Your biggest weapon in the midst of chaos

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 and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Una.

Welcome back to another episode of the Entre MD podcast. Super pumped that you're here and I am looking forward to giving you some big time encouragement and inspiration and empowerment to be a great entrepreneur like you deserve to be. And we have been looking at what to do in the midst of chaos. And if you didn't get a chance to listen to the previous episode, you really do want to, where we talk about how to stay calm in the midst of chaos. And today I want us to look at your biggest weapon. And it's not what you think. Your biggest weapon in the midst of chaos. Now, when it comes to chaos, there's so many things that could cause that, right? For at the time of this recording, we're literally in the midst of a pandemic. And I had heard a lot about pandemics. I had read about it. I mean, I'm a doctor, I read a lot about it, but I never thought in my life I would be part of a pandemic. But here we are. So life happens no matter what you do to prepare for it. There are things that you. They're just out of your control. So it could be a pandemic. It could Be a recession. It could be illness that you didn't plan for, an injury you didn't plan for, you know, really bad divorce. It could be all kinds of stuff that are out of your control. It could. And I want to show you how to thrive in the midst of that. So we talked about how to stay calm. And today we're going to talk about the biggest weapon. And that weapon is focus. And you're going to be like, what? Really? Dr. Une? Yeah, really. That weapon is focus. Now, I kind of know what focus means, but I looked at the dictionary and one of the definitions I found is directed attention. One of the things that happens in the midst of chaos is that our attention goes everywhere. If you think about it, maybe not you, but a lot of people are spending an enormous time on social media, an enormous time listening to the news, an enormous time keeping their eyes on what could possibly go wrong. That they've completely taken their attention off of their vision, off of their business, off of their family, off of the goals they had for this year of like, that is all gone. But one of the marks of the ultra successful is that they keep their eyes on the prize. Okay, now before I go on, I'm gonna say this is not to say that I'm insensitive to what is going on. Don't misunderstand me. This is a business conversation. So I'm not talking too much about the healthcare aspects of what's going on with the pandemic that we're currently a part of. But I want you to think about the business side of it, okay? Chances are that you're gonna go through this pandemic and you're gonna come out on the other side. So since you know that, what do you want your life to look like on the other side? What do you want your business to look like on the other side? What do you want your finances to look like on the other side? You need to focus on that picture, then reverse engineer so that you can have that on the other side. So that's where your focus needs to be. Okay? So the social media, the news, this hysteria, the worst case scenarios, with you as a player in the worst case scenario, we cannot focus on that. Okay? This is the time to limit how much time you're spending on social media. This is the time to limit how much time you're spending listening to the news. I'm not saying be ignorant, I'm saying be informed, but not obsessed. Okay? So you need to have the information about what's going on. But no, you don't need to binge on it. All right, so let's talk about the things that you should focus on. And if you will focus on these things, you're going to see that your life is going to be so much better on the other side. Okay? And if you think about any recession that's ever happened, there are two types of players. There were people who it really hurt, and there are people who it really helped. And maybe this time you're gonna decide, you know, all of this stuff going on is gonna help me. And I'm not saying, yay, there's a pandemic, but we're here, we didn't ask for it, you know, well, how is it gonna leave you? Okay, so we're gonna talk about focus.

And.

And before we go into that, I just want to stop real quick and acknowledge all the people who've been faithful listeners and for everyone who's reached out to me on social media and reached out to me via email to share with me things that have changed and the difference that listening to this podcast has made. And I want to really, really say thank you, I appreciate it, because this is the reason I started the podcast. And now more than ever, people need to hear about possibilities. They need to hear about opportunities. They need to hear about how to manage crisis, how to manage chaos. And I want you to be a HOPE ambassador. I want you to take a moment to share the podcast, like, diligently. Okay? Share the podcast on social media. Share it via text. Tell people, you know, listen, when people are complaining and seem hopeless, which there's a lot of that, or they seem really anxious, I want you to reach out and say, hey, why don't you make this part of your routine, what you listen to, because we need to get all that positivity in. Okay? So thank you, thank you, thank you. Truly appreciate you. And I love that you've signed up to be a HOPE ambassador. All right, so let's get back to what we need to focus on. The first thing we need to focus on is revenue generating activities. Okay? Revenue generating activities. What are these? These are the things you do. They're typically not too many, but these are the things that you do in your business that bring in revenue. Okay? So picking the colors of your brand, not a revenue generating activity. Picking the color of the paint, not revenue generating. Picking the chairs that are going to go in your waiting room, not revenue generating. Okay? These are revenue generating activities, things that you do that bring people into your business. Okay? Now, Mark Cuban, who is a billionaire and owns like 150 companies and has been on Shark Tank and is owner of Dallas Mavericks. He had a very interesting quote and this is what it said. It said, rather than focusing on how bad it is, focus on how you can use this time to connect with your future customers. Rather than focusing on how bad it is, focus on how you can use this time to connect with your future customers. So I want you to start thinking in those terms. Revenue generating activities. One of the best ones is speaking. You might say, wow, but you know, that's a little limited now. Maybe offline, but not online, right? So this is the time that your voice needs to be heard. This is the time when people, in the midst of crisis, people are looking for leadership. This is the time to emerge as a leader, to emerge as a voice, to talk to your customers, to talk to your clients, to your patients, depending on what your business is and get them into your business. And even if they're not coming right away, once there's a little bit of a turn, they're coming in. Okay? So you need to focus on revenue generating activities. One of them is speaking, one of them is asking for referrals. One of them, you know, is reaching out to centers of influence. And all of these things you can do even in the midst of chaos. Now you may need to pivot your business a little bit. And I've been working a lot with my coaching clients on that. Like how do I need to adapt my business? Times have changed. What do I need to change to be relevant in this time? So you may need to pivot a little bit, but you still need to focus on those activities. If you'll do all those activities now, it will not only keep you profitable in the midst of the chaos, but it will set you up to emerge as an even greater leader and greater voice at the end of the chaos. Okay? So focus, focus, focus. You know what that is, all right? And so that could be speaking, it could be referrals, it could be, you know, setting up referral sources. It could be social media network. Now, don't hide away on social media. If you've heard me speak, you know that I always value your one to one more than social media. So social media cannot be ignored. But you can't ignore everything else and then do social media, okay? If what you do addresses a problem people are having right now, then you need to be doing your live streams and you need to be doing virtual summits and all of those kind of things. But you need to be talking to your current customers and and your future customers. You need to focus on revenue generating activity. So, for instance, if you own a practice, we need to hear your voice. You need to have Facebook lives going, you need to have videos going, you need to have emails going to your entire patient base. You need to be talking to referral sources and let them know how you're preparing and helping your patients have a safe experience in your office. You need to be doing stuff like that. Okay, all right, so revenue generating activities, that's the first thing you need to focus on. The second thing you need to focus on is guarding your cash flow. The number one reason why businesses go out of business is cash flow problems. So you need to guard your cash flow. What's coming in, what's going out? Now, I can probably do 10 podcast episodes on this, but let me try and keep it simple. What you have to, I mean, you literally have to pull out pen and paper and maybe have a meeting with somebody else so you can brainstorm and look at how is money going to come in in this chaos? What are the areas where money won't come in? What are the sources of revenue in this business that we can beef up in the midst of this? You need to look at how is money coming in? Okay? And the second part of it is money going out. So you literally need to go, like, we don't need this anymore, let's get rid of it. Or this is actually costing us money rather than making it, let's get rid of it. This we do in person, but we can now do it virtual for like a third of the price. Let's get rid of it. You need to look at your cash flow. Okay? Money coming in, money going out, money coming in, money going out. You can't leave that to chance. You need to know what's going on in your bank account. You need to know, you know, what those sources of revenue are looking like. And you need to adapt. Okay, all right, so that's that piece. All right. The third thing you need to focus on, and this is so cool, you know, sometimes people are like, you know, how many streams of income do you have? And they name all of that. But within your business, you can have multiple streams of income. So if one stream of income is affected, you have others that can kind of be a buffer. All right, and let me give you a few examples just to think, all right, I'm throwing these out and then you'll go develop the thought and take it. You know, take it and take it all the way to the bank. Because you worked It. Okay, let's say you had an online business, okay? That's your thing. And maybe you had one offering that was digital, an ebook or a course or something like that. But you have your division where you have your digital products, but you can also have physical products, right? You can also have merchandise to go with your digital products. For instance, there's a. There's this podcast is the Entre MD podcast. And I can have a whole merch department. I can have T shirts and I can have, you know, mugs, and I can have little quotes that you can put on your desk and all this stuff. And that's my physical store. It's all merchandise that goes with a podcast. And that could be a. A total different division, right, of the Entre MD brand. So you have that. If you do those kind of things and you're an online business, you can also have affiliate marketing as a whole thing. There are people who literally make six figures every year just from affiliate marketing. And I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail, but really what it is, is you're recommending somebody else's product. And for, you know, everybody who clicks on your unique link to buy, they can get. And you can get anywhere from 10% to 30% of the price of that thing you recommended. And that's affiliate marketing. So that's another division. Okay, so I'm not going to go into details, but I want you to kind of get the concept. Okay, so this is one online business, right? You have digital products, you have physical products, you have affiliate marketing, you can even have a membership. You have different things. So if something happened and people say, oh, we're no longer shipping stuff, you still have these other aspects going on. If someone says, oh, we're no longer letting you recommend products and you can't do affiliate marketing anymore, you still have all these other divisions, right? So you have multiple streams of income within one business. All right, let's think about something where, you know, a lot of people own practices or they work in practices. And there are many ways you can bring money in. One of them is what everybody does, which is the patient visits. So, you know, they're sick, they come in, or they need a procedure, they come in and. And that's it. But what of other things? What about telemedicine? Right? They don't. You can set that up where it's a different cost center on its own. So if something happened and patients could no longer physically come in, could you have a whole other division where you can see Patients virtually and still keep the revenue coming in. Right. What if you could offer other services? Think about it. Okay, so at the time of this recording, the specific chaotic situation we're in is that there's a COVID 19 pandemic, but that doesn't stop people from having babies. Do you think a mom will pay for house calls so she doesn't have to take her newborn baby into a doctor's office? I bet you a lot of people will pay for that. So that's a different division. That could be a different division in a practice if you're a pediatrician or not. You know, ear piercing. Yeah. There are many people who don't want to go to the mall or go to the tattoo parlor and they'd love to do it with the doctor. That could be another division. And there's esthetics and there's all kinds of things. But it's the concept I want you to get. How can you create multiple streams of income within the business that you currently own? Okay? That's what the more successful people will do. Because you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, okay? So some people are going to be focusing on social media, on the news, on hysteria, on worst case scenarios where they're a player, okay? Like, this is what happened and it happened to me. But you're not going to do that, okay? You're going to focus on revenue generating activities, okay? You're going to be calm because you listened to the last episode and you did what we talked about there, and you're going to focus on revenue generating activities. You're going to focus on how to guard your cash flow, and you're going to focus on creating multiple streams of income within your business. All right? And if you will do this, one is that you won't have such a horrible time. But the second thing is that your business will thrive in spite of the pandemic, in spite of the chaos, okay? No matter where the chaos is, it will survive in spite of it. Not just survive, but thrive, okay? Every time you spend an hour focusing on the chaos, you have lost an hour you could have used to propel your business forward. And you're never gonna get that hour back. And just because that sounds so cool and so profound, I'm going to say it again, okay? Maybe you're driving and you can't just like, hey, I need to listen to that again. Every time you spend an hour focusing on the chaos, you have lost an hour you could have used to propel your business forward. And you'll never get it back again. So don't be distracted by the chaos. Keep your eyes on what you should be focusing on. Okay? So I trust that this was super helpful. I came out here to serve, to keep you encouraged, inspired, motivated, and empowered to thrive in the midst of chaos. And I wanna invite you again to be a HOPE ambassador. Share the word, spread the episode. You know, let's get people on the right track and get them off the chaos train. Cause it's just. We just need to be off it. Okay, again, as I said in the last episode, if you figure like, okay, this is great, but I really do need help. I really do need coaching. Whether it's private coaching or group coaching, feel free to reach out to me. I realize these are just times, and I want to be available for everyone as much as I can. And you can reach out. The email is Dr. Unadru n auntremd.com don't do this alone. Okay? So, yes, these are chaotic times, but they're also times of unprecedented opportunity. And I want you to come out on the right side after all of this, and we can all. We can all celebrate together. Okay? So again, if you're on the front lines, thank you so much for your service, for what you're doing. If there's any way we can support, let us know. And thank you again for listening to the Entre MD podcast. And I will see you next week.

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.