In this six‑question, seven‑minute interview, Professor Pete Alexander talks with Hans Kaspersetz, CEO of Arteric, a digital marketing agency serving pharmaceutical and biotech brands. Hans explains that Arteric’s work helps bring life‑extending healthcare products to market, which he finds deeply rewarding. He shares a core lesson from a mentor who urged him to "keep going" during numerous near‑death moments for the company, framing perseverance as essential for entrepreneurs. Hans advises leaders to cultivate both a caring persona and a warrior/"monster" persona, deploying the latter only when confronting unethical competitors or legal threats. He recommends inviting Jeff Spanbauer of Relevate—a seasoned pharma marketing leader—to the podcast. Hans recounts his first job as a paperboy in Weehawken, New Jersey, where he learned to manage money and demand payment, a formative experience for his later entrepreneurial mindset. The episode closes with his LinkedIn handle and the Arteric website for listeners to connect.
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This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
My name is Hans Kaspersetz. I'm the chief executive of Arteric. Arteric is a digital marketing agency for pharmaceutical and biotech brands.
Hans, it's great to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?
Oh, we actually get to transform people's lives by bringing healthcare products to market that extend people's lives and expand their healthfulness and really create a lot of possibility for people.
I love that. It's great to hear how that— what you do actually works for particular patients, and it must be very satisfying for you.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Question number 3: I have a fictitious book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read? The chapter title is going to be, "It's All Going to Be Okay, Keep Going." Are you basing that on experience having kind of frustrations in the past and just persevering through?
Yeah. So, my first real mentor in business after I re-kicked off Arteric in 2010 was a gray-hair consultant. As an entrepreneur, we've had hundreds of near-death experiences as a company, and none of them have killed the company yet, but every single one felt like it was going to kill the company. And this guy's number one job in my life was to tell me, just keep going, it's going to be okay. And I can really credit the success of Arteric today to that, that idea. And it's the number one thing that I have to communicate to budding entrepreneurs when they get really, really scared and they get into a place of inaction or fearfulness.
Well said. I love that story too. It, it, I'm sure it's going to resonate with a lot of our listeners. Question number 4, other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?
The advice is to develop both your caring persona and your warrior persona and know when to deploy each. Uh, there's an author out there that talks about, uh, being able to be a monster. And that doesn't mean you should be terrorizing people, but you should have that capability and it should be present, but you should be able to adopt a calm and caring and focused persona most of the time, but people should know that you can be a monster if needed. Mm-hmm.
So is there an example of, you know, when you had somebody that was a monster to you, like a client or anything that would kind of give more insight into that recommendation?
Well, first of all, we always delight our clients. And so even if a client is being a monster, we're not going to reflect that back to them. But the reality is business is extraordinarily competitive. And even within that competitiveness, there's people who are fair and ethical, and then there's people who aren't fair and ethical. And there are bad actors in the world, and they sue you, and they try to take advantage of you, and they come after you. And if you don't have that monster side, you're going to be rendered helpless in that confrontation. And so that capability needs to be there, but it should rarely be used. People just need to know it's there in case.
Mm-hmm. Well said. Thank you for that. Question number 5: What other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?
So I'd like to invite Jeff Spanbauer of Relevate. They are an extraordinary local marketing agency for pharma and biotech, and I think his years of experience at P&G and Pfizer and elsewhere would really be useful to your audience.
Great, I will reach out to him. Thank you for that referral. And our final question, question number 6, please tell me about your first job.
Oh, my first job was a paperboy. I took over someone's paper route in in Weehawken, New Jersey, and that person hadn't been collecting the money for the paper route, he just abandoned it. And so my dad taught me how to read through all of the tickets that indicated whether someone had paid their paper route, and we actually went and collected all of the unpaid money the first week. I went and collected all of it, and one, I learned how to work money, and number two, I learned how to ask for payment. And that lesson has been transformational for me as an entrepreneur and as a leader, just the level of comfort with money and talking about exchange of value.
Wow, great story. I love that. And as a former paperboy myself, I can really appreciate that. So, Hans, thank you so much for being on the show. How can people find you?
You can find me on LinkedIn at /hanskaspersetz. Or you can go to our website, uh, uh, arteric.com, A-R-T-E-R-I-C.com. I look forward to connecting.
Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.
