5 unexpected things successful entrepreneurs do

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 ontremd 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.

Well, hello, Docs. Welcome back to the Entre MD podcast. Super, super excited that you're here. Even more excited about our event ENTREMD live, coming up June 13, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia. So I want you to check it out ontremd.com events. And this is our Business of Medicine event. It's gonna be amazing. So great content that will set you up to thrive as an entre, whether you don't even believe you can be an entrepreneur or whether you're kind of a newbie entrepreneur or an established entrepreneur, there's something for everybody. And beyond just the content, the networking, I mean, it's unbelievable because here you are in a room with a group of doctors who know where they want to go. And you know, entrepreneurs, we say they're our crazy friends, right? So you have a bunch of crazy friends. It's so amazing the connections that get made there. Totally, totally amazing. So people have come out of these events and started on a trajectory that has, you know, increased their income 10 times, five times. Of course, you know, everybody's result is going to be different, but it is truly a game changer event. So. Atlanta, Georgia, June 13, 2020 on tremd.com events. So go check it out and I look forward to seeing you then. But for today, we'll. We are going to be looking at five unexpected things successful entrepreneurs do. I said unexpected because a lot of physicians are type A accomplishing like just give me a checklist, just tell me what to do, let me get it done. And we kind of think some other things are like soft or woo woo or things like that. But there are some things that I've noticed that a lot of very successful people do that are either really simple or really woo wooish. Or you're just like, what? But it's a trend. So if people who own trillion dollar, billion dollar companies are doing these things, maybe we should take a look at them. So let's go. So number one is that they practice gratitude, right? Remember I was going like, okay, I mean like, can we talk about marketing instead? But they practice gratitude. So if you look at Arianna Huffington or Tony Robbins or Oprah, they all agree that success in life starts with acknowledging what you already have and where you already are. So these are people who start their day with a gratitude list. And what they're doing is every morning they start off with five or 10 things that they're grateful for and they write that out and they start off their day. And initially I was like, yeah, you know, whatever, gratitude, yay. But especially if you are somebody whose natural bent is to be negative or you expect bad outcomes, like every time, time you think about your business you're like, what if this doesn't work? Or what if that doesn't work? Or what if this person leaves me? Or if you're that kind of person. Especially if. But this is for everybody. This is a wonderful habit to have. So what the habit does is it sets you up where you start your day from with a positive outlook and with an outlook of possibilities, right? If, oh my gosh, if all these things could happen to me, who knows what will happen next? It's kind of that kind of attitude. If you're given to being sad or moody and stuff like that, this is a great exercise, okay? If you are so driven that you always have your eye on the goal, it sometimes is easy for you to become sad and almost depressed because you're always in chase mode and you're never going to hit it because before you hit one goal, there's already another goal set. It's like a never ending chase, you know? So gratitude is a great thing to do, okay? And human nature is naturally negative, right? Where it's so much easier to remember things that are not working. You know, this staff member left me, or, you know, this client after everything I did for them left, or this person left me a one star review or any of those kind of things. But I need you to imagine if you could focus on all the things that did go well. So there was a day that I came back home and I think, you know, this was many years ago. We didn't hit, we didn't see as many patients as I wanted us to see. It was kind of a slower kind of day and, and I was in my complain mode, in my mind kind of stuff, you know, and maybe we saw 18 patients or something for one doctor, something like that. But that same day there was a snowstorm in New York and I had all these pediatrician friends who couldn't even see any patients because, you know, nobody could drive in those conditions and they weren't going to be open the following day. So. And I started thinking, I'm like, you're complaining about the 18 patients you did see, but there are people here just like you, through no fault of theirs, who didn't see any patients and won't the next day either. And I'm not saying that to say things have to be bad for others for you to be grateful, but sometimes it just helps put things in perspective. And the following day I found out about another pediatrician who was shutting her practice because she was like, yeah, this is just not working. I haven't been able to make it work. And here I am with a practice that is cash flowing and I'm complaining, so there'll always be something to complain about. And I could have turned that around and say, well, I'm so grateful for the 18 patients that I did see while we work on our volumes to see more patients, right? So what can you be grateful for? Could you be grateful for that after five years you finally started the business? Could you be grateful for the fact that, you know, your account had been in negative all this while and for the first time is positive, even though it's not $700,000 in there, but is positive? Can you be grateful for the fact that for the first time you didn't worry about meeting payroll? Could you be grateful for the fact that you finally landed your first client? Could you be grateful for the fact that, you know, you finally, you know, branched out and started a second business? There's so much to be grateful for. And it doesn't have to all be business, right? I'm just using business. That's the context of the podcast. But what of health? Sometimes we take it for granted. I mean, you could be sick, you could be in the hospital. I mean, there could be so many things going on, but you're fine. You know what I mean? So can we be grateful for the health we have? Could we be grateful for the kids we have? Could we be grateful for our spouse, our house? I mean, there's so many things to be grateful for. So that's something that is really good to adopt and that's gratitude. Okay? So you can practice it. All right? If these ultra successful people are, then maybe you should as well. Okay. Especially if you're a negative person. All right, so the second thing is affirmations. And I know it sounds woo woo, it sounds soft, it's kind of weird, but hear me out. Okay? They practice affirmations. So when I first started my private practice, oh my gosh, I was really not an entrepreneur. I wish the Entre MD podcast existed. I really wasn't an entrepreneur. And I remember hiring my first set of staff. And these are not even doctors, so my payroll is not that big. But hiring the first set of staff, and sometimes they wouldn't come to work and all this kind of stuff. And I remember one morning waking up and my heart is literally racing, like eyes open, palpitations, and it's almost like all these thoughts of gloom and doom had just been sitting by my bed waiting for me to wake up. This is not going to work. Your patients are not going to come back. You're not going to have the right staff, you're going to be found out. You have imposter syndrome and all this stuff. And. And I could literally feel like cortisol and epinephrine being released in my body. I'm like, this is crazy. I was like, if I can't figure this out, I need to just get a job. Because there is no way this experience is healthy. This is insane. So I remember getting off and sitting and analyzing all the thoughts I was thinking, right? You're not a real practice. These are the guys are the people that are supposed to be here. You're kind of like, I wannabe. All those kind of things, I identified them. The fear of failure, you know, the fear of dealing with people, whether it's, you know, whether it's clients or, you know, patients or vendors or referral sources or staff. I identified all those things and I wrote affirmations that were the direct opposite, right? And what I use those to do, because you can't really fight thoughts with thoughts. You have to fight thoughts with words. So that. And I wrote them out. I literally wrote them out so that when those crazy thoughts come, I can literally pick up a piece of paper and start reading off of it. Right. You know, my practice is one of the best practices in all of Gwinnett County. That's, you know, my. My practice is in Gwinnett County. I have a fully engaged, well trained, a team that works with me, our client, our patients love us and love to refer pat. We're able to offer expert medical care with unparalleled customer service in a profitable way. I put all these things on there, and I did that. And what I was trying to do is trying to change the inner narrative. Because the problem with the inner critic is that you're listening to the inner critic all day. I mean, like, it's like a constant story that's going on. And some point you're going to have to direct that story because you're listening to it. And the longer you listen to it, the more you believe it. So I had to interrupt that story story and create my own story. All right? So affirmations are really, really powerful. In fact, they're so powerful that in the Freedom Formula masterclass, which is a 12 week group coaching course that we do, I literally started with money hang ups. Because the inner critic talks a lot there, right? Like, you want to start a business. It's like, oh, my gosh, you're so greedy. You're like one of the top earners of in the country as a physician, and you just want to make more money. We don't want to make more money. That's not. That's not what it is. We want to serve more people. It's just that the make more money thing kind of goes along with it. We have to do both. Okay, so those money hang ups, like, you're not the kind of person who can make money, right? Or I mean, like so many weird hang ups. And literally the first module is, these are the commonest money hang ups. Identify yours, get rid of them. Write affirmations, because it will stop you in business. I mean, you can have all the right information, but if this inner dialogue is going on, you're just not going to engage because you feel guilty for being an entrepreneur. You feel guilty, you know, for wanting to build a profitable business. And you can't be great at something you feel guilty about, you know, so affirmations, all right? And a lot of them use affirmations. And you're a successful person, so you should do it too. Okay. All right, so that's the second one, the third one. Now this one, if I must confess, I'm still working on, okay? And it's sleep. You're like, Come on, Dr. Una. How do you go from gratitude to affirmations to sleep? Yeah. The third one is sleep. Now, let me tell you, I'd heard about sleep, and you should get eight hours and da, da, da. I'm like, whatever. You haven't been to medical school. You can't have eight hours of sleep and survive. And we can't keep those habits. We just don't sleep and all this stuff. Till I heard Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, make a comment about sleep. That blew me away. That's when I was like, you know what? I need to pay attention. Now, let's put this in perspective, okay? He's the founder of a company that's worth a trillion dollars, and that's only one of many companies that he has. Okay? So sometimes when people like that talk, you might want to listen. At least that's what I do. And this is what he said about sleep. He says, I prioritize it. I mean, he has hundreds of companies, okay? I prioritize sleep. He says it makes me think better, I have more energy and my mood is better. Then this is the part that got me. He says, as a senior executive, you get paid to make a small number of high quality decisions. Your job is not to make thousands of decisions every day. Is that really worth it if the quality of those decisions might be lower because you're tired or grouchy? So he gets eight hours of sleep. He feels that he owes his company. His responsibility towards his company is to get enough sleep so he's well rested, has enough energy, has the right mood so he can make the right decisions. Right? So in the same way, could it be that we're making weird decisions because we're sleep deprived? Could it be that we're quitting sooner than we should because we're sleep deprived? Could it be we're not engaging the process, we're not dreaming bigger, we're not working well with people because we're not getting enough sleep. So again, this is something unexpected, at least for me. But you got to fix your sleep. So I would say at least make it incremental, right? If you are still one of those running on four hours, maybe go to six. If you're six, maybe go to seven. If you're seven, go to eight. If you're eight, you need to send me an email. Okay? Maybe I need to Bring you on as a guest on this show because most doctors are not doing eight hours, and it requires discipline actually, to do that, but they discipline themselves knowing that the cost of being sleep deprived is really high. Okay? The opportunity cost is high. So make a commitment and let me know, okay? Let me know what your commitment as far as sleep is going to be. You can post that in the. In the online community. Okay? All right, now, the fourth thing, which is a little related to the affirmations, is that they visualize, and you're like, Dr. Una, what is with this episode? This is one of my favorite episodes, okay? So listen, they visualize, and I'm going to give you an example using Michael Phelps, okay? Because basketballers do this. Olympic athletes do this. Golfers definitely do this. And they actually have mental coaches that teach them how to do this. So you're welcome. Okay? You're welcome. All right, so Michael Phelps. And if you don't know him, you definitely want to read about him. He's a really amazing story. He has. He is the most decorated athlete of all times. He has 28 medals, okay? 28 Olympic medals. And not like, he had a lot of bronze and silver, 23 of them are gold, and then three silver and two bronze. So he's the most decorated Olympian of all times, okay? Not athlete. Olympian. All right? So this is what he does. This is his mental videotape routine, all right, that his coach walked him through. He is supposed to imagine a successful race from the blocks to the point where he gets the medal and they're celebrating. He's supposed to do that every day before he gets. Before he goes to bed. And in the morning, once he wakes up. So twice a day, he's closing his eyes. He's imagining himself jumping off the blocks, swimming ahead of everybody, getting to the finish line, getting out of the water. Everybody's celebrating. He's going up to get his medal. He's doing that twice a day. Twice a day. They call it the mental videotape. Okay? Now you might go, like, what does that mean to me? I don't know. I mean, like, whatever you're scared of, just flip it. So you're like, oh, my gosh, if I. If I go talk to this, you know, person about referring to me, they're going to laugh at me. That's a videotape. Now, you have to put the right videotape where, you know, you go, you meet a client, they're like, oh, my gosh. What you do is what I've been looking for. They're happy to pay for your services, they're happy to refer you to family and friends. And you repeat that and repeat that. Maybe you're someone that's a speaker and you're terrified of being on stage or not even a speaker, but you know, you have to speak to grow your business, whether it's online, offline, or you should do both. And you're like, oh, but what if I get frozen? But what if you don't? What if you wow the audience? What if they follow through with your call to action? So you're literally like, you're going in, you're going up on stage, everybody's clapping. You introduce yourself, you're standing confidently on stage, you're commanding the whole stage. You're bold, you're confident, you go through all your material. If there's a call to action, people are flooding for it. And people are like, that was so amazing. Someone comes, meets you. After that, it's like, I want you to come speak at my event as well. Well, you nailed it. Imagine rehearsing that twice a day, every day. Okay, so again, a little woo woo. You know, you kind of like, huh. But it's amazing. Okay, so golfers do it. The Tiger woods of this world, they do it. The basketball players, they just stand there and they imagine their three pointers. Imagine that going into the basket. That's what they do. They're mental rehearsals. Okay, so adopt this. This is something pretty cool. Find something you're nervous about, find something you have a negative narrative around and then flip. Imagine that it works and play it in your mind. Okay, so if the most decorated Olympian did this twice a day, I think it's a good habit to, to, to adopt. Okay. All right, so that's number four. Number five is that they schedule fun. And I think for physicians, this is so cool. Like, I think we should schedule stuff like that because we're a lot of times we're not given to that. I mean, some people are sanguine, naturally, so, you know, they're the life of the party anyhow. But a lot of doctors are not like that. Type A driven one, accomplished st. But the thing with accomplishing stuff is we're never going to get to the finish line. Right? Except you're a quitter. But there's always going to be something new. Oh, I'm going to start a business. Oh, I'm going to scale the business. Oh, I'm going to become great at hiring. I'm going to start a second business. Oh, I'm going to start a Non profit. Oh, I mean, like, there's always going to be something, right? So you want to stop and smell the roses. So schedule fun. You know, part of what I do in my goals is I schedule. I schedule vacations. I don't expect them to just happen. I'm driven, my husband's driven. We'll just drive all year, you know, so. So we schedule vacation. We schedule vacation that are vacations that are family vacations, and we schedule vacations that are couples vacations. And we have a weekly date night. Everybody knows that Tuesday's date night. Nobody will call me on, on a Tuesday because they know what happens on Tuesdays. Right? But you have to schedule those things. You have to schedule so you don't run and then find out you're 80 and you missed out on life, you know, so you're still going to work hard, but you schedule fun, stop, smell the roses, live life, build relationships. One of the most valuable things you can do is spend time with people who are older. It would help you gain some kind of perspective of what's important in life. I have met many people before they died, and a lot of times they regrets the things like, you know, I wish I mended a relationship with XYZ or I wish I spent more time with my kids. You know, I wish I. I had better relationships. I made more friends. A lot of times it's not, I wish I started that second business, you know, and while it's important to accomplish because we're built for purpose, right, we have to, we have to live that out. But at the same time, the things that really matter, you want to. You want to schedule that. You. You want to make sure that life is not getting away from you while you're trying to be successful. Okay? So these are five things that I think are really powerful and they would up level your skill set and your what you can do as an entrepreneur if you adopt them. So gratitude, affirmations, sleep visualization, and scheduling fun. Okay, so what I want you to do right now is I want you to take a screenshot of the podcast and I want you to post it along with which what you learned, right? Post it with what you learned, what you're going to adopt, and then tag us. Okay? Hashtag entre md. I'd love to continue this conversation with you on social media. I'll be checking out for the tags, but pick a thing, Pick a thing and do it. One of the best things you can do as an entrepreneur is listen to this podcast. The second best thing is to start acting on it. Okay? So pick something, do it, and, you know, let me know how it helps you. Let me know how it helps you change. And I cannot wait to see you on the very next episode of the Entre MD Podcast. Thank you for listening.

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