Business Lessons From My Dad, Dr. Chineme Part 4

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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 practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Una.

Well, hello. Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of the Entre MD podcast. I want to say I'm excited that I get to be in your ears and I really want to thank you guys for the feedback you give me. So many people talking about how when they're facing challenges or things that they used to hold back on, they're like, I hear Dr. Una in my head, like, you can do it. Progress over perfection. And, you know, and all of that, and, you know, it's so rewarding. And for everyone who's been sharing, you know, this legacy series where I'm honoring my dad and all the amazing things he did. Thank you. It's special beyond anything that you can imagine. And I appreciate you more than you'll ever know. Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much. Today we are going to be looking at the fourth and the final part of the legacy series, Business Lessons from my dad, Dr. Chenema. And, you know, this part I think you'll get a lot, a whole lot out of. And we're just going to dive into it. I'm just overwhelmed with gratitude. We're just going to dive into it. So if you missed the first three Parts. I want you to go back and I want you to listen to them. They're all separate and they're all very impactful. And then you can come back to this fourth part. Okay. All right. So my dad. My dad turned 85. He turned 85 on April 5th. April 5th. And, you know, that was fun. We celebrated him, made a lot of noise and. And all of that. And he. On 28th April, I listened to a podcast episode. So I. I took my kids to school on that day, and on my way back, I was listening to a podcast episode on Entrepreneurs on Fire by John Lee Dumas. And he had brought on somebody who helps people write books, right? She just helps people write books. And she said that one of the. She started talking about the different books she wrote, and one of them was the story of her grandmother. And she was like, it was such a fascinating story. Like, you know, like, it's. You could make a movie out of it. And she started talking about all this history and wisdom that gets lost when people don't write their books. That's why you should write a book. And that's when I thought about it, I was like, my dad, he's so amazing. He's done all these things, and I don't even know all the stories behind, you know, what's gone on in his life. And the truth of the matter is a lot of things I've shared in this episode, I didn't know about them. Like, I literally didn't. And I was like, listen, you grew up in the village. I didn't even know he grew up in a mud hut. I didn't know that. And I was like, you grew up in the village and you got a scholarship to go study in University of California at Berkeley. And your story, you've been married for 44 years. You have four kids, your kids are all doing great. You know a lot of stuff, and you need to write about that stuff because we need to know about it, you know, so. So I talked with him and I was like, so I.

Will you write a book? Would you write a book?

That's what I asked him on April 28th. Okay, April 28th. And I'm going to pull out. I'm going to read the actual thing that I sent him because this was a WhatsApp message, right? So, you know, we were chit chatting and all this stuff, and, you know, I was like, I have an idea and I'm wondering if you're open to it. It said, you, life story is fascinating, and I only know a tiny bit about it.

Could you write about it?

I mean, being a kid, getting a scholarship to move to the US for med school, your experience here, meeting mommy raising us, your decision to move back, et cetera. There's so much wisdom you have and it would be great for us to all get it from you. And also the other piece about it is I have four children and my older two had been to Nigeria, so they met him once, but they were younger. My younger two had never met him. And he has all these other, you know, because none of us, none of the kids live in Nigeria. So he has all these grandkids. And I'm like, I don't know, you don't want to travel. And you know, they, they may, they may not meet you and then they get to read about you and all that stuff and it gives them context when they get on the phone with you and stuff like that. So, you know, I was thinking, and my dad, remember from the last episode in Legacy series, he's very decisive, right? So I sent him this text at 8:57am his response at 9:03, I'm quite open to the proposal. I'm willing. Let's start. This is an 85 year old man, okay? So he said yes. And I said, okay. So when do you want to start?

He says, tomorrow.

That's my dad for you. Very decisive, even at 85. And so that's April 28th. He's says, we're going to start tomorrow, which is April 29th, May 7th, I get a message from him. I'm done with the first part. I'm like, what? What is that? Right? Yeah. So less than two weeks, right? Actually about 10 days. He's done with the first part. The only reason why I have all these stories to tell you which have been so impactful is because he wrote the book. He wrote the book. My mom sent it to me and I was able to read all this stuff. I was like, I kept going, like, wait, what, what, what? That was my reaction to all those things. I didn't know all of that. I didn't know all of that. So he sends that May 7, and by June 24, he's gone. He's gone. So what's the lesson here? You strike while the iron is hot. What's the lesson? When you know what you should do, do it. Because that opportunity may just roll on by. What if I sent him that message the second I got out of the car to say, wait a minute, I'm sure my dad has an amazing story I sent it that same morning once I got out of the car. So I saw an opportunity. I struck while the iron was hot. I told him, and in less than six minutes, he said, yes. And he said, I'll start tomorrow. And in 10 days, he was done with the first part. He struck while the iron was hot. There's no way I could have known that less than two months after asking him to do that, that I won't be able to ask him to do that. There's no way I could have known. There's no way he could have known. If I don't get this done now, I'm going to go with all my wisdom. I'm not going to leave anything for my kids and for my grandkids and for the entremd community. He didn't know about that. If I had waited, I would have missed out on it. If he had waited, he would have missed out on it. We would have lost the preservation of his legacy. His grandkids would never have, quote, unquote, met him. When opportunity shows up, it's too late to prepare. We had an opportunity to share his legacy, but if we waited, he would have been gone and we wouldn't have known. We wouldn't have known. So how does this apply to you? Well, as an entrepreneur, you get opportunities to improve your business. You get opportunities to start, you get opportunities to speak, you get opportunities to launch a podcast. You have all these opportunities, opportunities to build a team, opportunities to uplevel your team. And a lot of times we procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate. We don't strike while the iron is hot. I want to share with you what happened to us in my. So this is in my private practice now. What happened to us during the pandemic? November of 2019? So this is the year before the pandemic. I sat with my practice administrator, big shout out to her, Fatima Sparks, and we started thinking, what do we need to do to create massive growth in the practice? What do we need to do to apply the principles of online business and all of that to the practice so we're more innovative? What do we need to do to leverage telemedicine in a much higher way? What do we need to do to make the practice more efficient? We spent weeks working on this stuff, tinkering at it, coming up with plans. And we had all these plans for 2020. All these plans. So when the pandemic hit and all the things that happened started happening, do you know what we did? We literally Took our plans for the year and just compressed them, and instead of rolling them out, we just went to work on all of them. We were ready. We were ready. We already had everything in place to start emailing our patients every week. We had everything in place to embrace television medicine at a higher level. We had everything in place to send them out videos to let them know, this is the update. This is what is going on. This is what we've done to make the office safe. We already had everything in place to hit the recaller, to get people to come in for appointments when everybody was trying to stay away. We had already put everything in place. So when the pandemic hit, we didn't know we were preparing for it, but we were ready. So in your business, this plays out every day? It plays out every day. You take what you know you can do today, and you do it like you mean it, because there's something else that's tied to it. So, for instance, you have an opportunity to speak. You speak, you have an opportunity to do videos. You do videos. You have an opportunity to do Facebook lives, you do them. Why a day is coming when you're going to have an opportunity to land a big stage, if you're not ready, it is too late to prepare. What will make you show up and knock that out the park is what you've been doing every single day. I got to speak at a conference, and it was a conference hosted by Terry Savelle Foy. There were a thousand women there. A thousand women. And I was walking to the green room, and there was someone else that was going to be on the panel, and she's, like, jittery and she's shaking and she's like, oh, my gosh, aren't you just so nervous? I was distracted, right? I was thinking of something else. So when she said that, I turned, I looked at her like, no, I'm not nervous. And then I realized who I was talking to. So maybe it was her first time on stage and all that kind of stuff. I was like, no, it's going to be okay. You know, like, I kind of caught myself. But the reason why I could say, no, I'm not nervous without thinking about it is because I've done over 400 videos. I've done over 150 Facebook lives. I show up on video and speak every week. I have a podcast where I speak twice a week. And I've done. I've done so for the last seven months, and I've done once a week for the last 18 months. I do a lot of speaking. I've been at a lot of events. I've practiced this thing. I've worked on improving this thing. So, no, I'm not nervous at all. How do you get to that point? You take advantage of what shows up every day because it's preparing you for something bigger. You want to start a business? Start it. Start it. You don't know what it gets you ready for. You decided to scale. Scale it. You decided to build your personal brand. Stop delaying. You don't know what it opens for you. Whatever you know you should do, start doing it. If you wait, it may be too late. If I had waited, it would have been too late. And I would not have had four episodes to share with you. I would not have had all these experiences that would inspire you. I would not have been able to show you that if someone could go from a mud hut to a US trained surgeon, that whatever it is you've been dreaming of, you can do it. You can do it. So whatever it is, whatever it is, start now. Start now. Because one thing opens the door for another thing. So let me tell you, for instance, my dad, there was a second part to the book, and he had talked to my mom about it. He said, you know, so I've talked, you know, I've done the historical part and all of that, and now I want to talk about my lifestyle, you know, how I ate, how I this, how I managed my mind, how and all of those things, how I raised my kids. But he didn't write that part. But at least he told my mom, right? And so my mom is going to. She's going to. I'm going to have her tell me that part, and we're going to add that. And my dad had four of us, I have three siblings, and we're each going to write a chapter about his life. And when I go back to Nigeria, I'm going to get pictures that correspond with each area, each part of the story. And I'm going to make a really good autobiography. And it's going to be called Tom's the autobiography of Dr. Ekenecheneme. And because scholarships were so instrumental in the life that he lived, we're going to host a fundraiser every year. Every year around June 24, in memory of his death and in celebration of the life that he lived, we're going to. We're going to, you know, do a fundraiser. And people could buy the book for $1,000, whatever, and all the proceeds will go to give scholarships to those who otherwise will not have the opportunity to go to college and make their dreams come true. And I don't know how big that's going to be. I don't know what's going to happen with that. But guess what? If I had waited, if I had waited, if he had waited, then that little decision would have stopped this big thing from happening. So, docs in the entremde world, you know that I love you and I root for you and I believe in you and I want to challenge you today. Stop waiting. Stop waiting. Say yes. Go get it done. And you don't know what you're preparing yourself for. You don't know what you're setting the stage for. Just embrace it all. Is it going to be scary? Yes. Is it going to feel like you're doing stuff messy? Yes. But it's okay. That's the way it is. My dad, my dad is a surgeon. Okay. He hand wrote this book. Right. How many of you know, I needed to pray to read what he was writing. So was it messy? Yes. My mom took pictures of what he wrote and sent it to me on WhatsApp. Is that the best way to do this? No. But is something really beautiful coming out of it? Yes. Is something even more beautiful going to come out of it? Yes. Your messy action is okay. That is all that is required. Just give it your best shot. Give it your best shot. What I want is a month from now, six months from six months from now, a year from now, for you to send me a PM, a DM text message and say, Listen, Dr. Una. Those four episodes, the Legacy series, that changed my life. That's when I finally owned my dream and said, I can do this. That's when I fixed my business habits and I was like, I'm going to be consistent with what I need to do. That's when I decided I made a quality decision, that I'm going to make decisions. I'm going to make decisions of what I want my life to look like, my business to look like, and I'm going to go after it. And you're going to say, that's when I have stopped letting procrastination stop me. I learned to strike while the iron is hot. And Dr. Una, those four episodes changed everything. I want to hear you say that. I want to get messages from you that that's your reality. That's what I wish for you. So this is part of the life of my dad. Dr. Chinnamen. Surgeon. Great husband, great dad, great friend. He's a philanthropist. His whole life was philanthropy and I'm glad I could share it with you. And I'm grateful for the ripple effect that I know it will have. And to help me honor him, what I would ask you to do is to take this episode to share it social media hashtag ontremd second hashtag ontremd legacy and share what you got out of it. Share how my dad's life is impacting your life today. And that would be the absolute best for me. Thank you so much for being part of this series and I can't wait to celebrate you. I just. I just can't. So go do that. And welcome to a brand new phase of your business and your life. And I will see you on the next episode of the entremdy podcast.

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