#65 Oliver Hunt on Solving Sustainability In Healthcare

Hey, kia ora and welcome back to the latest episode of the Be Better podcast. Thank you for tuning in. If this is your first time, welcome. If this is more than your first time, thank you for listening in. I've actually reconnected with a couple of mates, one from uni who's been listening to my podcast. I'm like, who knew someone actually listens? So shout out to Stokesy. But anyway, with me today we have Oliver Hunt from Medelf. So Ollie, how's it going?

It's good. Great to be here, Tim. Great to be on the podcast.

Excellent. That's what we like. So for people who have been living under a rock and don't know the amazing stuff that you do and who you are, who are you? What do you do?

So, mate, I'm ollie. I, I'm 29, I live in Christchurch, New Zealand and in my personal life I love spending time in the outdoors with my mates. Mountain biking, skiing, surfing and everything else that goes with it. Occasionally running and going to the gym to stay fit enough to do those things.

But I suppose the reason I'm here on this podcast is that I run a company called Medel, which is a social enterprise that remanufactures single use medical devices that would ordinarily go to landfill and then returns them back to hospitals for safe clinical reuse for hospitals all over New Zealand. And we employ people who face barriers to employment in their processes. We're carbon zero climate positive organization and we save money for the health system and provide a stronger supply chain. So that's a bit about who I am and what I do on a day to day.

Nice. And so, yeah, so let's get into, let's get straight into Med South. So we first met, I think you were still at uni. I came in to give a talk on B Corp at quite a high general level and I think, because when were you at uni? It would have been.

Oh, it seems like a long time.

Ago now, but you think it's a long time ago?

Yeah, 2013 through 2000 and the start of 2018. So I did a mechanical engineering degree and then I finished off with a master's in engineering management.

Wow. Yeah, that's definitely not my vibe. Medieval history for me. Much easier to bluff than actually knowing. But yeah, because I think I remember that talk I gave, I was trying to, how do I, how do I connect to a bunch of students. I was like, oh, I'll try and give them some references to when I was at university. And so I was at university, 1996, 1999. I was like, so does anyone recognize this person? I put a picture of Sean Fitzpatrick up, who is the captain of the All Blacks in 1996. And most of the room like, no, no idea. And I was like, do any of you remember Princess Diana? And most people were like, no, she was still alive in 1996 anyway. And this was the number one song in New Zealand. How bizarre. In 1996. Most people. I think most people know that song. So that's why I made the connection. But so, yeah, because. So, yeah, how did Mets have come about? So you sort of in mechanical engineering to medical device, sort of recycling. But yeah, not a direct connection, perhaps. So, yeah, tell us, how did medsal come about?

So probably good, good to cover off, like how we met, because it's a good. We segue into this is that throughout my mechanical engineering degree, I've gradually came to the realization that becoming a design engineer wasn't for me. Like, I probably, you know, not really the person to do that. I could do the work, but I wouldn't have, you know, enjoyed it on an ongoing basis. So as I got further through that mechanical engineering undergraduate degree, I got more and more interested in businesses and. And how one could create one, because I thought it was just, you know, really interested in projects when I was younger. And a business is kind of the ultimate project because you've got the things that the business makes, the people, the structures, everything that goes. And so when I met you, I was at an entree seminar in the undercroft at the university, and it was. You were introducing B Corp, and you did this really good talk about. I don't remember the Sean Fitzpatrick thing, but you did this. Talk about how a lot of people go through their lives and they, you know, find a good job that pays good money and they work hard on that job, but that job doesn't necessarily align with what they see as their own purpose, personally. And many people don't even know what their own purpose is either.

And I thought this was kind of funny because you talked about your time working with Johnson and Johnson implants, and there you were standing in front of a bunch of university students and T shirts and shorts, but you were wearing a suit. And I was like, there's some irony here. It was a navy blue suit and it was sort of like, we could put this on the back of my bus and you'd be flogging houses in no time.

And so I missed my true calling in real estate. I do it.

I do it And I remember striking up a conversation with you about hip implants after that, because my uncle was a surgeon and you knew him professionally. And so we have a conversation afterwards and I was sort of like, this is an interesting conversation because, like, I sort of challenged the fact that, yeah, you were in a suit and had worked, Jay, and it's just a big flip for you. And anyway, that kind of got the idea in my head that, you know, I was really interested in business, but business didn't need to be without purpose and it could actually deliver positive impact more so than I had potentially considered. One of those things that I probably hadn't thought about so much, but having that conversation with you and understanding the B Corp framework was definitely, you know, well, okay, there's a different way of thinking about something that I hadn't considered before. And so sometime after that, I needed a master's project for my master's in engineering management. And that course is mostly coursework. And then the last 40% of the course is a project. Most people will do a project for a large company like Fonterra or Simlay or, you know, down there, and they're doing an optimization of supply chain or the new drying process or something like that that combined all the engineering and engineering management disciplines. But you can also start a company. And so I initially had a project lined up with a company in Christchurch called osis, but they will. We weren't quite aligned on whether or not was going to get paid, and when we figured out that I wasn't going to.

Do and. And so I was like, well, I need to come up with a project and I need to do it fast because I've got to start this thing soon. 5 months of work to cap off my masters. So I went around to my. The aforementioned uncle's place and I was just. Just before the election, it was about September 17, 2017, and I said, look, the health, funnily enough, is back on the radar. The election's coming up in a week. What do you think is going to happen if we have a change of government? And he said, oh, probably nothing.

And.

It'S not going to make a big difference for people. But we kind of pursued the conversation a bit further. And he started a couple of companies in Christchurch that do medical devices. And he's a surgeon, obviously. And he said, look at the stuff in my garage. Why don't you try and figure out a way to remanufacture or reprocess that or make it sterile again so hospitals can reuse it and that can be your project. And I was like, hm, interesting. All right, I need to do some validation that this is actually potentially possible. So I went back to my mates at OSIS and I said, look, all right, we know we're not doing this project, but what do you reckon? And they said, well, yeah, definitely, it's definitely possible. We'd looked at this, we just couldn't make it work a few years ago, ten years ago at that time. And I was like, okay. And they said, well, look, have all of our stuff, have our documentation, have our research and you can figure out, see if what you can do. And by the way, here's a couple of customers you could potentially go and talk to. So they. They gave me the first intro to. To nurse manager at Burwood Hospital, who I went out, met with, and I didn't even know what the product was going to be. But, yeah, that was the start. And. And so I built a process around this one product. They told me that was the right product to start with. I built a process around it. A year later, I got it into the hospital. So I worked for an entire year from the date that I started my project through the date we had our first purchase order, you know, sans salary or any other form of, you know, employment contract. And I won a few awards over that time period because the. The idea was so good. And then, you know, fast forward to here we are today and we're working across almost every hospital in New Zealand. We employ, you know, close to 30 people and we now have some stuff starting up in Australia as well. And we're making a significant positive impact on the health system from a financial perspective, from a waste perspective, and we're employing quite a lot of people who otherwise might have struggled to find employment in our normal workforce. So, yeah, it's been good. And that's a bit of a condensed version of the journey and how it started.

I suppose that's super cool. The UC entree for people listening, not in New Zealand. So University of Canterbury, is entree still going? I don't know. Possibly, yeah.

And I think so. You know, it's sort of. It continues to evolve as time goes on, but it's the center, it's the entrepreneurship club. So there's a number of clubs at the university. And the University of Canterbury is kind of known for having a really good club scene. I was involved in the Canterbury University Board Writing association, which is sort of lined up with my skiing and surfing stuff, and then also the Engineering Society, which sort of lined up with My interest in engineering and also all of the other fun stuff that goes on there.

The beer drinking.

Yeah, there's a little bit of that and. But the Entree club as well. And so Entree would run competitions for people to come up with business ideas and pitch them and things like that. And they do like a startup competition and they would also host workshops and yours was one of them. So. Yeah, and it does exist.

Yeah, because. And there's been quite a few B corps that have come out of it. So Brianne west at a teak. She, she won the, I think one or runner up maybe in, in the Entree. So it used to be that they, it was like a, a startup competition as well where you, if you, you created a startup idea, you would, you'd have some mentoring from some industry experts, which I think I was one for a couple of years I worked with Bridget Williams who had a different idea, but she's now doing Beat and Proceed, which kind of was a spin out of her idea. Yeah, there's some Brianne and Sam from Little Yellow Bird, so. And, and you and yourselves definitely three like really cool B corps that have been spun out of a, a student competition at uc. So go uc, I suppose.

Well, it's actually funny because mid Self I put a number of ideas through to Entree and they all got told pretty much, you know, keep walking mate, take the next care.

Oh, brutal.

No, no, like that is not going to work. And I found that it was challenging because a lot of those ideas I thought were pretty good. So there's one like pretty much there's a company called Menu Aid in Christchurch which does supermarket shopping. So a similar idea to that is one that I put to Entree like probably six or seven years ago. And it's probably a really good lesson for anyone out there that's an entrepreneur is, you know these, sometimes the people that are judging these awards are not the customer and they don't actually know what's going to work. So there was one there and then there was another one I remember putting through, which is effectively Gaspee, the app that tells you how much fuel price prices are around the country.

Anyway, those, those two, they failed. They got, they got the. No, you can't. And I didn't push them very hard because I didn't have to, because I didn't have to do a project on them. But with Self I actually took it through the university's University center for Entrepreneurship program. And that, that's kind of a funny one because I started mid Self like Working on it quite late for what the summer startup program is. So have the conversation. September 17th, probably about the 19th of September or the 20th. I'd got far enough down my journey because I was really scrambling to make a project. I'd realized I was going to do this and it was just going to happen. And I went to the entrepreneurship center and I said, look, you've got the summer startup program. You're paying all these people five grand to work on their ideas. I know I've missed the cutoff, but can I just be involved because I, for starters, I need an office or somewhere to work, otherwise, you know, it's going to be pretty lonely summer. And they said, look, we'll let you in, it's all good. You're just not going to get the five grand because we've already given all the money away. And I remember that year I was at the, at the races in sort of early November. The program starts on the 20th of November. And I was at the Christchurch races like the end of October, start of November, and I got this text saying, we found more funding, you're getting the scholarship. And I was like, mint. But it was pretty good that they didn't give me it right then and there because, you know, put it all on.

It could have been off to a flying starter.

It could have been, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But a hole in the bottom of the boat.

I'm not, I'm not sure that's in the investment playbook. Yeah, take, take the initial seed funding and go to the casino or the races.

Yeah, yeah, well, that's right. So anyway, part of the program, the end of the entrepreneur entrepreneurship thing over the summer and ended up winning a few of the awards. So two of the five awards at the end of the showcase. So we all did a three minute pitch. You have to pitch your ideas to about 2, 300 people and midsole one people's choice and best opportunity.

Which always. Because there's one of our competitor, not competitors like one of the other companies in the, in the competition or the program. Komodo, well at the time was called satisfying sport. And you probably know Chris, Chris Bacon and he won best pitch, which really got me.

But not that you're competitive.

Not that I'm competitive. So anyway, yeah, that was the start.

So.

And then a few years, a few months later I won an award and it was effectively a hundred thousand dollars in kind for many of it, $20,000 in cash. And that kind of paid for the equipment and the stuff that we got to get Going, got a few grants and then a year later we were actually operating. It's quite a long time when you're 23. One year is a.

Yeah.

And if I'm perfectly honest, I'd finished the summer startup program and I was trying to figure out whether this was going to fly or not and I turned up to the awards evening for the this Dream Believe Succeed award and I was one of the sort of seven or eight contestants and I was convinced that there's no way I was going to win. But I turned up in the suit anyway and I won and. And mids have won and I didn't even. I hadn't even told anyone. I'd been playing tennis with some mates earlier in the day and I just put a suit on and turned up and won and I was amazed. And then I was like, all right, well, I've got to give it a real good shot now because, yeah, someone believes in me. Didn't make it. It still was a really tough, tough challenge to get into hospitals from that point onwards. But we're there now.

Yeah, man, that's such a super cool. I mean, I guess it's sort of proof that pressure makes diamonds in some ways under the pressure, immense pressure to fin project. But because you talked about how, you know, you had these other ideas like, you know, these apps and stuff, if, let's say Devil's Advocate the. The Finding Cheaper Petrol app had, had won. Do you see a parallel universe sliding door moment where you'd be as happy and as satisfied and as excited about having an app that helps people find cheaper gas compared to the. Because clearly what you're doing at Med will dig into some of the good that you're doing. Like there's layers of good that you're doing at Med that there's no way you would have done that with a cheap petrol app or finding some food app.

Yeah, look, I think you're touching on something really important and like, I've just talked about this really difficult time in my life, professionally and personally to go through that. I've got an idea, I've got a customer and that took a lot of. You know, you wake up every morning, you go, what am I doing today? Because all I'm waiting for is someone to reply to an email. That's it, you know, for months. And then someone kicks you meeting for a month and you're like, oh, well, I guess, you know, what am I going to get out of bed for today? And it's actually quite hard and I think having that Knowledge that this is something that aligns with what I like doing, you know, with skiing, mountain biking, surfing, spending time in the outdoors, that I can be, you know, one and the same across those two areas. That's really important, I think, you know, to be. So the counterpoint, I think building something and getting customer adoption and getting good feedback on a product or an app or whatever to a point is, doesn't that. That gets you a long way. But then those hard times when you're not getting that and it's. And that will happen with any sort of enterprise, whether it's for good or for just to go and.

Make lots of money. It would become a lot harder, I think, if you don't have that underlying alignment with your overall purpose. So I think, I don't think I'd find that particularly rewarding and I don't think it would be there. I mean, I struggle even now, like, there's not many vehicles that you can take up a ski field that are electric in New Zealand. And so, like, that's, that's for me a bit of a pain because I prefer not to have, you know, a car that's. And we've talked about this, you and I, because. But there's not another option. We look, look baited breath for a cybertruck or a Rivian or something like that, but probably not going to spend $200,000 on a vehicle. So. So I think, I think, yeah, to be honest, that's a, that's the big thing for me. You've got to really be aligned with it.

And if.

If you're not, I think that's going to make it probably impossible, definitely very hard to go through those toughest, tough periods.

100%. Yeah. That's why I'm so big on the purpose thing and having been on the, on the other side of it for many years of not having, you know, or having that disconnected purpose. Yeah, I think it's. For me, it's. It's this massive potential that people haven't tapped into.

You're kind of touching on a really interesting one there because, like, the company that you're sort of talking about is multi multinational company that is on the Facebook out there to make people healthy. And that's definitely what they do with their individual products. Like, that's the goal of the product is to make that person's life better, that individual person. But the back end of that does a huge amount of damage to the environment and that ultimately has a negative impact on everyone else's health as well. Yeah, so it's, yeah, you can see how some people just take this singular purpose which is just make healthy and they'd look. So it is an interesting one. But I think having that fully aligned all the way through and every decision that you make within business.

Be, you know, considering against your purpose or you know, your. What you want to be doing.

I think, yeah, I mean that, that was the big thing for me.

You.

Know, when I was working in the medical device world and, and sad. I mean have you been watching the painkillers stuff on Netflix about the OxyContin stuff in the U.S.

You know, I think, I think that that is the more pernicious side of the medical device world. And that was what really got me to leave was the fact that beyond environmental impact, actually there were, there's frequent examples of where the actual core product that was being sold wasn't fit for purpose and was actually destroying lives and sometimes killing people when actually you know, the root, you know, the Hippocratic oath that more broadly should be associated, what you think should be associated with the entire medical industry, you know, at first do no harm. Actually the underlying driver for the medical device industry that I was a part of was make money at all costs. And if we lose a few patients on the way, that's it's a reasonable expenditure that we can deal with in lawsuits and compensation.

Yeah, and that's exactly right. And you see like this, I don't know the detail of the OxyContin stuff, but from what I understand, it's sort of like you're actually treating someone in a way that makes them dependent on a product wherefore you're effectively securing yourself a cash flow. You're not actually making a positive difference in the short long and, and that's difficult. And we found that there are some medical device companies that we have just been unable to, to, to work with some in some parts of the world because the like, the way that they make money is fundamentally misaligned with what they want to do. So you've got companies out there that are saying we want you to be healthy, but what they actually mean is we want you to be healthy after you've got sick and significantly so. So we can make money off you becoming healthy. And which, you know, this is where you get into the, the future of healthcare type stuff where.

If you could have an ideal world, everyone would avoid having to have a hip replacement because they would do enough in their own personal life to the activity and their exercise and their training and strength and stuff. That they don't need that. But that means that the company that makes $20,000 when that replacement goes in doesn't make any money. So this is where the Apple watch, which by itself is like a 300 piece of equipment and then you can use the software on that to train the person's body to be fitter and healthier. And I've just got a notification from Apple saying I need to close my, close my ring for the day for my, my, you know, number of calories burnt or whatever stuff is, is a lot cheaper. It's top of the top of the cliff stuff. But there are companies who make lots of money at the bottom of the cliff, if you like. So the ambulance off the cliff type situation. So, yeah, it's a, it's a really industry, interesting industry to work in and it's, it's certainly something that's, you know, we find we don't even have to do anything differently. It sort of sets us apart in some cases from.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole medical device world. It's. That's a podcast. Maybe that, that is a podcast to do with a bunch. Because I saw today or overnight, Sanofi, the pharmaceutical company in North America, has now become a B Corp. And a lot of people were kind of like, oh, how can Nespresso be a B corp? I'm actually more, well, how can a pharmaceutical company be a B corp? I don't know. Sanofi. Well, I sold, as you sort of mentioned, hips and knees and then spinal instruments and implants, so physical products. So I don't know as much about the pharmaceutical world. But yeah, I'm kind of like, okay, Sanofi, interesting. You know, have they. I don't know. I don't know what that track record is. I'm going to try and do a bit of research on that. But I think it was. I was talking to Ian Cooper from Tasman Trolleys and Medical Equipment last week on the podcast and I saw they did a post yesterday and B Lab have done a post with the three of you because there's three, three Kiwi companies who are in the medical device sector. So you've got yourselves Tasman Trolleys and Medical Equipment and med enterprises who do recruitment for doctors. And I'm actually, I'm going to write I have it in my tab to complete the post on the fact that it's, it's a crying shame that there's only three medical device companies that are B Corp certified. And it's again, it's like for the industry that should be about care and impact only doing good. The fact that there are so few B Corps for me is quite telling of the wider industry.

Yeah, well it's sort of like, it's sort of really, yeah, really interesting. And talk about the Hippocratic oath which is the do no harm thing. Now that's most of the time it's doing a harm to the patient. It's like well what about doing harm to the planet or the rest of people on it? And we, we sort of look at that and yeah, so I think it's really interesting and you've kind of touched on a really good point there which is B Corp's about purpose led businesses that are doing good in a number of areas and they can show that, you know, environmental people, health, et cetera. And for the fact that like so many of these companies either are unwilling or unable to or just, you know, don't know about. B Corp is a real eye opener because every single one of these companies has got to do regulations. They've got to deal with not do regulations, they've got to work in line with some form of regulations whether it's the CE mark, the fda, the TGA or you know, Medsafe even. They've got to maintain some form of ISO 35 or above, compliance, MDR, et cetera. And so the B Corp is, you know, should be not that complicated. But the B Corp is a score about just the whole company, not just the technical design of the product.

Yeah.

So yeah, anyway, it's a really interesting, interesting kind of concept. Probably long, long rabbit hole we could go down.

But and because I think it's interesting because again most people probably don't know. So you know, my job was to sell the product to the surgeon. But then the big part of my job was I used to stand in the corner of the operating theater whilst the procedure was going on. And at the critical points when the surgeon and the surgical team were about to use the product that my, me and my company supplied, we would then give them the advice around, okay, well I would use this to do that. And you're giving them very specific technical advice on how to put the product into the human body. But I think what most people don't understand is the amount of, when you think about the waste, the amount of waste that is produced just in one typical operating procedure. So the patient is draped in sterile, basically sort of plasticky paper to make sure that the risk of infection is reduced. The surgeons and the team are all wearing surgical gowns that are Single use plastic based sort of material. You've got gloves, you've got face masks, you've got hats. All the product that gets supplied, if it's, if it's typically for a device like a hip or a knee replacement, you've got these big metal trays that are sterilized each time they're wrapped in this plastic paper. And then the products themselves typically come in a double wrapped plastic container which a cardboard box and a double wrapped plastic paper where they've been sterilized with various gases to keep them stable and shuffle and keep sterile. And so by the end, at the end of a procedure you might have four big like massive yellow bags of rubbish per procedure. And you kind of think, well, in a typical hospital there's how many operating theaters and they're doing maybe anywhere between three to ten procedures a day. You kind of go, actually there's quite a bit of. And shipping all this equipment around the world for it to basically be used once they're thrown in the bin. It's.

Yeah, and it's ridiculous. You know, you see some hospitals that we deal with and you know, reasonable sized hospitals and they're doing eight tonnes a day of waste to landfill. And it's not, it's not just general waste, it's clinical waste. It was expensive. And so there's that and then there's also just like. And I think one of the things I think, and I've been doing this for a long time now is the reason that we're at this sort of stage with healthcare is kind of a multitude of factors. One of them is not many people understand that. So your average person walking down the street, unless they're a nurse or they're directly involved in the provision of health surgeries, doesn't actually know that that's, that goes on every time. And so this person who is, you know, trying to avoid using a single use plastic bag in their personal life and probably over the course of a year generates the same amount of waste as one surgery or less in their own personal, you know, consumption of food products or whatever. They wouldn't have a clue. And that that's really interesting when you consider that a lot of the healthcare delivery in New Zealand and Australia and the UK and other places is funded by the government who are trying to get to stop using plastic. So like that's. But in my opinion one of the key reasons this, that we've got to this sort of thing is, you know, firstly you've got manufacturers taking advantage of epidemics and pandemics previous to Covid, like I'm talking AIDS and things like that, where they, we can make, we can, you know, sell a product that is under the guise of infection control, that is single use, and therefore push that further whether or not that actually provides any benefit. In some cases it doesn't, many cases, and then the other one is the design. So I'm a big fan of beginning with the end in mind. And so this is a little bit off the reservation, but one of the best examples of design that we have here in Otatahi, Christchurch is the town hall. The town hall is an acoustically amazing building that was designed and you know, in conjunction with Marshall Day acoustics. And so when you go into the town hall for a performance, you know, the sound is amazing. It's one of the world leading pieces of architecture for, for sound. But the way that they got there and they've got this fantastic building which has recently been rebuilt following the earthquakes, is that they bought the design engineers into the room at the first meeting and so they built a building with the purpose of being acoustically excellent and obviously able to hold people and all of those other constraints that they need. They didn't build a office block and then go and bat, you know, batman.

Work out how to make it sound good. Yeah.

And the challenge for healthcare, you know, these companies have been operating towards this angle where they haven't cared about the environment. So design decision all the way through for a product has been made with no regard for the product. And then you start trying to bolt on sustainability and you find these like recycling programs and that's not great because recycling usually takes it into a different material. You can't use in the same lower value. A lot of waste, a lot of energy. But actually we've started this and we're doing it. Med salve itself effectively bolts onto the health system to fix a problem. But if you were able to start, and we have started doing this at the design of the product, where you considered the impact on the environment as well as the patient, you can make a lot of design decisions that allow that product to be used a lot longer, be a lot, probably safer, easier to clean, et cetera. But obviously a product that's easier to clean means the manufacturer's probably going to sell less of them. So you've got this misaligned incentive between these multinationals.

Yeah, yeah.

And then couple that with the fact that they're being manufactured in a far away country and that manufacturer doesn't want to do any activities in a high labor, high cost of labor country they would rather make it in, you know, China or some far away country where the cost of labor is relatively low, ship it somewhere and then say goodbye to it once it's been used.

It's, it's, it's almost the same as fast fashion, isn't it? It's that whole, the whole ethos behind it. And again.

The, the whole having been, you know, I guess the, the poacher now turned gatekeeper. The whole.

Theory from the companies was single use is better because we care about patient outcomes and single use, there's less risk of infection. Whereas if you're reusing the same product, you know, but then ironically, and a lot of people don't know this in the private healthcare system, quite often they do reuse stuff that was sold as single use because they want to maximize the, the financial, you know, the roi. So look, looking at like neurosurgical procedures, they use a thing called a bur, which is like a high speed drill with like a little, looks like almost like a mace or like a, it's got like a drill bit on the end of it. Well, frequently in private hospitals they will reuse that because the company is probably selling them at 150, 250 bucks a pop. And so if the surgeon can use the same one three or four times, they can bill the patient the same $200 for using a bird, but they're getting four uses out of it. So the economics of health care is really, really interesting. But then the flip side is I was really lucky to work in Writington Hospital in the uk, which is where the modern hip replacement was invented by Sir John Charlie. And there they were. So in the modern surgical world, I don't know if it's still the striker exhausted system, but when people do orthopedic procedures, the risk of infection is massive because you're basically cutting open bones and you're opening the body and there's massive risk of infection. And that's what Sir John Charlie worked on was if we can reduce the risk of infection in a hip replacement, we're going to rapidly increase the, you know, the upside and the long term survivorship of patients having hip surgery. And so he created this draping system and this exhaust suit system which has now been converted into this modern design which is single use. So you put the surgery like if you've seen TV dramas about doctors, you know, they put the blue gowns on, that's all single use. Well, in Writington, when I was there 15 years ago, they still used the same equipment that Charlie was using in the 60s, I. E. The gowns and the drapes that they were using were washed and laundered and they, they kept saying to the companies, you show me the paper that shows that single use is, is clinically significantly better than what we're doing and we will change, but you do not have that evidence. And I just think that the other thing I really loved about Charlie is that when he invented the modern hip replacement, he, he discovered polyethylene as a, as a product that he thought might extend the life of the hip replacement. And he was also testing with Teflon and he injected Teflon into his own body to see what the reaction was. And I think we need to bring that back into the medical world. If you're so sure that your product is going to solve the problem, you take it first, then you go get to get it FDA approved, then you go and get, sell it.

Oh, I'm probably, probably not going to go away in on that specific thing.

But look, I think where's to put your money? Where your mouth is? Yeah.

Well, I think if you find me injecting a single remanufactured, single use medical device into my body, you probably find me, you know, becoming quite a lot larger as a person not potentially having the sun clinical benefit. But that's the kind of thing that, you know, like if you look at that particular case study where you've got the surgical drapes and stuff and then they've moved to single use and they'll, you know, there'll be a rep going into hospital and this is what happens when you've got an understaffed health system because all of a sudden it's not cost, it's not sustainability and it's not patient outcomes, it's convenience that gets prioritized. And so we've made so much of an effort to bring with our products as much convenience as we can to the health system while at the same time delivering all those other benefits. But you, we found that hospitals, and this really gets me hospitals that own their own laundries, which are not insignificant in size, using single use sheets.

The downstream effect of doing that is you start using a single use sheet and then company tries to make more money. So what are they going to do? Well, they're going to figure out a way to reduce the cost of the single use sheet. Yeah, all the, that you kind of cite in your example there. And one of the ways of doing that is to use a poor quality material which Means, you know, you get a drape that breaks or you've got a less high quality outcome from the.

Patient, which that means you need to use two drapes for each procedure instead of the one because it rips and oh, patient safety. Yeah.

And so, you know, you're actually better to have a higher cost, initial cost, reusable product that you can, you know, put through a process that's able to be cleaned. It's a small. And so this is the sort of thing and you find that like the convenience factor is material and we will not. New Zealand and Australia and the uk, all three of them have this common problem where we've got severely underfunded health systems and the funding isn't used as well as it could be. You know, we're making some good steps. New Zealand, in terms of getting rid of some of the waste, spending on repeated decisions around the system. That's what soaks up a lot of money in New Zealand. But, and there's no economies of scale, it can be delivered. But what it means is you've got underfunding, you don't have enough workforce, you don't have enough staff. You're just seeing the political announcements. Classic national labor. We're going to give you more doctors. Cool. Bit late. Classic would have been nice if you did that sort of 10 years ago. You know, this stuff is, you've been seeing it for a while. Anyway, point being, these doctors, these nurses, these clinicians, the people, the nurse aides, they're under pressure, they don't have much time, convenience is prioritized and the short term, probably not noticeable. Longer term, worse outcomes for people, worse outcomes for the country, more cost, more waste and. And then eventually you become completely reliant on it. We have very few medical device manufacturers this side of the hemisphere.

That are capable of delivering the products that we need in New Zealand for all of the complex procedures that we do. So it's a pity, unfortunately, and that's what we're trying to change.

We do our stuff, we do the remanufacturing and the processes that we do with our products and we do them for the hospitals that we work with. But on top of that, we're advocating for better behavior and better interest from these bigger companies.

But I'll give you an idea of what we're up against. So I was in a procurement conference recently.

And this is in Australia, and there was four people on a panel, you know, one representing in private hospitals, one representing private insurers, one representing a hospital and one representing all of the manufacturers and distributors of products in Australia. So the, and, and the guy representing all the manufacturers and distributors of products in Australia said, we have, we've done some analysis of our pricing to hospitals and this is more about pricing. But he said, we've done analysis of our pricing to hospitals and we found 14 reasons why the price might be different 14 reasons why the price might be different from hospital to hospital to hospital. And this is sort of, well, okay, how many they buy, where they're located, how much service that they require, and you know, what is it? Another 11 permutations of we want to make more money.

Yep.

Realistically, that just shows you sort of the way that the game gets played. And you've got massively complex rebate systems and volume, you know, not volume discounts, but, you know, we've. We found one the other day where there's an organization saying, if you commit to buying 90 to 100% of your product from us, we will give you about a 20, 25 discount on the product price.

Yeah.

You've got to commit that in writing. So that's interesting, that individual thing and just, it paints a picture because that doesn't actually make any benefit to the supplier if the volume product doesn't go up.

It's just.

Yeah. Blocking other people out.

Yeah.

So that's. And that's just, that's just a couple of. These are two days in my life which I come across and go, and these guys were meant to be trusting, to supply us products, to help us. Yeah, yeah.

Because I think aligned to that thing that always astounded me as I got further down the rabbit hole, you know, as I've progressed my career in the medical device industry, the veil starts to be lifted further and further. And you see, further back into the back room of what's actually going on. You know, when they talk about, oh, you know, well, we need to charge high prices because, you know, all the innovation we do. Well, typically what you find is most of the big companies aren't innovating at all. They watch someone like you who's got a startup and once you get big and annoying enough, they come and buy you and then they integrate you into the machine. So there's very little actual innovation going. Actually, what you're funding is mergers and acquisitions and paying lawyers and due diligence teams to go and buy smaller startup companies. And secondly, any innovation that is done internally in a company, what they typically do is they design the widgets, let's say, I don't know, they, they design this, this cup, black cup. Those of you listening can't see the video. They then also patent the teacup, which. So it's like a slightly different shape with a handle on it. And then they patent 50 to 100 variations either side of those to make sure that no one else can launch an even vaguely similar product for 25 years. And then they sit on those patents because they know that they only need to launch the one product that has to be marginally better than the last one that they launched 25 years ago because they can sit on the patents. And if anyone tries to innovate around that innovation, they slap them with lawsuits. So instead of actually, if you've got all the smart people like yourself, you know, engineers, designers from all the medical companies in the world and said, right, we're going to lock you in a room for a month and between all of you, you need to solve all the pressing medical problems we've got. And they need to be cost effective, sustainable, provide positive outcomes and just be amazing. You'd probably knock that out in a day, let alone a month. But no, the companies want to maintain shareholder primacy and make as much money as possible.

Yeah. And it's always really interesting because even, like, we're not a huge company, but even in companies of, you know, you get companies of our size, you get differences and reasons to be there from people within the company. And like I can tell you now that the objectives of our engineers are we're pretty aligned as a company. The reason that people know work at Med Salva is because they, you know, they, they value the purpose that it brings to their life and they don't want to be making a negative impact on the planet, environment, people, healthcare, et cetera. But what you find is the bigger the companies, you find these people who work in those companies and they're engineers and they're getting pissed off because they're getting told to figure out way make a product single use. Yeah. When you're actually just there to make, you know, the product deliver some healthcare. And it's super interesting to see how that that transpires. And, and you know, one of the ways we see it is because people apply for jobs at midsole, right. And one of their comments is, you know, these are, you go to a trade show and a rep from another company says, oh man, I hate having to sell this stuff. Would you be interested, you know, can I give you a cv?

Nice.

Or I'm an engineer for company X. I'm wondering if, you know, like this or Whatever. Like, some of the stuff they do is pretty disingenuous. They'll just make a normal product white. Well, it could be. And it will still do the same thing and it will still be able to clean just the same. And, yeah, you, you know, like. But if it's got like a minor piece of a. A scuffle, like a minor mark, it's not actually going to knock clean, it's just going to recover it, then it will prevent it from being able to be used again. And so, like, I find that really interesting and people maybe don't understand that because they're not operating within the paradigm of this could be reused.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's a hilarious industry because you can sort of like, as you say, lift the veil, open the comino, and you go, what? Why did you do that? Oh, you did that. Yeah. Okay, nice one. Yeah, cool.

Yeah.

And so you're making some waves, though, you're making some progress.

You're changing the narrative seemingly. Yeah.

So we got our first customer within a year of idea to customer, roughly. Our second customer took about probably nine months from then, but now we've got 57 hospitals across New Zealand engaged with our programs. So there's, there's 66 in New Zealand. Seven of those are engaged. And the majority of those engaged are buying products back through us, either directly or through some of the companies that have. Have had the foresight to go, actually, we should work with you rather than trying to aggressively punt you out of the market.

Crazy idea.

Yeah, amazing, isn't it? And.

And we've got, I mean, to be honest, the, the. There are a small number of customers, potential customers that we don't service in New Zealand. And, and that's because of the novelty. And what I mean by that is there's some people who have struggled to grapple with the idea of taking what a product is that's single use, remanufacturing it and returning it, and it's still being safe and capable of doing the same job without posing any risk to the patient, et cetera. And, yeah, that's health for you. Even if it's the perfect decision that's been made in all of the bigger hospitals, then you will still always find people who are saying, oh, it's impossible, you know, whether or not they have any kind of.

Valid reason to have any concerns about possibility of anything. But, yeah, so we're working well and we've got really strong interest from across the Tasman. I think it's been interesting to see the difference in Culture between New Zealand and Australia, like New Zealand probably perceives itself as a bit greener than Australia.

Yep.

And that's correct. But when Australia, Australia and Australians decide to do something, they do it a little bit harder at its scale.

Yep.

Yeah. And they go, well, we're keen on doing that and we will do that rather than, you know, okay, well, we've got some bureaucracy to deal with in New Zealand. In Australia, you know, it's been a little bit quicker.

Yep. I've got a good mate of mine, Adam Harris. He's a business coach, EOS implementer. He, he always, he's from the UK originally. He always says, in New Zealand it takes you five minutes to find the decision maker, but it takes them five years to make a decision. Whereas in the UK it takes you five years to find a decision maker, but they make the decision in five minutes. And I think that that feels like the same with Aussie. It's like if you find the right. It's going to take you longer to find the right person, but they'll, they'll go when you, if you've got a good offer. Yeah.

And to give you like some exact color on around that. There is a hospital that we work with in New Zealand and we've got some great people that we work with there, but it took us four and a half years to get them to actually use a product itself that has, you know, avoids it going to landfill. And that really, you know, that's, that is shocking because what you end up with these. We can, we can, we can. Which is you could just say no and I'd feel a lot better about myself for a time period you say yes, hard maybe is way worse than a no type of thing. But the, but the other thing is this hospital has, this particular organization has, has got a goal of zero wasted landfill by 2030.

It's like, hello, we might just be able to help that.

Yeah. So that's. And you do find like a little bit of, like, if you think about that organizations as a, as a hierarchy, which they are, the people at the top want this.

Yeah.

People at the bottom want this. People in the middle can sometimes find lots of mud or treacle to drip all over your process.

So that's just, that's just life. But. So my job is not about sustainability and it's not about, it's actually about making change and that's what across the health system. And we help encourage people in other ways.

Nice. Yeah. You multifaceted. Yeah. And that's the thing I Mean, it's been the same with me, you know, me giving my talk to you back in 2014, you know, far out. You know, it. You don't know that the influence of something that the conversation that you've had with someone in 2017 that is going to boil up and create some change next week. It's really hard to know what you do or say and, and, you know, it's not always a linear.

You know, effect of change.

Pretty much.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly. So it's. But it's good. I think New Zealand is kind of getting its head around the idea that, you know, New Zealand by itself probably not going to solve the world's climate or environmental crisis, but as a small country, it's kind of like the perfect place to innovate and learn things that can be shared across the rest of the world. Yeah. You know, as long as you can get that decision making speed up. Yeah. Five minutes, five years thing. That's very, very. I mean, I don't know about the uk, can't comment on that, but is pretty accurate in New Zealand, I'd say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, well, we'll get there, we'll get there. So just looking back briefly to, to the, to the university days. No regrets, I mean, obviously. Well, having said that, I do, I do find incre. I mean, like I say, over the years, I've done quite a bit. Bit of, you know, spend a bit of time at UC and hanging out at other universities. It does just seem that increasingly the young people, the youth of the day, whilst they're at university, everyone's got some side hustle and they've got a business idea and it's kind of, hey, you know, maybe when I leave, I'm going to go all in on my business idea. Whereas when I was at university, I was talking to my mate Stokes, James Stokes, yesterday, you know, we were just on a pathway. If you're going to finish university, you're going to go get a job. There was no real. I mean, there might have been a young enterprise type thing hanging around somewhere, but most people would probably go, yeah, it's full of geeks not interested in, um. So, yeah, any regrets on not having taken the corporate path? You know, just got the engineering finished, engineering degree gone and got a job at Fonterra, you know, did, did you see other mates of yours going down that path and have any moments of. When you're sitting there begging and borrowing and stealing an office, were there any sort of moments like, ah, damn it. Actually, do you Know what? I'm just going to go and get a job.

Well, I think. I don't know, it's an interesting thing to think about because I think if you go down that corporate road, you probably go, well, I've got a job and I can sign out of it. But that's one thing that's harder to do with this business at the moment, is to sign out and go, look, I'm off. You know, if I get a phone call the weekend and tell me, well, you know, I'm going to respond to that because it's my name on the business and I don't want to let our customers down or employees, our team members, anything like that. But so, like, you know, can you turn off. It's a little harder to do that when you're sort of invested so heavily in this. In this business. On the other side of the coin, I think it's more fulfilling. So the highs are higher and the lows are probably lower because it means. It means something different to you when it's just sort of so invested in it. I think the same token, though.

I.

Have learned a lot with this business in terms of, you know, taking it from one person who was doing all of the work and everything, customer engagement, the processing, the design of the machines, the whole shebang, through to where we are now, where we've got, you know, multiple teams of people who are doing that work. And I'm having to learn how to manage managers who are managing, in some cases managing their own supervisors or managers. And so that, from a professional development perspective has been, you know, quite remarkable for me. And I'm still very much learning that. And luckily I've got a really good team who I've built around me who can.

Play their part. They're also developing as well. So a lot of time spent actually bringing them along the journey. Personnel development. No one that works at Med Self would have had a job in this industry if medsl didn't exist. So we haven't hired people from other companies that already had that experience. And that's kind of good because we get to do things our way and that you don't bring any of that sort of interesting sort of other medical.

Device or the baggage.

Yeah, exactly. So I think it's been good and. And I certainly, you know, get a lot of. There's a little bit of freedom not being in a massive multinational company to be able to do things. And that sort of freedom extends to our team as well. I don't know. I just don't Even think I could contemplate being in one of those organizations and doing that stuff. It's just so, so different, you know, as I get better at doing the roles that I meant so I will naturally have more process. We're a pretty process driven organization, being ISO accredited, et cetera and B Corp already. And we will become more that way as we scale and do things. But the good thing for me is every day is a new challenge.

Yep.

And that, yes, it was relentless but fun.

Yeah. Well, you clearly have that entrepreneurial spirit. The fact that you were part of the entree, you know, club and even, you know, just looking at all of that, I think fundamentally people like you and me are unemployable in the real world. You know, who would have us in a large. Because I think you're very much like me. You'd just be pointing out the idiocy and the. But why are we doing that? You've stated this, but you're doing that. This makes no sense. That's, that's what I always found in big companies. Like you say this, but you're doing, you're doing the different. And either I'm really dumb or you're not doing what you say you do.

Yeah, well, you're right. And to be honest, like I have to bite my tongue a fair bit within the health system because there's sort of things where you just sort of. You scratch your head. But you know, one of those steps is you realize that you can't just call things out straight away. That's not necessarily going to make change because is not about whether you're right or wrong. It's about bringing people along the journey with you and making the journey that good old journey. Yeah, it all wraps up and you can add more corporate speak around it as well if you like.

But to the point, a bit of bingo.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yes.

It all comes down to people. I don't know. And I suppose every company will go through a stage where it's about the product and it's about the initial service delivery and eventually you get to a stage where actually you're managing people who are managing people and that is making sure that they've got all the tools to do their job. I don't know. And as I said, still a lot to learn from me.

Nice. At least you acknowledge that, you know, there's a lot of leaders and managers out there who think they're perfect and don't, don't think that they need to do anything different or have you. So you Know that's awareness, self awareness. Know thyself, as the oracle at Delphi would say, is a key part of that, of that journey. All right, so getting into the B Corp side of things. So you connected to B Corp pretty early in the piece in terms of, you know, the business idea, listening to this crazy bloke in a suit. I guess, yeah, I was wearing a suit because the company I was working for at the time, I wasn't self employed at the time and the company I was working for, you kind of, you wore a suit and tie. I don't think I've worn a suit and tie to a work meeting since I started my own business in late 2015. Hence T shirt is, is how I roll these days. So yeah, you connected B Corp. So when, when did you. So the business you started? 2017 you said.

So we. Yeah, so I actually think that our talk, you might have done your talk maybe 2015. Ish.

Yeah, I think it would have been around about then.

And I started mid cell 2017, the end of the year. So the 12th of December was when I just incorporated it. But like from then, and.

I think it's a, it's a balancing act because we were like, well we've got to do the B Corp thing at some point and we're always going to have in the back of our mind. And then we sort of, we looked at it and we looked at it, we saw the successes. You know, you talked about Brianne west and what a fantastic business entrepreneur, you know, high executing person that has delivered such a fantastic result, you know, in that space and as a B Corp and as a leadership leader. So that's super cool. And we were looking at these things and going okay, well when's this going to be right? But, but it's probably better to have the customer because you know, the thing about B Corp is you do have to have a bit of documentation, you have to have a bit of history, you have to have a bit of a track record to show. And then. Yeah, so we started that and we looked, we were like, okay, we've got, we'll talk to the experts here because we know what we're doing should fit in well. But I'm a competitive person and, and I know that B Corp doesn't like talking about the score, which is sort of like why I have the score, I suppose. But.

You know, either it's binary or there's a scale and we wanted to be right at the top of it. And so we were like, okay, we know we're probably going to be able to hit B Corp if we just went through the process right now. Yeah but we were like we can probably do better as a company. It'll bring us up as in terms of our own things and it give us some more stuff to differentiate against the existing know processes in the health system. So we, that's when we engaged with you and we went through that process of okay, where are we? What have we got? What things can we tie up? And there's some areas that are easier and some things that are harder, you know with, in, in terms of manufacturing and, and where things lie. Like to be perfectly honest, you know, New Zealand has a high minimum wage, really high minimum wage and minimum wages has absolutely no bearing on what the public health system will pay for medical devices, which is an interesting thing. But you know, so we, we looked at that and we moved, moved there and we also, you know we, we've always had an upwards pressure on wages anyway from internally so things like that. So we worked through a whole bunch of stuff to do what we could to do to improve things over the course of I think six months. And a lot of it was actually just taking what we already do and writing it in B Corp language. So take it from ISO documents and then to that and then we submitted and we went through the process of waiting for about a year until we went through that review process earlier this year and yeah we came out with a score of 139.4 which I think for a company of our size and nature and definitely sector within New Zealand and probably Australia is the highest.

But there's, there's obviously a couple of companies of one company that's outscored us in New Zealand, which, and Jamali Consulting, I think that they do a good job so that you know, get on them. But we, we're certainly proud of being able to achieve that. And now it's really a question for us. You know, we've done all right but we can do better. And I think the thing about the B Corp framework is it is a framework, it is immeasurable, it is evaluatable, it is objective. You know, most pretty much all of the things in there are objectives. There's only so many things that you can argue the toss on. And that's great because it means that everyone's getting held to a consistent standard. And so I've recommended that you know, public organizations use B Corp as their way of evaluating suppliers. Like if you, whether they actually have B Corp certificates or not, certification or not using the tenants within that evaluation process would be quite a smart way of doing it. So that's how we've done it.

And I big shout out to Amy, who's not on the court at the moment, but Amy, who is our, you know, one of our resident wizards, basically managed that process and, and did all the sort of translation of what we do into how the B Corp talks about it, which is really good.

And yeah, just, just looking, you know, talking about your score for a minute. So yeah, 139.4, which is, which is, you know, for first time score is phenomenal. But that is testament and proof of the fact that you know, you have baked a good into the business. And so for those people who aren't completely okay with the B Corp framework, there's kind of two levels to the assessment. So the standard assessment is a review of your operational performance. So how do we employ people? Do we provide some basic training, you know, kind of slightly beyond what would be legally required, but not really a huge jump or huge extension. But there's a second level to the assessment which is called the impact business model which is if you can prove you're going out of your way to create more positive social or environmental impact, that's where you kind of unlocked really big points. And so as you kind of already mentioned, you unlocked. Well, you've got four impact business models which is really, really rare and you've got four in four different.

Four different sections. So you have got.

Impact business model under workers because you provide those employment opportunities to people who typically have challenges getting mainstream employment. You unlocked the governance impact business model which you have to do that one now as a B Corp, which is putting the purpose and stakeholder language into your constitution. You got an environmental IBM for the resource conservation work that you do because you're clearly repurposing recycling. So that's saving resource that would ordinarily be virgin material made to make a project. And because you're operating in the healthcare system and you're creating a product which had a health outcome, you got an impact business model there. So proof that you are across the board a truly phenomenal company. So Chapo, round of applause to you and how you've done it because you know, I think you really have built, you've built a company around the framework as much, you know, as much as wanting to prove that you, you know the thoughts and ideas that you've had. Because I know we, we met when I was doing some work at Kilmatic Enterprises and that's where you sort of have that insight into, oh, wow, you know, there's a bunch of people here with intellectual disability who aren't really going to have much of an opportunity to have a job. And you kind of realize that initially there could be an outsourcing role, but then you're like, actually, I'm scaling so quickly, I'm just going to need to try and get a couple of people to come and work for me in my building. So, yeah, just kudos to you, man, for how you've done it, because you could just like if every business was operating like yours, you know, you just think how good the world could be.

Yeah. And it's kind of interesting. Like you talk about the way we've got there, and I think the way we've got there is we didn't actually look at the B Corp framework. We just knew that it was business for good and it was generally stuff that makes a difference on a positive way for the planet, for the people on it, et cetera. Didn't know what the impact business models were. Didn't know all that stuff. But what we did do and, and this is a rip off from Allbirds, like unashamedly, why, why do something creative when you can just copy it?

Yeah, 100%.

And it's, it's not a rip off from the documentation, it's a ripoff from the How I Built this podcast with Tim Brown. And he says at a. And Joey z, at about one hour into that podcast, 59 minutes roughly, he says, the thing about sustainability is you've got to consider it in every decision. And yeah, you probably can't do it if it's going to cost you 20 times as much to take that sustainable option. But if you can do it on every single decision that you make throughout the business, that will compound and you will become a far better business. And I'm just looking on the wall behind, I've got three of our values. Give equitable access, be transparent, and optimize for customer impact. But one of our probably guiding values, we've got eight, there's a few others. But be sustainable. And what that means for Medel is consider sustainability in every decision you make. And sustainability is this big nebulous word. So we've defined it environmental sustainability, social sustainability, and financial sustainability. Now that means every time we make a decision, every time we have a business case that we look at, every time we consider a new product or a new market or a new, you know, whatever it is, that lens and all of the rest of our Eight values get applied across that. And I think that's probably the main reason we've been able to do it. Like, if you look at, and this is, this kind of ties well into my, what I'm talking about with the town hall analogy or the town hall kind of design process that they went through. We've got these guiding values that are there and they inform every decision. They're there for our team to make decisions when there's no one else there. You know, I've say to them, if you, if you can make a decision and you can point to all eight of the values and show that you've, you know, appropriately consider them all, I'm going to have a hard time disagreeing with that decision. And so, yeah, we've defined that, that's been there. And like we use reusable cartons to move our product around the country. That costs us probably more than the original, than the current way of doing it, which is, and this is financially covered, but it delivers a benefit because we can now report on the number of COVID boxes we haven't had to use recycle. Otherwise recycling is not actually a panacea for that issue. So I think that's the main, the main way we've done it, you know, with the other stuff is, you know, keep it simple, be ambitious, be authentic and do good quality work. You know, and that rounds out our eight values. But the be sustainable one is probably the key driver and reason for the business to exist.

Nice. And I think, you know, I think that this is the differentiator between how you're doing and how these other companies actually, actually give a shit is, you know, when I work for Johnson and Johnson, they have the credo which was, you know, our number one priority is to the, the people who we're providing our medical devices to. The second consideration is to the doctors, surgeons, nurses and support staff who are helping those patients get better. Our third consideration is to the communities in which they're all based. Our fourth consideration is profit, but that was just a lie because almost every decision in the company was around profit, which is why they've had, you know, the ASR hip replacement, one of the biggest medical device recalls in the world, because it was a profit based decision, not a patient outcome based decision. And so I think the key is, and I think this is what's coming through particularly with, you know, entrepreneurs of your generation, your age group is, is you actually believe the values that you've written down on the piece of paper and so do your team. And you actually hold each other accountable to them, whereas in a lot of other companies they go, yeah, we're just going to put the blankets over the values and then we're going to have a quick conversation about how we launch this product and then we'll lift them back up and then we're all, we're all good and we can all, we can all be happy that we didn't see that.

Yeah, I think like, we, we had a customer come through this morning and we were talking, talking to them about some of the things we do. Like, there's a lot of things that we do at Med Cell that are not immediately obvious to the outside buyer center because we've been too busy working with our customers to update the website or put it on LinkedIn or whatever. One of those things is that, you know, when we've got products that they reach the end of their useful life, they can't be remanufactured because they've been damaged in a way that we can't fix. We take off the polyvinyl chloride tubing from them, cut it up, like physically cut it up with a pair of scissors and, and put it into a box and we just build up these boxes of cardboard boxes that we've received from our suppliers, like Office Max. Unfortunately, you know, being the mighty beast, that Mid sell visit can't get reusable. Every other one about supply yet, yet. And we, and we ship them to Wellington for them to be turned into a playground matting material in a injection molding facility called Matter in Otaki. And every time we do that, it costs us 500 bucks. So, you know, 500 bucks on it when we could alternatively just chuck it into a bin and pay 30 or $40 to. And that's one of those areas where actually we're paying quite a lot more than it would be otherwise to do the sustainable option. But, you know, we don't want to be telling our customers that we're just sending their stuff to landfill if it hasn't. You know, that's just a, that's the thinking there. And we, we're not in the, you know, we don't want to run at a loss because then we'll be able to be prevented from delivering our positive impacts. But, you know, it's the same, same thing as you're saying, just have your values and actually love them rather than. And we've caught so many companies saying, oh, we've got this, this is our goal. It's like, okay, well.

It'S not just. And so what? Yeah.

Yeah, I think, yeah, it's that whole, you know, integrity. The definition of integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one's watching, which is clearly what you're doing. And then the other phrase I love, I can never remember the guy's name, but he was the head of alumni affairs at Notre Dame University. And he said, don't, don't tell me your values. Show me where you spend your money. That's, you know, it's proofs in the pudding. It's like, yep. Not. And I think this is where you, you're crushing it. It's like, yep. We say we do it, but we are actually doing it. Even when we don't tell you about it and you're not looking, we're still doing it. But if you want to know that, you can come and see, because here's the proof.

That thing, and the one that I'm super passionate about is definitely, you know, if we look at the things that mental health does, the most rewarding thing by a significant margin is our employment of people with barriers to employment of any, any form. And probably until maybe last year, we did a video about one of our key staff members who was willing to just share, share his story on camera. And until then, we really hadn't talked to our customers about what that actually meant. But we're lucky, you know. And I had this really interesting conversation with someone the other day.

About why we do it. They were like, what's your purpose behind doing that? Like, what's your reason? What have you got to gain? Like, how are you going to make more money by doing that? And I was kind of like, this is interesting because I haven't ever thought about this way. And I ended up just going away and thinking about it. It kind of came back with.

Doing that particular piece of work is not necessarily going to deliver us any more revenue and they're not doing it. But given that we're a really process driven organization that does the same thing to the same types of products over and over and over again and has an ultimately repeatable outcome that we're looking for every time, or the same outcome, which is a clean, safe, functional product that can go back to a hospital, there's do the work. We are really well placed to offer employment to people who otherwise might not find it because the consistency of the workflow and the structure. And so it's really a case of, you know, when you walk down the street and you see like an older, older person drop their shopping, you don't Go and help them out because you're trying to get a promotion at work. Yeah, yeah, help them out because it's the right thing to do and because you're well placed to help them right then. And so that's how we've viewed that. Like when we find our in a position to do the right thing, we'll do that. And, and then if, if, if it helps our customers out as well and they are able to deliver on their scope 3 impact carbon emissions otherwise, then that's a benefit too. But yeah, I don't know, it's an interesting, it's an interesting way of thinking about it.

But that's, that's the whole idea of purpose. It's, you know, using what you've got to contribute to the greatest good and that, and that's what we need as humans. That's why helping the old person who's dropped their food, that's why it makes you feel good. Because I've used what I've got, my skills, my muscles, my ability to bend over and pick it up to help someone else who can't do that for themselves. And that's the innate part of meaning and purpose that is missing in the. Let's just sell as many of these as we can for as much money as possible. And we don't care if we kill people and we destroy the planet because it feels good. While you're on that journey and you're getting all the trinkets and trinketry and valuables and you're having a great old time going to the big conferences, but actually in the, in the dark night of the soul, when you start reflecting on it, it, it catches up with you. And you know, so.

With most people there, I think there are some people who actually just do not give a, and will never give a.

And you know, you know, like, you talked about being a rep and working in the hospital where you're there basically as a caddy man for a surgical.

Man. I wish I'd had that with my card. Caddy. That's basically what you are. Caddy, stroke fluffer, orthopedic surgeons.

Yeah, exactly. And you're like, well, that's like you're going to get paid well, you know, you sell enough, you flog enough hip implants, you're probably going to get, you know, going to get a pretty good wicket. But is that going to be enough to cover the fact that you're sort of not that thrilled with the way you're going about it? You know, and it's different alignments. You know, there's certain, certain companies that are in business for different reasons to us, some of them, I mean the company that I talked about before that, that has got this agreement where it's commit to buying everything from us and we'll give you better pricing irrespective of how much you buy. You know, that's sort of like okay, so you're, you're in business for. Because you want to be a dick to other people or you, or you just want to make as much money as you can from the smell or whatever it is and that's. It makes life hard to, you know, well, we won't work with you, but then anyway it is interesting. So, but I do think that based on my experience and interaction with people, that actually does cost. You know, you might make lots of money over here, but you've got to spend it making up for all of the, you know, feeling bad over here. And probably there's something you can buy for that whether it's legal or not. I don't know.

But that's the model world we live in. 100 people self medicating to fill the void of the, you know. Yeah, 100%. I mean. And that's why I love this guy, Gus Speth. He is an environmental lawyer and he's got this great quote which, which is where, you know, where for me, you know, I'm not a real sustainability expert. I, I couldn't help you work on how to make your packaging better or how to help you reduce your carbon footprint or you know, even measure your carbon. But what Gus Beth said, you know, I used to think that the top global environmental problems with biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address these problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfish self selfishness, greed and apathy. And to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation and scientists don't know how to do that. And I think that's, that's more what I see I'm trying to play a part on is, is telling the stories of guys like something like you. You've had that path. You could have gotten been working for Fonterra, probably earning a ton of money, doing some really cool, quite boring tinkering on the edges of how do we make this machine burn something slightly less or more quickly than, you know, the previous one. Squeezing a lemon on some process that, you know, not that I'm criticizing all the people that are doing that. I'm sure it's a great job and you love it. But you know the impact that you're having at scale here, I mean what that would mean to you ultimately two things.

If you're at Fonterra and you can make a big A, a 2% difference, they're like, wow, that's amazing. But to my point earlier about I'm. My job is not about sustainability, it's about change and perfectly articulated like from a scientist perspective, like someone that's going to make that kind of change at at Frontier unless they're going to re engineer the cow is and then get everyone to adopt the re engineered cow easily, which is always ultimately a change process.

That sustainability doesn't come from the technology, the technology enables it, but it comes from the engagement with people across the sector. And you know, very few sustainable technologies can just automatically catch on like an iPhone and just go around the world like wildfire. So that. Well, like preferably not like wildfire because that's kind of nice.

You know what I mean? It's really about.

Yeah, making these, these things work. And we have a million other people out there, more and more who've got great positive environmental business ideas but they will need to overcome the. And in big bureaucratic organizations the selfishness, the greed and the apathy that comes from the people who, who don't care or it's going to affect them personally and make that happen. That's the challenge. That's the hard bit. You know, when I talk to people senior in our health system about what our challenges are, they're never about the complexity of the products. It's all about the relationships and you know, all that stuff. And are we going to take people out to golf to get them to buy a product? No, we're not. We won't do that. It's not the sort of business that we want to be, but you know, someone else is then that makes life a lot harder for us. So yeah.

Man, fun times. Hey look, well, we've been going for quite a while and I know you were on a, on a bit of a timeline. So just finishing up. What does the future look like for Med South? Obviously you've mentioned possible global expansion or at least regional expansion into Aussie in terms of impact and doing more good. Was there anything from the B Corp journey that you kind of got your eye on or just in general making more impact into the future?

Well, we'd like to improve our score, I think. You know, like you can be good, but that's subjective until you put the objective framework around it, so we, you know, it's, it's always harder, I think the bigger the company is to get a higher score because you can't control things as well as you'd like or you, or you, you know, the, the, the sometimes what is a marginal cost becomes a major cost. But, but we would like to improve our score when we come back for a reassessment. So the next three years of Med Cell will be about, okay, that's the baseline. What can we do to improve that now? We're already doing that. We've done a lot of that around.

In our, in our workers area and then figuring out other ways that we can unlock things. What can we do to improve our advocacy for not just what we do, but what other companies are doing and how other hospitals can do it.

When we go into hospitals, we're advocating that they use reusable products which we don't sell. Generally. We, we do sell one reasonable product which we made to replace a single use product. We're going in there and when, when a hospital can fit with them, we'll advocate that they use a reasonable product which doesn't make us any money, that sort of stuff. So building on advocacy, building on that, showing people that what's possible, like if we can do this in healthcare in the highly regulated space that we're in, then a model similar to this should be able to be applied in other areas and supermarkets and, you know, consumer goods. I think that's probably what we'll try and drive. Value for more people than us through. But we're competitive so we, you know, hopefully all things going well.

Moving our score north next time we do this, do it. But yeah, we're pretty happy with what we got to. But we could.

But we know now where we've got to go.

So, you know, you know what, you know. Awesome.

Yeah.

Well, mate, it's been really good to reconnect. It's been a while since we've had a bit of a chat. It's a shame that we couldn't do. I was thinking, oh, maybe we could do a podcast on the skis. But I was like, how could. We could maybe record it on the chairlift, you know, in little bits going, going up and then skiing. I'm going to try to play with that for next year, see if we can do a podcast on the chairlift. Chairlift chats with B Corpse.

I'd love to do that. I can see your skis in the background there. It's good.

Yeah, I was really, I was possibly even going to look to postpone today to get up, but it's looking at average. So anyway, but I might thank you so much for what you're doing. You, you are just, you know, like I say, you are a B corp to the core. How you're approaching it, just the way you're doing it, genuinely, I think, you know, you're going to look back in 30, 40 years and you'll just go, man, what a ride. Like, we, we were the company that really changed the whole system and I think right now it's hard for you to reflect on, on how you're doing that, but I think, yeah, in the future you'll look back and you'll just go, yeah, what a ride it was. And I think, yeah, don't underestimate the amount of change and impact I think A, you are having and B, you will have because you are a strong, determined character. You're a dog with a bone and, you know, watch out, world. So, yeah, thanks to you, mate. Thank you, mate, for everything you're doing and thanks for being a guest. It's been great to chat to you.

Awesome. Thanks for having me on.

Tim.

Hey, it's Tim here, that B Corp bloke from Grow Good. If you want more content on purpose, B Corp, how to do more good in the world as an individual or a business, then you know the drill, hit the like and subscribe. Check out some of our other videos, they're probably floating around here somewhere. You know how it works. Thank you so much. See you next time.