The healthcare system keeps making it harder for doctors to make money, or worse, do what is right for their patients.
This leaves doctors wondering how long they need to accept the constraints of a broken system
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
A well-crafted personal brand can create opportunities for physicians, like you to call your own shots.
LinkedIn is the perfect tool to create that.
Once considered just a website for job seekers, LinkedIn is now a platform for creating the career YOU desire (and deserve).
That’s why we’re bringing renowned LinkedIn expert and keynote speaker, JD Gershbein, to break down the how to’s of uncovering opportunities on the platform:
- Why so many physicians have become so active on LinkedIn in the last year
- What these doctors are doing on the platform diversify their income opportunities and gives them control of their career
- How to adapt principles from JD’s LinkedIn style guide to make your profile stand out
- and much more!
If you want to gain control of your career and revenue-generating opportunities, this show is for you!
Links:
Contact Finance for Physicians
Full Episode Transcript:
Daniel Wrenne: JD, how you doing, buddy?
JD Gershbein: Hey, I’m here. I’m good. I’m ready to go.
Daniel Wrenne: Awesome. Well, we are rocking and rolling and we are live and recording and everything. And so, if you’re not live with us, we do this live every month. And so make sure to join us for one of these. These are fun. We can kind of do Q and A live. So we’re gonna be talking about some fun stuff. I love this topic personally, and I know, I think it’s valuable for many of our audience.
Daniel Wrenne: We’re gonna be talking about some big tools and opportunities for physicians to kind of leverage what’s out there to help ideally, provide more branding for themselves, and turn the corner in the healthcare system.
Daniel Wrenne: The healthcare system’s messed up and we’ve kind of talked a lot about that on the podcast. And there’s a lot of opportunities out there. There’s a lot of conversations going on. There’s a lot of communities building up. And so that’s what we’re gonna talk about today with JD.
Daniel Wrenne: JD is an expert at LinkedIn and branding, and so before we jump into all he has to share with LinkedIn, I would love it if we could kind of talk a little bit about JD.
Daniel Wrenne: JD, tell us a little bit about you and how did you get into this world of like specializing in LinkedIn and particularly with the healthcare industry?
JD Gershbein: I thought you were gonna mention Daniel. How did I specifically get here on this podcast? Literally.
JD Gershbein: What has brought me here, which is really an extension of my origin story. So, I think to come full circle with this and make it really customizable for a physician. I was groomed to be a doctor from a very early age.
JD Gershbein: I grew up in a scientific and an artistic household. Both my parents were scientists and artists, and my father was one of the most prolific medical researchers in the world.
JD Gershbein: But I’ve always had that scientific sense. and brought that into the business world, into the marketing arena. And when I saw LinkedIn in 2006, I was smitten.
JD Gershbein: It was love it for sight. And transitioned my marketing consultancy to LinkedIn. And for so many years the doctors had abstained from LinkedIn. They were few and far between. And I am uniquely positioned to help them, guide them.
Daniel Wrenne: Because I wouldn’t say that I’ve walked in their shoes, but I’ve walked in their booties. I understand what they’re going through Why were physicians slow to, or why have physicians been slow to kind of jump on board with the whole LinkedIn or just maybe social media in general game?
JD Gershbein: I don’t think it was their focus, Daniel. They were focused on getting out of medical school, doing their residency, and all their rotations. And then settling into a very stable area of practice where they could pay back their loans and deliver the best patient care that they knew how to. And social media wasn’t their focus in general.
And I don’t think doctors were all that eager to get on social media and tout themselves. There were entities that were rating physicians in the marketplace. You could get on and deck the credentials and qualifications of a physicians were contemplating a visit And they weren’t writing content. They weren’t interested in building networks. They were just going into a clinic every day
Daniel Wrenne: I was talking with the physician the other day and they were describing this particular person I was talking with has a direct specialty care practice.
Daniel Wrenne: In other words, he’s kind of like disassociated with the system. Like he doesn’t do insurance. He doesn’t do hospital. He’s just, patients pay him directly. So, anyway, this particular physician was talking about how when he used to be in the system, I’m gonna use air quotes for the system, he was so full and had just this onslaught of patients and he really had no need whatsoever to brand.
Daniel Wrenne: And it was almost like he said he wanted to do the reverse. He was like, slow down the this in influx. I already have too many patients I can’t see. He said that’s partly why he didn’t brand at all. He almost kind of took himself off of the internet. I don’t know if that’s been partially the case.
Daniel Wrenne: Has that been your observation in cases?
JD Gershbein: I have noticed that many of my classmates from Chicago Medical School do not have even a baseline media presence, . And I’ve looked for them. I’ve tried to reconnect with some of them, haven’t been able to find them.
But to your point, I think they’ve kind of recollected and reconvene on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has become that play. That destination for physicians because as you know with the system the way it is, many are looking outside of medicine.
JD Gershbein: They felt that they’ve done enough, had enough. They now want to follow their muse and execute their passion projects or side hustles. So, LinkedIn has kind of become that medium to absorb a lot of that interest in connecting.
Daniel Wrenne: Yes. So for those of you guys that are just joining us, I’m talking to JD. JD is an expert at LinkedIn and branding for physicians. And so we’re getting into kind of some of the reasoning maybe why physicians have not been as involved in LinkedIn. And, you know, there’s a lot of different theories.
Daniel Wrenne: But I think that’s been pretty well known is that there’s not been a lot of, you know, I work with physicians all day long and I would say the minority of my colleague, friends and clients even on LinkedIn. Even now, today, like most of my buddies that are physicians and clients are not currently active like today still on LinkedIn.
Daniel Wrenne: And so I think, but now JD you mentioned the word like side hustles and there’s these trends now developing in medicine and I think it’s partly going back to the system being a mess, like the healthcare system is a mess. And so there’s also these trends developing in, healthcare and particularly with physicians is like, I need to get into a side hustle, so I need to do passive income.
Daniel Wrenne: You can see it with like the explosion of Facebook groups. There’s been these monster Facebook groups that have just exploded in the physician circles around these topics, and I think they kind of revolve around like. helping to solve or get away from some of these healthcare issues that, are causing problems for them.
Daniel Wrenne: But it, it seems like that kind of goes hand in hand with their, potential interest to get back and involved in LinkedIn like this, if I want to get into a side hustle that kind of starts to push you down this road of like, maybe I need to put my name out there, right? I mean, maybe I need to build a brand or.
JD Gershbein: Well, I think we’re seeing a lot of physicians elevate their profiles. There’s no question about it. I think that that has been a nice byproduct of, the pandemic. It has kind of forced us to reconcile the value we bring as professionals and I, think it’s given physicians a certain autonomy. They have been under the gun, under the microscope, no pun intended.
JD Gershbein: And, they have been tagged and compressed by the system, And, many of them now are, liberating themselves we’re seeing the rise of physician leader. people who are leaving medicine to, work on medical path, and, just kind of be their own boss for a while and not have to feel so overburdened by a healthcare system that has, it’s really showing its vulnerability right now.
JD Gershbein: and, they’re showing their human side basically. LinkedIn is a very humanized medium and they’re out there as business people, as professionals, but they’re also showing their, delicate underbellies now. And I, for one, I appreciate that and I applaud it cause for. so long, they had to be leaders, they had to be they had to go in there into the exam rooms and, listen and be compassionate.
JD Gershbein: And whereas they still retain that empathy, they’re channeling it in another way in the business world. it’s nice to see, to be honest with.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. I agree with what you’re saying. I think though, before we dig too far into LinkedIn, it might be helpful to talk about like, why LinkedIn?
Daniel Wrenne: Like why social media? Like why should a physician, I know physicians are busy and all of us are so busy and it’s got a million things going on. So, why should I be as a physician having a LinkedIn profile versus having Facebook versus not doing anything at all?
JD Gershbein: Well, for any business person, it’s at this stage of the game.
JD Gershbein: To not have a LinkedIn profile and be in the business universe is a bit of a red flag. And based on LinkedIn’s advantageous position with Google, the search for a name will immediately give back LinkedIn as top of the page. So we’re pre-conditioned to click on the top of the things in a search, and LinkedIn is right there.
JD Gershbein: So the LinkedIn profile can serve as a gatewaywhether they’re on the corporate site for the medical practice, whether they’re other things, whether they are medical advisors or companies, whatever the case may be. Wherever their bios exist, LinkedIn will bubble up to the top of those.
JD Gershbein: So that’s the search engine optimization effect with LinkedIn, the business case for LinkedIn becomes important because once people get to a page, they can research the docket. They can see what he looks like or she looks like they can see what their background is like, where they trained where they were educated what kinds of things they’re doing in medicine and, maybe some of the things they’ve done outside.
JD Gershbein: And we slowly but surely see doctors adding those little elements to their profiles about things they’re doing outside of practice, whether they’re being, taken on as medical device consultants, for startups whether they are guesting on, say, as a medical expert in some kind of disease or condition comes up.
JD Gershbein: So they’re doing all sorts of things. And LinkedIn, again, as from this, the marketing for them to communicate so the business case for LinkedIn is becoming more obvious to doctors. They’re figuring it out. They know they should be on there, but again, to your point, they have to use it. They can’t just be a profile sitting out there, but you Really do have to leverage the interactive space, put force on the system to create an outcome.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. And I, don’t know how much awareness there is of how LinkedIn works versus, I mean, I kind of think of it as like a professional leaned social media platform and I’m sure everybody listening will have varying levels of understanding of how LinkedIn works and how it compares to other social media.
Daniel Wrenne: But, first of all, I don’t think, I’m almost like fearful of getting fearful, but I’m cautious about social media. That’s how I view it these days. And I think a lot of my generation is a little bit like that. We were early in on, You know, I was in college when Facebook started and so I experienced it pretty early and.
Daniel Wrenne: Have seen it change over the years to the point. So I saw the good side of Facebook where it was just like connecting and friendship and profiles and you know, sharing pictures and that kind of thing. And then it became like advertising started to get snuck in there and then everybody, your grandparents were on there and then cat videos and then all of a sudden the rabbit holes and the algorithms and it’s almost like I have to protect my time from getting onto that social media platform particularly.
Daniel Wrenne: Is LinkedIn in some ways like that or is it a completely different social media platform?
JD Gershbein: Well, LinkedIn is the most enigmatic of all the platforms. It does share the characteristics of all of the other sites. There is a central core of information, a profile from which you have these spikes radiate out and these inroads that they do the profile.
JD Gershbein: And then there’s this interactive space, a homepage, a feed of walls, Facebook, and. Whereas they’re similar, they all leave off at different points. LinkedIn is around the and ideally there certain gravities, a certain political correctness to what we post on the site and people are taking liberties every day on it, looking a lot more like Facebook and Instagram and TikTok every day because it’s become that kind of, medium people are more expressive.
JD Gershbein: They, are dredging deep and it’s almost a kind of okay, I’m gonna put this out. What’s the worst that can happen type of approach. So there are people who are unfortunately, are doing things that they may think help them, but are militating against them. But for the most part, people who are out there creating and contributing some kind of personal value are leveraging these type of forms
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. And, so going back to the healthcare challenges that are out there, I think I was, look, I saw an example of this the other day of someone on LinkedIn. They were talking about, I don’t know if they worded it this way, but it was basically moral injuries. So they were describing a lot of different stories or experiences of these conflicts that they’re facing in healthcare or in their practice and how insanely like challenging they are and not in the interest of the patient.
Daniel Wrenne: In other words, like it’s causing these patients to get like not the best care possible and they’re sharing all these stories that are real life or it seems that they’re real life stories or of these patients that are, interactions that they’re having where it’s like basically the patients are not getting the best care possible or the costs are way higher than they need to be because of all these problems in healthcare.
Daniel Wrenne: And the physicians are put in this position of having to like make these. Decisions that conflict with their morals, and that’s where the moral injury comes into play. So they’re telling these stories that are like painting the picture of this whole moral injury thing as opposed to this whole burnout idea.
Daniel Wrenne: Which I think is incredibly valuable. It’s also, people resonate with it that a lot of people, it’s very active. This particular physician has a very active involved following. And this is just one people that comes to mind.
JD Gershbein: To your point. Doctors are getting more open and transparent about the medic field.
JD Gershbein: And I’ve been seeing that as well. I burnout is rampant in the medical profession. It’s costing companies thousands I’m sorry, millions of dollars in fact, billions of dollars at this stage. globally Employee burnout, but we, don’t wanna hear about it in the medical profession. We don’t like to think of our physicians as being burned out or getting a little bit too expository about certain finance.
JD Gershbein: So the, medical profession has to, I believe, maintain a certain sense of guardedness. But burnout is so rampant and its effects are devastating and it’s up tailing the whole mental illness conversation right now, which is important and priority one for, us as a species. So LinkedIn has been there to absorb the shot, and they are more, people are being cathartic with it.
JD Gershbein: They’re, letting their true feelings be known. That’s a very human movement, and I accept it, but at the same time, I, attend to the social science around it. I see physicians as being no different than anyone else. Prone to the same imposter syndrome behaviors, social comparison, bias, anxiety, depression, mood swings, they’re not immune.
Daniel Wrenne: Well, I think when you hear other people share their stories and this particular physician is also kinda helping, physicians see that it’s not, burnout is kind of a broad term that they throw out. It’s like almost implies like you got issues like, and this physician is helping to really put a little bit more of a pinpoint on what that issue is.
Daniel Wrenne: And it’s not so much your issue and it’s more this messed up systems issue that’s making it very challenging. Kinda like to, to,
JD Gershbein: I can’t really speak to the burnout issue. I’m not, again, down those corridors, I don’t interface with the technicians.
JD Gershbein: I, am not squeezed by any kind of system that forces me to be at my best every single minute of the day. but at the same time, I know that it’s all about the delivery of quality patient care. And if that suffers, you have to find the broken links in the chain, address them with them like any other Business, medicine is a business and, medical practitioners are labor now.
JD Gershbein: of Big companies, many of them. And there’s performance reports and in their case, their pro, we all, we all kind of say, well, it’s not life and death, but in, the medical profession it is. And there’s, a Hippocratic Oath and there there’s commitment and sometimes there’s just, there’s no room for a diverting attention.
JD Gershbein: span the focus on the patient.
Daniel Wrenne: So I see this particular person I keep going back to, he’s an orthopedic surgeon that’s sharing these stories. And I know that there’s a lot of like younger maybe they’re in training coming up and coming, orthopedic surgeons. That would really latch onto those stories and it potentially would change the direction of their career completely.
Daniel Wrenne: So I’m an example of that. Like I was in the traditional financial services world for years and years, which is this kind of like the traditional healthcare world and that it’s like there’s a lot of conflicts of interest and it’s challenging to navigate. And so I started to kind of follow some voices in our industry that were doing it a little differently, including on LinkedIn, and started to kind of latch onto some of the unique ideas they had.
Daniel Wrenne: And ultimately that changed completely, changed 180 degrees, the direction of my career, way for the better. And so I think the same thing is happening. It’s the only social media platform I’ve seen that kind of professional, like. community developing is LinkedIn like this? Yep. Same sort of thing is happening.
Daniel Wrenne: It’s starting to see happen with physicians. It’s like these stories of people that are very admirable, doing it the right way. Looking out for the patients, like fighting the good fight. Yeah. People, and they’re sharing their stories. You just have to get on there and go follow ’em really
JD Gershbein: Well. We’re also seeing the creation of a huge advocacy system for physicians. You’ve got physicians coaching physicians, physicians supporting physicians. There are a lot of validation behaviors and support seeking behaviors going on on LinkedIn in any profession right now. We all wanna know that we’re on the right track.
JD Gershbein: And that’s the value and purpose and advantage of community and the doctors are finding theirs and there are more people who are. holding space for doctors to talk about their issues to really kind of come clean about what they’re feeling and how they can be the best practice.
JD Gershbein: And we’re talking about physicians that want to stay in medicine and they embrace all that’s good about the profession and the field. And they, are crusading against the, oppressive nature of the system. And then there are folks that are looking elsewhere. They, may be keeping a, foot not so firmly planted in medicine, but they’re looking to write books.
JD Gershbein: they’re, looking to engage companies. They wanna do wellness programs for corporation. They wanna be media personalities, they wanna start podcasts, they wanna guest on podcast. So maybe that’s the next wave of medicine where doctors who are leaving. Are now going out and being advocates for other physicians and also being, sources of nurture for young docs coming into the market.
JD Gershbein: So the preservation of medicine is the noble profession that it is. It’s very important that I know many physicians taking that role and taking it seriously.
Daniel Wrenne: I hope some of them stay because I need a doctor for my future and my,
JD Gershbein: we all do
Daniel Wrenne: but I do know a whole lot, of scary large amount of physicians that are working their way out outta medicine.
Daniel Wrenne: And, we’re not talking about like retirement age physicians. There’s a very large amount. of Physicians I know that are not, maybe they’re not completely working outta medicine. Maybe they’re like slowly getting into side alternative careers and
JD Gershbein: Well, you know, the other downside of that is you’ve got people who are leaving corporate, who are going out there becoming consultants and coaches, and sometimes coaches and consultants have kind of had enough of being on their own, so they wanna get back into corporate.
JD Gershbein: The beauty about medicine, it’s, always
JD Gershbein: So we’re more nomadic than ever before. As professionals, people are leaving great gigs to just go out and do what they feel they were destined to do. doctors included and ideally, they’re still bringing the mindset of the healer whatever it is they’re doing, whether they’re teaching, whether they’re writing, whether they’re taking broadcast, so educating people making them aware of, what to expect in a medical career.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, I’m in the, of course, in the podcast circles and so I know a lot of the physicians that have podcasts and it’s interesting and maybe it’s not so interesting.
Daniel Wrenne: It’s maybe common sense that almost all of them have very active LinkedIn profiles, but I think the reason is because they have, they’re like developing this side revenue stream, like alternative business or whatever with the podcast. And LinkedIn is such a fantastic tool to kind of compliment all that.
JD Gershbein: Well, that’s where I really have positioned myself as a resource for the medical profession is because I can work with a doctor who is a fixed to practicing medicine who is very focused on that. There’s nothing pulling him or her outside. But then also the, physician turning entrepreneur, the physician turning leadership developer.
JD Gershbein: These people are feeling inside that they’re in a, state of transition and they, want an aspect like the LinkedIn profile to pace those changes and announce those changes. So that’s where I’ve installed Textel because I know the vocabulary of medicine, spent my life growing up in healthcare, been talking to doctors since I was a kid.
JD Gershbein: and I, know what to communicate for purposes of that profile because you certainly don’t wanna raise eyebrows or ruffle feathers or indicate to an employer that you’re ready to bolt. But at the same time you want to extol your merits for virtues. and the benefits of working with you to stay a company or a growing business startup.
Daniel Wrenne: How does that work? I know it’s gonna be very personalized to everybody’s got different Situation, but like, give us a peek into what it looks like to work with someone like you to kind of navigate the world of creating your profile.
JD Gershbein: I’ve been writing profiles since 2007.
JD Gershbein: It took a couple months before I got that call, and that was the call that changed everything, Daniel. JD how much do you charge to write a LinkedIn profile? And prior to 2006, no one was outsourcing any kind of LinkedIn work, let alone the putting much thought behind their LinkedIn profile. We were a little bit ahead of the personal brand conversation, but, now with so many people who have mobilized around the LinkedIn trade, making it a, business it was a cottage industry and now it’s a huge hypercompetitive field.
JD Gershbein: and a heavily outsourced service is LinkedIn profile writing. So my art and my science in designing these profiles is to really create a real-time snapshot of what the doctor is and, what the future vision is. Also reaching for the future and maybe leveraging a little aspirational communication.
JD Gershbein: Talk about the things they want to do, they hope, and that they feel would be implemented for the good. And, we telegraph that if they, are cool with it, we’re casting this wide net position as a personal brand, so that it’s not just about a healthcare provider, it’s about being someone who is truly in touch with human.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. And it seems like there’s a lot, more of those active physicians out there, like I talk about that have a, what I would consider a great profile and they’re very active. And does it just involve setting up a profile? Like if I say I don’t even have LinkedIn or I’m not very active on LinkedIn do I just need to set up a profile and then kinda like takes five minutes and I’m off?
JD Gershbein: Well, many people have. Yeah, many people set up their profile and all about it.
Daniel Wrenne: Don’t put a picture on it.
JD Gershbein: We have seen the visual aesthetic of the LinkedIn profile page heightened through the years, and now we put our own aesthetic onto that page. And yes, it means, of course, having a warm, welcoming, professional headshot,
using verbiage,Installing yourself as a person of impact, person of influence in your field. And that takes a little doing, because on the one hand, you don’t wanna tout yourself over the top. You don’t wanna go to testimonial. But at the same time a little bit of personal selling, a little bit of personal marketing. We’re all marketing ourselves.
JD Gershbein: we are trying to reach the people that we can serve and the people who keep coming back. Patients have economic value to doctors and to the medical doctors, and there’s a certain responsibility for doctors to have a presence, maintain that presence and, drive a footprint on LinkedIn so that the patients know who they are.
Daniel Wrenne: We can use my LinkedIn as like a tester LinkedIn. I have a picture. So that’s a good start. And I have. Connections and it’s been around for a while and I haven’t had anyone professionally write my LinkedIn profile and I’m sure it has lots of room for improvement.
Daniel Wrenne: And there’s a lot of, I noticed early on in LinkedIn especially, I had a lot of noise in coming through in my feeds and started to feel like a waste of time and just because of all this, mess of connections and you want to have more connections because that’s always good.
Daniel Wrenne: But like, what are some tips for like someone that’s, trying to kind of get past this, I gotta, it start it. Like I want to get this thing a little bit more efficient. Like, do I accept every connection? Do I comment on every post? There’s a ton of things that, you can do in LinkedIn.
JD Gershbein: Well, LinkedIn is a multifaceted platform and whereas I’m not really the tips guy there are plenty of people out there doing tips, but I like to take a look at this from the overarching perspective of making incremental gains. You can’t do it all at once.
JD Gershbein: Impress anybody out, try to configure a LinkedIn profile that really sells them in real time. It takes a lot of thought, a lot of introspective, a lot of self-assessment to move forward on LinkedIn. read your profile every day, even if it means adding a sentence, taking out a sentence, kind of plugging and playing a little bit. I think we all have our descriptions that remained with us throughout our whole careers or how our patients, feel about us. I look at what others are doing to a certain point, but. I self crowdsource. What doesn’t feel right to me, I won’t put it there in my profile. So the profile is one piece. The social engagement is another piece. And really seeing who inhabit your professional network and moving your mindset from that thematic network, which is a bunch of things and thumbnails to a living vibrant community.
So that’s what I try to do is see the person underneath the profile.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. I think you also have to figure out or always be thinking about what value you want to add. and this is a lifelong thing, like what do you wanna be when you grow up, I guess? Yes.
Daniel Wrenne: What unique ideas do you have? Do you want to do some public speaking on the side, or do you want to shift into having your own practice?
Daniel Wrenne: Do you want to create a new way of doing healthcare? Do you want to get into a completely different industry? That’s probably the first thing is like, where do you wanna take your life professionally? Especially what do you value professionally? Who are the type of people you connect with?
Daniel Wrenne: That’s also another good starting point. I have gotten a lot of traction from LinkedIn by really looking closer at these people that I like, the guy I was describing earlier, the physician, the orthopedic surgeon that has all these great stories, going onto his profile and looking at the people that are interacting with him that’s a great or there’s a much higher likelihood they’re the type of people that are gonna resonate with what I like in his, profile or his interactions, his ideas.
JD Gershbein: Well, that’s where we’re moving from network to community because we are seeing the people underneath and we LinkedIn users have accepted in invitations,
JD Gershbein: we have extended invitations, we’ve built this community. But is it a real community if you don’t know who people are in it? So the more you look at these names, the more you look at these profiles, the more you reach out to people. And the direct messaging portal on LinkedIn is really where the rubber meets the road these days because, that’s where you really assert force on the system, conversational force on the system.
JD Gershbein: You can’t achieve an outcome. You can’t impact the decision, inform a decision unless you reach out or you’re, reactive. And once you get out there in the interactive space, anything can happen. Get found, get noticed. People might be interested in the services you have, the perspective you bring.
JD Gershbein: And the key is to get them in off LinkedIn conversations. Exchange ideas, talk about mutual benefit, creation for creation, and then you start to feel this sense something’s really happening.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. it’s kinda like finding your tribe. If you find your people, say you’re interested in, like I was referring to earlier, like practicing direct care, and you find people on LinkedIn that are already doing it really well, and you connect with them and then you start to interact with them one-on-one. Like most of the time or they’re way more likely to want to really interact with you.
Daniel Wrenne: They’re gonna love talking about it and love that you’re asking them questions about it. It’s their big idea themselves, and they’re like, oh, that’s, there’s some other people that are kind of jumping on to the bandwagon. There’s a lot of, that’s like community building.
JD Gershbein: You really start to see what’s happening in medicine as a microcosm of what’s happening in the business world at large too.
JD Gershbein: That’s all the business people have done on LinkedIn and physicians are covering it now, and they are exploring ways to build community through LinkedIn engagement. Several of my clients who are, prolific speakers, and lecturers at symposia, and they’re traveling and they’re, talking about whether it’s physician burnout, whether it’s talking about advances in their field.
JD Gershbein: And that’s another huge piece of LinkedIn to glorify the career profession through the profiles and talk about being at the forefront of advances in technology, AI, all these exciting things that are playing into the medical field now. But the posts that doctors are putting out there, which are basically four doctors and the communities that they’re building, they’re starting to take on shelf latch for day, not weeks.
JD Gershbein: And they get a lot of risk and a lot of really great ideas, exchange, comment, and I study those and I comment where I feel I can, where, I feel it’s my spot. Not just comment, but comment say, but that’s how you kind of nestle into the psychic of people, it kind of butchers in it. It’s what we call pro equity.
JD Gershbein: You’re kind of siling up to, others on LinkedIn and forming parasocial relationships. Though both parties kind of get the feeling that they know each other somehow just by engaging on, it’s amazing. And that’s how LinkedIn and all the platforms we get the idea that we really know these by what they’re expect writing and by being on their profiles a few times.
JD Gershbein: And when you build a relationship and work very hard to expand the conversation, that’s where things start. And that’s where you really get the feeling that no longer a networking into a community and end to end mind to mind or age to age human to human.
Daniel Wrenne: You’re talking about some of your clients and I think stories are really good to, kind of hear, stories of people doing it the right way or seeing positive results.
Daniel Wrenne: Do you have some, specific stories not names and everything, but stories about clients or people you know that have kind of gone through this transition where it’s helped them turn the corner?
JD Gershbein: Every physician that I’m working with right now is undergoing some kind of transition, and that doesn’t mean that they’re leaving the profession, but they have worked long and hard to get to where they are, and I rally behind them in that respect.
JD Gershbein: I want to tell their story and I approach them from the viewpoint of a broadcast journalist. I have extensive experience in broadcasting and in journalists. I’m really there to get their story.
Daniel Wrenne: I’m gonna ask you to predict the future. LinkedIn seems to be, I haven’t seen the statistics on it but I remember it not being massively growth, the percentage is not huge on number of new users and that kind of thing, but I just feel that it’s much more niche focused and not a great comparison to other social media necessarily.
JD Gershbein: I believe that the clutter is only gonna get more intense.
JD Gershbein: Yeah. LinkedIn is growing in an exponential rate. as we sit here and think today on February 21st, 2023 it’s at about 840 million users. So it’s on its way to a billion users and it’s absorbing a lot of the overflow from people who have had it with Facebook. There are many people that just have given up on the other platforms and linked in to its credit is the top of the heap.
JD Gershbein: They have spot some of this scrutiny and, problems that the other site had, say for a few security breaches. LinkedIn is withstood every test that’s given. So I think that more and more people will activate more and more people will awaken of creating and distributing content. More podcasts, more than we could listen to in a hundred lifetimes.
JD Gershbein: They’ll be more people who want a guest on podcast. There’ll be more call for physicians in the AI space and technology kind of weaves its way through the metaverse. I think you’re gonna start to be more and more docs come involved with that. You’re gonna see more docs looking to each other for support.
JD Gershbein: The rise of the physician coach, the physician consultant, and they’re kind of galvanizing themselves against this period of incredible, remarkable change. And LinkedIn seems to have kind of flexibility and elasticity, for change and communicate everything that’s on the horizon.
JD Gershbein: And that’s where I like to be.
JD Gershbein: I’m more of a futurist than I ever was before. I really do try to think one, if not two steps ahead.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. and I think health healthcare is changing a lot and the world physicians work in, could very well change a considerable amount in the next 10 or 15 years. There’s a lot of problems, but I think the people that at least I’ve follow and see on LinkedIn or talking more about solutions. I mean, they’re talking about the problems, but they’re also coming up with solutions and becoming part of the solution as opposed to like the traditional hospital system is like just not really solving, I mean, they’re not changing much.
Daniel Wrenne: It’s like a very difficult to turn direction in the big monster system of healthcare. Yeah. Whereas when you look at these individual physicians that are kind of, or even groups that are banding together and communities with all these ideas, they’re really.
JD Gershbein: Well the future and the revenue is in innovation. And that innovation more welcome than in medicine and an individual or a group can come up with an invention, like a service, an app.
JD Gershbein: To save lives, improves the level of care, unifies families in the face of healthcare crises. I think there are people that wake up every day, adrenalize accomplish that kinda thing and I support them, applaud them, and I’m there for them.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, that’s the kind of platform you want to be involved in, is if you’re trying to work on solutions, I think that’s a difference I noticed too, is in any other social media? I don’t know. It’s not professional. LinkedIn is very professional focused, and it’s also more entrepreneurial and entrepreneurs are all about identifying problems, but then also solving them.
JD Gershbein: Yes, true. taking risks around them.
Daniel Wrenne: It’s a risk to say, here’s the problem, here’s my idea to solve it. And then you’ll put the thing out there that you’re gonna do to solve it. That’s scary.
JD Gershbein: Yeah. And it’s a risk to walk away from medicine and do that full-time.
JD Gershbein: I mean, is a physician willing to exit and forego a $200-$250,000 annual salary to toil in anonymity for a while and lay on the hope that maybe they can get some funding for a project or the invention of a device. I mean, there’s a lot associated with entrepreneurship that it can be a very cruel and frightening world brought with peaks and valleys and ebbs and flows and sleepless nights, and wondering if they’re doing the right thing and second guessing themselves.
JD Gershbein: But as opposed to the stability that a medical career does provide. And so these doctors are taking a huge leap of faith and in so doing, they become leaders by example, they take medicine to almost another plane of another level of greatness and nobility.
JD Gershbein: And that’s what I’m, interested to see how that plays out. And LinkedIn is going to play a huge role in that.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. my prediction, if we’re gonna make predictions about the future, I’ll make mine too. My prediction of the future of physicians’ practices is that there is a bigger shift.
Daniel Wrenne: Cuz lately, or you know, the past whatever years, it’s been a shift towards physicians working for the hospital systems, no longer being self-employed, but selling their practice to the hospital system or just starting with this hospital system. I think it’s gonna flip flop completely where physicians are gonna go back towards their entrepreneurial, like, not, necessarily creating this grand awesome new idea, but just like practicing medicine in their own practice.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. Or maybe disassociating with insurance. That’s what direct care is like, getting away from the system.
JD Gershbein: People who work in restaurants, they’re not looking to innovate. They’re, going in to create the best food they can that day and they do it the next day and the next day,
JD Gershbein: That’s the heroic. And if you extrapolate that into the world of the physician the best physicians just go in there every day and they walk down those halls and they see the patient and they’re besieged by this rep or that rep during the course of the day. They’ve gotta put up politics of the healthcare system.
JD Gershbein: But you know what? When it’s time to dispense healthcare and see a patient and be an active listener, and now we’ve got telemedicine and be being diligent on the telemedicine side, wherever you gonna leave. Just dispensing good medicine is heroic on a day-to-day basis. And that’s also worth communicating on a LinkedIn profile.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. We got a question from Ricky. Good to see you here, Ricky.
Daniel Wrenne: And this is a good question. He’s asking about LinkedIn potentially being used for evil. His sharing an example of his buddy who actually took advantage of him and he’s a Northwestern Mutual financial advisor and has a fantastic LinkedIn profile and that’s kind of like the corporate, when I was describing the financial world, they’re like the corporate system of financial services.
Daniel Wrenne: So this guy’s got apparently a great fantastic LinkedIn profile, but it’s allowing him to sell more of this crappy product that he took advantage of him with. Is there any way to like avoid this or limit this, negative aspect?
JD Gershbein: There are bad actors everywhere.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, there’s a lot of ’em in this world.
Daniel Wrenne: I know exactly the world he’s talking about because I came from it and there’s a large amount of them It’s kinda like the healthcare system. Like there’s a lot of problems within that world and unfortunately they are really good at having fancy LinkedIn profiles.
JD Gershbein: Well, I can’t speak to that. I speak to LinkedIn for the greater good and there are plenty of folks out there that pollute and contaminate the landscape.
Daniel Wrenne: I think what you have to do where there’s darkness, you gotta shine the light on them. And I think, and that’s partly what I’ve done Because I happen to have worked for this company. He’s talking about, and I know a lot about this particular use case. And I think the same is true in healthcare. And it goes back to the example I was describing earlier, when you can share the stories, the real stories of why this is such a problem and why it’s bad for people and talk about it in a platform.
Daniel Wrenne: That’s where it’s at. And you can shine the light on this kind of thing. And so I think the motivation for me is to, like, that’s more motivation for me to be loud on LinkedIn, essentially. Like to get more involved.
JD Gershbein: Well, it’s really speaks to the virtue of building a organic, tightly knit, cohesive community, which is what I espouse and, how I teach LinkedIn.
JD Gershbein: We do have the ability to block people. if there was a legal issue, if there was anybody that was defamatory or compromising on LinkedIn, those are legal problems that can be reported to LinkedIn.
I love the best practice. That’s my conversation. My conversation is about developing trusted relationships and if there’s any hint that the relationship will not bear or hold trust or blossom in any way.
Disconnect. Get the hell out of there, block them. Life’s too short, man. I’m out for eliminating any and all toxicities in my life.
Daniel Wrenne: So it’s kind of like, you could use the example in healthcare, it’s like insurance companies, health insurance companies have really good LinkedIn profiles and put a, lot of like fancy content out there.
Daniel Wrenne: And I believe that they have a lot of conflicts of interest that sometimes can cause them to do evil things. And so I have much more faith in the physicians themselves and the more involved they can get and put out like really good content and shine the light or share unique stories about why that’s a problem and why that’s an evil and why the other side of the story, I think that’s gonna be a big opportunity for something like this is to kind of, because right now these big insurance companies or the big hospital systems, they have big budgets for this kind of thing, but LinkedIn kind of evens the playing field. Like they allow, like the guy, the one person that can, speak pretty well and is very educated to compete essentially and potentially get a lot more action than this big huge monster insurance company that because that’s the thing I noticed about this, the insurance world, if we’re talking about that their content is terrible in a lot of cases it’s not any good.
Daniel Wrenne: It’s not very personal at least.
JD Gershbein: And they’re the industry that LinkedIn is set up to help them most and in many cases they restrict them the most, especially if in, financial services, if someone is selling investments or servicing in the equity market LinkedIn is very restrictive. Securities act of 1940 in FINRA and compliance and all of that.
JD Gershbein: But again when you’re speaking about virtue on LinkedIn, that’s, where you’ll find me. I can’t speak to the unscrupulous behaviors. I can’t stand them. I see so many predatory sales behaviors out there on LinkedIn, write about them, speak about them. There’s no way to avoid it.
JD Gershbein: People are going to do what they’re going to do, but fortunately you have ways to dim them down, make them fully opaque in your life, and operate from a sense of purity, which I think is very important on LinkedIn.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. Well, I know we’re getting to time as we’re wrapping up. I would love it if you could share more about your work and your business and how people can find you.
Daniel Wrenne: I know of course on LinkedIn, he’s got a great LinkedIn profile. If you want a great definition of a LinkedIn profile, like just go to JD’s profile and like look at his and you know that’s a great story.
JD Gershbein: You’re very kind, Daniel. Thank you very much for that, beaming testimonial. The, difference between me and any other LinkedIn user is I saw the value of this thing right away and all I’ve done since 2006 to communicate that value in one way or another, whether it’s through written word, spoken word through my profile, things that I do, leader by example. So my, work today is helping good people flourish on LinkedIn, committed people, who have an idea who, have vision.
JD Gershbein: Who wanna change the world for at the risk of time, cliche, and many of those people are in medicine. And I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to work with doctors. And I’ve been in the months leading up to our taping here through the pandemic where I started to see physicians kind of infiltrating LinkedIn.
JD Gershbein: I designed a proprietary model, extended my methodology for them. Because that’s, where I’ve lived. Lived in the medical profession since I was a kid. I never practiced medicine. I know what’s at stake for the doctors right now. I know what they wanna do. They’ve got hopes, dreams, conditions, and I can co-create with them.
JD Gershbein: And that’s a huge piece of my work right now, a specialty marketplace.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, well definitely go ahead and check out JD’s LinkedIn profile. And have a LinkedIn profile. If you’re listening to this and you don’t have a LinkedIn.
JD Gershbein: That is an important first step.
Daniel Wrenne: Let’s start with a LinkedIn profile.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. And then follow JD first. If you don’t follow me, follow me for sure. But follow JD.
JD Gershbein: Follow Daniel. And you’ll get to me. I’m basically hitched my wagon to his star.
Daniel Wrenne: You will be like second connections and then first connections, and then that’ll all work out.
JD Gershbein: Exactly right. Now I wanna thank you, Daniel. You kept my head in the game on this and you posted admirably on LinkedIn in the days within our taping here. And that was a, nice use of the site. It remains to be seen and I don’t really pay attention to metrics, to be honest with you. I feel that a piece of content like this has an eternal life, depending on how often we come back and promote it.
JD Gershbein: So, if people didn’t see it when it was happening live, we have the ability to get in front of them down the road. And thank you for the interest, thank you for veering away from your world of finance in medical practice to have little of me on.
Daniel Wrenne: Oh, no, it was good. I’ve enjoyed our conversation and look forward to staying in touch, JD, as always a good conversation.
JD Gershbein: Thanks, man.
