Radio recap: Building a personal (CDI) brand

Building a personal brand is “about competition, especially in the CDI world. There’s a lot of competition in the CDI world, lots of people trying to get positions. It’s very competitive and challenging,” said Brian Cui, RHIA, CDIP, on the November 14 episode of ACDIS Radio.

Having a known presence in the industry, Cui said, can give you a leg up in the CDI world and provide you with otherwise missed opportunities.

“It opens a lot of doors when you create a brand,” he said. “People come to the brand and then they find out who’s behind it.”

The large majority (79%) of respondents, however, to the episode’s polling question said they haven’t done anything to build their personal CDI brand. Largely, Cui speculated, this is because they feel they don’t have anything to say or offer the public. This is a fallacy.

“Even if it’s not in medical coding or CDI, I think you need to find what you can do and your passion,” he said. “My number one tip is to always create content, no matter what level of content it is. There’s always someone in the audience who can relate to your content.”

Everyone in CDI has something they’ve learned that could be beneficial to others, regardless of how much they think they know. Cui, for example, took his 12-plus years of experience in coding and CDI and applied it to medical coding tutoring leading up to ICD-10’s implementation in 2015. Then, after that, he created a community for coders called Medical Coding Geek to keep the knowledge sharing alive when tutoring dried up.

Many CDI professionals share Cui’s love of teaching and relish the opportunity to educate physicians and medical staff (read any number of ACDIS Meet a Members for proof), so approaching personal branding from that perspective will help you get going. In Cui’s case, his tutoring, turned to social media community building, turned to podcasting—all with that same aim.

“The sense of helping people [has been the most rewarding thing],” Cui said. “The recognition is nice, but the fact that I can reach out to people and share what I’ve done has been a great benefit.”

Of course, building a personal brand won’t be easy when you’re balancing your work and family on top of it. Cui, who works full-time and has three kids and a wife, recommended using the weekends and your evenings after work to get in some personal branding time. Try devoting an hour or two a week to start out, then adding more time as your able.

“It’s a matter or rearranging things,” he said. “If you’re passionate about it, you will find the time.”

Editor’s note: To listen to the full episode from November 14, click here. ACDIS Radio is a free biweekly show. To learn how to register and listen live, click here. To subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, click here. To listen to Cui’s podcast, Not Elsewhere Classified, click here.