Will AI Replace Nurses? Bonnie Clipper on Nursing AI + Kirk Barnes on Digital Health Sales

Usman: Into the limit Welcome to Tech It to the Limit, the humorous and surprisingly informative podcast that makes digital innovation in healthcare as entertaining as it is relevant. I'm Elliot Wilson, your resident elder millennial digital health fanatic. Each episode, I'm joined by leaders from all sides of the industry to talk about how tech is shaping healthcare. Expect puns, laughs, and even the occasional nerdfest. So thanks for coming along as we see how far we can Tech It to the Limit. Welcome back to Tech It to the Limit listeners to this month's episode. I am so excited to have you here. I can't wait to bring you our conversation a little later on for our final interview from our Vive interviews with Kirk Barnes. But before we get into that, I have a very good friend of mine on, Bonnie Clipper, who is like the nursing innovation guru of the world. And she's gonna be joining us for our segment one here. As you know, I get to be joined by friends of mine from across the digital health industry. They come on and talk about topics that are of import to them and should be to all of us. And so as it goes, they come on, talk to us about it. As long as they can bring it back to digital transformation in healthcare, we're in a good spot. And Bonnie, I think you chose a Doozy for today. So you wanted to talk about I love the way that you put this in there. Will AI replace nurses, followed by like six question marks, whiskey tango, foxtrot. Wow. So first off, did you take a breath in there? No, I don't I like to I try not to breathe if I can avoid it at any cost. You definitely summed it up. So I'm excited to be here with you. We're gonna have a great conversation. Yes. I get that question sent to me on LinkedIn or sometimes texted or emailed to me on a regular basis. So I'm kind of thinking this is going to be a fun conversation. Yeah. So I mean, whiskey tango foxtrot, is AI gonna replace nursing? So here's my take on this. I think we're at a really amazing point in time right now. We're seeing AI tools proliferate. There is a interest in by hospitals in how we can utilize these tools to improve outcomes and be more efficient. So I'm going to take you a few different ways, Elliot. The majority of the tools that are out there are physician related or medically related tools that aren't created for nursing workflows. So our challenges and issues are completely different. The tools that will work for us have to be created with nurse input. So you're hearing more and more kind of this mantra, this anthem, which is literally for nurses by nurses. So we're the ones that have to drive that. We can't just retrofit physician created tools and make them work. And here's an example ambient documentation. Physicians have been doing this for 15, 20 years in terms of probably even more like Gosh, my whole career, which I hate to tell you, is thirty plus. In terms of picking up a minute. Were you practicing nursing when you were like 10? Twelve. Twelve. Twelve. So, you know, but physicians have literally been able to pick up a phone, dictate a note, or dictate a visit with a patient. On the other end, could way back in the day it was a human typing it, then it moved to transcription. I remember the days when literally the people on the would come up on the elevator, have a s thick stack of those with the little rubber things on their fingers, flip through them, put them in the charts so that you had the proper procedure notes, H and Ps, you know, op notes, whatever it might be. So docs have been doing this for a really long time. And now fast forward to today, we figured out that we could actually use tools to dictate Create a good transcribed note. And now with the advent of AI, it's actually parsing this into something that's far more intelligible, accurate. And the importance here is that physicians use this for a couple different reasons. Obviously, one, we know what's going on with the patient, helps us be compliant with joint commission, CMS, and other standards. Also, physicians bill from these. So the keywords are coding words that they're able to use, and those are utilized to drop a bill. For provider services and also for hospital based services. In nurse world, we've never narrated our care and we've never had to be concerned about our notations, our documentation generating any kind of a bill, whether right, wrong, or indifferent. So in nurse world, A, we don't know how to narrate our care and B, we've not had to do this to generate any kind of revenue. So what we say is kind of rambly. So when you think about retrofitting it from a physician related tool, they're really good at getting the keywords in, parsing their words, clarity, brevity, cranking out a good note. In nurse world, we're gonna be full of babble. So while there's some really good AI tools beginning to evolve, it's a completely different process. Don't we need to also at the same time train nurses how to speak? Yes. Now we're doing that. But docs have been doing that and medical schools have been doing it for thirty plus years. Nurses. Yeah, they a little bit of a leg up. Yeah, right. So look, we got a lag of thirty years here. Now we're starting to teach nurses how do you narrate your care. And it's also kind of weird and uncomfortable when you're in a room for a half hour doing an assessment. What is it I'm actually saying? Because a lot of these things are checkboxes. Right. Right. So this is where it's difficult to just retrofit a tool that exists for physicians and say it's gonna work for nursing. Right. So I think for me that's part number one is we have to give nurses really good tools. That means we have to listen to them, we have to understand their pain points, and we have to understand their problems, which are completely different. So we have that big component. The other piece is that nurses are what I call the last mile of healthcare. So someone is going to be touching the patient. Right. That's what nurses are doing. Right. Now if you start to back up from there. We do absolutely have the opportunity to use AI to help us critically think faster, safer, more accurately, help to identify patients that essentially are gonna be pre septic before they're septic. So we can intervene in that. We have the ability now we can actually use AI to predict patients that are gonna throw a lethal arrhythmia. So all these things exist right now in today's world. Awesome. We have to figure out how do we string these things together to actually make it more meaningful for nurses. So we're not even at that point yet, let alone let's get the human out of the way and let's just replace him. So in my opinion, we're gonna work probably f very quickly here over the next two, three, five years to make the tools far more suitable for nursing practice. Do I think there's a time that AI will replace nurses? Like, you know. Look, I've watched enough of the Jetsons to think we're gonna go from the Flintstones to the Jetsons, but it's gonna take a little while. Yeah. I think we're more likely to end up in a scenario where we truly focus on the if we do it right, we focus on the humanity of nursing. Right. And we allow the ambience of AI to do the paperwork and allow. the nurse to care for the patient, right? Because they are the last mile. Because what the AI can't do is put a sh put a hand on the shoulder of a patient and sit with them and and care for them, not just physically, but emotionally. ⁓ In a way that brings them through an illness or a disease state. So in my mind, I think that should be the goal to the point where like where can we exploit these technologies so far to the point where the nurse can come in and place the line, administer the med, provide the hands on care and connect with the patient and not have to do everything else, not have to run and get the chips, you know, not have to go get on a chair and fiddle with the wires behind the television, right? Not have to spend their lunch documenting, right? All this other stuff that takes them away from true patient care. So I think when we start I think if we exploit AI appropriately, we'll be centering humanity between the nurse and the patient. That's my thought around it. Yeah, I think the potential is there. You know, and even some of the things you you mentioned, does the nurse have to place the line or couldn't that be someone else? Right. Does the nurse have to administer the meds or can that be somebody else? I think we're at a little bit of a crossroads in our own profession right now to really get a sense of what is it the nurse should be doing that it takes a nurse to do. And essentially we're masters at care coordination. So pulling all the pieces together, think of the hundreds of data points that we, you know, work with and and not me. I'm not at the bedside. The ones at the bedside, the direct care nurses, they're doing the hard job. So they're getting hundreds of data points, everything from labs to vitals to meds to assessments to eyeballs on the patient and what's going on. I think that's where AI has the ability to get a lot of the crud out of the way and just really allow us to focus more directly on those patients. What do the outcomes look like? You know, I think A, it's gonna make nursing where it's probably gonna really help bring back some of that job satisfaction. that right now we're we're just hammered by running in a million directions, that's not fun, right? So I think it could have the potential to improve that. It's going to improve safety. It's going to improve outcomes. Do we have the ability to just start whittling away incrementally at length of stay, reducing errors, improving throughput? I think yes, yes, and yes, but first we got to figure out what exactly do the tools look like to create this world that nurses can go, hey, I I don't have to do this or that because I know it's being managed by some AI thing somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Where do nurses stand on, like generally, and obviously nurses aren't a monolith, but where do nurses stand on on AI, right? When I got your topic, right, I started to do some background you know, research on it, right? So JMIR nursing said, you know, nurses were more likely to trust AI systems when the tools were explainable or already validated in clinical settings and positioned as decision support rather than decision replacement. But International Journal of Nursing Studies found that nurses are generally open to AI tools, but that trust drops when that transparency is lacking or if it interrupts the workflow. Where do you think nursing stands in terms of trust? Yeah, I think that's a fantastic question. So there was a study that came out in May. It's called The Clinicians of the Future 2026, and it's from Elsevier. So it came out, and it's very interesting. I actually just pulled it up here on another screen because I was looking at it yesterday. So 41% of nurses use AI versus 57% of physicians around patient care. 61% of nurses believe that clinicians using AI are gonna deliver better care than those that don't. So that's kind of a, yeah, at least right, we're all starting to see this. 30% of you of nurses use a clinical specific tool frequently or always in the workplace, versus 37% of physicians. Now remember, that's among nurses who use AI in the workplace. And what we're seeing that kind of most prevalent AI use case right now tends to be for nursing it's a couple different things. It's around evidence and research. So we're seeing that pop into Epic as a way for people to kind of pull up some evidence, a journal article. So that's helpful. The other things is that in nurse world where we're starting to see it pop up is more along education, building your educational profile, things like that. That tells me there's a lot of opportunity to really utilize AI far more in the course of the shift of caring for a patient. So imagine a world that you would literally walk into your assignment and when you, you know, open kind of your laptop, your cart on wheels, your cow or your wow, you would essentially see your patient assignment. And because it's dynamic, let AI tell me. Hey, things have changed in the last hour with this patient. They are now a higher fall risk. That needs to be the first patient you see. You got a patient going for a procedure in a certain amount of time. This patient needs to be first or second on your list. You have to complete a pre-procedure assessment before they can go somewhere. That's where there's so much opportunity today. Make my life easier. Right. Show me what I should be caring about, in what order, and stop. beeping and making my phone go off all the time. Just tell me what I need to think about first, second, third. Yeah. Do all the background prioritization for me and just let me focus on getting that done. Yeah. I that's interesting. No, you did bring up trust. Nurses have a very low trust of AI. So forty two percent believe the tools on the market today are trustworthy. And I think for all the right reasons, we want to go slow today to go fast later. This stuff has to earn our trust. So you can't just keep telling us it's trustworthy. It's got to earn our trust. That means we have to see high accuracy validation, reliability rates, low error rates. We need to understand. We're not coders and engineers. However, we need to understand how it's built, where the biases are that we have to watch out for. So nursing in general. I heard this at a couple presentations that I've been at in terms of technology at whether it's at health or Vive or ANIA. We as nurses have a lower AI literacy. So it's going to be important for us to get educated and up to speed quickly to know when things are trustworthy and when we really have good reason to hit the brakes. So I think we're really building this on the fly, Elliot. We're building the plane while we're flying it. So we got, you know, we have education, we have training of nurses that are in the pipeline to become a nurse. We have training of incumbent nurses. We have training of leaders. So there I think there's a lot of work that's gonna be going on simultaneously to get us there. It's a lot of work left to do for sure. Yeah, totally. It's exciting work though. Well, Bonnie I don't think that we're anytime soon in a place where AI's gonna be replacing nurses, and thank goodness for that, because then where would I be without you in my life? I know. But I do know you're very sad man. A very sad man. I would be devastated. But I do know that you are going to becoming an e you are planning to become an expat at some point in the future. So which leads me to a little game that I came up with. Are you ready to play? I'm hesitant. ⁓ my gosh, you're gonna have such a good time. All right. And let's just clarify when you say expat, I wanna have a foot on two different continents. That's so I shouldn't say expat. I think that looks like fun. You're gonna be an ocean straddling nurse innovation executive. Yeah. Just across the pond. All right. Well, so for this game, I'm calling it Nurse GPT or Portuguese. ⁓ my God. Okay. My Portuguese is Terrible. All right, you ready? So I'm gonna ask you questions about nursing and AI and questions about Portugal. ⁓ good lord. Okay, and I'm gonna try my best to not embarrass myself in either of these. Okay. All right. Question one. According to recent nursing research, what is the most likely near-term impact of AI on nursing practice? Is it a fully replacing bedside nurses? B Reducing administrative and documentation burden. C. Eliminating nursing education requirements. Or D. Replacing physicians with nurses using AI. ⁓ I sort of like D, but I'm gonna go with B. B. Reducing administrative and documentation burden. In nursing outlook, researchers argued AI's biggest near-term impact is automating routine tasks and reducing cognitive overload, not replacing nurses entirely. Question two. What is the capital city of Portugal? Is it Porto, Lisbon, Faro, or Coimbra? Lisboa, Lisbon. Lisbon. Also the world capital of Americans saying we're thinking about moving here for the lifestyle. Yeah, it's pretty darn awesome. Question three. True or false? Most nursing organizations currently recommend allowing AI systems to make fully autonomous clinical decisions without nurse oversight. Please shoot me now. No. That would be a don't do that. It's false. False. The American Nursing Association specifically calls for nurse-led governance and human oversight of AI systems and care delivery. Question number four. Portugal is famous for which fortified wine? Sherry, Madeira, Port, or Vermouth? ⁓ see, this is a trick question, because it's it's port and Madeira. Well, according to my Question generating capabilities that's C, port, which coincidentally is also what every healthcare startup calls their integration strategy. Port. Yeah. Yeah, you know, if you get the chance to have a good port wine, you'll never go back. You're gonna send me a email me. I can think about that. All right. Question five. Research shows nurses are more likely to trust AI systems when they are a faster than humans, B, explainable and transparent. C hidden in the workflow or D branded with the word copilot. Yeah, I think process of elimination here is leading me towards B. B. studies in JMIR, nursing found clinicians trust, AI more when recommendations are understandable and validated in clinical environments. ⁓ That's a shocker, right? Question six, which of these is a traditional Portuguese music genre known for emotional storytelling? Flo. Flamenco, Fado, Tango, or Opera? Fado. Fado. She is the Portuguese expertise. Question seven. What's one of the biggest concerns nurses report about AI adoption? AI talks too slowly. B. AI creates additional workflow burden. C. AI is too inexpensive. D. AI uses too much printer paper. B That's right, additional workflow burden. McKinsey's nurse surveys found many clinicians worry poorly implemented AI could actually increase burnout instead of reducing it. I feel like there's a real danger there. It's a huge danger because we're going outside of our typical realm of workflows to having to access AI to bring it into our workflows. So this is all just maturity stuff. Yeah, for sure. All right, question eight. Portugal shares the Iberian Peninsula with what other country? Italy? France, Spain, or Morocco? Spain. Spain. One side tapas, one side pastel de nata. ⁓ yeah, pinch thos, yeah. It's ⁓ there's good food on both sides, there's good wine on good both sides, and good ham on both sides. Go for the port, stay for the ham. According to recent healthcare workforce studies, which nursing skill is considered least likely to be replaced by AI? Chart summarization? Medication reminders, human empathy and patient advocacy, or scheduling. Oof, toss up there, but I'm gonna go with empathy. I'm thinking of D as a no, it's C. And fortunately, I've read a couple studies that say where we are with AI is that we're a long way from really creating those emotions. And from a nursing perspective, that's one of the things. That makes it more likely that we will not be among those that are in the second or third round of replacement because the nature of our job really does require a high degree of empathy and compassion. Those that are on the cutting edge of being replaced, radiologists and pathologists. Mm-hmm. Yep. Because of the redundancy of that work. And honestly, pathologists are now doing ⁓ human in the loop overreads of the AI that is actually doing the original reads. Yeah. I would say in healthcare generally, I mean, we think about clinicians a lot and AI, you know, the danger of replacing AI with clinici ⁓ clinicians with AI a lot, but in healthcare I would say that's like in most industries, the most likely people to lose their jobs fastest are administrative assistants, project managers, finance managers, middle managers, et cetera. So I mean we tend to not think about those when we're thinking about healthcare, but that also makes up a large swath of the healthcare workforce that are gonna lose their jobs to AI. All right. Last question. Which famous Portuguese pastry has become globally popular? The cannoli, the churro, pastel de nada, or the macaron? Pastel de nada. Paste and I pronounced it wrong. So pastel with a little cinnamon on the top, nice and warm and a good espresso. You're there. ⁓ Bonnie, your future life plan debating AI ethics by day, eating custard tarts at night. Honestly, that sounds healthier than LinkedIn. That's awesome. I really appreciate it. Bonnie, you won the game. Thank you so much for playing nurse GPT or Portuguese with me. ⁓ you know what? Thank you for making the questions easy. I have really enjoyed ⁓ you spending the time with me today talking about ⁓ nursing and AI, two of some of my favorite topics with one of my favorite people. Really appreciate it. You're awesome, Elliot. I've enjoyed it very much and hopefully we continue to get people to think about where can we take this? What can we make the timelines look like to be smart, safe and make it effective for everyone? Heck yeah. Well stick around, listeners. We'll be right back. Did you ever notice how a patient can be definitely going home today, like six separate times? Like at 11 a.m. there's a discharge order, and then at 11.07, nursing starts the workflow, and then at 11:12 transport gets to call, and then at 11:18 the family posts, we're free on Facebook. And then at like 11:24, cardiology says, actually, I want to observe them one more night. That's why this episode of Tech It to the Limit is brought to you by Hokey Pokey, the predictive, AI-powered discharge orchestration platform. Hokey Pokey uses ambient clinical intelligence, operational analytics, and advanced physician optimism modeling to determine whether a discharge order is real or merely aspirational. Using our proprietary discharge confidence score, Hokey Pokey can detect pending consults. Unstable potassium, family transportation drama, shift change uncertainty, and the phrase, let's see how they do after lunch. So before nursing prints the paperwork, removes the IV, educates the patient, calls transport, and emotionally commits to this person leaving the building, Hokey Pokey asks the important question: Are we really doing this? Listeners of Tech at the Limit received 15% off their first enterprise deployment of Hokey Pokey, plus a complimentary discharge stickiness assessment. And free access to premium modules, including family expectation deflation, because they're already fed up. Wheelchair suppression engine, soft discharge detection, and recursive discharge cancellation forecasting. Because with Hokie Pokey, you put your DC in, you put your DC out. You put your DC in, and then you wait for nephrology to call you back. Hokey Pokey, reducing unnecessary discharge enthusiasm across the care continuum. Hey, welcome back to Tech to the Limit listeners. Today I'm really pleased that we have Kirk Barnes here with us at the Vive event. Kirk is a seasoned healthcare technology executive with deep experience leading large-scale digital transformation across complex health systems with a focus on aligning IT strategy to operational to clinical impact. He brings a wealth of history with his time in pharma. He has a pragmatic lens that he brings to innovation where Governance, execution, discipline, and real-world adoption matter just as much as the tech itself. It is such a great pleasure to have you on, Kirk. I appreciate it. Thank you. Was that intro just saying I'm old? That's right. That's right. That's exactly right. No, so here on the podcast. I'll take it. I'll take it, man. So we we we've try and focus on like an elder millennial sort of vibe here on the podcast. So I mean I'm not I know you just told me how old your daughter is, but ⁓ I'm seasoned. You're well seasoned. That's right. Yeah. So there's a reason I shave, because like this is all gray, you know. Right, right. Thank God for color. ⁓ All right. So so Kirk, before we begin. We ask all of our guests that come on the podcast, be they dad or not, to share with us their favorite dad jokes. You got one for us? I got one. My daughter and wife would cringe when I tell this joke. So I'm itching. So which days are the strongest? I don't know. Saturdays and Sundays. The others are weekdays. Boom. That is so good. Boom. That is so good. That's so corny. Absolutely using that with my case. Like no, no doubt about it. Yeah. All right. Now we gotta recover. That's right, right, exactly. All right. So we're here at Vive. We're talking digital health. We're talking founders. We're talking provider organizations. We're talking venture, investment. Bring it together. Tell us kind of like the story of you and how you came to be here on the podcast and and your expertise. Yeah. So if the podcast audience of you have any black friends, like I'm very culturally appropriate, you know, a story starts when somebody said, see what had happened was. See what had happened was. So I'm sorry. It's good, it's all good. I basically have had was not supposed to be here at all. So one, I was a econ major at Florida NL, FAMU, and then Right out of fam, I got recruited into pharma. Okay. So I spent the first pharma career in sales, carrying a bag, in pharma, biotech, so the f the consumer division of Pfizer, the oncology division of J and J. And then I was one of the first employees at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Okay. So I was at Takeda when there was no product, it was a startup. And we I was there ⁓ as employee one twenty six. We went from zero to a billion dollars in seventeen months. Crazy, right? So in that I always thought I was gonna be a corporate dude, like you know, played the role, climbed, played the different positions. And I got great experience. So one of the things that big pharma and big industry does really well is train you and help you learn how to sell well, give you good infrastructure, lead well. So I got to carry back, do managed care contracting, did marketing, did leadership. Did some data IT projects. So I really got to learn the commercial side of the business. And then a little something in 2007, 2008, remember what happened then? ⁓ yeah. Yeah. So see what has happened. That's when the millennials all realized they were never gonna be able to afford So the recession hit, I was let go. Uh-huh. And then the guy that was the guy that was my vice president of sales, he went to a nanotechnology startup. He hired me to help build this nanotech spin-off out of Northwestern. The only dude that can convince me not once but twice to leave Atlanta and move to Chicago, cold Chicago. That is a culture shock. So great technology. We rebuilt the business from scratch, double digit growth, and our tech our startup didn't make it. So five years in, we got a call on Monday that the doors would close on Friday. Actually it was a Tuesday, the doors would close on Friday. Four whole days of notice, man. That's great. And the worst part is in February during Black History Month. I was like, really? So I'm so I mean mix it with other words. I'm like so transparent, man. But one of things that began that journey is when I left corporate, I was surprised at how many people would not return my phone call anymore. And you know, you talk about your work family and your work friends, and when you leave, there's this this shock that, you know, they're when you no longer work with them. Yeah. Danger family anymore. Yeah, that's right. Except for a few folks. It feels like like almost like an excommunication. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that began a common theme in my journey as to why how I got here. You kept getting fired? No. See what it happened was. No. No, is the importance of relationships. Yeah. And intentionally building relationships before you need them. And so how I got there. ⁓ wait, no, because that's a mic drop. Right, right there, right? So intentionally forging relationships before you need them. Right. Right. That's so key. And I just want to make sure I just want to highlight that for listeners because one of the things that I love about you and what I see from you out there is like I constantly learn about networking from you on on there. So I just want to provide that little bit of context and call out that mic drop moment. Most definitely, most definitely. And so It was from networking that I got a job that wasn't advertised. So a dude called me. He's like, hey, come to Chicago, what are you doing? I was like, you know what I'm not doing? I ain't working. So he's like, Do you want a job? Like, cool. So that's how I got my first startup gig. And then from there, through successes and failures, I ended up in the startup world landing at Georgia Tech at the Georgia Institute of Technologies incubator called the Advanced Technology Development Center. So here I am, econ major, around these brilliant people. And they did not have a program specifically geared towards healthcare technology. So the way their program works is it's an economic development arm. ATDC serves the entire state of Georgia. And basically there's general programming for all entrepreneurs that teach like customer discovery, financial literacy, investor readiness. And then it breaks off into different sectors like advanced manufacturing or fintech. And each of those verticals is stood up by a sponsor. Okay. So you gotta go raise the money. Yeah. Then if you get the money. Then you have to design the curriculum. And then if you do that, then you have to go recruit startups. Right. So that's what happened, how I got into this space. So I raised the money, designed the curriculum, recruited about 40 to 50 health tech startups. And then we launched the first health tech program in Georgia Tech's incubators 40 year history. So that's how I got in this space. And then from there, the people I met opened doors for me to work in two years in venture capital. I led a startup initiative with the US Department of Commerce. So I got to play inside and outside of healthcare. And then ended up being co chair of Together Health and just a phenomenal plug for Together Health, one the largest consortiums of digital health ecosystems. So we work with Mass Challenge, Cedar Cyanide, Texas Medical Center, Santa Fe Ventures, Ascension Ventures. So some of the big names that are driving digital health in the country are part of our organization. And so I volunteered. And so going back to the network plug, the foundation of networking is giving. Is giving. Yeah. So being a servant leader, giving of yourself, servant heart, giving of yourself. How I got to ATDC, I've I volunteered and let me articulate AT D C. A T D C. Not A D C. Not A C D Cour Group. Not doing innovation for a rock group, right? But I started up volunteering as a mentor. I showed up and they were like, We need you to come on ⁓ part time. So it came on part time, then they're like, We like what you're doing, come on full time. Would you lead this healthcare program? Boom, boom, boom, the rest of history. And so now in this space, I get to work with venture corporations, payers, all these different startups, all these different areas of innovation. And I get to use my collective experience, successes and failures. Probably more the failures than the ⁓ than the successes, right? I mean definitely. You know, I fell down on you know here so I can high so I know how to help you over this gulf. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and you know I don't mind being called unk on the OG or whatever it is. And I think if I can help, you know, people learn from my experiences, as I like to say jokingly, I'm a a mile wide and inch deep in healthcare. There isn't much I haven't sold or commercialized. And then working on the tech writing part of venture and then working in the federal government, working economic development, it gives me a really holistic perspective on what works, what doesn't work. So that's why I'm here meeting with you. So we talk about on this podcast, we talk about T-shaped individuals. So people that are really wide ⁓ have a lot of knowledge about a lot of things and then some very specific knowledge and and and depth. So like they're T-shaped, you Not body shaming, right? Not body shaming. No, no, no, no. T shape is sexy. Right. So tell me about like you've worked with a lot of startups, right? And and so what are some of give me a horror story that you've had to ⁓ you've in either endured or you've had to help a startup throw? Have you ever heard a saying that a lot of ⁓ my people like grandmothers say, let's say, like, people don't believe that fat meat is greasy. Did I tell you that? You were talking about that. ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll talk more about it, but my particular area of expertise is in the sales, sales hiring, go-to-market messaging, and what you do when you're in front of customers to get customers across the finish line. Yeah. So if you have a if you have technology but with no customers, you have a hobby. You don't have a business. You have a hobby, right? So What I see is some of the founders that I work with that repeatedly try to hire salespeople without the advice and counsel of somebody that has been a salesperson, led a sales team, hired salespeople, fired salespeople, promoted salespeople. It's like you would not want me to lead your developers. Right. That would be disastrous, right? So why, if you're a technical founder, why do you think You really know how to go higher sales. Sales like and sales is so difficult because coding, you know if you put in the code, you hit a button and it works. ⁓ no, no. I do not think that coders know if they hit a button and it it works. I think sometimes they go Right, they cross your fingers. Maybe engineers, right? You put it together. Yeah. And if you do everything right, you know that it works. Yeah, right. Yeah. Sales depends. Yeah. Well, it's it's all about feelings. It's all about feelings. If it's feelings and connections. And and even what worked in one sales call won't work in another sales call. So there's a lot of fluidity and flexibility that comes into and and I'm gonna be honest, there's a lot of sales people that are BS artists. So, you know, I want I want people to help learn the importance of discerning suspect from prospect. Right. And so I've seen a number of startups that get burned by hiring somebody that looks good, smells good, toss good. But then when they get in front of the the business, they're like, nothing happens. Yeah, yeah. And then it's six months and you smell that bacon cooking, that's their that's their runway just burning away because there's no revenue coming in because you hired somebody that clearly was not a match for where you are. So that is a very common thing that I see among our beloved startups. Yeah, yeah. I love how you phrase that. Suspect, non prospect. And founders need to understand that. What got them here isn't gonna get them there. Absolutely. And, you know, they may have a particular skill set for selling to investors, which is a very different skill set than being able to sell to potential customers, right? And you know, one does not necessarily equate to being good at the other one, but I have to give it up to you and then and the work that you do around building a sales force because it is a skill set that I cannot figure out. Like I'm the kind of guy you put me in front of a customer and like, I can't remember anything. Like I'm socially awkward. You know, and and so then I just un I end up, you know, not being a good face for whatever, you know, I'm standing in front of. But I mean it's such a it's such a skill set. So I'm gonna ask you, yeah. What if I'm a salesperson, what is a first startup? What is the number one skill set? Give me a tip, or what's the skill set that I need to like be pumping iron on? Yeah. So I actually like to talk about. Cause lot of people hear sales and they think like sea sleazy and it's like dirty. So I've worked on this. That's how I feel. Yeah, yeah. But you're not, yeah. I like to change how we think of sales. Mm-hmm. Instead of saying that you are selling, because selling is associated with something I have, I'm trying to convince you. And it's more about me. So I say instead of thinking yourself as selling, think of it that you are monetizing problem solving. Right. Because then it's not about me. Yeah, yeah. It's great framing. And so it makes you genuinely curious about the problems that your customers have. And I think that's the muscle that I want people to because for real, people don't give a crap about your technology. Right. They really don't. They don't care how smart you are. They don't care about none of that. They wanna know, do you really get my pain? Mm-hmm. And are you gonna be with me to help solve it? And so if you develop the relationship with the right customers. And there's this ⁓ very simple three-step process that happens in every sales relationship or business transaction that people have to know you, like you, then they'll trust you. Yeah. Right? So I always give the analogy if there's two coffee shops, both phenomenal coffee, one of them's your boy, and the other one's like somebody yours don't know, who are you gonna buy coffee from? Yeah. You're gonna buy right from son of your boy. From your boy. So that is the same thing in business. And the higher the stakes, The more complex the call, ⁓ the more complex the technology, the more complex the buying decision, sales is really a transaction of trust. Yeah. And and just like dating, they're gonna see when you're trying to get to know them, that is what it's gonna be like doing business with you. And so if you focus on being genuinely curious about the problems of your customers, that and you can help them solve it if they trust you enough to really tell you what the so what the problem is. then you can make money they'll gladly give you money if you help them solve them. Yeah, yeah. Monitor. And then the rest you you kinda figure that stuff out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's that's it. I think that's I think that's spot on, man. I really appreciate that insight. You know, we have just a couple more minutes. ⁓ but I'm I see people knocking trying to get in I know, man. Come on, they need to just they need to take notes to sit down. So what's next for you? Yeah. Like what you know, you've done all of this amazing stuff. Yeah. You've built this online empire empirical presence online. What's what's next for you? Yeah, so tomorrow, and thank you for asking, I'm launching the world's first digital health sales institute. And this is taking the cumulative knowledge, like I don't know a whole lot. I know this stuff really, really well. Yeah. And it's from learning from work with hundreds, dare I say thousands of startups, but taking the skills necessary to help develop the future pipeline of sales talent for digital health. What we see really quickly is most digital health startups will hire pharma or med device folks that are selling an FDA regulated product. But digital health is different. It's not just a clinical. You have to learn the clinical, financial, technical, operational, workflow, things of that nature, completely different hustle. And then sometimes people will hire SaaS or software people, salespeople, can hustle, but You know, Cedar Sinai is not gonna teach you healthcare. Right. Aetna is not gonna teach you the managed care language. So there's this this mess of where we can train people to be ready. So there's the the ability to develop talent and then teaching sales, ⁓ not salespeople, but the startup founders how to discern prospect from suspect. Right. And then when you hire people, how do you help them get the hit the ground running so you don't make those mistakes? So quick number and then we can wrap up. How much does it cost when a startup makes a bad sales hire? ⁓ gosh. Inclusive of salary? Yeah. ⁓ God, that's gotta be that's gotta be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Between three and five hundred thousand dollars. So every time they make a bad sales hire, you lose that much amount of money and the time and like I said, that that bacon sizzle because the burn is still happening, but you're not getting any revenue. So if I can help develop a pipeline of talent that can go to the startups and the accelerators and venture funds, because a lot of those jobs never get listed. Yeah. And then I teach them how to hire. This can compress the sales cycle, save that money. And then I'm also working with corporations that struggle with selling a digital product alongside a therapeutic. Yeah. So this is the first of its kind in the world. I have some backers, partners like Matter, Math Challenge, Texas Medical Center, a few VC firms. But ⁓ this is gonna be my jam. So I'm excited. I love it. What are you calling it? The Digital Health Sales Institute. You can go to digital health sales institute.com. Or you can get to it through my website, transformed.com, or hit me up on LinkedIn. I would love to talk to anybody, learn more about it. And man, I'm just blessed to be here, brother. So good to shop it up and spend time with you. Yo, thank you so much for joining us on Tech to the Limited, Kirk. I really appreciate it. We'll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening and ⁓ enjoy the rest of Vive. Peace out. Welcome back to Tech It to the Limit. A huge thank you to Kirk for joining us today. And before we wrap up today's episode, it's time for my favorite segment, Wise Nuggs, where I look back on the conversation we just had and try to extract a few nuggets of wisdom that are worth nothing on in the weeks ahead. So, let's get into it. You know, right away, one of the things I always enjoy about talking with Kirk is that he's just incredibly real. He's so easy to talk to. He meets people exactly where they are. He's present in the conversation, and I know that sounds like a small thing, but in a world where everybody is multitasking, checking Slack, checking email, checking their stock portfolio, and somehow pretending that they're listening to you at the same time, it feels good to have someone looking at you in the eye and being there with you. And it makes sense since networking is what he's all about. And it's also my first nugget I took from him. Forge the relationships you want before you need them. Many people think about networking when they need something. They need a job, they need an introduction, they need a customer, they need funding, they need help. But to Kirk, that's not the point of networking. And that's my second nugget. Kirk's point that the foundation of networking is giving, not taking. You don't build a network to take, you build a network to give. And if you spent years helping people and connecting people and sharing opportunities, making introductions and adding value, then when the day comes that you need something, you're not making a withdrawal from an empty account. You're participating in a relationship that already exists. You have funds in the bank to cash that check. Another nugget, and one of my favorite lessons, was one for founders. You wouldn't put your salesperson in charge of your developers. So, why would you assume a technical founder automatically knows how to build and lead a sales organization? That's a different discipline. It's a different expertise, a different skill set. And I think some founders learn that lesson the hard way, especially in digital health. Which brings me to another phrase that Kirk used that I absolutely love. Don't think about customers as prospects, think about them as suspects. Obviously he's not suggesting you interrogate your buyers under a bare light bulb in a basement somewhere doing your best Elliot Stabler, but I mean if that's your thing, I'm not here to judge. But the mindset shift is important. When you're a startup founder, especially early on, every conversation must feel exciting. Every meeting feels like it might be the one. Every person who replies to an email suddenly feels like they're about to sign a contract. And if you're not careful, you might start mistaking activity for progress. The suspect mindset forces you to investigate. Is there really a problem here? Is there really urgency? Is there really a budget? Is there really alignment? Or am I just getting excited because somebody took a meeting? I think that's a lesson a lot of us could probably benefit from. Honestly, after spending time with Kirk, one thing becomes obvious. His positivity is infectious. You can't spend more than five minutes around him without smiling a little more and wanting to spend a little more time with him. And when we're talking about networking, relationships, sales leadership, or honestly, just being a decent human being, that's probably not a bad lesson either. So my wise nugs for this episode are. The strongest networks, the best salespeople, and the most trusted leaders all start from the same place. Giving before taking, listening before pitching, building relationships before needing them. Because by the time you need trust, it's already too late to start building it. And I'd love to hear from you. What's one relationship in your life or your career? that paid dividends years later because you invested in it before you needed anything in return. Drop your wise nugs and let us know what stood out from this conversation. And if you're a founder trying to figure out healthcare sales or a sales professional looking to sharpen your craft, be sure to check out Kirk's Digital Health Sales Institute. You'll find information in the show notes. Full disclosure the Digital Health Sales Institute is not a sponsor of the podcast, but you could be Just drop us a line on LinkedIn. And that's gonna do it for this episode of Tech It to the Limit. A huge thank you again to Kirk Barnes for joining us, as well as my favorite of all time nurse innovator, Bonnie Clipper. As always, we'd love to hear from you. What's your biggest takeaway from this conversation? What wise nug are you walking away with? Drop a comment on LinkedIn, send me a message, or share the episode with somebody who should be part of the conversation. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you're subscribed wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. Give the video a like and help us spread the word. So if you liked the show, tell a friend. If you didn't, tell an enemy, but for God's sake, tell someone. But the biggest support you can give is to leave a review and share the clips wherever you see them. The algo loves it when you do that. You can find Ticket to the Limit on all major podcast platforms and at our website. Links are in the show notes. I'll see you next time on Tec It to the Limit. Tech It to the Limit is written and produced by Elliot Wilson, with occasional inspiration from the LLM du jour. Original music is written and performed by world-famous court minstrel Evan O'Donovan. To consume more awesome content, head to Tech ItotheLimit.fun. And don't forget to follow on LinkedIn, YouTube, Blue Sky, and across the event horizon. See you next time on Tech It to the Limit.