Last year, I’ll give you a cue here. Mmm agency 100 Studio sessions benchworth. Okay, we’re rolling.

Hi,

this is Russia bouchak. And I’m a senior reporter at Emma. I’m super excited for you to plug into this episode of the a100 studio sessions a new podcast series that gives members of the mmm agency 100 list in opportunity to Riff on what sets them apart.

In this

episode we’re focusing on the agency benchworks and the firms specialization in gene therapy here with me today in studio. Is that bench CEO of the BW Health Group?

Hi Thad

great to have you here. Thank

you for having me.

So let’s begin with our first question. Can you tell us a little bit about what the BW health group is and what it currently entails

sure. I’ll be delighted too. So the BW health group is comprised of three different operating units today and I say today intentionally because we’re always adding things. But the largest of the operating units is bench works, which is a pharmaceutical advertising agency and we’ve been busy with that type of work for almost 30 years now and standing next to the agency is BW consulting which is a group that works principally with small to mid-sized pharmaceutical companies helping them develop their commercial trajectory and plans with a special emphasis and genetic medicine and lastly is a technology offering called Candor, which is a patient feedback tool that allows the patient to opt in and correspond directly Via SMS an email directly with

Their clinician to let them know how they’re doing on their therapy and that’s been a new offering and it’s been very effective and and clinicians and patients really enjoy it and a great way to keep that Circle of Care going.

Yes, definitely a super fascinating with the Candor app and you know, if you were to describe what makes the BW Health Group different or unique and exciting for your clients, what would you say?

Sure? Well, what makes the BW Health Group different I think is is the people and we try to curate our people we use that word intentionally. So we’re very proud of the folks that we have working on staff and something else. It’s a little bit different is that when we do engage with the client we make sure that there’s a mix of individuals on that team. We always have senior people involved and we’ve all heard the stories of an agency or consultancy will come and where the pitch team and they get wow everybody and then they earn the business and then all of a sudden they’re a lot more Junior people involved that doesn’t happen at the BW health

If we always have that mix of senior people combined with people that are earlier in their career to make sure that things are going along and the best quality is preserved.

Now benchmarks has been around for over three decades which is a significant amount of time. So, what would you say has been your guiding lights over the years?

I think recognizing the the realm of the possible and you know, we talk about pivoting and you know, we started as a very modest really marketing Job Shop many years ago and so over the course of time we added more sophisticated offerings, you know piece by piece and I think it’s interesting when we talk to clients or other entrepreneurs. They often say we say what how could you expand your business and we might suggest something and they say well we don’t do that. That’s a we realize that but you could do that and so having the ability to recognize an opportunity in the marketplace has been and then being able to execute against that has been a Hallmark of the BW Health Group since this Inception

when someone first comes across the BW health group, what do you hope they take away?

The excitement that we have in the organization, we feel that we are have a lot to offer.

And our morale’s very high in also the expertise you we’ve been very fortunate particularly in the past five or six years to be able to really bring in some amazing people into the organization. So the quality speaks for itself and frankly that’s been the real Hallmark of our growth as of late is is knowing how good the work is we’re doing it and that’s beginning to be socialized in the industry.

and when you mentioned before, you know this idea of the realm of the possible and Imagining the realm of the possible, can you delve a little bit more into what that means and kind of do you have any sort of tangible examples of what that looks like for BW Health Group

sure, you know when we think about a product law extension, you know, there’s a litmus test first of all,

I have to understand the business opportunity I call after the second telling hopefully the first telling but if I don’t understand after the second telling them we probably shouldn’t be engaged. The other piece is to not be afraid to do some investment spending to to partner with a group to help us execute in a new area and being candid with them about saying like look one day we may bring this in-house but we need we can’t experiment with our with our clients obviously. So I think you know sort of investing in that level of expertise and then giving an initiative some time I think companies and Executives can make a mistake. They’ll start a new service line and they don’t give it sufficient time to actually get traction. So if you’re if you’re compelled to do this and say great that makes a good sense. You have to give a time then lastly. I would say fail safely. And so when you do undertake something

Don’t bet the company on it go ahead and and it’s okay to approach something new at the at the type of scale that if the results aren’t what you’re looking for that it doesn’t have an existential impact on the business.

As you’ve grown the organization, what would you say have been the biggest challenges? And how did you overcome them?

Look as a small organization. There are the common business challenges that present themselves like, you know, getting enough Revenue through the door through a difficult times growing your reputation managing cash flow all the things that are associated with the entrepreneurial Journey now that we scale and we’ve had a significant amount of Commercial Success. The challenges are different how to grow intelligently. Lots of opportunities are presented to us now so being selective on the opportunities that we decided to execute against and making sure that we’re what I call surrounding ourselves a Giants bringing the best possible people to the Endeavor.

How do you define success at BW Health Group?

So it’s interesting thinking about success and of course, there’s commercial success and we hold ourselves to a very high standard just like we were a publicly traded company. So we want to generate, you know free cash flow in the percentages that are best to breed. And so certainly that is an underpinning but for me real success is candidly seen this success of our employees particularly our younger employees and you know an example of that is we have some young account Executives with a major client of our original fairly tactical work and they were so enthused and Johnny on the spot and raise their hands for assignments large and small that eventually we were brought in to do strategic work solely on the hustle of these young account Executives and to me watching them grow and Thrive and then frankly tee up a bigger opportunity is tremendous success in a more tactical level. Perhaps is when our young folks in our

position buy a house

things like that to me that’s tremendously exciting to say that they are, you know face space in their career where they have the economic opportunity to start their home and and be on their way and to me I take a lot of gratification with that

definitely and I wanted to loop back a little bit to something you mentioned at beginning which was this new technology Candor that BW health group has developed. You know, I think it’s definitely really fascinating being able to give patients the chance to communicate with their hcps quite directly. What would you say has been some of the response from both the hcp and patient side as a result of the rollout of this? Yeah,

so it’s relatively new for us, but we do have some nice case studies going along with that and what we’re seeing is frankly script volume going up because the old saying for doctors is no news is good news Well, in fact if they do get good news, they’re much more likely to write and it is a nice elegant way for a patient to communicate directly with their clinicians.

So it’s it’s good for care and frankly. It’s good for the commercial results of the brand that adopt the Candor program.

Yeah, and definitely I’m scriplift is the ultimate goal, right?

It is indeed. It is indeed.

What are you most excited about in terms of the future and moving forward into 2023 and Beyond?

So we’re very focused on intelligent growth. We’re getting some scale to the organization. So there is so much exciting clinical development particularly in genetic medicine. The BW Health Group really has put a flag in the ground that that’s an area that we are really going to be focusing on we have a number of assets that we are currently are managing either through our Consulting Group or through our agency and the ability to harness this incredible science to many instances or some instances provide a cure or something close to it is just remarkable so that to me I think is going to be one of the obviously the hottest clinical areas for the foreseeable future and I’m very proud that we’re part of that

great and I wanted to ask a little bit about if you have some wise and parting words to your younger self, you know, you’ve obviously been in the industry for a long time. What would stick to your old dad tell 20 year old that

I think trust your gut, you know, I it’s hugely important and you know, one of the advantages of and thank you for being kind to say 60. I’m actually 62 is to is you actually had time in grade and I’m not a mystical person but there is such a thing as face reading you can after you’ve been become an experienced executive you can kind of gauge a business proposition an individual pretty quickly and and all of us have that feeling and I think of the course of time I’ve made mistakes along the way where I didn’t trust my God or I say, oh no, I have these reservations, but we can train them or maybe it’ll work out or and but most of the time your gut tells the truth trust it.

Well, thank you so much that this conversation was Illuminating when it comes to be W Health groups journey and Imagining the realm of the possible. I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast with that Bunch CEO of bwhealth group. It was a terrific conver.

Station and many things for listening come back soon for another one. This is leshabushak with the mmm podcast. Take care.