How can physicians build a personal brand the way athletes do?

Leigh Steinberg has spent decades as one of the most recognizable agents in professional sports, representing some of the biggest names in America. Now he's applying that experience to medicine as co-founder of MD Envoy, an agency built to help physicians develop public platforms in the same way sports agencies develop athletes' brands.

The premise behind MD Envoy is that physicians already hold a unique position of public trust, yet most never think to build on it. Whether it's through research, media appearances, or simply a talent for explaining complex health topics in plain language, doctors have the raw material for a public profile. What most lack, Steinberg argues, is the infrastructure — the negotiating power, financial planning, and marketing strategy — that has long supported athletes navigating public life.

That infrastructure matters more as physician marketing grows more competitive and patients increasingly research doctors online before ever booking an appointment. But physicians also face constraints athletes don't: employer conflict-of-interest policies, medical board guidelines and malpractice exposure among them.

Medical Economics spoke with Leigh Steinberg about this issue to learn more.

(Editor's note: The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)

Medical Economics: Many physicians build a public profile through research, speaking engagements, or media appearances without ever thinking of it as a brand. What's the moment or signal that should tell a doctor they have something worth monetizing?

Leigh Steinberg: At the point that they have a body of information or expertise or insights that they believe they can share with other people, then it's time to talk about branding. Branding is how many people out of 100 can name this individual, and if they can name him, can they apply an appellation to them? "Yes, he's a prominent surgeon." And if they do that, do they have positive feelings toward him? So we start with the concept of social media being the way information is received or transmitted in today's world. You sit with a doctor and ask him what his goals and aspirations are, and if you find out that it's to be involved publicly and have a role, then you start to build out the website, and the website can be a generic website, or it can be Facebook, or TikTok, or Instagram, or having a presence on all of those. And now the point is, can that doctor create little bits of content that are interesting?

All of us are focused on our health, and the average person thinks about it. To the average person, a doctor is — "God" would be too flowery, but is a respected figure who you associate with health and life and death in certain situations. The respect factor we have for physicians is very high, especially in this fragmented and fractured world today. So can that doctor add insights as to potential treatment, prophylactically how to stay healthier, and then, once something happens, what the cutting-edge techniques are and the rest of it? And if that doctor can steadily put out little bits of information like that, once those numbers get high enough, then you can find corporations and other people that want to monetize from that load of influenced people. It could be a niche — it could be athletic-related injuries, or how to avoid dementia, or what's the cutting-edge thing on Alzheimer's.

Once you have a doctor, then the question is, can they do a podcast? Can they host a radio show? There's one here in Southern California called "Doctor in the Dugout," which is a show with an orthopedic surgeon. So the question is, can they write an article that a layperson can relate to and understand? How's their profile? Once we establish the doctor as an expert in his field, then that can stimulate all sorts of media calls for information, because there's always some epidemic or health emergency or situation — and biomed now is in the process of curing or finding a way to treat a whole variety of previously untreatable problems. What's the effect of hyperbaric oxygen, or stem cells, or red light, or Nanovi, or Bimini? When health is everything to people, and doctors are the critical key that unlocks the secrets of how to live a healthier life — you now have a big bulge in the population, Baby Boomers, who are hyper concerned about their health. So we're trying to individually take each doctor and fulfill their aspirations. Now, there are some doctors for whom it's enough to do their practice, and they don't have much energy left after that. But there are other doctors who want to share what they've learned or share insights, and those we can help brand.

Medical Economics: Doctor Oz was obviously extremely popular even before he got into politics. Is that the kind of person you're envisioning — someone who becomes a household name that people trust?

Steinberg: Yes. So what you're thinking about is, since health and wellness is an ever-present concern, how can we build experts in their own way, and they'll find their own level? Dr. Oz is an extreme example of someone who was able to have a nationally popular show, and then he spun it off into endorsing various supplements and treatments. So you can see that once you have the brand, there are more products just in the medical area — vitamins and supplements, and prescription drugs — and you could see it building into a company that's not necessarily in the medical field taking certain characteristics, like excellence and work habits, and featuring an ad around that with a successful doctor. Back in the day, Dr. DeBakey in Houston became a nationally known person. So it depends. Each individual doctor will have their own ambitions, and we need to employ listening skills to elicit from them and cut below the surface, so we understand what their greatest anxieties and fears are, and what their greatest hopes and dreams are, and put ourselves in their heart and mind and see the world the way they see it.

Medical Economics: Can any doctor follow this path? Can any doctor get the attention of an agency like yours, or do some have to grind for a few years and do some of the work themselves before they're ready to take that next leap?

Steinberg: We're helping physicians at different levels of their career. We're contemplating training programs for younger doctors. We take each one as they get to a certain stature. If they're not willing to do the work to promote themselves, then that's fine — it's a life decision, but that's not somebody we're going to brand.

Medical Economics: Athletes tend to have an entire team — agents, lawyers, financial advisors — managing their brand. Is that a similar infrastructure that would work for a physician?

Steinberg: Absolutely. We're conceptualizing, with my amazing partner Dr. Michael Suk, every stage of how a doctor arrives in the system: long-term planning, a path, helping them with placement with HMOs and insurance companies and hospitals, negotiating for them, doing financial planning for them — because doctors, with no insult to the profession, are not known as the financial geniuses of our time. And then it's branding, marketing. We may put together projects that are reality shows or dramatically scripted. It doesn't escape me that the hottest show on TV right now is "The Pitt." Imagine if you have a whole series of doctors with their own creative ideas — you might be able to create documentaries, reality shows and dramatically scripted movies or television shows from them.

Medical Economics: If there's a younger doctor who hasn't had a lot of exposure yet and this is a path they want to pursue, what should they do? Is there a way to start getting their name out there?

Steinberg: It starts with figuring out what content you have to share as a physician, what interesting insights, what your specialty is, who the audience is for that, and then starting to create a website and build out on social media different approaches toward Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and Facebook and LinkedIn. Doctors can use the same techniques that other social influencers do to establish a presence. But it starts with, "I have this interesting career, it's specialized in this niche, and I'd like to share this information with the world." And I'll be responsible for creating tiny bits of content.

Medical Economics: Does it have to be something unique, or is a passion for keeping patients healthy and on the right track enough to stand out in a crowd?

Steinberg: I think so. From the standpoint of the world, healthcare is getting more complicated, but doctors have unique stewardship over an area of expertise. The very fact of preventative medicine — what can people do to stay healthy, the fact that you ought to be seeing a doctor for X, Y, or Z problem — and look, we as men know that part of our challenge is to not be stubborn, but to be open to the fact that we need to visit physicians and not ignore situations. So it's also a type of consciousness — that doctor can be a role model for people to understand the path to health.

Medical Economics: Physicians have some unique constraints that athletes don't — employer conflict-of-interest policies, medical board guidelines, malpractice exposure. How do you advise doctors to navigate brand opportunities without jeopardizing their primary career?

Steinberg: By being completely aware of what the restrictions are and what the rules are against conflict of interest, and carefully navigating a path that doesn't put their primary career into jeopardy. It's maybe getting clearance from whoever they're working with — whether it's the hospital, the HMO, or the insurance company. It's being open about what you're trying to do, so that if there are red flags or potential challenges, you don't go over those red lines.

Medical Economics: Do you ever get pushback from physicians who say, "We're physicians, we're not celebrities, we're not here to promote products — we're here to take care of people"?

Steinberg: Sure, that's fine. It's no different than a player in sports who wants to give peak performance on the field, and that's it — they're not interested in public speaking, endorsements, being a social media influencer. For those doctors who are just content with that, we can still provide placement and negotiation and a variety of other things. But for those doctors who do have the ambition to do more, we can deal with them. Again, it's not different than the athletic situation, where I have clients who are very anxious to be public figures, and other clients who just want to do their job and go home at the end of the day. You have to be responsive to each person and their deepest anxieties and fears, their greatest hopes and dreams. You need to peel back the layer of the onion and deal with their needs on their own basis. We don't have a divine right to alter someone's basic personality or character. It's dealing with them as they are.

Medical Economics: Anything else you'd like to tell physicians who are reading this?

Steinberg: In sports, there was a time when athletes had absolutely no rights and no help — as a matter of fact, they couldn't even use an agent in negotiations, and that tends to make people feel vulnerable. We want to empower doctors to achieve all their goals, all their dreams. This is embryonic — it's the first concept of how to put doctors collectively together, and the first 130 doctors all became investors and minority shareholders of this. We're looking to have this be funded by doctors for their own needs, and they'll feel a sense of liberation, of empowerment, by finally having some help in these situations. I don't negotiate my own contracts for books or speeches or motion picture consultancy — I use an agent, because if the subject is me, that's a little tough. We're going to work with the different bodies that are present, and I think after a while, they may feel some sense of challenge at the beginning, but they'll see that having a representative with rational advice who's aware of the market is a positive.