The EntreMD Podcast

Reclaim Your Time with These Strategic Hiring Approaches

• Dr. Una

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Are you overwhelmed by your workload as a physician entrepreneur? Many in our field struggle to balance patient care and business responsibilities.

Picture having the freedom to focus on what truly matters, whether it's spending time with family, traveling, or simply enjoying life outside of work. 

Today, I reveal the key to unlocking this reality: building a strategic team. I discuss the urgency-based and strategic hiring models, showing you exactly who to hire and when.

You'll learn who your first hire should be and how this one decision can save you countless hours each week.

I also share tips on creating a structured team that empowers you to step back and let your business thrive independently.

Click to listen to the episode and start building your dream team today. Your dream life is just a few strategic hires away.

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Key Takeaways: 

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 01:53 Urgency-based hiring model
  • 05:42 Strategic hiring model
  • 06:20 Who should be your first hire
  • 08:15 Building a layered team structure
  • 11:52 Benefits of hiring the right team
  • 13:41 Hiring as a skill to develop 
  • 15:32 Building a dream business and life
  • 17:25 Outro


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Additional Resources:


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:

an executive assistant. They can manage your email. They can manage your calendar. I want you to think about how much time you spend, you know, trying to schedule one thing, like we should get together to do whatever. Yeah, is this time work? No, does this time work? No, like, what? Like? Get all of that stuff off your plate. Just say my people. Talk to your people, hi docs.

Speaker 1:

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. As you know, I'm a big, big, big supporter of physicians building dream businesses and living their dream lives, and it's not unusual that I have people talk to me about how they don't have time, whether these are people who are at the beginning stages of their businesses and maybe they're working a job, or people who are running very successful multimillion dollar businesses and they're like I just don't have time, and time is the currency for your dream life. If you don't have the time, you can't live the dream life right, and so one of the things that comes up a lot when I start showing them how they can have this dream life is that they realize that they need to buy back their time and they need to build teams. Okay, once they figure this out, then the million dollar question becomes how do I know who to hire next? And that is what we're going to be talking about on this episode of EntreeMD podcast. So who do I need to hire next? I have this business. It's really successful, and I know that I need to hire multiple people. Where do I start from?

Speaker 1:

Okay, and if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't really think I need to hire anybody, truth of the matter is, if you are building a business, you do. At least there is one person everybody needs, but we're going to talk about that as we get into this. So there are two main ways to look at who to hire next. Okay, one is from a very strategic standpoint and the other is from an urgency-based standpoint, and both of them are valid, right, so it really depends on where you are in your business. So I would like to tell you for everybody this is who you hire first, the second and third, but I would rather show you how to think about it, so you can not only make this decision for yourself now, but you're empowered to continue to make this decision as you continue to grow your business. All right, so let's talk about the urgency-based model first.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now, the urgency-based model is based on urgency right, like, what is the urgent need in your business right now? That needs to be, you know, needs to be taken care of. So, for instance, maybe you're somebody who you are running a direct primary care practice and you started with just you and you don't have anybody else working with you. But then you've built your panel to the number of patients you want to have and in the beginning it was fine because you were able to do all the administrative angles of it and you were able to take care of the patients and all of that stuff. You're able to do them. But as your panel grew, things started falling through the cracks and all of that stuff. You're able to do them, but as your panel grew, things started falling through the cracks and your service delivery started suffering and people always used to leave five-star reviews. Now you're getting some threes, now you're getting some twos. You're like, okay, there is an urgent. No matter what the strategy is, there's an urgent need to bring somebody in who can take care of the administrative angle of things. So that's an urgent need to bring somebody in who can take care of the administrative angle of things. Right, so that's an urgent need.

Speaker 1:

Or maybe you have, you know, like a practice, and you have, you know, five doctors and their panels are booked solid, and then you had a doctor who needed to leave and if they needed to leave and they used to see 20 patients a day, 100 patients a week, and they used to see 20 patients a day, 100 patients a week, 400 patients a month that you have an urgent need to find somebody who could take care of those patients. Do you see what I'm saying? And you could be a coach and again you've taken care of your patients, your clients, you've done all the things and it's been fine, but again service delivery has started suffering. Or you had a full panel of clients and you had somebody who was responsible for scheduling all their coaching calls, sending them emails, sending them recordings of their coaching sessions and all of these things, and everything was good, and that person got pregnant and needed to stop working.

Speaker 1:

Right Now you have something that is urgent because all those things are going to fall through the cracks and you can't take care of it because you have a full complement of clients, okay, so the first thing to look at is do I have urgent needs in my business right now that I have to staff for right Now we could go into this is a little bit of a tangent, but I'm going to go into it for about 60 seconds. And you know, every time you find yourself in a position where you need to hire, it is a good time to do an audit to see do I really need to hire? Is this, if there's so much redundancy that was in this position that I'm trying to replace that, I can eliminate the position. Are there things that could be automated that I can just automate? Right and forget about having to hire a whole person to do this. So you do want to run an audit and say, okay, is this position needed at all? Right, okay, so I just wanted to throw that out there. Back to urgency, all right. So, look, is there anything urgent that I need to stop for? If there is, then the strategy doesn't necessarily apply in this situation. You want to fill that position with the people on board them. Do all the things, get them up and running, proficient in what they're doing, right, so that's your urgency model.

Speaker 1:

The second model, which is where I'll spend more of my time, is the strategic model, and so this means there's nothing wrong with your business. I could say, okay, so let's say, you know, I want to take my practice to where it's doing 5 million in revenue and so, based on where I'm trying to go, what are the positions that I need to have as I go from one revenue milestone to another? Okay, so this is strategic, there's nothing wrong. I may not even really have the need at this time, or I may, I may, but I may not have the need at this time. But this is strategic, okay, right. So when it comes to strategic, there is a sequence, all right. So let's talk about let's talk about that sequence in the sequence of hiring. Chances are 99% of the time, this is the way this will happen.

Speaker 1:

Your very first hire would be someone for an administrative role. Okay, and so that could be a virtual assistant. That could be an executive assistant In a way. In the private practice, it could be like a front desk person. But truthfully, I'm a big fan of physicians having executive assistants, especially. I mean, like you're running a business or you're running multiple businesses and stuff like that, and executive assistants will give you your life back literally. Okay, all right, so it will be an administrative role, like so this is somebody who can handle your emails. This is somebody who and and there's a lot of Nobody can handle my emails, like me. Just remember, there are so many executives who don't touch their emails. Remember that there's so many executives who don't have email, like they don't have access to an email. So there's email for them, but they don't have access to an email. I mean, there's so many ways to do this. I would really really invite you to explore it and not just knock it down. I have yeah, that's not even going to what I have, because there's so many things that I've just gotten off my plate but an executive assistant. They can manage your email. They can manage your calendar.

Speaker 1:

I want you to think about how much time you spend, you know, trying to schedule one thing, like we should get together to do whatever. Yeah, is this time, does this time work? No, does this time work? No, does that like? What? Like, get all of that plate. Just say my people talk to your people, right, my people talk to your people. Okay, so they can get that off your plate. And remember executive assistant is not the executive assistant for your business, it's the executive assistant for you. So, which means they can schedule date nights, they can schedule your kid's birthday party, they could book trips, they could do all this stuff. There's so much you can get off your plate with an administrator. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1:

So the first level will be your administrative team. Okay, administrative team. You can choose to have one professionally and one personally. You know, I'm a really big fan of building a home team. You're the CEO of your home, so don't try to do everything yourself. Should I bring team members on? Okay, so that's the first one and I'll give you examples.

Speaker 1:

So the second layer would then be the people who execute. So your executors, the people who do the tasks, the other people who are the producers, that level of a hire. And so if it is a practice, a private practice, for instance, you could think like this could be a front desk person and your medical assistant, your referral coordinator and all of those people right, they're the people who get the job done. Right, they're the people who get the job done. If you're somebody who is uh, who is a coach, that could be other coaches who work with you. Um, they could be there, could be like project managers, especially if they're managing projects, not people, right, like, so you know project manager, things like that. Those are people who you know they're on, they're on that team. Maybe you have a marketing person, you have a sales person, you have someone who runs consult calls and all of those things. They're all part of that level. So you have your admin and you have your, your executors. Okay, so those are the doers, so they get the, they, they get the job done.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now your third layer, your third layer, is going to be your managers. And so these are the people who manage the producers, right, they manage the executors. Um, and really, you know, by the time, you have over five, um, people, like full-time people especially, who are working with you and reporting to you and all of that stuff, you're at a point where, if you're going to add a bunch more people that you do want to have somebody who you know like who's managing all of that, right, because if you think about it especially so, say, you're in private practice, you know you're the physician and then you're the manager and then you're the CEO, like, you have so many roles, even though you don't realize that you think it's one hat, but you're wearing so many different hats, and so once you get that number of people reporting to you, you really want to put another layer of management in there, right? Okay, so you have that, and again, that person is responsible for outcomes. The person is not so much a doer, they manage the people to the outcomes, right. And so let's say, you have an office manager and you're, like you know, I want to see on my schedule 20 patients a day and I want us to have X number of people referring to us. I want to have X number of reviews. I want our AR, you know, I want, like you know, 85% of it to be in the zero to 30 bucket, I want. So they're managing your billers, they're managing your schedulers, they're managing, you know, people getting the reviews. They're managing the people running the office to make sure that it's running in a timely manner, so your patients are wowed and they give you all those lovely reviews and all those things. So they're managing outcomes and they're managing the people to deliver on the outcomes, right, okay, if you are a coach, for instance, right, and you have a team, you have a team of coaches and you have workshops that you do and all of those things. You can have a manager who is managing your coaches, managing your marketing person, your salesperson, all of those things, and finance team and all of those things and they're managing them to the outcomes that you set. And then after that, you have executive leadership, which I won't talk too much about that on this podcast episode.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so if you're in a position where you're like, oh my goodness, I'm so burnt out, I want to get my time back. Dr Una, you're right, I'm always working in the business. I don't have any time whatsoever In fact, I'm drowning in the business. I don't have any time whatsoever to work on the business and I want to start building a team. If we're going strategically and we're thinking sequence, it's executive assistant. This person, oh my goodness, will save you so many hours a week. You will not believe it how much time they will save you, right? And so you have your executive assistant. And then you're like, okay, who do I need in my business? Is it front desk, all of that stuff? Do I have that? If you have that in place, great, but I have 12 people reporting to me, so I need a manager in place, right, and things like that.

Speaker 1:

So that's kind of a sequence that you can follow so you can build this team that can really run the business without you, right, like create a well-oiled machine for you, okay. So I wanted to bring out these two things so you can kind of see the way to look at it. So if you're in a place where there are urgent needs, urgent urgent needs, you're like, okay, let's staff for those urgent needs get that out of the way, and then you know if it's not urgent. You're just like I want to build a well-oiled machine, I want to build a team, a company that can work without me. Then you can follow the strategic model and then just bring these pieces in and understand. With each piece you get time back, you get bandwidth to focus on the business. You get bandwidth to meet with the team and coach them and train them so they can run things for you and all of those kinds of things, all right. So those are the two ways to look at that and that's what will make all the difference in your business.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now I want to really how do I describe this? I really want to encourage you because I know that it can be challenging if you haven't hired before and all of those things, but I want you to understand that it's a skill like any other skill and you can build it. It will require that you put in the reps. Okay, it will require that you put in the reps, and so I want to invite you to start practicing writing out the job description. What outcomes do I want them to be responsible for? Put it out there. Tell people you're hiring, start interviewing, practice interviewing at the highest level. We have podcast episodes you can go back and look at that how to run the interviews, the questions to ask and all of that. Start bringing people on board.

Speaker 1:

But this is the deal. I believe that every physician deserves to have a business that serves a lot of people, that creates time freedom for them, that creates financial freedom for them right? I truly believe every physician deserves that kind of business and the business is built in such a way that the business can work without you. I don't want us building jobs. I want us building businesses that are assets that you can walk away from, that you can sell if you wanted to, that you can just keep what you're not in the day to day.

Speaker 1:

That's on one side. That's the dream business, okay and that you also have a dream life where you have the time to focus on the things that matter to you. You have the time to work on your marriage and enjoy it and build memories to work on with. You know, like your kids, if you have kids and and and really enjoy that, you have time to travel If traveling is a thing you want to do. You know, like your kids, if you have kids and really enjoy that, you have time to travel. If traveling is a thing you want to do, you have time to focus on your health. You have time to focus on why you think you're on this planet and do that right and explore all of those things right, and entrepreneurship really is the vehicle that can deliver all of that to you.

Speaker 1:

So I want you to lean in. I want you to do this. Understand with every team member you bring in, you're adding one more block to the building that is your dream life and your dream business, okay, all right. So go execute on this. Identify who your next critical hire is and start putting in the ads and all of those things to hire that person. And look, you can send me a private message and say, dr Una, you will not believe what happened. And I will say, of course I will what happened. And then you can tell me about who you hired and how it changed your life and how it changed your business and all of that. Okay, and of course, if you need support with this, you know we're always here for you, okay? So the Entremdi Business School is the place where we help physicians become the kind of entrepreneurs who could build dream businesses and dream lives.

Speaker 1:

And if you're wondering, is this my best next step, schedule a call with my team. They'll be happy to walk you through it. We do not do hard pressure sales of any kind. This will be us having a conversation, finding out what your needs are, find out what your goals are and to see if this is a good fit for you. So entremedycom forward, slash call. That's entremedycom forward, slash call. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1:

Now I want you to think with me for a second. Okay, because this is the life that I want you to have. I want you to imagine bringing in your next three like let's even take it further your next three critical hires. You've onboarded them, they have function at maximum capacity and they have taken so much from your plate and they have taken so much thinking off your plate, because they're responsible for the outcomes, not just the tasks. So they're not just doing the tasks, they're leaning in and producing the results. So they're doing their own thinking and bearing their own weight and bringing their own expertise and their own magic to your company. So your company is so much better and because it's so much better, you're serving more people. You have more financial freedom, you have more time, and then you have all this time and the resources to build your dream life. Okay, that's what I want for you, right, right, so let's go do it. Don't forget to share this episode with another doctor in your life, and I'll see you on the next episode of the OnTrendy Podcast.