Welcome to ACML in Action, brought to you by the Association of California Nurse Leaders. I'm your host, Charlene Flushan. Our guest today is Grant McCaffrey, CEO of Five Star BBM and host of the podcast Follow the Brand. Grant is an expert on business strategy and digital marketing who's been recognized as a global thought leader. His weekly podcast is one of the top shows on the topic of personal branding, and he's here today to give us a primer. Grant also has an impressive healthcare background as president of the National Association of Health Services Executives, or NAHSE, and a program chair for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, or HIMS. Grant will also be presenting a webinar for ACNL later this month. Be sure to check that out at acnl.org to learn more. Welcome, Grant. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Oh, I can't wait. I've been looking forward to talking to you, your audience. This is wonderful. Thanks for the great introduction. Let's jump right in.

Yes, let's jump right in. We're so excited to have you here and to talk more about personal branding, which is a really timely topic. And just to start, what is personal branding? You know, how is that different from just working on your resume or having a LinkedIn? Tell us more about that.

You know, that's interesting. Personal branding got a lot of traction along with what you would call mobile computing or your social media sites and things of that nature. All of a sudden, people had a platform, right? So, and then it's just a matter of what do you want to do if they have platforms. So, some people, let's say you're on Instagram, Facebook, and everybody's heard of these internet darlings, right? They get out there, no one's ever heard of them, but they they amass these great followers. Now, that has become a form of personal branding. That is not the totality of personal branding. You know, a lot of that is being a social influencer, uh, things of that nature. But what we're getting into is how to be a thought leader. Think of it like that, where you now have a platform where before you might have had to, if you're gonna impress a potential employer, or if you're in business, you're going after a new business account of thing, then that nature, how do you make yourself more visible? Uh, who's who's aware of you, correct? Right? So now you have a platform on social media that you can actually leverage to get your your persona out there, who you are, what you're about, how you see things differently. Because I will let you know, lots of people have some kind of degree, or they have an advanced degree, or they may have been in their career shorter or longer than you, but some similarities, right? How do you differentiate yourself in that field today when you can't just go to all the different networking events? That's a part of personal branding, right? You can't just email people to death, right? You know, if you're doing any kind of self-promotion, things of that nature, or you just can't show up, you know, at all the boardroom meetings because you may not may not even be there. How do you get noticed today is what personal branding is all about, but it's all about intentionality, right? You've got to be intentional about crafting a business strategy around how you're going to project yourself, and then who would be most interested in that persona that you have developed that can then take advantage of who you are, what you do, and how they can make their situation better. So, in a nutshell, that is personal branding, according to me. And I'll give you one little other tip. Most people don't don't even realize this. Your brand is not what you say about yourself, it's what others say about yourself. You can influence that brand, but it is what comes out of someone else's thoughts about you or your situation. That is the brand. You think about branding from a business aspect, right? You know, the brand. If you're gonna think about uh Nike or you're gonna think about McDonald's, and you think about those are brands, but those are the brands that people know about and they speak about them quite frequently, right? But how do you develop yourself into that conversation is what personal branding is all about.

Right, and you shared a lot of great insights there. And what you mentioned too was so true because personal branding goes beyond just networking, right? And beyond just sending emails. And I think that maybe I think maybe um maybe a decade ago that might have been a way to do so. But I know that there's so many more platforms now, so many more avenues to expand your brand, tell your story. And you know, for nurses who are listening now and nurse leaders, why why do you think it's so essential for nurse leaders to have their personal brands? Or what what does it mean for them? Or, you know, how could it, how could it be um important for nurse leaders?

Well, there's two things. First of all, our society has completely changed as far as communicating, how we communicate with one another is so so important. We are a digital first society. So I say that to say this search and social. The first thing someone's going to do, typically, if they don't know you and they know they're about to meet you or something to that effect, they're gonna look you up. And when they look you up, that is the story that is told about you. That's the first impression. And we all know first impression, how do you get rid of that? You know, your first impression is a lasting impression. So if you're not showing up on social or you are showing up on social, but it's not the story that really tells who you are and what you're about, you're doing yourself a disservice. So going back to the nursing realm, and I've worked with several different nurses through my own program that I call the Brave Framework. What is that? Brave Brave is all about brand identity, it's about resilience, it's about assets, like your brand assets, your platform what you're using, visibility, and then it's about engagement. How do you get engagement through your brand? What does that all look like? A lot of people are a little gunshot when it comes to putting themselves out there. But on platforms such as LinkedIn that are business-to-business platforms, it's a professional platform. They don't want to know about what you did last night, what you ate for dinner, and you went on vacation. It's a little bit different from that. Here's an opportunity to showcase yourself as a thought leader in your field. Here's what's different about what you could see. A resume usually is going to give you a chronological order of your work history. And it may have some information in there about how you were successful, or you overcame some challenges, or you met certain metrics, and then a little snapshot of who you are. And that's it. A CV will be more of a story-like form of that same chronological type resume, where a personal brand is something that you can deliver every day. Because think about it. How often are you delivering you your resume? How often are you delivering your CV? Everybody's like, Oh, I've got an update, I've got to update, I've got to update my link. I gotta do this. So LinkedIn, just for instance, it's more than just a resume, it has that on there, has all that information uh that you typically will see in a resume if you you know go ahead and fill out all the the different uh profiles that are there. But you can do a lot more as from a platform perspective, you can deliver your story every day. How are you different in nursing than your competitor? Or what are you doing within your facility that's very important? That's not proprietary to the facility, but for what you're doing, how you're doing it. Let's say, for instance, and I know this is happening every single day. Someone's about to get a procedure, let's say, at your facility, your hospital. They don't know a lot about it. Wouldn't it be great if the nurses came out, whether it's on a LinkedIn or even on a YouTube? YouTube is another big platform. Someone could find information and experience about what I am about to go through. I'm about to go through cancer treatment. I'm not sure what this is gonna be about. They might get some generic information, but if they could get something directly from the nursing facility that I'm about to go into, and they're telling me step by step what I'm going through, they're gonna talk to me about my feelings, they're gonna talk about what's going on, they're gonna talk about their track record. My my curiosity is gonna be satisfied, and your credibility is gonna skyrocket. So that gives you an idea how you can utilize these platforms to be a thought leader and utilize them effectively to showcase yourself.

Right. And it sounds like there are some very important takeaways from what you just shared. And the first is how personal branding can really support your personal brand. Because just like you said, it could be a huge disservice if you don't have a social media presence or if you don't have a LinkedIn presence or some sort of way to showcase what you've done professionally. I know that a lot of a lot of um people in human resources, a lot of hiring managers do look up candidates before they interview them. And if people don't show up, it really is a missed opportunity to tell more about who you are, what you've accomplished. And meanwhile, someone else who has all of that set up, it can really give them that really nice first impression that you talked about. Um, that could really kind of tip over the edge in terms of when you look at two different candidates who might have equal credentials or skills. Um, and then secondly, about how personal branding can actually help support the organizations you represent, different organizations you're part of. There's there's kind of twofold, uh twofold approach there and a lot of benefits if you're able to represent both well.

Absolutely. And you said it's just you're not just representing yourself, you are representing your career, and you're representing where you're currently maybe employed or the client that you're working with. And people do want to know, and it's so easy how simple it is to pick up your phone, type in some business, or now you can speak to it, right? You know, tell me all about Grant McGall. I guarantee you I know pretty much what's going to come up because I've been intentional about building my brand, and that is picking up on this in this digital world about how I've crafted myself and I've been mentioned in a number of different circles, and I've done a number of different things, and then that information is bubbled to the top. But if it you just get silence out there, that's not a good thing, or understand this. People like, well, I might have a similar name. Like, my name is I think there's only two other Grant McGalls in the world, Directs, and I've I found they're probably just like, oh my god, there he is again. No, different guy. Uh, but I have an uncommon name, some people don't, so you have to be more creative about that. Some people will throw in, let's say, a middle initial to kind of differentiate themselves, or they put their credentials uh on the on the back of their name, but they have to you have to do that consistently when you're doing that. But I want to talk to the to the nursing world and help them understand you're very, very um interesting to other people that they want to know about you, what you who you are and what you do. I worked with a nurse and she wanted to get into the emerging technology field. She'd been a nurse for 20 plus years, but she said, I don't know how to make this pivot and have people see me in this new technology realm. I don't have the background, nothing is saying a lot about me in that world. How can I make that pivot? So she enrolled in my program, and I was able to then begin to help her to craft her story in such a way that she now can differentiate in herself. She understands her objectives, she knows her mission. She did a SWOT analysis on her, part of her personal brand, so she can see her strengths, her weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Understanding that even though she's going to this emerging technology realm, the thing that she was doing it for, technology is an enablement tool. It enables you to do things. So she wanted to use the platform to enable her nursing credentials and her nursing experience to be experienced in a technological uh platform. So I showed her how to do that, and then she understood like, wow, you're not losing 20 years of experience, you're just utilizing the platform differently. So the next one to three to five years is going to have you look differently to others, and then you can craft your brand on top of that.

Right. And I really appreciate how you mentioned about the importance of differentiation, because there could be a lot of other people in similar fields with similar names as you. And I mean, uh, you know, my name's pretty unique too. There's only other like one other, I think, Charlene Platon. Although I have a twin sister and she has a very different brand, so I have to be very mindful of that. But um the differentiation is such an important um aspect because you want to make sure that people find you, you know, who you are and understand your brand. Because if it's kind of told by someone else, um that's an unfortunate circumstance. If it's not the way that you want to portray yourself and your accomplishments and your brand. And um, especially when you're wanting when you're wanting to speak to your experience of over a number of years and you've worked really hard to come to that point. Um, the personal brand is kind of like the cherry on top to kind of tie it all together. And and actually, yeah, and and actually speaking on that too, what would you say are really the core elements that make up a strong personal brand for a nurse leader in particular, you know, if whether it's like their leadership style or communication skills, what would you say are some of those core elements?

There's a lot there. First, what you're going to have to do, what I would do, you have to do a self-assessment. And that's very difficult to do sometimes. Just telling your own story. And I do that by I have my on my website go to five number five star BDM. And that is B for brand, D for Development Informasters.com. So five star BDO, there's a personal brand assessment. And that what that's going to do is take you through 12 questions that's going to help you to begin to think inwardly about yourself and how you see yourself, and then how others see you and how you operate in different settings. Because you don't operate the same way depending on what the circumstances are. Everyone has different levels of emotional intelligence, they have different levels of situational awareness. All those things can start to work up what we call a brand archetype. They would say, What's a brand archetype? A brand archetype. You we work with them all the time. But think about, you know, if you're in that Marvel universe, you know, who would you be if you were a Marvel character, right? Are you going to be the Hulk? Are you are you are you Iron Man? Are you, you know, one of these other characters that are out there? Because each one of those has a different persona. You have a different persona depending on how you operate. You don't operate the same way you do at work as you do at home, or if you're in relationships, or you're with you know family, things of that nature. But getting an understanding of who you are from a brand identity, identifying yourself is foremost, part of my framework. That's that B. You have to understand your identity. Once we've got that kind of nailed down, kind of got a feel for who you are and how you operate. We've now got to do some research about where do you want to go with this? What do you want to accomplish? What are you trying to achieve? What is your next evolution of yourself? Think about that. The next evolution of you, that you are creating this new iteration. Everybody wants the new iPhone when it comes out, right? The new Apple and all that when it when it comes out. We want to start crafting the new you. This is a cool factor about personal branding, is that you're not becoming something that you're not, you're becoming more of who you already are, and you're making it more visible, right? That gets into that A part of it, that gets into your aesthetics, it gets into your assets. What are those brand assets that you're gonna now leverage? Because that next level is even more important because you become visible. You're gonna make that become more visible. You're gonna be visible through different platforms. I use podcasts, that's mine. We're on a podcast right now, it's a very good way to make yourself visible, audible, get your thought leadership out there. Some people write books, some people do eat blogs, publications, some people that they post every day or some kind of information of tidbit. Hey, you know what? Here's my 10 tips for the day or 10 tips for the week. Technology has made this easier because you're gonna say, Grant, I don't have time. Who has the time to do all that, right? Well, you can schedule these things now. You can take time. What AI has done, artificial intelligence has what I call collapsed the window of time. So now it used to take you hours to do a lot of this, you can do it now in minutes. And where before it cost you money to go go out and get a graphic designer and go out and get all these different professionals. You can do a lot of things yourself from a DIY, do it yourself perspective to help to make your brand more visible. And then that E, the last part of that is engagement because you want that feedback to come back to you. You got to get engaged, you got to look at the metrics, you got to know if it's working, do you need to pivot? All those things take in the brave framework that help you ultimately to become this new iteration of yourself. And as and as I said before, you are just becoming more of the potential of who you are, and you're making it more visible.

Yes, and I really like what you mentioned about doing this kind of self-assessment and going through the Brave framework to really understand who you are, what your personal brand is, what your own identity is, and what you want to share with um others out there in the world. And just kind of given, you know, you share different um types of ways that um nurse leaders and nurses can share their brand, different platforms. Um, how would someone know, you know, and especially in such a broad profession like nursing, how would someone know what kind of platform to actually establish themselves on and what, you know, sort of content would they know to create to become these thought leaders and to provide these valuable resources, especially for someone who's just starting?

No, that's a good question. And that's where you have to go through. I I I recommend going through a program like myself, because if you try to just do a lot of times what happens is people do things out of order. And a brand master told me this once. It was so, so good. Everyone has a mobile phone, but for the most part, you have a mobile phone, right? You said, but do you have my number that you can dial the exact digits to actually get me on the phone? Because if you don't do it in the exact right order, I will not be able to contact you. So there's an order to these things, there's a process, there's a procedure to these things because you've got to take ownership of it. If you do it outside of these things, what you're gonna find is that you're becoming something you're not, you're becoming an idea that's usually a persona from someone else, someone else's personality. We're constantly bombarded with other people's personalities, and largely we're not really doubling down into our own personality and making it a platform in which we can launch our brand, our our thoughts, our feelings, how we look at things, and making it count. So people pay attention to it because you don't know where your strengths are, you're not familiar with your weaknesses, you haven't really looked. And to your point, one of the opportunities to utilize it, and until you understand. Understand that you're going to be floundering around a little bit. And so you start with that first part, which is the assessment. Once you get there, you start to look at all right, how do I differentiate myself? I start to develop a strategy. And then from that strategy, because you're going to be intentional about this, this is not unintentional. You're going to be very, very intentional. 10 years ago, whatever, I was very intentional about creating my brand through social selling in my particular aspect. For a nurse leader, if you're not already in leadership or if you are in leadership and you're looking for that next level of opportunity, you want to work from the two principles. Look at as if I were the vice president of nursing, how would I behave? What do I need to know? What don't I know? What different skills do I need to attain that I don't have? And then I become more intentional about acquiring those skill sets in order to operate at that level. The other more important, another, I would say more important, but it's very important, is relationship. What relationships do I need to intentionally cultivate? Remember what I said earlier. This is not about going out around being the social influencer and I need millions of followers. No, but guess what? If I had 20 to 30 other nursing leaders that I would say are in my circle that I've intentionally cultivated, and that I'm a resource for them as they are a resource for me, now I'm on a path to true personal branding.

Yes. And I really like how you mentioned the importance of intentionality and thoughtfulness. And uh it's true that with um a certain process, you can you can see the success of your brand as it grows. I think that a lot of times people don't consider how much um intention does go through the building of a personal brand. It can seem so easy when others do it. But just like you said, it was a 10-year journey to build your brand to where it is now. And it takes time, just like any profession, just like how the skills that we build in our profession, it takes time to get to a certain point where it's um everything is, you know, very well done. And, you know, you're you're an expert in your field. Um, it's it's the same for building your personal brand. Um and I do want to say too, because I know that consistency is so important for this type of work. And uh when we see other brands like you mentioned, like McDonald's and other and Nike and other well-known brands, the consistency is really important. And how can nurse leaders develop this kind of consistent communication style that's really aligning with your brand or really aligning with their brand without coming off as you know, inauthentic or forced or anything like that?

You know, that's a great question. And it's about tuning in. You gotta fine-tune yourself, fine-tune yourself to your passion. Once you fine-tune yourself and you find that station, that radio station, that true voice in your head where your passion is, you are very authentic. That's that a authentic part of those assets, being authentic. And once you tune into that, it's powerful. And that consistency just flows from your authenticity. You want to get your message out. There is a reason why you like podcasts. There's a reason why you like, you know what? I want to hear someone else's story. I want to be able to tell this, and I like doing this, and I do it on a consistent basis because I like doing it. So you're not doing it as a chore, so to speak. You're doing it because you now have an avenue to which you can uh uh present yourself and and showcase your thought leadership around that subject matter that's so so important to you. You've got to look at why you were nursing in the first place. What really drew you to this? A lot of times I find it's not the money, it's it's it's it's it's a lot about uh empathy, or you might have a story in your in your life in which healthcare was a big part of that, and that you wanted to be, you know what, I want to help save somebody's life. I want to be able to educate somebody, I want somebody to have better health care, I want them to have a better healthcare outcome. I want to get involved, I want to be passionate about that. And you've got to tune back into it because you can get drowned out by sometimes the work. A lot of nurses work very long hours, 12, 14 hours, right? It's a long time, it's a grind. And then you've got to write, how do I retune myself back into that passion of why? Why am I doing this? Why this is important? And sometimes you you're in a nursing environment or healthcare environment, and your voice is not heard, or the voice of your staff is not heard, or your department is not heard. This isn't an opportunity to showcase your why, why this is important, because as they make decisions andor decisions outside of your realm, they might not have all the data, all the information. You know what? If we do that, it's going to affect this. But I didn't know that. So it's important for you to showcase your point of view through your own personal story, and when people understand what's really going on during that time frame, or why you're doing certain things, why you're you're in this nursing framework. So as they start to make changes, or you're part of that change, you're at the table. I remember there's a great statement a lot of people hear these days. They said, no, if you're not in a boardroom, or if there's not a seat for you at the boardroom, no, bring a folding chair. This is your folding chair. Your personal brand is your folding chair. So that table can listen and hear what you're saying or how you're saying it, and then take it into consideration for any kind of decision making.

Yes, and I love what you shared. That definitely resonates with, you know, if you don't have a seat at the table, bring a folding chair. And I think that's true for a lot of nurses who are listening because they might not always have the opportunity or they may not always see the opportunity to um share their voice, maybe in their organization, but they definitely have the opportunity to do so with their personal brand and with whatever they want to share on their platforms. They definitely have the opportunity to do that in ways that didn't exist before. Um, and part of that fine-tuning, like you mentioned too, is the storytelling, right? Um, being able to tell your story, um, especially as a nurse who might have a lot of very interesting stories to share that people don't know about. And I think for nurses who are new to storytelling and sharing it on different platforms, what are some of those tips that you might have for effective storytelling to showcase leadership experience or different accomplishments in a way that's relatable?

Oh, and I I know like when I think of a lot of people, when they think of nursing, they think that nurses on the floor that are taking care of sick patients, they're bedside people, they're in the trenches. Everybody's seeing Gray's Anatomy and things like that. And they that's what they associate with, right? There are so many great stories that happen in healthcare systems on a daily basis. Some of them are life and death, how things happen, or how how certain new changes are how is it going to work in this environment? Just because you have a certain title doesn't mean you have a certain influence. I want people to understand it. Just because you have a certain title doesn't mean you have the influence. The nursing profession is very influential. You have the story. When I I am in health informatics a lot, health informatics management system society. That's what HAMS is about. It's the technology. Right now, AI is on the table. Before that, it was uh a lot of telehealth, a lot of remote patient minds, a lot of technology that's being infused into the workflow of nursing. And I guarantee you, and I've seen this happen so many different times, so many different types of technology implementations fail at the nursing function, especially at the bedside, because they did not take into account how that actually operates and why it's so important. If you're going to make changes that could potentially affect the life and the life outcomes of others, you've got to have the right voices at the table. They're going to tell you, hey, that's great, but if you do it this way, this is what's going to happen. Oh, I didn't know that. This is why EHR, electronic health records, when they first came out, they were miserable because they did not take into account how things actually operate on a day-to-day, hour by hour, minute-by-minute basis. It took a long time for that to really get ironed up because it was just a mandate from government, meaning for years, hey, you're going to do this and you get money back out of it. And they threw it out there without really considering how this really is going to work. This is so important why we need to have these voices out there. I want to know how nurses feel about artificial intelligence. Is it good? Is it bad? Can you get factual information that you can make a critical decision based on this information that you're getting from this machine or not? And the good and bad of that. We need to understand it.

Yes, absolutely. And um, you you raised such an important point because nurses and nurse leaders have such important voices that they could contribute in so many different ways. Um, people might not always consider the nursing voice, but it's much more influential than um than someone might think, just because of their role in healthcare, how influential and essential they are in the healthcare team. Their voice is really essential to making sure that systems work and that they make sense for the people who are, you know, being provided care. Um, and you know, I I think that people who might be listening to this and are really interested in building their platform, uh, they might be really interested in this work, but then they also might be afraid to share their voice, right? And afraid to share their stories because of what the you know people might say or, you know, people who might critique what they're saying or the stories that they're they're telling. Um, how can nurse leaders really handle these kind of potential criticisms or kind of negative feedback that they might see online when they are trying to maintain a positive brand and a positive image?

You know, a lot of times you take it to the personal realm. You don't uh like, I wouldn't like put a particular uh uh entity in my forefront. We're talking about topics, we're talking about trends, and we're talking about operations that are ubiquitous throughout the ecosystem, not just a, you know, your particular situation that might be personal to you in that organization. So be conscious of what I'm talking about here. It's about like a lot of times you listen to a lot of my different shows, you look me up, we're talking about not uh uh a particular institution, so to speak, but we are talking about like an intelligence, a technology, a platform, a policy that that that's important for others to know more about and get our point of view about it and what's interesting, what's not interesting about it. So you make your story going back to the storyline, that it's more encompassing, right? And that because of that, with someone else, let's say a nurse leader is or uh leadership of itself is they may be listening to your particular uh episode if that's what it is, it's a podcast or it's a blog, or how you made yourself visible, you made your voice uh um heard, then they don't take it personally. They see it like, aha, that's interesting. Remember, we're talking about thought leadership. We are being leaders in a way that someone can then take it into context around a decision that they may or may not uh in embark on. Right? So take it away from it, you know, we're talking about personal branding here. We're not talking about, we're not attacking or or or putting someone else in an uncomfortable situation. We're talking about in general. When I talk about earth first intelligence, I didn't say, for instance, I'm not talking about open AI, I'm not talking about cloud or cloud, excuse me, 3.0, I'm not talking about Gemini, I'm not being that specific. I'm talking about in general. So we're talking about the nursing world in general, and these situations and experiences are are are commonplace. How do we as a nursing organization embody these types of changes? That's important.

Yes, absolutely. And um definitely still some it's still uh still definitely worthwhile to share your voice because there's still so much that's left untold without that voice being shared. And I feel like there's so many more things that we could talk about on this topic. And um, you know, as we wrap up our time for the day, though, I just want to um give you the opportunity to share any additional insights for any of our listeners who are um who are tuning in right now. And um, what are some final thoughts or advice that you have to share for nurses who are interested in in sharing their voice?

Well, most importantly, I will be back on the platform in June when I'm going to take people through a personal branding webinar. That'll give you the opportunity to actually get QA, ask questions. I think it's so important and to understand where you are in your journey on personal branding. Personal branding is a personal journey, everyone's on a different level, they have different objectives. And depending on that objective is how your personal brand will be delivered. Everyone's a bit a bit different in how they do things, and that's okay, but be aware of it, be conscious of it one way or the other, and then from there, you can then proceed because I want everyone to succeed, and I want the entire healthcare system to be better. I want that if someone who is a right now we're all listeners, but someday we might be a patient, and then if you are a patient and you're going to a particular institution or whatever it might be, and then you're able to get using your search and your social good information, good intelligence, because not all information out there is good. So you want to be able to give good information about this is what this is going to look like, this is what this is going to happen. I'm going to look at you, I'm going to feel comfortable about my experience as I begin to traverse that next journey and that pacing journey, what that's going to look like. So that's what I like to leave our audience with.

Yes, thank you so much, Grant. And we're so excited to have you back uh later in June for the webinar. We can't wait to hear more of your insights. And we can't wait to join you all for that webinar.

Thank you very much for having me.

Yes, thank you so much for being on our show. And our guest today was Grant McGaugh, CEO of Five Star BDM. We'd love to hear your feedback. Email us at socialmedia at acnl.org and connect with us on LinkedIn and Facebook at ACNLNurse. And as always, if you like the show, please remember to rate, review, and share. ACNL in Action is presented by the Association of California Nurse Leaders with new episodes on the first Friday of every month. To learn more about the show or ACML in general, visit us at acnl.org. Thank you for listening.