#5: Building Patient Value in Healthcare: Inside the Pharmaceutical Advocacy World

**Gus:** Welcome back to another episode of the Founder Facing podcast. I'm joined today by Matt Toresco. Matt is the founder of Arco Advocacy Group, which works in medical consulting. So Matt, thanks so much for being on the podcast.

**Matt:** I appreciate you having me.

**Gus:** Yeah, of course, man. Super excited. We had a bit of a conversation earlier, one much longer than expected. So we have a lot to talk about today. Um, so just real quick, give us a quick idea of what you do at Arco and what you're trying to accomplish because you're obviously in the healthcare space. So give us a little bit of info.

**Matt:** Yeah. So ultimately there's a lot of feelings about pharma and biotech and what do they do? What do they not do? Um, are they looking to get us healthy? So on and so forth. Um, so these organizations all have what are called advocacy functions. So there are a team of people whose job it is to get out to the patient community, understand any needs or issues that the patients are facing, try to look to overcome those in whatever means are best for the patient and spend that, you know, anywhere from, let's say 10 million to $25 million in a year to maximize the patient impact that they can have.

**Gus:** That's awesome. Yeah. And so you take, you work with these companies to talk to consumers and talk to, you know, patients to try to, you know, ideally get them better outcomes within the, um, within the healthcare system, right?

**Matt:** Yeah, it's, it's working with them to figure out the best ways to spend those dollars truly so that depending on what we're seeing. So for example, you have a lot of policy changes going on. You have, um, issues within the community, something called social determinants of health, which quite simply puts the zip code that you live in has an impact on your healthcare. How can a pharma company utilize the dollars that they have to impact those issues? Um, and then something as simple as the current statistics are 50% of patients who are prescribed a drug that needs to be infused actually get it. So what about those other 50%? And that's the focus of the advocacy function and the work that we do is to try to figure out what those issues are and work to overcome them on behalf of patients.

**Gus:** Nice. That's great. And I think that, you know, anyone who's trying to do any sort of good in the healthcare system is definitely appreciated.

**Gus:** Um, obviously he said the devil's money is still green. Um, a lot of issues in the healthcare system. So I kind of wanted to start just there and there are so many different issues. It's such a complex system. There's no one solution that could fix all of these kinds of issues. But as someone who, you know, started in the healthcare space and now is, you know, consulting and advising these different healthcare companies, if you could single it down to a single issue, what do you see as the biggest issue in our healthcare system today?

**Matt:** Unfortunately, it's individual education or what we call health literacy. And it's, it's the inability and age time constraints be the complexity of the system itself of how do we ensure that when you do get sick or you're facing a medical issue, that you know what you're doing, that you know where to go, you know, how to deal with insurance, you know, about your insurance. Most people don't know about the insurance they picked, unfortunately, until they have to use it. And then they recognize that, oh man, that plan that I picked requires me to pay a lot of money before the insurance company does anything. And that's, that's the unfortunate feature of our healthcare system is that I would say it's somewhat unnecessarily or purposefully complex. And just because now you've gotten to a doctor doesn't mean they're the right doctor. Doesn't mean they're the right doctor for you. Doesn't mean they can fix your issue.

**Matt:** And I came across this in my own personal life. I broke my neck in 2005. So I was playing lacrosse at Ohio state. It took five months for them to recognize that I had blown out a bunch of discs and vertebrae in my spine. So there was a, I was already kind of behind the eight ball. Then I got into the healthcare industry and it took me 20 years to get off of a pain meds that they decided that was the best route and option to deal with the pain that I had from a massive spinal injury. Luckily I have all my fact, my, my faculties, I'm able to walk, move all of that, but I was dealing with chronic pain. My start, I was six foot and at one point I was about five 10 because I was so bent over from my neck. And if I work in it and I know how to have the fights with insurance companies and who to contact and that I can leave the state that I'm in of South Carolina to go have surgery somewhere else, what, what does it take for someone who doesn't know those things? And that's what brought me into doing what I do is that there are plenty of people who were in my situation or other disease states or whatever it might be that aren't aware of how to have the educated conversation with a physician or maybe afraid to. Um, and it's how do we better educate them to take that on?

**Gus:** Totally. Yeah, no, I, I have a buddy of mine who's a neurosurgeon and he had some stomach issues and this is the same thing. He's like, I'm literally in med school, like, or just finished med school. I'm like, I'm a doctor right now and I'm going to other doctors and I like, I don't know exactly what's wrong with me, but it's definitely not what they're telling me is the issue. Right.

**Matt:** Right. It took him months to get that. And as a doctor, he might be comfortable challenging or asking questions and I'm sure he was frustrated with all of that too. Imagine not being someone or being an individual who thinks they're subordinate to their doctor. And it's definitely a generational thing. Um, we are seeing those that are, let's say 60 and older who bow down to their doctor, do what the doctor says for the most part. Um, but you have to be able to challenge that, you know, you are a, uh, you're a part of this healthcare economy, so it's unfortunate. But the way that I've heard it put best is that you get dropped into the home depot, so to speak of healthcare that nobody ever wanted to shop in and there's nobody there to help you.

**Gus:** Yeah. There's no friends around.

**Matt:** No, there's, there's no guides. You don't know what you're buying, why you're buying it. You just know what your problem is and you're hoping to find somebody else that's like you in that store that can help provide some guidance. Um, and that's where we're helping the industry itself recognize that they need to be in the aisles helping to facilitate these patients along the way.

**Gus:** That's great. And I think that helps with the fear aspect of it too, because I mean with all the, all the reasons you'd might be afraid to go to a doctor costs, like just like people are afraid of that sort of thing, you know, to actually be able to stand up and say like, I think that this is maybe not the right option or anything like that. Like it takes a certain amount of confidence to be able to say, I'm not so sure that this person who has gone to school for so long and is like well respected and all this stuff. Um, so I think that that's, that's great. And I think there's a lot of space that can be improved upon, uh, on that and in the healthcare system.

**Matt:** Yeah. And I think a lot of people need to recognize that you will hit a limit of knowledge for a doctor. It's just, it's normal. It is what it is. You know, my, I'm in my space, I hit a limit of my knowledge in healthcare, so it's okay to go to somebody else, right? Same thing in, in healthcare. If the doctor's no longer serving you or if you've hit the limit of their knowledge, it's okay to go find somebody else. It's the only way you're going to get the solution that you know somewhere in your mind that there is something that is fixed or what it feels like to be fixed. The only way to do that is to navigate it on your own.

**Gus:** For sure. That's great advice.

**Gus:** Um, let's jump into the business itself a little bit and talk a bit about how you got started. I know we talked about your bootstrapped. Um, so you came from, so tell us, tell us a little bit about the story from how you, what you did before and how that kind of turned into the business that you're running now. And then we can kind of talk about your new hire and all of the, all of the things that go along.

**Matt:** Yeah, it was, um, it was one of those things that I wanted to make this move for a number of years and just didn't know if I could do it. You know, you have to talk yourself into it and talk yourself through it and, um, had some, you know, misalignment with some, some, with an ex employee, so to speak, ex employer. And we just did not see eye to eye on the work that I do, which was very different than anything that anyone else at the organization did. Again, this patient advocacy focused work and research and trying to ensure that we were giving feedback back to these nonprofits who depend on it. Um, so I decided, all right, we're going to, we're going to start on our own. Let's, let's see what we can do. And you have to have the faith in yourself to make the jump. And it took some time to get there, but I got there.

**Matt:** And, um, ultimately from there, it's once you're, once you're jumping in, how can you ensure that a, you've, you've cemented a value prop that people can, can come and latch onto and appreciate. But then B, you kind of have to become a master of all traits because there are so many elements in business bookkeeping, one of them that becomes the bane of my existence. Um, but you, you quickly learn what you don't know and where you need assistance and you have to be comfortable with that. You have to be okay being uncomfortable because for the first two years minimum, um, it's going to be uncomfortable. There's going to be boom and bust scenarios where, you know, I'm in one right now, we're, we're waiting on a payment, right. And, and with pharma companies, you typically have a 90 day payment term. And that's difficult when you're running a small business and you have employees and I have two kids and it's all of those little things, um, that end up in the success or failure of a business. And for us, it was, we had backing from customers. We had the ability to make the move financially as a family. Um, and we knew that we were bringing value to the market. So with those three things, we jumped.

**Gus:** That's awesome, man.

**Gus:** I'd love to kind of dive in on that value prop thing because I feel like that is something that founders can struggle with. Especially, you know, you identify your ICP, you try to figure out what do they care about? How do I position my product or service within that space that appeals to these ICPs? But it can be a really challenging thing to, you know, just actually commit to, especially when there are so many different aspects. I mean, personally, I've been repositioning my business and coming up with my value props. So what do you, what's your process for that value prop? You do customer interviews? It's something I teach, actually.

**Matt:** Yeah. Um, so I teach this to the pharma industry, um, to their account managers and mainly the folks that go and talk to folks in a hospital. Um, because as you might imagine, you have a product and there could be a lot of people in the hospital that use that product, which means central purchasing, but there's other influences on that. The product's the product. At the end of the day, a product is a product. People aren't going to buy the product for the product. They're going to buy who's behind the product.

**Matt:** So the base of your value proposition, and we've, I've seen this in many different domains. If you make the base of your value proposition price, you will lose. If you make the base of your value proposition, you and all that you've done, all that, you know, all the places you've been and what makes you special. No one can take that, can take that from you. So that base of your value proposition has to be you. You have to do a personal inventory. I don't care if it's where you went to school, what your grades were or what your degree was in, who you know, what you've done in business, if anything, because believe me, I have someone who works for me that this is his first, as he calls it, big boy job, right? But there's value to the individual and the passion can only come through about what you do if you've built in who you are first and foremost.

**Matt:** Then from there, it becomes the product secondary, the company third and pricing last. Right. So you have to get a sense for who you are and what you care about. And I tell this to young folks all the time and I say young folks, I'm about to hit 40. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you do, just make sure it's something that you enjoy, something that you find passion in, because then it's not really work. There's no such thing as work life balance. It's choices, right? You've made a choice to focus on the work or you made a choice to focus on something else. But when you can enjoy all of it, that's really what it comes down to. So what is your value prop based off of the industry that you are so happen to be in? What are what about you? What is it about you that sets you apart?

**Gus:** Definitely. And I think that that's really great advice. It's actually an interesting previous client of mine had a number of like speaking coaches and different like business coaches on his podcast. And he said very, very similar things to what you were saying. Is that like do a personal inventory and, you know, really talk about like these were my experiences and it's and it's for yourself. Right. And I think this man was a public speaking coach, but he's like, who are you really? And I think that's something that a lot of founders through the chaos and the hustle and bustle of starting a business, taking care of the bookkeeping, making sure you're getting paid on time. What's my product? I'm marketing all the time. That piece of it can definitely get missed.

**Matt:** Yeah. And, you know, I was working with a client just yesterday and it's all about people want to buy products and services from other people. You're not a big, giant, well-established brand that's been around for 10, 15, 20 years. You know, having a fancy logo and a fancy name for your business and all of that, like there's no trust there. But if you can see a face and you can see the person that's behind the business and start to understand those values and understand, oh, wow, this person is worth the investment that I'm making.

**Gus:** Yep. I think that adds a lot. And I think that that can be something that founders miss out on sometimes.

**Matt:** I completely agree. I think a lot of founders get really hyped about their own product. Right. And as the saying goes from back in the day, don't get high on your own supply. You know, the products, the product, you know, what is it like? Think about the simplest form of you introducing yourself to a new customer or just in the grocery store, introducing yourself and who you are. What is what is it that makes you you? Right. Yeah. I'm the founder of Arco Advocacy, but my goal is to utilize the 20 plus years of experience that I have in health care, watching the way that the sausage gets made in pharma and biotech and med device and genomics to ease the process for a patient. Right. So you got to bring in all that, you know, and all that you do. Otherwise you just become the product and we can replace the product with the next best one. Thank you, AI, for iterative opportunities. But again, the only way you're going to stand out, I hate to say it in this AI world, is the, quote unquote, soft skills. Right. Those soft skills are not soft by any means. They are the most important thing that you can focus in on.

**Matt:** And again, many founders get lost in the soup of creating their their their decks to take to market, trying to sometimes find funding and be, you know, just proof of concept. Is this what people want? Well, they have to want you first and you have to be somewhat of a market expert in which you're in and be able to build your own brand on all of the social channels and platforms so that people know when you do come to them, they already have a sense of what you're coming about.

**Gus:** Exactly, exactly. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more with that.

**Gus:** And I actually I was looking at your socials. You know, you've made some shorts, you've put yourself out there, you're starting a podcast soon, right? Is that correct?

**Matt:** Exactly.

**Gus:** Yeah. And I think that that's.

**Matt:** Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say it's it's a work that I never really thought about prior to coming into the small business world as being something that would do anything. But I can't tell you the number of times I've been at conferences or that I meet new customers that's like, oh, I've seen your stuff. Right. And we do know LinkedIn ads at this point because we're lean and mighty, but it's the total volume of what we put out. I'm a big believer in the two to two of LinkedIn, which is two to two posts, two comments to, you know, like, love, whatever. Insightful reaction, the little reaction button. Right. I mean, if you're not doing that every day, the person that you are behind the computer screen gets lost because if you're not being authentic on those platforms, you will come off as fake. People can sniff it really easily. So the more that you're able to educate the market that you're in on what's happening and be the influences that are coming, the more of a quote unquote professional you are coming off as for when you do get to that sales table.

**Gus:** Absolutely. I truly could not agree more with you on that. And I think that that's a big piece because, you know, I work with a lot of startups, founders and things like that. And the educational piece of it is how I kind of crack the content side of things, because a lot of founders and a lot of, you know, startup like higher ups and startups, right. Content is very low priority to them. And also it has some what of a stigma around it, I think, just due to the rise of the number of influencers on the on the stage right now, the kind of perception around being an influencer or being a YouTuber or something like that. And I think that that's a really challenging hurdle to kind of overcome. But I feel like the educational aspect of it is a really important piece of it. And that's kind of what we try to focus on is like, who's your who's your customer and how can you educate them about something that also refers back to your business, but isn't just, hey, go check out my business. It's like, no, I'm a master of my domain. I understand this, this, this and this. And this is why you should either follow me for more information like this, or maybe we can actually help you. Right. Because at the end of the day, business is about solving problems for your customers. It's not about tricking them into buying some stuff that they don't want.

**Matt:** You got to leave breadcrumbs that show people there is value to what you do. Right.

**Gus:** Absolutely.

**Matt:** I'm a big believer in what's called a pest analysis, which is flat out read every day, read on your market. You have to know the political, economic, social, cultural and technological changes that are taking place in your market. If you can do that, you will outpace 90 percent of the industry for whatever you're in. And that's what allows us to then create content and put it out. Because at the end of the day, content is not content for content's sake. We're not I'm not trying to become an influencer. I think that that term is getting tossed around a bit too much. Yes, there are professional influencers, but they built their brand on who they are as an individual, first and foremost. Right. I don't care who you quote to be the big influencer of the day. Right. I mean, my kids enjoy watching Mr. Beast, but his his to me, his value prop is he's a giver. Right. He enjoys making other people happy. People resonate with that. Right. I enjoy educating people on a market that is very complex, that can be simplified. So do it and put it out there.

**Gus:** Totally. And I think also a lot of founders think in such big scale because, you know, OK, I have the SAS product and I want to get, you know, a thousand users and then ten thousand users and a million users. And it's all about those big scale kind of efforts. And sometimes and again, when I started my YouTube channel, like. I was so stoked to get like three comments and have like my first couple of videos be like, wow, I like this helped me with this VR thing I was doing or like, oh, wow, this like looks really cool. I'm going to check it out. And I think that that's another piece of it where it's like it's not all going to come at once. You're not going to post your first thing and get 10 million comments. But those few people that you might have helped out with educating them about something that's still really impactful. And I think that that kind of gets lost in the lost in the hustle and bustle of the startup grind.

**Matt:** Sometimes everyone's looking for the big clothes and not enough people are nurturing the market, I would say, you know, there there are there are sales that come in my industry that I never expected. In fact, it's been funny. I end up closing more business on vacation that I do it any other time. And it's not that I'm working on vacation. It's that at some point, something I said along the way resonated with somebody. And for them at that moment is the right time to engage. So, you know, you got to do you got to put the work in. You got to leave the breadcrumbs and trails of the value that you could provide so that when they're ready, because you're not going to push anybody to buy and you're not going to change their budget. But when you're when they're ready to engage in a conversation, you've at least have a track record of everything that you stood for.

**Gus:** Absolutely. And you're top of mind as well. Yeah. Like you want to be the first or oh, who's that content guy? Oh, who's that guy? You know, in the health care space doing this client advocacy stuff like if they can recognize you or see you again. Right. You're continuing to post. Oh, wait, that was that guy on LinkedIn. Like I meant to reach out to him because we want to do this right now. Right.

**Matt:** Exactly. There's tons of value in that.

**Gus:** Actually, back to that pest analysis, too. I'd love to get an idea of like what your informational diet is and like how do you if someone listening to this wants to do a pest analysis in their own industry, what are your recommendations for that?

**Matt:** I would say find the newsletters in your industry that are that have a couple hundred thousand followers and hop in. Find, you know, in the health care space, there's actually a couple of websites that do a really nice job. I'd consider them almost RSS type aggregators where they're taking news from other sources, but they end up doing a nice little digest for you. I like people who want to make my job easier. And I give a shout out to Health Care Dive and Bio Pharma Dive as two sources I use on a daily basis because they give you a three bullet, you know, synopsis of what the article's about before you even have to get into reading it. It's fantastic.

**Matt:** But that way, you know, and people here are 20 minutes a day minimum of reading and they're like, I don't even know where to fit this in. Well, the news cycles of the news cycle Monday, there's not really a whole lot you got to read because nobody's prepped to launch anything on a Monday. Friday, that's only what people are trying to hide. Right. Typically. So and you're usually going to see a recap of what's already taken place. So you're really doing your 20 minutes a day, Tuesday, Wednesday, a little bit on Thursday. Right. But if you always tell people, find the newsletters, sign up for them quickly, unsubscribe for them even quicker. If they're not of value, get rid of them. Right. You'll you'll probably find four max, you know, newsletters or let's say Google News alerts that you got to set for yourself as well that serve you outside of that. Get rid of them because they're just noise.

**Gus:** Yeah, that's such valuable information, too, because I feel like the just overwhelming amount of content out there, it can be challenging to, you know, cut through the noise. So I think, yeah, like sign up quick, get rid of them faster if they're not serving your purposes. Or, you know, sometimes newsletters can get a little aggregated themselves where, oh, this person posted about this thing last week. Now I'm going to kind of now I'm getting it again.

**Matt:** Exactly. And so you got to kind of be able to feel those things out. But that's that's super useful information. I'm actually going to start to take advantage of that as well.

**Gus:** But let's also jump over to your first hire. You mentioned your first employee, first big boy job. So talk to me about what your process was for taking the jump and hiring the first person and then, you know, all the things involved in finding that right person and also just, you know, going through the decision making process of what I'm going to start this over. This is way too long. I want to be a clip. I'm going to cut this part out. But cool. So let's jump over to, you know, you hiring your first employee. Walk me through that. Like, how did you find this person? How did you know they were the right person? And yeah, how did you know it was time to hire somebody?

**Matt:** Ultimately, I knew it was time because there was just so much to do and there was only one of me. And I was working some really late nights and figured there's got to be a better way. And we were we wanted to start with a part time hire. So that was obviously in itself difficult to to find someone who would be a committed, but be only taken on on an hourly basis. And I'm a big believer in constantly networking as much as you can. This hire actually came to me from a neighbor of mine. It was their nephew. And, you know, when I was starting my business and I was I was interacting with folks in our neighborhood because Charleston is just one of those places that it's a front door. It's a front door neighborhood. They encourage people to to engage with one another.

**Matt:** When they heard that I had a potential opportunity, and actually I even spoke to this person before anything became open, just to let Hunter, which is his name, which is fantastic because it's actually what he does, his job to hunt. I had a 30 minute call scheduled to get a sense for his market knowledge, but more so what were the values that he could bring to the table? I knew he had a marketing degree. I knew he was under 25 at that point and knew social media. He understood that world. I didn't grow up in it. Obviously, it was a little bit behind me, but I know that that there's a lot of value to it. So our initial 30 minute conversation ended up going three and a half hours.

**Gus:** Wow.

**Matt:** And that was telling for me because I remember sitting there going, man, here's a kid who graduated in the height of COVID, who all of his job opportunities were stripped because of COVID and the economy downsizing at that point, who opted to start his own business. And I wish I had the balls back when I was his age to do the very same thing. Right. So he had been successfully engaged in personal training in the Charleston area for two years. So he had a mindset for health and wellness. Different than health care, different than the domain that we're in, but he was hungry to learn. So we started with a couple hours a week and I set expectations for him of, A, that pest analysis, doing the reading, being engaged in it, starting to build his own brand on LinkedIn and putting out some posts each day.

**Matt:** And he took to it like a sponge and just really, really sucked it up and dove in. He's been a full-time employee now for just over a year. And it's something that has to work for both parties. So he had to be comfortable working, not just for me, but he had two other jobs at that time, too, and was willing to grind and do what was asked. But with all the tools that are available now, building outbound emails, not very difficult. It's all about the consistency game. And that's what I needed was someone who could manage that side of things. When a client gets nurtured enough for us, they come over to me and we get them on a call. And there's no better opportunity than being like this face to face than actually being face to face. I think that's still number one. But to be able to hand off a couple of those key heavy items to him, that for me freed up time for me to actually re-engage with my family.

**Matt:** So it's always opportunity costs, right? Same thing with bookkeeping. I know I harped on it before and it's not fun, especially when you're dealing with high marketing budgets and a lot of different vendors and making payments and collecting and all of that. But to find somebody who could do it for $10 an hour that was an actual accountant, albeit they are in the Philippines, but someone that I could trust to do that work and pull together P&Ls and keep track of expenses, but also keep track of invoices. I mean, that was a no brainer to bring in somebody like that. So, you know, you always have to take a look at the opportunity costs. What are you able to free up your time to do? And then do you have something to fill that time with? Because I don't think it's valuable if you're just going to bring someone in just to bring somebody in. There has to be something that they're doing that you're not able to do on your own. And this is where Hunter really fit the bill for us. It was come in, learn. He's continuing to learn. He will learn the rest of his career. But at the end of the day, he can take a volume of work off of my shoulders that otherwise would get stuck.

**Gus:** Totally. Yeah, no, I think that's incredibly valuable. And I'm, you know, I'm in the hiring process, the kind of early phases and it can definitely be overwhelming. From my personal experience, it was definitely overwhelming to, you know, throw out the LinkedIn post, get that many applicants, you know, that that was like I was like, oh, my gosh, this is much more results than I expected. Yeah. And I think what you talked about with the part time versus full time, you know, that was an avenue that I was attempting to go down. Yeah. But it was challenging because you're right, the buy in is not there in terms or it's hard to find someone who's fully bought in with the perspective of potentially becoming a full time employee, actually, when they still understandably need to work and make enough money to survive. Right. And so that's kind of been a challenge for me, at least. I have to start to get get over that or at least maybe find the right person. But I think the other aspects of hiring, you know, for a small startup, small business is finding somebody who's willing to learn, willing to to to grind and also, you know, take those things off your plate that you're able to then fill with things that are going to either impact the business or just give you a little bit of your mental health, a little bit of breathing room.

**Matt:** Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing I would say is transparency, right? Letting them know and I keep Hunter continuously in the loop, especially when we have, you know, down months on cash flow. It's like, look, here's where things are. This is why I have the KPIs that I have set for you where they are. And if they begin to slip, I have to be a good manager of that individual to let them know that they're slipping and they need to reengage.

**Matt:** But Hunter agreed that, listen, we'll take this as from an hourly hourly rate that I could afford to pay that ultimately at the end of the day became his full time salary. If you think about it from a pure hourly perspective, it became a full time salary in and of itself. And he was willing to devote more and more time, the more payoff he saw from it. And there was also a commission based component that came with that, too. So, hey, listen, you know, you'll take a lower hourly rate for now, but you'll take a higher commission check if you do get a sale in this time. And then when you move to a full time that that becomes a little bit different and you get a lower commission check, but you're continuously getting paid. So, you know, it's completely up to that person. It really becomes that initial conversation that you're having with them. What do they want out of this? If they're just looking for the check, then they're probably not the right person.

**Matt:** And I would say that, you know, the 20 to 30 year old generation probably gets a bad rap for not being willing to to hustle. There's plenty of them that are. It's just having having that discussion and making sure that that you are as transparent with them as possible about, listen, I'm brand new to this. So there's a lot of learning that I'm going to do that. I need you to be just as as open and transparent with me of when I've given you something that you can't do. I need to know and I'll walk you through it. We'll we'll do it together the first time that I'll have, you know, you got to teach them before they can fish. But if you haven't taught them the fish, they ain't going to fish.

**Gus:** Yeah, totally, totally. And I think that that's a big part of it, too, is, you know, you can have the biggest go getter in the world, right? It could be the perfect person for the job. And I do want to kind of go back to more, I guess, maybe technical, like personal. Like, would you let me let me start with the other one. So you can have all the technical skills in the world, but if you're not given that good mentorship and you know, here's the relationship that we have where you can come to me and say, hey, I'm not sure how to do this, like, but I will figure it out if you can tell me. Right. And also, you know, that transparency, I think, is a big part of it. Like, hey, I'm learning, too. There's going to be things that I'm dropping the ball on. So keep each other accountable. Be a good manager. Those are all definitely learning experiences. We've all had bad managers.

**Matt:** Oh, yeah. And we know what we don't want to be, but at times it becomes really easy to slip into that silence. So we have standing calls every Monday and Friday so that there's consistency in what we expect and measuring out the week and looking at the at the next week. And at the same time, you know, text threads that are consistent, if not, you know, Slack completely up to you and what you use. I'm just not a fan of email communications for that type of work. It's a little slow.

**Gus:** Yeah. But, you know, I had to set the expectations of what I wanted from him Monday through Friday. This is this is the time that I expect. This is what I'm going to ask you to do. And then from there, if there's things that you think you can do that I'm not, I want you to come to me. If you see things differently, I want you to know that that's OK. Let's have that conversation because I am not a marketing expert. I don't have a marketing degree. I came out of the science field. So come to me with those ideas. It's only going to benefit you in the opportunity for growth in the future because it's going to benefit the company.

**Gus:** Absolutely. Absolutely. And those are the those are the winning the most winning players are the ones who are willing to speak up and say, hey, this is stupid, the way that we're doing this and then be able to come back and say, but I think we did it this way. Like, yeah, I am so open and like thrilled when somebody says what I'm doing is wrong because I'm like sick. Like, yeah, I want to do anything wrong. Like, yeah, I want to fix it. So those types of people are we can do this simpler and easier. Great.

**Matt:** Exactly. Help me understand how, you know, and he's done that multiple times and just bringing ideas and just simple concepts like have we ever thought about an influence map? It's like I would love to do it. I just don't have the time to do it. Well, you know that perhaps that's that's something that he can take on. Right. Because in this advocacy space, there are so many players, there are so many groups, there are so many independent folks and independent consultants, and then there's the companies themselves. So being able to have the right triggers to pull at the right time is is really influential. And that was something that he came to the table with.

**Matt:** So, you know, it's that transparency and that approach of I want to learn from you as much as you're going to learn from me. And I'm sure it's going to take time and I'm OK that it's going to take you a number of years because it took me 20 years to get to where I'm at. You're not going to be there. And the amount of times I've had to pour back into him to help him to understand that it's OK that he's not where I am and that his brand isn't as built as he may think it should be. You have to set realistic expectations.

**Gus:** Totally. I mean, I was a I was a 20, an early 20 something a while ago, and I was like, why isn't shit happening fast? Yeah, like, oh, why is this taking so long? But yeah, I mean, I think over the course of the things that I've done in my career that have really paid off for me, it was the YouTube channel that was me working on that for six years straight with, you know, good success, but nothing at the beginning. Right. And it really does take I don't know if the 10,000 hours is the marker, especially in startup, because you're like, I'm doing so many different things. You know, I guess 10,000 hours of a bin of startup stuff. Right. That's where you get that expertise. But it does take time. But I understand that the impatience.

**Gus:** The last thing I kind of wanted to chat about, kind of switching gears a little bit here is a little bit about your business model and how you came to that. So if you're comfortable with sharing, obviously, if not, we can kind of tweak this a little bit. But what is your business model? Like maybe what's your sales cycle look like? And how did you determine, like, these are the packages or these are the services or these are the surveys that we're going to provide to these customers? What was that process like?

**Matt:** So the research is something that I came across a number of years ago. And in industry, you have a lot of benchmarking that's done on any commercial role. But unfortunately, this domain did not have industry benchmarking, which I always thought was interesting because they are, in my opinion, a vital asset to the organization. But because of, you know, federal law and the DOJ and the way that they see pharma, these teams cannot be commercial in nature. Right. So they can't realistically and legally be tied to a commercial number. Well, how do then do they tell their organization that they're doing a good job? Right. Or they're doing things that help. That's where the research kind of grew out of was if we can go to their customers and get feedback from their customers, we can come back to them and say, here's where you are based off of their perspective. And now let's let's let's think about how we can work together strategically to change that opinion or to continue to drive that perception that you are doing the right thing. And then how do we sell that internally? How do we become a part of the business so that they see us as a business partner, not as what's often termed in advocacy? Oftentimes it's seen as shaping fog because it's it's the fluffy stuff, right?

**Gus:** Absolutely.

**Matt:** You get to deal with patients on a daily basis and the nonprofits that support patients. And you're not building marketing decks and you're not doing the hard stuff. No, they are doing the long term relationship building. That is the hard stuff because the company makes decisions all the time that impact that relationship.

**Gus:** Absolutely.

**Matt:** So that that was the premise of of the research itself. From there, it's also become a let's provide the industry back a benchmark for this function. So we've launched a second report that's known as the bioadvocate benchmark, the first being Elevay, which is patient insights, elevated health care. And the industry, the bioadvocate benchmark was, again, because there's not been a ranking, so to speak, of the organizations themselves. There's also not been inputs on what your average team size looks like, what their budgets typically are, where they sit in an organization, because there's there's a lot of inside of these companies about where does advocacy actually fit because they're non-commercial.

**Matt:** So we did a study to help guide the industry on here's where the majority of teams sit, here's what their budgets typically look like. And it's all based off of, obviously, the number of disease states they're involved in, because at the end of the day, that's what drives your spending. The more disease states you're in, the more nonprofits there are, the more professional societies there are. So that drives your spend. We knew that, but we didn't know what the actual numbers were going to look like. So to give you an example, your typical large pharma company has a budget of twenty five to fifty million and a team between thirty and fifty. And it's all dependent on that eight to twelve disease states. And that number can shift and change. But even your small ones that focus on one or two disease states have about a five million dollar budget and a team of three.

**Matt:** So it's having that benchmark and then figuring out, OK, what's the sale actually look like? How do we get them to, A, want to know the data? B, know the data when they don't look good. That's oftentimes a hard thing. Yeah. And it becomes a carrot or the stick, right? Let us let us work with you to craft a narrative internally by subscribing to the data and we'll walk you through it. We'll show you exactly why you look the way that you do. Or there's a press release, right? And the press release that you don't have control over can can be a difficult pill to swallow when leadership sees it and you weren't expecting it.

**Matt:** So there's there is that approach. And the sales cycle is typically three, maybe six months, depending on where in the year we were actually beginning that dialogue, you know, for for the industry right now. Honestly, you have another thirty five days before the industry shuts down. Most of pharma and biotech shut down the week before Christmas through the new year. So nothing's going to happen. And with 90 day payment terms, it's not like you're going to be collecting anything with for the rest of the year. But what ends up happening in November is they do budgeting kind of like the government, which is we're not starting at zero. We're starting at where we were last year. And if we didn't spend it all, you don't get that next year. So there's a lot of fallout money right now. And some of those sales cycles in November are much faster. And we even have some customers that want to prepay with spent with leftover money for next year's report that we're currently in the midst of fielding. So you get them now. It's quick. You get them in January, February, March, a little bit slower.

**Gus:** Mm hmm.

**Matt:** Summer sucks. You know, and these are things that you have to learn as an entrepreneur to budget for. Right. Knowing that there's no money in August and September and you have it's so funny. It's it is so funny because like, you know, when you're growing up, you're like summer vacation is awesome. And then you join the workforce and you're like, summer sucks.

**Gus:** Yeah.

**Matt:** And then you realize eventually you're like, oh, no, people still have summer vacation.

**Gus:** Yeah, nobody's doing anything. Nobody does a damn thing in the summer.

**Matt:** Wild. And, you know, as a small business owner, I don't know about you, but, you know, we don't have all of the federal holidays off. Right. I have some always a surprise to me. I'm like, well, you guys have today off. You have you know, you have Veterans Day off. Like, OK, good. Good for you. I don't have Veterans Day off. But why do we have to then wait three weeks after Veterans Day to come back together? How about we get that a little bit faster? Right. So really do have to keep you have to be pushing and pushing in the summer if you want anything to happen. But honestly, and then, you know, the difficult thing in this industry is budget cycling. Most people go into budget review in July. So they're looking at the following year's budgets and what they're going to need midway through the current.

**Gus:** Oh, interesting. So they're not planning out like a quarter in advance. There are a couple of months in advance because, you know, you have big marketing budgets. And yeah, majority of those dollars in marketing go to ads on TV, which we will see plenty of them this evening on the news cycle. Right. And those take time to make those take time to get get seated in the market and so on and so forth. So it's always about marketing first and foremost. And then from there, the price point has to be right. Right. And it's been a very interesting dialogue and discussion with customers because really, you have to know where your customers are able to make the decision on their own versus where they're going to have to go above them to get sign offs. And we learned very quickly where that number is based off of some consulting calls with them and just what that looks like. And that's how it helped us to set our number for where we're at. And mind you, we have one competitor and that competitor is free.

**Gus:** Well, I'm dealing with a value prop, as I discussed before, if your only value is your price, well, we're lost, right? They're not going to pick us. So that's where the breadth and depth of the value of the data that we provide. And ultimately, they get a team member or two for a year with us when they buy the data, because as you can imagine, when you have about 200 slides worth of data, it's something that you can't go through on your own and it takes time. And then when they want people internally to hear about it, they don't want to take the time to do it. It's on us to sell the data continuously, internally. And then typically once we can get them on the hook for one year, they don't do multi year contracts in pharma, just not the way that things happen. But if you're working with them, they are still with you that next cycle that comes around. So you're more than likely going to get them again in the coming year.

**Gus:** Well, I think that's a really smart way to do it is like, you know, you can't just say, hey, here's the data, like, enjoy it. Right. You want to make sure that the internal team is actually utilizing that, looking at it, taking advantage of it, because next year they'll be like, oh, that was we got no value out of it. Yeah, exactly. And then you're like, hey, you're ready for next year. And they're like, actually, like we don't really use it that much. But, you know, from a from a sheer business model, it's almost like a SAS product, right, where it's it's built ones distribute many. But it's just on a microcosm of a one year cycle. Right. The data is only as good as the year that it's in. And then when we get the next one, well, you know, it's one of the reasons that we go into currently right now we have 50 percent off of last year's report and a 10 percent discount if you go under contract for next for this coming year's report.

**Matt:** All right. So you got to get got to get it out while you can, knowing that the next report's coming, the next marketing is, you know, needing to be paid for all the conferences that you have to attend are coming. So you got to you got to price it right and know what your cogs are going into that so that when you do sell one, you know, I hope to cover the costs of running the report in selling one report. That way, everyone else is profit on top and can help cover the expenses of the business.

**Gus:** Yeah, no, I love that model. It makes a lot of sense. And for that number, when you're I think that's incredibly important for some businesses, right, where you're not trying to escalate up the chain. And then we have, you know, 15 other people like your sales cycles are already relatively, you know, not long, but they're longer than some of the sales cycles that I've seen, you know, working in sales previously, you know, like a tech at Oracle. Right. But when it comes to figuring that number out, like, was that just a conversation that you had? Like, hey, yeah, what's your budget? Like you just straight.

**Matt:** It was it was a couple of conversations with different customers. OK, listen, you know, because we didn't have the benchmarking data before. Right. So we didn't know if they were a twenty five million dollar budget, a ten million dollar budget. We didn't know how much was already allocated for nonprofit activities. And, you know, at the same time, you have to understand that they can go internally and ask for dollars from other departments if they don't have the money. So very much became just a consulting call of help me understand if there's something of value for your team. Where where is it that is the price point that you can buy it yourself? What type of money could you go and get if you didn't have it? How long would it take to do that? And what would be the right price in your in your eyes for data of this value? Right. And that that discussion over a number of years helped us to to increase the price ultimately, because, you know, we started at a number that, you know, was was great and all. But at the end of the day, you know, it's almost like if you go back to what is it? War Dogs with Jonah Hill is like, oh, you came in as the lowest under 50 by 50 million dollars. That's the last place you want to be. Right. You want to sell at the at the highest point that you can, but also that carries the most value for the product. And you have to have those conversations that can oftentimes be difficult because you have a customer at the other end. So may it be that you're throwing them a discount because they're giving you those those insights? You got to do it.

**Gus:** I think that's incredibly valuable. And those are they are hard conversations, for sure. And but having that information, regardless of what you're selling, right? Yeah. Having those customer conversations, understanding the value that you're bringing, the whole process behind the scenes, like they're tough and it takes time. But I think it's extra valuable.

**Matt:** So and believe me, we've had plenty of customers where the price was still too rich for their budget. And at the end of the day, the more partners that we have in this research, the better the research is. So we're willing to have that conversation about, OK, what can we get you for your price point? And they always appreciate that and be typically become long term customers because we're still giving them the value that they're looking for just in a in a different form.

**Gus:** Absolutely. Yeah. So you kind of have to be everything. Yeah, you really do. I appreciate a good discount. And I think that those can really open doors, especially if you're starting out as a newer, less proven product kind of thing for for people out there. I mean, a lot of like SaaS companies start in beta, which is completely free. Right.

**Matt:** Yeah. But there's a whole lot of other other challenges that come from doing a free beta as well. I completely yeah. Once you move to that price point that now I like to agree, what am I going to get for that price increase? Right.

**Gus:** Exactly. Yeah. A lot of a lot of different challenges. But but Matt, that was a that was an hour. So thank you so much for being on, man. That was a really great conversation. There's even more that I want to ask you, but we'll have to just get you back on the podcast or maybe we can do it on yours sometime if this kind of fits your style.

**Matt:** That would be fantastic. Yeah, obviously. Best of luck with everything else. Where can people find you? Where can people find your company? Tell everybody and we'll leave it all.

**Matt:** You can you can find us at ARCO.io, A-R-C-H-O.io, so Latin for build. And you can find us same same name, Arco Advocacy on LinkedIn. That's where you'll find a majority of our content. But our website is up and running and open to even subscribers to our newsletter. So we're here to educate the masses on health care.

**Gus:** Amazing. So go get subscribed. Go learn about what's wrong with your body and how to how to take care of it. And Matt, we really appreciate you coming on. Best of luck with your company. Best of luck with with the family and everything. And have a great rest of your day.

**Matt:** Thanks, my friend. Have a good one.