For Chris McMains — prepared via Sean (Lorcan-assisted analysis) · October 5, 2026
Companion to attendingtoself-combined-feedback.md (Aug 2026), which covered site mechanics. This covers the outward game: how the material and services actually reach buyers.
He is not a wellness vendor. He is a practicing fellowship-trained rhinologist, Professor of Surgery & Health Professions Education at USU, and the faculty-development director at a VA-affiliated academic medical center who just won the LTG P.K. Carlton Award as outstanding faculty member across all 36 GME programs at SAUSHEC (2026). The research under the brand has an Academic Medicine "Must Read" designation and a publication record spanning Academic Medicine, JCEHP, and Teaching and Learning in Medicine — including a piece co-authored with Eric Holmboe.
The pitch line: "The identity work underneath burnout — from a surgeon who studies it, publishes it, and runs faculty development institutionally." Every channel below should echo this. The differentiation isn't the topic; it's the standing of the person saying it. Burnout-vendor space is crowded; identity-formation-from-expert-space is nearly empty.
Institutional buyers (the revenue core):
- GME program directors — buy grand rounds, workshops, wellness curricula from CME/faculty-development budgets
- DIOs, GMEC faculty-development committees — the institutional buyers of multi-session engagements
- Associate/vice deans for faculty affairs — his existing testimonial is from exactly this persona; it's his proof
- Chief wellness officers — expanding title; receptive to "identity" framing vs. wellness-slop
- Specialty societies — AAO-HNS (his home), ARS (he founded its Ethics Committee) — native credibility
Individual buyers:
- Mid-career physicians in transition; physicians planning exits (his "Controlled Burn" paper on leaving professional identity is an unexplored product line for pre-retirement physicians — almost nobody serves this)
- Trainees and early faculty struggling with belonging/shame (ties to the Academic Medicine Shame paper)
The military-medicine unfair advantage: FOCUS Master Facilitator, USU, BAMC, VA networks — an underserved, high-trust market with unique identity strain (deployment, uniformed identity, VA/DoD boundary). He speaks it natively. Discipline required: never market into his government role; the disclaimer stays, and internal-use talks at his own institutions are warmups done free, not sales.
- The Belonging–Becoming Assessment — live, free, framework-bearing. Currently collects no email and leads nowhere. The single highest-leverage fix.
- Academic Medicine "Must Read" — one of the highest authority signals in med-ed; belongs on the homepage and every speaking one-pager.
- Holmboe co-authorship — a direct thread to ACGME, whose annual meeting is where GME leadership shops for faculty development.
- The Carlton Award — "outstanding faculty among all 36 GME programs" is a one-sentence institutional-buyer hook; currently buried on the About page.
- KevinMD op-ed traction — proof a general physician audience engages with this material.
- The Work prose — his best writing, pre-written LinkedIn content, unpublished.
Loop 1 — Assessment → list → conversation: Bolt email capture onto the assessment results ("get your results emailed + one follow-up essay monthly"). Completers are self-qualified warm leads; a gentle sequence offers a no-cost discovery session. The August review called this the gold mine; this loop is the shovel.
Loop 2 — Talks → relationships → paid work: Grand rounds and faculty-development sessions (free initially) put him in front of the exact people who hire him — program directors, chairs, deans. Every talk ends with the assessment QR on the last slide. One good hour creates a regional reputation; GME is a small, gossipy national community.
Loop 3 — Publications → authority → invitations: 2–3 short pieces/year (JGME perspectives, letters, MedEdPublish) keep the citation loop alive. Repackage dissertation findings as op-eds for KevinMD/MedPage.
Loop 4 — Engagement evidence → social proof → harder to dislodge: Every workshop host and two participants get asked for a one-line quote within a week. Three anonymized case-study one-pagers ("what a Faculty Development Day changed for Program X") become the highest-converting sales asset for institutions.
- LinkedIn — where physician leaders and deans actually are. 1–2 posts/week repurposed from The Work + research findings. Zero new writing required. This is the main broadcast organ.
- Grand rounds / faculty development circuit — San Antonio first (UT Health SA, VA, military facilities as free warmups), then Texas (Baylor, UT Southwestern, UTMB, MD Anderson), then regional GME meetings.
- Conference speaking ladder — specialty societies (AAO-HNSF, ARS — instant credibility) → ACGME Annual + AAMC Annual (the buyer's conferences). Call-for-speakers deadlines for these run months ahead; submissions should start now. Note his ACGME thread via Holmboe.
- Email list (Buttondown or similar) — the owned asset nothing can deplatform. Monthly short essay. Assessment completers join with consent.
- Research page + papers as collateral — one combined PDF ("the research behind Attending to Self") for institutional inquiries.
- NOT recommended: paid social ads (trust-dependent business, wrong funnel), corporate-wellness expansion (commodity pricing, thesis dilution), high-volume group coaching (no leverage for a solo provider).
- The Faculty Development Day — fixed price, one-day, on-site workshop w/ pre/post assessment. Institutional buyers love a fixed-price menu item.
- The Program Identity Audit — instrument-driven diagnostic (survey → report → debrief). Data-led entry point; scales; feeds Loop 4 case studies; natural upsell to workshops/coaching.
- Keynotes — "The Identity Beneath Burnout," "Controlled Burn" (for mid-career/exit audiences), "Trustworthy Belonging."
- Coaching (individual) — keep selective and premium; it's the credibility anchor, not the volume business.
- CME accreditation — partner with a university CME office so workshops are purchasable from CME budgets (the standard institutional spend). This is the single structural unlock for institutional sales.
Now (site infrastructure — overlaps Tier 1 of the August plan):
- Email capture on assessment results + follow-up sequence
- Plausible/GA analytics; event on assessment completion and contact submission
- Homepage + speaking page: Carlton Award one-liner, "Must Read" badge, testimonial above the fold
- Fix CV link, PDF beige pages (from Aug review)
Next 30 days:
- LinkedIn cadence begins (repurposed Work prose; 2x/week)
- 3 grand-rounds pitches out (SA institutions + 2 Texas)
- 3 testimonials collected from past workshop/coaching contexts
- Buttondown list live; assessment completers migrate in
Next quarter:
- CME accreditation arrangement
- Conference CFP submissions (AAO-HNSF, ACGME, AAMC, Alliance)
- Program Identity Audit pilot (1–2 programs, discounted for the case-study rights)
- Case-study one-pagers produced
Behind that:
- National keynote ladder; military-medicine track (FOCUS network, AMSUS)
- Consider monograph/book from the dissertation as the long-term authority capstone
Assessment completers · email list size · talks booked · CFP submissions pending · paid engagements · testimonial count. Six numbers; if assessment completers and talks aren't growing, the content is wrong — if they grow but paid work doesn't, the offer architecture is.
Everything above lives outside his government employment: claims only about his research/practice, no institutional endorsements, disclaimer preserved everywhere, internal talks at DoD/VA facilities framed as faculty-development service rather than marketed products.
Prepared by Lorcan for Sean, 2026-10-05. Builds on the August 2026 combined website feedback.