28 Days To Save The World - True Quality Roadshow

During the Houston leg of our True Quality Roadshow series, we had the opportunity to sit down with Dan Purvis, CEO of Velentium and author of "28 Days to Save The World."

Dan tells the story of how his company weathered the early days of startup life, and how the pandemic - which took so many companies down - turned out to be the springboard that tested the culture that Dan and his co-founder had molded from the very beginning.

If you're not familiar with our True Quality Roadshow - you should definitely check it out! It's a free half-day event at one of 6 cities across the world. Links below!

Listen now:

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Some of the highlights of this episode include:

• The role Velentium played in upscaling the production of ventilators during the pandemic - this was a significant achievement and showcases Velentiums leadership, collaboration, and company responsiveness during this worldwide crisis.
• Real-life challenges faced by companies, especially dramatic stories like the purchase of parts without a PO and the personal involvement of the leadership, and paint a vivid picture of commitment and dedication.
• The central theme of a company's mission ("We exist to change lives for a better world") and how it guides its decisions is foundational and deeply impactful.
• The pivotal role that company culture plays, even when compared to strategic planning.
• The long-term vision of a company, and we emphasize that while actions and technologies change, the core mission remains constant.
• The decisions Dan was faced with, such as how (or if!) to pay employees during a crisis, and we highlight the ethical considerations a company has to make, and how to stay aligned with a company's core values.
• The emphasis on finding clients to fund growth rather than relying on investors - this is not only pragmatic advice for startups but also provides a unique perspective on business growth.

Links:

• Dan Purvis LinkedIn
• 28 Days to Save The World book
• Etienne Nichols LinkedIn
• True Quality Roadshow
• Velentium
• Texas Medical Center for Innovation

Memorable quote:

"Because as a leader, if you don't clearly know where you're headed, it's really hard to get a bunch of people to follow you. And I don't want people to follow me. I want them to race me up the mountain, which is the one that we've all decided to ascend together."

Transcript

Etienne Nichols: Hey everyone. This is Etienne Nichols, the host of the Global Medical Device Podcast. Welcome back. Today we're going to be talking with Dan Purvis who is the CEO of Velentium, where they build test systems, product firmware and products for medical devices.

So, if you're interested, you can check them out. We'll put those in the show notes. Dan Purvis is the CEO and founder there, but he's also the author of 28 Days to Save the World, where he tells the story of his role and how he helped during the pandemic and how his company really came together when a lot of companies were falling apart during that time.

It was really fun conversation. If you have a chance to read his book, I'll put a link to his book in the show notes as well. Also, quick note about this episode.

This was actually recorded in front of a live audience in Houston, Texas, in the Texas Medical Center for Innovation. It was a really fun conversation. It was a really fun event.

If you have a chance, we have a few more road shows coming up in the True Quality Roadshow series. We are going to be in Orange County later this year and we're also going to Amsterdam in November.

So, depending on when you'll hear this recording, that may or may not have passed, but we are excited to get to do that again, where we spend a day offering free content to the industry, where we have speakers come up on stage, tell their story.

We have panels of different professionals, MedTech professionals, talking about the industry and best practices and how we can better serve you definitely check that out. We'll put a link in the show notes as well.

But let's get to the episode.

Etienne Nichols: Dan, why don't you go ahead and give a little bit of your background and we're going to talk a little bit about the story of you and your company working to save the world.

But let's give a little background on you and how you got to that point if you don't sure, sure.

Dan Purvis: So, I was born at an early age, and the bottom line is, when I was in junior high, I figured out that people would pay a quarter for a little piece of Hubba Bubba.

And my mom was a teacher in that junior high, and gum is not allowed. And she caught me and then took me to Sam's where I could learn about supply.

And she actually bought me a case of Hubba Bubba and I was the gum guy. And I realized right then that, man, I really like business. This idea that I could buy for a little and sell for a lot and delight fellow junior high kids, much to the consternation of the VP, was great. And so, the vice principal was not really a fan. But I learned a great lesson about business through all that and through the course of the next several years, I got a degree in electrical engineering.

And my goal in electrical engineering was to find the smartest person in the class and become their friend. And so, people have always been my passion, and so that doesn't mean that you can't be a gifted engineer, but it is not my thing.

People say, are you an electrical engineer? I say, I'm an electrical engineer by training, but my passion is people. And so, the dream that I have always had is to be a part of an organization or organizations that can change lives. And so, when my co-founder Tim Carol and I had the chance to found Velentium ten years ago, we kept fighting with this idea of like, what are we supposed to be about? We finally came up with just we exist to change lives for a better world. We exist to change lives for a better world.

And we fought it and fought it and fought it. Why do we fight it? Because it just sounds so trite. We bring good things to life or whatever, and yet it really is who we are.

And so, when you say, tell us about Dan.

I'm married to my favorite person. We've got four kiddos. They're 17, 1614 and twelve, which meant four, three, two, and newborn. At one point, Velentium was ten years old. We started a company where there were two people in the company when my kids were seven, six, five and three. And so, you can do it. You can do it. It's doable. The spoils don't go to the most talented. The spoils go to the most stubborn. And so, dig in, hang in there and you will win.

Etienne Nichols: The race is not to the swift, and the battle is not to the strong. That's really cool. So, I really appreciate you sharing the background. Your book is titled 28 Days to Save the World.

What's that even talk about saving the world? I mean, is it just being what's actually happening? There in that.

Dan Purvis: Sure. So, we wanted to write a book on culture because it's such a big passion point for us at the company.

But I didn't want to write a book just to self-publish. I wanted to write a book that would be published that other people could read, because the whole point was to improve lives.

And so, then we had this opportunity through the COVID response to have this amazing story. And through that story, we now have a publisher. And so, what we did is we merged the COVID story with the culture book we wanted to write and turned it into one.

We were meeting as a senior leadership team in March of 2020, and we were talking about the PPP program. For those of you that aren't familiar, it did happen, but it was a chance to get money from the government to try to keep people employed.

I had an email in my draft inbox to the staff at Velentium saying, we're going to try to hang on to everybody. We're really not sure what's going to happen.

And then we had a phone call that afternoon. And then that afternoon I got on a plane, and I flew to Seattle, where the first deaths from COVID were here in this country.

I walked down the street of our neighborhood with my wife saying, babe, you know, I have to do this. We have a chance to work on a ventilator project that could save lives.

I have to do this. And she just wept. I kissed her on the forehead as I walked out the door, because nobody really knew at that point just, how lethal is this thing?

And it turned out to be pretty lethal, but you just didn't know. I got on a very empty plane, landed in Seattle, went up to Bothel, Washington, where Ventec Life Systems, one of our clients for the last five years was and they had just told a leading magazine that if they had more resources, they could build more ventilators. So, we called them up and said, we're here to help.

And I went up there to help them. Two days later, they said, there are people coming from General Motors. I said, General Motors, the car company? Right, yeah, why not?

Sure. Do you mind if I go to the conference room? Sure. And so, sure enough, I was in the conference room. They brought the head of North American manufacturing. He reports to Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, and several others.

And we're going around the conference room, and they come to me and I say, I'm Dan from Velentium, and we build the test systems for Ventec. And they just kept going around, and it just kept growing and growing and growing.

They were building about 100 ventilators a month out of the Ventec facility. And they basically said, at General Motors, what is it going to take for us to build 10,000 a month? Which ironically, really is just a spreadsheet of scale. And so, you just put it in, and you say, I need 400 and some OD test systems and a bunch of parts.

And it was nuts. Within 90 minutes of that first meeting, they had a disassembled Ventec ventilator on the table with all of the parts starting to be identified, because they had an army of 70 buyers going across the entire General Motors buying platform to go find the parts.

And we opened a Kokomo, Indiana old Delphi plant from General Motors, reopened it as a ventilator factory within about 28 days, and shipped 30,000 ventilators over that summer. And so, it was a remarkable story.

We're working 16 hours days, seven days a week. I told each and every leader on the team, I said, I need 16 hours a day or more until your body gives out.

Every day. When your body gives out, go home and rest. And when it wakes up, come back. And I've always said, we exist to change lives for a better world that starts with you and your family.

I said, but in this particular moment, the whole country just stepped between you and your family. And if you're going to lead for me on this team, you can't just be willing to do that 16 hours, seven days a week.

You have to be willing to require it of everyone on your team. And everybody to a person said yes, except for one, who had just gotten married. He said, I need to go talk to my new bride.

And the next day he said yes too. And so, it was really cool to know that we had a team that was all in, because, man, in that moment, it was clear that they were all in.

And they were all in because for years we've been building this culture into them, that we exist to change lives for a better world. So, when an opportunity like that came across our plate, it was just obvious that it was something we had to step into.

And so, we went up to Kokomo, Indiana. We were shipping test systems each and every day. We had multiple shifts, so we were going 24/7. And sure enough, we turned on a ventilator factory from a shuttered plant inside of a month.

And those first ventilators went out the door to hospitals to the tune of then 30,000 over that summer.

Etienne Nichols: I remember in 2019, I think it was September of 2019, where I was a project manager at the time, sourcing a lot of parts out of China. And I got an email, and I turned to my team, and I said, something's going on in China.

We're going to have a delay. And I wish I still had those emails. You talk about 400,000 parts, the amount of supply chain that you had to deal with.

I've read some of that part of your book, the Supply Chain the story about your wife breaking through the gates to drive out onto the tarmac to deliver the box to the plane.

That's just amazing. What are some of the things that you really had to navigate to get that with supply chain down? How did you manage that?

Dan Purvis: What were some of sure. So, the fun thing about a factory is that you assemble something in a factory and then in Life sciences, you then have to test and verify that thing you assembled to make sure that whatever just got approved by FDA matches what you're building on the floor.

Such that the test systems, the verification of that unit represents about 50% of everything that's done in the factory. Maybe not by manpower, maybe not by dollars, but by function.

Testing is half of the game.

And here we are in a project that is being talked about from the White House lawn. Mike Pence is in the facility. People that report to Mary Barra are here all the time, and we are half of it because we're all the test systems.

All of the test systems. I got a call from Phil Kenley, who's the director of North American Manufacturing. He was like, you're late.

And I'm like, man, we got the PO, like, three days ago, right?

We had been buying we bought $2 million worth of parts before purchase order. Terrifying. We bet the company on it and we bet the company on it because it was the right thing to do, because it was going to be your mom or my mom and one ventilator left, and they both have COVID. We couldn't let that happen if we had a chance to step into that. And so from the get-go, we were buying parts.

We got that order from General Motors, and it was the largest order by far in the history of the company. And we turned it down, which was also terrifying, but it violated our values. Our first value is honorable. And the delivery date on that purchase order was two weeks. I was like, I can't accept this in good faith.

There's no way I can do this. And the buyer goes great. Tell me what date to put. I said, here's what you put for the date. You ready? He's like, yeah.

Said, put this at every day at the time of General Motors choosing, dan Purvis will brief whoever wants to be in the room exactly where we stand.

He says, that's not a date. I was like, I know, but that's all I could promise. And we just stood by that. And that's what they put in. And it allowed me and my client to be partners throughout the entire thing because we were contractually obligated to communicate.

That was it. And as a result, we got it done quicker. We had what we like to call your friendly neighborhood purchasing team from a supply chain perspective because many of us were home, right?

So, I had a lot of executive friends who went to college with me, and so we're getting a little bit grayer, and so we're running things, and a lot of them were home.

And I said, would you mind for me?

They're like, what do you mean? I was like, Turn on the news. That's what we're doing right now. I really need a lot of parts bought. And so, we've got this online spreadsheet, Google Sheets.

I think we had 57 people in that spreadsheet at one time, at one point, and there were engineers designing things, and then there was the black line, and above the black line meant it was approved, below the black line meant engineers were still trying to figure out alternatives, parts that might be available, et cetera. Once it went above the black line, it needed to be bought as quickly as possible. And I had friends all with my Platinum card from American Express, just buying, buying, buying.

And so all-over, West Houston, there were executives that had not done purchasing ever, or in a long time purchasing again, because it was leaders that I knew. I'm like, don't take no for an answer.

Don't take no for an answer. If the answer is yes, I have that part, but I can't get it to you tomorrow, and we need it tomorrow, then figure out a way to get it here.

My personal trainer, I started sending him all over the country. He would fly all over the country, and I was like, well, if you can't get it to me by tomorrow, can you get it to the Airport Hotel by tomorrow morning at 06:00 a.m.?

Well, yeah, we could do that. Good, because my trainer is going to be there, and you hand it to him and he'll fly it to me, and I'll have it by 9.

And so, we would do that over and over again. Such that when I got that call from Phil Kenley, he said, when I briefed the White House this afternoon, and I say, we're late because of test systems, what am I supposed to tell him?

And I went, tell him to call me.

He didn't, but I was like, holy smokes, what if he does?

We were doing the best we could with the supply chain.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, I've heard of people trying to get out of a workout, but that's a new one for me, so sending them out, look at send your trainer.

So, okay, you break your book down based on how you save the world, 28 days, and then later on you start talking about the culture. Our CEO, David Duram, we call him DD, he talks about culture and every new hire who comes on, he shows him a picture of someone dancing in the rain.

And he said, this is not culture where you're just dancing, and the culture is raining down on you. You have to rain it down on other people. So, I'm curious when you start talking about these different things, whose responsibility is it to perpetuate that culture?

And whose responsibility is the culture?

Dan Purvis: Whose responsibility is the culture? We talk at Velentium all the time about making culture true, if you will. So, this idea that culture is a platitude on a website or a poster on the conference room wall, it's just not true culture. Every company has a culture. That culture can either happen to you, or it can be cultivated by you. And so how do you cultivate a culture one person at a time?

Everybody has to own that culture. For us, we talk all the time. If you're part of a startup, you haven't read the book Traction by Gino Wickman. I highly recommend it.

Traction is a blueprint for how to run a company that's small. And so, it's worked very well for us. But in Traction, it talks about RPRs right person, right seat.

Right person, right seat. And so how we define that at Velentium is right person means you align with our four principles. The four principles at Velentium are our passion. We exist to change lives for a better world.

That starts with you and your family. It moves out to our clients and our suppliers. It moves out even further to the caregivers and the patients. And finally, it involves our community.

But it starts with you and your family. And then our three values honorable, we do right for right's sake, results plus plus. We do the job and then some. And humble charisma.

We strive to be the kind of people you want to be around. If you can defend your decision according to our four principles, I've got your back. But what I found is that a right person is somebody who just gets those four principles.

And I found that I can't train you to be a right person for our company. If you're a wrong person for our company, then there is a right company for you, and it's not us. A guy on a plane next to me, he was an executive at David Weekly Homes. You're familiar with that home builder here in town? He taught me this concept. I love it. He said sometimes you just have to invite someone to pursue excellence elsewhere and that they're going to be wrong people, that they're not a bad person, they're just a wrong person for what a right person is for you. And so right people really just ooze your principles, and then right seat can they do the job and do the job well?

And we're very forgiving on right seat. If we have a right person, we will work hard at Velentium to find the right seat for you where you can shine. But if you get people right person and right seat, man, the energy that comes out of that to just not that employee, but all the people around them is really great.

Etienne Nichols: You probably already answered this, but.

Dan Purvis: I.

Etienne Nichols: Wanted to ask you a little bit about why culture is so important because a lot of times just do the work. That's really what it comes down to. A lot of times in my mind when I was thinking when I was a project manager, and I look back on that with a little bit of regret and shame because I do appreciate culture so much more now.

But I'm curious what your answer would be. Why is it so important?

Dan Purvis: Yeah, so my mentor said that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and I think he got it from Peter Drucker. But the idea, and we sell this all the time to our clients, it is going to hit the fan at some point in whatever you're doing. And whatever I do, it probably is hitting the fan for half of you right now, whatever it is, right?

So, when that happens, do you want a vendor who is there for the money, or do you want a vendor who is there for the cause?

And so, at our company, we exist to change lives for a better world. You hear me say this again and again and again because I'm pounding it home in my own hearts and in the hearts of everybody that works with me all the time.

So, when it hits the fan and we have a chance to go save the world like we did in the last week on a situation that hit the fan with one of our clients just now, it's like, no, we are in.

And we're not in just so we can get paid. We're in because we want to end people suffering from diabetes or we want to end people suffering from heart failure.

We want to end people suffering from insert indication here you'll see over there, indication man on our banner. And we call him Indication Man because it's a silhouette of the human body and all of the different indications that we've had the opportunity to partner with you all, to treat.

And so, to have a culture that says this is who we are, not just what we do, is really, really critical because that's what's going to define what comes out naturally when you get poked, when it gets hard. Right? I guess I would say one other thing, is that if you ask somebody, tell me about your company and the first thing you come back with is what you do, I would challenge that. And the reason I would challenge that is that what you do is technologically and market driven and technology and markets, they change all the time. But if I say, tell me about your company, and you say, here's why we exist, here's how we exist, here's who we exist, here's where we're headed, and finally, here's what we do, these four don't ever have to change. And so, if you're full of something that, you know, on this side, then the what can change and you can adapt and flex and get yourself once again relevant if the market or the technology changes.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah. When I think of a Greenlight Guru, my mind went to that because in previous companies, I never would have been able to really identify that. With Greenlight Guru, if you ask me what we do, our goal is to improve the quality of life.

And I could talk about other things like that. And then, oh, yeah, we sell software, but that's really cool to think about that. So, okay. I didn't mean to leave the 28 Days to Save the World as quickly as I did.

I had a question for you on that. So, you went through that experience. I'm curious. Has it changed the way you live your life now, the way you look at things, the way you look at business?

Or was that just a moment? That was extraordinary, and now we're back to normal. What are your thoughts?

Dan Purvis: Yeah, so for those of you that are Toy Story fans, great. If you're not, then you haven't had kids yet. But there's the Dino guy, right, that he goes, I don't have to play this anymore. I lived it. Do you remember that scene?

And it's just great. We look back on that scene from The Life of Velentium, and I go, wow, that really happened. That really happened. They say that people that have personality disorders sometimes have this disproportionate view of themselves where it's self-aggrandizement.

Right. And there were several times at the hotel in Kokomo where I'm like, is this as big a deal as it feels? Am I making this up? And then you turn on the news and you see pictures of the plant you just left, and you're like, no, this is the real deal.

And so, one of the things this is going to be kind of funny for you guys at Greenlight Guru. One of the things that I said after that project was, the company after Project V will never be the same as the company before.

And the thing we're going to do first and foremost is pour into sales and marketing like we never have before, and we're going to copy Greenlight Guru because your marketing is unbelievable.

Yeah.

Just the way that you lead in the marketplace. I remember going to one of your trade show booths a decade ago, or maybe it wasn't quite that, but a long time ago, and going, man, you guys seem pretty cool.

How big are you? And you're pretty small, right? And you've always projected just way bigger than you were, and it just continues to grow. I'm very impressed with how you market, and that was the number one thing, is we wanted to walk away from that project with an investment in sales and marketing that started to lead the marketplace similar to the way you guys do.

Etienne Nichols: Just guilty by association. He's looking at me, but I'm just no, the whole team could stand up right now and start clapping. That's great. I love that, and I appreciate that.

One of my favorite concepts’ kind of leading into the or segueing from what you're talking about, one of my favorite concepts from the book was slow, fast, slow. I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit.

Dan Purvis: Yeah. So, the idea of slow, fast, slow. There's a chapter in the book that talks about that moment when I called the leaders to project V that we had been working on this for at that 8 years or so.

And so, for eight years we've been building Roots into this company. And it's one of those situations where I felt like the results from the root building, we had been investing in was disproportionately low to the amount of effort we had put in to continue to build and drive Roots deep into the ground.

And what we found is that what will happen, especially in small companies, is that you can find yourself in moments in history where you are uniquely placed as the person. And when that moment comes, it's time to act extremely fast. It's not a time to go I'm not sure. What do we think? I don't know. You jump in. You jump in with reckless abandon.

Like one of the leaders at General Motors got asked by General Motors purchasing, man, that price seems kind of crazy. Is there anybody else that could do it? And he told me afterwards it was an engineering colleague of mine.

He told me afterwards, he goes, yes, I could give you twelve names of people that could do it. And I was like, no, I want the business. He goes, but if you want it done in the next two months, there's one company in the world that can do that because they've been working with Ventec for the last five years.

We were uniquely able to do that like nobody else. But I've thought about it before. If we had sent one of our engineers who had worked on that project up to Seattle instead of a leader up to Seattle, what we ended up with a few days of consulting, or maybe several weeks of consulting instead of multiple millions in every test system in the building, right? So, when you come across a moment where you go, ooh, I might be tailor made for this, I would suggest that you are tailor made for this.

There's a chapter in the book that says, why not me? And it goes very close with this slow, fast, slow idea. Why not you? Why not you? I think it should be you.

Because the person on the screen, on the TV that's getting all the fame and fortune because they just changed the world, they still put their pants on one leg at a time just like all of us do.

And so why not you? I think it should be you. And to the. Extent that it is, you step forward. We volunteered again and again and again over the weeks that led up to that project.

We called them when we read the article. We showed up when they said they were overwhelmed. I said, we have a war room meeting every morning at 08:00 a.m. I'll be at it tomorrow morning.

Over and over again. We volunteered ourselves, and that was the fast. It led to several months of very fast. And then you get back to slow. So, seven or eight years of driving routes, several weeks or months of extreme speed.

And then after that, whoa, what just happened? Think of I don't know if you've whitewater rafted. We love to do that in Colorado in the summers, but there's periods of beer drinking and floating and then it's like beer's down or up.

Everybody better listener. We're all going over and it's like you're like, oh, my gosh, we're going through that. And then you go through that and it's exhilarating. And then you float some more.

And so, think about that in the life of your company. Drive your cultural roots deep, jump right into that rapid and row like crazy. And then afterwards, what just happened? What could be better? What did I learn? How could the process have improved?

Who shown during that and as a result, could do other things at this company? Who really didn't? Who shied in that moment and maybe isn't a right person like we thought they were?

That's what the rapids will show you. And so that's the idea. Slow, fast, slow. Prepare, act, recover.

Etienne Nichols: If I was at home, I'd have multiple screens with lots of notes and taking notes for next question. So, this is difficult for me, but I'm appreciating that you can just take this.

One thing that you had in your book was page 48, the why not you?

Dan Purvis: Page 48.

Etienne Nichols: Of course it was page 41. 48. I think it should be you. I want to read this. This is not my words, it's his. I hope you'll decide to stop accepting the world as it is.

I hope that instead you'll start making promises and taking steps to go after something great. And I know that you'll be able to do it because you'll understand the power of culture, and you will after this talk.

Someone's got to save the world. Why not you? I got chills, and if this was my book, it was underlined and highlighted, and dog eared. That was great. So why not you?

There's another thing. It almost seems like a juxtaposition, though. Later on, you talk about a phrase that says you decide. As a CEO, how do you use that phrase in regards to culture?

Dan Purvis: Yeah, you decide. My favorite two words at the company by far. You decide. I like to tell the story. We adopted two boys from Kazakhstan and as part of the dossier that we had to prepare for Kazakhstan, you had to have a letter on your bank's letterhead that said you had a bank account.

Because I guess in Kazakhstan that's a thing and it shows a certain level of status, which means you're worthy of being a parent. But at any rate, it was a requirement.

I walked into I'll call them big bank and yeah, I just I just need something on your letterhead that says, I have an account here.

And the manager goes; I can't do that. I was like, Wait, what do you mean? And I love this quote, and I hate this quote.

And he said, I don't have an F key for that.

I was like, what are you talking about? He was like, well, we can print these twelve forms, f one through F twelve. And if it's not that, I can't do it.

And this led to about 90 minutes of me almost getting myself arrested, where I was like, do you have this thing called the Internet?

Do you have this thing called Microsoft Word?

Go download your logo, put it on Word and say, I have an account, print it out and sign it. And he finally did, and he was like, I'm doing you such a favor right now.

And I was like, oh my word, you're between me and my son. No, it was crazy. And I just found myself going, yes, processes are important.

Yes, procedures are important. We're at a quality conference. But taking so much of the humanity out of the workers that you don't give them any ability to make a decision means that you as the leaders are going to be workaholics.

Because there's no way you could scale your company if every decision has to go through your desk. So, my favorite two words by far in the company are you decide.

Because if every decision has to go through my desk, I can't coach my daughter's private school basketball team, which I did this season. It was great, but I had to leave the office every day at 230 to go coach her private school basketball five days a week for the two or three months I would rather do that because ten years from now, I'm not going to go, man, December 2022. I sure do wish I had worked more, but I will look back in ten years and remember that season we almost got shut out one game in basketball, but not the best coach.

But the fact is, we had a blast. And I tell my staff; you may get an email from me at 11:00 pm. It doesn't mean I need you to respond to it.

It just means I'm back at work after taking that afternoon off each and every day. And so, to do you decide culture really requires some policing of yourself as a leader, because there are plenty of times that somebody makes a different decision that's not a bad decision.

And when that different but not bad decision happens, you got to let it ride.

Like, I got a call earlier yesterday, the five-minute talk that you heard earlier today about Velentium, who's given that I was like, Ben's, given that. Well, why is Ben given that instead of you?

Well, he should. Why not? It's like, why? Like the idea that could somebody else in your company, do it? And if they could, they should.

And I don't know about you, but as a young leader, I'd like younger leader. The idea is it's a little scary. It's a little scary not to do it, because you got to where you are today as a leader.

By doing it, you got results, and those results got you promoted. Those promotions got you more opportunities, which you did those too. And yet the higher you get in your organization, and especially if you're starting up a new organization, it's not what you do, it's how you think, which is a whole different mindset.

And so, this idea of, I'm going to step away and let the organization do its thing is critical, but it's terrifying. As a leader, am I going to be left with nothing to do?

And if I'm left with nothing to do, what happens next? I guarantee you your giftedness will attract more things to do. You will never run out of things to do.

But if you continue to do the things that you did yesterday, you won't train your team to do those. So, you can do the new things that will take your organization to a whole another level.

Etienne Nichols: That's fantastic. I'm trying to figure out exactly which way to go with that, because you decide.

Dan Purvis: Thank you.

Etienne Nichols: Rules versus principles. That was one of the things I wanted to talk about, because you mentioned that we are I mean, this is a quality focused day that we're talking about here.

There's a lot of rules that we have to follow. So how can a medical device company take that and actually say, okay, we're going to implement principles versus rules? Can we get away with that when we're supposed to have SOPs and so forth?

What does that look like?

Dan Purvis: Sure. So, Principles over Rules basically says, come up with the core of your culture, and anytime a principle can reign, do it.

Anytime a principle can reign, do it. But what you'll find is that those principles would get violated all the time.

So, what happens when a principle gets violated? If you tolerate that, your culture just changed. If you don't tolerate that and that doesn't mean you have to remove that person, but it does mean you have to train to it, then that principle gets reinforced.

And what I've learned again and again as a leader is that the rest of your organization that is diligently following your culture, sees the culture violations such that when you tolerate it as a leader, because it's uncomfortable to confront that person, to train that person to correct that person to remove that person.

The rest of your culture, the rest of your people stand up and take notice and go, wait a minute, maybe this isn't our culture. I just saw it just recently on one of our slack channels.

It was like, it seems like there are a couple of people that are using slack to perpetuate a cancer. That doesn't seem like it's very much the Velentium way. I was like, oh, thank you, Mr.

New person on the company leadership team. That's a really good point. I'm going to have to work on that. So, if a principal can do it, do it that way.

A principal cannot handle your manufacturing floor. A standard operating procedure and a work instruction can handle your operating floor. But if a principal could handle it and it's not, and that do not have a name, don't ever put a rule in. I've always said that we're not going to have rules with names on them. If there is a name in the company that is continuing to create needs for rules, it's time for that person to pursue excellence elsewhere.

Because I want every rule in this company, if we ever have one, to motivate and inspire top performance, not babysit and police bottom performers. And so, if I have a bottom performer that continually needs a rule, it's just time for them to go.

And so, when we think about principles over rules, I think that the bottom line is when you apply it to quality is could a principal do it? And if not, if there's a procedure or a regulation that demands something more, then obviously you have to have that.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, that's really good. I want to talk about the grow defend I can't remember the last part.

Dan Purvis: Launch, maybe.

Etienne Nichols: Grow launch, yeah, the section of the book where you talk about growing your culture, defending your culture.

Dan Purvis: I really did write the book, I.

Etienne Nichols: Think, and I really did read it. You know what, I've got the book right here.

Dan Purvis: Let's look at it.

Etienne Nichols: There's a section. I'm going to look at the index real quick.

Dan Purvis: There it is. Defend, grow, think, think as you decide. And the F key culture and avoiding the F key culture. Yeah.

Etienne Nichols: What about when you soar at the very end you talk about launching and soaring your culture and growing your company even further. One of the things that you talked about was your vision.

And I remember you reading something about 1000 families and what does that mean and why does a vision matter?

Dan Purvis: Sure. So, when I meet with new staff or prospective leaders that might want to come and join our company and they want to know about Velentium, I say what I have to do is tell you about our company.

And then if that jazzes you, then we should explore this further. And so, we start with the why of changing lives and the how of the three values. Then we go to the who of Velentium, which is in our name.

Our name is velocity. momentum and ingenium. Ingenium is the Latin for talent. Vel. Velocity ENT momentum, ium ingenium because I wanted something that brought the idea of talent and speed together.

And speed really matters to us. You can't just do the job well and work here. You have to do the job well and enjoy speed. And why speed? Because we exist to change lives for a better world, and that starts with your family.

But I need the job done. And so come in, work hard, work fast, and go home. And so that was the idea of speed and talent. And I wanted something where the.com was available, and I finally found Velentium.

So that was the who of Velentium. And then you go to the where of Velentium. The where of Velentium is our vision of where we're headed. So, people oftentimes in a culture will say, well, what's the difference between mission or passion is what we like to say.

And vision, well, your mission is the why of the company. The passion is the why of the company. And there's a chapter that says more than air. When we interview different candidates, I will oftentimes say, tell me what you're passionate about.

And nobody has ever answered air. And yet in six minutes you're all dead, and so am I without it. Right? And so, yes, air, but not the why. And yet when you say why company, a lot of times people will say, well, I want to maximize shareholder value, or something that reflects money.

And I'm like, no, that's the air. And I'm passionate for the money because it allows us to do all the other great things we get to do and create more indication man, right.

So, we love that, but it's not the why. And so, you come around finally to the where, which is the vision, passion and mission being the why. But the vision is the where.

Where are we headed? Because as a leader, if you don't clearly know where you're headed, it's really hard to get a bunch of people to follow you. And I don't want people to follow me.

I want them to race me up the mountain, the one that we've all decided to ascend together. And so, as you think about where in the company, the metric for that is something that's got to inspire people.

And so, for us, it was staff. I said, I dream of a day that we would have a thousand staff on our team. And the reason for that is I'm passionate about people.

I want to change lives for a better world one staff person at a time. And I was drinking beer and eating pizza with a mentor of mine, Dan Moore, who is the CEO of Cyberonics here in town, and then the chairman of LivaNova.

And I pursued him at a benefit and handed my business card and said, I'd like to learn from you. And I called him for six months, and he never returned my call.

And he finally did. And after time, he finally became a friend. He actually wrote the forward to the book. And he goes, you know, you say a thousand staff? I was like, yeah, that's where we're headed, a thousand staff.

He goes, but you're so passionate about the family. I was like, oh, man, I love Julie. She's my favorite person. By the way. The kids go, wait, you like her more than and I go, oh, yeah.

If we do our job right, you're all out of here. The whole job is to launch you, right? And if I do my job right, we could stay together. And he goes, well, why wouldn't you say 1000 families?

And I went, Whoa. And this is something you'll find as you create your culture and test it through battle, essentially, in life with your company.

It's not quite right. It's not quite right. And then boom, it locks in. And when it locks in, you know it. We say another thing around the company. Simple isn't easy, but simple is worth it.

If you haven't reached simple, you're still doing this. Keep working, keep working, keep working. And finally, boom, it'll lock in. And then you know you've got it. And when you know you've got it, you've got it.

And people say, how do I know I've reached simple? I was like, you haven't.

How do you know? Well, because you're asking. And if you haven't reached simple, there's still that it's kind of that head tilt. I talk about a head tilt in the book. If you have things in your culture that cause an eyebrow raise or a head tilt, it's not right.

My oldest son flooded our bathroom upstairs, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's water everywhere. And I asked my son, I was like, what happened? He was like, I have no idea. I think there's just something wrong with the toilet and head tilt, right?

I'm like, something ain't adding up. And it led to a or. And he said, it's just like that or I might have put an entire role in to see what would happen.

When you get the aur in your company, you got to dig on that and rifle it out until you fully get it tight, right? And so that's the idea.

Etienne Nichols: I've heard you talk about money is the air company’s breeze. And you mentioned nobody says air is your passion. However, so there's a story in the book that I thought was really great.

Before COVID happened, hurricane Harvey had hit Houston. You had employees that wanted to go help neighbors and friends, and you said, okay, we're going to do that, and we're still going to pay you.

But the account kept dropping. I wonder if you could tell a little bit about that story and how you would advise companies to navigate that if they do want to pursue that to where you are helping other families and things like that.

How do you navigate the money versus the ethical side?

Dan Purvis: Yeah. So how do you bridge the gaps of financing? There were some financing questions to the panel and your passion, which is maybe the indication you're working on, and how do you make all that work together?

That is a really tough deal. Right. Because you could say there is huge amounts of success right at the other end of that parking lot, but you've got to hold your breath to get there.

And I'm like, I don't think I can hold my breath and run all the way to the other end of the parking lot. Well, that's a problem because that bounty exists.

But you're going to die halfway there, and that doesn't work.

How many of our companies you were like, it was so close, and we just couldn't pay everybody and everybody went, and so money matters. Money matters, absolutely. The quicker you can get the cash flow positive and let your customers pay the bills instead of investors paying the bills, the better.

The quicker you can get the cash flow positive to let the customers pay the bills and not credit cards or your own personal finances pay the bills, the better. My wife and I came out of a movie this is early on in Velentium, and she was weeping.

I guess something from the movie got her thinking about the company and how crazy it is, and we've got these young kids, and she goes, I don't want to hear about the finances of the company anymore.

And I was like, okay. She goes, and please don't have us live under a bridge.

And my thought I said we won't. And what I was thinking there was not that Valentine will be successful is that I can mow lawns again like I did in high school if I have.

And over the next course of events, Tim and I had nine credit cards in a spreadsheet. It had Tim 1, Tim 2, Tim 3. Dan 123456. The limit on that credit card. The day that it cycled, and hence the day after, is the best day to buy because I get the entire cycle plus the float to 45 days or so of interest free line of credit.

And we built a company on that. And then we used our 401K loans, and then we used a home equity loan. And then I borrowed $70,000 from my father-in-law behind my wife's back because she said, I don't want to hear about it anymore.

Terrifying Thanksgiving. Yeah. Well, no, seriously, when we took private equity, people go, how did it go to take private equity? I was like, you were asking the wrong guy. Because it changed my life, because I can eat Thanksgiving with people, like, and look them in the eye again.

Right. And so, when you say, where is the line between money and ethics? I'm just saying that when I tell you the story that we decided during Hurricane Harvey to pay people right through the not the pandemic through the hurricane, even while they were mucking out their houses and everybody else's houses and not doing work anymore.

I know the pain that that caused because it nearly put us out of business, but we just said it's the right thing to do. And quite honestly, I got to the point where I was like, I don't just want to run a company.

I want to run a company that reflects my passion for people. And so, if I can't run a company that reflects my passion for people, then we will die trying. And I'm telling you, if you have that kind of attitude that you don't want to just run a company, you want to run a company that X, figure out that X and then die trying.

And I'm telling you, we didn't get to zero. We got to very negative.

I looked around.

There were some girls selling lemonade on like the 16th tee of a golf game I was playing, and I was like, they sold lemonade to the group in front of me, which means her net worth is higher than mine.

She's got $0.05. I've got.

So, one more quick story on money. I went on a mission trip with my oldest son. We flew into El Paso and then went up into an Indian reservation in New Mexico.

And we were driving up there. We went to the Walmart. We got some Doritos and Cokes. And then we're heading up in there on the rental car, and I got this question.

Dad, are we rich?

I was, hmm, let's say, son, that we own that water tower. We were driving by a water tower, and he goes, okay. And let's say that we get to the checkout at the Walmart with the Doritos and the cokes, and I say, oof, chef, I don't have any money, but I have a water tower.

Would they give you the Doritos? He goes, no. And that, my friend, is the difference between cash flow and net worth. We have a very high net worth, and it is extremely illiquid and all in the company.

And so how you reconcile that all in your life?

If you're single and like Ramen, you can go longer. If you're ahead of a household with four young kids, it's a little bit harder. But I'm telling you, drive to what you want to lead, and I think it'll probably work. Find that way. Don't say no. And why not? You be the one that's stubborn enough to say, I'm going to make this happen.

Etienne Nichols: Do you have any practical advice? Because in the previous panel we talked about how maybe in next year we could be facing a recession or something like that. You already went through the pandemic, and your story is really inspiring to me.

To see how you did that and how you handled it. Do you have any specific practical advice to companies who may be starting up and facing that and how to get through that stronger than weaker?

Any thoughts there?

Dan Purvis: Yeah. So, I say this all the time to people talking about funding. By far the easiest and hardest, but the best funding you can get is clients.

Find a way to sell something.

Find a way to sell something. So maybe you can't because you don't have FDA clearance. But what do you know? Maybe you need to sell some services on the side.

For a while, we wanted to be design, development, and manufacturing, but we're just starting manufacturing now. We've had clients for years beg us to manufacture for them. I'm like, I can't.

Why can't you? Well, I don't have a factory. Why don't you? Factories cost money. It's like, I don't have any. And so, find a way to let your clients pay for it.

We went up to Ventec Life Systems early in our company. They were a longtime client of ours. And I said, I'm looking at payroll yet again. I'm not sure how we're going to make it work.

I'm going to go up to Ventec and I'm going to sell the next phase of the project, and I'm going to come home with $50,000.

And Tim, my partner, he goes, well, how are you going to do that? It was like, I'm going to do it. And sure enough, we got the order for the next piece.

They said, you’ve got a deal. And I said, Great, I need 50 grand down. And they said, we don't do that. I said, Then there's no deal. And I just started staring at them, and they started staring at me.

They were like, let's go get the founder. And they went and got Doug Freeze. And he came in. I told the same story. I was like, I have to have 50 grand.

We're growing, which is great. We're growing, which you should like, but we're growing. And that eats cash. And you get that, right? If you don't get why growth eats cash, you need to figure that out.

Because you go hire a person, they're net two weeks. They want to be paid every other Friday. But you go do work that may turn into revenue someday in the future when you get approval or may turn into revenue when you can bill a client and they pay you 90 days later or 120 days later.

But you are paying your employees every two weeks. The more you add, it takes a while for that cash to rush up behind them. And so, yeah, I just looked at the founder and just kept saying, it's going to take 50 grand.

And he goes, Son, you have a deal. And I was like, thanks for calling me son. I guess I still look young, but yeah, that was the deal.

Etienne Nichols: That's fantastic. I really appreciate all the stories. I'm going to give the mic over to the audience now.

Dan Purvis: Yeah. So, the question of what do we do on the day to day to reinforce culture?

There's the story that's told of a kid who's walking down the beach. You probably heard this story and forgive me if you have. And he's grabbing Starfish and throwing them into the ocean.

And some adult comes by, and he was like, man, what are you doing? He was like, I'm throwing starfish in they were going to burn up on the sand. He's like, yeah, but look, there's starfish as far as you could see.

You can never make a difference in all those starfish lives. He's like, yeah, but mattered to this one and tosses it in and out of that. We say we do for one what we'd like to do for all.

We had a key leader in our company, really, really liked this person.

Huge Astros fan. I pulled him into my office. I said, hey, we just hit the World Series. You, your wife, and your two kids are going to the game tonight.

And I watched him light up. I can't do that for everybody. But not everybody loves the Astros like this guy does, right? I spoke his language on a reward perspective, by the way.

He gets a book. Yeah, nice. They were all like, quick, it's not that good a book.

But we have Amazon gift cards. You can get Amazon gift cards with your logo on them. And when we give and they're spot gifts, they're $50 and $100 gifts. And we give them to our program managers and say, give them out.

Give them out whenever you were impressed, to the staff. And that gift, quite honestly, is not to the staff. It's to the staff spouse. Bring that thing home with our logo on it and be like, hey, you did great.

There are things like that. Then there are things where you have to defend the culture when something doesn't go well. And we're in research and development, and that R is ugly, right?

Research by definition is unknown, which means we camp out all the time in Ugliness on an engineering perspective of just trying to get something to work that has never worked before.

And so, in the midst of all that humble charisma am I teachable. That's one of our values. And so, when something doesn't go well, I can guarantee you I'm not going to do everything right for you if we serve.

You probably shouldn't say that if I'm trying to get business. But what I can guarantee you is if you call us out, we will answer the phone. We will look you in the eye.

We will tell you the truth. And if I don't sniff that's happening, I will respond. I got a complaint at, I think, 10:30 the other night, and I was still up because I do a lot of afternoons.

Activities with the kids, and I responded on behalf of the company within 30 minutes, saying, it's not mine to respond. People on our staff will, but I'll make sure you hear from us tomorrow because boom.

I want people to know if there's a problem, you're going to hear from us. Does that kind of help? Defend it and reward it. Defend it and reward it. Anytime your head tilts and it's not quite right, you as the leader, have to speak up.

You have to address it. If you ignore it, that's a problem.

Etienne Nichols: I want to emphasize what you said about whenever I get a gift card from Greenlight Guru, it goes to my wife because that helps me do my job better. If she's happy with Greenlight Guru, I'm living a better life.

And so, rewarding the spouses is fantastic, too. The other thing that I wanted to mention, too, is I'd never seen this definition quite I think you quote Seth Godin in the book when you talk about culture, is when you can say, this is who we are, and this is what we do.

Dan Purvis: Yeah, who you are and what you do are aligned. We have a quarterly company meeting, and there's a share document out there for the quarterly company meeting, and there's a section of that document called Value Celebrations.

And throughout the quarter, the staff can go into that area. Everybody has access to it, and they can be like, I put Dan in parentheses, humble charisma at the end for the way that he and then I talk about what I saw you do, and we will have dozens of those in the corporate meeting.

It's my favorite part of our quarterly meeting. I'm like it's. Time for value celebrations. Dan, start us off because Dan's right there, and I will talk about at the end, and then it'll go along.

And Kennedy, you're next. And so, you're talking about your colleague and just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Not only are you getting your 20 seconds of fame in front of the company to talk, you're lauding your colleague and reinforcing the values, right?

So, it's just another way that we try to say, hey, this really does matter. We have a project highlight. And anytime we have a project highlight in the quarterly meeting, I'm always quick to make sure that the tech developer and the program manager that are talking about that project talk about indication, man, how is this ultimately helping people? We had a situation with a supplier during COVID I got a call from a supplier. She runs a one-man graphics design company, and she called me in tears.

She said, my husband just fell dead in his high school classroom, and he didn't keep up our life insurance, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I was like, oh, that's horrible. She goes, And I couldn't think of who to call, so I called you, and I was like, the fact that she decided to call one of her clients and it was us says something about our culture I was really excited about.

Well, I said say no more. I'll be back in touch. And we put it out to the company that over the next three days, every dollar you donate will be matched dollar for dollar by your leadership team.

And then we called her back, and we said, we've just funded six months of your mortgage because the company raised $3,500, and we matched it and put $7,000 towards six months of her mortgage.

She gave me her mortgage account, so we actually put it straight to the mortgage, and she just began to weep. She goes; nobody has loved us like Velentium has.

And there wasn't a dry eye in our conference room, and we hung up with her on the zoom, and I said, Gentlemen, roll up your sleeves, because that's why we do this.

That's why money matters, so that we can change lives for a better world, one life at a time. And so those stories, overtime, in your company, will become legend.

And once those stories become legend, they have a life of their own, and the culture begins to go into the other people where they're not just being reined on.

Etienne Nichols: Can you tell the story of the hammer? Because I thought that was a great story.

Dan Purvis: Yeah. So, our chairman and my lead investor, he tells the story of he got a new office manager, and she locked the cabinet on the office supplies, and it really bothered him. He was like, no, I run a company, not our company, but the company that he had back in the day. I run a company where I trust my people with the office supplies.

But rather than just say, hey, unlock the cabinet, he said, get me a hammer, and he went up there, and he pounded the metal handle off of the cabinet and just left it hanging there in the door, just dangling, because he was like, I want people to see, hear, and feel that at this place. We trust you. We trust you. Well, when he retired from that company as its leader after many, many years, they gave him akin to a trophy, but it was a hammer with that handle, like, all done up in some kind of art deal, because they loved him, because that story became legend at that company. And that legend is that no, here. We trust you.

We trust you.

Etienne Nichols: Legendary. I love that. Okay, we have another question from the audience, right?

Dan Purvis: So great questions. Who do I look up to and why? And where do I see the company in ten years or more?

So, Brian Tracy is, like, this motivational guy from, like, way back when I was, I don't know if he's a thing anymore, but he told me I went to one of his motivational things way back when.

He said, if you will read 30 minutes a day in your field. You will be one of the world leaders in your field in ten years. And so, my first challenge to you is if you're not reading and reading actively, you are getting surpassed by others who are. Now, I'm not a big reader, I'm a big listener. And my kids all make fun of me because I'm a big fan of Audible's, 2X feature.

And they're like, how do you do that? It's like, well, it forces me to concentrate. I like speed. I like speed all the time. But if you recommend a book to me, I won't put it down on a list.

I'll go to Audible immediately and buy it.

Then I'll listen to it as quickly as I can, and I'll go on to the next one. So, the first answer I would give you is, I look up to anybody that's written something because I want to consume that, right?

So, from an author perspective, my favorite author is Jim Collins. "Good to Great," "Great by Choice," and "How the Mighty Fall"

All these books are just foundational. I've learned a lot from Gina Wickman, so “Get a Grip and Traction and then Scaling Up” by Vern Harnish is another book that is just great about small business and growing small business.

These are authors that I will read as far as people that I look up to.

Dan Moore, I sought him out. I was told by others that Dan Moore is a man of faith who leads well. And I went, I got something to learn from that guy.

And I stalked him. Right? So, he ignored me for six months. And when we finally had coffee, we talked for a very long time, and he goes, you know, anybody that wants to be mentored by me, I ignore, because if they don't really want to be mentored, they'll give.

I went, huh? Okay. You know, I'm glad I didn't. So, Dan Moore is a guy that I look up to, and then ultimately, I would say that if you're not a person of faith, you might consider that whatever that looks like for you, because people of faith tend to ultimately study influence.

And so going into some kind of a faith tradition and pursuing lessons from that so that you might learn how to influence, I think, is the ultimate lesson.

Oh, and then where do I see myself in ten years?

So, we did sell to private equity 40% of the company. And so now we're perpetually a company that is for sale, because that's what they do.

My dream would be that we talk about it all the time, that we are design and development, design and development, design and development. And in order to grow the company, Tim and I have to go out and hunt more design and development projects to drag back to the cave to feed all the engineers.

And it's exhausting because if you want to grow. You just need more and more and bigger and bigger projects. But design, development, manufacturing, then every time a new project in design development goes into manufacturing, it just grows because manufacturing is the life of the product as opposed to the life of the project. So, my dream at the company would be that our manufacturing facility that we're building right now out in Katie will be full, but it would be full mostly of prototyping and stuff that has to be done here.

But then we would have international manufacturing as well, such that as you get your product into full commercialization, into the tens of thousands, into the hundreds of thousands and beyond, we can build for you around the world as well in a way that's still competitive.

And so, when I say 1000 families, I never said 1000 engineering families. I never said 1000 American families. I said 1000 families. So, families around the world, families from technologists to line manufacturers, to full length engineers and everywhere in between.

I love all of that because I love people. And so, my dream would be that that thousand families happens not just here, but abroad, and not just in engineering, but in all of the different aspects of medical technology.

Yeah, no, that's a great question. So, I got the question from my father, probably year four or five, have you thought about looking for a job?

And I got really mad at him.

There's a scene in Ocean’s Eleven we were just joking about this, where they said, is he ready? And Saul goes, if you ever ask me that question again, Daniel, you will not live to see the next morning.

And I was like I kind of glared at my dad. It was like, don't ever ask that question again. I burned the boats. I burned the bridge. This is it.

Because if there's a plan B, there will be tons of time in your history as an entrepreneur that you will gladly take it. It's miserable at times, but I'm telling you, the answer to your question is you do get to a point where there's some perpetual motion in it, where I'm like, not only do I think this thing is going to survive, I think it's going to be pretty good. That moment is really remarkable.

It's funny how, as an entrepreneur, what you might define as that moment.

People call me the avid optimist. My wife calls optimism delayed disappointment. But the fact is, as an optimist, I thought it was way earlier than maybe others would see. We had a monetary scorecard where some people that I didn't necessarily want to see that scorecard within the company did see it, and they were freaking out.

I was like, man, if they're freaking out that we only have three months of financial life, they should have seen this a year ago when it was three. So, but when you finally get to the perpetual motion where you're rolling down the hill and picking up momentum.

It really is fun.

That hammer guy and my first mentor, Larry Bickle, he said, larger companies are easier to run.

And I said, well, what do you mean by that? And it's really true. When you get large enough at a company that you can go hire the person that's great at finance, then you don't have to be the chief financial officer anymore.

When you go get to a size in a company like we just did, where we hired ahead of manufacturing, where we went on a national search and found a guy who's been leading thousands in multi-site international manufacturing, I don't have to worry about manufacturing.

So, like, what you'll find is you do get to that point where I think we've got it. I think this thing is really going to survive. Then you could take that momentum.

It's the idea of the flywheel from Jim Collins work. And you feed that flywheel and it goes faster and faster. Every time you feed your flywheel with an elite RPRs, right person, right seat leader, it goes even faster.

Because what happens is that person on your staff will fuel that flywheel of their own accord because they too have the passion as a right person. And so, yes, you get to the point where I think I made it, and then you say, now let's turn on the gas and really go, thank you guys for your time.

Hopefully this is fun.

Etienne Nichols: This is fun for me. I hope it was valuable for you all. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Dan Purvis: You bet.

Etienne Nichols: And let's give him a round of applause.

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About the Global Medical Device Podcast:

The Global Medical Device Podcast powered by Greenlight Guru is where today's brightest minds in the medical device industry go to get their most useful and actionable insider knowledge, direct from some of the world's leading medical device experts and companies.

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