Without a clearly defined path to follow, Marc-Francois Bradley relied more on a few guiding principles to lead his life. He sought to make a difference and expect good outcomes. When unexpected events came his way, he wasn't derailed but rather used the opportunities to recenter his priorities. Find out how setting your guardrails sometimes provides all the structure you need on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Local to the area where he’d eventually go to college, Marc-François Bradley felt it was a happy accident to land there and benefit from good experiences with hockey, friends, education and the opportunity to kindle a relationship with the woman who would eventually become his wife. But like the spirit of accepting what will come for college, he didn’t launch into a career with a particularly pathway in mind. Instead, he said he set a few guardrails based on the guiding principles of seeking to make a difference and expecting good outcomes. He parlayed his computer science skills into various technology opportunities but when his first child was born very early and needed extensive care, a new path took shape, guided by his guardrails and new priorities.
In this episode, find out from Mark how setting your guardrails sometimes provides all the structure you need…on Roads Taken with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode’s Guest
Marc-François Bradley is a digital healthcare strategist and manager with extensive experience in innovation, information technology, and development of strategic corporate relationships. For the last decade, he has been founder and CEO of Sophrona, an online patient-physician communication technology and SaaS solution for ophthalmology. He lives with his family in Idaho, racing his bike and appreciating all he has done and will do.
For another story about grounding decisions in values, listen to our episode with Jennie Tranter.
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Marc-François Bradley: What I was best equipped with was more like, not specific goals, but sort of guiding principles. So I sort of knew the guardrails of where I wanted to go, right? I knew I wanted to make a difference. I knew my life mattered. I knew that pretty much anything I was gonna do was going to make, I mean, that sounds cliche, but I sort of had a very strong confidence in that.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Without a clearly defined path to follow, Marc-François Bradley relied more on a few guiding principles to lead his life. He sought to make a difference and expect good outcomes. When unexpected events came his way, he wasn't derailed but rather used the opportunities to recenter his priorities. Find out how setting your guardrails sometimes provides all the structure you need on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today I'm here with Marc-François Bradley, and we are going to talk about starting things and the seeds from which they start being sometimes mysterious. So thank you so much for being with us.
MFB: It's a pleasure to be here.
LJR: All right, so I ask our guests the same two questions at the top of each show, and they are these: When we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
MFB: All right. Well, I've had the luxury like many of your other guests to think a little bit ahead of time and actually took, it took a little bit of reflection. But I think that, you know, when I came to Dartmouth, I was probably a little bit, I may have been a little more accidental a student than some of my peers or some of our peers. I mean, I look back and I'm absolutely thrilled with Dartmouth and love Dartmouth and wish Dartmouth on any student. But at the time I sort of thought of Dartmouth as sort of one of many other options and I was just very quickly, just loved the place, made friends really quickly. I was a local. So I was sort of from the local community. That's maybe partly why I was accidental. I hadn't like grown up dreaming of staying in town. It was sort of just like that: Unsure what I was going to study. You know, I ended up studying engineering, which I loved, but I didn't have that as a goal just to arriving as a student.
I was a hockey player. I hadn't been recruited, but I thought I had a shot if I worked really hard at it.
LJR: Did you play all four years?
MFB: No. I played JV for two years. At the time, there was a JV program and I gave it my all and I think I came close to being asked to play one level up. But by then I was very seriously dating my now wife, and I sort of felt like the risk-reward was slipping away from me and that I probably would enjoy myself more and as maybe a better use of my time to see her. We were dating long distance. She was a Cornell student. So leaving for a weekend to visit was, it wasn't something I could do at the same time as pursuing the hockey dream.
So as a hockey player, I came from a bilingual family and sort of from a blue collar working town. So it was really nice to find a whole world that appreciated another culture. And so that's sort of who I was. I was new to my Christian faith, so I was really excited to meet others who, you know, were inquisitive in that area and wanted to learn and grow in that area. And so I think between those things for three years at Dartmouth, I was dating my now wife so that, you know, so between dating long distance, trying to play hockey, sort of a new faith, lots of friends and then studies, you know, it made for a very busy and very fulfilling period of my life.
LJR: Full life. And engineering itself kind of gives you a lot of breadth in the kinds of things that you're doing. And so I think I know where you ended up as you were leaving, but where did you think you would long term end up?
MFB: Well, I think I, you know, I've given, I think that's actually the harder question to look back on. And I think that in my case, I didn't have a very singular objective. I wasn't someone who said, I'm going to be an attorney, or I'm gonna be a doctor. I knew I wasn't interested in…my, you know, my father was a professor. And I knew I wasn't someone who wanted to teach things. And so, you know, as I look at…I knew that most of my classmates either continued engineering or they went into sort of consulting. And so that sort of felt like a better fit. I loved problem solving, kind of like the idea of maybe, you know, being in a city and experiencing things I hadn't had experience before. I think that probably as I reflect back, what I was best equipped with was more like not specific goals, but sort of guiding principles. So I sort of knew the guardrails of where I wanted to go, right? I knew I wanted to make a difference. I knew my life mattered. I knew that pretty much anything I was gonna do was going to make, I mean, that sounds cliche, but I sort of had a very strong confidence in that. Of course I was, at the time, engaged to be married, so I knew that was part of my identity. But in terms of, you know, what would I end up doing or that sort of thing, it was really more of an outlook: just being confident, being enthusiastic.
LJR: And so you did take the consulting route first thing off out of college?
MFB: Yeah, I did. Although if you look back as sort of a historian, in reality, consulting for most of us meant that we were gonna be programmers. You know, it was a time where I think, at least my recollection is, that the computer science sort of field of study wasn't nearly as popular. My recollection is that there was a fairly small number, and this was the time when, you know, Andersen Consulting had a facility in St. Charles, Illinois where you went there to learn to be a consultant, but really you were learning to be a programmer. And so, I don't know. I kind of look back a little bit with the wink and kind of feel like a lot of us were sort of fooled. It worked out great for me. I loved programming and I'm, you know, I didn't become a long-term programmer, but that was sort of the foundation for a lot of that. And so, yeah, I went, you know, what was the consulting route. And I didn't go to St. Charles, Illinois to the Andersen…I wasn't picked to be an Andersen consultant, but I went to Hartford, Connecticut. [LJR: Okay.] Which, being from New England, I felt was you know, less exciting than going to Chicago. But did some formation and programming and then went off to Minneapolis, which was really where I knew I was gonna sort of make my home for the first few years. My fiance at the time had, you know, we had kind of lined up with what cities would make sense to live in. Again, back to the sort of guardrails, right? Like, well, these four cities would all be cool, so let's pursue things in these four cities. And Minneapolis was one of 'em. I had…a few of our classmates spoke very highly of Minneapolis. Michelle Erickson then was a woman on the hockey team and she always spoke really highly of it. And so that somehow landed on our map and that's how we ended up there.
LJR: And so there were a couple of consulting years, coding years. Learning to solve problems in a specific way, but then a problem arose and you took a different tack, so…
MFB: That's right. That's right. Well, so I had been at it for a while and I, you know, really quite liking what I was doing, and I, you know, from a career perspective, I suppose, progressing nicely and getting new responsibilities and being appreciated for what I did and getting to think about bigger problems and that sort of thing. And by that point, my wife had decided and was in medical school at the University of Minnesota and I was working at Target stores in a variety of roles when Target was getting big and being cool. And…
LJR: Because that was their headquarters, right?
MFB: Yeah, that's right. That's right. And I never thought of retail is cool until I worked there. And then, people would say nice things about Target opening a store in their area. But in any event, we were expecting our first child and she was born super early. She was born at 28 weeks in one pound, 12 ounces. So very, very small. Like as small as a little, t was a squirrel.
LJR: Really?
MFB: Oh, you know, my wedding band would've fit around her leg. But any event, that was maybe one of the hardest periods in my life, at least as I look back. She was in the hospital for almost two months and, you know, it was a first child and my wife was in medical school. I was still working and we're trying to get to the hospital to visit her. And, you know, oftentimes in the neonatal intensive care unit, you sort of take two steps forward, one step back. Maybe that's true for a lot of healthcare, but…So it's a stressful period. And at its conclusion, I started really being frustrated with how much time we were spending trying to make appointments with doctors and make follow up.
She's totally healthy. She's a Dartmouth class at 2025 now.
LJR: Ah, congratulations to her. Yay.
MFB: Sophomore summer. So you know. But in any event at the time there were lots of medical appointments, lots of challenges, and it led me to sort of start. Thinking about trying to solve that problem, figure out how to help patients make their own appointments online and not have to wait on the phone. And, you know, what started as sort of an idea and a curiosity…I was also in business school at the time. I, you know, sort of used that hat, that business school hat to call people and say, Hey, so I'm a student. I'm trying to understand this, you know, talk to me and, you know, start starting to understand that while the path was difficult there, there probably was, you know, a way to address that.
Now, bear in mind, today I think we think of online scheduling as probably something we've all done for healthcare.
LJR: But really only recently.
MFB: Only, well, yeah, only recently and even so in many cases it's still not possible. But this is almost, you know, this is now we're talking about 2003 timeframe and 2002. So that was, that sort of became an impetus for me to start thinking about like, maybe, maybe I could do something. I pulled together, you know, I had a very big network. But at that point I was not a programmer. But I had a lot of friends who were programmers, and so we started kind of working on a concept for making this work and started, you know, looking for some money. I did not come from a wealthy family that had all the connections. So who knows what it could have been if I had. But you know, I could work real hard to get that first $30,000 check from someone who said, okay, I believe in your idea. Go try to do something. And that was super validating, but…So this was a turning point for me. At the same time my wife was in medical school, hadn't picked a specialty. This intern also, you know, it's worth noting, was a pivotal sort of moment where she decided then to pursue obstetrics and gynecology.
LJR: Wow.
MFB: So this experience of having, you know, an unexpected daughter born that early really sort of put me down this different path. And ultimately I decided that I couldn't do all three things be, you know, be the dad I wanted to be, and the husband of a medical student and soon-to-be resident and pursue a startup and do my business school degree. So I ended up leaving Target and dropping the MBA program. So I'm really a half MBA, if that is anything at all.
And really just, I worked for several years on the concept, had to retool. This conversation isn't just about that work. But the point is, you know, there were the normal fits and starts of a startup and the normal setbacks. I think the normal, the common what started from that experience, you know, turned into something that's I'm still working on today.
So I'm, you know, still very happily tackling the dragons of challenges patients have with healthcare and trying to figure out how to do things better. Mainly in ophthalmology, but, but still, yeah.
LJR: Yeah. And I think that's just a great, of course, there's this off the wall, unexpected impetus for it, but it really does bring together so much of who you are and were, you know, the coding part. [MFB: Yeah.] You weren't a programmer then, but you knew enough about it and you had friends that were doing it and could come in and help you had the business side. Even though you didn't finish the MBA, you still kind of had that inquisitive side and had had enough of the time in industry or in retail that you got that and you had this user experience of “this really sucked.” And you know, when you put it all together, that is the, usually that's the sign of a good entrepreneurial beginning. And then to be able to then parlay that into now 20 plus years of that, that's the staying power is the, probably the non-typical part.
MFB: I think I that's probably right, but I think that, I think the former part is very much, and it goes back to this idea of, you know, not knowing exactly what you're going to do, but knowing you're well equipped. And, you know, not only well equipped in terms of skill and experience and intelligence and connections, but also, again, going back to this idea of, you know, sort of knowing, knowing what you wanna live for, even if it's not a specific definition of like a particular role or a particular profession, but just sort of, you know, this idea of, well, what kind of a person do you wanna be? And, you know, living with a purpose. I think that does a lot to sort of help one decide, you know. Well, I can't be an MBA and an entrepreneur and a good dad, right? So what am I gonna pick? What are my guardrails? You know, and yeah.
LJR: But even the entrepreneurial lifestyle like that requires a lot of other guardrails, like more specific ones, because that can be all consuming. And I think you're right in saying that, if I know the kind of the life I'm after or those values that I'm after, like making sure that that's coming first and prioritizing the family part, you know, that you needed to have told yourself that pretty early in the game or…
MFB: I think so. I think so. I mean, there have been times where I've seen others who, you know, maybe by some measures, have accomplished far more, but I also know that that's come at a price in that same sort of trade-off circle. You know, of different things to do. So I'm very fortunate in that, you know, been married for 25 years now, still love my wife very much, you know, good marriage.
My daughters are both doing great. We're empty nesters this year for the first year, so that's been kinda fun.
LJR: Wow, that's a lot. So, wait, so you have, your oldest is a sophomore.
MFB: My oldest is…but it's actually a little bit of a joke here because she will be doing her sophomore summer. So she's a sophomore through this fall. But my youngest daughter is a freshman, finishing her freshman year next week. So technically they're gonna both be sophomores for a little bit. I think you could make that argument too.
LJR: So you had another child on the heels of this kind of very disruptive, very scary, kind of traumatic medical experience while your wife is a resident and you're starting a business?
MFB: I think there might have been a little bit of a sense that we had a window if we wanted to have another kid. It was kind of like now we're, they're gonna be like five years younger than their sibling with residency and well being enough.
LJR: If we think about it too long, we'll never do it. Yeah, okay I see.
MFB: Maybe that, but I think just a sense of, I think we actually, I think that we may have. I could be wrong here. I would fact check with my wife, but we may have even been encouraged to have another child for the benefit of sort of the developmental delays that, you know, our first daughter had initially, and, you know, having a peer at home. It's possible. Like I said…
LJR: That just seems like a lot to undertake. My goodness. I think you have to have the guardrails at that point, or you let, you were completely off the rails when you thought about that one.
MFB: We were very fortunate. I'll say that. I was told that having two kids was one plus one equals 11, and in our case there really was like just one plus one is. I mean, they, they, they sort of, I would be the argument for, you know, do 'em in a batch. I mean, it's you know, they potty trained together. They were thinking about college applications together. So, I mean, there's just a lot of…
LJR: Right, right. And now you do have this empty nest kind of semblance of that. And you have another chapter ahead of you. So you've kept this business going in various forms with various kinds of partners and implementing it different ways. Where do you see, I know the unplanned seems to work well for you, but where do you see the next chapter taking you?
MFB: No, that's a, that's a difficult question. Yeah, I mean, I love what I'm doing right now. I can see doing this. I, well, let me say this. My father is 87 and my mother is 84 and like they still worked till a year or two ago ‘cause they were doing stuff they loved. And so I, you know, I currently do, I mean, I'm very active outdoors. I do a ton of mountain biking. I race my bike. I'm a coach. I do a lot of really cool things. So I'm not one who is in a, in, I really like the work I do, so I'm not really one who is in a hurry to say I'm gonna retire, right? And so I think that, I think that, you know, as long as, you know, we're healthy and we're able to find ways to make, continue making a difference, it could be in any different way. But, so I, for the short term, I think it'll continue to be the sort of thing I'm doing now. But I can't, yeah, I guess it's not all together different from the answer about leaving Dartmouth: That I feel equipped, I feel like I have a purpose. I'm not exactly sure what that'll be, you know, beyond, you know, some of the goals I have just for the next few years that are primarily business driven, I think. [LJR: Yeah.] You know, staying in touch with my kids as they go through a different chapter here and staying connected and staying relevant, I guess if I'm really honest.
LJR: Yeah, yeah, totally. I get that so much. So you have actually been in Minneapolis and then of course the way that medical schools work and training, was it your wife's career that made a move?
MFB: Well, it was her family. We were very, very happy in the Twin Cities. There are a lot of, I wanna say it's one of the more active Dartmouth alumni clubs in the country. So very, very connected, very happy, great place. But I think that we would, we, you know, my family was in Vermont and her family was in Idaho, and we knew that we would do better with kids as they got older if we were maybe had the supportive family. And so you know, when it came time, I mean, I love visiting Vermont. But I just didn't really see myself living there. Idaho at the time, and still today I guess to some extent, felt like sort of an exotic destination. And and so we, so when the opportunity arose for her to find work, it was after residency really. It was the opportunity of where to work and where to build a career. We chose to come back this way and by then, Sophrona, the company that I started, was well enough off the ground and kind of been tested out long before the pandemic. We were all a virtual company, right? [LJR: Ah, okay.] So we, we all, we all were used to working from home, so, so it was relatively easy to say, well, I'll just keep doing the same thing and there won't be too many adjustments. So, so that worked out really well. And so that's great. We've been here since 2008. Long time.
LJR: Yeah. Long time. All right. So long time indeed from when we were in college. So try to cast the mind back to that 20-something Marc-Francois. And if you told him, Hey, let me show you kind of the trajectory of what this is gonna look like. What would he say? What would his reaction be?
MFB: Well, I think I would've been, I think it's no…I'm very grateful and I think it's no small thing to stay married and be happily married for as long, so I would've, you know, said you did it! You know, you wanted to and you did it!
So I think I would've sort of given myself that, but I think that, you know how many kids are like, we weren't, that wasn't, I don't…For some people I think there's sort of an idea, you're gonna do this or you're gonna do that. But no, I didn't think I'd start a business. I didn't think that. I'd be successful with it in a small way. I, yeah, I think there would've been a lot of surprises. I'm guessing most of your guests would answer the same question this way, but maybe not.
LJR: No, I think, exactly. I mean, that is all, it's almost the point of this whole enterprise to say we had no idea what it was gonna be like or where we were gonna end up. And I feel like some of us did think though, that we knew, or we were putting our stones in the road so that we would get to that thing. But so many have shown that we can't anticipate kind of where love takes us or opportunity takes us or our children take us or whatever it is. So I think you are a shining example of, I don't exactly know and I'm gonna follow what seems right and make sure those guardrails are there so that I'm not straying into territory that might not be right. [MFB: Mm-hmm.] So I appreciate your sharing the story with us, and we can't wait to see where those, you know, well-intentioned guardrails will keep you safe, but maybe we'll see you someplace different in the future. So thanks so much for being here.
MFB: Yeah, well, you're welcome.
LJR: That was Marc-François Bradley, a digital healthcare strategist and manager with extensive experience in innovation, information technology, and development of strategic corporate relationships. For the last decade, he has been founder and CEO of Sophrona, an online patient-physician communication technology and SaaS solution for ophthalmology. He lives with his family in Idaho, racing his bike and appreciating all he has done and will do.
We certainly appreciate all the listeners of this podcast and will continue to bring you great content this summer wherever your adventures might take you. Go to wherever you find your podcasts or RoadsTakenShow.com to join my guests and me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on Roads Taken.