The Five Forms of Physician Leverage
What would you say if I told you that your most valuable professional assets aren’t your clinical skills, aren’t listed as line items on your CV, and weren’t taught to you in medical school or residency?
Your most valuable assets are your different forms of leverage.
There are five discrete forms. You may not be aware that they exist or be aware of how to activate them. But before we dive in, let’s first define what leverage is and what leverage isn’t.
Leverage is the ability to amplify your output per unit of input. It’s about getting disproportionate results - whether in income, impact, or opportunity - with the same level of effort. When you’re activating leverage, it compounds over time and accumulates even when you’re not actively working.
It’s important to contrast this with what leverage is not. Leverage does not mean increasing linear inputs such as hours spent at work, RVUs, or productivity. That model is not sustainable from an energetic perspective, and is also fragile in the age of increasing pressures from AI, reimbursement challenges, and consolidation. Physicians that have intentionally activated different forms of leverage will be hedged against some of these pressures.
THE FIVE FORMS
Form 1 - Knowledge Leverage
Using your clinical knowledge and expertise to create value outside of the clinical setting - expertise that extends beyond the clinical encounter.
Examples: My participation in the AI Advisory Board at Atrius/Optum, where I help evaluate AI software and platforms for integration into our practice. Quality and Safety Workshop creation in tandem with the insurer Coverys, to help practices across the country learn how to better manage incidental findings discovered on imaging exams.
Form 2 - Credibility Leverage
Using your physician credential itself to open doors, access opportunities, and create trust above and beyond the clinical setting.
Examples: Advocating for healthcare reform in Washington DC alongside hundreds of other physicians wearing their white coats in the halls of Congress. The MD credential signaling trust, status, and judgement in conversations with healthcare founders and investors.
Form 3 - Network Leverage
Utilizing relationships built over time through either your practice, professional societies, or your training to create access to opportunities, people, ideas, and introductions.
Examples: 15+ years of relationships in professional societies, such as The Massachusetts Radiological Society, and the American College of Radiology, leading to leadership opportunities in both organizations. Deep investor networks built through my time spent with the Launchpad Venture Group, AngelMD, and various other physician investor circles, leading to investment opportunities such as in the Series A investment round for RadAI. Gaining an invitation to speak at a national conference (RSNA) through reaching out to a fellow physician that I know through my network.
Form 4 - Platform Leverage
Using your public presence - whether through your social media channels, your reputation in your specialty or across the conference circuit, or through your writing or a newsletter - to amplify your visibility and transform it into opportunity.
Examples: MRS and RSNA conference speaking. Physician Vantage Studio creating opportunities for collaboration and discovery, such as a guest-podcast invitation I received recently to be interviewed on the Let Care Speak podcast. LinkedIn presence now approaching 1000+ followers and growing.
Form 5 - Capital Leverage
Using financial resources to create investment positioning, ownership interests, and business interests that create returns either disproportionate to - or independent of - hours worked.
Examples: Equity shares in multiple healthcare startup investments, some of which are positioned very well (and some of which have not been successful), and real estate investments. Using financial stability to buy back time which is then invested in other ventures, such as building Physician Vantage Studio. This could also include ownership of medical office space, or equity in clinical practice ownership or ASC ownership.
HOW THE FIVE FORMS COMPOUND
The important thing to understand is that these five forms of leverage are not independent of each other, but rather work together as a flywheel. Each part of the flywheel amplifies the effect of the others.
The flywheel works like this:
The Physician Leverage Flywheel: Knowledge creates Credibility. Credibility expands Network. Network expands Platform. Platform generates Capital. Capital funds the next investment or experiment. Each rotation of the flywheel is stronger and faster than the one that preceded it.
Knowledge opens the door for you and credibility makes you trusted once you’re there.
The network amplifies as your work permeates and compounds, which leads to a platform that magnifies your visibility.
Then capital follows as the flywheel turns.
Let’s run through a specific example from my life. My radiology expertise (Knowledge) combined with my AI interests and expertise (such as those gained through my RSNA AI certificate) gave me credibility as an AI implementation leader in my practice (Credibility) which connected me to other physician leaders and AI experts through my participation in my practice’s AI advisory board (Network). This informs my writing through LinkedIn, Substack, and Physician Vantage Studio, which then surfaces investment or collaboration opportunities (Capital) through outreach from investors and innovators I connect with in-person and online.
Once again it’s important to note how these forms compound. Each form of leverage makes the others easier to activate.
So, a physician with a rich network and platform leverage tends to learn about advisory opportunities (that they may not have discovered otherwise)… which can then be executed with knowledge leverage. These forms of leverage end up multiplying each other instead of being additive.
The gap between having leverage and using it is mostly a matter of awareness.
Here’s the honest baseline analysis for where most physicians stand across all five forms:
Knowledge Leverage: Already formed and available, but generally underutilized outside of the clinical domain.
Credibility leverage: Already intrinsically there by definition, but generally underutilized in the non-clinical context.
Network leverage: Partially formed, strongest within medicine and typically within one’s specialty, but weaker outside of it. Large potential to be amplified and grown over time through intentional strategic relationship building in adjacent contexts.
Platform leverage: Generally underdeveloped. Most physicians have a relatively minimal public presence. This leverage form can generate a strong return on investment because it compounds over a long time horizon.
Capital leverage: Depends on the state of the other four, and most physicians don’t activate this until forms 1 through 4 have been activated to a certain degree.
So the good news is that as a physician you have at least three of these five forms of leverage available to you right now, although you may have never activated them fully. The five categories of opportunity listed in the prior essay are the destinations, and these five forms of leverage are the ways to get there.
You are not starting from zero. You are sitting on five forms of leverage that took a decade to build. The question is whether you know how to use them.
In the next essay, I’ll dive into the specific regret that builds when physicians reach their 40s with leverage they never activated - and why that regret tends to be more common, and more preventable, than most physicians realize.
Which of the five forms of leverage do you feel is strongest for you, which is dormant, and which one do you think you could change the most in the next five years? Comment and let me know.
Disclosure: I hold investment positions in healthcare companies including through Launchpad Venture Group. Views expressed are my own and not those of my employer or affiliated organizations.
Scott F. Cameron, MD is a practicing radiologist, AI implementation leader, angel investor, and MRS Past President. He writes about physician career architecture at Physician Vantage Studio.