Will A.I. Replace the Medical Sales Workforce and Surgeons? With Edouard Saget

In the changing balance between innovation and tradition, medical sales succeeds with personal connection, persistence, and the commitment to link technology and patient care. For today’s episode, we have Edouard Saget to discuss the big question: Will AI replace medical sales workforce and surgeons? Edouard shares his journey from a 1099 sales rep to the founder of OrthoGrid Systems, a groundbreaking venture to enhance surgical procedures. Edouard explains the challenges and triumphs that led to the creation of this revolutionary medical technology. He then discusses the role that AI plays in the medical field, both at present and in the future. Will AI replace the medical sales workforce and surgeons? Tune in to find out!

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Will A.I. Replace the Medical Sales Workforce and Surgeons? With Edouard Saget

In this episode, we have another special guest. He goes by the name of Edouard Saget. What makes Edouard special? Besides the fact that he’s a co-CEO of OrthoGrid, this is a company that’s bringing a novel and game-changing device to the medical sales industry. Besides the fact that he’s a health entrepreneur with many years of experience developing and delivering market entry and growth initiative strategies for companies, this man was someone who did not know anything about medical sales and got to this country from France.

He got into the industry, applied himself, learned, started a company, and now he’s at the top of the ladder. Why am I sharing it this way? This is the kind of story that I believe everyone should read. It’s the kind of story that’s going to inspire you to do so much more because of the odds he faced and what he was still able to do.

It leaves anyone reading to think to themselves, “I have no excuse. Whatever I want in this life, I’m going to go get it.” That’s absolutely what Edouard is. I’m not going to say anymore. I’m not going to spoil the episode. I encourage you to read carefully. He really explains things and shows you what’s possible. As always, we do our best to bring you guests who are doing things differently in the medical sales space. I do hope you enjoy this interview.

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Edouard, how are you doing?

I’m doing great, Samuel. Thanks for having me.

Why don’t you tell the audience who you are and what you do?

I’m the co-CEO of OrthoGrid. It is a leader in the transformation of orthopedic surgery with AI, a new type of technology that we’re able to bring into orthopedic procedures

Let’s get into that because those are a lot of big words. We have people in our audience who have no idea what you’re talking about. Why don’t you tell us what it was like before this technology before AI was able to assist, why is it important, and what is adding AI to this now changing?

That’s the fundamental question. It goes all the way back to this. For me, technology was a tool that came when I started selling total drone replacements. That technology was the regular navigation systems. Optical Tracking, Brand Labs, Ortho Soft back then, or even PraxSim was one of the companies that was making those systems and Medtronic StealthStation. The technology was cool in terms of being able to guide things instruments, implants, and such motions. It’s a cool technology.

When you change technique which is what happened in a tall hip replacement world, technique change happened, and with that technique that technology did not work as well. There was a change that happened when we brought fluoroscopy in. It worked better but didn’t have any supportive technology. The world of AI merged at the same time as this technology was taking over this procedure, the total hip replacement. We saw it as a tool to get to the next level of performance, even at least the same level as the technology that we were using in the past.

When those technologies are combined, they only work so well. AI has blended them in a better way to make them more effective and much more valuable.

The benefits of AI are at the same level of immediacy. Everything’s super efficient. Nowadays, we’re starting to understand that. Many years ago when we were playing around with it, it wasn’t that obvious because first things came out like machine learning. I couldn’t save my life writing a line of code, but the problem is what we’re trying to resolve. We started asking a bunch of questions and being curious about what these software options were.

We could do software, but this machine-learning stuff kept coming about in the meetings and my partner loves to go on the forefront of everything. He’s a front guy and an engineer as well. He brings all the stuff and he brought this concept of automating through software with AI. He got very curious about how the system could operate on its own. That’s cool because when you are in the operating room, the surgeons depend on humans, or something has to do the work on their behalf. The ability to have a system that could work autonomously without the help of another person in sync with a surgeon was very interesting for us to explore.

To give me more context to this, walk us through a procedure and the results before and after this technology. What’s the stark difference here?

It depends on what market you’re talking about because there are different tools. They work somewhere in the same space. They provide different value points. You have a registration process. That’s a step and a requirement. You have a procedure process. After that, there’s a modality and the modality can be different. In terms of what it looked like before, you take an X-ray or an image in surgery and then it would go to a machine and those two things are still happening. That hasn’t changed.

When that goes on a machine, everything has to be done by a human in an old way. The image comes in and you have to press all these buttons everywhere to do what you need to do. Someone is back there operating. It doesn’t want to wait for things. There’s a level of efficiency and performance. The other thing is when humans are different every time, you may have different results. One other human goes the other way. There’s no reproducibility.

A margin of error exists.

Now we do differently. The image is still produced by an X-ray machine. It is still transferred over to our system. The difference is that our algorithm was trained to do all the human was doing. It means recognizing the step or surgery, giving instructions, doing a quality assurance check, providing the information, potentially giving a warning, and all that happening all the same time. You look up and it happens. It’s trying to do all the processing of the physician in their brain as how they would want to do it and telling a digital or software robot to do it on their behalf, and it works.

Would you say it’s saving physicians time, money, and all the above? What’s the biggest impact that a physician gets excited by when they hear this technology?

The number one thing they’re excited about is a system that works for them. Surgeons have perfected their surgical workflow. When you introduce change, either you’re selling something or you’re introducing a new solution, you might interfere with that flow. That flow is important to them because from beginning to end, it’s almost their factory. There’s a product at the end. That is maybe a total hip replacement perfectly done, the same way every time. That’s what they sold to that patient and committed to.

 

When we bring new technology and that disrupts that, it needs to have a lot of value for them to be willing to go through that risk. The way we look at it is they are already doing a certain technique. That technique uses the arm. The image is being produced anyway. What we wanted to do is, “If the image is being produced, let’s process it on your behalf on what bracing you want. You don’t have to wait for it and it speaks to you.” When I talk to you a physician about the use of OrthoGrid, my first question is, “What is your technique?” I understand how the system is going to work, but I’m not asking them specifically to change their technique. That’s a very powerful conversation because that’s a big worry. They can always default back to what they know how to do.

Would you say that it’s AI is finding the most effective technique or is not quite that advanced yet?

The reality is you train your AI. You have to train it. It’s not just one algorithm that comes out and does everything. It’s a bunch of algorithms and then there’s a bunch of different quality checks along the way. There’s also an element of logic that needs to be organized so that you have a certain behavior. What we try to do with this specific product as a first-generation AI is to statically achieve a level of performance that a physician could be confident with and its relationships. It’s workflow-based, but it does not learn from the surgeon’s experience. We learned everything and it will not deviate from that.

Why not do that? Why not have it learn that the more surgeries it sees, the more captures and analyzes and says, “This is a better way?”

It goes back to the question, “How much data do you need? What kind of data do you need?” That’s a whole other world. The reality is there’s a moment where you have a diminishing return. You already have enough data that you’re going to have a chief of a certain level of performance. I think that data doesn’t help much more than that. The risk is to lose that performance. Not all surgeons are perfect and not every case is done perfectly.

You could have a lot of different data points that would come in and/or acceptance rates that would potentially lower the performance of our own algorithms. At some point, you have to say this is good enough as good as going to be but as many people as possible. If you have some outliers, you need to go and get that data those data points, and say okay, “There are enough outliers here that we do need to train better when we change the way we organize our software.”

If there is still a need to do things better, there are new products that are going to be created. Click To Tweet

Excuse the naiveté that I’m about to ask now, but is there space in which you could find the best surgeries? Could you get access to data that could say, “These are the best surgeries that have happened?” They met this criteria, for example, and then you’ve now can see which techniques were utilized, plug it all into the device or the AI, and see what it comes out with or are we too far away from stuff like that?

You’re not. As a matter of fact, the problem is that you need both. A system needs to be able to see both. To know that it’s good, you also know what bad looks like. You can’t just train on good and good only. It depends on what we’re talking about specifically, but your real life is real life and if you’re going to try to do an artificial intelligence, it has to have some of the same elements. That’s one piece. What’s interesting is if you do have excellence in a model, you could hear it with what is actually happening present time, and then you could create variability metrics that say, “If you want to be the best, you need to be here and you only here.” That’s assuming that you know what’s perfect and surgeons are not always perfect.

 

You know who’s perfect because you were the rep. You know which surgeons did it better than other surgeons when it came to the procedure.

There’s no question about that, and I think you recognize it very well. It’s one of the most amazing things to watch. We have a surgeon pool that tells us, “This is how the system needs to behave.” You do that as a group, not just like a single guy.

That is exciting stuff you guys are playing with here. When I first started many years ago, there was a physician who told me, “You should think again as far as medicine. You should not be in it and don’t let your friends enter it because pretty soon we’re all going to be replaced by robots.” It has some truth in it and he was joking back then. What’s the reality of that? Can we imagine the time when we won’t even need surgeons and AI technologies handling all of it?

Not in the near future. That’s for sure. Surgeons are not just operators and surgeons. There are a lot of decisions that are made every day that is we’ll keep factorial, impactful, and legally carry weight that we’re far down the road before they’re being replaced. Honestly, as a patient myself, that’s a good thing. Technology assists them in a way that they are able to do more things with more accuracy and with less fatigue on them. There’s a lot on those guys’ shoulders these days across the entire world.

It would probably be a good symbiosis between physicians, humans, and medicine. Otherwise, we’re going to have a catastrophe anyway. If that’s the case, everything’s going to be reshuffled so that there are new rules of engagement between machines, software, and humans. That’s all that balance going to work out.

That’s something that’s not often talked about. How is the quality of life improved for surgeons that are getting assisted by these technologies?

I think there are different curves. Surgeons would disagree and agree. Any new onset of technology incorporation comes with a lot of pain. There’s been many years of that happening with all these EMRs. I bet if I take any surgeons and we ask and they were going through those days of transforming their practice from paper to digital systems, I can tell you, they were hating life.

It’s not always a good thing when you start with the first wave of technology. What’s interesting about AI is it builds upon potential things that are already in place because it’s a secondary effect of having all these data points that came in for these last many years. That’s looking at renting these systems more efficiently at a level that the original expectation was.

AI builds upon potential things that are already in place because it's a secondary effect of having all these data points that came in for these last 20 years. Click To Tweet

When you talk to a physician that’s saying, “I want to know what you’re doing. I want to understand this new device for OrthoGrid. Why should I be excited about it?” I’m assuming you’ve talked to 100 physicians by now. What feature do they get most excited by when they say, “It can do what? We need this.”

Sometimes it’s hard to tell, but depending on the physician and their qualifying, your customer matters a lot. You need to not waste your time with people where your product is not even going to be needed at all. You need to do that qualification first. Everything after that is a little bit easier. The number one thing I would say that physician gets super excited about is they used to do it one way. It was a series of compromises on how they got to the end result.

With our system with AI, they get there immediately and they’re like, “That’s what I wanted now. Thank you.” That’s a little emotional shift that I could qualify as being the thing that makes them tick. Could they do it without it? Sure. They’ve been doing it before, but why not do it? It’s like I have the cameras in my car and it helps me know exactly how far I am from the truck behind me. I could do and park. I’m French. I’ve learned how to park well on my own, but the camera is nice.

First of all, ease of use. It’s the reproducibility. That’s what’s meaningful to them. The last thing is consistency so that when they do a surgery on a patient and they finish it one way, they expect to see a certain result in their clinic when they see that patient again. They want to know that they can do that over and over again. They’re trying to get that consistency out.

What you’ve done or created is fantastic. One thing that readers have to read is how you got this space. You are the CEO of OrthoGrid. This is a cutting-edge company that’s doing cutting-edge things. A lot of money is involved and this is exciting. I need to hear your story. Let’s go back to where you even started when you got into this country. I don’t want to spoil it for anybody, I’m going to let you tell it. Take us back to the beginning. How did you get to this country? Give us the story.

The reality is the story of OrthoGrid, though on your show speaking, it’s a story of a lot of people. The background in OrthoGrid is interesting. My partner is South African. I’m close to them. He has a whole story that’s unbelievable, then I have another partner who is from Kodiak, Alaska, who is a master fisherman, has a big boat, is an orthopedic surgeon, used to climb very high-level cliffs, and has a very interesting background of that team. From there, “How did we meet?” is the question.

I’m from France originally. I moved to a lot of different places. I grew up in France with my family, a sister, a brother, and three half-brothers from the US. This is the connection with the US. Right there, my mom had a first marriage. That was how the French guy got to the US. That plays a big role because I was able to get the visa to allow us to do that, and then I moved a lot.

I ended up going to med school. I went with my best friend’s dad. We skipped a church on Sunday. I would go into surgery, and they explored me to the world of surgery in high school. I ended up going to Mexico in France for a few years. I screwed up on my Anatomy exam because I didn’t show up on time. I was like, “I can’t get in there anymore.” I moved to the US. I was like, “I want to go to the US anyway.” I spent all my summers trying to figure out how to get here growing up.

How old were you?

When I first came, I was fifteen years old in the summer, but then we moved in 1999. I was 20 years old and my sister was 19. We moved to Boise, Idaho, of all places. At the time, it was still a little town, but in the Western US, that was where we wanted to be. It’s like the dream of the Western US, cowboys, big rivers, beautiful landscapes, and skiing. That was a thing. My sister and I did that. As I was going to Boise State University Blue Turf, I ended up trying to go back inside the operating room. The best way to do that I found out was to be a medical sales rep. Lo and behold, you don’t need all these fancy degrees to get into the OR.

How did you find that about this job?

It’s an important question as a matter of fact because it’s everything about how you enter your medical sales industry at times. It’s about who you know. I was totally random. My brother was an orthopedic surgeon and surgeon. One of these sales reps was Smith+Nephew, a snowboarder. I love to snowboard. I was looking for people to go snowboard with. I got in touch with them and we went together. What happened is that in his car, as every good medical sales rep orthopedics, your car is not your own. There’s stuff everywhere in it. It’s like books of technique guides and instrumentation trays running around.

That’s where I got my hands on a technique guide of a Russell-Taylor nail at the time from Richard’s Orthopedics. I devoured it on my way to the snowboard hill. I couldn’t shut up about it until I left and then I got interested. He hurt his back one day and he needed help. He called me and said, “It seems like you’re passionate about this stuff and I need help. I’m bedridden. I got the surgeries. Can you help me out?” It was May or June, five months after I moved to the US. I’m like, “Let’s go.” I had to learn and cover hip surgeries. I’m super thankful for the team and a small town in Idaho to welcome me with my French accent and learn how to do this thing.

You didn’t have anything to do with them. You helped him out and then he gave you a job or he told his team and they gave you a job?

He got me by himself. He gave me a job. I helped him out that summer. I was looking for OR. First of all, I want to get back in OR. I was doing orthopedics, which I knew a little bit about. Suddenly, I had a lot of fun. I’m a sponge for this stuff. It was fun. I kept doing it and helping him. He gave me little lines. I practiced that. He said, “This thing, why don’t you go out and sell it and see what happens.” There was an ENT line called OrthoCare. It was for turbinates on the nose. That was an interesting piece because I had to learn everything and had to go and get the appointment to the physicians and get my little rendezvous and tell speech on. It worked. I sold some stuff. My first commission was $2,000. I’m excited.

How old are you at this stage?

I’m 21. I got my job with him at twenty. I’m a summer baby. I turned 21 in September. My first sale on my own without any help from anyone was in October.

You said he hurt his back. Was it snowboarding?

No, it wasn’t. It was from a dirt biking.

He was his own version of an athlete.

He was a surfer.

You helped him. You guys became friends. He takes you on and gives you your first experience. You get your own sales. You’re doing your own thing now and then take us to the next physician. What happened after that?

After that, he left. He went to Hawaii and decided to leave. What was left was all these surgeons and products in limbo and technically almost in my hand. I was managing them with him, but the boss, distributors, or folks did not know who I was. They have to make a decision when he hear that he is leaving. They didn’t entrust those lines to me. I’m very thankful to a few people who have trusted in letting me manage these product lines. Those are Smith+Nephew Trauma, Smith+Nephew Recon, and OrthoCare. There was also the clinical therapy side of Smith+Nephew with fantastic product lines.

You’ve always been a 1099 sales rep.

Now we’re in a world where everybody wants a base salary. I do recruit salespeople. The first thing they want is a base salary. The first thing I would want is commission. It’s a fascinating transition. There are two worlds in this field. There is the 1099 world and the employee world. I’ve learned that there are benefits to both the employer side but also the employee or 1099 contractor side. The experience is somewhat the same when it comes down to talking to the physician, being part of a team, and bringing change inside the environment that you’re looking to change. You should pick your products. It’s the number one thing you should pay attention to.

 

We talked to hundreds of people who want to get into the industry and everybody still has this mindset, “I got to get in.” We say, “Stop thinking that way. Start getting interested in where you want to be within this space. Learn what’s being sold,” and like what you said, “Why don’t you pick a product or pick a state that you’re interested in that you could sell under?” I couldn’t agree with you more.

Somebody wants to call me now and say, “I don’t know anything, but if I work my butt off and anything, you pay me a commission. Where can I sell?” I can tell you, I’ll give you a shot. There’s very little to lose doing that and it’s all to gain for that person. I’m not saying it will work every time and there are organizations that don’t work like that. If you’re a distributor and you are always looking for some help, that’s how most of the help comes in. It’s the word of mouth. I need the help of a rep. There are plenty of these entry positions, but there’s lots to say about hard work and saying, “I want something.”

You are on OrthoGrid and you hire. Who would you like to experience more? I know it depends on the candidate, but would you say you’re looking more for that rep that was a 1099 and they’ve been on themselves or would you say you’re looking more for that highly trained W-2 employee that performed really well? Who do you tend to lean towards more?

As we’re building organization, it has to be more organized. There are definitely different levels of roles with different levels of expertise that we need to fill in. We are trying to manage growth. The growth is going real fast. That’s a process in and of itself. Can I manage the inbound and can it deploy the Salesforce as well? That’s one role. In terms of pure sales, I think you’d be surprised by the kind of people that we brought in at times.

It could be somebody who reached out to me on LinkedIn and is experienced in the EMR world selling directly to surgical practices or it could be somebody who is pure 1099 with a current product line first of all. It depends on where they sell. If you have a need for a certain market, you might consider somebody would be an employee. That makes more sense there because there’s already a demand and, potentially, it’s important to be controlling to some extent what the customer service looks like.

 

You need a little bit of everything is what I realized in an organization like the one we’re building that distributes products and software. The point is we have multiple options. If there is an interest in joining a company like OrthoGrid and there are plenty of other companies like that, do not think that there’s only one way to serve business. There are many ways to serve a business. If there is a match and you can find that, we’re always opportunistic or trying to get the help we need because we’re always out of resources.

I love that there’s always a way to serve a business and you need to find where you match. I don’t think enough people think that way. I’m glad you shared that now. What I want to know is when you look at your profile on LinkedIn, you see your CEO of ES Medical Sales, Cofounder of Global MedChoices Management, and then OrthoGrid. I’m assuming that since you’ve always been at 1099, you’ve been able to enterprise yourself in different ways. Talk to us a little bit about those two other companies that you have.

Global MedChoices one is interesting. I did that between the Depew and OrthoGrid technically. What we did was that we were helping to get patients from Canada who were on the waiting list. It was three years to wait for a total neutral hip. It’s already painful to wait that long and Canada doesn’t allow you to cut the line. If a surgeon is on the waiting list, you’re at the end of the waiting list. That’s how it is. We ended up going to the Caribbean and setting up the first Caribbean surgical tourism business. We would take patience some Canada, send them to the Caribbean with their surgeons, get a nice dinner on the beach, get operated on, and recover on the beaches. It was in Turks and Caicos at the time.

It was very cool because it allowed me to put together everything I had done in my medical sales career to, “This is it,” from the marketing using videos like this, website building that I did for physicians, and education to patients remotely. We were doing videos to teach patients remotely. At the time, we were trying to figure out how to capture patients with marketing and markets. It’s very interesting, all the way to the surgical procedure, the recovery, and to 2 or 3 years later, which is the patient record and outcome tracking. The negotiation with the hospital, the shipping across boundaries, frontiers, FDA, and non-FDA is very interesting. It’s a very interesting business.

There’s no better feeling than finding a home for all of your skillsets.

There's no better feeling than finding a home for all of your skill sets. Click To Tweet

It was fantastic and very challenging. The patients were very happy. That was a very good time. Things shift in the Caribbean. It’s unstable sometimes.

There was one on that market.

Not really. We got kicked out. We helped patients because what we did is that we were taking the physicians and the patients from Canada or the US, but then we were also doing those local patients that used to be flown out. They had to be flown out because they were family and stay at home and get care from the same level of quality of physicians that the others were getting. The most important part of that business is that we’re helping those people. We would cross them in the grocery store. It allowed me to get everything I had done, observed, and participated into one thing, then there’s the OrthoGrid business, which it’s all I do.

You can’t skip that. We got to see how it happened here. You did this business. The Caribbean’s got a little difficult to navigate in. Walk us through the process. How did OrthoGrid spawn? What happened?

OrthoGrid happens as a necessity to take care of physicians change into a surgical procedure. In 2006 or even a little bit earlier than that, Joel Matta was a very well-known orthopedic surgeon. He is a pelvic and trauma surgeon. He is a super nice guy, but he’s also an explorer. That guy likes to go and learn new stuff and think about stuff. He went to France, which is funny, to learn how to do a certain approach called the Anterior Approach in total hips.

In that approach, he decided was transformative in terms of rehabilitation that he wanted to bring back to the US. When he did his own cases, he saw the challenges and started to go and talk to companies and say, “I think there’s something there.” He published on it. He had J&J, and those guys did a good job at rallying behind Dr. Matta and creating this training program to learn this new technique that was foreign to the US market.

One thing that was different is the patient, instead of being on the side, was put on its butt called supine and then it helps the X-ray machine to come in and take images. There’s a picture of what’s going on. The approach and incision are very much muscle-sparing. It’s very good for the patient in terms of recovery. Long story short, I told you earlier we’re using technology for when the patient is in a certain position. We put the patient in a different position. The systems didn’t work as well and still don’t nowadays be honest with you. When we looked at the image that was being taken, that’s when we’re like, “We need to do more with that.” That’s where OrthoGrid’s idea came from, to be honest. We wanted to do an analog device. We did it with somebody in a garage literally.

The best story starts there.

I remember this one rep of mine because he came in one day with a wood board and chicken wire stapled on and he was like, “Can we use this?” “You can’t do that. That didn’t work.” That was an interesting era of building one to try to get some data out of it. It is simply trying to make it better. There’s a lot of do-it-yourself at the beginning, that’s for sure. One thing we did was that we placed a patent on it right away. We kept perfecting the device. I don’t know why. We just didn’t want to give up on it and make it better and better. We send it to the University of Utah here in Salt Lake. I got a call a year and a half later or something like that, “That thing you sent over works. We’re getting it published in The Journal of Arthroplasty in a couple of months.” I was like, “Whoa.”

You’re minding your own business and you get a call one year and a half later?

I sent the little device over to Erik Kubiak who was from Kodiak, Alaska. He was a professor at the University of Utah. Richard, who was in Salt Lake City, my partner, took that and gave it to him as something to use.

Are you guys anticipating the call?

No, I need a backtrack a little bit because that was my experience. When Richard, who was my partner here in Salt Lake, was meeting with Erik, the guy from the University of Utah, they are doing it and we’re building that thing. There was a connection already. What we don’t know is that when you start to study and they do the study, you don’t know what the results are going to be. When he calls and says, “The results are happening,” it’s much better than I even expected.

The reality, for me, is I had put that study and totally forgot about it. It’s like this thing that I forgot about. When he called and said it was being published in a JOA out of all articles or publications, I did not know I hit it because I was surprised. It was rough. Ten millimeters was the dome back then. Sometimes my competition will take that article and say, “I could plus or minus 10 millimeters.” That was the goal back then, but it was a fact that it was at the same level as the other systems that were costing so much more was enough to say there was something here.

There’s a system of value, less expensive, and the same results. That stuck with me. We had the patents and we were waiting for the patent. The patent came out in December 2013. It was fully issued. Our system was basic and without a patent, this would have never seen daylight. Nobody would have supported us. Everybody can copy it. It was interesting, the combination of clinical data and patents. If you had been the other way around patents but no clinical data, I’m not sure we would have done anything about it, but because there were clinical results first and a patent for protection in 2014, we decided to go forward with the business.

It sounds like opportunity met preparation. Fast forward to when you said to yourself, “We hit it. This is it. We’re going now.”

That is still happening. This is something that evolves definitely. It’s an iteration process because you’re constantly looking at different things and you never think you you did it. I launched AI, and all I can think about is the next product because it’s not perfect. Do you see what I’m saying? The next generation of AI and the performance of trying to answer what if and why not is how could we because there is always something else. At some point, you have to stop and say, “Are you splitting heirs?” Our reality is if there are still surgeons out there to need something fixed in an area that I participate in, then we’re going to try to find a way to fix it. That’s where the whole mentality comes from, to be honest with you.

You have OrthoGrid. You’re on the cutting edge. A couple of questions, how do you make it all work? Are you a family man? Do you have all the time in the world? How do you balance a 1099 with whatever your social life looks like?

That’s been a difficult question since I got into medical sales. Be prepared for a balancing act.

Give us the family makeup first and then how you make it work.

I am a happily married man to a beautiful woman by the name of Miriam. She is the mother of two children. That’s the family composition.

You are on the way out. A few more years of college, and then it’s OrthoGrid and the wife and whatever else you guys want to do.

I jumped a little bit because I sent him to boarding school. He asked for it. He wanted to learn French. I found a boarding school for him to go to about 30 minutes from my parents. He just came back, which is fun to have him back. Technically, my daughter was still at the house. I’m not an empty nester, but OrthoGrid is the big baby.

Millennials and Generation Z stay until 30 now.

That’s not happening in my house. They are not staying around in my house. They are welcome back anytime.

That’s a family makeup. What will give us some insight into how you balance it all is give us what’s the daily practice for you. What time are you getting up? What are you doing first? How do you make it all work?

I wish it was perfect, but it isn’t. I do try to sleep seven hours every day. I don’t like that being cut short very much. It’s close travel. It’s not my least favorite because I get in late. Potentially, I have to get up early if it’s surgery. If there are any delays in an airplane, you show up at 2:00 in the morning and get up at 5:00 equivalent Eastern Time. That’s 3:00 Mountain Time. The sleep part here is very important. I love the seven hours. My wife always wakes up way before me. In terms of daily activities, with the morning routine, I fast a lot. I do a lot of fasting. I usually try to eat after 12:00. I work out three times a week. I do love going to the mountains. That’s the place where I get to relax.

How often?

I don’t do it enough, but usually, when the winter is good, it’s at least twice a week. If not, three times a week if I can. We’ll do that if I’m not traveling.

What drives you? You went to med school. You left your your home nation. You made it in America. You’ve been a 1099 rep the whole time to the point where now you run an entire company and organization. What drives all of this? Is it something religious? Is it something that a life philosophy you have? Is it the way it’s always been? What can you say in that regard?

It’s the commitment. You set yourself onto a path. That commitment to try to finish it and to get to the places that you envision is probably what drives you. Like I imagined earlier, the what if, why not, and how could we is almost like a pool. That’s what you’re driving force. After that, business is a whole other interest because it’s complex. It’s not easy. I didn’t go to school for this stuff. Maybe there are some things that I’m missing in the process.

I certainly look back and can see things we could have done differently. For CEOs and entrepreneurs that I met, to be honest with you, as a matter of fact, I had a call with one and it’s the one-on-one, “How do we go about this?” It’s one of those things you have to discuss or take internally a lot. That part is fun. I enjoy that. I like the challenge of it. It definitely has made me grow my personality. Those are the driving forces.

We try to take people and it’s not something that produces a ton of money. We’re looking at something down the road when we finally get to the place where we can get the rewards, but that’s delayed gratification. There’s no question about it. As a sales rep, I find out the gratification is way more immediate because you get this out, you get the commission, and repeat. Nothing stops you from trying to get more of it. When you get to the other side, the gratification comes from other places. After a while, you do see where that reward can come.

If there’s anything you can say to our audience, remember our audience is people who want to get into the industry, people in the industry, and people leading the way, what one thing that you like to share?

If you are a sales guy and if you want to be a sales guy, then sell yourself. That’s the first thing. You got to go out there and you can’t take no for an answer. You got to sell yourself. You will probably not stop selling yourself for a while. Sales is a personal connection. It is how you come across. It’s not just a product but also you are part of the product. You’re attached to that product. If, at the beginning, the product is new to an organization, then that’s what you have to think about.

Don’t let people tell you you can’t do something. If that’s what you want to do and you have it in you to go get it, then that’s number one. The pathways, honestly, if I were to do it again, the first thing I would do is go find a doctor, any of them depending on what the fields are, and then ask for recommendations for who they work with our current sales reps. They are one phone call away from someone.

How quickly can you get into that spot? That’s one way to do it. The other thing is, as an organization, get some training. That’s something that matters because depending on what you’re trying to do, the best way to be valuable to an organization and several organizations is if you can’t shortcut the process a little bit, you do some of that, but there are always other organizations. You can shadow someone or you can work with an organization to get you up to speed about what the industry is about. That can be effective. That’s very valuable as well. Be persistent and be clear about your intentions. Usually, things open the door naturally.

This has been an amazing time with you learning and being inspired by how to move mountains in the medical sales space. We have one more thing to do. It’s called the lightning round. Are you ready?

I suppose.

Let’s do it. First question, what is the best book you’ve read in the last six months?

I don’t read books that often. I do a lot of reading on the phone about all kinds of different things. I’m going to talk about an article I read. It was the one about clinical data that’s coming out on our product that compares human versus AI. It’s a wonderful piece. It’s the one of its first. I’m very grateful to Dr. Glenek to have been put together 200 patients.

Is it a published article?

It’s going to get published pretty soon. It was a poster at one of the meetings. That’s what I read when I got the email.

Next question, what is the best TV show or movie you’ve seen in the last six months?

I got sucked up this summer into one. Outlander.

I’ve never seen it, but I heard people talking about it.

The other one I saw that I got sucked into as well but it’s nice because it’s not too many episodes is the one on Bass Reeves. I like cowboy movies.

I’m sorry. I don’t know who Bass Reeves is.

It’s like the story of The Lone Ranger. It’s the same guys who did Yellowstone.

I did see Yellowstone. I like that one.

That’s very curated what to build to it. I got sucked into that.

Very cool. What is the best meal you’ve had in the last six months? We want the restaurant and the item.

I had a beautiful meal at a restaurant in Salt Lake City called Rawtopia. If you want a restaurant that is super healthy but has good a menu for everybody, Rawtopia is delicious. That is also to the canyon on the way to Park City.

Any items to recommend?

Anything.

The last question, but not least, what’s the best experience you’ve had in the last six months?

I had many. Being with my family in the summer and getting my son off to boarding school was very cool. The second thing is my daughter’s graduation over the certificate for Master’s was fun. Personally, I went and we did some cliff jumping. That was fun. I finished my first-ever early ski trip in Canada. I was discounted. It was early December. I got hooked. That thing was fun. Those are the last things we did. I try to keep it balanced.

Where can people find you?

At the office, most likely, on a plane, or on LinkedIn.

It was awesome having you on the show. Keep doing the amazing things you’re doing out there in the medical sales world. We can’t wait for an update.

Thanks. You keep it pumped up. It’s fun.

Thank you.

—

That was Edouard Saget. It was such an inspiring story. Reading things like that makes you say, “I’m going to do that much more.” If you’ve been reading this for any period of time, then you already know what I’m going to say. Visit EvolveYourSuccess.com. File an application and get on the line with someone who can change your life. Evolve Your Success was created to create opportunity and to inspire people to reach higher.

People ask me sometimes what was my motivation to start this show. Initially, it was simply because I just felt that this industry is so amazing and it creates so many opportunities. There should be more voices that champion what happens within it. Truly, that’s what it’s served, then it became I want to make sure that I showcase every single field in medical sales so people can learn where they can be and I’m still doing that.

As we grow with this show, we’re about to cross 200 episodes. I’m happy to say that we are crossing 200,000 downloads. A lot of people have read and learned. It’s gotten to a point where it’s a little bit less of something I want to do or something I should do. It’s a little bit more of something that I have to do. There’s a responsibility that has been created within me to bring the message to the masses. That’s the goal, bringing these inspiring stories to the masses, letting people see what’s truly possible so when it comes to whatever moves they want to make in their own lives, they have these kinds of stories to fall back on and say, “Whatever it is, I can do this.”

If you’re here and reading this, maybe you want to get into the industry. Maybe you’re ready in the industry and you want to learn some sales skills, or maybe you found us because you just like it and you’re tied to medicine in some way and you said, “Let me read.” However, you found us,

I want to share this with you. Now, you have things you want to do. You’re in a stage of your life where you’re trying to progress.

I want to share with you that now, at this very moment, I want you to picture this thing that you’re trying to capture and imagine that you’ve captured it. Hold on to that. There it is. Now I want you to take the next step. I can’t know who you are and what you’ve chosen, but I know that it’s there. I know that there’s a next step to take.

Some of you might think, “That’s a scary step. I don’t think I can do that.” Some of you say, “That’s the problem. I don’t know what step to take.” I’m going to challenge you. If you don’t know what stuff to take, then you know what you need to do. If you know what step to take, you know what you need to do. If it comes to getting into the medical sales industry, then you also know what you need to do. I’m going to leave it there. As always, we do our best to bring you guests who are doing things differently in the medical sales space. I do hope you tune in for another episode.

 

Important Links

• OrthoGrid
• Rawtopia
• LinkedIn – Edouard Saget

 

About Edouard Saget

Edouard Saget, Co-Founder, Board Member, and Co-CEO of OrthoGrid Systems, is a healthcare entrepreneur, with more than 20 years of experience developing and delivering market entry and growth initiative strategies for companies. He has broad experience working with hospital systems and physician-driven center of excellence programs, with a focus on digital integration to solve problems of efficiency and team engagement. Strategically minded and deploying processes around legal structure, intellectual property, and fundraising, Edouard has been critical in securing OrthoGrid’s patents and driving the development of proprietary technology. He attended Boise State University and the Universite de Medecine in France.

 

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