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Episode 19-
Dr. Simon McDonald

Dr. Simon McDonald on Being Grateful Pt.2

In the last episode, we began speaking with Dr. Simon McDonald, CEO and co-founder of Rhondium. Simon is a "serial inventor and entrepreneur", who has brought a number of groundbreaking inventions into the field of dentistry. You might be familiar with the V-Ring and the Tri-Clip, but his other notable inventions include the One Visit Crown and the Grip Tab. 

In part 1, Simon talked us through his inventive process, and stressed that each of his creations have taken countless hours to be fully realized. He also described how he studied dentistry in the UK at King's College in London, but moved to New Zealand when his first child was still young. He fell in love with the country, and set up his own dental practice there. Through the years, he used the spare rooms in his practice to house the dental inventions he’s created across his career.

In part 2, we’re going to delve into some more of Simon’s inventions, and explore why he is grateful for everything he gets in life.

Resources

Follow your curiosity, connect, and join our ever-growing community of extraordinary minds.

CariFree Website

CariFree on Instagram

CariFree on Facebook

CariFree on Pinterest

Dr. Kim Kutsch on LinkedIn

Dr. Simon McDonald on LinkedIn

Rhondium Dental Products Website

What's In This Episode

  • What did a young Simon like to do?

  • Simon’s latest product offering.

  • Why Simon is so grateful for everything he receives.

  • Simon’s adventures outside of dentistry.

Transcript

Recording:

Extraordinary.

Innovative.

Integrity.

Courageous.

Curious.

Thoughtful.

Brave.

Unafraid.

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

There is a place where technology and art meet, where work and play are one and the same. When the threads of curiosity are pulled in this place, the spark of innovation ripples across industries. Those who make this place their home are giants, titans, who pursue creative passion while leaving their mark.

Recording:

Creative.

Flexible.

Brilliant.

Clever.

Confident.

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

They are courageous thought leaders set on changing the practice of dentistry and their corner of the world. More than the sum of their parts, we deconstruct the traits that bind these uncommon innovators,

Recording:

Humble, daring, disciplined, playful principled, spontaneous.

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

To discover what makes them contrary to ordinary, where we explore the extraordinary. Hi there. I'm Dr. Kim Kutsch, host and founder at CariFree. I'm fascinated by what makes the paradigm shifters, world shakers and art makers tick. Let's embark on a journey. Extraordinary is a place where ordinary people choose to exist. Together we will trek the peaks of possibility, illuminate the depths of resilience, and navigate the boundless landscape of innovation to discover how some of the most innovative dentists and thought leaders unlocked their potential and became extraordinary.

 

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

On this season of Contrary to Ordinary, we explore the motivation lives and the character of innovators who see limitless potential around them, the people behind some of the largest paradigm shifts in the practice of dentistry. Before we start, I would like to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. It's a time of year when we all reflect on what we're grateful for in life. This is the second part of my interview with Dr. Simon McDonald, and a little later in our conversation we're going to be exploring some of the things that he is grateful for. In part one, we heard about a few of Simon's inventions and how he poured countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears into their creation. I wonder where did Simon's drive to become a serial inventor come from?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I was quite shy. I was redhead, freckles, and teased a lot.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

What was your favorite thing to do as a kid?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Oh, I liked playing soccer and chess and games and model airplanes and stuff like that. I think the model airplanes was a big part of my manual dexterity. I loved building balsa airplanes and flying them.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Oh, okay. So you built the actual flyable, balsa kind of airplanes with engines and the whole deal?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah. That's right, yeah.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

So you were building things even as a child?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, I liked making stuff. I was always making things or pulling things apart.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

See how they work.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I've done that once actually at my local school where we got the kids to bring something in that didn't work and pull it apart to find out what's inside.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Right.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Because a lot of kids don't do that, and a lot of kids never have the opportunity. Yeah, I think that's a really important part of growing up. And when I talk to engineers, quite a lot of them talk about that, that they did that a lot. They couldn't help when everything broke, they just... Sometimes they got into trouble for taking things apart. You couldn't get them back together. That happened to me a few times too.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

So that's a trait that you have that you were born with that.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

You had the kind of inquisitive mind.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Well, my father was very encouraging in that stuff. He had an engineering background. He would mend things. I would look over his shoulder and see what he was doing. So I think that I got that from my father.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Yeah, so you were curious even as a child.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Very, very. I think I was one of those kids that's always asking, "Why?"

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Right.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

"Why is this and why is that?" And so many people couldn't answer. I never really lost that. I've seen some parenting who just tell their kid to, "Shut up. Stop asking why." I was like, that's child abuse actually, to tell the child that.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Yeah, exactly. You should encourage the child to be curious.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, yeah, to have the patience to try and answer them.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

So that curiosity kind of spilled over?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Really big time, yeah. I'm curious about everything. I'm always researching something.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

You mentioned your dad encouraged you to ask why and tear things apart.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I had an uncle who was an engineer as well. I suppose when I was about 12, he must've been about 30, and I really looked up to him. He was always doing something interesting. He crossed the Sahara Desert in a Land Rover on one trip, and he got into all sorts of stuff. And he was into model airplanes as well, so he was a hero of mine.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Oh wow.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, he was a great guy. Uncle Bill.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Another great hero of Simon's is the late Steve Jobs, who famously spent time with his own father disassembling electronics jobs. Jobs' father encouraged his son's curiosity, and it's arguable that he might not have found the same dizzying heights of success without that early support and belief. Simon, as a curious person, has tried a huge range of things out over the years.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I started doing a Ph.D., and the topic was computer modeling of patterns of dental decay. And if you look at graphs of the incidence of dental caries by tooth surface or tooth types, so DMFT or DMFS, and what we all know is that the most susceptible surfaces are the fissures, and there's a common pattern, and also it's related to the number of years that the tooth has been in the mouth exposed to the oral environment. So for example, the first molar we all know is very susceptible and probably the most filled tooth there is. But as the caries rate increases, then in a population, you get an increased rate of, say, MOs, on the first molar, you can plot out a pattern.

So I dug up a vast array of epidemiological surveys that plotted age and DMFS. I used a spreadsheet actually to begin with because another way of looking at it is there's a normal distribution of age of eruption. So some teeth erupt early and they're going to expose to caries environment, so a proportion of those would decay. And then I split the normal distribution by age, and I did a massive spreadsheet that calculated thousands of calculations, this is one of the first spreadsheets actually, and it worked. I could plug in a decay rate at 12, like a DMFT at 12, and it would predict the decay rate at every age all the way through to 18.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Wow.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Amazingly, accurately. But I had never finished that either. It was an interesting academic exercise, but I couldn't really see an awful lot of value to it. I then wrote a program in Pascal. I converted the spreadsheet into an actual program, and you just plugged in a number and it spat out epidemiological data.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

One of the studies I find really fascinating is the cohort study is going on in Dunedin when those individuals are now 51, 52 years old, the last report was when they were forty-seven. And watching the decay history throughout their lifetime, their decay rate, it just doesn't change for the individuals that were very low caries rate at age three, they still are at age 47, and the ones that are high caries rate, they're still high caries rate at 47. It's like everything that we've done as a profession hadn't changed that projectory one iota. And that's fascinating to me. It's such a fascinating study because they're going to follow those people through death. And I think they're still pretty close to 800 people in that study. And it's a unique study in the world. I'm sitting here thinking about the Dunedin study and how interesting that is, but I've seen a few studies that described percentage risk for different individual surfaces geographically in the mouth for decay, and I've seen that all plotted out. But I didn't really ever see anybody take it to the next step where they use it to be predictive. Good on you.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

That was interesting. Some of that stuff did get published.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

As medical professionals, it feels like we're constantly trying to see the patterns in our patients' health, that's why regular screenings exist, and that's why we take so much care to examine genetic factors that might influence a patient's trajectory. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Study is super interesting because it spans such a vast amount of time and includes a huge amount of diverse people and data. If you haven't heard of it before, this groundbreaking New Zealand based study had its 50th anniversary in 2022, and tracked not only the participant's dental trajectory, but also other factors around overall health, lifestyle and a host of other factors across the lifetimes of its participants. The study participants are in their 50s now and are preparing for retirement. It'll be interesting to see what happens to them in this next stage of their lives and beyond. People's health changes and their motivations does too. I wonder what drives Simon now.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I've got lots of kids. That was a driver. I needed to be a breadwinner because I had lots of children, so that's a big part of, it was quite difficult-

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

But would you be doing this anyway?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Probably. I don't know. Yeah, I probably would. I do get bored. I mean, I get bored. I can't sit on the beach for very long. I'm a participant. I'm not part of the audience.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Right. You're not an observer in life. You're actually a participant.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, very much so. I don't really like going to audience things, not that much. I don't really like going to the theater unless it's exceptional.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

You'd rather be working on something.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I'd rather be doing something.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Doing something.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Yeah, so you're a doer.

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I'm a doer, yeah.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

So how do you define success in your own life?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I probably don't spend much time thinking about that question. I'm very appreciative of the success I have had.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

You feel grateful?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I spend a lot of time being grateful. I think making a contribution and being grateful are really important.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

So you're not driven by fame or money?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Well, I did need the money for the children, for the family. I was driven to be comfortable, but not-

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

But that was never the goal.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

No, that was never the goal.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

"Let's do all of this so I can be rich."

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

No.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

No. So you're driven more-

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Freedom. Time freedom's important.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Right. But it sounds like you would really want to make a difference.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I do think now that's important. If you wanted to focus on gratitude and you wanted to be a monk and sit and meditate on gratitude all day long, well, I don't think that's a very useful life. To me you've got to add in contribution. You've got to contribute to other people's wellbeing, and that's a wonderful thing to do and gives a lot of pleasure to other people and simultaneously to yourself. So contribution and gratitude are a big part of where I'm coming from.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Okay, so taking your gifts and then using them to help other people. And then when that happens to be successful and it helps a lot of people, you have a real self sense of gratitude for just having had the opportunity to do that?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, I do. And I think a lot of problems we see in the world right now are gross ingratitude. Every time you turn the tap on, you should be grateful that water comes out of it because look what happened to make that here. Every time you turn on the kettle, that electricity comes through.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Every time you flip a light switch.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

And you should be grateful for that. There's lots of people who don't have that. They don't have running water, they don't have electricity.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

There's probably more people on the planet that don't have running water and electricity than do have it, right?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah. And to me, you could say to be mentally healthy, I think people need to say 10 things they're grateful for every day, and that might change their perspective instead of moaning about all the things that's wrong. There are so many things that are right.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

If you do that, you start to recognize how fortunate we are.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, we are so fortunate.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

And all the blessings we have around us, right?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Absolutely, yeah.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

That's a beautiful thought, Simon. What do you think the secret to happiness is?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

So I just said it. I think that's it really.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

That was it really.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, I think so, yeah. Being grateful and making a contribution. And those are the two really important things to my mind.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

At this time of year, we're invited to give thanks for the good things that we have and think about those who may not be as fortunate. Gratefulness is a powerful thing. It humbles us and can give us a moment of mindful reflection in our stressful lives. In her book, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks, theologian and author Diana Butler Bass stresses that gratefulness is the foundation of all spirituality and may serve as a cure for a world divided. Indeed, she spends an entire section of her book talking about the neuro-physical benefits of gratefulness. These include improved mental health, increased brain function, and stress reduction. Butler Bass says that gratitude is however more than just an emotion. It is also a disposition that can be chosen and cultivated an outlook toward life that manifests itself in actions. It is an ethic. I invite all of you to practice the ethics of gratitude, not just during Thanksgiving, but all through the year. Another one of the things that Simon is grateful for is being able to sail around his beloved New Zealand.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I sort of learned to sail was about 10 at a local sailing club and just loved it. I thought about doing that as a career, actually, going into the sailing field. When I was a teenager, I bought all these books on how to make sails and design sails and stuff. But when my parents moved to London, then the opportunity to do much sailing dropped off. I was really keen on dinghy racing and that I lost through circumstance. I wasn't able to do that. And so most of my adult life, I've been too busy really to focus on that. I bought a catamaran probably about 25 years ago. Probably about 15 years ago. And that was good fun. It didn't go offshore though. We were just around New Zealand. And then I bought a big catamaran, a big Sunreef 62 foot catamaran, it's a big thing, 40 ton boat and sailed that up to Fiji. I've gone up on board about three times. I've skippered it up there and skippered it back. First few times I've had skipper on board. It is actually more challenging, I think, doing coastal sailing where there's rocks you can hit than it is doing ocean crossings.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Right. There's obstacles. Yeah, yeah

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

As long as you're careful with the weather.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

If you listen to part one, you'll know that Simon spent countless hours creating some of his best known inventions, the TriClip and the V Ring. Maybe it won't surprise you to hear that he's just created something new.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, so the newest product is a lovely circumferential band that feels a bit like a Tofflemire when you wind it up, but you just push the button and the stainless steel carrier disconnects from the band and there's a little toggle. So there's a stainless steel carrier that tightens the toggle. It's got a swivel on the front so you can use in any quadrant. And it's also formed. It's got a lovely contour. That's very-

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

So it's double convex.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, it's convex on both.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

So it creates the shape of the contact.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, it's concave. Yeah.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

That's one of the problems. I mean, if we shifted to posterior composite restorations that getting the correct contact shape is so important. And when you got a straight stainless steel band that's smooth, trying to get-

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, tin can restoration.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Trying to create that into a convex kind of situation.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, it's challenging.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

So this is brilliant. It already comes shaped that way.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

It comes shaped.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

So Simon, let me ask you this. This wake you up at 3:00 in the morning? Where'd this come from?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I'll have to go back a bit. When we sold Triodent, which is another whole story, there was a product that a dentist called Adam Doudney, he approached me with an idea. Quite a few dentists approached me with an idea, because I'd become reasonably well known in this country, and-

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

I think that's an understatement.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

He thought that there had to be an easier way or a lower cost way to make a crown. He had been pre-milling like an occlusal veneer on a CEREC machine and then using a band and squashing it on and-

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

I think we're referring to it now as kind of a flat top preparation?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, flat top prep and using bonding to hold it on there. And I thought that was a good idea. But the matrix bands at the time, as we know are horrible for that situation. A lot of them you can't tighten very tight, so they don't hang on what's left. And also the shape of them was pretty grotty. So we didn't sell that concept and that's where Rhondium came along. We thought we could get that one sorted. And we went through lots of different versions. We had a kind of a semi indirect method, which involved the dentist doing a lot of dental technician work chair side, which wasn't that popular. The concept of being able to do a crown in a single visit in forty-five minutes or less is very popular. But the clinical technique is obviously the challenge. Again, if it was easy, somebody would've done it. And the whole reason we do do crowns with an indirect method is because it's so difficult.

We delegate it to a bench top dental technician who can look at it from every angle without the mouth and without the tongue and the cheeks and everything else in the road. And they can spend hours on it. But we have to go through a temporary crown and a whole lot of other issues. So it was a pretty big ask to try and solve that one. And we've been working on that for about 12 years now. But I think we've finally cracked it actually. So the issues are when you're going to do a direct crown, you've got to have wonderful proximal surfaces. But the buccal side is easy, doesn't really matter. The lingual side's not too hard. But the proximal surface is challenging and you need a nice anatomy and you need a hard-wearing surface. So in the final version that's just coming out now is very cool. We're going to do a digital version.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Hi, Contrary to Ordinary listeners, we're going to take a short break from this conversation for our segment, Questions with Dr. Kim. Don't go anywhere. In this segment, I'll answer a listener's question about their dental health. If you have a dental question that you want answered send it to podcast@carifree.com, that's C-A-R-I-F-R-E-E.com And add, "Questions with Dr. Kim" in the subject line. If your question gets read out on the show, we'll send you a small gift to say thanks for checking in.

This week's question reads, "Hi, Dr. Kim. I have a problem with dry mouth. What causes this and what can I do about it?" Thanks so much for the question. I can't give you specific medical advice, but I can provide some guidance on why it might be happening. Persistent dry mouth, also known as hyposalivation, or in more extreme cases, xerostomia can have various underlying causes. It's essential to identify the cause to effectively address the issue. The most common cause of dry mouth is prescription medications. Other common causes include medical conditions like Sjogren's syndrome, dehydration, aging, smoking or vaping, tobacco use, post-radiation therapy, mouth breathing, nerve damage, stress and anxiety, and even poor oral hygiene. If you feel like you have a dry mouth, please consult your dental professional, as a lack of protective saliva increases your risk of getting cavities.

Thanks so much again for the question. And if you, dear listener, would like more information on all things dental, head to carifree.com, where we've got more resources on dental health and our line of CariFree products that can help you keep a healthy smile. But right now, let's get back to the conversation.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

What happens is the dentist either sends us a scan or a photograph with a scale against it. So they could put a ruler beside the tooth in the photo, obviously a plan view shot so we can measure it. And then we manufacture an occlusal veneer with all the anatomy to that shape so that it's the right shape. And then we supply them with a band that's this new band.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

So they do this prior to doing the preparation?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yes. They just take a photograph of the tooth, tooth to be prepped. It's an unprepped tooth. Send that to us. Then we'll send them, we could just say-

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

The solution, the pre-packaged solution.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

The pre-packaged solution. Now what they do is they cut the prep flat, fill any defects, they put the band on, basically fill any defects, get it so it's a flat top with about three millimeters, two, three millimeters clearance. What happens is that these bands, on the proximal top edge they've got a long tab with multiple holes in it. Now most times you don't need those because the band sits snugly against the neighboring tooth. But sometimes you're doing a crown because there's already a gap and they want it closed. And you know what it's like, you're trying to pull and pull and pull to get it. And quite often you pull or you push on the band with a burnish or something and it doesn't work. Yet you think the band is touching the next door tooth, but it's not actually touching the next door tooth. Take the band off and you've got to get... Or you end up with a contact point right at the very top on the marginal ridge, and then you go and trim it off and it's gone.

So this idea is you've got a beautiful contour anyway, and if the band is showing signs it's pulling away, then you can put some bond on the adjacent occlusal surface and flowable on that surface. Obviously no edge because you'd never get it off, but you just want a temporary bond. So if you put bond and flowable, and with a probe, you pull on this long tab and the flowable flows into the holes in this long tab, light cure it and you've literally glued it to the next door tooth.

And dentists are control freaks. Anyone who's good as a dentist has got to be a control freak. You've got to control things. If the matrix band is out of control, what better idea than to glue it to next door tooth? We've got a technique to get the vertical dimension perfect as well. But basically you put composite inside the band. And I won't go into the details of the technique. But we've got a way so that you just push that occlusal surface down, the band holds it in the right position and cure it.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

You take the band off and finish it.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

And you're done. And you can do it in half an hour.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Yeah. Wow, that's beautiful. Simon, as we sit and look and we've talked about all these things, you're truly a disrupter.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Well, this week, no, last week I came up with a final solution to how to get the occlusion right.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Oh, right.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

That's fertile ground. Very cool. It's so, so simple.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

But you've been at it for 12 years.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, well that one we've been at it for 12 years. But I think this new version is marvelous because it's going to be so easy and we'll be able to do them in the US, Australia. We'll be launching that in probably the next three or four months. But this new band, it's just fabulous for routine restorations.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Yeah.

I don't know if Simon has ever thought of himself as a disruptor. One of the first uses of the term was in Clayton M. Christensen's book, The Innovator's Dilemma, which was first published in 1997. Christensen used the term to describe a new technology or innovation that disrupts an existing market by displacing established market leaders and fundamentally changing the way products or services are delivered. The concept has since gained widespread use in business and technology circles to refer to innovations that create new markets or significantly alter existing ones. Often these innovators aren't thinking about the act of disruption itself, they're just thinking about making solutions that do things better than they were done before. From disruptor to daredevil, I don't think many people know that Simon wing foils in his spare time. You might know wing foiling as windsurfing.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

I spend some good time wing foiling. I do want to spend less time in making dental products at the moment and spend a lot more time doing other things. I sort of enjoy some traveling. But I love it here so much and the beautiful home we've got. With the heated swimming pool and right on the waterfront, it's hard to go away actually. Whenever I go away, I think, "It's nicer at home."

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Right.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

So I'm super, super lucky there. I understand why a lot of people do go on holiday because it's great where they're going. But yeah, I'm looking forward to spending a bit more time with the grandchildren. I've got grandchildren, the oldest is 10 and the youngest is one. I've got nine.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

And are your grandchildren all local?

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

They're all in New Zealand, but seven of them are actually within a few miles from here.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Oh, cool.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Which is marvelous.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Yeah, yeah. You're fortunate.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

My kids have all come to come and live here, which is really cool.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Oh, that's wonderful.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Even my ex, Jan, has now moved here as well, mother of my first four kids. So we see her quite often too. So yeah, I've got a marvelous family. Super lucky.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Yeah.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Yeah, I've got a beautiful house, got great people around me. Have a-

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Life is good.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Life's great.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Simon, thank you so much for sharing your extraordinary life with us today.

 

Dr. Simon McDonald:

Thank you, Kim.

 

Dr. Kim Kutsch:

Thanks for listening to part two of my interview with Dr. Simon McDonald. Simon is an incredible man who has such vision. He's another extraordinary person who can see better ways of doing things that others just can't. He's not normal. And we need more people like him in the world, spending hundreds of hours inventing what we need to make our lives better. Around here, we aim to inspire and create connections. We can't do it without you. If this conversation moved you, made you smile or scratched that little itch of curiosity today, please share it with the extraordinary people in your life. And if you do one thing today, let it be extraordinary.

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