Giang Le: Here's something that drives smart physicians a little crazy. You are excellent at what you do, you have real expertise, and you go looking for a non-clinical role, an advisory seat, a consulting gig, something in health tech. You search the job boards. And what you find is either entry level nonsense or something so generic it could be filled by anyone with an MD. Meanwhile you know for a fact that other physicians, ones who are not obviously smarter than you, are getting calls. Advisory boards. Speaking invitations. Consulting retainers. Nobody posted those jobs anywhere. So what's going on?

Giang Le: I'm Giang, founder of Studio Germina, and today I want to talk about why the best non-clinical physician roles are never on a job board, and what that actually means for how you should be spending your time if you want one. Because once you understand the mechanism, this stops being confusing and starts being something you can actually build toward. It just takes longer than a job search, and it works completely differently.

Giang Le: Think about how these roles actually get filled. A health tech company is building a cardiology product. They need a cardiologist who understands clinical workflow and product design. They do not post that role and wait. They ask their investors, their advisors, their network, who do you know. A law firm needs an expert witness. They ask around. A pharma company building out medical affairs wants physicians who already communicate well in public, so they look at who is already doing that publicly. A conference wants a speaker, and they want someone who has already spoken somewhere else first. In every single one of these situations, the decision maker is looking for a name that is already attached to a specific thing. A physician who is excellent at everything and known for nothing in particular simply does not come up in that conversation. It's not personal. It's just how the search happens.

Giang Le: So if reputation is the currency, what are you actually building? I call it a position, and here's the simplest way to think about it. A position is the one sentence a total stranger could use to describe you, plus the evidence that it's true. An emergency physician who has spent five years on how clinical AI fails at the bedside. A pediatrician known for translating vaccine evidence for anxious parents. A surgeon who writes about how surgical teams communicate. Notice something about all three of those. A position is narrower than your specialty and broader than a job title. It's a subject plus a point of view. And here's the part that stings a little, almost no physician has deliberately built one. Most of you have built expertise. Very few of you have built a position. That gap is exactly why the few physicians who have done it seem to have roles arriving out of nowhere, and why everyone else is stuck refreshing job boards.

Giang Le: Here's where I see physicians go wrong constantly. They try to widen their appeal instead of narrowing it. Someone will describe themselves as a healthcare consultant available for strategy, operations, digital health, whatever the room needs. That sounds flexible. To a stranger trying to fill a specific seat, it reads as nothing at all. Compare that to the surgeon who only talks about how surgical teams communicate under pressure. When a device company needs exactly that perspective, there is one name in their head, and it is not the generalist. The fix is not doing more things. It is saying the narrow thing out loud, consistently, until it sticks to you.

Giang Le: Let's get specific, because these roles are not all the same animal. Physician consulting is companies and health systems paying for your judgment on a specific problem. They want a demonstrated point of view and evidence you communicate clearly. This is sold through content and referrals, not applications, full stop. Medical advisory boards are startups and device companies assembling a small group of clinicians to guide their product and lend it credibility. They want physicians who are visible, respected by peers, and willing to engage honestly, even critically, with the product. Compensation there ranges from equity to retainers, and the terms should always be in writing, never a handshake. Medical affairs and industry roles are more structured, and yes, a job board exists for those. But even there, the strongest candidates were already known to the hiring team before the posting ever went up. Health tech leadership, chief medical officer type roles, those are filled almost entirely through networks. And then there's expert witness work and keynote speaking, which run on the exact same reputation logic. We've actually written more on both of those specifically, and I'll put the links in the description if you want to go deeper on either one.

Giang Le: Okay, so here's the practical part. First, decide your sentence. Actually write it down. Put it on your LinkedIn, your website, your bio everywhere. Second, build the evidence. That means public work on your subject, articles, talks, a newsletter, writing on LinkedIn, podcast appearances like this one. About six months of consistent output is roughly what it takes before a stranger finds your sentence believable. And I'd point out, LinkedIn specifically is where a lot of these decision makers actually live, so that's worth knowing before you pour your energy somewhere else. Third, build one findable page, a single place that states your position, shows your evidence, and tells people how to reach you. Fourth, build your network on purpose. Find the advisors, founders, investors, and executives in your subject area. Engage with their work. Show up at the two conferences that actually matter for what you do. And fifth, have your commercial structure ready before you need it. Consulting rates, advisory terms, a simple agreement, all worked out before the first inquiry comes in rather than scrambled together after. The links to a couple of pieces where we go deeper on personal brand and positioning are below, I will put them in the show notes.

Giang Le: I want to be straight with you about the timeline, because I think false promises are worse than no promise. A position takes a year or two to become known. That is slower than firing off applications to a job board. But it produces better roles, more of them, and on better terms, because you are the one being sought instead of the one applying. And here's the thing almost nobody says out loud, most of that work, the placement, the page, the outreach, the contract terms, is business work. It is not clinical work. It's not what you trained for, and it's probably not what you want to be doing at ten at night after a full clinic day.

Giang Le: And that's really the whole reason Studio Germina exists. You are the medical expert. We are the marketing and business experts. You keep doing the work only you can do, the clinical thinking, the teaching, the content people actually trust. We handle the positioning, the public facing pieces, the deals, the contracts, the pricing, the follow up, all of it. Because those hours you already spend online, answering questions, posting things that help people, that's real work. You'd probably do it for free, and honestly, a lot of you already are. We make sure it gets paid for properly, on terms that actually fit your ethics and your vision, without ever turning you into a salesperson. So if you're a physician or healthcare creator who would rather just create and let someone else build the position around it, book a consultation at studio germina dot com, and we'll handle the business side with you. Thanks for spending this time with me. I'm Giang, this has been Beyond the Screen, and I'll catch you next time.