Entrepreneur Rx_Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Entrepreneur Rx_Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne: 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 healthcare professionals own their future.

John Shufeldt:
Hey everybody! Welcome back to Entrepreneur Rx. Today, have the great fortune of speaking with Elizabeth Clayborne. She attended medical school at Case Western Reserve. She completed an MD and an MA and bioethics ... four years, and then she did EM at George Washington University, where she served as chief resident during her fourth year. Yuk, a four-year EM program, kill me Now! What I really like, I'm excited to talk about it, she developed while she was a resident something called NasaClip, which I'm really interested in investing in and then also learning more about because as anybody in the EM knows, God, nosebleeds are just a challenge often. So, Elizabeth, welcome to the show.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
Thanks for having me, John. I'm so excited to be here.

John Shufeldt:
How about that for an introduction, a four-year, kill me now, EM residency?

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
I talk to my residents all the time because now I'm faculty with University of Maryland, which is a three-year program. So they always talk to me about the pluses and minuses. I think I put my fourth year to good use and I love D.C. so it wasn't too ...

John Shufeldt:
So yeah, when I was applying there was three and four years and I applied to both, but I luckily got into a three-year program. Did you think the fourth year, I know we're going way ahead of the so, do you think the fourth year was really necessary?

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
I certainly think you can be adequately trained in three years. I think that for a lot of people who have an interest, whether going into fellowship or going into academics or someone like me who was really into policy that fourth year really gives you a springboard to kind of leap horse your career in the direction it needs to go while still giving you that training environment. And the fourth year is actually the year that I came up with NasaClip. So for me, I would say absolutely yes, right? So not necessary, but can be beneficial.

John Shufeldt:
There you, that's a great answer, and you're right, it's kind of a springboard if, particularly, you want to stay in academia, or do a fellowship. All right, so let's back up. How the heck did you get into medicine? Like, were you a young girl who was interested in being a physician? Give us your background.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
So I was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. My mom's a nurse and my dad's an engineer. I would say my mom almost discouraged me from going into medicine in the sense that she always knew how dysfunctional it was, but she was excited that I wanted to be a doc and always introduced me to her doc friends. So I would say early on, yes, I was interested in medicine. I went to Duke for undergrad and had this big plan to be a biomedical engineer and major in engineering. I had it all planned out and then I got there and was like, I really don't love these math and science courses enough to do them all the time and only. So I ended up designing my own major in medical ethics and religion, and I think that actually set me up to have a really unique career in medicine. I always maintained the goal to go to medical school, but it was with this caveat that I was utilizing my right brain a little bit more in thinking about human beings as like people, right, as these kind of complex entities that were not just disease processes. And I think that that permeated through the rest of my career because I eventually took a time off after undergrad, which I always recommend these days, especially for people who are interested in medicine to kind of really think about where they want to go. I did a two-year research fellowship at NIH and that was my first introduction to DC, which is why I love this area. I like policy, ethics, end of life care in particular, and that was my first introduction to that on a policy level, working at NIH, some on some different race-based issues with genetics. And then when I went to medical school, I was, that's why I did the dual degree with medicine and bioethics. So it was strange to take ethics courses and write philosophy papers while I was in med school, but I also think it really grounded me as a human being that was learning how to take care of other human beings and not just a doc that was trying to absorb all this information and kind of look at people as like, What do I do? You know, it always results in like this, you know, this template for how I'm supposed to care for other people. So I really appreciate that, and I think that's how I've had a bit of a convoluted career in medicine, but one that I think really has made me an outstanding doc in the way that I'm able to connect with and interact with my patients currently.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, like you said, you balance your left brain and right brain. I was a sociology major, and I loved it. The downside is I said, boy, if I don't go to medical school, you know, I'm going to be saying, Do you want fries with your coke for a long time? So I better figure something out. Okay, So then you did EM. Why emergency medicine?

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
Yeah, well, I mean, do you remember? I don't know if they did this when you were in med school, but when you first get there, they show you that chart that's like your personality breakdown of like what kind of personality you have or what specialty you go into. And the first branch is, Are you crazy? And the only people that are on the crazy side, you've never seen this? People will laugh, they know exactly what I'm talking about, google it. The only people that are on the crazy side are psychiatry and emergency medicine. Everyone else goes to the noncrazy side and then it asks other things like, you know, like what kind of hours you like? Do you like people, right? You don't really like people that maybe you're a radiologist or a pathologist and lifestyle and all that. But I, definitely early on, I think I loved EM because I like to be the first person, right, to like, approach a patient, figure out what's going on, deal with that differential. I like that we're, I would say, procedurally adept, right? We can do a lot of different procedures. We know a little bit about everything. And when you tell people you're a doctor, I think they expect you to do what we do, which is answer any question and respond to an emergency, like when there's a plane emergency and they say, is there a doctor in the plane, they really mean, is there an emergency doctor on the plane? Because your cardiologist or ophthalmologist or urologist is not necessarily going to help depending on what happens? And so I like being that kind of doc. And I also think I'm the typical ADHD, have a lot of different things I'm interested in, and I had a life outside of medicine, and I thought that the career in emergency medicine would really cater to those other interests and be able to kind of help me support the other things that I wanted to delve into while being a physician.

John Shufeldt:
That's great, that's a phenomenal answer. Now, I've got to go back and look up, what should I Google to look up the?

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
I don't know, I'll have to look it up. I'll email it to you, but it's like it's definitely I mean, they literally showed it to us when we first, when we were like first-year medical students, it was like how to choose your specialty, and it was a personality breakdown chart.

John Shufeldt:
All right, I'm going to have to find that. We'll put it in the show notes. All right, so you did EM, then you were chief resident your fourth year, and then let's talk about NasaClip now for a little bit. So you came up with this idea as a resident, I always tell physicians, look, if you have a great idea for something to make our practice easier, let's chat about it. What, I mean, it takes a big, A, it takes a big leap, and then you went past the leap. You went to like, let's do this. What? You give us a story.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
Yeah, yeah, I definitely have now become the person that everyone comes to my organization when they have an idea, like Dr. Clayborne, I think I have a good idea, what should I do? And it's because I did a lot of missteps, right? A lot of trial and error when it came to me first thinking about NasaClip. So really this idea was born out of the frustration that you definitely alluded to when you talked about taking care of epistaxis or nosebleed patients. So we see over 500,000 ER patients annually in the United States, and that's just a hospital-based ER, not even urgent care. So it is a pretty common ailment that we see, and docs always recognize that these patients are a pain because they're not that sick, right? The vast majority of epistaxis is anterior, meaning that the bleeding is usually going to be stopped with conservative measures, but by the time they've seen us, they've done a bunch of stuff that has made the bleeding worse, like they stuffed stuff up their nose, they pinch the wrong location, they put their head back instead of forward. So they're really frustrated when they come and they're like, I'm bleeding, this is an emergency. And we're like, You're at ESI45, like you're going to be waiting. So I would tape together tongue depressors or we would make all these makeshift things to temporize their situation until they could be brought back to be seen, and I couldn't believe there was nothing in the market that helped people treat nosebleeds effectively that could be both used in the medical setting, but then also like at home, like I was like, why are you actually here? You should be able to deal with this problem at home and not have to see me at all. And so that's how I came up with NasaClip. And so I'll show it to you, John, but people can go to NasaClip.com, N A S A C L I P and see like a video of how it works. It's basically an external nasal compression device that holds a customized external nasal compression and then pre-medicated sponges that go in the nose.

John Shufeldt:
What is it medicated with?

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
So my patent covers any kind of medication, but we are focused on Oxymetalozine, which is Afrin, and that's kind of the mainstay, the first step that you'll go to, it's a generic over-the-counter, currently just FDA-approved for nasal decongestion, but is actually standard of care for treating nosebleeds, right? It's an alpha agonist vasoconstrictor. So if you clear your nose of blood clots, spray Afrin up your nose and then hold pressure, you're going to stop that bleed a lot more quickly. The problem is, it's kind of hard to spray a liquid medication or a spray up a nose that's bleeding. So we usually would put it on dental rolls or cotton swabs or something and then apply pressure, and that's what this device does, all in one convenient, easy-to-use device. And it is sized for both pediatrics and adults, since nosebleeds are most common in kids ages 2 to 10 and older adults, 60 to 80. And so this is something that the patient themselves can put on in triage or triage nurse can give to the patient. It doesn't require me as a doc to intervene and they can have it in place for 10 to 20 minutes and then remove it and check for bleeding. So by the time they see me, their problem is likely solved. And because this is over the counter, I can send them home with it, and so they can actually use it at home. And so our current plan is we're pre-revenue, we're not in the market yet, but we're going to be launching into the market next year and we're going to first target the medical channel. So we believe this has a pretty large market. It's probably a $5 billion combined medical and consumer market. It might be even larger than that if you consider that one in three US households has someone with common recurrent nosebleeds. So this is something that I would consider the Band-Aid of nosebleeds, right? So anyone that has common nosebleeds, but also school nurses, sports medicines, sports trainers, docs like me, along with the everyday mom and dad, or a caretaker with an elderly person that's on anticoagulants or blood thinners, they're going to want to have a NasaClip on hand so they can deal with that nosebleed emergency quickly and effectively and not have to come to the ER.

John Shufeldt:
Did you ever wonder, as you were thinking through this like, okay, someone had, someone has to do this already?

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
Oh, yeah, I was shocked. One of the first things I did was a patent search, right, to look to see what was available or what had been patented, and there was really nothing that did this combination of medication with compression. And then the way that the device looks for me, where it's compact, it doesn't obstruct the mouth or the eyes and can be sized for pediatrics and adjustable where you control how much pressure you apply, that was nowhere in the literature. So that's one of the first steps that I did. So when you asked like how I really tackled this, the first thing I did was I approached one of the faculty members that ran our innovation center, Dr. Neal Sikka, he was my attending at the time and is now serving as one of my medical advisors on my board. And he said, okay, we're going to get you in touch with our OTT office, Office of Technology Transfer, and they have a collaboration with one of the law firms in DC and that's how I got my first provisional patent. Now, fortunately, because I was a resident and not a faculty member, I was not employed by the university, so my IP is 100% applied to my company, which was key when moving forward later on. If I was a faculty member, I would probably have had to share some of that IP with the institution, but because I was a resident, I didn't do that. And then I submitted the idea first to the GW Business Plan competition and did really well, and that's where I got my initial kind of traction. And from there we did the local DC I-Corps and went on to participate in the National Science Foundation I-Corps, and I highly recommend that program for anyone who has this kind of Medtech idea. It is going to be a process that helps you focus on customer discovery to ensure that before you pour your blood, sweat, and tears, and any money you have into this idea and patenting it, that is an actual real solution to a real problem that people will pay money for. And so that forced me to really talk to like, go out and talk to other docs, talk to parents, talk to coaches, talk to trainers, talk to pharmacists like, you know, what do people do when they ask for this problem and then verify like, you know, is there a gap, right, in the solution in the market that needs to be filled? And does NasaClip do that? And so I did that and then from there kind of built the company. But I also was at the same time juggling, graduating, going on to my new faculty position, and I had a kind of period of 2 to 3 years where my focus was just getting my intellectual property secured and kind of still practicing medicine, right? I hadn't fully jumped in in the beginning, and it wasn't until around 2020 when I had the opportunity to do an accelerator program with TedCo, which is a Maryland state-based initiative, that it really moved forward. But I did spend a lot of time, you know, kind of piecemealing like in having this be like a back burner project, but there were a lot of people who always said, that's such a good idea. I can't believe that doesn't exist. You know, you could go on Shark Tank or I see this as the Band-Aid of nosebleeds, there's a huge market, and I always got that positive feedback. And ultimately I was like, you know what? I've heard it enough and I see it every time I have a nosebleed, right? I'm always like, I wished I had one of my prototypes here so I could use it on you. So I knew that I really had to kind of go full force in and dedicate myself to make it accessible. So in 2020, right during the pandemic is where I really started focusing on the company. And it also coincided with me delivering my third child. So another thing that I had mentioned to John is I have two young children, two and three, and so I talk a lot about the challenges of being a female physician, a black female physician, and now a black female physician entrepreneur. And I did this all while growing my family, and a mom, right? And so one of the things that I gave as far as feedback to some of these programs that are targeted at entrepreneurs is they always want you to be full-time, like 100% like a CEO of your company. But for me, I was like, I got to pay student loans, I have a mortgage, I have kids, and the only reason I qualified for this program is because I did it during my maternity leave, which is something that us as women do all the time, we just hustle to make it happen. And since I will say to TedCo's credit, they've acknowledged that and have changed some of their regulations so it's easier for people like me and women to be qualified for their programs because they understand that, yeah, you might be giving full-time effort to your company, but that still means that you may be paying the bills by doing another job. And I also explained to the, me maintaining my clinical practice helps me as a CEO, right? It gives me credibility as a doc, as you know, especially in emergency medicine, other docs don't really respect you as much when you don't have some clinical practice when you're talking to them about a clinical solution. And then I also eventually applied for NSF SBIR phase one money, and so I got a grant in 20, in March of this year for $256,000, and I was able to be a PI on that project because of my academic affiliation, so there are some benefits to maintaining it. But yeah, 2020 was our big year of acceleration and we were able to secure the grant funding and then we did a pre-seed investment for NasaClip and we're using those current funds to pilot our prototypes in a chain of urgent cares in Houston, Texas, as well as a healthy volunteer study outside of UT Austin, or I'm sorry UT San Antonio, and then we'll be using that data to help us launch into the market. So since 2020, I'd say I think things are moving along much more quickly, but it's been a learning curve. And I think that, not something I really expected, right? I think that I maybe thought, Oh, this will always be my pet project and now it is definitely my full-time job. I do still practice clinically, but part-time, and I continue to see a need for it every time I have a nosebleed patient, so I cannot wait till we get to market so I can start using it on people regularly in the ER and then sending them home with it and be like, Don't come here and get COVID, like stay at home and treat your nosebleed with NasaClip.

John Shufeldt:
That's so cool. So a couple of things you said that was interesting. So there's a book out by Adam Grant. Now one of our previous guests turned me on in this book, it's called The Originals. So I always worked when I did other business things, and my theory was, well, one, I've got to pay the bills to literally exactly what you said, although you're much more eloquent. But I said to him, he was a guy, and I said, Oh, you burned the ship. I mean, he, you know, I have to be like this. They bailed out of medicine completely. One in medical school, one the moment they graduated. I said, Wow, you really burned the ship. And I said that. To me, it seems like it makes you a little bit more, you know, come hell or high water is going to work. And he said, Well, read the book, The Originals, because they've actually studied this. As it turns out, entrepreneurs who keep their full-time job, at least for a while, and then talk about Steve Wozniak tend to have a higher success rate because they have less pressure on them to put food on their table because they have their full-time job, or they have a part-time job. Something's giving them money and they can focus, like you said, on their entrepreneurial passion. So it's a really interesting perspective because I always thought, well, I never really had the burn-the-ship mentality so, therefore, yeah, probably could have done it a lot better had I done that, as it turns out, probably not true.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
I absolutely agree. I mean, I understand the urgency when it's like I have no other way out. I have to make this business work. Like I understand why that is a motivator for some people. But for me, I think understanding the changing landscape of medicine and how NasaClip works on the ground is important. And I also think it's important for me to understand as a clinician how this works in practice and how that changed during COVID, right? Like things have changed substantially during COVID, and I wouldn't really be as aware of that if I wasn't still practicing clinically, not to mention the credibility that I have as a practicing clinician saying this is how I recommend you use nose bleeds. And then the other relationships that I build within the academic community as a ER doc that has this solution that I can introduce through those different veins. So I agree, I think for me, I think it's different for everyone to understand why for some it makes sense to burn the ship, but I try to tell people, especially who are coming from medicine, there's no prescribed method and you need to kind of forge your own path. For me, you know, I did this really atypically, it was back burner and now it's become the main thing that I'm focused on. But I do think that it's been my experience in medicine so far, my experience as a mom, right? My, all the things that I have that are kind of not just related to the company that has made me successful as the CEO and founder of NasaClip, and that also includes my struggles as a black female founder. We have a lot more difficulty securing funding statistically, right? We get, like black founders in general get less than 1% of venture capital. We have to put a lot more effort into getting money, even if we have maybe what you would consider as qualified as an idea. And so for me, part of why I want to be successful is I'd love to serve as that example of black excellence, right? Of someone who's kind of beat the odds when coming from a demographic, that's been underrepresented and underfunded in this space. And I want to knock it out of the park, not just because I think a NasaClip is a genius solution to a very common problem and can be a global brand name for nosebleed rescue, but also because I'd like to position myself to have a great exit and then be financially positioned to reinvest in other people of color and female founders since I think that's an excellent way to build generational wealth.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, here, here, that's a great roadmap. What has been, what was your biggest surprise doing this, being an entrepreneur? What was your like, Wow, I didn't see that one coming?

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
I would say that, I think everyone in medicine thinks what we do is really hard. We go to a lot of school, we spend a lot of effort and we work a lot of hours. I think that entrepreneurs work even more hours, right? There's like no off time. Like you're never off. You're sending emails in the middle of the night, some of it healthy and not healthy, right? I actually talk a lot to residents about wellness. I do think it's equally as important as an entrepreneur that you have some work-life balance because as my board tells me all the time if I'm not okay, the company is not going to be okay. But I do think I was surprised that because I thought I came from a background where I already did things that were really hard, that this wouldn't be as challenging. And I think the amount of time and effort that it requires, I really respect everyone else that's an entrepreneur because you really do have to work all the time and you have to work very hard in order to make it through the roadblocks that you're continually kind of coming up against.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, it's funny. It's, you know, there's this Ray Kroc quote, they said, Oh my gosh, you're an overnight success. He said, Well, 30 years was a long night. And, you know, for the folks who are successful, oftentimes it does retrospectively look kind of, oh, easy, you know? You have this idea you found, you did a patent search, nobody else did it, then you made the product, now you're a gazillionaire and, you know, it's like, okay, God, if you only knew how many times I talked to the ceiling fan at night, and sometimes it answered back. Like, I don't think unless you do it, you really get a sense of like, Yeah, medicine is hard, and I think we have a great, I think physicians have great building blocks to be entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs, being entrepreneurs is tough as well. Like, like you said.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
Yeah, and it can be isolating as well because there's no one that's doing exactly what you're doing. And so especially as the boss, I recently joined a really great group in Maryland that's kind of like our YPO-like groups, young Presidents organization, because of that, right? You feel like you can feel kind of isolated as the person who's at the helm that doesn't necessarily always have someone else to bounce ideas off of. And having that community of other entrepreneurs or other people who are forging their own path with their businesses, even if it's not in the same industry, it can be helpful to feel like, okay, I have someone who might understand a little bit of what I'm dealing with, even though it's not the exact same thing that I'm doing and I don't feel as alone or afraid that I'm messing up or that I'm fumbling or misstepping, or that I may not make it, because there's a lot of other people out here trying and a lot of them are successful. I mean, a lot of them aren't, but a lot of them are. And even those who are not successful initially, end up, I think, oftentimes getting that entrepreneurial bug and then being a serial entrepreneur, and if their first idea doesn't work, something in the future does.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, exactly. What is, what's your sense of burnout and entrepreneurs? And at least for me, these extracurricular things was always a hedge against burnout because I didn't really, I haven't really experienced that. I've done it a long time now. I mean, there's days when I walk out of there and go, you know, just shoot me now. But for the most part, I'm pretty enthused about going in and working shifts. What's your, now that you're doing part-time, what's your perspective?

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
Yeah, I mean, I think that the status of Madison right now is really kind of discouraging after COVID. I have not seen this level of burnout and cynicism within physicians in like ever, and I'm a pretty young doc, so I'm not speaking from tons of years of experience, but I'm a really optimistic person and someone that always was kind of preaching about, well, you know, we still have this going on, or at least you're not dealing with the problems that you see your patients dealing with every day, right? Like the basics are covered. I'm not hungry, I'm sheltered, I'm safe. But when you go into work every day and we're dealing with nursing shortages and everyone's angry and there's just not enough supplies, and you get really cynical and start to kind of like be dreading work before you get there, I think that's dangerous, and I think a lot of people are they're all over the place. And so for me, being an entrepreneur has been hugely protective for me being able to still work clinically because if I didn't have this, I guess exit is what it is right out of medicine if I need, I might be losing my mind. I mean, I think it's really hard to look at a career in medicine right now and just say, I'm going to be a clinical workforce and put 20 years in emergency medicine, like that is not even viable anymore. You almost have to have a multifaceted career or something else you're doing to balance the work that you do in the hospital because there is a lot of burnout. Now, on the flip side, I do think that entrepreneurs can burn out because they're trying to take on too much at once, but usually because whatever you're, for me, the invention or what you're doing, you have a passion for, you tend to be not as likely to burn out because you're so excited about it, right? Like I can get tired of the work that I'm doing related to my company, but this is my baby and I want to see it successful, and so I tend to be excited even if I am tired. Whereas for medicine, if you're not feeling as connected to that clinical work and not getting good interactions when you're there, you might be asking yourself like, Why am I doing this? And I think that that's hard, and it's sad to me because I love emergency medicine still, right? I think being an ER doc keeps you grounded, keeps you humble. It reminds you of the privilege you have as a physician, especially an entrepreneur, and it also shows you what I would consider the extremes of human nature, right? We see, like the most devastating things that can happen to human beings, right? Diagnosing someone with cancer, telling parents that their child has died, dealing with molestation or abuse. But then you also get to see people who've been married for 65 years that are still doting on each other. Miraculous things that happened that I can't explain, or a little girl that is like so excited that I'm her doctor because I'm like a real live Doc McStuffins to her, and she's just beaming because I come in in a white coat and I'm her idol. Those are like huge extremes of, I think, emotion that we experience in our job, and I've always really liked that. And so it disappoints me that I'm not enjoying it as much, and I hope that moving forward will have some more stability within healthcare or at least some adjustments to our healthcare structures so that I can get back to enjoying that and still do it occasionally while I continue to grow my business.

John Shufeldt:
Well, and you were, you know, like you mentioned earlier, you were kind of a ground, that kind of you were at ground zero during the pandemic. And you said if I can share this, that you did it very, very pregnant. That had to be, I mean, I always say Phoenix was hit hard, but we weren't in New York or D.C. I mean, you guys really got crushed.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
Yeah, I worked at PG County Hospital, which was one of the hardest-hit hospitals in Maryland. It's just outside of DC and we had, we were carrying about 50% of the COVID-positive patient load during the first wave of the entire University of Maryland medical system. There were so many COVID positive patients at our institution, they had to open up other hospitals that were closing to make COVID hospitals. So that, I was pregnant at about six months pregnant when COVID hit, and I had two other colleagues that were pregnant at the same time. So for all of us to leave would have been pretty devastating to our colleagues, so we stuck it out. I think also we didn't really know what the real risk was. This is back in February, March of 2020, and then I delivered my daughter in May of 2020 and got like a little bit of a hiatus, and I totally thought I would come back from maternity leave and COVID would be over and it wasn't, and we continue. So, you know, I have, my pandemic baby is two years old, that's how long we've been in it. And so to kind of go through that stress of having to be in that intense clinical environment and working in what was ultimately a dangerous situation for a long time, and fortunately, all of us delivered healthy kids, none of us had poor sequela, and our colleagues really stepped up in the end. They kind of pulled us back from intubating so we wouldn't be doing as high-risk procedures, but we were still in an environment surrounded by COVID all the time prior to the vaccine being available. And so that was nerve-wracking, and that's what EM docs do all the time, though. I mean we, even now, like with monkeypox, people are like, what is this? Like, how dangerous is it? It's like one other thing that I'm like, I can't, it's not as life-threatening, but I'm like, I cannot get monkeypox and my kids cannot get monkeypox. And we're dealing with a lot of patients in D.C. We have the highest rates per capita right now in the country, and so it's just one thing after another. And I do want to always come in, all of my colleagues, not just physicians, but everyone that's on the front line in healthcare because a lot of us have been doing selfless work for a long time and the burnout is real. And so for me, it was interesting to be, you know, deliver a child during the pandemic, to be raising kids during the pandemic and then growing my business. But I think fortunately for me, ultimately those have all been positive things and everything has been working out well. But I do think there's a lot of uphill battles that we will continue to have to climb because COVID is not going anywhere, and that impacts not just medicine, but my business and life in general.

John Shufeldt:
You know, it's interesting, too. I mean, when I was at kind of your stage, HIV was the big, the scourge. So when I was in medical school and residency, you know, that was a great unknown. And now finally it's, you know, we can, I think, say it's basically curable with PrEP, but knock on wood, you know, the COVID, the pandemic will start to recede even more than it is today so, and we'll live to fight another day. But you're right. I have to give all our colleagues a lot of credit because it's been a rough few years. And I've had another guest say that you know, there's almost a backlash against a lot of healthcare professionals now, and people are more argumentative than ever coming into the emergency department. And I ... about you, but I quit asking people if they've been vaccinated or not because I would, I couldn't help myself but be frustrated when they came in symptomatic. And so, no, I didn't get the vaccine. You know, we're being targeted by whatever theory they had. And I'm like, stop asking. No good will come from you asking.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
I totally identify with that, John. And I mean, I think it's hard. I don't know if I could practice in some regions of the country. I happen to be in an area where we have higher vaccination rates, but I'm still that doctor's like, I need you to get vaccinated. If you're not vaccinated, you know, you still can die from COVID. It can have really negative sequela. If you're not protected, and even now, right, with the rollout, with the pediatric vaccines, there's still a lot of hesitancy. And that's why during the pandemic, I ended up doing a lot of media. So because I was pregnant, I did a couple of interviews about what it was like to be a front-line pregnant ER doc. And from there I ended up doing a lot of interviews on CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, CBSN, and I thought it was really important to represent an African American physician that was talking, first of all about issues that hadn't been paid attention, in my opinion, in the media as much as they should be about disparities that we're seeing in COVID, but also to encourage communities of color that were pretty hesitant in the beginning about the vaccine, about what I thought was needed, because not everyone has our knowledge, right. I also talked a lot about death and dying and end-of-life care, something that I think we do really poorly in this country. And COVID brought that to the forefront again, because, not just because of the number of people that died, but because you really had to make decisions ahead of time about what you wanted and how to grapple with the idea of your mortality. And so I always encourage everyone to have an advance directive and to, no matter what age you are, have talked to your family about what your wishes are because having those conversations with me in the middle of an emergency is not ideal, and it was extremely hard to do that in the middle of COVID. And so, me going on the media and talking about that and bringing that up from the perspective of a black physician was really important, and it's something I continue to do because I see a need for not just representation on TV to represent my demographic, but also to connect with, I think, communities that had had historically trust issues with the healthcare system for very good reasons, but also don't necessarily always have access to the knowledge and data that should help them make the best decisions for themselves and their families.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, you know, I know, as I do, a lot of Native American communities, and they had very logical distrust for the US health care system. And you look back at their history and I'm like, Yeah, I get it, African Americans is the same way. I mean, you go back to the syphilis experiments, I don't even know how to, I don't know the phraseology for that because it wasn't an experiment, it was ridiculous. But yeah, there absolutely should be trust issues because you've been, you know, once bitten, twice shy. So no, it's good you're out there doing that.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
Thank you, John.

John Shufeldt:
Was that a difficult transition? I've done a little bit of media myself and I enjoyed it, but it was I don't know, I always watch the clips of myself and be like, oh, like, I've got a face for radio.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
Yeah, I think that I always, in the moment think I'm doing a bad job, but then I'll get great feedback, and so I've learned to be more confident. I always was comfortable doing lectures, doing a lot of public speaking. And so it's kind of a skill set that I've fallen into late in the same way that it's been a skill set as far as being a CEO and founder, but it's another attribute, I think, that has made me really successful as an entrepreneur and founder of my company is the ability to articulate myself, speak clearly and be able to communicate with multiple people no matter what their background or knowledge base is, not just about biotechnology, but whatever it is that I want to make sure that I'm getting clearly transcribed to them. So, I've liked it, I don't have as much time to do it as I want. I think my biggest issue is my time constraints, like being a mom, still practicing clinically, running this company, and then I do the media when I can. But that is a challenge that a lot of people have, and I'll take that. I mean, I think these are good problems for me to have.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, absolutely, so the difference between us is, I always think I was doing a great, great job during the moment. Then to watch it, I'd be like, you may have oversold yourself on that one. The, yeah, after listening to all you've done, I'm never going to complain about my time management again because I think first off, for all your moms out there, I don't know, and physician moms, I don't know how you do it because being a mom is a full-time job, period, and then add everything else to it, so hats off to you.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
It is, and I want to encourage moms always ask for help, right? I get asked a lot like how I do this and it's really that I had to get to a point where I realize, and this is true as an entrepreneur and founder as well, you have to be able to delegate work at some point. Like, so I have a lot of support. I have my parents that are very active in my kid's life. I have a live-in nanny that's amazing. Like, there's a lot of components that go into allowing me to do what I do, but I want my daughters, I have two daughters, right, I want them to look at me and understand that you can do anything you want in life. And being a woman by no means handicaps you. In many ways, I think it's like our superstar power.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, it is a superpower. Well, where can people learn more about you? Because you have a phenomenal story.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
Thanks, yeah, so you guys can go to NasaClip.com. N A S A C L I P.com, and you can find all about NasaClip there. I'll have some clips to some of my media. You also can get on our list to be one of the first to order a NasaClip when it comes to the market next year. And certainly, if you're from an organization that would like to find out more about our fundraising efforts, we are actively fundraising and have a round going on. I would love any support when it comes to helping me make NasaClip a global brand name for nosebleed rescue. And then I also will be in short order launching DrLiz.com which will display a lot of my other background as far as ethics media, some of the teaching, and my mom experiences. So NasaClip.com for now and in the future, DrLiz.com.

John Shufeldt:
DrLiz.com, I love that. All right, well, thank you very much. It's been a total blast. I really appreciate it, and congratulations, you had a ton of success.

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne:
I appreciate it, John. Thanks for having me on.

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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