Why Marketing is So Important!

As we get ready to celebrate baby #4's - 1st birthday this month...It came with quite a scare.

I am here to tell you that there's nothing routine about the miracle of life, that being childbirth, even after having 4-children.

24-hours after having our fourth child, I left my wife's bedside to go meet with a client. Easy to judge, but I'm self-employed, there are no days off. Just really amazing clients that understand when you need to step away from a moment and some that don't I'll explain that later.

However in addition to work responsibilities I had to dedicate time to managing our other three kids that are 9, 7, and 5. Dad duty, client obligations and off to the hospital to see our latest edition. Leo Fernando Schiraldi was born on November 14, 2017.

Backing up briefly 9-months prior, my wife came into my office to have a talk with me, with a serious look on her face she said "get off the phone we need to talk."

She proceeded to tell me that she was pregnant.

I immediately broke down in tears. And no, selfishly for the first time as a Dad, I thought about the 3-businesses that were all in their infancy and Hooper, the unruly Labrador Retriever and of course our 3-kids that are still just babies.

We recently got a puppy named Hooper, after the marine biologist character played by Richard Dreyfuss in the epic movie Jaws, Matt Hooper. Yes, my kids named the pooch and are fans of the great white shark, I digress.

I ran to the store to get every pregnancy test I could buy, for whatever reason that's what you do. She was thinking that test she had left over might have been dated. That's not the case.

I'll start with the end to not keep you in suspense and let you know this story has a happy ending to this story, but not without a great deal of worry.

Leo was born with a heart murmur, found within 24-hours after he was born. Our doctor, practically family, and a close friend found the hole by listening to Leo's heart.

He said this is common in newborns and typically the hole will close within 24-hours. Having 3-other attempts at this, well let's just say this was the first time we ever had any reason for immediate concern.

The next day while I was at my meeting, my wife said they still heard the murmur and wanted to run some tests. I told her to keep me posted. That day is a blur, I know I was with a client when she text and called.

Unfortunately I was at a meeting and the news was just shattering.

She was hysterical and rightfully so, having just given birth and alone to hear this news...Through a series of diagnostic tests, a pediatric cardiologist was brought in to diagnose our Leo, only 48-hours on the planet with Tetralogy of Fallot.

Which essentially through the next 24-hours and 6-months we began to educate ourselves daily as to what this meant, scrubbing the web daily and reaching out to friends, former colleagues and anyone that could possibly provide us with some information.

The initial prognosis was that he would need to have open heart surgery, although we were lucky because it wasn't immediate, he was not showing any outward symptoms.

However, it was inevitable, surgery would be necessary. The percentages of making it to year 1 were not in his favor. Which I'm super excited to tell you that we are getting ready to celebrate birthday #1 in two weeks.

This is where I want to tell you about my professional life, just briefly, to help with the context of what the point of all this is...You see, I am coming up on 17-years of marketing experience, with a good bulk of those years spent in healthcare.

Several years ago in the most read article I've ever contributed to LinkedIn and it's truer now than ever titled, 3-Things Everyone Marketing Healthcare Should Know!

"Don't ever underestimate the power of what you do in marketing. You have the potential to impact the quality of an individuals life in very significant ways, don't ever underestimate that power." - Dennis Schiraldi, 3-Things Everyone Marketing Healthcare Should Know

1. What you do has the potential to impact the quality of an individual’s life in very significant ways, do not ever underestimate that power!
2. Whether you are in a hospital, clinic or with a vendor. Get out into the clinic setting, it will make you a better marketer and a better person. It'll create an entire new perspective and help you form the ideas and strategy necessary to be successful at what you do.
3. Never ever make it about market share, even though everyone in your organization in a C-Level position will make it about that...These are people, that service, that product or that box again is going to impact a person’s life!

This has NEVER been more true than now...Do you know how IMPORTANT marketing really is...Especially when you are staring down the situation that we found ourselves in...The ability to read up, educate ourselves and find comfort in knowing that all would be OK!

My wife and I spent our time running down through our resources.

This started with Google, but having spent a good decade in healthcare both on the provider (service end of healthcare) and vendor side of the business.

Therefore I started to work my network daily. Calling on former colleagues, bosses, hospitals, physicians, anyone that I'd ever done a favor for, this was my time to call that favor in...

See here's what I want to impress upon you.

ESPECIALLY if you are marketing professional in healthcare.

Those three things that I told you were only the surface. I can tell you now, as a parent of a child with a life threatening heart condition, everything and anything I could find to comfort myself and my wife, along with our other children was the difference between sleeping at night and not for 6-months.

Nothing can prepare you for the moment you walk your 6-month old down the hall into a pre-op staging area and one physician after the next walks in smiling at 6AM to introduce who they are and what they will be doing to your child. At least this is the protocol at UPMC Children's and it's amazing.

The next observation I made in this surreal moment, the fact of the matter is they (doctors) are either getting younger or I'm aging...

There comes a point in time, where you hand your little bundle of joy off to the doctor and they walk away with your baby secure in their arms. Cradling our Leo, I was torn, but knew that our faith, love, support, prayer and having to be strong for my wife, family and Leo...I did what I could in that moment to hold it together.

Over the next 5-hours we sat in the post op waiting area. People come in and out, not only do I hope and pray for the great outcome for my own kid, but all the other people there as well.

As nothing can prepare you for that moment that you walk into pre-op there's ABSOLUTELY nothing more gut wrenching when you first see your child in the ICU. Our surgeon was just an absolute gem. She sat and discussed the outcome with us a being very positive, they patched the hole, and didn't have to touch any of his valves. Which was key, because typically a child will require additional surgery if a valve needs reconstructed.

She informed us that he'd done very well, that the breathing tube was already out and we could go and see him. Walking into ICU, I honestly didn't have any idea of what to expect. He was hooked up to more hoses and monitors, beeping noises, and there was belly breathing. It scared me to death, only to find out that this was normal.

Again the new normal and nothing looked normal to me. I reflected for a moment, that if I could do anything in life to exchange places with him I'd do it in a heart beat. The combination of the anesthesia wearing off and the meds to get them off of it cause a baby to become disoriented and moan, often times cry. It was heart wrenching...

He's a trooper, we made it through, within four days and minute by minute hoses came out, he began to eat, holding him for the first time within hours of the surgery to being released and heading home. Truly remarkable.

I'll leave you with this...In this VERY personal account. If you are in marketing, I've said it before and I'll say it again. You have an obligation, whether you are in healthcare, hamburgers or TV's to tell us about your product, your solution and/or your service. At the end of the day, it might just be something that's life altering.

Please don't ever under estimate that power. It's something that should hopefully motivate you daily to put out content that'll educate your audience, inform them, delight them...Because you just never know!

Thanks and if you want me to come out to tell you about Little Leo's story in person hit me up with an email at [email protected] - I'd love to give you more context about what we dealt with and why it's so important to educate people about what you do!!!