Amanda Dinsmore
Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. I am Amanda.
Laura Cazier
I'm Laura.
Kendra Morrison
And I'm Kendra.
Amanda Dinsmore
And today is a special treat. We are honored to have a special guest, Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, aka Dr. Una. She's a pediatrician and serial entrepreneur, and today she's going to teach us about business. She has been the CEO of her pediatric practice for the last 14 years.
She's also the founder of EntreMD, a platform dedicated to helping physicians build profitable businesses. When doctors own their businesses, they can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their own terms. She's been featured on Forbes and her company recently made the Inc 5000 list of the fastest growing companies. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Una.
Dr. Una
Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this.
Kendra Morrison
So why don't you introduce yourself? Tell the audience about you, your training, how you got interested in being an entrepreneur and a little bit about your journey.
Dr. Una
Yeah, so, as far as training, I think I'll start off by saying, when I was in medical school people would ask me, what do you wanna be when you grow up, when you're done? And I'm like, I don't know, but I'm very sure I don't want to be a pediatrician. And so it's very amusing that I'm a pediatrician now, but I went through my training, really loved OB-GYN, primarily because I love the moms and parenting is such a, having babies, all of that, such a vulnerable time. And I was like, man, I felt so much empathy.
And then when I thought of the lifestyle, I have to deliver babies, even when I'm 50, I was like, yeah, but I have nine lives running at the same time. So I can't pull that off. I'm like, where will I still find the mommies? And it was pediatrics. So, I did my medical school at the University of Nigeria and then moved over to the U.S. right afterwards.
Did my training at Newark Beth Israel in New Jersey, graduated as a pediatrician. At that point, I had never had a thought really of owning a business or anything like that. I was going to do what every good pediatrician does, which is finish my training, and go work a job and take care of babies, the end.
And so I started my first job, and I worked for a neonatologist who owned a practice. So he worked in the ICU, and I'd go, you know, I'd basically run the practice, but I didn't know I was doing that. And after my first year working with him, he said, here's a five year contract and to put it in perspective, I had been married for three years.
I just came out of a three year residency. So my definition of eternity was three years. And so when he said this is a five year contract, I'm like, golly, like I can't commit to that, but I was moving anyway. So I told him I need to move. And he's like, so then start your own practice. I'm like, what did you just say to me?
Like, that makes no sense. Like, why would somebody start a private practice, you know, 12 months out of residency, 15 months out of residency? It's like, you're already doing everything here. And like, in case you missed this bump, cause I was pregnant at the time. I was like, this is a bump. It doesn't make any sense to start a business now. And he was like, no, if you have questions, I'll answer them. And I will say ignorance is bliss because I believed him and I thought, yeah, of course, like, why wouldn't I do that? And I got a lease and I started practice and my philosophy is I will hang the shingle and they will come and I hung the shingle and they did not come.
And I couldn't get out of my lease or the contracts I had signed with the insurance company. I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm stuck. What am I going to do? Because I started off as a socially awkward, super shy introverted introvert. I did not have the quote unquote makings of an entrepreneur. Everything I would have to do to build my business was something that I was just not willing to do.
And I remember a day where I was reading a book by Brian Tracy. And he said, all business skills are learnable. Nobody's better than you. They just know things you don't know. I was like, hang on, hang on, wait. You're telling me all these practices doing really well are doing really well because they know something I don't know.
And every business skill is learnable. I'm like, I'm a physician. If there's anything I know how to do, I know how to learn. Like that, that I have that down pat. And that's when, that's when business started getting demystified for me. And I started learning the skills like, okay, I don't think I know how to hire, but that's a skill. I don't know how to network, but that's a skill. I can't speak on stage cause I'm an introvert. It's not a personality type. It's a skill. And I just started stacking on these skills. And one thing led to another, the practice started thriving. And, you know, after a few years and looking at what was happening in healthcare, I came to this moment where it's like the way healthcare is.
If all I know how to do is to doctor, I'm going to be out of luck. Like I need to retool myself. I need to learn all these new skills. And I was like, well, it's going to be a lot of physicians out of luck. So why don't we do it together? And that's when I started EntreMD and started helping doctors build businesses so they can have freedom.
They can live life on their terms. They can practice medicine on their terms. So that's kind of my story.
Kendra Morrison
I love that. I think that's the biggest thing that contributes to burnout. We talk about this all the time, is that stuckness of just feeling like, oh, I am just a physician and I have to work in this thing, this hospital, this practice, this whatever.
And there's just nothing else I can do. And you just blew the top off of that. It's not a personality trait.
Dr. Una
I just want to reiterate that this is not who you are. It's all learnable. And just knowing that the successful businesses are just people that know things you don't.
And I think it's also important for us to think about the fact that as physicians, we've done this before, though. We're not strangers to this concept, right? Like, so you have the pimply teenager who makes the family announcement, I'm going to be a heart surgeon. Like, what do you mean? Like, you're a teenager.
You can't even keep your room clean. Right? You, and, and you're telling me that you're gonna get people, crack open their chest, bring out their hearts, fix the heart, put it back, and you pulled it off, right? Like, so if we can experience that level of transformation, then what will happen if we make another announcement?
I'm gonna build a career I love. I'm gonna build a business I love. I'm gonna have a, I'm gonna have an A team. I'm going to build a business where, you know, I have a team that supports it so I can create all the impact I want and still have time for my family and still have time for the things that I love.
How about I'm just like, I, the, the narrative in the healthcare space, I'm like, I unsubscribe from that. Like, I'm not doing that. We, we're just one announcement away. Right? Yeah, because we've done it before. We have the evidence.
Laura Cazier
That was brilliant. There's so much truth there. When we're feeling burned out, that is kind of the biggest symptom is that feeling of lack of autonomy and lack of control. But you got, we heard it here. We can get that feeling of autonomy back no matter where we are by even staying in the same job. We can get it. So that, thank you. Very empowering. So how does a doctor get started making the transition from physician to physician entrepreneur?
Dr. Una
The first shift of course would be a mindset shift, which, you know, we've talked through some of those things that would be the first thing, you know, embodying that identity because I've had events where somebody came up to the front and said, I'm an entrepreneur and the whole room erupts and everybody's clapping and cheering them on because that's the first time they've ever said that because they can't even identify. They're like, because there's all this stuff like business killed medicine, all that stuff. Business didn't kill medicine. Business is a neutral thing. People who put profits before people killed medicine, right? It's not business. And so shedding all of that, so you can identify, like I'm an entrepreneur, which means I help people and I get a thank you note called money, period. Like that's really what it is.
So, so that's the starting point. Identifying what business you're going to start becomes the second thing. And I tell people, don't sit there forever. Like you're going to make your best guess and then you keep it moving. And if that was not the business, it will lead you to the one that is right.
And so identify what it is. And I'm always careful to say. We're thinking about profitable businesses, because sometimes people will tell me, I want to help people that are underserved. And I want to spend two hours in appointments with them
. And I want to charge them this itty bitty bit of money. And I'm like, okay.
There is a business and there's a charity. Why don't you build a business, make it really profitable and fund your charity? But what you're trying to tell me is that you want to set up something that is not going to make any money and we're prone to that because we're helpers. We want to help people and I'm all for helping people and I help people, but I'm like the math needs to math.
Business is an economic sport. Okay, the math has to work and the other thing is sometimes people are like, but I don't want to charge that much. I want to help people. I'm like, the two can coexist. You can help people and they like, okay. Like I paid for this mic. The mic is helping me. The fact that I paid for it doesn't take that away.
Right. So that's the second thing, identifying what that profitable business idea is. And then after that, then comes the building blocks, right? So the first thing would be building out your visibility because if nobody knows about your business, it doesn't matter how good it is. Nobody's going to come there.
You're not going to help anybody and you're not going to make any money. I already did that. I took one for the team. Okay. I hung the shingle. I was like, of course, I'm a great doctor. I have great bedside manner, all that stuff. I'm going to get the building. I'm going to put the big sign and everybody's going to come.
They did not. They did not. It was my job to go put myself out there, talk to people who could refer to me, show up on social media, do all the things. And people found out about me and started coming. So the visibility piece is a must. The selling piece, and this is hard for physicians, is a must, right? We have to ask.
So I usually say this, I say, You know, boy likes girl, boy asks girl out, they go out for a really long time and they've been dating for a year and girl is like, when are you going to ask? Because she cannot say yes to a question he's not asking, right? We need to hear this. Will you marry me thing? So we can move this thing to the next level.
And so sometimes we build the visibility. We're showing up everywhere. People know about us all the stuff, but we're not telling people, come work with me. Come to my practice. Come be a client of mine. We're not saying that. The more we say that. The more yeses we get, right? Sometimes what we do is we end up doing marketing for other people because we show them the need for what we do, but we don't tell them to come work with us.
So they find somebody who could do what we told them they need to do and go do it with them. So asking, selling, right? It's not a bad thing. If I asked you now, everyone on here, is there something in your life that is a problem you're facing right now and you're like, I just wish I could find somebody who can solve this problem and you will happily pay them, right?
But there's somebody who solves that problem is like, I don't have any clients. So the problem is we just don't know about them. And they haven't asked us, but they ask us. We're like, yeah, absolutely. Right? So asking becomes this thing we want to do. And I think one more thing, you know, because even early on it's needed is a team.
We're physicians, so we're busy and we can't just keep piling on things. This is how we got where we are, right? We can't just keep piling on things. If we're going to take on new things, we have to let go of old things, whether we're eliminating them or we're delegating them. And sometimes people are like, well, I have to pay for all this stuff.
I'm like, listen, one of the gifts we've been given as physicians is we have a relatively high earning capacity. And that's a gift because what that means is we can buy the times of others. You don't have to have 24 hours, right? Like you can hire 10 people and now you have 240 hours, right? And so you can do that.
So you can expand your influence, expand your impact, expand your capacity to innovate while preserving your life. Like, I run multiple companies, I write books, I run four podcasts. Please don't ask why it's just a thing, but I have four podcasts. I homeschool my older two kids and all of that and people are like, how do you do all of that?
I'm like, that's the thing. I don't. Right. I have a personal team. I have teams in my business because one is too small a number for greatness. You need people, right? And so once we start embracing all these things, which are almost counter the way we would naturally think as physicians, we're setting ourselves up to get all these building blocks that truthfully make for a successful business.
When you see big businesses. Doing really big things. They all have this in common because these are the, these are the foundations, these are the basics, and you never outgrow the basics, right? LeBron James is never gonna say, whew, I never have to practice for my three point shot anymore. You know, like, I'm good.
You, you never outgrow it. You, you're gonna do it forever.
Laura Cazier
That was awesome. So marketing. Yeah, that, I think a lot of people they want to be entrepreneurs, they want to work for themselves and they think that they can completely outsource that marketing piece. And what would you say to that? And what are some tips you have to market a new business?
Dr. Una
Yeah, so I will start off by saying it's very important that we remember that the dream costs what it costs. We can't pick and choose. This is not a buffet. And so starting a business and saying, I'm not going to market it, I'm going to outsource it, when you stop to think about it, that is rooted in fear.
Right. That is rooted in fear. That is rooted in something that we're resistant to resolving. That's what that is. And so we really need to come to terms to the fact that I am the CEO. I am the founder. Like marketing is something that I do now, once we come to those terms and we kind of learn the concept, because this is the thing, right?
Your message has to come out of you. So you can outsource to another company. They're not going to be able to say what you're trying to say. They're not going to be able to represent your brand the way you want to represent. Like you have to get that stuff out of you. It's in you. Right? So when you embrace that, you start learning, what is my message?
What are the pain points of my clients? What can life look like on the other side of working with me? The clearer you are with that, you test it, you go, you post it on social media, you do a podcast episode, you say it at events, all of that, you see what resonates, what doesn't till you become like, you have the precision of a sniper.
You know what your people need, you know what they need to hear, you know what their fears are. So when you speak, they're constantly going like, oh my goodness, it's like, you're in my head. And you're like, of course I'm in your head. That's my. Full time job to be right now, when you've developed all of that and you know what channel works for you, you know, what is a podcast is a YouTube, like they're not going to do that for you.
You're the one that's going to figure that out. Right. Am I a LinkedIn person? Am I primarily a Facebook person or Instagram person? What is the message that resonates? When you have that figured out, then you can bring on a team and you can direct the team because now you know, you know, what works, you know, what kind of language works.
And so a lot of times people bring on marketing teams. They're, they refuse to do the work. They refuse to develop their message. And they're frustrated because they're like, why would you say that? I wouldn't say that. How are we supposed to know what you'll say? So for instance, I have people that help me with my marketing, but guess what?
I have over a thousand videos. I have over 400 podcasts in my primary episodes on my primary podcast. I am prolific on social media. They can take all of that stuff and they can get my voice. So if they, if they showed up or I showed up, you can't actually tell the difference because I've given them enough for them to represent me.
Right. So I'm not a fan of start a business. You don't even know what you're about. And then go get a company, that's not something you can delegate. You're finding your voice is yours to do. And you know what? Let me, let me even say this right with, with businesses and evolution. When I decided, oh, I want to be an entrepreneur.
I was like, okay, what, what do I want to do? I want to help people succeed at business. People, right? So I held my first event. I think I called it your best year yet or something like that. And I had entrepreneurs, all the people. So they're physicians, non-physicians, they all came for the event. It was amazing.
Right? We had like a hundred people in there. It was like unbelievable. Afterwards, I started having conversations with people. The people who were non-physicians were like, yeah, it was
really good. But you know, you don't really understand us because we don't, we're not as smart as you. We don't have as much capital like you have access to.
We don't have the kind of network you have. And so that would work for physicians, but it won't really work for us. Okay. Then I talked to the physicians and like, yeah, it was so amazing, but you know, we're not entrepreneurs. So that, you know, that's not, that doesn't really apply to us. And I'm like, I had this amazing event and talked to nobody.
It was in that moment that I was like, you're going to have to choose. You're either going to talk to non-physicians or you're going to talk to physicians. And I'm like, non-physicians have access to all this stuff and they believe that they can be entrepreneurs. My physician, like we were just like, I'm just a physician with that, that, that statement like that.
But then I had to pick, I'm like, okay, I talked to physicians who want to build profitable businesses and that's how EntreMD was born. What marketing company is going to do that for you? They can't do that. This is your homework. They're not going to do that. They're not going to help you vote. Like they are not going to do that.
That's your job. It's your job. Yeah. You know,
Laura Cazier
Even if you hire them, they'll still make you do it. You still have to get your voice out there. So how does one go about building a good team for their business?
Dr. Una
Yeah, that's the million dollar question. So I'll start with the story, right? I was at a mastermind and the keynote speaker was a lady who ran a 500 million dollar business. That was the valuation of her business. I'm like, nice. Right. And so after she was done with her talk, really amazing. Somebody asked her a question, said, sounds like you have a really great team. Now she has all the way to executive leadership, right? You have a very great team and all this stuff. How did you build the team? I was like, my life is about to change. And then she said, oh yeah, it's trial and error. You'll probably kiss three or four frogs before you get to Prince Charming.
I'm like, at 500 million? Like, come on, like I thought you'd have figured this out by now. So. Building a team, the reason why I told that is I want to start with, you're gonna make many mistakes and it's okay. You're gonna have bad hires and it's okay. It literally is part of the process because in the beginning, you're not actually clear on what you want.
So you always bring people on the team that are not a good fit. In the beginning, you're not really a good leader. You know, so you're not able to pull out the best from your people. And so you become a better leader, you become better at hiring and your team just keeps getting better and better and better.
Okay. But this is at all levels. So starting off is relax. There's no perfectionism needed here because perfectionism will make sure you never hire. Cause you know, we're just growing this stuff. So the starting point of a great employee finding a great employee is really deciding what exactly you want.
You may identify with this where, oh, I need, I need a medical assistant for my practice. Then you Google medical assistant job description, and you grab that and you edit some things. Boom. Your ad is ready. But is that what you really wanted though? You know what I mean? Cause the actual habit of sitting down and say, okay, for a medical assistant.
What exactly is it that I want from them? Who are the people that I would love to work with? Who are people that won't be a good fit for this job? What are the metrics they'll be responsible for? What kind of training do I want them to have? Because that's how we define, that's how we create our job description.
We don't copy and paste. Now I've done that many, many times, but I'm saying it doesn't work. So it's defining what you want. Right. That's the first thing. And in defining what you want, you also want to decide like, what outcomes is this person responsible for? So say you're going to bring on an executive assistant and you're like, I want to be at inbox zero every day.
I want them to pitch X number of podcasts. I can have four podcast guest spots every month. I want them to like, you define all these metrics. It's perfect for you because you know, if this job is working for this person, it's perfect for the person because they know how to score. They know when they're winning so they can have so much satisfaction at work.
Cause they're like, I crushed it this week, all my outcomes, boom, done, right? Like they can have that. And so it's really defining that. You know, so then the next thing is when you're starting your business, you go all the way out there to recruit clients or patients or whatever. When you start bringing on the team, you go all the way out there as well.
I have many people write job descriptions. They won't tell anybody. They're too embarrassed to post it on social media. And embarrassed is because sometimes we wonder like, is my company good enough? Will they come, especially when doctors are hiring doctors, like they'll come in and find out I'm not all that.
My practice is kind of a mess. And I'm like, your practice will always be a mess. It's a construction site, right? Like better is the goal here, right? But you have to put it out there. I have to put it out there a lot. Right? And I think I will leave this part here, you know, where a lot of mistakes get made is with the interview process.
And you guys will tell me, maybe you've done this you, you go for an interview, the person comes and you just decide you like the person, right? And you guys have a nice, warm conversation and you hire them. You just hired a warm body, right? You don't know if they'll do the job. You don't know, like, you don't know anything.
You're just like, yeah, amazing. And so for us, the way we train people is we do three interviews. Three different times with three different people. Somewhere along there, we will get a feel for who this person is, what their values are, what motivates them, if there are any red flags, and all of that. We take their work history seriously. Right. Like what have they been able to do?
So again, see, I've made almost every mistake in the book, okay? So I would hire somebody based on their potential, right? Like I know they could do this, but every human on the planet has potential. The question is, do they want to use it or not? Do they want to explore it or not? So I hired all these people.
I hired somebody who worked in my practice for almost seven years. I was waiting on this person to grow. She never grew into the position I wanted her to grow into. Never. And I tell people, I took one for the team. I did it for seven years. Please do not do it. We hire based on evidence. This person has done this kind of thing before.
This person has a history of staying for a long time at jobs. Like what is, we're not making up stuff. We're not fantasizing. We're not doing any of that. Like what is, and when people show you what is believe it. Right. And so three interviews. Three different times, three different people believe the evidence, the historical evidence of this person.
Don't hire for potential like at all. We can hire for potential, but there's evidence and then there's potential. You see what I mean? But not just based on potential.
Laura Cazier
And not just that good feeling. Yep. Yes. I have done that. Yes. I love that. That was gold right there. That can save a lot of suffering right there. Yep. Just follow that advice.
Amanda Dinsmore
For sure. Well, speaking of you said you've made every mistake that there is, what are some other common ones that you see in your physician clients that you're helping with their businesses? Like, what should we be looking out for?
Dr. Una
So one of them I've alluded to already is really resisting what must be done. Like, I don't feel, I don't want to do this. We didn't ask you. This is an economic sport and these are the rules, right? Like you can't say you're going to a basketball game and say, you know, I want to kick the ball. Like there are rules. Right. And so, so one of them is resisting what must be done.
Another one is not realizing the amount of effort it takes to pull a business off. So it is hard work. Like anybody that tells you otherwise, like Instagram can have all the people with pictures of them on the beach sipping margaritas. This is not the way business works. Business is hard work. Now my job is I help people make it smart hard work.
So it's a lot less work, but it is still hard work. Right? And so people make that mistake. They come in and they're like, I didn't expect it to be hard. And I do listen to my podcast. It's hard, you know, but it's doable and it's not as hard as medical school. So, you know, we've done hard things. Again, we have evidence.
The third thing, let me look for one that is nice. The third thing is really not, not building a home team. And I'll explain what I mean, especially mommies, kids, all of that stuff. And so they're trying to do
everything. And I'm like, I cannot tell you how much better life can be if you get all these things off your plate.
So if you're, especially if you're starting where it's a hybrid, you're working a job, starting a business, but then you have all this other stuff, like, please hear me when I say there's no award for doing it by yourself, none. Nobody knows, nobody knows, right? Like the important thing is for it to be done, not necessarily for it to be done by you.
So, I will give an example with myself. I will preface this by saying I've been an entrepreneur for 14 years. I've been doing this. I've been building up this team over time. I do not cook. I do not do laundry. I do not meal prep. I do not do shopping. I literally will be going for an event and my team will bring the clothes and they'll say, this is what you wear on Thursday.
This is what you wear on Saturday. This is what you wear on that. Like I do not shop. There's so many things that are not on my plate because you can't keep stacking things. Like when you bring new things, old things need to need to go off. That's really the way it works. Another mistake I find is people think they can go to from mountaintop to mountaintop.
So when the valley times come, they're completely thrown off. There are times where your business will grow quick, there are times when your business will grow slow. There are times you'll bring on an A team member, there's a time you'll have a toxic employee that will almost crush your business. Like it's valley, mountain, valley, mountain. And if you can go through the valley knowing that I'm on my way to a mountain, it's easier to bear. Right. As opposed to so many people shut down their businesses in the valley. Not realizing that this business could have done so well.
A big mistake we've talked about is not embracing sales. Nothing works without sales. Like the client says, yes, the patient says yes. At the point of sales, like if that's not happening, nothing is happening. For private practice owners, it's pretending the financial side of their business doesn't exist. Doesn't exist, right? Like, so I don't meet with the biller. There's cash in the bank. We made payroll. It's all good, right? And bad things can happen when we don't pay attention to that.
And I think another mistake is assuming that we can start businesses without a business education. And I don't mean MBA. I just mean, you have to retool yourself. The you, you are, when you make the decision to start a business or you make a decision that, okay, I'm going to take it from 500,000 to a million or a million to whatever the you, you are, cannot do that because if you could, you would have.
And so every time you set a bigger goal, a bigger you is required. So people forget that. And so they stay the same and do the same things and they're banging their head against the wall because of course they're getting the same result. Every time I make a decision to grow my business or to experience a new leap, I have to change.
I'm very clear that the first thing that changes is me. When I change, I show up differently. I do different things in a different way and I can get a different result. But many people are like, I made a decision. Yay. Let's make it happen. I'm like, that's going to be hard. It's going to be hard.
Kendra Morrison
So we are emergency physicians, so we don't talk about private practice very often, but I do want to give a little space you had brought up being in private practice. How can somebody in private practice thrive even more this year than before?
Dr. Una
Oh, wow. That's, that's an amazing question. I'm grateful you asked it too. Yeah, because the, the, the common narrative is that private practice is dead. But that was the narrative 14 years ago when I started my private practice.
And so for someone who wants to thrive in private practice, the first thing is to understand it's a business and it will sound so weird that I say that, but many private practice owners will tell you, no, this is not a business. This is a private practice. I'm like, and that's the problem because you show up as a clinician and a clinician cannot produce a profitable practice.
It takes a business person, right? And they're like, and business is bad and business is not bad. Business is like money. Money's not good or bad. It's a, it's a mercury paper with dead men's faces on it. It takes the shape of the person who has it. And we're physicians. We put people before profits. So if anybody could be a great ethical business person, it would be me.
It'll be you because that's how we're wired. So the first thing is recognizing it's a business because once we recognize that, then we know business rules apply. So the business rules that then apply is we must pay attention to marketing. What is our referral base? How many people are sending us patients?
How many of them are still active, still sending us patients? How many new patients are we getting? Like, we have to pay attention to that. You can choose to leverage social media, you can choose to leverage YouTube. Many people won't do that, but the truth is, because so many people are not doing that, once you do that, you become the expert.
You become the go to. Many years ago when I was still seeing patients five days a week, I had a Facebook live that I did. Every Thursday called the legacy parents show. Right. So I didn't talk about medical stuff, but I talked about building your confidence as a parent and all of these things. I cannot tell you how many patients would come.
I'm like, how did you hear about us? Oh, I watched the legacy parents show. And it was obvious who my pediatrician should be. It was so much that when I decided to cut back on my clinical time, I had to stop the show. I had to stop it because of the number of people who are coming because of like, I just couldn't accommodate it.
So when we embrace marketing, then we're putting our business on the map, right? We embrace sales and sales could look as simple as. And every visit, every practice has this, you have a database of patients and hundreds, sometimes thousands of them are overdue for appointments. If you could just say, here's your list, call all these people, get them on my schedule because people tell me, how do I attract patients?
I'm like, they're in your ecosystem already, right? If you could do that, you could fill up your schedule. We use that to fill up our schedule all the time. We use it to fill up our schedule during the pandemic. The pandemic year 2020, we did better than 2019 using these same things. The third thing is the billing department is literally like the aorta in your private practice.
If it gets nicked, it bleeds out. So we run away because we don't get, think about it. We don't get paid because we see patients in private practice, they walk in the door, walk out, that doesn't make us money. We still have to send the claim somewhere, we have to follow up the claims, we have to make sure we collected the copay.
That's where the payment happens. But most of the time we don't want to touch that, we don't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. So, as the, clinician, as the, you know, the OBGYN or the family medicine doctor, you may decide I don't want to talk about those things. But as the practice owner, this is non negotiable.
And so many people, when they start doing this, they can recoup 10, a month just by paying attention to what is happening with their billing. So these are very simple things. And I understand it's very challenging, I understand with the decrease in reimbursement a lot. But we. Right now, we don't have control over that.
We're working on it. And the time is coming where there will be enough empowered physicians that that will completely flip. But in the meantime, we do need to have profitable practices. And some of these simple practices can get us, we must think of them as businesses and run them as such. So imagine a private practice where marketing is being ignored.
Which if you think about it, it's not unusual. Sales is being ignored. Again, not unusual. And the billing department is being ignored. These are like, these are three fundamental areas. And don't let me go to team because a lot of times we don't optimize our team as profit centers. Now, of course they're people, right?
So, so this is what I mean by that. For every team member, what do they do to affect the bottom line? Cause otherwise the entrepreneur that the practice owner is carrying the entire burden of making the practice profitable. Meanwhile, they have a team of 20. Now what if those 20 people spent two hours a day, one hour a day focused on a revenue generating activity.
Now the burden is shared. Now everybody, cause I tell my people when they're like, Oh, I don't want to do this. I'm like, your salary does not come out of my 401k. You see these patients, you're not being nice to them, you should see dollar. They represent your salary. Be nice to them, . You see what I'm saying?
Like, but if you help them make that connection between what they do and the bottom line, then you have 20 allies who are in it with you, who are like, yes, we're gonna make this profitable. But otherwise, you just have a team that, I don't wanna say dead weight because they are
doing things, but they're not optimized.
So they may not be helping you at all, and you have all this stress and you're carrying it all by yourself. It's not necessary. So we can still thrive, but we have to treat our practices like businesses.
Laura Cazier
Amazing. So I'm imagining that some people have listened to this podcast. Maybe they have an idea for a new business. Maybe they've started a new business and it's not optimized yet, or maybe they're even in private practice and they want to learn more about you.
How would they we briefly alluded to, you have a whole business that caters to this called EntreeMD, but how does somebody find out about it or potentially work with you?
Dr. Una
Yeah. So the, so EntreeMD is like entrepreneurial MD and the company exists and it exists to help doctors build profitable businesses. So we have almost like three MBAs and I'll tell you what I mean by that. We have the EntreMD podcast and like your podcast is super high value. It's not fluff. It's not, it's not an infomercial. It's none of that where we talk about these concepts. We talk about team, we talk about marketing, we talk about mindset, all of those things. And so we call that the free MBA. Right. The new episode every single week. And I love it because of the immersion, right? Like you can immerse yourself in the concept of entrepreneurship.
If I want to learn Spanish. I could go down the street and listen to, and do a Spanish class for 30 minutes every week. Or I could move to Spain. Right? If I moved to Spain, everything is in Spanish. The signs are in Spanish. The menus is in Spanish. So I'll learn much faster. Right? So the first thing is the podcast and just pop that in, go for it.
It's called the Entree MD The second thing is we have a series of books. We have the Entree MD method book. We have the made for more, the visibility formula. And again, it's, it's all these, these concepts, deep dives on these concepts. And so we call those a 15 MBAs, right? You buy a book it's designed such that you can learn a skill, apply it.
I'm all about the implementation. We don't need another certificate. We don't need to learn 7, 000 other things we need to learn to do, learn to do, learn to do. So we're changing in real time. And then the third option is really for someone who is like, I'm committed. I'm all in. I want to do this. I know I can do it.
I have the work ethic. I just need the mentorship. I need to be in a community. I'm in a community where people don't believe I can do it. People are like, well, isn't this enough? You're a physician. What more do you want? I want to be in a community of, and I call entrepreneurs crazy people like fellow crazy entrepreneurs who are getting it done.
Right. And, and I want the accountability because a lot of times I know what to do, but I just can't bring myself to do it. We have a year long program. It's called the EntreeMD Business School. And that really that's as immersive as you get because that's mentorship every week. They're very vibrant community and just designed to support entrepreneurs to thrive because what we're experiencing now is not normal.
Yeah. We can have an alternate reality, right? And, and that's what that is. So all of those you can find on, on the website entreeMD.com.
Amanda Dinsmore
Dr. Una, thank you for all your wonderful tips and tricks of the trade.
Dr. Una
Thank you so much. And I, and I do want to say thank you for what you do. because the physician community does need all hands on deck. And I'm so grateful that you have the podcast and the way you serve physicians and all of that because it really does change lives. I mean, you see it. Once you see one life change, you're like, man, like I'm never stopping this. So thank you. I really, really appreciate it.
Kendra Morrison
Awesome. And thank you for all listening today. Remember, help us help you leave us a review so that other awesome physicians and medical people can find us. We recently launched a new version of our course, Wellness 911. So please go to our website, check it out. It's amazing. www.thewholephysician.com to get more information. We take demoralized doctors from fried to fantastic with our easy and evidenced-based Wellness 911 program. So until next time, you are whole, you are a gift to medicine and the work you do matters.
