51. Sam Jackman - co-founder of Boost Innovations

Hey, it’s great to be back! 🍋🍋🍋

So, for all those who enjoy the ‘Wild Card - Whose Shoes?’ podcast, welcome to Season 2!  

It has been lovely to hear from so many of you, saying that you are missing the podcast and asking when it is coming back. Well, here it is! 

At the beginning of last year, 2023, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And not for the first time.  

Being quite a private person, but also quite out there, in terms of Whose Shoes events, social media, hosting a podcast and so on, I found it hard to know how to handle that. As you may imagine.  

I was trying to manage my illness and treatment alongside deadlines from my ‘real’ work, so when I reached episode 50 I decided that made a very neat if rather long, Season 1!  

But I have been raring to go with Season 2 and wondered how best to re-launch.

I found the perfect podcast guest – and today is the perfect day to post our conversation – 4 February 2024, World Cancer Day!

Sam Jackman is an inspirational woman - a multi-award winning entrepreneur and a disruptor. Sam offers a breath of fresh air (literally!) to women who have had a mastectomy due to breast cancer. She is rocking the world of conventional prostheses through her innovative Boost products. 

Boost products are 100% inspired and designed by women for women.
We need to make sure that women hear about them! 

It is an extraordinary story 

• the lived experience of Sam’s Mum
•  finding a huge gap in the market - and doing something about it!
• courageous entrepreneurship
• rocking the world of conventional solutions
• putting women first

And all from the deepest reaches of rural Cornwall.

Sam is highly entertaining. We are joined briefly by Blue, Sam’s emotional therapy dog!

It is a story with a difference, making a difference and I am very proud to support ‘We Wear Boost’ innovations, who have made a BIG difference to me personally. Thank you, Sam!

Key link
Breast Forms | Lightweight Breast Forms UK | We Wear Boost
Daughter creates design after mum's mastectomy - BBC News

Lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋

• If you want something amazing to happen, you may have to do it yourself!
• Don't listen to the naysayers
• We need to bridge the 'us and them' divide  between clinicians and patients
• Co-design with the people using the product will NOT fail
• Be inspired. Achieving this from Cornwall was NOT easy!
• Men in suits are not the experts on breast forms and nipples! ;-)

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Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.

Chapters

• 0:00 ‘Wild Card - Whose Shoes’ is back. Where have we been? 💜
• 4:03 Welcome, Sam Jackman. Entrepreneuse extraordinaire!
• 4:20 Mum was the inspiration. Her prosthesis was uncomfortable, heavy, horrible. Surely we could do something better?
• 5:00 Breakthrough. Why did it have to look like a breast? It could be anything! Boost was born!
• 7:24 Reimagining, what a breast form needs to be. What is Boost? Sam explains
• 9:00 Funding challenges! “No one will buy it!” and “Where’s the nipple?“ say the men in grey suits!
• 12:16 User design brings a whole new experience. You don’t need a giant nipple!!
• 14:42 It’s a man’s world. The history of the prosthesis…
• 15:32 Society needs to move on! Like it has done with other parts of the body – e.g. a leg prosthesis
• 16:32 To pocket or not to pocket. That is the question. Removing barriers!
• 17:50 A paradigm shift. Promoting wellbeing, not stereotypes. Be proud of your breast cancer journey, don’t try and normalise everything and reinforce stigma
• 19:06 Empowering women to go beyond the standard, NHS beige prosthesis. Offering choice!
• 21:33 We all love purple! 💥
• 22:35 Getting on with life with minimum fuss!
• 23:23 Filling a yawning gap in the market
• 24:00 ‘Us and them’. The women love Boost! The clinicians have never heard of it – and do they want to?
• 26:38 It’s hard for the NHS to be innovative
• 27:56 Let’s hope this podcast can make some waves – please share it!
• 29:20 Women deserve to know what is available? One size does not fit at all! Literally, in this instance!
• 33:13 Gill and Sam meet in Exeter. Boost starting to get High Street recognition.
• 37:33 Woman’s hour! Deborah Meaden! The endorsements are getting stronger
• 38:19 Pop it out and pass it round. Peer support. Gill gets brave!!
• 39:17 Increased openness decreases stigma and improves breast cancer outcomes
• 39:53 Meet Blue, the emotional therapy dog
• 41:25 And this is all happening … in Cornwall
• 42:45 Local and ethical; minimising waste
• 43:51 Scaling up – with a difference
• 45:55 The traditional silicon gel breast forms end up in landfill
• 46:56 Wonderful people making a difference, reducing stigma, including in Indian communities. Well done! World Cancer Day!
• 48:39 Please spread the word! Reduce stigma! Encourage people to come forward for their screening
• 50:10 You can follow Boost on Instagram and Facebook! @WeWearBoost.

Transcript

Gill Phillips  00:11
My name is Gill Phillips and I'm the creator of Whose Shoes, a popular approach to co- production. I was named as an HSJ 100 Wild Card, and wanted to help give a voice to others, talking about their experiences and ideas. I love chatting with people from all sorts of different perspectives, walking in their shoes. If you are interested in the future of health care, and like to hear what other people think, or perhaps even contribute at some point, 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes?' is for you. 

 Hey, it’s great to be back!

So, for all those who enjoy the Wild Card - Whose Shoes podcast, welcome to Season 2! 

It has been lovely to hear from so many of you, saying that you are missing the podcast and asking when it is coming back. Well, here it is! 

At the beginning of last year, 2023, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And not for the first time. 

Being quite a private person, but also quite out there, in terms of Whose Shoes events, social media, hosting a podcast and so on, I found it hard to know how to handle that. As you may imagine. 

Anyway, although I carried on and produced several more episodes of the podcast last year, I was trying to manage my illness and treatment alongside deadlines from my ‘real’ work, which I love, so when I reached episode 50 I decided that made a very neat if rather long, Season 1! 

I haven’t talked much about cancer on the podcast. Of course, I have had wonderful conversations with Lesley Goodburn and Yvonne Newbold. But I haven’t talked much about breast cancer and certainly not about my experience of it. 

As you can imagine, my personal experience of cancer over the years and indeed of life, of supporting various friends and family members, through all sorts of different health crises and conditions, and all the stuff that happens inevitably as you get older, has very much shaped my Whose Shoes work, and this latest round is no different. 

But my podcast is generally not about me – I tend to thread relevant bits of my work and personal story through the conversations as we go. 

I love hosting the podcast. I have missed it. And I hope you have too.

My podcast is about celebrating extraordinary people doing extraordinary work to improve the lives of others. Focusing on the human side of health and care rather than just the medical. I like to mix it up rather than have a set plan and just talk to amazing people that I meet and want to showcase along the way. 

So, to relaunch my podcast, my guest today is perfect. 

I’m delighted to introduce Sam Jackman, an inspirational woman, who is helping so many women who have had a mastectomy due to breast cancer. She is rocking the world of conventional prostheses / breast forms or whatever you like to call them, through her innovative Boost products. 

More of that anon …

It is an extraordinary story, which I will leave Sam to tell for herself, but I can certainly say that she has made an enormous difference to me personally. I have been thrilled to meet Sam and have pledged to do what I can to help take the world by storm with her imaginative innovation; which is 100% inspired by women for women. 

We are publishing the podcast today, the 4th of February 2024, because it is World Cancer Day, and we hope that is going to help make some extra ripples! 

So welcome, Sam. I’m delighted to have you on the podcast and as my very first guest for Season 2. 

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your extraordinary journey?

 Sam Jackman  04:15
Hi, Gill. It's amazing to be here. Thank you for having me. And so I'm Sam and my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was around 17 years ago now. And she was given a traditional breast prosthesis that she found was hot and heavy and sweaty and uncomfortable to wear. And she really didn't like it at all. She didn't get on with it. And she struggled on with that prosthesis for quite a long time but would quite often tell me about the issues that she had with wearing it. And I started to think about that and think really that perhaps it was just my mum that she just had problems wearing it because she felt like it was uncomfortable. And then one day she said to me, Well, why does it even have to look like this, I'm fed up with tit, it's too heavy, is too horrible, and I just don't want to wear it; it reminds me every day of the breast I've lost. And I don't even understand why it has to look like that. And it was that comment, rather than all the others that really got to me. And I started thinking about that, and I have a bit of a creative brain anyway. 

And that's where the idea of Boost came from. So it wasn't really from me, it was from my mum. And then it turned out that there were lots of women out there who were wearing traditional breast prostheses, who felt the same way that my mum did, they didn't like how they looked, they didn't like how their breast prosthesis felt when they were wearing it, they felt like it was an ... Well, it is a medical device, but they didn't necessarily need that, what they needed was something that would go into their clothing, to give them some shape, and some contour, but not necessarily a fleshy thing that was designed to replace the breasts they've lost to something to give them some shape. And so that's kind of where Boost came from. The product that my mum wanted, wasn't available, nobody had made, it wasn't on the market. And I soon realised that if she wanted that thing, if other women wanted that thing, then perhaps we'd have to make it ourselves. And that's what we did.

 Gill Phillips  06:22
And I love the idea of just having an idea. And I think my theory is that everybody probably at some point in their life has an incredible idea. And it's perhaps mentioned at dinner or you know, it just fleetingly goes through your head, and then it's gone. And probably there's all this potential out there. But to actually take that idea and do something with it. And it must have been really difficult - I know as a female entrepreneur/ entrepreneuse, if you like, how hard journeys can be. 

But hey, I invented a board game people have done that before, and perhaps the actual nature of what I've done has been innovative. I'm sure it has, I hope it has. But to do something so different. I can just ... my mind goes crazy, really with the kind of risks of that with the design, the testing production, the manufacture. So how did you do it? Perhaps it would help people people listening to what is it we're talking about.

 Sam Jackman  07:24
So  yeah, so the the Boost breast form is a redesigned and reimagined take on what a breast prosthesis could be. So it is open structured, it is bright and colourful, it doesn't come in skin colours, it comes in feel good colours,  that helps you to match your breast form to your style and to your to your underwear, not necessarily your skin colour, because we're not replacing the breast you've lost, what we're doing is giving you a shape or product to help you feel more comfortable and confident under your clothing. So it is an open structure product, which means it's got holes in essentially, it's got a pattern that has gaps within it. And that pattern. And those gaps, not only make it look really pretty, but they give it some functionality. So they take some of the weight off, they make it squidge in nice soft, squidgy ways, they help us to give it a bit of weighting at the bottom so you get a bit of a natural wobble when you're moving and it moves with your body. 

But it also means that it solves some of those big problems that it was hot, heavy, sweaty, uncomfortable to wear, because you have air circulating through, it is a lot cooler, a lot lighter. And it's not replacing the boob you lost because it doesn't look like a boob. It's not a fleshy thing that goes in your bra; it's something quite radically different. But yeah, because it was so different. It was really difficult to find the funding and the support to move that forward. I mean, in the early stages, I can remember going into investment meetings where you walked into a room of maybe like 12 men in grey suits around the table. And we we didn't even have a prototype. We didn't have ... we had maybe a couple of drawings, but we didn't have anything to show them. 

 Gill Phillips  09:11
Yes. 

 Sam Jackman  09:12
And what we were saying is we're going to make this this breast form. And they were saying things like "Well, where's the nipple? Where's the nipple?" And "it doesn't like a breast. Why don't you make it in fleshy coloured?" and then you say to people "Well, what is skin colour?" And then they go "Oh, yeah, everyone's skin colour is different!" Yes, exactly. So why do we keep doing this? Why do we keep trying to replicate the same design concepts? We don't need to, we need something radically different. And I think that it was really disheartening at the beginning because they just didn't get it like there's no nipple, it doesn't look like a boob, you know? And it was really, really hard, so I just worked to be honest, I just worked my ass off.  If I'm allowed to say that

 Gill Phillips  10:01
You are!

 Sam Jackman  10:01
Thank you. I just worked really hard. I took on extra contracts and extra work to kind of make it happen. Because we, we wanted to get patents, we knew it was going to be ... the more people were saying, "Oh, no, nobody will want that", the more we were going, "Yeah, but they do. These women that we've worked with!". We worked with 160 women in Devon and Cornwall on a co-design process, on feedback, on testing on, you know, what do you want this product to be? And they were all like saying very similar things. And we developed the product with four women who've had breast cancer. And we knew that that's what they wanted, despite what all the finance people said, "Oh, nobody will buy it". We were like, "yeah, they will, because they co designed it with us". Yes. And it was just having that knowledge. But also having my mum there ... like my mum, at points, you know, where you feel like you want to give up, I couldn't give up because I saw my mum every day, she was helping me out with the childcare and doing a lot of stuff for me to support me when I was at work. So actually seeing my mum every day, my mum's going, "How are you getting on with this? You need to make this happen, because nobody's going to do it if you're not doing it". And I think that, that meant that I never, I never had the option to quit, I never had the option to drop it. Because every day my mum was going "Come on, get on with it, get on with it, we're all waiting for this thing to happen". And so  that's how it worked, I just worked harder, I tried to earn some more money, I sell finance, a little bit towards the patent costs and some of those other things that you have to do at the beginning. And then we got a little bit of grant funding here and there. And that's what really launched it. And it was only... just getting on to three? two and a half? three years ago? that we actually finally got investment. And we've been going for five and a half years now. So it was a couple of years in before anybody really realised that they believed in it enough to give us a little bit of money to try and, and make it bigger. 

Gill Phillips  12:16
Wow, it's just such an amazing story. Sam, I love it in so many ways, I love the ... you know, you can just picture it ... the men in suits, not 'getting it', and the assumptions that are made about what it should be. And, you know, I won't get into all the things that might lie behind that! But you know, not necessarily thinking like a woman who's actually got to wear it and get on with her life and you know, feel good and not have the heaviness and the sweatiness and all the things I can relate to, the innovation and how hard it is in terms of I've got a cartoon that I use quite a lot that "This is a great idea. But I'm sorry, we can't do it because it hasn't been done before", you know, and that loop that you go around. I love the "it hasn't got a nipple". And if I could just mention, I mean, I think M&S have been brilliant in terms of having a fitting service for bras generally, but a focus on surgical / post -surgery bras and products that help women, you know, to actually get a properly fitted bra nad a sympathetic fitting, and so on. So I, in the early days, and I mean, obviously post surgery, you've got to be careful what you use, and you know, against your skin and so on. And I got one of their 'softies'. And it was really good apart from ... this giant nipple!!

 Sam Jackman  13:41
I've got one. I've got one right here in my hands! I've actually got one. Can you see that on the camera?  

Gill Phillips  13:47
Yes, I can! (laughing) Yeah! 

Sam Jackman  13:49
So I keep I keep these actually in the office to just explain to people because you're right. It's, it's just they, yeah ... it's a bit large.

 Gill Phillips  13:59
It's large. And you know, the big assumption then that you kind of want your nipples showing and that it would match the other one that you've got, and you end up with one, you know, the one on the prosthesis, if you go swimming or something. So yeah, it's just amazing. And I think anything that you're saying, like who would buy it? Well, actually the people who helped design it. And that sort of runs through my work really, that if you work with the people, you won't go far wrong because people with lived experience of whatever it is, will know what works for them and what doesn't, rather than just sitting around the table and designing something in in a kind of ivory tower kind of way. I love it!!

 Sam Jackman  14:42
Or from a man's perspective kind of way. So we trace back as part of our research, we looked at the history of the breast prosthesis, and quite a lot of design assumptions were made in the 1960s when life was very different, women's lifestyles were very different. And what a prosthesis was, and how it started, though, is very similar to a lot of products, how they still are today. And I think what we are thinking of is like, really? Why hasn't this been looked at when women's lifestyles and needs are so much different when we are used to seeing things in society like an external limb prosthesis that if you have a lower leg removed, you don't necessarily get given a beige, fleshy leg? 

 Gill Phillips  15:32
Yes!

 Sam Jackman  15:32
Because if you are a runner,  then you might get a running blade, you wear the right leg for the job, whether it looks like a leg or not, because society has moved on, we're accepting that people have had health conditions that people's bodies are different and we embrace that. But why with the breast was it so different? So hard to do the same design principles? You know, why was it so hard? Why was it so taboo, and basically, it's just because it's a breast. Like we're just weird about them. And we wanted to challenge that we just wanted to make people think a bit more about why we were sacrificing maybe comfort, why we were sacrificing access to exercise. And and all of those things just for the sake of it being a bit more fleshy or a bit more 'breast like', ... Wait, when did we decide that that was the design priority, and then we've been able to work with women to say exactly that, and then to redesign it.

 Gill Phillips  16:32
Yeah. And I think the convenience as well, you know, without going into too much of the kind of mechanics, the fact that with a conventional prosthesis, you've, as far as I know, definitely got to where a kind of pocketed bra, it's a special bra. And you've got the faff of putting it in and out and in the right position. And I find that the Boost is just so easy to just pop into in an ordinary bra. Unless I'm doing extreme ... I don't know what I might be doing extreme. What might have been doing extreme, Sam? Mountain climbing? 

 Gill Phillips  17:02
 Pilates or something I might, you know, take a bit more care, and so on. Like just day to day, it's just so easy. Another thing I like is the "It doesn't look like a breast", it seems to me that that's been like a wonderful example of something that's equally a barrier. "It doesn't look like a breast, we're not going to fund this, we know you will be so completely on the wrong track from the beginning of your journey". And the fact that that was actually the breakthrough that everybody else is looking to replicate the natural breast in the most convincing way possible. And you just jumped outside and did something so different. And that was your actual breakthrough for the innovation.

 Sam Jackman  17:03
Jogging?

 Sam Jackman  17:50
Yeah, I mean, because that in turn made the the way that we were able to deal with the functionality issues, it just opened up loads of different design options. Because if you're thinking "Well, it doesn't have to be a breast. Like the running blade doesn't have to be a leg, it just has to function to support your body to do a certain thing". And in this case, that's what we're looking at. But we were also thinking about women's health and wellbeing and the way that we could maybe create a paradigm shift about the way that people felt about the product, not just how it worked for them, but also their confidence and wellbeing actually being a breast form wearer. Because I think that is also something that's not talked about when we talk a lot about practicalities of things sometimes, but not actually about feelings. How do people actually feel about it?

 And one of the things that we found is that we were over the moon the first time when somebody actually bought one as a gift for their friend, like you would never, it's not appropriate, to buy one of the normal market prostheses as a gift for somebody. It would be really odd to, if you did that it would be weird, but our Boosts are something that it giftable like they're desirable, they're kind of funky. They're kind of a nice thing to say that I'm supporting you after your breast cancer journey. And the first time we were asked to gift wrap one, I was just like over the moon because it just proved that we'd changed something. Do you know what I mean? That we'd changed that paradigm of what the breast form would be and it's the same with ... we made one, a special one for somebody's wedding and it was sewn into her wedding dress you know, like it was on show in her wedding dress through some sheer lace like it was there, she wasn't hiding the fact that she only had one breast ...

 Gill Phillips  19:39
Wow!

 Sam Jackman  19:40
She was embracing it you know, like those types of different ways of looking at things, where women go out in their bikinis on holiday, and their Boost is showing a little bit perhaps under there, but they're proud of it because they have been through a breast cancer journey, their body is how it is, and they embrace that, rather than trying to hide or be normalised themselves. So it was about a conversation, it was about a challenge to the stereotype of what women's bodies are and how women are beautiful, we wanted to look at that, we wanted people to feel differently, that we wanted people to feel more empowered when they put on a Boost breast form, rather than to feel like they didn't have a choice, they were issued a beige, one from the NHS, and that's what they had to wear, we wanted to give them a choice. 

So all the colours, all the different designs, we've got a new design that we're hoping to come out in the next couple of months, that those those options hopefully give people a bit more choice. And we have found that quite often our customers do return to us, and they buy a second boost in a different colour, so that they have a little collection of them for the different underwear they wear or the different things that they do. Like this is the one I wear for yoga, because it matches my yoga outfit and this and the one that matches my swimming costume. And you know, that kind of thing. And that just ...  that is just lovely. We love that, we love that so much. 

 Gill Phillips  21:09
And it's brilliant because I have gifted one to a friend. And I felt very proud to do that. And I've also just come back and bought a black one. And at the beginning, I thought why would I want a black one? Why would I want a coloured one? I'd started off with just a white one. But actually, I realised I wear a lot of black underwear. And if it does poke out and I don't want it to, it just bl  ends.

 Sam Jackman  21:09
It's more subtle. Yeah, exactly. 

Gill Phillips  21:10
It's more more subtle. That's the word I'm looking for. Yeah.

Sam Jackman  21:33
So yeah, more subtle, and it doesn't matter - and back to that assumption again - it doesn't matter if you're a woman of colour, if you're a black woman, you could wear the black Boost if you wanted to. Because there's not ... it's not about your skin colour. It's more about what you're wearing it with and how you feel about your sense of style. One of our favourite colours in the office, one of our favourite colours is the purple, the deep purple colour that we sell. 

 Gill Phillips  22:04
Oh, and I wasn't able to get that one, I think that was out of stock.

 Sam Jackman  22:07
I'm sorry, Gill. We'll have to find you one. But yeah, those kinds of colours, they're just really saying to the world, I'm wearing a breast form in my favourite colour, because it's my choice. That's the choice I'm making. I've chosen this colour because I like this colour. And I think that there's something really empowering about that, rather than society tells me I should have two breasts, so I'm having to wear this gel prosthesis.

 Gill Phillips  22:35
You know, it's so in tune with my work with Whose Shoes it really is in terms of: everybody's an individual - and to find things that suit individuals. And I think just hearing you talk ... fabulous, the woman who got married, the story that you told there, and I've learned about tattoos ... mastectomy tattoos, all sorts of things that exist, that wouldn't be for me, but they would be for somebody, and this is the thing. you can find the bits ... I mean, perhaps the Boost wouldn't be for somebody, you know, it's so individual, isn't it, to find the things that actually make you feel as good as you can. And to get on with your life, which is where I'm coming from, you know, quality of life, minimum fuss with things and to be able to get on and do the stuff that you love doing.

 Sam Jackman  23:23
It's just about choice. It's just about choice. Before we came along, there was a big gap between the traditional prosthesis and the more ... , the lightest softies or the knitted knockers and those types of thing. And there just wasn't, even just in terms of the continuity of products, there just wasn't enough that was more in the middle. So it had a little bit of weight, but not too much weight, and all those kinds of things. So not just the practicalities of how people view it. But even just in the continuum of products available, there just wasn't enough choice in that middle ground. And that's what we were addressing as well.

 Gill Phillips  24:00
Yeah. So you are properly disruptive. And again, that's what I love. You've come along with something that's different. That's challenging. And I saw, Sam that you were at the conference, the breast cancer conference  in Birmingham, I remember tweeting you at that very recently, because I loved  it, that you've got ... I can see the kind of 'us and them'. You've got the health care professionals, you've got the people who know everything medical about breast cancer in the world. And I can imagine how hard it must be to be at an event like that and say, you know, "This is what we're doing". And you see the women and they give you a hug, because it's the real deal.

 Sam Jackman  24:44
Yeah, we just don't We don't speak the language. We haven't come at this from a medical perspective. We've come at it from a grassroots perspective, from the perspective of the women who are wearing the product, and we haven't come at it from the point of view of the medical profession and I don't ... like I said, I don't speak the language of the medical profession. So it's been really hard to engage with the medical profession and get them to understand a little bit more about what we're doing and why we're doing it. So, to go to the conference to present some of our research there was really, it's such an amazing thing to happen. But I did, I did spend the first day feeling really sad, I thought, I've talked to all these people, and nobody's heard of Boost. And we've been going for over five years now. Nobody knows we exist. 

And then the Patient Advocate Group came into the hall, and then they came over; "Boost is here, Boost is here"; they give me a big hug, you know. And that's the kind of response that we had from that grassroots level. The women knew we existed, the clinicians might not, but they do now. And so you know, we were getting that kind of rollout. So it was such an amazing feeling to understand that although I'd been so disappointed that clinicians and NHS leaders and people I was meeting, they hadn't really heard of it before. But when those Patient Advocate Group, they came into the hall, and to say, oh look, "Boost is here, Boost is here"; this is a company I've just been telling you about. And this woman came and gave me a great big hug and said, "It's so great to see you here. And it's amazing". She said, "How's your mum?" And I'm like, "My mum's fine. I don't know you, who are you?" And she said, "No, no, it's fine. I'm a customer. And I know all about you". And it was just, it was just really affirming ... because the people who needed to know about us, the people that we really want to engage with, they knew who we were. 

And now what we are doing is trying to work more closely with the NHS, we are trying to find ways to show, or to develop, our innovative approach. And then align that more closely with the healthcare systems that are in place, because it is really hard. It's really hard, I think, for healthcare systems to be innovative, or to accept innovations and embed innovations. Because almost by the time they get to it, it's kind of not innovative any more. When you think about our products, we've been selling them for a couple of years now. And people have been buying them and they've enjoyed wearing them. And we know that they work for a lot of people, that means that there's still a gap there, because it's still been so hard to get into the medical settings to spread that message a bit wider. So that is our mission. And for this year, that has been what we've been doing, we've been looking at ways that we can get to engage more with women at an earlier stage in their breast cancer journey, so that they know, not to really push the product at them, but just so they know that there is another option if their traditional NHS prosthesis doesn't work for them. So yeah, that's our 2024 mission.

 Gill Phillips  27:56
Well, hopefully, this podcast will help with that, because I'm quite good at rocking boats and getting stuff out there and lived experience. And this is basically what I do. And the reason I'm doing the podcast. And it's interesting, because I went along and I was offered an NHS prosthesis. And it was a good experience, it was much, much better than I was expecting. And it was a quality, you know, top of the range, you can choose, like proper fitting. And, you know, the Sunday best, it's a very important thing to have. But as soon as I heard about Boost, it was completely different. It was something that has really worked for me on a day to day basis, as I've said, you know, without the fuss, without the sweating or the heaviness, and all the things that you've mentioned. 

So my mission would be ... I mean, I've been lucky, I see myself as fortunate. I've got both, I've been able to come to you and buy the (Boost) prosthesis and come back for a different colour. So I feel very well served. And when I went to a wedding in Italy in the summer, I unusually wore my 'Sunday best' one, you know? But how would it be for example, if somebody's at the beginning of their journey, so they need information? They need information about what's around. So that's a challenge to the NHS. Do they include something like your product in their information, or not? Do they include it verbally? Does it depend on who you meet? Do they include it in their booklets? "Oh my God, we've got to rewrite our booklet!" Do they include it on the website? Do they not mention it? Does it have to be very very research based? And then how much research and you know what type of perhaps medical research or things that tick their boxes do you need to do to get into that process?

So that's the kind of thing that fascinates me from a Whose Shoes point of view because I see something that's like, either at the very least people should know about it, and how are they going to get to know about it, if they meet a breast care nurse, then that's something that could be mentioned, should be mentioned. You know, it's really interesting how an innovation actually gets into the mainstream, at least in terms of being told about it. And perhaps if you can't afford both, to be able to possibly be offered it instead of your NHS traditional prosthesis. If it would be something that if I had to choose, I would choose Boost.

 Sam Jackman  30:28
Oh, that's really nice of you Gill, and actually, that is something that we are looking at. We are seeking to engage with NHS procurement. It is a really difficult thing for a very small business to engage with NHS procurement. As you know,  these things, these things are very, very tricky. They took a really long time. But you're right, yes. And that's the reason why this year we've been, firstly, we submitted research to that conference, and we got accepted to present a poster presentation for ...

Gill Phillips  30:30
Brilliant!

 Sam Jackman  30:30
The breast cancer conference for that reason to just get people to ... just a little bit of brand awareness in a different setting. But yeah, I mean, traditionally, when we first started, most women were finding us, they were probably two or three years post surgery, and perhaps had gone back for their second breast prosthesis, were offered something that was very similar to the first one they had. And went "Oooh, I don't think that's for me", or "I will take it in, like you say, it's, it's an option. But I'd like another option because I want to do Pilates, or I want to do yoga, I want to do these things". And so people came to us when they wanted another option. And at that time really, there was a lot of peer to peer recommendations. So women were in breast cancer support groups telling each other, like, perhaps you should try this if you can. And the cost is always a consideration. For us, it is always difficult, but we are a really small business. And we have to charge for our product.  

Gill Phillips  32:07
Of course! 

Sam Jackman  32:08

Yeah, we make our own products. I mean, one of the other things that people, people should remember if ... 

Dog!  32:14
( ...dog barks) 

Gill Phillips  32:18
So talk about yourselves. So it's a very informal podcast, we've just had the dog and

 Sam Jackman  32:27
We've just been interrupted by the dog. 

 Gill Phillips  32:30
 Where were we? 

 Sam Jackman  32:30
Yeah, my son's coming home in a second. So ... really getting our name out there actually is a priority to help women to make that informed choice about what might suit them, to help women just have a range of products that could help them to live their life after breast cancer surgery so that everything goes as well as it possibly can be in their sort of life afterwards, and recovery. And you know, all of those things that help women lead a happy and healthy lifestyle, essentially, that's what we're here to do. So, yeah.

 Gill Phillips  33:13
So that's brilliant. And I think it comes back to where we actually met, which I was thrilled about. So normally, something like this happens to me and I think, "Oh, I wish I'd known about that because I could have done something different!". But as it happened, it wasn't like that, as it was I was on holiday in Devon, and happened to see I think I'd only recently become aware of you and I had just got my my own Boost product. And I saw that you were having your first (I think it was your first) pop up stall in a John Lewis and it was in Exeter, which is pretty much on our journey home. And we connected and I said, "Can I come and see you?" And we ended up chatting for I don't know how long it was. I felt sorry for Colin, 'Mr. Whose Shoes' who is used to me, but to randomly call into John Lewis in Exeter, and instead of shopping, chat with you on your stand for a couple of hours. But how's that going in terms of getting into ... I've seen you've done some more since? 

 Sam Jackman  34:15
Yeah. So one of the things that we thought would be really interesting to explore, as well is looking at national rollout through things like the NHS, which is as we've just said, it's been quite challenging, just because of the nature of working with clinicians, and the barriers, speaking the same language and all those kinds of things that we've had to deal with. We thought about different ways that we can make breast form wearing more of a normalised kind of thing. So you know, if you're going in the High Street and you're just going shopping with your friend on a Saturday afternoon, you're gonna go for a nice coffee in the local coffee shop, that you can go pop into John Lewis or to ... we've been working with Bravissimo as well really recently.

Gill Phillips  35:02
Brilliant!

 Sam Jackman  35:02
Pop into a high street store, and actually have access to perhaps, innovative breast form products like ours. But importantly, as you said earlier, Gill, about the bra wearing, our products are designed really that you can try different types of bras. I mean, we do have a lot of people who still feel more comfortable if they wear their Boost in a pocketed garment. And that's fine. But you don't have to. And I think that's the key thing. Again, it's about that choice. So what we've done by working with people like Bravissimo and John Lewis, is trying to explore the ways that we can bring our products which initially might be viewed as niche or kind of, you know, medical, but bring those to the high street. So people who are just normally bra shopping don't have other barriers to bra shopping. 

So if you're a breast form wearer, we can try and remove some of those barriers, make you feel included, make shopping in the high street more accessible to you, by just by stocking those products or just by having bra fitters or lingerie or women's wear that is more aware about breast form wearing, and staff that are better trained in what that means and how to support a woman as she comes in as a breast form wearer. So, yeah, it's been a really interesting journey, I think it's quite good to work with those high street brands to understand where they come from, and what their priorities are, but also to think about that accessibility, and inclusion, but how we communicate that as well. Because not everyone that went into John Lewis that day, there was quite a lot of people who we met who were breast form wearers, who just happened to be shopping in there. And they didn't, unlike you Gill, who knew we were going to be there, there was quite a lot of people that we just kind of ran into that we didn't know, before, they didn't come specifically to see us. They were just shopping on their regular shopping trip, which was really lovely. 

Gill Phillips  37:08
I witnessed that, because while we were standing chatting for all that time, obviously people were coming up and looking and we were breaking up our conversation and you were showing people and I could see that happening live and I could see how exciting that was for you in terms of getting the product known. And for the shoppers like "Oh my goodness, what's this?" You know? So I think  that's really clever, and really important what you're doing there. And the other one that jumped out at me was your slot on Woman's Hour. Wow, well done you ... and Deborah Meaden. And I know after that, hey, I tweeted about it and got Deborah Meaden to retweet me ...

 Sam Jackman  37:47
 She did!

Gill Phillips  37:48
So she must be a massive fan of what you're doing.

 Sam Jackman  37:52
It was really, really good to get that kind of publicity. I think that was January last year, actually, when we did that. Well, and it was lovely to be asked. Yeah, it was really lovely to be asked to talk on there. 

 Gill Phillips  38:05
Yeah, I think to get those opportunities, and they're big names, aren't they, you know, John Lewis, Bravissimo, Woman's Hour, these are the kind of slots that are really going to help and then the more traditional, you know, the conferences and so on. And just as a little throwaway, really, I think you'd be proud of me, because we were talking about peer support ... and I've got a fantastic peer support group, and we're getting to know each other. And someone was saying that they were interested in Boost and didn't really know what they were like, and they hadn't got along and they were going to go off on their holiday. So I managed to pop mine out and pass it around...

 Sam Jackman  38:47
(Laughs) Well done! 

 Gill Phillips  38:48
And it was so easy. And it is to do with stigma, isn't it? And I'm I am not at the kind of forefront of bravery. And I'm quite a private person. But when you get with people that you trust, and you think well actually, is this gonna help them or not, you know, why am I doing that? Because it's a group of people around that I trust and actually, it'd be quite helpful, you know ...

 Sam Jackman  39:11
Brilliant!

 Gill Phillips  39:11
So I think all of these things are helping break down barriers , aren't they?

 Sam Jackman  39:17
I agree. I agree. And the more we can talk openly about experiences of breast cancer and body difference, the more other women might be more inclined to look at their own bodies to do some self exams, to do some checks to understand the signs and symptoms better. The more open we can be about these things, the more it encourages people to think about all of that that goes along with it. And that means that potentially instances of breast cancer might be found a bit earlier and possibly surgery will be minimised. 

 Sam Jackman  39:53
I just can't believe the amount of interruptions ... That was the doorbell ... He's is a big pup. There we are. You have him in there, you watch him cos he's chewing things. Right there. Dog, puppy is gone. We call him in the office still "the puppy". We call him our emotional support puppy because he is. He's so lovely. He's really, really kind. He wants to sit on your lap and he's very playful. But he also is very good at ... interrupting video calls and podcast recording is his superpower. He's like been stuck quiet all afternoon and then as soon as you start doing something that's recorded, that's it. He goes nuts. Anyway ...

 Gill Phillips  40:42
What's his name?  

Sam Jackman  40:43
His his name is Blue, like the colour blue. And we didn't name him, he came with that name. But he already had that. So but he's a Labrador, cross breed, so he's quite big. And he's one, so he's a little bit, he's a bit playful but he's good is gold. And then as soon as you start to do something that's recorded. It's just ... chaos! But yeah, it's so good. He's sorted. Now he's gone inside.

 Gill Phillips  41:12
And he's not our first canine podcast guest. I quite like them. Because, you know, just anything that adds a bit of fun, isn't it? I like the idea of him being an emotional support dog in the office. We all need one of those.

 Sam Jackman  41:25
I think he is I think he really is like there have been times where women have come to visit the office or to do a fitting with us here. And we are in very rural Cornwall. I mean, I look out the office window. Now, I can just see a field of sheep. Like that is how rural it is. It's proper rural. And people have come to find us. And I always say to people, if they've been coming recently, I'll put the dog he's got a crate, put the dog in the crate and keep him out the way or leave him in the house and keep him out the way. And lots of people say oh, no, no, no, it's fine. Because he comes out and he's all cute and wagging his tail. And everybody wants to say hello to him. And it's actually a nice way to break the ice. Sometimes people feel a bit more at ease. Yeah. So yeah, although I do always ask and I keep them out of the way if I need to. It's also nice that he did like to greet people and say hello to them if they come to visit Boost HQ

 Gill Phillips  42:22
I'm glad you've mentioned that you're in Cornwall, because to me that really adds to the story. It's not like the obvious centre of manufacturing, in order to actually design and produce a product. I think, it's not what you'd imagine, I think that's part of your story, isn't it?

 Sam Jackman  42:41
Well, I love Cornwall, I mean, I can't say ...

 Gill Phillips  42:43
So do I !

 Sam Jackman  42:44
Yeah, lots of people. Yeah, I was gonna say lots of people love Cornwall, but I love Cornwall and I was born and raised in the same village that I am in now. So I have started the business here in the village that I was born in. And we employ local people we've got, we've got three staff, and me. So there's four of us. And we we work here and we wanted or I wanted that to be the case, then I wanted to grow Boost, I think Boost has the potential for doing enormous things, there are so many women around the world that might benefit from our products. 

 Gill Phillips  43:21
Amazing!

 Sam Jackman  43:22
But at the same time, I think that it's really nice for us to have that base here, you know, and we are quite dedicated to that. We are looking for bigger premises at the moment, but we think we might have found one in a town not very far away. So again, we are very committed to being here and and to do our product manufacturing here is really exciting as well; it gives us the opportunity to really control how we do so we don't believe really in mass producing, we believe in batch production, which is a kind of a different approach. So we'll always produce the breast forms that we need to sell. But when you mass produce, you kind of over produce, you use a lot of energy, a lot of electricity, a lot of resources, a lot of water to just make as many as you can, and then you might be making too many. 

And the worst thing for us is we really don't want any of the Boost products to end up in landfill. That's our challenge to try and stop that happening as best we can. So that means that we don't want to over produce them, we batch produce them. So we make what we need to fulfil the orders that we have, which is a really good way of keeping energy costs down because it means that we're not running machinery when we don't need to. It means that we are saving on storage space because we're not holding like loads and loads of stock that we don't need to hold. And importantly, it means that we're not over producing products that don't have a home to go to, there's not a risk that they'll get thrown away somewhere. So these things mean quite a lot to us, which is why we've kept control of the manufacturing process rather than handing it somewhere. But that in itself has been a challenge and we've been told so many times by investors "Oh, you can't do that because it's difficult to scale". And it isn't, we really believe that that's a really good model for going forward because we have something that's called a production pod. And it's, it's just like a little workspace really. And it's a self contained little space, that's got everything  you need to make a Boost breast form in, and then we run the production pods. And Chris, our engineer goes in at the moment, and he'll make the batches of breast forms that we need to fulfil the orders and to keep the website stocked up. And that production pod, if we had four of them, then we would be able to make four times more breast forms but we still don't need to mass produce, what we can do is just replicate the production pod system, right. And then we're still only using the resources that we need, at the time to fulfil the orders that we need, we can manage our waste, we save all our production waste, so that we can reshape it and recycle it as much as we can. And we can try really hard to make our breast forms as eco conscious as possible. 

And we know that with the silicone gel breast forms, it's actually quite tricky to make them as eco conscious, because of the way they are, the complexity of the plastic on the outside and the gel on the inside. If they split, as anybody who who's had one that splits knows, you can't really do a lot with it, you just have to throw it away, there's nothing you can really do to save it. Well, with our products, they're quite robust, they should last for five plus years anyway. But then, if they're not needed any more, or they do have any issues over time, then we can take them back, and we can re-chip them and reuse them. Or if they're still good quality, then we donate them to charity that at the moment, we've been working with a charity in Nigeria in Africa, to donate breast forms to them. So you know, it's all part of that process, not letting things end up in landfill, not mass producing, but producing what people want and what they need, so that we can meet their needs. 

Gill Phillips  46:56
So I think my listeners will understand why I've invited you onto the podcast. Because just everything about this story, I just love it. And I love meeting interesting people doing interesting things. And I haven't had, as I said at the beginning, a particular focus on cancer in the podcast. But through my own journey, I'm meeting such interesting people. And one of the other people, who I won't name but I'd love to have on the podcast at some point is through my peer support group. 

And we've talked about how important peer support group is. I've met a wonderful Indian woman who's telling me about stigma in her own community and how just being able to talk about breast cancer, which we all find difficult, but in her community, all the more so. And when we meet as a group, she comes along with her breast cancer awareness T- shirt. And she's got a sort of podcast, but she's putting it out on Indian TV and reaching people who sometimes ...  in quite a basic way in terms of: what is breast cancer and how can you be screened? And how can you be checked? You know, I think, to find something that's suitable for the audience that you've got and the awareness that you're trying to raise. There are some incredible people out there, as well as the more well known people, if you like, they're the kind of people that I like to feature on the podcast. So I guess, is there anything else that ... I know we've touched on all sorts of different aspects already - things that I knew, things that I didn't!

 Sam Jackman  48:35
What else do we need to know about Boost?  

Gill Phillips  48:38
Yeah. 

Sam Jackman  48:39
I think I'd just like the opportunity to thank your listeners for listening really, and for listening to the story. But also, for women who've had breast cancer to try and spread the word - whether you've had breast cancer or not, and whether you're just listening to this, because one in seven women will end up with a diagnosis of breast cancer in their lifetime. And 23,000 mastectomies are performed in the UK every year. And it affects a lot of people. And actually just having a bit more awareness, talking to people about breast cancer, the signs and symptoms of breast cancer, the opportunities to live your life after your breast cancer diagnosis, all of those things, I think is just that visibility, that whole visibility around the topic is just really super important. So if there's one thing that listeners listening to this can just sort of go away and do is just have conversations with people, say I listened to this strange woman on a podcast and she was interrupted by her dog ... 

Gill Phillips  49:40
Strange women! 

Sam Jackman  49:42
(Laughs) Yeah, strange women ... talking about this product. And and the other thing I would urge your listeners to do is, and it's really hard to describe in the audio version, what a Boost breast form looks like and why it's different. So if you are listening to this, please google it, because you will see what it looks like. And you'll see why it's so incredibly different that the men in suits couldn't cope with it. And we nearly made their heads explode. So you know, if you can go and find a visual picture of it and look on our Instagram pages at @WeWearBoost, or follow us on Facebook at @WeWearBoost, and just take a look and see what we do. Because explaining it is not as good as seeing it on a woman and seeing the poses of some of our models and seeing the customer photos that we get sent in. That is what makes everything worthwhile. So if you can please go and look at that. 

Gill Phillips  50:40
And that's so funny, Sam, in terms of my journey, I mean to describe to people what is Whose Shoes is hard enough. Yeah, it's a board game. And it looks at things from different perspectives. But hey, come along and experience it. But with what you're doing, it's the same in spades if you like so I will include in the notes for the podcast, some links to Boost and people will be able to very easily click on something and look up and see what you're doing. So huge. Thanks, Sam. It's been such a pleasure talking to you. And I wish you so much success. And you know, just making a difference with your journey is amazing.  

Sam Jackman  51:18
Thank you, Gill. 

Gill Phillips  51:20
Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would be fantastic if you would leave a review and a rating, as well as recommending the 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes?' podcast series to anyone who you think might find it interesting. And please subscribe. That way you get to hear when new episodes were available. I have lots more wonderful podcast guests in the pipeline. And don't forget to explore and share previous episodes. So many conversations with amazing people who are courageously sharing their stories and experiences across a very wide range of topics. I tweet as @WhoseShoes. Thank you for being on this journey with me. And let's hope that together we can make a difference. See you next time!