Dr. Una is passionate about helping physicians embrace entrepreneurship so they can grow their wealth and win back the freedom to practice medicine on their own terms. Learn more at: https://entremd.com/. Dr. Una helps physicians build and grow their businesses to 7 figures and beyond. Each week, she will share key insights on how you can turn your medical experience into a profitable, passion-based business that gives you time, freedom, and a deep sense of purpose. Be sure to follow the podcast so you never miss a new episode!
In this episode of the EntreMD Podcast, Dr. Una discusses 3 reasons why comparing yourself to other entrepreneurs or your business to theirs is one of the most harmful things you can do.
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SPEAKER_00
Hi dogs, welcome to the Untraining B podcast, where it is 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. Ilma. Yay, welcome back. Super pumped that you're here. I'm excited as always. It's a great day to be alive and we're gonna rock this entrepreneur thing, right? All right, so listen, I want to know if this has ever happened to you. All right. You woke up all optimistic. You're like, this is a great day. I'm so grateful for my family. I'm grateful for the business that I have. I'm grateful for what I'm doing as an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur. I love my patients, I love my clients, business is growing great, and you're just like, this is gonna be a great day. And then you decide to browse on Instagram or Facebook for a few minutes, you know, and you're just scrolling around aimlessly. And then you realize after looking around for a few minutes that you're not the prettiest. There's all these pretty people out here. Your kids are not the smartest because, you know, JJ's kids just got accepted into some Ivy League school. Your house is not the cleanest because you saw this other house and everything's organized, everything's a spot where it should be, and the two-year-old is just sitting in one spot with their cup of milk and there's no mess. And you realize that other people's businesses are making more money than yours, and their websites are nicer than yours, and their entrepreneurs sitting on the beach and making four times what you're making. And it really looks like everyone is effortlessly living their best lives, and then the optimistic you become sad and you feel inadequate, and you just want to go take a nap and start the day over, right? Well, this is called comparitis, but that's what I call it. It's a disease that makes you compare yourself to other people, and we all just need to stop it. Now, it's not the easiest thing to stop because it's so subtle, but if you recognize it for what it is, then you can start stopping it. Okay, so it's comparitis, we all need to stop, and comparing yourself to others is actually one of the most dangerous habits you can have, and I'm gonna show you why that is. The first reason is because people are in different phases in their journey, so you really can't compare person to person because they're not at the same stage. So I remember this was oof years ago when I was a pediatric resident, and I remember being in the NICU, and a baby had extubated. It was a 70-bed NICU, it's a you know, pretty nice size NICU. And I was just like, oh my goodness. I knew there was a 500 grammer, and I was like, I hope that's not the kid that extubated themselves. And of course I go to the unit, and that's the kid that extirbated, right? And so the baby's 500 grams, and it's so funny, I forgot this part of the story. The nurse that had the baby looked at me. I'm a third-year resident at the time, and she's like, Can somebody get me a real doctor? And I looked at her like, geez, Louise, I'm right here, you know. But anyway, you know, respiratory therapist is there. It's like, here you go, doc. So I, you know, I take my endotracheal tube, I take my laryngoscope, all the stuff, start putting stuff in. And when I'm done, they're like, yay, it's in and all that stuff. And you know, the nurse looks back at me and she's like, Thank you, doctor. And like, whatever. Um, I don't judge. But anyway, intubated the kid. Now, I had an intern, and I'm sure the intern is going, like, I wonder if I'll ever be like that, right? Where you can have a baby that little, you can intubate the baby in one try and walk away like a boss, right? But the truth of the matter is that intern can't compare herself to me because I'm three years in. At that point, I'd probably done five or six or whatever number of NICU rotations and intubated X number of kids. So it would be foolish for the intern to compare herself to me or some medical student, like looking at me like, you know, I fell from heaven because I could do that. And it would be unfair for her to compare herself to me because I'm in a completely different phase in my journey, right? So you may be in a stage in your journey where you just started, you're in the hustle and you're in the grind, and you're trying to get your bearing and you're still working on your messaging, and you know, you're getting clients, but it's sporadic. And then you compare yourself to somebody else who's been an entrepreneur for, you know, 13 or 14 years, in a different phase, has a big team, has a lot of experience, has a lot of people making raving fans who are also driving sales and all that stuff. You can't compare, right? So you look at that person, you need to just be happy for them, like, wow, one day I'll get there and be done with it. But you can't say, look at what that person is doing, look at what I'm doing. I'm not a real entrepreneur. No, you can't do that. You can't do that. Okay. So different phases in their journey. So that is why it makes no sense to compare. Okay. All right. The second thing is that people have different drivers. And what drives you in your business, what's your why, is completely different from somebody else's. So for instance, I'm a pediatrician, right? And there are other pediatricians, and I could have a pediatrician friend whose idea is I want to build a pediatric health network, and I'm going to buy all these pediatric practices, and I'm going to do all this stuff. I'm going to build a big private practice empire. And, you know, I'm like, good for you. I don't want to do that, like at all. And maybe my thing is I really just want to see patients one day a week. And what I really want to spend the rest of my time doing is helping physicians build profitable businesses. Our whys are completely different. We're both physicians, we're both pediatricians, but we want different things. So our businesses are going to do look differently. Now, it would be so silly of me to compare my practice to his practice to say, oh, he has this stuff that I don't have, or they have this number of locations, or this number of hours, and all this stuff, this number of doctors. It's never going to look the same because our whys are different. What is driving me and what is driving him? They're completely different. Okay. So maybe you're here and you're a mom and you're at that phase where you're having babies, but you've built something for yourself where, you know, it's able to sustain you, it's able to pay the bills. And your thing is, I want to be able to have the flexibility to be there for my kids. But somebody else is building their business because they want to raise $500,000 to invest in real estate. You can't compare your business with their business because what is driving you is different. Your driver is flexibility, so you can invest the time in your family. The other person's drive is making a lot of money so they can invest. Very different. So your businesses will look different, your efforts will look different, your results will look different, and that is fine. You have to be okay with it. In fact, I'm of the opinion if you're not clear on your why, you probably shouldn't be on social media because you'll be depressing. You need to look at people who look like they're quote unquote doing better than you and be happy for them because that's for them. That's not what I'm looking for, and it's fine. Okay. So that's the second reason why it makes no sense to compare. The third reason, and I hope you remember this for as long as you live. The third reason is we have different starting points. We have different, very different starting points. You may be looking at somebody and going, like, oh my gosh, look at how they just built that seven-figure business just like that. But they come from a family of entrepreneurs. They worked in the family business when they were younger. They were technically like their parents' VA. So they understand all these lead magnets and opt-ins and all the back office operations of a business. They understand all that. They went for speaking gigs with their parents and saw them on stages with thousands of people. So it was so easy for them to believe it. But maybe that's not you. Maybe you are the first person to graduate from college in your family. Maybe you're the first person to venture into entrepreneurship in your family. Maybe you're the first person to build a six-figure business or seven-figure business in your family. Different people start from different starting points. So when you say that person's been in business for a year and I've been in a business for a year and I don't have the results they have, you guys may have different starting points. And you have to be okay with that. Okay. So I want you to think of it this way: you can be in one of three positions. You can start from a positive, neutral, or negative. And negative, I don't mean like bad. Okay. Or that's not what I mean. So just roll with me. So it could be positive, it could be negative, or it could be bad. Okay. So let's say you came from a family of entrepreneurs and you worked in the family business, or at least you knew what was possible, and you've seen your parents generate multiple seven figures in business and stuff like that. So for you, you don't even think of those things as things that are not possible, right? You have access to more capital to start business. You have access to more social capital. Like you can tap into, you know, relationships that either your parents developed or, you know, somebody who's a mentor to you developed and stuff like that. You are starting from a positive. There are some mindset issues that somebody else will have. You will never have because of where you're starting from. Okay. So that's a positive. Okay. Maybe you had to do some speaking for your father's business or your parents' business or some other person's business. Or maybe when you're in residency, somebody who was a practice owner took you under their feet and they're like, under their wings, and they're like, come on, I'm going to teach you everything that I know. You have a different starting point. Okay. So that's positive. And then neutral is, you know, you've never seen business work, but then again, you you've never been around the people who badmouth at business. You don't really have any negative mindsets per se about money. You're like, yeah, that would be nice to do. So you're at a neutral. And then some other people are at a negative, where maybe you grew up in a place where you were taught that money was bad. Your parents taught you that business owners were evil. I mean, Hollywood would do that for you, but you know, they taught you that that was wrong. Maybe you had some bad experiences with entrepreneurs who misuse their position and their money and stuff. So as far as you're concerned, entrepreneurship is evil. Sales is evil. Like, so it's not just that you're neutral, like, I don't have any business experience, it's that you actually don't like business. You think something is wrong with you, you think it shouldn't be done. So you could start from any one of these places. They're all different starting points. So comparing yourself with somebody else who's had so much business experience, even though they've never owned a business, is just foolish. I mean, like it would be so painful. You shouldn't do it. So, yes, you're gonna have to work harder than them. Yes, you're gonna have to maybe do more courses and get more coaching than they would. Maybe you do, but your starting points are different. Okay. So different phases in the journey, different drivers, different starting points. This is why you should never compare yourself to anybody else. Now, I listened to a podcast episode where Amy Potterfield was interviewing Jamie Carlima, and she is the founder of It Cosmetics, and she was the first to graduate college and all this stuff in her family, and she embarked on the journey of entrepreneurship, knowing nothing about it. And she worked her tail off. Like she worked and she had no after no after rejection after rejection, and it wasn't looking like it was working. She could have compared herself to all these other people and quit because it wasn't working. But she stayed true to it, she stayed committed to it, she kept taking risks, she kept reaching out, she kept trying to make her dream work. And eventually she got on QVC and everything changed. And she built a really impressive business that ultimately she sold to L'Oreal for $1.2 billion. And the reason why I'm telling you that story is if you're like me and you came from a position where you've not really seen business work, you've never been privy to the backside of a, you know, the back office operations of a of a business, you're learning everything from scratch. You started scared, spitless. Sometimes you wonder, you're like, okay, how is this gonna work? If you're starting from there, I told that story for you to know that you may need to work harder, you may need to work longer, but it can it will still work. The fact that it's not as fast doesn't matter. I mean, like if you have to slave away, what I mean by that is work and and get a lot of no's and all that stuff so that 12 years later your business is bought for $1.2 billion cash, I think you'll be like, yeah, yeah, work for a decade, I can do it, right? So don't worry about that. Okay. And the interesting thing about her is that she really wasn't on social media in all those years, right? Sometimes if you find I'm in this place where I'm discouraged, I'm unsure, I don't know what I'm doing, da-da-da-da-da. Maybe you should get off social media for a bit, right? Because you can't compare. You just can't. It's a distraction, it will stop you, it would make you give up on your dreams. You can't compare, okay? So get off of social media if you need to for a bit to kind of get your bearing back or go to the right places. I mean, entree MD, we have a private Facebook group. Come over there, all right? It's a happy place. It's just like this podcast place. So rather than compare, I want you to commit to your development as an entrepreneur. Rather than compare and get depressed and get sad and get overwhelmed and think you can't do it and wonder what you're doing. All that energy, I want you to take it and commit to your journey as an entrepreneur. Rather than be distracted by others, focus on your journey, focus on your dream, focus on your vision, focus on what you should be doing. Stay in your lane, own your lane, and work your lane. That sounds like a Facebook post, huh? Yeah, post it, tag me. Okay, stay in your lane, own your lane and work your lane. Okay. And if you're here and you're like, I commit, then I want to invite you to join us on the Freedom Formula Masterclass. This is a place of, you know, where people commit to their own journey. Doesn't matter where you started from. It doesn't matter. Commit to do your own part. You'll be part of a group of people who get together, who are learning the principles of business, who get their one-on-one on so that they can, you know, they can start building that business and taking it to the next level. And you have the community and you have the accountability. Yeah, join us. Okay. And for all my podcast listeners, my commitment to you is that you get 50% off the investment for the course. So if you go to the website, entremd.com slash freedom and put in the code podcast, it drops it to 50%. So don't compare. Rather, commit to your own development. Okay. Spend that time, learn a new skill. Spend that time, rub minds with somebody else who's building a profitable business. Spend that time and work your craft. Stay in your lane, own your lane, work your lane. Okay. So check out the Freedom Formula Masterclass. If you haven't yet, I would love to have you join us and share this episode because you know that we need to hear this. And I will see you on the next episode of the Entree MD podcast. If you love this podcast, please take a moment to subscribe, share, and review it on iTunes. As you go about your week, remember you're not just an MD, you're an entree MD. Don't forget to tune in next week for another great episode. Until next time.
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