Episode #162. From Ideas to Patients: The Mission of Physician Entrepreneurs, with Dr. Arlen Meyers

Summary

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Risk Never Sleeps Podcast

Episode #162: From Ideas to Patients: The Mission of Physician Entrepreneurs
Host: Ed Gaudet
Guest: Dr. Arlen Meyers (Founder, Society of Physician Entrepreneurs)
Date: December 12, 2025

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Overview

This episode explores the challenges, motivations, and impact of physician entrepreneurship through the journey and perspective of Dr. Arlen Meyers, founder of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs (SoPE). In a conversation marked by wit and candor, Dr. Meyers explains why clinicians often struggle to translate ideas into patient benefits, the importance of reconciling medical and entrepreneurial mindsets, and offers advice for new innovators in healthcare. He also shares personal stories of risk, change, and the lessons learned from both failure and success.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins of Arlen Meyers and "SoPE"

• Dr. Meyers shares the family lore behind his name, drawing a whimsical link to the composer Harold Arlen ("Somewhere Over the Rainbow") ([01:01], [01:18]).
• Introduces SoPE—the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs:
  • "We are an international open nonprofit biomedical and clinical innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem." ([05:50])
  • Mission: "Members helping members get their ideas to patients." ([05:55])
• Memorable Quote: "Every white coat thinks they have a good idea. They don't. They have ideas. That goes down the shower and gets stuck with the hair in the strainer and you never see it again." — Arlen ([06:00])

2. Barriers to Physician Entrepreneurship

• Doctors and scientists lack training in innovation and entrepreneurship.
• "You probably, in your training, had not had innovation and entrepreneurship training... we don't teach that yet." ([07:18])
• Dr. Meyers' personal pivot: Developed a device for cancer detection but couldn't bring it to market due to ecosystem gaps for community clinicians.
• He founded SoPE to fill this void after observing consistent obstacles in getting ideas to patients ([08:08]).

3. On Career Change & Moral Injury in Medicine

• Dr. Meyers discusses his workshop on non-clinical careers and why many professionals leave practice:
  • Burnout, moral injury, systemic frustrations, and the intertwining of ego with identity ([09:38]).
  • "Moral injury? Well, that means that your values are being threatened because you're being made to do something... that you don't feel are in the patient's best interest, like order a bunch of tests so the person that hired you can make a lot of money." ([12:19])
• Moral injury is contrasted with burnout: "It's actually more powerful than burnout." ([13:29])

4. The Medicine-Business Culture Clash

• Reconciling medical ethics with entrepreneurial goals is a core tension.
  • "Peter Drucker has his famous line that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. That doesn't work in medicine. My job is not to create sick people." ([14:04])
  • "I'd rather pay you to be well than to be sick." — Arlen ([14:53])
• The solution is finding the overlap between the clinical and entrepreneurial mindsets: "There's a difference between skepticism and cynicism... I'm a healthy skeptic, which unfortunately, I don't think we have enough of." ([15:43])

5. Radical Candor and "Euthanators" for Bad Ideas

• Meyers acts as an "entrepreneurial attending," pushing innovators to challenge their own assumptions:
  • "Give me three reasons why this idea should never see the light of day."
• "We have too many accelerators; we really need more euthanators. So a euthanator is a place where your idea goes to die and give us both a merciful death." ([17:18])
• Describes "idea euthanator" workshops, where teams evaluate whether to persevere, pivot, or punt an idea. ([18:11])
• Questions the value of business plan competitions vs. value proposition contests: "I don't think that's terribly useful, frankly." ([19:27])

6. Skepticism, Optimism, and Generational Hope

• Dr. Meyers is bullish on the younger generation's curiosity and will to innovate:
  • "I'm optimistic. And the reason that I'm optimistic has to do with the younger generation." ([16:15])
  • Enjoys coaching students and residents, giving tough feedback but also empowering them.

7. Artificial Intelligence and Unpredictable Change

• On fears and hopes for AI in healthcare:
  • Uses the iPhone's transformative effect as an example:
  • "Would anyone, knowing then what was going to happen to the iPhone and the impact it would have on our life... No, it's impossible." ([21:19])
  • No one can fully predict AI’s impact, but adaptability is key.

8. Practical Nuggets & Humorous Asides

• On lost phones: Dr. Meyers puts a card with his wife's number on his phone to facilitate returns ([22:52]).
• On longevity: "I think this whole longevity thing is smoke. It's just silly. It's another scam to make money... It shouldn't be about life span, it should be about health span." ([24:16], [24:35])

9. Risks, Selling, and Advice to His Younger Self

• Riskiest thing: Selling newspapers as a child on Atlantic City beaches taught the value of taking risks and selling—skills key to entrepreneurship ([26:11]).
• "That's another thing we don't teach med students, which I think is a core skill, is how to sell." ([27:02])
• Advice to his 20-year-old self: "Make it personal, but don't take it personally... Because you will ultimately fail repetitively." ([27:43])
• "Don't let school get in the way of your education." — Mark Twain ([28:33])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Moving from Idea to Innovation
  "How do you get an idea? And even if you had a good idea, you wouldn't know what to do with it." — Arlen ([06:46])

• On Moral Injury
  "If you are asked to do something to or for a patient that is not in the patient's best interest... then that inflicts moral injury." — Arlen ([12:57])

• On Business vs. Medicine
  "My job is not to create sick people... Some people would argue with that, that contemporary medicine is exactly about creating sick people and spending lots of money to make them better." — Arlen ([14:12])

• On Euthanators for Ideas
  "We have too many accelerators and we really need more euthanators. So a euthanator is a place where your idea goes to die and give us both a merciful death." — Arlen ([17:18])

• On Not Taking Failure Personally
  "Make it personal, but don't take it personally." — Arlen ([27:43])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Origins of SoPE, Meaning, and Mission – [05:47]
• Barriers for Physicians to Innovation – [06:53]
• Pivoting from Practice: Frustrations and Moral Injury – [09:38], [11:55], [12:19]
• Reconciling Medicine & Business Cultures – [14:04], [14:49]
• Euthanators & Idea Pitches – [17:18], [18:11], [19:27]
• AI, iPhone Parallels, Unpredictable Future – [20:27], [21:19]
• Practical Problem-Solving, Lost Phones – [22:52]
• Views on Longevity, Healthy Life vs. Long Life – [24:16], [24:35]
• Risks, Selling Young, Entrepreneurial Skills – [26:11], [27:02]
• Advice to 20-Year-Old Self – [27:37]
• Plug for SoPE – [28:58]

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Closing

Dr. Meyers’ journey from clinician to entrepreneur is a lesson in the value of candid self-reflection, practical education, and building supportive ecosystems for innovation. He combines healthy skepticism with hopefulness, encouraging health professionals to develop entrepreneurial skills, embrace failure as part of progress, and focus on making real-world patient impact.

If you’d like to learn more about the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs, Dr. Meyers recommends visiting sopenet.org — “It is dirt cheap and a really high value. It’s 80 bucks a year.” ([29:13])

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For more resources, episodes, and patient safety insights, visit Censinet.com

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome to Risk Never Sleeps, where we meet and get to know the people delivering patient care and protecting patient safety. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet. Welcome back. Aimed 25 insights podcast series sponsored by outcomes rocket and sense in it. Risk never sleeps. And we're here today with Dr. Arlen Myers. Yeah. Of soap. And you're going to tell me what soap stands for in a second. And my good friend Saul Marquez. Good morning, Saul.

[C]

Good morning, Ed. Excited to be here.

[B]

Yeah, terrific.

[A]

Thanks for having me.

[B]

Thanks for joining us, Doctor. Can I call you Arlen or Doctor?

[A]

Call me Arlen.

[B]

Arlan.

[A]

I've been called a lot worse. Me too.

[B]

So is the name of family name Arlen? That's a unique name.

[A]

Oh, that's a very long story. But no. The short answer is no. But the. The family lore is. I was named after Harold Arlin.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

Who is probably the most famous composer you've never heard of. Yeah. He wrote Somewhere over the Rainbow. Wow. Wow. That's a very long story. But that's the.

[B]

You know, I love that.

[A]

Yeah. Look him up. Harold Arlen.

[B]

Of course. The wizard of Oz is back in vogue, Right.

[A]

It's the most famous movie ever. Ever, Ever.

[B]

And is that the sphere. Have you.

[A]

It's the most. And Somewhere over the Rainbow is the most popular song ever.

[B]

Did Kermit the Frog sing a version of that song? Probably something to do with a rainbow. I don't remember.

[A]

Hawaiian guy did it. You remember the Hawaiian?

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Who was that? What was his name?

[C]

Izzy.

[A]

Izzy.

[C]

Izzy is no longer with us.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Oh, I remember playing that song. And we were in Maui just driving all the way up the mountain.

[A]

Right.

[B]

With a.

[A]

Memories.

[B]

You played it with like. Oh, you mean listen. Listening to it.

[C]

Yeah, Playing it on my radio.

[A]

Okay. And there's a very. I don't want to go down in a rabbit hole with this. But there's a very interesting musicology analysis of that song. Really? Because it came out in 1930. I'm the only one that knows all this information.

[B]

I love it. Let's go.

[C]

We like rabbit holes.

[A]

This is great.

[B]

This is the Rabbit Hole podcast.

[A]

It was produced in 1939, and people have interpreted it as a warning sign of the Nazi threat. What? And somewhere over the rainbow and what's going to happen and all the trials and tribulations you have to get to all that stuff. And the wizard of Oz behind the curtain and all that business. What? So it's a pretty interesting. Yeah, it's a pretty interesting analogy.

[B]

I love that. That's like Paul is dead with the Beatles. Right.

[A]

Isn't there like a look it up.

[B]

And you play like, a Led Zeppelin song backwards and something bad happens?

[A]

I don't know.

[C]

Interesting.

[B]

I'm gonna look that up. Yeah. That's published somewhere, Right?

[C]

Fascinating.

[B]

Yeah. All right.

[A]

And speaking of Led Zeppelin, I was recently in Palo Alto and there' restaurant there where they did their first gig. Dude, there's a plaque.

[B]

Dude, I love that you just said that.

[A]

There's a plaque on the wall.

[B]

No one has said. Speaking of Led Zeppelin ever on this podcast. That is first.

[C]

You're in, Arlen, did you see Zeppelin?

[A]

Yes, I was there.

[B]

You were there. Oh, my God.

[A]

It's a really hot cafe that all these Silicone Valley people go to. And there's this plaque that.

[B]

No.

[A]

Yeah, it was pretty interesting.

[B]

What's your favorite band?

[A]

Eagles.

[B]

Did you go to the Sphere?

[A]

Well, no, but I live in Denver, so.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I can remember very distinctly. This will age me that I remember the Eagles and Janis Joplin at a concert at Mile High Stadium where the football team. Yeah, I love the Eagles. My wife is, like, fed up with all my Eagles songs, but James Joplin, that.

[B]

Did you see her, too?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, man, she's great.

[A]

Yeah, she was amazing.

[B]

Yeah, she was so amazing. Yeah.

[A]

So I'm a hippie and I love it.

[B]

So am I. Yeah. Yeah. We can go all day about hippie stuff.

[C]

Don't get ed started.

[B]

Yeah, don't get me started. Like, we'll do flashbacks, right? We're going to have flashbacks. Flashback with Arlen Myers, Vietnam War. And what was your number? Oh, there you go. Did you have a number?

[A]

Oh, you bet.

[B]

Oh, did you go?

[A]

No.

[B]

Did you burn your draft card?

[A]

No. But there's two things people of my generation sort of remember. One is everybody remembers Kennedy getting shot, but the other is sitting in front of a television screen when they rolled the number for Selective Service. And everybody remembers it, and I remembers their number. Yeah. It's unfortunate because something that stays with you. Right. But that's a whole nother story how all that wound up.

[B]

Yeah. Did you go to Altamont? No. Are you from San Francisco?

[A]

No, I'm from Philly. Philly.

[B]

Philly. Big game last night.

[A]

Did you watch it? I didn't see the end. Did they win?

[B]

They won.

[A]

Good for them. Good game. It was a creepy game. The first.

[B]

It was a little creepy.

[A]

And typically I watch NFL football about 30 minutes a year, and usually it's the last five minutes of games that I want to see because that's how they're.

[B]

That's a good way to watch. Very efficient way to watch football.

[A]

It's an efficient way to watch.

[B]

Yeah, I like that. I'm going to have to try that.

[A]

And I'll give you another rabbit hole that if you eliminate all of the dead time in an NFL game and all you do is watch the action, forget the space between the huddles and the timeouts. It's 12 minutes of actual football action.

[C]

You're onto something that could be a thing. Right. Like streaming the action to you.

[A]

In fact, you could do that.

[B]

I want to feed it into AI and just have AI play it for me.

[A]

There are things on.

[C]

I like that.

[A]

There are things on your streaming service where you can get rid of all the dead air.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And just play 12 minutes.

[A]

And just play 12 minutes of.

[B]

Now he just said two trigger words for me. So I have to ask you, have you seen the Grateful Dead? I'm a deadhead. So yeah.

[A]

Good for you.

[B]

A couple hundred shows.

[A]

All right, so moving on to AI.

[B]

So let's talk soap. Let's talk soap. Tell us about soap.

[A]

Right. So SOAP is affectionately an acronym for the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs and we are an international open nonprofit biomedical and clinical innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. So that's a whole bunch of words. And what does that mean? It means our mission are members helping members get their ideas to patients. The problem we're trying to solve is that most white coats when it comes to a. Every white coat thinks they have a good idea. They don't. They have ideas. That's it goes down the shower and gets stuck with the hair in the strainer and you never see it again. It's an idea.

[B]

That's where my ideas are. Shower.

[A]

Right. Look in your shower Stainer. You're going to see a lot of ideas.

[B]

Oh man.

[A]

God knows what else you're going to find there.

[B]

Oh, this is a rated G show. We're just changing the rating system here.

[A]

So how do you get an idea? And even if you had a good idea, you wouldn't know what to do with it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Engineers, doctors, scientists, everything else.

[B]

So you help them marshal that?

[A]

We help them connect the dots. So we are a dating service. Oh, we're a two sided market dating service. And I tell people because we are that and a non profit. We're a cross between Rotary and match dot com. So interesting. You have an idea. Everybody has an idea.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But you're clueless what to do with it. Why is a whole nother conversation which we can have but you probably, in your training, had not had innovation and entrepreneurship training, education, development in your formal curriculum. Whether it's a PhD in biochemistry or whether it's a neurosurgeon, you just don't have that. And we don't teach that yet. So as a result, you don't know what to do. Now, what I just described was me 20 years ago. And there's nothing worse than a reformed sinner. So I decided that I got angry. I am still angry. You can probably tell.

[B]

You don't seem too angry.

[A]

You don't seem like real.

[B]

You're from Denver. How angry can you be?

[A]

I grew up in Philly. Oh, there you go.

[C]

There's the anger.

[A]

There's the anger. We're the people that boo Sands.

[B]

Oh, we know.

[A]

So anyway, so I didn't like that. So I had a team that invented a gadget. So I became an accidental med tech entrepreneur. And I had no idea what to do with it. All I knew was that there was a clinical situation that I thought needed a solution. It was a gadget that optically detects cancer in the mouth. Pretty good idea. A Geiger counter for cancer lights up, you have cancer, you don't have to biopsy. That tells you, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, I could never get that idea or that technology over the goal line. And I think, and the reason I thought was because the ecosystem wasn't sufficiently developed for the average clinician to do it, particularly in a community setting, not in an academic medical center where I was. So that's why I do what I do now. I'm an emeritus ear, nose and throat facial plastic surgeon at the University of Colorado. My first career was to do that for 40 years. When this happened, I decided it was time to make a pivot. I liked doing what I was doing. I don't want to come across as a grumpy, burned out doctor because I really liked what I did. But I just felt it was the right time to pivot and move on to make a bigger impact.

[B]

I love that.

[C]

I love that.

[B]

Teach them how to fish.

[A]

Exactly.

[C]

That's awesome. Taking your experience and now helping others not make the same mistake. You were giving a talk here, right? Tell us what that was about.

[A]

Well, I just had a workshop on non clinical careers. So we had a good group and a lot of good input back and forth. And the reality is that a lot of health professionals simply don't want to see patients anymore because of burnout, because of the system, because of moral injury, because they're just fed up because primarily comes down to fear, ego and greed. So they're fearful of what's going to happen to their future when they look into the crystal ball and come to a meeting like this. And how is AI going to take my job and how is it going to make it different? And et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The ego part comes about because that's how doctors are built. There's such a strong connection, including myself, that you are so embedded in your career and your personality is defined by your career that it's hard to divorce yourself. So I call this divorcing yourself. And just like when you're divorcing something else, usually you don't flip the switch until you have another love interest. Yeah, so you can bitch and moan about it all you want, but this is awful. I'm going to eat worms. But until you find a viable exit strategy, you're unlikely because you're afraid, because what's going to happen is going to be lonely. How am I going to deal with this on my own? What are people going to think about me? What about peer pressure? How about money? All the stuff. And finally, when you flip the switch, then you realize, I should have done this a long time ago. So that's basically how I still love you, honey.

[B]

He's pushing, but I'm not biting.

[A]

So anyway, that's how this worked out. So what do I do now? So after all of these career pivots, and I've probably been through four or five of them, most of which, in fact all of them, I had no clue what to do when I did it, because I wasn't. For example, I didn't know how to be a med tech entrepreneur. I didn't know how to be a social entrepreneur creating an international nonprofit. I mean, how do you do that and scale it and grow it and make it sustainable? I didn't know anything about side gigs and consulting, advising, money, all that other stuff. So I learned all that stuff on the fly.

[B]

You mentioned moral injury.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What does that.

[A]

Moral injury? Well, that means that your values are being threatened because you're being made to do something. So the typical example is in warfare. So you're ordered to do some things that just doesn't feel right.

[B]

Give me an example.

[A]

In My Lai massacre.

[B]

No, in medicine.

[A]

Oh. Well, you're asked to do things for patients that you don't feel are in the patient's best interest, like order a bunch of tests so the person that hired you can make a lot of money.

[B]

Oh. Or doesn't it go against the oath that we take?

[A]

Yeah, that's a whole nother story.

[B]

Yeah. We have time.

[A]

Well, we're talking going back many years, like a couple thousand. I mean, the times have changed. The fundamental issue is, which I think most doctors still adhere to, is when you're practicing medicine, the key thing is to place the interest of the patient primarily.

[B]

Right. We don't do that.

[A]

We all have conflicts of interest. I don't care where, when, and how. You can't eliminate them. You can only mitigate them. So if you are asked to do something to or for a patient that is not in the patient's best interest, and you're saying to yourself, wait a minute, that's not what I signed up for, then that inflicts moral injury. Now, some people confuse moral injury with burnout. It's a different thing.

[B]

I'm sure it can amplify it, though.

[A]

Well, it's actually more powerful than burnout. So if you just don't feel right about what someone's asking you to do. And incidentally, this also holds true for entrepreneurship. So if you go to work for a company that is doing something that you know is wrong. So I call this therontology. Like Theranos.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

For that deal.

[B]

Oh, I do.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I wrote a poem about her.

[A]

Oh, you did?

[B]

I'll have to send it to you. You might like it, actually.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Of the Museum of Lies?

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Yeah. There's an exhibit.

[A]

So anyway, there's. And we've seen the pharma, bro. It's just the same story. There's nothing new under the sun. It's the same thing.

[B]

Same thing over and again. Yeah.

[A]

So that's basically what. Now, the interesting thing is that the. One of the main issues with what I'm involved with that is physician entrepreneurship is how do you reconcile the culture and ethos of medicine, which we just described, with the culture and ethos of business? So Peter Drucker has his famous line that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. That doesn't work in medicine. My job is not to create sick people. Right. Some people would argue with that, that contemporary medicine is exactly about creating sick people and spending lots of money to make them better.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

I would like to think that's not what I did. For the vast majority, I'd rather pay.

[B]

You to be well than to be sick.

[A]

Exactly. So that's the conflict. And a lot of that has to do with reconciling the clinical mindset and culture with the entrepreneurial mindset and culture. Now, there are two overlapping circles. There's distinct differences between the two, but there are a lot of commonalities where the two circles meet in a Venn diagram. And that's the space that we play.

[B]

Wow. My mind is blown already this morning. It's not even 9 o'.

[A]

Clock. You're getting all.

[B]

I am getting it all. I'm getting it all. In fact, we're going to do a follow up on this. This is really, really interesting. Fascinating. Damn.

[C]

Definitely.

[B]

You're a cynical optimist, I would say.

[A]

No, I'm just angry. But you're also.

[B]

You have to be optimistic to be an entrepreneur.

[A]

No, actually, I'm very optimistic.

[B]

Yes, I can tell that. But you are also a little cynical, which is good. It's an interesting balance.

[A]

Right. There's a difference between skepticism and cynicism.

[B]

Yes, that's true.

[A]

So I'm. I'm a healthy skeptic.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Which unfortunately, I don't think we have enough of. No, skepticism is your healthy. You're questioning the status quo, reasonable reasons.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Cynicism means you think people are awful.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

I don't think people are awful. I have a fun time with people. Yeah.

[B]

But I like people.

[A]

Yeah, I like people, but it's sometimes I don't.

[B]

Soylene Green, man. Soylent Green.

[A]

Exactly. So the point is. No, I'm optimistic. And the reason that I'm optimistic has to do with the younger generation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This story gets repeated over. It does, over and over throughout organization. It's the same deal. So I'm pretty optimistic. And even just at this meeting, several med students, residents are coming up to me and saying, oh, I love this stuff. What do I have to do? And I want to do this, and I want to change the Great. Knock yourself out. So I'm going to give you the tools. Yeah. And I tell people that. The thing I like about. I'm a professional educator, medical educator by training. I did this for a very long time. Residents, med students in the or, all that. So I used to tell people in the or, don't cut that, because I can tell you what's going to happen if you cut that. Now, I consider myself like an entrepreneurial attending. So when they come to me with an idea, I give them radical candor, like, give me three reasons why this idea should never see the light of day. Yeah. Does this sound familiar to you?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In fact, I think we have too many accelerators and we really need more euthanators. So a euthanator is A place where your idea goes to die and give us both a merciful death.

[B]

I love that. Do we pay people for that or just.

[A]

No, actually, we do.

[B]

Yeah. That's great. We're going to kill your idea, but we're going to pay you a little bit.

[A]

Well, I've been asked to, actually. I have a euthanator workshop.

[C]

You do?

[A]

Yes, I've been asked to, actually. The last one was on YouTube. It was upstate in SUNY in Syracuse. We did a workshop with the residents, and it was called an idea euthanator, where your idea goes to die. And the idea was that you put together a project team and these folks just came out of the blue. They had no. They didn't know what we were going to do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the task was identify a problem that you have encountered during your clinical today. And everybody can see, like, 10 things that are wrong with the system. Pick one and come up with a solution. And then the idea was to articulate a value proposition, which is actually pretty difficult in a short period of time.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And then they would get up and they'd give the value proposition and everybody would say, now, you got three options. You can persevere, pivot, or punt. You can persevere with this idea because you think it shouldn't die. You could pivot, which means you gotta do something different, or you punt. You kill it. Yeah. And that was actually a pretty good exercise. So I think I'll be interested to see at the Shark Tank.

[B]

Yeah. Are you.

[A]

I'm one of the judge. Yeah. But I'm gonna try to keep my mouth shut. That's hard.

[B]

But that's never gonna happen.

[A]

I don't.

[B]

Good luck.

[A]

No, I don't think.

[B]

Saul got a word in. There.

[A]

It is.

[B]

What's the time on that song? Oh, right.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

He's vying for the most interesting guest.

[C]

So far, I think. I think we'll see.

[A]

I think I'm showing up with a black hood over my head so that nobody really knows.

[B]

Like V for Vendetta.

[A]

I'm just kidding.

[B]

With a little eagle on your chest.

[A]

And that's another thing. I don't think Anthony's gonna like this, but I think that these business plan competitions and these pitch fests and I don't think that's terribly useful, frankly. So, again, instead of a scalerator, we should have a euthanator. I think instead of a pitch fest competition, we should have a value proposition competition or an idea comp, where you are strictly. You create the business model and then we judge whether that's viable or not. Not all the bells and whistles and the hype and the usual charts and hockey stick finance and all that stuff, because we really don't know what happens to these companies that actually win the pitch.

[B]

Compensation. Yeah.

[A]

And I've told some folks that I work with in business schools and all that stuff, and they say, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they keep doing the same thing.

[B]

If it's a good idea, you probably don't need a pitch contest, right? All right. So, skeptical optimist, what's your view on AI? What's the worst scenario? What spares you?

[A]

So here's my deal with that question, right? So I would remind people that Apple is celebrating their 50th birthday. So 50 years ago, Apple was created. That's it in the garage. That's right. Steve Jobs, etc.

[B]

After he left Atari, which most people don't know.

[C]

Oh, he was at Atari.

[B]

Yeah. See.

[C]

Hey, didn't you interview a guy from Atari?

[B]

I did, yeah. One of the designers for the ET game.

[A]

Wow. And the iPhone was launched in 2007.

[B]

Yeah, that's right.

[A]

Actually, June 7th, 2007.

[B]

That's your birthday, right, Sol?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

No.

[A]

Why would I possibly remember anything like that? I just do. It's like the Dewey, Grateful Dead or whatever. So the idea is, would anyone, knowing now, knowing then what was going to happen to the iPhone and the impact it would have on our life. No, it's impossible. You just couldn't.

[B]

Of course, nobody knows.

[A]

You couldn't possibly imagine how screwed you'd be if you lost your phone.

[B]

Yeah. Are Reliant on it? On it?

[A]

Right. I like, panic because I thought I lost my. I left my phone in Uber and it was like.

[B]

No. Yeah.

[C]

Like, gee, I think we've all been there. Yeah.

[A]

I don't know. What. So what do you do when you lose your phone in an Uber?

[B]

You get angry or.

[A]

No. So how do you.

[C]

It happened to me before.

[A]

How do you recover? This is probably the most important Uber account.

[C]

Yeah. You go to your laptop and you go to Uber and then you.

[A]

Oh, that's. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Say I lost.

[A]

Oh, that's good.

[C]

Yeah. And then the driver will get it back to you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I've left eyeglasses in an Uber and they've actually delivered them.

[A]

Yeah, they're pretty good.

[B]

They're really great.

[A]

That's a good tip.

[B]

Yeah, I've tipped the driver, too.

[A]

That's great. So for the right to go to the bonus round, what do you do when you lose Your phone.

[B]

What do you do when you lose your phone?

[A]

Yeah. How do you recover your phone? Or if you find someone else's phone? Yeah. What do you do?

[B]

I call the last call on the phone.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But the phone's locked.

[B]

Yeah, that's a good point. Well, it depends where you lose it. If I left it. If I left it here. If I found it here, I would give it to the front desk.

[C]

If it's not dead, you. I would usually expect somebody to, like, text themselves, and then that would be my lead.

[A]

Really?

[C]

Because I would text myself.

[B]

But how could you get the text?

[A]

But how could you get the text? The phone's dead.

[B]

Yeah, the phone's dead. You can't get the text.

[C]

Oh, if it's dapped and it's dead.

[A]

Correct.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Right. So here's the answer.

[C]

How do you do it? Oh, okay. Just throw your card on it.

[A]

So I put my card on the back of the phone and I put my wife's phone number.

[C]

I like that.

[A]

If you lose. If you find this phone, call this number.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

And then she tells me that a person called and they're not going to lose your phone.

[B]

Like, that's.

[A]

No, but I found one.

[C]

And then that's when you.

[A]

That's when I'm thinking of myself.

[B]

Oh, and they had that on there.

[A]

No, they didn't. I found the phone on the street.

[B]

Look at you.

[C]

Solving problems have.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

All about the mindset.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

So I said to the. And actually, what happened was just coincidentally, I'm thinking to myself, now what do I do that I found this person's phone and I can't get in touch with them. You're supposed to take it to the police station. Because they can.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Figure. All this while I'm thinking about, what do I do? The phone rings.

[B]

Oh, you can pick it up.

[A]

I pick up the phone. I say, hi. And the voice on the other end says, hi, Bob. And I said, I'm not Bob, but I just found, I think Bob's phone can. And you obviously know his number.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you get in touch with Bob's whomever.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Wife. Significant. And tell him that I found the phone and I am waiting at third and whatever to give him the phone back. Did he come? Yeah. Nice.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

All right. You could live forever, but you can't bring anybody that you love with you.

[A]

World's around.

[B]

Would you do it?

[A]

Do good?

[B]

Would you do it? Would you live forever? No, you wouldn't. Why not? You're a sensible man. I like this.

[A]

Well, first of all, I think this whole longevity thing is smoke. It's just silly. It's another. I think it's another scam to make money. I love it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm with you.

[A]

I think we really need. We shouldn't. And some people are addressing this. It shouldn't be about life span, it should be about health span.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, who wants to live to be 100 and something?

[B]

Well, that's what I'm asking. If you could live forever, would you do it? You wouldn't do it?

[A]

No.

[B]

Why?

[A]

Why give somebod else a chance?

[B]

Yeah. Because I think if everybody could live forever, would we throw the orbit off because of the weight of the.

[A]

Yeah. So what happens to all the people that are living forever? More importantly, who's going to take care of.

[B]

Who's going to take care of them?

[C]

But there's not enough resources.

[B]

There's not enough resources.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So eventually we would die. Just be a. Be an awful death, wouldn't it?

[A]

So do you remember, you ever remember a guy named Dick Lamb? Dick Lamb used to be the governor of Colorado.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

Now this goes. You wouldn't know that, but it goes back many years. He was a pretty liberal, sort of center left kind of guy. He did a lot of really good things. He was a good governor. But he gave a very famous speech many years ago in which he said old people have a duty to die. And that duty to die sank his political career.

[B]

Yeah, he spoke truth.

[A]

He spoke truth. People had. I mean, it's not so. No, I think it's silly.

[B]

Yeah, me too, by the way.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I've talked to people last night and many people said they'd live forever. I just.

[A]

We do it. I do it.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

As long as you can pay for it and don't ask me to support you.

[B]

Well, you'd be dead, so I'd be dead.

[C]

Right.

[B]

The other thing people say, which you didn't say was. Well, they bring up the vampire analogy.

[C]

And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's true. We got a vampire.

[A]

Vampire.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

Lightning.

[B]

Lightning. Round two. Couple, two couple questions. Riskiest thing you've ever done?

[A]

The riskiest thing I've ever done was I had a job. My first job as a kid was selling newspapers on the beach in Atlantic City.

[B]

Whoa, that's some Bruce Springsteen right there.

[A]

And I was scared to death because I figured I'm not going to be successful and I couldn't. That's another thing about the doctor mindset. Everybody's telling you're the smartest kid in the room since you're eight years old. And speaking of AI, there is no smartest person anymore. Anymore. You can forget that. But anyway, so I'm on the beach.

[B]

Damn it. No more saying that people. I love that. We're going to kill that statement right here.

[C]

Dead.

[A]

So actually, it was very good. And it turns out that one of the predictors of entrepreneurial success was how old were you when you sold your first something for money?

[B]

Yeah, And I was nine.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's true. I think it. And that's another thing that we don't teach med students, which I think is a core spill, is how to sell.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

So we just talked about this in the thing. Yeah. Doctors sell to patients all the time. They sell to all kinds of people. They just don't realize it.

[B]

Right, exactly.

[A]

But they don't use that transferable skill to the entrepreneurial mindset. So anyway, that's the deal. So that was sort of risky. What was the worst that could happen? I couldn't buy a pretzel. A soft pretzel.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah.

[A]

I couldn't possibly. Or a tasty cake or something filling.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Ride the merry.

[B]

Go around. Come on, folks. Go back in time. See your 20 year old self. What would you tell him?

[A]

Yeah, that's a common question. In fact, I asked these folks what would be the title of your letter to your former self?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And my answer is make it personal, but don't take it personally. So what that means is if you're going to go down this road, meaning entrepreneurship or medicine, whatever, it's so hard and the risk of failure is so high that unless you have something in your soul that trips your trigger, you're not going to be successful. Right. Because you will ultimately fail repetitively. Yes. I have a failure resume that. Choke a horse. Me too. So you have to move on. So you make it personal because that's what's going to motivate, intrinsically motivate you. But you have to understand that you're going to have to pick yourself up and move on. So don't take it personally. The other thing I would say is don't let school get in the way of your education.

[B]

Yeah. Just a little.

[C]

My grandma always said that.

[A]

It's a Mark Twain.

[C]

That's a good one.

[B]

Just a little piece. So no horses were choked in the recording of this podcast.

[C]

It's important to note.

[B]

Yes, it is. Okay. All right. Are we going to wrap it up?

[C]

Let's wrap it up.

[B]

All right, go ahead, you go.

[C]

Well, there we have it, folks. Dr. Arlen Myers from the soap, which is. Tell us what it is again. Society.

[A]

Society of Physician Entrepreneurs. And if you want to join in same shameless self promotion. If you want to join, you go to www.sopenet s o p e net.org. it is dirt cheap and a really high value. It's 80 bucks a year.

[B]

What? Yeah, I might just join anyway.

[A]

Yeah, you should just join.

[B]

It's 80 bucks.

[A]

What the heck, you're going to spend more on Starbucks in two days.

[B]

Could I be a doctor?

[A]

Maybe just play one on tv.

[C]

That's the first step is to join.

[A]

Soap or as a podcast host.

[B]

As a podcast. Yeah.

[C]

All right.

[B]

Thank you, Dr. Arlen Myers.

[A]

It's been a pleasure. Yeah, it's been fun. Thanks.

[B]

Thanks for listening to Risk Never Sleeps. For the show notes, resources and more information and how to transform the protection of patient safety, Visit [e-mail] that's C-E N S I N-E-T.com I'm your host, Ed Gaudet, and until next time, stay vigilant because Risk Never Sleeps.