Christy Pretzinger On Transforming Healthcare Content Creation

Episode 67 – Transcript + Timestamps

Creating a personalized leadership style for business success

Introduction

[00:00:00] Yvonne Heimann: Hello and welcome back to, yeah, yet another episode of Boss Your Business. I think now we are in like the sixties on our episode, so it is becoming really fun. And today I want to introduce you to Christy Pretzinger. I don’t even know if you’d pronounce that that way in English. That’s how we pronounce it in German.

[00:00:23] Christy Pretzinger: It’s right.

[00:00:26] Yvonne Heimann: Yes, the Americans have not butchered the last name, yes. Everybody listening guys, I always have a fun with pronunciation, especially when I come across names and last names that I know are European based and sometimes they just end up sounding really funny in English. With a little bit of different pronunciation. So now that we got the whole language and accent out of the way, guys, Christy is a dynamic, visionary innovator who has transformed the landscape of healthcare [00:01:00] content creation.

[00:01:01] Look at that mix. She and her team originated an entirely new category in digital content, and now many other firms are duplicating her model. As the owner and CEO of Writer Girl, Christy has been an industry leading organization that delivers top notch content and strategy to the healthcare industry nationwide.

[00:01:24] Along with her drive to strengthen healthcare communication, Christy is passionate about creating an environment where people truly can thrive. And man, I envision that’s quite a work in healthcare, because we are in the States.

[00:01:44] Christy Pretzinger: Yeah.

[00:01:46] Yvonne Heimann: How did you get here? How does one start focusing on content based in healthcare and health education?

[00:01:59] Christy Pretzinger: [00:02:00] Well, first of all, thank you for having me. But the way that that happened was I was a freelance writer. I started freelancing 30 years ago and then fast forward about 10 years. And I was building this business that became what it is now. And I first had a client I’d been around for a while in my town.

[00:02:22] So people knew who I was. And so I had a client come to me saying they needed a 1000 page content management system. And so I did that. It was like four writers and me, and it went very well. Everybody made money and it was like, great. And I thought, oh, I’ll bring teams of writers to projects. That would be interesting. And then about six to nine months later, another former client who had moved from where they had been into a hospital system as a marketing director came to me and said that they had three websites that were launching concurrently, and she was under the impression that the content was mostly done.

[00:02:57] And she asked me if I could come in and fill in the [00:03:00] cracks. The content hadn’t even been started for most of them. So, yeah, I think within like a week I had 35 writers on the project. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know anything about hospitals or health care at all. And it just went very, very fast.

[00:03:16] And fortunately, it worked out very well. I learned a whole lot, you know, trial by fire. And then, then I did what a lot of entrepreneurs do, which I told myself the necessary lie. That it would be evil to bring teams of writers to hospitals. Like, that’s what I would do. Like, that will be just easy peasy.

[00:03:34] Which is kind of funny cause nobody in my hometown, I’m in Cincinnati, Ohio. Nobody would even speak to me at any of the hospitals here. So, I kind of went around the state and I went up to Columbus, Ohio and met with someone at the Ohio state university. And that was probably our first big client after the first thing that we had done, and they’re still a client to this day.

[00:03:53] And then from there went to, you know, largely surrounding states and different places, kind of regional at first. And now, [00:04:00] we have 30 people and upwards of 100 contractors that we work with. And I think we work in every state in the country.

[00:04:13] Yvonne Heimann: Coming back to follow the yellow brick road. Question right in the beginning of the, oh yeah, most of the content is done. I just need a little bit of your help too. Yeah, no, nothing is done. What was going on inside you? It’s like, now, suddenly, the, the complete scope is changing. You are suddenly bringing in a ton of writers to make all of this happen.

[00:04:43] What was going on with you and, and your mind in that moment? How, what was happening there?

[00:04:51] Christy Pretzinger: Gosh, it was so long ago. I have to kind of think back to. Let’s see.

[00:04:56] Yvonne Heimann: Did you, I’m like, sometimes it also just happens. [00:05:00] It’s like, okay, the need is there and we are just in it and we are just making it happen.

[00:05:05] And suddenly we look back and it’s like, oh, that just happened.

[00:05:09] Christy Pretzinger: Right. Very much like that. It was, it was really, you know, when you’re a sole proprietorship at the time, it was just me and some contractors. I didn’t know most of the people that I put on the project. So, I was learning about them and, you know, kind of like, oh dear, I shouldn’t have put that person on this, you know, that kind of thing.

[00:05:26] So I was learning very quickly as I went, learn as you go, right. And to your point, put your head down and do the work because you have to, and someone’s counting on you and you have to get this stuff done and you have to do it well. And so really. I just did and, and it fortunately it worked out, you know, it did work out.

[00:05:44] They were happy. We were happy. They remained client for many, many years after that. And, and it all worked out, but it was, you know, I think that anybody who has run a business, their own business. That’s kind of what you do, especially when you’re smaller, you know, you [00:06:00] wear every hat, your business development, your accounting, your project management, your everything.

[00:06:06] And you just switch hats really fast and you do whatever you can to keep all of the balls in the air. You know, fortunately now I am very lucky that I have a wonderful team of people and now I work on the business and not in the business. So I’m very far removed from the actual work of the business.

Hiring With Kindness: Setting Up Employees for Success 

[00:06:26] Yvonne Heimann: And I love that you already jumped right into the question that I had ready for like she knows where I’m going with this now, how, what was your path from okay, solopreneur team is growing all the heads doing all the things to now working on the business, rather in the business. What was that process?

[00:06:50] What was that growth and that change?

[00:06:53] How long did it take you to make all of this happen? [00:07:00]

[00:07:00] Christy Pretzinger: Well, I would say that I, I think about this a lot. I had a coach probably about 12 years ago who said to me, the company is you and you are the company and it won’t grow until you do. And so I, yeah, that, that’s a good one. So what I did at that time is I’m not, I mean, I’ve like anybody else.

[00:07:21] I’ve read a lot of business books, but that’s not really what moves me. So when, when that, when she said that to me. I became very intentional about my behaviors and my habits at the time, which I no longer now, but I did then and I got up every morning and I meditated and then I would read usually more of a self help, spiritual self awareness kind of books because I really wanted to work on myself.

[00:07:47] And right around that time, too, is when I was introduced to the Enneagram, which for anyone who doesn’t know, it’s a personality typing. There’s many of them out there, but we use the Enneagram in my organization. And the thing I like about it, and that I [00:08:00] found particularly helpful at the time I’m referencing is that it’s, it’s not about behavior.

[00:08:05] It’s about your why. Why do you behave the way you do and then recognizing the highs and the lows of your behavior. You know, I’m a very fast processor, which can be good, but doesn’t make me smarter than somebody else. I just process more quickly. if taken to a wrong point, it can become impulsive. So I, yeah,

[00:08:30] helping to people that, that process more slowly that really like to process in their body and kind of think about things. And so I’ve learned over the years to moderate my behavior. I used to joke and say, like with my accountant, I can ask her a question that I can go read the news while she thinks about what she wants to say back.

[00:08:47] And that’s fine. That’s good. You know, I want someone who’s thoughtful and thinking that she’s not the same kind of processor I am and it in no way makes her any less intelligent than I am. We’re just different. So back [00:09:00] to how the business group became that it was all of that kind of learning about myself that in turn allowed me to grow the organization.

[00:09:10] Hiring a salesperson 13 years ago was massive game changer. And she’s still with us today. She’s awesome. And really making sure that anyone that I hired, I set them up to succeed. So for example, when I hired her, her name’s Reba, when I hired Reba, I had just landed our largest client ever.

[00:09:32] It was a large six figure client and they had prepaid it, which was wonderful, cash is King. That’s great. And so I gave her that client along with the commission that went with it, even though I was the one who had closed that business and I didn’t want to compete with her, I didn’t continue selling. It was all her and I, I helped her.

[00:09:48] I helped raise her up. I taught her everything I knew and set her up so she could go do it better. Then I did and she does it better than I could have ever done it. So by doing that, I did that with everyone I ever hired. [00:10:00] And that in turn created this culture where people can thrive. And, and it’s continued to be that it’s the core of our organization is our culture.

[00:10:11] And, but I think that the way that it grew from me being a solopreneur into this was really always looking at other people and thinking about how could I set them up for success? I didn’t want to be the best salesperson because then I would have a job. You know, that’s, I wanted, I found people smarter than me.

[00:10:32] So I’ve surrounded myself with people who are better at all these individual tasks. My COO is brilliant. She started out as a lead gen person making 15 an hour, 20 hours a week, and now she runs the whole show. I think she’s been here. 12 years. Oh gosh, 12 years next month. So there’s a, the theme for me is really finding good, smart people and then setting them up for [00:11:00] success and then allowing them to do their jobs well without feeling like I need to constantly tell them what to do.

Embracing Self-Awareness For a Compassionate Business Environment 

[00:11:07] Yvonne Heimann: So you mentioned, you mentioned a couple of things. I would love to dive into this hire to succeed a little bit. You mentioned you’re using Enneagram internally, you, you are giving them the resources you already have. I’m assuming you’re probably also giving them resources to continuously grow. How, how does that,

[00:11:29] that value, that goal of hiring to succeed manifest in your company. How can the audience, anybody watching or listen, start a process similar to you, because I’m like in the States, it’s not common that somebody is with the company for 12 plus years, not to my knowledge, so many switch. So how, how, how have you built, how, what are the processes that your team goes through?

[00:11:58] So when you are hiring to [00:12:00] succeed that the audience potentially can replicate to build a similar company culture.

[00:12:08] Christy Pretzinger: I think that when I first started building the business, I said to my accountant at the time, if I can’t build a business based on kindness, I’ll go back to being a freelance writer. And that was because I had worked places where I didn’t feel like I was treated that kindly or other people were treated that kindly,

[00:12:30] Where people were respected. They were treated like adults. There was the flexibility that people needed. And so while that was my intention, as I mentioned, when you’re building a business, right, you’re just working. You’re not thinking every day about it. I want to be kind, but I think that’s also who I am as a person.

[00:12:45] I’m not someone who I’m not a serial entrepreneur. I don’t look at building a business to get it big and sell it. That’s not. That’s not my passion. That’s just not what I wanted to do. I wanted to really, I think that [00:13:00] I’ve grown and changed a lot, but at the time when I was doing this, I used to jokingly say that it was all built on my insecurities.

[00:13:05] I wanted to be everybody’s favorite vendor and everybody’s favorite client, which as we know, can move into codependency, but we don’t need to go into that. But, but over time, I don’t feel that way, but, but that, that served me well because I really, I, I wanted to be kind. I also knew that is very different than weak.

[00:13:23] You know, that that kindness is clarity of your thing and it’s respect and empathy and all of this. And so I was always very cognizant of that. And now, in hindsight, looking back when I talk about this, because I’m actually the author of the upcoming book, your Cultural Balance Sheet. So when I talk about your cultural balance sheet, I say, trust is a long game, and people don’t believe you when they first come to work for you that you mean what you say, that like you really are [00:14:00] setting them up for success, you really want them to do well.

[00:14:02] They have to see that. And then when they do, they want their friends to come work here too. So like my salesperson and then my, now my COO, and then my other salesperson who’s now the EVP. In charge of business and mark, business development and marketing. All three of them worked at the same organization.

[00:14:20] And the EVP just celebrated her ninth anniversary here and they are our marketing director. And two of our content strategists all worked at the same company and they recruited each other. Two of my good friends, daughters, both work at this organization. And then other people recruit their friends to come work here because they’re like, this place is awesome. You know, you really want to work here.

[00:14:48] And so we don’t have a hard time finding people, because of the fact that it’s such a wonderful environment. And I think that one of the ways that other people can do [00:15:00] something like this, that I really want people to do something like this is to really have an eye on the people that you are privileged to lead and to feed into their lives.

[00:15:12] You know, I don’t look at this as like, I’m so great. I’m the one that did this. There is no way I could have done this by myself. Absolutely no way. And I am humbled and proud to be the leader of this organization. And I think that that humility people find attractive as well. I mean, I don’t, I mean, I truly am that way.

[00:15:32] I really believe that, but they know that too. People know that, that my intention is kindness. Our values are, we’re empowered, curious, kind, and fun. And my intention is to be all of those things, but each one of them requires attention as well. So you really need to pay attention. Moderate your behavior.

[00:15:54] Look at things. You don’t mean keep an eye on yourself. Check yourself. All of those kind of things. The self [00:16:00] awareness key. I mean, it’s key to building an organization where people can thrive. And then, of course, to your point, you asked if we give the tools, everyone is typed in the enneagram. They get a book about it.

[00:16:10] They get some sessions with our enneagram coach. We do lunch and learns and sometimes full day workshops on it. Because what, what that self awareness does, first of all, it helps you moderate your own behavior. That’s a wonderful thing to do as a grown up. But also then when you learn,

[00:16:29] challenging motivation for why someone behaves the way they do. The minute you start thinking about somebody else’s motivation, you have become empathetic because you’re looking at, oh, she’s behaving that way because she’s a slower processor than I am. And I need to give her time to process that. And, and you immediately become radically empathetic.

[00:16:51] Yvonne Heimann: And I think that’s, that’s a big piece of the, I always talk about [00:17:00] perception where it’s like initially where, before we start self growth, before we start the understanding and, and personality types and dive into all of that, I at least used to be one of it’s like, Why aren’t you getting this? Why are people not thinking like me?

[00:17:19] What the heck is going on? And it has, it has shifted a lot, especially after moving to the states from Germany, where the language is different and the same phrase one to one translated has a complete different meaning. So that’s when my interest started coming in of seeing that different language and personality types are literally like different languages where one person can say the exact same thing like the other person and it’s perceived completely different because there’s a different energy behind it, whatever it is.

[00:17:56] And I [00:18:00] love the, the idea, if that is Enneagram or if that is any other personality types to, to bring out the knowledge of how somebody processes information, how somebody thinks, how somebody is motivated, what is their goals, what are their values, what’s behind what they are doing rather than, oh, they just don’t care.

[00:18:24] Or they didn’t hear me because they might not respond right away. And it’s like, no, no, no, no. They are kinesthetic. They literally just need to feel out what you just threw at them. What you just said, they are processing, and they’re going to come back in an hour with an answer for you. And being able to have that knowledge for the team around you to, to adjust accordingly.

[00:18:51] As you said, with your, with your accountant, I think, yeah, I think it was an accountant you mentioned where it’s like, here, here’s the stuff. I’ll, I’ll do something else. I’ll be back in half an hour. [00:19:00] Once, once you process the information and really building on that to give each personality, each team member, what they need to be their best self.

[00:19:14] Like, we work similar here, where we actually have everybody run through four different personality types for that matter, because we, we pull different information for different situations out of it. And I love your idea of diving deeper into that and giving the team, the resource of he has a coaching session for you.

[00:19:37] Let’s do, let’s go do a group day intensive focusing on this and, and really getting deeper and enabling the team to better communicate with each other. I love that.

Empowering Your Team By Investing On Their Personal Development

[00:19:50] Christy Pretzinger: Yeah, it’s, we also give everybody personal development money every year. And they can use it for whatever they want. One person bought a bicycle.

[00:19:58] Somebody else [00:20:00] took painting classes. Somebody else used it for some Enneagram coaching. So it’s, it’s all about for me is being your best self. I kind of feel like the word authentic has been overused a little bit, but it really is about being your whole human. You know, all bringing all of yourself to the, to the situation.

[00:20:22] Yvonne Heimann: Oh my God. I love that. Yeah. I didn’t even think about it. All of me happens to be my theme for 2024. So when you brought that into the team dynamic and how the team shows up, I’m like, yeah, that makes sense because now we don’t have to compartmentalize. You can just be and show up and be accepted as all

[00:20:45] of you. I like that.

[00:20:47] Christy Pretzinger: Correct. Yeah. I mean, if you can bring your whole self, all of you to, to your work self, cause you know, it’s like that. I think there’s a book called There’s No Such Thing As Business Ethics because it’s [00:21:00] just ethics. And I feel like that’s the same thing with development. It’s not personal or professional development.

[00:21:05] They each inform the whole you. Yeah, which is why we get personal development money. You can do, if you want to take a writing class and you’re a writer, feel free, but you don’t have to use it for that. You know, you can use it for whatever fulfills you.

[00:21:22] Yvonne Heimann: And I, I, I really, really love that because, I’ve talked in past episodes about how some, some of my guests, as well as also my clients that I’ve worked with, they’ve struggled trying to support their team.

[00:21:39] Because there is so much going on. They might have gone through a growth spurt. They might have gone through, through some major scaling things just happen. And the team, the team is invested. The team wants to do, but they’re like, I can’t do anymore. I need a day off and being able to say, hey, there’s resources for you.

[00:21:58] Heck, even if you take, [00:22:00] take a piece of that development money and go get yourself a massage, a weekend off, relax and recharge. Because giving them that personal freedom and letting them recharge their battery also means they’re going to show up better for us being refreshed and, and still being excited about the company.

[00:22:22] Christy Pretzinger: Yeah, we, it was a long time ago. It was probably at least. I decided to give everybody unlimited time off and I had read about it like in fast company and it was some big company that had done it. And I thought, oh, I would love to do that. Unfortunately. Now, I think a lot of companies do it because what they’ve found is that people take less time off.

[00:22:40] That is not why I did that. I did it because I wanted people to take time off. We encourage them to unplug. It’s up to them if they feel like they want to check email for some reason, because they don’t want it to pile up, but we really encourage them like doing once a day and then put it away and just unplug and enjoy yourself and do whatever it is you want to do.

[00:22:59] Just like we closed the [00:23:00] company the last two weeks of December to give everybody time to really enjoy the holidays to, you know, they’ve worked really hard to reset and people come back in January, just really refreshed and excited about the coming year. And that, you know, that’s a big hit financially to our business.

[00:23:15] It’s a very large six figure hit to our revenue. But the price that doesn’t show up on the balance sheet is the people benefit, right? That doesn’t show up anywhere on a balance sheet. And the engagement, the retention, the joy that people actually feel in their work. Those are your cultural balance sheet.

[00:23:35] That’s what those things are.

[00:23:39] Yvonne Heimann: And so much happy. And it sounds like the team has taken well to the unlimited time off because it, I know my team by now, yes, they would take it, but because we’ve been working as a team for them to be able to say they want to take a time off, but they were in such a mindset of, as you mentioned.[00:24:00]

[00:24:00] A lot of corporations have realized the team takes actually less time off when than when they have a fixed amount and having that personality, but it seems like you and your team already from the beginning have such a great dynamic that it’s not a oh, my god, I don’t, I don’t want to be the one taking time off, right?

[00:24:24] Christy Pretzinger: So nobody feels like he was confident with that. Good. That’s yeah. And you know what it is too, is what I say too, is that, sorry, that I cast the vision for the culture. They live it out every day. If all I did was talk about it, then it wouldn’t really be a thing. It’s the culture is the, the, the, some of the parts being greater, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, right?

[00:24:45] All of these people protect this culture. If somebody wants time off, they come in and fill in for each other. We give maternity leave to women. We do, I mean, we give parental leave. How about that? But it’s, [00:25:00] it’s, it’s a very safe space and people protect it because they value it.

[00:25:05] Yvonne Heimann: I love that.

[00:25:09] So it being 2024, where, how do I say this? Nowadays, who is Christie and what does the company do now?

[00:25:23] Christy Pretzinger: Well, we just rebranded. So we’ve been Writer Girl forever. And we’ve checked over time if we should change the name and our clients would say, you know, it doesn’t really capture everything that you do, but everybody knows the name.

[00:25:37] So we’re like, okay, we’ll hold on to that. Well, then we decided this year that we are rebranding to WG content and then it’s strategy and creation because what we’ve found really, even in the past couple of years. That many of our clients, the, like the high level, the CMOs that not the people we work with day to day, we usually work with marketing departments, but the CMOs and CEOs of these large [00:26:00] hospitals don’t know.

[00:26:02] They’re surprised by how vast our offerings are. So we decided we wanted to actually depict that in our name. So that’s, that’s a large initiative that’s happening as we speak. And we kept the WG because a lot of people refer to Writer Girl as WG. So we kept that as the legacy and then change the rest of it.

[00:26:20] So that’s, that’s a big initiative. The company remains mission driven, which,

[00:26:29] continue to be mission driven, regardless of the actual work that we do, because we look at the way that we, we kind of process that mission is that we build relationships with each other. We build them with our vendors, all the contractors that we have. We build them with our clients and then with our clients populations with their their audiences.

[00:26:51] So it’s a, it’s a thread that runs through everything that we do. And for me, I firmly believe that in the world [00:27:00] in which we live right now, not just in this country, but the world that people are yearning for human connection. Right. I mean, the real connection, and I’m not talking online.

[00:27:11] I’m talking about smiling and nodding at one another. And you can do that virtually. I know you can build a culture. It’s a different energy. It’s a very different energy. And I think that we really need that. So I’m looking at ways to further that mission of building relationships one word at a time of creating opportunities for people to truly connect in their humanity.

[00:27:33] With all the good that that is, you know, being fully seen and knowing that they matter. And they can that the special magic they bring to an organization is missed if they leave those kind of things. I think people are yearning for. So, so that’s my passion is looking for. How do we further that mission into the world that really can make an, an impact you know, on a, starting on a small level and then can [00:28:00] cascade and grow from there.

[00:28:02] Yvonne Heimann: God, I love that. Tell the audience where they can follow your journey. Where can they find you? Where can they stay up to date what you’re up to?

[00:28:11] Christy Pretzinger: Probably the easiest way is to go to writergirl.com, which will soon point you to wgcontent.com. And you can find me there and all of our social media is there.

[00:28:21] We have blogs. I also, I have, have a website, which I have on Sheet. com and I will shortly have some things on there about the upcoming book and about where you can reach me. And you know, I’m happy to do podcasts like this. I love talking to people like you and like minded people who share many similarities and, and I find that interesting to be able to, to talk about that with others.

[00:28:48] So.

[00:28:49] Yvonne Heimann: Love that guys. As always, you know, all the links are going to be in the description. So it’s really easy for you to just click on it and go follow Christy. Thank you [00:29:00] so much for joining me today. Everybody in the audience, remember to hit that follow button. So you do not miss the next episode. Thank you so much for

[00:29:09] joining me.

[00:29:10] Christy Pretzinger: Thank you for having me enjoyed the conversation.

Timestamps

00:00 | Introduction

06:26 | Hiring With Kindness: Setting Up Employees for Success 

11:07 | Embracing Self-Awareness For a Compassionate Business Environment 

19:50 | Empowering Your Team By Investing On Their Personal Development