BoneChat #42 - Maximize your success at Medtech Conferences, Investor and Trade Shows with Ted Bird

Welcome to Bone Chat Discussion #42. We all know medical conferences have become less and less useful every year for some reason. The old days of just throwing a booth out there to be a focal point of the company and drawing interest is just gone. So how does an individual or a company get the most out of a conference? Well, Ted is going to teach us how right now. Handing the mic over to Ted.

Great, thank you, Tiger. Welcome everyone this afternoon. I really want to make this an interactive session. It's kind of a topic that came up as the bone chat community, as we were discussing what are some good future topics. And, you know, one of the questions was these investor conferences. 'cause many of the members and attendees here this afternoon are entrepreneurs or company founders or service providers to, you know, innovative emerging musculoskeletal companies. So every penny is precious, clearly. And the question was, is the specific question was, is specifically the LSI, the Life Science intelligence meeting that they used to hold, you know, once a year in Dana Point, California worth it because the expense and I've been to 4 of them now over the last 4 years. So I definitely have an opinion on it. And I'm going to share, you know, about that, but then I added just trade shows also, you know, professional society meetings, whether it's a national or international society or, you know, they are different. Obviously, if it's a regional meeting or even a state-level meeting, the dynamics are different. But it's still money and it's, it's investment that you make to take the time and the money to try and maximize your success. So I'm going to share my experience and thoughts and I'd love to just, you know, kick it out to the group because there's a lot of experience here. Let me pull up the presentation. That's the back end of it. Okay, can you guys see this? Is this on the screen? Yes, yes. Okay, great. All right, so this is the topic for today, is Maximizing Your Success at MedTech Conferences, Investors, and Trade Shows in 2024 and Beyond. Um, just quick introduction of myself. I have, uh, 4 decades now of experience. Now, um, just feel blessed that I've had the opportunity to be in the medtech, med device industry for this long. You know, so what I do today with a very deep domain expertise in orthopedics, I think I only have about 18 months when I was outside of an orthopedic company or project. That was GI endoscopy with Boston Scientific. And I ran, you know, right back to orthopedics as soon as I could. But, you know, today I do go-to-market commercial strategy and execution through my firm, Bird Medical Group. And associates, key opinion leader, distributor, or market development activities, market access activities. And this is primarily for smaller companies, for startups, whether it's U.S. or international companies looking to plan ahead and be successful when they get into the U.S. market. Also have an active practice in BD, business development, whether that's licensing, technology from surgeons or entrepreneurs or companies that are looking for a strategic partnership or an exit, and M&A through private equity firms that are looking to do roll-up strategies and looking for an industry expert to kind of advise them on suitable targets and assets and even integration activities once the deals are done. And then I do serve on boards and advisory roles for boards and CEOs or management teams, as well as depending on the project and operating role for whether it's a VC, venture studio, or venture capital, or private equity firm that's looking for, or even a company that's looking for operating leadership depending on the project. And recently, in recent years, quite a bit of experience in capital fundraising. These are the logos of some of the companies in the last 30 years. I didn't even put the ones before that, which are no longer around, like Dionics and Richards that are now part of Smith Nephew. I had trouble even finding their logo. But this is kind of ones in the last 10 to 15 years. Today I'm active with chairman of the board of Askel Healthcare, which is a Helsinki, Finland-based cartilage defect repair company. Real exciting clinical stage company. To the left of that is OrthoSan, which is a UK-based university spin-out from Oxford University with also a Class III, just preclinical, approaching their clinical stage for an injectable biostructural gel for low back pain. Very, very exciting. So active with that as well as a number of other projects. So let's get into the meat on the bone here. So what I'm going to cover and try and leave time for discussion, and please jump in as I go through this, but, you know, it's as with anything else, it's all about planning. Advance planning and preparation really matters. I mean, whether it's an investor conference or it's a trade show, if you just kind of register your company and buy your booth, go to FedEx Kinko's and print your banner and your tablecloth and your flyers and show up and hope for success, that's all you have, which is a hope and a prayer. That is not the way to be successful. So my message really resonates around not just planning carefully well ahead of any meeting to make sure you're getting a decent return on your investment, but also being very active because today's world, much of it is online like we're meeting today. Social media, brand and marketing awareness has moved into the digital realm. So having a well-thought-out and designed campaign to maximize your success is important, both for investor conferences and for trade shows. We'll talk about that specifically. So then I'm going to just talk specifically about investor conferences and my experience in the really post-pandemic era of today with a few of those. What works, what doesn't. Professional society meetings, which I, like others on the call, you know, decades of experience, and they've really morphed and changed. And many people today, you know, recognize that, are they worth it? And ask the question, is it worth all the expense of these meetings? And, you know, I would suggest and make my case that they are, as long as you, you know, properly set out your goals and objectives for being there and do the advanced planning and do the work while you're there and the follow-up once you've finished. Then I'm going to cover some best practices, both for investor conferences and professional society meetings. And this is always fun about the what not to do. And a lot of this was actually the what to do in the 1980s and the 1990s. And if you went to some of the big meetings and orthopedics like AAOS and You know, just bigger, bigger meetings like, that's probably always the big granddaddy is of course the AAOS, but others, you know, it's shocking what, you know, if you try to get away with what we used to get away with back then, and we'll talk about it. This is where the stories will come out. I want to, I want to hear from everybody on the, on the, on the computer today about some of your experiences about what worked, what doesn't, didn't, and, and get your opinions. So, I do want to make it interactive. Before I dive in, is there anything else that Tiger or anyone else, you think I'm grossly missing here?

No, just jump in.

Okay. So, as I said, advanced planning matters. It truly does. It's very important, as with anything else in business to be successful, establish clear goals and objectives for each meeting. You know, one fairly broad goal or objective if you're still under the radar as a company. Now, there's a way to do this without going to a meeting, and again, you do that through today's social media and digital marketing. But, you know, face-to-face does matter. You know, at the end of the day, you can't do everything by Zoom, Teams, Google Meets, or any other, you know, platform. You know, when you're meeting face-to-face with someone, it does make a huge difference whether it's an investor or a customer or a distributor, um, or a clinical advisory board, uh, you know, it just makes that much better when you're in person. So, um, uh, it, it does help when you're coming out of stealth mode to, uh, to be, be there and, uh, be at a meeting. But, but, uh, look at each of the meetings and look at the expenses and And if you, you know, if you're not, if you're new to this, you know, feel free to reach out to me or others on this community to get feedback. And we can tell you, you know, whether you're thinking correctly or not, if it's the right time for you to spend money on physically going to a meeting or if you're ready for it. But, you know, also, as I said, meeting in person with your existing customers, your key customers that they're very important to defend your position in the marketplace. With those customers and reinforce, you know, why they're working with you and strengthen that relationship. But also your partners, your distributors, your supply, maybe supply chain partners depending on the meeting you're attending, your strategic partners you may have, you know, a licensed product with, you know, just to spend time covering key business topics but also improving, you know, your relationship in person with them. And then most importantly, and this is what most people generally think about, you say, what's the purpose of going to a trade show? You know, outside of at least med device or orthopedics, you know, they're trying to get leads, you know, get new business, meet new customers, investors, partners. And that's very important too that you can do that, but you have to plan for that. And do that appropriately. And that's what I actually have developed, leads to drive new revenue investments. So I've got to, I'm going to come back to that later in terms of how you actually, the way to do that, you know, is in my mind versus the way not to do that. You know, you don't walk up and down the halls with a lead pad and try and stop somebody and say, hey, do you use, do you work in the lumbar spine? You know, are you a neurosurgeon? Are you an orthopedic surgeon? Can I get your Can I get your name? That's not the way to do it. But research. Again, this applies to both investors as well as customers and partners, whether it's distributors or other strategic partners. You know, do your research ahead of time as you would with any just one-on-one meeting or sales call. Really understand the dynamics. I'm just going to excuse myself for one second, guys. Hang on a minute.

No worries.

Yeah.

One of the things Ted did mention is one of the goals for a lot of companies is to recruit salespeople. So you can, you can run around and it's a great place to meet potential reps or distributors. If you can just get them out of their booth. Welcome back, Ted.

Yep. Thank you. I had a dog emergency there I had to take care of. All right, part of the video online world we live in. So the research ahead of time is very important, particularly in investor conferences, but it's the same with professional trade shows and a strong commercial organization before they make any investment, you know, on if it's a sales call or if it's a trip, you know, you're having your sales team bring a key customer into your facility to review product ideas or get to know the company, don't just do that haphazardly. I mean, ensure that you, you have as much information— everybody in the organization has as much information about that target person or firm or customer as possible. So do your research and then initiate outreach and digital social media awareness campaigns before the conference and plan this out. You know, start a month out at minimum and start kind of a drip campaign of getting the word out and the awareness about you and about your company and about your brand and that you're going to be there and And ideally, you should be planning, not just at invest— not just at trade shows, but even at investor conference to do things besides your booth, you know, besides just showing up for the exhibit hours, that you've got some events planned. You've got some dinners, you've got lunches, or you've got breakfast meetings where you want to talk with a core group of clinical surgeons and use the opportunity where you've got a quorum to be there to talk about clinical multicenter trials that you want to do, or VAC committee, you know, run the latest, you know, VAC committee approval plans by some of your existing customers to get them oriented to that and get feedback on it. So do that, organize special events, meetings, meals ahead of time, get the invites out, Confirm the attendees. When you have those receptions and those events, take note of who's there so you can follow up. Because not just the advanced planning and not just strong execution, but the follow-up is really important at these, these things.

What's, what's the best way to get a surgeon to come to an event? Is it text, email, face-to-face, rep?

Well, I'd open that up to the group, but I would say it varies by surgeon. Email sometimes just doesn't work at all. So you kind of start there, but you have to almost rely, if you're a one-man band and then you're just starting as a company, you don't have a sales force, you do your best, but you work as best possible to get, ideally if you've got a local contact, to that customer, they'll know the best way to get ahold of that, that individual and, and, and, you know, rely on them to, to get the word out and make it part of their responsibility. So Mark, and figured you would have some ideas on this one.

So doctors sell doctors. And so that would be my number 1. Number 2 would be a relentless avalanche of messaging text. It works better than anything else, I think. So before the event, and, and that can be like set up like an automatic machine in the background.

That's all. Perfect. Eric?

I would call Ted Bird, let him make introductions because he knows everybody.

Yeah, if you walk with me at NAS, I think this year is going to be my— I lost count. I think it's 30-something. So it's hard to go longer than, you know, 5 to 10 yards without bumping into somebody. But planning ahead. So when I— Eric and I work together, I've had— and I've got this later on in my kind of recommendations— a schedule. You know, do it. Put your schedule together and make sure you know and line up ahead of time, ideally, confirmations of your meetings. And then, you know, just stay on plan. And then when you don't have anything scheduled, don't, you know, don't go to Starbucks and go hang out with your buddies and/or go back to your room and take a nap, you know, outside of exhibit hours. You know, you're on, you're investing in the meeting. You know, network, network, network. Go to all the receptions, the, the, the welcome, you know, venues, the, the other, the other, you know, even breakfasts that they're holding, even though it might be at 6:00 AM in the morning. You never know who you're going to sit down next to. You might meet a new customer, you might meet a new distributor or someone else in the industry. But, um, you know, when I commit to going to a meeting, I usually— my voice is already hoarse from, uh, talking for two slides. It's almost— it's completely gone by the end of the the meeting because, you know, you're busy. So let's move on to the next slide. See, so investor conferences. So there's two. One that you see very prominent today, in particular on LinkedIn, that they do a great job of getting their name out there is LSI, Life Science Intelligence. Scott Pantel out of Orange County there in Irvine, you know, started this a few decades, a while ago, mainly for market research data. And he just started this kind of meeting idea about, you know, 5 years ago where they started a meeting there in Orange County and they brought the med tech community together. And it has grown. So I went, and then the pandemic hit. He did the first one, I think in 2019, and then '20 had to take a break like everybody did. And then they came back in '21 and they have really grown this thing. And you, the last one that I went to was the most recent one in March of this year in Dana Point. There's a lot of people saying this is, this is the new JP Morgan. LSI has become the new JP Morgan for, for medtech. Uh, and, and it's a medtech conference, so it's not pharma, it's not, um, you know, there's digital, but it's digital medtech and AI, but it's not pharma and other life science stuff. It's medtech. And they continue to enhance it and change it and upgrade it. It's not cheap. And that was the question that first came up that spurred me the idea for me to put kind of this talk together was, I think it was Alyssa Huffman saying, should I go to LSI, you know, for my company? And, you know, definite opinions about that. Just, I'd just come back from that meeting because a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, I went and it was very expensive. They charge $5,000, you know, for the industry, you know, the companies to go and present per person. So if you want to bring you and maybe you're, you know, someone else from your company, that's $10,000. You can get a break, you know, if you apply, you know, early. And then they— you want to have— they added a a, um, kind of a booth, little small little tabletop booth thing, mostly for, you know, service providers. Um, but that's like another $5,000 if you want to do it as a company as well. So that plus the travel, and they hold it, you know, at, um, the, uh, the, the Waldorf, you know, and Ritz-Carlton, first in the world. So it's, it's not a cheap place, but of course as a startup, you know, I found the, uh The Comfort Inn just down the road on the beach is quite nice, although their bagels aren't quite as fresh as they are at the Waldorf.

Yeah, the, the rub on LSI is it's expensive and even the presenters have to pay, um, and so it's a high bar. It's a high bar, and so you don't go— it almost forces you to prepare extra just to get your money's worth.

No, that's, that's my message, is, is that— and then the other one I've had some experience with is a UK-based company called LSX. They started to come over to the US. They did it for the first time last year in Boston last fall. They've got their second annual. They're doing it next week again in Boston called the World Congress, and they hold one in the spring every year in London and also in November. But they, they're a bigger tent, you know, they do biotech, they do pharma, health tech, and med tech. And so MedTech, med devices, and particularly orthopedic devices is a much smaller, you know, piece of the puzzle in that one. And it's even more important to be really, really focused, you know, about your objectives. It's less expensive, you know, the, the, the price of entry, uh, is a little less. Um, but, um, so my, my message here on these investor conferences, it depends, it depends on where you are as a company. You know, everybody needs money. That's part of the essential DNA to keep— to stay alive is obviously capital, you know, and everybody needs that. And that's been a real struggle in the past couple of years. And so this is a forum where they're bringing capital together and they're a— focused audience, you know, at this event for you to, uh, to meet with. And they set up these, um, uh, you know, one-on-one sessions. It's kind of like speed dating, you know, throughout the whole meeting, where they, they provide an app that you can sign up for. You put all your information in, all the investors do. You can reach out and then confirm meetings. They assign you a table, and you basically get 15 minutes I think you can schedule up to 30 minutes, but that's the max. And you just, you know, it's a warm, it's like speed dating, it's a warm hello. The criticism is that the investors, the VCs, you know, in particular at these meetings, are just don't participate in the app and they're not, you know, responding to the invitations from the from the startups that are there to try and raise money. And so it becomes frustrating for the startup founders and the entrepreneurs trying to get those meetings. And so my message is don't rely on just even using the conference app or getting there to get to have your meetings. Hopefully, you know, by happenstance, by bumping into somebody, you have to really, as you do with any fundraising, successful capital fundraising campaign, you have to research, target, and identify the appropriate investor fund that is appropriate for you. You may be so early stage that you're seed stage or even pre-seed or A, and most of the venture capital, the institutional capital, has been growth capital. So they're willing to give you huge checks, but only if you have a big enough market opportunity, but you've already got the regulatory pathway cleared and, you know, you want to just, you know, get the capital to ramp up and show momentum for your company depending on whether you just want to grow it that way or you want to grow it in order to sell it. So a couple of hands up. Tom, why don't you jump in there? Sure.

It's funny you should use the term speed dating. I actually went to a legitimate speed dating with PIMCO.— or not PIMCO, PISMO. Are you familiar with PISMO?

No, no.

They're a fund, I think, primarily here on the West Coast. And we legitimately went through this speed dating. You came in, there were 4 or 3 groups, A, B's and C's, and it was a horseshoe and the investors were sitting here. And wherever you started, you had 7 investors that you met with. You had 4-minute pitch, you had 4 minutes with them. A minute and a half pitch, 2 and a half minutes response. And out of the 7, I had 2 really good responses. But a lot of the guys around the table, they were representing other things themselves. So one of them, I came out with, I think a really good PEO could be a good value there. And then one of the other guys, again, he had a great relationship with an investment bank that he was a partner in. So that could be, you know, something along those lines. But it was, it was very interesting. I don't know, I'd probably do it again because there are a lot of good guys in the room and a lot of industry guys that were, you know, it was useful that way. But there is a legitimate speed dating thing.

Yeah, it's the strat— it's the collision strategy, you know, collide, you know, just put them in there and mash them together and something's going to come of it. You're going to come away with a few new relationships. Yeah, David, David, you got a point?

Oh yeah, actually a question, Ted. Other than these two that apparently are very expensive, are there other investor conferences that you would recommend for startup companies?

You know, it's funny because LSI, I've actually been registered twice for that. It's down here in Dana Point, at least the one here on the West Coast is, and it's so it's relatively local. For me, I've never gone through part of it. The, the, you know, I drug my heels along as far as I could before payment was due, you know, so I never have actually made it to that. But there are some local things that, you know, for me, where are you located, dude? Or who asked the question?

David, you asked that question?

Who asked? Yeah, I'm not necessarily geographically bound. Just curious if there's places that, well, at least I guess within the, within the country.

Yeah, I just—

I'm sorry. Yeah.

The only reason I ask is, you know, I'm in Southern California, so there's, there's a lot of, a lot of, you know, access to capital. And these guys really were after local companies. And I think part of it, they can keep in touch and be personal. They could be in person to see what's going on. They can pull you into different meetings and things like that. So I don't know, again, back to your geography, I don't know if you're in that kind of environment or not.

So we could, David, we can probably get a list and we can distribute that. I've got one, I can just give it to Tiger and we can put it on the Slack channel because there's medtech strategists, they hold a meeting. I think there's one coming up in San Diego, but they do one in Dublin, kind of an international, you know, investment conference. There's AdvaMed, the medtech AdvaMed conference that's become, you know, quite a forum. I think it's up in Toronto this year. Then there's, there's Koretsu Forums, there's angel groups, there's New York Angels, there's Bay City Angels, there's every probably area if you look just Google internet on family office or angel meetings, there's various opportunities to, to, like Tom was saying, you know, get involved in a local group. There's a lot of Midwestern groups that like to focus, you know, regionally on Midwest companies in the Chicagoland area. So I'll put a little list together and maybe, you know, the rest of the folks on BoneShack can add to it. And I think it's a good way to, you know, there's small local ones, which I recommend every particularly smaller company participate in and make yourself aware of. Also, each state or region usually has a life sciences or, you know, medtech economic, you know, development and promotional, you know, group. And so I, like, I live in South Carolina, so I'm trying to integrate myself with a group called SCBio and the South Carolina Research Association where But they, they're trying to help, you know, bring the, this industry up and be more successful. You know, in Boston, the MassBio group is famous for being very active, very useful in providing materials and, and subject matter experts. So I strongly recommend getting involved in all your local stuff as well.

The, the angels that I've been to have been really very, very helpful because they're all associated with other guys outside of the angel. We haven't fit in to the angel fund at any time. We've had some offers at a lower valuation. We are a little bit further down the path than what they're usually comfortable with, those groups, but they're all connected, you know, so it's worth going and pitching and getting in front of the guys because there's, you know, potentially something good that can come out of it.

Yeah.

So down the street from Tiger Buford.

Yeah, that's right. So, so, you know, Max, my experience with LSI, you know, I, I, um, I went, um, in '21, '22, '23, '24. So '24 is my 4th time. Each time I kind of, uh, you know, ramped up my, my activity levels. This year I was more— I had 3 different companies I was representing, so even more important to— I was very, very busy. With meetings, first of all, but, but two of the companies were European companies that were being introduced for the first time. So, but I also took time, and I have, to get to know the organizers. So I've gotten to know Scott Pentel, Kelly Williams, Henry Peck, all those guys really well, and I, I help them. I try and help them. So when I ask a favor, you know, I get it. So I was able to get one of my company founders from Europe on a panel meeting about women founders coming from academia, and that was help to really raise the awareness for, for her company at Ascale Healthcare. And, you know, they have strong social media following and presence. So you get kind of plugged in with them. You can get some nice profile pieces. They, they, you know, I'm considered an insider, I guess. I get knowledge of some of the new things they're doing, like special interviews they're doing. In a private little room you might not know about. So I go find Blake Matrone and say, hey, you have any more slots in your interview network? And then, and then they do a great job of getting those materials, high-quality level video, out onto the internet. And that's an asset for you. That's a marketing asset. And that's, you know, also for your pitch at LSI. That's the difference between LSI and LSX. They do a really nice job of getting good, high-quality video And my, my coach— coaching recommendation to companies presenting is do not go up there and stand at the podium and take, take a set of notes. Uh, basically it's like you're on a TV show, you know, you basically are talking to the camera because actually in the room there's hardly anybody there, you know. You think it's a room full of investors, but as I said, most of the investors are not in the room. They're either in the speed dating in a hall next door frantically like meeting with each other or, or online. Yeah. Or on the golf course perhaps, they're not there, you know, just is not responding. But the value is that 5-minute video that you have, that 10-minute video, if you do a really good job of it and with your pitch deck, and your elevator speech and how you present yourself, that's an asset for you to use. And then blitz your social media presence, you know, do some little interviews, take some nice shots, stop and get a picture with Mr. or Mrs. Famous and get it out there, you know, one of the network, the fireside chat, you know. Person, um, Josh Makeower or somebody like that, drinking a glass of wine. Go, go have a sip of wine with him and, and get it, get it on, get it on LinkedIn. But network, network, network. Go to all the breakfasts, the lunches, and even, you know, outside of their apps at meetings. And I've always come away after spending that money, those meetings, um, with a handful of very useful contact, new contacts that I've met, you know, whether it's a service provider, maybe it's an accounting and finance, HR, you know, support, you know, idea for a startup company, or it's an investor that may not be interested, but, you know, like the story and introduce me to somebody else. And so those are my kind of themes on investor conferences. I'll move on. Okay, one more slide on investor conferences. This kind of some overlap from what I just said. Get in touch with the conference organizer. Make sure you get to know them well. They can make your life a whole lot easier. You know, start reaching out ahead of time. You know, put your downtime to use. So at the meetings in Boston, you know, I had two other clients and people I needed to meet in Boston last year. And I went and met with them in person. So I wasn't just there for the meeting. And I got to see a Red Sox-Yankees baseball game one night with one of my company founders. So put your downtime to use. And of course, like Tom said, in Orange County, there's a lot of medtech in that little corridor there in Southern California. But be massively prepared with your firm's messaging, your elevator pitch. You know, I've got relationships now just from 5 minutes in an elevator at LSI from a company founder where it's like, oh, so what do you do? Oh, you know, I'm I'm in spine and I have an AI navigation system and I'm in Utah. I'm like, oh, I work for a company in Utah, you know. So, you know, if we didn't start talking just in the elevator, but that was another connection. And make sure you follow up, have a, you, whatever, see, you know, got CRM or your own, you know, system, just make sure you have I don't have a tip or a trick of a special one that I use. I just make sure that you follow up, follow up, follow up, and don't wait, you know, a week or so. Get it going right away. If you do have a little sponsorship booth, make sure— this is the same for trade shows— make sure it's eye-catching. Don't just, again, go to Kinko's, FedEx, buy a tablecloth, bring some samples, and have a literature rack. I mean, that's so 1985. That is not the way to do it today. You know, have a video. Have a little putting green and have a little competition about who, who can, who can win the, the sleeve of the Titleist balls if you hang out at my booth.

Yes, there's Ted, there's a, there, yeah, there's another alternative to not have a booth on purpose. It lets you roam around, it lets you have a, you can have a hotel room with and invite surgeons to seek, you know, uh, what do you— what are the pros and cons of having a booth versus roaming and having a, a secret place?

Yeah, so that, that, uh, but applies to both investment conferences. I would say, you know, having a, a sponsored booth is, is probably better if you're a CRO, a marketing agency, um, or graphic, digital, video services. Services. Yeah. So that's most of the sponsors for there, but I'll talk about alternative ways to a booth at trade shows, conferences, actually on the next slide. But let me just move on. Oh, this is just the list. Just over the next 8 weeks, these are all the meetings that I'm physically not going to be at, but I have good reason probably to be at, that start today, actually. Society for Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery in Las Vegas, you know, through this weekend. American Orthopedic, you know, Foot and Ankle Society's in Vancouver next week. Scoliosis Research Society in Barcelona, same dates overlap next week. OSET, the Orthopedic Summit in Vegas, same dates next week. September 11th, well, no, 13th it starts and goes through the 18th. Then the Interventional Pain is in Boston next week, the same dates as actually LSX World Congress, right next to each other. One's at the Westin Copley, one's at the Hyatt Convention Center. So, you know, I could span both at the same time. And then a few weeks, in a few weeks' time, the big spine, North American Spine Society is in Chicago at McCormick Place starting on the 25th of September through the 27th. And then, Again, these are more focused on my world and these are bigger meetings. The Interventional Pain, American Society of Interventional Pain, started a new— this isn't in their annual meeting. Their big annual is in July in Miami, but they're doing this new little summit. It's called a collaborative summit. They're trying to bring surgeons and interventional pain people together for a 1-day meeting in Nashville on like October 12th. So, These are all sort of opportunities to interface on the professional side. And then best practices, be organized. So if you're going to do a booth, these are best practices if you're going to have a booth. We'll talk about at the end about not having a booth and other things you can do. But again, be organized, have a booth schedule. If you're going to have you or others there, make sure everyone knows what is going on and what the plan is. Throughout the 2 or 3 days that you're there. When you're at the exhibit area, break the ice. Talk to the folks that you're meeting with and start finding out, are they potentially a good lead? Maybe they're an existing customer, but don't just kind of let them peruse on by without kind of breaking the ice and trying to introduce yourself and find more about them. Prequalify, you know, as much as possible as part of the advanced planning about who's there, you know, get the advanced, you know, attendee lists as part of your advanced, you know, work ahead of the meeting. Videos are much better, and this is more for trade show, you know, design and booth design. Video is much more impactful than just flat graphics. And roll-up banners. Engage with people that are passing by or at the meeting. Practice active listening. Make sure you're not just like launching in or your people launching into your pitch, you know, without having a good awareness of, you know, who you're talking to, whether you're wasting your time or not, or even if it's appropriate for them. And check in, you know, at the end of day 1, check in with your team. Say, what's working? What's not? Do we need to pivot? Should we change? So these are all sort of booth activities, and then there's the non-booth. You should go to the meetings again to meet with people, but you don't have to have a booth. Again, that's thousands of dollars, the shipping, logistics, and everything else. And you're also— it's an anchor. You're tied to man your booth. You don't want to have, you know, an empty booth when people are passing by. But you can go without having a booth, and you can do an alternate strategy like Tiger Buford mentioned, have a spend the money on a larger room, maybe a suite at a hotel nearby, and bring your materials. You can hold one-on-one meetings, small group meetings, or even little, you know, demos at that suite, or events, little cocktail reception. And then speaking of events, plan ahead before, you know, well before you get there. Make reservations, go to OpenTable or whatever system there is, get just stock That's what I usually do, you know, reservations for anywhere from 4, you know, 4 to 6, you know, tables at, at decent restaurants that are near the convention center or main hotel. And then start to again match it up with your target list of people you want to meet with, both existing customers as well as new and partners like distributors or others or potential new distributors and start filling in your schedule. So, I'm sure we're going to have some comments and thoughts, and I want to get to what not to do, and I'm sure we're going to have some great stories at the end. But, David, go ahead.

Just real quick, when you're scheduling those offsite dinners and that sort of thing, make sure you know the schedule of the society, what they have going on in the evening. I ran into that once, which was embarrassing. As the head of marketing having an overlapping event. And the society actually in many cases, I forget, this might have been the American Academy of Pediatrics, but not only did they not like that, they actually prohibited, I think. Yeah. Some societies do. Yeah. So that's just a little something to be aware of that I ran into.

There's your first mistake. So, yeah. I got a separate question on the— with these professional society meetings, can you get the database of attendees? Can you get names or emails?

They generally— you can't— you can get it. They usually won't give you— most generally they won't give you. I don't know. I'm open to the group here. I don't know what current practice is. But you can buy it. They'll sell it to you because, like, I'm a member of NAS, for example. They had a small window where they let industry people become a member, so I, I jumped on that, and I get membership rates, and I have a membership color badge, so it's not an industry badge. I don't get thrown out of my competitor's booth, but the, the members— basically, I can opt in for the marketing material to be emailed to me by companies that want to do that, that buy the lists. So they do sell them and they do, they do provide emails.

So, so you could, yeah, I mean, there's nothing to prevent you from sending out mass email with, you know, with a call to action.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Yeah, I understand. I mean, if you can send out 1,000 and get 2 responses, which is fine.

Yeah, but it's worth, worth, yeah, putting it out there. But, but again, if you, if you make it interesting to say, stop by Bird Medical's booth, location, we're having a putting competition. We're having a pickleball, you know, contest, whatever it is. I don't think I could buy that much carpet space at NASA to put a pickleball court. That would be very expensive.

But, well, the good old days, you could, you know, have a chance to win a Ferrari, but that's gone.

Yeah, or park the Ferrari, you know, on just a stop. Well, we'll get to that. I've got that on the do, what not to do.

Ted, this year at NASS, NASS is actually giving attendees a 20% discount if they'll allow NASS to distribute their name, email, and specialty.

Okay, so when you signed up for NAS as just a non-physician, they'll still give you a 20% discount?

That confused me a lot, but yes. But especially for the surgeons, they got a 20% discount as well. So NAS is compiling that list. I guess as long as you give them that permission, they won't give out phone numbers, but they'll give out email addresses.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, let's go to— this is the fun one. What not to do. I tried to— there's a whole bunch of pictures I was gonna put on here, but, you know, you guys have seen this. Do not sit at your booth. Do not order a bunch of chairs or a lazy boy or a couch. You know, it's okay. Maybe if you're a massage chair company, you see those at some of these meetings. That's what they do. They're selling massage chairs. But, you know, don't sit there, work on your computer, and decide to catch up on your emails. Or continuously be on a phone or a Zoom call in the middle of the exhibit hours. That is not inviting. You know, if you do that somewhere else in your hotel room or somewhere else, don't eat at your booth. Even if they have a buffet, don't go get your food and bring it back. And, you know, smaller meetings like ski meetings and stuff like that is different. You know, you're inviting, you know, those attendees to come in and have their après-ski, you know, snacks together with you at your booth. But, you know, at these larger professional society meetings, not recommended. Don't just cluster with your colleagues and be cliquey, you know, with your group. And, you know, you got a customer that's walking by and you're just, you know, yucking it up with your friends. Don't complain to visitors. You never know who you're talking to. You know, you just say, oh man, the dogs are hurting. I've been here for 3 days and the aisles are empty and I can't believe they don't have better padding, you know, AAOS on these carpets, you know, just Just be positive. Be positive attitude, you know, makes a difference. And don't just copy other exhibitors, you know, what other exhibitors are doing. You know, it is such a sea of sameness. So it is important to kind of look to differentiate yourself when you're going to make the kind of investment in your booth. Don't look threatening. Don't sit there with your arms crossed with— and also design your booth so you've got a big high countertop table, you're, you're, you're blocking entry to come in, make it warm, make it inviting. And don't use booth babes. So Tiger and I talked about this. If you, anybody from the AAOS remembers in the '80s and even maybe into the '90s, I was actually a product director at J&J Orthopedics in the late '80s. I had casting, you know, fiberglass and plaster of Paris. So my section of the booth for J&J was we had the babes that we would hire, the models, for the orthopedic docs to come apply the cast. So we would have, depending on the models, depending on who the product director was that year, they would want to apply the cast. This is something today that is very, you know, sexist, obviously, and not welcome. But, you know, people think, well, that'll be attractive. You know, to, to, to attract, you know, the, and, and I should say for the, for the female members of our society, you know, even, even a male model in there to, for the female surgeons or the female customers, you know, that, that's not the way to do it, you know, today. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn it over. I think we've got probably a few examples of, things that, that people would recommend in addition to my recommendations. And, you know, what works, what's worked, what works today in your opinion. And what doesn't work? And maybe I want to hear a couple stories about what went really great one year, what went really wrong. Any good stories? Nope. All right.

Well, I think didactic stuff is really important. So hands-on, anything that's moving in the booth. Videos that are looping or a chance for hands-on participation, I think is really important. I mean, I used to work for Soldier Orthopedics. We, one year, we decided to turn it into a golf theme and we had Pebble Beach pros and we had tee times every 5 minutes and the surgeons were just lined up out and surgeon would get a golf lesson and a video of their golf lesson every 5 minutes and that was, So you get, I think, things to do for surgeons. Orthopedic surgeons are hands-on. I think you gotta give them something to touch and feel. Eric, Mark?

Yeah, so similar to what you're saying, Tiger Buford, but much more, I guess, product-specific. When I was at Medtronic and manning the booths, we had a contest to see who could get the most leads, and I won. 4 iPods, you know, each year just, just doing that. But what, what, what got me all the leads was, was having something that was interactive. And if, if I was at one of the exhibits in the booth that made noise, or if it had lights, people came in. It drew them in. It was like, it was like the bug zapper, you know. But, uh, the thing that got me the most was, was, uh, was something that, that, that had some, some noise to it.

Mark, Mark.

So, I got a story. Basically, one thing we did one year actually caused the Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons to change the rules. And that was in 2001. I believe it was in Orlando. We had a fairly limited budget and we were introducing, um, digital imaging. And so we, we had these, we spent $60,000, which was our entire marketing budget, to make these like X-ray size bags that said the name of our company on it. And we handed them out so that literally by the third day, everybody walking around Orlando was carrying a black X-ray bag that said eTrauma. And I'm walking into the convention, like, on the 3rd day, and these 2, I think they were Japanese surgeons, were speaking to each other, and they said, so who sponsored meeting? Eat trauma? And it was so effective that they changed the rules. From then on, if you're going to hand out anything like that, you had to pay the Academy. So, but there's one thing I wanted to show, and that is, if I could share my screen, I want to show you a graph.

Let me stop sharing.

Yeah.

Let me show you something here. So I've long had the theory that the bell curve of development in orthopedics is very high and that the longer we dance on the top of the bell curve of development, the harder it is to differentiate innovations today. What this graph shows is that the actual groundbreaking developments in orthopedics kind of peaked in the 2000s. And a lot of what you see now is innovations in efficiencies, cost savings, you know, software, AI-driven things and everything else. And I think that that's had a real effect. I'll stop sharing. And I'll be happy to send you this graph and so forth. But I, I think it's had an effect on trade shows because whereas in the '80s you would go to look at a new hip or a knee or something new called the arthroscope or a shaver or whatever. And now those groundbreaking innovations tend to be less, not that they're not there. But I think it's had a little bit of an effect, and I think it's kind of what some of the conversation I'm hearing today says that also. And as far as renting a booth versus having a big event, I would much rather hold a big marketing event today than I would have a booth.

Yeah, I would agree, you know, events and making your awareness, you know, but you're there, you're present, but make it very evident on social media that you're there. And that's a good way to raise awareness. Mauricio.

So there were two things I wanted to mention. First, how to attract surgeons. I feel like hands-on things always attract them. Every— in the Colombian Academy of Orthopedics meeting, There was a company that sold casts. They had a model and they would have surgeons put a cast on them. That would always be the longest line for the booth. And those guys would always wait as long as needed to get to place the cast. But in reality, we've done like, hey, you know, place this plate on a sawbones and we have a leaderboard and whoever does it quicker at the end gets an iPad or whatever. That always gets them very engaged and it builds that competitiveness. So that's something that's worked for us in the past. And yeah, and with respect to what Mark was saying, two things. One, first, then I got in trouble because of you, because then on an AAOS meeting I gave away free bags and they came and they said like, hey, you're not allowed to do it. And they took photos of it and I got like penalty points. So you know the AAOS points you get, we got penalty points for that and everything. So yeah, we got in trouble because of you. And the last thing is, I think the booth, the value of the booth being there is just telling people you're there who aren't there. Because if you, I mean, especially in something like AAOS or NASA, those things are so big and the big guys' booths are so impressive, it's almost impossible to stand out. So it's more about using the being there and having a booth as, as almost like a credibility stamp that you use on the rest of your communications.

Yeah, and for me, you know, with the focus on innovative new companies, the first place I go, you know, to Academy or AOS, and most of the business development people at the large strategic go, is the new, new company aisle. And they want to see, okay, who's there, what, what, what, what's available, you know, to, uh, to learn about. So there's some value in that, you know. Even people complain about, oh, we're in the back of the hall with it, you know, the rest of the, the, uh, the small little booths. But the, the smart people, the people in the industry that know, know that's where you need to go to kind of see something new, as opposed to just kind of seeing what your big competitor is doing on the third floor of their booth with their 6 different conference rooms. Mark, I mean, David, I know we're running out of time.

I'll do this real quick. We had our, you know, significantly sized booths at some of the major events, trade shows. But to save money, one of the tactics that we employed was geofencing. Some of the smaller meetings. And so we would drop content to anyone who was walking in the doors at the convention center. And I had more than a few physicians I spoke to subsequent to these meetings saying, oh yeah, you guys were at that meeting. Yeah, I saw your booth. We were never there, but they believed that we were there and assumed that we were there because we had this presence by just, you know, dropping things in there on their phone. You know, it can be notifications, posts, sponsored ads, that sort of thing. And that was very effective. So, and a great way to sort of save money not having a booth if you want to be present at a meeting but not actually pay for the booth. So I'll throw that out there.

Great stuff.

I love that virtual booth. Could be the way of the future.

Well, that's it for me, and thanks guys for hanging in there. Definitely a timely topic, but don't just discount it and write it off. Just think about all the ways you can maximize and optimize the money you do spend on these meetings. But it is an important decision to make, you know. Is it the right time for your company, your product, and you to spend that money? And, you know, I'm happy to offer opinions to anyone that is interested. Thanks, Ted.

Thanks, Ted. And we'll share that, those investor conferences on Slack for everybody.

Yeah, we'll get that list together.

Yeah, thanks guys. All right, good topic. See you next week.

Thanks, Ted. Thanks everyone.

Good job.

Have a good evening.