Stacy Case, founder of Sideline Surgeons, reveals the hidden healthcare battle in pro sports. We discuss the massive $42M lawsuit that reshaped athlete care, the team doctor dilemma, and how her platform is giving athletes back control of their medical data and second opinions. Whether you’re into sports, startups, or health innovation — this one uncovers what’s really happening behind the scenes.
Topics Covered:
• Why athletes are wary of team doctors
• How NIL and transfer rules complicate care
• The startup solving healthcare data continuity
• Legal risks pushing doctors away from athletes
Connect with Stacy Case:
LinkedIn: Stacy Case
Website: Sideline Surgeons
TRANSCRIPT
John Hill
Welcome to another episode of Founders Growth. My name is John Hill. I run a company called Adapted Growth, a coaching and training company. This show is to help founders understand all the roles and hats they signed up for when they went out on their own. Today, we’re joined by Stacy Case. Stacy has been in business for a very long time. She runs a very cool project called Sideline Surgeons that we’re going to talk about, and she has had a lot of interesting things in her background, everything from nursing to being a sales rep to launching this thing. So, we’re going to be diving in and talking about it with her. Before we dive in, Stacy, can you give the quick 30-second background on Sideline Surgeons so people know what we’re talking about?
Stacy Case
Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thanks for having me on, John. This is absolutely a pleasure.
So, Sideline Surgeons—I founded this five years ago and saw a need, a little niche in a space that really wasn’t there. We’re connecting elite surgeons to elite athletes and formalizing second opinions, allowing them to connect on our IT platform. They’re able to formalize reports and do everything secure under a HIPAA envelope, where that has never been there before for them. They can connect to athletes all the way down to junior high and high school when they’re starting to come into their athletic sport of choice, allowing them to get help where they need it to continue their journey in their athletic career.
John Hill
That was amazing. I have some questions for you because I started thinking about what gaps or challenges I could even think about as someone who doesn’t work in this space. One of the things that came to mind was, with these student-athletes, a lot of these people have deep relationships with their trainers and coaches. Have you run into any friction with buy-in around the athlete listening to the second opinion or hearing things out appropriately? Have you run into any friction around that?
Stacy Case
They have more friction with their actual team physicians, especially in professional sports, because they feel like it’s a contract, right? The physicians are employees of the team. So, they end up struggling with whether the team physicians have their best interests at heart as an athlete, or if they are just trying to get them back on the field.
John Hill
Wow. Because you are an asset to the organization, right? That’s fascinating. Is that the normal concern if you’re a professional athlete—you get an injury, and you’re not really sure if you’re getting advice that keeps you healthy versus advice that just returns you to being an asset? Is that a common concern for athletes?
Stacy Case
Yeah, for sure. A lot of these players have traveled from team to team, and they’ve done it from the time they were in high school, right? They go from high school to college. Now, what we’re seeing with the NIL portal—which makes this piece of the puzzle even more confusing—is you have athletes at the college level in the NCAA hitting the transfer portal and going to another college. Now, they’re having to start that relationship all over again with the medical team. They’re having to put their trust back into another athletic trainer and another team physician.
Then, if they go pro, there’s an even larger number attached to their performance contract. They’re really trying to make sure that team isn’t just wanting them back on the field, or if they are allowing them to have the rest and recuperation they need. They’re seeking that outside opinion to make sure what’s in their best interest is to either play or to sit. It’s a very strange dynamic that has always been there, but with betting, gambling, NIL deals, and these huge salary caps—the things that have begun to happen in sports—it has really escalated that piece that we’re trying to help manage, especially for the physicians taking care of these athletes.
John Hill
That’s interesting. Hearing you talk about it, I would imagine—before this conversation, I was thinking that it boils down to whether we are going to do surgery or not. But I imagine it’s probably not that polarizing. On a second opinion, it might be like, “Okay, they only need a month of rehab versus three months of rehab.” Is it more like that secondary case where it’s small changes between the treatment plan and protocol? Or is it bigger, like “surgery time versus no surgery time”?
Stacy Case
It’s both. Realistically, it’s: how bad is your injury? Is it something that’s just been repetitively nagging you? The person on the field or in the locker room trying to take care of them finds it’s just not going away, and they really need an expert.
A lot of our physicians are fellowship-trained in a very specific area, whether that’s foot, upper extremity, shoulder, knee, spine, or concussion. You’ll have one physician who has one opinion, and another physician who has another. If it’s severe enough that it needs surgery, or if they think you’re so borderline on having surgery or not, that makes the difference of whether that player gets a contract or not. Or if that player is going to have to sit out for six months versus three months of rehab to get back to where they were.
It allows the athlete to hear more than one voice. We’ve had cases where one physician suggests surgery, and another physician says, “No, I’ve done this treatment on 12 other people with this exact injury.” That’s a huge piece of this puzzle—the physicians on our platform see these athletes all the time. Athletes have such a different health journey than a lot of us. They’re very big sometimes, very muscular, and their body makeup is different—especially if you’re playing football, which has a massive amount of injuries. You look at some of these guys’ X-rays, MRIs, and CAT scans, and they look like they’ve been hit by a train. They are very high-trauma, high-velocity injuries oftentimes. It takes a very specific, special surgeon who has seen a lot of these athletes to give a good second opinion.
That allows the athlete to get the best consultation they can by someone who has seen more injuries in this area than anybody else and probably performed surgery on these athletes more than anybody else. We’re allowing the athlete to really take control over their health by controlling their healthcare data on our platform. As they go on that journey from high school through college, and even to the pros, they’re able to take those medical records with them. It gives them the option to have a physician who specializes in that area when coming up to a contract. They get that choice, whereas oftentimes athletes don’t have a choice—it’s the choice of the team or college physicians. If they do know where to reach out, do they get the opportunity to have a conversation or go see that specific surgeon?
We are trying to bridge that gap. If an athlete knows, “I’m going to be at that next level, I have it in me to be that kind of athlete,” but all of a sudden they have an injury—whether minor or big—you can seek out the best care where it maybe makes the difference of getting a college scholarship or going pro. That’s really what we’re trying to help on the athlete’s side as well.
John Hill
Wow, yeah. The thing I hadn’t really thought about until this conversation was just how many different teams the average professional athlete is going to work with. That means there isn’t going to be that continual person who has the whole picture of all your injuries. Just the idea of having a second opinion that you’ve been coordinating with since high school—they can be that voice of consistency when you get a brand-new team with a brand-new trainer. That to me is fascinating.
Do the players come to you directly? Is your motion tied to trying to coordinate and drive awareness in teams? How do you guys get the word out and get people moving in your direction?
Stacy Case
We get a mixture. We’ve had athletes whose trainers or agents know these physicians and call them. Really, what we’ve done is try to build this slowly. Anytime you start a company that’s a new concept or a new idea, you always have headwinds and people saying, “I’ve never done it this way before, why do I have to do this now?” We’re definitely coming into a market where athletes, teams, and trainers have not necessarily had to pay for this type of service before. It has always been something they had access to through their agents or teams.
The athletes actually find this as a benefit. Strangely, we’ve started having retired professional athletes reach out to us for this reason, as they no longer have the support from a professional team and their agents are not with them anymore. They’re like, “Now what do I do?”
Here’s the other key to this: John, do you know where your medical data is? If you got injured playing sports when you were in college in a completely different town, I can guarantee your medical records are there. You probably don’t remember who the physician was that took care of you, and they may or may not have kept them. Through us, you’re able to upload your images, information, and any type of medical report you had and bring it with you. It’s kind of like having a backpack of your medical data to go to your next team.
The same thing happens with our professional athletes. They don’t necessarily get the option—I think they can ask for it, but a lot of them don’t understand that they can. What are you going to do with that when you’re done? They give you a floppy disk or a CD, and when are CDs going to be irrelevant? Now everything’s in the cloud, and there is a high potential that you probably don’t have your medical data from when you were playing pros, high school, or college. Part of our company is trying to help build that for athletes so that it continues with them.
We have inquiries coming from all different directions: athletes, agents, and teams finding our physicians. Our physicians are taking what they were doing prior—which was not formalizing these consultations—and bringing the athlete directly to them. This gives them the opportunity to formalize that and put it all in one place, which is amazing. We’re kind of the hub of a wheel, and the athletes, agents, and teams are the spokes that make that wheel go around. That hub has never been there, so we’re hoping to fill that space where you can keep your medical data and get that second opinion. We have some other fun things coming that I can’t talk about yet, but yeah.
John Hill
Going back—because I’m curious—do you think of this as a place for athletes to come get second opinions, or do you see it more as a place for professional athletes to house their data and have consistency?
Stacy Case
Can’t it be both?
John Hill
It can be both for sure, but I’m curious when you think about the impetus of this—the thing that got you excited to go try this, because you have other things going on. This doesn’t just come from a place of need; it’s probably somewhat intentional. I’m curious if that original intention was, “Man, I want to get these people the help that they need,” or, “Hey, these people live a life that has a completely different path of wellness, and we need to do a better job of supporting them.”
Stacy Case
For me, it was definitely a way different path than you would ever think. Obviously, I worked in medical devices and I still do. The relationships that I formed with the physicians I worked with around the country is where I saw that central problem of them not having a place to formalize these consultations. It started with the professional athlete side of it. My goal was really to solve this piece for the physician: how can I help you formalize this?
There have been a lot of pretty major lawsuits that have happened—one very specifically with an Eagles player who sued for $42 million, which was pretty serious. We have a lot of physicians where that has made them second-guess treating professional athletes. Now, with NIL deals, that has also changed the game. Is it worth it for them to do this? We’re trying to keep those channels open.
As a former athlete myself, I recognize that an injury could potentially make the difference between whether you’re playing college or professional ball. But if you have physicians who are scared to treat you because of the implications it may have for them…
John Hill
Whoa.
Stacy Case
Yeah, it’s a huge situation that’s coming that I saw five years ago. I literally made the comment to one of our surgeons, “There’s a potential that somebody is going to get sued.” And then it happened. There were a lot of factors that happened within that case, and anybody can go look it up—it’s there.
The fact that that happened has really made physicians go, “Is it worth losing everything that I’ve worked for over the last 30 or 35 years to treat an athlete that could potentially turn around and sue me for future earnings?” Which is the reason why the lawsuit was so high at $42 million.
Part of this is for the physician to be able to take the information and conversations that they have and document them. But that’s also great for the athlete because then there’s clear communication about what was said. It’s documented, and they get to keep it with them. Then, when they go on disability or once they retire, that information is all there, which is a huge thing for them afterward that a lot of them don’t think about.
John Hill
I did not even think about that idea. I used to sell to surgeons—we talked about this in our DMs and everything. I sold to orthopedic surgeons, doing the spinal stuff. It wasn’t my best sales experience; we talked about that a little bit. But in my mind, every surgeon just wants to operate. They just want to get it done. But with that idea that this class of patient is fundamentally different, that might create so much risk that it’s not worth doing it.
Stacy Case
Yeah, we’re actually starting to have the opposite problem. Physicians are really shutting their access down. We have some major facilities that will not see professional athletes or athletes that have NIL deals. They just don’t want to assume the risk. We potentially could see this catch on and continue to go further.
Again, that’s why, when you start a company, you have one problem, right? You think, “This is the one little problem I’m going to solve. I’m going to fix this one.” Then you get into it, and it’s like the gift that keeps on giving. It just opens up, and you’re like, “My gosh, what am I supposed to do with this?” You realize now you’re solving this problem and that problem. They’re all great problems to have. It’s what makes our business go around. That’s the fun part of it for me—solving problems. And that’s sales, really.
John Hill
100%. Absolutely.
I’m curious real quick, and then I want to dive into some other stuff, but the last thing on this timeline: you said you could kind of see it in the air, feeling that maybe someone was going to get sued from this. I’m curious about the span of time we’re talking about, from when you were feeling that, to the timeline of that case coming out, to you deciding that it’s worth the time and effort to launch this thing.
Stacy Case
It was probably five years ago when I started having more connection with one physician that I was working with and understanding how many athletes he was seeing and the way that he was doing it. I was like, “Ooh.” First of all, I couldn’t believe—again, it wasn’t necessarily about monetizing that part—I couldn’t understand why they were doing it for free.
However, that’s how they built their practices. It was kind of like, “If I’m taking care of these athletes, it builds some notoriety.” But they love doing it. It’s their passion to be on the sideline. I mean, who wouldn’t want to stand on the sideline of an NFL game, run down a tunnel, and be that close to the action? Thousands of people go to one game at a time; it’s electric. So, that in itself was a passion for a lot of these physicians—just the sport. A lot of them loved playing it on top of it, so treating the athletes was amazing for them. That’s kind of how they got started.
When I started seeing that piece, it reminded me of lawyers: they get paid for their time and their IP. I’ve written a lot of checks to lawyers, and they definitely value their time! I was like, “Okay, it should be the same for physicians, to be honest.” It’s time away from their family, conversations on the phone hours after their normal clinic. The conversation I started having was, “If I can make that easier for you, on top of helping you get paid for that missing piece, what do you think?” That started happening.
Then, if you follow social media at all or see what’s going on, the sports betting started. You have DraftKings and all these other things, and people are betting. ESPN has a whole show dedicated to sports injuries. I kept thinking, “My gosh, you just feel it and see things coming.” I kept saying, “Somebody’s going to get sued. Something’s going to happen.” You just feel it coming, and it did.
Then my phone went off the hook. Surgeons were asking, “Is this company running?” And I was like, “No, we’re still building it! I was trying to convince you guys for two years that this was going to happen.”
John Hill
So you saw the opportunity, you started to build, and you were facing some dissonance until that big awareness point. On the sales side, I love whenever there’s something external that shows all the weight behind the decisions being made. Fascinating. So you were already building this.
Stacy Case
Yeah, we were already in the middle of building it, trying to let surgeons know, “This is why we’re doing this, and we feel like you need to protect yourself in a space where there’s no protection.” Again, it’s like anything else: they’ve been doing it a certain way for a long time. You hate to say it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but it is sometimes—until something happens.
John Hill
It is, for sure, especially with doctors who are smart and have been doing it for a long time. No one’s really allowed to tell them what to do because they’re doctors.
Stacy Case
Right. Then the lawsuit happens. It’s not uncommon for physicians to get sued, whether it’s warranted or not. I never go off of, “Well, that surgeon’s been brought up in a malpractice lawsuit,” because oftentimes, patients are just crazy and that happens. It’s no reflection on the surgeon or how good they are.
But the reason why this one carried so much weight was the future earnings aspect. To be honest, it’s the first case that had future earnings attached to it, which is quite scary. Now we have case law in place, and this is why a lot of physicians and facilities are shutting that access off.
That is when the surgeons were like, “Hey, remember we talked to that gal and this is what she was doing?” It made us relevant. Not to say that Sideline Surgeons wouldn’t have moved forward or been a company, but it definitely made us very relevant. The fact that we had already gotten started and that’s what we were doing—here we are. It’s that thing where luck meets hard work. I would never wish what happened to that physician on anyone, but was it good for us? Probably, yeah. But it is a very challenging topic for a lot of people.
John Hill
Yeah, especially on the sales side. The hardest thing about being a salesperson—and this is why everyone likes marketing—is because marketing can create awareness, and then the salesperson can just come in and clean up afterward. The hardest part about being a salesperson is trying to navigate that awareness point without accusing the prospect of choosing to be stupid or not on the level. It’s why so many people get rejected and kicked out of offices—they don’t have the savvy or knowledge to say, “Hey, when I talk with other people, they say this thing sucks. Does this suck for you? Yeah? You want to talk about it?”
I had this problem as well. I’m going around trying to go to surgeons’ offices saying, “Hey, I’ve got better screws.” And they’re all like, “Yeah, buddy.” It was just too much.
Stacy Case
A screw is a screw is a screw. Yep.
John Hill
Exactly! So, I’m curious about your growth plan. As a prior-service military guy—I was in a military unit, and I sold in hospitals afterward—I’m familiar with the nurse-doctor dynamic and that caste system inside of healthcare. Have you run into any friction, having a background in nursing and wanting to lead this, versus being an MD yourself?
Stacy Case
No. Strangely, my nursing was the one thing I will never be sad about. That has been my jumping-off point.
When I started nursing school, I was a NICU nurse—neonatal intensive care. I did that for five years, and I thought I was going to live and die there. I loved it. I loved the complexity and the challenge. I loved the fact that the patients were two pounds and that was all it took to turn them over. I had some great longevity in that area, but it’s also a place where you are going to work the night shift forever. At the time, I had a nine-month-old, and I couldn’t sit there and look at her anymore while being that tired working night shifts. For anybody that works night shifts, it’s brutal. It’s terrible.
John Hill
It’s so tough. I tell everybody, with all the VAs and the globalization of workforces, when people in other parts of the world say, “Hey, I want to come work with you,” I’m like, “I don’t want you working overnight.” I’ve done nights in the military, and it sucks. We’re not built for it.
I feel like that’s why I moved into sales: the money was good waiting tables, and I was learning how to communicate for my income, but I hated that I had to work every Friday and Saturday night or else I wasn’t making money.
Stacy Case
Yeah, it was holidays, weekends, and on-call shifts. It built character and gave me thick skin. I’ve saved people’s lives, and I’ve held people while they died.
When I first was training people, if they complained about something, I used to say, “Well, did anybody die today?” Once you’ve been through nursing, you’ve been through the trenches. I have seen more things than I would probably want to tell people. It built me, and I think it built what I’m doing now because I am very tough.
I posted on LinkedIn a while back about jobs that shaped me. Nursing was definitely a huge one, but working in a maximum-security prison was another.
John Hill
You stole my line! I did the research and I was going to bring this up because it blew me away, honestly. But I’m curious: did that make you think of a medical lane, or did that get you into the medical lane—the prison?
Stacy Case
The prison? It was so crazy. I knew I wanted to be a nurse and get into medical care. Where I live, the prison is like the local factory—that’s where everybody goes to work. It employs lots and lots of people. Well, that was the only job at the time I could find that had any kind of medical aspect behind it.
I tell you, it’s one of the most interesting jobs I’ve ever had in my life. You literally go to prison with these people every day. You walk in, the door slams behind you, and you walk into what they call the rotunda as all the cell houses are dumping out. There were times where it was just me, maybe 50 inmates, and a couple of officers. You had this massive amount of fear that you had to hide. You’re walking to the clinic thinking, “Please don’t kill me. Here I go.”
In training, you go through a two-week program where they literally tell you, “You may die, and this is how.” They bring out a bloody uniform where somebody was hatcheted to death, and I was like, “My gosh!” Hands down, after that, I knew I could do anything.
I think that’s where I get that attitude of, “Just do it, because what else do you have to lose? You’ve already done all of these things before.” It takes a certain amount of grit, and it takes that to start a company. It is hard, and you have people who look at you and go, “Whatever, she’s just doing well.”
Stacy Case
You lose friends over things. People don’t support you. And then you have people that wildly support you. So it can be a polar opposite thing. It’s an interesting dynamic that you have when you found a company.
John Hill
100%. I wasn’t really even thinking about talking about this, but that peer circle has a huge impact, right? Because I’ve been hanging around with sellers my entire professional career. Then I started talking about going out and doing this thing, and it was like, “Well, John, that seems tough.” And it’s like, this is tough, right? Dealing with all this chaos and “are we going to get paid?” and “is the deal going to close, is it a good deal?” and leadership—all of this is tough. It’s not easy, but it’s just a different form of tough. But 100%, yeah.
Stacy Case
It’s a controllable, right? I mean, this you can control. Sales, you can’t control. We suffer from that here. We have contracting issues, and it’s not only that the physicians have different things they’re doing or taking vacations, but you’re relying on… there’s only so much you can grow. Yeah, it is chaos. It is a lot of chaos for sure. Hate to say it, but I’m probably addicted to it. Otherwise, I mean, I worked in a prison for goodness’ sake! What else do you have? Bring it at me!
John Hill
Built for it, built for it, built for it. We’ll call it that!
So when you were working in the NICU—great job, you were getting fulfillment out of it, but you had this child and you wanted to show up more for them—how were you navigating that decision? A lot of people talk about jumping from nursing into the sales side of medical, and there’s kind of a stigma that once you cross to the dark side, you get cut off. Was it a day where you woke up and thought, “I want to be in sales”? Was it, “I still want to be in medical, but I need a better quality of life”? Did you get poached? How did you go from Stacy as a nurse who is mostly fulfilled, to needing to go do something else when the sales role showed up?
Stacy Case
It was so random. I was working at an orthopedic surgery center, loving my life. It was Monday through Friday, no call, no weekends. My daughter was getting older, and I was like, “This is great.” If I don’t have enough chaos, I’m going to create some!
I was standing in the break room, eating some peanut butter on a cracker like we all do at a surgery center to stay alive between cases. One of the reps walked in—she was taking care of foot and ankle—and asked, “Do you know anybody looking for a sales job?” I thought, “Huh, I never really thought about it before, but it fits my personality really well, and that kind of sounds fun.” Doing scary things, right? You’re just like, “I’ll apply for it and see what happens.”
So I put my resume together—which I think was potentially the first resume I ever put together, to be honest, because you go to nursing school and you’re a nurse, you don’t need a resume, you have a license. I put a resume together and sent it off. I waited, and it came back. I did one interview, and then I did three more. I was like, “God, just hire me already!”
John Hill
“The rules are open, guys, what are we waiting on?”
Stacy Case
I know! I was like, “You don’t have to sell me on it. Am I that bad of a sales rep that I haven’t sold you that I’m the right person?” But I did, and it went great.
That was how I got into it. I really was thrown to the wolves a little bit, but thank goodness I had my nursing degree because I had been in the OR. I knew anatomy. I knew not to touch that blue drape! All the annoying things that I used to get massively irritated by when sales reps were in my room.
I am very nice, but I do have a massive case of RBF (resting bitch face). Even to this day, other reps call me the mean rep because my brain moves so fast and I have so many things going on that I probably look at you like… [sighs]. They’re like, “She’s so mean!” Then when people get to know me, they realize, “My gosh, she is the nicest person, she’s so fun.” But I also just take it as a competitive thing where nobody bothers me.
John Hill
I have it too!
I didn’t have any medical background. Talk about being tossed into the deep end! I was doing martial arts with a guy, and he was always in there in scrubs. I was one of the enforcers and instructors for the school. One day I said, “Hey man, we get it, you’re a doctor. Can you show up on time for class, please?” That was my job! So we became friends, and then he offered me a sales role because I was working in a bank and could see I wasn’t going to be able to play the politics, so I needed to go find something else to do.
I asked the wrong question. My friend, who went on to be my boss, had already been a chiropractor for 14 years, had run clinics, and already knew all the surgeons. We were talking about the deals and economics—I was going to start with a base, but when I wanted commission, I’d lose the base, standard package stuff. I asked the wrong question: “Hey, how long until you went on commission?” With him already being a chiropractor all that time, he goes, “Three months.”
So now the expectation was set that by three months, I should be killing it. There was no training or timeline from him because it was a pretty small distributorship. I was out there trying to make it happen, but I was also having to be in these cases so I knew how to operate in the OR and avoid that blue tarp. By month four, I was terrified that any day now I was going to get the axe. Meanwhile, he was anticipating an 18-month ramp-up time for me! Because I asked the wrong question—”How long until you went on commission?” versus “What is the average time it takes to get traction in this role?”—I was so anxious and scared.
It was so tough because I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know how to get a meeting or how to get past the scheduler who just wanted me to bring in lunch. It was very, very tough. If I hadn’t made the jump that I made and worked with my business partner, I was so frustrated I was ready to just go wait tables at two restaurants. I was tired of failing and struggling, feeling like I was treading water. That’s when this other lane opened up for me. It was the craziest thing because I thought I just wasn’t enough, but I really wasn’t giving myself enough time to get anything going.
Stacy Case
Yeah, it’s a really tough job. Anybody that I’ve hired shadows me. I had that experience, probably just like your chiropractor friend; coming into it, the only things I didn’t know were surgery-specific details and what I was selling.
When I started, there was no business here. I had nothing to go on, and it was hard. But that helped build me as well. It gave me a really good foundation of how to build and grow a company. I ended up in the top three in 2016. I was standing near the stage, and one of the VPs of sales at the time said, “How come you’re not on stage?” And I was like, “You wait until next year.” And that’s where I ended up.
John Hill
Just don’t tell Stacy what she can’t do!
Stacy Case
I’m a preacher’s daughter, so it was a thing of: don’t tell me what to do, I’m going to do the opposite. I’m really bad about that! A dare or telling me “no” is literally like a toddler putting their hand up where you say “don’t do it” and they just do it anyway. That’s kind of me in all things in life.
It’s fun to see somebody grow, but medical device is a tough world. It has gotten even tougher and is more competitive than it’s ever been. The rules have changed. You’re selling to somebody who will always know more than you do about what you’re selling. The only thing you can really rely on is to be reliable, have the stuff they request plus more than they request, be a support, and grow in that.
For the people who work for me, I never wish an experience like what I had on them, although it built me and I don’t regret any of it. But coming from a medical background into sales was an easier transition than pulling somebody off the street or out of a karate studio! But you have the personality for it. A lot of it is likability and just not being a weird person.
John Hill
Thank you! I mean, I’m a weird person, I just know how to handle it now! At the time, I didn’t know how to handle it.
It’s funny because that guy and I still talk now—we’re still friends. When I found this coaching path, I started working with a coach while I was still seeing him at the martial arts school. About a year in, he said, “Okay man, I’ve got to ask a question. Where was this guy when you were working with me? I’m not mad or frustrated, but I was hoping you would be like this.” I said, “Well, do you remember that coaching we talked about, where I asked you to go talk to the guy and you said no?” He goes, “No, that’s not it. There’s no way sales coaching is doing this.” I said, “We’re in a Kung Fu school, and I’m teaching you an art that’s 300 years old that’s changing how we think about the world. Why wouldn’t sitting with someone who knows this stuff change me?” It completely floored him!
I told him, “I think you should meet with a coach again because you have new people on your team, and I know what it’s like to be the new person on your team. This would probably help them.” He actually came in, sat down, emptied his cup, and did the learning. By that time, we were already friends and it was great, but I didn’t realize how stuck I was. I just wanted money.
My sales philosophy before that role was: “I’m smart, I know my stuff, you should buy from me because I know more than you.” Man, the brick wall I ran into when I wasn’t that smart person anymore! It’s not that I’m not intelligent, but I was holding onto the idea that you should buy from me because I can be your trusted resource. These people don’t need trusted resources—or not in the way I was thinking. Being there, being on time, having additional bolts in case one hits the floor—that is the value. I just wasn’t savvy enough to fit into that space.
Then there was all the bad side of medical device stuff: the payouts, the physician-owned distributorships, and all of that. I really didn’t want to do any of that. I saw a rep push another rep into the sterile field so they had to cancel the case, and then he just happened to have his sets there, already sterilized for a case later in the week. With all of that, I felt like even if I could find a way to success, I didn’t want to compete with that stuff.
On top of not feeling successful, it was very easy to start thinking about doing something else. But ultimately, I’m really glad I had that experience because now I can speak to the idea that you can be good, want it, and have drive, but without coaching, training, and appropriate reinforcement, if the performance gap is too big, you’re not going to get there.
Stacy Case
100%. Hands down, it’s the people that surround you. If you don’t have good people around you and you don’t have resources to grow… I’m taking classes even now, learning things I never thought I would. You tell your kids, “You won’t need this when you get older,” but the reality is we never stop learning. If you do, then you’re dead.
If you don’t take it upon yourself to learn new things and new skills, you’re never going to be better or elevate yourself. I didn’t go to business school; I went to the Hard Knocks Business School for the last five years! I have hands-down learned more things than I ever thought I would. I feel like my company has made the right trajectory at the right times. Is some of it from me, or some of it just natural? I don’t know. I’ve been very fortunate. It’s about the things you do to be prepared, but there are just some things you don’t learn unless you experience them. Even some of the classes and things I’m doing today are things I would not have understood or found relevant five years ago, where now it’s like, “My gosh, yeah.”
John Hill
The thing I appreciate now when I choose to go learn something is going into it in full learning mode. You can just decide to stay stuck. I know a ton of people who aren’t pushing themselves at all—the internet is just for cat videos for them, and no harm, no foul. But I want to grow.
We’re coming up on time, and I want to be super respectful of your time. Thinking about the biggest lesson you’ve had to learn the hard way as a founder—going to the school of hard knocks rather than business school—what is that thing? When the student is ready, the teacher appears, and experience is a great teacher. What did you have to walk back, rethink, or relearn because you were doing it badly at first?
Stacy Case
Probably the biggest thing is knowing you’re going to make mistakes, and that’s fine—it’s how you react to them. Asking for help is key; it’s always okay to ask for help. There are resources out there. In the day of the internet, you can watch cat videos or you can watch a coaching video—those are your choices.
Attach yourself to the right people, the right team, and people who truly have your best interests at heart. I have learned some of that the hard way, but I was fortunate to learn those lessons in micro-doses. The next time it came up, I was able to say, “You know what? Nope, that’s not how I’m doing things.” If you make those mistakes early enough and small enough, the ripple isn’t as big. It’s about how you respond. When you see a founder make the same mistake over and over again, it’s no wonder the company failed—it’s on the founder for not pivoting, changing, and doing it a different way.
Be humble about what you’re doing. I don’t know everything. I’m not a surgeon; I don’t live in their shoes every day. It’s calling them and asking, “Is this going to work?” You find out that the people who want you to be successful are going to be there for you and tell you the truth. Frankly, I want hard-ass truths. I did a pitch deck early on, and it was embarrassing. You sit there thinking you have it all together, and then they start asking questions and you’re like, “Gosh, I don’t know that answer.” The nicest guy said, “Look, I’m telling you this because I care and because I see how much passion you have behind what you’re doing.” It was my first pitch to raise capital! He said, “I’m so sorry that I’m telling you this,” and I said, “No, I appreciate it. Thank you for giving me a learning lesson. I apologize that I was not as prepared as I thought I was.”
It’s just the things you don’t know. So when somebody tells me something is off or suggests looking at it another way, take that advice. Say, “Okay, that’s great,” and then move on. If you don’t do it and continue to fail, they were probably right and you weren’t. Taking experiences from people who have built and grown companies before you is valuable. Frankly, I would prefer to hear from somebody whose company failed to find out why it failed and what happened, so that I don’t make the same mistakes. It’s a matter of being open, being humble, and finding a good team around you. Even though I’m a solo founder, I have such amazing people around me; I couldn’t do this by myself.
John Hill
What a beautiful point. I end up talking about the idea that you can’t take advice from everybody. Even my mom has ideas about what I should be doing with my business—she thinks I’m a life coach! That’s how clear she is on what I’m doing! I use that as an example that my mom means super well and wants me to succeed, but I can’t listen to her business advice because she’s not a client or a customer. How do you know who to listen to versus who to smile, nod at, and ignore? How did you get better at deciphering that?
Stacy Case
The more you listen to people, the more you start picking up on patterns—everybody kind of says the same thing. You’ll have one odd person say something, but then four people say the same thing, and you realize, “Okay, four people are saying this, it’s probably true.” (Not always on social media, but in reality!)
Look at what they’ve done before. If somebody is telling me how to start or run a company and they’ve never done it, I may look at them and say, “Okay, that’s great, thank you for the advice,” and then put it in my pocket and move on. But the people who have done this multiple times and are willing to pass on information to help out—those are the ones to listen to. Guaranteed, those people also had a tough time, and somebody else helped them out, or they failed and they just care.
It’s like being a sales rep: you either have a good leader or a trainer who doesn’t want you to experience what they went through. I used to tell my reps, “I made those mistakes so you don’t have to. I’m giving you this advice because we don’t want to mess up, and you don’t want to experience the pain and discomfort I experienced.” If you’re a nice human being, that’s what you do.
John Hill
That’s a weird thing for salespeople, because I can’t tell you how many founders I talk to who honestly believe there is nothing to coach, train, or teach in sales—that it’s literally just “go out and flame yourself down as many times as you possibly can until one works, and then do more of it.” We don’t hire for anything else this way! Imagine if that was the process for surgeons: “Once you can do surgery on 10 people and only kill three out of 10 instead of 10 out of 10…” It’s wild how many people think sales isn’t a teachable skill, but a talent you’re born with or not.
Stacy Case
See one, do one, teach one!
Some people naturally have sales skills and some don’t, but I teach service instead of sales. Service is solving a problem, and that’s what sales is. If you don’t have good service behind sales, it will go nowhere. Your customers will be gone. If anyone comes to your platform and you don’t back it up with service, it’s dead.
John Hill
That’s a nugget right there! That’s huge. You know that because all your clients and customers come back to you with questions and concerns. You can either lean into that with, “My God, these people really love me,” or look at it honestly and ask, “Where is onboarding, support, success, and help?”
The crazy thing about that is, if you spend too much time helping people, you might get in trouble for not hitting your goals in a traditional role. That’s a very weird situation to be in if you’re a service-driven salesperson rather than a transactional, performance-driven salesperson.
Stacy Case
Yeah. When you start out a young person who has never done it, the baseline things they can do are: show up on time (which means being early), be presentable, speak correctly, don’t talk out of turn, and read the room. There are so many things you can help elevate before they even take over a room or sell something on their own.
All of my awkward, embarrassing, and terrible experiences have led to where I am today, and I’m grateful for every one of them because that’s life and business. They mix, especially in our world—I don’t stop “business-ing” very often!
John Hill
My very first day as a surgical rep selling spine to surgeons, it was 5:00 a.m., and we were doing these big 360 cases. My boss said, “Show up in slacks, and we’ll get you scrubs there.” So I’m there in slacks. We were in the dressing room about to walk into the OR—I had never been in an OR before, not since my time in the military medical unit. He said, “Okay, three rules of success. Rule one: don’t tell anyone you’re new.” (Which was my favorite thing to do; I loved being the new guy, but he hated it.) Rule two: “Just hang out in the back hallways of hospitals, because that’s where you’re really going to connect.” That’s a terrifying thing to teach a brand-new sales rep who doesn’t understand the nuance of earning the right to be in those back hallways! Then he said, “Let’s go make it happen.”
We walked into the OR, and he said, “Stand here, don’t touch anything, observe, and don’t touch anything.” That was my first hour and a half as a sales rep in the OR: pure fear and anxiety. I’m a conscientious person—a C on the DiSC profile—so I like to follow rules. I had to get badged in just to get into the hospital, and I was supposed to just walk in? Nothing screams “vendor” like a guy in slacks in the back halls!
Stacy Case
“In my slacks, I’m ready! What else do you want me to do?”
First of all, sir, you can’t be in slacks in the back hall—where are your scrubs? “Mr. Vendor, please go get your vendor scrubs.” That whole topic with VendorMate and Symplr is a hot mess!
John Hill
A hot mess, yeah!
Stacy, this is my last question for you, and I really appreciate your time. What is something you are seeing founders do that gives you concern—something where, if you had a billboard to reach all these founders doing it, you would tell them to stop and do something else instead?
Stacy Case
Being disingenuous. Be who you are. People want to know you’re a real person with real feelings, and that there is anxiety behind growing and building a company. Being a female solo founder is ten times harder to grow and found a company, for sure. But it’s about passing on legacy and passing on knowledge.
If you’re that person who says, “I’m the best, and everything is great,” I don’t believe you. I’ve had too many conversations with people who own multi-billion-dollar companies, and even they have stress, anxiety, and things going on. Don’t try to fool people that everything is hunky-dory, because it’s not, and you’re setting a terrible precedent for founders coming behind you.
Help another founder out. Somebody sent me a pitch deck a couple of days ago on LinkedIn asking, “Do you know anybody that’s raising?” Even after my own tough experience, I didn’t want anybody else to go through that, so I politely responded, “In the condition your pitch deck is currently in, I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody I know for fundraising, but here are a few resources.” I wanted him to know that it’s okay. Whether he took that to heart or got mad at me, it’s hard to say. But understand that when people tell you something is amiss—especially when they don’t know you—it probably is. Take that to heart and change it.
John Hill
I love that. The reason I try to network a lot now is in that similar vein of trying to help other people out because I’ve made a bunch of mistakes. On the flip side, I’ve had a lot of people pour into me—people who took meetings when there was no financial need to.
As a sales consultant, one of the hardest things is that I get a ton of outreach from founders, and most of it is really bad. If it’s from a human, I always try to respond and offer some advice. They didn’t ask for it, but I didn’t ask for the email either, and maybe it provides some lift for them.
Stacy Case
You just said the key: “They didn’t ask for it,” so I can respond however I like!
I felt guilty about it at first, but I was in that same position when that investor told me my deck wasn’t where it needed to be. I was devastated for five seconds, and then I was like, “All right, I’m going to get back in there and get it done right.” You are absolutely correct.
John Hill
You have to be big enough to hear the feedback, whether it’s from an investor letting you off nicely (but not too nicely, so you actually hear the lesson) or a sales leader telling you to get your act together before doing outreach. One of my favorite books is The Inner Game of Tennis. It’s not really about tennis; it’s about coaching and the idea that you can’t argue with the right feedback loop. That’s why there are mirrors in gyms and martial arts schools—you can argue with a coach, but you can’t argue with your own reflection.
We have to be practiced enough to say, “This is good feedback, I need to action this,” versus “This is unqualified feedback that’s going to lead me down a bad path.” If you’re in sales, you learn this stuff through professional development—you learn that people waste your time or use your information to manipulate others. But if you’re a founder who has never been in a sales seat, you just think everyone is going to buy, it’s just a matter of time, and it makes sense to keep taking meetings rather than reading the writing on the wall.
When I started this, I thought most founders would have some sales chops. Most don’t, because they just think, “I’m good at this thing, I’ll hang a shingle, and that’s enough.” It’s cool that you’re willing to give feedback based on your own experience. If you hadn’t had that experience yourself, you probably would have thought it wasn’t worth your time.
Stacy Case
I’ll end with this. Somebody asked me the other day, “How did you become a CEO?” And I said, “Because I founded the company and I wrote myself in as the CEO!” That’s how I got here. You can be whoever you want to be, but it’s what you do with it that matters.
I don’t know everything, and I’m still learning. Coming from sales and nursing led me here, and while I wrote my name in as CEO, I am a founder and will always be a founder. It’s a tough, very rewarding space to be in.
John Hill
Stacy, this was awesome. Thank you so much. If people want to ask you questions, network, or check out what you’re working on, where should they go?
Stacy Case
Probably just my LinkedIn page under Stacy Case. That’s the easiest way. I try to answer people—whether they want it or not!
John Hill
We’ll put a link to your LinkedIn in the show notes. Once again, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate the conversation, and I think this is going to help a lot of founders on their path. Have a great day, and we’ll talk soon!
Stacy Case
Thank you for having me, I appreciate it. Good luck to you as well!
John Hill
Thank you. Cheers!
