Love & Way Too Many Drugs

Four years ago I wrote about my transition from #scientist to #salesman on my Quora blog, it was one of the hardest experiences in my life but I'm grateful for it and I still apply lessons from those times to help startups today.

I thought re-sharing my story would still be of interest to the broader entrepreneurial Community...

Back in 2014, I was reminiscing with a few scientists about our failures, we talked about failed companies, failed projects and life after academia. 

I dropped out of my PhD in stem cell research after advice from one of my old lecturers, who was and still is the CEO of Cyclacel. I'd spent a pretty dreary couple of weeks in Edinburgh (beautiful city, horrible weather) and I decided to take the train out to Dundee (yes I was living in Scotland at the time) to meet with Spiro.

I told Spiro about my aims of eventually building biotech's and he told me to drop out if I wanted to build biotech businesses but to stay in my PhD if I wanted to head up a lab... so a few weeks went by and I dropped out (sorry Professor!).

I'd already tasted the hard cold edge of the business world and I hadn't realized that I couldn't go back again to just being a bench scientist, I'd changed too much. 

I remember going through Pfizer's bootcamp, learning Guerilla sales tactics and techniques, there was no such thing as a no see doctor (even if they or their staff said they were no see) and I bled blue (as Pfizer employees would say) at the end of my training.

I was trained to hangout in parking lots, find ways through all/most gate keepers, I watched as a handful of my fellow pharma sales trainees had nervous breakdowns after the pounding pressure of constant sales training for months with no end, evaluation of every word, movement and then daily pass/fail testing, fail either sales role plays or written tests on pharmacology and you'd get fired, it was as simple as that.

I experienced the pressure of quotas, pushing product, watching my colleagues get stress related physical illnesses. I broke rules, lots and lots of rules, hospitals with no pharma sales rep policies, those didn't apply to me. Security once escorted me out of a hospital, the next time, I learned, I realized how to game the system by buying off security with donuts and coffee, for a while I was the only pharma rep allowed in.

I watched my idealism melt away, right and wrong were no longer clear, I watched how those physicians often placed on a pedestal were just as easily corrupted by power, money and sex, one time, I watched a male physician asking a female pharma rep (for a competitor), to say fuck until he said stop (in a hospital corridor), he did it for no other reason than to show me and her his power, she hesitated but he said he'd stop prescribing her product unless she did and then the fucks began, until he asked her to stop.

I watched lines get blurred, I got asked to cover "creepy" male doctors who hit on female pharma reps (having caught a few placing their hands all over my colleagues). I watched female reps sleep with top prescribing doctors to hit their sales targets, I learned how sexuality was used to sell. I became a door opener, I was the guy who could make it through gatekeepers, women, men, regardless, I found ways.

I had my first break, after a large female patient nearly physically attacked me in the ghetto while I kept my cool, she didn't want the doctor to see me first, even though I was bringing in meds that she'd get for free, insane and at 6ft tall and 250 pounds, she was no ordinary woman! I sat in my car afterwards, hating my job and life for about 20 mins with the radio turned on, I compartmentalized it, as I'd learned to do and went on to my next meeting with a smile, I learnt how to be emotionally hard.

I started to be fearless, I use to call on the doctors in the ghetto in NYC, the places that other Pharma sales reps use to fear to tread, I'd walk in a suit through neighborhoods that people told me they thought I was a police detective (sometimes parking next to burnt out cars), there were lots of patients there in those doctors offices and I wanted to make my numbers. I learnt how to sell and find opportunity where others saw nothing.

I went from selling into primary care, to hospitals to specialty doctors, being trained and taught advanced NLP skills, learning anchoring, visualization, how to maximize performance and the scary part was that it worked. I'd go in cold, to new offices, new situations and I stopped feeling butterflies in my stomach, I'd anchor, visualize and deploy myself. I was no longer sure what was me and what was my sales mask, I became a veteran sales guy.

I moved on to selling bigger and bigger deals (moving into the corporate realm), moving from ten's of thousands of dollars, to hundreds of thousands to eventually million dollar deals. I worked with Biotech and Pharma companies partnering with them to develop their drugs, closing more and more deals, until my deal count passed $200M, then I stopped counting and felt the emptiness, I wanted to do more than just sell, I followed this path because I loved science and instead, I'd become a machine of business.

So now I'm back, spending my monday nights, hanging out with biotech nerds in the lab, talking science and re-learning what it means to reconnect with who I really am, doing things for meaning, not just money! 

I still close though ;)