Stiefel Laboratories COO Bill Humphries talks about scouting potential deals, time management secrets, and taking care of the ones he loves.

Bill Humphries serves as Stiefel Laboratories' chief commercial officer. He is also on the board of directors.

Paint a picture for us of the size, scope and mission of Stiefel Laboratories. Where are the world headquarters, and what takes place here in Gwinnett?

To frame it out for you, what I'd say is that we have a global headquarters in Coral Gables, Florida, where our chief executive officer Charlie Stiefel (who is fifth generation, by the way, running this company) sits. Brent and Todd (Charlie Stiefel's two sons), who are sixth-generation obviously, reside there. Around the world, we have five different R&D sites and we have six manufacturing sites. So we're very global in nature.

In the United States, we have Coral Gables, and we have an R&D facility we just opened in Research Triangle Park. We have a manufacturing facility in Oak Hill, New York. We have an R&D facility in Palo Alto, California. And then finally here in Duluth we have what we consider to be the commercial nervous center, where you have U.S. sales and marketing, as well as global sales and marketing for the entire organization.

Tell us more about what the company does and the kind of products you develop and sell.

We're solely dedicated to skin care and dermatology. That really is what separates us. As a matter of fact, we're the largest privately-held dermatological company. We have products in over 100 countries. We have subsidiaries that are wholly owned in more than 30 different locations around the world. So we're really unique. We have a tremendous global footprint.

Our sales last year - we just closed our books - our fiscal year runs from April to March - but I believe with the Connetics acquisition if you put it all in - will be north of $600 million. Fully including Connetics next year, we expect our budget to be somewhere above $900 million. As a corporate goal short-term we have achieving $1 billion in sales well within our sights.

How would you describe your process for scouting potential deals?

It's an interesting approach we have here and I think every company does it a little bit different. We're fortunate to have our corporate development efforts lead by Brent Stiefel. He has a process the commercial development team runs through in conjunction with research and development and global marketing to make sure we're constantly scanning what's happening in the marketplace - and also networking heavily, so we're constantly attending the conferences, conventions and making sure we know who the players are and we're in constant conversation with them about what the art of the possible is.

Dermatology is such a fragmented part of the business and peak-year sales on a blockbuster dermatology product is $150 to $200 million, and a lot of times the big pharmaceutical companies aren't interested in developing those drugs. We can pick them up in phase two, take them through fruition, and market them to our customers and patients, and do what we do well, which is topical medications and soon oral medications for treatment of skin disease.

What first brought you here?

I actually moved to Gwinnett with Stiefel Laboratories. I've been here three years, and I would say we really enjoy Gwinnett County and Georgia. We moved here from southern California, and my parents live in Savannah. So for us it was sort of coming home. We have two children - Lisa and I have two children- Davis, who is 11, and Rilee, who is 9. That brings them closer to their grandparents. So it was a win for a quality of life because Gwinnett is a great place to live and it was a win for me professionally because Stiefel Laboratories is a great company - and we've had a great growth track record over the past five years, and I've been really pleased to be a part of that.

What are your responsibilities here?

First and foremost is top- and bottom-line results and making sure we drive the sales for the top brands that we've committed to in our budgets, and also that we manage and leverage and use our money wisely for sales and marketing around the globe. So in short, it's sales, it's marketing, it's public relations - anything that commercially touches the customer, I want to make sure that our team is working well with the other functional leaders here at Stiefel to deliver top-flight products and results for patients and customers alike.

The secrets to your time management skills are...?

You know, I try a couple of things - I ask myself what I need to do and what I have to do, so I have a grid that I use which is urgent to important and it has four quadrants. So I try to qualify things as to, "is it urgent or isn't it urgent? Is it important or isn't it important?" I find that a lot of things end up in that not urgent or not important category - those are the things that sort of feel good.

You can cross them off the list and I try to watch that I don't get sucked in there and I think about things appropriately. So if it's urgent or important - it may be a call from our chief executive officer Charlie Stiefel and there's something he wants to talk about. That's going to get dealt with straightaway.

I heard something about maybe a very special anniversary with you and your wife - maybe in another country. It sounded like a unique moment - is that something you can share with us?

Family is very important. The moment you allude to is one of the other things that Lisa and I like to do for fun - we like to travel internationally, and we had the privilege of going to Madrid, Spain last year and it was also over Lisa's birthday and it was coming up on our 14-year wedding anniversary.

So we went out and got ourselves some new rings and managed to find a local church and ... I lived in Puerto Rico as a child, so I can speak some conversational Spanish, so I was able to negotiate with a priest to have those new rings blessed and Lisa and I exchanged rings again and renewed our vows with this priest in Madrid, then went out for a very romantic dinner. I think it's very important to stay connected to those that you love.