Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is JR Riscala. He's director of MSLs at Sunovion. And we talk about MSL execution factors, which is based on a book by Kim Perel. So this is kind of a book review. JR is awesome. As always, I think you guys are really gonna like this. Don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram and check us out on YouTube. All of our videos go up on our YouTube channel. It's just MSL talk on YouTube.
And then we have MSL talk live discussions once a month. It's typically the 1st Tuesday of every month at 1:30 PM EST, and that's on LinkedIn live. So look for those announcements on LinkedIn, and please join us. Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical. There he is. JR, welcome back to the podcast, my friend. Thank you, Tom. Good to be back. I'm excited. I'm excited.
So for those of you probably recognize JR's name, he was, he was on the podcast, I think last year. And, he's a dear friend and colleague. And, JR is notorious for we have these Carolyn Group T shirts. And and he's all he literally travels all over the world and takes pictures of him wearing the Carolyn Group T shirts, and he reps it. So, I'm I'm grateful for our friendship and for, he you know, him being such a good colleague of ours. So I was excited to have him back on.
So why don't you do a quick intro, let everybody know who you are, and, all that good stuff? Well, thank you, Tom. It's always be good to to be back and appreciate your friendship. And you're right. Every time I travel overseas or anywhere, I have your t shirt in my bag because whether it's a gym, the beach, or whatever, it's like, I remember you guys. You've been been tremendous. And by the way, thank you for all you do for our community.
I do remember back, what, March 27, 2020 when you first started your podcast. And recently, about 4 months ago, you hit the 100th episode. Yeah. Kudos for you guys. You do so much, and I really love you, and I appreciate you and your team. You guys have been wonderful. And I can't wait to see you this September in Vegas, definitely. Yeah. I can't wait. So so for everybody, I'm JR Wescala. I'm a physician by profession. I work for Synovian Pharmaceuticals.
I've been in, as an MSL for as long as I remember. I started with a company called Park Davis, then moved to Pfizer. Lived in New York for a few years where I worked at Pfizer downtown, and the last 9, 10 years, been with Sunovion. Great company. I'm in the neurology group. So my background and expertise always been in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy. And I'm a member of the MSL Society. I coach and member people. We do webinars.
And every time I get a great idea, I jump on and say, Tom, we have an idea. Let's pursue it. And here we are today. So I'm grateful for that. This is a great idea. So, guys, JR calls me up or sends me a text or something and says, hey, read this book. It's called The Execution Factor. It's by this author, Kim Perel. She's an entrepreneur, a businesswoman that has had a tremendous amount of success.
She sold a business for her first business she sold for like $30,000,000 and then she became an angel investor. So she's like a venture capitalist. She's invested in, invested a number of businesses. And now she's probably a billionaire for all I know. I'm not really sure what her net worth is, but, so JR had this idea of of doing kind of a book review of, of her book, The Execution Factor. So I read it and I agreed.
And I think that there's some really practical information here that we wanna share with you. And I think it's something that not only can apply to medical science liaisons, but really to anyone. I think that there's there's lessons for for life, for business, for any type of career. So let's let's I'm gonna ask you. What, Gerard, what made you think of this for this community, and and how did this kinda come into mind?
Well, as you said, I was I always love to read things, and sometimes, good things always pop up in your head. After reading her book, I realized as an MSL leader and a hiring manager that sometime we always follow a certain template. We always look for certain skills in an MSR role. You know, the communication skill, the analytical skill, all that stuff.
But sometime, it seems we forget because in my mind, a candidate that I that I wanna interview or hire or work with need to have a vision about their own career, and they need to have a passion about the job and what make them want to join our industry and help patient. It's also about the action they have taken all along to the point and their resilience to really never give up on their dream.
Really stand up every time you fall, get better for the next interview, and seek connection because relationship are very important with people who can help you to get there and succeed. And I believe every manager right now, including myself, was every MSL I work with.
I always look for the opportunity twice a year to sit down and talk about their passion, talk about what they how they plan to act for the next couple of years to achieve their goals and objectives, what's gonna their next promotion's gonna look like, and what's their career aspiration role is gonna be. So I think all the straight about execution really fall greatly into this MSR role and into me as a leader and a manager and a coach to make sure that I can act upon and help my people.
So that book just came right in my laps, and I said, we gotta review it. We gotta do it. Yeah. And just to to, I guess, to get, you know, into the book a little bit further. So, what what Kim talks about in this book, she actually really the the the whole crux of the, the whole concept behind the book is she focuses on 5 execution factors or 5 traits. And those 5 traits are vision, passion, action, resilience, and relationships. So basically, the whole book is her breaking down those five areas.
So I think what would be best is maybe we should do that right now. So let's start with vision. You know, why is that so important? How does it relate to the MSL role? And why is it important really for anyone? Yeah. Well well, before we get to each one of these trace, I I have to tell you that the the greatest part that I loved about her book is that Kim talks about execution factor as one skill that really drives success.
She asked herself and people, an entrepreneur, even MSL, do we really think big? Are we working hard? Do we always persevere no matter what obstacle block our path? Are we dreamers, or are we doers? Because dreamers have always plenty of ideas, but if they don't act upon those and they're not doers, then these ideas, they never move forward. They never succeed.
As leaders, including myself, we need to share our failures, our experiences, our successes with our people, and we need to help steal their vision to more successes because their ability to execute really separates aspiring people from those who get to live their dreams. And she suggested these 5 traits, as you said, vision, passion, action, resilience, and relationship. So let's start with vision. To me, vision is an MSL or every person or every entrepreneur North Star.
We all need to have a North Star to look for. It is the focus of the execution because if we don't have vision, we don't really know what direction to follow and what action to take and how we reach our goal. Because vision makes us realize the potential of our ideas so we can execute on them. Kim says in her book, if you don't know where you're going, how you expect to even get there? Because vision defines our day to day life, and it's a precious gift we have to embrace.
If we move in too many direction, it's not progress. It's really a chaos. So you write down your vision, you read it often, you believe in it, you act upon it, and you talk to your manager, your mentor, and your coach about how they can help you achieve your dreams. That's vision. Yeah. And I'll tell you, there's so much to unpack there. And she uses vision somewhat broadly, but she does break it down.
Vision can be, not just what motivates you, what gets you up in the morning, what your purpose is, but it could also just be your goals. What are your goals each day? What are your what are your goals at work? If you're an MSL, what are you trying to influence for your team? What are your KPIs? And and, how does that guide you? You use the term North Star. She uses that term in the book too. Like, what's guiding you? What's giving you a sense of purpose?
And I think that that's so important because without that, I there's there's you lose that sense of direction and motivation. You talk about action. She says in the book, action without passion is boring. So I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but it's like, if you don't have that vision and passion and if you're not working towards something, then you you might just get bored. The other thing she says is, execution separates the dreamers from the doers.
So, you know, it's it's all a part of knowing what you want and having that burning desire to get there. So let's talk about passion. That's the next one. So vision was the first one. Let's talk about passion. Well, passion in her book, to me, passion is what helps us summon the strength so we can make tough decision. We all have to make tough decision in our day to day life as an MSL, as an entrepreneur, as a business person.
Sometime we have to reach that point where we say, this is not working anymore for me. I need to move on. So we need to make these tough decision. I think it's also the fuel that powers your vision so you can execute upon your idea. If you don't have passion about what you're thinking, about your goal, like you said, about your objectives, then how can you execute on these things? Passionate people always celebrate wins, big or small.
Every time we celebrate, we recharge that passion in us to keep us moving forward. Even if it's just a small win, it give us that new fuel to keep going, keep dashing forward. If you're not passionate as an MSL about helping people and helping patients, then to be honest, you're in the wrong business.
This is my passion because I know every day I'm helping somebody somewhere with our medicine, talking about disease state, helping physician make the right decision, give them the the data to understand thing. That's a passion that keeps me going. Our KOLs will not trust us and believe in us if we're not passionate about them, about their patient, about their business, about the thing they do every day. And if we act upon them, then I think we're gonna be winners. I love it.
Passion is that fuel that keeps all of us going. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. And one of the things that resonated with me is that she said that passion gets you through pain. There's a certain amount of pain that you're going to experience in parts of your life and in parts of your career. Meaning it's, you know, we don't just go along and every day's a great day. There's struggles, there's challenges, there's setbacks.
And if you have a passion for something, it's going to drive you through the pain and not focus on it. It's going to keep you going. You know, you could have a passion, and she even talks about this. You can have a passion for sipping cocktails at the on the beach. That's my passion. I love happy hour. I'll sit down and have cocktails with anyone. Me too, brother. You know what I mean? But you can't make a career out of that. That there's no career there. I mean, if there is, let me know.
I'll switch off right now. But the point of the matter is, you know, any job that you have, there's going to be a certain amount of pain. There's going to be a certain amount of difficulty challenges to it.
So if you could find that passion and maybe the passion is, you know, I, like you said, I get to influence patient outcomes, you know, or I'm looking to grow my career or I'm looking to establish myself in a certain discipline, whatever it might be, let that fuel you through the challenges and the difficulties, and you hit the nail on the head. You have to celebrate your wins no matter how big or small they are. Absolutely. It keeps you going. Yeah. You can't live for the failures all the time.
You gotta have some wins. Yeah. No. For sure. And, you know, one thing you know, it's funny you mentioned failure. She talks about that too, and she talks about how failure is a part of success. So, and there's, there's there's a quote that I heard recently, fail fast and fail forward. So there's a certain amount of failure you're gonna experience in anything that you do. So get it out of the way, but just keep moving forward from there. So good stuff. Let's talk about action.
Well, in her book, Kim talks about action being the central hub where other execution trade revolve. So the passion, the vision, the relationship, all this revolve around taking action on these things. So as a hub, if you don't have action, you don't have execution. It is the first step to get to your own dreams, make your ideas come through, achieve your goals, take them off the page, and go out and celebrate them into the world.
When you act, always consider your worst case scenario and really visualize in detail. Because if you can't deal with that scenario, then you can deal with anything that's gonna come down the road. And we have to be prepared. Every time we call on a KOL, we really need to plan it. We need to visualize how that call is gonna call, what they're gonna how they're gonna object to some of the information we're giving them, what's our answer is gonna be.
Once you have all this in your head before you go in and accept whatever is gonna come out, then you're ready for the next big thing. You're ready to close the deal. You're ready to give that information. So really never give up. You have to be prepared, and you have to see the answers in your mind. So when you act, you got it all covered. Yeah. Yeah. She I love this I love this part of the book because she really spells things out and challenges people.
And what I mean by that is she talks about the fact that it's important to take action, but it's also important to take the right action. You can be super busy and you could be an active person and still fail. If you're busy but not productive, you're taking action, but you're not finding success. So one of the things that she talks about, and I'm sure you guys have heard it, heard this before is do your most difficult tasks earlier in the day. Try to get things done.
Because if you if you put off the most difficult task, 2 things happen. Number 1, they never get done or they get done so late that it it could hinder your progress. Or you just become a procrastinator. That's procrastination. That's what that is. Yeah. So I think that's a big part of one of the things that I got from this chapter of the book or this section of the book.
But I think it's just really important to challenge yourself to make sure you're not just being busy, but you're being productive. You hit it on the nail, buddy. Yeah, man. Alright. Let's talk about resilience. So this this is a good one, actually. I mean, is, let's face it, resilience is a big one. Whether you are an MSL, you are an entrepreneur, you're starting a business, you're starting a new job, I mean, that's where resilience need.
It's the as a contributor and as a manager, if you don't have resilience, that's where execution will separate the dreamers from the doers. Because if you're not resilient about persevering and doing the right thing, then that's where you're gonna fail. And it's that ability that keep us on track despite all the challenges, all the struggles, and the setback. It's really, as everybody will say, it's about falling. Every time you fall down, you get up, and you do better.
If if the if after failed practice, after even a failed KOL meeting that morning, you get it out of the way. You have that resilience. You know, the next one is gonna always be better than the first one. You fail once, and then you succeed the second time. And you learn from your mistakes, and that's when you have to never give up because those mistakes lead you to more successes because now you know that there are failures.
And do let don't let setbacks, as she says, keep you from reaching your goal and achieving your full potential. That's where resilience lies, and that's what each of us need to really keep moving every day. Yeah. Oh, awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Not to not to be redundant, but she she definitely talks about, your failures will lead to your next success. So you have to just keep going. I mean, we've learned this as MSLs or anyone that obviously, we all made it through COVID. Right?
We made it through that period. Everybody learned how to be resilient because we had no choice. We had to adapt. We had to evolve. We had to get back up. I know there are a lot of people that struggled with it. And, you know, the opposite of resilience is inaction. And I think that it's really important to, again, focus on what you can do every single day to take the proper action and be resilient. And then you're gonna get through the challenges, the hard times.
People are talking now about, you know, I hate to use the word, but recession. Right? Yeah. People keep talking about, oh, you know, the economy, the stock market, job, you know, there's gonna be layoffs and cutbacks and all this stuff. And you know what? Listen, inflation, gas prices, there's a lot going on right now. I totally agree. I don't have my head in the sand. But what I will say, and I actually am thinking about doing a whole separate podcast on this, is don't subscribe to it.
Don't talk about it. Don't dwell on it. Don't let it instill some kind of fear in your life that's going to take away your action and make you inactive. In other words, be resilient through all of the, you know, the negative talk, through all of the challenges, and find your way to the positive side of the equation so that you're not gonna be a part of, you know, the negativity. You're gonna be a positive light in the midst of all of it.
And I think that that's just an attitude thing more than anything else, but that's resilience, in my opinion. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. I mean, as an example, I'll talk about myself. I mean, we always through my career, we always do things that we think is gonna pay off. Let's say, the stock market or what have you. I mean, how often you hear from the media, oh, the stock market's gonna crash. The economy is gonna go south.
And then with the media frenzy, people just run out and they start selling like crazy, and they everything drops. Well, guess what? I never, never got out of anything because I know anything is gonna fall. It's gonna come back up. Might take a year or 2, but if I lost something, I'm gonna gain it back. And all this time, I just stayed resilient because I knew that my thought process about my future, my retirement, my career is there, and I did the right choice. I'm just gonna wait it out.
And guess what? Resilience paid off. Everything went back up. Everything doubled or tripled. Hey. I mean, that's where resilience play a big role in your decision, and that's why you have to make the tough decision. When if you're resilient, you will make these tough decision that hold you strong, so you don't hear about anything. You don't let anybody sway you, and then you just keep moving on. So Yeah, man. Great advice. And you know what? I'll tell you. That's a perfect example.
Using that example is a perfect way to describe resilience when you when you look at that stock market example. So Right. Let's talk about so the last and the 5th and final trait of execution is relationships, which I think is probably the most important thing for MSLs. Could be the most important thing for anybody in business or in their career.
Again, you hit it on the nail, and and and Kim did a great job with it because relationship, regardless if they were internal or external, it's what help your successful execution because your personal happiness, your career really depends on the quality of the people around you. And I I can't remember the name of the movie, but they say you are in the circle of trust. Or if you're not in that circle, then you're not good for me because I wanna learn something from you.
We we are, as human being, hardwired to collaborate and form connection all the time because we just we're not geared to be alone. We're not wired to be alone in this life. So because we cannot be alone, we need to have stronger relationship, whether it's internal or external, that really are oriented towards areas of reciprocity as Kim says, and mutual success. Because the relationship takes time and effort to build, good relationship lasts forever.
In my career, being in the area of epilepsy and and neurology, I've had relationship that lasted almost and continue for about 30 years right now. Every time I go to the American Epilepsy Society meeting in December, I see people that I've known for so long. And every time we see each other, we hug and we cry and we celebrate and we talk about families and kids. And I never forget every time it's their birthday or what have you, I send them a birthday card and email.
These are the relationship that takes long to build, but they're strong enough that they will last everything, including COVID. Because as you remember, we struggle so much as MSL to have virtual calls, to reach to people, to set up time to talk. And most of the time, you don't get an answer or what have you. I've been very successful with my relationship because they're strong and because these people know the value I bring to them.
And even though they take so much time and effort, we always always need to choose well our relationship. We need to seek and build relationship and mentorship with people who have succeeded where we failed because that's what we need to learn the most, and we need to evolve to grow our career. I'll tell you, man. You know, when you look at this piece of the equation, it's really relationships to the foundation of any career. If you're an MSL, it's the foundation of your success as an MSL.
I I I'm going out on a limb by saying that, you know, the more successful your internal and external relationships are, the more successful you you will be as an MSL.
Absolutely. And and I love this part of the book because it focuses on not just the nurturing of relationships, but she talks about how important it is to audit relationships, meaning you have to step back sometimes and say, are the right people in my life, or is there anybody that's in my life that maybe isn't good for me and where I'm going? You know, you're sometimes you mentioned circle, you know, your circle of trust or whatever.
Sometimes you might have people in your life that you're holding on to or there's relationships that you have that may not be the best for you. There may be something toxic about it. So she talks about either addressing it or kinda cutting it loose. So, the book's not negative by any means, but that is something that, you know, made me think a little bit about the relationship piece. So I thought that that was interesting as well.
Before we get before we get too much further along, as it relates to the stuff that you read in this book, what else really resonated with you, JR, as it relates to the MSL profession? Well, before I get there, you know, I just wanna touch on something because you were talking about looking at your relationship, and sometime you make tough decision about who are really this relationship, how they're helping you, how they are part of your life.
I'm gonna be honest, and I know a lot of people think of it as bad or as good, but this is a great advice I would like to give. I remember when we first started LinkedIn, everybody went into frenzy like Facebook. The more friends you have, the more relationship. The bigger the number, it look like you're important. So they have reached 500 connection. They have reached 2,000 connection. And you start connecting with people because you wanna build relationship.
You're reaching out to people that probably can help you in your career, help you advance in anything else. I can tell you in the last few years, I revisited these connections. And I looked at the messaging and the connection back and forth and what I've earned and what I've shared and how we helped each other. And I can tell you, I could count little over a 100 connection I've had that I thought that are meaningful for me that I never heard the word from.
It doesn't matter if I said congratulation on your promotion, congratulation on your birthday, happy anniversary. Not a word of thank you or anything. That's where they are today. Yeah. They're gone. Please come follow-up. Thank you. Goodbye. We need to make this decision as you said. If your relationship and I'm not trying to be selfish or or or arrogant about it, but this relationship we form is to help us move forward and to help us also give back as a coach, as a mentor.
All these skills you wanna share with people who need them and people who are at reach out to you, like in the MSL Society, the mentorship program. I would love to do that because I feel I can give and I help, and I hope a lot of people do that as well. But but to your point, some of the insights from the book to me, in my humble opinion, I believe this book really touched on important traits that are very relevant to our MSR role. We all need to have a vision, our own vision.
Not the company vision, not the thing published on the website and what the company vision is all about and mission. It's your own vision. What's your brand? What you want to do? Where are you going, and how are you gonna get there? Who's gonna help you to get there? We need to be passionate about what we are doing and how it's gonna affect the life of patient and physician that we interact with on regular basis.
We need to be resilient about our future, about our career, about our role, about helping others, helping aspiring MSL get their dream job, and we cannot stop until we accomplish this dream because we are doers. We are not dreamers. And last but least, this relationship with people who support us are gonna be essential for us to execute on our career, our goals and objective, and our dreams. That's what I took out from Spot on, man. That's a perfect way to summarize it.
You know, I think it I I would recommend folks read this book or get it on audio. I think there's a lot of good, you know, takeaways. JR and I tried to kind of spell out what resonated with us, how it can be used in a professional setting, how MSLs can use it. There was one other thing that resonated with me, and and this was towards the end of the book. But, you know, and I it's it's so funny because I just think this is so important. It's so simple.
And I've talked about it on this podcast before. But take time to find some way to encourage others. Take time to acknowledge others in your relationships, in your regular life. JR, you hit the nail on the head. People are gonna reach out to you on LinkedIn, and they're gonna congratulate you or you're gonna congratulate them. That's an acknowledgment. That's encouragement. Hey, great job on your promotion. Great job on your job anniversary. Happy birthday. Read your article that you posted.
Amazing job. Congratulations. Acknowledgment. Congrats. Well wishes. It just makes people feel good. We all like it when people acknowledge us. We like it when people show us some type of gratitude. So maybe make it a point once a day to go out of your way to reach out to somebody, maybe more than once a day, but definitely make it a point to recognize other people, acknowledge other people. And that's how over time, you don't just develop relationships, but you develop your career.
And, Tom, that's when somebody said you pay it forward Mhmm. Over and over. Yep. No doubt. So, JR, you're the man. I appreciate you. You know you're welcome to come on this podcast anytime. You always, you're always awesome. So I appreciate you. Thank you for coming on. Appreciate it too, and look forward for another one with you. Yeah, man. Hey, guys. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to share this episode because it was awesome. And, we'll see you soon.
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