Bausch + Lomb: Leadership & Innovation in Eye Care

THL’s Healthcare in Action, Season 2, Episode 3

What does it take to reorient a 172-year-old healthcare company toward driving groundbreaking innovations? In this episode, Jon Lange speaks with Brent Saunders, Chairman and CEO of Bausch + Lomb, about how he’s reinvigorating one of the world’s most iconic eye care brands. Brent shares how the company is focused on driving major innovations across its broad portfolio, including Project Halo, a potential breakthrough in contact lens material science that could result in a new paradigm of all-day comfort. Jon and Brent explore what it means to be a great leader in healthcare, the importance of curiosity and humility, and Brent’s personal recipe for happiness. This is a wide-ranging conversation about eye care, leadership, and how to foster a mission-driven culture to ultimately advance the standard of care for patients.

Key Takeaways

• Bausch + Lomb is investing in major innovation across its portfolio, including Project Halo, a potential breakthrough in contact lens material science that could result in a new paradigm of all-day comfort.
• A new contact lens under development may help slow the progression of myopia in children, which could be a game-changer for pediatric eye care.
• Revitalizing innovation requires top talent; Brent’s focused on building out his R&D team as a first step toward taking big swings on groundbreaking innovations.
• Success is a long game; Brent and Jon discuss the myth of “overnight success” and how passion, hard work, and consistency are key ingredients for real success over the long term.

[00:00:00] Brent Saunders What motivates me is really solving problems for people that today are unsolvable. Sight is such a precious gift, so being able to preserve it or restore it for people who are struggling is just massive satisfaction. And so to the extent, I play a small part in finding the next treatment for someone who’s visually impaired or blind, that would be the holy grail for me. 

[00:00:30] Josh Nelson That’s Brent Saunders, the chairman and CEO of Bausch and Lomb, and I’m Josh Nelson, head of healthcare at THL Partners. And this is Healthcare in Action. It’s a podcast that explores the latest developments and innovations transforming the U.S. Healthcare sector, from cutting edge technology to thoughtful approaches to patient care. I’m here with my colleague, Jon Lange, who will lead us in a conversation about the eye care market, including exciting new products in the pipeline and how to build a culture of innovation at a large healthcare organization. Jon, take it away. 

[00:01:04] Jon Lange Thanks Josh. Today we’ll look at a part of the healthcare sector that plays a crucial role in the daily lives of billions of people around the world and yet is often taken for granted, eye health. The eye health market includes everything from glasses and contact lenses to consumer products to pharmaceuticals and surgical devices, and it addresses not only vision correction but also many eye diseases that can cause serious damage, and often don’t have cures available. Few companies have contributed more to the eye health sector than Bausch and Lomb, one the largest companies in the space, and also one of the oldest health care companies in the US. In this episode, I spoke with Brent Saunders, who has led Bausch and Lomb during two stints as CEO most recently since returning to the company in 2023. In addition, Brent spent several years building what became Allergan and ultimately sold that company to Abbvie in 2020. Over Bausch and Lomb’s 172 year history, the company has grown from a small optical shop in Rochester, New York, to a multinational corporation with five billion dollars in annual revenue. It’s responsible for many groundbreaking innovations in iHealth over the course of its long history, including the first mass-produced soft contact lens in the 1970s, Ray-Ban aviator goggles for military pilots in the 1930s, and even some of the first affordable glasses frames all the way back in the 1860s. Brent and I discussed the company’s history and culture, the importance of mission, and how he approached reorienting the company to focus on driving major innovation. Brent also shared his perspectives on what it means to be a great leader in healthcare, his personal recipe for happiness, and where he sees the biggest opportunities in the coming years to improve the standard of care and address the most important unmet needs in eye health. So let’s get into it. Brent, thank you so much for joining me today. 

[00:02:50] Brent Saunders Thanks for having me, Jon. I’m looking forward to the discussion. 

[00:02:53] Jon Lange Maybe to start out, of course, most people will be familiar with Bausch and Lomb and a number of its brands and products, but can you just set the stage for people who haven’t followed the company closely? What is the range of businesses that Bausch and Lomb is in? And maybe tell us a bit about the evolution of the brands and the company. 

[00:03:11] Brent Saunders Sure, absolutely. Bausch and Lomb is a 172-year-old eye health company. We operate in the eye health segment in the broadest sense of the word. We organize around four businesses. One is a pharmaceutical business that makes prescription medicines for eye care. We have a consumer business that make all the things you would buy in a drug store or Walmart in the eye care aisle, vitamins, drops and everything in between contact lens solution. We have a contact lens business that makes contact lenses around the world. And last, we have a surgical business that makes everything an ophthalmic or retina surgeon would need to be able to do the surgery, whether that be lasers, capital equipment, implants, instruments, fluidics, surgical packs, gowns. So very comprehensive eye care company. The brand is an iconic brand having been around for 172 years. But many of our products are sub-branded. So in the consumer space, our vitamins for people suffering with macular degeneration are known as PreserVision. Our contact lenses are known as our newest one that’s launching, it’s called Infuse in the United States. Some of our drugs are, for dry eye example, Xiidra or Miebo and then in terms of cataract surgery or implants used in cataracts surgery, we have an Envista product line of implants. So we have hundreds and hundreds of brands in the eye care space. 

[00:04:45] Jon Lange And maybe taking a step back, for those who haven’t followed the iHealth space more broadly, can you just set the stage? What are some of the key trends and drivers and maybe even unmet needs that companies like Bausch and Lomb are trying to address? 

[00:04:59] Brent Saunders Yeah, so it’s interesting. Historically, it was a field that was driven by age. As your eyes age, they tend to deteriorate, that could cause presbyopia, that could cause cataracts and things of that nature. A new factor over the last decade has been screen time. As you stare at screens, you blink less. Kids that stare at the screens tend to have their eye muscles be underdeveloped. They get a disease called myopia. And then, of course, pollution. Diabetes is a big negative to eye health and can lead to a variety of different issues. And then as we’ve lived longer, there’s prevalence of other diseases like macular degeneration or geographic atrophy, and then there’s a whole host of genetic or inherited eye diseases that have been around and unsolvable. Across the entire field of eye health, many of our diseases are still treated, not cured. And so as a result of that, there is a lot of white space and opportunity for innovation and R&D to change the standard of care or change the paradigm for patients and how we deal with the disease. So take glaucoma as an example. Very high prevalence of glaucoma. You always thought of it as a disease of increased interocular pressure, but really it’s neuropathy. It’s a neuropathic disease affecting the retina, and so glaucoma patients while we can control the pressure with eye drops still 30-35 percent have their eyesight deteriorate over time and so we’re always looking for novel ways to treat it rather than the standard paradigm. 

[00:06:38] Jon Lange I think that’s a good segue to a topic I wanted to talk to you about, which is innovation. And at least my understanding as an outsider is that when you rejoined Bausch and Lomb in 2023, the company had been focused more on incremental innovations as opposed to more groundbreaking major innovations. And so I have a number of questions I wanna get your thoughts on. But first, how do you reorient a company to major innovation and taking big swings, particularly when the company has been around for so long and has such a, you know, a legacy and a culture already. 

[00:07:13] Brent Saunders Yeah, great question. Never easy to do. I’ll tell you the way we went about it. One was to really invest in talent in R&D, and really go out and try to hire or promote or develop the best R&D talent in the organization. I spent my first year really working with our head of R&D on recruiting scientists and building out the capabilities of our R&D teams. And once you have that in place, it gives you the confidence to say, okay, now let’s stop doing the incremental innovations, let’s get rid of some of these pipeline programs, and let’s make bigger investments in programs that are going to change the standard of care for patients. And the reason we believe we can do that is that we have the right people and the right talent with the right expertise and experience to lead these programs. And so you feel more confident as a CEO investing behind a program when you’re really confident in the talent of your team. And so that really was the formula that I deployed. It took time, but I’m really excited when I look at where we are today across all of our businesses and our pipeline. I would say it’s never been stronger, and we unveiled it in November at the New York Stock Exchange to our investors, and we got tremendous feedback on the progress we’ve made. 

[00:08:36] Jon Lange I want to talk a bit about Project Halo, and at least my understanding is this could be the most exciting innovation in contact lenses in the past 25 years or more. Can you talk a little bit about how that came about and the status today? 

[00:08:52] Brent Saunders Yeah, it’s really, it it’s a good story. So, you know, Bausch and Lomb invented the mass-produced self-contact lens, and I think it was 1971. And those were called hydrogels. Then, in the late 90s, Bausch and Lomb invented the next new material called silicon hydrogel. For the last 25-26 years, the industry has been optimizing this material, silicon hydrogel, and Bausch and Lomb started it but was late to the optimization of it. And so when I got here I said, you know, it’s really important that that we restore ourselves back to driving innovation in material science and contact lenses and there’s a real need because there’s a lot of dropouts still in the industry because of end-of-day comfort. And so I think it was my second or third day as CEO, I went up to Rochester, New York, which is where our contact lens R&D team is. And then during the lunch hour, they set up easels with posters. And teams, many of them younger talent, were presenting these posters to me. And I would spend 10 minutes or so at each poster and getting to know folks. To be fair, I wasn’t really so interested in what was on the poster. I was more interested in the talent behind the poster and in getting to meet the people. I get to this one poster about this novel material, using hyaluronic acid as its backbone. And I really was impressed by the team and the idea and the concept. I called the head of R&D and I said, I wonder if we could turn this into a full-blown development program. I walked them through my rationale. We then met with the team. I said to them, guys, you guys have a winning idea here. Whether we can bring it to life remains to be seen, but I want to invest in it. And I’m going to meet with you guys every Friday until we figure out we can do it or we can’t do it. Let’s get started. But I’m gonna give you one requirement. Not only you have to change the game and material science, but we need to be able to manufacture this on are existing manufacturing lines because building new lines is a multi-billion dollar investment and I’d rather invest in the R&D than in new manufacturing capability and so that was a pretty big challenge, and so over the course of the next three years we’ve been meeting every Friday and the team does a lot of work between Friday to Friday and lo and behold they cracked the code they figured it out, and now we’re in the final stages of clinical testing on that contact line with a target launch date for 2028. 

[00:11:39] Jon Lange And what would this mean for patients, for consumers? How would this change the game? 

[00:11:44] Brent Saunders So the promise is best-in-class comfort and potentially even, you know, we’ll have to see how the data plays out, right, we’re doing the clinical studies, but potentially even better comfort at the end of the day than at the beginning of the data because the way the lens is built using hyaluronic acid, which is your body and your eyes natural moisturizer, as that interacts with the, the lens interacts with natural enzymes in your eye, it releases more HA. And so the longer you wear it, in theory, the more comfortable it should be. And so it’s really turning the whole paradigm on its head. 

[00:12:22] Jon Lange It’s great to hear and I’m really excited to see the data and the launch in a couple of years. I think this could really change the game. 

[00:12:29] Brent Saunders Yeah, we should have data in the second half of 2026, so five, six, seven months from now. 

[00:12:34] Jon Lange The other project I wanted to talk to you about is that I know you’re working on a new line of contact lenses that could slow the progression of myopia. That could be a real game changer, particularly for younger people. So can you talk about that project, where it is, what it could do and how it came about? 

[00:12:53] Brent Saunders Yeah, so myopia is an epidemic. It primarily affects children who spend too much time indoors or staring at screens. The easiest way to solve it is to get kids outside more and looking farther away and exercising their eye muscles. But that’s hard sometimes, particularly in urban settings and places like that. We see in Asia, it has already been declared an epidemic. It’s happening here in the United States and Europe as well. And today the current treatments are either, now there’s some spectacles that are approved, but they’re contact lenses that help essentially strengthen the eye muscles. I’m oversimplifying. But they weren’t designed for kids. They were repurposed. What we think is a breakthrough is we have a design we did with an academic partner that we think it’s really novel. It’s designed for kid. We’re using our best, most comfortable contact lens material, so it should be very comfortable for the kid. And then the treatment is on the outer rings of the lens. So it allows them to see normally. But then exercise the periphery of their vision to help strengthen their eye and thereby treat the myopic condition. So really cool. We’re just about to go into clinical studies over the next few months. And I’m very excited. I hope we can do it very quickly because at least in my field of work, nothing’s better than helping children and helping children see better, to live better is really part of our company’s mission. 

[00:14:28] Jon Lange Well, it’s great to hear and really exciting and could be so game-changing for young people everywhere. And so I’m really looking forward to hearing more about that project. 

[00:14:36] Brent Saunders Thank you. We are as well. 

[00:14:38] Jon Lange I want to switch gears a little bit, and you’ve had a really interesting career. And of course, this is your second stint as CEO of Bausch and Lomb. So can you just take us back a bit? How did you end up in healthcare in the first place at Bausch and Lomb the first time? And how did you end up coming back? 

[00:14:57] Brent Saunders Sure. So I was in law school in Philadelphia, and I needed a job. And so I got a job working in the law department at Thomas Jefferson University in Health System. And so that became my first connection to health care. And I really liked it. And as I completed my law degree and ultimately did an MBA, I took a full-time job at Jefferson. And from there, I went into consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a partner in their consulting group. And that’s when I transitioned to pharmaceuticals. They needed some help in their pharmaceutical practice, I volunteered, and I started doing much more work with companies like Abbott and J&J and some companies that don’t exist today, Pharmacy and Schering-Plough and others like that. And ultimately doing a big project for Schering-Plough, their CEO at the time, a guy named Fred Hassan, a real legend in the pharmaceutical industry, said, hey, why don’t you leave consulting and come work with me at Schering-Plough? And it was a tough decision because I really enjoyed the job. I enjoyed the people I worked with, but ultimately I saw myself on the side of doing things, not advising. And so I made that change, and I worked for him for eight years working my way up to become president of Schering-Plough. And then Merck bought us. And I decided I needed to find something else to do. And so it was interviewing with a bunch of folks. Warburg Pink is the private equity firm that you know well, had just taken Bausch Lomb private. They were looking for a CEO, and so I interviewed and got the job. It was my first CEO job. I ran up for about three and a half almost four years, and they then got it offered to sell Bausch and Lomb, and they sold it, and I left. I then spent almost the next 10 years creating what became Allergan and wound up selling that to Abbvie in the summer of 2020, during pandemic. I took a year to just to do kind of family office, and do my own thing. And I learned something about myself, which was I wasn’t ready to not be an operator. That I wanted to get back in and run something and work with great people and do great things in this industry. And just by chance, the board of Bausch and Lomb reached out to me that they had spun Bausch and Lomb out of the old Bausch Health Valeant as an independent company, and they wanted a CEO and would I come back? And I thought about it for a while. Ultimately, I love the company. I loved my time here in the past. I absolutely love the iHealth community and the innovation and the entrepreneurship of this industry, and so it was an easy decision to come back, and it’s been no regret since. Best decision I made in a long, long time. 

[00:17:50] Jon Lange It’s really interesting. And one other thing you said really resonated, reminds me a bit of my father, who retired not so long ago, that you weren’t ready not to be an operator. And so why was that a surprise to you? And then how did you realize that you weren’t ready yet and you wanted to go back? 

[00:18:10] Brent Saunders Yeah, you know, my wife was kind of helpful in that. I might get up and go to the office every day person. I never really worked from home. Even in pandemic, I went to the office every day. I’ve been doing it so long. It’s just, you know, I either go to the airport, I go to the office, right? Those are the two places I go every day. And when I was doing my own investing in my own family office kind of activity, I was getting up early going to the gym, going to the office, coming home, you know, at seven, eight o’clock at night, and my wife said you just don’t seem as happy as you used to be. I knew it but I needed to hear it I think externally to know, you know, you’re right. I’m not good at just advising people. I like to do things. And that comment from my wife I think was really instrumental for me saying you know what, you’re right. I’m much happier when I’m doing it and feel accountable for delivering than when I am just advising. And this may sound odd or corny but, you know, and I was what, 52, 53 at the time. And then it dawned on me what the key, for me at least, to happiness is. Happiness for me is very simple. It’s when you’re excited every morning to wake up and go to work, and you’re excited at the end of the day to go home and be with your family. And if you can have those two things working, what more could you ask for? 

[00:19:33] Jon Lange There’s a lot of wisdom in that. And, you know, I’m reminded maybe again, not to be too corny, but I remember an interview with Jay Leno years ago, and someone asked him how you know you’re in love. And he said, it’s at the end of the day, you don’t wanna go to Starbucks, you don’t wanna stay later at work, you just wanna go home. And I think that’s true for a career, and it’s also true for family. 

[00:19:55] Brent Saunders I hadn’t heard that, but that resonates. I think that’s exactly right. At least my recipe for happiness is I wake up every morning excited for the day, even if there are big challenges in the day. I feel like, I don’t know, like an athlete. I’m putting on my uniform every day to go in, and give the best performance I can, but at the end of the day driving home, I can’t wait to get home and be with my family. 

[00:20:21] Jon Lange I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about leadership. And of course, you have been at the helm of Bausch and Lomb now twice and Allergan as well and its predecessors. And so having been a leader, having seen lots of leaders succeed and fail, what do you think are the most important qualities to be a great leader of a healthcare company? 

[00:20:43] Brent Saunders You know, if I had to pick, let’s try to winnow it down to maybe two, maybe three. But I think one is a realization that success is about the talent you surround yourself with. When you want to run a pharmaceutical company or a medtech company or in Bausch and Lomb’s case combination of both, you need really talented people on the team. I use a lot of sports analogies, but it’s kind of like a football team. American football, I’ll use. You can have a great quarterback, but if you don’t have a great line and great receivers and a good defense, it doesn’t matter how great the quarterback is. You’re not going to win Super Bowls. Super Bowls are won when the team is very talented at all positions. And that’s true for, I think, for leaders. You need to hire people smarter and better than you to push you and challenge you. You need to give them the room to operate. You need to coach them through the tough things. And you need to ask great questions. But most importantly, you need hire really talented people. I think the second attribute I would define as curiosity. When you run a science-based company, and you’re not a scientist, I’m not a scientist, I wish I was, if I could go back and get a redo, but I’m not, you know, you have to be exceptionally curious. People who work with me, well, no, I spend a lot of time very early in the morning. First thing I do when I get up is I scan the literature of all the different journals. I look at everything to read and study in order for me to ask questions of our talented scientists. Have we thought of this? Have you ever thought this application would work? And I send out emails early in the morning, you know, 5:36 a.m. Did you look at this? What about this? Have we seen this? And so it’s really being very curious and pushing yourself. And then maybe the third, I think one attribute I learned from Fred Hassan, my mentor at Schering-Plough, but really humility, you know, I think that the organization isn’t here to serve me, I’m here to serve it. My job is to make everybody else’s job easier. It’s not for them to work for me. It’s for me to work for them. And so I take that very seriously, and actions speak louder than words. So just a silly example, it may seem very simple, but I show up at every meeting on time. And one day somebody asked me at Allergan, why are you always on time? You know, the previously I was always late. And I said, look around the room. I said, there are 18 of us in this room, and if I’m late for 30 minutes, that’s nine hours of productivity lost from really great people. And so, not only do I want to be on time, but I want run this meeting really efficiently, because your guy’s brain power is way too important. And those are just, you know, just one simple example, but that’s, I think what great leaders do is realize they’re there to make everybody else better, not to make themselves better. 

[00:23:51] Jon Lange I think that is a great way to summarize it. And it reminds me a bit of at THL, we have an unofficial motto, smart, hungry, humble, what we aspire to be. I think it sort of mirrors some of the things you were saying, you know, find great, smart people, you know the curiosity, the hunger, but then also the humility. And I always liked sort of the simplicity of that, but how powerful it is if you get it right. 

[00:24:14] Brent Saunders I may steal that. Is that trademarked or? 

[00:24:17] Jon Lange Go for it. We’d love to spread it in the world. 

[00:24:20] Brent Saunders All right, thank you. 

[00:24:22] Jon Lange But with that, you mentioned the importance of building a great team and getting really smart people and great leaders in the organization, particularly at a big organization like Bausch and Lomb. How do you build a great culture, attract great people, retain great people in a way that really drives results? 

[00:24:42] Brent Saunders Yeah, so it’s a never-ending quest to find ways to do that. You know, I think culture is really important. I spend a lot of time thinking about culture. We have a very simple culture statement. It should be something that everybody really understands. And having the statement and actually making it become the culture is a big, big jump. And so, it’s a lot of repetition. It is a lot creating muscle memory. It’s a lot of initiatives around how we evaluate performance reviews, how we promote people, how we recruit people, really looking at that in the context of, you know, the culture we’re trying to build and reinforcing it. And so I push pretty hard on this. I feel like I’m a politician. I go from site to site, country to country, talking and pushing on the same things, working with communications, HR, and others to really make it come to life, because I think it’s essential, right? Ultimately, I want Bausch & Lomb to be known as not the biggest, but the best eye health company. And that’s because our people are the best. And that turns out to being the best products with the best customer service. 

[00:26:04] Jon Lange Thinking about culture, and particularly the culture at such an old and established company, how do you think about being the steward of Bausch and Lomb and bringing it into the future while at the same time maintaining that culture and being true to the really rich legacy and history? 

[00:26:24] Brent Saunders Yeah, it’s interesting because my first CEO job was at Bausch and Lomb and then I left, and 10 years later, I came back, and I felt like I had some unfinished business in this regard, because when you have the privilege of leading an organization that’s 172 years old, for me at least, I feel a real sense of obligation that when I retire someday in future, that I leave it in a stronger position than which I found it. And I don’t know if I fully accomplished that the first time, and it was one of my regrets professionally. And so now I have this wonderful opportunity to get a redo, and you very rarely get redos in your career. And so I’m pretty adamant, and I say this a lot to our team, that when I retire several years from now, my goal is to make sure that the company’s on a path for the stronger 172 years and the 172 it’s had. And look, Bausch and Lomb had a tough 20 years, change in ownership, little pipeline. In fact, it was funny, I was just looking at, in a legal review, a really good leading indicator of innovation, which is IP filings. And just by chance, the way the legal teams presented the graph, it from 2010 to today. And in 2011, 12, and 13, we averaged like 60-plus patterns filings. That was when I was the CEO the last time. And then you go from the next decade, and we averaged like five or six. And then this year, again, we’re back at 60. And it resonated with me like so profoundly just looking at it on a screen saying, you know, that’s really an interesting analysis of what leadership of this company thought was important and what wasn’t important during the decade I wasn’t here. And I’m so happy that we’re back being able to look at this leading indicator of future growth or innovation, whatever you want to call it. And we’re starting to trend back to our historic highs. But now, I want to do better than that. I want it to be, obviously, you don’t want to file patents just to file a patent. So it has to be something real, but it was a very rewarding chart to see. 

[00:28:54] Jon Lange What I find so interesting about that is that sometimes it’s hard to draw a direct line from culture or leadership or priorities to results. In this case, you were able to see this tangible metric that really reflected the priorities of the company and how you were driving the company as its leader, and maybe also some of the drawbacks of disruption, like change of ownership or deprioritization within a broader company. So it’s great that you’ve been able to see those tangible results. 

[00:29:29] Brent Saunders The best, Jon, is I wasn’t looking for it. They were just doing a review with me, and that chart came up. And I actually said to them, guys, I’m gonna use that chart with the board, maybe even an investor meeting in the future. I know that’s not why you guys are showing it to me, but it does tell the story in one very simple chart. 

[00:29:46] Jon Lange A number of people watching this or listening into this will be students in undergrad or business school aspiring one day to be a great leader of a healthcare organization. And so what experiences would you suggest they pursue or what things would you suggests they think about if they wanna get there and be a greater leader? 

[00:30:08] Brent Saunders You know, it’s a great question. I think in terms of perhaps two things. In terms of field of study, I would take, you don’t have to be a major, but I would as many science courses, probably focus more on biology than chemistry, given where the world is today. But I would definitely be conversant in biology. And I say this to all my nieces and nephews and friends’ kids. If you’re not trying to absorb and learn everything you can that your university has to offer about AI, you’re missing one of the greatest opportunities you’ll probably see in your lifetime. And so, you know, if I were a college student, I would be either taking those courses, many of the universities offer them online, you can do them on the weekends or at night, but I would, I would really be becoming very proficient or even creating an expertise in artificial intelligence as well. I think having the combination of those two academic opportunities, I would be all over both of them. But I think more important than perhaps learning, I’d just be prepared to work hard. I was with an entrepreneur yesterday who’d been out of business for 13 years and having modest success. And this year, their products hit and the business is now worth billions. And he’s sitting at lunch and he knocked on the table and he goes, we got very lucky. And I said, you know, it’s funny because I know how hard you work. The harder you work, the luckier you get. And he said, what do you mean? I said it’s not luck. It was 13 years of really blood, sweat and tears, missing vacations and working over weekends. I know you feel lucky because you’re having great success today, but, but it really wasn’t luck. The one thing I worry about sometimes, you know, I probably sound like my parents saying this, but the younger generation, I don’t feel people really understand how hard a lot of people had to work to get to where they are today. Controversial sometimes. One of the greatest innovators of our time is Elon Musk. That guy works seven days a week, 18 or 20 hours a day. People forget how hard it is, right? And how hard and effective you have to be at what you do to get to the top of the game. 

[00:32:33] Jon Lange It’s great advice, and it reminds me, maybe tangentially, I read an interview with a pop star, maybe 10, 15 years ago, who had just become very successful. It had a big hit. And the journalist asked something like, how does it feel to be an overnight success? And this musician said, well, it wasn’t an overnight success, 12 years in the making. And exactly to your point, it’s sort of the harder you work, the luckier you get. 

[00:33:02] Brent Saunders Maybe it’s social media, but you know, people only see these successes. They don’t realize, you know, it’s kind of like a duck floating on the surface of the water, how hard they’re pedaling underneath, right? It looks so elegant and peaceful, but underneath, they’re really paddling pretty hard. And maybe social media has a bit of that complex that success seems so either lucky or easy, when the reality is outside of winning the lottery, perhaps. There’s no substitute for good old fashioned hardworking commitment. And there’s no overnight. I was just talking to an entrepreneur, started a business. They’re doing well. And I said, you don’t understand. You’re in this for the long haul. And ultimately, I think you’re going to be very successful, but it’s not going to be in your one or two would probably be your eight, nine or 10. And, you know, you’re just going to have to stick with it. And they’re going to be bad days and good days and everything in between, but it’s that consistency of showing up with vision, with passion, with commitment, day in and day out that creates that lucky feeling. 

[00:34:08] Jon Lange Absolutely. Well, it’s great advice. And finally, I wanted to ask you, there’s so much going on at Bausch and Lomb, there’s much innovation. What excites you most as you look forward five, 10, 15 years about the company, about the upcoming innovation, about what it can do for consumers and patients? 

[00:34:29] Brent Saunders Yeah, I mean, I think what motivates me is really solving problems for people that today are unsolvable. Sight is such a precious gift. So being able to preserve it or restore it for people who are struggling is just massive satisfaction. And so, to the extent I play a small part in finding the next treatment for someone who’s, who’s visually impaired or blind, that would be the Holy Grail for me. That would be, you know, that would maybe even when I retire and say, wow, now I really feel like I’ve accomplished something. 

[00:35:08] Jon Lange It’s really exciting. And you are in such an exciting position of being able to steer a company with this rich history and push it toward innovation, which can make a real difference for patients. And as you say, solve unsolvable problems, cure things that can’t be cured today. So thank you for all you’re doing and look forward to checking in sometime soon to hear about all the great progress. 

[00:35:31] Brent Saunders Yeah, I would love that. And Jon, I really enjoyed doing this. So thank you for taking your time to learn a little bit more about what we’re doing. 

[00:35:40] Jon Lange As we wrap this episode, I’m joined by my colleague, Mac Levin, vice president in the healthcare group at THL. Mac, one thing that came through really clearly in my conversation with Brent was his focus on innovation and how it can be really challenging to push an organization that hasn’t been focused as much on innovation toward really taking big swings. In your work with healthcare companies, what have you found are some important things in helping management teams drive innovation? 

[00:36:10] Mac Levin I think first and foremost, you have to identify the right people. A Plus outcomes come from A Plus people, and finding and incentivizing those people is really essential to drive innovation. Secondly, I think allowing them the opportunity to challenge the status quo is really important in driving innovation because just because there’s a way that care is delivered today, doesn’t mean that’s the best way will be delivered tomorrow. Finally, I think empowering management teams and their employees to be intellectually curious, and always continue to learn and grow is really important in driving new innovation. 

[00:36:51] Jon Lange Great, and one thing you mentioned, of course, is curiosity. Brent talked about that as well and how important that is to him and his organization. Can you tell us a bit more about what you mean by that and how you foster that at a healthcare organization? 

[00:37:06] Mac Levin So to me, being curious is being willing to learn and grow. And I think Brent talked about that in a variety of ways, whether it was thinking about reading the new science or achieving new attainable outcomes. And I think fostering that type of environment with management teams where you set higher goals every year or you embrace debate and embrace new learnings, I think is essential in driving that innovation that we talked about. 

[00:37:37] Jon Lange And more broadly, Brent and I talked at length about leadership and what it means to be a leader of a healthcare company and be a steward for a company, particularly one with a long and rich legacy. What do you think are the most important qualities that make a great leader in healthcare? 

[00:37:56] Mac Levin So first and foremost, I think a desire for continuous improvement is essential for a leader at a healthcare business or really a leader of any business. I think Brent is a terrific example of this where there’s 60 patent filings a year, he wants to get to 70. And so always trying to reach that next height or that next goal. I think is crucial for a healthcare executive to be focused on. Secondly, I think the ability to have respect and empowerment for your colleagues and employees. Again, I think Brent exemplifies this great where he talks about, you know, a small thing like not being late to any meeting. I think that’s a perfect example of a leader showing that respect and empowerment for their employees and the type of leader that I would want to invest behind. 

[00:38:47] Jon Lange Mac, you mentioned a number of qualities that are really important to be a great leader of a healthcare company. At THL, we’re always trying to think about how can we support management teams and allow them to work at the top of their game so they can be great leaders? What are some of the ways that you’ve seen that partnership be successful? 

[00:39:09] Mac Levin So first off, I think it starts with being great thought partners, asking the hard questions, pressure testing assumptions, looking for that obstacle around the corner. I think being really great thought partner is really important to help drive the best outcomes with our companies. Secondly, I thing we have the benefit of working with a variety of companies across the healthcare ecosystem. And I think we can help provide some of that pattern recognition. When working with our management teams to identify pitfalls as well as opportunities to drive growth and innovation. Finally, THL Strategic Resource Group does a great job of working with companies at certain stages of the life cycle to help them grow, whether that be through M&A, technology innovation, human capital, and I think through our 50 years of investing, we have developed some operational capability that can be really useful to the management teams at our portfolio companies. 

[00:40:11] Jon Lange Mac, thanks so much for joining me. It’s always a pleasure, and I look forward to continuing the conversation with you and with Brent very soon. 

[00:40:19] Mac Levin Thanks, Jon. 

[00:40:21] Josh Nelson Thank you for listening to Healthcare in Action, brought to you by THL. To help Healthcare in action reach more listeners like you, either share this episode with a colleague, subscribe to the show, or rate or review us on Apple Podcasts. And for more background on THL’s Healthcare vertical, visit thl.com/verticals/healthcare. 

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