I help salespeople become sales leaders w/ the Salesblazer Method™️ | Executive Sales Leader

Over the last decade, I helped build multiple multi-million dollar medical device territories by developing new markets and strategic sales teams. I also helped customer-partners build their personal brands and land consulting contracts, which led to developing new products/techniques and enhanced patient outcomes.

Then, in 2023, I hit a fork in the road. Do I continue building someone else's company at the expense of my convictions, or do I risk my comfortable life to gain personal agency, take complete ownership over my future, and craft something worth telling a story about?

Building something on my terms and diversifying my income would be the best pathway towards control over my calendar, autonomy over the work I get to do, and the direct impact I can have.

While this pathway has not been easy, the results have been remarkable.

Since leaving a sales executive role with a great brand, I have been able to replace my income by working for myself with less effort (working smart).

I have launched Sparkbound, a medical sales & marketing organization that goes beyond the transaction and seeks to enrich the lives of others.

Sparkbound not only helps our people build influential careers, increase our partners' influence, or improve our practitioners' patient outcomes, but we also want to help aspiring difference makers become the change they wish they could make... and then help them make positive change happen.

My mission is to help you see that you're not stuck. You don't have to labor and live as others expect you to. My mission is to help you challenge the status quo, lead by design, and choose the impact you wish to have.

I love writing about leadership, specifically leadership without titles, about how high-impact professionals can earn personal agency, purposeful productivity (doing more good, better), and meaningful work.

Francisco Martinez

Find a leader to work for. Not a job to do. 

The wrong manager can hold your career back for years. 

The right managers see your potential, help you unlock your potential, and champion your promotion. 

The best leaders are agnostic to the logo they represent. 
They are believers in the people they are responsible for. 

The best managers prioritize people first, then profit. 

I've worked for great leaders. 

- They believed I had potential.
- They asked about my wife & children. 
- They invested in me even when I deserved to be fired. 
- They designed comp plans around revenue goals, not quota.
- They created roles to solve problems that fit my passion and strengths. 
- They listened - and did not turn on me - when I considered outside offers.

I once struggled because I wasn't sure I wanted to be in this industry. 
My leaders noticed my decreasing excitement, put their arms around me, and said, "Where do you want to be? We'll help you get there." 

They are why I stayed, even though I was offered better pay elsewhere. 
They are the reason I haven't quit the medical device industry.

Ultimately, their leadership has led to several promotions, bigger paychecks, and once-in-a-lifetime career opportunities. 

Choose leaders who want to see you grow today. 

Agree? Let me know your thoughts👇

If you want to look like a leader, get your MBA. 

If you want to be a leader, start leading.

Leadership is simple. 

Leadership is not: 

- Executive titles
- Being a high performer
- Corner office with a view
- Managing a 10K person org

Leadership is:

- Stepping up to care for those around you.
- Getting results while raising up others.
- Creating opportunities to serve. 
- Leading yourself. 

Titles, certifications, degrees, and education amplify your leadership. 

But they don't make you a leader. 

How can someone start leading today?

After 14 years in medical sales (18 total in sales), I've had to reinvent my career several times. 

I have been demoted, stuck, and promoted. 

I have represented large brands and startups. 

Every time, it has come down to these basic but powerful habits. 

Here are the 17 powerful habits of high-impact salespeople:

1. Focus on what you can control: your attitude & actions
2. Learn to say, "I don't know, but let me find out." 
3" Give, don't take. Give away your time, expertise, & self. 
4. The day starts the night before. Wake up to execute. 
5. Practice patience, not passivity. Growth takes time. 
6. Like Navy Seals, train with a pod of peers. 
7. Sundays are for strategy. Plan an ideal week.
8. Get aligned every quarter with your values and mission
9. Always be checking in on your character. 
10. Do what you say you will do, even if it costs you. 
11. First impressions are for impact, not to impress. 
12. Time block high-revenue activities. Ruthlessly stick to it
13. Send a weekly highlight report to your boss. 
14. Send a weekly lessons learned report to your team. 
15. End each day with a self-assessment review of yourself.
16. Solve big problems instead of reacting to fire drills. 
17. Go beyond the transaction and seek to enrich lives. 

Medical sales, and all sales, are more than hitting quota. 

It's about becoming the person you would rave about doing business with. 

What did I miss? 

--
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You don't need permission to lead.
You don't need to work 60-hour weeks.
You don't need approval to implement AI.

Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. 

The biggest lies we tell ourselves:

"I need to wait until the culture improves."
"I need to be promoted before I can lead."
"I need to stay in my lane.

Here's the truth:

You have everything you need to make change happen in your company.
The work isn't waiting for permission.
The work is taking responsibility.

How many people do you know who spent years taking orders instead of taking initiative?

The most successful people didn't wait to lead and do great work.

They had a vision.
They took small bets.
They chose to lead and make a change.

Stop waiting to get picked.

Pick yourself and make positive change happen. 

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It's not your fault that you aren't getting promoted.

Companies love to promote the wrong people: 

People with seniority, big numbers, and loud mouths. 

But don't let that stop you from getting promoted the right way.

Promoting the right way is simple.
It's not about being extraordinary. 
Nor is it about being high performing. 

It's about being a high-impact person. 

High-impact people don't chase what others chase:

🏷 Executive titles
🏢 The corner office
👏 Praise and recognition
🎓 Fancy MBA degrees

High-impact people are simply leaders without titles. 

Lead where you are. 

No hierarchy.
No entitlement.
No permission needed.

✅ Seek impact, not impressions.
✅ Take initiative when others are complacent.
✅ Pursue excellence when no one's watching.
✅ Lift morale when others stick to themselves.

The gap between insignificance and influence shouldn't be authority.

It's the choice to become the leader you wish you had.

What do you think?

The best leaders aren't the smartest in the room. 

More Knowledge won't get you promoted. Try this instead:

Acquire wisdom. 

Here's why:

🧠 Knowledge is about knowing more. 
🦉 Wisdom is about knowing you don't know enough. 

🧠 Knowledge says, "I know the answer." 
🦉 Wisdom asks, "What's the right question?"

🧠 Knowledge recites best practices. 
🦉 Wisdom knows when to break them.

🧠 Knowledge speaks first in meetings. 
🦉 Wisdom listens, then synthesizes what others missed.

🧠 Knowledge focuses on being right. 
🦉 Wisdom focuses on being useful.

🧠 Knowledge collects information. 
🦉 Wisdom connects the dots others can't see.

The leaders who get promoted aren't the ones with the most certifications or the largest vocabulary.

They're the ones who can navigate complexity, read between the lines, and make decisions when the data is incomplete.

They turn information into insight. Problems into opportunities. Chaos into clarity.

Stop collecting Knowledge. Start cultivating wisdom.

Your career will thank you.

What's one moment when wisdom mattered more than Knowledge in your career? Share below 👇

-- 
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Making Leaders Remarkable | Follow for systems & strategies for effortless leadership & remarkable work | Founder & Principal building an 8-figure sales agency from scratch

Avoid being the 99% who wait to get promoted.

Trust me when I say:

- mastering influence
- excelling in your role
- crafting solutions as a niche
- teaching others to create success

And above all, being worthy of remark...

Will make it 100x easier to get promoted.

Waiting for an opportunity isn’t reliable. Go create a demand for your skills.

99% of people miss a promotion because they try to do "more". 

Future leaders focus on who they are becoming.

❌ Stop asking, "What must I do to get promoted?"
✅ Start asking, "Am I becoming someone worth following?"

❌Stop asking, "How many more years do I need to wait for that next promotion?"
✅ Start asking, "Where can I initiate, and whom can I begin serving today?"

❌Stop asking, "How can I get noticed by leadership?"
✅ Start asking, "How can I shine a spotlight on others?"

❌Stop asking, "What skills do I need on my resume?"
✅ Start asking, "What real, soft skills can I develop?"

❌Stop asking, "Who can help advance my career?"
✅ Start asking, "Whose career can I help advance today?"

❌Stop asking, "What tasks can I take off my boss's plate?"
✅ Start asking, "What common problem can I bring solutions for?"

If you are frustrated that nothing is changing, stop asking the same questions everybody else asks.

Ask better questions.
You'll get different, better results.

"Quality questions create a quality life." - Tony Robbins.

What questions have you asked yourself to become the leader you wish you had?

You can't just "wing it" in leadership. 

If you want to succeed as a leader, start asking two questions:

"Who will I serve today?"
"Who will I surprise this week?" 

Leadership is simple. 
Leadership is servant leadership. 
Servant leadership is not waiting around hoping to be asked for help. 
Servant leadership is initiating and planning acts of service. 

You will either lead well or not. There's no in betweena. 

You can fail to plan your leadership, but you will plan to fail as a leader. 

How do you plan to lead well this week?

Don't just pray for a great culture.

Be the answer to your prayer.

It's easy to hope for a healthy workplace—one where you feel safe, valued, and seen.

But culture isn't something you stumble upon.

It's something you help create.

Culture is not:

- Pizza, ping pong, or even pickleball
- Unlimited PTO or remote work
- A profitable business unit
- A mission statement
- HR department
- Core values
- The CEO

The success or attitude of individual contributors is not the measure of culture. 
But it is measured by:

- Low burnout
- Employee referrals
- High retention rates
- People celebrate each other
- Alignment of all people and parts
- The way employees feel on Sunday night

Yet, no culture is perfect. Even great workplaces will disappoint at times.
And that's okay.

That's why what matters is how you carry yourself and champion the culture you wish you had.

You bring attitude, habits, and values everywhere you go.

The best cultures aren't found. Courageous people cultivate them.

So yes, pray for a great team, a mission you can stand behind, and a culture that breathes life.

But don't stop there.
Be the person who:

- Gives credit
- Has a bias for action
- Chooses to lead without a title.
- Praises the efforts and success of others.
- Isn't waiting to be asked to serve but creates opportunities to serve.

You're not just a recipient of great culture.
You're crafting it... every single day.

What are the best ways a leader without a title can impact their culture?

The best medical sales reps don't sell. They serve.

After 14 years in medical sales, I've watched too many reps crash and burn trying to be the smartest person in the room.

Here's what actually works:

Stop trying to impress doctors.
Start trying to improve patient outcomes.

This mindset changes everything.

Here are the non-negotiables for high-performing medical sales reps: 

✅ Lead with patient impact, not product features
✅ Create opportunities to serve your customers. 
✅ Play the long game and build trust as you build your pipeline.
✅ Educate, educate, educate. 
✅ Don't knock the competition. 

Here's the interesting truth:

When you stop selling and start serving, your numbers go up.

In medical sales, we don't just move products.
We're integral to someone's healing.

Act like it.

What's the most important lesson you've learned about putting people before profit?

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The #1 credential for leadership is character. 

Without high integrity, you can't influence people effectively. 

Character is more important than your certifications.
Character is more important than your degrees. 
Character is more important than your experience.
Character is more important than your success. 
Character is more important than your content.
Character is more important than your mission.

Character is the most foundational aspect of leadership, as everything flows from it. 

Your hard work. Your motivation. Your goals for your people. Your servant leadership. Your trustworthiness.

All of it flows from the person you are when nobody is watching.

Before you ask what you should do to be a leader, ask, "Who am I becoming?"

Character is a slow brew. It is shaped and developed through testing over time. 

So be patient. 
Know who you want to become.
Be that person. 
When you fail, own up to it. 

That's what the people around you need most. 

Then watch yourself naturally work on being and having all those other things essential for success with people. 

Do you agree or disagree? Comment and let me know.
♻️ Repost and like if you agree

P C.

Don't quit. Don't give up. Turn that frustration around. 

Because success is not a corner office, a title, or a bigger role. 

Thinking in terms of vanity metrics almost destroyed my career. 

Thinking I could impact lives if I had that bigger role hindered my effort. 

I realized that it wasn't my managers keeping me from bigger and better things. 
It was me. 

Once I chose to be a salesblazer, making positive change happen right where I was and leading without a title, my career blossomed. 

Here's the mindset that finds success with or without titles:

- You make change happen for the sake of others. 
- You initiate solving common problems your way. 
- You think beyond your role. Create a rising tide. 
- You are willing to ask for help from your tribe.
- You are faithful with what you've been given.
- You detach from outcomes. Create systems. 
- You know what makes you unique. 
- You don't hate small beginnings.
- You adopt the 12-week year. 
- You aim to work hard. 
- You excel. 

The result? 

You build an impactful and successful career.

The brutal truth about starting your own business: it doesn't give you the freedom, security, and everything you dreamt about when first starting.

Well... at least not at first.

Ben Horowitz said it best:

"As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every two hours and cried."

While my trust in the Lord keeps me sound asleep at night, that doesn't mean I don't wrestle with stress and anxiety over the business and the people that have come along for the ride. 

Building a medical sales agency from scratch has taught me:

- Relationships are priceless, and integrity - even when it costs you - is the glue that keeps them together.

- While you have a sense of ownership over your calendar, you're owned by the customer and your people. 

- When your people don't show up, you have to... even if it's on the weekend. 

- No such thing as a cushy savings account because cash goes quick when you're scaling fast. 

- More time with your family? No such thing. 

Everybody dreams about starting a business.

But nobody wants to sacrifice and prepare for the cost of actually building a business from scratch. 

Starting a business isn't about freedom.

It's about trading one set of problems for another — except now they're all yours.

And there's no one to blame if things don't get done except yourself 😂 

Is it worth it? 

100%. 

What matters most is to count the cost before you leap. 

Because the business builders who survive aren't the ones with the best ideas.

They're the ones who knew what they were signing up for — and chose it anyway.

What's the hardest part of starting a business nobody warned you about?

The biggest mistake I made in building an influential sales career:

Not being generous.

Not monetarily, that's easy.

But sacrificial with everything else.

Now I give away my:

- Expertise to customers with zero strings attached
- Strengths & skills to develop others
- Time in the trenches with our reps
- Ideas to improve our organization

Giving binds people into a community.

Salesblazers are better together.

Take your work seriously, but not yourself seriously.

One of the greatest mindsets for doing great work without running over people:

- Think of yourself less (& others more)
- You’re not that important
- Commit unwaveringly to your mission
- Leave a mark on those you serve
- Decide to involve the skills and talents of your team
- Have fun

Nobody likes to work with arrogant jerks. 

The humble way, while more challenging, brings everybody together to accomplish your important work.

Caring isn't a strategy you implement. 

It is a lifestyle you embody daily.

So stop acting like you care. Start actually caring. 

❌ Don't perform empathy for your team 
✅ Genuinely invest in their growth

❌ Don't fake interest in customers
 ✅ Detach from profit and connect as humans

❌ Don't care for the applause 
✅ Care because it's a person you can impact

If you feel you are acting, tell yourself to care genuinely.

Do the work to make an impact, not just to impress.

What's one way to embody authentic care?

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The system for promoting salespeople is broken.

And it's costing companies their best leaders.

5 metrics nobody is using to discover true leaders:

Old metrics:

- Seniority
- Expertise
- Big personality
- Quota achievement
- Number of direct reports

Better metrics:

- Flexes between extrovert and introverted personalities
- Develops and creates more leaders (not just followers)
- People passionately following their mission and vision
- Obsesses over people first over quota
- Initiates acts of service

The common denominator? 

Not quota achievement or high-performing. 
But pouring into people because that's the right thing to do. 

Traditional credentials make a manager. 
People make the leader.

What's one trait youve seen in a great leader that never shows up on a performance review?

The system for promoting salespeople is broken

No matter how experienced you are, selling can be daunting.

Here's how to stay calm (without hacks):

Overthinking ➡️ Write out strategy 
Uninspired ➡️ Read customer stories
Scared of rejection ➡️ Practice your pitch
Stuck in a rut ➡️ Call a mentor
Tired of cold-calling ➡️ Rehearse your why
Confused ➡️ Leverage AI
Frustrated by mgmt ➡️ Go lead
Burned out ➡️ Create a system
Impatient ➡️ Impatient
Unmotivated ➡️ Read a book

What would you add?

Find a leader to work for. Not a job to do. 

The wrong manager can burn you out and hold back your life. 

The right managers know your emotional and physical capacity and help you maximize it, not exhaust it. 

The best leaders are agnostic to "hustle culture."  
They not only push their people to greatness but also protect them from burnout. 

The best managers prioritize people first, then profit. 

Choose leaders who want to see you succeed without crashing. 

Agree? Let me know your thoughts👇

I help surgeons become trusted digital voices - because in today’s world, trust is your currency and reputation your bank account.

I help surgeons turn trust into leverage. Not followers. Not fame. Real authority that changes how patients, peers, and industry treat them.

I work with surgeons who are technically excellent but don’t have time or skill to build trust and monetize their reputation. I fix that.

Through my Physician Brand Rx™ protocol I help surgeons:
	•	Clarify their message so it cuts through the noise
	•	Show up consistently online in a way that earns trust
	•	Build digital authority that elevates their reputation and expands their impact

At FEED. The Agency - our award-winning physician brand firm - we create:
	•	Strategic brand positioning that sets surgeons apart
	•	Premium, ghostwritten content that accelerates trust
	•	High-impact DOL campaigns that make surgeons the obvious choice for patients, peers, media, and MedTech

My mission is simple:

Help surgeons step into Digital Opinion Leadership- so their expertise isn’t just seen… it’s sought after.

Matthew Scott

Steve Carell didn’t know Yolanda was going to shave his pubic hair.


He found out the same way most patients do.

Right before it happened.

I watched his hip replacement video. Because underneath the comedy is something every surgeon should feel a little uncomfortable about.

Your patients are walking into one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives with massive information gaps. Not about the surgery. About the experience around the surgery.

-Nobody told Steve about Yolanda. 
-Nobody warned him the OR was going to look like a torture chamber. 
-Nobody mentioned he’d be asked to choose between titanium and ceramic while his brain was running on pure adrenaline and fear.

He’s Steve Carell. Imagine your average 67-year-old patient.

Ryan “Saw-Bones” Molli, D.O. Hands down, the best I’ve experienced at closing that gap before the patient ever meets him in person.

THE Orthopedic Journey is Dr. Molli’s 
patient experience framework built around a simple insight: the clinical outcome is only part of what patients actually go through. Most arrive confused, under-informed, and anxious — not because the medicine failed them, but because no one designed the experience around them. 

This changes that.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Steve Carell turned it into a bit. 

Like Dr. Molli, you can turn it into a practice builder.

Matthew Ray Scott, MS

Surgeon Reputation Architect | Physician Brand Rx™ Creator | Best-Selling Author | Voted Best Cause Marketing Agency by The AMA.

I hired my daughter.

I got a front row seat to watch Sierra become something I never coached her to be. A creative. A real one. The kind who sees angles in a story before you’ve even finished telling it. The kind who makes content that doesn’t sound like content.

I’ve spent years helping surgeons find their voice. Telling them that the most powerful thing they own isn’t their technique, it’s their story.

Turns out I was raising someone who already knew that.

I post this because if you’re a parent watching your kid quietly become something extraordinary, you know this feeling doesn’t have a clean word for it.

It sits somewhere between pride and humility.

Because you look at them and think: some of that is me.

And then you look a little closer and think: most of that is entirely her.

Sierra, watching you build your creative life has made me better at building mine.

That’s not something I expected. But it’s the best thing about working with you.

No alternative text description for this image

Sierra (middle daughter) and I got tattoos together.

Today we rebuilt the agency website side by side. By noon we had sauce on the stove. Chicken cutlets in the pan. Homemade meatballs from scratch. 

The kind of vodka penne that takes the whole afternoon and makes the whole house smell like Sunday.

She’s 30. She doesn’t have to work with her dad.

I spent 20 years in medtech learning what it means to leave a mark. Rooms full of surgeons, C-suites, board members. 

I built a business to buy back my time and stop waiting for someone else to decide what my life was worth.

Turns out the best thing I did with that time was share it with my tribe (family/framily).

People ask me what success looks like. I used to have a complicated answer.

Now I just say: my daughter chose to build something with me. 

And we made dinner while we did it.

That’s the whole thing.

Matthew Ray Scott

(99+) Feed | LinkedIn

JSESSIONID

li_at

Talks about #branding, #medicalsales, #healthcarebranding, and #medicaldevicemarketing

Beavis and Butt-Head Understand Medtech’s AI Strategy Better Than Medtech Does.

I’m helping surgeons launch AI integration companies and I’m around Med Tech leaders sniffing around AI. 

It’s a scene from this Saturday Night Live skit. 

Senators asking questions that made you cringe.

Executives answering with words that meant nothing.

And somewhere in the background, Beavis and Butt-Head going “heh heh… he said algorithm.”

I kept thinking: this is medtech’s AI moment.

Fictional hearing. Real energy.

SENATOR: “Can you explain how your AI platform improves surgical outcomes?”

MEDTECH EXEC: “Absolutely. Our proprietary deep learning infrastructure leverages real-time intraoperative data to create a connected ecosystem of intelligence across the care continuum.”

SENATOR: “So… does it work?”

MEDTECH EXEC: “It’s a force multiplier.”

Beavis: “Heh heh. He said multiplier.”
Butt-Head: “Yeah yeah. He has no idea what it does.”

Here’s what I know after working with surgeons for two decades.

The ones winning right now are not waiting for their medtech partner to figure out AI strategy.

They are building their own.
Their voice. Their data. Their reputation. Their distribution.

The buzzwords are somebody else’s problem.

The outcomes are theirs.

To my knowledge, I co-develop more digital thought leadership about robotic surgery for orthopedic surgeons, minimally invasive spine surgery for spine surgeons, and interventional pain as a profitable integration into orthopedic and spine practices than anyone in the world.

Over 500 surgeons - We work with some of the top orthopedic, spine, neurosurgery, and interventional pain physicians on the planet.

Other than Joe Urban and Thomas Fleetwood - I will, likely, never receive a call from a medtech sales or marketing leader saying:

"You're shaping the narrative of our technology with our top surgeons. And it doesn't cost our company one penny. The purpose of my call is to find out how we can arm you and equip you with better information."

But think about what's actually happening.

The surgeons we represent are not waiting to be selected by med tech as KOLs...

We're taking surgeons and turning them into Digital Opinion Leaders.

DOLs who build audiences. DOLs who create content ecosystems. DOLs who shape how the next generation of surgeons thinks about your technology.

Medtech companies spend millions on KOL development, advisory boards, peer-to-peer education, and surgeon engagement programs.

We do that work organically.

Not as a vendor to medtech. As a trusted advisor to their most influential surgeons.

The irony?

Our independence is why surgeons trust us.
And that trust is why the content works.

Which is exactly why the technology narrative gets shaped in the first place.
So no, I don't wait for med tech to call. 

But someone in medtech marketing should probably do the math.

For five years straight I’ve sent 7 personalized videos, a day, to 7 people I want to help before 7:01 AM.

Each one, typically, is under 60 seconds. All recorded on my phone or webcam. No studio. No editor. No script.

Five years in a row it has created multiple seven figures in revenue.

Most people building a service business are waiting on funnels and algorithms to do the work they’re afraid to do themselves. 

That work is showing up for specific people, by name, before the rest of the world has had their coffee.

A 47-second video that proves you actually see someone cuts through more noise than any campaign ever will. It says I know who you are. I know what you’re working on. I think I can help.

People don’t hire strangers. They hire people who already felt like they gave a damn.

7 videos. 7 people. Before 7:01 AM. Start tomorrow.

Everyone else, but you and I, will quit after the third week.

For years in medtech, I lived inside a trade show booth.

Not figuratively. Literally. You showed up early, you stood tall, you waited. The philosophy was simple: be there, stay visible, and when a surgeon walks by, you go get them. Chase them down the aisle if you have to. That was the job.

I understood it. I did it. And a part of me always felt like there had to be a better way.

When I left medtech and started working directly with surgeons, I made myself a promise. I would never ask a surgeon to come find me. I would never ask for an appointment. I would never show up in their world with my hand out.

Instead, I started sending hyper-personalized videos. Seven of them. To seven different surgeons I genuinely wanted to help. Before 7:01 AM. Every single day. No pitch. No ask. Just value, delivered with intention, before most people have had their first cup of coffee.

That ritual changed everything.

So fifteen years later, when I do show up at a conference, I am not spending $40,000 on carpet and a back wall. I am not wandering the floor hoping to run into someone. I already know exactly who I am there to see. 

I fly into Nashville or New Orleans or LA, I stay in the shadows, I rent a bougie Air BnB, nearby, I put my culinary school to work, feed a surgeon, and I have one conversation that actually matters.

Then I get on a plane and go home.

I spent a decade waiting for surgeons to walk past a booth.

Now they ask me what I’m cooking next trade show.

My father was 65 when he died.

He had run marathons. He was one of the top tennis players and golfers in the South. 

Death. Nobody saw it coming. 

That’s the thing about unexpected loss. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t give you time to prepare a response.

What it does give you, if you’re paying attention, is a moment of absolute clarity about what matters.

My mother stood in the middle of that grief and did something I’ve thought about almost every day since. She prayed the Prayer of Jabez over my life.

If you don’t know it, here’s the short version. Jabez shows up in 1 Chronicles almost as a footnote. Two verses in the middle of a genealogy that most people skip. He asks God for four things. Bless me. Enlarge my territory. Let your hand be with me. Keep me from harm.

That’s it. No elaborate theology. No conditions. Just a man asking to matter more than his circumstances suggested he would.

My mother prayed that prayer over me the way only a woman who has just buried her husband can pray something. With everything she had left.

And I made a decision.

Not just about my career or my company or what I was going to build. I made a decision about her.

She needed to mother me. I knew that. Grief does that. It reaches for the familiar things, the relationships that still make sense when everything else has stopped making sense. But I also knew something else. She needed to feel needed. Not just loved. Needed.

So I hired her.

She controls everything that touches money. Bookkeeping. Accounts payable. Accounts receivable. Hiring. Making sure everyone gets paid. She is the financial spine of everything we’ve built.

The agency doesn’t run without her. That’s not sentiment. That’s just true.

People talk about building a business like it’s a solitary act. Like the founder is out there alone, making something from nothing through sheer force of will. 

But every company I’ve ever respected has someone in it who holds the thing together quietly. Someone whose name isn’t on the press release but whose fingerprints are on every single decision that actually kept the lights on.

That’s my mom.

She prayed that my territory would be enlarged. And then she showed up and helped me build it.

I don’t know what promise you made in your hardest moment. I don’t know who was standing there when the call came or what you decided in the days after.

But I know this. The Prayer of Jabez isn’t a prosperity prayer. It’s a purposeful expansion prayer. It’s the prayer of someone who believes their life is supposed to count for more than it currently does and is willing to ask, out loud, for the help to make that happen.

My mother believed that about me before I believed it about myself.

The least I could do was build something worthy of the prayer.

The female surgeons I work with are among the most clinically rigorous people I've encountered in this space.

They are also operating inside a structural trap that their male counterparts never think about once.

Here's what behavioral psychology has documented - not opinion, peer-reviewed research - about how expert women are evaluated: women in high-status professional roles are assessed on two axes simultaneously. 

Competence and warmth. Men in identical roles are effectively assessed on one.

This asymmetry has a direct consequence that nobody in healthcare thought leadership is naming clearly enough.

Ask Kiran V. Patel, MD - we spend an entire dinner discussing such topics. 

Content that optimizes for warmth - relatable posts, personality-forward content, appearance-based visibility - suppresses perceived competence in the specific audiences where authority matters most. Peers. Industry. Referring surgeons. The medtech VP deciding who gets the advisory board call.

The female surgeon doesn't lose followers. She loses legibility in the rooms where likability is irrelevant.

This is not a critique of any individual surgeon's choices. It is a diagnosis of a market asymmetry that was not designed by surgeons and was not designed to serve them.

The surgeons I work with who understand this stop asking how to appear more relatable. They start asking what signal the right audience is actually calibrating for. That question leads somewhere completely different - to clinical specificity, to intellectual point of view, to a platform the authority economy can actually act on.

The research on this goes back decades. Heilman (2001). Fiske et al. (2002). The mechanism is documented. The application to digital reputation is newer — and it is the thing nobody is building a communication narrative framework around yet.

If you are a female surgeon building a platform and you have ever felt the gap between your follower count and the quality of your inbound opportunities -this is worth understanding. 

The gap is not a content problem. 
It is a signal problem. 
And it has a structural explanation.

My word for 2026 is authorship.
Not the kind you think.

Yes, I co-authored a bestselling book.
Yes, we are launching another one this year.
But authorship taught me something I was not expecting.

The best things I have ever built were co-authored.

2025 best-selling book, men@pause: Life 2.0, was co-authored by two buddies I grew up with. 

Physician BrandRx was co-authored with Scott Sigman MD who believed reputation could be systematized.

Content Crib was co-launched six years ago with my buddy Eric I Anderson for healthcare leaders who wanted to learn how to become thought leaders. 

The Orthopreneurs Symposium was co-launched with Ryan “Saw-Bones” Molli, D.O. & Chris McClellan, DO  to equip surgeons who refused to separate their clinical identity from their entrepreneurial one.

Ortho Mafia Poets was co-launched w/Dr. Scott Sigman as a community that understood the best surgeon thought leadership does not sound like marketing. It sounds like conviction.

Required a refresh. 

We canceled all of our big medtech business. Every contract. Every retainer. Every safe, predictable revenue stream.

Instead we went all in on 100 surgeons.

Quietly in 2025 becoming reputation architects. 

Unconventionally, we started with professional athletes. Learning how to help them turn “pro” in something other than their sport. 

Next, we began working with orthopedic, spine, and neurosurgeons. Studied what trust looks like when the stakes are a career, a body, a legacy. Already learned that reputation is not what you say about yourself. It is what the right people repeat when you are not in the room.

We approached med tech leaders, thinking they would be interested in thought leadership. Only 1. Others were indifferent. 

We had a plan. Going all-in. We became the surgeon reputation architect. A job description you will not find. 

Not a marketing agency. Not a social media manager. Not a content mill with a healthcare vertical.

An architect. Someone who studies the blueprint before building. Someone who understands that a surgeon’s reputation has a structure, a foundation that has to hold before you ever add a story.

Now we are expanding. Interventional pain. Cardiac.

Not because we are chasing growth. Because surgeons in those specialties started asking why no one was doing for them what we were doing for ortho and spine.

We opted out of launching campaigns for medtech giants. We opted in to brand launches for medtech startups and surgeon-founder ventures.

Your reputation is being written whether you author it or not.

LinkedIn just got a lot smarter. And most surgeon content just got a lot more invisible.


The platform rolled out a new algorithm that reads your posts semantically. That means it is no longer counting keywords. It is reading for meaning. It is assessing whether you actually have a coherent point of view or whether you are just producing content that sounds like every other surgeon on the platform.

Here is what that means for you practically.

If your last 30 posts could have been written by any surgeon in your specialty, the algorithm now knows that. It cannot distinguish you from the noise. So it does not distribute you.

If your posts, read as a body of work, tell a story about who you are, what you believe, and what you stand for clinically, the algorithm begins to associate your profile with that topic. 

Distribution follows authority.

This is the KOL to DOL transition playing out at the algorithmic level.

LinkedIn is now rewarding surgeons who have built a point of view, not just a posting schedule.

Three things to do right now.

1. Stop posting tips. Start posting beliefs.

2. Pick three to five ideas you return to repeatedly and approach them from different angles, different patient stories, different clinical moments.

3. Own specific language. The surgeons who become the algorithm’s default recommendation for their niche are the ones who consistently occupy the same semantic territory.

Clinical excellence got you to the table.
Narrative capacity is what keeps you at it.

If you insist on writing the way you have always written, talking about the same things your peers have always talked about, refusing to learn the frameworks of narrative transportation, perspective, and problem solving, and objecting to the visual structure of how content actually gets read on this platform, the algorithm is not going to argue with you. It is just going to ignore you.

The algorithm just made that official.

Hospitals spend hundreds of thousands dollars on marketing departments that make every surgeon look identical. That's not a branding strategy. That's a camouflage strategy.

Professional headshot. White coat. Arms crossed and a tagline about "compassionate, patient-centered care."

Now multiply that across every surgeon on the hospital website.
Same photo style. Same language. Same everything.

That's not a branding strategy. That's a camouflage strategy.

The surgeon who replaced 5,000 joints and pioneered an outpatient protocol gets the same bio template as the surgeon who graduated residency last year.
The surgeon who developed a technique that changed how an entire procedure is performed gets the same "Dr. Smith is passionate about helping patients return to active lifestyles" copy as everyone else on the page.

The hospital didn't build their brand. The hospital buried it.
Not intentionally. But effectively.

Because hospital marketing departments aren't designed to differentiate individual surgeons. They're designed to protect institutional consistency. 

Those are two completely different objectives.

So the surgeon with 20 years of expertise, a philosophy that changes how patients think about their own surgery, and a track record that medtech companies would pay to be associated with...

...looks identical to every other name on a dropdown menu.

That's not a visibility problem. That's a translation problem.

The clinical excellence exists. The reputation architecture doesn't.

And until that changes, the surgeon's expertise compounds inside the hospital while their reputation flatlines outside of it.

Surgeons don't need to leave their institution to fix this. They need to stop relying on it as their only megaphone.

Your hospital markets the system. You need to digitize trust.
And those are two very different prescriptions.

- - - 

I help surgeons build something most of them didn't know they were missing.
Not a bigger following. Not a prettier website.

A reputation that works when they're not in the room.

Category ownership. Thought leadership. Media attention. Medtech monetization.

That sequence isn't random.

When a surgeon owns a category, they stop competing and start being sought out. When they publish ideas that challenge how people think, media and conferences come to them. And when a medtech company can see that a surgeon doesn't just use a device but can articulate why it matters, that's when the consulting conversation starts.

None of that comes from posting more often. It comes from reputation architecture — a system that translates what you already know into positioning that compounds over time.

- - - 
What prompted this post? I'm was on a Zoom w/a 30-something hospital marketing director telling a prestigious spine surgeon he can't do anything that can be perceived as personal branding. Only the hospital can "market" his personal reputation. 

Why LinkedIn is the ideal medium for surgeons.

Matthew, you must enjoy jumping from perfectly good airplanes. 

"No, I just prefer hanging out with those who do."

Ted Williams divided the strike zone into 77 cells.

Each one roughly the size of a baseball. He calculated his batting average for every single cell. Low outside corner? .230. Belt-high, middle-in? .400+.

His philosophy came down to one discipline. Only swing at pitches in your happy zone. 

Even when the umpire called it a strike/when the crowd bood/when the manager wanted more aggression.

He refused.

.344 lifetime average. Highest on-base percentage in baseball history. The last human being to hit .400.

Williams did not have the best swing. He had the best discipline. He understood something most people never figure out.

You do not win by doing more. You win by knowing where you are .400 and refusing to swing anywhere else.

I have observed two surgeons who remind me of Williams more than they would ever give themselves credit for.

These two surgeons will elbow me in the rib cage for drawing attention to them. 

Dr. Charlie DeCook built 12x12. Twelve total joints by lunch. Not by moving faster. By mapping every second of the OR the way Williams mapped every cell of the strike zone. 

Every role defined. 
Every instrument anticipated. 
Every wasted motion eliminated. 

After filming him: 

It is not speed. 
It is precision that looks like speed because nothing is wasted.

Dr. Robert Masson MD neurosurgeon and Founder of eXeX saw what most surgeons visualize: the best way to make the surgeon better is to remove every distraction around them. 

He built a mixed reality and AI platform not for the surgeon’s hands but for the surgical team. The logistics. The flow. 

The invisible architecture that lets the surgeon operate in calm, focused flow. 

He described his ideal OR the way Williams must have felt when the batter’s box went quiet.

(Full transparency: I serve on the eXeX advisory board.)

Both surgeons studied their craft at a cellular level and refused to swing at .230 pitches.

Swinging at .230 pitches because it felt wrong to watch them go by.

-Williams said no with his bat.
-Buffett says no with his checkbook.
-Dr. DeCook says no with his OR clock.
-Dr. Masson says no with his operating environment.

Find your 77 cells.
Ignore the rest.
Let them boo.

Believe → Focus → Disrupt → Repeat.

Neurosurgeon | Biomedical Engineer | CEO, eXeX™ | Surgery Intelligence | Healthy Longevity

eXeX

I spent years in MedTech as a VP of Sales deciding which surgeons got the call.

I know exactly how the KOL designation works. Who gets selected. Why they get selected. And what the company is actually buying when they put a surgeon’s name on a roster.

They are not buying your surgical excellence. They never were.

They are borrowing your credibility to move their product. Those two things have been dressed up as a partnership for three decades and I was inside the machine long enough to know nobody talks about that distinction out loud.

The surgeon produces the authority. The company borrows it.

I left MedTech to build something on the other side of that equation. And the first thing I noticed when I started working with surgeons on their own reputation architecture is how many of them were auditing themselves against criteria that were never designed with their interests at the center.

Waiting to be designated. Waiting to be placed on a panel. Waiting for an external party to publicly confirm what their patients and colleagues already knew privately.

I watched surgeons with fifteen years of category-defining outcomes sit invisible online while the industry circled the same rotating faces at the same conferences.

That is not a talent problem. That is a system problem.

And the surgeons who understand the system stop playing by its rules.

Here is what I have seen happen when a surgeon stops treating the KOL designation as the destination and starts treating their own reputation as the asset.

MedTech stops being the gatekeeper and starts being the opportunity. Companies do not pursue surgeons who are waiting to be found. They move toward surgeons who are already visible. Already authoritative. Already shaping the conversation their customers are paying attention to.

The platform you build does not compete with the KOL model.

It makes you the one they call before the budget cycle closes.

If you are a surgeon who has been waiting for an external designation to validate what your outcomes already prove, building your own reputation architecture is the right decision.

Because MedTech needs your credibility to sell their product.

You never needed their platform to build your authority.

I just wish someone had told you that sooner.

Stop Trying to Be Relatable: Build Your Surgical Reputation, Not Your Follower Count

March 20-21.

Content Crib 6.0 is built on the belief:

The right partnership changes everything.

One person with a good idea.
Linked with the right person.
Creates something disproportionate in impact.

1 + 1 = 3.

Not because you work harder.
Because you stop building in the dark.

March 20-21, 2026
Bentonville, Arkansas

This is not a conference where we only celebrate what worked.

We are going to show how it was built.
Step by step.
Including the mistakes.
Including the cost.
Including the moments where it almost did not happen.

If you are a physician, healthcare leader, orthopreneur, or MedTech builder, and you are carrying any of these quietly -
	•	A book you have not written yet
	•	A six-figure side hustle you have not launched
	•	A category you want to own but cannot see the path
	•	A smarter way to serve patients without abandoning your post
	•	A business idea that needs a second brain and a second set of hands

This is for you.

Because nobody teaches the hardest part:
How to go from idea to partnership.
How to find the right creative partner.
How to pitch them.
How to build something together.
How to make it sustainable without burning down your life.

If that is the season you are in, comment or DM me and I will send you the details for Content Crib 6.0.

Only 50 will hear me, in person, break down the (1+1=3) protocol I used to co-launch three surgeon-led seven-figure businesses with zero marketing spend and no sales team.

March 20th. Content Crib 6.0. Bentonville, Arkansas. 3:37 PM.

1. It starts with identity. Not your CV. Not your title. Your aspirational archetype. The version of you that owns a category instead of competing in one.
2. You develop content that positions you as the digital opinion leader in your category. 
3. You connect with the people you actually want to help. 
4. You build a community of like minds. And that community becomes the foundation of something no algorithm can manufacture.
5. Trust and reputation as the ultimate currency.

On March 20th-21st I will share this entire framework with 50 surgeons and healthcare thought leaders who are ready to punch imposter syndrome in the mouth, pursue a creative partnership, and stop waiting for permission to lead.

50 seats. Two days. 

Your next bestseller, your seven-figure side hustle, your category-defining moment is closer than you think. The only thing standing between you and it is the belief that you have to build it alone.

You don't.

I became a lifestyle design entrepreneur around three non-negotiables.

1. Never carry someone else’s quota.
2. Never wait for external validation to get paid.
3. And never live somewhere you can’t take a leak in your own backyard at 2 in the afternoon.

Four acres in Northwest Arkansas. That’s the dream.

No neighbors in my business. No HOA. House paid for in cash. Just me, the Ozarks, and the kind of freedom most people put on a vision board.

Then we went and built a Finnish sauna right onto the side of the house.

Life got significantly better. And significantly more problematic for my wife.

Because now I’m walking from the sauna to the back porch in nothing but a pair of tighty-whities. Towel optional. Confidence levels: elite. Bulk in tow.

She tolerated it for about three weeks.
Then she bought me a robe.
I wear it now. Sometimes.

The point is this. A lot of people are out here optimizing their LinkedIn profile, their morning routine, their quarterly goals.

I’m optimizing my acreage-to-dignity ratio.

And I’m doing just fine.

Northwest Arkansas. Come for the trails. Stay for the personal freedom.

Find your WHERE and your WHAT and HOW come trailing along. 

#LifestyleDesign #NWA #WorkFromAnywhere #TheFieldManual

Surgeons are the only profession in the world that spent a decade earning the most trusted credential in society, and then decided the key to an audience was pretending they didn't.

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The Battle

Francisco Martinez

Matthew Scott

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The Battle

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Matthew Scott

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Francisco Martinez's LinkedIn Performance

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