BootstrapMD

Career Coaching for Physician Entrepreneurs

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.

By

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.

By

How This Doctor Set Her Sights at Retiring at Age 40

Pilots are forced to retire at age 65. An aircraft controller is not allowed to work after they turn 56. Yet we all know some doctors who work in their 80s and even 90s (!). But how many physicians do you know plan to retire at 40? Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, also known as “Dr. Una”, is not like most physicians.

This pediatrician started her own private practice, Ivy League Pediatrics, but from the beginning, she built the business to work without her. She saw too many examples of practices falling apart if the doctor-owner was not available 24/7. Retirement for her is to see patients because she wants to, not because she has to. And I think many doctors would love to be in that position. Sensing a need to help doctors become their own boss, she founded EntreMD, a platform created to help physicians embrace entrepreneurship, attracting those who want to build businesses similar to hers. It’s an inspiring story that you’ll want to hear again and again!

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I love to interview doctors who want to become their own boss, doctors who are entrepreneurial. And it makes sense being a physician entrepreneur. So I really enjoy it when I have to be able to interview a kindred spirit here. And this is someone that I’ve heard of, for quite a while it’s kind of in the background, doing a lot of great and important things and helping other doctors become their own boss. And she is a pediatrician by trade, but she doesn’t work full time. She actually just worked one day out of a week. So I wanted to know more exactly what she’s been doing to be able to afford that and be able to have the life that you’ll soon find out that she that she’s always dreamed of, I believe so. Before we begin, I’d like to introduce Dr. Nneka Unachukwu…did I say that right?

Dr. Una
I’ll give you a B plus. That was great.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
B plus! Correct me please correct me, please.

Dr. Una
Oh, it’s U-na-chuk-wu, you did great!

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Okay, but they know you if you’ve been online if you’ve been on social media, you may know her as Dr. Una, she’s the founder of EntreMD. We’re going to talk more about that. But Dr. Una, once again, thank you for coming on to the call today.

Dr. Una
Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been following you, I’ve been a fan for many, many years. So this is so cool to be on your podcast.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Well, I appreciate it. So just like in the comic books, I’m kind of a comic book nerd. I love to hear about origin stories. You know how they Peter Parker becomes Spider Man, Bruce Wayne become Batman. So how did Dr. Una become I guess EntreMD? How did that transition start?

Dr. Una
Well, so I, I started off at you know, when I was done with my pediatric training, I did what, you know, most doctors would do, I got a job. And you know, was my first job, attending job. Amazing. And I worked for a doctor who was a neonatologist. So he owned the practice, but he didn’t work in the practice because of conflicts of interest and all of that. So technically, I was a solo practitioner, you know, that was that was my first job, which was in the beginning, very, very nerve wracking, but I got used to it. And towards the end of my contract, you know, my boss is like, here’s a five year contract. And to put it in perspective, I just finished a three year residency, I’d been married for three years, I thought five years is very long to do anything, you know, I’m not doing a five year contract. And, you know, and I needed to move anyway, so I wasn’t gonna stay. And I was like, you know, I would love to stay. I really enjoyed it here. But I have to move. And he’s like, okay, so if you’re gonna move, just start your own practice. I’m like, nobody starts their practice a year out of residency, like, that’s not how this works. And at the time, I was pregnant, like, and I’m like, I’m about to have the baby. He’s like, Listen, everything you’re going to do for your practice you’re practically doing here for me. And if you have questions, I will answer them. And I’m like, but I’m going to have a baby. He’s like, Yes, in the beginning, you have no patients, and you have a baby. And then the baby gets older, you have more patients and have more time for your patients. So go start practice. And I was like, okay, and this is why I say ignorance is bliss. Because a number of other things happened and I ignorantly was like, oh my god, I’m just gonna go start a practice. And I started a practice. And then I found out that I had enrolled in the school of hard knocks, because I didn’t know anything about entrepreneurship. And I was a very shy, very introverted introvert. And everything that makes a business work has to do with putting yourself out there and I was like, I’m not doing that. I no, I you know, I was shy, I was painfully shy. And, you know, I had to, but I had the business right? So I came to this point where I was like, okay, come to Jesus moment, you’re gonna have to do this. And I started delving into personal development and learning about, you know, marketing, kind of, learning about sales, and I came to this point where I was like, you know what, this is is a learnable skill. Brian Tracy always said that all business skills are learnable skills. Like selling is a business its a business skill that’s learnable, marketing is learnable, I’m going to learn this, and I embrace my role as an entrepreneur. And I learned it. And I got the practice to work and I got it to be profitable. And I hired other people to work with me. So I can be a true CEO not doing all the work in the practice. And so we build it up, you know, it’s a seven figure practice. I’m enjoying it, right. And I have this moment where I’m like, wait a minute, but there are many Dr. Una’s out there who have started practices or started businesses, they could be not practices. And they’re struggling. And they think it’s because something’s wrong with them. Because I thought, other people were better than me. That’s why they’re building better businesses. And they’re not better than you, they just know, something you don’t know. And that was the beginning of EntreMD. And I was like, I’m going to help all the Dr. Una’s out there who are afraid of putting themselves out there that think they’re not good at business, they can do business well. And this is going to be a platform that’s going to help them just do that. And so that was almost two years ago. And that’s how EntreMD was born.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I love it. I want to I want to go back to those hard times. So you had, I guess, would be kind of a mentor of yours. Or he just gave you the go ahead to start the practice. How long had you been struggling in that practice? How long did that take for four years finally saw profitability?

Dr. Una
Well, actually, the, we kept our overhead pretty low. And so we were…

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
It was just you at the time, or just did you have an MA or a nurse or?

Dr. Una
It was just me. So I would, this is how bad it was right? I was so scared of the money piece of it. Like, what if I don’t make it work? How am I gonna afford to pay somebody else and all that? In the beginning, I did everything myself. I answered the phone, I had an alter ego called Ella. Thank you so much for calling Ivy League Pediatrics, this is Ella, how can I help you? Right? And it’s so funny. I had somebody call you and say give them the whole Ella speech. And they’re like, this is a doctor, you know, my name. Lots of consonants right there. Does the doctor have a thick accent? Like, would I be able to understand? And I’m like, No, I think you’ll be I think you’ll be just fine. You know? So I answered the phone, I did my billing, I did all of that in the very beginning. I had no patients. No patients, no big fund anywhere. I mean, like that was a year out of residency. And so I started with that. So even hiring my first MA was a big deal, like, wow not have to cough out all this money and and pay the person. So within six months, I think that’s what it was, we’re at least paying our bills, right? Like, there was no profit, but it was paying its own bills.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Did you have to get loans to get started or…?

Dr. Una
So I applied initially, and I wasn’t asking for a whole lot. I think I was asking for 50 grand or something. I knew nothing.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Which is nothing, in terms of a practice, right?

Dr. Una
Which is nothing I know, right? Yeah, I know nothing. Right? And, um, and they’re like, No, we don’t do loans like that if you want 250,000. And I was like, 250,000 that’s like a whole other medical degree, like what? You know. And so, so I didn’t do that. We literally bootstrapped like, literally started with Practice Fusion, which was a free EHR at the time. We had a little office with three exam rooms, which is all you need for one provider and you know, stuff like this so we literally started little, and then grew from there, you know, we bootstrapped.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Now, did you get that? I know, you said it was about six months, but whatever time I’m sure you got, like, notices in the mail. Hey, we’re looking for a pediatrician in this beautiful place. You know, starting at this amount. Did you ever get like drawn in or were you like, you know, I’m just gonna start it and see what happens.

Dr. Una
Well, do I have this story for you? So before I made the decision to start the practice I had interviewed at Emory. Okay, this is a dream job that you work in the urgent care, do shift work, you know, be just be amazing. And I interviewed there in November, okay. and in December, I was like, hey, so what’s up and they’re like, oh, we’re still interviewing other candidates. I’m like, after interviewing me, okay, fine. And then I reached out again in February, and the person was like, What? I don’t think that’s still open. I think we already hired somebody. I’m like, whatever. We signed the lease for the office on March the 30th. Okay, April 1st Emory calls me. And they were like we have a job for you, and when I interviewed they were like, we will start you out PRN, right? So they’re like, I still remember where it was, I was like, oh, do you want the job? I’m like, sure. what is it? PRN? Part time? We’ll give you whatever you want. Part time, PRN, full time, whatever full benefits the whole nine yards. The day after I signed my lease, I literally looked up and I was like, God, you’re funny. Cuz you know if this call came yesterday, I would have probably been like, forget the lease.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Wow. Wow. Well, he’s probably telling you something different there. So yeah, yeah, that must have been tough to say no, but you already signed the lease. Right? So?

Dr. Una
Well actually, I did say yes. But to PRN, right? Because I didn’t have any patients. You know. So I’ll do some 4pm to 12am shifts, kind of, you know, stuff like that. So I did take it. But I would have taken it full time. You know what I mean? Like, I would have just forget that.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
But it probably helped you at least in terms of opening up the practice. Because you least have something to fall back on right? If needed which is often.

Dr. Una
Because, you know, I had stuff to pay the bills and all that stuff. So I wasn’t under financial pressure. While we started the practice. So it was great.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Now, when you were opening up your own practice, did you have colleagues who either dissuaded you not to do it? Or maybe encouraged you? I don’t know. In my case, I had a lot of people who told me I shouldn’t open a practice. What was it for you?

Dr. Una
A lot of people said don’t do it. Like, you know, like, practices aren’t working anymore. The big hospitals have bought them up. You don’t know enough. And I think I learned early on that if you’re gonna do things, you talk to people who are doing those kind of things, right. So I didn’t talk a lot about my, you know, building a practice with people I knew would be naysayers. I just didn’t have those conversations, because they’re going to discourage you. And when something is in its infancy stage, you need all the encouragement you can get. Not discouragement. So people did but I didn’t. I kind of kept it from them. I’m like, my principle is don’t give people information they don’t need and as far as I was concerned, that’s just information they didn’t need.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Now, you mentioned that personal development was a big factor for your success. What? When did you start delving into that and who were the kind of I guess, gurus that you kind of followed?

Dr. Una
So um, in the beginning, it was the likes of Brian Tracy, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Rich Dad, Poor Dad, you’re like that’s a real estate book. But it talks a lot about the concept of owning a business, versus owning a job. And I think that’s one of the reasons why I built my practice, the way I built it. Where from the beginning, my goal was to build a business that would work without me. My target was by the time I’m 40, I want to retire. Retire meaning, I see patients, because I want to. Not because my practice will fall apart if I’m not there. Right. So I, I go on Mondays, but the practice fully functional, and it’s fine. I did a lot of Brian Tracy because he talks a lot about vision, goal setting, giving up procrastination, time management. Which are all huge if you’re gonna run a business, especially cuz you don’t have a boss anymore. You have to be effective, based on your decisions, not because you have timelines, and deadlines and all of that kind of stuff. But when I was getting ready to start EntreMD, it was a whole new level because at this point, I wasn’t speaking, I would not show up on a podcast like this ever, like, never. And I had to, that’s when I found the wonderful world of coaching. And because I needed for me to go into phase two of my career, which is helping doctors build profitable businesses. I had to reinvent myself. I had to become a different version of myself. It’s still me but a different version. Yeah, and then that’s where that journey started.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, yeah. I like the same people you like, and yeah, I guess Rich Dad, Poor Dad is uh, you know, he made his money in real estate. But I think his cashflow quadrant book was the one for me, at least that transformed me where, like you said, I built a business, so I don’t really have to work in the business. I mean, and that’s actually a difficult concept for doctors to understand. Because as you know, there are a lot of solo doctors well, there was a lot, but you know, it’s dwindling. But those who are still in existence? They, you know, like for the concierge medicine just to give an example, you know? Yeah, let’s say they have less reliance on insurance, but then they’re relying on being on their cell phone 24 hours a day. And, you know, I have a joke in my practice, when they ask for me that they just want to see the doctor, that’s a bad sign. Because I have nurse practitioners who work in my place, and I’m sure you’ve got something similar. But if they’re just asking for me, and they just want to see me, I actually don’t like that.

Dr. Una
Yeah. And actually, that’s the same thing I did in my practice, where we go look at the reviews, and they’re like, Dr. Una is amazing. And, I’m showing my staff and they’re like, that’s amazing. I’m like, no, that’s awful. I want to read reviews about you, Like, I don’t want it to be about me. Right? You know what I mean? Because I can’t be the face of the business, the everything of the business, and everybody only wants to see me that’s not a business. That’s a job. And you know, the E-Myth Physician will say you work for lunatic, yourself, you know.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
And when it comes time to actually even selling the business, which is what we all aspire to do, you’re not going to be there, you know? But sometimes when they try to sell practices, you know, the hospital will say, well, you’re selling the practice, but we’ll give you a million dollars, but you need to work with us for the next 10 years.

Dr. Una
Yeah, which I’m not willing to do any of that.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So when did EntreMD when did that start for you? When did you get the idea for that?

Dr. Una
Well, you asked, so that was in 2018. So it started off like, I I’ve always wanted, you know, it sounds cliche, but I’ve always wanted to help people become the best version of themselves. I believe everybody has greatness on the inside of them. I’m like, people are amazing. They just don’t know it. In the so I started off helping entrepreneurs. So this will be great for everybody listening, who is like I’m afraid of niching down. Okay, this will be so helpful. So I started off helping entrepreneurs. So I did a first conference. And in that conference, physicians were there and non physicians were there. And I’m talking about all these concepts and the physicians there were going like, well, this doesn’t apply to me, this is just for regular entrepreneurs. And the regular entrepreneurs were like, clearly she’s not talking to me, because she’s a doctor. So her situation is different. She doesn’t understand where I’m coming from. And when I noticed that after that conference, I made a decision, I was like, you’re gonna have to pick one. Cuz because you’re talking to everybody, nobody is listening. You have to pick one person to talk to. And then I was like, well, the people I feel most passionate about the people I feel, have a disadvantage are the doctors. We are smart, we have an incredible work ethic, we have access to capital, we know how to do difficult things, we know how to chase down one dream for decades to see come to pass. But we’re handicapped because we don’t have business skills, we cannot translate all of that to a career we like, and a financial situation that we like. So I was like, so doctors it is. And that’s when on EnteMD was born, you know, which stands for Entrepreneurial MD. And so I started doing some one-on-one coaching, and got phenomenal results. And on a whim did a one day event last year on Trinity Life. And it was amazing. We had you know, 47 doctors from eight states and you know, live stream from four countries, something like that. It was really good. And then launch the podcast and did a second event had 321 doctors, it was just great. And yeah, so there was no definite roadmap. I took the next step in front of me and I took the next step in front of me, and here we are.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
What are some of the obstacles that you see as a coach with physicians? You know, I’ve done some of that as well. And I know what kind of my bias is, but I’m curious as to as to what you’ve seen, at least in terms of obstacles that you’ve had to help them overcome.

Dr. Una
Well, so one of the big obstacles is the the marketing and selling piece, right? I don’t want to put myself out there because it’s not professional, it’s sleazy. It’s like what a used car salesman would do. And so because we love to help, we will create products, we will create services, but then nobody’s using them, because we’re the world’s best kept secret. I’m like, you have to spend 50% of your time creating this amazing service. But you also have to spend this other 50% telling people about it. And so they can use it. So the thing about wrapping our minds around marketing selling, can be sleazy, if it’s done in a sleazy way. And it can be professional if it’s done in a professional way. It’s, it’s a paradigm shift that we have to make, but it’s a big, big, big obstacle. And of course, the money conversation. Um, we have a lot of hangups about money, like, it’s greed, like, I’m already a 1% earner, how can I possibly be trying to take more money from people, right? I’m not going to start a business. I’m going to start a business to help people but I don’t want anything to do with the money and like, then you can’t help people. Like it goes together a business serves and earns, you can’t separate it. The money’s a thank you note, it’s like you did this amazing thing for me, thank you. But you can’t, you can’t have a big business with a profound impact that doesn’t make money. It doesn’t work. They go together. You know, so that’s really huge. And one that I was shocked by, but I had that too, I didn’t know till after the fact is, I’ve studied for a decade, I paid multiple six figures for my education. I’m done being educated. Like, they don’t say it, but but that’s be like, I’m not going to throw myself behind learning a whole new skill set, because I’m done. I’ve learned enough. I’ve spent enough, I’m not going to pay for coaching. I’ve done enough. And I’m like, it’s not enough. There’s more. I mean, like, imagine, in a decade, going from somebody who doesn’t know anything about medicine to a person who can put people to sleep and wake them up. Who can do spinal taps. Who can replace knees? Who can do heart transplants? What if over the next decade, you threw yourself again, at reinventing yourself and learning new skills. So you’re dramatically different over the next decade? Right? So pay the price, do what you have to do. We haven’t arrived, we can reinvent again, we can. There’s so much in front of us. And it’s a deception to go like, I’m done. Like you’re not done.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, I guess I haven’t heard that. But I could see in different ways that they said this is too much work, I guess is one way that they kind of phrase it. It’s like, well, you know, it’s, not gonna be you push a button, and then money is gonna come through. I mean, if we could we’d all be doing that, you know, it’s going to take effort.

Dr. Una
Yeah.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
And, and your focus is on then building practice. It’s not going to happen tomorrow. But it’s about building the foundation. And a lot of it is up here, right? It’s the mindset, the obstacles that they put in front of them. I’ve seen that. What say you?

Dr. Una
We’re our biggest problem, I my biggest problem. Right? Once I get out of my way, everything becomes better. Everything on the outside is really a reflection of what we think. Right? what’s what’s going on here. And it, I think it takes a level of self awareness to go, this is actually what I’ve been thinking, and all these things I’m thinking that’s actually the way my life looks. So now that I want my life and my business to look different, I’m going to have to change the way I think. And for instance, I thought a lot that people wouldn’t follow me, people wouldn’t pay money for my services. I thought a lot of thoughts like, I’m not the kind of person who can do these things. Says who? Right. But that is such a huge limiting belief because, it affects the way you show up. It effects the way you invest in yourself, effects everything because you don’t really think you’re one of them. And one day, I’m like, who is one of them? I’m one of them if I want.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Now, do you still consider yourself an introvert?

Dr. Una
I’m an introvert. I mean, at the end of the day, I draw my strength from solitude. An idea of a really relaxing time is me walking in a very quiet place, not bothered by anybody, right? My idea of a fun time is me with a book sitting in my backyard. You know, I’m not gonna go to a party and be the life of the party. I will, but I no longer use it as an excuse. So if I need to show up on stage I show up powerfully. Even though I’m an introvert. If I need to go to an event, I know that my net work is my net worth. So I’m going to, I’m going to network, I’m going to build relationships, I’m going to do that. But when I’m done with all that, I want to be by myself. So I’m still an introvert, but I don’t use it as an excuse anymore.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
It’s like my wife said, since we went into COVID, cuz she’s pretty introverted. She says, I’ve been working for this for so long, I’m getting this down. But we’re a little tired of it now. But yeah. Once we can network, yeah, I love what you said, the net work is your net worth. Um, you mentioned some success stories, anything you want to share? I know, you’ve been working with some cool doctors and just maybe share some of their stories and how you’ve helped them?

Dr. Una
Yeah. So a number of them I had…and I’ll give some that are, you know, in different stages. So one of the clients I worked with early on she, she’s based in the UK, she always wanted to have a skincare line. And she was just telling me like, yeah, you know, I’ve been thinking about this, you know, like, pipe dream type of thing, right? And all of that. I’m like, so why haven’t you done it? She’s like, I can’t do that. Like, of course, you can do that, you’re a doctor. You can, you can do that. And so we started working together. And within, her birthday was I want to say eight months away, and she was going to turn 40. I was like, how cool would it be that you launch this on your birthday?And we worked together and she founded a company, Dr. Yang Has Skin is what she called it. And she had her own skin line. And she launched it on her birthday, which was totally fantastic for someone who thought, I absolutely 100% can’t do this. I had another doc who had been working in the weight loss space, and she was working in this is more like a coaching, directing type of setup. And wasn’t really doing too much with it at the time. And she had posted a picture of her story and stories of some of her clients, and I was like, gosh, doc, we need to take this to the next level. This is so amazing. She had lost 50 pounds and kept it off for two decades.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Wow.

Dr. Una
Yeah. And she has patients that’ve lost 70 pounds. I was like, what in the world? You know, we started working together. And really my area of focus is the marketing, the selling, putting yourself out there, fix your mindset, so you can figure this out. So it works, whether private practice or coaching practice or your intrapreneur, whichever. And so one day I’m like, okay, so run your numbers, where are we? And she’s like, my goodness, we’ve worked together for a year. And my patient volume has gone up 413% and my revenue has gone up 657%. I was like, what you know, and that’s just to show we can do big things, you know. And so that was really, really super, super cool to watch. And, you know, for the people, who are what I call intrapreneurs, I had a doc who reached out to me, she’s in a private practice working as an employee. And she’s like, I want you to coach me. I’m like, Okay, so what do you want to do? She’s like, I don’t want to leave my practice. But I know there’s more. I’m like, I like you, you’re so great. And then so what we started doing was building out her personal brand. Because I believe that even if you’re an employee, you’re an entrepreneur, you work for You Incorporated, you may lease eight hours of your day out to your boss, but you’re the CEO of your brand. And that’s a business, you know? And so we started working on that she builds out a YouTube channel, she starts speaking in the community, and all of this stuff. And we were doing this so that there was no partnership track on the table. But we’re doing this so that she’ll be able to negotiate for partnership at the end of her first year. And you know, and for four day work, and all of this stuff. And she starts working on these things. The practice goes like 90% of our website traffic came from the YouTube channel.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Wow.

Dr. Una
Yeah. And you know, and then all these people are like, you know, she’s getting appointments from, you know, speaking gigs in the community and all this stuff. And her boss reaches out to her and says, I want to put you on a partnership track. I’m gonna hire somebody else so we can give you a four day workweek. And this was what we were working towards. And that’s what she got without even asking, because she built her own brand. And to the doctors listening, if you’re an employee you don’t wait till you start a business your business starts now. Your brand your business, and what you’ll do is you put yourself in a position where when they want to lay off, you’re not really the kind of person they lay off, because you affect the bottom line. It puts you in a position where you can negotiate for stuff because you affect the bottom line, it puts you in a position where if they say, we don’t care, we are going to mess you up and we are sending you out of here, you already have practices, or businesses or hospitals in line waiting, because they know, oh, this person is available. We want her on our team.

So we’re all entrepreneurs.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I love it. There’s always more, there’s always more. And what’s interesting, too, is she didn’t even realize her success that she had. And I think I think that’s why it’s important to have whatever you do at least have an accountability partner, because we always minimize our own successes. Yeah, so we did this or, you know, like, she says, I’ve kept the weight off for 20 years, and she probably wasn’t making it a big deal. It just, yeah. And sometimes it just has someone, you know, whether it be a coach, whether it be a friend, you know, get together with somebody just to keep yourself accountable and to help, you know, push you forward, because as you know, entrepreneurs can be very lonely business. Yeah, right. It can be very lonely. And so it’s, I think, essential to have a coach or a mentor to help push you forward. Dr. Una, where can they go to find out more information about you and the different services that you offer?

Dr. Una
Well, so for the people listening on the podcast, there is a podcast, The EntreMD podcast. So same platform you’re on just type it in E n t r e MD podcast, and we talk shop all day every day. That’s what we do on there. And you can find me on social media, my handles are @Drunachukwu, which Dr. Woo-Ming will be so kind to put in the show notes, there enough consonants there, hope you don’t misspell it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I hope not, I will make sure.

Dr. Una
And, you know, for people who are like, I want to take next steps and stuff like that. This year, we did launch the EntreMD Business School, which has been so cool. And it’s all about helping doctors get out of their way, stop being the world’s best kept secret, and actually build businesses that create the platform for financial freedom so that we can live life and practice medicine on our terms, which is what I wanted to do from the beginning.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I love it. I love it. This has been fascinating. I love speaking with fellow physician entrepreneurs, any last minute words before we end the call today.

Dr. Una
For everybody out there, I’ll just say, just do it. This is something that I think about a lot. And I’ll tell it to you. Think about the 90 year old version of you. And the things they would wish you said yes to Yes. Entrepreneurship can be scary, but so many people have done it. And most people do it scared spitless. They just look bold on the outside, but they’re scared spitless right? So say yes to yourself, whether that’s starting a business or that scaling a business. Say yes. And build it and do scary things and do hard things. And just imagine when you’re 90, your kids and all the people you’ve impacted come to celebrate you because you said yes. So don’t hold back. Don’t let your fear stop you. Just say yes. It’s an adventure. You’ll love it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I love it. I love it. Dr. Una, thank you again. Check out her website EntreMD you can find her podcast. You can find her on social media. Thank you so much. This has been a very elucidating time we spent together Thank you again.

Dr. Una
Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
And thank you everybody as she says: Don’t be stagnant. Don’t be scared. Find out what’s gonna happen to your 90 year old self. You don’t want to live your life with regrets. Whatever you do, don’t put yourself off for the next day. Just always keep moving forward.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

By

Why Virtual Assistants are Essential for Physician Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur coach and advisor, one of the biggest questions I get is “How can I hire a virtual assistant to help grow my online business?”   It’s great when you are in a position to run a successful business and become your own boss, however, you will reach a point where you won’t be able to do it alone.

A business will always need to get a steady flow of prospects and leads, and this is where having a virtual assistant is mandatory.  Here to help us out is my friend Daven Michaels, CEO of 123Employee,  a highly successful global virtual assistant company. 

Daven has been self-employed for over 40 years and has taught countless small businesses and entrepreneurs on the importance of outsourcing. We discuss why a virtual assistant should be the first investment you make when growing your business, what are the essential tasks you should outsource, and how best to manage your VA (virtual assistant). In fact, there was so much to go over in the call, one episode wouldn’t cover it.   So we made an exclusive announcement on a special 3 Day training to show you a step-by-step process on building your own successful online business. And as part of the BootstrapMD network, I’m buying your ticket!

FREE LIVE ONLINE BUSINESS 3 DAY TRAINING:

Starting on  September 28th Daven Michaels and his team have a mission to help 10,000 future entrepreneurs start their own online businesses LIVE on a 3-day virtual Master Class.

AND because BootstrapMD is a sponsor… you get to attend the online Master Class for free!

TRANSCRIPT

Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD. I am super excited because I’ve got a good friend of mine on the call. You may not be familiar with him in let’s say the medical space, but in the other world that I live in, which is the entrepreneur internet marketing online business world, Daven is a big deal. So I’m so excited to have him on.

Daven Michaels is a bestselling author. He speaks around the world speaking about entrepreneurship. He is the CEO of 123Employee, which is a giant virtual assistant company because I know a lot of you have been asking about that. So I wanted to get him on the show. He’s spoken on stage at many events, some of which that I’ve had the opportunity to also share with. But he’s also shared with some other guys you may have heard of like Les Brown, Mark Victor Hansen, Bill Clinton. Some of those names you may have been familiar with. And Mike Woo-Ming, of course. But without further ado, I know he doesn’t have a lot of time so I want to just bring him onto the call. Daven, how are you doing today, my friend?

It’s great to be here with you, brother. It’s always cool when we get together because you have a very fond place in my heart. Because when I first, first, first got into the marketing space… You and I have been self-employed forever. I’ve been self-employed for almost 40 years. I don’t like to tell people that because I’m old. But when I first got into the marketing space you were one of the first people I met, literally. You and I were in a MasterMind with Larry and that was one of the first things I really did in the marketing space. So, it’s always good to have a reunion with you and hang out with you and your tribe. So thanks for having me.

Well, you look great. You look great for just 40. I know you started your first business when you were one, but for me I had to take antiaging clinics for a personal reason…

So Daven, let’s get into it. Like I said, my audience may not be familiar with… So let’s talk about how you got started. Like you said, you’ve been self-employed for 40 years. Many of our audience are just looking into starting a side gig or a side hustle. Tell us how that started for you.

Yeah. I started my business actually at 15. Don’t do the math. And what really happened for me was I was an only child, and so there was no playbook for my parents and nobody told me I couldn’t do it. And so my parents really encouraged me to do whatever the heck I wanted to do. All my stupid harebrained ideas they said, “Go for it, go for it, go for it.” I fell on my butt many times, but eventually I figured it out.

And mine’s an entrepreneur story like so many others. And I have the privilege of speaking on stages all over the globe to young, bright entrepreneurs all over the planet. And what I’ve learned is that my story might be a little unique, but everybody’s got one. Every entrepreneur has an incredible story. They really do. Because it requires a lot of tenacity and perseverance to really make it happen.

But for me, I was designing clothing for bands in the early eighties. And quite frankly, my bands didn’t really have anything going on. Most of them were playing in their garage and they really had no clue. I had no clue. But an amazing thing happened. MTV came on the air and changed the face of music and changed my life. So I was working with these bands that had nothing going on and within about 90 days most of my bands had record deals.

Wow!

And within about a year, yeah, there were selling millions of albums. And I rode that wave. Especially at such a young age, it was really quite incredible. These bands were basically playing in their garage and then all of a sudden we were playing these small venues, like 600 people and then 1,000 people, and then 2,000, 10,000, and then 20,000, and then 50,000. We were playing stadiums and it was unbelievable.

Any you want to name drop here or…

Yeah, sure. I was working with all the biggest fans of the eighties and nineties. Prince, Madonna, Cindy Lauper, Thompson Twins, Duran Duran. And it was fun. And that was really the beginning of my career. And most of my businesses have been in entertainment and communications.

From there I had a telecommunications company. I had a really nice exit to a public company which turned out to really change my life really. That was cool. And then I became the biggest electronic music event producer in the U.S. That was awesome. And I really wanted to become a recording artist. And because I had that built-in fan base I was able to throw my own concerts and have 25,000 people at them. So I was able to get distribution.

I went on tour for a while and then I became a producer. Had a really good run. I wrote and produced for some very big bands. Black Eyed Peas, Coolio, Samantha Mumba. A really good run there. And I’d still be in that business today really, but Napster came out and 50 million people were downloading free music. And I really thought that was the end of the music business. So I started producing television and that was at the very beginning of reality television. And I didn’t really have any big hits there because I didn’t really have enough time there. I was just there for a few years.

And then my outsourcing business took off. And today we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of employees at 123Employee on three continents. And we work with entrepreneurs all over the globe and we do all the busy stuff for their business. BS, busy stuff. Things like internet marketing, social media, telemarketing, back office tasks, inbound and outbound voice. Basically, for entrepreneurs we do virtual assistant stuff. And for larger companies we do customer service, inbound, outbound voice. And our mission at 123Employee is to rescue lifestyle starved entrepreneurs, give them their time back and their lives back. And we love doing it. We’ve been doing it now for well over a decade.

That’s amazing here. So, many of my listeners, like I said, are healthcare professionals. They’re busy. They make a good living, but for whatever reason they’re seeing, just even with stuff like with COVID coming on, we’re hearing stories like anesthesiologists who are losing 50% of their income because they closed the hospitals.

So there’s a lot of people who have been interested in entrepreneurship for various reasons. And when they try to do a side business, so they’ll look at something online saying, oh, make money online. We all know that there are scams. There are a lot of people peddling stuff, but of course, there’s also people who are actually really making it. But then they say, “Well, I need to start a business but I don’t know how to do it. I don’t have time but I don’t want to hire somebody.” And that’s where they hear about virtual assistants. So I know you’ve got a lot of big, different entrepreneurs, I’m sure big 10 figure businesses and up. Is there an opportunity for somebody to start small in your organization, in your industry, in your company?

There is. Yeah. So we run what’s called a managed facility. So there’s two types of outsourcing at least in my world. So there are freelancers and there’s a managed facility. So freelancers are where you hire somebody, they’re working from home. You can find those people on sites like Upwork. And then there’s managed facilities like 123Employee. And there’s pros and cons to both. You can find freelancers that tend to be specialists. Sometimes you pay a little less for them. In my opinion, and what I’ve really learned, I think to actually being fact, you’re better off with a managed facility.

Every day we have people that come to 123 that have maybe worked with a freelancer. They’ve had some success or not, or maybe they’ve had success, they’ve invested time, worked with that person, maybe six, seven, eight, nine months, and then the person disappears. Or they’ve had a hardship, or an act of God or the power is going out, or the internet is going down or there’s issues with phone. Or you name it.

In a managed facility you have accountability. You can pay with your credit card. The power is redundant. The building can handle hurricanes and earthquakes. It’s just a much better situation. And so we highly recommend working with a managed facility, whether it’s 123Employee or not. It’s very inexpensive with a company like us at 123 you can hire a full-time or a part-time employee.

We find that entrepreneurs, the most successful entrepreneurs that outsource are the ones that know what they need done. So it’s always a good idea to sit down, make a list of what you want to do. And usually I see lots of mentors, gurus, what have you, they always say, “Hey, get the busy stuff off your plate.” So make a list of all the busy work and outsource all that. And I agree. That’s something you definitely want to outsource. But I actually recommend doing it a little bit differently.

So as you would agree, Mike, I’m sure, there’s a thousand tasks everyday in your business, right? But there’s probably just a small handful of tasks that create immediate bottom line results in your business. I call those IGAs, or income generating activities. So what I always tell people is make that list. So maybe take a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle. On the left make a list of your IGAs, your income generating activities. And then on the right make a list of everything else. All the stuff that’s eating up your day.

So on the left hand side take that list and circle everything that you feel could be outsourced or delegated to somebody else. And then on that list there are going to be some things that you feel like, oh, there’s no way that that could be outsourced. But then step back for a second and say, “Hey, if I had maybe a month to do a brain dump, what other things could be outsourced?” Circle those as well on the left hand side.

Then what you’re going to do is what I would suggest doing is attack the stuff on the left hand side. The stuff that actually moves the needle in your business, that actually generate income in your business. Because at the end of the day, when you hire an outsource team or outsource contractors, it’s not very expensive because it’s overseas, but it’s still a liability on your balance sheet. So why not make that income generating? Once you do that now your team overseas is generating revenue for you. It’s income generating. It’s no longer a liability. You’ll probably hire more people, you’ll scale faster. And then you can start getting the busy stuff off your plate. The busy stuff is still going to equal more time and more money to you in the long run, but at least your income generating in the beginning. So that’s the way I suggest tackling working with virtual assistants.

I love that. And there’s a lot to take in here, because I have worked with virtual assistants, I have regular flesh and blood assistants. Not that they’re not flesh and blood, but in front of me assistants. But also with what you mentioned and like I said before, Upwork… What was it called before Upwork?

It was not oDesk, right?

Oh yeah, oDesk. It was oDesk.

Was it?

Yeah. And then I think RentACoder, I think was another one of those types. But it’s good for ones and twos, but bear in mind that they probably have other different clients that are going on. Not saying they’re not here, but when you have a managed company you’re their priority. You’re their priority.

Also, yeah, when you’re using freelancers you don’t know how many other clients they have. And also one of the biggest challenges that our clients have had before they’ve come to us is if you’re in the U.S., which my guess is most of your viewers are in the U.S.

Yes.

You’re going to be very hard pressed to get them to work during your day. So for example, now 123Employee about 65% of our workforce comes in at midnight and works till 9:30 in the morning. That’s our day. Because 65% of our clients are in the U.S. You would be very hard pressed to get a freelancer to work through the night. They just don’t want to do it. And I get it because who wants to work alone at night in your house? It’s just very lonely and it’s boring and it’s hard to stay awake. Whereas at our center it’s lively, everybody’s running around and it’s a campus and it’s kind of a party. Everyone’s busy because that’s our day.

Right, right, right. I love that thing about the IGA. Actually, I call it the RGA, but same thing, revenue generating activities, income generating activities. What would you recommend as one of the first things, I know you said busy work. Where do you find that entrepreneurs, they really scale their business when they start outsourcing blank? What do you usually see?

Yeah. That’s a really good one. I’m going to say lead gen. I think it’s all about the lead gen. I’m always focused a hundred percent on lead gen in every business that I’m involved in. So if I’m ever looking at starting something new, I… Sorry, that’s my little alarm there. Sorry about that. Anytime I’m starting anything new the first thing I’m looking at is what’s the lead gen? How are we going to generate revenue for the business? How are we generating leads? How is that scalable? Is it scalable? What’s the game plan? How does it scale financially, as well? Can we continue to bring in leads at the same price as we scale it? So I’m always looking at lead gen when I’m looking at the first thing to outsource. So that’s what I do. [inaudible 00:13:33] businesses.

Right, right. And for me, since social media’s come in, lead generation used to be easy. Oh, we’ll do you some mailings. Hey, let’s do some… We need to get something online. We’ll do some paper click advertising. Oh, let’s do some Facebook ads. Now with social media, we’ve got so many different ways. And I know that, and this is a good segue to what we’re talking about, I know you’re coming up with something that’s really cool, and a training. I believe a three day training that’s coming out that I’d like you to talk more about it. So feel free, Daven, tell me what’s going on.

Yeah, absolutely. So earlier this year I partnered up with an old friend of mine, Chad Nicely, and we are actually going to be hosting a three day masterclass. Now it’s not all day long, it’s just in the evenings, where we’re actually… Well, actually let me back up a second. So I’m sure that all of you that are listening and/or watching this before, have attended a webinar before. And usually on a webinar you’re learning something great.

But Chad and I have created a new process. Well, we’ve been doing it for quite some time with our own tribes. But now we’re taking it out into the world. And it’s our three day masterclass model where you’re not just learning, you’re actually doing. It’s experiential. And we are doing a live three day masterclass, September 28th, 29th and 30th.

And on this three day masterclass, it’ll take place in the evenings, we’re actually going to be working with everybody live. We’re going to show you how to create a brand new business. We’re going to show you how to generate leads in real time and attract your very first customers online. Every single person is actually going to do it in real time. We have timers. We have badges. We have rewards. The whole thing. When we do it we celebrate your success. It’s super cool and it’s free to attend.

And I believe we have a link for it. I think it’s a… We set one up. It’s bootstrapmd.com/3day. And because Mike, you’re a sponsor, you can all come for free. It’s bootstrapmd.com/3day And it’s super fun. Not only will you learn a lot, you’ll do it, which is so cool. You’ll actually make it happen. So if you’ve ever had challenges generating leads online, you’re going to do it. By the end of three days you will have generated leads online.

Daven, I know you’re an outstanding businessman, but I just want to correct, you said it was free.

It is free, only for our sponsors though, because [crosstalk 00:16:08], exactly.

That’s awesome. And what I love about it is we all have been on webinars and maybe we’ll put it on and we’ll turn it on. And then the kids are running around, the dog’s barking, and we’re on our texting phone. This is not that type of webinar. This is we’re going to be in there. We need to be paying a hundred percent attention. We need to be working.

Yeah, exactly. You have to roll up your sleeves and pay attention because you’re going to be doing not just watching. So yeah, but it’s going to be so cool. We’re actually going to be generating leads. It’s going to be on LinkedIn. So, if you don’t have a LinkedIn account we’re going to walk you through getting all that set up in advance. So when you register there’s a whole process and we’ll walk you through all the steps so that you’re ready when the masterclass goes live.

But it will be a game changer for you. And there have been hundreds and hundreds of people that have already gone through the three day masterclass in our own tribe, but there will be over 10,000 people on this live event. So we plan to break the internet with this three day live masterclass. It’s going to be intense. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a party. But it’ll be a game changer for a lot of people.

Mike Woo-Ming:

This is great too, because for my audience most of them have LinkedIn accounts. As you know, it’s more of the business to business type of lead generation, but we don’t know how to generate leads or at least I don’t know how to generate leads. So I think first off a good idea, guys, make sure you got your LinkedIn account ready for this, and the link that we have for you for this three day masterclass. Can you repeat the dates again?

Yeah. So it’s September 28th, 29th and 30th. And the link again is bootstrapmd.com/3day. And also, I want to clarify some things too. So you made a really good point. I have the privilege of speaking on stages all over the globe. And I always ask entrepreneurs. I say, “Hey, how many of you are on LinkedIn?” I’ll ask the audience and everybody raises their hand. And then I always say, “How many of you feel like you’re under utilizing LinkedIn?” Everybody raises their hand.

I raise my hand too.

Absolutely. And so when we’re talking about generating leads on LinkedIn, there are several ways you can generate leads on LinkedIn. You can buy advertising on LinkedIn. You can pay for advertising and it’s so cost prohibitive. You know this, Mike, it’s so expensive, good luck ever monetizing out on it. Big companies do, that have crazy sales cycles that sell incredibly extensive equipment and services, big consulting firms and what have you. But good luck being an entrepreneur and doing it on your own. But what we’re talking about is how to do it organically. We’re going to show you exactly how to do it. And before you leave the masterclass you will have people raising their hand saying, “Hey, I want to do business with you.” It’s that cool.

Awesome. Awesome. And the thing is about LinkedIn is I’m on it but I’m getting all of these requests and you can tell that some of these are either automated. I’ve seen the same email again and again. This is not what we’re talking about. Correct?

No, it’s not. And on top of that we’re going to show you how to break through that noise with what we call our foot in the door approach. So, because there is a lot of noise on LinkedIn with what we call spam. That’s what that is, it’s LinkedIn spam. So we’re going to show you how to break through that. And I think that’s on day two. So yeah.

Oh, awesome, awesome. So do you know the time period or how long each will last?

Yeah, so we’ll go live at 5:00 PM. Pacific, 8:00 PM EST, and we’ll go a couple of hours each night.

Okay, great. Great, great.

Yeah.

Most of my, obviously are working, but that seems like an ideal time to help people who have to do the 9:00 to 5:00 job but want to get out of that. Sign up for this, guys. It’s completely free. I don’t know why Daven is doing this, but I’m thanking him as a friend lending you access to this. I’m sure there might be some limited, I don’t know if there’s a limit to when you could get in.

Yeah, so we have 10K is the max and it’s filling up fast. So jump on board.

Wow! Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Okay guys, the link again, bootstrapmd.com/3day. We’ll put it in the show notes as well. And then for those who want virtual assistants, please check out Daven’s company, 123employee.com. Is that right?

You got it. Exactly.

Okay. And how does that process work real quickly? Do you know ahead of time before they hire you? What’s the process when you [crosstalk 00:20:40].

Yeah. So you give us your list, your laundry list of the stuff you want to do. And then we will match you up with somebody that meets your list, if you will. And then we give you a project manager and you’ll work with that project manager. So you actually get a VA and a project manager for the price of a virtual assistant. And 85% of the time we get it right. We’re just really good at placing you with a good person. 15% of the time we get it wrong. If we do, you let us know and we’ll replace that person for you no questions asked. And then you’re up and running right away. We generally have a pretty full pool, so we can usually get you up and running right away.

And is there a minimum amount of hours that you need or how does that work?

Minimum hours are 40. We have really just three packages, 40, 80, and full time, 160 hours a month.

Awesome. Awesome. Daven, I know you’re busy. I know you’re going to be jet setting around the world when you can.

When I can, yes.

But thank you again. I appreciate it. Guys, again, sign up for the three day masterclass if you’re looking to get leads because every business needs leads. Sign up today, bootstrapmd.com/3day. Once he’s full Daven will let me know and that’ll be closed, so you need to get in now. Daven, thanks again for joining me. I really appreciate it and all the best of success to you.

Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye.

Thanks everybody. And as always, don’t be stagnant. If you feel that your business is not going start outsourcing it, guys. Hire a virtual assistant company like Daven’s or whoever you choose. You need to generate leads. Sign up for that class. But don’t stay stagnant, keep moving forward.

By

Make Passive Income with Your Own Amazon Store

You May Have Bought Something From This Doctor and Not Known It! An Interview with Amir Baluch, MD

Online shopping is booming but for those who want to strike it rich in e-commerce, there are big, big challenges to overcome.  Not so for Dr. Amir Baluch, an anesthesiologist, serial entrepreneur, investor, and author of “Make it, Keep It: New Wealth Preservation Rules for Doctors”. 

Dr. Baluch is truly an example where persistence paid off.  From failing to get into medical school the first time, to an electronics payment business that also failed, he was determined to not let that set him back.  After successfully getting into medical school, he realized if he wanted to attain financial freedom it could not be from one income.  So he invested in himself, learning about wealth preservation, developing sustainable revenue streams through the stock market, real estate, and creating a biotech fund.

Not one to rest on his laurels, he set his sites on Amazon.  Using his own proprietary software, he analyzed the metrics of successful Amazon Stores. He saw what worked and what didn’t.   He then applied it to his own stores, now reaping the products of  thousands of products every single day. And just recently, he has been sharing his strategy with his fellow doctors, on developing 6 an 7 figure online stores through his company Global E-Commerce Consultants.  This is one of my most longer interviews but nuggets of info you won’t want to missed.  But if you’re pressed for time you may want to skip ahead and get right to the e-commerce part, go to around the minute mark.  You will not be disappointed!

LINKS MENTIONED:

GlobalECommerceConsultants.com – Set up a Free Session with Amir about owning your own Amazon Store.  Mention BOOTSTRAPMD to qualify for a special deal. (Wait list will be offered if full)

Make It, Keep It: The New Rules of Wealth Preservation for Doctors – Amir Baluch, MD

RAW TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I knew someone in medical school who bluntly said I only want to be in the highest paying specialties. And yeah, he probably said something like because of medical school loans. But in reality, he wanted to be rich, and he wanted everyone to know that. And not that there’s anything wrong with that. But behind the Ferrari, the McMansion the summer home, there’s the stress, there’s the unexplained chest pains. There’s the credit card debt, there’s the impending divorce. And I hardly ever see him. And the reason is, is because he feels he needs to work even harder to justify his lifestyle. But for me, and for those who believe in financial freedom, I never been a fan of the hourly rate. I don’t mean someone else, telling me how much I’m worth because it’s more than how much money you make while you work. More importantly, it’s about how much money you make when you don’t work. The key is to have as many sustainable ethical revenue generating assets as possible. And my next guest has figured that out. This doctor started his first business while in medical school through a credit card transaction company, then shifted into flipping real estate and then now managing giant real estate projects with his team. He has a BioFund company and his next conquest is Amazon. In fact, if you bought something at Amazon, you may have bought from some of his companies. This is a tremendous interview and I do admit it’s a bit it’s a bit long. So if you’re pressed for time, you may just want to fast forward to, let’s say the last 20 minutes of this interview. And of course I want you to go back later and listen to the whole thing. But if you’re interested in what he’s talking about with Amazon, we put together a special opportunity for some doctors who are interested in having and investing in their own revenue generating online store. You do not want to miss a word of this. My next guest is Dr. Amir Bullish on this episode of BootstrapMD.

Narrator
Welcome to BootstrapMD, the physician entrepreneurs podcast, your source to help you the entrepreneurial doctor, live life on your own terms. Get new ideas and inspiration to help you find more balance in your professional life. If you’re ready to get the knowledge without all the hype, you’ve come to the right place. It’s the BootstrapMD Podcast. Now your host, Dr. Mike Woo-Ming.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Hey guys, Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another episode of BootstrapMD. Have you ever wanted to become what’s known as a digital nomad or maybe heard the term and not sure exactly what that is? Well, I have friends who work making their full time living online and allows them to travel to country to country, at least when we could still travel. And just like just kind of go with the flow and you know, one day would be in Australia when another day they might be in Costa Rica. And what’s great is they’re not tied down by you know, going to a brick and mortar business or making a nine to five job. They’re basically living online and in some cases maybe that’s a myth, but there’s others where it’s a reality. And one of the goals was to become a digital nomad and I didn’t think it’d be possible for a doctor. So most of my friends who do this aren’t medical doctors, but I think I have one who is well on his way to becoming one of those and his name is Dr. Amir Baluch and he’s an investor, serial entrepreneur and a fund manager at Bio Wise Capital LLC. He’s got seven years experience in private equity and securities with series 22 and 63. He’s got four year experience under a broker dealer retrained to evaluate opportunity, negotiate, mitigate risk, and underwrite multi million dollar real estate syndications. He’s also an internationally best selling author of the wealth management and investment book, Make it Keep it New Age, Wealth Strategies for Physicians, and a regular contributor to Forbes now has a new goal of getting 1000 physicians and professionals to reach part time status with turnkey ecommerce stores. So you guys have been asking about ecommerce well you’re gonna hear about it on this call, turnkey ecommerce stores that can generate six to seven figures of passive income for them and he is also a hard working anesthesiologist, we need to mention but I’m super excited because there’s a lot of doctors who say that they’re building passive income and this guy is living it. So I needed to get him on we kind of met through Peter Kim’s leverage and growth course and just kind of hit it off and he said, you got to come on to the program and kind of twsited his arm but finally got him. So, without further ado, Amir, thank you for coming on to the call today.

Dr. Amir Baluch
Hey, how’s it going, Mike, thanks for having me on.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Man. I know that was a lot but it’s true, I’ll have doctors who come on and they’ve got like a side income, or maybe they’re at the beginning stages of it, but you’re like, living it. And and it’s and for someone like myself who’s had multiple streams of income. It’s so refreshing to see that because you’re in real estate, you got ecommerce, of course you got your anesthesiology career. But what I wanted to know is where did this all start? How did this all begin? You probably don’t know me too well, but I’m a bit of a nerd. As you can see I’ve got like my little Star Wars action figures back here. I’m big into superheroes in origin stories so I want to know like, how did Clark Kent become Superman, Peter Parker become Spider Man. So how did you become this doctor digital nomad? How did that happen?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Well, you know, my plan was when I was a kid, hey, let me just grow up and be like my dad and be a doctor. He was internal medicine doctor. And so, you know, went through college had pretty good grades, decent MCAT. And I applied I was pretty much sure I was going to get in and I didn’t get in, and I’m like wait a second. So at that point, I really felt like I couldn’t trust any one, you know, path I had to be diversified and so I had do a lot of self insight and really look into what I wanted to do. So I became a like a personal trainer, librarian, like, all kinds of crazy things. I eventually got in and you know, during those two years where I wasn’t in medical school, I just had a lot of time to reflect on things. And I really enjoyed being an entrepreneur and starting businesses from scratch. And so once I got kind of hooked on that I still continue that even after I got into medical school had small businesses even while I was a medical student and in residency, one of those being ecommerce on on eBay.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I don’t mean to interrupt you, but what was your first business? Can you can you share that with the audience?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Yeah, so it was called National Payment Services. It was a business this is back in the year 2000 2001. Believe it or not, at that time, you couldn’t have your your gym membership auto debited from your, you know, checking account or credit card like there are some people still not doing that. So we had a system where we could auto debit people’s checking account directly or even print checks with a printer I had in my apartment that had magnetic ink, I could literally print checks, let’s say for an apartment complex, I give them all the rent on the first of the month, some and then I make a little transactional fee. So I was like Okay, you know, somebody I just heard on the radio and my roommates like, let’s check it out and so we did it. That’s my first one. Lost my life savings learned a lot. I like a lot, that’s probably the most amount of learning, you know, when you fail, you learn a lot. But uh, you know, it’s really interesting, you know, had to learn about LLCs and bookkeeping and CPAs and all that, you know, the business 101, at least I got that under control. And then I stepped back and kind of reflected on what I really needed to do and was from then on I was a lot more careful about what I went into. And, you know, it has been pretty good since then.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So but when you became a doctor, your entrepreneurial dream didn’t die. What what led to that?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Well, you know, since my parents weren’t doing well financially, my dad had lost his practice he over leveraged on certain deals and businesses and didn’t do due diligence, who’s losing money left and right.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
He was a doctor as well?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Yeah, he owed a lot of money and taxes and things. And so, employees left clinic fell apart. And so I kind of became the breadwinner of the family and student loans, barely cutting it for me, then, you know, my mom needs you know, pain medicine for her knees and, you know, my brother wants to go to college I try to pay for that. So out of desperation I was like, you know, what can I do? I had some contacts, they would rebuild cars. So like, I get, you know, zero interest credit cards, and buy cars from the auction and flip it with them. And I would do arbitrage on eBay, just buying like at the time, just supplements that I would use, buy them at wholesale and then, you know, triple my money online just selling like Xenadrine and Hydroxycut. I know some people have taken Hydroxycut in the past. Maybe it works out, back in the day. So things like that, you know, whatever I could do. And so that’s what I was doing through medical school. Residency, I didn’t have as much time so I kind of pulled back on that. But then when I started private practice and I was, you know, in anesthesia, a lot of times we’re done like at one or 2pm like, and you’re single with no kids, you got a lot of time to do things. So you know, became a realtor or started my real estate brokerage started flipping homes. Now we flip subdivisions and develop subdivisions. So, you know, just kind of grew from there and it just never stopped. It was just so fun to like, you know, progress and learn something new. You know, I think that progression is really what drives happiness. It’s not about like, what you have, it’s just where you’re going really is what’s, what’s more important. So, you know, once I got bit by that entrepreneurial bug, I just kept rolling with it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So I know you said earlier you know you went into entrepreneurship because you had to you’re the bread earner paying for your your mom’s pain meds and things like that. But then you became an anesthesiologist so I assume that financial need wasn’t there, or was it? It sounds like you did it because it was more fun rather than for monetary reasons is that right?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Yeah, it was, it was a couple things like, you know, I was already thinking, because what happened to my dad, I can’t just rely on anesthesia. You know, even when we have six figures come in, and you’re like, well, this might not be here tomorrow, you know, even like, imagine during COVID I mean, for about a month or two where, you know, I was like 80% unemployed, just almost overnight, like you really can’t trust anything. So I was always going to build multiple streams of income. All the books say people make their first million with real estate for the most part 80% so that’s why we focus on real estate. My brother needed a job, so I had him help me with real estate. He’s now my GC and you know, lead developer. So it ended up being a family business. And you know, we just keep on going like, Okay, we got the real estate down. Okay, now let’s go to the next, let’s flip businesses, let’s flip Med Spas, let’s grow ecommerce again, like whatever, you know, whatever is making sense right now let’s just do it and keep growing like a mini Empire here.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So I love this because I think you know, you’re, you’re kind of unique. In terms of that

Dr. Amir Baluch
I like unique, some people say crazy.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
You know, I have doctors on here. And I mentioned this just before the call, who have said they’ll do a side gig and you know, they’re very nervous about putting $1,000 into, let’s say, starting up a website, you know, selling something. And it sounds like here it’s like, and this is what I know about a lot of entrepreneurs is they run like 80 miles per hour, one way and just think, let’s just do it. I mean, is that an accurate description? Or are you more you step back and kind of research stuff before you jump in? What’s kind of the methodology?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Well, I think you definitely had to have passion and believe in yourself and what you’re going to do and believe in the reason you’re doing it. Like, we wanted to have diversified income. So there’s like, there’s not really much of a choice, but also we’re having a lot of fun building, you know, businesses and systems. And it became a family business and we just keep pushing ourselves. So just one thing kept on leading to another, but you are right, like, you know, if you’re gonna do it, you might as well do it, just don’t go halfway. You really got to go all the way and push it to the limit. You know, if you go halfway, you might as well just not even do it because you’re not going to be successful really because the other people that are doing it as a full time basis, they’re gonna leave you in the dust. You really got to create a system they could go full time. You know, to compete with the competitors, or you got to, you know, put in your 40 hours after you put in your 60 hours and medicine, you know, you got to do one of the two, or hire a manager, somebody’s got to put in the time, and somebody’s got to put in the money at the end of the day. And if you don’t believe in it, then, you know, you shouldn’t even go forward. But if you’re going to do it, I think you should go all the way. And if somebody loses a little bit like me, it’s just a learning experience. If you invest in enough businesses, you grow enough businesses, you’re gonna have a couple losses. I mean, Warren Buffett’s made a couple losses, Elon Musk had a couple setbacks here or there, but they just keep pushing through and persevering and they’re on top of the world now. So you got to have that type of mindset.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So speaking about mindset, you know, I kind of joke with some of my students or some doctors who kind of want to venture in business still very apprehensive, you know, I tell them, you know, you can’t rely on double blinded placebo studies. Sometimes you just have to go and do it. What gave you that mindset? Did you have mentors that did it? Was it family? Well, I guess maybe from your father, you maybe you learn the opposite way. But what was it? Did you buy courses? What kind of led led you to that?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Oh, I’ll answer a D, all of the above. First started off, like whatever fell on my lap that excited me, I just jumped into it. But now like, I’m a little bit more cautious about it. Like, I won’t really go into anything unless I have a mentor. And I know where this fits. Like, I’ve had the good idea, like, how much time is this going to take? I don’t want to spread myself thin. Can I systemize this stuff? Can I bring in a manager from day one, or at least I’ll run it and then bring in a manager and buy my time back. So these are some things I think about now but for sure having a mentor is the most important thing. Courses can can help a little bit but I feel like I’ve never taken a course where they gave me all the knowledge like you got to learn from the streets at the end of the day. When you jump in there and you get confronted with the obstacles, that’s when you really, you know, learn how to perform in business I think so you do kind of have to jump in there, you’re never going to have all the answers.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
100% agree. No, it you know, I’ve talked to some doctors who say, you know what, everything’s free on the internet, I’ll just learn on YouTube. Yeah, maybe you could learn a few things there. But what would you say to somebody like that?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Yeah, I mean, you’re definitely gonna learn some vocabulary. And also at the same time, you got to figure out why is this person on YouTube? Like, is he trying to get some likes, sell some ad, sell a course like what’s he trying to do really? But there is definitely plenty of free information out there. But some things you’re not going to find in a course like for example, when I bought my first Med Spa, and you’ll get this point. So I bought it I looked at the financials bank looked at the financials. Why does this guy have like, profit? His profit margins are like 40%, which is a red flag. I’m like, well, maybe he just because he runs really lean. It’s not until after I bought it and I started doing the injections, you know, figuring out that, you know he had a deal with a rep or like every time he got a vial of BOTOX, he would get an extra two vials. So I mean, imagine if he’s getting all his injectables at one third the price of his competition that’s huge because usually med spas have 17% profit margins across the board on the aesthetic side. So you know so even though on on the financials, if I had just taken over I should have been, you know, profitable making like 50-60% return on my down payment with my SBA loan as leverage. Instead first year barely broke even. So then it’s like okay, it took me a couple months to figure that out. Had to rebrand I hired consultants from the east coast. Pay 20 grand with a credit card, figure it out. You know, year two we made like you know, 80 grand and then year three, we started doing six figures, net profit, and then a little bit after that I sold it. So we still ended up flipping it and being successful. But you know, who’s gonna teach you on a course about that? Like even the bankers and the appraisers didn’t even see that coming like, or how to deal with patients that complain, like, where’s the courses on this? Until you experience it yourself, you know, you’re not gonna know how to deal with it really.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
It sounds like you have an incredible skill, which I think is one of the most crucial skills you can have being an entrepreneur, is being able to read profit and loss statements. I mean, I think out of everything that I’ve done in terms of buying businesses and at least looking and then realizing, hey, this all looks good, but actually, if you look at this, you know, having the ability to kind of go through with a fine tooth because numbers lie they can, they can sway whatever you want, but is that something that you’ve just kind of acquired over time just with your experience, or did you learn that on YouTube?

Dr. Amir Baluch
No, so actually, when I talked to the bankers on the appraisers I learned about in the med spas, and the consultants came in, and they, they created a pro forma for me, which was not going to be accurate at all to be honest, like, there’s no way we would, you know, they’re just so like, every, every month, you make an extra 10 grand like, no, that’s like, not how it works. Okay, so, but at least look at the numbers and see what adds to expenses. What adds to profit, know where your profit margins are, at least do that. And then, you know, add in some marketing channels and see what is pushing those numbers up and down, like, how do you drive down costs and increase your profits? Like you got to at least see these numbers on a piece of paper, there’s no way you could have this stuff in your head and just remember it. And then after I got burned that first year on that Med Spa, that’s when I was like, anytime I look into buying a business, in my mind, I think okay, how are they fudging the numbers because when somebody sells a business, it’s like, you know, when somebody’s gonna get married the bride on wedding day, that’s the best they’re ever gonna look right. It’s all things tweaked up like, this is good is gonna get when you really get it, it might not be that way the next day. So I come into every business looking like that. And you know, a lot of times it’s just like whatever somebody gives me as a pro forma, I just cut it in half I’m like, and half and whatever the timeline is double it and you’re probably get closer to what’s realistic. And we still stomach those numbers, then go forward. Like, you know, a good rule of thumb if you don’t really run numbers, just cut everything in half and see if you’re still happy with it. So yeah,

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I spent the, I think it was two years ago that I was gonna expand more and you know, I’d looked at probably about five to 10, med spas and even in our best look it was it was not, I wasn’t ready to pull the trigger on it. But you buy and sell residential real estate. You said, houses and apartments as well or?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Apartments retail, you know, for commercial, I’ll partner with somebody else on residential, we have our own in house team. So we’re focused more on residential, I’d say probably 70% of what we do is residential 30% will be like commercial with majority of that being multifamily.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Awesome, awesome. And then you looked at med spas that you were buying and selling what other types of businesses were you looking at? Or did you?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Uh, you know, really, I looked at everything like, you know, earlier on just anything that fell in my lap, I looked at daycare centers, I looked at, you know, dry cleaning companies where everything is like cash with quarters.

It’s almost like I had shiny object syndrome like, Oh, hey, this is the new shiny object of the week. Let me just look at this, I guess and then I start thinking, Okay, I can make money with this. Why don’t I do this? I didn’t know why not. So I was just trying to look into it at least now I step back and I got some criteria that screens when I go into So, you know, I’m just mainly focused, I’m actually like laser focused on the ecommerce, my brother’s laser focused on the real estate, and then the biotech, we’re focused on that as well. That’s pretty much the only three things I’m looking at right now. And we have teams to help us process information and we have teams that help us do the underwriting now. So you know, at the end of the day I just get a nice presentation of information look at the numbers like we were talking about and then make a decision or negotiate.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I love it. You didn’t mention a lot of medical practices…?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Oh, so stressful that now I’m medical director of like, you know, a couple dozen locations and yeah, I make more net profits doing that and not actually showing up for anything really. So ended up being good that I had that med spa experience.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Exactly, exactly. Um, so I mentioned about becoming a digital nomad, I gave some examples of friends who do it. And you told me beforehand that that’s kind of your goal. Tell me exactly what’s a digital nomad to you? And why is that a goal for you?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Well, so after looking all these businesses, it’s like, you know, or anything that makes money. You know, if you, if you set your mind to it, and you come in with a mentor, you come in with partners, and you have good credit, you can get the money or you can raise the money. I mean, literally, you could go into any industry and be successful. You just have to have that, if you could keep that approach with everything, bring in the mentors bring in underwriters do the due diligence, pull the trigger, boom, you’re good. So now, instead of thinking about how do I be successful, it’s like what I want to be successful in and why, you know, there’s been this trend even in medicine, people are more looking at like, you know, lifestyle criteria. So what would be the ultimate lifestyle? I mean, why be stuck to a city or to a certain location? What if you had things run, you know, businesses where you could just run things off of your laptop or something. And so when I became medical director and sold my Med Spa started, like figuring out, hey, I could make money from home being a medical director, and then I did some medical legal consulting. I’m like, Oh, I could be sitting, you know, by the pool, you know, reading some, you know, literature on and making a report for some attorney, and I’m making the same hourly rate is in the OR, but I’m at by the pool, you know, I could be in Miami. So I was like, Well, how do I do more of this? So we doubled down on our online marketing company. So we have that we’ve got we doubled or tripled our clients almost there, that when I could do from a laptop, if I manage my biotech fund, I don’t have to be in Dallas for that. And the ecommerce is like the ultimate like literally, I just need my cell phone. And you know, so why not create these businesses where you don’t actually have to be anywhere. And that gives you the ultimate that really gives you the ultimate freedom to really do what you want. I think that’s what people want with passive income, like people say, Oh, I want passive income, or I want more money, a lot of people say they just need more money, they make more money, and they just spend more, they don’t have anything cash flowing, right? So then they’re like, Okay, let me get passive income, why they want passive income? Because they want the freedom. So what gives you the most freedom, you got to look into these businesses where you could buy into them and not have to actually physically be anywhere. So you know, even any, any home based business, imagine if you want to be, you know, a better parent, maybe to your kids and be at home and still work, like, look at any home based business doesn’t have to be commerce. You know, medical legal consulting is something I think everybody should look into. I mean, it’s another way to use your license to get a high hourly rate and you don’t have to actually be anywhere. So that’s really the ultimate freedom. I think that’s a little bit of what everybody wants, and so that the ultimate way to do that is to go after this digital nomad lifestyle doesn’t mean I’m going to be travel around the world, like, you know, Anthony Bourdain or anything like that. But, but I mean, at least I would have the option to if I wanted to. And that’s what I think people really want when it comes to getting passive income and multiple streams of income.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I again 100% agree for me, I don’t really know where money What’s more, the more time you know, more time freedom. And that one thing you mentioned, I just want to kind of cover this too, is we’ve talked about medical directorships and supervising physicians on a previous podcast, it was really well listened to, but there’s a lot of doctors who you don’t want to become medical directors. I’m a medical director, you know, at multiple clinics as well. And you know, some doctors are very skittish about this. What’s been your experience with that?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Well, let me tell you if I didn’t, if I didn’t run my own med spa and wellness clinic. I don’t think I’m not sure if I would want to be a medical director either cuz I wouldn’t be so familiar with the risks and the compliance that you need. And Texas is way more laid back, it’s kind of wild wild west out here. So it’s a little bit easier than other states. But, you know, since I knew the risk of all these procedures, I performed all this stuff even even including lasers, I was lasering people. You know, I really have a good feel for the risk. And so when I make my SOP standard operating protocols for other people to work off of, it’s very tight and controlled as long as they don’t deviate from that I know that the risk is going to be pretty low. And then for signing on charts and like that, you got to have systems in place so you know we all have I think we mainly use My Aesthetics Pro, I’m not sure what you what you like to use but easy to sign off on things even off my cell phone, if any nurse injects or NP they got my cell phone they call me about anything. I make sure they feel comfortable with me on that. You know any we do chart reviews, like there’s still a certain amount of work you have to do. That’s just like, it’s not an emergency or how to do it now, like, you could do it when there’s some downtime, you’re waiting in line for something hanging out of the doctor’s lounge, you could knock out some, you know, some charts or whatever. But yeah, it is, it is good that some of those people you’re talking about, they do have a healthy fear of the unknown. There’s nothing wrong with that. So what they could do, I don’t know how it isn’t in California, but in Texas, if you’re a medical director, you always also have to have a backup consulting physician. So there’s always got to be two doctors, I don’t know if it’s like that in other states. But if somebody wants to be a medical director, if they go out there and get some people that want to sign up, why not you know, split the fee with somebody that actually knows what they’re doing, so your risk is mitigated, and now probably make them feel more comfortable. So that’s one way to get over that fear of the unknown is, work with somebody that knows what what’s going on.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I love that because you hit on a few topics: one, don’t go into something that you don’t know. I often tell people like, if you want to open a med spa, one of the best ways to learn is to become a director for a med spa, right? It’s not the point where, hey, I’m just going to be paid this stipend and I’m not going to come back. I mean that that you’re like asking for a lawsuit. But if you’re truly interested in aesthetics, if you’re truly interested in anti aging, and hey, I want to open up my own, why not get have your own training and get paid for it? I mean, that’s how I did it with weight loss clinics. And because I was interested in it and with our med spas, and that led me to open up my own. But this other thing that you mentioned is there’s a whole degree of risk. I mean, there’s a there’s a big difference between, you know, Botox versus, you know, I’m going to set up my own opioid center super rocking doctor. There’s a big difference in there. So obviously, be smart. But yes, you can have fun fear of the unknown, but don’t just like blame the system or blame, you know, middle level providers are taking over, just like figure out, just do things the right way. And if it’s something that you want to do, why not go for it?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Right? Exactly. And there’s so many courses out there too. And plus, especially when you talk about the Med Spa world, like, this is still like medicine, the practice of medicine, like, I don’t know anybody that went to a course whether it was about hormones, weight loss, or minimally invasive aesthetics, like, you’re going to learn something and keep that knowledge for the rest of your life. Like that alone is worth whatever you’re spending on the course. So you know, if you’re even a little bit considering it, go ahead and and take the course learn, and most importantly, talk to everybody in that course, because some of those people already have med spas, ask them what their experience is that’s where you get the real learning as the other attendees. So, you know, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. And let’s say 10 years pass, you might regret not putting your big toe in the water. So that’s one thing I, the reason I look into a lot of things I never want to live with regret. So anything that seems like this might be a good idea, I gotta at least evaluate it. So you know if anybody out there is thinking about even adding a med spa component with a medical weight loss is awesome, like, crazy marches on that I love it. We did a little bit of that, too. They want to add it to their clinic. I mean, totally look into that. So don’t be too afraid of that at all. Go take a course or something.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I love it. And there’s so much I want to talk about but I know we’ve got a limited amount of time. But I do want to address something we’re going to talk about e commerce because I know everybody wants to know about ecommerce stuff. A lot of times when I talk with doctors, they want to start a business but the first thing is they’re concerned about debt. Now, obviously, you know that the loans are the big elephant in the room. I’m sure you’ve had med school school loans as well but you’re also buying and investing in probably multi million dollars you know, I assume you don’t have like a, you know, a truck full of cash is just on there. I’m assuming you had to borrow money to do this. What is your experience with debt and how may that be different than most other doctors experience?

Dr. Amir Baluch
So I definitely like debt I’m very comfortable with it. You know, some people look at me and think I’m actually overleveraged but you know, my I keep my debt to income ratio like below 35-40% which is pretty does still makes you lendable. So the thing is lend when you borrow money, one, it’s good to borrow money because the bank becomes a business partner, because they’re going to lend, they’re not you know, not in the business of losing their money and they’re gonna have at least twice as much money in the deal as you do. So now you got a business partner looking at it so it’s good to get debt even if you don’t need it because you got somebody else looking over your shoulder. Number two, if you’re going to go into business, there’s two different ways you either buy an existing business or you start from scratch. If you’re going to go debt and start from scratch, and you don’t have anybody on the team that’s been there, done that, that knows what they’re doing. Okay, that’s kind of high, high risk there, you know, but let’s say like, in my situation, I actually bought an existing Med Spa. And even though the numbers were fudged, you know, I still at least broke even and that included paying off that SBA loan. So, you know, I was still paying down that loan and building equity in the business, even though the cash flow was breakeven for that first year. So you know, if you buy somebody else’s existing system and leverage into that your risk is significantly less especially when you’re buying into a lot of businesses down the street, you could buy it at like a two or three x. So imagine if you bought it all cash, you’d be making 33% return on your money. You know, if you bought all cash, if you leverage you’re looking at, you know, easily 45-50, 60% you know, return on the cash you put in so why would you not want to go into debt, especially if you’re going to buy an existing business? So it definitely makes sense to do it. But I also understand that that fear, oh, I’m going to go into debt and if the business fails, now you got all this debt. So, you know, I can for a start up, I could see that happening, you know, and just it really sucks. I know, people that start up brand new med spas, and they go into debt. And they buy all these lasers from the reps.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Oh, god, yes.

Dr. Amir Baluch
Hey don’t buy one CoolSculpting by two CoolSculpting, it’s only it’s only a quarter million and everybody will come running just because you have it, they don’t talk anything about marketing, right? That’s not good. But let’s say if you bought a store and they already had CoolSculpting or whatever machine and you see on the reports that they’re doing some sales, at least you got something to work with and leverage into that you’re leveraging into something that you know exist versus leveraging into a startup and you don’t know what it’s gonna look like next year. So that’s, that’s how I think about debt when you’re buying into something.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
This, this has been awesome. I mean, so much wisdom, guys that he just shared with you right there. I mean, I would listen to this a couple times just what you said, is buying an existing business. And if you aren’t doing a start up, you better be prepared to that you’re going to not make money in at least for the first years and even more so if you do not have a mentor, so why not have buying existing business, it’s already there, you already have the numbers. I mean, I could like count, you know, if I had, I could count how many times I heard oh, I just bought this laser, you know, they’re my best friend, they took me to sushi…. and I never heard from them again, until three years later when the next model, your models outdated.

Dr. Amir Baluch
That’s real life. That’s real life. Well, I’m a medical director of this one chain and it was an awesome story like these people from overseas came in, American dream, and they actually started from scratch, but they made it work. Okay. Then another doctor that didn’t go to residency though, but still finished medical school for medical graduate, came in and just bought 50% of the business and let the other 50% for the previous owners. So now there are 50/50 with the previous owners, well the owners know everything about the business. Right? So the previous owners were running it as she was learning the business over the course of a year or two. And then she after she learned the system that she expanded to more locations, that’s very smart. So you know, leveraging smart and and they had the mentor, what better mentor than the actual current owner who made that money.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Perfect. I mean, I mean, I had one mentor telling me a physician mentor, he says, I would rather just get like a peace of, a little bit of everything. I don’t need to have the whole thing, I don’t need 100% where I am working 70 hours. I’m doing that. Yeah, I just need like a little piece. You know, it’s a piece of a little bit, like when you’re in your head, you’re busy with the transactions. This can be a little piece of the transaction here. I don’t need the product. But give me some of that fees for the transaction fee. That’s what I need. Yeah. All right. All right. We got kind of delayed this. Let’s talk about e commerce. You’ve been doing this, it sounds like maybe you started on eBay, a little bit, I don’t know if that’s what kind of got you the bug to do this. So what are we talking about here? Ecommerce. Are you creating products? Are you getting the manufacturing overseas? Are you buying them from Macy’s and then just selling them on Amazon? Give them the secret sauce here, or at least you want to get all the secret sauce, but just give me like, what are you what are you doing here?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Well, a few couple things. So just give a big overview big picture of what is possible in ecommerce. I split everything in my mind, I split everything into two categories, like, for sure we’re selling online, that’s what ecommerce is, instead of buying from down the street or 711. Okay, sell something online. Now you can either sell direct to consumer, which is very marketing, intense. A lot of Facebook ads, like you create your own website, nobody knows who you are, and drive traffic, sell, sell, sell, sell whatever you want. Or there’s the Amazon approach where because Amazon is 55% of the e commerce world, anything online right now in the United States, any product 55% chance is going to go through Amazon. So they’re bringing you the customers, you just need to manage a store on Amazon and do it correctly. And there’s a little bit of marketing involved, but not near as much as when you go into direct to consumer. So those are the two models. I should do like all models, I do Shopify and three different ways to do things on Amazon, but I don’t, I’m not saying I recommend everybody do that. But uh, on Amazon, let’s forget about Shopify for a little bit. When somebody wants to talk to me about it later we can so, but on Amazon, you can either do drop shipping, reselling, or private label. So private label, like you were kind of mentioning, you actually have your own product. So you could have, I mean, you can even create your own like masks, right when a lot of people are trying to create their own mask and brand it or whatever. So that’s the highest risk is creating your own brand. Nobody knows who the hell you are, and you’re out here trying to sell it, but you could do it and make millions people do it to make millions. Then you have dropship where, you know, you’re going to buy these masks like maybe from Walmart or somewhere else, and then you sell it on Amazon, and then when somebody buys it, you tell Walmart to ship it to them. So that’s called drop shipping because you never actually hold the inventory so just dropship to the to the buyer. Then there’s reselling which actually like a legit store. Where is imagine if you’re a 711, and they’re buying Doritos and Monster energy drinks, they’re buying established brands, people are going to the 711 to look for that. You just happen to have bought it at 50 cents on the dollar. And you’re going to make your 10-15% profit off of it after you know, your overhead and all that kind of stuff. So that’s kind of what I recommend for people to look into. Or like when I do a partnership with people, I do that model because it’s the least amount of risk with the most amount of money. And so that’s kind of what we’ve put together. And I’m mainly focused on that on that reselling aspect on Amazon, and just contracting suppliers. Say, hey, here I am, give me a shot. Here’s my website, I got this track record. Let me buy some products at 50 cents on the dollar. When you sell on Amazon after all their fees and stuff. There’s still 10-15% profit margin for you leftover. You make that every month. So imagine you know 10-15% return a month on your money. Just keep turning this inventory. So that’s pretty much the model is just very difficult to execute if you can imagine you’re buying and selling things every day, like thousands of things that are like 15 bucks, 20 bucks, you know, 30 bucks. So logistically, it can be a nightmare. But, you know, on a superficial level, all we’re doing is we’re buying 50 cents and selling for $1 online. That’s, what reselling is. So that’s kind of an overview of what ecommerce is.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So, there are a lot of advantages to reselling. So let me kind of summarize for my understanding. So these are existing brands that people are already buying already. Is that we’re talking about here?

Dr. Amir Baluch
It’d be Adidas shoes, could be ginzu knives, could be you know, anchor batteries.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Right so you don’t need an infomercial to sell these things.

Dr. Amir Baluch
Yeah, in fact the software will tell you how much of that is selling every month. You know, a million dollars of this flavor of Monster Energy a month is being sold. You have that data.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
That’s right. So you’ve already got the trust built in trust. It’s already established. It’s on Amazon. I mean, everybody loves Amazon. And we’re comfortable buying Amazon. I mean, I am driving truck comes to my house like every other day. And it’s so much easier. You don’t have to have a like a long page sales letter or you’re buying advertising, you go into where the buyers are already there where they are 55% of them are using Amazon. Right?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Exactly. That’s correct. So it’s not that marketing intensive. So that variable is gone. Because if you don’t have a marketing background, and you’re trying to do something like Shopify, I mean, you’re pretty much going to be dead in the water. Even if you try to hire somebody, how do you know who to hire? When don’t have a marketing background yourself. You’re just going to maybe through trial and error, you’ll find somebody, you’re going to blow through a couple grand at least, if not 10s of thousands plus your time so that’s why I like this model is not as marketing intense, it’s just what is the strategy to actually get suppliers to trust you because some of these people have, you know, minimum order price might be quarter million or something like that. But, you know, if I have a conglomerate of stores and we’re all sharing inventory, and now it works, and that’s like a huge you know, hurdle for other people, for other competitors to get in, like, not everybody can write a check for a quarter mil or half a million and buy some inventory. So that’s why I like that, that model barrier to entry for other people is very high. But once you’ve crossed that barrier, everything else is just like logistics of inventory and, and you know, pricing and things like that.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, so a couple points there. I mean, the reselling, that sounds very attractive, but but like you said, if you want to get into it and actually make money, you have to buy it. And as you know, a significant amount. I mean, I had a sister in law who owned a 99 cent store for a couple years and and unfortunately she did succeed with it but the number was because they didn’t have enough income to actually buy it. But you know, a lot of times they were like, well we buy things in pallets. So you know is that kind of what we’re talking about here with you, you’re but you’re probably talking about warehouses of pallets.

Dr. Amir Baluch
I find it depends on the supplier, like let’s say if there’s some product like let’s say some baby toy or a pet toy, and they’re only selling like $10,000 a month on Amazon, you might be able to buy one or two thousand they might appreciate it you know, that’s like 20% now you’re 20% of their of their sales is coming through you but mostly these brands are selling a lot more and on their on the supplier side. Imagine it’s a logistical nightmare for them to work with multiple resellers. Right? Right, right. Suppliers mainly want to work with distributors and the we might actually buy from a distributor because even the suppliers are like man, just leave me out of this mess. So just for logistical reasons why do they want to have a headache, somebody is coming here with like, thousand dollar purchase, like it’s already waste their time to get on the phone with you. So not all the time, but a lot of the time. And so that’s why it makes sense to come in as a conglomerate and buy a huge chunk of inventory at a time. And plus you get better prices and better margins anyway, it just makes sense.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
It does make sense. And I know you do lots of stuff in Amazon, maybe we could just touch on them and maybe why you think it may be good or may not be good for a beginner. I can tell you about it’s just kind of like my own experience and some of my friend’s experiences. Like maybe a few years ago, the big thing was using Amazon is you know, get something created overseas like most likely China, right? Buy it cheap, maybe, maybe make it better, you know, make a make a spatchula, put a little coating on and you make it your own and then for a higher price. Because of different things, administration tariffs, I mean, I know friends whose businesses dropped significantly because they weren’t able to do that. Is that are you still seeing that? Or is that still an issue?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Well, so three years ago, is definitely way more difficult than it is now. Okay, so difficult now, because there’s still 100 steps, but you do have if you if you buy enough software and you’re really good at data analysis, you can prevent some of those losses like you have a better idea of where you’re going to land these days. But you know, a lot of people if the barrier to entry is coming down because of software. Now, the issue is you got more competitors, taking the same course as you to do the same thing, right. So like, you know, one way or other there is there is still supplying and demand there’s still competition out there. But the reason private label, what you’re talking about is private label, making your own brand. It’s so hard because that probably has the most amount of steps, like, get all the way from the very beginning, the manufacturer level, you know, some people, they might even, they might even be successful. They just like, Oh, I didn’t check the trademark, you know, somebody had it, they create this great product, they make some sales for a month, and then they’re gone, because the person has the trademark or, you know, it’s like, hey, that’s mine, you know. There’s like 100 steps and if you mess up on even one, you’re toast. That’s how I think of private label. But these, each one of these steps are doable. And if you do all of them right, then there’s money on the table, usually about 20 to 25% return a month on whatever your product launch cost is. But why go through all that when you know, reselling has the same margins and way less risk. Like not as much steps, right. So that’s why I like wholesale, but we just talking about private label. So that’s why when we go through all that, but it is it is not easy. So many steps. There’s no one source that will tell you all the steps. You know, there’s just not even like the whole game of just getting reviews to grow your brand. I mean, like, if you don’t have sales, you can’t get reviews. If you don’t have reviews, you don’t have sales. That’s a whole thing. You got to overcome.

That alone, makes private label so difficult.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
And exactly, I mean, compared to reselling, I mean, okay, you got a bad review on a Nike, okay? It’s Nike. It’s like, or, you know, whatever that is, it’s the branding. It’s not you. But thanks for addressing that. So, you recently, well, I don’t know how long you’ve been doing this. I just know just you’ve been working with with doctors on this Amazon reselling program, do you might just talking about it and you know, maybe you could share some successes about it, and a little bit more about your program that you’re doing.

Dr. Amir Baluch
Yeah, so about a little more than a year ago, I decided to look back into ecommerce mainly because so many people were asking me to do the marketing for their ecommerce stores. And this is like this is has quintupled in the last three years. Why is this quintupleting? So many people asked to use my marketing company to help them with ecommerce. And then we even did it for some companies like one company called Dubai Diamonds is making like millions of dollars a year just from our marketing. Oh, then it’s like why am I you know, why am I doing that? The only thing I didn’t have was the diamonds like I did the marking that got them the money. So let me jump into ecommerce. Then I had to analyze all the stuff. We talked about how to look at that whole landscape to figure out what’s the lowest risk model. And you know, a lot of people come to me for advice on how to get passive income or a solution. And so like, you know, one of my goals is to actually get a lot of my friends and physician colleagues, at least be able to go part time and enjoy their life a little bit. Just satisfying for me to do that, and I feel like ecommerce was the way to do it once I saw the numbers and what was possible. So, for the last 14-15 months, we’ve been putting this together. And we kind of launched a little bit earlier, I was gonna launch like an at the end of this month, end of October. I don’t know if there’s a timestamp on this video or not but it’s August, August 2020. We’re gonna plan on launching around this time, but that virtual summit was in May. So it’s kind of like we kind of get moving because people can ask me about this.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
All the dates, I didn’t even know we were in August, you know, it’s all been a blur. But, go on.

Dr. Amir Baluch
Now, we’re cranking out we got about, you know, 25 to 50 people in the pipeline at different stages, but I mean, it does take a while that build the store, get the LLC, convince a supplier, give us some product, test the product do all this stuff. So we do have inventory going to the warehouses now and already like we pretty much have locked in profit, like pretty high like significantly higher than 10 to 15%. I want to talk about online and freak people out but, you know, we’re gonna hit our numbers, like for sure. And that’s really cool. Now the next thing is just the logistics of handling the inventory management and stuff like that. I easily gotta double my employees, we got to get to like 50-60 employees like in a month. So, but that’s I’m very happy with that like, basically I have no concern about people making the returns they are supposed to make it just, you know, my concern is how much of a logistical nightmare it’s gonna be for me but you know, we’re gonna have that handled I just got to hire more people basically it’s more like a hiring issue. But I’m happy that the whole system is up in place and is working right now. So you know, I might stop doing a little bit of it becomes too much of a headache like maybe we get to 100 stores, okay, then we stop, and then just grow the focus on growing those stores instead of doing a lot more stores but I do want to I would like to get a lot of stores and, you know, meet my goal of having 1000 doctors go part time and just kind of do medicine, you know, for the love of it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
No doubt, that’s what I’ve been asking and hoping for. But I just want to clarify something. It’s not just like an investment. This is not just like we’re just going to invest, there’s going to be learning about ecommerce not just invest?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Right, because unlike, you know, some of the other investments like my Biotech fund, my real estate deals, you know, it’s usually like a security, you know, you’re going to be a limited partner, you write a check and then that’s it. This is different. I’m actually building stores in the other person’s name like all the money’s in their bank accounts, not in mine. They had to pay for the products when the invoices come in, and all the money goes to their bank account. I don’t get you know, my cut of it until I send them the invoice and then they pay me my cut. So like, they actually own the store, which is great. If anybody is a W-2 and don’t have any tax deductions. Now you actually got a business you start writing all kinds of stuff off. It’s worth it actually, you know, you can do an IRA, you could do all kinds of things, employ your kids or whatever, like, so many crazy things can happen once you actually own your own business. And so that’s another reason I wanted to do it that model versus let me just create 10 stores and create a fund and have that fund, fund inventory, I could do that. And actually, I am doing that I do have an ecommerce fund coming out. But that’s not as helpful to people as me just actually growing their store. And it’s not, it’s not that much more of a headache for me to do that. It’s definitely easier for me just to ecommerce fund and say, hey, here’s your 1% a month, 2% a month, call it a day. But this is like, you know, if you really want to have an impact on the community, I mean, building a business from somebody, you know, with 99.9% chance of success like, this is pretty awesome. And so, so I got to do it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So do the students, do they get to select the products you have, like, here’s a product that we kind of recommend or you? Or do you say, you just do this product, how does that work?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Well, so pretty much it’s all about mathematics like, you know, we have a certain amount of criteria. And then we crunch the numbers. And we look at profit margins that we can make per month. We’re trying to crank out big numbers. My whole team is for the most part commission based so they want the stores just to make big numbers. That’s how they’re financially incentivized. So if somebody says, Oh, can I sell this? Can I sell that? Well, if it doesn’t meet our criteria probably doesn’t meet our criteria, like 90 something percent of products don’t. We can’t have more than 10 competitors, for example. The net profit on the product needs to be at least we’re shooting for at least 15%. You know, but worst case scenario we’re thinking is like 10. We don’t want Amazon to be a player in the game. We don’t want these things to be seasonal. And we have all these criterias like 25 criteria. We got to run every single product to when we’re looking at 100 products a day, we find something that meets the criteria. Okay, it goes into this bucket, let’s contact the supplier. There’s a whole other team that now is making phone calls all day after the product research team is looking through all these hundreds of products. So it’s just like boom, boom, boom like a machine and then whatever comes out just be happy you got that because most people have not found those products. Be happy with like a rinky dink like, we were doing like 20% profit margins on men’s underwear for incontinence in January, 28% in two weeks with saran wrap in March. Why because like supply demand with Coronavirus. I didn’t know we’re going to do that much but Coronavirus you know jacked the profit margins way up. So, you know it’s just math.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I can imagine Coronavirus probably just blew this whole thing up for you guys.

Dr. Amir Baluch
Oh yeah. And some people are feeling like it’s Black Friday every day?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Wow. Wow. Wow. And so I know we’re gonna get a lot of interest in this guys, and just to kind of reiterate, it’s your program and we will leave a link at the end so you can find out more information. Do you vet your students first?

Dr. Amir Baluch
You know, I want to make sure people have the right mindset. Like at the end of the day, this is still a business and there is still some risk. And you know, people do have to be responsible for like bookkeeping and communication with the team and things like that. And so, you know, you got to have a certain mindset about this. So, like, if somebody is completely clueless about business, or even a little bit hesitant, like, you know, just wait for my ecommerce fund and make one or 2% a month, like that’s no problem, that’s easier. But with the store, like I mean, imagine if I send an invoice to somebody and they’re like, not communicating with me or something, or they are, you know, somebody is trying to add other products to their store, and then Amazon shuts them down, like, you know, I’m still paying the overhead for that store. Like, that’s not cool. So, like, you know, we do ask them questions and kind of vet people a little bit and eventually I’ll have like a nice application. Luckily, almost everybody picked up now I already have known them, they’ve already been in projects with me, for the most part, almost everybody. So, you know, for new people, I just got to talk to them and make sure that, that it makes sense. So, you know, they have to be ready for certain things like a lot of emails coming in, constant communication with my team, like, you know, they just got to be ready for that.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So they should probably be ready to have like, at least a virtual assistant of some sort or be able to handle the volume?

Dr. Amir Baluch
I already have it for them, they’ll have an account manager, so we’ll have an account manager for everybody, but at least they need to be just somewhat responsive, like somebody doesn’t check their email for a week. That’s not gonna fly.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Right, right. Right, right.

Dr. Amir Baluch
Yeah, it’ll be like, you know, maybe 10% of people that, you know, maybe shouldn’t do it or something.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Okay. And then you said you mentioned you have like around 25 or 30 people right now, and you’re looking maybe, at least at this level, take them on maybe another 60-70 more, is that right?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Yeah, I think once we get to 100 we need to stop and reevaluate and see where we’re at, and see if we would just want to boost up the ecommerce fund and then grow those hundred accounts. Or let’s take those hundred accounts and let’s go to 1,000. You know, because there are some benefits. And when we have a lot of stores, I mean, I could put the same product in multiple stores and flood the market and get more market share. Like, there’s all kinds of competitive advantage. We can have, even with suppliers and things like that, like when they see or when they just hear we represent like a conglomerate of stores like that already turned some of these guys on, they never heard that they already want to return my phone call. So you know, the bigger the more numbers we have, you know, the more negotiation power we have, to an extent.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
The secret to any business is making sure that whatever you’re going into, there needs to be some type of barrier to entry. You know, there’s a lot of courses out there on Amazon some good courses. We talked about this beforehand, but there’s nothing more important than having a unfair advantage and it sounds like with the numbers that you have, as well as the relationship with some of these vendors you have. You may have this unfair advantage. Is that fair to say?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Yes, we definitely have some significant advantages and some I won’t even mention on here, but we’re very comfortable with, I’ll just put it that way, we’re very comfortable doing what we’re doing right now.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, guys, so I think if you’re interested, we’ll leave a link here. You can find out more information. Amir or somebody from his team will talk to you to see if you’re the right fit. But yeah, I think this is really something that may be very attractive to others. Any last minute thoughts before we end the call to remember so much wisdom that you shared with us, we probably are going to need to come back for at least or at least another episode.

Dr. Amir Baluch
I want to talk to you about you know, your experience with med spas of wellness centers. I mean, we got so much to talk about and you know, we could have broken up this into different segments too. So oyu know, maybe we might do that we’ll maybe just find out what the feedback is from everybody out there and if they wanted to expand on this or that we could maybe do something more in depth on one topic. Like if people want to know like, you know, how do you get a business loan? Where do you find a business broker? How do you even go about that? That might be valuable.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Oh ya, so valuable or they could just watch a YouTube video. I’m here with Amir Baluch this has been tremendous again, your ecommerce, do you have an official name for your program?

Dr. Amir Baluch
Global eCommerce Consultants.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Global eCommerce Consultants we’ll leave a link so you can take advantage of that. Sounds like a no brainer to me. Amir, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing with everybody. You know, there’s a lot that I can learn from you most definitely. But you’re definitely I am saying this in the nicest way possible, you’re like the the most unique doctor I’ve met, at least in a few months so I appreciate that.

Dr. Amir Baluch
Glad you had me on here it was fun talking.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Alright guys, it’s been great and as always you know, don’t just be envious of others when I just go out there sometimes you need to go out there you know, pick yourself up and just do it, just kind of what Amir did. So as always guys, whatever you do keep moving forward.

Hey guys well I hope you like that interview I hope your amazed as much as I was when it was happening in real time. Something really cool happened after we ended the podcast. We actually talked for probably another hour or so swapping stories, entrepreneurial stories, things that we’ve done. I was all in on on the ecommerce now, ecommerce is something I don’t talk a lot about. We’ve had some minor successes, you know selling products but we do things differently. We did private label products. And there’s a couple things that I know about Amazon and, what Amir is doing has overcome these obstacles. The first thing, it’s a lot harder to get your Amazon store up and running. There are things you need to do to even get your application being accepted in certain categories like health or beauty. So he already has relationships with that to help people who want to get their store helped them get in. Number two is he need access to quality products, products where people are very comfortable in purchasing. And he does that because he has a giant, giant network and he’s able to buy as a group in bulk at a much cheaper price than just like the regular Joe or Jill, just like you and me do where they’re going to charge you at a higher price. And of course, the third thing, which I didn’t mention, the third thing and probably most important. He’s already had a pattern of success. But don’t take my word for it. Go right now, if you’re listening, can’t stop at the side of the road, put it in Globalecommerceconsultants.com. And he actually has screenshots of his Amazon stores and how they’re just killing it right now. So he wants to let you know that after talking, I said, This is amazing. I’m in so he’s helping me build my own Amazon store. And he said, if your listeners are interested, I want to help them too. But I can only take a few number of people because I want to make sure that these folks are being taken care of and we want to make sure that they understand the process because it’s not for everyone. I mean, although it is an investment there is you know, a little work that you need to do you know, maybe once a week, checking emails, those those kinds of things, and but you got to be comfortable. So go to Globalecommerceconsultants.com and go sign up for a you know, it’s free. You can talk to Amir, ask any questions, he’s one of us. He’s an anesthesiologist. He’s had a track record of success. But, of course, in anything you do, you want to do your due diligence. It’s got to comfortable for you. It was for me, but I might be at a different place than you are. You need to be comfortable with that as well. But what he did tell me is for my BootstrapMD, network family, he’s going to arrange some type of special deal for you guys. So let him know that I sent them to your way. I do know that, he said I’m only taking a small number of doctors that want to make sure that the these guys have been taken care of and then let me know, because I want to make sure that you’re being taken care of as well. So with that, guys, thanks again for being a fan and being a supporter of this BootstrapMD podcast. I want you to keep on working on that next revenue stream of income for you and I’ll talk to you soon.

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

OUR CONTACT INFO

BootstrapMD
c/o MWM Holding
1537 Grand Ave Ste D
San Marcos CA 92078

info AT mwmpro DOT com
760-518-4809

 

Like Us On Facebook

FREE MASTERCLASS

Become a High Paid, In Demand Physician Consultant