Connection is a key ingredient In an entrepreneur’s journey. It is very hard to venture out on your own. When my friend Sharon McLaughlin let me know of an upcoming free virtual entrepreneur summit that promotes networking with other doctors, I said it’s vital that I spread the word!
Sharon is a plastic surgeon turned successful entrepreneur I interviewed back on Episode 90, and has one of the largest physician entrepreneur Facebook groups. We also discuss her upcoming project in helping more entrepreneurs add more journaling and mindfulness in their career.
Female Physician Entrepreneur Summit
April 23-25, 2022
REGISTER HERE:
https://bootstrapmd.com/go/fpe/
Mindlull – Bring more entrepreneurial fulfillment through journaling
https://www.mindlull.com
Previous podcast episode with Dr. Sharon McLaughlin:
Transcript:
Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike. welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD today on the program, a special treat. One of my favorite people in this weird physician entrepreneur space that we’re in. I’ve had her as a previous guest. She’s a board certified plastic surgeon and she had. A summit coming up.
That’s really exciting. We’re gonna talk more about it. It’s called the female physician entrepreneurs summit. That’s coming on April 23rd through 25th. She let me know about it. I said, I need to get you on the podcast. Most of be asking her some projects that’s coming up that I think it’d be really exciting, especially if you’re someone who wants to be able to refocus on your business and your life.
She got something that it’s really cool. That’s coming up that I like to share with you today to welcome to the program Dr. Sharon McLaughlin!
Sharon McLaughlin MD: Thank you so much for having me today as always. I’m doing well. Mike, I’m excited about the summit. I’m excited about the upcoming book. I’m excited to share with other people and just help that’s the bottom line, but I never, when it comes to helping other physicians, that’s what gets me most excited because I think with this day and age with burnout being so high and career dissatisfaction, being so high, it gives me purpose.
I’ve had so many failures throughout my life, what I consider failures, and if I can save someone else time, then I want to be able to do that. And I’ve been able to grow a network and there’s a lot of people that I know that can help with others. So I just want to give them a platform to be able to share what they’re doing, just like you’re doing with your group and with your podcast.
Physicians know that there’s other opportunities out there rather than corporate medicine, or rather than being a cog on the wheel. Just to know that there’s other opportunities you may not want to make the move today, perhaps you’re, 100% happy. But if tomorrow comes and you find yourself unhappy, just know that there’s all the options and that there’s people out there willing to help you.
Mike Woo-Ming: I always thought if we didn’t have failures, that means we weren’t trying. So I’ve had a lot of failures in my life and most entrepreneurs, actually, all entrepreneurs probably did. Now, for those who are listening to you for the first time, or maybe watching this video on our YouTube channel just tell us about yourself. How did you become a physician entrepreneur?
Sharon McLaughlin MD: I think it started with my dad. Really. He was excellent. I think it all has to do with our upbringing. He was, is a man of integrity. He loved helping other people. He had a business is to deliver oil, but he was, just going around as a little girl with him on the oil truck, making deliveries, and we’ll see how he interacted with people, seeing how.
He actually… the first word that comes to mind is he brought joy to people and you would think his delivery man, but though his, he was so very personable, very hospitable. And he loved talking to people. He really loved getting to know them. So yes, he was delivering oil. Yes. He was fixing the oil burner, but he truly got to know his customers.
And that’s what I remember growing. Wanted to go into medicine, but I always knew that I wanted to do things outside of medicine as well. So for me, I started with some skincare and I did some scar gels. I did a lingerie line. I’ve tried different things, but it always comes back down to, really what you’re passionate about.
And what’s going to make you happy. I believe that if you’re not thoroughly passionate about it, You’re not going to be able to pursue it because even though it may sound like a good idea, maybe it’s a way to make money. If you’re not passionate about it, there’s always bumps in the road, no matter what you do. So unless you’re passionate about it, truly easy just to give it up or, get off that path.
Mike Woo-Ming: So you started the Female Physician Entrepreneur Facebook group. And if you don’t join it, go check it out. And we’ll put a link on here. When was that? When did we, when did you start that again?
Sharon McLaughlin MD: About four years after I started it, I wanted to be surrounded by like-minded people. One of the things that I believe that if you’re struggling or you feel stuck is to be around people that are similar to you in the sense that they have the light, the same likes desires passions as you and I really didn’t have that in my life. I have a wonderful husband. I had friends that are in medicine. They really didn’t have an interest in entrepreneurship. And I did, and I found that was a boy that my life. And I figured if I was interested, perhaps there were other physicians interested. So I started this group and it really took off rather quickly. Oh, eventually I have to be honest with you in the beginning, people were joining.
It was very, it was crickets and it all, I think, in this time that we’re going to talk about community building, but I believe one of the things you have to do is make it about the other person. And I just kept on adding value as much as I could, but honestly, it was crickets for awhile. And I was like, you feel that people were joining.
I really did question it. I’m like, am I doing the right thing? Because the numbers are going up, but people really weren’t engaging at all. And I just kept pursuing it. And then, it did take off rather quickly after that. And I w I’m happy that I’ve done it. I’m happy. So many people have reached out over the years and said, this group has really given me ideas.
It’s really why I’m where I am. Even if I didn’t get the feedback, it’s just nice to know that you can, again, it comes down to helping other physicians, I feel very. I think a lot of people are very concerned about where medicine is right now. And what do we do about it at so many levels?
So I really would like to bring people together that are working on legislation that are doing things, working with the hospitals that are doing things, working with health plans and really network. And that’s what this summit is about is. But it has to do with my Facebook group. When I see that someone’s really trying to hard to make a change.
I am so happy to promote them as, the way that Facebook is going. It’s hard as far as doing links, as much as we used to in the past Facebook doesn’t like it you’re off their platform. You’re or you’re off the group and they penalize you for it. So I that’s another reason why I wanted to do the summit on a separate Facebook group.
And I figured as long as I was opening it up, might as well open it up to everybody. I really would like to make connections. I think that we move faster when we network with other people. So to answer your question, I started the Facebook group because I needed it. I had avoided my life and I wanted it filled.
I wanted to see if others were interested and I believe that we learned and grow faster together than we do by ourselves.
Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. And I’ve had many guests on the program and, a number of them, point to your group, as, really the starting point for where they got started and say, “Hey, there are other people, that’ll like me, I’m not just crazy trying to think of this. I’m trying to invent this.” And really that’s really what you need as an entrepreneur. And you went from myself. I remember you asked me to come onto your program. I’d been teaching other entrepreneurs, not too much on the physicians, because I wasn’t sure, if they would be interested in that kind of the crazy stuff that I’d be doing and you invited me and you’re so generous and we’ve had a great relationship talking about all the different projects.
So when you told me that you have the summit to say, Hey, let me know more about it. That might let my folks know more about it. So let’s talk about the summit. Why did you create the summit and tell us what we can learn when joining the summit?
Sharon McLaughlin MD: There’s so many. Great people in the group and it always comes down to “geez, who do I ask? Who do I not ask?” I wanted, it’s very diverse, truthfully. It’s you could say a hodgepodge, but for me, in my head, I’m like, we need the speakers. I wanted it where, okay. You start where you’re at. You’re a physician you’re unhappy. It’s really targeted for the physicians that are unhappy.
So you’re a physician. What do you do? Speaking as a really great, we have a couple of speakers at Ted speaker. We have from me coming on, who was. Really built a career on keynote speaking. So she’s going to be talking about that. You could start a book, right? You could start a book, you could publish a book.
So we have Jasmine talking about that, just really where you are on that…,
Mike Woo-Ming: If you could get the names of some of the people who like, you don’t have unfortunately basis, but if you didn’t have the full name so they can check it out.
Sharon McLaughlin MD: Absolutely please. We have Dr. Lulu, she’s a Ted speaker. She’s going to be talking about that. We have Dr. Romie talking about keynote speaking. And Nivedita, she is a poet. So she’s like a published poet. We’re going to be having a reading from her, one of her poems about people struggling. And then she’s going to be talking about becoming a pilot, which I think is really important. We have real estate investing, both syndication as well as direct buy direct ownership, such as like short-term or long-term rental.
And that’s by parent and it’s by all summer with Miranda Phillips, back to now. Okay. So you have an idea of what you want to do. How do you get out there? How do you market it? So there’s a couple things we have Manasseh who has started a whole line on children’s. How do I say this? Dinnerware, plateware, it’s unfortunate that children are exposed to plastics.
It’s an endocrine disruptor. So she’s designed a line that are really, safe for children. So she’s going to be talking about how she got her product to market. And how do you get, PR for a product, the same thing, even if you’re want to be a spokesperson, how do you get out there?
You have an idea. You have a book. Product service, how to get out there and market it. So she’s going to help with that. We have Amy Shaw also speaking about, getting out there doing social media, cause she’s made some great connections with large companies makeup companies health companies, doing shakes.
Getting my name on products. I can go on and on. We have some coaching talking about coaching, building communities, and you should meet us talking about that, how to negotiate. Cause that’s such a I hate to say this, but I think women are as good with negotiation. It’s not something we learn as we’re growing up.
So we have Karen coming on, talking about that. She’s a physician coach. And Latifah is going to be talking about financial freedom because it’s so important. I believe as physicians, we make these salaries, we should be putting money away for investing. And just so that we have options in the past. I want me to keep going,
Mike Woo-Ming: This is amazing! We could check it out on your website.
It’s again, it is the Female Physician Entrepreneurs Summit people 23rd through 25th. The price, I think you said it was at 1500 or $2,000 for
Sharon McLaughlin MD: the summit?
The summit. Is that. No, it’s a free online summit. It’s a free, here’s some great mic. It’s a free online summit.
Mike Woo-Ming: Yes. I know some of these speakers pay a lot of money.
If you want to do consulting and coaching, it’s well worth it, but it’s not, cheap if you would like to stop with these. So getting the opportunity to hear from them on promoting the speakers is, some people say with the summits it’s free. It really comes down to, what you want to put in and on what you get out of it, there.
And I really feel more people need to be taking advantage of these opportunities. What’s a you,
Sharon McLaughlin MD: so I’ll be honest with you when I started this, Summit’s all about networking. I want links. I want to hear about your businesses. I want people to work together and collaborate. So that, that my goal is that yes, you’re going to listen to the speakers.
You’re going to get some ideas. But you better network with some of the other members there. And I’d like everyone to come out with relationships that they had after the summit that they didn’t have before the summit. And when,
Mike Woo-Ming: what did, just so the listeners know, how will they have an opportunity because it is a virtual summit.
How will they have the opportunity
Sharon McLaughlin MD: to net. All in Facebook as far as putting posts there and comments, and I don’t care if you take this offline, I prefer that you don’t message people if they’re not asking to be messaged, but listen, Mike, this is how we add, right? Like we met through Facebook and so many wonderful things can happen.
I can tell you, I do fundraising, right? For mitochondrial diseases. I’ve raised thousands of dollars doing the things that I’m doing strictly from Facebook, and it’s really. You can do anything. The sky is the limit. What’s not what is a problem. And it always will be an obstacle is how do you get it out there?
And there’s people willing to help you with it. So take advantage of it, make those connections. It’s the fastest way to grow.
Mike Woo-Ming: Now. It is called the female physician entrepreneur summit, but is it open for men to write? It
Sharon McLaughlin MD: is it’s open for everybody. Once I started putting lists together and I was looking at the speakers, I was like, we should all benefit from this.
And I believe again, being that I wanted this summit to network. Otherwise I would have just kept it in my own group, but being that I want networking for a lot of sharing links. I don’t care. It’s important to have other people involved, too, men and women, we’re going to grow faster together. So
Mike Woo-Ming: th this is great.
Now I do want to focus on your own businesses. You got, you’ve got some projects you’ve been working on it. Tell us about my LOL. Tell us what is that? Yeah, you’ve
Sharon McLaughlin MD: got either. I can say, remember slow, cause I’m not, but I’m always going at a fast pace. Like even the summit. Do you know how long it took me to do this?
I’m giving myself two weeks. Like I had this idea last week. I’m like, okay, put out some messages, people, I count me interested and then we’ll put it together. I did a weight loss summit about three years of count. Same thing, third, like we had no joke, 32 speakers. I did a lot more for that summit. Cause everyone, I can build on websites and all everyone have their speaker page and all that.
And this time around, I was like, no, I’m not doing that. That took up too much time. I need to promote this. I need my own sanity. So that’s just how I am. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are now focused. They have all these great ideas, but where do you really focus? So I’m in the process of creating a planner as well as a workbook to really answer some has journaling and miserable.
Those questions that are going to make you think, really plan out your day, plan out your week and plan out your month. And it’s going to be over 28 days. And you can say 20 days, isn’t that much for those people who feel like they’re all over the place. It’s a start. And I don’t believe in.
Overwhelming. I believe in small, if you truly feel that way, like you’re overwhelmed and you don’t know where to focus, start small. So I had said, four weeks is the max. Cause I’ve had people telling me you gotta do a quarter, one, I’ll do a quarter, one. I, my plan is to do a series, but I really want to touch on the people that just can’t move forward.
They don’t know where to go. Ask those questions give you some ideas of what you could start doing and then take it from there, plan it out, do journaling, at least once a day, how do you what’s that morning routine looked like, mapping out your morning routine for you. And then it’s a tracker to, where are you at the end of the week?
Where are you? Did you reach goals and if not, why not? You really need to focusing on
Mike Woo-Ming: that. Yeah. I’m such a fan of journaling and planning out my morning. And sometimes, we try to do this and then we, some few days I fall off and. That’s usually when I’m the least productive is when I let it go and giving an opportunity to be able to have, a site that allows you to do this is very point, especially if you’ve never done this before now, it’s coming out.
We don’t, it’s not ready yet. Where can they go to get more information or is it a you’re going to let us know when it’s coming out and I can let my group. The
Sharon McLaughlin MD: Y the website is mind lull. L U L O is mines. It’s that giving our brain a lot of time, quiet time to really just focus because I believe that’s how we focus.
Just giving it’s not, they can’t do it. I’m doing like quiet time. And I’ve learned to actually factor that in. I need those quiet times because it’s when I’m most creative. And when I feel like I’m saying. It’s usually because I’ve been go, and over all over the place. Really want to like center myself, bring it back to me and what needs to be done to, to move forward.
So you can find it on the website at mine, little.com. I have an opt-in there’s some tips. As far as focusing, there’s an ebook there that you can sign up for. And then if you’re on that email list, I will send out when the book actually launches on May 3rd.
Mike Woo-Ming: And I love what you’re building an email list.
We’ve been talking, I believe
Sharon McLaughlin MD: like it is so important for those people out there. I always even don’t have to do what you pre-train. And I always preached about building an email list, but because Facebook I’m so on it and But I never did build that email list. I built a Facebook group over 8,000 people and I never had an email list for it or one that I didn’t push.
And now with Facebook, logarithm changing so much, I’m like, oh no, I really need to change this up rather quickly. So I’m yeah. To enter the groups. Now you need to give an email it’s really important. If there’s changes at all, you won’t even see it. If I publish it in any of the groups. So I want an email to be able to connect and I don’t spam.
I don’t send around crappy stuff. So it’ll all be valuable information. That’s pretty much how I run.
Mike Woo-Ming: Okay, perfect. Yeah. I know, w when marketing, sometimes we forget all the things that we should be doing. You mean when I started out my practice, W practice advisor to say do you have an email list?
Oh yeah. I should probably email them. Oh, you got you probably, it is one of those things that it is so important. So we’ve got this, we got mine low. We got the summit coming up. Anything else that you want to share or listeners
Sharon McLaughlin MD: to know? I really don’t like just for them personally, if you’re not happy, reach out to others, there’s no reason to stay unhappy.
I’m telling you, years ago, maybe it was, I think it was different. People were still doing things outside of medicine, but there’s ways that you can actually stay in medicine. One of the talks that I have for the summit is actually. Being really smart about running your business because I know when I was practicing, I didn’t know the back office.
So Sandy Weitz is actually going to be talking about building up your practice. Remember, it’s all about staying where you are right now. What can you do? So as far as me, no, because I’m really concentrating on the summit first, then the book and really taking those breaks and really focusing, it’s going to be about helping others with their quiet time.
And if that’s the case, that’s why your time as well. That’s what I’m focusing on. Thank you.
Mike Woo-Ming: You always come from a source of giving and it definitely shows go out and check out or summit. It’s a female physician, entrepreneur summit. It is open to everyone’s coming up. April 23rd through 25th. We’ll have.
We can go to find out more information. Thank you again, Sharon. Thanks for spending time with us today.
Sharon McLaughlin MD: It’s always a pleasure. Thank you for doing what you’re doing!
Mike Woo-Ming: And thanks guys. If you would need to get motivated, don’t just try to do this on your own. Sharon said, it’s all about networking, finding other like-minded individuals and keep moving forward.