Transcript

Bennie F Johnson 

Hello, and thank you for joining us for this episode of AMAs Marketing And. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F. Johnson. In our episodes, we explore life through a marketing lens, delving into the conversations of individuals that flourish at this intersection of marketing and the unexpected. We’ll introduce you through our episodes through visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know.

Through our thought provoking conversations, we’ll unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. Today, my guest is Wes Michael, president and founder of Rare Patient Voice. A market research industry veteran, Wes earned his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. It was roughly 10 years ago in 2013 that Wes launched Rare Patient Voice based on a novel approach to building a market research panel, one that enables patients and caregivers to share their voices with the researchers and companies developing products to improve patients’ lives. He structured the company on the core values of being good, a good resource for patients, a good partner to clients, a good employer to staff, and a good citizen to our community at large. Since this inception, Wes has seen the company grow from expanding to the US, to Canada, to the UK, and across Europe and beyond, completing thousands of projects and providing customized services to hundreds of clients. He hopes that rare patient voices work can help the lives of patients and caregivers who are able to participate in our studies and for those to come in the future. Wes, thank you for lending your voice to our podcast.

Wes Michael 

Hey, Bennie, great to be here. Hello from Towson, Maryland, to all your listeners.

Bennie 

Yes, it’s Towson, Maryland. I smile when I think about that, you talk about market research. I think my very first panel interview that I ever participated in as a young marketer was with a company in Towson, Maryland for market research, which is kind of a big superpower of Towson, Maryland.

Wes 

Huh. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Bennie 

So, you know, it’s interesting in your background, we talk about, you know, marketing and kind of marketing being the launching point. And I’d like to start early in your career, not so much today as your CEO of this venture, which you’re going to talk about in a second. But I’m really curious, you started in brand management. Talk a bit about how you started in brand and how that’s brought you here.

Wes 

Yeah, yeah. So when I first, I was an English major. So what did I know about anything? And I got out and I started working for this guy that had a computer consulting company and as an editor, because, English, you can help me write these publications. And he started doing surveys, right? This was many years ago.

Bennie 

Okay.

Wes 

And he would do surveys about people’s word processing programs or their accounting programs or their small business computers. And so I knew nothing about even statistics, but I started tallying it up and writing the results for his publications. And I said, this is kind of an interesting thing. And that’s when I eventually decided, let me learn about it and go to school. But I was in brand management especially McCormick, you know, best being in Baltimore, McCormick and spices. And I was manager of the gourmet brand. That’s the glass bottle, you know, all the hundreds of spices in the, in the, in the pretty glass bottles and various other brands that McCormick had.

Bennie 

Those are the fancy spices that make me feel like I’m doing something. Right, right.

Wes 

Exactly, exactly. Where you don’t pay attention to the price, you just buy them, at least that’s the idea. And that was a cool experience. McCormick is a great company, it’s been around a long time. And learn a lot about marketing and marketing without spending a lot of money but proving to the grocery chains why you’re worth being on their shelf, showing why you’ll outsell the competition, all the little things, and then trying to do a lot. But one of the key things I did, the big brands, all the spices and all the tins and all the plastic bottles, they spent a lot and they called planograms and getting set up. I was on a smaller budget. So I did the poor man’s study and I found.

Bennie 

Okay.

Wes 

Let’s put little A, B, C, because they’re an alphabetic order, but people are not, and they couldn’t find what they wanted. I put little clips to the sales guy, and they put little letters on the grocery shelf. And then, gee, garlic, so people could find it. So for pennies, I did my part of it to boost sales. So there’s fun marketing stuff and a lot of fun things you can do.

Bennie 

Hahaha!

So I love that your insight is that we’re hard coded to be in the library. Or the bookstore. Like, okay, let’s figure out what order they’re in. You know, so when you’re at McCormick, and McCormick is known for its kind of innovation around spices. What was your favorite to work on? I’m curious, with having a whole category, like what was…

Wes 

You

What’s up people from Insta?

You know the favorite wasn’t exactly the spice. It was the recipe for example. We had test kitchens and they were always working on new recipes or or mixes to make things etc Etc and it’d be like hey, there’s I remember a colleague mine there Yeah, you’ve got this this Steak recipe is pretty good. Let’s try a little slight twist tomorrow, too. So yeah, you’re constantly Professionals cooking your steak and you’re like, you know, let’s try this again tomorrow. It’s not quite right

Bennie 

Okay.

Wes 

So all the different things you do with it, right? Because you’re not just eating spices straight. So it’s all the recipes and the recipe development and what people are interested in and that kind of thing. So.

Bennie 

As a metaphor, I like jumping into talking about getting it right and working on to get it right. You know, talk a bit about what did you take from those years being in brand management, working hard to get it right that helped you in your path as an entrepreneur?

Wes 

Yeah.

You know, it’s not being afraid, right, to try things because they’ll be wrong and then you fix it. One of the first things I did at Rare Patient Voice, I said, hey, wait a minute, I’m going to go out to people and tell them they can refer their other people they know with the disease. And I sent a mass email out to the people that we had at the time. And within a few hours, I got one back saying, hey, I love this, but.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm. Right. Right. Mm -hmm.

Wes 

Yeah, that’s not really right. I I know my sister might want to join but I shouldn’t be telling you that she needs to tell you that I’m like He’s exactly right. So I was able to send an email out that very day and say basically I screwed up. Here’s how it needs to work. You tell them and if they’re interested they tell us and so so again and then to this day From that little seed referrals are huge for us in terms of quality and quantity but if the

Bennie 

Right. Right. Okay.

Wes 

Jumping ahead there, but so it’s don’t be afraid to try stuff to get it. Cause you’re not, don’t assume you got it right. You know how everybody is like, we really looked at this and we know we have it. It’s like, yeah, you’ve missed something. The odds are you assume you don’t have it right. Try it. And if you can, something we do all the time, we call a soft launch, try it small. Cause then your problem is small and you fix it. You know, you don’t have to fix a big problem. You fix a tiny problem.

Bennie 

Right.

Wes 

So yeah, it’s all about try stuff, experiment, fix it, and then go big.

Bennie 

So in that thinking of experiment and trying things, what prompted you to leave the spice world as you were spice king in that moment, Dev? What prompted you as a brand manager at McCormick to then move into a more entrepreneurial space? And I know you had some other stops in between McCormick and starting, but what really led your journey after that?

Wes 

Yeah. Exactly.

Well, it’s funny because I had been in market research and then I’d been in brand management. And I remember looking for other opportunities and just assuming I would need to be like stay as a brand manager. But this recruiter, remember the old days, there were recruiters, you know, it wasn’t all black hole. And she said, you know, you really light up when you talk about market research. I love that. But, you know, that was in my past. He says, well, you know, there’s a lot of opportunities there. I didn’t even know. And so she and it was an opportunity in a completely different.

Bennie 

Yes, yes. Right, right.

Wes 

Area health care. What did I know about health care and disease? I knew about spices and foods and cereals and stuff and And but I thought but that’s interesting And and it was this was in the late 90s where the laws had just changed Remember all the ads you see on tv, right? Ask your doctor about x That was illegal to advertise drugs, that way before that so that opened up

Bennie 

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Right. Wow.

Wes 

A whole new area where all these smart people at all the pharmaceutical life sciences company, they knew everything about marketing to a physician one -on -one with a sales rep. They never heard of TV. We would go in, I always predict, somebody’s going to ask what a GRP is. They didn’t know anything about TV advertising. And so it was very exciting to go in. It was like introducing a certain science to an area that had never been applied to before, the healthcare area.

Bennie 

Right. Right, right.

Wes 

And so that’s what got me into that. And then all I can say is something, in effect, lucky happened to me. They gave me the idea to be a entrepreneur. And it was…

Bennie 

Okay, what?

Talk about it a bit, because we all have these moments, these kind of aha moments. I love that a recruiter saw, she saw your passion that you didn’t even see in yourself, right?

Wes

Huh. 

Yeah, yeah. So a client came to us when I first year I was in this health care area working on all this patient consumer stuff and said, we’re in the hemophilia spaces. Hemophilia is very rare, but it’s very, very valuable to us. We would like you guys to create a panel. We want to do surveys. We want to do interviews. We want to find out what we can do, products and services to really build our business with these folks. And so we said, like a lot of companies, we bid on it and won it. And so then we said, now we have to figure out how to do it. And we went to the National Hemophilia Foundation Conference and set up our table and had our giveaways and explained it to be, and it worked. And we had this wonderful panel and the client would come to us and say, let’s do these surveys, let’s do these interviews. And that was all fine. And every year we’d get more people, but two or three years later, here’s where the aha came. A client from a different company came up to me at one of those conferences. And she said,

Bennie 

Okay?

Wes 

I hear you have this hemophilia panel. Can we access it? And of course, the answer is no, because if company A is paying for it, company B can’t have it. But that gave me the idea. I was like, wait a minute. Why not create a panel that’s not owned by a single end client, but that we can use across all different companies. So I had that idea. I remember coming home and saying that idea. And from time to time, I tell my wife. I don’t know if she knew what I was talking about. And.

Bennie 

Mmm. Entity. Right.

Wes 

I kept that as an idea for many years. And then for me personally and professionally, so that might have been around the year 2000. It wasn’t until 2013 that I actually pushed the button and said, let’s do this. Let’s be an entrepreneur. Let’s take the risk, take the chance, and let’s create something like that.

Bennie 

Talk to me for a minute if you remember, what was the feeling like when you start Rare Patient Voice and you get that first client, that first group?

Wes 

Yes. So it’s funny. So guess what I started with? Hemophilia, right? So I knew it would work and I’d worked in that category and I knew there was a lot of activity, a lot of demand in that area. And so my very first thing was that I took, so my wife had been out of the workforce raising our kids and she was looking for a job. And then I was working for a company and it was like, okay, they were running short on cash. So, hey,

Bennie 

Which one? Well, of course now.

Wes 

She got a job and had healthcare rates all about the healthcare there was and and our kids were like 11 12 and I said look I’m gonna be home starting this thing so I’ll be around figuring it out so I got the name and I got the materials and I was ready and I was set to go to the hemophilia conference and the week before the hemophilia conference I got a call from client because I hadn’t I hadn’t put the word out that much because you don’t want everybody calling you say but I don’t have anything yet you know you don’t want to over promote when you don’t have anything but

Bennie

Right.

Wes 

I got a call saying, hey, we’ve been trying to recruit hemophilia patients for a month with no success. Do you have any? And I said, no, but by the end of the weekend, I will. So that was our first client. I went, I recruited, I think, 136 people there, and they used a bunch of people in their study. And that was our first client and the first paying, you know, first invoice and the first payment that we ever got. And so since then, now we’ve done 9 ,000 some projects and…

Bennie 

Right?

Wes 

And we actually, we have done a lot with hemophilia, but 1,500 other diseases. So who knew?

Bennie 

Right. Right. You know, I love on your site, you’re you’re the rare disease, but also the non rare as well. Right. Right. It’s kind of that branding moment in which you kind of outline the lane and you realize the lane is too small for what you really can do, which is the service for any.

Wes 

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s funny, I just assumed that, I knew there was this man in rear, but I knew there’s very large panels out there. So if you wanted somebody with diabetes or asthma or something, they already existed. So I just assumed that that was covered. But then two things happened. Again, it’s all about listening and hearing and changing course.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm.

Wes 

Patients would say, yeah, I have hemophilia, but I also have anxiety or asthma or, and should I put that in? And I’m like, hmm. And then, or my friend here, can he sign up? He has high blood pressure. And, and I’m thinking about it because we’re paying everybody with a gift card to join at the time. And, and then guess what happened? A client came and said, by the way, do you have asthma patients? Do you have anxiety? I said, okay, I’m not saying no to anybody, right? I don’t want to change the name because the focus is rare. And we, you know, we started being known by that name.

Bennie

Hmm. Right, right.

Wes 

But I want to promote the idea that we do, we have everything. And so we actually did a little research ourselves just asking people, because it sounds simple, also non -rare. But I remember we said, like, non -rare, too. And if you do non -rare, too, with an exclamation point, if you glance at it, it looks like non -rare tool, and it just confuses people. So we found different ways of saying it. And that one communicated instantly. Hey, you, yeah, rare and non -rare, you got everything. So.

Bennie 

Ray. You got everything there.

Wes 

And so all of a sudden we branched out. I just assumed there wouldn’t be a business. We do a lot of work in non -rare conditions. And I like to say everybody’s rare in their own way. They want to be considered unique. And our focus is on the hard to reach, because even if they’re non -rare, people might want people on a specific medication, a sliver of a sliver of a sliver that becomes a rare patient.

Bennie 

So what surprised you the most? So you’ve been running the organization for 10 years. And we talked about kind of the lack of panels and opportunity when you first started. Give it a aha moment. 10 years in, what do you think about the business space now?

Wes 

Yeah, you never know what to expect. It’s interesting, just the fact that we’ve been able to go out and find patients and meet clients of man has changed how the industry works. It used to be they said, well, maybe we can get some and maybe we’ll talk to a few. Well, then when we proved you could get people that wanted to take part,

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Wes 

What was like one of those, if you build it, they will come things. Well, Hey, wait a minute. Now that we know we can get them, let’s do this qualitative and let’s do this quant. Let’s do this survey. Let’s do communities. Let’s go into people’s homes and see how they’ll all of a sudden it opened up. People wanted to do more and more different types of research. They didn’t have to say, well, we can’t do anything or we’ll just, we’ll just worse. We’ll just decide ourselves what, how to market it. You know, they’re talking to their MBA friends at headquarters. What do they know about the person, the people you got to talk to the users, right? You got to, you got to.

Bennie

Right. Right.

Wes 

You gotta go out there.

Bennie 

Right, I mean your work really centers on something that’s true to brand and core marketing, which is voice of the customer and finding a way to kind of extract. But in your case, it’s less about extraction and more about amplifying the voice. Talk about some of the ways that you’ve been able to break through with customer voice, some of the insights that your clients and you have seen in talking to real customers.

Wes 

Yeah, I mean, because it used to be the focus was on the healthcare professionals, the doctors, the prescribers. It still is. They’re obviously very important in your marketing. They’re a key component of any strategy you have. But what’s really changed is, wait a minute, who’s actually using our product?

It’s the patient or the caregiver, the mom or the dad of the kid with the disease, whatever it might be. It’s changed the focus. Every life sciences company now has a wonderful phrase. They say they’re patient centric. It’s patient centricity. And I’m sure some, you know, walk the walk more than others, but they all know that it’s important and they need to be doing it. And that’s the learning. Patience. You know, back to spices. People love spices and love to cook.

That’s not the same though as my kid has a disease and I got to do everything I can and I’m going to typically one of the parents will maybe drop out of the workforce because they become a 24 seven caregiver and they may have to move to be closer to a treatment center. It turns their lives upside. They didn’t. They hated science in school. Now they’re an expert in that disease and they’re teaching their doctors because a regular family doctor doesn’t know about these rare diseases. So their lives have been turned upside down and they are.

Bennie 

Right. Right, right.

Right, right.

Wes 

So eager to have the voice heard. Hey, if anybody can hear my issues, my complaints, my wishes, and even if it doesn’t help me or my kid, it might help those coming after. It’s amazing. It’s amazing what, how eager people are to help. And we like to be generous and we pay folks 120 bucks an hour for their time, which is for market research is pretty good. But if you talk to the folks, they always say, they don’t, man, that’s an afterthought. They go, so happy to share my opinion.

Bennie 

Right.

Wes 

If this can help anybody and they go and the money helps we’ll get notes around Christmas and things like that You made my holiday a couple hundred dollars here and there, you know It’s it’s because somebody think about it. You’re if you have if you’re disabled or your family has been put in bad circumstances You know, you may be on disability. You it’s really hampered. You we’ve done surveys with our folks There’s a million ways people are upset right emotionally and spiritually so but financially is certainly one way to and that’s

Bennie

Right. Right.

Wes

Just one component, but it’s nice to be able to help that one component a little bit. I would say we’re part of the solution there. We’re not solving it, but we’re helping.

Bennie 

It’s really powerful when you think about it. Rare and many times equals alone. Right? Like the premise we come into this rare means there’s no one like you. But what you’re able to do with both the offering and the engagement is to create a sense of community.

Wes 

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s so good to know that other people are in the same boat that what and you know, most of the clients you can think about if they’re doing research It’s because they have a new treatment generally coming to market and they want to describe it They want to see if people understand it will they ask their doctor about it? What do they like? What don’t they like? I like to tell the patients. It’s like a sneak preview of drugs treatment medications that are coming down the pike.

Bennie 

Right.

Wes

And who doesn’t want to get a taste of that and see that? Because so many people say, I saw that and then later I saw that drugs on the market. Then they’re primed to investigate it further.

Bennie 

Well, it’s interesting as we talk about it, health and wellness and disease and need, no, no borders, right? There is no real borders in that space. Talk a bit about how you’ve evolved as a global concern. You started here in the US, but then you’ve expanded in terms of your panels and your engagement. So talk a bit about the role of kind of a global embrace.

Wes 

Global thing. Yeah. So yeah, right. We started in the US and that was easy. Well, easier, right? Because you’re dealing with one language. Even though we have all these states with different laws in general, we’re dealing with one set of laws, et cetera, et cetera. But clients kept saying, we love you. We love your patients. I need patients in Europe. I’m not struggling. I’m finding I’m not getting anything. And I kept saying, let us someday, someday, but we want to continue in the US. Well, eventually we got to the point we said, okay.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm.

Wes 

Now it’s time several years back, three or four years ago. And we can’t go everywhere. We say, OK, where are clients demanding that we go? And the first thing was what they call the big five in Europe, right? UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Sweden. And so what that requires is language capabilities, websites in the right languages, forms in the right language. So there was a bunch of work we had to do and then to recruit folks, to get the word out, to work.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Wes 

Work with the advocacy groups and to work with the events and things that we use to meet with folks. So that was our leap. We’re still much bigger in the US, but now we have, if we have 100,000 or so patients and caregivers in the US, we have like 40,000 in the big five in Europe, and we have enough to do things there. So that last couple of weeks, my colleague Pam and I were in two different conferences in the UK to spread the word to the European community that were there, that we have patients that please contact us, not just for US work, but for European work. In the meantime, we also opened it to patients in Australia and New Zealand. That’s mostly because it’s pretty much English, right? It’s like Canada. Yeah, and it’s not that we get a lot of demand and it’s not a huge population, but it wasn’t difficult. We didn’t have to create a whole new thing. We said, hey, they’ll kind of understand our American English. We don’t have to reinvent the world for them. But…

Bennie 

Right.

Wes 

The other ones, you know, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, all new language, languages and folks to help us.

Bennie 

Right. So what’s next for rare patient voice? So you’ve been able to expand, you know, you increase the kind of methods that you have that you’re able to use, make available. You’ve got a really robust community that you’ve tied in. What’s the next hurdle for you?

Wes 

I think the biggest area is in a whole marketing terms, a whole new product. But it’s interesting. It’s something that we’re really doing now. It’s just doing it for a different market, different audience. So right now, most of our efforts are recruiting for market research, interviews and surveys. But there’s a huge market for recruiting for clinical trials, the actual studies where people…

Bennie 

Mm -hmm. Okay, right.

Wes 

Some of them go on a test drug and some of them go on placebo. And that is crucial because companies that are coming out with new products, it’s not going to be approved until they’ve run their clinical trial. And the clinical trial can’t be done until they get the right people in. For us, it’s the same process we have. We have people that say they were interested in research. They tell us exactly what disease they have, et cetera, et cetera.

So we send them an email. It’s a whole different world on the other end, you know, doing a clinical trial versus doing a survey. But for us, it’s sending an email and finding out who’s interested and then working with the companies that are recruiting people for clinical trials. So my joke is in a few years, we’ll say, remember when market research was the biggest part of the company, because clinical trials could dwarf that, you know, as we move into that. So we’re excited to do that. We’ve been going to conferences that are more focused on clinical trials, we’ve been working with clients that do that. We’re focusing that effort. So that’s a fun, you’re always looking for different areas to go, like geography and this, and this is a new product area, but pretty much doing what we already do, just for a different audience.

Bennie

So, you know, thinking about your background and you’re now a CEO of concern, how did your marketing training, how does it show up for you each day in your role as CEO?

Wes 

Yeah, I mean, it’s good that it’s kind of baked into your blood, right? Because you have it. And I don’t always think, but it’s like, because what we’ve done, so much of our marketing has been a couple of different places. It’s been conferences, going out to the target market, health care market researchers, general market researchers, now clinical trial folks, rare disease conferences, and then LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been tremendous. It’s like you’ve…

Bennie 

Right. Mm -hmm.

Wes 

I, you know, I think of, you’re watching sports and you see a tire ad and you don’t need a tire. You don’t need to talk about eventually any tires. I think, I think Michelin was safe. Remember I kept hearing that. So for us, it’s like, people don’t see everything we post, but if you post a lot and have a good time, people generally see things here and there. We’ll go to conferences. I see you there. I saw you stop posts. Like people kind of know about it. So they’re like, wait a minute. Who’s that guy that had the rare patient company?

Bennie 

Right. Mm -hmm.

Wes

And so they’ll find us for that. So it’s about, you know, marketing terms, reach and frequency, right? So you want to get out to the right market. You want to hit them enough. If you think it’s too often, too much, it’s not because they’re not seeing everything. They’re not paying attention to everything you’re doing. And then we keep finding the simplest message is the one we got to get across. We need to remind them that we’re not just rare.

We need to remind them that we’re not just in the US. If they’ve done quah research, we need to remind them we do quah, also do quah and vice versa. So it’s the simpler messages that we need to get off and we need to say over and over again. So very, very simple stuff there. And now we have a wonderful director of marketing who enforces that we keep our messages and, you know, uniform and integrate stuff and word things correctly and have the right.

Logos and things all used the right way. So all the all the good stuff that you’re supposed to we have somebody that makes us do that now, which is terrific

Bennie 

So I’m gonna take a little bit of a pivot, because we’ve talked about kind of success on top of success and trying these things and working. I’d love to hear, has there been a time in which a disease audience actually stumped you all? Where it was hard to find a panel of willing participants? Have you had one that has been really kind of a challenge beyond the challenge for you?

Wes 

You know, there’s often very much challenges and we often have it where somebody wants say 20 of a certain patients and we’ll say, we’ll get you based on what you’re saying, we might get you five or so. So we often have to tell clients we can’t get all that. We use it as an opportunity to try to find more. What better way to recruit folks like, hey, if you qualify as $120 in it, et cetera, et cetera, but.

Bennie 

Right.

Wes 

That is it is very often a cancer is a quite an it’s a huge area Fortunately because there’s been so much improvement so many new treatments across cancer when I first started I wanted to avoid that I said I mean to put it in a business perspective I didn’t want to spend all this time and effort recruiting folks and have the pass away on me. You know, that’s not a good business model. Let alone it’s not nice for them. You know, yeah, it’s horrible. So I was avoiding that but

Bennie 

Right, right, right.

Wes 

But things happen. I was introduced to a gentleman, David Wasilewski. At the time, he had this wonderful website called What Next? It was like a social media site of the American Cancer Society. So they have wonderful information about patients, and they would share information on that site. And I would get these cancer requests. And I thought, I can’t do this. I said, wait a minute. This guy, David, could do it. He has all these people. And I called him up, and he says, yeah, but I don’t know anything about research. Guess what? We’re like, let’s work together.

Bennie 

Okay, right. Yes.

Wes 

So we worked together for years. We still do a little bit. He’s long since left that site, et cetera, but that gave us something to sell in those days because everybody wanted cancer and he had the patients. We split, we split the proceeds and it was a win for Robert. He didn’t know how to monetize his panel and we didn’t have a lot to sell. So it was a wonderful thing to do it. So there was a victory when we really didn’t have anything, but we happened to find somebody else who had it, but didn’t know what to do with it.

So, but to this day, as you can imagine, cancer and some of them are very rare cancers and such and very deadly cancers. So it can be difficult to find folks. But it is amazing. I used to think when somebody came to me and said, we’re looking for stage four cancer patients, we know stage four is your bed shape. It’s spread, right? It’s spread throughout your body. I used to say.

Okay, but they probably have something better to do with their time than do a survey interview. Once again, I was wrong. I mean, at least the ones we talked to, they’re like, no, I’m so happy if I can help anybody. I’d love to give my opinion. So, so I always have a don’t be shy. People, they don’t want you to ignore them. They want to tell their story. And again, I love being proved wrong because that’s where all the good stuff happens.

Bennie

Right.

It really is so I’m gonna we’re gonna do a little acceleration and time travel learning for everybody listening So if you had advice or counsel to give to yourself ten years ago when you started based on what you’ve seen and know today What would you what would you say?

Wes 

I would say don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to try stuff. I mean, I did this anyway, but I probably would do it faster and quicker, right? Try stuff, see what works, move on, network, network, network. You never know who needs your help and who can help you. The stuff we did, I would do, but I would, yeah, I would do it.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm.

Wes 

I would have started earlier. When I started this, I said, why didn’t I do this 10 years before? But I said, don’t be afraid to take that step and try things. What’s the worst that can happen?

Bennie 

Right.

So true. So if you were then to accelerate in the future, what do you think you’d want to tell yourself in the future? What do you think the future of this market research is going to be?

Wes 

Yeah, it’s like, again, as I say, what other products are there? We’re looking at clinic trials. What other countries are there? It’s all about still inviting more and more patients to join or whatever other things we have. Just keep looking. You don’t want to say yes to everything, but look at everything with an open mind and then pick and choose. So that’s one of the…

Bennie 

I think, you know, I think that’s, I hate to say it. I think that’s a powerful way for us to end our conversation. I, you know, I was looking for another question for you, but I was like, you know, be open and pick and choose to be bold. It, that really covers my friend West that, you know, if you have other things you want to share for our audience, absolutely. But I think you kind of nailed it there, my friend.

Wes 

Hahaha. I kind of covered it.

All right, excellent.

Well, I’ll say as a plug, please, if anybody, A, has selves or friends or family that have a condition that would love to share about it, they can sign up rarepatientvoice.com. So we’re always interested in people that want to share their opinions, and so many people do.

Bennie 

Well, we’re really delighted that you joined us today and shared this. And it’s really powerful to see how you’ve taken your brand experience and your market research and turned it really on its head into something really dynamic that helps, as you said, it’s good for the patient, it’s good for our community, and it’s good for the world.

Wes 

It is. I like to say that nobody loses here. The patients love it. The clients love it because they’re getting people faster. We get paid. Even our competitors are our clients. Other research firms that recruit, they come to us. So it’s a win for everybody involved. And it’s great to be in that position because we’re competitive and like to do things, but it’s nice where nobody’s a loser.

Bennie 

It’s great. And we get to elevate voices and stories, which we know are really powerful to our role as marketing and to our human experience.

Wes

Exactly. There’s nothing more powerful than hearing somebody talk about what it is rather than just look at 49 % on a graph someplace, you know.

Bennie 

Well, I appreciate you and spending the time with us and helping to bring these stories, these panels, these conversations to life. Thank you, Wes, for being here. And as Wes mentioned, you can find out more through their website and their programming at their website. And you could also find out more at AMA .org. So rare patient voice and AMA .org. Learn more about

market research and as Wes said, be bold, don’t be afraid and be open to listening to the world around you. So thank you all for joining. Wes, thank you so much. And thank you all for joining us for this episode of AMAs Marketing And. I’m your host, Bennie Johnson. We look forward to our next conversation.

Wes 

That’s right. That’s terrific. Thanks, Bennie.

Bye.