ProTaper Ultimate™ Step-by-Step Procedure/Guide card
Launching Dreams ProTaper Ultimate Q&A and Flying a Kite
This episode opens with a sober reminder of the ongoing drought. Next, Ruddle does a Q&A on the recently launched ProTaper Ultimate file system. Then, to celebrate this recent product launch and the symbolic launching of dreams, in general, Ruddle and Lisette will be out of the studio flying a kite in this special lifestyle segment. And finally, Ruddle comes back down to Earth to close the show with another round of Demotivators, because a little dry humor can be quite uplifting.
Show Content & Timecodes
00:09 - INTRO: Drought in Santa Barbara 06:49 - SEGMENT 1: ProTaper Ultimate Q&A 29:01 - SEGMENT 2: Flying Kites 39:15 - CLOSE: DemotivatorsExtra content referenced within show:
Downloadable PDFs & Related Materials
ProTaper Ultimate™ is a root canal treatment solution combining: The latest generation of ProTaper NiTi files designed to create a Deep Shape; an enhanced disinfection concept with irrigation needles; and a dedicated obturation system supplemented by the new bioceramic sealer AH plus BS...
Since the beginning of endodontics, every decade has witnessed controversy. Currently, there is ongoing debate regarding the concept of minimally invasive endodontics (MIE) as it clinically relates to preparing any given access cavity or canal...
This transcript is made available by The Ruddle Show in an effort to share opinions and information, and as an added service. Since all show text has been transcribed by a third party, grammatical errors and/or misspellings may occur. As such, we encourage you to listen/watch the show whenever possible and use the transcript for your own general, personal information. Any reproduction of show content (visual, audio or written) is strictly forbidden.
INTRO: Drought in Santa Barbara
Welcome to The Ruddle Show. I’m Lisette and this is my dad, Cliff Ruddle. How are you doing today?
I’m doing great, but I could use a glass of water.
Okay, well he’s saying that because we’re in a drought, and a lot of California is in a drought. Last week, we mentioned that we had an exciting lightning storm, and it did rain very hard for a short period of time. But, you know, it’s not a lot of rain. We’ll take what we can get, though. Every now and then we’ve had a winter where it does rain a little bit more, but for the most part, the drought has been going on my whole life. And this is hard for Californians, especially if you’re in the agricultural business and we’ve been having more fires than ever before it seems. And we have a fire going just a little bit north of us right now and the air was very smoky yesterday.
Choking.
Yeah. So, from your perspective, how has the drought impacted Californians in general or maybe even you, specifically?
Well, we have an international audience so they should understand that California is very long, north-south. We’re very narrow east-west, I mean very narrow east-west, just you know, 200, 300 miles. Anyway, that’s the coastal plain. We get rain in the fall and in the winter, and maybe in the spring, and all those words are “maybe.” So, what that means is when we get the rain which we really need down here, we’re getting snow up in the mountains, and if we get snow up in the mountains, that’s snowpack, and that’s gold, and that melts in the spring, comes down, fills our reservoirs, and that gives us water, reliable water, because we have reservoirs north and south.
They’ve heard of some like Shasta, Hoover, these are huge damns. They were land reclamation projects that were done decades ago. So, anyway, when the reservoirs get low, then they don’t produce hydroelectric power, and we’re having warnings for brownouts. A brownout, if you’re not aware of it, means they turn off your electricity, and it’s not off all day long, but they might say from 10:00 to 8:00 it’s off, or they might give these windows where it’s off, and so you know not to do something because you’ll probably be powered down.
Yeah, I know that we’re always trying to save water, and you know, faucets, we’re running our faucets at a trickle. I know that when I see my husband washing the dishes it is so annoying because he has it just barely dripping out of the faucet. I’m like, “How can you even clean the dishes?”
Well, he’s an environmentalist.
When plumbers have come to the house, they’ve actually told me that they do have more backups than usual because people are running their faucets so low that it’s not enough water pressure to wash things down the drains very easily.
Not to mention low-flow toilets and plumbing problems.
Yeah, sometimes you’re flushing two, three, four times.
Which would have been the old toilet.
Okay. Well, I know that my water bill is higher than I wish it was, and I do water, you know, some plants, not my grass, but I know you have a lot of plants to water, so how do you and mom handle that?
You keep giving us plants to water, so that’s one of the problems. All those orchids are a huge bill. No, orchids don’t take very much water, that’s what’s great about them, just moist. Well, we have trees, and we can lose some trees – I’m losing a tree right now that makes me sick to my stomach, because some of these trees have been around for hundreds of years, and they add ambience to your property and they’re very pleasant to look at. And then we lose grass, you’ve lost a lawn, we’ve lost lawns. And you lose your flowers and vegetation, plantings.
So, it’s discouraging sometimes cause, you know, even when things get chaotic in the world, you like to look at a sunset or a sunrise and get some energy, look through a tree, pepper tree, an oak tree, and you know, those bring a lot of joy to me, especially when I’m in planes so much, so I love nature. And so, yeah, we’ve had to struggle a little bit.
Yeah, I really don’t like the smoky air, and that’s one of the indirect impacts of the drought, because it’s do dry there’s so many fires, but even if there’s not a fire, it’s just dustier. And if you have –
Like that.
– breathing issues – yeah, that it can be hard. I know that with the ground water less, the ants tend to come up looking for water, so there’s a lot of ant problems. The wildlife is coming down out of the mountains more to try to find water, into the residential areas. I actually just saw a mountain lion for my first time I’ve ever seen one.
So they’re not confused, we reported on a mountain lion experience with me. This is not the same mountain lion, I don’t think. But it was now on her case.
Yeah, it was kind of scary. It actually made me change my whole workout plan for like a week before I was brave enough to go back out.
Well, you were running in the dark.
Well hopefully that little bit of rain we had is a sign that we’re going to have a rainy winter ahead.
Yeah, it’s a good omen, but one never knows. They – the weather people never get this right, you know, whether it’s going to be a wet year or a dry year, and they start forecasting. We just need to maybe develop Desal. We’re right on the west coast. The only place between Canada and Mexico, we have a Desal plant here. We actually had it up and running.
We just need to keep it running, keep the switch on, because what we made the mistake of is when the rains did come, they mothballed it, then they shut it down, then they cannibalized the parts and sold it, and then when we wanted to fire it back up again, we lost our permitting, and as you might have mentioned when we talked, it’s very strict in California with the environmental issues, with Desal plants, cause you’ve got to get the by-products of clean the water for drinkable use. You have to get it way out, maybe a few miles, so you don’t disturb the marine life.
Yeah, well maybe that will get up and going soon. All right, well we have a great show for you today, and so let’s get started.
Stay thirsty!
SEGMENT 1: ProTaper Ultimate Q&A
All right, so as promised we going to do a Q&A on the recently launched ProTaper Ultimate Files, and I have this list of many questions, three pages of questions, that have come in from endodontic opinion leaders, so we’re going to get through as much as we can today, and probably we’ll have to do another segment this season to finish up the list. So –
And we might have to, because this is just from the endodontists internationally. Wait till the general dentists have questions.
Okay, so the first question is, “The ProTaper Ultimate improved in five ways. I know you talked about these things in the ProTaper Ultimate Special Report, but maybe you can just briefly remind us what they are.”
That takes us to the answer. Well, real quick, the first thing we want to do is make smaller bodies, so we wanted to respect minimally invasive endodontics. Less is more, so we wanted a shorter series, so we did that, reduced the file. The third thing we did was we wanted to be more available to a bigger range of anatomy. Of course, with new technology, we can always get safer. And then maybe the one that’s the most controversial, not for me, but it’s rotary first.
All right, well let’s go now into this rotary first idea. Is this the case for all canals, or are there some situations where a K file is required?
Before I answer that, I’d just like to make a clarification cause there’s already been a little confusion in the field. I guess evidently quite a few of you got pretty enamored by the special report on Ultimate, and some of you pulled out your old instruments that aren’t Ultimate and decided to go rotary first.
Well, they – look, this file is not ProGlider. It’s not Gold Glider. It’s not any other dedicated glide path file in the marketplace. This was built and specifically designed with its cross-section to be an ultimate dedicated glide path file. So, it has a different cross-section. It has different metallurgy. It’s designed to be the rotary first instrument.
Is it called the SLIDER?
We call it SLIDER, yeah, SLIDER. So, it’s confusing, Glider, ProGlider, SLIDER, so these are terms that are very clear to us, but when you’re out there in the marketplace, you’re just thinking, oh, it’s another instrument that negotiates canals; let’s use mine in that way. Not necessarily.
So, are there – so, can it always be used first?
That was her question. So, what I have always taught is lay the handpiece just like you saw – hey, listen, go back, and watch the special report. Lay that handpiece right in the webbing between your index finger and your thumb, and the other part of the file at the other end is in the tooth, so you’re just balanced. You’re not up here specifically on the nose pecking away. Don’t be a pecker; let it run passively.
So, the question was will it always go to length? The key opinion leaders, the KOLs, the endodontists around the world, we looked at their tabulations and their sheets and there was a lot of them from all over the world, and they said that 63 percent of the time they could achieve length in extracted teeth with no hand files, 63 percent of the time. Well, that’s kind of a breakthrough because if more than – well more than half the time you can use a mechanical file to get to length, that’s going to save a lot of post-op problems, you’re going to have the best slide path you’ve ever had, and it’s going to be smooth and reproducible and right out of the blocks.
So, in the other cases where they didn’t use it, did they try to use it first and then have to stop and go to a K-file or did they just right from the start say, you know what, I’m not going to start rotary first on this canal?
What we taught them to do, Lisette, as we said, just hold it like this and let it run. If it bogs down, we said pull it out, clear the blades in a sponge, and replenish the pulp chamber with the re-agent and put it right back in. Let’s just say for fun it doesn’t go. If it doesn’t go, don’t start pushing, don’t start pumping, don’t start hoping, don’t peck, don’t be a pecker.
So, then you realize do what you would have always done anyway the 37 percent of the time. That’s the reciprocal of 63 percent. So that means they would grab a 10 file typically and with a discus chelator, my preference, they would then negotiate and secure the canal and get working length. So, if it goes it goes; if it doesn’t, you’re right where you always learned to be, so it shouldn’t really throw you. Just don’t push, don’t pump, and don’t have this preconceived notion, “I’m taking this file to length no matter what.”
All right, my question was more like is there a case where you would say, you know, what? I’m not going to even try rotary first on this one?
Well, I would always try rotary first.
Okay.
Because if you hold the handpiece properly – she might be alluding to what – a deep division, like a bifidity where the file hits the septum and won’t go. Those are hard to see radiographically even with CBCT. Sometimes though, you can see on a radiograph, you can see a very discernable canal, very clearly coming off the chamber, deeper, deeper, deeper, you see it, you see it, and then it disappears in the apical third. That’s usually when the canals make two different pathways to length.
So, you wouldn’t necessarily know this by looking at a radiograph intelligently and thoughtfully, but you would let your hands and your brain tell you. She might even be alluding to what? A canal that goes down in the last two or three millimeters, makes an abrupt curve, okay? So, in really abrupt curvatures and in divisions, that’s where you might have to still use a 10-hand file.
Okay.
Thanks for making me be more specific. I was – see, you can teach this two ways, can’t you? You can teach it by the anatomy, that’s what she brought up, or you can teach it by feel, that’s what I brought up. So, you can just let the file tell you. If it doesn’t want to go, it won’t go. Don’t push it.
Okay, these next questions are all related to the SLIDER. So, the first one is can the SLIDER be pre-bent, why or why not?
Well, that’s a great question. See, probably around the world, many of you don’t know this, but Pierre Machtou, Professor Machtou, Dr. John West, and myself, we aren’t hesitating to pick up a manual Ultimate File. See a lot of people still don’t even remember that. But if you go back to the special report, you’ll see at the very end, the come manual. You don’t use them very often, but in tough cases, you can pre-curve a manual file.
So, you can take a bird beak’s orthodontic plier, as an example, and it’s M wire – M-wire is 400 percent more resistant to cyclic fatigue than non-M wire files, so there’s normal NiTi and the there’s M-wire 400 percent more resistant to cyclic fatigue. That’s one of the things we have. So, you can bend that M-wire with a tool, orthodontic bird beak’s pliers, for instance, and manually it will hold its curve pretty well.
But back to your question. If you put a curve on a rotary file, as it starts spinning through restrictive dentin up in the body of the canal, coronal middle one-third, you’ll knock the curve off the instrument, because there is some shape memory, and the instrument will arrive in the curvature pretty straight.
Okay.
So, I just said something else. If you’re enlightened out there and you want to pre-curve that file because you have difficult anatomy, pre-enlarge the canal first. Now that you have a little bit more space, it’s easier to hold the curve on the file.
All right, well I heard you mention something about M wire, but what is the metallurgy of the SLIDER?
It’s an improved M wire.
Okay.
Yeah. So, if they saw that special report, they noticed we have file specific, heat specific, heat treatment, so not all the files in the Ultimate series are made out of gold or blue wire or M wire. The metallurgy treatment was based on the file’s cross-section, its tip, its tapers, and its performance.
And that’s an improved M wire from M wire in the past?
Because even within M wire, you can find different ranges of temperature to still stay in that family before you go to say maybe blue or another complete – they turn colors, so we say these things like gold wire, blue wire, it just means as you keep elevating the temperature in the chamber, the oxide that forms around the file on the outside will have colors from pink to blue to gold, so like that.
Okay.
Yeah, there’s pink files.
The next question. The SLIDER was designed to be used in a rotary motion. Can it also be used with reciprocation?
No. Please! It’s a good question. Everybody is aware of reciprocation, and I’m a co-inventor with the team. There’s quite a team, and we were the first in the world to do an unequal bi-directional movement. So, the engaging angle was 150, the disengaging angle was 30, so all the people are trying to knock us off, they now have the angles perfectly. The net was 120, and if you do three cutting cycles, three times 120, the file is always making circles.
So, you need a file designed to stop at 150 on a dime, come back and stop on a dime, and if you do that over and over, that’s inviting cyclic fatigue and the instrument is more predisposed to break. So, instruments need to be designed specifically for the movement.
How is the SLIDER different from ProGlider? I guess this is the answer for why you can’t substitute one for the other.
Well, ProGlider, you know, dentists don’t like me to lift up the hood and look at the engine. They just want to put the keys in the ignition and drive the car. But she asked the question and it was from the KOLs. ProGlider has a [square] cross-section, so basically, if you have a [square], this would be your cross-section. So, that was ProGlider. [Text corrected here per screen note within the show]
We have a rhomboid on the SLIDER, so it’s a completely different idea. These don’t benefit from alternating offset machining. So, when you feed the stock through the machine, the stock is moved in an alternating fashion to have a centered mass of rotation, but it disengages the file, and as you saw in the show that I know you’re now going to be riveted to watch, we have two points of contact, one point, two-points, one point. Every other millimeter as you go up the active portion of the file, you have the file held nicely by two places, then just one, and two and one.
So, these are quite different designs. So, we had the metallurgy I talked about, we have the offset machine and then I mentioned the cross-section. Those are the three things that make the SLIDER different than the ProGlider.
Okay.
I just love it when the board gets filled like this. It looks like we’re doing something!
Well, this question here is sort of related to what we were talking about, but it’s just put a different way. Is it mandatory to use the SLIDER?
From now on you have to use it! I’ll be very, very disappointed if you’re not using it. No, you don’t have to use anything. In fact, if you’re a little insecure, you know, like you don’t really know if that’s the right thing to do, what could they always do? They could grab your purple 10 hand file, and in a big bath of viscous chelator which gives you the advantages of lubrication, emulsification, flotation. Those three things are superior to sodium hypochlorite. We’ve already explained this.
But when the canal is really small initially and it’s the first instrument in, you don’t really get a lot of reagent below the orifice. And so, all of a sudden what little there is your file itself is displacing that reagent. So, a viscous chelator like ProLube Glide, you know, RC Prep, they butter the file, they lubricate the file, and then you get the big three. You got a superior lubricant, you emulsify tissue so it can’t reattach vital collagenous tissue that likes to reattach itself. Now there’s no favorable pilot hole for the file to go into. And then finally, you’re creating debris, and although most of that debris is on the file, some of that debris is in the canal.
And so, it’s a forgiving medium. So, you can always just grab your 10 file with a viscous chelator and catheterize the canal and say, “Gee, Cliff’s not looking, he’ll never know I didn’t, and then I can use my SLIDER after the 10.” That’s just a level of security.
Yeah, I wonder how many people are going to come up to you and say you know, “I really love the new files. I haven’t tried the SLIDER yet” because maybe they’re thinking that that just seems really risky, like to start right off with the mechanical file. I mean I guess they might think that and it’s just maybe they just need to get used to it?
What we’re – I guess we’re going to do some Demotivators later. Maybe we’ll talk about that later. It might come up, you know, with mindsets and stuff. Look, this is not something that Pierre Machtou, Ruddle and West flipped a coin and thought that’s a sales pitch, that’s going to sell a lot of files. Pierre and I have been doing this for about 10 years, okay? And we realized it can be quite successful.
And one of the – okay, what’s the hardest thing – what’s the hardest thing would you guess a dentist doing endodontics is doing? Not surgery, not retreatment, but just first person in, you’re going into the tooth, you cut your access, what’s the hardest thing you think we do?
That I think you do?
Uh-huh.
Maybe just the access? I don’t know.
Well, that’s safe, getting in, but it’s negotiating those canals.
Oh.
Because they’re curved and they curve in more than one dimension. You know, we look at the curves mesial and distal, but we don’t see the in and out buccal facial lingual curves. So, for clinicians to achieve length each time, every time, all the time, consistently, that is the hardest thing internationally that I see after almost 50 years that dentists are struggling to do. And even your great clinicians are always trying to get better at glide path management, you know, this – everything we’re talking about today right now is glide path management.
So, you can do it with a hand file, you can do it manually, you can do it mechanically, and we’re kind of flirting, you know, this way and that way, but with new designs, new technology and actually it sounds crazy, just a little tip on how to hold your handpiece, what if you could start doing it 63 percent of the time? Now Pierre and I say you can do it about 80 percent of the time, so we just broke more instruments around the world, didn’t we, we were going to do something about elitism or something, but maybe we’ll say, you know, like maybe if they can do it I can do it, and so they’ll start pushing and we’ll have more broken instruments.
So, don’t push, don’t peck, that’s the old you. You’re going to turn your back on the old you and you’re going to be very much like a – oh, I don’t know how to draw, but, you know, what is this? Oh, that would be a feather, okay, and it will just float down to the earth; that’s the new you when you’re holding a mechanical file for the first time going in and you’re trying to achieve length.
Okay. The next question. Are the ProTaper Ultimate tips the same as the ProTaper Gold tips?
I guess they mean files, probably, don’t they? Or do they mean the very tip of the file?
I think they mean the tip of the file, because I have a note here that [they have] a modified guiding semi-active tip.
Ah, they’re talking about the tip of the file.
Okay.
Okay, so I guess – I can’t really draw, but you have – you have a file coming down getting smaller and smaller, and then in the old days these tips used to be quite pointed and, you know, they would cause incurvatures, that’s the leading edge, that’s the head of the spear, it could dig into the outer wall and you could get a ledge. If you kept working at it you might perf or you might break your instrument. So, there’s been quite a bit of interest in the tip of the file.
The first rake angle, what we call D0, the diameter at the end of the file, like if we’re talking SLIDER, as an example, it’s 0.16 millimeters, so that’s to right here. Nobody ever talks about this. A lot of people think that’s D0, but this is very, very small. It’s not 1,600ths. This is coming almost to a point. Well, that’s a dangerous tip. So, many years ago the engineers were smarter than us, and they started recommending different tip shapes and different configurations.
And right now we have – it’s not nearly as simple, but right now we have done that, and then if we do a blowup of that, so we’ve taken a point and we’ve taken that, and then we’ve had to make – it used to be like a tough transition angle, that’s called – there was an actually IP patent on the transition angle, but it expired so you can now round this in and you can round this in, and then you can round that and you can round that, so we call that a modified guiding tip.
So, it doesn’t cut, but it’s called semi-active because this would be – the point would be completely active. If you just made it blunt, it’s just going to grind tissue; it’s not going to get it up on the flutes where it can auger it up and out of the canal. So, a semi-active tip is the tip we found to be very successful.
And that’s the same for ProTaper Gold and ProTaper Ultimate, the same?
They’re a little different, but we can think of them the same.
Okay.
Maybe like twins. More or less the same people, but a little different.
Okay, and we’re just going to finish with this last question. Are the speed and torque settings the same for all ProTaper Ultimate files?
Oh good, you’re going to get us out almost on time.
Okay.
So, for Ultimate, that’s what we’re talking here, it’s just like ProTaper Gold. You’re going to work at 400 rpm and you’re going to use a torque of approximately 5 Newton centimeters. If you have a motor and it only goes to 4.5 or 4.8, I’ll look the other way, you’re okay, but these were validated through the engineers and through extensive testing over two years at – actually they were validated at 5.2 Newton centimeters.
But many dentists don’t have that kind of a motor, so if you’re at 4.8 or 4.7 you’re fine, but we’re really suggesting a good torque, because Ultimate is not a fixed tapered file. Ultimate always cuts with its bigger, stronger, and more efficient blades. And to turn those bigger, stronger, and more efficient blades, you need torque.
The reason I wanted to ask this question here is because I think that there’s a perception that if you want to be safer, maybe put the torque down, you know, and that’s actually not safer. And –
There’s more drag on the instrument. That’s a great – listen, this is a non-dentist dentist, because our work together she – I never told her that or look, look, if you got, if you want to turn the torque down, good luck trying to cut.
Yeah, it kind of – I think that people think it’s going to be safer. The same thing with the SLIDER. I think your instinct tells you well isn’t it safer to not go mechanical to start, you know, and maybe it’s actually better to use the SLIDER then in certain situations. So, I think that, you know, some of these challenges are basically our instinct for what we feel is safer with this new information.
Let me close with one thing. Do this yourself and make your own personal self-discovery. I’m always with extracted teeth. It’s just then as a teacher around the world you’re always working extracted teeth. In my histolab in Santa Barbara, working extracted teeth. You can take almost any extracted tooth on the planet, grab a 15-hand file, flip the tooth over, cheat, and stick a 15 in the foramen. Try it.
Well now you realize the file is not binding at its length. These canals are almost always 10 to 15 hundredths before man or woman’s ever entered the pulp chamber or in the canal. So, my point is where’s the file binding? Up in the body. That’s what SLIDER does. It takes care of restrictive dentin in the coronal, in the middle one-third, and it’s just doing a little job of following to length.
Okay, great. Well, we’ll finish up these questions on a show this season, later in the season, so coming soon.
Thank you.
SEGMENT 2: Flying Kites
All right, so we’re out here now at Santa Barbara City College because we thought we would take our own advice today and get out of the studio, and we’re with our families and we’re going to have some fun. To commemorate the launch of ProTaper Ultimate on September 1, and our show is about launching dreams, we’re out here today cause we’re going to launch a kite. We’re going to fly a kite up in the sky. When’s the last time you flew a kite, Dad?
Maybe, well I don’t want to remember, it’s a long time ago, but it with the shooter right here, that’s my grandson, Isaac, and he was a little guy and we were at the mission and we had quite a kite lesson that day.
I think that was about 20 years ago.
Yeah, we got the kite out there – was it thousands of feet, Isaac, or was it thousands of yards?
At least.
Well, the reason we chose Santa Barbara City College is cause it’s right near the ocean, so we thought we might have a better chance of having a good breeze here because the air feels very still, and I actually kind of envisioned this whole segment as like a fall blustery, windy day, but it’s actually like in the 80s today, so it’s very warm, and we have fires burning to the north so it’s fortunately not smoky here. I was a little worried about that.
Looks like we could even catch a little football down there tonight if we wanted to. There’s a game, you know.
For City College?
There might be. They play today.
Well, if you just pan around, Isaac, you can see that City College is like a beautiful campus. It’s actually known to be one of the best city colleges in the nation in terms of academics, but if you just look at the location it’s also probably in the top couple as far as locations go.
Oh, it’s got to be.
Both my kids went here.
This college has always been nationally in the top five academically, so to your point, it’s not a bad place to go. I’m thinking about enrolling.
If I can spend time here, that seems like a good place. So, whoa, there’s a lot of moss flying around. Do you want to try this?
I think we should try to see if we can – well, you know, what they say about the rocket?
Oh, what do they say?
They say a rocket spends 80 percent of its energy in the first 12 inches of lift, so we’re going to have to run like maybe almost Olympic speed down that hill cause the breezes are very gentle. In fact, Isaac probably doesn’t see anything moving.
Well, that rocket thing you just talked about is very similar to launching a product, because all of the meetings you had and the testing of the prototypes and I mean just a lot of work went into the project before the launch.
Yeah, there were really long hours.
80 percent I think.
Yeah, 80 percent, and there was more than two years, and there was a huge team of like 60 people, so yeah, it didn’t happen by accident. There was a lot of hustle.
Yeah, I did see something, I read something, that it was on what’s the toughest challenge for launching a product, and I guess most people said that they did not ever feel 100 percent ready. And then someone else said well, if you ever feel 100 percent ready to launch your product it’s too late. So, I don’t know if I’m 100 percent ready to launch this kite, but we’ll try it.
Yeah, they usually cut us off on that. They usually say you’re now done with your thinking, and you’re now done with your field testing and you’re now done with everything, we’re going to market, because you guys would never be quite ready for the perfect file.
Okay, so you –
There’s no such thing as perfect, right, there’s just excellence.
Yeah, and then sometimes not.
Well Vince Lombardi, the old football coach, said, “You never reach perfection, it’s impossible, but you hope to catch excellence.”
Well, that’s what we hope to happen, we hope to capture excellence when we launch this kite so –
Now well Isaac and Lori, please start breathing and blowing. We need a lot of wind now to get this launch.
Okay, let’s do this. We’re going to do it now.
We’ll see if we can launch a dream.
[music and kite prep video playing]
[repeated kite launch attempts and music playing]
[successful launch]
When I was a kid, I remember when we were at the beach. I remember that you could get the kite so high that I could barely see it in the sky, and you would just prop up that string with the rock on it and just leave it, so and it would just be flying all by itself.
Did we have wind that day?
We always had a lot of wind at the beach.
Yeah.
So, we did get it off the ground.
Well as I said, a rocket expends 80 percent of its energy in the first 12 inches of lift. Did we get higher than 12 inches?
Yes.
Well then, we have the 20 percent to get it to full altitude and bring it in. Then our dream will come true.
So, there’s still more work to be done. We got it off the ground.
Yeah.
But we didn’t get it to the point where we can just like watch it.
We’re not into orbit yet; we’re still ascending. We’re on a trajectory towards greater success.
Okay, well I did look up actually some like what kite flying symbolizes, and it symbolizes like hope and freedom and actually even violence, because kite fighting used to be – is a sport in China, and they actually fly kites and you try to – with your string you try to cut the other string, so it is associated a little bit with violence as well. But hope and freedom is good!
Okay. Well maybe if we came down here 10 times, nine times, we’d fly it – how much string do you have? 1,000 feet?
Yeah, I think it’s 500 maybe.
500 feet? Okay, we only got out maybe 30 or 40 feet, but as I said, we got to keep working.
Yes.
You always got to put a little effort back into your projects to keep them at altitude. Otherwise, they come down like a kite with no wind.
I also saw, too, that if you – if your kite gets away from you and you have to go find it, then to bring it back home if you find it, that’s a symbol of honor.
Oh, well we’re bringing out kites home, that’s good, very good.
Well nice family outing, huh?
It was a lot of fun. I didn’t – haven’t seen your daughter for awhile, so that was great, and then Sophie’s off in college, she’s here, and Adam, the pro tennis player, he actually got the kite up higher than any of us. So, he helped us launch our launch dream.
Okay, well that’s our segment for today. We’ll see you back in the studio.
CLOSE: Demotivators
Okay, so we’re going to close our show with another round of Demotivators because we find your dry humor and sarcasm very uplifting. So, they’re in this box, and there are these cards that I gave my dad a long time ago, and they have like something that’s a title, and then below it, a little saying, and they’re kind of funny. You’ll see what they’re like. So, this is the first one we’re going to do. It’s called Dare to Slack, and it says, “When birds fly in the right formation, they need only exert half the effort. Even in nature teamwork results in collective laziness.”
Well okay, I’m going to reverse it, how it meant to me. I actually didn’t think it was lazy. I was thinking of NASCAR, and in NASCAR you always draft in the wake because you save fuel, and so when the guy out in front burns up all his fuel and has to pit you like zoom right by him. So, that was one idea I saw about it, not being lazy, being smart. And I was thinking about birds, they’re pretty smart, so probably when they’re flying in that wedge in that formation, they’re saving energy. They’re thinking marathon, they’re not thinking sprint. They’re thinking the long flight.
You know, I actually thought the same as you when I first read this. I actually thought of like a Peloton in cycling, and how they draft behind the riders to try to save energy, like it’s supposedly more efficient.
Yeah.
But I guess if you think of like a team at the office, like we all have certain duties, and if you’re like well, I’ve done my part and even though I’m all done with my part, I’m just going to not venture out and help with other parts because I’m just going to only stick to my little part, and so that, I guess, could be kind of lazy.
Should I put people on the spot?
Go ahead.
Well, there’s big organizations in dentistry, big companies, R&D, and stuff like that that retain thousands and thousands of people internationally. How many people in our organization?
Five.
Okay. Well sometimes I wonder if nobody is breaking the wind for any one of us, because we have more to do. When you’re a big team, you know, oh, no, this is your job, you do it, and okay, now I’m free, delegate a lot. When there is very few people, it’s hard to delegate. So, you have to kind of do a little bit of everything.
Yeah. Okay, well there’s that one. Okay, the next one is Elitism. It looks like this. And it says, “It’s lonely at the top, but it’s comforting to look down upon everyone at the bottom.”
Well I again, didn’t quite, you know, elitism is not a good thing, and it could be money, power, fame, all these things, and we don’t like it in those areas, but what if you were an astronaut, you know, you’re up there above everybody, but it’s comforting to look down at the people at the bottom because if it’s Houston, what’s it called, Control Houston Control?
Something like that.
Anyway, you’re glad to have those people down there on the earth, because they’re keeping you on your flight, they’re keeping all the technology going.
Yeah, I actually was a little tripped up by this one because elite, if you say something is elite, like I hear every day them talking about it’s so and so, an elite quarterback in the NFL, and they mean it in a good way there.
Yeah.
But then this seems like elitism with the “ism” on the end seems like a negative thing, so I’m just really like stuck on the whole perspective of it.
Well maybe we should tell them, too, look up proletarianism and then maybe they would understand elitism better.
Yeah, no, I think it kind of like reminds me of a word like “anxious” has a negative meaning, but “excited” has a positive meaning. So, I think it’s just kind of like maybe a test in perspective.
Yeah, we can go back to corporate America, but there have been general managers that you might say that card if kind of perfect for, from yesteryear, not currently, and oftentimes calls are made and decisions are made that really aren’t helping the people on the ground.
Right, okay, that’s a good point. All right, the last one we’re going to do for today is insanity. And it says, “It’s difficult to comprehend how insane some people can be, especially when you’re insane.”
Me first or you first?
You first.
Well, I don’t want to out myself, but when I was growing up, I did a lot of things that I shouldn’t be sitting her at the desk even on this show right now, so when I was younger, I can just mention cars and speed. I can mention one time in Sacramento there was a big trestle that went across the Sacramento River, and there was some guys that jumped off that trestle into the water, so I had to measure myself because it was overcoming fear and doing – but they did it, so they lived, so anyway I’ve done some stuff that probably looking back is crazy.
Or just maybe very creative.
I don’t know about that.
I think that this kind of reminds me of creativity and just having lofty goals, you know, like people would look at you and say, “You’re insane.” But then, you know, what is that, how that impossible thing means like I’m possible, like what you think might be impossible for someone is very possible for them, so you might think they’re insane, but then when they achieve it, then who’s the crazy one? I don’t know.
Well, that happens in R&D all the time actually, you get into big battles with engineers and marketing people and stuff. I even heard the words, “That’s insane.” But then in sports when someone hits a home run, that’s insane.
Yeah, and I think this was actually a good one that kind of sums up our whole show for today, because we talked about launching your dream and maybe people might think that you’re just completely crazy, but they’re your dreams, go for it. I mean what’s worse? Like trying to reach your lofty goals and failing or just never even trying?
Well, if you never try, you never lose. Except if you never tried.
And you could die knowing that you were perfectly sane.
Yep.
Okay, well that’s our show for today. I hope you enjoyed it, and see you next time on The Ruddle Show.
END
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