The EntreMD Podcast

You Can’t DIY a Business: Why Physician Entrepreneurs Need Mentorship

• Dr. Una • Episode 458

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Would you tell a medical student to Google how to perform surgery?

No? 

Then why are you trying to figure out entrepreneurship on your own?

Just like there are systems of mentorship to help guide a student in becoming a doctor, there are systems of mentorship to help guide a doctor in becoming an entrepreneur. 

One of the biggest struggles doctors face is trying to DIY their businesses. But you can’t DIY a business! You can’t just Google your way through it or rely on Facebook groups for all the answers.

That’s why today’s episode is all about the power of mentorship. The same power that got you through medical school and that will help you become a world-class entrepreneur!

Tune in. 

—

Key Takeaways: 

  • 00:00 Intro 
  • 00:38 The importance of mentorship in entrepreneurship 
  • 02:43 The problem with DIY 
  • 07:39 Three gifts of mentorship 
  • 13:47 Make a decision! 
  • 17:04 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 are things that we simply don't see, strategies we can employ. We simply don't see Decisions we're making that are hurting our business, that we simply don't see Places. We think we're stuck. And it's just because we can't see there are blind spots. What mentorship does? It exposes those blind spots so you can see and then make the right decisions.

Speaker 1:

Hi dogs, 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, you would never tell a medical student to go Google how to do surgery. You would never tell a resident to do that either. You understand that there are systems of mentorship that have been put in place that will help somebody go from a pimply teenager through a process to then become a heart surgeon. There is mentorship required, and so my question for you is why are you trying to figure out entrepreneurship alone? Why are you trying to figure out entrepreneurship alone? Why are you trying to figure it out alone? You're a whole physician. You have been through mentorship, through med school, through residency, some of you through fellowship and all of that stuff, and you understand the power of it. Okay, you understand the power of it, and so, when it comes to the world of business, it's no different. It's no different. One of the most challenging things I see doctors trying to do is they're trying to DIY their businesses right, and they're like oh yeah, you know, I can get this from a Facebook group or I can Google here and stuff like that, and I want to kind of paint a picture for you. I want you to get this and some of you you may already be in a setup where you are getting mentorship, but maybe you're not leaning in as much as you can, and at the end of this, you're going to be all in, so you become this person who, every 90 days, your business is different. Every 90 days, you, as an entrepreneur, are different. That is possible. It is not possible without mentorship.

Speaker 1:

Why am I talking about this? Because this year, the time of this recording, is 2025. And this year is the year of the physician. I've been saying it for four years now, but this is the year we're here, is the year of the physician, and it is the year where physicians are going to experience five freedoms. This is going to become the new norm that is available for physicians. The first freedom is the freedom to practice medicine on their terms. The second freedom is the freedom to live life on their terms. The third freedom is time freedom. The fourth freedom is financial freedom. The fifth freedom is the freedom to live life on their terms. The third freedom is time freedom. The fourth freedom is financial freedom. The fifth freedom is the freedom to pursue purpose, like why I really think I'm here, what I really want to do, the change I want to leave in the world, the legacy I want to leave. We're going to have those five freedoms, so forget about what is happening now. We have the opportunity for something else, but what I don't want you to do is then waste this year DIYing.

Speaker 1:

The problem with DIYing is it is so ridiculously expensive. You know, my team and I we talk to doctors a lot and it's not unusual. You know to see somebody and they took out this big loan $300,000 or $400,000, you know for their business and they've blown through it. They've blown through it on things that don't matter. They've bought devices that they're never going to use. They have paid for all these teams. They paid for the most gorgeous location and all of these things, but they're not the things that will make the business work. That is so expensive because again, they blew through 300,000, 400,000 in things that are unprofitable.

Speaker 1:

Right, we have seen people who you know I'm going to take my business to the next level. They bring on a marketing team but on their own they have not made the evolution. They don't understand marketing. They don't understand the terms of marketing, so they cannot even tell whether the marketing team is doing a good job or not. And because they abdicated it they didn't delegate, they abdicated like I don't want anything to do with this they're not giving their marketing team any content, any direction, anything. So their marketing team, when they do stuff for them, don't even sound like them. And they're paying five grand, six grand, $10,000 a month with no ROI. So I want you to think about if they pay $10,000 a month, that's $120,000 just down the drain gone. Diy is expensive.

Speaker 1:

I've had other people. They have billers and they're running these multimillion dollar practices but they have no idea what the biller is doing. They have no idea. They don't know what the accounts receivable statement means, they don't know what AR days mean, they don't know how to troubleshoot it. They don't know any of those things, and so, at the end of the day, the billers are doing a sloppy job and I don't mean billers in general do a sloppy job, but people do what you inspect, not what you expect. But you don't know how to inspect because you have no idea what's happening. Those things are expensive. Do you see how? Each of these examples we're talking over a hundred thousand dollars?

Speaker 1:

Right, we've had people. You know they have teams, but they have not. They have not learned, they've not had mentorship on how to lead a team. So they have a team they're paying for, they have a very huge you know, like, you know payroll and all of that, with no return on investment, none whatsoever. Why don't they have a return on investment? Because they don't know what to do with their team. They don't even feel they're worthy of a team. They don't know how to build out KPIs for the team. They don't know how to evaluate them. They're just like, yeah, they come to work, they're dedicated and all that stuff, and like your payroll is $200,000. Like that's not going to cut it. So DIY is expensive and it wastes so much time. It wastes an incredible amount of time, and so I really want us to start thinking how do I to eliminate this waste, right?

Speaker 1:

So sometimes we talk to doctors and we're going like my goodness, like you're throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And they'll say, yeah, I can't, I can't invest in the entrepreneur business school, you know, I just can't afford it. I'm like, no, what you can't afford is what is going on in your business. Like you can't afford that. And you know, for for the people who are listening, who are newbies, like you have a gift. Like you have a gift, like I wish I had the entrepreneur business school when I started. It will save you so many mistakes. Like, if it saves you from one mistake, you've covered your investment.

Speaker 1:

Because people say ignorance is bliss, ignorance is. But he does training on coding. His name is Paul Firth and he, you know he was trained on how to, how to code properly. I didn't know anything about coding. I was like you know, like I was like every great physician. You know I just bill everything 99213, so I don't get audited.

Speaker 1:

And so I got an invite in the mail to go for his event. I don't remember what it was, $500 or a thousand, I don't remember what it was, and you know it was a whole day conference. So I said, okay, you know, I'm just going to go. And I went there and the strategies I learned blew my mind Like my mind is still blown till today. And I was like my goodness, I saw that, you know, I was seeing so many 99214s billing them as 99213s and that conference easily led to another seven grand to $10,000 in my practice every single month.

Speaker 1:

So I want you to think about that. Okay, so let's use, you know, $7,000, seven times 12, that's 84. So that's $84,000 that I was able to generate for work I was already doing because I paid $500 or $1,000 to go for a conference, right? I just want you to think about this. It's the same thing we did in medical school. You know, in medical school we paid 200, 250,000 to get this career. And then it puts us in this place where we earn six figures, multiple six figures, almost a million for some people for years, till we retire, right?

Speaker 1:

And so I want us to start thinking in this way, because this is the way savvy entrepreneurs think. This is the way they think they look for the mentorship. We don't say go Google it, go find, go to a random Facebook group and pull it Like those are all good, there's nothing wrong with it. But the same way, you're not going to become a world-class surgeon doing that, you're not going to become a world-class entrepreneur doing that, okay, and you're going to throw away so much, okay. So the most successful physicians that I have in my world and I have a lot in my world they get mentorship. This is something. This is something they do. They understand it's a proven system, just like you understand it's a proven system.

Speaker 1:

If you wanted to, you know, get another residency done and another certification and stuff like that, you get. Go get training for it. You go get mentorship for it. You know you're not just going to go Google and go take a test. That's not the way this works. We're physicians, we know this, okay.

Speaker 1:

So what is the gift that mentorship gives? Mentorship gives three gifts out of fourth one. But the first one is that it helps you see your blind spots. There's so many things that you cannot see. There's so many things. For instance, on Wednesdays we have our live sessions in the EntreMD Business School and a lot of times we would have you know Q&A after. Sometimes we have laser coaching the entire time, but sometimes we don't. I teach a specific thing, but afterwards we have a Q&A and then usually the Q&A.

Speaker 1:

You know, people come up and ask questions and literally you can see the blind spots. Sometimes their classmates can see the blind spots, but they can't see it, you know. And so they'll come and say you know, I have this team member, you know, and they're very good, they're always on time, they have a great attitude and all of these things. And they start listing their concerns about them and I'm like why is this person still in your company? They're like because of this and because of that, and this is what I'm paying them. And I'm like, and because of that, and this is what I'm paying them. And I'm like you're paying them five times the national average, like, and they're costing you money, like what are you talking about? Right, and it's so easy for them in that moment to see like, oh my goodness, like this is a problem that could cost me $50,000 this year. I can get rid of this problem right now. Right. And so they're blind spots. They're things that we simply don't see. They're strategies we can employ we simply don't see. They're decisions we're making that are hurting our business, that we simply don't see. They're places we think we're stuck and it's just because we can't see. They're blind spots.

Speaker 1:

And what mentorship does? It exposes those blind spots so you can see and then make the right decisions. So that's the first gift that it gives. The second gift is proven frameworks. Right, it's proven frameworks because, think about it, that's what we get in medical school, that's what we get in our residencies and stuff. We get algorithms, we get all these cheat sheets, checklists, all of these kinds of things. And then we know, like when we want to run a code, somebody looking from the outside is like oh, it's so chaotic and all of those things. You know it's step one and they re-evaluate step two, then step three. If this, then that it's very organized in our head. It's a framework and I love frameworks and blueprints and checklists and all of those things.

Speaker 1:

And, for instance, in my mentorship program in the Entree MD Business School, we have a lot of those. We have a revenue generation framework. We have that revenue generation framework. We have that. We have a checklist for all the things you need to learn, the four pillars of the Entree MD Business School. We have a framework for creating an ideal job ad so you attract the kind of people you want and then you repel the people you don't want, like they all have formula, blueprints, checklists, frameworks. That's what you get from a mentor and that's the reason why you know one of the things I do is I recognize that you know, like I'm a leader in the physician entrepreneur space and there's so many people that I'm responsible for and that's why I'm constantly learning and that's why I'm constantly developing new frameworks and I'm constantly studying new businesses and I'm trying out in different industries.

Speaker 1:

Because what do I want to do? I want to give my people the best frameworks, the best pathways, the best blueprints that will help them get the biggest results they can in less amount of time, not more Right. And so you get these proven frameworks, especially if it's a mentor who's been there, done that and has the t-shirts Okay, which I happen to have. That's the second thing. The third thing a mentor would do is they'll hold you accountable. People are not just motivated because they're always motivated. They're motivated because there's systems of accountability. I have so many systems of accountability around me, so I seem motivated all the time, but I'm not right. But I'm getting the job done, I'm doing what needs to be done, and so you get that? You get that because it's the difference between deciding to do something and doing it nine months later, or deciding to do something and getting it done the next day. This is one of the reasons.

Speaker 1:

In the Entremet Business School, we have monthly challenges, and the monthly challenges they're in your face. They're designed to keep you in momentum. Nobody just stays in momentum. People in accountability systems stay in momentum, and so that's what they give you is the gift of accountability. Now, when you have mentorship in the context of community, which I was so adamant about when we started the Entremdi Business School people are like I want one-on-one coaching. I'm like, trust me, that is not what you want. I need you to trust me on this one. That is not what you want.

Speaker 1:

Having the gift of physician entrepreneurs who are building businesses from startup all the way to 9 million in revenue to be in that community I mean, what do they say? Your network is your net worth. Your net worth jumps maybe a thousand X just by joining the school right, because now you're exposed to about a hundred physicians who are like unicorns, who are killing it, crushing it right In all different phases, in all different industries. It's like unbelievably amazing. Now, how is this a gift? This is the fourth gift. When you have the gift of mentorship in community, what you get is vertical and horizontal mentorship. So what that means is you get the mentorship you get from the leader of the community. I also get the mentorship that you get from the people in the community, because there are so many rock stars, so many unicorns, so many phenomenal physicians, and you're not going to learn from just me. You're going to learn from them as well, like when you watch them do what they do. They normalize challenges. They normalize big wins. They normalize doing it messy. They normalize doing it scared. They normalize showing up even when life is lifey. They normalize going at the pace of grace when life life's like. They do all of these things. It's just a phenomenal. It's a phenomenal experience.

Speaker 1:

I say this because I don't want you to miss out on the year of the physician. I don't want you to go another year saying this is the year I build a team, or this is the year I cross the seven figure mark, or this is the year I buy my time back, or this, like I've been thinking about doing this for a long time. I want to invite you to make a decision, Okay, and you can say, oh, I have this other program that I want to do and that's fine. I'm talking about the entrepreneur business school, because I don't know that there's a better program for physician entrepreneurs. I just don't know that there is. So that's why I'm talking about the program that I lead. But I want to invite you to make a decision. Like, at some point, if you didn't make the decision to get into medical school, you won't be a doctor period Like you just wouldn't be. What is on the other side of your yes, what is on the other side of you being in a position where you get the mentorship, you get the accountability, you get the community, all of those things, and you start making significant strides. This is the way you get two years in one, four years in one.

Speaker 1:

It's not unusual for people to come into the EntreMD Business School and they're like my goodness. The first half of the year, I made X amount of dollars. The second half of the year that I was in the school, I made 2X. That Some people it's 4X, that. It's not unusual for people to come in and they do their first quarter in the business school and they're like my goodness, I did more in this quarter than I did all of last year.

Speaker 1:

It's not unusual, and I might say come in. Just all you have to do is sign here and then all these things will happen. No, there's work to be done, but I'm telling you this because it's available, and it's not one or two people and we didn't start the school yesterday. It's been around for four and a half years, right, and so you may be afraid, afraid, but fear is not what stops you from coming into the community. Fear is what drives you to come into the community, because then you see, everybody's getting afraid and we normalize that You're able to get over that faster. You may be like nah, I think I'll figure it out, but you're a physician and so figuring it out is not a winning strategy. This is not a winning strategy.

Speaker 1:

If you have been stalling on something for years, if you have wasted so much money trying to do something and you have made no headway. It's time to make a decision. It's time to make a decision to do things differently. So what I want you to do is I want you to embrace leverage. That's what mentorship is. Mentorship is leverage. You can go at one speed or you can go at two, four, eight, 10, 12 speed right, and that's what the EntreeMD Business School will do for you.

Speaker 1:

I want you to make a decision. I'm going to embrace leverage and I want to invite you to come join us in the EntreeMD Business School. It's EntreeMDcom forward slash business. You can turn in application Team will be happy to talk with you and kind of walk you through what it is such a magical place. I wish I had it when I started as an entrepreneur, but I didn't have it, so then I built it. But it is such a game changer.

Speaker 1:

There is a reason why, four and a half years later, the school has been around for four and a half years. We still have doctors who started four and a half years ago and they haven't left. There's a reason why, and I want to invite you to come join us and this is not about sales. This is about you putting yourself in a position for radical change. And it's so important to me because I did not start off as a person who would be an entrepreneur. In fact, some of my classmates are like Dr Udall.

Speaker 1:

What happened? What happened to you? We knew you. You were very quiet, maybe even shy. You know person and you're just like super smart and things like that. But what is all this other stuff that you're doing right? And one of my biggest superpowers or super hacks is mentorship is mentorship, and ever since I found it, I've never stopped because it's such a game changer and I want to invite you to come have that experience with us too. Okay, so turn your application on ontrendycom forward, slash business, and I'm looking forward to celebrating you and celebrating the wins and the speed and the transformation. And we had a doc who just joined the on-trend business school about you know, 30 days ago and she, she, she posted in the group. She's like I cannot. I cannot recognize myself, I cannot believe the things that I'm doing. I cannot believe the person I've turned into right 30 days, 30 days. Okay, so I'm rooting for you. I want you to have the same experience. So go, turn in your application and I will see you on the inside of the Entree MD Business School.