Etienne Nichols | Greenlight Guru | Gratitude, Writing to Reflect, & Furthering the Medtech Industry

The Leading Difference

Etienne Nichols is a mechanical engineer, PMP-certified project manager, the host of the Global Medical Device Podcast, and the builder of the Greenlight Guru MedTech Excellence Community. In this episode, he shares a plethora of advice and great stories, including why gratitude and curiosity matter so much, how writing helps you to identify what you truly believe, his passion for furthering the medtech industry, and how an article he read changed his life.

Guest links: https://www.greenlight.guru/podcast | https://www.greenlight.guru/etienne-nichols-thankyou | https://www.linkedin.com/in/etiennenichols/

Charity supported: Polaris Project

Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at [e-mail].

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Host: Lindsey Dinneen
Editor: Tim Oliphant
Producer: Velentium

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Episode 009 - Etienne Nichols

Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.

Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.

Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives.

Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives.

Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.

Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.

Hello and welcome to The Leading Difference. I'm your host Lindsey, and I am excited to introduce you to my guest today, Etienne Nichols. Etienne is a mechanical engineer and PMP certified project manager with a wealth of experience in the medical device industry. He's worked with Fortune 500 and startup medical device companies and has taught classes on quality management systems and design controls for Regulatory Affairs Professional Society and American Society for Quality. He is a frequent speaker at MedTech conferences, the host of the Global Medical Device Podcast, and the builder of the MedTech Excellence Community. Thank you so very much for joining us, Etienne. I'm so excited to have you here on this show today. Welcome.

Etienne Nichols: Thank you. I'm excited to be here as well. I'm super pumped to be with you today.

Lindsey Dinneen: Awesome. Well, I would love, if you wouldn't mind starting by just telling us a little bit about yourself and your background and how you got to where you are now.

Etienne Nichols: Sure. I guess if I was to break down as simple as possible, I'm the host of the Global Medical Device Podcast, and I say that partly because we just interviewed Dan Purvis, the CEO of Velentium on his book, "28 Days to Save the World." Loved that, but, anyway, just had to throw that out there because I'm just such a big fan of you guys as well.

Okay. To your question, specifically, my background, the word background can meet a lot of things. I just finished a book called "Livewired" by David Eagleman. He's a neuroscientist at Stanford. He basically says, our brains aren't so much observers of reality, but filters. So we filter out our past, we hone in on certain things. Okay? I say all that to say when I think of background, I imagine a picture of Mona Lisa, what's in the background? You think Mona Lisa, what's in the background? Only things that matter to Da Vinci. So I'd like to tell you a quick story. It might not seem super relevant, but this is a story of kind of help shape who I am.

When I was in my early twenties, I thought I was in love, but it turned out that it wasn't meant to be. So as an early 20 something without a fully grown prefrontal cortex, I did what any self-respecting Oklahoman would do. I signed up for Terry Don West School of Bull Riding. Terry was a world champion bull rider 1985 to 2003, and he had a school outside in Henrietta, Oklahoma. So I went there. I was the only city kid there. After a few rides, like I literally got on multiple bulls and I got on one where it laid down in the shoot, it was bucking around and laid down in the shoot and it, it was dark down there. And my brain immediately said, "abort mission, jump outta here, jump outta the shoot." And I jumped out and I was terrified. Terry ran over, he yanked me by the collar, he stuck his gloved finger in my face, and he said, "you never ever ever get off a bull in the shoot."

And so I, I'd say that story to say, when I think about background, that was a pivotal moment in my life when I thought, you never give up. You know, no matter how dark or scary it is, you never give up. So that, that was one of the things that before I was engineer, that was one of the pivotal moments.

I'll talk about my real background, I guess that's more traditional. I'm a mechanical engineer by trade. Before coming to MedTech, I worked in aerospace, the steel industry, so both regulated and unregulated. I'm gonna close my window because I actually have a rooster right outside my window.

Lindsey Dinneen: I've been enjoying him.

Etienne Nichols: But I've worked in manufacturing regulatory. I actually got my project management, professional certification on a regulatory project product development. Finally was a project manager of a drug delivery combination product. So, all of those things before I came to Greenlight Guru, which is where I am now. I've worked with dozens of companies to help them set up and implement their quality management system. And so as I mentioned before now, I manage the Global Medical Device Podcast. So it's been a really fun ride.

Lindsey Dinneen: Awesome. Yeah. And a very eclectic ride. It sounds like you have come at this in a very unique way. Okay. I would love to hear a little bit more about your story on joining Greenlight Guru, because I recently read a post on LinkedIn about it. I just thought, "wow, what a great story." I'd love if you'd share that with us.

Etienne Nichols: Sure. This was several years ago. I was working as a project manager for a drug delivery combination product company. I walked into the VP of Engineering's office. He and I were talking about some things that were going on, and I thought, I need to do a little bit of research. I went back to my computer. I started looking for an article, and that was when I first stumbled across Greenlight Guru. I came across the article, "DHF Versus DMR Versus DHR." It's a helpful article because FDA and their acronyms, if you're familiar with those. So after reading that article, I did what anyone would do. You know, you reach out to the author, thank them for their writing. And so I, I reached out to Jesseca Lyons who was the author on LinkedIn, and I told her I really appreciated the things that she had written, and she just responded, "yeah, you're welcome."

The very next day she posted, "Hey, we had a great quarter last quarter, and by the way, we're hiring" and I thought "hiring?" So I clicked on the link and it looked really interesting and I just applied on the whim. I was not looking for a new job. I wasn't interested in getting a new job, but I wanted to learn more about this person and their company. And after my first interview with her, she literally put a Zoom meeting on my calendar that afternoon. Three days later I had an interview with Tom Rish. Four or five days later, I had an interview with Fran Cruz, who was the VP of Customer Success at the time. And I basically had an offer in less than 10 days, I I believe.

So, Jessica and I joke about that article changing my life a little bit, but it's a really good article. But it's been a fantastic ride and I've really enjoyed my time at Greenlight Guru. And I'll say one other thing, it felt like a big risk at the time to move because I was in a great position. I loved the company I was working for. I really respected the CEO. But after looking at this company, it felt like a risk, but the more I thought about it, it was so in line with what I really loved doing: content creation, interacting with customers directly, and the potential to get on stage and speak on the podcast or at conferences. I felt like it was a bigger risk not to take this job.

So this is something that I would throw out to some of the listeners is you may be facing different career steps and there's always a risk no matter what you do, but you always have to think about the risk of not taking a risk. And I think that's something we sometimes forget. So I dunno if that answered your question. That's the story as least as it's coming to me at the moment.

Lindsey Dinneen: No, That's a great answer. Yeah, I love those collisions, I like to call them. All of a sudden, things work out, but it takes intention, right? You read an article and then you reached out to the author and that led to a series of events, and here you are. But, I just love when those, those kinds of things happen. Those stories are my favorite.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah. It makes me think-- oh, I'm probably gonna butcher this-- but the definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yes.

Etienne Nichols: And I think if you're always preparing, you, you may or may not be lucky. The opportunity may or may not arise, but when they do, you know, you almost have an obligation to take that sometimes.

Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely agree. Yeah. A theme that I have picked up on from following your work on LinkedIn and whatnot is gratitude. And I would love if you would share just a little bit maybe about your philosophy behind it, because it seems like something that you often express gratitude, whether it's to the author of an article that you appreciated or it's to an interviewee that had a particularly inspiring thing to share. I just have noticed that theme throughout your work, and I would just love to hear your perspective on it.

Etienne Nichols: Wow. I actually got like little chills when you were saying that because I don't think anybody, nobody's ever mentioned that or called that out. So I'm glad that's showing through, for sure. I'm really thankful, I'm thankful that's showing through. It's funny, let me rewind to a period in my career that I thought this was one of the toughest parts of my career. It, looking back, it was one of the toughest. I was in a situation where I was leading a project that if this project did not succeed, many, probably dozens of people would be laid off because the company wouldn't be able to support them if this project didn't succeed.

That was my perception. And I think even looking back, I think it's accurate. So, I was really stressed at the time. We were working 60 plus hours a week, me and my team, And during that time, I honestly thought a lot about giving up. I never gave up. I told my wife, no matter how hard it is, I've gotta finish this. And then, if it's still difficult, after we're done, we're gonna move on. And that is what happened. We brought the project to fruition and moved on.

But during that time, I remember standing outside a conference room and I stared at an empty whiteboard and I looked at that whiteboard and I thought someone should put something in there. So I put just a question. "What is your definition of success?" I believe that was the first question. A few days later, I walked by again and lots of people had answered that with their different definitions, and I thought, huh? I took a picture, went home, and I wrote a memo. I said, "what is your definition of success? This is what you said."

I went back to work and I sent this out to, I don't know, 20 different people. I didn't know who had answered on the whiteboard and I wrote a lot of these different things and people kept telling me you know, appreciate you translating our words into this memo. Just kinda your giving it your own thoughts. By the time I left that company, I had over a hundred people who I was, you know sending a Monday memo to, and I learned somewhere along the way that people don't mind getting a little bit of encouragement. During that time, the way I was able to get through the stress was every morning I would write that Monday memo. I would think about those things people were saying, and I would try to focus, what am I really grateful about these people? And that's really what helped me get through.

So, that was kind of a circuitous way of answering your question, so I'd like to be a little bit more succinct here in the, my last couple phrases here. There is, there's a lot of scarcity in the world, but gratitude really shows you what you have. When you start looking and comparing your life to other people's, it's easy to wish you had this, wish you had that. When you're grateful for what you have, you start recognizing all the things that you do have. And so it's more of an abundance mindset. So that's been my philosophy. I believe gratitude is at the heart of of an abundance mindset.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. And that story is pretty awesome. So was that maybe the start of your content creation journey?

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, I do think that. Oh,, if you'll let me go through another story, which is

Lindsey Dinneen: Yes, please.

Etienne Nichols: When it comes to content creation I'm a big believer in writing and having a writing practice of some sort. So, to answer your question just directly, yes. that was the beginning and I learned the value of writing every morning. In fact, at that time I was very disciplined. I have three kids now, I'm not quite as disciplined. I would get up at 4:45 every morning. I would go work out and then I would stop at a coffee shop on my way to work. I would write for 30 minutes, and then I would go to work. That was before the pandemic, coffee shops closed. And it was before kids and all these different things, but that's when I started writing.

Fast forward to Greenlight Guru. I was working with different customers and I was loving what I was doing. Occasionally I would post on LinkedIn just a long form article about, this is something I learned about, I don't know 21 CFR part 820.40 document controls. Why do you need to show a Rev A to Rev B? Why do you justify those changes? All these different things. I've just wrote an article about that, and I would do that every now and then. Well, while I was in that position here at the company at Greenlight Guru, the CMO, Nick Tippmann reached out to me and said, "Hey, we're thinking about building a community and we want you to build the community. I've been watching what you post on LinkedIn."

So this is a guy I'd never met before. He's within my company, but he saw what I was doing on LinkedIn, the content creation. At the same time, the founder of the company, Jon Speer reached out to me and said, "Hey, I've watched some of the things you wrote on LinkedIn. Wondered if you'd be interested to be a co-host on the podcast." And so these are two separate situations happening at the same time because of the content creation.

Now I'd been writing for years up until this point. And I'll tell you one more thing about writing is it helps you identify what you truly believe, what you actually think. You may think something, but once you write it out, you may change your mind or tweak it slightly. And so that really helps. And so I've been doing this for multiple years and it got me to a point where two different people approached me and I was able to accept that, and it's been really fun.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I love that story. When you had the opportunity to do the podcast, was that something that you felt immediately comfortable taking on? Was that something that took a little bit of a learning curve, or how did that work for you?

Etienne Nichols: The way I would describe it was terror. I had never met the founder of this company. And not only was I meeting the founder, we were interviewing the best in the field-- people like Mike Drews or your CEO, Dan Purvis. Every time I saw those names on my calendar, the pit of my stomach would ball up and I'd go through some breathing exercises, do some squats, whatever. And it's okay, we could do that. But, when you get scared like that, to me, you, you have to qualify it a little bit, but a certain amount of that fear, to me says this is the right direction for me. And the same thing happened at multiple points in my career that sort of confirmed this is the right thing and that little bit of fear is one of 'em. You can look at it as fear, but you can also be excitement because I'm reaching beyond my grasp, and if I keep reaching, I'll grow and I can actually reach this thing. So that's how I looked at that.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I was once told by a friend that she felt that whenever you were nervous it was because you cared. And so use that nervous energy to do a really good job because it can be harnessed, right? That fear, that, that nervousness, but it's not a bad thing, it's just along for the ride. It's there to help give you a little extra boost and that's okay. And I've always kinda liked that.

Etienne Nichols: So I'm curious about you because I love talking to other podcasters, so I just, if we could flip the script just for a minute. I'm curious how you handle that nervousness or is, are there any specific things you do?

Lindsey Dinneen: That is a great question. Yes, I still do get nervous. And it does depend on the situation, but I think one thing that I have learned is that being yourself, being just normal and natural and a little vulnerable and a little bit not polished is actually a lot more relatable to people than being perfect. And I'm not perfect. My interviews will never be perfect, but I can do my best and I can be me. And the more that I embrace that, the more comfortable I am.

Etienne Nichols: Oh, yeah. I think that's great. The one thing that I I can't remember who told me this but curiosity-- you talk about like what is the opposite of love? Is it hate? Some people may say hate, but I actually think it's indifference. Indifference to me is the opposite of love. So what's the opposite of cowardice or being afraid? The opposite of that isn't courage, because you have to be afraid in order to have courage. To me, the opposite of being afraid is curiosity. Someone may disagree with me, but that's the way I banish fear is, man, be really curious. " Why did I react that way? Or what are they really trying to tell me?" And instead of thinking, oh, this person's title is this, and this, I'm like, "what are they actually saying?" This is really interesting. So that's how I look at that.

Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. That's great advice too, just in general because curiosity allows you to explore and exploration is always a success, right? It doesn't lead to failure, it's just a way to learn more about the world around you.

Etienne Nichols: Absolutely.

Lindsey Dinneen: Well, okay, so you have mentioned that there have been a couple of moments along your journey that I guess confirmed to you that this is the right path. But I'm curious, specifically in the medtech industry, what is it that drives you, that gives you that passion to continue doing what you're doing?

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, I can tell you a couple different things. So the spark I would say happened when I was in college. I broke my arm and it was a go-karting accident. And I went to school with arm in a cast. But before I got my arm in a cast, the guy's name was Garrett Watts, the hand doctor who put me back together, and he knew I was a mechanical engineering student. He talked to me about the Synthes DePuy, I don't can never pronounce that word, but the little piece that was going to be placed into my arm with different screws and talked about the physics of it really fascinated me. I thought, man, as a mechanical engineer, I could contribute to this industry. That would be great. That was a spark.

Then when I met my wife, she has had a pacemaker since she was 11. So, I've seen her through multiple surgeries to get new pacemakers. And every time I see that, it's man, I am so thankful somebody developed this medical device. There have been other times when I had to watch a loved one go back to the OR, and just talking to the surgeons afterwards and learning about the things that they have to go through. I want their life to be easy. I want them to be able to do their job efficiently. And so I really am passionate about the medtech industry for those reasons.

You know, I love all of the things that go into engineering. I will never be the best at those things. And I kind of had to realize that somewhere along the way. The people who are really the best at anything are the people who do it for a living and also do it for a hobby. And those are the people you want in your life in different roles leading technically and things like that. But when it comes to MedTech, I realize I could be passionate about this product because I know the end user is going to be truly affected by this. Not only some unknown person, it could even be my wife, my son, anybody I love could be affected by this. To me, MedTech is really personal, and that's what confirmed this industry.

For different roles, I see myself as, I just want to help the industry and so whatever role I can be in, whether that's mechanical engineer or a project manager, or a regulatory consultant or a podcaster. However I can help further the industry to where we work more efficiently and more streamlined in a way that produces safe and effective medical devices. That's the role I want to be in, whatever that role is.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You've mentioned having opportunities to be in leadership roles, to lead teams, and we've had that discussion in regards to gratitude specifically, but I'm curious, how would you define leadership? Or what does it mean to you?

Etienne Nichols: That's a good question. And so two things come to mind. And they're actually both books, and so you don't have time to quote an entire book, but all my best thoughts came from someone else. And so even that's a line from someone. But the two books I could think of first one is "Leaders Eat Last," I believe it's by Simon Sinek. And it's really the idea that leaders are meant to build others up. In fact, actually, a third book comes to mind. That's "28 Days to Save the World" by your CEO dan Pervis. That's a fantastic book. I really recommend that one as well. And I'm not just saying that because it's your, it's your guy. He covers so much ground in that book. It really was something that you almost need to read multiple times.

But the second book that I recommend is "Captain Class" by Sam Walker. So he talked about the captains of teams. So usually when we think of a leader, we might think of the CEO, we might think of the executive team, and those certainly are incredibly important. But the "Captain Class" by Sam Walker, he's actually a sports journalist, if I'm remembering all of this correctly. He analyzed all of the great sports dynasties, not just someone who wins one off, but he gave certain parameters as to what he would define as a team sport and a team and a dynasty, and all those different things at the beginning of his book. But he talks about " what do they have in common?" And he looked at the coaches, he looked at the budget, he looked at the manager, he looked at the location, all these different things.

And the thing that he found that was really consistent across all of these dynasties was the captain of the team. It might not be the best player. It might not be the person who's most outspoken, but it's that person who brings a certain energy and can recognize when things are going sideways or things are changing, and he somehow tweaks the team in such a way that they can reorient and get back on track.

So you want your best player shooting hoops, shooting those free throws. They don't have to lead, they just do what they do. Put your best players in the positions where they can excel. But the captain, like I said, they may not be the best player. They may not be the best person on the team, but they're the person who's kinda like the glue, who gels everybody together. And so those two different concepts are what I think of a real good leader. Number one, leaders eating last, and the second one being that glue who's able to look at a bird's eye view and determine what direction we need to go in, what attitude adjustment needs to happen.

I'll give you one more little anecdote that you may have heard before, say you have a bunch of people working their way through a woods cutting with axes trying to get through the woods. The manager is the one running around saying, "Hey, do you have the right ax? Do you need this sharpen? Do you need this? Let's help you out." It's still a servant role, but the leader is the one who climbs the tree and looks up and says, "Hey guys, I think we need to go in this direction." So that's the leader in my mind.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. So the visionary and the person who is the cheerleader and motivator and helps bring people together towards a vision.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, so my, my dad actually told me something once that he probably got this from someone else, I'm not sure, but he said, " you know, Etienne, a leader without followers is just a guy taking a walk." And some of us are just taking a walk, but a leader is someone who people are willing to follow too. So yeah, there's lots of different facets. It's a good question.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. So you mentioned curiosity before, which I think is a really important theme. And so I'm wondering how that plays into your continued growing and learning as a leader yourself. Obviously, you have had a bunch of different roles even within the industry and through various companies and I'm sure each one of them has prompted you to learn and grow in different ways. So, how do you continue to prioritize that these days?

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, that's a good question. I've gotta speak to your question about curiosity first. In every role that I've been in, one of the things that's really important to me is to understand how this role that I'm working in interacts with every other role in the organization. I'll give you a quick anecdotal story, I guess, for that. I was at one company where they put me in a cubicle that was right outside the break room, and that's a terrible idea. You do not put an engineer right outside the break room. The people had to walk out of the break room and either turn left or right or go straight into my cubicle. Since I was new, they told me that my cubicle was cursed. Nobody had managed to be there for more than three months. And nobody knew why. It's just cursed.

I'm like, okay. Well, I figured out pretty quick why. It's because I started writing down how many people came into my cubicle to say hi to me, and it was in the 30 to 50 people a day and I was not getting things done. Just a few minutes with each person, and that becomes hours a day. So I realized quickly that this is a problem or an opportunity. And so I tried to treat it like an opportunity. The next engineer who came into my desk or came into my cubicle, I said, "Hey, can you help me with this thing I'm working on my spreadsheet?" And they said, "oh yeah, you just do this, and this."

And my 15 minute task turned into a one minute task. And so that happened multiple times. Pretty soon I was getting more things done than pretty much anyone else on my row. And so being curious about what that person knew was really important to me. And I realized it clicked in that role early on in my career. And I said, man, I need to learn what everybody in the company does. And so I started actually making a running list of who is everyone in the company and who do I know. And I put a check mark next to their name and I said, "okay, I gotta meet this person and find out what they know. Meet this person, find out what they know."

It wasn't all me. When I came to that company, this is actually a really fantastic practice that this manufacturing company had done. They gave me a list of every machine in the entire company. And so we had multiple buildings, you know, out there. And they said your first job is to find every machine, learn who runs it and what product it touches and how that machine interacts with that product. And that's a big homework assignment. So if I wasn't interested, that would've been hard to accomplish. So, between my situation being outside the break room and my forced interest in the manufacturing floor, I decided to make it a personal goal of mine to meet everyone in the company and to learn exactly what they do, a little bit selfishly, to see if I could make my job a little bit easier to learn what they knew and so forth. And so that really helped. And that really reinforced the importance of curiosity.

Lindsey Dinneen: That's a great story and I'm sure you looking back are also quite aware, obviously of how things evolved in your own career. But it's fun to hear it from an outside perspective and go, okay, I see how certain things that you did, maybe just because you were curious, led you to be in a position now where you are comfortable-- maybe still get nervous-- but in general comfortable talking to all sorts of different people cuz hey, you were just going around meeting everybody, learning what they do anyway.

Etienne Nichols: Oh yeah. It's crazy to look back. When we look back, we can connect the dots easily, but when you're in that soup, you're in the moment you're like, oh, my life is a mess. You're not really exactly sure. But yeah, yeah, you nailed it, that's true.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And then nowadays your continued learning and growing as a leader in the medtech industry? Yeah.

Etienne Nichols: So the way I answer that, the way I prioritize it is it's true. We all, we only have so much time in a day. It's difficult to get those things in. I try to double dip as much as possible. And so what I mean by that is, let me give an example. The best way to learn something is to teach it, right? When I was approached, I looked at myself, I said, "Etienne, you don't have what it takes to do these things." And that was just my honest assessment of myself. But I said, but I'm gonna take this on and I'm going to get what it takes.

And so, after I was in the role a little bit, I started looking at the different conferences I could potentially go to learn more about these things. And you might make the argument, okay, going to a conference. That's a continuing improvement, right? You can learn there. Well, that wasn't good enough for me. So, I have a specific story about this. There's a conference called CMX. It's the number one conference for community building, I believe. I found that and I thought, "okay, I want my company to send me to this conference, but I don't just want them to send me, I want to speak on stage, even though I've been in community for only a few months."

I'm going to come up with a problem that I've faced and a problem I've solved, and I'm going to write a proposal for me to speak at this conference. So I sent it in. I sent my proposal in and they wisely said, "no, but you can moderate a panel." I thought, "okay, well that's good enough." So I went to the industry. I moderated the panel, but because I was speaking and I was gonna be on stage, I now had access to all of the voices in the industry who were speaking. So I sent them all messages, tried to socialize with them prior to going to that event. And I now have dozens and dozens of really valuable connections in the industry to that specific subset of an industry. So that's one example.

Another example I'd give is double dipping. I gotta describe something real quick. So there's something that I learned early on. Have you ever heard of " The Seven Spoke Wheel of Life" by Zig Ziglar?

Lindsey Dinneen: I don't know that I have.

Etienne Nichols: Oh, man, you've got to check that out.

Lindsey Dinneen: Okay.

Etienne Nichols: So I learned this in college, lets see if I can remember them all. But see, he has the Seven Spoke Wheel of Life. Essentially, what he says is there's seven spokes. You have family, career, intellectual, social, financial, physical and spiritual. I think I did it unless I repeated something. So all seven of those spokes essentially make up your life.

If you have a broken spoke, you have a flat tire, just think of it that way. So I looked at that and I said, "okay, well, I go running with different people and we usually chat about the same old thing." So I said, I'm gonna start using this Seven Spoke Wheel of Life as much as possible. And so the next guy who I went running with, I told him about the seven spokes. I said, why don't we pick a different spoke every time? We'll just talk about that while we run our 10 mile run or whatever it is. And so we would do that and we'd cover more ground.

And so when I say double dip as much as possible it's making those different spokes cross over each other. So that was, let's say, intellectual. Maybe I'm gonna meet with some engineers to go running. So that's a physical thing. That's an intellectual thing. It's a social thing. I have now met three needs in one interaction. Or maybe I'll go to a coffee shop in the morning. I have a book club that I meet with every week to discuss a book that we're talking about. So there's a social interaction, there's our intellectual interaction and it forces me to be reading. If you can double dip, even the podcast-- I get to practice my public speaking. I get to extend my career perhaps. But also meet with people like you, Lindsey, and other people in the industry, and it's really fun. So double dip as much as possible and don't feel bad about it.

Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, that's great advice. I really like that. I like, I like the double dip because that's a little better than multitasking, right? Because we're actually not wired to do that. But I really like your idea of combining a couple of different things together for the win. So.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, and I love that categorization. It helps me anyway to kinda have that seven spokes, so you kind of differentiate for yourselves. Okay. This truly is doing multiple things. it's beneficial for me anyway.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Just pivoting a little bit, just for fun. Imagine someone were to offer you a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want, doesn't necessarily have to be in your industry, but it could be. What would you choose to teach and why?

Etienne Nichols: A million dollars! Oh, okay. Well, So the thing that comes to mind for me is listening and I know it's a soft skill. And if I thought long enough, maybe I could come along something technical and specific to medtech. But for right now, listening comes to mind. So few people really listen. And sometimes I struggle with this myself, but most of the time we're just waiting for our turn to talk and you've actually done a really good job. I'm actually pretty impressed with your capability and your listening. It's really cool, Lindsey.

But a lot of times when we think we're listening, we're coming up with that next thing to say, but instead if we're able to ditch those lines and listen with your whole body, your whole mind, your whole soul, make this person in front of you the most important person in your life. That changes everything because what I've realized is people are willing to give me the amount of attention I give them and not a whole lot more. And so, you've really gotta learn to listen to, to really succeed.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I love that. And actually to your point, I'm curious how do you manage that as a podcast host and when you're moderating panels and things like that because part of your job does entail a certain amount of preparation. So how do you balance the two? Because you, you wanna get to the questions that are important for you, but then you also, of course, wanna be actively listening so that you can have a real conversation. Have you found a good way to balance that?

Etienne Nichols: It is really difficult. If anyone ever says moderating a panel or moderating a podcast is easy, I don't know that they really know what they're talking about. It takes a lot of focus. I go back to a quote, I guess, I think it's, was it Eisenhower who says "planning is everything, plans are nothing." And when you go to a, an interview like that or a panel is a good example. I'm glad you mentioned that. When you go to a panel, you probably have a list of questions that you want to get to, but it's hard for our brains to remember every one of those little points that we want to ask. So if you instead focus on the overarching theme that you want to cover, and this is the advice I give people, is focus on the overarching theme and then when you're talking to those people, you have your initial question, you'll ask that question and they'll answer, really listen, because most likely the gold is somewhere in that question that they asked.

I'll see if I can think of a example. If they're answering a question about the time that they, took a company public and it was pretty stressful at the time. They managed to get it public. They signed all the papers and now they're retired, but they're really excited because now they're advising other people. I'm like, okay, there's something stressful. I heard them say that. I wanna know, what did your wife think when you decided to take that public? What did your executive team, or what did the people who work for you think? I may have a list of questions, but I really want to dive in and just treat it like a conversation keeping in mind the overarching theme of the panel. So I dunno if that answers your question, but that's how I approach it.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I really like that. And something that came to mind as you were talking about the overarching theme was sort of in tandem to that-- maybe the idea of what do you hope the audience will gain from it? So if you have that perspective of I want the audience to feel inspired or I want them to know more about this particular topic by the end or whatever, then that can help guide the conversation too. Especially if it doesn't go quite the way you anticipated.

Etienne Nichols: Yes. I love that you said inspired or I want to make them feel inspired because that's a really good point. I told someone this recently, man, everything on the panel you could probably Google. Sometimes there's really good tidbits, but for example, Dan Purvis and I, we did the the interview a few weeks ago and it was a fantastic interview and you could go and read his book and maybe get a lot of the anecdotes that he told us about. But you're not gonna get the feeling of passion for the industry or excitement for the future and all these things. And so, that's really what a lot of these live events will give you. It gives you a feeling to move you forward and we think, "oh, that's wishy-washy. We're technical, we're engineers," but you can't forget that we're humans. We're driven in a certain way.

And so these interactions that make our job easier, a lot of that is softer skills or softer experiences and not necessarily hard technical things. As important as those are, you have to have the things that pull you forward. So I love that you mentioned that inspiring the audience and things like that.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, definitely. So speaking of inspiration, I suppose, what is the one thing you wish to be remembered for after you leave this world?

Etienne Nichols: I think it's interesting that we even want to be remembered. When I'd step outside myself and look at myself, I'm like, why do you wanna be remembered? But you do. And so I can't really get rid of that. That's fine. So when I think about that, the answer I think I would have is the strength of my kids. I heard someone say this once. See if I can remember exactly how it goes. I want my son to be the strongest man at my funeral. It's my job to make that happen. When I think of being remembered, I think about being remembered through my kids. There's another ancient writing that goes something like, "like arrows in the hands of a warrior so are the children of one's youth." So being a good dad, that's probably the most important thing to me in my life.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. And then final question, what is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?

Etienne Nichols: Oh, It would have to be my daughter. She's 13 months old now, and if a rainbow could become a person, that person would be Darcy, my daughter.

Lindsey Dinneen: That's wonderful. I love it. Oh my gosh. Thank you so very, very much for joining me today. This has been so much fun. Speaking of inspiration: lots of it, lots of great advice and your stories are fantastic. So thank you so much for sharing all of that with us.

Etienne Nichols: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much, Lindsey. I really appreciate you inviting me onto the podcast and excited to work together in the future.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, and we are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to the Polaris Project, which is a non-governmental organization that works to combat and prevent sex and labor trafficking in North America. So I really appreciate you choosing that organization to support and just again, thank you so much. We just wish you continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.

Etienne Nichols: You're so welcome. Take care.

Lindsey Dinneen: Of course, and thank you also to our listeners for tuning in and if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I'd love it if you share this episode with a colleague or two and we will catch you next time.

The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.

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