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Follow-up:

1. Thanks to those of you who replied to last week's newsletter. I love interacting with and learning from this group, so keep it coming.
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2. We're more than halfway through TryDry January. It's still going well over here. It hasn't even put a damper on my après-ski game. ❄️⛷️🍺
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   Remember, it's so much easier to break a habit if you have something appealing to replace it with.
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   ​Athletic Brewing does the trick for me (something free for you and me if you happen to buy through that link).

Start With Why

I talk a lot about restoring the physician-patient relationship, but I'm wary of falling into the trap of focusing just on the physician to patient half of this relationship.

The other half, like any high quality relationship, is patient to physician.

A quick aside: I'm going to stop using the word patient.

Language matters, including the words we say over and over again in our heads. From now on—and feel free to call me out when I screw up—my "patients" are my "clients."

Back to that relationship: In order for it to be a true and therapeutic relationship, I have to trust my clients to know a lot about me, if they desire, just like they trust me to know a lot about them.

Part of the WHY of this fledgling newsletter (I wrote about another part last week) is to foster the client to physician relationship. I want to create for my potential and current clients reliability, knowledge, and a sense of closeness and community with respect to me as a physician and fellow fallible human.

Through writing (and talking here and here) about dermatology and things I’m learning, working on, failing at, enjoying, struggling with, trying, and so on, I'm giving people a chance to know me more than they would ever expect to be able to know the typical insurance-dependent dermatologist they may be referred to or find through a web search.

I hope this helps potential clients make an informed decision about how they want to take care of their health and use their money.

Know, Like, Trust isn't just a catchy thing marketing experts like to say. It matters, especially if you want to build a successful and sustainable business that your clients love.

Share Your Why

When you find yourself struggling to keep up with something hard you’re trying to do and you didn’t Start With Why, take that opportunity to think about your Why.

It won't be easy, but it will be worth it. Having a strong Why makes it much easier to keep going despite the inevitable challenges that arise when you are doing anything hard and worthwhile.

My copy of Simon Sinek's wonderful book happens to have belonged to my late brother, Jim, who is part of my Why for this weekly newsletter. I'm grateful to my Aunt Cina and Uncle John for rescuing much of his wonderful library from his home for me.

Share it, at the very least, with yourself.

If you can muster the courage, share it with friends and family and maybe even the whole Internet if you dare.

About a year ago, I shared my Why (in this example, Why = "I want to achieve this goal because:") for investing time, energy, and money in private residential and commercial real estate.

I wrote the entry shown here on January 1, 2022. I see now that I wrote that date as 1 January 2022 because I guess I thought that was fancy…? 🤦‍♂️

​Two years later, my wife and I, along with a few wonderful partners and some banks, own and operate 20 high quality residential housing units in our community as well as a unique commercial space that we bought partly because we didn't want a developer to buy it and tear it down.

Start with why. It works.

Hopefully this helps explain why my newsletter is wide ranging and goes above and beyond dermatology and the direct care, integrative, holistic model I've chosen for my practice.

I'm Not For Everybody

I know I'm not for everybody. I don't want to be.

If you don't like me, you won't be excited or motivated to do the hard work I'm going to tell you to do if you become a client.

If you don't like me, I won't be able to keep you accountable, and we'll both end up regretting the decision to work together.

If you're struggling with your skin, hair, or nails, I want you to find a great dermatologist. Full stop. I don't care if it's not me. I just want you to find one.

If I'm to your cup of tea but would like help finding someone who can help you, I'd be happy to help.

Podcast

​The Direct Care Derm keeps rolling, and I'm having a blast.

We have a few more 5-star ratings and reviews, including ones from my Mom and Dad. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

If you can't ask your own family for some love, how can you expect yourself to ask for it from strangers, which is what podcasters need to do to grow the visibility of their product?

As of this wring, the show has 409 listens after being live for just two weeks. I'm grateful for your support.

Episode #005 drops today.

In this episode, I share a free sneak peak of my upcoming ebook: Your Derm's Secret to Looking 40 at 50 without Needles & Knives: Your Simple, Cost-Effective, Science-Based System to Looking Younger than Your Friends throughout the Years Starts Today!

(Pro tip: it's not just for 40-year-olds!)

In this ebook, I teach you the Pareto Principle version of a dermatologist-approved daily skincare regimen. You'll get a taste of it in this episode #005 to help you decide if you want the full thing when it's available.

In next week's episode, I interview the wonderful Dr. Dhaval Desai. Dr. Desai is a wonderful human being, an emergency medicine physician, a healthcare hero, a vitiligo sufferer, and author of the excellent memoir, Burning Out on the COVID Front Lines: A Doctor’s Memoir of Fatherhood, Race and Perseverance in the Pandemic.

Dr. Desai happens to be the brother of Dr. Seemal R. Desai, the president-elect of the American Academy of Dermatology, of which I'm a proud Fellow. I had no idea about this connection before the interview, in which he happened to mention that his brother is a dermatologist and my mind started racing.

This is a bit like how I had no idea that Dr. Farhaad Riyaz has >161K followers on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter prior to interviewing him for Episode #002.

Where Else to Find Me Since Last week

​Dr. Dana Corriel, physician, artist, and Founder of Doctors on Social Media (SoMeDocs), and I dissect one of my recent LinkedIn posts that tickled her.

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You can find the full episode here on the SoMeDocs YouTube channel.

If you're a doctor and you're not yet a SoMeDocs member, I encourage you at least to make a free profile.

I love Dr. Corriel's mission and what she does for us, so I'm also a happily paying Network member, which comes with plenty of additional benefits.

Catnip (Dognip?)