The Outsource Advantage

Derek Kissos (00:33.537)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Outsource Advantage. I'm Derek Kissos, your host and I'm really excited to have our guest on today, Bob Thoman from Brightbot. And so Bob, would you introduce yourself to the audience and let everyone know a little bit about your background?

bob (00:47.438)
Sure, Derek, that sounds great. My name is Bob Thoman. I am president of BrightBot. I am also a physician assistant in the ER for the last 20 years, and I have a background in electrical engineering. During the COVID pandemic, just a little bit of background about BrightBot, they were having us use masks for days on end and their idea of keeping everything.

Derek Kissos (01:12.787)
you

bob (01:17.518)
Sanitize as you know put it in a brown paper bag and bring it back the next day So I was just like guys is you know horrible. There's got to be a better way to do this So, you know during that time I also was working with a nonprofit. I'm in and we started making UBC boxes to bring to work basically so all of my co -workers could sanitize our masks our stuff the scopes badges phones things like that and then that kind of

broke out into, oh, hey, what can we do inside the rooms for the patients and the workers also? So we started making these roll -around UVC units. And the problem was that the hospital had looked at UVC companies in the past, and the ones out there that they had looked at were over $100 ,000.

for a system and it was something that the hospital couldn't justify or afford at that time. So we didn't have anything. So I'm like, well, you know, there's got to be a better way to do this on a more cost effective basis and still get a medical grade UVC light out of it. So we started making UVC lights and that's kind of the motto of our company is to, let's give you something that's medical grade.

Cost -effective, you know that anybody can use so that's that's kind of where we started

Derek Kissos (02:48.385)
Yeah, that's great. And you know, the team told me a little bit about your background, which I thought was fascinating, by the way. You know, I'm a fellow veteran myself. And so if you could just, you know, I think given that a you're you're operating in ERs, you have the background you have, could you just elaborate a little bit more on kind of your background and how that kind of led you to where bright bot is?

bob (03:10.734)
Okay, so like I said, I went into the army when I was 17, and that was...

Derek Kissos (03:20.033)
What branch? Or what branch in the army?

bob (03:24.462)
Yeah, I was Army Reserve and infantry. So, you know, the, you know, it's always the recruiter, you go back to the, Hey, you don't want to do engineering. You're going to be doing that during school the whole time. Why don't you have fun playing with them 16th? I'm like, you know, being 17, I'm like, Oh, that sounds like a great idea. So, you know, I started out in infantry and ended up going over to armor at some point, but, um, so that was, you know, my beginning in the military. And I think I spent six years in the military, but.

Um,

Derek Kissos (03:54.049)
Bob, I was not as brave as the sole of you. I was an adjutant general, which is basically personnel. So I thank you for your service way more so than people should thank me for my service. So thank you for your service.

bob (04:04.014)
Yeah, yeah, but I think you know bright bot is kind of a culmination of like everything up to this point in my life. So I have an electrical engineering background. So I did that for years. And then, you know, I got tired of doing that. So I went into the medical field as a physician assistant in the emergency room, which I've been doing for the last 20 years. But part of that also was I

start doing non -profit work, which was nice because we can go overseas, do medical training, do medical work, get into water purification. And one of the things I noticed, if you're doing something in a third world country, taking a lot of complicated technology over there and trying to replicate it is very difficult. They don't have the money. They don't have a lot of the resources we have. So that kind of...

is a background of like bright bodies, like, you know, we get the job done, but we don't have to have every single bell and whistle there is out there. And then that way we can kind of keep it affordable for everybody.

Derek Kissos (05:16.833)
No, that's wonderful. That's wonderful. How long has Breitbart been in existence?

bob (05:22.414)
It'll be four years in July. So yeah, we started right at the beginning of the pandemic.

Derek Kissos (05:25.729)
That's great.

Derek Kissos (05:29.537)
That's fantastic and obviously what a great time to do that, right? Given the demand was there. And can you walk me through kind of your product offerings? Because I believe you have different sizes of models and things like that. So can you walk me a little bit through just your span of products, any services you provide with that, et cetera?

bob (05:49.486)
Yeah, so right now the two main ones we have we have a The bright bot 60 which uses like 60 inch uvc bulbs and the bright bot 48 Which uses the 48 inch bulbs. We also have a smaller tabletop unit That you know, you can just pick up and move around and that one We're we didn't sell so many commercially but we ended up giving a lot of them away to

for people that have cancer and are going through chemotherapy. So they can put them in their house and sanitize the house when they're immunocompromised. But the 48 and the 60 are real good for hospitals, for nursing homes. We even have them in dentist offices.

Derek Kissos (06:44.321)
That's great. What kind of separates you in your mind? You know, I think I have it in my head, but for our listeners out there, what kind of separates you from the other big players in the market in terms of UVC disinfection?

bob (06:57.934)
Yeah, so like I said, We want to keep it simple. We want to keep it, you know, cost effective. And, you know, that's the biggest thing. So, you know, our products range, I think our most expensive products around $10 ,000. And then we go down, I think the 48 is around $8 ,000. But, you know, the other major players in the market there, you know, they could run over $100 ,000, maybe $70 ,000 for a unit.

Derek Kissos (07:19.827)
you

Great.

bob (07:28.014)
And, you know, that's all fine and great, but, you know, smaller facilities like nursing homes or dental offices or, you know, clinics, they can't afford something that's that expensive. And the other thing with, you know, our smaller or the more cost effective units is you're going to have more of them in the hospital and therefore be sanitizing more area than you would with a more expensive unit. And then as far as the simple aspect of it,

Derek Kissos (07:37.875)
you

bob (07:56.27)
You know, we don't have any software. It's very simple to train people to use this. So, you know, you may spend a half hour to train. So if you have like a turnover of, you know, employees in the company training the next person isn't going to take, you know, a day or two. It's just, you know, hey, here's the instructions and, you go ahead, you know, put it in the room, shut the door, you know, turn it on with remote and you're ready to go. Which also tried to make it.

As far as maintenance, you know very easy to Work on you know, so we're in the process now of putting together some YouTube videos Our products fairly modular so You know, let's say if a remote control goes out, you know, we can send you one the next day you I can walk you through it or you can just watch the video and it'll take you ten minutes to Replace that and put it in We just added

motion sensors to the unit so if something goes wrong with that you can just take off the top box and well we'll send you a new one and then you can send the old one back to us and we'll fix it so you know you don't have these we're going to be down for a week or two weeks sort of scenarios we can get you back up and running you know fairly quickly.

Derek Kissos (09:14.849)
Yeah, and it sounds like you don't need to wait on even service techs, which is kind of a challenge in the industry right now as well. So I totally understand that. Talk to me a little bit about kind of how you do your R &D. And so, you know, where do you get the feedback for research and development for maybe new features or things that need tweaked? You know, what's that process look like for for a bright bot?

bob (09:18.958)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

bob (09:37.612)
No sir.

Yeah, so I mean when Breitbach came out, you know, our official, our first run around was, you know, we had an IV pole with some, you know, tubing around it with some light bulbs on it and, you know, ballast in there. And, you know, that's what we were like donating to the hospital. And, you know, then as we, you know, ramped up and, you know, everything got better. But, you know, so I have my ideas of.

you know what the system should be like but you know even like when we deal with HHS you know I get feedback from you guys that says hey you know the the casters on the bottom are a little bit small you know when we go over the thresholds for an elevator this thing kind of bounces around a little bit can you put bigger casters on I'm like oh yeah sure you know so you know getting ideas from the the customer really helps out you know and and like I think another one that came from you guys was you know we've some of the other

Products we've had have had troubles with bulbs breaking and then you know you have downtime to clean that up and then So, you know, what can you do about shatterproof bulbs and you know, so did a little research we found a place That made shatterproof Coverings that we could like heat shrink under the bulbs. And so we went ahead and did that so, you know, we had the basic design and then You know from our customers then we get

Derek Kissos (10:48.673)
Hmm.

bob (11:04.332)
you know, like what do you guys need, what do you want? And then we kind of go from there to kind of tweak stuff and give you guys what you want. It doesn't really matter what I think is good, you know, you guys are the ones buying it. So, you know, try to make you guys happy.

Derek Kissos (11:17.313)
All right.

Yeah, and I just keep what's popping in my head and talking as you are kind of the perfect situation of someone who has the background you have, but also works in the hospital, also at the start of a pandemic and just took the initiative to put all that to use, which is just fascinating to me. You know how that all comes about. Right.

bob (11:40.046)
Yeah, and I didn't even, when I first did it, I wasn't even thinking about making a company. It was just, hey, let's do some stuff to keep everybody safe here. And then it's like, okay, so now there's more need. And so then things just kind of snowballed from there.

Derek Kissos (11:56.341)
Yeah, that's great. What's been some of the challenges in the four years that you've had to overcome and what kind of process do you go through to get through that? Because I imagine you don't have thousands of employees in manufacturing plants across the world and so your challenges are going to be much more unique than the big players out there and I think that's going to be fascinating to some of our listeners as well.

bob (12:10.862)
No. No.

bob (12:19.714)
Oh, absolutely. So, I mean, you know, I did everything backwards. So, you know, when you think of a startup company, you think, oh, we're going to get a group of people together. We're going to form an idea. We're going to get some financing and then we're going to figure out, you know, all the issues that we're going to have and kind of work back until we're ready to make a prototype. And just due to the situation was like, hey, we need something like yesterday.

So I'm making prototypes first. And then the one nice thing that I had about working in the hospital is as I make a prototype, I'm actually working there. You know, down in the yard, we were using three of them. So I could see the things that were working or not working and make adjustments, which I think most players aren't able to do that because they don't have somebody, you know, working with the product as they're kind of trying to design it. But the hard thing is, is then, you know,

Derek Kissos (13:06.117)
Right.

bob (13:15.79)
and you're bootstrapping it on your own. And, you know, so you kind of go slowly and then, you know, you find out, okay, well, we need to do this, you know, compliance thing. And so then you have to, okay, now how do we have to change our design to make this or what do we need? You know, hoops, do we need to jump through for this? One of the biggest things I learned was, you know, I'm a medical guy and I'm an engineer. I'm not a marketer. I'm not a, you know, salesman. Like I can't do.

Derek Kissos (13:28.673)
you

bob (13:45.518)
everything myself. So there was a lot of reaching out to other people and there still is. Reaching out and just knowing what I don't know then really is an asset because then I can go to other people and ask them, hey, what should I do here?

Derek Kissos (14:03.809)
Yeah, that's great. And it's, it's also refreshing, you know, you call it backwards. I'd probably say it's more forwards than that most companies should do. But I also think it's just great that you saw a need and you went out to do it to solve the hospitals problem that you were working in instead of looking at it to make a dollar. Obviously, it's developed now into a business. But I think that's great. But I have to ask you, so is that one of your machines in the back over there on with the cover over it? I want to know what the I want to.

bob (14:09.998)
Yeah.

bob (14:27.534)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually, the funny thing is that's... Oh, go ahead.

Derek Kissos (14:31.553)
I want to know less about that and I want to know about the artwork on the other side of the door.

bob (14:34.894)
That's the kid. So I got an eight and six year old and they're putting up the stuff all over the house. And so, yeah, so I'm working in the ER. I have a family and I'm running a business. So I'm just pretty busy all the time. So yeah. Oh God. No, not really. Cause in the ER we're rotating shifts too. So, you know, one day I'll be working days and the next day I'll be working nights. So it's a...

Derek Kissos (14:51.713)
You must get great sleep every night.

bob (15:04.238)
And the kids are always up at the same time every morning. So you know how that goes. So yeah. Yeah.

Derek Kissos (15:06.529)
Yeah, yeah, I have two young kids as well, five, well about to be six and four next month and I noticed that and it caught my eye. So yeah, you know, as one of the questions I like for individuals like yourself, for the audience is, you know, some of it aren't always end users, meaning like in our hospitals or even in airports or resorts, people who would use UV technology, but also people who may have an idea, maybe it's not in UV, maybe it's in some other form or feature or function.

bob (15:22.222)
Mm -hmm.

Derek Kissos (15:32.673)
What would be some advice you would give to entrepreneurs who are similar to you in terms of lessons you've learned and say, look, if I had this idea again and I could rewind the clock, what would you do a bit differently? Or what were some of the things, I guess conversely to that, outside of what would you do differently? What are the things you're really happy with that even though, as you stated, might be backwards actually help?

bob (15:54.446)
Well, I think what helped was just doing it. You can wait around till you think you're ready and then you end up never doing anything. So you just kind of have to jump in and do it. With that said, do a little research. Get out and look and see who's out there, what other products are out there that are similar, what they have and the good and bad aspects that you can see in that. And talk to...

Derek Kissos (16:02.753)
you

bob (16:23.918)
Talk to your end user. So, you know, at my hospital, I talked to the infection control people, I talked to housekeeping, the people in surgery units, and I was able to find out kind of what they needed. But it's, you know, things I didn't think about were regulatory things and how do you scale and all these different aspects that somebody who's done this once or more than once, you know, they're...

They're like, yeah, yeah, those are easy things to think about. But if you're just coming up with an idea, I would say bring on people to talk to and that have done this before. I joined a couple of organizations that had mentors, so they were able to give me insights that I hadn't even thought of. And so I think that's a really good thing, like some of these incubator type startup places. And they got people that...

you know, have a lot of experience in that, which, you know, goes back to, you know, you don't know everything, so find somebody who knows more than you.

Derek Kissos (17:24.353)
Yeah.

Derek Kissos (17:28.577)
That's right. That's right. No, that's great. Where you guys go next? Is it any new products or just product feature tweaks? What's kind of the, you know, pick a point in time year, two year, five years? You know, where do you, I guess, two part question, where do you see Breitbart going? But then where do you see the UV industry in general from a, there's a term, I'm going to say disinfection, but it's not, I know there's a another term for eradication of whatever.

bob (17:37.422)
You know, we're.

bob (17:53.174)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Derek Kissos (17:57.985)
expert, but kind of where do you see both of those items going?

bob (18:01.198)
So I think, you know, with our product, I think we have a pretty solid product at this point. You know, we've got motion sensors, we got shatter proof bulbs, we've got independent lab testing showing that it works. It's simple to use. So I think we're okay as far as that. And those are the things that I kind of am good at, but, you know, developing the relationships with people, getting the product out there. So,

Derek Kissos (18:25.793)
you

bob (18:30.962)
Sometimes it's hard to break into an industry that already has a bunch of solid players there. And people are like, oh yeah, we've been using these guys and these guys and these guys. Why should we change to this new guy? So those are the challenges I have as far as just expanding our base and selling our product. And just even in the industry, there's a lot of infection control people that are

somewhat skeptical about UVC or they don't quite understand that it kills pretty much everything. So with enough time, you're gonna, and if the light's shining on it, it's gonna sanitize it. And it's not a new concept. They've been using this stuff for over 100 years. We've got some measles outbreaks up here in Chicago. And back in the 30s, I think in Philadelphia, they were using UVC.

in the school rooms to shine on upper air surfaces to reduce measles in the classroom. So, you know, there's studies about that. So then all the vaccinations came out and that kind of fell off a little bit. But, you know, now with the, you know, the different antibiotic resistant pathogens out there, you know, this will become more and more of a useful product. You know, there's no chemicals and it kills stuff. So,

Derek Kissos (19:46.599)
Great.

bob (19:57.486)
it's not antibiotic based or anything like that. So the pathogens don't really get used to it and find a way to get around how it eradicates them.

Derek Kissos (20:09.409)
Yeah, my favorite thing about your product, obviously minus the price point, which is probably one of the best features, right? Given what else is out in the market, but is the ease of use. You know, when I round hospitals or honestly any facility that would have these as a potential and mostly honestly, it's in operations and in -house operations where it's the hospital staff or whoever's staff doing it. I would say it's about 80 to 90 % of times where the equipment's just sitting in a supply room.

bob (20:13.742)
Yeah.

bob (20:27.854)
Mm -hmm.

Derek Kissos (20:38.817)
Right. And it's one of three things is people don't know how to use it, which is the main thing because they've got these fancy interfaces with all these cool features that no one's going to use anyways. Right. It's like a new car. But then it's also waiting on either parts or the labor and service and all those things. And so to me, you know, I think it's a it's a great opening for you of saying, you know, all those things that make you not be able to use your machines. We're the fix for that. Right. And by the way, we're 90 percent cheaper. So.

bob (20:46.382)
Yeah.

bob (21:05.646)
Yeah, right.

Derek Kissos (21:06.785)
You know, I think it's a win -win and I think you got a great product. I know I was and I try not to talk about HHS a lot on these, but I'm going to for a second. You know, we have a pretty good program with you guys, especially around the patient bathrooms with your smaller unit. And the thing that when I was rounding in one of the hospitals was the amount of patients who loved having them in their rooms, loved seeing the light come under the door. We named them not because we wanted to the actual staff and patients made us and they would literally say,

bob (21:12.778)
Yeah.

bob (21:19.342)
Right, right.

Derek Kissos (21:35.393)
you know, and I'm forgetting the names, but you know, when are X, Y, and Z coming back to our room to visit? And that was the first I heard of it. And I looked at the, our VP and I said, who is that person? And they started laughing and they go, no, that's a bright bot. I'm like, makes sense. And, and you know, at the end of the day too, for hospitals or service providers, you know, the biggest thing I took away from that is obviously it's going to do its job in eradicating pathogens. But the more important thing, and obviously you being in the military, you knew this is perception is everything, right? Perception is king.

bob (21:46.542)
Hahaha!

Derek Kissos (22:05.473)
And the fact that the patients notice that when they get their HCAP survey, they're going to check, yes, my room was always clean because I saw that blue light all the time. And so I think even just that intangible aspect is what I love about UV technology.

bob (22:18.382)
Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, you've got the HCAP scores. You think about the marketing of this, like, hey, we go the extra mile to keep you safe. And with UBC, the other thing is it gets areas you can't wipe down. So I work in an ER and we've got equipment mounted on the walls all over the place. And so the environmental services staff comes in and they wipe everything down. But...

they're not wiping down the otoscopes or they're not wiping down all the different equipment and curtains. I mean, it's not the best for curtains or kind of porous, but sometimes our curtains stay up for six months. And so the UV light is sanitizing the curtains, it's sanitizing the walls, it's sanitizing equipment on the walls and anything in the air. So we started using them in the yard and...

Derek Kissos (22:58.483)
you

bob (23:14.35)
after a while the environmental services people are like, oh, is there a COVID person in the room? Did you use the UV light? And like they expect it. And if we don't do it, then they're upset with us. So I think, you know, getting people to use it, once they use it, then they're like, oh, you know, now we want it and, you know, we've had it and we see the benefit and, you know, why aren't you doing it now? So.

Derek Kissos (23:36.257)
Now there's a question for you, does your hospital that you work in get all of your brand new products? Do you get to trial them out there?

bob (23:43.598)
Um, we've got, yes, we've got our products there. Um, you know, there's been some change. We've been bought up by other places and stuff and some of the environmental services. This is where I go into the, you know, we use them, uh, but we have a new environmental services company came in and they use a different competitor's product. And so they've had two of them in the hospital. Well, I sold the hospital 10 of them when COVID started probably for

you know, a third of the price of the one of the ones to they have. And that gets back into the, you hey, you got two units that you might move around the hospital, you might do 10 rooms a day at most, but you know, with their two units, expensive ones, but with with our, you know, cost effective product, you can have one on every floor. So, you know,

you could be using them all over the place. But this is where the relationships and these sort of things come in. And so that's kind of the challenge at this time.

Derek Kissos (24:49.217)
That's great. One of the last questions I have is around, if we have a hospital administrator or a outsourced provider listening to this, what are the things they should look into when just evaluating who to reach out to, whether it's you, I won't name your competitors by name, but give them some insight where if you took your Brightbot hat off for a second and you said, look, these are the things you really need to look into in selecting a.

a vendor for UV disinfection, what should they consider?

bob (25:20.142)
Well, you know, one is price, obviously. Two, you know, the things you don't think about are like the hidden costs. So, you know, is there a software agreement? Is there a maintenance agreement? Is, you know, what are the yearly costs for, you know, bulb replacement or, you know, things like that with Breitbart? I think every two years you replace the bulbs and it's maybe 600 bucks. So it's, you low. And then, you know, what's

how does the service, you know, like if you call BrightBot, probably you're going to get me and I'll walk you through whatever you need, you know, hopefully within that same day and then get whatever needs to get done done. But some of the bigger companies, you know, then you've got a little bit more red tape and stuff, but you want to make sure that, you know, there's, they've had some testing or at least that, you know, it shows, um, you know, how powerful the bulbs are and things like that. Um,

So yeah, I mean, I think those are some of the main things. And then, you know, when I first got into this, you know, I was talking to some guy and he's like, Oh yeah, we'll get some stuff from China and then we'll assemble it here and then we'll say it's made in the United States and then we'll sell it for three times what we bought it for. I'm like, well, you know, it's not really what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to make a little better product and, you know, something from here. But, you know, just, you know, kind of the service you get with the product, you know,

Derek Kissos (26:40.129)
Yeah.

bob (26:50.126)
how willing are they to help kind of walk you through stuff and then just make sure you understand what all the costs are gonna be for a whole year as opposed to just the purchase of it.

Derek Kissos (27:03.873)
Yeah, that's great. All right, Bob, I have a question for you. Tell us one thing, one interesting fact about you or fun fact about you or something you'd like to do, something just to get to know you a little bit better as a person.

bob (27:13.678)
Hahaha.

bob (27:19.278)
Yeah, I think what I like to do is doing things with the kids. Until I had them, I didn't really realize what I was missing and now they're unbelievable. At some point when they get a little bit older, I want to start taking them on some mission trips around the world and let them see everything that's out there and stuff. So that's kind of what I got.

Derek Kissos (27:46.209)
great. That's wonderful. Any parting comments for the listeners before we sign off here?

bob (27:52.61)
Yeah, you know, just take a look at our website, see what we have to offer and you know, I think with our price point and with the features we have, you know, I think we're a good competitor, you know, but you know, people can see what we got and see what they think. So.

Derek Kissos (28:09.825)
That's great. Well, Bob, thank you again so much for coming on. Hopefully this was valuable to everyone out there listening or watching this. Thanks for joining the Outsource Advantage. If you haven't, please subscribe. We release these every two weeks. And Bob, I hope you have a great rest of your week and we'll see you soon.

bob (28:26.254)
OK, you too, Derek. Have a great day. OK. All right. Thanks.

Derek Kissos (28:28.769)
All right, thanks, Bob.