How to Fall in Love with Your Journey as an Entrepreneur

All entrepreneurs deal with ups and downs, tough times, pride and joy, hard work. I won't act like it's all smooth sailing. But you know what makes it easier?

Connecting the work with your why.

When you strive to serve and earn, and your specific goal is financial freedom to travel or to pay for a weekly cleaning service so you have more time with your family (or whatever your why may be), suddenly all the hard work has a tangible goal tied to it. It's a prize for you to keep your eye on, motivating you. It's the push you need at times. It's a reminder of your efforts and your impact in the community and in your own home.

With your dream, your why, at the top of your mind, it's much more doable to uplevel and learn how to market, learn how to sell, get comfortable talking about money, embrace any fear of speaking on stage, etc.

You'll be thinking, "I'm serving people. I'm creating financial freedom that's allowing me to live my dream life."

You've got this!

And I've got a whole lot more where that came from in today's episode of the EntreMD Podcast!

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Additional Resources:

• Learn more about my 12-month program. 
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When you are ready to work with us, here are three ways:

•  The Profitable Private Practice Movement - If you want to build a thriving private practice that serves a lot of patients, while creating time and financial freedom for you, come join us here. 
• EntreMD Business School Grow - This is our year-long program with a track record of producing physician entrepreneurs who are building 6, 7 and 7+ figure businesses. They do this while building their dream lives!
• EntreMD Business School Scale - This is our high-level mastermind for physicians who have crossed the seven figure milestone and want to build their businesses to be well oiled machines that can run without them.

To get on a call with my team to determine your next best step, go here ...

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hi dogs. Welcome to the Ontree MD podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Imna. Well, hello, hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of the EntreMD Podcast. And today we're going to be talking about something that is really so powerful that if you get this, it will make your journey as an entrepreneur so much easier. And it really is all about how to fall in love with your journey as an entrepreneur. And this could be whether you are a full-time employed physician and your personal brand is your business and you're working on that. Or if you're at multiple seven figures and you're like, I want to cross eight, you know, cross into eight figures, like wherever you are, I want to talk about how you can love that. One of the things that I am fortunate enough to have learned really early on is how to enjoy the life you have now on the way to the life you're going to. And so I'm one of those people who I thoroughly enjoyed medical school. And medical school for me, you know, is a little different because I went to medical school in Nigeria and Nigeria uses the European system. And what that means is they will let as many people as possible get into medical school, and it is survival of the fittest. And so when I got into my med school class, we were at 420. Think about it, 420 people. And they knew fully well only about 120 were going to graduate. So it's not just about doing well and having great grades, it's about being the top 150 people in the class, yeah, 120 people in the class. And but I enjoyed that. Now I enjoyed it, knowing that I would never do that again, but I enjoyed that. I enjoyed being a resident. In fact, when I was in my interest, I still remember a third year who walked up and is like, how come? How come you're always smiling? How come you don't look as, you know, frazzled as everybody else? And that's the same thing that I brought into entrepreneurship. So at this point, I've been an entrepreneur for going on 14 years, and I have enjoyed it. Now, there have, I'm not saying there have not been any challenges. Like clearly, you know, in med school residency, there must have been a lot of challenges. I'm not saying there are no challenges as an entrepreneur because there are challenges. But there is a way to enjoy the journey. And I would love to share that to share that with you. There is this thought process of this relentless, nonstop hustle that you have like we have to do. And if we do it long enough, we'll get to, you know, the life that we want one day. Okay. And for many people, they did that as doctors. And they waited for that one day, thinking it's like when I, once I'm done with my training, I'll be at one day, only to find out there it was not one day, right? It was still, oh, you have to do all these things, you have to deal with all these challenges, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when you think about that and you're like, so one day is never coming, it can be very disheartening. It can be very annoying, and it can make you almost despise your journey, right? And so you may be listening and you may find that in a lot of places you're not even willing to do the work that entrepreneurship requires. And it may just be because of this. It may just be because you're like, this never ends, you know, one day is never coming. And your business by itself, right? Like, okay, so let's say you are a private practice doc, you started this private practice. The private practice by itself in isolation can be a pain, right? Because you're gonna deal with hiring, you're gonna deal with firing, you're gonna deal with building company culture, you're gonna build deal with marketing and sales, you're gonna build deal with up seasons and down seasons and times when there's a great resignation and a pandemic and this and that is gonna just keep going on and on and on. And so if if everything is tied into, okay, I'm doing this business thing, I'm working hard at my business, it's a pain, okay? It's a pain. Lots of challenges, lots of disappointments. But if you can connect it with your why, you'll love it. Right? If you can connect it with your why. So your business, I talk about this a lot, is a means to an end. Now, in your business is a vehicle, it is a vehicle you use to serve a lot of people and you use to earn a lot, right? At least that's the way we talk about building businesses, right? So it serves a lot, it helps you serve a lot and earn a lot. And that is fantastic. I want you to think about how meaningful your work is when you think of the people you're serving, the difference you're making in their lives and all of those things. And at the same time, it's creating financial freedom for you. That's amazing. But if you take it even further, right? Why do you want the financial freedom? It's not as though we're just gonna sit at home and eat dollar bills, right? Like you don't really want the money. You want what the money can create for you. And for, you know, everybody's different. We're all wired differently. So your why would be completely different from my why. For instance, big shout out to Dr. Whaley Gray, who shows doctors how to live their dream lives now. And, you know, and if really her area is travel, like through all these exotic trips and all of these things while still working full-time at her job and all of that stuff. And for her, that's that's a why. Now, if you're thinking about the fact that you get to go on six trips a year, you know, you get to do that, you get to do that with your family. Your relationship with your kids are so much deeper, your relationship with your husband is so much better. And you went to all these places and you learned how to do it in such a way that it did not break the bank. So you learned how to travel hack, you learned how to work your points and all of that stuff. And so you did all of these things with your family, you left them memories of a lifetime, you left them a legacy. If you have that in mind, that dream life in mind, then it makes, you know, okay, I have to up level and learn how to market, learn how to sell, get comfortable talking about money, embrace my fear of speaking on stage. And it makes all of that like doable. Because you're like, you know, I'm serving people, I'm creating financial freedom that's allowing me to live my dream life. Do you see what I mean? And so if you link those two, it makes it worth it. Now, let me tell you what makes you absolutely helplessly fall in love with it. Is if you can see that dream life and come back here and start living a version of it now. Now, if you can do that, that means you've taken your dream life from sometime in the future, you've taken it from one day and you've brought it to today. If you can bring it to today, you can handle almost anything, right? Okay. So in the on-trained business school, we're really, I'm really big on this. I'm like, there is a seed form of your dream life that you can start living now. We don't wait. We start living it now. And as you, as your business grows, as more opportunities show up, you're able to live that ver you're able to uplevel that version of your dream life month after month, year after year, you know, decade after decade, right? And so no matter what your life is like now, on one side, and no matter how big and wild your dream life is like, on the other side, there's a version of that you can bring to the presence, you can bring to it right now, and you can recognize it, you can enjoy it, and you can start saying, I'm living my dream life right now. I want you to think about it. A million physicians, right? 60% could saying, you know, I have symptoms, some symptoms of burnout, loss of autonomy, don't like medicine, won't refer it to, you know, it won't recommend it as a career choice for their friends and family, no financial security, all of that. Imagine if you can go from all of that to living your dream life. What? Right? Okay, so let's talk about, let's talk about how to do that. I'm gonna give you five steps, okay? This is one of these episodes you definitely want to share with the doctors in your life. You do want to take notes. And actually, I'm gonna tell you a cute way you can deal with it. Okay. All right, so number one. Number one is to identify your dream life. Okay, and many people have not stopped long enough, right? They're in the, they're doing the work, they're doing their hard work, they're responding to challenges, they're putting out the fires, they're doing all the things that they've never actually stopped to say, okay, what is my dream life? What does that look like? I'm talking about taking the time to think about it, to document it. There's no right or wrong. We are all like artists. We are creating the future we want. Like our lives, they're given to us as gifts. They're like blank canvases, and we get to kind of create the masterpiece that we want, right? So there's no right or wrong. There's no what will somebody say. It's not like that. It's your life. You know what I mean? Like, if money was not an object, time was not an object, like what would it look like? What really talks to my soul? What really matters to me? And this is not something you can look at, what somebody else said, because this is something that will resonate with you at your core. It's something you're wired for. It's it's just you, it's uniquely you. So identify that. Okay, so many people know what they don't want, but they really have no clue what they do want, right? So the first thing is to identify that. Don't be afraid to write it down. It's not going to be the only version you do. You're going to do version after version after version, and each time it'll be clearer and clearer. But the the clearer it is, the more you can pull it into your present. And the more every day you could be walking in the direction of your dream life. Okay. So that's number one. Number two, once you're done identifying your dream life, identify the version of your dream life you can build right now. Okay. Now, so your thing may be you know what? I want to go on six vacations with my family every year. That's my dream life. And maybe for the last decade you've done zero to one. Okay. You may not be able to do six this year. Maybe you could do one. Maybe you could do two, right? If you could do two, is it six? No. But if you're doing those two, is it more than what you had before? Yes. Knowing what you now know, can you enjoy it more even if it's one and make it a bigger deal? Yes. So can you start living your version of your dream life now? Yes. Do you see what I'm saying? Like you pull that and you're like, it's not six, but it's one. We're on our way, right? You may be saying, you know, like, I want my home to look a certain way, right? And when you think about it, maybe you think about this, you know, really massive 7,000 square foot home, contemporary design, open design, lots of like purely contemporary. And, you know, it is you may be like, you know, my husband who wants his own house to have a gate and a driveway and all the things, not into the subdivision, into his own house. And you're like, that's the way I want it to be, and all of that stuff. And it may look out of, and I'm I'm not saying it's out of reach, but what you want to mean is like I can't do that. Fine. Maybe you can't do that. But with the home that you do have, is there something you can do to pull that version in? Right? Maybe it could be that you remodel your living room to look the way you want it to be, or your workspace, or whatever. Or you just decide, you know, one of the things that those houses don't have is clutter. And I'm just gonna do a decluttering project with my family. And over the next of the course of the next three months, we're gonna get this all decluttered. Is that your dream life? Of course not, but it is a seed version of it. It's a seed version of it. There's a certain way you want to dress, there's a certain, you know, there's a certain amount of time you want to take off every year. I don't know what it is for you, right? Maybe you're this kind of person, you're really social and you love to hold brunches, you know, you know, brunches once a month. Okay, maybe you can't do the most elaborate ones, maybe you even can, but you just didn't know you could. You can start. The bottom line is take something out of that big dream, bring it all the way back here and start living it right now. So that's number two. Identify the version of your dream life you can live starting right now. Maybe you're this person you you would like, absolutely love your job. What you really hate is that you have to come back and chart at home. And so maybe for your dream life, you're like work stays at work, and home time is home time, and you own your own practice. I mean, get a scribe, and that's the end. Like you're boom, that part of your dream. You see what I'm saying? Like, just intentionally, you are creating a masterpiece. This is the whole point of building a business. The win for your clients is that, oh my goodness, you solve their problems, you get rid of their pain. The win for you is financial freedom that gives you your dream life, right? Okay, so that's number two. Number three, we talk a lot about this in the entrepreneur business school. It's called the CEO calendar. And this is kind of, you know, how you calendar in, you schedule your life, right? People sometimes people are like, I want the spontaneity. Yeah, but the the very wildly successful usually have some kind of sketch, even if it's they have some kind of sketch, even if it's in their mind. But hear me when I say this, okay? If you don't schedule your dream life, it may not be something you're used to doing. If you don't schedule, it's not gonna get done, right? And so for instance, in in EBS, in ABS scale, one of the things we did is like, okay, I'm like, how much vacation time did you take off last year? And some people were like, well, a week, some were a couple of days, and all this stuff. And some people were like two weeks and all of that. I'm like, okay, whatever it is. So I was talking to them at the end of 2022, whatever that is, let's double it for 2023. And the initial look was, uh-oh, here Dr. Una goes again. This is a little cuckoo and all of those things. But they're like, huh, okay. Because the million dollar question is, how can I, right? Now, what did I have them do? The first thing I had them do when they pulled out their calendar for 2023 is I had them schedule their vacation time, right? Because that's usually the thing that we think about last. And because we think about it last, it never gets scheduled. And we find out we've accepted things all over the place, and there really is no place to fit in this vacation, right? And so whether it's a vacation, whether it's time with your kids, or whether it's brunch with your friends, or whether it's, you know, your decluttering project, if it gives you joy, otherwise outsource it. But you know, like all those things, the things you're gonna do to bring your dream life to your reality now, they're not second nature. If they were, you'd already be doing them. And so you wanna schedule them. So you want to schedule your priorities, okay? You wanna schedule them. You wanna schedule them. Because if you don't do it, if you don't schedule it, it's not gonna happen. Okay. So that's the third thing. Like schedule your priorities. Now, number four, number four is to change your mindset from one day I'm gonna live the dream to I'm living the dream. You're just gonna live the dream bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger as the years go by. But I am living, like imagine I'm living my dream life. Living my dream life. You make the tweak, you look at that tweak, you're like, I'm living my dream life. Make another tweak, you look at that, I'm living my dream life. Living my dream life. I cannot tell you the amount of joy and happiness and enthusiasm it will bring into your life. You don't have to fix everything. Nobody comes in and fixes everything. They start fixing things, you know, a second, a moment at a time, one screw at a time, one nail at a time. You know what I mean? And you can start thinking that way. I am living my dream life. I'm gonna live more of it tomorrow, more of it the day after, but I am living my dream life, right? Okay, number five. Number five, number five is something that's gonna give you the bandwidth to do this, right? With the life you already have. You know, as physicians, without entrepreneurship, we're busy. With entrepreneurship, we can be busy, but there are ways around it. We talk about this like nonstop, non-stop in the entrepreneurial business school. But number five is by the time of others, okay? One of the things that I think we're so blessed with as physicians is we have this amazing earning power, right? And with that, I think sometimes we should look at it as a gift that we're given so we can expand our 24 hours, right? Like imagine if you had three people working for you full time. Just think about it. Or that means that every day you acquire eight more hours per person. For the three of them, that's 24 hours. You can buy a day every day. So you have your 24 hours and you have their 24 hours, and their 24 hours are all working 24 hours. Your 24 hours includes, you know, sleeping, taking a shower, tying shoelaces, and all of that. Think about it, you can buy back time. And so if you're gonna be a person who's gonna live a dream life, um part of it does include, you know, becoming the CEO of your life and your personal life and your business, right? We're talking about entrepreneurs entrepreneurship here. And so that means you have a team for your business and you have a team for your personal life, right? And so that you have the capacity to delegate, to take things off your plate so you can add new things to your plate and all of those things. The more you embrace the concept of leveraging the time of others, the more of your dream life you'll be able to live. That's literally just the way it works. Okay, so I've given you five things. Identify your green your dream life, identify the version of your dream life you're gonna live starting right now. I've talked about the CEO calendar, changing your mindset, and buying the time of others. If you will do these things, you can look at your life and someone else can look at it, like, oh, like it's the same as it was yesterday, but you know it's not the same. And you're excited, and you've you've started, you have all these seeds of your dream life showing up in your life right now, and you're like giddy with excitement. And your business is just this tool that helps you create that, you know what I mean? And which will make you engage with the business more, it'll make you learn the concepts you need to learn so you become even better at it. It's amazing. It's amazing. That is why you hear me say, like, I've never worked in entree MD. Like, I love it. I love to, I love able to serve people. I love, you know, that it's affording me the opportunity of being home with my kids, homeschooling my older kids, driving the younger ones to and from school, affecting thousands and thousands and thousands of lives, living a life that is so purposeful to me. And to think that I, you know, I am in a position where I can change a community or I can change the narrative for a whole community. I could disrupt an industry, I could be part of the solution is just crazy. I have the freedom to create, which is, you know, and I'm leaving this legacy. And my goodness. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. So, so this is the deal. Now, I get this inspiration from some for some from some doctors who are already doing this, and I'm gonna name it. Okay. So for this episode, I want you to grab a few friends and I want you to do this exercise together because the problem with this is it's so simple. And the thing about simple things is that they're easy to do, they're easy not to do. That's kind of the way it plays out. And I don't want you not to do this because, oh my goodness, you could be saying, after you listen to this tomorrow, you could be saying, even today, I'm living my dream life. Like I'm living my dream life. Okay. So I want you to grab a few friends and I want you to do the the the um the exercise together. And we call these entream D APs. So entree MD accountability pods. And so an entre-traMD AP, you guys get together, three to five of you, and you guys workshop this together, get it done, hold each other accountable. And then your new thing becomes I'm living my dream life. So exciting. Okay. And if you do this and you're one of the entream D accountability pods, let me know. I want to shout you out. In fact, you can post about it on social media. Maybe you guys all on Zoom take a screen, uh screenshot, post it, like, hey, we're the entream d accountability pod. And then just tag us, hashtag entreamd. I'd love to give you a big shout out, and you know, never know, there might be freebies and stuff like that. But I think it's super exciting. There's nothing as beautiful as actually doing what you set out to do. Okay, so this is the deal. You can have this meeting and you can start living your dream life today. You can give up the conversation of we're so burned out, we don't have autonomy, the insurance companies are driving us crazy, people don't want to buy my stuff, and I'm just uh, okay, somebody wrote me a one-star review and all of that stuff. You can come out of that energy and live in the energy of I love being an entrepreneur. It is a vehicle for me to serve a lot of people, change lives, do meaningful work. It is a vehicle that allows me to create freedom, find freedom so I can live life on my terms. And I am living that life right now. Like, think about it. I mean, I I think about how how stress-relieving that is. Think about, I mean, the joy of it. And so where other people are saying entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship is such a nightmare, you can say, I won't lie, it's hard work, but I'm so grateful I get to do this, right? Okay, so I cannot wait for that to be your story. So set up your accountability pod, set up your AP, go get this done, share your your your screenshots on on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn, wherever you do that or TikTok, and tag us, hashtag UmTraMD. I cannot wait to shout you out. I'm beyond, beyond proud of you. And I will see you on the next episode of the Ontree MD Podcast. Hey, if you love listening to the OmtraeMD podcast, I want to invite you to join OmtraMD On Demand. It is my signature subscription program that gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do one thing as a physician entrepreneur, and that is to thrive. Just head out to omtramd.com forward slash on demand, and I love to have you join us. See you on the inside.