Your Collaborations Move At The Speed Of Trust, with Timothy Nelson

Steve Krein: Hi. This is Steven Krein, and I'm here with my podcast partner, Dan Sullivan, for our third episode of our Free Zone podcast with Tim Nelson, the CEO, Chief Scientist, Chief Medical Officer, and Founder of HeartWorks. And I am incredibly blown away by the last two episodes, the conversation that we had, an innovative model that you have developed over the last 12 years. I'm excited to dig in today for this third episode to really learn more about the long-term commitments that you've had by your side over the last 12 years that has given this a foundation that can really for decades to come impact the world, not only of congenital heart disease, but my guess is many other areas that are going to benefit from the research and the work that you're doing.
 
Tim Nelson: Well, thanks for having me, Dan and Steve, and it's so inspiring what both of you have accomplished. And the StartUp Health and the ecosystem you've built is really remarkable, and we have a lot of similarities and things to share here for sure.
 
Steve Krein: So I want to dig into, one of the questions I asked you prior to recording was just the level of financial commitment it took from the funders, original funders that you began with Todd and Karen Wanek. And learn a little bit more about not only how that capital commitment evolved, but how they approached it from the perspective of a family that was impacted clearly at a level that aligns from your standpoint, what you are both trying to achieve.
 
Tim Nelson: Yeah. No. I think it's important to appreciate that what we've achieved is a direct function of the commitment, vision of Todd, Karen, and their entire family. This is a story not predicated on three R01 grants from the NIH and an academic lab, which is where I started, right? And if that was the scope and scale, we would not be having this conversation today. It's because of the transformative vision that the Wanek family had, their responsibility to make a transformative investment in congenital heart disease. They made an initial pledge, and they've shared this publicly, of $35 million over five years to launch, to build a team, and we had nothing at that 2010 stage. We had a vision. We did it in mice. Why can't we do it in humans? And we hired the first team. I mean, I'm a little bit mad because when you hang the first dollar you've made on your wall, I always like to think where was the first dollar we spent?
 
And it turns out the first dollar spent actually ended up going to the office chair that I sat in. And I was so annoyed by that because who spends money on an office chair? But that's the truth. But since then, the hard part has been annually, we work with the Wanek family to do another $10-million-a-year commitment to what we've been doing. And we've been doing that for many years now. All loaded, we have about $100 million, which the far majority of that 100 million has been from a direct investment from the Wanek family. And I am so grateful not only for their continued long-term support, but for their trust and that moment where we had nothing, right? That moment where we had nothing and that trust to be able to build an ecosystem. But this hasn't been a passive investment from Todd and Karen.
 
We meet frequently. They guide us. They've brought their whole Ashley organization to coach and mentor us along the way. This is a family-run business, if you will, in a long-term commitment that if it's only a charitable donation, we will fail. How do we go from the charitable donation that launched the assets that we have today into a growing, sustainable ecosystem that can bring more capital to the table, and be at a point where capital can be scaled rapidly to scale the manufacturing upon the technology that we have today? That's the journey that we're in today, and that's the journey that both of you and your teams are directly influenced and mentoring us along this journey.
 
Steve Krein: So first of all, incredible story that I know when you walk backwards over 12 years and tell how it's evolved, it sounds like perfection, right? Just if anybody could replicate that, it'd be perfect. But the reality is, what was that first conversation like? How long did it take you to go from being introduced to them to actually forming a synced vision for what you are going to create and get that $35-million commitment? Again, just sounds easy, but I know it was not.
 
Tim Nelson: I give all the credit to Todd and Karen. It was their vision, and they were scouring the country asking the same questions that they asked at Mayo Clinic. And for whatever reason, I was fortunate enough to be part of this team from the early days. But that commitment was very quick, and the vision of Todd is he's a quick starter. He's an entrepreneur. He's built the world's largest furniture manufacturer of Ashley Furniture. They're global. They've taken it to levels that are just impressive to anyone. He made an early bet, and I'll tell you one thing that he did that I haven't shared this publicly very often. But one thing that he did that changed me forever was he had a picture. Actually, Dan, the picture I just showed you that's hanging on my wall in my office, he had two copies of that picture. And one copy is in my office. The other copy, he had me sign with a pen on the front of the photo of his daughter, Gabrielle, and said, "I'm working for you," and signed my name.
 
And they have that photo framed in their home, and that became the bond from early on that we will make a commitment, but we expect you to make a commitment. And I think there's people that would've said no to that. I put all of my academic career, all of my career into this, and we have turned down many, many opportunities and many twists and turns over the last 12 years so that I stay committed to that photo that I signed. Once you commit to something like that, you get a return on that investment in spades. I don't regret it. I never will. It was that commitment, and we moved at the speed of trust, and moving at the speed of trust with investors, with partners is the critical thing. If you can have that trust, what can't we solve?
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. I got the chills as you were telling that story, and you might not have heard about Dan's book yet, The 4 C's, that everything starts with commitment. And what you just described in signing of the beautiful picture, I think it embodies a couple of very important pieces of what has laid the foundation for your success. You had an entrepreneurially-minded backer who had a personal experience and who aligned commitment from the very beginning. They're not small aspects of it, the entrepreneurial part of him being a Quick Start and the personal part about his family. But the third part that you just told the story of, which again just gave me chills because it's the most powerful way to begin a relationship that lays the groundwork for trust and lays the groundwork for alignment.
 
And the [inaudible] part of those 4 C's that I would love you to talk about quickly around the courage that you need to summon up to accomplish the goal, and then the capabilities that need to be either developed or brought into the mix ultimately is what leads to the confidence that you clearly have today. But it all began with the commitment from the right person or people.
 
Dan Sullivan: So the 4 C's in the Coach context is that you start with a commitment, okay? And commitment is when you make when you're dedicated to a result, but you don't have the capability, so you don't have confidence either. You have commitment, and so what has to come in next is courage, okay? And the difference between courage and confidence is that confidence feels good.
 
Tim Nelson: Totally.
 
Dan Sullivan: And it's the combination, the catalytic effect of commitment and courage which actually creates the capability. And confidence is the reward you get once you get the capability, and then with the confidence you can make an even higher commitment and you can start the process over again.
 
Tim Nelson: Love it. Love it.
 
Dan Sullivan: And you could do your 12 years and you could say, "Well, this is the commitment period, and this is the courage period, and then we have the capability period. And then now we're getting some of the benefit of the confidence part of the process." And then, when we now go across into the capitalization stage, again, there's going to be commitment, courage before the capability and confidence comes again.
 
Tim Nelson: Dan, you're like the Jedi wizard for me that just explains things. From the first half an hour I met you, I've been endeared by your wisdom and your ability to simplify things. What you just described there, overlaying that on our experience is the commitment was huge as you just said, and we had no capability. I think this is important for people to realize, and for your audience to hopefully in the health startup world to be inspired by perhaps that we had no capabilities. We did not have a track record in this. We had an idea based on animal studies that said, why not? Right? And the tyranny of the expert is a dangerous thing in academia. I mean, what I mean by that is the expert mentality is, "You come to us, the expert, we'll tell you what to do, and we'll tell you why you were stupid and why your ideas won't work. Because we tried it 20 years ago and it didn't work then. By God, it's not going to work now."
 
I wasn't an expert at that time. I was naive. I still am at some level, but I was willing to take a risk and then take a commitment. And that catalyst, as you described it, allowed us to build capabilities that we now, as we sit here today, 2022, we have capabilities by producing patient-specific autologous stem cells and making heart muscle cells that nobody else in the world has. And we have FDA permission to launch the first clinical trial, which will start in the coming weeks. That capability, that unique capability was not because we were extra smart, was not because we are extra lucky. We have elements of all of that. But it really was that commitment and that courage of our backers and our team that bought into this early on.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, and the 11 centers of excellence who have agreed to do the heavy work of the clinical trials so that it wasn't just one lab in Rochester, Minnesota, doing it. I think that's really the interesting, so just to take it back to our four-day conversation, he wasn't getting in, Steve, he wasn't getting in.
 
Steve Krein: By the way, just to use this again as an analogy, what Dan puts up as a filter for getting into Strategic Coach, it sounds like what you put up as a filter for getting involved with your collaboration. And I always am impressed by Dan's black and white nature of who gets in and who can't get in as a result of that. How do you go from what you've been doing for the last 12 years to transition into a company? A double-bottom-line-focused company needs to do both the impact but the financial return as well, especially when you bring in investors. A: How do you make that transition? And then, I want to get into a little bit of, how you outline for others what your criteria is for getting involved with your collaboration.
 
Tim Nelson: So at Strategic Coach this week, they have you go around and introduce yourself as, "I'm an entrepreneur with an specialty in X." And then, what's your accomplishment in the last year? So I thought about it, I had some time to think while other people were talking, and I came up with, "I'm an entrepreneur with a specialty in curing congenital heart disease. And my biggest accomplishment in the last year is getting Dan Sullivan to let me into Strategic Coach as a nonprofit." And that was my joke. And then I explained that a little bit, because what we really are is, we are a clinical stage startup that is funded by philanthropic capital to be able to de-risk our technology and launch a sustainable growing industry.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yep. And I think the big thing, and I had to drag it out of him, and I said, "Who owns the IP?" I said, "Who owns the IP for all this stuff?" And he said, well, the previous Friday, the FDA had given him the go ahead. And on Monday the Mayo Clinic who owned it gave him all his IP back with an agreement to a future royalty agreement between them. And I thought it was incredibly wise on their part to do that because if they hadn't, you were going to walk. Somewhere down the road, you were going to walk, and they can still have you as part of the Mayo family. And I said, "You have an IP company, and I suspect the IP is worth a lot." And he said, "Yeah," and I said, "Okay. You can come into the Program on the basis of your profit-making IP company."
 
Tim Nelson: Yeah. So what Dan is describing there, which is a key element here for our next step-
 
Dan Sullivan: Because it's analogous to the big trip.
 
Tim Nelson: Yep, is that we actually started out 12 years ago. We started this program, but in parallel, aligned but decoupled, we started a for-profit entity known as ReGen Theranostics. And ReGen Theranostics was started with the sole purpose of making bio-engineered IPS cells to support the research community like our program at Mayo Clinic. That's how we started, and we had a for-profit just doing a contract manufacturing of stem cells basically. As we started developing needs of our clinical trials and other things, ReGen, as a for-profit, started taking on more and more capabilities of supporting our multi-center clinical trial. And so that was always there and it added capabilities for what our mission was of curing congenital heart disease. And we always had the vision that we would raise the capital at ReGen to be able to develop the products for congenital heart disease. Well, turns out that's wrong.
 
Turns out this is a failure on our original plan because we were too early, we didn't have enough capabilities, the market size was too small. And any person in VC or in pharmaceuticals or device companies will tell you, if you just ask them, "Why don't you invest in pediatric devices?" They'll give you a hundred reasons why they cannot do it. So it was only in the last couple of years that the conversation between our funders with the Wanek family and our leadership at Mayo Clinic came to the realization that for this to continue to grow, we need to create a broader ecosystem that brings hospitals together. And so what we did is we created the nonprofit overarching umbrella structure of HeartWorks to be able to bring all of our assets together, all of our know-how together, and put it very clear and unapologetically, our focus is to cure congenital heart disease. And we're going to bring collaboration together in a unique way for that moonshot that's never been done before for congenital heart disease. But underneath that, we'll have a wholly owned subsidiary ReGen that is a for-profit entity. And that's where the original investors at ReGen and Mayo Clinic all agreed to give their assets to the nonprofit HeartWorks because putting it under that structure will give us the best chance of not only meeting our goal of congenital heart, growing the philanthropic contributions, and growing the commercial assets that are going to be needed to make this scalable. We realize that $100-million philanthropic donation is transformative, but we also realize that $100 million is grossly inadequate to fundamentally develop products that are going to change the trajectory of this.
 
So we have to build a plan that can bring both together. And so that's where we're putting our know-how and all of our growth opportunities into the for-profit so that we can bring capital dollars from the market when the timing is right. And ultimately it always aligns with our core moonshot of congenital heart disease. So the alignment and the center point of this is really, really powerful right now.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. One of the things, and I totally grasp the intelligence of the nonprofit side, and the reason is we're frequent travelers going back and forth across the Canadian-American border, and we have Trusted Traveler, NEXUS, it's called NEXUS in Canada and Trusted Traveler. And we just go to a machine now and you activate it going across the border, and you look into the camera and they say, "Welcome to the United States." The other people who don't have this are standing in very long lines. And their U.S. customs and immigration people that they're going to encounter are not friendly people. Ours comes in and says, "Are you Dan?" And I said, "I'm Dan," said, "Welcome to the United States," The human that I talked to.
 
That's what his nonprofit. He doesn't get his 11 collaborators in the centers of excellence if he's a profit-making company. He only gets them if he's a nonprofit, because he speaks the language and they have to motivate all their people to get involved. And they're not going to do it for a profit-making company. They're going to do it for somebody from their same tribe. And I totally grasped it, but if you didn't have the nonprofit IP company, you're not getting into Strategic Coach.
 
Tim Nelson: Exactly. And another component there, both the nonprofit, for-profit that you're highlighting is our having the world's first FDA permission to do what we're doing. We've had, I think, a great trusting relationship with the FDA on how we have this structured, which is the gatekeeper of any biomedical product development. So it is remarkably catalytic of how these pieces are coming together. And I sometimes spend a lot of time trying to convince people of this story, Dan, and just sharing our story, you were able to codify it in such a simplistic way that I was begging to get into Strategic Coach because if you could do that in a half an hour, what the hell could you do for the next 10 years for me? So you sold me with your capabilities very quickly because of those insights.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I had a conversation very briefly with Kathy Ireland, who was the Sports Illustrated. She was the model of 13 issues of Sports Illustrated, and she was the freckled tomboy model, then she quit. She did 15 years, and then she started a $2-billion company. I won't go into the details. But somebody asked her in the audience, "What was the biggest skill that's allowed you to get to two billion?" And she says, "My understanding that 'No' is a complete sentence."
 
Tim Nelson: I love it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And the whole point is, people don't know what your yes means until they know what your no means. And the other thing that I saw, and I think it was when we were having lunch and Jeff Madoff was there. Jeff did all the interviews at Genius because Tim came and spoke at Genius Network. And it was the whole thing that I said, "The people that you've acquired as centers of excellent collaborators are actually your distribution system when you productize what you're doing here. You've actually built your entire distribution system as co-designers and co-creators of the breakthrough. And then they're going to become, through licensing agreements, they're going to become the for-profit distribution system." And that's what I found was amazing about what you've done.
 
Steve Krein: So do you have the HeartWorks' nonprofit above the corporation or side by side with the corporation?
 
Tim Nelson: 100% above it. So, HeartWorks is the umbrella structure right now with, the for-profit is currently 100% owned by HeartWorks, the nonprofit. What that allows us to do is that allows us to de-risk our IP portfolio, our product development, our clinical trials. We are a clinical stage nonprofit. And when we get to the tipping point of when that technology needs to be scaled, and let's say a phase three clinical trial is a tipping point where we think about it. Once we get to that definitive clinical trial, that's a point where we can now more effectively ask for investment opportunities rather than philanthropic donations. Obviously, we might be forced to do that sooner than we want to if our philanthropic contributions aren't sufficient, but the further we can get with philanthropic contributions, the more value we are creating for our future investors. And you do this, Steve, I'm preaching to the choir here.
 
Steve Krein: No, but I like you explaining it to people that are listening. Yeah.
 
Tim Nelson: There's $400 billion annually in the United States in philanthropic giving. That's 2018 numbers. 400 billion. That's 10 times larger than the NIH complete budget. So 140 billion is typically earmarked for healthcare. Much of that money goes to what? If you got to get rid of $50 million out of your foundation, it's really, really hard to find an investible team that's aligned with your mission. So you build a building and you put your name on it, and put it into an endowment, which is the worst possible investment of any philanthropist in my mind.
 
Dan Sullivan: And then you have the Spring Gala.
 
Tim Nelson: Yeah, right. It's a broken system. And if you think healthcare is broken, I will argue philanthropy is the reason healthcare is broken, because philanthropy is broken. If we build investible teams, and we can de-risk product development with those capital dollars when no other reasonable investor would be involved, we can take shots on goal and move things forward in a no-fear, trusted way. And so it's partly the money, it's partly getting team members to be committed to that because there's more stability in these scientists doing other things. But ultimately it's not team member or money dependent. Ultimately, it's a plan that has a sustainable, scalable platform that inspires the capital and the people and the resources.
 
Steve Krein: So are you running or have you put yet a team in place to run ReGen as a company? Or is that a down-the-road endeavor in terms of your goals?
 
Tim Nelson: No. It's a very active conversation right now. Keegan Caldwell's been involved with us. Dan connected us with him.
 
Dan Sullivan: He liked Keegan because it was the first lawyer he met in a hoodie.
 
Tim Nelson: Exactly. Very pragmatic.
 
Dan Sullivan: And he understood technology transfer from the type of thing, the Mayo to Tim Nelson transfer that happened there.
 
Tim Nelson: We have an external group of advisors that I actually created early on, which was atypical, I took a non-academic group of advisors that have been alongside of us and have been challenging... HeartWorks exists because of that group. So I would say, Steve, we're evolving there, but it's always a matter of timing, right? I mean, we haven't gotten ahead of ourselves yet with the grandiosity of launching a business when we don't have a business plan.
 
Dan Sullivan: I don't think you have to.
 
Tim Nelson: But we have a plan of when the clinical trials get to a definitive stage. I'll also say, because of this recent FDA approval, I just had a conversation yesterday and I have two more today with companies that are very interested in our know-how and what we have created. We have FDA permission to do autologous IPS production. There's many other companies, I've seen their business plans, that are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to do what we've already done. And so we're in licensing negotiations, know-how agreements right now with a number of companies that will be revenue generating for our group with that know-how. And so we're entering into that earned income world right now because of the Unique Ability of our capabilities and our FDA permission.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. There was a famous yo-yo champion. He was asked, "What's the most important thing of being a world-class master yo-yo champion?" He says, "Make sure you can do your trick before you name your trick."
 
Tim Nelson: Love it. Again, Dan, you tell stories that capture exactly what we're trying to do, and that's exactly right.
 
Dan Sullivan: You've mastered your trick. And the truth is that it's the 11 centers that you have already. They're going to be heroes to hundreds and thousands of people in their own markets. So the grandiosity doesn't have to come here. You're not selling fairy dust here.
 
Tim Nelson: Exactly. Now, the business model is, if you go back to our fundamental problem, which is the market size is too small for congenital heart disease. That's why we're a nonprofit. That's the only reason we started out as a nonprofit, right? We would not be a nonprofit if the market size was big enough to support what we do. So we're a nonprofit because we have a small market. However, for us to raise the capital beyond philanthropy to make this a sustainable cure that transforms generations in front of us, we're going to have to enter into other markets like adult ischemic heart disease. And so we are in conversations with other groups to find where that collaboration is, because our Unique Ability can be leveraged with other larger markets, and we can't ignore that. We have to proactively engage in that. So the idea of starting with a focus, building unique capacities, and then being prepared to be able to scale and expand that with emerging markets that are bigger, that's the playbook that we're figuring out day by day right now.
 
Steve Krein: Have you outlined your ideal collaborators that would be as easy as reading a piece of paper or a document that would let somebody know if they fit with collaboration with you or not?
 
Tim Nelson: No. I guess in the context of hospitals, yes. So our hospital structures, that's very clear. We run down the list there that they've got name recognition, they serve a region of the country, and they are striving and built to be the center of excellence in their region. So we partner with people that are growth-minded and wanting to grow on collaboration side. Steve, I think you might be maybe thinking a little bit more broadly than that in terms of other partners, investors, capabilities. I'll give you an example that I met Alex at Platinum Trip. Alex runs InfoTrust, a large company that does web services, all technology. I'm not an expert in it, so Alex, forgive me for doing your company injustice. But what I do get about Alex's company is they've made a pledge that 10% of their professional capacity is going to be working towards nonprofits in a way that they don't charge.
 
And so they are working with us now to do things that we would never paid somebody to do, because we wouldn't have been able to justify the resources to do it. But they're coming in, redoing our website, making us more searchable. And their business model, which Alex, you're brilliant, because he says, "We're going to have 10% of our capacity going to projects that we are inspired to do." And HeartWorks became a project that their group got inspired by and they put a statement of work together, deliverables together, time and energy together. And the bottom line is always zero for us. But what they get out of it is they get workforce retention, because their workforce is making their diversity skills work to have an impact on groups like HeartWorks. And so it's good business for worker retention for Alex's company and it's catalytic for us. So those are the types of things, Steve, that-
 
Dan Sullivan: And I think you'll see more of this. First of all, the already existing capabilities that you're going to need for every stage of your growth already exist out there. You just don't know them and they don't know you. But it won't be their message that catalyzes it as your message. I think you're a wonderful storyteller and it's like Steve's partner. It's the storytelling that actually unifies all the elements. Steve, as we wrap up number three here, I'm going to challenge you because you've had your own, how many years is yours, StartUp Health?
 
Steve Krein: 12 years.
 
Dan Sullivan: 12 and 12.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: We got two 12s. We got collaborating 12s here. Three things that is a new model for you that will now immediately accelerate certain things that you're doing in StartUp Health as a result of listening to this very, I mean, really, really singularly focused, courageous person really has created this, plus two other singularly courageous people, the donors here. But what have you got from this that you can see accelerating the StartUp Health model?
 
Steve Krein: Well, first of all, a great example of it working.
 
Dan Sullivan: And you'll have the video here and you can show it too.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. But Tim, what you've done, and the reason I was being more precise with every step in the beginning and all these different things is that, so many innovators skip that part. And then they're frustrated with why they're having not only failure after failure, but frustration after frustration with the lack of support from their investors or from their partner.
 
Dan Sullivan: Or from the world, from the world-
 
Steve Krein: The world, the world's against them. You're like this perfect... And I always use when talking about the concept within StartUp Health an example of an entrepreneur or a company or a situation. And oftentimes I have to go out of healthcare to use an example of it working. And I go back to the moon landing example a million times because I'm like, over and over again, it was 400,000 people and 20,000 companies, and this is what happens. It was $140 billion in today's dollars, blah, blah, blah. But to do it now in healthcare, what everyone is trying to do, I think for the last 12 years you've laid a really interesting groundwork. And while there have been plenty of people over the last decade that have built companies, they miss some of the steps along the way that you've put in place.
 
So to answer your question directly, and then one is, you're a great model for others to be inspired by about the ingredients. And being able to say as the examples when you were talking about the wonderful caring alignment with Karen and Todd, that will, I believe, catalyze a whole new generation of entrepreneurs to finally see it working. Because there's a lot of people weren't sure it will work in terms of when you talk about collaborative mindset. I mean, even your Bob Shaddy example like, don't understate that. That's a pivotal new commitment like Dan described the C's, commitment coming in. And so if you could dissect- We call it the anatomy of a moonshot, right? It's like the anatomy of your moonshot has a lot of the same ingredients we talk about. And so I'm excited to dig in and get to know you and the company more in organization. And now that you're in the community at Strategic Coach, it makes it even easier to connect.
 
And you'll hear some of the lingo, I brought some of it up today that we talk about whether it be Unique Ability, whether it be the 4 C's, whether it be around collaboration. The last question I asked you, quite frankly, around the ideal collaborators. One of the exercises we did probably three years ago now, Dan-
 
Dan Sullivan: Perfect fit.
 
Steve Krein: The perfect fit collaborator or client, but literally putting on a piece of paper and sharing it, and everyone's like, "What do you mean sharing it?" And they're like, "No, no. I mean, you rattled off a bunch of stuff, but does everybody know that it's talking to you, what you're looking for?" And are you confident enough to say, "Here is who I'm looking for. Does it match with who you are?" And that's a pretty ballsy way to operate.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it's being the buyer rather than the seller.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. Let's use that as a wrap up, because you're the buyer now instead of the seller with collaborators and people who can help multiply the $100 million by a hundred times, if not a thousand times, to really make this moonshot achieved. And by the way, I think we're building an ecosystem of moonshots, and so I think this fits squarely in the hole of there's a lot to collaborate in.
 
Tim Nelson: Well, the one thing I would invite you both and your audience to do your due diligence on us, because there's things that I'm not even thinking of. February 23, 2023, we have a virtual event that everybody's invited to participate in and see firsthand the community, the families that we work with, the investors and the technology partners. You simply have to go to webuildhearts.org, webuildhearts.org. You can find the registration to our virtual event on February 23. It's an extraordinary event where we send you out a box of food, a bottle of wine, we cook a meal together, and we spend two hours on Zoom together from a thousands of people across North America. And we really can go deep with our milestones, what we've done in the last year.
 
And people can meet the stakeholders of our ecosystem, from the kids and the families that are affected directly to the big box investors like the Wanek family and Greg Olsen from Fox NFL. So I'd encourage you both and your teams to consider joining us for dinner on the 23rd to do your due diligence. And I can only imagine that there's Unique Abilities out there in this world that we haven't even thought of yet to help us propel and accelerate what we're doing collaboratively. So I can't say thank you enough to you, Dan, and great to meet you, Steve, and what you guys are doing and what you've already taught me today is invaluable. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
 
Dan Sullivan: That's great.
 
Steve Krein: Dan, what's your biggest insight from the call as we wrap?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, first of all, and by the way, you got a book. I see book titles floating in the area, and you've got a book, The Anatomy of a Moonshot, I think that's a book.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I got New York City. He sells condos. I was in a breakout session with him on one of our Zoom calls, and he's really interested in intellectual property. And I said, "Why are you interested, Dexter?" And he said, "I'm so tired. I'm really tired of selling $6 million condos." I said, "That's a wonderful book title. Everybody will read, I'm Tired of Selling $6 Million Condos." Okay, there will be $18 million condo sellers say, "Would you be interested in a $18 million condo?" So the whole take I really, really get out of it is without knowing it, there wasn't anybody I was picking up on the Longevity Trip that seemed to understand intuitively what we've been striving for in Coach for 33 years and five years in Free Zone now.
 
And I just got the feeling that you had in your own way, pioneered and discovered what the collaboration really looks like in a very, very complex world, in a very highly regulated world. So I was deeply, deeply intrigued by what you were doing. And I will say this, we introduced you to Keegan Caldwell, and I think the biggest IP you will have 10 years from now is not so much the scientific breakthrough. Scientific breakthrough gets you in the door of a vast collaborative world. I bet the greatest IP is all the different processes and methods of collaboration that you're now going to grow to take this breakthrough into the world so that it's one in 100 babies, but right now it's 9,999 of the babies that are dying. Polar bears are really good for pushing a cause, but babies are a lot better.
 
Tim Nelson: Well, my world has opened up since that Platinum Trip. When I met you and Joe, my world just became a lot bigger. I was at Joe's Genius Network and presented there. Peter has invited me to be on stage at A360 in March coming up. It's amazing to me how engaged people are with the model that we're talking about. The model is just been a byproduct of our day-to-day activity. It hasn't been our focus, and yet people are so engaged. James who I met at Genius Network has invested in a startup company that has struggled because of the rare market. And he's come to us and said, "How do we flip this model because of the rare market?" And there's other people that have been in the nonprofit world that have raised a shitload of money for charities, and they don't have a team to execute anything. And they're thinking, "How do we do this?" And so you were there, Dan, at Genius Network, and on February 25, we're going to be gathering with a small group of people to start kicking the tires on, how do we start codifying this model?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yep. But the model that is the world-changing capability, I mean, there's millions and millions of discoveries lining up, but they just don't have the model. And as you say, the big systems are broken. And I was very intrigued, we're going to send this out immediately as soon as Gord thinks it's fit. I mean, he cleans things up and makes it presentable, but it'll go out to all the people. And for every one person we have in the Free Zone, there's 10 that are thinking about it. But they don't have a conceptual structure, and they don't have a living example to actually get the sense of what it is. So I think we're all grateful to each other for this three-way discussion.
 
Tim Nelson: And my wife is particularly grateful to you and Babs, Dan, because Chad coached me to go home and create a golden Free Day for my wife as step number one. So my wife will get the first golden Free Day before I'll take it. And the second thing is, I notice you have a Couples Connection that's on your thing. And I realized in the first day at Coach that most of my long-term visions of what I talk about is dependent on my kids and my grandkids. And so how arrogant of me to sit here in Strategic Coach without my wife, because I can create the perfect plan, but if my wife isn't committed to that plan, I don't have that generational opportunity that I dream about. So I came home and did a golden Free Day for my wife and said to my wife, "We're going to sign up for a Couples Connection as priority number one."
 
Steve Krein: That was one of the most transformational weekends. In 2002, I think we did, my wife, we came up with a 20-year vision. All the tools that Strategic Coach has for entrepreneurs was translated into couples' tools. And we found it probably four or five years, maybe it was like three years ago because we were looking through a bunch of stuff, found all the workbooks and stuff, and hadn't looked at them in years. But the alignment we got from that in everything from where we wanted to live and how we wanted to raise our kids and the lifestyle we wanted to have, and all those things were all designed, custom designed at the Couples Con- It used to be called Couples Conference, now it's called the Connection-
 
Dan Sullivan: It's still Couples Conference.
 
Steve Krein: Oh, it is. Yeah. Couples Con. Fantastic. Highly recommend it. Yeah.
 
Tim Nelson: No, that's good to know.
 
Steve Krein: Hey, Tim, really wonderful to meet you. Look forward to many more conversations and hopefully collaborating together.
 
Tim Nelson: Yeah, Steve, I'd love to learn more about what you guys are doing and your unique capabilities that there's things we can learn there. One specific thing, Steve, I wanted to throw out at you is another part of my day job, if you will, working at Mayo Clinic. I work with colleagues in Northwest Wisconsin. It's a billion-dollar healthcare system, and we've strategically aligned with the university there in town, the University of Wisconsin. And so we have a very unique collaborative agreement between Mayo and the university. We're even building a building that we're jointly occupying, which is unheard of within the Mayo culture and the university culture. But we've started a program of entrepreneurship, and it's largely focused around healthcare. I can't help but imagine the synergy and wonder if you have interacted with undergraduate students to try to build the operators of these ecosystems that we dream about. And if that would be of interest to you to explore more deeply.
 
Steve Krein: It would, absolutely. And I think some of the best entrepreneurs are the ones that in healthcare who go through and get educated in medicine, but have an entrepreneurial mindset. And there's a difference between someone who just goes to school and almost gets- The education is so anti-entrepreneurial thinking in medicine and in law that you either need to-
 
Dan Sullivan: Steve has a law degree. Fortunately, he did not practice.
 
Steve Krein: But getting retrained or actually learning how to turn your hat when you're a doctor and turn your hat when you're an entrepreneur is a skill. So yes, we do have very much an interest in that, have done a lot of work in that. In Wisconsin, one of our early backers was Aurora Advocate, Aurora Healthcare. Nick Turkal, who used to be the CEO there, was a very entrepreneurially-minded CEO that I think opened up our eyes to some of the unique talent in Wisconsin. And in particular, I think what you're describing is very interesting to us. So we should definitely pick up.
 
Dan Sullivan: Okay.
 
Tim Nelson: So we're creating a partnership with Mayo MCV and VC Group in Northwest Wisconsin that started Jamf. They're a networking company for Apple devices. We're envisioning creating a fund that could be used to fund entrepreneurial activities out of the university. And we've gotten alignment of some really interesting partners. But I think what StartUp Health has maybe something that could really be synergistic and value-add in multiple-
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think Steve, from his 1990s experience, and then being very successful at that time, because the dot-com crash just wiped out so many people, and Steve had the incredible skill to know exactly when to sell.
 
Steve Krein: Luck.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, yeah. But the biggest skill in luck is getting people to believe that your luck is actually your skill.
 
Steve Krein: I could have been a lot luckier.
 
Dan Sullivan: I have to tell you, there is no other skill greater than that skill. So anyway, I got a jump and I'll see you I think this afternoon, Steve.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. You'll see me at 2:00 or 3:00, whenever that workshop is.
 
Dan Sullivan: We'll chat a little bit to the Free Zoners about our talk with Tim.
 
Tim Nelson: Awesome, guys.
 
Steve Krein: Tim, great to meet you. Thanks, Dan. See you later on. Bye-bye.
 
Dan Sullivan: Okay. Bye.