In this eye opening interview, Dr. Sujin Lee is a neuro rehab physician and physician coach who practices medicine part-time while pursuing her interests in research, teaching, consulting, and coaching. She believes that physicians have many skill sets beyond clinical practice that can be utilized in various fields through a side business.  She helps other physicians reach their full potential to create a satisfying life and is presenting a webinar for physicians who are interested in entrepreneurship.  Listen and learn!

Dr. Sujin Lee’s Website:
https://sujin-lee.mykajabi.com/

Dr. Sujin’s Physician Coaches Profile:
https://www.physiciancoaches.com/coaching-category/sujin-lee-md-physician-coaching

Webinar: Achieving Work-Life Balance  through Part-Time Practice with a Purposeful Side Business:
https://sujin-lee.mykajabi.com/achieving-work-life-balance-2023?

Transcript: 

Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD. Today we have a good friend of mine. She’s actually part of my mastermind physician mastermind, and I’ve got to know her over the last few months. I’m very talented and. I feel also very inspirational. She’s a neuro rehab physician.

She’s a single mom of two children. She’s actually a physician coach as well. She’d been practicing medicine part-time to pursue her interest in research, teaching, consulting and coaching while spending time with her kids. Since she’s finished up her fellowship she always been working a lot with women physicians, getting to know them a lot better, and she realized in her part-time practice, she can create the environment for herself to practice medicine on her own terms.

When she helps other physicians to reach their full potential to create a satisfying life, and she’s coming up with a webinar for physicians who are interested in entrepreneurship, which I love to talk about. Welcome to the program, Dr. Sugen Lee Sugen. How are you doing?

Sujin Lee MD: Oh my goodness. I’m doing great. Thank you so much. Your introductory is “I’m like, oh my God, who are you talking about? Is that me?” Thank you so much.

Mike Woo-Ming: And it’s been a long time since we saw each other. I think we just saw each other. Listen, just last week at a little mastermind that we had. With Peter Kim up in Southern California.

But I wanted to talk about you and I’m really excited to, to have you onto the program because I think you’re, I think don’t think you’re doing your story justice because I do think it’s in, it’s inspiring and I think it’d be inspiring to our listeners. So let’s talk about your journey.

Just before the show, you told me, you came to this country, not necessarily to practice medicine, but were interested in music. Tell me more about that.

Sujin Lee MD: It’s an interesting story I never thought about. It’s interesting because that’s part of my story. I put that one as my past, but it’s part of me all the time.

It never goes away. But I’m thinking back, you know what, first time the idea about becoming doctor came from my mom. I was a fifth grade. I was already playing piano for maybe another five years or whatnot. I guess I was pretty good. So a lot of people pushing me to go into music and my mom suggested why don’t you wanna become a doctor at the time?

And I said, because my mom says so. I said no. So I said, I’m gonna go to continue music education. So I ended up going to our school for my junior high in high school in Korea. And I went to college to study music and in college the education program is once you are in certain area, it’s really hard to change any major at the time.

So in college I didn’t like music that much, but I guess I was good enough. But I just continued and I talked to my professor asking, I wanted to do something different, what should I do? And my professor asked me, do you know what you want to do? I said, not really. And she said, just continue what you do and it may lead to something.

So I kept her words to my mind. And then I continue study music. And by the time, around the time that graduating college I wanted to come to the United States. It’s very interesting. I don’t know what happened, but what happened is my mom she’s actually second oldest child with a seven siblings, and she grew up in a countryside in Korea.

She was in charge of taking care of the rest of the sibling. So when she was in high school, her parents, because they lived in countryside, they wanted to send the son to the big city to go to college. And then they asked my mom to be the parent role. So my mom’s regret or something that she always wanted to do was going to college and get the older education and having the career or life that she wanted to do.

I think that’s something that she would want me to do. When I got into the college, she said, you should go visit the United States and see what’s out there. It might be something that you might be interested in the future. So actually she sent me and my friend, and there’s like a package tour thing, so she sent me, She shipped me over there to the United States and that was 1991.

It’s a totally different word. It just opened up my mind and there’s so much opportunity and back in, in Korea as a female there’s a limiting things what you can do. And once you’re in certain way, there’s not much different options you can do. So when I was here as a freshman in college, I saw the opportunity.

Something that I could explore. And I didn’t like the homogeneous culture of the Korea there. It’s a one ethnic background, even back then. It’s worse than, it’s more homogeneous back then than now. So I didn’t like that culture that everyone follows the same thing. If somebody buys one thing, everything, everyone buys that I think it’s known in our culture in Korean-American or Asian-American culture too. I didn’t like that culture. I was looking for something different and it opened up in my mind that I want to go to the United States. I just didn’t know how, and I figured it out, what might be the easiest way to do it, and I realized, okay, I can go to grad school, so let me get into the grad school with the music, because that’s what I was good at and that’s what I was able to do.

So I applied. Doctors are, “We’re so notorious about doing the hardest thing or the most challenging thing that you want to do.” I wanted to go to grad school has the most challenging program. So I applied a couple schools and I was really fortunate to get into one of the top program in the United States.

So I went to New York for two years to go to grad school. That’s how I came to the United States. But towards the end of my college, I knew I didn’t want to continue music. I enjoyed teaching, but I really didn’t enjoy the performance part of it. So I started looking into different options. I was interested in psychology, I was interested in medicine.

So when I was in New York auditioning my program, I went to NYU listening to a seminar or session about how to get into medical school. So back then I was inter international student. I didn’t have any green card. I didn’t have anything. So I asked a question, how hard is it to get into medical school?

And the dean said it’s almost impossible. So I was like, “Okay, let me just get into grad school.” Let me do that first, and then if it happens, then maybe I will have an opportunity later on. So I put it in my back pocket. And then I moved to the United States to study grad study music.

So I was dating at the time. So after graduating we decided to get married and then I moved to San Diego and we had two kids. And around the time my thoughts about going to medicine became more realistic. I wanted to do something different. In California, culture is very different. Korea, my original plan was study music, get doctors in music and go back to Korea and teach in college.

That was my plan, but since I decided to live in the United States, I looked, started looking into different options, and I think I had this desire of helping others or teaching others. I think we all have it as a physician. Maybe that’s why I continued music. My goal was become a professor and teacher, and I guess that’s related too in medicine.

I always enjoyed helping other people and teaching others, so I looked into option in medicine. And interestingly, I was pretty good at math and science even. I was a music major, so I went to community college try out a couple different classes, and I did pretty well. So with the two kids, I made a decision to apply for medical school.

My dad said, you’re crazy. But you’ve been always crazy, so I’m gonna support you, whatever you to do. Yes. I was in San Diego at the time. I think I spent maybe three years to take all the prerequisite courses and do volunteers and research, and I got into UCSD. So that’s how my medical journey started.

Mike Woo-Ming: I love it and I love that you didn’t really take no for an answer when in New York, they said that the dean said, no, it’s almost impossible. And you didn’t accept that. And I really, I didn’t know that. Many doctors have the, the typical, a bachelor’s degree.

MCAT go into medical school, go into music and then community college. Oh, yes. And taking all the three, the prerequisites for a few years. That’s certainly remarkable. You went to you went to medical school you went to residency. Yes. And then you became a doctor in treating patients.

When did you start thinking maybe there were other ways that I could help other people besides clinical medicine?

Sujin Lee MD: I think a lot of physicians, they usually go straight into medical school or take a couple years between, but there’s not that many women physicians who goes to medical school and medical training with the children.

But my circumstance, I already had a kids and I decide to go to medical school. So medical training medical school and residency was a full-time clinical work and I felt I was missing out the time with my children. And I always had a interest in research. I’m a kind of heavy academic kind of personality, a little bit nerdy.

I was interested in research. I wanted to do research. So when I was in resident, I reached out some of the research faculty in the school u c Irvine. I got trained. They’re very well known for the researchers for spinal cord injury. Yeah, I talked to professor and then I volunteered to work at their lab and actually they had opportunity for research grant during my residency.

So I got the research grant. So actually fourth year my resident, I took half six month off to do the research. That’s when I started noticing that, Practicing medicine full-time is not the only option to be a physician. There are many other different things that you can do as a physician.

Actually, it gives you a lot of credit, and the training that we go through has a lot more skill sets than most of the physicians think. When I talk to other physicians, they say, “I don’t know what else to do. I only see the patient.” But if you think about it, seeing a patient, running a team, medical team or rehab team, I’m a rehab physician.

Has a lot more skill than just seeing the patient. Even just seeing the patient is not just seeing the patient. There’s a lot of critical thinking, process, communication, writing, presentation, and dealing with the team, leading the team as a leader. There’s many different skill sets that that we don’t see a lot of times.

So as a researcher we call it “physician scientist”, I. Because I had a research background in spinal cord injury in animal, I decided to go into fellowship and I continued to have the research grant throughout the fellowship. And at the end of the clinical fellowship I did a clinical research fellowship for two years.

So that’s when that I practiced maybe medicine about 50% of the time. And then I had this research about 50% of the time. And so probably that’s why I started seeing the possibility that physicians don’t have to practice medicine all the time. There are many things that we can do. We just need to open up for the opportunity and see what resonates our values and what we are passionate about.

So when I was finishing my fellowship, I had opportunity to, at the university being a full-time clinical faculty. Or I had the option of working part-time clinically. But I had opportunity doing the consulting work medi with a medical device company that spinned off from the research project I did.

And interestingly, I also had opportunity to do some expert witness work. It started with a deposition that I took care of during my residency and I was deposed as a fellow. It was very scary experience. Yeah. But that opens up the whole other area, that there is other work that can be utilized or use our skillset, who needs our care, who needs our expertise.

I was able to see that opportunity. So when I was finishing my fellowship I had a choice: Either going into a hundred percent clinical work in the university or stay in a private practice and piecemeal together clinical work and research and other administration side of work. I decided to do that because that was more aligned of my value, that I don’t wanna miss out more time with my children, which I already did during my medical school and training.

So that’s how I got started with my career. So I never actually fully practiced a hundred percent clinical practice. I guess probably I went through that burnout during my training. And I knew that I didn’t wanna continue to do that as attending. So that’s like already what, seven years ago in, that’s the time that I saw all different opportunities.

Mike Woo-Ming: I like it. And you mentioned the burnout, it also comes with, finding that it sounds like a drive was your children, and that’s what it was it for me. Many people decide to start up a career. They think, A lot of people think it’s, oh, just for the money or am I gonna make a million dollars?

But really what it comes down to, for me it was more time with my family. Yes. My kids were young, one who was autistic. I wanted to spend more time with them. Yes. What also sounds like what also drove you to is your curiosity over other things that you could be doing besides medicine. Is that what led you into coaching?

Sujin Lee MD: Actually coaching came to me. I was looking for something more, so I was already doing part-time clinical work, and then I had opportunity to become a associate program director for the program during the covid. And towards the end of the covid. During Covid, actually, I felt a lot of stress.

Everybody experienced extreme stress during Covid as a physician that we feel that impact the most. And most of the stress was from protecting my residents because they were getting pulled over to ICUs, even their rehab of residents because the hospital was short of a staff. So we ended up spending a lot of time to protecting them and then those transition and towards the end I felt there must be something else.

You practice medicine the first couple years as attending, you master for your skill. Of course, there’s more things to learn in. I’m in the academic setting because I work with the residents all the time. You can always learn more, but we all agree about 80, 90% of the time it’s a bread and butter.

You can actually treat them without thinking too much of it. And I think maybe I have a little bit of a curiosity and maybe some desire to helping others. And I take care of all the people with the neurogenic deficits like stroke, spinal cord injury like that. So I was doing that, but I felt something is limiting me.

I wanted to go into more research or doing some more in-depth work. I didn’t know what it was. And also I got separated at the time, so I was looking into financial mean, how to grow my asset and wealth and actually being retired. Because I started my career late and I immigrated later on.

I didn’t know anything about the retirement. But my mom actually had some of the properties in Korea, that’s one of the her side business, what she did as a stay-home mom. So I felt okay, I wanna buy another property. So I found Peter Kim’s conference in LA. So I went there 2019, right before Covid, and then I realized there’s a whole different physicians doing entrepreneurship.

So I met physician coaches and other people in the different entrepreneurship. I got introduced to the coaching area physician coaching idea. And during the covid that really ramped up. Like it really helped me managing my mind, managing my resident’s situation and dealing with all the stress and trauma we go through.

So I realized this is something that I want to do and also coaching helped me to grow more. I used to go to therapy on and off 10 years with a relationship and my experience as a physician and different challenges. But when I went to therapy, the therapist said, you’re doing fine. There’s nothing wrong with you.

Why do you wanna keep continuing therapy? But I was looking for where do I go from now? I’m already successful, but I want something more. I initially thought, what’s wrong with me? I have everything. I have healthy kids, I have a great career, I have everything, but I wanted something more.

And what helped me to find that? What’s that more and why do we want to create more? I found it through the coaching, so that helped me. Yes. So once I know that area I wanted to. I realized actually I was already doing it for my residents and colleagues and medical students guiding them as a mentorship.

And there’s a lot of the coaching part of it, and I realized there are many people who became, who becomes attending after that. We feel like we’re lost up to become an attending. There’s a map. Once you graduate undergrad? Some people say you gotta be bio major or what? A science major? I don’t believe that.

After undergrad, you go to medical school and you go to internship and residency and you get a job, then you’re done. But the reality is the life actually starts when you become attending. You started having a family, you have a responsibility in finance and as an adult or as a parent, there’s a lot of challenging comes.

And as we get older, I think the things in what happens in life, the illness or death of family, the things that we were sheltered when we’re younger, it becomes more relevant to us. Maybe because I’m in the rehab space. But there’s a lot of things going on and there’s the challenges. A lot of times there’s no mentor or there’s no guidance.

During medical school we have a faculty during the residency, yes, we have attending, but once you become a attending, you, unless somebody finds it actively, it’s not there. They’re not given to you. Yeah, and I think the coaching is the one that gives you guideline, but the difference is up to that attending somebody gives you what you’re supposed to do.

There’s a map, but once you become attending, you can create your own map. But the problem is we were never learned how to create our map.

Mike Woo-Ming: For those who’ve never attended a conference… Like the one that you had mentioned when you were with like-minded physicians. How big an of an impact was it?

But to go into that conference, it sounds like it, it was something that you probably wouldn’t got if you just stayed home and maybe got the recordings.

Sujin Lee MD: I think the biggest benefit or impact is seeing there are other people who are thinking similar. And there are people who already walked through the path that I am about to walk through.

And I truly believe even the destination is, might be same. I wanna have a hundred units, I wanna become a successful coach. The destination might be there, but the way, how you get there, I think everybody’s different because everybody is unique. And we don’t see that when we are in medical school.

Even that’s not true. Even becoming a doctor, everyone has their own unique pathway. Some people ace everything. Some people struggle a little bit, some people don’t match. They go to second match. There’s all different things, but we don’t talk about those things and we try to hide. And once you become attending, when you go to the next destination, and there’s a little bit of a stigma about.

Why do you wanna do something else when you’re a successful physician? There’s a lot of judge feel that culture needs to be changed, especially current healthcare system, how we were told what to do. And I think the mission or the passion of a physician is most of a physicians who go into medicine.

Our drive is to help others. What I see in current healthcare system is it provides the platform, but it really takes a lot of effort from us and maybe we’re not compensated enough. I’m not just talking about how much money we get paid and we’re talking about the emotional, psychological support and being able to have a life as a human, not instead of working 70 hours straight or 30 hours straight, look at the trauma attendings. There’s no limitation. Some trauma attendings are 30 hours. There’s another level one trauma come in. You go to trauma bay, take care of the patients, save the lives. But who saves those people who are working hard? We don’t have that protection.

To me, I think both things need to be changed. The system needs to change, but sometimes the systemic change comes later or doesn’t come until the people in there brings the issues to them. And my role, or what I, the reason why I advocating part-time, one part is as a full-time physician, we’re already working double of the time that most of the people work.

When we stay full-time, it’s 32 hours. Or 40 hours. I believe average patient works 60 hours if you’re working full-time. Wow. So the concept of a part-time for us could be still full-time, but that’s our mode, right? I need to work 60 hours. That’s my full-time. Maybe that’s not how it’s supposed to be.

Maybe that’s not healthy. So I learned that during my residency and I understood what matters to. me, my children and my time. Self-care… I wanna share that with other people, normalizing. Even I say it’s a part-time, maybe it’s a full-time for other, careers. And I guess what we trained or we developed that character in order to go through the medical training.

You gotta be really dedicated. Medicine is not something that you can do it as a hobby. There’s many professions that you have to dedicate it to be very successful. And being a physician is extreme success because human life depends on it. But if you look at everybody who’s successful in business, successful in entertainment industry, they work really hard.

But we carry that in our personal life too. So a lot of perfectionism, we have to work hard and we get burned out. Here we go the other way, burned out over there. We need to unlearn those things. And my mean, my tool is showing part-time medicine is fine and it’s okay to do something outside of medicine.

If you like your reason. If you wanna make money, yeah. Go ahead and make money If you wanna do your painting, yes. Go ahead and do painting. If you wanna volunteer. Yes, go ahead. I volunteer. And a lot of, there’s a fear about what if I lose my income? What if people think about, I’m not half of a doctor because I only practice halftime.

I just wanna share that’s not really true.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, I did a a survey to my list on, “would you rather make $500,000 a year working five days a week, or would, or a hundred thousand dollars a year working one day a week?” You can guess what most of them chose was the a hundred thousand. Let’s talk about your coaching and what you do to help other doctors.

Sujin Lee MD: Okay. So when I became a coach, I, we all have a niche drama.

A lot of coaches have a niche drama. Of course, I had a niche drama. So I actually run a single female physician on finance group with other couple other single female physician. Those are all moms. And I thought about, oh, maybe I can do money coach. There’s many great money coaches out there. I tried that one and then I’m like, oh, that’s not what I want to do. And what actually attracted, when I say I’m coaching, I attract people who wants to make a transition, who work full-time, especially one physician who work full-time, who wants to either transition out of a medicine or starting some side business as their passion or wants to cutting down their time, but they don’t want to lose income or… There’s a more potential actually. You can be more successful financially if you have a good business. If you have a successful business, probably you will make a more money than being a full-time physician. So what I notice is, depending on how I show up, it attracts certain clients. So I started coaching everybody and I noticed a physician entrepreneur in the early stage.

They come to me. So about a year ago, year and a half ago, we had a little summit, the Leveraging Growth Summit, and about 10 physicians in early career came to me and asked, “can you coach us so that we can start our business?” So that’s how I started about coaching entrepreneurs. So in my group, I had somebody who wants to start a YouTube channel. She’s still very successful. I had two people who started a podcast. I had one person who became a certified life coach in starting business, and I started attracting those people who wants to make a transition from employed full-time position to something else. So I don’t attract the people who wants to go to pharma because that’s not the space that I am in.

So I usually attract the people who wants to go either part-time and doing side business, or who wants to transitioning from employed physician to become a practice owner, starting their own practice or trying to figure out how they can create more autonomy and flexibility and how they can create time, what matters to them.

Most of them just had babies. So I have a client who just had a baby. She will come to your class. Yeah. Those are my typical best clients. Those are the best clients because I know I have two children. I went through that phase, so I know what it feels like to creating the time is the most valuable thing than any money or anything else.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. 100%. And there are, we don’t have a lot of time left. I know you’re busy. Let’s talk about the webinar that’s coming up. What what’s it all about? What would we learn if we register?

Sujin Lee MD: Okay after all that, I was communicating a lot of people in Facebook. I’m pretty active on Facebook.

A lot of people ask like, how do you get started? Like, where do I start? I can’t do this anymore. I’m miserable. I am a full-time practicing in a big healthcare system. I have to work full-time to make money or maintain my financial for my family. I hate my job. I don’t know what to do. So I ended up answering those questions in the Facebook comments and I realized it’s a very common question in many physicians.

So on previous webinar, it’s gonna be May 24th 5:00 PM. In Pacific Time, the title is Achieving Work-Life Balance Through Part-Time Practice with a Side Business. So this is exactly what I do and what my clients want to do. It doesn’t have to be this way, but this is a great place to start. So it’s gonna be I’m gonna talk about three things, three key points, how to make that transition.

The first thing is know where we are and what we are not happy about and what really matters to us. And I would like to. The second point is I wanna share the resources that I learned throughout the past seven years trying different real estate investment. I do expert witness work and do medical consulting.

Now I’m a coach, so I’m pretty familiar with many different types of outside business. So I wanna sh want to share that resources. The last point is I want everyone and everyone to come into, I want everyone have a, some solid next step. The downside of a going to conference in the webinar is we absorb all this information, but we don’t take action, right?

So we learn something, but we don’t make a progress. So I want to have a little bit of a conversation and actually help my audience to come up with a tangible plan so that they can take an action so that they can feel or they can move one step closer to creating the life, literally work-life balance.

And more filling life, you don’t feel like I’m burning out. You don’t feel like I hate medicine because it is possible to having this type of a life.

Mike Woo-Ming: Sujin, this is great. Lot of great information, great inspiration. Thank you for so much for joining us on the podcast. Any last minute thoughts before we end the call today?

Sujin Lee MD: You know what that’s an interesting question because I’m so grateful for everyone who helped me for me to be here, like my peer, one of my mentor and coach in our mastermind, and I’m very grateful for my clients. They find me that they come work with me so that I can help, I can share what I have.

It makes me feel like I’m going to the right direction. And actually we’re changing the culture of medicine one person at a time. I think that’s really necessary or very needed to have save our healthcare system, the physicians stay in the healthcare so that when we get older, we can get a good care from a good doctors.

Mike Woo-Ming: Well said. Thank you, Sujin. Thank you for joining us. The webinar is coming up May 24th. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. May 24th. Go ahead. We’ll have the links where you can register, how you can set up your business while working part-time as a physician. Thanks again, Sujin, and for everybody listening.

Again, if you’re have an idea, you’re stuck or maybe you’re in a career right now and you don’t know where to go, there’s always people who can help. I prefer other physicians who’ve been there and done that, like Sugen. Go out and reach. Reach out to them. Find out there is a path for you and keep moving forward.

A physician career coach can be a valuable partner in your career transition. They can help you identify opportunities for improvement in your personal and professional life, which could lead to greater satisfaction overall. Gaining an outside perspective is a useful way to learn about yourself and your goals.

Here to learn more on this important topic, is Dr. Mat Daniel is a pediatric otorhinolaryngologist, educator, and coach who specializes in career development and leadership for doctors.  He has a Masters degree in Coaching and Mentoring and is one of few coaches to have studied coaching at such an advanced level. He is also a licensed career coach and accredited with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council.  If you feel you are at a point in your career that you are feeling unfulfilled, hiring a career coach might be an ideal solution.

Dr. Mat Daniel’s website:
https://matdaniel.net/

Dr. Mat Daniel’s Physician Coaches Profile:
https://www.physiciancoaches.com/coaching-category/mat-daniel-mmed-ma-coaching-phd

Transcript:

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD. From time to time, I love to spotlight coaches who work with physicians to help them achieve the solutions that they’re looking for, and I was really impressed why. My next guest in terms of what he’s done and how he’s helped other doctors achieve what they achieve, their successes.

He has over 30 years experience in healthcare working as a consulted pediatric Otorhinolaryngologist. He has a PhD in Master’s in Coaching and mentoring, a master’s in medical education. These are leadership roles at university, regional and national level. He’s appraiser and a consult. Peer mentor and he’s passionate about diversity and he feels that coaching is a natural extension of his work as a doctor.

And he’s driven by wish to help others. Underpinned by his core values, curiosity, love of learning, honesty, fairness and kindness. And he really think he has based, just based upon his experience in the years of doing this and having a accredited degree in coaching, I really. Feel that he’s someone, if you’re looking in the areas of, especially in career, maybe you’re struggling in a career and you’re looking for help, you can explain why coaching is probably the most important thing that you can do.

So I’d like to welcome to the program Mat, Daniel. Mat, how are you my friend?

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: Fine. Thank you Mike. And thank you very much for that introduction and thank you very much for having me on your amazing podcast.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Now as I get older and listening to a lot of music over the years, my hearing isn’t as great as it could be, but I do detect that you do not have an American accent as most of my guests are Americans. Where are you? Where are you from and where are you calling in from today?

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: I have an accent that very few people get. So I actually live in Nottingham, England, but I was born in Belgium and I grew up in Slovenia. My mom was Slovenian, I’m a bit Austrian, a bit Italian. My dad was Scottish and I, and that, all of that happened via Australia as well so it’s one of those accents that’s well travelled.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. And where are you calling in from today?

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: Nottingham, England.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: In England. Okay. If you’re gonna say Kansas City, I’d be like, totally blown, blown away. So let’s talk about this. You’re one of the few guests that I know has had a long career in coaching and been in involved with this. So tell me about how this journey is, because it certainly doesn’t sound like you started in.

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: No, I started on a fairly standard clinical career. Always knew that I was interested in making a difference to other people and ended up in surgery, in otolaryngology with that. But fairly early on during my training, I realized that one of the things that really mattered to me was also.

Developing others and developing people around me and teamwork. And even as a trainee, I got involved in undergraduate medical education and attached myself to the university person who became my mentor and still is a really influential person. My career followed them around, started writing multiple choice questions.

And then, naturally progressed from their onwards into having much more of an education role, both in the undergraduate world as well as the postgraduate world. Although at the moment I mostly focus my education undergraduate world. And I think coaching really came along with that cuz it’s another way that I can help people.

I have patients that come in and, maybe I take the tonsils out. I have undergraduate students, they come and I teach them otolaryngology. And I have colleagues that need help with their career and I use coaching to help them with that. And some of that will be through one-to-one discussions.

But a lot of what coaching does for me, to be honest, for me become a way of leading and it’s become a way of being. With people around me and the coaching training that I’ve done, the way that I’ve developed myself as the skills and attitudes that I’ve acquired during my journey of learning to be a coach and, and it is still an ongoing journey.

A lot of that has actually been super useful in terms of how I interact with the team around me and… The theater team, for example, in the operating theater would be a really good example about how I tend to use my coaching skills as a way of leading to bring the team together to foster teamwork.

And when I first started doing things, coaches coaching type stuff, they all thought, has he gone mad? But years later I think they, they all embrace it and they all know. What it’s for. At least that’s what they tell me, Mike, maybe they talk behind my back, something else, who knows? But I think they enjoy it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: So almost every coach that I have interviewed or been in contact with have had their own coach. And it sounds like you, you yourself benefited from that by having that mentor. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about how, maybe personally, how it affected your coach.

Maybe what problems you, you had and how did the coach assist you in helping you get to that.

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: Yeah so actually you’re right. I got into coaching by having coaching and it made a massive difference to me personally. And that really sparked my interest in saying actually, you know, this is incredibly powerful.

I had coaching a number of years ago. I had significant health problems at the time and… that caused me to pause and reevaluate where my life and where my career is going. And as yourself or any of your listeners, if you have a big life event, it happens. You do pause and you do reconsider.

And our medical careers, they’re a bit like treadmills. You hop on when you are. And you run and you run from one role to the next. And and sometimes you pause and think and other times you just keep running and keep running. And I had to an event which paused me to step off the treadmill and reevaluate and think, where am I going?

And I work with the coach to. To decide what do I want from my life going forward? What kind of difference do I want to make? What kind of a person do I want to be? And and that those were the kind of questions really that influenced me and what came out of that discussion. Was for me specifically, this interest in developing others and, that’s always been there.

But probably not quite so crystal clear, but through working with my own coach it helped me really focus on that and say, actually, what I, what do I want my life to be about? And I want my life to be about developing others. And then, That, that’s become a really big thing for me and that for the years since I first got coaching, that’s something that’s permeated and that’s guided what I’ve done and how I worked and what kind of a person I’ve been.

Yeah, really transformational for me personally. As I’m sure a lot of your other interviewees have also said,

So being a doctor, so why in particular do you like working with doctors? Or maybe you don’t? I’m not You, you, on your website, you are a physician coach and you’re also featured in our, on our website, physician coaches.com.

What maybe some unique experiences that physicians have or any healthcare professional have that maybe someone who’s a non-physician may not know or experience.

Okay. I think it worldwide. I think there is a disconnect between what people go into healthcare for and what then happens. And I think that’s problematic and as shown up by the way, that so many of our healthcare systems are struggling.

So the thing is that, At the age of 16, 18, we’re taking enthusiastic people who want to change the world, who are altruistic, who want to make a difference to other and somewhere along the line they join a system that doesn’t necessarily look after them particularly well. That tries to pigeonhole them into specific category, that denies them flexibility of careers that makes it very difficult to work flexibly at least as a trainee.

And I like the people that are in healthcare. I’m sure there are similar people in other organizations, right? I like the people in healthcare because I think fundamentally we are a nice bunch of people who wants to help others, who wants to make a difference in the world. And fundamentally, when I coach people, you know that’s how I see, I coach people who want to make a difference to others.

And I think that for me, makes me think, okay, this kind of person… I want to spend some of my time helping them. And the problem is that sort of when it comes to the world of careers it’s often difficult for people to progress their careers in the direction that they want to progress.

Whether that’s around choosing specialties. Passing exams, how do you get the job? Do you choose leadership positions? What kind of life balance do you have? How you lead the team, what kind of relationships you have, how do you use emotional intelligence to have high quality relationships with the people around you?

And those kinds of things are really difficult. So I think on the one hand we have. Altruistic people who want to make a difference to other, but we have them working in a system that is really challenging, that isn’t necessarily designed in a way that, that makes it easy for people to thrive and for people to succeed.

And I think that really That’s why I like coaching in that space. Yeah. Because fundamentally I think it’s full of nice people who want to make a difference. And if I can support somebody to progress their career, so that’s ultimately that they’re making a difference to others, then through that person, I too am making a difference to the other person, to, to the other person’s patience.

And the thing about careers is that. I think career success for us as physicians comes with seniority or certainly it’s a lot easier to have career success as seniority. But that’s often quite difficult to get there. When you are a trainee it’s difficult to make decisions.

It’s difficult to balance, other priorities with your career. And e even when you do. Fully qualified. There’s still a whole load of challenges that become about how one works. And if I can help people do that, if I can help people have successful careers then that means that person has a successful, meaningful career, which makes a difference to their patients and I guess through them, then I make a difference to their patients also.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Now, I know you talked about one of your focuses is on in coaching is career coaching, and I think there’s maybe some confusion about what exactly is a career coach. Maybe you can help dispel some of those myths for us. What is a career coach and what exactly how do you help them and what exactly do you do to help them?

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: Yeah it’s a great question and I wish that question got asked more often. And I think probably different people will define it differently. So I can give you my definition and how I work, but I know that other people might work differently. So I think.

The way that I would work as a career coach would be about asking questions to help the person decide where they want to take their career and how they want to get there. So it’s about what decisions do they want to make and it’s about how they get there. Now, the problem that I often hear and this often arises with people that are looking to leave clinical careers and people often will say for whatever reason they’re unhappy in the clinical career.

And they want to do something else but they don’t know what to do. And there’s an expectation that, that somebody will give you a series of tests and analyze you and tell you, and the ideal career for you is X and the reality is that, that just doesn’t exist.

Yeah. The way that I would, I would label that. Career Guidance. Yeah. If you imagine of when you’re at school, you go to see, to career guidance or career counselor, you have a series of tests done and then, you get a list of 10 ideal careers. The problem with that approach is that when it comes to working with grownups, people probably already know.

An awful lot of that for themselves and it just isn’t simple to reduce careers down to a list of 7, 8, 9, or 10, not list of which is that the careers that exist today, they might not exist in 10 years anymore, or those careers that might be suitable for somebody today, they’re gonna be completely different in 10 years time.

And actually, one of the things that I often see in my career, coaching is a lot of anxiety cuz, people are worried about making the wrong decisions and usually if that’s the case, we then have a discussion about, okay how do you make a decision, number one and number two, is there such a thing as a wrong decision?

And number three. We’re making decisions today with limited information because, who knows what it’s, what’s it gonna be like to be an orthopedic surgeon in 10 years time, or 20 years time, or 30 years time? So when it comes to co to, so career’s guidance, career counseling, that would be somebody doing a series of tests and then getting a printout that tells you can do X, Y, and Z and that in, in the world of groans up is just far too simplistic.

Yeah. So career coaching would be around, me asking questions to help people figure out and the typical way that I would work in careers coaching with somebody who’s trying to make a decision whether they, whatever they wanna do within healthcare or within medicine or outside, or whether they take leadership roles or which specialty.

So the starting point would be around, what matters to them? What makes them come alive? What are the values? What are the peak moments? So some of that will be paying attention to what they really enjoy, and then looking back at their careers as to what’s been really successful.

What made them thrive? What were the peak achievements that they’ve had? Perhaps focusing on what are they good at and asking the people around them, what am I good at? And outta that, you produce a list of things that, that you want. So this is what I want in my future career.

And you might end up with, maybe seven to 10, not seven to 10 careers, but seven to 10 things that you would want in your future career. Yeah. And, and that might be working with the team or it might. Life balance, or it might be a rural environment, or it might be working from home, or it might be doing procedures, or it might be, doing something that’s really an intellectual challenge, different for everybody, but you end up with, 7, 8, 9, 10 things that I would want in my career.

And then once you have that list, then the next step then is saying, okay, what kind of career? Potentially would meet these needs in me. And then me as the coach together with the coachee and their friends and family and people around them. We brainstorm and they go away and think about it and ask people around them about, this is what I want in my career, what kind of careers would meet their needs.

Yeah. And then typically you find there’s that, that there’s. Usually 20, 30, 40 different careers that would all meet that kind of needs. And then the next stage then follows the process of deciding actually okay. There. There’s lots and lots of opportunities out there and people are usually surprised when they see that and they think, oh my God, there’s so much out there that potentially I could do that all would be a really good career.

And then of course that then comes some decision making about what they actually want to focus on. And that sort of often induces a bit of anxiety because people are afraid of closing doors because, if you go down in one route, that means you’re closing another avenue. So that introduces a little bit anxiety.

And sometimes one way that that one can overcome that would be, rather than making massive jumps into their unknown, you say, okay, now what small step can you take to find out more of what small step can you take to move you in that direction? So you then, get it down to, there’s maybe two or three that I want to explore.

And then the final step of the career coaching is the coach then goes out there and says, okay, these are two or three things that I’m interested in. I’m gonna go out and I’m going to find out more to see what it actually takes to get there. So that kind of would be a typical process, but the content largely comes from what the person wants and what they’re interested in and what drives them and what the values are and what they’re good at rather than diagnosing them and giving them a list. Yeah, and I’m glad you asked me because often people expect that, that I’ll plug them into a program and, and I’ll give them a spreadsheet what they need to do.

And, life is just not that simple.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, I have a friend who is also in this discipline, and she was like, they come in and sometimes they think that I’m gonna give them a list of all these jobs that they can do right now, and here’s all the different employers.

That’s not what it’s all about. It’s about identifying, like you said, what they enjoy and then decide where they want to go. It’s not surprising to me that they feel like they made the wrong decision. Or they’re worried about making a wrong decision because oftentimes it sounds like they come in feeling they made the wrong decision many years ago and spent all this time and money in this case be becoming a doctor. How do you help over overcome that?

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: I mean it’s interesting isn’t it, that people talk about that, that they’ve made the wrong decision because n normally the way I would start a conversation by how they make a decision and what is the wrong decision.

And like they’ve made the decision it was the right decision at the time. It might not be the right decision now, at the time it was the right decision. So usually. If they come with something like that I would probably. Probably just have a little bit of a philosophical check about, is there such a thing as a wrong decision?

There are just decisions, aren’t they? Yeah. Ma made with good reasons. Yeah. So that would be the first thing. The second thing, I think when it comes to healthcare careers and, my own personal disclaimer is I enjoy my healthcare career. I think healthcare is a very rewarding career.

It’s a tough career. Yes. But I do enjoy my healthcare career. So that usually I bring that to any coaching conversations and anybody that claims on my website will hopefully see very clearly that that I do happen to think that Healthcare careers are rewarding.

I do have a portfolio career as do you. And there are lots of us out there, the sort of, that are interesting portfolio careers and entrepreneurship and, that adds extra things to my career and that gives me satisfaction that I don’t get. But fundamentally, I do enjoy healthcare and I do believe that healthcare is a good career.

So if somebody, Worried that they’ve made the wrong decision, then at the beginning I would probably try to understand what’s behind that. And, and that really serves two purposes. So the first pur purpose would be to, to unpick, whe whether we can really say that this was a wrong decision because, maybe they come say in the field, this is the wrong decision.

But it turns out that they are being bullied by a line manager, for example. They’ve been bullied by the head of department and they say, they hate their job because they’ve been bullied by the head of department. And if that person then has the courage to go and change and work in a different department.

The problems resolved, so the medicine wasn’t the wrong decision. The wrong decision was working in that particular department. Or people will come and say they felt they made the wrong decision. But people are not good at putting up boundaries between their work life and other aspects of their life and, and the professional life over spills into every single aspect of the private life. And then actually what we then need to work on is boundaries to do that. So if people come feeling that they’ve made the wrong decision in medicine and they want to leave, understanding why they say that is important because, maybe they haven’t made their own decision at all and, and if it does turn out that actually truly is the wrong decision, then understanding what’s made it the wrong decision is super helpful.

When it comes to creating a career somewhere else, because if somebody says that they’ve made the wrong decision because they don’t like the pressures of having to make life and death decisions, or they don’t like the pressure of having to make really significant decisions, then when it comes to a career change, That’s really useful because you then know that they want a career that does not involve life in their decisions.

Or if somebody says that, they don’t like healthcare because they’re responsible for a hundred patients all at the same time and they really struggle to pay attention to a hundred things, which, most of us as physicians all of the time, we are juggling so many different things. So if somebody says they can’t deal with that, then we know when we’re looking for a career change, we’re looking for something that means that they sit down and they focus just on the one thing.

Yeah. And that’s just a different way of being. Of course, in healthcare, you can also have a career. The focus is just on the one thing. But understanding what makes somebody say that it was their own decision. If it really is the wrong decision, which often it’s not then you can at least understand what it is they’re looking for.

And then instead of doing a away move, so instead of saying, I’m running away from medicine because I don’t like the pressure, or I’m running away from medicine. Because I don’t like having to spin so many different plates. Instead of that, you’re making them towards me. So I’m making a move towards a career that allows me to just focus on one thing at once, or I’m moving towards the kind of career where I can make decisions that influence, quality of life, for example or money or finances rather than lives.

Yeah. And that sort of moving, doing towards moves rather than the way he moves that from is a really important career concept.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: That’s really powerful. In my own experience, as a primary care physician, I didn’t particularly like working in the hospital. It just, I was not my thing to do.

So why would I be born to become a hospitalist? I realized I can start my own practice and in wellness and weight loss. And I enjoyed that. And I enjoyed that population. But for the most part, you can leverage what you already have if you are a physician.

I don’t know how often you come across it, but I don’t think you’ve had many people say, you know what? I just don’t want to take care of humans. Now I wanna take care of animals. I’m gonna go to a veterinarian. Probably unlikely. There are probably. As you say, there are activities that you can do in medicine that let’s say you want to be more involved in public health, or maybe you want to be speakers maybe you wanna be, be involved in public relations or be of a hospital or.

Another avenue that you can go to that really focuses on the sprints, on the things that you like to do, and having that credibility as a physician will open doors more often or not. Would you agree?

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: Yeah, absolutely. And again, I share your personal opinion and as a coach, I make that very clear that, that is what I believe in.

So that there are so many careers in healthcare and, as a fully qualified physician, Undoubtedly it opens doors for you. If I think of my own career, I have three different aspects. I’ve got my coaching career, I’ve got my medical education, and I’ve got my clinical career.

And the fact that I am successfully in my clinical career has very much opened the other two doors for me. And, yes, it is a question of finding out where your place in medicine is. Medicine is such a wide area that there really is. For everybody. And we talked about whether you like hospitals or you like sort to work with lots of people or just with one people.

All of that is possible in healthcare. And a lot of the things that people struggle in healthcare, people say, oh I don’t like responsibility, or, I don’t like the pressure, or I struggle with work-life balance. Newsflash those things are there in all the other career also. You find a career that’s that’s gonna give you a six figure income with no stress that’s that, you can do for a couple of hours a day, from a beach.

I think we’re probably all gonna go there, aren’t we? They don’t exist. Yeah, they don’t exist. Those kinds of careers, where wherever you go if you want a career that’s making a difference, you’re gonna be having responsibility. If you want a career that gives you good income, you’re gonna be having to work hard, easy careers that, that with no responsibility and big income.

Like there, there’s no such thing. And sometimes what people need is. Is sometimes people need a bit of a reality check and to realize that actually as physicians we are actually quite well paid and we are well respected and, and if you leave being a physician, you’re probably gonna find of, there’s a really tough world out, they’re far tougher than healthcare, number one.

And what people need is a set of skills that enable them. To have a rich, successful, meaningful career. And those skills are needed in healthcare. Those skills are needed in business. They’re needed in an industry, and anywhere else that you go, you need to have the skills. That means that yes, you can be successful.

And yes, you can switch off and yes, where you draw the boundaries. And yes, you can make decisions about how much you want to work or not, they’re not healthcare specific skills. They’re skills that you need. Whatever sector you are in.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. Yeah. That’s very interesting that you say that they’re looking for this no responsibility and just sit on the beach and like you said, in society money.

What is money? Money is given. If you can provide value right to whatever you’re doing I’ll, because you’re in Europe, I’ll give you… Messi right in, in football, right? So they pay him millions and millions of dollars cuz he’s very valuable to that team. If he couldn’t if he couldn’t hit the ball into the net.

He wouldn’t be getting all of this and all of these endorsements. He’s very valuable. So what that’s part of being a career is how much value that you’re going to give to whatever who’s ever paying you, for that. And that does involve responsibility. And that is how we are it, money’s not the only way that we determine our self worth, but in the society, that’s how it goes.

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: The other thing also that’s relevant to hear is that the people that I talk to often, they are people that want to make a difference. Yeah. Yeah. There’re people that have entered healthcare because they wanted to make a difference to the lives of others, and they still want to make a difference to the lives of others.

Yeah. They just they want to do it in a way that’s sustainable, they want to be successful at it. They don’t want to burn out, but they still want to make a difference to the lives of others. And, sitting on the beach. You’re probably not making a difference to the lives of others, and they might be occupations where you can sit in a beach and do nothing and earn a nice salary.

I’m sure they exist, but you’re not making a difference to others. If you are wanting to be making a difference to others, that, that means there’s gonna be some work that’s going to be involved. And if you sit on the beach and then lots of. I dunno. Would that be a meaningful career?

I’m not sure that it would, it would be income, yes. And you might be fabulously wealthy, but would that give you a meaningful career? I’m not sure that it would, but, the people that come to me, and most of the people that I see in healthcare, they’re there because they want a meaningful career.

And that does mean that’s, there’s gonna be work involved.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, I always like to say, leaving a legacy, you know what and this might sound a little bit morbid, what’s it gonna say on your your gravestone, right? What did you do, what it’s gonna say in your obituary?

When my dad passed away a couple years ago, it was like, wow, he had a really meaningful career. And we didn’t even realize it at the time when he was a pediatrician and, all the things that he had did not only just in medicine, but outside of medicine. And that at the end, is what do you wanna leave?

And I think legacy is that’s why, I’m trying to see as help as many people as I can because I wanna build that legacy for me and my.

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And that, that idea really permeates the coaching discussions that I have with people is because, we are, we’re all here because we want to make a difference.

That’s why we’re in healthcare. Vast majority of us at least, even though perhaps we’ve forgotten. 16 years ago, there was a little boy that wanted to make a difference and, and you need to find that little boy again and and resurrect him and say, okay, you’re doing this cuz you want to make a difference.

Go or and, it’s rediscovering that and rediscovering that passion and you know that, that. Creates a meaningful career and yeah. Question about what do you want your legacy to be? That’s one of my stock questions in my first stage of my coaching discussion.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Little boys and little girls too as well.

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: Yeah. Boys, as in I’m a little boy or was, so that that’s why it’s gendered. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: This has been a very fascinating discussion. Where can people go if they’re looking and looking for help in this area? I know you not only work with career coaching, leadership coaching as well.

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: Where can they go to get more information about you and potentially working with you?

So the, probably the best thing is to look up my website, which is www.matdaniel.net, so m a t d a n i e l dot net. And there’s information there about me. And usually if somebody’s interested in coaching I would arrange a chemistry session, and I do that as a one hour free coaching session.

And I think that’s really important because if somebody wants to work with me, it’s key that they know what I have to offer them and that they can work with me. And equally it’s key that I need to know that I have what it takes to offer that person. So very much two-way discussion to make sure that we can work together.

And that’s how my coaching starts.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Dr. Daniel, this has been really I said very insightful and fascinating. Any last minute thoughts before we end our call today?

Mat Daniel MMEd MA(Coaching) PhD: Thank you very much for having me on your brilliant podcast. And I’m, I was looking through the episodes. I can’t believe how many episodes you’ve done, Mike, so thank you very much for having me.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you. I think it really shined the light on the importance of coaching and especially for those maybe who are struggling in your career. Coaching is the number one thing that you can do to help you define the the solutions to the whatever you need and help you determine what your legacy or whatever you want to achieve is.

So thank you Mat. Thank you for the time. And as always guys, if you’re struggling out there and you’re not sure where to go or what to do there’s always someone who’s probably been there and done that. They can help point the way, show you the way, maybe give you some other options that are out there.

As always, don’t just sit on it and think about it. Find real solutions to these problems and keep moving forward.

How would you like to fund your medical business but not have to use your own money or take out high interest loans? Then you need to take advantage of GRANTS! Today we break down and discuss the grant process that is available for physicians to fund their business ventures.

Here to help, is the founder of Melanin & Medicine and physician consultant Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH who is an expert of the entire grant application process and shares tips for successfully obtaining grants to grow your medical business. . This episode is an informative resource for physicians looking to fund their business ventures through grants.

And, who doesn’t love free money?

Dr. Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo’s Resources

https://linktr.ee/dr.omolara

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD. We’ve been recently talking about starting up your own practice and medical practices, and obviously one subject that you can’t ignore is money.

I talk about how you bootstrap your way to doing it, but there are other ways that you can fund your clinic, fund your fund, your business. And of course you can borrow money and we all know about loans and we’ve had talked about getting loans from the federal government, from friends and family, but there’s also another way that you can get revenue for your business, and that’s through grants.

And I’m excited that on the program right now is we have an expert and who also happens to be a physician, which I love that! She’s a community health equity advocate, a physician and the co-founder of Strong Children Wellness, which is an award-winning, multi-practice healthcare company that partners with community organizations to deliver integrated healthcare to under-resourced communities and secure it over 1 million. That’s “M” 1 million in grants and contracts in less than two years. She’s the founder of Melanin and Medicine, which is a coaching and consulting firm to help mission-driven healthcare practices and organizations serving communities of color scale to ultimately create greater health. Justice, and we’ve just been talking on the program and I know you’re gonna enjoy this.

She’s gonna give us lots of information. Wanda, welcome to the program, Dr. Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo! Omolara, how are

you?

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH: I am well. Thank you so much for this opportunity. I’m super excited to talk about Money!

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, and I know doctors speak can be weirded out with money. I think when it comes time to building your business, building your practice, I would much rather have other people’s money or other businesses, or other communities, money to help fund my dream.

So let’s talk about it. First, I wanna a little bit know more about your background, how you got started. Believe you st you, you’re a pediatrician by, by, by trade, right? Then how did you get, go from a pediatrician? To talking about securing money and grants for all of your all of your businesses and dreams that you built.

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH: Yeah, so I’m a pediatrician by training and I wanted to be a pediatrician since I was five, so that happened and ultimately I ended up, one of the things that’s really important in my work has been health equity. And so a lot of times when I was working in different spaces, the places I worked at, they were very… hospitals that were focused on, under-resourced communities, but also very underfunded . And I think one of the issues as well was, I would realize there’s a gap here. And the, the administrators would say we don’t have money to fill that. And so me being the resourceful person, I am both from my background working not only in America, but also working in Africa and in Asia.

As a global health pediatrician, I was always really interested in how could we actually create the thing that we want rather than succumb to this is not possible. And that led me to develop building up my research chops, which that, which meant that. Basically I was able to do operational research, which said I could get funding for programs by just evaluating whether or not they actually work for the people that I’m interested in helping.

And so in academia I got a really good track record of I wanna do this. Let me see what places potentially are wanting to fund this, and let’s start developing relationships with those funders. And so ultimately over time within probably seven years or so, I pretty much was just continuing to get grants with my team members and it totalled to almost 2 million dollars by the time that I left academia.

But the real important thing was that all of the programs that we started were able to scale. And now one of the, one of the big places, the largest health system in New York actually scaled one of our programs that started with, a small grant. And so that’s the exciting thing. But I was also burnt out.

I was an MPH professor, a public health professor, seeing patients in Queens, which is the most diverse county in this in this country. Also, of course, running a global health program and teaching residents, and then in addition, running two large research programs and actually burn out. And in 2019, in May, I actually lost the ability to walk and developed multiple sclerosis.

I found out it was multiple sclerosis, so I had to take a leave. And unfortunately when I finished that four month leave, I came back and I had to reposition my job to not be so stressful. And unfortunately the organization, the workplace that I was at, was not able to accommodate some of the supports and things I needed.

So now I was in a place where I was like, okay, you have to figure out can you stay in a workplace or do you need to create the place that you would want to work at? And that. When I started thinking about strong children wellness, which is the practice, and thinking about what would a practice that I wanted to work at look like?

Like what would be the things that I would put in it? And ultimately one of the community partners that I had worked with for a while, I shared the idea of this is what I think we can do. We can actually, how about we take physical healthcare and we actually bring it into your organization rather than the other way around.

And see how that happens. And we, they love the idea of course. And we said, okay, but we have no capital or money. And they said, we don’t either. so luckily I was used to that. And we actually decided to write it up and we got 125,000 from a funder to basically pilot the project and using that funding partnership model.

Allow me to see, oh, this is something that’s repeatable. And so ultimately we were able to find different nonprofits, different organizations that we could partner with, get access to grant funding, and do some, use some model called fiscal sponsorship to basically have them subcontract us to deliver services not only to their clients, but to the community at large.

And that’s how we’ve built it! I’ll talk a little bit about the steps on how we do that, but that’s the story. And then once I started doing that, other people were like, “how are you doing that again?” And I transitioned to a company called Melanin Medicine and Motherhood, which was really born out of the fact as a black woman and the weathering that I had about like, how do you manage work life integration?

And ultimately the way I did it was through entrepreneurship. And so then those who were coming along that I was coaching were yeah, but we need money. And so then they wanted to learn how I did that. And so that’s how Melanin and Medicine really morphed to really just supporting the funding part of developing your practice.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: This is a subject where it’s really difficult, that I see… To find out really good information. I’ve had a little bit of experience with grants, my wife, who was a special needs teacher, and it was an aside, Hey, we need to get grants and you need to figure this out.

And she remembers, just. The teachers are all like sighing, like I don’t even know where to begin. And they go to, grants.gov and they start looking at all of these different grants and they can’t figure it out. And then by the end it’s just give it up. Let’s just try to get a loan somewhere.

I know that kind of rings true but I know that’s. That rings true with, a lot of people who are listening. So what are some like misnomers or mistakes that you see when people actually start this process? I never got taught any of this, I wasn’t in academia. Perhaps you’ve got better experience than I have. Where do how did you get through all of this?

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH: I think the biggest mistake that I would say people do is… Not utilizing their network and not looking at who’s around them. So a lot of, I think the first thing that we had to do was to recognize the fact that yes, the majority of grants that are available don’t go to for-profits.

They go to non-for-profits. And we were, and we were like, oh okay, that excludes us. But then. We through this model, we actually, I think it came up through conversation where we talked with this nonprofit. They were like “how about we just bring you guys in?” And so we thought this was a really novel concept. Look, it actually, when you look at it, there’s a process called fiscal sponsorship that was built for that purpose. It was built to actually support small nonprofits or individuals who were waiting to get their nonprofit status and to fall under an established large nonprofits to still get access to grant funds.

However, when you look at it, most people use it for nonprofits, but you can actually use it for-profits too. And that was a game changer. There’s like a whole directory of fiscal sponsors, of actual organizations that’s all they do for-profit and non and small nonprofits. So once I think the myth of “Hey, we cant actually access these dollars” left. Then all bets were off. We started to identify, okay, who’s a nonprofit who I think is more established because both of you can’t be on the struggle bus, right? So one person, you can’t go to a nonprofit. Also I don’t know, I want grant funding too.

You need to, of course, find an established nonprofit that actually has, gravitas has a funding track record. And that really is aligned. This is the most important thing. We’re not just using nonprofits to, get money, but they actually have to be aligned. And what we do is we support are they aligned in terms of their target population?

Are they aligned in terms of the mission of what they’re doing, and is it complimentary? And once we’re doing that allows for these to be easy connections. I think the hard part for people is the time and is like trying to understand how do I, who do I find out? How do I find out who these people are?

And that’s, Actually what our company does, because we did realize it took a long time to figure that out. But they’re actually databases where you can find out foundations, you can find out grant opportunities outside of grants.gov that are more from private foundations. And I love private foundations just because it’s faster to get the money and there’s less red tape around it.

And the nice thing about it is that your nonprofit partner is actually going to write the proposal and do the work. You just have to do your work. And so it’s a really nice connection and the nonprofit’s extremely excited because now they have a new service that their board will be extremely excited about, and we’ll garner even more funding for them.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: So one of the ways, at least I know my wife was frustrated, is like when we sees all of these different grants, and then you just” okay, this is what they want.” And then you’re I think we could do that. Even though it’s it almost feels like you’re now changing your business, right?

Because you’re trying to like, “wow they’re giving away a lot of money, but if we integrate, this. protocol to it.” Do you ever experience that? Is that something that comes up often where it feels like you’re almost like having to change your business to, to meet what they’re asking for?

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH: Yeah, so this is really important cuz that’s the first part of our like six P process. But it’s positioning your practice. And what I try to say is the goal is not to change your business, but to find the niches inside of your business. And what I mean by that is to say, I’m a pediatrician, right? But what social problem, what group is having health inequities that is actually within my population.

For example, asthmatics, one of our clients was a pediatric pulmonologist, right? And they take care of all sorts of kids. But the asthmatics were a really, especially those that were very severe. And what she was finding was she could do a lot of the treatment, but what they needed was follow up in the home, but she can’t do that. And so we actually connected with her nonprofit that has community health workers and who couldn’t take care of kids that were that severe because they didn’t have the pulmonologist, like being able to support it. So it’s about find, finding out what’s the mission that sits inside of your practice.

If I’m an oncologist, we have people from all over. We have a dermatologist and she’s focusing on alopecia and health inequity. Like you can find what that group is, and then what is the unique model of care. So I talk about the mission. Then what is the model of care that. Helps you solve this problem differently from the competition.

So how are you doing it differently? Are you more responsive, like because of cultural diversity? Are you more robust? Are you more in depth and rigorous? And then the next part is not thinking so huge, but say, “okay, in the next 12 months, what could I achieve for this population?” So we call. A minimum viable practice, the M VP , but what is the minimum viable practice?

And being clear on the leanest version of the team, the tools and the tech that you need. And then our money plan. So it’s mission, model of care and minimum viable PR practice. And then your money plan, which just basically is how much do we need to actually do this, and how much can your nonprofit put in?

So a lot of times nonprofits actually help with space. So they, so we did that in the beginning where we had space, we had a space issue, we didn’t have space. And they were like how about you provide the services inside of our space? And that was a great thing that took off a lot, a lot of money for us.

And then we were able to do that. And the last thing is messaging, which is how do you make sure. that you are able in the writing process, sharing what the value is for the nonprofit that you’re partnering with, and then what is the value and the impact for the population that both of you are serving.

And that’s your value proposition and then the results. So when you have all five of those things, you’re able to position it. Now as not just the regular practice, but now a social enterprise that really can get some funding. And then the process is now looking for who wants to fund that. And trust me, there are over 130,000 foundations.

No matter how small you think your problem is, there is a foundation that is that’s exactly what we do. And and that’s the work of us trying to uncover where those people. Excuse me, where those people are and what their, and what they, what their funding priorities are.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: At the time we’re recording this, we’re still uneasy in the economy. They say we’re in inflation. We are in an inflation. But, I’ve heard the, this, the statistic that, there’s a lot of these grants that, that. Never get filled. Is that true Or is it, is money still tight or is there money still plentiful and we just have to go out and find it?

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH: Yeah. Money is still plentiful, actually, I will say, right? The people who donate to foundations during the pandemic got a lot richer and , we see that, and ultimately we see that endowed economies, actually the people who are the usual suspects to fund and provide philanthropic dollars actually end up having even more disposable income.

What I will say is that during 2021 and 2022, the amount of money that was dispersed was even higher than it had been for three years before that, and the amount that was focused on health was higher! And you can imagine that was due to covid and now racial inequities and other inequities.

So there’s this moment, I’m not sure how long it’s gonna last, but health is very much a hot place, and a hot button for us. So while that is an issue, what we found is that for us, that hasn’t been an issue as long as you, you’re developing relationships and not. Looking for what’s available right now.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, I have a little bit of experience on grants. My practice was, as many other practice were, was affected during the pandemic. And I just found. A grant for Asian Pacific owners and go” I’m Asian. I’ll figure out I’ll apply.” And I found it on YouTube and I got a $25,000 grant, which was really excited about, it didn’t take much work at all, but then when it came down to okay, how can I get more of this, I was stuck. I didn’t know, really know where to go. There are people who are listening to this who maybe have their own practice. Maybe they wanna have to start up their own practice and they’re looking for funding. Maybe you could walk us through a process of how to even get started with something like this.

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH: Yeah. So the first thing I talked about was position, and that’s more of your inner work, right? Of what you have to do and think about, okay, what is my, what do I want my practice to do? What’s the potential social mission that my practice can solve? So not shifting your whole business, but identifying that piece in it.

The next thing that we have to do is package it. And that’s the problem that I think a lot of people don’t do, and that’s why they’re like, oh, I gotta… Now do all of this to apply, instead of it being oh, we can apply here now we can apply here and now we can apply here. And what it is creating reusable assets.

And so we help people to create a master grant proposal basically. And we have both a done for you service or if you want help doing it. But then that allows for now us to have everything in there, your statement of need, what the problem is, what the value proposition is, and literally we just, I just submitted something last week for 280,000 and it was not a, it was just like, oh, this is available. Okay. And that’s the problem cuz most times we find grants, it’s like the deadline is next week and people are like, oh, always happens. always. But if your packaged, then it’s not an issue.

And you need to have an executive summary. You need to have those kind of things. And a elevator pitch, which I’ll share why that’s important. That’s about pipeline development. So what you wanna do is also start having somebody, and we’ll talk about that, but it can be you or your EA or VA… start to go to the doing just research on foundations in your state.

So you can just look up California Foundation’s Health, right? Just Google that. You’ll start to see what foundations come up. And what you wanna do is you wanna look at which ones are your ideal funding organizations, and then you wanna look at who’s on their portfolio, who have they funded, because. When you look at that tells you the nonprofits who are doing well, cuz they’re getting funding from them and also the nonprofits that they’re likely to fund.

Again, because the, it’s less risky to fund a funded organization that you’ve funded before. And then you can go on certain grant sites. There’s Grant Watch, which is not grants.gov. It’s what is it? An open source and you can start looking for it. Those have, those are much cheaper. The databases that we use are more robust, but they also cost a lot per month.

And you can find those funding opportunities or your VA can do. We have people who have their VAs do it so that they have that list and they can run through it. So we talked about position, we talked about packaging and developing a pipeline of resources and then presenting the opportunity.

That’s where people, I don’t know why. As physicians we get, we like, I don’t know what it is. We minimize our impact. We’re like ” I don’t know if I should reach out.” And it’s like it’s, you have this amazing service. You are a physician. They will really enjoy the fact that you’ve reached out to them.

And we help people develop an elevator pitch so they can connect. Then we help them with giving them our guide to doing a discovery call with that organization to collect information and then they can use that master proposal and tweak it to basically curate what it is that you know now for this organization, how they could curate what they’re doing.

The last thing, the easy stuff, pretty much compared to that is partnering, which means you guys have to talk, okay, what are the terms of agreement? Are we gonna, are you gonna hire that person? Am I gonna hire, are you gonna do space? So we talk through that. You get your lawyers, create the templates and stuff, which we have templates of that and then get people. Once you get that, then you just want people, like interns, we use a lot of interns and they help us with our community outreach, community engagement interns. And they’re basically helping source schedule more meetings with funders or with or organizations. And that way you can just show up and share your model.

And that’s how we’ve been able to get these grants. And then also contracts because. A lot of times the organizations who are really robust are like, we don’t even wanna wait for the grant. We actually wanna subcontract you and we can look for the grant in the meantime. So we’ve gotten contracts by way of looking for grants.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: That’s wonderful. How many grants, proposals do you think you’ve or your team have written in the last few years?

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH: Gosh, that is… I should know that question. , I would say in the last few years, or since inception, we’ve probably done maybe 12. Yeah, it’s not bad. But the reason is that we don’t need a lot of quantity because we focus on a hundred thousand dollars or more.

Grants usually 50 sometimes, but they’re usually average is 150. Our largest one that we got was 250,000 and at one time. But then they just once you can reuse and repackage, then that’s how come it’s been so many that we were able, so much money that we’re able to accrue in such a short time.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Sounds like you have it down to a science. Yeah. This has been amazing. Oh. Where can they go to get more information and tell us about your your firm.

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH: Yeah, so Melanin and Medicine is a healthcare funding consultancy and we’ve worked with both healthcare prof I should say for-profit healthcare practices that are mission-driven, I like to say, and nonprofits as well, and that are focused on, both focused on health equity.

And so our work primarily, we’ve initially started with women of color, but we’ve had men, we’ve had other people who are like, please help. And so we’re able to provide v i p services. We have both a Mastermind and done for you services that we provide and you can find out more about us. We don’t like show, we don’t send our investment guide or anything, but we have people apply and we can do intakes.

And then we also have classes and webinars. So you can go to https://bit.ly/melaninandmedicine you can also find us on Instagram or LinkedIn. And actually at the end of the month I posted this, that we have a workshop that I’m a high introvert Mike. I don’t like doing live anything, but we have, I’m doing a live workshop just for Women’s History Month.

You can actually apply if you text us and like I’m interested in a workshop we will send you the application and then we’re inviting people to that three hour workshop where we’re gonna go through the, these processes. But yeah, and I’m, and you can go to Bitly Forward slash Melanoma Medicine and you can see everything.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Awesome, awesome. This is obviously, we’re just kind, scratching the surface and your knowledge and what you have on there. But any last minute thoughts or advice that you have for someone who is thinking about getting to the process or maybe we’re in the middle of the process right now and of feeling stuck?

What advice can you give them?

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH: I think. Don’t put it all on yourself. I think that was the best thing that we did, which was identifying like, who else can help you? And I think a lot of us have these ideas of an intern or a family member or somebody connected who says, Hey, can this person work at your practice or do something in your practice?

And that is such an opportunity. So I think a lot of times this gets overwhelming when we think that we’re doing it all by ourselves, but literally, , you can go through this process and you can have someone doing that research for you so that we can start and just think about one, like what is, what one grant would do for you, right?

How it would help you. And then we, then we can think about pipelines, but just focusing on one and looking around, looking at your network and. Who else would I love to work with that is serving the population that I really wanna make a dent in and those I think are really helpful.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you Omolara again. Her site is Melanin and Medicine. We’ll have the link in the show notes where you can go find out more information. Like you said, money is everywhere, so who better to have it than you and your organization. If you have a dream and you wanna get that accomplished, money can allow you to do this.

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, MD, MPH: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you, Mike. I’m glad to be able to, And

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you for listening. And as always guys, if you get stuck in your business, there’s always people out there knowledgeable who can help. There’s always a way out. Don’t always remember. You can always keep moving forward.