From Dishwashers to Deodorants: Sarah's Scientific Saga

In this chat, Patrick interviews Sarah, a sales manager at Atelerix, about her unpredictable career journey. Sarah initially pursued a degree in biotechnology but quickly realized academia wasn't her calling. Her year-long stint at Procter & Gamble in dishwashing detergent formulation left her with a strong aversion to dishwashers. 
After struggling to find work during the 2009 financial crisis, she worked as a carer and later as a science coordinator in schools, where she discovered her knack for recruitment. Despite her vow to avoid sales, she spent 12 years in recruitment, finally becoming intrigued by Atelerix's innovative technology. 
Through perseverance, she landed her current role, focusing on building relationships and promoting groundbreaking cell preservation products. Along the way, she encountered quirky jobs, like recruiting armpit sniffers and quality assurance testers for condoms. Sarah attributes her success to her ability to connect with people and seize opportunities, even when they come with bizarre stories!

Transcript

Patrick: [00:00:00] So that's why I wanted to talk to you because you have an interesting background, I think stemming from recruiting, but who knows, you may have other paths that you've taken. 

Sarah: Chaotic background is what it is for me, Patrick. A chaotic background.

Patrick: okay. Funny enough, I can somehow relate to that. 

Sarah: Non linear. 

Patrick: Never is right.

But yeah, that's why I chose in terms of the naming the podcast. Pathways in life sciences, you know, we each have our own paths and most of the time it's winding and most of the time it goes up and then down as it winds. And so just fascinated with your story. So yeah, why don't we get into it, Sarah, really, really appreciate your time. And,

Sarah: Absolutely.

Patrick: yeah, tell me first of all, you're obviously, sales manager of Adaleryx and we'll get into what Adaleryx is. But yeah, tell me about your journey.

Sarah: Okay how far back can I go? 

Patrick: So you were born in, no 

Sarah: so I guess undergraduate [00:01:00] degree was in biotechnology. Okay. So I'd originally wanted to do medicine, actually, but I guess maybe fortuitously I didn't end up getting into medical school I I was always interested in science and biotech was a kind of new up and coming thing at the time, no one really knew what it was, but it seemed fun.

Quite interesting. So that, that was what I started and my plan at that point, I thought I'd end up in academia, which again, I'm glad it didn't work out that way. Cause I'd be a terrible academic. But yeah, so in third year of my degree, I did a year in industry, a placement year with Procter and Gamble.

Can I name companies in this? Am I? Sorry, you might have to edit that bit out.

Patrick: drop them. Yeah. Sponsored by Procter and Gamble.

Sarah: Yeah, so I did a year in industry with Procter Gamble where I worked in formulation science and that made me never want to work in a lab ever [00:02:00] again.

Patrick: Yeah. What

Sarah: Dishwashing Detergents.

So my degree was in biotech, and I went to the sort of the careers day that they had. And they put you through a series of written tests, and then you do a personality profile, and it was quite a long assessment center that they did. At the end of it, they said, okay, you're going to be working in ADW which was as I say, the dishwashing detergent division.

And I maybe naively thought it was going to be more scientific. It really wasn't terribly. 

Patrick: Washing dishes the whole time. 

Sarah: Honestly, I had a dishwasher in my house for maybe about eight years after I left because I couldn't stand the sight of dishwashers after working there. 

Patrick: That's funny.

Sarah: yeah, honestly, so a large part of my role was optimizing the polymers, the sequestering polymers that they put in the detergent formulations.

And when I say optimizing the polymers, literally what I did [00:03:00] every day was I had a bank of eight dishwashers. And I would add the formulation and then add a different polymer into each one with four glasses and some soil. Like the soil, it's a consumer relevant mix of, it was like coffee and, 

Patrick: oh, it was supposed to mimic

Sarah: Yeah,

Patrick: Yeah. 

Sarah: Just what the kind of stuff that customers would have in their dishwashers that would stain dishes. So you put that in and then I would run the dishwashers like four times or eight times and then you'd measure how shiny the glasses were. And that was literally take a sort of a time lapse photograph.

And then it would measure how like white, how much white was on the glass afterwards which was a determining factor in how well the sequestering polymer was working at removing carbonate and phosphate from the water which is, I'm sure very interesting to a chemist, but I was a biotechnologist.

One of [00:04:00] the things I found when I worked in formulations was I used to speak to people and I'd say why do we do that? And they'd be like, Oh, that's just what we do.

Patrick: That's just, yeah.

Sarah: Okay, but why? Tell me more. What is the purpose of adding this level of, whatever it happened to be of carbonate 

people are like just because we've tested it and that's what works and that was never a satisfactory answer to me.

Patrick: Yeah.

Sarah: wanted to dig a little bit deeper. And so I did toy with the idea of going into academia afterwards. It was not meant to be. And I ended up when I graduated, I really struggled to find a job for a little while, actually.

I graduated right in the peak of the sort of global financial crisis in 2009.

Patrick: Yeah,

Sarah: and so I worked as a carer, a support worker for people with disabilities for maybe eight months just to keep some money coming in.

Patrick: yeah 

Sarah: And then I was offered a job as a teacher, so my job title was training coordinator.[00:05:00] 

But what that really entailed was I used to go out into schools and work with kids 14 to 16 years old that were disengaged with science. I used to deliver the training programs. So it was a vocational qualification called the young apprenticeship and applied science. 

Patrick: I was trying to find what the science angle was, but

Sarah: yeah, so it was, I was teaching science, essentially secondary school science.

And I really enjoyed that, actually, and as part of that, what I used to do was I would organize a two week work placement for the students and we had about 90 students That I used to work with, and you had to organize an unpaid work experience placement for all of them.

Patrick: right.

Sarah: I guess that's the parallel with recruitment, was that I used to ring around a load of companies and say, Can this child come and work for you for two weeks?

Patrick: At Procter and Gamble wasn't part of the list.

Sarah: No, God no.

Patrick: You want to put other people through that? 

Sarah: Actually, interestingly, we used to [00:06:00] recruit for the exact job that I did in the recruitment firm that I worked at. So I could tell people all about what it entailed. And I suppose I was maybe a bit more feisty when I was younger. Maybe that fire's gone a little bit.

I I think I almost. Look back now, and I think actually it was a great opportunity to work in a great company It maybe wasn't the environment for me I'm not the most corporate of people and I like to challenge the status quo and I think it's some of the bigger Corporates maybe isn't the right environment to do that But yeah, I mean I was pretty unhappy there, but I think it was just The wrong fit for the wrong person.

But I think if I were to go back there now and have that same experience, having lived the life that I've lived, maybe it would be a bit different. I might take more out of it, but certainly, it definitely helped me a lot in terms of just understanding the world of work, stuff like constructing a [00:07:00] business email, no one teaches you how to do that in university.

Patrick: Ironically, you don't really need to know that now with ChadJPT, but I digress.

Sarah: Yeah absolutely. But stuff like Outlook, I mean it was the first time I'd used Outlook was when I worked at P& G.

Patrick: Wow.

Sarah: we didn't have that at university. I can't remember what the portal was called, but it was the university portal used to use, you didn't use like the Outlook or, for things like scheduling.

I guess now the equivalent would be no one really uses Teams outside of business, I don't think, or, certainly things like that. 

Patrick: Yeah.

Sarah: So I think Yeah, it certainly, it had its uses, but maybe wasn't the right environment. You will find with me, I go off on little tangents.

So sorry if I'm going off, just drag me back.

Patrick: you're mimicking your path to add a lyric. So it's, perfectly you and perfectly everybody, I think but you know, what's amazing with those type of experiences is like, at least you learn on the spot, what you like and what you don't like.

Sarah: Yeah.

Patrick: at it, you know, you're grateful for those experiences, right? [00:08:00] Because without those, you probably, Be stuck at a dead end job somewhere and Procter and Gamble and corporate and wanting to you know,

Sarah: I'd have hated it. I'd have absolutely, yeah, maybe not that drastic. But yeah, I definitely wasn't my ideal environment. I've got something that may be worth noting. I've got ADHD, so I'm very easily bored. So that lab environment where it's very repetitive, doing the same thing every day is not for me. And I think, probably much like you, the thing that I really value in my work is building relationships with people, and I think that's my key strength. Everything I've done since that role, I think, has revolved around building relationships, so whether that be with the students that I was training the organizations that we were getting them work placements with and then with that one, I probably would have stayed there.

I mean it was terribly badly paid. So I [00:09:00] yeah I think financially maybe wouldn't have benefited from staying in that environment. But but actually they were making redundancies at the time. So there was a big change in the way the funding worked and it seemed like the right time to look for something new.

So I went and approached a recruitment consultancy and basically said to them, will you help me get a job back in a lab? And when I went in they had boxers everywhere in the office that I went into. And they said, Oh, apologies for the mess. We're planning an office move. 

Me being me. I said, Oh, why are you moving offices? Are you growing? And they said, Oh, yeah, we're planning on taking some new staff on. Is that something you'd be interested in? And so we got to talking about recruitment and actually, when I started working in recruitment, it seemed like the ideal place for me.

So it was the sort of environment where I got to learn a little bit about a lot of things, which I think is my [00:10:00] personality. I don't necessarily need to know everything about everything, but I want to know a lot. But everything about one thing, sorry, but I need, I like to get a really broad overview.

And I guess I got to be professionally nosy in that role you get to hear lots of life stories and I absolutely loved that. It was my first. Foray into a sales driven, target driven environment, which is funny because I remember when I first graduated talking to a recruiter and they said, what do you want to do?

And I said, anything but sales, not sales, 

Patrick: I think a lot of people have a different or skewed version of what sales is, right? Everyone has that used car salesman image

Sarah: yeah.

Patrick: because we've all had that experience of a person's, you know, selling to us or talking to us that way. But now that you're in the industry, at least for life sciences, it's just like, no, it's not necessarily like that, you know,

Sarah: I think you still get those people out there [00:11:00] who are quite transactional and short termist, but I think a lot more business is won on the basis of building a longer term, more consultative partnership, and yeah, probably my experience of sales up until that point, actually, interestingly, my dad was a used car salesman and a mechanic.

Patrick: I meant no offense to your dad, no offense to any used car

Sarah: It's fine. It's fine. But yeah, that was what my perception of it was, this sort of wheeler dealer and then I, through, when I was at university, I worked all the way through and I worked in retail where it was pretty sales. Target driven. I worked in a call center as well a holiday company.

So in,

Patrick: Okay. So

Sarah: yeah and what I used to do is there was a newspaper where you used to collect the clippings from this newspaper, The Sun in the UK. And if you collect a certain number of clippings, you could buy a holiday for 15. 

Patrick: Back then you

Sarah: like a UK based caravan [00:12:00] holiday, like a trailer holiday.

But it was my job, so people would call in to confirm their holiday, and I would basically tell them you can come and stay with us, but you won't get any bed linen and you're not going to get towels, and you won't get any electricity or water. I used to have to sell all of those add ons.

Patrick: Man. Are you serious? Wow.

Sarah: yeah. So that, definitely, I think that helped.

Patrick: I mean, selling electricity and water probably was easy enough, but the rest, maybe not.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. And they would get randomly assigned to a holiday home on the park. And I would log in and see which one they'd been randomly assigned to, and then basically move them into the worst one that we had on the park and then try and sell them an upgrade to the one that they'd originally been assigned to so Oh, it was awful.

So

Patrick: of your role. Oh man. That's funny.

Sarah: Yeah, so I think certainly this kind of sales is a lot nicer and you feel like you're actually helping people. And [00:13:00] Yeah

Patrick: really rewarding being a problem solver in life sciences is that ultimately you're trying to help people live better lives. Right. And it's awesome. Which I guess is a good segue to tie into how you got into Adlerics, right?

So you did recruiting for a couple of years and then

Sarah: 12 years in recruitment. So

Patrick: Okay.

Sarah: yeah. Yeah. For my sins. I, you know what, I really enjoyed it, but similar scenario to when I left the training provider is that the organization I was working for announced around a redundancies. It's no thought of surprise to anyone that the lifelines industry has been really, It's not been a nice environment for the past few years with

Patrick: Yeah.

Sarah: the sort of the cuts to funding and it's just been a really challenging environment.

And the organization I was working with was cutting headcount. I was safe. I think I would still be safe now if [00:14:00] I was still there. But. It just, again, I think it sparked something in me that it might be time to think about something different. And I actually, I got a job with another recruitment firm and it wasn't the right fit.

It didn't go well. And while I was working there, I met the team at Tellerix. So I'd been at a small networking day that they were presenting at and I saw the technology. I saw Steve, our CSO was speaking about it and my mind was just blown.

Not just the hedgehogs are great and Steve's great, but it was for me. Why is this not everywhere? Why is everyone not using it? And it made me just really want to work with them. So I kept in touch. I actually bumped into Steve and my colleague Sarah at another show a couple of weeks later in London.

And then I just kept crossing paths with them quite regularly at different conferences and events. [00:15:00] And then Alistair got in touch with me and said that they were looking to hire a sales manager and could I help him look for one? And I started doing that. And then it occurred to me that actually why am I going to let this opportunity go?

Patrick: hang on. Yeah.

Sarah: absolutely. And. It was a really uncomfortable situation to be. It's one I've never been in before. And so it took me probably about two weeks to pluck up the courage to talk to Alistair about it. And so I sent him a message and was like, I appreciate your discretion on this, But would you consider my application as well?

And he came back straight away and was like, yeah, absolutely. And it went from there. I stopped working the job. I didn't look at it. Although my boss thought I was working. It was really uncomfortable as well. I couldn't tell him that I was applying for the job, but I didn't work the job from that point on.

And yeah, I was really focused on being able to do this role myself. I want to [00:16:00] say I was really lucky to have the opportunity to come and work for them. I think there was a lot of hard work on my part as well in terms of researching the opportunity and yeah, so that's it really.

That's the story of how I ended up here. 

Patrick: Yeah. They've been awesome to deal with. I mean, you Steve Allister all the way down. And I guess for people who don't know, why don't you explain a little bit the technology around that a

Sarah: yeah,

Patrick: say,

Sarah: that's okay. I think, call us what you want. 

Patrick: the

Sarah: So we make products, the Hedgehog Guys, that, that's our official title, right? But yeah, so we make products that are used for preserving cells, tissues, organoids, viruses, anything with a lipid membrane at room temperature. So that can be as an alternative to cryopreservation.

Or some cells that don't allow for cryopreservation that you can't freeze. It's a way to preserve and trip those. So it's a short term storage method. It's not [00:17:00] designed as an alternative to biobanking. It's for logistics is its main use. 

Patrick: Yeah, it really is a game changing, disruptive technology out there that I think when you talk to people and introduce the technology, a lot of them is like, what would come again? Like it's very science fiction for them. But a huge need, a huge cost saving needs, especially if you're shipping bio samples to other locations.

Sarah: And I think for me, the thing that I've really enjoyed since I've started working here is talking to people and seeing the impact that it will have for them. For example one of our clients that we've been chatting with in New Orleans has been hand delivering her product who customers in Boston.

Because she doesn't trust that any logistics firm is going to get it there safely. So she gets a call saying, we need some of your cell models and she books a flight and goes and delivers it by hand. For that business, that's the difference [00:18:00] between being able to scale and, being limited to how many sales reps can go and deliver your product by hand.

And it also allows them to expand globally because at the moment they are limiting all of their business to the U. S. And really what they want to be doing is going overseas. So I think for, customers like that where you can just see that this is going to change their business It's amazing.

And then just for me some of The different applications that you don't realize until you're talking to people and you see a light bulb in their head and they think, Oh, actually this is going to solve this problem for me. So things like I was speaking to someone last week who was saying that it would be really useful for him to be able to hold his cells while he images them.

And then to be able to then recover those cells afterwards, rather than the way he had been doing it, encapsulating it in a gel, but then he couldn't remove the gel. So he was just Discarding his cell models, which it's things like that, that you don't think [00:19:00] of, and it's a real game changer for people.

Yeah,

Patrick: Yeah, it's really fun as a salesperson about a product and watch the customer's eye just widened and their

Sarah: yeah, absolutely.

Patrick: really, really fun to offer disruptive technology like that. Now the, I guess the only official person

For

Sarah: yeah.

Patrick: And so how's that been?

I know you and I have had conversation about, you know strategies. So what is your strategy now reaching out to customers since you're the only one?

Sarah: It's got to be to a degree, systematic. For me, it's you identify this is the market I'm going to target. This week or this month and it's really going through each of the big players in that market identifying the key decision makers within those markets.

But ultimately It's getting to know your customers working out who the key players are in those organizations and just keeping in touch with them. How many contact times do you need to [00:20:00] have got in touch with someone before they actually get back to you?

I think, is it something like seven? They say. So I think it's

Patrick: So it's

Sarah: Yeah, maybe it's more now.

Patrick: to 15 now.

Sarah: Yeah. So I think it's it's sometimes not being disheartened if you don't hear back from someone or, if it's a no, it's thinking okay, I'll go try someone else and come back to them. So I think with a new disruptive technology, There's numbers involved, you have to hit the right number of people.

I think obviously we've got Sean, who works for us as well, our marketing manager, who's doing a great job just on getting the message out there and the brand awareness. We're gonna be hitting conferences throughout the year we're gonna focus on probably six or seven big conferences with.

Smaller ones dotted throughout the year. And it's really, it's going to be all hands to the pump in getting the message out there. Really? Yeah.

Patrick: ideal for, for what you like. Right. Just strategies, different things going on, connecting with people in different ways. Right. So

Sarah: Yeah.

Patrick: [00:21:00] that's awesome for you.

Sarah: Yeah, I think, to a degree, I think. One of the things I'm going to have to be quite disciplined with is just because something's not working. If you've got a strategy, I think sometimes you need to give it the correct amount of time for it to work. And that's something I'm not always great at, and I do like to try different things.

And I think sometimes it is just, persistence with some strategies. But yeah, I think it's going to be working out that there's not going to be a one size fits all. So different customers are going to have different requirements and the best way to reach one customer is not necessarily the best way to reach another one, even two individuals within the same organization.

Yeah, it's going to be a multi pronged approach. It's going to be a volume game to an extent, and then brand awareness, things like this, talking to people.

Patrick: Yeah, no, that's great. I think you know, what I got out of, you grab the opportunities as they come, which is great. And I think you're open to new ideas. [00:22:00] think, you know, all of those put together is the reason why, you're successful now and you're going to be successful in the future for sure. And you just, you do have that talent just to connect to people, and relate, you're very relatable as well, which is

Sarah: think it's an ADHD superpower, right? You just, you find connection with things that people don't necessarily, where people don't always see a connection. 

Patrick: Well, that's, you know, that's what I find fascinating, like, because, you know, there's a lot of your story that I can relate as well, you know, work in the lab, not liking it and trying to find my path after science degree after university. But, you know, you kind of figure it out, you know, you figure what you like, what you don't like.

And, it's just awesome to see, you know you get this role with us. And who knows where it's gonna go. Butit's a pretty inspiring story. my goal is to, yeah, inspire others who, cause you know, when you graduate in science, that's one thing I wish they taught, maybe they teach now.

But when I was going through university, you know, Being in science [00:23:00] outside of wanting to be a doctor or being a researcher for the rest of your life. You don't really know any other options, right? 

Sarah: Yeah.

Patrick: explaining that to you. And so yeah, my goal is to kind of inspire someone, you know, that's completing a biotech or a science degree to say, hey, you know what?

There's all these roles in these industries. So there's other ways you can help people.

Sarah: Yeah, and it was one thing I think I was quite lucky to be able to do when I worked in recruitment was to go and talk to undergraduates and postgraduates as well. And just chat to them about, you don't have to go and be a researcher at the bench. You might want to go into clinical research.

You might want to, go into sales. You might want to. Go into quality assurance, there's so many different areas you can go into and I think that was one thing that working in recruitment gave me a really good overarching view of as these are all the different paths you can take.

And I think in sales too, then you do that as well because you talk to so many [00:24:00] different people in each organization and it's great. I really enjoy it. 

Patrick: Yeah.

Sarah: yeah,

Patrick: shows. So I really appreciate you sharing your story. This has been awesome.

Sarah: I'll have to interview you next Pat.

Patrick: Oh, I think yeah, I much, no, no guarantees that my story would be as interesting as yours. No dishwashing in my story, but you know, I'll do my best.

Sarah: I've got your question that I need to answer as well.

Patrick: yes. Right, right. Yeah. I gave you what a list of a couple of them. 

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So the question I , I sent you before this was what's the weirdest or most bizarre thing you've learned or encountered in your field?

Sarah: Okay, so weirdest thing I've encountered. I thought I would tell you about one of the labs that I was recruiting for. When I first started in recruitment. So there's a science park in the northeast of England near me. And on that science park is a fragrance house. And They asked me on the site to talk [00:25:00] to them about recruiting for a lab technician.

So this is when I first started in recruitment. And I went on site expecting a lab. And what I went into looked more like a dry cleaners. So they're showing me around. I realized what I was recruiting for was essentially an armpit sniffer. What they did was,

Patrick: the role.

Sarah: but yeah, basically, so they would recruit people to work for them who had to pass a certain nasal test, like they had to be able to smell certain smells.

Patrick: Yeah.

Sarah: And they would get people on this science park, some of the men on the science park would go in on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. They would take off their shirt, the lady would hand them, I mean it was all women, would hand them a freshly laundered shirt that they'd laundered. Then before that they would apply deodorant to this guy.

They'd sniff their armpits while they do it, and rate them for what they do,

Patrick: scent.

Sarah: and after, yeah. And the guys on the science part, like the researchers, [00:26:00] would get like a 10 gift voucher every month or something for

Patrick: Right.

Sarah: part in this trial. 

Patrick: There a condition that they had to wash themselves for a week beforehand or go to the

Sarah: yeah, they weren't allowed to I think they were allowed to go to the gym, they weren't allowed to swim. And they weren't allowed to apply aftershave or any of their own deodorant. It had to be the deodorant that this company gave them.

Patrick: Yeah.

Sarah: But yeah, that's probably the weirdest lab I've ever been in.

Yeah, it's definitely consumer relevant, right? Much like what I was doing with the dishwashers.

Patrick: Well, let's hope there's no tests like that for like toilet papers or anything like that. 

Sarah: Actually, one of the other roles I recruited for was um, quality assurance for a condom manufacturer.

Patrick: Oh yeah.

Sarah: And someone had to process the customer returns.

Patrick: Oh, what? Really?

Sarah: Yeah.

think you, you know, you wouldn't need a person for that. You just find [00:27:00] something protruding in the lab or something to, to, to do that. But I guess you want real life uh, testing, I guess. Because it's quality assurance, I guess they used to deal with the customer complaints and things as well.

Patrick: Gotcha.

Sarah: Yeah.

Patrick: Well, I guess we'll leave it at that.

 yeah. Awesome, Sarah. Thanks for your time.