In this episode, we delve into the multifaceted aspects of advisory roles within medical device startups.
These discussions explore the nuanced differences between consulting and advisory work, the intricacies of the advisor-startup relationship, strategies for growth, and the delicate balance of equity and compensation in these roles.
Devon Campbell shares invaluable advice and experiences, focusing on mentorship, relationship-building, risk management, and navigating the challenges of the MedTech startup ecosystem.
Interested in sponsoring an episode? Click here to learn more!
Listen now:
Like this episode? Subscribe today on iTunes or Spotify.
Some of the highlights of this episode include:
- The distinction between consulting and advisory roles, highlighting the long-term, relationship-focused nature of advisory work.
- The critical role of experience and mentorship in guiding startups, enhancing their growth and success.
- Strategies to transform challenges into opportunities, fostering innovation and resilience in the MedTech industry.
- The importance of understanding and respecting employment contracts and avoiding conflicts of interest in advisory roles.
- The necessity of due diligence and setting high standards in choosing companies to advise, to protect one's reputation.
- The power of passive networking and the proactive seeking of advisors to fill knowledge gaps, especially in areas like quality systems.
- Insights into equity and compensation in advisory roles, emphasizing realistic expectations and adequate self-compensation.
- The value of accelerator programs like MassChallenge in connecting startups with experienced mentors and advisors.
- The importance of risk management and the strategic formation of diverse advisory boards to provide multifaceted guidance.
Links:
Memorable quote:
"Having a board of diverse advisors can significantly enhance the quality of advice and direction for a startup." – Devon Campbell
Transcript
Etienne Nichols: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Global Medical Device Podcast. My name is Etienne Nichols. Today we're going to be doing a little bit different episode than maybe we've done in the past, or I don't even know if we've done one quite like this in the past.
The expert I brought on is Devon Campbell from product, and we'll get into your background in just a moment. But just to kind of introduce this idea, I've had some different people, different startups, and both startups and advisors come to me and say, hey,
I would like an advisor for my startup. Or from the other side.
I am a regulatory specialist and I've been asked to come on as an advisor to this startup, but I don't exactly know how to navigate that. I've never done that before, and I'd love to think that I could have all the answers, but I like to outsource my brain sometimes, and Devon is the expert in my mind for this. So, Devon, anyway, thanks for coming on to the podcast today.
Devon Campbell: Happy to be here again.
Etienne Nichols: So, what I thought we'd do, and what we kind of talked about before is to look at this from the perspective of the advisor. If we were to give advice to the advisor,
but those of you who are startups, maybe you're starting a company, maybe you're in the midst of raising funds for your company. Maybe you need an advisor. I don't want to lose you.
We do want to talk towards the end of the episode a little bit about things that maybe you don't want to look for an advisor or things you want some red flags to look for.
So, we'll talk a little bit about that at the end, and I'll let you kind of talk a little bit about how we can utilize this conversation, both directions if you want to.
Devon.
Devon Campbell: Sure. I mean, I think it's an interesting problem. We're going to talk really specifically, like kind of advisor giving mentoring or coaching advice to other emerging advisors.
And I get referrals all the time where people say, hey, I'm thinking about doing this, or I know someone who is thinking about dipping their toes in this water. Would you mind talking to them about what you do?
And they see all the fun that I do in my life, and they want to do something similar.
So, we're going to focus the conversation on that. But if you take this entire discussion and turn it inside out, a savvy startup, listening to the conversation, there's a lot that they should be able to pull from it to understand what does someone like me look for when I'm looking in a company, and how would I advise other companies about other advisors, about working with small startups?
I think there's a really good Rubik's Cube type rearrangement of the situation there that people should be able to extract some value from.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
So, your company does that a little bit. I don't know if you wanted to touch on what your company does just here at the onset, just so people have an idea.
Devon Campbell: Sure. So, my company is product. I started it after the second of three exits that I've been lucky enough to have been a part of and kind of stumbled into it.
I have this call me, like a reluctant consultant, and I know it's my personal journey. It's not everyone's, but my personal journey has had a lot of consultants in my history that have not been really great people to work with and have really kind of left, like a sour taste in my mouth about working with consultants, working with advisors.
So, I wasn't even looking to go into this space at all. After my second exit to a company, we took public, I was like, okay, well, I got some time. I'm going to take a year off. I'm going to figure out what I want to do next but not hurry. I had some good mentors say, don't hurry.
People are going to come out of the woodwork, just say no to everything for a year and just enjoy life. And I acknowledge my privilege. I was in a fortunate financial position to be able to do so.
So, in that time frame, I would get introduced to emerging entrepreneurs, early-stage medical device companies, all medical devices.
And it's usually through folks on their board, C suite, folks that know me, or through accelerators, and they say, hey, I'm putting a little money in this company, or I'm thinking about investing here.
Would you take a little look at them? Do a little bit of lightweight, like angel level diligence, which is a good plug for our earlier podcast we did just a few weeks ago about medical device diligence.
And I'd get involved, and if the people I were working with were really good, honest, hardworking, nice people to be around and the technology that they were working on was going to be impactful, it was the kind of thing, like, if we could pull this off, this could touch millions of lives in a big way.
I'd be like, I'm all in. This is fun. So, I would just start meeting them for coffees, for beers, for lunches, for dinners, talking with the executive team, talking with the development team, giving them like, just infusing all of my experience into them for the purposes of doing good, not for the purposes of making any money, or there was nothing financial tied to any of it.
But it wasn't until about a year of doing that, till it was pointed out to me that I'm really happy. I'm smiling more than I ever have been. Like, in the last 25 some years in the medical device industry, I'm happier than I've been since I was like an original early contributor product development engineer.
Maybe this is what I should do. And I was like, no, that's just consulting. I don't do that. Consultants are jerks. And I was kind of like, nudged into thinking, like, they don't have to be. I can change that mold for myself, even if it's my own personal therapy.
Break that mold and really be kind and empathetic and make a big difference. So that's kind of what product does. So, we've been around for five years now. Coming up next month.
No, this month. This is our five-year anniversary.
Etienne Nichols: Happy anniversary.
Devon Campbell: Thank you.
And that's kind of like the spirit of what we do. We help emerging entrepreneurs, early-stage medical device companies. We come in with a lot of heavy advising, a lot of heavy mentoring, sometimes shoulders to cry on type situations, because this work is hard, right?
Sometimes we have to stop and acknowledge that medical device development is really hard and it's scary, and it can be nerve wracking.
So that's what we do. We get in there, we help think through. What kind of infrastructure do you need? How do you set the stage to be able to be successful?
It's kind of attracted a lot of other great talent onto the team, and we've continued to grow over the last five years. And we do a lot of advisory work.
And then in cases where a team is just like a four-person team or a six-person team and they don't have a lot of resources, we roll up our sleeves, we get dirty, and we'll build the resources for them.
They don't have a quality system.
We'll help them architect one, and then in many cases we work with you guys, and we go in and we build a world class quality system. Just enough for what they need when they need it.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Devon Campbell: So that's what we do a lot of advising.
Etienne Nichols: Very cool. I appreciate the backstory. It really helps to understand where you've come from, and it kind of makes me think if we're going to try to focus a little bit on speaking to an advisor, and I like how you use that Rubik's Cube or inverse terminology, where, hey, if you're a startup, you should be able to apply this as well to your selection of an advisor. But if I think about, okay, I'm talking to an advisor, maybe not everybody followed the path that you followed.
What are some things that you could say, hey, here's some ways you can know you're worth your salt. You don't want to be that jerk consultant, you don't want to be XYZ, but here's some different things that do show that they are worth potentially what they're charging or whatever.
Devon Campbell: Are you asking for signs that someone might think to themselves, I wonder if I should do some advising signs.
Etienne Nichols: I'll give you a specific example. One person I know, they turned down a startup because they said they wanted me to advise the startup.
I'm not to that point in my career. And so how would someone know? Maybe the signs, maybe that is what it is. Kind of like what you were saying with your signs.
As far as after a year, you knew this is what you've got.
Devon Campbell: Okay, so in that situation, if a startup comes to, someone says, hey, we'd love to have you as an advisor. If you're filled with a sense of self doubt, then you've got a little work to do. Sure.
And that's okay. It's important to do hard work. I would say in a situation like that, it's really important to understand.
Why are they looking at you? If they approached you, right. And they said, hey, would you be an advisor? Why are they looking at that? That would be hard pressed if you were just a couple of years out of school, right?
Yeah. Generally, I don't see a lot of teams asking other people to join their advisory boards or just as a general advisor for the team for someone who's not deeply experienced and has seen a lot of stuff because that's part of what you want the advisors for.
But if you did have some particular subject matter expertise that you maybe have had a couple of years of really digging in deep and you've done a really nice job with, and you've had a great mentor and someone teach you how to do things exquisitely well, but you don't have decades of doing it, that's okay. I would look at that team and say, well, they don't have that. And if they don't have that experience inside, that might be why they're asking for you.
Right. They should be looking for gaps to plug in their skill sets internally, and that might be a reason why they're coming to you. Other reasons they come to you is just for the panache of having a particular name associated with their team and those I'm not interested in.
And I would generally recommend other people like, don't do that just because they want your name associated with something.
Maybe if you're ego driven, then fine.
But for me, I find that that doesn't make for as healthy of a relationship as you need to have. And as an advisor and an advisor, you need a very strong, healthy, robust relationship that you can have critical conversations with each other.
Etienne Nichols: So, you mentioned something there. Typically, they're looking to fill gaps. So, I assume as an advisor, you would be looking for those gaps as well to make sure that you are able to fill those gaps.
So, what's some advice that you would have to those advisors or potential advisors? This is getting a little confusing, speaking these languages.
What's some of the advice that you would have in getting started in this work?
Devon Campbell: Sure.
So, we're speaking now, and we're always speaking to the startups in the background, but we're speaking now to those emerging advisors who are either looking to moonlight a little bit in addition to their day job or dip their toe into the advisory pool because they're interested in maybe diving in someday.
All in, we've got a few folks that have done work with us at product that they come to us as a safe place, so they can dip their toe and try it a little bit and see if they really like it. And if they really like it, I'm like, great, spin you out. You go do your own advisory thing. I don't care.
Try it here where it's a safe environment. And if you really like it, do it. I would never say just jump right into it to anyone because it is a unique environment.
So, if you're just getting started, good to talk to other people who do advisory work, talk to other consultants, but specifically, like, talk to advisory work because there's a little bit of a difference between kind of like advisors and consultants.
Etienne Nichols: And actually, I kind of picked up on that. I wondered if you could do a little bit of definition here.
Devon Campbell: Sure. I mean, it's not a hard and fast rule. I'll give you, like, Devon's opinion. You can put whatever discussion, that's what we want on.
You know, the consultants generally, you go to, like, a consulting firm, you hire them for a very specific task. They come in, they do an analysis, they give you a recommendation,
you pay them, they disappear. Right? They're done. They move on to the next one. And maybe that might be a one-week exercise, maybe it might be a six-month exercise, but they in for a very specific task.
They get paid, they're out. Whereas I see advisory work, which is what we try to model. Everything we do at product after is we reject those situations. We don't want to come in and just do a thing and be gone.
It's about building relationships, going back to that earlier word. So, advisors, you're building a longer-term relationship with them. And it's not just for one specific thing, it's more for, okay, over time, teach me, mold me, coach me how to do things. And of course, you're maybe helping us think through organizational shifts and what's the right way for us to do certain things and then actually doing it and watching us.
And you're involved, very lightweight. You're not there every single day. Like a consultant might come in, you put 60 hours into it, you're done, you're gone. Whereas an advisor, you're like, okay, this is a long relationship.
This is going to be like a couple of years. And it's more constant. It's more ever present, but very lightly. Does that kind of make sense, the difference?
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, I think that makes sense.
Devon Campbell: So, talk to other advisors, talk to other consultants. But I would say in this situation, definitely go find people. Look at startups, look at their websites. They're always going to show off or on their pitch deck.
They're going to show off their team, and then they're going to show their advisors, talk to some of them, see what it's like to work in that space.
I think doing that is a good way for you to get, like, a little bit of experience under your belt to see if this is the kind of thing you want to do.
If you're moonlighting or if you're dipping your toe and you work part time, other places or doing whatever, I strongly advise people to check their employment contracts with where they currently are and at all costs, avoid any semblance of conflicts of interest. So if someone's picking you because they use a particular technology that you are really good at, you're really good at that because of maybe some experience that you've had in a prior company, you should check your current employers contracts and also your conflicts of interest contracts that you would have had with prior employers, too, just to make sure you look out for you and you stay safe.
And if you're working for someone and you're doing this, I say stay above board. If your employment contract says that there's no problem doing this, you should let them know and say, hey, I'm going to do some lightweight advisory, advisory, advisory work.
I'll keep it light. If you want to. I'll show you how many hours I put into it. It won't be more than like an hour or two a month, because usually it's not a lot. And they generally don't have a problem with, as long as you demonstrate to them, it's completely no conflict at all, no business conflicts.
If there's any resistance from the company, let's say you're at a service provider and a company wants you. Let's say you're like a regulatory firm and a company wants you to do some very lightweight advisory work for them.
And the regulatory firm that hires the person who wants now gets pulled a little bit to some startups that can't pay the big firm. You can also spin it a little bit to say, but this is also a bit of a funnel builder, right?
So, if this team needs more than a couple of hours or so of me a month, then I'll push that off to you guys and like, oh, okay, great. And then now they're financially motivated, which earlier discussion, not my modus operandi, but there's ways to get it done. So, check all those boxes first. Okay. So now we feel like we're safe to do it, and if we're working somewhere, we got blessings to be able to move forward.
So now as an emerging advisor, you got to think about you, right? And so, what I think is really important for folks to think about is to keep your bar really high. Don't just do advisory work for any team that asks you.
Don't fall for the flattery and don't let your ego get in your way and say, oh, I'm going to do this because these guys want me to do it. And then this other one does it, and then this other one does it.
And now you're like, you're an advisor for 300 little tiny companies. Whatever. I say, keep your bar really high. And you want to do that because you don't want to dilute the value that you can bring to them.
And you also want to protect your reputation because you are a little bit associating yourself with them, just like they're trying to associate themselves with you so they can put you on their pitch decks and say, look at these great advisors that we have supporting our team.
Right.
Etienne Nichols: Question about that.
Devon Campbell: You're bound to them. Yeah, go ahead.
Etienne Nichols: How do you set that bar? Or what are some of the characteristics you look at? Maybe you personally at product when you're evaluating those companies?
Devon Campbell: Another plug for the earlier one we just did. You got to do some diligence, right? Don't just jump in because they're nice. I personally look at the niceness of the people, right. Because if they're jerks or whatever, I just don't have time for it. So, I do look at the people and the team that's there, but I look at the technology.
I work in medical devices. I'm pretty savvy in this space. I kind of know my stuff and I have the right people to talk to if I don't, I look at the technology, I try to understand a little bit the product market fit, try to understand a little bit of what the valuation or the total addressable market could be and how much they could potentially capture.
A lot of the stuff that they would normally put in it, that a startup would normally put in a pitch deck.
Etienne Nichols: Just kind of, as I'm listening, it sounds like there's a natural entry point for an advisor and maybe there's a question buried in there somewhere. At what point does an advisor make sense or at what point does it make sense for you to become an advisor where you actually have enough information to say, okay, yeah, I can do enough due diligence that I recognize the potential of this company.
It seems like it's a sliding scale or what's your thoughts or advice?
Devon Campbell: It really varies. Right. It's going to be a case-by-case situation on the team if they're great people. But you take a look at it and say, what is the maturity of this technology? Right. Is it like, this is straight out of postdoc and it's not really done a lot, or has it been kind of maturing for a couple of years or a couple of months, or how mature is the product and the processes that the teams are coming to you to get your advice on moving forward?
That's one thing to think about. Right? If it's really early, if it's wires hanging out of a cardboard box, which I have seen before, oh, I believe it. Amazing technology. But it was still inside a cardboard box with wires hanging out of it, which did not look like the pictures in the pitch deck, which was a glossy rendering of what the instrument could look like in the future.
Etienne Nichols: I've made those myself with the renderings and the cardboard behind me. Yeah.
Devon Campbell: But I dig. I go into the lab; I want to see the real thing. I want to see it work. And then when they showed it to me, it was wires coming out of a cardboard box.
Etienne Nichols: Hard to show a doc.
Devon Campbell: Yeah.
So, take a look at the tech, take a look at the product market fit, try to understand a little bit of the valuation and see if it's at a point where you can add value to it. If they're really early and your deep experiences downstream commercialization of medical devices, it's probably not the right time.
If they're really, really early, it's probably the right time for someone like me to come in as a product development expert, say, okay, let's take a really good look at what is it going to take to bring the product to market.
And then maybe I need to make a little space on the bench to bring in really savvy operations or sales minded folks to be able to help you build and expand growth of the company.
I don't know if that answers your question, but I think it used up enough time to make it feel like I answered your question.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah,
I think all of the above. No, it does, because especially what you said about its kind of like a self-analysis. If I know what I'm good at and maybe I'm not so good upstream, but I'm really great downstream, maybe that design transfer or whatever it may be, I would say if you're close to where you can start adding value, that's kind of what I'm picking up from what you're saying, and that makes a lot of sense to me.
Devon Campbell: Let me add one more color to that paint by number, please. And that would be to also look for work when people are approaching you, when they're looking for advisory support.
If you're a subject matter expert in a certain area, but it's just a thing that you don't like doing just because you're an expert on it. Don't sign yourself up to do it because a lot of advisory work, it's not like, it's like highly paid type work, right. Especially for early-stage entrepreneurs. And we're going to talk about that in a few minutes.
But in those situations, you're doing it because you're interested. You're doing it because you want to try it. You think maybe you could build up a large enough portfolio of these sorts of clients that in aggregate it makes it worth it.
But one by one, it's not worth, life is just too short. It's not worth picking up the work to do things that you're good at but you don't like doing. So, I would say pick those things that you really enjoy doing.
I love product development stuff. I'm good at post market. Right? I'm good at post market surveillance. I can help build all that out and think about how we're going to do a field service and how we're going to do sales support and what are the infrastructure and how does all that flow back into product development and into risk management.
But it doesn't mean I like doing the post market stuff.
Etienne Nichols: That's good advice. Yeah. Okay, what's next?
We're being very careful about who we're working with. We're to the point where we're ready to work with a company, whether they've approached us, and that might be another question, is how some of these conversations start.
But maybe I'll broaden the scope a little bit. How do these conversations start and how do you handle it moving forward, whether it's through contract or the money side?
Devon Campbell: So, I'll give you my personal experience and then how I help my teams that I support find other advisors. Okay.
Etienne Nichols: Okay.
Devon Campbell: So, my personal experience is I don't go looking.
So, usually it's a board of directors, it's someone on one of their VCs where they're getting funding from. They'll say, hey, you're kind of getting to a point where you need to pull in product.
They're good in these particular areas. You guys are kind of weak in that one spot. Just talk to them so we don't necessarily go out and looking for it. And when I was first getting started and he kind of went through my origin story of this crazy ride that I'm on right now and how I got here in those situations also,
I wasn't going and looking for them. Okay. So, for me, my personal experience was not actively going out and finding it kind of found me. However, teams that I work with now, I do strongly advise and coach and mentor them to go out and find advisors because it helps them bolster their deck and their bench, especially from like a diligence perspective, right.
And forget about diligence. Even think like you're trying to do like you're going for government grants and it's just like three or four of you, right? They're going to want to see that you have advisors helping coach and mold you. So, the team should recognize where they have gaps and say, like, I'm really, really good at this clinical chemistry, analyzing technology or I'm really good at this material that I'm going to use to 3D print bone structures or whatever, but I'm not good at these things. I don't know quality systems at all. So maybe they should go as an early-stage company. Maybe they just go get a quality advisor to help keep them.
It's not going to be fully compliant that early, but at least help move them, nudge them slowly into the right directions. So, I tell them to go look and to actively try to find people.
One great source for advisors and mentors and it's kind of a safe spot where you can try it on is through accelerator programs.
I'm a global mentor for MassChallenge, masschallenge.org. It's a nonprofit accelerator program. I like it because they don't take any equity and what they do, they really exist to help these startups get started up.
And the mentor pool there is incredible. When you're inside, you can scroll through the directory of who all's there. I'm like, I don't belong on this list. The list is great. So those are great resources to go to and find mentors. And very often the mentors that you have through those accelerator programs can become advisors for you after the program is over.
So that happens with me pretty regularly.
Etienne Nichols: I think that's good advice. What are some other ones like mass challenge? I mean, that's a great example. Any other thoughts as far as other programs?
Devon Campbell: Yeah, there's a number of them. There's lots of smaller regional ones. So, I would recommend that folks look for regional ones. Like, for example, Mass challenge is big now, and they're all over the world. And I do mentoring through Mass challenge Israel and Mass challenge Taiwan and Switzerland and a whole bunch of places.
But the mass challenge Boston cohorts, like the people that are here in Boston, where I'm located, I feel like I'm able to add more value and I get more out of the relationship, because, again, it's about building relationship.
When I can kind of come in and kick the tires and see the product in the lab or get into the engineering lab and start taking measurements and kind of help them move things.
So, I would look like Midwest has great accelerator programs, West coast has great accelerator programs. So, try to find ones that have offices near you and work with those mentors.
Etienne Nichols: If you're doing it for free like that, is there still some sort of agreement that you would recommend putting in place with those companies? Or. I would imagine Mass Challenge has something.
Devon Campbell: If a team is working with an advisor or a mentor through a program like that, usually all the NDA stuff and everything contractually is covered through the accelerator program.
So, let's take that off the table for a second.
Etienne Nichols: Sure.
Devon Campbell: If it is just, you and me and some people want us to kind of help them in those cases, I strongly recommend no emerging advisory entrepreneur, no person starting to do this, do it without having a contract in place.
You might even want to go so far as to consider professional liability insurance. It doesn't have to be very expensive, but even if you don't get that, think about how much work you're doing for them. And if you're just giving suggestions versus if you're actually building a little bit for them, you should think about the insurance side of things just to protect yourself.
But you always want to have a contract in place. And never sign advisory contracts that are open ended term wise.
Always put in like a one-year term, a two-year term, six-month term, whatever the number is that you feel comfortable with. But you want to force the two of you in the relationship to stop, pause, reevaluate the relationship and where you're going, and then sign up. Extend the contract by amendment if you want to, but it's good to do that regularly. And then in this kind of work, especially in startup world, our world changes so dynamically and so quickly. A lot happens, and you don't want to find yourself in a position where you have a whole bunch of open-ended contracts with no terms.
And I see this happen, and now, seven, eight years down the line, you've forgotten all about them because they haven't contacted you, but you're still contractually bound.
Etienne Nichols: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Devon Campbell: Always put a term and always make it like a reasonable number. Don't go out seven years, make it a year, make it nine months, something like that. You should think about that.
Etienne Nichols: I've always heard agreements, well, someone told me somewhere in my career agreements are really, they should be called disagreements because that's the only time you read them. So that makes sense.
Let's revisit this. I like it.
Devon Campbell: Yeah.
Etienne Nichols: So, we're thinking about the contract. That sort of starts me thinking down the two-way street of whether it's compensation through equity or cash or nothing at all. I guess that would be in that contract.
How do you come to an agreement on that? Or how do you come to evaluation of your services for that kind of thing?
Devon Campbell: Carefully.
One thing I've noticed when I first started getting into this space, too, I remember someone pointed this out, is like, when you're first starting, you'll consistently undervalue yourself when you're trying to figure out what should I charge, like as an hourly rate, or should I do value-based billing or whatever.
In the end, there's some number, financial number associated with things, and there's some number of hours that you're thinking that you would put toward a team, and then you're going to divide one by the other and you're going to come up with some kind of hourly rate at some point.
And especially when you're first doing it, you're going to be like, oh, yeah, that Number sounds great. When in reality you're adding much more value to a team than what that number represents.
That's just kind of a normal growth I see happen with lots of mentors and advisors.
But let's talk about compensation specifically. You want to dive into equity or cash first?
Etienne Nichols: Let's talk equity. That would be interesting.
Devon Campbell: Okay, so startup comes to you, says, hey, we'd love to have you as an advisor. You do a little digging, you love the people, you love the team, you think it looks really great.
You say, okay, we're going to have to have a contract in place, right? There needs to be an NDA, more than just an NDA, but there needs to be an NDA, and there needs to be some kind of contract that spells out our relationship and your eventual disagreement, which fortunately never happens. I'm just turning your words back on you, right.
So, it's tricky with early-stage startups, especially like, are they incorporated? Are they an LLC? What is their organizational structure? Sometimes they might think I can. Oh, yeah, we can give you equity.
They might not have the legal entity in place that they can even build a cap table and put people on it and have the resources and the infrastructure to deliver you equity. And if they don't, that's a bit of a concern.
If you want to craft a contract that says, well, when you get to that point, then it triggers. And once you're there, and I've been earning fake equity the whole time, even though they don't have the infrastructure in place to be able to give you the equity.
But as an advisor, you have to be very careful looking at the team and saying, are they in a position where they can even give equity at all? Have they gone through an evaluation process?
Right. Because someone has to value that stock so that you have some idea of what your shares of equity would be.
So, let's presume that they do have equity capabilities. So, if they do, then you can choose to work if you want to. I should preface what we're about to go through, because I only work, and my team works with emerging entrepreneurs and early-stage companies. We have to demonstrate flexibility to be able to meet the teams where they're at.
So, kind of a lot of what we're going to go through is some of the levers that we have available to pull when there's a team that's involved that they just don't have the cash to be able to pay.
Right. And we'll talk about cash in a minute. And all cash is obviously one of the options, but it's advantageous for them to look at giving you equity as an advisor, especially remember, the difference between advisor and consultant, in my mind is basically the depth of the relationship and the length of the relationship as an advisor, taking equity, it's a demonstration and a commitment to that team that I'm here in the long haul because I want my equity to be worth something, and that has panned out for me in this business. So, the third exit that I had an opportunity to be a part of was a similar situation like that where, yeah, I did a cash equity blend, and the equity turned into something when they sold.
So, you have to be careful making sure that they have the infrastructure there. And if they do, then you can think about, do I want to do a cash equity blend or an all-cash process?
In either case, there's going to be a vesting schedule, and let's talk a little bit about that. The difference between a vesting schedule for employees and the vesting schedule for advisors okay, as an advisor, if you came to me and said, okay, well, we want to give you some,
we're going to pay you completely in equity. And maybe I say, fine, I'm okay with that.
And they say it's got a one-year cliff and a three-year vesting period.
So, if anyone listening doesn't know what we're talking about there, I mean, you're going to get some total amount of shares over the course of three years. That's your vesting period.
But the cliff, in this case, we say one year, maybe it's nine months, maybe it's six months, means you don't earn any equity during that time frame, and then you kind of back earn all the stuff you would have earned after you hit the cliff, and then you start earning equity, like at a monthly or a quarterly rate thereafter.
Etienne Nichols: Makes sense.
Devon Campbell: That's normal for employees, and it's an important employee retention tool, especially for startups. Right. Because you're kind of pulled in to say, well, hey, I just got a grant, but it invests over the course of three years and it's a big grant.
I'm going to stay here.
I think this is going somewhere. I'm not going to go anywhere. It's a little different for advisors, right. So, if our relationship is maybe a year long, and then it goes really, Light Touch after that, it doesn't make sense to have a one-year cliff and a three-year vesting period, right. So, I suggest in those situations, if equity is what's on the table, the advisor pushes hard to say, I'll just start immediately earning.
So a zero month cliff and just start immediately, or make it some reasonable number, like, fine, you can Try Me out for a month, and after that, then we're going to start earning equity if we continue to stay in the relationship and Then make It vest over the period of the term of your Contract.
So, if your contract is an 18-month contract and that's when your term expires, then you should build your equity around. Equal vesting over those 18 months is my recommendation.
Makes sense and my practice.
What other questions do you have about equity that you think that we should dive into?
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, well, okay. So, I'm still thinking a little bit about the valuation itself of the services of the advisor. Now, one thing we didn't really touch on is the amount of advisors a company may have. And so of course that's going to be Just depending on what they are good at, what the company needs to shore up their gaps.
But each one of those advisors may have a different level of equity based on the,
I guess, direct impact of their skill set on the revenue. But how do you make that determination?
Devon Campbell: Well, I mean, the company makes that determination. Right. So, if they're mature enough that they have a cap table and they have equity and they have some number of shares outstanding, they will have gone through a process where they have allocated.
This much of it we're going to keep for ourselves and for our employees. This much of it we're going to use for our board of directors and for potentially advisory board members, which is a little different than just being an advisor.
We can explore the difference between the two if you'd like to, but they're going to often pay like advisory board members with equity. If it's a company that needs to have a medical advisory board associated with their product, those folks are going to be expected to be paid with equity, too.
So, my point is the startup is going to have a smaller slice that they can have as discretionary equity to be able to dole out. So, company to company, you might get different percentages.
They might have bigger pieces of pie. Smaller pieces of pie. It's really going to vary. And like you said, if they have 15 advisors, which would be a lot of advisors, that's a ridiculous number that I just threw out.
But if they had 15 versus if they had two, if everyone had the same size pie share to give out, now you have to share it with more people. So, it's going to vary.
Etienne Nichols: And it kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier. The advice you were giving is to talk to other advisors. I would assume that would be how you determine is a 0.1% or a 10%.
That's a massive spread. I get that. But just how you're going to determine what is worth it. If you were giving advice to an advisor, oh, I wouldn't do it for that much.
Or versus the other.
Devon Campbell: Here's the thing with equity, and we're going to pivot into cash. Here's the thing with equity and with deferred cash payments, and we'll talk about that in a second. In all of those cases, as an advisor, you are taking on risk, right. And so, when you're thinking about how do you value yourself and what percent are you taking? And I would almost say, don't even worry about what percent of the company.
Don't worry about that. Think of like, okay, what is the valuation of the shares?
What kind of work would you be doing? What would that be worth paying someone and how much of that would you take as shares? And it's going to be whatever percent of the company it's going to be. If they decide they have 1 million shares or if they decide they have 100 million shares, it's going to be different. But in all of those cases, it's you taking on risk. And my recommendation to people just starting off in this space is to ignore all of it. You cannot count on any of the equity; you cannot count on the deferred. And we're going to talk about them, but deferred payments coming through. So, it's also a matter of your risk tolerance, right.
If you are supporting your entire family and you're thinking, oh, well, wait a second, when this happens and when this happens and when this happens, we're going to be able to do these things.
My advice to folks in this space is don't think like that at all. This is all gravy.
Compensate yourself with what you need for now and then. You don't need to be greedy; you don't need to be a jerk about it. You don't need to have a high massive ego and a giant inflated head about everything.
Take something that's reasonable for you to be able to keep whole. If you don't feel like you're being taken advantage of.
Whatever you can do kind of upfront to do that for like a cash equity blend or just a cash and deferred cash blend, something like that. But take what you need to take care of you in the moment and feel good about what you're doing and the rest of it.
If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And the chances of it happening are low.
Etienne Nichols: There's a couple of things you mentioned that I wanted to talk about, advisory board member versus advisor. I wanted to see if you give a quick overview of that real quick.
Devon Campbell: Sure.
And I generally counsel startups to build both.
Okay.
Maybe you start off with a bunch of advisors and they're individual contributors, but the difference between like an advisory board and an individual advisor is if you stack your board with a couple of different really experienced advisors in your particular space, and they're not all cookie cutters of each other, right. You've got someone with some commercial experience and someone with product development experience and someone with risk management and whatever, all these different functions that you kind of need really seasoned pros to help guide you with.
You put them on a board, and you get them to meet once a month, once a quarter. Once a quarter is probably more reasonable. Don't do it once a year, it's not meaningful enough.
The conversations that you get when you bring your advisors together and you've built a board and we're experienced in our space, we kind of start riffing off of each other. We say, oh yeah, you're right. Et. You remember that one thing that happened back in the early 90s when this company did that and they got themselves in trouble.
And then we start talking and we start talking and then collectively we're bringing advice and bringing our scars and our stories to bear to be able to help the startup.
And that is very valuable versus just talking.
Know, Nancy in a vacuum and then talking to Rodrigo in a vacuum and talking to all these different people, you're still going to get good advice from them, but maybe not as good of advice as you would get if you had kind of a board that makes sense, right?
Okay, so if you brought an advisor on for a very specific subject matter expertise, like, let's say you had some really sophisticated optics in your system and you want to bring on a really seasoned optics pro, that's great.
That probably isn't someone you need to have on your advisory board, right? Because it's very, very niche that you've brought them on. So, for them, you use them as an advisor. But if they're a bit more broad and they've seen a lot more things and they've brought a lot more medical devices to bear, then a good suggestion is to build a small board.
Etienne Nichols: Okay, that makes sense.
So, we're going to get into deferred cash payments, but before we do, I know we're coming to the top of the hour. Do you have a hard stop? We can always do a second.
Devon Campbell: I don't.
Etienne Nichols: All right, if you're good with it, then, yeah, let's get into cash then.
Devon Campbell: Okay, so a couple of different options on cache.
There's the kiss option, which you can define however you want, but I like to use it as keep it simple, stupid.
And that could just be where you just say, okay, I'm going to come up with an hourly rate that they can afford and I'm just going to get paid that and I'm fine. Right? Again, you don't feel like you're being taken advantage of and it's where the company can meet you.
If they come back and they say, oh, we can pay you minimum wage, like I'm bringing a bit more value to the situation than minimum wage, right. There needs to be some equity or something else involved, or you just do it pro bono in that case. And we haven't even talked about pro bono work yet.
So, you could just make it really simple for everyone. And there's no cliffs and there's no deferring, there's no nothing. Just make it real simple and that works great. That works well for the advisor, it works well for the company.
It's a very simple arrangement. They pay you once a month maybe, and you're done. That's kind of the easiest approach, but it's not always that easy, especially in startup world. And especially if it's a more seasoned advisor you're trying to bring on, or you're a more seasoned potential advisor and you just haven't done it yet.
You do have some higher valuation there, so you can do a couple of creative things. You can look at deferred payment, and so, what we've done in the past is say, okay, we're going to help you for this limited amount of time and for this limited amount of effort that we will do, we'll help you and we're going to help you get to this a…
Once you get an A round landed, though, you need to back pay us. We'll keep track of the hours, it's upfront, everyone understands it, and then you can get paid. So that's like a full deferred payment. I'm not making any money right now.
It's fully at my risk and it's at your benefit as the startup and you close your a, you just raised 7 million, whatever on the due diligence work that's going to happen, people are going to look at what are your outstanding debts, and one of them would be, we owe this much to one of our advisors, or two or three of our advisors who have been gracious enough to do the work with fully deferring their payment.
Etienne Nichols: Makes sense.
Devon Campbell: So that's an option.
Another one is to do.
You can also think about that as an accrual. So, it's just like you're keeping track of hours. Or you could just say a lump sum and you could say, okay, I'm going to help you for the next six months, or I'm going to help you till you get to this value inflection point. And once you can afford me, then you pay me.
But not to be greedy and not take it earlier than that. But once we get to that point, maybe it's a milestone, maybe it's whatever, I'm going to do it for X number of thousands of dollars. And so, it's just a clear, it's a known, consistent hard number which startups actually really like, because I don't know how many hours, we're going to need of you or whatever. So, you can just say, I'll just do lump sum, right? It's kind of like a fixed fee kind of schedule type thing.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Devon Campbell: You can also do just like a cash equity blend. You can also do a partial defer payment. So, let's just make really easy math. Let's say you're getting paid $10 an hour. You could say, fine, I'm going to defer seven and you pay me three, right? And maybe you're comfortable with getting paid $3 an hour, but we're using those numbers to make the math add up really easily here. Right? Scale it however you want to so you can do that.
You can say, I'm going to keep track of it. And once you get to that trigger, then you back pay what you have and then we know what the rate is going forward.
It's just full rate.
That's a fair, equitable way to work with an early-stage startup.
And then another approach takes another creative way to look at it, is Atlassian makes a Product that a lot of startups use, a lot of people use Jura, and Atlassian is the folks that make Jura and their business model for Jura and for confluence and things like that. Know it's very inexpensive for small numbers of people. But as your numbers of people using their tool goes up, your price per person goes up.
And I like it because it makes it really inexpensive for the startup to be able to use a tool like that. But it's kind of load sharing. Like if you're able to be successful that you now have 100 people, you have grown the company, you're presumably making enough money or you've raised enough money that you should now be able to pay Atlassian what their software is worth. But at the beginning you're paying like whatever it is, it's very small number of dollars per head, per seat for a while.
So that's like a sliding scale. So, you could do the same thing too. As an advisor, you could say, well, let's put this sliding scale in place and you pay me this now.
And then as the company gets to this level, okay, then my rate will be this. And as the company gets to this level, my rate would be that. So, it's kind of like there's no deferred payment, you're just meeting them where they're at, but changing constantly.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Devon Campbell: Another creative lever that you can pull. Okay. The question that I'm sure you're asking yourself with all of those situations is, what are those downstream triggers? How do you define that? And it's not too hard. I mean, you have to think about it can't be a value inflection point because you can have companies with huge value but no cash still, right?
There's a lot of software situations that happen, right, these insane valuations, but they have very little cash so far because they have no revenue yet.
So, you really tie it to either when a grant arrives. And that's another clever way you can do it. You can write yourself into the grant. Okay, so if the grant gets funded, then you get involved, and you get involved at this rate, and you help them write the grant, and I'll help write the Grants for free, just kind of like a little bit of supporting the team, kind of good for them. And if they make it, then it happens. And grants is a whole different world.
But in both those situations is the company had a cash influx to a point where they can now afford to pay you some, and you and the company in the relationship talk it out and figure out where that point is. Where they say, okay, if we have this much coming in, if we raise 6 million, will that be enough to be able to pay, or should we keep driving and pumping money into the product and into the infrastructure? Maybe you say, okay, fine. Maybe when you hit your B or something like that, there's a lot of levers, a lot of flexibility.
Etienne Nichols: Okay, so I appreciate you going through those different levers and how to use equity versus cash. Let's talk a little bit about the pro bono.
I think just maybe an attitude of altruism makes sense, that maybe that's what would be your motivation. But I imagine there's lots of other benefits to doing things pro bono.
Can you speak to any of that, or what are your thoughts?
Devon Campbell: Feels great.
Before I started the company, my first year was all pro bono. I was really happy, and I still am very happy, and I was having an amazing amount of fun. So, you got to do stuff, and you take the money problem off the table, right.
It's very much like a more money, more problems kind of situation.
And if you don't have to deal with it, great. But I'd be careful that you don't give too much of yourself in a pro bono situation, and you don't give too much of yourself for too long.
Because if all you do, and I don't mean like meeting someone for coffee once a quarter and catching up and hearing how their product is coming and answering some of their questions about, because I do a lot of this. Like, how's the organizational growth going? How's your product development plans maturing long? What kind of problems have you had? Those. Fine, don't worry about that.
That's you have over coffee, over lunch, you have a nice dinner with your friends, and you're just kind of talking. But if you're actively going in regularly and talking to the team and giving advice and kind of exploring it, if you want to do that pro bono, sure. But just be careful. You don't do way too much of it.
You also don't want to be taken advantage of in that pro bono space for too long. So even in pro bono, I still say you need a contract, and that contract still needs a term.
Etienne Nichols: Okay.
Devon Campbell: Right. If it's just casual lunches, don't worry about it. Maybe an NDA, you should have an NDA. But casual lunches and meetings with friends, don't worry about that one. But if you're actively going through, if they're putting you on their deck as an advisor, they're representing you on their website as an advisor, even if you're doing it pro bono, definitely have a contract in place.
Etienne Nichols: Okay. I think that's good advice.
One other thing I wanted to think about maybe the softer side of this, because we've kind of dwelled a lot on the brass tacks of equity and so forth, which makes sense.
What about the actual conversations that you have? I'm curious, because when you describe the consultant versus advisor, is it something of a mentor? You've kind of used that terminology a little bit.
If that's the relationship, what if they don't take your advice? Or what if you butt heads? Even if you love each other, sometimes you butt heads. What do those conversations look like? What's a good relationship look like?
Devon Campbell: Okay, good.
Hopefully you will have ferreted some of that out during your pseudo diligence process. At the beginning when you are trying to come to an understanding of, is this a team you want to be associated with?
Are these people you want to work with? Okay. So, one of the things that you look at, going back to that earlier part of the conversation is kind of their spirit, right.
These folks are coming to you because they don't know something, and you know something. They're not experienced with something, you're experienced there, and they want to benefit from it. And hopefully we all can mutually benefit from it.
But if they're not coachable, if they demonstrate an unwillingness or a propensity to not listen, and I don't mean they need to do what I suggest. I mean, I make recommendations, they make decisions, but they should at least consider it so that when you find yourself in a situation that they're going down a particular path, you're not there every single day. A lot of times a decision is made and then they come back and say, well, what do you think about this path?
And if you say, guys, I think it's dangerous, right?
I don't think we want to go this way. And they're like, well, we made our decision or whatever, if they're unwilling to listen. Not a situation you want to get into right off the start.
If the culture is one that embraces growth and embraces healthy confrontation, and I don't mean that in a mean way, but to be able to have a conversation and disagree with each other and talk it out, that's healthy.
And if we find ourselves in situations where you're not picking that up early, I would say don't go. So, let's say that you're in it. That's kind of what the character of the conversation should be.
Let's take the Rubik's cube back up and flip it around a little bit and let's look at it now from the startup's perspective. The startup talking to an advisor, talking to a mentor, advisor, whatever you want to call it, you don't want a yes person.
You don't want to go find yourself an advisor that just comes in and says, oh, I love what you're doing, this is great. It's a pipe crew. You don't want that. You want someone who has enough comfort with you to say, that's baloney, right?
Your plan is garbage, and I don't mean it that crudely, right? But to be able to have the conversation and say, well, let's look at alternative options, because if we go down this route, this and this, and this might happen, and if can we have that healthy, constructive conversation?
You want someone who pushes you and stretches you. It's not comfortable, right. To have a mentor. And I've had great mentors in my life who really put me in uncomfortable situations because they had confidence in me, and they knew that I would be able to learn from something and grow from it.
But it's not always the easiest thing. You want people that will push you into not easy positions if there's a heavy mentoring side to the relationship.
So, I think on that side of the situation, definitely you want to find as a mentor, as an advisor, you want to find places where I can speak my mind and you'll listen, you don't have to do it, but you'll at least consider it and then make a decision.
And it's not an adversarial type of situation.
On the other side, as a startup, you want a person to come in and challenge your thinking and help you think about different ways.
Etienne Nichols: That makes sense. And since we've already opened the Rubik's cube or turned it around on that.
Devon Campbell: We don't open it. That's cheating. That's when you break it open and you move all the blocks to the different corners. You got to learn how to just do it.
Etienne Nichols: Since we've already done that, whatever the word is, what are some red flags that if I was a startup and I'm looking for an advisor, what are some things that should immediately say, okay, I'm moving on to the next one?
Obviously, you gave one already.
Devon Campbell: Sure. So, what's their motivation?
Right, so you're looking at an advisor and the two of you are engaged in some relationship, in some conversation.
I guess in this situation it would be like maybe the board is telling them, you need to work with this person, right. If you're going out and finding them, you should still understand if they're interested, what is their motivation? Why are they interested in doing this work with you, especially if they've not done any advisory work in the past?
Is it for egotistical purposes? Is it for whatever.
There are strong benefits to an early advisor, to having some advisory gigs, right? A little bit of advisory work begets a bit more advisory work. As long as you do a good job and you're kind and you're good hearted about it and you add value, you can't just be nice and not make a difference.
But if you are kind and you make an impact, then it's going to create more opportunities to do that kind of work. But if the person you're talking to, if their motivation is purely to bolster their resume, here's a dangerous one.
If they got caught up in any of the many downsizing events that happen in our industry, and a lot has happened in the last couple of years, if they're just looking for this as a stop gap and just to kind of fill the gap and show something on their resume that says, oh, yeah, I wasn't not doing anything for a while, I was doing some advisory work, I'd be careful there too, because what's their motivation there and what is their long-term commitment to the relationship that you're trying to build they go and they get a job somewhere, are they going to drop you right away?
And now you're kind of out an advisor, so understanding, kind of why are they interested in getting into this situation with you, I think is really a valuable exercise to explore.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah. And I've heard you say, too, I think that's great. I really appreciate you saying that and giving the specific examples is really helpful.
You mentioned earlier, if it's just to stack the deck from the advisor's perspective, you may not want to work with that company. If they only want you to stack the deck from a startup perspective, I imagine that probably the same advice would assume to reevaluate your own thinking.
Why am I approaching this person? Can you speak a little bit to that?
Devon Campbell: Well, let's talk a little bit about the danger of stacking the deck.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Devon Campbell: Now we're speaking to you, startups. If you're trying to stack your deck for the sake of stacking your deck because you feel like it's going to demonstrate to teams that you've got all of these advisors and all these folks that are helping you when it comes down to sophisticated diligence work, the kind of stuff that I have the lovely benefit or I have the lovely opportunity to be able to do with some big VCs, we'll sniff that out real fast. We'll know that. Smoke and mirrors, right? Every advisor you put on your deck is a liability.
I might call them, I might cold contact them and say, hey, you're associated with Nichols Medical Devices. Tell me about your relationship with them. They're like, oh, well, I mentored them once in mass challenge like three years ago. They still have me on their deck. Right. So that kind of know we'll find real quick. And what kind of impression do you think that leaves us doing the diligence? When you as a startup play games like that, we're not going to trust you.
If we're not going to trust you in one thing, we're not going to trust your data, we're not going to trust a whole bunch of other things. So, it's important, like not just stack the deck for the sake of stacking the deck, your advisory team should be people that you do lean on regularly, you do engage with them. If you have an advisory board, they're going to say, oh, yeah, we meet once a quarter. We meet every two months.
We sit in on as board observers for board meetings. Advisory boards don't get to make the same fiscal decisions that a board of director makes. They really just kind of give business consulting type feedback.
So, we'll follow up on that. So, I would definitely not stack the deck for the sake of stacking deck or trying to make your team look bigger or better than it is because we'll figure that out real fast.
Etienne Nichols: I know we're about out of time. I have one last question. If you still have a minute, and that is how to have a clean breakup, I imagine an exit would make sense or at the end of your contract, but still, I would think you would want to have a clean breakup.
Devon Campbell: It goes back to one of the things that we started with, which is that contract. Right. You will break up at some point and the contract before you're in.
And I say break up and doesn't mean a bad context.
Etienne Nichols: Right.
Devon Campbell: It could just be like they've moved on; they don't need you anymore.
Great. That's lovely for them. Or you're too busy doing other things now and you need to be able to step away from them. At the very beginning, we should come to an agreement to say, what's that going to look like?
How's that going to happen? Right?
Especially when you have situations where there's outstanding cash payments or outstanding equity, you have to think about what those situations would be to look like. So, let's presume that you have contracts in place and you've thought about that up front while you're still both levelheaded and thinking about it, and you're saying, yeah, this is fair for you and fair for us. We get it makes sense. A lot of this is built on trust.
Right? You have to trust that I'm going to walk you through hard things and give you the feedback that you need at certain times and that I have some experience to be able to help you understand what things are going to look like.
I have to trust that you're going to consider it and adapt that into your thinking and look at the whole picture and decide what you want to do when it comes time to move away from each other. And that happens all the time. Right? It could absolutely be an equity event. That's an easy one. So, I don't even think we even need to talk about that. Like, yay, exit happened.
Everyone is now enjoying their time, whatever they're doing, post exit.
But if it's not like an exit situation, it's like you're too busy for them, they're too busy for you. Or you've come to realize, like, maybe the leadership team has changed and maybe now you were enamored with the people that were there to begin with, but the leadership team has changed and they're now not as affinity matched to you. Right. And to say, well, wait a second, I'm not having fun anymore. I don't like these folks. Right. It happens.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Devon Campbell: So, I think as long as you trust that you can have that open conversation with the team and say, hey, guys, I need to do it. I think it's also important, and I'll do this in my contracts, to not have any harsh movements fast.
Right. So, I'll put 45-day windows on things to say, like, look, if I need to step away, I'm going to give you a month and a Half. Heads up. I'm going to help you find my replacement because that's the right thing to do.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, right.
Devon Campbell: It's about being kind and being clear up front, but it's the right thing to do to not just say, you know what, screw you guys, I'm out of here. And you give one week notice.
Yeah. So maybe that's just my style. I'm sure other people have different opinions on it and maybe say, no, you need to have really hard breaks. But I tend to think that, and I make it bidirectional in my agreements as well with people to say, like, if you need to make a change, fine. You can't go from 100 miles an hour to zero.
Right.
In some cases, they run out of money, and you have no choice. You have to. But in other cases, if they need to go different direction, fine. There's like a little bit of a ramp down so you can start to find other work in other places.
If that's all you do, if this is you just dipping your toe in the pool or you're moonlighting and it's just kind of like side gig stuff for fun, maybe you don't care. Maybe in a situation like that, you say, okay, that's fine. If it disappears, it disappears, and you don't put as big of a window on it. But talking, being kind and honest with each other, it's good with everything you do in life, not just in advisory.
Etienne Nichols: I love that you mentioned the word relationship so many times, because if it truly is a relationship, and it should be, like you said, communication should only improve it, not hinder it.
So, more communication is better.
Devon Campbell: Yeah.
Etienne Nichols: Really appreciate it. Thank you for taking and going over time especially. I'll let you get back to it. Thank you so much, Devon.
Devon Campbell: Yeah, no problem. Thank you. All right, take care.
Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, can I ask a special favor from you? Can you leave us a review on iTunes. I know most of us have never done that before, but if you're listening on the phone, look at the iTunes app. Scroll down to the bottom where it says leave a review. It's actually really easy. Same thing with computer. Just look for that leave a review button. This helps others find us. It lets us know how we're doing. Also, I'd personally love to hear from you on LinkedIn. Reach out to me. I read and respond to every message because hearing your feedback is the only way I'm going to get better. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.
About the Global Medical Device Podcast:
.png)
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.
