Quality Grind Podcast Episode 1 – Welcome to The Grind!

Jessica Taylor: [00:00:00] This is the Quality Grind Podcast presented by Medvacon. Conversations that go beyond compliance. Sharing insights geared toward helping you navigate the everyday grind of regulated life science industries. Here are your hosts, Joe Toscano and Mike Kent.

Mike Kent: Welcome to The Grind, everyone! My name is Mike Kent. I’m the Director of Learning Platforms here at MEDVACON, and we’re ecstatic to bring you into the fold of this new platform we’re launching, the Quality Grind Podcast.

We plan on having a ton of great conversations with some really interesting people around the life science industries, regulatory requirements, compliance. But also have a lot of fun and get to know them a little bit, and see what makes them tick and make them successful and share their perspectives and their experiences with you and with all of us.

So [00:01:00] we want to tell you a little bit about the show, why we’re launching it, and how we hope to engage all of you in this process and in this platform. To do that, here’s my co-host and President of MEDVACON, Joe Toscano. Joe?

Joe Toscano: Hey, Mike, thanks so much, and welcome everyone. Thank you for listening to our first ever podcast. Exciting time for us and the company, and a long time in planning and a lot of work. But we’re really excited to be here, and we really hope that everybody enjoys it as much as we’re going to enjoy doing it.

A little bit about the podcast and why we started this journey. First of all, the podcast is brought to you by MEDVACON Life Sciences. MEDVACON is a quality compliance consulting company that services the life science industry. If you want to learn a little bit more about the organization, http://www.MEDVACON.com, and there’s more information there than you’ll ever care to know and how the organization can help.

But in terms of this, we decided about a year plus ago we [00:02:00] really wanted to put some information out there that would be helpful to the clients and the industry that we service, which is the life science industry, pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, gene therapy. And we wanted to provide some information to help solve a lot of the common problems that we find when we’re hired for consulting work. We launched a website outlining services. Then behind that, we actually launched a blog where we have a lot of great individuals, industry experts that contribute on a variety of different topics that we find individuals consistently ask us for help in, or want some more information. And we thought it would be great just to start a library and some communication where people had a resource that they could go to all the time.

And then we said, well, let’s take that up another step and we should really do a podcast where we get to talk about these things live with people within industry who are just incredible at what they do.

[00:03:00] Now, these aren’t famous actors and actresses or sports figures that you’re all used to listening to you on a podcast. These are individuals that within their own circles, and within their own companies, are really important. And the reason they’re so important is they work so hard every day to make sure that the products their companies are making are safe and effective, and they meet all the requirements established by the FDA so that consumers are safe and get benefit from the products they produce. And they all have fantastic stories. We’re really lucky. We get to work with all of these people on a regular basis. And it’s really nice to introduce them all to you because they have different approaches, ideas, methodologies, way they do work, really interesting personal stories that we think everyone, as much as we do ourselves, when we work with them, enjoy listening to and talking about and sharing that with a greater community that could benefit from it as well.

So we’re really excited about doing this and looking forward to going on this journey with all of you. And we’re really [00:04:00] appreciative of you all being here with us.

Mike Kent: And that’s one of the things that I’m looking forward to most is just hearing more about who these people are and how they got to where they’re at, how they go about doing things. You can find information about regulations and requirements in any one of 10,000 different places. What occurred to both Joe and I is that more often than not, success comes out of how you do things and how you put things together, rather than just the specifics about what you’re doing.

So those are the types of questions that we want to ask folks when they come on to talk with us, is, okay, great, you’ve had these successes and we want to characterize those and capture those and celebrate those.

But behind that and underneath that are the reasons why those individuals were successful. Why were those initiatives successful? What set them apart? What [00:05:00] questions did people ask? How did they engage people? Because nobody does this alone in this industry. It’s always a team effort. So we’ll talk an awful lot with folks about how to engage people, how to really create an environment where the sorts of things that we want and need to happen every day can and do, and then how do we sustain that.

So as Joe mentioned, part of the learning platforms that we’re putting together here at MEDVACON with the blog and now the podcast will also include things like white papers that’ll be supplemental to the podcast episodes. We want to provide you with a little bit more depth and detail and some examples of what might work well within your industry. Maybe not the silver bullet that addresses your particular issue in the moment, but it gives you a place to start. It gives you some ideas. It gives you some different perspective that you can use [00:06:00] in order to try some things, see where they land, and then go from there.

Joe Toscano: Yeah, and Mike, you bring up a really good point, and I think it’s something we want to point out early on. We’re going to give people’s experience and their ideas on how they approach different scenarios and problems, and it may be different than what you’re currently doing or how you’re working through something, and that’s okay.

The idea here is the way we’re describing it or it’s being explained or how it’s shared isn’t the only way to do it. It’s just one way in order to get a great outcome. And what we hope is that if it’s something that you may be challenged with when we’re talking about a particular subject that day, and somebody gives a different approach, it now leads to a successful outcome for you, because maybe that was something you hadn’t thought or considered before, or even had known that it could be done that way. Maybe what we’re describing, there’s going to be people in our audience that are going to say, well, no, no, there’s a much better way to do that. [00:07:00] If that’s the case, that’s great, and please share, send us your comments. Let us know that because we’ll post that with the notes from the show online. And this way people can see that beyond what we discussed, there was other ways to go about it as well. This is meant to share ideas and success stories and things that work well in industry. It doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do things in industry.

Mike Kent: That engagement is the central theme of the Quality Grind Podcast, it really is.

The other thing that we want to do, or, and I guess it’s maybe want to avoid, is getting into the weeds of 21 CFR 2 blah blah says blah blah blah. You can find that information anywhere and you can get it. And I’m not discounting the importance of understanding what the regulations are. But often times, we see that information and it’s, “Okay, now what do we do with this?”, or, “how does that really help me solve my [00:08:00] problems?” What we want to do is get to that next layer of how folks used those requirements and what’s out there in the industry to create their own sustainable improvements.

Joe, you and I have talked in the planning sessions for the podcast about how we want to go about this. We don’t want to be buttoned up. We don’t want to be strict and to the letter and regimented. We want to have some fun. So you may not be used to that sort of playful spin on this environment, which is a very serious regulated environment, and rightfully so. But there’s no reason that we can’t have some fun while we’re talking about this and while we’re going through it, right?

Joe Toscano: Absolutely. If we’re not having fun, it’s just not worth doing, is it Mike? I mean, the point of this is to have a great conversation, provide some information, meet a lot of really great people who actually make differences every day that [00:09:00] nobody has any idea that they are, but they’re benefiting from the great work and things that they do, both professionally and maybe even personally.

 There’s so many different areas of this. It’s really hard to get that specific. But what we want to do is talk about the general themes that we see in terms of there being issues out there. Simple approaches, changes, steps that could be taken in order to address them.

Joe Toscano: People just don’t go to work. They have a life, hopefully outside of that, where they have interest and they do things and they volunteer time. And everybody listening does as well. Hopefully we’ll be able to not only talk about some important work things, but more importantly about life things, right? Things that people might pick up on or an organization to hear about that might spur them wanting to get involved, or to do things outside of work that maybe they hadn’t thought of before. And again, the individuals that we’re talking about, we’re talking with, not only are they good at what they do, but they just have really interesting stories [00:10:00] that got them to where they are and how they do different things. That’s kind of where we want to spend our time and just have some fun get to know people a little bit better, solve some issues, but not be so regimented as Mike said. We need to laugh a little and have some fun.

Mike Kent: A little? I don’t know about you, but I pray it better be a lot, and I think it will be. I guess we’ll have to leave it up to the listeners and the viewers to tell whether it’s fun or not, but

Joe Toscano: Yeah, exactly.

Mike Kent: We are going to enjoy ourselves as we go along on this journey.

Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know Joe and I a little bit and better understand the reasons why we’re launching the podcast and how we hope to engage you in this process as we go along. Please make sure that you like, share and comment on the podcast itself and we hope to see you next time for the episodes that will follow.

Thank you so much for being a part of this journey, helping us kick off the Quality Grind Podcast, and we look forward to what’s going to happen [00:11:00] next.

Joe Toscano: We’re really looking forward to a great show and some great conversations. And again, if you ever need some help in regards to quality compliance or even talent acquisition and MEDVACON Life Sciences can assist you, never hesitate to reach out. We’re always happy to just have a conversation and you can reach us through our website at www. MEDVACON. com. Thanks again, everyone.

Mike Kent: Thanks very much for watching and listening, and we’ll see you again next time on The Grind.

Jessica Taylor: Thank you for listening to the Quality Grind Podcast presented by Medvacon. To learn more or to hear additional episodes, visit us at www. Medvacon. com.