Mark Cook's Inspiring Shift from Music to the Healthcare Sector sponsored by SimVS.

Have you ever wondered how a career in music can pivot into the healthcare and simulation sector? Our guest for today, Mark Cook, has an inspiring journey that shows just how possible it is. An entrepreneur from the UK, Mark started as an EMT and a clinical educator, eventually finding his niche in healthcare sales through his experience of teaching colleagues how to use a new defibrillator via simulation. His tale is one of resilience and adaptability, filled with insights into the mind of a leader navigating the challenging labyrinth of business growth.

We talk about the growth of his own company, SimSkills, discussing how his early experiences in leadership and customer care shaped his business philosophy. Mark’s journey, however, has not been without its share of hurdles. He shares the challenges he faced in taking on partners, relocating the business, and the struggle to create a company culture where everyone feels valued and appreciated. Mark offers honest insights into the fear of failure and the importance of recognizing achievements, even when success is not immediately visible. 

In the latter part of our conversation, we delve into Mark's reflections on how his company's direction was inspired by Simon Sinek's "Start With Why". We also discuss the power of collaboration and technology in healthcare, and how it can help under-resourced communities. Mark’s mission to provide a safe harbor in healthcare and help others find the right solution resonates throughout our discussion. Tune in to hear Mark’s fascinating journey, and understand the role of purpose and connection in entrepreneurship. His unique perspective is a must-listen for anyone seeking inspiration from a successful healthcare entrepreneur.

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Transcript

Disclaimer/ Sim VS ad / Show Intro: 0:00

The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of anyone at Innovative Sim Solutions or our sponsors. Thanks to SimVS for sponsoring this week's episode. Simulation helps develop the mindset of patient safety by allowing learners to practice and fail in a safe environment. SimVS designs tools that contribute to the development of this mindset. We are excited to release our new 4-pump simulator practice prime's proficiency. To learn more, visit www. simvs. com. Welcome to The Sim Cafe, a podcast produced by the team at Innovative Sim Solutions, edited by Shelly Houser. Join our host, deb Tauber and co-host Jerrod Jeffries as they sit down with subject matter experts from across the globe to reimagine clinical education and the use of simulation. So pour yourself a cup of relaxation, sit back, tune in and learn something new from The Sim Cafe.

Deb Tauber: 1:24

Welcome to another episode of The Sim Cafe. Thank you, listeners, for being here with us today. Jerrod, welcome, how are you today?

Jerrod Jeffries: 1:33

Oh, I'm great and, Deb, I'm really excited we got Mark. I'll let you give a proper intro, but just before that, mark, where are you calling from?

Mark Cook: 1:42

So I live in a town called Shrewsbury in Shropshire.

Jerrod Jeffries: 1:45

That's all you need to know. We got someone from.

Deb Tauber: 1:48

Shrewsbury. All right, well, with that, we will go ahead and introduce Mark. Mark Cook is a 39-year-old entrepreneur from the United Kingdom. Mark was an EMT and clinical educator for 10 years before moving into healthcare sales. He's the founder of Simmons Skills. The company's almost three years old and has eight employees and lots of exciting plans for the future. So thank you so much, mark, for joining us.

Mark Cook: 2:14

Thanks for having me.

Jerrod Jeffries: 2:15

Yeah, thank you. It's always exciting to talk to other entrepreneurs, mark, so I appreciate the time and the business schedule. I know you have a lot of things coming up. You have a lot of new accomplishments that you guys have done and want to hear about, but let's start with kind of your own journey into not only simulation but starting your own company. How does simulation play a role in the past, current and future? Catch on to that a little bit for us.

Mark Cook: 2:41

Yeah, sure. So my journey in healthcare kind of started in 2004. I'd just been at university studying music technology, believe it or not, and that was because that's what I enjoyed at school. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, so I've followed the music path and I didn't really get an awful lot out of university educationally, but I did get a lot out of it in terms of life lessons and I met the lady who's still my wife and lots of friends out of it. So it taught me that I didn't want to do music.

Mark Cook: 3:13

But I came home and I needed to get a job and so I saw an advert for patient transport driver, which is non-emergency work and the ambulance service, and I applied for it and thought it'd be quite interesting and it was. I did it, and I did it for a year and really enjoyed it and decided to go on the frontline side of things and learn to be an emergency medical technician, which I did for 10 years. In the end, unfortunately, I hurt my back halfway through about five years in and realized that even at the age of I was probably 25 then that I probably wouldn't be able to do this for the next 40 years. You know. I think there's a lot. There's a definitely a limit to what you can do in frontline work and in nursing as well. You know it's quite a physical job. It can be so 10 years seems to be about the limit?

Mark Cook: 4:00

Yeah, absolutely. It was my back or your shoulders or your hips. Something's going to go, so I kind of took it as a warning that I should probably look for something a little bit more secure. So I ended up going to education and my first project was to actually be at a new defibrillator that we were rolling out across the service, and they gave me the job of the training, of want to use it, and you know, I'd never even used PowerPoint before and you know no less than even knew what simulation was. But we did it and you know it turns out.

Mark Cook: 4:29

I used simulation, we went through scenarios and we learned how to use this to relate to, and I really enjoyed it and so decided that's the path I'm going to go down. I'm going to do education. I studied for postgraduate teaching certificates. I was a qualified teacher as well, and that kind of gave me the grounding in helping people to learn things, which is kind of what I see as sales being now. It's all very connected, so yeah, so I did that and I ended up running a commercial training department within the ambulance service so we would sell first aid and basic life support training to other organizations.

Mark Cook: 5:05

And that was my first taste of selling, which I also enjoyed. So I kind of found my niche is to healthcare and sales combined.

Jerrod Jeffries: 5:14

You know, we have, as you probably listened to some of the other podcasts. Everybody has their own unique story and their own journey. But I think you're the first that has ever studied or was started in music technology.

Mark Cook: 5:26

Yeah, probably.

Jerrod Jeffries: 5:28

And that's fascinating. But I can just think I would want to be picked up by your patient transport and being like, okay, what's DJ Mark got on the beats these days, you know? And just oh yeah, I'll just say, can you take another loop? You know she's not that sick.

Mark Cook: 5:42

I don't think we even had a working radio in the in this old van. It was like 1993 for transit, no sat nav and I've got no center direction. So we got lost every day and it was dementia patients that I was transporting to day centers. So I would ask them where we're going, thinking, you know, in the early days before I realized and knew a lot about dementia, asked them which way to go, and they'd tell me, and they'd be wrong.

Jerrod Jeffries: 6:05

We get lost. You want to enjoy the company.

Mark Cook: 6:09

Yeah, well they did. We had a great time. I really enjoyed that job.

Deb Tauber: 6:13

Did you play and do you play instruments?

Mark Cook: 6:15

Yes, I play guitar mainly, but a little bit of keyboard and bass, but drums. My sons are trying to get in the middle, so one of them plays guitar, one of them plays drums. So we'll have the family band up running in a few years.

Deb Tauber: 6:29

Yeah, you'll have to, and I am a sage of the band at the booth.

Mark Cook: 6:35

Maybe, maybe no promises.

Deb Tauber: 6:40

How did you get your inspiration for Simon skills? What was the impetus behind that?

Mark Cook: 6:47

So I wouldn't say it wasn't really an inspiration, it was more. You know how to start a business out of necessity is how I, it's how I came to think of it Somebody wise I can't remember who it was now but somebody said to me that being an employee is harder the longer you do it. But setting up a business is the other way around, and I think that's definitely true with me. I found it difficult to be an employee because you kind of looking around and seeing how people do things and I realized quite early on in my career you know, being in the ambulance service and finding my way into a managerial position quite early, even though it was only a small department I ended up in these big managers meetings that everybody had to go to.

Mark Cook: 7:28

I'd look around and I'd realized that most of these people don't really know what they're doing. And you think that, you know, I always had this perception when I was younger that there were the grownups somewhere that knew, you know, had it all figured out and they knew they were following their plans. And none of us are. We're all just making it up as we go along. So that's really given me no fear in terms of, you know starting a business and doing things that I'm not really that comfortable with, because it, you know, everybody is they just some people are better at faking it than others, so I think I'm quite good at faking it.

Mark Cook: 8:01

Who say yeah, thank you, but that's you know. One of the things that gave me the real confidence was, you know, I've looked after customers as much as I could and a lot of them have followed me, so that, you know, when I moved from my job at Lerd to a job at Simulade, lots of customers came with me and then I moved again and started SimSkills and a lot of those same customers are still buying stuff and that's because they'll buy whatever I'm selling, because they know that I won't sell them something that's not appropriate. And it's kind of one of the ethos is that we that we live by is just to make sure we look after people, even if we send them, you know, away from what we're offering. We're on and stand up from with them. That's something that's important.

Jerrod Jeffries: 8:38

So let's level the playing field for our guests. So can you tell us about what your job is, what you do, and a little bit abou Sim and Skills then?

Mark Cook: 8:45

Sure, so I'm the under managing director and founder of and Skills and Skills. I started it three years ago for the first, like 14 months, it was just me. We are essentially a distributor for all types of medical training equipment and we try, we're trying to provide everything that people could possibly need. So really I see it now as a problem solving company and we listen to the customers and when they have a you know when a lot of them say the same thing, you know. Just give you one example we we've been selling mannequins from day one and now we have a variety of different providers that we work with.

Mark Cook: 9:21

But one of the questions that came up to a college that we were dealing with they said that we're going to buy a mannequin, and I just happened to, you know, for the customers say where are you going to put it? They say we don't know. So what, have you got a bed? I said no, and so you know. Then that's how we ended up selling hospital beds, because we ended up asking that to every college that we dealt with. And these are the new, you know, the further education colleges. Here we have a qualification, new qualification called T levels, and they are setting up from scratch. You know, never done simulation before there where the hospitals were, you know, and universities were 15 years ago, so seeing this cycle. So then we got better at asking the questions about all different types of things that they might need and that's led us to be a provider for lots of different things that we didn't really expect to be a provider for.

Mark Cook: 10:09

And you said E levels like Echo, T levels, technical levels, Okay, so, it's more vocational training for 16 to 18 year olds rather than having to do generic qualifications. So it's a good idea, I think, but it's taken a while to. You know there's so many of them, it just takes a while for them to come through. But there's a T level in health which you know they'd go on to then be do a nursing degree or be care-resistant or something like that.

Deb Tauber: 10:37

So in the UK they have. Can you describe the education a little bit more about that?

Mark Cook: 10:42

Yeah. So there's lots of different qualifications now. But that's a more kind of specific. And I look at these kids at 16, I think how do you know you want to be a nurse, because I don't know what I wanted to do at 16. I don't really know now. So you know you have to kind of admire their ambition, but it's been one of the more successful. You know you could do engineering or you know whatever type of T level you wanted to do. But that's just an example of a market that we focused on because none of the bigger players were. They are all now coming round and you know we see lots of our marketing copied by other companies and you know it makes me smile because it means we're on the right track and we're actually kind of past it now. That bubble, we think, is a burst thing and we're on to the next thing and we've got an offering for universities now and that's where our focus is.

Deb Tauber: 11:31

What was the biggest challenge that you faced during the journey?

Mark Cook: 11:36

You make it sound like it's over.

Deb Tauber: 11:38

Well, I mean starting, starting, starting those first couple of years, you really question yourself before you have anybody working with you for you. That's the question.

Mark Cook: 11:49

Yeah, and I can't, and I can't nail it down to one. It's not one big challenge, it's a succession of big challenges. You know. You solve one problem and three more present themselves is how I see it.

Mark Cook: 12:00

So you know, there were certainly a few moments, particularly the start of this year, before we doubled in size recently but I felt like it was making life changing decisions every single day. It was, it was exhausting. And not only have we moved, you know, we moved the business. So we were in a in a county called Northamptonshire and a little town called Kettering, and I was running all of the gipping out of a self storage unit which then turned into four self storage units. And then my wife joined the company, initially to do marketing. She ended up in the self storage unit doing all the shipping and we got to the point where it just got unmanageable, you know, for us.

Mark Cook: 12:42

So we took a big step to bring in two partners. That's been the biggest shift and one of the biggest challenges of this year. Two guys who I've known for a long time work within previous companies, Chris and Kieran, and they've joined us as equal partners with myself and Nicola, and Chris is is now running the operation in the warehouse in Chesterfield. So that's been, you know, a huge shift and a huge challenge for me to let go of all of that. You know, I don't see any boxes anymore. I don't touch anything. I just have to trust that it's all happening somewhere. I know it is, but that's, you know, that's the. That's a big challenge, isn't it? For when you start something, to then divide it up from some of the people and say, right, you're in charge of that bit and I don't do that anymore, that's quite scary you know having a second warehouse and equal partners.

Jerrod Jeffries: 13:31

I mean there is a lot of change and of course, now also moving, you know, headquarters or from from A to B, it's that's a lot of change in a little amount of time and of course you physically move too right.

Mark Cook: 13:43

Yeah, yeah, so we moved in the other direction the family. So the warehouse is 100 miles away from me. On purpose, I didn't tell Chris that one.

Jerrod Jeffries: 13:52

You really didn't want to be touching boxes.

Mark Cook: 13:54

I didn't really do want to, because it's it's hard work.

Mark Cook: 13:59

Yeah, I'm not not afraid of hard work, but it's it. You can get sucked into that thing, and you know, I know now my role is completely different and you know I barely do any sales anymore, which you're just ashamed. That's what I quite enjoy talking to the customers, and, you know, hearing about their issues and how we can solve them. But I'd be letting out down the rest of the team. There's eight of us now, so I have to make sure that everybody else is happy. That's my job, and focusing on the culture of the company is something that's really important to me, certainly.

Deb Tauber: 14:29

Yes, yes. And what would you describe the culture as Mark?

Mark Cook: 14:33

It's still evolving, but we almost narrowed it down to we want to be the company that everybody wants to work with, that kind of summed up. You know, in every given way, whether it's employees, we want them to work. You know to work and be happy, suppliers, customers, whoever it is, we want to make sure that everybody wants to work with us and so far I think we're doing okay. But we need to, you know, not get complacent. Well, like I say, when you solve one problem, you know we're quite lucky and we're very sales oriented. All the people that I've brought in, our very accomplished salespeople. So we don't have a problem with sales. Our problem is the follow up. How do we make sure we deliver things on time and we train people to use things? And you know, like I say, one problem is solved. Who more present themselves? So we've just employed an account manager. So she will be a part of her role will be following up with customers, making sure they're happy, making sure that we've done our job properly. And she's she's the first person I've hired who I didn't know beforehand.

Mark Cook: 15:39

So that's a massive change and a massive I'm not going to say risk, but you know it's a. It's a bit of a gamble to. You know the whole employee. You meet somebody for a couple of hours and interview them, and then now I'm responsible for making sure your wages get paid. So that's. You know, that's a big it's again. It's always scary. It's always scary. It's still mind blowing to me that there are there could be seven other people. There are seven other people who are busy 40 hours a week, sometimes more, because of this thing that I started three years ago. It's really.

Jerrod Jeffries: 16:09

So then, that leads to a good question, though. I mean, do you then fear success or failure more?

Mark Cook: 16:15

I don't think I fear either one of them. I think the thing that I fear the most is not knowing the difference between the two, because it's so, you know, 60% of businesses fail in the first three years. So the fact that we're you know, we're just coming up to the end of December will be three years old. So the fact that we're still around, we've succeeded in some way, but it doesn't feel like we've even really started yet. It feels like we just we're just getting going. So I think the problem with success is that the goalpost move constantly and you don't really get the time. Certainly, when you're working on your own, you don't get the time to stand back and look at all the things that you've achieved up to that point, because you can just see that there's loads more things that you need to do immediately.

Mark Cook: 16:56

So I think that's what I'm trying to get better at is taking that step back and looking at what we have achieved up to now and then making sure that we plan for the future and that we go after the right things and we don't do. You know that's been a big challenge for Chris and Keir and coming in from big companies is that you can. Now you know you're restrained very much in a global corporation because everything moves so slowly. Come to a small company and you could do absolutely anything. But should you? And that's the big thing is, how do you choose what you should do and what you shouldn't do?

Jerrod Jeffries: 17:31

Mark the moving boxes? Yeah, no, I shouldn't.

Mark Cook: 17:36

Sometimes I might have to, but I should.

Jerrod Jeffries: 17:39

I mean it is crazy because, like you know, when you, you know to you say, the larger the company, kind of, the less the impact you can create as an individual. But the smaller company, the larger the impact because you can, to your point, you can do anything, but should you be so, you have to use your time very effectively and efficiently to say this yeah and the same is true in this industry.

Mark Cook: 17:59

You know it feels quite small and everybody knows everybody, but that means you kind of have a big impact. So that's you know. That's what we're trying to decide is, you know, we're still in that stage of building the foundations and making sure that we make enough money to pay everybody. That's number one and that's still the first priority. But there will undoubtedly come a point where we get some stability and we have to then decide what direction do we want to take the company? Why does it exist?

Deb Tauber: 18:26

Yes, and I really appreciate your responses there. It is a big responsibility.

Mark Cook: 18:33

Yeah, it feels like it someday more than others, but yeah, I don't take it lightly. It still amazes me and I'm very grateful to the people that do what work for us that they've kind of taken that risk to work for a startup company, because, you know it is. It is scary, but I'm trying to be as open and honest with people as I can and I share as much as I can and I teach people about what I'm going through at the same time so that they can learn, because that's, you know, part of the front of working for a company like ours.

Deb Tauber: 19:01

Thank you. Now. Do you have a favorite leadership book, motivational movie, article or person that's been an influence to you? I think, with your music background, you probably have an interesting response here.

Mark Cook: 19:13

So it's a book I've chosen. It's almost become a bit cliche now because it's quite well known, but when I first heard about it it was very new. And it's a book called Start With why by Simon Sinett, and it was recommended by Clive Patrickson, who was the CEO of Laurdal when I worked there. From what I understand from him, it helped them to articulate to the rest of the employees the importance of the mission which their mission is helping save lives, and it informs everything that they do and they take it really seriously and it was quite inspirational to see it.

Mark Cook: 19:45

I definitely felt that culture while I was there. So I'm trying to bring some of that to what I do now. But obviously it's not the same scale and we can't have the same impact now as they can. But to see, you know, it took them a long time to go from what they were you know the bread and butter work to this new thing and the sister company that they have. They actually measure how many lives that they are helping to save. You know that's. You know we're a world away from there, but the ethos is the same it's making sure that the people within the organization know that they're not coming to work, just so that I can buy another speedboat or one speedboat. I've got any speedboats.

Mark Cook: 20:25

Shrewsbury. Shropshire is about as far away from the seas you can get in the UK, so I have no need for a speedboat, but it just does it exactly. You know, it's not, it's not all about me, it's not all about the money. We're trying to build something you know, together. I just don't know what that thing looks like yet. So let me tell you about the book, because I got off on a tangent. So if people who don't know start with why is essentially the concept is that people don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it. And he talks about the golden circle which has why in the middle and then how and what.

Mark Cook: 20:59

I think most of us are quite good at knowing what we do and how we do it, but we don't really think about why we do it, and I certainly didn't. You know, when I was, when I was in the ambulance service and actually helping to save lives and saving lives, I never really had any kind of existential crisis as to whether I was doing good in the world, because it's just inherent that you're there. But in sales it's different. You know, you are essentially making money and it was always important to me to know where that money was going and what I was doing and having a positive impact on the wider world, and I think it's really important for a lot of people.

Jerrod Jeffries: 21:35

Yeah, that's powerful. I like that mark, I like that a lot. And the reason behind why you do something is it usually you know it really gets. It gets to the emotional piece. It's kind of like the storytelling in so many areas For better or worse. I want to remember speedboats now from our conversation.

Jerrod Jeffries: 21:50

But that aside, right, it's like in order to say, okay, we care about you. And to your point of selling beds, where you're going to put it, you're already thinking. You didn't ask the question where you're going to put the mannequin because you want to sell a bed. You weren't even selling those at the time. You were asking that question because you're like I have seen these things corrode. I've seen these things get lumped in a storage container or room and not get touched for two years and you're wasting X, y, z dollars and so you're going to the next step of being this all-in-one shop for distribution in the UK and such, which I'm sure is needed. But it just goes another step. So I think that's a. I appreciate you sharing the book because I think it really could resonate with a lot of people.

Mark Cook: 22:30

It doesn't genuinely, not not just professionally, personally. You know it informs everything that I do now because it's so simple to remember. You just have to always ask why. You know, and I have a six year old son and his job is seems to be just to ask why all the time. And it gets frustrating. But when you, when you look at it from the other, you know we are having to justify Decisions that you make to a team of people. You know you do need to know what you're about and know why you're doing things, and that's you know it informs our strategy.

Mark Cook: 23:00

So we're, you know we're even moving away now. You know the whole the strap line that we use of everything you need to succeed in simulation. It feels a bit product focused. So we're now trying to move a bit more towards the problem. Just to give you an example, our latest project is something called student powered simulation, which is helping our customers to put the students at the heart of their learning from completely intended and we want to be able to give Solution. They might be changeable. That's the thing we're trying to solve the problem, rather than say we've got these. In this case it's three software packages which fit really nicely into this, this model, but it could be anything, you know, and it will change in the future.

Mark Cook: 23:39

But as long as we are always focused on solving that problem and the problem being that there are is a massive shortage of doctors and nurses in the UK and I'm sure across the world it's the same. And because there's a shortage of nurses, there's also a shortage of nurse educators. So how do you then? Certainly in this country we have to do 2300 hours of clinical placement before they can qualify and Struggling to find the places to put the nurses and to get them the right. You know, they often go on to the world and they're just another pair of hands to do the work. They're not learning huge amount and they're not being coached in the right way.

Mark Cook: 24:15

So what we're thinking is that they can use simulation and do simulated clinical placements to augment that experience and make it better. And in some places we were having this conversation the other day when we dealt some states in the US they're offering to, you know, one hour of simulation is equivalence, two hours in practice, because you're getting that concentrated Experience and learning, objectives are set and you know that they're gonna come away learning something, whereas they go and do a day on the wards. They might get something, they might not. So that's what we're doing. We're using these software solutions in this model called student powered Simulation, to try and help our customers to give their students a better experience.

Jerrod Jeffries: 24:52

Well, with that, then I mean that's a lot to unpack. Well, I mean, my thing is is like there's, I love that one. You brought in similarities from the US, because the way Simulation and I'll use some of your words earlier like we are a niche industry within healthcare simulation and I feel like everybody tries to reinvent the wheel, you know, and you have you have professional organizations or associations saying, hey, these are the standards, these are the practices, this is the best practice.

Jerrod Jeffries: 25:20

Like, we found the best way to do it by getting these key opinionators. This is the way. But then you have this other group. Hey, you know, we gotta, we gotta start from scratch.

Disclaimer/ Sim VS ad / Show Intro: 25:29

gotta do this again.

Jerrod Jeffries: 25:30

It's like we don't know, save the ten years that we've already developed, all this. Start there and then you can really, you know, push the benchmark a little further ahead, and I think that you know sharing that education and sharing those practices are necessary. But you know, your approach to doing a lot of things I think is also very powerful.

Mark Cook: 25:48

So I appreciate that and that's and we're coming at it from you know Chris, my colleague, who he was. He had similar, similar background to me, was a paramedic. He then went into university. He was a lecturer. So he can talk to other university lecturers in the set on the same level because he has experienced all of their problems. So that's why we see what we do and why a lot of the people in the organization are either former teachers or Educators you know been in the industry a long time because then we don't need to, we don't need to push products on people.

Mark Cook: 26:20

We can solve whatever problem a number of different ways, but the key thing is that we understand the problem and I think you know, going back to your point of solving the problem so many different ways, I think it's a human thing, I think it's a, it's an ego thing. There's, there's a lot of that in academia and we hope we can use it in the right way and we get customers involved with things early on, because you know, we did a webinar on this concept of student-powered simulation just last week and it's not fully formed yet and we're open about that. So we want to get universities to come and talk to us so how we can fit their model into what they're doing and solve the problem. It might be in two different ways, we do some two different organizations, but the fact is we can have that conversation on that level, which I think is rare with most companies.

Deb Tauber: 27:10

Well and I think it gets back to one of my favorite statements is when everyone thinks alike. No one thinks a lot, and that's by Stephen Covey, but everyone thinking in one direction is going to. You know, yes, it's a nail, we're all hammers right. So if we're all different tools and we want to come up with what's the best solution, we have to think from a broader perspective.

Mark Cook: 27:37

Definitely and that's why I deliberately made that choice when I was choosing my partners to work with or, you know, make it sound like I kind of coordinated it, but it happened organically that we all complement each other. We all have very different skills and sometimes it creates arguments and disagreements, but that's always positive, because the last thing I want is for me to say yeah, absolutely the last thing I wanted for me to say we should do this, and everybody just nod and say yes and boring For one of that. I just carry on working on my own.

Jerrod Jeffries: 28:07

Well, mark, I do want to ask one of the final questions, though, and that would be aside from speedboats, what? Are the final words you want to our listens, to kind of remember this conversation by.

Mark Cook: 28:18

Oh, so it's cheesy, but I'm going to stay. Student powered simulation, just because I've hanged on about it so long. You can go to studentpoweredsimulationcom if you want to, and that'll take you to the webinar that we did the other day and you can watch it for yourself. But I think the key thing about it is that, wherever you are in the world, we're all facing this problem and you're not alone, and rather than focusing on the technology when you're in your center, start with why, work out what the problem is that you're trying to solve, and if you need inspiration, then come and talk to us, because we love nothing more than having a debate with people, and even if they've got nothing specific they want to buy, but they just want to talk about the idea, then that's great, we're all about that.

Deb Tauber: 29:01

Thank you. Is there anything that you want to ask us?

Mark Cook: 29:05

So I'd like to ask you because we talked about start with why so much what your why is, and why do you do what you do?

Deb Tauber: 29:13

Thank you, d. Do you want to go ahead first?

Jerrod Jeffries: 29:15

Sure. So the podcast. I think that we should be disseminating a lot more knowledge and expertise and connecting a lot of dots around not only key opinion leaders, but entrepreneurs such as yourself, Mark, and people that have just gotten into different specializations within simulation, as we've had for many of our wonderful previous guests. But for Beaker Health, which I've found it to, which is a community education platform.

Jerrod Jeffries: 29:42

That why is because I grew up not you know, I was born in rural Indiana, growing up on a farm, but also grew up in Indonesia, and so these are heavily under resourced population sizes and segments and there's no funding going to these areas and you don't have the best and the brightest of you know healthcare professionals that are just like, oh, let me go to this place in the middle of nowhere. But this knowledge and these resources are in large urban areas and with technology today, we can disseminate. We not only create and disseminate, you can also share that within other parts of the world at a very low cost to actually help one, help save more lives, but to also to raise the benchmark within all healthcare practices and especially within simulation. You can be doing that for very easily if you're working with the right groups of people and then connecting those two lines of saying, okay, here's the one providing the content and here's the one that actually needs the content. And so that was our why for Beaker Health, yes fantastic.

Mark Cook: 30:46

We're so privileged, aren't we, in the world that we live in, that you can forget that it's not like that everywhere.

Deb Tauber: 30:53

And mine would be. Essentially, when I started the company, I didn't have a plan of starting a company. I was going to stay and work for somebody forever, and then my position was eliminated. So our vision is that we work. We're working towards a safe harbor to improve safety and healthcare and with that, similar to your mission, it's helping clients find the right solution for them.

Deb Tauber: 31:18

Obviously, if you're a nursing school and you're not going to be intubating patients, why would you need $100,000 mannequin simulator that is going to be intubated when you're not going to utilize that? So it's helping, just like you said, customers and clients find the best solution for them. So that's part of my why. The other part of it is this podcast, which was just kind of an afterthought on everything, but it has provided so many people an opportunity to give their expertise and give their voice into the environment, into the world, into the universe, on what they're doing and why they're doing it. And it's just been a complete privilege to have the opportunity to interview people and obviously having Jared join me has been another wonderful opportunity. So my whys are once again putting goodwill into the universe.

Mark Cook: 32:14

Brilliant, thank you.

Jerrod Jeffries: 32:15

Thank you for the question.

Deb Tauber: 32:17

Anything we want to end up our conversation today? today

Jerrod Jeffries: 32:20

No, I'll add Mark, coming from a place I can I butcher every time I'm going to say, but coming from the United Kingdom. I appreciate you being on. I think that we need to connect more people, especially with as you're, heading over to ASPE here in Brighton next month as well as IMSH in San Diego in January next year. Hope some people have been able to pick you up from the podcast and reach out and say hello and I will certainly do the same so we can meet physically. But I appreciate you jumping on.

Mark Cook: 32:51

Thanks for having me. There's a lot of good stuff happening in the UK, so I'll certainly put some people your way so you can have some more UK guests and get some more UK listeners.

Deb Tauber: 33:01

Thank you and happy simulating.

Disclaimer/ Sim VS ad / Show Intro: 33:06

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