Ep #135: How to Fall in Love with Your Business

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, hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of The EntreMD Podcast. And as always, I’m super excited to be here. I am pumped that you’re listening. And I just want to say that I think we’re in a brand new phase, a brand new season for physicians. And I’m actually really excited about it.

In 2016, when this whole thing started of “Listen, you know, medicine as we know it is gone. We have to prepare. We have to start acquiring new skills. The way we’ve always done it is not going to cut it anymore,” there was a lot of hopelessness and despair and, “How can we do this,” around that.

And to be in a time – like I’ve been in the EntreMD Business School, our private Facebook group, and I was just looking in awe at all the physicians there. You know, physicians who have been in practice for a number of years and they’re like, “We’re scaling. We’re doing this big-time,” physicians who are like, “I’m owning what I now do. I’m launching that podcast. I’m launching that YouTube channel,” doctors who are like, “Okay, this is my milestone. This is when I’m going to cross the $100,000 mark, this is when I’m going to cross the seven-figure mark.”

It’s insane. It’s such a positive place. We’re making a lot of forward momentum and we’re living outside the box comfortably. We’re living outside our comfort zone comfortably.

So, doctors who are like, “I can’t speak. I can’t be on a podcast. I don’t even think I can be an entrepreneur,” now going, like, “I’m an entrepreneur. I can do that. I woke up at 10 o’clock last night and decided, forget it, I am doing that podcast and I’m going to reach out to my first set of guests, and boom, done.”

So, I’m just saying that to say we’re in a different phase. We are taking back the steering wheel. We’re getting back in the driver’s seat. We are doing our thing. And I want to invite you to do that too. Embrace it. Don’t believe the lies. Don’t believe the, “I cannot,” don’t believe the, “I’m a one-trick pony.” Don’t believe, “I can only do a business this size.” We have no limits. It’s so beautiful.

But anyway, today we’re going to be talking about how to fall in love with your business. And you might go, like, “Okay, what does that even mean?” So, I’ll tell you what it means, and I’m sure it will resonate with a lot of you.

When I first started my first business, which is my practice, Ivy League Pediatrics, I was ashamed of my practice. To be completely honest and vulnerable, I was ashamed of it. And I was ashamed of it because, “Well, this is an itty-bitty practice, small office, three exam rooms,” and all of that. And five minutes away, there’s this big practice that has 16 doctors and they’ve been there for almost 40 years.

And 10 minutes in the other direction, there’s this other practice and they’re doing big and great things, and I’m just here and I just started. I’m having maybe seven patients a day and stuff like that.

And so, I was kind of ashamed of it. Which would not be too bad if I was ashamed of it and I kept that to myself. But what it did is it affected the way I showed up. So, I wouldn’t market it. I wouldn’t talk about it confidently. I wouldn’t tell people, “There’s no other place your kid should be. They need to come to Ivy League Pediatrics.”

I didn’t because secretly I was ashamed. Now, I got over that, obviously. And the rest is history. This was 11 years ago. But then, I started EntreMD. And when I started EntreMD, I was like, “Well, Tony Robbins is a coach and you’re going to say you’re a coach. How many years of experience do you have? Do you really think you can pull this off?”

Now, I had been doing what I do in EntreMD unofficially, so not as a business, for years. But it’s just a thing I was doing and stuff like that. And again, because I was kind if ashamed – maybe not so much ashamed as I didn’t really think it was as good as the other people’s stuff – because of that, I didn’t really show up.

I would show up. I would make offers and all of that stuff. But it was from a standpoint of, you know, this is really not as good as the other stuff. And I am so grateful that I’ve overcome both of those, like in both businesses. And I love my products. I love my services. I love what I do. And I offer with reckless abandon because I think my services are amazing because they produce the results. They just do.

And so, there’s something to walk through to go from, “I’m not really showing up because, you know, I’m kind of also an entrepreneur. This is kind of also a business. I’m not even sure of my idea. I don’t know if this is a thing.” There’s a process to go from that to the point where you make an offer knowing that no matter how much people are paying you, it’s a sweet deal.

So, I’m going to walk you through that process. But if you embrace it, you can fall in love with your business. You can fall in love with your offers. You can tell people to come work with you so confidently. You can reach out to referral sources and say, “We will take care of your people.” And you can offer your products, whatever it is that you do, so confidently because you’re in love with it.

So, let’s go through the process. Number one, number one is that you have to understand the magnitude of the problem you solve. Because sometimes people will come up to me like, “Well, nobody really needs this. Nobody really wants this,” you know what I mean? You have to understand the magnitude.

So, let me play with numbers. Numbers are easier to measure. When I started EntreMD, I was like, “Yeah, but if I niche down to doctors, I’m not going to have any people to serve. I’m going to lose all these other people.”

Well, if we did the math though, or if we did the research, there are a million physicians in the US. A million, and not in the world, in the US. Because in the business school, we have students from New Zealand, we have students from Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, France, and Tokyo. I hope I didn’t leave anybody out. Sorry.

Yeah, but we have from all these countries. So, I’m not even talking about all those countries. I’m talking about in the US, there are a million. So, do I have a lot of people to serve? Yes. Do I have a lot of people who have this problem that I solve? You know, they haven’t embraced entrepreneurship. They’re not living life and practicing medicine on their own terms. Do I have a lot of people? Yes.

So, what do I do? Well, I go out and find my people. That makes marketing, promotion, all of that stuff less disturbing because I have all these people who have this really big problem and they don’t know about me. I don’t have a million downloads on my podcast yet, so what that means is that there are all these people who have no idea, they’ve never heard my podcast.

And listen, if you’re listening and you love this podcast, can you do something for me today? Once you’re done listening to this, I want you to share this episode with another doctor in your life, or maybe your favorite episode, whichever. Because I’m trying to reach my people, okay.

So, you have to understand the magnitude. There are all these people, there’s a million of them that need the solution that my business offers.

You might say, “Well, Dr. Una. I don’t think all million of them need your services.” Okay, fair enough. But if 10% do, that’s 100,000 doctors. If 1% did, that’s 10,000 doctors. If only 1% of the doctors said, “I need what you have,” that’s 10,000 doctors. That’s a lot of doctors. So, the magnitude.

So, we have a doctor in the EntreMD Business School, big shoutout to Dr. Cheruba. She’s called The Fibroid Doc on YouTube. And she embraced that and she’s like, “This is what I do.” Well, you might go, “Fibroids, I mean, that’s such a small, small, small group of people.” But one in three women will develop fibroids at some point in their lives.

There are 166.7 million women in the US, so a third comes to 55.6 million. That’s a lot of women. But Dr. Cheruba gets an understanding of, “This is the number of people that have this problem, and then all the things that go with it, the anemia that goes with it, the painful periods that go with that, the need for hysterectomies, infertility, all of that. It’s such a big problem and for so many.

And if you can view your business, like, “My business, this is how it serves humanity,” you can even say that, humanity, “56 million women in the US alone going through this and my business fixes this.” So, there’s that.

And there’s another doctor who owns a physician match-making service, which is so amazing. I’m so happy she decided to do that, Dr. Lori Hochman. And her approach to fixing burnout in the physician space is matching doctors who are looking for jobs, or who want to be employed physicians with private practices owned and run by physicians. How brilliant is that?

Now, I didn’t pull numbers on this, but I’m in private practice. I have many friends who are in private practice. And one of the biggest issues in private practice is HR, is finding the people and keeping the people. And to have a service run by a physician that will link physician-run practices with physicians who are looking for employment, I mean, I don’t know what’s better. It’s a huge, huge, huge, huge problem. And her business is designed to fix that.

And not only fix the match-making problem, but fix the burnout problem. So, she is serving the physicians who want to be employed and the physicians who run the private practices.

So, you have to take a step back and look at, what is the problem that my business solves? How many people have that problem? And if you can figure out the magnitude of that problem, then you see how valuable and how sought-after what you do is. And it puts you in a different frame of mind. Like, you’re like, “I have to go be a guest on that podcast so that more of my people can find me. I have to go speak at that event so more people can find me. I don’t mind having a weekly newsletter so my people can find me.”

You do that because you’re like, “This is a big problem.” It gives you a bigger vision. It takes away that tendency to just quit because you’re like, “No, my business solves a problem that 55 million people have.” Do you see what I’m saying?

So, first, you have to have an understanding of the magnitude of the problem you solve, or your business solves. So, that’s number one.

Number two, you have to have an understanding of the transformation you offer. Now, I’m going to sit in on this a little bit because what ends up happening is we know our process. I’m a pediatrician. I go into the office. I see the kids. I do my HPI and the rest of my notes. I order shots and all that, and I go away.

But you’re going to have to dig deeper. What is the transformation I offer? Again, I’m going to pull all these docs from the business school because I know them and I know their businesses, and frankly I love shouting people out. So, Dr. Arinola Dada, for instance, she is a rheumatologist in Seattle. And she is building The Center of Excellence for Rheumatology in Seattle. That’s what she’s doing.

Now, she can say, “Well, I help people with joint pain.” Which is true. But let’s dig a little deeper and see, what is the transformation that she offers? So, there’s a lady. And I’m totally making this up, but she’s 60 years old and she has three amazing grandkids who live, fortunately, two miles from her, so she gets to see them a lot.

In her mind, it would have been amazing if she could take them to the park every day. Because her daughter, their mother is saying, you know, “They’re not getting a lot of time outside and I’m working these late hours so I can’t take them outside.” And she’s thinking, “I’m older. I would love to spend time with my grandbabies in a structured way every day. I’d love to get them active and I would love to be active as well.”

But she’s had arthritis in both knees for the past five years and she’s in so much pain that, even though that’s what she wants, she can’t do it. She looks outside. She’s like, “It’s a beautiful sunny day.” But she can’t take them outside. She sees them running around and she just wishes. She looks back to when she used to roll on the floor with her daughters and thinking, “Wow, if I could do this as a grandmother…” but she cannot. She cannot.

There are places she used to go visit. She can’t go because they have stairs and she can’t go up there. She used to love to dance and there’s a place for her to go and dance. But she can’t dance because her knees hurt.

Then she meets Dr. Dada. And then, Dr. Dada walks her through her treatment and gets her back to functional use of her knees. And for the first time, she’s able to take her grandbabies to the park and they’re running and they’re like, “Come on, grandma.” And she wasn’t able to run the way she used to run in her 30s, but she could run after them. And tears falling down her face saying, “Oh my goodness. I love Dr. Dada. She has changed my life.”

And she’s gone back to dancing. And she’s gone back to being able to shop at her favorite mall that has stairs, but she’s able to go now. Dr. Dada’s not just treating joint pain. She is changing lives.

The more in tune you are with the whole transformation, the more in tune you are, the more you will love your business, the more you would reach out because you’re saying, for this 60-year-old lady, there are many others like her going through the same pain, not realizing that there’s a fix, not realizing that. That’s one example.

Now, Dr. Diana Mercado, she’s also in the business school and she’s a coach for physicians with ADHD, which I think is phenomenal, okay, phenomenal.

Now, she was talking about this and she said, “Ignoring ADHD can lead to depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicide. A person with ADHD can decrease their life span by 21 years and is more likely to die from unnatural causes because they got distracted by something.” I want you to think about that.

So, when Dr. Diana is working with people, well, is she helping them use ADHD as their superpower? Yes. In fact, I know she talks about helping them reclaim five to 10 hours per week. And if you think about five to 10 hours a week, I mean, 10 hours a week is 520 hours a year. Think of what you could do with that. I mean, you could sleep, to start with.

You can sleep. You can go on vacations. You can read more. You can invest in your business. You can do all these amazing things. But that’s not all she offers.

If you think about it, if she works with them and they come to a point where they kind of overcome the stigma of it, if you will, they reach out to get the help that they need, they learn how to use it as a superpower, as opposed to it being a problem. And because they work with her, they get over the statistic that says they’re more prone to depression and anxiety and addiction and suicide.

I need you to think about it. She is reducing the risk of depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicide in physicians. She’s helping them prolong their life span because they’re no longer as distracted. So, the more in tune she is with the fact that her business actually saves lives and prevents chronic mental health problems and prevents suicide, the more in love she’ll be with what she does. You have to have an understanding of the magnitude of the transformation you offer.

You know, in EntreMD, what we do, it’s all about business, right? Kind of, because this affects multiple areas of life. I think one of the most amazing comments I got from one of my clients was she was like, “My business has grown by more than 600% since I started working with you.”

She was like, “But more important than that is my quality of life is so much better. My marriage is so much better, because now I have the time to spend with my husband. I’m so proud of the fact that my power of contribution in my family is so much higher; so much higher. My relationship with my children is better.”

The transformation I offer is not just a business, even though that is huge in itself. But it even goes to that. You get your time back. You get your family back. You get a higher sense of worth. And not that your worth comes from what you do. No, that’s not what I mean.

Because one of the most rewarding things about a business is the person it makes you in the process of building that business. So, I love what I do because I know the magnitude of the problem I solve and I know the magnitude of the transformation that I offer.

I think it was Dr. Dada, she talked about her on her episode on The EntreMD Podcast, it was called The Difference Six Months Can Make. And she talked about the fact that in six months, her revenue had gone up, her charting time had gone down by 70%. There’s a second vertical in her business, the expenses had gone down by 70%. She’s back at home with no notes to get done.

So, now she has all this time to spend with her family and all of that. And she’s like, “Now there are no limits.” That’s the transformation I offer. Okay, so that’s number one and number two.

Number three, number three is you’ve got to practice owning it, talking about it, and selling it. You have to practice owning it, talking about it, and selling it. Now, you’re going to do the work to understand the magnitude of the problem you’re solving and the magnitude of the transformation that you offer. But it’s still going to feel weird. It’s still going to feel weird when you talk about it. It’s still going to go like, “I don’t know.” It’s still going to be better but it’s still going to be there.

So, what are you going to do? You’re going to put in the reps. You’re going to talk about it. You’re going to talk about it. You’re going to own it. When you introduce yourself, don’t just say, “Oh, you know, I’m a pediatrician…” No, no, no. Own who you are.

My name is Dr. Una, I’m a pediatrician and I’ve been the CEO of my private practice for the last 11 years. And I’m also the founder of EntreMD. It is a company designed to help physicians embrace entrepreneurship so they have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their own terms. I do this through my podcast, The EntreMD Podcast, an amazing podcast that hit over 100,000 downloads in less than 18 months, and the EntreMD Business School, the only school of its kind, exclusively for physician entrepreneurs who are ready to build profitable businesses.

See, right? I’m owing it. Now, my inner critic may say, “Whatever…” but we don’t pay attention to our inner critic. And our inner critic is faithful to talk, we have to be faithful to put ourselves out there. Faithfulness all around.

So, you own it. And then you talk about it. You talk about it, which means you go out there. You go out there to referral sources, to be guests on podcasts, on YouTube channels. You start your own YouTube channel. You start your own blog. You go to networking events. Whatever, you are talking and talking and talking and talking about it.

You speak at events. You’re talking about it and you sell it. You tell people, “Come and work with me.” Don’t talk and not tell them not to. Because people, there are millions of people who need what you have. There are hundreds of thousands of people. There are thousands of people who need what you have.

And you need to reach them and you need to tell them, you’ve had this issue. You’ve been dealing with it for so long. You don’t have to anymore. This is what I do. Come work with me.

And that’s whether it’s a private practice or you have a product or you’re a coach, especially if you’re a coach. If you’re a coach, if it’s your personal brand, even if you don’t have a product.

So let me give you this. If you have a personal brand and you don’t have a product or a service and you’re not thinking about it yet, your audience is your quote unquote product. I’m not saying people are products. Please don’t misunderstand me.

But if you don’t know what to do, what you can do is build an audience. So, when you’re ready, an audience that knows, likes, and trusts you. So, when you’re ready to offer a product or you decided affiliates are your thing or you decided you’re going to be a brand ambassador, you already have people who follow you, who believe in your stuff, who’ve been having wins just based on your free stuff. And they are the people who will buy from you.

But regardless, practice owning it, talking about it, and selling it. Practice owning it, talking about it, and selling it. Okay. You have to do that. And if you put in the reps, if you keep doing it, you’ll come to that point where you don’t think that much about it. You just tell people what you do and you always feel like you’re offering them a deal, like the deal of a lifetime.

So, those are the three steps. Understand the magnitude of the problem you solve. Understand the magnitude of the transformation you offer. And practice owning it, talking about it, and selling it.

So, this is what I want you to do. This is one of these episodes, I’m sure you’ve gotten a lot out of it. You’re probably mind-blown, like, “Oh my goodness, I can fall in love with my business. I can fall in love with my service. I can fall in love with my product so I don’t have to be ashamed of selling, so I can be so excited because I know I’m offering people a great deal. Like, no matter how much they pay to work with me, technically it’s free because their return on investment is so huge. So huge.”

If you invested in stocks knowing that, for every $5 I get, I’m getting $25 out, well all the money goes in there. Let’s say that was a constant and it could not change. Well, all the money goes in there because you have nothing to lose. Nothing.

So, the magic is in the doing. So, I want you to schedule a meeting with yourself to do number one and number two, where you’re going to sit down and you’re going to play it out so you can understand the magnitude of the problem you solve and you can understand the magnitude of the transformation you offer.

You’re going to track it all the way. So, you’re going to schedule a meeting for that. And for the next month, I want you to just make a commitment. I’m going to make an offer five days a week, so Monday through Friday, for a month. You might go like, “What?”

Yes, but listen. If you do that coming out telling people what you do, they should work with you or you tell a story like a testimonial and then they should work with you and different posts like that, but every one, there’s a call to action, like come work with me or sign up for my stuff or whatever, if you do that for a month, guess what you’ve done.

You’ve built a muscle. It’s your muscle. You’ve built the promotion muscle. And you’ve learned to do it in creative ways and you’ve seen what your audience responds to and you’ve been able to answer their questions. And believe you and me, you will have a lot of patients or clients, whoever you work with, just from doing this exercise.

So, Monday through Friday, and if you’re like, “I don’t know how to do that,” well, social media is one way. And we did the seven types of posts you should be using on social media. And if you got that from EntreMD Live, use that. If you didn’t, then you can sign up for EntreMD On Demand and you’ll have access to it and all the other courses that are there. Of course, if you’re a business school student, this is in your portal, so you don’t need to sign up for anything. So, you can use that.

You can choose to be guests on podcasts, guests on YouTube channels. You can decide on your own podcast you’re going to do some kind of marathon for a month or on your YouTube channel, whatever.

But you know what? You’re an entrepreneur. You’re a problem-solver. So, figure it out. But make an offer Monday through Friday, or five days a week, so if you want to do different days that’s fine, Monday through Friday, five days a week, for a month.

And you know what? If you do this, you will change. Your business will change. This will be so amazing. And if you do this, I want you to email me about it, druna@entremd.com and I want you to send me an email and I want you to share all your wins with me because I know they will be mind-blowing. They will be.

So, do that. And what will happen is that at the end of it, you’re going to be that person who is never, ever, ever again afraid of selling because you’re not selling. You’re not trying to manipulate people. You’re not trying to get them to give you your money. That’s not what you’re doing.

They have a problem. You have built a solution. And you are offering them the solution. So, whatever deal you give them is a sweet deal. Imagine making offers from that standpoint. Imagine telling people to come work with you from that standpoint. And that can be you.

So, I want to invite you to do that. I know I don’t think I’ve ever given a call to action this quote unquote hard since I started the podcast, but I am giving this to you because I know that it will radically, dramatically change your life and your business. And I want to see that for you. Okay.

So, share this episode with another doctor in your life, especially if it’s the doctor who wants to start a business, wants to grow a business, or is holding back on putting themselves out there, doesn’t like selling or promotion, which is almost every physician. So, just share it with all the physicians, okay. 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.