The EntreMD Podcast

Revolutionizing Problem-Solving: Developing a Strategic Mindset and Harnessing the Power of Questions

• Dr. Una • Episode 370

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How about revolutionizing your approach to problem-solving and decision-making? Now, that's a proposition you wouldn't want to miss! This episode is all about developing a strategic mindset and learning to ask the right questions. I share a compelling story about a doctor who felt overwhelmed and underproductive, and how simply rephrasing her statements into empowering questions led her to solutions she hadn't thought of before. We'll discuss techniques such as brainstorming and mind-storming, processes that summon creative ideas to tackle business obstacles. 

Moving on from there, we'll dive into the potency of asking better questions. We dissect the five prime questions we ask in our EntremD Business School and demonstrate how you can cultivate creative solutions, navigate challenging transitions, and even find legal hacks to cut down taxes. And guess what? We'll also be introducing you to the EntremD Business School. You'll learn how our coaching, accountability, and the community can help you accomplish your goals. So, if you're aiming to elevate your business and your mindset, grab your headphones, and let’s unravel this power-packed episode together. You're about to learn something revolutionary!

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When you are ready to work with us, here are three ways:

  • EntreMD Business School Accelerator - If you are looking to make a 180 turnaround in your business in 90 days, this is the program for you.
  • EntreMD Business School Grow - This is our year-long program with a track record of producing physician entrepreneurs who are building 6, 7 and 7+ figure businesses. They do this while building their dream lives!
  • EntreMD Business School Scale - This is our high-level mastermind for physicians who have crossed the seven figure milestone and want to build their businesses to be well oiled machines that can run without them.

To get on a call with my team to determine your next best step, go here ...

Speaker 1:

Hi dogs, welcome to the EntremD podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, dr Ibnah. Well, hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of the EntremD podcast. And today we're going to be talking about something that is so fun and that is strategy and how to develop a strategic mind. And I started thinking about this because a doctor in the EntremD business school was like how do you think strategically? Sometimes you ask these questions and I don't even know where to start from them. And I started thinking about it and so we're going to talk about it and we just recently hosted the EntremD business school vision retreat. Oh, my goodness. So the vision retreat is a retreat we host once a year in October, because that's when our year starts, in October and we set our goal for the next year, and all of those things is just so good and there's so many opportunities for hot seeds and questions and all of those kind of things. And when we're together virtually, it is unbelievably amazing. When we're together in person, it's just magic. There's no other word to describe it. It's just pure magic. You can actually go to Facebook or Instagram and just put in the hashtag hashtag EBS retreat and you'll see. You just see all the people talk about their experiences and stuff. They're just so good. But a doctor came and came up and was talking about how she was so overwhelmed with all the things that she needed to do and the fact that she was doing so much and it was bringing in little compared to her goal and all. She was like I don't even know where to start from, because if I have to rev up my revenue, then that means that I have to do this even more, and where would I get the time and all of that? And so I have learned. I have learned that statements can constrain us, but questions, the right questions, high value questions empower us. And so I, as she was talking, I walked to the board and I put there. I was like how can I do this in half the time? How can I do this in half the time? And so when she was done talking, I said okay, I have one question for you. I was like how can you do what you're doing in half the time? And initially she was like wait, I could see on her eyes. Of course, I can't do this in half the time. This is how much time is taking me. I was like what, if it was possible, how would you do that? And she said, well, and she gave I would do this. I'm like great, what else would you do? I knew I was going for at least five. And she came up with the second one. I'm like okay, what else would you do? And she's like, wait, wow. And everyone started smiling. I was like you're blowing your own mind, are you not? Yeah, I'm like okay, so what is it? Then she said the third thing. I was like, great, what else would you do? She's, that's all I would do. I said what else would you do? What if there was more? What else would you do? And she came up with number four. And she came up with number five. And she came up with number six. And she just was like oh, my goodness. And at the end of those six things, not only did she find out how to do it in half the time, she found out how to leverage a team she already had. She found out the projects that were 20% style projects that were ringing in most of the revenue, and she's, I'll go for this. She even figured out to get more help in her personal life. By the time she was done, she had figured out how to create so much more revenue doing this thing, and doing it in half the time, and I suspect it's actually less than half the time. But I'll be able to talk with her in a few months and see what she did right. And that was all from one question. And so think about in your business, if you get into the habit of, rather than making statements of, oh, it's not working, oh, I'm not getting a return on my investment, nobody's buying, there are no good team members anywhere, I can't figure out these systems. Think about if, instead of making those kind of statements, you were asking better questions. Okay, so what I wanna do today is I wanna give you a few questions to kind of jumpstart the process for you, and this will be one of those episodes I'm gonna keep it short that you wanna go back to and listen to over and over again, cause you have the opportunity to workshop it right. So you write out the question, you stop, you actually think it through. You can decide. Five is my number. Every time I ask, I pull up five answers. I pull up seven answers. Now I learned this from Brian Tracy, whether it's brainstorming or mind storming. So mind storming you're doing by yourself. Brainstorming you're doing with somebody else. If you can pull to 20 questions, you're gonna squeeze out some juice that will rock your world, right? The first five, you just be like free flow. The next five, you work hard for it. The next five, you'll sweat for it, and the last five will be like squeezing out blood. Right, but what you're doing is you're retraining your brain. You're training your brain on how to look for solutions. You're training it. I have done this for so long. I heard Brian Tracy talk about mind storming and brainstorming. Wow, it must have been like 2012,. 20 times. I've done this for at least a decade, so much so that when somebody's talking to me, it's almost like the words they're saying they're all being thrown up in front of me, right, and then I'm able to pull out okay, these are the things that matter. These are the answers to those things. I'm able to organize it, make it nice and pretty. I'm like okay, here are three things you do right. And it's just because that aspect of my brain literally has a six pack, okay. And it's not because I'm super special, because, remember, before we became doctors we didn't think like doctors. Before we became doctors, if we saw somebody running a code, all we will see is chaos. But now, because we've been trained and that part of our mind is used to seeing all those things, we're able to see okay, abcs, your ACLs, your algorithm, your PALs algorithm, like you're able to see all of those things even in the midst of the chaos. It doesn't look chaotic to you. So imagine if your business didn't look at least for the stage you're in. It did not look chaotic to you, could put things in boxes and decide how things needed to work right. So this is something you wanna put the reps in. You just wanna put the reps in. I have a dry erase board right in my office where I'm working. Every so often I'll pull out one of these questions, I'll just put it up there and I'll start working through it. I even started doing that with my kids, where I just come up with something I was like say I was gonna do, and for me it could even be hypothetical, it could be real. I'm like what if we were doing an event and we wanted this event to be an event that brings in $2 million, right, and so this is a stretch. How would we do that? I don't know. Well, let's think about it. What if we could do it? How would we do it? We would sell tickets. Great, we'll sell tickets. What else would we do? I'm like how many tickets and how much? We'll put the number together. Okay, we still have money left. We need to make more money. Oh well, we could have sponsors great, how much would you charge your sponsor? How many sponsors would you have? And they say the number we put that up and okay, great, what else would you? We could sell merch okay, great, how much would you sell t-shirts? And it's okay, on average, how much would that be? How many would you sell? And we just keep going. It's just a way of thinking. Okay, it's a way of thinking. And in the Entremde Business School we call it the EBS puzzle, right, where we just put a revenue number, like how would you do that? Say, how would you do that? Right, okay, all right. So five questions here, all right, five questions. The first is how can I create X dollars in revenue? I mean, you already set it as a goal. Maybe when you said it you didn't know the how, which is the thing about goal setting right, there are stretches. Sometimes we don't know how. I've had goals. I said I didn't know till March how I couldn't even create a roadmap to the number. You start playing with that Like how could I do that? I'm going to write 10 ways I could generate my first million or my first 2 million and get on the Inc 5000 list or whatever. So you're like I will do this, I'll do this, I'll do that. And the important thing is not to edit, it's just to write it Right and start thinking we have you're a physician, you have a super smart computer, your brain is so amazing, so well developed, right, and we're just going to get it good at something else. So just keep asking and asking and asking. You can do it by yourself, you can do it brainstorming with others and just play around with it and your brain will become good at this. You'll be really good at seeing possibilities and all of that stuff, and whatever it is your goal is becomes more and more subconscious because you're working it. So that's the first question. The second question is how can I find X kind of team member, whatever that is for you? Maybe you've wanted an executive assistant. Maybe you've wanted a lead medical assistant or a lead front desk person or an office manager or a practice administrator or a CEO or director of marketing or whatever, and usually this was very true for me. When it comes to team members, I'm like they don't exist. I'm like stop being ridiculous. What do you mean? They don't exist? I mean you're going to hire an adult. That means, of course, they exist, right. And so I'm like Amazon pre-pandemic had 566,000 employees. Apparently, there are people all over the world willing to work and people who have experience and all those things. So how would I like, how can I find them? Okay, I could post on Facebook great, what else could you do? I could do an add-on, indeed. Okay, what else could you do? I could tell people who hire people like that, maybe they know something. Great, what else could you do? I could look in different companies and see what roles they have there and reach out to the people who have those roles and ask them if they're looking or if they know someone who's looking. Great, what else could you do? And you'll get to a point where my wonderful doc who is like wow, you blow your own mind. You're like, wow, okay, and you never accept that this cannot be done because treat it like a game. Of course it's possible, so how would I do it? All right. The third one is how can I do this in half the time? How can I do this in half the time? You're like, of course it can be done in half the time, but you don't know that, not until you ask the question how can this be done in half the time? And you may find out you have a team member on payroll right now who could do it, and it doesn't even need to be done at all by you. Right, how can this be done in half the time? How can this be done in half the time? How's that? Okay, I could automate this part, I could delegate this part. I say the same exact thing every single time. I could create a handout for it, like, all kinds of creativity comes to play, All right. Number four how can I overcome this challenge? So something happens. You get let me make up one. You get a tax bill. You're like, lord have mercy. I just got a $300,000 tax bill, right. And you're like, okay, how can I overcome this? How can I set up my business? Because I'm like people who make a lot more than me pay a lot less than me in taxes. So and I'm not talking about tax evasion, I'm talking about reducing your tax liability legally. So the question becomes how can I do that? How can I overcome that? How can I pay 50% less next time? How can I pay 40% less next time? Right, how can I do that? Okay, you have a team member who leaves a critical role. You're like okay, how can we move forward in spite of this? Right, how can we manage the transition period where we continue to serve our clients and our patients at the highest level while we hire for this role? How can we manage that? Forget that you're a doc and you come to and this is not quite a business example Nobody is. For instance, you come to work and somebody called out sick. Okay, how can we have a great day even though this person called out sick? You start boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay, how can I overcome this challenge? Next one or you can say oh, I've done 20 discovery calls, consult calls, and nobody has said yes to my offer. How can I increase my conversion ratio to 20 percent or 10 percent, which means I would have had at least two clients. You start going. Maybe you record your calls. You go over them. You find, yeah, I was a little wimpy on the offer. Oh, yeah, I skipped finding out what they really wanted, so I was just selling them what I wanted. You can start troubleshooting, okay. Then finally, how can I create the time for X? There is some critical 20 percent activity you're supposed to be doing in your business that you're not doing. How can I create the time for it? You are not taking care of yourself. You are not sleeping because you believe I have all these things to do and I don't have time to sleep. How can I set myself up so I have eight hours to sleep every day? How can I? How can I? It is such an empowering question because the thing is, for 90 percent of the things you ask, you can do them, but your brain will not go to work till you require it to. So I want you to think about this. We do this with chat GPT, okay. So we know the better prompts you put in, the better your output. It is the same with your brain. You have the highest version, like the pro-pro-pro version of chat GPT, and that is your brain. And if you put in better prompts, you get better output. If you tell it you're no good, you can't get this done. Imagine putting that in chat GPT Okay, right, but when you start asking better questions, you start spitting out data and creativity and innovation and solutions that will rock your world. So I want you to go practice this. I want you to take these five questions. I want you to go practice and start putting the right prompts in and start creating new neural pathways in your brain and start developing six packs in the area of strategy, and it will blow your mind what you'll be able to do with your business and the way you do. One thing spills over to all the other areas of your life, which means that your life ultimately becomes better. And then you start teaching your kids this, you start teaching your team this, and what you'll see is like explosion and expansion on every, every, every side. Right, and that is what I would love for you. So take this episode. Please. Do not keep it to yourself. Give this to the physician entrepreneurs in your life. Share this on social media. Share with me the biggest nugget you got. Tag us hashtag on TramD so I can shout you out and I will see you, my friend, on the next episode of the On TramD podcast. If you enjoyed listening to the On TramD podcast, you have to check out the On TramD business school. It's the number one business school for physicians who want to build six, seven and multiple seven figure businesses. You get the coaching, the accountability and the community. You need to do the work so you can thrive. To find out if this is your best next step, book a call with my team ontramdcom forward slash call. That's ontramdcom forward slash call. I can't wait to celebrate all the wins we can create together.