The extraordinary opportunity cost of quiet quitting

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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 my friends.

Welcome back to another episode of the entremd podcast. I do want to stop and say a big thank you to everyone who listens and everyone who takes action on what they listen to and create wins in their businesses, in their careers, in their lives. From the On Trendy podcast. I was just at the Women in Medicine summit that was held in Chicago hosted by the amazing Dr. Shika Jain. And I cannot tell you how many people walked up to me and they said, you know, I listened to the podcast. It's made such a difference. I show up differently. I found it when I was in such a dark place in my life as a physician and this was what gave me hope. And I started a blog or I started a podcast, or, you know, so many amazing things. And I'm just grateful to every one of you because this is the reason why I do that. And so, you know, I say this to say thank you, thank you so much. And also to say, really, if this podcast has made a difference in your life at all, this will be an amazing time for you to just stop and take a moment to leave us a review on itunes. If you've already done A review on itunes. Just post on your social media, take a screenshot of this episode and say, hey, YouTube, if you're a physician, you need to be listening to this podcast. It's made such a huge difference. You can go ahead to give some specifics. And I say that because, you know, Entre MD is more than a business, it's more than a podcast, it's more than a business school, it's more than a book. It is a movement of change in the physician community. And you know, we can have a completely different experience, but we need to learn a few things, we need to see how things are different. And every time you share, you're making a difference for another physician. Every time you share, every time you leave a review, you are helping the movement. Okay? So I want you to do that. And you know, thank you so much for doing that. It makes a difference. Okay? Now let me let you in on a secret. My husband's out of town and you know, I was just thinking about these things and it's 10 o' clock at night and I'm recording, okay? I'm just recording because I was excited. One talk, talk, talk about it and I promise I will get enough sleep and. But I figured I'd come talk to you. So this is 10 o', clock, if you can imagine that. All right, so let's talk about this concept of quiet quitting. Okay. So we're in a time where, you know, we had the pandemic, we experienced a great resignation. I mean it was the, it was almost like a mass resignation really. People decide, you know, maybe I don't want to work anymore or I'm close enough to retirement and I'm in the healthcare space, I don't wann anymore or you know, I don't have anybody to watch my kids. So now I'm going to stay at home. And there's so many reasons, you know, why people had needed to resign and things like that. And it is a global phenomenon and it was the great resignation. And then more recently I started hearing about quiet quitting. Which, you know, technically the term doesn't necessarily mean that people are quitting. It just means that, you know, people are working just in the allocated time doing just the tasks that they were assigned to do and things like that. That, that's the, you know, that's the technical term. But this is more so referring to people who are just doing the bare minimum so they don't get fired. Right. And that, that's kind of the concept around it. Like this person's kind of checked out, just doing the bare minimum so they don't get fired. So really they've quit, but they're still there, you know. And you know, people are like, yeah, they don't treat us well at work, so we're just going to quiet quit, you know, and all those kind of things. And I'm just here to sound a warning. And the warning is this. I want you to think about this concept, the concept of portable wealth, okay? There is dollars in the bank that represents your financial wealth. So this is dollars in the bank or investments in real estate, investments in stock or any of those kind of things, right? That represents financial wealth, but there's also portable wealth. And this is the wealth that you acquire because of some experience or some skill, you know, whatever mechanism you have for creating money or creating opportunities, that's portable. And so what that means, if you think about it, think about someone like Jeff Bezos, okay, Founder of Amazon, and you know, he's worth billions and billions, billions of dollars. But the money, his bank account or in stocks or in shares or any of those things, that's one thing, that's financial wealth. But there's also the portable wealth, which is the know how he has the connections, he has the skills, he has the abilities, he has such that if you took away all the financial wealth, right, you all. He needs his time and he can recreate it because he created it in the first place. That is the portable wealth, right? And so yes, there's the financial piece, but there is the portable wealth, okay? And so this is what concerns me about quiet quitting, okay? Now I want us to look at the opportunity cost. So let's say, you know, I don't like my job and I decide, you know what, I'm just going to quiet quit. I'm still here, I'm still on payroll, I'm still working, but I'm doing the bare minimum. I'm just doing enough not to be fired. Now, you know, I do want to put this out here. I'm not talking about a place that is so toxic that you know that you need to leave. Then you make a strategic decision and you leave, right? I'm talking about unresolved conflict or unresolved disagreements or whatever. And you decide, I'm just, I'm just going to not do my best. I'm just going to do the bare minimum, okay? So let's look at the opportunity cost of that. Number one is, is there are skills that you could develop on the job that you don't develop. Okay? So if you, if you develop them, you're really mediocre at them because you didn't apply yourself, right, to become really good at this. Now you, you may say, but they don't appreciate me here, so I'm not gonna work hard to become really good at this. But that's the point. It's not about them. It's about your portable wealth. Because if you develop that skill, it is yours to keep. It is yours to take somewhere else and monetize in a different way. It's yours to use and create a whole new business. It is yours, it is not theirs. So they really can't take advantage of you in that way. But if you decide that I'm not going to apply myself, you're not. You may be hurting them, you may be hurting the bottom line, but the person you're hurting more is yourself. Okay? So I want you to think about skills that you could develop, experiences that you could have. For example, you. You could learn to lead a team. Or you can say, I don't have time to talk to these people. They're crazy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or you could learn to lead a difficult team. You could learn to lead difficult people. You can learn to lead without a title, right? You can learn to have. Because leadership is influence. You can learn to influence people without a title. These are all skills that all translate to dollars. But if you're quiet quitting, you won't develop them. That's the opportunity cost, right? You can learn. I mean, like, you could become really good at conflict resolution. You could become really good at hiring, really good at firing, really good at building company culture. You could learn how to transition a healthcare system onto a new ehr and all of these things. There's the argument, they don't pay me for this. But there's also the other argument of, well, what if you developed that? What could that become? What could you do with that skill? Right? Now, the first practice I worked at after residency was a solo practice, but the owner of the practice was a neonatologist. So because of the conflict of interest, he could not work in the practice. Okay? And so I worked with him. And in working with him, I learned how to run a clinic. In working at him, I learned how to master, you know, customer service within a healthcare space. I learned how to lead the team because he wasn't doing any of those things. He wasn't coming. Those things were not things that were necessary, necessarily part of my job description. But guess what? It is my portable wealth. It is my Skill to keep, right? And so when I started my own practice, there were things I had to learn, but I didn't have to learn those because I had those down pat, right? And so when you practice quiet quitting. Yes, you may be hurting your, your team, you may be hurting your boss, you may be hurting the organization you work for, but you also really hurting yourself, okay? So that's, that's the first thing that you have to give up is the skills and the experience which you can take somewhere else, which will put you in a position to have a really nice promotion as an intrapreneur, or you can take those same skills and those become things that you can use to build a business, right? Like a whole business model around it. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, is the network, okay? And I. Let me tell you, humans, human beings are like hidden treasures because they just look human. They just look like a regular person looking at you. But you never know what they carry. You never know what opportunities they can create for you. You never know who else they can connect you to. You never know. You just never know what advice they could have, what information they have access to. If, if you put yourself in a position where you're quiet quitting. There are all these opportunities to create networks with people who are vendors, with people who are fellow physicians, with people who are in leadership. So physician leaders, with people who are administrators, with people who are CMOs, CFOs, all that stuff. Like you have all these opportunities and you're like, I'm not talking to them. I'm not going to that event. I'm not doing, I'm not doing any of that. I'm quite quitting. You're hurting yourself because let me tell you something, There is financial wealth, we've talked about portal wealth, and there's also social wealth. And that's what your network is. It is an index. It's a type of wealth, okay? Your, your networks, it is a type of wealth. And I dare say that it's more valuable than financial wealth, right? Because the thing is this. There are things that money cannot do for you, but one person can do for you, one phone call can do for you, right? And so all these opportunities to build all these networks you do without, and someday you're going to leave and someday you're going to say, well, I want to start my own business.

And.

All these people who could have been resources to you, you don't have access to them because you didn't take the time to build the relationships So I know that working at certain places can be hard. I know that sometimes the work conditions are not the best. I know there are things that need to be negotiated. But I think that you can strategically stay or you can strategically leave, right? But when you practice quiet quitting, you're hurting yourself, okay? There's personal development you're supposed to be experiencing, professional development. You're supposed to be experiencing networking that is supposed to be blowing your net worth through the roof. And you give up all of that to hurt the company that you're a part of. There's no way to really hurt them without hurting yourself too, right? And so you can stay or leave. But if you're there, recognize nobody can take advantage of me. This is my portable wealth. I had a client and I told her, she says, this is what they're trying to do to me. I'm like, nobody can take advantage of you. You're out there speaking in the community. Guess who has the speaking skill? You do. You're out there marketing to promote the practice. But guess who's whose network is growing? Yours is. You're going on media to go and speak there. Well, who has the brand as this person who goes on Fox and goes on CNN and all that you do now? So for as long as you work with a company, it will bring benefit to them. But guess what? When you go, you're leaving with all of that. Those are your skills to keep. So I want to implore you, if you have thought about quiet quitting, give it up. If you're doing that, give it up. If you have family members who work, talk to them so they can give it up. If you have team members, show them the concept of portable wealth and tell them all the time, you're working for me, you're working for yourself. And truthfully, what I want is when you leave, you're like, my goodness, I experienced the most growth when I was working at this company. When they're not able to tell their life story without talking about your company and all the invaluable skills they got from there, okay? So that's what I would implore you to do. That's what I'm asking you today. But don't fall into the trap of quiet quitting. It is a trap, okay? So I want you to show up at work. Remember, in the entrepreneur world, we say every physician is an entrepreneur. And if you work a job, you are an intrapreneur and you are the CEO of your own brand. When you show up to work, you show up like the CEO CEO that you are, you show up, you leverage this. The opportunities you have to develop skills or to have experiences or to network at all. You take all of those, knowing that I am building my portable wealth. I am building the net worth of my company. And so for a while, I'm here. It will be a benefit for you. But if I do need to leave, guess what? I leave with all of that. I will never go somewhere to start from ground zero, because I have all these things, right? Everything you're ever going to do, you have the seed form in your hand. Right now, your job, if you're working a job, is the seed form of all the other businesses you're going to build. While you're working on your job, you're working on your business. You're building the skills you're going to use for that. You're building the tenacity you're going to use for that. You're building the ability to lead a team you're going to use for that. Don't give it up. Don't play into this whole quiet quitting thing. It is so expensive. The opportunity cost is too high, and we just can't afford to do it. Okay? So I would love to see you show up as the boss you are. Show up in control, build your portable wealth. If you're in a place you have to leave, make a strategic decision, leave like a boss. But don't sabotage yourself by engaging in quiet quitting. Okay? So I want you to take this episode, share it with every doctor you know who works a job. And that's not to say they're quiet quitting, right? But at least we can escape this culture and they can learn about portable wealth and start to use it right proactively. All right? So go share it. Thank you so much for being a part of the movement and spreading the word. And I will see you, my friend, on the next episode of the EntreMD podcast. Hey, if you love listening to the.

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