Behind the Brand®

[00:00:00] Jeff Adamson: Welcome to Behind the Brand presented by Neo. We take an inside look at the leaders behind today's most influential brands. I'm your host, Jeff Adamson. As co-founder of Neo Financial and SkipTheDishes, I'm fascinated by what it takes to build great companies. On this podcast, we'll learn from leaders that are reimagining, transforming, and innovating in the financial and retail industries across Canada. Let's get going!

Today I am excited to introduce Michael Ryan, the VP of Brand and Innovation at Kintec Footwear and Orthotics. With a background in academia and extensive experience as a pedorthist, Michael brings a critical and progressive perspective to the field. His expertise lies in challenging traditional paradigms ingrained in foot care, leveraging advancements in sports medicine and technology to improve patient outcomes.

At Kintec, Canada's largest full-service footwear and orthotics provider, Michael spearheads innovation, refines change management practices, and implements groundbreaking procedures. Since 1991, Kintec has utilized its orthotics expertise to deliver personalized solutions and exceptional customer service. Through initiatives like Kintec Anywhere, Michael aims to revolutionize the foot care experience while staying true to Kintec's core values.

Okay, let's start from the beginning, Michael. Tell us about your journey to getting to Kintec.

[00:01:22] Michael Ryan: I think Jeff, is to me, this starts back in first year biology. Like I didn't take anything, I didn't know anything about really the human body and biology in general going through high school, and I thought Geography was my calling and that was the direction that I, [the] first subject in high school I found passion with.

And it wasn't until, I'm gonna kind of nerd out a little bit here, but like in that first Biology 100 course and I understood how cells make ATP, adenosine triphosphate, and how a muscle contraction actually happens in a biochemical environment. Like actually, we sort of take these things for granted that just, I just, I think about moving my arm and then it moves. But to actually understand the process of that happening and the different energy systems in the body, that really exploded my interest in human kinetics in general.

I was a University of British Columbia's, I was in agronomy, actually. I wasn't, I was an okay student in high school, I wasn't like top of the class. But I was able to get into a really good university in the west coast of Canada, sort of an okay program, but one just sort of to see where I could go. And when I discovered that passion in biology, as well as exercise in general and the effects that could make on the body in a theoretical sense as well as, for me personally, I started working out more and seeing firsthand the differences that could make. And I was able to get into human kinetics.

That was really, for me, the first chance of like truly following a passion. And then the results came and I was able to get a lot better grades, of course. I was able to get into grad school and fell in love with sports medicine.

I was lucky enough to have, in my one course, let's see, for people in the audience that are fans in sports medicine, I had Karim Khan, who's the author of the bestselling sports medicine textbook series by Peter Brukner and Karim Khan. It's like a bible for physicians in this space on how to manage sports injuries. He was a professor in this course, coupled with Jack Taunton, who is in the BC Sports Hall of Fame, who was the team doc for the Vancouver Grizzlies, that were in Vancouver's brief history of NBA stardom, which is really interesting. As well as Doug Clement, who former Olympian and team doctor for the Vancouver Canucks. So it was like pantheon of sports medicine and they're teaching this course, and I had access to all of this.

[00:03:55] Jeff: Like, I just think back to the, some of the, I kind of how I ended up in my, my career and the quality of the teacher can make such a difference in the passion that you have for a topic. Even when people are looking at their own careers and like what they're gonna be interested in. Like for me, I was always looking at which profs were just the highest rated profs in the school. Not necessarily as much at the topic because I feel like any professor, if they're super excited about their field, they're gonna be able to get everyone else excited about that field as well.

And then the opposite is also true, where you have someone who's just totally, you know, they may be brilliant in that field, but they can't kind of convey that passion. It sounds like these guys were, were kind of both renowned and also incredibly good instructors. Was that the case for you?

[00:04:40] Michael: I don't know about the instruction part. I think I just, I had this filter on that, you know, anything they said was gospel. And I think that really lit a fire for me that I was able to work beside these people. And I think certainly for people in your audience and that are still at graduate programs, being engaged with professors, they have a host of projects to get you integrated into their fields that provide opportunities that I still have today. For example, like Dr. Taunton had done work with Nike for a number of decades that I'm able to still continue to this day to help facilitate some of the clinical work and looking at their footwear. And it's just super cool to see that translation.

And a lot of times this was able to expose me to some interesting questions that were emerging. To me, I'm maybe a bit biased, but like in end of the 1990s and two thousands, there was a pretty interesting time in sports medicine. There was some pretty important discoveries or innovations that were happening. I'm sure that they happen, you know, each decade but I was super aware of what was happening as I was looking to find topics in an area of study.

And I think as I went into my Master’s and then my PhD at UBC and was able to get exposure to, I spent a year in Germany working with research partners there. Learned German, which is [a] super interesting language, very methodical. Similar culture, but very different at the same time, which is interesting. It exposed to me some differences that I knew for me, I was able to get results. I was able to publish work.

And in fact, one of my first publications looking at 2000 running injuries that patients who were seen at the UBC Sports Medicine Clinic and being able to look at trends over the decades in how runners were presenting in clinical practice were shifting. And I remember publishing this and thinking, “Nah, I wanna do something that really impacts people”. Which is ironic considering this, actually, this paper itself has been cited probably 3000 times cuz it's often a starting point when people discuss injuries, they reference this paper from Jack and I back in 2002.

[00:06:52] Jeff: What were some of the trends though? I'm actually curious how are they seeing people present injuries? Cause I mean, running is one of the most common physical activities and like how, how has that changed over time?

[00:07:02] Michael: Yeah, and so, there's a number of things that have biased that, but historically injuries would happen to the knee, and to the front of the knee. To the kneecap in particular. But then when we saw more clinicians observe foot flattening and pronation, and the corresponding rotation that happens up the kinetic chain, so up from the foot, ankle, knee, hip, et cetera. As a result of that, footwear companies and clinicians often would address anti-pronation measures, so they'd add more harder pieces to the shoe. They would stiffen the shoe, widen the shoe as a way to prevent that pronation from happening, and they were successful in doing that.

However, careful what you wish for. When you restrict pronation, they took too much of it away, essentially. And so people were effectively under pronating and it was just the pendulum was swinging the other way, and we were seeing an influx of injuries to soft tissue on the outside of the leg to the hip. And so that and meniscal injuries started to appear as well, which I think may also be an artifact of improved clinical diagnostic techniques. This became more on the radar, and so there's a few shifts in trends that we were able to identify, motivated by clinical practice changes and guidelines and awareness of conditions, as well as the equipment that individuals were using as they were taking part in this activity. Which is super important for people to know and it's, and I was happy and proud that we could help contribute to that body of knowledge.

I knew I wanted to contribute more in that space. There was a famous study while I was in graduate school and I started working in an orthotics company, a young startup, Generation II Orthotics by the Taylor family. And first class braces, knee braces for stabilizing ACL injury patients and individuals with knee osteoarthritis.

Jordy Taylor, the father of the sons he was an Air Force mechanic and engineer, and he developed this hinge that essentially replicated the complex motion of the knee. If you're knee bracing, having the two ends, the shells move with your leg as you're bending your knee it was an interesting problem to solve and he was able to do that to improve the comfort. And so it was exciting for me to get involved and work for them and a as a clinician while I was finishing up my Master’s, but it exposed me to some innovations in orthopedics that were material to how patients were being seen.

A good case in point at the time was [if] you have osteoarthritis in the knee, the practice would've been for surgeon to go in and put a scope, like a thin little camera, inside the knee and look around and then do a debridement, essentially clean and scrape away any cartilage on the surface of the bone or in the fibrous disc that essentially cushions the knee.

And that was standard practice that, you know, you present with knee pain, there was structural changes, you'd get the scope and cleaning done. And a famous study came out of Stanford that was a control trial that showed when you basically put the scope in and do nothing and have a cup of coffee versus having scope and do the lavage and cleaning and everything else, there were no differences after three months and after 12 months in the prognosis of the patient. And of course it exposes that in individual to risk of infection, it's costly in terms of time as well as the obviously O.R. time. So it's things like this that provided like a profound shift in how people were managed.

In my own field, I was looking into overuse tendon injuries and even subtleties on the semantics of the condition changed a lot historically. We would refer to, oh, I've got a, a sore achilles tendon that would, you would call it a tendonitis. Or you've got tennis elbow, you'd have epicondylitis, that tendon on the epicondyle on the outside of the elbow.

Part of the work that I had done in my PhD was to look at ultrasound imaging that shows that it's not an inflammation of the tendon, rather it's a structural breakdown. And so the language at the time by Karim Khan and others helped motivate a change in that suffix from itis to osis. And you're probably sitting here thinking, who cares, Michael? Like what difference does that make?

[00:11:13] Jeff: Well, no, I think what, you're clearly passionate about this space. There's a lot of people I think that go into university and it almost feels like a bit of an arm race. Tons and tons of people, like I think this is the most educated that Canada has been ever. Even globally, like universities are pumping out people with degrees, and then more and more people are getting Master’s. How should people be thinking about whether or not they want to go and pursue post-graduate education?

[00:11:38] Michael: For me, it was a case of, I was already doing the work of a Master's through assisting, you know, Jack Taunton with some work with Nike and then he's just like, you should get academic credit for this. It just made sense for me because I had the research, the study question, everything on a plate. The question to go deeper into a PhD was motivated by the ability to answer unanswered questions and actually contribute to knowledge in a space. And I think that's difficult to justify from a practical perspective, cuz you might think, how would you monetize that knowledge? And indeed, that's a question I think many people ask when they go into a post-graduate program.

And I don't think in human kinetics, it's discussed often enough. And this does tie in to the decision to come to Kintec. So we are bringing this back on track, but I didn't get there right away. And for me, I'm an interesting case study in someone that followed my passion because I'm, maybe I'm just a natural hedonist and I like just doing what I think is academically gratifying. But that's really where that took me, is that I was passionate about running injuries and I was working with luminaries in the field, that was just infectious.

[00:12:56] Jeff: Seems pretty practical too though. Like it kind of, as you're talking about this, you're talking about Nike, you're talking about people who have real injuries. You know, at Kintec, you guys are helping out hundreds of thousands of people get into proper footwear, get into orthotics, kind of lead happier and healthier lives.

But I find that a lot of academics I've talked to it, it is kind of science for the sake of science. It seems a lot more purely academic whereas, seems like what you have chosen to go down and in your life has pretty immediate practical applications for industry.

[00:13:26] Michael: That was the goal and that was the benefit after talking with the founder, Mark McColman. After I had spent four years at a post-doctorate position that first took me to Wisconsin, Wniversity of Wisconsin. Went over to Griffith University on the Gold Coast of Australia, which has a suburb called Surfers Paradise, right? Like how could you possibly think of leaving a place that the sand is like the color of, consistency of flowers…

[00:13:52] Jeff: Easy, sharks. It’s a no-go.

[00:13:54] Michael: [Laughing] Well, actually I had a young family at the time as well, and so you suddenly realize that in a subtropical environment is full of a host of dangers to young kids maybe.

[00:14:08] Jeff: And alligators too. Like they, like, honestly, I dont know how people…

[00:14:11] Michael: We're too far south for crocodiles, but blue bottles, irukandji, sometimes get down, the jellyfish that sting and like instant death. We had a huntsman, two huntsmen in our, our house that just chilled my, I dunno if you know what a huntsman spider is, but it's the size of your hand. It doesn't lay a web. And you would come downstairs and see this thing on the wall and you thought it was a light switch. And you're like, no, no, no, that's a spider.

[00:14:37] Jeff: Oh my God. Like we, I do not need to worry about my wife ever allowing us to go to, to Australia. Like right there just… sharks was, was enough. But yeah, like man eating spiders, that that's not gonna happen.

[00:14:52] Michael: It brings it home, literally. [Laughs] So no, we wanted, where I'm from Vancouver, my wife moved from, Ontario to Vancouver and has loved it there. And so a lot of our family and friends are in Vancouver and we went back to the North Shore and love it now. And I was super fortunate to still maintain contacts in the orthotic and sports medicine space in Vancouver.

And so when I was discussing coming back with Mark, he's really a visionary from an entrepreneurial perspective that's, he's the founder of Kintec back in ‘91 and really wanted to marry the two disciplines of kinesiology with technology in his clinic. He was one of the first to bring pressure distribution measurements into his practice really before it was en vogue. He was the first to bring in Hoka shoes, when everyone laughed at him, they were funny colors and thick, and this was 10 years ago or more. And now CNN is running editorials on how Hoka is the up and coming brand. And I think today alone we probably sold 50 pairs of Hoka at least, maybe even more like just online.

So it's bananas and a lot of that is his vision of trying to push the boundaries. Push, push, push. He's like watching Drive to Survive. And just having that sense of what's next and where are the threats that might make us redundant? He wants us to be our own force of disruption essentially.

I think he saw, I don't wanna be speaking for Mark here, but I think he saw perhaps in me the ability to continue that technology innovation in the industry and as a vehicle to help execute some of the visions that really the two of us have helped, as well as other people in the company of course, have helped to develop and inspire and then ultimately implement.

[00:16:39] Jeff: And what you guys do is really interesting too because I think so many people are used to going in and getting a new pair of shoes, but you guys aren't really just about selling more shoes. Like you're into the technology game, you're into the orthotics game about like having healthy biomechanics. Which I feel like is you're taking a lot more ownership over the customer experience. Like I don't think a customer is trying to just get a better pair of shoes or a pair of shoes that fits, they wanna, they wanna be active. They wanna be able to get, become healthier. They wanna be a runner. There's just so much more to being a runner or being active than just having the equipment.

One of my friends, I showed up to a soccer game one day and I had like a soccer jersey on, and he called me a full kitted wanker, which apparently is a British term for like the guy that has all the gear but sucks at the actual sport itself. Like you're not trying to just put equipment on people, you're actually trying to get them to achieve the the goal. And I feel like a lot of brands aren't doing that, they're just much more about pushing product and that, that's one of the things I really like about what Kintec’s doing.

[00:17:40] Michael: We sit in a unique space in that the footwear companies just sell shoes but don't really understand the functional parts of the shoes from a biomechanical perspective. There's other companies that sell orthotics but don't really get into the wellness space and think about the, like they talk in marketing about, a lot of people talk about themselves and who they are and the services that they provide, which are really, is really like the marketing metaphor of the airplane, when for a lot of people, they wanna go to the desert island or the you know, the tropical island, which is I want to be able to run faster, run easier. I wanna be able to walk my dog after work and not have to groan that my feet hurt. That's where we want to take people and we want to present that opportunity for them. These things are available to you, and we can break down those barriers in ways you probably didn't think about.

Most people don't think about their feet in that way. I'm over 25, maybe I'm over 30, my feet are supposed to hurt when I come home from work. Actually, no. Even if you're in your sixties, you shouldn't necessarily have sore feet on a regular basis, you know. We're always adapting and getting better. The big part for us is being able to marry the knowledge base of pedorthics, which is the clinical practice that really drives Kintec through the provision of custom foot orthoses or insoles. But there's a lot of training that has to go into that.

When I went through this program certified in 2006, there's an old school, 1950s published, The Professional Footwear Guide, which is kind of a cool vintage look at an acknowledgement that there's parts of shoes and the construction of shoes that matter in terms of supporting the rest of the body. And it's been a really interesting time overall, as far as just the footwear piece alone, as footwear companies were acknowledging pronation is bad, let's try to correct it. Oh, wait, we've overcorrected it, now what? Now we need to add, maybe we just don't need footwear at all, was a theme that persisted in the two thousands, the late two thousands.

[00:19:47] Jeff: Yeah, what's your take on on the whole, cause I think didn't that spring out of the book ‘Born to Run’ and then everyone, you saw all these like really weird looking foot gloves.

[00:19:56] Michael: Vibram FiveFingers.

[00:19:57] Jeff: FiveFinger ones that, I don't know what it is that creeps me out about them, but that kind of took over for a while. But they're still, you're starting to see like Zero Drop shoes are pretty, pretty common. I sometimes get so skeptical when I see like a new trend come out where I'm like, okay, like in five years, are they gonna be like laughing at at people who are wearing these things?

[00:20:15] Michael: So ‘Born to Run’ and Chris McDougall did a great job of popularizing a trend that had been in the academic circles for a couple decades, but really became, I think the inspiration for that book came from a review paper in the Journal Nature by Dennis Bramble and Dan Lieberman from Harvard. They were, you know, these anthropologists that acknowledge and essentially provide a scientific case for the physiology and anatomical adaptations for our genus Homo to do distance running.

‘Born to Run’ does a great job of sort of distilling this into an easy to digest version, instead of reading reams of review papers and scientific journals, like I might, the general public can read this and think, yeah, this is really cool. And certainly to McDougall's credit, they reference academic papers in the, and so it really brings this to life. And you think this is a valid argument. And not only that, it's social proofed in the sense with referencing the Tarahumara in Mexico. And I think for a lot of people, myself included, it was a watershed moment in realizing that human beings have a physical advantage in nature, which up until now, we probably didn't think we had, it was only through our, you know, cleverness or innovation, like in making tools that we got to where we are as far as if you will, command of nature, but the ability to actually do something physical, like we can outrun prey in the wild, like it sort of appeals in a primal sense.

And there's been a host of biomechanical studies supporting the theoretical advantage to running that way. However, it also comes with some disadvantages, and probably if I leave any of your listeners with one thing, from a standpoint of preventing injuries, it's just let your body adapt to whatever program you're doing. It takes time. It's gonna take longer than three, you know, three months to do that. And that's the problem is when you've been running in shoes and all of a sudden you run in without, with very little shoes or no shoes at all, and you haven't adjusted the surface, you're just shifting one problem for another. You're gonna get a stress fracture instead of patella femoral pain. You know, all this being said, like there's footwear can do a lot like the Vaporfly 4%, the Breaking2 documentary that Nike initiated, and then Ineos followed up with…

[00:22:33] Jeff: Yeah and this is, you're talking about Eliud Kipchoge, who's the…

[00:22:37] Michael: Yeah.

[00:22:38] Jeff: Ethiopian runner who broke the 2…

[00:22:40] Michael: 1:59:45, yeah.

[00:22:42] Jeff: The two hour wall that, you know, no one ever thought was gonna get broken. And just like the fact that over 42 kilometers had 15 seconds despair. Like that's how close it was. And this is like, Eliud Kipchoge, who's the G.O.A.T. of long distance running. Just unbelievable that with all the technology, all the training, I think he had a bunch of pacers as well, and like it was still that close. It's just unbelievable like what, what he's been able to do.

[00:23:13] Michael: For sure and to think that you can put on a pair of shoes that just by putting the shoes on will make you run four to ten minutes faster in a marathon.

[00:23:21] Jeff: Those are the Vaporflys you’re talking about?

[00:23:23] Michael: Yeah. I think there was the Alphafly in the version that was the one, in the version that ultimately ended up breaking two, two hours. There's a lot of innovations that could be trickled down into either other elements of performance or just everyday life. And I think that's the nice thing about what I get to do at Kintec is helping inform and working with our team as we're seeing people again, that everyday athlete, that's you know, we have the Sun Run in Vancouver, Canada's largest 10K event. There's the stat that really rang for me in that race is 50% of people are new to the Sun Run each year. So from the standpoint of democratizing, running and improving public health, I can't think of a better venue for people that generally are not runners and are using this time in the springtime to prepare for this April event.

A lot of, running is hard, right? Like it took took me a long time of doing this on a regular basis to feel like I “enjoyed the movement”. Up until then, it was something to do on my calendar. And so for a lot of people, if there's little differences we can make in footwear that will provide that added benefit to get, like, to help them get there because it's easier to move, you know, having that expression on people's face where they're like, I had no idea shoes could do this. Yes, they could do that now.

[00:24:45] Jeff: I'm curious, Kintec, like, how, how do you guys identify as a business? Do you see yourself as a footwear company? Do you see yourself as a, like, how do you identify as a company in your DNA? We had one of the founders of tentree, David Luba, on and he was talking about how they see themselves as a tree planting company that sells clothing. And then that kind of dictates how you make decisions, how you talk about your brand, and just hearing you talk versus if I were to go to Sport Chek, it's a very different vibe. And I'm curious how that kind of trickles down throughout the organization.

[00:25:21] Michael: I would say that we would identify as a footwear and orthotic retailer that develops and implements technology. If I had to consolidate it into like a short form boiler plate for you based on answering that question.

So then the sense that, you know, we've, there's certain technology that we incorporate that we haven't ourselves developed, but we think it adds value to the customer journey, which is super important for us because that's one of the cornerstones of what I think makes us distinct. Being able to for instance, use a scanning tool, our FitScan that provides 10 measurements of someone's foot. And not only does it do that so that you know that you're a US men's nine and a half and this is your width, but that you have an in-step height that's at the 90th percentile for the population.

Like little details like that are helpful because you might think, oh, that's why I always feel like I'm running out of lace after tying my shoes because the top part of my foot is pushing into the laces. I didn't realize because only 5% of the population have an arch higher than mine that that's why that's happening.

Maybe that's not like gonna make or break someone on an everyday basis, but it's about providing insight on, I think a part of the body that is often overlooked but is so instrumental to our overall health. Like your big toe joint alone, when that doesn't work because you've got arthritis in it or you've jammed it or whatever, maybe you have gout. You have to, I think use 60% additional muscle groups in order just to overcome the fact that that joint is so pivotal, excuse the pun, in translating your body forward. You have to like lift your hip and you know, just make all these other adjustments.

[00:27:08] Jeff: I feel like there's a ton of companies though out there that they want to incorporate tech into the business, but they just run into so much kind of legacy inertia of, “Hey, this is the way that we've always done it.” And, you know, they really struggle to transform themselves.

It just seems like you guys have rolled out this new kind of, 3D measurement technology. I've tried it out as well, it's amazing. Like, it literally like takes a 3D image of your foot from your iPhone and then you guys are able to do like a virtual consultation to like watch people's walking and biomechanics.

But like a lot of companies, they just, they may start with that, but they just can't get the adoption, they can't roll it out, their employees that wanna do it. Like, how have you guys been able to do this successfully where many other companies seem to struggle?

[00:27:47] Michael: Perhaps consistency? It's not just implementing one piece of change, it's maintaining a continual rate of change. One of the things we should do if we get around to it in our office is have a mural of all the different pieces of technology we've developed over the last 32 years. And some of it we've developed in-house, like the ability to take a self scan and carry out the technology in the Kintec Anywhere program, like you referenced. The development of arguably the, Canada's first insole designed exclusively to treat people with knee osteoarthritis and also supports the foot and ankle. It's supported by university testing and is able to make a big difference in taking 6% off the loading on the medial compartment of the knee. Why wear a brace when you can wear this insole? To the scan and in store to our own clinic software too, that is basically the ecosystem that houses all the data that we use.

Like there's multiple advantages or innovations that we've Implemented in the store, in our processes, I think our team just starts to expect it to a certain degree. And so when there's this sort of, I wanna say momentum of rate change that happens in certain processes and whether it's something big like “Yay, we can open up an entire new market segment that's independent of our physical locations and can truly serve anyone anywhere in Canada”, versus adopting a new process to manage projects, you know, within a department. Like those, just those little things as far as, okay, things, this is a fluid landscape, whether it's how we manage our people or how we identify different markets, we've just understood the world is always changing and I think that's, something that we've attempted to try to do into our culture and it, I think it's worked pretty well.

It always requires discipline and the leadership group that I work with, I'm delighted to be involved with them because our COO has been here for over 20 years and he's seen those changes. And as I mentioned, the mindset that Mark initiated when he founded the company, I think really helps set that benchmark.

[00:30:09] Jeff: Do you see, like when, when you think about kind of virtual care, is this where you kind of see things going? Obviously during Covid I think there was a huge push to, “okay, how can you do things remote?” Now that Covid is mostly behind us now, have you seen strong adoption of virtual consultations? I guess I'm just wondering like, how much is this trend gonna continue? Is it gonna, you know, continue to pick up? Or do you, has it kind of dropped off quite a bit since the end of Covid?

[00:30:37] Michael: I'd say the response has been mixed for the virtual program, partly in terms of how we operationalize it as well as the uptake from the public. And I think for this, it's an exercise in understanding and meeting people where their needs are. And I think from a standpoint of identifying trends in medical care or even foot health provision, foot healthcare provision. There's just a, it's a variable, variable market. Some people, they want to go into the store, they still value very highly that face-to-face interaction and they expect an experience, like it's an experiential thing for them.

Others are motivated a lot more by convenience and, or they already have maybe an insole and they know it works for them. I just want another one and if I can not have to drive both ways twice, cuz I've gotta go to the clinic, I've gotta get assessed and have an impression made and then the company fabricates the insole and then I've gotta go back for a fitting. If I can avoid both of those steps and take advantage of this technology that brings it basically straight to me, and I get to evaluate it through a, you know, registered expert in this space and have my insurance cover it as well at the same time. Why wouldn't I do that?

[00:32:00] Jeff: Like so many companies get caught in the trap of, this is how we've always done it. They'll make slight iterations on it, but for the most part there's a lot of fear in doing things differently, especially in big companies. In big companies, you just get so ingrained into doing things the way they've been done. The process around, okay, hey, let's try something different, let's try something new, let's take a, let's make a big bet. I think what people overlook is that even if you don't necessarily have a unanimous agreement on where you want to get to, the things you're gonna learn along the way are gonna help inform, and there's gonna be valuable nuggets that you're gonna get that are gonna help drive the business forward.

And you may not even end up where you originally planned, but it's that process of doing things differently and then getting exposure to all those new things that your customers didn't tell you or that your staff didn't know they didn't know. Then all of a sudden, like you end up in a place where you're at, yeah, you are able to give better advice, you are able to change the experience that you have with your customers, or you change the way you train your staff simply because you decided to make a bet on one thing.

I love hearing that not only are you using this tech for, for kind of the original purpose, but now you're also able to do a better job on educating customers on how their body works.

[00:33:21] Michael: That's actually one of the pieces that we are sometimes surprised at, is that we think of ourselves as okay, we provide, we're a footwear and orthotics retailer. I'm always quick to say we do so much more than just dispense orthotics. So that's the reason why we have a 45 minute appointment for an individual that's coming in for an assessment. We don't have a 15 minute appointment because we need time to get to know them.

And a lot of cases, the value, the true value add for the patient's perspective is just the information. I didn't know that's why it was causing me pain. I didn't know this is, there's a pathway for me to get better. I didn't realize that I should be doing these stretches in this order, or that I could tie my laces differently and that could hold my heel in place. And all these things are, you can only really understand that when you spend time with people.

[00:34:09] Jeff: And what I love about what you guys are doing as well, and, and we had Michele Guimond, the, the Head of Marketing at MEC on the podcast and like they're getting people outside. They're getting people to go out and experience the outdoors, and I feel like with Kintec as well, like you're helping people become more active and they, and I feel like the more we can make being active less intimidating, the more we can help people realize, Hey, you don't need to kind of live in pain or, Hey, there are solutions out there for you, and make it easier for people. Just the better off that we're all gonna be.

What kind of messages do you have for people who want to become more active but maybe have kind of tried and failed a few times? Or maybe have just given up on their kind of current situation.

[00:34:59] Michael: Certainly a mantra I always have is exercise is medicine. And so certainly appreciating that, but I think our industry can do a better job of being less dogmatic in applying or prescribing exercise or nutrition even. In the sense of saying, you need to follow this program, or you need to drink… [laughs]... I was gonna say, you need to drink two liters of water a day, just as you take a sip of water and like, you need to, you need to, you need to, you need to, as a global guideline, that's really an amalgam of a series of different averages that, you know they kind of recommend because that's how the statisticians have broken it down.

At an individual basis, it's understanding that patient to know, you know, for you to be able to walk to the end of the block and back without pain. Like that's just, or let's just find out where your boundary is. Taking this back to the tendon overuse injury argument or the discussion, right, that got me started in research. Some of the best therapists in the world will tell people with chronic tennis elbow, for example, you know, a condition that affects the outside of the elbow? You can't hold a cup of coffee. You can't pull your sheets up over your body when without excruciating pain, and they'll simply have people rest their forearm on a table and just simply raise their knuckles.

Dead simple. That's all I want you to do is just lay your hand flat down, palm down on the table, and I want you just to raise your knuckles and elevate. So I want you to activate the common extensor muscle in your elbow and that's, and to do that without pain. And I'm just teaching that part of the body that's associated with the injury to activate the muscles and not trigger pain.

Only way we know how to do this though, Jeff, is because we realize this isn't an inflammatory condition. It's a structural problem, it's a neuropathic problem. It's not an inflammatory problem. So this is why the, you don't call it an itis, it’s an opathy because it affects how you treat it. It affects if you don't know what it is.

And so getting back to answering your question though, but it starts small. Find that. Find where your knuckle elevation exercise is that you can do without pain that you feel is sustainable and applicable on a every everyday basis and then build on it from there. Don't try to do too much.

[00:37:18] Jeff: Well, this has been super interesting, Michael and I wish we had a bit more time to dig in, but I just wanna thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And I guess where, where can people learn more about, about you and more about Kintec?

[00:37:30] Michael: Well, kintec.net has, you know, everything that anyone needs to know as far as who we are. You can learn about the Kintec Anywhere program. If you're in BC or in Ontario where we have our physical locations or anywhere else in Canada, and you're maybe you're tired of driving an hour or more just to see your foot health professional, especially if you live in a remote community, we can be there for you. To learn more about our knee arthritis insole, the the V.D.O.O., which is really exciting, or any other provision kintec.net is your place. Feel free to look me up on LinkedIn or send me a message and happy to chat about footwear, orthotics, or tendons.

[00:38:09] Jeff: This has been awesome. And thanks again for coming on.

[00:38:12] Michael: My pleasure, it’s been a delight.

[00:38:20] Jeff: Thank you for tuning into Behind the Brand. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you’re interested in learning more about Neo Financial, visit us at neofinancial.com.

Behind the Brand is a production of Neo Financial and MediaLab YYC. Hosted by Jeff Adamson. Strategy, research, and production by Keegan Sharp, Alana Tefledzuk, and Kyle Marshall.