IAM593- Marketing VP Provides Research Tools in Healthcare

Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello. Hello. Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, I have a very special guest on the show today. I have CJ Xia of Bosterbio.com CJ Xia, it's awesome to have you on the show.

CJ Xia 0:39

Hey, hello there. Hello to the community.

Gresham Harkless 0:43

How's it going? CJ. So what I wanted to do is just read a little bit more about CJ so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And CJ is the VP of marketing sales at Bostonbio.com. He has eight years of experience in life science marketing and it with reasonably deep insights and concurrent Life Technologies and health care CJ, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

CJ Xia 1:04

I AM a CEO oh I am CEO community Hey, how are you? I can I can be ready, I can be ready when whenever I need it. Okay, that's like I'm doing so in the business. where I am needed, I'll be testing.

Gresham Harkless 1:20

I appreciate you hopping on the show. So I wanted to just kick everything off here a little bit more about what I call your background and what led you to your current position now.

CJ Xia 1:30

Sure, be happy to give you a quick overview. So my background is in neuroscience and helps to have a business degree. This company itself is a family run business, not too big have about 100 100 or so employees. And we were traditionally a manufacturer of high tech reagents are known as antibodies used heavily in scientific research. So we're a traditional manufacturer that just kept cranking other products in mainland China and In the early 2000 because I'm in 2011 Actually not early 2000 because and they just kind of just shipped me over and they're sorry, a US branch. So it's a Seimei. From is now like I started from scratch, scratch, but the only the business and operations side of it. So we we had no not much business here or internationally. And now we are about four times the size we were the efforts. So it's not as starting from scratch, scratch, someone has some of the best skills and experience I definitely don't have percent. But as a person who is very enthusiastic about the science and the business side of it, I am hoping that I can share some experienced that people will find useful.

Gresham Harkless 3:04

Yeah, well, no, I definitely appreciate you for giving that bio, definitely breaking it down is it's interesting, you know, at whatever stage, if you're creating a business from scratch, or you're doing it in an entirely different country and building it up from there, you kind of need those entrepreneurial skills. So I definitely appreciate you for for being on the show. So I wanted to hear a little bit more about boster bio, could you take us through exactly what you guys do and how you how you work with clients you have?

CJ Xia 3:29

Sure hear him. So you're asking just like what products and services we provide. So the product line that we provide is generally for longer research reagent. So what does that mean is that biological, scientific researchers, scientific research in healthcare or bio biology or preclinical mostly would need to do experiments, and then the tools to do experiments, tools and reagents to experiment and we make the tools and reagent for them. Well, not all of them not all of the tools but a specific subset of tools that are related to immunology. What these tools, namely antibodies and Eliza kit, what do they do is that they help you measure and visualize where proteins are in any given sample. So for example, if I have autopsy done right, I have some tissue of myself on a piece of glass, I need to see where these proteins that may indicate diseases are and how many of there are to decide if I'm in trouble. And these regions will help you help people see where those proteins of interest lie so that they can make an informed decision, whatever question they're trying to answer. So it's very basic tool to help do a very basic thing that is needed in a lot of scenarios. Think of us as making nuts and bolts and screwdrivers for scientists.

Gresham Harkless 5:00

Hmm, no, that's that's very powerful. And he definitely say this is like a simple tool. But it sounds like it's so important because especially with with scientists and anybody's doing any type of experiments, the more information and knowledge you have probably the better, you're able to get the final result, the final desired result.

CJ Xia 5:16

I surely hope that I can help my client do that. Now. Clients customers know what the right terms are. And they behave like customers, but I guess they are. I don't know if there's even though official difference between the two. Go ahead.

Gresham Harkless 5:30

Yeah, no, absolutely. No, I think they definitely go hand in hand. And I think anytime you're you're creating something for, you know, target market, client, customer, whatever, you know, term, we kind of use, it's just important to be able to kind of be of great service. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce, and it can be for you personally, or for your business. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

CJ Xia 5:52

Well, there are a couple things from different angles, and talk about the first angle is from my own managerial perspective. Because the challenge I face most mostly our end, things are scaling things. Right. So the on the product side is already a viable product. So in the beginning of my career, and right now, I'd say half of what I face right now is, you know, issues and opportunity are commonly thrown at us. And they've been a reason why not too big of a company, the resources and talents are reasonably limited. So privatization is always a big challenge. And everybody's trying to figure out how to do that my secret sauce for bath is I focus on what's called moment of truth management. So what does that mean? It means I try my best to minimize the time between realisation of a issue or a opportunity to taking a effective response or action. I've tried to design my workflow and lifestyle around being able to minimize that time. I mean, sounds vague, but let me give you some examples. For example, one type of opportunity, or issue we tend to face is from customer feedback. So for example, if a customer asks a certain question, that means might not have been addressed in full, the website itself, right? So he's gonna be watching a little one on one, how long can you retain the store, like that's right on the website. But people ask that because you can blame them being lazy, but we're constantly just put it in a more prominent place. So we get a lot of small insights, marginal improvement opportunities, by our interaction with customers, how do we design a system that would minimize the reaction time to that is a train the customer support team, to where there was some skills that are needed to update what pages so that would shrink the circle of intergeneration to like, the manager, developer and all that, to them being able to do some small changes on fly, of course, you have to set parameters like don't matter and have like backup system to prevent Shaheen and fan but but that, that is like the embodiment one, one example of embodiment of this philosophy is, how do you shrink the amount of time from realization of problem to, you know, take any effective action. So from a managerial standpoint, that's one thing that I think is very actionable for many businesses. A lot of businesses, small businesses, especially big, big and small, they feel that there's like an idea, and or issue and then years later in, there's still that issue. And you just don't know where things get lost, sometimes just be creative and designing workflow that keep this objective as one of the center objectives is one point that I want to make. As far as marketing and product strategy was there's not a point about being customers. Especially marketing, right, a lot of folks who don't do marketing as much, especially scientist, talk about things that they are. They are enthusiastic about a lot of times. So sometimes help friends of mine that are also running companies, some DIGIC. Advisory or consulting. Like for example, a person would have a service testing for compounds. And they will call the compound testing. But in fact, to the people who actually to the customer who actually use the service. It's not a compound, it's a very specific thing. So they will call it preservative testing or anti microbials. That's the more, you know, like tomato extract testing or something like that, right. So to them is not a compound. And when you communicate with the customer should avoid using things that that are your mind and you care about you're efficient. I've literally seen customers are in honor businesses have blogs writing about, you know, their scientists go on a hike with their dog and a cute picture of the scientists in a documentary. That's great for like, company culture and all that, but he just in terms of keeping it a lot of customer, it doesn't really help. And plus that blog is like zero views from nowhere. Always keep the customer as the centerpiece of your strategy, especially in marketing strategies. Here's another thing that I share, it's so much easier to get lost in the hole. You know, people starting things with a passion in a garage kind of story with that people lose sight of the fact that most businesses are very down to earth. And they, they to do well because they serve the customer well. And it's not about the business owner, but about the customer. So that's another thing that's kind of easy to overlook. People like to talk about things they're passionate about, sometimes try to focus on the customer customer centered, is a word I use are a couple other things I talk about sometimes, but no. That's the tool that I can think of right now.

Gresham Harkless 11:39

Nice. No, I definitely appreciate those. And I definitely see how they kind of overlap as well too, as being like kind of customer focus. I think so many times, as you said, you know, as entrepreneurs, business owners are working for companies, being scientists, or whatever our industry might be, we are looking through our lens, but we got to remember that a lot of times we're doing stuff to help out so many people help out clients or customers or a target market, as we said before, so being able to communicate with them and come in speak and show them how you can provide that solution, it's definitely a huge thing. So definitely appreciate those, those examples of secret sauces and what you guys are doing. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app or a book or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

CJ Xia 12:23

So that I personally am self taught programmer that I really like to automate things, when I can even come out come trying to come up with a course trying to put it on YouTube or on Udemy, or whatever to teach some simple automation skills. By using very simple software. Like I said, we use just excel and Chrome to automate a lot of tasks.

Gresham Harkless 12:49

Ya, know that that makes a lot of sense. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a co nugget. So that could be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice you might have already gave this gave us this, but it's something you might tell your younger business self?

CJ Xia 12:59

Not even have to be much younger. If it just like a mouse, my mouse younger, I would tell myself to especially when I tried to start a new thing. I need to have the measurement, really soft through you know, don't don't don't do like, you know, if it's just have to, maybe this is not applicable to like certain other businesses that at least to me, with limited resource, which was one of the we don't take any VC money. That's a problem. It's all like organic revenue base. So in that scenario, I would definitely tell myself to have clear and measurable you know, results measurement, measurement step standard guidelines set up before turning on the faucet on a certain project, always try to do it more on the conservative side. Think about what is the objective? Or what milestones should I meet and if it don't meet those just chatted loose. Don't let a handgun I mean, if it doesn't, people don't change really mostly once they reach a no age past 22 they physically and mentally there wasn't as much so you know, if if somebody is not going the right direction, doesn't meet certain milestones. It's better to kind of project loose, then hanging hanging out there without a plan trying to have to work better. I guess this would apply to anyone who's like me trying to start like, you know, running about one dozen to about a dozen and a half project the same time all the time. And trying to chew up a lot trying to grow fast. I mean, it has gotten us growing pretty fast over the past few years and yet you know, there are some some decisions that I regret that I think I could be put on, put out like a little bit faster. Definitely have measurement as a part of your planning, not just how you would do it but how you would know that you have done it. That's That's it The advice that will be emphasized to myself even though I knew back then knew all along, but still gets me every time.

Gresham Harkless 15:10

That makes sense. A lot of times we fall in love with what we've created and what we've done. So definitely not by yourself. And that's in that sense. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're all gonna have different quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So CJ, what does being a CEO mean to you?

CJ Xia 15:28

Practically. I think it's responsibility. No, not. There are two. I mean, there's a couple photos of them, there's responsibility to the people that follow me. And there's responsibility to making stuff happen. That is the last line of defense for all the important things to happen.

Gresham Harkless 15:46

Awesome. Well, I appreciate that CJ, and I wanted to wanted to pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and listeners know and then of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you guys are working on.

CJ Xia 16:01

Oh, sure. I mean, Bosterbio.com is the website as a call the numbers on the website, they will probably get ahold of me.

Gresham Harkless 16:07

Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that. CJ, what we'll do is we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. But appreciate you for all the awesome things you're doing and the time you took today and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE And leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai