What I learned week 14

This week we had speaker Justin Racine director of marketing and Ecommerce at Geriatric Medical Supply. Justin is a WNE alum with an interesting background. When attending school, Justin was a marketing major, pharmaceutical business didn’t exist yet. While in school Justin worked at a golf course part time to make some money in school. As graduation was getting closer and closer he knew he needed a marketing internship to graduate and working at a gold course wouldn’t cut it. Justin approached his boss and told him that he loved the job he was at but needed a marketing internship. Lucky for Justin, his boss also worked as the general manager of the supply division at a medical supply company and was able to get Justin a marketing internship that would pass for credit. Justin worked at the medical supply location for the summer and was given an objective to create a trifold brochure on the how-to and general information of the use of adult diapers. He did such a good job and everyone from the company enjoyed his work that they offered him a full-time job after graduation as well as part time for remainder of his college career. They offered Justin a position on their Ecommerce team. He built the company’s website from ground up as well as creating websites for other businesses that they partnered with. The key driver for this position was to strengthen the partnership between smaller medical supply companies such as Louis & Clark where I work now and larger medical supply companies. This also puts the small contenders like Louis and Clark on the map to compete with larger distributors such as McKesson. Some customer and smaller companies don’t want to go through McKesson or larger facilities, sometimes it’s cheaper and easier for them to go through mediators that do the direct buying and selling. Justin was lucky in this case because he had a connection with his boss who was an actual friend, and this really goes to show how important networking is. Some may say “it’s not what you know it’s who you know.” Networking is so important because your personal network can do so much for you. Networking can help with more than just job leads, it can provide referrals and other important information about companies you might be interested in working for. It can also provide information for certain careers fields you want to explore. Your network can also give you advice on where to look for jobs or review your resume. So, the importance of networking was one thing I learned from Justin.

In continuing his story about his career path, he mentioned how once he was at a show speaking to a crowd about his marketing experience and expertise and someone approached him wanting to talk. The stranger at the time said they he heard of Justin and wanted to talk. Another career lesson that I learned from Justin is to always say yes when an opportunity strikes. If someone reaches out to you, especially if they’ve done your research on you and are requesting to meet you, say yes, take them up on the offer. Even if you are not looking for a job, or happy with where you’re at, it doesn’t hurt to see what they have to say because an opportunity so good you can’t say no could come out of the discussion. This was the case with Justin, a different corporation approached him, Amazon, wanting him to join their team. Justin met with the member of Amazon and was given an offer, and Justin wanted to take it. Justin informed his current company that he would be leaving but they valued Justin so much that they didn’t want him leaving the company, so they offered him an increase in salary that he couldn’t refuse. This goes to show again, take any and every opportunity you can in your professional career because you never know where it can take you. After this discussion about where Justin ended up, Dr. Spotts asked if he had any regrets not taking the job at Amazon. At the end of the day Justin said yes, he did regret the decision to not take the job, simply because today Amazon is a beast that cannot be destroyed. They are industry leaders across the board. In addition, Amazon employees get a percentage of their stock, and today alone Amazon’s stock is at $1,334. So, in the profit aspect, yes Justin did lose out on a potentially triple digit salary, but he enjoyed where he’s at. Amazon also locks their employees in a contract where they sign away working for them for four years, because they know their working situations aren’t ideal. It’s Amazon, there’s a lot of work behind the scenes and at times I’m sure it can take its toll on the employees with the amount of workload and timelines, so in that aspect Justin was grateful he did not take the job. Again, this point just proves again, explore your options, do your research and do what you feel it best for you in your career at that given time.

In addition to Justin’s journey to where he is today, he also gave us a brief overview of the company he’s at today and what they do. So Geriatric Medical supply is a wholesaling company that operates more heavily on the B2B side. Geriatric Medical Supply buys directly in large quantities from say 3M, and then sells to smaller medical supply locations like Louis and Clark. So, for Louis and Clark, it’s cheaper for them to buy medical tape from Geriatric Medical Supply rather than straight from 3M. This is because Louis and Clark don’t need a large supply so it’s going to cost them more to buy a small amount of tape, rather than Geriatric Medical Supply buying a large amount o of tape and reselling to Louis and Clark. It’s cheaper for Losu is and Clark, but Geriatric Medical Supply still makes a profit. They act as the middleman. They are a smaller company, serving just the New England area, which serves as a competitive advantage for them. Geriatric Medical Supply also provides next day delivery for their customers as well as up to date live texts letting companies know when their deliveries will arrive. They are a family owned company located in Woburn Massachusetts. Not much has changed since they opened in 1945, everything they do today is focused around the customer. Every order, delivery, service relies on the customers; and that’s just the culture of the company, something in which Justin prides Geriatric Medical Supply in. To this point Justin acknowledged that at his company if you have a question or comment for the CEO, you can simply walk into the office and ask, and have it fixed then and there. But with large companies such as McKesson you must go through several other people to get to the CEO and possibly even must schedule a meeting to even get in their ear—again it’s all a part of the company culture. It’s interesting because when Justin presented on Thursday he spoke to my boss, Skip in a sales attempt of sorts. I believe Justin just wanted to inform Skip of Geriatric as a company and a plug. I spoke with Skip the next day and in fact he was not interested in working with Geriatric Medical Supply because we already have relations with McKesson and we are very happy with their prices as well as customer service. But there’s also a possibility in the future with working with Geriatric if McKesson’s prices continue to increase or what have you. I learned some valuable career lesson from Justin’s presentation.

On Thursday, we had Kim Gettens present, director and project manager of IQVIA. Kim is Dr. Gettens wife, a professor of mine in my product development and innovation class. Kim started her career of working for a company called Scott and White Healthcare as a study coordinator. At this job she did a lot revolving data operation, mitigating adverse events and simple administrative tasks essential the trial. Kim then took a job at Kendle, which was all about treating patients ethically. Kendle no longer exists, but while she was there she was a monitor and she thoroughly enjoyed this position. As a monitor she visited different sites to ensure they were complying with protocols. Making sure all rules were followed, the patients were being treated fairly and ethically, data was imputed properly, and the sites were up to code were all things she monitored. Now, at IQVIQ she taps into all her past knowledge as a project manager to make sure the trials are running smoothly, and everyone is doing their part correctly and efficiently.

Kim had some great knowledge about the company she’s at today and further excelled my knowledge about the clinical trial process. One of the main topics we talked about, was clinical trial patient recruitment. There was much discussion and questions revolving this topic. What I learned was that it can be very difficult to get patient recruitment for clinical trials, because in many cases, volunteers ask, “What’s in it for me?” It was helpful to see Kim’s insight because I always thought that everyone who took place in a clinical trial got compensated, but that isn’t the case. Kim explained that yes in phase I, with healthy individuals you can compensate them, but in all other cases no, there is no monetary value given. It all comes down to altruism, especially within the United States where we have a relatively healthy population compared to somewhere such as South America. Kim used Brazil for example. If you introduce a clinical trial in Brazil, signups fill up fast, this is because many don’t have healthcare down there. So, what they’re getting out of it is free healthcare. But in the United States, where many already have healthcare, people don’t need an outlet for free healthcare. The main reason partake in clinical trials in the Unites States is altruism. This relates to selflessness and the wellbeing of others. Partaking in a clinical trial because it’s for the wellbeing of others at your own potential health risk shows an act of altruism. Nowadays, almost al clinical trials take place outside of the U.S not only for this reason but for greater coverage and efficacy. This transitions us perfectly into another topic we discussed about, which was taking clinical trials outside to foreign countries.  Many see ethical issues of taking clinical trials to other foreign countries because there are fewer regulations, many things are easier to slide by, and the quality of care is far less than the United states. But Kim and her current company do clinical trial testing in foreign countries. Some reasons being it is far less cheap, the “willing” applicant pool and lastly and maybe most importantly is that the trials can expedited faster. Expecting clinical trials to be efficient and on schedule is more important now than ever because of the patent cliff crisis’s. To make any profit at all from these drugs, and before it goes off patent, you must do clinical trials outside of the U.S to ensure the process is done fast so after all is said and done with the clinical trials, you still have an ample of time to reap the benefits and make a decent profit before the drug is in threat of a patent cliff. As a business student I understand why many pharmaceutical companies take place in this practice because generic drugs are on the rise and just waiting to come in and steal the profits of these block buster drugs. Pharma companies spend billions every year on research and development of these drugs, if they can’t make a sufficient amount back due to delayed clinical trial processes, many of these businesses would be bankrupt. I do see the ethical issues, but if everything is regulated to an extent and at the end of the day the patient’s safety is still number one, I do not see any further issues. These companies still must pass FDA regulations, even if they are taking efforts outside of the U.S. This is also how her job relates to marketing efforts. Now more than ever is marketing important to draw people in for clinical trial studies. These include but are not limited too radio advertisements, television advertisements, and posters and signs to hang in hospital waiting rooms or doctor’s offices. Everything pharma is regulated but he FDA. Pharmaceuticals is one of the most regulated industries, for good reason because people live are at stake, but every document, sign, poster, commercial must be approved by the FDA for distribution. Kim’s discussion was interesting for me to see because it opens a new job career that I haven’t research yet, and I plan to look further into this career for after college.