Are Your Habits Building Up Your Business or Tearing It Down?

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 sevenfigurebook 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. Umn. Well, hello. Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of the On Trendy podcast. And as always, I am super pumped to be in your ears and I want to say thank you. I know I say that a lot, but I truly mean it. Thank you for being a listener. And, yeah, we're going to have. We're going to have a very interesting conversation. This podcast episode is inspired by my husband, as many of them are. And you know, over the weekend we were talking about one of our mentees, so someone we mentor together. And the person has, you know, a specific challenge that they've been working on. But the problem is, you know, they would start working on it and then they stop and they start and they stop and we're like, man, this has been going on for years. And we're like, she just doesn't have that staying power, you know, to continue with the process. And. And we started thinking about it, that ability to start doing something that's gonna create a result, but it's gonna take a minute and to really stay with that until now. I will pause and say, this is one of the reasons why you'd hear me talk a lot about my Belief that physicians have what it takes to be the best entrepreneurs because we have staying power. At least we've practiced it before, right? So we're physicians. For most of us, it took us over a decade, you know, to finally become attendings and things like that. And that ability to stay with what you need to do to accomplish one goal for over a decade, it's powerful. And you may be thinking, well, I don't have staying power and things like that, and it's just not true. I mean, there's evidence to show that you do, right? It's just that we need to channel something we were really good at in one area to another area. But anyway, so we started talking about it and we're like, yeah. And so he made a statement. He said, yeah, but staying power is a muscle. It. It's something that you build over time. Nobody is born with the ability to just tenaciously follow a goal until. And when he said that, I was like, oh. And he said, if only we understood, right, that everything, everything is tied to the kind of muscles that we build. And so when he said that, I just had, you know, so. So his thought process was, you know, if you are lazy, every time you decide to do something that is lazy, you're building a muscle. Every time you decide to worry a lot about something, you're building a muscle in the same way. Every time you decide, I've done this five times, I'm going to do it for the sixth time, you're building a consistency muscle, right? Every time you decide, I don't feel like doing this, but this is the right thing to do in this moment, and you do that, you're building that muscle of doing discipline, right? If you're going through challenges and you decide, I'm going to go through the challenge, but I'm going to have the best attitude as I go through the challenge. You're building the muscle of joy. They're building the muscle of a great attitude. And so as he said that, I was like, whoa. I just had this image, you know, how you're having a conversation with someone and you just, you know, take off on a little bit of a tangent. I just had this image and it was the image of a bodybuilding, you know, like with, you know, like when you look at a bodybuilder, you're like, wow, we have a lot more muscles than I thought. I just have one lump where, you know, you're having all of that, but it's like all these muscles. And this wasn't the concept of Some of us being bodybuilders and some of us not being bodybuilders is that we're all bodybuilders. We all have like these, we all have bodies like bodybuilders. But the question is, what muscle are we building? So do I have this big body that's, you know, made up like a bodybuilder, but the muscles that are there are muscles of laziness, of sloth, of worry, of inconsistency, of, you know, as an entrepreneur, muscles of not procrastinating on marketing, procrastinating on selling, not putting myself out there, yielding to fear, all of those kinds of things. Or have I built this muscle, right, that is going to be a great asset to my life and to my business because it's a muscle that's around the concepts of consistency and discipline, all of those kind of things. And so I was like, wait a minute, we all, look, we all have these massive bodybuilder type bodies, right? But what are those bodies? Are they tools? Because the muscles we've built will serve us. Are they weapons against us? Because they're muscles that will hurt us. Okay, So I want to bring this all the way to business. So, you know, we were having that conversation like, man, it's the truth. Everything, every decision we make, every time we do something, we're building a muscle. Just think about it that way. Every time I do something, make a decision and I do something, I'm building a muscle. Does that muscle serve me or does that muscle hurt me? Okay, so let's bring it to our businesses, right? We can build muscles. And you know, when I started thinking about it, I was like, man, this is the exact framework that we use in the entrepreneur business school. We can be building marketing muscles, right? We could build sales muscles, we can build leadership muscles, we can build delegation muscles, team building muscles, we can be building all of that. The thing with that is that building those muscles is like really uncomfortable. But if we build, I want you to think of yourself as somebody who's really proficient. You're proficient at marketing, you're proficient at selling, you're proficient at building a team. You're efficient, you know, proficient at leading the team, building company culture, building systems, creating content that converts. Imagine if you, you were a bodybuilder and these are all the muscles you had. What would your business look like right now? In building those things again, you're gonna have to embrace discomfort. And nobody arrives when it comes to this. Every time you master something and you create these wins in your business, you would have also created new problems that require new skills that require a new version of you. So this is. It doesn't matter if you're just starting or you're at, you know, eight figures. It doesn't matter. This is what we need to do. And so now with building muscle, the thing about it is, if you think about going to the gym, lifting weights, though you can lift weights, you'll most likely be sore, right? You will have to pace yourself, and the muscles don't grow immediately. That is why so many times people quit, okay? Because the muscles don't grow. They don't grow quickly, they don't grow overnight. It takes the time it takes, period. And it's the same way as we build those muscles in our businesses. And so when it comes to things like, you know, building your marketing muscle, right, you're going to start putting yourself out there. You're going to start building referral sources. You're going to start, you know, maybe leveraging, leveraging social media, showing up on video, speaking at events, going for networking events, and all of those kind of things. And you're going to be sore, and the muscle is not going to grow right away. It's going to feel uncomfortable doing it and all of that. But I want to challenge you to think of it like, every time you do it, your muscle is bigger. Every time you do it, you're closer to being comfortable doing it every time you do it. So you can embrace all the discomfort, so you can get onto. You can get to the other side, right? It could be around, you know, you're like, I won't talk about money. I don't want to sell. I don't want to do any of that. But great entrepreneurs sell. This is. This. This is just. And. And we're always selling, right? And even if you were like, yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to sell. Well, you. You may, you know, like, my company is at a point where I don't need to do that. But you have to sell your team on stuff. You have to. Maybe you want to sell your company. Maybe. What? Like, you're not. You don't outgrow it. It's not something that you outgrow. And so if that's the case, why don't we just settle down and start building the musc, Right? Think about it. If it's going to take me talking about my product 400 times for me to get comfortable talking about it and charging what I charge and all of that, I guess we might as well you know, we might as well start, right? If I know It'll take me 400 times to build that muscle, then I start now and I keep pushing it and keep going at it until I have that muscle, right? Think about content creation. Think about being a great speaker, A speaker who is able to communicate, articulate their value, right? Articulate what life is like on the other side of working with them and things like that. If you're going to be that person, you're going to do a lot of talking, and every time you do it, it's a muscle. So in the entrepreneur business school, we would have, you know, we've had like speak a thon challenges. We've had a video a day challenge. We had all kinds of challenges driving people to speak. And sometimes people are like, well, I don't, I don't want to do Facebook lives or I don't want to do reels. And I'm like, it's so not the. Like, yes, is some. For many of you is going to create, you know, it's going to create results in your business, in the short, in your businesses in the short term. Like so many of you, that's what it's going to do. But I still see that as a short term win. The most important win is how good you become at speaking, how good you become at communicating. You're going to need that when you get on the big stage, you're going to need that. When you're invited for that international talk, you're going to need that, right? So it's not just about the short term. It's that you're building a muscle, right? There are people who now they've done TED talks and all of that stuff, and they're like, my speaking journey and getting comfortable and owning my voice. And all of that started with XYZ Challenge when we had the Facebook Live challenge, right? So every, Every time we, we market, every time we sell, every time we hire a person, every time we choose to lead our team instead of hiding, every time we choose to cast vision, every time we choose to hold them accountable, every time we choose to create content, all of that, what are we doing? We're building these muscles that will serve us as entrepreneurs. Okay? Now on the flip side, you can say, I'm not going to do any of that. I'm going to run away from marketing, I'm going to run away from selling, I'm going to run away from building a team. I'm going to run away from my operations, I'm going to run Away from my profit and loss statement. The problem is, every time you do that, you're building a muscle, right? Every single time you do that, you're building a muscle. And so it's kind of like, let's choose. Let's choose to build the right muscle, right? Let's choose to build a muscle that will serve as a tool for us as opposed to a weapon against us. So you can choose not to do any of this. Instead, you can choose to live in overwhelm. Like, oh, I'm overwhelmed now. There will be times where you feel like, I'm feeling overwhelmed. And then this is the way we teach in alternative business school. When you feel overwhelmed, when you feel an invitation to say, oh, I just want to live in this overwhelm, Think about it. There may be so many things, but what is that of all these 1 million things that are overwhelming me, what is the one thing I can do? What is the one thing I have control over right now? What is the one thing I can do? Then I do that, right? Like, being overwhelmed is not going to serve me in any kind of way. So living in overwhelm, living in confusion. I see this a lot amongst entrepreneurs. I don't know what to do about this. A month later, I don't know what to do about this. It could be this, it could be that, it could be that. I was researching this, researching that. I call it the confusion addiction. It feels good because then you don't have to make a decision, right? And so I'm like, chop, chop, let's take an hour. Let's do the research. Let's come up with the best possible decision we can with the information we have, and let's go. We don't have five, you know, five weeks, five months, five years to be confused. We literally don't have time for that, right? And so, but the more you practice living in confusion and just staying there and not making decisions and all of that, the better you get at it. That's the problem, right? So the confusion addiction, you may, you know, it could be procrastination. You live there, you're like, oh, I'll do that tomorrow. I'll do that tomorrow. The more you do that, the bigger the muscle gets, the easier it is to do that, the more proficient you get at it. You become great at procrastinating, and you want to interrupt that sometimes. You know, discipline has been described as. Has been described as doing what you should when you doing what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it. Whether you feel like it or not, right? And so sometimes we want to feel a certain way, we want to be motivated and all of those things. And sometimes you're just like, no, I'm just going to do this. It's a pattern interrupt. I want to interrupt this procrastination habit. I want to interrupt my, you know, my, my opportunity to build this procrastination muscle. You just decide and you do it even though you don't feel like it. What are you trying to do? You're trying to interrupt this thing. You're like, I don't want to be building this muscle anymore. Right? Yielding to fear, allowing fear. Stop you. That is a. That's a muscle you can build and you can just keep allowing it and keep allowing it, or you can build a muscle of daring your fears. And I will tell you. So this happened to me in 2020, and I came to this realization that there are so many things in my life that were uncomfortable. I was stepping out of my comfort zone and all of those things, but I was okay with it. And I was like, wait a minute, I didn't know. I was like, wait a minute. You can actually get comfortable being uncomfortable. Like, I was very comfortable in the discomfort. I'm like, yeah, you know, is the way. Is the way it works. That's what entrepreneurs do. And so the more you practice it, the better it gets, right? And so you know that we get to choose. Am I going to be this. I'm going to look like a bodybuilder, like on the inside, right? I'm going to look like a bodybuilder regardless. Or what kind of muscle am I building? A muscle that serves me or a muscle that destroys me? We get to choose. We get to choose today. I'm going as an entrepreneur. I'm going to build my marketing muscle. Even though I don't want to do it, I'm going to go out there and do it. I'm going to build my selling muscle. I'm going to go out there and do it. I'm going to build my team also. I'm going to go out there and do it. I'm going to build my operations muscle. I'm going to. I'm going to build all of that. I'm going to understand my profit and loss statements better. Like, I am building those muscles. Or you can choose to practice laziness, procrastination, overwhelm, worry, discouragement. And I'm not saying you won't ever feel these things. You could, but then you could choose not to build that muscle. Right? Okay, so we get to choose. So, you know, back to my conversation with my husband over the weekend in the kitchen. And you know, you know, he was like, you know, I wish everybody understand that, you know, we're constantly building muscle and our results is all about the muscle. It's all about the muscle. What muscle did we build? And he ended it by saying that every decision you make is an exercise in muscle building. Every decision, every decision you make is an exercise in muscle building. And what the muscle I build determines the results I get. It was so good. Okay, so what I want us to do is really, I want you to make a quality decision. Like, if I'm going to be building muscle anyway, I want to choose the kind of muscle that I'm going to build. Okay? I want to intentionally choose it and build it. And if you're like, yeah, and I've tried that before and I really struggle, then I do want to take a moment and invite you to come join us in a place where we've built a system that will help you build muscle. Okay? And that is on tremd business school and in the entremde business school. One of the things that we've built is a community of people who are doing these things, right? So there's a community of people and their activities and their results and their sharing of their triumphs and trials are things that will make you, put you in a position where you are around constant motivation, right? Like constant motivation to put yourself out there to market your business, to crush your goals, you know, to cross certain, you know, revenue milestones and all of that, because you're in a community where people are doing it. But then we also have systems of accountability that support you on your journey to build the right muscles, right? And so, for instance, we have these challenges that we do every month at the time of this recording. We are the beginning in the middle of an Ask a Thon challenge. And in the Askathon challenge, there are, you know, there's a group of asks they have to make their businesses every day. And these are asks that really would take them, will move them forward in their businesses, either by getting new people, new clients or by getting new team members, right? But these are direct asks and these are the things people typically don't want to ask about and all of those things. And we do that to give people an opportunity over a 30 day period to build these asking muscles. And we've only done it for about a week and I'm already seeing people say oh, my goodness. It's getting so much easier to ask. Is getting so much easier to ask, Right? So we do things like that on a monthly basis. We have our success groups, which is all about accountability. It's about doing. It's about building muscle, really. And so depending on the week, there are different things that they work on. The success groups are not about teaching, not about discussion for the most part. It's about doing. It's about building muscle. Right. And, you know, so it is a place that fosters. That is what it's all about, Right. And especially if you're here and you're like, I love the podcast, and I'm learning the concepts and I'm really inspired. I struggle to execute. I struggle to implement. The business school is all about implementation. Okay? So I want you to come join us over there. So it's entre md.com forward/business, okay. And you'll be able to turn on an application, and one of our business analysts will get on the phone with you. We'll work it all out, and we'd love to welcome you into the community. Okay. But this is a group of people. We are all bodybuilders, but we're building business. We're building, you know, muscles that work for us. I cannot tell you how many people are like, I almost don't recognize myself. I don't recognize myself. And I love for that to be you, too. Okay? So I want you to think about taking the next 90 days, right? And you're like, man, I'm going to build these muscles in my business. I'm going to build the muscle of marketing. I'm going to build the muscle of content creation. I'm going to build the muscle of speaking. I'm going to build the muscle. And you start paying attention to the muscles you've been building that you're like, I don't want to build that muscle anymore. Right? And you stop it. You interrupt it and you're like, I'm going to lead my team. I'm going to show up as the visionary leader that I am. I'm going to do all these things. I want you to imagine working on that for the next 90 days. And as a result, you have created this system that is a tool for the growth and the prosperity, if you will, of your business, and that is totally within reach for you. So I want you to keep that picture in front of you. I want you to fight to build the right muscles. And as you do that, you're going to end up with a business that you really love. You're a muscle builder. Just make sure you're building the right muscle. So share this episode with another doctor in your life and I will see you on the next episode of the ontremity Podcast. Hey, if you love listening to the ontram 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 forward/on demand and I love to have you join us. See you on the inside.