The anatomy of an EntreMD

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 back to the Entre MD podcast. You are in for a treat today. Today we are going to be looking at the anatomy of an Entre md Right? So if you play your cards right, if you develop all these business skills, if you learn all these new things, what could your path as a physician look like? That path that will lead you to financial freedom. The path that will lead you to. To being able to live life and practice medicine on your terms. Working how long you want to work and making as much as you want to make, this is going to be really great. Okay. Something very interesting happened when I got my first job as an attending physician. So I need you to think about this, right? We're talking years of medical school, grueling years of residency, working 80 hour work weeks, looking forward to the end. And the end was 2008 for me, right? Looking forward to, to the end when I'll finally be done with all this stuff and I finally would have accomplished what I wanted. I'm an attending physician. I'll be my own boss. I'll be seeing patients. I will finally be earning some money. This is going to be great. Or so I thought. And I Had anticipated all that, right? The boss, the paycheck, the prestige. Not in a prideful kind of way, but we'd worked hard for this stuff. So this was return on investment time. And I still remember very clearly my first day on my first job. I got a job in a solo practice in Stockbridge, Georgia, and the pay was good. My boss was great, introduced me to the staff. I talked to all the people that I know, like, look, I'm about to start. I need tips, because now the buck stops with me. I was now a big boss, and it was great. So I had my first day. I think it was October 6th of 2008.

And.

And I got in there, and I saw the first patient, and I think it was ringworm or something the patient had. It was so cold, I diagnosed it, sent the prescription, all that. Ha. First patient as an attending. And I remember walking out the room, and rather than being super exciting, I became sad. And it was very shocking to me. I was like, okay, this is a weird reaction. And the sadness came from. All my life, in my pursuit of becoming an md, I had something to chase, right? When I was in high school, I was chasing great grades and all this stuff, so I would qualify to get into a great medical school. And the entire time I was in medical school, I, you know, was working hard because I wanted to get into a great residency program. So I had a vision in front of me. And then when I was done with medical school and I got into residency, then my big goal was, I'm going to become an attending. So there was always something I was chasing after. And now I'm an attending, and I'm like, okay, so what's next? Do I just do this, like, rinse and repeat from now till I'm 65? Wait, wait, where am I going? What am I supposed to be doing? For the first time in my clinical career, I didn't have a roadmap. And maybe you started a practice, or maybe your thing was I wanted to get this kind of job or earn this kind of money, but to a certain extent, it's not. The roadmap isn't there, like, from here, where do you go to? Okay, so now, over the years, that's changed. I have a roadmap, right? I know where I want to go. I know what I want to accomplish. It's probably not in a book written anywhere, but I have a roadmap. And it took a number of years, but I figured it out, and that's what I want us to look at today. What does that roadmap look like now to understand it, I'm going to take you to the NBA. And you guys know I love basketball. And a lot of the reason why I love basketball, I don't play any of it. And I'm five three. So the reason why I like basketball is we, as physicians, can learn so much from it. So, so, so much from the players, from the sport. It's really great. So I'm going to take you back to the NBA now. Like physicians, they worked all their lives to get into the NBA, right? You know, they went to the basketball camps. They spent summers working on their game. They got, you know, great coaching. They chose schools based on what would make it easier for them to get in. All their lives, they've worked at it. They've broken bones, they've sprained ankles, they've spent a lot of money. They did everything. Everything was for the mba. But when they get into the mba, they don't feel like I've arrived, which is the way we feel when we become attendings in a certain way, right? Like, I made it. They realize I said I made it. Now the work begins, right? Now the work begins. And that's the way we need to think as physicians. Like, I worked hard and I got here, and my thing was I deserve to rest like I've been working for so long. And their thing is, I made it here. This is great. Now I'm going to milk this as much as I can. I'm going to make the best of this opportunity. And that's the way we need to think as physicians. They're clear when they get into the MBA that it's a new start. It's not an end when you become an attending. It is a new start. It is not the end. So there are two kinds, you know, two ends of the spectrum. There are two kinds of NBA players, right? Some come in and leave, and within five years, they're bankrupt, right? I mean, the statistics show 60% of NBA players are in some kind of significant financial distress five years after they leave the league. But then there's this other 40% that come in and they recognize I'm a business. Like I'm a business. And this is what their roadmap looks like. And this is what our roadmap should look like as well. So first phase is there, active phase. They come into the NBA, they're playing. They have to work their numbers, they have to work their shooting percentages. They have to work on their weight. They have to work on their speed. They have to work on being the person that their team can depend on. They are working to build their notoriety as a great player. So that's the active phase, right? And that's the phase of you work, you get paid. If you don't work, you don't get paid. You know, you work, you get paid, right? So that's phase one. A lot of NBA players stop there, but not the financially smart ones or not the smart ones, period. Once they build that, I'm a LeBron or I'm a Charles Barkley, or I'm a Stephen Curry, or I'm a Kevin Durant, right, I, you know, I'm really good at, you know, three point shooting, I'm really good at defense, I'm the defensive player of the year, all of that. Once they've built that in their active career, the next thing they do is they start building phase two, which is their leveraged career. And in this part of their career, what they're doing is they're leveraging the name they built in their active career to build something else. So that is where you see them doing endorsements. That's where you see them on music videos, you see them in movies. You see, you see them speaking on stages. It could be motivational, it could be whatever. You see them doing these things, starting companies, and the rest of them now, they still have to have some skin in the game. So it's not passive, but it's not as active as the active phase. It's leverage. They're building on what they've already done. All right, so that's phase two. And then phase three is their passive phase. This is where the smart ones would have taken earnings from their active career and earnings for their leveraged career, and they're plugging it into passive streams. Some will do stocks, a lot will do real estate, A lot will be silent partners in businesses. But it's passive. So being able to earn money or being able to make money in a business is not an end in itself. You have to figure out where you're going to park the money, right? And a lot of them will park them in real estate. This is what a smart NBA player does. This is the NBA player that does not show up as a statistic. You know, 60% are in financial distress the first five years after leaving the league. They start with active, fully aware that that's only one third of their career. They go from active to leveraged to passive. That's the sequence, that's the anatomy, that's the roadmap. Okay? So it is a disservice to everybody, including the player, for the player to start with active and stop there. Because what that means is you had all these opportunities, but you didn't take advantage of them in the same way. As doctors, we have these three phases of our careers and it's up to us to use all three. Traditionally, what has happened is we stop at active phase, right? So active phase for a physician would be I got a job or I started a practice that can't work without me, right? So you're a solopreneur, okay? Now in that phase is you work, you eat, you work, you eat. If you don't work, you don't eat. Okay? That's the active phase and it's great. And we all have to start from there and we have to be good at it, right? You're not necessarily going to get deals as an NBA player if you're no good, right? If you're the worst man in the worst team, nobody's telling you to come be the face for Nike. It's just not happening. So you have to be good at what you do. You have to be good as a clinician. You have to be great. Now once you're done with that, you still have two other aspects of your career. You have the leveraged and you have the passive. So what would leverage look like for a physician? Maybe you've done this and now they make you the CMO at an insurance company, right? And you've leveraged that. It's still active, but not as active. Maybe you've built your practice and you've put systems in where you're now the CEO of your practice. So you have four or five doctors working with you and you work one or two days a week. That's leveraged. Maybe you're speaking based on your depth of research or how vast your experience is. You're speaking on stages and making income as a speaker. You are leveraging what you've had. Okay, Maybe you start off non clinical businesses. Maybe you have a product line, you know, whether it's, you know, people have done accessories, they've done skincare, they've done apparel, like all kinds of stuff. Maybe you're a content creator, right? Maybe you create online courses, whatever it is, but now you're leveraging your expertise as a clinician. Now you're still working. You work and you get paid, but it's more like you work and you get paid, paid, paid, as opposed to you work and get paid in your active phase. So this is leveraged. Maybe it's coaching and consulting based on your years of experience. I have, you know, a client who had for years worked with emergency departments to help them build their workflow efficiency, increase their door to dock, decrease their door to dock times and all of this stuff. And now she can leverage that and pivot it and make that a consulting firm. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, this is all leveraged. I built a practice from the ground up. It's nine years old at this point in it's thriving. It has systems, it works. If even if I'm not there, there are many doctors who want to build practices. I can consult with them and help them because I've done this for almost a decade. Do you see what I'm saying? So this is all leveraged. When you leave that on the table, there's so many things you want to give expression that you can't because you've not embraced it. Okay? So leverage. This is where you can live out purpose, you can live out your passions. But in order to do that, you must have business skills, because business is the vehicle that you use, right? We live in an economic world. Business is the vehicle. The third is the passives. I need you to imagine you were disciplined as a doctor in your active phase. You only took out 10% of your gross income. And, and you made sure that you put it away to invest in real estate. If you were earning $200,000 a year, that means over the course of 500, 505 years, you would have had $100,000 in real estate. To which you're like, well, that's not enough. Well, it depends, right? Because if you're buying a $500,000 property and you had to put 20% down, that is 100,000, right? So, and that's just looking at it one way. There's so many ways to finance these deals and stuff, but you have stuff that is passive, or you invest in syndications and all that kind of stuff. But you're parking your money, right? Because it needs to be parked. If you did stocks, I won't talk a lot about it because I'm more of a real estate kind of doc. I'm not really a stock doc, you know, but you took all that money and then you started speaking and coaching and consulting, doing all of that and use that to bankroll your real estate investment. You know what I'm saying? Then you can choose at 50, I just don't want to work anymore, you know? You know what I mean? You can choose how long and how hard you want to practice medicine because you have financial freedom. You have to have financial freedom, right? So think about it. If you only do the active phase of your career, you did a third of your career, okay? You did a third. You left so much on the table. And it's not just money, but you left a lot of opportunities, a lot of lives you could have touched, a lot of changes you could have effected. You left all of that on the table. So what I'm going to ask you today is I want you to take a look at your career and commit to do all three active, leveraged, and passive. You know, what would that look like for you? Passive is where you build financial freedom. Because working for money is great, that we can work and earn a great salary and all of that, but the ultimate is always your money working for you. So you want to generate it in active and leverage and park it in passive and let that money work for you, okay? You become the boss of your money, not the other way around. So don't stop at one. Don't stop there, okay? Don't stop at a third. You're an entre md. Do three out of three, okay? Now I want to give you a gift today, and I want you to read it and I want you to start thinking more about your leveraged career and your passive career and what that would look like for you. So for today, I have a free gift. It's a book that I wrote called Three Ways to Make Six Figures as a Physician Entrepreneur. And what it will do is it will jumpstart your way of thinking. Like, I'm great, I'm a great clinician. How do I pivot and get into my leverage? Right? There are tons of ways, but I talk about three ways in this book. So I want you to go to www.entremd.com eBook. Okay? And you can get it, you can download it. It's an easy read, and it would totally transform the way you think. All right? So entre md so e n t r e m d.com ebook and get it and make sure you share it with another physician entrepreneur. Okay? So you may be saying, but I don't want to start a practice. I don't want to start a business. I love my job. And so this doesn't apply to me. It applies to you, like, a whole lot. Okay? Because the principle of an entremd means that you work for yourself, okay? You work for yourself no matter who pays you. You work for a doctor, you incorporated, okay? I have a client who works a Job, and she loves her job. And on our first call together, I was like, yeah, I mean, you have a really good deal. You should do this. You're just three years, four years out of residency. Let's do it right? Three years at that point. But I was like, you want to become an intrapreneur, though? So what we did was we worked out a strategy where I'm like, you're going to treat this business, this practice, as though it were yours, and you're gonna make yourself indispensable to the practice. Okay? So she's doing all these amazing things. She starts the practice's YouTube channel, puts them on the map. She starts talking to the patients, building a community, getting them to work, great reviews. She's doing speaking gigs, and people are coming in because of her and all of this stuff. So in that practice, she is an asset. And it puts her in such a great position to negotiate for, you know, either raises or extra time off and all of this stuff. And it's all because she decided to be an entre MD even though she's employed full time. Do you see what I'm saying? This applies to everybody. So I want you to look at this roadmap, to look at this anatomy, and I want you to own your space, okay? I want you to decide what you're going to do for leveraged, what you're going to decide what you're going to do for passive. And I want you to start today. I want you to start today. You are an entre md. You do not stop at just one phase.

You.

You do all three phases. You knock this out of the park. Okay? So thank you again for joining me today. Remember, you are an entre md. You're not just an md. And you have what it takes to build your own pathway from active to leveraged to passive. So you can have that financial freedom. So you can have real estate investments that pay you more than your first job out of residency ever paid you. So you can go on the vacation because you want to. So you can duke a cash based clinic and choose the number of patients you want to see because you want to. You are in charge. Okay? So see you same time next week. Don't forget to share and I'll talk to you then. 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, Sam.