Leveraging the power of one's brand: How applying a marketing framework can help you thrive in academics

In this chapter, we acknowledge the pressures of scholarly output and promotional paths that physicians in academia face which come with the risk of burnout. We will provide a framework borrowed from the business and marketing literature in which physicians undergo reflection on their practice to self-identify a personal brand to promote professional identity formation and purpose. We then discuss how to have more meaningful output of academic work by leveraging your brand sweet spot, which entails the intersection of three domains: (1) what you are passionate about; (2) what you are good at; and (3) what your institution needs. This framework will also allow healthcare providers to more easily recognize areas where there is risk for burnout and failure at work. Lastly, we aim to reframe the experience of rejection-to make it more of an expectation rather than a perception of failure-and provide strategies to mitigate negative feelings commonly associated with rejection.