Episode 52: Biotech Strategy and Success with Key Opinion Leader Don Davis

Who is Don Davis? The man, the myth, the consultant, the podcast host, the bullpen member. Listen now to find out. You're listening to Bio from the Bayou, empowering biotech leaders with the tools, assets, and expertise to improve healthcare outcomes. Each episode provides insights and information to expand your network, advance your product line, and help your company thrive. Serving the entire Gulf South, but recorded in the heart of New Orleans. Welcome back to Bio from the Bayou. I'm James Zanewicz, the Chief Strategy Officer at Tulane And I'm excited because today's guest is Don Davis. Don and I met during the pandemic as part of a life science Zoom social group that became dubbed the pajama party. And you'll have to buy us a drink at a conference to find out more about that. Don is the president and principal of 5280 Life Sciences Consulting, which empowers life science companies to navigate industry challenges and enhance their operational performance. He is also the host of the associated podcast, one of the most popular in the business called Life Science Success. And he's the founder of D3 Digital Media Marketing. So he has no downtime. Welcome back to the show, Don. We love having you here.

Thanks, James. I appreciate it. It's one of those things where owning 2 businesses and then also having a podcast definitely keeps you more than busy.

Well, you must sleep at some point, I assume.

Yeah. Barely.

Barely. And then also, you know, you have to keep the wife happy and stay married. So there's that too. That's right.

Yeah. And 3 kids, 3 grandkids. Yes. Yeah.

There you go.

It all keeps me busy. So for sure.

Well, let's dig into A little bit more about you. I love, we started on your background, and that really is my first question before we talk about your work and podcast. I'd like to learn more about what brought you into life sciences and biotech in the first place and what keeps you here. What excites you about this area?

I'm gonna take a little bit of an aside here. So my mom passed away of ovarian cancer whenever I was 10. I constantly tell people the one thing cancer is really good at is making enemies. So, so whenever I was coming through school and kind of going through things, The one thing I kind of wanted to do was to find a way to help and contribute to people that were making the next generation of medicines and things like that. And so that's what led me to life sciences and more or less to healthcare, I would say, as well. So a serendipitous path, but also one that is also very self-serving for me. So on the broader picture, I worked for General Electric for 18 years. As a part of that, they acquired Amersham Biosciences. And as a part of that, then I got to sort of interact with a lot of the life sciences companies there.

Which bridges your kind of love of technology, which you have right now, with your love of science. And it totally makes sense now. For as long as I've known you, we've never talked about that bit. So I love it.

My time at GE was a, a great training ground from that standpoint, because a lot of the companies that they would acquire, they would bring them in with this idea that, hey, look, we're gonna ramp up and scale them. dramatically in the next 6 months or whatever. And it always sounded really good, but then there was the execution of it. And that's typically whenever I got involved, it was, look, these things aren't exactly working right. So can you go over there and figure out what's going on or not going on and then help?

So basically you play the role of my team where I have all these ideas and they're like, and let's fix it now and actually make it doable. So yes, our producer is nodding and laughing behind us, just so you know. Well, now that we know a little bit more about what makes you tick and that you are an operations person in many ways, which is why Elaine loves you, I'm sure, among many reasons— that's Elaine Hamm, our other co-host— let's talk about D3 Digital Media Marketing. My understanding is that this is the avenue that provides help to companies looking to figure out how to communicate their value proposition using the internet or social media in a really compelling but clear way. And it's one of your more recent endeavors. So, What brought you to creating this, and can you describe what you do for companies to help position them more effectively?

Again, the path that I started with was I originally wanted, as a consultant, to reach out to as many companies as I possibly could and just let them know, hey, this is what I do as a consultant, this is how you connect with me. And so that's where things more or less got started with my podcast and other things, was let's just try and find an avenue to connect with people where I'm not selling anything. I'm just trying to more or less Be there for people, and then hopefully whenever they want or need something, then they come back to me on the consulting side. I felt like I spent an inordinate amount of time and money on companies that essentially at the end of the day didn't deliver. And if you think about digital marketing, the first thing that sort of comes to mind for me is this idea that, you know, hey, look, we should be able to have data around everything that we do. How many clicks am I getting? Where are people going? Where do they come and go real quick? Maybe they're not finding any value there. And so again, if you look at my credentials, my PhD and want in terms of the data and things that we're acquiring in terms of information, I wanted all of that. The companies that I hired oftentimes weren't able to supply it. And so I kept asking these questions and eventually it sort of led me to Who are the experts in terms of building websites, establishing SEO, creating social media, and all of those things? And I hired them. So I hired people to teach me more or less to start. And then people started asking me, could you help me on the digital marketing side? And so that's what created the company.

And that built out into a really successful business at this point. And I wondered if you could share one or two of your success stories, anyone you can highlight.

Recently, we took on a client that had spent 7 months and unfortunately an awful lot of money, tens of thousands of dollars, to try and draw traffic into their particular website. The first thing that I wanted to do with this client was just look at what had been done. So let's go back and examine everything that's been done up to this point. And then from there, let's take that information and try and figure out how we build forward. Well, unfortunately, a bit like making spaghetti, I felt like the other company was more or less throwing the noodles at the wall, trying to figure out whether or not they were done. And so, so we spent a lot of time sort of looking at things and going, okay, well, this doesn't make sense to me. And if you think about SEO is what I'm describing here, search engine optimization, or why we go to Google, is often started with questions. So we all start with these questions in our mind. How do I find the best X, or how do I get the best performance or, you know, whatever it might be. But all of those questions then lead back to searches on Google. And Google at some rate has to try and figure out how do they position your company ahead of everybody else. That's a data-driven exercise. It's not something where you just sort of put out a bunch of, let's say, keywords in this case where you could say, hey, look, I'm going to say Tulane Medicine. And I'm going to say, because Tulane Medicine's the name of my company, I'm going to say maybe cancer and maybe I'm going to say research and then maybe I'm going to say Gulf South. I mean, those are all great things to have on your website, but what are people searching for? And oftentimes it's something like, I have cancer. Who's the best place in the Gulf South that could treat me? And from that, maybe they come back with Tulane Medicine.

It's almost a mathematical algorithm more than marketing. It sounds like in many ways you're gaming the system.

A lot of this has to do with, again, positioning yourself against other companies that are out there that are doing the same exact thing. And so one of the other questions that we oftentimes ask is, who else is out there? And so with this particular client, what we saw was that by putting the right keywords into their website, by making sure that we were answering questions for people, all of a sudden they saw 150% increase in traffic to their website in one month.

That's incredible. Wow. Positioning yourself is always important. So that brings up your podcast and brings that to mind, the Life Science Success Podcast, which is also a vodcast. You make us be on camera too. And, and not to brag, but I've experienced with this and got to be a guest and I really, really enjoyed it. And I wondered if you could tell everyone a little bit more about that and who would benefit from listening and watching. And if they want to be a guest, how can they try and reach out to you?

I started this in 2020. It was during the pandemic. Again, it was kind of a selfish exercise because I'm a consultant and essentially I wanted to know, how do I connect with people and not do it in a slimy way. So I wanted to, wanted to do it in a traditional, genuine way with people. We've done over 400, I believe, podcasts now. I think we're approaching 500. And so it's been a real passion project of mine. We get about 17,000 visitors to the website every month. We've had, I don't know how many tens of thousands of downloads at this point. The ticker's always full in terms of people that are downloading these things. If you want to go listen to them or watch them, you essentially go to www.lifesciencesuccess.com and you can see all of the episodes there. You can also go to your favorite podcast app on your phone or what have you and find it there. So whether it's Spotify or Apple, etc., you'll find it there. And then lastly, if you want to be a guest, the best place again is to go to the website and then just click on the button to ask a question and then propose that you could be a guest there. You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm fairly easy to find on LinkedIn as well. So Don Davis, PhD, MBA on LinkedIn, you'll find me there.

Well, you mentioned guests, and so I want to know who, other than me of course, who have been your most interesting guests? And I know you had many, but who are a couple that you'd love to highlight?

There are a few different reasons why I guess I would highlight maybe a couple of different One of the ones, certainly for me, that was a very interesting interview was Dr. Elaine Hamm. And the one reason why I loved the interview with her is just that I hadn't really envisioned parts of the country being flyover zones until, you know, we really had the conversation together. I live in Colorado, and you could kind of call that a flyover zone too. At the same time, I mean, we like to call ourselves a little hub. And then, you know, I would say that you probably do the same exact thing in your area.

Yeah.

In addition to that, I've sort of had people ask me this question, like, what is your favorite one? I love every one for different reasons. And oftentimes I love it for the conversation more than I love it for the topic or what it might do for the individual. I love the connection. So I love the connection and the conversation more than anything.

Well, you said you love Elaine, so you're safe, and that's all that matters. And hopefully she'll write— she'll send us both a check right now, which would be good.

Right, exactly.

Or a bottle of wine since her husband's a sommelier. That actually might be better because we know it'll be well chosen. Given that, Don, you were out and about, the pandemic's over, so now you're hitting lots of events. Are there upcoming events where folks want to meet you in person and get to know you and perhaps utilize some of your services? Are there places you have planned to be attending where they can do that.

One of the places I've been helping an awful lot recently has been Bullpen Ventures, bullpen.ventures. But yeah, so the Bullpen is a great place. I know you're very active there as well. And people have a real passion for sort of connecting and then wanting to help each other as well, which I greatly enjoy with the organization itself. We will be at Bayou on the Bayou in October.

So excited for that too. I can't wait.

Then we'll be at JP Morgan as well. And I know Christian Engstrom is thinking through lots of other events that he wants to do and participate in and things like that. And so I definitely will be there. I also try and attend every single BIO International just to be there as well. And frequently I will hold a series of interviews all over the place, any place I go. So anytime I'm somewhere, one way to connect I know is always to do that. And then lastly, If you want to work with me, the best place to go where I'm most active right now is at d3digital.com. So if you go to d3digitalmedia.com, you'll find me there.

Perfect. So you got that, you got LinkedIn, you got all the ways. Don, I want to thank you for taking time to join us. Is there anything else you feel that we missed today? Because I'm not always the best at asking questions. I do my best job, but anything else you want to highlight before we wrap up today?

No, I just would like to ask you back.

So tell me about your You're not the host of this podcast.

As you get prepared for Bio on the Bayou, what are some of the things that you're really looking forward to at the event?

Well, of course, you being here and doing bullpen stuff, and we did not plan that, but honestly, Christian and I just talked about that yesterday and how he had talked to you about coming down. And I was so excited because the fact that you're going to be able to do some additional video content, what we have Ian doing Bio for the Bayou podcast, we'll have our dueling podcast hosts. Maybe we'll look at views and see who wins a little competition. Ian, you're going to have to step it up. That's going to start booking. We should probably put you beside each other, just have people roll from one to the other and get all the, all the great content. And you know, it's great because yours are a little longer form and visual sometimes, although for the bullpen they're even shorter than what we do here. Ours are just audio, which is really great complements. But the bullpen coming down, I think, is a really incredible add-on this year. The fact that it's gonna have some wraparound things. We've got really, really great turnout already. We're approaching 100 registrants. We've never had that many this early. It seems like a year where it's gonna hit. We've got our asks out for our panels and our acceptances starting to come in. Our panels are looking to be fire. I just, I'm ready to do it and to change the Gulf South and to have the bullpen be part of that with us is honestly my favorite thing this year. And that was not a preplanned plug, but that is what I'm looking forward to most is the region is arriving. We're in year 5 of Bio on the Bayou, which I had to go back and count and realize it's the 5th iteration of it as that. It's time. We're here for it.

I'm really excited and of course love the team down there as well. So I'm looking forward to coming and really look forward to getting to see you and the rest of the team.

Do you have your costume ready? Because it is Halloween this year. And so you're going to need to have some sort of costume or you might get dressed by us.

I'm also planning on bringing my wife. She will make sure I've got the best costume.

Ooh, fantastic. I like it. I like it. Well, Don, I want to thank you for joining us so much. I always enjoy chatting with you. And it's been nice to turn the tables a little bit, although you turned them back on me at the end. And I just wanna point out to everyone, like, if they heard something where they're interested, as always, we are gonna find and have all your contact information. We're gonna have website, LinkedIn, all those things posted in our show notes. So if anyone heard anything that interested them, if they need help with kind of their digital presence for their company, I encourage them to reach out to you, to click the links to learn more. And I cannot wait to see you in 2 very short months.

Thanks so much, James. I really appreciate being on.

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