The EntreMD Podcast

How to Stop Living the Same Year Over and Over as a Physician Entrepreneur

• Dr. Una • Episode 447

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Are you living the same year over and over again like a broken record? 

You’re not alone. I see it all the time with aspiring entrepreneurs who don't stop to evaluate their past year. What worked? What didn’t work? What were you great at? What could you improve? What did you learn? 

Evaluating your year is one of the most powerful things you can do so that the following year, you can have a different year. A better year. 

In today’s episode, I’ll walk you through my process of evaluating 2024 and reveal the most powerful lesson I learned–one that will shape an even better 2025.

Tune in!

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Key Takeaways: 

  • 00:00 Intro 
  • 00:43 Celebrating the wins of 2024 
  • 05:01 The most crucial lesson I learned in 2024
  • 08:25 First step to self-development
  • 09:52 Second step to self-development
  • 14:30 Third step to self-development
  • 15:55 Fourth step to self-development
  • 17:38 The results
  • 22:06 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:

One of the worst things that can happen to anybody is that they go from year to year living the same exact year, and that happens because we don't stop to evaluate, to see what worked, what didn't work, what was I great at? The things that I quote unquote failed at, what did I learn from them? Evaluating your year is one of the most powerful things you can do so that the following year you can have a different year. Hi docs, welcome to the EntreMD podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians, just so that the following year you can have a different year. 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 Una.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes people will tell me you know, I'm an entrepreneur with 10 years of experience and I'm like, not really. I never say this to their faces, but not really. But you're an entrepreneur who has had a year's worth of experience, 10 times right. So we want to make sure that you know, year to year, we're showing up differently. We're accessing our wisdom right From evaluating our experiences. So I took the time you know to do this. The time of this recording is the end of the year and I'm like, okay, you know what was the most powerful lesson I learned? Right, and this was really tough because I learned a lot of lessons. I learned from what I win at, because the things that you do that work, you want to do more of what works and less of what doesn't. Because the things that you do that work, you want to do more of what works and less of what doesn't. And the things that didn't work, I take the time to evaluate them and say, okay, why didn't they? What could I have done differently? Right, which I mean like is is just amazing how, how transformative this can be. And you know, I looked at the year and for us, you know, I'm so grateful, I'm so grateful to God. We've had an amazing year, right when I think of what's happened with the company. So this is not even my personal life, but you know we made the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing privately held companies in the United States. So this is, for the second year in a row, which you know, have a certain level of growth and make at least 2 million in revenue to hit that and that was just so powerful. So you know, and this year we've had, you know, we've had the revenue goal growth.

Speaker 1:

This year we published, you know, two books that were both bestsellers the Visibility Formula, how to Go from Best Kept Secret to Household Name, and we also had the Profitable Private Practice Playbook. Both of them were bestsellers. Really, I mean, like they did so well and we had, I guess, the best team we've ever had across my companies, right, like so in my private practice, absolutely phenomenal practice administrator who, as a team, we grew so much and we performed at such a high level. And we ate frogs, right, and if you're new to the podcast, you know what that means is. We did activities that we're uncomfortable with but have huge ROIs. And then, you know, with a marketing company, we had another hire that we brought on and, oh my goodness, like she's been absolutely amazing, again, amazing experience to work with. So we've had such great teams, such great teams, even you know, with with my homeschooling. So my homeschooling, my code name for it is the Unachukwu Legacy Project. So my, my full last name is Unachukwu, so it's Unachukwu Legacy Project, and so I hired someone to come on and to support me on that. So I have the vision I have, what I want my kids' school to look like because they're all homeschooled and what I want that to look like. And she's the one who executes on my vision. So amazing, amazing team that we've had and we've also had the biggest client wins. And so this is a year when we do our quartering review and people come up and they're like my highest revenue month, my highest revenue month, my highest revenue month, my highest revenue quarter. We had our first client to say I had my first seven figure a month. Right, I had my first seven figure a month, which was just beyond, beyond amazing. I've waited for this for years beyond amazing. When she said that. You know, and even for people who've joined the school, like we had the amazing, I'm always going to shout her, you know, sing her praises.

Speaker 1:

Dr Lucy Mitchell. If you don't follow her, look for her on Facebook. She's a physician, she's also an artist and she is the one who did the official art for the National Private Practice Physicians Day, which was a day that we created. Entremdi created that to celebrate and honor the amazing physicians who are still in private practice fighting the good fight and literally preserving healthcare in America. She came into the school and, within the first four months, had made $67,000 from her art alone. Like there's so many things that happened with her as an entrepreneur and all of that, but this is from her art.

Speaker 1:

It's been so amazing to watch all the transformations the businesses launched and the personal wins that our clients are experiencing, whether that's paying off loans, so they're now debt free, or they're exercising consistently. For the first time, have a level of confidence they've never had before. Their marriages are better, like so many, so many things. And so I say all that to say phenomenal year, phenomenal year, right? So when I think about the most important lesson again, there are many of them, but I think the most important one is working on me. Working on me is my most important work. Working on me is my most important work, and I'll explain what I mean by that. Right, when we have things going on in our businesses, we may think the issue is my most important work, and I'll explain what I mean by that.

Speaker 1:

When we have things going on in our businesses, we may think the issue is we need to hire. We may think the issue is we need a certain number of clients. We may think we need to get a certain amount of capital, we may think we need to get a certain number of referral sources, and these are all things that are external. Now, do they need to happen? Yes, but in the sequence of events.

Speaker 1:

The idea is your personal, your external world is a reflection of your internal world, right? And so when you want the external to change, the first thing you need to do is change the internal. Like I am the rate limiting step in my world. I am, when I say I'm the center, I mean outside of God, right, like I'm the center of my world. Like, when I change, everything changes. Right, that's just the way it is. When I change, everything changes.

Speaker 1:

And so when I work on me, I'm working on my businesses, I'm working on my relationships, I'm working on everything Okay, and I want to tell you like, four categories when I talk about working on me, what does that mean? Okay, and why is this important? This is important because, when I think about in, I've been an entrepreneur now for for 14 years and I have been the founder of well. I am the founder, but you know, I've founder of well, I am the founder, but I founded EntreeMD six years ago. So in six years, we have touched tens of thousands of lives, tens of thousands, and these are physicians and they are physician entrepreneurs by definition who touch thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. And so when I think about it, if I think about the first level of impact of my work, we're talking tens of thousands of people. And then, when we talk about the ripple effect, like if those tens of thousands of people only touched a thousand people, what does that come to? We're talking millions at this point, right, and so I want you to think and I'm not saying this because I'm special and you can't do what I'm doing Like everybody is called and everybody has a unique, unbelievably amazing assignments that they get to do and they get to use their businesses to do it right, like so, whichever way, whatever your business is, you have this opportunity to have a massive impact, and you know, for me, this is one of the things that's very important to me is that when I leave this earth, when I leave this earth, I want to leave this earth empty.

Speaker 1:

I want to leave this earth having done everything that I have the potential to do, like I've done it, I'm done, I lie down, I'm like that was fun, goodbye, okay, that's what I want to do and that causes me to live my life now, at the age of 45, with an extreme amount of intentionality. Okay, and so, because I want to be this person who can explore my potential, become everything that I can become, then it puts me in a position where, if my most important work is working on me, I want to become a master at that work. Okay, all right, so let's talk about these four areas. So the first is mindset.

Speaker 1:

Now I will tell you this when I first started as an entrepreneur, I thought working on my mind was not a thing that I would do, because it's for people who are weak. You know what I mean, and I was not weak, so I did not need to do mindset work. I did have a little bit of privilege in the sense that, you know, I had been a student of the Bible and a lot of the work we do. There's a lot of spiritual work, but there's a lot of mindset work as well, right, like reframing the way we think, the way we interpret challenging situations and all of those things, and so I can understand, like partially, like, why I would think I didn't need mindset work, because I was getting a whole lot of mindset work, and I had been for years. So, anyway, the older I've gotten, the more I've realized that a lot of success is it happens or it doesn't happen based on the mindset.

Speaker 1:

Like having a terrible mindset is like having a 2025 Ferrari limited edition with flat tires. Like you can be as beautiful as you want to be, you can have the capacity to go from zero to 60 in three seconds, but you're not going anywhere, not with those tires, right? And so the mindset work. Like when I'm doing that, I understand that when I work on my mindset, I'm working on my five companies. When I'm working on my mindset, I'm working on my team. When I'm working on my mindset, like everything is changing and I'm going to tell you how. Like the different vehicles I use. But let me give you the second one, because the same vehicles, right. So the first is mindset, the second is skillset. The second is skillset. Please hear me when I say this.

Speaker 1:

So, for instance, if I say, oh, I want to take my business from 2 million to 10 million, I am fully aware, okay, at this point, like, let's say, this happened just when I hit 2 million I'm fully aware that the skills I have can bring me to 2 million, and if I'm going to go to 10 million, there are new skills I need to have. So, for instance, I need to be able, maybe, to tap into a different portion of the market and do more corporate consulting. Right, I may need to be able to build a team that can use my documented processes and frameworks to help other people to get results. Right, I need to be able to maybe get a CEO on board and lead the CEO. Like there are different skills that are required. Right, I need to be able to maybe get a CEO on board and lead the CEO. I think, like there are different skills that are required, right. Okay, so I need to acquire those.

Speaker 1:

If I go on stages and they pay me, you know, like $5,000, and somebody else goes on stages and they pay them 20,000, there's a skill missing. It may be the skill maybe I'm not as good of a speaker. Or it may be the skill of negotiation. Or it may be the skill of networking and building collaborations so that I can find the right stages that will pay me that much. Right, I may be a person who is in private practice, and the bigger my team grows, the less profit I make. It means that there's a skill missing there the skill of inspiring and unlocking the potential of my team, so that I'm not the only revenue generator.

Speaker 1:

My team is creating revenue as well, right, and so when you see pain and suffering in your business, you see things that are not working, I want you to start thinking mindset skill set, mindset skill set, right. Like, how do I bring them on board to kind of turn this situation around? And so, for me, the tools that I've used for that, one is coaching, okay. One is coaching like getting training, like how do I do this? Training on how to manage my mind, training, you know, on how to develop certain skillsets. Okay, and this is part of the reason, like I am so big on Entremdy Business School, and that's why we're so committed to showing up, building a team that can support physicians at the highest level possible, so you can go on to build these, you know, these profitable businesses.

Speaker 1:

This is the reason why people come to me and they say, oh, I've you know, like you know, I've never been able to do more than 500,000 in my business, or I haven't been able to launch my business and I don't know how to lead a team, and I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can build a business I can exit from, and I'm like, of course you can, right, because what do I? What do I know? I know it's mindset and skill set. We're very in tune with this, right, like we have this whole mindset piece where. That's where we help you make that transition from physician to physician entrepreneur. It's all about rewiring the mindset that we have.

Speaker 1:

Many of the things that we had to, mindsets we've had to adopt as physicians are the very mindsets that cripple us as physician entrepreneurs, and so I know that we have to work on that. That's one of the things we need to work on, and there are three dominant skill sets we work on, like how do I build a dominant brand, how do I build a revenue generation system in my business and how do I build a profitable team that can run my business, and so it gives me the opportunity to have more impact, more financial freedom, more time freedom, right? So this is why it's built that way, because mindset and skill set right, mindset and skillset. If I'm continually upgrading those when I say my business, my business keeps upgrading and every other aspect of my life as well. Okay, so coaching huge, huge, huge for me. I discovered the power of coaching in 2017 and I have not looked back since, like ever since then. I've always invested heavily in myself, every single year and for me, you know like, for me, it's a responsibility, right, because I am responsible for thousands and thousands of physicians and I cannot, you know, stop developing, because then it makes me no longer a good steward of the assignment that I have like to support physicians. I'm just no longer qualified because I'm not growing. Okay, so I do that.

Speaker 1:

I do a lot of books. I probably do at least three books a month. It's more like four, but you know, three books a month. And I'm an avid listener to podcasts. I don't listen to a ton of podcasts. I listened to a few of them and I go deep on them. I just add them to my routine, which, again, there are many physicians who do that with the Entrained Beauty Podcast. If you haven't started doing that now, I want to invite you to just make it part of your routine. Once a week, twice a week, I just listen to the podcast. If you're new to the podcast, you can make that your morning routine for months and we have enough episodes for you.

Speaker 1:

So number one is mindset, number two is skillset. Number three is, as far as working on me, is my body right? Okay? So again, when I was much younger, it's like whatever. I could sleep, whenever I could stay awake, as long as I could eat whatever. I've never really a big eater, but I could eat whatever. I could go for days without water. I could do whatever I wanted to do. I'm 45. Okay, and then you start going like, huh, apparently this body's not going to last forever, and if I want to be someone who you know would finish the assignment, I feel like I have right You've heard me talk about EntreeMD that I want to help a hundred thousand doctors build profitable businesses so they have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their terms.

Speaker 1:

Guess what I cannot do. If I am not well, don't feel well, I'm not optimized. I cannot do that, I cannot complete that, I cannot fulfill that, I cannot get this done right. And so when I am sleeping, I am doing some of my most important work. When I'm eating, right, I'm doing some of my most important work. When I'm drinking water, I'm doing some of my most important work. When I go for my checkups, I am doing some of my most important work. When I exercise, I am doing amazing work for my business. Why I got one body and peak performance requires not just my mind to have peak performance, but my body as well right, and so paying attention to this is some of my most important work, right.

Speaker 1:

And the fourth thing is relationships, and I put that there because, man, the more high quality, really enjoyable relationships relationships you have, the better you are Like, the better okay, I'm talking about my lesson right the better I am. And I had a year where I got to spend so much time with my family. It was like so beautiful, so beautiful. We got to go on a few international trips as a family so my husband, me, my four kids, and that was really great. A number of business trips that I went on. I went with my kids as well, which is so much better than being in a hotel room by yourself, fyi. So I got to do a number of those as well, which was so good.

Speaker 1:

I have great relationships with my team members. I try as much as possible to run a peace-filled company where everybody's called to hire and everybody's given the gift of accountability. It's my true desire that when people think about the highlight of their career, it would be when they were working with me, right, and so we have all these great relationships there as well. And then with my friends and mentees, it just filled my cup up so much A number of entrepreneurs who are running businesses that either the size of my business or much bigger than my business, and we got to spend time together. These are just things that filled my cup. These were things that brought about.

Speaker 1:

I mean, like you talk about great minds rubbing together and great ideas and all of that is just amazing, but it just puts me in this energetic state where I'm like I got this, and so did we have enormous challenges in 2024? We did. Did we have set quote unquote setbacks? We did. Did we have things that we tried that didn't work? We did. But overall, what kind of year was it? An unbelievably amazing year, and I think one of the things that I was consistent with consistent was doing my most important work, which was working on me right, and so every time I got rid of one mindset virus, my business got better. Every time I got rid of another mindset virus, I was able to go into massive action in a specific space in my business. Every time that I worked on my body, I felt better, so I could run harder and faster right. Every time I had the opportunity to enjoy this high quality relationship, I mean like ugh.

Speaker 1:

And so I think for 2024, this is the biggest lesson, and it is a lesson that I'm then going to take into 2025 and up it right, like, my job is to evolve, my job is to get better. My job is to upgrade my mindset, upgrade my skill set, upgrade my relationships, upgrade my body, and I'm just going to go all in on that because, guess what? I have access to strategies. I have a very strategic mind. I have access to processes and tactics and things that I can do, but the better I am, the more at peace I am, the better my body feels, the better my relationships are, the more I can lean into those things and absolutely crush it For me. I'm kind of saying this is my statement, it's one of my affirmations. You hear me say some version of it every single time. This is my best day, week, month, quarter year, yet decade, whatever, right, because I don't believe in better yesterdays. I believe that I get better and better, and my businesses get better and better, my family gets better and better, and so 2025 will be my best year yet, and this is one of the lessons that I'm going to take in with me.

Speaker 1:

My most important work is working on me. I want to build a $10 million business Great. How does that person think? What is the difference between my current mindset and the mindset of a person who runs that kind of business? Now it's time to do the work. What is the difference between my skill set and the skill set of the person who runs that kind of business? Now it's time to do the work. What is the difference in the state of my body and the state of the body of the person who runs that kind of business, right, and who's planning to live long? Then I start to do that. It's me changing first as a human and then changing the activities I do, and then I have a certain results, right, like that's the sequence, and so I'm really leaning into that, and so for you, you know like this may not be your most important lesson, but it's a very powerful lesson, and I want to invite you to kind of adopt that. It's like my most important work is to work on me.

Speaker 1:

If you are frustrated by your business, turn inwards and look at you. What do I think about it? What is my mindset about it? What is my mindset about it? What is my skillset? Do I have the skillset to pull it off and all of that stuff? And if you don't, then it's time to make a change. But please hear me when I say this your business is not going to change by itself. It's going to change because you changed and then you changed it. That's exactly the way this is going to happen.

Speaker 1:

If you don't like the quality of your team, if you don't like all these things, don't look at other people, turn around, look at you first. You hire them, you train them, you onboarded them, you let them stay right. And you know I'm preaching to the choir, I'm preaching to myself. You know it's like I change. When I change, everything changes right. So I want to invite you to make that decision. Like when I work on me, I'm doing my most important work and I'm going to upgrade my mindset, I'm going to upgrade my skillset. I'm going to upgrade my body. I'm going to upgrade my relationships. I'm going to upgrade the way I show up in my relationships, how I enjoy my relationships right, the quality of my relationships.

Speaker 1:

And you know, maybe for you one of the things you know you've thought about is man. You know, like, I've heard about the Entree MD Business School and I listened to the podcast and it's made such a change and I mean I can't even imagine what else you can teach. We already have 450 episodes. What else new is there? But I know that if I'm in that environment, immediately my net worth goes up. If I show up in the EntreeMD Business School, I'm going to have the work on my mindset and my skillset.

Speaker 1:

If you're thinking that you can book a call with my team, entremedycom forward slash call, we'll be happy to talk to you and so we can see if is this the best next step for me? Is the Entremedy Business School the best next step for me? But regardless of whether you come into the school or not, don't get it twisted. I would love for you to be in the school because I know it works and if you are committed to your goals, it goals, it will work for you. But I'm here to support you in any way you choose to be supported right, and that is why I produce unbelievable value on the podcast here.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so, whether you come to join us or not, make the decision. And what I would really love is, 12 months from now, for us to celebrate the amazing strides you made in your evolution, which created amazing strides in your business. And the consequence is this because, at the end of the day, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So guess what else will be better? Your health will be better, your relationships with your family will be better, your personal finances will be better, the legacy you leave will be so much better, your intellectual development you wouldn't even recognize who you are. All of this, I mean like you just create this magical life over the next 12 months, and I would love to celebrate that with you because I believe doctors. I mean, we've given up so much. We deserve that. Okay, so I'm celebrating you. Make this decision and I'll see you on the next episode of the Entree MP Podcast.