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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.

Filed Under: Articles, Entrepreneurship, Outsourcing, Training Tagged With: 123employee, daven michaels, virtual assistants for doctors, virtual assistants for physicians

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Inside The World of Physician Coaching with Sunny Smith, MD Part 2

We continue the conversation with Dr. Sunny Smith, an academic physician, and now one of the most well-known physician life coaches in the country (So be sure to catch the first part of the interview, If you missed it).  We explore her journey to becoming a life coach, who she met that changed the trajectory of her life, and the impact of the pandemic, which has caused some doctors to take a second look on their own career.  She also gives hope for doctors who are in a state of flux and are looking for assistance from.a colleague.

To see the first part of the interview: Click here

Coaching with Dr. Sunny Smith:
https://empoweringwomenphysicians.com/coaching/

RAW TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
One point that you you brought up was that it totally cements it for me is with doctors. And I’ve said this before, and they don’t like to hear it is that we’re followers, we tend to do what we have a linear path, right? We don’t need to go out to become a doctor, we need to go get good grades in college and get the MCAT scores high enough, go to med school, residency, and then work at some place. And in back in my day, it was the idea was that I would work someplace for the next 30 to 40 years, get my pension and then then retire. We know that doesn’t work these days. Right? And I can just imagine how it was when you went to like your first life coach conference, and it’s like, Marie Forleo is talking on stage. Yeah, it’s like I never even heard about this. You know, I was lucky. Because in my 10- 15 years ago, guys, you mentioned like Stu McClaren, James Wedmore, they were those were in my groups. These are guys who I know, personally, and I didn’t have any other doctors who were doing that it’s, it’s it’s doing this we’ve got yourself, Peter, all these other doctors who realize because that the one that really resonate with you because it was another doctor, another doctor, and we don’t get exposures to that in medical school we’re reading Principles of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Sunny Smith
Fauci, Harrison.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
That’s right. All right, you know, but some of us are reading Tony Robbins and some of us getting Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and then you realize, hey, some of the stuff in the book actually works. They don’t have to be MDs, and there’s another way of looking at life that I think Like coaching helps out is is uncovering that because they don’t know that there is a way out

Dr. Sunny Smith
and integrates it. That’s what I think are ways. It’s like there’s this there’s the James Wedmore Tony Robbins, Stu McLaren like I literally no joke. It is not made up like a two in the morning. I was watching James Wedmore last night because it’s supposed to be DVD right now and I’m in Southern California so I can go to all these events easily. A lot of these things are in California, It’s DVD live right now. It’s supposed to be okay. We’re in a pandemic. We’re on lockdown. There’s no DVD live except for recorded. So anyway, so I was watching him the other night, but there’s like that world. And then there’s the doctor world and they’re forever separated and would never cross. Right. But then so I was at a woman physician conference, like How did I end up sort of in this with this crew? Is that because there’s like training into Life Coach School, but then how did I get friends who actually did this was I went to a normal it was an orange county women in medicine and there’s an episode about it on my podcast. And some woman, a normal woman physician who worked for Kaiser was like, Hey, I heard you’re a coach. Have you ever been to a Tony Robbins event? I was like now? I mean, I’d heard of him. I think I owned awaken the giant within book or something, you know, but like, I don’t know that I ever really read it. Everybody knows who he is. And she’s like, No, you really have to go. And I was like, Okay, and then then I went to, like, the little dinner that they have the conference and she like, came and found me. And she’s like, Listen, she needed to tell me she was compelled to tell me the story of how her life like she was in big trouble in her life. And it was transformed in a weekend. And I was like, That just sounds culty and creepy and weird. I don’t know. And then so, so that was like a couple months earlier, and then it was matchday and I’m in charge, like a happy Match Day. You know, like, I have to be there. At least that’s the story. I was taught myself that yes, I was supposed to be there. And Tony Robbins was coming to town to LA on Match Day. And I’m like, no and so so she she kept texting me text me I’m like it’s Match Day. She’s like, you have to come you have to come and she was like volunteering there is like the staff people. And so I was like fine I’ll drive up the night before I and then you have to walk on fire it up the first night, you know, you like walk on coals. And so and they’re like, chanting all this stuff. And I’m like, What is this is walking into that type of thing. Like what have I got myself into? Why am I here? I need to get back to match day. This is crazy. But because I was there, I was like, I have to walk on the fire. Right? Because that’s like a thing. And so it didn’t even start that part of it like 12 or one in the morning. It’s like, Come on, hurry up with a firewalking. It’s not really fire. It’s cold. Okay, so so then I did and then I got home at three in the morning. And so sleepy driving and then I went to match day and then I had to decide, am I going back for the next day? And I was like, well Yeah, I’m just gonna go. And then that’s the day I met Peter and Kenji and Lottie and Bonnie had hooked us up because she knew they were there. And we all were brand new that day to this environment. Yeah, we did entrepreneur stuff ourselves. But like, just that took it to a whole nother level. And I believe that a lot of our success is because we’ve been continually exposed to that for the past year, at many events and many things like HIPAA, if any physician entrepreneur wants to go to an event, they’re going to be creeped out if you’re not familiar with this, but go to his business mastery, because it’s, it’s just like, he makes you champ stuff that becomes like in your bones, you know, like, I am a leader. I will believe not doubt, you know, like, there’s just a lot of good stuff. So long story, but yeah, and so now so now Okay, so now what we have is we have the overlap is that there are physicians who represent the integration of both of those worlds. Find those people Hang around those people.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
It is okay to go to a conference where they don’t have to give CME.

Dr. Sunny Smith
So here’s what I did. I did coaching with no CME for like the first year or so. And people have this idea, though, that they can’t spend money on themselves because they don’t fish doctors don’t want to be selfish. They don’t want to, you know, spend money on just personal things. And so I’m like, Okay, listen, I’m a medical educator as a profession. I can get see me so I got to see me like, Look, now you can come and see me that make it easier for you. Yeah, and so some of it is like, some people who work with me it’s like 100% free because their employer reimburses them for the entire amount. That’s amazing. And and it’s real. So like the nation’s leading experts in physician wellness just did a randomized control trial. It’s published in JAMA that position colors right, exactly improving needed in the curriculum. Yeah, so like, it’s it’s for real and we’re trying to get better about doing it. med schools and residences is becoming very standard. I personally think we’re totally on the tipping point. I’m actually I didn’t put it in my anything that I sent you and you would have no way of knowing I don’t think but like, I mean, I’m the lead coach for the California Medical Association care for caregivers now. Okay. So during the, during the company, pandemic, would they were the California Medical Association was like, What do we do? How can we contribute? We’re the California Medical Association. We’re like the biggest organization in medicine, you know, underneath ama, because California so big, what can we do and the CEO of physician wellness there, he’s one that has been one of the deans of the USC School of Business. And so he’s a business executive. He’s a New York Times bestseller, and he’s a trained coach and wrote a book on coaching and he’s like, I need coaching.

Dr. Sunny Smith
Like, we just want to and it’s not like coaching them to get over it. It’s like you’re struggling and you’re we want to recognize you’re human. manatee have someone listen to you, and help you through this super hard time. And so that gentleman called me because he’s heard me speak and he was like, Listen, will you do this with me? We’ve got no money. We but this is important. I’m like, hell yes, of course, I’m going to do this with you. And we’ve trained way over 100 physicians to be peer support for other physicians in California right now. So anyway, but but my point about that is, why did he come to that conclusion? Because he’s the Dean of a business school. Right? no medical school person would probably be like, let’s go get a whole bunch of coaches. Right. So so I do see this as like a merger of the worlds now coming together.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming

Well, it’s finally changing. I mean, I remember talking with a doctor and they stole resumes from a years ago. She’s a radiologist, you wanted to start our own business? And she says, I’m depressed last year. How long have you been depressed? I’ve been depressed for 25 years. I can’t, but she doesn’t have any avenue for where to go to. And I said, Well, why are you doing something that you’re depressed about? She She would talk about how the thing that she hated the most was waking up. Because waking out means I can go to a job that I hate. And well, why are you in that job? Because I have a lifestyle that I have to. Well, we know you’ve heard it all before. It was taboo. You know, now we’ve got coaching and we’ve have this available but still, we’re still a minority here, not on still know about it. But you know, like yourself and others that are now enriching this, with all this engraving exactly what we’ve been talking about this new mindset, which isn’t really new, it’s just a different

Dr. Sunny Smith
one. So interesting. I love that you said that it isn’t this new mindset, and then right away, like it isn’t really new. So like, I was involved in this project, where we flew across the world to go see the Dalai Lama and asked him what to do about physician distress. Wow. And it was amazing, like life changing was exactly a week, a year ago. And he said to me, and I was you know, on there on university business, and he said to me training of the mind, I’m like, No, but so I have to make a curriculum. I have to like, you know, the system is so bad and there’s this and there’s that all these details and he’s like, suffering is in the mind training of the mind if they believe They can improve things or improve their life. He’s like the secret to world peace, his inner peace, you need to like work on their minds. And I was like, holy crap. So and then I worked a lot with his interpreter and who has been his interpreter for 30 and runs his own compassion Institute now and so they made this partnership with the University and a historic hundred million dollar grant that we received or gifts that we received. That is incredible. But the point is, so we need so when he comes jinpa is the person for not he’s probably pretty much like the most amazing human that I’ve ever met. And just so yeah, there’s my husband, and then there’s jinpa, but like the profound deep wisdom, that because he’s a Buddhist monk, and he was and he is a PhD from Cambridge, but like, he reads all these ancient texts from millennia like when he comes to talk at our school when we have the launch of the Institute. He He put up a slide. Like I sat right next to I’m so grateful like, it’s such a life moment to have someone like that come to medical school, right and be like to try to teach your students the secrets to the universe and like how to be not suffer so much in medicine. And he said, he got up there. And he said exactly what you said, the first thing he said was, so, I know this sort of like neuroscience of this is new, because we’re studying the neuroscience of compassion. He’s like, but these concepts are millennia old. Right? And all these coaching concepts, they all go back to stuff that’s in ancient, not all of it, but a lot of is like in ancient Buddhist texts, right? Like arguing with reality, suffering is in the mind, like there’s just so much of it, even in the Bible asking you shall receive. It’s like the wisdom, it’s human wisdom. It’s something that’s been around for as long as people have been telling each other stories, but somehow it’s become a little bit more marginalised and interestingly, sometimes there are things we tell our children. So you’ll find them in children’s books, or, you know, growth mindset stuff, we try to teach our kids. But as adults, we just kind of like put it away. And we think it’s not really for us, because we’re like nine to five, we got stuff to do. Mm hmm. If you just kind of have enough space, which you rarely do, because especially in the United States, we don’t get that much vacation. And, you know, it’s just our work ethic. It’s just it’s not that much downtime to have space to reflect. But when you do, I mean, these ancient truths are always available to us. We just don’t make the space and time for them. So I find it very, very interesting. What are we going to do with this one wild and precious life like, like 45 years in I’m like, okay, 45 to go if I’m lucky, that let’s do the rest on purpose. I had an amazing life so far, right? Like I could, I thought I might die a handful of times, but like, for instance, after that bike accident, and I said to My husband, I was like, I was crying. We were both crying. I was like, I lived a good life, babe. Thank you. Well, but, but I made it, obviously. And the truth is like, that’s an inflection point. And now the rest gets to be more on purpose and more on my terms.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
So, this is a bit amazing. And it seems like in the last five years, how much you’ve grown in that span of five years. And what you continue to it’s, I mean, who knew you’d be talking to the Dalai Lama? Right?

Dr. Sunny Smith
You know, oh, my God, I can’t you know, this podcast is probably way too long to edit a bunch of

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
two parter, I think.

Dr. Sunny Smith
Great idea two parter, okay. I tend to be as you know, from my Facebook posts, I tend to be loquacious. So I tend to talk a lot but, um, it’s just my style. It’s who I am. I blocked a lot of opinions. But so how I ended up there, I wasn’t supposed to Stand up there. And I honestly believe if I did not have coaching in my life, I never would have been invited. Because I’m so the Vice Chancellor was going and the person who was the Dean of neurosciences who became in charge of the compassion Institute once it was funded, and it was totally his idea and doing and he came from Stanford, he wanted to get there and came here 10 years ago. And so there was a meeting, and the two of them were supposed to go to India. And I’m like, I want to go and be like, yeah. They said, maybe you could meet the Dalai Lama when he comes back to San Diego because he’s been to UCSD but he’s not gonna come right now for various reasons that I won’t get into. Um, and I put on such a coach like, I put on my “she believes she could so she did” bracelet and I went into the room with Jin Pa, we had to present to Jin Pa. And I just lead with passion like everyone else actually had PowerPoints, and I didn’t know we were supposed to have PowerPoints. So I just thought was gonna be like an open hour for discussion. And I was there to talk about the med student component and various things. And I just really lead with my why and my passion and why this matters. I mean, I, you know, it would be a whole nother five podcast episodes to talk about why physician health matters and why physician mental health matters. I mean, the entire society depends on our well being. We are all patients at some point, right? We all need doctors, what if all the doctors leave? Or what if there’s not enough like, we it’s just our health, our mental health is of the utmost importance to society. So, um, anyway, so I just talked and it was I was so as you talked about gratitude earlier. I had so much gratitude that my institution was totally Talking about and caring about investing in, in a very significant way, distress of our students, and distress of our physicians. And you never know how things are going to go right. But even the fact that jinpa was in that room with us and we were having that conversation and I had a seat at the table, I was like, my mind is blown right now. I can’t believe the possibilities that there are here. And so anyway, I was like, I’m just so grateful and I’m just I’m so excited. And I mean, it’s couldn’t like the best day of my life. And so I leave and I get an email from the Chancellor shortly after this like jinpa says, you have to come he says we need that girl hmm because I just believed I’m like I if there’s a project about compassion and and I’m no longer doing that, so like to be official like I don’t want anyone to think that I’m still doing that work, right? Like I I feel the compassion In part, I officially stepped down. And that was the point actually where I was feeling like, how am I going to do this university versus outside work? Because is there some overlap But anyway, I haven’t formally stepped down from or stepped away or moved on from that. So I just think it’s incredibly important. And I think

I think I believed I belonged in the room if we were going to talk about that, because at my university, I’m like, who, from my university, run the free clinic. And I have various reasons and various students and various things history where I really care about those students well being so many people do, but like, it’s my heart, it’s my soul. And so if anyone’s going to talk about that, you’ve got to bring me so I was just like, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go I’m gonna go we’re gonna make this work. Somehow this is going to happen. And then oh, and then, um, he got pneumonia and then To cancel the trip, the Dalai Lama got pneumonia. He was home, and they canceled the trip all together. And then they moved it to a few weeks later. And then that was the date of that trial I was telling you about I was supposed to go to trial for $25 billion lawsuit, but it was someone who had a broken ankle, and we obviously weren’t gonna settle my insurance company was like, hell no, so they wouldn’t settle for a broken ankle. So other people are like, well, then we’re gonna take you to trial better. And so they were saying I couldn’t go, because you have to be here in person to go. But you know, they’re not gonna really So anyway, I call my lawyer. I’m like, Listen, that’s another she believes she couldn’t like I know, you say you can’t move my trial. But you move that trial. We have to move the trial because it was a big secret at the time that we were going to see the Dalai Lama. But I told him, and so I was like, so you have to so I went and it was it was amazing. I mean, it’s, it for me really validated. Exactly what I’m doing now. training of the mind training of the mind training of the money so that it’s the secret to everything. And the Buddhists have known it forever. And I just wasn’t paying attention. It’s always been available to me. I was just too busy to see it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
And that’s my thing. You know whether whatever you believe in, whether it’s God, the universe, whatever He always comes back is when you give, it always comes back a thousandfold. It always, always seems to work that way.

Dr. Sunny Smith
Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, that’s absolutely and there is because again, there’s the neuroscience, like we were you, coaches in general have some idea. Some of them have some idea about the neuroscience of it. But because, you know, we were in this Neuroscience Institute, I was paying a lot more attention to the neuroscience of it. And here’s the thing like there’s a helpers Hi, it’s real. Like you get dopamine, you want to help people. So empathy is seeing someone suffering, right. Like if I see you’re suffering, like say, You’re bleeding or something, and I just have to watch and like, Oh my god, that poor guy, he’s suffering, he’s bleeding. That’s painful. That causes distress in my amygdala, you can measure it in the neck. MRI. And if you even just allow me to imagine that I’m helping you, the distress and lighting up in my brain in the middle of fMRI goes down, but if you actually let me help you, it really releases neuro chemicals. It. It’s I think that’s why I’ve spent my whole life running a free clinic and advising students in distress. And now coach, there’s, it feels good to help so help people. And then I think if you really do that with a good heart, then it comes back to you when you go into business. Or when you when it comes time if you’re an internet person when you do cart open, like if you’ve been helping and helping and helping when you do cart open, people are like, I want to work with her. She’s so great. And it whereas if you’re like grasping, greedy, you know what I mean? Like I’m in it for me, I deserve this. They’re like, Who are you? You know, why do you want to be that way? So like, always have a heart of service. I feel like it’s a continuation of the journey, but I do think it is worship, yes, you need to have boundaries, right? Like, I get a lot of requests for one on one coaching right now. And I have a method for that in my program, but I personally can’t do it. There’s just too many people. So what I do is I group people together. And it’s equally if not more profound, to have a group that you do it with for all those reasons that we just talked about, and they still get one on one, but this is sort of, you know, just 2020 for me where that I’m not personally doing all of the one on ones, you know, I’m bringing in people who I know and trust and here’s what I do is I bring the medical education, assessments and see me assessments. Unlike Likert, scale one to five. The teaching was excellent. The coaching was excellent, the you know, have outcomes measures. And my last cohort, like the measures are 4.8 to 4.9 on every single item, and as a course director, I can tell you because I reviewed many courses And many faculty emails because I’m on the committee that reviews the faculty for promotion. You can never see 4.9 like it doesn’t it doesn’t run the free clinic and ours aren’t that high. It’s people love this work. It matters to them. It matters to their husband. I did like a little live q&a last night. Because people have lot of questions because physicians aren’t familiar with this work. So I’m like, I’ll just go on zoom, just like we are right now. Live. I’ll answer. I’ll answer any questions you have. And like a lady popped on with her husband sitting next to her. And the husband wasn’t coaching the husband, I was coaching the wife. He was like, this has changed my life. I’m a different person. She’s a different person. He said she’s a better mother. She’s a better mom. I mean, sorry, mom, wife, Doctor, sister, and person he said, you know, and if some there’s some kind of thing What is it like? Mama ain’t happy. Ain’t no one happy something like that type of thing and happy wife. happy life. He’s like this. program has changed our whole family. So it’s just like the ripple effect. I think it’s real. Right? Whoo. But here’s what we do. The model that I was taught in is think feel act, and then you get the results. So you have to change how you think first, otherwise, the action doesn’t matter. Because you can do all the same actions and doesn’t really come out the same if you don’t believe it’s gonna work. So think feel act. So then you go act in the world, you gather data, I love to think of it as scientific experiments. Everything you do in business is just a scientific experiment. You do something, you get some data, you begin again, better informed. And you just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. So that’s what we do with people

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
saying this has been amazing. I think we’re gonna have to do a two part. It’s almost a three part. Now, but there’s so much I wanted to talk about, but I do I don’t want to end this just yet. Because you’re doing some things this summer that I want you to share with our audience today. Tell me about the coaching program.

Dr. Sunny Smith
So I dragged I’m always I’m such a proponent of coaching, like in real life with my real friends and with anyone who listen, um, that I kind of dragged Hala into it. I didn’t drag her. I talked about how amazing it is she saw these things, she started experiencing it. And so now, she too, has gone through the program. And so both of us are going to team up together to help physicians, because I was working with a team of physicians already and I’m still going to be working with a team of physicians, but she kind of also brings an additional level, because I bring the expert coaching all of these coaches are amazing. And as she brings the like, so not only my coach, but I also you know, was just running this national television international television show. I’m also a consultant to Facebook. I’m also like a digital distributor. She has like all these she knows everyone. She’s a great mentor. All this stuff. So she’s has a lot of skills that a lot of physicians don’t have. And so we’re going to bring her she’s going to co lead it with me. And then we’re going to bring other folks who also have, because this summer in particular, let me just back up for a second and say, because of the pandemic, so I launched my last program, March 1, March 11, there was a pandemic. So I spent no joke and I was still doing one on ones until just now like, I’m just I’ve been cutting back cutting back so and I do all the groups, so not all of them. I do a lot of groups. So I coached hundreds of hours of physicians, myself, during a pandemic, where they saw their income go completely away completely. You know, we never thought our income would go away. I mean, that’s the one thing as a physician we always knew, right? No matter what, when no matter how what happens in the economy, ever Everything contained. We’re still

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
gonna make six big RPC people.

Dr. Sunny Smith
Yeah. And we went from multiple six figures to z row. And not only temporary zero fired, furloughed

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
filing for unemployment.

Dr. Sunny Smith
Yeah. No joke filing. This is not a joke. People think this is a joke. No, they’re filing for unemployment. And they’re in the red. Because if they have that heart where they’re there, they own their own practice and they want to keep their staff. Many of them, some of them are working. These are real people. I’m not making up these stories, right, working full time for zero dollars. And there are many people whose practices were like, well, we’re just going to take zero dollars for three months as physicians. We want to pay the staff and some people are still in the red, right in the red and are working like he imagined any other worker. It was like, okay, it’s gonna cost you 35 Not going to work this month you want to go? Oh, no. So anyway, so because I was coaching so many people for so many hours on so many different things through this pandemic, and we had to coach through that, and 95, we had to coach through, you know, you’re going into your first COVID patient, you you, we had coaches who got COVID, we had clients who got COVID. This is legit, it’s real. You have enough people, you get enough exposure to all this stuff. So, and people started asking me how I never intended to be a business coach. I’m a wellness person, right? But they’re like, how do you do it? I see you doing it. How can you tell me this? Can you tell me that? And then Peters conference came, and almost every one of my personal sessions started being like, so I’m seeing this person in the summit. And they would give all kinds of examples. And this is what I’m thinking for me. And I’m seeing this and this is what I’m thinking from and I’ve seen this. And so we had been talking about what the next version because my program was set to run At the end of May, what the next version of it would be. And so that’s why the next version of it, I’m very purposely bringing in successful, multiple six figure businesses that are physicians who also practice clinical medicine. But they are practicing clinical medicine because they want to, it’s on their terms. And they know, they know, they know what it’s like to be in arena. They know what it’s like to have all kinds of stuff happen. And then like, so I just asked them I’m like, will you come in? Will you come in you remember how I have this great coaching program? They all know, you know, will you come in? And because I teach in their courses, like, you know, letting Can you teach on real estate, so I come to the coaching, or Bonnie did money. So I came in and did the coaching. And so I’m like, well, you guys come and be an example of what is possible for my people and be mentored Horse and be advocates and be advisors. And they’re like, yeah, course. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do life because it’s all about life, right? Like, everything is integrated. And then we’re for those who are interested, and everybody who listens to your podcast, obviously be interested or they wouldn’t be listening. There will be intensive business guidance as well. Am I going to be Stu McLaren or James Wedmore or Amy Porterfield? No, those you can get that stuff elsewhere. Right. But like, I’m going to be we’re going to be how to physicians do this? What do you need to know and then guide people? What’s your first step? They come up with it? Okay. Next week. Then we see how went right. And then they’ll see a group of people who are going from either nothing in the business world to something or there are people who’ve already signed up who had amazingly meaningful physician contract. Like there’s a woman who is a radiation oncologist who

they do breast cancer stuff. And so she found that her patients couldn’t wear a bra. And she couldn’t find they couldn’t find any bras that were comfortable. So she started a company and went through all kinds of stuff already. And now she, you know, sort of posted this thing in that Facebook group of the accelerator thing that people are continuing on as a membership. Or she’s like a now and you can totally tell that she’s in the personal development coaching space, or she’s been coached by her language. Because she’s like, I’m the CEO of my own life now, like this is it there’s a lot of failure, a lot of failure and all that failure brought me to the model that I have now of what I’m doing, and that’s why I’m doing it well. And so those, you know, there’s people who are doing it, who are even enrolled. Does that make sense? So it’s like the whole you have the whole it’s like the having a first year, second year, third year, fourth year med student along with the residents along with With the junior attendings along with the senior attendings, and it’s like, see one do one teach one is the way I think it is. Yep. It’s something we know something we believe in something. We know works. Medicine is an apprenticeship. That’s what medicine is. It’s like being a carpenter, but different, you know, but you see the person ahead of you, and you’re like, Oh, this is how you examine lungs, tell a patient, they have cancer, you know, whatever it is, it’s an apprenticeship you watch, and then you emulate. So that’s sort of what this is. And again, for those who aren’t interested in business, that’s totally fine. Because we’re separating the business calls because that’s what my coach does, too. She has life calls. And then she has business calls. And it works really well. So and then we have that we’ll have the like, access experts type of thing. So thank you so much for I mean, I’ve been talking about that for very long. It’s thank you so much for asking, being so interested.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
That’s awesome. And it sounds like the business…

Dr. Sunny Smith
I need to bring you! I have to bring you, you’re getting an invitation this very second.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
This has been amazing. The Yeah, we could talk to you, you know, so much life experience. You didn’t read this in a book. Oh, you got to do it. live with it and so many principles that you’ve mentioned, you know, definitely around the same way of like, thanks again, Dr. Sunny Smith. We’ll have a link to the program on the show notes here. Any last words of advice before we end the call today or call Stig?

Dr. Sunny Smith
Oh, that’s a really good question. I think dream for your listeners dream. And then believe whatever that dream is. Find it first. That maybe just maybe it might be possible. Love it. Love it. That’s it, and then you start taking action.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Thank you so much, Dr. Smith. This has been incredible. We’ll do this again. Hopefully we can do this on a physical realm sister down the street. Yeah. Thanks, guys for listening. And as always keep moving forward.

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A Membership Site for Non-Clinical Doctors

When I was looking to see what my options I had as a clinical doctor interested in leaving the bedside many many moons ago, there wasn’t much.  How things have changed in the last year! 
However, the amount of info is almost overwhelming and it can be daunting to separate truth from fiction. 
When I heard that a couple of family doctors were putting together a membership site to help navigate doctors looking for non-clinical opportunities I needed to learn more.  I talk with the founders of Clinicians Careers Cooperative, Dr. John Jurica and Dr. Tom Davis, on why they decided to put together this groundbreaking educational portal and what they foresee as its impact in the future.

Join Clinicians Careers Cooperative Today and receive my special bonus “A Roadmap to Your Non-Clinical Career”, a simple checklist to help those wanting to make a change:

RAW TRANSCRIPT
Hey guys, it’s Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD. We’ve got a first here I know I’m late to the zoom thing, but I’ve never had multiple guests on. So with the era of technology, even this 50 plus year old can finally figure out how to do it. So on the podcast is if you’re watching we’ve got these two gentlemen, both family doctor trained actually We’re all family doctors. But anybody is doing this full time and part of it is because is because we’ve gotten into different careers and that’s what it’s all about here today is me talking about clinical doctors, physicians who are interested in other ways, whether it be starting a new job in a non clinical career or starting your own business consulting. You name it. This is why it’s we brought these two gentlemen on the call today they started the clinical careers. cooperative. Have I Got that? Right? I call it the Triple C, and it’s just launched. They’re going to talk all about it, and more importantly, why you need to join it. And privileged to have on the call with me is Dr. Tom Davis. And dr. John Jurica. Welcome, guys. Thank you for being here.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
Oh, go ahead and talk now. We’ve had John Jurica if you’ve been following me on the BootstrapMD podcast. I’ve had john on it a couple times, and you’ve probably seen this man. His name is Everywhere he just shamelessly promotes like no other doctor that I know. But you may not have been from Dr. Tom Davis, who comes from Missouri, I believe, and the whole story. Is that right? Yes, it is your right. Awesome. So I’m a little thrown off by the Hawaiian background, but we’ll kind of figure it out. And we’ll find to kind of figure out what that’s all about. But he’s him and dr. john de rica got together and started this clinical careers cooperative. We’re going to talk all about it. But Tom, I would like to introduce you first I I just introduced your story. I know your family physician trained, but now you have a very thriving consulting business among the many things that you do so Tom, let us know more about you on the call today.

DR. TOM DAVIS:
Well, thanks, Mike. And I want you to know that I to shamelessly promote just probably in a little different circles than other folks. I’m Mike. I’m a board certified family doctor and I came out of my residency in 1994 and joined a teeny tiny single specialty group, right out of residency in rural Missouri about the same time that we signed the first total risk Medicare Advantage contract offered anywhere in the country that was 1994. If you would imagine that Well, I was very fortunate, nobody else knew what to do with it. So finally, they let our little teeny tiny practice, my partners were just very far seeing. And 18 years later, we sold the health system that we created on the back of that contract and others like it to a regional competitor for $132 million. Wow. And I use that number to impress the business guys. But what should impress everybody who’s listening is the fact that for 18 years, I got to practice medicine, like I was trained to with autonomy. It was like the I was a small town doctor, I got to do what was needed. It was like dancing on air. So after I realized that an employment situation was not a good thing, Fit. I decided to go out and teach mentor other clinicians and businesses and insurance companies sell systems and how to do what I did. And while I was doing that, I got to rub elbows, everywhere across the country, I mean, everywhere with a bunch of very, very unhappy doctors. And I also got to see how they were treated. Because when the boardroom door closes, and you’re standing in the back of the room, they kind of forget you’re a doctor. And they think that you’re a business person or consultant in some of the things that I saw. Were horrific, for lack of a better term. And so I decided to dedicate some of my time to help clinicians who did not have the opportunities I did kind of pay my, my, my good fortune forward and help them navigate in alternative worlds. One of the benefits Mike of doing what I did is I got to rub elbows with a bunch of venture Apple types and they gave me a heads up, though eight years ago that they were going to start lobbying the state legislators to expand telemedicine authority. So I got in telemedicine pretty early and created my own telemedicine practice as an independent contractor. And I teach clinicians how to do that as a as a great way to kind of decompress for the first couple years off the treadmill as they try to decide what they do. And now I’m in the I’m also working on helping clinicians start their own cash pay practices through a variety of vehicles. So it’s really just kind of, I feel kind of like Forrest Gump. Sometimes I kind of go where the wind blows. I just been fortunate to be there before the wind starts blowing.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
Now, are you still practicing medicine or is your other ventures kind of taken that away from you?

DR. TOM DAVIS:
I am absolutely I practice I supervise nurse practitioners and I practice telemedicine 10 hours a week. I try to live the life that I advocate and I mentor in that way one It makes me better mentor just like practicing medicine makes us all better. Better doctors, but to it also kind of demonstrates that, you know, I’m not just blowing smoke. I mean, it should never take advice from someone who they themselves. It’s not free. And so I’m free to do what I want. And I’m hoping that that convinces some of these just terribly impaired physicians who are just trapped on the treadmill to actually look up, look around and see what else is out there.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
Thanks, Tom. And I hate to take the spotlight away from you. But john has been needling me. But you know, he’s got a lot of fans a lot of fans of John Jurica out there. And

DR. TOM DAVIS:
Why do you think I partnered with him?

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
They’ve been clamoring…and they want to know “we need more John Jurica!” John, for the seven people who don’t know who you are. Can you tell us in a nutshell, who you are. And interestingly, how did you guys to meet up and start Okay, let me give you my quick intro now.

DR. JOHN JURICA:
Oh, yeah. I’ll tell you how Tom and I met you know, it’s sometimes hard to remember those things when they go back few years but if family physician, I worked my way into my first full time non clinical job as a senior VP and Chief Medical Officer for a hospital did that for a few years, and I got tired of it and I want to do something entrepreneurial. So I opened an urgent care center. And when I did that, I had a little more free time. So I started doing a blog, which led into my podcast, which is how a lot of people know me. And then shortly after I started the podcast, I got involved with a Facebook group called physician, non clinical career hunters. So that’s pretty well known. There’s almost 14,000 members in that group right now. And then more recently, I opened a non clinical Career Academy, which is a paid site course the podcast is free. And then Tom and I went into this new venture now, how did I meet Tom, you know, okay, Tom, I don’t know that I met you at the seek meeting. You might have to remind me but we’ve known each other for a couple of years, we’ve been sort of talking about doing something together. And then you came up with this fantastic idea that we can talk a little bit more about in a minute. But do you remember how we actually first met?

DR. TOM DAVIS:
We met at seek and then you invited me on your, on your podcast, and we just kept in touch and, and we started talking about this approach of scaling, helping doctors, and it’s just taken off from there. It’s all in your partners. It’s all in your partners.

DR. JOHN JURICA:
Well, I By the way, I have I’ve had time on my podcast twice. And I think I’ve just scratched the surface of the things that he’s done over the years. He’s written a bunch of books, not all of which he’s released yet. He does his telemedicine thing. He’s doing consulting, he’s working with startups. So it was a pleasure to work with you time once we came up with this plan. Yeah, so

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
I got up the business because he wants to know more about this man of mystery. So revealing my secrets I gather. So it’s for those who don’t know, I think everybody knows what seek is but it is a contract for doctors pursuing non clinical careers. Now, we You guys, attendees, were you speaking at the event? How did that? What was the situation there?

DR. JOHN JURICA:
I’ll start I was attending and it was I was I was basically sort of lurking. My main role, reason to go there was to find guests for my podcast. Laughing there was it and it was full of people that I met and half if not more, had been on the podcast and then but Tom, it was on the mentors. Maybe you can tell him more about that. And then he’s presentation.

DR. TOM DAVIS:
I attended it. About seven years ago when I was figuring out that I was a bad fit for employment. And then, so I mentored frequently. There’s since and I believe that’s where we, that’s where we met. So it was a great program. I really enjoy it.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
So when did the wonder the situation happened? Where you’re, you were thinking about this idea of the clincal careers cooperative. Tell me, tell me the genesis of that

DR. JOHN JURICA:
Tom. That’s you

DR. TOM DAVIS:
I was just thinking about it. I thought about SEAK. And I thought it’s always about scaling. The last time I was at seek before we started before john and i started this, I was struck by the number of residents. And yes, even medical students that were attending. It was shocking to me shocking. And, you know, secretly does that once a year. And it’s a great model. But there are some ways that it can be tweaked. And really, the need out there is so compelling that and the barrier to go into something like an off site conference. They’re important because they commit you to making a change. But on the other hand, it really excludes people who maybe aren’t there yet, and really might slow down their progress. So it was the ideal scale, and I knew that if I was going to scale I needed someone with John’s reputation and expertise. And I’ll tell you a Jerry Seinfeld story. He was at a He was at a network, a network party filled with suits and he can get this on YouTube when he talks about it. And he just is very uncomfortable in that situation. And in the corner, he spied none other than Chris Rock. So I went right over to him and grabbed his head, grabbed his shoulders at the same time he grabbed mine, we both looked at each other’s eyes and said, comedian and and you know, they were both comedians so they both could let down their hair around each other. Well, John’s a family physician and I worked a lot with specialties and administrators of business folks. So john, being a family physician, even though our product is broad is the point of the broad spectrum. John, being a family physician really, really helped me unlock some of the creativity and I believe that I’ve done the same for him.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING:
John, I’m now gonna call you the Chris Rock of non-clinical jobs.

DR. JOHN JURICA:
Okay, that’s okay. I like that. I should be So funny.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING:
So, so you have this idea and kind of behind the scenes, you know, I’ve known I’ve known john for a while. And one of the reasons to it was he wanted to he also believe you’re thinking about a membership site that you’ve got your Facebook group. But I knew you had some reservations about being on Facebook, even if it’s a paid Facebook group, you want to share that with the audience.

DR. JOHN JURICA:
Okay, this is mine. Right? I had a couple of concerns. First of all, there are different kinds of Facebook groups. I’ll just go through these very quickly. But the two major that I see are a single owner. So somebody starts a Facebook group, you have an individual who may be an expert, a coach or something, there’s something online that they’re selling, and they have this, this group, so that kind of limits the members of that group to that person’s expertise. So if they want to get a lot of different opinions, they have to go to multiple groups, they may end up joining 5, 10,15, 20. Now that person owns That group can sell in that group. Now the other hand you have the group that I’m involved with as an admin, and that is massive group, anybody can come in after passing, you know, a few barriers, making sure their physician and so forth. But there’s absolutely no promotion allowed in our group. It’s one of those large kind of promotional groups, you can chat, you can support one another. And so you’ve got that. And so for me, and other mentors that are in there, and there’s a number of coaches and mentors in the Facebook group that I talked about earlier, they really can’t sell in there, but they can gently sort of softly sell and if people like their comments, they can track them down and do that kind of thing. The other thing about a Facebook group is it could go away anytime. I mean, even a private Facebook group or your own personal group, you know, Facebook changes, the rules, you know, used to be pages were big now, pages are not so big groups are big now, groups have been shut down. So those are just some of the reasons that you know, after talking with time, we thought well, one of the things would be great about having a cooperative and online forum. something of that nature is that it would be a little bit more private, there’d be no way that anyone could shut us down unless we wanted to shut it down. We can have a lot more designated mentors, and we can recruit mentors to it. So unlike my facebook group where, you know, they just kind of lurk out there, and they may or may not show up. And then the other thing about this kind of forum is that you can find things a lot easier because we have designated topical areas and threads that you can go in anytime you can find what you need, you can search on it. In my facebook group, it’s almost impossible to find a thread from six months or a year ago. I mean, it’s just it’s not built for that. So those are some of the reasons I think that Tom and I discussed and when we were trying to put together how this thing would work.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING:
So let’s talk about the clinical careers cooperative. Tell me it’s a membership site. It’s got lots of different forms, what can they expect when they join?

DR. TOM DAVIS:
Well, what you can expect is a safe environment where you can connect With a broad spectrum of mentors that john and i have curated, as well as reviewing the collective wisdom of all the conversations that have preceded you. So unlike other social media groups, the the threads don’t disappear, they’re going to be there. And you’re going to be able to to peruse them. The subscription feature is intentional. One of the challenges with the free Facebook groups is that they don’t challenge you to take the next step free Facebook groups have a role. But unless you put just a teeny tiny amount of skin in the game, you really are not likely to take the next step. And the idea behind having a low but a nominal but real hurdle. financial commitment is so that so that you engage, and then it’s my job to make sure that the environment that you’re in is generating value for you.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING:
Yeah, and I mentioned this on a recent a podcast to that, you know, or you eat a post, it’s like, you know, people say, Well, you can get everything for free, you know, everything’s free on the internet, I can find this on YouTube. You know, I used to do some free calls, and most of my consulting is now paid but I’ll do like a free you know, initial call where we just kind of opened myself up and use looking at and I just look at the numbers you know, and then say for every 10 free calls, maybe one person will actually take action. And the idea of having skin in the game really, you know, engages you engages that person and the other thing too is, you know, you go No offense to you know, on your Facebook groups, but people could be given free advice and completely doing the exact opposite of what you’re what they’re doing or they’re just saying, I’m what they’ve read, they’ve not actually been doing it and I like what you said Tom is like, one of the reasons that you’re you’re still kind of in the game is you’re living the life that you want to lead and If you weren’t, then you would be considered, you know, a fraud. Right? So that’s the importance that I believe about having a paid membership versus free. Any thoughts on that?

DR TOM DAVIS:
Well, Mike, I want to I want to emphasize the point you just made, as I said, previously, the people that are mostly employing doctors and our business types, and they are not looking out for the interest of their workforce. And john was very passionate about having this be owned and created and operated by clinicians. Not just for physicians, nurse practitioners, PA, dentists, you know, whatever the patient care specialty that you have, but it’s run by your fellow clinicians. john and i are not looking to squeeze every last nickel out of you, okay, we’re here because it’s our personal mission to serve. And we’re trying to create the best possible site where we can help you do better and that is something that is absolutely missing from the social media platforms, even the ones that are run by clinicians themselves. They’re not really properly vetted. I think that they have their place. But the cooperator was meant to be the next level where you know that you’re among peers, because as we all know here is that the system has failed the clinicians and the only people that are going to help clinicians do better are your fellow clinicians.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING:
I love it. I love it. So let’s talk about maybe like who’s, who would, who would most benefit from this or perhaps we can talk about what are the topics that we’re going to be seeing here in the in the CCC? John?

DR. JOHN JURICA:
Well, I’ll start the topics if I can remember, have a I don’t have the list in front of you. But we have some general topics at the beginning that are just welcome and just career transition in general. Then we have specific topical areas on medical science liaison, hospital based management careers. I think they have courses when I tell them medicine which by the way You might want to just go in there for that alone because Tom, how many posts have you put in that telemedicine forum? Tom 5050. I mean, he’s put a lot in there and he’s been really chronicling, I think from what I understood what I read of it, you know, some working within COVID environment, pandemic and then just sort of all the kind of things that come up while you’re doing telemedicine, the nitty gritty, the little pearls that you learn only by doing it and so that has been I read about half of those and those have been awesome. We got one on locum tenens, which is a popular clinical but sort of conventional career. Let’s see utilization management, medical writing.
What am I missing?

DR. TOM DAVIS:
medical spas speaking and entrepreneurship, venture capital, consulting and coaching.

DR. JOHN JURICA:
You know, we have coaches in there not only to serve as coaches or guides For the members, but also coaching is an awesome career for physicians, you get a lot of the all the good and like none of the bad. So it’s not i’m not surprised by the number of physicians who when they transitioned out of clinical, they went into some form of coaching.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
That that’s awesome. And I know I’m one of the mentors and can you name just a few of the other mentors that you’ve got participating in this?

DR. JOHN JURICA:
Yeah, I’ve got a list right here, but
I’m going to try and go down most of the list here because Andrew willner is the expert in locum tenens he’s written a book on it he’s also an expert in medical writing. Christopher Loo does real estate and consulting and passive income. Charmaine Gregory I think I know her best as a coach, mostly fitness coach and then I think also transition life transition coach, Maiysha Clairborne I think your listeners know who she is. New and then we got Phil Boucher, maybe you could talk about Phil and maybe also Jill what is a winner because she’s one that Tom has has brought Right.

DR. TOM DAVIS:
So Phil is a pediatrician and he’s also physician coaching and someone who helps people with their revenue stacks and develop different streams of revenue. And Jill also specializes in actually working with with women clinicians and helping them with problems from that challenges from that perspective.

DR. JOHN JURICA:
Just to complete the list besides Tom and I, we’ve got Lisa Jenks Mandy Armitage, specialist in medical writing, Marjorie Stiegler I think many of your listeners will know, branding and online business. Michelle Mudge-Riley. The I kind of think you interviewed her recently, Mike, and I think those are the current ones I was gonna say, too, we’ve we’ve got already others that are asking to come in. And we’re going to try to do some kind of vetting process and we’re not going to be overbearing on this, you know, people are interested in and they’re legitimate coaches or they have some expertise, we’ll include them but we will definitely make sure that you know, they’re they’ve been doing this for a while and they have expertise, you know, before we let them apply for member as a mentor.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
This is amazing stuff, guys. And what’s so incredible is like, I’m even thinking, you know, Tom, I know you’ve been out for a while I’ve been out out for a while, you know, john for the last few years.
This stuff wasn’t even talked about.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
You know, we, I’ve mentioned it many times, you know,
being able to actually speak about this at a conference was almost considered taboo. You know, I remember speaking at a conference where they, it was pharmaceutical Reimann say, why don’t we just, we’re just really more interested in doctors writing more prescriptions and, and promoting medications. And you know, nothing really about entrepreneurship, consulting, even locum tenens, you know, we really didn’t even know much about so it’s amazing to have this that wealth of knowledge and really, you’re not going to find this in any books. This is people actually doing it. I think that’s was part of your vetting processes. You guys are actually doing this stuff, you guys have done it on your own. Now, you know, share your knowledge, you know, with the world and learn and it’s always it’s always something to is it’s continuing to learn this this type of information is continuing, you know, just just about what we’ve dealt with in the last two weeks, right? We’re all we’re all learning in these new processes. So, um, we’ll have a link to it guys, too, for you guys to join up. I know, at the time this is coming out, we’re doing a special, you want to take advantage of it. I know it’s a special pricing that you’re doing. I don’t wanna put words in your mouth but I don’t know how often you’re going to have this lower price. Is it for Is it fair to say this is probably the lowest prices you guys are going to offer?

DR. JOHN JURICA:
I say that’s true. We haven’t decided if and when we will raise the price but Obviously, because it’s a chicken and egg we have to get members we have to get mentors. It’s kind of just it’s a it’s the little startup now so six months from now when we have you know, who knows hundreds or thousands of members and 20 or 30 mentors then you know things will be different. But the other thing I wanted to mention before we close is that to get people in besides it very tiny cost and the seven day free, you know, introduction that they can take advantage of, there’s a bunch of bonuses that are going to be going away within about a week or so. So I mean, we have some PDFs some you know, thing that I wrote a while back but I think the good ones the really good ones are $75 off to an upcoming course with Michelle Mudge-Riley that you know about Mike 100% discount and one of Marjorie Steelers courses, two months to get into my non clinical Career Academy two months free, that’s worth about $200 and then you get the telemedicine mastery course that Tom has been been selling for a year or so to people interested in telemedicine. And I think that covers it that I know and we’re adding new ones, I guess all the time. So you want to get in early just to get those even if you don’t hang around more than a few months, it’s definitely worth it.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
And just just to throw things out to sorry not to cut you off too, I’ll be adding a bonus to that as well. That I’ll be sharing at the end of this call
it’s gonna be something that is gonna be very valuable.

DR. TOM DAVIS:
John and i have really gone
gone as far as we possibly can, adding lots of value, especially as we’re, as we’re kicking off the hard launch. But the biggest barrier to this endeavor to clinicians helping clinicians quite honestly is the clinicians themselves and that this is something that is nowhere else on the Internet, you can’t find it anywhere else. And so it’s important to understand that the mission of this is to help peer clinicians because nobody else inside the system is looking out for clinicians. And even if this might not be something that you’re totally interested in, or you’re kind of in the pre pre contemplated phase, I urge you to stop by take a look, subscribed for at least a little while and help support the site, not because john and i are looking to make a buck off of you because believe me, we’re not. It’s because this is new. And we are in a new world. And the only structures that are going to work are new ones. And so I just asked, everyone’s listening to check us out. Give us a subscription, help us make the site better, and to be the change that you want to see in the world. If not for yourself, then for somebody else.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
I love it. And I think you also
have an important point in that, you know, anytime you’re in the beginning of something, you know, there’s definitely some I need an easiness. But you can help set the curriculum in terms of what you’re asking. And I know, for myself when I have a question on something, and I put it on the internet, you know, I don’t know really know where to go to sure you could go to Facebook groups, but you don’t know who’s actually responding. That’s actually true. I can’t even find half the questions and what Facebook groups that I’m in no offense again, there’s so many different Facebook groups that are out there, knowing that there is a site out there if I’ve got a question at two o’clock in the morning, it will be answered relatively soon, with almost with a team of physicians in a whole bunch of different genres, a whole bunch of different experiences that you can be sharing. I know Tom, you and both of you are contributing and me Answering questions. But you’ve also got that team of mentors there to, you know, to have your back, so to speak. So, I appreciate you guys taking the time. I know, Tom, you’re ready to go back, dip into the water there on the beach. Any final words before we end the call today?

DR. TOM DAVIS:
I’m gonna let john finish up the sound more erudite than that. Oh, really?

DR. JOHN JURICA:
Last minute comments. Is that what you’re saying? Mike? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know,
there is you can go and spend a lot of money on coaching. I love coaches. You can go and just go to the free Facebook groups. But, you know, if you could join with other clinicians in a very low cost, friendly, safe environment, I encourage you to do that. The other thing I would say is that, you know, Tom and I, I know are committed to helping our peers. Get out of the rat race. I mean, it’s just, you know, it breaks my heart. When I see my peers suffering, whether they’re burned out if you want to use that term, whether they’re just taking advantage of the new grads coming out. They don’t even know how bad they have it. And I just wanted to create something that is going to be there to help you give you some hope, and actually some hand holding and some concrete advice and guidance as you try and figure your career out.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING:
Dr. Tom Davis, dr. John Jurica, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom here with us today. If you guys want to join, we’re going to leave a link. I’ll have a special bonus that we’ll be talking about, as well that once you guys joined, this is the best time to join most of us are at the time of this video where you’re usually holed up, now’s the time to take advantage of online education. This is the time to improve your skills, improve your knowledge, improve your career. If you’re not liking where you’re at right now, there are people who can help you. First place to start the CCC clinical careers cooperative. Thanks, guys. It’s been a pleasure. Fun.

DR. TOM DAVIS:
I as well. And fun. Get back to the beach.

DR. MIKE WOO-MING
Get back to you guys. We’ll say thanks again for listening. And as always keep moving forward.

Filed Under: Articles, Entrepreneurship, Interviews, Training

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Lessons Learned from BootcampMD 2.0

Although it’s been a few months since BootcampMD 2.0, there are still many
things that struck me about this incredible training event we put for physicians who wanted to have their own online business. It’s amazingly rare for doctors to put on a business workshop meant for doctors, and I reflect on the challenges of taking on such an undertaking.

Joining me on this podcast is Dr. Maiysha Clairborne to get insights on what she learned, why it influenced her to have her own event, as well as plans for BootcampMD 3.0!

Mind Re-Mapping & Manifestation Retreat, February 2020

BootcampMD 2.0 – The Complete Course: Online Business Training for Smart Physicians

SHOW NOTES:

  • The most important feedback Maiysha received from students of BootcampMD 2.0 [3:50]
  • What she learned as a BootcampMD speaker [7:02]
  • Should we have offered CME? [8:05]
  • Why Maiysha wanted to launch her own event on Mindset [10:51]
  • How even changing one word in your conversation can shift the wiring in your brain (and ultimately your success in business and in life) [13:01]
  • How her NLP training prepared her for launching her business and her first $4000 client [15:29]
  • Who is the right person to come to the Mind-Remapping Retreat? [20:03]
  • Get a Sneak Peek on the details for BootcampMD Live 3.0! [25:13]

Filed Under: Articles, Training, Workshops

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It’s Official! BootcampMD is Coming in January 2019

Want to learn from physicians and others who have successfully transitioned to a successful online side business?
Then you need to be at BootcampMD 2019!  Here are 5 reasons why you need to be here…

 

NOW SAVE OVER 75% with the Early Bird Link!

Register Today at BootcampMD

 

Filed Under: Articles, Training, Workshops

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