The EntreMD Podcast

From Private Equity to 7 Figures: How Dr. Brenda Dintiman Rebuilt and Scaled DermUtopia Wellness

• Dr. Una • Episode 517

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What if the deal you thought would free you was actually holding you back?

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Brenda Dintiman, a dermatologist and founder of Utopia Wellness, who sold her practice to private equity — and when it didn't go as promised, made the bold decision to start all over again. She rebuilt from the ground up, crossed seven figures in her private practice, and is now expanding into the wellness and metabolic health space.

She shares the mindset that made it possible, the tangible moves that drove revenue, and why she's more excited about what's ahead than anything she's already built.

Tune in and get inspired!

Key Takeaways

  • 00:00 Fear of not trying beats fear of failing 
  • 01:55 Why Dr. Brenda Dintiman left private equity and started over 
  • 04:25 The missing piece: joining a business-minded community 
  • 07:00 Shifting from silenced to owning your voice as a leader 
  • 08:55 Celebrating wins as a driver of mindset change 
  • 13:45 Entrepreneurship creates more time freedom, not less 
  • 16:00 How Dr. Brenda Dintiman crossed the seven-figure mark 
  • 19:45 Overcoming physician resistance to pricing and collections 
  • 21:55 Resilience in action: fixing problems instead of spiraling 
  • 24:05 Why regret of inaction outweighs fear of failure

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Additional Resources:


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  •  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 ...

SPEAKER_00

Is it a fear? Yes, of course it's fear. Will I stay well? Will we be able to do it? But in my brain, I'm not afraid of it failing. I'm afraid of not doing it.

SPEAKER_01

Have you always been like that? No. Hi Doc. Welcome to the OnTram 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. Mnet. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the OnTramD Podcast, especially to this series where we're having what I call eight-figure physician CEO conversations because we're talking to doctors who have crossed the seven-figure mark in their businesses and they're still growing. So this is going to be a fantastic episode. Super pumped to have Dr. Brenda Dintman here. She's going to introduce herself in a second, but I want to say a big thank you to you, Dr. Brenda, for coming on the show and being willing to share your story because it is stories like this that will help us change the narrative for physicians everywhere. So welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you. It's my pleasure. I'm Dr. Brenda Dinnerman and I've been practicing for over 35 years, but I had a new practice start about uh five years ago. So I'm excited to share with you about dermatopia wellness and the growth that I've achieved through entree and bee business.

SPEAKER_01

That is so awesome. Like you've had a really long career. And I think one of the things I will applaud you for is, you know, many people at your stage will say, you know, I'm in retirement mode, don't necessarily want to grow, don't necessarily want to learn new things, but you're somebody who, you know, really has a growth mindset. And for someone who's like 30 or 40, yes, you may have a growth mindset, but to have practiced for that long and you're still looking at, you know, innovation, evolution, and all of those things, it's really, really so fun to see. So let's talk about right before you joined the entrepreneurial business school, right? At that stage, at that point, you had already been practicing for a long time. You'd been in private practice. What was it that was going on that made you say something needs to change?

SPEAKER_00

The story was that I sold my practice, my partner and I did, to private equity. And we thought we were relieving ourselves of a lot of responsibilities, HR, marketing, all the things that doctors complain about that they can't do. And the story just wasn't real. And so we won't go into the long story what happened, but after going through mediation, for about 10 months, I decided to start all over and to kind of get rid of that mindset that you're too old to start over, because you're never too old to start something new. I'm a forever learner, always learning is my hashtag. And so I started again first, just you know, subletting very tenuously, and then COVID hit. So I was so grateful that I had not signed a lease that I just put my toe in. And then when we came out of COVID, still subletting, and in 21 decided to get my own space. And that's when I met Dr. Karen Kaufman, a colleague in my community, who said, Hey, this is the way I'm doing things. Have you considered this? And I said, Well, I want to know more. You just tell me. And she said, Well, you need to be in Entre MD business. And that's how I got listening and introduced to you, Dr. Irna.

SPEAKER_01

Well, big shout out to Dr. Kaufman, who is uh ambassador for the Entre MD Business School. What was it that was the final straw or maybe final decision or the thing that happened that made you say, okay, I've done the private practice, we built it up, we sold it to private equity. This is not quite going the way I want it to go, and I'm gonna start over because that's a pretty big decision, right? Like, especially for someone who's been there, done that, and has a few t-shirts.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so it was huge. You know, people said, why don't you just go volunteer? Why don't you just go on vacation? Well, you can only do that for a month or so. And the truth is that I still had a lot to give. I had a lot of dedication and I wanted to give to the community, to my patients. And I wanted to do it differently this time. I had already started my practice once after working with someone about 25 years before. I'd had a partner, I'd grown big, I thought I had done the right thing. Carrot is kind of dangled, you won't have to worry about these things. It's not true most of the time. So it was very scary to start again, especially not being able to call out and reach out to patients who I'd known for 20 years. I felt like I'd left a family behind. But little by little they came back. And the things that really were so helpful was starting to be part of a community that had a different mindset. Like, let's use technology, let's not be afraid of social media, let's do it differently this time. And I'll never forget the very first call I was on with Dr. Tamar Beckford. She said, Okay, here's the project for today, and I'll be back in 40 minutes. And when you come back, you need to be have asked to be on 10 podcasts. And I was like, who the heck wants to be on a podcast? And what do I need that for? And little did I know. Little did I know. When you think about before you met Dr.

SPEAKER_01

Kaufman and before you were introduced to Entre MD, what are some of the things that you had tried to do to get the results you wanted to get, but they didn't quite work out the way you expected they would?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's hard because I've always been a community person, even back in the 90s when there was only listservs. I was part of an international online community and then a part of a younger Facebook community in the dermatology world. The difference was I had never been part of a business community. I had had my consultants, my team, I had an attorney, I still do an accountant, I had that team, but I didn't have a team of physicians and people that were like-minded trying to grow, trying to be innovative, trying to just do it differently in spite of what the world or society or medicine tells you. And that's what really just drew me to the community, the your podcast, your view. It was just super intriguing because before that, in medicine, we were told you shouldn't market, you shouldn't have to. You just show up to an event and you're gonna be part of the hospital and someone's gonna introduce you, and you insurance will send you patients. But all that has changed and we want it to change. So we want to be part of the change. And I think that's what drew me the most to this group.

SPEAKER_01

Watching you do what you do with people, you know, I see it as a gift because I had to work to even be able to do that in any kind of way. You were in that position where, okay, I'm I'm quote unquote starting over, which you weren't really, you hadn't been part of a community and all of that. Contrast that with where we are now.

SPEAKER_00

The community and the communication we've had in our weekly calls has reinforced things that maybe inside I knew, like how important a team was, or how important it was to be resilient and keep going. But I have this voice in the back of my head all the time, whether it's yours or one of our classmates, and it'll say, like, keep going, just keep going. Today you're having a bad day, or today the you know, the social media got messed up, or today, you know, three patients didn't show up. But the concept that it's always working. And I think that we need that as physicians because we're so quick to emphasize what's wrong and what we haven't done enough of. Also, the concept of let's celebrate, let's celebrate our wins every single week. You know that I couldn't wait to get on and I had to hold myself back because in the past that was called bragging. And I was raised that that was almost like false humility, that you're just supposed to act like you're not doing well and you're not working hard. And I've tried to pass on to my team that everything they do when we're working together and we serve a patient, we serve and we earn, we don't just serve, that we are growing together as a team and that they're part of something bigger. It's easier for me to call myself a visionary now. It's easier for me to call myself a leader of a team. It's easier for me to say, my voice needs to be heard.

SPEAKER_01

I like all of that.

SPEAKER_00

I like all of that. But I just pause and let that sink in because we think our voice needs to be quiet, or maybe our voice is being quieted by people, by an association, by a group, by a hospital, by the world. But our voice needs to be heard, and I think we need to know what's inside integrity, our vision to help others, and to do it in a different way. And that's where I think you've been guiding us, Dr. You and everybody else in this community. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_01

Those are some really strong words. I'm a visionary, right? I lead a team. That's a beautiful transformation. And somebody may hear that and they're like, what's the win, right? Because we understand very deeply that is the internal wins, the intangible wins, that create the tangible wins, right? We celebrate a lot of mindset wins because we understand that's what sets the stage. Nothing really changes until that changes. What are some of the things, some of the tangible wins, if you will, that over these last few years you created in your practice?

SPEAKER_00

Definitely learning to do social media and not being afraid of it and realizing that there's actually kind of joy in it because you're even if it doesn't directly relate to X number of patients coming, it's a feeling that you're putting your voice out there. And I think as this younger team, they like it. You know, they like feeling like they're affecting the world also. I think the second thing is that the patients know. They know that I'm in a business school. They're intrigued by it. They know that it means that I'm focusing on things that are to help them. And we talk about it. I talk about that I use AI to research research things. I talk about that I reach out to my colleagues, that I'm not alone, that I'm gonna research for them on their behalf. And so it's just a different feeling than transactional medicine. It's really like getting people to where they need to be and knowing that they're unique, that they're being seen. So that I think that's where my practice has gone. I've always felt that way. I've always wanted to have this individualized approach and know the patient, but now I feel like I'm allowed to do it because it's it's my baby, it's my world, and I have a whole group of people that are cheering me on.

SPEAKER_01

And you know how to build a system to make it work. You can dream and then you make your dream your reality. The second part of the question I was gonna ask was, and what has becoming this version of entrepreneur made possible for you in your personal life? And I ask that because, you know, we always talk about the dream business and the dream life. We do not have any interest in building businesses that will cost us our lives or our families or stuff like that. We want to win all around. So what has that made possible for you?

SPEAKER_00

It makes it possible for you to choose when you want to do things, who you want to be with. You know, if my daughter, if my son, if my husband, if my friend needs me, I'm in charge of that schedule. And I have control over taking vacation when I want to. And the vacation time has increased, not decreased since I've been working as an entrepreneur again. And part of that's efficiency, but not always that. Part of it's choice. I'm gonna choose to do it because it's one of my values. And then I'm gonna make up for it later. I've always been a work hard, play hard person. So that's not so unique, did take off time. I would say the struggle is in making sure you're not thinking about it all the time, 24 hours a day, that you are starting trying to create balance. It's also helped my marriage because it stressed the marriage at times because of the intensity that it can draw, which you want to do more and more and more and more, but also the depth of the conversations. My husband is also a businessman, he's not in medicine. As Dr. Una knows, he read these books long before I did. Some of them he's read two and three times. But now we'll sit and have very interesting conversations about books like Eat That Frog or other really great business books. And so it's intriguing. My children now will both say, hey, I realize we're different than our other cousins. I think we're entrepreneurs. That's a really interesting thing when you have your children saying that. It has an effect on a lot of aspects of your life. And I think the most important thing is the mindset work. When something is going awry, it's so easy for me to say to them, you've done hard things before. I know it doesn't seem like you're getting anywhere, but the snowball is coming. Progress, not perfection. So many phrases that I think we all need to hear right now because there's a lot of stress, adversity. A lot of younger people have a lot of anxiety, and they don't really understand how we got where we are. They think we just woke up one day like this. So I think that those things are very helpful. They lead to more meaningful conversations with patients, with friends, and with my own children.

SPEAKER_01

That's amazing. Touched your marriage, touched your parenting, right? And I'm sure, and touched your ability to take time off. And a lot of times, these are the things that actually stop people from becoming entrepreneurs because they think it will take too much time, it will take too much effort, it will take too much money and all of that. But here we are. And for you, it's actually creating that, not the other way around. That is excellent. What would you say to somebody who, and they may not be starting, they may be at a stage in their business where let's say, you know, they've grown their practice, they are 500,000, they have an opportunity to take another leap, but they're like, man, it took me so much work to get here. It will take me too much work to get there, and they just hold back, even though they do want to grow. Like, what would you say to that doctor?

SPEAKER_00

It's always fear. It's fear of failure, it's fear that it maybe it'll be worse or they'll be uncomfortable. And I think that's the other thing you've taught us to live in the discomfort. And also I would say to them, you need to look at what you're doing that you can let go, you can delegate, you can give to someone else. So you can focus on the 20%. You can focus on what the things that only you can do to make your practice great. It totally is a leap of faith to keep going. But it does help to be inspired by others. I was looking back at posts from three years ago and simple things that I didn't know how to do. And now I'm like, I know how to do that. I can teach you, I can mentor you, I can show you. So I think the concept of not only doing for yourself, but because you're leading people around you is what keeps me going. And I think we owe it to the medical community to be the leaders.

SPEAKER_01

We owe it to the medical community to be the leaders. You're speaking my language all over the place. I love it. Right. And, you know, you bring up a great point. Our personal development is not only about us, right? Because we get to lead other people, whether that's our team, whether we lead by example, or we're leading the physician community to say these are the things that are possible. There's such a desperate need for leaders now. And so our evolution is one of the best gifts we can give our families, our communities, our industries. And I just invite you to go for it. Let's switch gears a little bit here. So we celebrated you at the was it the end of last year or the beginning of this year or somewhere, because you crossed your seven-finger mark in your private practice, which is huge. So excited. So for you, when you think about that milestone, what do you think are the things that made that possible for you?

SPEAKER_00

Definitely having the goal. You have to have the goal. I know that some people will have a double and triple goal, but I think I've always been a person that's looked at my profit and loss very often, very regularly. And you've heard me say, I'm not afraid of the numbers. That's a common thing physicians will say, and I think they have to get over that. And numbers are just numbers, they're just data, and they're ways that sometimes your brain thinks you're not doing well and you're actually doing 10% or 20% better. So I think looking at the numbers often, trying to be consistent about noticing whether there were ebbs, there's going to be ebbs and flows in your year, whether it's something that's going on with the weather, the health of the people around you. We've been through it now with COVID, but the consistency of reaching back out to patients that maybe have canceled, say they were sick or there was a snowstorm. So I taught my team to consistently re-market and re-reach out to the patients, which kept the funnel of the patients going and also kept the consistency of the care. So that was really important to us. It was super important for me to work carefully with my billing team. I have outside billing. I always have. I love that because I think that they are as motivated, if not more, to get the money that you deserve, that you've earned. And we would revisit things throughout the year. Maybe not in a systematic process like some people do something every month, every quarter, but it was always being done. And then to try to find ways to grow, not to be afraid to raise the prices. I would say I raise them very gently, but even little bits. Everything else was going up in price. So also that was important. And of course, to look at your costs. I love using a virtual assistant that I've had for three and a half years. I love mentoring pre-meds and pre-PAs. I think we get a mutual relationship out of it. And that helps have people that are super motivated to help you grow.

SPEAKER_01

The reason I want to unpack this is because a lot of times these are the things we run away from as physicians. So first of all, you start with have the goal, which would sound like, why would you say that? But the thing is, I have spoken to so many people who are running businesses and who have run them for years and they have no goals. And is the fear of then if I set the goal, especially if it's a stretch goal and I don't accomplish the goal, then I have to live with, you know, how bad I'll feel because of that. And so the solution is to not set goals, which you're like, I had a goal, right? I had a goal. And then two, looking at the numbers, which again is a place many physicians don't want to touch. The big leap you're looking for is found in the uncomfortable things that maybe you haven't wanted to do prior to this time. And so this is our invitation to say, you know, have the goal, look at the numbers. You heard us say consistency and marketing, reaching out to she said marketing and remarketing, right? Reach out to them again, get your patience and anticipate the ebbs and flows, meet with your billers, look at the numbers. And I like what you did with the cost and creating a two-way street. So I'm gonna bring in these people, I'm gonna mentor them and all of that, and they're gonna support me in my goal. So it's the true win-win situation. That is just brilliant. I love it. So, in this journey, when you think about it, when you set the goal, I'm sure there are some things that came up, like, okay, you're gonna need to start embracing these things, you know, because that's the goal you had. What are the things that, you know, in the beginning, maybe you were resistant to? Because a lot of times we come up with if I want to accomplish this, then I have to do this or become this or start thinking this way. You're like, ah, I don't want to do it. What came up for you?

SPEAKER_00

We're often resistant about increasing prices. That's a that's a big, big thing that happens as a physician. We often are resistant to, you know, trying to get our team collect for what we have earned because we feel that we should just give it away. And again, in my brain, I keep hearing we serve and we earn. And I think you're resistant to old ways. You know, you you think, oh, that won't work. I did that once. And I think that the discussions we've had along the way, they unsettle you a little bit. They push you to say, well, why wouldn't you change that? Why wouldn't you do it differently? I would say, for me, I get bursts of energy, I get tons done, and maybe I have lulls. It's I'm not gonna be a person who creates a spreadsheet and every 14 days is gonna have an analysis. So I would beat myself up about not being that person. And I think that the calls and that your approach was sort of to embrace like who you are, embrace it. That's not your way, but you are still making progress. So I think a lot of it seems to be the mindset that that was difficult to change. As physicians, we have a lot of negative mindset and we were not enough, that we could be more. And how did you do that error? Like, for example, last year at this time, there was so much positive energy. I had done a podcast with Dr. Mary Alice Mina. I was very nervous about it. For some reason, that small podcast hit 7,000 people and now is up to 26,000. Wow, no others have done that. We have no idea why. Well, that energy was rolling, and then we had made for more was being released, and I wanted to be part of that so much. So I moved everything in my schedule. I was seeing patients, I came on board in the middle of it to even speak. And so all this good was happening. And then I found out March 30th that somehow I had let my malpractice not paid it first time in 34 years. I had not paid another bill and another thing. So I went to start beating myself up. And then I was like, I went into just fix it mode, just fixed it, corrected it, and then asked my accountant to now be my accountability. partner with it. So I think the the difference is maybe things will still happen, but your resilience and your ability to think quickly will help you come out of that lull or that low faster.

SPEAKER_01

And this is why I brought you on the show. Because even from the three things you did to get to the million, those are all not three things you gave me like six things. These are all frogs. And then you talk about this piece of resistance and a lot of it yes is that identity is either I'm not enough, which for a good number of people is not even the I not enough is the second one you said, which I could be more. Right? Like I'm amazing but I could be more so now that cancels out the fact that I'm amazing. It is just so wild. It was nice to hear you talk about the trials and the triumphs happening at the same time. Right. You had the podcast that did really well you had the book launch you had all these things and you forgot to pay your malpractice. And I'm guessing there would have been a time when you know you'd beat yourself up like you know properly, okay? Like properly and all but you're like, okay, let's fix this. And the most exciting part is and let's put something in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. Right. With your accountability partner. So guys if you missed it, this is the way we start practicing handling challenges from now on. It happens and we sit in the discomfort of it and we're like, okay, how do we fix this? And how do we prevent that from happening again? That's kind of what what the doc did over here. This is good. Okay. Now you could have settled after you grew your practice and sold it to private equity. You did not you could have settled after you launched your practice and it was kind of you know cool and coasting along it and it would have been fine. You've grown it up to this point. You have a great team you have a great brand you have a great reputation the revenue milestone you wanted to hit, you hit it. So have you finally come to the place where you're going to settle or what's going on?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely not. Yeah now I'm in like I'm in over launching mode and all I can think of is I want to leave a legacy. And I can tell you exactly a turn two turning points this past year. One I can imagine myself walking around outside of the apartment I had to live in because we'd had a flood in our house and we're displaced for six months and talking to some of the team in our breakout session and saying, you know, what am I doing? I should just like be happy and be where I am and why do I need to grow and what am I trying to do to grow into the wellness and metabolic health space because I'm too old. So see that little that voice came back to me. And because of the encouragement at that group of four, all four of them said, no, I don't think so. I think you still have more to give and I revealed that I have this dream of also even working with one of my family members. And so they inspired me and they kind of lifted me up out of a very low point. You know you've been displaced from your home and you have all this extra thing to do and why don't you just like settle that I wasn't ready. And so into my life came when I interviewed I just put an ad out and found one physician who's interested in something similar in metabolic health, wellness weight loss and she's been a dream to get to know and we're just at the point of launching and now hopefully I will be signing a contract with this family member to be to join me. So it's super exciting because I feel like not only am I going to be mentoring within I'm going to be co-leading and this is a person that also started Dermutopia app with me in 2012 before they even went to medical school. So it's a beautiful full circle for me. And is there the fear? Yes of course there's fear there's fear will I stay well will we be able to do it but in my brain I'm not afraid of it failing. I'm afraid of not doing it. I'm really afraid of not pursuing it more than I am afraid of it failing.

SPEAKER_01

I'm not afraid of failing I'm afraid of not doing it. Have you always been like that? No so what do you think got you to this place right because most people who are afraid and they don't do something, they're not thinking about the opportunity cost. They're just thinking I'm afraid of failing so I won't do it. They're not thinking I'm afraid of failing so I won't do it which means it's not going to get done.

SPEAKER_00

How did this happen? I was much more driven just by process in the beginning. This is what you did to get good grades. This is how you got in medical school this is how you went through residency. Yes, I'm going to be somebody's partner I did not want to be an entrepreneur. But if you read my chapter you'll see that it was the tweaking and the threatening of integrity that would push me to the next level and I would get pushed to I would rather work at McDonald's than have this situation. That's kind of a dramatic thing to say it was a long time ago but my husband believed me when he heard it and we didn't have any money and we he didn't have a great salary job. But amazing things happened and I think along the way I've started to realize that there is more risk of not doing that that's the regret that you have. That being said I often will tell colleagues it's not always your time it's okay to have a very stable secure position and maybe in the back of your mind you're creating something because we need that in our family life, in our personal life maybe you have a parent to take care of but then to be open to the time when it's time to change.

SPEAKER_01

This is unbelievably amazing. And guys the book she was referring to is made for more she has a chapter in there. You can grab it on Amazon or anywhere you buy books phenomenal read of different doctors and their journeys in entrepreneurship. There are doctors who are at the cusp of making a decision to go further right and a number of them we get to talk to them because maybe they've thought about it, they've met doctors like you who've been in the entream business school and things like that. But they're afraid of the investment which as physicians maybe we're not necessarily exposed to that world right they're afraid of the investment will I have time to do this or they're afraid it worked for others. It worked for Dr. Dentman but I don't know if it will work for me. And I have answers to all those things right because I think about these things very deeply but what would you say say to that person?

SPEAKER_00

Well I totally agree. We were not trained to invest in ourselves. My husband had a coach he's always been part of groups where he was not afraid to pay money to learn. We think of it as oh we'll go and do go to a CME meeting and maybe we'll get some nuggets out of it. So I think the coaching world though has brought that concept to us like especially during COVID that there's there are better ways for us to learn and to learn in community is super important. The fear of the commitment yeah it's not going to just happen to you everything we've ever done nobody did it for us. Nobody studied for us nobody learned how to draw blood nobody learned to put that line in we all have to do it ourselves. So I think we have to keep remembering we've done hard things before we're doing the work anyway at work. So why not do it in the midst of a community where you can ask difficult questions you feel safe. It doesn't feel like a dumb question to ask and it feels like people are cheering you on. And I think that's the major difference.

SPEAKER_01

Major difference for me too when we started the OntraMD business school people are like no I don't want this I don't want the community I want one-on-one with you. I'm like such a compliment you haven't experienced this kind of community the second you do you get it right is just a beautiful beautiful thing to see. Now there are some people who would like to follow you to support you to find out more about what you do. Where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00

I'm on Instagram Dermatopia Dermatologist and I have a YouTube channel also Dermutopia which will be growing you can also go to my website which is Dermutopia and I'd love to interface with you because we are definitely growing and we're going to keep trying to work on things that are better to love the skin you're in to love you know yourself for patients to grow and feel like they're embraced by a community if not us that we will help you get to people that will help them. So that's our philosophy. I'd love to I'd love to be followed but it's so great Dr. Una I think the impact that everybody that's been in these communities has is is really going forward. And like I said before I feel the obligation to train the next generation and the next generation is watching us. They're scared they see a lot of things that are look difficult but when we show them a glimpse of how things can be or should be with patient care I think that speaks volumes and guys she is she's not just saying this Dr.

SPEAKER_01

Dent has always had medical students. We've watched her celebrate the ones who are going off to medical school and you've always supported people and even your team and even when I just watch you on social media I can tell the way you think about your team and the difference you make in their in their lives and that's fun. Do you have a story of a team member who has been impacted by your mentorship?

SPEAKER_00

Oh I've been so lucky I think we're on number 15 getting into either medical school PA school now I have a pre-med and a pre-nursing I love that so much. I think there are two really interesting stories one somebody that I felt I didn't know if I could mentor them. They helped me out when things were really low. I had lost my whole team of course there were only three but how would you like to wake up one day and you have no one so I asked this young woman to come work with me and she was almost done with college but a semester short. I thought I'm really going to have to tread lightly because she's not pre-med she's not pre-P she's got her own path I'm not sure what it is. And what was amazing is we started to read the book Eat That Frog and we met one time, two times not every month like I would have liked to and people set goals and I watched this person transform into a person who now worked out five days a week she changed her diet. She came on time she came early she took initiative and she started to have this relationship with the patients that they looked forward to seeing her. She'd helped me troubleshoot things and then one day she woke up about seven months ago and said hey I'm going back to college I'm going back to UVA and I'm going to finish so that felt like a strange situation because it was not direct mentoring but she was being mentoring mentored by the group the second program. That's what it is.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah you build a community at a group program.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah and the second was the young woman who had a lot of experience and had even worked in nutrition for two years but needed more direct clinical care to go to pre-med pre-PA she just kept engaging and engaging and leading and helping me with the social media and helping with create systems in the office which was very important and necessary for me. And one day she said you've ruined me I'm never going to be able to just work with anybody for someone I'm going to be an entrepreneur. She said I don't even know Dr. Una and she's ruined me and I said well that's a nice way to be ruined. And so it's so beautiful because she even said when I finish I want to come back and work with you. So that's another motivation I have if I can she's already made it through almost a year. So before I know it she'll be back. Wow there's a few beautiful stories just to see them grow and to also learn when a patient is talking I will say to them stop and listen to them. You're going to learn more from them than you do from me. You're having a masterclass right now they're not talking about skin they're talking about how they felt when they had their cardiac procedure or this or that or how uncomfortable they felt or how they weren't treated well or how they were treated well. I said listen because that's where you're going to learn the most important part of medicine. Wow.

SPEAKER_01

Wow and I mean like you have that many stories for all the people who worked with you because the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. That's amazing. I think we need to name this thing of team members working with you, going out doing their thing and coming back. We'll call them second generation team members like their legacy team members, you know? That is phenomenal phenomenal. I'm going to let you leave a last word here. And I just say this because I don't like what fear does to physicians in the sense of stopping them from saying yes to what could be extremely great. And that's the thing about entrepreneurship we don't know. We don't know what happens on the other side. There are many things I'm sure you could tell stories and stories of them that you're like I'm going to do this and I'm going to get you know I'm going to do X, I'm going to get Y results, but you also get ABC D EF, right? Like you get all these other things. And there's somebody who is still afraid of taking this next step, right? And you know the way we do it in EBS we we learn to do, right? We we learn to take action. And I want you to talk to that person who knows this is the path I need to go on.

SPEAKER_00

These are the next steps I need to take but I'm afraid do you mean to become an entrepreneur or to join the community?

SPEAKER_01

To go to their next level in entrepreneurship, right? So for somebody that may be a startup, for somebody else that may be on that goal to go two seven figures, for somebody else that may be a really a critical hire that is required for growth, whatever that next step is for them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's hard. I mean it really goes back to the Nike just do it because at some point you're never going to be able to figure it all out and figure out what are the 12 things I can do so it won't fail. Most of it I think is going to be your energy and your mindset. I keep coming back to that because I would say that is the biggest thing that has changed in me in the last three years of working with you is that I will be super energized. You get energized about we could do this or I could hire another physician. And then the brain starts to talk you out. And I think again watching other people do it is what helps you. Watching other people take those steps is what really helps you. And also kind of thinking what's the worst that could happen? You hire a doctor it doesn't work out they leave you reboot you do it again. And I think that's kind of how we have to live our life a lot of times we can't live always in prevention. We'd like to do preventative medicine all the time but every so often somebody just passes out right in front of you in the middle of your beautifully scheduled beautifully timed beautifully organized clinic. So isn't that the way our life always is in medicine we know that path so we don't have to be afraid to take that next step.

SPEAKER_01

That is a beautiful analogy I'm going to steal it I will give you credits but that is beautiful.

SPEAKER_00

And I think that's harder though for people who are super organized, super methodical to accept in a way it's better if you're not like that because I'm used to sort of pivoting and changing and regrouping and coming up with a new plan. And then I would beat myself up for not being methodical and having the monthly meeting with the staff. So you have to embrace your gifts and know that if your gift is to be methodical you're going to have to push yourself to go out of that comfort zone to be uncomfortable and try something new. Yeah that was me.

SPEAKER_01

I was like everything needs to be in a box and I tied up with a bow and my husband is the opposite like he would pivot the more impossible something was the more excited he got about it. I'm like oh my goodness I gonna kill my husband what is he doing right stuff like that. Being in communities and then watching him watching people like him helped me make that transition. So I still think in boxes but I allow the what ifs a lot of what ifs which is what entrepreneurship is all about. Like I'm in the middle of five big what ifs which it will look beautiful when we're done but my husband's like how was your day froggy froggy was a frog fest. I was just eating frogs all day doing uncomfortable things. So yeah man yeah this is this has been so good so good. If you are here watching and you're like man I want to take my business to the next level there is a community of elite physician entrepreneurs it's called the OntreeMD Business School. You can book a call with our team on traumd.com forward slash call. We don't do any high pressure anything is just to see is this the best next step for you. And we'd love to have you this is the community where you need to be we'd love to have you in the community so you can experience those, you can shift your mindset so you can get the strategy. So you can have a community that will support you when things get hard but you still need to keep moving because this will happen to everyone where you get to watch people doing in real time things that you can only imagine but they're doing it for fun. That's the community that's really the place for physician entrepreneurs so that's on trademd.com forward slash call. Dr. Dinsman, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you for doing this and I know like me, you have you know these five what ifs it may not be five but you have a number of what ifs going on it's probably more than five actually for you based on what you said. And I want you to know that we are rooting for you like relentlessly and I cannot wait to celebrate how this plays out because you've done the work you continue to do the work you have a beautiful growth mindset that is so fun to watch. And so I have my popcorn and I'm ready to watch the movie that's about to unfold.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you so much. And you know I'm always willing to help or listen to a fellow physician because without us helping others we're never going to get anywhere in this world. So I'm available to help you out too with or without you know spontaneity is fine with me.

SPEAKER_01

All right everyone make sure you subscribe to the podcast if you have not already share this episode with every doctor because we are on a mission to make seven figures the new floor where the new reality for physicians is they're building dream businesses and they're building their dream lives loss of autonomy burnout financial instability all of these things become things of the past you can say no to the status quo and we're saying that. All right we'll see you on the next episode

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