Ep #165: 7 Things That Can Stop You from Accomplishing Your Goals

Hi docs, welcome to The EntreMD Podcast, where it’s all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I’m your host, Dr. Una.

Hello, hello docs. Welcome to another episode of The EntreMD Podcast. As always, I’m going to start off by saying thank you, thank you, thank you for listening, for sharing, for all of it. And maybe I should even put it out here, I love the EntreMD community, every last one of you. So thank you for listening.

I want to start off today by reading a review from one of the doctors who was at the EntreMD Business School retreat. And I’m doing that because I just spent some time going back debrief trying to see what can I do to make this better? What can I do to make it a more amazing experience last year? And this doctor’s review is just like totally amazing.

So this is from Dr. Tamara Beckford, and she is the founder of UR Caring Docs. She is amazing, she has a number of shows. She just hosted her first summit. You should absolutely check her out.

Now, she said, “The EntreMD retreat was a five star experience. We connected with like-minded people. We hashed out our goals for the upcoming year and helped each other with challenges in our businesses. No one left without an actionable plan.”

She goes on to say, “You are uplifted by your colleagues, Disneyland might be the most magical place on earth, by the EntreMD retreat was the most magical place for physician entrepreneurs. This was our Disneyland.” Oh my goodness, it just gives me bumps and chills and all of that. Thank you, Dr. Beckford, for saying that. I’m glad it was such a great experience for you, I know it was for the school in general.

And if you’re a physician and you’re like, “Entrepreneurship is lonely and I’m going through this by myself and I need help working through my challenges.” There’s a place for you, it’s called the EntreMD Business School. And it’s a place where these challenges are normalized.

So you’re not unique because you’re afraid. You’re not unique because you tried to do something and you talked yourself out of doing it. You’re not unique because some of your dreams you’re not even bold enough to articulate them.

You’re not unique, this is a human experience. But there we own all of it, and we call each other out and we keep it moving and so it’s a really great experience. So I invite you to join us on entremd.com/business,  get on the wait list, it will open soon and you’ll be the first to know.

So today we are going to talk about something that I think is so critical for us to know, especially this time of the year. Well any time of the year, but especially this time of the year. And it is something that is going to be like a master class. And if you’re listening to this on your commute and all of that, this is one of the ones you’re going to want to go back to with pen, paper, journal, whichever, and listen to and make decisions and all of that, okay?

We’re going to be talking about the seven things that can stop you from accomplishing your goals. And I’ve fallen victim to all seven, that’s why I know them. So if you hear it and you’re like, ‘Oh, man.” You’re in great company.

But the beautiful thing is that you can stop this from stopping you. You don’t have to be a victim to it anymore. And this is going to be really cool. So let’s get down to business, I’m going to start with the very first one. And that’s this, not changing your self-concept. Not changing what you believe about you, how you see yourself, because that needs to change.

Now, if we set a goal, the goal is something exterior. But our exterior is produced by what we have on the inside. So my husband would usually say it this way, that you cannot take a journey on the outside that you haven’t first taken on the inside.

Now, whether this is there’s a revenue milestone you want to hit, or number of clients, or kind of clients, or a kind of team, whatever it is, if you haven’t made that journey on the inside, you can’t produce it on the outside, right? You will self-sabotage your actions, you’ll kind of sort of show up, but not really. And you just get wimpy results, right?

So for instance, let’s say let’s just pick something that’s easy to measure. Let’s say in your business you want to have your first $100,000 year. The first thing you have to do is become the kind of person who generates $100,000 a year. Because the money in the bank is one thing, but it’s you, the person changing that produces the money in the bank.

And so if you say it, you write it down and you’re like, “Ooh, I don’t even see how I can do that.” Or “I’m not the kind of person who can do that,” or you seriously doubt it, well, first of all, I don’t want you to think that’s bad. We should always be setting goals that are kind of bigger and we’re like, “Oh my goodness.” Right? But now you have to recognize you have to do something about that. You have to elevate your self-concept.

Now, there are many ways of doing this, I think I’ll just mention a few. One of them is affirmations. Some people are for them, some people are against them, whichever. But when I write my goals, I also write a version of the goals as if they’ve already happened.

And one of the things I would do is very often, I would take that and I’ll say it to myself. So for instance, let’s say I was the one that was saying, “Wow, this is going to be my first $100,000 year.” Then I would say, “Oh, EntreMD generates $100,000 this year.” And when I say it, I’m like, “Huh” in my mind. My mind is going like, “Huh, interesting concept.”

But the more I say it and I use my imagination, I said this at the retreat, I was like, “I made this stunning revelation. Well, not revelation, stunning discovery that there is no imagination police. It just doesn’t exist. I can use my imagination, do what I want with it. It’s mine.”

So when I’m saying EntreMD generates $100,000 this year, what I’m really doing is also imagining, “Oh, we made that much. We had that much hit our Stripe account.” And all those kinds of things. So it’s affirmations but I’m using my words, I’m using pictures, I’m using all of that. So you can do that.

You can do a vision board because what we see is what we become. So you have it in front of you, you have the dollar sign, or you have your bank account with $100,000 there, or whatever. Or you write a check to yourself in your name and that’s what was given to you, whichever. So vision boards, you can use that.

And one of the most powerful ones is being in the right room. Being in the right room. I always try to put myself in rooms where I’m almost intimidated. Like I have to coach myself to not be intimidated. I’ve been at events where someone’s like, “Oh, yeah, well, you know, where we are in our business now we’re doing an easy million a month.” I’m like, “Easy million a month, hmm.”

Now, it may not pull me up to where I’m like easy million a month. But then it pulls me up to like, “So what’s the problem with multiple seven figures a year?” So being in the right room, being in a place where goals that are so much bigger than yours are normalized elevates your self-concept. It does that.

Now, you’ve heard me talk about this a lot. When it comes to being in the right room, some rooms you’ll find yourself there, some rooms are pay to play, and you pay to play. So if it’s a mastermind or something and there are people much bigger, you’ll be there. That’s one of the things that happens in the EntreMD Business School, because people are like, “Oh, wait a minute, she did that? I remember when she was scared. When did that happen?”

And it kind of tells you, “Well shoot, you can do that too.” Someone comes in and celebrates, like, “Oh, this month, we did $400,000 this month.” And you’re like, “$400,000 in a month, hmm.” It just elevates your self-concept.

So you want to be in the right room. And when you’re in those rooms, you want to be in the room. You want to show up, you want to take advantage. When I say take advantage I don’t mean like a parasite, but you have stuff in front of you, show up at the meeting, show up at the calls, ask questions, do all of that stuff. But when you’re in that environment, it changes your self-concept. Okay, so that’s number one.

Number two, not taking 100% responsibility. I think I was really good at this. Before something would go wrong, I’d already decided who I was going to blame. And you may look at your life and you might see that you do that too. So why didn’t we hit this number? Because of this, because of my team members. Why don’t we have staff?  There’s a hiring crisis, so we can’t have staff. Like there’s just a reason for everything, right?

But the problem with that is if you’re not taking 100% responsibility, you are accepting the role of the victim. That means you don’t have control over your results. You have to take 100% responsibility for your results. Otherwise, you don’t hold yourself accountable, you’re just like, “Oh my goodness, I had no control. That’s what happened, blah, blah, blah.”
You don’t want to be that person. Okay?

Now, I’m going to give you an example, for instance, when the pandemic hit, I had options. I can say, “Well, my practice just has to close. It is what it is, we just have to go out of business.” Or I can say, “Okay, there’s a pandemic. I don’t have control over that, but I have a brain, I have innovation, I have staff, I have a community to lean on. We’re going to fight and we’re still going to hit the goals that we set for 2020.” That’s my choice.

I can take full responsibility for my results. I may have no control over the pandemic, but I take full responsibility. And now to elevate my self-concept, come to think of it, what I started doing is once it hit and I was like, “Oh my goodness, what are we going to do?” I started saying, “We’re going to thrive in spite of the pandemic. We’re going to thrive.”

I kept saying it, we’re going to thrive, we’re going to thrive. How are we going to thrive? I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out. But we’re going to thrive. And what happened at the end of the day? We did thrive.

Now we got to this other place where finding staff became like, oh my goodness, this really impressive thing. A lot of people, I mean, there are many reasons why people didn’t work. I mean, some of them are scared of getting sick, especially in the healthcare environment. Some of them are scared of getting sick.

Some of them stayed at home to for virtual learning with their kids and decided, “Wow, I kind of being at home.” And some others were like, “I’m only two years, or three years, or four years from retirement, I’m just going to go ahead and retire right now.” And some were like, “Well, I’m going to get an unemployment check, I don’t have to work.”

And so there’s so many reasons why people didn’t work. But the bottom line is it created this whole staffing crisis. And again, I started saying, “Oh, it’s the great resignation,” because that’s what it’s called. Oh, the great resignation, can’t find staff, all this stuff. And I was like, “Okay, wait a minute. Wait a minute, when the pandemic hit, I chose to thrive in spite of it. So why am I accepting this?”

And then we started getting really creative. So we brought on some virtual staff, we brought on some premeds, we did all this other stuff to create a stable staffing situation. Why? Because we accepted 100% responsibility for our results. So I started off in blame and then I ended up in 100% responsibility. And now we have stable staffing.

So 100% responsibility. I am 100% responsible for my results, 100%. All right. Now, and you may be thinking, “Yeah, but there are actual real problems, right? Like the pandemic is real. The resignation crisis is real. Being in a tough work environment, that is real. But the thing is, as long as we stay victims to it, we can’t be in control. Victims are not in control.

And if you think about it, you have a lot of creativity. You have a lot of resources, you have a lot of connections. If you decide to take 100% responsibility, even if you don’t know the how, you will come up with the how. You will come up with the how. So 100% responsibility.

Number three, not making decisions. Not making decisions. Not making decisions, oh my goodness. Now, you have to ask yourself this question, what is the typical timeline between idea and execution for me? What is the typical timeline? So you say, “Oh, I think it’s time for me to bring on my next staff member.” How long does it take you from when you have that thought to when you actually do it?

“Oh, I think I’m going to register my business. I don’t know if I’m going to do Zoom–  not Zoom, I don’t know if I’m going to do Legal Zoom or if I’m going to register by myself.” And three months later, four months, five months later you’re still trying to make that decision.

Oh, I want to launch my online course. I don’t know if I’m going to do Kajabi or if I’m going to do Teachable, or if I’m because you think Thinkific. Four months later you’re still thinking about this, like “Which one am I going to do?” What is the time between when you have a thought and when you execute?

My practice is big enough, I want to be able to create better work life balance for me. I want to bring on a practice administrator. How long between that thought and when you actually do it. Because if it takes you days to weeks to make decisions, and for someone else it takes months to half a year to make decisions, you’re going to have five times six times the results that that other person has, because it’s taking them too long. The cycle from idea to execution is just too long, too long.

So, I will pause here to say, now, human nature is to go to the extreme. So there’s, “I don’t make decisions” on one end of the spectrum and, “I make very rash decisions. I get no information, I just get an idea and boom, I’ve done it,” No strategy, no nothing. Those are two extremes.

In the middle, in the happy place is a place where you make the best decisions based on adequate research. The best decision, so on one side you have no decision, on the other side you have no research. In the middle you have best decision with adequate research. Now notice, I did not say extensive research. I said adequate, enough research to make the decision you need to make.

All right, so think about something like starting a podcast. I’ve had people tell me, “Look, I wanted to start this for two years. I wanted to start this for five years.” So think about idea to execution in years in years. We’re burning daylight. You see what I’m saying?

So think about the decisions you have to make. What’s the name of the podcast going to be? What podcast hosting service am I going to use? What equipment will I use? What podcasts art am I going to use and all of that. If it takes you months to make every one of these decisions, then it will take you years to start the podcast.

But guess what? You can do–  Let me just see if I can do a plug for Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout is the hosting service that I use. They have an article on how to start a podcast. You can read the article and it gives you options for everything. And you can make decisions, and you can make all those decisions in 48 hours. And boom, podcast is good to go, right?

Or you can think about it and do it two years later. But what’s the opportunity cost? What if two years later instead of starting your podcast, you’ve been podcasting for two years. Maybe you shocked yourself and you had 200,000 downloads. Maybe you ended up speaking at events. Maybe you’re even planning to do a course.

But because of how much people took your content, you have to create a course, you have to do all this other stuff, you brought in so much revenue. And you didn’t do that because you didn’t make any decisions. So you’re going to make decisions, you’re going to make decisions.

I have a client, she’s in EntreMD Business School. Her name is Dr. Catherine Toomer, she is amazing. Amazing. Now, at the time, this was right when the pandemic started. So the pandemic started, and she had a practice and it was brick and mortar.

And so when it happened, everything shut down and all of that kind of stuff. We’re like, okay, so we had a call. And she got on the call, I’m like, “So how you doing? What’s going on? What are some wins? What’s happening?” And she’s like, “I took my whole practice online.”

Now notice, she didn’t even come on to say, how do I do this, all this stuff. Granted, we had talked about it a little bit. But once everything shut down, she like, boom, made all the decisions, changed all the things to online that she needed to change. Created appointment slots in different ways, set up her Zoom, set up her thing, set up her work schedule, set up everything, boom, done, right?

What if she had waited six months? What if she had waited nine months? What if she had waited a year? Like boom. So she didn’t even say, “I’m thinking of doing this,” she’s like, “Done, I move everything online.” I’ll never forget that. It’s been a year and a half and I still remember it, that’s how impactful it was. Make decisions.

All right, number four is not taking bold steps. I don’t know how many times, I mean, the older I get, the more I’m like, “Man, the best place to be at all times is outside of your comfort zone. The best place ever.” Because that’s where all the magic happens. That’s where the miracles happen. That’s where you start living a life where you’re like, “How did I get here?” And all of that stuff, not taking bold steps.

So think about everything you’ve dreamed about. Think about the goals that you’ve set. In order to accomplish them, you’re going to have to step out of your comfort zone. So I’m going to pause and say this, your comfort zone is not something to chase. I used to chase being comfortable. I used to chase the path of least resistance. I still chase the path of least resistance, but in a different way. That simplicity in business and all of that.

But like, “I don’t want to spend any energy. I don’t want to make myself nervous. I don’t do things that make me uncomfortable. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Now when I don’t have anything I’m doing that’s uncomfortable, I’m like, “Wait a minute, I’m not growing. Wait a minute, I’m not stretching. Wait a minute, I’ve stopped creating the magic.” So taking bold steps, okay.

So if you find yourself in a position where you’re like, “Oh man, this decision is going to make me uncomfortable.” Then say yes. Say yes, then figure it out. Say yes, then figure it out. And I’m not talking about hustle and grind in such a way that you’re so stressed out. That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about saying yes to uncomfortable things. Saying yes to things you haven’t done before. Saying yes to things that are bigger than you usually do. Saying yes to those things. And it’ll all work out well.
But you can’t change if you keep doing the same things that you’ve always done. So take bold steps.

All right, number five, not leveraging the power of relationships. I could do a whole online course on this. Okay, I’m not going to, but I could. Your social capital is more valuable than your financial capital. Because there is financial capital in your social capital. Your network is your net worth. It sounds very cliche, but I cannot even begin to tell you how true this is.

Your relationships are more valuable than money. They are. Now, during the business school retreat something very cool happened. A doctor came up and said– I think I had asked them something about something you know you need to do and you have no idea how to do it or you are too scared to write it because you think you can’t do it, something like that.

And she came up and she’s like, “I feel like I need to be able to reach all the residents. I just want to have a database or community for all the residents.” And she’s like, “I have no idea how I’m going to do that.” And I’ve had this experience, and you’ve had this experience before, where there’s something you want to do but you cannot see how it’s possible to make that happen.

And I said, “Okay,” I was like, “beautiful thing going on.” So I turned to the audience, I said, “Who knows where she can find all these residents?” I kid you not, within three minutes she had 15 people tell her how. She had people who said, “Oh, I’ll connect you with this person. I’ll connect you with the person in charge of this organization. Did you know you could go to this website? Did you also know…” I mean like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, at least 15 people. At least 15 people.

And she was like, “Oh, my goodness, I can do it. I can do it.” Okay, so I need you to think about it, I need you to think about something being a total block to becoming a possibility. Not affirmation type of a possibility. Now you’re like you can see it because you’re in the right room, because of your relationships, because of your network. The things that are your problems, there are people who have overcome them.

And it’s not just those above you, these are colleagues too. They’re people who have overcome them. So you want to leverage the power of relationships. People are more valuable than money. Your business relationships are more valuable than money.

Because all the money is in them. It’s either they have it and they need your services, or they have connections, or they have resources, like whatever. Power of relationships, if you don’t leverage that it’s easier to stay small because you need people to grow big.

All right, so that’s number five, number six. Number six is not asking, okay, not asking. Not asking. People cannot say yes except you ask. Think about you’re just sitting, you’re with your friends and you guys are chit chatting, you’re not asking questions, you’re not asking for anything. And all of a sudden, they say, “Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. I’ll do it.” What? How can they? You didn’t ask them for anything, right? But when you ask questions, you get yeses.

Will you get noes? Yes, and you get a lot of them. But guess what, you will also get yeses. Now, when it comes to asking, as an entrepreneur this is one of your superpowers. I believe in this so much than in the EntreMD Business School at least twice a year we’ll do the ask a day challenge. And it’s all about asking, asking, asking, asking.

So you’re going to ask for people to join your team. You’re going to ask for people to become your clients. You’re going to ask for patients to sign up with you. You’re going to ask for referral sources to refer to you. You’re going to ask for reviews that will boost your positioning and credibility in your community. You’re going to ask for speaking gigs. You’re going to ask to be on people’s podcasts. You’re going to ask, okay. The more you ask, the more your dreams can come true.

There are a number of reasons why people won’t ask. It’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to bother people.” You know what I mean? “Oh, if I ask them, that means I owe them.” And all these kind of things. Or I’m a really shy, introverted introvert, and you know I am too, but asking will change your life.

No matter what I say, when you start it will be uncomfortable. But if you can do it and do it and do it, it will become more and more comfortable. And at some point, it’ll just become like that’s how I roll. That’s my superpower. You won’t even think about it like a separate thing you do. So asking.

Asking, and let me tell you, sometimes you should think about it. You’re not really bothering people when you ask them for things, right? Let’s take a look at it, if you’re asking someone to be on your team, well they need work, right? And they need an income. So you’re not bothering them. If you ask someone to be your client, well, they have a problem. You have the solution, so you’re helping them when you ask them.

Really, you are. Think about you right now, you have a problem in your life that you would pay to make it go away. Think about referral sources, right? And you’re saying, “Hey, send people to me.” Well, they’re looking for who to send people to and someone that they can depend on, and someone that would take care of their people and all of that kind of stuff.

Like think about an OBGYN. Every mom is asked, not every but most moms are going to ask the OBGYN, “Well, where do I take the baby?” And so when you come and you build a relationship with them, and you show them what you can do for their patient’s children and all those kinds of things, you’ve made their job easier. They can just say, “Oh my goodness, I met Dr. Una. Just go to Dr. Una, she’ll take care of you.”

Think about asking for speaking gigs. What do you think event planners need? They need people to speak. So when you come and you’re like, “Listen, this is who your audience is. This is a problem they have, this is a problem I fix. I can be amazing value. And I’m a dynamic speaker and I’m an engaging speaker and they’re going to have a blast.” They’re going to be like, “Oh my goodness, you mean I don’t have to search anymore and hope the person is good?”

So when you ask, you’re actually serving. You’re actually helping people. And if you can re-frame it that way, you’ll probably ask more, and your goals will just blow up, like really. Okay.

All right, finally, number seven, not reflecting. Not reflecting. You have to think periodically. You have to stop and you have to evaluate. That’s what we do. Think about if you’re running a code, or maybe that’s not a very pleasant memory, but let’s just say you’re running a code. Okay?

Well, you start chest compressions and you’re bagging, but you stop every so often to see, “Hey, is a pulse back? What’s going on?” Right? You shock a patient, well, when you’re done you’re like, “Well, let’s see if that worked.” The patient is dehydrated, the heart rate is high, all that kind of stuff. And then you get fluids, well you go back to see, “Did this work?” Now, that’s the same thing we need to do with our goals and our lives as well.

So every so often, you’re going back to say, “Hey, in this business, what worked?” Now you know you can do more of that. What didn’t work? Do less of that. What marketing method gave me the highest ROI, return on investment? Where did I hold back? Everyone’s like, “Oh man, you’re amazing. Look at all the things you’re doing.” But I know, where did I hold back? Where did I not show up because I was afraid. So maybe that’s something to coach yourself on. Right? So then you can go on and do what you need to do.

I recommend this is done monthly, weekly, and yearly. So yearly, like when we did the retreat we all got together, we set our goals for the year, we looked at 2021 in review, we did all of those things. So what are we doing? We’re seeing where we were, and then we set our goals for 2022. We did all of that. So that’s like yearly, we looked at that.

And then monthly you still go back. Okay, so this month what happened? How well did I put myself out there? What kind of impact did we have in the lives of our clients? How much money did we make? And what new opportunities do we create for ourselves? What new referral sources did we link with? Like all of those kinds of things.

What happened? Where did I not show up? What limiting beliefs held me back? What victories did I accomplish? Because we celebrate. Listen, we celebrate all the wins, right EntreMD? We celebrate all the wins. And then weekly, every Sunday. What happened last week? What do I want to accomplish the next week?

The beauty of this is if you can do this, then you put yourself in a position where you’re course correcting really quickly, right? So instead, of course correcting twice a year, you’re course correcting weekly, you’re course correcting monthly so you can catch yourself, so you can make bigger steps. So you can acknowledge your wins and go like, “Wait a minute, all that happened? What could happen if I lean more into it?

So if you don’t reflect, then it’s easy to live the same year, year to year, even though you’re so busy. And I’ve done that, I’ve taken one for the team. I don’t want that for you.

Okay, so these are the seven things, not changing your self-concept, not taking 100% responsibility, not making decisions, not taking bold steps, not leveraging the power of relationships, not asking, and not reflecting, okay? If you can avoid these seven things, you’re well on your way to blowing up your goals and ending up with a year that you could not have planned for.

Okay, so I want you to listen again, I want you to take notes, I want you to make decisions that these seven things will not stop you anymore. Because what I want for you is over the next 12 months, I want you to execute.

I want you to have tremendous momentum. And I want you to create massive results. I want my email and my DMs and PMs to be flooded with people saying, “Oh my goodness, I listened to this episode and I decided the next 12 months are going to be the best 12 months of my life. And, Dr. Una, I did it.”

All right, so that’s what I have for you. This episode, every doctor needs to hear so please take it, share it with another doctor in your life. And if you are ready to do entrepreneurship like you mean it, come check us out at the EntreMD Business school, entremd.com/business. We will love to have you. So I’ll see you, my friends, on the next episode of The EntreMD Podcast.

Hey, if you love listening to The EntreMD Podcast I want to invite you to join EntreMD On Demand. It is my signature subscription program that gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do one thing as a physician entrepreneur, and that is to thrive. Just head out to entremd.com/ondemand and I’d love to have you join us. See you on the inside.