1601: Healthcare Marketing Strategy That Builds Trust with Saul Marquez

Robert Plank 0:04 Nearly 2000 healthcare leaders have sat behind his microphone. It's Saul Marquez and, or Marquez, he'll tell me in a moment, but he discovered that most companies don't fail because of bad products, they fail because nobody understands their value and Saul went from leading sales at Medtronic and Stryker to now building Outcomes rocket.com where he builds health tech companies turn strategy into revenue. So we're going to find out here about some healthcare company secrets, what he's learned from interviewing nearly 2000 healthcare executives, founders, and investors, beliefs that were changed, tears that were shed, etc. So, Saul will tell us about his discover, define, deliver framework, perhaps, and, and about maybe AI, and so much more, depends on how much time we have. So, Mr. Saul, how are you?

Saul Marquez 0:58 Robert, I'm doing great, thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here with you and your listeners.

Robert Plank 1:04 Happy to have you. And so, can you, can you set the record straight? Is it Marquez? How do I say that?

Saul Marquez 1:09 Marquez.

Robert Plank 1:10 Okay, I think I knew Iran Marquez in high school, and it was so weird, because, like, there's the Q right there, but you don't say the U.

Saul Marquez 1:18 Yeah, Marquez, Marquez, yeah, the name, the name is like historically Spanish, French, and Marquez was kind of like of the heritage that would patrol kind of the mark, the line between territories. So that was my ancestors' roles.

Robert Plank 1:38 A very much needed profession. Yeah, like that last thing, it sounds like a conquistador, right? Sounds like a conqueror.

Saul Marquez 1:43 Something like that, yeah, yeah.

Robert Plank 1:46 Okay. Right up there with Magellan. And so that's right. So, what is Saul Marquez doing in the healthcare space to try to fill the shoes of that family lineage?

Saul Marquez 1:57 Yeah, you know, Robert in healthcare, and I get that not everybody listening is in healthcare, but so let's just say in business, right? And especially in healthcare, it is so important to have clarity in what exactly you do and be able to communicate that in a way that creates trust, and I know that a lot of people want leads and a lot of people want to build pipeline and the way you get there is through trust, so the question that we should all be asking ourselves is, are the activities that our team is doing in the market, is it creating trust, whether it be a blog or a podcast or a LinkedIn post, or an Instagram post, or whatever it might be. Are you creating trust, and our company helps our clients in the healthcare space create and accelerate trust that grows their market and that grows their business. So that's what we do, and we have a lot of fun doing it. And you mentioned health tech, we also work with med tech companies, so medical device companies, as well as software as a service health technology companies.

Robert Plank 3:08 Oh, great, that's important. So you're changing the world, and you're saying just to, for me to digest this so far, you're saying that it's important to know what you do, and to then the next step is then to communicate that clearly, and then the third step is then build that trust with those people that you're looking to communicate with, get in front of, and help, and you know that that word trust, it's one of those kind of like on the surface iffy words, where when I used to hear a word like that, I would just disregard it until I started thinking about, like, well, what's the word cloud? What's connected to that, and so now it's like more like when I hear trust, where my brain goes is like repetition and consistency. It's like, so that way, if you know, if if you're driving the school bus and you pick me up at, you know, at 8am every morning, and if that's been happening for every day for weeks, like I trust that I expect it, but if sometimes it shows up at 7: 30; 8:30, I don't trust it anymore. So now that word trust is solid to me, and it just means that you're like repetitive and consistent and reliable. And so when you're like your company's blogging, as you say, you're not just making one blog and forgetting about it, it's like blogging like every day, every week. So when, when you say trust, that's what that means to me.

Saul Marquez 4:23 I love that man, that's a good way to think about it. And one of the best ways to create trust is through results, you know, and and so when we do, because our company does marketing strategy and marketing execution, and a lot of the work that we do is is is about helping our clients position themselves in the market. Tactics are the noise you hear before the war is lost. That's a quote from Sun Tzu in The Art of War. And what happens in marketing is there's so many tactics, there's so many things you could do, so many things that you can do. That it's, it's really important that before you go do the things, you take a step back, get off the treadmill, and ask yourself, what is the landscape? It's strategy, right? So, strategy precedes tactics. If you're able to do that, assess the landscape, going with the analogy of war, understanding what your supplies are, your strengths understanding your enemy position understanding their weaknesses, what their, what, what the opportunity is. How long will those supplies last you, and what is the ultimate goal, right? And so, if you identify all these in the strategy, that's discover. So, Robert, you talked about the formula: discover, define, deliver, and that formula is really the way to reproducibly get the end result, which is results, and so discover gives you the landscape define narrows in based off of everything you found, competitive position, your uniquenesses, and everything you define where exactly you're going to share your message to who and in what way, and using what channels. So that's the define, and then deliver is ultimately you now get to perform the actions that are fully aligned and integrated that are going to get you the end results that you're looking for. So, is it going to? So, after doing the analysis, you realize that your clients are reading these three publications, they have these two, three main pain points, and they mostly spend time at conferences and on LinkedIn. So now you have an opportunity to put together a strategy that's defined, and when you deliver it, you know, you're gonna not necessarily pick up the phone, because that's not what they do. You're not going to reach them via the phone. You're going to do cold mass email, because that's how you're going to get a segment of them. You're going to complement that mass email through LinkedIn. You're going to, you're going to do some PR that hits the trade trades and other media outlets that they're reading, so that you're creating trust through third parties, and then you're going to create thought leadership content for your website that all connects together, that when you reach out to them, it synchronizes, and you're going to make sure your team is aligned with all of this. You're going to create assets that support sales, when they reach out, it tells the same message and the same story, and ultimately help them decide on you.

Robert Plank 7:26 Very cool, very wise. So, have a little bit of planning and organization, right? What a concept. And this, this is an area where I used to really resist it, because there, there's a lot of ways to go wrong, isn't there? Like, I know when I was in, like, my early 20s, I knew so many people that would just make endless plans, and it was like, the, like, you know, figuring out some of these things, like you're mentioning, like, hey, am I, I'm gonna do the cold emails here, like, they would just do that all day long, and then get themselves like tired out, because they would, like, done so much, so much talking and writing and planning, and so I was like, at the time, like, oh, I'll just kind of, like, ready, fire, aim, but then that's a whole other set of problems. So, like, do you ever think about this, like this idea of, well, I want to make the plan, and I want to discover, define, deliver, but I'm worried about, like, wasting so much time on the planning, or that maybe the planning will will tire me out on taking action, but I know I need to plan, so like, what do I do?

Saul Marquez 8:23 Yeah, Robert, and you know what, it is such the reality that we're all in, right? Like, we are in a situation, all of us, where we're growing a business and we need results, and you're thinking to yourself, man, I don't have time to waste, like, to put all these hours into planning, and that's why we, we came up with the, with the, with the discovery sprint, so, so rather than spend weeks, because you can spend weeks right on proper discovery, we have a sprint process for discovery that literally is done in a week, in a week's time, you do the specific research, you do the specific answer, the specific questions, so that within a week's time you have your, your discover phase done. The reason we did this is because our clients told us this is what they needed, right? Like, they're like, "Hey, we just need to drive leads, we just need to drive results right now, cool. No problem at all. Let's get there, but before we do, let's just do some of the fundamentals on a sprint mode, and this sprint mode has been awesome, man. Like, you know, it's something that we do, it's something that helps level set, and in the end, our clients end up thanking us for it, because it helps them document their marketing strategy, there was a report done by McKinsey that highlighted med tech companies, only 28% of them actually have a clearly documented marketing strategy, 28% So, when I saw this, I said, "Wow, what an opportunity, what an opportunity to say. Stick out if only 28% are documenting, that means if you document your strategy, then you're, you're only competing with 28% everybody else is flying by the seam of their pants, so your competition now shrank, and now you're working with the Navy Seals, right, and you're, and you're giving that, that go to market approach the opportunity to succeed that it deserves, and so, yeah, you know, it's it's thing, and I've been on the side where if we don't do this, our chances of success decrease significantly, and and it's in my best interest to make sure that our clients do this, and it's in your best interest to make sure you do this, because if you don't, your chances of success decrease, and in business you control the controllables, if you don't, you're leaving it to chance.

Robert Plank 10:52 I like it. So, yeah, so you're saying having this strategy put you in that top tier. Did you say 24%

Saul Marquez 10:59 28.

Robert Plank 11:02 So 28% and you're saying that in order to avoid the runaway planning, you have some sort of a structure for this sprint, that way there's kind of clear, clear goals defined for the research, so that we get that done in a reasonable amount of time, so you're even even the planning part, you're not winging it, and it seems like what little I know about the healthcare field, it's like it's been crazy amazing growth the past 20 years, and it seems like you know we've all had to go and you know get our blood drawn or get the lab results or go to the doctor, and it's like whenever that situation happens, it's like you can just tell that they follow a step by step procedure, right? When they're, you know, when they're drawing blood or giving you a shot, it's like they kind of are slow and careful and deliberate, and it's like, why are they doing that with the like the actual doing the work and the service, but then when it comes to your own business, which is like so important, like they're not applying that same kind of step by step methodological, much logical, can't even say the word, it's so important, step by step.

Saul Marquez 12:06 With the methodological.

Robert Plank 12:06 Methodological, there you go, there you go, you got it, finally got it, and, and so, like, so this, this all sounds good, but I'm sure, like, it's one thing to learn some advice, and yet another to like get the specific help from you and your company, and so when, when someone comes to you, like, what kind of a organization is that? And like, where are they stuck? Where do you help them?

Saul Marquez 12:29 Yeah, Robert, we work with, as I shared, health tech and med tech companies that sell to healthcare systems, provider organizations, provider offices. They also sell to insurance companies like the payers and the med tech companies, medical devices, and so you know our, our, the way that we work, you know, you've got to have an established product in the market, so that we can help you with the commercialization plan, and you could come at, you could come with a, with a problem that you have, no matter where you're at in the commercialization phase. You could be at the beginning of a product launch, or you could be stuck with a product that you've had for a while that you just need to hit the reset button on, and and just resuscitate your go-to market strategy. It could be you run into some issues with, you know, product failures, and you need to improve the messaging reputation management in your, and for your organization in the market, so really it doesn't matter where, it's just big challenges for commercially available products and services in the market, that's that's where that's who we help, and strictly healthcare, right, the companies that we work with.

Robert Plank 13:43 And what kind of products are we talking, like, like a scanner or a laser or software? Like, what are they usually have where that they're trying to fix?

Saul Marquez 13:53 Yeah, so on the medical devices side, it could be monitors and devices that measure different things in your body, like heart rate monitors or capnography monitors or x-ray machines or even implantables like spine implants or hip fracture devices, different things like that. Right, that's the medical devices side. On the other side, on health tech, it's software as a service, so think electronic medical records, think software that helps your practice run more efficiently. Think remote monitoring technologies, just to kind of name, name a few, right? And so, and so, these are the different things that the the industry needs to function effectively, and and so these companies lean on us to properly position themselves in front of the different buyers that they have in the market.

Robert Plank 14:46 Very cool, it's amazing that this, all that goes into this, right? All that we take for granted. One hospital, one doctor's office, imagine all the all the gadgets, right? All the devices and all the many gadgets go into it. Yeah, and it's like. Right, it's amazing that it all works, but it's all important, right? Because we all want to live those long, happy, healthy, productive lives. We all want to live to 100 years plus, right? In the, in the olden times, they would just say, "Well, put some leeches on it, right? Do some bloodletting, and now it's like we've got the EMRs, and now we, we kind of have some technology to make our lives better, and as far as, so we've gotten a good idea of like what your thought process is, and the kind of companies you help. Do you have a fun story to share with us? I always love hearing about if you know some company was struggling and they found you and you turn things around. Do you have anything like that?

Saul Marquez 15:37 Absolutely, you know, there's there's a lot of examples I will share one in particular. So, a client of ours had a very innovative platform, and it was different. It was very different than what the market was used to seeing, the normal way of doing things. They wanted to clearly define themselves as a new category, which is not easy to do, and so they were having a hard time, and they, they needed enough, they really just needed an opportunity to better structure their messaging and find the right channels to share their, their, their, their sort of innovative play with in taking a look at the market, they were calling on Chief Information Officers, Chief Nursing Officers of Health Systems, and when we started doing voice of customer research for them, we uncovered that the customers you could divide them into early adopters and late adopters, so not everybody was the right fit for the message with where the company was right now. The ones that were going to be most open to their message were the early adopters. So then the question became, How do we find the early adopters? We created a landscape map that highlighted a couple different things on how to identify them. Podcast was one of them. Are they on podcasts? They want to be out there sharing their ideas. Have they have they written point of view articles in the media? That's another thing. Did they have, when you took a look at their LinkedIn, different advisory boards that they were a part of, that was another thing. Another factor was, are they new in their position, and are they new in their position highlighted that they wanted to make change, right, to make a name for themselves. So we took these points and we mapped the market and we narrowed down from like several 100, like three or 400 to 70, so we shrunk our target audience to the most relevant target audience, and we got after those 70 and we're able to get the message to them, actually, and what happened was we got feedback, live feedback from them, because, because what we have, what we found through this particular project is that these early innovators want to be part of the innovating, so if you have something that's cutting edge, they're going to tell you what they like and what they don't like, and what you potentially need to change or adjust, it's not always correct, but, but they're willing to tell you, and they're willing to engage. Those conversations turned into an opportunity for us to create a podcast series for these clients. This client, that podcast series, we were pushing out episodes. We then would go to conferences and do live recordings there too, but then we created white papers and industry connections with, with, with some of the leading information technology management trade publications, and it's sort of like created this ecosystem, and then sort of like the cherry on top was creating a maturity model that, that, that a hospital would take a survey and they would see where they land on their, their smart hospital maturity model, so they would know kind of where they sit. This whole thing led to a creation of them as the smart hospital player in the healthcare industry, and they eventually, you know, two years into our work together got acquired by a large medical device company, and so it was one of these like bumping your head against the wall because you know you have something, and then just trying to figure out a way to unfold it all in a way that makes sense, and you could move forward in a reproducible way, and that's what we were, we were able to do together, and you know, I'm still good friends with, with, with Bruce, the President, and, and, yeah, it's a really good, good story that I like to share.

Robert Plank 20:01 Yeah and that's a great story to hear about the debugging and the feedback loop, right? You say you changed up the messaging and the targeting and what's on the profile and who you talk to, and then took the feedback, and it's like there's something to that, whether you're talking about like getting your writing figured out, or getting like code fixed, or working with AI, when it's like your sparring partner, and you're like, you're closer, closer, and then you finally get it. It's like such a great feeling, right? That, like, okay, well, I was way off, and there was such a chasm to jump over, but then I kind of slowly kept fixing stuff, and slowly was picking up speed, and it's like cool. Now we took this, whatever it was, medical device, medical software, and it was like totally missing the mark. And to make the 502 changes would be impossible, but we just kind of kept adjusting, and it seems like a fun process, and kind of a trend that I'm getting here is a lot of communicating, right? Like, like you said, about unlike the publicity, like you said about the getting that client on podcasts, and I know that you've done almost 2000 podcasts, and I mean, I like, I like podcasting too, right? It's relaxing in a way, and it, but also kind of lights your brain up, but sometimes it, I like the pushback I've heard about podcasting, like, from any business owner, it's like, well, like, what's the point? It's, it's so time consuming, like, it doesn't always, like, lead to success every time, and so, like, what's your take on that, as far as, like, the podcasting, the publicity, knowing it's not all going to work, and sometimes having to do, like, a lot of volume, maybe.

Saul Marquez 21:38 Yeah, I will say that you've got to enjoy what you're going to do, so like, and that's the conversation we have with our clients all the time, right. It's like, if you don't enjoy podcasting, you shouldn't do it, you should actually, but if you see it as a valuable thing, then maybe find somebody in your organization that could enjoy and do it, because if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to stay with it, and consistency is key, right? So that's number one. We have clients where it doesn't work, because they don't want to do it, like for them, they'd rather write an article, you know, they don't want a podcast, but they're comfortable being on a panel at a conference, so, so you know, you got to trust yourself and do the things that you enjoy. That's that's what I'll start off by saying, right? If you don't enjoy it, don't do it, because there's other ways to slice the cake. Now, on podcasting as, as a marketing tactic, I will say there is definitely a way to make a podcast work for you, and, and I always like to share this about podcasts. Downloads are vanity, contacts and contracts are sanity, so you know, and so when you do a podcast, there's three camps. I'm just gonna lay this out. Okay, there's three camps on podcasters. Camp number one, you're a media company, and your business model is selling ads, so like, so essentially you should care about downloads, because that's your business. That's camp number one. Camp number two is business owners that run podcasts. Robert, you have a business. Your podcast supports your business. Same with me, and many of our listeners, that tends to be the biggest camp. What I find is that oftentimes people in this camp think they got to do what the media camp does and get a bunch of downloads. That's not true, and I'll tell you why in a second, but I'm going to tell you about the third camp now. The third camp is the hobbyists, so you just, you just love it. It's not a business, you just want to get out there, you want to learn, connect with people, fine. But you're doing it at your expense, and, and because you want to, good for you. Make it happen, but let's get back to the B2B camp, right? The B2B camp, you have a business, and you're using your podcast to support you. On this front, you have two sides of the funnel. Side number one is the guest, who you get on the podcast becomes a potential collaborator and a client, and side number two is the listener, the fastest ROI is with your guest, so if you align your podcast to be super interesting, you could create create opportunities to open up doors to new prospective clients, as well as nurture existing client relationships through the podcast, because you give them a thought leadership platform on the listener side, that's mid to long term ROI, and it's omnichannel. A lot of people think that they're going to start a podcast and drive leads through listenership. That's not, that's not necessarily the case. In fact, it's very likely not going to happen. But what you can do is now you take this podcast asset and you put it through what we. Call the content flywheel, and the content flywheel is is all the spokes on your marketing wheel. That podcast now becomes AEO SEO article, where you grab the transcript, it becomes a social post, it becomes little snippets that you give to your sales team to share with prospects in LinkedIn direct messages, or or Instagram or email, it then you take that and it, and it becomes an opportunity for PR and pod swaps, podcast swaps, because if you have a podcast, then you have an opportunity to do a pod swap with someone else, so you have currency right that helps you get get seen and recognize only when you activate this content flywheel will you be able to monetize the listener side of your podcast as a business, and that's why we say contacts and contracts are sanity and downloads are vanity.

Robert Plank 25:55 Nice, and it rhymes, you can almost do a wrap on it, and I'm right there with you, and yeah, that's what, yeah, beatboxing, etc. Yeah, and, but, yeah, it's, and it's like, I completely agree that that's like that's what a good podcast host and guests do, right? Like, like, we should both do it, like, after, like, about a week after the show, I'll be sending you a Google folder with the reels, the graphics, the swipes, the blog posts, all that stuff, and it's like, so few hosts and guests do it, and if we both do it with our own tools, I mean, that's amazing, isn't it? Because it's like you get all the backlinks, and then, as you mentioned, the, the, the AI SEO, where it's like, well, if you want to be known in the medical space, because you, you know, you have this, you know, this this device, and if you're only, if there's only your one website and one blog post, and what kind of like AI-assisted search results will show up? Probably not much, but if there's all this, you know, I was on Saul's podcast, and he's got his post, and he's got all these LinkedIn and TikTok, and I've got all kinds of things, and it's like you just did one show, and there's like 2050 pieces of content, all helpful, all linking back, all with your like name on it, and company name, and can easily be identified by AI. It's like, whoa, this guy saw, like, he knows what he's talking about. Now, on your, on your LinkedIn, you have the like the board advisories, and all that stuff. It's like, okay, this is much more like presence digital footprint, and the that trust you were talking about, right? It's you're not just one single web page, it's like it's all this stuff that all get kind of says similar, similar things, and all kind of reinforces that like you're part of this company, or you have this device, or you have this solution, and then, man, when it's time to get attention and get the get business, then that, that helps, and it helps with the getting, keeping the podcast going right, and getting better guests, and everything that comes with that, and as you say, some clients, some referrals, and then there's the audience, so it's like it's a lot to wrap our head around, but it's really important, right, if we want to be in business, we can't just have that good product. We have to get the word out and do the marketing, and so you've given us like such a masterclass in a bunch of different areas, and we're already over time, but that's okay. I'm enjoying speaking with you in our final few minutes. Do you think there might be a missing question that I should be asking you? I just don't know to ask you.

Saul Marquez 28:21 Yeah, I would say you've asked a lot of really great questions, Robert. Maybe the question that to ask is, you know, what? What should I not be doing in marketing? What should I be avoiding right now, and and the way I would answer that is, it depends on your strategy, and it depends on your audience, and we get bombarded with so many offers every single day from every angle, and it's very easy to get tempted by a lot of these offers because they seem interesting or hot or new or trendy, and the most important thing you could do in your marketing is avoid the things that don't get you to the end goal as fast as possible, and so the way you do that is again anchoring on your strategy, right, and so and so, if you don't know what to avoid, you're going to say yes to a lot of things that are going to slow you down, so that's that's what I would say is know what to say no to.

Robert Plank 29:37 I love it, know what to say no to, no that strategy, so that way you're not being pulled on these directions, your mission to focus on where you want to go, and so if someone says, "Man, this guy saw, he's got a lot figured out, he's reading some pages out of my diary, I know that he can help me. What are some next steps here?

Saul Marquez 29:55 Yeah, I mean, if anybody's curious and wants to work with us, feel free. To reach out outcomes rocket.com check out the stuff that we have there. We, we every quarter, we, we do an insight, two insight reports. We do a survey on B2B marketers, and we figure out what's going on in the different aspects of marketing. Our latest one was on PR sources of truth. We surveyed 811 b marketers and have pulled some really insightful things. One insight from that report that that boggled my mind is that only 6.1% of organizations are actually taking their PR and operationalizing it for sales use, like basically taking things from their PR and putting it on sales quotes, taking from their PR and creating messaging with it. Such a missed opportunity. When I see stuff like that, 6.1% that means I'm only competing against 6.1% If I'm doing it, I just.. what we like to.. what we love to do through these stats, Robert, and everybody with us is find those areas of sleepy opportunity, because in those areas of sleepy opportunity, where you find people asleep, that's where your biggest opportunities lie to take advantage of the market in a good way, right? Like, like I say that in a really good way, but man, it's so fun when you find these little opportunities, because that's what helps you make the difference, and that's what helps get you in. So, check out our insights. We do two a quarter, like I said. Our next one coming up, actually, Robert is on podcasts. We are, we have about 500 responses so far. We're shooting for 800 on podcast marketing, the state of podcast marketing in 2026 so teasing that one, it'll be available on the website by beginning of August, so not sure when this one will will post, Robert, but we'll make sure to make it available to your listeners, but outcomesrocket.com is the way where you should go.

Robert Plank 31:59 Very nice. Yeah, I love the concept of sleepy opportunity. It's like, if you say, well, I'm fat, I'm out of shape. What should I do? Should I have this crazy complex meal plan and get these injections and these pills? And then you might say, well, hey, just like take a start taking a walk every day, and then maybe if you get tired of that, like change it into a run. Like, just, there's a lot of things that in our personal lives and our business, we've got 71 and a half different daily tasks, and it's like, well, you can't pile on 20 new things, but you can say, hey, well, if my, if I'm not happy with the way that Messers is going, maybe I can look into podcasting, maybe I can look into taking some of the PR quotes and working them into the sales calls, it's like just like you know, kind of easing into things and making these small tweaks changes, and then there's the feedback loop. If doing that makes gives you a really good month, or if you can attribute certain sales to these new activities, like, hey, well, hey, I'll do more of that, and it's just, it's very like scientific method, right? You're just like running these little experiments, and if they work well, then repeat them, do them on a bigger scale. What a concept. But this is all just talk if we're trying to do it ourselves, and we don't have the help of Mr. Saul Marquez and his team at outcomesrocket.com Their approach is focused, evidence-based growth for med tech and health tech, and it's through this three phase framework: discover, define, and deliver. They want to ensure that every decision channel and investment is grounded in evidence and aligned to real business outcomes. So, if you want the implementation in addition to what we're talking about here, then you need to go and check out outcomesrocket.com, get yourself educated, go and check out all those many excellent interviews that Saul has been performing, and then go and click on that contact us button and get that conversation started with the good old team at outcomesrocket.com. But before I let you go, Mr. Saul, it's time for the scary part of the podcast, where I try to stump you. I try to put you on the spot by asking you about a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you. So, what comes to mind as far as a fun or interesting quote or lesson?

Saul Marquez 34:13 You know, one of my favorite quotes is, you are the average of your five closest peers, yeah. I love Jim Rohn, and I love that quote, yeah. I think you know it.

Robert Plank 34:30 Yeah, yeah, and you're;

Saul Marquez 34:31 You're familiar with this.

Robert Plank 34:32 and it's, it's so true, and it's, yeah, it's like if you're around a lot of negativity, it's what will rub off on you, so that, so maybe it's time to to get rid of some of the bad friends and find some new friends, so I love it. You're the average of his five closest friends, and maybe if they're getting you and your company as part of their circle, then that will get them to where they want to go. And if someone's saying, "This guy's salt, I want to do more of what he's talking about, I love the way that he thinks, then they need to get. In closer proximity with you.

Saul Marquez 35:02 That's it, you know, and some of our best clients are relationships where we learn from each other and we make each other better, you know, we push them on their marketing game and the sales game, they push us in other ways because we see them and the businesses that they're building, and these become partnerships that last, and so, yeah, that quote's very powerful. I share with my son, I got a nine year old son, and I always, he finishes the phrase, "Buddy, if you know you are who you hang out with, you are your average of, and he finishes "Five Closest Friends I Know, Dad, and it's so true, man. It's such a powerful way to shape your present and your future.

Robert Plank 35:44 Of course, and especially for kids, like that's a huge thing, where they say, whenever they like, you're all about the stuff, I know we're getting off on a change at the very end here, but like when they've done studies, like, like the book Freakonomics, they said, like, what makes for successful kids, and there were some family where the dad named one kid Winner and one named Loser, and then the guy who was winner, he was like a criminal drug addict in jail, and then the guy named Loser, he was like the police captain, they called him Lou, and they said, well, why, like, you know, I thought parents affected their kids, and they were like, well, it's mostly the friends that they make growing up, which is like such a, such a loaded statement, right? Because it's, it's so random, and when you're a kid, you kind of, you just kind of just end up in these friend groups, but then that ends up taking your, your life where it ends up, and so, yeah, it's like, I think that's that's really powerful to teach that concept to a kid, so that way they choose their friends wisely, because it definitely affects their future.

Saul Marquez 36:43 Totally; hey, so did so. Did this guy actually name his kids Winner and Loser? The story.

Robert Plank 36:50 Well, I mean, I've never verified it, but it's in the book Freakonomics. We should look that up, and;

Saul Marquez 36:55 We should, we should; that would be interesting. You'd be surprised at some names out there.

Robert Plank 37:00 Well, I think I mean Freakonomics, it's like put on by all these like college PhDs, co-wrote it, so like I'd expect it to be to be true, but you never know, right? I should go verify.

Saul Marquez 37:13 No, I was just curious, I was just curious.

Robert Plank 37:16 But either way, it makes a good story, right? And story.

Saul Marquez 37:19 I love the story.

Robert Plank 37:21 Yeah, me too. And I mean, as you know, in in podcasting and in sales, like stories are so important, and I can imagine how if some of these med tech companies, if they're kind of lost in the sauce, and they're just like talking about, like, well, what our device is 8.2 micro volts and worth 9000 hertz, and maybe they need someone like you to like kind of like add some fun, some magic, some storytelling in there, perhaps.

Saul Marquez 37:45 Yeah, you know, yeah. Hey, I was gonna ask you, what about Plank? Tell me about your last name.

Robert Plank 37:51 Oh, I mean, I don't, I honestly don't know. I need to look at it too.

Saul Marquez 37:54 Yeah.

Robert Plank 37:55 Yeah, I don't know, looking

Saul Marquez 37:56 I was thinking like Walk the Plank.

Robert Plank 37:58 I heard that kind of, yeah, I heard all like that when I was a kid. I heard Robert Plant, because it's, it's one letter off from the Rolling Stones musician, but it's.. I haven't put much thought into it. I am who I am.

Saul Marquez 38:14 Would you consider yourself a pirate?

Robert Plank 38:17 No, a pirate is kind of morally shady and does things illegally, so I'm not a pirate.

Saul Marquez 38:23 I like that. I like that. What would you.. what would you.. is it.. is it.. is it like.. are you a dreamer?

Robert Plank 38:31 Yeah, I think all entrepreneurs, business owners have to have that imagination. I can, I can.. yeah, I can kind of have big dreams and want to accomplish things, of course.

Saul Marquez 38:42 So, you would put the pirate on the plank and have him jump off.

Robert Plank 38:47 I guess, so.

Saul Marquez 38:48 Yeah, take over the ship and right the wrongs, right?

Robert Plank 38:52 Yeah, leadership. I'm all about making that change. Oh yeah.

Saul Marquez 38:54 Leadership, good working, good working. I like that. I like that.

Robert Plank 38:58 I'm just, I'm here to deplete you. And so the next step here, after after a couple of guys having fun, outcomesrocket.com, they turn healthcare complexity into measurable growth. Check them out, Mr. Saul Marquez. What a blast speaking with you. Thanks for being here.

Saul Marquez 39:14 My pleasure, Robert. Thanks, thanks for the opportunity. Good to be with everyone.