10: Medical Innovations International Acquisition

May marked a significant milestone with my acquisition of Medical Innovations International and its veterinary brand, Innovative Animal Products—a manufacturing business focused on silicone and stainless steel products based in Rochester, Minnesota.

For the last 21 years, I've consistently explored business opportunities and engaged in my own start ups. In 2018, I made my first acquisition: a 30 year old manufacturing company named Nuhill Technologies (now Prototyping Tech). Over the last six and a half years, I have grown it significantly, focused its operations on medical device prototyping and production, and dug deeper into the medical field with earning a MS degree in Biomedical Engineering.

Two months ago, I first connected with the owner and team at Medical Innovations International (MII) and today, June 1st, I am honored to be the new owner and stepping into the role of CEO and Chief Engineer!

If you're interested in learning more about MII's products, scroll down to the bottom of this post, and/or stay tuned for my monthly product updates. Directly below, I have written up the most valuable insights gained from my experiences in discovering, evaluating, and acquiring businesses.

1. The Existing Team Is Your Greatest Asset

The heart of a legacy business is its people. Processes may look inefficient or outdated on the surface, but there’s always a reason behind them. The tenured team often holds decades of knowledge, context, and wisdom you can't Google. Earning their trust requires time, respect, and humility—it begins by listening before changing anything (perhaps while you’re doing that inventory count together). Many of the tools, molds, and customer relationships I benefit from today exist because of someone else’s dedication. Honor that. You’ll often unlock insights that save you weeks of time and thousands of dollars.

2. Find the Overlap Between Their Strengths and Yours

A successful acquisition isn't only about leveraging what the business already excels at—it’s about unlocking new opportunities by aligning your strengths and systems with their established capabilities. What do they do exceptionally? What products and processes do they know and have in house? Who are the vendors and customers they have existing relationships with? What do you bring in these categories? What can you do to remove friction or unlock scale? For me in MII, this means combining their trusted brand and product lines (some of which have been consistently for sale since the 1970’s!), clinical and veterinary relationships, in-house manufacturing capacities in silicone and stainless steel machining. I bring experience in medical device design, manufacturing systems development, many forms of medical polymer manufacturing including additive, and entrepreneurial product and business development. 

Magic happens when your strengths relieve their bottlenecks, you can leverage each other’s networks, and complementary domains of expertise can empower the new larger whole.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Question Longstanding Systems

One of the gifts of coming in fresh is seeing what may no longer be serving the business—but has lingered due to momentum, habit, or sunk cost. It’s easy to inherit systems that once made sense but are now just how it’s done. If something seems inefficient or unnecessary, question it gently and dig into the why. Just because time or money has been spent on something doesn’t mean you have to keep using it if there’s a better way. Your fresh perspective is an asset—approach existing practices thoughtfully and respectfully.

4. Take Time to Understand Problems Before Solving Them

Every company, especially one that’s been operating for decades, comes with its own history of work arounds and inherited systems. When you find a problem, or what looks like a problem, your goal isn’t to judge or immediately fix everything. It takes time to gain an accurate understanding of a business and the many internal and external relationships it involves. My process prioritizes doing work alongside different members of the team to the extent possible--to learn as much of the technical and human dynamics that play out in the actual function of the business. As you do, you will begin to discover the many nuances that will make you worthy of trust and effective at making new decisions.

For example, it may take you processing some shipments or spending hours participating in an inventory count before you can understand the pain points, bottlenecks, or lack of organization that make work take longer than it should, cause stress and frustration for your team, or enable you to understand quality issues.

5. Know what you’re about.

My professional life has been full of experimentation, discovery and some hard pivots. However, there have been throughlines of entrepreneurship, engineering, physical product development, and investing. Over time, my professional mission has clarified into the development and distribution of products that support life and make it worth living.

For me, the combination of my interests, experience, network, education and other resources points increasingly toward specialization in the Medical Device space. This made it easier over the last 15 years of browsing business listings to enquire about medical device businesses and know quickly if they could be a fit.

Do you know what you are about professionally? A few resources that have been helpful to me in clarifying and discovering the answer to this question:

1. Mastery by Robert Greene

2. The Japanese concept of IKIGAI.

3. Translating Jim Collins' business concepts to myself as an individual professional. Specifically his concepts of:
Hedgehog: Similar to Ikigai, it's finding the overlap between "1) what you are deeply passionate about, 2) what you can be the best in the world at, and 3) what best drives your economic or resource engine."
Flywheel: What is the set of self-reinforcing activities that I can engage in that builds momentum in the direction I want to go.

6. Work fast but don’t compromise yourself

Buying a business is demanding, with complexities and challenges you may not fully grasp until you’re immersed. It’s a time to dig deep and work hard, while not going into your reserves in a way that makes you a bad decision maker. Anxiety is normal, as is some overwhelm. Buying and building a business is a marathon, and it's something that you can do when taken a day at a time. I love this quote:

“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you...and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” -Steve Jobs

Jobs' doesn't mean there’s no one smarter than you. What he's saying is: You have agency. Show up for your dreams, and approach them in a way that leverages the strengths you do have.

Bring your best and do it at a pace that honors the marathon level of perseverance and sustained effort that it’s going to take!

If you're interested, here the core product lines that MII manufactures and distributes. In the coming months I’ll be focusing on them one or two at a time in my posts:

🩺 Medical Innovations International (Human Products)

Barton-Mayo™ Tracheostoma Button

A leak-proof silicone button co-developed with Mayo Clinic to support hands-free, glue-free speech after laryngectomy—compatible with voice prostheses and requiring no skin adhesives.

Nasal Septal Button™

The original non-surgical solution for nasal septal perforations, first manufactured in 1977, offering global clinical credibility and customizable silicone fit.

Endo X Trainer

A flexible endoscopic training tool simulating the upper and lower GI tract for medical education and procedural rehearsal.

Rochester Bone Biopsy Trephine™

A precision-engineered bone biopsy tool designed by Dr. Robert Recker for outpatient surgical sampling.

Rochester Cannula Clamp™

A compact, thumb-operated, reusable surgical tubing clamp offering quick, secure 3-point control and full autoclave compatibility.

🐾 Innovative Animal Products

The Original Interlocking Nail System™

Veterinary-specific intramedullary nail system offering strong, stable fracture fixation with minimal soft tissue disruption.

SAFE-SEAL ENDO TUBE

A revolutionary autoclavable silicone endotracheal tube for dogs and cats that uses internal baffles instead of inflation cuffs for safer, pressure-free sealing and fluid removal. More Details Here

Bone Plates

Orthopedic plates designed for a variety of animal surgeries.

Want to Lend a Hand?

As I bring MII into its next chapter, I’m looking for a few great collaborators:

• Web & Systems Developer (Odoo) – I’m building a customer-facing portal and modernizing our digital infrastructure. If you or someone you trust has experience with Odoo or similar ERP-based web systems, I’d love to connect. If you click over to our websites MedicalInnovations.com & InnovativeAnimal.com, you'll see they need updating right away!
• Logo Review Crew – I’m running a rebrand and would love your eye. If you’re design-savvy—I’d be grateful for your feedback in the logo selection process. Send me an email at Josh@JoshAdams.io with the Subject: "Add me to the Logo Review Crew"