Gabriela Franco

The 𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔸𝕋 companies in Jim Collin’s book outperformed the market by a measure of 6.9❌ over 15 years. A key, incidental finding of their study is that these companies were guided by a level 5 leader – one with this paradoxical blend of a strong professional will and abiding humility. Forging strong character and an unconquerable spirit is much like shaping steel. Both take heat, pressure, steady hammering, sweat and compressive forces to form us into the person we were born to become. The enforcement of your will is one of your greatest responsibilities. Combined with a unique humility, a strong sense of will makes for the peak performance. It is one of the first things we begin to learn in life and is likely the last lesson we learn thoroughly, if ever. It’s this kind of paradoxical leadership – maintaining an intense professional will combined with a unique humility – that makes companies great. It’s not that these leaders don’t have an ego or some motivation borne out of self interest. Most are driven by incredible ambition; it’s just that this is ambition is for the success and endurance of the institution and not themselves. They strive to improve everything they touch so that greatness will endure. They are frantically propelled forward by an incurable need to produce results by adhering to inspired standards. And they are more plow horse than show pony, grinding with grit to get the team to peak performance. The Level 5 leader will always demonstrate a daily devotion to do whatever must be done to produce market leading results over a a sustained period, no matter how difficult and demanding. They will do this with a fanatical focus on lead measures. Today, let us each work to make the enforcement of will, tempered by humility, a permanent condition of our success. How do we use will to forge, shape and strengthen our character? Make an undeniable declaration you will succeed. Give yourself a direction and then act in that direction. Remember, there is no self-direction as great or words more powerful than, “I will!” With these words, there is #strength, conviction, depth, solidarity, decisiveness, clarity of focus, confidence and shear determination in the loud, ringing tone of their declaration. The words, “I will”, send an resounding message of endurance, triumph, of victory in the face of resistance, and tenacity to persevere until the very end. Every achievement is wrought from will. Make yours as strong as steel‼️

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CVS Caremark is wielding its money and influence in an attempt to buy the Governor’s veto. Let’s send a powerful message. As an army of pharmacy professionals, allies and activists we can’t let this happen. Whether you’re a California resident or not please consider sending a letter or sharing this post in support of PBM reform. Urge Governor to Sign SB 966 The California Pharmacists Association along with the California Chronic Care Coalition, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and the Los Angeles LGBT Center are fighting the PBMs/Health plans to save community pharmacy and they need our help. Despite a tremendous amount of opposition from the PBMs/Health plans, SB 966 cleared the Legislature without a single NO vote. Now, they are focusing their efforts on the Governor urging him to veto the bill. While the PBMs/Health plans have unlimited resources, what they don’t have is our commitment to patients. This is not just an independent pharmacy issue; pharmacies are closing all over the state including corporate chains. Every time a pharmacy closes, patients lose access, and pharmacists and technicians lose jobs. The PBMs/Health plans are claiming that this bill is just the greed of pharmacists wanting to charge more for medications. That is laughable. What they really want is to completely control the supply chain and move as many patients as possible to mail order severing the relationship between pharmacist and patient. This is an urgent matter; the Governor could act any day, and the opposition has direct access to him and will use their influence. We need volume. The last time we took on the PBMs, the Governor vetoed the bill – let’s fight hard to make sure this time he sides with patients and pharmacy! CVS Health American Pharmacists Association ASHP Dr. Maurice Shaw Bled Tanoe, PharmD, Lannie D. #pharmacy #Pharmacist #pharmacytechnician #pharmacylife #cvs #pharmacystudent https://lnkd.in/gsAZZtiy

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Why are sales teams and their customers more likely to die off too early unless they are in the 3% top closers club? If the top 3% of MedTech sales reps give doctors the best tools to improve health and save lives, why can’t better AI SaaS reps do the same thing? B2B SaaS products, when designed with the right vision and plan, save employees precious time and possibly their lives. Unfortunately, the sales process for selling B2B SaaS and MedTech are out of date and broken.  Selling both SaaS and MedTech takes too long and closed-won rates are at an all time low. Getting contracts signed can take months and even years depending on capital and operating budgets. Rising competition and better sales skills from your competition are killing your closed-won rate. Whether corporations, hospitals, or government contracts, closing deals can take 6 months up to 2 years to land a big deal. A mentor of mine recently said his 80% close rate is the result of the work he did 2 years ago and he’s working hard to improve his win% even higher. All closers want to close more deals. Innovative SaaS tech can do the same thing and the proof is far more subtle. Here’s my theory: Employees at tech companies used to walk to the water cooler, take exercise breaks during the day and even go on walks around the building. That’s the exception now and about 80+% of employees are stuck at their desks using sometimes 10+ apps and 3-7+ “Zooms" a day. I gained 30 pounds when I was chained to the desk selling products the old way. I learned a new way in 2020, lost 20 pounds and replaced it with muscle. Highly effective AI-enabled SaaS products save time and if used properly can mean spending less time sitting at the computer getting early onset of weight gain and other bad health outcomes which I won’t mention here. There is a MUCH BETTER WAY! Here’s 1 story on how I inspired a team of sales reps to hit their annual revenue goal in 6 months. They went into overdrive to save more lives and win a Beamer 6 series at the same time. Listen to hear how one Doctor with amazing vision and an incredible sales and development team around me made the difference in hitting the annual sales goal in 6 months. I named the product the Beamer. It's a technology for sending people, not patients home cancer-free by enabling doctors to eliminate the risk of missing left behind cancer cells that might have grown back into stage 3 or 4 disease. Bottom line: Selling technology at high closed-won rates is difficult and there is a much simpler way. I built a methodology to increase close rates month-over-month and reduce sales cycles. My goal is to make it easier for people to save lives and give employers and especially their sales teams more time back in their days so they can use their talents to be the legacy they were designed to be. Come join the 3% club. Close With 1 #CloseWith1 #CloseWithOne #SalesProcess #CEO #SalesCareer #ClosingDeals #PowerQuestions

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One of the worst tropes that has been propagated is that doctors “are not good at business” - I despise this one and it gets under my skin. A few things I am ABSOLUTELY sure of: - Reading/understanding an EKG is MUCH more difficult than reading/understanding a P&L or balance sheet - Managing a panel of thousands of complex patients who’s lives are literally dependent on your decisions, is much more challenging than managing the load of competing business interests - Persuading a patient or family to take charge of their health and make good medical decisions is much more challenging than persuading a potential business partner to work with you - Managing a clinical team of diverse and highly trained individuals is just as difficult as managing any other labor force Physicians possess intelligence, drive, passion, and a deep understanding of the actual PRODUCT, which is the sanctity of the patient-clinician relationship and encounter. In no other industry is the true subject matter expert barred from owning and operating the core entity in that field. Chefs own restaurants. Engineers own software companies. Architects and builders own contracting firms. Healthcare doesn’t happen without doctors. We need a revolution, a reneissance of leadership, a TAKE BACK OUR POWER moment in healthcare. This is what will lead to a fundamental shift in American healthcare.

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Health is not on the agenda. I wish one of the answers in last night's Vice Presidential debate went something like this: "what's your plan for healthcare, and will you guarantee people with pre-existing conditions will have coverage?" .... "Yes, people with pre-existing conditions will continue to have coverage. Yes, we have a healthcare plan (spend 30 seconds on it). Also we are going to invest in the overall health of our nation. Right now, our food system is built around chemical addiction, much like cigarettes. We are going to change that. The mental health of our kids is declining, and there are strong links to social media use at an early age, we are going to change that. We are going to invest in both healthcare and in health, that's our only path out of being the nation that spends the most on healthcare without achieving the best health outcomes". We spend 98% of our time in healthcare talking about healthcare. When healthcare exists so that we can have better health. We need to get to a minimum 50/50 ratio of talking points, discussions, and actual policies. Otherwise, we're always going to be trying to out-healthcare bad health. And that's a losing fight. We need to improve the demand side, not just the supply side. Healthcare AND health. We have to invest in both.

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ATTN: Medical Device and Pharma Reps: Things may not get better just yet with the economy and "side gigs" are finally a "thing." Most people start ours 1099 part-time without a conflict. Here's a link to chat if you have questions for me: https://lnkd.in/eudY8bBt #medreps, #worklifebalance #residualsmatter

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Here's something I'm stupidly proud of. We had a really cool product launch for a Spanish language version of our patient payment tool. The cool part of the story, aside from no one else doing this for Spanish-speaking patients, is one of our co-workers did all the translations himself so that the texts would be friendly and make sense -- AI ain't got shit on human language translations. And anyway, I ended up making this product launch video using Descript and Canva. Maybe I'll do a behind-the-scenes on how I pulled this together in about 15-20 hours of effort if people are interested? I'm not a video editor by trade, so I was really really proud of myself for this. #spanishtext #mobilepay #productlaunches #video #B2Bmarketing

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#IngredientCosts in #prescriptiondrugs - what's the right metric? That's a great question. Let's review. 💊 AWP = I think we can all pretty much agree that AWP is a inaccurate metric for establishing actual acquisition costs of drugs. The joke in the industry is that it stands for "Ain't What's Paid." It's allegedly a markup of 20% on WAC or wholesale acquisition cost. Furthermore, generics can actually be discounted up to 98% the cost of AWP when all on and off invoice discounts and rebates are said and done. 💊 WAC = WAC might be a little better, maybe, at least on brand drugs. But not on generics. Percent off from wholesalers to pharmacies can be widely variable on generics as well. 💊 NADAC = (Full disclosure, I worked on the NADAC in the past.) NADAC is probably better than AWP and WAC, at least with Brands. Brands are usually with NADAC about WAC minus 1-6% (dependent upon class of trade of the pharmacy and/or their size). But again, generics are all over the place, and NADACs can vary widely to actual acquisition costs. There really isn't a great correlation between NADAC on generics and the actual drug price to the pharmacy. Not all pharmacies participate in NADAC, and NADAC pricing does not show off invoice rebates and discounts, so it's not the actual price the pharmacy paid either. Not all drugs have a NADAC, either. 💊 ASP = Average Sales Price. Not terrible, but only is for J code drugs or drugs that can be used in the medical benefit, put out quarterly by CMS. Doesn't really solve the problem of retail community practice actual drug costs for the pharmacy, after discounts, rebates, and all the other jazz. So, what's the BEST solution then? 💊 AAC = Actual Acquisition Cost. It clears out all the smoke and mirrors and clearly states what the pharmacy actually pays for the drug - this is really critical on both generics AND brands too - as reimbursements on brands by big 3 PBMs has been BELOW a pharmacy's actual acquisition cost, and this is what is driving over 2000 independent pharmacies out of business this year alone thus far. What do we use at Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, PBC? AAC. Yes, what we're showing you is actually what we actually paid for the drug. No off invoice rebates or discounts or any of that jazz. That and we make sure before we put a drug on our drug list that we have it available at our Actual Acquisition Cost to pharmacy team ups, both with Costplusdrugs.com as well as teamcubancard.com. No WAC, AWP or NADAC. Just what we paid, period. It's time to start using actual acquisition cost of drugs and get all the gobbleygook out of the way. (I'll save my opinion on drug rebates for another post and another day....) #pharmacy

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Google My Business just may be the most important new patient acquisition channel you have as a chiropractor. Yes, that’s a bold statement. And that is precisely why you need to understand how to optimize your listing and make it easy for Google to send traffic (aka future patients) your way. With hundreds of high-intent actions like phone calls and website clicks at stake, it’s critical that you have your Google My Business page set up now for your future success. It’s estimated that nearly 50% of searches on Google have local intent. Over the past 30 days, our Smart Chiropractor members have received nearly 200,000 views of their GMB listings, which has led to over 9,000 new patient leads (calls or clicks). Learn everything you need to know about GMB for chiropractors including: 3 Steps to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing for Chiropractors 1. Confirm Your Practice Information on Your Google My Business Listing 2. Upload High-Quality Images to Your Google My Business Listing 3. Post at Least 1x a Week to Your Google My Business Listing The 4 Primary Types of Google My Business Posts 1. What’s New 2. Events 3. Offers 4. Products Let's go! https://bit.ly/3IjqtnP

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Google My Business just may be the most important new patient acquisition channel you have as a chiropractor. Yes, that’s a bold statement. And that is precisely why you need to understand how to optimize your listing and make it easy for Google to send traffic (aka future patients) your way. With hundreds of high-intent actions like phone calls and website clicks at stake, it’s critical that you have your Google My Business page set up now for your future success. It’s estimated that nearly 50% of searches on Google have local intent. Over the past 30 days, our Smart Chiropractor members have received nearly 200,000 views of their GMB listings, which has led to over 9,000 new patient leads (calls or clicks). Learn everything you need to know about GMB for chiropractors including: 3 Steps to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing for Chiropractors 1. Confirm Your Practice Information on Your Google My Business Listing 2. Upload High-Quality Images to Your Google My Business Listing 3. Post at Least 1x a Week to Your Google My Business Listing The 4 Primary Types of Google My Business Posts 1. What’s New 2. Events 3. Offers 4. Products Let's go! https://bit.ly/40qJBdI

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EP 224 | Reducing Friction in Lead Gen Forms for Better Conversions #medtech #leadgeneration #marketingstrategies #growthlevers #healthcaremarketing

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The US allows direct to consumer advertising by pharmaceutical industry. I propose no change to this law. However, I propose that our public healthcare system spend the same marketing budget as the pharmaceutical industry on patient education. And, your marketing budget and marketing channels must be made public. Why? Because your R&D and your sales are subsidized by my tax dollars. And if you advertise to doctors who prescribe more because of your ads then you are responsible for tracking patient data (all of which is already done) and report patient outcomes based on your profits. Now, everyone's incentives are aligned - patient, doctor, government, and pharma. Other than that, have at it.

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Growth is back — despite a turbulent economy and looming election. After years of cost-cutting across healthcare, I’m bullish on the next 18 months. Healthcare delivery dollars are being earmarked for growth initiatives. A focus on revenue generation is on the horizon. Instead of searching outside their business for expansion opportunities via mergers and acquisitions, folks are leaning in to organic growth to acquire new patients and convert existing patients to more services. As one health system leader recently shared with me, “We are going to grow by doubling down on our existing business. There won’t be a big cash outlay or M&A in the immediate future. We are focusing on our patients.” So, why the shift? And why now? Some observations from my recent conversations with industry leaders:   📈 Operating margins have rebounded: Margins are improving and there’s money to spend again, fueling a shift from cost cutting to investment in acquisition. While 2023 saw nearly half of health systems operating in the red, reports from the first half of this year show a rebound in margins to the level needed to put dollars toward growth. The challenge here is largely in the rewiring of leadership, moving them away from a cost-cutting mindset and reorienting around investments that drive growth and ROI (after three years of the opposite). 🙁 Expense control has been detrimental to patients: Private equity firms are now at the helm of nearly 10% of privately-owned hospitals in America. It’s a similar story each time: firm buys healthcare enterprise, firm assesses where fat can be trimmed, firm cuts costs across marketing and engagement tools ... and patient experience is sacrificed. One PE-owned medical group told me recently that their digital outreach tool was stripped back post-acquisition, so they deferred to canned approaches. As a result, their care gap closure rates plummeted and outcomes suffered, while patients sought care elsewhere and physicians began to leave. The data reveals how expense control decisions have actually harmed outcomes and retention, precipitating a swing of the pendulum back toward growth. ⏸ The government has cracked down on M&A: M&A used to be the answer for growth, but it's a less viable option under the current administration. The FTC has interfered with a handful of multimillion-dollar acquisition plans, like those driven by Novant and John Muir while it’s increased its power via legislative responses to halt planned mergers like Sanford and Fairview’s. Health system leaders are tired of the frustrating dead ends and stall-outs. This might sound like optimism, but it’s not unfounded. The data and the real conversations I’m having bear it out: what is good for the patient is good for revenue is good for the health enterprise. With organic growth in the forecast, there will be no shortage of opportunities to increase market share through differentiation, i.e. guiding patients more thoughtfully to the care they need.

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"Thrilled to be part of the final webinar in the 'Road to the Silver Economy' series! Join us on September 17 for an engaging discussion on health, work, and innovative approaches to longevity and aging. Don't miss out—register now!

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