What is your personal impact factor?

Building your personal brand might seem like a trivial exercise for doctors. For most, their plates are full keeping up with state of the art medicine and coping with all the environmental change and uncertainty in the practice of medicine. However, there are two basic reasons why you should build your personal brand-personal growth and professional growth.

But, how do you measure it?

1. Define your objectives and key results. In the case or building your personal brand, you might define the objective as the amount of money you make from side gigs or other jobs. Here are some ways to measure your personal ROI on social media. Here is how to be a compensated connector.
2. Here is how to measure the impact factor of a journal article you wrote.
3. If you are thinking of consulting to a startup or early-stage company, serving as an advisor, on the management team or board of directors, just having initials after your name won't mean much. You will have to deliver the value that startup CEOs are looking for: money, marketing, making something, management, manpower, mentors, monitoring the environment and mergers and acquisitions. What evidence do you have that you have been successful in doing these things?
4. Use social media analytics to measure your impact on your various channels like website, Linkedin sites, social media,newsletters, blogs, webinars or Slack channels or guest appearances.
5. Include awards, recognition and mentions that support your claim that you are a key opinion leader or subject matter expert on your Linkedin profile.
6. Differentiate inputs, outputs, impact and value
7. Don't forget to measure the intangible impact and value you have created e.g. as a mentor or as a social entrepreneur or volunteer faculty member. Here is what I learned from teaching entrepreneurship to 1st year medical students.
8. Include the unintended negative impacts on your failure resume. What is your burnout technology impact factor?
9. What about your legacy?
10. Measure the differences between the costs and benefits of your personal business model i.e its viability
11. Use artificial intelligence to stratify the results
12. Stop the doctor, medical school and hospital beauty pageants.

Measuring your impact will help you with your personal and professional devlopement. Like the saying goes, without data, you are just another person with an opinion.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs