The EntreMD Podcast

It’s Not Working: 6 Strategies to Stop This Paralyzing Thought

• Dr. Una • Episode 494

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It's not working. 

One of the thoughts that challenged me the most and put me in a position where things I could have accomplished in three months took me years to accomplish was this thought: it's not working. 

This one thought slowed me down more than I like to admit. I second-guessed myself, held back from showing up, and even got annoyed with my team... all because of that one paralyzing thought. But it doesn't have to be that way. In this episode, I'll walk you through the 6 strategies I use to shut this thought down and keep moving forward. We’ll talk about doing honest audits, building radical gratitude into your daily routine, and how to celebrate the process even before the outcome arrives.

This is an episode every entrepreneur needs to hear, especially when it feels like nothing's working. 

So tune in, take notes, and remember: it’s working, it’s always working.

—

Key Takeaways: 

  • 00:00 Intro 
  • 01:55 It’s always working
  • 04:02 Conduct yearly reviews 
  • 09:23 Practice radical gratitude 
  • 11:14 Value process and outcome goals
  • 13:24 Conduct brutally honest audits 
  • 15:10 Stay abreast of class working strategies 
  • 16:39 Flip the narrative
  • 18:14 Your homework and outro

Additional Resources:


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Speaker 1:

The human mind is a very interesting thing. The default setting is it's looking for what is not working. It looks for why things can't work and all of those things, and so if you don't discipline it to do certain things, it's just not going to do that.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 1:

One of the thoughts that challenged me the most and put me in a position where things I could have accomplished in three months maybe took me years to accomplish, was this thought it's not working, it's not working. I can think of times where I got on stage and I held back from presenting the way I could because I was like man, it's not working. I know times when I could have gone out to be more visible for my business, shown up on social media, done lives all of those things where I held myself back because of this thought it's not working. I know of times where I got really annoyed with team members and, yes, there are some things that they could have done, that they weren't doing all those things but the real thing behind all of that was this thought it's not working. What I'm doing for my business is not working the marketing, the selling, the leading, the team, the figuring out the finances and then this is just at baseline. But on top of it, then certain things would go wrong. Maybe something wrong with the system or somebody, you know, a team member functioned in a certain way, or a launch that didn't do as well as I expected it to, or having less patients for a few days in a row than I wanted to, and it would then make that thought so much louder like it is not working and it is one of the most disabling thoughts. It is so far from an empowering thought and a lot of times it has nothing to do with reality. Now I am currently in a time where this is not a thought that stops me anymore for the most part, and I have a saying, and I say it all the time in the Entremet Business School. I say it's working, it's always working. Okay, it's always working. For those of using the 20% Coach Journal, you'll see it in there it's working, it's always working and that's what I choose instead of that thought.

Speaker 1:

But I'm going to walk you. I'm going to walk you through that process and I would think I want to start off by saying that if you find yourself in a position where maybe you wanted to hit a milestone and you didn't hit it, you had a revenue goal and you didn't hit it. Or you had a launch and you wanted to welcome a certain number of clients and you didn't. We had a month in your cash pay practice where you're like I'm going to get X number of patients and you didn't you know, and you didn't you know, you brought on a new EHR or whatever, a billing system, and you're like, yes, this is the thing that's going to make a huge difference in my practice. And it didn't. I want to invite you to tell you for me, most of the things that I have set as goals, like many of them, I never hit. I mean, they're still ongoing. I'm still, you know, going after them.

Speaker 1:

I don't let that stop me, like I don't let that stop me at all. Now, in spite of that, right, we've done so much, so it's not as though we're not moving forward. It's not as though we're not moving forward significantly, but I don't sweat it. Okay, let me walk you through my process. This is a six-part process that I used to overcome this thought. And again, why is this important? Because it will stop you. Is this important? Because it will stop you. It will stop you from showing up. It will stop you from showing up at a higher level. It will make you sabotage yourself all the time and it'll put you in a place where you'll be very hard to collaborate with. And that is where you're. Whether you're collaborating with people external to your company, you're collaborating with people in your company, like your team members and all of that stuff, because you are going to be in a state of frustration, like that's just where you're going to live. And for me, I'm like you know, I'm really at a point in my life where I want to make sure that what I'm doing is what I want to do and the life I'm living is the life I want to live. I definitely do not want to walk around with an underlying sense of frustration. That's just too much, way too much, okay, all right.

Speaker 1:

So let's look at this six part series. And the first thing I do the first thing I do when this thought comes like it's not working, or rather a habit I have that prevents me from falling apart when that thought shows up is this habit of doing a 12 to three year review. Okay, and it could be five years, 10 years, whatever, but at least 12 to three years, 12 months to three year review. Okay, it's a review, so it's looking backwards, okay. Okay, he's a review, so it's looking backwards, okay. And so when I do that, what I'm looking for is all the things that I thought were not working that have worked, all the things that took a little longer, but they played out exactly the way they were supposed to play out, all the things that I stressed out about. And now I'm like, yeah, I know what I know and I wouldn't have bothered with all of that and really what that is me pulling from the to then use that wisdom to have a better experience this time Right.

Speaker 1:

And so, for instance, we had, you know, we had a time where we were going to buy our medical building, right, like. So we started off, you know, leasing a space. It was about three exam rooms. It was perfect for when we started, we're able to keep our overhead low and not deal with any financial pressure and stuff like that, and so we started it there. And it's a building with four complexes, so we started off there. And then, as we grew, we needed more space, right, obviously, we outgrew that space and there was an OBGYN who was in a different suite that had six exam rooms and this OBGYN had just moved out, and so we moved into that space and we leased that space.

Speaker 1:

And then we got to this place where we're like, okay, well, we're going to need a place, right, but we're going to need our own place, and we started looking to purchase our own building and things like that. You know, finally, my husband just got this nudge to go ask the owner of our building if he will sell the building, like if he was looking into selling the building, which is very odd because he owned a private practice within that space as well and so we approached him and, after a number of conversations, turned out that he was open to selling it and all, and you know. So we started those conversations and it was some ridiculously long amount of time. It was like it's not working. So what are we going to do? At least it's going to run out, blah, blah, blah. There are all these things going on and at the end of the day, you know, we finally were able to close on the building. We acquired the building, only to find out Okay, so we found this out, like close to the time we closed on the building that the reason for the delay was the owner of the building was selling his building to the hospital and he wanted to secure a five-year lease before he sold it to us.

Speaker 1:

For us, we were like this is a delay, but what it did was, instead of giving us a building and then we would have this huge vacant space because that was the biggest suite. We had that and we had a five-year lease with the hospital, right, and so did that seem like a delay? Did it seem like things were not working fast enough and all of those things, yes, did it work out for us royally, like royally and you know that's just a reminder like, at the end of the day it's always working. Like our part is to do our part and do our part, you know, to the best of our abilities, but it's always working. I've had a time, you know to the best of our abilities, but it's always working.

Speaker 1:

I've had a time, like you know, when we first opened the Entremdy Business School so this was five years ago and after we had a whole event, we had Entremdy Live. I told everybody about the school and all of these things. You know, on day one we had two people join the school, like one two. I was like oh my goodness, and I was in such shock. I was like this makes no sense. I remember feeling like there was some embarrassment there, like you just did a thing and you told people how to sell and how to market and you could only sell two people into this stuff. But our cart was open for about seven days thereabout, and the next day then nobody joined, and after that maybe one person joined and all of those things, and I kept going and kept going like full speed ahead and stuff like that, and we ended up with 22 doctors the first time we opened the school. And so I remember that you know what I mean. I go back, I review, I remember that, and so if I'm in a place where I have two people, it doesn't mean I can't have 22 people, right, because it's always working. But if I stop showing up, then it's definitely not going to work, right?

Speaker 1:

We've had times where in my private practice, you know, we've had, you know, that when the great resignation happened, it was becoming a challenge to have people who would work, and you know people who would do good work, people who would stay longer than two weeks. I mean we have people who would even want to be interviewed and not show up for the interview, or they'd show up to work and they work for one day in the morning and then not come back, you know, after lunch, and it was all kinds of stuff, you know. But I remember that's when we built out our own training system and started training, you know, like pre-meds and pre-PA and all of those things, and those became our MAs, and then we just have this pipeline, and that's a historical fact, right. And so at the end of the day it's all working. It's always working. If it's not working for me, it's working on me. If it's not working right now, it's still working, and you know when it plays out it will make up for the quote unquote time lost. And so that's what a review does, and we all have these stories, right. And so I try to look back a year to three years and then just pull up these things of times when I thought it wasn't working, but it turns out that it was working for me in the best possible way.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so that's the first thing I do. The second thing I do and I train all my clients to do this is I practice radical gratitude, because the human mind is a very interesting thing. The default setting is it's looking for what is not working and looks for why things can't work and all of those things. And so if you don't discipline it to do certain things, it's just not going to do them right. And so for me in my business. You know, I may have this target, like I want to have a hundred new clients or whatever, and then two people come in and it's like what is two compared to a hundred? But I've learned to stop doing that and I've learned to be so grateful for the two and I've learned to be so grateful for the clients I do have. I learned to be so grateful for the team members that I have. I've learned to be so grateful for the people who listen to the podcast or the people who are commenting on the Facebook group and the wins that we've had and you know, the Inc 5000 that we hit. And like I just practice being grateful for all of it and practice it daily, because when I do that then it reminds me that it's always working right, because there's always something to be grateful for, so it's always working Okay.

Speaker 1:

And so even when I have calls in the EntreeMD business school, we start those off with gratitude, Like it's first of all, like you know, like what wins do we have? Let's celebrate some wins and all that. And we start from there and, as a reminder, one of the slogans that you always hear in Entremet Business School is always working. Someone go like, yeah, this is where it was and this is what I was thinking and this is how hard it was for me, and look highest playing out now. It's always working. And then even in the profitable private practice movements which, if you're in private practice and you're not part of it, come join us. Right, this is where we show up every Thursday to work on our businesses and private practice docs are just winning. Okay, and where do we start from? We start from wins Like so, between the last week and now, what's going on? Right, again, it's a reminder to the people sharing the wins that it's always working and it's a reminder to the entire community that it's always working. So that's the second thing.

Speaker 1:

The third thing is that I've learned to value process and outcome goals like both of them, and to see them as super powerful and celebrate them both. So I'll explain what I mean by that. An outcome goal could be like you know, we did seven figures in revenue this year, okay. A process goal could be something like we were very diligent and you know, for my private practice, we hit the recaller twice a week the entire year and what that means is that we're putting ourselves in a position where we're constantly talking to people about, you know, with their overdue appointments, getting them in, getting them scheduled, getting all of that stuff. A process win could look like I hired a practice administrator, like I haven't had a practice manager for my office and I hired one and I went through that process now, so immediately, there's no direct outcome.

Speaker 1:

That is what sets me up to have more impact, more time freedom, more financial freedom, challenging where you're like okay, I need to do something to make sure I'm getting paid for all the work I do and I realized that my billing company is just not the company to take me there. I need to change billers. Now, changing billers is a painful process, right, because you have to put all you know, like all the documentation you have to put together. You have to interview these people. You have to deal with the fear of what if this person is worse than the people I just had. You have to deal with the downtime and cashflow. Chances are there'll be some downtime, cashflow and all of those things. And so when you do it immediately you may not I mean like immediately the immediate result is actually a cashflow is a little less, not that it's more, but it's you're setting yourself up for it to potentially be a lot more.

Speaker 1:

And so if I bring on a billing company, I'm celebrating that. If we're consistent with the system in the business, I'm celebrating that. If we are marketing consistently, I'm celebrating that, like I'm celebrating the process as much as I'm celebrating the goal, because sometimes the process is thankless and it's followed by pain, not a breakthrough in the beginning, right. And so I've learned to value them both. And so I do that with my clients as well. And so when they do these difficult hires or they make these difficult process changes and all of those things which we know are gonna make their practices better or their businesses better, we celebrate those. Okay. So that's number three.

Speaker 1:

Number four I give myself the gift of a brutally honest audit. And when I say brutally honest, I don't mean I judge myself right, I observe, I don't judge, but I don't lie to myself. It's so easy to lie to yourself, and the problem with lying to yourself as an entrepreneur is that those lies will cost you progress, they'll cost you your peace, they will cost you great results you can get, they'll cost you team members, it'll cost you all kinds of stuff, so it's just not worth it to do at all. Okay. So the gift of brutally honest audit Okay.

Speaker 1:

And so, for instance, if I'm thinking it's not working because I'm not hitting my revenue targets, I have to go back and say, okay, did I actually define the pathway to get hitting that goal? Because if I didn't, I wasn't really serious about hitting that goal. So what did I say? Did I break it down? This is the number of clients I'll need, you know, based on our track record. This is what we can do to bring in those clients. And I'm showing up on executing them. You see what I'm saying.

Speaker 1:

So did I develop a pathway? Did I work the pathway? Did I work the pathway in enough volume? Did I reach out for help? Did I like? You know what I mean. Like, because it's easy to go like, oh, nothing's working. It's another thing to audit and say, okay, self, let's take a look at what exactly is going on here, right. And so I give myself the gift of that, and I call it a gift. It is, emotionally, it's not something we would necessarily like to do, but it's what is required for the business to thrive. And so I would do that, and so I can say, well, it could work. Like this is totally workable. I just haven't worked it yet, right. And I would go further to ask myself, like you know, why haven't you worked it out? What can we do to audit that? That's a whole different conversation. But you know it's like is it because I'm setting it up not to work and this is not a blanket? Well, it must be me and the problem type of things you actually taking the time to sit and do an honest audit and to see is it me right and is there something I can do differently, and all of that Okay.

Speaker 1:

The fifth thing I do is I constantly stay abreast of world-class working strategies. Okay. So the energy I used to say it's not working, it's not working and I stay in analysis, paralysis and I'm doing nothing. I'm frustrated. All of those things is the same amount of energy that I could use to go and say okay, there are people who are winning at this. What are they doing? Do they have books? Do they have a program? Do they have whatever? Or maybe I'm already in a program, but I'm not leaning into it. I'm like okay, self, this is not helping you at all. Maybe I'm not raising my hand to ask questions because I don't want to feel like I don't know what I'm doing. We're not. The ego is not serving us at all.

Speaker 1:

Right, and so I would just lean in to get a world-class education. Well, when I say education, I don't mean certificate. Oh my goodness, that's not what I mean. What I mean is I want to make sure that I understand the best practices for getting the result that I want to get, and I make sure that I have that information right, and so I would constantly stay abreast of those. So I'm always looking at what's working for marketing or for selling, or for leading the team and all of those kinds of stuff. And of course, for me, you know, it's a little more than just my own businesses. I'm responsible for hundreds and hundreds of physician entrepreneurs and thousands, if you include our workshops and the podcast and stuff like that, and I cannot afford to not know. Like it's too expensive, right. Okay, I call out the lies.

Speaker 1:

Okay, by doing this one to three year review, I practice daily radical gratitude. I value process and outcome goals, I give myself the gift of brutally honest audit and I continue to stay abreast of world-class working strategies, and then, finally, what I do is I just flip the narrative. It's working even better than I can imagine, and doing that one to two year review puts me in a position to say that, honestly, it's working even better than I can imagine. And doing that one to two year review puts me in a position to say that, like, honestly, it's working even better than I imagined. It's working even better than I imagined, and if there are things I need to fix, I've owned it, I fixed it and we can keep it moving right, and so it's working even better than I imagined. It's working even better than I can imagine. It's working even better than I can imagine.

Speaker 1:

And instead of letting it's not working keep running in my mind. This is what I then let run in my mind. Right, that's the way I have put myself in a position where I don't let it's not working stop me. I actually don't believe it's not working. I believe all work works, and doing this work over time has brought me to this place where all work works. All work works, it's all working, everything is working right.

Speaker 1:

And so if you think about the purpose of the thought it's not working, like what is the purpose? It's to stop you from working. What is the thing that is guaranteed not to work, not working right. So if I am not working on my marketing, for instance, because I put out a number of things and I'm like this is not working and then I stop altogether, that is guaranteed not to work right. That is guaranteed not to work. So I just don't. I just don't do that anymore.

Speaker 1:

I think it's a very dangerous thought. I think it's a thought that creates paralysis for physician entrepreneurs and it's a thought that keeps us those same week to week, month to month, year to year, where we may get a little better, but we're not getting radically better, because we're too scared to go out there and go all out, because at the back of our mind is this thought it's not working. So I want to invite you to do these things, okay. I want to invite you to do this thing. I want to invite you to practice radical gratitude. I want you to practice owning the thought it's working even better than I can imagine. It's working even better than I can imagine, and if you look all through your life, you'll see so many examples.

Speaker 3:

If you look through all the life cycle of your business, you see so many examples of exactly this. Okay, chapel Rowan cowboy hat, again in black pentagram on it. Another one who's dressed a lot more glinda bright pinks, pastels, lots of silver accessories. Next to them we also have just an actual octopus with a little mustache stuck on, a sort of salmonella dolly mustache stuck on the front of their Do. Octopuses have a face Stuck on their body at some point that gives the impression of where their face is.

Speaker 1:

Work this process and then come to this point where you're like you know what, it's working even better than I can imagine. And then you go all out. Listen, you're a physician, you're a physician entrepreneur no-transcript. That thought is like it's a bad guy, it's like a terrorist. It's a bad guy Trying to stop you from doing stuff and just don't let it anymore. And every time you think it's not working, just start thinking it's working even better than I can imagine. Okay, I'm rooting for you as always. As always. And if this episode helped you, send me a DM or PM and say let me know how it helped you. And if you have follow-up questions, send them to me and I might just make an episode just for you. Rooting for you always. See you on the next episode.