Is it Possible to Have Work-Life Balance as a Doctor? | The Role of Personal Boundaries

Hey, are you a doctor? Do you wonder if it's ever possible that you can have a good work-life balance? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. All right, so let's talk about work-life balance as a doctor. Yeah, I know you just laughed. I get it. I understand. You know, here's a little bit of a secret though. Doctors are not the only ones that struggle with work-life balance. In fact, most high achievers, people that are driven to be successful, that are excellent at their craft, we all struggle with this fact. So what I wanna do today is I'm gonna give you a couple of key things that we teach our clients of how to handle work-life balance. The first thing is, is you need to understand is everything that you've been taught about what it takes to become successful and everything that you learned in med school, residency, and your entire life as a doctor is actually structured so that you are stayed out of balance. And I believe that part of that is actually done by the industry and the insurance industry so that, quite frankly, you don't have time to think about making any other choices. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to give you a couple of key things that my doctors do in order to regain work-life balance. Okay, so the first thing is, let's say that you are insurance— you're an insurance provider. Here's what a schedule looks like for you. You have 30 clients or 30 new patients a day, plus a couple follow-ups. By the end of the day, you're probably seeing 50, 60 patients. And you're doing that 4, 5 days a week. Then you go home at night and you have to do all your charting, or you do it on the weekend. So you really don't feel like you get any time. All right, here's the first thing you do. Go through all of your insurance providers and cut the bottom 20%. Yep, that's exactly what I just said. You're gonna cut the bottom 20% of your insurance providers, the ones that don't pay you, that send you denial letters, That treat you like garbage and make you run through hoops to get paid the money that you richly deserve, right? So let's just get rid of the people that are the bad actors. I know, worried about your patients. Well, what's going to happen to them? Well, you've got to maintain, you've got to create boundaries in your life. Okay, so that's the second thing is you have to learn how to create boundaries. Hey, I'm Matthew Gillogly and I'm a maverick. Well, what is a maverick? A Maverick goes against the grain. We find our own way. And if you're sick and tired of being pushed around by the insurance companies, come join us. We'll show you the way out, and you'll love medicine again. Now, when somebody starts to come to work with us and we start transitioning them from insurance and just doing cash one day a week, what we do is we tell them, take Do exactly that. One day a week, all you do is work on the cash side of your practice. Okay? So let's say you're gonna say, all right, I'm gonna do nothing but cash patients and procedures. I'm gonna do those, say, on Thursdays. Then don't let any insurance patients fill that gap. Even if you're slower that day, don't build— don't put any insurance patients in. Do not let your staff say, well, Mrs. Smith could only come in and see you on Thursday, so we just snuck her in. Don't let them do it. You have to create boundaries, okay? Because for you to create this cash practice or a hybrid practice, you have to create space, not just in your calendar but in your head up here, so that you have the space to be able to do the things and focus on the things that are going to actually pay you back in the long term, okay? So one, we're going to go and we're going to get rid of the bottom 20— performing 20% of the insurance providers. 2, we're going to create a boundary And you're going to have one day a week. And if you're already doing one day a week, then make it two days a week that all you're doing is doing cash-based services. Now the third thing that we're going to do, we're going to create a personal boundary. This is going to sound really crazy to you, but what I want you to do is I want you to take one day a week, make it a Sunday if you want, make it a Saturday, I don't care what it is. Create one day a week that is just for you. No work, no reading stuff. No doing charts, none of it. One day a week where it's just for you. Okay? This is gonna create more space. And here's why we're doing all of this so that you have a— you can create, uh, more of a work-life balance, is that you actually need time to detox from the stress of an insurance practice. You are going so hard for so many hours, and you're doing it day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Many of you really haven't been able to take a sufficient breather for 20 years, and you're getting to that point where you're reaching the exhaustion level. And when you can take one day a week that is just for you, the burnout levels will decrease, the stress will decrease, and you'll start to get a lot more headspace in your life where you can actually start to think about things other than all the other stuff that goes with running an insurance practice. Right? So again, you want to get rid of the bottom 20% of your insurance providers. The second thing I want you to do is I want you to block a day a week for doing cash services. Again, just one day a week for doing cash services. The third thing I want you to do is I want you to create one day a week that is just for you. Now you're saying, okay, Matt, but I'm married, I've got kids. Fine, take the phone and set it in the glove compartment unless you're on call, obviously, but take the phone I actually have clients that have a separate phone that is just for personal and one that's for business. You can create— there's tools that you can put on your phone to have it kind of split in half, if you will. There's all kinds of things that you can do, but the bottom line is, is you have to create the boundaries and you have to create the space, or you're never, ever, ever going to be able to get free. Okay, now here's the next radical one. You're going to notice that all of these are built around getting time and space for you. Now, before I share this next one with you, I want to teach a concept to you. And this concept is based on science, and it's called the Pareto principle. Now, the Pareto principle was discovered in the early 20th century by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. And what he noticed was that he was out in his garden and he noticed that in the sunflower head, the head of a sunflower, he noticed that 80% of the seeds were in 20% of the surface. He noticed that 20% of the pea pods created 80% of the peas, right? And so he noticed that this thing was in nature. Well, the thing is, is that when we try to violate nature, things don't go very well for us. When we try to violate science, things don't go well for us. And so in the 80/20 principle, what we know is that 20% of our efforts create 80% of our outcome. Now think about that. This is a scientific nature principle that if you violate, It doesn't work. Now, how do we know that if we violate it, it doesn't work? Simple. Communism. There's a reason why communism doesn't work. Now, on paper, it sounds great. We're going to take all the wealth, we're going to redistribute it to everybody, and everybody's going to have equal. Guess what? 20% of the people wind up controlling 80% of the wealth anyway. And in some of those cases, it's 1% control 99%. So you can't violate nature. If you violate nature, nature comes back and it smacks you upside the head, and it's not pretty. So I want you to use science when it comes to getting control back of your life, of creating space. So this getting rid of the 20% of your underperformers, now what we've done is we've created more space. Creating a day, one day a week, where you can focus on just working with cash patients, that's an 80/20 principle. Creating one day a week where you have all this time to yourself, that's an 80/20 principle. All of this is designed that we're going to create just little slivers that's going to give us a lot more production and a lot more positive outcome and positive output. Okay, so then we start to apply this to everything that we do in business. Okay, now if you look at your business and we're again we're sitting here and we're talking about having good work-life balance, it's it's impossible. To just say, I'm going to start having good work-life balance. I want you to use science and nature to create more work-life balance. And it's fantastic when you do it. So now let's take that 80/20 principle and let's apply that to your entire schedule. Watch how this works. If you continually look at your schedule and you start to look at it through the lens of who are the 20% that generate 80% of the income for my practice. And you might sit there and think, ah, come on, Matt, all insurance providers are the same. No, they're not. I have clients that have done this and they've gone through and they've fired over 60% of their insurance providers in the span of 90 days. And guess what? Their business continues to run and they have more time to take care of the great patients and they have more time for themselves. Okay. So we're going to continually use this, and we call it the method of pruning. That's what this is, is I'm going to go back to science and nature. Now here's an interesting thing. I am an investor, believe it or not, in a winery. It's called Autonomy, actually Kelly Vineyards, and he creates a wine called Autonomy Wine. You can actually see the little thing behind me there. And here's what's interesting. So I was out in Napa at the vineyard, and Gene Kelly is taking me through— taking us through the vineyard. And you know what they do 3 times a year is they go through the vines and they drop 1/3 of the fruit 3 times a year. And I'm like, well, can't you take that and use that fruit? What do you do with the fruit? He goes, you can't do anything with it. You just cut it, you drop it, and you just leave it in the ground and it goes back into the ground. It's you don't make jams or jellies out of it? He goes, nope, can't use it for anything. We do it 3 times a year where we go through and we cut and get rid of 1/3 of the fruit. We drop fruit 2 to 3 times a year. And at the end, what happens is we wind up with these really incredibly robust grapes that make great wine. Now, what's really cool, at the time of this recording, in about 2 weeks, I get my 60 bottles of wine from the vineyard. I'm really excited for it. Um, and some of my special clients will get A bottle of wine for me. But the thing is, is that you have to do the exact same thing in your business. This is how you create space. This is how you have a good work-life balance. You start to go through, you use that same philosophy, this 80/20 principle, and you go through and you cut the underperforming fruit in your business. That allows space for the fruit to blossom. That's going to give you the best harvest and the best output and the best outcome. Okay, so that's how you do it. That's how you go through and you create a good work-life balance. It's not about saying I've got to be more disciplined, I've got to be better. It's about using nature. It's about using science to get the result that you want. And it comes from following the same concept that they use in vineyards, the same concept created by Vilfredo Pareto. The Italian economist, based on the laws and the science of 80/20. Continually find the things, the 20% that are not contributing to the 80%, cut them. You'll notice that you have more time, more space, and you'll have more time and more space to create a profitable cash practice and tell the insurance companies to take a hike. All right, you want some more great insights of how to get more great work-life balance? I'll tell you what, that was just one And if you want insight, I've got lots of them in my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Practice, and it's yours for free. Just follow the link that you're seeing pointed or somewhere on this video. It'll take you right to the page. You can get the book for absolutely free. And this book right here has all kinds of great information that's gonna give you more work-life balance so that you can tell the insurance companies to take a hike and leave you alone. So get the book, follow the link that's on here, and we'll talk to you soon.