Heath Fletcher (00:13)
Hello, welcome to the Healthy Enterprise podcast. If you're a return listener, thank you for joining us again. And if it's your first time, welcome. I appreciate you for being here. My guest today is Michele Hart. She is an accomplished senior marketer with 15 plus years of experience driving impactful campaigns for national and global brands and is currently working in the nonprofit sector as the director of marketing communications for BostonSight
That is an organization that restores sight for individuals with corneal diseases and dry eyes. This should prove to be insightful. Excuse the pun, but ⁓ let's have a chat with Michele.
Michele, hi, how are you? Thank you for joining me today. I've been looking forward to chatting with you and ⁓ yeah, welcome to this episode.
Michele Hart (01:06)
Hi Heath, thanks for having me.
Heath Fletcher (01:09)
So why don't you start with doing a little introduction of yourself and tell us about your professional journey and where you've gotten to now.
Michele Hart (01:20)
Sure. ⁓ So Michele Hart, I'm currently the Director of Marketing Communications at a nonprofit called BostonSight . I have been in healthcare marketing for about 25 years. ⁓ And I actually studied anthropology in college in journalism. Yeah, it's an interesting, interesting trajectory. ⁓ Anthropology has actually been incredibly useful in the marketing field because you're really taught to
Heath Fletcher (01:39)
I was looking at that.
Michele Hart (01:50)
you know, pay attention and observe how people ⁓ behave and interact. So from a marketing perspective, it's highly valuable. And then I went on and got a master's in writing and I started in a corporate communications company ⁓ or excuse me, role that got merged with marketing in this company when I was in 20s. And that's just how I ended up in marketing. There was no particular rhyme or reason to it.
Heath Fletcher (01:57)
Yeah, no kidding.
I think that's how most of us end up accidentally landing in marketing.
Michele Hart (02:22)
Right? I know you could have the best laid plans for where you think your career is going to go. And then somehow it just keeps taking these twists and turns. ⁓ I really liked it, you know, and that was a for-profit company. But then I moved into nonprofit and, you know, aside from the obvious things like pay tends to not be as high in nonprofits as for-profits, ⁓ mission-based work is really, really meaningful. And so I've been in nonprofit
you know, the majority of my career. And including a stint for about 12 years or so where I ran my own association management business, which was for nonprofits. Yeah, back in the day, there was not quite as much flexibility ⁓ for mothers or parents, working parents. So at the time, I had to find a way to have more flexibility with my work schedule. ⁓
And so I started a small business. Again, it was kind of by accident. I had taken 10 months off from my career to be home with my first baby. And ⁓ somebody asked me to run the marketing and operations for their ⁓ association. It was a small medical association here in New England. I said, sure. And then a board member on that association was a board member on another and asked me to run this other association.
and then a board member on that one was a board member on another. And you can see where this is going. Before I knew it, I was in LLC and I had an employee that worked for me. ⁓ And I could make my own hours. I was only committed to being on site for particular events. ⁓ So ⁓ I don't recommend working with your babies at home, but it gave me the opportunity to create a flexible schedule.
Heath Fletcher (04:12)
It was like a true fractional executive role you had going on there with multiple roles for multiple organizations. Yeah, interesting. And so then ⁓ what happened after that? Then at what point did you get involved with BostonSight ?
Michele Hart (04:22)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, so when my youngest child went to kindergarten, really didn't want to be in the association management business. It worked for me. But I didn't want to be dealing with all of the payroll and all the operations part of actually running a business, the financial aspects. So I sold that off and I actually started working for an autism ⁓ research organization that's here in the BostonSight area.
And I was there for a couple of years before I moved to BostonSight site. And I started in BostonSight site in February of 2020. And you can all guess what happened two weeks later. We were all working from home. ⁓ Which, you know, it was challenging, but I will say the benefit to that as a new employee is you really get to know your coworkers very quickly because everybody's
kind of, we got to know each other's dogs, we got to see everybody's homes, what their spaces looked like. ⁓ And we did, we became a tight-knit team really fast.
Heath Fletcher (05:36)
He got very familiar very quick, didn't it? There was no going around. There was no hiding the person walking past in their underwear. There's no there's just knowing. I don't think the backgrounds only think we're even working that well back then were they they were
Michele Hart (05:38)
Yeah.
weren't
and I had three kids at home all doing remote school, right? One was in elementary. So he's like, know, they're elementary kids are all excited to talk on screen. The high school kids are barely awake. ⁓ You know, I remember being late to a few meetings because I'm trying to get them all set up and go and everyone was just wonderful about it. ⁓ You had to do what you had to do.
Heath Fletcher (06:16)
It makes me think of that BBC clip where there was somebody speaking, a very influential or very, an expert in some field in the back, the door of his office opens and now in comes his toddler and then his wife crawls in on her hands and he's trying to drag the child. Little does she know she's on the back.
Michele Hart (06:37)
That was fantastic. Just, you know, all business and then the baby rolls in, in her little walker. And I was so glad, I know this is, I was so glad it happened to a man because what I really discovered during that COVID time was, ⁓ you know, not to generalize, but the majority of stay at home parents still tend to be mothers. I think it gave the parents who work, ⁓
Heath Fletcher (06:53)
Yeah.
Michele Hart (07:06)
out of the home a really good sense of how challenging it is to raise children, you know, and to be home with them and try to accomplish anything.
Heath Fletcher (07:16)
Exactly.
is a good example. And for so many people, it became a real true understanding of yourself and how you can manage yourself at home and working. And it's not as easy as it sounds. And so at some point we all got to decide, well, do I prefer working at home now or am I going back to the office? And now we're seeing kind of a little bit of hybrid of everything all over the place. Like some people are working two days in the office with the rest of week at home and...
So it seems to be we're a little more fluid as more than we used to be.
Michele Hart (07:51)
Absolutely. it was hard for me to go back into an office because when I ran my own business, I had my office at home for 10 years, 10 plus years. ⁓ I did love the impromptu conversations I would have with folks and walking around the office. So that's good. And now I work hybrid. I work a couple of days in the office, a couple of days home. ⁓ that's perfect.
Heath Fletcher (08:20)
What drew you to BostonSight site? Did you know about the company before you joined them?
Michele Hart (08:27)
I actually, did not know about them and they are only about 18 miles or so away from where I live. ⁓ You know, it's a niche product that we provide, product in medical treatment that I'll talk about in a minute. But what drew me to them was the opportunity. They had not had a communications or a marketing ⁓ role in, gosh, a number of years. So I love coming in.
to a company and sort of building that marketing function from the ground up, creating all the foundational pieces, auditing all of the materials and taking a look at where they are. ⁓ And so I was able to do that. It was a really great opportunity. And now that I've been there five years, I'm having to sort of shift my mindset a little bit. The foundational stuff is done. So where do we go from here?
Heath Fletcher (09:20)
Good question. I'm sure you're going to answer that.
Michele Hart (09:24)
I will, but I will only tell you about BostonSight . For over 30 years and originally founded as BostonSight Foundation for . We have a patent on a scleral lens. So a scleral lens is an oversized, it's a contact lens, but it doesn't touch the cornea. It only touches the white part of your eye, which is called the sclera. Yeah, it vaults over the cornea. And so it creates this like little bowl.
Heath Fletcher (09:27)
Yeah, absolutely.
Michele Hart (09:53)
where you put solution into it and then place it on the eye. And it improves vision, but it also really reduces pain and discomfort for people with ocular surface disease or corneal disease. ⁓ We are a small company, about 50 people, but in our location in Needham, we have an onsite medical clinic with optometrists and ophthalmologists. We have an onsite manufacturing lab.
We produce more than 40,000 scleral lenses a year out of our little lab. ⁓ We have an education and research team, and then we also have a commercial scleral lens, which is still nonprofit. Any revenue from that entity goes back into BostonSight site, the parent organization, and that funds patient care and research. ⁓
scleral. Rolls off the tongue. S C L E R A L.
Heath Fletcher (10:55)
Let's scleral.
Michele Hart (10:56)
Yeah, white of your eye is the sclera.
Heath Fletcher (10:58)
Gotta see it.
No, see, did not know that. that's why we learn these things. People are going scleral. I've never heard of that before. Now, who knew that there was ⁓ this particular lens? How did this come to be? it obviously ocular ⁓ malfunction of some sort is discovered by an optometrist, more or less, typically? Is that how you determine
Michele Hart (11:25)
much.
can't recall off the top of my head the initial person who sort of created this lens, but the purpose is that so the cornea is the most sensitive part of the human body and if you are cornea, have you ever heard of keratoconus? It's where the cornea kind of bulges out into like a cone shape so the light cannot refract properly.
Heath Fletcher (11:47)
Right.
Michele Hart (11:50)
on the eye and your vision is distorted. So that's a visual issue, but also as the cornea distorts, it can be uncomfortable. So you cannot put a soft contact lens or a hard contact lens directly on the cornea. It's not going to solve the problem. It could cause a lot of discomfort. So the scleral lens with this fluid reservoir and the preservative free solution that goes inside it, really, again, it sort of creates a faux cornea, like you're creating a new shape.
but the healing properties and the comfort properties are immense. ⁓ Some of our patients have ⁓ issues where the inside of their eyelid feels like sandpaper and you blink, I think something like 19,000 times a day. So can you imagine the pain for that? They put a scleral lens in and it's immediate relief.
Heath Fletcher (12:33)
God.
Wow, and so that doesn't necessarily have to be a prescription lens. It could be non-prescription and it's really literally just to protect the eye from the eyelid.
Michele Hart (12:56)
Yes, it can be from the eyelid or environmental debris. Occasionally, patients have an eyelid that will not shut, so a scleral lens can protect the eye surface. We've actually also, for ALS patients who are using medications to reduce mucus secretions as they're progressing in their ALS diagnosis,
their eyes get very dry. And so we found that ALS patients can continue to use their eye ⁓ tracking system for communication longer by using a scleral lens. It's really wonderful to see.
Heath Fletcher (13:36)
Is that right?
We talked earlier too, you said for stem cell transplant patients who suffer from dry eyes also can take advantage of this as well,
Michele Hart (13:49)
Absolutely,
we see a lot of ⁓ ocular GVHD, which is graft versus host disease patients ⁓ in our clinic.
Heath Fletcher (13:57)
Yeah. And Sjögren's I was reading.
Michele Hart (14:00)
Yeah, yes, Jogrens.
Heath Fletcher (14:02)
And which is a very, not a very common thing, but I know somebody that actually has that, family member. And suffers greatly from dry eye because it's the lack of all ⁓ secretions, right? Saliva and fluids in the eyes. So very uncomfortable. So these are really amazing solutions for people. And it is really, it's a discomfort thing. Like it's about quality of life, right?
Michele Hart (14:30)
⁓
100%. We ⁓ surveyed about 2000 of our patients last year and the percent of those folks who responded 96 % of them said they had improved quality of life because of their ⁓ scleral lens. This is our specialty scleral lens. have two sort of two avenues. We have our pros treatment, which is more for severe
the most challenging cases out there. And that's what we do in our clinic in the BostonSight area every day. And then our commercial scleral lens, which is BostonSight Scleral, ⁓ that's used by optometrists worldwide. We're in about 40 countries. ⁓ It can also be used for more severe treatment, but in that case, it's really practitioner capability. ⁓ It tends to be used more frequently for folks. I don't want to say less challenging because to the individual.
their condition is challenging, but from a diagnostic perspective, perhaps a little less challenging than what we see every day here in the BostonSight clinic.
Heath Fletcher (15:37)
What was the second one again you said?
Michele Hart (15:39)
That's
BostonSight site scleral. That word again. That's the commercial lens.
Heath Fletcher (15:44)
Thanks, Glero.
Oh, that's a commercial lens. Okay. Yeah. Oh, interesting. so how have you, so you came on, it must have been early days in the company because you said it's been around for how long?
Michele Hart (15:59)
It's been around for 30 years. So it was not early days in the company, but early days for getting a marketing function.
Heath Fletcher (16:01)
30 years.
Right. okay. Right. And when you, so when you arrived there and you come in as the marketing person, what were the challenges that you experienced to get ⁓ out of the gate? Yeah. Because this was in what year was that then that you came in? So what, yeah, what kind of challenges did you face when you arrived, COVID aside, obviously that's a big one, but.
Michele Hart (16:23)
2020.
Well, there were a number of them. ⁓ Foundationally, the branding was a little bit all over the place. I think the organization was really trying to figure out who ⁓ they were or are because of the expansion of the research. We partner on clinical trials and such with ⁓ pharmacies, excuse me, pharmacological companies. ⁓
this commercial product had been being sold for a couple of years, but they were really struggling to figure out where the commercial product fit with this treatment model that we did in our clinic, right? Because as the commercial lens continued to become more complex and continued to grow in its capabilities, was that going to eat away at our business for the pros treatment that we do in our clinic? Right. ⁓
So they had to make some really big decisions there. And that was part of what I helped with was, you we really needed to own the fact that the PROS treatment, which by the way, PROS stands for prosthetic replacement, the ocular surface. Yes. again, that's for the most challenging cases. And there's only about 20 doctors in the world who are PROS fellows. We train them.
Heath Fletcher (17:41)
That was my next question.
Michele Hart (17:52)
And they're all at tertiary eye care centers because you have to have an ophthalmologist, you have to have an optometrist that's trained, and you need all of the administrative support that a tertiary eye care hospital can provide. we have pros fellows at ⁓ Johns Hopkins, at Baylor, ⁓ know, Weill Cornell Medical Center out at UCSF, et cetera. ⁓
We had to own the fact that this PROS treatment is really for those most challenging cases because scleral lenses are becoming more available and becoming more widely known. You don't need the most aggressive treatment for somebody who has a less severe case of, for instance, keratoconus or ocular GVHD. And there's a financial impact as well to both the patient and the provider. ⁓ So the commercial scleral lens really let us scale up the
the business. The goal is to ensure that people can have access to a scleral lens anywhere in the world. That's what we're trying to accomplish. And, ⁓ you know, we do a lot of that not only through the sales of our scleral lens, but education for practitioners and ensuring they know how to fit these lenses.
Heath Fletcher (19:07)
So yeah, so the commercial ends, I'm understanding now. you're selling business to business in that sense. You're selling directly to ophthalmologists, you said? Optometrists. And they're doing the fitting and the training to the patients and doing the client care. Exactly. right. And so then you train them.
Michele Hart (19:18)
Yep, an optometrist.
Heath Fletcher (19:37)
to ⁓ fit the lens and get the lens going. Okay, I get it now. Me too.
Michele Hart (19:43)
We do a little bit of B to B to C ⁓ because not all doctors, not even all optometrists know about scleral lenses. So even having patients advocate for themselves can help drive business, but also it's really about ensuring the patient knows what options exist.
Heath Fletcher (20:02)
Right, because if a patient goes to their ophthalmologist or ophthalmologist and says, heard about this product, ⁓ that's a great thing. That's great for marketing because the customers are coming to the doctor saying, this is what I want. And ⁓ that would encourage that doctor to then explore that opportunity. And then, then are you training them? Are you also helping them market that product on their behalf? Is it kind of like a, is it that kind of relationship?
Michele Hart (20:32)
You know, we initially tried something like that and found that was challenging. do provide anytime we bring a new practitioner on board, we announce them on our social channels. They are listed on a provider directory that we host on our websites. And we do provide them with some content that they can use on their website. That's been sort of, mean, SEO optimized. You can take that for what it's worth these days with AI summaries and such, but ⁓ just trying to give them the
correct information to use to explain what a scleral lens is. ⁓
Heath Fletcher (21:12)
And so that's a great addition. mean, that's a great way to expand the reach. And now you can do it in, how long did it take to expand to multiple countries?
Michele Hart (21:25)
So we, ⁓ it is, it can be. There's a lot of, ⁓ you know, with each country has their own, ⁓ you know, standards. like it's called CE and, ⁓ you know, you have to wait for all of these approvals and processes to go through. But we use distributors in other countries for the most part. ⁓
Heath Fletcher (21:27)
Was that a difficult process?
standards. ⁓
Michele Hart (21:53)
But we are partnered with Moorfield's Eye Hospital, which is part of the National Health Service in the UK. So we provide the, manufacturing our lenses on site there. We are partnered with LV Prasad Eye Institute, which is a very large eye institute in India, and they manufacture our lenses, you know, according to our standards there. And then we have a distributor that works with us through Latin America and some ⁓ Middle Eastern countries.
Heath Fletcher (22:20)
Wow, amazing. And so that part of that growth was since you've been on board with BostonSight.
Michele Hart (22:21)
Yeah.
Yes. And my boss, who is the chief business development officer, she actually started two months before me. So the two of us really were like hand in hand working together to try to bring everything up to speed. ⁓ So we have a great relationship.
Heath Fletcher (22:43)
And so when you're of course marketing to the client and marketing to a business, it's a different approach. And how did you navigate that? What was the way? And was the commercial already operational when you came on board?
Michele Hart (23:00)
It was operational and it had been very much a ⁓ sort of grassroots effort. think that team that was working on it did a fabulous job because they were not marketers. There was an account manager and a product developer essentially. ⁓ But one of the things I did was take, I had mentioned this earlier, audit everything that they had. Materials, website, I looked at all the channels they were on. I think the number one thing I tell marketers is,
reduce the channels where you're at because it's almost always too many. So I'm a marketing generalist and I have been my whole career, which I love. You sometimes I feel like a Jack of all trades master of none, but I like to see the big picture and I can connect the dots between operations strategy, content, digital, et cetera. In small companies like BostonSight site, ⁓ you have to be a generalist. There's no getting around.
I can't spend my whole day working on email campaigns. ⁓ And so in that case, you have to optimize efficiency and that is key for reducing where you are and making the most of the channels that you want to be on. ⁓ We found, you we had a Twitter account. We absolutely did not need Twitter or X. ⁓ Our doctors are in the clinic. They are not looking at their Twitter feed all day.
Um, zoom, you know, we reduced our, our social channels, I think by half, um, we, we did the website, um, always important if it hasn't been looked at in a long time, even as a nonprofit, you have got to be directing people to your website. I've heard several times from folks that websites aren't that important. It blows my mind. I mean, that's the place you need to drive people to get more information about you. Um,
Heath Fletcher (24:53)
Exactly.
Michele Hart (24:54)
I consider it one of the most important parts of your marketing strategy. ⁓
Heath Fletcher (25:02)
It's really the destination. It's where else are you going to send them? Right? mean, you got to send them somewhere. And so the website is the perfect place to send everybody. It matter what channel you found them on and you can send them from one channel into a very specific place on your website. I mean, it just seems ridiculous to not. Where else would you go? I don't understand. Would you send them to...
Michele Hart (25:26)
I was at a company prior that wanted to keep sending everybody to our social pages. And ⁓ I think that there was somebody there who was really stuck on the likes that remember. ⁓
Heath Fletcher (25:37)
⁓ no.
So yeah, doesn't ⁓
Michele Hart (25:45)
Exactly. The vanity metrics, right? Pretty useless overall. ⁓
Heath Fletcher (25:51)
Yeah, you can't sell anything on a light.
Michele Hart (25:54)
No, exactly. So, yeah, so we reviewed all of that. And one of the things that I do, so I also manage our PR and I still believe in press releases. I'm a little old school that way. know I've been around a while, but I strongly believe in them, not more so for actually getting your internal team on board with what you're trying to communicate. when we were launching a new product,
Heath Fletcher (26:09)
I do too.
Michele Hart (26:23)
It was the best way to distill what the CEO, what the product developer, what the chief business development officer and what I, from a PR perspective, thought were the most important parts. This is a great place to let everybody put in every thought they have, right? And then you can lead it down to the most important points. Because if you start letting all of those other roles contribute to your brochures, your website copy,
That's where you end up with, have you ever seen that picture of the pizza with the Turkey and the every M &Ms on it, where you end up with something that everybody contributed to and is absolutely meaningless. So for me personally, I found actually letting them have the opportunity to talk about everything they want to in the press release. I'm not keeping it in the press release because when it's there though, they can start to see how muddy it is. okay, right. Let's pull this out.
Heath Fletcher (27:03)
Yeah.
Michele Hart (27:20)
and then we can clean it up and get a better ⁓ handle on what it is we're trying to communicate out.
Heath Fletcher (27:26)
I think that's a point because it's talking about you can't be everything to everybody all the time. And every time you put out a message, you can't say all the things that we do and how great we are. because you're not really speaking to anyone at that point, you're speaking to everyone. then you might miss the person who you really want to hear the message may not hear it.
Michele Hart (27:51)
I'll tell you, nonprofits are notorious for doing that because we're also marketing to donors and they're like, well, everyone's a donor. Well, they are, but not everyone's going to care about your cause, do humans have the bandwidth to care about every cause. you focus on the right people, you're going to be much more successful.
We actually, for the first time, outsourced some of our market research to a small firm this year, and it was wildly helpful. One, were able to ⁓ talk with customers and non-customers of ours, ⁓ and we thought that that would be really helpful to have an outside company do that so that people could really feel free to speak.
about what they thought about a BostonSight site and our products and services. ⁓ this small company came back with a 75 page document showcasing all of our personas, ⁓ what each area was looking for as far as like what they needed to maybe move the needle a little in this direction or in that direction. And that's stuff we've been wanting to do, but just didn't have the resources in-house to do them.
Yeah. So that's also part of that, you know, optimize efficiency, work smarter, not harder is knowing how to outsource something. That's a bit, that was a big lift for us and they accomplished it in probably six weeks. It was incredible.
Heath Fletcher (29:26)
Yeah, it's an important thing you're saying is that you can't always do everything in-house as an organization. Not only is it, you just don't have the capacity, or sure, it's a priority for a period of time, but if something else comes up, it's the first thing that gets pushed aside, right? Yeah. But it also, like you said, gives a very objective, an outsource gives a very objective perspective. they're looking at
your company and your messaging from the outside in. Whereas when you're in it every day all the time, you kind of are only seeing certain things. And I think getting that outside perspective is very helpful. It's really kind of gives you a fresh outlook and says, ⁓ I don't think I ever thought of it that way. You know, and, sometimes companies do need that because they do get a little complacent in the way their messaging is going. And then just having that little sort of like, I've been a mirror shown at you to say,
Here, this is what it looks like. I it's great. It's very valuable. Yeah.
Michele Hart (30:31)
It takes the emotion out of it too. As somebody who'd been working on the messaging for the past five years. Like the last thing I want to hear is somebody say, that ad was absurd or whatever. You know, I mean, have a thick skin. could take it, but it's nice to have the emotion pulled aside and then just get the results. So that's helpful.
Heath Fletcher (30:50)
⁓ don't tell a creative that
Michele Hart (30:52)
Yeah.
Heath Fletcher (30:54)
They get very emotional when it comes to that. I don't like that picture. That was not very good.
Michele Hart (31:00)
I know. And you know, if there's one place where everybody in your organization has an opinion, it's on marketing, right?
Heath Fletcher (31:06)
my God. At some point, everyone, doesn't matter what level you're at, which position in the C-suite, everyone becomes a logo designer.
Michele Hart (31:16)
Yes. Yep. Or they say, let's just make the logo bigger.
Heath Fletcher (31:21)
⁓ my god. think we have that on a t-shirt somewhere.
Michele Hart (31:27)
Yeah, you haven't really been in marketing until you've heard that.
Heath Fletcher (31:30)
Exactly.
Particularly on the banner of the website. It must be bigger.
Michele Hart (31:36)
It's too funny. ⁓
Heath Fletcher (31:40)
Do
you, you know, little on that note, do you find that or have you found maybe in your career, not necessarily where you're at now, where sometimes the, you know, marketing is one of these things that's like, well, we got to have marketing, that organizations or companies don't always align, because you mentioned strategy and planning and
goals and all those things that they don't necessarily align all those things with their marketing and sales. Cause sometimes those things get very siloed. got a sales department and you got a marketing department and do you find sometimes there's a disconnect.
Michele Hart (32:25)
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, some things that are really important is, especially from the product development side, ⁓ you're trying to stay ahead of competitors or what's coming out, you want to have, you know, of course, we think our lenses is the greatest lens is an excellent lens. but there can be some features, for example, that well,
are wonderful, you have to take a look at how many people in the market would actually be able to use that feature. So for example, we provided a feature that required a secondary piece of equipment, which we learned only in Latin America, eight or so doctors had. And we knew this because we had talked to the equipment supplier. So
Was it worth, is it worth the investment in time to try to introduce that feature into the Latin American market when only potentially eight customers would be able? Yeah. No, absolutely.
Heath Fletcher (33:26)
Wow. That's
valuable information to have, Yeah.
Michele Hart (33:30)
And
so that's exactly where product development, marketing and sales all have to be really talking to each other. ⁓ You know, because we can market as much as we want, but do you remember the phrase you can't put, ⁓ it's like putting lipstick on a pig. Not that our product was the pig, it was an excellent product. ⁓ But you know, if there's nobody to sell to or it's just not a useful product,
Heath Fletcher (33:48)
Yeah.
Michele Hart (34:00)
You can't do anything with that.
Heath Fletcher (34:02)
It comes back to the pigs don't need lipstick.
Michele Hart (34:05)
Exactly.
They're beautiful the way they are.
Heath Fletcher (34:09)
Lipstick's better used somewhere else. ⁓ Yeah, it's a good point. The departments need to communicate and they need to know that, especially now. I I get it. There was a time when a lot of these areas were disconnected. ⁓ But now in modern marketing, everything is connected.
All the data is connected and if your data isn't connected, if your sales and your marketing data aren't aligned and your product information and your assessments of the market assessments, nothing is aligned and the data is not connected, you don't really know where you're going. You're kind of flying blind.
Michele Hart (35:04)
Yeah, that's exactly right. ⁓ You know, we have so many tools at our disposal, even, you know, some free tools, you know, for nonprofits, I always ⁓ remind folks as well that ask any software vendor or any vendor in general, if they have a nonprofit discount, you know, we do use Canva for some of our stuff and we have a free pro account because we are a nonprofit. Yeah, our CRP.
Yeah, absolutely. Our CRM system, we have a nonprofit discount. That is incredibly helpful for ⁓ us. Because nonprofits, we still have to drive revenue, right? We can't have a business without revenue, but we are heavily mission focused. You we're not reporting to shareholders, but ⁓ our stakeholders are our board, they're our employees, they're the people that we are serving. And to be able to run a successful business, you have to have revenue.
Heath Fletcher (36:02)
Absolutely. And it doesn't mean to say you can't make more revenue. I mean, there is a bit of a disconnect to it that a nonprofit shouldn't make any money. But I think that's a fallacy. I think that's a bit of a myth. mean, the more money you make, the more you can invest back into the company.
Michele Hart (36:24)
Yeah, exactly. You know, we budget to try to come out as even as possible each year, but the more money we make, it really will go back to patient care because we do provide ⁓ funding for patients who have financial need and cannot afford the treatment or the scleral lenses. So we provide quite a bit of that every year. And we do put it back again into product development and research. ⁓ it's again, it's it's a really nice
Heath Fletcher (36:38)
Okay.
Michele Hart (36:53)
a place to be from a business perspective. Would I have liked to have made more money throughout my career and have stock? Sure. But my husband says he's an engineer and he's like, that's what he does. And he's like, I do the good work and it is good work. I see it with all the patients we talk to. We have interviewed so many patients. They are all willing to share their story because they're so grateful for.
Heath Fletcher (37:20)
That's great. I'm glad you said that. So you use ⁓ video testimonials of patients? that's great.
Michele Hart (37:27)
And actually we just held our first patient webinar. We hadn't done this before, but for the PROS treatment, we wanted to provide an opportunity for people who might be interested in the PROS treatment side to learn just the very fundamentals of the treatment. we had a patient speak, I moderated, we had a patient speak, we had our chief medical officer talk about the ⁓ treatment itself. And then we had our clinic director talk about the logistics of
getting a referral coming into the clinic, how long the appointment takes. And that was really well received. And that's an example of sort of that B2B2C marketing. So ⁓ again, it's just for, it's for advocacy purposes and ensuring that patients know what their options are.
Heath Fletcher (38:14)
Was that something you'd seen somewhere else and thought, ⁓ I'm going to implement this?
Michele Hart (38:19)
I, you know, I don't know. It's possible. I can't think of what it was off the top of my head. I don't want to take credit for it necessarily, but yeah.
Heath Fletcher (38:27)
It's okay, you can take credit for it. just
thought maybe you saw it, had seen it or heard of it somewhere as an idea and thought, I'm gonna try this and it worked. But you kind of just dreamt it up and thought, you're gonna do this. wow, that's great.
Michele Hart (38:40)
And we had talked to so many patients that after we interviewed them and did a little video testimonial had said, I'm willing to talk to any potential patients you have, just have them call me. And I think that's where the idea generated.
Heath Fletcher (38:54)
Great, yeah, that makes sense, yeah. That's great. What other kind of things do do for marketing initiatives and campaign strategies? What else do do?
Michele Hart (39:06)
Well, on the commercial side, we definitely do a lot of email campaigns and social. We do still do print advertising and digital advertising. We had tried something that was a huge flop. I always love to share something that didn't work at all. Genius idea. I decided that we should have a customer roundtable session that would happen a couple of times a year where we would invite all of our practitioner customers.
Heath Fletcher (39:20)
Yeah,
Michele Hart (39:35)
to this round table online and somebody would be, we'd have identified somebody from our customer base who would kind of moderate the conversation. I would be there as well. But it would be an opportunity for them to learn from their peers, ⁓ for newer fitters to ask questions in a comfortable environment, but also for folks that were a little more established to get some more experience, you
talking in a group setting, right? Because sometimes we reach out to these folks and they will present on our behalf at a conference. We provide them honoraria and such, but you know, so it was a multifaceted thing. Well, I scheduled it, did all the outreach for it and the marketing for it. And I scheduled it at a time that most of the doctors on the West Coast would still be in clinic and two doctors showed up. was me and two doctors.
Heath Fletcher (40:24)
No.
Yeah
Michele Hart (40:30)
And
they were wonderful and they had the best conversation. that was great. But afterwards, was like, right, this just did not work at all. So reassessed and our team decided, let's try something a little different. And so we just we took that learning experience and thought, what did we really want to get out of this?
Heath Fletcher (40:38)
Yeah.
Michele Hart (40:51)
Right. how can we change it? So we moved it into a Dine and Learn session where we have our account, ⁓ one of our account folks. She will actually go to a restaurant in a location that we have a lot of customers. And in advance, we invite all of our customers or our leads that are in that area. ⁓ We cap it at 20 people. They get a very nice dinner and it's a two hour combination of networking. you're
networking with all customers, non-customers, experienced fitters, non-experienced fitters. Laura, our ⁓ staff member who runs these, does an hour presentation and then there's time for Q &A afterward. And they've been really successful because it's really about that relationship building, but also helping the practitioners learn from each other. ⁓
Heath Fletcher (41:25)
nice idea.
Michele Hart (41:45)
So those have been great. And we're on our third one of those is actually taking place this week. And, yep, it's full up 20 people. ⁓ It's been a really nice group.
Heath Fletcher (41:56)
The in-person ⁓ things are really making a comeback. people are really open now to getting back out and connecting with other people. It was slow. It was slow to resurface, but it's kind of coming back. The trade shows are coming back. ⁓ There's a lot of interaction happening now again, which is kind of good to see.
Michele Hart (42:02)
I 100 % agree with you.
It's interesting you say that because I've been thinking a lot about what the future of marketing might be right with AI and such. And, ⁓ you know, I'm not worried about AI taking my, my job. I use it for some things. ⁓ you know, maybe eventually I, I worry about the accuracy of information that is going to be out there. already see so much disinformation, but I'm
Also, you you see these younger generations as well starting to pull away from being available on their smartphones all the time and looking for ways to be a little more analog. I think some of these more tried and true marketing ⁓ tactics might come back. I think the pendulum might swing a little bit the other way. So it will be interesting to see how that shapes up.
Heath Fletcher (43:14)
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because it is, I think you're right. Some of the older, more I want to think of an older, ⁓ traditional marketing ⁓ activities or actions or initiatives are coming, are making a rebound again as well. ⁓ Long form videos, ⁓ longer ⁓ reads, ⁓ blogs and podcasting and video casting.
It's still information, but it's getting to people in a variety of different ways, but a little bit more traditional. Podcasting has become the radio of ⁓ now. Everyone's paying the big distributors, podcast, Apple, whoever, instead of local radio stations.
this has become, but you got to choose what channel you want to listen to, what subject matter you want to listen to, which is actually really interesting. But it's just navigating that space and understanding how it fits with your organization, how it fits with your product. But again, like you said, coming back to being in person, it's really making a comeback as well, because I think people are missing that connection, that connection with people.
I mean, we can do it here. You can do it online and it's great, but there's something a little bit more concrete in person.
Michele Hart (44:50)
Agreed. Agreed. Even even hard to read some social cues online, right?
Heath Fletcher (44:55)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, everyone's on, you know, it's easy to kind of, plus you can watch yourself, right? So I can watch how I'm behaving at the same time while I'm talking to you, right? And so it's a little bit curated or maybe a bit contrived, ⁓ we're, you know, and we staged the background and, you know, we're lit well and, you know, we kind of, it's not really in person, like in person, there's a little more room for, to being more casual or being more familiar. So.
I think that's where people are really ⁓ looking to reconnect in that sense. So as far as innovation now, we've talked a bit about technology. What's next for BostonSight site? Are there new products in the site line? Excuse the pun.
Michele Hart (45:30)
Yeah, I agree.
We just released a large upgrade to our online ⁓ ordering and management system. We are one of the only scleral lens companies that allows practitioners to log into a, it's an online software basically called FitConnect. And from there they can design the lens for their customer through a step-by-step process. Yeah, it's.
It's really wonderful. ⁓ Many other companies still have folks email like paper, write on a PDF, a fillable PDF or something and send it to the lab. But ours is all online and ⁓ we had spent the last year and a half upgrading this system. So that that was a huge lift.
Heath Fletcher (46:30)
That's a big step. Wow, that's huge. Yeah.
Michele Hart (46:33)
It's been really exciting. ⁓ We also have some new features for our lens that are coming out ⁓ later this year that are pretty dynamic. But the ⁓ CEO just released our five-year plan. We'll be sharing that with ⁓ folks soon. And that's really looking at how we can continue to grow around the world and how we can use things like AI or other ⁓ digital technologies to improve the fitting process.
We are also exploring how scleral lenses might be used for drug delivery. For example, did a research study with, I it was, I don't know if I can say this online. Well, I won't say the product's name because I'm not sure I can say it. Sorry. Not yet. I don't know if it's still under wraps.
Heath Fletcher (47:24)
Mum's
a word. ⁓
Michele Hart (47:26)
But
⁓ using a dry eye drop in the bowl of the lens with the saline to put on the eye to ⁓ improve hydration of the eye and to calm inflammation further. sure lots of people have seen things about smart lenses, know, with, you know, digital technology with actually in the lens. We'll probably be exploring that.
Heath Fletcher (47:50)
Cool. Wow. ⁓
Michele Hart (47:51)
I know there's a lot of opportunity, but we also need to make sure we're focused on our core mission still, right? Which is improving vision and ocular health of as many people as we can. ⁓ yeah, we also partner with a number of companies ⁓ that folks can use a machine called an aberrometer, which maps the eye and that can map something called higher order aberrations. you wear glasses as to eye. ⁓
Higher order aberrations cannot be corrected with ⁓ regular contact lenses or eyeglasses. There are things like ⁓ double vision, blurring, ghosting, halos you might see at night while driving. Yeah, it really impacts night driving. And our lens has a built-in ⁓ HOA correction system already, and there's like three different levels the doctor can choose from when fitting our lens. But sometimes the HOAs are so severe that
Heath Fletcher (48:32)
Okay, yeah.
Michele Hart (48:48)
what's in our lenses is not ⁓ going to work. And we're the only company that has us already built into the lens. So we're ahead of the curve there. But this HOA, this custom correction uses the aberrometer where the doctor scans the eye and then sends that scan to the lab and a custom lens is built to correct those HOAs. So ⁓ that has been some pretty cool technology to work with.
Heath Fletcher (49:13)
is very cool. I heard something else recently too about eye scanning technology that can actually ⁓ pick up a variety of health issues within the body as well. Yeah, that's really interesting too. And you'll end up blending that together and then tying that in with your ⁓ personal health data collection cloud.
Michele Hart (49:28)
I saw that.
Heath Fletcher (49:43)
portal and then it continues as every time your eyes scan it continues to load up that information and then ⁓ along with all your fit bits and fancy weights scales we're collecting data on our health and on a regular basis and now we're not worrying about people getting into the doctors on time and all that data is being collected and then crunched and AI can then process it and
ping the doctor, ping the owner of the health portal and say, hey, you've got something going on that wasn't there six months ago, you better go get that checked out. A medical system built on prevention as opposed to reaction. Wouldn't that be cool?
Michele Hart (50:21)
Yeah, yeah.
Which would be wonderful.
And yes, as long as insurance companies don't get involved and worry about, you know, what could happen rather than what is happening.
Heath Fletcher (50:42)
I don't know,
maybe insurance companies might be more interested in ⁓ rewarding people for not getting sick. It could get turned around if they see the benefits would be wonderful. Yes. Here's a reduction in your insurance cost because you lost 10 pounds.
Michele Hart (51:03)
Yeah, exactly. That would be a much better way to use that information.
Heath Fletcher (51:07)
3 better ways to use the mic
Well, ⁓ this has been awesome. Michele, thank you so much for spending this 45 minutes, 50 minutes with me. It's been ⁓ insightful for lack of a further pun, excuse the pun, but really great to learn about you and your ⁓ journey in marketing in the healthcare industry. You've been really helpful. I'm sure listeners have lots to take away from.
from hearing you speak today. So thank you so much. Is there anything you'd like to finish with that we didn't touch on that you'd like to share?
Michele Hart (51:45)
no, you know, if you are suffering from, ⁓ you know, ocular surface disease or corneal disease, I really encourage you to learn more about scleral lenses. ⁓ Our website is bostonsight.org and bostonsightscleral.org. That's the commercial product. But ⁓ in general, talk to your eye doctor about what options exist for you.
Heath Fletcher (52:07)
Yes, and mention to them BostonSight site. Excellent. Well, thank you again so much, Michele. maybe we'll talk again one of these days, I hope. And I'd like to hear more about where you go in the future.
Michele Hart (52:21)
Thanks, Keith. Appreciate it. Bye.
Heath Fletcher (52:28)
I always enjoy talking to other marketing professionals in this space. ⁓ There's a lot of things that we have in common and yet there's things that we can learn from each other. I think that's very interesting to do that. I like hearing from Michele understanding that marketing strategies at BostonSight site usually focus on education and outreach, which I think is happening more and more, particularly in the healthcare space. She also emphasized that the importance of
Reducing marketing channels for her effectiveness was very helpful. Another great piece of advice for organizations that feel like they're spread too thin, particularly in the nonprofit sector. ⁓ that websites are crucial for directing audiences ⁓ to the valuable information that they're looking for again, in healthcare and in nonprofit, which is where Michele's expertise really stands out. You know, we talked a little bit about outsourcing too, which is also an important point to understand.
when is a good time to outsource and what should you outsource? It can provide valuable insight and also expand your capacity to do more, particularly in marketing. In-person connections are becoming increasingly more important these days and we're also noticing that more traditional marketing methods are seeing a bit of a resurgence in the digital age.
So fun conversation, really enjoyed meeting Michele. I hope you enjoyed it too. Thank you for listening to the Healthy Enterprise podcast and we'll talk again soon. Stay healthy and take care.