5 Lessons The Pandemic Taught Me

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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 and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Imna. Well, hello my friends, and welcome to another episode of the Entre MD podcast. I am super happy to be with you. Whether you're walking, driving, doing laundry, whichever it is, I'm happy to be in your ears today. So I have been thinking a whole lot. The time of this recording is the end of 2020. We're in the middle of December, and I know that life that is not evaluated is not worth living.

So I'm taking time to evaluate my year. You know, kind of what worked, what didn't work, what are the lessons that I learned and stuff like that. And I took some time and came.

Up with five lessons that the pandemic taught me. Okay, five lessons the pandemic taught me. And if you, you know, think about it, having to go through a pandemic, having to go through a challenging time is one thing, but not learning anything from it is a completely different thing. Right? So I would love to hear what you learned, but I'm going to share what I learned on this episode of the Entre MD podcast. Now, before we do that, I want to give a big shout out to Dr. Raja, who left us a review on itunes.

And.

And if you haven't left us one.

Go, leave us one.

Come on now. Hint, hint. Okay, so she says thanks and puts five glowing stars there. She says, you're an inspiration, Dr. Una. I love listening to you on my walks. It always feels like a one on one coaching session. I have taken a lot of mini steps and I'm believing in myself more because of you. Thank you. On a separate note, I hear you mention your husband as your mentor and coach.

You should do an episode with him.

As the guest, if you haven't already. Thanks again, Dr. Raja. Thank you so much for leaving this wonderful five star review. I'm so happy to hear that the podcast is helping you change your mind. It's helping you believe in yourself more. It's helping you take action. I love, love, love that you're doing that. And I have talked to my husband. I'm saying, I'm like, look, the people are asking, okay, so hopefully soon I'll be able to do a podcast episode with him and that would be so cool.

But thank you for this review.

And if you haven't left us a review yet, you can head over to itunes or whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, and please leave us a five star review. It really helps us get the word out there. And of course, I love hearing how this is helping you. Okay, and now for our episode. So five lessons. Five lessons. The pandemic taught me. The very first lesson is my reaction is my choice. My reaction is my choice. And I'm just gonna tell you from, you know, what happened with me, you know, over the course of the year. And I remember when the pandemic hit, it was interesting to say the least. Okay, so it was really bad. You know, there are lots of people getting sick, lots of businesses shutting down, lots of practices going out of business, you know, people staying at home, schools were closed. Like, all the things that were constant almost in our lives kind of got thrown out of whack. And it was interesting. And, you know, before I go on, I do wanna say, like, I'm not. When I say these things, please understand that I'm pulling out the lemonade from these lemons, okay? I'm not trying to downplay any hard times that anybody experienced, all right?

At all.

So when this happened and practices are shutting down, people are going out of business, and doctors are losing their jobs and all these things are going on, I got up and I was like, you know what? I'm not only going to survive, I'm going to thrive. Now, when I said that, I didn't have a five step framework on how to survive and thrive in a pandemic. But I made a decision. You hear me say a lot. Make the decision and make it right. I made a decision. I'm going to thrive. Now that I've made the decision, let's figure out how we're going to do that.

Okay?

And for the people who are in my programs and my one on one clients, I'm like, listen, I know that there are a lot of things going on, but we are going to thrive. And it was so wonderful to hear people adopt that language and start saying the same thing. We are going to thrive. We are going to thrive. And the truth of the matter is, when I look back on the year, that's what happened. I didn't just survive, I thrived. And I had a lot of clients who would say the same thing. This was my best year. 2020 was my best year. And they're not kidding. They're saying the truth. So the first lesson is your reaction to a challenge, your reaction is your choice. There's a circumstance, there's a situation, and everybody's going through that situation. But you can determine your response to it. That's within your power. The circumstance may not be, but your reaction to it is. And what I want you to do in this moment is we're at the end of a year, and if you're listening to this later, you're at the end of some kind of season and you have another 12 months in front of you. Decide today what that's going to look like.

Decide to thrive.

You're listening. You're a physician entrepreneur.

Decide to succeed as an entrepreneur. Decide that this will work for you.

Decide that all these things going on are happening for you not to.

You make a quality decision.

And you might be saying, Dr. Un.

I don't see how that can happen.

That's the point. You start from the decision and you make the decision right? Okay? So that was the first lesson that I learned. The second lesson I learned is when crisis shows up, it is too late to prepare. When crisis shows up, it is too late to prepare. So I kid you not, between October and November, my practice administrator and I, we spent a lot of time planning 2020, and we were planning to market my private practice in a way that was not conventional. We're gonna take advantage of email marketing, we're gonna take advantage of podcasting, we're gonna take advantage of videos, we're gonna take advantage of the recaller. We're gonna do all these things that Maybe are not as traditional to weave them all together and do them. And we're like, we're going to do that. We were going to go big on telemedicine and there was nothing wrong. I mean, the practice was already doing well. We didn't have to do all that stuff. We didn't have to plan for that. We did all kinds of scenario planning. And we're like, this is what we're going to do. And the truth of the matter is, when the pandemic hit, that plan didn't change. We just had to do it quicker. But it was the same plan. It was almost as though, you know, I would. I'm a person of faith, so I'll say, you know, it's the grace of God and his wisdom. But it was almost as if we knew there was something coming and we prepared for it. So when the crisis shows up, it's.

Too late to prepare.

Some people had emergency funds and they were ready to handle what came. Some were furloughed and stuff like that. So some didn't.

When the crisis shows up, it's too late to prepare.

Right.

And am I saying this for you to go like, oh, my gosh, I should have prepared? No, because you have another 12 months.

In front of you and it's time to prepare for that. It's time to put things in place. Maybe you never lived by a budget. Maybe it's time.

Maybe you've had this dream of a business to start and you haven't done it. It is time. Maybe you've never built out your brand as a physician.

It is time.

Maybe you've run away from speaking. It's time. Maybe you've run away from owning who you are and showing up authentically and powerfully in the marketplace. Maybe you're keeping your business as the world's best kept secret. It is time to prepare.

Okay?

And I'll tell you something. I don't know that anything magical is going to happen on December 31st. I don't know anything will happen magically as we go from December 31st to January 1st. I think 2021 is going to look a lot like 2020. But the difference now is in 2019.

You didn't have inside information about what the year would look like. Now you do. Okay, maybe this year was a little rough. Take those lessons and use them to prepare for 2021. You can say, you got me once, you're not getting me twice.

When crisis shows up, it is too late to prepare, and I'm going to stop here. And say this, you know, 2016, you.

You may have heard me tell the story before.

2016 was the first time that it dawned on me. I just had this really big aha moment. Like medicine as we know it is done. It's done. Is changing is going to be a dramatic change. And if our only skill is doctoring, then we have a problem on our hands. Well, I have a problem on my hands, right? This was for me. And the thought process was, develop your skills as a CEO, develop your skills as a speaker, develop your skills as. As a coach. So you become, you know, multiple streams of income. You know what I'm saying? And this was 2016. And when I started talking about it, people are like, what are you talking about? Doctors will always have jobs, will always have job security. There's a physician shortage, will always have that. But we can see that's not what's happening. Doctors have been furloughed. Doctors had to collect unemployment checks. Like, all the things we thought could not happen have happened. And I want you to prepare.

I want you to become a true entre md.

I want you to up level your.

Game as an entre md. I want you to embrace entrepreneurship. I want you to make a decision to figure out this money thing. I want you to make a decision.

To figure out how to build a profitable business. I want you to make up your mind. I'm an entrepreneur, and negotiation is a.

Skill that I need, and I am learning it.

I want you to decide to become.

Great at the things that you've hidden from things that you know you need to do.

Because when crisis shows up, it is too late to prepare.

Okay?

So make that decision. All right? So that's the second thing. Number three.

The problem solver always wins.

The problem solver always wins. Now, as an entrepreneur, what do we really do? People may say, you know, you exchange services and products for. For money and stuff like that. Okay, you can say I create financial freedom. Okay, you can say, I help people. Okay? The bottom line is that entrepreneurs solve problems. We are problem solvers. This is why I say physicians, physicians.

Should just be entrepreneurs because we're good at this.

We solve problems for a living, right?

But the problem solver always wins.

Entre MD grew in 2020 because I was focused on solving problems. I wasn't focused on exposure per se. I wasn't focused on building my audience per se. Like, at my core, what I was focused on was solving problems. So when the pandemic first hit and, you know, a lot of states went on lockdown and Everybody had to embrace telemedicine. And, and there were so many questions, there was so much confusion and it seemed so complicated. I'm like, how can I help people add telemedicine to their practices in less than 48 hours? How can I do that? And then I created a course, it was a free course on how, just how to do that. And I had hundreds of people, hundreds of people sign up. And that grew. The number of people who knew me, my audience grew. But where did it come from?

It came from solving problems. Problems, right?

And then I started thinking, I'm like, okay, I've done these programs, I've. I've done some programs, I've done some one on one coaching and all of this. But what is the simple framework that would work irrespective of Facebook algorithms and, and that change daytoday and, and all this other stuff? What is a simple framework that a doctor can use? The same way we use algorithms to manage sepsis. What algorithm can we use to, to build a successful business that I know if I follow these five steps and I throw myself at it, my business will work?

And that's how the entre business school was born.

It wasn't born from, oh, I want.

To own a business school.

It was born from, I want to solve a problem.

I want to solve a problem. How do you take a doctor who's scared of being an entrepreneur, scared of speaking, scared of all of that?

How do you put them through a system and they can come out of.

It on the other side? A confident business owner who's making money.

Right. And that's how that was born with my practice. The constant question was like, how do.

We help our people? They're at home, they're scared.

There's so much information out there, they.

Don'T know what to do. A lockdown, what does that mean?

Like, how can their kids be helped?

Can they still get shots? And we went after them to help.

Them to answer questions. We created all those videos to help them, ask them answer their questions.

We send them emails often to keep them updated, keep them from being afraid to partner with them to keep their kids healthy.

And what did that do? Generated so much goodwill, generated so many appointments, generated. I mean, like, it was just amazing.

The problem solver always wins.

So when you see problems that your ideal clients are facing, you want to.

Solve them, you want to solve them.

The business, the problem that your business.

Can solve, you want to solve them.

And so one of the things that I'm going to ask you to do.

Is is to train your eyes to.

See problems and then to see them in the right light. They're not problems.

They're opportunities. They're opportunities.

Okay. All right. So that's number three. Number four, the fourth thing I learned.

Is that help is available. Help is available.

Back in the day, I used to.

Think I was who I was, and that's it. Like, I'm not good at speaking, so I can't speak. I'm not good at networking, so I can't network. I'm not good at negotiating, so I can't negotiate. I'm not good at collaborating with others, so I can't collaborate.

And then I learned, listen, you're not a tree. You can move.

You can change. You're not. You're not fixed. You're not like a wall. You're like, play doh. You're malleable if there's something you're not good at. But, you know, for the assignments you're called to carry out or the business you're called to build, you need it. You can acquire it. You can acquire it. And so this year, I learned that, and I learned to take help. I learned to get coaches on board for things that I didn't know. I learned to do programs that, you know, I was like, I don't know this stuff. I have to learn this. I.

There were trends I noticed in my clients, and I'm like, wow, to help them, I need to learn this new thing. There are literally courses I took to empower myself to help my clients better.

Okay, Help is available. You're not stuck.

You're not at a loss. You're not. It's not what it is.

You can change stuff.

And this is one of the years where I changed and changed and changed.

I just kept metamorphosing. I made up that word, I think. But I kept changing and taking all the help that's available. Now, as a physician entrepreneur, let me tell you about the help that you do have. Okay? You might be saying, I don't know about this stuff and all that. Listen, number one, you have this podcast, okay? I have had people who are like, oh, I just started from number one, and I worked my way up, and it has changed my life. I have started a practice. I have done this. I've done that. You heard about Dr. Raja that I just read? She's taking steps.

She's believing in herself more.

Who knows what that becomes? You have this podcast. It's your help. Use it. It's free. Use it. Okay? And you're like, this is so good. I can't believe it's free. Yes. How do you pay for it? Just share it. Share it with another doctor. Okay.

It's there for you.

We have the Entre MD Facebook community. If you're not there, come join us over there. All right? And you meet other doctors like you. It's normal to be an entrepreneur in that space. I challenge you with a lot of. A lot of thoughts and I answer a lot of questions and. And the power of the group is there. Come join us. Come join us over there. All right, Just search for entremd in.

The search tab on Facebook and come join us. But it's help for you.

Okay. There's an entrepreneur business school. You know, it's going to open a few times a year, but you get on that waiting list. Okay. It's ontramd.com for/business. It is the business school for the physician entrepreneur. Especially if you're not looking for complexity, you're not looking for all these big highfalutin things that you cann using the actual marketplace. If you're looking for something that will set you up to start taking action right away and start seeing results, start changing right away. If you're looking for a community of physician entrepreneurs who are committed to making their businesses work, then that is a place for you. I cannot tell you how powerful the business school is, okay? The students will tell you. So powerful, so transformational. It's a place for you, it's help for you. Okay? And if you're like, I remember talking to someone, talking to her about, talking to him about the business school, and he's like, business school? Like, I don't think I can do that. Like, that's way out there. And I was like, how do I help people who listen to the podcast? But they want more, but they're not quite ready for the business school. They're like, I don't even know what business is about, you know? And I created On Trendy, On Demand just for you. Entre and D On Demand is like Netflix for the physician entrepreneur, right? But instead of just spending time amusing yourself, you're spending time educating yourself. And what it is is a collection of business courses that would get you on your way. So the very first course on there is a perfect place to start is five steps to your best year. And consider it vision retreat of sorts. It's a goal setting workshop. And that sets the stage because by the time you're done with that, you have your goals for the next 12 months all mapped out. Plus the things you need to do every day to make them a reality. Plus the habits of the ultra successful in that one course. That one course is worth a year's subscription of Entre MD on demand. Like truthfully, okay? And it will set you up to make the next 12 months your best. And that's just the way it is. And if you go on there, you see the testimonials of people who've done it with me. And so it's entre md.com on demand. Okay, Go check it out. But you have help available. Take the help that you have available. Don't assume that the way you are is the way you always be. You can change. Okay?

So that's lesson number four. Lesson number five.

Lesson number five. Lessonite number five is the pandemic taught me to keep the main thing. The main thing. It taught me to keep the main thing. The main thing. Business is so important. Financial freedom is so important. But there are things more important or at least as important. For instance, your family relationships or relationships in general. People matter. Your relationships with people matter. When the pandemic hit and we started seeing records, numbers of people that lost their lives, you start thinking of, you know, the people, the people I have beef with. Why do I have beef with them? Like, this is so silly. You don't even know if they'll be there tomorrow. Is it that important? Right?

Maybe you're in spending time with your.

Kids or with your spouse and you're like, man, I need to spend more time. I need to build relationships. I need to enjoy my children, joy, my spouse. There's a whole world out there. I need to enjoy nature, whatever that was for you or whatever that is for you. The main thing. The main thing. I've ignored my health this whole time. I've worked 200,000 shifts, I've done all of that stuff. Is it really as important as I'm making it out to be that I'll compromise my health because of it? The main thing. What is that for you? For someone like me? My faith is so important to me. It is. My relationship with God is so important to me. And it just made me put my relationship with God, my relationship with my family, you know, the. Making my health a priority made me put all those things in the right perspective.

Because you need to be thinking of.

What will matter later today. If you build a multimillion dollar business but you lost your family, would you be happy if you built a multimillion dollar business but you didn't manage stress and you didn't manage your health and you didn't manage all of that, so you had no health to enjoy all of this stuff with later. Doesn't matter. If you built all this stuff at the expense of your core values, doesn't matter. So the point is, what is the main thing to you? Keep it the main thing. Identify what the main thing to you is and schedule it. Because a lot of times the main thing is not urgent, but it's important. And if you don't schedule it, the urgent will just take up all the time. So for me, my faith is important. I schedule time to pray. It's 6am every morning. I schedule it right. My family is important to me. So I schedule time. You've heard me talk about it many times. It's the meets week. Meaningful time with kids. I schedule it. Why that is important to me. It is so important to me. I schedule times to go take walks. I work on my mind so I'm not living under constant stress. Why it's important to me.

So those are my five lessons.

Number one, my reaction is my choice. Number two, when crisis shows up, it's too late. Number three, the problem solver always wins.

Number four, help is available.

Number five, keep the main thing. The main thing. So those are my five lessons and.

I've kind of challenged you to adopt.

These in some kind of way. And I hope you follow through with the actions and I also hope you take time to think about the lessons the pandemic has taught you. In fact, what I want you to do is I want you to take time and I want you to document. I want you to document the lessons it taught you and maybe post it and you can tag me on it. Entre md. I'd love to shout you out. I'd love to learn from what you learned from the pandemic and we'll be stronger together. I am looking forward to an Amazing next 12 months. Even if it ends up being a rough year. We can do hard things. We can figure this out. Okay?

So thank you so much for listening.

Go post what your top lessons were and tag me on it. I want to learn from you as well. And don't forget to share this episode of the Ontremity Podcast. I will see you same time next week.

Hey, if you love listening to the Ontremity 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 ondemand and I love to have you join us. See you on the inside.