Outcomes Rocket – Mark Watson: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Saul Marquez:
Hey, everybody! Saul Marquez with the Outcomes Rocket. I want to welcome you back to our podcast. Today, I have the privilege of welcoming back Mark Watson to the podcast. He is the CEO of ABI Wellness. For those of you that say, hey, that name sounds familiar, that’s because he’s been on the podcast before. You probably heard about BEARS, the Brain Enhance and Recovery System, and the work that he’s doing to help people recover from traumatic brain injuries. The work he does is extraordinary, and I’m excited to have him back. Mark, welcome.
Mark Watson:
Hey, man, it’s always good to catch up with you, Saul, and your listeners. So looking forward to providing a little bit of an update as to what we’ve been kind of working on over the past couple of months and years.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, man, it’s great to have you back, and look, for those that haven’t had the benefit of hearing your story, why don’t you give them the why, behind you do what you do, the story about Mark?
Mark Watson:
Yeah, well, I mean, it’s not about it’s really not about me, it’s about we, and, you know, the reality is, I’ve always believed that people have deserved, not have, deserved the right for opportunities to get themselves somewhat better. And we need to follow what science is telling us may be possible for people. And this is why, as all of our audience, our people here, Saul, are all healthcare people, so we understand in medicine the beauty of the promise of a clinical trial to help to answer better questions, to better understand how to get people care. And for myself, you know, I’m dyslexic. I’ve struggled, I struggled in school early on. I went through that process of trying to understand, you know, the Viktor Frankl stuff, search for meaning. And really, you know, what our team has identified is that in a particular area of health around cognitive health, that many providers out there require a system that can help them to more reliably align assessment with the rehabilitation process, with a focus on neuroplasticity and outcomes. And that is really ABI Wellness embodies is, is doing out there in the space is, we’re partnering with leaders in the field that have identified that, okay, I’m a physiotherapist that might work in a place like Wyoming, and I do this great work orthopedically, but I still see this, these people who struggle with attention, memory planning, and organizing, and what do I do about it? Do I do nothing? Maybe there’s nothing I could do, or maybe there’s something I can do. And those are the kinds of people that we want to hear from. And we want to provide them with an opportunity to get some training and learn about a platform that may be able to help them to help more people.
Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome, Mark. And the thing is, what is out there? I feel like we need to do an episode on myth-busting, right? Because there’s a lot of myth-busting that you’ve been doing for years.
Mark Watson:
Yeah.
Saul Marquez:
What are the most common myths out there? And what’s actually the truth when it comes to brain injury recovery?
Mark Watson:
Yeah, I mean, when you think about specific to brain injury, I can connect this with someone better than me, more well-versed in brain injury. But when I talk about generalized brain health.
Saul Marquez:
Brain health.
Mark Watson:
Brain health, in general, the brain has a remarkable capacity for change, right? And the brain is neuroplastic throughout the lifetime, meaning that it is, change is possible, right? And I think that’s the big message that I think most of us now are willing to accept. You know, you and I were just talking about research and conferences and hearing really interesting people explain their research. But I think that’s myth number one, is that the brain is, change is possible. I think the other myth is that you know, if you go through Costco, you know, and you’re going towards the checkout line and you see this likeness of Albert Einstein on a pill and, and you kind of say, okay, maybe this is my way to get my brain super healthy. Not that nutrition and supplementation is not helpful, it absolutely is. But, you know, one of the things I love is that, you know, there’s no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs. Because along the way, you’re going to grow, and you’re going to learn about what you can do, that you can get up those stairs yourself, and then you learn those lessons, and then you apply them into your behavior as you move forward. So I think, you know, the other thing is that, I don’t believe there’s really a silver bullet to get you where you want to go. You’ve got to do the work. There’s no hiding the work. And we think we all accept that physically, most of us accept that physically from an orthopedic, you know, rehabilitation perspective. But I think it’s really exciting to harness that opportunity cognitively as well, and I think that’s a great opportunity for many people out there. I’m fortunate, like you, to meet many people, and there are so many remarkable people doing great things in brain health, not just the BEARS system, but other great things, and I encourage people to go out there, to be curious and explore and look for those. Those are two myths that I think are out there, and don’t know that they’re necessarily myth. It’s just kind of like, you know, lifting up the rocks and looking underneath and exploring what’s possible.
Saul Marquez:
Totally, yeah. There’s absolutely great, great myth-busting here with you. I love doing that. Change is possible, and there is no secret bullet. There’s no magic pill. You got to do the work. So, Mark, talking about the work, you got to do the right work, right? You can’t just do any work. So you guys have developed a system that actually works. You got case stories to prove it. You guys could go to ABI Wellness, we’ll leave it linked up below, ABIWellness.com, to see some of those stories, but like like there’s an opportunity for clinicians to administer this work that works. Talk to us about what that is.
Mark Watson:
So what I would like to do, you and I were just talking offline about some of this and what I would like to do. My encouragement is that call to action that if you’re out there, you’re a provider, you know, you’re looking to round out some of your brain health services, Maybe you’re in a hospital system, and you’re looking to further align sort of, you know, inpatient to outpatient to community programs with a focus on the on the client, the patient. You know, I was just chatting this morning with another group that does remarkable work on this, who I’m going to connect you with, Saul. They’re doing amazing things for those really tough to treat.
Saul Marquez:
Let’s do it.
Mark Watson:
You know, I will. I will connect them with you. But, you know, my encouragement to people that are out there that are struggling to find the kind of program that can help them, number one, better taste manage that file that individual if they need interdisciplinary care, BEARS is something you may want to look at. We’d love to hear from you. But if you’re also looking for a good neuroplastic program that’s individualized in nature and well well-scaled, and easier to deliver, we also want to hear from you because we’re looking for the innovators that have this challenge and are looking to find a solution to help them move towards it. We want to empower the professionals to extend and standardize more of their efforts with their clients because, you know, we hear from so many people, so many professionals are so tired of treating, you know, too much paper and less people. Well, we want to help them to do more of that. You know, that’s what we want. That’s my call to action, is we want to hear from you, give us a call, shoot us an email. We’ll provide you with a free demo consultation, and if it’s something that makes sense for you, we want to make it work for you.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great. And Mark, so what does that typically entail? Like the demo. What do you show them?
Mark Watson:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, what we want to do first is understand: okay, is there a challenge that we might be able to help you with? And oftentimes, people might be either looking to increase the cognitive outcomes for people maybe in a sort of like a return to work type situation, or is it, you know, the multiple disciplines of care, the papers following too far behind the individual, which is making it problematic for case management. What the demo looks like is, let’s say they identify, okay, I’m looking for a good Neuroplastic cognitive program. Currently, I’m doing pen-and-paper tasks that doesn’t scale well, and outcomes are all over the map. Okay, if that’s the challenge, we’ll walk you into the system specific to that unmet need and then have you do your personalized demonstration, and then, if it’s something you wanted to pursue with, we could take you through our our virtual training and certification process and provide you with the technology.
Saul Marquez:
Awesome. Well, great, great opportunity, folks, to take Mark up on a program that could potentially work to help your patients recover much faster. Mark, what closing thoughts do you want to leave people with? This is always, always fun to connect with you.
Mark Watson:
I think the biggest one is, we’re just getting started, like, and I know it’s hard to hear that, and we hear that all the time. But, you know, I’m very optimistic about the future of brain health programming. I feel like there are more and more a good, well-scaled, evidence-based, brain-based assessments coming out, and that gives me a great reason for optimism and hope for people that might be struggling with these conditions, and many of them may have already given up. If you have a loved one that might be struggling with some of this, don’t give up. There are options out there. That’s another thing, another call to action. If you have interest in trying to better navigate some of that, we also want to help you. You know, reach out to us. I know Saul, you’re really good at this with your team, you can just click through to us in the show notes, and we want to help you with that. Don’t give up on that because the brain is, like I said earlier on, the brain has remarkable capacities for change. Does that mean if somebody post-brain injury is going to get back to necessarily pre-injury function? Not necessarily, no. But remember, just like the body, the brain is, it has remarkable capacity for change. So don’t give up.
Saul Marquez:
I love it. Great call to action there and way to instill hope in all of us that could use that hope, Mark. Can’t thank you enough for jumping on with us. And folks, you’ll check out the show notes and this social post that you’re seeing right now below to connect with Mark and his team. Mark, thanks for jumping on.
Mark Watson:
Thank you. Thank you again, Saul. And thank you to all the listeners we’re here to serve. We’re here to help, so we’d love to hear from you.
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