#34: How I Became Brave Enough: My First Steps as an Entrepreneur feat. Sasha Shillcutt, MD, MS

Foreign.

Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. I'm your host, Peter Kim. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe so I can bring it to you every week. Now let's get on with the show.

Hey, everyone.

Now we have Dr. Sasha Shilcutt, and I'm so excited to bring her to you. She's well known to so many people in this community as not only a cardiac anesthesiologist, but also a mother and author of a new book called Upgrading Grace. She is a speaker, a coach, a conference maker, everything. And it's hard to define her in just one sentence here, but we're going to find out more about her story, how she got to be where she is, and also she is the founder of an amazing website called Become Brave Enough. How you doing, Sasha? How you doing?

I'm good. How are you? Thanks for having me today.

Thanks for being here. I know you're a busy, busy woman, so I appreciate your time. Can you tell people, just right off the bat, tell people what Become Brave Enough is and what that means to people out there?

It's a central source for professional women to invest in themselves. You know, so often we invest in everyone else and we take care of everyone else, but not our. We kind of lack our own personal development. And that's what Brave Enough is about. It's just a really. It's kind of like a wiki for women who maybe need a class or they need something inspirational to read or they need to connect with a community. It's all there.

That's awesome. My wife happens to be a part of it, and she absolutely loves it. So I recommend it to everybody out there. But, you know, people see where you're at right now while people forget that at some point, you know, you were in medical school, you were in residency, and you kind of came up along this path. I'm curious about that part. You're cardiac anesthesiologist, so obviously you went through a ton of training. You did fellowship training. Like, when did this all start for you? This kind of whole transition from physician to not physician, entrepreneur and all these things.

Like, you, I, you know, had a very traditional medical school route and went into residency and went into academics and thought that that was going to be my entire career. And about five or six years ago, I found myself in a really bad place professionally. And personally, if you looked at me on paper, you would think that I was very successful. I had an NIH Grant. I was speaking all over the country. I was publishing, but I was really isolated as a woman in medicine. And I was personally just struggling to get through every day raising children. I would go to work and I would feel like I was failing at work, and I would come home and felt feel like I was failing at home. So, you know, they say you create the business that you need. And I did that. I just started very small. I started a group that I needed. I realized after being burned out that I really had a whole side of me like, that I like to write, I like to be creative. I like to connect with other women that I just had let go of. Like, there was no. I was not. I was succeeding, but I was not succeeding as authentically Sasha. And so I was miserable. And I started a group that grew on Facebook called Style md and then I would write things in that group. And then friends of mine that were outside of medicine would say, well, we want to hear what you're writing. And I was like, well, how do I blend this, really, which was just blogging at that point with my academic life? Because those two things felt like oil and water. And everyone knew me nationally. I had a reputation as a cardiac anesthesiologist involved in several professional societies. So I didn't know how. It was like I was hiding this whole side of myself that was actually really authentically me. So at that point, I recognized, you know, I actually need to really think about what this is, because it's been life saving to me to connect with other women and to express this kind of creative side of myself. But it has to materialize into something because it was taking so much of my time. So at that point, I decided to launch a business, which I had no idea how to be an entrepreneur. I had no idea about a business. I literally went to the bank and was like, how do I open up a business account? And I figured, you know, okay, if I can get people off bypass, I can start a business. This is literally what I would tell myself every day. Like, I had a lot of imposter syndrome, though here I was really doubtful that I knew how to do this. And what helped me the most, honestly, was I had two friends who were not in medicine who are entrepreneurs, and they would say, why do you think you can't do this? So weird that you, like, look what you do every day. Like, look at the crazy things you do every day in your real job. Why do you think you can't own a business? So I started the blog. I started a Conference because the women in the group were begging me to put on a conference. And I had done CME conferences for cardiac anesthesia, so I knew how to do that. But that conference kind of that first go around, that's really where I learned what it was like to be an entrepreneur and the responsibility. And it also increased my confidence in myself, in my business skills that I could do this. Because I think that there's, as you know, and I love the work that you do where you're empowering physicians to think about their own finances and their own capabilities outside of medicine. We don't learn this. I mean, this is nothing we learn in medical school. And I think that medicine is such a straight path that, like, if you veer off it a little bit, the feedback that you get is something's wrong with you. Like you're either displeased with medicine, which is not my case. I love medicine. Or you're looking for something or you're struggling. But the reality is that I just had this whole other side of me that until I fulfilled that role, that creative side of myself, that connective, that community builder, I wasn't happy in medicine. Now I am very happy in my job where I take care of patients, because I am able to have this, which is really my passion. So that is probably a very long answer to your question.

No, that's amazing. I mean, you took us from 0 to 100 right there, all in a few minutes. It's an amazing story. I kind of want to start from the beginning there where you said, all right, you started a group and you said, was that stylemd that you're talking about there?

Yeah.

What was that? And why did you start? How did you know how to start it and that sort of thing.

So the truth of the matter is I was really lonely. I mean, I was really lonely. Like, I would go to work and then I would go home. And I remember having a conversation with a woman that was a couple, couple decades older than me at my work. And I said to her how I just felt really like alone in my life. And she said to me, you know, you are mid early career woman, you are raising kids. You don't, this isn't the time to have friends. And I remember thinking like, but I need friends. Like, I need somebody to talk to about my everyday struggles. And I didn't have friends, but I had really lost touch with them because I was, you know, becoming a physician, which leaves little time to have any friends. So I started a text group. Believe it or not, I Literally sent out a bat signal. And I said, do you want to be my friend to nine women doctors? And they were like, well, sure, we'll be your friend. Like, I knew them professionally, but not really personally. And I said, you know, I just want us. I just want a safe place where I can ask you, like, hey, is this lipstick good to. Or, how do I negotiate for this raise? Or, how do I tell my nanny that I need her to do X, Y, and Z without offending her? And so we started a text group. And this text group became a really, like, busy thing in my life. And if I wouldn't text in the group, people, the women would be like, where are you today? What's. We're waiting for our inspiration, you know? And so my husband actually was like, I don't know what's going on in your phone, but you have to get off of this text group, and you need to, like, make a group or something on Facebook. And I was like, okay. And I had a partner, and he had a fantasy football group, like, on Facebook, like, this secret group. And he's like, just make a group. And I was like, how do I do that? I don't even know how to do that. So I literally started this group with 10 people, and I told everybody, we can add two people. So we grew from 30, and then it grew, and now there's about 11,000 women in the group. And that is a source of such community and support. I mean, it is a powerful place. Women help each other through so many things in that group. They help each other through job changes, through gender discrimination, through divorce, through, like, celebrations. I mean. I mean, Vicki, obviously, your wife is in it. She can tell you there's just so much encouragement and community there. And I think that was really kind of my source of confidence to build my business.

That's awesome. At one point, did you feel as that thing, you know, as that group continued to grow and you saw the impact that it was making? Like, you started figuring out again. You said you started a conference, you started creating a blog out of that. At what point did you decide to make it into something a little bit more formal outside of a Facebook group? And then how did you again know how to make that transition?

Great questions. So I knew that I wanted to. There were things that were coming up in the group that needed answers and that needed help. Like, for example, a lot of women were like, how do I negotiate for a raise? How do I overcome this. This gender issue in the workplace? And I started looking at it very much Like, I looked at my research in my real job and I thought, you know, when I want to answer a question and do research, I need funding. I go out and apply for grants and I need funding to do this, like, basically very simple business process. Like, I need funds to put on a conference to help these women answer these questions. I need it. I need funds to put on a course for women that can help them succeed. Like, I knew this was my, and there was conflict because I thought, okay, I don't want to look like I'm monetizing something. But then I realized, like, we don't ever have that conflict when we think about answering or doing a research project. Right? Like, we got it, we got you. If you want to answer questions, clinical questions, you have to study something and you need funding to do that. It's really no difference in building a business to help other people. You have to have the funding. So I started, I thought, okay, I'm going to put on a conference. And I basically set aside how much money I could invest personally and how I knew, like my first year I just wanted to break, I didn't want to lose money. So I wanted to get back all the money I invested. And I really set it very low, like 100 people. I thought if I can get 100 women at a conference, I will be able to buy back the investment. And more than anything, I will get to, it's, I'm going to look at this as my pilot study. So I'm going to self invest into this pilot conference and see how it works. And you know, nobody wanted to sign on as far as any companies or funding because they're like, we don't even know who you are. Like, you do cardiac anesthesia. Why would we give you any, why would we sponsor this? So I mean, I self funded the first conference and then, but, but I, I, I basically set the budget for a hundred and I had 200 women sign up the first day. So I knew that I could fund, I knew I could fund the conference basically. Um, and then, you know, just smart business practices. I, I saw this as something that I didn't need to live on because I had a job. So I was going to invest in the company, in the future of the company with anything, any profit I made from the conference in the next year to have another conference because, you know, you have to have, I mean, I'm not like an organization with a million dollars in the bank that if they, you know, hit or miss that this conference this year at their annual conference. Oh, well, you know, so they dip into the reserves. Like, this was just me. So, I mean, I learned a lot. I'm still learning. I'm still learning a lot. I would say that I'm trying to answer. I keep it very simple. I'm like, if I see a problem, I'm trying to answer that with a solution that allows me to help women. And I'm staying in my lane. I think it's really easy to kind of go out and when you're starting out and be like, oh, I gotta get on this train and this person wants to work with me. And I just keep it very, like, straightforward so that I. I have a good business practice, basically.

I mean, how did you figure out, like, there's no roadmap for this, right? So, like, when you're coming up with these ideas, like, are you bouncing it off different people? Do you have mentors in the space? Are you reading certain. Are there certain resources that you're using or is this kind of just, you know, you are just trying the best you can and figuring it out, Trial and error type thing, or.

Yeah.

How are you navigating this?

Well, I think the first thing to do is I've learned that, you know, nobody goes into the operating room or nobody goes into the clinical space and is like, I'm going to just try this new surgery today. No, you prepare. Somebody else somewhere has done it before. And so I kind of approached building a business like I do practicing anesthesia, like, if I've never floated the coronary sinus catheter from the right ij. I'm not just going to walk in the OR and be like, oh, today I'm going to do this. I'm going to call somebody, I'm going to look it up, I'm going to read about it. So I definitely reached out to several people who I think are really good business leaders and ask them questions. I asked so many questions the first two years, I probably had 20 coffee dates with people that I just cold called and said, look, I'm starting a business. I know you have a business. Can you teach me one thing? And I have this notebook that I would write things down and a lot of it is trial and error. But then I also, like, in year two, I hired a business coach for, you know, a period of time to help me scale because I was like, I'm doing everything. And she was like, you know, she basically, like, it was like doing a consult. She was like, oh, my gosh, why are you doing this? Why aren't you Hiring somebody to do that. Why? So she kind of. She did a lot of, you know, help. So I would say it's not like I just figured this out all on my own, but I definitely took ownership of what I was lacking and invested time and energy into asking for expertise or hiring expertise to help me.

Yeah, I think that's a great lesson for anyone. I think that helps you. Like, our time is important. Our time is valuable. It's limited. Especially you. You're a cardiac anesthesiologist. You're a mother. Like, how are you able to balance all these things while running a business? Were you still working full. I mean, I don't even know where you're at right now, but were you working full time and doing all these things as well, or how are you.

Able to balance all that? You know, I definitely. This is the first year that I've ever bought out time out of the operating room. So, like, for the first four years, I did this all nights and weekends. And I think that that really allowed me to, you know, obviously financially keep. Invest in the business. It was really, really hard. I mean, it is hard. It's still hard. I'm not gonna lie and say, like, oh, yeah, I have all these people that work for me. Like, even if you have an intern that works for you, it's. It takes, you know. You know, you gotta train that person. You gotta stay on top of what they're doing. And it's. It's a lot of work. I work hard. I mean, that's just the truth of it. Like, I'm not going to be like, oh, yeah. I just, you know, spend like five or six hours a week on this. But I don't. I spend a lot of time on this, and I work really hard at it. It's something that I'm passionate about. So part of it doesn't feel like work because I love it, so it's easier to do. I mean, I'm sure it's the same with you. Um, but it's not. It's not easy. Like, there's a reason that people start businesses and fail. It's because it takes, like, such persistence. And one of the things I think has helped me is realizing, like, that I have a job in medicine. Like, even though now I'm not. I'm buying time out, so I'm not working less in anesthesia. It is a comfort to know that, like, if this thing goes crazy, like, if this, you know, like right now with. With what we're all experiencing, you know, all of Our businesses are going to face a hit and we're probably all facing a recession. People aren't don't have the money to spend on things that they did two months ago. But I think if you have a good business model and you have good business practices and you don't lose your clinical skills, you're probably going to be okay. Also, it's common sense. You don't go out and buy things that if you don't have the money to buy them or it's the same thing with the business, you don't go out and spend thousands of dollars on marketing if you don't have that. So I think there's a balance to taking that risk. But I'm pretty conservative in my business practices.

No, I think one thing you said earlier on is that you talk to some of your friends who are in the business space and, you know, you were like, hey, I. I'm a physician. I don't know if I can do this as a business and this sort of thing. And I think a lot of people probably feel that way. You know, what have you learned over time now that you've kind of made it along this path? Like, how did your medical degree. Do you feel like that somehow helped you or at least the training going through that? Like, do you think it was an advantage in some way, or has it kind of just really kind of helped you along your journey?

Oh, I think it's definitely advantage. I think that, I mean, if you think about what we do every day and the innovation that it requires to do our jobs every day, we are really good at figuring out how to save people's lives. We can be really good and use those same skill sets to build a business. It's just getting over that imposter syndrome. Like, I have no idea what I'm doing. And I think that, you know, like, if I was going to do a clinical procedure tomorrow and I had read an article of yours that you had done this, I wouldn't feel weird calling you and saying you're an anesthesiologist. I see that you published this paper. How did you do this? Or can you help me? You would probably give me 10 minutes of your time. And I think sometimes we get nervous when we think, well, why is this business person? I don't know this business person. I don't know if they're going to help me. I'm scared to send this email. Just ask. I mean, most people will help you. They'll give you five minutes. If you are very direct in your Questions, you know, I always had, like, three questions that I needed answered, and I didn't waste people's times in the beginning when I needed help. So I didn't, you know, talk about a million things. I would just say, like, can you help me answer these three questions? Or can you point me in the right direction? And people did that for me. They really did. So I try to pay it forward and do the same thing. I think physicians are in a really. I think, number one, we have an expertise, and we have a. Basically, you have a reputation. Just being a physician, that will get you far in the professional world, and it will get you far in the business world. I think that what you're teaching people is so smart because we do need multiple streams of income, and medicine is changing, and especially if you look at how hard we have to work to earn what we do. I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm getting to the point where I'm like, oh, my gosh. I take 24 hours a call, and it takes me, like, two days to recover. So I don't want to be working that hard when I'm. I don't want to be in the hospital doing transplants when I'm 65, you know, so I think it's smart what you're doing.

So what does your life look like today? You mentioned this whole journey of how you started. You didn't. You felt like, you know, you didn't really have friends or connection in the world, in the professional world that you had. You've done this. You built out what you need. Do you feel you've accomplished what you wanted to accomplish from the beginning?

I think I still have some things I definitely want to accomplish. I just wrote my first book, which was a huge accomplishment for me, and. And I'm getting out and talking about that and promoting that right now. And that's been really fun to see what that book has. Has meant to people and the connections that I've made. But I definitely have things on my agenda that I still want to do and achieve, and I'm. I'm really using this kind of downtime right now while we're all staying home to really think about the next five years and plan that out. I'm a big strategist. I think that there's. You know, you could wake up every day and do a million things, and probably 90% of them don't need to be done. So I'm somebody that kind of wakes up every day and needs a plan. I like to Plan ahead. I have a three month kind of plan and then like a three year plan. And I'm. I wish. The one thing that I wish somebody would have told me is like, don't wait for everything to be perfect to launch, because I wasted a lot of time in the beginning. Just wait, wanting everything to be perfect. And the truth is, you know, there's no such thing as a perfect business plan or perfect conference or webinar or course or whatever. You know, you just gotta launch at some point.

Yeah, I wanna ask you about that book because, you know, there are a lot of people that transition and, you know, they wanna kind of get the message out there a little bit better and they wanna kind of use different platforms. Why did you choose to write a book? And how did you even go through that process of writing a book? Like, how did that happen?

It's a challenge to write a book. Well, the good thing is that 99% of authors have a real job. Right. Because you're writing, like, unless you're J.K. rowling, you're not just writing for a living. So if you want to write a book, you can totally do it, number one. Number two, there's two ways to do it. There's don't do it the way that I did, because when I started, I just thought you wrote a book and then you pitched it. But that's not at all what you do. There's something called a book proposal. And there's this. It's almost like writing a grant. There's specific elements that you have to meet, and no publishing house is gonna look at your proposal unless it's in a specific specs. There's great resources out there. There's a really good Harvard Hat's a really good writing course for healthcare professionals. You can self publish. And I almost did that because I had a book written. The problem with self publishing is it's really hard to get a second book published through a publisher. So once you kind of choose that route, you always are going to kind of be on that path, unless your book does amazing, which maybe it will. I went the publishing route and that was a really interesting process. I learned a lot through it. It took me about a year just to write the book proposal. And then lots of rejections. I mean, lots of rejections. And then finally one. Yes, but that's all it takes is one. Yes. You know, so it's been really fun to finally see it come to fruition and see how people are responding to it and just meet people through connections, through networking. In the book.

Well, what's it about? Is it about your journey? Actually, it's funny because we have it right now downstairs on our dining room table, but my wife is ready. I haven't read it yet. Sorry, I'm waiting. I will now, but can you tell us what is it about?

Yeah, so it's. It's a book about basically, all of us in have, you know, both grit times in our life where we have to be gritty, where we have to kind of come out of the dugout, and you have to stand up and be assertive and be authoritative. And all of us also have times where we have to exemplify or give grace to either ourselves or others. When you. When, in my experience, when you're a woman and you are assertive, you kind of get labeled one thing, and if you aren't assertive, you get labeled another thing. So it's really hard oftentimes. And we kind of walk this very marginal kind of path of like, oh, I'm getting backlash for being too assertive. I'm getting backlash for being too nice. So where do I fit in? And really, I think all of us as humans, whether we're a man or a woman, we have to have both of those traits. I mean, we do. And we should embrace the grittiness or the grace side of all of our authentic kind of individual characteristics instead of judging. And I have about 35 women in there from different professions and their stories kind of nestled in. And it's really a workbook and a journey to kind of make you think about different times in your life when perhaps you weren't being authentic and who you really are. And so it's a profession or it's a personal journey, more not about me so much as I want the reader to kind of go through.

Yeah, everyone should definitely check that out. I remember seeing you on TV pitching it and promoting it, and yeah, you look fantastic. And honestly, I think it's something that, like, appeal to all women. Definitely. My wife, as a professional physician mother, going through all the same things you're going through, I know that she relates to it like a ton. So thanks for putting that out. Before we get to our number one tip that we're going to leave with people who want to follow in your footsteps. I mentioned some of the places, but where's the best place that people can reach out to you? Find out about your book, find out about what you're doing, your conferences, website, this kind of thing? Let us know.

You can follow me at become brave enough.com or on any social media platform. I'm pretty active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and. But the probably the best thing is just go to my website and sign up and you'll get my little emails and updates on what's coming out next.

So let's leave people with the number one tip. For someone who says, hey, I really relate to this resonates with me and this is something I'd love to kind of start and begin down this journey. What would you give them?

You know, I would say I always tell myself hard is normal. So starting a business, launching a new product or course or whatever it is is not going to be easy. Hard is normal. That's okay. Don't let the obstructions kind of stop you. You know, I always say every time someone throws an obstruction in my way or I put my own obstruction in my way, I just kind of pause and pivot. And certainly right now when the world is kind of crazy, it's a good time to do that, just to pause and pivot. So hard is normal. Don't give up. Keep pressing through. Everyone has awesome ideas and you just have to think about how you what's your own kind of approach to the problem and how you can make a business out of that.

Well, thanks for your time, thanks for sharing with us and thanks for the impact you're making. Take care and continue the great work.

Thank you.

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, make sure to hit subscribe. Are you part of our community yet? Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. You can join us on our Facebook group PassiveIncome Docs, and you can always learn more at our website, passiveincomemd.com thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.