A Journey of Medical Innovation: Lessons In Persistence And Impact With Dr. Peter Bonutti
For this episode’s guest, creativity is what sets groundbreaking medicine apart from standard care. Tony Martignetti sits down with Dr. Peter Bonutti, renowned surgeon, inventor, and medical device pioneer, who shares his journey from humble beginnings to holding over 500 patents in the medical field. With a passion for improving patient care through minimally invasive techniques, Dr. Bonutti discusses how he’s built a career on creative problem-solving, persistent innovation, and a patient-centered approach that redefines modern medicine. Tune in to hear his reflections on resilience, overcoming roadblocks, and the power of taking an unconventional path to success.
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A Journey of Medical Innovation: Lessons In Persistence And Impact With Dr. Peter Bonutti
It is my honor to introduce you to my guest, Dr. Peter Bonutti. Dr. Bonutti is a surgeon, inventor, author, professor, consultant, and entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience. He's the founder of Bonutti Research, a medical device incubator that has developed products and technologies used around the world including UVCeed, and maintains his clinical and surgical practice, focusing on adult knee and hip arthroplasty, and the integration of robotics into surgical procedures.
Dr. Bonutti is a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery, has over 500 patents in applications, with 700 licenses, and multiple FDA-approved products to date. Major corporations that are leveraging his technologies include Hitachi, Medtronic, Kyphon, Covidien, US Surgical, Biomet, Arthrocare, and the list goes on. He is a prolific speaker, lecturing internationally, and has trained over 100 surgeons on his surgical techniques.
He has received over a dozen industry honors and awards for his achievements in his career. He earned a medical degree at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and completed his orthopedic surgery residency at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, with international fellowships in Canada, Australia, and Austria. He currently lives in Palm Beach and Effingham, Illinois where his research and practice are based. It's truly a pleasure to welcome you to the Virtual Campfire, Peter.
Thanks for your time, Tony.
I'm excited about having this conversation with you because the work you're doing is fascinating, but also your work has impacted so many people both inside of the practice of advancing medicine. When you think about the ripple effect that that has, it's not just about who you've treated. It's about the people who you've trained have treated and the impact that has on the world. I think that's one thing that people often don't truly appreciate.
We're most proud of the fact that we're in a small rural area of town of 15,000. We've had surgeons fly in from Korea, Germany, France, Spain, and China to come and look at our surgical techniques through surgeries at our center and development center. We probably had twenty different countries where surgeons have flown into rural America to study surgical procedures, which is contrary to most academic centers. We've been able to innovate and develop stuff. I'm proud of that. Thank you.
It doesn't happen by accident. You don't just stumble on this. That's one of the things that I'd love to uncover at this moment. We're going to do that with what I like to call flashpoint moments. These are moments in your journey that have ignited your gifts into the world. I want to have you share some of those moments that you're called to share in this space that have gotten you into this work and have revealed who you are on this journey. I'm excited to share you with the audience. When you're ready, Peter, I want you to take the moment and start to share some of those moments that are the foundational flashpoint moments for you. Are you ready?
Yes, sir.
Take it away.
Foundational Flashpoint Moment
Going back, I guess part of my background that’s important is my parents were immigrants from Europe, from Italy. Now, in Slovenia, a small country. The border changed about four times during their lives and they came here with nothing in their pockets. They moved to Cleveland Ohio. My dad was a professor of Economics. He always wanted to be in politics, but being a foreigner, that was very difficult. He worked hard, working his way to get his PhD by working at a drill factory during the day and night time, going to school. He became a professor and then ultimately, he became a diplomat. He became Slovenia's ambassador to the Vatican in his later life.
It was an exciting time for us to watch my father and his career develop. It was tough. We are six kids. Financially, it was always tough. With a professor's salary trying to do six kids was challenging, but I had a great family, great brothers and sisters. My family was always important. We moved a lot. We would build houses every four years and sell them. We’d move to a new location because my dad didn't make that much as a professor.
I learned about the value of hard work from my dad and our family. We always work together. Following that, I went to high school. I went to a private high school and I had a scholarship. The first year was full scholarship but as time went on, the scholarship diminished and the cost kept going up for the tuition. In my third year, my dad said, “I can't afford to send you to this private school anymore for your senior year,” or at the beginning of my junior because my scholarship was decreasing. My dad said, “You have two choices. Go to the public school, or you can graduate early and go to college.”
I was fifteen years old and pushing along, I had to do my junior and senior years simultaneously because I didn't want to move from my senior year. I applied to college when I was fifteen. I got accepted to the University of Chicago when I was sixteen. My teacher at school was very upset saying, “This is stupid. You should never do this,” but I got a full ride to a college football scholarship. College was cheaper than going to high school. I went to college at sixteen. I was 4 foot 9. I weighed 80 pounds so there was this social misfit. I worked hard probably because I had nothing else to do.
I put my nose to the grindstone. In the first month, I shattered my ankle. I used to be a good basketball player. Even though I was under 5 feet tall, I could still stuff the ball. I shattered my ankle out and for three months, I was stuck in a long leg cast and shattered leg. It taught me hard work. I had challenges getting to classes in Chicago in the middle of the winter with a cast and crutches, but it taught me perseverance.
When I was in college, my parents told me that I was only going to be two things. I either had to be a priest, which I thought would be difficult for me, or be a doctor. Unfortunately, I had to choose the doctor not because it was my idea, but because that's the option they gave me. I went ahead and said, “I'll apply to medical school.” In my second year, I went to the dean of students and then my advisor. I'll never forget her name, Sheila. I won't go further, but she told me, “No way you'll never get to medical school. Don't waste my time.”
I go to my third year, “Don't waste my time. You'll never get the medical school,” and fourth year. After that, I finished school. Everything went well, and I decided to take a year off. Everybody was telling me I was too young. I'm not going to get to a medical school. Don't waste your time. I would work the night shift, drawing blood and managing the laboratories of the Cleveland Clinic. I did that and said, “I probably should go to medical school.” I applied and got into the University of Cincinnati.
The same thing happened there. I worked hard, but I decided that I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. Being left-handed was also a problem because everybody is right-handed. The operating rooms and everything are built for right-handed people. They used to smack me and hit me, “You can't operate, you can't tie knots, you can't do anything.” It made an interesting challenge in medical school. The advisors in medical schools said, “Don't apply in orthopedics. It's too hard. You'll never get in. Don’t waste your time.”
I ended up applying to orthopedics and I got into all the programs. I went to the Cleveland Clinic. A funny thing happened there. The same thing. I started my residency. Again, being left-handed was challenging, but I worked my way around it. The chairman of my department called me and said, “You’re always questioning everyone. Why do you always question everybody? You should shut up, listen, and learn.” I said, “Two people are doing two different things. One is easier and the other guy looks more difficult. I hear the patients. They don't like this. What's wrong with questioning what's going on?” He said, “If you continue to question, you'll never finish your program. You're going to get kicked out.” I was like, “What did I do wrong?”
I went to my father who was a professor and he said, “I can't tell you about everything, but the one thing you can learn is to put your ideas and concepts on paper. They can never take that away from you. Write a paper, do some research, and do something that differentiates you from somebody else.” At the end of my second year, with the chairman threatening to kick me out, I started researching cyanoacrylates or superglues. I went to the lab and I started gluing tendons, skin, and tissue together in the lab and I started comparing because there were no good adhesives. We are talking 40 years ago. There was nothing like this.
Put your ideas and concepts on paper. They can never take that away from you.
I won a bunch of research awards. I wrote papers. I didn't know what I was doing without any guidance from any of the professors because they didn't know what I was up to either. They wanted to go on and give my lectures because I was lecturing in Australia, China, and England. They were like, “We can't give you our thoughts because we don't know what you're talking about. We haven't spent time on the lab.” I would get first-class tickets to fly to give these lectures as a third and fourth-year resident. I would meet up and my professors would be on the first-class flight. I would trade my tickets down to the coach and use that for extra money.
That was that, and when I finished my residency, I was given the highest award from the Cleveland Clinic. They gave me $40,000 to set up a fellowship and travel internationally. I went from almost being kicked out to writing papers and getting a bunch of awards. I wasn't married so I set up a fellowship while I worked in several different countries, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. I want to Austria, Switzerland, and Slovenia. I said, “I need to learn internationally what people are doing. I know people think medicine is all invented in the US. We have the best medical care. It's good but I thought that international opportunities would be great.
As I was leaving, I went and did all these fellowships. I came back and my professors were recommending me for jobs, “Where would you work? What would you do? You'll never amount to much maybe. You should go.” I got an offer from Stanford, Emory University, all those academic institutions. Interesting but I said, “What I want to do is applied research.” The reason was when I was in residency, I learned from a guy who probably no one knows his name, but he was one of the most influential people ever in orthopedics.
He revolutionized spine surgery. He was a local guy, a hand surgeon, and he developed, what's called interpedicular fixation. He revolutionized the treatment of the spine by making incisions and stabilizing two vertebrae next to each other. The people who have severe back pain after surgery, he would cure them. He developed a company and a business. I worked with them for four years. I ran his lab and he decided to leave the hospital because he had conflicts. I ended up going through that. I love this product development side because research is a focus.
I had a chance to buy this research laboratory. I had to fight with the nuns at the hospital. The Archbishop of Cleveland came in and said, “If you can come up with the money in 30 days, we’ll sell you the research facility.” I was in debt from medical school residency. They let me buy the research facility, but I had to come up with the money. I went to all these universities and I said, “I'll practice for nothing for a year, just help me acquire this facility.” None of them would do that. In a small town in Illinois where my brother was married, they said, “We don't know anything about this, but we'll countersign you a banknote if you come because we need an orthopedic surgeon.” They accomplished my bank notes, bought two big semis, moved all the research equipment from Cleveland, and mothballed it for me for a year. In my first year in practice, I did pretty well. I used all those funds and reinvested 100% to open my first research laboratory. I continued to grow.
What it taught me was perseverance, belief in the concept that you can do things, and put your money where your mouth is and your time is. Everyone else back then was saying, “You have to go to university, you have to do this.” I felt that if I could control my capital and reinvest 100% back into my research and my idea. The other important feature of my life was my sister married a patent attorney. He helped me with my patents. It comes full circle. My dad told me, “Put things on paper,” and I put my ideas down on paper.
That's amazing. I want to hear about this, but I want to pause for a moment because I want to reflect on what got you here and this particular part of it. It is so interesting what you shared up to this date. What you shared is interesting because the words that are coming up for me are you were fighting resistance. All along this path is fighting for resistance, but then backing it up with evidence.
I think so many people don't take that next part. When you hit resistance, sometimes you power back and say, “I guess it's not for me. I'll do whatever is my backup plan.” Instead, you leaned into that resistance and said, “I'm going to provide evidence.” Your default method is to continue to find ways to provide evidence.
When you get more resistance, you decide to say, “We got that. I'm going to go do my own thing. I'm going to create my own path that allows me to take control of my destiny,” if you will. That is a beautiful way to think about navigating this journey. I'm looking forward to hearing about the next element of your path. I think this is an interesting theme that I'm seeing picked up. Would you agree?
I would say that persistence is the ability to when you feel that you have roadblocks, you can turn around. You can turn sideways or you can try to break down that roadblock. I think there's tremendous value from a personality perspective and for growth to realize that once you can breach one of these barriers, you can do it again and again.
The fact is that all of us have challenges in our lives. We hit roadblocks. How you respond to that, whether you're persistent, whether you're willing to fight naysayers. Maybe “fight” isn't the right word, but believe them, believe in yourself, and believe that you can add value wherever you're best abilities are, and continue to push that. I always thought that when you invest your own time and your own money, other people will follow. Those are some of the features.
I'm sure even to this day, you're still seeing, “Because I've done that, I can still do more. There are still more lessons I've learned from those early days that allow me to continue to lean into what's next.” I want to get back into this next thing you're going to share around IP, which I love to hear.
IP And Patents
Going full circle, my father taught me to put things on paper. I learned from this innovator. He had filed a patent and he sold his company for $350 million, but it wasn't the money that he made. It was the fact that he revolutionized that in a small hospital, a doctor with no backup created this revolutionary change in spine surgery. I didn't know that I could revolutionize anything. I said, “If he can sit there and develop this, I can at least try to do the same by persistence.”
As I said, the value was my brother-in-law happened to be a patent attorney. I started to explain to him during my fellowships. I saw all these different things and different approaches. I also saw patients and listened to them. I tried to turn medicine into something that was patient-oriented. When I trained, everything was about what was easiest, what was best for the surgeon, the hospital, and the provider. There was very little emphasis 40 years ago on what patients want. What was their perspective?
Looking at things like sizes of incisions and post-operative pain and recovery. We would do a knee replacement when I was a resident. They'd be in the hospital for a week. They'd be in agony for three days. It would take them a year to recover. They would have incisions that were 2 feet long. What shocked me the most was early in my practice, I had a representative from a company that I work with. He asked me to come to surgery because he had a knee replacement. He was 45 and tore them up playing hockey.
He ended up going to Chicago to a famous center, and post-operatively, I got a call at midnight from his wife saying, “He is in agony. I don't know what's going on.” No one answered. I was just a visiting doctor. I came in to help, but he died, unfortunately, because the pain was so severe. They gave him so many narcotics that he stopped breathing, and he passed away. That had a permanent imprint on me saying, “That person is the most important, not the system around them. We need to think about care from patients' perspective.”
My technology and ideas were all focused initially on looking at how to make it simplest, fastest, and best so patients have faster recovery. Now, if we look at medicine and knee replacements, we do things outpatient. We do minimally invasive surgery. We do robotics. That bothered me. I felt that we should personalized medicine and we should think about medicine and surgery from patient care.
I started listening to my father. I went on the world and I said, “I can start developing these ideas myself.” I saw other people where their ideas were stolen. During residency, I had ideas about drug-coded stents and tried to do antibiotic illusion and treat things locally. I didn't file any patents. Those things were stolen. Now we have drug-eluding stents and other technologies in the market. I said, “I have to do something about this.” How can I talk to these big companies without the fear of losing the direction, the approach? Going back to what my father had said, “Put it on paper.”I realized that doing a patent is putting it on paper.
I took my money and started putting these ideas and writing things down. It was a big investment. I probably filed ten patents in my first two years of practice and started figuring out how to play that game. It's a complex legal game as well. I started filing early patents. It was expensive and nothing came in. It took a while but my first patents, while I was doing my practice, working during the day, I worked on the patents at night and opened the research facility one year. After, I mothballed it for a year in that same small town rather than going academic institution because I thought I'd have a better chance of controlling the product development side. Back then, universities didn't do product development.
I persisted with that. It took me a while. I think, my first patents took almost six years before I realized any revenue out of them. Even then, I reinvested everything back in the laboratory. I learned also some important lessons. A famous surgeon said, “Trust me. I'll take your ideas and I'll fix things up. Sign these patents over to me and I will help you get this on the path.” I signed it to him for next to nothing and he ended up taking my patents immediately and using them for litigation because his company had patents that were predated by another company. They were fighting each other in court. I didn't know that.
These were general surgery patents for special minimally invasive dissecting, balloon retractors, and expanding devices. I had a whole series of these things, and it was shocking to me that somebody came under the veil as a friend and turned around. He had no interest in the development of any of this. He was purely interested in using my patents to predate. He was able then to sell his company for $300 million. I got 25% out of it. It was a joke, but I looked at this and I learned that you have to be careful in business and people. You have to evaluate them.
You have to sit there and visit what you're doing and be honest with the people you work with. That taught me a bunch of lessons, but most of all, it was to persist to keep going. That was a challenge. I was trying to still work. In my first five years in practice in a small town, I was on call 24/7, 365 days a year. Here I was working all day in surgery. I was on call for emergencies at night and then trying to do these patents in design and development.
I slowly built up the facility and grew it. I enjoyed that, but coming back to what you said, it's persistence. It's documenting what you're thinking about. Writing it. You do podcasts. That's important. That's effectively putting it on paper but how you sit there and lay out what you have, and not just put it in a paper napkin and throw it away. You have to act on your ideas, not just talk about them, think about them, or share them. I guess those are all the principles. Should I stop at that point?
You have to act on your ideas, not just talk about them.
This is fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that. One of the things that keeps on coming up for me is this sense of continuing to be a little bit careful about who you're interacting with too, making sure that you're diligent, especially as you start to get into the business world. You realize that it's not just about the practice of medicine but also now, you're moving into the world of its business.
We talked before we got on about following the money and thinking about where is the incentive. Now you have to be careful about where is the lens of what this person wants or what the people need. I think it's so important to get back to the basics of what is most important and what is the true driver of this person's decision to do the thing they're doing.
It's so important to get under the bias of any given person's objective. One thing that I want to ask you about is I often talk to people about how they maintain a sense of practice, meaning still operating in doing surgery but also getting into other things like research and building product development and all that stuff. It seems like there's a real desire to have one foot in the operating room and one foot outside, and that desire to maintain that can be a tug of war in a sense for someone who's practicing medicine.
Medical Technology
For me, medicine was always a challenge because again, the status quo is problematic. I would see people practicing. They would go and finish their residency and they would go out. For the next 20 to 30 years, they would practice exactly the way they were taught. Medicine is evolving. My philosophy has always been that I need to add value. I can't practice the same way I was taught. If I'm constantly iteratively improving, I'm not helping the patients that I'm taking care of. For me to provide high-quality care, I need to look at this. I need to improve my techniques on implants or technology but also, you need to be part of the process.
For me, that meant looking at the technology, the products, and the instrumentation. How can I make it simpler, better, faster, cheaper, but again looking from the patient's lens, which I think was missed for a very long period of time. I think coming back to that, now you see all these kinds of technologies, personalized medicine, and specific medicine. Even artificial intelligence today is all about tracking and optimizing the quality of care from the patient's lens. To me, that's been probably the most important piece.
I look at every patient. I never look at what I did well. I look at what went wrong and I want to make sure that doesn't happen again. The second is I'm doing the same thing repeatedly, and I'm not constantly looking to improve. I'm never going to help those patients. My job is to iteratively change, improve, and learn. Education is on a day-by-day basis. If you're not studying, reading, and learning on a daily basis, despite finishing school, you're not adding value to yourself, to society, and to anyone else. Reading, studying, and learning don't stop at college, high school, medical school, or residency. It's a constant lifelong ambition.
If you're not studying, reading, and learning on a daily basis despite finishing school, you're not adding value to yourself and to society
It's a great mindset to happen, but we have to be careful about that. You don't want to be putting too much pressure on yourself where you're burning yourself out in this process of constantly go, go, go. I think about when you started this conversation. You came from immigrant origins and there's a sense of working hard to get to where you need to go.
I have the same background myself. We have to be careful not to overdo it in the process of trying to continue to improve. I think there's also an important aspect of this, which is to make sure we're getting better every day. Getting better every day, but not doing it to the detriment of our self-care. There is an element of that, which you'll be of no worth to anyone else if you aren't taking care of yourself.
I would have to say that I didn't learn that until later in life. I worked so hard. I didn't get married until I was 45. We have six kids. Once I started realizing after the first two children got older, I go, “I'm missing something here. I have to make sure I take time for them and myself as well.” We never taught that as kids. It's all work all the time and we did work. I learned that later in life, so you're correct. There has to be some kind of balance. I don't know what it is. I'm not going to profess to know. My family has helped me achieve some of that which I think is very positive for me.
I love that you share that because we're not perfect beings. It's also a great message for people in your field to think about and say how we continue to get better, but also make sure we're having a life that we can feel proud of outside of the practice.
There's more than just work. When you have children around, it makes a big difference. It changed me quite a bit. I'm a little older. I'm 66 now, but my ten-year-old always brings me back to that. I have to make sure we’re spending some time with them. I have to make sure they're as important if not more important than the other things I'm tinkering with.
Business
Are there any of the flashpoints that you want to share before we move on to the next part of this conversation? Is there anything else that comes to mind or maybe some things that as you got further along in your practice you’re like, “That was a big moment for me?”
I talked previously about the surgeon who was taking ideas and using them for his own value-added stuff. I had a couple of experiences like that because the business world is very different. In medicine, we're always taught that you're not supposed to look at money. It's always in the patient's best interest. I agree with that. I do believe that money flows secondary to quality of work and quality of care. I've never looked at finances first.
As I got more and more involved in the business side, which was a learning experience for me, many people don't think like doctors do. Unfortunately, finances come first for many people. We’re trying to identify those and we’re bridging that. It was noble for me. I did a business deal with someone who was going to market my technology.
At this point, I would have 200 patents, designing and developing. I watched someone walk away and take my technology, and then if he could make more money by selling somebody else's technology, he eliminate mine or try to reduce the patent footprint on it and develop others. I saw how people changed when it came to money.
It bothered me on the medical side too because I always felt that medicine should come first, finances second. When I saw people where it’s finances first and everything else was second, it jaded me a little bit. It became life-changing for me. I have to step back and I have to revisit. Every time I do something, I have to make sure that I'm putting that person’s life ahead of what my interests are. Usually, that's the most beneficial.
That was life-changing for me to realize that not everybody thinks that way. That was probably a big event. I went through legal cases on this. I lost legal cases and lost some very concerning stuff. At the same time, one of my high school friends started taking over my investments. He was the vice president of Lehman Brothers. He ended up absconding with $250 million and took all my investments. I was 40 years old and thinking about getting married.
All of a sudden, I get called by the FBI in the middle of a clinical practice. They said, “Don't travel anywhere. This guy has stolen your identity. You can stay in work, but don't go anywhere.” I was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal over this stuff where I had tens of millions of dollars gone. One day I thought I was pretty well off and I could fund all these projects. The next thing, I had nothing because this guy had taken $250 million from all his investors and walked with it and disappeared. I learned a lot from that too.
Those were some of my daunting challenges, but I came back from that. I said, “You lost all this. I had to go through litigation. I had some recovered but not that much. I had to step back and start all over again. I'm 41 years old. I said, “I got all these costs, but I'm not going to give up.” Persistence, I learned that. That was challenging to have crazy stuff like that happen. That taught me the value of work and the value of persistence. Business is a whole different issue than taking care of patients. I prefer taking care of patients.
People can't see the shock on my face when you're describing this. This is not happening every day to people. This is another chapter of how you’re continuing to persist. Most people would be devastated and wouldn't know how to turn this around, but you continue to maintain some sense of hope and optimism. I think it comes from this internal sense of who you are. It's so hard to trust people after going through some of those moments.
Unfortunately, some people think, “How can I take advantage of people in the world?” It makes you realize how important relationships are in trust. You have to find the right people who are in it for the right reasons. When I think about even the relationships around selling more medicine, getting out there, and doing more of that push, push, push, the reality is not all people in this field are driven by that.
We're not all financially motivated. A lot of people like yourself are in this place of how we make the biggest impact on people. I worked in the biotech field for 25 years. This is one of the things that always drove me. It’s this sense that the patients are at the center of everything we do and every decision we make. When you lose sight of that, everything goes downhill quickly.
Your points are valid. Probably, my saving grace was looking at patients. I still am honored when somebody says, “I'm coming to you because I trust you. I want you to operate my knee and my hip. I treat it that way. It's an honor and a privilege. It's not financial. People ask me, “Why aren't you retired? You’ve done well. You're working on these innovations.”
I am a surgeon. I take care of patients and I block out. I work one week a month, and one week I'll do 40 to 50 joint replacements. I take care of my patients. I'll see all those patients during this week. I still consider it an honor. I don't do it financially. I work now for a hospital group because I thought it was in the best interest of the patients from all these insurance and challenges.
What has grounded me is to come back and say I'm still taking care of people. They're still more important than any of these things that have happened to me. I still consider it an honor anytime somebody comes and says, “I want you to take care of my knee. I want you to take care of my shoulder or my hip.” That's probably the most gratifying thing in my life still. I don't have to work but I just like the patients. I love my staff and the people that I work with. That’s what drives me.
We've covered a lot of ground. I'm so grateful for all the things you've shared. I'm going to ask you a challenging question. Maybe not that challenging but we'll see. What is something you've learned about yourself that you haven't shared already? Maybe something about your character or an element of lesson learned that you'd like to share in this moment.
Part Of A Community
As I look at things, I enjoy the opportunity to look at problems and find solutions. I live now in Florida. We live on the ocean. It looks nice and we're having a challenge here in the area where we're losing beachfront. There's a sand transfer station that shouldn't be there. It's damaging our beaches. There are these financially motivated people. They want to go out and sue the government, sue the state, and do this. The idea is we have to help our neighbors out. We have to help our friends out. We still have to be part of the community.
I'm donating my time and work to sit there and say, “I need to be part of this community. I need to add value. I need to find ways to add new solutions.” It's not medically related. Maybe this is a small environmental issue that has not been the biggest focus of my life, but I'm looking at this and saying, “How can I help the town and people, and how can I help them fight the big government, which is destroying things around here?” Maybe that's something new and different. I don't know. I wouldn't have done that 30 years ago, but it's part of being in a community and part of adding value to the other people around me.
It reminds me of that old saying, “Do what you can with what you have wherever you are.” I didn't say it exactly how it was originally intended, but there's an element of that, which you embody in everything you do. The sense of leading through a place of being purposely useful and of service. Not useful because that sounds a little off, but to have service to people in any way you can and not look at it from “What can I get?” but more of “What can I give?”
I'd like to think that as maybe arrogant or selfish, but I do want to enhance or improve the people that are around me and not just for myself. It's important - family, friends, and community. As I have gotten older, I've learned more about the sense of community and being able to add value. That's probably the most recent thing in my life as I get older. It’s understanding that the community is also as important. The friendships that we've made and the relationships that I have are very important early in my career, so I focused on work and development. I focused on getting things accomplished. Maybe I've evolved a little bit.
As you said earlier, you want to make sure you are continuing to learn and evolve. I think that's a testament to this element of even if we didn't get it in life right, we can continue to have another crack at it every day.
That's important. Persistence, sitting, and learning. What I've learned is about people from a different perspective. For many years, it was patients’ care. The family started becoming more important, even though I was from a big family. Now it's like family and then community. We need to do something back to help them as well.
Impactful Books
As we come to a close of our conversation, which I wish wasn't close because there are so many things I'd like to ask, I'd like to ask one last question. What are 1 or 2 books that have had an impact on you and why?
One that comes to mind first is a book by Tom Clancy. It was his first book called Red October. The reason that that comes to mind is because this was my understanding and I don't know him personally but my understanding is he was a simple insurance agent. He sat there and was very interested in the military and he read books and did all kinds of studies independently on his own about military tactics and naval warfare. He wrote this book about Red October which is a great book. It’s a fascinating read. It's fiction but based on some historical facts.
Here's a guy who has nothing to do, has gone outside, learned, read, and created a whole new career. That book was groundbreaking from a military perspective because the government started to question how he got all the information. I don't know if he was subpoenaed or not, but I certainly know that they questioned him significantly about how he had access to all this information. He said, “It's all publicly available information. You have to read the stuff that you guys are publishing.”
Again, this is all secondhand but this is my understanding from reading about him. He then created and wrote a number of other books, all very interesting. He came from an insurance background and he turned to one of the world's bestselling authors. The book is interesting. It's more intriguing about his personality and what he did. Maybe that's the one that sticks the most.
The other one, I was thinking about it. In medical school, we had a book on anatomy. I'm trying to remember the author's name. I was always struggling with anatomy because it was always like memorization. You had this book written with all these details. We had to do our cadaver laboratories and we looked at that book. We try to understand its anatomy as we cut these cadavers. Someone sat there and spent this much detail to try and explain to medical students. It's used to this day. I apologize for the name.
It taught me the discipline of someone who looked at things over and over to that detail and sat there and improved the quality of care by teaching not just medical students but anyone who wanted to read the complexities and challenges of the human body and human anatomy. Those two stuck in my head because they taught me different life lessons. They taught me the value of knowledge, education, detail, and persistence.
Both are fascinating. One of these days, I'll remember the author. I'm getting old. I can't remember. It was fascinating to me. It was a professor at the University of Cincinnati who wrote it. I enjoyed it. I hated it because I had to memorize everything, but I loved it because of the effort, the detail, and the fact that it changed many people’s understanding of the human body.
I love what you shared because it's like a little common thread for you, this sense of discipline and evidence. When I think about Red October and what you shared, it blew my mind. I did not know that. It’s this sense of you collecting all the evidence. Before you know it, people look at you and they cannot ignore how much information you can compile if you're willing to be committed to that. That’s very powerful.
I want to bring up one point about the value of creativity. People are most interested in innovation and creativity. I had a band for about a decade. We had a little bit of radio airplay. I wrote a bunch of music. It was fun before I had kids. I gave all that up because my family became more important. I sat there and I was like, “I'm not making any money at this.” It's not financial at all, but it's the ability to be creative and go outside the box, not just in medicine, but looking at different spaces. I enjoy that and still do that to this day. I have a big collection of guitars and other stuff. I still write music but it's just for me now.
I think that creativity is probably the single most important thing that’s missing in our educational system. I read some interesting articles about learning and the most successful people in the world. Education is very good. It's analytical studies. When you go to school, you learn about analysis. What they don't teach you very well is about creativity. We have art classes, music classes, and things like that. That may bridge creativity.
The most successful people are the ones who also have practicality. There's no educational process that teaches practicality. The most effective people and the most successful people have equal components of all three. You can be the greatest analytical student at Harvard or wherever you want to say, but if you don't have creativity and practicality. Medicine schools don't teach practicality.
The most successful people are those who also have practicality.
I would like to say understanding the least common denominator is coming to the simplest and most basic solution. Practicality is important. Try to figure that out as you live your life because that's something no one can teach you. It's either learned or absorbed. The practical knowledge to me is what makes me different. I wasn't the best student. I was a good student but never the best student. I wasn't creative, but I tried to learn. Getting to the least common denominator and the simplest solution is always the most important for whatever that's worth.
That's wonderful. I couldn't agree more. It's a great way for us to close out. I think there's a lot of power in that insight that you shared. Thank you. Before I let you go, I want to start by saying, “Thank you so much for all that you've shared, all of the great insights and the stories. I'm honored and thankful for your time with us.
I appreciate the opportunity. I hope I didn't babble too much. I tend to talk too much sometimes but thank you.
Before we let you go, is there any place where people can reach out to you if they want to have a conversation and learn more about you?
My email is P@Bonutti.net. You can also go to the site for my business Bonutti Technologies. BonuttiTechnologies.com is another site. I'm happy to chat with anyone anytime.
Thanks again and thanks to the audience for coming on the journey. I hope you're leaving inspired and ready to change the way you're looking at your own career path and your own way of showing up in the world and inspired by what Peter shared here. Thank you for coming on the journey.
Important Links
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