The EntreMD Podcast

10 Things You Need to Delegate Right NOW as a Physician Entrepreneur

• Dr. Una • Episode 435

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Time is the currency of your dream life.

If you want to live life on your terms, you have to take back your time.

That’s why today, I’m sharing 10 tasks you need to delegate right now to free up your schedule and focus on what truly matters.

By the end of this episode, you’ll feel lighter, more in control, and ready to live on your terms.

So, without further ado, let’s jump right in. 

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Key Takeaways: 

  • 00:00 Intro 
  • 01:03 My personal experience 
  • 02:54 Home management 
  • 04:38 Itinerary management 
  • 05:46 Email management 
  • 07:24 Calander management 
  • 08:48 Outreach efforts
  • 11:31 Social media
  • 15:35 Core content creation 
  • 16:49 Referral program management
  • 20:00 Client delivery 
  • 21:38 Team management
  • 23:12 Outro 

Additional Resources:


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Speaker 1:

Time is the currency of your dream life. If you are going to live life on your terms, if you're gonna enjoy the way you spend your time, one of the things you have to figure out is getting your time back, and there are many things that contribute to becoming the boss of your time and being able to do things on your terms, and one of the biggest things is delegation. People ask me all the time like what can I delegate? Like I actually hired somebody and I don't know what to do with them. I don't know what tasks to give them. I don't know what to take off my plate. I feel like everything on my plate is something I must do. I want to promise you, every time you think that that is not a true thought Okay, there's so many things you can get off your plate, and I want to start today by telling you 10 things you should get off your plate. Delegate them right now. Hi docs, 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. Now I want to give you a little bit of a background, because if you're thinking like you don't get it, I really don't have anything to delegate. I want to let you know that I totally, totally understand that.

Speaker 1:

I've told the story before of how I started feeling stressed out in EntreeMD, and this is after having lived on my terms for a number of years. I started feeling stressed out, like there was too much on my plate. I was feeling frantic in the morning. I was having this rush, rush, urgent type of energy going on. I'm like what in the world is this? And so I stopped and I said, okay, let's take a look at this, what exactly is going on? And I remember going to my front porch sitting down. I said, okay, let me write everything that I do in EntreeMD that somebody else could do, like somebody else in the world. Right, because if I thought about who would do it, then that will create another barrier. I'm like something somebody else can do. Okay, and to my shock, when I was done, I had written 27 things that could be done by somebody else 13 in the general Entree MD piece of things and 14 within the Entree MD business school 27 things. So what did I do? I made those 27 things into a job description hired somebody, offloaded 27 things.

Speaker 1:

I got hours and hours and hours back of my life, went back to that peaceful energy where, yes, I'm doing a lot of things, yes, I'm doing a lot of high capacity things, but I am living life on my terms. There's no rush energy, there's none of that, and I want that for you and I want that for every doctor in my world, really, okay, so let me show you, let me just give you this, 10 things you can get off your plate. Right, we're going to split it into personal and business, and I say this because, of course, you have your home. So that's you, if you're married, your spouse and your children, or maybe parents or whatever but you have this whole other aspect of your life and you need a team there. What we want you to think about yourself as the CEO of your personal life and the CEO of your business, right, so you have two companies you're running and you want to run both of them with teams, all right. So the first two things I'm going to give you are things that you can take off from the personal side, and then the first would be home management.

Speaker 1:

Now, I am saying home management because there are a number of things on there and you get to pick. Okay. So this is like a buffet, but you get to pick which one of them. Just pick at least one, okay, pick something, okay. Now, the reason why I want us to pick is because there may be something that is very relaxing for you, like maybe when you do laundry, it is your time to be by yourself and stay in your thoughts and dream of the future. Maybe that's your thing. Maybe it's cooking. You love to create these, you know, like a variety of really nutritious meals for your family. Then don't delegate it, right. You want to delegate the things, just things that must be done. You don't care, it doesn't matter if you do it yourself or not. You probably just don't care about them, right? Okay? So I'm going to give you options, the one you like the least. Just take that off your plate, okay. And so this could be shopping. Whether this is shopping for groceries, shopping for kids back to school supplies, shopping for clothes, shopping for furniture, whatever that is, you can get shopping off your plate. You can get laundry off your plate. You can get meal prep off your plate. You can get cooking off your plate. You can get laundry off your plate. You can get school runs off your plate. You can get like you know after practice. You know after school practices and activities and stuff. Drop off, pick up. All of these things are things that you can get off your plate. Nothing will go wrong if you're not the person doing them yourself. Okay, so number one is home management. Pick any of these options and as you go through this, I really want you to think like what is the thing I can get off my plate, what is the thing I can, what can I get off my plate and then send Dr Una, pm, you know, on Facebook or Instagram and say, dr Una, you will not believe what I just did and I'm going to quit. Tell me all about it. Of course I will. Okay, so that.

Speaker 1:

Number two is itinerary management. Okay, so, again, this is your personal life, so this could be trips, so you do travel. Your flights, you do not have to book them yourself. Your hotels, you do not have to book them yourself. You know, like, the activities you do when you go on this trip, you do not have to book them yourself. Date nights you don't have to book these yourself. Your kid's birthday party, these are things you do not have to do yourself right. So these are things you can have somebody else do for you. These are things you can take off your plate.

Speaker 1:

Now that could be a virtual assistant, that could be a house manager, like, whatever. Like whichever position you're getting, it could be volunteers. You have older kids who are teenagers. When we do trips, a lot of times I'll have my older to plan out the itinerary, and so they're giving me options this, this or that and then we can choose. I'll have them do that Other times. I just have you know, I have, you know, a team, like you know, and they'll take care of all of that. So those are the first two and those two are under personal, that's, you as a CEO of your personal life. The rest of them are going to be business things. Okay. So number three, if you will, number three is your email management, your business email. Okay.

Speaker 1:

Now, once upon a time I used to handle my own business email and as things got busier, of course, the ball started dropping and emails would take forever to respond to and all of those things. And I have an amazing executive assistant and she takes care of the email. So you know, we have a standing huddle meeting every day and if there are things she's like I have some admin things, I have some emails. You know, we don't have a framework of how I would respond to them and I want to run those by you. We will go over those and she would take care of them. But she's responding. She's responding to the emails and she does such an amazing job that when I go to be a guest on podcasts or so, they're like oh yeah, you know, I just wanted to let you know. You know, jessica, she's absolutely amazing and such a timely and professional response to our emails. It's been a pleasure communicating with her and things like that. She's even had, you know, I was a guest on a podcast and the podcast gave her a shout out on the podcast interview, right, and so when I was doing it absolutely not so cool, this way's cool Everything gets responded to and all of that.

Speaker 1:

So that's number three is email. Now, of course, you're going to have to hire this person, train them, give them parameters. This is how I want you to respond and all of those things. But oh, my goodness, the amount of peace and quiet this will bring to your life. We had a number of doctors in the Entree MD Business School who recently did this and they're like so much peace and quiet. Okay, so, and that also means guess what you don't have to have on your phone. You don't have to have that app on your phone at all, you don't have to go in it. You can get to a point where you're wondering I wonder what the login is, I wonder what device I'm logged into. This thing Like how blissful would that be. Okay.

Speaker 1:

Number four is calendar management. Think about, say, you wanted to schedule a meeting with a vendor, or you wanted to schedule a meeting with a client or whatever. Think about how many emails back and forth just to get a time on the calendar. You don't need to be doing any of that, right? It's like, hey, how about we get together? We talk about this? I'm going to have my people talk to your people. That's what you need to do. I'll connect you to my people. Okay, because if I give you a time on my account, I promise you it's double booked and I'm messing everything up, but this is the person who will be able to do an excellent job and make sure that you know like we can get a time that works for both of us. And so for me, what that would look like is, you know, all the podcast interviews I need to have, all the calls with, maybe, referral sources that I need to book things that I have to do with, say, the person who manages our ads, or the person who manages different aspects of our company, the accountants, all of those things. I don't have to schedule any of those, they just schedule them and they're scheduled and it's amazing, this is something you can get off your plate and they can manage your personal calendar as well. So make sure all the activities you have to say with your kids and all of that, that that's done, so there are no conflicts. And so when you tell somebody, hey, you know, I want to talk to this person at 10 o'clock on Friday, and they're like, yeah, but 10 o'clock on Friday, you have this. I mean, you have a conflict on your schedule with this other time work. Okay, so that's number four. Number five Now as an entrepreneur, one of the most important things, well, one of the core things you would do would be you know the working, the visibility of your brand, right, making that bigger so more people find you.

Speaker 1:

New people are finding you. And so, when you think about outreach, you can hand this off. As far as whether that is pitching to be a guest on podcast, pitching to be a guest on somebody's Facebook live or Instagram live, that's speaking at events, like all of that, these are things that you can leverage a team to get done. Now I'll tell you a fun fact. Sometimes people talk to me and they say you know, I know that if I was a guest on a podcast four times a month, it will radically change my business, but I'm just not able to consistently pitch. The truth of the matter is that that was my issue as well, right, like, I got to be a guest on a number of podcasts because you know I would do some pitching and I had a brand and you know, periodically ask people if they're looking for a guest on their podcast in my Facebook group and things like that, but I was not pitching consistently, and so, while I had the target of being a guest on a podcast four times a month, there are many months where that didn't happen.

Speaker 1:

I brought somebody on my team and this person's responsibility part of their responsibility is make sure that I'm a guest on somebody's podcast four times a month. Right. So we're on a mission to help a hundred thousand physicians build profitable businesses so they can live life and practice medicine on their terms. So I need to constantly get in front of brand new people. And, while we're at it, if you know a podcast where you're like, oh my goodness, dr Una, you need to be on this podcast, or a stage that you think I need to speak on, an event you think I need to be on, please connect with us. So, dr Una D-R-U-N-A at Entremdicom, and we would love, love, love, love the connection.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, I gave this person a two hour block on her schedule every single week and I'm like this is your time to pitch me on podcasts, and I tell you that I will have to look for the exact number, but I have been a guest on more than four podcasts every month since, right, and so sometimes the reason why the things are not working as smoothly is because you're doing it. You're the bottleneck, you're the issue. Like, of course, you're not the issue, but you see what I mean Like you're in the way, okay, and so your outreach efforts. This is something you can leverage a team for, and because that is their focus and that is a key result area. They just lean in, they get it done, and it's so magical when that happens, and so, because of that, our audience has grown. I've met so many amazing physicians that I didn't even know existed before, connected with their audiences, and that has led to getting to be on more podcasts, has led to new clients, that has led to more speaking engagements and all of that. So it's really magical, okay. Okay.

Speaker 1:

So that is number one, two, three, four, five. Number six social media. Oh my goodness, get this off your plate now. Now, hang on, because someone's going to say, oh my goodness, yes, I hate it anyway, I don't want to be there, and all of that I'm not telling you. When you do this, you're going to do this in a stepwise fashion, okay. So there are a number of things you can do, but I would not start from stopping altogether having the team post for me when the team does not understand my voice. Okay, if I post on social media and my team posts on social media, chances are you cannot tell the difference, like you really can't tell the difference, because they've really leaned into communicating in my voice, right?

Speaker 1:

So, when it comes to social media, the beginning part may be okay. You're already writing all your copy for your social media posts. You're recording all your videos and all of that stuff. Well, could you batch it where you sit and you produce content for a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks? I have a friend who does four weeks at a time. It's all in a Google document and you're like here, and then they take care of the graphics, the pictures, posting it onto different platforms, making it platform specific and all of that stuff.

Speaker 1:

So were you involved in it? Yes, but you were involved in a very significant part of it, which is your voice, your ideas and all of that. But somebody else did the heavy lifting of making sure they were uploaded everywhere, right? So if you're just starting off, you can get that off your plate. The other thing you can do is you can get it off your plate by repurposing, and so, for instance, there was and you wouldn't know this, but there was a time that I was off Instagram for about five months and I had my team pull all my best performing posts for the last year that were not time sensitive, right. Like so not come for this workshop on this day, the content that's somewhat evergreen, and I had them repurpose that and use that for five months.

Speaker 1:

I was off for five months and I want to show you how powerful this is, because the content is still good, it's still my voice, the concepts are still true, and so people will post in the chat. They're like, oh my goodness, I really needed to hear this today. The first time I actually made that statement was five months ago, and so I want you to think about that, because your content doesn't become irrelevant after you post it. Your content is good, and so I leveraged my team in that way and I was just like I want to take a break from this, and I was able to take a break from it and they repurpose my stuff, okay. The other way you can do it is you can completely offload it, and that is something over the next two years, a year or two years, maybe I would be at that point where I start thinking closer for some platforms in that way, and it's just like completely offloaded. I will warn you, though, it's not. Is it a warning, caution, it's a thought, okay. So this is the idea.

Speaker 1:

Chances are you're not going to get, you know, a very inexpensive VA to do this. This is somebody in order for you to hand it off, they have to have, you know, the technical skill of okay, these are different platforms, these are the rules that work in different platforms. They're going to have to be good at copy, so good at communicating with words, but they're also going to need to have the marketing strategy, because you're not on social media to post on social media, you're on social media to market right. So for you to find somebody who has the technical piece, the copywriting skills and the marketing strategy, you're looking for a high capacity team lead, and so a lot of people will get a VA, pay them six bucks an hour, eight bucks an hour, and expect the world from them. That's not the way this works.

Speaker 1:

And, trust me, I think of my businesses and my journey as an entrepreneur, as the lab. I've tried all these things. I've tried it all kinds of ways. I have just not seen that model work. I haven't. Okay, so you're looking for a high capacity person who understands how to work the technical part, the copywriting and the strategy. So can you delegate this Absolutely? I've seen many people do it. I have done it for months at a time and things like that, but it requires a high capacity person. Okay, that is the sixth thing. Number seven core content creation. Okay, core content creation. Now, you know that I am.

Speaker 1:

When we talk about the visibility formula, we talk about you needing your HQ, your headquarters. This is your big body of work, your core body of work, which will either be a blog or it will be a YouTube channel or it will be a podcast. Right, and the beautiful thing about having this body of work is when you want to bring on team and say I want you to speak in my voice, all these things. You have a lot of stuff to give them, and they can make posts out of it, they can make eBooks out of it, they can make newsletters out of it. They can do so many things with it, right? Okay, now, in that process, I cannot tell you how many doctors I see who are editing their own podcasts, editing their own YouTube videos, uploading every single thing by themselves, creating their own show notes, creating their own descriptions, doing all of that. There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting there, but you don't want to stay there, right, and so chances are you are going to produce your own like, you're going to do the actual recording and all of those kinds of things, but all the other stuff you have to ask yourself like what can I get off my plate? What can I get off my plate? Right, and so start getting those things off your plate. Don't do everything by yourself, okay.

Speaker 1:

Number eight referral program management. Okay, now, one of the most magical things you can have in your business is a referral, like a panel of people who will send you people, whether that is clients you know, your coach or consultant, speaker, thing like that, or if you are a private practice owner, okay. So you have somebody. You have people who have access to a lot of people who talk to their audience about you. So I'm a pediatrician, so a referral source would be like an OBGYN, for instance, who would be a daycare center, for instance as a business coach, if you will, a business consultant or strategist. There are other people who work with physicians, that could be life coaches or weight loss coaches or vendors, ehrs, for instance, that work with people in private practice and things like that. These are all people who have access to my people, and the more of those people who know I can trust me and want to send business to me, the better my business does, right. So I want you to think of it in that way, and that's the same for you as well.

Speaker 1:

Okay, it's easy to lose track of them. It's easy to not maintain that relationship, but one of these people. So let's look at it this way Okay, so let's say you are your coach, and or let's say let's use me. Okay, so, the Entrendy Business School at the time of this recording, that is a $30,000 investment. And let's say I have a referral source who sends me five people a year. That's all For that referral source. Their annual value is $150,000, right, it's $150,000 per year.

Speaker 1:

And so the question is if you have a relationship that yields $150,000 a year, how would you treat that relationship? Say, you're a private practice doc and the value of a patient encounter is $200. And these patients are doing four visits a year, or five visits a year, and so that's $1,000. So I want you to think about that. But you have this doc who refers you 10 patients a month. That's 120 patients a year, right? And so 120 patients a year times $1,000 is $120,000.

Speaker 1:

And so the question is, if you had this one doc who was responsible for $120,000 of revenue in your business, how would you treat them? How would you treat them. Okay, so you want to build a team around this, because of course, you're busy and all of those things. But imagine if you had a team around this and these people, your team knows, once a month we're reaching out to them. Whether that's a handwritten card which you don't have to write by yourself, I'm whispering Okay, okay, so it could be a handwritten card, it could be a gift, it could be a book you want to get them, it could be a simple fax to say this. It could be a simple thank you, we got this patient, you referred to us or whatever, but you can build a framework for it and then hand it off. So it's getting done. It's getting done in a timely manner, it's getting done on a schedule, it's getting done with the right frequency, the right cadence, even though on your own you'd have been sloppy doing it.

Speaker 1:

This is something you want to get off your plate. Why? Because a six-figure relationship. It's important to maintain a six-figure relationship. Do you see what I'm saying? Okay, so get that off your plate, delegate it, okay. Number nine client delivery. Client delivery, whether you're a coach, no-transcript.

Speaker 1:

As long as you try to do everything, you will be dropping the ball so many times it will be almost embarrassing. You have great intent, but you're going to start dropping the ball, okay. So where can they help you? Where can they support you In private practice? When you think about it door to door, like, where are places where my people can help me do a better job? Where can they help me? Start looking into those things and get all the help you need.

Speaker 1:

For some of you, it may be like maybe it's the time and you need to get a scribe on board, right? So get the scribe on board. That gives you back so much time, that gives you back so much peace and quiet, right? Just think about all those things that you need to do. You want to start delegating that. You're at a place where you have way too many patients and you are booking out you know like six months and all of those things and you're so stressed out because you can't bring your people back in. It may be time to bring on another doctor, right, and sometimes that's scary, but you know you've done scary things and this is just one of them. But it's better for you, it's better for the patients, it's better for your team, so you don't have to tell people we can't get you in for another six months. It's better for your bottom line, it's better for everything, right?

Speaker 1:

So the question is do I need to delegate some of this? Do I need to delegate part of my patient panel? Okay, okay, and last but not least, is your team management, your team management, okay? So this is the thing. I cannot tell you how many people. I see this in private practice a lot. It's in every business, but I see it a lot in private practice where somebody has an office manager but the owner is still managing everything, and so sometimes you have the person but you're not delegating. So delegate. Now, one of the best things you can do with an office manager style role practice administrator style role is that you want to set it up where they're not responsible for tasks. They are going to do tasks, but they're responsible for outcomes. So what that means is well, I want to see 25 patients per day. There are a number of things that you can do to pull that off, but this is the outcome you're responsible for. I want our missed appointment rate to be less than X, y, z. I want our AR under 60 days to be X percentage. Pick outcomes, not tasks. They'll need to do the tasks, to deliver on the outcomes.

Speaker 1:

Managing your team you must not make every schedule. You must not address every conflict. You don't have to take care of every single one of those things. You can leverage your team to do that. You don't have to onboard every new person yourself, like someone can run the onboarding at some point. They're like, oh, come meet the big boss and they meet you and you do all of those things and it's amazing, right? So I want you to think about these things. These are 10 things.

Speaker 1:

Now, you're not going to get rid of all 10 of them right this moment, but I just want to show you there's an endless list of things that you can get off your plate. So this is what I want you to do. I've given you 10 things. I want you to take at least three of them and I want you to do them. Like get these things off your plate. Once you do them, I want you to send me a PM on Facebook or a DM on Instagram and I want you to type these words I freed my time up and you know I love exclamation marks right Like exclamation, exclamation, exclamation. Right Like three exclamation marks. And then you tell me what you did. Right, because I want to celebrate you. I want to celebrate you.

Speaker 1:

In the DMs. I go like, oh my goodness, you are absolutely amazing. This is so good. Now I want to show you the power of this. Okay, if, every 90 days, you delegate three things, it means that at the end of the year you'd have delegated 12 of these things. So you'd have done maybe all 10 and done some iterations, and that is so powerful.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now if you decided 90 days 90 days is a lot of time. I have nothing but time. I get six things off your plate. That would be 24 things in a year, 24. I want you to think about it 24. What do you think your life will look like if there are 24 things you did every day or every week that you no longer had to do? And this can be your reality. And it all starts with taking this list, maybe grabbing.

Speaker 1:

A group of friends say what are we gonna commit to doing? Because we are gonna send Dr Una, you're gonna send her that DM. I'm gonna say I freed my time up with three exclamation marks. I'm going to tell everything about it. But if you do this, it will radically change your life. It will free you up in your personal life so that when you are in your personal life, you can allocate your time the way you want to. It will free you up in your business life so you can keep doing higher and higher level activities, which is the secret of getting a lot more done in less time. So I'm absolutely rooting for you. Go do this and share this episode with another doctor in your world. Tell them look, we are going to build our dream business and dream life concurrently. Apparently, we need to figure out this delegation thing to do it. So let's go do it together and I will see you on the next episode of the Entree and Be Podcast.