Passion. When a person really cares about something in a dedicated and passionate way, the face, body, eyes and gestures are part of communicating. The words that are said matter but the expression, focus and involvement of the whole person communicates so much more. When someone has a joyous expression and is full of energy when talking about their company, their product, their breakthrough, it is infectious. I still remember being riveted by a lecture in graduate school where the visiting Harvard Professor paced the stage with a big smile while he told us about his lab’s studies in Sigma Factors. He made everyone care because he cared so much in such an infectious way.
Credibility. Just like body language and facial expression can tell you about a person’s passion and dedication, it can also signal reservation, mistrust, or disinterest. Whether consciously or not, most people read whether another person is open and trustworthy by their actions more than by their words. How many times have you come away from a conversation and thought or said “I just don’t have a good feeling about that person”? That was your subconscious signaling you that their non-verbal signals were telegraphing: “don’t believe what I say”. This is why important contracts are seldom signed before the parties actually have a chance to meet with each other. The more important the contract, the more meetings may be necessary and the more members of the team they will involve. This is also why people want to do business with people they already know – the credibility has been established.
Serendipity. In gatherings of colleagues trying to gain attention, unexpected connection and amazing experiences can occur. At a satellite conference during J.P. Morgan Healthcare week, I had just such an experience. An innovator seeking investors for a breakthrough in drug delivery, one of my specialties, described dosing someone at the conference the night before with one of their investigational products. She was in serious pain and he reported she experienced rapid relief. While I found him believable, the conference setting offered me the chance to immediately and personally verify this story. I quickly found the woman who was part of the team supporting the conference with catering and refreshments (i.e. with no vested interests). She had been experiencing severe neck and shoulder pain for two weeks and it had been affecting her sleep. She said on a scale of 1-10, it was an 11. She was skeptical of his offer the night before but wanted to be a good sport. Within 15 minutes of a topical dose of a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory, her pain was down to 7 and after an hour it was gone. She had slept great and was ebullient and delighted to talk about her experience the next morning. Then she shared that another member of the circle the night before had received a dose. I followed that chain to a gentleman who was both a company executive and investor. He was used to being skeptical about unusual medical claims. He dosed both his sore knee and back and commented: “while I can’t say conclusively that it worked, I can say the pain is gone”. And he seemed awfully interested in helping the company get capital.
This experience follows a long line of medical innovators dosing themselves and others to prove something they really believed in. Dr. Barry Marshall gave himself a gastric ulcer by drinking Heliobacter pylori, to prove it was the causative agent, then was cured with antibiotics, leading to the change in the paradigm for treatment as well as an eventual Nobel Prize. As a startup executive, I had dye injected by a prototype nanojet device to show how it gets into the skin and diffuses just like a drug dose would. These kinds of personal demonstrations and observable, unorchestrated results are anecdotal but powerful validation that an entrepreneur is willing to put everything on the line in a situation they don’t control because they believe in what they are doing to the core. That is what face-to-face and gatherings like this week in San Francisco allow you to learn. You can’t email that.