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Career Coaching for Physician Entrepreneurs

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Become a Better Physician by Understanding Marketing with Kevin Cuccaro, DO

I love marketing!  And today I’ll be sharing a recent interview with a physician who has the same passion that I do.  Pain specialist Dr. Kevin Cuccaro felt that we could do a better job treating chronic pain patients, but what was the best way to share his message to the world?

Dr. Cuccaro become a student of marketing, and was one of the early physician pioneers who found success through podcasting, and now is the host of two successful podcasts, outside his medical practice.

In fact, by understanding marketing better he argues, we can become better physicians.  We could have talked for hours! There is a lot to digest here, so make sure you listen to this episode today!

LINKS MENTIONED:

TheChangedPhysician.com – Podcast to help you learn the mindsets, skills, & strategies to create the life you want. Cohosted with Dr. Melissa Cady.

StraightShotHealth.com – Dr. Kevin Cuccaro’s resource on pain management and pain care.

Contact information for Dr. Kevin Cuccaro – drkevin@straightshothealth.com

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Hey, guys, it’s Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another episode of BootstrapMD. I really have the honor of introducing my next guest. He is a fellowship trained specialist and an expert in the science of pain. He trained in anesthesiology at University of Chicago as well as got a pain medicine fellowship at my alma mater, University of Michigan, go blue. We won’t talk about our football team this year. He also spent some time here in my hometown of San Diego, at the Naval Medical Center in the pain medicine fellowship program. And he has a program called the Straight Shot Health, which actually led to him starting his own podcast way back when, in 2013. And he also launched a web based course the next year, he refers to himself as an online physician-preneur. And that’s why I needed to have him on the show. I’ve actually been honored to be a guest on his podcast. Which, if you haven’t checked it out, it’s called The Changed Physician where he is a co host. So bring to the show today. Dr. Kevin Cuccaro, how you doing my friend?

Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
Very well, Mike, how are you doing?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Doing well. You get all your holiday shopping out of the way?

Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
It’s all computer based, right? It’s like, you know, it makes me think of, you know, first world problems, or whatever. Because the issue this year, is since we’re doing everything, and we’re pretty good about online shopping in general, before the pandemic. But then we get all these packages, and nobody knows who’s supposed to open them. Right? Because we have me, my kids, my wife, we’re all ordering stuff for each other. And then it’s like, what do you do? Because you check the order, you’re gonna know what you’re gonna get. And so it’s been an interesting thing. We just started throwing things underneath the tree, it’s gonna be interesting Christmas. So…

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Well, at least it’s more interesting than what I give to my my family, we’re just basically sending out the same Amazon gift card, but just back and forth. It just keeps on going back and forth. So I wanted to have you on the program. As I mentioned, I’ve been on your show, which you guys need to check out. It’s called The Changed Physician. Were going to talk about how you actually, kind of, launched that. So, I want to get back into, let’s say, 2011-2012. As you mentioned, you’re a pain management specialist. What decided you to say, “Hey, you know what, I want to start my own podcast.”?

A lot of dissatisfaction, and probably in common with a lot of your audience, right. So we as physicians, you know, we went into healthcare, almost all of us, I think, because we wanted to help people get better. And so when I did anesthesia, and then I had initialism pain, I did my fellowship in pain. And I was always interested in helping people get better. Now, if you’ve been practicing for awhile, you kind of know that in the field of pain, there’s not a lot of people getting better in a traditional practice. And so when I was in the military, and we had six other fellowship trained physicians, all really, really well trained. I was finding it very frustrating that we would do this stuff, obviously, in a physician pain world, we’re heavily interventionally focused. And we were doing all these injections. And I couldn’t tell who was getting better and who wasn’t, literally. Some of us were super conservative, and some of my colleagues, again really great guys and gals, but they were super aggressive. I would walk into a room and say, “Is an injection appropriate?” And some of my colleagues are like, “Where is an injection appropriate?” And it didn’t seem to matter. So I thought it was the military model at the time. And then I left military medicine, I came to Oregon there was no full time pain specialist where I was. I was super dedicated to like evidence based practice, I was following the guidelines. And within six to eight months, my outcomes were no different than what I was seeing in the military. Meaning people would walk into your office and they’re like, “Oh, you know, Dr. Carl I feel so much better”. But then you look at the chart and if I had done injections in their back and month after that, they were seeing the orthopedic specialtist for injections in the knee, month after that the rheumatologist getting injections in the shoulder, and then they were back to me saying either their back or neck was hurting again. I just didn’t like that. I’m like, something’s wrong. Like we’re supposed to help people get better. So they go back to living their life not seeing more and more physicians and getting more stuff done. So I started taking a really critical look at the evidence and data behind what I did. And I’m sure it’s not shocking, again, to your listeners that when you look at the outcomes for pain, they’re horrible. And I’d say the majority of the things that we do in medical care, have little to no evidence that supports them, when you’re looking at objective data. And the outcomes are atrocious. And when you’re doing things to people, that you think that are actually harming them, even if you’re getting paid to do them, and you went into medicine to help people get well, there’s a lot of dissonance with that. So I spent a lot of time going back and studying pain, again, looking all the science that we weren’t actually taught in fellowship. Which is kind of weird, because I came from a pretty good program. So the science of pain is actually advanced quite a bit, the practice of pain is still stuck about 60 years behind. Yeah, and really the model that we have is not set up to help people get well. And I was recognizing very, very quickly, in a typical medical practice, there’s no resiliency and there’s no flexibility in order to create that better pathway. Meaning we’re all RVU generated, or heavily procedural based, the procedures make a bunch of money, there’s no time to the education to really incorporate behavioral health techniques to get in a true multi disciplinary team. And yeah, so that’s that’s sort of what accelerated my path into more of a physician-penuership domain. Meaning, I started looking at how does behavioral change occur? We’ve had actually a talk, I think, on our podcast about that, because that led me into direct response marketing. Because you were like, well, who changes behavior or gets people to take action? It’s marketers. And then that kind of lead into my podcast and trying to do two things. One is, get people aware of the discrepancies in health care, or more of the sick care system, like what can you do for your health? And the second thing is, then how do you create actionable programs, that people can start and go through and actually have transformative results. And so that that is sort of been what my focus has been over the last seven, eight years now. In working again, mostly with clinicians kind of trying to transform how they approach and treat pain through understanding it differently and applying different principles. So that’s a super long way to say it was mostly from dissatisfaction with the current medical system, and not seeing people get well.

Now, back then, or currently, do you have your own practice? Or do you work for a hospital system?

No, I’m completely independent. And I had a small, almost like a micro practice for a while, but I just closed it this last year. And the reason was, to get your referral volume to make that even worth doing is really, really hard to do. And you have to actually educate, again, mostly the clinical population, because most people when it comes to pain, aren’t thinking about helping people get better. From the primary care perspective, it’s often, well who can I get to write these opioids for them. And that is not my focus at all. It’s not the opioid side. So that physical practice, I’ve actually shut down this year, but the vast majority, even up until that point, 90 plus was working with either healthcare systems or clinicians and teaching them pain. So I had a couple of large scale grants in 2016, I got an extension on those in 2017. Had a couple big projects this year, with health care systems and some tribal health clinics in southern Oregon this year. So that’s where I’ve been really kind of falling in that space.

So why back then, because I’m thinking back in 2013, there wasn’t a lot of podcasts out there. Why did you decide to use that medium? Then let’s say, go to your local your, your society, and put out a paper and all that. Why did you decide to use that medium?

Um, that’s a good question. I have never thought about that, to be honest. So I did, I started doing a lot of presentation and speaking. So speaking for medical events, and I really, really enjoyed that. The actual podcast side, I think honest to God, like right now you hear everybody saying, oh, podcasting is the future, you need to start a podcast. Well, they were saying that back in 2011-2012, it was the same thing. It’s just there was nobody podcasting at the time. And I thought, well, this would probably be a good way to do this. It seemed like an interesting medium. And I like talking like we’re talking now. So that’s really what precipitated that. I think, again I haven’t had a chance to really think about it as much. You know, why did I do that? But I think it really just came up. There was no strategic plan. I knew I didn’t really want to do a blog. And yeah, I think it was just became an easier media and I took a course from a guy who was a well known podcaster at the time, slipped right into it. And yeah, just been kind of doing it since then. That particular podcast, I don’t publish nearly as persistently as you need to do. Like I’m sure from your experience, the key to podcasting is making sure that you’re on a consistent publication schedule. That was probably the biggest learning thing I got from that.

So it’s so it’s still active, but you’re not as frequent.

Yeah, I haven’t closed that particular podcast. And this is if you’re, if you’re thinking about podcasting, there’s a couple of different things that you can use for it. One, you can do it for education, right. From a marketing standpoint, you can use it to educate who your audience may be. The other thing, and what mine sort of transitioned to over time, it became very easy way for me to speak to experts about pain, like some of the world renowned ones. Lorimer Moseley, everybody knows him down in Australia. If you have a podcast, it becomes a very easy way to connect with people, because you’re like, “Hey, would you like to come on my podcast?”, and then you talk to them, and then you do whatever. So there’s sort of a network effect with that. And so what I do, I guess I’m sort of blowing my cover here. But what I do with that particular podcast now is use it as connection. Either to promote people I’ve worked with, so now they have an audience to see the good things that they’ve done. And/or to connect with people that I think are fascinating. It’s easier than saying, “Hey, can I pick your brain for your 20 minutes in a coffee shop?”. People don’t want to have their brains picked in a coffee shop. But if you want to talk on a podcast, people will definitely talk on a podcast.

You’ve alluded to this, but just just want to be sure, what has led from that podcast, what is what kind of doors have opened for you?

I think really connecting with people that you normally wouldn’t have an opportunity to connect with. You know, if you’re looking at from a business side, it’s probably a little bit harder now than it was then. It just sounds so much better. Like, there’s something in it the interviewee that you have, if you have something to offer them. You know, if you’re doing something like hey, I really like what you do, but I want to sit down and talk to you. Other than the good graces and someone feeling good about helping somebody, which is a great reason to do it, there really isn’t anything long term for that individual. But if you have a podcast now, at least they know, you know, if I go and educate you, and I asked you these questions, and we’re having a great discussion, somebody else may hear about that. And they may discover me that way. And so I think a podcast and again, you can do this in different media, but a podcast is so much easier to have a great discussion. And so it allows that kind of give and take relationship in a way that is beneficial to both parties. I mean, I’m always kind of shocked if you have somebody who refuses a podcast. People forget, like, once you have a podcast episode up, it’s there forever, unless the podcast stops publishing. And people will find stuff that you that you published 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago in some scenarios that you would never have ordinarily connected with. So yeah, it’s it’s always great for the podcaster because you can connect with people that you really want to talk to you. And it’s great for the person being interviewed, because now you have this asset that’s sitting in the interwebs that basically it will last as long as people are paying the hosting fee. And that’s pretty amazing.

Yeah, it’s just so funny. Just yesterday, I get an email from an interview I did pre COVID, I can’t even remember. And they liked something that I said back then and I’m like, I don’t even remember back then. But you’re right, it’s permanent. And you have all of these distribution channels. I mean, why not take advantage of it? I’m just kind of curious, just kind of being a geek, did your audio equipment change from 2013 to today?

No, so the guy I took the course with, I’m not even sure if he does podcasts anymore because he did it for so long and then kind of transitioned. He wanted to be like the Tony Robbins that didn’t cuss. His name’s Cliff Ravenscraft. He’s hardcore and used super hardcore audio file. So we’re in this course and he’s like, this is what you need. You need this microphone. And I’m like, that’s a $600 microphone. You need this, I didn’t get the $600 microphone. But you know, he said get a soundboard, get an external recording device, get this. And because of that kind of foundation, which was overkill I think a lot of ways, but I haven’t had to change anything. Like it’s all hardware. I’m sitting I’m looking at it right now. And it’s still working really, really good because it was quality equipment, and so I haven’t had to do anything there. Which is kind of nice. Right?

That’s very cool. And just so that people on the audience know that name of the podcast is Straight Shot Health Talk.

Okay, awesome. So you got your practice, you got this podcast that you’re doing on the side. When did you decide to say, Hey, you know what I want to do a second podcast?

Unknown Speaker
That one came about with, with a desire to meet dynamic people again. So in the pain world, there’s a lot of passion surrounding pain. The conversations oftentimes get overshadowed by the whole opioid issue. There’s some really fantastic people. And there’s some amazing things that occur. But there’s a lot of anger too, and they’re rightly so on many different sides. And that kind of negativity gets a little rough at times. And so with the podcast, my co host, Dr. Melissa Katie, who is also anesthesia and pain trained, who doesn’t do interventions anymore. We’re like, well, we need to get around positive people. And the people that we enjoyed to be around were entrepreneurs, and specifically physician entrepreneurs. And so the reason we started that podcast, then was to connect with other physician entrepreneurs, so that you in some ways maintain your own sanity. Becuase I know you’ve felt this way, Mike. Like, when you’re thinking on your own and working out in the ethers of the internet, you feel isolated, right? Nobody seems to understand what you do. Everybody looks at you like you’re crazy. Like, what are you doing practice for the hospital? You’re not employed? You’re doing this thing, blah, blah, blah. And, it’s hard to talk to people. You can’t necessarily talk about the purpose of a podcast, or lead generation, or creating solutions and things because people have no idea what you’re talking about. So with that particular podcast, again, it’s meeting physicians, predominantly entrepreneurs. And the other back end of that is, to encourage physicians specifically, there’s this whole burnout thing. And I don’t like the burnout, per se, but there’s a lot of physicians feeling trapped. And our purpose there is to say, there’s so many opportunities for physicians, if you’re thinking differently. And that was another reason to do it is meet a lot of people who are already thinking differently, encourage other physicians to start thinking differently, because ultimately, the solutions for the future of healthcare are going to come from us. But they’re not going to be in this, you know, the traditional medical model is not going to be where healthcare transformation comes from. It’s going to come from physician and entrepreneurs devising the solutions for the 21st century.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I’m curious, how did you and Dr. Katie meet? You meant before? Or like some type of podcast physician society that you got together on?

It was pain. Yeah, we met through pain. Now um, we had another colleague, another physician colleague, there’s like, there’s a couple like lights out in the dark. We all started connecting. They introduced me to Melissa, we actually went up to a more pain specific event in Seattle, I think in 2018, and just kind of hit it off. She interviewed me for a project that she has, I think I brought her on to my podcast. We had started another podcast, we’d briefly run for about 40 episodes I think, it was more pain specific. And then we decided to transfer into a positive audience. Yeah, so we had a project before The Changed Physician.

So what are your observations on having a co host, versus doing it on your own?

Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
Oh, so easier, so much easier. So much, the hard thing with that particular podcast when I started, it was just me. Because I made the mistake of you know, one of the things in entrepreneurship is you learn to model right. And most podcasts, were doing these interview based podcasts, which they’re still doing now. And I’m like, everybody’s doing interview podcast, I’m not gonna do an interview podcast. I’m gonna do solo episodes. Well, generating solo content that you can then discuss in a way that flows well is really, really, really hard to do. And especially when you’re not sure if anybody’s listening because nobody’s listening to you when you start. With a co host, what that allows you to do is, it’s just so much more dynamic, because there’s always this dialogue. Like you and I, because we can have a conversation, now we have no idea where this podcast is going to go. As long as we’re not babbling it should be interesting for the audience.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Hey, don’t give away all my secrets here.

Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
They’re gonna get something out of it right? And so the advantages of having a co host, what we’ve even seen, with when we have a guest on now we have two of us. Oftentimes one of us will take the conversation in a way that I didn’t even anticipate. So it’s synergistic in a lot of ways. It’s more fun and then the other part is of course, you can split the labor. Melissa’s more technically minded she can do things with like editing than I have no idea what she does. I can do a little bit more on the marketing side. So and you have a built in accountability buddy too. That’s the other thing, like even when you feel like not doing it all the sudden, you get the email, hey, we have an interview in two hours or whatever. And so, it’s been great to have a partner.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Now, just to name that podcast, that’s called The Changed Physician, I encourage you guys to check it out. I’ve had the pleasure of doing two episodes with you. You’ve also been able to attract some really interesting guests. I’m trying to see the one that they came across. I forgot his name, but he’s from the UK. He’s big in productivity. He’s got a couple million followers. It’s kind of one of my bucket list wants to get. How were you able to get ahold of him?

Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
Melissa just reached out. And again, it comes down to, you have a podcast and it really comes down to to reaching out to individuals, and then making sure that it’s in a way that is constructive, right? You’re not asking for anything other than time, although that can be a huge deal. What’s really great about Olli is, he’s just a great guy. And we had reached out to him before he had a million YouTube subscribers. But, you know, he’s actually he was very conscious. And he’s been publishing stuff for, he’s young, he’s like, 25-26 I think, he’s been doing stuff online for at least 10 years. So he started in his late teens. And, he is just a really giving guy. He’s like, you know, I always want to make time for people who are doing things and so he was happy to do it. Now there’s been a lot of other people who have a million plus YouTube subscribers that haven’t responded. So it doesn’t always happen with everybody. But you know, you ask and people who understand will often say hey, I remember what it was like when you’re starting something new or before I had, you know, a million or even 100,000 subscribers. So it was fun to talk with him and also to get his perspectives on a different style of medicine. Because, if you watch some of that episode that he did with us you know, there’s always this grass is greener thing with with physicians. Oh, if you go to the UK better for you, you go to Canada it’s better. We’ve had Canadian doctors on and it was really interesting to hear their stories of burnout. And then Olli is like, completely different. He makes way more money through his online ventures than he will ever make through medicine. So to see how he did that was a treat.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, and I think last time I checked he put his medicine medical career hold, just because he’s just doing so well online.

Yeah, so the system they have is a little bit different. So the junior doctor, which is kind of like being a resident, in the United States. And it’s really, really typical, apparently, in the UK health system that when you finish that junior doctor status, a lot of them take like a year off. So we’re like, oh, this is something that you’re doing, actually a lot of us are like you’ve been killing yourself for so long, take a year off and then they go into whatever next where they’re doing general practice or they’re gonna try to do specialty training. And so, he was aware of this, he wanted to take this break. I’m not sure if he will go back and if he does in a limited manner. But yeah, it was it was really interesting. because that’s so different, you know, what we do here is like, medical school, residency, fellowship. Where can I get started? It’s like, freakin take a break, you know? Relax a little bit figure out what you want to do.

Yeah, I guess the only break is because I trained in Arizona and I was just waiting for my California license to come in.

Forced vacations, right? Licensure or hospital privileging or whatever.

I do want to talk about something that we both have a love of, is direct marketing. And you kind of talk to me about how I got into it. I’m interested in how you got interested in that. It doesn’t seem like something that would be part of a pain specialist curriculum to learn about.

Yeah, well that that comes down to that frustration.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it comes down to again, you’re looking at the date on pain, and you’re looking at it as it’s universally atrocious. Then what kept coming up is these few kind of indicators, and they were all behaviorally oriented. Like changing and coping style, changing and pain beliefs, distress management and things. And so I’m like, well, we need to actually work at helping people to kind of facilitate change within them. And then as they do that they can move and they can exercise, and we decrease fear, avoidance beliefs and all this other stuff. And I remember thinking, well, how do you get people to change their behavior? Right, because we aren’t doing it. And that first actually led to the book Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, which is all about organizational behavioral change. And that one blew my mind because it was like information doesn’t change behavior. Which, I mean, you know that I know that it sounds so stupid to say, but at that moment I read, I was like, holy crap, this explains everything. Because we’re always handing out a form and thinking that the patient is going to all of a sudden, radically transform. If I give them this little sheet of paper that says quit smoking, they’re going to quit smoking. No, it doesn’t work. We know this doesn’t work, right. So I made this thought. And this was one of the little hints of, of luck. I’m like, well, who gets people to take action, and I thought, sales people do. And so then I started listening to a bunch of podcasts and watching interviews with salesmen and marketers. And I didn’t even know what marketing was at that point. And the more I learned about marketing in the sales process, the more I saw, it was directly relevant to behavioral change. Because if you can get someone interested, you can develop that interest into a motivation. And then you can then get them to want to take an action based on that, because now it’s in their best interest to do so. That’s a skill that’s super useful. And when you look at marketing, as we had talked about. There’s two types, there’s like the advertising brand marketing, which is what we typically think of when someone says, oh, you’re advertising and that stuff is garbage, unless you’re Coke. Unless you already have, you know, everybody knows you, and you’re just trying to keep a level of presence, it doesn’t help you. Yeah, a direct response, then you know, when you start seeing it, and you start seeing it everywhere, it’s just amazing. And it’s been utilized for over 100 something years, the sales principles that they’ve been doing in the early 1900s, they’re still using them now. And then what I also love about it is then if you start looking at the psychological literature, so from social psychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, now we’re knowing why these things work. Why did these triggers actually work? And yeah, so it started in an interest of trying to get people to change behavior and now it’s just a fascination, I just love it. I think it’s the most fascinating thing. I like breaking down ads like to see how people’s funnels lay. Because it’s, just intellectually fulfilling to me. I just love it.

I know. But what it does, though, it actually kind of ruins it for some people. Because like, we’re watching something on TV, and to my wife, like an infomercial comes up. You know why they’re doing this, right? This is all scarcity and urgency that they’re doing here, you know? And she’s just like, lay off. I think you did kind of do the same thing, you got to break these down. What about, you mentioned the Heath brothers, are there other books that you’ve liked?

Well, specifically, the Heath brothers, I think was a big one. It depends on if you’re looking at marketing, or if you’re looking at pain and health, or just the way that you think, because that’s what the marketing is really kind of got me into to thinking about, how you think about things. Completely unrelated to everything we talked about, there’s a book called How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett, that is really about how our experiences are constructed. And that kind of pulls together a lot of stuff that I learned from the science of pain, and pulls together some of the marketing principles. There, was another good one this particular year, again, kind of relating to information and behavioral change and much more relevant to the political situation. That was called Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me, which is, again, there’s a couple psychologists involved with that. Aronson, who’s a big, pretty well known guy. It talks about cognitive dissonance theory, which again, is kind of related to marketing principles again, and tells you why we have such a polarized society. And, some of the, you know, the dangers and opportunities there, which are kind of frightening. So I would probably start there if you’re going to start with anything if you’re if you’re new on the physician journey, and you’re kind of wondering why, like, if we know lifestyle, and this lifestyle and behavioral changes necessary, we’re spending 90% of healthcare dollars on the treatment of lifestyle and behavioral disease, ie chronic diseases, and why what we do doesn’t work. I would start with the Heath brothers book, The Switch. Because that kind of gives you an introduction of really, this whole idea of handing out the pamphlet, and then complaining that your patients are non compliant is completely ridiculous. We’re not doing what we need to be doing.

So do you, in your own practice, do you use some of these strategies?

All the time. I incorporate, change theory and marketing principles in my presentations. If I’m doing a CME event, I will build them like I do a sales presentation, because it’s the same thing, right? Because, we’ve all been in a boring, super boring CME lecture and the person’s like blabbing out data or whatever, and it doesn’t serve anybody. But if you’re like, okay, what am I gonna do with this audience? If I want to change their behavior, I want to increase the level of awareness in them. How am I going to structure my presentation in a way to do that? So what’s my introduction going to be like? How am I going to take this concept and simplify it in a way that makes it interesting to them? So I use it all the time. I mean, everything that I do kind of defaults back into, how do we how do we influence people? How do we persuade them? How do we get people to change? What’s the best way that I can communicate? And then learning that foundation from direct response marketing, then it kind of flows through you and everything. You’re talking to people live you do it, the way you write an email, it happens, if you’re doing not even a sales presentation, any sort of presentation it’s reflected in that. Yeah, so I use it all. It’s, it’s fundamentally changed my life and how I see the world and it’s fun. It’s like the matrix, right? You step into it, and it’s a whole different world, you can never go back. But I’m glad to be there. And luckily, we’re not stuck in a weird submarine thing, shaved heads and eaten nasty mush like they were on The Matrix. It’s actually better.

I thought that was just Oregon. Okay. But yeah, as you mentioned, with that, you go down that rabbit hole. Because not only has been it for hundreds of years, you know, it’s like within the Spider Man movie. With great power comes great responsibility. When we see things where they take them to the nth degree, you realize, those same techniques are used to form cults. Right? And why, I was turning on HBO, and they have the documentary on the Halley’s comet, Heaven’s Gate. And it’s just like, how were they influenced? Well you watch some of these things you know, it’s the authority figure. It’s changing the behavior. That’s why when you look at this stuff, you realize how powerful it can be and especially if it gets into the wrong hands. That’s what can happen. But if you can utilize it and understand it, I think will make you a better physician.

I totally agree. I totally agree. And I think the best marketers who understand the responsibility behind that, like John Carlton I’m sure you know, is a writer. In his course I think lesson one is, I will not use these things for evil like literally. There’s a little page in there, I can’t remember if you’re supposed to sign it. But because it is, it’s a tool and you can use it in a really bad way or you can do it in a really good way. Rather than to duck, put our heads in the sand and say, I’m a physician I don’t have to learn this stuff blah blah blah blah blah. You better learn it. Because if you’re not learning it, then the unethical dude down the street, who you know is a hack, he’s learned I guarantee it or she. And is going to pull your patients away and do substantial harm. So learn as much about sales and marketing as you possibly can just so that, at a minimum, you can defend yourself and others from from the bad users and perhaps use it on the good side. Like I don’t know, the dark side and the good side of the force.

We could talk about this forever, I know you’ve got to go. Where can we go to get more information about yourself, podcasts, website? What’s the best way?

Well for your particular audience probably the best place to go is Thechangedphysician.com The Changed Physician that’s our podcast between me and and Melissa Katie. A little community there, we’re always looking for interesting guests who have wonderful stories and are you know transforming themselves and not settling. And so that’s probably the best place to go. If for whatever reason I sparked an interest in pain, you can go to straightshothealth.com and some of the work that I’ve done there is there. Or they can just email me Drkevin@straightshothealth.com is probably the easiest way.

Kevin, thank you so much. You’ve got a great brain for understanding all of this, putting things together, I love what you’re doing in the community. Just kudos to yourself and you know, all the best for you and have a have a wonderful holiday.

Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
Yeah, you too, Mike. And it’s always fun to talk with you. And I was just thinking as we’re finishing like, man, we need a physician podcast. Or some sort of secret group where we can talk about sales and marketing. How cool would that be?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
But thank you for having me on the show, it was a pleasure. You know, it’s always great to talk to you. I love what you’re doing, and have been doing it for so long. You’re like the godfather of physician-prenuers. So it’s absolute pleasure to be talking to you. But thanks for having me on the show.

Well, with the Godfather, right, I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse. So thanks, everybody. Thanks again, Kevin. And as always, guys keep moving forward.

By

Rank in the Top 10% of Your Specialty By Mastering This Skill with Dr. Melissa Cady

Why does LeBron James make more than the NBA journeyman who goes from team to team each year?  How does a 19 year old Youtube influencer make hundreds of thousands a year, while another 19 year old makes minimum wage?  It’s simple. They’ve increased the perceived value of their worth to the world. 

Pain specialist Dr. Melissa Cady wanted to reduce the amount of hours she worked, while maintaining the autonomy of her own practice.  As she details on this interview, she learned to design her career by honing her craft and marketing herself.  This attracted lucrative career opportunities, as she could provide a unique set of skills and expertise that you couldn’t find anywhere else. 

Just like the title of Cal Newport’s book, when you become “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, people will seek out your expertise.  The more rare and valuable skill you can provide to the world, the more in control you are able to design the life you want.

If you feel you are not getting paid with what you are worth, this is an episode you won’t want to miss!

The Challenge Doctor – Melissa Cady, DO
https://www.challengedoctor.com/

Melissa Cady’s Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/challengedoctor/

The Changed Physician – Podcast to help you learn the mindsets, skills, & strategies to create the life you want. Cohosted with Dr. Kevin Cuccaro

https://www.thechangedphysician.com

RAW TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I love to spotlight physician entrepreneurs. And I’m seeing a trend with with many of us. And oftentimes we have an independent streak. We’re often someone who is kind of in a square peg in a round hole. And I think it might encapsulate I’m not sure, but it might encapsulate my next guests. Dr. Melissa Cady, also known as the challenge doctor is a Board Certified anesthesiologist, and pain management specialist. She’s the author of the book, Pandemic, a practical and holistic look at chronic pain, the medical system, and the anti pain lifestyle. She’s co host of the change physician podcast with Dr. Kevin Cucarro, who I recently had the opportunity to be interviewed with and we recently had him on a podcast. And the change position to podcasts you guys need to check out is where you can learn the mindset skills and strategies to create the life you want without selling out your morals or values. And I needed to have her on the program. So Dr. Cady, thank you for joining me on the bootstrap MD podcast.

Dr. Melissa Cady
Well, thanks for inviting me and thank you for all you’re doing to inspire and guide other physicians as well.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So I was able to interview your partner in crime or your co host

Dr. Melissa Cady
gic?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
That’s right. Yes, I know. I know you’re married, but you also got your podcast partner.

Dr. Melissa Cady
got my business? Yeah, married partner.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
And when you interviewed me, I definitely getting to know each other, you kind of had an independent streak I could with the questions that you’re asking. And I just thought it was so unique. So I wanted to learn more about your background. And that’s why I wanted to have you on the program. But am I am I hearing that correctly? Or did you know since elementary school, you wanted to become a doctor.

Dr. Melissa Cady
First of all, that guess this, this whole round peg in a square hole or square peg in a round hole has eluded me, because I think I’ve always felt that sense of not quite fitting the traditional, or I’ve not been one to want to. You know, even for a lot of organizations, even in college, I felt like I didn’t want to conform in this way where it didn’t allow this ability to think and maybe look at things a little differently. And know I’ve never really wanted to be a physician since I was a child. There are a few positions in my family like my uncle’s. But I may have thought I’ve talked about being a veterinarian, but I think there was a lot of influence from maybe perception of what was a noble field, and what was something that would enable some stability of income. And I love to learn, I think that’s the one thing that I realized I love to learn. And I like to think differently. So I, because of that, I think that creates a sense of, I don’t want people to tell me what to do, or how to do when to do it. But the problem is you have to go within that infrastructure in order to create this opportunity to be a physician. So when you are on this treadmill, and I’ll just keep going and giving you some ideas, my perspective there. Please stop me if I go too far. Right? Yeah, so I feel like I’ve been on this treadmill where you just kind of hop on and do what you’re supposed to do in order to achieve. And I think I’ve had a sense of I think my pursuits have been directly related to a feeling of just feeling good about myself and filling voids, like the sense of accomplishing and, you know, is that part of trying to please others, whether it’s family or friends, probably to a certain extent, because I don’t think I really, really dove into that true personal development type of just that. That pursuit of personal development. I don’t think I was ready for it. In my teens, my 20s I mean, I was always learning but academics is a little different than like relationship learning and and life learning. And, and so I think it really took time for me to kind of grow into myself and realize some of these insights that maybe I felt but I can never put into words, because I don’t think I had the emotional intelligence to really appreciate that back back then. And you know, and it’s still a journey, I’m still evolving. But I think there’s this feeling that and it’s really created issues, and I think it might be relevant for people to hear is that I have had a problem, I’ve kind of gone against the grain in some ways in where I worked, because of the system that we work within. So just to give you an idea, I’ve worked in anesthesia for, oh, gosh, I finished my pain fellowship in 2009. And then I worked part time and had a seizure, because I had a hard time conforming to the traditional pain medicine practices, because it didn’t feel right, I’ve dealt with my own pain, I know there’s a lot more that goes into it from the patient perspective, there’s a lot you need to do a lot, you need to understand a lot of things you need to appreciate to really, really be on that journey of healing and, and less pain. And I call it the anti pain lifestyle, this is a general term of just, you’re never gonna have a pain free life, in order to really achieve and improve pain or improve a state of anxiety or stress you there’s, you’ve really got to learn to, you know, there’s these challenges you’re just going to have to deal with, and it takes a certain level, I’ve gone on a tangent, and I just want to, I’m not sure I’m going now. But in essence, all of all of these challenges and struggles, it requires a certain level of personal development to really improve. And so when I dealt with pain, when I dealt with, let me come back to my tangent here, when I dealt with pain, and I dealt with, you know, going into this medical profession, who is very much driven by, you know, this, this, unfortunately, money, and a lot of people are in it. for the right reasons, it’s just Unfortunately, the system is designed to give you more money for doing the things that probably you don’t need to be doing to patients. And maybe we need to do more education and helping people learn how to live healthier lives and deal with stress and deal with these challenges of stress, anxiety, pain, all these things that that we’re trying to fill a void or trying we’re struggling with. And it could be just the environment we were born into, or that we’ve chosen.

And the medical system is no different. So I’ve, you know, struggled and I know a lot of us, as physicians have gone through this medical system, realizing things should be better, and it’s stressful, it doesn’t enhance the wellness of physicians. And unfortunately, I feel like if we don’t take care of ourselves, and we don’t take care of each other, hence why the podcast came about. If we, if we don’t do these things, you know, for each other, then it’s hard to take care of patients. So it’s almost like victims take care of victims. And so the whole system, I think comes crumbling down and you look at the pandemic or some I’m kind of putting a date on this interview here. But and I never even obviously, I didn’t have a crystal ball to know that my pain demick trademark in my book would actually come to be a, you know, there’s actually a pandemic around the corner, you know, but those those things are are real, some of these challenges we have in our system. And so when you get into the system, and you’re working in it like I did with the anesthesia, and then you no longer when I first got out of my training, I was the kind of locums and I was part time. And then I decided to become employed. Which to me for me. And that’s not it’s not necessarily everybody. That was a big mistake, I think on my part. Because when you become employed from a financial standpoint is beneficial, got benefits and all this other stuff. But it could it can put kind of this constriction on me. And I know, I’ve, I’ve come to know myself and realize that I can’t have that kind of binding around me, like I need to feel the freedom, I need to feel the autonomy. And once you sign that contract, and you’re expected to do what you need to do, and you’re making salary, and yet your hours increase or you need to cover more call, you’re actually working less on when it comes to an hourly basis. So you give it up more time, in some cases, and sometimes it can work out great for people. But for me, I want the freedom. It doesn’t mean I work less. I think you probably can agree that sometimes when you’re independent, you find work as physicians, I’ll speak for my personality. Work is our sanity. Like in some ways, it’s create a structure for So many years and we were trained, and that we don’t know what else to fill our time with, other than more work, because that’s, that’s been our, we’ve been kind of like brainwashed in a way to be the kind of people that will take more work and do more work and do it for the good or, you know, the better of people, and just just for the good of society. And so and so I have a lot of biases, of course, I’m, I’m a female, I’m, you know, I’ve gone through the medical system, and all these things influenced me and how I perceive the world. But I see in my perspective is that when you are trained as a physician, you have to work really hard, you have to sacrifice a lot. We’re used to sacrificing our, our view is that we want to know things to help people, we feel this, we feel like we have to have the answers all the time. And sometimes part of being a great physician isn’t necessarily your answers. It’s being present, and being part of the journey with patients. And the way that we are that infrastructure and how we get paid is for, you know, doing things to people. And, you know, I’m reading a book right now by Vivek Murthy about together in isolation and loneliness and such a big part of our health and our wellness and, and I think it also applies to how our interactions are with patients. Now. We’re not and I’m not talking about emergency situations, but you know, these continuity of care type things, you know, we need to be present. So you know, I kind of went on multiple

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
rounds here was a great, we’re dead now.

Dr. Melissa Cady
Don’t You’re what? I’m missed it, what do you say?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
That’s, that’s all the time we have left now.

Dr. Melissa Cady
But there you go.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
It’s fascinating, because there’s so many, there’s so many directions that that we can take this conversation. But when did you feel that this way? I know, I know, I talked a little bit about it, you actually were a personal trainer, or a personal trainer. And then that would would kind of lead you into medicine? Correct.

Dr. Melissa Cady
So it’s, it’s kind of been It was kind of an evolution from them. I loved musculoskeletal medicine, I played sports, I had a fascination with the human body. It just kind of a natural inclination to be a personal trainer. But then I was feeling uncomfortable when I had patients that had like heart problems and, you know, back problems, and I just felt like I need to know more. And you know, it’s just like, you have so much energy, you know, in your 20s. And you just so driven many times, that’s where a biggest drive start. And so I felt like, why not? Let’s just try. And so I got into medical school and, and because of my love of Go ahead.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So you went into medical school. Again, the pain you’ve you’ve had sounds like you’ve had some pain, personal pain issues as well, which which led to that. When did this disillusionment of becoming an employed physician? Start? I know where it started. For me, it was pretty pretty in residency where I kind of learned but, you know, I thought that for about five years, what was it for yourself?

Dr. Melissa Cady
I think I just, you know, I was drinking the Kool Aid throughout the whole training thing. I think that year of pain fellowship. And this, this feeling that what I want to do for patients would not allow me to make the profits because the just the way that the incentives are, you know, put together. I felt like I felt this nauseating feeling like I couldn’t join a practice, I have to do it on my own, that I probably couldn’t afford the overhead in the way that I would spend time with patients, I would see half the number that my colleagues and my fellowship would see, and they were fine with it. But I was willing to take on some of the most, you know, challenging patients or just frustrating ones and, and I enjoyed it. But I think that’s when it first started. And then I just had the freedom and the income after that, at part time. And I literally started I think this is unusual, talking about the square peg in a round hole. Another really unusual thing about me is I, I decided this is the number I need to make per month in order to live. And as long as I make that amount, I’m fine. So I’d work two to three days a week right out of the gates. Because my perception is I can always work more, but I don’t want my state or my standard living to be so high that it’s stressful to come down if I need to. So I did have that around that time. And I literally told myself, I need to make 10,000 a month for me to be happy. That was kind of like mine. Number. And so and I still feel like that, you know,

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
and it’s so simple. And what I tell, you know, other physicians is okay, you you’ve done you graduated medical school, you know what your average salary is, and your hourly rate, you have an idea what that’s going to be. But so many doctors feel that they need to make meet the average, right? Because we all see this average amount of salaries, anesthesiologist, cardiologists, you know, pediatricians way below primary care a little bit about above that, we kind of need to know that the averages and they, you know, they come up with this every year, and you’re in the West in the south, we all know what kind of averages is. And for whatever reason, they feel that well, I need to meet that. Even if I’m working 50 plus hours, even if I’m doing three plus hours. But you can, you know, it comes down to just this independence is you went you went into locums and just like I can always get that back. I can always work more if I need to. I’m Why do you think more doctors don’t think similarly to that? Because I see so many that’s just trying to catch up? You know?

Dr. Melissa Cady
Yeah, I think there’s, I think obviously, like most things, and humankind is complex. But I think there’s, you know, first of all, there’s the golden handcuffs of I’ve got 100 to $300,000 in debt, they feel like they gotta get that paid off right now. I think sometimes it’s hard for us to realize, and you know that you’re not guaranteed tomorrow. And sometimes people overwork on the front end thinking they could just push and get this all done, make tons of money and retire early. There’s attitudes of, you know, they want something secure. So they get the J ob, which requires them work full time. And I don’t think that the medical system creates the options in a way that makes it normal to maybe not work full time. I think we’re also to blame us physicians, too, too. And I’ve been the subject of this, too, is that sometimes people look down on you for working part time as if you’re not putting as much effort in, you know, here’s the little light bulb that should be going on, oh, she’s making less money than me, you know, so that there’s a sacrifice that’s being made in a different way. And so I think as clinicians or physicians, we should, we should embrace and support people that want to design their life, I think we need to be better at designing our life versus just getting on the treadmill that we started on from the very first day of medical school. I think there’s a pre med for that matter. There’s just I think we’re so used to being followers. And I think you said that in one of our interviews, that many physicians don’t tend to be the typical leaders. Were there willing to construct or create the life they want? And granted, there might be people are perfectly happy with, you know, the jlb and the full time and there’s no question to them, and they’re happy. But you know, through some of our interviews on our podcast, it’s interesting to hear from, you know, one of the things Dr. Aaron Wiseman, and made a really good comment that sometimes, you know, for like men versus women and women are the ones unfortunately, we’re the only ones that can really like bear children if we’re gonna have children. So there’s a little different kind of stress there. But the system is really kind of been designed for for men, because that’s kind of what it started out that way. So, you know, it’s, it kind of depends, I guess what I’m getting to is it depends depends on your expectations. You know, what, if you’re going to be happy that or not? And to answer your question directly, why are people less likely to be more entrepreneurial? I guess? I think it’s just because we’re brainwashed to just be followers. And by the nature, we have to follow the rules, we have to pretend to be conservative and, and how we, you know, we don’t want to we’re worried about our reputation. You know, there’s everything we’re worried about, like it’s all about following the guidelines. And even if you look at what we have to answer these things, if we’ve had any medical psychiatric things, there’s, you know, there’s been a push by several physicians to work on that, too. Like, we’re shaming a lot of physicians in ways like, if you just had a bout of depression, you just lost your wife and you’ve been in depression for a year like, you don’t want to share that like you don’t even want to go get seen like we can’t even work on our own wellness because of the nature of the system. But I think a lot of people out there just i think that i think we’re just brainwashed into just being employees. And we’re not we’ve lost our autonomy.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Well, and to and this will probably get me in trouble. So I might read this later. I mean, I’ve worked with the medical board. I did some things with the medical board and We get this quarterly newsletter that gives us a list of all the adopters who did not follow. didn’t follow everything. And of course, there’s some definitely should be practicing medicine. But then you’ve got people who like, here’s a name because they didn’t turn in their, their license on time or you know, there had some tax issues, or maybe had a DUI, but it’s all listed, all listed here. And it just shows you like, okay, here, the doctors that aren’t following the system. Credit, many of them are reasons why they should be but it’s this public embarrassment.

Dr. Melissa Cady
Yes. shaming, again, the shaming

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
about that. So tell me about your your practice. Now I know you’re working part time, tell me how you kind of set it up and the other businesses that you run.

Dr. Melissa Cady
So right now I do part. So this is, it’s kind of it’s been kind of fun, to be honest. I left the group of an anesthesia group after about nine years, September of 2019, and then did locums. And then, of course, a few months with pandemic, I couldn’t do any elective cases that I thought I’d be starting in May or low earlier than that. So as of June, this year, I started working directly with two plastic surgeons that I worked with, when I was with the prayer group. They came to me directly and asked me to do their cases. This is, you know, plastic surgery, mainly elective, mainly cash based practice, seizure. So I’ve really embraced it. And the reason I think it kind of ties into things we’re talking about is having the autonomy to create the experience for patients that I feel like they deserve and should be in place. So this is take a little bit of time for me to create this. But essentially, I have the plastic surgery office will let me know, hey, we need to cover this case. Okay, I get the phone number. I text the patient. I said I’d love to do a pre op zoom online preoperative assessment with you. And talk about all your questions. Do that ahead of time, so it’s not done the day of surgery. So I send them that I send them a link, they can schedule themselves. I see them on that particular day for our preoperative chat, I call it an anesthesia chat. And then I after I talked to them, if they’re not insurance, which most of them aren’t, I get permission send to the email and invoice to prepay for their anesthesia experience, which is all inclusive whether the surgeon goes longer than the estimated time or not. And then I see on the day of and literally it’s a pop in for a minute or two, just say hey, do you have any questions since we chatted last time, make sure vital signs are good and hadn’t eaten and and then I give them IV Margarita and we go back to the operating room. And after that I ended up getting you know, I give them a card with a direct that same phone number I’ve texted from they have any questions about their anesthesia experience, they can directly contact me. And then after about a week later, I send them something in the mail. And I asked actually the text message I send Several days later, by the end of the week, see if there’s any issues, any questions, if they don’t, please fill out this survey. So I get feedback directly by text, which is document instead of just on the phone. So it’s actually they’re printed. And then they fill out a survey. That’s, you know, I put it up anonymous for testimonials later if I want to. And I specify that and then I sent him something in the mail a little gift tonight, I have this whole experience that is just unheard of. And I absolutely love doing that. And so I’m keeping track of all the you know, feedback and potentially even the surgeon thinks that we should present it at a conference. But it is by far the amount the amount of feedback and the kind of feedback I get back just goes to show you we’re not delivering on value. Not that everyone has to be happy. I don’t believe that every patient has to be happy because they are what makes them happy may not be good for their health. So you know that that’s different, but that is my part time practice right now with two plastic surgeons, that volume might change because one surgeon is going to be going off to do a separate location

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
and what compelled the physicians, the surgeons to reach out to you.

Dr. Melissa Cady
Um, I am very particular about not every anesthesia provider is the same. There’s a lot of great anesthesia providers, right. I just happen to be the kind of person that once more I want to dive in a little more details about them. I might spend a few more minutes on the pre op. They’ve heard me when I worked with the other group they’ve heard me and how I just from a professional standpoint and and consistency and wanting to know how they did afterwards. Like there’s there’s a lot of care and detail that is unique to me. But there’s a lot of people that care, and but the way that they do it is might be different. And he knows that I’m an entrepreneur, and that this would be something probably up my alley. And he felt like his patients do well, when I take care of them. So I don’t, that’s, that’s my guess. I mean, otherwise, he wouldn’t be coming to me.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I really think it hits the nail on the head, because we got so many physicians who are complaining about so much and mildly so declining reimbursements, I’m seeing my salaries going down. But when you’re able to be do really, really well, at whatever specialty you’re at, which you obviously do, they’re coming to you. Because I don’t know, you know that that movie, Liam Neeson from taken, you know, he has this particular set of skills, you’ve heard that phrase, right, because he’s using the best one. And that’s why he charges so much money, I’m a physician to a hired killer. But if you get my point, the way that you can increase your value is increased the amount of benefit that you can provide. And that’s why they come to you, you’re not going to them. And if you’re a physician that’s struggling right now, and you feel like you’re just a number. It’s because that’s how they treat, that’s how they perceive you. And we know that’s not true. But a part of being a physician. And I don’t know, if your book may be playing a role into it. But did that help you in terms of marketing yourself? We don’t like to think of ourselves as marketing ourselves. But But did that help do that get you noticed more than than other?

Dr. Melissa Cady
Well, these of course, he’s the one of the two surgeons that actually pursued me and in and even discussed in my prior group, like, I really, we really want her to do the cases. He knows that I wrote a book, he came to my book signing, he, I think he was quite, you know, he appreciates he understands what it’s like to he has his own practice. And he knows the struggles of building your own practice. Now, I had the benefit. And he talked about the salaries in the country, the sounds totally off topic, but not necessarily, but I don’t have to worry about an overhead. So like a surgeon, imagine a plastic surgeon, he has a huge overhead. And he has to manage staff. I don’t have to do that other than, you know, communicating with people in the surgery center that I work at, and I worked at before. For many years. It’s there’s something to say about I guess, once you’re kind of have that mindset, you kind of understand that this other person has that similar mindset, in the book, I think just created evidence that I have that tenacity and that and I still need to write the second edition, which I need to get that tenacity back. But yeah, it’s I think, I think it just added to this perception of my drive to create a better experience, and I’m very committed to educating I feel very, very strongly that people should be better informed. And I do recognize some people get super anxious to too much detail. And I try to monitor that and present it in a way that they can tolerate but there is a certain minimum I expect them to hear as an adult consenting to any type of elective procedure.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Again, you know, what’s interesting, too, is is you know, in my audience got a lot of entrepreneurs and doctors who are entrepreneurs as I jump in for them, as you know, they want to do that. But if you’re still passionate about medicine, which I can tell you, you sure are like myself, is just want to be the best at that. That just be the best and make yourself where they come to you. You don’t necessarily have to come to them because that’s when you can when you can you know, again money is not the end all but you write your own check, you can decide how you want to work right? Because that that really kind of improves your your standing I have a friend who has a weight loss doctor and his primary care we deal with weight loss for like a minute. Yeah, but he charges like five to 10 times higher than the average other doctors dealing with weight loss one he’s got a book he’s had a special on PBS. So he charges 1000s of dollars. I’m not saying that’s that’s not what you have to do to to charge that but it brands and better. Is he the best doctor dealing with weight loss, he would probably tell you not you know, you know, there’s some universal things about eating less moving more, but because the perception is he’s able to brand himself and he enjoys what he does. So even if so if you’re someone who said, You know, I don’t like doing this, but there may be there’s a part in medicine that you do, like, maybe you love to create podcasts, why not be the best podcaster that you can be. But it’s it helps those who are not ready to make that leap to becoming their own boss and say, Hey, I mean, it’s just the branding and marketing. And I know Kevin loves to talk about marketing, the call weight room for like, two hours. We couldn’t like get and that but but I love that you that you illustrated that point? And then looking back, it’s like, geez, you don’t have to kind of follow those average salaries. You know, that’s why NBA players, why did they get make millions of dollars? multi millions of dollars, right? Because the best of what, at that particular skill? Yeah. But yeah, thank you for illustrating. And just showing evidence that that is true. We met so you have that in one or the other, your businesses that you work on? Sure.

Dr. Melissa Cady
Well, I’m in a stopping kind of in a pause on my my pain out loud website is still still there, I’ve got an app associated with it actually is a small New Zealand company that was a startup at the time that helped kind of bridge an app with my website. So I have a lot of interviews with pain professionals and people live and I call them pain, challengers and pain professionals and just gives their stories. And so they’re video interviews that are on the website and can be seen in the app as well. At least for now. I’m just debating whether or not to continue the app based on utilization. And I’ve found that it’s the one thing about pain, it’s people don’t necessarily think they need an education on it. Because they experienced it, and they think they know it and understand it. And as Dr. Caro Caro, who wasn’t interventional pain physician in the past, who’s now third, he considers himself a pain specialist. We both stopped doing interventions for pain, because they’re really not necessary most of the time, and nearly most of the time they are not. And so we’ve we have a very strong belief there. So my my venture into that was several years ago was starting to just share stories to help people realize there’s better ways of understanding pain and dealing with it and to minimize injections, medications and surgeries. Not to say I’m completely anti against those, but people need to have the basis of understanding before they choose to take on a risk that may not be necessary. And so I think going in eyes wide open was my my goal. And the tagline was healing stories matter. And so sometimes people need proof that there are other ways of doing it versus learning the hard way, which is what most people in the society in the United States that are pursuing pain interventions are doing. They’re just like, let’s try this and this and just, you know, possible complications and learning the hard way. So that’s one of my ventures that I’m trying to decide how I want to take that or if I’m going to consider it more of an archived effort, definitely not going to get rid of all the interviews, I think they’re helpful. But sometimes we need to curate the information in a way that’s very guided, and so that that’s something that I you know, might develop over time. Of course, a podcast is something that there’s been a lot of fun for, you know, Kevin and I to do, because we just had this joint vision of doing something it was meaningful. And of course, a lot of fun interviewing people to hear their stories. He didn’t

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
remove the background of his fireplace, though.

Dr. Melissa Cady
Yes, he needs a different background. It’s it’s all zoom background. So it’s not really like a true fireplace. Yeah, I need to pick something different. I just talked about that. Yeah. What’s up?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
You didn’t hear from me?

Dr. Melissa Cady
Oh, no. Well, I, I need to bring it up. So I like giving them a hard time, you know? And let’s see what else what else do I have, there’s, there’s something I can’t really talk about right now, that’s kind of a startup that I might be involved in. But it will be more on a telemedicine type of venture where I can use some of my pain background in my position standing to help people. And this can be a position that I could potentially, I could work, I love to go to Australia, New Zealand quite frequently. So. So if I’m off site here, then I could enjoy, you know, still be making some income doing that. But, you know, some of my other little entrepreneurial things are real estate and, you know, working on a couple other book ideas, but those are kind of

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
fun, but that you’re having fun doing it.

Dr. Melissa Cady
That’s right. Yeah, I think the this is the thing that I think makes a lot of people happy. It’s not just me, but having the opportunity for creativity, with autonomy, and not doing too much of the stuff you love, like in the medical field where it has its own stressors because I need a break from that as much I love it. I don’t want to do it full time. So I want the flexibility, the autonomy, the creativity, to design the life that suits me. And so for everyone else, that’s different. I don’t have children. So you know, some people, they need to surround themselves with their children that will take up their time to solve a cat,

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
you got a cat,

Dr. Melissa Cady
I have a cat into rabbits, into rabbits. Yes, they’re all rescues. So if you’re curious out there, don’t ask. But they’re low maintenance, put it that way.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
But what what’s great is just just like, if I had one dead client of mine, he said, you know, Mike, you get these opportunities, you know, and I can’t get the same opportunities, because, you know, you’re out there a bit. And anybody can can get these opportunities. Anybody? Can we would you agree, you just have to have your eyes open your door and be willing to put yourself out there, which be honest, you know, as someone who’s introverted, it’s difficult to do this, you know, sometimes, but I think the benefits outweighs the rewards. Because, I mean, do you agree in general, that there are opportunities

Dr. Melissa Cady
out there? Sure. Well, that’s, that’s the mentality. I think this this applies to many areas in life. And, and sometimes you can’t just find it, you have to create an experience that either someone else has put out there for you to go experience, or you create your own, like podcast experience, and which forces you to connect. And when you start connecting, it’s those connections that open your eyes and your ears to opportunities you would never even thought of because you’re we’re in your little world. That is, I would say just brainwashed, but they have a certain mentality of what if you’re focused on just surviving, and you’re stressed out, and you’re not getting enough sleep, and you feel isolated, despite being around tons of people who are burned out as well and just want to go home, and may affect the quality of patient care. I mean, you can go on tangents on all this and how it has these multiple effects. But yes, I think that you have to, there is without a doubt, if I had not put myself out there with. And sometimes it’s about thinking about what’s if you think about trying to help somebody else, whether it’s a society or its individual, if you just start going out there and trying to do something good for people, people will notice people acknowledge it, they’ll appreciate it, they might connect you with somebody else, then they start recognizing your value, and then they share you with somebody else. And that’s like the ultimate marketing is that people, they might have an impression about you that might not be completely accurate. But if you don’t put out your value, or you don’t put out the good things you want to do in this world, then people won’t be able to see it, and won’t be able to share it. And so I think, you know, you just kind of had this, you just brought up some ideas, I really haven’t even said in words, but you have to you have to engage in an experience with people. So whether it’s somebody else has created it, or something you’re deciding you want to do, because it just sounds cool. You want to try it, or you want to learn, you know, the paradox podcast, he doesn’t because he wanted to learn more about some topic. And so you just put it out there for the world to hear too. So find something that helps other people maybe selfishly helps you to. And it’s amazing how you can start connecting with people and opportunities. Many times the opportunities are all around us. Or we’re not engaged with the right people in order to see them. And I don’t mean to social media and stuff because they’re gonna start targeting you with certain stuff and, but really engage with real relationships with people. And it’s, it’s kind of cool to, you know, connect with people you didn’t think you’d Connect so quickly with or maybe learn something from them. I mean, that’s how wealthy people I mean, you have to have your networks of people.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Right, right. Right. And, I mean, it sounds woowoo. And I know you’re from Austin, and that no, yeah. I love you. But but it is, you know, I’ve always been the belief you just put something out there out into the universe, whatever you want to call it. Something always comes in. And I think the other thing that you mentioned, too, is that drive is a curiosity factor. No, you can’t fake that. No, you mean you. I do it because I just like to hear interesting perspectives. That’s how we learn. And as you mentioned, you’re not at your journey. We’re just still kind of riding along. We don’t have all of the answers. We don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean, if you told me that You know, the country was going to shut down for, you know, all of 2020 you know, saying, you know, what are you smoking there. But it happens and it’s just the way we’re able to connect. And you know, we all have a love hate relationship with social media, we know the trolls and the bad things that can happen and that but there’s also opportunities to meet people we’ve never met face to face, but we can have these conversations over these zooms. It’s not 100% replaceable, but it’s allowed us to bring us closer together and in some weird fashion, but there’s so much great stuff, we’re gonna need to have you come back I love the way that you that the way that you think and see these things. where can our audience go to learn more about what you do? Just give some links that you can you want to share with us today? Sure.

Dr. Melissa Cady
Sure. I I think the easiest thing is just going to challenge doctor.com you can put my name and Melissa Cady, calm but everyone misspells it. So it’s better to

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
have a golf. Assisting a golfer? You’re not a caddy?

Dr. Melissa Cady
I’m not a golf caddy. Yes, Cady, like Lady but with the see. Sounds like a first name. But yeah, go to challenge doctor.com I’m, you know, Instagram, I’m trying to get a little bit busier on that course, I got a couple Instagram pages because I got the podcast, and I manage all my own stuff. And at some point down the road, I might have someone else do it. But I’m kind of that control freak.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
thing about being a father is I get it. Okay.

Dr. Melissa Cady
Very nice. Very nice. Yeah, feel free to you know, follow me challenge doctors pretty much my hashtag on any of social media. That’s wonderful.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
It was wonderful. You just, I love how you put things into into perspective. And just kind of the way you think. And for those listening, I hope you were inspired as much as I do every time I hear her talk. And as always guys keep moving forward.

By

Using NLP in Your Physician Career and Life

NLP:  A Powerful Discipline to Strengthen Your Business and Life with Maiysha Clairborne, MD

What is NLP exactly?  I first heard about NLP back in medical school as a way of improving my memory to study for medical exams.  Little did I know about the various applications it can have in your career and life! I needed to learn more.  

Here to help us out, is my friend Maiysha Clairborne, who is an integrative physician and certified NLP trainer.  Find out how physicians can use these powerful skills to help empower their mind, career, and business to the next level.

Mind Remapping Academy

http://remapmymind.com/

By

Empowering Women Physician Entrepreneurs Through Community

Board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Sharon McLaughlin felt alone as a female physician entrepreneur. 

Having created a successful skin care line for her private practice, she yearned to connect with other women entrepreneurs, to network and share experiences.  Unfortunately,  what she found was a ghost town.

So just like any good entrepreneur would do, she went and created her own solution!  She is the founder of the popular Facebook group Female Physician Entrepreneurs that has over 6000 members, some of whom I’ve interviewed here on the BootstrapMD podcast. 

On this episode, she also shares the trials and tribulations of starting a new business, her new ventures including an online weight loss program, and her consulting company.

Be inspired by her story, and how having a sense of community with like-minded individuals who have mutual goals can be the foundation of something big.

——

https://www.facebook.com/groups/FemalePhysicianEntrepreneurs/
– Facebook group Female Physician Entrepreneurs

https://sharonmackwellness.com/
– Sharon Mack Wellness – Whole Body Wellness Blueprint

https://sharonmackmd.com/
– Sharon Mack Consulting

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Hey, guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD. As you know, I love to highlight physician entrepreneurs and especially physician entrepreneur influencers. And today I’m honored to be joined by my friend, Dr. Sharon McLaughlin. She is a New York board certified plastic surgeon turned entrepreneur, she’s been involved in a lot of different projects evolved a skincare line, lingerie line, weight loss wellness program, I guess that’s kind of popular right now, weight loss. And you probably best know, her for the being the founder of the female physician entrepreneurs group, over 6000 members are in this group. They’re networking, and many of my guests have actually been inspired by being in that group. It’s the Facebook group that you’ll definitely want to check out. But without further ado, Sharon, nice to have you on the program today, too.

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
Dr. Mike, thank you so much. I am honored to be here, and you have always inspired me. One of our first talks together, you had talked about being an entrepreneur in medical school. And the thought of that, I was like, I all I did was study, you know? We went out once in awhile but all I did was study. Let alone trying to do entrepreneurship, or thinking outside the box, thinking like there’s more to medicine than just medicine, I can do so many things. So thank you for inspiring us and thank you for all the work that you do in this field. As far as, physicians entrepreneurship, you really have opened our eyes that there’s so many different avenues to go down.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Thank you so much, and you know, I don’t want the spotlight. The spotlight is on you today. But, I do appreciate it and speaking of medical school, you know, I’m not gonna give away my age, but I was in medical school and residency in the 90s. And one of the things that got me motivated, and kept me sane, was listening to music. And I listened to a lot of music that dealt with a lot of female singer songwriters. So my question to you is, how many times have you been mistaken for Sarah McLaughlin?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
More so in the past, because then people like, nothing against Sarah, I’m really sorry. I love your music. But now people are like well, who Sarah McLaughlin? But years ago, absolutely, yes, all the time. And it’s funny that you mentioned medical school and music because one of my favorite outlets was going down to Bleecker Street, and just listening to acoustic music. And I would just like, be lost. And I was like, I don’t want to leave here. I don’t want to go back to reality of all this studying. But it’s something we did.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
It’s something we did. And you know, it kept me sane through the boards and everything like that. But just a little fun question to start off with. So I want to know about your journey. You have a very popular podcast, you’ve interviewed a lot of physician, female entrepreneurs. But how did you get started in this crazy, becoming your own boss business?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
I had never really worked for somebody in private practice, it was always me, myself and I. And I started with skincare and the line really took off. It was just a private label. But it astounded me that you could actually make cash doing things outside of practicing. And then I set up a website as far as shipping, but I’m still shipping. So that was something I always kept in mind. Like it’s nice to have products, but that shipping and yes, you could hire it out. But I even thought back then, what a great thing just to have digital products online. Where that’s all you have to worry about is just you know, automating the system so that when someone purchases, you can download it or it’s kind of like hands off, right? I enjoy medicine very much but I believe that we can do so many different things. And as physicians, especially with the way medicine is right now, a lot of us get burnt out. And I was definitely burnt out. I’m gonna say it started around 2009 and I stayed in it until at least the end of 2011. I started a new job in 2012 with a company reviewing radiology requests, utilization review. But I’d gotten into that and I tell the story before, if you’ve heard it, if you haven’t heard it, I will tell you. I was very busy. I had a young family young daughter, she was sickly when she was first born. And I had a hard time managing everything. I just kept on going and going, I didn’t see an outlet, I didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. I just felt like, you know, I was making money and how would I replace this money? At this time truthfully, my loans were paid off. My loans were paid off that first year I was out of medical school. Which was something I’d always promised my dad that I would do. But I just didn’t see any other way out. And then I was approached by the CMO of a hospital I was working at to do utilization quality management review for the hospital. And it was not a paid job, I said yes, because I didn’t know anything. I didn’t want issues with privileges, the hospital where I felt the most comfortable. Like I think most doctors, at least I can answer for myself, there’s always one hospital that just seems to be very special. And this place was special. In more ways than one I was actually born in that hospital. But it just felt like home. It was just a few blocks from where I grew up, and then on top of that it was all the people that I worked with in that hospital, they just made things easy for me. People can make things difficult, they can make it easy. And they went out of their way to make it easy. So when he said can you do this, I felt like I had no choice. I just said “oh, sure”. But I remember walking away and honestly there were tears in my eyes because I was like how am I going to do this? It was just one more thing at the back of the burner to do. So that’s how I actually ended up getting into quality assurance, quality utilization review. And then from there, I started doing consulting work. Honestly, I think at the time, those jobs were easier to get than they are now, lless competition. But I was able to make side income doing that, and it was a great start. And then when I got burned out with my practice, I shifted into that. This job opened up and I just took it. I must say, I didn’t really look into it, it was a stepping stone for me. I didn’t realize at the time, it was a stepping stone. I thought it was the answer to what I was looking for. The salary wasn’t great, but I took it because I felt like there was no way out. And at least I could be at home, and at least I had more stable hours than being on call. I did a lot of emergency room call. A lot of you know, lacerations. And then I did even the most closures which you could say there’s really no emergencies in dermatology. But these weren’t little life distal things. Some of them were and that was great, but others were like 5, 6, 7, at night and then you know you have to wait for OR time and half the nose was gone, or the whole nose was gone. And we’re talking like major reconstruction. You just never knew what you’re gonna get when it comes to MOHS. You could see the patient ahead of time and kind of guess estimate, but by and large it was a very unstable lifestyle. I don’t know if unstable is the word, but it was not planned. It was certainly not a nine to five, and it was always like one day to the next was different. And that definitely caused a lot of anxiety, especially with childcare, I never had a live in nanny, nor did I want one. So started from there, and then it just grew.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Just so I have the time line right, so you closed your practice?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
At that time. No, it didn’t.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Oh you still had it up, but you had to at least reduce your hours right?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
That’s correct. I tried to move more into skincare. I know that you can make money off of that. I did a lot of Botox and the injectables, to me that was like easy work. But I didn’t find it as rewarding, I have to be honest with you. I actually enjoy doing the reconstructive surgery. I enjoyed, you know, people that truly what I thought needed my help and that is what I was trained to do. And I think injectables are absolutely great, but they just weren’t challenging enough for me, they didn’t sustain me.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So you had your family at the time? And are you the only breadwinner of the family, or your husband also?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
Now he’s does pretty good, he’s a CRNA. Here in New York, can’t account for the rest of the country but, high twos, very high twos, like close to three for his salary. He always did extra overtime.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Okay, so and supporting you on this career transition?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
Not at all, Mike.Not at all. 100% not at all. We had a really bad marriage at that point. We were fighting a lot, and I remember talking with one of my girlfriends, Marjorie, if you’re listening, Dr. Reed. She said to me, “You know, Sharon he married a plastic surgeon.” and I was like, “but this is my life, Marge”. You know, I don’t get this I as long as I contribute financially, what difference does it make isn’t about me and being happy and I felt like I had to answer to people when I stepped away. And you know, my parents were deceased at the time. I don’t know what they would have said, but I know my sisters and we’ve had this discussion. Why, why why? Why are you doing this all this training? I don’t understand. And I was like, it’s not up to you to understand it is up to me to understand. And that was really a hard time in my life. I’m a cancer survivor. I think that was harder for me. You know, going through this transition was harder for me than going through the treatments.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Wow. So sorry to interrupt, just wanted to get an idea where you were at.

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
No, I do bounce around a lot and I slowly transition. But you know, here I am talking about burnout. But I had a full time job doing the utilization review, but I just couldn’t give away that practice just yet,. It’s something that we had worked so hard for, and I just wanted to, like, touch it somehow, you know, just keep it. But I realized that, you know, I was burnt out and I needed to let that go. So maybe finding the injectables not challenging enough was just an excuse just to let it go. I’m not sure. But I did let it go. It took a while though. I’ve always done wellness, though. That’s why I’m doing the weight loss now. But going through burnout, I think wellness is so important overall. And I know we hear a lot about physician wellness. So much so, especially when it comes from administrators, it’s hard because they’re not walking in our footsteps, right? But overall, whether if we’re physicians or people outside of medicine, we don’t take care of ourselves as Americans, and that’s why we have so many chronic diseases. So education has always been important to me. I’ve done blogs throughout the years, had a YouTube channel that I’ve done here and there, I’m more consistent with it now. But that was how I continued my practice, even though I didn’t really require malpractice at all, and it wasn’t in practicing seeing patients. But educating the public has always been important to me.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So you’re doing utilization review, you eventually did close that part of your practice. When did your entrepreneurship juices start flowing?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
Even in my practice though, because I was doing the skincare, then scar lines, right, like we knew about silicone gel sheets, and I found a manufacturing plant down in Texas that would do that for me. So I private labeled that. So that was good. I started doing my own line, actually. I manufactured me own skincare line for a while. But when I gave up the practice that went with it, because I was just like, I don’t want to inventory and at that point I was burnt, just nothing. But when I did do that, when I stepped away from the practice, the lingerie line actually came to be. So I ended up with double mastectomies, and trying to find lingerie that actually fit appropriately was really hard. So this is how this all came to be, as far as designing the lingerie line. I live close to New York City. So there was the fashion district, I have no design experience whatsoever. But I was determined to do it. I basically started Googling online designed, some protocols had it made, had the prototype made. And then I had it manufactured in Brooklyn, actually. And that did okay, but again, it was really hard to market. It was like fun, there was some interest, but I certainly didn’t throw myself into it. And I just kept on going back to what I was making as a physician. And my husband was not supportive. So, but I can’t blame in all honesty, I can’t blame this on him. It was just I myself felt like I need to contribute more. I wasn’t sure if we were going to get divorced or not. And I definitely needed a financial out, like I needed my own money.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, how are we today? What are we doing now?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
Still utilization review, I took a job with the state plan in New York State. And I’ve been doing that, it’ll be seven years in January. And so I’m able to work from home. Definitely better stable lifestyle, marriage is better, daughter’s doing good. And it still allows me opportunity to do some more entrepreneurship. Hence the start of the Facebook group, because I felt like I just needed those creative juices like you mentioned. The best thing to do, is to be around people that are going and doing, and didn’t have that in my life. So I felt like if I needed that maybe we can inspire each other.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
When did you actually start the group? And how did how did that evolve? Did you just say, I’m going to start up a Facebook group? Or did you have some entrepreneur friends and say, hey, let’s get together? How did it all get started?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
I just remember being in a Facebook group and saying like, this is all about like husbands. At that point, I was like, I want to talk about business, and I couldn’t find it at all. I didn’t know about Nisha made group, this group actually, Nisha had started her group long before I did or had this idea. I didn’t know about hers, had I jumped into hers maybe I never would have thought about the group. But wanted one space for physician, female physicians because they, I felt like I could relate to them the most, as far as burnout goes, and then doing other things. I think I was always creative, this is why I went into plastic surgery. So I had the idea, I had reached out to a couple of people. They said this is good. You know, I started Googling people actually. I googled female physician entrepreneurs. And the first one that popped up was Cheryl Ross. So I sent her an email, I said, Would you be interested in joining a Facebook group? I didn’t even know her. And she didn’t know me. And she said, Okay, put me in the group. And that’s I honestly started Googling physician names. And that’s how this it was word of mouth. And honestly, it wasn’t like it just started and boomed. People added, people out of their friends, but it was quiet and crickets. And I’m gonna say this, for months, I felt like it was quiet and crickets. I just was like posting every day, there wasn’t much engagement at all. And then slowly, like, we’re talking months, it started increasing. I don’t know if I ever thought about giving up. But I did scratch my head like, nobody’s talking here and there’s no engagement. Is this even worth persisting? But I saw the numbers were going up, so I just kept with it. And you know, it’s like anything else, you just have to keep with it. And I tried all different things, different articles. At the time, I don’t think we were we weren’t dinged as much for posting outside of Facebook. So I would like to find articles and forums, and I would talk about that, and what are your thoughts on that and, you know, ink.com, and success. And then find some entepreneurs and share their story, and then certainly promote within the group, you know, a lot of networking. The group is about discussion, but with so many people in the group, it’s not like a pitch fest, either. We do networking threads, we’re actually going to do a networking call tomorrow, where we kind of introduce ourselves, talk about our business for a couple of minutes, and then present a problem. You know, this was it was someone else’s idea in the group, not mine, I had wanted to do an entrepreneurship panel, we’re doing panels now in the group. And I just didn’t know how to bring that about. Our last one, I’m just going to tell you, our first one, I figured it was good to get started off with, it was all about intimacy and sex. And is that a discussion most of us have and as female physicians, some of us may feel, like how can we talk about those things? We should know those things, but you know, definitely infidelity and just problems, in the bedroom. So there were some specialists with expertise, and our group got them together, it was a great panel. Next week will be about physician burnout, but the panels will be related to things that, you know whether they’re social or things that we see in the group. So the panels started, that’s something that I’ve added to the group. But this all came about just because honestly, it’s election week, everyone’s so stressed. There’s some mindful groups as it is, so like what can I possibly add to my group? I’m always thinking, pivoting, trying to think of different things that will work. And honestly, some don’t work and others do. But you just keep on going and you try different things. So that’s what we’re going to do tomorrow, like a networking session where we introduce ourselves, talk about our business and then present a problem. Like, I’m having a problem with this, and then kind of brainstorm. It’s like a brainstorming session.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So election week, I didn’t even know. What are the big issues that female physician entrepreneurs have that we may not be aware of?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
I don’t know if they’re any different than the male, to be honest with you. I think, this is my own biased opinion, I still think that women are the primary caretakers of the children within the home, regardless of what the husband is doing. I could speak for myself, I see it. So then there lies the problem because there’s that guilt feeling, like, do you leave the kids, do your business, there’s no time to do a side business? And all I can say to that is just only takes 15 minutes a day, just take some time, map out what you want. That is the most important thing, is to have direction and outline. Because if you don’t, if you just sit down, and we know this was social media, we’re going to post on social media just we sit down and try to do it. Right? Your brain is a total blank, you don’t know what to post. But if you planned it out ahead of time, it’s the same thing with a business plan, if you plan it out ahead of time, you know what to do. And if you don’t do it, then there’s a question like, well, why isn’t this happening?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Do you think that, and I agree with that because you know, they have an extra burden or extra responsibility of raising the family, childcare, etc. But I do sympathize with you in terms of, what does the family think you know about this? I had the same thing, I was not as rbrave as you. I didn’t even tell my mom until like a year later that I was leaving medicine. But, you know, luckily, I did have a supportive spouse. But you think it’s harder being a woman? Telling your husband versus, vice versa?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
I’m gonna say no to that, I don’t think so. But I will tell you, the ones that have a supportive spouse do better. I see it, there’s no studies that I know of to support this. But the people that are really excelling in the group, and I’m sure you see it, too, they have supportive spouses. And people that have fighting spouses, it makes it that much more difficult. And I’m not just talking about my husband, Bob. Just like in general. If you compare the two groups, there must be something to be said for that. Whether the home life itself feels more comfortable, and you’re just you have the support, and you just like oo, go, go, let’s go. Or you’re just kind of on your own, even though you’re married and trying to do this alone, it makes it harder for sure. But I’m not so sure that there’s difference between a male and a female. In general, I think that men are more out to try different things are more risk takers. That being said, I know the numbers are more equivalent now in medicine. Men are typically more the breadwinner, more male physicians, at least in the past. So their opportunity to even step away from medicine being the breadwinner is more difficult, right? Because they’re the breadwinner. So then what other job is going to replace their current salary?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Do you think that the new graduates now, the younger generation, they’re more open for looking into entrepreneurship, as opposed to you know, older doctors?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
I definitely think so. You know, when I was younger, I would have like, early 30s, I used to see entrepreneurship in medicine, and it was the nurses. And I always wondered why physicians didn’t do that. I like at least the ones I was coming across. They would do home care, like pharmacy delivery, they did a lot of different things. They were involved in so much, even doing like the satellite, where they’re doing EKGs and trying to do contracts with the police, the local police. And I always wonderd, but then I was thinking, you know, maybe they have like a set salary doesn’t go much higher than that? So they want to try different things? Where the physicians are already at a higher salary. And it wasn’t until last 10 years, or whatever it is that I see definitely more physicians doing it. And it probably has to do with physician burnout, they’re burned out. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. And it’s like kind of a means to an end, like how do I do this now? The whole idea about fire and, you know, retiring, at least practicing medicine on your own terms, rather than being told what to do.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, yeah, I can see that. I do think they do tend to be more open. But, you know, unfortunately, with medical school loans, you know, a lot higher than when you and I had back in the day, you know, it certainly is a big obstacle to climb. In terms of, building a business, what type of businesses are doctors in your group doing? Different types of business? Consulting? Where do they tend do go? Or is it akll over the place?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
It’s all over the place. But recently, there is a huge push to do coaching, a huge push. And I believe that’s because we’re healers. So when we see someone that’s down or sick or needs help, we want to heal them, we want to help them. And this is where coaching comes into play. There are a lot of coaches in the group. And recently it didn’t start off that way years ago. Definitely a lot of network marketing, I believe because it’s safe. It’s low income, like it’s a low cost to get into, right. And so there’s a lot of that, and then all different things. Wellness is huge as well, but I think that’s like inbred in physicians, wellness feels very comfortable to me. I hired a mentor back in the spring. And he’s very good with, you know, digital selling online. And he said to me, what do you want to do? And I honestly at the time was like, I could do like an entrepreneurship and be like the next Amy Porterfield. I was thinking that honestly, like, if I could push myself, that’s what I would do. But I always go back to wellness, because it’s something I feel comfortable with, even though I’m not integrative medicine or lifestyle medicine. It is like I could just read an article like skim it and like I understand it, where I can’t do that with, you know, digital marketing, it just is not natural to me. It’s something that is a learning curve. And I don’t feel that way with wellness. So as far as physicians go, something that’s related to what you’re already doing, and just maybe making, honestly, physicians like to teach. Informational products, I’m always going to push those digital products, because they’re easy to get started. Low cost, however you need, you need a following. So it’s either going to be organic traffic, or you’re going to do paid traffic. It’s a good idea and you just don’t come up with the idea and don’t try to sell it, test it test it with your friends. Test it with people that maybe are on Facebook groups, just try it. But we, as physicians, we like to teach, we know so much. If you have an idea, just try kind of outlining it and putting it into a course and see what happens.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yep, you gotta learn how to market. You could be the best coach, you could be Tony Robbins, but you know,if you got a one person email list nobody’s gonna hear you. So those are the skills like it or not, we got to learn, you know, social media, building a list, those are all things that for any type of business you’re going to need to learn. You mentioned one thing that, I thought was really interesting, is that you, you love medicine, you know that you still love medicine. Me as well, as someone who left medicine and then came back, you know, that was my first love. As I wrote in my book, you know how to love medicine again. But a lot of doctors go into entrepreneurship, because they don’t love it or something happened, they want to get out of it. What do you see? And again, in terms of your group, what do you see in terms of like success? And I’ll tell you what I see. But in terms of success of their business, do you see those who just want to do something else? Do you think they they tend to be more or less successful than those who still have that love?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
I believe that we follow our path. Right? So I for me, that one is hard to generalize, I believe that some people, like have incorporated their medical practice, they’re still practicing. And their job, their side job is very similar, although differently. Like somebody’s been working in the emergency room, but they’re still doing wellness, and those types of people do very well. Where others have given up medicine. But I believe it was more out of necessity. There’s some people in our group as I’m sure yours, they admit to being suicidal. And at that point, that’s like a dead end. Where do you go from there? You can’t. Do you know what I mean? It’s a dead end, that choice was basically made for you, your body made that choice for you. So yeah, I know, I’m not exactly answering your question.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
No, it’s good. I’m thinking in terms of, all the entrepreneurs what I call “want-repreneurs”, and not to be derogatory, but they’re surely people who want to start businesses and for whatever reason, they’re just not ready to, to go into that direction. I often see people who just want to escape from something. I don’t think entrepreneurship is necessarily the first thing that you want to gravitate to, is what I usually tell people. Just like yourself, find a job that can pay the bills, find something different. And then explore it. Because as you know, entrepreneurship, it’s not the most stable business, stable line of work, that you can do, and it’s certainly not for everybody.

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
No, there’s a lot of ups and downs, there’s definitely anxiety, like it depends on why you feel burnt out. There’s no magic button, right? We talked about this all the time, it’s going to require work. So where are you going to make the time? I think some of the people have done really well, when they’ve left medicine, because they have the time they have time to devote. But if you’re leaving with, you know, questions like I’m not sure…I don’t know, then it’s very hard to dive right into entrepreneurship and throw yourself into that business, because you have to believe in the product or your service. Otherwise, if you don’t believe in it, 100% if you’re not able to fully dive into it, how could you expect others to buy the product? Right? They’re not going to because, and I’m not really into this stuff, you know, but I do believe that there is energy out there. Like what you portray. You feel confident? Great. But if you don’t people know, and it’s very hard to sell. When it comes to selling online, if that’s what you’re going to do, it’s videos. You need to be able to sell, which means getting in front of the camera and talking about it. So if you don’t feel 100% that’s a problem.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, I totally agree. You know, I think we come to this conclusion, that the people who’ve done well, it’s because they love doing it. They enjoy it. You know, for myself, I love creating things. I love marketing. I don’t love getting on the phone and trying to sell something, that’s not my skill, but it is something that I have to learn to do. Or at least if I have employees to learn how to do it, it’s part of it. But it just comes with it. You know, in medicine, we don’t love 100% of everything. There’s things that we love, things we don’t love but overall if we enjoy what we’re doing, we should go and do that. But I still see some people who want the “get rich quick”. They see ads and I want to do that. I want to be the next Uber, I want to be the next, you know, Zuckerberg, whatever. Yeah, more power to you, but it’s just like anything you know, when we went into become a doctor, we didn’t say hey, I want to become a doctor and then you know, open somebody up the next day, right? We had to go through training. And then same with entrepreneurship. I like what you’re doing in terms of networking, where you have your more experienced entrepreneurs, and you’ve got someone who can learn from them or mentor them. And that’s, that’s the one thing that, I listened to you on previous podcasts and you mention it here is, you know, one of the reasons why you started the group was because you felt alone, correct? When you were going through entrepreneurship journey?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
Absolutely, there wasn’t a lot of support. Even though I have friends in medicine, they weren’t interested in entrepreneurship. They’re fine with it practices, fine working for a hospital system. They had no interest in doing something else. But if you surround yourself with people that are doing what you want to do, it makes it that much easier. I’m not saying you need to leave medicine, there’s ways to add ancillary practices, we have one of the physicians in the group that talks about that often, you guys don’t need to leave medicine, you just need to, you know, leverage what you already know. And start using some ancillary services. So that’s an option. But like Dr. Mike said, there is definitely no push the button, it’s going to require work. And if you feel like you’re burnt out already, then it’s really hard to throw that energy in because there’s just no energy left, right? Like you’re already like, the cup is empty. So it really goes back to working on yourself wellness, taking care of yourself, and kind of just thinking it out being in no rush. It will come and believing it will come.

You’ve done conferences. And for this reason, people should go to Dr. Mike’s conference. No, I’m not pushing it just for that. It’s important, because it’s not until you don’t know what you don’t know. And if you’re in a world where, I’m not happy, you don’t know what else is out there, because all you’re thinking about is being unhappy right now and how life sucks. But when you see other people succeeding and being happy doing what they truly enjoy, you can say yourself, well, they can do it, I can do it. I hope that you never feel like oh, they’re doing it and I’m kind of spiteful or jealous. Like look at somebody else and say, Yeah, they’re doing it, let them be the role model for you. If they can do it, you can do it. You’ve done so much with your life, you can figure this out. And if it’s not by yourself, and you hire a coach, or you hire other people, or you just start reaching out to people. These networking groups are great, because it’s a great way to see what other people are doing. But there’s nothing stopping you from reaching out.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, perfect, or Google them just as you did. And just as a side too, I love to have a conference. Unfortunately, folks have been asking. Nothing for 2020. But we’ll see what happens in 2021. But I want to segue to you talked about working on yourself, working on your wellness. You have a wellness program, can you tell us more about it?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
This is something I’ve been working on for a couple years. But the website, probably when I was just turning 50 it was cool, like weight loss and women over 50. And I just had the domain, I started the website and it just stayed there. I didn’t do anything with it. And then I had, well Covid came, and I really had a hard time with that. And I had some extra time. And I said you know I really want to do this. I reassess every once in a while. So in 2020 came that was like there was something on the back burner that I wanted to work on. And I was able to lose weight. And this was back last year at this time, actually, it was able to lose I had already lost weight. I’ve kept it off like over 20 pounds, which doesn’t seem like a lot for some people. But for me it was a lot. It was those pounds, are they put on during menopause, is it getting older? I’m not sure. And I had struggled to lose weight, I couldn’t do it. I tried all different things. And it was really a matter of just eating healthy, but it was more than, mindset too. So the wellness program that I created, it is a combination of nutrition, because I that’s like the most important thing. There’s some exercise, which is important but definitely not like the nutrition. And then it really goes into mindset. I actually do a guided meditation as far as weight loss goes. And then I do it’s self care as well. Importance of sleep and we go into other things as well, you know, other factors as well. But it is a whole body approach to losing weight. Not terribly expensive. You can say oh my goodness, why are you doing this? It’s it’s $29, I didn’t want to sell it to physicians. To me that wasn’t my target audience, it was a matter of having it affordable to everyone. So we’re actually getting together to put the pages together, the sales page and everything, around two o’clock today. So I’ll let you know how that goes. It’s for sale now, but I’m not happy with the sales pages, I just did it, I just throw it up there because I’m ready to sell it. But um, yeah, so you can find out more about that at SharonMackwellness.com. And then you’ll see that the sales pages will change in the next week or so.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
And how do we spell that is that?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
Yeah, it’s SharonMackWellness.com.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Awesome. Awesome. Well, this has been a tremendous half hour that we spent together. We’re going to go outside of the wellness, where can we go to contact you or tell us more about your group. Where can we go to learn more about that?

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
I actually started a another website. I have like five of them right now. So what I did was, I know you guys, what it did was it’s called Sharon Mack m-a-c-k because most people can pronounce McLaughlin. md. I didn’t spell check it at all. I was just putting it together last night. It’s one page going down, but it has all the links out to like the Facebook groups that I have. And so you could find out more about that at SharonMackmd.com. And the female physician entrepreneurs, the Facebook group, Female Physician Entrepreneurs group.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
You can find that on Facebook, Dr. Sarah McLaughlin, I mean, Sharon! Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for helping spread the word of physician entrepreneurship, and keep inspiring others. It’s been amazing to be friends with you over this time in it. It’s been a pleasure interviewing you today.

Dr. Sharon McLaughlin
And to my thanks so much for having me on. And really thank you so much for inspiring all of us.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Thanks again. And thanks, everybody. Remember, if you’re not if you’re stuck, there’s more opportunities for networking. There’s people who have had the same problems that you do, you just need to go out and reach out to them. Go on to Dr. Sharon’s group and just get inspired. The one thing you want to do is stop staying stagnant. You just got to keep moving forward.

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Ten Common Mistakes Physician Entrepreneur Newbies Make Again and Again

We all make mistakes!  Not an earth-shattering statement, but as a veteran entrepreneur, I’ve noticed the same problems come up repeatedly, that can often make the difference between success and failure of your business.  By the end of today’s episode, you’ll learn some tendencies that I often see with doctors (including myself),  in hopes you won’t make the same mistake. 

I also take a moment to reflect on an individual whose sudden death shocked the business and tech world, while his actions and teachings inspired me to become a better entrepreneur.

RAW TRANSCRIPT

I have a track record of successful online businesses and a track record of not so successful online businesses, as well as I own a number of different medical clinics, mostly cash based clinics here in the Southern California area. I talk about my experiences as being an entrepreneur, becoming my own boss, and all the warts and all about being in this type of business. And I started the podcast with a bit of a heavy heart, on someone I do not know personally, but someone who would actually inspired me and his name is Tony Hsieh. He was one of the true internet, pioneer entrepreneurs started a company called LinkExchange back in the mid 90s. Sold that to Microsoft for $265 million, eventually founded Zappos, which you’re probably familiar with, which is a store that continues to sell shoes, and then later sold that to Amazon. And he is also one of the one of the people who is considered one of revitalizing the downtown Las Vegas area, if you’re been to downtown, you know, I guess 20 plus years before this, it wasn’t the safest of areas, and started the gentrification of that area. I was recently there a couple years ago, it’s beautiful. And you he came out with a book called Delivering Happiness, about 2010. And really, what I was inspired was one, he was one of the first entrepreneurs that I after reading his book that really understood about the culture, building a culture for your, for your company, and previous books that I read, read about entrepreneurs, and maybe this is something that you’re familiar with that, you know, I had it in my mindset that if you make a lot of money, he usually had to step on people’s toes to get there, you know, you had to be ruthless with your competition. And some of the books kind of back that up, you know, some of the books that I read, like, you know, you get to be in a certain situation where you have to be cutthroat with what you do. And he was all about, you know, you could be an entrepreneur and you could still be a good dude, you could still not only respect your, the competition, but you could also respect your staff and treat them and give them a fair wage, and all about delivery, you know, what his book says Delivering Happiness not only to his customers, to his staff, to his partners, and the kind of live life, you know, I’ve never seen any really bad reviews on him. Unfortunately, he died at the age of 46 in a house fire, but I’ve never heard anything like bad

feedback, You know, bad news, which is on the internet is almost impossible. We all hear stories like Elon Musk, and all here the skeletons of you know, Jeff Bezos and stuff like that. He was wondering if you never really heard anything, had anybody negligence is to say about him. And so that, that, you know, that it was okay to make money and to still, you know, be be cool about it and, and use money to, to, to be involved in cancer research and all the different types of things that that he did. So just wanted to give a shout out to him and he kind of reflected reflections as an entrepreneur and and just wanted to share with you guys today and it got me thinking about this topic, about mistakes that I’ve made as an entrepreneur and mistakes that that I’ve seen, occur again and again. And if you’re someone who is new to becoming your own boss, or you Not sure exactly what it all entails, perhaps this podcast can give you some things to think about before you decide to jump in. So these are 10 common mistakes that I often see, as someone who is done making these mistakes myself, as well as being a mentor or coach to other physician entrepreneurs. So, without further ado, let’s get started. So for dramatic effect, let’s go backwards number 10 comments mistake that beginning physician entrepreneurs make thinking that having a great idea means you’re gonna have a great business. Now, some might be listening to this and saying, oh, my goodness, I went out and reached out to Dr. Mike, and the sounds like me, again, this is just tough love. Because I’ve heard this numerous times, where you’ve got a great idea. You think it’s a game changer, the greatest thing since sliced bread, but you don’t have a lot of business experience. So you reach out someone to like myself, who maybe have a little bit more experience than you have and say, hey, I’ve got this great idea. You have the business mind. Let’s, I want you to sign an NDA, and then I’ll tell you my idea. And then you use your business contacts or business experience and make it successful, and then we’ll split the profits. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well, there’s a few things wrong with that is the first thing I generally won’t sign an NDA. Because I don’t know what your idea is, it could be something that I may have found it before. And that you’ll come after me or my partners may have come at that idea. And it could just get really ugly. Number two is I’m not a big fan of original ideas. I know that sounds harsh. But, you know, one of my mantras is originality is overrated. And I’d rather have to see where something has been successful in maybe another area, and then maybe you have an idea to just focus on this specific niche, then a completely original idea, because that takes a lot of time, and a lot of money. And be honest, there’s not a lot of original ideas out there. And if it truly isn’t original idea, it can probably cost a lot of money to get it out into the mainstream. I mean, launching an Uber or a Tesla, you know, cost a lot of money to get that out there. So if you’ve ever watched the show Shark Tank, you know that the the sharks, the investors, always wants to see that the invest inventor has skin in the game that they’ve had, if shown a pattern of success already, they don’t just have an idea, they have a prototype, they’ve sold it, they’ve been profitable, and then they go to the shark to see maybe an infusion of capital, we’ll take that to the next level. So you always want to have skin in the game, if it’s just you’ve got the idea, figured out and work with someone else who’s got the business experience and contacts. Nine times out of 10, it’s it’s not gonna work. So that leads into my next common mistake. Number nine is number nine is they don’t study marketing, they don’t study marketing. You know, you could be the best physician in the world, and you’ve got a clinic and, and you’ve had a 100% success rate with whatever procedure that you do. But if nobody hears about it, and you don’t market it, in it, nobody will ever know about it. So you can be like a good physician, but have excellent marketing skills, you’re going to be more profitable than the great physician who’s got none. And so that takes time, that takes time, investing into courses, investing in a mentor.

Oftentimes, what I see happen is they’ve got this idea, but they don’t want to be bothered by learning the business. Even if your self is not getting involved in marketing, you need to know what you’re spending money on in terms of marketing to see what works or not, you should understand things that I’m talking about the return on investment, you may not be the person to come to with search engine optimization, but you want to know is if you’re spending all this money, then it’s going to work or not. And I’ve seen common mistakes that they, they it oftentimes I see this a lot with physicians who want to set up their own clinic, they’ll hire somebody else to do the business. And then later find out that that, you know, they’re spending all this money, they don’t know where it’s going to, and, you know, or worse, maybe they’re the partner stealing money. I’ve heard almost every story out there. You need to understand metrics, you need to know what’s actually working. You don’t need to necessarily need to be involved in actually doing the nitty gritty of marketing that you want to understand how it works. It just makes you a better business person. Number eight, they’re stuck in research mode forever. I get it as doctors You’d like to research everything. But what happens is, eventually you need to get off the pot, right so to speak, you need to make a leap. Physicians tend to take longer than other entrepreneurs that have worked with, you know, with others, entrepreneurs, they may not have the amount of capital, they may not have a six figure job to fall back on. That’s either, you know, this is successful or bust. And there, we had a research mode, but for doctors, whether it be they’re just not confident. Other times, it could be legal issues, they’ll hire an attorney, and they’ll spend all this money. And in, you know, with attorneys, you know, they’ll gladly take take your income, you know, most some attorneys, well, they’ll gladly take the money to invest in it, because I can always find something wrong with it.

When it ends up happening is you never launched the product or business and you just given off excuses. So you know, like I said, do the marketing, understand what marketing works. But eventually, you know, if it’s gone on like a year, you haven’t launched it, you’re never gonna launch it. So that’s, that’s number eight. Number seven, unrealistic expectations. This is again, this is usually the entrepreneur who says that, I’ve the idea, and I just want you to kind of figure it out. So let’s say they’ve got an idea about weight loss, they think that weight loss is everywhere, everybody needs weight loss. So I’m just going to sell to the masses. And you know, we’re going to make make a lot of money, they don’t understand it takes a lot of money to make the marketing work to get it out into the masses, you don’t want to sell to everybody, just focus on your specific niche, it’s going to save you a lot more time and money. Other other realistic expectations is in terms of the time, the time commitment that it takes to vest successful business, if you’re an 80 hour surgeon, you’re not going to be able to launch a big website that might be taking a lot more time and effort from you. So take the time to understand what are the trends what what’s going on, it takes money to, to create an app to create a website. You know, another thing that I see oftentimes with doctors is just because we’re so busy, we’re kind of behind the curve. So I have a few doctors come out to me and they want to study apps. And yeah, apps were great. Back in 2015, but many people who’ve got apps now aren’t making a lot of money on it. Because that is already that area has already come and went. You need to know what the next, what’s the next thing coming in 2025? What is it? Where are they? Where are they already spending the money. Also, in terms of creating an app, it’s not just hiring a developer to create the app, who’s going to actually maintain it, you have to pay those people to the software engineers, who’s going to be paying for the marketing, these are all aspects. And you need to recognize maybe an app isn’t the best area that you need to go into start small, it’s okay to start small. Start with just like a course, you know, a recorded course or just do something for free. Again, you want to make sure I get I sound like a broken record. But I’ve heard this a lot they’ll spend, I’ve known some doctors who’ve spent six figures or more on an app, and they don’t know if it’s making them money, stop doing that, get away from it, you know, move on to something else set, it’s okay to set your sights small, it’s okay to set your sights small, I’d rather you do that than just spend a bunch of money, and you don’t know where it’s going to number six, they’re way off on pricing. So I mentioned I’d like to see what the market is actually paying. So one of the questions I often ask, you know, the student is, how much would you pay for something like this. And if it’s something that’s new, they won’t have any idea because no one’s ever paid for this before. And then oftentimes, it will mean to put that on the back burner. Before you decide to launch it. You should have an idea how much you’re going to sell. But as doctors, we tend to underestimate or Preston versus overestimate, just because we don’t we haven’t been there. We don’t have the experience. So I remember working with one student, and she had this online course. And it was all about how she, you know, she was able to successfully lose weight using this, you know, strategy, and she put hours upon hours video on this. She spent all this time he probably spent 1000s of dollars on everything like that. And it was very successful. She had students or she had clients who had lost weight using her system. And then she wanted to sell it for like 20 bucks if you can. And I go, do you have $20 of value that you give back shipment? Yes. I always tell them it’s to say is to give back 10 times and what more value with what you’re actually they’re actually buying for it. So at least 200 dollars of value, did you give $200? value? No, how much of the money? Are they saved by using your strategy? Well, I can’t really put anything on it because you know, they’ve, they’ve lost the weight, and it has changed their life, is it worth more than $200 change each, you know, these are kind of questions that are rhetorical, but most likely, they have benefited, you know, from this 1000s of dollars, and you need to price yourself accordingly. Also, you have to understand, if you got a $20, weightless course, you have to sell a lot of weight loss courses, for it to be worth your while. So I always tend to price yourself higher, because you want to say that you’re the best you’re not, as I mentioned, you want to be the low cost leader, you want to be undercutting your prices, you know, so be aware of what you’re pricing.

Number five, this is someone that I’m guilty of trying to do it on myself, you start a business, you want to donate your money into it. But you don’t realize that if doing it all yourself, you’re doing tasks that you know, a minimum wage worker could do, if it’s editing video, if it is making a social media graphic, there are other people who you can cheaply get this done who, let’s be honest, probably will do a better job than you can do. And if you’re not willing to hire, you know, someone full time, that’s okay, you can go to Upwork. And how to do a part time Heck, you can go to fiverr.com, fi, ve RR com, and you can find someone to do these little tasks that you shouldn’t be doing. As the entrepreneur, you’re the one who has the vision, you’re not the one who is doing all of these little tasks, because it takes a lot of a lot of energy and a lot of manpower, or women power to get all of the things that you need to have a successful launch of a business. So try to do everything yourself. There’s often apps for different things that you can do. You know, if you’re if you’re deciding to create an online course there are, you know, websites that allow you to make the process a lot easier. And again, hiring these people it doesn’t isn’t very, isn’t the worst, best, worst use of your time. And it’s more cost effective to just outsource everything. Number four, not willing to joint venture partner or find affiliates. If you’re new to business, you most likely have not developed an audience. And that’s okay. But if you want your product or service to be successful, you need to find audiences and you need to incentivize the people who own those audience to start promoting your stuff. Because you don’t have any traffic, you know? How are you going to get it you sure you could buy traffic? But that’s going to be expensive? And look at the cost of an online course what is it actually costing you. And I’ve seen a few people who like I just want my audience, I don’t want them to know about other audiences. I see this a lot with Facebook groups, I think everything is about them that they the person is only belong to like one Facebook group. They are other Facebook groups that have that are very like minded and I’m someone who’s always been willing to, to share my audience. If it fits, you know, my audience, he fits with what you’re trying to do, if it’s going to be helpful to them. I’m not so egotistical, that thing, just my products alone, that is going to solve all their problems. There are other people who have got other different products and if they’re willing to. And if and if they’re looking for an affiliate, you know, some I don’t do an affiliate commission for and but some that I do. And that’s okay, too. As long as it’s something that is worthwhile to tell my audience all about basically so many, where they say like, you know, I don’t want anybody to know about this Facebook group, and not thinking that they belong to like 10 other Facebook groups, they belong to different lists, it’s okay. So I’m very comfortable doing affiliate marketing and and I think more entrepreneurs should be comfortable with affiliate marketing where you sell a course, they’re going to get 50% of that, or 25%, or whatever you want to do. Because I would rather make 50% on something that 100% of nothing, especially if I don’t have an audience. Let’s take for example, Tim Ferriss from the for the author that you might be familiar with the four hour workweek. He didn’t really have an audience. But how did he become successful? Well, one of the things that he that he has shared was that he was willing to give out his book for as an affiliate or almost for free, just giving his book away to anybody who would be willing to listen so he’d go on every blog and talk about his book. It was just a way to Promotion and then saying, Hey, I’m going to give away these books. And that’s how things got shared. I mentioned at the top about Tony said, Tony Shea, he shared his, although he was a successful entrepreneur, he was willing to give his books away for free, or the proceeds going to charity. And that’s how he got his, his name known, despite him being a very successful entrepreneur. And so it’s okay to,

to, you know, think outside the box. But I think a number of people just have this small minded thinking that I’m not gonna share my audience with anybody, I don’t want them to know, and I’ve seen this firsthand. And more times than not, it just, it’s not going to be a long term success for you. So be very comfortable with affiliate marketing, in my opinion, others may differ, but for me, and for what I in from what I’ve seen, at the end, it works out because I’ve seen ones who had that, and then they later regret that they didn’t reach out to affiliates. Number three, have a launch plan a launch plan, and be willing to give incentives for a reasons for people to buy your product or service. So I’ve talked about launches in the past, and how it’s important to make a big splash, like when we open up a clinic, right, we have an open house, we want people to know, you know, we’ll have a ribbon cutting, we’ll go for the Chamber of Commerce, and let everybody know, we’ll might put some press releases, have a launch plan when, when going out there, you might if you’re interested in launches, you need to seek out a book called The launch by Jeff Walker, a friend of mine, and you know, he’s kind of the godfather of launches. But you also need to give an incentive for them to purchase right now you know, the size of money, his people are holding on to money and you want to give them a reason to buy and everybody loves a discount. It’s okay to give a discount on your product. I mentioned, I don’t like you pricing your product low to begin with. But giving them incentive to price it lower. Because everybody loves discounts give bonuses, people are motivated by adding some urgency having some scarcity to it, if it’s real, you know, he can’t just say it, they only have 500 bucks left, right, you will ask me a real type of scarcity and give them a reason why it’s scarce. Give them some fish to buy, you know, this isn’t every course is never gonna make, you never going to have again, you never gonna see these bonuses again. And you know, stick to it, you want to be authentic, and you want to be a man or woman of your board did that. So that’s the number three Reason number two looking market, using bad tactics, such as becoming a spammer. And again, nobody sets out to say, I’m just going to spam become a spammer. Nobody sets out to that. But what happens is, they want to get out the group and we’ve seen it, they’ll go on Facebook groups, just like just doing these vomit, Dr. vibe posts where, hey, I’m in this group, and I’m just going to give you my link and you can purchase it. And next thing you know, they get banned from the game, you don’t want to be that person, right? You want to be an ethical marketer, you just say you know, if there is an opportunity for you to mention your product, first you want to contact the Facebook owner to see or just look at the the list, look at the rules of the group to see if there’s something that you can do. And then if the situation presents itself, you know, mention that you may have a product. But don’t just go spamming just for the sake of spamming. I’ve seen that happen in my groups, it gets very irritating, it’s very annoying, and they end up getting kicked out of my group. And then finally, the number one common mistake that I often see beginning physician entrepreneurs make is they’re not building a list. They’re not building an ice, they’re not building an audience I mentioned, if you don’t have an audience, you then you need to joint venture with other partners who have audiences, and be willing to give a percentage of the cost of your product or service. And even if you completely failed with your launch, that’s okay, that’s a lesson that you can learn. One of the things you need to do is, is being built being able to build a list. So how do you do that? So let’s say you’ve got a course on how to successfully lose weight,

of course, and they don’t buy your product. But then as they’re about to leave a mill, they’ll see an exit pop up that says, Hey, are you interested in like 10 tips of how to lose weight, then you give them incentive to opt in. Now you’re building an email list. So the next time you’re decide to do the second edition or write a follow up course, then you can announce it To the world. So you’re always building an audience, whether it be any type of list, an email list, a Facebook group, a LinkedIn, a list, a set of followers, on your Instagram, followers on your Instagram, those are all different ways of building an audience. And then that’s where you can actually grow. So it’s not really about the course itself. It’s really about building an audience and then building that brand. Because another aspect of when you’re launching a business is also be the ability to understand what things aren’t going under percent, right. And you need to pivot into a different direction. And that’s okay, too. But it’ll be a lot easier when you’ve built up that email list and you built up your audience, and you’re going to become a successful business person. But I hope you like those 10 common mistakes again, this is tough love that I want to give you. I’ve done many of these myself. 10 common mistakes beginning online, physician entrepreneurs do, just something to keep in mind. But it’s, it’s all about not just ink becoming stagnant. It’s all not about just being in research mode and just waiting for it to happen. You have to do moves on your own. And the first step is important that you always need to keep moving forward.

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