YouTube English auto-captions.

Hey guys, welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD, the podcast for physician and healthc care entrepreneurs. My name is Dr. Mike Wing. I am a 20 plus year physician entrepreneur.

I run a number of cash practices in the Southern California area, also involved in startups. I've developed coaching programs and online businesses. And today I'm going to talk about 10 reasons why physicians entrepreneurs absolutely need mentorship. And if you're watching this, I feel kind of awkward because I just got this microphone and I've been told that sometimes I get a little too quiet on the microphone.

It's difficult to hear. So I have it right in front of my face. So hopefully you guys can hear it. Okay, but thanks for those who reached out and given me this feedback.

So let's talk about why you need a mentorship. One of the things that I learned, especially with physicians, we think we know everything on there and it can be very difficult to actually ask people for help. But really, every entrepreneur needs to be able to ask people for help. You're not going to know everything on there.

Chat GPT is not going to give you the answers for everything. Case in point, when I launched my cashbased practice, my first location a few years ago, 13 years to be exact, and I rented in a space in area of town which didn't really attract new customers. I was spending money on equipment that I didn't need. And I remember spending on marketing $5,000 on a Valpack offer that attracted one patient who was just looking for free medical advice.

And I was so stressed out spending up to five figures a month to get this going. And then I realized is I have mentors along the place including one name Sarah who ran a series of weight loss clinics in Texas. And I said, you know, I need your help. She says, what's going on?

I went over the phone and I broke down. I told her everything. And she said, you know, this is often what physicians do is they try to figure out everything out on their own. Even though I had been a successful business mentor, there are things that she just reminded me that I needed to do and invited me to coat to Texas and was able to shadow her and her businesses and that me that these calls and the trip really saved my business round.

So that mentorship really helped. So today I want to share you 10 reasons why physicians absolutely need mentorship even if they don't know it. Number one is mentorship saves you from paying what I call the stupid tax. So what's the stupid tax?

where you're paying tuition that we often pay and the mentorship stops us from doing these avoidable mistakes. You know, spending thousands of dollars on the wrong EMR, spending tens of thousands of dollars on marketing agencies and don't give zero or less leads and why not just have a mentor who says I'm already using this EMR system. This is what works for me. It's not perfect and I could just skip to that one or I'm using this marketing company or I don't need to hire this marketing company.

Here are some marketing strategies that you learned. And again, these were things that I had even taught other clients how to do and I just forgot about it or didn't implement it. It didn't make sense. Like building a list, that's really important.

You I need to have whether it be a online business or brick-andmortar business is important to remember the fundamentals. And you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on expensive marketing the first year. It could be just building relationships with five other businesses in the area. where the mouth, you know, is often one of the best sources of leads of or potential patients coming in with you.

So that saved me tens of thousands of dollars. So it saves you from paying that stupid tax. Number two is a mentor compresses time just like a well-run rounds. Remember rounds, right?

Think of a mentor is like your entrepreneurial senior resident. You know, I remember spending time and time again on like pricing and changing it three different times. I overcharging it whereas was I, you know, scaring away people because of the pricing. Was I undercharging it too?

And Sarah just gave me a simple formula and like overhead just like double the amount that is costing you to do that on it. And again, it was a 15-minute conversation. It me months of time spinning my wheels on in there. Another important bit of advice is you can't just research everything.

You just end up procrastinating. when I was trying to hire an MA. I wanted to find the perfect MA. Sometimes you just need to get out there, write the job description, conduct the interview with a few candidates, start them on a trial, and the ones that stick, hire them, and that was the best decision.

A lot of times, we don't like to spend a lot of money. I get that on there, but hiring somebody, you shouldn't be doing tasks that you could hire a medical assistant who's doing it at a fraction of what it would cost you. What's the best use of your time on in there? So it really helps compress all that time and the time you've wasted and you know instead of spending five years doing trial and error, you can spend five months on focused action.

Number three is a mentor diagnoses your blind spots. It's always good to have somebody else look to see the mistakes that you're doing. I play pickle ball quite a bit and I have a coach on there and I think that I'm playing well, but sometimes the coach we record some of our games and they say they make me look at like all these mistakes that I'm making and as a physician you're great at diagnosing patients but you might not be great at diagnosing yourself, you know.

So I found things like I was undercharging my market. I just want to be starting out. I just want to be accessible. I didn't want to seem greasy.

But you know, Sarah told me I'm undercharging it and it's hurting your business and it's like making me less credible by offering these super low prices. It's not making me accessible at all. So that was a blind spot that I learned and you know I had to learn to value my time and my time is worth it's important on there and not every patient is going to be your patient.

It was just about a volume game. Some aren't ready and it's okay to say no. So what happens? We raise our prices.

Patient satisfaction went up. stress became down and our outcomes improved. Number four is accountability is the antidote for that entrepreneurial drift. Just like you, I suffer from shiny object syndrome.

I want to go to the next thing. I want to do tele medicine. I want to do medical writing. I want to create more courses.

I want to start a podcast. So, I had a lot of these half-finish projects. So, a mentor really kind of steers you into the right direction. I had another mentor that I would meet with regularly and I would talk about, you know, what did I do?

What? Why did I do that? Here's another way that I've done it. And they've already had another mentor who had had years of experience running successful businesses in my maybe not exactly in my area, but in the health space on there and talked about how to create a signature program and it just saved me so much time and she made me accountable and says like, "Okay, you need to do your profit and loss for the year and I want to discuss it over the next two weeks." So, she gave me a goal that I needed to hit.

It wasn't the IRS giving me a goal. It was my mentor who's giving me a goal. And those deadlines really changed everything. Number five, mentors can help you with that emotional support because entrepreneurship can get really messy.

Hey, it would be great if from day one our revenue increases every time each month and we're bitting all these records. It can happen, but it doesn't usually happen on there. You're going to have your ups and downs is like I always say on here, you're going to have seasonal variation. I wasn't aware that there was seasonal variation, but it makes sense, especially a lot of weight loss.

People don't want to lose a lot of weight during the holidays on in there. Sometimes you need an emotional support. You're going to get a bad review. It's going to happen on there.

You couldn't sleep. You keep rereading it on there. But my mentor said, you know, you can't make everybody happy. You just try to do the best that you can.

But if you got one negative review after like 30 or 40, that's pretty good. So, she's already been there. She's already been through the war. And so, that helps me with my support.

And it really just helps define my fears, what what's real or what's imagined on there. So the sixth important reason is is a mentors give you real world a playbook that seeming is never going to teach. They're going to tell you know this is what happens. What do you do when the patient is angry or they've been on hold?

Do you take it responsibility? Do you blame it on your staff? You know they've been through all of that stuff. So where do you want to price yourselves?

You know my mentor says try to price yourself in the top 25% of the market. Sure you're going to lose price sensitive patients but that's good because they're often the most demanding on here. So people who value quality become the raving fans. So don't compete on price, compete on value, compete on great service.

And that really changed my business model and income. So that can be very very integral and again seeing he's not going to teach you any of that. Number seven is mentorship expands your network instantly because they have other clients and they'll say like hey you know I know someone who runs a network of urgent carers in your area. Let me introduce you to them.

and just sends one email. Whereas before, maybe I'm trying to do cold calling them or sending business cards or inviting them unannounced. That's very awkward on there. But if you got a mentor, they may have bigger connections than you have or stronger connections that you have that you don't have on in there.

They also introduce me to like their network. Hey, this is the attorney that I'm using. This is the accountant that I'm using. Here's a business coach that I personally hired that I think you could benefit from here.

So I got my network instantly because instead of building in contact and contact every years, I just went through a mentor who made these endorsed network meetings that really saved me so much time and got me into the door. Number eight as a mentorship can prevent burnout because it what she taught me was have a business that serves you. And in my business except for like very very specific procedures, I wanted to make my re replaceable.

So if I wasn't be able to make it, my nurse practitioner, my physician and assistant could take over on in there. She told me about entrepreneurship will give me more freedom and I felt like I was having less and so you know she's saying if I got hit by a bus tomorrow would my business survive and at the time I said no you don't have a business you really just have a job. So over time, we discussed about hiring more VAS, implementing systems, setting boundaries.

For example, a patient can't contact you over a certain amount of time, cutting my clinical hours to now what I'm doing like a half day a week where I was doing five to six days a week on in there. Help me get my life back on here. Number nine reason why a physician needs a mentor is that you can help get borrow their confidence when you're still building your own.

Sometimes people say you make it, you fake it till you make it on here. to which he told which Sarah told me is you don't need to be successful to add value just by you just need to be a few steps ahead you're not claiming to be like a guru you're just sharing what you're learning so sometimes you have that imposttor syndrome that can overcome your beliefs and what a mentor does is help bridge that confidence when you're really really frantic helps you become your confidence they can become your stabilizer and you can borrow from that confidence and it makes you more confident on then there so again can be very integral when you're establishing yourself you want People know you, like you, and trust you, but maybe you just don't have that confidence just there. A mentor can help pull you along the way.

And then finally, mentors help you staying ethical and patient centered while scaling on in there. Of course, we all want to make as much money we can. Sometimes we can cut corners under there. So, it's always can be a grounding influence on someone who like you're saying, it's important to support your patients, support your clients, just do the best that you can.

Try to overwhelm them if you can. and in there because you're going to have a lot of different opportunities. There could be opportunity to cut corners. Having that mentor as a stabilizing force was so integral to my success.

So those are 10 reasons why physicians, specifically physician entrepreneurs need mentorship. I think it's an absolute necessity. Again, Sarah was just a friend who was really very helpful and just wanted to see me build. And there mentors around the place.

There's probably someone who's doing what you've done five or 10 years ago or even a year ago. Reach out to them if you can. So specific action steps I recommend is identify like let's narrow it down like three physicians who are two to three years ahead of you. You want to get to where they want.

Reach out to them. See what you can do to whether it be I often recommend this paid consultation on in there. Sometimes you don't want to just come in out of the blue and say, "Hey, give me free advice." People certainly turn people the wrong way. It certainly turned to me the wrong way on in there.

But find those mentors that are out there. And again, I'd be happy to be your mentor. If you're looking to do these kind of things, just drop me a line at bootstrapmd.com. See where you are in your business and maybe we can do something that can help you to live your life with purpose, to help you build autonomy, to live the life that you deserve on there.

Hope you like this. If you did, feel free to share this with others and also subscribe to my podcast. I'm always looking to get new visitors, new viewers, new people who just talking about this kind of stuff because again, physicians don't really talk about a lot of these different things. So, you're in a safe space here at Bootstrap MD.

Remember, as an entrepreneur, you're going to have your ups and your downs. Do something a little each day to get you closer to your goals and keep moving forward.