The medical device industry functions as a highly complex ecosystem where diverse niches—including regulatory affairs, quality assurance, marketing, and reimbursement—must seamlessly interconnect to bring life-saving technologies to life. In this episode, host Etienne Nichols sits down with Sean Smith, a 25-year B2B marketing veteran, journalist, and founder of the weekly LinkedIn newsletter MedTech Leading Voices. Together, they peel back the curtain on why traditional, corporate-centric marketing strategies often fail within the specialized medical device space, exploring instead how service providers, consultants, and experts can effectively communicate their value without losing their human touch.
As generative AI tools begin to saturate digital platforms with automated content, the landscape of B2B marketing has grown increasingly crowded and noisy. Sean discusses the critical paradigm shift required to cut through this digital "slop," emphasizing that true marketing success is rooted in foundational human behavior rather than algorithm hacking or perfect websites. He challenges the standard corporate playbook, pointing out the futility of over-polished taglines and unread online case studies, and explains how authentic storytelling and real-world problem-solving serve as the primary mechanisms for earning industry trust.
Looking toward the future of professional expertise, the conversation addresses the long-game nature of organic visibility and the rising importance of specialized professional networks. Sean outlines actionable strategies for medical device experts to transition their buried, day-to-day insights into public thought leadership by focusing on what truly drives human behavior: helping peers make money or keeping them out of trouble. Ultimately, the episode serves as a powerful reminder that robust, human-centric communities are the ultimate safeguard for safeguarding one's livelihood and career longevity in an automated world.
Love this episode? Leave a review on iTunes!
Have suggestions or topics you’d like to hear about? Email us at podcast@greenlight.guru.
Think of B2C (Business-to-Consumer) marketing like a commercial for a sports drink or a makeup tutorial on TikTok. The goal is to capture short attention spans, leverage emotional impulses, and push for a quick, high-volume purchase.
B2B (Business-to-Business) marketing, especially in MedTech, is more like dating with the intention of marriage. You are selling complex services to teams of engineers, regulatory officers, and executives. They aren't buying on impulse; they are buying based on systemic trust, risk mitigation, and long-term relationships. This is why B2C tactics like flashy taglines or giant logos don't translate effectively into medical device consulting.
"First be human. First be a human being... I think that it's very difficult to humanize the kind of in-depth regulatory, quality, risk discussions that we have... and so we're trying to make this information accessible, understandable, and keep it at a human scale." - Sean Smith
"The European audience wants the same thing that everybody wants. They want to know how to make more money and how to stay out of trouble. Those are the only two things that motivate human beings. So if you can tether the story that you're telling to one of those two things... people don't like making mistakes." - Sean Smith
What are your thoughts on humanizing the technical side of the medical device industry? Have you had success building an authentic personal brand on LinkedIn, or are you struggling to cut through the AI noise? We love reading your thoughts and respond to our listeners directly with personalized insights. Send your feedback, guest suggestions, or burning MedTech marketing questions over to podcast@greenlight.guru.
This episode is brought to you by Greenlight Guru, the only dedicated medical device success platform. When you're trying to prove your expertise and build an industry community, you need an infrastructure that mirrors that commitment to excellence. Greenlight Guru's connected Quality Management Software (QMS) and Electronic Data Capture (EDC) solutions help you seamlessly document your engineering breakthroughs, manage strict regulatory frameworks, and safely collect clinical data. Elevate your quality processes from a simple compliance exercise into a true competitive advantage by visiting greenlight.guru.
Etienne Nichols: Hey everyone, my name is Etienne Nichols. I'm the host for today's episode. So welcome back to the Global Medical Device Podcast with me today to talk about kind of an unusual topic, maybe compared to what we typically talk about is something along the lines of marketing.
Not necessarily just for your medical device product for, but for the people helping develop those products, the people providing the services to the companies who are writing those products. Because the medical device industry really is an interesting ecosystem made up of quality regulatory, marketing and reimbursement. All the different types of people that you.
It's disparate different niches within the niche that is MedTech. Sean Smith is a veteran B2B marketer, journalist, entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience helping businesses translate their expertise into authority, trust and revenue.
He's the founder of MedTech Leading Voices and we're going to talk about that in just a little bit, which is a weekly LinkedIn newsletter spotlighting the best of MedTech. His background includes senior marketing leadership roles, Infodesk, Elsevier Business Intelligence (EBI), and Thompson Publishing Group.
And he brings a unique blend of marketing, journalism, storytelling expertise to every conversation about growth in the life sciences and healthcare space. I first got in touch with him in 2022.
I believe it was when he approached me about my activity on LinkedIn and just some of the visibility I was trying to provide to my company and the people that I was working with.
So anyway, all that aside, Sean, I'm sure there are gaps in that introduction, but great to have you on the podcast. How are you doing today?
Sean Smith: I'm doing well and I thank you for the introduction. That was, that was amazingly thorough and I don't. I do not have anything to add to it.
Etienne Nichols: Okay, well, well, why don't we go ahead and jump into the topic at hand.
Sean Smith: I.
Etienne Nichols: Well, maybe we could talk about why MedTech leading voices came up. 2022 feels like a lifetime ago. So many different things have happened since then. But what was the impetus for this and how have things changed since then?
Sean Smith: So, it started with, I just wanted to find 25 people worth following on LinkedIn and do a post about it.
It was as simple as that. I just woke up one day and I could, I was like, I could do a post, 25 people. And then I started looking and I started doing hashtags and I started, you know, trying to search LinkedIn. And that's when I discovered LinkedIn shows you what LinkedIn wants to show you in the order that it wants to show it to you, and it hides everything else from you.
They make it impossible to apply any technology to searching their platform, connecting with their platform, no APIs, nothing. They forbid it. They strictly forbid it. So, finding 25 people was a real challenge.
So, I did it the hard way. I started. I started reaching out to people and saying, who. Who do you follow? Who should I follow?
And your name came up. It was one of the first names.
Etienne Nichols: So, you know, well, I was honored when it did. And it was. You just really kind of hit me a very.
I was very curious about, you know, why and what is it you're doing. And I learned a lot about the different people that were out there and sort of borrowed from what you.
From the work that you're doing and finding those names. And that was, you know, 2022 was an interesting year because you could grow a lot faster. I'm not exactly sure.
I'm not going to say I'm jaded at the moment, but LinkedIn is much different now, and. And we don't necessarily have to make this about LinkedIn itself. I would love to hear your thought about how marketing in general is going in the MedTech world, but whichever way you want to go with that,
I'd love to hear.
Sean Smith: Well, I mean, I think that we have to sort of start with the elephant in the room, which is AI ChatGPT, Claude, you know, eating everyone's lunch, you know, things as you said, it was, you know, maybe a lot easier in 2022 to launch something than it is than it is today.
There's a lot more noise, there's a lot more AI slop, there's a lot more confusion about the. What the future looks like and where people should be putting their energy.
Etienne Nichols: So, what are. One of the things I think about a lot is what is going to persevere. And I'm curious if you have a thought on that, whether it's philosophical basis of how you do marketing of your med. And I would assume some of this applies to both medical devices and the vendors.
But how do you.
Etienne Nichols: What are some of those basic philosophical things that aren't going to change?
And then, you know, maybe that's the strategy, but then the tactics underneath that, which likely will change.
What are your thoughts there?
Sean Smith: I think the first and most important tenant that I say is first be human.
First be a human being. You know, one of the first things I do on my show every week is ask people. So, when you were a small child, did you dream about having a MedTech podcast when you grow up?
Absolutely not.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Sean Smith: And, and, and then I try to get, get a picture of, you know, the 5-year-old at 10.
Right.
And what your ambitions were at 7 or 10 or 12, you know, and then develop the conversation from there rather than starting in with. So, we're here to talk about sterilization today.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, yeah.
Sean Smith: You know, I think that it's very difficult to humanize the kind of in depth regulatory, quality, risk discussions that we have. You know, we had a session last week about, about risk.
And you know, I gotta admit, a lot of it was over my head, you know, and so we're trying to make this information accessible, understandable and, and human, and keep it at a human scale. You know, I think that's first, second, I would say show interest in other people.
You know, if you are in a bar and you're trying to pick somebody up and you walk up and start talking about how great you are and you know, you know, pitch slapping them on the, on the first date, you know, not, not a good approach.
You know, so let's, you know, I don't know how to make this stop beeping. I tried putting it on focus. It's on. Do not disturb. There's nothing else that I can, it’s not coming through to me. So, no worries either way.
Sean Smith: Okay, that's great.
So, you know, and you know, whereas if you walk up and say, hey, you've got really nice eyes, I'd like to buy you a drink, you know, that changes the nature of the interaction from the very beginning. So first, you're human. Second, you're likable, you know.
Yeah, yeah. You're interested in the other person.
I think that marketing in general tends to be like, I want to give you my elevator pitch. I want to tell you who I am. I want to, I want to get to the.
Therefore, you know, and it misses the point that it's about relationships, it's about community, it's about trust, it's about who do I want to work with, you know, and I think that when, you know, people ask me to look at their websites and I'm just like, I don't, I don't do websites that I'm like, that is, that is a losing proposition right there.
If you want to get criticized by every single department in the company.
Agreed to redesign their website. Oh yeah, sign up for that little mess and see what happens.
Etienne Nichols: Well, that's an interesting point because I mean that, that's a very accentuated part of marketing and how it can be criticized. But wouldn't you agree? Or maybe that. What's your take?
It feels like everybody feels like they know how to do marketing. Every department, every, you know, they have an opinion on almost all of it. And maybe I'm wrong on that.
No.
Sean Smith: I've been a marketing professional for 25 years and I've never met somebody who just says, I know nothing about marketing.
Whether they got their information from USA Today or Time magazine, I'm not sure.
But every single time somebody tells me, Nike, now they've got a great logo, I'm like, do they? Or did they spend billions of dollars to make you think that they do?
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, yeah.
Sean Smith: You know, is. Is just. Do it actually a good slogan or did they just buy that place in your brain, you know?
Yeah. Now I think that a lot of the stuff that we hear, particularly from B2C business to consumer marketing, gets applied to B2B marketing. And it just has no place there.
It's, you know, we need a great tagline. No, you don't. We need a great website. No, you don't.
You know, you need to be providing value is what you need to be doing.
You know, you need to be earning trust. You need to be visible, findable.
But your website, whose website doesn't say we're great.
Whose website doesn't have testimonials from three of their greatest clients on there or more, you know. Oh, Etienne is. Is so fantastic.
Who creates a website that says, you know, we're kind of mediocre, you know.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah. I have a friend of mine who owns a services business. As he says, we're not the most, we're not the best, but we're not the cheapest.
But nobody actually says that.
Sean Smith: Yeah, right, right. And so, it's like, yeah, you know, we're just kind of a middle of the road company. You know, I mean, the truth of the matter is, is that there are. There are very few superstars in the world. There are very few people doing anything original, anything different, any. Anything that remarkable. The rest of us are just putting in a solid day's work.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah. Which there is a place for that. We need that. You know, it takes all kinds. You said two things there. And I wanted to kind of drill down. I don't know which one you want to pick.
You know, you pick whichever one. I'll try to make sure we come back and get both of them. But you said what you need to do. Maybe you don't need the website to be perfect, you don't need this tagline to be perfect, all those things, but you do need, because that's what I'm interested in, is to be adding value and to be visible, which, I don't know, which one do you want to pick? I think we ought to just pull a thread there because I want to know how to do a better job with both of those.
Sean Smith: So, let's start with adding value.
Etienne Nichols: Okay.
Sean Smith: The irony about most MedTech experts is they're providing value all day long and they're not documenting any of it.
They might have it in emails, they might have it in PowerPoint presentations, they might have it in proposals, they might have it buried here, there and everywhere. But what they're not doing is telling their own story.
They're not saying, and this is the problem that the client had and this is how we solved it and isn't this remarkable? And this is the outcome that we achieved.
Instead, they're writing up case studies that nobody and their mother will ever read. I, I've never read a case study in my life on, on, on a website.
Never, never. I, I refuse to read them. It's a matter of principle. But the, you know, to tell that story in a way that somebody actually wants to listen to it, that's marketing.
That's, that's where storytelling interest, you know what, and so then you're looking for what is the hook, right? There's value in, in these hills, but how do we find it, right? And how do we package it and make it visible to other people?
Etienne Nichols: Can you give me an example? Because I, I know what the case studies look like and I, I feel the same thing. Like when I see a case study I'm like, all right, yeah, whatever.
I mean that's, that's a one-sided perception. I probably shouldn't say that we do case studies, and you know, for whatever reason, different people.
Well, I'm going to throw a phrase out there that somebody told me once that I don't know whether or not agree with, but I feel like sometimes it fits. And this person said we need to do all of marketing because only 50% of marketing is actually effective.
We just don't know which 50%. And I don't know if that's true or what your thoughts are on that, but either way, okay, we've got the case study idea of like, you know, that's, there's like an eye roll situation.
How do you tell that story. What is a good example of telling a story of. Of how you solved the problem?
Sean Smith: Okay, a good example of how to solve the problem is the marketing dilemma itself, which is you're a marketing expert. You're not visible.
You've been doing it for 20, 30 years.
You know, a lot of. But you have an engineering degree. You're capable of doing this. You're capable of writing a 510(k), you're capable of doing all sorts of things.
Right?
Fantastic.
Who knows it? No one.
Right.
Okay. Like, do you speak at. No, you don't speak at conferences. Are you on webinars? No, not really.
Do you post on LinkedIn? Twice a year. You know, and so the thing is, it's like, how are. How are. How are people gonna find you?
So, the case study is really, well, I have to go back to the work that I've done and be able to tell that story.
So, when I do a webinar, say I get 600 people signed up, 200, and some go, right.
What about how. How do I tell the story to the other 400 people?
How do I take the thing and turn it into an infographic? How do I take the thing and communicate it to people with the attention span of a flea?
Right.
The rest of us, you know, that don't have an hour to sit and invest in going to a webinar. How do I condense the information, repackage the information?
So, you're right, we don't know which 50%.
Some people want the article, some people want the webinar, some people want the podcast, some people want the infographic, some people want the pithy little quote on a funny meme on LinkedIn. Right.
And I don't know either which 50% is going to land.
I would say that it all lands with somebody.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Okay, so we talk about that webinar article, all those different things, how to feels like it's under attack in different ways.
It's been that way for years. YouTube, for anything you ever do in your home or anything like that, you go to YouTube to figure out how to do that. Well, nobody's going to really trust YouTube necessarily for their regulatory expertise, but now we have LLMs that we go to and say, okay, write me some design controls and. And different things like that. So that does sort of feel like now we have something of an outsourced situation here. So that how to content.
I mean, I think what.
At the end of the day, when it. It's all boiled down; people still trust those experts to do the actual work.
But we're going to try to cripple ourselves along or cripple, I don't know, hobble along, I guess. The word I'm looking for using LLMs until the day is we, we hire this person.
I'm going to stop this TED Talk here in just a second. Apologies for this rumbly question.
What are the things that are going to last from a content perspective that are going to continue to hold people's attention? Or does the how to content and explanation still seem to be doing that?
Sean Smith: Years ago I worked for someone who said, oh, we, we can't seem to sell our publication in Europe.
I guess European. We just don't understand what the European audience wants.
And I said the European audience wants the same thing that everybody wants. They want to know how to make more money and how to stay out of trouble.
Yeah.
Okay.
Those are the only two things that motivate human beings.
So, if you can, you know, tether the story that you're telling to one of those two things, which is, I'm going to show you how to make more money or I'm going to keep you from getting in trouble and costing you a lot of money and time and embarrassment and everything that's attendant with making mistakes people don't like making.
I personally have a strong aversion to making mistakes. I do it every day, all day long, but I have an aversion to it. You know, I think that one day I'm going to wake up and I'm going to be perfect. And thus far it has, it hasn't happened.
So, you know, with that in mind. Okay, how to content.
Yes. How to file a 510(k). Yeah. That is going to become a commodity. That's going to, going to become really, you know, very, very much so.
What endures is for me when someone says I get the same stupid question all day long from every single person that works in this medical device company. They come to me with misconceptions, they come to me with misunderstandings and they come to me making the same mistakes over and over and over again. And, and what the MedTech expert has the vantage point of seeing, this is across clients and this across the industry and across, you know, different areas and saying, yeah, these, these are some common misconceptions that can help you make more money and keep you out of hot water.
Yeah, yeah. So, it's really a point of view.
It's an opinion, it's.
And it is expertise. Because this is the thing I fight with the LLMs about.
I'm, you know, the first thing I ask them is say, I say, according to whom?
Because they speak in this omniscient third person.
Right. You know, just like, oh, well, you know, that's very easy to understand. You know, no wonder you're feeling that way. You know, it's obvious that human beings are, you know, and then it makes us statement and you're just like, according to whom?
And so, the thing about journalism, and this is where journalism and marketing to me go hand in hand, is I always want to know who said what, where and why.
And so, my articles, when I write them, you know, when I have time to write them, I try to make sure that it's very clear to, that this is an expert's voice. And so, my business, my company, is based on the voice of the expert Medtech leading voice. This is not unintentional. You know, the branding around this is.
These are people that are worth listening to. These are people that know what they're doing, you know, and don't discount expertise. Expertise is the enduring experience.
You know, I mean, I asked the LLMs to write an email for me and they stick the word free in it. I'm like, don't. You know, you just triggered every spam filter in the world.
If you're writing an email for me, then why would you stick the word free in it? You know? And they're just like, oh, yeah, good point.
Etienne Nichols: It's your PhD. It's your intern with a PhD that you're telling.
Sean Smith: Yeah, right. It's, it's, it's like, okay, well, you know, there, there, there are basic rules of email writing that you, you don't know. Like, always use a PS.
Did you know that I love PS’s?
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Sean Smith: You know why? Because people won't read the email, but they'll read the PS.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Sean Smith: So put your most important message in the ps. Like, there are things that you just need to know.
Like here, if you don't get 10 likes or comments on LinkedIn in the first hour or two, they're going to bury your post forever.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Sean Smith: So how do you get 10 links or comments in the first hour? You send it to 10 people and say, hey, can you like this?
Etienne Nichols: Yeah. You don't tell LinkedIn that you did that. No.
Sean Smith: Well, just switch up the 10 people. That's the trick.
Etienne Nichols: So, and maybe this gets into the, the, the specific things that you can do to build that visibility. And I'm just gonna, so when I, you know, I was a mechanical engineer, project manager, and didn't know or think about this for the longest time.
This.
Then I joined Greenlight Guru. I started working a little bit of marketing because they liked what I was doing on LinkedIn and they asked me to build a community. Well, I knew nothing about a community, so I wanted to go to a conference.
And this is interesting. I'm curious what you think of this ridiculous thing that I did.
Etienne Nichols: I, I emailed the conference. It was the largest conference in the community.
Community, Community building. Community.
And I said, I'd like to speak at your conference. And I sent them my whole thing that I wanted to speak on. And they kind of laughed a little bit, said, you know, we'll let you moderate a panel.
Well, suddenly I had access to every leader in that because I was a speaker, you know, quote unquote, and I could hang out the speakers. I, I'm like, yeah, I'm speaking at this.
And so, I had immediate access to the people who actually knew what they were doing.
And that was huge for me.
It's, it's a big, it's a difficult thing, building an online community, but I don't know how that carries over necessarily. Although I've gotten some notoriety in a similar way at MedTech conferences.
What is the advice you have for those MedTech vendors and service providers when it comes to getting that visibility and really acquiring new clients? I mean, that's what they're after, acquiring new clients, right?
Sean Smith: Absolutely.
I mean, that's the end goal. Start by building yourself an advisory committee.
Start by surrounding yourself with the cool kids. Start by inviting them to speak or interview them, ask them questions. Don't get up there and pitch your company. Nobody wants to hear you pitch your company.
You know, it's like, it's like putting, it's like putting your logo on your post. You don't need that. Your name is right there with the company that you work for.
Everybody knows that you're selling.
You don't need you; you don't need that. You don't need to write, hey, and call me if you're interested in Greenlight Guru.
Sorry.
You know, you don't need to do that. They know that you're shilling for Green Light Guru. Sorry. But, you know, it's, it's, it's like, yes, yes.
We're all, we're all selling. We get that.
So, you don't need to tell people that, you know, right?
Yeah.
Etienne Nichols: And, you know, it's funny that you say that, because I don't know that everybody realizes it. When you're in marketing, when you're in sales. You do start to realize that everybody's selling something and if they're not you.
I actually told some people this recently. If you're not paying for the product, you might be the product, and you just need to think about that.
But anyway, yeah. What other piece of advice do you have?
Sean Smith: I would, I would, I would think the, the most important thing is consistency.
You don't have to be visible on a daily basis. You don't have to be visible even on a weekly basis.
You can create a, a Substack and Substack publication for free.
You know, if as long as it's a free publication, they don't charge you, you know. And I'm seeing Naveen has a wonderful Substack publication. Let's talk about Risk has built up quite a following for himself, you know.
And you know, around, around a theme. You know, you can have a monthly Substack, you could have a quarterly Substack publication. If you're the only person writing about, of some obscure topic or standard, you know, own that niche and become, you know, the visible. Go to expert. Even if it's, it's only once a quarter just. But consistently commit to something and stick with it.
Don't give up after the first three, six months when you're like, well, we tried posting on LinkedIn and it didn't work.
Yeah, no, no, duh.
Etienne Nichols: It's a long game.
Sean Smith: Yeah, it's definitely a long game.
Etienne Nichols: I'm sure. So, what has it been now, four years since you started the MedTech? Leading voices. What, what would you say you've learned over the last couple years? And you know, any, anything that really stands out, you know, it's the people that just keep showing up. You know, 90% of success in life is just showing up.
And some people, they, they just can't even show up for their own life. You know, sometimes, sometimes I can't show up for my own life.
But you know, every Sunday I produce this publication. Do I want to, to sit down at 4 o' clock and Sunday afternoon and produce the. No, not, not.
Honestly, I do not want to spend my Sunday afternoons that way. And if I could find a Claude skill that was capable of doing it, I would gladly, gladly have that. You know, I'm halfway there.
But you know, it's, it's, it's still, it's still work.
You know, there's no, there's no two ways around it. At a certain point you just have to roll up your sleeves and, and do the work.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
And where Would you say people could go to learn this work? Because sometimes, you know, you and I, I feel like we might in the moment, you, you feel like everybody knows everything you do.
At least that's always been my Achilles heel. I just assume everybody knows everything I already know, so. But, but when it comes to MedTech professionals, they don't always know the marketing things that we're talking about.
One of the things that I might even bring up is you brought up B2B versus B2C and what the differences are there.
I don't know if we want to pursue that or if you have other thoughts about the work that people need to be pursuing.
Sean Smith: Well, I think that's one of the most confusing things for people is they see B2C stuff, they see influencers. They say, oh, I don't want to be an influencer.
You know, I don't ever use the word influencer in reference to LinkedIn. You know, an influencer is somebody selling makeup products on TikTok.
You know, to me, there's somebody who is monetizing their following. There's somebody who is doing something completely different than being a visible MedTech expert.
So, the confusion is when they start saying, well, I don't like social media.
Well, I don't like social media much either. You know, I don't like AI much, I don't like LinkedIn much. You know, the truth of the matter is, is that there's a lot of things in this world that I don't like, but it doesn't mean that I'm not responsible for creating my own livelihood.
And in creating my own livelihood, you know, I worked in house for 27 years, never had more than a week or two off at a time, collected a paycheck, was well rewarded for the work, and enjoyed, you know, every minute of every day.
Right.
And however, when I started my own business, the learning curve started all over again at zero.
And, and if you're gonna run your own business and you're gonna be either, you know, an entrepreneur or consultant or a freelancer, you have to learn how to market yourself.
And, you know, one great place to start is with the LLMs themselves. You know, to go to ChatGPT, Claude and tell them what you're struggling with and ask them for advice and ask them where to look.
You know, I, I think that, you know, is it going to answer all your problems? No, it's not. You know, I mean, I've been struggling for years with.
There are a huge number of MedTech experts out there that could use my help and they can't afford me.
They can't afford to become a marketing client.
So, I'm working on a one-to-many model which makes it very affordable for them from $47 to $1,000 to be part of a community.
I think community.
You mentioned this. How do I start a community? Community is one of the most BS words that marketing has ever created.
And yet at the same time, it is the only thing that is going to protect us from the LLMs going forward.
If we do not band together as MedTech experts and as professionals and as knowledge workers, we're going to see our livelihoods taken away from us. I'm pretty sure of that.
That's not a supposition. That's not like, oh, let me just hedge on this. No, I'm pretty sure that a lot of people are going to lose their jobs.
Right.
So how do you protect against that While there's safety in numbers, you know, and so form a community, find a community.
Get with the people who are, you know, active in your, in your ISO standard or in the product therapeutic category that you're in, or in the patient groups or in what have you. But you know, there are plenty of little, tiny communities out there, you know.
Yeah.
Etienne Nichols: Okay, let me ask you this then you maybe think of this question. How would someone determine or what criteria should they be looking at to determine that they are succeeding in this visibility and doing things correctly versus just shouting into a void?
You know, I could see somebody making that argument, sure.
Sean Smith: I, I think the best example that I can give you is someone named Geor Digel. I don't know if you know Georg, but he's, I've had him on the podcast, the CAPA guy.
He's, he's the CAPA guy.
So, about a year ago he was no.1 and he has documented in his posts themselves what his progression was. And he talks about how the, for the first three months of posting on LinkedIn he was posting to crickets that he was not getting anything back.
And then people started to get, you know, comment and share and then people started to follow. And then so, you know, you see your followers start growing, you see the shares start growing, you see the comments start growing.
But you know, commenting is a two-way street.
If you want people to comment on your post, comment on theirs. You have to be a good community member yourself.
If you're coming at this from the perspective, what can I take from this community?
That's kind of, that's kind of an ugly positioning statement right there. Right. It's like, what do I have to offer?
So, the key piece of advice that I give to people is just start with something very simple. I know a thing or two about.
Fill in the blank.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
I, you, you know, I know a thing or two about MedTech marketing, for example.
Right.
Oh, and then start building your content out from there, your topics out from there.
And, you know, so you have followers, you have views, you have a lot of vanity metrics that don't mean anything at the end of the day, but you should see them all progressing in the right direction. One of my favorite things is to look at the analytics on LinkedIn and look at over the course of the year, what is the aggregate response that I'm getting?
You know, how many people are looking at my stuff on a regular basis and is that trending in the, in the correct direction rather than how is each post doing?
Because if I'm taking my temperature every five minutes when I'm sick, guess what?
It, it doesn't help my mood in any way whatsoever. You know?
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, that's a good. I think that's a good answer. And yeah, Georg's a good example to use. I need to reach back out to him. We haven't spoken in a while.
In fact, he is. I'll. I'll say one other thing. He has some rabid fans too, which I really think is great, and I'm proud of him for doing this. I, I remember posting something a few weeks or a few months ago, and apparently, he had posted something along, maybe a similar line about AI or something. And I said, I haven't seen anybody posting about this. It's just, you know, offhand. But in one of my posts, and one of his fans said, well, Georg Digel has been saying this.
I'm like, okay, well, I'm sorry, I don't read all of his posts. Right. It cracked me up. But I was like, hey, that's great. I'm glad.
Sean Smith: Yeah, no, he does. And, you know, I mean, I tell people, it's like, you know, if, if, if, if you can make CAPA interesting and exciting and, and get, you know, tens of thousands of followers posting about CAPA, you know, then I'm pretty sure that you can do it for any other area within MedTech, you know, that is, that is, that is. That is not the most dynamic area. And yet he makes it interesting. He makes people care.
You know, he, he, he keeps, you know, switching it up and.
But he's also human. You know, he'll post pictures of himself.
Sure. Yeah, he'll talk about his life outside of, outside of CAPA, you know.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, it goes back to the human side that you were talking at the very beginning. I think that that makes sense.
Any other examples or things that you'd like to, to pull up and just kind of talk about or piece of advice, places you want people to go to or point the audience to?
Sean Smith: Well, so we have, we have launched with Jose from Bold Type, a site called MLVx AI.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Sean Smith: And you can search all the experts.
We're adding all the people that were nominated and it's a free resource, it's interactive and you can actually find a lot of really, really helpful regulatory information. But then you can also see who said it, what the sources are.
And if you go in there and you just type in a standard number or regulatory thing or I don't know, a topic area like human factors, it'll just, it, it, the, the answers are really interesting and then, but they're, they're tied to the experts. So, what we're trying to do in the name of community is to grow that, to get people using it, to get them posting their events there, you know, and their slide decks and their white papers. It's sort of the way that I look at it is like, you know, stuff goes up on LinkedIn, it's ephemera, you know, it lasts for a day, maybe a week, you know, and then, then it goes the way of all flesh. Right. And then.
But here we're creating an endurable archive of MedTech experts and MedTech expertise so that you can, you know, hopefully create visibility with, by being part of a community that will allow you to compete with some of the larger companies with much deeper pockets, much more reach than you have as an individual or as a small company.
And I think really LLM visibility, authoritative content is going to be the thing that is going to be driving search going forward, driving AEO and so forth. So, I tell people, don't, you know, build your marketing plan around marketing that was done five years ago and what, you know, state of the art looked like then. But really for where you think it's going to be in the next few years, how are people, you know, I mean, look at the search engines.
I mean they're just gutted at this point, you know, I mean what, what is happening with them?
You know, and everyone is just turning directly to the LLMs. Well, if they're going directly to AI for answers, then how do you become findable that way?
You know, I don't have the answer to that question. If I, if I did, I would be much wealthier than I am, I'm sure.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, it's a good question. And, you know, I'm, I'm in favor of good questions even if we don't necessarily have the answers. You know, some people say, don't ask the question if you don't have the answer.
Sean Smith: I disagree.
Etienne Nichols: I think asking the question and, you know, if you out there have a few different answers, if someone listening, feel free to reach out to Sean or myself. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
If you agree, if you disagree. Sometimes the disagreements is interesting to me as the agreement. I don't mind people disagreeing with me. I don't know how you feel about it, Sean, but those have been some of my favorite.
I remember I got one.
It was the funniest LinkedIn message I think I ever got. And it just made me realize, I think I've made it. When I got this hate mail and they said, you are nothing of a guru.
At the time, my title was medical device guru. I'm like, okay.
I just said understood. That was like a thumbs up. Okay.
Sean Smith: Right. My response is usually fair point. Thanks for, thanks for helping me with the, with the LinkedIn algorithm.
Etienne Nichols: Exactly.
Sean Smith: You know, yeah, that's.
You know, I think it's. I think it's really easy to criticize other people who are making themselves visible.
And I think that you need to expect a certain amount of criticism. I've gotten very little, to be honest, very little criticism, because my whole model is really just lift up other people, you know, and surround myself with smart people.
And this worked really well for me. You know, I do almost no marketing. My website is horrible, by the way.
You know, but the.
Everything I do is marketing at the same time.
So, it's like, well, I don't need to send brochures.
Etienne Nichols: The thing that I would say, just to echo your point regarding whether it's hate mill or anything, I. I say it for two reasons. One, you should at least know that there could be another side to visibility.
And that's not a deterrent; that's just a bra. You know, build the calluses and so on so that you can take it. You know, it is what it is. You're going to get more.
More visibility comes with a slight bit more notoriety, and that's okay.
The other thing is, when you do get that, it can be discouraging. I'm not going to sit here and say it doesn't bother me at all. But what I do remind myself in Those moments is that I'm helping somebody and I can remember.
I pull up, I have what I call the Box of Awesome. It's a word document that anytime somebody sends me a message says, wow, this was really helpful. I can't tell you how much, you know, this got me a promotion or raise or whatever else.
I put that in my box of awesome for the days that I might get hate mail. It's only happened a half a dozen times times or so for the last five years.
But, you know, for whatever reason, that one piece of hate mail that year weighs more than all the other comments. So, I go and I look at my Box of Awesome and it's.
It helps me a lot and reminds me that this isn't necessarily always about me. It's. It's helping. It's literally helped some different people, what I've been doing. So, I feel better and I feel it's.
It's less. I'm promoting myself for whatever else you may feel like. So, I don't know if you have any thoughts about that.
Sean Smith: No, absolutely. And a lot of the time it's. It's really sort of an indirect path. So, I got, speaking of Awesome, a message from somebody yesterday that says, hey, I gotta thank you. I just sold my company because of the introduction that you made for me.
Etienne Nichols: Wow.
Wow. And I was just like, wow, that is really cool.
You know, guy built a tech platform, and he sold it, and, you know, I didn't even remember making the introduction. I believe him that I did.
I make introductions all the time. I think that we don't know who we're gonna reach.
We don't know which message is gonna reach which people.
But if we keep putting value out in the marketplace, I think, you know, what is my expression?
Love freely given surely brings a full return.
You know, and I think that if you.
If you. If you share your knowledge and your wisdom generously, people will recognize that and. And return it in kind.
We've made countless connections through our Friday call, connecting vendors who are like, hey, my client needs help with figuring out insurance coding. Do you have somebody that can do that? I just hand over the name, get a new client. You know, that's.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
Sean Smith: I think what's really underestimated in B2B marketing is there's the prospect and then there's all the people who influence the prospect.
And a lot of times in our market, having a consultant walk your product or service in the door is going to be much faster than you hammering away with, do you want a demo? Do you want a demo?
Do you want a demo?
So, you know, for companies like Greenlight Guru, I always recommend that they have, you know, a large affiliate program of sorts so that you have people selling the company on your behalf, you know, because they're going to take the word of their trusted advisor over a salesperson from a vendor any day of the week.
Sure, yeah.
Or over a website or over anything else. So, it's a trust-based industry.
How do we generate trust?
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, yeah, that's the million-dollar question.
And I think you've answered a lot of it in this podcast, in this episode. So, I think we probably leave it at that.
I'll just throw that out there though, if there is someone out there who is interested. Greenlight Guru does have an affiliate program for, in a partnership program.
So, it's.
If you, if you want to know more about it, feel free to reach out to myself. I used to run that, but I've since gone on to bigger and better, better things.
But it's still near and dear to my heart. But anyway, yeah, that's good. Thank you so much, Sean. I really appreciate it. Where can people find you and see what you're doing?
Sean Smith: The easiest place to find me is just go to medtechleadingvoice.com which goes directly to LinkedIn, which goes directly to the weekly publication which goes direct.
I'm all about LinkedIn. My whole business is built around it. You know, even though I don't love it, you know, it's, it's, you know, they built a sticky product.
Sean Smith: I mean, it's, it's devil. We know.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, yeah.
Sean Smith: All right.
Etienne Nichols: Thank you so much, Sean. Really appreciate you coming on the show. Those who've been listening, thank you so much for listening to the Global Medical Device Podcast. We hope to see you next time and until then, get visible.
We'll see you next time. Take care.
Sean Smith: Thank you.
Etienne Nichols: Thanks for tuning in to the Global Medical Device Podcast. If you found value in today's conversation, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform form.
If you've got thoughts or questions, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@greenlight.guru.
Stay connected for more insights into the future of MedTech innovation. And if you're ready to take your product development to the next level. Visit us at www.greenlight.guru. Until next time, keep innovating and improving the quality of life.
The Global Medical Device Podcast powered by Greenlight Guru is where today's brightest minds in the medical device industry go to get their most useful and actionable insider knowledge, direct from some of the world's leading medical device experts and companies.