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Developing Your Physician Legacy Mindset with Hala Sabry, DO

Leaving a legacy.  So what exactly does that mean?  And why are some physicians able to make it their life’s mission, and many never consider it?  Here to help us is Dr. Hala Sabry, best known as the founder of one of the largest and most influential social media groups of physicians in the world.  

Now Hala has done many, many interviews, but I specifically wanted to focus on her as an entrepreneur (which she never thought herself as one) and as an influencer to women physicians (which she dislikes the term).  

We discuss why she launched her first conference, and some insight at launching her four course “The Legacy Mindset Program for Women.”  We’re also starting a new segment, “5 Unexpected Questions” where you’ll get to know Hala a little better!  Enjoy this fun and lively interview!

The Legacy Mindset Program for Women

https://halasabry.com/legacy-mindset/join-legacy-mindset

RAW TRANSCRIPT

And I’m just super pumped for my next guest. Actually, she really doesn’t need an introduction. If you’re a physician, which most of you are. And we do have many moms who listen to me or so I’m told. You already know who she is. She is the founder of the physician, moms group, one of the largest, if not the largest group, Social media group for physicians that are out there. So much to talk about. She’s a Board Certified emergency room physician, she’s the chief community Officer of Doctoropedia. She has a really cool course that we’re going to talk about called the Legacy Mindset for Women. Again, needs no introduction, Dr. Hala Sabry. Hala. How are you doing?

Dr. Hala Sabry
Oh, my gosh, I cannot believe when you asked me to be on your podcast, I was like, just floored. So I just want to thank you for having me here. And for everybody listening. It’s crazy to be considered an entrepreneur. Like I don’t think I really actually gave myself that title until maybe a year ago, even though it’s funny, even just hearing your introduction to me, I’m like, why didn’t I think of that earlier? You know, I’m so funny.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, and unlike most things that doctors think you didn’t have to pay 1000s of dollars for a certification for entrepreneur, you just, you just bestowed it upon yourself. Right?I know, it’s definitely ludicrous, right? Like we’ve been taught for so long, that you can’t claim anything unless you’ve taken so many board exams and paid so much money to have this little piece of paper on the wall that nobody cares about except for you. So it’s really interesting.

Well, we’ll have the time of this recording at the time that you’re watching this, you’re actually in the middle of your launch for this course, that’s coming out. And so I thank you, I don’t know why you agreed to this interview, because I know all about launches and all the stress and strain about that maybe we could talk about that a little bit. But we’re also recording at the time where we’re at Peter Kim’s Leverage and Growth Conference. And that’s going on. So I know you’ve got so many things that are here. And because of that, and because you are so famous, at least now the industry community. I know and we’re gonna be you know, transparent. I know you’re all about authenticity. You’ve done a lot of podcast interviews, I have done a lot of podcast interviews, I know a lot of people already know about your story, and about how you started physician moms group. And and if you don’t know that I please go in and listen to those. I’m not trying to make light of it is a really interesting story how you started the group. Also just want to want to know, is it true? Is it the largest social media group of physicians? That that’s out there?

Dr. Hala Sabry
I think, I don’t know if it’s the largest now I’m well, I don’t know, I think physician side gigs has very similar numbers. I really honestly don’t compare. But I think it’s the largest for women. Definitely, um, you know, we are, you know, 96% women, we do have a COVID subgroup that has some men, but definitely women are dominating the field there. So, um, so yeah, I think we’re the largest woman woman’s group. And so, I mean, that’s a lot of people and internationally 115,000 people. So it’s been really fun. And yeah, thank you so much for bringing a little bit of light, you know, it’s to kind of what I’m doing now. I think a lot of the podcasts and the interviews, you know, do go over how I started. And it’s funny, because I’m like, Yeah, but I’m evolving. What about me now. And so I’m just so happy and refresh that we’re talking about? Like it the hollow like 2.0 or 3.0. So I’m so excited about this. So thanks for jumping right in.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
And that’s amazing, if not the largest, it certainly is the most influential, at least from what I see. So I’m just gonna start off the interview. I said, you did a lot of interviews, and I always tell my students, you know, to stand out, you got to really differentiate yourself. So I’m going to warn you, before we start, this is going to be a little bit of an unconventional interview, you know, you know, if you stop and walk off, I’m not gonna be offended on here. But, but I know that you, your BFF is Dr. Sadie Smith, one of your BFF you’ve lots out there, but she’s definitely up there. And I know if you know I interviewed her last summer, actually, just about the same time. And, you know, I had also just just really recently met her. And she, you know, it’s actually interesting of all the guests that I’ve interviewed. She’s the only one that I had planned one out episode and it actually went to two episodes so you know what i’m talking about we love you to death but she could be a little wordy sometimes again.

Dr. Hala Sabry
can i if i were best friends it’s awesome

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
yeah you guys said that you’re similar but we started off the interview by beat me basically making fun of her name’s sonny smith and i was singing about songs of sonny and i surely am not one to talk you know i got a weird last name booming you know i when i ran for fourth grade treasurer my dad said would be really cool if you put the poster that said woman is zooming for fourth grade treasurer of which i came in fourth place out of five and you know all the teasing that got in my name but i want to know and i know it’s arabic correct

Dr. Hala Sabry
yeah yeah i’m Egyptian.

Dr Mike Woo-Ming

Egyptian, and so i’m not trying to make light of it but does anybody say anything about “Holla Hala!”

Dr. Hala Sabry
oh like 1,000% like a lot of people ask me like if my parents named me after like jay z’s like holla but i don’t think they realize i’m older i’m like i’m like the same age as jay z i think i was born in 78 so um so yeah i get a lot of that or like “Hala-Day” or jHala-peno “or you know lots of stuff but um but yeah actually the way that my name is actually really you know pronounced is hella and the reason why i go by hala and a lot of hollows go by hala is i think it’s just i think the the english vernacular it’s just i don’t know why it you know goes to holla like this like hard a kind of or i don’t even know what the exact grammar is but you know i was in first grade and i got moved from a private school to a public school because what happened was i was in this private school and i was they would give us these packets every week on monday and the packets were like 20 pages you know stacked packet front and back and basically you’d have to do all these worksheets and um and then turn it in on friday so i would be so stressed out about this packet that i would finish it by tuesday afternoon and so i would skip i would skip you know recess and i would eat lunch with the packet you know and stuff like that i’m in total gunner right and and so the school was like i’m a little concerned like she’s not making friends and and things like that and so they wanted to hold me back for social development and so and i had already skipped a grade so i skipped kindergarten so i was the youngest i was the smallest i was the least social and so my dad was like i think that they’re just trying to get us to pay more money because you know him as an immigrant was like so she’s like the smartest in the class like what’s the problem you know why does she need friends so they moved me to public school and then the first day you know i mean this class of 30 people which is insane to me because i think my class before that was like less than 20 and i was like one class of like four other first graders you know and the smallest my mom said i was wearing a 14 dress at first grade yeah and so she you know what teachers do stand up and introduce yourself and this is like january you know they all know each other so i’m like oh my name is Hala which is like what can you speak up and i’m like my name is Hala, and she’s like Holla i’m like yep sure whatever gets me to sit down just answer and you know it’s funny when i went to junior high i’m like i’m going to reinvent myself i’m going to be Hala same thing happened in high school in college in medical school so i’m Hala i’m calling for life.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
and that’s what we know and then the lesson begins now talking with sonny and just kind of prepping for this interview you know she says love her to death but she says you tend to underestimate yourself and especially your influences and so i did my research before for this interview and you know just just putting up in your name and when i mean research i’m just googling yeah like everybody yeah

yeah and you know talk about authentic you know your name comes up and just like you’re putting yourself out there and really we’re gonna talk about legacy you know the internet google that is your legacy what what is coming up and just some of the things that you done and this probably doesn’t even scratch the surface i mean i found a usa today article from a few years ago with your battle for in fertilization how i mean talk about just putting yourself out there how did that kind of come about?

Dr. Hala Sabry
yeah you know it’s funny i was just talking to someone yesterday another coach that we were pure coaching each other and i was telling her that initially my identity and my identity had been so tied to my infertility journey so for those of you I don’t know, I had to do infertility for five years. Well, five years, plus five years before I had my first child, I had seven rounds that were failed. And then on my eighth round was lucky. And I got pregnant with twins that ended up having a vanishing twin. And I have my daughter who’s seven and a half now from that, from that pregnancy, and then I went back and, and had two other pregnancies, both sets of twins. So I have five kids. And when I, when I finished that journey, like so much had changed, because that whole journey took like, you know, 10 years total. But I had decided when I was going through the journey that I was, I mean, I was so aware about how isolated and how alone and crying I was, like, all the time. And I remember, like not being able to tell anybody, like I was in residency, and I was doing IVF. And I was like, nobody wants to know this, because they don’t want me getting pregnant, because who’s gonna cover my shifts, you know, and so just kind of like, the added isolation on top of just having infertility and feeling like you’re broken, like your body is not doing what a woman’s body should do. Like, I think that that was like a very common thought pattern in my brain. And I remember the one hour of the day that I would look forward to every day, it was four o’clock. And that’s because the Ellen DeGeneres Show would play. And I would cry every single time. And, and I think what Ellen had shown me, and I know that there’s a lot of like, bad press that she’s gotten them last year. But what I what she had given me, though, it was hope, you know, I was like, look at this woman, who also suffered from isolation, because of her sexual orientation. And, you know, got things taken away from her, like, just very similar. I mean, in a way very similar situations. But not only did she rise on top, but she doesn’t downplay it, she always remembers it, she always talks about it. And she is even more generous and giving at least that’s what the show, you know, makes us you know, think. And I was like, No, I don’t know, you know how I’m going to do this. But I know that when I, when I get pregnant, if I’m lucky enough, if that’s what the universe has, for me, I’m going to make sure to help other women. And in my brain, it was really with infertility, right? Because that was my world. So I’m still part of infertility groups, and I still go in there, and especially like, on Mother’s Day, and holidays, where those were constant reminders and triggers about like the family, you don’t have, you know, that was really hard. And so I always go in and give them hope, like, hey, even after seven failed cycles, $150,000 in the hole, you know, I thought there was no way I was gonna have a family and just like kind of how it ended up and to give them, you know, to give them hope. But it’s funny, though, because I, I actually, I don’t identify with it anymore, because I’m so far away. So I have to kind of remind myself, so thank you for bringing this up. But yeah, USA Today, it was like the anniversary, the 30th anniversary of IVF. And because I had been so outspoken about it, especially about my clinic, the clinic I went to was ccrm and Colorado. And so that that clinic, you know, reached out to me, and they’re like, hey, do you, you know, are you interested in any PR, and I was just delivering my second set of twins. So I said, Yeah, of course, I have no problem sharing my story. Because my Why is if any woman is crying, looking on the internet for hope, like I did for so many years, maybe she’ll come across that story. And ironically, that story has been seen. I mean, the the author of that story had reached out to me saying that she was so surprised about not only how many times that story has been seen, I don’t even know what the counter is for that. But also like it continues to be seen. And I continue to get emails from women who asked me questions or follow up questions. And I answer every single one of them. Because I’m committed to making sure that people don’t feel alone. But since then, there’s so many amazing there’s a coach that is committed to this like work to her name’s Kate Chandler, I believe her last name is. And so I’m just so glad that whether I took part in any of that, that there’s other women who also feel committed to that journey of normalizing and fertility.

Yeah, so that’s kind of how it came about. But yeah, it’s it’s so funny. I don’t talk about infertility nearly as much as I did anymore. But it’s definitely a big part of my journey and why I even started PMG because when I started trying to make decisions, whether I was going to stay home with my kids or I was going to continue to work as a doctor, part of my thoughts were like, I worked too hard. I paid too much money to have these kids to have somebody else raise them. And for me to have to choose between my career and being a mom, you know, so really, that’s part of the foundation of everything that I’m you know, I am today so everything that you’re hearing in this interview really started from struggle and sacrifice and and sadness and And then eventually resilience and seeing hope. Oh, yeah,

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I see the pictures five beautiful children, handsome husband here. I got to ask with so many kids now, do you ever forget their names when? Oh, all

Dr. Hala Sabry
the time? I’m like, What’s your name? I even like I have two dogs. And sometimes sometimes I call them by the dog’s names, you know, but they think it’s hilarious. And now and now they try to play tricks on me, especially the twins. They’ll be like, so and so. And I mean, there, none of them are identical, but for some reason they think they are. So like, I’m, you know, I’m Athena today. No, I am Fifi today. So it’s really fun. They’re so cute. But yeah, I have a lot of fun with it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So in addition to you, obviously, you got this PMG , physician moms, very influential, but I didn’t realize how influential and I just, I pulled up a couple of things that I saw, for example, your PMG was in a second psychiatric journal, I see something on in terms of COVID. And and it’s, it’s published, you know, your your group is published early on. Another thing, too, that I thought maybe we could get into a little bit is just just kind of maybe understanding the power of your group. And I found something and I, we can talk about this, we can’t there was a incident with an ad that you saw on the scrubs company that I found. Yeah. And you found it you posted something, because you found that that ad was demeaning. Don’t talk about it.

Dr. Hala Sabry
Yeah, so I don’t know, maybe two or three months ago, I don’t even know how long ago now it was fix, you know, fix have put in put out an ad of a woman physician and pink scrubs reading a medical terminology for dummies book upside down. And then, you know, she was it was like a video ad. And so she was reading it and then kind of thought it was too hard even with her pink scrubs reading this book upside down. So she closes the book and kind of throws it to the side. Like, who cares about books anyways? And I read, I mean, I saw that ad and I was like, you know, already I was already a little bit skeptical of things. advertisements, because I think that I think it’s hard. I think it’s hard when you’re selling apparel you need to be like, marketing it like you want beautiful models. You want racy things, like

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
maybe a little edgy sure?

Dr. Hala Sabry
Yeah, you want edgy, right? And so like, I totally respect the company for like, for all the bills, right? But I think that early on, like I started not personally as a consumer, like not speaking on behalf of PMG in any way. But as a consumer, I started kind of not really identifying with their ads, because I was like, that’s not what my body looks like, that’s not how I act at work. I wear socks because, like, I I see lots of blood, and I’m putting in chest tubes. And so for me, I just thought it was unrealistic. So I mean, I’ve never really been super connected to the brand, although I do respect what they built and, and, and everything like that. So when I saw the ad, though, I was I was really taken back now, you know, I also you have to understand, like, you know, I’ve been really understanding of their ads, like for the last couple of years, and there’s been a couple of things that have been problematic. I’m just personally as a consumer. But now, you know, my whole point is legacy, right? And so there’s this, there’s this actual study by Save the Children that I that I’ve been quoting, up and down everywhere. But basically, they found that after a survey study in 2015, of girls in the United States and on the west coast of Africa that by the age of eight girls think that they’re not as smart and they’re not as valued as men or boys rather. And so when I look at these ads, right, with this woman who’s reading a book upside down, that’s for dummies and then throws away because even that’s too hard. And I’m like, well, no wonder no wonder like, how like, and this is a woman run company. This is internal misogyny, you know, internalized misogyny. So intralinks someone’s watching me is sexism. internalized misogyny is when women promoted, you know, and so women can be sexist to against their own kind. And, and so I think that when I saw that, I was like, Okay, this is like, where this is where, like, I need to say something, like, I let go of a lot of my opinions before. And you know, honestly, being an influencer myself, like, um, and I really have a hard time even with that title, because I think, like it kind of, like, in the, in the layman’s terms, like means, like, you know, getting money for ads or whatever.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
It has a picture that we think of we think of influencer.

Dr. Hala Sabry
Yeah. And so I so I’m talking about influencer as like somebody who’s a leader that can influence somebody else’s opinion, not about buying something but about anything. You know, I’m, I’m really hesitant to put out personal opinions that I’m not very well thought out, like, you know, about all of the pros and cons and things like that. And if this is something that’s just like, my personal vendetta versus a bigger Miss mission, you know, so when when that happened, though, I was like, okay, like, I’ve been reading about this study, I’ve been trying to figure out like, how do we change the girls mindsets at eight years old realizing that 40 we still have that same mindset and this is why we hit mid career crisis and i’m like this is this is like not helping and so i wanted people to see i thought it was a great example it’s kind of like a morbidity and mortality conference like where you have a really good picture of like the chest x ray that’s gone wrong or whatever it may be so i literally it was really late at night i screenshotted it and i just put this is what sexism in medicine looks like just plain and simple this is what it is and it’s so easy to creep into it and think it’s funny and it’s fun and it’s racy and it’s edgy but it’s actually very damaging and they did the same thing to male nurses they have the same ad with a male nurse to marginalized populations you know out of all of the healthcare workers 76% of women 76% of healthcare healthcare workers are women every single health care line doctors respiratory therapists like name it right it’s all male dominated except for nursing nursing is the one that is women dominated hmm they put a male nurse in there and i was like okay that’s not okay either you know this is not just about women this is just about marginalized populations and so and so i posted it it did go completely viral ended up on the news and actually what people don’t know is that the ceo of the company actually called me on my cell phone and yeah yeah and so um and we had a really good conversation she was very straight to the point she’s like she wasn’t mad she i mean i don’t know maybe she was but she didn’t tell me she was mad she was like i just want feedback on how we could be better

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
and how quick?

Dr. Hala Sabry

So they took him here it took them to add well before she even called me they took time to ..

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
add how quick was it that sort of curious how…

Dr. Hala Sabry

i think a day i think yeah i think the day within a day um but she called me and you know i really had a lot of respect for her she said like hey keep my cell phone number if you ever see something that you don’t like you know tell me um you know kind of here’s access to me you know and some of it i mean i don’t know i don’t work for the company i’ve never called her again i’m not opposed to it it’s just that i’m an official consultant so if there’s a way that you know i’m going to work with a company it’s going to be more formalized than a text message but um but i think what what they put out there is that they have an action plan of how they were waiting to remedy this they were going to have you know a diverse board of you know healthcare workers whether the physicians or not looking at every single ad to make sure that it’s not offending you know any kind of marginalized population you know i mean it’s hard you’re gonna offend somebody all the time you know but i think just trying to be committed to diversity and inclusion so i’m glad that that company did that you know i don’t know what the outcome is of it i don’t follow them or anything like that but i’m really excited that they were able to own up to it apologize and take actionable steps for their company to be better i think it’s a good example for all of us how we can mess up and how we can be resilient.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming

yeah just kind of shows you the power of the group and just you know your influence too but because this is a podcast for physician entrepreneurs i want to talk about building businesses and entrepreneurs and one thing that you did and i believe so you did a conference how many conferences have you done for pmg which is one to two first one was in 2019?

Dr. Hala Sabry

no i think it was like 2015 2015

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming

okay.

Dr. Hala Sabry
yeah we did one and it was redefining dr mom and it was more of like kind of us it was really more of an entrepreneurial conference like people who just kind of wanted to think outside the box or at least be comfortable in their own skin it was one day it was in las vegas i think we had like you know close to 100 people that came it was good a lot of people that’s how i met Sunny so really really yeah so

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
i want to talk about that you know people see that you’re doing these seminars and it’s got a bigger and better what did you learn from that first seminar that made me know that…

Dr. Hala Sabry
So i learned that las vegas is probably not the best place to have a conference so it wasn’t the best thing for us

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
this specific one?

Dr. Hala Sabry

yes yes so our demographic you know we have these women who what we’re largely hearing is that they oh wait i want to say i want to back up i tried to have a conference the year before or two years before so in 2015 maybe that was june 16 2015 i don’t know i tried to do something before my group said oh we want to do a cruise want to do a conference on a cruise and this all ties in into why i’ve made these mistakes so they think that idea they’re like oh i want a cruise conference i went ahead i found out i found everything i booked everything i put it out there 600 people have like like this one post and yes we want to cruise i even had some buy in i was like hey what week where do you want to go what It’s a topic 600 people consistently answering guess how many people registered for it? Not 603

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. And so I was like, okay, that’s not gonna work. So um, but here’s where their objections were right. Their objections were like, I can’t go out of the country without my family. Those CMEs may not work because their crews CMEs And apparently, I don’t work in academics. I don’t even get like, reimburse me. So I’m like, okay, like, No, I’m learning. Right. So then the second one, I was like, okay, definitely, we’re not doing a cruise. Yeah, we’re gonna do somewhere where, you know, everybody can fly in and fly out the same day if they want to, you know, so Las Vegas seemed okay. The objections, like, I can’t take my kids because Las Vegas is not a child friendly area, you know, things like that. So I was like, okay, so I think my people like my group, really, they really value family, why am I trying to work around that, you know, so. So this third one, I guess, third attempt, right, was a family conference. So we had a kids track. So you drop off your kids, they learn throughout the day, so that we have like a plastic surgeon teaching them how to do sutures, like it’s age appropriate. So the younger, the younger ones, they’re like learning how to tie, you know, the older ones, got to touch a needle, and learn how to inject like we brought, you know, oranges, and they learn how to inject and I even tried it on my kids to to make sure that they weren’t gonna freak out and kind of use them as a, you know, trial. And we have the fire department come and talk to them about first aid. And you know, what, what do you see? What do you do if somebody is down, like what happens and things like that, you know, so it was really neat. The kids, my kids still talk about it. They talked about, like, how to learn how to splint and things like that. So it was really neat. And then the parents, the moms and you know, kid go and they were at the conference, and then we had a gala, we did a fundraiser for UNICEF, and it was so fun because we were dancing. We had an auction. It was fun. And then what happened was, though, is a complete mess up on my part, but it was ended up being the best part of the conference. I ended the childcare an hour earlier than the gala and just did not realize we had changed some of the times. So all of a sudden, they’re like we have to pick up our kids. And so the kids go to the childcare they have they have their mini gala, but they they went in pajamas. So they’re having a pajama party. We’re in like ballgowns. Okay, so my conference organizers are like, what do we do? And I’m like, dude, just bring the kids over here. So the kids are dancing on the dance floor, they’re in pajamas, parents are all dressed to the nines. It that was the best part. I’ve never seen people so happy. You know. And I was like, This is what PNG is. And this is what the future is. These are kids that are not only going to a conference, but they’re involved. And one of the things also that happened, and I promise we can move on to the next topic is when I had to ask for speakers. One of the members, Dr. Jean Roby, her daughter was like, I want to speak Can I speak at the kids track? And I was like, Whoa, okay, so she, I think she’s like, 14 at the time. So I’m like, Oh, yeah, sure. Like, of course, right. And so I gave awards to every single speaker. It’s this Diamond Award. It’s really awesome. I love them. And so I actually presented her with an award, because usually we would present it after their talk. But because I wasn’t there for her talk, I actually presented it to her at the gala. And that in itself, like her mom still messages me, telling me what impact that had on her daughter. And her daughter’s name is Jade, and how she’s gone on to apply for community service. And, and it’s just helped her mission. And she still has that. You know that that little, you know, it’s that little bit award that she that she uses as inspiration. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, like, this is what we could be doing. We could be changing the next generation of women physicians, and what kind of I mean, who else who else can say that they have part of that legacy? You know, it’s going to be us, our community.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
She could be President and it started right there on that cruise.

Dr. Hala Sabry

It’s, yeah, I’m excited for her and what she has to, you know, offer the world.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So this has been awesome. And I mean, talk about that a legacy, but I want to change things up a little bit. And we’re going to talk about the program that you’re going. But like I said, I want to be a little bit unconventional. So I picked five questions that I want to give you. But probably the typical podcast interview you’ve done, probably don’t ask. So I’m ready. Just you could pause and say pass. Okay, I think your fans would be very unhappy. So I go for that. challenge here.

Dr. Hala Sabry

I will answer all five of them.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming

Okay, five questions. Okay, oops, my my computer went down here. Okay, first question. What was the last show? You’ve been binge watched? Oh,

Dr. Hala Sabry

what’s it called? The crown. But there’s also like this Netflix part. I think it’s called the wins the House of Windsor. That and Schitt’s Creek. Two things. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, those are pretty similar. Similar shows, I think but we’ll move on. Okay. This is one that I’ve wanted to know, for a long time. Have you ever been or maybe have seen on someone else’s screen – The Physician Dads Group?

Dr. Hala Sabry
I do know Johnny Diaz. And I actually worked with him on a project last summer and have been trying to get him some connections for some amazing ideas that he has. But so I know of physician dads group, I have never seen a screenshot of any Well, actually, no, I have seen some screenshots, but they Nope. But I have not seen the group. I have seen some screenshots that were not very positive. But I think is a representation of a very minor part of the group. I hope so. So

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
yeah. Okay, that’s kind of a non answer, but we’ll confirm or deny that. All right, moving on. You spent, I believe seven years of working for Disney. Right? I did work for Disney. Okay. What is the best ride at Disneyland? And what is the ride that they need to get rid of?

Dr. Hala Sabry
Oh, gosh, okay, so the best ride? Oh my God, why are you asking me such a hard question? That’s a really hard question. So I worked on Pirates of the Caribbean for many years, and I was a lead on that ride. And so that will always be one of my favorites. And small world because I love the mission and that they actually opened it with UNICEF, which now I partner with. So both of those are my favorite. What do they need to get rid of? Um, gosh, at? Oh my gosh, what a Disney World. Yeah, hollywood presidents. It was not my favorite, especially since they put Trump in. I am not a fan of him. But you know, I think actually, it’s not really an attraction. It’s not a ride but Liberty Square in and I’m in the what’s it called the world showcase. I don’t know. I never stopped there. So maybe get rid of that. I

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
don’t even know what that is.

Dr. Hala Sabry
=It’s like, it’s like old colonial America. Okay, my mind. Let’s put another country in there. Yeah, so maybe that’s what I would get rid of. Okay, number four. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So how are you doing? Good. Okay.

Dr. Hala Sabry
Yeah, yeah, that’s

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
cool. Okay. You’re an emergency report certified emergency room? Doctor? Yeah. What? specialty or what specialist is the hardest to get into the ER? And what kind of superpower do you use to get him or her in to see a patient?

Dr. Hala Sabry
Oh, well, this is like, actually not fair. But um, yeah, I think ophthalmology, but to their defense, it’s because they don’t have the equipment in the ER, so like getting them to come. And also, like, I mean, there’s just so many different eye, eye issues that come to the ER that are not really like, er, like, we don’t have any of like, the actual tools to help them. And what’s really hard is most of these people don’t have access to an ophthalmologist. And so it’s like, I think that’s the hardest part of it. But I will say that every place I’ve worked at, I’ve connected and networked with the ophthalmologists gotten their cell phone number have been able to text them and be able to get every single patient taking care of no matter what. So that’s the way I’ve worked around it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
That’s the superpower. Yeah, along with kindness.

Dr. Hala Sabry
Well, and they want to help too. So I think that just you know, establishing a foundation. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Every 100% all of them. Do.

Dr. Hala Sabry
I the ones I’ve talked to you. Yeah. Great.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Okay. Okay. One last question. Okay, you’re ready. Okay. Have you ever scheduled an interview, and then later texted the interviewer to reschedule the interview? Because you had a conflict at the same time, but then later texted them back that realized you were on the wrong week. Is that

Dr. Hala Sabry
that sounds so familiar. I think I did that this morning. Oh, you. Alright, that

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
wasn’t a question. That was a question. We’re going to end on. I know, some of you. I think this is great. I’m learning a lot but we’re gonna talk about entrepreneurship. This is kind of a standard question, but what three books influenced you the most as an entrepreneur that changed her life. three books.

Dr. Hala Sabry
Um, I think, Oh my gosh, there’s so many books, but atomic habits for sure. And it’s just about Yeah, I just thought, and I actually give it well, I don’t want to say that I give legacy boxes to all the people in my program. And that may or may not make appearance in the legacy box.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
But okay,

Dr. Hala Sabry
maybe we’ll see atomic habits, because I think for me, it was just a way of reframing my brain to be able to have the superpower to do anything.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
On the topics you guys don’t know.

Dr. Hala Sabry
Yeah, atomic habits by James clear, um, first things first. Um, I think that was really helpful in me, like kind of, when I started thinking about legacy, you know, all of the internet really focuses on financial legacy. And I don’t think that’s what legacy is. And in fact, if you look up the definition of legacy, it’s the expressions of one’s value, and their contribution to community and their family and to their environment. So that doesn’t really even mean money. But before I used to think that that was like, you have to like leave $100 million to the Humane Society to have a legacy, I didn’t know that it was accessible. But truthfully, your legacy is your obituary, if you don’t think that you’re leaving when you are. So you might as well decide what you want to leave behind or not. But also, I kind of think through that book, I think I was like, I can enjoy my legacy. It’s not something I’m leaving behind. It’s something I’m making now for myself to enjoy. Right. And so I think that was really helpful. And then a third book, Oh, my gosh, let’s see, there’s so many. I think anything by Brene Brown, like any any book that she’s written, has been really influential for me. But I think if anyone’s like me, I listened to Brene Brown. You know, I would binge watch, like interviews by Oprah and things like that. And it would give me that feeling of sensation, like I could really do anything, but it was like the execution of like, when I was in moments, or when that feeling died down, it was like, I was left again alone. So I think that’s why, you know, I kind of started delving more into this work of like, how can I extend the work of all these great women on a real practical level of helping them kind of change their mindset, not only by being an example of what can happen, but also having an opportunity for them to work with me directly? So I think those those are not three books. Those are three kinds of books. But yeah, I think that’s what I would do.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
You got it, you pass the challenge. Question challenge. I know, we’ve got only a few minutes left here, but you’ve got this course. I know, you’ve put a lot of time and effort into it. It’s fine. I think your biggest course you you’ve you’ve put up before I’ve been in terms of what you’re doing in terms of I know, you’ve put a lot of time and effort into this.

Dr. Hala Sabry
Yeah, but I haven’t made a course before. I have not made a course before. So this is my

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So I’m accurate.

Dr. Hala Sabry
Yeah, first and biggest,

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
first and biggest the legacy mindset of women. What do you want to know? I mean, you I know that you’ve been getting a lot of questions about it. Um, maybe you can cover some of the questions that you’re getting. I know, you said, You’ve got a lot, a lot of questions. First, you know, is it it’s for women, legacy mindset is for women? Do they have to be a doctor? No, no,

Dr. Hala Sabry
they do not have to be a doctor. I’m really focusing on women in male dominated fields. Because like that study I mentioned, when the eight year old girls and then thinking that they’re not valued or as smart, you know, it’s funny, when I first saw that article, I immediately was like, phew, I like dodged that bullet. Because clearly, I think I’m smart, and I’m valuable. And that’s why I became a doctor. But you know, what’s interesting is that, you know, in my mid career crisis, where I was like, gosh, like, what else do I want to do with my life? I mean, I was happy being a doctor, there’s nothing wrong with that. Clearly, but, and I love it, and I still do it. But I was like, thinking more about, like, what’s the impact I’m going to have on my family, on my career on medicine, like, whatever it may be. An impact doesn’t have to be big, you know, it could be anything. And so I started kind of thinking, like, instead of just thinking I was on this hamster wheel of life, or just a cog in the wheel, like, what kind of impact do I want to actively work towards to make sure I’m having and so and so I think the mindset of like a mid career crisis is the same thing like, what’s our value? And so for me, I was like, that’s so interesting, that that eight year old is searching for her value and the 40 year old or the mid career person is searching for her value as well. And so I really want to speak to those mid career, really highly motivated women who are in positions like me where you know, they became the lawyer, they became the dentist, they became the engineer. They became the woman in tech. You know, all of these uphill battles with sexism and you know, competition. And then they get to a point and they’re like, Wait, where’s my impact, because I’ve just been so focused on the destination, and tying my value with the destination of what I will be and not how I will act and how I will be. And so I think that, for me that that group of individuals are really important. I mean, every woman is really important, but that group of individuals is what I’m focusing on, because I think those women, that mindset needs to be cultivated, because the eight year old girls are looking up to them. And those those women are teaching the eight year old girls, whether those are their daughters, or nieces, whatever it may be, you know, they’re teaching them and so I think like, even through this mindset shift that I’ve gone through, you know, how I was thinking I parent differently, like the way that I teach my daughter’s so different than what I would have done, you know, two or three years ago. And so for me, I’m like, wow, like, that’s a legacy in itself. just changing your mindset is a legacy in itself, focusing on her values. And, and so I’m like, you know, I know that my daughter, like right now, one of the examples I gave is that she wanted a cat, and I did not want a cat. And so every time she’d be like, I want a cat. And I was like, No, just No, it’s easier to say no. And so finally, I just stopped. I said, Why? Why do you want a cat? And so she kind of explained to me that she wanted to, you know, somebody that was, you know, I have two sets of twins, and she’s not a twin. So she was like, you know, you know, I want? Everybody has somebody? Yeah, you know, and I was like, Why don’t have a twin? And she’s like, Yeah, but you’re our other dog. He follows you around all the time. I’m like, Yeah, because I feed him and I, I pet him, and I walk him and I do all these things with him. And he’s 10 years old, I’ve been doing this since you know, he thinks I’m his mom, you know. And so I said, you know, you’d have to do that for this animal, but we get. And so she’s like, I’ll do it, you know, and we all know this, like, kids are like, I’ll feed it, I’ll do this, and you know that, you know, you’re gonna end up doing it, right. And so, so I was like, you know, look, I know, I’m gonna end up doing it. So like, we know that that’s a given. So I’m not gonna fight her on that part. She’s, you know, seven. But what I started doing is like, you cannot take care of another animal or another thing unless you take care of yourself first. So we talked about, like, what does that look like? How do you take care of your body? How do you take care of your brain, and we listed all the things like taking a shower, doing the laundry of what, like, not laundry, but like getting all your stuff into the basket, you know, and, you know, doing your homework, things like that. I was like, you cannot take care of this dog, unless you take care of yourself first. And so she practiced that. But it’s funny now, like, you know, whenever her brother and sister want to walk the dog or anything like that, you know, she’ll tell them like, oh, did you take care of herself first? And it’s funny, because, you know, I, I didn’t learn that till I was 35. And she learned that at seven. So you know, for me, I think that that’s hope, you know, I don’t know what I mean, every person is going to have their own issues and mindset blocks and objections and things like that. But my hope is that hers will look different than what it was for me. Last question,

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I know you’re gonna get a lot, a lot of it’s closing down. Maybe at the time of this recording, you may not see it. So if it’s still open, you want to go click on the book and get it. But you beginning some questions on there, and you’re answering each one one by one. You said one of the questions is your hearing that they feel like they’re they’re not ready, you know, to take your course. What do you have to say to those folks who say this? And what do they hope to get? What will they get after they complete? Your course? For women? Yeah,

Dr. Hala Sabry
I don’t want you to be ready. Because then there’s no reason to have a course. Right? I mean, I wasn’t, I wasn’t ready. My whole point is getting you ready to think about legacy? You know, I don’t I mean, not that I don’t want you to be ready, I think I’m not expecting you to be ready, who this course is not for someone who feels very comfortable with the legacy that they’re leaving. They’re not questioning it, they’re not questioning about their impact. Those people you know, they probably already done the mindset shift. But if you have any question in your mind, don’t like not feeling unfulfilled. The whole idea of like, Oh, my gosh, well, I’m already a doctor, I’m already a lawyer, I’m already a dentist, like, what else do I want and then and then kind of thinking and shaming yourself, like, I should be grateful, I should be lucky. And then and then some people what they’ll do is they’ll go back and they’ll become a lawyer, or they’ll become something else. And then you know, and then what they’ll do is be like, well, how can I prove to myself that I’ll or how can I like assure myself that I’ll be fulfilled and that if I’m not fulfilled now, and so they constantly searching for changing their circumstance, or giving themselves an opportunity that they think that will fulfill them not realizing it’s just a power within them. And so some of the things that I thought I was not ready to focus on legacy are things like, Oh, I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough money I you know, I have a I have to work on my relationship with my mom or my my husband first or, you know, things like that. So, basically This course helps you with all of those things, just to be able to get all of that noise out of your brain. So you can actually focus on your legacy and your values and understand how your values are shining through everything that you do. And I know it sounds really intangible, you know, and that was part of the reasons I was a little hesitant as an entrepreneur to even put this out there. You know, when you think about coaching, you think about someone who’s like, you know, I’m a business coach, and I’ll make a help you make six figures in a year, you know, or I’m a weight loss coach, you’ll lose 10 pounds in a month, right? There’s a real tangible, deliverable.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Sure.

Dr. Hala Sabry
And that was one of my hardest things is like, what is the tangible deliverable here, and it’s you betting on yourself, it’s you focusing on your mindset and knowing that you’re unfulfilled now, and that you will have a sense of fulfillment, in the eight weeks, you will understand what that looks like for you. And that will be the start with your work, you know, and so, um, you know, and the other thing, too, is that there’s nobody talking about legacy, like, and they’re talking about legacy in the aspect of like, you know, money, which is a big part of it. And we do have two weeks on money, we have one week on money, scarcity, and one one week on money abundance, like how to in like investment, like just the idea of opening open to that, and what what kind of thoughts that you have to have to kind of like, even be interested in that. Not the how to do it, but the why we do it, you know, and the realization that the generational wealth of women is far inferior of women across the world, to men, there’s not one area in this world that women have more wealth than men ever so, and with money comes power and influence. And that’s why these girls at eight years old, don’t think that they’re valued, because they’re only seeing men, right? They’re only seeing men in the history books and things like that, you know? So, um, so I think it’s just more of, you know, to answer your question, it’s more of like, you don’t, you don’t need to be ready. We’re not none of us are ready. That’s why legacy is not something that’s it’s completely if you guys had read Russell, Branson’s book, expert secrets, it’s all blue water, you know, so it’s like, it’s a new, it’s a new discussion, you know, but that even the discussions that are being had are by men, you know, and it’s funny, as I was talking about this, I was on clubhouse one day, and I was talking about legacy mindset. And I had this man who DM me on Instagram, and I mean, he, I mean, great. I’m so happy that he connected with me, but he was like, Hey, I made a legacy mindset, or legacy mindset club. I’d love for you to teach in my club. And I was like, Well, of course a man did that. Right? And I mean, I’m, I’m happy to help him and I’m happy to represent his woman. But I went and all the people that were in the club, mind you, it wasn’t a lot of people, but they were all men. And I was like, Where are the women? That’s because they don’t think it’s accessible to them. So if you’re a woman who cares about these eight year little girls cares about your fulfillment now cares about legacy in any kind of way or does want to start to prioritize it is interested is curious about it, then, then, you know, sign up for my program. And like I said, I have no idea when this is going to air or if I’m going to have spots because I only have eight spots left at this time of like, talking to you. But um, but you know, you can always follow me on Dr.HalaSabry.com, sign up for my newsletter, there’s a values worksheet there, that’s where I started my journey. So I made it accessible for everybody. If you scroll down to the end of our of my landing page, you’ll see it. And you know, and just start, you know, start by starting, you know, read the books, read, you know, listen to the podcast, do the work yourself, but it is hard work. But the return on investment is like infinity. So

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Hala this has been very powerful. Thanks for playing along with me, I’m here. If you guys are looking for clarity in your legacy, and if it’s still open, you got to check what she has out here. The Legacy Mindset for Women by Dr. Hala Sabry. Thank you so much for. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, everybody. And as always, you can just read about it, you know, nothing’s gonna change until you actually implement. And so whatever that is, it’s all about keep moving forward.

Dr. Hala Sabry
I love that.

By

The Only Physician Side Gig You Should Pursue


Physician side hustles and side gigs are all the rage!  However, many do not understand on why these type of gigs are often not ideal for entrepreneurial doctors.

We cut to the chase in this episode to see why only securing side gigs that will reward you after you leave, are the best ones to have when seeking work-life balance and becoming your own boss.

TRANSCRIPT
Hey guys, it’s Dr. Mike Woo-Ming, welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD. This is the podcast for a physician entrepreneurs, and you may not be aware of, but we have a Facebook group with over 1400 of your colleagues that you can join us on BootstrapMD, And I’m happy to put that into the show notes. I know for the last few months, actually few years, one very popular topic is pursuing physician side gigs or physician side hustles. And as someone who left corporate medicine back in 2004, I never would thought there would be a day where we would have some of the biggest topics, biggest discussions on doing something besides the regular physician job, it was almost taboo back in the days.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s great. I love other doctors pursuing other interests, other activities, other things that really give them joy and happiness and bring in additional streams of income. However, I do think it’s actually lost its focus somewhat on discussing side gigs. Now, the definition that I’m using on side gigs is a side job in addition to your main job, which is mostly your physician job, and there are many reasons why people pursue this. I’m not talking about replacing your job. Most people who are looking to do other activities outside of being a doctor, it’s usually a clinical activity, whether you’re being burnt out working with patients or dealing with insurances, or dealing with hospital rules and regulations, whatever that may be. But just because you are doing something different or nonclinical does not necessarily mean you’re going to be happier, it doesn’t necessarily mean the grass is going to be greener on the other side.

And I can’t say it’s a hundred percent, but most likely, this side income, the side job that you’re going to be getting is not going to be the same as what you would as a medical doctor. You have to understand you most likely will take a drop in income, it may not always be consistent. But I’m not talking about replacing your job to do nonclinical activities. I’m talking about a side gig, a side job in addition to the income that you’re making. So this discussion is not for those who have a job as a physician, a clinical job, and are looking for a nonclinical job to replace it with, and this is not what I’m talking about.

If you have aspirations to do more in utilization management or become an expert witness and want to pursue that, and think that’s what you want to do for the rest of your life, then more power to you. But most likely, if you’re listening or watching this podcast, you do want to become your own boss, you do want to become a physician entrepreneur and you have the aspirations to do that. So this talk is for you. So if you’re someone looking for a more financial freedom to capture that mythical work-life balance, unless that side gig, really does pay you more than what you’re currently making, you should only focus on side gigs that will help you develop revenue generating assets. And actually at the end of this talk, I’ll give you some questions you can ask yourself and how to determine if that side gig does exactly that, help you produce revenue generation assets.

Now I know what some of you might be saying, “That all sounds good, but it’s not always about the money, Mike. I’m looking to work as a yoga teacher, part-time, I’m not getting paid a lot, but it gives me more time for myself. It clears my mind and I enjoy it.” And that’s great, but that yoga teacher job is not going to lead to more financial freedom if it’s not helping you decrease the amount of hours that you’re working in your current job and leading to something else. Now, if you said, “Hey, I’m doing kind of a yoga teacher job and I want to open a yoga studio.” Well, now that’s more of a business. So in my definition, your yoga teacher job is more of a hobby than an actual job. I know it sounds harsh, but we’re here as entrepreneurs. We’re here to learn more about financial freedom.

And we’re going to go over these revenue generation assets and what those are all about in just a moment, but to get a better understanding, I want to go over the concept of money and how physicians deal with money. And I know that can be an uncomfortable subject, but recently I had been on the internet and I wanted to see what young pre-med people think about medical life or becoming a physician. And we all say we want to become physicians because we want to help people, that’s the typical, stereotypical answer you put on a personal statement or for your entrance into medical school, but a lot of people do look at money and how much they make.

And I was looking at the Student Doctor Network Forum, which is probably the biggest pre-med online forum out there. And it wouldn’t surprise you that a majority of the discussion is about money and, “How much can I make as a family doctor?” “How much can I make as a cardiologist?” etc. There’s a big emphasis, a big concern about is, what is my hourly rate? And for many doctors, this hourly rate is used as a way of just comparing people. And somehow, the intrinsic worth is built into this hourly rate. Let me give you an example.

So every year, they publish the average salary that [inaudible 00:07:31] in a specialty make. You’ll have generally, obviously primary care doctors below, specialist at the top. But does that mean that, let’s say a cosmetic surgeon, are they four to five times more valuable than a pediatrician? Don’t answer that. Of course not. It’s because that’s what society believes that that person is worth. So the cosmetic surgeon might be able to charge thousands of dollars for procedures and make a lot more money than a pediatrician who may not be able to charge these types of amounts, but it has nothing to do with their value, but many doctors have their self-worth wrapped up into their hourly rate. And it’s not just a physician thing, it’s a society thing, but you shouldn’t take your hourly rate as a reason of what you are worth. It’s simply an indication of what someone else is willing to pay you, what society is willing to pay you for that.

So let’s say I’m a family doctor and I work in the outpatient setting. However, I might be able to work twice as much as a hospitalist in the hospital. However, even more than that, if I decide to work, let’s say in a prison, they pay one of the highest salaries for primary care doctors. Does that mean that the salary that I would make as a jail doctor, because I’m making twice as much as an outpatient doctor, do I have twice as much value? Of course not, it’s silly, right? But we have this belief that the more money that we make per hour is somehow better. And too many doctors get caught up in this hourly rate. And the ones that do are substituting time for dollars and not realizing that they can make income besides the actual activities that they’re making, the ones who are not obsessed with that understand the importance of multiple streams of income, but it’s silly.

I’ll give you another example, did you know, you can get a tattoo artist in New York city, they charge $500 an hour. LeBron James, he just signed with the Lakers a few years ago, he makes $586,860 per hour. Does that mean a tattoo artist is worth more than a cardiac surgeon? Does that mean LeBron James is worth 10,000 more times than an emergency room doctor? You guys, if you follow sports, there’s a name you may be familiar with, his name is Gregory Polanco. He plays for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pittsburgh Pirates, in that shortened season because of COVID, they were the worst team in the Major League Baseball. Gregory Polanco was arguably the worst player on that team. He was at bat 157 times, he got 24 hits. So a 153 average, meaning out of 10 times, he failed.

Some considered it the worst season for a Pittsburgh Pirate in over a hundred years, Greg Polanco made $7 million last year, $3,365 per hour. Just another example of that you got paid at an hourly rate doesn’t mean that you are worth more, but we all have this salary mindset that we need to get out of our heads. So in our lifetime, research has showed that we work as an average, 90,000 hours in our lifetime. And if you’re a doctor who has graduated, actual work time that you have available as a doctor is probably around 70,000, 75,000. How do you want to spend that time? Is it trying to go after the highest hourly rate that you can? I would argue not.

What you need to start doing is to stop looking for side gigs, and instead looking for side income, or as I mentioned, income or side gigs that will help you develop revenue generating assets. You want to create something that will help you develop revenue for a lifetime. So what are revenue generating assets? Are these entrepreneurs owning their own business, whether it be a brick and mortar business, an online business, it can also be creating online courses, creating books, creating content, paid content that pays you monthly. It could be investments, real estate, stocks, developing royalties, all examples of revenue generating assets.

So what are some side gigs that can develop into revenue generating assets? Well, let’s say you want to own your own business. Let’s say you want to own your own med spa. Well, one side gig could be become a medical director for another person’s medical spa. That way, you’re not only learning about the trade, learning about this area, you’ll have the best education that money can buy. You’ll know what’s working, what’s not working, you’ll have an insider look, and that best thing about it is you’re also getting paid for it.

Let’s say you want to sell more books. You want to develop books or become a book writer, or a book publisher. Well, you could take writing gigs on freelance sites, such as Upwork, where you’ll actually learn to pursue this even further, see if you even like it. Those are the skills that’ll pay you off for a lifetime, and those are the side gigs that I want you to start pursuing. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be financial or transactional. I worked as a volunteer writer at an online medical journal that was pretty prominent, and I was really just doing it for exposure and increasing my networking. And it actually led to more higher paid gigs because the editor left and went to some other place that was pretty influential, and then he remembered me and I was chosen for a pretty big writing deal, biggest one that I had.

And so it always doesn’t have to present itself as you’re always going to get paid for it. Can you get exposure and will that lead to more revenue generating assets now and into the future? And so to me, it really doesn’t matter how much you actually might be making per hour, as long as it’s leading to generating some types of revenue assets. So there’s a lot of jobs out there where they’re looking for people to create more health content. A lot of times right now, a lot of video that they need to do.

So where a website just needs more online health content, and you being doctor, you’ll probably be at the top of their choosing and you might not get paid a lot of money to do that, but doing that, will that give you more experience and maybe the courage to create your own course? And let’s say you learn about creating more content, you get comfortable with the video, you learn how to create courses, and now you’ve developed your own course and you launch your own course. And let’s say you sell that course for $100, okay? And just coincidentally, maybe you make a hundred dollars an hour as a doctor, and you’re trying to reduce the amount of hours.

Well, you sell one course a month, you’re going to have the ability to reduce one hour of working for someone else, of working in your medical job, or you keep your current working hours as a physician, and now that extra hundred bucks covers your water bill, or let’s say you sell five copies or $500, now you don’t have to worry about your car payments, or maybe you’re lucky and you sell 10 courses a month, you put some marketing into it and that’s an extra thousand dollars. Now maybe let’s say that’s how much you have to pay for your medical student loan. And now you have the peace of mind to have that covered. That’s the importance of learning skills that will help you develop revenue generating assets.

So when it comes to deciding if you’re going to do a side gig, there’s really only a couple of questions you need to ask. First off, do you need to do it? Or are you doing it just so you can do something else? Because I know some people who get certifications and get master’s degrees, just because it occupies their time, but it’s not helping them develop financial freedom. And the second question is, is what I’ve touched talked about is, is a side gig going to help me develop more time, more money and more enjoyment in the future? Is it developing more revenue generating assets that will build me an income and keep me sustainable for a lifetime? But whatever you do guys, once you find that side gig, don’t just sit around and think about it, that’s not going to help, it only works if you keep moving forward.

By

Making Money with Your Own App with Daniel Erichsen, MD

We’ve covered all types of businesses on the BootstrapMD podcast, but one of the areas that we have not covered  that has had a tremendous amount of interest is developing successful phone apps.  This internist reached out to me over six months ago, and I’m so glad we are finally able to bring him on the show! 

Dr. Daniel Erichsen is a sleep specialist and the founder of Bedtyme, an app to help people overcome insomnia through better sleep education. We cover, warts and all, how he brought this app to the marketplace, and is now certifying sleep health educators to spread his vision even further.  I think you’ll enjoy and learn a lot from this lively interview!

LINKS MENTIONED

Bedtyme –  health app to help insomnia sufferers restore the power of sleep

Https://www.bedtyme.co

The Sleep Health School – online sleep education and coaching portal

https://www.thesleephealthschool.com

Sleep Health School Youtube and Podcast
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC_tdQDMQon0CfD0xAbZPNDg

RAW TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 0:17
Hey guys, it’s Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another episode of BootstrapMD. If you’ve been following us on the program, you know, I love to spotlight physician entrepreneurs. And actually, last summer, this doctor reached out to me, and unfortunately, I don’t know if it went into my spam folder, or not, but once I heard about his story, I said, I need to have this physician on. His name is Dr. Daniel Erichsen. He is from Eugene, Oregon. He’s a sleep specialist. But he had an idea about just basically sharing his message more out into the world. You know, outside of his patients, he saw that there was a dearth of information on insomnia and other aspects related to sleep, and he wanted to create an app. And I know many of you are interested in either creating an app or maybe you have an app available, and maybe you don’t know how to market it. He was actually successful six weeks after he launched his app. We’re gonna hear all about the trials and tribulations that actually led to creating a website for certification of sleep providers. But enough from me, they want to hear from you, Dr. Daniel Erichsen, welcome to the show.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 1:31
Thanks so much for having me. I really, really enjoy talking to you.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 1:35
This is good. And, you know, I think a lot of times when I have a lot of doctors who either are entrepreneurs, or what I call want-trepreneurs, and maybe they live vicariously through us, and I always try to highlight examples of doctors who are actually out there in the trenches. So, before we begin, I always like to hear about origin stories, a little bit of a comic book nerd, you know, how did Peter Parker become Spider Man? So how did you become, from Dr. Daniel Erickson to the sleep coach?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 2:08
So absolutely, it’s a good one. And you know, I love this origin story. So I’ll share mine, which is this one. So just very briefly, my core specialties are actually in pediatrics, and I was I did my residency back in the Bronx, New York. And I thought I was going to be like, I knew I needed to, I wanted to niche down to become a little bit more narrow, and I thought it would be an intensivist maybe, or something like that. But I realized that lifestyle wasn’t for me, I wanted something more kind of, you know, more lifestyle friendly, if you will. And it so happened that a friend of mine just mentioned, hey Daniel, do you know that there’s a fellowship and sleep medicine? And I was really curious and intrigued, and I applied, got it, got the fellowship, and I really enjoyed it. And during fellowship, I learned mostly about sleep apnea. That’s like the big thing and a little bit about insomnia. But then, as I started practicing as an attending, which is about 10 years now, 10 years ago, now, I saw that insomnia is really, really a big problem. You know, just as big as sleep apnea. A lot of people struggle with sleep. And I would teach these methods called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. It’s kind of a mouthful, but it’s quite straight forward. And I would always, or very often, I would ask people, you know, when I heard them talk about their insomnia, I would say, Have you heard about CBTI? Have you heard about CBT? And you know, either they would say no, or do they go like CBD? Yeah, I’ve tried that. I’ve tried CBD. I was like, no, not CBD, CBT. And so anyway, that’s this just a way of saying, like, I realized that there were millions of people struggling and like, really, virtually nobody got like, a helpful message. So that’s, somewhere along the journey, I was like, there has to be a better way. There must be a way of getting the message out there to people. And that’s how I kind of transitioned, you know, towards being a sleep coach.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 4:00
Now, you know, most of our listeners, we do have doctors and non doctors but you know, most of our listeners are doctors. And I can’t even remember if we got any education on sleep. I know a lot of us had lack of sleep, I know I did in my residency, and we continue to have this and obviously, it’s a huge problem. So can you define for us, what is your definition of insomnia?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 4:26
No, no, that’s really good question. I’m very important because it’s there’s often a lot of confusion, sleep deprivation, which which we had as residents, is very different. That’s just you don’t have enough opportunity for sleep. And when you get a chance to sleep, you typically have no problems whatsoever sleeping you asleep really easily, in fact. Where as insomnia, it’s a struggle. It’s when somebody tells you like, I just can’t fall asleep. I can’t stay asleep no matter what I do nothing helps. And that’s the sense that there’s something wrong and basically, they’re really, really trying hard to sleep but sleep just doesn’t happen for them. That struggle, that is insomnia.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 5:03
So, when you were deciding to create an app, first, why did you consider creating an app for insomnia?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 5:13
That’s a good question. And that actually goes back to a not very successful venture with an app actually many, many years ago. This was just after I finished fellowship. And I had this idea that you could create an app that people could take their smartphone, and use this, you know, the thing you use like, when you’re jogging, you put on your arm? People could put their smartphone on their legs, and check if they had like leg movements, kind of like restless legs in their sleep and monitor it. And that’s one of those, like, you create a product that nobody wants. There’s no interest for that whatsoever.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 5:47
Or at least it’s hard to market.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 5:49
It’s hard to market, exactly. And hard to get people interested in. But that was with a friend who was a programer himself. So apps were a little bit on my radar. And I had a little bit of experience with it. And, so I just felt like with everybody having a smartphone and the ease of just downloading an app and being right there, that sort of, you know, led me towards thinking an app would be a really good way.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 6:17
Now, the app is called Bedtyme, and that’s B-e-d-t-y-m-e, so it’s with a “Y”. How did that get started?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 6:25
Yes. So what happens so in clinic, very briefly here, the core of CBTI, is that, someone who has trouble sleeping often spends a lot of time in bed, and actually, when they spend less time in bed and are more sleepy when they go to bed, that typically helps. So I had this idea, and I realize it was kind of a naive idea that, you could basically boil it down to an algorithm. That if somebody said, Okay, I’m going to spend this amount of time in bed, and it calculates how much percentage of that based sleep, then it could do a suggestion, it could be basically almost like an automatic solution. So I thought that was fantastic, when I thought of the idea. And so I thought, this could be a simple algorithmic solution that could really help people. So and the idea actually came to me during the sleep conference in 2017, in June in Boston. I just I had that idea. And it took awhile, It took about six months until I started executing it. And I found online, on like one of these websites, I found a developer in Russia that could build it for me. And, you know, it was expensive, it was like 40 bucks an hour. And the total cost of creating that app honestly, was probably like $40 or $50,000 or something. And the sad part of that was that, my wife actually was sort of skeptical. She was like, Daniel, how is this actually going to help people? I was like, Oh it’s gonna work great, people are just gonna sleep better. But she was right. When we launched that first one, people used it, but nobody actually got better. Because it was lacking in education and support and guidance, etc., people didn’t really do much better. But another learning point here is that you often have an idea and you launch it, and then easily at that point, I could have easily gone, Oh, no, it didn’t work. Let me like scratch the whole idea. But I knew there was something there. So that became a complete rehaul, where instead, I added a curriculum and built in coach within the app. And that’s when it really started to work. So you mentioned like, six weeks after launching, it started making money. That was actually a relaunch, but since then, it has is starting doing really, really well.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 8:43
So you mentioned it cost, maybe $40 to $50,000. Was it just the development time for the algorithm? Or was this guy taking you for a ride? What’s what, tell me more about that? That’s a pretty expensive for an app. Or is it? I don’t know.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 8:59
I would say overall, I think development costs are coming down quickly, but I think they were a good company. It was just that the way I had created it, It was pretty complex and it did require a lot of work. But what then happened was, actually was very serendipitous, my kids had a playdate with another kid, and they’re dad was mentioning that he was an app developer. And he actually did different types of apps where the first one was like native only for for iOS only for Apple. But there are these softwares now where you can create for both, and we used so he used that. So anyway, long story short here, that recreating it actually became much less costly than the first one. So for anyone out there thinking about it, we use software that can can create for both. And that becomes much less costly.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 10:08
Now, so you found a local developer, a friend, or a friend of a friend. Did that seem to speed up the development process, rather than going overseas?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 10:18
It was much, it was so much better. You know, imagine with the first developer that was in Russia, and again, they were nice people. But it was also like, I’d have to sketch things on a paper, take a picture and send it to them, they created it, they sent it back to me. Then I’d have to say, oh no this is not what I wanted. And also, what was so nerve racking, honestly, was that whenever there was a bug, I had to describe it to them, they had to try to figure it out, and then create a new build, and it could take like weeks. And in the meantime, a client couldn’t access anything. It was very nerve racking, it’s so much better to have someone within the company. And by the way, the local person, we found his name is Hank, I gave him a part of the company, for him to become the CTO. And that also, when we have somebody on board like that, it makes a huge difference.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 11:13
Yeah, yeah, that opens up a whole lot of new questions. And I know we’re gonna probably gonna get a lot a lot of feedback from this call. But just so I have the timeframe, so you originally launched it in 2017?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 11:28
The idea came June 2017, started actually working on it with this Russian company in like January of 2018. And launched it for the first time in, I want to say was like, August or September of 2018. And then it took about like, six months to figure out that the initial thing wasn’t working. We relaunched it with the same Russian company, like a second relaunch, you know, when was that? That was like,maybe mid 2019. And then, the final reversion happened, and then that relaunch was about the time I emailed you.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 12:09
Okay. Okay, so that was in July.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 12:11
Yes. 2020.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 12:13
So when you initially made your deal with the local developer, was it strictly cash for services? Or did you say, Hey, I’m going to give you a piece of the company? When did that discussion happen?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 12:29
No, no, absolutely. That is a very good question. And it’s a nice piece of the story there. So we had this play date and he talked about how he was an app developer. and me and my wife, and by the way, she’s a big part of the company, most of the good ideas come from her. We were kind of like, He’s perfect for us and he lives in Eugene. It’s kind of crazy. So I literally when I came home, I just texted him and said, Hey, do you want to meet up in Starbucks tomorrow? And we did. So he came there. And I was a little bit nervous, because I really wanted him. But I had to, like, convince him that this was a good idea. So I basically told him, like, Listen, we have this app. And we have seen that people are willing to pay money for this type of service. And we have brought in a little bit of money. So I was just convincing him that it would be a good deal. And I offered him a small percentage in the company, for him to become the CTO. And now he has a team in China that he works with for other purposes, so he just oversees it. And then we’ve paid them a little bit anddevelopers, but that that’s how it happened, basically.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 13:31
Great, great. Great. That’s really good to know. So let’s talk about the app itself. I know we talked a little bit about it. It’s called Bedtyme, and what it’s all about.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 13:44
Absolutely. So again, when somebody has trouble sleeping, like insomnia, it’s sort of like an anxiety and miseducation thing. So it’s really pretty straightforward. And by the way, I want to quickly mention that there is this very successful app for weight loss that is called Noom, you know about it? We basically have the exact same model, we took it from them really. So every day on the app, you get this like an educational text module…

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 14:16
We might have to edit that out, by the way, just kidding!

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 14:24
No problem. Although, I don’t think they mind actually, I’ve told them that I took it from them on Twitter. They said something like, Oh, you know, good for you or something like that. So they know it. But yeah, so every day you get an educational text module and and you have access to coaching within the app. And that actually, is it. So every day you learn something and there’s a little tracking function, you can count see how you’re doing? And that’s it. It’s pretty simple that is it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 14:53
So you’re going to steal my thunder because there’s this joke that I had my back my head, you just give them content so they fall asleep. How does it work? It’s a paid model or free trial? How’s the financials? How do you set that up?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 15:12
Yeah, exactly, I think it’s called freemium. So it’s free for one week and then, it’s kind of like Netflix, you sign up for free, but you do give your payment information, so if you if you don’t unsubscribe, then you are subscribed, and you will be charged after one week. And, we started off with a two week free trial, and then it was, I believe, $39 per month and then we went up to $69. And, the thing is that it requires a lot of education and coaching. So if you compare to other products, this is still very cheap. So we actually just a few weeks ago, we upped the price to $129. So after a free trial, it’s $129, which I think is going to be a good price for a long period of time. But people are still purchasing it, it’s still doing well, etc. So that’s our current model.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 16:03
I gotta ask, are you willing to share numbers? Either like users or revenue, you know, from the app?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 16:10
Absolutely. So at this point in time, in my interface as a coach only, I only see the clients that I talked with in the last week. So there are probably more, but I think I have around 40 to 50 active paying clients. But we only recently changed the price. So I’ll share with you that at this point in time, the app is bringing in probably around $2500 a month.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 16:37
Very nice. Very nice. Now, I know that you’re a sleep specialist. Has that been able to allow you to reduce your hours? Or are you still working full time? How has this effected your job, your career?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 16:53
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I’m still I haven’t actually paid myself anything from the money we’re bringing in. And I have gone down to a part time position. So I went down 100% to 70%. And partly it is because yeah, I really want to focus more on the side projects. And, partly it was because of COVID, too, things became very slow. I’m RVU based, so it made sense also to decrease my time. So right now, I’m working 70%, three days a week.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 17:24
Now, I like what you said, you know, it’s very difficult to hit a home run when you’re first up at bat. And it’s actually gratifying to hear, you mentioned that you had a failure, your first first attempt didn’t succeed as you wanted it to. You got the app out of the way, it’s successful. It’s on iOS, and now it’s on Android as well. You mentioned that you there are companies out there that let you do both. And then I guess, if you could go back in a time machine and change it, you probably start with that. Are there any other lessons learned from from this app? Or did everything go as smooth, as you’re telling us it did?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 18:12
No, it was not very smooth at all, actually. You know, again, the first version of the app, which was quite expensive, the idea was not sound, it was not a good model. So I think for anyone out there that has this, you know, fairly ambitious like entrepreneur idea, your first product may very well be not that great. But you can learn so much from that if you’re willing to change trajectory, learn from from what didn’t work, then iteration by iteration, you will get to a product that works. That’s huge.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 18:52
Now, sometimes you see things like with Shark Tank, or they’ll have a commercial where they’re launching a product and they click the on button, I’m sure seeing this in like dollar signs appearing. But we all know, that’s not reality. How did you get your app? How did you start marketing it? How did how do people find you? I don’t know what the landscape is on sleep related apps out there. How did you really stand out in the marketplace?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 19:23
Oh, that’s a great question. And that leads us to kind of a whole different topic. So when I started working on this app, I was like, I think I’m starting to become an entrepreneur. I have to learn more about this. And you know, went on YouTube and like heard people talk and stuff like that. And one person that I came across that you probably come across them is Gary Vaynerchuk or Gary V. So for anyone who isn’t familair, he’s many things but one thing he’s really good with is marketing and social media, etc. So one thing he said I believe I heard him say it, and I read it in one of his books too, was that whenever you have an idea, you’ve got to start talking about it, you got to start talking about your idea. And that, that hit home with me, I was like, I gotta do that. So I started a YouTube channel, like two and a half years ago. And I just talked about sleep and insomnia, and shared whatever I knew about it. And that became super important for many reasons. I will say actually, number one was this, that I thought I understood insomnia, but I didn’t. You know, I only partially understood it. Then when people would submit comments, I was like, oh, that’s a good call, I haven’t thought about that. It really made me understand and my teaching improved immensely. That was number one. Number two is, I built a following. Little by little, and this is a slow process, but little by little, more and more people found it and the channel grew. So when I had a product, I had somebody that could share it, and they almost became like my beta testers, you know, my followers. So that is basically all the marketing is through that YouTube channel, and also word of mouth and a little bit other things. But that became really helpful.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 21:10
I love it. So basically, free content. So you’re not paying for advertising at this point?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 21:18
No, I mean, we’ve done like, $10 Facebook campaigns, fiddled around a little bit, but it really, it’s only content marketing, exactly. Just sharing helpful information, and then a lot of people just come to you then, because they trust you and want to work with you.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 21:37
So your company, you said your wife is involved, as well as, of course, the CTO. Are there other employees that you have or is that about it?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 21:47
Yeah, that’s really it. We have one more partner, actually. His name is Alexander, he also serendipitously found me on the YouTube channel. He happened to have a company where he does like UX design, you know, user interface design. And he helped with designing the app. So that’s the four of us, the partners, and we’re in that space of a startup where, we’re doing everything like marketing, coaching, you know, everything ourselves. But I think we’re very close to being able to hire somebody. I think that the next step for us is to hire a second coach. And so that’ll be the next kind of like, litmus test of the model here. Because a lot of the clients I have are people that sort of know me from the YouTube channel. So, will it still work when we have a hired coach? I’m sure it will. You know, again, we have to tweak it, but that’s kind of the next step for us.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 22:46
Well, and obviously, you’re in a space that is going to continue to grow. I assume from the pandemic, you know, I don’t know anybody who’s been sleeping soundly since the pandemic. Maybe right place, right time. But did you see any changes from when you when you launched? I guess, it’s hard to say. Because you actually launched it during the pandemic? For the most part, right?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 23:08
Yeah, that’s right. I think, again, when you’re in the phase, you have some natural growth, and I don’t know if it’s accelerated with the pandemic or not. But, just generally speaking, I can tell that definitely the pandemic has affected people’s sleep, and there a lot of people having trouble sleeping nowadays. It’s like that combination of the stress, but also the isolation and inactivity. Insomnia, a lot of times comes from, you know, if you have a lot more time on your hands, more time to ponder your sleep and more things to focus on, it actually typically gets worse. So, yeah, it’s a lot more people have trouble sleeping now.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 23:44
Yeah, I mean, just from a personal standpoint, my son actually has a lot of issues with insomnia. And you know, it’s because his mind’s racing, and then it’s just a vicious cycle. And, I know we spend money on it. Everything from pillows, to cool blankets, to meditation apps, CBD. Not yet CBT, but yeah, it certainly is a big issue. But you didn’t rest on your laurels, you decided to create something called the Sleep Coach School. What is that about?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 24:21
Absolutely, it started off as kind of a separate project. But now I see there’s a lot of synergy between the two. So during this journey, I was on Twitter, and I connected with these two guys, Michael and Martin, who are both here in Oregon, and they’re also really into like helping people with insomnia. So we chatted here and there, and a common theme was that we were like, Oh my gosh, look at this article, it’s so unhelpful and this is going to cause so much stress. Also like, Oh, look at this person that calls himself a sleep coach, but all they say is not helpful at all. And then Martin, he was like, I wish there was some kind of like certification. So you could at least know that this person knows what they talk about, you know? And then I was like, there’s nothing like that, why don’t we start that? Like, you know, why don’t we start actually certifying coaches? And Michael, the other guy who was like, Yeah, sure. And Martin had a lot on his plate so he didn’t join. But me and this other guy, Michael, we did that. So it became an online school is called The Sleep Coach School. And it was really designed for someone, our initial thought was maybe someone who’s a counselor, or maybe doctor who wants to learn more about it. But I realized, after a while, that probably isn’t going to be the thing because doctors, counselors, we already have so much on our own plates. But so what we see now is that, it’s mostly somebody who actually had trouble sleeping, got past it, and now wants to help others. Those have become most of our students that we certify.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 25:53
I think it helped too because, I believe you have an MD or a DO behind your name. That actually accelerated the process and made it more, certifiable, so to speak. Or legitimate.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 26:06
Absolutely. And I think, to this day, still, being a doctor, it means something, a lot of people have confidence in doctors. And something I thought about, that may be helpful for anyone that tunes in here. You know, as a doctor, you do some things that are kind of pure medical. Like, you cannot call yourself, I don’t know, a knee coach and start doing knee operations. That’s not gonna happen, that’s not ethical, that’s not right. But then you have things like, in sleep, for example, we have insomnia. Which is really not medical, it’s just education and guidance. And, you had your guest from the other podcast, was named Kevin…

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 26:48
Cucarro, yeah,

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 26:49
Cucarro, for example, a pain doctor who sees that education, about your relationship with pain, for example, is often what the problem is. And you can see that, as a doctor, you actually do a lot of coaching, too. So you could have, for example, a pediatrician who tells people how to potty train. They could become a coach for that. It’s a silly example, but what I want to say is that as a doctor, you have a lot of opportunity, because you actually do a lot of coaching. And you could take that into a whole different space, if you want to.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 27:24
What I like about this, I’ve coached doctors for years, and I’ve had a couple of sleep doctors who wanted to do entrepreneurial. Unfortunately, they got into some financial issues. I know, one particular doctor, he had a sleep center, that because of declining reimbursements, he had to close it. So, it’s gratifying to hear someone, a doctor who like figured it out. And yes, it is something that you can do. And it sounds like, not only are you generating revenue from it sounds like you’re having fun doing it too.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 28:04
Absolutely. It’s super gratifying. I mean, literally, almost every week, somebody sends me messages saying, I’m sleeping again, after so many years of struggling and it’s like you changed my life. You know, which is, by the way, all of us really, went to medicine for that. Right. And you can do that in traditional medicine but, you can do that as a coach too. And it’s, it’s super gratifying. Absolutely.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 28:31
And then in addition too, talk about your reach now. I mean, obviously, you would have your patients in Eugene, but now, you know, I assume you’re you’ve got people from all around the United States and maybe beyond?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 28:43
100%. I had a client that came on, you know, on Bedtyme on the app, popped up as a client yesterday and she was mentioning like, Oh, it’s super hot here, I’m in Australia. And I was like, so cool. It was so cool. I love every client wherever they are, but just reaching people in Australia or you know, wherever it’s really cool. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 29:04
Well, it sounds like you’re having a fun time. All the best of success to you. The name of the app is Bedtyme B-E-D-T-Y-M-E at bedtime.co. Dot C-O if you want to find out. And thesleepcoachschool.com, you also have a YouTube channel and a podcast also called The Sleep Coach School. It’s been great talking with you Daniel. I know a lot of people are gonna get a lot out of this. If you have any advice for you know, an aspiring physician, App Inventor or developer. What advice would you give them?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 29:43
Absolutely. I would say you know the classic one is just do it. Go ahead and do it. If you have that within you and feel like, I should be doing this, I wanted to do it. Do it. And the thing is that yes, it I spent a lot of money on initial product that didn’t really work that well, but I learned a ton from it. And if you’re willing go there, learn from things that may not be that comfortable in beginning, you can really get to a place where things turn around, you make back your investment and beyond. You help people and it can be fantastic. So just take the plunge, do it, and you’ll learn.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 30:21
Thank you so much. I so many lessons that we learned here. I love how you pivoted, you didn’t give up, you knew that you had something of value to the world. And I’m sure there were times when you wanted to stop, right? You wanted to say, enough’s enough. I know for you, or maybe your spouse, family and friends. But I think the world is a better place for it, guys. So Daniel, any last minute thoughts before we end the call today?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 30:52
No, I just want to say that if anyone is just curious or wants to connect, have questions, then, you know, I’ll share my bio with with you, Mike, and very happy to talk with anyone that’s even remotely interested in anything I do.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 31:08
Oh, wonderful. Well, thank you, Dr. Daniel. Again, it’s The Sleep Coach School, Bedtyme is the app. If you’re considering an app, and to want to learn more about it, I think, Daniel made a very generous offer out there. And I really appreciate it learned a lot. As always guys, don’t stay stagnant. Don’t just think about the idea over and over that someday it’s gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen, just like Dan says, unless you actually just do it. So again, guys, it’s all about keep moving forward.

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7 Success Metrics Every Physician Entrepreneur Should Know

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“If you can measure it, you can improve it”.

I learned early on as an entrepreneur, to do well in marketing you need to know a little math, and there are specific indicators to track what’s working and what’s not.

If you have 100 people  land on your website, do you know what percentage actually buys your product? , I want to share seven success measures to determine the health of your business using the example of my cash-based medical practice.

And as an added bonus, I also share four things I look at to determine the  effectiveness of a new online ad campaign.  Whether you have an online business, a local practice, or just getting started, these are the measures you’ll want to know to save you time and money.

LINK MENTIONED:

http://www.callrail.com – software to track your phone call leads

TRANSCRIPT

If you want to get more sales, you want to get more customers, you have to measure it. So I use certain metrics in my business to determine if I’m losing money or if I’m making money. The metrics that I want to share with you guys I think can be used to apply to almost any type of business out there. I use it for my medical practice, for my online businesses.

Hey, guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD, the podcast for physician and healthcare entrepreneurs. If this is your first time, welcome, and if you’ve listened to me before, welcome back. Today, I’m going to be talking about metrics. Sounds like a pretty boring topic, but it’s something every entrepreneur needs to know. There is a quote that I like to use. The quote says, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve on it.” For me, as someone who is introverted and likes to see numbers, this works perfectly for me. I learned early on that to do well in marketing you just need to know a little bit about math.

Take your website. You’ve got a website. You’re selling some type of widget. When you have your website, you want to know analytics. For example, if 100 people come to my website, what percentage actually buys my product? Now, the average is about 1%, 0.5%. Are there things that I can do to improve that percentage? There may be different variables to test on my website. Maybe I’ll have a blue background versus a red background. Is there a difference between people who buy the blue website versus the red website? Maybe I introduce a video versus a still picture. Maybe I add testimonial A versus testimonial B. These are all things that you can measure. An example that we would use is from, let’s say, my online business. Maybe I’ll buy a Google ad. The ad allows you to show a blue background website versus a red background website. Then, you can measure it to see if we send 100 people this versus 100 people on the other site, is there going to be a difference in percentages?

Another adage that we use in marketing is, “If it’s not working, test, test, test,” with the idea that you’re split testing it, and you’re using just basic mathematics to determine which site is better. Once you’ve got a website that is doing well, you then have your control. Then, maybe you’ll add another variable. That way, you can incrementally increase the success of your website, increase more sales.

What I’m going to cover today are these success metrics that I use to determine where I am in my business, just as you would a patient. You would be checking the vital signs to determine if this is someone who’s going to be ill or is this someone who is going to be healthy. You’re going to be looking at the labs. Well, you do the same thing in a small business. I want to share these success metrics that I use. For an example, I’m going to be using my cash-based medical practice. Some of you who are new, I own or co-own a number of different practices that are cash based. They don’t take any insurances. In our practice, we do aesthetics. We do medical weight loss.

Again, we don’t have insurance companies to refer us patients, so I have to have a marketing budget each month. I need to know the dollars that I used, I set aside for marketing, and what isn’t marketing, getting it into the right place. It also determines what I need to improve on, just a general assessment, how we’re doing. So these success metrics indicators just give you a snapshot of your business so you can see where you stand. It’s something that, if I can’t get to it every month, at least every quarter. That way, I know where my marketing budget goes, if I need to promote something, or if I need to take something out of my practice. These are all things that an entrepreneur needs to be aware. Now, again, I’m using my medical practice as an example, but if you have an online business, you can use these same success indicators.

So without further ado, here are the seven success metrics that every physician entrepreneur should know. Number one, customer acquisition cost, or CAC. Plainly speaking, how much money is it going to cost you to acquire a customer? let’s say you spend $1000 on a Facebook ad campaign and you get one customer. Customer acquisition cost is $1000. So I and a business partner, we agreed to put this big banner, pay for this banner, in a shopping mall that was near our weight loss clinic. We got a good deal, but when it came time to re-up it, we didn’t really know if it was making money or not. This one cost thousands of dollars to apply, very similar to I’ve seen practices advertise on billboards. Sure, that Jaime may get thousands of cars every day, but is it targeted traffic, and how do you know that it’s actually worth it? You don’t. In that line of thinking, sure, you might want to get the most traffic as possible. Why don’t you buy a Super Bowl commercial? You have to have something that you can measure.

Now, I do understand that there are some businesses, it’s all about branding. Coca Cola, they have the budgets to have this big media advertising, but not if you’re, in my case, a small local medical clinic. I’ve got a very limited marketing budget. I’m not all about branding, but I want to be sure that your marketing dollar goes farther. Now, one simple way of determining what’s the best strategy for your customer acquisition costs, and most people do this, most businesses do this, is the simple “How did you hear from us?”

Let’s say you decided to do a health talk at a local community group, and maybe it costs you $50 a year to be a member. You find out that you got 10 new patients from that talk that you did. Maybe you should do more of that versus paying $3,000 for a billboard that maybe gets you two patients. That’s just one way of having some type of understanding of what it is. I’m so surprised that more people don’t realize, when they say to me, “Hey, I think it’s working, it sounds like it is,” but they have no real grasp of it.

One thing that I do, if you’re going to do something like a print ad or a billboard, is to have certain tracking phone numbers that forwards to your main clinic number. When I’m doing some online marketing for my medical practice, I’ll have a different tracking number on my Facebook ad versus, let’s say, my Google ads and another number for a print ad that we’re doing, or a direct mail ad. That way I know which one is bringing in more phone calls. That’s a way that I can track. In that way, I know I can put more money in this one because it’s working, and this one is not. I use a system called CallRail. Callrail.com is what I use. I know if you use Google system, they do have their own Google tracking that’s free, that comes if you use the Google ads platform. But at very least, it’s one way that I can track more effectively what’s working and what’s not.

Next is customer lifetime value or CLV. Simply put, it’s a metrics that indicates what is the total amount of revenue that a business can reasonably expect from just one single customer. If you’re doing this, you are ahead of 95 to 99% of all business owners, yours truly. I have a general idea about my CLV, but it’s not something that I compute regularly. Simple example, I went to Starbucks this morning, got my vente for $6.50, but my customer lifetime value isn’t $6.50 cents to Starbucks because I go there a few times a week and I’ve been doing this since it’s opened. My customer lifetime value, over all the coffees that I’ve drunk, is a lot higher.

Simply put, in your business, are they just buying like one $27 ebook and you’re done, or are you offering additional services? Are you offering services that are more expensive, more lucrative for you as the business owner? Are you offering a webinar experience that may be a few hundred dollars more or coaching? That way, the average customer lifetime value increases. In my example, we have, let’s say, a special on Botox, but they don’t just come in for Botox. They come in every three months. We’ll add complimentary services to a skincare line, supplements, dermal fillers that all increase the customer lifetime value, just a measure of retaining as well as a measure of satisfaction. Are they just here one and done, or are they here for life? I’ve had patients here ever since I’ve been opening.

That’s something that you need to track, and again, most business owners don’t do that. The one measure, just as an aside, there’s a ratio called the CLV to CAC ratio, so customer lifetime value over their customer acquisition cost. Some businesses use that with the sense that you want to be able to increase your CLV and then decrease your CAC. You want to increase the customer lifetime value and then decrease your customer acquisition costs, so the higher the number is, obviously, the better. So that’s one way that you can combine those two measures.

Number three is return on investment. We cover that in the first part. I gave you an example of the different types of online ads. Am I getting a return on investment on my Facebook ad versus my print ad? What’s actually working? I might turn off my print ad when I find that, my return on investment, it’s just not where I need to be. Then, I could put my marketing dollar in a better place that actually is converting.

But again, it always surprised me, in using the understanding of return on investment, how many businesses, at least in my space, in the medical spa space, where they’ll just throw money at it. If they’re business is hemorrhaging, they’ll say, “Well, I’ll just buy this laser because it’s a high priced item. I can get $6,000,” but not measuring what is the customer lifetime value, not measuring what the customer acquisition costs. Then, that laser becomes a coat rack after a few years, until the laser rep remind you of the new best upgrade that’s going to be coming out that you need to have. When you’re looking at return on an investment, don’t just trust what the salespeople are going to say. You want to trust and actually, if you’re going to introduce some type of new procedure or treatment, ask around, “What is return on investment on it?” You want to hear from the business owners. They’ll tell you, not the salespeople because they have an ulterior motive.

So if you’re new to marketing, the first two or three might be a little bit difficult to explain conceptually, but I think the next couple are pretty easy to understand. Number four is how many customers do I have each month, or with Mike it’s, how many patients do I have each month? I also look at breakdown. Are they new? Are they recurring? I’ll also look at appointments. What are the type of procedures that are occurring? How does it compare to 12 months ago? How does it compare it to from two years, from that data point? What do I need to do? What’s changed? I also look at things like seasonal components. That’s why, for example, around December, in weight loss, it’s really slow because people are going to holidays. They want to eat a lot with family and friends, so I might be promoting something different. I might be promoting some skin lines during the winter season to make up for the decreased amount of visits.

Number five is just looking at monthly revenue. What’s the revenue that’s coming in? Again, taking to all the things that I just talked about. One interesting component, too, is do you have recurring revenue? See the thing with a cash-based clinic, it’s based upon how many people are actually going to show up? That determines what the amount of dollars you can be bringing in that day. With recurring revenue, you don’t have to worry about those ups and downs. That’s why the gyms love memberships. They know that, when they joined on the first or 15th or whatever the date is and it automatically re-bills, they’re going to be getting that set amount of income whether the customers show up or not. We don’t have a membership in our clinic, but it’s something that we’re strongly looking at because it does save you, that you know that you’re going to get this recurring revenue that’s coming in, that can help pay the bills when things might be dire.

Number six, website traffic. Obviously not something I look at every single day, but owning a marketing company that did local search engine optimization, it’s important. You want to make sure that you are being ranked for the keywords that will bring in more customers and will bring in more patients. Where do you stand versus your competitors? You want to make sure that you have your Google analytics, you’re bringing in more traffic to your website, the targeted traffic that’s coming in, and if it’s not, what you need to do to improve that.

Number seven, reviews. This is especially important for local businesses. We’re on Yelp, so we want to make sure that we’ve got an excellent reputation on Yelp. We’ll look at the number of reviews. We’ll look at the average amount of stars that we get. These all play a role to it, like it or not. Study by Bright Local, just giving some stats, 82% of consumers will first read up on what other people have to say about a local business. I know I do that myself. Other thing, too, is, as a local business, you always want to be bringing in more reviews. Another stat I’ll throw at you is that 84% believe that reviews that are older than three months are no longer relevant, so you always want to give an opportunity for your customers to say nice things about you for reviews.

Now, as someone who owns an online business, Yelp may not be very important to you, but the same principles apply. What’s coming up on your name or your product on the search engine? Is it positive or negative? Just like you want to respond to any bad reviews that you would get in a business, you want to respond to some bad reviews on an online testimonial that you may or may not see. Again, reviews is very important in this transparent society that we live in today.

So those are my seven success measure indicators. As a bonus, I want to give you some indicators that I use when I am doing some online marketing. These are things that I look at when I am doing online advertising. Now, you may not be someone who wants to do your own online marketing. You may want to outsource it to a company. These are some things that you need to be asking these medical marketing companies or any kind of marketing companies. If they’re putting out these online ads, these are the indicators that they should be telling you because these are the indicators that can determine the effectiveness of the online ads.

We’re going to again use the example of my clinic. We have online advertising vendors going, where we’re trying to attract cold craft, people who have never heard of us before. The way that we do it, in this scenario, is we use a coupon. We have an ad that goes out where they get a coupon for a Botox at a discounted price. They get a special. Now, we were putting out an around, and let’s say we’re using Google or Facebook. The ad goes in, and if they click on the ad, they’re going to be taken to a coupon where they’re going to get this discount, this discount on Botox.

On the ads, we want to know what is the click through rate. So of people who see my ad, how many actually click through to actually see the coupon? That’s your click through rate. So of those, taking 100 clicks on the initial ad, how many will actually go and click on the advertisement and see that coupon? We want to know what that is. The second thing is we want to look at their opt-in rate. Now, this may not be used for every single ad. You might have, let’s say, a click through that just goes to your website. There’s nothing to opt in. We like to have an indicator.

So for people who decide to take the coupon, we want them to jump hoops a little bit and opt to answer. They have to give us their email address or their phone number to actually get the coupon. That allows us to track and also determines that they’re more serious versus someone who just could be a competitor or just clicking on the advertising. But if you’re just sending them straight to your website, you won’t need to have it. So the number two indicator is the opt-in rate. So of those 100 people, let’s say 20 people, or 20%, actually clicked on and got exposed to the coupon. Now, if they actually get the coupon, of those 20 people, how many actually gave us their email address or their phone number? It could be five out of 20, so that’s our opt-in rate.

Now, taking that further, number three is of those people who’ve got the coupon, how many actually made a phone call? We want to know, from the people who initially clicked on the ad, how many people actually took us up on our offer, got the coupon and then called us to make an appointment. How do we figure that out? You probably guessed it. I have a special tracking phone number, so I can determine who are the people who saw the ad, got the coupon, and I know how many calls that I’m getting. That way, I know whether a campaign is working, or if it’s not.

Again, these are indicators that you need to know, you need to be able to ask your marketing company, whoever you’re going to be using. Now, I told you, there were four. Three are related to the actual online marketing of the ad. The fourth one is related to how well you are at hiring your staff. The fourth one is the conversion rate. How many of those people who take the phone calls, what percentage actually make an appointment? If you find out that one person is getting 95% and you find out maybe another person is getting 25 or 50%, you may need to talk to that person because they’re not doing a good job in actually converting that phone call and inquiry into an appointment.

What I like about it, with these indicators, you can actually break down to see if there is an issue with your online ad campaign. You can actually see where the breakdown is. Let’s say you have a low click through rate. You’ve got your ad, but not a lot of people are clicking on that ad. That means that your ad needs to be improved. There’s something that is not resonating. Let’s say you got a pretty good click through rate. People are clicking through, but they’re not giving you their email address or their phone number. Well, there’s something on that website that is stopping them. Maybe it looks too spammy. Maybe they’re not comfortable giving you their email address, or you’re asking them for their cell phone number. So what’s on the website? Are you having testimonials that enlist trust, that, “Okay, this looks legitimate?” You need to be looking at that.

Then, let’s say people are getting the coupon, but they are not converting those into appointments. We had that issue, and we needed some reminders that they had this coupon. That’s what we found out. That’s where we found our breakdown. Once we improved that, then we started getting incredible amount of appointments. Then, if they’re calling in and it’s not converting into appointments, you’re getting the phone calls, it’s not converting to appointments, what is your front desk person saying? Maybe they’re saying something that’s turning people off. Maybe you’re so busy. You can’t get appointments, and you have to be seen for a few weeks or months. These are all areas that you can look at and investigate and analyze.

So those are the measures that we’re using when we’re doing our online ad campaigns. You notice I didn’t say anything about how many Facebook comments I’m getting or Facebook likes or views. Those all may be important, but in determining your campaign actually being effective, the four ones I gave you are much more important. I have a marketing friend who says, “I can’t deposit likes into a bank.” So if you just stick with the four that I gave you, it’s going to be well worth your time and money.

As an aside, I have a marketing team that we work with that will help you with those four indicators. At least at the time of this recording, they are open to take a couple more clients. So if that’s something that you may be interested, they’re specifically working with med spas and cash-based medical clinics. The guy who owns it I’ve known for over 10, 15 years. If that’s something that you’re interested in, I’m not going to put out their information publicly, but if you are interested in that marketing company, just go to bootstrapmd.com. At the top right is a contact us. Just put in [inaudible 00:24:56] marketing team and maybe a little bit about your business. Again, they’re just working primarily with med spas, cash-based medical practices, and be happy to share with you that information.

I hope you found that helpful. These success measures can really make or break a business and not a lot of entrepreneurs are actively doing it. It’s all about teaching you guys to be more proactive with your business. Find out what’s actually going on with your business before it’s too late. With these indicators, these are the things that are going to help your business, keep moving you forward.

You’ve just listened to the BootstrapMD podcast. For more valuable resources, as well as past recordings of our show, check out our website at bootstrapmd.com. Now let’s get to work.

By

Assembling a Virtual Team for Your Business with Dr. Errin Weisman

“It’s hard to get good help!” Not exactly true.  Just like any skill, managing a team to strategically growing your business is something that can be learned.

Here to help us out is physician coach extraordinaire Dr. Errin Weisman.

You’ll learn how this burnout coach was nearly burnt out herself when managing her business.  She shares how she overcame her struggles managing a team to finally achieve her success.

LINKS MENTIONED:

Physician Coaching Alliance

https://www.physiciancoachingalliance.com

Burnt Out to Badass – Masterclass to help overcome physician burnout.

https://www.burntouttobadass.com

Doctor Me First – Learn More about Dr. Errin Weisman’s life coaching, courses, and podcast.

https://www.doctormefirst.com

RAW TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Hey guys, Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another episode of bootstrap, MD. And our next guest is someone that I’ve been wanting to interview for some time. I mean, there’s, as you know, one of my good friends is Dr. John Jurica, probably one of the nicest doctors you’ve ever met. And I was listening to this podcast, and I could actually feel the cheeks of john blushing on this call, and I just, it was great to finally have the opportunity, because she’s gonna be talking about things that a lot of entrepreneurs need to know about. And that’s about building your own virtual team. So Errin, I want to give you a proper introduction. She speaks on her experience on professional burnout. She’s a family, family medicine doctor, but underwent burnout and she her kind of mantra is that no woman should ever feel alone, that she should be able to have a joy filled and sustainable career. And she’s able to transition from being a primary care doc, getting out of the realms of burnout and as a very popular life coaching. life coaching business and her she has a physician coaching lines so much that we could get into I’m just gonna shut up right now. Errin Weisman, welcome to the program.

Dr. Errin Weisman
Oh my god, Mike, I’m so excited to be here with you. Yes. If anybody hasn’t listened to that episode with john, I don’t think he knew what he was getting into quite yet.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So yeah, so just let you guys know, because I did clear it up. Sometimes we might get NSFW you guys

Dr. Errin Weisman
We’re gonna go off color.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
We’re gonna go off color. So I know that there is some virgin ears that might be semi some interns. Some people you know we get we get all types. Eric, you know, Mexico, premed retired, just just want to prepare you. But again, I’ve been looking forward to this for some time. But you know, there’s some out there who don’t really know about your story. So when you were in medical school, when did you say you know what? I think I’m gonna build a physician coaching Alliance. You never never

Dr. Errin Weisman
gonna be I was gonna be the straight laced. Go back home to the country. delivering babies go into the nursing home. Everybody knew me at church doctor. That was my grave right though. I was gonna do cradle to grave Dr. Quinn, medicine woman that was that’s what I thought when I

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
bring you apples and oranges, as you know,

Dr. Errin Weisman
pies chickens. Yeah. Yeah, honestly. And it wasn’t until I really got into the throes of medicine and it really creeped up on me honestly, like, the dreads about going in and rounding.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
There was that

Dr. Errin Weisman
hindsight. 2020. I really think that my burnout, I think I started earlier in that I think it was probably my fourth year of medical school. But I thought it was normal. Like I looked around at all the other students in the resident, I’m like, Well, I guess this is just what it is. Right? went into training. And it was always about like, when I get out of intern year, when I get to second year, when I get to third year when I get out and get my big girl contract, and you know, it’s gonna get better, it’s gonna get better. And then it didn’t get better. Within weeks of starting that new job, that big girl attending job, I was like, Well, shit, this is it. This is the next 30 years of my life. Like, where’s my frickin doctor medicine woman magic. I was pissed. And and at the time that came out his frustration, it came out as like, little needle pricks on like, on irritations with patience. It came out as just like the zombie mom who was just rushing to pick her up kids up from daycare, get them home, feed them, wash them and throw them in bed as quick as possible so that she could just collapse. And as I sat with that, I was like, this is it. This is what I went six figures in debt for I’m the first physician in my family. Hell, I’m the first one with a pretty advanced degree to be perfectly honest. And I just looked around and I was like, I don’t want this. But I couldn’t say those words out loud. Because at that time, everybody else was like you did it. Aaron, you did it. You made it through medical school. You’re back here at home. Like kicking ass taking names. But inside I felt numb. And it was when the Sunday dreads really creeped in hard, you know that feeling before you got to go to the office the next day. And it’s that dark cloud, you don’t know where the hell it comes from. But at bed, it feels like a dementor on Harry Potter, when it just sucks all the life and joy and happiness out of you. My husband, he tells me now he’s like, I can see this switch, when your brain started to process. And you wanted to hop on the computer and get on epic and look like what your your schedule is going to be and how many labs you needed to go through and who was going to be there that day. And it just came to a point where I remember sitting at our kitchen bar with my husband, and I’m like, I can’t do this. And he asked me like, what is this? Like, what so hard? This is what you’ve been trained? It’s not any different than residency is it? And I said, exactly.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So your husband is not in medicine.

Dr. Errin Weisman
He is not he actually is a teacher supported me all through medical school. And after we popped out a few kids, I was like, man, somebody’s got to be the stable parent here, because I’m like killing it. And so he actually, quote, unquote, retired early from teaching and is now the farm manager of his family’s corn and soybean farm. So he got to live his hashtag best life and he was transitioning and kind of going through, like, what’s my identity, if I’m not what I went to school for, so he was kind of going through his own thing. But we had gotten to a good, good place. And I think that was part of it that triggered my transitioning was because I was like, This is not how I envisioned my motherhood to be like to just be the golden goose that brings home the paycheck and then like occasionally checks in and sees people and saves enough money. So you can go to Disney World, like that’s not, that’s not what I’m in this for.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
And you had young young kid, a young kid and Jenkins at the time.

Dr. Errin Weisman
Yeah, almost three and six months. Wow, when we had this kind of like reckoning moment. So yeah, that tells you anything, I had two kids in residency, and I still graduated like eight weeks off cycle. So you can do the math. What I did there, but it was legit, it was legit. And the other thing is that made it really hard is that essentially when I transitioned away, I mean, I lost all my community, everybody else was going to their different areas, setting up practices. And that bond that you have, like I know a lot of people have compared to like, residency bond is like, Band of Brothers like water. And like it was gone. And I intimately felt that and so what I did is what I tell all my patients not to do, which was get on the internet. And I found and this was back in 2014, I found 1000s of other doctors who were saying the similar thing. And that was just when like fire was kicking off. And people were transitioning to pharma. And I just was looking through the list. And I was like, I don’t really like any of that. But I was so desperate at the point that I was like, I don’t care what I was gonna do. I was googling how to turn my CV to resume, because I was like, I gotta find something. Because this, this is not it. And I was scared to death because like, literally, I’m a new grad. All that student loan debt, we just bought a home little kids at home husband’s scared to death because you know, he’s a farmer, and they don’t make no money. And what I found through those, those searching was this gal out on the west coast and she was doing this thing called entrepreneurial MD now I’ma do but I love my MD counterparts. And I signed up for it. It was like an evergreen program. Now, you know, everybody’s got one and started working through it. And I was like, I gotta talk to this woman. Because I think I think she’s got something and so I did what I know now is a discovery call got on the phone with her. And I felt heard. And I felt understood. And she validated that like, hey, you’re not crazy if you don’t want this. And…

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Was it Philippa Kennealy?

Dr. Errin Weisman
It was Philippa. 100% Philippa. She is like the matron saint of physician coaching. You guys don’t know, Philippa. We’re going to put her in the show notes. Because

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I don’t think she’s you know,

Dr. Errin Weisman
she she’s Yeah, she’s transition and doing something else too. But God, like she was instrumental in my story and just sat with me. Because she started asking me the questions that no one else had ever asked me. Like, the one that I remember the most and I talk about all the time is like, what is the one thing it was taken away from you, you would be devastated. You know what? I didn’t say my kids. I didn’t say my husband. I didn’t say my health. I said my frickin medical license, because I had that. So wrapped up into my identity. And that one thing that was my identity was also burning me to a crisp. So it was like this love hate relationship of like, I gotta let this go But who am I without it? And so she sat with me and coached me through that. And as we were going through the process, I was like, You know what, where’s all the like young physician life coaches, cuz we need this shit. We needed this shit in medical school, we needed in residency, we needed when we hit hard times we needed mid career we need all the way through everybody needs a coach, because it was such a powerful thing for me. And so that’s when I jumped into the business in 2015.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, I think I appreciate the story. But I think Philippa is like a South African, or is she? She is your shit?

Dr. Errin Weisman
Absolutely,

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
yes, yeah, interact with us lovely woman. But yeah, that’s great. It’s just a the importance of a mentor.

Dr. Errin Weisman
And, and getting somebody who not just like, pat you on the head and send you back to work. But the work that she did for me as my first coach, to show me like, No, you have choice in this, and you can have autonomy, and you can change your life, and all those rules that you’ve written inside of your skull. They’re not, they’re just invisible, you can change this, there’s no one saying that you’re locked into this office, or this career path, or this way that you practice medicine, like you can, you can change that. And so she was just, she’s been so instrumental to my story. And I will forever be grateful for her wonderful. And so that’s what my entrepreneurial journey started at that time, I still practicing medicine kind of started as a little like, didn’t really want to tell people about it. So I was just doing like coaching friends and family, you know, like toe in the water. And then I realized, like, I can do this, I really, I can help people. And this is a way that I can do it with a certain amount of sass that’s not being expressed in other places. And then the business has kind of grown and grown and grown from there. And so I want to come to your podcast today and talk mainly to the people who were five or 10 steps behind me. And teach them what I learned through the University of hard knocks what not to do, when it comes into the entrepreneurial space, and especially around leading teams. Because as as cool as it sounds of being like a solopreneur, this burnout coach almost got burned out in her her passion job.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, this, this is great, you know, we’ve had so many people who’ve come on to the show, and they feel that they have something of value, which I always, I always encourage you to get something of value that you can put out into the world. You know, why not share that? And that’s what you did. Because I know, as a physician myself, you know, one of the reasons why I got into medicine is, of course, the typical, I want to help people right. But for me, you know, writing the same prescription medications and adding the fourth or fifth antihypertensive, I didn’t feel like I was doing it. And one of the, the benefits, you know, of, at least having an online business is you can really just put yourself out there. So I’m not ready to make that call not ready, ready to do that. That’s fine. There are there’s steps that you need to do. But that’s what I always think that for someone who wants to start their own business, why not just doing something that you love by just giving your expertise, your knowledge. It’s not like I’m assuming it’s not like something you went to like burnout University, you just, you know, got certified. We all know how much doctors lift certifications, but your own experience and that’s something that you can’t take away, you can’t separate from someone else.

Dr. Errin Weisman
Well, and also realizing too, that your perspective may be the exact thing that someone one other person needs to hear to change the trajectory of their life. Because here’s the thing. We go to med school, we learn all this stuff they forget to tell us you can only take care of a finite amount of people. Like I really again, Dr. Quinn, medicine woman, like I was gonna take care of the world, all of Southern Indiana you just come to me and I would take care of you. But in reality that is not sustainable whatsoever. And so you’ve got to translate that over into entrepreneurship to like, you are not everybody’s special sauce. Like I am not everybody’s special. Believe me, you go look on the trolls on my social media. I am not for everybody. But I know that that doesn’t mean I’m doing something wrong. In fact, I’m doing something right. Because that means I’m not vanilla and I’m not playing. And I’m making people have a reaction, be it a positive one that they jump on the bandwagon and are like, all in badass. Or the opposite, who you know, they call me whiny millennial Doctor Who doesn’t want to work hard. And and that’s fine. They, they can have their opinion. But guess what? So can I and let’s the marvelous thing about this digital world is you don’t have to go out there and shout with a megaphone and and try to reach the masses like peloton does, you just typically probably need to be reach about 20. enough to get a side hustle started and get things going and get stuff beta tested and see like, do I really want to keep doing that. And then 20 becomes 25 and 25 becomes 40. And then you double and your ad. And then pretty soon you got this podcast where 1000s of people listen every month. And and that’s what I just remind myself is in all of these goals, this is like not trying to be like the status of target. Like that is not who I’m going after who I’m going after those that truly resonate with my message, who want to listen to me, who we have some type of touch point that is more powerful than anything else that they’re hearing in the world. Those are your people. That is why your experience has to be put out into the world.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So much to digest here. I like what you said about trolls, because I remember when I put myself out there, I was doing a consulting gig and and I remember just fixating, you know, 95% 99% to be positive. But of course, we’re human, we’re going to focus on that one negative thing. I remember whoever it is, and he said, Oh, Mike, probably he couldn’t make it as a doctor. So that’s why my business

Dr. Errin Weisman
been there. But yeah,

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
so actually, I believe that he you gotta have haters. If you if you don’t have haters, you

Dr. Errin Weisman
haven’t made it?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, nobody cares. You’re not making a difference you whether it’s positive or negative, like Like you said, You’re triggering something. And that’s when I think that’s actually an indicator of success.

Dr. Errin Weisman
I remember I got what the first time I got a one star review on my podcast, and I was just like, if I could have tracked down CIA pulled up the list were their houses, you bet your ass I would have went and knocked on their door and be like, you need to change that because doctor me first is not a one star podcast. But then I thought about it. Man, I and I got this from Dr. Ne Darko, like, think about the time that that person who gave you the one star review took to go into Apple podcast, and take the time to review your show and fill out all of those like, absolutely, you triggered something within them that they felt like they needed to share with other people. And though it may not be on the positive side, and our brain wants to like key into negative bias. Yeah, they did it though.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It just like when I when I left. And I was in corporate medicine, and my colleagues were saying, you know, I know Mike, what’s he? What’s he actually doing? And then not to my face. But you know, some of them actually became clients. Absolutely, years ago. So it all comes around. But I wanted to talk about this idea of a virtual team. So you had the coaching, you were doing, I guess, mostly one on one coaching, right coaching? When did you decide you know what, I need to hire somebody? Because that’s always a big question for people.

Dr. Errin Weisman
Yeah, the question always is like, when do you hire? I always said, I now say, like, immediately, but I want to give people some tips and some preference, some some idea around this. So first time, like I’d worked with some projects and did some like little contracting stuff. But the first time I really hired somebody was like, 2017 ish. I knew I needed a VA because at the time, I was still I would transition from family medicine, I had a nasty non compete that I had to burn out. So I transitioned and worked over an ER for about 15 months. So I was swinging er shifts and trying to get the coaching business up and moving. So I recognize that like, I needed an assistant, everybody’s talking about, you know, delegating outsourcing. And I was like, That will be great. It’ll somebody who can work on the business, when you know, I’m working a 12 and coming back and getting it done. It wasn’t as good as what I thought though, because you can’t like clone your brain and put it into somebody else. So the things that I learned from that hiring because remember, it’s not failure. It’s all feedback and entrepreneurship. So what I learned from that experience is one I needed to tighten up my hiring process. Now I had gotten this name from a referral who I trusted. We had done like a quick call. She worked on a little small project seemed like it went, Okay. So I was like, Yeah, absolutely. Like, let’s keep working together. And she was like, Great, let’s do a 12 month contract. And of course, at the time, I was like, sure that sounds wonderful. Little did I know that I didn’t recognize exactly what I needed this person to do. Nor did I recognize that this was her first time being a virtual assistant, and a budding entrepreneurial business that didn’t quite know 100%, what its direction was. So lesson learned from that is one really key and take your time on the higher, so slow to hire quick to fire. That’s my mantra that I live by. And I can explain the fire part later. And the second thing was, is getting really crystal clear on what it is the things that you need someone else to do. So I break them down into a couple categories. So one is the head on the desk moment. This is when you’re sitting at your desk, and you’re like, Oh my fucking god, I can’t do this anymore. So for me, that’s bookkeeping. That’s podcast editing, that’s writing stupid email sequences for when people sign up on your list. Like, those are those things. I’m like, holy shit, like get these away from us. But I know they need to be done. I know I can do them. And I’m pretty good at them. But if I’m putting my head on my desk, if it’s taking me away from that, those are the things that I know that I need to delegate out. So if you’re thinking of those things, write them down right now, there is someone who can help you with them. The second way to identify your needs are what are the things that I shouldn’t be doing? Now listen, we’re all super high achieving professionals, we can learn a whole bunch of skills, but you should not be writing your own contracts and doing some legal review. If you do not have that background, just like I shouldn’t be doing my own taxes. And that sort of thing. Given the I don’t have a CPA, no, yeah, I can use QuickBooks, I can figure it out and all that sort of stuff. But not just the time investment, but what’s the energy and emotional investment that you’re doing. And I get it, I get bootstrapping, because I did that for a while. But I also see now that if I would have like, released my white knuckling on some of these tasks, and found good people that knew how to hire and delegated those out, who would have been a much happier businesswoman at those points. So head on the desk moments, what are the things that you shouldn’t be doing? And then the third category is, what things can someone else do to make me money? So for me, I don’t need to be like doing customer service emails, setting up podcast interviews, answering, you know, questions about why the website course is not working, I need to say where I’m making money. And if you come and be my one on one coaching client, you kinda want to talk to me. So I need to be with my one on one coaching clients, I need to be with my burnt out to badass group, I need to be the one doing my podcast and talking on there. And anything else, those are things that I need to delegate out to, so that I can stay in my zone of genius, so that I can be the golden goose and make the money for my business. Those are my three kind of categories.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
This is great. Now, do you think that because I’ve worked with physicians, and I’ve worked with non physicians, but I seem to think physicians tend to be more of the I got to do everything? Mm hmm. If you’ve experienced that as well,

Dr. Errin Weisman
Yes, I have. I don’t know where that comes from. Because, you know, think about it in the medical setting. We don’t prep patients for the O r, we don’t get them set up for pap smears and get the little cup thing and the broom and you know, like we have people hope we don’t check the patient’s in or check their blood pressures. Now, there are some people in DPC who are a jack of all trades who are doing that, and I give them major props, but then I also tell them like, Hey, you need to get some help, too. Because you don’t have to be doing you could be spending more time with your patients. Anyway, that’s beside the point. But when why wouldn’t we take that team approach model that we’re used to practicing in in medicine and flip that over into our business? Why do we think oh, it only has to be me and I have a theory on this. I think it’s because when you step into a heart centered business, you feel like Only I know the message Only I know the audience Only I know how to convey this. But I’m going to push up against that thought because if you’re working with very good contractors and professionals and you’re able to communicate your brand, your audience What you sell why you sell it who you sell it to? They’re pretty smart people too, and they’re going to be able to pick up on that. But it’s up to you to start using communication skills. And if they’re not giving, getting that, like giving them some feedback and say like, now that’s not really my messaging, like, let’s try again, or maybe I would phrase it like that, and building that relationship with the contractor. So they can learn your style, they can learn your voice. So my head copywriter, she literally says she’s like, I put you on my shoulder, when I sit down to like write, and I can just hear you talking in my ear. Because we’ve been talking, we’ve been working together long enough. and nine times out of 10. I read through her copy, and I’m like, yep, nailed it. Moving on. Occasional, there’s some tweaks, maybe 10% of the time. But just think about, like, if she’s doing blog posts or setting up emails, she’s spending the 10 hours, that means I got 10 hours to go do something else. And I do a 30 minute edit. I mean, that’s bank, honestly. And so, it again, and this is a lesson from Hard Knocks University is you’ve, you are not the only one with the special sauce, you can share the special special sauce, you can teach someone else to make the special sauce. But you’ve got to be willing to give over the recipe. And you’ve got to be willing to communicate well, with your team.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, I love what you say I call it you know, for me, I call the RGA revenue generating activities. That’s the one that either I’m hiring somebody to do those RGA or I’m doing it myself. And I think entrepreneurs feel that. If I’m just busy, that means I’m doing something and busy and like I’ve worked with with with clients, and I said, Well, what were you busy with? What did you do this week? Well, I was like working on my logo, or I’m working on the graphics. And I go, have you ever done this before? No. But I was busy. So that must be good, right? And it’s just like, you just want to hit him over the head. Hey,

Dr. Errin Weisman
I’ve been there. I’ve been an expert on Canva. Now that I’ve sunk like 100 hours into it my first year business, I have no business doing graphics, or branding colors or picking out fonts. Like know that. You’re exactly right, like letting the expert do what they’re great at. And encompassing that is so important. You know, one idea that I’ve been trying on this year, because I am the burnout coach. And because I know I can easily grind, I can grind with the best of you. I tell people in medical school, I might not be the smartest, but I will outwork all your asses into the ground. And that that mentality is what burned me out, I’ll be perfectly honest. And it’s still something that hard work was so implanted to me as a child that I know I can, even if it means my death or illness, I can grind hard. So let’s try on the opposite Aaron, the more fun I have, the more money I make. And that has been a really fun idea to thread into my business to be to see, like, if I step back, if I hire someone to do this, and someone to help me with that, and I go and have fun, I come back into this space with more creativity with more spunk with more fire. And and that energy is what’s going to bring people to me. And so I think we have to remember exactly what you said like busy doesn’t equal success, we have to stop the transition of like time equals money. That’s not true. I think we’ve learned that through medicine, you know, like the almighty grind, and for the almighty RVU bullshit. And so we have to start looking just like in medicine at different payment models, you have to start looking at your time and different ways. And so I really think it’s important to look instead of like goal based living, which is like the to do list and like, in five years, this is how much I’m going to have in my 401k. And like, you know, having those hard milestones, and really switching it into more of a value based living. How do I want to feel when I wake up in the mornings? How do I want to go about my day? How do I want my kids to perceive me? I think that’s really super important. Because so many times, if you say like what’s most important, I do this with my clients. I’m like, what’s most important to you in your life, and they give me a list. Usually it’s like family, fulfillment, purpose health, friends, you know, the typical list. And I say, well look at your schedule, where do those show up? And it’s a huge mismatch. And so that’s why I say like, something’s gotta give either you have to change your values, or you’ve got to change what you’re dedicating your time to.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, I love it. So let’s talk about going Back to your virtual assistant. What would you recommend in terms of like, hiring them? Are you are you giving them tasks, it should be 10 hours a week, you do it full time, what’s what’s been your experience?

Dr. Errin Weisman
Alright, so through learning all the mistakes, what I would recommend now is finding those exact things that you need. Like, for instance, I use ConvertKit, for my email services and communicating. So if I’m interviewing a VA, to do emails and setup, I want to know their exact experience with ConvertKit. I want to see examples. And I want at least two names of past or current clients that they are working with, that I am going to contact. A lot of times, like people will get names for referrals or recommendations, but they don’t follow up with it. And I’m going to challenge you to say like, No, you need to follow up, and you need to ask some hard questions about expectations of this person quality of their work, and even ask them, How much did you pay for them, because, you know, they’re probably going to coach you a price that’s higher, and you’re gonna have to think about that. So this is the kind of work that they were doing for this person at $30 an hour, they’re now telling me they’re $100 an hour, are they worth that value to me. And so that would, that’s what I would do to be doing the interviewing process. And then what I do is I date before I get married, so I’m going to give them either project that’s a couple weeks, or that it’s based on like the project length, I want to see how you work, I want to see how you communicate. And I want to see the quality of your work for to do. Are you the type of person that I’m going to have to micromanage and answer every single question every hour of the day, or you’re going to take the project and run with it and come back to me. And then when I give you feedback, you’re going to take it and go fix it. Or you’re going to go like hide and get upset because I didn’t like things. And so really feeling people out and giving them a project. If you don’t feel like you got a good feel for them on that first project, do a second project and see and do a third project. And then after that, then I would start talking about more of a retainer type project. Because like, you need to see how this person’s workflow is, if they’re going to take 10 hours to set up a simple email series, how long is it going to take them to do something more complicated. And if you’re paying them on an hourly basis, I personally would pay a little bit more for somebody who works a little bit less than pay for somebody who’s cheap, but it’s going to take double or triple the amount of time and gonna take typically more management on my part. Because really, in your business, you’re three things you are you are the CEO, the high level, futuristic thinker, you are the manager, operations manager to make sure that everybody’s working well. And the books are happening. And then you are also the service provider, be at coaching, consulting, speaking, whatever. And so if you remember that you have those three hats, then you can hop into those whenever you’re managing people, because you’re not there to be their coach, you’re not there to to be their teacher, you’re there to be their manager at that point. So interviewing well working on a project, seeing how they work and then deciding what’s going to work best for you and for them, and proceeding forward. You know, maybe starting off with just like 10 hours a month, and saying if this works out, we can extend it. I wouldn’t blow it up to the whole, like 32 hours a week. Initially. I think it’s a gradual workup process, because maybe that person’s capacity is because they have three kids at home. And they’re single mom, like maybe 10 hours a month is all that they’re going to do, even though they want that like 10 hours a week. Maybe it’s just not going to work. So I say again, you know, go slow, titrate slowly, just like what we would do with blood pressure meds.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Now, you mentioned that your first ones, you got them from referrals for someone who’s starting new, they don’t get any referrals. Are there any sites you recommend freelance sites? Maybe Upwork? I don’t know

Dr. Errin Weisman
that. Yeah, there are plenty of freelance sites. I think the two best places to go is someone that you see that is doing things well. Go ask them who works for them. Like just go ask them. at me. The worst thing is they can tell you no. Or the contractor says like, No, I’m busy. I can’t take on another project. The second thing I was mentioned is because I talk on this so much and work with so many other coaches and entrepreneurs. I’ve actually set up my own referral system. And where you can just fill in a Google Doc, you tell me and I make I listed out so you don’t even have to like come up with your list. You can look at my list and be like, Oh yeah, I need that. And I need this. Ask how much Are you willing to pay? What level of expertise Do you want out of this contractor? I mean, if you’re okay with like working with an entry level contractor for this job, because it’s like, you need a millennial to do some, like video editing, they got that shit, you know, like, fine. But if you need a project manager or a high level, high functioning VA, yeah, you’re gonna want somebody with a little more expertise. So we tease it all out. So that’s actually a benefit of coming to physician coaching Alliance is that you get to use the referral system and find the people that you need to, through me, essentially, either people that I’ve worked with, or just through the connections that I’ve made and found found contractors who understand physician brains, because we’re, we’re a little different. That’s okay.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Right, right, right. Yeah, you can’t just cookie cutter it. And then finally, you mentioned about hiring slow but firing fast.

Dr. Errin Weisman
Yeah. So I’m not without grace for people, and life happens. But if I am paying you, there are certain expectations. And I think it’s really important at the higher to lay out those expectations. So I’m very much You don’t have to have a huge five page contract document. But just having something that clearly spells out, like, these are the expectations that I need to have done. And then their contractor on the other side, saying, like, these are the expectations that I need for you to work for you. And so if you can very clearly outline and define those expectations, and then when they’re not done, you refer back to them and say, I expected email to be checked daily, and me to be notified on important things. I wasn’t notified. And so you know, that’s an issue that we need to talk about. I go to the extent to of just jotting down and keeping some notes on my con, because it’s a lot easier to tease out facts versus feelings. Because like, the contractor who like dropped the ball, or like, went Mia, and ghosted you in the middle of a launch, like you’re gonna remember that because there’s a lot of feelings bundled around that, when in fact, maybe you need to just remind yourself like, oh, her mother died. And that’s what happened in the situation. Because then no think, Oh, my God, it’s happening again. And so not really like an HR folder, but just something to remind me, and having really candid conversations with your contractor, and just saying, like, I need to talk about this, I need to clear it off my chest. And really using good communication, schools skills. I feel disappointed when the email is supposed to be checked daily. And I see there’s a lot of open messages, I need to have regular communication with my clients, and with you to know that this business is operating Well, when I’m not there, would you be willing to insert what you need? So it’s, I feel I need Would you be willing to, and if you can use that communication style. You’re not saying like you, you did this wrong, and they instantly go on the defense because you’re attacking them, but really using I statements, and really clarifying, like, what was the issue? And then how can we find resolutions, and I work by the three strike policy. So after like, we’ve had that conversation three times, and it’s not work. And I will warn people, I would say like, Hey, this is the first strike. Like, we need to work through this, I can move past this, but I just need you to know, if they do it again, hey, this is the second strike. And really, you have to say that this is the second strike. If we have another one, I’m going to have to let you go and in the contract at that point, and again, like in your contract, you need to spell out what that looks like is that like, you know, because it’s in doctoring to when you quit, you don’t quit that same day, you got a 90 day burn out that you typically have to do. So my contractor usually in there, they say, you know, like with notice for two weeks, however, if mutually agreed upon, will end within 72 hours. And so, you know, so that, you know, and if you have the third strike, then you initiate that plan. And you talk about what is the what is the exit plan look like? This is what I need to be done. I don’t share passwords anymore. And I use a system called LastPass. I would highly recommend anybody who has contractors to do that. It’s an encrypted way to share passwords, but your your the other side, the contractor doesn’t know it. But before I would have to like change all my passwords and so like I would just say I need you to exit out of all of my accounts, any sensitive information, anything that you’ve created for me and you haven’t uploaded to Google Drive or Dropbox, I need to go ahead and do that. You will be removed from permissions as of whatever date and then we talked about like when their last paycheck comes. When they’re last, you know, invoice will be paid or when it needs to be to me on that point. And you know, typically it’s pretty amicable then, because you’re taking the emotion out of it. And you’re just being very factual and being like this is this has been the pattern, this is what it is, this is how we’re going to exit out.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So, so much great, great content, I do want to, I do want to mention to you, of course, you want to be sensitive, you might have some family issues, that’s delaying. The one you want to worry about is the one that I had where the uncle passed away, and then the aunt passed away. And then the sister passed away as excuses. Or there’s like a real problem in there. Yeah.

Dr. Errin Weisman
And then you would just say, like, this is not a good fit. Like, obviously, you need to go either take care of your family or figure things out. Because Yeah, because, you know, excuses are like noses, everybody’s got one and, and that’s fine. And that’s maybe the story, the stories that they’re telling themselves. But that’s not yours to figure out. You’re the employee, you’re the business owner. And if you can’t do it, they can’t do it. And that’s okay. And it’s the same for us. Like, I think sometimes we delay getting stuff to our contractors or, you know, something comes up and we’re like, well, this is what’s happened, like, just state the facts. And then you can move through it and move on to it. Yeah,

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
yeah. So so much to go through, but great content. You mentioned a few of your own businesses. Give us some information on the physician coaching Alliance, as well as your, your company on physician burnout.

Dr. Errin Weisman
Yeah, so physician coaching Alliance was formed, because I’m kind of an out ahead of the physician coaching wave, which I’m glad to see new coaches coming into the space. But I was seeing a big gap from when people were going trained through their training. And then they were kind of like staying with their little hub of whoever they trained with. And I was kind of like, this is not junior high, like, we can intermingle. This is fine. Like, maybe you did that coaching school and somebody else did that certification and like, I wanted a place that where we could all intermingle and really learn from each other. Because there’s so many different styles and topics and approaches, that I really wanted you to be a very open and inclusive space. And so I started this back at the beginning of 2018, just as coaches who had come on the podcast, or that I had met through LinkedIn, or Instagram or whatever, and just invite him and said, hey, let’s do like coaching grand rounds. Once a month. Let’s get together. Let’s have community let’s talk about a topic. And we’ll see. And what I realized is like people loved it. Like we were just talking about such amazing things and forming this just like network and community, because I’m a good family medicine, like I like a referral. So if somebody comes to me with overdrinking, that’s not really my jam, but I know a guy or I know a girl who I can send them to. And so it really helped open that up. And what I realized is, I was essentially forming a community, authentically. And so we named it, we now have a very active slack group, we have three meetings a month that anybody can catch who’s in the group on all sorts of different topics. So not only talking about the different types of coaching and how people approach it, which is what we do one Thursday night a month, but also tangible takeaways. How can like this conversation we’re having today? Like, how can you build your business? It’s almost like a best practices like what are you doing? What are you doing? What have you done, that’s worked, but coming from peers, and not some like 26 year old business guru who just got out of MBA, actual people who are in our same shoes, and who can say authentically, like, this is how how we do it. And so it’s been a really awesome space, it’s open to anybody. It’s a super easy level of entry. You just fill out the form on the website, and you tell me, Hey, I heard you on Mike’s podcast, like I want to be a part of the Alliance comes to me and I’m like, Yeah, you’re in, here we go. And it’s just great to come in there and to meet people who you otherwise would not bounce into. Because here’s the thing, we kind of get this lone wolf mentality like that you got to like survive the wild by your own and like, you got to figure it all out. When in fact, it’s really a pack mentality. And if you can learn from somebody else, and you can teach somebody, collectively as a group, we’re going to get farther faster. And the whole preference of physician coaching Alliance is to bring coaching and to bring balance into medicine and I don’t know who doesn’t get behind that.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, yeah. And your your burnout coaching.

Dr. Errin Weisman
Yeah. So in addition to that, where it all started, you know, was the burnout coaching it’s where I’m still super passionate. About. And so the podcast that I started is Dr. Me first, and it’s me having conversations of just about everything. Occasionally I’ll let my husband Mr. Wiseman, come on, and we do a series called married to an alpha female. And so that’s always fun to get an inside look into team Wiseman. But yeah, come over to Dr. Me first and hear more about that. If you are feeling a little crispy if you’re interested in being like, okay, maybe I’m transitioning for the right reasons, but I’m a little crispy around the edges, I’d encourage you to check out burntouttobadass.com. It’s where I do all of my coaching. I do one on one and group because I love both of them. Like I’m sorry, but I’m never gonna scale to group only I still like just like a patient encounter with a person in front of you. I still love coaching one on one with the person in front of me as well. And so, yeah, that’s my coaching what I’m doing. And it’s kind of cool to have now built the coaching practice and now helping and fostering other entrepreneurs in the physician coaching space. I don’t feel like I have, like two separate entities. It’s more like my right and left hand now.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Right, right, right. You definitely walk and walk talking the talk. And then the URL is physiciancoachingalliance.com. All righty.

Dr. Errin Weisman
Make it easy.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yes, you did. This has been tremendous. Just just been a joy. Any last minute words that you want to leave for us today?

Dr. Errin Weisman
I would just tell people don’t compare your beginnings to somebody else’s middle. Like we all put our pants on the same way. We all take a shower are the same. Like there’s nothing special about what I’ve become and what I’ve built that someone else couldn’t do with their zone of genius. It’s just having the clarity of what I wanted to do. The courage to put myself out there. And the confidence to keep going.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I love it. Aaron, it’s been a pleasure. I never had to use the word sassy through the podcast. So I think that was pretty good. But again, so much fun. Thanks for coming on and like to have you on again. And as always guys. Keep moving forward.

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