We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Selena Jackson Guines a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Selena, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I was good at my corporate job. But I was overwhelmed and overworked. Corporate America was burning me out. Even mentioning the thought of quitting got friends and family up in arms over the perks and benefits I’d leave behind. But I didn’t care. I just wanted more work-life balance. 

The thing is, corporate America requires and teaches you things you might not do if no one is watching. Corporate America taught me structure, organization, scheduling, goal setting. I knew how to run a business. Most entrepreneurs neither plan, put anything in writing, nor keep things in order. They just do what’s ahead of them. That’s a mistake.

The government must buy medical supplies from the private sector. When I created Genesis Medical Supply Service, I began to learn how important a woman-owned small business was to government agencies. I started educating myself on the medical supply industry and examining bids. The sheer quantity of solicitations looked lucrative. The issue was having the enough money to fulfill the larger bids and significant quantities requested.

We started with zero dollars. Not ideal, but it is what it is. We had to find a way to make this work because of the obvious potential. Doing business is about overcoming obstacles to meet demand. My focus was on how to avoid net terms when a buyer bought products and services because we couldn’t float a shipment of anything for 30, 60, sometimes 90 days. Instead, we found buyers who use purchasing cards. We ran a 65-70% profit without having to user our own money.

I like doing business face-to-face. I love meeting people and gaining their trust. I started visiting purchasing agents in search of relationships and favorable terms. That led to not only finding the right types of solicitations to respond to, but steady revenue followed. Eventually, we had to request increases in purchasing capacity to meet the needs of all our customers. As is often said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Our processes worked and we were growing quickly.

The most important thing about this process was knowing when it was time to leave corporate America, taking full advantage of what I’d learned, and applying the same values to my own businesses. Entering the government sector with successful business practices, and a willingness to keep learning where my value could best be leveraged, made all the difference. 

Selena, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

What sets us apart from others in the world of medical supplies is, we have products when others don’t. This is a business of “hurry up and wait.” Buyers want product now, and vendors are quick to get contracts signed, but vendors are notorious for delaying shipment because they don’t actually have the product in stock. I get it. Millions of dollars can be tied up in inventory and valuable resources are sitting on shelves waiting for orders to convert stock into cash. 

We discovered the optimal way to self-fund by getting the right customers based on the right terms of purchase, essentially using OPM—other people’s money. However, to get to the next level, we needed greater capacity and efficiency in inventory, delivery, price and availability. Solid revenues and profit margins allowed us to invest in warehouses, new computers and inventory systems to meet our growth agenda. 

In addition, we found partners manufacturing some items who gave us volume discounts to lower our price points, making us competitive throughout our product line. One key lesson we learned was to never bid on something we couldn’t supply. We never wanted to strain our valuable relationships with our customers by not meeting demand on a timely basis.

Our business philosophy is to keep lower margins and prices for repeat business. Greed kills business. Plain and simple. You might get them once, but when they realize they overpaid, they won’t come back. We kept our overhead low and didn’t need to make excessive profits if we had repeat customers, plus our price points kept them coming back. Whether easy to fulfill or not, keeping low margins is key to our success.

I can say without hesitation, what makes us most proud of our brand and reputation is, we genuinely care about providing quality products. This isn’t just lip service. We want our own kids to have better products in the healthcare space, which drives us to source the best quality products possible for our customers. This is another differentiator of course because the combination of high quality and low price to our customers is like candy to a baby. It’s a beautiful thing to help government agencies and they remember us for anything they need. 

Another key ingredient to our success is, we are adamant about creating systems to make things easier. We make it look easy. Our customers love us for it, and we operate effectively internally to minimize bad customer experiences. We are efficient and we communicate. Others don’t set the right standards, get calls at all hours, not standardizing systems, not being organized. Who wants a call in the middle of the night? I don’t. We keep strict hours and handle our business. It’s all about doing business the right way. That’s how we roll.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

We had to start small, ramping up once we knew what we were doing and adding efficiencies to become a more effective supplier. We learned the correct protocols for working with the government, which created more opportunities for revenue and the fiscal health of our company. In any business, you have to know what you need and make them your strengths, then build those strengths into a financial model or strategy you can capitalize on. 

Again, if your buyer requires net terms, you have to wait for your money. If you don’t have funds, you get into a bind. Plus, the cost of terms may conflict with your margins. So you have to have a strategy that works.

During the pandemic, we had to pivot in several ways. When a hospital asked for products, we had to learn their process and come up with a new structure for them to pay us in a timely manner instead of net terms they were accustomed to. They made decisions by committee. Board meetings were slow because that’s how they purchased. But they needed product and we had it. Meeting their needs helped us build relationships. In an emergency, they were willing to change their processes to meet their needs.

However, it didn’t end there. Masks became mandatory when people started dying from COVID symptoms. Our President’s executive order caused significant challenges to us as a supplier. The U.S. government began to confiscate medical supply shipments at ports from private sector suppliers, like us. And when they paid, they gave us a pink slip with our declared cost of goods—no profit added. So, we had to change our methods to stop them. 

The main point here is, if you don’t have the right team in place, you can end up in a world of trouble. A lot of times, business owners don’t know they need a good attorney or advisor to guide them through unanticipated nightmares. Our lawyer was able to determine what we needed to do, which was let the government know they were interfering with paid for and assigned government shipments, not private sector shipments they can take. That solution allowed for us to deliver our products to intended recipients on time. 

Doing business with the government isn’t easy. We just make it look easy with our principles and values as a business. A quality product at a good price makes them happy, repeat customers. Being systematic and delivering as agreed keeps them coming back. They call us now. That’s how we built Genesis Medial Supply Service. Having a good lawyer available as needed helped us continue to be a reliable supplier when the President of the United States was willing to take anything not previously committed to a government agency to keep the country running. You’ve got to be ready for anything. We were.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Most people think manufacturing is only assembling things. There are different stages of the manufacturing process that can be hacked or subbed out for greater efficiency, especially when you have specific government standards to meet. But we realized we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. We had to find the right company to partner with initially that was already certified to meet the highest industry standards and would supply us at manufacturer’s rates. 

Mind you, we saw significant growth up to this point. Since 2014, we averaged a 33% annual increase in revenue the first couple of years. Then we exploded to 300% annually from 2017 on. It’s normal to search for greater efficiencies. After assessing the financing and tax implications of owning commercial real estate, warehousing and manufacturing became an obvious next step. We could create a bigger future investing in space and equipment.

So now, we have purchased equipment to produce saline, with the challenge of finding enough FDA-regulated “clean space” designed to control contamination and the removal of airborne particles. On other products, we have partnered with a manufacturer who understands and provides specific standards per customer requirements. That allows us to explore new markets both domestic and international. 

I love to travel. With added capacity, I visualized exporting to international markets, having sourced materials overseas during the pandemic from foreign suppliers. New relationships have evolved into a network of useful partnerships. We now have contacts in the SBA, UGA SBDC, Georgia Department of Commerce, US Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration for Healthcare, and Export.gov to help us explore foreign markets. 

Growth is both exciting and challenging. To grow, we are always pushing ourselves and our limits. Alignments, partnerships, and matching agendas go a long way toward doing things previously unforeseen. Finding people who want to help, participate, learn, and grow with the company is the foundation of expansion. Always being in communication, sharing resources, and a common vision form the bedrock of a global enterprise. We have a lot of work ahead, but we are definitely up for the challenge.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.genesismedicalsupplyservice.com
• Facebook: [email protected]
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/selena-jackson-guines-63b1539a/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@genesismedicalsupplyservic4564

Image Credits
Kimazing Photography LLC Jennifer Banker Photograph LLC