Are you thinking about becoming a thought leader?
If you want to attract high-paying clients by marketing like a thought leader, you must commit to becoming an expert. Especially if your expertise is in a subject many think of as taboo.
Consider the career of Rachel Braun Scherl, a thought leader in the area of women’s sexual health and wellness. A self-described “vagipreneur,” Scherl is a market-maker in the multibillion-dollar global women’s sexual health subsector.
“Building expertise in an area requires constant learning, innovative thinking, building partnership and the willingness to face challenges,” says Scherl, “This is especially true in women’s sexual and reproductive health where entrepreneurs are creating solutions, creating conversations and driving growth.”
Scherl spends a great deal of time speaking publicly, loudly and passionately, in an effort to drive the conversation around the business of female health and sexual pleasure.
After a successful career in corporate America, Scherl became an entrepreneur because she wanted to be more in control of her financial future. Since cofounding SPARK with her longtime business partner, Mary Wallace Jaensch, she has built an international client base that includes multiple divisions of Johnson & Johnson, Allergan, Pfizer, Merck, and Bayer, among others. (Scherl and I met when I helped her edit a book about profiting from the coming surge of women’s sexual health and wellness.)
“The growing awareness of the ‘size of the prize’ has led to a boom in the founding of companies that meet a broad range of needs out of medical, gynecological, sexual and reproductive necessity,” says Scherl. “I am passionate about reframing entrenched beliefs about women’s sexuality, with an important emphasis on creating conversations. Without a vocabulary, the conversation and progress would be stalled before they start.”
Scherl feels strongly that today’s industry leaders need a language for the complexity of female sexuality, to destigmatize pressing health and aging concerns for women.
“With that common vocabulary, companies can grow businesses in historically taboo areas,” says Scherl. “The first step of building that expertise is an obsession with the subject matter—and who better to be at the helm of their own health than women?”
She preaches that entrepreneurs, academics, health care professionals and investors are driving the efforts to bring new technology to market, develop better solutions for a wide range of sexual and reproductive health concerns and create the companies to deliver on those needs.
“As the needs are complex, the solutions must be thoughtful, accessible and useful, providing information, customization, education and often immediate gratification,” says Scherl. “Interestingly, the education piece provided by companies is often filling a gap left by the current state, or lack thereof, of sex education.”
A thought leader needs to write, speak, and it helps to win awards. Scherl is the recipient of numerous business awards: SmartCEO’s BRAVA Awards honoring top female CEOs, Top 25 Entrepreneurs in New Jersey, and Best Fifty Women in Business by NJBiz.
Thought leaders need to get involved and collaborate. Scherl serves on the board of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and the boards of several female health and wellness companies.
“I have been a proud contributor/participant in this space, with a laser-like focus on the intersection of women’s health and businesses responding to them,” says Scherl. “By driving growth with companies—large and small, established and developing—I have the frequent opportunity to collaborate with investors, inventors, entrepreneurs, conference leads, researchers, academics, and health care practitioners.”
In addition to seeing increased investment in women’s sexual health and wellness, she has seen a spike in conversations regarding all aspects of women’s health including pleasure, which she says is long overdue.
“Today companies are talking about all aspects of women’s health, from menstruation to menopause,” says Scherl.
