In episode 90 of We Are, Marketing Happy, Jenny sits down with Hedy & Hopp’s Director of Data & Technology, Mark Brandes, for a conversation that steps outside our usual healthcare marketing topics. We’re diving into mindset specifically, how it shows up in our industry through things like imposter syndrome.
Mark shares insights from a podcast he loves, Standard Deviation, and discusses how reframing imposter syndrome as “manifestations” can help us move past feelings of inadequacy. From the pressure to be a perfectionist or expert to the fear of asking for help, this episode unpacks the invisible weight many marketers carry, especially as roles evolve to include data, privacy, compliance, and much more. Jenny and Mark reflect on their own experiences and offer encouragement to anyone who’s ever thought, “Why am I even in this room?” Spoiler alert: you absolutely belong there.
Resources
Standard Deviation Podcast Episode
Connect with Mark:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbrandes/
Connect with Jenny:
Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/
If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.
Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Bristow, and I’m also the CEO and founder of Hedy & Hopp, a full service and fully healthcare marketing agency. I’m really excited today to have our very own Mark Brandes who is the Director of Data & Technology here at Hedy & Hopp, and we’re going to talk about something that is completely different from our normal content.
For any of you who have chatted with an agent or team member or have seen us at a conference or industry event, it may feel like it’s the right vibe. But it isn’t our normal content. Today we’re going to talk about the power of mindsets and kind of what we’re seeing in the industry. As far as trends and different outside influences and the power of thought to help you be more successful in your position and just a little bit of background, all of this kind of was teed up because we have so many folks that come to us, especially with all of the shifting landscape components around privacy and compliance.
And they feel, like a fish out of water. They’re like, I’m in marketing. Like, why am I having to learn all of these new things? I didn’t go to school for this. This, you know, is something I feel kind of uncomfortable with or maybe not prepared to handle or tackle on their own. And then Mark shared a couple of resources, including a podcast that really talked about a shift in mindset that can make you really frame it more as an opportunity for growth instead of a challenge.
So Mark, with that, take it away. Tell us a little bit about some of this content you’ve been engaging with and some of the takeaways.
Mark: Yeah. Thanks, Jenny. So yeah, I, I follow, a gentleman by the name of Simo Ahava, he’s been kind of one of my heroes in the techno marketing industry. He just really kind of helped me learn how Google Tag Manager works, how things in GA4 work server-side.
He’s been very instrumental. He’s kind of a a trailblazer there. So I love the insight that he brings to things and what he talks about. And I noticed he has a podcast with a woman named Juliana Jackson. It’s called Standard Deviation, which is obviously a fun, nerdy name for a podcast, which I love.
But, they’ve been doing it for a few years now. An episode came across, in my email talking about them, speaking about imposter syndrome, which I felt was really interesting because I’m always interested in people that, you know, you look up to people that are so successful and you think, man, you know, they’re so confident and they they do all this turns out a lot of people have things like imposter syndrome going on, and, I thought it was good to talk about because that’s one of the things they kind of, spoke to, a way of kind of helping with get past these kind of feelings.
One is talking about it, and I think there’s some other positive things that can go. They had a, guest on named Nicholas Stroud, and she has done some talks around this. She spoke about a doctor named, Valerie Young, who has done some Ted talks and other things, and they had some really interesting ideas, and I kind of wanted to talk about that a little bit, because to your point, I feel like a lot of our listeners, a lot of the clients we talked to sometimes can feel like overwhelmed or they don’t know everything.
And, I feel like there’s some there’s always kind of validity to that, right? Like, yeah, you might not know it all, but there’s also a sense that, hey, that’s okay. I don’t know it all yet, but I’m still learning and I’m still going. So there’s a positive way you can kind of spin that in your own head to make you feel like I’m not a failure.
I’m just I’m still working. Right. And I think that’s okay.
Jenny: I love that, one of the big starting points that you were telling our team about is the change in mindset from, kind of it being a syndrome to something else. Can you talk about that?
Mark: Yeah. For sure. Nicola talked about how, one of the things Valerie Young has done is kind of turned it from being more of a syndrome to being more of a, think of it as manifestations.
And so she kind of had five types that she referred to. One of them was being a perfectionist. Right? So a lot of us kind of know that feeling, the idea that you just have these incredibly high standards and you’re never going to be good enough. And so that’s one way that this can kind of manifest.
Another one is just this general being an expert. Right. You think you need to know everything about everything. And I think that happens a lot in our industry, especially at places where maybe you’re a one person marketing team or just a couple people. You have to know all the things. And I think that can get you down a little bit.
And then there’s the idea of being, this, superhuman, which sometimes comes out, which is I’ve got all kinds of rules all over the place, the way Nicola talked about it was like, you know, I’m a mom. But she’s also, you know, an academic over here. She also needs to be a thought leader and always be posting on LinkedIn.
So she needs to be an expert in all these places and doing them all. So that’s one way that this can kind of manifest as well. And then there’s the natural genius they call it, that one is if I’m not competent or good at something immediately, I’ve kind of failed. Like the sense that you should just know, right?
I should just inherently know how that works because of where I’m at in my position. And that can get you a lot, too. And then finally there’s the soloist, which I think a lot of us run into, which is the idea that if I ask for help, that’s seen as a weakness. And I think that’s something that society does kind of train us a little bit on.
Right? Like The Tonight Show that you don’t want to see as, hey, I don’t know this because people might look down on me. And so trying to change that kind of mindset. And for me, being in, you know, an analytical world, I love those types of mental models because it helps me kind of understand why am I feeling that way, and how can I change my thought pattern to kind of move past that and understand that’s just my brain kind of trying to trick me?
How can I work around that?
Jenny: Absolutely. It the timing of you bringing this up is so interesting because I was actually chatting with one of our clients and they’re, you know, one of the top marketers in a hospital system, lots of responsibilities, lots of people. You know, that role up to them organizationally, from a reporting perspective. And, it was interesting because she shared with me, we were talking about career growth and professional growth individually, you know, throughout the lifetime of our careers.
And she goes, you know, Jenny, everything changed when I figured out, I don’t have to know everything. I just have to be really good at saying, you know, I don’t know, let’s figure that out together. Or, you know, I’m confident that I can figure that out. Let me get back to you. So actually saying, I know, I know, I know all of the time was holding her back.
And if I look back on my younger years in my career, I certainly can see that trend as well, that when you think or pretend that you know everything, it’s different. And that’s actually when you think you know everything is more the Dunning-Kruger effect. But I think also it’s interesting if you want to talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, that one dovetails nicely here because that one is for those of you who haven’t heard it now, probably butcher it a little bit, but the idea is, is that, you know, when you don’t know a whole lot about a subject, there’s a good chance that if you’re asked how much you know, you can say you’re pretty confident, and then the idea is, as you start learning more, you start realizing, oh, there’s a whole lot I don’t know.
So your actual confidence about that subject actually drops, even though you’ve been learning more. And so there’s just kind of curve that you go on and then eventually get to the bottom of that where your confidence is really low, but you’ve learned a lot, and then you start kind of building back up. And so I’ve always found that fascinating.
I use the, to go outside of marketing for a little bit. I always talk about this in terms of golf. Right. So I’m not a very good golfer. But I needed to learn it. My brother in law was good at it. I wanted to be included. And at the start, I was like, how hard can it be?
Just get out there and just hit the ball. I mean, I can play baseball, I can do other things. I can hit that. And then when I started trying to do it, I was terrible. No, but I started learning how I got to have my grip and where my arms need to be and what angles and all that.
I was like, oh my goodness, this is overwhelming. I’m never going to be good at this. And then eventually I started to improve a little bit. I’m still not good, but at least I kind of know where I need to be and how to talk about it. And I’m not, you know, as lost as I was. And so that’s always the way I think about it and like to explain it. Because same thing happens in analytics or in, and, in our healthcare industry, where something new comes up. Things like AI. Right. You might not know a whole lot about AI, or you may have talked to people who say, I know everything about AI. Well, just keep in mind they may be at the top of that curve right now.
Right. And so just keeping that in mind, because I think that also is one way that imposter syndrome comes out, because some people will be on that curve and just be as confident as possible all the time. And other people will think, man, I you know, I don’t know anything. Why am I even in this conversation with these people?
Because I’m a fraud, right? So those kinds of things can kind of scrape in because, yeah, those concepts do really tie nicely together. And I think understanding them and having a sense of them always helps me because at least then, yeah, I have that mental model of what’s going on here. Am I really here or what’s what’s happening?
And I can help myself think ways out of it.
Jenny:I love that Mark, and something that I have found to be really helpful to help myself out of it, is building a community where I can have open, transparent conversations about areas I’m struggling. So something that I encourage everyone I chat within the industry about is don’t look at others in the industry as competitors, and there’s enough in the universe for all of us to be successful.
Look at opportunities to build relationships, experience share, which is a philosophy that I was taught whenever I was a member of a business owner group. When somebody asks for advice, I don’t give advice anymore. I do an experience. Here’s something I went through that sounds similar to what you went through, and you tell them your story. Find people that you can experience share with, and get into the nitty gritty and learn from in a noncompetitive fashion.
So for those of you that are attending a conference this year, for example, proactively talk to people, sit down at tables where you don’t know people, make friends, be social at networking events. Every client that we have brought to a conference has walked away with connection that they have maintained since then, and they have told us time and time again that it helps them feel not alone when an industry shift happens or they’re questioning their understanding of something.
Having somebody to call up that can provide that level of support where you don’t have an imposter syndrome feeling and you’re learning things together, can just really help you feel more secure, professionally.
Mark: Yeah. And I think that’s a great point, Jenny. And, what we talked about before, also with the entry of AI into our world, something you can do is try to prepare yourself.
Hey, what are some questions I can ask the stranger sitting at a table? And you can prepare yourself with some of those questions. So I think that’s great. The other thing I thought about when you were speaking about that is, those of us that are kind of on larger teams or we have kind of, employees that we work with.
It’s also as kind of a leader of a team. It’s really important to be vulnerable there to to kind of say, I didn’t know this or I didn’t know that and show your stuff that way, because that’ll really help your team kind of understand, okay. You know, my manager says this or the leader of my company does this.
I can do it too. And there’s, there’s a that’s a it’s a great building to that vulnerability because then it’s not holding people back. People that talk in meetings, maybe they’re not doing it because they don’t feel like they should be there. So if you can help kind of build them up, you may find that meetings become a lot more interactive.
People are more willing to say, hey, I have an idea, and they won’t feel like, well, I’m not going to bring that up because I don’t know I shouldn’t be here. And so I think those types of things I think are great. So the more you can talk about it and share, I think it’s a really positive thing.
Jenny: I love it. Well, Mark, this was such a fun topic to talk about today. Thank you for hopping on and I hope our listeners enjoyed the change of pace. We just talked to so many folks across the country that have expressed feeling some version of this with all of the shifts in our industry, so hopefully this will help give you a framework to think about it differently, in a more positive light, and help you feel empowered to tackle all of those constant changes and shifts that happen within our industry.
Mark: For sure. Yeah, Valerie Young says that 70% of people in the world have imposter syndrome. So you’re not alone. I’ll leave you with just, Maya Angelou, right? Brilliant writer. She has been very vulnerable in saying, hey, I wrote 11 books that were amazing. On my 12th book, I thought, oh my goodness, I’m a fraud. Nobody’s ever going to read this.
You can just go out and search about celebrities having imposter syndrome. And, and they feel the same way. Right? So it’s our mind playing tricks on you. And just know that you’re you’re good enough. And you know the information. I sound like Stuart Smalley from SNL Jenny, but, just just know that, hey, there’s learning to do and we’re here to help you along with that journey as best as we can.
So as you’re watching the podcast, that’s what we’re here to do. But we’re always open for more conversations if you want to have them.
Jenny: Oh, I love it. And absolutely please reach out to us. We would love to chat. Mark is going to share some of his favorite resources aligned with this topic in the show notes. So if you want to continue listening the reason podcasts and Ted talks linked below.
Otherwise please like and subscribe. We would love and be honored to have you as a future listener of our show. New episodes drop every Friday, so thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. We’ll see you soon!
