7 ways to fight for your business during a crisis

Before we get into the episode, I am thrilled to announce that the ontram D Business school is open for enrollment. The on trendy business school is the only school of its kind for physicians who want to build six, seven and multiple seven figure businesses. Over the last two years, we have had hundreds of doctors go through the school with unbelievable results. Some of them run brands, some of them run private practices, some of them are coaches, some have other kinds of service based businesses or product based businesses. And we've had people come in and cross the six figure milestone, cross the seven figure milestone, cross the multiple seven figure milestone.

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have made statements like this. I recovered my investment in the first week. I recovered my investment in my bank account in the first 90 days. This is the best investment I've made in myself ever. I want you to have that kind of story. Not just a story of building a great business that serves a lot and earns a lot, but having a business that gives you the freedom to live life on your terms. So don't wait any longer. Entremd.com business. And now for the episode.

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. Well, hi docs.

Welcome back to another episode of the Entre MD podcast. Checking in with everybody and doing what I can to keep everybody inspired and motivated and empowered in these amazing times that we live in. And you know, before we go into it, April, which is what month it is at the time of this recording, is a really special month for me. And the reason for that is it's my daughter's birthday, my first daughter, she turned 12 and, and she was the baby that I wasn't supposed to have, you know, so, you know, I got married two years before I had her, was super excited. She was my dream, only to be called when I was about 20 weeks pregnant to say, hey, she has a congenital diaphragmatic hernia. We don't think that she's going to make it. We recommend that you abort. She also has a pericardial effusion. There's just no space for her lungs to grow. This is not going to be pretty. And we did all kinds of stuff. And she was my dream. And I fought and fought and fought. We fought for her. And she, you know, eventually carried her to full term to the glory of God. She was in the hospital for only nine days, even though she had surgery on the day of life. And she's done great. Like, she has not had any complications or anything like that. But we had to fight for what our dream was. And even though this is a little different than our businesses, we actually have to fight with our businesses. Everything is great with business until it's not. And when it's not, then we fight. That's what we do. Now, at the time of this recording, we're right smack in the middle of the COVID 19 pandemic. You know, it's a real crisis, and I don't want to make little of anything that anybody's going through in their businesses. I think in private practice across the nation, volumes are down 50 to 60%. So these are real things that are happening to real people. But I'm on here because I want to show you seven ways to fight for your business during a crisis, all right? Seven things that you can do. Now. There's some things you have. There's some things you have control over. You don't have control over when a pandemic shows up. You don't have control over, you know, if there's going to be an a recession, if there's going to be an economic crisis. But you do have control over your response to it. Okay? So I'm going to show you seven ways, and I want you to apply these to your business right away and start looking for some kind of better outcomes. Okay? So let's hit it. So the first thing you can do to fight for your business is keep your vision top of now. One of the things that I noticed that happened, you know, when the pandemic, you know, really started hurting businesses, people saying, well, 2020 was a wash, 2021 will be a better year. So it's almost like, forget it. The year's over. Nothing's gonna come out of it. We're done. And I don't want you to adopt that stance. We still have time. We still have I mean, we have endless creativity and we have support and we have all kinds of stuff. We're gonna fight for this. So I don't want you to take that vision that you had at the beginning of the year and thr away. Maybe you want to tweak it a little. Maybe you don't want to tweak it a little, but don't throw it away. Do not throw it away. Okay? So I want you to think about. You do this all the time. I want you to think about the pre Covid era when you used to go to the mall, right? And you go to the mall and you go to the directory, and the directory says, you are here. And you're like, okay, where's the Gucci store? Gucci store is there. So this is how I need to get there. Now, there could be many things that will take you off track, right? So maybe you went with the kid, the kid wants to go to the bathroom, or you saw an old Navy and you wanted to stop by and get something and all that stuff. But you never let it take away your vision, which your original vision is, I want to go to the Gucci store, right? So in the same way, yes, the pandemic has thrown some things at us. Yes, it has thrown some things at us economically. Maybe some things happened with some staff, and maybe you didn't get your PPP loans approved and all this stuff going on. But these are all detours. I want you to keep your vision top of mind, okay? If you would keep your vision top of mind. It keeps you centered. It keeps you like, we can fight for this. It gives you creativity because you're constantly. Your subconscious is constantly working on how do we bring this vision to pass. So don't throw away your vision. If you had a vision board and you kind of tucked it away somewhere in the basement, I want you to go get it out, and I want you to keep that vision top of mind. So the question now becomes, how do we make this our reality? And once you start asking those kind of questions, you start getting the kind of answers that will help you turn your business around, help you reinvent it, help you pivot it, the whole nine yards, okay? So that's the first thing. Keep your vision top of mind. The second thing is you have to extrovert into the marketplace. Even in the pre COVID 19 era, for most businesses, the biggest problem was obscurity. People don't know that you exist. So the option of hiding, the option of not coming in front of the marketplace, not coming out to serve, not coming out to let people know what you do, the problem you solve, the solutions you can give them, the outcomes your business provides is an amazing disservice. And it's not going to work for your business. So maybe you're like, I'm shy. I don't do videos. I don't really like talking to people. I don't do social media. I don't reach out to people. I don't ask them for business. I don't ask them to refer. I don't do any of those. You do those now, okay? You have to extrovert into the marketplace. You have to put yourself out there. You have to stop being the world's best kept secret. Okay? There are many people, you even in these times, who, if they knew about your service, would sign up yesterday. They just don't know, okay? So you have to extrovert. And you might be like, I don't want to put myself out there. But let me tell you something. Do you know one of the things we have an abundance of in the middle of this crisis? Problems. There are a lot of problems. The old problems are still there. The new problems have shown up on the scene. And guess what we do as entrepreneurs, we solve problems. Okay? So extrovert. Go out there, solve problems. Let people. What you do let put your business in front of people and let people use what you do. Okay? So that's the second thing. The third thing is you gotta learn to sell. You have to learn to sell. And I know doctors, I know it's almost like a cuss word. Like, did she just say sell? Yes, I said sell. You have to learn how to sell. All right, let me give you an example. With my practice, okay? So you guys know I'm the founder of Entre md, but I also have a pediatric practice. And of course, like every other practice, you know, when the pandemic hit, everybody's scared in their social distance and all the stuff and the volume started going down and I had to come to Jesus meeting with my staff and I'm like, you know what? The way things are right now, I don't really need your services, like, really. Right. But I do need a new set of staff. And their job description is whatever it takes. So if that's you, you're willing to be flexible, you're willing to be flexible with your role and all of that, then let's do it. You're the person I've been looking for. So they're like, yeah, let's do it. Whatever it takes. And so we developed a sales strategy, right? So their parents who could come in. And, you know, I'm a pediatrician, so, you know, vaccine rates dropping. I mean, that is really scary. And we've done a lot of changes in the office to make it safe. So they're not coming in contact with other people. There are no sick people in the office. The whole nine yards. So I'm telling the staff, like, all right, it's now time to hit the phones. Because they're like, the phones are not ringing. I'm like, the phones are not supposed to ring. You're supposed to be on the phone. So if people are calling you, you call them. But whatever it is, you need to be on the phone. So they're calling the patients. They're like, hey, you know, checking up on you guys. We see that Johnny's behind on his shots. This is what we've done to make it safe. We would like to get you in so you can get his shots. For others, they're like, oh, we see that, you know, James has asthma and we haven't seen him in three months and all that stuff. If you need this kind of appointment, we can do it via telemedicine and stuff like that. And so they're just doing that. They're overcoming objections and they're getting appointments on the books, and they're kids getting their vaccines, and the world is a better place, okay? But we had to learn to sell, okay? We had to learn to sell. That's one of the things you have to do in a crisis. Because if there's no money, there's no mission, there's no margin, there's no mission, right? Okay? That's the third thing. So you gotta do it. The fourth thing is you have to galvanize the team. So I already talked about that a little bit, right? You have to have meetings with your people. You have to talk to your people. You have to inspire them. You have to lead them through change. And maybe your business, you're in a position where a lot of things were like, you know, by autopilot. You didn't really have to deal with people. You didn't have to inspire people. You didn't have to do any of that. Now you do, okay? Because your team, they're like your greatest assets. They are. And if you can galvanize them, share the vision, share the challenges, and, you know, share what can happen and. And the strategy and ask for their input because they're on the front lines, they know a lot of these things more than you, the things you think are objections may not be objections at all. They know, because they're talking to your people, right? So you want to galvanize them, get them on your side. So you guys are working as a team, and you're not working isolation, because that will lead to burnout, frustration, no one to lean on is just awful. Okay? So number four, galvanize your team. Number five, serve your clients or your patients at a higher level. Okay? Now, what is going on now is that we have new problems, right? There are new problems. So let me go back to my practice and use that as an example. Now you have. It used to be that my kids, they just need to come in, they need to get their shots and all of that kind of stuff, right? You know, just needed us to take care of their healthcare, but now there's the COVID 19 fears, and the parents have to deal with all of that. And what do we do to serve them on a higher level? We have to make sure that it's safe for them to come in, right? So we did away with the waiting room entirely. So they go from the car, they call us when they get there, we call them in, take them straight to a room, we make the visit, you know, such that they don't come in contact with other people. There's not really any wait time. So they're technically in and out. They get their things and they're out. Right. For some of them, serving at a higher level means we have to incorporate telemedicine, right? So we incorporate telemedicine. So for some of the things, they don't even have to leave the house. We can take care of them in the comfort of their own homes. And we have to send out emails. We are doing emails about three days a week to keep them updated with what we're doing, updated with what is going on with COVID and all of that kind of stuff and, you know, health information they would usually get. So we had to add on all these things to serve them at a higher level, right? Because they have new problems going on. So one of the things you do to fight is to serve them. And the reason for that is they're afraid, they're unsure, they're anxious, right? And for you to be the person who is making them more comfortable, who is looking after them, who is helping them through this transition, it gives so much goodwill, so much brand loyalty, and it's just overall great. That's what we want to do anyway, isn't it? So serve your clients at a higher level. Okay. For the other business that I run on ChairMD, if you look at the podcast, you see there's a lot more episodes and is geared towards the problems that people are having. Why I wanna be able to serve you at a higher level. I wanna be able to help you in the midst of this crisis. I wanna be able to give you direction, what things you can do to make your businesses better and stuff like that. For my private coaching clients, I created another vertical around what I already do for them to give them more support in these times that we're in. If you look, I've done a lot of webinars like how to recession proof your practice, how to recession proof your business, how to create videos that will put your business on the map. These are all things that I'm putting out there to help to serve at a higher level. Okay, so that's number five. Number six, you have to work hard to eliminate doubt, anxiety, and fear because you need to be in the right mental space to lead your team, to lead your tribe, to. To weather the storms, to not get thrown off by every piece of bad news that shows up. So you have to eliminate that. You can choose how you do that. For some people, it'll be prayer. For some people, it's meditation. For some people, it's affirmations that they say. And actually, we did create affirmations for the physician entrepreneur. And if you go to entremd.com affirmation you'll be able to get that. And what it is, is five minutes of positive affirmations about your business that you can listen to right at the start of the day to set your mind like, this is gonna be an amazing day. This is where our business is going. These are the opportunities that come in our way. This is how I'm gonna navigate this crisis. So it's great to start your day with. But also you have those times in the day where maybe three pieces of bad news came at you back to back to back, and you're like, man, I'm just gonna quit. I can't take it. Everybody has those kind of moments, right? It just takes enough bad news for that to happen. But this is something that in five minutes, you can use it to reset, reset your mind. And you're like, okay, let's get back in the ring. Let's get this done. Okay, so eliminate doubt, anxiety, and fear. Okay? That's something that we need to do. The seventh thing that you need to do is you need to lean into your mentors and your coaches and the best Way I can think of illustrating this is think about a boxer in the ring and they've had one round and they beat the crap out of the boxer, and he goes back to his corner and his coach comes up up there. It's like, look, you can do it. You can do this. Change this strategy. I got you. You can't quit, right? We need that. Okay? So this is a time to lean into mentors. This is a time to lean into coaches. You need the direction, you need the shortcuts. Someone can give you a roadmap. Like, this is how you do this, right? You need that. So lean in, okay? And if you're like, yeah, I've never really done the coaching thing. I don't know about coaches. I started investing in coach a few years ago, and it is the best thing I've ever done. And I'm never going to stop for as long as I live. But if you're like, you know, I don't have one yet. There is the Freedom Formula Masterclass. This is a program that we've run for almost a year at this point, at different times. And it is a place where you can get direction, you can get the shortcuts, you can get roadmaps, and most importantly, you can get a supportive community, positive, supportive community that you definitely need to thrive in these times, right? Because you can read enough blogs and watch enough videos and all this stuff to eventually figure out stuff. But we don't have time for that. We're in the middle of a crisis, right? And this is something that you can start in and you can get those shortcuts and you can work your business and you can make it thrive. Yes, there are a lot of businesses that are suffering, and that's because of the times that we're in. But there are a lot of people for them, this has been their best time. It literally because of some things that they're doing. Okay, so you can check it out. It's entre md.com freedom and for those of you who are my podcast listeners, you can put the code podcast in there and it gives you an amazing 50% off because again, I am doing this to help you in this time to thrive. Okay? So those are the seven things you can do. Keep your vision top of mind. Extrovert into the marketplace. Learn to sell, galvanize your team. Serve your existing clients and patients at a higher level. Eliminate doubt, anxiety and fear. And finally, lean into your mentors and coaches. Okay? All right, so apply these. Super helpful. Will help start turning your business in the right direction. And one of the best things you can do, one of the best ways to learn is to teach. So I want you to take the nugget that stood out to you the most and that you're going to start applying right away. And I want you to go to your social media platform and I want you to talk about it. Just tag me. I'll be happy to give you a shout out as well. Okay. And check out the Freedom Formula Masterclass and I will see you on the very next episode.

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 entrepreneur.

Dandy.

Don't forget to tune in next week for another great episode. Until next time,