"You start your own company out of a passion for working with your customers."
James Jordan is a healthcare and life sciences expert. He is a Distinguished Service Professor of Health Care and Biotechnology at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, the President of StraTactic, the National Co-Chairman of the BIO Bootcamp, and the Founder of the Healthcare Data Center. He has published numerous articles and books on innovation, startups, intellectual property, and health systems.
Jordan has been a senior executive for Fortune 100 companies and has participated in and led angel and venture capital investments. As CEO of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, he worked with 493 companies and invested in 93 of them.
James has held high-ranking positions in Fortune 100 companies such as McKesson Corporation, where he served as Senior Vice President, Johnson & Johnson, Vice President for Marketing, and many other noteworthy ventures.
As an author, speaker, and consultant, he works with hospitals, health systems, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, biotechnology, and health IT; Jordan is an active industry expert looking for ways to improve the business of healthcare. This combined experience makes him a sought-after healthcare expert for reporters and the media.
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Table of Contents
If you were in an elevator with Warren Buffet, how would you describe your company, your services or products? What makes your company different from others? What is your company’s biggest strength?
James Jordan: The healthcare business is broken; my company’s mission is to improve the healthcare business. This is done through community building via my academic website HealthcareData.Center, through my Podcast ChalkTalkJim.
My for-profit activities include deploying a toolbox of tools to help healthcare, pharmaceutical, medtech, and health IT companies grow their business planfully by understanding their markets, the value of their technology, and their intellectual property.
What advice do you wish you received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
James Jordan: The first is recognizing that digital marketing a like any other sales channel. It is often chosen because it is the most cost-effective way to acquire customers. We consider SEO to be at the end of the process versus the beginning. Many of my customers are using this technology backward.
The second learning is that business processes must have as much strategic intent built into them as in developing the product itself. Think of your customer or chat experience with Amazon.
Have you ever walked away dissatisfied or not thinking that the solution was far? This builds far more brand loyalty than just delivering the cheapest product…which also translates into buying a product that is not always the cheapest.
Here is a two fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
James Jordan: I read the book The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, which was about generational cycles that have been statistically predictable for 500 years. And at the same time, an economist, Harry S. Dent, studies economic cycles. These cycles, albeit unintended by the authors, sync.
The implications are that economic and marketing strategies are more predictable than you think. The current dialogue around Millenial and Gen Z attitudes towards life and could be totally predictable by reading these books.
The implication for me is a map of the wants and needs of the current and future workforce and society.
Christopher Hitchens, an American journalist, is quoted as saying that “everyone has a book in them” Have you written a book? If so, please share with us details about it. If you haven’t, what book would you like to write and how would you like it to benefit the readers?
James Jordan: I have written as a sole author and, with others, three books. They can be seen on my Amazon webpage.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
James Jordan: You start your own company out of a passion for working with your customers. You have a passion for doing.
However, only 40% – 50% of the time, you are doing that. The rest of the time, you are either doing administration or marketing to build your client base.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
James Jordan: The superpower would be perspective and patience. I would not share this story publicly. I recently had a client with mental health issues that paid me very well.
Reluctantly, I resigned or fired the client. It was a financially fearful decision, yet it unlocked a creative energy that allowed me to conceive numerous new products.
So the super power would always be being in that space of perspective and wisdom.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank James Jordan for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with James Jordan or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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