The EntreMD Podcast

Answer These 7 Questions to Achieve Explosive Business Growth in 2025

• Dr. Una • Episode 450

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Have you ever felt like you’re doing everything right, but the results just aren’t there?

You’re probably asking yourself the wrong questions. 

The questions you ask determine the answers you get, and those answers drive your results. So, if you want to grow your business, it starts with learning to ask better questions!In this episode, I share the exact seven questions I ask myself to ensure every year is better than the last. These aren’t just about goals. They’re about clarity, focus, and unlocking hidden opportunities.

If you want to make 2025 your best year yet, answer these seven questions! 

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Key Takeaways: 

  • 00:00 Intro 
  • 02:15 Question #1 
  • 05:24 Question #2 
  • 12:36 Question #3
  • 14:20 Question #4 
  • 16:54 Question #5 
  • 19:13 Question #6 
  • 20:47 Question #7 
  • 21:37 Call to action 
  • 22:47 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:

There's wisdom you have because of the experience you've had. Now, if you have an experience and it's not evaluated, it doesn't translate to wisdom. But if you stop and you evaluate it, you learn lessons from it. It turns to wisdom, and so what that means is the thing that was your disadvantage or the thing that was a setback or whatever, is not as much of a setback anymore because you've learned so much from it. What not to do or what to do, hi. What not to do or what to do, 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. One of the best things you can learn how to do is to ask better questions. The questions you ask determine the answers you get. The answers you get determine the results you get right Based on what your analysis is, and all of that. So today we are going to look at the seven questions you need to ask yourself before the end of the year. Now, the time of this recording is the end of 2024, but really you can ask these questions at the end of a year, at the end of a quarter, at the end of a month, at the end of a week. The idea is, the more questions you ask, the better questions you ask, the better thoughts you have, the better actions you take, the better results you create. Okay, so this is going to be a whole lot of fun. Now, this is something that I learned how to do a few years ago and it's something that has created really massive transformation in my business, because I'm very clear on where I'm trying to go, I'm very clear on what's working, I'm clear on what's not working. I'm clear on the things that get me the biggest results. I can do more of what works and less of what doesn't. It's just set me up to do that, and I'm so grateful that, year over year for the last, I mean like six years of EntreeMD, all six years we've had, you know, like growth years, like one level of growth to the next, and I credit a lot of that to questions that we ask. So let's take a look at these questions.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now, this is one of these episodes where, if you're driving or you're taking a walk, that's fine, you know you can listen through, but you also want to come back to it and pull out a journal and, you know, maybe sit somewhere quiet and kind of work through these things, right, because the more work you put into it, like paying attention to think it through, the more you get out of it. Okay, all right. So first question here is this what are the top seven wins in my business? Okay, so, in this time period so what we're talking about is a year so in the last year, what are the top seven wins I've experienced in my business? And you may be tempted to say what, like? I've had so many challenges, so many problems. I'm in the middle of a problem right now and I'll tell you what I tell every one of my clients.

Speaker 1:

I say this often, very often in entrepreneur business schools, so much so that they've adopted this line of thinking and that is that your business is, and will always be, a construction site. There will always be something to fix, it will always be noisy and something will be broken, and they're, you know, team members wearing, you know, dirty coveralls because they're working in it. There will always be something. And so the fact that it's a construction site doesn't mean it's not working, it doesn't mean it's not helping people, it doesn't mean it's not creating financial freedom. And you have to be aware If you're waiting for a perfect business, that's like a box with a pretty bow tied around it. That's not the way business works, especially if you're trying to grow it Like. When you grow things, you break things. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, you want to stop and look. If you haven't done this exercise a lot, you may not be able to find the wins. You're like Dr Una, I really don't see it, and that's okay. It's a muscle that we build, right. So here's some of the things you can do Like run month by month. What happened, right? What happened in these months? You can take your goals for the year, like these are the things I wanted for this year. Which of them have happened? Which of them has a percentage of it happened, right? Like. So you start looking at that. You can go to your phone and pull out your pictures and you start looking through them, right? You find you did this event. That was amazing. You find this one time. You know that you got, you know, 10 new clients. So this award that you were given. It is so unbelievable, the things that we can forget. It is unbelievable, right. So you want to stop. And the reason why this question is really important is because when you look at this, you realize that it's working. You realize that it's always working. You realize that you're much further along than you thought.

Speaker 1:

One of the things we do in the Entrepreneur Business School is we have this quarter and review habits that we do right, like. So you know I've talked about this many times on the podcast that we live a quarter at a time, and so the beginning of a quarter we're like happy EBS New Year. So we do this four times a year and we do a review of what happened in the quarter we just finished. And I'm like guys, please, I know that it can be terrifying to do this, but I need you to do this exercise. They're like but I don't know about the wins, and I'm like trust me, just do the exercise and without fail, at least 20% of the people come back and say, oh, my goodness, I did not realize how much I had done in a quarter, I didn't realize how many wins were created in a quarter, I didn't realize how far I've come, right. And so you want to take the time and do this.

Speaker 1:

It shows you how far you've come. It shows you that it's working. It shows you like, oh my goodness, these are things that were on my vision board or that I dreamed of. Or maybe you from three years ago would go like I cannot believe you did this right, I cannot believe you accomplished this, and so it's really good and it's a great place to start because it puts you in the energy of gratitude and possibility and it's working and all of this stuff for you to do the rest of the work that we're going to look through. So that's a place to start. Don't skip out on it and just make it a habit. It's a great muscle to have where you can see the things that are working, because our minds are designed to see what is not Okay. So that's the first thing.

Speaker 1:

The second thing is you want to ask this question like what are the top seven lessons I learned? Like what did I learn? And we look at wins and lessons, lessons meaning things that didn't quite work out. But okay, they didn't work out. What did I learn? What did I learn about what to do, what not to do, what, not to avoid what, not to procrastinate on what did I learn? And I always say this like we observe, we don't judge.

Speaker 1:

So it's not about you looking at your life oh, my goodness, I suck, look what I did. It's about you looking and saying, oh you know, like wow, I mean, I guess when you know, when you don't have meetings with your team members, they just don't rise. I guess, when you decide not to make sales for three months, that the next three to six months can be very interesting and in the worst way possible. And you start making the like if I hide from my profit and loss statement, bad things can happen, whatever that is, but what this does is it puts you in a position where you tap into your wisdom. Right, there's wisdom you have because of the experience you've had. Now, if you have an experience and it's not evaluated, it doesn't translate to wisdom. But if you stop and you evaluate it, you learn lessons from it, it turns to wisdom, and so what that means is the thing that was your disadvantage, or the thing that was a setback or whatever, is not as much of a setback anymore because you've learned so much from it what not to do or what to do Right, and so this is a very powerful thing.

Speaker 1:

What are the, what are the top lessons that you learned? One of the lessons I learned a few years ago, after, you know, we had taken now we had taken a second company to seven figures, so my private practice and then Entremd, and I didn't want to do the work of building the team. Right, I mean, I had some team, but I knew I needed a more competent team. I knew I needed more team members and I just didn't want to do it and I didn't want to be responsible for the hiring, building, the culture, onboarding, training, all of those kinds of what if it doesn't work, all of those things. What happened is the level of growth I wanted to experience. There was just no way for us to do it. We simply did not have the bandwidth to do it. And so one of the big lessons I learned was you know, the people with the companies, with the best teams win, and the price for multiplied impact and the price for more freedom is huge more team, both in volume and in quality. So that was a powerful lesson that I learned. And then the following year, I went all in on learning how to do that and I have such a phenomenal team, but that's because I tapped into my wisdom, right? Okay, one of the lessons I learned this year this year has been a very good year for me.

Speaker 1:

It is a year where, as a company, we put so much effort into serving the clients we have at a much higher level. So much, like you know, we changed our onboarding process. We really did tweak the curriculum that we had. We introduced different kind of call types, we went all out with our events and all of that like to serve them at the highest level. We worked on our workshops so this is now to the people outside of, you know, the general EntreeMD community and we worked on delivering those at the highest level. We worked on our workshops so this is now to the people outside of the general EntreeMD community and we worked on delivering those at the highest level. We even tweaked them, introduced two new workshops, and that was super powerful.

Speaker 1:

We see what is happening in the private practice space and how much, how dangerous it is Like for every private practice that goes out of business. You're talking of thousands of displaced patients, right, and so you know, helping private practices thrive. It's a national thing, like we're solving a national problem, and to us we decided we're going to take it on. We know we launched the National Private Practice Physicians Day, wrote a book, the Profitable Private Practice Playbook. We most recently launched the Profitable Private Practice Movement. This is a movement of physicians who are like we're going to defy the odds, we're going to build great, profitable practices and once you have enough empowered physicians running private practices, then we can go after the system. We can't go after the system right now. We just don't have enough of us to do that. We did a lot of these things. There's a lot of work, and sometimes it did feel like a lot of work but the return on investment immediately was not as big.

Speaker 1:

But now that we're at the end of the year, I see how putting in that work, putting in the effort continue to push against resistance and all of that doing it over time is so powerful, because what you go on to create is a tsunami. And so I cannot tell you how excited I am about 2025 because we have laid the foundation to have, you know, like an exponentially higher impact, exponentially higher team, the level of effort put into training the team and bringing other team players on board and all of that stuff. It's been so good, and so a lesson I learned is that great success takes a while, and so if you cannot work against resistance, if you cannot work when you don't see the results right away, even though you're doing all the right things, if you can't continue, that greatness will elude you, right? And so it's like, yeah, if you plant corn, like in a few months you can have corn, but if you're going to plant an orange tree, you're going to wait. You know what I mean, and so that's a powerful lesson that I learned, and the reason why that's powerful is because when that time comes again, you know, next year, chances are we're not going to be launching a whole lot of new things. We're going to be optimizing what we have because we've laid this really good foundation. But the next time I know that, okay, we're going to make another like quantum leap. I understand that.

Speaker 1:

What follows it after that is almost like chaos. In a way. It's almost like chaos Things that work to start breaking, and you have to rebuild systems, you have to rework your team, you have to do all of these things. But I'll recognize the pattern right, the same as during the pandemic. During the pandemic, it's very interesting, you know.

Speaker 1:

When I think about it, I'm like we launched the Entremet Business School in 2020, like right, smack in the middle of the pandemic and I'm like what was I thinking? I don't know how much I was thinking, but what was driving me was the fact that, you know, there was so much uncertainty. People didn't know what to do. People had already shut down their practice Like, oh, I'll shut down my practice for three or four weeks, for this thing to blow over. And people were so scared and I remember just coming and shouting from the rooftops like we're going to thrive, like we're going to be exempt from this, we're going to move forward against the resistance, all of those things.

Speaker 1:

So the drive was to help, and I didn't realize that in real time when I look back this is why great questions are important, right? So when I look back, I'm like wow, like it was so dark, so scary. And here I came and I was like no, there's a way we can be exempt from this, we can thrive in the midst of this. I'm still working on the strategy, but we are going to win. I didn't realize how valuable that is for you to be the voice of reason, to be the light when it's so dark, and so I was like huh, if there was ever a pandemic again, I would hold nothing back because I recognize the pattern right. So this is the reason why and I'm not saying there'll be another pandemic but whenever there's a crisis, for me it's not a time to run away, it's a time to do the work, find the answer, find the strategy, show the people say come on, let's go, we're not rolling over, we're not playing dead, we're still going to win. Right, like times may get tough to tough, get going. That's what we do, so anyway. That's why it's important to look at those lessons, because when that shows itself again, you know you're, you're smarter now, right, okay, so that's the second question.

Speaker 1:

The third question is what are my top three goals for 2025, right, so for the next year, if you're doing this on a quarterly basis, for the next quarter, all of that, what are your top three goals? And I want to say this here because you know I've worked with thousands of physicians over the years and a lot of times they would set goals and there are no revenue goals and stuff like that. Okay, so you can pick whatever goals you want, but one of them must be revenue Let me not even say should must be revenue. Pick revenue. You know, pick revenue If you are in your pre-revenue phase. Pick the size of your email list, but pick one of those numbers, okay, so revenue, one of them. But what are your top three goals? Think about it and, you know, I'll give you a sub question under that when you're done writing.

Speaker 1:

Whatever those three things are deciding on them, ask yourself okay, so let's say it's a year, december 31st, 2025. If all I accomplished in my business were these three things, how excited would I be? On a scale of one to 10? If it's not a 10, you haven't actually owned what you really want, right? And so you tweak that and tweak that and tweak that till you get to a 10, because you know what you really want, right? And so you tweak that and tweak that and tweak that till you get to a 10, because you know what you really want, okay, and go after it. And sometimes people are like, but what if I don't get it? So what? You don't have it.

Speaker 1:

Now the thing is decide on what it is, reverse, engineer it to see what you need to do, do that to the best of your capability and let the chips fall where they may, right? So, anyway, what are my top business goals for 2025? And you don't want to walk into a new season not knowing where you want to go. Right, you don't know where you want to go. You don't know how to get there. That's like going to a new city and just waking up in the morning and driving. You don't know anywhere, from anywhere. You're not really going to go anywhere. Significant, right, you're going to move, you're going to have a lot of action, but chances are you're not going to get the result you want. Okay, so what are they Right?

Speaker 1:

Question number four this is a very powerful question to ask. Now, when you have those goals and you have a revenue goal, the question you want to ask is the revenue I'm creating in my business now, where's 80% of that revenue coming from? Okay, where's 80% of the revenue coming from? Chances are it's only from 20% of the things you're doing, or one product you're offering, or you know the specific activity. Whatever it is, where is that revenue coming from? The reason for that is, if you're not aware of the activity that is driving most of your revenue, you can find a shiny object and get rid of that, and I cannot tell you how many businesses have crashed that way, because they don't understand the things that are making the business work and they stop doing them. So you want to know what are the things like, what are the things that creates 80% of my revenue? What are the things I'm doing that are creating them, so you can do more of what works and less of what doesn't.

Speaker 1:

This is a very, very, very powerful question. Now, this is, for the most part, is not a I think the answer is not an, I think kind of answer. You're actually looking at the data, right, actually? So so say, you're a coach and you're like, oh, you know, like 80% of my clients come when I host this monthly masterclass that I'm doing Okay. So the question then becomes how do we optimize that masterclass? Do we need to do it more frequently, say, if you're doing it once a quarter or twice a year, do we need to do it more frequently? How do we get more people into it? Because the more people you get into it, the more people would convert. Do I need to learn to become better at delivering, better at doing my pitch? Does my voice change and do I feel weird, and all of that when I make a pitch? Okay, how do I become comfortable with that so you can optimize and make what is working better.

Speaker 1:

Your private practice and you've looked and you're like most of my people are coming from referral sources and that's amazing. Okay, good, of all the referral sources, what are the top three referral sources? Right, and so those are the people you stay in contact with, you build relationships with, you take gifts to the office. You do all of that because 80% of your revenue is coming from there. Like, you want to know what that is. This is a powerful, powerful question. Okay, you must understand it. So sometimes I would talk to people and they were trying to troubleshoot their businesses and they're like you know, my patient business has stalled and all of those things. And I started digging and one of the questions I asked was okay, so, historically, where has 80% of your revenue come from? Oh, it's come from referral sources, or it's come from ads, or it's come from whatever. Okay, great, so tell me what you're doing there now. Oh, you know what. We got busy, so I stopped. I'm like, yeah, that is exactly. This is not complicated, just reinstall what was working. Okay, so that's a very powerful question.

Speaker 1:

Question number five Now, question number five is if I want the goals, so those top three goals that I decided for 2025, what is the new 20% I must embrace? Now let me explain what I mean by 20%. Okay, so this is off of the Pareto principle that 20% of your activities create 80% of your results, right? So the more you focus on the 20%, the more you can get done in less time, because the 80%, not only is it only going to give you 20% of the result, but it also takes four times as much time right, it was four times as many activities as your 20%. So the more you live in the 20%, the more you focus spending 80% of your time on 20% activities, the better. Everything else is right. So so the question becomes these goals that I set it's wonderful.

Speaker 1:

Now, so, since I set them, what are the 20% activities that create these? So, for instance, if you're running a business and your big thing is, we want to crack the $500,000 mark and stuff like that, or let's even go, let's say, a hundred thousand dollar mark, your 20% activity is selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling and putting yourself in front of new people you can sell to. That's it, I mean, that's not it, but those are one and two for sure. The closer you get to seven figures multiple seven figures then, yes, you still have to have the selling done, you still have to have the brand stuff going on. But team now becomes an important thing because you're approaching the end of your bandwidth. And a team now becomes an important thing because you're approaching the end of your bandwidth and if you do not bring team on board, you cannot expand your impact.

Speaker 1:

Chances are you get burned out. Chances are you start sabotaging your own growth because you know more growth means more work, which means more burnout, right, do you see it like? So what is that 20% activity? What is the thing that you need to focus on? Maybe you have a business and you know. Sometimes you know how to find the 20%. It's like what's your opportunity? That's low hanging opportunity. That's right there. And so maybe for you you have a great business. You have no referral sources. It's not something you've looked at at all, but it's always, always a game changer for a business and you're like, wow, I need to embrace that. I have some hangups around that. I need to work through that. I need to get some wisdom, some knowledge about how to do that, knowing that when I bring this in. It changes my business. Do you see what I'm saying? So the 20% puts you in a place where you become very strategic, you become very intentional, you start doing less things, but with the less things you're doing, it's like getting more results. It is magical. Your 20% is a magical neighborhood, okay, so you want to be there.

Speaker 1:

Question number six if I want those goals, what are the 80% activities I must get off my plate. So deciding on the 20% is great, but the 80% we also have to decide on that. And so maybe you're spending way too long on your social media because you're the one doing everything and you're making all the graphics and all of that stuff. Maybe it's you're spending too much time collaborating to get times on your calendar when you could get a VA to do that. Look for those things Like. What are the things that need to come off my plate?

Speaker 1:

For many of you, especially for those of you who are running homes, you have kids and stuff like that, your 80% may not even be something in the business. Your biggest 80% may be things at home that you're still doing, and so you're stretching at work and you're stretching at home. You're doing the laundry, you're doing all the cooking, You're doing all the cleaning, you're the only one who cares for the babies and all of that stuff. It's time to then say this is part of my 80%. I need to get help so I can delegate some of this stuff. Some of us, we don't even need to get help. There are people who are begging to help us, but we have this complex that we can do it all ourselves, and I just want to invite you to say yes to the people who are offering to help you anyway. Right, so what is the 80%? This is very powerful because this is the deal. The gravitational pull of your formal self is so strong, is so strong that if you don't take the time to think about this and make decisions, you'll find yourself where you're like me, 2.0 and all of that stuff, and you show up and you act exactly the same as you always have, because that's your default. For you to create a pattern, interrupt, you have to think and you have to make decisions.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now the seventh thing super powerful is who's my next critical hire? Right, like so, this is where my business is now. This is where we're going. Where we're going, who's the next person I need to bring on my team. Right, who's the next person I need to bring on my team to turn everything around and take us to the next level? And so that may be a virtual assistant, that may be an executive assistant, that may be a practice administrator, that may be a business manager, that may be another doctor, whoever Like. If I could only hire one person and this hire will help me accomplish the goals that I've set for this business If it could only be one and I know you'll be like Dr Una, I need seven people, I hear you. But if it could only be one, who is that person? Right, we want to know who that is, because that's our domino, and we want to hire that person, bring them on board and they will work with us to take the business further and generate the salary for the next person.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so these are seven questions. Again, there's no set answer. You just want to sit and reflect and come with the answers and you'll find so much wisdom that you've been walking around with. It will help you make very strategic decisions and you'll be shocked. You'll be shocked. So this is what I want you to do. I want you to go answer these questions and you'll be shocked. You'll be shocked. So this is what I want you to do. I want you to go answer these questions and you can literally get a couple of friends you know, you know physician colleagues who are physician entrepreneurs as well, and you guys can do a little workshop type session, sit together, answer these questions, all of that stuff, and I want you to do this. I want you to think about the biggest aha, the biggest takeaway, the discovery you made that really shocked you, and I want you to do this. I want you to think about the biggest aha, the biggest takeaway, the discovery you made that really shocked you, and I want you to send me a direct message on Facebook or Instagram. I'm Nneka Una Chukwu on Facebook, I'm Dr Una Chukwu on Instagram and you can find me. I'm Nneka Una Chukwu on LinkedIn. So whichever one you like and just say Dr Una.

Speaker 1:

I listened to this episode of the podcast seven questions to ask before the end of 2024. And, oh my goodness, I discovered this. Okay, so send that to me, because I want to celebrate it with you and say oh my goodness, this is amazing. 2025 is going to be our absolute best year yet, and you have set the stage for that to happen. Okay, so go, do this with your friends. Come up with your biggest takeaway, share it with me, and I am telling you, just doing this will give you so much clarity, so much wisdom, so many strategies what you need to make this next 12 months your best 12 months. So I'm rooting for you always and I'll see you on the next episode of the Entree of the Podcast.