Michael Lampe is the founder and CEO of Scient Public Relations, a communications and consulting firm exclusively serving clients in the healthcare industry.
Scient was founded on the principle that effective, well-executed communications strategies can help organizations achieve their business objectives.
Every company has a story to tell, and telling it effectively can impact your ability to secure investment, access development opportunities, and recruit the best talent.
Scient exists to bring together the best communicators in the health care industry to help innovative biotech companies tell their stories in a way that supports their business goals and moves their businesses forward.
The Challenge
BELAY was the first company Michael turned to for support.
When he met his CSC, he was pleased with the thoroughness of their conversation.
“He went through the whole onboarding process of what are you looking for, what do you need, where are your pain points,” Michael recalls. “He was like, ‘I’m going to find you guys an assistant who can do what you need to do. And he did.”
Enter BELAY Virtual Assistant turned full-time Scient employee Erin Schradin.
“We had a great [first] conversation,” Michael adds. “She seemed like she’d be a good fit culturally, and also like she’d be able to do what needed to get done.”
The Solution
“Within a week I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to change my life,’” Michael says. “She’s just a perfect fit. The first thing I gave her was invoicing, and she fixed the whole process.
“Then I gave her payroll. I’m like, ‘You do this better than me.’ She took over payroll and then one thing after another.”
Erin has since been also helping Michael with a slew of administrative tasks: his calendar, client budgeting, operational work, client project management support, outsourcing partner and vendor relationships, expenses, and time entries.
Since transitioning into her new full-time position with Michael, Erin is now the Head of Operations and responsible for finance and HR — while continuing to refine all the systems that coincide with those departments.
“I keep saying great fit culture,” Michael shares. “She's not been here the longest. We [have] a bunch of people who've been here for more than two years, but she is such a core to the organization. She's the person that people interact with more than probably anybody else on the team, including myself, just because of everything she's doing on a day-to-day basis.
“It couldn’t have worked out better. It’s been such a great fit.”
The Result
“When Erin joined, we had one full-time employee, and the idea of scaling the business in any meaningful way wasn't something that I thought about because my pain points were getting people paid, managing all the governance around [running a business], reporting, filing, and then invoicing clients,” Michael admits.
“And so the notion that I'm going to have more people to pay and more clients to invoice, I was just trying to get the work done for the clients and not add to that burden.
“We've got 10 full-time employees now. Revenue is up roughly 40%, maybe 45%. We probably had 20 clients at that time. We have 35 now. And we think about the business and our opportunities in a far more ambitious way, which is great. It's exciting.
“I think we've got huge opportunities in front of us having somebody come into that role – and to be able to come into that role competently – then create confidence,” Michael shares.
“Now [that] we have employees, somebody's got to develop a performance review process. Somebody's got to develop a competition [and] somebody's got to work with the CFO.
“Those things weren't even things that anybody was doing. And so now not only is [Erin] taking things off my plate — and our plate[s] — that were stressful things, but she's doing things that we didn't even think we would ever get to need.”
Meet the Specialist
ERIN SCHRADIN
Virtual Assistant