Ep #105: The 7 Biggest Lies Doctors Have Been Sold

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.

Well, welcome back to The EntreMD Podcast. I am super-pumped that you’re here. I know I say this all the time, but it’s the absolute truth. I am so grateful that you come back time after time after time to listen. If this is your first time, welcome to the EntreMD family. Thank you for sharing this. Thank you for reviewing this. Thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And if you haven’t done any of those, I invite you to do that today. But this is a fun place to be and you make it worth it for me.

So, today we’re going to be looking at something I find really, really interesting. And that is the seven biggest lies that we have been sold as doctors. And I am going to show you, from evidence you already have in your life, that these are lies.

And what it’s going to do is it’s going to set you up so you can come at your business, you can show up in your business in a brand-new way because you know you have what it takes to either start or grow or dream a whole lot bigger. That’s what’s going to be happening today.

So, before we do that, I want to take a moment and read a review from one of our listeners, Medfitdo. And she says, “A Godsend,” and has those five stars that I totally adore.

And she says, “This podcast is composed of so many pearls of wisdom. I appreciate Dr. Una for using her gift of teaching physicians how to work on their own terms. This podcast is literally liberating. Dr Una’s voice is so soothing yet assertive and makes you want to get up quickly into action. Thank you so much, Dr. Una.”

Well thank you, Medfitdo. Thank you so much for that kind review. I really, really appreciate it. And I’m so happy to hear that when you’re done listening, you start looking for actions to take. That totally makes my day. So, thank you for that.

And if you haven’t left us a review yet, you can go leave us a review. I would love to spotlight you on The EntreMD Podcast because I’m all about elevating physicians and their brands.

So, seven biggest lies sold to doctors. Number one, number one lie that we’ve been sold is that we’re bad at business. Let’s just start from the biggest one. We’re bad at business.

And I’ve taken a moment to think about this. I actually share this in the EntreMD Business School. And I was like, “Well, let’s look at the odds.” Because when I do the math, the odds are in our favor.

So, when you look at businesses, 20% of all businesses will fail in the first year. 50% of all of them will fail in the first five years. That’s half, you know. Odds are 50-50.

And if you look at that, you’re like, “Wow, business is risky.” Well, let’s look at medical school. So, I went to check. The medical school acceptance rate in the US, it is 7%. At schools like Harvard, it’s 2.1%.

So, what that means is that you, my friend, you listening to me, you went to medical school. You got in. You got into something that has a 93% failure rate and you won. So, if your odds were 97 against three and you came out on top, how are you not going to survive with 50 and 50?

So, I had to remind myself, I’m like, you need to remember who you are. You are a person who while you were a teenager, you set a goal that you were going to go at this thing that has a 93% failure rate and you’re going to win. And you did it. So, if you did that, there’s nothing like you’re bad at business. You can learn what you need to do and you can rock it. the odds are even better. This is easier than med school. Much easier.

So, when you hear, “Oh, you’re an MD, not an MBA. Leave that for the suits,” I need you to not accept that anymore. You could do med school. You can do business. Nobody’s born good or bad at business. These are skills. We learn them. And we can learn.

So, any time you’re tempted to think, “I’m bad at business,” throw away the thought. It is a lie. You’ve done harder things. This is a piece of cake compared to what you’ve done. Okay, so that’s the first thought.

The second lie we’ve been sold is we’re bad at selling. We’re bad at selling. You know, we’re doctors. We don’t like selling. We’re professionals. We don’t sell, and all of that. And what really is selling?

Selling is a process of taking somebody from their problem and leading them to the solution. That’s what selling is. So, for example, I have people who I would say, “Hey, you know what? The EntreMD Business School would be a great fit for you.”

So, if I’m selling, I am telling somebody who wants to start a business but doesn’t know how to start a business that there is this solution here, you should come take it. I am taking someone with a problem to their solution.

And you might say, “Dr. Una, we don’t do stuff like that.” Well, do we not? So, let’s go back to our medical training. Have you ever met a pediatrician trying to convince a mother to give her child vaccines? If that’s not selling, I don’t know what selling is.

So, you look at a baby. The baby is healthy. But you know, without the vaccinations, the baby is prone to meningitis, pneumonia, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B, the whole nine yards. And you’re like, “Listen, we need to get this child vaccinated.”

You are convincing the mother of a two-month-old to let you poke her baby with a needle, make her baby cry, potentially get a fever afterwards. You sell them on that every single day. You are great at selling and you sell.

The same thing with someone who has a diagnosis of cancer who needs radiation therapy or who needs chemotherapy. And you tell them, this is what is going on with you. This is what you need as a treatment. You’re going to lose your hair. You’re going to feel very weak. You’re going to get sick from it. But this is going to make you better.

You convince somebody to do that. You, my friend, sell. You’re not bad at selling. You just haven’t practiced selling other things. So, I want you to reframe the way you think about selling. Selling is not manipulating people and making them buy what they don’t want to buy. That’s not what it is. That’s not what you do with a patient who has a diagnosis who you need to give medicine to. That’s not what you do.

You’re telling them, this is the problem you have. And they’re aware, “This is a problem I have.” And you’re telling them this is the solution. Take the solution.

And they may have objections. You overcome the objections and you tell them, really, you need to do this solution. That is selling. So, you’re not bad at selling. You just haven’t sold other stuff. So, that’s number two.

Number three, they say we’re bad at speaking, “Well you know, I don’t really know how to rock the stage and stuff, I’m not a trained speaker and all of that.” Okay, maybe. Well, let’s take a look at it, okay.

If you work in primary care and you see 30 patients a day, has it ever dawned on you that you do 30 talks a day on the fly? You were given a framework. It’s like you do the HPI, you do the review of systems, you do the family medical social history. You do your review of systems; you do your physical exam. You do your diagnosis. You do your medical decision-making.

If you were a resident and you need to present, you’re going to walk through all this stuff. You know how to talk. You know how to speak.

If you are not a resident, you’re still going to have to discuss your medical decision-making with every single patient. You have no idea what’s coming through the door. You see the patient. You generate a talk and you present that talk to the patient on the fly every single day, multiple times a day.

So, I say, if you can be trained to do a SOAP note talk, you can be trained to do a talk for transformation. It’s the same thing. You can do it. So, there’s nothing like, “I’m bad at speaking.” You’re a physician. You see patients. You do talks every day. You just need to learn the framework for transformation. So, it’s not a SOAP note framework. It’s a different framework. But if you can learn that, you can learn this.

So, I argue that physicians make some of the greatest speakers because you have a lot of practice. You just need to practice it in another container. So, bad at speaking, that’s not true. That simply is not true.

So, the next time you want to say that or the next time somebody tells you that or the next time you’re thinking that, I want you to debunk that. It’s not true. You’re great at speaking. You are. And if you’ve done a lot of grad rounds and all that in addition to this, you are great at speaking. So, that’s number three.

Number four, they say we’re bad at delegation. And to be honest, delegation is something that is not my strongest suit. It’s something I have to work on. It’s something I have to sit myself down and go, like, “Okay, what are you doing that you shouldn’t be doing? What are the things that are on your plate that should be off your plate?”

So, bad at delegation because we’re perfectionists and all that stuff, but okay, let’s look at the evidence. Let’s look back at our training. Is it really true? I mean, in your training, did the option of you doing stuff by yourself actually ever exist?

You were trained in a system. You came into the middle of stuff and you left before the end of stuff. And I’ll explain what I mean. So, you come into clinic, you didn’t check the patients in. You didn’t check their insurance. You didn’t collect their copays. You didn’t bring them back into the exam room. You didn’t do their vitals.

So, guess what you’re good at? You’re good at dealing with a team. You’re great at working with a team. Now, when you’re done with seeing the patient, you still don’t walk them out the door. You put orders in. And somebody else goes in to give shots or do labs or whatever needs to be done. Somebody bills for the visit, all of that stuff.

So, you actually don’t do everything. You probably never have in your training. You probably never have. So, why do we then come into businesses, let’s say some online business, and then decide, “I’m going to make the website and I’m going to do all the calls to the clients and I’m going to do all the lead magnets and I’m going to create the logo myself.”

You’ve never done that. This doesn’t line up with your training. So, think about all the things you’ve quote unquote delegated in your medical training. Think about all the things you delegate at your job.

Now, when you come into business, I want you to think the same way. So, the lie that we’re such perfectionists – I mean, are we perfectionists that we do our vitals by ourselves, that we give all the shots by ourselves, that we draw blood by ourselves? We’re not.

We can have some issues with perfectionism, but it’s not that bad. So, when you think about doctors, this is just the way we are, not true. You were sold a lie. You may have bought the lie. It’s time to get rid of the lie. It’s not true. We’re great at delegation.

Who goes into the OR and does everything by themselves? Nobody. Nobody ever. Who works in the ED and does everything themselves? Nobody. Nobody.

So, is it true that we’re bad at delegation? No. Nopedy nope, nope, nope. It’s not, okay. So, get rid of that. Get rid of that. So, that was number four.

Number five, we’re bad at taking risk. We’re bad at taking risk. We want to be in control of everything. And I’m like, “Well, let’s take a look. Is there any truth to that?”

Think of what you do as a physician. You signed up of your own free will to be part of a career where you make life and death decisions. Of your own free will, you decided to become an ED doc where you run codes, where people who are almost dead come and you have to keep them alive.

You’re an OBGYN. You decided to deliver babies. What could be riskier? Think about the number of things that could go wrong in the delivery room with the mom and with the baby. But you chose that and you’re excited about that.

I mean, you almost lost your mind when you got accepted into your program. You love it. So, how is it that you cannot analyze risk and take risk? Of course you can. Of course you can. You’re an ophthalmologist. You signed up to do eye surgery; surgery on the eye. If anything goes wrong, the person is blind.

You signed up for a career where people get sued regularly. So, am I saying go jump off a cliff? No, that’s not what I’m saying. But what I am saying is it’s not true that you’re bad at taking risk. It really isn’t.

You are calculated. Calculated risk, you’re good at taking it. So, when you think that or somebody tells you that, don’t agree with it. It’s not true. We’ve been told that we’re bad at networking. You know, doctors, they just see patients, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We’re bad at networking.

So, let’s think about that. Let’s unpack that. Has there ever been a resident that didn’t network? Let’s not even go as far as a resident. Let’s talk about the medical student.

Now, if you’re a medical student or you’re a resident, let’s say a resident, you have to call your attending to give a report on a patient. And that may not seem like networking to you, but what you just did is you spoke to somebody who is far ahead of you career-wise. And you’ve established a connection.

And if you’re an intern, you network with the second years and the third years. And if you want your life to not be miserable, you network with the nurses on the floor and you network with the medical students who come to work with you and you network with all kinds of – by nature of what we do, you have to know a lot of people. You have to reach out to a lot of people. You have to talk to a lot of people. You can’t be isolated. You just cannot.

Now, you did that for the good of the patient. You did that for your patient care. You did that for your training. Guess what you can do when you become an entrepreneur? You can do the same thing.

You can do the same thing as an entrepreneur. You can reach out to people much further than you. You can reach out to people who are considered colleagues. You can reach out to people that are just a few steps ahead of you. You can reach out to people who you can help. You can reach out to vendors.

You can create this massive network. And I want you to show up knowing I have done this before. I have rocked this before. I am great at networking. I am. So, that’s number six.

Number seven is my favorite. I felt that, you know, I’m a doc. I may own a business, but I own it from the standpoint of I’m also an entrepreneur. Now, let me talk to you a little bit about that concept.

You know how you can have, you know, Lebron James is a basketball player. Stephan Curry is a basketball player. And then somebody who is in the D-league is also a basketball player. Now, I’m not saying that to demean anybody. But I’m saying, they also play basketball. But they’re not up there. They’re not the movers and shakers. They’re not those people.

And so, when it came to business, I was like I’m an MD, I’m also an entrepreneur. You know, this is another thing I do. But I couldn’t bring myself to think, “I can change this sector of society with my business. I can change the lives of 80,000 doctors with my business.”

I couldn’t do that. Why? Because I’m also, “I’m trying. I’m not really supposed to be able to do this stuff so I’m kind of just doing it. But I’m not really, really, you know, a real entrepreneur.”

So, the seventh one is we’re not visionaries. We’re not visionaries. We can’t own something and change it. We can’t change a sector of society. We can’t build businesses that are legacies.

And I don’t know if there’s anything further from the truth. I need you to stop and I need you to think about when you were in high school and you were like, “I’m going to go to medical school.”

You were in high school and you elected to go to a field where even to get in, to be trained, the odds were against you. There was a 93% chance that you wouldn’t get in. But you decided to do that. And for most people, probably 99% of people, the motive is not money. The motive is not prestige. The motive is, “I want to help people. I want to leave a mark. I want to do something significant.”

You have always been a visionary. You have always been a visionary. From when you were in high school you’ve been a visionary. If someone tells you, you don’t have what it takes to change the world, to change a sector of society, it’s a lie. You have what it takes. You always have.

If you look, I pulled examples from stuff you’ve already done because I want you to see the evidence that these seven things are lies. So, stop and think about it for a minute. What if you showed up in business, what if you showed up knowing that the opposite of these are true.

So, imagine with me for a bit, imagine that you showed up knowing, believing that you’re great at entrepreneurship, that you’re great at selling, you’re great at speaking. You’re great at delegation. You’re great at taking calculated risk. You’re great at networking. And you are and have always been a visionary.

How would you show up? How would it matter in your business? What change could you create? What could you do? I’m thinking you’re literally unstoppable if you would embrace the truth and reject the lie. Don’t believe those lies anymore.

Adopt the truth. Show up that way. And watch what you’re going to do. Whether you’re an intrapreneur building out your physician, brand, whether you’re in private practice, whether you’re a coach, whether you developed a product, whether you own some other service-based business, whatever it is, show up.

Show up as a great entrepreneur, speaker, networker, seller, delegator, visionary, risk-taker. And if you would do that, if you would do that, over the course of a few months, you’ll find out that, “I was always meant to leave a legacy. I was always meant to impact my world. I was always meant to live a life of meaning and significance. And I’m on my way.” And I would love nothing more than to get a DM or PM from you saying, “Yes, I’m doing exactly that.” Okay?

Alright, so those are the seven biggest lies. And now you can see they’re all lies. So, start walking in your truth. What I want you to do today, one of the fastest ways to learn is to teach. So, I want you to take a screenshot of this podcast episode, just take a screenshot on your phone. I want you to post it on social media. I want you to post the seven truths you’re choosing to believe about yourself as an entrepreneur and tag me #etremd. I would love to shout you out, reshare it, and all of that. And let’s go build something great together.

So, thank you for listening. Be sure to share this. And I will see you 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.