Episode 25: Reinventing Your Vision

One of my most inspiring podcasts! Dr. Una is an incredible business owner, physician, and advocate for physicians living life on their own terms. She is the CEO of EntreMD Business School, an author of several best-selling books, and podcaster of a top 1% podcast, The EntreMD Podcast.

She joins me today to share how she lives out her mission every day and how physicians can take their first steps toward creating a life of their dreams.

Follow Dr. Una here -

Website Address: www.entremd.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nneka.chinemeunachukwu

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drunachukwu/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/druna/

The EntreMD Podcast: www.entremd.com/podcasts

Transcript

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Welcome to the PurposefulMD Podcast. As a physician, you've sacrificed so much of your life for other people. Your patients, your family, your friends, and your colleagues. What would it feel like to spend time doing what you enjoy, and to live without guilt? I'm your host, Dr. Laura Suttin, a family physician, certified coach, and business owner. If you're a medical professional on a journey towards your most purposeful life, a life with more time and energy, and ultimately more joy, then this is the podcast for you. Welcome to the purposeful MD podcast. I'm so excited to have our guest here today. Um, Dr. Nneka Unuchukwu is the founder of Entre MD on a company on a mission to help a hundred thousand physicians build profitable seven and seven plus figure businesses. So they have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their terms. She does this through the EntreMD business school, the only school of its kind for physician entrepreneurs, the EntreMD podcast, a top 1 percent podcast, and her bestselling books. Dr. Una, as she is fondly called, has also been featured in Forbes and her company was on the Inc. 500, 5000 list of fastest growing privately held companies in America, two years running. She's a board certified pediatrician and resides outside Atlanta with her husband and four children. Thank you so much, Dr. Una for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this. Yeah, me too. Me too. So I know a little bit about your story, but for our listeners, tell us how you got started with your business and how it brought you to where you are today. Yeah, um, you know, so my, my first business was my private practice. Um, at that point, I think I was an accidental entrepreneur. Um, you know, I was working a job, um, I had worked for about nine months and then I told my, my boss comes in with a five year contract. He says, you know, here's a five year contract. I love working with you and you know, at that time, you know, I joke about it. I'd been married for three years and I'd just finished a three year residency. So my idea of eternity was three years. And so I was like, five years, golly, you know, but I was going to move anyway. So I told him, you know, I'm not going to stay. I'm we're needing to move. So I'm going to need to look for another job anyway. And so he said, well, you should consider starting a practice. And I'm like, that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. I said, what do you mean start a practice? Like nobody starts a practice nine months of out of residency. And in case you missed this ginormous bump here, I'm pregnant. Like who says that, you know? And he said, yeah, I mean, like you're doing the things you would need to do in a private practice here anyway. Um, you have questions, I'll help you in the beginning. The baby will need you a lot. The practice will not need you as much. And as the baby gets older, the baby will need you less. The practice will need you more. It's like perfect timing. And I like to say that ignorance is bliss cause I believed him. And I was like, yeah, you know, I just hang the shingle and you know, I'm already doing everything I would need to do. This is amazing. And so, you know, it took a few months, but I, you know, finished out that job, had the baby, you know, while I was on maternity leave, I even have pictures, I'm holding my son and then I'm kind of looking at like pediatric private practices, you know, looking at what, you know, people like, what people don't like, looking at the reviews, the services they offer and all of that. And so I looking at, you know, buildings to, to rent, to start this practice. So I, so I started the practice and my philosophy was hang the shingle and they will come. And to my other shock and terror, um, I hung the shingle and they didn't come. They didn't come. Apparently there are other things I needed to do. And I, I didn't actually know what they were. I just knew that I was stuck, like here I am with this lease, I have all these contracts, utilities, all this stuff. I just came back out and I have this business and apparently I need to do more than see the patient and I don't want to. Okay. That was a socially awkward, super shy introverted introvert. I'm like, I don't want to do whatever this is going to require. And so I did that for a little bit. And I remember reading a book by Brian Tracy and he said that all business skills are learnable. I was like, wait, that was the most liberating thing I'd ever heard. It's like, all business skills are learnable. So the people who are running really successful businesses are not better than me. They just know things I don't know. And I said, I'm a physician. I may not know everything, but I know how to learn. Now that I know how to learn. And so I started looking at problems in business as learning projects. Like there's just something, I don't know, that's creating this. So I started learning to market, to sell, um, to build company culture, to hire, to de-hire or fire, um, you know, and, and the practice really started working. It was a beautiful thing to see. Um, I read about building a business as a business asset so it can work without you and all of those things, hired a dog who worked once a week, every Friday. Um, and so I had a long weekend every week. It was like phenomenal, you know, so that, so that was my, you know, my first business total accident. And then, you know, a few years into private practice, I was, um, everything was good. I was, I had a long weekend every weekend. The practice was really profitable. Um, you know, I had my family with me, like everything was good. And I just had this. knowing like medicine as we know it is dead. Like the way it is now, this was 2016. So eight years ago, as at the time of this recording, it's like, it's gone. And if all you know how to do is to lay hands on patients, that's all you have to do, know how to do for impact, for creative revenue, all of that, you're going to be out of luck. You need to retool yourself. You need to learn other things. And I didn't know, I didn't even know coaching was a thing. I didn't know anything about, like, I didn't know anything about that world, right. And I said, okay. I was like, what could I do? So I started taking inventory. I was like, okay, I have a successful practice. I could show other people how to do that. So check that, that's one. I was like, I'm the lead pediatrician, but I can learn to become the CEO of my practice, which are two completely different things. So check that. Uh, I could be an author. Apparently people make money that way. Check that. I could be a speaker. Now, Just to get how random this was, like, as I was writing, I was like, I know there's no way I'm going on any stage. You know what I mean? But I was like, we're just brainstorming here. And so that's when I started the process of retooling myself, right? Like, what if I could no longer have impact or earn a living the way I've been doing it, what would I do? And, um, you know, I had done that for, maybe, maybe six months or so. And I was like, wait, it's not going to be bad for just me. It's going to be bad for a million physicians, you know, like I, I can't wait till I'm done retooling myself and come back and say, okay guys, let's do this. So let's do that now. And that was the beginning of EntreMD. That's when I started selling physicians on the idea, like we need to retool ourselves, we need to learn how to you know like monetize our brands, we need to learn how to, you know, launch businesses if that's what we want to do, build teams so we can get our time back and all of that. And that became the EntreMD podcast. Um, the books we've written, the EntreMD business school, all of that came out of that mission. And the mission really was, you know, as I studied, I found that if you can, if, if 10 percent of a community can change, the whole community changes. And I said, okay, there are a million physicians, 10 percent is a hundred thousand. I was like, if we can help a hundred thousand physicians build profitable businesses, so they have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their terms, then the whole narrative, everything that's going on now in the physician community, that changes, right? So, so that's kind of, that's kind of how I ended up here. Oh my gosh. I love all of that so much. It's I, I, I love what you, what you said about when you sat down and brainstormed about that, you just, you know, can't hang, just hang the shingle and see patients and not have the business sense. And I'm sure you see this too, that other physicians tend to have a mindset of, well, I'm just a doctor. I, I, it breaks my heart every time I hear that, I'm just a doctor. And I, I mean, I see you nodding. And so, and so first of all just that you had that insight and that flash to even brainstorm. I could coach, I could speak, I could write, I could podcast, I could do all these other things, I think is amazing. And so where do you start when somebody has that mindset of, well, all I do is see patients and that's, that's all I know how to do. How do you start with, with somebody? Yeah. I mean, so the thing is this, right. We talk about, you know, all I do is see patients and that's all I, all I do, but there was a time where we couldn't do that. Right. Right. There was a time we saw a future, like, wow, I could be a physician. And, you know, like. The thing with you and I, right, is that we're physicians. We've been around physicians a lot. We're around physicians maybe all day and stuff like that. So it doesn't feel as magical. But think back to when we started, right? Think about the pimply teenager who makes the family announcement,"I'm going to be a heart surgeon". Think of how ridiculous that is. A teenager that can't even keep his room clean is telling you, oh yeah, you know, I'm going to grow up. I'm going to be this person. I crack open chest. I pull out the heart. I fix it and I put it back. It's just insane. Yes. But we did it. Right. We pulled that off. And so if in 10 years, you can go from, you know, like this person who they would not let anywhere near a patient to a person who saves lives. If we can do that in 10 years, if we commit ourselves to another future, where could we be in 10 years? Right. So, so it's not true that we're just, because we weren't born that way, right? Right. We, we acquire that because we wanted to, and many people may not have evidence that they can decide on who they want to be and become that. But just by being physicians, we have that evidence. And so it's like, let's just do it one more time. What do you want to be? I want to be a physician and, what is and, let's tag that on and let's go for it. We know what we had to do. We had to learn new things. We have to put ourselves in a new environment. We have to try a lot of things. We have to fail a lot, right? Think about how many IVs didn't go in. Think about how many intubations we didn't get the first time. Think about, right? How many times we presented and we're like, well, what kind of HPI is that? Like think about how many times, but it never stopped us. We had one mission and we got there. And so we can do it again and again and again and again. And the truth of the matter is, you know, this is my philosophy. I think. The further you go along in your journey, the fewer people there are like you, right? Like think about people who became physicians. Again, we're around physicians, so it feels like everybody's a physician, but the truth of the matter is it's a million physicians in a country of over 300 million people, which means if you divided the country equally and put 300 people in each room, only one person there will be a physician. Right. And so when we get to that point, I feel like then we owe it to our world, not in a bad, like lose your life kind of way, but we owe it to our world to then pursue whatever other development is there, whatever potential is there, because not like everybody can go and stack that on. Right. Because there are fewer people who have that. So it's almost like it's our gift to the world to take this amazing person that we are, these amazing people we already are and make them more amazing. You know, so, so no, not just at all, nothing just about us. Yeah. I, I, I love that. And I, I, I love how your philosophy is around supporting physicians so that they can scale and grow where I hear a lot of kind of some of the languages about, well, medicine is broken so just get out of it, right. And, but if we all get out of medicine, then who's going to take care of us and our parents and our children and Right? And so I love your philosophy and your model around, around taking the, the businesses and making it successful and making it profitable through learnable doable skills. And I mean, the analogies that you use, like, yeah, we didn't learn how to intubate or we didn't know how to intubate two pound babies, but we learned and we could do it. And there's not many people in this planet that can do it. So, so you can learn anything. Yeah. And the truth is, I think, you know, like some people, some people are going to leave medicine. Some people are going to stay in medicine and everything in between, but I'm a firm believer that you don't want to be forced out of everything, anything you, if you want to make a strategic decision, then that's different. Right. But the truth of the matter is when we, when I stopped to think about where we're headed, like, Like from a healthcare standpoint, I'm like, this is, this is like the makings of a disaster if we don't, if we don't do something about it, and not to be scared, I mean, like, if you listen to me, I'm probably, you know, one, you know, like top 10 most positive people, but, but the thing is this, we, as physicians, Um, it's kind of time for us to rise as leaders. Um, this whole thing started as the doctor patient relationship. Now it's doctor, patient, insurance company, admin, blah, blah, blah, big pharma, blah, blah, blah, relationship, right? Like there's so many people in between. But the question is, are we going to bail on the system or are we going to fight for our patients, for our country? Like, nobody's coming to save us. The, the healthcare space is literally crying out for leaders and we have the opportunity to rise as those leaders. So whether we are, you know, like employed physicians, like in that position, how are we showing up? What do we decide is a change we're going to make? How are we going to change the way we're treated? The lack of autonomy, the burnout, all of that stuff. If we're in private practice, they're like oh private practice is dead. Can you imagine if private practice was really dead? Can you imagine the state of healthcare? And I'm like, yeah, so we're in it. It's not perfect, but can we please get this stuff profitable and then build the numbers so we can go off and then affect systemic change. But we're not going to do that to empower it yet. If you're strong, if you're needing to take a second job as a private practice owner, to pay the bills for your practice, you're not fighting Congress. Like you're not doing any of that. Like we kind of need to get you put the oxygen mask on first and then we'll take care of everybody else. Right. If you're a coach, then, oh my goodness, there's so many physicians that need the support and all of those things, learn to make it work, learn to make it profitable, learn to be to the mission that you have. You can't accomplish it without a business system. We got to build a business system around so you can do it. And so any way you look at it for physicians, we're all being called. It's a call. It's an, it's an opportunity to rise, like to become the leaders that the healthcare space, the physician community needs because we need that. And if we don't rise, it's going to be so ugly, like so ugly. Yeah. Yeah. I love what you say about even talking about money, which is something that as physicians, we're not used to talking about. We don't, we, we have this kind of, we have blinders on because we don't always ask patients for money. At least the world that I came from was at a very large healthcare system employed model. And so we have this notion that if we're asking people for money, then we're not doing the service to them. And your message is the opposite is we have to make the money so that we can continue to serve. And the patients actually want us to, to, to sell to them. And not in a way that is against our values or unethical or anything like that. But I love your example that you, you share about the ophthalmologist who, uh, who wasn't doing surgeries. Do you mind sharing that story? Cause I've, I've heard you tell that story a couple of times and I think it's so brilliant. It's, it's so fun. It's so fun. Um, so it's a doctor, a doctor in the EntreMD business school, this was a few years ago. And she's an ophthalmologist had been in private practice for, I want to say seven years before she, before she joined the school. And, um, you know, was not really in tune with the business side of things, right? Like she was taking care of the patients, doing all those things that we do as doctors. And, you know, so it's funny that when, you know, she, she, she comes in and she says, you know, that her patients. Come to her, the ophthalmologist, because she did a lot of the medical side of, of things and a little of the surgeries. And she would say, her patients will come to her and say oh, you know, I was, you know, like, I think I have cataracts and all of these things, can you recommend, can you refer me to a surgeon, an eye surgeon, so I could get my cataract removed? And I'm like, oh my goodness woman, like. Your patients have no idea what you do. You've got to market to them. You got to sell them. You got to tell them because that's the person who actually stopped to tell you I want a referral. Think about for every one person who tells you that, they're probably 20 or 30 that didn't say anything. They just googled eye surgeon and went to get their stuff taken care of, right. And they come to you for the medical stuff. You're the woman for the job. You're a great surgeon. You care for your patients. Like what in the world now, and that's on one side. And then on the other side, from a financial perspective, you're doing all the quote, unquote, low ticket stuff and when it's time for them to spend the big bucks, they go somewhere else. Right. Right. It's the funniest thing. But the good thing is when we had that conversation, she decided to make the shift, so she started and I was like, you're going to talk about it to your, like, if I have to say this one more time and I promise you that's the first time they heard it. And so she had the signs and she had her team know to talk about it and she was talking about it. All of those things. And she went from that to an OR schedule that was wholly booked for weeks out. Like, just like that. And now she's keeping her patients in the one practice, she's taking care of them, and her practice is so much more financially stable, so she has now earned the right to continue to serve them, because once the money's not there, gotta close shop and go away. Right. And so, yeah, so she continues to thrive and all that. She just celebrated her 10 year anniversary, which was a lot of fun. But yeah, that was, that was something. That's so cool. And the patients are getting better care because they're being seen by the same person. Same person is taking care of their medical eye needs and their surgical needs, so it's a win, win, win all around. Yeah. All around. Yeah. It's uh, yeah but this is our time. We need to, you talked about how, you know, there is a lot of, you know, drama around us and money and all of that kind of stuff. And the way, the way I like to think about it is, you know, we've been, it's not intentional. I can't say it's intentional, but we were completely removed from the money conversation, right like I remember being an employed physician. What do I do? Do I get up, get ready for work? Pick up, you know, for me not coffee, my hot chocolate on my way to work, get to my office, have a seat. The team comes in, they say room one is ready for you. I go see room one, prescribe my thing. And I do that room to room to room. Then I have lunch. Then I do it again. Then I go home. Then every two weeks, a miracle happens. Money appears in my bank account. Right. Okay. Now, so for me, I'm thinking the correlation is I do good medicine and the money follows. The problem with that is that's not what happened. Yeah. Because there's somebody who was the liaison person who went to go talk to all the referring doctors to get them to refer. There's somebody else who put up a billboard. There's somebody else who did the direct mailer. There's somebody at the front desk who collected the copays, the deductibles, the old balances. There's a biller who makes sure all the claims are sent to the insurance company and get paid appropriately. There's a collections company that collects from the people who didn't pay. So all these things are happening. That's how I got paid. But I'm thinking I saw room 2, room 1, room 1, room 2, room 3, and did that over and over and over and I got paid. And so when we then start practices or we do any other kind of business, we say, if I do a good service, the money will follow. But the, but the good service is like, that must be done. Right. But there's so many other things that need to happen. And so it's like deception for us to think, which is, and I tell people, I took one for the team, for the team. Okay. I did the hang the shingle and they will come and they didn't come. So I took one for the team to please don't make this, don't make the same mistake I made, you know? And, and so a lot of times people say, well, when is enough, when is enough enough? Like you're being a greedy doctor, you earn more than these people anyway, you're asking them for money. And I'm like, we live in an economic world. You give a service, you get a thank you note called money. That's just the way the world works. It's the game. There's not, you can't, it's the game, you know what I mean? And when people pay, they pay attention, you know? And so it just is what it is, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of online for us. Oh, totally. I hear that as a, as a coach all the time is, is this a scam and, or is this really worth it? And well, yeah, if this is going to change your life, then absolutely it's worth it. And. And yeah, so I, the same, same in my world as well. Um, yeah, you said you took one for the team and I think it helped to, I mean, it definitely helped to shape you and helped create your business and the amount of, of just how much you're able to serve your fellow physicians is just phenomenal.. And I love it. And I love your, your spirit and your, your heart to serve. And I, I also love how you shape your conversations around, you know, which physicians do you serve? And it's not just private practice owners and entrepreneurs, but you use a term that I had never heard before, until I heard you say it was intrapreneur. So tell us a little bit about what that, what that means, what that word means. Yeah, and, and to give the, the overarching thing, um, I think physicians are some of the most amazing human beings. And that's because it takes a lot for someone to say, I want to help people. And I'm willing to quote, unquote, give up at least a decade of my life and take 250,000 in school loans to do that, to earn the right to do that. It takes a special human to do that. And so it also lets me know that like beyond the art of putting hands on patients, there's so much locked up on the inside of us. And I'm like, if you can learn business principles, then you get the freedom to do any of those things you want because you know how to monetize them. So you, you can literally do medicine the way you want it, do life the way you want it and all of that. And so I'm always thinking about how does this apply to everybody? So like you alluded to, you know, we work with doctors who want to start private practices, people who are, you know, coaches, um, people who are speakers, who host events, who have products. We have an artist in the school who's killing it, but she does art. And then for the employed physician, right because they're, they're not, not everybody is going to go out and start what is considered, uh, uh, a traditional business. And we don't teach people to do what other people are doing. We teach people to do what it is they truly want to do, right? Cause you know, in, in high school, we had to do certain things and certainly to get into pre med and do things in a certain way to get to med school and do things a certain way to get into a great residency program and all of this now. You get to do whatever you want. Like when I say whatever you want, what I mean is what you truly want, right? You get to do that. And so the intrapreneur is a physician who is employed, but understands that they own a company and their company is doctor. Like that person's company is Dr. Them. And Incorporated. So my company would be Dr. Me Incorporated. Incorporated. So when I show up to work, I don't show up as an employee. I show up as a business owner who is giving eight hours of time to this other organization. And so what that means is I still think in business terms, how can I be more efficient. How can my productivity be better? How can I be rewarded for my, my productivity? Right. Understanding how to have bottom line conversations with the decision makers. So for instance, we have, um, a really brilliant intrepreneur in the EntreMD business school. And she talks with them to, to negotiate, like, I would like a scribe. And if you give me a scribe, I can see X more number of patients. And this is what it would do to the bottom line. So at the end of the day, I win, you win, the scribe wins, the organization wins, done. She's like, okay, I think in this organization with the level of burnout and all this stuff amongst the doctors, and the nurse practitioners, and the PAs that we need coaching, She negotiated for coaching for her entire organization and they paid for it. Right. Wow. And then she goes on to say, you know, I can increase my productivity here and here and here. And so I want to take 12 weeks off this year. And she showed them how it will be advantageous for them to give her 12 weeks off. So as an employed physician, she made the most she had ever made in a year. She took 12 weeks off. She got a scribe. Now the scribe was, you know, in a, in a previous year and the coaching was in a previous year. And she's still, she's been in the EntreMD business school for years. And she's there as an intrepreneur running things because she understands I work for me. She understands how to speak the business speak. She understands that you don't walk up to, to your organization and say, I want to be paid what I'm worth. Like that's not a con, that's not a business conversation. You show them the numbers, you show them like you can have that conversation as an employed physician. Right. And, and that's not the only way for some people, they want to work their job, but they want to build a brand. They want to build a, you know, have a podcast. They want to get this message out there and all that, like, which is wonderful. Just kind of learn how to monetize it, right? So you can continue to do it. You can do it on a bigger scale. And so if you want it to work three days a week and work two days a week on your brand, you can, because. It brings in revenue, right? And so there's, there's, there's a gazillion ways to do it, but it's just that thinking. I work for me incorporated. This, this is the company I work for. This is a company I own, and then treat it that way. So can you imagine if intrepreneurs were showing up profitably? Private practice owners were building profitable practices. Coaches were killing it. Speakers were dominating the market. You know, they're like, oh we'll pay you$1000 for this, but their speaker is making$20,000 a talk. Like what if we write like the physician world, we embrace that and everything in between. Can you imagine how different the physician community will be, like so wild, but we do need to stack on business skills. We're not gonna, we're not gonna do it doing it the way we've done it. In fact, the, the, the more time goes, the worst it would be if we don't have those skills because the, the, the space is changing at such a speed, um, and nobody's coming to save us, you know, so, yeah, yeah, I, I, well, first of all, just picturing the world that you were just describing is beautiful. I mean, how much better would it be for us, for our families, for our patients, for the 900,000 physicians that may not be in your world, just the ripple effect that it's going to have. And like you said, when 10 percent of us stand up and advocate, I love the example you just shared about the employed position advocating for herself and, and advocating for a coach, again, the impact that that's going to have on everybody else in that organization who gets a coach. So it's just, it's so beautiful and, and really inspiring to think about. It's pretty wild, but that's that's where we're going. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about your books because you have The EntreMD Method, um, Made for More. Tell us a little bit about the books and how those came to be. Yeah, so, um, the book started off as, and I'm more of a talker than a writer, right? Like, you know, my, my podcast, I think we have 450 episodes or something, or more of a talker, but I started thinking about, you know, there's so many frameworks that I've built over the years. There's so many stories and I'm like, I wish I could put this in a concise way so that even people I never get the opportunity to work with and, you know, closer setting, they have something that they read Chapter 1, take the action, read Chatper 2, take the action, read Chapter 3, take the action. And with each action you take, your life is different because my love language is radical transformation in the lives of others. Okay. So that's kind of my job. And so that's when I started embracing this whole concept of capturing, um, things that have worked with the people I've worked with in, in book formats, right. And so the first book we did, um, first business book was the EntreMD method. And it was really about a lot of these philosophies, like, okay, we have to embrace entrepreneurship. Nobody's coming for us. We talked about this new paradigm of medicine because what it is, is we become a doctor and we've arrived and that's it and we stop there. And I'm like, okay, but let's look at the NBA, right? Let's look at the way they do it. You come into the NBA as that player, but you, you know, that that's the foundation for everything else. You don't stop, right. And so they become the player and then they understand, okay, I need to leverage businesses, so they build their own personal brand. You may see them in movies, you may see them in music videos, they have endorsements, they have all of these things and they're creating revenue that way that has nothing to do with playing. And for the people who go on to thrive. And so these would be, you know, like the Shaqs of this world and stuff like that after because 60% of them five years after leaving the, the, the NBA, they're broke. Yeah. Right. And so these ones, what they do is the money they make from the NBA season and the money they make from the business, they channel it into building this empire. Whether that's investing in other businesses, stocks, real estate, all of those kind of things. And I'm like, what if we did that as doctors? Yeah. What if we were like the doctor, then the business, then the empire, right? So we have that, but we come to the business stage. We're building our personal brands, and we have personal brands. Everybody knows except us. Like when a referral, when a recruiter says, oh this is this position here. Um, and if, if you, if it's not for you, send it to your friends. What are they doing? They're leveraging our brands. We don't even know it. Because to us, it's always just my friends. No, it's a multi-million dollar net worth. That's what you have. And they're tapping into that. Right. Like, so what if you said, I'll send them to you as long as when you close on that person, you get your$24,000 commission,$4,000 of it is mine. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, and I'm not saying anybody should do that, but it's just like, it's a different way of thinking. I have a very profitable brand if I choose to build it, or a private practice, or, or coaching, or speaking, or whatever that is, or brand endorsements, right? And then all that while I'm taking all of that, I'm funneling it into this empire piece, like, financial instability will cease to be a thing for physicians. You see what I'm saying? Like if we use all three. So I talk about that and talk about how to break out into this world. Like, how do you start the process of building that brand or thinking about a private practice and, and things like that. So that's the EntreMD method. Like, how do we go from, you know, so we can live life and practice medicine on our terms. How do we do that? The second book, um, is Made for More. And you know, you, you experienced this too, right? Cause you knew your coach, you wrote the book, you did all this stuff. And when you talk about things that happen in your business or results, you get your clients, people are like, well, of course it's Dr. Suttin, of course she did that. Like you're just going this unicorn mode. Right. And so I said, okay. Let me pull out, let me invite doctors from the EntreMD business school to share their entrepreneurial journey. So everybody can kind of find themselves somewhere in it. And so Made for More is a compilation book. So it's like 41 stories from different doctors in EntreMD business school. Um, so people can see themselves, see what is possible, see this person was just like me. They had the same fears I had. It just normalizes all the stuff we experience. So that's the second book. The third book is The Visibility Formula. Um, so much fun because again, I started off as a super, you know, super shy, socially awkward, introvert, introvert. So when me and visibility, I would just break out in hives. Like I'm not doing that. Right. And so I'm like, okay, how can we take a business from best kept secret to household name? Right. And so the whole book is about that. And it's so like, there's no fluff. It's literally, read the chapter, do what it says, go to the next one, do what it says, go to the next one, do what it says. And you'd be shocked where you find yourself. I taught this as a workshop. There's a doctor who took that, um, you know, took that and started acting on it. And within the next, within the next two weeks or so, she was on CNN. Oh my goodness. You know what I mean? Like it's insane because it works. It works. The formula always works. And then the, the, the last book, the latest book we wrote is called the Profitable, um, Private Practice Playbook. One that is really near and dear to my heart because in 2021, 11,000, 11,000 private practices either went out of business or sold to private equity. And I'm like, if that happened in a year. Like if that happened every year for 10 years, that's 111,000, like 110,000 practices, like how are we going to replace those, like what in the world, right? And so I wrote it and really wrote it around, I sat down to say what are the top seven ways private practice owners leave money on the table every day. And in that book, it's like literally one after the other, this is the way, this is how to fix it. This is the way, come on, stop it. This is how you fix it. And all of that. And it is one of those books that I will not be surprised the number of people who would be able to change their revenue by between 100,000 to 500,000 a year, just taking action on the book. And you know what I mean? And that's being conservative. And, and, and so it's just one of those like, here, go fix your practice. Don't worry about the insurance companies and all that. Don't worry about any of that. Just go fix the dollars in your practice. Let's go. Right. And so, so yeah, so we call those our$15 MBAs, uh, you know, cause you can get, yeah, you can get a solid education for$15 bucks on Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. I, so I read EntreMD Method and Made for More. I need to check out the other two for sure. I mean, all of this is based on, either your own personal experience or what you've coached other physicians through. And the Made for More was so, it was just so impactful for me because I felt like I could see myself in every single one of those stories and, and just, yeah, if they can do it, I can do it too. And I read it a few years ago before I made the leap to full time, running my business full time. And so, yeah, it was definitely very inspiring for me. Um, and thinking about visibility, I mean, picturing you as an introverted introvert is difficult for me because I'm just getting to know you because you're so visible. Everybody knows Dr. Una. And so again, it sounds like these are things that you did and you had to do, and you had to embrace the discomfort and kind of get over that and get past that. And something that I hear in your message a lot as well, as again, kind of sticking on the private practice theme is, yeah, Nobody's coming. The insurance programs and a lot of the administration, there's a lot of challenges there, but don't become a victim to it. Right? Let's, let's mobilize our resources. And in order to do that, we have to have enough money and enough power and enough strength. And so we, that we can kind of step up and take back our power. Um, and even despite the challenges that we face as a physician community, there are a lot of things that we can do. So don't, don't stay stuck for sure. Yeah. I like your way of putting it, but absolutely, absolutely. And my dream, if I can tell you is my dream is we will get to that point where we're a collective, right? Like private practice owners and, and we can come and then we can make demands. Like, this is what we want. We can come together and say these five insurances as a collective, we're dropping that and they should be sweating. But the thing is, there's no way to get there. Right. Until we're empowered. Right. There's no way to get there till we fix the money thing. And so, so I'm just like, okay, I have to go through here to get there, you know? And every time I see a private practice owner who's crushing it, I'm just like, We're one person closer, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's so awesome. I love it. I love it. It's so wonderful to have you. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about or anything else I should have asked you? Yeah, I, well, I think, you know, you know, for every, every physician listening, this would, this would kind of be my thing is, um, like, I hope that this, you know, this interview, um, it inspires you and I sincerely hope it doesn't leave you there, right? Because action is kind of where the rubber meets the road. Like whatever that next step is for you, take it. Um, sometimes people ask me what my, my superpower is. You know, I, I, I don't think of myself as someone who has like superpowers, but I think of myself as someone who's not afraid of taking the small steps. So I'm always moving forward. It may not be as big as somebody else's big step and I don't worry about their big steps because I can't do whatever it is they're doing. But this thing in front of me, I'm going to do that. And literally that is what has brought me from where I was to where I am now. It's like, huh, let's do that. Oh, okay. Let's do that. And so for you, it could be. Maybe this is your first time on Dr. Suttin's podcast. You should subscribe to it, right? Um, subscribe to the EntreMD, EntreMD podcast. It's time to start binging on this stuff to reframe how you think, right? For someone it may be like, wait, books? Like maybe your next stop is to Amazon and you're like, you're reading and your commitment is I will learn to do. I'm not learning to learn. I'm gonna, I'm gonna read. And then I'm I'm going to take the next step. I'm going to read and then I'm going to take the next step. Um, you know, for some of you, it could be something else, but the important thing is if at every point in time you will be taking a, you will take a scary step, you'll be shocked where you find yourself. Just take a scary step forward, not comfort zone, like something that's uncomfortable. You talked about discomfort, Dr. Sutton, right? Like something that's, you know, this is, this is what I should be doing next. It's uncomfortable, but big gulp, let's go, right? Big gulp, let's go. And if you can live in discomfort, and it's not a painful discomfort, it's just, it's like growing pains, right? If you can live in discomfort, you will find yourself in a magical place, living a magical life, doing magical things. And that's the, that's the truth. So I really want to invite everyone to, to kind of do that, like the status quo. And I'm not a negative person. Like I promise you, I'm not, I'm not a doom and gloom person, but the status quo is getting worse by the day. And the status quo will continue to get worse and worse by the day. But we can rise above that if we will start operating differently. Yeah. Right. So we just need to start taking the steps and it doesn't matter whether you're just starting or maybe you're listening, you already run a 3 million business, but the question is. You know that you're not optimizing your profitability and you know that you're not leading the team the way you need to lead them. And you know that there's a next critical hire is supposed to hire that you haven't hired yet, and that's why you feel burned out, take the next step. Right? Take the next step. That's, that's kind of the way that works. Yes. I love it. Love it so much. Thank you so much for being here. We've got all of your links to your website, your social media. Um, so our listeners can check you out. If they haven't heard of you, then they're living under a rock. Um, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. We really appreciate it. Thank you so, so, so much for having me and for anybody who's like, oh my goodness, I just want to do it. And, you know, like get to know more about Dr. Una's book, a call with my team on EntreMd.com/Team. They'll take that forward slash call. They'll take care of you. And Dr. Suttin, thank you so much for what you do for physicians everywhere. Thank you for writing the book. Thank you for doing the podcast. All hands are needed on decks. I have a lot of respect for you. I'm so grateful for your work. Thank you so much. While I am a physician, the information presented in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your own healthcare provider before making any significant changes to your lifestyle or routine. By listening to this podcast, you are not creating a physician patient relationship. Thank you for listening to The Purposeful MD Podcast. If you like what you hear, please rate and review the show. Please also visit my website, www.thepurposefulmd.com for free downloads or to discuss working with me as your coach.