LGBTQ+ In The Medical Sales Workforce With Trevor Boylston

Diversity is not just a goal; it’s a catalyst for innovation, progress, and the transformation of the medical sales industry. Welcome to another exciting episode of the Medical Sales podcast! To celebrate Pride Month, Samuel Adeyinka interviewed a remarkable guest named Trevor Boylston. Trevor stands out as a pivotal figure in the medical sales industry by using his voice to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. In this Pride Month special, we delve into Trevor’s remarkable transition journey and his invaluable experiences in promoting inclusivity within organizations. His work at Boston Scientific has had a major impact, particularly in creating a welcoming environment for transgender and non-binary individuals. So, grab your headphones and get ready to be inspired by Trevor’s passion, dedication, and unwavering commitment to advancing diversity. This episode will leave you with a renewed sense of purpose and an appreciation for the power of inclusion.

The CE experience for this Podcast is powered by CMEfy – click here to reflect and earn credits: https://earnc.me/U8wFC6

 

Reach out to Trevor Boylston!: Website | LinkedIn

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

LGBTQ+ In The Medical Sales Workforce With Trevor Boylston

 

In this episode, we have with us another special guest and he goes by the name of Trevor Boylston. Trevor is an advocate for welcoming trans and binary workers into organizations. This episode was a joy. It was a wonderful interview and we talk about a lot of amazing things that Trevor’s been doing in that organization. His journey and experiences are something I recommend to everyone to read to. If you’ve ever had an interest in the LGBTQ community, then you have to read this episode.

If you’ve been interested in what’s happening in this space as far as diversity is concerned, then again, you have to read this episode. It was a true joy to do and it represents all the wonderful things we’re doing with the show. As always, we do our best to bring you guests that are innovating, pioneering, and blazing new trails in the medical sales space and I do hope you enjoy this interview.

—

Trevor, how are we doing?

Good, Samuel. How are you doing?

I’m good. Why don’t you tell everybody who you are and what you do?

I am Trevor Boylston. I use he/him as pronouns. I’m an advocate, especially when it comes to welcoming trans and non-binary workers into your company. I like to say I have a day job and a gay job and I love it when they come together. I can talk about both like I’m going to do here.

First question, the million-dollar question, how did you get into your role? Take us back to when you were in college. Did you know that you could work for a med tech company? How did it happen? What was going on?

No, this is not anything I ever saw myself doing. In fact, when I started college, I thought I was going to be a doctor then organic chemistry came around. I quickly decided that was not a road that I was going to pursue.

It kicked everyone’s butt. Mine too.

I passed but it was enough to turn that off. More important in college, I was struggling with my gender identity. I was so uncomfortable in my own skin that I couldn’t settle into anything. I left college after two years. I took an extended leave of absence to try and sort things out. At that time, I didn’t have a way of explaining what was not sitting right and it took me years to figure it out. Those years were spent job hopping. What happened after college? I was hopping all over the place. I couldn’t settle into anything.

Everything I did, parts of it I enjoyed. I was pretty good at it. I was good at building relationships but never at a deep level and never anything that felt fulfilling. I ended up on a personal side, getting involved in what turned out to be a very abusive relationship, which cut me off from work for quite some time. When I re-entered the job force, I had finally been able to come out to myself as trans but having been cut off from the job force and navigating those early days of transition. I didn’t know what to do so I started temping and that was good.

At that time, I didn’t have to explain my transition to anyone. I spent two weeks here and two weeks there. As my voice changed and started to grow a little bit of beard and lose the hair on top, no one questioned it because, in two weeks, you’re not going to get to know anybody. I ended up tempting a company. It was supposed to be a four-day break covering someone’s vacation for Christmas. I ended up there for eight years. It was not what I was expecting but it was one of those, “We need some help on this floor. Can you come help here? We need help with shipping and receiving. Can you come help? We need help with accounts payable. Can you come help?”

Eventually, I ended a role and did well with that. It was a lot of that relationship-building with some of the data analytics and the transactional piece. I settled there well for eight years. Probably about a year in, it hit me that I had gone three days without thinking about my gender identity. That was awesome. No one there knew me before my transition. They accepted me at face value. At that time, it wasn’t a company environment where I would’ve felt supported being out but it was a place where I could learn to be myself.

I realized I wanted more for my career. I wanted to advance. I wanted more strategic work and started looking outside. I landed a wonderful opportunity in a company. I came in as a buyer in the endoscopy and urology units. I’m going to pause right there to say that what I’m sharing is from my own perspective and not on behalf of the company. Again, I didn’t plan to be out. I went in as myself. No one there knew me before my transition, so why shake things up?

About six months after I started, someone that sat near me started telling transgender jokes and it made me uncomfortable. I started finding reasons to not be at my desk. I would take my laptop and go work from the cafeteria or a huddle room. My boss, I think, at that time, was shaking her head saying, “I hired this guy. He’s never at his desk. What the heck? I know he is doing his work but he’s never where he is supposed to be.”

That was uncomfortable for me and it got to a point where I ended up calling this individual into a conference room and saying, “I know everybody laughs at these jokes and rolls their eyes and no one is calling you out but you don’t know who around you is upset by these. You don’t know who has a trans family or who might be trans themselves.”

I was expecting him to be a jerk back. I was not expecting much of a positive response and he broke down. He said he had a family member transitioning. He didn’t know how to deal with that. He didn’t know where to find resources to support. He said he felt like he was losing someone that he’d known and very close to all his life because he was afraid that they were going to become a different person. That struck me.

 

I’d always thought that microaggressions and macroaggressions always came from a place of malice. Here I was seeing this person’s point of view and hurting for him. It struck me at the time. I ended up coming out to him on the spot saying, “I’ll tell you I’m trans. Ask me whatever you want to ask. I want to make sure that you are supported, your family members are supported, and we can continue to have a good working relationship.” Up until then, we had.

We spent about two hours talking that day and it changed the course of my career. After having that conversation with him, I realized that there are probably other people that need to hear that. I got very involved with our employee resource group for LGBT employees. Eventually, I’m working my way up to the global lead position for that group. I was given the opportunity through engaging openly with that group to work on changing policies in the company, to work on changing our HR benefits policies, and to be more equitable for assisted reproduction for LGBT folks, which also benefited single women.

I was able to work with our global teams to change the way our bathrooms are designed so that when we have new construction, a neutral restroom is constructed in the same block as the men’s and women’s rooms. You’re not having to go out on a loading dock or walk half a mile to get to a restroom that you feel safe accessing. Even with our facilities fitness center, they have a 5K on our campus every year. The fitness center said, “We have a men’s category and a women’s category but we have the ability to change. We can add more categories.”

We added a new category for folks who are non-binary. It’s been great to see the change to empower other coworkers to come out and feel safe being out to have the opportunity to engage with everyone across the company from our sales teams. We have wonderful sales representatives who are part of the LGBT community that hadn’t felt seen until we were able to bring them in and say, “We see you. We want you to be a part of this group. We want to see how we can support our sales force.” Some of that is around language that we use in brochures. Are we using the right language to reach the community that we want to reach? Are we using language that is approachable?

It’s been an incredible journey. The whole time I was still working until I was approached by the other department lead at the time and they said, “There’s this conference. It’s a conference we go to try and work with LGBT-owned businesses for this program we call Supplier Diversity. Would you care to support it as the lead for this ERG?” I thought about it for half a second and said, “Yes, I want that.” I attended that conference and it was eye-opening. I had no idea that supplier diversity was even something that was out there as a career. It took me about two seconds to decide after that conference that this is what I want to do. I spent the next several years supporting ADHOC.

It was 50% of my role and finally transitioning into a full-time role. It’s incredible. I get to work with so many amazing communities. Not just the LGBT community. We work with the US Pan Asian Chamber of Commerce, the National Minority Supplier Development Council, the U.S. Black Chambers, and the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. I’m sure I’m missing a few in there but I love it. It’s all about building those relationships. It’s all about bridging those gaps between the needs of the company and the suppliers who can fill those needs.

It’s about innovation. The sales reps for all these companies have given me a lot of appreciation for how hard sales reps out there are working on a daily basis to get in front of the right people. Having a program where you can learn from anyone you can. Find those mentors and use those programs like the Medical Sales program here to get in front of these companies and learn all you can. There are so many people out there with so much experience. It is just a wealth of knowledge, so take advantage of it where you can.

That is awesome, Trevor. Let’s go back a little bit. You told us a little bit about what you do but give us the details. What is your day-to-day? What’s the sole responsibility that you’re responsible for? What does that look like on a day-to-day?

I work for a company that’s a federal contractor. We have sales that go into the VA hospital system. As such, we’re required to maintain a small and diverse supplier program to meet the small business administration’s requirements. Aside from that, it’s a good business practice, innovation, and diverse thought like you want your workforce to be diverse. You want your supplier base to be diverse as well. They bring such a wealth of innovation and value to the company. On a day-to-day basis, it’s a lot of relationship building, getting to know the suppliers that are out there, and finding good fits internally with stakeholders.

It’s trying to match a need that’s open in the company with a vendor that can fill that need. That’s done through a series of attending conferences for the national group organizations through one-on-one business matchmaking. Think of it like speed dating for business, where we meet a host of vendors over the course of a day. It’s done through industry peer group support, sharing best practices with my peers, and mentorship.

We have the opportunity to mentor businesses and entrepreneurs who are in small and diverse organizations who are trying to advance their businesses. A lot of it is facilitating those matches internally and making sure they’re connected with professionals who can help them grow their business. People who can help them assess their weaknesses, needs, and business pitch, so they can fine-tune that pitch when they walk in and say, “This is who I am. This is what I sell. This is why you need it” There’s a lot of that one-on-one work. A lot of advocacy work, understanding what laws are affecting different communities these days, and a fast no might be more of a mercy to a business than a long drawn out maybe.

No is not an easy word to say. As sales reps, no is never a no. You know that. It’s a lot of that work. It’s a lot of detailed work collecting data as well. We want to know how much we’re spending with diverse businesses. We want to know how much our prime suppliers are spending on their diverse businesses. We like to take a look at that data and see what impacts it has on the communities.

No is not an easy word to say, and as sales reps, “no” is never a no. Click To Tweet

For example, we know that spend of about $13 million creates X number of jobs in communities where these diverse businesses operate. It improves health outcomes and college attendance. There’s a wealth of benefits to the environmental social and governance aspect of business when you are doing business with diverse businesses.

A lot of it is answering emails, getting on phone calls, having one-on-one conversations like this one on Zoom, and finding champions in the company that are not afraid to take a risk on a business that they haven’t worked with yet. It’s understanding when we can push and when we have to back off. It’s advocating for policies that make a more equitable playing field for small and diverse businesses.

For example, expedited payment terms to help with cashflow for small businesses are a big one, especially coming out of the pandemic. We know that access to capital in small and diverse businesses, especially at the startup phase is so critical. If you have a large company that has standard payment terms that are long, then that cashflow is going to be an issue to doing business.

We want to make sure that those barriers are removed. A lot of it, as I said, is relationship-building. From a sales standpoint, you can appreciate that. You’re out there to build those relationships. I’m the guy on the other side of that page. It’s been great. I’ve learned so much. I’ve developed so much empathy and respect. It’s been an incredible journey. I’m dipping my toes at the beginning of a career that I hope is decades-long in this field.

More power to you. We can’t wait to see your continued progress. Let’s get into a little bit more personal aspect of things. Talk a little bit about, you touched on it earlier but share with us again, when do you know that you wanted to go through an actual transition and what was that experience like?

To take that back, when I share my story, I always start with, once upon a time in a land far far away, there was a baby born and the doctor held the baby up and said, “Congratulations, it’s a girl.” Now we all make mistakes. That was South Carolina in the ‘70s. I was fortunate to grow up in Massachusetts in the ‘80s and it was great.

In the neighborhood we moved into, all the other kids that were my age were boys too. We did all the things that boys do. We climbed over fences, ran through mud puddles, played in the tide pools, and all the stuff that kids get in trouble for. One day, we were cutting through a yard that we probably shouldn’t have been cutting through. Climbing over a fence that we shouldn’t have been climbing over and I slipped at the top of the fence.

The first words out of my mouth at about seven years old were, “My balls.” One of the other little kids looked at me and he said, “You’re a girl. You don’t have balls.” It was the first time in my life that I realized that I knew I was a boy but no one else around me knew. No one else could understand that. It started fights with my mom one Sunday when she wanted me to wear a dress to go to church. I started feeling isolated at school when I didn’t want to play with the girls but I wasn’t welcome to play with the boys anymore.

I turned into the smart kid that did their homework early and didn’t have a lot of friends. In seventh grade, the friends that I did have and I earned the nickname, the nerd heard. It was given to us by the teachers and it stuck. It was a little lonely. I can remember the first time I felt gender dysphoria. It truly is a physical sensation. It was my thirteenth birthday.

My mother took me to get my haircut. I don’t have to worry about that anymore and the hairstylist at that time found out it was my birthday and gave me the gift of a manicure. For a thirteen-year-old in the early ‘90s, late ‘80s, that was nice. It was generous. It wasn’t something that the other kids were getting. I hated every single second of it. I couldn’t wait to get out that door and peel the paint off my nails. I felt dizzy, nauseous, angry and so guilty because I knew this was kind and nice and I didn’t understand. I didn’t have the words to explain why this was so upsetting.

I can still remember the shade of nail polish. It was the same shade that my mother wore, that her mother wore, that my grandmother wore, that her sisters wore because we all went to the same hairstylist. That’s the way things worked. That started being uncomfortable with my body. It started periods of showering at night with the lights off so I wouldn’t have to acknowledge what my body was doing. As I went through puberty, it was upsetting but I still didn’t have the language for it. We didn’t have Google. We didn’t have a positive representation of trans people in the media on TV.

If we did see someone that was trans, it was in a crime drama and they were either a prostitute or a gotcha plot device. It was no positive representation. I didn’t have the language. I didn’t know how to explain this. I didn’t know if my family would accept it. I thought when I left high school, things would be better and I could be somewhere else. It was the place that was the problem. Not something inside of me. I left for college and couldn’t settle into anything there.

It was the same thing. I was depressed. I was isolated for more resources so it was not a good environment. We touched on what it was like when I left college, job hopping. What we didn’t touch on is I came out as a lesbian and admitted that I was attracted to women at the time. My family was okay with that. I thought, “This is as far as it needs to go. I don’t need to acknowledge this other part of me that is still not quite right.” For a while, that was okay but I still was holding people at arm’s length.

I wasn’t developing those deep relationships with people. It took getting out of that abusive relationship where my choices were down to suicide or starting over. I didn’t have the energy to hide who I was anymore. The night that the relationship ended, it ended with me bloody on the floor thinking, “There are enough pills in the cabinet in the bathroom when I have the energy to get up, this will be it. I won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

I fell asleep on that floor and I woke up the next day with enough energy to go one more day. I called my mom. I came out to her and my family. It was a little rougher this time around. My mother was supportive right from the start. I had some family that took some time to come around. The first piece of advice I got from my mom when I came out as trans was, “If you’re going to be a straight man, you need to learn to talk about sports.”

 

She sent me off to the store to buy a Red Sox shirt, a Brewer’s shirt, a Celtic shirt, and a Patriot shirt. I couldn’t have told you anything about any of those teams but that was my wardrobe to start. It took a long time for me to realize that my mom had to go through a grieving process. She had to let go of the daughter that she thought she had to make room for the son that she does have. Looking back on it, we’re coming up on many years of transition.

I transitioned at the age of 27. It was a struggle for her but she never let that on. She always showed support. My brother was good with it. We like to say he’s got the emotional depth of a spatula. His whole processing was, “My sister is going to California and she’s coming back as my brother,” which is fine. That works for me. I knew right away as soon as I came out and got into therapy because the first step of getting gender transition care was therapy, which was probably the best thing for me at that time. I used it to deal with coming out of that abusive relationship to be a whole person again to address some of the depression that was around that. It was pretty early on that it was clear that my gender identity was male. It was persistent and had been for many years. I just hadn’t acknowledged it.

I knew pretty early on that I wanted that therapist’s support for moving forward with the medical transition. At that time, the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care required a letter from a certified mental health professional saying that the person was of sound mind to make these decisions. Pretty much similar to what you see now although laws across the country are doing their best to change that in not in a positive way. Barriers to care are very real now.

Therapy for several months before I was able to access hormone therapy. The endocrinologist that provided that hormone therapy saw adult patients one day a month out of a spare room in another clinic because his practice was pediatrics. I started on hormone therapy and got scheduled for a mastectomy, which was the first surgery that I would have to affirm my gender. What a load off my chest. Fully intended there.

I was binding at that time which is very uncomfortable. It can be dangerous. I was lucky enough to be in a position of privilege and employed where I was able to purchase binding garments that were meant for surgical binding. A lot of people who don’t have access to those will use things like duct tape or ace bandages, which can cause some long-term problems with breathing and damage to the tissue around your ribs and your lungs.

I was lucky enough to be able to afford and have access to the care and the material that I needed at the early part of my transition. Insurance paid for none of it at that point. I was paying everything out of pocket. The transition surgeon that I saw for my top surgery is called a mastectomy. It would be called top surgery. It was in California at that time.

That involved flying out to California, putting myself up for two weeks, and paying for the surgeon and the fees out of pocket to the excess of $10,000, which pretty much wiped out the savings that I had. It was lifesaving, honestly. I know people think of it as cosmetic or not necessary. It was necessary to be affirmed as the person I am.

It impacts your whole sense of being, I’m sure.

The way you present yourself to the world and the way you were read by the world. It also is the first step for me at that time to change my legal documentation. We all know how important ID is in this world. If you are presenting an ID that doesn’t align with your appearance, everything from the TSA to a routine traffic stop to buying liquor. It’s a world where your paperwork has to match who you are or you are in a world hurt.

People think of cosmetics as not necessary. But it can be necessary for people to be affirmed as the person they are. It impacts your whole sense of being, the way you present yourself to the world and the way you are read by the world. Click To Tweet

Those first steps, getting a passport that had my right name on it after legal name change and social security name change and getting a driver’s license that had a picture that looked like me that had my name and my gender marker on it correctly. South Carolina, at that time, didn’t want to change my birth certificate and I needed that to get my driver’s license. I had to hire a lawyer. It’s more costs out of pocket and it adds up.

Again, I’m going to reaffirm here. From the place of privilege where I stood for that, I was able to have family support. I wasn’t homeless. I was able to be employed because, honestly, I’m a White man and I walked into the top agency and they hired me on the spot. That was what kickstarted this whole thing because I could. I had the access that so many other people don’t have. There are so many biases in employment. You see a lot of trans folks who go underemployed, especially trans women. They have to turn to sex work to support themselves because they don’t have options out there if they don’t have the support.

When you talk about people who are resilient, have an entrepreneurial spirit, and can develop relationships, you want to look at those trans women who have come out of that sex worker world and have been able to pull themselves out and advance themselves into careers. They are amazing people. More power to everyone that’s able to lift themselves out of that place that I never had to go.

I had a question for you. I want you to correct me if I don’t say this the right way. When you say transition, is there a completion of transition or is it just transition? It’s going to be what it’s going to be.

Thank you for asking. You asked it the right way. Transition is going to look different for everybody. There are people who will identify as trans without ever taking any medical steps to transition. There are people who would identify as gender fluid or gender non-binary that may take some steps but not all steps that are available to them. For me, I always had an end goal in sight and it’s taken almost two decades to almost be at that end goal.

For most people, what transition means is getting to a point where you’re comfortable with the way your body and your mind align. There’s no right way to transition. There is no one course of action. There’s no one surgery that does it all. There’s no one medical step that does it all. It’s dependent on the person and what their care team decides is right for them. Some people are not tolerant of hormone therapy.

They can’t take them. There are some people that are, for one reason or another, unable to go through surgical procedures, whether they don’t have the finances or the support network to do so. It means something different to everybody. For me, I had a clear end goal in sight. If you look at the scale of female to male and people fall on a spectrum somewhere in there. I find myself at the far end of male. I am as masculine as I can be, I think, getting there. I have a few more surgeries. Knock on wood. One more to go and I’ll have reached what I would consider the end of my transition.

Again, educate me here. I’m assuming that when you get to that stage where you can say, “I have completely transitioned from my definition.” That’s like monumental, “Let’s throw a party,” or is it more like, “No, this is who I am and I’m happy that I’ve arrived and everything continues as normal?”

For me for a long time, I thought the top surgery in hormones was enough and just because the additional surgeries were so expensive and healthcare wasn’t covering them at that time. I put it out of my head then dysphoria cracked back in. There were some issues around. I still had a uterus and ovaries and the maintenance that comes along with those, like yearly pap smears. I was so dysphoric about having that procedure done but it was necessary because your organs are still there. You still have to care for them.

I made the decision to have a hysterectomy and I was like, “Great. That’s gone now. I don’t have to think about that.” The dysphoria crap is back in. I’ve thought about this surgery for so many years. I put it out of my head as something that was impossible but now I have a wonderful supportive family and in-laws who are there for us. My mother is there for us, my wife and my child. I’m working for a company that understands that this is something that is important and has the benefits that would support me going through this procedure.

I reached out to our wonderful medical sales team and said, “You work with these surgeons day in and day out for other reasons. Who would you send someone to if they were going through this procedure?” They recommended a surgeon in New York. It took 6 months to get the consult and then 18 months after that consult was booked for the first surgery. I thought I was prepared mentally for being ready for it to be there.

When they wheeled me into the recovery room and I saw my reflection in the ceiling for the first time, it was the first time in my life that I looked in a mirror and saw a whole person. I started crying. I still get choked up thinking about it. I feel more whole every day and now being able to look in a mirror and see a whole person is an amazing feeling. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

One thing I love about your story is you keep highlighting how much support you had. You didn’t have support from everyone but you had enough support that it allowed you to explore what do I want, what will make me feel whole, and what’s the soundest and safest way to get there. It’s almost like you created a blueprint. I’m curious, for those that are reading that might be in the same position you were at one point, what are the resources they can turn to truly get support and even have the type of experience that you were able to create for yourself?

That answer is going to look very different than it will tomorrow. There are some wonderful resources out there. NYU Langone has gender-affirming care resources. It’s going to depend on where you live, what care you’re able to access, and how old you are. Right now, there are laws sweeping the country that are restricting gender-affirming care for minors.

Gender-affirming care for minors does not mean surgery. It means social transition, different haircut, different clothing, and different name. It means, at the time of puberty, the ability to access drugs that would put a pause on puberty that are reversible that have been used for decades to treat cisgender children who hit early puberty. State after state receiving those procedures banned.

Gender-affirming care for minors does not mean surgery. Gender-affirming care for minors means social transition. It means a different haircut, different clothing, different name. Click To Tweet

Some states are as extreme. The Attorney General of Missouri, for example, issued an emergency order saying, “No care can be received until other issues have been cleared up depression. If you are depressed, you cannot also receive gender-affirming care.” For a lot of folks, that depression is caused by not being able to access gender-affirming care.

When you’re looking out there for resources, if you’re in the New England area, the Mass Trans Political Coalition is a great resource. PFLAG will have great resources on a national level. The Transgender Center for Equality does a lot of advocacy work. Google is a thing now and it’s very helpful to look up local resources. If you’re in a pinch, find me on LinkedIn or on my website. You’re welcome to reach out to me and I can try to help you find something in your area as well.

If you are working already, your company probably has an employee assistance program that has some of that information embedded in it. Look for your affirming health centers like Fenway Health in Massachusetts or Callen Lorde in New York. They have a lot of resources out there. Look for states that are trying to drive sanctuaries for bodily autonomy care. It is what it is. If you’re in California, Colorado, Minnesota, or Massachusetts, those are the states that are safe now for you to access care and will have the resources to point you in the right direction.

Trevor, this has been fascinating. If you can share a little bit more with us about family. Do you have a family as in children, planning to have children, a husband, or wife? Share with us.

I identify as a straight man. I have a wife. She did not know I was trans when we met. She’s a wonderful person who works in the supply chain. Together, we have one child. She is the absolute light of my life. She is sassy, bold, opinionated, and artistic. We have a dog in the family, too. Our four-legged baby. It’s wonderful. I am very lucky to have this structure in my family. Eventually, we would like to grow our family. I hope we grow our family. It does take some medical intervention for that. We are always keeping an eye on that.

I’m going to ask because I know a bunch of people are thinking about it. Now technology has moved as far along that you can have gender-affirming surgery, be a straight man, and produce, not quite.

Not quite. I wish that was the case. We haven’t quite gotten there.

What can be done?

Wonderful medical intervention, assisted reproduction technology, IVF, and IUI. There are some wonderful centers out there. Fenway Health, I’m going to call out. I’ve been a patient there for over a decade receiving care. They have a program that specifically works with lesbian and trans couples who are trying to conceive. We were very lucky to be able to access a program where they knew which boxes to check off for us for our insurance purposes.

There were no questions about having to prove that we had been trying for so many months before being declared infertile. You look at some of the questionnaires in these places and they go through this whole list of answering questions that are not applicable. You get to the very last question and it asks if they’re same-sex or trans partners. If you ask that question first, you would save yourself a lot of time going through this questionnaire. It’s interesting to navigate that world but we’re very lucky to have in Massachusetts the resources that we have here.

That is amazing. Trevor, you have created quite the life to go through what you went through, be able to be an advocate, have so much support then go on to create a family that continues to spread the message and has even more support. You have set the blueprint.

I’d like to think so.

That is fantastic. Trevor, thank you so much for spending time with us. For anyone reading out there, we’ve been educated and we know how important it is to have advocacy in this space. One thing I want to do with you is have a lightning round where you have less than ten seconds to answer a series of questions.

Let’s go.

Trevor, in the last six months, what’s the best book you’ve read?

I just finished listening to Rhythm of War: Book Four of The Stormlight Archive. I love Sci-Fi Fantasy, so that’s top of my list now.

Is there any more known science fiction that we can relate to?

If you have listened to any of the Wheel of Time Series from Robert Jordan or A Game of Thrones, it’s not quite as violent as Game of Thrones but it’s a similar vein.

Very cool. I’ll have to check it out. What is the best movie or TV show you’ve seen in the last six months?

This is from a parent of a three-year-old. We’ve been watching a lot of Bluey and it’s unbelievably relevant to parenting. It’s great. It’s an Australian series about cattle dogs and their two kids. It’s wonderful.

Never heard of it but I’ll have to check that out as well. What’s the best meal you’ve had in the last six months?

Any meal that was not cooked by me. That’s a tough one.

Give a restaurant too.

That’s what I was trying to think. Honestly, I’ve been recovering from surgery since November 2022. There was a lot of takeout over that period of time. I’m going to say the Christmas dinner with my whole family here. They came and everyone else cooked, so I didn’t have to make anything other than the roast beef and that was wonderful. My mother makes an amazing broccoli casserole. My mother-in-law makes amazing cheesy potatoes, so I think between the two of them. That was probably my favorite meal because everyone was together.

Lastly, what’s the best experience you’ve had in the last six months?

The best experience in the last six months is when I pick my daughter up from daycare. She sees me and she yells, “Daddy,” and she goes running across the daycare and jumps into my arms. That is the best feeling. Recovering enough from surgery so that she can jump into my arms and I can pick her up now and give her a big hug.

Amen to that. Trevor, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for your time with us. We can’t wait to see your team’s progress and advocacy in this space. Thank you for being on the show.

Thank you for having me. It’s a wonderful organization and I look forward to seeing what your wonderful mentees do out in the world.

—

That was Trevor Boylston. It’s a fascinating episode. We got to read about a fascinating individual doing fascinating things. It’s episodes like this that remind me of why the show is so important. The whole point of the show is to shed light on an industry that people now know about but people are very unclear about the inner workings and all that it entails. To provide an avenue for people that want to get involved get into a position themselves and give them a true solid way to get there with our program, the Medical Sales Career Builder.

To bring a voice like Trevor’s to a massive audience is awesome. It’s why we do this here at the Show. We want to shed light on every facet of medical sales. Not just the differences within medical sales, whether it be pharmaceutical or medical device but on the individuals that are in these positions and the different types of individuals that are in these positions.

That’s what we’re doing. It’s great to be able to share this with you all. If you’ve tuned into this show for any amount of time, then you already know what I’m going to say now but I’m going to say it again because we believe in it so strongly. We want you to be a part of it if that’s what you want to do. Medical sales is an awesome field.

You’re impacting patients’ lives. You’re working with some of the smartest individuals on the planet and you are truly invited to use everything you know how to do to make something happen. That’s the same opportunity we want to create for you with the Medical Sales Career Builder. Some of you might be reading and you’ve been wishing you could be in a medical sales position but you have no idea where to start or you might be reading and you’ve been applying. You’re on the 100th application and nothing, crickets, or you’ve been getting interviews and you are not being selected. You keep being told it’s because of your lack of sales experience, medical experience, or experience experience.

We’ve heard it all but I’m here to share with you that if you want to be in this industry and you’re a professional and you’re ready to do what it takes to make some things happen, then you don’t need sales experience, medical experience, or any of the things that they’ve been telling you. What you need is a resource that can give you all the tools that you need to get the job. That’s what we can do with a Medical Sales Career Builder.

One thing I want to highlight, sales experience is often recommended for people that want to get into these careers. Not because you have to have some experience to get this career but because they’re hoping that if you take a sales job and you hate it, then you’ll be quickly turned away from ever coming near this career. That’s what the angle is. Sales is the world of noes and yeses. A true sales professional is always looking for a way to turn that no into a yes.

What that means is your daily experience can be a lot of rejection. The reality is some people aren’t built to experience that much rejection between an 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM period. They’re not built to handle that much rejection in such a short amount of time. On this side of that token, some people thrive on doing that. Now, if you want to be in medical sales, then being able to handle rejection is going to serve you well.

However, medical sales is also nuanced because there are opportunities that don’t take on traditional selling. For example, a clinical specialist where your expertise is helping the provider AKA medical professional utilize whatever it is you’re selling. That’s much less about rejection and much more about your competency in communicating with someone and understanding the service or product that you’re helping this provider utilize.

Again, if you want to enter medical sales, whether you’re the hardcore sales professional that can handle rejection any time of day or the not-so-hardcore sales professional that would love to use your expertise and intelligence to help a provider utilize the product or service to the best of their ability, we believe that there’s a place for you within the medical sales realm. That’s what we’re helping people find and get into ultimately to go and thrive in. Again, if you want to be in medical sales, visit EvolveYourSuccess.com and let’s have a conversation. Make sure you tune in for another episode.

 

Important Links

• Trevor Boylston
• US Pan Asian Chamber of Commerce
• National Minority Supplier Development Council
• U.S. Black Chambers
• US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
• NYU Langone
• PFLAG
• Fenway Health
• Callen Lorde
• Wheel of Time
• A Game of Thrones
• Rhythm of War: Book Four of The Stormlight Archive
• LinkedIn – Trevor Boylston
• Medical Sales Career Builder

 

About Trevor Boylston