Personal Branding Is Career Insurance

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Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Hello, Stewart Gandolf here and welcome to our podcast. Today I have an old friend and repeat visitor, a repeat guest to our episode, Alan Shoebridge.

Alan, welcome. Good to see you again.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Thanks, Stewart. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Great. So, Alan is in the Communications Department at Providence Health. Alan, I’d love you to talk a little bit about your role, just to introduce guests to your background and what you do.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah, you bet. So, I work for Providence, we’re a seven-state healthcare system. I’m mostly serving the West Coast. I’m the Associate Vice President of National Communications.

And kind of the areas that fall under me are internal communications, crisis communications, and thought leadership for our executives.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Oh, that’s great. Well, what a timely topic for today, talking about leadership. So that’s awesome. So let’s just jump into this, because I love this topic.

And we’ll talk about my own experience in a moment here. But I’ve been fascinated with the idea of personal branding for a long time.

And I’m trying to remember the book I read. I read a book on this topic years ago by one of the sort of famous 80s guys.

And a friend of mine, Peter Montoya, wrote a book on this as well. So it’s escaping me at the moment.

But anyway, we know that personal branding is important. And as marketing communicators, it’s something that companies typically want to support.

Let’s talk about our personal brands. How do we build them? Why would a company care? But let’s get into this before we jump in too deep.

What is a personal brand from your point of view?

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah. Well, actually, it’s funny. I mean, I don’t necessarily always agree with him on a lot these days. But Jeff Bezos said, your personal brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.

And I think he’s right on. I mean, it’s sort of like, what are people going to say about you? What do you bring? If I bring up your name, what do people know about Stewart, right?

That’s the brand. And it’s really important, not just externally, but internally as well. I tell people this, and this is kind of where I focus, start off focusing.

It’s like, your brand really matters. Your personal brand matters inside the organization you’re working for now. So you don’t have to be job searching.

You don’t have to be really wanting to do anything necessarily to build a personal brand other than thinking about what’s your reputation like within the company that you work for.

And then thinking about, you know, what else do you want to do? to do? What? What kind of other opportunities you want to bring.

So I just tell people, think about, it’s your reputation. It’s what people are saying about you, both where you work and in the broader community that you’re associated with.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So that’s a great, simple definition, right? Simplicity is always better for people to remember. By the way, it was A Brand Called You by Tom Peters. I remember it was back in the 80s or 90s. And I thought that was a cool book.

Yeah. So, well, I guess I’m going to jump maybe ahead of our agenda here. Why would a company care?

Why would a healthcare organization care? Like, do I want you as an employee to have your own personal brand? Like, why is that important?

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Well, it’s a really good question. And this is something I tell people. It’s like, figure out what matters to your company.

So some companies really value this. They really want their employees visible, talking about how good the organization is, sharing leadership, sharing thoughts, really acting as a way to basically, you know, spread the messaging about your organization, what it’s doing well.

If you have people with a strong… Personal brand that work for you. Some percentage of what they’re talking about is going to really benefit your company.

They’re going to talk about, here’s the work we do. Here’s why it’s important. That’s going to help attract people to your organization.

So there’s this piece of just providing good information about the organization as part of the content you do to build your personal brand externally.

That’s very valuable to most companies. But I do tell people, I say, find out what matters to your company because there are certain companies and leaders that don’t care about this or may even think it’s negative.

I think they’re in the small percentage, but you do have to be careful and sort of understand that. If this isn’t important to my company, maybe I need to be a little more careful.

Maybe I need to think more internally about what I do and that’s building my brand. But I think that for most companies that are forward thinking and progressive, having employees that are engaged and visible and sharing stories about where they work and what their organizations do, that’s only positive in my opinion.

Again, you know, I think there’s a small percentage that have reservations about this, but I feel like most companies

The companies, they want you to be active. They want you to help promote the organization as a good place to work.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So it’s really funny, Alan. The different hospitals in particular, we’re talking about hospitals today, but other health organizations as well.

Some view themselves with sort of a very much of an abundance mentality, like we’re leaders in our community, in the nation, thought leaders.

We’ve talked to people from Mayo Clinic, for example, on the past, and Cleveland Clinic, you guys, and other sort of leading hospitals and health systems.

And it’s funny because they really do believe like they want to be innovative in every area, not just in medicine, right?

They feel like, it’s part of our culture. It’s part of our DNA. And I think it comes down to an abundance mentality versus sort of a scarcity mentality, depending on how that business operates.

And, you know, it’s funny, if I were new in my career and wanted to work with the health system, I think I would make that as one of my criteria just because, you know, not just this sliver we’re talking about, but just broadly, what does this organization want to do mission-wise?

So what are the key elements that make up a strong personal brand and how can people develop them?

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Well, you know, one starting point is you’ve probably seen that movie Office Space from, you a couple decades, right?

But there’s that scene where they’re sitting down and they say, what exactly do you do here?

You don’t ever want to get that question.

Like you want to get out in front of that question. You want people to understand what you do. And I think in terms of internally building your career, when you’re a younger person starting out, you really do want to think like, what am I known for?

Or, and what I want people to understand what I do, I want the value to, I want them to understand the value they bring.

So that’s like sort of the key step. I think just defining what you do, making sure people are aware of it.

I think, you know, sometimes people forget to share wins and successes and really being intentional about it. Here’s the work I’m doing.

Here’s the benefits from it. And as you move up in role, that becomes really important for leaders to do.

I think sometimes what I’ve seen is people get kind of ensconced in their position and their organization, and they forget to do that.

They forget to share. They those wins. They forget to share success stories. They forget to build a network. All those things that are really important, sometimes they let it kind of grow stagnant.

So I feel like the basic starting point is just making sure people understand what you’re doing. And we’ll talk a little bit later about some strategies to get opportunities.

But that’s the biggest piece. People need to understand what you do. You need to understand what’s successful. And you really play a role.

People play a role in that individually. You have control over your band to a great degree. But if you’re not ever talking about any of the work or what’s working or what’s not, people can’t get a sense of who you are, what you do.

And, you know, again, I give a lot of sort of career advice to people that, you know, when you’re starting out and you want to grow, people need to understand what you’re doing.

And they need to see you kind of at the next level before you get to that next level. And it’s all part of like how you package it up that really matters.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s a great point. And you said something a moment ago that reminded me of yet another book. Don’t know why today I’m on an old book kick that I’ve stuff I’ve read.

There’s a book I read years ago called Dig You’re Well Before You’re Thirsty by Harvey McKay. And that’s really what the spirit of is.

Well, don’t wait until you’re trying to do a career transition or you’re stuck and you’re behind by five years where you’re hoping to be to start digging your well, right?

You want to bring those things into place early. So that’s a good book for anybody who hasn’t read that.

That’s a kind of a classic business book that I read back in the day. Um, the, that’s a really also just kind of commenting on that.

The, it’s funny. I remember my own experience way back when at some point in my career, I asked my boss at the time, like, how do you see me?

I just asked directly. And he’s like, you’re the innovator for sure. You just like to innovate things. Always. You’re always like, that is cool.

If I had to pick something I’d want to be known for, it’s that.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Cause that aligns with my value.

Didn’t want to have to say, well, you’re the curmudgeon or you’re the this or that. Cause I think he would told me really frankly, how he viewed me.

And I think that’s a great question to ask. I don’t if you have any comment on that. I don’t know.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah. It’s really good to get that feedback. Cause I also feel like, like a company. People have sort of defined brand positions.

Either your brand position, your reputation is positive, it’s unknown, or it’s negative. And the positive is great. That’s where you want to be.

You want someone to give you comments like that. If they tell you, I don’t really know. Okay, that’s an opportunity.

You can build on that. If it’s negative, if it’s like you were saying, oh, you’re person who just brings up all the barriers, whatever.

You got to change that. Because again, positive is great. That’s where you want to build to. Unknown is an opportunity.

And negative is really a career killer. That’ll just derail your plans for growth. So I think getting that feedback, and sometimes I would tell people too, don’t just stop with one person because you need to hear from a lot of other people.

And doing those sort of 360 type feedbacks from a lot of people, that’s a good way to assess kind of where you stand.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, so it’s funny. I often think about a friend of mine that’s somebody I worked with early in my career and continue to interact with today.

He doesn’t work with us. But his personality was always like, oh, this sky. It’s blue. Well, not at night.

It was always, always, like a comeback.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

I don’t think he meant it to be that way, but it was always like the counterpoint. Like, really? Like, the sky’s blue?

No, not at night. It’s not. Like, okay, I guess you’re right. So it’s like, that’s not the kind of personal reputation I want.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah, well, I’ve told people, you’re right on. And I’ve told people, like, I’ve known good people who, every time they’re in a meeting, they’ll interject and say, I don’t want to be negative, but, and then that just gets everyone defensive.

Like, they’re bracing for something negative. And so you’re kind of associating yourself with your words and how you position in a negative light.

And that’s a part of this, you know, really thinking of, what are the words I’m using? How am I responding to people in person, email?

Like, little wording choices and things can make a big impact on how people perceive you. And that can really hurt your reputation.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, it totally makes sense. So when people are thinking about a new job, because it sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of mentoring, which is awesome.

I love that. And they’re thinking about they’re looking for a new job or a new role. Is this something they should think about? And if so, how and why?

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah, I do. So there’s two levels. Obviously, you don’t have to be looking for a job outside of your own organization.

mean, that’s one thing. And a lot of people do that. But even thinking, like, if you want to get promoted at your organization and just make sure you’re on a good career trajectory, that needs to be something you’re basically cultivating and putting some effort into.

And you were mentioning books. So, you know, I’m going to mention one, too. It was a great book by this comedian, John Hodgman, called Medallion Status.

And in his book, there were all these little tips about how he had kind of gotten opportunities. And he just said something that’s really fundamental is say yes to opportunities that come up.

And, you know, I know in our profession, we often want to say no, because, again, it might not make sense strategically, whatever.

And I think there’s a time for that. You definitely have to be careful. You can’t say yes to everything.

But when there’s opportunities, they really might give you an opportunity to stretch, do something. Different. Work with new people.

Learn a new aspect of your organization. You need to say yes to those opportunities. And they can be scary sometimes.

You’re kind of like, well, what exactly do you need from me? Or I’m not sure what the path would be.

But you need to say yes to that kind of stuff because that’s how you grow. That’s how people will start seeing you as operating at the next level you want to get to.

And I find people sometimes they just get in this trap of like, they don’t say yes to opportunities. And I don’t know what the number is.

But every person has a finite number of times you can say no. You know, Stewart, if you ask me to be on the podcast, and every time you ask me, I said, no, not right now.

Eventually, you’re going to stop asking me, right? You might ask three times, maybe four, but then it’s done. So you have to think like that inside of your organization too.

Opportunities come up, you have to say yes to that. And I think, you know, if you’re looking outside and really wanting to leave your work now and try to find something new, that’s where you need to build a network of people.

You need to really think about getting people to know you, what you do, who you are, make those connections.

You mentioned earlier, sometimes people wait way too long. They are in a job searching mode, and then they’re looking for help.

They want to reach out. But people don’t know you. You have to build those relationships in advance. I think that’s the biggest thing people can do that are maybe looking externally.

They need to focus on that.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So I’ll give a couple comments on this. One, I think, and I get it. When I was in my 20s, for example, I also thought I could move up by moving out.

But I can tell you that’s been done so much in recent years that most of the people when they’re applying to a job with us have had five jobs in four years.

And it’s toxic to me. I was just like, I won’t do it anymore because I don’t want to be at the sixth job in five years.

It’s way too much energy to put into somebody. So I would just say, if you’re serious about growing your personal brand, if there’s ways to grow internally, it looks so much more impressive.

Because I think during the great resignation, employers just sort of had to settle. But now, that’s criteria number one.

I tell recruiters or my hiring managers, Everyone has that background, which most do, like most of the resumes we’re seeing, or somebody who’s had so many jobs so quickly, it’s like, just pass.

We won’t even consider them under any circumstances because we know they’re already looking at the next thing before they start.

And it’s a lot of investment from our standpoint. So if you’re thinking about your personal brand, honestly, I think that’s a big part of it too, where you’ve been and how long you were there.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah. And, you know, making the decision on what jobs to take is really important because, you know, again, like some of those people might’ve been in a position where they had the best intentions to switch jobs.

They got a new job. was terrible. They had to leave for nothing. But, you know, like maybe they didn’t think it through enough.

Like, is this job really going to give me what I want?

Because I have seen people who get into that hopping thing where they’re just kind of acting out of like frustration and desperation without really thinking of like where they’re going.

Is that going to help them? Like, you know, so there’s part of that of just thinking through, like, if I’m making job decisions, is this role inside or outside of the organization?

Is it really going to help me? Where I want to get down the road. And I think too often, sometimes people don’t think about that.

They make a decision, then they have to change it, then they have to change it again. And to people like you were looking at, like this story just doesn’t make sense.

So they need to think about that.

There’s a lot of work that goes into making those decisions. And sometimes I think people jump a little too early.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah. So the next question I’m going to ask you, I want to think about not just the younger people in their career, but older in their career too.

What advice would you give to people thinking finally, okay, it’s time to build a personal brand, especially in a competitive field like healthcare marketing?

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah. I don’t think it’s ever too late to start. Obviously, the earlier you can get on it, the better.

I saw somebody was responding to a post I did on this topic. And they’re like, I tell people to get started in high school.

And I was like, wow, that’s really early.

But I think, great.

If you can get on it early, that’s fantastic. I think for most people, they’re going to get into it as their first kind of jobs, getting out of college.

I think that makes sense. But yeah, for people who have been around a while, I think… The trap they fall into, and I might have mentioned this a little bit earlier, is they think that it’s just good enough what they’re doing.

That where they’re at, they’re not ever going to need another job, whatever. I’m kind of surprised people still have that mindset because we see things with layoffs and others.

That it really is helpful to build that network before you need it. And also just get people thinking about you.

What are your opinions on topics? So you were talking kind of like your red flag for hiring people. Well, one of mine is that, you if I’m hiring someone who’s a director level or above, and they don’t have any sort of perspective on what’s going on in the industry?

What are your opinions on AI? Like, have you ever shared content? Are you a thought leader on any of this?

Or do you even have perspectives? I just think that’s a big miss. So, you if go to someone’s LinkedIn profile and there’s just nothing there, they don’t ever talk about issues.

It’s just one of those red flag things where you’re like, well, what is this person’s brand? You know, are they just kind of like they just do the work and that’s good enough?

Or are they actually engaged… And again, for more senior people, the higher level you’re kind of at, the more you want to be seen as someone who has perspectives, that has takes on things, that’s representing your company well.

And if you’re kind of not visible in doing that, you’re really missing out. And so, you know, again, I’ve seen people who, they’ve been in an organization or in a role for 10, 15 years, but they never write articles, they never do podcasts, never do presentations.

And that might all be fine if your plan is just to solely remain in that job for the rest of your career.

But again, if there’s a layoff, if there’s a change, something happens, you’re starting with like no base to build from. You need to build that base proactively.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah. And I remember, according to somebody else, I remember once I saw Tony Robbins speak, and he was like, do you really have 10 years experience or do you have one year’s experience 10 times?

Wow, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. That’s probably true for a lot of people, right?

You have one year experience 10 times.

Yeah. So the, any other? Are any you think that are pretty common that would be to building a personal brand? And if so, how would you overcome them?

@20:04 – Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

I think the biggest challenge is people just feel like, why me?

What do I have to say? Sort of that imposter syndrome. If I say yes to being on Stewart’s podcast and I don’t do a good job, oh my gosh, I’m very nervous about that.

You have to take a leap and just say you’re confident in your knowledge, what you know, and you’ve got to take some risks.

I think that’s the biggest thing. People get scared. The first time I was invited to do a presentation, speak in front of a group, I was scared.

I was like, I’m not a natural public speaker. This was something that was hard for me to do. But if you don’t make that leap the first time, there is no second opportunity.

You’ve got to do something once to really feel like you can do it again. And then opportunities build on each other.

I tell people that as well. Once you do one thing, once you go to a conference, give a presentation, you know, there’s 40 people in the audience.

One of those people would be like, hey, you know, so-and-so would be great to do it at my thing.

Or, you know, like I would recommend if you don’t take the leap. And take some chances and say yes to some of those opportunities, a little scary.

You cannot grow. Those opportunities will not build on each other. So I think for a lot of people, the barrier is just getting started.

The first time, putting yourself out there, you know, taking a risk. That’s really hard for people. I think that’s the biggest barrier, frankly.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So that’s funny, Alan. Occasionally I get invited to do podcasts on other people’s podcasts that are like they want to know the Stewart origin story.

And one of the stories I often share is I had left advertising and marketing, got into commercial real estate, and timed it exactly with the industrial real estate depression of the 80s and 90s when I was working with Grub and Ellis.

So I got clawed back into working. That’s how I fell into healthcare. And I worked with this agency that worked with individual physicians and small groups back in the day.

And we traveled around the country and spoke to small groups of like, I don’t know, back in the, before I did the larger groups, which I did later, was like, you know, 15 people, but I’d never spoken publicly in my life.

And I took this job, and I have to teach them for three days by myself, no net. And basically, it’s a succeed or fail thing.

And it’s like, but the skills I learned in that period of years were so fundamental to the stuff we do today, because working interactively with groups of physicians, I’ve, you know, grew to become the lead speaker and became VP of marketing in that company.

And it’s funny, because I wasn’t even thinking about my personal brand. But by the time I was done working there, I had a personal brand that I wasn’t even trying to get.

And this is, you know, for the internet. So, but people knew of my reputation by doing that after working with thousands of doctors.

But that was such priceless experience. I often, you know, it’s like, I liken it to, you know, in baseball, you don’t get up to bat very many times.

I was getting back up to bat every other weekend and practicing my skills and practicing my experience working with, you know, groups of people and how to manage that and lead that.

So it was just great. I don’t know if have a comment on that.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah. Well, you said something that I think makes a lot of sense.

You need to get reps in. The first time you do a presentation or a talk or whatever, it’s not going to be your best one.

But you’ve got to get a comfort level with it. I think you’re right. You get that first opportunity. You’ve got to say yes.

It’s going to be uncomfortable. And then you’re going to get better at doing those things. I mean, if I went back and looked at my first presentation I gave back in 2007 or something, I bet today I’d like, oh, my God, what am I doing?

Why am I so nervous? Or why did I draw out this point so long? And you learn, but you’re going to get comfortable.

And it takes those reps to get comfortable. You have to do that.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

And it’s continual learning. I go back now and see some of my podcasts from not very long ago.

And I’m very casual the way I’m sitting. I’m not sitting up like, oh, my gosh, did I do that?

So it’s constantly being willing to critique yourself and go back. It’s like, oh, what was I thinking in that meeting? But I was having fun.

So I was very casual and it showed up on screen.

So this is an interesting question. Question as well. What’s the right balance between building your personal brand and supporting the organization you work for?

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah, I think, you know, people start at different levels. So one of the one of the things I talk about is, you know, people ask me, like, how to get started on LinkedIn, sharing content, because I think that’s an area people can really get involved in.

And for people who are doing nothing today, I said, you know, one of the great ways to start is kind of maybe balancing a little bit, going a little bit heavier on that, because you can share what your organization is doing, you can share perspectives on healthcare.

So maybe if you’re starting out, maybe that’s like, you know, 80% of what you’re doing. I think for me, someone like me, who’s more been around for a while, works at different organizations, develop perspectives on issues.

I think for me, it’s kind of like an 80-20 thing, probably 80% of the content I do. It’s kind of more personal based.

It’s things like this. It’s good conversation like this about brand building or leadership, or, you know, it’s not necessarily completely aligned to my organization, you know, but there’s probably a good 20-30% of stuff where I am doing that, where I’m making sure I weigh in.

one way You can do that a lot. It’s also on comments, you know, so like when the organization is posting something, our CEO is posting something, I’m weighing in with comments, you know, right there, you know, participating, resharing, reacting, things like that.

So, you know, when I think of my original content, if I’m writing something, you know, new and, you know, just from me, probably like 80% of that’s me, maybe 20% of the time I’m talking about what the organization is doing, but I’m always active with the organization content, with our leaders and things like that.

So, you know, maybe as someone’s getting started on this, they lean more heavily into supporting the organization directly, making that the focus of their content, but as you kind of find your own voice and the topics you want to talk about, you do more that kind of shifts to you personally.

I think, know, again, over the last 10, 15 years, I’ve probably found five topics that I like to talk about a lot that are personal, and I kind of interspersed that with the content from the organization.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, that totally makes sense. And it’s funny, going back to… On the extreme of this, there are people that I’ve seen before that I think they want to be an influencer more than have a job.

And that’s another red flag to me, if I get that vibe.

And I’ve also noticed the correlation of their length of stay at the company is also very short, typically.

We had somebody that that red flag was tripped.

I ignored it. And since she left here like six years ago, she’s had like, I think, 14 jobs. I mean, seriously.

And like she did, she omitted ours and we were one of the longest on her LinkedIn profile because she has so many jobs and I’ve tracked it over time.

So like that’s a red flag too. But that’s the extreme the other way. I would like to talk more about your, it’s funny because I’m doing a podcast in coming weeks or an interview about something you mentioned earlier, which is, you know, elevating executives within your business or doctors within the business.

I’d love to know more about your feelings about that because these are people probably more successful in their career.

So they probably never, I want to make sure we don’t just talk about the young people getting started here, but the people that are already successful.

And they’re like, I bet you hear a lot of pushback. Like, I didn’t get here by being on LinkedIn, Alan. I don’t really need to do this.

Like, how do you work with that?

Why do you work with that?

Like, give me some more insights there.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah, there’s a lot of range of variation. I mean, I think what I go to is what is the person trying to do?

If they want, let’s say their objective is I want to get more speaking opportunities. I want to go to more conferences.

I want to get land and more articles. Well, okay, that’s great. And this is how LinkedIn could help you do that.

You could build an audience when you do content. Here’s the distribution channel. So if that’s the goal for the person, would try to lean into that.

If the person is more like, well, you know, I have all the business I want. I’m not looking to get my voice out there.

I’m like, okay, I don’t think you need to maybe be that active. Maybe what you should do is your brand could just be making sure it’s updated, making sure you’ve got all the right, you know, experience and branding.

And maybe what you’re doing is helping amplify other content. Maybe you’re just weighing in periodically. So there are differences based on just something, what’s the goal?

Like, again, if you want to grow and drive business and get more speaking opportunities or any of that stuff, then you need to be active.

If it’s more like a maintenance thing or I just want to lend my voice, we can do that too.

So I try to find what the objective for the person is and then make sure the strategy fits. Yeah.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Well, it’s funny. was just thinking about a recent podcast guest, Douglas Flora. He’s an MD. And the guy just has such magnetic personality and the way he looks at things.

And you can see that why people would follow him. And he’s great at this stuff. And, you know, he understands.

And one of the things he said on our podcast is the marketing team is part of our cancer fighting team.

Like they have an equally important role.

They just do different things than I do. And I think that that’s really interesting. I’ve seen, you know, again, I’ve worked with thousands of providers in the year before I started.

This agency. And, you know, in any, you know, in any group of humans, you’re going to find some are going be more aggressive on stuff like this and others are not, right?

It’s just a fact of nature, doctors too. But, you know, interestingly, for example, on very heavy professional referral-based specialties, there’s still going to be some that are typically much more aggressive out there.

They’re still great doctors, but they’re willing to go out and spend the time to build relationships on a human level with referring doctors.

And they’re always busier. There can be a group of 10 or 20 orthopedic surgeons, but the orthopod who’s out meeting the doctors and especially like, you know, for example, in the rural areas surrounding their hospital or whatever, they’re just busier.

It’s really funny. And I can see the thought leadership becoming part of it. And also, Alan, I remember talking about branding and personal branding, you know, 20 years ago to doctors, and nobody really got it.

This is a new concept to them. Whereas today, a lot of the younger doctors… are getting this idea. Have you seen that over time, the increase to increase?

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Absolutely. And the other thing is, it’s been a game changer in the last 10, 15 years. It’s just the prevalence of social media.

So now you have an owned channel, going back to something like LinkedIn, right? If you have tens of thousands of followers, you’re getting information to them directly.

That option did not exist 15 years ago. Like you were hoping you could land a media story or something like that.

And that’s great. But you can only do that so often. You know, today, if you have a high following, you can go out and do stuff every day.

You can do as much content as you want. You can engage tens of thousands of people. You know, I’ve been seeing what the content we do for like our CEO, right?

On his LinkedIn account, sometimes it’ll get picked up by news media. Some people’s news media will like take his LinkedIn post and quote it in an article or contact us and go, can we use this LinkedIn post?

Absolutely. But that platform, those sort of platforms did not exist in the past. And then also you think of all the sort of content that’s available, you know, obviously.

We’re doing podcasts and, you know, articles are coming to people through email. There’s just so many opportunities to, like, own the distribution channels that you could not do in the past.

And I think that has been a big game changer of just saying, like, there’s a platform that you can control, that you can get to tens of thousands of people, you know, depending on how successful you are, hundreds of thousands, millions of people.

But that’s all in your control if you want to do it. So I think that’s also been, you know, not in addition to just people becoming more accustomed to this, that platforms allow for you to go direct to the masses in ways that just didn’t exist in the past.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s true. One other book I remember reading was Here Comes Everybody. And it talked about this is the sort of nascent period of this.

And it talked about exactly this.

It was intriguing, too, though, is it did talk about the potential dark side of it, like where anybody can say anything.

Particularly about things like vaccines that may or may not be factual. And it did talk about, so the good news is everybody has a voice.

The bad news is there’s no one curating it. And so everybody has a voice. There’s no one saying what’s real and what’s not.

So it’s intriguing. I haven’t gone back to read that book, but I think it’d be really interesting to read again because I remember that one in particular.

So as we wrap up here, let’s give us a few takeaways about personal branding that you think everybody should remember.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)Yeah. So there’s three things that I encourage people to remember. One is that just, let’s be honest, nobody cares more about your career than you do.

At the end of the day, you’re responsible for it. Even the most well-meaning spouse or parent or whatever, yeah, they care about what you’re doing, but you’ve got to live the job.

You’ve got to be there. You’ve got to be the person that does the work. You care about your career more than anyone else.

And second thing is nobody is going to manage your career better than you can. Even the most well-meaning boss, mentor, whatever, they’re going to give you advice, but you’re the one who has to manage to make sure that it’s going in the right direction.

You’re doing what you want to do. I just use the analogy like none of us are sports stars or musicians.

We don’t have agents. We don’t have people managing our career. It’s on us. So what we do in terms of growth it’s on us.

And then the third thing is just very broad, but I feel like this is the same for most brands and companies.

It’s just never a bad thing to be known by more people for something good. The more people who know you for something good inside your organization, outside your organization, the general public, that’s a good thing.

I mean, they’ll ask you to do more opportunities. You’ll get a chance to build your brand. So I always think about engaging an audience, sharing good things.

It’s never going to be bad for what you want to do in terms of building your personal brand.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

And I would add, just based on experience, because a lot of people reach out to us because they want to do what we do.

So I built my personal brand as well as our company’s brand over 20 years.

And you can do it, but you have to look at it for the long term. I mean, you’d be shocked at how many sort of naive, smaller companies in particular reach out to us with no sales force.

They want to have, and they’re asking about the, how, what’s our cancellation agreement before we get started? Can we get out after the first month?

If it doesn’t go well, it’s like, you shouldn’t do this.

You just shouldn’t do this.

This is not for you. If you have that kind of short-term perspective, you’ll never be successful. And honestly, we don’t want a client like that because we’re talking about things like personal branding.

It just won’t happen like that. It does, but it takes effort and, you know, a long-term commitment. So that would be my advice is just for that because this will take time.

But the great news is once you do it, it’s easy to maintain it. It’s kind of like an object in motion.

And, you know, I was noted lately to people I’ve been talking to sort of personally that, you we were huge in spending our energies on this in the early days of our company.

During COVID, we still did it, but not with the same vigor because we had a lot of other things like a worldwide pandemic to deal with.

And in the last few years, back doing this again, because LinkedIn has grown from such an, you know, kind of afterthought to a primary channel.

And I love it so much more back in the day, as you know, Twitter was a big driver, but it was very unfocused.

LinkedIn is really focused. So it’s to me, it’s even more opportunity now than it was a few years ago. So anyway, I encourage this at all levels.

If you’re younger in your career, great. But really, if you’re more mature, so that you’re building for the long term for your organization, as well as for yourself and, you know, future proofing and remaining relevant.

You know, another thing I think is, you know, eventually when, you know, I decide to do something else, like my hope for my company lives on forever, but I also remain relevant.

You know, I have built a platform that I can still consult. I can still speak and write and remain relevant because that’s important.

So anyway.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Absolutely. I think you made a great point of like, this is not, for most people, it’s not going to happen overnight. You know, there are people who do something and like, bang, like next day, they’re getting, you know, thousands of connections.

That’s just, that’s the exception to the rule. This takes time. It takes hard work. And also, I tell people to, you know, do it.

Do what feels good to you. Not everyone likes producing the same type of content. For me, I like doing a lot of writing.

It comes naturally. I don’t have to force it. It makes it easy. A lot of times people ask me, how do you do so much content?

Well, for me, I like it. It comes quickly. For other people, they might want to focus on different things.

And so I think finding what you can do to build your brand in a way that’s authentic to you and doesn’t feel like you’re just climbing uphill all the time, you’re going to be more successful.

But to your point, you’ve got to give it some time. It’s not going to be something you do in a year.

It’s going to take multiple years.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So, to quote another person today, Robert McKee is famous for screenwriting. And he used to do, I don’t know if he still does, he did a book, but he did a seminar called Story.

And so he’s very famous for that in writing. And a couple of things that came out of my experience with that.

One was that you’re building a body of work over time in your screenwriting. It’s not like, so your first screen, it kind of goes back to what you were saying.

Your first speech won’t be great. He’s like, you’ve got to Get your first screenplay done, and you probably should just throw it away when you’re done.

It’s like it won’t be good enough. And then the second thing was, you said something like, yeah, some people make a million with their first screenplay, but not you.

It’s not going to happen to you. Get that thought out of your head. So, like, sure, it happens to somebody, but it’s not you.

And I thought that was really an interesting thing. It’s like to get a realistic perspective. So, yeah, sure, lightning strikes at a bottle, but if you go in with that expectation, forget it.

It’s just not going to happen. It’s so harsh, but true, right? It’s like this is the thing. it’s the equivalent of this, and I’m going to wrap this up now, but we often will have somebody reach out to us about organic social, and they want to be an influencer.

So I’m like, okay, well, first of all, what you’re talking about is literally a one out of a million thing, right?

Like to be a consumer social influencer. Like I can think of a specific dermatologist who’s out there who, you know, I’ve covered in my book like four or five years ago, six years ago.

And she’s still out there. And even then she had a publicist and a social media person full time. She happens to be in dermatology and cosmetics.

And so she happens to be attractive. She loves it. You know, it’s like, and she’s had a six or eight, 10 year head start with publicist.

So it’s like, sure, it might happen to you. But that’s probably not going to be realistic. But what can be realistic, I think is really important.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Yeah, I think for most people, what you’re trying to do is just have opportunities come your way. You know, again, if you want that promotion at work, if you want to, you know, climb a ladder, be seen as a leader, like that, you’re doing the right work to build that reputation.

You know, externally, if you want to be seen as someone who can, you know, again, contribute to content. Those are realistic goals.

And, you know, frankly, like most people don’t even start on those goals. You know, they either don’t do anything or they’re shooting way too high.

So I think having that realistic approach, it’s the best way you’re going to be successful.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Love it. I want to finish on that note. Thank you, Alan.

That was fun. As always. Good to have you back.

Alan Shoebridge (Providence Health & Services)

Great. Thanks, Stuart. Appreciate it. All right.

Bye. Bye.