Entrepreneurship and the MSL Role
LOTS of great information to share today!!
I had the opportunity to interview Michelle Mudge-Riley, founder of Physicians Helping Physicians.
Michelle has a storied career in non-clinical medicine and we spoke about the founding of PHP as well as her MSL career.
Michelle described herself as an “always wanted to be a doctor, doctor”. She loved med school and learning the science.
Clinicals were a different story – she did not find the love for patient care
This was a tough time because she received a lot of pushback when she first vocalized this; people made her feel something was wrong with her and she did not know what to do with this information.
She chose pathology residency as a way to continue in medicine but not in day-to-day patient care. The residency program was malignant and she, as well as several others, did not finish their time in that program.
Coming out of this experience she landed her first job in industry, working in a medical device company. This job “opened her eyes to how large the world really was”.
She reminisced about this time when she only knew that “insurance or pharma” were potential options; as many of us know, we do not get any information in medical school or subsequent training about non-traditional careers for MDs. This career path is also frequently looked down up by colleagues.
Michelle has experience in a number of roles throughout her career: medical device, consulting, building companies, serving as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR). We chose to focus on two of those – PHP and the MSL role.
Physicians Helping Physicians (PHP) started in 2008 when she decided to share her non-clinical career transition by writing articles for medical journals. As she published, physicians started to reach out to her for advice and guidance. She describes PHP as a “total accident”. The requests for her counsel grew organically with MDs asking her to help with their resume and interview preparation and she found herself being invited to speak at physician conferences to share her experience.
After coaching for a decade her waitlist for clients continued to grow and she realized she needed additional means to aid physicians in their transition. The NEXT conference was the solution; started in 2019 she transitioned this to a virtual conference in 2020 and that will continue in 2021.
At NEXT physicians “get a lot of perspectives about many options and how to get into those options – pharma, biotech, med writing, IT, leadership, UM, digital marketing, entrepreneurship – so many things you can do as a doctor”
Michelle has offered a $50 discount to readers of today’s blog: INDUSTRYMDPHP
Want to learn more? Register for the conference here (this is an affiliate link and The IndustryMDCoach will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you)
One other point about the NEXT conference – Michelle easily admits to being scared to take on a conference! But she did it anyway and it was and remains a great success! We have to be willing to do scary things.
What about the MSL Role??
Michelle became aware of the MSL role when she was first transitioning out of residency; she met with a PharmD that had the role but at the time was not intrigued, especially given she had a young child at home and the travel required did not suit her family situation well. A decade later she re-visited this option. She worked in a contract situation for a large tech company that was acquiring a smaller biotech company. She had great opportunities to work with senior leadership of the companies, medical affairs personnel and learn things she had never been exposed to.
She knows her strengths and called out relationship building (even though she is an introvert!). In this role she built 30 key relationships over 2 years, traveled to MIT, Stanford and universities in between. This role ended due to some regulatory issues that kept the partnership from moving forward but the learnings were immense.
A new MSL role is now starting for Michelle. She will be working in a small biotech company, again as a contract MSL. This role is via The Medical Affairs Company.
Let’s talk about “contract” MSL: a contract role means that you are hired not by the biotech or pharma company but instead by another company that manages the hiring, training, payroll, etc. Michelle describes this format as a “safety net” –
It’s a safety net for both parties – for smaller companies that may be more risky from the standpoint of achieving their corporate goals working for a contract organization protects the MSL from losing a job and also allows for moving to another role the contract company has available. It also allows the MSL to “vet” the company and make sure they are a good fit before becoming a full-time employee of the pharma company. For the pharma company, the contract approach reduces their overhead related to hiring and training. This is a great win-win situation and something to definitely consider if you are looking for an MSL role!
Michelle had some key points about the MSL role:
- First, it is NOT a sales role – you are not evaluated by sales number and you are not paid like a salesperson
- you are an educator
- you are providing information to people – both within and outside of the pharma company
- every MSL role is different – different companies have different expectations of the MSL role – make sure you understand this as you evaluate various MSL roles
- MSLs have “territories” – a number of states that are their responsibility. The size of the territory can vary widely between a large city, like NYC or Chicago, to multiple states (one example was a colleague who covers 6 states including TX, NM, AZ, and LA)
- currently, Covid-19 has impacted the travel required for MSLs and she will do her relationship building virtually (note, I’m incredibly interested to follow what will happen with these roles as we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic – will companies reduce the number of face-to-face visits expected? certainly there are efficiencies that come with reducing travel such as financial and environmental impacts)
In closing, I asked Michelle for her advice to a physician looking to transition to a non-clinical career…
- match keywords in the job description and on LinkedIn profiles to your resume (truthfully of course!)
- PREPARE for your interviews… do not expect to “wing it”! Interviewing is a skill set to develop.
- You need to develop your “elevator pitch” to motivate a recruiter and/or hiring manager to hire you
- You have to be willing to accept rejection and know that the rejection is not personal
- You will find something that is the right fit for both you and the company (here, I would add that it is important to focus on finding the right fit – this is critical to your success in any new role!)
Her closing words of wisdom: