The EntreMD Podcast

Boosting Productivity and Avoiding Burnout: The Power of the Pareto Principle

• Dr. Una • Episode 364

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Burnout is no stranger to the entrepreneurial journey, but what if you could strategically dodge it? That's right - there's a way to significantly diminish the risk of burnout and simultaneously improve your productivity! The secret lies in an age-old principle; the Pareto principle or the 80-20 rule. As we uncover how this principle works, you'll learn how to identify the vital 20% of your tasks that result in 80% of your success. More importantly, we'll guide you on how to ensure that most of your time is dedicated to these vital tasks. 

We're not stopping there. We'll also discuss how to apply this productivity-boosting rule to amplify both your business and personal life. From increasing your offers to finding more people to engage with, we'll explore the crucial activities that can steer you towards your goals. By focusing on that golden 20%, you can achieve bigger and better results in less time. 

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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 Imna. Well, hello. Hello, my friend, welcome back to another episode of the EntremD podcast. Today we're going to talk about something that I hope you put yourself in a position to not have to deal with, and that's burnout, but this time as an entrepreneur. Right, it really is a buzzword, like in the physician community, with numbers anywhere from 60 to 80% of physicians reporting burnt symptoms, if you will, of burnout in the last 12 months. But for me, it's very rewarding to see doctors who embrace entrepreneurship, whether that's their, whether they're entrepreneurs or they're deciding to become coaches or run their own private practices and things like that and they come to this point where burnout is a thing of the past, right, like so. They're helping people. It's very rewarding to them. They are creating financial freedom for themselves, they're creating time freedom for themselves, they're taking more vacations, they're taking better care of themselves, they have better boundaries, so work is not seeping into family time and all of that, and it's really beautiful to see Now on the other side as they continue to grow and continue to grow. Then they bump into this new thing where they're like, wait a minute, this feels like that did right. Where they're like, wait a minute, I feel burnout, but now this is of my own making. You know what I mean. Like I took back control and I have autonomy, but I feel burnout. And what that does is it puts these amazing physician entrepreneurs running seven and multiple seven figure businesses in positions where they're like I don't want to grow, like if more success means more of this. I don't want it, and they actually start sabotaging their own growth and I don't want you to have to deal with that. Okay, so today we're going to be talking about the number one reason entrepreneurs burnout and what you can do about it. And this is something I've practiced for so many years. When I look at it, like I am at the helm of running five organizations, right, and these are big organizations, you know what I mean. And so how do you put yourself in a position where you can do that and really you have more time, not less time, right? Like how amazing is that? So we are physicians, so we have the benefit of a picture that will really make this make sense. And I want you to think about somebody who is an emergency medicine doctor and who is running a code Okay, so I want you to think about it. Running a code that lots of people in the room that this is really high stakes, somebody's about to die and there's what seems like chaos right To an outsider, and all of that. Now, when you think about that, the doctor in that position has no intention of fixing everything None whatsoever. In fact, the doctor has an algorithm, right. So this is an adult. He has an whole ACS, acls algorithm going on in his or her mind and they're very clear. In this situation, these are the things I do and this is the sequence I do them in. Okay, so, anything that's outside of that typically something that gets procrastinated on or it is something that gets delegated, but the doctor is very clear. There are 3000 things to do right now and these are the eight things that I need to do, okay, so the thing that creates burnout really is trying to do everything, okay, okay. So I've built the company and when I started off, I could run it as a one, two, three brand show and get away with it. I could do all the sales, all the marketing, all the finances, all the operations, all of that. I could do all of it, okay. And then, plus, at home, I have the husband or the wife and the children and the this and the that, and I could do all of it. But as growth comes, it comes with more things to be done, right? So there could be more things happening in your personal life and more things happening in your business, and sometimes what we do is we continue to take more and more things on. There is nowhere that leads to but burnout. And so what if you had an ACLS, bls or PALS card for your business where you're like there are all these things going on, but these are the things I do. You've done it as a doctor and you can do it as a physician entrepreneur, okay, so what does that bring us to? It brings us all the way back to a age-old, really old concept called the Pareto principle or the 80-20 rule. Okay, now, the 80-20 rule is pretty clear. It's this rule that states that 20% of your 80% of your results will come from 20% of your activities. Okay, so I want you to think about your business, right, and you do a hundred things in your business and you brought in $10 million. Okay, so you did a hundred things. You brought in $10 million. That rule states that of the hundred things you did, there are only 20 things that accounted for $8 million. Okay, so you did a hundred things. 20 of those things created $8 million. The other 80 created $2 million. Right, and so the idea is how do I put myself in a position where one I'm very clear on what the 20% is and I spend 80% of my time living there? I want you to stop. I want you to stop for 30 seconds and think about this. Most of the things I do account for the smaller part of my success. There are a few things I do that account for most of it. Now, if I can learn to always analyze and audit and say what is the 20%, if I can do that, then I put myself in a position where I can get so much done, and I did it with less time because, hear me, the problem with the 80% is number one is low value. Now, that doesn't mean they don't have to be done at all. Maybe they have to be done right, but maybe they could be done by somebody else. Some of them will need to be done by somebody else. Some of them may be done by you, but in 20% of your time, and maybe some of it just needs to be deleted, right, but anyway, the problem with the 80% is one is low value, but two is high volume. That's the problem. This is the problem. The problem is the 80% is 80 things, but it only gives you 2 million, but there are these 20 things that can give you 8 million. So why don't we do the 20% things twice and end up with 16 million? And we did it in 40% of the time. Do you see what I'm saying? So the 80% is the enemy, the 80% is the trap. The 80% is what creates burnout. The 80% is what creates mediocre results. The 80% is what creates overwhelm, the 80% is what creates paralysis. The better you get at identifying what the 80% is and either deleting it, delegating it or doing it in less than 20% of your time, the better, and so I've been working on this concept for years, and for the next 12 months, I was like you know what I am going to live in? The 20%. I am going to so aggressively filter my time, screen my time, that I am living in the 20%. My business time is spent on my 20% activities. My family time is spent on my 20% activity. Like, think it in that way. This will change your life. Okay, all right. Now I want to give an example so I can try and bring this all the way home. Okay, let's use an example. Let's say you want more clients or you want more patients. Like, that's the goal that you have, right? What is the 20% there? Okay, so now I want to make this very clear 20%. Sometimes, if you're like, what is that? Ask yourself what are the things that I know are good for my business? But I procrastinate up on the most A lot of times, that's your 20%, right? These are the things, a lot of times, we don't want to do. But now, when you think about more clients, people can say, oh, yeah, I will show up on social media, I'm going to do a direct mailer, I'm going to do ads, and there's nothing wrong with ads, don't get me wrong. I have a lot of podcast episodes on this, but this is where people like to run to first. But at the end of the day, somebody say, yes, comes from you asking them a question. Somebody say yes to you working with them in some way, shape or form comes from some kind of sales activity. Okay, and so your 20% is going to be selling, is going to be selling and is going to be the things that support selling. Not prepare for selling, but support selling. So let me give you an example. If you're saying I want to double the number of clients I have, that's my goal, what you will not hear from me is that's a ridiculous goal. I'm like what? Let's do it? All right, what do you want to do to pull it off? What I would be expecting to hear from you would be things that are 20% activities. Like number one increase the volume of my offers, increase the volume of my invitations. So maybe I used to ask on social media, or ask at events, or speak or ask for referrals or ask for all of those things. Maybe I used to do that 10 times a week. If you want to double the number of clients, it makes sense that you at least double the number of asks. So I'm asking people twice as much. I'm upping the volume of my ask. That's a 20% activity. Finding more people to ask is another 20% activity. So you can ask and ask and ask and ask. But if you're asking the same people, yes, you're going to get resolved, but the law of diminishing return is going to set in at some point, and so what that means is, well, I'm going to go guest on podcasts. I am going to go speak on stages, I'm going to attend that networking event. I'm going to go serve in other Facebook communities where my ideal audiences live. Notice, I said serve, I didn't say sell. We want to be respectful of people's groups. Ok, it's not just a group where people sell, all right. So I'm going to do all these things. Why? I'm going to double the amount of times I show up in front of new people, people who do not know about me, ok, so if I want to double the number of clients, I am doubling my audience, if you will. Or the number of times I'm showing up in front of new audiences, I'm doubling the amount of times I'm asking. Right, that's the second thing. The third thing is I'm up leveling my skill when it comes to selling. I'm going to become better. You might say, oh, but I brought my business to seven figures. I brought myself, my business to multiple seven figures. Great, but what brought you here won't get you there, right, and there are people for instance, russell Brunson showed up on the stage and did a 90 minute presentation on close $3.1 million in sales from one 90 minute presentation. And so if you have not done that, I dare say there's room for improvement. You can learn to be better at this stuff, right, and so improve your skill of selling. And this is why investing in yourself is so important. It's so important because that is what makes you say I do not recognize myself, I did not realize I could do this, I did not realize I could pull this off, which is what we hear in the on-termity business school all the time. Ok, so that's the first thing is increasing the volume of your asks. The second is finding more people to sell to Right. The third is increasing your skill of selling. And then the fourth thing really is increasing your client results Right, one of your obsessions if you serve people, whether this is a private practice setting or as a speaker, whether you always want to think how can I get them bigger results? How can I get them better results? How can I get them results faster? What is confusing? What can I get out of their way? Why? Because the bigger their results, the higher the likelihood they will continue to work with you, the bigger the results, the higher the likelihood they will refer other people to you, the bigger the results, right, and you can start creating this snowball. You see what I'm saying. Now, if you're telling me this is what I want to accomplish and you tell me this I want to double the amount of clients, patients, speaking gigs that I have. And I listen to you and you tell me these are the things I'm doing. At the same time, there'll be 700,000 million things that you're not doing, but I know that you're doing the things that will move the needle. So you can actually do this and you can double your client base, double your patient panel, without burning out Like you may actually end up doing less because you got rid of all the 80%. You got rid of the email and the calendar and even pitching the pocket, Like all this stuff. You got it off your plate. You got all the people to take care of it, like in your personal life, in your business, like all over. You're building all these teams, right? So if you're going to take on more things, things have to come off. And if you're going to take on more things and you're going to get more done in less time, then the 80% just needs to go. It needs to go. If you can adopt this way of thinking, you become unstoppable and you start having this life where things that take other people five years you're getting it done in a year. You're getting it done in six months. Right, and the more you do it, the better you get at it. It will change your life forever. So this is my homework for you, right? I want you to do an audit, look at your calendar from the last month or things like that, and go like okay, what are the things that are actually moving the needle in my business? How am I using my time? How much time am I spending on the 20%? How much time am I spending on the 80%? And make a commitment to double. Take the 80% things off and replace that with 20% time, 20% activities. It will rock your world, okay. So go workshop this. This will really change your life. If you're like man, I need help implementing this. I need help. I know what. It is right, because the bigger your business is, the more like your 20% stuff is not just doing, but is doing things through a team, and so building your team, training your team, hiring the right people, building the culture all that becomes a huge thing and growing to become the kind of leader who can lead that kind of team. These are all now 20% activities, right? If you need help with that in any stage of that, understand that we have something for you, okay. And so if you need help implementing that, reach out to my team on termdcom, that's on termdcom. We're happy to help you, happy to support you on that journey, and I cannot wait to see the results you'll create. I want you to think about this what if, over the next 12 months, you're able to double your impact, double your revenue, double your time off? Think about it. Double your impact, double your revenue, double your time off. If you can do that, what is that worth to you? Is that worth doing this exercise? Is that worth figuring this out? Is that worth figuring out the 20% and living there a thousand times? Yes, and that's what I'm going to be doing. So I invite you to do the same and I cannot wait to celebrate you when you send me a DM and say Dr Runa, I listened to this podcast episode you did a year ago and I took you up on that challenge. And guess what? Over the last 12 months, I have doubled my impact, I have doubled my revenue, I have doubled my time off, and that would be so amazing. Okay, all right, so go do it and this episode share it with the doctors in your world. Share it on your social media. Tag us hashtag on Tremd. Tell me what resonated with you the most. Make this a conversation. I'll see on social media and back here on the next episode of the Entremd podcast. Hey, if you love listening to the Entremd podcast, I want to invite you to join Entremd on demand. It is my signature subscription program that gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do one thing as a physician entrepreneur, and that is to thrive. Just head out to Entremdcom forward slash on demand and I'd love to have you join us. See you on the inside.