The EntreMD Podcast

My 2024 Predictions for the Physician Community

• Dr. Una • Episode 392

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Prepare to be empowered, my fellow physicians, as we explore the critical entrepreneurial skills that are becoming essential for navigating the healthcare landscape of 2024. Experience firsthand the gravity of personal branding, and why it’s no mere buzzword but a career-saving strategy in 'Doctor You Incorporated.' We confront the uncomfortable realities of job insecurity and discuss how to emerge as a medical maverick, turning your profession into a thriving business that can withstand the volatility of the industry.

Venture with me into the private practice and consulting realms, where the true test of resilience lies. Together, we dissect how to amplify team productivity without burnout, and I shed light on the financial pitfalls that could be silently draining your practice's revenue. For consultants, it's time to elevate your business acumen with robust sales and marketing tactics that cut through the noise in an ever-competitive post-pandemic world. Let's navigate these choppy waters with strategies that promise not just survival but resounding success.

Embrace the philosophy that change is not only inevitable but an opportunity for unprecedented growth. In this episode, I open up about the support networks that Entrée MD provides, designed to guide you through this transformative journey. From insightful podcasts to educational books and intensive business programs, prepare to be equipped with the tools needed to build a lasting legacy. Let's march forward with confidence, claiming our place at the forefront of the medical business revolution.

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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:

Well, hello, hello, my friends, Welcome back to another episode of the EntryMD podcast. As always, super Pumped to be in your ears, and I just wanted to start off by saying thank you, like thank you, for sharing these podcast episodes, thank you for reaching out in the DMs and the private messages letting me know how this has helped you with your business, how this has helped you navigate the very fascinating healthcare space we find ourselves in, and today I wanted to take a moment and talk about my 2024 predictions as far as the physician community goes. Now, when we look at healthcare, there are a lot of, you know, different things going on, and the purpose of this conversation is not really to fix the healthcare system, because that's a that's a bigger problem. It's more around. What do we need to do as doctors to preserve ourselves as we navigate this time? So I want you to think about it like, kind of when you get on an airplane and the flight attendants are like, okay, if we, the cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will come down and make sure you put the mask on yourself before you try to help somebody else. So helping the healthcare system is a herculean task which we're not running away from. We are going to do, but we have to put our oxygen mask on first, okay, so this is really about that, okay, and I kind of wanted to look at this in looking at the different places where doctors find themselves different types of work or business and things like that and so I'm kind of, you know, breaking this up into a few sections. And so the very first group of docs I want to talk about are the employed physicians. And in the on-tremdy world, you know, I'm a firm believer that every physician should embrace entrepreneurship, whether you're you're working a job or whether you own your own business, whether it's a private practice or your coach or your consultant or your speaker or whatever. But we invested too heavily in our education right, like you're talking $250,000 in school loans for us to not be in control of how we create a return on investment. And you may be saying, well, I didn't go to medical school to make money and most people didn't go to medical school to make money. However, we do live in an economic world and we don't want to pretend like money is not important. Okay, so, it's not number one, but it's very close to number one, all right. So, employed physician, what's the problem? What's the problem we're going to see more of in 2024, there's going to be a lot more terminations, a lot more terminations. I started talking about doctors taking control in 2016. And if you think about that, that was that was a long time ago. Right, that was eight years ago. And I'm like, okay, guys, we, if all we know how to do is doctor, we're gonna, we're gonna be out of look, we need to be in control. And you know, like what is going on. A time is coming where it will be harder for doctors to find jobs, and I remember how people say, oh, you're so ridiculous, that will never happen. I'm emergency medicine trains, that will never happen. We'll always be in high demand, and stuff like that. I'm like, no, you don't get it. Like, look at what is happening. And so now it's a lot more obvious and, of course, covid made it a whole lot more obvious but it is accelerating, it is not slowing down at all, and so I cannot believe I mean, I knew it was coming, but I cannot believe how often it's almost every day that I see a post on Facebook by a doctor saying I was terminated without cause. I was terminated without cause. I mean, this is something that, when I was a resident, there was no way to conceptualize. That, right, because that's just not a thing that happens, you know. So there are going to be more terminations, okay, and I promise you this is a very encouraging episode. Okay, I just need to tell you what is, and I'll tell you what to do. So there's going to be more terminations and that our roles are gonna be more commoditized, and you might be like I don't understand why that's happening and all of that, but I'm just telling you what is right, and so you can do what you do and these five other people can do what you do. Right, it's gonna be more commoditized. And so, if you are an employed physician, what should you be thinking about? What is the solution to this? Okay, and there are a few things. Number one you must understand that you already own a company. Your company is doctor. You incorporated. Your job is to build your brand. Okay, the thing about building a brand and this is something, whether you're employed or not, as a physician, you want to do your personal brand is something that you can leverage to create all kinds of different opportunities. Start all kinds of different businesses, start all kinds of different verticals, and you get to just build and build on top of it. It is an asset. It is a seven figure asset, right? And I want us to start thinking about our brands. For instance, if you get fired, terminated without cause, what kind of brand have you built that will make it so much easier compared to somebody else, so much easier to get another job? Okay, I have a doctor who's a client of mine who you know, the hospital had given her this ridiculous contract to sign that had a non-compete that if she had signed it and she left, she would literally need to move six hours away to get a job. That's how wide the non-compete was. And she was just like I'm not signing this, right? And she decided you know what? I'm just gonna leave. She'd see someone who had built her brand, built her network, built her name, and so somebody else found out she was leaving. It's like, oh, my goodness, I will start a whole practice for you. Come work with me, right? Why? Because of the power of her brand. Okay, so you want to build your brand, like starting yesterday, okay. And so, since you couldn't start yesterday, today's the next best day. That's number one. Number two build your network, okay, because people are like gold, right? The more people you have in your world, the more access you have to answers, to opportunities, to jobs, to business opportunities, all kinds of things. It's all in people. And so the bigger your network is, the higher your network, the more control, the more control you have. And so maybe you're like me, you're an introvert, and maybe you're like I was you're painfully shy, socially awkward, introverted, introvert. I just want to invite you to understand that networking is not a personality trait, it's a skill and you can learn it. But start growing your network, start growing the number of people you know who are in a position to be a gift to you. Now, that doesn't mean it's manipulative, right, because again, we talk about networking, but you lean into, you know what's in it for them, right? So you lead with service, you lead with being a gift to them and someday, when you need it, there'll be a gift back. This is just the way the world works, right? So grow your network, don't just know you, right? Okay, and the other thing is build business skills. It is never too early to build business skills. Every time we open up the Entry into Business School, people ask me okay, so I'm thinking of opening a business six months from now, so maybe I should wait until then to start the business. I'm like, yeah, but what skills are you gonna use to start the business? Right, the best time to start acquiring the skills is now, and in the Entry into Business School world, we call it the business before the business. And the people who have done this, it's amazing that they have been able to start their businesses with a bank. Because I'm like, why are you waiting? Like, the first thing that needs to happen is you need to become an entrepreneur. Right, it's not that when the door is open, it doesn't make you an entrepreneur. So I'll give you an example. There's a doctor who's in the Entry into Business School and he was a partner at a practice. And one day they call him and they fire him. He was firing him, right, but this is the deal At this point, he had been in the Entry into Business School for almost 10 months and he was building the skill, building his social media presence, building his brand, building his network, speaking, doing all the kinds of things, building his team even though it wasn't his team, but he was building his team and getting them profitable, right, like, how do I build a profitable team and all of these things. So guess what he had when they fired him? Skills. Guess what he did when they fired him? He went and opened his own practice and he is starting busy, right, because he understood the business before the business. He started building his list, he started building people who are patients, he started scheduling before his doors were open and he is going to absolutely crush it. I can't even wait to get him on the podcast. Okay, but this is somebody who was fired, but he had built his brand, built his network, acquired business skills. He was ready. He was ready. You may say, oh, but my place of employment, they're really great, like they're not going to do anything like that and that's fine. But if they are, I told you the story of another doctor who's a student in the Entry into Business School. She's one of the EBS lifers, right, she's like I'm never leaving and we love her. So she says you know, she was talking to me at a vision retreat that we had and she said Dr Iuna, I have made the most money I have ever made as an employed physician. That's what she said, and I took 12 weeks off. Why did she do that? Cause she has built her business skills and she has built her brand right. She's built her negotiation skills. She did all of that. So if you're an employed physician, the worst thing you can do is just stay like I'm employed and my job will take care of me. Nobody's taking care of anybody, like. It's too risky to do that. You have your family depending on you, have you depending on you? Have your dreams depending on you. You take care of you. Okay, okay, so that's for the employee physician. Second group private practice. Okay, what's the problem? Well, there's decreasing reimbursements, there is the great resignation, and so it's much harder to keep team members. There's a rising costs of Doing business, whether that is the supplies to do business or the cost of the team. Right, because now you know all the rates are up and all of those things going on, and so these are the challenges that private practice doctors are going to be facing in 2024, and so that's what is right. And so what is the response? Okay, so the first thing is we want to start thinking about running lean practices. Right, and you know we're like a lean business machine. So we're looking at our expenses, we're looking at you know where the money is going and all of those things and cutting off what needs to be cut off. Now I do want to say this we don't cut off marketing. I mean, except this marketing that's not working. But we don't cut off marketing. We don't cut off coaching. We don't cut off the things that help us stay alive, right, but we want to take a look like what are we doing? What is it costing us? I can't tell you how many times, you know, people are like, oh, my goodness, everybody's working overtime. So not only are the salaries, are the hourly rates higher, but everybody's also working overtime. And I'm like, yeah, we can just nip that in the bud, right? Like because, especially because it's not like we're on to it, or anything like that. So that's one thing to do. And you might be saying, dr Unai, dawn stand is not sustainable and all that you are in private practice. Why don't we figure out how to get you to thrive? And we are coming after the system. We're just not talking about that today, we're talking about you, okay, the other thing we can do is increase the team productivity, or more like optimize, right, increase makes it seem like we're slave drivers. We're gonna optimize the productivity and you want to look at each role in your practice like what is this person's contribution to the bottom line? What is the contribution of this position to the bottom line? How can we Modify what they do to add revenue generating activities? Right, you want to think about that. So I did a podcast episode how to convert your payroll to an investment instead of an expense, right, so you want to go listen to that and really pay attention to that and act on it, because if you can up your team's Productivity, then what that does is for the same amount, it increases how much revenue you're bringing in, and so that improves your profit margin. Okay, so that's the second thing. The third thing is to really eliminate waste, and I did a whole workshop on Seven ways private practice owners leave money on the table. Okay, I did a whole workshop on that and I talked about it like open spots on the schedule, not sending in your claims, you know, sending claims that need to be reworked, and reworked. Having your doctors do things anybody else on the team can do right, because they're the most expensive people on your team, and we talked about a lot of different things. And if you would, if you were not part of the workshop, and you would love that you can send us an email at dr Una druna at on tremdcom, and we can send you the replay. Okay, but you want to go through those seven things and say, okay, let me audit my practice here and get rid of these seven things that are here. Okay, then for some of you will make absolute sense to start building verticals, right, like so? Maybe your pediatrician and you want to think about ear piercing, right, so? Maybe they're not many doctors that do that and that's not something that you're opposed to doing. Well, you can do that. It has a pretty low overhead and things like that. You may be a Specialty that has more procedures and stuff, and there's some things you can bring a house. I will say, though, like you know, but you have to make sure the numbers work right, because a lot of these people are, you know, predators. They'll come and say, oh, take this laser machine will help you market, we'll do all the things. That would just be fantastic, and the second you sign away this something that'll come to $450,000 over x number of years they walk away. You never really see them again, except to get their payment. So you want to be careful, you want this to be something that you know for a fact that it will work. There's an ROI and things like that, and you can think about adding verticals, right, okay, so that's for private practice, right. So, yes, you can still thrive, but you are going to need to show up differently. And the first place you need to show up differently is in the mindset. Like, you can't say, oh, this doesn't work, it just sucks, I don't know what to do, I should just shut it down, like. I mean, like, if you do, if you make a strategic decision to shut it down, that's okay. But I want us to get out of the energy of, oh, you know, like, own it, like, let's look, rather than this is not working, like how can this work, right, okay, so so that's the the second group. Third group would be consultants, coaches and cash-based private practices. So, like your direct primary care, direct specialty care type of models, the problem is that you know, like the markets, because of the recession, because of hyperinflation, you know like the market is more savvy. So, during the pandemic, right, people had this realization like, maybe I like being at home, you know more, maybe I want to switch careers, maybe I want to, I want to do something different with my life. And so people and the government was pumping in money and there was all kinds of relief payments and so people were just spending and it became so much easier to sell and to do all of those things. But now it's a different market. Now, right, like, people are more savvy, people are still buying, but they're paying more attention and they're investigating more and things like that. And so what that does is it sets the stage for you to actually show up like an entrepreneur and do the work, because the other, the other stuff is, is gone. Right, like that was artificial. That was, you know, that was artificial. Okay. So what's the solution? If you're a culture consultant and I say this, I say this respectfully a lot of times you know we start our business like you know hobbies, jobbies, you know just going to try it, or we just like helping people. We don't really want to care about the money. That's not going to cut it. You're not going to accidentally get to multiple six figures, seven figures, multiple, seven figures doing that, right, you may not even thrive at all doing that, okay. So number one is you're going to have to treat your business like a real business, right, this is a business, which means that I work at it, which means sales, which means marketing, which means all of these things. Like you're, we're going to have to work at this thing right, and so treat like a real business. You. You engage, marketing, right, like the people who will love to use your service just don't know you exist. So you're going to put yourself out there. You're going to extrovert in the marketplace. You're going to grow your audience. You're going to grow your email list, all these things you've heard about. You're going to work the sales. You're going to do the one to one sales. Maybe you're going to do the one to many sales. You're going to train your team to sell right, like for a more established business. But your sales and your marketing, that's going to need to happen, like that's going to need to happen. The excuses of I don't like being on camera. I don't like being on social media. I don't like talking to people. I don't like talking to referral sources. I don't do people like all of that. None of that is going to work. None of that is going to work. Okay, so we're going to have so many of these businesses go out of business, except they realize that their business is an active coordinate. And I think one of the other critical ones is really around the pricing. And so you know, I'm all about the math needs some math, right, like. So the math of business is a podcast episode I've done. You can look for that one where we talk about you know, really, looking at you can't just arbitrarily pick up prices like this is what I'm going to charge and not run the numbers like the numbers have to work. So, for instance, if you're like I want everybody to be able to afford my thing and so I make it a really low price and you're going to have to serve everybody to make it profitable, right, like so it's low ticket, high volume, right. Or you decide, no, I'm going to charge high ticket. What I do is really custom, really boutique, really concierge, and I'm going to start charge accordingly so I only have to have a few clients. But if you're like I want to have a few clients so I can spend all the time with my clients and I want to charge a little, then you see the problem, like the math is not going to math, and then so many, you know businesses will go out of business. You know, and if you are you know you're, you've always had a one to one model and you're like I really want to scale then it's the time to start looking at one to many model. Maybe you're a coach and you've done one to one and you want to start thinking about groups and things like that, and so it will require you learn new skills, but you're going to have to treat like a real business, right? And so when I think about 2024, these are some of the problems that come to mind for me, and I just want us to be ready. I want us to be prepared, I want us to thrive Okay, I want us to thrive. And so the big, the big deal here is that in all of these, you'll see that our evolution is required. Like we're not gonna do things the way we've always done them. Where we can't say this is the way I've always done it, we can't say I'm waiting for the you know good old days to come back. That is never happening. The rate of change of the industry any industry is so fast that we can't afford to not keep up right like, so things are changing. We need to change, we need to evolve, we need to learn to Build our brands. We need to learn to market. We need to learn to sell. We need to learn to build big build teams. We need to learn to lead teams. We need to learn to be comfortable talking about money. We need to be able to be comfortable asking for money. We need to be comfortable building Business assets. So not not oh, you know, I just did this to get a buck but you're building an asset, right, something that can work without you, ultimately, something that you can sell if you want to, something that can have a huge impact, something that can disrupt the whole industry. Like we're gonna need to evolve to do that right. We're gonna need to evolve. So I want to embrace I want everyone to embrace this whole concept and and decide to evolve like I'm going to change, I'm going to be better, I'm gonna up my game. I'm not complaining about this anymore. I'm going to do something. I'm gonna take charge. I'm gonna take charge of my own Career, my own business, my own destiny, my own return on investment in this whole education that I got. I'm gonna take control, right. Like that's kind of what we need to do. And so, as far as Us, as a company on tramd, we are Are committed a thousand percent to helping physicians do this, and so I just want to give you a Feel for the way we're going to be doing that, the ways we have available to do that in 2024. Now we have a number of resources. The podcast is one, and my commitment is if you show up twice a week to listen, I will be coming with some of my best stuff. I don't do fluff. I've had people call me and say why do you put all this amazing stuff on the podcast? I feel like people should be paying for that and I'm like, yeah, so people pay me and we work on the implementation and the accountability and the troubleshooting and all of that. But I want my podcast to be a gift to the physician community that provides the business education that we didn't get, and so this podcast is one right. So make it part of your routine. Like twice a week I just listen and get my business education on right. So that's one. Two is that we have a number of books. We have the alternative method, we have the made for more a book, and I have another book coming out and I will make that announcement at a different time, but look out for it right. And again, these are things that are a business education. That's the, that's the whole idea on term D exists to provide the business education that physicians didn't get right, and so those are, you know, like technically free resources books about 15 bucks, but technically they're free. I Then, as far as our programs, we have three programs that we would serve physicians with. The first is called the Entry and Redeem Business School Accelerator, and this is a 90-day program. So maybe you're like I don't know if I want to do a year in the Entry and Redeem Business School, but I get so much from the podcast. I want to get more. I want to get more accountability, more direction, more structure and things like that, and so it's a 90-day program that is really designed to help you have the experience of taking 90 days of your life and creating a 180-year business, like really turning things around and think about it. Like the president has the first 100 days in office and you have your next 90 days in business, and so you will get a really in-depth workshop on how to set your goals for the 90 days and how to create a plan that will help you accomplish the goals. You get to meet doctors who are doing the same thing. Hear their stories. You get virtual networking and all that super powerful 90 days. And the second thing is Entry and Redeem Business School Grow, which is what we've traditionally known as the Entry and Redeem Business School. That's our year-long program that's produced so many new businesses, six-figure businesses, seven-figure businesses, multiple seven-figure businesses. It is a group of unicorns in one community committed to building great businesses so they can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their terms. We've had people do that. They paid $260,000 off in student loans. We had a doctor who hit a million in her first year in private practice. We have doctors who are like my marriage is better, a doctor said to me. She said on the podcast, dr Rebecca Barron, it's like I've been in therapy for years but the Entry and Redeem Business School has been the best thing for my mental health. People like I'm in the best shape of my life. It's a magical place and I feel every physician deserves to be there. But of course I'm biased and so if you're someone who's committed and you're like man, I'm ready, man, I'm not playing anymore Then come join us. Come join us. And then the third is for the doctors who've crossed a million in revenue. Congratulations. Congratulations, especially if you're female. Only 2% of female entrepreneurs do that. But you have also created new problems for yourself. Right, because now you have problems around building team, managing team, getting things done through a team. Building systems, because the systems that got you to a million are all broken. They don't work anymore. Right, or maximizing profits, because sometimes your revenue goes up but your profit margin keeps going down, and so you're revenue rich, but real money poor. Right, and there is a community that is filled with unicorns. I need to imagine a group of physician entrepreneurs building businesses that over seven figures in revenue. Wild, it's a wild place. It's called EBS scale. It's a beautiful place to be in. And so, whichever one that is, if you're like man, I want to evolve and I want to leverage the Entremd Business School to do that Then I want you to just you know, next step is just to schedule a call, entremdcom and so on my team. We'll be happy to help you decide which next step is best for you. Okay, and we'll be happy to do any high pressure sales in the Entremd Business School. None, because we believe that we can create a master PCR. We can create an unbelievable business. If that's what you want and that's what we want, right. So we want to make sure that it's a match, it's a great fit for you. That's what we want to do. So there's no pressure, it's just really sitting with you to see is this the best thing to do, and which of these are the best for you to do? Okay, so, regardless of whether you come to Entremd Business School or not, I want you to embrace your evolution and just, whatever you do, don't stay the same. Okay, it is going to be. It's going to look like a rough year, but you can. These are some of the things I'm telling you so you can exclude yourself from that. Right, I'm all. I've always been about the exemption. When the pandemic hit, nobody knew what it was Like. Now we know. Nobody knew what it was, how long it will last, what it will do to the world and private practices were dropping like flies and I remember coming out and saying guys, listen, okay, I know these things are going on, but we are going to thrive. How, I don't know yet. I'm working on that, but we are going to thrive. At least we can make that decision and we did Right. And so I mean, the Entremd Business School was born in July of 2020. It's all about exemption, and so I want you to choose to be exempt from the craziness that's going to be happening. And these are some of the things you need to do, and your evolution is mandatory mandatory If you just flow as your 2023 self in 2024, it is not going to be pretty, and you know I'm a very positive person, okay, but that's why I'm showing you the way to escape that. So evolve, keep the, the preferred picture, what you want your business to look like on your mind and go get it done, okay, but don't roll over. Don't expect things to get better. You be better, right. Jim Rohn said that don't expect, don't wish things were easier. You be better, right. Okay, so this episode is one I really want you to share with the doctors in your life, because we doctors all need to hear this, and I want you to make a commitment to yourself that you're going to change. I want you to share this on social media with your friends. Send them text messages, tell them you absolutely have to listen to this and I will see you on the next episode of the Andre and the podcast.