What to do when your family doesn't support you
30 Jan 2026 · 17 min
Dr. Nneka Unachukwu explains why families push back on entrepreneurial ambitions and what to do about it. Start small and prove results instead of asking for belief upfront. Build your own supportive community while you work to shift their minds.
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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. Hello. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the ontremd podcast. Listen, I cannot even tell you how excited I am to share this episode with you. It is literally 9pm And I got off a live session at the On Tremd Business School. We meet every Wednesday at 7pm Eastern. And. And we had the most phenomenal live session. So I hosted the Forced Appreciation workshop. And it's all about elevating your mindset so you think like the person who can accomplish the goals that you set. I mean, it was unbelievable. But at the end of it, one of the doctors asked such a brilliant question and I was like, man, I just need to make a podcast episode out of this. I'm going to figure out how to get it to my people. Okay? Okay. And she said, what do you do when your family doesn't support you? Right? You set these goals and maybe some of them think you're ambitious. And is being a doctor not enough? Or is building this, you know, business to the level where it is? Is that not enough for you? And I was like, this is a really great question. And I know it's something that has stopped a lot of people from starting businesses. Or scaling their businesses and things like that. And, and I said, you know what, I think the world needs to hear about this, right? The physician community. So I answered it there, but I thought even more about it and I was like, you know what, let me come, let me come on here and share this with the entre MD community. So what do you do? And this is, there are two times when this would happen. This would happen when you want to start a business. And that could be you work a job, you want to start a private practice, or you really wanted to be a coach, or you want whatever it is you want to do, develop a product. And, and you know, your family's members are like, you know, don't do that. It's not going to work. Businesses fail all the time. You're a doctor, that should be enough. Why are you so ambitious and all of that? The other time it can happen is when you set new goals. And so this is an, this could be an established business. So maybe you had this business, you've been at multiple six figures, you're on cruise control and you decided, you know what I mean? Yes. Only 9% of businesses make it to a million dollars in revenue. And for female owned businesses, it's even lower. It's two. But I want to do that, I can do that. You know, maybe that's your thing. And when you decide to do that, they may come for you. And it's like, you know, why is this not enough? Why is this business you already have not enough? What's wrong with what you've already been doing? It's producing results, it's paying the bills. Like, what more do you want? Right? But you know, it's not really about the revenue. And now we don't downplay revenue at all in the entrepreneur community, right? We talk about serving and earning. A great business does both. Now the order is serving and earning. But earning is right behind serving, okay? So we make no apologies for building businesses that make money. We make no apologies for learning how to make money. But the motivation is not quite the money, right? The motivation is what can I create? What can I build? How can I explore what my potential is? I want to live out my all. I want to live out my potential. I want to die empty, right? When it's time to go, I just want to take a break, empty body and leave it here on earth. Because I've done everything. Like, I've explored everything I can be. And so you owe it to yourself to do that. And you owe it to yourself to not Let anybody stop you, not even your family, okay? And so I want to share with you three things you can do, okay? If your family is not supportive, number one is understand them. Okay? Chances are they're not mean. They don't hate you. They don't. They may not even. It may not even be that they don't believe in you. They want to protect you. When you look at the statistics, a lot of businesses fail. We're talking 80% in the first five years, right? A lot of businesses fail. When you look at it, a lot of people, they go after their dreams and they get discouraged and they get hurt and they lose money and all of those things. So really, a lot of the times, your family members really just want to protect you. They want to protect you from chasing a dream that may not come to pass. That's really what that is. And when you look at it that way, you can see that they're not being mean, they're not bad. That's just their understanding. They want to protect you. That's what that is. And it helps you to still own your dreams and still love your family, right? Not say, oh, you didn't believe in me, and all of that stuff. And especially if they're not people who are chasing down their own dreams, they have no experience with what you're talking about. And maybe they've tried chasing down a dream and didn't work, or they built a business and it failed. They're literally trying to protect you. So don't look at your family as the bad guys. Now, of course, there's the exception, but most of the time, they're not being bad. They. They really want to protect you. And it's important to realize that, yes, we want to build businesses and want to do all the things, but we also want to have great family relationships. And we may not always agree, but we can disagree peacefully. We can disagree and still have great relationships. We don't all have to agree on the same thing. And I think everybody's been who's listening to this podcast has been alive long enough to realize that, yeah, we're not always going to agree, and that's okay. Okay? So that's number one. Number two, understand their position in their journey. So I explain what I mean by that. I have people in the entrepreneur business school who are like, oh, you know what? I've been dreaming about starting this business for the last two years, five years, seven years, 14 years. Okay? And you went through different stages of doubts. You went through different stages of belief. Maybe you tried you dabbled, you know, a little and kind of sort of did it a little. I decided, no, I can't do this. And you stopped and you did all of that, and you finally got to the place where you're like, I'm going to do this. Okay, you got to that point. So like I said, some people, it took 2 years, 5 years, 7 years, 14 years. Okay, even longer now that you've decided you're going to do it. You make the big announcement to the family, and then they look at you and they're like, why would you want to do that? And you're shocked, and you're in disbelief, and you can't understand why they don't believe in you, and you're upset. But I want you to think about it. You had 14 years to work your way to belief, and you're judging them for not believing in 45 seconds. And when you think about that, you realize that's unfair. Their position in the journey is that is their first contact with your idea. For you, it's been five years. And so you've had time and they haven't.
Right.
And so, yes, think about reaction they're having, and think about the reaction you had when you were 45 seconds into your idea, you had the same reaction they did. Like, you can't do it. You see what I mean? And so they are so early in their journey, and you gave yourself time to. To go from doubt to belief, and you want to give them time to. Okay, so don't make the big announcement and get offended that nobody's jumping as much as you're jumping. You've had time, they haven't. Okay. All right, so then what's the third thing? The third thing is this show don't tell. Show don't tell. You get a business idea and say you think your spouse won't be supportive. Let's even use a relationship that close, right? I was actually. It's so funny. I was talking to a mentee of mine today, and, you know, she's wanted to start a business, I mean, for as long as I've known her, which is years at this point. And today she was saying, well, my husband is not really very supportive. And I'm like, okay, well, let's look at it. Okay? And her stuff has to do with the arts. And I said, since I've known you, you've talked about this. Okay. And that means. Which. Since he has known you, because I knew her before she got married. Since he knew you, he's known you, you've been talking about it, but you've been talking about it and you haven't done anything about it, right? And I told her, I said, there's a seed form, right? There's a seed form of what you want to do that you can start doing today. So this would be stuff that's done on stage, what she does. And I'm like, you can start. You have a platform, it's Instagram. You can start from there. You can start doing it, and you can build credibility and you can build your skill level and you can build an audience and can do all of that, and it will open doors for you. And then you can start branching into all these other things. And so I'm saying, if you did that, do you think that he would be in agreement? And she says, yes. And I said, okay, perfect. So do that. You see what I mean? Do that. And so it's the same thing. If you're wanting to start a business, then start it. Start the seed form of it. So, for instance, for me with entremd, I started coaching people one on one, and I started doing things online and I did my first event. It wasn't like the biggest event in the universe. I did that. And all this time I'm showing, hey, this is what I want to do, right? And so start doing so that you can show and not tell. You can show and not tell. And then it's the same thing. For now when it comes to your distant family. So not spouse, maybe cousins and uncles and all of that kind of stuff, the truth of the matter is you don't have to tell them at all. You, when you meet with them, you can talk about the family, you can talk about the weather, you can talk about their children, you can talk about all of that. You know, if you know they're not going to support you and your business is still a baby or your scaling idea is still a baby, don't talk to them. Don't say anything about it. Don't worry about it. Why? Because every baby should be quarantined. Okay? Every baby should be quarantined. What does that mean? When you have a newborn, right, you take them around healthy people, you don't take them around people who want to hurt the baby and think about not wanting, you know, everybody who comes in the house, wash your hands, do this, do that, you know, hand sanitizer, wear a mask, do all of that before you come around the baby. But when the baby's five years old, you just send them to kindergarten with other Jeremy kids. Why? They can handle it, right? So when you have that new idea, you don't put it around people who are going to squash you. Don't put it around people who pull out fire extinguishers and put it out. So don't. Don't do it. Don't tell. And when it shows up, everybody knows, but you don't have to tell them. You don't have to have conversations with them. You don't have to. You do not have to give people information that they don't need. Don't do it. Okay? All right. Now, when you have people who are really naysayers, right? Like, so it's not just family members trying to protect you, but they're naysayers. Oh, you're so ambitious. Oh, you keep trying to do all the things and all of that kind of stuff, and you feel bad about it. This is a question you ask yourself, do I want my life to look like their life? Do I want my life to look like this? Uncle's life? Do I want it to look like this Cousin's life? Do I even want it to look like my sister's life? My sister has a great life. I'm just giving an example, right? Do I want it to look like that? And if the answer is yes, then go ahead and listen to them. If the answer is no, realize that the mindset they have, the mindset that is the foundation where they're pulling the advice they're giving you from that mindset created the life they have. And so if you don't want their life, don't take advice from them. If you don't want their life, do not take advice from them. The end. Okay? That's just the way this works. It's not a very sentimental thing. You just have to decide, do I want to fulfill my dreams or not? Do I want to become who I think I can be or not? Okay? So understand them. They're trying to protect you. Understand their position, their journey. They've only had 45 seconds to digest this stuff. And number three, show them, don't tell them, show them. Start doing. Start hitting milestones, start getting results, and then the conversation can start. Okay? And then for the people who are distant, don't even have the conversation at all. Leave them alone and let it be done. Okay? All right. So I want you to go practice this with your family. If you're in a family where you need to practice that most people are. And think of it this way, if you learn how to do this this way, then you will end up with a great relationship with your family, even if you disagree. Great relationship with your family, even though maybe they're not necessarily supportive of your. Of your vision, your goals, your dreams. Because, you know, I understand what's going on with them. Right? And it is really important. Really important. I talked about this with, with the doctors in the business school that you curate your own community. Okay? Now, for the people in the business school, it's amazing because you're talking over a hundred doctors who are physician entrepreneurs who are paying the price, who are going through, who are killing it, right? They share their wins, and the wins inspire people, and they share their challenges, and it normalizes challenges. And they're in this really great community of support. And so they can hang with their family and have fun with their family and then come get their support from the Entre business school. Right? Do you see that? So you want to curate your own community where you can talk about your ideas and it is accepted and it is celebrated and you're supported when things get tough, because they will. And you can just love on your family and take the pressure off them needing to support you. Now, if you're the kind of person who has a family where they're really into personal development, they'll support your dreams, then you are blessed. Enjoy it. But if you don't, this is what you do. And you can end up with a great community where you're supported and your family where you're loved, and it's all good. Okay? So that's what I have for you. Go practice this and go build really great relationships so you can enjoy your family and you can enjoy your community of entrepreneurs, because you can have it all. Alrighty. Share this episode with another entrepreneur and I'll see you on the next episode of the Entre MD podcast.
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