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This is the Leap Together podcast, where we highlight top leaders driving breakthroughs in clinical research and life sciences.
We've worked with some clients that have I'm thinking of one in particular, where they've really partnered with us in a different way, where we've been on the same team. We were less of a vendor. It was us against the problem rather than us against each other in terms of how we ran clinical trials. And just the capacity to partner from this client, it was an inflection moment for me of how we could enable that more. How when we're working with other clients, there's a way that we can work together.
Zach:That meant with that client, like, understanding not just kind of, like, the protocol for a clinical trial from a risk perspective, but, like, what each step really means on the science and and the human side, and how to educate patients in a better way, how to educate sites and what's going on. Being able to get deeper into what was happening because we had a stronger partnership, it didn't just make the work more fulfilling to to me and the team, but it's it's led to better results as well.
Zach:Hi, Zach Gobst here hosting the Leap Together podcast, podcast where we explore how leaders in clinical trials, biotech advocacy, and healthcare innovation are transforming patient experiences and advancing research together. This podcast is brought to you by Leapcure, the equitable clinical trials platform. At Leapcure, we make clinical trials accessible, empathetic, and impactful.
Zach:From regulatory prep to patient recruitment and retention, We help sponsors and advocacy groups connect with diverse patient populations, streamline timelines, and ensure trials succeed. Clients that have worked with, Leapcure and have been in the space for twenty years, share that we're the best patient recruitment they've ever worked with. It's because we know what it takes to make clinical trials a win win win for sponsors, sites, and patients. Visit leapcure.com to learn more. I have Chad Franzen with me from Rise twenty five who's done thousands of interviews with successful entrepreneurs and CEOs.
Zach:And we flipped the script. He'll be interviewing me today. Chad, welcome to the show.
Chad:Hey. Thanks so much, Zach. It's great to be here with you. I'm looking forward to finding out more about you and about your journey with Leapcure. Why don't you start out by just telling me what inspired you to found Leapcure?
Chad:Yeah.
Zach:I was I never really had a a pull to the health care clinical trial space. It wasn't until I had a moment in my family. My my father had a what was that? TIA, which is a stroke that we didn't know how long it would impact him. Fortunately, with a TIA, it was just a twenty four to forty eight hour period.
Zach:And after kind of spending the night, a couple nights in the hospital and kind of experiencing, like, what it's like to have, you know, traumatic health events. It kinda hit me how impactful this work could be. So many people go through stuff that's so much worse. And and so became interested in health tech, worked at a company that was was interested in kind of taking on being the Uber of of clinical trials and, you know, kinda fell in love with the space. Start started Leapcure just because my gut was that there was so much that that I could do to kind of impact people's lives.
Zach:And, you know, nine years later, still at it. Yeah. Very nice. Did you have a background in that area prior to? I I knew how to be effective via, like, complimenting the people who had the background.
Zach:And so Mhmm. That's what I picked up from my previous experience when I was working with the the clinical research folks. I could bring in kind of the kind of analytical sense, you know, how how do you make this a business? How do you make it scale? And how how do you deliver services in a way that can impact more people?
Zach:And so, yeah, spent spent a lot of times speaking with folks that kind of understand the medical side a bit better than me. And and so, yeah, I've been able to run a business where I have to kinda borrow domain expertise to to kinda figure out what the right thing is to do from time to time.
Chad:Has your vision for the business changed since you started Leapcure?
Zach:Yeah. It absolutely has. You know, I Leapcure was founded in 2015. And at the time, we thought, like, oh, we create this kind of great product and then, like, you know, if you build it, they will come. Like, we build a great product, everything will come together.
Zach:What what we learned was, you know, all the different stakeholders involved in the process have very challenging roles. And, you know, this is the people running research sites, the sponsors who are project managing all the moving parts. And so we we kind of pivoted from a product based business to a tech enabled services business. Impact was always our focus, and to to kind of find our way to optimizing impact, we we became more of a a services business that helps with technology rather than kind of a product that thinks that can solve everything. I think a lot of companies go through that, you know, trajectory too.
Chad:Speaking of impact, was that was there ever a or was there a moment between founding it and now where you kinda realize, like, yeah, we're making a pretty significant impact?
Zach:Yeah. I I think it it happened in two ways, you know, from from a numbers perspective. You know, we were always kind of tinkering with how do we make this model work. And so when we began, like, providing support to patients and sites after they, you know our product would often kind of find people interested in clinical trials, and then we'd send them to sites way too quickly. And when we started to take the time to get to know the patients in the sites, that started to, you know, drive better numbers.
Zach:You know, at first, it was like, oh, yeah. This validation process works. What we learned over time is that there's actually something more important going on, which is we have the ability to provide people with support during a time of need. You know, a lot of these patients are are struggling with something and reaching out to leapcure who who they usually haven't heard of to try to get help. And, you know, a lot of the the stories we get from patients about how kind our staff were or how much it meant to them that that we took the time to kinda work with them, That's been really impactful.
Zach:And then so so that's a big part of it, as well as we've worked with some clients that have, you know and I'm thinking of one in particular, where they've they've really partnered with us in a different way, where where we've kind of been on the same team. We were less of a vendor. It was us, you know, it was us against the problem rather than kind of us against each other in terms of how we ran clinical trials. And just the capacity to partner from from this client helped kind of it was an inflection moment for me of how we could kind of enable that more, how how when we're working with other clients, like, there's a way that we can work together. And so that that meant with that client, like, understanding not just kind of, like, the protocol for a clinical trial from a risk perspective, but, like, what each step really means on the science and and the human side, and how to educate patients in a better way, how to educate sites and what's going on.
Zach:Being able to get deeper into what was happening because we had a stronger partnership. It it didn't just make the work more fulfilling to to me and the team, but it's it's led to better results as well. And it's, you know, a big reason why our performance is as strong as it is. We're, you know, we we rarely churn clients, you know, versus our first few years. And in most cases, you know, after a client starts working with us on on one project, whatever projects they have that come up, they they think of us first because we figured out how to how to build better partnerships.
Zach:But that was all, you know, thanks to, you know, mostly those two things, which is, you know, understanding we could make a bigger impact with with the patients, and then also just understanding how a partnership can come together and encouraging that.
Chad:Yeah. Nice. Very nice. So at this moment in time, what
Zach:do you what maybe do
Chad:you think is the biggest challenge facing clinical trials?
Zach:I think that the biggest challenge has always been I I don't think it's that different. You know, we're using some variation of the scientific method to figure out should this treatment be, you know, accessible to more and more people. And there's, the stuff that helps you validate the science, and then there's the stuff that happens on the patient's side, which makes it approachable for them, you know, helpful for them in their day to day. You know, finding a way to kinda bridge what what validates what you're looking for on the science side and what's tolerable for a patient and their lifestyle and what they're going through. That that's always been a really tough challenge.
Zach:And and some things we're we're kind of used to. So, like, if you think about a flu shot, you know, a flu vaccine clinical trial might might not be as difficult as maybe a a rare disease clinical trial where they're figuring out, like, new tests and trying to look at every biomarker because they don't have a standard way of, you know, measuring if if it's effective or not. I I'd say that there's some studies that are that are gonna be easier than others, but essentially, each study is its own kind of product product market fit challenge. And you have to have kind of scientific rigor to make sure it can be expanded, but you have to marry that to, you know, what what can a patient, you know, feasibly do. And sometimes when you're designing on the science side, you think like, oh, you know, a million people have this problem.
Zach:We just need 1% of them to to to join. It's similar to, like, a tech startup that thinks like, oh, the market is so many people. We just need 1%. But the reality is is to kind of understand what why an individual would, you know, change their lifestyle to do this versus all their other options. It's it's quite tough in most cases.
Chad:Yeah. You work with, several kinda several different entities or groups of people who have maybe different things that they're looking for. How do you kinda balance the needs of, you know, like, patients, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies?
Zach:Yeah. I I think it's important to understand everyone. And I think that was maybe the fallacy of, you know, early leap year when we just kinda built a product focused on listening to one side of the equation is that, you know, the way the progress is made is, like, bringing everyone together. You know? And when we're working on a clinical trial, yeah, there there's sponsors that might have different priorities.
Zach:Maybe they have to hit a certain timeline. That's how they you know, they they have investors that said, yeah. We'll give you this much money, but you need to go accomplish ADC. And and they're doing their best to kind of manage what they, you know, think is the way to get there. And research sites, you know, those are usually physicians that have their own day to day.
Zach:We've got to figure out, like, what's gonna, you know, pull them into running a clinical trial versus standard care or other clinical trials. You know, patients, they also have their own kind of choices to make. And so when we can get, you know, information from them or from advocacy about what's going on, what people want, and why, we can kind of tinker with what what should the design be, you know, with all these things in mind. And so it's all really useful to to kind of hear these different perspectives. Sometimes it's kinda painful to realize, like, for example, like, hey, in this area or in this country, you know, this is the true sentiment versus what we thought before.
Zach:And one of our values as a company is is, you know, difficult truths. We have to you know, the the longer it takes for us to kind of realize, you know, what what we're really up against, you know, the more we're gonna invest in a strategy that's not gonna be that helpful or impactful. But, you know, to us, kind of kind of understanding the needs of everyone is is is actually the way, to to driving faster, better research.
Chad:I'm sure, technology has always played kind of a role in clinical trials. But moving forward, you know, as technology changes and advances, how do you see it? What what kind of role do you see technology playing in the future?
Zach:Yeah. I I think there's, there's all these kind of, like, funny nuances, all this tribal knowledge of how clinical trials are run, you know, the process of working with ethics committees, the way that, you know, you know, data is is managed, the way that, you know, contracts work for for for different situations. There's always kind of, like, very nuanced things, and I and I think AI is kind of helping provide better education for the people kind of operating. It's it's a lot easier to kinda get your head around what it'll take versus when we started, it was very much trial and error. It was it was like, yeah.
Zach:We think this is what it'll take to go recruit in Spain, and then we'd find out, no. Spain wants something entirely different than what we thought. And now we have a a pretty good guess. And so, you know, I I think to expand our service offering and and to offer more value is is easier today. In terms of the patient experience, I think there's actually bigger gaps with technology because people assume they understand what's going on with, you know, tools like AI.
Zach:So, you know, just because you have access to, like, pharmacy data or you can kind of integrate into a database, that doesn't that doesn't mean you understand the why of patients. There's a lot of things that are still missing. And so to me, there's a bigger opportunity for, you know, services, you know, and that's and that's where we found a lot of successes is kind of services to help understand what people are looking for. We're we're excited about what's ahead because I I think that we have to pair technology with, you know, the accessibility, empathy, meeting people where they are, understanding their why. That's gonna be really key, and it's often overlooked in the way that we think about, you know, technological advances.
Chad:Well, I'm sure with most businesses, especially yours, you know, you guys are you're always learning. For you personally, what has been kind of your biggest learning experience as a CEO? Yeah. It's a
Zach:good question. I I mean, I think that, we went through a ton of ups and downs, whether it was kind of, you know, is when we started the company, we had a founding team where, you know, we we thought we were, like, ready to take on everything, and then we found out, like, oh, these other people on the founding team, like, they're interested if we become, you know, a company that looks like Instagram or continues to, like, take a certain trajectory. But they're more interested in other things if it doesn't do that. The people side in building a culture was was an endeavor I I really wanted to take on. I you know, my previously, career, I worked for a 100 year old automotive company that was very entrenched in their values.
Zach:And I I learned early on, like, how important, you know, company values can be to driving culture and behavior. And so I I'm still not as good at this as I need to be. You know, this is this is kind of a journey of kinda building a culture, but I'd say those are the learnings that hit me personally the most. You know, and I think it depends on the individual of kind of what they wanna take on. But, you know, you know, scaling the team to to what it is, you know, forty, fifty people full time right now, and, you know, figuring out, like, how to get people organized to take on more and more ambitious goals, but also kind of reflect on what that means for the culture and and how we wanna bring things together.
Zach:That that's where a lot of my learnings have been, at least the ones that have
Chad:been impactful to me. Ultimately, what kind of culture are you driving toward? Would it be a culture of innovation?
Zach:Yeah. It's it's a it's a culture of kind of having space to be empathetic, have capacity for others, be a good team, and as a result, drive drive impact and innovation. We're we're an impact first organization, and so, you know, it and we wanna bring in experienced people. Like, people kind of bring some things from other companies that that we really like, and then there's some things where we're different. And I think that, you know, we're we're kind of learning what we want the culture to be as we go to to a degree as as time goes on.
Zach:But I but I think we're we're trying to start with a foundation of impact. And so the ad it does involve, you know, know, drive driving together to innovate. But, you know, we we're sometimes less focused on kinda building that feature and thinking more about, well, well, how does it make an impact, and then we build it. You know? And how we come together as a team to do that is kind of a fascinating exercise that that, you know, that's the one that that's the way that we're choosing.
Chad:Do you have relationships with patient advocacy groups, and how do you kind of approach those?
Zach:Yeah. I think somewhere in the range of twelve, thirteen thousand advocacy groups that we've worked with over the years. You know? And the way that we work with them is a bit unique as well, where for us, what's important is that we meet them where they are and we figure out what's what's gonna be useful to advocacy groups. Like, how are they operating day to day?
Zach:And if we're trying to drive an awareness campaign or a strategic partnership, like, what's really gonna be aligned with their needs? And if there are kind of, like, execution gaps, a lot of these advocacy groups don't have a lot of staff or resources, like, how how do we play a role that kind of fills the gaps that they have to kind of empower them? We don't wanna kinda pull them away from their charter. We don't wanna pull them into something they don't have capacity for. And so, yeah, our approach to advocacy is is to make sure that we, you know, have capacity to kind of complement what they're doing.
Zach:And, yeah, we've we've been partnering with advocacy for, you know, the entirety of our business. So we it's something that we've we've grown to be quite strong in in taking on. In fact, you know, later this year, we have some plans to add to the capabilities that we have to make, you know, advocacy partnerships and and the health of advocacy groups even stronger than what they are today.
Chad:Are there maybe any common misconceptions regarding clinical trials? And if so, what do you think is the most misunderstood aspect?
Zach:Yeah. I I think that the people running clinical trials are often have very good intent. Like, sometimes, like, there's initial thought of, like, the intent of this clinical trial is to, like, take from the patient and serve pharma. And I I think that, you know, if there's a bell curve, you will definitely find people on that end of the spectrum. But for the most part, you know, I I think, you know, particularly in in the realm that I'm in, people running clinical trials, they they are very much interested in kind of doing this the right way, you know, looking at the data objectively, looking at who will really benefit.
Zach:A lot of people are, like, really working hard at that and dedicating their lives to it. So the average person you you meet that that's kind of running a clinical trial actually has a lot of empathy for for patients. I think that's a common misconception. And then I also think that, you know, the the rigor of what these protocols require and the processes involve, you know, it's it's not a it's not, you know, perfect. But the way that we kind of validate what medicine is is ready for approval is is, you know, even in in a situation with, like, you know, the COVID vaccines, there was so much going into kind of pressure testing to to make sure that we were doing something that was going to be effective and not have adverse events.
Zach:It it's pretty high, and it continues to to get higher and higher as we learn more. So the those are the, you know, the two things I would say. And then and then, you know, just people within, you know, clinical trials, you know, to kinda harp on, you know, kind of the key point of why we wanna do a podcast in general. The more that we kind of empower each voice in the process, the better you know, the the better we do and the faster we can move together. You know, I think that, you know, sometimes we, you know, people in the space kind of think of, like, individual features or, you know, solving individual problems.
Zach:You know, again, we're working on kind of a product market fit challenge. We're not working on like, hey, you just solve this and everything, you know, and there's a domino effect. What it takes to drive good research is empowering each perspective, is making sure that we're looking at everything and figuring out how do we how do we serve more and more people. And, you know, for us, as an equitable clinical trials company, you know, we're interested in, you know, better empathy and accessibility in the clinical trial process because we we've seen that that's not just felt best to us about our work, but also, you know, driven driven more, you know, outcomes like us enrolling 80% of a study or, like, you know, we've got, like, just a number of weeks to kind of fill, you know, a project or we have to kind of get a study done in a new country in some way. When you take an equitable approach and kind of understand what's going on, you can kind of move mountains in a way that you otherwise can't.
Zach:And so for the people inside the space, that's that's what I'd say.
Chad:Yeah. You mentioned the podcast. What, what do you think listeners would most benefit from by from hearing the podcast?
Zach:Yeah. I I think it's you know, I'm interested in helping empower more voices. I think there's a lot of people doing great work in clinical trials. So to kind of hear perspectives from different folks that that I think are are driving kind of meaningful change and impact, you know, how they got to where they are and what their stories are, illuminating that. I'm I'm interested in kind of just expressing gratitude, you know, to the people that in you know, are are involved in in driving breakthroughs.
Zach:And then kind of what I said before, I I think what what I'm confident will come across is how it really does take input from everyone, how everyone's voice really does move things forward. If if we're recruiting a patient for a clinical trial and we spend time learning from that patient, may maybe that they're not a fit or they're interested in something else. That's still really impactful to how we drive change, Understanding what's what's behind what they're looking for still helps us understand, hey, what what is going to be more in fact impactful? Because this interaction was this. And so, yeah, I'm excited to to kind of, you know, take on the podcast.
Zach:It it took some encouraging from from a few friends, John Corcoran of Rise twenty five, one of them, and a couple other friends as well. But I I think that I I I see a lot of opportunity in using a podcast to help kinda bring forward and see see what I you know, what we see every day at Leapcure, which is, you know, all these impactful voices and we kind of bring people together, we're able to to implement, you know, pretty amazing change.
Chad:Yeah. Nice. I'll certainly look forward to to hearing some of your episodes. Hey. Last question for you.
Chad:You mentioned recruit recruiting somebody to participate a clinical trial. What advice would you give to somebody who's maybe considering that?
Zach:Yeah. It's it's never an easy situation to be in, and I think that it's it's a vulnerable position to be in. I think the first thing I'd think about is mindset and making sure that you have people around you that will advocate advocate for you. And I I think that's really tough when you're dealing with a different, you know, with different conditions. So it's easier said than done because a lot of patients, they get hit with something.
Zach:They don't wanna be a nuisance or a burden to others, and it's hard to kind of find the dialogue with the people in your network that that do wanna advocate for you. But they're there. I'd I'd say be kind of try your best to be resilient about finding those people that'll advocate for you. And and through that, you know, I I I think through advocate advocating, like, find resources, get yourself out there. There'll be some things that won't be a fit.
Zach:Don't be deterred. But give yourself capacity by surrounding yourself with people that can advocate for you because there's never really a linear journey with with, you know, you know, some of these patient experiences that we come across. And, you know, and and sometimes, you know, we're we're not able to find the perfect solution for us, but, you know, you surrounding yourself people with people that'll advocate for you and and the energy that you kinda put forward, it it, you know, will get to the best outcome for you, but also kind of set up future generations of people that deal with the same thing that you're dealing with. There's light at the end of the tunnel from your effort. But it's never a situation I wish on anyone, but that's, you know, that's my point of view after working with, you know, hundreds of thousands of patients.
Zach:Sure.
Chad:I would imagine. Hey, great stuff, Zach. I really appreciate hearing all of your insights. Thanks so much for having me
Zach:Yeah. I appreciate it, Chad.
Chad:So long, everybody.
Leap Together:That wraps up our conversation with Chad Franzen with our host, Zach Gopst, CEO of Leapcure. We hope you came away inspired by the vital work Leapcure is doing to make clinical trials more accessible, inclusive, and patient driven. From bridging the gaps between patients and researchers to advancing medical breakthroughs for everyone, Zach and his team are reshaping the future of health care. If today's episode resonated with you, be sure to follow the show and leave a review. And don't forget to share this episode with someone who's passionate about innovation in healthcare.
Leap Together:Thanks for listening. And until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and keep pushing for better health outcomes for all.