High performance habits with Olympic hopeful and M.D/M.B.A student, Kamali Thompson

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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, Doct Una. All right, everybody, welcome back to another amazing episode of the Entre MD podcast. And I'm so excited today because I have about to be Dr. Kamali, who's already called the doc and she is amazing. We're going to have a really amazing conversation. She's a fourth year medical student and she's doing an MD MBA track. So that is amazing by itself. But she is also getting ready to go to the Olympics to represent our amazing country in fencing. So we're just gonna get into it and get ready to be blown away. All right, so I know a lot about you, even though I just met you online a few weeks ago and I was like, she's amazing. I need to get her on the podcast. So I'm gonna allow you introduce yourself to the audience. So go for it.

Yeah, so like you said, I'm a fourth year MD MBA student. I'm from Teanec, New Jersey and I started fencing when I was in high school, which is much different than people normal. Normally people start when they're like 7 or 8 years old. I started when I was 12. I was young for my age or young for my grade, but I started when I was 12 in high school. And I hated fencing at first, but I fell in love with it and decided to go to college for fencing. Once I got to college, I got really good all of a sudden. And that time came where I had to decide whether I was going to stop fencing and go to medical school or keep fencing and go to medical school. So I decided to keep fencing, and eight years later, here we are, and I'm really close to making the Olympic team.

That is so, so, so, so amazing. Now, going to the Olympics is something that seems impossible, right? Being a medical student is something that's really hard. Being an MD MBA student is really hard now. So how is it possible that you're doing all three of these things?

That's a great question. And I think that question every day. But a lot of things have really helped me get my life together. Essentially, the first thing is that I used to be a huge planner. Like I said, I was young. So I was 20 years old when I started medical school, and I was supposed to be 24 when I graduated. I'm 28 now. So obviously things got off track. But for me, I found the most success when I stopped trying to take control of everything and stopped trying to follow this timeline that I thought I set for myself or that the world set for me and kind of just go with the flow. So I decided to do my MBA in 2015, when I was preparing for the 2016 Olympics and business was something I thought about, but I never really like, you know, it was kind of just up in the air. But I thought it would be a great way for me to help me later in my group practice or by my own practice days. But it'd be great for me to be training and try to make the Olympic team. So I had to let go of my, like, stiff timeline and, you know, delve into something new. And then the same thing for right now, like, I took a year off of school and I did research in orthopedic surgery for two years. And once again, like, my timeline went out the window. But I was able to see all these new experiences and expose myself to things that I definitely would not have done if I would have been so rigid.

That's amazing. So don't be rigid.

Do not be rigid.

So I'll ask you, now you're still in the thick of it, but do you regret not graduating at 24? I mean, because the trade off is now you're going to graduate with an MD and MBA and saying, I was at the Olympics and I did great I mean, like, do you regret not sticking to that rigid timetable?

No, not at all. And I. Every year, this isn't the third medical class I've been in. So my original class, they. A lot of them have actually graduated residency. Like, one of my best friends is in fellowship now. And then the second class I was in, they're like in the middle of residency. So every time someone graduates, it makes me a little sad. But overall, for me, being 24 and being a doctor, I don't think I would have been nearly as mature or as experienced as I am today. So I think that life was kind of just helping me along. Like, hey, if you wait longer and, you know, like, if you see more things, it'll help you become better. And I didn't realize that until I came back to medical school the second time. When I started third year, I just approached things much differently. I was definitely more interested or more focused on patient care and less on grades, which is a lot of like, you know, what we learn when we're younger. And I was able to see the changes. And every year I look at medicine differently just because I've seen more. So it sucks because I don't have a paycheck every two weeks. But on the flip side, I think it's better in the long run.

I have a funny feeling you're setting yourself an even bigger paycheck and you'll catch up.

Yeah, that's what I'm looking for.

You'll be okay. So over the years, there are some habits that you must have acquired that you can say, this is part of the reason why I'm successful. What are those habits?

So the biggest thing for me is time management. When we're younger, our parents are always telling us, don't procrastinate. You know, get it together. So my mom was always very big on me on scheduling when I was at the end of high school and definitely in college. And it's annoying because you just want to. You want to do what everyone else is doing. You know, everyone's procrastinating. You want to procrastinate. You don't want to be the one who's doing the work. But my, the beginning of college, my mom made it really clear to me that if I wanted to be a student athlete and pre med and go to med school and like, you know, have all these goals, I was going to have to be really, really serious and buckle down. And I remember distinct calling her the third week of school. And I was like, mom, I'm not having as Much fun as everyone. This is really upsetting. Like, I don't really want to do this, you know? And she was just saying, give it some time. You'll see it. Everything will pay off. And that semester, actually, or the following semester, a lot of my friends didn't come back because their grades were terrible. Meanwhile, I got a 375 my first semester in college. That's craziness. So after that whole, you know, that semester, I saw that she was right and what she was doing was paying. What I was doing was paying off. Scheduling habits were great, and little did I know that that was actually shaping me for medical school. So now I get to medical school, it's already like, you know, you're drinking out of a fire hose. On top of that, I am practicing in New York City, which is an hour away from me. So I have to get on the train. I have to get to the train. I have to get on the train. I have to go to practice. I have to get back on the train. I have to get back home. So if I didn't schedule the way I schedule now, everything would have just been all over the place. My schedule is so good. It's down to the 30 minutes. And I even schedule me. Like, I'm a little crazy, but it's what I have to do to make sure that I stay on track with everything that I have to do.

So time management is your big secret?

Time management is my big. And then discipline. Well, and then a really good balance of discipline and fun. Cause if you're all disciplined all the time, then things are just not gonna be fun anymore. So I definitely make time to see my family. My brother fences too, so I see him every day. I make time to see my friends like that. It's really important for me to put that in there, because when I know, okay, all Sunday you're gonna be going to brunch or whatever, then Saturday you have to get the research done. You do this.

Okay, so manage your time and then factor in fun time and work time. I had a mentor who said, enjoy your time off. Just don't stay there the entire time. Like, you know, the way they say, stop and smell the roses, like, but, you know, keep going.

Right? Exactly.

But you're right. You should. You should schedule both. So I can imagine that as an athlete, like a high performance athlete, you must have a very interesting workout routine. So what is the typical. Like, when I say, I'm going to the gym, I pat myself on the back. If I'm there for 45 minutes. I'm guessing that that's why I'm not a high performance athlete. So what does that look like for you? Like a typical training day.

So we have, so I have a bunch of things that are involved with training, but the basis is fencing practice. So what I do is I fence five days a week and some of those days I'll fence twice a day. It kind of depends on like, who that practice. Like, is it worth my, like, you know, is it going to be a good practice or not? But basically what we do is we have a personal coach and every day with our personal coach we have a private lesson. And that lesson you're just going over technique and maybe there's something new that your coach wants to show you or something that you need to fix that you're not doing well. So you do that for 20 to 30 minutes. Then we have group class where we do footwork. It's like moving up and down the strip. We do drills and then we free fence. Free fencing means we fence with 15 touches and then fence somebody else. So you just keep doing that for about three and a half ish hours. And then I work out with a trainer, so I'm quite lazy as well. So I, my trainer and I, my trainer is great. I've been working with him for about two and a half years. And in fencing our bodies are very unbalanced because if you ever see the fencing stance, there's like one leg in the front, one leg to the side. So what we've been doing for the last two years is trying to fix the imbalances that happen during practice. So I do everything. I used to do like squats and deadlifts and all that stuff, but now everything's unilateral. So like the left side gets more attention because it's the weaker side and we just work that out. So we do that twice a week. And then I will do cardio on the off days just to make sure that I'm still like in shape, in shape.

So it sounds like this is happening all day.

Yeah, I would say about six hours some days. So if I have. There's a lot of fencing clubs in New York City and all the best fencers come from New York City. So some days I'll go to another fencing club and practice with them. So like for Tuesdays and for example, I'm at my club from 12 to 4 and then I go to the gym for Cardio from like 4:30 to 5, and then I'll go to their practice from 7 to 9. So like Tuesday's a long day, you know, but they're not all like that.

Okay, we'll leave it at that. That's a lot of hard work.

It's a lot.

Well, hey, I trust you are enjoying this episode with Kamila Thompson. She is absolutely amazing. But I wanted to do a quick break to let you know about something exciting that's going to be happening in Atlanta. On the 13th of June 2020, we are going to be hosting our second episode of Entre MD Live. Now, the reason why we do this is because you know that I believe every physician is only one skill away from having the career of their dreams. And the skill in question is business skills. So in this event, it is all about the business of medicine. In fact, it is the ultimate business of medicine event. And are going to be talking about the things that you need to know. When I talk to doctors, one of the things that is hardest for them is starting a business is marketing. The business is figuring out how to start a business, even as an employee and whether you're someone who just has an idea or someone who's built a business but you haven't figured out how to make it profitable or you're a veteran and you're just looking to scale your business, this is the event for you. So go to our website, entre md.com to get more details and to save your seat. We did sell out last year, we are going to sell out this year. But it is a one day event that will change everything. I have doctors, tens of doctors who were at the meeting last year and it started a series of events that led them to start businesses, to qualify to become partner because they are employees and that's what they wanted. Help them 10x their business. I even had a client 15x their business. All right, so go to the website on trend.com, get your ticket today. I want to see you in Atlanta June 13, 2020. And it's a Saturday. You don't even have to take a day off. Now back to Kamali. So I'm a business coach and I find the world of coaching very fascinating. So you're doing almost like personal coaching and then some group coaching and then some freelancing. Do you think you would be you are if you didn't have a coach? What's the power of coaching in your world?

So coaching is extremely important for different reasons too. So I've only, I've had two coaches ever in my life. But when you get to the level where I am we have a national coach, so when we go to World Cups, there's one person, the national coach, who is essentially in charge of helping us and giving us instructions. And then if our personal coach is able to come, then, you know, we have them, too. But so I've interacted with a lot of different coaches, and the most important is that you have to have somebody who respects you, and you have to have somebody who believes in you. And the coaching process is for fencing, it takes a really long time to get good, and it's very frustrating because you go to competitions and you lose and you lose. It's very similar to tennis, you know, and all of a sudden, one day, you just win. And my coach has been amazing because he's super calm. You know, when you're fencing sometimes, and you can't lose the ball or else you're eliminated. So I'm freaking out. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm losing. What's going on? What do I do now? My coach is super calm. Like, calm down. Relax. We'll get through this. But he's. Every single day or, you know, for the last eight years, he's like, you can do it. You can be an Olympian. You can. You can do this. You can do this. And that's really important because I see a lot of girls get chewed out by their coaches. I see a lot of girls, their coaches belittle them, and they make them feel like they're, like, worthless almost. And my coach has never done anything of the sort. And I think that's definitely helped me with my confidence and helped me believe in the fact that I can make the Olympic team.

So coaching is everything, but you have to get a coach who believes in you.

Yes, for sure.

Do it. So it will kind of be like, I believe in you, but go to work. The accountability and all that.

Right? Yeah. You need your coach to say, you haven't been in practice in two days. What's going on here? You know? But at the same time, you know, some people are just like, you're so stupid. Why would you do something like that while you're fencing? That's not what I need to hear. I need to hear something encouraging. Yeah. Yeah.

So accountability and the belief, that's awesome. Yeah. And I. And I think the same thing for business as well. I think if you're going to be high performance, then you really need someone in your corner who one believes in what you think is not possible. They're like, you can do. Like, you can totally do this, and who will Give you the direction and the accountability. But I think we all need somebody in our corner, not just for sports, but sports is just such a perfect analogy to use for business because, you know, if you want to be high performance entrepreneurs is what we have to do. Now you talked about how discouraging it can be. You know, you lose. You lose all of that stuff, and you have to stay there because someday you will win. And we're rooting for you for the Olympics, by the way, just so you know. But what do you do to develop that mental toughness? Because it's hard to lose. You know what I mean? To develop that toughness to kind of stay in the game, even if maybe your last three games you lost.

What.

How did you develop that?

So mental toughness was the hardest piece for me. I had everything else, and mental toughness took a really long time to develop. So for me, it's difficult because there are just some naturally athletic people who are very confident and they are not good at all. And they'll say, I'm gonna beat Serena Williams. And you're just like, no, you're not. You know, so that it was hard for me to get that because I'm a very logical person. And I go up to fence these women who have been fencing longer, almost longer than I've been alive, and I'm just like, how am I supposed to logically beat you? You know? But for me, I had to break it down. And instead of looking at the big picture, I had to look at what I was good at and say, okay, well, yes, maybe you might not be able to beat the Olympic champion, but these are your strengths. And I would try my strengths and they would work. And I said, okay, so if you can do this against them, then we can just get a couple extra touches. And now you're breaking things up little by little. So that's what I had to get my confidence from all, well, my strength can defeat the best person in the world. So now if we keep doing my strengths enough times in a row, now I can win a whole belt. And now, finally, I'm at the point where I'm trusting in my weaknesses as well, because I've been training and all that. And one of my teammates said something really good that inspired me, but he said, I don't need luck because I know I'm prepared. And this whole year I've been, as I told you already, doing all this work and preparing myself to be able to fence anybody. So now my confidence is coming from, yes, I'm a Good actor, but I'm also preparing myself, and nobody's working harder than me.

That is great. So you almost, like, broke down the fear to show that it's actually not logical.

Yeah, it's not logical.

And then find where your strengths are and then own them. Right, because even the person who's the Olympic champion may not have the strengths that you have. Develop yours. That's really powerful. And for everybody listening, because you made a point, you said that was the hardest thing for me to develop. And I find parallels in the business world as well, because sometimes you know what to do, you know how to do it. But that toughness, to deal with the rejections, to deal with the naysayers, to deal with your own inner critic, that's like the biggest thing, because that's what will stop you from doing what you know you should do. So you don't get the results you know, you can get. Absolutely, you know, so mental toughness is something that we have to take the time to develop. Now, I know for a lot of golfers and basketball players and all of that, they do a lot of visualization where they're just standing and imagining their, you know, their baskets going in or, you know, is that something that you do as well?

Yes, that is something that we do. And I have a sports psychologist as well. We've been working on visualization, but we've also been working on, like, different aspects. So when I first visualize something, I would imagine somebody else doing it because I couldn't put myself doing it. So that's a long time. Like, if I imagine a certain action. So, like me maybe making somebody miss and then attacking, I would imagine the best person I knew doing it. And then my sports psychologist, we will work on me doing it. But then when I did it, I did it the wrong way and not the way I wanted to see it. So then I had to work on seeing it, seeing me doing it well. So I finally got over that hump. But now a big thing is I'm working on putting myself in a visual situation where I'm losing and like, all the feelings of losing and the anger and the frustration and then working on doing the right actions. So that's been eye opening for me because you have to put yourself in this weird, uncomfortable state. And I'm like, I don't want to be losing. High support psychologist is like, yeah, you don't want to be, but you're going to lose eventually. And you have to be able to work through those emotions to come back.

Up on top so that's designed to help you where if you lost, you're not falling apart and if you were losing, you're still in a position where you're like, I can turn this around.

Exactly.

I love it. I love it. I'd never thought of that and I'd never thought of visualization in terms of imagine someone who's really great at it, doing it and then almost like, then take them out the picture and put yourself in there.

Yep, exactly. That's what I did for a while. Yeah.

I love it. Awesome. So again, for us, it's something we should be doing as well as entrepreneurs. Whether it's closing deals or whether it's rocking your talk on stage or whether it's what your bank account should look. We should be visualizing. Sometimes it seems, woo, woo. But I found that high performance athletes, everybody's doing it.

Yeah, everybody.

Yeah. It's one of the tricks of the trade. And you know, we should be adopting that as well. That is so cool. All right, so I heard you say I'm lazy. I'm also lazy. And I'm so glad you said that because I used to feel like I had to be very disciplined having everything together, always want to do my work and always that stuff. And it took me probably a decade, but I came to the conclusion that I think every human being is lazy and if we put ourselves in the right environment and if we have the right people around us, we will seem like we're not. Well, we really are. Do you find that to be your experience?

I do. I feel if I was hanging out with non athletic people, then what I'd be doing in terms of going to the gym would be sufficient. But because I'm hanging out with athletes like Olympians at that, they're like cycling twice a day, they're doing all these like, all these classes, you know. So I think surrounding yourself around high performing people, it has to increase your goals because you don't want to be the only one who's not like either putting in the work or who's not getting results or who's not going anywhere. So even actually one of my really good friends, unfortunately she was a two time Olympian and now she has a hip problem so she can't compete anymore. She's still spinning. And I said, but I thought your hip was. I thought she was like, you know, I'm pushing through the pain because I don't want to get, you know, I want to keep this shape. So I'm like, I'm not spinning. Maybe I should Go spinning. So, I mean, it's great. A little, like, French friendly competitiveness. Definitely makes sure that you are in a good space and that you're always pushing yourself.

Positive peer pressure. And it will make you look like you're not lazy, like you're really disciplined even though you're really lazy. I love it. So tell me about big plans after medical school, after the Olympics. What are your big visions? What do you see for yourself?

I'm going to go into orthopedic surgery. So as soon as I get back from the Olympics, maybe I have a couple weeks off. It's still up in the air because I'm applying for owes, but I'm doing away rotation for ortho, and then I'm going to apply for ortho residency. So that's going to be exciting. I definitely want to work with athletes. I would love to work for a team, preferably an indoor sport like basketball, because, I mean, football is cool, but when it's cold outside, I don't know if I want to be standing up.

There, says a person from New Jersey.

But, yeah, so I would love to work with a team. And especially there are not that many female orthopedic surgeons that work for NBA or NFL teams. So I'd love to, like, break down that barrier and be involved with that. And, yeah, I don't know where I'm going to end up or what coast I'm going to be on. But like I said, I'm excited to just let life happen and see where it goes.

That's really good. So you're looking for more barriers to break because, I mean, orthopedic surgeons in General, there are 150 practicing African Americans.

150. Isn't that crazy?

That's it. That's it. So, yeah, keep breaking. We're rooting for you here. All right, so I went to your website after listening to you on that was Today. The Today show.

The Today show, Yep.

Yeah, after listening to that, and. And I saw that you have a goal as far as the funding you need for your Olympic stuff, and it was a $40,000 goal, and you are $7,500 short. So I'm going to give a shout out to the entire audience. What we're going to do is over the next week, we are going to get that paid off. Most of you on here listening are doctors, and if you're not, you want to pay it forward, help somebody else accomplish their dream. And life just has a way of going around, and somebody else will help you accomplish Yours. So give us your website where we can go to give and all of that stuff to support you.

So My website is www.kamalitompson.com. that's K A M A L I Thompson, T H O M, P S O N. And on the homepage it says donate with exclamation points. If you click that button, it'll take you right to the donation site and it'll give you a little bit more about me, how I started fencing, my athletic accomplishments. And there are incentives based on how much you donate. So if you donate $250, you get postcards from everywhere I go after my competition. $500, you get Team USA stuff. So it's very exciting. Cool.

Okay, so I'll tell you this entre md, we're here to support you. So from our company, we're going to be giving $1,000.

That's so exciting. That's so exciting.

And I'm doing that because. Because there's a why behind what we do. We build successful businesses, profitable businesses, so that we can help. So we want to support your dream. And I'm throwing out a challenge to everybody who's listening. And I want you to take up the hundred dollar challenge doesn't mean give $100. It means give a minimum of $100 and let's get this $7,500 paid off and so we can send you to the Olympics and you can go do your thing and we'll all be screaming from our living room. So I've never watched Fence and well.

This is the perfect time.

This will be really cool. So the website link will be it's kamalitompson.com but it will be on the show notes as well. So go there, click and support Kamali. Okay. And I also want you to share this episode of the podcast to the people in your life. We want everybody to pay it forward and give her all the support and love that we have. She's done a really good job of, of getting this far and if there's anything we can do to lighten the load, we should be doing that as well. So, Kamali, we are rooting for you and I want to say thank you. Thank you for coming on the show and I know you're going to make it there and I know you're going to make it with orthopedic surgery. And I know you have no idea where you'll end up because you have really big dreams. So you're really just going to have to do your best to see where life takes you. That's kind of the way this works.

Sounds good to me. I'm excited.

Yeah. So thank you so much for being on here and can't wait to hear that your 7500 is all paid off and you're all to the Olympics.

Yes. Thank you for having me. And thank you for your donation. I cannot explain how exciting this is to hear this.

Oh, my pleasure. All right, people, so go give, and I'll see you on the next episode of the Entre MD Podcast. 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 Entree md. Don't forget to tune in next week for another great episode. Until next time.

Sam.