Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Camille Prairie. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Camille , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Day to day the world can seem like a tough place, but there’s also so much kindness in the world and we think talking about that kindness helps spread it and make the world a nicer, kinder place. Can you share a story of a time when someone did something really kind for you?

Last October, I took maternity leave from October through the end of December. I already knew I had great clients – and I did everything to prepare for leaving them for three months, like frontloading work – but in the weeks following my son’s birth, a few things happened. A package landed on my doorstep from the United Kingdom, complete with tea for me and “Cribsheet” by Emily Oster, and contrast cards and a stuffy for my son. Another client sent me a gift card for some self-care. And one of my service providers sent me a DoorDash gift card. That’s not just one person, but in the weeks after giving birth, I was at my most vulnerable – and the people who support my business stepped up to support me, as a person. It was incredibly meaningful to watch those relationships transcend the context of work.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a strategic healthcare communicator, which means I can do everything from deliver a blog based on a brief you gave me to build a content strategy from the ground up across multiple channels. I also write patient education and continuing medical education materials. I got into this profession when I decided I did not want to be a doctor and was left with a degree in Biology, a year of postgraduate education, and no job. I had been part-time freelance writing for money on the side and decided to try it full-time. I quickly niched down into health.

I work with private practice owners, nonprofits, large hospitals, and other business in the healthcare industry to ensure their content is resonating with the intended audience. I may audit their current content and suggest how it could be more effective. The main problems I solve are, “We don’t have enough time to do this well,” “We don’t know how to market ourselves,” or just, “We need a skilled writer.”

What sets me apart from being another writer is that I can do more than just write: I can provide strategic insights, I work on positioning and pricing with my clients, I do SEO/AEO strategy — I do many things well that support good healthcare marketing and healthcare education.

I’m most proud of the potential for positive impact on patient outcomes my work has.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I built my main audience on LinkedIn – and I know that’s not the most popular place to build, but it’s where my audience is. There’s no point in building on Instagram, for example, if the audience for my work just isn’t there.

I finally bit the bullet and just started posting every day. Sometimes I would use templates that were sold at a low price point or for free to get some inspiration, but I found that posting was a muscle I had to build. Writing a post moved from staring at a blinking cursor to second nature. And I also learned that no one sees the posts that no one sees. Either a post will be really popular, and you don’t need to interrogate why too deeply, or it’ll flop and then there’s the next day to try again. Now I use LinkedIn to advertise freebies, upcoming events, anything going on in my ecosystem – and it really works or me.

Advice? Just start! And go where YOUR audience is – not where you think you should be.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I have always been incredibly driven (and I’m not saying that like it’s a virtue – it’s pretty morally neutral.) And it’s actually lent itself to burnout since I was in college. It can be helpful when there’s something I need to get done, but when I started running my own business in 2022, it became clear pretty quickly that I had no work-life boundaries. And the lesson — or idea — I was basing my whole business around was that I constantly had to be a step ahead of everyone else, constantly needed to be first up to look at gig boards, constantly needed to be on. Otherwise, how would I keep finding clients? How would I make sure everything got done? I had no “off” button. I felt like things would burn down if I took a step away.

Now, I have a child – which adds a whole new layer of complexity – and if I hadn’t unlearned this lesson or idea before he came along, I certainly have now: I can’t operate like that.

Surprise: Things still get done, even if it’s not on my timeline. No one is mad at me for not meeting a self-imposed deadline.

The lesson, in all of it, is that no one is as hard on me as me, and I can make the choice NOT to be hard on myself.

Image Credits

Susanna Trotter