SoFi Blog

What do Tina Fey, Justin Timberlake, and Ellen DeGeneres have in common? Aside from being excellent and hilarious entertainers, each of these influencers has done an exceptional job with personal branding.

Though the meaning has fluctuated over the years, what I mean by “personal branding” here is your unique promise of value. That is—your personal brand is the story only you are able to tell. It’s the one that makes you stand out from the rest of the pack.

As anyone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area will tell you, it is truly a place like no other. The tech industry beckons with its surfeit of good paying jobs, the restaurant scene rivals that of any world capital, oh—and where else can you ski in the mountains one weekend, and then kayak with sea otters the next?

So while it’s not hard to understand why so many people are clamoring to buy a home in the Bay Area, those incredible perks are offset by one major drawback—a sky-high real estate market.

In our #SoFiStartups Q&A series, SoFi co-founder Dan Macklin sits down with startup founders who have gone through the SoFi Entrepreneur Program, where we offer mentorship, access to investors, and student loan deferment for founders of young startups. In a candid conversation, he speaks from one entrepreneur to another about their experiences founding a company.

Medications can improve the quality of your life—when you remember to take them, that is. This is the insight at the heart of Pillsy, a smart pill bottle that syncs wirelessly to your phone and beeps when you forget a dose. The set-up lends an effortless, tech-assisted hand to help you keep track of your vitamins and medications.

But if this solution sounds deceptively simple, that’s because it is. In fact, it took the Seattle-based startup two years to get to where they are today, on the verge of launching their product. Challenges like manufacturing cost-effective hardware, wrestling with Bluetooth, and developing a user-friendly format didn’t make Pillsy easy to bring to life. As co-founder Otto Sipe describes the process, “It was long and there were a lot of rewrites along the way. Along the lines of—Oh, this is completely not going to work.“

If you haven’t yet reached the point of sitting in your cubicle and counting sticky notes out of boredom or because your workplace has become so grueling, you can’t be bothered to pay attention anymore—congrats. You’re one of the lucky souls not suffering from job burnout.

But even go-getters can suffer from career stress—the feeling that work has become a series of mindless repetitions and frustrating situations. And once it hits the burnout stage, that feeling is no joke. Left to fester, burnout can wreak havoc on your health, happiness, productivity, and performance. According to the Staples Business Advantage 2016 Workplace Advantage Index, 91% of U.S. and Canadian workers surveyed for the report put in over 40 hours a week, at least some of the time, and 22% have changed jobs because of work-life balance issues, including decreased family time and battling work pressures that seep into their personal lives. In addition, 3 out of 4 respondents reported they aren’t provided with the latest technology and are expected to do more with less, and only 35% have a wellness program available at their current job.

Snapping back from job burnout and once again becoming excited about your career is doable, but you must first take a deep dive into how you’re feeling to identify the source.

It’s no secret that the average doctor is saddled with tons of student loan debt when starting practice. In fact, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the average doctor graduates medical school with $190,000 in student loans—6x the national average.

Having a strategy to quickly and efficiently pay down your student loans is critical to long-term financial success, so we’ve put together a few personal finance tips and tricks for doctors to help them pay down student loans faster in 2017. These tips are relevant to all doctors, regardless of specialty or income.