The Modern MedTech Growth Playbook

Hello and welcome, everyone. Friday in Focus, another week, down, down the, drain, and as we roll into the weekend, I'd like to welcome everybody. Hi, Maria. If you would like to be promoted to panelist, please raise your hand, and Francesca will promote you. And yes, nice mustache, thank you very much. I'm working on it. It's somewhere between upper lip hair and mustache at the moment, but hopefully, you know, I'm gonna get the whole, like, handlebar thing going at the end. So a couple announcements while we're waiting for people to join. What's coming up? Let's see, next… next Wednesday. Next Wednesday, while I will be live at the MedTech Symposium in Philadelphia,

a Project MedTech meeting. We're gonna be doing something really cool there. We're gonna be building a yearbook live at the event. And that means that everybody who's there is going to have the opportunity to sign the yearbook. Have a picture taken, do an interview, contribute, and what we're trying to do is create a living document. Because, you see, one of my beefs is that events, live events. Come and go, and only the people in the room get the benefit of what happened there, and everything else just… I don't know, it just goes away, you know? And all those speakers that spend all that time preparing those presentations, you know, that never see the light of day again, or, you know, whatever, so…

I look at it as an opportunity for second life, you know? So let's, support that. While we're there, in the middle of the day, yeah, I double-booked, I'm gonna be doing a webinar for the business case for quality, how, business culture puts your market access and revenue in jeopardy under QMSR. And we're going to be really making a strong business case for quality, so if you work in quality, or you know somebody who works in quality, have them tune in for this, because QMSR is really the ammunition you need To build your quality department. Next, register now. So, yeah, next Friday, is device connectivity. So, connected devices, cloud-connected devices, what it really costs, and how to get your device online and keep it there.

What does it really take to have a cloud-connected device? What does it mean to have a cloud-connected device? And we're going to have speakers, Alex Condon, COO of Matrix One, is gonna be here. And, of, of Matrix Connect. As well. So, yeah, this is… this is exciting. And then, in two weeks, we're gonna have an author on, who has written a new book. With, Tebow Zekmeister, Tibor, and, They're publishing the book. It's sort of a book launch. party, and a lot of… some of you may have been interviewed in the book itself, or appear in the book, right?

And so, look forward to that. Having a little trouble booking for September 11th, imagine. that, so if you're interested, please reach out to me. I know. And That's it for me. I'm gonna, go ahead and introduce, Etienne. I was on Etienne's show, podcast recently, and I wanted to return the favor and give him the opportunity to take the microphone and talk what he… talk about what he wants to talk about. Tell us what you're going to talk about today, Etienne.

Alright, so we're gonna talk about the modern MedTech Growth Playbook, and really, I guess if I were to boil it down to the most fundamental, would be marketing and what marketing looks like in 2026 for MedTech vendors. That's… that's the thought there. Go ahead and share my screen. You want me to go ahead and launch into some slides? All right. And… feel free to stop me at any point. I love being interrupted, believe it or not. My family may not believe that, but… so we're gonna talk about the Modern MedTech Growth Playbook. I'm gonna look at my screen so I can see the slides, but I'll look over here at you when I'm looking at you, so it's not trying to look away. Actually, let me rearrange this so I can see everybody, who comes on.

Good to see some familial… familiar… faces out in the audience. I hadn't seen, Carrie in a while, so… and I'm sure there's others that… it's great to see you all. But why… why are we struggling right now when you have real expertise? Why are we struggling to win business? My name's Etienne Nichols, I'm the host of the Global Medical Device Podcast, as Sean mentioned, that's run… that's powered by Greenlight Guru. There, I'm the head of education insights, industry. I can't even get my… title, right, half the time, Head of Industry, Education, and Insights. What we're gonna do, obviously, if you have… you want to put your cameras on and talk to me, I'd love to hear from you. We can have a conversation if you have any questions as we go. I'll try to keep a track of the chat. I may have lost it in my screens here, but Sean, I'm sure, will keep track of that.

We do have a couple polls. I'm not as familiar with this platform, so I'll lean heavily on Sean to help me out with that, and make sure we get the poll questions answered, but, We're going to be sharing the recording slides afterwards. So, first poll, where did your last 3 pieces of new business actually come from? This is, love to hear… Let's see… And Sean, tell me, is there a way for them to answer this poll? Is it just in the chat?

They just, yeah, they just use a straight referral, published, LinkedIn, you know, outbound, conference.

So, Etienne, I would be interested, because most of my business still comes from referrals.

Yeah.

like, how do you move out of that space? Because I have a really good LinkedIn presence, but it's still… You know, that personal connection that's why my business is growing.

Okay. Alright, that's good.

As opposed to all the work I do on LinkedIn and Substack and stuff like that.

Okay. Yeah, yours is a little bit more unique of a business case, and so we'll get into that, too. So let's kind of cover some of the other ground, and then I'll definitely try to answer that as well. So, alright, let's keep moving. So… I think most of us would agree that business development has gotten harder, not easier. Some of us aren't sure why. Word of mouth obviously still works, referrals still work, and they matter, but it doesn't produce the steady flow like we, you know, in my past that it has before. So they come in slower, they're further apart. And the interesting thing about word of mouth, too, is you may think

Well, we'll get to the word of mouth that happens, two different types of words of mouth, I guess. What I think most… was actually happening is most of the work is being done before they ever meet us. So, they're researching products on their own. This is something that we've found in software. They know more about the software, even than we do half the time. By the time they get to a demo, or they want to see the software, it's really just a confirmation call, almost, at that point. They're comparing things very early. They know all of the competitive landscape. They've already formed opinions, maybe not necessarily on the product or the work that you're able to do, but based on

the presence that you have. Like, Michelle has a heavy presence online and a very recognizable voice, which is one of the things I love the most about her. Been on webinars, been on podcasts, written articles, active on LinkedIn, or Substack. All of those things are important. Those are opinions people are forming before they even get to you. And I might ask you another question, Michelle, about that when we get to that point, but if they have that opinion, what do they think, or how does the first conversation go? We could talk about different areas of the pipeline, like. you're increasing your funnel, if you're familiar with the funnel terminology, where everybody's going into a funnel of thought leadership, they know who you are of awareness, then they are familiar with you, now they actually want to work with you. Have you widened the funnel by…

getting that thought leadership out of there, or have you made it easier to convert once they actually do have that conversation? And those are two very important things to think about. It's not always one or the other. Oftentimes, those are equally important and equally being impacted by your presence online. So… that first conversation, like I said, I think it is kind of a confirmation, When people know who you are, whether it's through a referral or through, the… thought leadership, it's almost like they're verifying, is the price gonna be right, or can you actually do the specific thing I need done? Most of that selling, the actual selling, has likely already happened because of the level of reference, or the level of presence you've had online.

So a lot of that public work that you do is… carrying those things. And I think that's important to think about, because if you have no presence, you really are relying on… solely on that reference that your friend is giving you, which… You know, likely is good, but… If they have… if that person, that customer, that prospect, has multiple people who they've given a reference, you know, to, someone has recommended somebody, if they're looking at those 3 different recommendations. What is going to differentiate person A from Person C, A lot of times, they'll look at whether it's your web page, what looks more professional, your level of expertise based on what can I see them do, what can I… how can I build that parasocial relationship through listening to them on a podcast, a webinar, etc. Those things are going to matter.

When they're making that comparison. So, this other… this is the second poll that I'd like to ask, and when they finally do contact you, how much do they already know about you? So, do they know nothing? Or… and this is… this is me curious to validate or invalidate what I've already said. I have my own experience, and that's what I'm basing most of what I'm going to tell you off of, but I'd love to hear from your experience as well.

And you can also write NA if the question doesn't apply. Yeah. That is sort of implied. But… you know. Yeah. Just to clarify that. So back to the previous poll, you know, the, The main answer was referrals.

Okay.

that we saw,

That makes sense. Okay, I'm getting to my chat here. Rearrange a few things here. Thank you for your patience. I saw there was a question from… I think it was LLMs. Can you expand a bit on the impact of AI with search now not being via Google? Okay, now that's really good. And I can answer that just a little bit, get a little bit technical as to how SEO versus now what they call AGO, or whatever you want to call it, it's, you know, LLM search. SEO previously, you wanted those high-ranking, specific words It's very similar now. LLMs are searching all of those ranks pages, and they're getting all that information from those things, but they do pull from it in a slightly different way. And one of the things that LLMs are pulling from

are FAQs, pretty commonly, glossaries, and lists. They really like lists for some reason. So, if you have a top 50 companies, the one at the top, okay, somebody has said that is the number one, it's going to pull that directly into LLM and basically ignore the others. So, I don't know if that helps a little bit with that, that question, David, but…

I would also like to add, you know, with the LLMs, be careful about strategizing around the LLMs. They're changing so rapidly at this point, the way that they, value information that what I would focus on is creating valuable, original information, not more AI slop. The world doesn't need more of it. You know, it actually needs more expert opinions that are specific. And that the provenance is verifiable. And provenance is something that is very important for the LLMs, and is going to continue to be important.

So, in other words, it's an original idea, it's original to you, it's verifiable, it's published, it's, you know, there's a citation. to, you know, Etienne Nichols said on the Friday in Focus, on the 21st, Full quote. You know, that's the ticket, is be quotable. provide information that ChatGPT cannot.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I totally agree with Sean. Some of the questions are saying, okay, yeah, we get it, don't optimize for LLMs, but how do we optimize for LLMs? And so, the platform, I suppose, if I were to tell you, is Reddit. That would be the, I think, number one right now, LinkedIn being very… close in the top 5, you know, some of the things they're pulling from. Because they… they want to know what the strong opinions are, just… it's a human user that's using an LM, so what does a human want to know? Well, I want to know what your opinion is. One of the things I care about carries, you're opinionated when we've talked in person. I care about your strong opinion.

That's, you know, because that's built on expertise and experience. It's not something I can read in an FDA guidance document. You know, how many Q-subs did it take for you to say, don't do a Q-sub for this? You didn't read that in the draft guidance, you It's your experience. And so those opinions are really, really valuable. So, I have published on LinkedIn 781 times, according to the thing that I pulled from, you know, my spreadsheet, and I would say most of those, believe it or not, if you've heard of me or if you've not heard of me, it's not gonna hurt my feelings one way or another. I had one post in 2024, got 2.2 million,

impressions, and I don't know how many… several thousand, 10,000 likes, or whatever it was. You know, up until then, you could say most of my posts were pretty… Much duds. And, I would say the majority of my posts are total duds, and that's fine. But one person told me, we write one post so we can write the next one. It doesn't matter, don't let your ego get wrapped up in it. I don't really care. If I get zero on a post, I don't even care. It's exercising that muscle every day. That's the goal. And so, I say this, I know we still need to get to Michelle's question, but I really strongly recommend publishing something, because that's you publicly proclaiming your opinion.

to teach somebody. My… when I first started publishing things, whether on websites or on LinkedIn, Reddit, wherever else that I've published, it wasn't to get attention. That was never my original goal. Sorry, I'm a little touchy with this. That was never my original goal. My original goal was to teach somebody something, because I was working with about 40 different medical device companies when I first started posting on LinkedIn, and I would… I kept coming into the same problems. What's the difference in a user need and a design input? how many times have I had to explain that to somebody? I thought, maybe I'll just post a little article about that, just a mini, this is the difference. And people liked that, because it's helpful. And now, what's the difference in verification and validation? Or, when do you… when is it important to have an FMEA versus, you know, follow strictly ISO 14971, or… and are they different, you know? And I've gotten into a lot of fights online about that. So, there's lots of different opinions that

you likely have, probably just from what I've said, you probably say, well, I don't know, I probably disagree, and that's great. post that opinion, because that's experience that you can put out there. I really think that the companies that are growing the most are the ones that you hear about the most. They are constantly… you've heard about them. The companies that nobody's ever heard of, those are… Not… I mean, they're gonna grow slower. That's just a pure numbers game at that point. So I work with Greenlight Guru. We're probably one of the best, or have been one of the best, at marketing, regardless of what you think of our product. Our marketing is far and above most of companies out there. We have quite the engine. When we run a webinar, we…

typically have 2,000 people sign up, and, which is kind of a lot, and all medical device professionals. We've had a podcast for over 10 years now, nearly 500 episodes, quite a few different interesting people on, every week. And when I look for somebody to be on the podcast, I'm looking for… and I bring this up because this is… just a generic way of looking for someone who's interesting, in my mind. I look for somebody who is competent, that's… that's a baseline expectation that you're good at your job, you know? Competence is important. But I also look for somebody who can tell a story. Can you tell me a story that someone will listen to? Do you have a little bit of charisma?

And then the third thing is, if you have something of an audience, then I would love to, you know, share my audience with you, and you share your audience with me, and we can, you know, share the education with this mutual group of people. So, those are the three things that I look for when I look for the best guests. And if you look into the actual topic that we would talk through. this is something I've been thinking a lot more here lately, if you get specific, if you can solve a very specific problem, you're the only one who knows exactly whether to use an SPDX versus something else when you're building an SBOM.

And you can tell me that, and I can't find that anywhere else, suddenly you own that tiny topic, and you're an expert. So, I really love the specificity when you can get that, that specific, you know, difference in a design input and a user need. Okay, everybody can do that, but how many people can tell me the other? And how much can you teach versus, and giving that opinion. Most of the time, we're not just pitching you on something, we're trying to teach you something. Alright, let me go forward, not backwards. These are different ways people can find you. Some of this is a little bit straightforward, you're probably familiar with this. Articles…

podcast appearances, webinars or talks, practical resources. I want to tell you just a brief story. when I tried to break into a different industry. So I was a… I didn't really give you my background. I started as a mechanical engineer. I started, actually, in aerospace, then I came to MedTech as a manufacturing engineer working on cranial fixation and deep brain stimulation. Got into a regulatory-driven, focused project. I actually was thrust into project management when the project manager quit. And they said, Etienne, you're the only one who even knows what the three letters UDI mean, because you were his assistant, you know, doing the IQOQPQs, so they sent me to project management training where I had a lobotomy to remove the mechanical engineering part of my brain, so I had to make decisions at this point instead of optimize, and that's what I did. And I got into product development.

And the rest is history, I suppose. Gotta drug delivery, combination products. So now I work with Greenlight Guru, because they wanted someone who could talk the language to the people they were trying to sell to. Well… quickly, they wanted, for whatever reason, they wanted to put me in marketing, and so that's where I landed, and they said, we'd like to build an online community. I'd never built an online community. So, what do you do when you're thrust into a new industry? Well, I read books, first of all, and I have some book recommendations to give you all, but I also like to get in person and talk to the experts who've done this before. So I found the biggest

conference, on community building at CMX out in California, and so I decided to con my company into sending me there. They weren't gonna just ship me off to a conference for a week, you know, paid, but if I had a speaking gig, they would. So I called them, and I proposed a speaking thing. I'd been in this… I'd read two books on it, and I'd been in community building for about 3 or 4 months at this point. Who's gonna speak on this topic? But I proposed a very specific thing that I had solved. I built a quality manual for my community. This is getting long-winded, Sean's gonna shut me off here in just a minute, get the hook, and pull me off here, but…

So I presented this, and they smartly did not give me a speaking slot, but they did give me a moderator. I was a panelist. I moderated a panel of 4 other professionals. But what was interesting about this is my company paid for me to go, which was great. They didn't… they let me go to this conference for free, the conference itself let me in for free, and I now had access to every speaker because I was a speaker. So… now, I have access to all these people, made friends with them, and as a result of that, I went 110% when I was at this conference, and I had multiple people reach out to me and wanted to collaborate on articles, and so I had multiple articles written with other people, and now, suddenly, I had a presence in this other industry, and I'd broken into it in about 3 months by reading the top 3 books, and meeting the top… I actually had dinner with some of the authors of those books.

at that conference. So, there are ways to do this. You have to think. how do I become the professional in this industry? And it's possible. I'll give you another cheat code if you want it. Many of the… Many of the universities around you, or the large companies, these are too… too ripe. places to go. You know something, you've solved a problem. You could go to this university and be a guest speaker there very easily. If you've contacted a professor, contacted somebody, be a guest speaker there. Now you say, I've spoken at Vanderbilt. Then you go to Boston Scientific, say, I'd like to put on a free training. I've spoken at Vanderbilt, and I'd love to share this with your people as well. Now you have a free session at Boston Scientific, and now suddenly

you are a speaker who has spoken at Vanderbilt and Boston Scientific, and now you have a door open to any conference in the industry just about. That's… that is a very… straightforward, and you might think impossible to playbook, but I've… I've done it. And so, if I were to look at my resume, I'm like, Etienne what? But… You actually do have something to offer these people, these, these companies. And, it's, it's… yeah.

Let me go a step further. I'm gonna say that, that, Companies wasting money on attending conferences, sponsoring conferences, having booths at conferences, and sending a couple salespeople to sit there and pick their nose at the booth is an absolute waste of money. What I discovered a long time ago when I worked at Thompson Publishing Group was that I work that room, and I'll break up the furniture and turn it into firewood while I'm there. That means that while you're there, your job is not just to find people who say, oh, sure, I want to hire your company. Your job is to not just walk around pitching people, your job is not to walk around

getting meetings. Your job is to walk around and find every opportunity that exists in that room, whether that's connecting with speakers, whether that's talking with experts, whether that's recruiting, whether that's Finding, referral partners, anything that could go in any direction in that room is your job, and sitting at your booth is not the job. you might think that's the job, and you might think that that's the route, but really, you need a Trojan horse, so I'm going to give you something that any of you can use, which is Rather than walking up to somebody and saying, hi, I'm from so-and-so, and we do so-and-so, and can you hire us? The answer is invariably, no, get the hell away from me.

Whereas, if you walk up to somebody and you tell them that they're pretty. That you'd like to interview them. So what that means is, I really loved your presentation. I thought it was really interesting when you talked about XYZ. Could I interview you for our blog? Could I interview you for our podcast? Could I interview you for an article that I'm writing? Or, I'd like to include what you said in the post that I'm getting ready to do. on LinkedIn about why this conference was valuable. Instead of posting pictures of your food. Or the people that you're with, Or who you met. Post something useful from the conference.

You know? Like, the way that people in our industry attend conferences is the most infuriating thing in the world to me, because they just leave every single opportunity on the table, and they turn away, and they say, well, we didn't get any new customers. And then, oh, and then they take the attendee list, and they email everybody, hi, we're so-and-so, and we provide such and such, do you want to hire us? No, I don't want to hire you, right? Like, believe it or not, I do not wake up in the morning thinking about wanting to hire a product or service provider. Any more than any of you wake up in the morning thinking about wanting to hire a marketer.

Think about that.

Yeah.

Done.

That's really good. And I… yeah, I would just kind of echo what you said. So, when I go to a conference, I have another presentation I'm going to be giving in a few weeks with, it's to the MedTech Innovator Group on what to do at a conference, which is interesting. They asked me to build a presentation for that, but I have a mantra that I used to say every time I got on stage, you know, I'm here representing company so-and-so, or whatever, you know, whatever company I'm representing at the time, but I always have a secret agenda, and that is, I'm here to… it's the three L's for me. I'm here to learn from those a few steps ahead of me.

Lead those a few steps behind me, and love those beside me. You know, the ones who are doing the same thing and don't read too much into love, you get the idea. Like he said, tell them they're pretty, that sort of thing. Build friends and build relationships. you probably know people that the people in the room need. So, reimbursement, for example. Maybe you're not a reimbursement person, but that is such a hot topic right now, and people need it big time. Once you make that connection with that reimbursement specialist. My favorite question to ask people at conferences, what are your goals at the conference? It usually makes them think for a second because they don't have any, but once they figure out what that goal is, they say, well, actually, you know, we're raising our Series B around. I'm like, oh, well, I just met an investor who writes $2 million checks, and he said he's looking for someone in orthopedics. I see you're in orthopedics. You make that connection, suddenly you're very valuable.

So that's a very real situation that you can, you know, be in at any point, when you're always looking… it's that Zig Ziglar quote, you can have anything you want if you help enough people get what they want, right? Alright, so those are some of the things. And the other thing I would say is, because Attribution, that's the word that we give in marketing to where did this person come from? And you've got last touch or first touch. So the person who is referred to you. Why did they refer you? That's… that's another layer down, and we don't usually get very deep in the layers of our attribution, especially in this industry, necessarily, and that's not nothing against us or anything, but if someone referred you, why did they refer you?

Did that… and why did the person listen to the referral? Those are two different questions that are worth getting the answer to. So, I may not be able to tell you how to get past that referral, because I may not… you may not actually want to get past that, but how you build up… if you think of an, what is the… the big iceberg, you know? We just say referral at the top, somebody sent me this person's name. Well, why did they send it? Was it, someone was reminded that you saw an article, or a LinkedIn, or whatever, or is it simply because they only worked with you? Those are two different things, and they're worth kind of thinking a little bit through. Michelle's gonna call me afterwards and say, you didn't answer my question, Etienne, and

But you did, you did, you just answered her question. The answer to the question is all of the work that she does online supports the recommendation that the person is giving, and so the thing is, is that it is, in fact, the visibility which creates The opportunity for the referral. you know, do you want to refer somebody who no one has heard of, and there's no verifiable proof that they're good at what they do? Just take my word for it, I'm going to introduce you to so-and-so. Or, if the person goes and checks out Michelle's reputation online, they're going to find hundreds and hundreds Of documents, podcasts, References, and they're gonna be like, wow, she's legit.

Sorry.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I… you know, they tell me I get a little too self-deprecating, but I… have a hard time taking myself seriously in life, so that's just the way it is. And incidentally, I didn't… I meant to int… tell you this, just in case, I think we're good, but I live completely off-grid in a house that I built with my own hands, and sean got to see the, negative effects of that right before we jumped on. I hope I didn't give him a heart attack, but I lost power, and I had to go redo my batteries, but We were on a generator before, but anyway. Quick poll, what's actually stopping you from publishing consistently? I'd love to hear more from you on this time, okay.

Yeah, that makes sense. WordPost research, yeah. Yeah, that's fair, Marina. Not sure if anyone wants to hear from me. And that wording is a little… deceptive. I would… sometimes I'd tell myself, nobody wants to hear from me, but I also tell myself, who cares? I don't want to hear from me. I don't want to… you know, I don't… I don't… do I want people to want to hear from me? What I want is to help somebody solve a problem. I want to make their life easier. And so the people who that… my words are not going to make their life easier, if… if the people don't hear that, that's fine. It's only for the person whose life will be made easier. So, think about it from that perspective, but

Yeah. Legal. Legal's a big one, I suppose, and surprisingly, it was, I think it was a Boston Scientific employee who asked me, who was talking to me about this, and they said they went to their employee, their employer, and they said, are we allowed to… am I allowed to write on LinkedIn about some of the things that I'm, you know, not specific, but… The actual problems we're solving, from a generic sense, you know, sanitize a little bit, and the employer actually told them I think it was Boston Scientific, I can't remember exactly, but they said, you know, we actually expect our employees to publish. That is actually something we want them to do to show them as more credible to the industry. And so, I mean, if you can position it that way, it's all about positioning when you… if you have an employer who you're not sure if they're gonna

Want you to do that or not, but…

Yeah, I would… I would even add to that. If you… work for a company and, for recruitment purposes. They're trying to, people want to know who they're going to be working with. They want to know, what the company culture is like. They want to find a LinkedIn presence for the company and be able to evaluate it independently of, you know. I don't know, you know, Glassdoor or something like that. They're trying to get a sense of who works there, who reports to, you know, and if they find nothing. out there, that's… not a… not a good thing. Yeah. But be sure to check with your company, about what their,

Their policy is, because it's not worth losing your job over not asking permission. Or, you know, getting in trouble.

Well, the other thing is, because there's a couple other different things about, just some answers in the chat, so I'm loving this, personally. Lots of vocal people on the same subject. Makes total sense. The other thing I would say about that is, not everybody speaks your style. I am from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I'm gonna tell you a story about growing up in Oklahoma here in just a minute. the way I speak at conferences, some people are not interested in hearing what I have to say, and that's fine. The people who are interested in what I have to say are the ones I'm interested in talking to. So, I could say the exact same thing, but I say it differently.

And I think we need everybody, personally, to say all these different things, so that, you know, different tones, different ways of saying things is important. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. You're not trying to get 100% market share for… of this topic. If you get half a percent of market share, that's probably plenty for you to live on. And that's okay. The other thing… what was the other one? There's enough noise in the world, only post if I have something useful to share. That's fair. I would say, if you follow what I write, or if you're… if we're connected, I'm gonna say some things that are probably not useful. Because I'm thinking of that employee, or that employer, or whoever it is I used to work with, they say, man, Etienne, I love the stuff you post about design inputs and product development, that's probably my passion.

risk management, whatever, but I love hearing what's going on in your life, too, and so I'm like, alright, well, I'll post something about how I did something in this airport, you know? And because some people want to know, for whatever reason, they want to know, you know, I don't fully understand that, I'm not a psychologist, but some people want to know about your life, and that's okay, too. So, it's just, if you have one person in mind who you write to, it's okay if it's a different person each time. I wouldn't sweat it too bad. I knew I made it in life when I had a hater. Messaged me that said, you are nothing of a guru.

And I said, understood, and moved on. Said, that's okay. If you don't have any haters, then you probably are a little bland. Which is fine, too, but… Okay, so… how inbound… if you think about inbound being leads coming to you versus you going out, trying to hunt somebody down, and try to convince them to buy from you, you really… inbound is a better way to live. this is how… this is the realistic way it works. First couple months, you'll get nothing, it'll be crickets. Few months go by, people start referencing you because of consistency. And then a few, you know, strangers… if you have a strong opinion, strangers are going to come to your door at some point in the next year, they're gonna be convinced, and…

You may not even be able to tell where they came from. And so, eventually, after years go by, your name will come up, people will ask you to be on things that you never thought you'd be on, and you'll have a lot more reach. So, it's… it's a long-term play if you want to build an inbound, pipeline. But, one of the things to think about, too, is I… what… you know, Stephen Covey says, begin with the end in mind. If you think with years at a time versus quarters or months at a time. I was actually speaking with, I was trying to find his card. It's on my desk here somewhere. I have… I have, you know, way too many cards from all the different conferences I've been at in the last couple weeks, but I had dinner with an investment banker who spec… he… he specializes in

hooking up MedTech vendors with M&A. So, for a strategic who doesn't have reimbursement, they may buy a reimbursement vendor and hook them up. So, we were talking about what does it take I was curious, I'm like, why do you choose this vendor versus that vendor when you recommend them for M&A? He does a lot of the due diligence and so on. He says, well, it's actually not the size. It doesn't… it's not the size of the firm that I'm interested in, it's the scalability. That's what I'm interested in. Do they have a way of selling, or a way of getting their name out there that actually is going to scale when we purchase them? Because, obviously, the person who purchases a medical device vendor, they want

They want to grow that thing, so if they spend however many million dollars, they expect that to give them a return. In some way, and you've got to figure out what is that return? Is it a… a consistent way of selling, that can be You add more people, and now you can sell more? Or is it a specific, skill set that they need to, complement their existing services. There's lots of different ways. So, I will just say. Begin with the end in mind, whatever it is your goals are, that's gonna dictate how you build some of your sales and marketing. Did I say everything about that? Yeah, I was just… I was… when Sean and I were talking about this, I was gonna use Greenlight grew as something of a, I guess a case study. We've been publishing now for over a decade, and our resource hub

It reaches over 200,000. When we send out a webinar, like I said, we may have 2,000 sign-ups, but that's being sent to a newsletter of about a hundred and something thousand people. So now we have about 1,100 companies around the world that use our software. And this wasn't built overnight, but it was built with education first in mind, because the goal is… however you think, again, however you think of the product we sell, the goal was to help the industry initially. That was our original goal. So, like I said, 3 different kinds of returns. Referrals are the number one. The best way, I don't know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. In my mind, and in my experience, a referral is the easiest sale to make.

and repeat business, that same buyer coming up when they remember you, because you're top of mind, for whatever reason, and then future companies. Those people change companies, or they move to a next company, or they build another company, and they remember you. And that's… those are the three relationships, that I think are the… The… the most important, ones to build. Let's see… I think this is pretty self-explanatory. Your reputation outlives the, But the three questions that are things that I think are interesting, and actually, the next slide talks about the homework that I would give you, but what would someone conclude about you from a 10-minute search? If they search your name.

Provided it's unique enough they can find you, which should be, what will they come up with? And who in this industry would vouch for you without really being asked? If your name came up and you weren't the one who asked them to do that, who would vouch for you? Say, oh yeah, man, he's good at XYZ, he's really good at these different things. Is there anything that you've published in the last few years that you really stand behind? I have published some things that I've changed my mind on. I hope you don't judge me too much for changing my mind, but I feel like if you never change your mind, that might be a problem as well. But you also need some things that you'd stand behind. So…

The next thing that you could do in the next 30 days is publish one article, write an article, you can present it to several different companies, because a lot of these people are looking for things to publish, if you want to publish something. If there's someone who has a podcast that you know, or a webinar invitation on a subject, one of the best webinars we ever conducted was somebody who It was a guy who I worked with, and I just reached out to him, I said, hey, I know you're… I don't know if you have time to do a webinar, but I know you did this MDSAP, prison… you went through MDSAP. and getting ready for that, could you build a presentation for us? And it was the best presentation on MDSAP I'd ever seen, and there was zero reason for him to do that, because he was comfortable in his job.

But later on, he got, they had some downsizing, he was let go, and now he runs a consultancy. And, I don't know if that has anything to do with the success of his consultancy, but, That's one thing you can do, is putting those things together, because someone who's hungry is gonna be a whole lot better at building a webinar than someone who's just… You know, doing it because that's what they do. Oh, this was a poll. I thought I… I'm just… I'm just trucking along, guys. Alright, cool. Well, I…

Yeah, let's ask them, what's the one thing you'll do in the next 30 days? Yeah. Is, you know… You know, when he was talking about the, the one post that got 2 million views, impressions, whatever. what I would say is, while I've never had a post that's gotten 2 million views, and I've been publishing consistently for 3 years, that's not the number I look at. The number that I look at is the 365-day number. If you go into LinkedIn Analytics, and you look at your post. look at… go deeper into the analytics, and find what your average is over 365 days. And, you know, I'm somewhere between, you know, a million and 2 million impressions per year. And

it's consistency on LinkedIn rather than, you know, the post that rings the bell or gets the brass ring, because going viral on LinkedIn is like winning the lottery. then your life goes back to exactly the way that it was before you won the millions of dollars, and it turns out you can be just as miserable with millions of dollars in the bank as you were without it. I think that the important thing to understand about developing a presence Is just consistency, and if that's every day, I find that to be tedious, to be honest. I prefer people that do not post every day. I do not want to hear from my own family members every day, much less you. Not to be rude, however… however, I do need to point out that you can wear out your welcome on LinkedIn, that you can be overly present, and that you can become a thirst trap.

You know, a thirst trap is a gay expression that we in the community use amongst ourselves to be somebody who is, like, you know. out there all the time, always demanding attention for themselves. The best thing that I think that you can do is raise up other people. Thanks. Done.

Yeah. I mean, and if you look at how LinkedIn is working right now anyway, commenting on other people's posts is as good as your own posts, just about. Not that… I think you should still have your own posts, so you have your own point of view, but… yeah.

Yeah, so here's an opportunity for you to do that. I'm gonna drop in a link to, the, webinar that we just did, with, Daniela Carrera and, Matteo Moso this week on Clinical, and I want you to not only like it, I want you to save it. Because saves are the new force multiplier on LinkedIn, according to our friend Jose. Yeah. From CyberMed. So, remember to hit that save button. I'm gonna drop that in.

And, so this number 3, Rick, you put number 3, but this may take time to refine. So if you build that practical resource. And you do a post about it, that is likely the one that… if you could turn it into a post that someone will save, you'll get that. So, I mean, you think about it, the reason those saves are so important is because someone… what do you save? The things that are actually helpful. And so, if you're actually helpful. then people will save it, and LinkedIn wants to incentivize the things that people actually are interested in. So, yeah, you just have to think about the philosophy of why this is. They're not completely irrational at these different platforms.

Okay, so what to do next? Just kind of reverse engineering what I've already talked about. Search your own name the way a buyer would, write down what you find, kind of evaluate yourself. Would you buy from yourself? Be pretty honest with yourself. Pick that one format you can sustain for the next 12 months. Can you write an article once a month and submit it to MDDI, MPO, these different places, Quality Digest. Write down 3 questions clients have asked you. What do they ask you when they're talking about hiring you? And then answer those 3 questions, publicly, you know? You don't have to say, a client asked me this, or a prospect asked me this. You just say, you know, here's something I would…

I'd be curious about if I were trying to hire somebody, you know, what does working with you in the first 90 days look like, or whatever it is. List those people who'd vouch for you, and start recognizing them as well, as important in your life. I mean, if they'll vouch for you, then They should carry some weight with you a little bit. And then, put that recurring block so that you can maintain that format sustenance. I wrote… I wrote down a little bit… a few books that I recommend, in marketing in general, so this post-acquisition marketing book, I really like, because it gives some… some… serious talk about how to build a content funnel and, different things like that with tables. We love tables. How to build that content

just… engine. It was written for private equity-backed companies, but in my mind, if you build your company as if you're going to go through an acquisition, even if it's a one-person operation, if you think, okay, I'm just gonna pretend I'm going to be acquired in 18 months, what do I need to do differently? That's a, you know, that's a good playbook. So, and that's what this book will show you how to do. 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Horizon Trout. Like I said, when I enter an industry, and I also recommend, always know what industry you're in. I was a mechanical engineer, I was a designer, I was in regulatory, I was in manufacturing, so I knew about manufacturing, went to the manufacturing conferences, I knew about robotics and all that stuff. Then I went into marketing. Okay, well, now I need to know marketing, so I read all the marketing books. This is the one that negates every other marketing book. If you want to go even deeper, you could get into

advertising. You know, I don't know what Sean thinks of Ogilvy, but, all these are just some of the best, you know, that they've stood the test of time. They get into the psychology of marketing, not the, how often do you post on LinkedIn. It's what actually do people care about, and how do you get into those Maslow hierarchy of needs type situation. How to Win Friends and Influence People, who hasn't heard of that book, but have you all read it? I actually try to read it every year. Giftology is kind of a bonus in my mind. This is one I actually struggle with marketing teams to pay attention to. How many of you been to a conference show and been given a pin, or an Uzi, or whatever, a koozie, or whatever else, and you throw it away on your way out the door? Giftology is where…

Like, if I give… if I'm having a CEO dinner, I'm about to swipe $7,000 on my card for just the drinks alone, and they're all CEOs, and I don't… I don't want to give them something cheap, so I give them what I really like, personally, is, I like, the… what is it? The Fisher Space Pen with their name engraved on it, not mine, not my company's name, but their name, engraved on a pen that is very engineering-specific. If you don't know about that pin, you know, look it up. Five Love Languages, yes, it's for your… a significant other, but it's also for your biggest client. So, everybody has a different way of expressing those needs.

Alright, keep moving. If you want to find me somewhere, this is where I'll be, and I'd love to talk in person. I'll be in Boston later this month, Europe next month. Chicago after that, and then Minneapolis, so if you want to find me, I'll be the guy in the boots that's starting to be part of my brand, I guess. But, I'll tell you one other story. So I told you I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Maybe I should have started this. I actually graduated from Terry Don West School of Bull Riding in 2009. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, everybody winds up in rodeos, so please don't judge me for that. Bull riding, if you don't know about this, is scored 50 points, 50 points. 50 for the rider, 50 for the bull.

you can ride a perfect ride, perfect technique, and you stayed on, but you get a low score because the bull didn't really perform the way they, you know, want to see him perform. So, again. Sean talked about the 2.2 million. You might think, oh, I'll never get 2.2 million. Well, it's true. It's dictated. It crossed multiple industries, got into aerospace, other things like that. Who doesn't really help you. That's the bull. I was there because I showed up every time. I control my 50%. That's it. So you control what you control, and ride anyway, every day. That's the recommendation I would give you.

Alright. I'm meant to get through this a lot faster. Sean's like, show me your slides, I don't know.

I love it. I want to know a little bit more about bull riding school.

Oh, man, when I showed up, alright, full disclosure, I had gone through a very bad breakup, and I didn't care about anything at that point, so I was like, I'm gonna… I'm gonna go bull riding school and be a bull rider. This was before I went to engineering, and I was the only one who sat down from the city, and Terry Don West was a… he was the PBR champion 3 years in a row in the early 90s, and he says, who's here just to have fun? And I raised my hand, then I looked up, like. these guys are serious, they're here for a living. This is… and so… a lot of life lessons from riding… from bull riding school, honestly.

At one point, I went down… I rode 13 bulls that day. I went down into the chute, it sat down, and I was in the dark, I was scared, and I jumped out. He came up to me, grabbed me by the chest, and said, you never, ever, ever get off a bull. So I was like… So anyway, a lot of life lessons there.

So we have some questions. Someone asked in the Q&A, would opinion pieces or tips and tricks posts be more valuable coming from the organization employer, or from the respective employee? First, I'm going to tell you guys something, that your LinkedIn does not like company pages. LinkedIn does almost nothing with company page posts, okay? So, coming from the employer, it's not going to reach anybody. LinkedIn is a place that exists for people, not for companies, primarily. And if you are a company, they want to make a lot of money off of you. So if you're looking for organic stuff to travel.

posted from your individual page. Second of all, I'd like to remind everybody that your individual page belongs to you and not to your company, unless you're like me and you're the owner of the company, in which case Nobody cares. But the, the… the… The… the point is that Always post from your personal LinkedIn. First. If you want to put it on your company page, go right ahead, but it's like reposting. It doesn't do anybody any good, you know? Have you ever noticed that if you repost an article, repost a post from somebody else, LinkedIn views that as duplicative content. and does nothing to promote it, even if you write something really, really interesting about it, you're better off writing an original post and referring them back to the post by Rick Stockton or the post by Chris Kelly.

You know?

Yeah, as a general rule, I look at corporate posts about 10% of the weight of a personal From a personal post, so… If you look at actual impressions.

So there's a really big question, how to build organic, leads pipeline. Yeah, that would be, like, 4 other webinars, in a row, but, you know, if you want to learn, I recommend to everyone on this call that you consider joining MLVX. We're a community. of, MedTech product and service providers who are all struggling with the same question, which is, how am I going to get more friggin' business this year? And if you're not struggling with that, God bless you. But for the rest of us. in the world, there is a community, and a community that can support you. I think that when we look at the people who are present on this call, and the ability for one of us to, refer business to one another.

You know, because there are very few people on this call that do absolutely everything, and if they do, they probably don't do it well. And so what I would recommend is that if you need a cybersecurity expert, or a human factors expert, or a CRO, or a validation expert, or a biocompatibility expert, that you turn to a network of people that you can trust, to a network of people that you know, and, belonging to a group, so if you want to know how to get involved. The other thing is, is that while we were working here, I whipped up a prompt. For, how to get the most out of your conference attendance, and basically what you do is you upload your role, what you're looking for, then the agenda of the conference, the website of the conference, all of the speakers at the conference, and all of the vendors at the conference. And what it's going to do is going to create a before, during, and after plan for you of who you should connect with.

What you should say to them in order to connect with them. And, how you should follow up with them after the fact, rather than sending them one of those stupid emails that say, we're so-and-so, and we do this and that. If you'd like this prompt, please write prompt in the chat. If you would like to connect with Etienne. please write Etienne in the chat, and if you would like information or to talk to me about becoming a member of MLVX, write MLVX in the chat, and we will book a meeting next week. I hope everybody has a great weekend. I would like to give Etienne the closing 2 minutes of the call.

And I'm gonna shut the hell up.

I'll give you one piece of advice when you go to that next conference, if you want to get ahold of everybody, as many people as you can, the one person nobody talks to at the end of a… panel, or whatever, is the moderator, and guess what? The moderator knows everybody at that conference, or at least more than probably the panelists themselves, and nobody's talking to them. There's no line. talk to that guy, and say, hey, is there any way you could introduce me to this other person? That's my piece of advice if you want to do that. But anyway, thank you so much for listening, I really appreciate all of your attention, you've been a great audience, and it's great to see…

those, additional… those names out there that I haven't seen in a long time. And Sean, thank you so much for inviting me on here. It's been really fun. I enjoyed it.

Yeah, it was great. It was… Etienne was a very dynamic guest. His public speaking is impeccable, and something that I aspire to personally. He's got a lot more polish than I'll ever have. And, I would like to thank all of you for your time and your contributions today. Look forward to the recap article. And, yeah, this has been awesome, thanks.