How Dr. Prem Tripathi Went from Fired to Multiple 7-Figures in Private Practice (And How You Can Too)

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What if losing everything was actually the beginning of your biggest breakthrough?

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Prem Tripathi, a facial plastic surgeon in the East San Francisco Bay Area, who went from being let go from his employed position to building a private practice that hit seven figures in its first seven months. He shares the mindset, the strategy, and the exact moves that made it all possible.

Tune in and get inspired!

Key Takeaways:

• [0:00] Intro 
• [0:52] Welcome & Introduction to Dr. Prem Tripathi 
• [2:10] Why Get a Business Education While Still Employed? 
• [4:45] The Moment Everything Changed: Being Let Go 
• [9:55] From Job Loss to Launching a Practice 
• [15:45] Top 3 Reasons for Success in Private Practice
• [22:10] Knowing When to Say No to Patients 
• [25:30] Overcoming the Fear of Social Media 
• [31:00] Building a Media Company Alongside Your Practice 
• [34:20] How Entrepreneurship Changed His Relationship With Money 
• [39:10] The Power of Investing in Yourself 
• [41:21] Outro

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about my 12-month program. 
• Interested in 1-on-1 coaching? Apply here.
• Grab a copy of the "The 7-Figure Physician CEO" book. 

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

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Investing in your team, giving them the tools to be successful, that's gonna make you more money and give you more time. If I make more money, everybody makes more money. I don't mind paying my staff a million dollars a year if they're bringing in$5 million. Patience and results are number one, but profit is 1A.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Hi, dogs. Welcome to the OnCham D 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. Inna. Well, hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to our very first interview in the eight-figure physician CEO series, really. And I am so excited because I have a good friend of mine here. I guess I can call him that, Dr. Prem Trapati. He is absolutely amazing. He has a wonderful story. And I love talking with him because he's so generous with his journey. So this is one where I can already promise you you're gonna need to re-watch this. But even before that, I want you to lean in. I want you to have an open mind. And this is a conversation that really five years from now, you go back and say, Man, I was listening to Dr. Una and Dr. Pram talk, and that was the beginning of a new phase of my journey. So, Dr. Pram, no pressure whatsoever, but welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I'm Dr. Pram Trapathy. I am a facial plastic surgeon based in the East San Francisco Bay Area. So I have my own private practice that I started uh officially in 2024 and uh was a previously an employed physician, um, now on my own. I also um run a social media brand and am scaling my practice now within you know two years. And I was part of EBS from 2022 to 2023, which sort of launched this whole, this whole process. So very excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

When you joined the entre MD Business School, um you were an employed physician. Okay. So the first question I have is what made you think of getting a business education when you're still an employed physician? Why did you decide to do that?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

When you're employed, there's a lot of things that you can control and probably a lot more that you can't, right? So from the physician standpoint, I think we're all equipped when we come out, at least to start doing things pretty comfortably. But there are a lot of systems in place that I just didn't think were optimized to make the practice flourish and scale. And so I started listening to the podcast at my wife's pressure. She said, you've got to listen to this thing. So I started listening to the podcast and implementing a lot of things that I would hear, you know, your biggest spend in your practices payroll, how to make that optimized, um, how to optimize systems, how to get into the right mindset. So once I realized that those things I could do, but it's much harder when the team is not yours. That's where I sort of figured that I need to go back home. I need to go on on my own because building the team was so important to me. Not that the employees were not good. We just weren't aligned both in mindset and in growth capacity. So I figured if I can do the physician part, which he said is much harder, then there's no reason why I couldn't do the business part. But I didn't think that, you know, the MBA route was the way to go. And so I wasn't interested in getting another degree, but I wanted both the mindset and the knowledge and sort of the motivation and accountability to do my own thing. And EBS was, you know, was the launching point.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

There are two things I want to point out here because, you know, you're pretty remarkable. And one is that way before starting your own practice, you're like, I need to learn some stuff. Because one of the questions I get a lot is I haven't started yet. Should I start doing this now? I'm like, starting a practice does not make you an entrepreneur. Becoming an entrepreneur makes you an entrepreneur, and that's something that you figured out. And then the other thing is that you really are a massive action taker. Like you were taking action from the podcast. Of course, when you came into the entree MD business school, you're taking massive, massive action, which has created all the results we're going to talk about today. But let's go to June of 2023. I remember reaching out to you. I'm like, okay, this is gonna end up being one of the best things that ever happened to you. And you were on the same page with that. I want you to walk us through that moment because this is an experience for many physicians. It may look like the story that you had, it may look like a different story, but just being able to see how something can seem devastating or really bad or something like that, and then it turns around to be one of the best things that happens to you if you play our cards right. So, so talk to us about that.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Again, I was an employed physician. I was a partial partner in the group. Um, but I showed up to work one day and I was told that I was no longer employed. I wasn't given a reason why. I thought to myself, okay, this is terrible. I'm gonna take my take my time to grieve however long this takes. But the only difference that separates me from another successful person is how long it's gonna take me to grieve through this process. And luckily, I had had um eight eight months in EBS and over a year listening to the podcast, lots of things written down, the mindset at least set. So while this wasn't on my timeline, I felt equipped to take on the next journey. And I had already started getting into the mix of looking for a space and thinking about the mission of the practice, but nothing sort of drives you into hyper overdrive like a devastating issue that's not on your timeline. So I took, I would say maybe a week to think about it, get my ducks in a row. And then it was just pure action, you know, lots of lists, lots of prioritizing. I think if I had not been in EBS, I would have created a checklist that didn't prioritize the biggest needle moving events. Um, but I felt very ready mindset-wise to move on to the next journey. And obviously I got your phone call, which helped a lot, that it was going to be the best thing. And it was within six months. And honestly, even though it wasn't on my timeline at the moment, it was the best time because it gave me the opportunity to do so much in the time that I needed to get my practice going. It truly was the optimal time for this to happen.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Just imagine that, you know, six months from then, a year from then, you'll be able to say, Man, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, but that was the absolute best thing that ever happened to me. Because that's that's kind of what happened to you. In hindsight, what would you say is the most valuable lesson that process thought taught you?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

I think the one thing that I realized is it you have to take a grieving period. You have to sort of set yourself straight. I couldn't just move on without at least thinking about what went wrong and how to make it better. But then I also the the time that it's gonna take me to recover, I also realized very early, cannot be lengthy. It's just like blocking time off, right? If you block time to get your get your stuff together, you have then the time that you know you're gonna move on to. So if next Saturday I've decided that I'm gonna start taking action, I can take the next few days to sort of get the things in order and not have to think about them. So the time blocking, time blocking grievance, I think is important, but also just knowing that you say this a lot. We've done harder things. We've done so many harder things. I've been through a surgical residency, I've been through a surgical fellowship, applied to medical school, all those things that are orders of magnitude more difficult in their both stress level and time, time suck. And there were so many people around me that had their own businesses, right? My gardener has his own business, my plumber has his own business, my con, and all of these people are wildly successful. So I think we're told as physicians that we can't be. But I kept that that was the important thing also in my mind to remember is why can't I do this? Um, and it had been a year, like I said, of listening to the podcast. I felt very well equipped to say, let me take my grievance time and I'm gonna start with start with this on day one.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

This is all important, but the the part that's my favorite is the piece of, you know, time block your grieving. Okay, so like grieve by all means, but this is your timeline and let's keep it moving. Love it. Okay, so let's talk about because again, phenomenal story. Let's talk about between when you're told you no longer have a job to when you started seeing patients in the new locations, when you launched your practice, and then the milestones along the way.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

This was end of June, so early July. And my goal was to have the practice started by December, January. Now that's obviously a lofty goal because I had barely found a space to practice in, nothing was built yet, but I still needed a timeline by which to set everything. So I set that timeline. And the thing that I am glad I did throughout the entire time during that phase was continue to brand build, right? I still said, I'm gonna make social media content every single day. Um, I don't have a team. I'm just gonna set my camera up every single day and post something. So that was helpful because I was getting quite a bit of engagement during that time. And then I said, I'm not gonna stop practicing or seeing patients. I just have to find a place to do it in the meantime. So I did have a colleague in the area that was nice enough to let me use their space. I got them outpractice for that space. So at least I could keep my skills up. But also during that time, I studied how to make my practice profitable from a mechanical and sort of like a systems process. And I think that piece was important because I had the mindset and the mindset sort of drama creeps in throughout this, but I had at least the foundation to say, I'm gonna continue to work on the mindset, but also now set up the strategic part of setting up specifically a plastic surgery practice. So that's what happened within the first six months. And I made my first hire in November, December, and launched the practice at the beginning of the year. Many of the things I learned from EBS were continue to build that brand. And how do I get the thing you told me on day one of EBS is we're gonna have you booked on day one of opening your practice. And so if that's the goal, then I have to sort of reverse engineer how that's gonna happen, right? Because at this point, although people know me, they didn't really know me in the area. So I continued to build the brand, was reaching out to people in the area, tried to go on podcasts. And on my first day, I had a book of patience. So I felt like I had my goal and I didn't spend hours on the logo for my website. I told the website company to make my logo. I didn't spend a ton of time figuring out the cheapest chairs to buy in my office. It wasn't gonna save me that much time or money. But I put my 20% in the in those high yield things and prioritized my schedule that way in those first five months before I launched the practice. And the first month was a six-figure month, which I did not expect, but was happy to have. And it's been up since then. We're now the goal this year, later, so now it's been two and a half, two years. The goal for Q3 of this year is seven figures a month, and we're slowly approaching that. The growth pattern you think is just gonna slowly happen. And it and it will happen if you do the right things. But when it's intentional, that's when I think the the major growth happens, both personally and professionally. And that's what all of these, you know, all these things that I've learned both in EBS and in the podcast and just being around the community is the intentionality was very important. So that is what I also did in those first five months and going forward.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

I love it. Like, yeah, we're not gonna spend time on the logo. We're gonna spend time on this. And and that really is the difference between succeeding and not succeeding and the speed at which we succeed, right? And so think think about saying, oh, on for the first day I'm gonna be booked, right? And we've had many doctors do that, and you did that, and that's amazing. Six figures in the first month. We're two and a half years in, and we're like, we're working on our first seven-figure month. Love, I mean, you know, you know how much I love that. Again, thank you for for sharing this because it's important for doctors to hear this, right? And you may be listening to this and you may have a because come up. It's because he is because he. And I just want to invite you to not do that, to have an open mind and say, how could this be possible for me? How could a version of this be possible for me? Because really, Dr. Pram, that's that's what you did. You could have said, no, that doesn't work for me. And she doesn't understand me, she's a pediatrician or whatever. But you decided to take this and figure out how to apply it in a way that makes sense for your practice. Now, over the last two and a half years, you and private practice, if you were to look back and say, these are the top three reasons why I'm successful, what would those reasons be?

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Prioritizing my team so that I could prioritize my time. I think that's really important. I always repeat the things that you say, right? One is too small a number for greatness, and that you have to lean into your team so that you can do the things that you're good at. So, you know, constantly working on that machine, I think is super important because, you know, my goal is to operate and that's it. I mean, I yes, I look at the PLs, but I don't want that to be my primary goal. I don't want to be the person setting up the systems, although I can be involved. So getting to a point where you're offloading, and it's not going to be in the beginning of the first day, but at least setting that as a timeline or as a goal and the action steps that it takes to get there, that piece was important to me. And then the second one is reverse engineering, right? So if your goal is a million dollars and you want to see this many patients, or you want to be low ticket, high volume, or vice versa, then you have to reverse engineer. If my conversion rate is 50%, I need to see 80 consults and I need to be able to hop between rooms to do this, that, and the other. That that piece is super important. And that's strategic. It isn't so much mindset. It's it is very strategic in that sense. And then the last piece is actually investing in yourself. So the investment in yourself, I think is the most challenging because we're constantly met with imposter syndrome. Yes, it's more like, oh, he did this and that, and I can't do that. And and we see that all the time. But one of the books we read in EBS, which I can't remember what it was, was the only difference between like us and Bill Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos is that they thought of it first. They just did it first. They were faster at doing it, right? Selling books was not, is not new, but they just were fast. The belief that you can do that on your own still still creeps in. You still don't believe it necessarily. But I do think that last piece of investing in yourself and really focusing on how you can optimize your 20% while you believe in yourself, that that piece is key. It's a reminder every single day.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Love it. I have a question for you. Yeah. When you hang out with your friends who are fellow plastic surgeons, how many of these conversations do you get to have? Low ticket, high volume, optimizing your team.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

So the first thing we have is you need to listen to EBS. And now all of them listen to EBS. There's we have like our own little pod, and then we have these conversations all the time. I think because at least in our industry, you sort of attract a certain clientele. If you want to be, you know, producing, you know, really, really busy, you can be very busy, but not profitable. That piece can slowly eat away at your life. We are building the dream life and the dream business together. And so that starting that very early on and deciding who you're gonna attract and who you're gonna serve, super important. We talk about that all the time.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

One of the things we say is at on-train, the on-trained business school helps doctors build profitable seven to eight-figure businesses so they have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their terms. And we put profitable there on purpose because you can have a seven-figure business, a three million dollar business,$10 million business that is not profitable. And so you talked about being busy but not being profitable. So for you, when you think about it, what do doctors need to do to avoid that trap? Because it's very common. Woo talk to a doctor who's doing four million in revenue and they're doing low comes to pay themselves because they can't pay themselves. They can pay the team and cover the overhead. You see what I'm saying? So what would you say to the doc who not even there, but to avoid the trap?

SPEAKER_01 18:39

It sounds sort of like woo-woo, but you really have to sit down with your mission statement in the beginning and decide like what your principles are for your practice. And from there, then reverse engineer what you want to take home and really look at not just your PLs, because once you're looking at a PL, it's almost too late to make a change. You need to have set up the business in such a way that there are pivot points you can make very early on. And you unfortunately, you have to set an hourly rate for yourself and decide like this is what I feel like I can, I'm worth and that I can, you know, because I'm good at what I do. And that needs, you need to have a sort of benchmark. If you're going through and you see your overhead's 80%, then you got to not necessarily cut. Cause when you cut, you're cutting like$20 here and there. You got to say, how do I make all of my staff members X amount more profitable? That was the biggest step that I took, you know, investing in your team, giving them the tools to be successful, because that's gonna make you more money and give you more time. Patience and and results are number one, but profit is one A, right? It is, it is very, very important. It can't we can't they know that. And so, and and if if I make more money, they I mean if ever everybody makes more money, right? I don't mind paying my staff a million dollars a year if they're bringing in five million dollars. And so if everybody wins and we have that good culture, then I I definitely think that you can get yourself into a nice situation. And you have to, the second part is you have to be okay saying no. We say no every day. If patients are not aligned with that core mission, it's okay. It there, there's plenty of other people they can see and we're happy to give those referrals to them. But if you're looking for a patient that's price shopping, for example, in plastic surgery, that's just not the type of patient that we're looking for, which is totally understandable. Nothing wrong with that. But if that's not how you've built your practice and your mission, then you have to politely decline and be okay with saying no. It feels it feels terrible at first because you're trying to get every, you know, you're trying to make money, but you have to live and die by that mission statement. Otherwise, you can get into an issue.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

For some doctors, you know, saying no to a patient, yes, there's the there's the financial implication of it, but there's also the part of we don't say no. How did you deal with that being in a position where the moral and ethical thing to do is to bless and release you to another practice as opposed to accepting you into mine?

SPEAKER_01 20:56

I had a patient that booked surgery with me. Mindset-wise, we were not aligned, in the sense that either there was a little bit of pushback, maybe some unrealistic expectations. And I just felt like there was a possibility that it was just not going to turn out the way that I wanted it to. Politely declined. I had already taken her money and I gave it all back. And I said, I just don't think that I'm the right surgeon for you. We can't be short-sighted. So it's we're playing the long game, right? A business, a practice, your success, all of these are the long game. We're used to that. And so now when we're done with training, we want that instant gratification. But if you're going for that long game, you have to be okay with making game time decisions that affect you long term. I was okay with that. And now it's so much easier to say no because I know there's going to be that next patient or five that are okay to come in. And even though I've said no, I've still had patients send their friends, send other people to me because they respect that I said no sometimes. That sometimes that that's all it takes. It's very different when you're dealing with life and death things, right? We're not saying no to that. We're not saying no to treating people, but I do think there's an aspect of that that's important for just building brand building.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

It is. And also for the the peace and quiet in your business, right? So imagine if you did the surgery for that person in particular and it didn't turn out the way they had wanted it, which you already knew was not a realistic expectation. And then the drama that follows that, right? Now, when you introduced yourself, you did not just call yourself a surgeon when you talked about your business. You didn't just say have a private practice. You also talked about your media company, if you will. And this is fun because, you know, I talk to physicians all the time. And I don't want to be on social media, I don't want to do YouTube, you know, I don't, I don't have a face for the camera and all of those kind of things. And so let's track back to when you were on social media before media company, right? Did you ever have a fear of being on camera or posting and then the haters come for you? Or, you know, I'm a physician, I'm a professional, I don't do things like that. Do you have any mindset drama around, you know, showing up on social media in the beginning?

SPEAKER_01 22:58

I wanted my name everywhere. I didn't want my face everywhere. That's what everybody wants, right? And it you cannot have one without the other. Nowadays, we don't hand business cards out, just hand business cards out. It just doesn't work that way. The only way to get your name out there is to get your face out there. And so, although it was terrible, and when I look back at those videos, I cringe. I pushed myself to do them because your podcast, you said we have an obligation to give proper information. We have an obligation to share our knowledge with people. So then it almost becomes like, you know, this is what I have to do. And my take on this was just dispelling misinformation on social media. And that became a brand. And so I started talking more about what I do, things that work and things that don't work. And with every video, it got a little easier. And I still cringe and I still sort of stop the video and re-record them. But better done than perfect, right? Get it done. I set my camera up, I spend 15, 20 minutes and I'm done. You don't know what video is going to take off. And so the mind drama still is still there, but I commit every single day to shooting a video, at least one video a day, because you can hand your business card out to 20 people, or you can make a video that 500 people see or 1 million people see with the way algorithms work now, that will find their way to the right patient. And even though you get videos that are 20, 20 views, 100 views, when's the last time you spoke in an auditorium of 100 people, right? There's a lot of that in the beginning, but it works out.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

And so for you, was it more so the commitment? Like, no matter how I feel, I'm gonna get this done. Or did you also have some tricks and things you used to kind of psych yourself to do it?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

I had a marketing person to help me with just like setting up cameras and doing that. Stuff, but it was more so just like get it done, like just set it up and do it. Because now we're not in the age of curated, beautiful, gorgeous videos anymore. We're in the age of walk on the street while you're like working out and record a video, and that's what people see. And so it's almost the easiest time to get your videos out there, right? Those are the videos that I do that do the best. And the other piece of it is just don't worry about the vanity metrics. I there are videos that I that just tank in my mind, but I have patients that come in that say, Hey, I saw your video on XYZ, and I don't even remember doing that video because I no one saw that video and I barely thought about it. So um, that vanity metric is so, so tricky. Likes and follows are so, so unimportant. They feel wonderful, but I could get a people, I could get a million people watching a video and no one, no one walks in through the door. So while that helps the media company, if I set that up, it helps my business zero. I do think realizing that your face needs to be everywhere for people to know who you are is is so key. You can literally do that in a week, right? It takes time, but you can get your face on three different platforms. Focus on one, but you can get it on three different platforms in a day.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

And you talked about something I just want to reiterate a little bit, and that is the concept of vanity metrics, right? And you like I've had the same experience where you have one video and everybody sees it, and okay, like maybe dopamine, maybe whatever. I still remember very vividly a day I posted a video and it had one like. And I was like, and what was the point of this? But see, that person then reached out to me and paid in full to be a one-on-one client. And I was like, I'll take the one like all day, every day, and twice on Sunday. Thank you very much. Right. And so we can't let the vanity metric stop us from something that is a very powerful tool in our businesses, right? Like so, Dr. Prem, when you think about it, and you may not have an exact number or anything like that, but when you think about it, what impact do you think your presence on social media has had on the volume and the of the patients you have and the dollars you have in your practice?

SPEAKER_01 26:58

The vast majority of patients that walk in through the door are patients from social media. And so we track everyone coming through the door. This is not uncommon for people that, you know, work that are in social media, but I don't have a the biggest presence locally. I have a much bigger presence regionally and beyond. I struggle to get the people that are next door because maybe they just don't see my content. But the vast majority of patients come in through social media. I'm not even 10 years into practice. I have patients from around the world. I operated on someone from the UK. It's powerful in that sense. It will test your mindset every single time you get someone through that. Like, can I do this? Right? You still get imposter syndrome. But it is by far the biggest game changer that I have ever. It is social media is life-changing. It is not, it is no longer your face in a picture. It is truly, absolutely life-changing. It has changed the trajectory of my entire life, my net worth, my family's life, allowed us to do so much more. And it was me setting up a camera and doing videos, and that's it. And sharing the things that I talk about every day anyway.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

So for anyone who's like, I don't know, the reason I had him share that is so you can say, hang on, if this can change the trajectory of my life, can change my business, can change my net worth. If if he's saying the vast majority of his patients came from social media and he's going towards a million a month, maybe I should think about it.

unknown 28:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Maybe I should think about it.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Absolutely. And the thing that you that you've always sort of drove home is the no like and trust factor, right? If they're following me on social media, they already know like it, trust me. A Google ad, it's great. They never perform as well as social media posts. So I tell, I tell other physicians, you could do a surgery that you then spend your profits on for a Google ad, or you could record a video and get a better quality patient and your video took you 20 minutes. I can't imagine your time is worth, your 20 minutes is worth more than what you paid for the ad. So you just have to decide what your priority is. And for me, that that was such a powerful brand building skill. And it's always evolving. So it's not like you can't do that with the next new platform. The next new platform comes in, and if you're first on there, sky's the limit.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Sky's the limit. Yeah. Now, at what point did you say, hey, I have been on social media, but I want to think about a media company? Because I remember even in your time in EBS, if I remember correctly, you even had a month or something where you did six figures in brand deals from social media while you were still employed. And so at what point did you make that transition to say I'm gonna make this two for the price of one, is gonna grow my business and is going to be a business.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

I was slowly getting, you know, PR packages, right? Packages of like products from brands. Well, I'm very thankful for them. They're great. At the end of the day, the brands are trying to make money, right? So if they're trying to leverage my audience to make money, then why can't I do the same thing for the videos that I already make, right? And not in a sleazy way. I would never promote something I don't believe in or that I haven't tried myself or that I don't try my patients. As that kind of grew, I remember the first time I got a patient from TikTok. I was, we all laughed in the in the in the clinic because I thought, this is so funny. This is never going to happen again. And that's all we see, right? That's every day now. When that started happening, then I was then approached by, and no need to be approached, you can contact them yourself, a uh social media manager, these managers that will help leverage their name to reach out to brands and see if you're aligned. And now I have that working in the background. I don't have to reach out to anybody. I can have my team, they know who I am, they know what I stand for, reach out to brands and get me brand deals if they work. And so last year I got to go to Paris for a brand trip and got paid, got to take my wife. I got to go to Korea. These are all based on connections and partnerships that I wouldn't have made without social media and without forcing myself to get out there and talk to people. So those are life-changing opportunities, life-changing trips, and they're already aligned with what I do. And so as that starts to grow, you realize that your audience is very important. They're the people that made you who you are, but also brands want to leverage that audience. No matter what field you're in, you know, if influencers can make a million dollars a month, there's no reason why a physician cannot make a million dollars a month doing brand partnerships.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Love the way you think. And yes, going to going with your wife to Paris and the trip was paid and you got paid. I think that that's a good deal. Absolutely. I think that's life-changing. We talk a lot, and you mentioned this about the dream business and the dream life. And I find for a lot of physicians, we're not necessarily motivated by money. Like, yes, we understand money is important, but it doesn't make us jump out of bed and do impossible things. So I talk about money as much as I do because we don't talk about money at all. I'm like, okay, we have to have this conversation, but it's not quite the motivation. But I tell people the most valuable thing from being an entrepreneur is the person you become. And second to that is the life you're able to create. So for you, when you think about it, what is entrepreneurship made possible for you?

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Your podcast really changed my relationship with money, but the way I think about money and the way I teach my kids about money because they're young, is it's a game, right? Everybody is playing the game very differently. I view money as just my way to buy back time, right? So I want time with my family. I don't want to be trading time for money every single day. And so that is the most important facet and gameplay I have for money. If you like buying luxury goods and handbags and cars, go for it. I mean, if that's how you want to, uh if that's how you want to spend your money, there's nothing wrong with that. That's amazing. But for me, that changed my relationship. So once I realized, okay, I want that to just work for me for time, but also I want to be spending time on vacation and not have to think about buying that extra meal or taking business class or whatever the case may be, then there's there's just certain things you have to do to get there. And every other industry thinks about money, but we are sort of like shunned because we help people. And I just think about my attorneys sending me a bill after like an email that I send to them, right? And I just like that just kills me. And so why can't we share our knowledge, help people to the highest capacity, and be given the freedom to live our lives comfortably? In that regard, changing the relationship with money and realizing you're not a sleazy salesperson, you're actually helping people. That was a big eye-opening thing to think about. And now I have no problems talking about money. If we don't do well in a month, great, let's talk about money and figure out how to how to do better. And it also helps other people that are struggling to figure out if you don't have a lot, you can do this with it. That part is very important.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

100%. Now you talked about teaching your kids. And so you brought this up. And I want to ask this question because a lot of people shy away from entrepreneurship because they think it will rob them as far as their relationship with their family goes. They think it will hurt their kids because they won't be as available. And for me, my experience has been that entrepreneurship, like you described, has given me my time back. I homeschool my kids and I don't recommend it. I just that's what I wanted to do. So I'm able to do it. I'm able to spend time with them, I'm able to go on vacation with them, I'm able to involve them in the business is part of their curriculum and all of those things. And like you, I get to teach them the things that we just didn't learn. You know, for a physician, we arguably have the best education in the world, if you can think about it. And then to think that you then come out and you don't know anything about personal finance, you don't know about leadership, you don't know about money, running businesses, speaking, you're afraid of showing up on social media, it's just ridiculous. And I'm like, okay, why don't we just be proactive and teach you all those things now? Right. And so, you know, for you, being an entrepreneur, towing this path, learning these things, transforming so much, how has that impacted your family?

SPEAKER_01 35:15

I remember before I started the practice, I posted on the Facebook group, I'm gonna take out this giant loan. I have like a momentary freakout. Am I not gonna be able to spend time with my three young children? Is this a bad idea? You also mentioned, and this happened, right? The people in your life will also sort of start to say that because it's coming from a place of love. What you realize too is you can time block the time you spend on your business and time block the time you spend with your family. And so even though my thought was I'm going to, you know, spend a whole bunch of time, yes, you have to do the work, of course, but you you are setting yourself up for more time. So in 2027, my goal is to take a month off with my kids during the summer and do that every year. I could never have imagined doing that otherwise. And now my wife, who also works, could never have imagined doing that otherwise. But we're given that option now that I don't have to be in the office for a month. If I was a physician in an employed group, which is fine, which is great, I couldn't do that. I learned the line that physicians are the working wealthy, right? We're wealthy when we work, but when we're not, if we're not given those tools, it's very difficult. So what you don't realize again is the sort of short-sightedness that we've never had as physicians, we can't have as sort of entrepreneurs, right? We have to think about what that long game is. And it doesn't have to be 10 years, it doesn't have to be five years, it can be one year. So I actually ended up getting a million-dollar loan, actually more, 1.25 million, so double what I thought it would be. And if I wanted to, by the end of the year of my first year, I could have paid that loan off all completely and still paid myself. So never would have thought that would be possible. But it wasn't the stress that I thought it would be. It was much, much more attainable. And for my children, they got to see me build a business. I got to help them ask me what logo should I pick? What furniture should I have? They got to come to my office when it wasn't built and see it get built. And involving them in that, it sort of gives them those tools. And we have little like children's books about money, which I wouldn't have done if I wasn't an entrepreneur. So while it may feel like you're taking time away, if you can time block it, involve them, and realize how it will buy you back time, you will have more time with them than you could imagine.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

You're giving them a business education, right? And and it's happening casually, like they don't even know that they're in business school. Right. My my daughter is um my first, she's 17 now. She has her own podcast, the Profitable Private Practice Podcast, interviewing dogs from the business school. She's part of the business. She has aspects that she runs. She speaks confidently on stage. Her dad's birthday was a week ago, and she was on stage with, you know, about 700 people in the building and just rocked it because she doesn't know any better. Like she doesn't know she should be afraid of speaking. Right. Absolutely. That's pretty wild. Now, when you think about private practice for the physician community and the challenges that people have and all that, first of all, what do you notice are the unique challenges, you know? And if you could give them one message, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 38:19

One very unique challenge that I think all business owners have is hiring staff, right? So it's difficult to hire staff that meet your expectation because we have high expectations. It's also difficult to keep staff once you train them. But I think if you invest in your team, both invest in yourself from a leadership standpoint and invest in the team from an educational training standpoint, and you take accountability for things that go wrong because it's eventually it's essentially your responsibility. That piece is super important. You know, I have colleagues that have a rotating carousel of employees. And that was always my goal to not have that, right? To take employees and move them up within the company if they want to be there. And if not, then help them for on their next journey. I think that piece is super important. And again, it's not a knowledge or or practical skill that we're we're given, but I do think that's one of the most important because your team essentially is your money, your team is your time, your team is everything. And that investment is super important. And I think it starts from it obviously starts from the top.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Now, one thing that comes up a lot with doctors is around investing ourselves. I think it's a, for some reason, it's a weird concept. Even though we invested$250,000 or so for our medical education, but that just seems different. It's like college or something like that. But I want you to speak a little bit, you've talked about it, but a little bit too the power of investing in yourself so you can become the person that makes your results possible.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

It is a tough pill to swallow when you come out of training, when you have debt, to think that your next step is going to involve a big chunk of change. Because you in your mind, you have this when I'm done, I will be making six figures and I will be happy. But that rarely ever happens, right? It's not the money that makes you happy. I think that piece we've done for 15 years, right? We've done the investment in ourselves in exchange for the education. If we're now expected to start a business and be an entrepreneur, it is very difficult. It is no longer a practical skill. It is no longer just strategy, right? It is starts way back from reaching into your brain and saying, you need to tell yourself that you actually can do this and rewiring your whole head. That is difficult. And once you once I realized that that was much more difficult than dropping money to invest in myself, it was it was much easier to do. When I joined EBS, it didn't seem like a big investment monetarily because I knew it was going to be such an amazing payoff. And now I pay consultants 10 to 15k a month because the ROI on it is 10 to 15 times that per month. And I never would have expected to pay people that much money, right? But that is truly an investment in my business and in myself. And we're always looking for the fastest ROI. But again, it it is that long-term game. And and we you have to learn pre-algebra before you do algebra. But when you come out of medical school, you don't have that mindset knowledge. I didn't have the leadership knowledge. I didn't have any of that. I felt like I needed that the most in order to get to my next step. And so it is, it was never a question of how do I invest in myself? It was never a question about the money because I knew it needed to be done. And once you realize that ROI comes in so many different ways: time, money, energy, happiness, it's so much easier to swallow. Because truly the biggest ROI I've ever had has not been my real estate investments, not been crypto or any, it's been investing in myself. So I had a friend who also started his practice at the same time. We listen to your podcast every week and talk about it. And same thing. I said, he built a million-dollar business in his plastic surgery in a year, year and a half. I said, what other investment have you ever done that has given you this much time, money, and freedom? None, but investing in yourself. So I convinced him to leave his employed physician job and start his own practice. And so these things are, I think, like you don't realize it at first, but it's invaluable. That is the most important thing.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

That is the most important thing. And I'm I'm in the same camp with you. So, and if you're if you're listening to this and you want to, you know, find out how entreamd can support you on your journey, then just reach out and book a call with my team, entreamd.com forward slash call. It's no pressure. We don't do pressure, we don't do any of that. It's just to see if you want to invest in yourself, if we're the right fit. So yeah. Dr. Prem, where can people find you? And if you're watching this, he gave us like 72,000 masterclasses. So you need to go follow him and you need to go support his work. So where do people find you?

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Yeah, so you can find me and my handle is uh at D-R, so Dr. Prem Trapathy, P-R E M T R I P A T H I. And that's on Instagram and TikTok. You can also email me. It's PremBtrapathy at gmail.com. Always available to chat or, you know, talk things through. I think like the community aspect is super important. You know, none of us are going through this alone and none of us have this. It's just like parenting. You're not like you feel like you're in a silo, but you're not. Everybody's going through the same thing. Definitely please, please contact me.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

That is awesome. All right. So you know where to find him. I will put that in the show notes as well. Dr. Prem, I want to say thank you so much for your time. Because of course, you're, you know, you're doing what you do, but thank you for taking out the time to do this interview. And I really want to say thank you as well for being so open about your journey, the trials, the triumphs, the wins, because there's so many people who see themselves in a story and change their lives because of it. So thank you. Absolutely. Happy to be here. All right, people. We'll see you on the next episode of the Ontario Podcast.