(This article concludes our 3-part series on “Designing Your Physician Life”. Click here for last week’s article)
Think about where we are right now. There’s a lot of “doom and gloom” right now the world. But think about where we are right now in terms of the opportunity to be able to reach people from around the world.
I’ve been blessed to speak around the world, and the only reason that I was is because I had some janky website where I gave some information that was useful to other people. I got over my introverted self and put myself out there. With the web, we have the ability to create content, specialized information, and now we are able to reach the people that we want to reach.
Remember Blockbuster Video? You went to the video store, because you wanted to watch “The Abyss” or “Jaws” of which they had many copies. They always had the most popular titles available to rent. But say you wanted to watch a classic Akira Kurosawa movie that wasn’t named “Ran” OR “Seven Samurai” and you would be fresh out of luck. Only the most popular movies were available, as you were limited based upon the physical space of the store.
And what happened to Blockbuster? They went bankrupt. Why did they go bankrupt? Because of companies like Netflix. Netflix has streaming video. They started renting DVDs through the mail, now it’s streaming video. They have an unlimited amount of movie titles. If you’re interested in Korean dramas, documentaries on race car drivers, or standup comedies, there’s thousands of titles available to you.
It’s the same thing with creating online products. There is an unlimited amount of information that you could sell. My first online business sold preparatory materials for premed students who wanted to get into their residency of choice. I was doing that way back in the late 1990s.
And I found out that I catered to a specific group: International medical doctors looking to get into the United States. How many people would be in this niche? Very, very few in the grand scheme of things, right? But I was able to reach them through the Internet.
Another aspect of that is that since it is a very specialized niche, you can charge more for that particular course. There may be less than 10,000 people in the entire world in this niche market, which allows me to charge for premium prices.
How are we reaching them? Well, it’s through sites like Facebook. We can reach them through Facebook advertising. It is scary how much information we have at our fingertips. We can target ads to specific demographics. We can target it by state. We can target by people who are interested in what type of music they listen to. What kind of movies they watch. What type of jewelry they buy. What kind of cosmetics they use. Whether they like credit cards. How much they make. Whether they’re employed or self-employed? Do they use credit cards? Do they not? Are they in debt? There are so many avenues that we can reach them by. And that’s just through Facebook.
You’ve got LinkedIn. You’ve got YouTube these days. The world is changing. It’s allowing the “average Joe” like myself to be able to reach millions of people. I don’t need to buy a Super Bowl commercial.
I’ve got a few weight-loss clinics, and I was recently at the mall going Christmas shopping, and there was a big banner in the mall for one of my competitors, that cost thousands of dollars. There is absolutely no way you will be able to measure ROI (Return on Investment. While my Facebook ad for my clinic, I can focus on people who are interested in losing weight and who live within 10 miles of my business. And I can track ROI so I know where my advertising dollars are going. And it’s much less expensive than buying a billboard or banner at a mall.
That’s why I’m excited about creating courses. Mark Zuckerberg might eventually start jacking up the prices on Facebook advertising, but for now, if I wanted to create a course on, let’s say, “dog training your Dachshund,” I can go and I can market to 50,000 would-be Dachshund owners currently, and then create a course just reaching that audience. I could go and hire a dog trainer, even if I wasn’t an expert, to create some type of video course on how to behave, how to fetch, and how to get them house-trained.
So what is your niche? As a doctor, you might think, I just want to focus on health. That’s great! But there’s so much more opportunities that you can take advantage of.
Ask yourself, “what intrinsic knowledge do you have?” Are there things that you say day after day as a doctor, that you could bottle up that information and record it? Maybe it is how to eat better, what vitamins you recommend to take, how to lose weight and keep it off. You have got a foundation for a business.
Maybe you are an expert in other fields. Maybe you are really good at daytrading or investing into stocks. A friend of mine has a million-dollar business where he just helps people with forex trading. He created a course that allows him to work from home. He doesn’t have an MBA, yet has a business based on the specialized information that he knows. All of you have specialized information far beyond what I know, that you can do well.
There will always be those recurring markets where people are always going to want to get more information. Anything related to money, anything related to relationships, and anything related to health. Those are the three or four big markets out there that people are going to buy again and again.
You can provide more value with your physician life. I want you to design your physician life so that you are not limited by what others dictate or tell you what to do.
People want to put us in this box and want us to do what we’ve been told. If you can provide more value to the world, the more you are able to help others, and it comes back to you a thousandfold. If you wrote a book or created a course on “how to improve your health,” now you’re not just dealing with the one patient. Now you’re dealing with helping millions of people out there.
We want to focus on designing your life. Where do you want to be? How much value can you put out? You have tremendous amount of value. You may not feel that you have reached your potential.
Where do you want to be a year or 5 years from now? Where do you envision how your life is? Do you want to be working 10 to 15 hours a week, or none? Envision what your day is going to be like when you wake up in the future. Are you going to be driving to the office, or maybe you’re just turning on your computer? The opportunities ahead of you are endless, and I am beyond excited about your journey ahead.
