‘Ni kama umeitwa Ogola!Lol! You’re about to be famous’. That’s what Fauziya messaged me on Instagram. Fauziya is like one of those Aunties that asks you when you’re getting married in the most ‘out-of-context’ situations like when you’ve just prayed for food at the family function, adding that you should be praying for a spouse and not garlic bread. She’s the same, the only difference is, she incessantly asks when I’m writing next, and diligently keeps a log in the glove compartment of her Harrier of when my last publication was just to keep me accountable. Anyway, here she was catapulting me into a life fame without so much as a ‘Hello!’, and who the hell is Ogola? You see, up until this point, anonymity was more valuable to me than fame, but my interpretation and understanding of this was fundamentally about to change when I met this gem of a patient.
In her message, Fauziya was referring to a big wig influencer who was looking for a Plastic Surgeon and had crowd sourced reviews from her instagram stories. Let’s call her Lucy, was documenting her search for her surgeon and sharing the feedback she’d gotten from her followers because, as I’ve come to learn, everything is content, and everyone loves a good treasure hunt. My name had popped up fairly consistently in her messages, so she chose me. Now, my socials are far from well curated, in fact…there are livestock with more compelling social media pages than mine. Surely it must have been put offish to Lucy, a luxury brand manager who’d cut her teeth in the world of PR and Marketing. Lucky for me, there aren’t many livestock good at Plastic Surgery.
She’d called me earlier the same morning, but i’d been in the thick of an intense Tuesday morning clinic and hadn’t been able to pick her call. I called her back, and I’d later learn that the personal touch and consderation of this call back is the reason she chose to come see me. She scheduled to come in for consultation a couple of days later.
The morning of her consultation with me, I was sat at my clinic desk listening to an enthralling true crime podcast when the office manager walked in and told me that there was a patient who’d come to see me, waiting in the lobby requesting for a cup of chamomile tea and honey? A few years ago, the expectation most patients had was to simply to be seen on time, these days, if you haven’t thought out your entire customer experience, a tweet can sink you. We had tea, just not chamomile tea or honey. Lucy settled for black tea, no sugar and a lemon slice.
I walked into the lobby to meet her, and found her speaking to the manager, tea saucer cupped in her left hand, tea cup pinched in her right. They were talking about this stunning pair of red heels she had on by Ferragamo, I couldn’t relate, I wasn’t the target audience, at least not in this century. It turns out that high heels were unisex until the end of the 18th Century, after that, they began to be associated with frivolity at which point men slowly departed from wearing them because they preferred doing serious things like fighting for sport and starting wars. Ferragamo was the shoe of the formidable modern day working woman, created by a fashion industry icon and innovator who built a brand through an unparalled mastery of craft and legacy of consistent high quality and cutting edge footwear. Lucy treated her feet like royalty, she treated her mind and body with similar regard. She was a productivity and mentality monster. She ran her own firm, worked out daily, ate the right things at the right time, in the right places, with the right people; hugely successful, and had earned every bit of it.
The reason she came to see me was minor, but not trivial. In fact, we concleded the enitre consult in a matter of minutes. What came next was an unsolicited masterclass on personal branding. Saying Lucy lived and breathed branding is an understatement, it was the very fabric of her being. She’d realised in her quest to find a Plastic Surgeon, there wasn’t much of digital footprint leading her to the service or professional she needed hence why she resorted to asking her all-knowing followers on Instagram. For a speciality so niche she saw opportunity, she said, ‘Daktari, Eat your name’. I have a complex pallete, so I beseeched her to dumb it down. Here’s what she said (paraphrased).
Don’t be everything to everyone. If you can do everything, it’s very unlikely that you’re the best a one particular thing. Pick a skill, give it your 10,000 hours, become the best at it, and distance yourself from the pack. All the while, tell people about it. A good number will come to you organically, but in this age of information, droves will come to you because you built trust by mastering your craft before their very eyes.
Be genuine. Authenticity builds you for longevity. In a world where reality is whatever you tell people it is, being genuine is valuable. Have a brand that has a pulse and a palpable personality. Be honest, but leave some room for omissions. Audiences are nosy, so feed the beasts the truth, just not all 4-courses.
Tell a story. Enchant the world with words, audio and visuals. You’re not selling a product, you’re buying their hearts. Don’t write fiction, remember, be genuine. A story you live is a lot easier to tell than one you’ve made up. Find compelling ways to tell it, breathe life into your brand. Make it more than a logo, price list and invoice. You may not realize it in the moment, but the best chapters are unfolding. Don’t commit yourself to an ending for your brand story, focus on fleshing out the existing characters and magically introducing your audience to new products.
Be ready to fail, and don’t be afraid of it. It’s more likely than not, that, at some point, things will go tits up. The degree of failure will vary, and it would be disingenuous to say you can bounce back from all failures, but preparation gives you a fighting chance.
Live your brand. Be the walking embodiment of the thing you’re trying to sell, not the product, the brand. Selling fish is great, but nobody needs you smelling like it. It can take time to achieve this level of clarity, but over time, your brand should be an sub concious effortless part of you. If you distill a transaction down to it’s purest form, business is about people and relationships, mingle and charm.
Let other people tell your story. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, word-of-mouth is the highest-er. In the longrun, nothing converts and compounds like word-of-mouth. If you succeed in telling your own story, you will know no greater joy than watching somebody who truly buys into it, tell it on your behalf.
Leave a legacy. Treat your brand like your life’s work. Give your brand a childish, naive, limitlessness. Sit on a set of principles, just a few, and let that mould your legacy. Entrench these principles into the culture of your work and watch the seed grow.
She finished off by saying, ‘And doc…for heavens sake, hire professionals to do all the abstract things I’ve said. You might be really good at doing a tummy tuck, but there’s a dark art to finding those Tummies.’
I didn’t charge her, I couldn’t. I should have paid her if we’re being all the way honest. We took a picture, that she immediately uploaded onto her instagram to crown her successful quest for a Plastic Surgeon in Nairobi. Her heels pummelled the floor with elegant and graceful authority as she strode to the lifts.
Medicine, like many other old Professions, has traditionally been very conservative. Being quiet and letting your work speak for itself is the way the trade worked. In medicine, prestige was typically built through a mastery of skill and high volume of scientific publication. That’s where you get respected. The landscape has changed, and medicine, though always sluggish to adapt to culture and lifestyle, inevitably has to. Being niche, specialized and mysterious is only useful if your audience can find you. It’s traditionally been considered, poor etiquette and crude to show the world exactly what it is you do, unless of course it’s dressed up as academic discourse, which if we’re being all the way honest, patients care very little about.
Salvatore Ferragamo, the shoemaker of dreams, built one of the most recognizable fashion brands by combining craft, aesthetics, anatomy and innovation. His story is told in an entire museum dedicated to his works and in iconic moments like the half wood, half steel 4inch heel he made for Marilyn Monroe. His legacy is one of converting the heel to designable surfaces and storytelling devices. An eternal artist, that ate his name and built a brand.
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