How to Build a Winning Life Science Sales Team | Pete Tortorelli

Need go-to-market that sales actually uses? Book a 20-minute Fractional CMO consultation with Bill to align marketing, VOC, and field execution—so reps stop “pushing” and start solving. 

- Visit https://meshagency.com/fcmo-fractional-cmo-fractional-marketing/ to learn more. 

Pete Tortorelli (GM/Managing Director, Revvity) breaks down how to build life science sales teams that scientists actually trust. We cover application-specific selling, channel orchestration, hiring for integrity and curiosity, and why the best reps sometimes refer business to competitors.

Connect with Pete: linkedin.com/in/ptortorelli

00:00 Why life science sales fails without market awareness
00:10 Building sales teams scientists actually trust
01:55 From accidental sales teams to intentional design
05:07 How to sell to scientists without “selling”
07:43 Do life science sales reps need a science background
09:58 Tracking trends that reshape lab workflows
11:41 Selling by solving real lab pain points
17:21 Why integrity beats short-term revenue
27:39 When sales drives product innovation

Life science buyers aren’t shopping for hype; they’re validating hypotheses. Pete Tortorelli led Omni through growth and acquisition and now runs the business inside Revvity. 

In this episode, he lays out how to build a sales model scientists respect: application-specific proof, honest discovery, and rigorous support from an app's “cavalry.”

We get tactical: how to use interrogative selling to find true constraints (budget, staffing, SOPs), when to cut bait, and why referring a misfit project to a competitor can earn long-term trust. On team-building, Pete favors integrity and curiosity over perfect CVs, then surrounds reps with fast, accurate answers.

Finally, we look forward. Your advantage isn’t a louder pitch; it’s a tighter proof.

3 Secrets to add to Pete’s Sales Model

1. Sales is your fastest learning loop — faster than product, faster than marketing.
In life science, sales isn’t just about closing deals; it’s about learning in real time. If you’re paying attention, sales will tell you things your dashboards never will — before you’ve spent months building the wrong thing.

The founders who win are the ones who treat sales as an intelligence engine, not just a revenue function. They expect their sales motion to surface insight weekly, not quarterly. If your sales conversations aren’t teaching you something new about your market regularly, that’s a systems problem.

2. Trust isn’t built by good intentions — it’s built by systems that hold up under pressure.
Everyone says they value integrity. That’s easy when things are going well. The real test comes when a rep is behind quota, a quarter is tight, or a big logo is dangling just out of reach. Trust doesn’t survive on values alone — it survives on structure.

Founders have to design systems that make honesty the default, even when it’s inconvenient. If you’re relying on “good people” without guardrails, you’re putting your reputation at risk without realizing it.

3. The real constraint in modern labs isn’t budget — it’s cognitive load.
It’s tempting to assume price is the blocker, but more often it’s mental bandwidth. Labs are understaffed, overworked, and drowning in complexity.

The products that win aren’t always the most powerful; they’re the ones that simplify life. Less explaining to a boss or a collaborator. If your product asks someone to think harder, it needs to replace something else entirely — otherwise it just adds friction, no matter how impressive it is on paper.

Follow Life Sci Continuum for real-world commercialization lessons from operators who’ve built, scaled, and learned the hard way.

Visit https://meshagency.com/fcmo-fractional-cmo-fractional-marketing/ to learn more. 

#LifeScienceSales #MedTechGTM #CommercialE

Transcript

0:00

This is an industry where if you're not on top of what's going on in the market per se, if you don't know what your competitors are doing, if you don't know where the trends are going, then you're going to get left behind. I'm Bill Schick, Fractional CMO. In this episode, Pete Tortorelli, of Revvity, breaks down how to build life science sales teams that scientists actually trust. What they want to know is, how is it going to solve my day-to-day issue? How is it going to help me in an environment where I'm short lab staff, I can't replace them? You we've had budget cuts and how is it going to make my job easier? we cover application specific selling, channel orchestration, hiring for integrity and curiosity, and why the best reps sometimes refer business to competitors. We want customers that we can refer over the next 10 years. That's how we hire our people. We hire them to be consultants in the process and to solve problems with the customer, not to foist instruments on them that they don't want. All right, let's go. today we want to talk a little bit about building a sales team in the life science space. A lot of my listeners are looking at what they need to do and looking for help in developing that. So you've got quite a background in that. And if you want to take maybe a couple of minutes and just provide a little bit of your background and what, your role has been in building that up there. I was the President/CEO of Omni International, which is a global manufacturer of homogenizers and cell disruption equipment up until our acquisition in 2021 by PerkinElmer. And then we became part of PerkinElmer. We are now part of Revvity, which is the remaining business units from the PerkinElmer divestiture. So I've run the Omni business unit for a number of years here. and had all of the different aspects of the business reporting into me, one of which is the commercial function. I think I understood that your background previously was heading up sales. What is your experience there just to give a level set for everybody? started out opening a sales office for this business in the Northern Virginia area, which is obviously NIH, hub of most of the spending. And that was a number of years ago. And so things have evolved market-wise and also in this company. So we were currently in the Atlanta, Georgia area. And the current sales organization is for territory managers who manage our different channel partners, also distributors throughout the world who are really manufacturers' reps. So channel partners could be catalogs, scientific catalogs, could be OEM relationships with companies that sell equipment that is complimented by a front end cell disruption platform. And so that's how we go to market, direct OEMs and catalogs. And so for this conversation maybe we primarily focus on direct sales so how did you get started with that how did you spin that up was it from scratch or did you have an existing team that you inherited. We did not have a team. I mean, basically, it was a small business for quite a while, Omni was. The MO, per se, with sales was kind of the place where other departments would off board their employees who weren't cutting it in other areas of the company. And so, you know, we've had people in sales that came from accounting, HR, operations, quality, places like that. And so that was many years ago. But over the years, as we've been more involved in directly meeting in labs with customers, it became apparent that we had to step up the game, so to speak, and how we understood the needs of those customers and what the requirements are. We now have four territory managers who, again, manage the different channel partners. So they will go in to see a customer based on who brought them to the customer side. It could be a direct sale. It could be a channel partner. And then based on what the end user, the customer wants, we then pull in resources from within the business unit. It could be application science. It could be automation, automation engineering, product management, if it requires a new product, things like that. So our frontline is the four territory managers. And they are trained in how to communicate with customers and lab directors, lab supervisors, scientists who have unique issues at the bench. So you said something interesting and that you got to a point where you felt like you had to level up the team or what you're bringing to the table. What do you think is the difference between your approach before and maybe the team that you've built today? I'm an avid reader and a student of basically every sales book that's ever been written. And, you know, it was interesting because I couldn't find any one good work by any of the big authors who are famous for being sales gurus that helped in the life science space until I found one by a former life science. a life scientist who turned, who turned into a marketing person. And he wrote a book, his name escapes me right now, but he wrote a book called persuading scientists. And I read that and thought to myself, this is the secret sauce as to how to actually sell equipment into a modern R and D lab because scientists don't want to be sold. Right. They, they want to be convinced by peer reviews. and through the scientific method that what the sales rep or the sales partner is telling them is that absolute truth. So lab supervisors, scientists, lab directors, automation directors, people that work in labs are unlike any other audience to sell to, right? They require proof that what you say is actually factual. So We had to change our approach and our approach went from, Hey, do you want to buy a homogenizer? It's going to save you some time to having application specific data that showed when you have this type of sample matrices or you're looking for these types of analytes, this is how you do it with our equipment. And here is the recipe. So we are application specific salespeople now. Which has helped us tremendously in growing the product and it creates a, a level of trust with the audience. Right? So it's unlike selling a car or, a TV or a computer where you pick something based on specs. I would say more than half of our audience is curious, skeptic scientists who want you to prove that you can do what you say you do and have to prove. Right. And as a sales rep or a territory manager, do I have to be a scientist to communicate that or educate on that? Or can I come from one of those other industries and learn it? So I think it's a good question. Of the four people that we have who are territory managers, two of them are scientists, two are not. So having a science background, you know, off the bench helps, but it doesn't make you successful. The other two had no background in lab science. They learned the basics of science and learned how to communicate through the method of persuading scientists that you're actually not giving them a load of bull, you're actually giving them factual information that's backed up with proof and managing the channels that bring you to those end users. So no, you don't have to be. I think the application scientists that we employ who help the salespeople who are kind of the other part of the attack force, if you will, right? So the territory managers might be the the infantry and the application scientists might be the cavalry, you know, the people who drive the tanks and the specialists. And so they bring in a unique aspect, right? I worked on the bench. What they're telling you was true because I wrote this application data and I can discuss that in detail with you. So now you don't have to have a science background. You do have to be an avid learner. you know, this is an industry where if you're not on top of what's going on, in the market per se if you don't know what your competitors are doing, if you don't know where the trends are going, then you're going to be you're going to get left behind. That makes sense. A revolution I think could happen very quickly, even when we think sometimes things progress pretty slowly. So I know sometimes we work with clients that, they deal with established protocols and it can take a lot of work for them to change those protocols and get those things moving. But advancements in technology and advancements in methods can happen. overnight and knowing, knowing what is happening I think would be important for the sales team to keep their their kind of their their thumb on. Absolutely. 100 % agree. We've seen trends over the years in this industry. For example, 10 years ago, your average sample size of whatever you were looking to extract something from, an analyte substrate, whatever, was maybe 50 ml. Now it's 1 ml or smaller. drastically changes a lot of the things that come into play from an equipment point of view. And as a instrument manufacturer, you need to be on top of that. You need to know what the trends are, where the trends are going. The next big trend, obviously, I think is single cell research, right? Because people don't want to use tissue anymore. There's a lot of... objection to, you animal based research, which is understandable. And they want to be able to extract single cells or use AI to do, you know, predictive methods. And so we need to understand those trends. We need to understand how they impact researchers and what they do in their job. Sometimes they don't understand and we have to educate them. And so that's a, you know, I think a larger burden on us that other than just understanding the the science, have to understand the technology that's going to help propel the science. Yeah, aside from just simply walking in the door and educating and convincing, what are some of the key functions that somebody in a sales role performs at a company like yours? I think situational awareness is the first thing that I would say when you're, when you're going in to a lab or you're going into a customer site, whether it be a university or pharma or CRO, understanding what the situation is in that particular company or university or lab and what their challenges are. Right. And I think asking questions. had this conversation with one of my application scientists this morning about how everything should be information is currency, right? So if a customer wants information from you, you want information back from them, not because you're looking for the upper hand, but because you want to understand what the true need is and where the true pain is. So question, question based, Or you might want to call it interrogative selling, I guess. Maybe that doesn't sound so great, but you want to drill deep with questions to really understand what the problem is. think too many times you people walk into a lab and they say, Hey, I have this new centrifuge or new homogenizer or cell counter or whatever. And it's great. And it's, it's going to do this and you know, you should try it out. And that doesn't make an impact on the end user. What they want to know is. how is it going to solve my day-to-day issue? How is it going to help me in an environment where I'm short lab staff, I can't replace them? We've had budget cuts and how is it going to make my job easier? So that's what our people have to do. That's what they have to understand. if you don't understand that, scientists aren't going to be receptive. So understanding where the pain is, in that specific situation. And let's be honest, if I don't have a product that is going to help believe that pain, or if it's going to solve a problem, I don't want to sell it. Because the last thing I want to do is give a customer or potential customer the idea that I'm going to solve their problem. And then three months down the road, we didn't solve it. Right. And you've burned all your capital with that customer. And they think, You're untrustworthy, right? So we don't, we don't want to do that. We want lifetime customers. We want to be able to go to somebody and say, you have this problem. We solved that problem for, Joe Smith at Glaxo or Regeneron or Amgen. Why don't you ask him how we helped him solve it and, and get his input. So we want customers that we can refer over the next 10 years. And you know, that's. That's how we hire our people. We hire them to be consultants in the process and to solve problems with the customer, not to foist instruments on them that they don't want. Right. So I've worked on the number of companies and in some companies, the sales teams are motivated to get in, get out, move what you can and move on to the next thing. And I find that those teams feel generally less invested in the company and the customers. It feels very transactional, which, you know, I mean, I get stuck in a sales role quite a bit. It's really against everything that I feel about selling because I feel that we're not really selling, we're solving problems. And so I'm 100 % on the same page there. Right. Yeah. Let's not, let's not fool ourselves. It is about numbers. It is about revenue. We all have targets we have to meet. If you're not honest with customers and if you're not really solving a problem, then you're not going to hit the numbers. I mean, if you're helpful and you sell a product that you believe in and that truly makes a difference for the customer, then the numbers will come. Right. You'll, you'll get to it because it, I mean, you've worked with us at Omni, you know, We have a great reputation and customers refer other people to us. And that's a good place to be, right? Because it means you were successful in making their life easier. And that's what our business, that's what Revvity is all about, right? Making life easier for people and solving problems that no one else wants to solve. Yeah. And I just going back to something that you, you said before too, and getting to the heart of the matter. I think you guys, you guys follow this as well, but I use the five whys. I do find that, a lot of people stop at, know, why are you doing that? And then you get an answer and then you just run with whatever that was. And I think really the point you made about digging into the heart of the matter. What truly is driving this, is important. And you, you mentioned. budgets and short staff where my thought is that the science is kind of table stakes. You have to know the basics of what is happening in there and where people really win is getting more to the human side of the sales conversation and cracking through beyond just the transactional numbers. Can it do the job? What's the price? hardest thing for a salesperson to do is to, is to cut bait, right? To say, I can't help you. And, walk away from that situation. And that aspect, you know, are for people, they don't want to do that, but it's more important for us to preserve the integrity of the relationship with that potential customer, because you don't know when downstream. when they might need your product. mean, it's some things, things evolve quickly in this industry. the other thing that, you know, we'll do is if there's a competitor who's better at something than us or another company, we'll, we'll make a referral. We've done that several times. And, know, that's not really common, common practice in any industry, but I, you know, I've got, competitors who think highly of us because we've actually referred business to them because they have a skillset that we don't have. And so it's about honesty, right? With customers and integrity and knowing your market and knowing that five years from now, you want to have, you want to be the guy who the customers you worked with give you the referral downstream because it was a, It was a pleasant way of doing business. You were the exception to the rule. And that's how we, that's how we train our people and we've been successful at it. And hopefully our competitors don't watch this and don't pick up on that because they're not doing that. Right. I mean, they're, they're coming out with solutions that are not as good and telling people here, buy it because it's got a better price and better price doesn't usually mean better performance. Right. And I think when you don't have a, you know, top-down sales philosophy, like you said, it's based on integrity. You sort of have to do whatever you can to get the sale. And that's a completely different mindset and attitude. And I think, I think customers recognize that they can, they, if they're not seeing it directly, they can sense it. Yeah. And I have a, when we do a presentation on the business, I have a slide, that segments our customers into two categories. One is what I'll call the one and done. And the one and done is somebody who comes and buys something based on a need or an SOP or a replacement. And you may get to talk to them. You may not, they'll buy it because you're in a location where they have preferential buying. you know, for contractual reasons. And so that's half of the customer base. The other half are the people who we're talking about, who have a legitimate issue, right? They have a problem. They can't solve the problem. They need application support. They meet, they may need a demo. They need to talk to people that are going to help them through the process. And that's where we excel, right? So we're the one and dones. We have the relationships, with OEMs and catalogs to, to cater to them. And we do a good job. But where we excel is on the other side with the people who really need the extra level of support. Yeah, have you have you ever had a salesperson come in and be more transactional focusd and numbers focused and you maybe had the sense that they were they were less of the problem solving mentality and had to coach them up? Yes. Also had to replace them. You can't really teach integrity, right? mean, you're either, you're either going to tell the truth or you're not. My thing is, never lie to a customer and never let a customer wait more than a few hours before you reply, you know, at the most 24 hours, because they, they came to you in a time of need. They trusted you. And you should honor that trust. People who get in this and try to wing it don't do well. I mean, it's a small industry, life science, everybody knows everybody else. Or they leave companies and go to competitors. They leave labs and become salespeople and they remember you. They remember the product, they remember the experience. They remember whether you were helpful or not. So honesty is the best policy. But also I think, you you have to do your homework. I don't think you can be a life science sales specialist or work in this industry and not do some extracurricular work. For instance, you you have to truly understand what your product does and what it brings to the market versus competitors. And if you're working an eight to 10 hour day, sometimes you don't have the time to do that. So this is stuff maybe you need to do after hours. um I tell my people, know, choose extracurricular activities that are gonna feed your career, right? Before you get into a binge watching on Netflix, ask yourself, am I gonna be better off doing this or maybe reading a book that's gonna help me brush up on my sales skills or should I maybe pull out the computer and go to my competitors' websites and see what they're up to? So it's, you're an athlete, basically you're, you're a sales athlete, right? You need to continue to build your muscle and build your game and don't get complacent and rest on your laurels. Right. It's a new kid in town is just waiting to take you out. Right. So I, you know, worked with a client a few years back where, know, part of my onboarding process is to go through as much of the sales training as they'll allow. And in my initial interview with the head of sales, he said, go look at our website. Everything that you'll need to know is there. And that was the extent of their sales training. He had probably a day or two on on the first day and otherwise he just sort of let let people go out to the wild. What do you think of that approach? oh And maybe oh how is your approach a little different? Well, we're not too far off from that, to be honest with you. We will bring salespeople in for a few days and have them work with the applications team and get a grasp of the product. And then we'll have them work with some of the internal partners here to show them where the things are in the server, application data, things that they're going to need, make sure that they're equipped, and then kick them out of the nest. My thing is I hired you because you had an aptitude or you had access to customers or you brought customers with you. Go talk to them and ask questions. You don't need to know everything. You don't need to be a product expert. If you have basic understanding of the product, but know where to go to get the questions answered. That's the good first step. And we have an outstanding support team here. And I think that's important. If you have a sales team, they need to be supported. They need to know that if they have a question that they're not just gonna make something up, know, extemporaneously on the spot and tell a customer something that's not true. You know, that violates my first rule. So I don't know is a good answer, but I'll find out. And you know, when can I get back to when you need to know by, you know, can I have till tomorrow? Or I'm not, I don't have the depth of experience to answer that question. Let me get you an application scientist. who we can talk to together and then they can address the issue. Would that be okay? And people are very open to that. I've very seldom in my career had a customer come to me and say, you have to answer my question right now. I've had managers do that, but never customers, right? So just support them and tell them where to go to get questions answered. I think the worst thing that you can do for building a sales organization is not give them access. to answers to their questions, connect them. That's my job, right? I don't know everything, but I know where to go to get it. And so right before, you you and I started this conversation, one of the reps messaged me and said, Hey, where do I go for this? And I sent him a response. So just support, you have to have a support structure. Sales is not going to, a sales team is not going to be successful out on an island. They need They need the application support. They need the engineering support, marketing support. Everybody works as a team. Yeah, I think if they're spending their time hunting for the information to help that one, you know, prospect, then they're not spending that time hunting, you know, for new accounts and new business. And so it just it just creates a lot of friction, I think, and being able to get them what they need quickly, I think is important. Yeah, you want them prospecting for sure. I don't pay salespeople to, you know, research how to look up something online. I pay them to open a door to get us leads, right? That are get us opportunities. So yes, give them as much support as possible. If you build a sales organization without support, you're going to fail. Yeah. Going back to something that you said a few minutes ago, you had talked about only wanting to sell to a client that you had a solution for. then if you couldn't, know, sometimes you'd refer them to a competitor. I think you shared with me a story or two where you've actually developed products based on conversations with customers. So what do you think the role is in, you know, the sales team and developing new products or new solutions? That's a great question. So salespeople by nature will want to sell everything. And that's a trap you can fall in, right? So if I have a customer asking for something and they say, can we make it? That's very different from, let's say a trend of half a dozen customers asking for the same thing over maybe three months. That to me tells me that it's a gap in the market that no one's filled yet. And if we can do it, we'll do it. You have to guard your time in product development. Salespeople need to be focused. it's a difficult thing. It's a skill you have to learn. Where do you focus your time? And if you have a product you can sell them, great. If you don't have a product and you know where they can get it and you give a referral, great. If it's a one-off then can't help you. If it's a product that you're getting or an idea or a problem that needs resolution that keeps coming up over and over again. I mean, that's where product management gets involved, right? We'll, we'll develop a voice of customer. We'll put together a new product introduction and try to, try to make the business case, saleable to to management and then see what they do from there. Typically, you can make a good business case and you can make a product in a year or so. So we have had instances where customers have come to us and said, hey, I have this and it does that, but I would rather it do this, that and this. And we've developed product in some cases that had been very successful and it, such as our automation line. We've also developed products and not been successful for a variety of reasons, mostly because we didn't do the front end analysis to make sure that this was a good business investment. And so, you you learn and, know, as, as a somebody that runs a business, I'm just as excited as the salesperson is when they bring an opportunity, right? Because you see an opportunity to increase your revenue, right? And who doesn't want to do that? But you have to be judicious in what you invest in and understand what the potential return is. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. It got my brain going to compensation. you know, I know, you know, we go, we go do the work that we're compensated for. And that's a big, that could be its own, you know, entire topic, but going beyond compensation, how do you motivate the sales team to do sometimes hard work that maybe there isn't a dollar specific attached to, maybe it's an operational change. or it's a different approach to what they're doing that maybe will have an impact further down, but it's less immediate. How do you motivate them in particular? I think you have to hire. You have to hire people who are intuitive thinkers, right? You can't you can't you cannot be lazy, right? You can't say. I'm going to make four visits today and then I'm going to go sit at the pub and you know. Yeah, no, don't. You always have to be looking for opportunity. Here's a good way to answer that question. I think if you're asking questions, you're going to uncover things, even things you didn't expect to uncover. Right. So if you're part of a large organization, right, as Omni is, we're part of Revvity. There are downstream instruments that you don't necessarily sell, but could potentially help that customer. And if you're asking questions and something comes up that's not related to your product, but you could solve a problem, with one of the instruments that a colleague sells on the other side of the business, right? You want to be receptive to that. want, it's just another way to help the customer solve a problem, right? Whether it be switching to a better reagent or having a better cell counter or a better nucleic acid extraction device. That's an interesting problem that we have because when we work on the front end, If the front end works, theoretically everything downstream should work. But typically our front end products work so well that we expose problems downstream, right? Whether it be a liquid handling problem or a problem with a reagent or whatever. So when you're doing things well at the front end of the scientific workflow, you can easily identify where the garbage out is, right? Because it's not garbage in at that point. So our people are looking to be helpful. The more helpful you are, the better your reputation is in this industry. And you'll carry that from job to job. Yeah, and so that's really interesting because I think for me that that sort of clinches something that I've seen from Omni is that you're very customer centric and a lot of you know, other other companies that I've seen are are more product there. They're more um inside out. They're sort of out there to get. get this in front of as many people, get people to buy it, just really kind of jamming it out there. And I think that I think the answer to your question is, you know, maybe be less focused on being a salesperson and be, you know, part of the, the Omni team that is customer centric. so when you're going in there, be, open, you know, to the conversation, be curious. That's one of the things we try to do is Have the curiosity of a child. You know, they ask, you know, my, daughter is four right now and why this daddy, why that and why, why, why? And I think as we get older, we sort of forget that. But if you go into these situations, more customer centric and more asking, why is that a problem? Why are you, know, why is this the thing right now? You're better positioned to help them find a solution. And then the sales come. It's all about trust. I mean, if you go in with a consultative approach rather than a, you know, a sales approach, they're going to trust you. They're going to trust you whether you helped them or not. Right. You asked the questions. If you deliver a solution that helps them great. And if it doesn't, and you were honest with them, they're going to remember that because who does that? Right. I mean, who, who goes to a customer and says, you know what, I can't help you. But I know some who can. And then your competitors also, I mean, they, if there's nothing more hilarious than sending a customer to a competitor because you couldn't help them. Cause the customer, the competitor doesn't know what to do at that point. Like you, sent me a customer and I've actually built several really good friendships with competitors who then reciprocate and send stuff to us. right? Because they know that, you know, hey, these guys are trustworthy, but you can't just put a product on a website and sell it in this industry. It's just not going to work. It's far more complex and not just because of the tech or the science. You want to create the human relationship with the people in the lab to help them solve the problem so that they can then create science. Right. So our tagline at Omni for years has been great science starts here. And that starts with the sales to customer relationship and the mutual trust that's built between the two. Last thing to put you on the spot. Let's say your time travel go back 10 years you're building a sales team from scratch. Three tips to earlier Pete. Hire inquisitive people. Hire people who are brutally honest. Hire hard workers. If you hire people with integrity and a strong work ethic, they don't necessarily, and learners, they don't necessarily have to have a science background. It helps. It helps a lot. But the people that I have as sales reps who are not scientists or have a science background do just as well as the other two. So. I would say that a couple of times we've made mistakes where we hired people with a science background and said, you know, this person's really going to light it up, but they didn't have integrity or they weren't a hard worker. Yeah, they worked on a bench, you know, and did pipetting and homogenizing before, but they just didn't fit the mold. So, yeah. So have a, have a model of what you're looking for. I would tell my old self and don't, and don't vary from it. Stick to it. The other thing I would say is if it doesn't work, change it, don't be afraid to change. Don't be afraid to grow. Because this industry evolves rapidly. Right. I mean, just look at what AI has done in the past year or, or look at the changes in, in science in general, due to downsizing of people and the trend towards automation. So So have a plan and stick to it. And if the plan doesn't work, don't be afraid to change the plan. Right, you just have to be fluid. Things are happening very, very quickly right now and people have to be on their toes. Pete, thank you so much. It was great to have you on again. If you made it here, thank you. If you haven't already, like, share, and subscribe to the channel. If you want to learn more about this topic, I expand on it below, as well as in my LinkedIn newsletter. That's all for now. More soon.