How To Network Like a Professional In Medical Sales
Haley Carswell, Vice President at Zynex Medical, joins us to share her unconventional path from managing a tanning salon to leading in the world of non-invasive pain management. What started as a pivot away from law school, thanks to advice from her father, became a thriving career built on people skills, grit, and an eye for strategy. Today, Haley supports her team through data-driven planning, leadership, and market insights that drive results.
We dive into the emotional transitions that shaped her journey, including a powerful chapter in addiction treatment. Haley opens up about the personal loss that fueled her passion for mental health advocacy, and how working through the COVID crisis in recovery centers gave her a new perspective on purpose. Her move into medical sales was more than a career shift — it was a chance to align with her mission to support non-addictive pain solutions.
This episode is a powerful reminder that the road to success isn’t always linear. From tanning salons to treatment centers to medical device sales, Haley’s story proves that resilience, relationships, and the courage to pivot can lead to impact and fulfillment. Whether you’re in healthcare, sales, or considering a leap into something new, this conversation will move you — and motivate you.
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Episode Transcript:
00:05 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
Hello and welcome to the Medical Sales Podcast. I’m your host, samuel, founder of a revolutionary medical sales training and mentorship program called the Medical Sales Career Builder, and I’m also host of the Medical Sales Podcast. In this podcast, I interview top medical sales reps and leading medical sales executives across the entire world. It doesn’t matter what medical sales industry from medical device to pharmaceutical, to genetic testing and diagnostic lab, you name it. You will learn how to either break into the industry, be a top 10% performer within your role or climb the corporate ladder. Welcome to the Medical Sales Podcast and remember, I am a medical sales expert sharing my own opinion about this amazing industry and how it can change your life. So, haley Carswell, let’s let’s you know. First of all, why don’t you tell the audience who you are and what you do?
00:57 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
Yeah, so thank you First and foremost. Thank you so much for asking me to be on your podcast. Like I’m super honored anytime I get asked to do anything like this, it’s, you know, it’s kind of like a pinch myself. You know, moment like, oh my gosh, people think I’m responsible enough to be on a podcast, right, you know. So like the little girl on me is like, wow, you’re really a you’re, you’re really a grownup. But I am Haley Carstle. I am a VP device company. We really focus on non-invasive, non-indictive pain management medical device For patients. We call on pain management PT, chiros, orthos, neuros, you kind of name it. We call on them. But yeah, that’s what I do.
01:36 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
Okay, a lot of people are in medical studies, are hearing this, but a lot of people aren’t Haley, and I want to give them some context, give us a little bit about what a day in the life looks like for this kind of medical sales. Professional in this kind of medical sales.
01:50 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
Yeah, that’s a great question. My day is dependent upon what my reps need. So I joke a lot of times with my team and with my region. So we’re in three right now. So I’m VP of the East. The Eastern City Boards my region. You know our, you know. So we’re we’re in three right now. So I’m VP of the East. The Eastern city boards from Florida all the way up to Maine.
02:09
So with my reps I say all the time like y’all think y’all work for me. You did not, I work for you, I work for you, you know. So my day to day, you know, normally starting out in the morning, I’m the worst person ever. I check my email, like right when I wake up and, like everybody, every podcast you ever listen to about like having any sort of sanity is like don’t look at your phone for the first 15 minutes. I absolutely check my email first. So there’s that. So I look and see. You know kind of what’s going on, if there’s anything that came in last night that I didn’t see the day before.
02:40
And then my day throughout the days are one-on-ones or strategic planning meetings with my upper, my upper level management, strategic meetings with some of my groups underneath me, my leadership underneath me, or my regional sales managers, my area sales managers, even my senior TMs, where we can kind of direct the what we want to focus on this month, this quarter, this week, and so it’s a lot of phone calls, it’s a lot of Zoom meetings and then for me it’s a lot of looking at reports, right. So I look at patterns, I look at trends. Medical device and sales in general is very cyclical, you know. So I look at where we are in the year, where we were compared last year, where we were compared last month, where where have we fallen off? Where have we picked up? Where can we pick up? Where are we missing the mark? And so my days are spent on the phone and Zooms and Teams meetings, on emails, and then looking at a bunch of numbers is what it is.
03:38 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
OK, OK, you know your, your career trajectory is absolutely fascinating. So your career trajectory is absolutely fascinating and I’ll correct you for wrong Haley, but you started at Palm Beach Tan. I did what was Palm Beach Tan?
03:53 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
I did.
03:53 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
Tell us exactly what that was.
03:56 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
I did. You know it’s so funny, so you know we were talking just a little bit before this, so my path to get here was definitely not linear, right? So I did not grow up thinking I’m going to be in sales. I didn’t go to college for sales. I was always. I will never forget.
04:12
I was probably in high school my dad told me we had a really good family friend whose daughter was in pharma sales and he was like you should really look into this. Like they make good money. I’ve never met a stranger in my life. You know, I’ve always been a people person, but my dad was also an attorney and so and I idolized my father Like he hung the moon. He literally hung the moon, you can’t, you can’t tell me otherwise. And so I always wanted to be like my dad growing up.
04:37
So when I went to school, it was just always going to be that I was going to go to law school. And whenever I ended up graduating from college, you know I had a conversation with my dad about, you know, taking the LSAT and going to law school and he was like Haley, you know, if you’re really, really passionate about law which I was not, but if you’re really passionate about law, then do it. But if you’re not, he was like you’re going to take the LSAT, you’re going to study really hard, you’re going to graduate from law school, you’re going to work 80, 90 hours a week. You’re not even going to be, you’re not even going to make what you owe in law school loans. He’s like why don’t you just take some time and kind of figure out what you want to do?
05:18
And I was like, well, okay, you know. So I got out of school. I was in school in Mississippi. I’m from Georgia originally. I moved back to Georgia and I was like, well, I just need a job. You know, like I, and I got. I got a degree in mass communications because the school that I went to didn’t have a pre-law degree, so that was kind of the closest thing for me to go. And so I’m like, ok, what am I going to do? And so I just started applying to different places and so I applied to Palm Beach Tan, which I will say they are the largest national chain of tanning salon businesses throughout the United States.
05:52
So shout out to Diane Lucas, who is the president and CEO of Palm Beach Tan. She is a boss and, quite honestly, one of my idols. Like she took something that was nothing and turned it into something incredible. But I get tickled. I had no experience. I think I worked at a tanning salon like my freshman year in college. Like, like nothing great, but I had no experience. I had really no sales experience and they hired me as an assistant manager, probably because I was maybe one of the only people that had a bachelor’s degree applying for this job. So they’re like management, let’s do it. And so I.
06:31
That’s when I really kind of first started within leadership, but then more so sales Cause. What people don’t understand about tanning salon chains. It’s very much like retail, right. So like, yes, you know, people are coming in and they’re doing sunless tanning and you know, you know UV bed tanning, but where they make their money is products, right, and so it’s like you’re selling lotions and packages and all this kind of stuff.
06:51
And I just remember thinking if I can convince someone to buy $175 bottle of tanning lotion, I can probably convince somebody to buy anything right, and so, and if I can teach someone to do that, I can probably teach them to buy something that they actually need. And so, you know, I ended up loving it and I worked my way up. I went from assistant manager to store manager, to multi-unit store manager, to we had some, you know some change, and so I was like kind of like the pseudo area manager and then I got, you know, promoted finally, and I was over Atlanta and they moved me to Florida to really try to pick up that market and I went from the Florida market was second to last when I took over and in three quarters. We went to number one and I was like wow.
07:42 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
Okay. So you can’t. You can’t drop that kind of progress and not explain what drove that progress. So talk to us. Yeah, I know it was your first time.
07:54 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
It’s been a while, because I work in medical device, but that’s kind of like one of my proudest things and so like, for starters, and let me get some context right. So in the tanning industry, you have other salons as your as your competition. In Florida, you have the beach as your competition, right, like I was in the panhandle of Florida, I was on 30A, I was in Destin, I was like all Panama City, all those areas Like that’s your competition. But I think this is where I really found my niche with leadership and this is where I’m so passionate about it. If you can build that rapport and you can build that relationship with the people that you work with your colleagues, your staff, whatever that you want to refer to them, as I like to refer to them as my colleagues because it keeps me right sized, right so with them, if you can kind of build that rapport where they work for you, right, so they’re employed by this company but they work for you, like the ceiling is just limitless, right. And so that’s what I did.
08:51
I kind of went in and my focus wasn’t so much on push, push, push, push, push but build, build, build, build, build.
09:01
Right. So build that relationship with them, build that relationship with my staff, build the relationship with customers, go in and show the people that were technically working underneath me that I was going to get down and sell behind the counter just like they would. If the bathrooms need to be clean, I was going to do that. If something needed to be mobbed, I was going to do that. If somebody was sick and a store needed to be open, that was my responsibility, you know. So I think modeling that behavior allowed this level of trust. You know, between myself and I think I had 12 or 13 stores at the time between myself and the store managers, assistant managers and the staff, to kind of build this like familial relationship where like I had their back and they had mine and at the end of the day, like we were going to be number one period, you know, like nobody was going to break us. And so that’s what we did, and it was incredible.
09:56
And in the tanning world.
09:57 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
we were a force, so it’s almost like you took on this attitude of full ownership, no matter what’s going on.
10:04 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
Yeah.
10:07 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
And that’s spread to everybody else that work with you. And because you guys have that mindset, you’re able to conquer any obstacle and drive your success number one.
10:13 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
Absolutely. And I think you know, with any sales opportunity or sales not opportunity but like any sales job, right, any sales career you’ve got to find the area of opportunity when are we missing the mark? And if we can figure out where we’re missing the mark, we can capitalize on that and make that our best asset right. And so that’s what I did.
10:37 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
You know, that’s what I did there. I love it. So Palm Beach Tan to addiction? Yeah, addiction treatment Right, what happened there? You were killing it. You’re number one, you’re district manager at Palm Beach Tan. Yeah, what came into your life or your world that said, you know what? I’m taking this to addiction treatment centers.
11:01 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
Yeah. So I’m very, very passionate about, you know, addiction treatment, mental health. I’ve had some personal experience in my life with people in my life that have suffered from addiction. Just full transparency. My ex-husband, my first ex-husband, died from an overdose, you know, very, very young. So I’ve had a lot of that in my life and so I know, and because I’ve had those experiences, I have a lot. I have. I had a lot of friends that worked in behavioral health, right, so they worked in that treatment space.
11:30
I’ve always been a very big advocate of mental health and behavioral health. You know which is what addiction kind of falls underneath. And so my friends for ever, even when I was at Palm Beach, they’re like you need, you need to come work in behavioral health, you need to come work in addiction. You need to come do this, you need to come do that Like it’s. You know it’s, it’s sales, it is sales. But you’re, you know you’re going in and you’re creating that buy-in with psychiatrists, psychologists kind of stuff like that. And I was like you know, I don’t know, I think at the time for me it was just a little too personal still. But you know, I went through the thing. You know I went through my time at Palm Beach and I was with them for like six or seven years and I loved it.
12:08
But there also came a point where I was, you know, I was getting older and and my staff was getting younger, you know, and it was like, you know, I was still having to get up and go open the store on a Sunday morning if nobody was.
12:21
If you know, somebody didn’t show up to work, right, and I was like, okay, I’m tired. You know, I don’t know if I necessarily want to do that anymore, and so I started reaching out to some of my contacts that worked in behavioral health and I got an opportunity with an incredible facility that is underneath the umbrella of Acadia Healthcare, that focuses on multimodality treatment facility that you know focuses on, you know, primary mental health or dual diagnosis between mental health and addiction, and then they focus on trauma. And to me, it was probably the best opportunity, you know, to have to go work for a place like that and it allowed me to really utilize that rapport building asset that I had learned at Palm Beach. You know, because that’s what you’re doing You’re going in, you’re calling on primary caregivers, right, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, even family medicine, and if they had a patient that?
13:14
was suffering from something underneath that hula hoop and they wanted a higher level of care. They would reach out to me and they trusted me with their patient which is a super important job, and so I worked for Acadia for a while. I worked for Summit Behavioral Health for a while, which is another company, incredible mental and behavioral health company focusing on, you know, primary mental health or addiction, and I was very, very blessed to have worked for both of them, you know, and I’m super grateful for it.
13:42 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
Yeah, so something happened when you were working at Palm and that said I now want to take this to addiction, or you always had in the back of your mind that you want to work in that space face.
14:01 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
You know, I, I, I think because I it was such a shock to me that I ended up in sales in the first place. I don’t even know if I knew what I wanted to do at the time. I just knew that at the time I had outgrown my position, or, you know, or my time at Palm Beach.
14:12 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
And.
14:13 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
I am again. I don’t want to say anything. I am so incredibly grateful for the leadership that I had there because I’m telling you right now, diane Lucas is CEO Honor Palm Beach my, you know my area manager.
14:26
I attribute all of my management skills to them. I learned everything I knew about how being a good manager to them. I just outgrew it, you know, and so I knew there was something that I wanted to do. You know, bigger, larger, more of a long-term career. I was also probably in my gosh I don’t know how old was, like early thirties maybe at this point and I was like am I really going to work for Tammy Sloan Chain, you know, up until my 60s? Probably not. You know, like, should I find something?
15:03 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
where I so that was it okay so we’re doing drinking treatment centers, you, you went on to the refugee and then summit bhc yep, yep what happened that medical sales came into your life Like yeah you know, was it a moment?
15:22
Was it like you were? You were, you saw, you saw an ad, or you talked to a friend, or, or you, you, you were at the hospital waiting. You know you’re at the doctor’s office and you saw somebody walk in. What, what? Give us, give us what happened. I hope you’re enjoying today’s episode and I want to let you know, know.
15:36
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16:29 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
So I think you know for me and it was such a you know I look back on it now and it was just like all of like God’s timing and everything lining up for me. So this, this switch, happened during COVID right. So everybody’s world has literally just turned upside down during COVID right.
16:48 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
Those of us in sales.
16:49 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
We’re used to one-on-one meetings. You know like we’re, we’re doing in services. We’re doing stuff like that, and all of that changed during COVID and and and the addiction field.
16:59
I mean, we got really busy during COVID because people were saying addictions ran rampant and and so it wasn’t for lack of, you know, business for me, but I think you know, just personally, the work was very heavy.
17:15
You know it was very, very heavy. And so when you work on the business development and sales side and of addiction treatment, you know you’re not just dealing with the person that suffers with addiction, you’re dealing with the families, you know, and it’s just, it’s a 24, seven full-time job. And in the back of my mind I always remembered my dad telling me, you know, about my family friend that worked in pharma sales, right, and so you know I thought, okay, maybe this is something, you know, a switch where it’s just not so emotionally draining. You know, for me, because you know, working in addiction and behavioral health, that’s a job, in my opinion. Unless you can really compartmentalize which I can’t, you know, or you just don’t have a heart, you take it home with you every day and it’s just hard and it was heavy and it was weighing on me at the time.
18:08
Yeah, it’s hard, it’s exhausting and you know. So I kept thinking about that and at the time my sister-in-law’s husband so my brother-in-law worked in medical device surgical sales incredible guy, love him, he’s great, you know had another friend that worked in aesthetic sales, had another friend that worked in lab sales and so I really started talking to her about, you know, kind of wanting to shift. I loved leadership, but I knew that medical or pharma or lab or whatever was so incredibly hard to get into. So I started networking. You know, I started talking to my brother-in-law, I started talking to her friends, I started talking to other people that worked in either pharma or med device lab. And so, by talking to people on her network and my brother-in-law’s network, they were like medical device is your space, like you.
19:00
You know, I don’t know what it was about me. For me personally, I think medical device is more personal, right, so it’s very relational. I think pharma and no, no, like pharma they’re incredible, but I think it’s it’s a very quick you know, it can be a very quick sales cycle Medical device. You’ve got to really build that relationship. And they were like stick to medical device for you. And so I started looking and I was applying and applying, and applying and applying, and because people are really familiar with behavioral health and addiction space, it was hard for me to translate what I did on my resume, you know.
19:36
And you know it’s. I love a good listen, I love medical advice and this is why I answer people when they reach out to me on LinkedIn. It’s like it’s an entry-level position, but they want 10 years of experience, right. So it’s like you know like what am I supposed to do to get?
19:50 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
there.
19:51 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
And so you know, zynex had a position open for a regional sales manager and I was like this is literally the best of both worlds, right, because we focus on non-addictive, non-invasive pain management options for patients, you know, that are living with chronic pain or post-op pain. So we’re not saying that you know opioids, you know, don’t have a place in medicine, because they absolutely do. We’re just saying we can help lessen, you know, the use of opioids. We can use it in conjunction, we can help taper off with these pain management devices. So it it combined something that I was already doing and super passionate about with what I had found out through my career that I was already doing and super passionate about, with what I had found out through my career that I was really good at, which was leading a team. And so I applied. And no one was more shocked than me when I got an email back and they were like we want to move forward with an interview and I was like, oh my God, we made it you know, and that was it.
20:57 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, was it?
20:59 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
yeah, yeah, I mean it’s. I mean I can’t tell you how many no’s I got before I got that. Yeah, no it’s real, it’s real.
21:07 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
I mean, you know it’s very right now. I mean gosh, that was back in covet now it’s 20 times more competitive than it’s ever been. Everybody wants to get into your. It isn’t saying. It’s to the point now where we say you know you need guidance, you need a strategy, you need a coach, you need a program or something to give you some, not just to have the strategy to get into a position, but the wherewithal and consistent motivation to get up every day and still go after it.
21:33 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
So absolutely but it is a full-time job. For sure. It’s not a good job in this industry.
21:39 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
What truly impresses me, though, about your career track, Haley, is within five years, you went from a regional sales manager to vice president of sales for the East.
21:53 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
Yeah.
21:54 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
You got to. You know, of course, there’s a whole world of information you can provide around how that happened. Let’s speak specifically to those people listening right now that are sales reps and they’re like you know, I really want to get to second line leadership. What the heck? How do I make this happen? What should I focus on? What should I consider? How should I be showing up in my role? Who should I be talking to? If you condense your experience, please share with us what those points would be.
22:21 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
Yeah, that’s an amazing question but quite honestly, I think people overcomplicate how to get here. So, number one and this is a term that I almost don’t like because I think people overuse it and they don’t really understand what it is but be a servant leader. So, like I said earlier, you know, I say to my region all the time that they don’t want to adapt that today.
22:46 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
How are they? How should they start showing up? What should they be doing?
22:49 – Haley Carswell (Guest)
So I, you know, I encourage my team to reach out to their team members, right? So if you, if you were looking at straight logistics, right, the amount of people that report to me directly or report to you, know the layers of management, like it’s insane, right? The, the I think the military says that the optimal number is like seven to one. Okay, well, we blow that out of the water at Zynex, right? So we’ve got to really lean on each other. And so if you’re you know, if you’re a rep, if you’re a territory manager, you know and you’re in a singular position, right, the way that you show up is that you show up for your teammates. We have a group text, we have a whole group text with our region, and then, I know there’s subgroup texts within the region maybe it’s statewide or whatever and we use those platforms for questions.
23:37
If you want to be a servant leader as a territory manager and you have one day, two days, one week, one month, one year, five years more than the territory manager, that’s answering the question. You answer it, you show up, you answer it, you volunteer, you help, you know we, you know at DynX, what we do is we, we do everything by zip codes right, but I’ll use Atlanta as an example. I’m based out of Atlanta and it’s probably the area that I know the most because I’m from there. You know we have multiple reps in Atlanta that share providers, right, or they need help or they’re. You know they’re younger or they haven’t been. You know, in the industry as long and you’ve been there longer you go and you do an in-service with them.
24:17 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
Haley, this was a true treat having you on the show today. Thank you again for all the wisdom you left with us and we got to do this again, and I can’t wait to see the amazing things you continue to do in your career. You Thank you. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and remember I have a customized and personalized program that gets you into the medical technology industry as a sales professional or any type of role for that matter. Become a top performer in your position and masterfully navigate your career to executive level leadership. Check out these programs and learn more at EvolvingSuccesscom by visiting our site, filling out an application schedule some time with one of our account executives and allowing us to get you where you need to be. Stay tuned for more awesome content. Amazing interviews on the MediXales podcast.