Reimagining Wound Care & Empowering Women in Entrepreneurship with Dr Wendy Slone

Heath Fletcher (00:13)
Hello again and welcome to The Healthy Enterprise. My guest today is Dr. Wendy Slone. She's an entrepreneur, an inventor, a Fulbright scholar, and she's the CEO and founder of B-Tech. So B-Tech has been helping to reimagine and redefine the conversation around wound care management with this really cool product called the Halcyon Smart Patch. So she's going to tell us more about that. Plus she has some incredible advice for young entrepreneurs who are looking to...

make their way into the world with their ideas and their passions. So let's get started.

Wendy, thank you for joining me today. Really appreciate you ⁓ giving me your time and coming out and having a conversation with me. ⁓ So let's start with tell the audience who you are and a little bit about your company and how you got started and ⁓ yeah, a little bit of your history.

Dr. Wendy Slone (01:08)
Yeah, sure. So my name is Wendy Slone. I am living in Cleveland, Ohio, and I have a company called B-Tech. B-Tech's product is called the Halcyon Smart Patch, and it's a small patch-sized device that you can put anywhere on the body to help heal wounds from the inside out. Our difference from other products that are wound care products is that we focus on increasing microcirculation.

to bring more oxygen and nutrients to the bed of the wound. And that's what helps to precipitate the healing from the inside out, strengthening the tissue along the way. ⁓ Other types of wound care products generally close across the surface. And that's good, that's much needed. But the reason why the wound reoccurs is because it's really still open underneath the surface of the skin. So if you've got something that's healing it from the inside out, which is how the body likes to heal, then you've got stronger tissue.

Now you have a less likelihood of that wound reopening and reoccurring, which can eventually possibly lead to an amputation. So what we're about is reimagining the conversation around wound care so that people begin to think about healing from the inside out and helping patients to likely prevent the need for an amputation. How we got started was out of love for parents. My mom was a diabetic.

And I saw her unfortunately lose both of her legs within a three year time frame to diabetic foot ulcers. And I began saying, my God, there's gotta be something else out here. And I learned two things. One, there really wasn't something that I felt that was suitable except for big lasers, which are cost prohibitive for most people. And then two, we haven't really changed how we manage chronic wounds.

since the dawn of man, since we came out of the Garden of Eden. ⁓ We've still been using some kind of dry wet, some kind of gel. In Egyptian time, they were using honey, literally. And we still find honey-based products now for wounds. They're honey-based gels. ⁓ And so we haven't really changed. And the market, ⁓ so on the consumer side, as well as clinicians, are looking for new types of materials. They're looking for new alternatives.

So the market is right. So it's not just that the conversation and reimagining it, but people are looking for something more. A little bit about my background. This is my second business. I had a data analytics business before where I worked for a local company in Cleveland and they had clients at NASA and ExxonMobil and I used to be a STEM expert for them helping NASA.

determine what kind of scientists they needed to hire. So did they need that engineer? Did they need a chemist? Did they need somebody who had a different background besides all of those ⁓ hardcore sciences in the STEM to help them move their agenda forward? And then with ExxonMobil, the former astronaut had STEM programs that were at universities that targeted K through college. And I used to manage some of their programs and write their reports.

My first PhD is in public policy. started life in college as a biology major. ⁓ And then I got hurt on my job and I moved into public administration. And at first I was like, my God, it's a soft science. They don't know how to like process and think and things like that. But I got over there and I fell in love and finished my master's and PhD there. I had originally been in the biology department getting a master's and then they really put two and two together that I was working with.

light refraction and light therapy and nerve regeneration. that's all that B-Tech is now. And so it's like coming full circle. I was always really good at chemistry. It just came kind of intuitively. people would ask, how do you know this technology? And I'm like, people invent stuff all the time, you know, and don't have a degree or, you know, it's like the mother of necessity, you know, that whole comment. Yeah. But I said, you know what, to go back. And so that's a kind of like questionnaires.

I got myself accepted into a analytical chemistry PhD program and just for the knowledge, you know, just so that I can say and talk with engineers. And a lot of people like assumed that I was an engineer and I was like, no, I just play one. I just absolutely know a lot of stuff and can talk the language. And that comes from the NASA background and double fold because my dad worked at NASA. And so I'm a NASA baby. It fed me at

Heath Fletcher (05:40)
Interesting.

Dr. Wendy Slone (05:40)
⁓

Yeah, so you see the full circle thing going here? Yes, so it was just ⁓ when I look at it now, like kind of like a natural evolution that led to the house young smart patch from all of that stuff that was me in the past.

Heath Fletcher (05:43)
Yeah, no kidding.

Wow. What a great, I think just the way you piece that trail together, how you ended up where you are. was like, how could you avoid it? Almost it's, it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. So the, and, so the wound, the wound concept too, is that, I mean, yeah, like we all know what it's like when you have a, you know, a cut, you, you put something gooey on there and then you wrap it up and then it gets all soggy and, and you take it off your finger and your finger is all white and it.

you're right. And things don't actually heal, but it protects I guess really what we're doing is we're trying to keep the infection out or keep it clean is more or less what we're doing. But yet that's not really what you're saying is is gonna work. mean, yeah, yeah, you heal from the inside out. Explain how that actually happens. Like how do you

Dr. Wendy Slone (06:47)
So we use far infrared light and we put it onto a proprietary bio polymer nanomatrix, which is a big way of saying it's a band-aid size device. And it goes on, like if you've ever put on an icy hot patch or a salon patch, you can put this product on and it works the same way. So when you put a salon patch on or icy hot or whatever, it's conduction from one surface to another. And that's what releases the lidocaine out into the body. And then the body absorbs it.

So it's the same principle with our Palutena SmartPatch. When you put it on, it has the far infrared radiation wavelengths impregnated onto the device because it doesn't go onto the wound, so it's not considered a band-aid. Anything that goes onto a wound is considered a band-aid, but if it goes distally, it can be classified as a device.

⁓ And so once you put it onto the skin, it's the body's ambient body temperature that activates the release of the far infrared. So let me just demystify far infrared. It's like solar, it's like the sun. And so what we're doing is just giving the body a small heat jolt to say, let's go into mitosis instead of apitosis, meaning cell death.

So what happens when you get a wound? The body's skin starts saying, die, die, die. Don't, don't heal, don't heal. And if you've got a disease state like a diabetic, which is a diabetes, the body's already said, don't heal, just continue dying. And that's how wounds become bigger and bigger. So my mom, in her case, it was a small, tiny pinhole, like the tip of my finger that went to a gaping hole this big down to the bone.

And so what I'm saying is that we have the ability to potentially heal wounds as early as a grade zero on a Wagner scale, meaning it still might just be a raised bump underneath the surface of the skin to maybe a grade three is what we're targeting. At a grade three, it means it's still open. You probably are getting down to some places where you could see some bone, but you can still use dry wet, negative pressure. You can still use all of those things.

So now what you've got is a twofold force of healing. You've got that surface layer, but ours is gonna expedite because that nano and that biopolymer are known to expedite healing of a wound. That's why we intentionally use those two products as our nanomatrix. ⁓ But now you've got a tooth prong. So you've got healing coming from the inside. And if you're using one of those other layers of closure, because the wound is like at a grade three or grade two, now you've got across the surface,

because it takes a long time to heal across the surface. Like in my mom's case, it was more than 90 days to begin to see just an inch amount of ⁓ regrowth of skin. And so the wound is open and vulnerable all that time. So the quicker you can get it closed, the less likely that it's going to get that infection. And a person devolves down into a cyclic cycle of infection hospital, infection hospital, and eventually maybe some debridement, but eventually some kind of ⁓ amputation.

So we're all about limb salvaging because what other people don't realize when you're talking about wounds is a couple of things. One, there's no one real person that is the wound guru manager.

So wound can be managed by a podiatrist, which was the case with my mom. It can go to a neurosurgeon rather, because now you've got to do some debridement. You've got to maybe do some amputation. It can be seen by that PC. It could be seen by a wound specialist, which most likely is going to be that nurse practitioner that's the wound specialist that has that hands on with it. So there's all of these different, you know, moving parts.

when you're talking about wound therapy. So it's not like when you have a heart disease, like I've got a brother in end stage heart failure. He goes to the cardiologist and then the cardiologist sees and oversees every step of the process, right? But wounds, it's not like that. I often tell people wounds are not the sexy diseases or the sexy issues like cancer or heart disease. And I know people like, oh my God, I can't believe she says that. But it's true. It's overlooked.

The second thing is, is that people who are experiencing these amputations now are not the 65 and plus senior citizens. Now it's the 18 year olds because our lifestyles have changed. We've become more sedentary. We've got more diabetics coming on board because of lifestyle changes and inactivity. And so because of that, now you're seeing these young kids with these chronic wounds that you would typically have seen.

maybe 30, 40 years ago, just in that 65 and older population of people. And the third thing is, is that, you know, people burn through their human capital. And so people and family might be like, I'm not dealing with them no more. I don't want to, I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to learn how to be a wound expert. Like my dad had to learn how to be a wound expert and he would care. The you see what I'm saying? And so everybody doesn't have that.

Heath Fletcher (11:46)
caregivers.

Dr. Wendy Slone (11:50)
So a co-morbidity of a diabetic is obesity. And so if you've got a diabetic ulcer that's on the ankle and you're obese and you're wheelchair bound, how are you going to manage a wound? And then you got other wounds because you've got pressure ulcers from sitting in the wheelchair. So you've always got something going on. And so you've got that. The other part that I find is that people don't realize the social construct issues around.

having wounds. People lose their jobs. So now they don't have the economics to pay for their lifestyles. They may not have the insurance anymore. And so they get depressed. And so in addition to the depression, the lifespan of someone who experiences an amputation has been decreased down to generally five years after the first amputation. And so you've got all of these factors that's going on and all of this is supported when you go into the doctor and they start asking you,

How are you feeling? Are you safe at home? You know, all of those type of questions, those SF, I think they're called SF20 forms. Those documents also, when I went through and did a small survey of them, began to show you that patients are saying, we need something different. We need something that's really gonna help us heal our wounds. And the clinicians are saying the same thing. So on both sides, everybody is coming to the table.

And this is why I say, and I started thinking about this, hey, at BTEC, we're helping to reimagine that conversation for people. So then now we can get out of that box and begin to expand and grow in our knowledge and understanding of, hey, new technologies like biopolymers are coming online, ⁓ nanotechnology are coming online, other types of fabrics and materials are coming online. Let's start looking at those and how can we use them effectively to help deal with

something that is a chronic situation for people, let alone the fact that it's over $12 billion globally as an industry. Wow. That's crazy, right?

Heath Fletcher (13:51)
That's crazy.

Dr. Wendy Slone (13:52)
That's crazy. Wow.

Heath Fletcher (13:54)
That's an opportunity.

Dr. Wendy Slone (13:56)
That's an opportunity.

Heath Fletcher (14:00)
So how are you, how is BTEC being received now? You're introducing this to care providers. So how is it being received? Are you getting a good response?

Dr. Wendy Slone (14:12)
I get good response. think that people are excited about it. think they'll be even more excited about it once we can get through a human pilot trial. We've done some initial testing so we know that we can build it. We know that we can get re-epithelialization. That's a fancy way of saying we know we can grow the skin back. But we need to apply it to a human to see what the efficacy of it is and validate it in that level. And once we do that, then we can take off.

The beautiful thing about our product and our technology is ⁓ a wound is a wound. And so it can be used in animals. So I've had interest expressed from veterinarians. I've had interest from people that are cardiologists because we focus on increasing microcirculation. So, Hey, will this work for my patient who has diminished microcirculation because they have congestive heart failure or some other kind of heart issue. And I'm like, yes, because our focus is increasing microcirculation.

I get interest from, you know, cos, cosmetologist saying, hey, I've got patients, I've got surgery on their face. Can this help to heal that wound, help to soothe the skin afterwards? Yes. My best one is we pitched to NASA ⁓ and we got vetted by them and it was like, this is one, a technology we like, it's cool.

Two, it's a technology that we would be interested in for two reasons. One is because when you go into space and you are in microgravity, and let me just add this, when like Jeff Bezos and all of them saying we're going into space, they're going to the threshold floor, right? So let me just clarify that. So it is anti-gravity, but it's not space space, right? No. But when you go into microgravity and it mimics, when you come back into gravity, a chronic wound.

And so the same thing in a chronic wound you're seeing in people who are going into microgravity environments. So with NASA giving the goal to go to Mars, you've got to have civilians, you're going to have military people, know, all kinds of people potentially going into space. How do you protect their bodies? How do you protect their connective tissue? This is something that could do that.

We believe we also believe that we can pivot the technology to be used as a personal radiation protection device because again, our focus is keeping the body systemically healthy by keeping that microcirculation going. That's the life of the body. You know, that's that's where all of the cellular stuff happens at. So if you can do that, then you can help maintain life, you know, in these environments. So I think that that's cool. So we've also cool.

presented to the DOD, to the Air Force for being put into the rug sacks of the military so that they can use it immediately. that military personnel don't have to necessarily be deployed away from their combat assignment zone. They can be treated quicker and more rapidly, have better response time to gunshot wounds, chemical burns, any kind of situation that would damage the skin. Because again, a wound is a wound.

The body doesn't care how it got started.

Heath Fletcher (17:24)
could you make a t-shirt out of it or a pair of long johns or something? Like make spacesuits out of it.

Dr. Wendy Slone (17:29)
So

you're right. You could, you could put it, you know, you could put it on the skins of planes to help protect planes. You could put it for commercial pilots, commercial pilots and stewardess are susceptible to getting breast cancer because of the radiation flares. And if you fly a lot, the radiation flares, they through the hall of the plane. And so it increases the likelihood of you potentially getting cancer, particularly breast cancer is what most research has shown.

⁓ so there's many, many applications of it. I liken it to, Coca-Cola and Pepsi when they had the Coke wars and Coke had one formula and they were doing it. And then here comes along that upstart Pepsi and Coke had to say, we need to what re-imagine ourselves. And this is how we got Coke light Coke zero pizza hut, Taco Bell, all of that. And they began to re-imagine themselves as a business and diversify themselves and have a portfolio.

from one formula. That's what I look at Vtech is we have this great formula with in this product with the HouseHound SmartPatch and we can take this and pivot it into many, many, many areas.

Heath Fletcher (18:40)
So remind me again, when did you start this?

Dr. Wendy Slone (18:44)
So the idea for the business, now follow the trail of this, idea for having a business was started in me in 2012. I registered the business with the state of Ohio, but I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. It's only been, I want to say in the past five to six years that we really worked out and hammered out ⁓ what is the Halcyon SmartPak.

And ⁓ so you have an idea and you just begin to float it around, float it around and tweak it and work it until you figure out what you're doing. And so that really all started about five, six years ago. And so we've been moving forward ever since.

Heath Fletcher (19:23)
So in that timeframe, what would you have said, you know, as a new entrepreneur, while it was your second company, but for this company, ⁓ what would you say was your kind of your largest hurdles this time around? Where were you seeing the most obstacles that you had to kind of push past?

Dr. Wendy Slone (19:41)
⁓ I think the biggest obstacle is when you're in the life sciences, deep tech, people always want to try to make a plum line. Well, how do you know this? And, and people will invent things all the time and, and, and had no clue. You know, it was just, I see something that needs to be done and I get a spark of inspiration. And I began, like I said, began to explore it until you hash it out and you work it out and you'd figure out.

what it is and how it works and then how you put it together. What I tell people oftentimes when they ask me about starting a business, I said, the first thing you can do for yourself that is good, even if you don't have the ideal fully flushed out, is just register your business. Get your legal entity in form. The rest of it will start to take shape as you begin to continue to work through it.

⁓ But you want to make sure if you got a certain name that you want, want to, you know, a certain branding, all of those things, because oftentimes I find entrepreneurs don't look at the business. They look at the product. And I say you need to look at the business that actually has a good product because you don't want to be a one hit wonder. So B-Tech is a business that actually has a product that has the potential for a family of products from one device.

And so you have to begin to also ask you, after you figure out what you're doing and what your product is and how it works, how can you leverage that product into a family of things under an umbrella of a company? So say for instance, if you have an umbrella company, then you can then have DBAs that do different things based on those different products and those different applications of it. So now you're building a family. Let's look at Procter and Gamble, right?

Procter and Gamble has many, many, many hundreds of thousands of businesses, but they're all under Procter and Gamble, right? So if you trace back Quaker, where is it at? Procter and Gamble, you know what saying? So you have to begin to think about the business and have, your business sound and solid? And then there's, your product because the product will stand by itself. It will develop itself as you continue to

process through it, work through it, acquire talent to help you think through things. All of that will happen and come for you. So it's almost like a two-fold ⁓ card. You've got to look both sides. But oftentimes, I find early entrepreneurs don't look at their business. They only are looking at the product. So when they go out and they start talking to people and they start trying to do

validation, you know, is this a product that the market can sustain? Is it a product that the market wants? ⁓ It may sound good to you and your family, your cousin, right? And your cousin might be like, I'm gonna give you a couple of dollars, but it is crap. You know, nobody wants to tell you that is crackerjack crap over there, right? So you gotta do some validation. They're too nice, right?

Heath Fletcher (22:50)
Too nice, they're too nice.

Dr. Wendy Slone (22:53)
So the other thing I tell people is go out and do an I-corp program. That was what I did. I did I-corp and I did validation testing. So I talked to end users. I talked to people who would use the product. I talked to, you know, other people. And what I did was I ingrained that process into the company so that we constantly keep our hand on a pulse of.

Is this still something that is viable? Is it going to be something that the market can handle? Is it something that the market wants? Is it something that people who would buy it would want to use? ⁓ cause you gotta begin to, you gotta do your market research and you gotta begin to court early adopters. So you gotta know who are your early adopters? Who is your supply chain? If you want to go that far. me, I want to be in quiet acquired.

Heath Fletcher (23:28)
your market research.

Dr. Wendy Slone (23:42)
So you've got to be able to position yourself and have these conversations with strategic. Who are the strategic in your area? You know, let them know who you are. Let them know what you're doing. Do they have an interest in it? Because if they don't have an interest and you're trying to be acquired, it's game off, right? And so you want to have all of these things in place simultaneously.

Heath Fletcher (24:05)
Yeah, it's great advice because so many people lead with the product. That's what their vision is. That's what their passion is, which is great. And that's very true. But I think what you're bringing to the forefront here is that you've got to have a business.

Dr. Wendy Slone (24:19)
Got to have a business. Yes, you have to have a business and people got

Heath Fletcher (24:22)
It's actually the foundation of it.

Dr. Wendy Slone (24:24)
Exactly,

because I find that investors are investing in you, initial, like angels. They're investing in you and that they see that you have the capability of bringing this product to market. But what they're really interested in seeing is not just your passion, but they're interested in seeing that you have a solid business model that is backed by a solid business plan.

that you know your financials and you know where they're going and that you're able to know what your milestones are and begin to work your milestones. So you can't continue if you're in a life sciences for instance, just do an R &D. You've got to get out there. You've got to do your FDA pre-subs. You've got to get out there and do your

⁓ reimbursement analysis. You got to get out there and, and if you got to do some clinical trial stuff, you got to build relationships with people in places where you can do that. You can't start cold Turkey. No.

Heath Fletcher (25:23)
And where you're at right now, you're on the verge of of human clinical trials, right? That's where you're at. You're just about to get into that stuff. And what's what's what's that going to take? What's that going to take to get you into that situation?

Dr. Wendy Slone (25:32)
Yes.

Yeah, so what we want to do is ⁓ go from just our initial animal modeling, which we're in rodents, into doing an expanded preclinical trial in two other animals. So doing an ischemic rabbit ear, because in diabetes, blood flow impedement is real. And so if we're addressing microcirculation, we need to know how our device works in that ischemic environment. And then from there, we would like to do a pig model, because pig scan is like human skin.

So we don't want to biopsy, yeah, we don't want to biopsy patients. We want to be able to get tell empirically how much re-epithelialization we can get from the product. And those are two easy things. And then we would move into a pilot human study. And in a pilot human study, then we would do X amount of patients and we would test it out on them before moving into a full-fledged. That pilot study though, in this next milestone,

that would be the ⁓ extended preclinical and the pilot human study is our next milestone. And this is what ⁓ would take us further into our desire to be looked at seriously by a large strategic for acquisition or actually least coming in as a preferred portfolio company that they will work with and mentor through. And eventually when we get to a certain place, look to potentially acquire.

Heath Fletcher (27:03)
And then that's when you go to, that's when they go to market more or less. Yeah.

Dr. Wendy Slone (27:09)
Yes, but they would do all of that. So ⁓ we don't have the breadth and the depth to hire all of the sales force due to distribution chain. So again, this is where people have to be realistic. Do you want to be an owner of a company or do you want to be successful? And ⁓ exit, and again, exit at the top of the bail curve so that you may still be able to show value to the strategic and that, we've got other ideas.

Heath Fletcher (27:26)
Well, that's

Dr. Wendy Slone (27:36)
We want to license just this part to you, but then we want to take and license another part of the technology here. So you've got to know your roadmap and the only way you're going to know your roadmap is knowing your business plan and your business model.

Heath Fletcher (27:49)
Right. And that goes for the business, but also for you as an individual, right? You got to know where you want to and what you're willing to accept as a finish line or where you want to go with it. So understanding that in advance is really important. Yeah, that's great advice. Yeah. So now you're at the stage, you're in investment stage still, right? You're looking for more investors. Yep. And that's kind of where you're working for it. So how do you find them?

How do you find those people and attract them?

Dr. Wendy Slone (28:21)
⁓ So that's one of the big challenge hurdles and everybody will always say it's the money, but I find this as an entrepreneur, you have to learn how to think out of the box and not be like just so stringent that you cannot look to the left or the right. ⁓ Oftentimes I'll ask people say, for instance, we needed help with our FDA, we needed help with our reimbursement. We won some things through pitch competitions and these were services that were part of that.

which were a blessing to us because it was work that we needed to have done. It gives us relationship with them. It gives us ability to say, when we do have funds, we want to continue that relationship because you've already done XYZ parts of work for us. And so it's really being creative and collaborating with entities that you would like to continue to work with and that you know bring value to you. So we've been really blessed at B-Tech to be able to do that.

So that's one of the ways that we've been able to get where we are now is thinking outside of the box. ⁓ Another way that we've been doing recently is looking for strategic accelerators that are focused on taking you to that doorstep of commercialization. Again, that may have manufacturing partners, ⁓ may have hospital associated partners with them that will help us to collaborate.

⁓ in further development of the device, but not only that, but they may be able to collaborate with us in terms of those clinical trials, getting those up and running and helping us to be able to access patients. it's, sometimes it's not all about raising the money, but it is, it's more though importantly to look at how can you build strong collaborative relationships that will sustain themselves beyond, you know, 12 weeks or an initial investment. ⁓ So.

What I've been doing, I learned this, I participated in a group called the ⁓ Female Founders Capital Network over in Massachusetts a couple of years ago and part of their fellowship. And it helped me to get access to a list of investors. so I'm constantly working through and onboarding new potential investors into a master spreadsheet. And then I just kind of work through those and apply. And sometimes we get interest.

monies are tight now, sometimes we don't, but I don't toss away anything because I've had things come back to me. Say for instance, last year we did Techstars ⁓ and we had applied to Techstars before, we didn't get in and then Techstars came to us and we got in. And so you never know, you my dad used to tell me, you never know what bridge you may cross again or somebody may cross to meet you at again.

And so, ⁓ I tell people, ⁓ one of my greatest takeaways is, is create a master list, work through the list. Even if you don't ask them for anything, just introduce yourself, get on their radar, let them track you. You'd follow them. And then you never know when the time comes and they open up or they may come back for you. And so I call it working smart and not hard building relationships. So business to me as an entrepreneur is.

99.9 % of building relationship. And the technology is that 0.1%. Because without relationships, building bridges, without that relationship, you cannot build anything else.

Heath Fletcher (31:48)
Yeah, it's the building bridge.

I mean, you don't know where anyone's gonna go, right? You meet someone today, they're doing they're doing X job at X company, but you don't know where they're going to be two, three, four, five years from now. And how that could have some sort of positive impact on where your where your vision is where you're going. And you you you build that bridge today. And you know, you may not have to cross it again for five more years. But by the time you get there, the bridge is already built.

Dr. Wendy Slone (32:23)
The bridge is already built. I mean, just like you and I, you know, we were introduced from somebody that I met at some place that I was speaking and presenting. And so people open the door for you, you know, and this is a ⁓ wonderful opportunity because I like what you're doing with the podcast, but it's also a wonderful opportunity to not only share, but also get BTEC out there to let people know, hey, this is who we are. This is what we're thinking.

You know, we're looking for like-minded people to think along the same way. ⁓ and it's great. And so you, love collaborating and I think that these ways are, ⁓ are priceless. could not pay anybody to do these and make these connections.

Heath Fletcher (33:07)
No, you have to just, you got to just keep, keep moving out and meeting people and ⁓ sharing your vision and sharing your passion. mean, you're, you're a very, you're very passionate about this business. You're very, you know, you're very driven and I'm sure you get a lot of, are you speaking anywhere? Yeah. I think I saw you speaking at a function not too long ago.

Dr. Wendy Slone (33:27)
Yeah, yeah, I did the women's they did a women's entrepreneurship program ⁓ event that Cleveland State University. I often get podcast invites, ⁓ school invites for students. I'm participating right now just to give a shout out to the UMass Lowell. They do wonderful, wonderful programming there. I've done some programming with them, but they invited me to be a mentor. So I'm mentoring. ⁓

PhD candidates that are doing things with like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, neurological diseases. And so I've done two cohorts and it's wonderful. And I was like, wow, why would they ask me? But it's helping them to get their pitches together, think through their business ⁓ and not think as an academician, but think as an entrepreneur. And so in academia, we're taught to think certain ways and we're taught to present certain ways. And I'm like, forget all of that.

Forget all that. And let's talk about the real world. Because the real world doesn't think like that. They don't present their business ideas like that. And it's so fruitful and so fulfilling to be able to give back. So I think part of business, even as an entrepreneur, you should not just be thinking about building, building, building, but you should also be thinking about how am going to reach back and pull forward somebody with me?

And I think that that's not looked at in entrepreneurship.

Heath Fletcher (34:56)
You're right. Yeah, I think you're right. ⁓ I mean, you would be an incredible inspiration, I'm sure to other women who are out there looking to build a business, looking to be entrepreneurs, have an idea, where do I start? Like, I mean, I think listening to you would be very inspirational for them to take that step and move forward.

Dr. Wendy Slone (35:15)
Yeah, that's my heart and passion because often times I go into a room and I'm the only female and I'm the only person of color. so ⁓ women are very intimidated when it comes to having a business and they often back down. I tell people it's the only time, the only time that I will ever allow that word, I'm sorry, you might have to beep, beep, beep this, that bitch in the room.

Heath Fletcher (35:44)
You can say that.

Dr. Wendy Slone (35:45)
And

so I said that at the last conference, said, look, the only time you can call me that without me saying you got to knuckle up and we go into the parking lot is when it comes to business. I want to be known as the baddest bitch in the room and I'm going to bring it. I come with the attitude of bringing it. And so a couple of years ago, I won future land there, pitch cipher, and I was on the panel and I told the people, said, I came to bring it today. Now, whether I win or not, my attitude is I'm a winner.

It's not a matter of if I win. It's a matter of when I win. It's a matter of when I go to market. It's a matter of when I get to where I'm, you know, ⁓ targeting to get to. It's a not it's never the word if. And if we begin to think like that as female founders and entrepreneurs, then we get to take on what I call a ballsy attitude. And we begin to be like, I can do this. I have a great idea. I have something that people want.

No matter what it is, whether it's a baby food product to a deep tech life science where you're building the next space shuttle, I don't care. Whatever it is across the spectrum. If you don't believe in yourself and that you have what it takes and that you have what it takes to be in the room, then you're going to fail and you males will just put your shingle up and go home. But if you think of yourself in that way that I'm the greatest thing here since sliced bread came on the scene.

you're going to succeed and you're going to get people to buy into you and you're going to get people that are going to champion you. So it's all about your attitude and you don't have to be mean and nasty or any of those things, but you just got to, you got to own what you know and own that you have a good idea and that you have value and not an imposter syndrome and not being bullied out of the space. So when people would say to me, well, how do you know this?

I got something for you. And I went and got myself accepted into another PhD program. Right. Because people were asking me, said, I got something for you. Hold, hold, hold up. Hold up. I'll be back on that one. When they say, do you have this? I said, hold up, hold up. I don't have that right now. And I would go and create it. do you have this relationship? Hold up, hold up. I'll be right back to you. I'm going to get that relationship because I'm not to be deterred. And I wish other females. That's why females are my passion.

And I'm finding too, it's not just females, men have the same hand.

Heath Fletcher (38:15)
gosh. Yeah, a lot of yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What did you say earlier? Imposter syndrome? Man, I lived through that so many times. my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. You know, if you don't

Dr. Wendy Slone (38:23)
Impostor syndrome.

We don't want to call the pink bunny the pink bunny, right? But we need to

Heath Fletcher (38:35)
Right.

Dr. Wendy Slone (38:38)
I remember being in graduate school and I would raise my hand and I would ask a question and my peers would say, why don't ask that, don't ask that. And I'm like, why not? I'm paying them a bazillion dollars. I need to know. I don't want to sit here like Barney Rubble. And it was like, what are you talking about? I have you ever watched the Flintstones? Barney had no light on in his eyes. It was like clueless. Nothing was registering. I don't want to be that person. I'm going to ask questions. And then I see all of y'all lining up like,

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I needed to know that. But they didn't want to ask. I'm the person that will ask.

Heath Fletcher (39:11)
Yeah.

If you need answers, all you have to do is ask.

Dr. Wendy Slone (39:19)
You just have to ask and not be ashamed to say, don't know. Let me get back.

Heath Fletcher (39:25)
Or and to question things too, like rather than saying, is it like this? Why is it like this? And why can't it be another way? think asking questions that that actually challenge the status quo as well, right? Not being afraid to ask those kinds of questions. Yeah.

Dr. Wendy Slone (39:44)
Yeah, yeah. And I tell women, ⁓ my first student was a male. My second one was a female. I told her to look, you're always going to have somebody who's going to be an asshole in the room. They're just going to try to, and it's generally a man. He's going to ask you something stupid and he's just trying to try you and it's going to, it's going to shake you a little bit. Don't be shaken. Just tell me that's a good question. I don't know. I'll get back to you. We can talk offline and then just shut them down.

very friendly, very gently, because again, you don't know what bridge you have to cross. But don't be intimidated, because that's what they're trying to do.

Heath Fletcher (40:20)
Trying to get a reaction.

Dr. Wendy Slone (40:22)
They're trying to get a reaction, but not a positive reaction.

Heath Fletcher (40:26)
situation like that, you're already nervous. And so that kind of situation would, would give some sort of defensive response, which is not, not necessarily a good one. It's almost like, well, that's a great question, but I'm going to have to get back to you on that one because I don't have an answer at the moment. Yeah.

Dr. Wendy Slone (40:42)
It's okay for me not to know what I know I'm going to say and I'm going to present. But all of the rest of it, it's fair game. And it's just like, we all have some Barney Rubble moments in our times in our lives. So it's okay.

Heath Fletcher (41:01)
Yes, it's okay. That's good advice too. It's all okay. Yep. Well, Wendy, I think you got a book in there somewhere. Book in there. 100%. 100%. I think I see a best seller. Amazon best seller.

Dr. Wendy Slone (41:18)
Yeah, yeah. I or at least at the very least the college tour. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (41:24)
⁓ This has been excellent. Is there anything you'd like to sort of wrap our conversation up with? Anything we haven't talked about that you'd like to make sure we have ⁓ on the show here?

Dr. Wendy Slone (41:38)
⁓ I just think being an entrepreneur is a great journey. You learn a lot about yourself. You learn a lot about how much tolerance you have for paying thresholds terms of not having any money coming in. You learn a lot about ⁓ building something from nothing that can become something that is life-changing for others in the marketplace.

And that don't forget to have fun along the way. Don't take yourself too seriously. Don't take your failures and internalize them. Get up and say, OK, if you don't get accepted into something, you're to hear more no's than yeses. And that's OK. Just keep plugging along. Because for every no, there's going to be a yes somewhere. And don't give up.

You know, you have to be your own best champion, your own encourager. You have to make sure you bring your family along for the journey so they understand what you're doing and why you're doing it because you need support and you need a core set of people around you. Not 50, 20 people, but a core set of people that will drop everything they're doing. When you say all hands on deck, I need you to do some research. And I have found that that is priceless. ⁓

And people that will come and work for you will come and work because they like you. They like what you're doing. And they want to see it advanced into the marketplace. So the talent will come as well. You just need to focus on building something that is great as a business, that has a good product ideal.

Heath Fletcher (43:27)
amazing advice.

Dr. Wendy Slone (43:28)
And thank you, Heath. Thank you, Heath, too, for the opportunity today.

Heath Fletcher (43:33)
it's been my pleasure. It's just been great to get to know you and meet you and hear your story. ⁓ I see great things happening for you in the, I can't wait to see where it goes from here. I love that your story came back ⁓ to NASA at some point where you were after your father being at NASA and then all of us, and then it came around and you were now working with NASA. just love that part. That was very cool. Anyway.

Dr. Wendy Slone (44:02)
And you know what's so funny is when I was ⁓ after my master's degree, the government, I don't know if they still had this program, but they used to have a program that looked for people who just got out of either master's degree or PhD that they could train to go into what they call the SES, which is the Senior Executive Service. So those are the ones who run the agencies. And my goal was to do that, to run an agency. So I got through all of that, got into that program.

And one of the first places that recruited me was NASA out in California. And it's a NASA in California sits on the Edward, the Edward Air Force base. So you had to drive through the desert to get there. And between the base in the desert was a prison. And when I got out to the base, you know, they put me on the stealth fighter and they let you sit in it. And so how many people in their lifetime can say that they sat on the stealth fighter and you smell the gas because it's been rolling across the body frame and all of that.

Heath Fletcher (44:35)
No kidding.

Dr. Wendy Slone (45:00)
And then they said, yeah, occasionally we have prison breaks. And you had to drive through and pass through the desert, pass the prison, back into the small little town every day. And I was like, I don't know if that's the life for me.

Though I really wanted to do it. But at the same time, I got an offer to go to a full bride in Norway. And so what my academic advisor said to me, don't be a fool. Go to Norway. And so instead I went to Norway.

Heath Fletcher (45:33)
Isn't that cool? Wow, that's really interesting.

Yeah, that's really interesting.

Dr. Wendy Slone (45:42)
Yeah,

it's like an al Pacino. He said I thought I was out, but they keep pulling me back in and that's what I feel about NASA, but in a good way

Heath Fletcher (45:48)
You'll

probably, it'll probably come back again. I'm sure it will. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being with me today. I really appreciate it. And I know the audience will enjoy our conversation. Wendy is definitely an inspiring spirit. She's got great energy, great passion. She's got a vision for her company and I have no doubt.

Dr. Wendy Slone (45:53)
I hope so. I hope so.

Heath Fletcher (46:13)
She's going to cross the finish line. She also had some amazing advice for young people, young entrepreneurs who are entering the market with business ideas and, and, vision for the future. The part that resonated with me was the building of bridges where every network, every conversation, every person you meet, every conference you attend is a potential opening or doorway to where you want to be, where you want to go. And it may not be.

The next day or the next week, next year, the next four years, somewhere along the line, you may run into somebody who you met, who you inspired, who you influenced, who you had some sort of conversation with that results in a, in a pinnacle moment in the evolution of your business or career. So building bridges as opposed to burning them and every stone you lay today will build a bridge for ⁓ when you need to cross it when the time comes. So,

I definitely see a book in Wendy's future. So hopefully she decides to go ahead and do with that as I think she's got a lot to share and she's certainly an inspiration to me. So I hope you enjoyed our conversation and thanks for listening to the healthy enterprise and you yourself stay healthy, stay tuned and thanks for listening.