Annette Gilchrist started out as a cancer researcher before starting MyGenomeRx, on online platform that identifies potential gene-drug interactions.
She joined The Savvy Entrepreneur to share the story of shy she founded MyGenomeRx, and how she’s built & grown the company.
Annette’s medical research background led her to teach pharmacists, and as part of one of her courses, she had pharmacy students use their DNA to identify potential gene-drug interactions. She quickly realized that there were a lot of potential interactions, but no good websites to easily access this information.
She partnered with a coding whiz and they developed MyGenomeRx, a site where you can enter your DNA from ancestry.com, 23and me, or other source. For a small fee, the platform then identifies gene markers that may cause your body to uptake a drug faster than normal, slower than normal, or have no response to at all.
Researchers are constantly finding indications of these, all of which help both patients & physicians determine which drug and dosage to use.
Annette shares some of the challenges of creating such a huge matching platform and of generating a report that is easily understandable. It’s also a story of how to find the right co-founder, and the challenges of creating a company as a side hustle for both of them, not to mention the challenges of marketing and pricing. It helps that this is not Annette’s first “rodeo” as a founding entrepreneur, and she talks about how some of the learnings with her first company have helped as she’s built and grown MyGenomeRx.
It’s an interesting story, and Annette openly shares some of the challenges she’s faced along the way. And she candidly shares some of the lessons she’s learned and advice for other budding entrepreneurs.
What follows is a transcript of that interview. But if you’d prefer to listen to it, go here.
Doris Nagel 0:42
Good morning all you entrepreneurs and small businesspeople. You’re listening to the savvy Entrepreneur Show. I’m Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour. The show has two goals, to share helpful information and resources for entrepreneurs. I made so many mistakes as an entrepreneur, and I’ve seen lots that clients or friends have made. So if I can help just one of you avoid a couple of those, then I’ve been successful. The second goal is to inspire. I found being an entrepreneur was confusing, often lonely, you have no idea sometimes if you’re on the right track or not, or where to turn for good advice. So
To help with that, I have guests on the show every week to share their stories in their advice.
And this week’s guest Annette Gilchrist. She is the co-founder and CEO of a company called MyGenomeRx. She’s joined me this week to talk about her journey as an entrepreneur.
Annette, welcome to the show. Thanks for being on The Savvy Entrepreneur!
Annette Gilchrist
Thanks, Doris. Thanks for having me.
Doris Nagel
Start out by telling people just a little bit about you — who you are as a person, what makes you tick, some things that might help people understand how you came to start and grow this company?
Annette Gilchrist 2:17
I was born and raised in Oklahoma City, and I actually received my undergraduate degree in biology in Oklahoma. And I was interested in genetics. But the University of Oklahoma didn’t have a great genetics program at the time. So, I looked around and decided on the University of Connecticut, where I went and received a master’s degree in biochemistry.
At the time, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. I was premed and had thought about pursuing that, but instead I went to work at Pfizer. After that, I got my masters, and I loved it, I absolutely loved every minute of it. I love the person I worked for, I thought it was a phenomenal experience.
And because of that experience, I actually applied to get a PhD to do research because I decided I would rather spend my time trying to cure cancer then spend all my time just treating patients that had cancer.
So I went back to school and got a PhD in immunology at the University of Connecticut Health Center. And in science, when you get your PhD, you get to spend the next few years doing what’s called a postdoc.
I interviewed for a number of postdoc positions but decided on one at the University of Illinois at Chicago, working for someone named Heidi Ham. And again, it was a phenomenal experience. Heidi actually moved from UIC to Northwestern maybe two years after I started, and I went with her to Northwestern. She eventually moved from Northwestern to Vanderbilt, and I didn’t follow her to Tennessee and stayed in Chicago at Northwestern.
So I am definitely a scientist through and through. And that’s sort of how I approach everything: very analytically.
I would say most of my hobbies have to do with science. I like science fiction. I like science in general. So
Doris Nagel 4:39
It’s quite a jump, though, from researching to starting a company and running a company. So talk about that part of your journey.
Annette Gilchrist 4:58
When I worked with Heidi, we started a company called Q Biotech. And it was definitely a learning curve. We had a technology that I had developed. My goal in Heidi’s lab was to look at the interface between something called a cheaper protein coupled receptor and a G protein. That’s how the cell communicates from the outside to the inside. And we had a new way to identify small molecules that would interfere with that communication.
So I’ve studied these G protein-coupled receptors my whole scientific career, and they’re responsible for something like 35% of all the drugs on the market today. So they’re really popular target at pharma companies.
So it wasn’t a big jump to think about them as being a means by which you could make a new drug. We thought we might have a new way to do it., so we started [Q Biotech]. And I pretty much did that on my own.
It was a lot! I had to learn how to run a business, how to write a business plan, how to get insurance, how to do payroll, how to invoice. I’d never taken an accounting class. Yes, everything was very much learned on the fly.
But it was it was a great experience. We eventually raised VC money and moved the business to Wisconsin. We changed the name of the company from Q Biotech to Kayden Biosciences, and we were there in Wisconsin for a couple of years. So it was it was a phenomenal experience to do that.
Doris Nagel
Wow. A great training ground, especially under someone else’s umbrella, so to speak for a little while, right?
Annette Gilchrist 6:43
Well, the only umbrella we were really under was Northwestern University’s, where I was a postdoc. And we leased the technology that we had developed from Northwestern University. We actually traded lab space for part ownership of the company. It was just a great experience. I really learned a lot, there’s no question about it.
Doris Nagel 7:15
Talk about though your company today, MyGenome Rx. What does it do? And how did that get started?
Annette Gilchrist 7:06
The company itself is an online platform. And it analyzes information from direct to consumer at home genetic tests. And we provide the customer with information about potential drug gene interactions. So if you’re taking any medications, how you process those medications, how long it takes you to process them, there are enzymes in your body that do that. And you may have genetic variations that slow that down, or that speed that up. And that’s going to alter how much medication you have in your bloodstream. So we can help analyze just that background DNA information for maybe what drugs you should take or what drugs you shouldn’t take.
How it got started? I teach pharmacogenomics at Midwestern University to pharmacy students. That’s part of my normal day to day job. And I insist that my students actually analyze the DNA results for someone at home from 23andme data in order to identify their drug/gene interactions and provide counseling tips for them as part of the course.
And it became really clear the very first year I taught this 10-12 years ago that there was absolutely no good online resource that they could go to find that information. Yes, there are some free DNA sites, but they are not user friendly. If you don’t already have a strong understanding of pharmacogenomics, they are just not terribly helpful websites.
So I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if you had some type of an online platform to get this information?” But I’m not a computer person at all. As it turned out, [I found someone who was]. I gave a talk about pharmacogenomics, which is something I do fairly often as outreach. This time, it was at a community biohacking event. And one of the people in the audience was Christopher Norris, and Chris is a computer guru.
After my talk, we were talking, and I said, “You know, it’s too bad that there’s no online platform where you could do this.” And he says, “Oh, I could do that for you.” And I told him we needed to talk.
Doris Nagel
That is huge. Because week after week, I’ve had guests on this show sharing how they needed some sort of technology platform for their company. And most of them talk about the stumbles and the money that is cost them trying to get it right.
In fact, two recent guests both shared a tale of woe where they spent a bunch of money, developed an online platform, then realized it didn’t do what they needed, or was very quickly obsolete. And then they both ended up having to try to find money — a lot of money – to again redevelop the platform.
So kudos to you for recognizing you needed that help.
Annette Gilchrist 11:30
Oh, I definitely needed the help. And Chris has been great. He’s a Wisconsin native and lives up in Wisconsin Dells, and we started the company together. He’s been just phenomenal.
Doris Nagel 11:48
How did you go from the concept and needing a platform to what the company is doing today?
You should probably start by telling listeners briefly about what the company currently does offer. Even though it already sounds like there’s probably a lot of different areas that might be productive to offer to consumers in the future.
Annette Gilchrist 12:30
We started with the idea that we wanted an online platform. Much of the information about drug gene interactions is known and very well-published. So we could take that information and provide it in an algorithm manner, so that the program can analyze the data.
So, if you go to mygenomerx.com, there is an option to upload your DNA. That’s a raw DNA file that you get directly from the at-home genetic test company, like 23andme or ancestry.com. You upload that raw DNA file, and then our system looks for something that’s called an RSID.
Along your chromosomes, at each position, you can have a different DNA sequence. It can be in A, C, G or T, depending on where it is in the sequence. And if that changes, sometimes it can change what the protein is going to be encoded by that DNA does.
Those RSIDs help home in on where the diversity is in the DNA. It’s like a name tag, if you will.
So if Bob has an A instead of a G, that may make the protein not work as well. And so we literally search for these RSIDs within the sequence of all the information that’s provided in that raw DNA file. And we’re looking at literally millions of different RSIDs that have been identified as being important.
And it’s more complicated because 23andme testing done and ancestry testing done, they don’t test for exactly the same things. They use a different chip. So they look at different positions. Now sometimes they have positions in common, but they were looking at about 600,000 Rs IDs each and there’s only a few that actually overlap, so you get different information from the different DNA tests.
Doris Nagel
I never realized that. I did Ancestry at one point because others in our family were using that. I did know that 23andme was out there, and I think there are a couple of other ones that are less well-known?
Annette Gilchrist 15:31
My Heritage is another common one.
We can look at DNA from any of the home testing companies with our platform.
Doris Nagel
Does your platform look at families of drugs, or at specific drugs?
Annette Gilchrist 15:53
It’s a great question.
Some people are on a specific set of drugs already. They may be taking drugs for hypertension, or for diabetes. And if the person is on medications, they just list the medications that they’re on. And the program then specifically checks for those medications [against their] DNA and will give them information back about whether they might want to think about taking a different drug. [It provides] information that they can provide to their doctor [to determine whether] they should change their medication or not.
Doris Nagel
That’s mind blowing, because the number of different drugs that are out there and given the number of different combinations. That’s a big data project!
Annette Gilchrist 16:49
Yes, it is a lot of information. And that’s why it had to be done as an online platform, because even online, it takes 30 seconds after you put in your information for the computer to do the analysis.
The other thing that we did, Doris, is we moved from two separate reports to one. Because it’s great if you’re on medications, but what about if you’re not? So we initially started with two separate reports, where we also provided information like, maybe a person shouldn’t take a statin, even if they’re not on the drug. But we found that that’s less helpful.
And so now we have just a single report, but we run a set of sixteen medications for everybody that submits their DNA. These include some common over the counter medications: things like aspirin, or acetaminophen. It includes antihistamines, three antidepressants, and a couple of the drugs for ADHD.
And it includes anesthetics, because many times, people have an allergy to these anesthetics and they should know that prior to going in for surgery, especially if they’ve never had a surgery before.
So we check for those as well. And we check for one of the anti-cancer drugs that has a relatively frequent genetic variant that you tells you should never go on this drug if you have that variant, because you’re at high risk for toxicity. So we check that one as well.
Doris Nagel
I thought that what your platform did was identify adverse drug interactions. Does your platform flag any of those kinds of things?
Annette Gilchrist 19:00
It does flag where you may have potential drug gene interactions, because it knows what drugs you’re on, as well as what genes you have. So it flags those, but it also provides information about if you have what are called star alleles.
So for any of the enzymes that process, or metabolize, those drugs after you start taking them, there are some common gene variants that that are well known that may slow that process down or speed it up. The pharmacogenomics terminology is the star allele. So instead of being star one star, one, you might be star one, Star Three, and that would mean that you don’t process certain drugs as well as a normal person.
If you don’t process the drug as well, you may have more of it. Right, that’s going to increase your risk for toxicity then. So we flag any star alleles that are identified and those can be taken to your physician because they can easily use that information then to give you drugs that don’t use those enzyme pathways.
Doris Nagel 20:26
You’re making me wonder about vaccines. After all, we’re hopefully coming out of the pandemic – although I personally don’t think COVID is quite done with us yet. But can your platform tell a person if they are immunocompromised, say, or other factors that can look at whether or not a vaccine might be more or less effective on a person, or whether they might have side effects? Of is that a future iteration maybe of the company?
Annette Gilchrist 21:09
So the two COVID vaccines that are the most common are Pfizer, and Moderna. Those are RNA vaccines, and we’re probably not going to be able to tell any information about RNA vaccines at all.
With the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, we might be able to give some information based on what else is in the vaccine, but I can’t really tell you about the vaccine itself.
There are definitely some people who have allergic reactions when they take certain vaccines. But for each of the vaccines that has come out, there has been genetic information that’s been identified about who is it most risk for having some of the adverse reactions that occurred.
And so, if 23andme or ancestry.com has included that RFID in their chip, we can include that information with our platform. But that’s really the limitation. Because we can only look at the information that we’re given in those raw DNA files. If 23andme doesn’t have it on their chip, then we can’t look for it, either.
Doris Nagel 22:34
Can you give some examples of how this is helped people make better decisions, or maybe even had life changing kind of moments where they realize something about some kind of medication or some reaction they were having?
Annette Gilchrist 23:06
Absolutely.
I think a really good example of this is statins. So many people take statin drugs, things like Simba statin are so core many people take to reduce their cholesterol levels. And one of the reasons that people don’t take their statins like they should is because they have what’s called statin associated muscle symptoms, or SAMs, where they have muscle pain.
And that muscle pain and stiffness that they get when they take their statins occurs with relatively high frequency, which leads to non-adherence where people don’t take the drug. And oftentimes, that’s caused by how the person transports the statin drug into their cells.
Again, there’s a gene variant that’s well known, and if you have that gene variant, you’re much more likely to have the side effect of Sam’s.
And so you can switch the medication to a different statin that doesn’t use that exact enzyme to transport the drug into cells. So the person takes their statin like they should because now it’s not causing any type of an adverse effect.
The other story that’s pretty common, actually has to do with codeine. So, codeine is by prescription. And it tends to be things like Tylenol three, you might get it. If you’ve sprained an ankle, or if you had some dental surgery.
They often give codeine in hydrocodone, right?
But codeine is an interesting drug because it has to be activated to actually get morphine. Codeine gets processed, and becomes morphine.
And if you don’t have the enzyme that actually converts coding to morphine, it’s not going to give you any pain relief. You could take lots of codeine, and it’s just not going to be helpful because you’re not getting the morphine, right, because your body isn’t processing the drug appropriately. And the gene variant for that, again, is relatively common, and depends very much on your ethnic background.
Other people actually process it too fast. So they may get pain relief, but it’s gone in 30 minutes instead of two hours. And so then they need more drug, right, quicker than other people, because they’ve already processed all of it right away.
Doris Nagel 26:27
What reaction you get from physicians? As I’m listening to you, I’m thinking it might be useful to have a doctor prescribe something like your report for people before they start writing a prescription for a drug. But that may be too simplistic.
Annette Gilchrist 26:53
In some cases, doctors do require it, There are some anti cancer drugs aware, they know that they’re not going to be effective. And so it’s required that patients be tested before they are started on the drug to be sure that they have the genetic variant that’s present.
So it’s not completely uncommon.
The test has been used many times now for mental health drugs. Often the drugs for mental health take a long time to work. You have to take them for a month, oftentimes four to six weeks before you even know whether they’re going to be effective or not. And if they’re not effective, then you have to go on another drug and wait another four to six weeks. That’s a pretty long process.
So some physicians are now doing pharmacogenomic testing prior to starting patients on drugs for mental illness just to help determine which drugs that they might want to start with. So if you never metabolize a particular drug, that might not be your first choice.
So I do think it is becoming more common, but you’re right – it still is not as common as it probably should be, in my opinion. But that’s what I do, right? I teach pharmacogenomics.
Doris Nagel 28:11
Let’s turn to some of the challenges you faced in starting the company.
It’s phenomenal that you found Chris, who had the computer technology and database manipulation background, but it’s still a giant leap to taking all this data and then generating a report that people can order online & download and understand.
I’m just astounded at what you’ve accomplished, and I doubt it’s quite as simple as you’ve made it sound.
Talk a little bit about what happened behind the scenes and some of the challenges you face in doing that.
Annette Gilchrist 29:04
Chris, in addition actually to having phenomenal computer skills, also has a background in biology. And that’s incredibly helpful, because you have to be able to understand the biology of it to write the right code for this particular offering.
So when I talk about genetic variants, he knows what I’m talking about. That really helps in terms of how we communicate to each other.
But I’ll tell you, one of the hardest parts actually was developing a report that anybody could read and understand. Because I’m a scientist, I’m 100% a scientist. I talk like a scientist, right? And I know most of us are not exactly like that!
So, one of the biggest challenges has been to make the report so that anybody could understand it. So we use a lot of graphics within the report, because I think oftentimes that’s easier for people to understand. When they see it, they understand better what I’m talking about.
We’re now on I think at least version three, if not version four, of our report. We’re continually working to try and make it so that anybody could understand it.
And there’s a third person in this company who is invaluable. She’s Dimitra Workinoplis, who’s our Chief Business Officer. She’ll provide reports to her friends and colleagues who are nonscientists and ask them, “Can you understand this? Does this make sense?”
Doris Nagel
Basically doing market research on the report format?
Annette Gilchrist 31:19
That’s right. So we tell people, “Let’s upload your DNA, and we’ll give you a free report if you’re willing to provide us feedback for the report itself. Did it make sense? Do you know what it says? How can we make it easier to understand?”
So that has been a huge part of the company and how we’ve had to really change from the beginning to where we are now.
Doris Nagel 31:43
How did you know there was a market for this? I know you said that you realized the sites that were out there were not very accessible, but how did you know there was a market for this product, these reports?
And a relate question: how did you figure out how to price the product so that people would go ahead and click the “Buy” button?
Annette Gilchrist 32:04
I’m going to answer those in two different parts. How did I know that people would want it? I would say, I did it the same way you do any market research. I asked myself, “What did I want?”
I had 23andme DNA. And while is great to understand whether you know, I have freckles or not, of course, I can look in the mirror and figure that out, right?
Doris Nagel
Or that you have some Norwegian ancestry that you wonder where it came from, since nobody in the family tree seems to be Norwegian.
Annette Gilchrist 32:41
That is exactly right. So, what I really wanted to know was, “Should I take certain drugs? Do I have a certain genetic variant that means I should never take five FQ, a specific anti-cancer drug? Because my brother had cancer, and he took a five Q and had side effects. So would that happen to me, too?” I would definitely want to know that before I’d ever start on the medication.
So I realized that there was information to be had from that raw DNA file. I had all the ability to analyze it because I do pharmacogenomics, but other people don’t have that background. They don’t know what RSID to look at. They don’t understand which RSIDs are associated with codeine or how to find them.
So I thought it made absolute sense that if I wanted that information, other people would want that information, too. I think almost everybody has taken a medication and had a side effect. Something that makes you nauseas or feel itchy all over, right? I think we’ve all had that.
Doris Nagel
Look at the drug ads that are on TV and all those warnings – taking this drug may make your fingers fall off, or all kinds of other terrible things. And those come from the clinical studies that the drug companies have done that have shown that there are adverse reactions for some people. So they have to disclose them.
Annette Gilchrist 34:13
Exactly. So it made sense to me that if I wanted the information, other people would, too. So that was that was easy enough.
As for the pricing, we looked around. You know, it’s amazing what information you can get from these at home DNA tests by third party vendors. They will tell you what foods you should eat, what exercises you should do, they’ll matchmake for romance.
Doris Nagel
I didn’t know that. I’ve been going to the wrong sites, apparently!
Annette Gilchrist 34:55
You can get all kinds of information from your raw DNA files. And so we just looked out there to see where the price points were for the other products.
Doris Nagel 35:06
My guess is that it wasn’t quite so easy to do as you make it sound. You strike me as just an absolute can-do person, but I’m sure there were things you had to persevere through, one of which was probably trying to figure out how to fund all this.
For example, I’m guessing with the platform, you had to make a pretty substantial investment in the database and the platform and the generating of the report before you could really collect dollar one in terms of getting people to pay for the report.
Annette Gilchrist 35:39
Well, I’ve mentioned, started another company, right. So I think that having done that made it much easier. For me the second time around, I knew potential pitfalls. I understood sort of the risk that it was going to take and the hard work that was going to be required.
And that really helped in terms of my whole outlook on this company. And Chris, who I was fortunate to meet has also actually been part of startup companies, several startup companies, oh, that’s helpful too. And again, that was incredibly helpful. And so we were able to just self-invest in the company at the beginning the two of us, we provided all of the capital that was needed. We were fortunate in 2020. We entered the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan competition, and we actually won the IT category in 2020.
And that provided some money that has helped set that platform up we actually the other thing that really helped us is because we were part of that Governor’s Business Plan Competition, we had to get the website up. It helps having a deadline, right?
Doris Nagel
Procrastination is the enemy of the entrepreneur.
Annette Gilchrist 37:10
It’s true, especially when both Chris and I have other jobs, other things that we’re doing. But we had a deadline, we had to get it done by that date, and that really helped us perform to our maximum ability and get it out. And at that point, it began to run itself.
So once it was up, it was a matter of revising the actual report, that’s taking us a year to get that Revised Edition out with the new format, where we provide the information for the fifteen drugs for everybody. And so, again, it was a learning curve in terms of trying to figure out what needed to be on the report, at what level you needed to provide the information, it has to be useful for both the consumer and for the physician that they’re going to take it to. We have to provide information sort of at both levels for that.
So I do think that it has been a process, there’s no question. But I approach it just like I approach everything, you know, it’s that one day at a time, one foot in front of the other kind of thing.
I always have a list, right? Very scientific, I have a list, I check things off.
Doris Nagel 38:30
I think that’s great advice for any entrepreneur or small businessperson — you definitely have to keep the longer perspective in mind and just know it’s not all going to get done today or tomorrow.
I’m curious how you found customers or how they find you. Who are most of your customers? And how do they how do they find you?
Annette Gilchrist 38:54
Currently, we don’t have any marketing, although we’re working on that. You’re not going to see a Facebook ad yet for us.
But people do find us find us on Google. They’ve done a search for raw DNA and pharmacogenomics or 23andme and pharmacogenomics. And they’re going to potentially find our site.
Interestingly enough, I’m only going to speak good things of Reddit. I’ve posted responses on Reddit about when people ask for information about pharmacogenomics about using sites like my genome RX or other sites, and nearly 10% of our consumers actually come from Reddit. So I think that’s been tremendously helpful in terms of free advertising.
Doris Nagel
I’ve seen in articles online, where people tell you how to get known as an expert. And I always thought “Oh, why should I bother respond to read it, nobody’s going to read that. But you’re living proof. That’s, just a fallacy on my part, and for you it was a great way to get known.
Annette Gilchrist 40:12
It is a great way. And I had no idea at the beginning where I actually answered on Reddit because I teach pharmacogenomics, I can answer that question.
And when we realized how much business we actually get from Reddit, then I’ve gone and answered more questions. Because I know that that’s a way that we’re going to get our name out there. Yes, it’s interesting. I had someone else on my show said, they go on podcasts and YouTube that are relevant topics and comment.
Doris Nagel 40:35
I had a guest on the show not too long ago who does a lot of white hat hacking. He helps companies prevent data breaches and anticipate issues with data security. And he said he finds a lot of his customers and clients through doing that.
So that’s kind of the same idea. Right? It is because people are reading. They see it, they look it up. And if they’re interested, then they’re going to buy.
Is any aspect of what you’re doing regulated by the FDA? Are there other any other regulatory hurdles you had to focus on?
Annette Gilchrist 41:35
So that is actually a great question. We are not. The reports that we provide are not regulated by the FDA because they’re educational tools only.
However, our data security we had to be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. Because we’re protecting health information. So we are compliant for HIPAA in terms of our data security, but we don’t have to worry about the FDA.
If we want to be accredited by the FDA for our type of reports, there’s some big hurdles to overcome.
Doris Nagel
Having spent a lot of time in biotech and MedTech, I can definitely say that getting FDA approval has killed a lot of healthcare startups along the way.
How is your business grown since you started? Talk a little bit about that.
Annette Gilchrist 42:39
So we’re very much still starting, I would say. Our website went up at the beginning of June of 2020, so we’re not even quite two years old.
We are, thankfully, cash positive and have been for a year. The reports that we provide pay for all of the data security that’s required to house them.
But we get new users every day. We have from our first year, we’re nearly triple sort of our daily rate of viewers to the website. So that’s great.
We’re still relatively young. We’re still learning. We’re still trying to figure out how best to grow.
What’s the best marketing strategy? Do we need to go to Facebook or Twitter? How do we do that? Do I post blogs on YouTube about pharmacogenomics? Like what’s the best way that we get out there so that people see the value of our report?
Doris Nagel 43:55
Triple the visitors is a phenomenal statistic, given the fact that you really aren’t doing any traditional marketing yet. How are you sorting through the marketing piece of it?
The dilemma you described I think is one that a lot of startup companies face: you could spend your entire day marketing just on social media — posting blogs and engaging people on LinkedIn and having Facebook groups and doing Instagram or maybe Pinterest or TikTok. There’s so many options!
How are you sorting through that process?
Annette Gilchrist 44:37
I do it the same way that I approached the company itself, which is: would I use it, do I go there? That’s not always the best, right? Because I’m old in terms of social media. The fact that I even said that I use Facebook tells you that I’m old.
My kids think I’m hysterical because I still use Facebook. They say what I need to be using is Instagram and Tik Tok. But I haven’t yet figured out how to get to pharmacogenomics on TikTok.
I think many people that come to our website come for a reason. They’ve had a bad experience when they’ve taken a drug, and they want to know why. So I think sometimes they’re getting to us because of something going on in their life.
It could be that they’ve recently started on an antidepressant, and it is not effective for them. And so they’ve come across the website because they’ve looked for keyword searches, in terms of like drug interaction, or for side effects that have led them to our website.
Doris Nagel
Yes. And I’m sure people struggle with trying to find answers for their kids or their elderly parents or other important people in their lives who are struggling.
Annette Gilchrist 46:11
And I think the more people that have DNA tests done — the at home DNA tests done, the more people will ultimately use the service. So as that becomes more and more common — people give it to their spouses for Valentine’s Day, or they provide it to their parents, right?
Doris Nagel
Or like me, I’ve been begging my cousins to do it. Because I’ve seen things in my family tree or my genetic history, wondering where it came from. So I’ve been reaching out to cousins to say, “Hey, would you get the test done? Because I’m dying to find out if this was this on my mom’s or my dad’s side.”
Annette Gilchrist 46:54
Yep. I had a friend that found out she was actually adopted by doing 23andme. She had no idea. There’s been all kinds of surprises, right, when people have done 23andme or ancestry.com, and followed up with a GED match.
And I think that MyGenomeRx is just another tool in the toolbox that they can have– information that would be valuable to them.
Doris Nagel
Where do you see the business growing? I know, you’re just getting started. But if you look out two to three years from now, if your company is successful, what will it look like? What will it be doing?
Annette Gilchrist 47:47
I think as we earn more money from sales, we’ll have will directly invest that back into the company so that we can market it. I think that’s a sort of ever-growing ripple effect.
I think – I hope — that the triple of users that we’ve seen in the last year will triple again or even higher.
I think the likelihood of us being bought by a larger company is pretty high. I think, whether it’s a add home DNA testing company that’s trying to differentiate themselves from sort of the big dogs, or whether it’s a company like a nutrigenomics company that’s wanting to offer a second business. I think it’s just likely, yes.
Doris Nagel
Well, that there are certainly other kinds of things that you might be able to do with this kind of database idea, right? I mean, it occurs to me drugs aren’t the only thing it could be used for.
Annette Gilchrist 49:02
It could be vaccines, it could be nutritional supplements, cancer. It could be different types of DNA, right? It could be your dog’s DNA. Why not?
Because lots of people have their animals, their companion animal at home, DNA tested. It is now done on those animals for the same reason: to tell you what kind of species it is, right? What breed your dog is, but that information can be used to determine its treatment for cancer, for example.
Doris Nagel
That makes sense! As a longtime dog and horse owner, and having talked to a lot of veterinarians, the challenge for the whole veterinary world is that you have patients who can’t tell you what’s going on. Not directly, anyway. So if something hurts them, you don’t even always know it.
Annette Gilchrist 50:09
Right. You don’t always know the side effects that they’re experiencing. So if that makes piecing together treatment for animals even more challenging. When they’re not eating, is that because they’re having GI upset? Or is it lethargy? So it helps vets and owners better understand the underlying mechanism there.
So, there are a lot of growth patterns that the company could take. We’ve also thought about moving into whole genome sequencing. So what we look at now has to do with at home DNA testing, but whole genome sequencing is certainly going to be the wave of the future, where instead of just looking at a few pieces of your DNA, they look at the entire genome.
There are companies that now offer that and so there are no pharmacogenomic companies that actually look at that information and provide that back to the consumer. So, just as we’ve, done this for at home testing, you could do it for whole genome sequencing as well.
Doris Nagel 51:08
I see why you say some bigger company might very well be interested in acquisition, because there are a lot of different ways this could go. And now you’re getting the company to a place where people start to see the possibilities.
Looking back on your journey — for both of your companies — what advice would you offer to other entrepreneurs who are either thinking about starting out or have already started, but maybe have hit a few bumps in the road?
Annette Gilchrist 51:53
You know, I wrote a piece for Springboard which helped me when I started my first company. Springboard is a group that specifically targets women entrepreneurs, and they asked me to write a piece about advice that I might give.
My advice then, and my advice now is the same and it’s to grasp the nettle. So it’s, that’s a British phrase, it means to really tackle a difficult problem and do it boldly.
Jump in with both feet! You have to believe in what you do, and just go for it. So I think that you have to accept the challenges that you’re going to have, you have to just resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to be tired, you’re never going to have enough time that that there are going to be 101 Things that you have to do and you’re only going to get to 30 of them. You just do it, you just go after it, 100%
Doris Nagel
Great advice.
If people are interested in getting a report or learning more about MyGenomeRx, or maybe you said something else that sparked interest in one of my listeners, how should they reach you?
Annette Gilchrist
I’m always available by email. My email is annette@mygenomerx.com. I’m easy to reach.
Doris Nagel
And check out the website, mygenomerx.com. It’s really well done. There’s some very interesting FAQs and other information out there on the site that I found helpful. So check it out, folks.
Annette, thanks so much for being with me today. I really appreciate you being on the show and taking the time out of your day to share a little bit about MyGenomeRx and your journey as an entrepreneur.
Annette Gilchrist
Thanks, Doris. I appreciate you having me.
Doris Nagel 53:57
And thanks to all my listeners. You’re the reason I do this.
You can find more helpful information resources for startups and small businesses on my consulting website, which is globalocityservices.com. And I’m starting to populate more and more on my new radio show dedicated site called thesavvyentrepreneur.org. You’ll find there a growing library of pot podcast, blogs, other tools for businesses and entrepreneurs.
My door is always open. I’d love to hear from you. Reach out to me at mailto:dnagel@thesavvyentrepreneur.org If you have questions, comments, want to be a guest on the show or just want to shoot the breeze.
Be sure to join me again next week at 11am Central noon Eastern time, when I’ll have another guest and topic.
But until then, I’m Doris Nagel, wishing you happy entrepreneuring!
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