Sterile Processing, Healthcare, And Medical Sales With Justin Poulin

POSTED ON June 21, 2023

In the dynamic landscape of medical sales, embrace innovation, ignite change, and unleash your potential to revolutionize healthcare. Success awaits those who boldly navigate the realm of medical sales with unwavering determination and a relentless pursuit of excellence. In this episode, Samuel Adeyinka sits with a remarkable guest, Justin Poulin. Justin discusses the dynamic landscape of medical sales, offering valuable insights and insider perspectives. He also shares the secret sauce to making his businesses and other successful visions happen. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain firsthand knowledge from someone who has truly immersed themselves in the medical sales arena. Tune in!

The CE experience for this Podcast is powered by CMEfy – click here to reflect and earn credits: https://earnc.me/8iOWxZ

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Sterile Processing, Healthcare, And Medical Sales With Justin Poulin

In this episode, we have another special guest and he goes by the name of Justin Poulin. Justin has many years in the medical and surgical industry. He’s the host of several healthcare podcasts which focuses on important topics, trends and innovations in sterile processing. He also has other podcasts, which are about the operating room, purchasing and supply chain and a podcast that deals with infection control.

He has exceptional leadership qualities and management experience in sales, clinical and field operations. Justin has seen a lot and this is one of those episodes where you’re going to learn so much. He is the definition of someone that’s truly enterprise himself in the medical sales space and I don’t want you to miss a minute. As always, we do our best to bring him innovative guests that are doing things differently in the medical sales space. I do hope you enjoy this interview.

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Justin, how are you doing?

I’m good. Thanks for having me on the show.

I’m glad to have you on the show. For a little bit of context for everybody reading, Hank, Melanie and you, Justin, are all in the same world so this is a treat. Why don’t you tell everybody who you are and what you do?

Our company launched a few years ago. Since then, we have launched three sister brands. Melanie joined the team and she is our content creator there. We launched one three months after that. That target audience is the supply chain, whereas the first one is the operating room and then we have another one, which is an audience and content curated for infection prevention and medical device space. A number of different brands have been innovating. I have a couple of other endeavors too as an entrepreneur.

You guys are the medical sales master podcasters. This is an example. Let’s give some people some context. People that are reading the episode regularly do know your company. They do in their first case ambient clean because they’ve heard both Melanie and Hank. We have a new audience all the time and they’re not familiar. Please tell us a little bit about what exactly it is, what’s the goal and mission and then maybe a little bit about what the other one is and some of the other brands that you mentioned.

There’s a very common thread amongst all of the brands. They’re educationally focused companies. We create content podcaster’s one version. We do virtual conferences, a lot of social media posts and content creation. We work not only to create great educational content but also with our vendor and supplier partners to take an educational approach to reach their audience. It’s all about bringing value that a lot of times people get caught in value prop features benefits instead of, “Let’s talk about what it’s like to be on the front lines day-to-day and give you some real actionable insights.”

There are some of the things that we do. We do talk specifically about products but a lot of the things that we do highlight subject matter expertise. You want to be engaging and very informative. All of the brands are built on that premise. Most of them get CEs for the content that we create from the organizations that offer continuing education or points depending on what you’re talking about.

The differentiator between the brands, Beyond Clean is the flagship. It was focused on the sterile processing industry, which honestly needed a lot to get awareness raised and elevate that profession. There is an enormous amount of passionate folks out there that have been doing this job for many years and we wanted to give them a voice. That’s why we call ourselves the voice of sterile processing. Also, it’s a great play on words with the podcast.

The First Case is for the operating room. Power Supply is for the healthcare supply chain. I would say the healthcare supply chain especially. Before the pandemic, nobody even knew what a supply chain was. We’re like sterile processing, the people who worked in the basement or maybe an offsite boardroom but a lot of people didn’t know materials management, supply chain, purchasing and procurement. They’re very much on a similar trajectory of sterile processing where the awareness of the profession is growing. We want to be a voice for all of those brands and elevate those professions and the people that are working hard on the front lines in healthcare every day.

Considering it is the flagship, how long has it been around?

A few years. If you go to the website, you can see how the company was started. I had worked for a company. I left and I was writing out a non-compete. I was about to start with the company and start selling back into the sterile processing space. I had been educating on a regional and national level around sterile processing and sterile processing topics for a number of years before I took a little bit of a hiatus.

As I was coming back in, I was in a startup company and taking an additional job. I had flexibility. People always ask me, “You do this podcast for the Celtics, how come you’re not podcasting in healthcare?” It was like, “I’ve only got one employer. If they don’t like what I say on my podcast, I might no longer have an employer.” I never did.

Hank had already run for the presidency of IAHCSMM, which is now HSPA. He had lost that candidacy and was looking for a voice and writing. I realized that this was a good time for me to potentially start podcasting on the professional side of my life, not only as a personal pastime. It made sense to partner with somebody who already had a voice. I shot Hank a message on LinkedIn. If you look, it was after midnight. It was late at night when I shot him the message and said, “Have you ever thought about doing a podcast?” You can read the rest of the dialogue but it’s history from there.

That is the coolest story ever. Let’s get some context here. I’m going to boast a little bit about you. Your podcast has surpassed a million downloads. I’m saying that so that everybody reading has some context into how series of an accomplishment you guys had here. Sterile processing was a little too almost unknown space within medical sales. To be even a rep in sterile processing, people are like, “What? I didn’t even know that was a thing.” You guys were able to take such an unknown space and create 1 million downloads within 5 years. That’s huge. Talk to us a little bit about what drove that. What could you say is the secret sauce behind making that happen outside of wanting to provide value for your audience?

One of the biggest reasons is we got enormous support from the industry and the frontline technicians that were out there. They wanted a voice and to be heard. It’s the level of passion in that industry and for recognition. Honestly, one thing that we were willing to talk about from the beginning was the pay scale for the folks that are working in that department. A lot of people would talk about it but I don’t know that it ever got an elevated voice. There were a lot of things that we were willing to talk about and topics that might have been considered taboo in the past. The industry embraced us.

I also think that the podcast started to take off. Believe me, Hank had already done an enormous amount of work to cultivate that audience and give it a voice through his writings and his posts on social media. From there, it was like, “Where can we go? Can we do conferences?” We wound up doing virtual conferences when everything shut down. It was the constant growth around education that was the secret sauce.

Also, we would bring in people who might not be noted industry experts but they would come on and get a voice on the podcast to maybe talk about a success story in their department, talk about a challenge or expose something that was an idiosyncrasy in the industry that was causing them a challenge like, “There’s no good answer to this question. We have this and this and these are competing expectations.” Every day on the front lines, we have to make a judgment call and create a facility policy and live with that or we’re not getting technological advancements in our department. How do we accomplish these increasing requirements of our department as medical devices get more sophisticated when we’re not being invested in them?

Those were the kinds of conversations that were happening on the show. Giving people an opportunity to say what needs to be said is one of the best ways to grow an audience in general and make them feel like they have a stake in the game. By listening and participating, they’re becoming part of a movement. Honestly, to take it to a million downloads, we celebrated by releasing the very first studio album of songs dedicated to sterile processing. We’ve got country, pop, folk and all of that. Nobody has ever done that.

[bctt tweet=”Giving people an opportunity to say what needs to be said is one of the best ways to grow an audience and make them feel like they have stake in the game.” via=”no”]

The first studio album, who created that?

It’s Hank Balch’s idea. He’s a mastermind. His whole concept was we need to create a culture. We talk about culture. It’s not only a content culture or a work culture. He and his wife are writing a children’s book about sterile processing. He may not have bragged about that when he was doing his interview with you and I love to tout his genius but he’s a visionary. He’s talking about culture. What is in culture, music and art? We have all kinds of art that we’ve digitized from scenes from within sterile processing and on the front lines. Art, music, books and literature is what we’re talking about. That’s the big vision from Hank’s standpoint. Honestly, we’ve read a number of books. Traction is a book that I’d recommend.

It’s the number one book right there. I love that book.

They talk about visionaries and integrators. Hank is the visionary and I’m the integrator. That’s how it all comes about.

You guys are a match made in heaven. This is interesting. You guys are creating a sterile processing world.

We’re not the only ones creating it but anything that’s ever gone viral has gone viral because everybody gets involved. Think about a meme. What’s a meme? The memes take off because everybody takes ownership of the meme. That’s how it gets sticky. We have a vision for it and created a platform to further that. We get creative to create that sticky energy and that culture. When we started the company podcast, there were no other podcasts. When I started my Celtics podcast, there were no other podcasts.

If you go look, there are 30 to 50 podcasts covering the Boston Celtics. A guy who writes for the Athletic Jared Weiss coined me the Pod Father for Celtics Podcasters but it’s the same thing with my podcast. There are ten podcasts about sterile processing. We’re not trying to be the only podcast. We’re trying to be one of the podcasts. It’s great that we were the first podcast but to accomplish this vision, you need all kinds of content flooding the market. One business or one entity cannot elevate an industry on its own.

Part of this viral world that you guys are contributing to creating has led to Hank creating an album of music for sterile processing.

With a children’s book on the way, yes.

I’m inspired. That’s all I got. That’s fascinating. To give us some context on what your time looks like, this is not your full-time gig. Talk to us a little bit about what you do outside of being this amazing podcaster and how much time are you spending in this fun space of work.

I do spend a pretty good amount of time building these businesses. A lot of what I do as an integrator is to create business processes, workflows and automation. Our team is going to grow so we’re going to need a platform for everybody to be able to communicate. Think of an operational sales force that focused on what happens on the backend, how we line up guests for the educational podcast and directing that vision. I do a lot of that.

I also record an enormous amount of podcasts because I’m recording for all four brands. For each brand, we’re doing 32 episodes a year so that’s about 100 episodes there. We also do what we call a vendor spotlight. That’s more of a partnership with our vendor and supplier partners and highlighting their products and services. You could look at another probably 30 to 50 podcasts a year on that one. I’m doing about twenty podcasts a year on the other podcast.

I do spend a good amount of time podcasting and the VP of sales with another company is in the vendor credentialing space. It was a startup a few years ago and is the fastest-moving vendor credentialing company on the market and has grown enormously. I’m very proud of all of these businesses. You don’t do it on your own. I have been lucky not only to be surrounded by visionaries or talented salespeople. Lindsay Brown for one brand and Melanie creates all the content for the other. I’ve got Hays Waldrop and Garry Skinner who do the Power Supply Podcast. They do their things as well like consulting and conferences.

Lawrence Muscarella is a noted subject matter expert in the medical device arena. He is my co-host for the other podcast. I also have one of the greatest mentors in Shawn Fitzgibbons, who started the vendor credentialing company and believed in me. He brought me on board, gave me the opportunity to become an entrepreneur and has never tried to hold me down on my other endeavors. All he wants is for me to grow and we all succeed when we take that growth mindset. I’ve been blessed. His mentorship has been incredibly invaluable to me.

MSP 142 | Medical Sales — Medical Sales We all succeed when we take a growth mindset

You have been blessed. To be able to recognize that and live in it, that’s awesome. Take us back as you have quite a colorful career. I’m not going to spoil all of it but take us back to college. What were you thinking you were going to be? What did you do or not do? Let’s go up to where we are.

After graduating high school, I got a scholarship in Chemical Engineering. I was headed off to the University of Maine to become an engineer. That summer, I worked at a camp for disabled children and adults. I had gotten exposed to healthcare in that way. I was only working in the kitchen the first summer but during my breaks, I would go work with my friends who were counselors and spend time with the kids and the adults during the adult session and got immersed. I then go off to college and granted, every other engineering program is trying to weed me out. I studied my brains out. I went to the first test and I got a ten on my first Chemistry test. It was out of 100.

The class average was 30 so it was announced. They weeded me right out between Physics, Calculus and Chemistry. You can tell that I’m a people person. Sitting down and doing equations wasn’t my thing. I swear I thought to myself, “I like working with the kids. Next year, I’m going to go back to this camp. I’m going to be a counselor and work with the kids and the adults all summer long.” I did everything but IVs. I’m talking feeding tubes and anything you can think of personal care-wise. We were trained to do that.

That next summer, I did that and I thought to myself, “I want to work with kids so I’m either going to be a teacher or a nurse.” Nurse pays more. It gives you a little bit more flexibility. I’m going to start there and see how it goes. I went back to the camp that summer, worked as a counselor, came back to school, made the dean’s list the first semester in nursing and stuck with nursing. The ironic thing is that I wound up becoming an educator even as a nurse. Those two things still materialized.

Your passions never die.

It’s funny but all of us have varied interests. I’m a good example. Whether they think it’s only a passion or something they do as a pastime, I would encourage people to find ways to take all of those interests and create their professional identity. I have a background in nursing. I love people and educating. I started podcasting in 2004 to cover the Celtics when everybody else in New England was talking about the Patriots and the Red Sox. The Celtics were one of the worst teams in the league and then all of a sudden, they trade for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen.

[bctt tweet=”Find ways to take all of your interests and create your professional identity.” via=”no”]

They go from worst to first. I got credentialed access. I was the first person from the new media to get into the locker room. I was featured in a small-budget documentary behind the scenes while they made that run. It was a ton of fun. Here I am standing. I’ve got my sales and entrepreneurial combined with my nursing and my educator passion and podcasting. The whole thing has merged into my career. You can do that. You just have to be willing to take an unconventional path.

Words of wisdom right there. You mentioned your mentor. Was there anyone from a distance, maybe someone that’s in the spotlight that you saw that inspired you to continue on your unconventional path or would you say that your unconventional path was more of you chasing your heart?

I was chasing my heart. I wish I could say that I saw somebody else who blazed the path that I looked up to. I came into a great deal of luck with a lot of mentorships throughout that path. In many ways, it was haphazard but I also listened to people and what they were saying. Instead of me putting my blinders on and saying, “I’ve got this medical sales career and this is all it can be. I’m going to climb the ladder at this one company and this is how I’m going to get there,” people were telling me for a very long time, “You should podcast in healthcare.” Even then, it took me a while. I had a lot of fear and you could hear that. Nobody accomplishes anything when they’re worried about losing.

You have to be willing to lose. When I left nursing, I sold my house for a $20,000 loss. I got help from my father-in-law. I moved my family and two young kids to a different state. I started a career in mortgages in 2008 and 2009. It was the worst time to be on mortgages. I took this loss. We didn’t have a lot of savings. I was working as a nurse. I made $12,000 that year in mortgages after taking an even bigger loss on the house. I got a lot of help from my father-in-law at that time.

I propped this up. I said I was going to give mortgages for a year. It turned out it didn’t work out. I can look at that and granted, there were days I was on my way to work and I was in tears. I was like, “How am I going to do this?” I got to a point where I knew I wanted to be a medical sales for a while. The problem that I had was that as a nurse, nobody took my application seriously. That shift work, you don’t understand variable comp and the base salary at an entry level is not going to compare all of those things. I remember I applied to a lot of medical sales jobs. I only got 1 interview throughout my 20s and early 30s. I failed at mortgages and I put out probably five applications. I got 3 of those 5 companies to call me back for interviews.

I got an offer from the company I ultimately started my medical sales career. I remember going to their home offices in Ohio for the interview and they had a more seasoned professional that I was interviewing against. I found out later that they were pretty sure they were going to hire that guy. When I came in, one of the biggest questions that I had prepared for was, “Justin, you’ve got this nursing background. How do I take what appears on the surface to be a failed year in mortgages that would only say everybody was right that I wasn’t meant to do sales? $12,000, are you kidding me? How do you turn that narrative around?”

I went into that interview and said, “I failed miserably. I made $12,000 the last year in mortgages but I learned a lot about sales. The fact that I’m still sitting here after trying to get an interview for a medical sales job for the last decade and not being able to do that, the fact that I made $12,000 my first time being a sales rep and I’m still sitting here telling you I want this job ought to tell you that I can handle variable comp and I want this. Otherwise, I go back to nursing.” I could have gone back to nursing three months in but I had things to learn. That story is what moved it forward. That’s the reason I got the job.

That’s a phenomenal story. What was your first job in medical sales? What was it?

I was with a company that did medical instrument repair, a number of processing essentials and surgical instruments like Kerrison. There were a lot of specialty instruments and some rigid scopes but a lot of it was onsite stainless steel, offsite stainless steel, rigid scopes, flexible scopes and the standard instrument repair categories.

The company I was with was very much focused on doing education and requiring sales reps to deliver education to the customers. We also had to get certified through the professional trade organization, HSPA, now IAHCSMM and get our CCSVP. You had to do that within a year. At my year anniversary, I had to deliver the baseline education to the owner and founder of the company. I was one of the most noted speakers at that time like Rick Schultz in sterile processing. No pressure at all. The guy who made the education, you have to deliver it back to him.

I made an impression and I did well. We then left that annual meeting and everything else. I got a call a month later from this guy, Matt, who was one of their top sales guys and oversaw a lot of the sales operations and marketing. He suggested to me, “You did a good job learning the education and presenting it back to Rick. Here’s the thing. We got a call. We built this whole booth so we could do in-booth education AuRN for the very first time. Feedler is going to be doing the approvals for all of those presentations for continuing education credits.”

“The problem is for you to get approved to do that in-booth education, you have to be a nurse. You’re the only nurse on the team. The conference is next month. Can you learn about this other educational program and be ready to deliver it at AuRN’s annual conference in our booth in a month?” I said, “Yes, I’ll do it.” I wound up delivering 12 or 25-minute presentations over the 2 days. The rest was history from there. I enjoyed it. I found a calling and I built a lot of my sales foundation on education. It’s no surprise that these brands are growing and thriving under the same concepts.

When you talk about everything you’ve been doing, it’s like you’re living in a fun world of a world that you created.

That’s how I feel about it. It’s a ton of fun. I’ve learned a lot about business. Coming in as a nurse, I have no business background. One of the first things I did was I got involved with the local arm chapter so that I could understand the supply chain. I wound up becoming the education chair for five years and sitting on the board of the chapter out of Southeastern Pennsylvania called CPAC. I did that to grow my experience. Even moving into this entrepreneurial space, working with our CFO, starting to understand all the things on the backend of a business, what it takes to run an organization and some of those responsibilities, I didn’t get that training in nursing school.

You’re taught it yourself. Here you are. It sounds like you’re living the dream. You got all these thriving businesses. You’re podcasting and educating your heart away. Where do you see this going? Do you look at it like every day is an adventure and it’s going to go where it goes or do you have some type of end goal?

It’s a little bit of both. Anytime that you’re so hard and fast on an end goal that is the blinders, then you’re not going to move. Honestly, it can be stifling to not allow for the creative process and influence to come in. Do we have a hard and fast goal? No. What I do believe is part of the reason we created these other brands was to target the audiences that are doing the front lines and then also create content for director, supervisor and manager levels.

The whole idea is more of these brands and more content. Ultimately, one of the other things is cross-collaboration from brands so that you know if you sell into healthcare that these departments are very siloed. Healthcare is very siloed. One of the things that we see on a bigger picture vision for all these different brands is to start crossing over.

Conferences that have supply chain and sterile processing content or supply chain content and SPD content. What about Biomed and infection prevention? The list goes on. We start to pull all of these different perspectives into a conference and appeal to both but we’ve cultivated the frontline audience. Having a broader beyond-the-silo perspective could be healthy for healthcare. That’s where we’re going with that.

The vision is, “Let’s build this out.” When you look at a company like Becker’s, it’s a similar concept to what we’re doing but I would say Becker’s is a top-down approach to content creation. You could look at what we are building with all these brands as more of the bottom-up approach where with all the aggregation in the healthcare systems, you know from a sales perspective, which is relevant to your audience.

You can go in and sit down with the CEO or the COO and they’ll be like, “We love it. Convince these 30 people as part of this large health system that they should do it.” You might get the stamp of approval but you’ve got to go out and do those front lines legwork. I look at it from an educational standpoint. We’re out there working on the front lines creating that content and then also getting them to understand each other’s perspective. That would be the difference between Becker’s and what we’re building with all these brands.

This has been fantastic, Justin. I’m sure everybody reading is saying, “I would like to spend a day with Justin and see what the day is like.” I’m going to give them some of that. I want you to walk us through from morning until night. What does the day look like for you?

My alarm goes off at 5:00. Some days, I hit snooze until 5:30. Some days, I hit snooze until 6:30, depending on what I was doing the night before. I get up, get some coffee and organize my day on my computer. Sunday night is my ritual. I lay out what I’m going to do every day. I have a whole plan. I’m very calendar and block-scheduling-minded in the way that I lay out my week but I leave lots of room for flexibility. I know things are going to get canceled. I have plenty of projects that will fit in. I lay it out that way. I get up in the morning. I do the things that I know I need to have focus time on. I’m fresh. If I don’t do it, then I’m probably going to get distracted throughout the day.

I have a lot coming at me throughout the day. I’m on calls most of the day back-to-back. I’ve been known to do 5 to 6 hours of Teams to Zoom to the podcasting platforms. I always bounce. A lot of times, I’m on strategic calls and I’m still keeping some emails moving to make sure that things are flowing and constantly in motion. I usually wrap up around 5:00 or 5:30. A lot of times, I’ll then take my daughter to softball and involved as an assistant coach. I stay involved in that. If I’m not doing that, I may wrap up a little bit of work. Usually, I’ll cook. My son is a teenager. He’s an intern with our company. He’s living with me as he wraps up college.

We might spend some quality time. I might even play some Madden. I love playing Madden on the PlayStation. I usually wind up doing some podcasts or more work on the eve. I’ll go to bed between 10:00 and 10:30. The day is full. It’s very little downtime for me. Most of the time, I do break up my morning with some exercise. After I get my coffee and get situated for the day, I’ll work out for about 30 to 60 minutes. I shower, have breakfast and get back into it a full day.

You found all this family time to fit in. That’s beautiful.

The best advice on that is to be involved with your kids’ activities because it becomes a commitment. It’s so easy, especially as you’re building your career for you to then be like, “I’m not going to go to that practice because I sit on the sidelines. I’m going to try to make that game but I can’t make that game because of work.” If it’s a team, it could be anything. One of my children is in plays. If you commit to being part of those things, then you’re automatically involved and then it’s quality time instead of you chauffeuring them around.

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The family timepiece is like work or getting involved with professional trade organizations. I wasn’t good at that at the beginning of my career. I realized as I was building my medical sales career that if I didn’t do that, I wasn’t going to be involved in their lives as much as I wanted to. That’s my advice early and often. You can make it fit into your schedule and it helps to make a commitment.

I’m going to ask you a question about challenges. What does a challenge look like for you? You’re having so much fun. When you have a challenging day, what things are, for lack of a better phrase, going wrong?

It’s almost always operational or related to communication. It may be an execution issue from somebody on the team sometimes. I like to focus on processes and not people when it comes to improvement. It doesn’t mean you can’t or there isn’t a people issue sometimes. When you’re trying to move everybody forward, instead of getting caught up in the blame stuff, you got to focus on the process, which is why I’m a big believer in automation. We happen to use HubSpot as our platform. They have a nice service hub that we leverage. We do a lot of tasking but then that allows us to look at the ops like, “Where are the bottlenecks? Who are the bottlenecks with? Who needs help?”

We’re constantly trying to advance that. For me, when a challenge arises, typically it’s something that didn’t happen that should have happened and then how we push that forward or how we make it right. A lot of times, people don’t want to go to their customers and say, “We messed up.” I can assure you, especially in the healthcare realm with the way that things have been, nothing will give you more credibility and integrity in this industry than to come clean as fast as possible and let them know that you’re doing everything that you can and keep them updated on where you’re at in the corrective action process.

If you do those things, you’re going to be in pretty good shape, honestly. Many people are scared of that. Typically, the challenges that come up are, “We committed we would do this and now we can’t do it. With our timeline on this, we are not going to meet the timeline.” Those kinds of things. That’s pretty common for most businesses. I’ve spent a lot of time in sales but I’m doing a lot of operations.

Let me ask you this then. On days when it seems like nothing is going right and you’re frustrated and you’re thinking, “What’s happening,” what motivates you to keep on going? Is that something that’s naturally in you or do you focus on something that makes you like, “I’m doing it for this reason?” What’s your guiding light in that respect?

I can’t imagine working for somebody else. That’s probably the biggest motivation, to be honest with you. Figure it out. You’d be working with somebody else. If I can’t do this, then somebody else is going to tell me how to do my job. One of the things I figured out early on when I became a medical sales rep was I need to put pressure back on the company. The minute the company is putting pressure on me, there’s something wrong. Everybody should be like, “You got to feel that vibe if they’re coming back at you.”

Everybody needs to write that down. That’s a good one.

You got to put the pressure back on the company. I got this order and you’re not able to deliver. That is a much better place to be than, “Justin, you didn’t hit your quota.” A lot of times when people don’t hit their quota, it’s because they don’t think that the company is going to come through for them sometimes. Sometimes, it’s a lack of basic sales skills but anybody who’s a decent sales rep loses confidence.

You can’t lose confidence. Your job is to put the pressure back on the company to deliver for your customer and for you to constantly advocate for your customer. You’re not going to lose a job doing that and you’re not going to lose a customer either if you’re honest with them. It’s the best position to be in. I’ve always subscribed to that.

I don’t want to be under somebody else’s thumb. The worst thing that can happen is you got to know you’re in trouble or you hear that somebody said, “I don’t even know what Justin does. What does Justin do?” That is the kiss of death. If you’re in a sales war and somebody drops that hammer on you, it’s all over. You are in serious trouble. Sometimes, you deserve it. Sometimes, you don’t. If you keep pressure on the company to deliver because you’re growing and out there hustling, you’re pretty much going to have nothing to worry about in your career.

Justin, it has been a pure treat chatting with you about the world. I’m going to call it the world because when I say sterile processing, the world of sterile processing. Is that fair?

Surgical services, health care and social media. You can go on as much as you want.

We’ll throw it all in there. This has been a treat. We’re going to come to a close and I’m going to ask you four questions. It’s called The Lightning Round. You have less than ten seconds to answer everyone. What is the best book you’ve read?

Traction. That’s a recent read and I love it.

What is the best TV show or movie you’ve seen?

That one is tough. I’m trying to think. I have not watched a lot of TV lately. I’m a series guy. I like Stranger Things.

What’s the best meal you’ve had?

I went out to dinner at this restaurant in Kennebunk, Maine.

You have to give us a name.

I cannot remember the name. I’d have to look it up. I went there. I don’t know why it’s escaping me. We had oysters on the half-shell, which were amazing. There were three different oysters and then we had this fried cheese and they had the most amazing bread. They had an eclectic mix but I had a ramen soup that they had homemade ramen noodles. It was phenomenal.

You have to figure out what that name is.

I’ll have to get back to you on it. I should know off the top of my head.

Everybody wants to know. Whenever we’re in Kennebunk, Maine, that’s the first place we’re going to. Last question, what’s the best experience you’ve had?

I celebrated Christmas with my kids and it was the first time that I was on my own doing Christmas with them. I did all the shopping. I got all the gifts. I did it all. I came up with some things that I know they love and would never have asked for. One of my kids even said, “I’ve been thinking about this forever and never thought to ask for it. This is such a great present.”

Lots of things happen in our personal lives and this has been a pretty tough year from some standpoints to have that Christmas with the kids. I love my family. I got some great kids so any quality time. I also did a road trip. I rented a minivan and we had no destination. We spent a week on the road. We got the hotel for the day the next day and stopped and made some TikTok with the kids. That was not a ten-second answer but all my time with my kids was the best experience I’ve had.

Justin, it’s been amazing talking to you. We’re going to be seeing some more things coming from the world of everything that we mentioned. We’ll be on the lookout for more things. Thank you so much for your time. We can’t wait to hear what’s going on next.

Samuel, thanks for having me.

—

That was Justin Poulin. Fascinating stuff. What I love about talking to Justin are all the amazing things he’s done in the podcast space. As a podcaster myself, it’s cool to hear of someone that’s enterprise at the way he’s done and been able to channel so much information to so many nuanced audiences. You might be reading this and thinking to yourself, “I want to do some of the things that Justin’s done.” Maybe Justin talked about a space that you haven’t even known about regarding medical sales and you want to get into it.

Regardless of what your interest is, you know that if you’ve read my show for any amount of time, this is where you come to read. If you want to find out what you can do to get into medical sales, whether it be a pharmaceutical, medical device, genetic testing, diagnostic testing, you name it, we can help you get there. You’ve heard me say it so many times before. If you’re still on the fence, take action. Do something different. Visit EvolveYourSuccess.com and let’s help you get into the position that you’ve been dreaming about. Make sure you tune in next time for another episode.

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About Justin Poulin

Justin Poulin is the Vice President of Sales at Green Security LLC and the CEO of Beyond Clean. He has over 20 years in the Medical/Surgical industry both as a Registered Nurse and Regional Vice President of Sales and Operations. He is an active supporter and participant in Regional AHRMM and IAHCSMM chapters and has presented educational programs at both the AORN and IAHCSMM annual national conferences. Justin is the host of several healthcare podcasts including the Beyond Clean Podcast which focuses on important topics, trends, and innovations in Sterile Processing. His other podcast projects include First Case (Operating Room), Power Supply (Purchasing & Supply Chain) and Transmission Control (Infection Control). Justin has exceptional leadership qualities with management experience in Sales, Clinical, and Field Operations.