5 Businesses Physicians Can Start

If your business isn't working the way you expected, it's not because you're bad at business. It's because no one ever taught you how it actually works. We were trained to master algorithms in medicine, but when it comes to revenue teams and growth, we were never taught anything. We weren't even told to figure it out. We just assumed somehow we'd know. Like it would magically make sense. But it doesn't. The era of the Seven Figure Physician CEO is here. And it's not about working harder. It's about learning entrepreneurship as a system. The same way you mastered ACLs and pals, you can master the algorithm of building a profitable scalable business. That's why I recorded the Seven Figure Physician CEO audiobook. Whether you're building a medical or non medical business, and whether your goal is your first million, first 2 million, first 5 million, first 10 million, this is where the journey starts. There is no Calvary coming to save us. We are the Calvary. So. So go get your audiobook now. Www.entremd.com 7Figurebook. And let's rewrite the narrative for physicians starting today.

Hi, docs. Welcome to the Entre MD Podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians just like you. Embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Una. Well, hello. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the On Trendy podcast. I'm super pumped you're here. As always, I want to say a big shout out to everyone who's a listener, which is you, and say a big thank you for listening, for sharing, for reviewing, and if you haven't reviewed yet, come on, go. Leave us a review and let us know how this is helping you. Okay? All right. Today, I want us to look at five businesses you can start as a physician. The reason why I'm doing this episode is because on the Entre MD Facebook group, I usually ask a question. What is the number one challenge you're facing right now? And it's always something around. I don't know what business to start. I don't know where to start from. And I figured, hey, I can take care of that on a podcast episode. So. So here we are. Okay, so maybe you're thinking, I don't even know, like, can I do a business? What kind of thing could I do? And I'm going to give you five great ones, okay. And I'm going to give you examples from real doctors that I've worked with or real doctors in My life who are doing this. So this is not just some social media thing that may or may not have been made up. Okay? So I want you to relax and enjoy this. Okay? All right. So five businesses you can start. The first kind of business you can start is you can be an intrapreneur. Now, this is for everybody who works a job. I don't want you to think that because you work a job, you cannot be a physician entrepreneur. You can be. We just call you intrapreneurs. Right? I had a client who came to work with me, Dr. Carice, who's a pediatrician in Valdosta. And I remember the first time I spoke with her, I'm like, so what kind of business do you want to start? And she's like, oh, I don't want to start a business. I mean, like, I love my job, but I know there's more, and I want more. And I'm like, what? You are speaking my language. So we decided to work on that, and we worked on her being an intrapreneur, and we worked on her building her brand. And she did such a good job of it that they recognized that most of the website traffic. I don't remember the exact number, but it's in the 90s. Most of the website traffic is coming from the YouTube channel that she started. And she's speaking in the community, and people are switching because they see her everywhere, and they're like, okay, I want this person to be my doctor. And. And she's doing all this in the midst of a pandemic. So she's such a beautiful part of the organization that she works for, and that's all because she decided to build her brand. Okay, I've talked about Dr. Barbara Joy, who is a lead physician at the outpatient clinic for Northside Hospital. And the same thing. She goes on tv. She's not working in the community. She's her brand. They're able to see that two thirds of the new patients are coming directly from her and her referral sources. And the clinic she was in was 50% ahead of projection, even in the midst of a pandemic because of her brand. Now, did she get rewarded for that? Of course. You know, she has days off. She has all this other stuff because she has leverage. She can negotiate. And so even if you love your job, I don't want you to think that this is out of your reach. I want you to understand that. That you can build your brand. And the thing about building your brand is, as you evolve, you may find things you want to do. You've been speaking, you've been doing all of this. You may have opportunities as a paid speaker. You may have opportunities to be a brand ambassador. You may have opportunities to be a medical director. Like all kinds of things can happen. But it starts from you building your brand as a physician. Okay? So even if you're employed, you love your job. You don't want. You don't want to start a private practice. You don't want to do anything else. You just want to do your job. My challenge to you is to embrace entrepreneurship, even though that's what you want to do. Okay, so embrace entrepreneurship. So that's the first thing that you could do. The second thing that you can do is you can start a private practice. Now, I do hear a lot about private practice being dead. The hospitals have bought all the practices, and I want to tell you that it's simply not true. Now, if you don't want to start a private practice, don't. But if you want to start a private practice and you're like, the reason why I'm not starting a private practice is because private practice is dead, then I want you to. I want to invite you to think in a different way because private practice is alive and well. Okay? I'm in private practice. I've been in private practice for 10 years at this point, and we're doing well. Okay. But let me tell you about a few of my clients. So Rosemarie Thomas is a pediatrician in Trinidad and Tobago, beautiful country of Trinidad and Tobago. And she joined the on trendy business school and started learning. We do a lot about marketing and selling and stuff like that. Now if I said selling and you thought, sleazy used car salesmen, maybe you should come join us. Get on the waiting list for Entre MD Business school. Because it's nothing like that, right? But you cannot be the world's best kept secret. And if you're not going to be the secret, you have to put yourself out there. So anyway, she started applying all these principles and she had been in the school for a little under two months at this time. And she's like, oh, my goodness. So she's like. We surpassed our revenue projections for the month of October, I believe it was, and had increased her revenue by 40%. 40. So private practice can work. It's just that we live in a different climate and we have to work it. Okay, so 40%, 4 0. She's in private practice. All right. I have another client who's in private practice who just started A practice. And she started private practice. I got to talk to her on day 34. Day 34. And she's like, oh my goodness, you won't believe what happened two days ago. I'm like, what happened? She was like, we had to leave the office. Office late. We left the office late because we had a full schedule. Now, please understand, she was in. She was in North Carolina and she moved to Houston to go start this practice. So it's not like she had this huge base, but she's applying all these marketing principles and selling principles and she had a full day. They had to leave the office late. Okay. So I'm saying all that to say private practice is a life. And well, so if it's something you've always wanted to do, yes, you're going to need to develop a system around it. You might need some coaching or you might need to be in a program, but private practice works. So if that's something you've always wanted to do, go for it. All right. Dr. Kathy started off with more of a cash based type of private practice. And she sent me her numbers after we'd been working together for about a year. And she's like, my practice has grown by 600%. Now, I'm not telling you you're going to have all these numbers because they had to do the work. Right. But what I'm trying to say is that it's alive and well, so it's the type of business you can start if that's what you want to do. Okay. So private practice, the third thing you can start is a coaching business or a consulting business. And for doctors, the thing about us is that for most doctors, our motive for going into medicine is to help people. So when it comes to coaching and consulting and stuff like that, we do really well with it because it aligns with our core value, which is helping, which is serving. That's just who we are. So coaching. And I have in ontremd business school, there are many who are coaches. And you know Dr. Michelle Quirk, shout out to her. She's in the Entre MD Business school and she's a run coach. And I love what she does because I really need what she does, but I haven't said yes to it yet. She helps people who don't think they can run.

Run.

She helps them. They do half marathons. They do marathons. And these are people who did not think they could be runners. Isn't that so cool? And just like doctors, you know, she did it for herself and she's like, oh, this is amazing. I'm going to help other people do it. And. And out of that, a business was born. So what are the things you can help people do? Now? You're going to need some training and all that around it, but we're good at this stuff, right? So they're life coaches, they're business coaches, they're run coaches, all kinds of coaches. Maybe your thing is more consulting. Maybe you've been set up where you've had a lot of training with certain things, right? Maybe that's onboarding, helping a practice, onboard with an EHR or a hospital system onboard with an ehr. Maybe you're really good at running programs for certain insurances. Maybe you're really good at helping people, startup practices. But whatever it is, for every one of those things, every one of them, you can be a consultant there, right? Maybe you do expert witness. You're an expert witness and you've built a business around that and you can help other people do the same thing, right? So you get the theme here. So the bottom line is maybe you should take inventory and you should look at the things that you're really good at and that maybe in a casual capacity, an unpaid capacity, you've helped people do that. Like, before I started on ChairMD as a business, I had been helping people start practices, start businesses. I've been doing it informally, you know what I mean? But it's something that I had tried and tested, I was good at. And I was like, hey, you know, if I build a system around this, then rather than help a few people, I can help a lot of people. Okay, so take inventory. What are you really good at? What have you had great results at? What have you been trained to do? And maybe it's time to look at that and say, do I want to pursue that further? Because that's a business. Okay, I have a client, Dr. Carolyn Clarissa. She's a dentist, and she paid off $250,000 in student loans. She paid that off in four and a half years. And informally, she'd been helping a lot of people do the same thing because she's like, listen, you can do this. It's. It's simple. And of course, everything we're good at is simple, right? And we don't understand why other people can't just get it. It's just like, this is simple. You can do it. And I'm like, sweetheart, is not simple. You're just really good at it. You're just really good at it. It's your thing. It's your zone of genius. And so she started helping people and they started paying off in short amounts of time as well. And, you know, now she founded doctors out of debt, and that's what she does. So can you make your passion that you have the skill with a skill at, can you make that a business? Yeah, absolutely. You could. All right, that's number three. So number four is content creation, right? Content creation. And this could be like an online course or this could be a blog, a podcast, a vlog that you would monetize. And many people do that, right? Many people do that. And that I don't need to tell you that that's a billion dollar industry. And of course, you know, in Entre MD we talk quite a bit about money and needing to monetize what you do, but the money doesn't come first, right? The helping people does. And these are all ways that you can help a lot of people. And the way we say the entremd business school is my business serves and earns a lot. We wanted to do both, right? So think about this podcast. Has this podcast been a game changer for you? I've had people who said, hey, I just started my business and I've been listening to your podcast, and then I've started marketing my practice the way I should. And, you know, this is the result that I experienced. There are people who are like, I didn't even realize this was a possibility, but now I see that it is that people like, oh, like I, oh, I have to get a mindset tune up every Monday. So every Monday on my drive to work, for some of them, my walk at night, I have to listen to the podcast. So it's having a huge impact. We did 51,000 downloads in the first year, which is nothing to sneeze at, right? So there are people who. That's what they do. That's their business as a podcast. And there's so many ways to monetize it. So that's, that's an avenue with, with vlogs. It's the same thing with online courses. I mean, that's a billion dollar industry. But guess what? You can help people. And, you know, let me just throw this out. Those of you who have been thinking about online courses, it's simple to do, right? The thing with the things we're good at is that we despise them almost because they come to us so easily, right? They come to us so easily. For instance, if someone comes to me and they're like, my business isn't working or I Have to do this talk. I don't know what to do. I have too many business ideas. I don't know what to do with them. I kid you not. This happens on calls all the time where I get on the phone with them and within 15 minutes we have a business and we're ready to go. It happens all the time. Why? It's my zone of genius and everybody has that zone, right? So the question is, can you help somebody experience transformation in five steps, Right? Can you help them in five steps? Can you do that? Right? So for me, if I'm helping someone build a business, you know, one, we have to define what the business is. Two, we have to clarify the message. Three, we have to figure out how to stop being the world's best kept secret. How do we get the attention of your ideal client? Four, we're going to build. We'll build out the business, right? So it can give your clients or your patients wins. Because that's the whole idea, is to help people, right? It's not about the fancy stuff and the website and the Facebook ads is to help people. Once that bucket is built, then we start working on systems because business is really important, but it's not the most important thing. It just isn't, right? So we don't want to build businesses that will take over our lives. We still want to build businesses that serve our clients, but they serve us too. So we'll have the time for ourselves, we have the time for our families, we have time for things that matter to us, right? So things like, you know, getting a VA on board, building automation, all that kind of stuff. Now you see that those are five steps and those could be five modules, and that's a course. Do you see what I'm saying? So in the same way, if your thing is, you know, weight loss, what is that? It could be, first we work on the mindset of it, and then second, we work on the habits that are making you overweight. Then we work on diet, then we work on exercise, and then work on building a tribe so that you have the accountability to stay with your habits. That's five things. That's five modules. That's a course. I'm just saying that to say we can do this stuff, okay? Now having said that, of course with every business, you're going to have to figure out marketing. But as far as creating a business, we got this, okay? So that's number four. All right, Number five is one of my favorites. I don't do it, but I love it. And that's Products, consumer products. And I can't tell you how many doctors are like, oh, for kids that have skin like this, it would have been really nice if they had, you know, this kind of cream. And I make it at home. I know the ingredients and all that stuff. Or someone who's like, they should have this kind of Tupperware or they should. You know, kids who have a lot of allergies, they should have these kind of products or. And all this kind of stuff, they can all be developed, every last one of them. Right? So I have a client, Dr. Yinka Skin, and she makes anti aging products. Skin products, skincare products. And her line is called Dr. Yinka Skin. That's. That's what it is. And. And her thing is she helps women of color reverse the aging process so they can look 10 years younger. That's kind of her thing. And, you know, it's all without needles and stuff. And she created her own skin care line. I use her skincare line because before her, I just use whatever was in the bathroom. But now I'm taking better care of my skin. But it's a. It's a line. It was first something she thought of, and now it's an actual business, you know? So I want you to think of it like, what is it that you've wanted to do? What if it. What is it that you're actually creating in your kitchen and your friends are using and your family members are using them, and they love your products. Right. Carol's daughter, she started making fragrances and lotions and stuff like that. And she started off doing it as a hobby. And it started off as a hobby. She did it for herself and, you know, some of her family members, and they were like, oh, our skin has never been better, and all this stuff. And then after a while, she was like, you know, maybe I'll put it out there. And she starts taking it to flea markets, I think, and selling a few here and there and by word of mouth and all of that. But at some point, she had this aha moment, and she built it out to a business, right? So Carol's daughter was born. Amazing brand. Amazing brand. Now, the kicker is that l' Oreal buys her brand. We don't know the amount, but they said north of mid eight figures. All right? So do the math. And that's just something that she was doing in her kitchen as a hobby. So the question is, with your product, what could happen if you said yes to it? What if you created it? Okay. You might say, well, you know, that's for her. Maybe she was a business person. Doctors don't do things like that. Well, what about Zarby's? I'm a pediatrician. We talk about Zarby's all the time. Everybody talks about Zarby's all the time. Right? It's a cough syrup. And Zarby's was founded by a pediatrician. By a pediatrician. And now it's arguably the number one brand for over the counter cough medication. It was a pediatrician. He says, hey, I don't like all the stuff I'm giving my kids. Let me try and make something. And there it was. And Johnson and Johnson bought it for an undisclosed amount. That tells you everything you need to know. Right? But the point is, these are five businesses that you can start, and these are five businesses that doctors have started and have thrived, okay? So I want you to say yes. If you are listening to me and you have a business idea, it is time to act on, is time to own it, because you don't know what that business becomes. When I started on Trend, I did not know it will have the impact that it's having now. And we haven't even started when Zarby's, when the doctor created that, I don't think he knew that that's what it will turn out to be. Carl's daughter, she didn't know that's what it would be. She didn't know that we don't know what these businesses become. So I want you to say yes. I want you to say yes. I want you to tell yourself, look, you've procrastinated long enough. You've dreamt about this long enough. It's time to do something about it, okay? And if you're going to do something about it, I want you to own it. I want you to post that. Hey, this is what I'm going to do. You can post it in the private Facebook group. It's entre md.com join if you're not a part of the group and say, this is what I'm going to do. It's a group of entrepreneurs. We'll support you. Okay? So I want you to say yes to it. All right? And some of you might be saying, yeah, these kind of sound good, but I haven't quite found what I really, really want to do. I have a freebie for you, okay? I have a checklist of 25 business ideas for physicians. So I want you to go get it. It's entremd.com 25. So that's the number not spelled out. Entre md.com 25. You get 25 ideas, and then you can figure it out. Okay. All right. Excellent. So thank you for listening. But the biggest thank you you can give me is saying yes to the business that you've been thinking of. Okay. And let's do this together. We are a group of doctors embracing entrepreneurship so we can live life and practice medicine on our own terms. I'll see you on the next episode. Hey, if you love listening to the Entre MD podcast, I want to invite you to join Entre MD On Demand. It is my signature subscription program that gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do one thing as a physician entrepreneur, and that is to thrive. Just head out to entremd.com and I love to have you join us. See you on the inside.