A while ago I was doing some marketing consulting for a medical technology start-up. A brilliant young doctor, who also has a degree in computer science, was working with two programmers in the kitchen of his condo. They were developing a service for hospitals enabling docs who make rounds in hospitals to input their diagnoses and billing info electronically via tablets to increase efficiency, improve revenue, blah blah blah.
It’s complicated and I won’t bore you with it. Suffice it to say that, although I could regurgitate the 10,000-foot overview to get initial attention, I was easily drowned in the cascade of details required to really understand the program. So I told the CEO I’d stick my toe in, develop the ads and the elevator speech explanations, but don’t expect me to master the gory details. That would have been a historic break with my tradition of never really mastering anything I have been involved with. (See my golf game for verification.)
The program was brilliant and hospitals signed on. Within a year we were in a fancy office building with 20 employees and growing. It was time to step on the accelerator with a splashy presence at a major hospital conference. A fancy booth was designed, materials produced, ads placed, the web site revved up. All three members of the management team, the oldest of whom was 29, along with me to provide some gray hair, flew off to Nashville.
The first day, things went well. The booth went up and the crowd of interested execs at our booth dwarfed many of the others. A lot of people, looked first to me because I was by far the oldest guy in the booth. I made appropriate small talk and deftly passed them off to the techies who promptly dazzled them with a computerized walk-through of the program.
That night there was a major party at a nearby night club. The young guys with me were stoked. They were mini-celebs who had successfully launched a high-profile start up. They were gonna be rich! To celebrate they tossed down drink after drink, madly chased skirt after skirt, and totally forgot their pledge to be at the booth at 7 a.m. the next morning.
I, on the other hand, was miserable. My hearing was getting bad and the noise was deafening, cutting me out of most conversations. If my hearing had been perfect I wouldn’t have known what they were talking about anyway. People under 20 speak in code that I haven’t cracked. About 9:30 p.m. I was toast, jumped into a cab, called my lovely wife to tell her I loved her, and went to sleep.
Up at six, I grabbed breakfast and hit the booth promptly at 7:30 to crank up. No sign of the “executives.” I start calling rooms. President’s room — no answer. VP of finance — 20 rings later: “Oh my god, I’m so sickkkk, can you handle it for a while.” VP of operations: “I’ll be there….hang on…zzzzzzzzzz”…dial tone.
Eight o’clock the floodgates opened. The booth quickly packed with prospects. You never saw so much tap dancing. “Tech people are coming soon — come back in an hour….I’ll send you material….our web site explains the details…”
Beads of perspiration begin seeping from my forehead. My stomach rolls as hospital presidents quiz me on mysterious Medicare coding procedures and reimbursement formulas. Finally the convention sessions start and the traffic ebbs. More frantic phone calls.
The president never did show up. Finally about noon, two gray-faced dorks stagger into the booth.
“Don’t shout, or I’ll throw up,” one says as I scream at him. Quaffing aspirin and Tums, they recover remarkably. Ah youth.
The president never did show up that day. However, he met a female physician the previous night, began dating her, and subsequently they got married. Happy ending — at my expense.
You’ll be happy to know the company has taken off like a rocket and now has employees in the hundreds. And here I sit — the unsung hero that held it all together until the management team grew up.