The Crisis in the Healthcare Space Is a Gift to You

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. Umna. Well, hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of the Entre MD podcast. We are going to be talking about something near and dear to my heart, which is crisis. Okay. But it's going to be great because we are going to reframe how we look at crisis, how we think about crisis. And we're going to start actually, you know, we're going to actually start leveraging it, which is going to be so much fun. So, first of all, if this is your first time of listening to the Entrepreneur podcast, you're welcome. If you're coming back. Thank you for coming back again. And you know what? I have a bhag. I've talked about it for the last three and a half years that we had the podcast, and that is to help 100,000 doctors build profitable businesses so they have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their terms. I recently completed a live event, and at the event, I had the opportunity to speak to a lot of physicians. And there's a lot of. There's a lot of pain, there's a lot of mistakes being made in business. There's a lot of, you know, feeling trapped. There's a lot of feeling like, there's a ceiling, right? Like, I can't do any more than this. And it was hard to have some of those conversations, right, Because I was like, man, I talk about this on the podcast. We really do a deep dive on this on the, On Tremity Business school. It doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be this way at all. And so I want you to do something for me, right? I want you to, you know, take a screenshot of this podcast episode. If this has been a gift to you in any kind of way. Like, listen, I listen to this podcast every Monday on my commute, every Thursday when I'm coming back from work. And it's just. Is the thing that keeps me on the straight and narrow. And because of it, I've had these wins in my business and things like that. And like, hey, you gotta listen. So subscribe and go listen. This will really, really help us get the word out to the physician community. Because, as you know, there's a million physic, okay? So when you think about the statistics, why they say 60, 60% are burned out. That's. That's a lot of people. You see what I'm saying? And so I want you to be part of the Calvary today. So be sure to share this episode, like on your social media with the doctors in your life. When someone's having a. As an entrepreneur, physician entrepreneur, having a hard time in business, you don't even have to think three times. You just say, hey, listen, I don't know if you listen to this podcast, but this is, this is 1000% what you need to be doing right now. Okay? So do me a solid there, and I will be forever grateful. I already am, but I'll be forever grateful. Okay, so let's talk about crisis now. You know, if I was younger, I probably would have been like, and I don't know if I want to listen to that. But their crises are inevitable, right? Okay, so they're painful experiences. Yes. They're not things you just sit down and say, you know, I wish. I wish there would be a crisis. Right? Nobody does that. Well, 99.9% of people don't do that. But the thing is, this crisis are inevitable, right? They're gonna come anyway. It doesn't matter how good you are, how good of an entrepreneur you are, the kind of relationships you build with the way you take care of your health, all the things. It doesn't matter. Like a crisis is gonna show up at some point. And so if you think about what's happened in the last few years alone. There's been Covid, which is a crisis nobody could see coming. We didn't know how to deal with it. We didn't even know what it was. We had that. Then we have the hyperinflation and then the recession and the great resignation. And, you know, people are like, yeah, there's going to be a recession. This entire year at the time of this recording is 2023, and all of these things are going on. And we have. We have two choices, right? Well, we have a number, but I'll talk about two. We can. Or three, we can bury our heads in the sand and pretend this is not happening. Like, you could be running a business. You just pretend there's no recession, there's no this. The problem with that is there. And you have to. You have to learn to navigate that. You have to learn what the market looks like and how to respond to that. You can't just bury your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist, right? So that's like doing nothing. And there's so many people at the beginning of the pandemic who embrace that, oh, I'm just waiting. I'm just going to close my doors. I saw this. I'm going to close my doors. We're going to use our savings. I'm just going to wait this out. Like, you can't wait it out. Like, you have to respond to it. You know what I mean? We don't know when it's going away, but anyway, so that's one response. The other response is to choose to play the victim. Like, why is this happening to me? Why is this happening now? This is not fair and all of those things. The problem is you cannot be a victor and a victim at the same time. You have to choose, right? And so once you start playing the victim, you. You've given up your power. You may not have the answers, you may not know how to respond to it, but there's one thing you do know. If I be. If I play the victim, I have given up my power. If I play the victim, I cannot be the victor. I cannot come up on top. I cannot win. Like, who thinks about victim thoughts and walks away empowered to be the victim? You have to be the victim. You have to put somebody else in charge that some. And you have to put yourself in a position where you can't help what's happening to you and you have no way of responding and there's nothing you can do. Reject the victim thing like Think about the crisis in the health care space. Think about all the things that are going on with the insurance companies, with big pharma, with the hospitals, with the hospital administration, with all of these things. Are a lot of them, like, really awful? Yes, terribly so. Right. But. Right. We can only be the victim or the victor. Right. Once we. Once we take the side of victim, then we just have to stay under. Okay. You may be thinking about, you know, like, the challenges in business. Like, I mean, like, in this time with the recession and all of these things. And if you're a private practice, the insurance companies, you know, like, you know, we figured the cost of living went up, the cost of delivering service went up after Covid, because there are all these extra things that need to be done. You know, plus there's a recession, plus there's hyperinflation, inflation and all of that. You know what we're going to do? We're going to. We're going to reduce how much we pay. We reimburse the doctors for the services. We're just going to reduce that. That's our executive decision. Right. Okay. So that's a crisis, if you will. Okay. But again, victim or victor, like, we can choose. Oh, what they do to us. And this sucks. I just hate it. And I wish I could leave it, but I love my patients. Or you can say, we're going to come out of this on top. We're going to figure it out. Which brings me to number three, which is we figure it out. We choose to navigate it. We choose to make it work for our advantage. And it can. But this is a way of thinking, and it's a muscle we can build. And so when challenges come, we can respond. So it's Winston Churchill that said, made this statement, said, never let a good crisis go to waste. And that was something that was like my marching orders during the pandemic. I was like, you know what? We're not going to let this go to waste. You know, we're going to. We're going to get something out of it. We're going to make something out of it. Like, we're going to respond in such a way that we'll be like, I never want to see a pandemic for as long as I live, but I won't trade the outcome like, the things I was able to create because of it. Now, I'm not saying this in an insensitive way. Like, we're happy. I mean, you know, people actually died. Right? Like, so it was a crisis, it was bad, but we're here and we have a choice. So what's our choice going to be? Okay, okay, so I'm not trying to be insensitive or anything like that. So, for instance, when the pandemic hit, what? One of the things that followed it was this crisis called the Great Resignation, where even people who are like, you know, I've had a stable team for the last 10 years, they start having revolving doors. Like, you know, people are just leaving, dropping like flies. People come to work in the morning, I come back for lunch. People, no show, for interviews. Like, it was crazy in the beginning. Everybody's like, wait, what in the world is going on? Like, what is happening? But this is the deal, okay? It's a crisis. It is what it is. What are we going to do? Close shop? Like, what are we going to do? And so for us, we started looking at how to adapt to that, right? And we're like, okay, there's some places where we cannot afford to have somebody just no show. And it takes us two weeks to fill that position, all of those things. And we're like, we've always meant to leverage a virtual team, like your virtual medical assistants and front desk receptionist and things like that. And we're like, okay, so let's decentralize all these critical tasks so we make sure that they're always done. And so we built a virtual team. We have never had. We hadn't had a virtual team before that, but now we do. And we've had them, I want to say, going on two years. And it's been phenomenal. Like, I cannot even tell you how phenomenal it's been. Okay? So we built a. We built a virtual team. And then because of the revolve. The whole revolving door thing, which in the beginning, we're like, what is this? Right? Because we had a stable team pre Covid, and we realized we don't have like one month to get people up to speed and all of that stuff because we just don't have the band, you know what I mean? There's a little too much traffic here. We don't have the bandwidth for it. And so what we did was we completely revamped our training system. We shortened. We short. We did it more effectively, more efficiently, so we could shorten it and we could get people up to speed so much quicker, right? Everything was organized, the sequence was organized, and we were like, ready. So once somebody comes in, in a week to two weeks, they're ready to go, like, ready to run the show. Okay? So we did that. We had to relook at all the tasks that need to be done. Like, what is a revenue generating activity? What is the thing for the patient benefits? What are the things that we need to outsource? What are the things we need to get off our plate completely? What are the, what are the 20% tasks that bring 80% of the results? Like, we had to do all of that. So I'll tell you what, we now ended up with a really great team. We ended up with much better processes and we ended up with a whole other team, a virtual team. And so there was a crisis called the Great Resignation, but it then created all these great things. Do you see what I'm trying to say? It's a way of thinking and it's a muscle. And when you start using it and you get better and better at using it, you really do transform, really completely transform your life, really. Like, and this does not mean that I'm like, yes, that was great. Let's have another pandemic. Absolutely not. I'm still going to say, oh, we, let's not do that again. Right? But while we're at. Worked for my benefit in a way. Okay, so, so that, that's an example. Another example is, you know, when I, I knew that a crisis was coming to the health care space, right? I knew about that in 2016. And at that point I was a, you know, I was a private practice owner, had my practice for about six years at that point. It was great. I was seeing patients four days a week and I was off on Fridays. I had a long weekend every single Friday. The money was happy. Like we, I was good, but I foresaw, right? And so, you know, I talk about it a lot where it's just like, oh, like everything, everything has changed. It's not obvious, but everything has changed. And if you don't reinvent yourself, if you don't prepare for it, like is. And, and the words that came to me that morning was like, this is, is going to be a bloodbath. Like, so it's a picture of how bad it's going to be. It's going to be a bloodbath and you need to be ready. And so that's when I started, you know, working on reinventing myself, retooling myself and all of those things. And that's when entrepreneur was born. Because I was like, if I'm feel if this is true for me, this is true for a million physicians and I need, we can do this. Right? And that was so the entrepreneur was like, come on, let's let's do this. And so I want you to, I want you to look at this picture. I was a private practice doc. I had one other, one other physician working with me a day to two days a week. And we worked at. I was good, okay? And I could have probably done that for another 20 years or whatever and it would have been golden. Okay? Which is, which is true of the healthcare space. We probably would not have retold, reinvented, pushed ourselves to the next level. Many of us would not have started businesses, many of us would never have thought of building a seven figure business or multiple seven figure business. But it's the crisis in the health care space that created the need for us to evolve. And while I would not wish what is happening on our, on my worst enemy, I don't have enemies, but, well, I wouldn't wish it on them if they did exist. This is one of the best things that happened to us. And if you're in a point where you're like, doctor, you don't understand, you know, my business, my private practice is just going through this or me as a coach, I'm going through that or you know, like this product that, like, I'm going through pain. I'm not trying to be insensitive, okay? But what I am telling you is on the other side of this, what comes out on the other side is you. 2.0 is UMD 2.0. And that version of you, so much better, so much more powerful, so much more capable than your current version. I can create a bigger change in the world and more revenue and more freedom and, and your dream life and all of that stuff. So it's like, okay, the crisis is here. We can't make it go away. We don't have control over that. But what we do have control over is not letting the crisis go to waste. So my life here as a private practice doc, okay? And I want you to look at life, life now. And so I am still that private practice doc, right? And. But I'm somebody who could take a 16 month sabbatical from my practice and it grew instead of declining, right? I am a podcaster and I've been doing this podcast for over three years and we have over 300 episodes, 450,000 downloads, okay? I am a speaker. And you know, if you're an introvert, you get it, right? I was a socially awkward, super shy, introverted introvert, but here I am a speaker speaking on stages as as many as a thousand people in attendance, right? That's on Physical stages. I'm the founder of a whole business school. Like this would not have happened if there wasn't a crisis. That's, that's the, that's the picture I'm trying to paint here. I'm the founder of a business school. We have served over 200 physicians. With so many physicians crossing the six, seven, a multiple seven figure mark, it is mind boggling. Featured on Forbes. Like my name and Forbes the same sentence. And the sentence is not Dr. Una has nothing to do with Forbes. Right. I featured entrepreneurs featured on Inc. Regional as one of the fastest growing companies in the southeast in America. And thousands of lives touched. Like my life that was in my private practice just doing my thing, which I would have probably done for another 20 years is now this life that has touched thousands of other physicians and created stuff that has affected thousands of physician business, physician owned businesses. Think about it. And what I want you to think about is the contrast. But what was the trigger? A crisis. So the crisis happening in the healthcare space, whether you are working a job and it's the administrators and all this stuff, or you own a private practice and it's the insurance companies and the great resignation, all of that, or you're a coach and it's the resignation and hyp hyperinflation and the market has changed and all of that stuff, are you building a product and you're going after, you know, like, you know, one version after the other. It doesn't matter what that crisis looks looks like. What I'm trying to tell you is that the crisis is a gift. Now if I bring it to the healthcare space, the crisis going on in the healthcare space is a crisis. It hurts, people are suffering, but it is a, a gift. And it's a gift that is gonna lead to your evolution. So I'm kind of here to say don't fight it, don't abort it. Don't waste the crisis. Take full advantage of it. Okay, so let me, let me, let me, let me talk about a few of my friends. Okay? So these are all doctors in the entremity business school. And when I think about their journeys, it's like crazy. But when I think about it, it's all crisis though, right? If the crisis in the health care space didn't happen, chances are we would have just been fine in the exam room doctoring. That's what we do, right? But it's almost as though, you know, it's like you guys are loaded with so much. You're loaded with businesses, you're loaded with leadership. You're loaded with problems that you can solve. You're loaded with all of these things and you're hiding. And please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the exam room. Please, you know, don't hear what I'm not saying. Right. Like, what I am saying is there's you 2.0, and for some of you, you do it in the setting as an intrapreneur. Some others, you're going to do it, like, in a different way. Right? So it's not about leaving the exam room. It's about giving all of you full expression. What gives you the freedom to give all of you full expression is the ability to build a business system around it. Right? Okay, so there is Dr. Alicia Shelley, okay, amazing family medicine doc, working in Wellstar, doing her thing, right. But the health care space has changed, right? And it's like, okay, we need to do different things. And she joined the Entre MD Business school. She started her podcast. Now she's a, she's a paid speaker, speaking on some really great stages. Probably is going to do a TED Talk soon, all of these kind of things. But those are all things she was carrying around. But it's the crisis that brought the pressure that's, you know, kind of squeezed it out. And she, I mean, she's phenomenal. She's. She's been on the Entrepreneur podcast twice, right? She is a phenomenal physician. And there's Dr. Deanna McCardo, who, you know, is a physician, had ADHD, really struggled with, you know, being able to complete her charts on time, complete tasks on time. It was just so bad. She was so embarrassed to talk about it and all of those kind of things. And again, the crisis presented this opportunity. Like doctors, you can get out of the box. That's the gift that the crisis gave us. You can get out of the box. You see all those things you wanted to help people do, you can do them. You just have to learn how to build a business system around them and then you're free to do them. Dr. Alicia Shelley didn't leave her job. Dr. Diano didn't leave her job, but here she is where she is, providing coaching for those doctors who have adhd. So they can. You can they contain their inbox, right? Take you to Inbox Zero, where they can learn to manage their time. She even shows them how to negotiate for scribes and all of these kind of things. And she's doing amazing things. And guess what? Since she's been at Ontario Business school. She served 90 physicians in her program. I'm not talking about her webinars that she does. I'm not talking about her podcast. I'm not talking about what she's done on stage. I'm literally just talking about the people she served in her program. So, you know, that crisis is a gift. It was a gift to her, right? So for so long, we've taught, you know, you just work till you die. And one day, you know, you can have this life where you have a little bit of freedom. But I want you. If, if I could take you. It's just that the Entrepreneur Business school Facebook group is such a sacred space. If I could take you in there, you find so many people talking about this quarter. I made more, even though I worked less. That paradigm shift is happening where I can generate what I can generate with my brilliance as an entrepreneur. Not just by hustle, hustle, hustle, right? Seeing that is amazing. Seeing doctors set boundaries because now, because there are many people in the entre MD Business school who are intrapreneurs. So they're working full time. Some of them negotiated for a four day work week, but a lot of them are working full time and they're like, oh, we have this committee we want you to be a part of. You're going to meet every week, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, okay, yeah, are you going to compensate me for that time? Are you going to decrease my requirement for my clinical hours? And they're like, no. And then they're like, yeah, no too. Right? So they can negotiate like bosses. They understand the value of their time. They understand how to say no. They understand how to negotiate for what they want. It is amazing. There are doctors who have missed, like Dr. Gail Miller. I just, I just love, I love what she does. She cares for people who are childless. Not by choice, right? And I was like, I have never heard of anybody talking to them. But she built a whole business around it. She built a whole business around it where, you know, she serves them. How to navigate the holidays, how to navigate when your friends are not having grandchildren but you didn't have any. And, and all of that. And she built a business around that. These are things that it's unheard. It would. I mean, go back to 2016. It been unheard of for a doctor to do that. But guess what? We're doing that. Why? Because we were given a gift by the crisis in the health care space. Is this, is this box, is this box that we had been in for so long and we were comfortable. And we were. We're comfortable even though we're in pain. We were comfortable even though we were burned out. We were comfortable even though we're like, there's no satisfaction here. I don't find this to be meaningful work. But now it's just like the crisis opened up the box and says, you know what? You can come out. You can come out. Where? I mean, even in the beginning of Entre md, I would say, oh, you know, we help doctors embrace entrepreneurship because, I mean, like, tell Doc you can build a million dollar business. All of that. It's like a taboo. Like, we don't talk about money, but now we do. Now we do a whole lot. Why? Because we were given a gift. We were given a gift. Okay, so. So this is the deal. This is the deal. I want you to think about it and I want you to maybe write this down and think about it quite a bit. What if the crisis in the healthcare space is happening for me, not to me, and in the beginning, maybe too painful to think that. Right? But I want you to think about, like, all this stuff the insurance companies are doing. Everybody, like, all of this craziness. What if it was happening for me, not to me? Right? What if this is my opportunity to reinvent, retool, become me 2.0? What are the things I need to do to become me 2.0? And then you just embrace it. Embrace. Embrace it. I am telling you, it's a gift that we've been given now. It is, you know, it is. The wrapping paper of the gift is kind of strange because it's some pain, right? But inside of it, it's a gift. It's a gift, okay? So I want you to embrace the process and start working it. Okay? Many of you, you know what to do. It's time to start doing it. Some of you know what to do. You've tried it, but you're like, I need some help and need some accountability and all that. If that's you, come join us in RT business school. This is. We are reinventing and retooling all day, every day. That's what we do there. And we do it in community, right? And you get to see little vision boards. Like, it's almost like you're looking at people and their vision boards of what is possible for the physician community. It's insane, right? So come join us on trendy.com forward/business. Okay? So this is the two years from now, a year from now, you could be looking back at this time and you could be giggling. You could be laughing, and you're like, man. And then you'll say, I never wish to see something like that. But, boy, I wouldn't trade my experience for anything. Stop and think about what would happen for you to say that. But that can be your reality. That is my reality. That's a reality of so many people. That's a reality of so many doctors in the Entre business school. And for those who haven't experienced it yet, they're on their way. I never want to go through that again, But I wouldn't trade my experience for anything. It made me who I am. Man, that is so good. Okay, so that's what I got for you. Okay, now it's time to go execute. It's time to shift the way you think about it and start asking yourself, how is this a gift for me? How can I use this gift? How can I take full advantage of this gift? How can I listen to Winston Churchill from so many years ago when he told me, never let a good crisis go to waste? Okay. All right. So this is one episode you definitely want to share with the doctors in your life. So go ahead, share that. You can actually take a screenshot what you learned from the episode, tell other people to go listen. Put us our hashtag there. Hashtag ontremd. I'd love to shout you out, and I love to thank you for being a part of a calvary because you. You share the message. Okay. All right. And I'll see you on the next episode of the ontremd podcast. Hey, if you love listening to the Entre MD podcast, I want to invite you to join Entre MD On Demand. It is my signature subscription program that. That gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do one thing as a physician entrepreneur, and that is to thrive. Just head out to entremd.com ondemand and I'd love to have you join us. See you on the inside.