Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Hello again, Stewart Gandolf here for another podcast. I’m excited to have yet another really smart informed guest with me today who happens to be a client and a friend.

We don’t do enough clients on this podcast, so I was talking to Ben, I don’t know what was it, Ben, a month ago, and we were saying like, why don’t you come on the podcast?

And he’s like, yeah, why not? So welcome, Ben.

Good to see you, Ben.

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Yeah, it’s a pleasure. see you as well. You know, it’s too late to say happy new year, but we’ll still wish you one nonetheless.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

I have you two. And so, Ben, besides being a friend and a client is Associate Vice President for Sales for CureMD’s Oncology Division, Oncentric. And so super excited to talk to Ben. As I mentioned a moment ago, he’s very knowledgeable, had great instincts as a client.

We’ll talk about this a little bit later about new exactly what he wanted. Just the kind of thing that gives us makes it fun for us as an agency.

It’s very cool work with some like Ben. of course, on top of all these accolades, Ben is wearing the secret tech black look, bro, shared along with me today as it turns out. Welcome back again.

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

It’s a real pleasure and thank you for the accolades. Much humbled and appreciated. I did actually have three layers of black, so I took them memo well.

And I’m just excited to have the conversation. Because I think when a company decides to embark on this quest and think, you know, how do I either reimagine myself or create an image for myself for a new company? It’s just really important that they think a lot about how they want that to take place and the partner with whom they want to do it.

And the experience that we had with you and your team really, you know, taught me a lot, even though I’ve done this a couple of times before in my career.

But at the end of the day, the education that I came away with was the right agency working with you in an accountable manner is essential to a successful process.

And actually, as you can see behind me, if I remember to lean the right way, this is one of the backgrounds that Brett created for us.

And I’m just, you know, thrilled to have the opportunity to talk about our experience and encourage others to undertake, you know, a similar endeavor.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Awesome. Great. Okay, so I was just checking my microphone there, but it sounds like I’m still working.

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Yep, you sound great.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

All right, so great. So, you know, For our listeners, we got to know Ben and his team back in early 2023, and it seems like, wow, it can’t be that long ago, but it was.

So they told us they were considering a brand, actually, know, it’s funny, when your teammate reached out to us, Ben, I go, oh, CureMD, I know CureMD, how fun this is, don’t know what this is about.

you know, CureMD is one of the practice management platform slash EHR, EMR spaces, insanely credit, or I’m sorry, competitive, for those of you who don’t know it.

But CureMD is a large brand in that category, and so very, very look-alike audiences, competitors all look and sound the same.

And so, to credit to Ben and his team, they were looking for a partner, and they knew they wanted to create a brand, Ben, can you tell our listeners a little bit more about that, and, you know, of what you’re hoping to do?

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Well, it’s interesting, and when we thought about this engagement, and honestly dedicating the budget and resources to it, we understood that, as CureMD, like you said, broadly recognized, but the whole EMR practice management space is somewhat generic right now.

There are a lot of players, we offer a lot of the same content and services. We think that we do it well and we have a full stack of services and offerings that differentiate us in many ways, but as with any company, you kind of fall into the white noise of the space.

Even more importantly, we service 35 specialties, only one of which is the one I focus on, which is oncology.

And we did a brand audit in cooperation with one of our partners that found that out of oncologists in the community setting, which is our target market, only 6% of community based on this new CureMD had an oncology specific offering.

So it was a wakeup call for us, we really felt like we had some measure of awareness in the market.

And when we had that metric, we used it as a platform to not only convince management to provide the funding for a rebrand, but to allow us to be engaged in it, not just as, you know, people having to do other jobs, but as an organization all contributing to how we can lift this project forward and make it a successful one.

It was just necessary. Nobody knew we were out there and our primary competitors were winning business. And when we’d follow up with someone afterwards, they would say, I would have called you, but I didn’t even know you were there.

So, when you think about brand investment and you’re in a situation like we were in, there’s an opportunity cost there.

So you can say, yeah, the project cost is X, but the opportunity cost of being left out of so many of these opportunities, not even considered that an RFP or called is so

much larger than that initial investment in the brand, any resulting success that can come from that.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That is, there’s so much to unpack there.

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Yeah, I talk a lot.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

No, but what’s great is first of all, number one, and I think most of the people that, or at least many of the people listening today that are struggling with branding and what to do about it, there’s some big lessons right there.

Lesson number one is data. You use data to come back with something that’s objective that was to gave you a sense of where you guys did in the marketplace.

So if only 6% of people know you, that’s a problem. That’s not just saying, you know, you coming to other levels of management saying nobody knows us.

When you have data, it catches attention, right? Otherwise, it sounds like a whiny salesperson. So that’s the thing. Number two, you guys were able to demonstrate that you were losing business because of that.

people don’t even know you. that, by the way, you said that, thought, oh, man, I can relate. know, like you guys have specialized what you do.

We are what we do. And it’s like, it’s amazing to me that, you know, people that are in healthcare, when they’re looking for an agency, they just hire like the guy next door.

It’s just crazy to me. Like, wait, you could have had incredibly specialized expertise for the same amount, but they just, they never even heard of them to look around.

So I feel you’re pain there for sure, because we see that. But I guess the importance of branding for us, for you guys, for everything, you have to keep beating that drum forever.

And the challenge, though, is that we’ll all come into challenges a little bit here. Let’s talk about the competitive situation just a little bit more, like, know, it is, you know, sea of sameness, and trying to differentiate yourself, give me a sense of what that’s like as a sales, you know, VP or AVP and, you know, your team working with you. Like, what’s that landscape like?

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Well, It’s so difficult to articulate the, I’m going to use a fun word, the cacophony, that a lot of these decision makers experience on a daily basis, in my specialty, oncology, it’s particularly acute because they’re being besieged on all sides by different vendors, different people who want to sell to them, service them than their own providers who are demanding more and more of them to help their businesses run.

And then just the stresses of day to day of running a medical business, whether it’s a solo to talk practice or a hunter provider practice.

So in able, in order to kind of like insert your messaging into that crazy milieu of information, we didn’t have a chance because we didn’t have anything to truly differentiate us.

We weren’t able to articulate like-to-like value because when you’re starting, you know, from so far by behind in terms of mind share and awareness, you can’t pay enough pay for pay per click to get somebody to follow on to an action item if they don’t know who you are or you don’t have credibility as to what you can deliver.

So that’s why we really undertook the branding activity is that we knew we needed to reinvent ourselves in order to use this as a splash moment and come out and have that momentum kind of build towards that broader awareness where we wouldn’t miss out on those opportunities and people would loop us in and we’ve since seen success with that but it was that in original understanding that we were just so far behind the curve relative to what the other players in the market we were trying to compete against were doing and the you know that share of the awareness of who was doing what in the market we knew we had to start from scratch and engaging with a branding agency like yours that’s specialized in healthcare and took the time to understand our business and the world in which we live, even as part of the early elements of the engagement really impressed us and knew we had picked the right partner.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s awesome. So, you know, it’s funny. I just want to respond back to something you said a moment ago too.

I recently did a podcast with an oncologist, just a fascinating guy. I don’t know if you know him. His name is Doug Flora, but he’s with a health system.

And he talked about a lot of things. one of the things he talked about was very consistently, you just mentioned, sometimes you guys are working with administrators, as well as doctors, depending on the situation.

But he’s like, you know, I understand that people get frustrated with his doctors, you know, being kind of ADD and all over the place.

But, you know, one minute I’m talking to somebody that, you know, just five minutes ago, I just told them they were going to die.

And then five minutes later, I’m looking at their MRI, worried about our patient, then I’ve got all the office stuff.

It’s just really hard for us to focus. Okay, so we always have, you know, I’m paraphrasing, and it’s exactly in these words, but you get the idea, and so if you multiply that times, lots of oncologists, and of course in smaller groups, you know, the doctors are still running a show in the sort of ten doctor groups, there’s kind of democracy, which is even harder.

And then you get to larger corporate groups, these are all different kinds of things, so the messaging has to work for all those different kinds of audiences too, which is something separate because, you know, some case, administrators are in charge.

In other case, the doctors are. Well, I want to, so I want to pivot, because everybody wants to know about challenges, and you it wasn’t all easy for you guys, even as, you know, bright, smart, forward thinking as you guys are, it wasn’t always easy.

So tell us about some of the challenges that, you know, I think our audience will relate to this that you may have gone through.

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Well, you know, I think when you’re considering a project like this, you know, before you even engage an external partner, you should try to find, you know,

know, an internal consensus on, you know, what, what the success metrics are for the projects, you know, you have to establish some enlist initial baseline KP KPI.

So you can say once the brand is launched and we’re measuring, you know, greater engagement, regardless of how you do that via the website or leads or whatnot, that you can have a clear before and after picture.

Because otherwise, you can say that felt successful, but how really was it? And I think it’s important to kind of understand where you come from to where you want to go.

That’s important both internally and with how you engage the partner because I think one of the things that we worked with your team on, and I think worked really well with Paul on, was holding us accountable to what we felt like was a project, like the objectives of the project overall, and helping your team understand where we felt like we needed to go.

Key events along the way. Like one of the things we really focused on was getting, getting towards our launch at the Community Oncology Alliance meeting, because that was our big coming out party was supposed to be the Super Bowl for the brand.

But you know, he asked us, you know, right then and there, what does that mean? What does that look like?

How does that translate into engagement, post that event? and then come to kind of an agreement together as to how we’re going to execute it.

So I think it’s important that that internal process be part of how a company thinks about a project like this and carries that attention to it, because it’s not something you just conceptualize and launch with the partner.

You have to stay engaged. You have to have a call and response with like we did with your folks on messaging on I mean everything from colors to shapes and ultimately what we wanted our website to look like You can’t just ask your team to do that on their own They have to have full engagement from us and there’s times where Competing priorities happen and you don’t always get back to each other With deadlines and whatnot And I think that slowed our project down because we weren’t necessarily as always accountable to deadlines as we could have been But I think at the end of the day Had we known that at the time we would have directed the attention Because what we ended up doing was delaying a really beautiful launch by about 60 days Because we weren’t as attentive to the deadlines that we committed to as we could have been But that’s a lesson learned and one that I encourage others to carry into their own projects.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s great. It definitely is and I would just I want to add to the challenges part because there’s a lot when it comes to This topic and I think that’s why I thank you for running

Yeah, because that is really important and it’s it’s I get it because we’re all busy and it’s like the From the agency standpoint we want as much time as we can to work on this and to dot you know to think and ruminate and You know kind of play with ideas It all worked out great because you know that as we know the deadline for COA the Canadian Alliance show wasn’t gonna move for us So we this means we have to work faster harder toward the end of the accelerate at that end of it and it all turned out awesome Which we’ll come back to in a moment, but I think that’s a lesson I would just add a couple there because this is you know, we do, you know, Ben it’s really interesting because in the marketplace You know, we’re definitely Brandon is health care.

We’re definitely brand for expertise. I’m talking about as an agency The interesting thing is for many years. really lean into the digital side More and we’ve always been integrated, but now like that integrated model where we’re doing a lot more branding is

is more common too. And that’s, again, brand evolution for us. We did a rebrand a few years ago, but as we’ve grown, it’s very different than we were 20 years ago, right.

So it evolves over time, organizations naturally talk to them. I would say another couple of things that, and you can speak to any of this if you want, then, but things we see all the time as challenges when it comes to this topic on the client side.

One is not really and you’re going to talk about scoping a little while so we can drill into this in a minute, but not really knowing what we want.

That’s a thing. I think a lot of times it’s getting really clear on, you know, what exactly we need to do in terms of is it a rebrand? Is it a refresh? Is it just messaging? Like, those are all different things. And so I think one of the big challenges to me about this whole topic is it’s very, first of all, marketers over the years have been very loose with the terminology they use.

there’s not one thing of defined terminology. So you got to be really careful, you’re all agreeing on what it is exactly you’re talking about.

And so that’s a challenge. And then number two, just inherently, unless it’s a marketing driven organization, which is extraordinarily rare in all care, there’s a real skepticism toward the topic at all, like, I can hire a graphic designer for, you know, I get some new colors, or I don’t want to change my brand, it’s fine, the way it is, or whatever.

And I think that understanding of value is a real challenge at lots of levels at the executive level, at the team level.

I’m not going to any comments on that because I’ve seen that over and over again. Even people that come to us asking for a brand are skeptical about your own brand.

So just the way things are sometimes.

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Yeah, I understand it. And I think it’s, especially if an organization has a more complex marketing org, where they have, you know, the different segments and

silos of work and they’ll coordinate on a marketing calendar that they execute against. Unless you’re a fortune, know, 50 company, you don’t necessarily have a person on staff that’s focused on brand, that’s focused on, you know, brand evolution, like you said.

So when you’re thinking about a more modest company like us that has, you know, a smaller but still refined marketing team, you know, there’s a, I think there’s an inclination to think I can do that.

And you might, but it’s the idea is can you do it well. And if I do that, what’s again going back to the term, the opportunity cost of the people that I have on my team not working on the projects they would normally work on, because a brand execution, a brand strategy, an execution, it takes a lot of time and effort.

And that’s why you work with a with an agency, because you have both the expertise in your paying for the bandwidth of that expertise, because you know or should acknowledge

that while you might be able to try to do it internally, it’s just not going to turn out the same, and you’ll distract yourself from your core mission.

And ultimately, that opportunity costs will be far more than engaging with an agency.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s great. I would just add a couple of things for those of you that are struggling that want to get this done, because as I joke, and I got this from somebody else years ago, but marketing departments often feel like they’re kicked to the kids’ table.

don’t really, they just, they don’t have, they’re not sitting with the CFO and the COO, and that can be challenging.

But if you’re feeling like you need this, Ben just provide some great insight there. think one of the biggest things was the opportunity cost of not doing it, I think is really important.

And another thing is, like the internal skills, and yeah, everybody can be creative, but if this is important to you, I mean, this is really truly a team sport with, specialized skill, like I can’t do what our art directors do.

Like the team you put together for better. And your team was truly, and you got active touch. I don’t know how many people in our team, the artists, the writers, the account managers, me on the strategy level.

And it really was a team effort. everybody in our team had, and you guys had a touch of that ultimate end product.

And I think that’s really important. These are all different skillsets. it all comes magical when you have the right sort of team, which goes to my next question.

I wanna say this. Dude, this is a scary thing, right? It’s gotta be really scary to hire an agency.

You’re gonna say, okay, now I’m gonna be gonna spend all this money, but I’m gonna put our company’s reputation on the line, Mr. CEO or whomever. And if it didn’t turn out well, it’s not gonna look good for me personally. So there’s lot of money in it, it’s a lot of time.

so that’s a scary thing. So any advice for that, because I get that when I tell you, I’ll just come back then.

We have an RFP that we’re, that a major health system that reached out to us. It was due for us.

We had to get our slide done, I think, in September 30th or something. they sent us the first email saying, okay, it’s going to be the end of the year.

And then it sent me another email saying, okay, it’s going to be February 28th. And I get it. But the thing is, for them, it’s even bigger.

They’re asking to pick an agency of record based on a 15-minute meeting with us plus Q&A. Like, that’s just like such a scary thing.

I would be nervous. But in a smaller way, let’s talk about the branding, you know, in terms of how do you mitigate that?

How do you feel like, you know, confident and sleep well as you go through this process?

What are some of the things you look for?

I think main question is, how do you obviously it’s going to be scary, but how do you look for the right agency?

How do you make that decision? What’s important?

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Well, you know, I think a lot of it for us was the way your team demonstrated that it wasn’t just a superficial engagement for them from this, from the start.

Because you have Fira Healthcare Agency, and you had some experience in working with oncology at the practice level. There’s an admirable project you did for Astera that really caught our eye, but it was the idea that you were going to work with an oncology company.

And it was clear from the start and working with Paul and in the early members of the team that the research had been done and not just at a cursory level, that there was a deep understanding of where our company was, where our competition was, how they were articulating their brand into the market and the gap that we had.

And the confidence, I think, to speak to their knowledge of that gap and the things that we needed to incorporate to a successful project plan.

That was apparent from the very beginning. And it wasn’t just that they took the time to understand that, but they also internalized it.

So it wasn’t just like, superficial knowledge by recitation. They really ingested it, digested it, came back to us with a product from the very beginning of, here’s where you are, here’s where we think you need to be, in order to be competitive and identifiable and differentiated.

And I think that meant the most to us and helped us select you as an agency from the very beginning, because it just demonstrated a commitment to the project that was above and beyond the scope of just here’s how much time, how many hours and how many dollars.

We could see from the beginning there was an investment by your team in a certain measure of pride and what that finished product could be before we even started the engagement.

And that was exciting to us. And ultimately that influenced me to firmly advocate to work with your team.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s awesome. By the way, we haven’t talked about this before, that’s really helpful to me as the CEO. I would say that it’s fun.

I mean, then you’ll appreciate this, I bet. As an agency owner, most agencies today, it is a tough business.

It’s just like complete, a lot of things out of your control. There’s always financial pressures. There’s always lots going on in a million different moving parts every day.

But the consultant side of us, the strategist in us, we just can’t overrule that. Because a lot of agencies, it’s about scale.

can we do this quickly and efficiently make as much profit as possible? I just can’t do that. I have to really understand what it is I’m working with.

I’ve been given the best advice. I just got off the phone this morning with a really cool business app and the behavioral health space.

But it’s a really complicated thing. went back through all the notes from my team. went back all the recordings like, guys, I still don’t understand this one up to help.

So we spent an hour really, really going into every detail. then when your agency drills down that deep, then they come back and obviously we’re starting with healthcare expertise, right?

When you drill down that deep, then we can pull back with fantastic ideas. just have to get in the weeds, you have to be able understand that.

So that feedback is awesome. I really appreciate that. I wasn’t even aware of that. And I know there’s always fits and starts, listeners will probably make this too.

his team came out, reached out, then I sort of didn’t quite disappear, but we didn’t do much for a while, then we were able to pop back out.

And so we’d get it, there’s always internal things you have to work through. But at some point, you have to commit.

And so committing, it requires the right statement of work. And I love that you suggested, this is a topic today.

This is so much fun for me, because these are all little things that we talk about internally, but I don’t think there’s chance to talk to clients about it very often until it’s all over.

So this is fun. So very wisely. I’ll talk about the agency point of view first, from our standpoint, getting the right scope of work is vital, because we all know what we’re talking about.

But I think it’s a much more interested and for your standpoint, because that’s a sophisticated thing to even talk about, right?

So help me get with some ideas about statement of work and why it’s so vital and how you guys got it right with our team or just in general.

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Well, you know, I think there are a couple of things to talk about here. And one is, what is the statement of work really accomplished for the project, right?

It gives us a framework for how we’re going to work together, our obligations to one another. There’s points of accountability and measures of what that means for each entity.

For us, for example, we knew that if we got to a certain waypoint and want to change is after that, it would represent scope creep and there would be, you know, a financial consideration.

So that in and of itself encouraged us to kind of stay within the guardrails and make sure the project was moving towards that date that we talked about, you know, because there’s always the temptation as you go through a project plan to kind of deviate or take a little roundabout detour.

And that can be productive, but unless it’s managed properly, you can end up out in woods and you’re not anywhere near your goal.

And all the sudden your timeline’s been eaten away by this diversion. So I think that in and of itself can be very helpful.

But for us, it was more important to participate in developing the scope of work and have that internal dialogue that forced us to have that conversation to say what does good look like and how do we get there?

And, you know, to a certain extent, what were we willing to spend to get to that destination. And then once we went to that destination, what was next?

Both for us and for our continued engagement with your organization. So in order to lay that path, know, it’s kind of like back in the day as people of our age, not to age you to mine, you know, if you wanted to go on a road trip, you went to AAA and you got a triptych, which was just like a big book of flippable maps.

And yeah, you could try to do it without it. But if you didn’t, you’d get lost and end up in Albuquerque, like they do in the Bugs Bunny cartoons.

We didn’t do that because we developed a really good project plan scope of work with your team and we adhere to it.

And if we deviated from it, we agreed on the nature of that deviation and the ultimate accountability for each party.

And I think at the end of the day, we had a great project that fell within budget that appropriately respected the time and material that you guys put into it.

And we are all very happy with the outcome.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s awesome. And as you keep talking about this, remember why you’re such a dream client for us. So that’s what we take our responsibilities seriously.

And you guys did too. And I think that’s really important for our partnership, right? It’s a partnership. not a one-way street.

And we want to give everything. I think too, like on your side, know, you guys are very thoughtful in your approach.

I’d like to say you mentioned Paul earlier and other members of our teams are also very thoughtful. And I think that really went for a good marriage in that case.

by the way, we’re really… Extremely, you know, we we’ve done all as I mentioned. I came up offline or online earlier the This one is just a project.

It just came together so perfectly like we first of all we love getting naming is hard hard hard But you don’t get the opportunity to name a very often right, you know, it’s like it’s the best at maybe Every other year we get to do the full rebrand including name, do branding a lot of times The name is already set so to do the name is hard and then we’d the positioning and the Brand messaging and the brand structure and how does that look with the brand architecture with CureMD and how does all that stuff work?

It’s just a lot there. So it’s just it was a meaty opportunity it was budgeted right we had enough budget to do it right and No excess mind you, but we were able to do it right and then You know the end of the day.

We’re just very proud of the results. So I’d like to get before we wrap up just a couple of

of things. The once it was greenlit, any kind of advice about like what happened along the way, history processes or just, you know, what that felt like to you guys or is I’m not sure if that’s anything they’re free to respond or not.

But we did have a very important launch of a new brand. So on your side, you had to prepare too. So any comments on that part?

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Well, you know, I’ll speak to one thing that I think it’ll be important, hopefully, for other clients who might have down the line.

And that is, you know, making sure you have robust and accountable internal dialogue around key decision points. So for example, speaking of naming, we had a whole deck on names that we went through with the team.

Some were favored, some not. Then we went away and came back and said, no, it’s this name. And then we had another dialogue and came back and said, no, it’s this name.

So, you know, like we said, whenever you’re not as well aligned internally on decisions like that, I mean, you guys were really patient with us, but, you know, every, every time you say, well, we’ll meet next week to talk about that and give you more feedback on our internal dialogue.

It’s a week that we don’t have towards that, that target date. So I’d encourage other clients as they go through this to, you know, be focused on when those waypoints are going to happen.

Make sure your resources are in place to have that conversation that you have kind of an internal accountability matrix.

So that once the decision is made, there’s a stick to it-iveness around it, because especially if you’re doing a full rebrand and picking a new name, there’s a lot of decisions.

You’re going to pick, you’re going to pick the name, the font, the color, the size. We had a consideration that we’re a subsidiary of CureMD, so it was Oncentric, a CureMD company where you’re going to put a CureMD company in the logo, a ton of decisions.

So just make sure you’re ready for that stage and other stages like it. So the project can keep pace and you’re not getting wrapped around the axle on.

Well, I like this color slightly better than this one and you can’t gain internal consensus because until you do, the design team can’t move forward with the next version of what you need to see.

So, it’s that kind of, it sounds mundane, it’s really essential as you execute on a brand strategy like this that your internal ducks are in a row to get through those kind of heavy intense decision-making periods.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So, again, so much here Ben, to unpack. Number one, there’s two things timeline to consider. numberone is I see this a lot and it didn’t happen with you as much but we certainly didn’t have any extra time.

It’s like the getting stuff approved can often be like, you know, hurry up and then wait and then wait and then wait.

then from an agency standpoint, it’s a little like uncomfortable because we want to hear needy and beggy. you know, you guys please make a decision, right?

Because it’s not where we’re coming from. But if you truly want to do this. We’re running out of time while the internal decisions are happening, right?

So, and oftentimes there’s a deadline, there’s a big event, something we’re trying to do. So, that’s not going to change.

So, that’s a challenge, just like I would say, if you’re thinking about this, try to give your, build in plenty of time, way before you think you need to do the launch.

So, you’ve got time for the inevitable internal hiccups that happen that made the delay the launch, you know, weeks or months.

And again, the deadline usually never changes, so it’s helpful. And your guys, in this case, we still had time to do it right, but, you know, there’s times where it’s like, wait, we can’t do this anymore, we just don’t have enough time.

And then the second thing is, you’re right, once you’re in it, each stage, it’s sequential, largely. you can build the branding.

At some point, there’s, we can do this on a parallel path with this, but usually it’s pretty sequential. So, it’s like, we’re hung up, we’re hung up, and so that’s really important.

And as an agency, we don’t want to be a nag, we don’t want to be like, you know, I joke, it’s like, I got, I stole this term from somebody else to be a shulty dog.

I’m like biting at the heels to get them in line, but kind of have to sometimes, right? So from the agency perspective, love these people.

You want to keep the relationship. the other hand, if you don’t, you know, nip a little bit, we’re going to end up missing the boat and they’re going to be really unhappy with you.

So it’s a delicate balance. But you guys did a great job. thought you guys were awesome with that. But these are very real things, Ben, the stuff we’re talking about right now are like all the time happened all the time.

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

So the runway is always shorter than you think it is. You know, always try to build in bonus time. So for example, last minute we asked your team to do a booth design for us, which they executed very quickly and very well.

And we, you know, had a booth built right before the show using the graphics and design that your team delivered.

But had we not built in a little bonus time, that wouldn’t have happened. give yourself some grace, give the team some extra wiggle room, and you’ll always be happier with outcome.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s great. And then So, actually, I’d love to know more about the big debut. So, you know, remember we came from starting this call, talked about, you know, sea of sameness and sort of lost in the fray, you guys had a big debut, that was not quite a year ago, right?

So I’d love to hear about the debut and what’s happened since then.

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

Yeah, it was a lot of fun to not only launch at COA because it’s the largest collection of community oncology practices during the course of the year, but, you know, we created buzz because we had great booth positioning, the booth, like I said, was vibrant, the colors that we worked on together really caught the eye.

So, you know, there’s a lot of dynamism in the logo that we worked with you to design, and I think it brought people into the booth, you know, what are you, what do you do, how do you do it?

So we actually had, you know, probably five times the booth traffic we had had the previous year because people were curious they wanted to know we were a new face in a room full of familiar faces and that in and of itself felt like a big splash and since you know we’ve launched the website we’ve utilized the platform in different other conferences where we create that same kind of buzz because people see that we’re a fresh face and we bring something different to the table and we’ve been able to leverage this to have far more conversations and we’re used to and it’s great to be busy.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s awesome so by the way our team will be enjoyed to hear that and just to give a little insight to this project and we’ll keep a link to the I think we have a portfolio page about this on our website and Ben you’re okay I’ll probably translate this into a case study as well for us but the the whole idea one of the key ideas we talked to

um, the CureMD slash incentive team from the beginning was that we wanted to make sure we had a visual system, colors, you know, graphics, name, everything that stood out because really just go to him or go to any medical conference and everybody looks alike and everybody says all the thing.

And so we really focused on picking colors that were, you know, vibrant, out there. It’s a challenge because you want it to be modern, timeless at the same time.

But I really feel like we were able to thread that needle. And I love hearing that feedback on the booth because, you know, I’d have been thrilled if you guys had a 10 or 40 by 40 booth by 10.

We’re able to like, you know, do stand out in a crowd, which is awesome. Any last words of advice for our audiences as we wrap up here?

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)

We wrap up here. You know, I think the biggest piece of advice is there comes a point where you need to jump off the diving board.

Um, you can stand there and contemplate the water all you want, but you know that eventually it’s, it’s really hot out there.

You got to get wet. Uh, so Find the right dive to do as you launch yourself into the water, but make the jump because I think had we done this a couple of years earlier, um, we would have been a lot further down the road with our growth strategy.

Uh, in executing against Working our way into different segments of the oncology space. Uh, just because like I said, there were opportunities that we were made aware of that we missed out on.

Uh, because people just didn’t know who we are. Um, so I will say that I haven’t lost some sleep.

Uh, contemplating that, uh, you know, to use the word again, opportunity costs, but I have because, uh, I just feel like had we done this sooner. Uh, We would be much farther down the road of our grand strategy than we are today but, hey, we did it thrilled with the outcome and regrets can’t have them because all we have is the reality we’ve created together and we’re thrilled with the project and the outcome and we thank you and your team.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Thank you for being awesome clients it was a fantastic partnership you know look forward to working with you and you guys and the larger company hopefully in other ways for years to come we really appreciate that work we did with you guys it was fun, never easy, but fun it’s just a lot but you guys actually made it fun it was easy too sometimes because it’s very easy to look at clients you like so that was great thank you, Ben.

Ben Reynolds (CureMD Healthcare)
It’s been a pleasure. Look forward to seeing you again soon.