Meet Aaron Fritts, MD | Interventional Radiologist & Founder of BackTable

We had the good fortune of connecting with Aaron Fritts, MD and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Aaron, have you ever found yourself in a spot where you had to decide whether to give up or keep going? How did you make the choice?
It’s tricky! When I look back at prior projects or ventures where I gave up vs where I stuck it out, it all came down to where my level of passion was. You have to do a gut check and be honest with yourself whether you’re really giving your all to it. If you don’t bring your A game to it, or keep finding yourself wishing you were doing something else, I’d say it’s time to redirect your energy towards another project. However, it’s essential to check in with yourself at every failure and every success and ask yourself: Is this a pattern? Am I setting myself up for failure or success? If I gave up, why did I give up and how can I avoid this situation in the future?

Despite a number of setbacks with BackTable, I keep going because I have an amazing team. I have a co-founder who also serves as a great mentor to help keep me going. It’s easy to get caught up in the granular stuff, the small setbacks that can weigh on your day-to-day. But once a month you should really take a step back and look at the big picture of everything you’ve accomplished. A monthly reflection is also important to document (perhaps journal!) so that you don’t find yourself making the same mistakes.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
BackTable is a medical education podcast platform. We currently have about 300 episodes across multiple surgical specialties, approaching 400,000 total downloads. We are unique from other medical education platforms because our content is peer to peer, on-demand and completely open access. There is no required sign in and you can listen to any episode on BackTable.com, or any podcast platform (Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, etc). The business itself is not that different from other podcast companies like Gimlet media, in that we run on sponsorship. This allows us the ability to put out a lot of high quality content, completely free to our colleagues. Our sponsors are typically healthcare companies like Medtronic, Siemens, Boston Scientific. It was not easy, and quite honestly, it took a few years to really craft the product and offering. I’d say the biggest challenges were reminding myself to be patient and persistent and finding like-minded talented individuals that share the vision. You have to talk to a lot of people to find the right fits! I just think it’s incredible that we’ve built this physician community that’s all about collaboration and innovation, and we love having docs on the show to share their passion about what they do.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
– Mi Cocina, Mambo Taxi on the patio – Highland Park Christmas lights
– Summit Climbing Gym on Forest Ln
– Haystack Burgers (and shakes!)
– Perot Museum
– Dallas Stars night game
– Klyde Warren Park and Dallas Museum of Art

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Anish Parikh and Gopi Shah (my wife)– co-founders of BackTable, played essential roles in helping get the company off the ground and running, as well as providing emotional support and mentorship throughout the years. It’s pretty much impossible to narrow it down to just those two, though. I’m so grateful that Chris Beck, Bryan Hartley, Michael Barraza (all guys I trained with at Vanderbilt) believed in me enough to join the team early on and help build a podcast platform from the ground up. Bryant Schmitz has been instrumental in creating an amazing user and online experience. Sabeen Dhand for being the fun host and gifted clinician we all know him to be. Our lead engineer and producer Kieran Gannon for helping me take us from one show to now 4 shows, and adding his creative flair to the mix. Jamila Kinebrew for putting up with the crazy scheduling of busy physicians. And the rest of the amazing team of hosts, engineers and students taking care of show notes, articles and social media, led by the incredible Anh and Chi Dang. I’m truly honored to work with this crew of exceptional people.

Website: https://www.backtable.com/

Instagram: @_BackTable

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backtablevi

Twitter: @_BackTable

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BackTablePodcast

Other: Stream full BackTable episodes from your favorite platform (available on BackTable.com, Megaphone, SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts).