Dan Cohen - Neurologist, Inventor & Serial Entrepreneur | The Hidden Link Between Sleep and Success

I went through medical school, specialized in neurology, went through residency, became born certified, had great job offers, and then immediately started a business. What if I told you one simple idea to transform how we sleep, how we heal, and how we live? Today's guest isn't just a neurologist. He's a pioneer of visionary who spent decades pushing the boundaries of science and entrepreneurship. From creating the revolutionary breathe-right nasal strip to selling his company for over $566 million. I was really interested in the difference between brain and mind, but this was the early days of computers, so I was kind of excited about all that stuff. We raised 350,000 to get going. The market was very accepting at that point of really small cap companies. Sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. I mean, when you're an entrepreneur, you are a risk taker. Dr. Daniel Cohen has consistently turned bold ideas in a global impact, but this isn't just about success. It's about redefining what's possible. If you don't have to raise money, then you could focus on the business exclusively. Most people don't understand is thinking versus feeling. How an exit, in case you're not going to be able to wean in the marketplace. Using magnetic waveforms, he's transforming sleep and shaping the future of health and wellness. This is the story of a man whose relentless curiosity is changing the way we think about life itself. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot has been a huge supporter of the show, and I'm happy they are because I'm a huge believer in HubSpot. I've used it for everything from this show to all the companies I've ever run in the past. And I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs in the audience. And let me ask you a question. 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Stop spreading yourself thin, marketing is tough enough, building a business is tough enough, stop putting out fires, start making major moves with HubSpot. Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers to learn more. Dan, I am very excited for you to come on. Dan, Dr. Dan, all the above, you are a neurologist, you are at MD. I think a really fun way just to understand sort of your journey and all the different things that you've built out over your careers to really just ask a question, you are a doctor, but you are also a business person. You also build incredible businesses. So why does a doctor go into building businesses? Where did that, what was the inflection point that pushed you down that path? You know, that's a good question. A lot of people don't ask that. And essentially, I went through medical school, I specialized in neurology, went through residency, became board certified, and had great job offers, and then immediately started a business. And people looked at me and say, well, what the hell did you go through all this medical training for, and then go into business? And you know, both my parents were in business. They both had small businesses. So around the dinner table, it was commonly business discussions. Number one, number two, neurology back in the 80s, you know, isn't the kind of field or wasn't the kind of field that you could help a lot of people. You can make a lot of diagnoses, but the treatments really weren't available. And I wanted to do more good. And I thought I could do it based on my experience with the brain and understanding that by developing equipment. So it was pretty simple. But how do you, like, I mean, I actually have a friend right now who's who's in med school, and I keep trying to push her to be more entrepreneurial and she keeps going in all these traditional routes because it just feels safe, right? I think that most people, not everyone, most people that go into medicine and law outside of the fact that their parents are pushing them into it, it's because it's like a really safe career path. And if you spend that much time and energy in, in these kinds of careers, first of all, it's expensive. It takes a lot of your life to get to the end. And then you want to go make some money and pay off that debt. So I think jumping into high risk starting a business is not the first thing on everyone's mind. They're like, I got to get the best possible salary and start practicing. So you didn't do that. What was the, what was the outside of your parents outside of putting all that time and energy into your actual certifications? Why, why did you choose to go down this path? And also what, what was that first version of entrepreneurship that you felt comfortable enough doing? There was not too high risk that allowed you to actually start a career where you felt, listen, this is the direction and journey I want to go in. Well, you know, first of all, you know, I went to college and medical school in the 70s. And I got to tell you, it was really cheap. My whole college education at Penn State was 3000 dollars. Oh my god. Yeah. And my parents could afford that. They couldn't afford medical school, but even my medical school education was $7,800. So I took out a loan. So I didn't have big debt. Number one, it wasn't like, it's not like today where you come out where you've got two, three, four hundred thousand dollars worth of debt. You know, I was essentially debt free. And later in my neurology residency years, I had side jobs. I had medical director of a nursing home that did social security disability exams. So I could make money on the side working weekends and evenings. So I was in a good shape financially, especially when you're in your 30s. You know, let's face it, you know, the world's ahead of you. You're too dumb to know that you that you can fail miserably. Yeah, you're optimistic. You know, so it wasn't hard. But, but I was really interested in difference between brain and mind and things like that. And, and, and, you know, this was the early days of computers. And we could computerize the physiologic readings. And so I was kind of excited about all that stuff. And so I, I just jumped in. Just, I mean, so jumped into, jumped into what? What was that first, that first version? Well, the first version was there were a lot of high risk surgeries, principally, open heart surgery and carotid end daughterectomies where they open up the carotid artery that feeds half your brain and they take out the plaque. And these surgeries were done without brainwave monitoring, you know, very, very few facilities had the ability to do brainwave monitoring. I mean, male clinic, for instance, did, we knew that the neurologist there that did that. And so we watched him do it. And he had the old EEG machines, you know, and we looked at that and we said, you know, we can automate this process. We could bring the EEG signals in, you know, digitize them, do FFTs, you know, frequency analysis and create graphics that showed you when you were in trouble. We could even automate the process. So you didn't need to have a doctor there doing the work. So our first, you know, foray into that business was, let's automate the whole field of brainwave monitoring. And then we could sell this to hospitals, you know, that had operating rooms and it would be safer for everybody. But I got to tell you that first business, although we made a great product, we got it through the FDA, it was validated to be 100% accurate. And it was a total failure as a business. First of all, that is seemingly the most, the most risky version of entrepreneurship, creating medical devices, because if you just think of all the different pieces that have to go into that, this is not like you are drop shipping t-shirts. And there's, there's a lot of science. And the FDA is, I'm sure, very hard to deal with. I mean, it was probably less expensive to deal with them than it is now, but it was not easy. So what were the learnings from that first business? Because it sounds like you actually did all the things properly and it sounds like it was a great idea and right time and right place and the markets moving in the right direction and you're taking advantage of all this new technology and then you get the regular, you get over the regulatory hurdles as well. So what, what was the learning, like what went wrong with that business? Well, first of all, back then, what we had to do, we were very sophisticated from a technical standpoint. So we were able to make the product very quickly and then with a very, very small team. And the regulatory process for us was relatively easy. And so we got it through FDA very quickly. Then we took it out into the market and then it was the biggest, it was the biggest like slam in the face that I've ever had in business. I went out with a sales force and did the demos. You know, and after the demo, the surgeon would pull me aside and say, do you think you could remove that disk drive? And I said, wait a minute, that's the medical record. I said, you need to have the medical record there. He goes, yeah, he says, but I'm not going to be able to afford my liability insurance. He says, right now, if there's a stroke that happens in the operating room, nobody knows about it until the recovery room. And so I can say, I didn't cause it. It happened in the recovery room. So I'm not at full. And what you're doing is you're going to be able to assign blame to that stroke. That's insane. And that's why it didn't sell because now doctors felt they were liable. Right. Well, and so the big learning was, you know, you really got to get rid of it and talk to your target audience and say, is this really a good idea? I could have learned that in two days by talking to a few surgeons that it wasn't going to fly. Did you raise money for that? Yeah. When we started, yeah, we didn't have any real money. So we did a friends and family around and we raised 350,000 to get going. And then our lawyer was an SEC attorney. He knew all the, you know, VCs, remember, venture capital was just starting back in the early 80s. So he lined us up with some of those guys. And so we raised money because they thought it was a great idea. But, you know, it turned out not a good idea. But you must have a paying okay. So it actually still sounds like a great idea. It doesn't sound like a great idea if doctors are concerned about their liability insurance, but it sounds like medical innovation and more insight and more data is like a net positive thing, especially for the patient who everybody's supposed to be serving. I mean, just as a really small commentary, we can move on because I don't want to spend too much time on the first business, but just as a patient of the medical system, that is a very concerning idea that too much data now gives me the ability to place blame if somebody screws it up. Like that's what I actually, I actually want has since then has the medical system in general, I just we can talk about the US, has it adapted to new technologies in a more positive or or amicable way so that if somebody does end up screwing up, the blame can be placed because this is like a very interesting issue that you're dealing with right now as to why it wasn't accepted by doctors. I can't speak to medicine overall, but you know, I'm sure some processes are sort of buried that way. Is it look at it this way? Scott, is it any different when a pharmaceutical company is threatened by new innovation and they buy the product and they shelved it? I know ethical companies, so-called ethical companies that you wouldn't, you would think of as ethical companies that buy products that paid $10 million in the very early stage of an idea and they say this competes with a business that I have right now that's a billion dollar business. I'm just going to let it sit on the shelf until the patent expires. I think it happens all the time. That's scary, it's a little bit scary. What was the next business after this was so it failed, you didn't make money off of this. Did you sell the IP? Anything like that? No, what we did is, well, you know, I remember going back to my board, you know, after the months out in the field and I told them, I said, look, this business is not going to work. And the response was, remember, these were VCs, but the VCs back then were seasoned operators. They were people in their 50s, 60s, you know, VCs had just sort of begun as an area. And so these guys generally knew what they were talking about. And it was really fascinating. They looked at me and they said, what do you know? You're a doctor. You know, we just need to get a real sales guy in there. And so I knew that if I convinced them that the business was going to fail, the business was over. So I said, you know, okay, you're right. You know, I'm just a doctor. Let's get a sales guy in here. And I said, what I'll do is I'll take the hardware that we've developed and I'll write new software. And I'll take it into sleep labs because sleep labs have a problem that we can deal with. And there's no liability issues. And we'll be able to make them more money because we'll be able to, you know, increase their throughput. And so one of the VCs who was the most respected one in the room said, it'll take it 10 years to do that. I said, it better not because I don't think you're going to fund us for 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what was what was year? I got to tell you this because this is really funny. What was so interesting is, you know, I knew it was going to take a couple years, but I knew I needed to make progress faster. So I envisioned the product. I made some screens, you know, took screenshots went out some of the sleep labs. And I said, I can give you this and it'll reduce your scoring time from four hours to a couple minutes. And I said, and I'll even give you a special program that you want for your lab. And, you know, and we'll make that for you. But you got to pay $60,000 up front for me to develop it. In that first year without having a product, I outsold the new sales guy with his sales force of eight. And without a business, I didn't even have a product. That's amazing. That's so smart. And I'm assuming the sales guy, it doesn't matter, you know, it's like your, your, your, it doesn't matter how much sales energy you throw at this thing, he rendered the same problems. So VCC that like this pivot is going to be successful. This is a direction you're going in there. And so then they were willing to fund it. But then we did another pivot in the business when I saw that, you know, the sleep business was, was okay, but we were profitable. We were already a public company after just five years, you know, cause we needed the money, you know, and you let the public. Yeah. So we went that early. Yeah, that early. And, you know, but we had, you know, we had revenues and we were on the verge of profitability. So we know it was reasonable. You know, we were a young company and the sleep field was starting to grow primarily because of our innovation. You know, you know, when we started in that field, there were only 300 labs globally. When we left that field 10 years later, there were 3,000, you know, many of which were using our equipment because we reduced the scoring time from four hours to one minute. So it was made it far more efficient and people were starting to learn about sleep out in the air. So there are two factories there that were big boosts to sales or to, you know, growth in the field. But tell me something. So how old are you at this point when you're when you're taking a company public? Cause that is still a wild ride. So this is not something that many, I guess at this point, you're not like a first time entrepreneur. You've gone through ups and downs. You've pivoted. I mean, but this is a, this is not a small time business at this point, even even though it's relatively early on. Yeah. I was 35. That's young. That's still young. Yeah. And does it not, I mean, the people that I know that have taken companies public, they're at much later stages. Like I don't know what your revenues were like when you took that company public. But does it, does it not act as a slight distraction from building the company when you're managing that side of it as well? Yeah, it does. But you know, I had somebody on the board who was our SEC attorney and he became my mentor. And, you know, and the truth of it was, it wasn't that hard, especially as a small company. Cause, you know, most people aren't paying attention to you. So it's, you know, yeah. Did we hold quarterly calls? Did we meet with analysts? Yeah. Yeah. All those things. But I also hired a very seasoned, you know, CFO who had already been in public companies. So, and the bulk of the work when it's a public company falls to the CFO, I mean, obviously the CEO, you know, is involved and talks about the future and the vision and and what we're going to do and all that kind of stuff. But I was pretty fluent, you know, and and you know, by that point, you know, I started to develop at least a local reputation because, you know, we were an early stage mid tech company that was innovating. And so, you know, people, people like to write about that. So in the Twin Cities area, we were known. It's a little bit of work. It's something to consider. But obviously, I mean, if you have the right people around you, it's, it's not going to be like it's going to, it's going to stress you out too much. I think that's really the, that's really the secret to doing something like this and going to this kind of transaction. And I guess it really opens up a lot of liquidity too, which is nice. And that gives you some cash to play with, which is important because the alternative is staying private. Like a lot of companies do when raising rounds and rounds and rounds. And then, I mean, as the founder, you're, you're devaluing your own equity position repeatedly. And then obviously you're accountable to more professional investors, like not just accredited, but you're accountable to now like VCs and whatnot. So it's a strategy. I just don't know many people that have done it. So it's very interesting, but you did it successfully. So I just wanted to learn a little bit as to how that process goes. But you would do it the same way. I wouldn't, it depends, you know, I mean, you know, in our current company, I wouldn't do that. I mean, first of all, the market conditions have changed. The market was very accepting at that point of really small cap companies. And so that was a plus. You're right. I did one access to capital. But I didn't realize that I would need the kind of access to capital and the value of being a public company until the next idea came along in that business. And that's, that's when there was really a transition. And I was really happy to be a public company at that point because, you know, our VP of operation says I got a friend and he was like to meet you. He's got something he wants to show you. And so I said, sure, I said, I'm happy to meet him. Came into the office and we met in a little conference room. And and he was talking about the product a little bit, but he wasn't showing it to me. And, you know, his name is Bruce. And I said, Bruce, I said, you think I couldn't see it? And he reaches into his briefcase and we're sitting across a table. And he doesn't take it out and he hands it to me. He takes it out and he hands it. He puts it on the table right on his side. And I looked at it and I said, Bruce, I said, you think I could touch it? And he adds it to me. And it's a cure ad bandaid with a piece of plastic glued on top of it. And he had been describing it. And he says, well, you know, it's it's like, I got this idea. I had a nasal breathing problem. I got this idea when I went to the state fair. And I was standing on smelling avenue right across the fairgrounds and I saw this arch and I go, that's it. I got to build an arch over my nose. And I looked at the product and I, you know, we were in sleep at that point for six years. So I knew all about the issues about sleep and breathing. And I just looked at it and I said, I love it. I love it. I'll license it. And I knew, I mean, you know, Scott, we were publicly held company at that point as high tech medical. And I knew that if I took this product to my board and they would say, you're nuts. You know, we're not going to license a consumer product that's a nose bandaid. You know, so I did it without their permission or without their knowledge. How do you do that? Like, how do you even do that? As a, I mean, you're accountable to the board. I mean, you have to, you have to, you're public. Everything's exposed. So, well, you know, I did it because I knew they couldn't fire me. You know, and boards are very sensitive to optics. And here I was, the leader of the company. And I salvaged the company with a failed OR machine and then had a successful sleep business. And by the way, I knew everything that was happening in the business is not easy to replace somebody who's sort of the central figure across as, you know, the departments for the most part. And so they had to live with the decision. And so I figured, you know, sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. And this was one of those examples. I knew they wouldn't take it. And I could see the future of this business. Now, were they pissed off? Yeah. And two days after the board meeting when I showed it to them and I told them what I did, there was a contingent of the board waiting for me when I got into the office that morning. And they said, they said, you know, we don't like what you did. I said, yeah, I figured it. I said better. This is going to be a good business. And they said, well, you like it so well, you figure out how to make it work. Because I had already started to search for, you know, somebody who was consumer guy, somebody who worked for a pharmaceutical company who could understand, you know, how all this worked. I had four finalists that I was interviewing. And I said, you want me to run breathe right? I said, who's going to run sleep? I said, you figure that out. Hire somebody that's going to run sleep. You do this breathe right. In essence, they were setting me up to fail so that they could then fire me. And they want to just, they wanted to show that this was not going to work. And then when it didn't work publicly, then they have an excuse to get ready. Exactly. And I said, all right, you know, I've never done it before. But I love to learn new things. I said, I'll figure it out. How did you know that this was going to be so, I mean, you're in the sleep space. But how did you know that this particular product, which would force someone to slightly modify their behavior to actually adopt this product? I mean, because nobody's using it at this point already. It's not like you're, you know, you're not like bringing a different type of coffee to market when somebody's already drinking coffee every day. No one knows what this is. Nobody has any experience. It's a very weird experience. The first time you put it on, it's like, it's like literally nothing else that you're using your day to day. So how did you know looking at this product that this was going to be a hit? You know, sometimes you just got to go if you're gut. All right. And I think too many people don't do that. You know, they don't have a belief in themselves. They don't have faith in their ability to get something done, even though they don't know how they're going to do it. And they're, you know, they're low on the scale of risk taking. I mean, when you're an entrepreneur, you are a risk take after all. And one of the things I think most people don't understand is thinking versus feeling. Okay. I mean, you know, you just asked the right question. How do you, how did you know knowing is a felt sense? It doesn't come from up here. Everybody thinks knowing comes here comes from the gut. It's like, oh, I just know this is going to be successful. I mean, when, when Bruce handed me that nose bandaid immediately in my head, I, I saw football players wearing it. I, I, I, I, I saw the design of it. I saw the stock market chart climbing in my head. I mean, there was just immediate knowledge. And so that's why I just went with it. I just want to take a second and thank the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story. Now, if you enjoy success story, you're going to love other podcasts and their network like business made simple hosted by Donald Miller. If you've ever wondered why some businesses take off while many struggle, Donald Miller takes the mystery out of growing your business with actionable strategies you can implement today, whether you're trying to build a stronger team, craft a clearer message or boost your bottom line business made simple delivers the frameworks that you need to succeed. Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcast. So, okay, so your board is not super happy, but you don't care. You're going to figure it out anyway. So, how do you take this to market? I literally conceived of a plan that I thought we could implement. Okay. And the plan was ultimately get it on football players. But before you get it on football players, remember, this is pre-internet. You can't go on a podcast and expose this to a million people. You know, you know, you had radio interviews that, you know, I, I felt like I was talking to the cows in Montana in some of those. Yeah. And also radio doesn't work so well when you're trying to describe something that nobody's ever experienced before like a band-aid on your nose that helps you breathe at the little. That's right. So, so the key was, all right, I need the press ultimately to get behind this. And so, and we had done the medical studies, you know, we were getting it through the FDA and we had to file a denovo application because the FDA said what you just said. There's nothing like this. So, even though it's just a nose band-aid, it became, it became a class two medical device. You know, yeah. And you had to do this testing and prove it. So, essentially, what I needed to do was get the press on my side. So, my partner called, she got 700 reporters for newspapers in the business, business writers, medical writers, sports writers to agree to take our press kit and not file it in the trash can. Okay. And I've read to all of them who said, look, you know, this fall football players are going to wear this. You're going to need access to this so you can write articles about it. And they agreed, you know, they didn't know. We didn't know that football players are going to wear it. We had to make that happen. And so, so we got that seeded. We had to get distribution, which was really tough for a new company because the pharmacies wouldn't take it because the wholesalers didn't have it. The wholesalers wouldn't take it because no, no pharmacy was requesting it. So, we literally had to close loops between the customer, the pharmacist, and the wholesaler. So, I did 400 radio interviews to get 3,000 pharmacies on board, you know, so that we could get all the 10 wholesalers to take it. And then I went to Walgreens, and I said, this product's going to be a success on the head of the cough cold, you know, section says, how much business are you going to do in the first year? I said, 23 million. And he goes, you're full of shit. I said, probably. So, you know, you didn't take it, of course. And he goes, no, I'm not taking the product. I'm not giving you a shelf space. I said, oh, you're going to take it. I said, you'll see. And so, when I left his office, the first person I called was the regional manager of the Walgreens stores in Twin Cities. I took him out to lunch. I said, how do we get this into your stores? He says, oh, he says, I have control over the counter space. I said, really? I said, and it doesn't need a perk to be approved by headquarters. He goes, nope, that's my domain. As I showed him the product, I said, what do you think? He goes, I love it. I'll put it on the counter. And so, it sold, you know, anything sells on my calmer right by the cash register. That's how it sold really well. He called four of his buddies that were regional managers and other parts of the country and they took it and they was doing well. And then I get a call from the cloth cold by and he goes, get your ass in here. He totally went around them, totally ignored them, whatever, it's in your stores anyway. That's right. That's how he, you know, I got in there and I said, tell it selling really well, isn't it? He goes, you can sell shit at the counter. He says, I said, so why do you want to take the product now? He says, because you're a pain in my ass, I have to process all those waters from those regional, you know, stores separately by hand. Let's take it up my whole day. I'm taking this product just to get rid of you. That's so funny. That's so funny. So again, it's not, by the way, anybody who's never put out a CPG brand, a consumer goods brand into the market, like what you're doing is exceptionally hard to do. Yeah. Because now it's so I don't, I don't think that you can just do that same playbook in 2024. I have no idea, but that seems ridiculously hard to do to go. Unless you have the relationships, I guess that is an X factor that you can lean on. But if you don't have those relationships, it is very hard to get that kind of distribution without the sales traction or the revenue traction. Right. If you're at the stage of you were at. Well, and then to get the distribution, I mean, I had some independence with it. And then I finally got Walgreens. I took their first order. Their first order was 200,000 to stock the shelves. And the first thing I did was that with that is I went down to the best regional broker firm in the country because they were all regional. There were no national firms. And it was the Pan Cal brothers. And they were known as sort of the premier group. They were based in Chicago. So Walgreens was headquartered in Chicago. So they took care of the Walgreens account. I walked in there and they were two proper gentlemen in three piece suits. And they said, well, Dr. Cohen, what can we do for you? And I said, I've got a check for you. And they kind of looked at each other and go, well, wait a minute, we're supposed to like write you checks or you write us checks on this and that. What do you mean, you have a check for us? And I said, well, look, I got an order here for $200,000. You know, from Walgreens, I want you to take over that account and I'll give you this as a starter. And they said, well, that means you have to pay us commission on that. I said, yeah. And they go, well, okay, why are you doing this? I said, I need a favor from you. I want you to call the best, you know, eight other regional firms that are brokers and get them to meet with me. And they said, done. That's a, so we uptick distribution in no time. And we were in 40,000 stores. You know, I don't want to take you. Well, you know, I'd say the whole process took about seven months. It's very good. But I mean, get it there for football season. I was going to say, if you didn't have it, if you didn't have it in the stores, then none of the strategy would work. So I'm assuming if you wanted the football players to wear it, you need to have proof that there was a, it was like adopted by the market. Well, actually, it wasn't adopted yet because it was just going on the shelves. I needed proof from the head trainers, the head NFL trainers. So we started to badger them, you know, at a guy that was literally calling every NFL head trainer every week, and saying, have you used them yet on your players? Have you used them? And finally, one of them did. He put it on Herschel Walker and Herschel Walker scored a couple touchdowns. And there was a photographer right behind the, the goal, you know, the goalposts and he had a nice picture of Herschel wearing it. And a beat reporter, we could turn it up on page six on Monday, you know, the sports section in the Philadelphia Inquirer beat reporter, then cold us up. You know, she saw it on Wednesday and she says, well, what's the story about this? And so then she wrote an article and she entitled the article bandage to beaks breathing better. Back in those days, color prints on newspapers were rare. And there was a six by nine inch on the front page of the sports section of the Inquirer. So we made color reprints of that. We sent it back to all the other trainers and we said, hey, other players are wearing this. Your players are behind, you know, and I said, post this in your locker room. And then Jerry Rice saw it and said, hey, I got a nasal breathing problem. And he went into Lindsey McClain, the head trainer and says, I'm going to, I'm going to try one of those. He put it on. He loved it. He said, he wore Monday nights football. And at this point, like, I mean, you're still like, but you're still running the two companies. You know, you still have this pub co that's like now running both of these companies. But I'm assuming that there's a point where where breathe right starts to outpace, like all the traditional medical tech that you built out. Yeah, exactly. And so we ended up selling it. So did you sell the whole pub co? No, we just sold them just sold the sleep part. How do you, how do you do that? How do you package out a piece of a public company and then sell it? What's this do? What's the strategy to do that? It was really easy because, you know, the patents were so different that the IP, you know, could be split, you know, companies back then they tended to just buy technology and incorporate it into their, their stuff. So it was really providing them all the engineering material, you know, our sales history, the intellectual property, you know, and so it was a transaction that, you know, didn't, didn't take much. And this was so, I mean, when you sold to, you sold the GlaxoSmith client in what was the 2006, correct? Yep. That was breathe right. Okay. Obviously an amazing exit. So that was for $566 million that you sold the IP for breathe right and all the sort of. And the bismarage. I mean, there was another product, fiber choice. We launched fiber choice chewable fiber tablets to compete with Metamusel. So and that business was doing well. So we, at that point, we had about $140 million business, but it was generating a lot of profit, even for a consumer goods brand. Oh, well, the margin is basic. I mean, a breathe right nasal strip, you know, we were making them in the billions. And, and, you know, a strip cost at that point, two and three quarter cents. Oh, cheese. Right. Okay. So you could, I mean, you know, you had a 90% margin. So, okay. So then you have an amazing exit. At this point, do you keep CNS? I mean, it's publicly traded. I mean, you, you could, in theory, I'm assuming at this point, and quasi-retire. And, and you could figure what to do next. So this isn't the end of your story, though. I know that you just started another company. So even after that transaction, just what happened in your life as an entrepreneur, massive success. Now everybody, you know, knows your brand at the household name. So where do you, what do you do next? You know, I went back to my mid school days, because it was something that really bothered me that I learned in medical school. And that was 75 to 90% of all medical conditions are made worse or caused by stress. And so I asked my professors, well, you know, why don't we do something about it? They had good answers. I won't get into the details. But I wanted to see if we could solve that issue. So my partner and I said, you know what, let's, let's start a separate company. And we did this while CNS was still operating. You know, and, and it was the idea of, let's do some research. Let's figure out if we could make a technology that would do this. Yeah. And, and so we started that company in 97. Actually, even though it, you know, we go, we go by the name of soltech health right now. It really round river research quirk dba soltech health. So soltech you started like a while ago. This is not a new venture. This is just a venture that you kept going. Yeah. Well, what happened? Well, the reason we named it round river research was because we knew it was going to be like navigating around river. And we were going to have to go around and around and around to figure out the solution. When you, when you started round river before we even jumped on here, you mentioned that sort of the first company that you started, like CNS was radically different in the way that you started it. And you operated it versus round river, which eventually turned into soltech. So maybe just paint a picture for just how you thought through starting round river versus when you first started CNS. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the two companies are dramatically different, but having the experience of the first, especially having been a public company raising funds the way we did VCs, then public doing all of that, you know, engineering work, the consumer work, the consumer research, you know, all of that taught me so much that when we started the second one, it was, you know, we're going to have to do a lot of research. Let's keep the team really, really small. It's not spend a lot of money. You know, we're going to put our own money into this because we didn't know in the beginning whether or not we could solve the problem. So we, you know, we were betting against ourselves. Actually, we committed a lot of money to it. You could say out of guilt because, you know, we made a lot of money. It was like, wait a minute. I went to medical school. I didn't want to sort of trash that education. What if we could actually do this? And so, so it was, let's see what we can do. Let's, you know, go on the cheap in terms of, you know, expenses because we're going to have to do, we're going to have to work at this for a long time, you know, before we come up with a discovery. And that was true. I mean, we, we kind of knew that. We started in 97. We didn't have our first major discovery until 2014. That's a wild amount of time. Yeah. That's an absolutely wild amount of time. How does a business go and operate for, you know, seven years without having some sort of discovery or product that makes, oh, wait, no, you said 2014. So, so it was 17 years. Yeah, 17 years. How does a business operate for 17 years without figuring out what product it's going to sell? Very low burn rate. We weren't taking a salary. So, weren't we weren't paying ourselves. So we put in the money. We had a very, very small team, you know, dedicated people who loved the mission. So, you know, we didn't, we didn't pay high amounts of money. We didn't even form a board for a long time. And, and it was one of those deals where you just don't spend much money. That type of business would have not been possible if you raised venture capital. No, because, no, they would have been, well, best funds last 10 years. They finished their investment cycle after six. They needed an exit. They don't like returning stock to their investors. So, it was totally impossible. Now, we did take some money towards the latter years. And we started to make a little progress with some of the technology we were playing with. And so, friends and family were interested. Some angel investors were interested. So, we started to collect some, some investment. But again, we kept the dollars low. We kept the valuation well. And it was a lot of research, you know, it's a sort of a good result. And does it make sense the way that, so, are there a lot of companies, because I don't know this space, that a lot of companies that are just focused exclusively on, on, on just research without revenue? That seems to be like something a university would do. Not like a private company per se. Yeah. There are a number of private companies that do that, but they typically fund it through grants. So, they have grant writers, and they do that, and they have to be patient too. So, there are a number that do it that way. You know, I was too impatient to do grant writing. So, it was like, no, no, I just rather pay for it. Do you prefer one style of business over the other, raising versus not raising? Oh, yeah, it's easy. If you don't have to raise money, then you could focus on the business exclusively. Yeah. And so, I did that. But then, because we're a small business, and we adopted that strategy, and I didn't want VCs in this business, because you didn't know when you're going to really be able to productize your invention. I couldn't afford to bring them in. So, to me, it was keep it small. I mean, I still spend a lot of time fundraising, you know, right now. I mean, it's really funny, but we do it. We do it so differently than the way other companies do it today. It's like, you know, if you, you can do a 506C filing, you know, with the SEC, and that allows the company to market its own stock. All right. And so, we almost always have an offering in process, and I'm always selling. Yeah, I mean, so I mean, we have an offering open right now. Hey, Scott, you want to invest? It's a really good. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Listen, you have a track record. I'll take off. You have a track record. So, I mean, this is, this is kind of what we do. But, you know, we, we didn't get bold about seeking investment until we knew we had something. You know, we had a discovery, and then it was figuring out, all right, how do we best productize this? Because even from the time we had a discovery up until now, it's been 10 years, and we're finally now launching the product and getting it out to market. So, there was still so much more work that needed to be done. And then, and we learned so much along the way. So, it wasn't, it wasn't just one discovery. We've probably made 10 meaningful discoveries that every one of them could have resulted in, you know, a series of medical publications. But we're a business, and we have to be accountable to our shareholders. So, this turned into a huge investment in intellectual property, because ultimately when you sell a business, it's all about IP. And, and so, you know, when I realized what we had, particularly in 2018, okay, we had, we had taken the technology far enough where we realized the same part of the nervous system that we had to stimulate to reduce stress is the same. It's a pacemaker of deep sleep. And so, that was a fascinating revelation. And so, the first thing I did is I called a friend of mine who ran a sleep lab. I said, Marty, I said, I got to bring this in. We got to do some work to, you know, look at this and see what it's doing. I think we're stimulating sleep naturally in terms of the actual pacemaker, not like a sleep drug where you're not, you're not causing sleep, you're causing sedation. Okay, that affects the cortex. Sleep is, the pacemaker is in the brain step. It's in the reptilian part of the brain. And, you know, you may have heard of the autonomic nervous system, iter flight versus rest and digest. Well, it was the rest and digest part, the parasympathetic division. And we had to treat this. We ended up using a technique that had never been proven. It was hypothetical. No. And so, it was called entrainment. We had to get that part of the nervous system to react to an external safe stimuli. And so, so think about it. Trainment is too tuning forks that are tuned to the same frequency. You start one and you don't even touch the other. You just move it closer and then the other one starts vibrating because the air molecules, you know, do it. So we to do the same thing, but obviously not with air. And then the brain works, you know, electrochemically, but the electrical part was interesting. And so if we could get, you know, electric waves to, you know, which essentially is magnetic waves, to interface at the right frequency, you know, we could probably stimulate that part of the nervous system. And we did. You know, since I doubt how to do that. And then, and then we realized, you know, it's sleep stage dependent because of different safe stages. Fortunately, I had all that background, you know, we pioneered in the last in CNS, the automation of sleep diagnostics. So, so I knew, I wrote for that. Ready? Yeah. You know, how did you, how do you know that, like, no, sorry, I'm so curious. How did you talk? Because it's so interesting how the sort of like the two businesses that you've built actually play together very nicely. But how did you figure out that stress is tied to sleep? Because that, that's, that was, I mean, obviously, years of research. But what was the, what was the discovery that led you to understand that if we have this device that stimuli, I'm not going to remember any of the medical terms that you just mentioned. So I'm not even going to try it. But if you have a device that stimulates this particular part of the brain that induces true sleep and not just sedation, then that has a like a downstream effect to your stress levels. Because stress, I think from, from a layman is, is, is based on cortisol to a degree. But also the, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and how those two play together. So, I mean, there's a lot going on there. And it's just interesting how you found out that the thing that you spent your first, you know, whatever, X amount of years building actually gives you a lot of information that will help you build out the second thing that actually solves for, for stress and people. It was very easy. As we made it work for stress, you know, once we made the key discovery, yeah, I mean, we started testing it on people. They were full sleep. That's so funny. So we said, okay, you know, and I knew what area of the nervous system we were affecting. And then I started to do some literature research. And I found these papers that had identified, hey, this is really the pacemaker asleep. And so, okay, fine, they'll, everything fit beautifully. So then we started to do that testing and worked, worked through all those things. And, okay, so then this devices the pacemaker asleep, it triggers something. And then you fall asleep, and then obviously that helps your stress. And let's actually get into, let's get into the, let's get into the mechanics of stress and sleep in a second before we do that. I think it's just interesting because you mentioned IP, intellectual property. So talk to me just from a business perspective, because then we can sort of shift off business for a second. But from a business perspective, when you're building a company, I don't think a lot of first-time entrepreneurs think about IP, intellectual property, trademark, all of that, because it's expensive and time-consuming, and you need legal help to do it. So I think you're just trying to figure out how to make your first dollar. But talk to me about the importance of IP and intellectual property in a business of how you defend it. And sort of because you've done this a few times, you know, IP is a cornerstone of any successful business because, you know, let's face it, you're going to start out, you're going to be a small business. If you don't have IP, somebody's just going to walk in, you know, copy what you've done, and they've got the financial resources you're done, you're over with, you know, and so without IP, I don't know how you value a company. Even if they have revenues, if they don't have IP, a bigger company comes along, copies them, and wipes them out of the market. So to me, IP was always the cornerstone. And so when I realized what we had in 2018, I found, you know, we already had a patent firm, but I wanted more than that. I wanted a patent genius. And so I found one, you know, and, and I went out and met with him. He was out on Bainbridge Island, you know, off of Seattle. And he says, look, he says, if I take you one, as a client, he says, I bring in a team of engineers, and I do six months of research on what you have, because patents are all about the disclosure section. He says, you got to look at a patent like it's a time machine. And if you put all this information in the disclosure section, you can keep revisiting that patent for the next 20 years and creating continuation applications that keep extending the patent life. And he said, so he says, my strategy is all about disclosure, disclosure, disclosure, and try to envision the future. And I just loved what this guy was saying. It made so much sense. And so we developed an IP team. And this guy I put in charge of the IP team, I said, I'll keep feeding you ideas based on what I'm seeing clinically and how I think it's working. You guys do the research. And then this guy, this guy was a world class patent guy. I mean, this is the inventor of general motors on star technology. But then, you know, he went off and did all these other things. He owns 19.7% of all the intellectual property on autonomous vehicles, which he's licensed to the top 22 car companies around the world. All right, any prosecutes and he defends his own patents. And this guy's brilliant. And so, you know, basically, I just said, you're a charge of this. We'll just pay the bill. And so we just, we spent a fortune with him. But he loves learning. And so, you know, he's now partially retired. We're one of two clients of his, the other one is his kid. You know, and so, you know, so he and I worked together, worked together for six years, you know, developing a mammoth IP portfolio. And that's the value of our company at this point. Can that be the, because as a company, I think a lot of people focus on revenue, but you just actually mentioned something that's actually really interesting. If you get your IP done right, licensing.ip could be a revenue stream. Right. And that could be the whole business. Yes. That's right. Well, and I got you. And when, when we started to look at our technology, we realized, oh my god, you know, it get back to the 75 to 90% of all medical conditions are either made worse by or caused by stress. Yeah. Well, okay. So we can go to the FDA and get claims for all these things. You have a mammoth medical business. We even have shown that this thing works for non-stress-related conditions like diabetic peripheral neuropathy. There's 200 million people around the world with that problem. Okay. And we not only take away the pain, we start regrowing the nerves. So sensation starts to come back. Nobody's been able to do this. So you look at that market alone, we can go out to all these companies and just license that. Or we can divisionalize the pattern in such a way that we could sell that part of the business. You know, we can sell the consumer part just to fund the medical research and the medical business is going to be worse so much more than the consumer side. How much does it cost to go through this kind of process to get the IPs and the patents and everything set up properly? Well, we've spent an inordinate amount of money in that in that area. Simply because this is all brand new and we wanted to encapsulate, we wanted to basically have a monopoly on this area. So we select millions. We've got three million dollars or not. Three million. Yeah. And that's considered, I don't know this game, so that's considered a lot. That's like the higher end of the spectrum for IP. For a startup, you know, a small company, it's an enormous amount. For a large company, it's not not a big deal. But yeah, of course, but for a company like us, it's a big deal. If you have like a message for entrepreneurs that are looking to build something right now, but maybe there's less invention involved in the company they're building, is there are there things they should focus on a focus on trade marking or patenting over others? Like if I'm thinking of a company that's building out some software for example, do you recommend they even patent their code? Is that something that that people would do? Yeah, there's usually some tricks in the code and you could either patent that are maintained as a trade secret if you think that somebody's code in the art can't figure it out. But you want to you want to investigate it, you know, or, you know, the other thing is haven't have an exit in case, you know, you're not going to be able to win in the marketplace. Know who the buyers are going to be and get to know them so that so that they're aware of you. And you know, if they look, if they make you the right offer, consider it. 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But I think the first time entrepreneur just focuses on building and a lot of the ones that I speak to, they don't know who their buyer is. They don't know what the exit plan is. They don't know if it's going to go to a strategic or if it's going to go to a private equity firm or if they're going to IPO at some point. As an investor, that's incredibly scary because you want to know when you're going to get your money back. But when you build a business, what's just some advice from even like what you're building right now, when you think of an exit plan or an exit strategy that like a nearly stage entrepreneur could learn from, let me tell you how I thought through our exit through this company. So you'd appreciate it. I think see the pieces. Okay. We have a system that has a couple components to it. We have this magnetic generator that goes under the bed. All right. And it generates the frequencies that we want to do the different processes, whether it's, you know, increased deep sleep, which we can do. We can restore deep sleep, which people lose as they age. Okay. Again, that's the first. All right. So, so you've got that generator. We had to develop our own wearable because I was interested in looking at heart rate variability in the frequency domain, not just the time domain, so that we could understand the frequencies to, you know, to really figure it out and fine tune, what we tell the generator to do. So it's a closed loop feedback system. So our wearable in real time, you know, tells the generator, hey, you know, he's moving into deep sleep, you know, send them these frequencies now. Okay. So there's a wearable. Obviously, there's an app, you know, and you have to be iOS and, you know, Android compatible. And then, and we have a, you know, a cloud-based database that to store all the data so that again, we could do research. So you got four different components there. Well, of those components, you know, which one is most relatable to other companies that could be interested in us? And it would be the wearable companies, right? And so then we did research on why are the wearable companies in this business? You know, what's the main reason? You know, there's a lot of wearable companies and they come and go, but who are the ones that are going to win in the long run? Okay, because, you know, because we can make our generator, we've done enough research now to make our generator wearable agnostic. Okay. And that's all that. And that's the key part. And so if we want to team up with some wearable companies, you know, they could, we could let their wearable run our generator. Okay. And we already had identified a relationship with Best Buy. You know, they're, they're headquartered here. We know they're, you know, executives. And so, you know, they wanted to take on our product because it was novel. It was electronic. They like to get into healthcare stuff. And so, you know, I went to them and I said, look, you know, we're thinking about making the generator wearable agnostic. You know, you want to make some introductions for us. And then you guys can bundle this, you know, and they said, yes, sure. And so, you know, so we did the research on the wearable companies and we looked at them. We said, who is the top for wearable companies? And it turns out it's Apple, you know, um, Samsung, on a Xiaomi and Huawei to Chinese companies. And then you say, what's common amongst those companies? In other words, are they in the wearable business for just wearables? These are mammoth companies. And, and their wearable revenues and profits are in there. They're round off there. You know, not on their PNL. And so then you go, there's something other, there's another reason why they're in the wearable industry. Well, sure enough, those are the top four smartphone companies around the world. And once a consumer hooks the wearable up to the smartphone, they're less likely to, you know, change to a different smartphone. Okay. So they're doing it to protect market share of a much larger business. So right away, what that tells you is, man, these other wearable companies are in trouble because, you know, there's not a lot of IP associated with a wearable. Okay. And so, so you look at that, you go, these big companies can outspend all of these smaller, you know, 1000%. Yeah. And so if you look at the smaller companies, and say we're public, you know, you might consider shorting their stock, you know, because how long are they going to be able to compete with these other companies? And so what they've, some of them have tried to do with to create little niche, you know, applications. I mean, I think the smartest one is Garmin, because they've got a select type of customer and they're going to buy, they're going to be loyal to Garmin. So they're going to buy a Garmin wearable. Yeah. But you look at some of the others, look at Fitbit, you know, even though, you know, you know, Alphabet could have tied that into the Google phone better, you know, they never did. And they bought Fitbit early in the process. They claimed for the purpose of having more data, because at that point, Fitbit had like 28 million customers. All right. But you'll look at the newer companies that got into it in the past five to 10 years, you know, the number of users is in the low millions. So it's like, you know, where are they really going to go? But it's interesting though, because I know some of the companies that have been built in the past few years, and they're trying to compete with the giants, the behemoths. And when you look at your strategy, what you're saying is, I'm not going to try and compete with those behemoths. I'm going to find a way to tap into the ecosystem because now I understand why wearables are even part of their ecosystem. And that's my strategic exit or my strategic buyer on the consumer side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, would we sell the consumer part of this business? Yeah. Because we get a lot of money for it. And then we wouldn't have to raise more money and dilute our shareholder interests and fund the medical stuff. And probably take the medical stuff as an IPO early. So again, our shareholders would have complete liquidity. Yeah, that's smart. That's very, very smart. So, and I mean, also, if you keep reinvesting in the medical stuff, I'm assuming you can license that to whoever purchased the consumer stuff because they're going to want to keep advancing. Well, yeah. Or other medical companies. There's lots of medical companies that specialize in different areas. You could just say, okay, I'm going to license this product to you for depression. And you could have diabetic peripheral neuropathy. And you could have asthma. And you could have migraine. You could have, you know, ADD, ADHD. You know, it goes on and on and on and on. I want to unpack sort of the science of stress and sleep. And I think that's going to be really interesting to me to add about. But just sort of some last just a couple last thoughts on the business of it. So where does this company go? Like, where do you want to see it going in the future? What are some maybe some advancements that you're working on now that you're excited about? And then let's talk about some of the science under the hood. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mentioned DPN and we've already had early discussions with the FDA. So we will take that one, you know, through the process to get FDA clearance on that. And that's that's nice. And then there are other neurologic conditions that are kind of related in terms of the pathophysiology. All right. And but one of the things that's very interesting to me is we can restore deep sleep that we lose as we age. Deep sleep is the most important stage of sleep because it essentially it restores the body every every night. So it's it's it's definitely the key driver in terms of cell repair, cell regeneration, even DNA repair, you know, let alone regulating the endocrine system and boosting the immune system. Okay. And that's vital. When you look at a graph showing you how you lose deep sleep, how much you lose as you age and you compare that graph to the number of chronic diseases that you accumulate with age, you have you literally have inverse correlation. Wow. So you can tell by looking at outside of the fact that that everybody on earth, every human being ever loses deep sleep as they age, you can look at somebody's deep sleep graph and you can find out how all the other things in their life are going based on how much deep sleep they're pretty much. I mean, it's a very primary indicator. And you know, someone argued that it's also the indicator for longevity, you know, and so will this reverse aging to some extent? I can't answer that question, but you know, there's a lot of hypothetical, you know, evidence that would suggest that's a possibility. Yeah, because everyone's into everyone's into biohacking and longevity and reversing aging now. And there's so many, not gimmicks, but things that people are trying, but it seems like this is, this is sort of like the first thing you should focus on. Well, it's your deep sleep. Not only that, but I mean, look at it another way. I mean, I can't promise that you're going to live to 120 if you use our equipment and you restore your delta sleep, your deep sleep. But you know, let's say you're going to die at 90, you know, or if if this thing allows you to live to 95, are those extra five years worth it? And I would say they're only worth it if you can be healthy during those five years. I mean, if you gave me the choice, live without any disease until I'm 90 and then die or live to 95 and accumulate these diseases, I would take the first choice. I would say, no, no, I'll take 90 good years, you know, you get out the last five years. I agree. And do we know why deep sleep deteriorates as you get older or shortens or no, but it isn't interesting that it does. It's sort of one of those biologic clocks that, you know, you wonder about. But now we can reverse it and we can reverse it naturally. In other words, we're not doing it in some sort of way to affect the cerebral cortex to create delta waves, you know, that are associated with deep sleep, because we're migrating through the entire sleep circuitry, which affects the entire brain and has secondary effects on things like the immune system, the endocrine system, you know, cell repair, cell regeneration. I mean, I was talking to Brian Dawkins the other day, you know, the exe, eagle, you know, his whole famer, you know, and he says, man, he says, why didn't you invent this when I was in my 20s because I already felt deterioration when I hit my 30s. I said, well, Brian, you're right. I said, you start losing deep sleep in your 20s. And it just progresses until you're 80 and you don't have anymore. The cycles of sleep or stages of sleep are, I guess, our light sleep, deep sleep, which is like you said, delta. And then what's, what's REM that dream sleep? So that's drain sleep. Okay, if you look at sleep and you divide it up, you know, you spend about 25% of your sleep time, not time in bed, because there's a difference, because there's a lot of time in bed that you're awake. Let's say typically an hour. All right. And so if you look at just a sleep time, your time in dream sleep, REM sleep is about 25%. And, and the percentage of time that you are in what's called non-rem, which is light and deep is 75%. And so about 50% of that is light and 25% is deep. If you're, if you're a normal 20 year old, okay, healthy, normal 20 year old. But then what happens over time, your deep sleep gets lighter and lighter. So it's no longer deep. And your lighter sleep also gets lighter and lighter. So your sleep becomes more fragmented and you have much more wake type. And so it's not nearly as restorative as it was. And we deepen all of that non-rem sleep to make you feel better the next day. And to obviously have the health benefits. And, and just to tie that. So when you, when you deepen the deep sleep, so that impacts a lot of things. But how does this impact your stress levels and your nervous system and your, and your, and your quarters, if you mentioned it, it also backs your, your endocrine, and endocrine system, you mentioned system, and that's all your hormones, right? So maybe like showing percentages or numbers or, or some sort of quantifiable so that people understand how this deep sleep impacts your stress directly. Well, remember that there's, we're talking about the same area of the nervous system. Yes. Okay. Number one, number two, I'm sure you've heard of the term neuroplasticity. Of course. Yeah. Okay. So your brain, your brain as you learn and your brain forms new neural pathways. Exactly. Okay. Back when I was in neurology training, that, that, that concept didn't exist. Okay. It's really been the past 30 years or so. They people have realized, hey, wait a minute, the brain is dynamic. Okay. Well, because we're supporting and influencing this primitive part of the brain that has connections throughout the entire brain, it's restoring all of these areas. Like when we restore deep sleep, it doesn't happen the first night you use it. If you already have the circuits in place when you're 20, yeah, you're going to get, you're going to get an effect very quickly. Okay. But if you're 70 or 50, you know, even by the time you're mid to late 40s, you've already lost 60 to 70 percent of your deep sleep. So, you know, you've got to grow back those circuits. So depending on how old you are and how damaged your brain is, it's going to take you, you know, a month, two months, three months, and then it continues. You know, it continues to improve in terms of your deep sleep. And so, so number one, recognize that, but it happens through neuroplasticity. Okay. Now I've explained all that in relationship to sleep, but it's the same circuits related to stress. So now you've regrown all those. And we have, in our app, we have two sections. Once dedicated to sleep, the others dedicated to relaxation or meditation, stress reduction. And so you can run that as well. And that will impact those areas of the nervous system. And what's nice about that is you're awake and aware. And you can feel what's happening to your body. And when you can feel those changes, you know, humans are very good at recreating feeling states. And so then you learn what it feels like to have reduced stress because most people don't know. If you ask somebody, do you know what it feels like to have zero stress? I always have some stress. You know, I know where I'm at. I'm just, you know, I'm kind of that way. You know, and so people don't know, but when they start to experience lower and lower stress levels and profound levels of relaxation, as I wait a minute, this is how I should be operating. And by the way, this is how you optim, or this is how you optimally operate when you're in low stress states, because then you're receptive. That's when you can make really good decisions from a business standpoint. That's when you can feel your guts, say, screaming at you, no, no, this is that the wrong path. This is the right path. Okay. So then you, that's how the two are interrelated. You grow back the circuitry. You exploit that circuitry. You learn what it feels like. And you do it during the day too. I've some people that that have a system under their bed. They don't feel like moving in. So they bought another one under their desk. And they just turn that on during the day while they're doing their work. And they really, if you just had the system under your bed that's helping you with that deep sleep and that neuroplastician regrowing the things that deteriorate over time, then you're you're lowering your stress baseline. But then the second you wake up and you move away from that environment that you elevated again. So you got to find a way to in sleep and and when away, you have to find a way. Well, I guess a way to sort of take advantage of that lowered stress baseline that your deep sleep is allowing you to have when we're combining, you know, those functions in our app right now, you know, we'll have an update in a couple weeks where you there's a now a choice. It's relaxed to sleep. So it runs a relaxation session. And then at the end of that, it automatically switches into a sleep session because it's a good chance you will have already fallen asleep. So then you get the benefit of the relaxation. You can feel it and then you drift off and then it goes into your typical sleep session because all the other things that people do to help with sleep. So, you know, they say, shut off your phone, X amount of minutes before you go to bed or an hour before you go to bed, it don't eat too late and obviously no caffeine. I mean, these these all help, but they're not going to have the same impact. Oh god, no. No, we recommend all those all those sleep hygiene tips are yet. They're all good. They're all beneficial. But this is actually supporting the mechanisms that subserve sleep and stress. How does this device and deep sleep? How does that play into cellular repair, cellular regeneration, even even I'm assuming like cognitive diseases or cognitive decline as well, Alzheimer's, dementia. So I mean, obviously the benefits affect everything in your body. So we don't have to go through every single thing that can happen to people, but those two items in particular, those are interesting to me, mostly because Alzheimer's dementia is in my family. But secondly, I think that I think that the cellular damage you mentioned that before is also a really interesting point as to how deep sleep impacts that. So maybe you can speak to both of those. Sure. Well, when you think about it and when you're growing, you're going through cell degeneration, cell repair, cell growth. Okay. And one of the things that's very notable in your endocrine system with growth is growth karma. Okay. It subserves that function. And that happens during deep sleep. Okay. 70 to 80% of your growth hormone is secreted during deep sleep. And so, you know, since you lose deep sleep, you're obviously losing that functionality. So the question we have is are we restoring growth hormone levels, you know, by increasing deep sleep. We know we must be doing something because we see an effect. Okay. We haven't actually measured growth hormone levels. So I can't tell you definitively, but we know with deep sleep, people are, you know, being physically restored to a much greater extent. We also know that because, you know, if you're 70 years old, you know, you might have good deep sleep one night with our system. And then the next night it's not so good. And people call me up and they say, hey, why is my, now that I have deep sleep again, why don't I have it every night? And I said, well, are you active every day like a 20 year old? And they go, no, I said, well, that's why. So your body's not telling your brain to put it out like that. Okay. So, so again, it allows you to increase activity, but it's there for you now. So cell repair, cell regeneration, that's all part of the of the deep sleep process. Okay. And then, you know, look, do we, does, does medicine right now know everything about every kind of hormone and every kind of chemical in your body? Absolutely not. We're discovering things like that every day. So there are all of these mechanisms at play and we know they're at play in deep sleep and in the different stages of sleep. Okay. So we know we're having an effect by being able to restore deep sleep. We see the effects, you know, daytime in terms of people's level of restoration and health. So we know, formally, that's a big issue. On the other side is the immune system. The immune system is constantly surveilling every cell in your body. Is this when developing cancer? Is there an infection? Do you have enough white blood cells? Are you stem cells doing what they need to do to fight off issues? All of that is happening. And we know we bolster that because again, that's a deep sleep restorative issue. And that's really key. So, you know, we see less infection. You know, I can't speak to cancer because we don't have the data to speak to that. But it's going to be interesting to see. But I would expect over time, this will have some effect because the immune system is getting better and your body can naturally heal and detect these things. So I look at those things and say, yeah, there's going to be broad ramifications with this technology. You're going to remember, we're not developing a product here that we're starting an entire industry with I said, is that allergy? And then you mentioned dementia. There's debate about what are called towel proteins, you know, in the nervous system in neurons that are associated with Alzheimer's disease. And we know deep sleep allows for those proteins to be cleaned out of cells. And so if that's really true, you know, by promoting more deep sleep, then we should be removing those waste products. And so we'll have to see over time whether or not this decreases, you know, Alzheimer's disease can it can it reverse the effects? Can it plant it again? You know, we have decades of research ahead of us to understand all these phenomena. But this is the first thing that has to be solved for before we can start to study all the potential online positive effects of having more deep sleep at a much later age. Well, you're seeing, I mean, people are calling us up with, hey, this is getting better and that's getting better. Yeah. And I can't name these things at this point because that would be a medical claim. But yeah, we know it's happening because of what we're doing for non-rhym sleep. We're amazing. I guess then a very, a very simple question is how much sleep is act? I have two questions out of this or it's very exciting. I find this fascinating. So first of all, how much sleep do you actually need to get? Because when sit somebody says six hours, seven hours, eight hours, nine hours, I'm assuming what they're trying to do is they're trying to create a total amount of sleep where you actually get the deep sleep that benefits you in that timeframe. Because if you could guarantee X percentage of your sleep is deep sleep, then I don't think you need the eight or nine hours that are recommended because you're getting the deep sleep that's actually benefiting your body, which is really seems to be the most important kind of sleep that you get. You know, you're bringing up a really interesting point. You know, from an evolutionary standpoint, if deep sleep is the most important stage, you would expect that you would get your deep sleep earlier, right? And you sleep under it. Just in case you are awakened. And indeed, that is what has happened in terms of evolution. So almost all of your deep sleep happens in the first half of the night. So then, so then the question is, well, okay, so if I got all the deep sleep I needed in the first four hours is that all I would need? And I would say no, because the other stages also confer benefit. And just like you get most of the deep sleep early, you get most of the dream sleep later, you know, and dream sleep is helpful from an emotional standpoint, from a memory standpoint, and as is light sleep. So there is a certain amount of sleep that you need for health. There have been numerous long-term, you know, studies that have been done, you know, involving tens of millions of people, you know, so these are large studies that have been done over 20, 30 years to determine how much sleep is is best. And they really didn't determine how much is best, but they determined the minimum amount of sleep that is needed to prevent major illnesses or to lessen the incidence of major illnesses. And what that showed was six hours seemed to be the cutoff. However, here's the caveat. All those studies were done over many years before there was any kind of home testing, like we have now with wearables. So most people were recording time in bed and you're awake for about an hour when you're in bed. So is the real answer five hours, you know, to prevent illness? I don't know, but I would suspect it somewhere between five and six hours of sleep to absolutely do it, but also note that some people need more than others, you know, I'm not a long sleeper, but one of my kids will regularly sleep 10 hours, you know, and I'll be happy with six, and I function great. So that's kind of the typical range that we see in the population. So some people need more and some people need less, but if you can get that delta sleep that deep sleep early, you're going to be in much better shape. And then I guess the other question that I have about this is everybody's wearing an aura ring right now to look at their or their sleep score is important, doesn't really matter the device, the sleep score is important. When you look at sleep score, is that measuring delta sleep or is it measuring the wrong thing? You know, different wearables have different types of measurements. The yeah, yeah, and you have to remember that they're not measuring what you measure in a sleep lap. So the level of accuracy is not sleep lab quality. Okay, so there's inaccuracies there, and there's more artifact. Okay, the only way to know precisely what your sleep looks like is to measure, you know, brain waves, eye movements, chin muscle activity, none of the wearables measure this kind of stuff. No, okay, you got to measure all of that to be able to do accurate sleep staging. Now, are the wearables bad, you know, are they worthless? No, they provide some information. And what's nice about a wearable is you can see whether or not you're improving and you can correlate your score with, hey, that was a good night's sleep. Therefore, if you keep getting that score, it's probably going to be good. All right. So they have real value. The problem with wearables is they in and of themselves don't do anything to improve your sleep. I mean, that was, that was what we were, we were looking at it and saying, hey, you know what? You know, we want to build something that helps your sleep. And we built a wearable just to refine our generate. And it's just to show you it's not like it's showing you that what you built is working. Right. Well, not only that, we needed it to refine the frequency. So ours is the only wearable as it looks at heart rate variability and the frequency domains. So we can get a more accurate assessment, particularly of deep sleep. Okay, because that's the most important stage of sleep. That's what we were most interested in. And so we had to be really good at that. Now, if we, if we encrypted or provided an encrypted firmware module to the other wearables that didn't ruin their battery life, we could give them the equivalent. Okay. And so we would do that in a license arrangement with them. So they could be a little bit more accurate in the whole depth of non-rem sleep. And we pride ourselves in being able to look at that depth on all of non-rem sleep. You know, and we can divide what's happening at the brain stem level versus what's happening at the cortical level of sleep to see what the interferences. I think that I think that, you know, just after even speaking you for the past hour, I think that, you know, the one concern that I that I immediately think about is everybody's trying to optimize their sleep score. But nobody had like outside of these like sleep hygiene best practices. Again, it's a great device. It gives you some data, but are they really optimizing for the right thing? Or are they maybe thinking that their sleep is a little bit better than it actually is because they have this score that's associated with their sleep. When really they should be trying to figure out, okay, how do I actually get more delta sleep? How is that actually going to impact my health? Because it's just it's not great to give people false markers of health. That's really what I'm taking away from this. So I think that that's where the benefit of your actual device comes into play because it's it is truly correlated with very positive health markers as opposed to just measuring what you're capable of without, you know, like assistance is the best way to put it. Yeah. Well, and it allows us to personalize because yeah, we now give you the stimulus per stage of sleep number one. Number two, along that spectrum of the autonomic nervous system, people operate at different frequencies. And so we have to find what's right for you. So we do a calibration process and it's ongoing to say, okay, you know, where is Scott operating in this range between point one five and point two five cycles per second and so we can give you that for your delta sleep. So we've gone through a lot. I appreciate it. I think that, you know, if you've looked at your career, you've always innovated. You've always built very incredible pieces of technology and you've always really been on the bleeding edge. So I guess the question is like, what's next for you? Well, I'm not going to disclose everything, but you know, my wife says I have to retire when I'm 88. I'm only 72. So I've got one more project left in me and I've learned so much in this project that I think there's a discovery that we can make that's really going to be fascinating in terms of brain versus mind because a lot of people think that well, mind only comes from brain and that's Western thought, you know, that life is chemistry and so the brain generates mind and it does. It generates your egoic mind. But from everything I've learned over the years and even back when I was in residency taking care of patients, there's another level of mind and I think I understand how they interrelate and I think I can measure that process. And so I'd like to devote the rest of my career to that. Explain what that means, that that concept for people that are listening to this. So explain how that impacts them in their day to day. Like, what would this research try and uncover? What it would do is to show people that they're more than what they sing and that if they put themselves in a mindset of greater receptivity, those ideas from that higher mind would come into their conscious awareness. And that would give so much more comfort and direction in life. And it would cause much, much greater relaxation, reduced stress and it would sort of open up our eyes to much greater cooperation amongst people. And I'm assuming I'm assuming you're going to find a way to create some device or IP that's going to allow us to tap into this state. I think at this point, we already know how to do it. And I think it's, this is a lot better than working 17 years for your first discovery because because at this point, I think we can get right to the technology and fashion it and test it. So, so this is a, this for me is a short-term project of like five years. Just a, just a little baby five-year project. Right. That amazing. Yeah. If people want to, if people want to connect with you, if people want to sort of go learn more about what you're building, if people want to try some of the things that you've built, where should they go? The socials, website, all of that. Yeah, I think the, I think the websites probably the best place. And it's, uh, www.soltechhealth.com. But let me spell it because some people misspell it. So it's, Soltech is S-O-L-T-E-C. And then health. So it's S-O-L-T-E-C-H-E-A-L-T-H.com. So there's only one H in the middle there. You know, a lot of people think Soltech should be S-O-L-T-E-C-H. And it's really just T-E-C and then health. Perfect. And I'll put those links in the show notes as well. And when people go to that website and they, and they want to get started, what is the, the first device or the first setup that they should, they should purchase, they should try out? Like what are the, um, I guess the, uh, the instructions for somebody who actually wants to incorporate this device into their life? Um, you know, there's lots of written material there and blogs. Uh, they can learn about the technology. They can go right to the technology section and, and start to see it and see what the system is and, and how it interrelates with the different pieces. Um, and, and the, you know, the use instructions. Uh, it's, it's actually, even though it's a very, very sophisticated, you know, system is really simple to use. So we've got a lot of expertise in terms of user experience. And the last question I like to ask is because you've had such an incredible career and you've gone through so many different seasons of your life, building different companies and, and, and sort of exploring new ideas and inventions. Um, you could go all the way back to your 20 year old self and you have, uh, the opportunity to tell that person, um, that, that young Dr. Dan, uh, one lesson. So what would that one lesson be that you'd want to tell your 20 year old self? I would steal the phrase that Nike developed and it's just, just do it. Just go for it.