Jeff Spear
Senior Vice President at ReviveHealth
There are two areas that Jeff Speer probably has more experience than you in: remote working and healthcare. Over the past 18 years, Jeff has worked for two agencies that specialize in providing marketing and communication services to healthcare companies. Since 2004, Jeff has spent a majority of his career working remotely and continues to do so in his current position at ReviveHealth, a full-service agency “focused on the intersection of healthcare delivery, finance, and innovation.” After establishing themselves in Santa Barbara in 2010, ReviveHealth moved headquarters and a majority of staff to Nashville, while Jeff decided to stay put in Santa Barbara. In his position, Jeff designs multi-faceted marketing and communication campaigns, develops strategy and messaging and is responsible for overall program results. Jeff is currently a senior vice president and works remotely from his dedicated desk at THE SANDBOX.
Keep reading to learn more about Jeff’s experience working in PR, what he loves about his job, and the advantages and disadvantages of remote working.
Jeff and his wife, Natalie, visiting the Colosseum
Q: What’s keeping you busy?
A: “I work for ReviveHealth, a full-service agency focused on healthcare. We cover everything from branding, marketing, digital, public relations, and issues management for healthcare companies.”
Q: How did you get to where you are today?
A: “Once I graduated from UCLA I got a job at Hyundai American Shipping Agency as an inside sales coordinator, which meant I helped plan space on shipping vessels. I did that for about 2 years until the company moved our department to Texas and I took a severance instead. I wanted to do something more creative so I looked for jobs in advertising. I ran across this job at a PR firm called FischerHealth, which specialized in healthcare, and ended up working there from 2001 to 2010. In 2010 I was recruited at my current company, ReviveHealth.”
Q: Tell me about ReviveHealth.
A: “I’m a senior vice president and I work in our strategy department. I was the eighth employee and now we have about eighty-five. The company was founded in Santa Barbara but most of our team is now in Nashville. We decided to move our office because Nashville is the capital for the kind of health-care work we do and it’s a growing city. We had a hard time hiring in Santa Barbara because we needed people with healthcare experience, an interest in PR and we just couldn’t find people locally or people willing to move. Now we have people in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Boston in addition to Santa Barbara and Nashville.”
Q: What do you love about your job?
A: “I do a lot of different things for different companies. The thing I like the most is creative work and creative strategy.
I also love learning about my client’s business really well. For example, earlier in my career, I worked with a medical device company and they had this procedure where they took a vein from your leg and used it in a heart procedure. It was fun since I had to learn the science behind the procedure and then I worked with a company that developed an animated video to explain how the procedure works.”
Q: What has your experience been like working in PR?
A: “I’m glad I spent so much time in PR because it really helps you think analytically. You learn to figure out hard problems that can’t be solved just by putting up an advertisement. In PR, you really have to figure out all the layers of how people react to things, how they think, what their perceptions are today and how you want those perceptions to change in order to drive whatever business goal you have. That kind of thinking is really helpful in business and in life too.
What I didn’t like about working solely in PR is that oftentimes PR firms get pigeonholed into ‘go get me media coverage’ and issue crisis work. Personally, I wanted to take the strategy and have the ability to engage people in many different ways. That’s one of the reasons I came to ReviveHealth. Even though we started out as a public relations firm, I knew the CEO wanted to do a lot more and for the past five or so years we’ve expanded into branding, marketing, and advertising. We have a digital team, creative team, social media team, PR team, measurement and analytics team, and it gives us the ability to do all kinds of things that a traditional PR agency would not be asked to do.”
Q: What was a monumental moment in your career?
A: “When ReviveHealth was acquired by Weber Shandwick, a global agency and one of the most respected firms in the country. A primary reason I joined ReviveHealth was to have the opportunity to help build a firm from the beginning. It’s been extremely gratifying.”
Q: How do you measure success in your career?
A: “As long as I’m growing my skills, contributing to my clients and the agency’s growth, and enjoy what I’m doing, then all is well.”
Q: What has your experience been like as a remote worker?
A: “I’ve worked remotely for most of my career and I’ve also never had a client in the same city as me. I first started working remotely in 2004 and you can imagine technology back then. It was a big deal for my agency to let me do that and trust that I could still do the job. We communicated through Yahoo messenger and over the phone. There was no Slack, no video calls, email was a little wishy-washy, there was no Dropbox. But we made it work.
The advantage is you’re a lot more productive. You learn discipline and how to focus. Remote working was hard at first because I felt like I was missing out on the social side of work but I learned how to concentrate and use my time, and develop relationships in other ways. The drawback is you definitely lose the comradery. Sometimes you don’t get pulled into something that might have been interesting or maybe certain career opportunities aren’t available.”
What brought you to THE SANDBOX?
A: “My company downsized enough in Santa Barbara that there were only two of us. Neither of us wanted to work from home full-time so we came to THE SANDBOX.”
Q: What are some of your non-work related passions?
A: “I like to play basketball in the mornings. That’s probably my favorite non-work, non-family thing.
And it makes no sense because I’m terrible. I’m chosen last every time but I don’t care. I’m not athletic, I didn’t play in school, getting older hasn’t helped, but I still love it. I like the fact that I just have to show up and play basketball, focus on something that is physically and mentally challenging, and it provides a chance for competition and teamwork.”
Q: What is something you read, watch, or listen to regularly?
A: “Listen: Run the Jewels, Pearl Jam, Kendrick Lamar, Alt-J, Alabama Shakes.
Read: Besides the news and work-related books, I like fiction. It’s fun to read the same things my daughter is reading so we read a lot of Fantasy fiction.
Watch: The popular bingeable shows and UCLA basketball.”
Q: What do you like about living in Santa Barbara?
A: “Oh man! What isn’t there to like? I love the sun and I love that it’s simple. It’s easy to get from one place to another and it encourages you to get outside and makes you want to be active. I travel a lot to other cities and they’re all pretty cool, but they all kind of have the same problems that Santa Barbara doesn’t have, like traffic and weather issues. I also like that Santa Barbara is growing.”
