EntreMD? What is that?
30 Jan 2026 · 22 min
Dr. Nneka Unachukwu introduces EntreMD, a framework for physician entrepreneurs. She outlines three core skills: running a medical practice as CEO, public speaking, and coaching. Her goal is to help 80,000 doctors build businesses alongside their clinical work.
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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 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. Hi docs, and welcome to the very first episode of the Entremd podcast. My name is Dr. Oona and I'm your host and I'm so excited that you're here. This is the place to be if you are a physician entrepreneur. We will keep you empowered, inspired, motivated, give you all the tips and hacks you need to be successful. So today we're going to be looking at the Entre MD concept. Like, what does that even mean? But in order to do that, I have to take you to where my journey started and then we'll take it from there. So in 2016, I had been in private practice, in my own practice for six years. These were exciting times. I mean, the practice was thriving. I didn't have to work five days a week. I had a four day work week. I had time to spend with the family, I had time to chase other passions. So I was good, completely good. And I remember this morning, I'm in my home office and, you know, just hanging out there and I had this almost like a rude awakening, if you will. And it dawned on me that medicine, as I had known it was gone. And nothing had changed dramatically on the outside, but it was almost like, you know, this is the tip of the iceberg. You see a little bit going on here, but underneath there's so much activity going on. And it dawned on me that we were in the middle of a major disruption in the healthcare industry. Now, as at that time, when I thought about it, when I graduated from residency in 2008, telemedicine was not a thing. Like, it was not the competition of the doctor in private practice. Cvs, Walmart, Walgreens. Never in my wildest dreams did I know that they would be my competition. There was not a whole lot of independent practice, if at all, for nurse practitioners or PAs. So the healthcare space had changed so much in eight years. So much. But the way we practice and the way we ran practices, all of that has kind of stayed the same. So it was almost like the healthcare industry is changing, but we, the doctors, are not changing. There were stories of doctors who lost their jobs and were replaced with mid levels and stories like that, which when I was in med school and I was in residency, job security for a physician was a given. It wasn't, you know what, it was a complete given. And that had changed. There was so much change going on. And it dawned on me that it was time for me to change as well. Like, everything is changing. If you don't change, you're going to end on the wrong side of the grass. And I thought about it. Think Blockbuster. At some point, they were in charge, they were in control. And Netflix came, and Netflix didn't really seem like much. It didn't occur to them that Netflix was going to put them out of business. Right? There was a major disruption and they didn't change. Think about the taxi industry. Uber came, little app. You know, some people drive a car, you know, they can use the app, ask for a car, the driver shows up, all is good. Nobody knew how badly it will affect the taxi industry in the same way. We're in the middle of a healthcare disruption and we need to do what we need to do to adapt. And that's where the whole entre MD thing came from. I didn't call it that at the time because I knew the concept, but I didn't have a name. But an Entre MD is an entrepreneurial md, and what that means is you're not stopping at medical skills, clinical skills, because they're no longer enough. You are also acquiring the business skills that it takes to thrive, compete and thrive in the times that we live in. And this is irrespective of if you work a job if you own a practice, if you own an uncle, it doesn't matter. No matter where you find yourself, if you are an md, it is time for you to become an Entrez md. Now, having said that, this is what that looked like for me. I'm a pediatrician by training. I had run a medical practice for six years at this point. I had a lot of other passions, but my track as an entre MD meant three things. So number one, it meant that I needed to not only be the lead pediatrician in my practice, but I needed to become the CEO. And what that means is, on the clinical side, I make sure all the clinical stuff are great, right? Make sure all my algorithms are good, make sure my people are properly trained and using the right policies and procedures and all that, and my patients are cared for medically. But as the CEO, I look at my practice as a business, and I help my business compete and stay profitable. So, which means I learn profit and loss statements. I learn how to extrovert in the market into the marketplace. I go out to get reviews, I go out to get referrals. I go out to make sure our social media is out there. I extrovert the practice into the marketplace. So it doesn't matter what my competition is. I compete and. And I thrive. I learned to hire, I learned to de hire. I learned to build company culture. I learned to bring community impact, which brings goodwill and a lot more patients to my practice. So this is completely nonclinical, 100%. This is me with my business hat as the CEO of a medical practice. Now, that was number one. And if you have read the E myth physician or if you've read e myth, period by Michael Gerber, and if you haven't, should. There are two kinds of work you can do in a business, whether it's a medical practice or not. One is you can work in the business, and the second is you can work on the business. Now, as a pediatrician, I work in the business. As the CEO, I work on the business. So it was time for me to embrace that as a skill, embrace it as a position, and learn all the skills that I needed to function there. So that was number one. Number two is speaking. And I don't know about you, but I was an introverted introvert. Like, I had problems talking to people one on one. So stages were just flat out not happening. But I recognized from all the experts in different spheres that one of the fastest ways to grow your business, one of the fastest ways to get your message out there is to be a great speaker. So, yes, I'm an introvert, but. But I have to give up my shyness and give up all of that and go. After learning how to rock stages, now when I talk to my clients, I'm helping them build their signature talk and, you know, holding them accountable for getting on stages. A lot of times what I get is, oh, my goodness, I'm so shy. I can't do this. And I'm like, I'm sitting in front of you, and I'm telling you that I'm living proof that you can do this. Okay? The first time I showed up on a stage, this was years ago. I had. I was in a. In a small group. It was. It was a sub meeting in church. And, you know, somebody was singing. I was in the audience, and, you know, I was singing along. And one of my mentors was in that meeting, and he heard me sing, and he's like, what? So something funny happened, okay? So he took me from the audience, and he took me to the stage. Okay? And that's not the funniest part. And then he got an usher and put the usher right beside me and said, don't let her move. Don't let her move. Now, I tell my clients, I'm like, if you've never been. Like, if you've never been on stage and they had to put somebody there to make sure you didn't run away, that you're doing so much better than I did at the beginning. So if I can rock a stage, so can you. Okay? So speaking. And a lot of times we're like, I don't know how to speak. I can't speak like them. One of the best things I learned from Brian Tracy is that every business skill is learnable. Like, if there's something you can't do, it doesn't mean you can never do it. You can never be great at it. It just means you need to learn how to do it. So for speaking, if you feel I'm not a great speaker, that's okay. All it means is you need to learn how to become a great speaker. And the beauty of this is, you're a physician. What that means is you have spent your life learning near impossible things. So if we put speaking against some of the things you've learned, you. You'll realize that I should probably just embrace speaking and keep it moving. For instance, you learned how to do a spinal tap on a newborn. Okay? That is so much harder than learning how to speak. Some of you have learned how to replace entire Knees and hips. That is so much harder than speaking. We have neurosurgeons. That is so much harder than speaking. We have obgyns who have to make split decisions, take people to the or, pull babies out because you know, mom showed up, she had no prenatal care and the baby was breached and is having D cells. And you manage to salvage those situations. You learn to do that. Trust me, you can learn how to speak. Okay, so speaking was that second thing for me that I had to embrace and learn and acquire. The third thing was coaching and consulting. And this is not just me, this is a lot of physicians. We have learned a lot of things that do not are not directly patient care, like seeing patients, giving them prescriptions and then leaving. Some of us have learned we've been responsible for workflow efficiency projects and we've done it for years. For me, I had learned how to build a thriving practice and build the systems within the practice so the practice works the same whether I'm there or not, so I don't have to always be there. That is huge because there are many people who want to learn that. You've learned so many things over the years. Those are skills that can be deployed. Some of those are full on businesses and it's up to us to embrace them. So for me, coaching was that third thing. Now everybody's journey would be different. I don't recommend one size fits all. Entre MD is not a cookie cutter type of thing. These three things are my things. For some of you it could be real estate investing and that's your thing, right? That could be your pivot. For some of you it could be stocks. For some of you, I have clients who are like travel agents and they're killing it, but that's their thing because they believe that having great experiences is one of the ways to fix physician burnout and burnout in general. So there's so many, there's so many things that you can do. There's so many, so many things you can do. But the era of just sit in a place, take care of the patient and don't worry about anything else, that era is over. That era is over. If you're going to compete and thrive in the times to come, you are going to have to acquire entrepreneurial skills. And this is whether you work for someone or you own your own practice or you have a non clinical business, it does not matter what. We have to embrace this. So Entre MD is an entrepreneurial MD and every MD should be an entrepreneurial md. So the Question becomes, now that you know this, what do you need to do? Now that you know that you need to be an entre md, what do you need to do? Well, first of all, before we get to that, let me just say this. An ENTREMD is somebody who realizes that they work for one person and is Dr. U Incorporated. You work for you. No matter who pays your paycheck, you work for you. That's the mindset that you have to go into it with. So what that means is you are a business. How is your business doing? Right? How do you put your business out there? How do you negotiate for good deals? How do you position yourself as an expert? How do you get the raises you want if you're employed? How do you get the partnership you want if you're employed? How do you get side gigs that are profitable and that you enjoy? How do you do that? How do you build financial freedom? How do you live out your purpose and your passion? You are the business. You're the business. Okay, so there are three things I want you to do. Three seems to be the number of the day. And number one is I want you to commit to your education. Okay? So I embrace being a CEO, I embrace being a speaker, I embrace being a coach. But I didn't just become that. Okay, you're gonna have to get an education. And I don't necessarily mean an mba. What I mean is you. You're gonna have to read the books, business books. You're gonna have to go for the conferences, business conferences, every conference. Doesn't have to be a CME conference, right? You're gonna have to listen to the podcast. You're gonna have to read the audiobooks and listen. On average, in the US people are commuting 20, 30 minutes to go to work. And I believe that everybody should enroll in a great university called Automobile University, which means when car you take something, personal development, business development, that will get you better, get you learning the skills that you need to learn. And you need to take that and play it and listen to it. If you spend 30 minutes doing this five days a week, that's 150 minutes a week. You do that for 52 weeks, you will be a different person. Okay? So commit to your education. Commit to it. Say yes to it is going to cost you time, it's going to cost you money, but that's the price to pay to be an entre MD so you can have the financial freedom, so you can live life on your own terms. You can practice medicine on your own terms. Okay? It's a small price to pay. The second thing you're going to need to do is subscribe to this podcast. Okay? Every week I'm going to be bringing you stuff on your business education, the different things you need to learn about speaking about referrals, about how to network like a pro, conferences to attend, books to read, stories of what has worked in my life, great guests and stories of what has worked in their businesses. So subscribe to the podcast. Okay? That's the second thing. The third thing is I want you to share this podcast with another physician colleague. Because there are a lot of people that just like us, who have the right work ethic, who have the right passions, who have the right business ideas. They just need a community to hold them accountable and they need the right information so they know what to do. Okay? So I'm going to share my bhag with you. BHAG is big, hairy, audacious goal. And my bhag is I want to touch 80,000 doctors. I want to make 80,000 doctors understand the concept of an entre MD and build thriving businesses so they can live life on their own terms. And for me, I believe that doctors, we have worked so hard for so long that we deserve a return on investment. And I'm not talking entitlement here. We've worked hard, we have. We help people, we do, we change lives. This is what we do. We deserve to have some kind of return on investment on that. So that's my bhag, and I want you to help me do that. So share this podcast with the physician colleague. And I'll tell you, sometimes when you share things, you don't know the impact that it could have. So I have a client who her passion, what she wanted to really fix was the obesity crisis that we have in the US and she's great at this stuff. I mean, she personally lost about 50 pounds and has kept it up, kept it off for years, almost a decade, if not more. And she was doing the same thing with her patients, some forty pounds, some hundred pounds. It was insane. And all she needed was the business systems to allow her help. A lot of people do the same thing, right? Because it's not necessarily about the money. The money is a consequence for solving problems. And this was the problem that she solved. And we started working together about five months ago at the time of this recording. And she sent me one of those texts that just blows my mind away. And she's like, in the month of October, this is how much I made. And it was almost 10 times what she had been making in the first two years that she had the practice before we started working together. Almost 10 times in five months. Now, 10 times the revenue tells you something that she probably helped 10 times the number of people. So not only does she have this passion and she's done it in her life and she's done it for some other people, but now she's able to help a lot of people. A lot of people. So much so that her dream is, I want to tackle this from my state of South Carolina because we have a big obesity crisis here. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, business is the vehicle that will allow you take your passions and and chase it the way you want to. Okay? So that could be you. That could be your friend. So share the podcast. Okay, Commit to your education, subscribe to the podcast, share the podcast and I will see you same time next week. Thank you so much for joining me. And remember who you are. You're not just an md, you're an entre md. 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 entre md. Don't forget to tune in next week for another great episode. Until next time.
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