Dr. Una's Guide to Empowering Healthcare Entrepreneurs

I read a book by Brian Tracy and he said all business skills are learnable. And that was a turning point for me. I was like, wait a minute, I'm a doctor. If there's anything I am very confident at is learning. So if.

Welcome to the podcast, everybody. This is Generations Maryland. I am Dr. Sarah Davis. I am not joined by my co host, Stephanie Davis because she is traveling around Europe having the time of her life, but I do have a fantastic guest that I am super excited about is Dr. Una and she is a board certified pediatrician and the founder of Ivy League Pediatrics outside of Atlanta, Georgia. She has also created the Entre MD Business School podcast and Community and she is the author of this fantastic book that I just finished reading and I loved, loved, loved and just. It's called the Entre MD Method. A proven roadmap for doctors who want to live life and practice medicine on their own terms. So welcome Dr. Oonar.

Thank you so much for having me. This, I've been looking forward to this and I'm so grateful for what you do with your daughter, the stories that you share. And thank you so much for getting a copy of the book. I'm glad you loved it.

Yeah, yeah. And it was really, it was very fortunate I had ordered your book because I was trying to find some books. I'm going to have a medical student rotating with me at the end of June. And I was trying to find financial books, business books related to medicine, and yours came up and so I had ordered it and then your team reached out to me of you wanting to be a guest on the podcast. And I just, I was just so excited. It was so fun to be reading this book, thinking I'm going to get to talk to this woman.

Well, I'm grateful, super grateful.

So will you just kind of give us a little bit of your background, a little bit your story? I'm sure you've told it a hundred thousand times, but for our listeners who haven't heard us, just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Yeah, so I'm Dr. Una. As you had alluded to my story, as far as my medical journey started off in Nigeria, I went to the University of Nigeria. That's where I had my medical training, which was very fascinating because it's the European system. So I went from high school to medical school. I turned 17 in medical school. You can conceptualize that that's crazy. That is crazy. And you know, I really loved it the entire time. People are like, so what do you want to do after you're done with, you know, medical tra. Your medical training. I'm like, I don't know, but I'm very sure I don't want to be a pediatrician. So it is the joke of the century because, you know, obviously I'm a pediatrician now, so, you know, but I was born here. I was born here in the United States. And so once I was done with my medical training, I moved back to the United States, moved to New Jersey, and I had options at this point. My initial choice was I wanted to be an OB gyn. And I was like, I don't know if I can handle the night call for the rest of my life. And I was like, but I, I still want the mommies. And that's how I ended up in pediatrics. So I did my pediatric training in Newark, Beth Israel. Really had the time of my life. It was something that I really enjoyed, but I was very clear that I wouldn't do it again. You know, like the 80 hour work weeks and all of that. But I enjoyed it. And when I graduated, I was like, I'm going to get a job. I'm going to work my job. It's going to be amazing taking care of all the kids. And I remember my very first day at my very first big girl job as an attending. And I saw the patient, made the diagnosis myself, wrote the script, it was all amazing. The buck stopped with me. I remember walking out of the room and it was so anti climatic. I was like, so I just repeat what I did 20 times a day till I'm 70. I'm like, there is something wrong with this equation. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with clinical medicine. But I think my entire training, just like you, like we were going for higher and higher and it's like, and here, now there's a ceiling. You can't go anywhere else. And I remember thinking about like, this is weird. And so I just had a thought. There's more. I don't know, I have no idea what more is, but I want more. And then, you know, after my, almost by the end of my first year, my training, my, my boss at the time was like, you know, here's a, here's a five year contract. And to put this in context, I had just finished residency, which was three years, got married, had been married for three years. So my definition of eternity was three years, right? Like that's, you know, and I was like, yeah, I can't do that. And I'm moving Anyway, so he said, start your practice. I'm like, nobody starts a practice out of residence. Like, what you're saying makes no sense. And in case you missed this ginormous bump here, I'm pregnant. Like, this is the time to start a practice. And he says, you know, the practice will be a baby. Your baby will be a baby. And by the time your practice needs more of your baby won't be a baby anymore. So actually, this is the best time to start. And I will say, ignorance is bliss, because I believed him. And I started thinking that all I had to do is hang the shingle and they will come. Yeah, I hung the shingle. They did not come. And then I realized, wait a minute. You mean I have to do the marketing? I have to tell people about me. I have to build a referral base. I have to hire, fire, build company culture. Oh, I, like, I didn't sign up for this, right? But I already had contracts. I had a lease. I, like, I couldn't get out of it. And so I had to start learning, right? So in the beginning, I was very resistant to it. And I was looking at all these other practices. I'm like, they're doing so well, you know, I. I just don't know any of these things. And it is what it is. And I read a book by Brian Tracy, and he said, all business skills are learnable. And that was a turning point for me. I was like, wait a minute. I'm a doctor. If there's anything I am very competent at is learning. So if.

If.

If all business sk are learnable, I can learn them. And that's when I embraced learning business skills, realizing that nobody's. Nobody's better than me because they have a bigger practice than me or bigger business, or they're doing something I want to do, but I feel I can't. It's a skill. I'm one skill away. I can learn this skill. And so went on to make the practice really successful. Got it to four days a week, you know, seeing patients. And that's when I was like, I had this epiphany in 2016. That medicine as we know it is. It's gone and it's not coming back. And if you don't reinvent yourself and retool yourself, then you're going to be out of luck, you know? And so you think about this was eight years ago, and that's when I started embracing consulting, coaching, speaking, writing, all of those things. And I realized it wasn't going to be bad for just me. But for physicians in general, like, the landscape has changed and we just need to retool ourselves. And so that's when I founded Entre MD and started writing and doing the podcast and launched the Ontremity Business School just to help doctors realize we have such a phenomenal education, but if we could just add business skills to it, then we're back in this place where we have autonomy and we're not victims of burnout, and we can practice the way we want to and we can create time freedom for ourselves. And that's been my mission for the last five or six years.

And you've been doing it. No, it's really wonderful because that's like when the student was saying he wanted to. He wanted to do private practice, he want, you know, when he's done. And I said, well, you know, I want to help teach you that. But I was like, but I need to kind of develop a little bit of a curriculum for him to. To just, you know, where do we even start? It's really. It's pathetic how little training we get on all of this, because, I mean, good Lord, look at all those really complicated rotations we do on all kinds of things. It would only really need to be a very short period of time that we could devote to this, and then we would come out and be ready to launch our businesses. But for whatever reason, that's been completely neglected in medical education.

Yeah. And even in practice, because I get a lot of people who've, you know, been in private practice for a while, and they're like, you know, I know what to do. I'm just going to start mine. Not realizing how removed we are from the equation. Right. Like, what we do is, you know, we get to work, we come to our desk, we put our things away, we log into the computer, sees who's. Who's ready for us, we go see the patients, we send over super bills and all this stuff, and we walk away.

Yeah.

And then magically, every two weeks, money appears in our bank account.

Yeah.

Then we think, oh, I can build a private practice. And it will work. Without marketing. Of course, we think that because we don't realize that there's marketing that goes into that. I don't have to have meetings with the biller. Because we don't realize. Yes, you do. That's the order of your practice.

Like, Right, right. You know that what you just said, you had that in your book, and I highlighted that whole passage, because I think that is so true, is that you. Everything is all teed up for you when you're doing some practice like that, and you think those patients just magically appeared knocking on your door, and, and, and I really do think so many doctors think that they're just like, oh, well, you know, it all revolves around me. They're just here. They're just here to see me. It's like, no, somebody told them about you, and that's how they ended up here. And I really. I think it's. I think you say it just, you know, just what you said. You say it so well, like, you know. Yeah. And then I think you even say it's like that without any sales or marketing, they just think that the paychecks will always keep coming. So. Yeah, yeah, but that's. That's so true. Well, which actually brings me to just a couple of points that you talk about in your book that I wanted to discuss a little more in depth. I mean, one of them is this whole notion that we as doctors think that sales is sleazy, and we bristle at the idea of having to sell ourselves. And I mean, I think we all have that kind of visceral reaction we don't like, you know, And I mean, I think everybody hates that sleazy salesperson. But I think you really say it well, that, you know, sales aren't sleazy. There are sleazy salespeople. But. But selling yourself is just. I mean, that's normal marketing. So what. Yeah, what else do you have to comment about marketing as doctors and how doctors can overcome that visceral reaction?

I think in the book I talk about, we go to a Toyota dealership and the slide, it was just so sleazy and slimy the way we're manipulated into almost guilty us into buying a car. Many people have had that experience. But that's bad selling. That's not selling. Bad selling. And sometimes I would ask people, I say, and I can ask you now, like, you probably have a problem like, or need in your life right now, and you're like, I wish I could just find somebody who can fix this. And I'm happy to pay them and pay them really well to make this problem go away or to make this need, you know, to fulfill this need. The things that we do, they're people who have the problem that it fixes, and they're actively looking for somebody to fix that problem. Right. And so selling is nothing more than me showing up and saying, you know, like, if you have this pain, life can look like this. That's what I do. That is literally so if you think of it in those terms, then selling is actually serving. Selling is actually helping somebody who has a problem find the solution, as opposed to manipulating and convincing somebody who doesn't need what you do to come do it. Right? That's bad selling. And so when we think about it that way, then we're fine with selling. And the truth of the matter is, if we stop to think about it, we're always selling, right? Like the mom with a kid in Walmart who's having a temper tantrum and she's trying to get him to stop that selling, right? The teenager to clean the room. That's selling. Boy likes girl and boy wants to take girl on a date. That's selling, right? Like, we do it. When we bring it to what we do. We are passionate salespeople. As physicians, we will convince a mother to let her child get vaccines, knowing that the child is going to cry, the child may have a fever afterwards, and all of that. We sell that because we know that this is going to help them, right? We have people who be convinced to go get surgery, they're going to be out of work for six weeks, and we convince when I say, because we know they have a pain, they want an outcome, this surge is the middle, and we're able to walk them through that. We know that's not yucky. We know that's not manipulated. We know that is serving at the highest level. When we find someone who doesn't understand, it will take an extra 30 minutes, we'll take another hour to explain it to them, to help them see that, yes, there is some risk, but the benefits, oh, my goodness, massively outweigh the risk that's selling. And so physicians, we've done it for so long. If we can just change the story we have around selling, I recognize bad selling as bad selling, not selling, it'll be so much easier for us to do that. And finally, when you think about it, if I have something that can change the lives of so many people, it's actually unethical and totally not cool, right? To not sell because somebody needs it.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's true. Yeah, that's, you know, I do this concierge medical practice that I've been doing for, let's see, what, 22 years, similar to you? I mean, I started when my kids were three and one and the same thing. You kind of think, well, I mean, there's no time like the present to start that. But when, when new patients come in, I do a consult to explain what it is that I do and what they're paying for. And, and I never. I never try to talk them into it. All I do is explain what it is that I do and then see if that is a good fit. And, you know, for a lot of times when. When you explain it, they're like, oh, yeah, that sounds amazing. But. But, yeah, I never try to talk them into it if they really. If I don't think that they're going to really benefit from it, because then, you know, neither one of us are going to be happy. But, yeah, that's what. When I first started doing it, I was like, oh, you know, I'm not salesy. And then I'm like, I don't have to be salesy.

Totally not required. Not required at all. And, you know, like you said, I'm sure you're, you know, starting this out. You're facing your career where you just want to help people get results. You want to work with people who would value what you do, who are looking for what you do and are willing to pay and all of those things. And so you don't. You're not really looking to convince anybody, because if it's a bad fit, it's a bad fit and are going to create revenue. But your primary driver is not revenue. Your primary driver is impact and helping patients get certain results and having them. Letting them have a better, healthier, longer, more quality life. And so if. If this is somebody who's not going to do the work, doesn't want to do it, doesn't value what you do and all that, you're not necessarily going to have the best time working with them. You know what I mean? So it's not about convincing. Is. Is about putting ourselves out there long enough and loud enough so the people who are looking for what we have can find us. That's really all it is.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's. That, that's totally true. I think that's. And again, I think you just. You say all that so well, and I think so many doctors really, really need to hear that. Well, and so just backing up. Okay, so you had that. You had that moment. You decided you really wanted to do something different. And then how did you really start doing what you're doing now?

Oh, wow. So in the. So to put this in perspective, at the time when I realized I had to retool myself, I was still this super shy, socially awkward, introverted introvert who would not be speaking on stage, would not be speaking on a podcast for any reason. But I remember thinking, if medicine has fundamentally changed. And the way we're doing it is not going to, like, we're going to need to change. I'm thinking it's at this time, 800,000 physicians. This is going to be very ugly. And so my awareness of the magnitude of the problem was big enough that I could dare my insecurities or my shyness or my introversion and still go ahead and do what needed to be done. I didn't have a roadmap. So in the beginning, what I started with, I thought, okay, what could I do? I could be a speaker. I could be all these things. And they think about introvert, speaker. And I'm like, okay. And so it just happened, right? Just happened. This is the way things happen. That there was a training, there was a two day event on becoming a speaker, like a speaker as a career and all that. And I got an email about it. I was like. And it was in Atlanta, where I live. So I was like, let me go check it out. So I go check it out. And I was like, wow. Like, I could, I could do that. Like, I'm going to go up and it's going to be so scary, but I can do this. So at the end of the two days, the, the host of the event says, okay, we have this 10 month speakers mastermind. You guys can join. You guys can join the Mastermind. And the investment for the mastermind is $43,000. I was like, and this Mastermind is laced with gold. Or like, somebody please make it make sense. And I didn't know anything about consulting or like, I was totally oblivious to that industry. So I was like, what in the world? But for some reason, you know, I talked to my husband about, it's like, this is what is going on. This is so crazy. And we're like, but I think I should do it though, because something has to give. So said yes, did that and started that journey of embracing speaking, owning what my message is, all of those kind of things. And that's really when I started doing the YouTube videos. Talking to doctors about what we need to learn, showing up on social media what we need to learn. Um, and that then evolved into I started coaching people one on one. That's where I started from. I was doing it like a hobby, you know. So I had two clients here, three clients there. And then I realized, if I'm going to make a difference, I just need to go all in and make a difference. Like, this is not going to cut it. Because I was treat. I was treating it like, you know, Like a side thing, like a hobby, like something that's nice to do. And for everyone listening, there are things that we have in our hands to do. We never know what it will become, except we give it all that it needs. Like we'll never know. I had no idea that this would bring me to this place. And so that's when I launched my first group program. It was 12 weeks. I was just like, let's learn selling, let's start marketing, let's start owning our messaging and all of those things. So started with that. I had about 30 doctors in the program. Oh my goodness. The results they got were so mind blowing. And I'm thinking at 12 weeks they would know. After 12 weeks you continue like, we're going somewhere. And at the end of 12 weeks everyone's like, okay, this was so great, bye. I'm like, no, that's not how this works. And I was like, that is the last time I'm ever doing a 12 week program for as long as I live. But that was the foundation for the Entrepreneur Business School. Because a year later, you know, I did another program. It was like a nine month program. I kind of tested that out. I figure that doctors need the community, right? Like, so entrepreneurship is not something that is second nature, is very common or whatever. And so I was like, if there's a community of physician entrepreneurs, they could grow that much faster because we mirror our environments, we mirror the people we hang out with. And so I created this nine month program and I made a mistake because I allowed each person have private conversations with me. And so the community never grew because they're like, oh, just ask doctor. I'm like, yeah, but ask the people in the group. Because there's so many specialties, different kinds of businesses, the ideas will be. And nobody, nobody, they didn't talk amongst themselves, they just talked to me. So they're in a group, silent and having all these side conversations with me. So I shut that down. I was like, this, this is not, this is not the way this is supposed to work. And then launched the year long version, which was the entremd Business School. Ultimately in, in July of, in June of 2020, perfect timing, right like in the middle of the pandemic. But launched it then and really built this container where the doctors can get the mentorship. And we use a mentorship model because we don't need 72,000 new books and new certificates. And we've been there, done that. We need to learn enough so we can do right. So the emphasis is more learning to do than learning to get another piece of paper. Because we have a lot of papers, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

We got all the papers.

We got all the papers. And so is really, there's the mentorship, there's the community, which now I got what I wanted because is this magical place where you have doctors who are in private practice, indirect primary, direct primary care, direct specialty care, concierge, speakers, event hosts, all of that. And innovation is not always new things. Innovation is like taking things that work, that are established in one industry and bring it into your own industry. And so it's like this hub where, you know, private practices are learning online marketing principles from the coaches and the coaches. It's like, fantastic. And people are so well connected, they're able to self, you know, refer to each other. Like, half the people there have podcasts. If you want to be a guest there. People like, it's just this magical community. And then one of my superpowers is accountability. So there's a lot of accountability because a lot of times we know what to do. We just, you know, don't do it, you know. Yeah. So we built this container that really allows me serve at the highest level for the people who are like, I want to go all in. And then we have the podcast, which is no fluff. It's. It's like, people are like, why do you do all of that for free? Like, you could charge for the things you teach on your podcast. I'm like, because there's a million physicians. And the only way to shift the culture, the narrative for physicians, is to help 10% of them, at least. If I help 10% and there's that shift, then the whole culture shifts. I'm like, so I'm trying to help 100,000 physicians. I can't do that. Only in the context of the entre in the business school. Right? So there's a podcast, there's a books, there's a live event. And it's all to support doctors and let them understand you're one set of business skills away from the kind of career you dreamed of. Right. Like, because we had. When we went in, we're like, we're. I'm going to help these kind of people. That's why we chose the specialty we chose and all of that. And then to come in the current health care space, the system doesn't allow for that. Like, people are leaving medicine not because of medicine. There are very few people who leave because of medicine. They love helping people is the system. But this is what we need to do. To rise above that. And if we have enough examples, like Dr. Davis, you're, you're a powerful example of what is possible. And you started this whole concierge thing when it was not like, it's not like now when it was super common. Right? Like, so imagine all the people your story, your life has impacted. Imagine if there are 100,000 of you, like different types of businesses and all of that as physicians. Once we see it, we can't unsee it. And once enough of us see it, it's a wrap. We will come for the insurance companies, we will come for big pharma, we will come for all of it. But we can't do it in the state we're in because we're just not empowered, you know?

Yeah, well, I think that's wonderful. And I, you know, and it's, it is, it is very kind of you to kind of give away that free content. That is a lot of work for you to create. But it is helpful to the doctors. It is helpful for potential people who are going to join your business school. Because just like you did the weekend course before you did the 10 month course, you got to have, you know, you got to try before you buy. You need to know at least a little bit of what you're getting into. And so you have to kind of know some of, some of that and then say, oh, hey, I really like what she has to say. I want a lot more of that. So, you know. Okay. Along those lines, though, this is a little bit of a tangent, but have you ever had somebody who joins one of your group and just has like a terrible idea that they're trying to do, a terrible idea for a business that they're really trying to float? And, and if they do, how do you handle that?

Yeah, it's, it's, it's happened. Not the, not sometimes, not quite the idea, the container. A lot of times that's what I get. So we're doctors, we love to help people. So people will come and say, you know, I want to start this kind of, Let me use a practice, for instance. I want to start this kind of practice and I only want to serve the underserved community. And I want to spend an hour, a half with my patients. And I'm like, okay, pause. Okay. Now there is a thing as the math of business, and the math must. Math, okay? So if you say, I want to serve people who can probably pay me a little, and there's nothing wrong with it. Any, any of these models, as long as you play by the game of the model can come to the same number at the end of the day. So if you want to serve people and you want them to pay you little, so let's call it a low ticket type of service for the math to math, you must have high volume. That is the rule of the game. So you can't say low ticket, low volume. That is equal to disaster. It's not going to work. Like, it cannot work. So if you, if you're like, no, I really want to take all the time, I want to have very few clients and all of that, then high ticket, that is the only way that math maths. Right? Like, so sometimes they're like, I want to do underserved. I want to do a lot, but I only want to have a few people. And I'm like, that doesn't work. I want to do like this low ticket membership, but I only want to help 10 people. People. I'm like, let's pull out calculators. There is no way to make that math math. Sometimes people say, well, this is something I'm passionate about. I want to give back. But then they call it a business. I'm like, okay, hang on, hang on. I want you to do this. I. I believe in giving. I don't use giving back. That's like, I believe in using wealth to change the world and do all of that. I'm with you on that. But you must be very clear. This is my business. This is my charity. The laws of charity and the laws of business are different. So if you really want to do this, this model is not going to create the revenue to sustain itself. Right? So you can build a business and use that to fund all your philanthropic things, but you cannot take your philanthropy and call it a business, because even as a nonprofit, you're still going to have to create the money. But maybe you're raising the money, they're getting donations. But if the math doesn't math, it can't work. So a lot of what I see is not quite the idea. That's the issue is the container they're trying to put the idea in. And I'm like, if we pull out a calculator, you'll see this can never, ever, ever work. So let's reframe the model. And I am all for building big businesses to fund big foundations. I'm all for it. But the laws of business and the laws of foundations are two different laws. They don't play together.

And do people take that? Okay, when you kind of spell it out like, That, I mean, these doctors, they're smart people for the most part.

Because, you know, I'm not. For me, you know, like you, my biggest driver at this stage is to help doctors win. Like, help them overcome this crazy notion that, you know, doctors, we suck at business, you know, bad deals or doctor deals, all of those kinds of things. You can probably tell from reading the book that those statements annoy me. Right. And I want to see him win. And. And so I will not. I. I will risk them being mad at me for one second to bring up the truth than to say, oh, yeah, yeah, rah, rah, we can. You know what I mean? Because I know it's not going to work. So. But. But I. We talk a lot about business models. Like, we literally just had a mastermind last month, and I still brought it back up. Like, these are the business models. Where do you fall? What rule are you violating? And things like that. So we talk about it quite a bit. So they take it well because it's obvious, Right. And if it's something that's a passion, I'm like, I'm not saying you can. You can literally do whatever you want as long as you play by the rules of the game.

Yeah.

So you can still do it, but you got to play by the rules. So they're usually okay.

Well, yeah. And I mean, people aren't coming to you for you to just tell them to be a yes person and just tell them, like, oh, yeah, that's great. I mean, that's not. They can go to their best friend to be their cheerleader, but that's not what they're coming to you for. So, I mean, it's like being a doctor in a lot of ways, too. I mean, so you tell patients, and sometimes they're like, yeah, here's bad news. You have to do X, Y, or Z to get this outcome. And I know you don't want to do it, but again, I'm not here to just tell patients everything that they want to hear either. That wouldn't be. That wouldn't be right.

Yeah.

The other things that I loved that you said, when people are kind of forming their message that it is that pick clear over cute. I thought that was very. That was really great way of phrasing it. I think sometimes people try to think, come up with some slogan for their business, and they're like, oh, that sounds good. And you hear it even in other businesses. Sometimes you hear something. You're like, I have no idea what that means. And so I thought that was like, it doesn't have to be catchy or all that, but you need to explain what it is that you're offering in clear, concise words and so people understand what that is. So I. I love that. I love that message.

Yeah. You know, I would use myself as an example because I fell for that in a way. I was thinking, what am I going to call my company? I'm like, entrepreneurial MDs. I'm like, wow, entrez, MD. Right? And it's a cute name, but till today, I have to explain what it means. They're like, what's the name of your company? Entre md. And they have this quizzical look. I'm like, yeah, you know, like Entrepreneurial md. They're like, oh, till today. But I could have called. I could have called it something as, quote, unquote, boring as Physicians thriving in business. Physicians winning at business. Physicians in business. Savvy physician entrepreneurs. Like, when you see savvyphysician entrepreneurs.com, you don't wonder what that means. It's very clear what that. You know what I mean? And so if I. So now the reason why I have not changed the name is that Entre MD is kind of like, you know, the way Oprah doesn't mean what Oprah means. Who she has become has defined Oprah. So the name is kind of gonna end up being like that, where what the company has done defines it. So we're kind of on that path. But if I were naming it over, I wouldn't call it Entre md. You know what I mean? So nobody is searching for podcasts and then looks at Entre md. I said, oh, I have to listen to that.

Yeah.

Right. But if it's Physicians thriving in entrepreneurship, they're like, you know, boring name. That is. Is not clever, is just clear. They'll be like, oh, that's interesting. Right?

Yeah.

So I have a Facebook group, right? And it's Entre md. Nobody's joining the group because nobody knows what that is. So I have to then go like, call it entremd. They put a hyphen there, say, Physicians in Business. That people are like, oh, physicians in business. I want to be in that group.

Yeah.

So I took one for the team. So nobody has to. But it is clear over acute all day, every day, and twice on Sunday. It is expensive to do it any other way.

That is good. Well, and. And I would say also, I mean, just having read your book and I've listened to some of your podcasts now, and even though, you know, you're talking about entrepreneurship. But sometimes even physicians get a little scared of that word. You know, they think, well, I'm not an entrepreneur. But, you know, even just starting your own regular, traditional practice, I mean, it doesn't have to be something really unique. I think people think of entrepreneurs as being somebody really out there doing something different, but it's just starting and running your own business, which, I don't know. I guess that's. That's what I would say to anybody listening to this podcast is if you're just. You're a doctor and you want to start your own practice, you don't have to be doing some really niche thing. This, this book is for any doctor who is starting any type of business practice, any of those things. So, yeah, so that's, that's one more strike against your. Against your name.

Yeah, it's. I. I look back, I'm like, people, don't do it. I already did it. I could tell you all the consequences of this decision. Don't do it. And you bring up something really great, which, you know, if I can speak to that for a second, which is really this concept of entrepreneurship for physicians. The way I look at it, every physician is technically an entrepreneur. And if you're listening, if you can just bear with me for a little bit as I explain this, we spent, for many of us multiple six figures getting a medical degree, giving up a decade of our prime time for us to become physicians. And even if we don't own a private practice or we're not a consultant or a speaker or whatever, we have a brand. We have a personal brand. Now, it may be an undeveloped brand, it may be an ignored brand. It may be right, but we have brands, and those brands have so much value. This is the reason why people come to us and ask us to refer. This is why pharmaceutical companies come to us and ask us to speak. This is why recruiters come to us and say, if you don't want the job, please tell all your friends about us, because they understand the. The amazing value of our brands. This is, you know, they understand that, but for some reason, we don't really see it. And so if you understand your personal brand is your first company, now if you have a private practice, that's your second company. But if you understand your price, your personal brand is your first business, then you realize we all have businesses. Think of all the times we've referred people for free, we've spoken for free, we've endorsed products for free. We've done all of those things. We like I've, there are people in the entrepreneurly business school who are intrapreneurs, that's what we call them. They understand business, they understand how to negotiate like bosses because they get in the same training as entrepreneurs. I had a client who she last year took 12 weeks off. I made more money than she's ever made as an employed physician because she learned to negotiate. She showed them like, this is what I'm going to do to keep the bottom line the same. This is what I'm going to do here. This is, you know, she's leading teams. She as an employed physician, wow. She has meetings with the cmo, cfo, all that. She's speaking the language of business because she understands that she's an entrepreneur. She's a CEO of her own company called her Incorporated. And she lends eight hours of her time to this boss every, every work day. That's it. Right. And so once we start thinking like that, we can take back our autonomy. So entrepreneurship is not about leaving medicine, leaving your employee physically. Maybe you love your job, maybe that's where you want to be. You don't have to leave. You just have to understand how to build business systems around whatever it is you want to do, because that's our take it out. So you may work a job and it's your brand. You may be a speaker, you may be a consultant, maybe a coach. You may have a private practice. You may go, like, I'm still playing the insurance game. You may say, I'm doing concierge, whatever. But if you can understand how to build a system around it, you can do it. So I want to invite you, if you're listening to this, to say, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a physician entrepreneur. And if your first business is your brand, there are people who are building multi seven figure businesses off of a brand. Serena Williams has retired. What is her business now is her brand. Right? Look at all of that. Look at how heavily people who are, have multiple businesses are investing in the brand. Because like Dr. Davis, you've built a brand, which means you can start a whole other business and leverage the brand you've built all these years to take you from 0 to 60 as opposed to starting from scratch. Because you have this whole other thing. If as doctors we could realize we have that everything changes.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's so true. I mean, talk about bringing you back your power. Well, and the one other thing I want to talk to you about is because you talk about perfectionism and you talk about the fact that so many of us, you know, it's, it's so interesting. Our training, we just have tried to be perfect. You know, we tried to get the perfect grades. We had to get the perfect grades to get into medical school. You had to be perfect, perfect, perfect. You do this whole path, you learn how to be a doctor, and then you're trying to launch something and you just say, oh, you know, I'm not ready to launch yet because my website isn't perfect. I'm not ready to launch because of this or because of that. And at some point, or I don't know how to do social media, I don't know how to do this, I don't know how to do that. And at some point you got to just start. And I think that it's so interesting because I really think that our, our training really doesn't. It does not serve us when it comes to trying to just get out there and be good enough. How have you, how have you dealt with that with your clients and in yourself?

Yeah, I mean, that is something. So this is the thing. I think the starting point is realizing we have two hats. We have the doc hat and we have the entrepreneur hat. And they are completely different hats. Right. And so now think about a neurosurgeon. Please be perfect in somebody's brain. Like, we kind of need you.

There's no margin of error.

No margin of error, like, do your thing. But that is very different from entrepreneurship. So the picture I like to use, which really helped me, is the picture of the iPhone. Now, when we think about the iPhone and we think about a new phone coming out, we think about stores being full, we think about lines everywhere. We think about all the ads and all of those things going on. But iPhone. The Apple company has never tried to make a perfect phone. They have never for once said, let's make the perfect phone ever. In fact, while you're standing in line to get iPhone, whatever that is, 15, you're very aware that next year there'll be a 16. You'll be actually shocked if there are no 16. You're like, how come they didn't release a new one this year? You'd be shocked. Their promise is better, not perfect is better. And so I adopted that as an entrepreneur and I helped the people I work with look at it the same way. Do the best you can do and get ready to do better. Just be like Apple. They're a trillion dollar company. So clearly that strategy is a winning strategy. Right? And so I'll give an example with My podcast. I talked about it in the book. When I was about to start my podcast, I wasn't even really listening to podcasts. I listened to two. I was a guest on one. I was like, huh, this is interesting. And I polled my audience. I'm like, how do you guys like to consume content? YouTube, podcast, blog, all of that. And I posted that, confident that they were going to say YouTube. And so I posted. And then they say podcast. Like 95% or something of them said podcasts. I'm like, the nerve of these people. I've been making all these YouTube videos. What are you talking about? Right? And so I thought about it like, well, if that's my. My audience wants and I'm trying to reach, you know, a hundred thousand people, then I have to figure it out. I could have waited. But I'll tell you what I did. I got my cell phone. I got the earphones that come with a cell phone. I went down to my basement. I recorded my first episode. I walked upstairs, called my brother who does, like, he did some YouTube stuff. He had never edited a podcast or anything like that before. I said, I just created my first. I did three episodes. I recorded my first three podcast episodes. They will need intro music and outro music, and they need to be edited and they need to be put on buzzsprout. And he's like, what is that? I'm like, I'm a doctor. If I could figure out how to record the podcast, you can figure out how to edit the podcast.

Okay?

And we did that, and I went to Google, like, okay, where do we put this podcast thing? So it talked about buzzsprout, it talked about all these things, uploaded the podcast. Less than a month later, there was a podcast with four episodes in existence. And now I think I just recorded episode 425 or something like that. But I've given myself the. I've taken off the pressure and I've allowed myself go like, well, the next one I'll do it better, and the next one I'll do it better. So, oh, you missed this and that. That's okay. I'll make. I'll make the next one better. I'll make the next one better. And so understanding that helps. The other thing is the opportunity. Cost of waiting.

Yeah.

And so Entre MD has been in existence for five years. And if somebody told me that, you know, there will be three podcasts that exist that would have had the opportunity to have thousands of doctors come through our workshops or that we would be on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing. If anybody told me any of those things, there's no way I could have believed it. So what if I waited? I'd still be tinkering at the idea. And there are all these doctors whose lives have been dramatically changed and private practices that are thriving and coaches that are rocking out. Like, all. All that. None of that would have existed. So sometimes thinking about the opportunity cost of waiting helps you realize you don't have the luxury. Yeah, right. You don't have, like, now we have the most time we'll ever have now. We might be the strongest we'll ever be now. You know what I mean? Like, we're not guaranteed tomorrow. And one of the things. I attend my 90th birthday party very frequently. I just travel. Like, what would that be? Like, who be there? What. What do I want them to say? Right. Because if I want them to say certain things, this is the time I work on those things. This. This is. I create that now.

Yeah.

I'm like, what do they want them to say? What do I want my legacy to be? What are the things that I don't want to regret? Like, I don't. I want to get. I want to get tonight and go, like, oh, my goodness, I did it all. Like, I really want to say that.

That.

So if I'm going to do that, it means that I can't let fear stop me. I can't let the fact that something's not perfect stop me. Imperfect things have changed the world. Perfection is not required except during somebody's brain. Right, with your doctor stuff. Yes, but not in business. Not in business.

Yeah. And I think the only way that you really are going to know if something's going to work is you just got to try it. I was talking to a doctor who wanted to start up a really specific kind of niche practice, and she was asking my opinion, you know, what do you think I should charge for this or that? And I said, you know, you're just gonna have to kind of make up a number and see if it flies and just get out there and start doing it. And then you'll just make adjustments and you'll say, oh, okay, actually, I need to charge more. Okay. No, actually, this isn't working. I'm gonna have to charge a little less. I'm gonna have to change it. But the only way you're gonna know it is just by doing it. And you get out there and you. It's just kind of trial and error. So I think that's really. I think that's great. And I think it's really, it's just very. It's hard. I think my, my daughter Stephanie, who has grown up with social media, she is totally happy to make these TikToks or Instagram Reels. To me, it makes me uncomfortable. I don't really know exactly what I'm going to say on there or put on there. And I'm a little bit like a fearful, oh, if we put something out there and people don't like it, what's going to happen? She's just like, you know, worst case scenario, take it down. I mean, as long as you don't do anything that's offensive or anything. Right. But she's, she'll put out a tick tock. And sometimes it takes off and sometimes we don't get any traction. But okay, that one didn't go, no problem. Let's just record something else. And you just have to let it roll off of you and keep going. And I think that, I just think that's hard for us.

I mean, it is, it is. And if entrepreneurship was easy, everybody would do it. Right? But the other thing to think about is social media used to be very overwhelming for me when I thought about it as social media. Like, I have to do these things. When I started my private practice, I had the opportunity of getting radiotized. It costs like an arm and two legs for 60 seconds of talking to an audience that may not even live anywhere near your private practice. Right. I remember thinking about that. I looked at tv. It was like, it was. It was so expensive that I can't remember how much it was. Right. Because I heard the number, deleted it from my brain. Like, forget that. Right?

Yeah.

So another way of looking at it is, but wow, because then, I mean, Facebook was very rudimentary back in the day, right? Like, it didn't even have the red notification. You didn't have any of those things. There are no groups. This is way, way back in the day. But to think that we have this opportunity to go on a platform for free and reach hundreds and thousands of hundreds and thousands of people and we just got to talk. But we just don't pay. Like, we paid for the radio station, the TV station. It's kind of like the people back in the day be like, what's wrong with you?

It's free tv, right?

It's free tv. It's free radio. And when you think about that, you're like, huh, I can advertise for free.

Yeah.

My only payment is my discomfort.

Yeah.

Right. Like, but I get to advertise for free. When we think about it, it helps when we think about content, not like content creation, but when we think about it, like, I'm doing what I do in the exam room anyway, but with a camera on. Right? Because they don't care about, nobody cares about our content. They just want their questions answered. They want myths, debunks. They just want you to address their fears and those kind of things, or entertain them, which is not quite our industry. But when you think about that, we're doing that every day. Like when people tell me I'm not a content creator, I'm like, I disagree. Your family medicine, you see 20 patients a day. You walk in and they tell you what their problem is, and you proceed to tell them what you think the diagnosis is and what they need to do. That's a video you made there. And then when you're done with that, you turn around and you write a whole blog post about it, AKA your note. So for every patient, you've produced a video and a blog post, they do that 20 times a day. How are you not a content creator?

Wow, that is well said. That is, I mean, that's a great thing to tell doctors when they, when they come with that. That's. That is very true.

Yeah. We're content creation machines. Yeah, we are.

Yeah. That's great. Well, this has been so, so fun to talk to you. I'm sad that Stephanie has missed it, but maybe sometime in the future we can get you to come back on our podcast so that she can get to ask all of her questions as well.

And I would love to meet her.

Don't you have another book book coming out? Is that right?

So I have a book that came out about four months ago. It's called the Visibility Formula. And it's all about taking your business, your brand from best kept secret to household name. Right? Because again, as physicians, the service delivery part we're really good on because we love to help people, we're really good at that. But putting it out there is kind of like, you know, so I wrote the Visibility formula, which, you know, is really about how do I get the message out there. How do I become known as a go to expert for something. How do I become, you know, like the Coca Cola? Like, you're, you're the one who owns that category. Really easy read, but full of powerful, practical steps that doctors can take. And you asked. I'm actually working on my next one, which is for private practice doctors. 7 Ways They Leave Money on the Table Every single day and how to fix it. So that's going to be. That's going to be the next one.

Oh, boy. Okay. That's great. Well, good. Well, we're going to have to get all of your books and have you back on if you're willing to tell us more about that. I'm excited about both of those. Those sound fantastic.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'm really excited about them. I think it's going to turn a lot of businesses around.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, I really appreciate your time. It is so lovely to get to talk to you. You're even more dynamic in person than you are on the page. So it's. This has really been a treat for me.

Thank you so much for having me. And please tell your daughter I said I'm a fan and good job getting her, like, involved in all of this so early. It's such a. Such a gift. Such a gift. That's a true legacy right there.

Thank you. Thank.