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About the Guest:

Amy Baxter, MD, FAAP, FACEP

CEO and Chief Medical Officer at Pain Care Labs

Dr. Baxter founded Pain Care Labs while practicing and teaching pediatric emergency medicine. Following her invention of PCL’s core products: Buzzy® Needle Pain Relief and VibraCool® Vibrational Cryotherapy, her multiple awards for visionary entrepreneurship include 2020 SBA Tibbets Award, MM+M Top 40 Healthcare Transformers, Forbes Healthcare Technology Disruptors to Watch, MDDI Top 10 Innovative and Disruptive Women in Healthcare, Most Innovative CEO from Georgia’s Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), “Idea Person” by the Wall Street Journal, and Inc. Magazine’s Top Women in Tech to Watch. In the development of Buzzy®, VibraCool®, and a new low back pain DuoTherm™, Dr. Baxter has received two SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) Fast-Track awards from the NIH (National Institutes of Health) – also serving as the Primary Investigator. She wrote the initial patents for thermal and vibration utilization to decrease pain, created the patent and trademark strategy, and prepared and filed the 510K submission for medical devices granted by FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). In 2014 and 2021 she worked extensively with the FDA to expand indications, and as part of a PMA process for DuoTherm for opioid reduction. Dr. Baxter has received grants from the FDA Pediatric Device Consortium, Chase, the MayDay Fund, and others.

Prior to joining PCL full time, Dr. Baxter held multiple roles in pediatric medicine, including Clinical Associate Professor at Georgia Regents University (current), Director of Emergency Research, Scottish Rite Hospital, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Pediatric Emergency Medicine Associates LLC, Assistant Professor, UT Southwestern Medical School, Clinical Instructor, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Professional Staff, Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters, National Director of Medical Programs, Kaplan Educational Centers, New York, NY and Brand manager of MCAT and USMLE preparatory courses while rewriting the Physics course materials. Additional medical administration roles include CHOA Pain Advisory Board, member, Clinical Research Advisory Board, CMC, Pain-Free Steering Committee – Procedural Pain Task Force, CMC, Procedural Sedation Workgroup, CMC, Child Abuse/Reach Committee, CHKD and CMC, Pain Control and Anesthesia Steering Committee, CHKD – CMC, and the CHOA Safer Techniques for Intravenous Cannulation (STIC needle pain committee).

In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. Baxter is a Board Member of Homeolux. She has served as Trustee of the Robert A. Heinlein Butler Library, the Editorial Boards of Medscape and Elsevier Pediatrics, Standish Foundation for Children Board, Founding Board Member of the Society for Pediatric Sedation, Board Member of the International Women’s Forum – Georgia Chapter and has been a member of the IWF, Belizean Grove, the International Association for the Study of Pain (Pediatric Pain Section) and the Ray E. Helfer Child Abuse Honor Society. She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Emergency Physicians; national lectures include Exponential Medicine, Converge, TEDx, MakerFaire, and TEDMED, and a Shark Tank appearance in 2014.

Dr. Baxter publishes and speaks as an expert in pediatric pain management, sedation, and testified before HHS in 2021 on adult needle phobia. International work includes seminal events in Mexico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Haiti, Romania, Israel, Republic of Georgia, Turkey and Thailand. Dr. Baxter completed a K-30 Clinical Scholars Program at the UT Southwestern, a Fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at at the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, VA, a Fellowship in Child Abuse and Forensic Pediatrics and Residency in Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati, OH. She received her medical degree from the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA and her BA cum laude from Yale University in New Haven, CT. Dr. Baxter serves on multiple neuromodulation, pain, and addiction NIH SRG review committees for NICHD, NIDA, and NINDS. She considers her primary contributions to science an algorithm timing child abuse using hepatic enzyme decline, the Baxter Retching Faces (BARF) pediatric nausea scale, the Pain-Fear-Focus construct of pain management, and the M-Stim external neuromodulation technology of Buzzy® , VibraCool® and Duotherm™.

About the Episode:

This week on Entrepreneur Rx, John has the pleasure of speaking with Amy Baxter, a double-boarded pediatric emergency physician, inventor, entrepreneur, and Founder & CEO at Pain Care Labs. Pain Care Labs created Buzzy and VibraCool, pain relief solutions that are helping people manage their pain without any drugs – all while being noninvasive compared to traditional methods like injections or surgeries.

Dr. Baxter talks about her impressive medical background, her love for research and academia, and her current focus which is managing pain using a multimodal pain device to stop people from starting their opioids. She also traces her entrepreneurial efforts and recounts her interesting experience with Shark Tank. Learn more about needle fear and how to find funding for your research in this fast-paced conversation with Dr. Baxter. Please tune in!

 

Entrepreneur Rx Episode 35:

RX_Amy Baxter: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

RX_Amy Baxter: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

John Shufeldt:
Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Entrepreneur Rx, where we help health care professionals own their future.

John Shufeldt:
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Entrepreneur Rx. Today I'm really excited to be chatting with Amy Baxter who is a board-certified pediatrician and emergency medicine physician, and most importantly for us today, an entrepreneur and had a great entrepreneurial story. Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy Baxter:
Thank you so much for having me, John. It's a pleasure.

John Shufeldt:
And welcome to Phoenix. You're here on a conference.

Amy Baxter:
Yes, I'm joining you from your own hometown of Phoenix, where the American Academy of Allergy and Immunology starts tomorrow.

John Shufeldt:
Very good. So you do allergy and immunology as well?

Amy Baxter:
No, no, no. Our devices block needle pain, and allergy and immunology has a lot of biologics injections, subacute, etcetera. So we've kind of transitioned to more musculoskeletal, but this is the only real needle-oriented show we're doing this year.

John Shufeldt:
Oh, very, very good. I'm surprised we're even still having the show given, given everything, but maybe returning back to normal with the Omicron variant finally.

Amy Baxter:
I think it depends on where you are in the country, and Phoenix is definitely decided to return to normal.

John Shufeldt:
Yes, and much to the chagrin of many of us who work in emergency departments in Phoenix. But you know what they say in emergency medicine? That's why we have jobs. So who am I to complain?

Amy Baxter:
Well, my colleague from medical school actually is who I stayed with last night. She's OB-GYN, and so she is definitely burnt out by all the preventable ugliness that has come with the pandemic.

John Shufeldt:
Oh, it is. I mean, you know, Phoenix is compared to other places like New York. We did not get hit hard, but it was still ugly here, and it was like everywhere else it could have been a lot different had we been a little bit more smart.

Amy Baxter:
Yeah. Well, it's hard for a society like ours to move in a general direction together in the right way for public health when so many people feel like they can do whatever they want and that's part of how they define themselves.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, I think was a very eloquent way to put that. I'm going to have to steal that line. All right, Amy. So you have a cool background. Why don't, let's talk about just give us the kind of lowdown of the college medical school residency sort of thing, and then we'll dive into what you're doing now.

Amy Baxter:
Well, it kind of was foreshadowing that I went to two different colleges, so changed midstream from Dartmouth to Yale, graduated from Yale, went to med school at Emory in Atlanta, then a residency in Cincinnati for pediatrics, then did a Child Abuse Fellowship, then did an Emergency Fellowship in Norfolk, Virginia, at King's Daughters, then UT Southwestern for two years of attending SCHIP and got a clinical research certificate and then went back to Atlanta to work at Children's Health Care of Atlanta in doing ED and procedural sedation.

John Shufeldt:
Wow. All right. Let's as they say, unpack that a little bit. So you did it through. So I don't think I was aware of all that. So you did a three-year peds residency and then you did a two-year pediatric child abuse fellowship?

Amy Baxter:
So it's actually at the time, a one-year fellowship. I was the first fellow that Cincinnati had in child abuse and I was interested in PTSD and had a research project I wanted to do and didn't match in an emergency at Children's. And that was the only place I'd ranked. So they quickly said, Well, oops, let's take you as a child abuse fellow. So did that and then did the emergency for three years, emergency peds for three years in Virginia.

John Shufeldt:
So I didn't know that. So even though you were already a pediatrician and fellowship-trained, you still had to do another three years in EM peds or was it adult EM?

Amy Baxter:
No, no, no. No. It's PEM. Yeah, that's one of the longest journeys for the least payoff of anything except for possibly or child life. But yeah, the Child Abuse Fellowship was kind of a bonus. That was just something that was because I really was into academics and always have been. But if we're going to talk about entrepreneurship that actually probably started around age four in Lexington, Kentucky, selling painted rocks and random things door to door in the apartment complex where I live. So there was a thread of entrepreneurship that went even through all of medical training.

John Shufeldt:
So it's funny. I trace my entrepreneurial efforts back to about the same age, maybe a little bit older. And, you know, really never looking back since I started selling raffle tickets door to door and I think I was probably five or six. So I totally identify with that.

Amy Baxter:
Yeah, I did junior achievement throughout high school, mostly because I grew up really poor and being able to have an extracurricular that also paid you forty-three cents an hour or whatever it did in the 80s seemed like a good idea. And then going through even with medical school. Well, I taught for Kaplan, so I ended up going to New York when I was on my residency trip and stop by the Kaplan office to tell them how they could improve their business model. And they offered me a job for a year between med school and residency, and my residency let me out for a year so I could do it. So there was even a little flair of entrepreneurship in between the medical pathway.

John Shufeldt:
Wait, so you did. You took a year. I've never heard someone doing that, taking a year off between medical school and residency.

Amy Baxter:
Oh, I even told them that I wasn't allowed to but I agreed that I would call my residency director Mike Farrell in Cincinnati and told him the deal. And because it was such a huge program, there were twenty-six of us starting in a class together. And so he was like, Oh, give me your word that you will come back. Tell me in December that you'll come back and I'll let you have a year off. So I got to be a year with a title of brand manager, and I got to travel all over the country and give lectures and have an expense account and have a completely different life. So I'm sure I wouldn't have been as willing to jump off the academia train and start doing research and have a company if it hadn't been for that gap of seeing what the corporate world was like.

John Shufeldt:
Wow. And then what was it like to go back to residency after that year?

Amy Baxter:
I never had any desire to have a company or to be in the corporate world. One of the analogies I use all the time was really like cotton candy. And now, you know, we're at a similar age, John and all of our friends who are in their fifties, sixties, who went straight into entrepreneurship want to have a legacy. And that was how I felt when I worked Kaplan was there's really nothing I can add that's going to change the world or make me feel like I have been of use to people and change lives. And that was and still is really what it's all about. So there was never a draw to stay in the corporate world because it was entertaining, but it wasn't substantive.

John Shufeldt:
Right. it didn't. Yeah, it didn't give you everything you needed out of it. So, OK, so you did that residency fellowship residency, you know, you're never-ending learning cycle. And then when did you start thinking about this whole Pain Care Labs?

Amy Baxter:
Well, first of all, my husband told me I had to quit doing fellowships and get a real job because I was ready to do an emergency fellowship after the peds emergency because there was still stuff I didn't know and I wanted to do that. And he told me I have to get a real job. So by then, I had wanted to be one academia research and in the course of doing research, I did a lot of lecturing and writing books about pain and needle pain and suffering was kind of the oeuvre that I wanted to float in. And when my own kids needed their injections, I realized that no matter what the parents do, if the nurses in the hospital system are not going to help support the kids who are having injection pain, then there's not a lot that a parent can do. So I wanted to come up with something that parents could use to change the immunization cycle and practice because what I noticed in my own kids was that they became afraid of needles, and we were seeing so much needle fear in the peds emergency department that I thought, literally, what if there's a pandemic and these kids have grown up? And when they're old enough to drive themselves to the doctor they won't because they're so afraid of going to the doctor and needles? So that was where the inkling of making a device came from. So I'm, I... By then, we moved to Atlanta. I did a lot of prototyping. My kids helped me take apart cell phones and figure out how motors worked and how to wire something together. So once I had the prototype for a pain device that worked, it accumulated this burden of needing to act and do something to make, either to prove this really worked, or it didn't. But I couldn't be complacent about continuing to work in the emergency department and to research knowing that I felt there was a problem with needle pain and fear, and I had a solution and I needed to do something about it. So that was where the genesis came from.

John Shufeldt:
You know that's so interesting until you said that I hadn't thought of it, but I'd always wondered why we don't use more Emla cream in the emergency department, particularly for kids. But I guess for everybody that really for kids, because what? It's 10 15 minutes, you get some skin numbness. It makes it a lot better. I've tried Emla cream, so why don't we do that? Is it just expediency? Like, Oh, tough it out, kid, you'll be fine.

Amy Baxter:
Yeah, it's definitely a combination. First of all, Emla actually takes 60 minutes to work, so if you want it to be effective for your LP, you need to stick it on before you send them to C.T. before you do all the rest of the workup. And that was really my first research paper was looking at Emla for spinal taps because our lumbar punctures in the neonates we weren't using any kind of pain control, and to your point, I resolved not to do research where pain was the outcome because doctors don't care. You know, we don't go into medicine if needles or pain bother us, and we're pretty stoic about our patient's pain as well as our own. So the needle part is because I think that we are seeing it through the eyes of adults and it's a suck it up deal. Whereas for a kid, especially if you're in this, this is from the Child Abuse Fellowship if you're in that age range between about three and seven. They can't abstract but they can remember so you can really leave a mark and PTSD if you have a very traumatic event that they can't understand why it's happening to them. So in the emergency room, I think it's expedience. And if you do leave them on for 15 minutes, it's going to be a constrict. So it makes it harder to get the IV. But it's more indifference because we're coming at our patients from the standpoint of how we would feel with a needle. Who cares?

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, it's always. It's funny, it's always bothering me. Even at the children's hospital I went to and you know, the nurses were great at starting IVs, but it was basically just like, OK, honey, this is going to hurt a little bit and boom done. Interesting. So, OK, so that got you. It sounds like the Pediatric Abuse Fellowship really got you thinking about this what effect we're having on children with needles. Is that a good summary?

Amy Baxter:
Only in retrospect? No at the time, I had the same biases of suck it up, kid. You know, this is what we have to do. My job is to get you through this procedure on with the labs that we need or with a clear tap. But I didn't really understand until much later that what I learned in the post-traumatic stress and the Child Abuse Fellowship was relevant. Now the real thing was just this is something that we could save time if there were an instant way to block pain, like when you burn your finger and you stick it under cold water that blocks pain instantly. And if you bump your elbow and you rub it, that blocks pain. So if we could do that for IVs or immunizations, then we wouldn't have all these scared kids screaming, and it would save time in the emergency room. So I don't have to even put on LMax. It takes 20 minutes. So that was really where it came from. What happened was I found out about this small business innovation research grant that the NIH supports, and I would never John have started a company if I had to take the risk that most entrepreneurs do. I had a sweet day job, but the NIH has a research program for entrepreneurs that is very well funded. Three percent of all of the NIH money goes to small businesses for R&D. So I had to start a company in order to qualify to do the research and development on the needle pain device that I wanted to do. During that research, I found that sixty-three percent of the kids were afraid of needles. They were in the highest quartile of fear, and that was not what was supposed to happen. So that's when I unpacked it to your point, went back to the IRB, got more information, and that was when I found, oh my gosh, we have a really big problem. Every increased injection a child gets on the same day between age four and six causes them to have an increased risk of being afraid of needles even five years later. They don't get their HPV shots because when I started trying to put together what I'd learned in the Child Abuse Fellowship with what I was seeing in the data and I was like, Oh duh, when do we give boosters? Four to six years. When are they sensitive to PTSD? Three to seven years? So we're smack dab in the middle.

John Shufeldt:
Wow. Ok, so tell us about, so you came up with this device called Buzzy, which is a neuromodulator pain relief device. Can you kind of explain what that means?

Amy Baxter:
Sure. So neuromodulation is simply changing the way the nerves behave externally. So it can be an implantable spinal stimulator. It can be rubbing your elbow when you bump it, but you're overriding the normal progression of your nerves. So what Buzzy is? It turns out that this gate control that people talk about with tens units, the transverse cutaneous electrical nerve stimulators the gate control, that people talk about with these spinal simulators, really what you're doing is you're just causing one of the motion and pressure receptors sharp pain, just like when you bump up and you rub it. The nerve that does that the best is the Pacinian corpuscle, which is the one that does position sense. So it makes sense that you want to know where your body is in space if you have to withdraw from a hot plate or if you want to run away from a bear. So what we discovered was that the specific frequency that you needed to block pain was about two hundred hertz and come to find out that was in 2006 and in 2012 it was published that and corpuscles are triggered between 180 and 250 hertz. And in 2019 it was published that the Pacinian corpuscle does 90 percent of gate control. So what you've got now is really a Rosetta stone of why tens units don't work and then what you need to do to make pain relief work. You really have to be an amplitude and a frequency to stimulate these puzzles. And we added ice or heat the ice for buzzy does something called descending inhibitory kaboom, descending inhibitory inhibition, and that is using C fibers. So this D-nick control, plus the gate control looks like a bee with an ice pack on it, but there's a lot of really sophisticated physiology that's pretty new. So you put that move at proximal in the same dermatome and it blocks the pain.

John Shufeldt:
Wow. And so you basically lay it on, turn it on, and it modulates at that specific frequency to block any pain sensation from that same dermatome.

Amy Baxter:
Right? Kind of like the A-beta nerve that does Pacinia is much bigger and fatter and faster than the tiny little 8-delta. So it's sort of like you just release this huge wave of sensations that outruns the relatively slower pain sensation. What really changed my life, though, was when a colleague used this little buzzy device to not take any opioids after a total knee. Turned out, he'd been an opioid recovery for 20 years, and I knew that he didn't drink, but I had no idea the depth of what his history had been. He was afraid to get a knee replacement because of the pain and used my device to not take opioids. He said it still hurt like expletives, but he said he couldn't have gotten through it without the device, so that was really the signal in 2015 that I should wrap it up in the emergency room and focus more on all of this new understanding of how gate control can be maximized to be part of an opioid-sparing arsenal.

John Shufeldt:
And then, OK, so when did Buzzy go out to the out to the market?

Amy Baxter:
We launched in 2009. We've sold over three hundred thousand at this point. I never really I never got salespeople. We never did a whole lot of marketing other than occasional online having a Facebook page and going to trade shows so Buzzy really spread with our child life champion army. And the other great thing about BuzzFeed, which I didn't know at the time, was that the effect size of Buzzy was so high. I mean, it decreases pain about seventy-five percent from a needle. So that's a big difference, which means that if you are a nurse or a fellow and you have to do a research project buzzes low hanging fruit. So there are now seventy-five randomized controlled trials done all over the world. Independently, I've only given away maybe 10 buzzes and the whole course of our thing because I think that sponsoring research causes it to be biased. So people just, you know, every so often I'll go through PubMed and find new articles that people have done independently on how Buzzy works. So that was great. And that's so the research is really, you know, there are five meta-analyses on Buzzy now. It really is equivalent to anything but faster and cheaper, but it's not a good business model. Buzzy is completely reusable, and so I never would have stopped practicing for that because you can't sustain a business on something where people buy it or loan it to each other, use it for 10 years. And you know, that's a great concept, but it's not a good business model.

John Shufeldt:
So then you did VibraCool. Is that totally different concept?

Amy Baxter:
So it's exactly the same frequency and the same the original ones, VibraCool was even the same buzzy device. I mean, we took the little happy be off and made it a little black plane, you know, put the VibraCool label on it. You know, we sat around at the kitchen table thinking about how can we talk about ice and vibration and not sound dirty and VibraCool was where we ended up with a brand. People still call it buzzy, but since I am now I have a different NIH grant. I'm studying different frequencies and permutations to look at high harmonics of mechanical stimulation. So I've started calling it mechanical stimulation instead of vibration. VibraCool, really. You know, my colleague was the one who did the first unit that stopped him from having the pain in his PT and knee replacement, but VibraCool when it started was just Buzzy. Now we have a different shape and you can attach it to braces or you can use two of them together for harmonics, but that was when I quit practicing was I need to really understand this so that it can be put together for opioid reduction.

John Shufeldt:
That is very cool. Where did you come up with the funding to do this? Was it all bootstrapped?

Amy Baxter:
Yeah. All bootstrapped. And again, this SBIR program is tremendous for a physician who knows how to do research. The problem for most people who do know how to do research is that you don't have the time or the bandwidth to start a company. So in 2009 was when we launched Buzzy, and then in 2018, I got another NIH grant for one point seven million from the National Institutes of Drug Abuse to be able to put together a multimodal pain device, ideally for low back pain, to stop people from starting their opioids. That's where we are right now is really focusing on how can we get these to people so before they start the opioids or if they're going to be going outpatient, so they've got something that they can use and they know how to use it, it makes them comfortable, it makes them feel in control and they can have options with heat or cold. All of these things really focus on a new construct of pain management. So that was that there's a lot of science because that was how we got funding was through the NIH.

John Shufeldt:
So, so you come up with the device now, two devices, really. Did you make these devices yourself or did you license the devices to be made by somebody else? I'm just asking for the business model.

Amy Baxter:
Yeah. So licensing is using somebody else's technology. What we did was patent both the frequency and the combination with heat or cold, and it seems like there are lots of devices. People go, yeah, there's a lot of things that have massagers of heat or cold. But what we did that was different was we made it so that their crystalline so that you don't lose any of the amplitude or the frequency when you're transmitting. In order to stimulate the nerves, you've got to stimulate to neuro modulate, you have to be very precise and you can't have a mushy hot pack or a mushy cold pack. You know, the gel doesn't work. So we made the patents, then we got the devices. And so we are actually licensing our technology to other people. But the full concept was, here's this how can we protect it and then put it out? Nobody cared about needle pains, so we got a 10-year jump and an FDA 510 clearance window before it started becoming apparent that this was something that could be used in or as for operating.

John Shufeldt:
Got it. So you came up with the idea, came up with the technology, patented it, and now you're licensing it to others to use your patent. To use your patent discovery.

Amy Baxter:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You use the bat, use the technology.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, that is. That is genius, Amy. Ok, I want to switch gears a little bit because this really was interesting about you. Well, two of a bunch of stuff, but you do talk on empathy versus compassion, can you? And so it's TED talk is so less than 20 minutes by design. What's the takeaway of that? That really struck me as interesting.

Amy Baxter:
In order to have empathy for something, you have to feel it yourself. And because we doctors don't really care about needle pain, it's very difficult for us to extend compassion to the patients because we don't respect what they're feeling. And having empathy for someone who's afraid of what we do every day as our bread and butter isn't really possible. But what you can have is sympathy for them screaming. Or you can have compassion before you get to the screaming place and understand that they are experiencing something you don't understand, but you're going to help them anyway. And I think that one of the key parts that I've learned, just like with my first study where I was not going to look at pain outcomes because that's not going to change doctors' behavior, trying to explain to doctors why needle pain matters was also somewhat unfruitful. It's hard to teach people to have compassion about something you don't respect. Instead, trying to get doctors and others to understand that our jobs are easier if our patients aren't afraid of needles and our jobs are easier if people aren't afraid of pain and feel like they can control it. So that is really been the empathy, sympathy, compassion, learning that fueled how I tried to spread the word to get people to understand that it mattered.

John Shufeldt:
That's a phenomenal why. You know they always talk about Simon Sinek. And you know, what's your why? That's a great why. Interesting.

Amy Baxter:
Thank you. Thank you. Well, you know, the really cool thing for me is that pain is evolving. Our understanding of pain has completely changed in the last 10 years, so pain is really your brain's opinion of how safe you are. It is not what's happening on your skin. It is not what's happening in your bone. It is a whole huge feedback loop from your spine to your thalamus, your hypothalamus, your amygdala, your insula, your anterior cortex. I mean, just all of these things that we studied in neurology and didn't really think we need it anymore. All of it comes together for our understanding of pain, and that's the number one reason people come to see doctors. So if we understand that really physiology and focus and fear all or what combine to be pain, then it changes how you approach pain.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, with quite a bit more compassion, because now you understand it even if you're not effectively feeling it. So I love that idea. I mean, I love that construct because it makes total sense. Very cool. Ok, so tell me this story tells us about turning down Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank.

Amy Baxter:
Well, again, there are so many decisions that I've made that are not the way you should run a company, but they're trying to at least be good for humanity. So I went on Shark Tank to raise awareness of needle fear and to raise awareness that this was a coming non-compliance tsunami if we didn't do something to address it. So at the time, it was like, all right, what's the worst that can happen? And I recommend this to anybody who thinks about going on Shark Tank. What is the absolute worst for your brand that can happen? I was like, All right, great. What if I give Mr. Wonderful a shot on national television? And he either faints or says it's the worst thing that I've ever experienced. And I felt like, all right, you know, if that's the worst that happens, we still are going to get to talk about needle fear and nobody likes to talk about it. So went on Shark Tank and the best thing to come out of it is a huge emotional mental bungee jump. You know, just terror, terror, terror, and then exhilaration. It's like the day you take your boards where you reach this place, where you're like, you know what? I know the most I will ever know. I am the most badass. I am at the pinnacle of my intellectual prowess here. Bring it on. So that's how it felt. They bring you in with someone putting a camera directly in front of your face. So you're striding forward, looking very confident and you kind of person is a foot and a half ahead of you walking backward that you're hoping doesn't trip. So you go when you stand on your mark and then they say cut. And you wait and they make sure the lights are there and they adjust your microphone and then you start into your pitch. So there's a lot of this reality TV stuff that gets cut out. It was forty-five minutes of pitching that got cut down to nine minutes. And Barbara was the only one I would have made a deal with because she had a little medicine dropper for kids, Ava the elephant, which I think was a stupid idea, but at least they look good together on the shelf at Kroger. So I had my whole thing pitch predicated on here's how much you put into Ava. You brought in a million last year. What a good business deal. And she shot that down hard. So after that, I just wanted to not look like a jerk on national television. I believe in retrospect that they knew that they wanted to invest in me and did not expect me to turn them down. So we dragged out because I was just trying to extricate myself somewhat gracefully and they were like, OK, just make the deal already. So when I finally turned them down, that was when Mr. Wonderful was like, All right, you're dead to me. And I said I've got one more thing. And Barbara said, Oh no, you don't. You're finished. And I said, Hush up you. I'm saying something nice. And I said, Thank you for what you're doing. I know you guys are working really hard and it is changing how young people in America are willing to pursue their careers. Because if you weren't doing this, it wouldn't give people the courage to tell their families that they were going to go into this after college, that they were going to start something. They were going to try to create something and businesses and creating things change our GDP and change our standard of living and change lives. So I thanked them for that and then turned on my heels and just was like, Oh, for forty-five minutes until I got a beer.

John Shufeldt:
That is a classic story. I've got to find the clip, and if we can find the clip and we'll put it on their website so people can watch that because that's a classic story.

Amy Baxter:
Yeah. Now obviously, they cut that out. I've always wondered if they would put some bloopers up and put some of those in bits but now it was definitely a great thing. It's wonderful because all of the Shark Tank pals, we should be the Shark Tank chumps, right, that was a wasted opportunity. But the Shark Tank pals help each other with business so much, and it's just a wonderful community of people who've been through a really surreal experience. It's hard to understand if you haven't gone through it

John Shufeldt:
Well, and they can't have a lot of physicians on there who have your, you know, years of education and you can really walk the talk. I mean, who could argue? I mean, literally, who could argue with you? Who on Shark Tank could argue? Who got who could argue the period, but who on Shark Tank could argue with you? They had to be kind of odd.

Amy Baxter:
You know, there have been a couple of doctors that have been on Shark Tank, but they, like I was at the time, just wanted to sell the company and keep practicing medicine with perhaps a really good fund for going on a cruise every couple of months. And the funny thing, though, is that the I think that none of the doctors who have been on Shark Tank have gone to the National Junior Achievement Convention every year of high school. And so if you haven't been steeped in business and cold calling and selling door to door, there's no way that you're going to leave the risk-averse world of medicine to go into a consumer medical device. It's a fool's errand, and that's why I'm out to quote Barbara Cochran.

John Shufeldt:
That's classic, and I love you called medicine risk-averse because, you know, particularly about what we do in emergency medicine. It's not all that risk-averse.

Amy Baxter:
Yeah, but we know what the outcomes are going to be, you know, I mean, we know that there's I got an 80 percent chance that I'm going to give a new MO by doing this, but it's the right thing to do and you accept the risk because you're really so understanding what the literature says about what you do in certain situations.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, right. Yeah, it's a great way to put it. Well, Amy, this has been a blast. Where can people find out more about you? And I'm going to find that clip of Shark Tank and post but where can people find out more about you?

Amy Baxter:
Sure. Episode five seventeen. Well, on our PainCareLabs.com Website, there is an About Us section, so you can find out about my until recently, all-woman team and starter story. If people are interested in going from their day jobs to having an entrepreneurial career, all of this is really laid out in an online starter story website, so I've gone back a couple of times to say where we are in the process. Buzzy and VibraCool can be purchased at shop.paincarelabs.com or on Amazon, and we've got the professional line of Buzzy Pro and Vibra Cool Pro that will be going just to hospitals and the DuoTherm is the low back pain device that should probably our NIH trial start soon. We're probably going to have this available by the end of the year.

John Shufeldt:
Very good. Well, congratulations, you've had a crazy, cool career and this sounds I mean, I'm going to do more research on Buzzy and see if we can get our emergency department to get it because clearly it's needed in all offices. But really, thanks for being on the show. This has been a huge amount of fun and I've learned a lot. So thank you.

Amy Baxter:
Absolutely welcome. It's always fun to talk about our weird mental bungee jump of a ride.

John Shufeldt:
I love the bungee jump analogy. Well, that's it, everybody. Thank you for another episode of Entrepreneur Rx. Stay tuned! There will be more to come. Have a great rest of your day.

John Shufeldt:
Thanks for listening to another great edition of Entrepreneur Rx. To find out how to start a business and help secure your future, go to JohnShufeldtMD.com. Thanks for listening.

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Key Take-Aways:

  • For physicians who are looking into research and development of a medical device, the NIH has a research program for entrepreneurs that is very well funded.
  • If you have an idea, come up with the technology, patent it, and license others to use your patent.
  • Find your why and stick with it.
  • Find a community of entrepreneurs who can support you.

Resources:

  • Connect and follow Amy on LinkedIn
  • Follow Amy on Twitter.
  • Find out how Buzzy and VibraCool are giving people power pain here.