940 Sheila Buswell:

Melinda Wittstock:
Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Sheila Buswell:
That’s why I got so involved with explaining artificial intelligence to everybody, because what am I doing? Why does one person’s motion matter? 300 can tell you whether or not you’re successful or it’s feasible. And that reference, that beginnings of a library, has to be free from bias. It has to be across the age spectrum. You have to be able to justify it.

Melinda Wittstock:
Artificial Intelligence has so many applications now, extending deep into healthcare, diagnostics, even discovery of new drugs and vaccines – but one of the biggest challenges remains removing any biases from datasets. Today I chat with Sheila Buswell who is on a mission to help people with mobility challenges with an AI-powered device she’s invented as the founder of Buswell Biomedical. We also talk about the myriad challenges for women in tech, including how to overcome imposter syndrome.

Melinda Wittstock:
Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb.

Melinda Wittstock:
Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur and U.S. Army veteran who is an innovator at the forefront of integrating AI and machine learning into motion analysis. The CEO and Founder of Buswell Biomedical, Sheila Buswell’s work primarily involves developing a device that utilizes a sophisticated AI algorithm to assess and learn user-specific motion patterns. By comparing individual movements to an extensive library of previous users, the device adapts to recognize what’s normal for each person, thereby accommodating unique physical characteristics like limps or wobbles. Sheila’s commitment to enhancing personalized technology is paving the way for more intuitive and adaptive motion assessment tools. If you’re as obsessed as I am with AI, its impacts and its challenges, you’re going to love this one. Sheila will be here in a moment, and first:

[PROMO CREDIT]

If you’re enjoying this podcast and what you learn from all the inspiring women I interview every week, please go ahead, hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and share it with your friends. We really appreciate ratings and reviews on Apple and Spotify – it helps more entrepreneurs like you find the wisdom, tips, and epiphanies they need to grow their business. It makes a difference. Thank you.

Melinda Wittstock:
AI sparks divided opinions: Many fear its implications; others are thrilled by its potential. Like a sharp knife, AI is both a tool and weapon.

Melinda Wittstock:
Today we’re going to hear about a new application of AI in a device that learns and recognizes personalized motion patterns, providing unparalleled assistance for individuals with mobility issues or in physical rehabilitation. Imagine for a moment an exoskeleton that understands your movement quirks and adapts to stabilize you—invaluable and game-changing for anyone with mobility challenges.

Melinda Wittstock:
Sheila Buswell is here to talk about her invention, and how she’s leveraging AI to help provide independence and safety in rehabilitation hospitals, even transforming routine activities such as toileting. As a US Army veteran, Sheila’s journey began with her own needs and those of her loved ones. It’s not just business; it’s personal as she reshapes the future of healthcare, one algorithm at a time, and also overcoming imposter syndrome as she innovated in an unwelcoming ‘bro culture’. I know a bit about that!

Melinda Wittstock:
We also talk about Sheila’s book, Is This Seat For Me? Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in Everyday Life and Business, so let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Sheila Buswell.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:
Welcome to Wings.

Sheila Buswell:
Thank you for having me. Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:
Let’s just dive right into how you’re using AI with Buswell Biomedical, because, you know, people have some pretty polarizing thoughts about AI. Some people are like, terrified of it, like it’s going to be the villain, it’s going to kill us all. And then other people are very excited about it because it’s leading to so many breakthroughs, especially in the medical space. Tell me how you’re using it.

Sheila Buswell:
So, our device uses it in a lot of different ways, but the primary way is we use a machine learning algorithm, a subset of AI to determine motion, if it’s stable or unstable, and it learns your motion. So, when you do something, it compares your motion to a library of motion from every person that has used this device before. And your emotions, the more you use it, the more you. It’s able to determine what’s normal for you. Like, for instance, I walk with a limp. I wobble, I. I jilt. I don’t know if that.

Sheila Buswell:
So, it’s very erratic when I do certain things, but it would know that that’s normal for me and not freak out or try to stabilize me.

Melinda Wittstock:
It would take thousands of years to kind of like figure that out, to personalize for every single one of your customers. And yet the AI can do this and learn this, right?

Sheila Buswell:
So yeah, yes, absolutely. And it drives me crazy because people, not people in general, but when I speak about, you know, artificial intelligence or my product which uses artificial intelligence, and they ask, how does it do this? And I tell them, they automatically think the Terminator of the last Mission Impossible movie where, oh, it’s got artificial intelligence that’s evil, that could be bad, instead of seeing the potential. And how it could help people, how instead of a self-driving car, we could. You could take yourself to the bathroom in a rehabilitation hospital and how that’s freeing and going to improve health outcomes.

Melinda Wittstock:
Right. Sounds ironic, but the more we humanize it in terms of the actual stories, like how it’s helping people. I think people don’t understand it and people are fearful of things they don’t understand.

Sheila Buswell:
I absolutely agree.

Melinda Wittstock:
And so how do you get around that? Say, like, just even in your marketing, what are you finding some of the challenges? Because I think a lot of. I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs using AI across a whole spectrum of industries. And I know I have this issue with, say, AI and podcasting, even and people I don’t know, like, all have this challenge of how to tell the story of AI without freaking out their customers.

Sheila Buswell:
The way I understood it initially was I likened it to almost the total basis of AI is statistics, math. But it’s like for large language models like I think you were using in podcasting, I don’t know. But in motion, it can compare and predict what the next logical thing would be. Just like when you’re older, your people picker gets better. When you’re in 20s, your people picker not so great. I have a list of boyfriends that would attest to that.

Melinda Wittstock:
Right.

Sheila Buswell:
But if you get older and you meet more people, you were able to pick out the things that maybe don’t jive. And if you put that into artificial intelligence terms. Yes. It can write your email in according to APA or whatever because it read a book and it was programmed on that, and it has every bit of literature that it should in open source available to it and it can access that. So, people picker is great because it has access to more information.

Melinda Wittstock:
Yeah. So especially in your case where it’s actually being trained on real data. So, there’s different types of AI like so in some of the large language models. I know there’s a lot of concern, say in the world of information that it can, you know, really double down on biases and things like that, which could adversely impact, say which founder gets funded, right? If it’s going on historic information and looking for historic pattern or basing its decisions on historic patterns. Right. In the case though of using in effect, first party data, like people actually using your device or you’re actually learning from real personalized data, that’s different because you don’t necessarily have that, that, that issue of, of bias in the AI, Is that, is that a fair characterization?

Sheila Buswell:
Well, I think you have to be careful of biases that exist. Like they use artificial intelligence, the same kind of machine learning algorithm that I use to detect skin cancer. Well, if you build that model off of one type of skin, it was really great at detecting skin cancer in whales.

Melinda Wittstock:
Right.

Sheila Buswell:
But all of a sudden you couldn’t apply that to the entire world. And then I think when they tried to improve it with a more diverse sample set, they, they used diagnosis data, pre surgery data, which I think they have a circle around the offending. So, the artificial intelligence got really good at picking out that circle, which is also not effective.

Melinda Wittstock:
Right.

Sheila Buswell:
I think being aware of the biases that could exist. My friend Anu has a whole business where she talks about the biases and trying to eliminate bias in artificial intelligence, because artificial intelligence is based off of every published piece of literature ever. But every piece of literature that was published ever has bias in it. That’s why when you use artificial intelligence, an image generator, it gives you a certain response like a modern Mona Lisa will have giant boobs because the, whatever. The identity of a perfect or a beautiful woman has come to mean something else, you know, big boobs and cheekbones or whatever, instead of, you know, all the things that could exist.

Melinda Wittstock:
We had a woman on my podcast recently who uses machine learning in evaluating executives and entrepreneurs for their likelihood of success for, say, venture capital and for private equity in the context of, say, mergers and acquisitions. What’s really interesting about her data is a lot of women and diverse teams get overlooked because they’re judged differently with unconscious bias. But her tool is able to show things to the venture capitalists and the PE firms that they didn’t otherwise see themselves through their unconscious bias and they were leaving money on the table and have reversed a lot of or, you know, changed their decisions, and more women have gotten funded as a result. But that’s because she came to it with this knowledge of what the potential bias could be, because it could be the other way around. You know what I mean?

Sheila Buswell:
Absolutely. And I think that, God, just like when you have. We’re gonna use this example of ChatGPT, like writing a letter for you, you still have to proofread and change some stuff in that letter. Generally speaking, you have the idea in your head that some biases exist or something’s going to come wonky. And I think if we enter any space with that and we can solve the problems. But if you, you can’t use those problems to be like, yep, see, I told you that was evil because it just shut people down.

Melinda Wittstock:
Exactly.

Sheila Buswell:
And evil. What does that mean?

Melinda Wittstock:
So how does it work? So, you have a product that has to go through FDA approval and all these different things. And so how, say, are the agencies at time looking at AI when it comes to something like getting a device approved? Is that like a whole other order of magnitude? Do you feel that there’s a kind of A competency there to even evaluate it at the agency level. I mean that’s a big topic. I know, but tell me your perspective on that.

Sheila Buswell:
Well, Buswell Biomedical has a patent, right. But it took longer to get our patent because for the whole device because we use machine learning and there’s very few people who understand that. And it’s the same thing with the FDA. 510K is the regulatory path. That means it’s based off a predicate device. A device that already exists even like exoskeletons have a predicate device. Just walkers I think is one of them.

Sheila Buswell:
But don’t quote me on that. But the idea of this. And that’s an expedited path to have a 510k. If you don’t have a predicate, you can go the de novo path. It could be longer but use it. It says okay, there’s not a predicate device out there, but this is desperately needed. And I think that’s the, I mean that’s the impetus. So much has changed.

Sheila Buswell:
There’s nothing that compares ChatGPT even or a app on your phone and your phone taking pictures to something that existed 40 years ago just doesn’t exist. So, so how do they evaluate?

Melinda Wittstock:
Like because the evaluators, I mean I could see this being a real issue like the evaluators don’t have the knowledge base to even evaluate a whole raft of new, new products in terms of how this is being used. I mean it seems like a bit of a. Yes, a challenge.

Sheila Buswell:
Sorry, I totally speak in terms like everybody understands de novo but like you have to justify it and prove that it’s safe and efficacy. So, for instance, for our device we have to prove it can adequately allow people to conduct the activities of daily living like toileting independently without stopping them too much and it can safely stabilize. And the way I say stabilize, it’s like the control systems artificial intelligence but basically it allows people to be lifted up so they can get their feet under them, not lifted up like a pinata but like off weight them so much that they can get their feet underneath them and they don’t hit their heads or fall down to the ground. But proving that it’s safe and efficacy safe and you know, improves health outcomes and you justify it by saying yes this is an expensive device, but healthcare workers are not safe. They’re not. And they often get injured helping other people and we can eliminate them in that path. I mean they’re helping people to the bathroom.

Sheila Buswell:
You don’t go to nursing school to do that, right. So, we have to prove that it’s needed and prove that it works.

Melinda Wittstock:
Okay, so I come to this mind, how do you, how do you do that? Just for anyone listening as like biomedical devices is not their kind of area of expertise. I’m just curious, so what is the process that you have to go through to actually prove all that? How long does it take? I imagine

Sheila Buswell:
It is a major thing. But the testing that’s required, you have to justify every bit of testing, and you have to with the testing be able to prove that it is safe and can improve health outcomes. So however long that takes.

Sheila Buswell:
Well for this, it’s a mechanical device, right. So, we’re going to have people, we have to prove that it can help them, but also that it can take certain mechanical loading, that it doesn’t tip over when loaded in a certain way. Like if you have all the weight in your sinus instead of in your toes or whatever that it allows, it works in such a way that gives you the independence but doesn’t make you make it the situation worse.

Melinda Wittstock:
So how big a sample, how many people are involved in this testing? And I mean presumably with AI too; you need a big enough data set for it to actually be meaningful.

Sheila Buswell:
So, for the beginnings of a machine learning algorithm, you need 300. And that started with me in the midst of the pandemic, going around and getting samples. And I’m a middle-aged woman, so I got lots of middle-aged women, but I needed young men. And there’s no way to not be weird and uncomfortably like stand up and sit down for science. It’ll be great. We’re building a machine learning algorithm. Like my own sister was treating me like I was trying to sell her something like a Amway. I don’t even want to say Amway, but some multi-level marketing hoodoo with her son in law.

Sheila Buswell:
That’s why I got so involved with explaining artificial intelligence to everybody, because what am I doing? Why does one person’s motion matter? And it’s one person adds up to 300. And that 300 can tell you whether or not you’re successful or it’s feasible. And that reference, that beginnings of a library has to be free from bias. It has to be across the age spectrum. It has to be the requirements of that can just. You have to be able to justify it. And interestingly enough, they found out or not.

Sheila Buswell:
But like, it’s not mysterious, but people in men and women walk different because of their. Whether that person, whether that man or woman is in Queens, New York or Kuala Lumpur. Right. Men and women in those two different places because of what’s called the Q angle is different. But they stand up and sit down very much alike. And those are scenarios that are needed. Right?

Melinda Wittstock:
Like, yeah, 100%. Well, just our bodies are shaped differently, and we have different heights and different. Yeah, I mean, all kinds of different things. I don’t know if there’s any cultural difference, but then, but then you have your own thing like, say, in my case, my knees are kind of messed up from many years of figure skating and skiing. You know what I mean?

Melinda Wittstock:
So how many people now, how big is your data set at this stage? Like, how many people have gone through? How many people have you sort of used your device or tested on at this point in time?

Sheila Buswell:
We captured 147 people, but we had a data science look at it and they said, data scientists look at it and they said, okay, there is similarities. So, I’m laughing because it’s kind of funny. It needs to be more regimented, more. Okay, this is up, this is down. This is the same location on all of them. And it’s going to be. That’s what makes it difficult is it has to be the same.

Melinda Wittstock:
So, yeah, our data set circumstance the same. Yeah. Because there are so many in that sort of information, right, in terms of the context. Context in AI is incredibly important, right. Because, you know, what’s the, what’s the weather like? Does the weather impact people’s mobility? Does the.

Sheila Buswell:
Yeah, absolutely. All those things. And then the time of day, like people walking is act. There’s a huge library and walking.

Sheila Buswell:
People have three different walks. They walk differently when they first start walking in the middle of their walk and then as they’re about to come to an end, all that has to be considered. And you can’t necessarily, for everything judge if emotion, if motion is normal or stable or whatever. Whatever. Normal Means from in the middle of their walk based off of a library that you might have towards the end of your walk. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Melinda Wittstock:
Right, yeah. So, I mean, again, this is a big, big thing that you’re doing, right? Because just the amount of data that you need to be able to make this accurate and all the testing and all of that. And so where are you in your kind of business trajectory in terms of getting this to market? Like, what all do you have to now do to be able to really get these devices to everybody who needs them? And I imagine you have a big market; you have a lot of veterans such as yourself. You have a lot of people who are older, you have other people with sports injuries. I mean you have like a whole bunch of different verticals that you could serve with this. But where are you in that trajectory at this point in time?

Sheila Buswell:
Like many people who listen to this, probably, I’m looking for venture funding because we need serious capital infusion into Buswell Biomedical to integrate the control system and the mechanical device and allow for testing. And it’s very hard to do anything totally. But that’s. Or completely at least people who. Sorry, I’m not entrepreneurial and I know you are, but I don’t have that thing inside me, but I do have this icky guy of the reason for living is to improve these people. In rehabilitation hospitals, like people are waiting hours to go to the bathroom because they’re waiting for a healthcare worker to have the availability or bandwidth to do that. And that is meaningful to me. I’ve been in that situation myself.

Sheila Buswell:
And I think that it’s as you approach life, and you think the reason for doing something. I think, I think it’s Carl’s Jung who said this, that if you have a reason, you can do any why. Or maybe it was Nietzsche, I don’t know. I don’t. But it was like that’s my reason. So yes, it is cumbersome. And 2% of venture capital as you know, goes to women run company.

Melinda Wittstock:
Yeah, it hasn’t changed in like 30 years. And it’s a mission really close to my heart. So much so that I’ve recently become a venture part in a fund that’s actually funding women at the seed stage. So, we should talk about what you’re doing. But it’s really hard to get funding. And I know through five businesses the struggles that I’ve had because I don’t know, you’re just dealing with all that kind of unconscious bias, and it’s got to change.

Melinda Wittstock:
So, this just seems like kind of a no brainer in the sense that you have, you have a pretty massive market, right. If you just think of the Veterans Administration, like what, talk to me about that, like your addressable market. Say you get through the FDA, and you have all the funding you need to really, you know, get this AI really clicking and whatnot. What’s the size of your market, how many people?

Sheila Buswell:
So, the total addressable market is for, you know, initially we’re going to hospitals, but initially we’re going to focus in rehab hospitals in St. Louis. But the total addressable market nationwide is over, I think $42 billion. And that’s based off of the generic how many beds and how many beds per room. And like, because the upward mobility, just to tell you how it would work is it would come to the patient like a Roomba. Well, all of a sudden in different hospital layouts, there’s different, there’s more than one person. There are doors that have to be kept open or kept closed based off like I think there was in Texas, they have a law that the doors have to be shut. So that, that’s a whole different accommodation.

Sheila Buswell:
And so, then it’s very generic to paint that picture. But it’s over $44 billion, but there’s billions, 280 of money spent on people that can be accounted for between lawsuits and just the cost to people. If somebody’s in a rehabilitation hospital and they get injured, it costs a lot of money. And a lot of those injuries are because people fall. Traditionally they fall in devices that are currently available. Or a lot of hospital injuries happen when people take themselves to the bathroom and there’s nothing to stop bad stuff from happening. And in that situation, it could be life or death if you hit your head, an older person especially, but anybody could die. So, there’s a reason for those rules.

Sheila Buswell:
But the idea of again, we’re going to go back full circle to artificial intelligence, helping people not die better than, you know, a vacuum that can vacuum your house while you’re at work or a self-driving car, although that’s great.

Melinda Wittstock:
Yeah, no, it makes sense. I could see how this could really transform a lot of things. I mean, this is the type of thing that when you look at the healthcare system and you look at the inefficiencies of it, not only does this improve people’s lives and stop them from dying, but it also potentially Saves a tremendous amount of money in a runaway healthcare system. Right. So, there’s lots of reasons that this makes sense. And so, tell me a little bit about your experience trying to raise venture capital. What have been the toughest things? Because I think there are. There are certain firms that specialize in things that need FDA approval because it’s a long process.

Melinda Wittstock:
It takes much longer for that company to kind of get to exit, you know, so the venture capitalist is thinking, okay, this is going to be a long haul. I’m not going to get my. I’m going to. I’m not going to get my return for. For many, many years. And there’s all this risk. There are some VCs that really specialize in that, but there’s a lot that don’t for reason. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:
So, tell me about your experience in terms of finding the capital that you need. You know, what have been.

Melinda Wittstock:
Is it hard to find the right venture partners? Is it difficult on the pitch? Like, what are some of the things that you’ve experienced?

Sheila Buswell:
Melinda, I’m just going to say this. Partners is the right word. And people don’t view it as a partnership. They think you’re asking for money. And that’s not really the case. And I liken it to dating. I have had situations that were just terrible. And I thought, oh, I don’t want this person to be my partner going forward.

Sheila Buswell:
And of those bad experiences, I had a guy who ate while I gave my pitch, right. Which I had worked on and honed. And then I had a guy whose belly was hanging out of his shirt. He didn’t respect himself enough to have a shirt that fit. He had billions of dollars. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the money to buy a shirt. It was that he didn’t care. You know what I mean? And so if he didn’t care about himself, is he going to care about me or Bustle Biomedical or the random person who’s in a rehabilitation hospital who needs help going to the bathroom? It’s just, it was very much like, I had great experiences, but I was turned off enough to be like, you know what? I’m just going to hone my product, do it, go as far as I can without venture capital investment.

Sheila Buswell:
I’ve learned a lot. Then, like you said, there’s specialties.

Melinda Wittstock:
Who’s your initial target market? I think that’s what venture looks for, right. They, you know, they want to know that you have product market fit, that you have people willing to pay you, they’re using your thing, they’re happy with it in a very narrow way because then you can throw money at it and scale it, right.

Sheila Buswell:
It’s just very disheartening to see people who don’t prove that product market fit. But God, I hate that because it’s not like I don’t like men or whatever, but if you’re a frat boy or have that look and you know, you can get money so much more easily, where I feel like I had to dot all my I’s, cross all my T’s and still have an issue. Well, still have problems.

Melinda Wittstock:
Yeah. All the research bears out that women are evaluated differently than men. Like we tend to be evaluated on past performance, whereas men are evaluated on future potential. And that’s a huge thing. Like I’ve just even noticed in the, in the companies pitching us at zero limits capital. I mean, I’m often the person saying hey to the women because women tend to be more conservative with their numbers or just, just more like saying what they know for sure they can do, whereas men do the big kind of hockey stick venture capitalists cut your projections in half because they just sort of assume that, you know, and so if you go in with these big confident projections, right, you’re more likely, that’s more likely to be an interesting, big enough, you know, market, big enough gain. Right. And men tend to do that with much more ease and confidence even when they, they haven’t a clue.

Melinda Wittstock:
Right. But they’re just more believed in that sense. Whereas women are asked to justify it. So, we come in with more conservative numbers and then we’re asked to justify it. And you have to figure out how to turn the conversation around. There are a lot of reasons why this is really, really tough. And it comes back to what you were saying about purpose, like finding investors that share the same mission as you. And it comes down to finding like the right people.

Melinda Wittstock:
And that’s hard because, you know, that’s almost a full-time job. Well, at same time you’re working on your business like you’re working on your product, like, you know what I mean? So, anyone who thinks entrepreneurship is glamorous or easy. And what you’re doing is hard and. But it makes it so much more exciting though, as well. So, like, hats off to you for all your progress so far, because obviously what you’re building is really needed. It’s a no brainer, you know.

Sheila Buswell:
Thank you for saying that. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:
So, okay, so fast forward, say where, like, say 10 years from now in your mind’s eye, in terms of, say if you wrote like a vision board for where you’re at, like five, ten years from now, what does it look like? What does it look like in your mind’s eye? Where your company’s going to be.

Sheila Buswell:
Buswell Biomedical has four people. I’m the CEO, but there’s a COO, a CTO, and a chief medical officer. And we all just want this device to be available when we need it. That’s our 10-year goal. That’s our hunt. You know, whatever we. When we need it or our loved ones need it, we want it to be available. We’re all in St. Louis. That’s our beachhead market. Melinda, I hate to say it like this, but I’m not in it to live a glamorous life or to make lots of bank. It’s to make sure that I don’t have to wait for five hours when I have to go to the bathroom, when I’m in a rehabilitation hospital, when I get my knees replaced. I want to be able to summon this device, like a Roomba, and it come to me and then hook up to it and it be safe by myself.

Melinda Wittstock:
Right.

Sheila Buswell:
And that’s my motivation.

Melinda Wittstock:
Yeah, that’s, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, that’s what’s going to make your product great. And of course, the venture capitalist wants to hear from you that you do want to make bank because they want to make bank.

Sheila Buswell:
And there’s bank to be made. I mean, product market fit is a huge amount of that. Right. To make sure that we. I think the biggest issue is I identified a problem and created a solution. There’s. I talked to so many people who find a solution, and they want to make every issue, that issue, like, ever, a solution to every problem, right.

Sheila Buswell:
They find a problem that fits their solution, and that’s weird, but, God, it happens all the time.

Melinda Wittstock:
There’s different ways to define it, but you’ve essentially at the stage of your business where you have proven that people will pay for the solution, use it. Like, recommending it to other people. You’ve proven it, you know, through finding your leads to converting those leads to, like, people happily using the product. You’ve proven your model at a small scale. And so, then all you have to do is rinse and repeat. And venture loves to invest at that stage because they’re really putting gasoline on a fire that is gonna, you know, is gonna grow.

Sheila Buswell:
Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:
And a lot of people try to raise money before they’ve actually proven that. And that’s. That’s hard because at that stage, at that stage, people are looking for things like, well, have you done it before? Right, like, you know, idea stage investors are few and far between at this stage. There used to be more of them, but now not so much. So, you know, you’re doing all the right things, to get to where you need to be.

Melinda Wittstock:
I want to get back into your purpose, though, because you were, of course, you know, you’re a veteran. You were in Bosnia.

Melinda Wittstock:
You suffered an injury, and I imagine that was a big impetus for how you came to develop this company. Tell me about the process there. The aha moment where you decided you wanted to do this.

Sheila Buswell:
I, like many people in their 20s, didn’t really appreciate what had. You know, it was horrible. I was. I joined the army when I lost my scholarship in 1997, and in 1998, I. I was deployed to Bosnia, and I was injured when a generator fell on my foot. I was treated at a UN hospital called the Blue Factory, and I had, like, all the Norwegian nurses I could think of, but I had an issue being accompanied toileting, specifically. And I remember feeling like I was told, oh, you have to go, or you can’t go home or whatever.

Sheila Buswell:
And they’re like, oh, it’s the opioids. I’m like, nope, it’s because you’re here with me, and I want to be alone. But then I didn’t really understand it, and I thought I had signed up for this, and it was. That was the solution at the time. Well, 20 years after my injury in 2018, my mom falls in Arizona, and she was in a rehab hospital. And the solutions that were available to her were the same that was available to me 20 years earlier. But those intervening 20 years, I got a master’s in engineering after my medical discharge, and I worked for a lot of great companies, mostly automating, and I got a master’s in biomedical engineering. And I knew a lot about, you know, different ways that work could be automated.

Sheila Buswell:
So, I’m sitting watching my mom basically wait to go to the bathroom. Not because my mom’s a huge woman. She’s a little Irish lady, but because somebody. Health care workers get injured and they’re short staffed. And this was in 2018. That’s definitely true now after a pandemic. But the idea that I knew better and that there was no progression, like, I wouldn’t deal with the Internet service I had in 1998, I definitely thought this could be better. Although in a lot of healthcare places, they still use a fax machine, right?

Sheila Buswell:
So, I’m like, what is that? That was cutting edge in the early 90s, but now I’m like, this could be better. You just have to focus the energy on that. I wasn’t Melinda, unlike you, I don’t have the entrepreneurships here. I had a master’s in engineering. I liked the security I thought I had working for all those great companies, but I was like. My impetus at the time was just to go work for whoever was developing a device that would allow what I think the upward mobility does, allows people to conduct the activities of daily living independently and safely. I was just gonna go work for those people, and then I found out, oh, nobody else is working on this and developing it.

Sheila Buswell:
So, I had a pep talk that I gave to myself about, well, if not you, then who? If not now, then when? And that’s how Buswell Biomedical. And that was my aha moment. Watching my little mama wait hours to go to the bathroom.

Melinda Wittstock:
I love this story because it’s so true. For most female founders in particular, that is a lived experience. That is the impetus for the idea like you go through something yourself and suffer sort of the pain or challenge of that so that you can solve it for everyone else. Like almost every female founder I know, you know, and a lot of men too, have that. Often men come at it more like, oh, there’s an opportunity here to make some money, so I’m going to go do that. But, but, but women tend to be a lot more mission driven in my experience. Do you think that’s true? I mean, it’s certainly true of your experience.

Sheila Buswell:
It absolutely is true of my experience. But I think that a lot of the things that people have to deal with day to day, I don’t, I don’t have kids. I’m not trying to worry about putting them through college. I like, I’m very supported and have a great husband that is like able to support me financially while I do this. And I have the VA health system that allows me to have health benefits that most startup founders don’t have. So, I can focus completely on doing that, but I am allowed to do that because of the follow the mission, because I have the other things taken care of in other ways.

Melinda Wittstock:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s, that’s like an incredibly, incredibly helpful. I want to pivot to your book because you wrote about imposter syndrome. You, you have a book out called Is this Seat for Me: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in Everyday Life and Business. What made you write about imposter syndrome? Because it is a big issue for women entrepreneurs in particular.

Sheila Buswell:
It’s strange. I wrote the book, it’s very intertwined with the business, but it’s not about the business at all. When I started Buswell Biomedical, I was pitching my business to founders and business accelerators and I was quote, unquote diagnosed, pathologized with imposter syndrome. And I had never heard this term before. But if I had a question to further my, further my knowledge about business acumen or computer engineering or artificial intelligence or whatever, it wasn’t that I was curious about the subjects. I was told I’m asking questions because I have imposter syndrome. And I had never heard that term before. And at first I was, no, I really want to know.

Sheila Buswell:
And I didn’t understand. And at the same time, I’m pitching my business and my husband, I walk with a limp, and I usually have a cane, but I was going to the bathroom, and he was standing out. He walked with me, and he was holding my hand being my cane and he was waiting for me to walk back. And he was approached because I’m just obviously the mouthpiece. He’s the one who knows about machine learning and artificial intelligence, and he can do this device. So, the two things kind of happened simultaneously.

Sheila Buswell:
People write books for many different reasons, but I was irritated because I was, like, from. I felt like my whole engineering career; I didn’t look like the people who traditionally held the role of engineer. And I think that’s true with a lot of women or people don’t the people. The mosaic of people that heal, that have the jobs or roles now is drastically different than what was identified as what that role or profession looks like. And it was the first time it had ever been given a name imposter syndrome to me, that I understood. But then the more I talked to people and the people in the book, there’s like eight different stories, mine included. But they were just people I knew.

[PROMO CREDIT]

What if you had an app that magically surfaced your ideal podcast listens around what interests and inspires you – without having to lift a finger? Podopolo is your perfect podcast matchmaker – AI powered recommendations and clip sharing make Podopolo different from all the other podcast apps out there. Podopolo is free in both app stores – and if you have a podcast, take advantage of time-saving ways to easily find new listeners and grow revenue. That’s Podopolo.
Melinda Wittstock:
And we’re back with Sheila Buswell, CEO and Founder of Buswell Biomedical and the author of Is This Seat For Me? Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in Everyday Life and Business.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Sheila Buswell:
Like, once I was interested in that and I talked to other people, I found out it was something that everybody suffered with in different ways. And I wrote the book because. For many different reasons, but mostly just to say, okay, you’re not alone if you feel this way. And simple ways to combat personal solutions to combat, like, how it’s addressed to you, but also cultural changes that have to shift for. As a society, I think for everybody to. And I think I’m an engineer, so I believe in practical solutions for, first, I want to make sure everybody knows you’re not alone, and then there’s ways to overcome it. And it’s not, not a huge book, but I think it’s a powerful book, and it’s a book that I would have needed when I was 20.

Melinda Wittstock:
Yeah. So many people go through this without even knowing they’re going through it. In my early 20s, even though I, you know, in my early 20s, 22 years old, I become a correspondent on the Times of London. Like, and I’m not even from England. But at the time, you know, I just felt almost every day like, oh, God, someone’s going to find me out.

Melinda Wittstock:
And I was like, breaking stories that were like, you know, moving markets and on the front page. And, like, I was being interviewed on television about my work. And even despite all of that going on at that tender age, I still thought, like, someone’s gonna find me out. I’m gonna be busted, like, any minute.

Sheila Buswell:
Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:
Even though it impacts people in different ways. Right. And you look at different times in your life as well. Like, what are some of the sort of examples that you’ve seen about how it holds us back?

Sheila Buswell:
My personal experience with imposter syndrome is after being an engineer and identifying with that and being told, I hate this, but I was told this, you’re too girl. If you don’t act so girly, you’re not going to be taken seriously as an Engineer. Well, now, 20 years later, I don’t feel comfortable around women because. And I like, but I don’t like to. I feel like I’m going to be called up for a lot if I go to. I have purposely been putting myself in spaces where it’s mostly women dominated. But I would freak out if I was at a women’s leadership symposium and there was just women are all around me and I thought, oh, I. They’re gonna know I don’t know about mascara.

Sheila Buswell:
They’re gonna know that I don’t fit in this club.

Melinda Wittstock:
And the truth was I felt that too. I. I showed up at a women’s entrepreneur thing, you know, women with like eight figure businesses, and everybody was in there, like dressed to like immaculate and like perfect hair and like I was in sneakers and jeans. You know what I mean? So, I know that feeling.

Sheila Buswell:
Oh yeah. Like every, every insecurity I had as a teenager came back and I was well into my 40s at this point, but I was like, you know what? It took me a long time and I’m still not there yet. It’s still a level of uncomfort, of being not comfortable in my own skin and being aware and comp. God. One of my solutions is don’t compare yourself to others or try not to. Yeah, but you can’t help it. The perfect, the woman next to you might have perfect hair. And I have short hair.

Sheila Buswell:
I get baby bird feathers that stick up. I call them my baby bird feathers. But my hair sticks up in the back sometimes. So, I’m like, oh, you know, my hair’s not going to look as good as hers. I probably have baby bird feathers.

Melinda Wittstock:
But what you don’t know is they’re looking at you and saying, oh my God, she’s so brilliant. Like I could never even imagine. Like, you know, because what you’re. Gosh, Sheila, like what you’re doing is so innovative and like not very many people could innovate what you’re Innovating. Right. So, like, we all have these different gifts. And I think that you nailed it with the comparison. I call it comparisonitis, because entrepreneurs are unique people.

Melinda Wittstock:
Like, we’re not really meant to fit in. And I think once I really accepted this because by definition, we’re different. Otherwise, how could we even be entrepreneurs? Entrepreneurs are people who are bringing new things to the world that nobody else could have thought of. Like, nobody else could have done. Like, something that’s unique about your experience, that’s unique. So, like, you. You can’t by definition fit in.

Melinda Wittstock:
Like, once you accept… Like, it was certainly in my own journey, like, once I accepted that, like, I’m just me. It does get easier, but it’s. It’s hard to do. And especially for women in 20s and 30s, because we’re so socialized to.

Sheila Buswell:
Yeah, and you’re not enough in your own mind. Like, my mom judged my success because of when she was my age and what the standard of success looked like then. That’s not my path. I don’t care. Not that I don’t care. It’s just different. And I wouldn’t compare myself to my mom, but I need to remind myself of that, not to compare myself to the woman next to me or the person next to me.

Sheila Buswell:
We need to know as a group of people, we are enough and that remember our past experiences so that we know where we belong in the spaces and not to compare ourselves to other people. And my whole thing is, you don’t know where on their journey they are or what their journey looks like. You know, where you are. You know, the symbols and the hurdles you had to make. You don’t know what they had to deal with. And they might be great at hair because, you know, that was the attitude in the 80s, right? Like, to have huge hair or to spend a lot of time on your hair. And thank God that wasn’t my experience.

Sheila Buswell:
That wasn’t my truth. But, you know, that is somebody’s truth.

Melinda Wittstock:
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. This is so true. I’d love to have you come back on this podcast, you know, as you progress and update and share your story. I think what you’re doing is really exciting, and I want to make sure people know how to kind of best find you and work with you or if they’re interested in supporting you in any way. What’s the best way?

Sheila Buswell:
I have the website named after the book. Istheseatforme.com and if you go there, we’ll start an email chat. And I won’t. I won’t spam you, but we can talk. That’s how people reach me.

Melinda Wittstock:
Wonderful.

Melinda Wittstock:
Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings today and flying with us.

Sheila Buswell:
Thank you, Melinda.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:
Sheila Buswell is the founder and CEO of Buswell Biomedical, a veteran of the US Army, and the author of Is This Seat For Me? Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in Everyday Life and Business.

Melinda Wittstock:
Please create and share your favorite clips of this or any other podcast episode via the Podopolo app and join us in the episode comments section so we can all take the conversation further with your questions and comments. Also, we really appreciate it when you rate and review the podcast on Apple and Spotify—it helps more entrepreneurs like you find the secret sauce to support and grow their businesses.

Melinda Wittstock:
That’s it for today’s episode. Head on over to WingsPodcast.com – and subscribe to the show. When you subscribe, you’ll instantly get my special gift, the WINGS Success Formula. Women … Innovating … Networking … Growing …Scaling … IS the WINGS of Inspired Business Formula …for daily success in your business and life. Miss a Wings episode? We’ve got hundreds in the vault, all with actionable advice and epiphanies. Check them out at MelindaWittstock.com or wingspodcast.com. You can also catch me on LinkedIn or Instagram @MelindaAnneWittstock. We also love it when you share your feedback with a 5-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever else you listen, including Podopolo where you can interact with me and share your favorite clips.