5 questions you must answer honestly to make 2020 better than 2019

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Hi docs. Welcome to the Entre MD Podcast where it is 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. Welcome back to the Entre MD PODC. And today you are in for a treat, as always. But today we are going to be looking at five questions you must answer honestly to make 2020 better than 2019. Now, it doesn't matter if you're listening to this in January or this, you're listening to this much later in the year. It is a practice that would help you make the next phase of your life better than the previous phase of your life. So I want you to really play, pay close attention to this and answer all the questions honestly. You can lie to everybody else, but you shouldn't lie to yourself. Okay, and I'm going to start off with this quote, which is experience is not the best teacher evaluated. Experience is. So the exercise we're going to be looking at today is literally the difference between living one year 40 times versus living for 40 years. All right, now before we do that, I want to take a moment to give a shout out to Dr. Jennifer Verest. And I have given her a shout out before, but she just writes great stuff. And this was after being a part of the Freedom Formula Masterclass, which is my 12 week masterclass. Total game changer. For the doctors who attended. Whether you are starting out in business, have an idea, but don't know where to start, or you're ready to scale your business, so. So she said, Dr. Una, thank you for completely changing my paradigm. I literally went through a transformation and can't fathom the person I was before. You have a God given talent to empower people. And my life is now drastically different because we crossed paths. You are making such a huge difference for us doctors. Thank you for your passion for us and working with us to remove those blinders so we can see the greatness we are really meant to achieve. And it doesn't stop at medicine. Thank you so much for saying that. And truthfully, I'm not a big crier, but if I was, I would have shed tears for this. But this totally 100% touched my heart because this is the reason why we do this. I started off as someone who was really insecure, really afraid, really big introvert, very shy, and just felt like business is not my thing because I just don't know anything about business and. And nobody taught me anything about business. I'm just a doctor. That's my thing. But, you know, when I was able to make that transition from physician to serial entrepreneur, I'm like, wait, wait, this is not as complicated as I thought, you know, it was. This is not as impossible as far off. And that's when the whole Entre MD platform started. And to see other doctors just like you, Dr. Jennifer, do the same thing is just, oof. Is so good to see. Thank you so much for that. So now we are going to go into five questions. You must ask yourself honestly to make 2020 better than 2019. We're gonna discuss this from a business angle, but truthfully, this affects every area in your life. So you can learn these things for business, which is what we're doing today. But still take the time and ask all those questions for the other aspects of your life. Now, before we do any evaluation, I want us to start with the right mindset. So before we start the questions, the question I want you to ask yourself is, what was great about the year? Right? Because sometimes when we start evaluating, we're like, nothing works, everything's bad, blah, blah, blah. And it's not true, right? If you're going to improve, you're going to need to evaluate. You're going to need to pick out those things that maybe you wanted to sweep under the, you know, under the carpet because you're like that. That was bad. I don't want to think about it, but to get better, you have to think about it. But we want to start from, things are going well, but I need to dig into these other things so we can make it even better. Okay? So ask yourself, what went great? Did you finally start a business? Did you finally make your first four figures, five figures in business? Did you scale your business and hit seven figures? Did you hire your first employee and get some things like your calendar and your email and some of your social media off your schedule? Did you work your time management better so you were able to make more and spend more time with your family? What are the things that were great? Did you get to speak on a dream stage? Did you get to have a month, you know, like a record breaking month? What was it? No matter how big or small it is, no matter how tangible or intangible it is, I want you to be grateful for that, okay? And if you're not driving, I want you to write that down and I want you to be grateful so that we can start this exercise from a place of positivity and stay positive. Okay? So take a moment, think about it, be grateful for it. And now that you're grateful, the next thing we're going to do is answer these five questions so that 2020 or the year in front of you could be even better. All right? Okay, so these are the five questions. First question, what worked? Right? What worked in your business? What pushed your business forward? What strategy eventually worked, right? Because when you start making plans, you plan all kinds of things, Say all kinds of things. Did it work? Okay, so speaking, did that work as a strategy? Social media, marketing, whether organic or paid, did that work? You know, how did that work? Did it transform your business? What did it do? Did you finally launch a business after procrastinating for the last five years? That's something that worked. What worked in your business? And hint, hint, if you're not sure, go back to what you're grateful about. Okay? What, what worked? So I will tell you, for me, there are two big things that worked really well. One was saying yes to new opportunities, saying yes to things that maybe I didn't have as much experience with. Things I was nervous about doing things I had never done before. I said yes a lot. I had never done a big event for physician entrepreneurs. And we did Entre MD live in 2019. I hadn't necessarily done a group coaching program for physician entrepreneurs. And we launched the Freedom Formula Masterclass in June of 2019. And it was huge. I mean, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. It was so amazing. And we got to see really great results. Doctors who were like, oh, my God. In that timeframe, I've upped my income by, you know, 15%. 15%, 15 times. You know, I finally started a business. I made this much in business. I. You know, it was. It was just insane, you know, and it's all because I said yes. You know, the thing, the opportunity came to start a podcast, and I said yes. I said yes in November, and by the 15th of November, it was live on itunes. So I said yes. I did it messy. I did it, you know, scared. I did it quick. I just did it speaking on stages. I did a lot of. A lot more of that in 2019. And these are all things that helped grow my business tremendously. So saying yes worked. So what am I going to do more of in 2020? I'm going to say yes now. Having said that, we're going to have a full podcast on this. But you need to be saying yes if you. If you're going to adopt what I just said, you need to be saying yes in areas that are aligned with your goals. So I didn't say yes to every opportunity. I said yes to the opportunities that were aligned with my goals. Okay. The second thing I did was building a team. And I will give a big shout out to the practice administrator of my practice, Ivy League Pediatrics. Her name is Fatima Sparks, and she is so amazing. So I hired her in May of 2019, and she really is an implementer. Okay, I may have made up the word, but she lets me be the visionary that I am. She lets me come up with strategy, and she brings all of that to life. She's amazing working with my staff and all of that. So that's free. Freed me up to do many more things and take my role and put myself in my area of strength. So hiring. And for me, it was a little. I hadn't done it before. Right. I hadn't done it before. And so for me, was a new thing that I did. And it worked. It really did. My practice is better and I've been a lot more productive. Okay. So ask yourself, what worked? Okay. What. What strategy did I do? What. What worked? The second question to ask is, what didn't work? Okay, what didn't work? And you have to be honest about these things, right? Because the last thing you want to do is do the same thing in 2020. Right? Because you're going to get the same results. So for you, it could be social media. Right? Was this something that was Unfocused. So even though I was always posting, nothing really came out of it tangible or intangible. Was it just a time waster? Maybe you tried to build a team and first of all, maybe you didn't even hire anybody you knew you should, you tried to interview, but you just never pulled the trigger for anybody. Or maybe you built a team and your turnover was really high, or you built a team and the culture was just nasty. Maybe you got into a partnership you shouldn't have gotten into and ended up being more of a pain than a blessing. Some of these things are things that you'll need to stop, right? It didn't work. I need to stop it or it didn't work. I need to improve on my skill to carry it out, right? So for me, Facebook ads was just a thing that never worked. You know, I tried it a few times with events and stuff like that. It just didn't work. And maybe that's something I need to get better at. Maybe I need to sit with my coach and work on that or, you know, take a course on it. Maybe, maybe not. But that was something that didn't work. And being a solopreneur, eventually I started hiring. But being a solopreneur is something that didn't work because, you know, I'm really, I can get really good at a lot of things. I love to learn. So especially on the creative side, I can get to do a lot of things, but, you know, creating my own images on Canva and doing every single social media post and doing every single email and managing my own calendar and all of that stuff, I mean, if I had brought somebody else on and delegated a lot of those things, it would have freed me up to do the high level work that only I can do. So being a solo solopreneur is something that did not work. I need to not do it. And yeah, so those are two things that didn't work. So what didn't work for you? What are things you did in your business that flat out didn't work? Are they things you need to get better at, or are they things you just need to stop? Okay. All right. So number three, what do I want next year? It is so amazing to me how many people walk into a year have quote unquote, big plans for their businesses, but they can't tell you what it is because it's not specific, it's not clear, it's not in a way that is measurable. It's. It's not clear if you're going to hit a target, you need to define the target. You need to be able to see the target. You need to be able to wake up in the morning and visualize yourself already having achieved the target. One of the things that would make it easier for you to waste a lot of time and not get a lot of results is not knowing what you want, okay? You're better off saying it and not hitting it than not saying it. Because if you don't say it, you're definitely not going to hit it, right? So give yourself permission to dream. Give yourself permission to imagine. So what. What do you want? Right? And it will be different for different businesses, but everybody should have a revenue goal, right? How much do you want to make? And sometimes people are like, you know, this is my passion project. Okay, fine. But if it's your passion project, then you're very clear that it's not a business, right? So because a business is designed to. To serve people and make a profit is designed to do both. So if you just want to serve people and you don't want to make a profit, then that's not necessarily a business. You don't have to apply any of these things, right? But I would also tell you that if your heart's desire is to help people, you need to figure out business, because business is what would help you to serve more people, right? If you learn. If you're somebody who helps people lose weight, if you learn the business skills, if you learn to make the revenue, you can build a bigger company that can serve more people. So actually, you are serving people by building a profitable business. Okay? So you want to have a revenue goal, right? So that's the first one. The other thing you should be able to define that you want is how many clients do I want to serve or how many products do I want to sell? You need to. You need to have those numbers clear, okay? They need to be clear. Maybe your thing is just, I want to launch a business. I can't think of all this stuff because I don't even know where I just. The big step for me for 2020 would be to launch a business. And that's fine. Put a date, let's do it. Okay. Launch a business. Maybe you want to be clear on what your positioning would be in the marketplace. Do you want to be one of the top 10 physicians in XYZ category, or do you want to be one of, you know, do you want to be perceived as the pediatrician in your community? What do you want that positioning to look like? Maybe like in in my county, there's a Best of Gwinnett, right? And we've been Best of Gwinnett for four years in a row. Maybe that's something you want to have or you want to have a streak or whatever. What do you want your positioning to be? How do you want to be perceived in the marketplace? Okay, so that's for number three. What do I want next year? The fourth question you need to ask yourself. And here you need to be brutally honest. Like, brutally honest. Okay? You cannot lie to yourself about this because it will cost you your dreams. The question is, what will I have to give up? I've said what I want for my revenue. I said how I want to be positioned. I've said how many clients I want to serve. I've said all these things in order to get that. What will I have to give up? Okay, so I want you to be thinking things like social media. How much time are you spending on there? Right. Do the math. If you have an iPhone, your iPhone will show you what your average is. Okay? I promise to tell you mine if you won't tell anybody, but my daily average is about. Is about four hours altogether. Now I'm going to have to give that up. I'm going to have to. I mean, some of it, a large chunk of it, could be business and all that, but it's four hours. That's a lot of hours. Okay, so what am I? One of the things I have to give up is four hours for social media because that's time. I could be recording another podcast episode to give you value. I could be serving my private coaching clients. I could do a bonus call for my group coaching clients. I can be, you know, preparing my talk for onstage time. There's so many things I could be doing instead of doing that. You need to tell yourself the truth. Okay, so do I need to drop that to an hour? Probably, so. So I have to give that up to go up. Okay, the second thing, you'll have to maybe tv. Maybe you come back from work or you come back from your business dealings, and you come home and you plop in front of the TV for two or three hours. Maybe even watch it late so you're sleeping less because of t TV when you need that so your mind is clear. Your mental computer is in top shape so you can be the mogul that you're designed to be. You're gonna have to say, I watch too much tv. I claim I don't have time to work on my business. I claim I don't have work to time to start a business yet. I have two hours to sit in front of a TV every day and maybe five or six hours over the weekend. Weekend doing a Netflix binge. You have to tell yourself the truth, okay? What else would you have to give up? Maybe a toxic relationship. And a toxic relationship doesn't always mean a romance. Like in the context of a romantic relationship, maybe there's just somebody in your life that when you're done, you get off the phone with them, you are totally drained. Or you had all these business ideas and you shared it with them and they totally killed it and you're, you know, completely discouraged and stuff like that. Who are those people in your life who make you worse? Maybe you have to give them up. And I don't mean, you know, you never talk to them again, but you know, the people you should be spending time with. And maybe they're not. Maybe they're. Hey. Hi. Just checking up on you. And that's it once in a while, you know, but their relationships, you need to get rid of the amount of emotional energy it takes to deal with a bad relationship. You, you can use that energy to build a whole company. I'm talking seven figure company. So if they're relationships like that, if they're relationships that need to be fixed, fix them. If they're relationships that need to be ended, end them. But deal with those toxic relationships. Maybe you paid no attention to your health. That's something you have to give up. Because, hey, if you're not healthy, you can't run a successful business, right? Because it's hard if everything is hurting or, you know, your body's not working like it's supposed to, or you're just generally sick because your diet sucks, right? So you're gonna have to give up the junk food or maybe you're gonna have to give up, you know, or at least limit it. But you have to look at what you're going to give up. You need to be brutally honest with yourself. And, and you need to commit to get rid of them. All right? So that's question number four. Now question number five. What will I have to learn? Okay, the person you are now can only create the life you have now. If you're going to have a better life or you're going to have a better business is because you will have to change. So it's not about, oh, I want my circumstances to change. You don't have control over that. You change because when you change, everything changes. Okay, so what are you gonna have to Learn as a business person, you have to learn how to speak, okay? And that's offline, online, in person, you know, one on one conversations, sales calls. You're gonna have to learn to speak. And you don't want to say, I don't know how to speak or I'm shy or I've never done that. You can learn it, okay? You did not become a doctor till you became a doctor, okay? Till you went through the process. In the same way, you don't have to be a great speaker. You have to commit to learn to be a great speaker and practice being a great speaker. The second thing is marketing. Maybe in 2019, you were saying, oh, I'm not a marketer, I'm not a salesperson. I don't believe doctors should be promote themselves. But this is a different year and you're going to have to learn those skills. You're going to have to identify. I have to learn this and commit to it. Maybe procrastination was a killer for you in, in 2019. So if it was, the first thing I'll do is I tell you, you want to go back to episode seven and you want to listen to that. Okay? I did a number of polls in 2019. I was like, what's your favorite? What's been your favorite episode of the Entre MD podcast? And every single time I did that, it was episode seven, overcoming procrastination. So if procrastination was something that cost you time and maybe opportunities and stuff like that, you definitely want to figure out how to overcome that. Okay? So you definitely want to down download that episode and listen to it. Okay, Maybe networking, maybe your entire business here, you spent it in your office. You never went anywhere. When you went anywhere, you stayed at the back of the room, didn't introduce yourself to anybody. And even if you did, you didn't tell them what you did, you didn't follow up with them, you didn't do any of that, then we have a huge opportunity there. It means if you can just learn how to network, then you can make a huge difference in your business. So commit to learn it. Okay? Leadership. Oh, I don't do people. I don't deal with people. Rather than deal with people, I'll do it by myself. And you can do that. The problem is you're going to stay small. You're going to stay small because the only way to go up is to give up something, all right? You're going to need to work with people. The only way you can take on new tasks, new businesses, New anything is you're gonna have to have people help you with what you're currently doing or help you build some aspect of that. Okay? So leadership is a must so you can learn to build a team, lead a team, and your team will deliver to you the business of your dreams. So maybe that's the way that's something that you're going to have to commit to learn. Okay? Personal finance, okay, so, yes, this is business, but. But personal finance is something you have to learn because all the success in business, in the universe, will not help if you can't understand it. Right? Because business is not an end in itself, right? The business is to fund your life. But if you don't know how to manage money and you're is going out as quickly as it's coming in, or you're not capturing some of it to discipline it, to work for you, you know, your money should be working for. For you. If you made seven figures and you spent seven figures, then what was the point? Right? But if you made six figures, multiple six figures, and you were able to put away six figures in real estate or some kind of vehicle where that money can be working hard while you're sleeping or while you're on vacation, then you did a great job. So personal finance, do you need to learn that? Do you know how to work from a budget? Do you know, have you had the consistency of every month putting away a percentage of your income? So it's working for you. These are the questions you need to ask yourself. What worked? What didn't work? What do I want next year? What will I have to give up? What will I have to learn? You want to sit down? You want to answer these, and if you answer them and implement what you commit to do, your year will be so different. You would get to December of 2020 and go like, oh, my goodness, when did I become this person? Okay? And that's what I want for you. That's what I want you to look back and say, oh, my word, the difference a year can make. You've heard it, you've seen it as a beautiful quote on Facebook, but what if you could really be saying that, right? So I want you to do that. All right? So this is what I have for you. This is what I want you to act on. And before I let you go, there are. There are some things I want you to do. So the first thing is I'm going to share one of the things that I want next year, and I want the Entre MD podcast to be positioned in such a way that it is one of the top 10 podcasts for anybody who is a physician entrepreneur and I'm going to ask for your help with that. So what I want you to do is share this episode, take a snapshot of it, post it on social media, say this is what I learned from this and tag your doctor friends. Okay? Share the episodes and join the Facebook community where we keep talking about these and if you have questions and you post them there, be rest assured that I will create a segment just for you. When you do your post, don't forget Entre md. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week. If you love this podcast please take a moment to subscribe, share and review it on itunes as you go about your week. Remember, you're not just an md, you're an Entree md. Don't forget to tune in next week for another great episode. Until next time.