#227 Who’s Got Our Back? Building Community and Autonomy in a Changing Medical Landscape

Hey, everyone. Hope you've had another great week. This week we're going to be talking about a topic that's close to my heart. It's been part of my journey. It's all about the idea of who has our back throughout this entire process. Does it feel like sometimes you're floating in your own world or seems like medicine is changing and it seems like no one is there to support us or is looking out for us? That can be a hard thing to swallow. So this week we want to talk about that concept and ultimately how to find our way out of that and figure out a way that we can thrive through all of that adversity. So stay tuned. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe. Now let's get on with the show. Okay, so let me tell you where I'm at today. I haven't actually practiced clinically for a couple of years. There were some things that changed at work where I went from a great situation, being in control of my hours and time, and once again, they came back to me and tried to put restrictions in terms of the number of nights, weekends. And I was in a fortunate situation where I was able to walk away. I told myself I was taking some time off. The time off started with a couple months, then it became longer, and now we're here a couple years later, and I'm wondering if and when I will go back. Now, don't get me wrong, I loved my job as a physician. It's something that I've always built towards my whole life I had, you know, I always felt so blessed and so much gratitude about having the best job in the world. I'm an OB anesthesiologist. And the opportunity to impact people and be there at such an amazing part of people's life and their journey. Like, how many other people can say they do that? I have some friends at business school or that are part of hedge funds in that business world. And of course they're making a ton of money. They're also feeling burnt out, by the way. But when I talk to them about how much they enjoy their jobs, very few people actually say they love their jobs. And they. And it's not because it's tough or it's grueling for many of them. They feel like it doesn't have much purpose. And because that purpose is missing, they don't get a lot of fulfillment from it. And even though they have money and all of that. They don't have what I think is most important in life, which is that feeling of happiness and fulfillment. I think that when you look at our jobs as physician, if you take away all of the bureaucracy and everything that goes along with that, when you look at the actual job of helping people, especially when it's a very vulnerable time in their lives and making an impact and creating and feeling like we've done something, I think there's so much satisfaction in that. I think a lot of people don't even have that opportunity to feel that in their profession. It's just that the landscape of being a doctor has changed so much over the past 20, 30, 40 years. And I don't have to tell you all this. I think you all know it. Whether you're a resident or you've been newly minted attending, or you've been out for several years running your own private practice, you know, the landscape has changed. You know, only in the last 10 to 20 years have we changed from being more independent, owning our own practices, having more autonomy, to a place where most of us are now employed. And it feels like there's a ton of admin or different people telling us how to perform our job, what to do. And it feels like somewhat we get slapped in place and put back in line if we don't do what they tell us to do. And I feel like the outside world is slowly starting to understand that concept. I was at lunch with a friend the other day, and he's not in medicine, doesn't have any family in medicine, and he was telling me, oh, I've heard that doctors and physicians are not happy today. It sounds like the landscape and the career for you guys, a lot of people being burnt out or people want to change, and people don't want to be a physician as much. And that's why they're creating all these other streams of income and doing all these things. And I said, absolutely, now you're starting to get it. And in some ways, it kind of felt good to feel validated, mean that now other people are seeing physicians not as just people who make a lot of money, live the perfect life. They're seeing that. They understand there's some challenges in medicine today. And we all know that. We've heard about burnout, moral injury, all of that. And all of that comes from this idea that we don't have much autonomy anymore. We don't have the ability to decide what's the best care for our patients. We don't have control over our time and how to marry all that together to create a person who you know, can take care of people and live a good life and be happy and be fulfilled. But overall, I'm an optimistic guy. So in spite of that, I feel that it's important to acknowledge where we're at. But I think it's important to look at what the future is.

Hey, what's up everyone? Just want to ask you a quick question. Are you ready to take your medical career beyond the traditional boundaries of medicine and amplify your impact?

Well, I want to tell you about.

The Leverage and growth accelerator community. Just so you know, we created this exclusive community just for physicians like you who want to expand their identities without giving up their doctor identities. It's an add on, it's not a replacement. When we hosted our first Leverage of Growth summit, I know many of you have been part of that. We realized that so many doctors were inspired by the what and why of entrepreneurship, but needed help with the how and when. And that's why we created this community called Leverage a Growth Accelerator. To help doctors learn how to start, grow or scale a thriving business and connect with like minded individuals who also want to make a positive contribution to the world. Within this community, you're going to experience a life of greater fulfillment. It's really a powerful antidote to burnout where you can leverage your medical degree for new opportunities and take command of your time and schedule so you can invest in your family's future while enjoying today. In the Leveraging Growth accelerator, you can have access to educational materials, you can have insights from expert speakers, small group coaching, and most importantly, you're going to have community support to help you realize your untapped potential in 2024 and beyond. And we're so confident in the transformative power of this members only community that we're offering the first 30 days for free. If you're interested. I want you to take advantage of this. This window of opportunity is not going to last forever. So go now to lgacommunity.com again that's lgacommunity.com if you're ready to take your medical career to the next level, make a profound impact in the world and do it together with with other like minded people. It's time to join us.

We can't wait to see you inside. There's a famous author, his name is Ryan Holiday, who happens to be the keyNote speaker at PIMDCON this year, 2024, who's written so many books on this type of subject and one of his favorite books is this book called the Obstacle is the Way. And there's no doubt that many of us probably feel an obstacle in our lives. You can probably think about what that obstacle is for you. Something that's small, something that's big, likely in the practice of medicine there is some obstacle there that's standing in your way. But he says that is part of the path and part of the journey to getting what you want to getting a more fulfilled life. If you can see it as just another step in the journey and figuring out how to get past that. And I can't tell people what to do, but I can only tell people what's worked in my life. Number one, I've surrounded myself with a supportive network of physicians, non physicians, who I can turn to for support. Especially when there's some sort of mental burden or help having some challenges financially or even just trying to decide what to do with my life. It's nice to rely on the wisdom of others who have been there or maybe a step ahead or can see things a little bit more objectively than you that are in the moment. They create a non judgment. The goal is to find some sort of non judgmental environment or culture where you can talk about these things, share your concerns and express those. Not feel like you're going to get judged, but get great advice, get great mentorship and help you figure out a way to get past all that. The other thing that's really helped me is to find places where I do have control. If there's one area of your life where you don't have a lot of control, but you have another area where you do feel in control maybe and you can focus on that. It makes you feel at least like there's some level of self autonomy that you can advocate for yourself, that you can make decisions which will impact your future, your family's future, and things can move in the right direction. The way that I've done that my own life is in the area of finances. I may not be able to tell the people at work or admin how I want to run my schedule and or how I want to practice necessarily. But if I can control the financial aspect, then I felt like I can make decisions that were best for me and my family. And that's why I started diving into multiple streams of income, Whether it was real estate, building businesses. It wasn't just to make more money. Of course, that's a nice byproduct of that. But it was really about feeling like I have some autonomy and feeling Like I have some control, feeling that I could advocate for myself when things aren't the way I want. Ultimately, that led to a situation at work where I had to make a decision and I was able to advocate on behalf of myself. And that was only possible because I had a financial foundation and that came from all these other type of investments. That's why we talk about it so much on this podcast in our communities and our conferences at pimdcon, all of that. And I absolutely believe those two things that I've been able to build into my life of really strong community and finding autonomy in the area of finance, those two things are why I talk about those things so much. That's dramatically changed my outlook my day to day. Even if I get frustrated over something that was at work or anything like that, I knew in the end that I was doing it because I chose to. I was doing it not because I had to, but because I got to do it, meaning that I had the opportunity to do it. And so in the bad moments, again, you can shift that perspective. And that changed everything for me. And there's no doubt that medical landscape is changing and I believe that things are not moving in our favor. But that doesn't mean that we can't make an amazing situation out of what we have. At the end of the day, let's remember that we still help people, that we're able to use a skill set that we learn to impact lives to make a change in our community. Now if we compare that with all the other things that give us more fulfillment in life, that creates this whole self Physician, if you can have multiple identities, you can carry all that and really address that whole wellbeing side. And at the end of the day, again, we're overall chasing, I believe I'm chasing is that feeling of happiness, of fulfillment, of purpose, of meaning. And all of that's been a journey for me, but I feel like this path has worked well for me. I don't know what's worked for you. I hope in some ways sharing this experience helps you on your journey, whatever that is. By the way, there are so many great ways to connect in a community if you don't have one already. We have a ton of online communities that we've built, one's called Leverage and Growth Accelerator. You can go to lgacommunity.com it's for a lot of physician entrepreneurs, people who are like minded, people who are trying to improve their businesses and their practices to get together in that nonjudgmental, safe space. To share and connect and support each other in this whole changing role of physician, we, whatever that is today. Please check that out. And again, if you love the in person experience particularly I highly encourage you to check out pimdcon, which is our Physician Real Estate Entrepreneurship Conference. New this year we've got a new Thrive Track, which is our CME track that's all about transforming healthcare through resilience, innovation, vision and empowerment. I'm excited that we are able to implement that. This year we have over 30 speakers. We're gonna have anywhere between 400 and 500 people. They're alive to support each other and create an amazing culture between all of us. You're going to get workshops, coaching sessions, and most importantly, you're going to connect with other people that are like minded. By the way, you better get your tickets soon. We're close to selling out. Hope to see you there. Hope you've enjoyed this episode and we'll see you again next week. Thanks everyone. Let's talk soon. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app you're listening to us in. And if you haven't already, be sure to hit subscribe. Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. Learn more at our website passiveincomemd.com thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.