Vince Marchetti was born in San Antonio, Texas and currently resides in Coronado, California. He then attended University of Central Missouri and majored in business. His activities included student government and President of Delta Chi fraternity.
He began his career in consumer products with Colgate Palmolive, selling soap and toothpaste to grocery stores and drug stores for four years in Joplin, Missouri & Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was promoted and moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan to service national accounts.
Vince was then recruited by the medical device company, Boston Scientific and transferred to Phoenix, Arizona after five years. He spent the good part of 20 years selling disruptive medical technologies in the vascular, cardiovascular and wound care space for start-up companies including Entellus Medical (acquired by Stryker), Lumend (acquired by Johnson & Johnson) and Novoste (acquired by Best Medical). The balance of those years was spent with large companies, including 17 years of outstanding results in the Wound V.A.C. division of KCI and Cardiovascular divisions of Boston Scientific and Medtronic. Vince earned sales representative of the year honors with two companies.
In 2013, Vince co-founded a life sciences company that specializes in bringing disruptive technologies to medical physicians and dentists. These have included telemedicine, remote patient monitoring and dental insurance replacement.
In the last few years, what lifestyle, habit or behavior change has had the biggest positive impact on your life?
My life has also been impacted greatly by the declining health of some of my family members. They have limited access to key healthcare specialists and proper facilities needed to treat and manage their conditions.
This really speaks to the need for more telehealth options, telemedicine, and remote patient monitoring. There are so many things that people have to go to the emergency room for that can be handled by remote monitoring of heartrate, blood pressure, pulse and oxygen saturation. Clinicians would be more efficient, and patients would have better care if this technology was more widely available.
Everyone has a family member that has been adversely impacted by the cost and limited access to healthcare. This can include the financial strain, access to technology and specialists or battling insurance companies. This should not be the case.
When you feel unfocused, what do you do?
I step back from what I am doing and implement something physical into my day. Trying to do more work or a different type of work is not going to keep me focused, so I find exercise and meditation allow me to refresh my brain. I also love walking my dog to get my mind off things. It is helpful to disengage if possible and spend time doing unrelated activities that drive endorphins, such as biking, walking, kayaking, or meditating.
What advice would you give a smart and ambitious recent college graduate? What advice should they ignore?
My advice is to network early in your college career and be disciplined in your follow-up, both personally and professionally. This advice is applicable to anybody no matter where you are at in your career. The more you network at an early age and the more you forge relationships that you can draw from throughout your career, the better off you are going to be. Not only is it going to give you more job opportunities, but you can also gain knowledge on best practices and methods; the people that have strong networks have a leg up on everybody. Even now, I have relationships that I’ve made in college that have helped my daughters get into different areas of their professional life and get job leads.
What is one lifestyle trend that excites you?
I recently switched to a plant-based diet because of the impact it has on so many co-morbidities and the environment. I was inspired by a documentary on Netflix called The Game Changers, which profiles athletes in their 40s, 50s and even 60s. They profiled several notable athletes including American cyclist Dotsie Bausch, renowned strongman Patrik Baboumian and Arnold Schwarzenegger. After Schwarzenegger had his massive heart attack and bypass surgery, he switched to a plant-based diet and he has more energy now than he’s ever had in his life.
I decided to just try it, and it changed my life. After nine months, I eliminated one medicine and greatly reduced two others. I lost 25 pounds without even dieting. This weight loss eliminated sleep apnea. I am sleeping better and have more energy. My recovery after exercise is also quicker.
Athletes have gone to a plant-based diet call it the new legal doping because their energy level and their recovery from a workout is much faster.
Everyone knows someone in their family that has health ailments that could potentially be impacted, so it’s worth trying.
Who has been the biggest influence in your life and why?
My father has been the biggest influence in my life. He has served the public through a long military career as well as in public service as an elected official. He has inspired me to do a lot of volunteering. I helped my daughters start Youth Sports Angels International when they were growing up. This organization provided used sporting equipment for children in Central America. I have been involved with my college alumni foundation and a handful of non-profits that inspire me. One organization I am currently involved in is called The Hometown Banner Program. It is a military service recognition program sponsored by a local municipality. Twice a year, the city recognizes nominated local Veterans with a formal ceremony and then their banner is displayed along the main street leading to the Naval base for six months.
What’s one of the biggest life lessons you’ve learned?
It is important to be involved in your children’s lives in a non-intrusive way in order to give them viable advice and guidance, so they make informed decisions in life.
I did not know a thing about coaching girls’ softball or soccer, but I taught myself how to do that early on so I could be involved in the extracurricular activities of my girls. I think it’s really important to be involved with your kids’ lives because you get to know their peer groups and their families. It’s not that you’re trying to be a helicopter parent; it’s so that you can be there, listen, act as a resource and better understand the challenges they face.
What do you think it is that makes you/someone successful?
I firmly believe it is all about hard work. When you’re in sales, hard work, ability to develop relationships and being an expert in your products’ niche are the biggest drivers for success.
How do you stay motivated?
I have a sense of urgency that time will run out on whatever I am trying to accomplish. You have to always have that fear of loss. If you’re not successful, you’re going to struggle; I have always operated out of that.
What legacy do you hope to leave behind?
In business, I am still very close to people that I’ve worked with, people who have worked under me, as well as people I’ve worked for. I strongly believe that every one of those people would tell you that I helped make them improve professionally, and they helped contribute to my success as well. I have taken chances on hiring and promoting people who may be the most qualified on paper but have demonstrated some intangible that they can quickly build upon. I am confident those people recognize and appreciate the chances they were afforded. In every case, they helped me improve professionally as well.
What drew you to sales early on? How did you get started in that industry?
At the start of my career, the country was in a recession; the economy had crashed. People were getting four-year degrees and not even securing job interviews late in the spring semester. I was really focused on getting a job in sales with a large company that would allow me to grow professionally and earn a comfortable living. Consumer products met those needs. A fraternity alumni connection helped secure an initial interview with Colgate Palmolive. My first job out of college was selling laundry detergent and toothpaste to grocery stores in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
Transitioning into medical sales was a big change. There were very few companies that would hire from consumer products. Most of them hired people with pharmaceutical sales experience, but that is a very different from medical device sales. I was fortunate to be introduced to an upstart medical device company called Boston Scientific Corporation that was looking to hire salespeople without the paradigms of pharmaceutical sales. Consumer products gave me selling experience directly to consumers, store managers, and headquarter points. The sales cycle is very different for each one of those. The common thread is preparedness, good pre-call planning, following the steps of the sales, consistency, relationship building, and impeccable follow-up. They recruited people from consumer products companies, like Colgate Palmolive, Procter & Gamble and Nestle Foods, and I was fortunate enough to have been one of those people.
What positive changes do you think can come out of the current pandemic?
There are going to be a lot of positive things to come out of this pandemic that we are facing. First, patients will discover that they don’t need to go into the doctor’s office all the time. The patients that are at the most risk over the next two years are going to be that population that does need to see their doctors and interact with them on a daily or weekly basis sometimes. Telehealth and remote patient monitoring are going to play a vital role here. For example, Kaiser is seeing a 700% increase in their telehealth in the last month weeks, which is outstanding.
What are you involved in currently for work?
Dentists are continuously getting their fees cut by insurance companies and many can no longer charge what they need to in order to keep their practices open. For the last four years, I have been working on introducing dentists to a company that has a model to replace dental insurance.
The company then attracts large numbers of patients through the member’s dental practice by designing dental plans unlike any other in the world. Employers self-fund these plans and contract through licensed administrators directly with the dentists in the company’s directory. There is an individual patient program which will follow shortly. The goal is for each office to receive as many patients as they are able to treat at a high standard of care, while being paid for each patient each month whether they require treatment or not.