The EntreMD Podcast

How to Get 1% Better Every Day as a Physician Entrepreneur

• Dr. Una • Episode 433

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The secret to success is continuous improvement. 

If you want to succeed, you have to get better every day. 

You have to make every day a progress day. 

I know it sounds impossible… 

That’s why today, I will share five morning habits you should do every day to move toward your most important goals. 

I will show you how to get 1% better every single day. 

And I know it’s possible because I did it, so no excuses! 

Are you ready? 

Let’s go! 

—

Key Takeaways: 

  • 00:00 Intro 
  • 00:48 Do you want to be the absolute best? 
  • 05:59 The secret of successful entrepreneurs 
  • 09:50 My daily 5 
  • 19:33 Discipline over motivation 
  • 23:06 Outro 

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:

Imagine every single day. Every single day, you got better. Every single day you got stronger. Every single day you got more equipped to handle the challenges that come with entrepreneurship. Every day, you had an opportunity for your vision to even get bigger. When you need the mental toughness, it's too late to build it. So what do you do? You build this, slowly but surely, every single day. What is the thing that makes entrepreneurs go from one level in their business to the next, to the next, to the next? What is the thing that helps entrepreneurs go through one trial? It could be a personal trial, a business trial, a business transition, a personal transition. What helps entrepreneurs go through that and continue to win? I have found out that it is not a strategy as far as a business strategy, but it is all about who they are. As entrepreneurs Like you are the most important asset in your business, and today I am going to show you how to get 1% better every single day, because if you can master this, it puts you in a position where your business is exponentially better. People think it's the business principles that make the business work. It does, but beyond that, there's an engine that drives their success, and it's all internal. Okay, so we're going to look at how to become 1% better.

Speaker 1:

If you've never met before, my name is Dr Una. I am the founder of EntreeMD. I'm a pediatrician by training, but what I love to do is help amazing physicians just like you build profitable businesses, so you have the freedom to live life and to practice medicine on your terms. Okay Now, at the time of this recording, we just recently, you know, watched the Olympics, the 2024 Olympics in Paris and I love watching the Olympics because it's all about champions, right, it's all about, you know, people who are world class at what they do. And I think this time, you know, I walked away making up my mind that I was going to be world class at being me, at doing what I think I'm on earth to do. I'm going to become world class at it, and what that means is that there's certain disciplines and certain mindset shifts and certain actions that we need to take, and I kind of want to just start this off by asking you to stop and decide like, do I want to be the absolute best, like world-class at being me? Because I thought about it, you know, like I was like, yeah, I could do that for a sport. I could do that, for you know something that I do, but I don't want to do that. The one thing that you know that I think would be worth putting all that effort is decades of effort.

Speaker 1:

Think about it when you see somebody watch, you know run a race and you're like they did this race in X number of seconds, broke the world record. It's so amazing. I mean, it took them, you know, four seconds to do that, or 10 seconds to do that, if you will. But if you's something that you're a student of, people come in to celebrate, like the 100 meters, right. So maybe they do it in 9.5 seconds. They come to celebrate a nine second race, but it took that person 15 years, 20 years, to become the person who could do that and to become a champion. Their routines and rituals and trainings and all these things required over a long period of time. Are you willing to do it for yourself? I'm willing to do it for me. I'm willing to become 1% better every single day.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now I run a business school called the Untrended Business Schools, exclusively for physicians, and this is the beginning of our fifth year, if you will. We just celebrated our fourth year anniversary and I have had the pleasure of watching some entrepreneurs who've been in school all four years and they're building phenomenal businesses and I've watched them go through personal crises, right, and so either you know there's something you know, like a parent is sick or or they're sick, or you know things like that and they still have a business. I've watched people go through personal transitions. So this is not a bad thing, but they had a baby and things like that, so it's not a bad thing, but there's time required to you know, like, focus on that. I've seen people go through business crises where you have three people quit, or you have a major insurance company decide they're no longer paying, or they change healthcare saga that we had, you know, so they were not getting paid. You know embezzlement all kinds of you know challenges. You know business transitions. You know have a doctor that moved locations and some patients are leaving because they don't want to drive to the new location, all of those kinds of things.

Speaker 1:

So sometimes people will tell me I need to take a break because this happened, this personal challenge happened or this business thing happened, and I'm like that's not the way that works. We're actually here to support you because we know times that are going to show up and we want you to win in spite of them. So they've had things like this go on. I've always paid attention to what they would say, helped them get through it, and almost all of them will go like I am so grateful for my morning routine, I am so grateful for my morning dream. This craziness is going on, but my morning routine is getting me through it and because of that, I wanted to come off to unpack this, because it is something simple, but I have learned that the fact that something is simple or the fact that something is easy doesn't mean that it gets done. So I want to unpack this and I really want to impress on you the importance of not only hearing about this and all of that, but actually doing it, and actually doing it over time and actually doing it consistently, because what this will do is it will set you up to be world-class. It will set you up to be the Simone Biles of your sport, which is the sport of becoming all you can be.

Speaker 1:

The reason why these people are thriving is because you know there are elements that they've taken care of. They've built a formidable mindset Like it's a mindset that can withstand storms. That is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself as an entrepreneur. That is filled with strategies and insights and understands how the ultra successful function, that kind of mindset. These are people who have, you know, set it up that they have made their priorities, their priorities right, like. So there's something about saying, oh, my priority is my family and my priority is this, but when we look at the way you run your life day to day, it's very clear that those are not your priorities, right, but they've prioritized their priorities right. So for some people it's their faith, for some people it's their family and their relationship with their friends and things like that. They've prioritized all of that. They pay attention to their physical state, because your physical state matters. How your body feels that matters. And these are people who are very vision focused, like they have their goals, their vision where they're going, on their mind all the time.

Speaker 1:

So I want you to imagine like, like if that was you right Super solid mindset. You know your priorities are your priorities, because what that does is, as an entrepreneur, it's easy to chase down what you need to do and do the work, and all of that when you know that you're being true to yourself, when you know that the things that are most important to you, that you're treating them like the most important, when the main thing is the main thing. Right, if that was you and your physical state was on point, so you felt good and you're ready to go and do the work that needed to be done and your vision focused to go and do the work that needed to be done and a vision focus, like imagine how much easier it would be to deal with challenges, how much easier it would be to. It may not be a challenge, but now it's a new milestone you want to crush and there are obstacles in the way and you're like, yes, and we're going to mow those down and get the thing done. You come in and you had a team member that quit or you have whatever. Imagine if that was your state. Okay.

Speaker 1:

So when I started working on my morning routine, I didn't just take somebody else's morning routine and make it my morning routine, and there's nothing wrong with that, like in the beginning. You can always start with that and as you practice it, you can start to make it yours. But the question I ask myself is this what can I do every day. That will put me in a position where I'm moving in the direction of my most important goals. What can I do every day that would make me better every day? What would I do every day that will put me in a position where every day is a great day, even if there are things that happened that I didn't necessarily like, because what happened is that day I made progress. Every single day I can put my head on my pillow and say today was a great day. It was a progress day. I made progress, I moved forward, I moved in the direction of my most important goals.

Speaker 1:

Life is life, okay, so I want to break down what I did with my morning routine so you can understand the concept behind it and really you can borrow mine, you know like, play with it and then edit it and make it yours. You can create yours. Maybe you can just optimize the one that you have, but this is critical because this is what makes you thrive as an entrepreneur, because challenges will come. Difficult situations you need to deal with will become. The discomfort of needing to evolve to become the kind of entrepreneur that produces the results you want to produce next, like. All of these things are going to show up. Okay, let's walk through this. I'll give you mine.

Speaker 1:

I call it my daily five, even though there are six things, and, yes, I can count, but daily five is what I called. It Sounds better than daily six, okay, absolute. Most important thing to me, the thing that where I derive most of my strength, my inspiration, my comfort, my ability to go through storms, all of those things are my number one priority is my relationship with God. Okay, now, it's easy to say that, but if it doesn't reflect in my morning routine, it's not true. Right, it's not true. And so you know, I joke about this and I say that I'm an Enneagram six, right, and when I started studying about it, the person who taught about it said that Enneagram sixers are like people who have pre-traumatic stress disorder, like, and I was like, the accuracy, right, because nothing has gone wrong, Nothing has happened. But it's like, oh my goodness, this could happen.

Speaker 1:

And if that happens, let me give you an example. So I'm gonna do an interview, right, for a new team member, the old Enneagram six. I'm still the Enneagram six, but what I mean by that is, you know, the unmodified version of me, right? I'm gonna do an interview. Well, this person is gonna come to the interview and they're not gonna like you know they're not going to like you know. They're not going to like my practice. They're going to think my practice sucks. They're going to tell other people they're going to leave a bad review, or maybe they'll come work with us, but when they come work with us, they're not going to like to work with the other team members and so they're going to quit and they're going to tell other people how we're not any good. And you know, and in the process of doing that, we'd have lost all this money training this person. And I could come up with this in two seconds. And I'm just sitting preparing for an interview.

Speaker 1:

It's all these things that the business won't work and this and that I mean I used to have palpitations so bad when I started my private practice because I would wake up. I'm still in my bed, I've not even left the bed, I'm still in the bed. I just opened my eyes and all of a sudden it's like oh yeah, this is not going to work and this patient is going to come and they're not going to like the experience, that they're going to leave a one-star review. And because they leave a one-star review. The other people who are now, you know, not going to come, your team members are going to find out that you're not really all that. They're going to leave as well. This practice is not going to work.

Speaker 1:

You, I use to center myself and realize that everything's going to be okay. I realize that I have help, and all of that is my relationship with God. It's prayer, it's meditation, because in the word, the scriptures, it tells me all kinds of great things about my practice and how everything I do will prosper and all of those things. Okay. So it is a non, non, non, non, non-negotiable for me. Priority of priority. So my first thing with my daily routine is prayer and meditation. Okay so, prayer, meditate on the scriptures. I do that. I'm able to handle the day. Okay, so that's one. And then, because it's my priority, what that means is all the stuff that happens in the day can happen in the day, but I made progress because I did something that moves me in the direction of one of my most important goals, which is building a solid relationship with God. So that's one, okay.

Speaker 1:

So the next thing on my list is what I call MeTweak.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so MeTweak is meaningful time with kids.

Speaker 1:

It's an acronym M-T-W-K meaningful time with kids. I put that there because, type A, I love what I do, I love to work, and there was a time when, you know, I had, you know, the business and at the same time, I was working about 20 hours in the urgent care because I self-funded my private practice and all of those things. And because of the times we live in, it's possible for you to be in the same space with your kids, but you're maybe on a device, doing something, they're on a device or they're reading a book or whatever, and so you were in the same room, but it wasn't really meaningful time. You didn't pour anything into them, you didn't teach them anything, you didn't lean in to go into their world. You didn't do any of those things right. You didn't lean in to go into their world. You didn't do any of those things right. And so this was what I put in place to make sure that every day, I am spending meaningful time with them. I am asking them about their day, I'm paying attention to their moods and where they are and how I can support them and just having fun with them and making them feel seen and know that they're more important than any business that I'm doing or anything like that. So I put it there and because of that, at the end of every day, I can say my family, like my family, is my priority and I prioritize my family and my family. As far as my family relationship and goals and all that, that is moving forward. Do you see how the morning routine is not just random, it's done on purpose, and so I have my meat tweak. That's the second thing. That is there.

Speaker 1:

The third theme is exercise. Okay, again, this is about your physical state, because the stronger you are, the healthier you are, the more you can accomplish as an entrepreneur. The more you can accomplish as an entrepreneur, the more you can withstand challenges. Because if you're so tired, weak, sluggish and all of that, then on top of it you have challenges show up in your business Maybe they're not even challenges, just that you're trying to blast through a milestone. It is hard to do that when you don't feel good, right, and so exercise. And when I say exercise here, it may not necessarily be lifting weights and all that. That's exercise, but in this context it's just something you do to pull your body into the state it needs to be in like the optimal state.

Speaker 1:

For me, that was, yeah, everybody. You'll know what that is for you. For me, that is taking walks. Taking walks is absolutely one of the best things I do for my body, my mind, all of that stuff. But, you know, getting out in nature taking a walk, all of that puts me in a state where I'm like, let us mow this day down, let us conquer what needs to be conquered. We can do this right, you know, and I'll talk about why that is so powerful, you know, in a second, because of the way I combine it. But you know, for me, taking a walk in nature, I'm blessed to live in an area with a lot of trees and I can walk about six miles in my subdivision, and so it's just this beautiful thing of walking in nature and just looking at how amazing creation is, and I'm like I'm surrounded by this. I can create too. It's just, it's just magical for me. Okay, so exercise would be that third thing.

Speaker 1:

The fourth thing you've heard me say many times how you know 2015 to 2016,. When I started writing my goals for 2016, I found out that they were the exact same goals as 2015. And the reason for that is out of sight, is out of mind. You know what I mean. And so if I'm going to be this person who is vision driven, I have my vision top of mind and I'm going after it. I'm relentless and all of that. I have to keep it top of mind.

Speaker 1:

And so the fourth thing that I do is that I look at my goals every single day. So I have a journal, my planner, all of those things. I would write it on the first page of it. So it's so I have easy access and I just look at it and you know like I keep my eyes on it. And it is so amazing what happens if you choose to be vision activated, if you choose to keep your eyes on your vision, because there's some things you'll be strategic about. There's some things you just find doors opening and opportunity showing up and information coming your way, and all of that. But because you're primed and you're always thinking about it, you can cash in on them. You could take advantage of those opportunities. So I look every day. What am I doing, activating myself to be vision oriented? So I do that. I do that every single day.

Speaker 1:

Okay, the fifth thing is that I read. So there's a reading of oh, I want to finish this book, I want to do all of that. I may schedule the time for that, but this is really about the intention of filling up my mind either with strategies or mindsets of the ultra successful, stories of the ultra successful, and things like that. Again, at the end of the day, I'll be able to say I'm better. Why am I better? Because I learned something. I learned something, and so, whether that's 10 minutes, that you have, 20 minutes, that you have whatever, it's just this habit of I read every day. If you're going to, if you want to read a book a week, they are probably going to have dedicated reading time, maybe different from this, but this is like you think about, like when we make products right, the minimum viable products, like it could be 10 minutes, it could be 20 minutes, but it's just a discipline of learning something new every day. Okay, so that's the fifth thing and the sixth thing of my daily five.

Speaker 1:

The sixth thing is I would listen to a podcast. I would listen to a podcast because this is the deal we are surrounded by information, all kinds of information. We are surrounded by so much negativity, like, think about as an entrepreneur. There's so much on you know, like social media, to say you won't succeed. Or there's so much on social media about how it's so easy and you should just be sipping margaritas on the beach instead of working hard. That makes you think that something's wrong with you for working hard. There's so many of those things.

Speaker 1:

But when you start listening to podcasts, you know like people who are founders of podcasts like this and all you have no idea how much it rubs off on you, till you find yourself in a bind and you shock yourself by the way you respond. Right, listening to people's stories, listening to people's strategies, listening to guests they bring on. I love to listen to the stories of entrepreneurs because it will normalize the challenges, or normalize the challenges you'll face on the way. It will show you principles. Like, you start noticing well, everybody had a mentor. And you start noticing everybody paid attention to personal development and you start noticing everybody invested heavily in themselves. You start noticing they all started before they were ready. Like, you start noticing these themes and you're like, wow, I want to be ultra successful, so this means this is what I need to do as well. Right, so listening to podcasts and doing it every day. Right, because there's opportunities every day to get discouraged, to think it's not working, to think something's wrong with you, all of that. But this is like you recharging yourself every day. So imagine this prayer and meditation, meaningful time with kids, reviewing your goals, listening to a podcast, reading, taking a walk or exercise of some sort. Imagine every single day. Every single day you got better. Every single day you got stronger. Every single day you got more equipped to handle the challenges that come with entrepreneurship. Every day you had an opportunity for your vision to even get bigger and the strategies for that level of vision. All of those things came up.

Speaker 1:

When you need the mental toughness, it's too late to build it. When you want to look at the end of your life and say, oh my goodness, I really prioritize my priorities, it's too late to do it then. So what do you do? You build this slowly but surely, every single day. And every single day, when I do my morning routine, I don't feel like, wow, this is amazing, I did my routine. I feel like I can take the world. A lot of times I kind of feel the same. I mean, I feel pumped and things like that. But that's about it. But the mental toughness it has afforded me over the years has been mind boggling. And then to see it after you know, like the doctors at the entrepreneur business school, to see them do it and see them reap the same rewards it is so beautiful to see. So this is my challenge to you. This is my challenge to you Build your own morning routine.

Speaker 1:

Make it simple. Five things, six things if you're like me. Five things that you do every day, that take you in the direction of your most important goals. But they help you build mental toughness. They help you learn other things. They help you embrace the discomfort. They help you do all of these things. They help you prioritize your priorities. Build that morning routine and start immediately.

Speaker 1:

You may say, oh, it's a little confusing. You can see that my morning routine is very well thought out. You can start with that and then edit it as you go, make it yours and all of that, but start today. If you're like, oh, I've done this but I haven't been consistent, let me tell you something. I did a post a few months ago and I was like I am the most consistent at trying to be consistent.

Speaker 1:

If you miss a day, boom, I missed a day, if it's the evening or whatever, do it then. If you miss the day, and it is what it is, it is what it is. Give yourself grace, move on, move on and get to doing it the next time. That's it. I never get bound to all the shade because I missed a day of my morning routine. I just go like whoopsie and keep it moving. And I want to challenge you to do the same thing.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so this is a deal. I would love, 90 days from now, for you to send me a private message and say, oh my goodness, dr Una, you were right. I was like wait, what? What happened? And you're like I went through this challenging season in my business and it did not phase me because I had built the mental toughness and, as an entrepreneur, I had evolved so much that I could handle it. I want you to go like oh my goodness, I cannot believe that. I believe this, like this revenue goal that was going to hit it. I hit it and I was able to believe that and I was able to acquire the strategies for that and I was able to weather the storms associated with that and I won, dr Una, I won.

Speaker 1:

I want to hear you say that. I want you to hear like, oh my goodness, I was so nervous, I never really wanted to lead my team. I wasn't doing meetings with them, I wasn't leading them, I wasn't holding them accountable, I wasn't doing any of that because I did not think I was the kind of leader who could do that. And in the process of doing my morning routine and listening to the podcast, you know, and all of those things and all of those things, I have become that person and now I have unleashed my team. We're talking 10x productivity, because now it's not just me being the main producer, but we are all producing.

Speaker 1:

That can be your story. Any one of those a story even better than any one of those could be your story if you start doing that morning routine today. So I want you to take this episode. I know. You know it's a game changer for the physicians in your world. Share the episode with them. Tell them you absolutely must do this with me. Okay, you guys can create a little challenge and decide, hey, we're going to do this nonstop for 14 days. We're going to give Dr Una updates. I would love that. Okay, so share it with them. Go, get this done and I'll see you on the next episode of the Entree MD Podcast.