MDG’s Director of I&I Sales, Justin Howlett, is ready to tackle the Industrial & Institutional market.
What drew you to Microbial Discovery Group (MDG)?
In my numerous conversations with Mike King, MDG’s CEO, I enjoyed the vision of the company’s growth as well as the challenge that was ahead in playing a role in getting the company to where it is now and where it will be. I enjoyed the culture that was and is so very important to Mike upon founding the company as well as how much he strives to keep it alive and thriving currently and for the future to come.
What does your typical day look like?
No day is “typical” in my role! On any given day you will find me intrenched in one of the following activities: working on training materials, interviewing candidates to expand our team, performing customer and industry research to understand what our partners might want from us, and/or discussing what MDG products would be helpful to add-on to our partners’ inventory.
What is something at work that you’re passionate about?
I enjoy the coaching aspect of my position. I assist my team by streamlining obstacles in our sales process so that we can close more deals more efficiently and thus gain more customers in a shorter time frame than we’ve experienced in the past.
With all the different trends in the I&I industry, what excites you the most about the impacts of microbial products?
Educating our customers about the “life-cycle” of their facilities. Since Covid has died down some, it is the perfect time to teach professionals how to treat their facilities like the living organisms that they are, and how this can benefit their bottom line!
As the Director of Sales, how do you tackle such an established market with SporActiv®?
SporActiv® is different because it’s an environmentally friendly microbial based cleaner for a wide array of cleaning applications, made up of actual organisms that exist naturally in the environment. Our job is to research and develop strains, grow, and place them in the right application to do what they do best! And I enjoy working in such a competitive field, I think it’s a fun challenge.
What do you like to do when you’re not at the office?
I enjoy riding bikes on trails with my wife and daughter, we typically do that every weekend, ofcourse, weather permitting. We also enjoy swimming, and electronic gaming console games (Switch and Occulus). Soaking up time with the family is precious to me.
MDG’s mission is to “Feed. Clean. Save.” What does that mean to you?
This is part of the culture that I love being a part of. Knowing the reason behind why we do what we do and playing a role in that, even if a just a little every day, makes me feel good about what I’m doing. This makes work feel meaningful to me, like I’m apart of a humanitarian effort instead of it being “work”!
How has working with Bacillus changed the way you go about your everyday life?
Besides the fact that I’ve stopped trying to remove EVERY piece of bacteria from everything in my home and life, I’ve also noticed that I see things related to Bacillus popping up WAY more often than what I used to even know existed. Additionally, I find myself talking to my friends and family about it because the passion that I’ve found from my MDG teammates is so contagious, it makes me want to share it with those around me too.
