How I built a company that helps academic physicians get promoted with Dr. Jia Ng

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'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. Unna.

Well, hello. Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Entre MD podcast. I have a great guest for you today. I'm super excited. Looking forward to this interview. I have Dr. Jia Ng. She is a board certified nephrologist and she's a founder of published md. So she helps people get papers published and which, you know, the first time I heard about it was like, oh my goodness, I would have needed you. Because that is not something that is an area of grace for me at all. And so I'm so excited she does what she does and she's going to be taking us behind the scenes of the journey of an entrepreneur. And there's just so much to learn. This is going to be great for you, whether you're just starting off or you want to scale because there are principles that are universal. Right. It doesn't matter if you're private practice or you're a coach or you, you do online courses. Doesn't matter. There's just so much to learn. So I want you to lean in. Dr. G, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Dr. Unar. It's my pleasure to be here.

Absolutely. So I want you, I know I did some kind of introduction, but I want you to take a moment and introduce yourself to the listeners.

So, hi, I'm Dr. Jia, and my mission is to help clinicians publish papers and help them achieve their academic goals. And the reason I'm doing this is really because I personally struggle with publishing paper myself. Despite having master's in clinical epidemiology, I could not get a paper out. And after like two, three years, I finally got my first paper out. And I know that pain. I know that struggle. I know academic clinicians are having the same pain. So I want to help. I know, like, the tricks now. So I want to help clinicians in how to move forward.

I love it, love it, love it. Okay, so now I want you to take us behind the scenes a little bit, right? And kind of play out how your journey has happened. Because here you are, academic physician, you're a board certified nephrologist. How do you go from that to now running a business where you help people write papers? Right.

So it more from wanting to help. And actually I started doing workshops for fellows and residents and realized things that seem simple for me and intuitive for me actually was not that easy. And so when I was doing that, I was like, oh, actually if I just guide them in this part and this part and another part, they can jump through that hoops easily because they just need a guide. And that's where I started. And I thought, if fellows, there are maybe seven people, eight people in a year. And I thought, if I can do this much more, a bigger scale, I could help so many people. And because I'm still a scientist at heart, and to us is publishing paper, that's our money, our currency. But I was thinking, if I can help 100 clinicians, that means by proxy, I am publishing a hundred papers. And that means I'm also helping more patients. So that's how I kind of started. Wow, this is so aligned with my research. I love business, I love entrepreneurship. So that's why this came about.

Okay, so you've already started dropping gems, and we're only like two seconds into this interview. And so you said something that I want to point out because it's so true and. But yet it's a trap that we fall into. You said the things that seem simple and easy and common sense to me, I found out they're not the things that are simple and easy and seem like common sense to us. A lot of times they're reflectors of our zone of genius. For you to be able to identify that, take Inventory and realize, wait a minute, this is not common sense. I'm just really good at this. You know, it makes it easier for us to value our business ideas, to even know that it's an idea, to follow it. Because you could have said no. Everybody knows this and walked away not realizing no, you know, it. It's your zone of genius. Right. And so I want to challenge everyone who's listening to kind of think about those things that for you, it's so easy. In fact, it's so easy that you get confused as to why people struggle with it. Right. Those things are pointers to things that you're really good at and you want to le meaning to them. Some of them may be, they may not all end up being businesses, but you need to be aware of what they are. But a lot of times one of them will end up being your business. So that's amazing. And the other thing you did is tracing down the ripple effect of what will happen if you start your business. Right. So you're saying, I'm a scientist at heart. Our currency is papers. And, and so If I help 100 people and they do 100 papers, then I did 100 papers and look at how many people are affected. So when you are now doing the process of working your business, you don't see it as, oh, it's just this little side gig. You're seeing it as something that has a potential of helping thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of millions of patients. And so tracing it all the way makes it easier to go through the process and throw everything at your business, even when it's not like a full blown business the way people would look at it. So that's, I mean, like, I was just like, oh my goodness, yes, I love it. Okay, so now talk to me about some of the things. So when did you actually say, okay, I've done these workshops as something that I just did to help. Right. But now I'm going to do it like a real business. And some of the things that you've had to do, some of the victories that you've had, challenges, you know, walk us through that.

I think that idea really started sometime in October 2021. And so I, I thought, okay, first thing maybe I'll do is give up free content. And I, I started with thinking about YouTube because I thought YouTube is evergreen search engine, so if somebody needs information, I could start doing that. But I wasn't really doing the things. I was just reading, researching, understanding, looking at what academic YouTube channels are like. So that was my first step. And then the second part was, maybe I do need guidance because I can't do business by myself because I don't know anything about it. Next thing was started joining a bunch of Facebook groups that are entrepreneurs. And then one of the posts said, oh, do you know any good business coaches? And Dr. Una's name came out like 10 times. Oh, I guess I should check her out. And I watched, I listened to the podcast and binge listen and kind of put my name on a wait list. And I think January, the cohort opened and I joined it immediately. So that's where I started.

Wow. Okay, so at this point, you're like, I have the idea. I know that, you know, I should put out content. And you started doing what we all do. We research the content, we research what we need to do to death. Right, Right. Like two years later, what are you doing? Oh, I'm researching. You know, I'm going to start, Start, start a podcast. We all do this. Okay. So you know, and then. But you're like, no, I need to. I need to learn about this. So you join some groups. And then you found the podcast, you started binging. And then you're like, okay, I'm going to get on the waitlist at school. And then you join the school. So let me hold you there for a little bit. Before you joined the school, did you have any thoughts as to. No, I don't think this will work for me. Were there any objections you had to actually joining the school? Or you were just like, no, no, no, I understand how this works. I just need to do it and move on?

So there are two parts of it. The first thing is I truly believe in coaching. So I knew I would do coach if I knew if I want to do something. I'd definitely do coaching because of all the courses, grant writing, every penny I spent, Even though it's 5,000, 6,000 coaching course, I've gotten ROIs like 10 to 100 times. And so I truly believe in a coaching model course. But I also had some reservation because I had I want to do real estate investment. And I joined two courses, like twice, but I could never get it done. And I was like, oh, am I having shiny object syndrome? Am I just jumping from one to another? And I kind of thought, maybe this is not going to work because what's the secret sauce for this business? Not the coaching, but this idea. And that was my obstacle. Finally, I kind of thought through a bit more and realized this would really work because it's in alignment with what I love. It means I love to align my clinical work, my research work, and business all at the same time. So it's like a nice triangle that because it's so in alignment, I think this could work. And then I took the plunge.

What a critical way of thinking. Like good critical, not bad critical, but it's a beautiful way of thinking. Right? So I know this works, but why do I want to do this? Is this a shiny object syndrome type of thing going on, or will this business model work? I know it will work. It's an alignment with what I want to do. So let's do it. And I'm guessing that that decides how you also show up, because I will say this. I don't know if I've said. I think I've said this to you on one of our live calls. You showed up in the business school like, I am here to get work done. I am here to get a return on my investment. I am here and this business is going to work. Like, you showed up like that from day one.

Right? Right.

And now I'm looking at. I'm listening to your thought process before you came in, and I can clearly see why. So this is amazing. And thank you for sharing that because it would be very helpful to someone else listening.

I want to say two things. Why I showed up that way is because if I want to pay somebody to guide me, why would I not listen to everything they say? Why would I not do everything they say? So that was the first point. And second is I learned this up for somewhere. I think maybe Donald Miller is like, don't treat people as your hero. I am the hero and my coaches are my guide. So I treated. If I'm a hero, I need to put everything I need so that my guy can bring me over.

Golly. Okay, guys, are you guys listening to this? This is gem after gem. Yes, yes. And thank you for saying that. We are the heroes of our own journeys. Your coach can be the most amazing coach. Your coach is the guide. You never relinquish that you that put that position of hero belongs to you in your story. You're the hero. Right? And you showed up that way. And that's the truth. So thank you for sharing that. So everybody listening, Whether you're in the on trendy business school, you're going to join, you're in your different program, or you're showing up to read a book or whatever it is, just realize who you are. You're the hero. Everybody else is there to help, to support, but you're the hero. I love it. Okay, so you did this, then you joined the school and so you joined January. So you're a little. Well, actually about three months at this point. Right. Because it started not the first of January. So talk to us about the difference a quarter can make because you've been in the school for about 90 days. So what has happened in this first quarter for you?

I'm going to give some tangible and intangible things.

Okay, let's do it.

So. So the tangible things. So before I was researching how to do YouTube, I launched my YouTube channel and have consistently put out one a week and gained 103 subscribers within two months. So that's amazing.

That is amazing.

I don't know if people know about YouTube, but getting 100 subscribers, the first hundred is really hard and, and it's organic. It's not. I, they like subscribe to me, you know, it was organic. So that's number one. Number two, I've been to six guest podcasts and then I plan to Launch. I gained 190 email subscribers. I have also did a launch for my first program and through that whole process learn the whole marketing, thinking, email sequence, everything you need to do, like the basic foundation, I did all of that. And yeah, I have, officially I have my LLC now and my business is official. So I'm really happy about that. That's the tender rules though.

Okay, now again, this is the reason why we're doing these interviews, right? I can bring in somebody and say, and this person built a nine figure business, which I will do. But the seeds of greatness can be seen. Okay, because this is what you did in 90 days. You had it registered. Because there are people who in 90 days will not register. They're still thinking, they're still wondering who to use, they're still trying to decide what lawyer to use or do I use legal zoom and stuff like that. And I'm not criticizing anybody, I'm just trying to show you what you're doing. You have the LLC done. You didn't have a YouTube channel, you set one up, you did a video every week. And guys, you guys need to check out her YouTube channel. I'm going to put the link in the show notes because you see that they're really well done. They were not just slapped on. This is somebody who is doing the work, right? So it's done. You got the subscribers, you got an email list, you have 190 on it. To put this in perspective, when I did the first entre MD life, where we had in 2019, when we did our first six figures in revenue, I had 257 people on my email list. 257. That's how it was. And you're at 190. Okay. And you're doing this. You've done your first workshop, You've executed your first launch. Like everything that is scary about business in the beginning, you've done them all. And that's why when I look, I'm like, the world is not ready for what's about to happen because Dr. Xie is going to. I mean, like, so watching this, this is 1/4.1. It's amazing. So amazing. And so, you know, I want to challenge anybody who's listening. There may be things that, you know you should do that will make your business so much better. Maybe you've been procrastinating on them. Whatever. Today's a good day to say, you know what, next 90 days, what am I going to get done? Set a target for it. Knock them out. Find the scary things. Put them on the list. Knock them out. So those are your tangibles. So tell us about the intangibles.

Okay, so these are even bigger. I would say I feel invincible now because I've done so many hard things. Of all the things I did, I forgot to mention one thing is for 12 days in a row before my launch of my masterclass, I did a Facebook Live every single day.

I did not know that every single day.

And that created so much pain and nausea, but I did it anyway. And because of that, I showed up on my master class with a lot more confidence. And I now do YouTube videos a lot faster because I'm used to it and I don't have to do retake like five times. So that was really big hurdle for me. So I feel invincible about it. If I can do Facebook lives, I guess I can do anything. So that's one. The second thing is the community. And I've never felt so validated in my life that what I'm doing is supported by 80 other people because we are in this together. So it was the EBS family, EBS community. There is so many things we can do to change the world and everybody are playing their own part and doctors are amazing people. So that's how I feel like medicine is not a dud medicine. You see amazing people who can do interesting things, who can help people beyond just pure medicine, but also in life in general. That is the intangible thing that I got on top of it.

That is so heartwarming. I feel invincible. And you can tie that directly to doing scary things, do scary things, people. It will make you feel invincible. I love it. I just did an interview with Dr. Tolu Alabentan. She's a family medicine physician and she started her own private practice. She's nine months in, over 2,000 patients. All this stuff going on and you know, she said what you said, she said it a different way. She said to be in a community with fellow crazies, right? Like, you know the way when you talk about entrepreneurship, sometimes people look at you, they look at you like you're crazy. But, but you're in this community where all your craziness is welcome. Exactly the way you said that. I'm like, great. Now with the business that you run now, I want you to take a moment to talk to people. So maybe there's somebody here listening who is an academic physician. And maybe they're not making ahead, right? I know what you do. You do what you do to help people reach their academic goals, right? So maybe they're not getting promoted, maybe they're not, you know, like they're not advancing as much as they would because they're not publishing papers. And maybe they've written it off. Like, this is just something I can do and it is what it is. I want to take a moment and talk to that person, let them know what is possible. Because if that person is listening, they need to come talk to you. So tell us about it.

So my advice is more general, not specific to academic medicine, because it applies is number one, sometimes we forget because in medicine the curriculum has been built for us for maybe 10 years, medical school and residency, fellowship. And then when you become an attending, suddenly you are left alone. And we are so spoon fed in having this curriculum built up for us. And so now as we become attending physician, academic clinician, we have to start evaluating our life as if we are in control of our own life curriculum. And so instead of waiting saying, oh, I can't get this, and I know this may rub some people the wrong way, but I think we have to start taking control in our own life and say, if I'm not good at this, if I want to achieve this, what are the skills that we need to get in order to achieve that? When you know what your gaps are, then you can go look for it, then you can find help. And that's why my goal is to help bridge that gap, help guide you through this process, give you the skills you need so that you can do hard things and become invincible. So that's my thing. And sometimes we go for Women in Medicine conference and we say, oh, we are not getting promoted. Let's get the promotion committee. But there's still a gap. Whatever it is, you see, you can't get promoted without the skill with publication. So we need to take a step back and see what do we really lack, what do we really need, and then start looking for the guidance. So that's my kind of big picture guidance.

Well, thank you for it. I love it. Like I said, if I. If I needed to write papers, you're my. The first, I think the first time I heard about what you do was when you were doing an introduction post in the on trendy Facebook group. I think that's where it was. And I was like, what? I was like, people do that. I needed that. Right. Because I'm like, papers. Oh, no. You know. Yeah. So that's that. Now, for somebody who is an entrepreneur now, and they hear what you've done in a quarter, but they kind of feel you're special now, of course you're special. Right. But they feel you're special and because of that, you could do that. And they still don't see it in the realm of possibility for them. What would you tell that person?

So just kind of think back about myself. What I think possible or not is usually comes through time. We think, oh, I'm really busy. How can I add another thing on my plate? But then I realized that time, you know, the amount of time you spend on something kind of spreads out. I don't know what law that is, Parkinson's law or something. If you have a lot and 10 times the amount, you think what's possible, you somehow figure out that if I need to get that done, let me do certain things in a shorter time. And I ended up being more efficient. So I spend my work day very efficiently. There's no chatting. There is no. Once I'm in, I do my papers and then I get out and I do my business. It's still the same amount of time, but I just get more things done. So it is not impossible. It's just that sometimes we have to think beyond imagine crazily, maybe imagine crazy.

Yes.

And somehow you can figure it out.

I love it. And I love the idea of working all the time you're at work. Brian Tracy had a way of saying it, like, if you don't use your hard time well, which is like your time at work, then it eats into your soft time. Right. And so it's kind of like if you. If you can do all your work while you're at work, then you have the time afterwards to spend with family, to spend some extra time working on your business and all of that. But if your work spills into you're a quote unquote soft time, then you lose even more time. I love that principle. And someone may be listening and saying, you don't know what I do. It's not possible. But I want you to embrace the option of it being possible because there are many physicians who are doing that, and there are many physicians who teach around that. There are many physicians who show you how to do your work, finish it at work, and then use the rest of your time for whatever you want to use it for. So that's amazing. All right, so people are like, where do we find her? Where do we find these Facebook lives that she did and her YouTube channel and all of this stuff? Where do people find you?

To make it simple, you can find me on my website, www.publishedmd.com. there you can find my YouTube channel. And for Twitter, I am. It's my name at J I A H W E I N G. That's my full name.

Awesome. And I'll link to all of those in the show notes. Doc, thank you so much for coming on and sharing about this. For everybody listening, if you're like, man, I want to join the community. I want to be part of the On Trendy business school. You can always come check it out. It's on trendy.com business. There is an application process. You can turn your application. The team will reach out. Dr. Jia, thank you for sharing all the things. Right. I really didn't want people to just have highlight reels like we would see a lot of times on social media, so they think something is wrong with them. When we share our stories, we normalize the experience of entrepreneurs. We normalize those hesitations and fears and let people know, yeah, that's there. But you can still go on in spite of it. So thank you for sharing your story.

Thank you, thank you. And as Dr. Una always says, do it messy and trust the process. So that was the two things I followed.

Love it, love it. And I am so rooting for you. I cannot see what. I cannot wait to see what Q2 looks like for you. It's one step at a time, but you're really doing it. Really, really doing it. So everyone listening, Remember, on Trendy is a movement. So what that means is take this episode, share it with somebody else. The other doctors in your life. I will see you on the next episode of the Entremde podcast.