Transcript

YouTube English auto-captions.

Most physicians are sitting on a goldmine and they don't even know it. You've got years of expertise. You've got patient lessons that you've learned the hard way. You have opinions that actually help people. But here's the problem. Unless somebody is physically in the exam room with you, they've never heard a word of it. So, think about that. Your influence, your actual hard-won 20 years of medicine influence is trapped inside your clinical schedule. It clocks out when you do. Now, I'm not here to tell you every physician needs a podcast. In fact, some of you shouldn't be anywhere near a microphone and you know who you are. But I've come to believe something and that's what this whole episode is about. And I want you to write this one thing down because it's the only thing that I really need you to remember today. The best time to build leverage is before you're desperate for it. Before you need the brand, before you need the exit, before you need that referral engine or building that second income stream, or the off-ramp from a job that's grinding you down. The best time to build that stuff is when you don't need it yet. And that's the whole game. Now, full disclosure, I run a company. We have a network of physician podcasters. So, yeah, I've got skin in this, which is exactly why I want to be straight with you about who this is for and who is it not for, and what a podcast can realistically do for you, and what it can't. So, stick around.

So, if you don't know who I am, my name is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. This is Bootstrap MD, the podcast for physician and healthcare entrepreneurs. I built and sold a couple of seven-figure healthcare companies and believe me, I made a pile of expensive mistakes along the way. And these days, I spend some of my time helping doctors build something that gives them freedom instead of burnout. And one of the things that I've watched change everything for the right physician is having your own platform, your own room, your own audience. So, I want to make the honest case for that. So, this is for you. It's for the physician who's got a niche and probably even more importantly has a point of view, who's sat in clinic, answered the same question for the 30th time that week, and thought, "You know, I think more people need to hear this. I've got something to say. I just have no way to say it at scale." This is for the doctor who wants more than trading hours for dollars until they retire or burn out, whichever comes first. And honestly, it's especially for the physician who doesn't need any of this urgently yet. Because say this with me, the best time to build leverage is before you're desperate for it. If you're comfortable right now, then good. That's exactly when you should be building. So, if that's you, stay with me. If it's not, no hard feelings. I'll tell you later who this really isn't for.

So, let me start with one benefit that nobody else will promise you honestly because it's the one that most people get wrong. A podcast can actually pay you money. Now, I'm not talking about vanity content. I'm not talking about doing it for the ego hit of seeing your face on a thumbnail. I'm talking about real money. So, when a physician's got a defined niche and a genuinely valuable audience, sponsorship and business opportunities get a lot more realistic than most doctors think. At the Doctor Podcast Network, we actually have sponsors coming to us looking for doctors because that is the audience that they're looking to get in front of, and they pay rather well. And here's the part that I really want you to understand because it's where everybody's intuition is wrong. You don't need to have huge download numbers. It's not about going viral. It's that the fact that if you have a podcast that caters to a physician audience, that is a premium audience. So, think about who listens to a doctor show. You have engaged people, you have high trust, many of them have high income, decision-makers about their own health and their families. Sponsors will pay real money to get in front of that listener, way more per listener than some giant entertainment podcast with a million of bored teenagers. A small, defined, valuable audience beats a big, generic one every single time. So, we have hosts in our network that are pulling real advertising dollars for their shows. Now, I'm not going to throw a number up on a slide. None of that is confidential, you have to join our network to find out more, but it's real money from real sponsors going to physicians for talking about what they already know. And here's the honest framing. In a physician network with the right audience and the right sponsor fit, monetization goes from fantasy to real possibility. It's not guaranteed, not overnight, but it is real. And that's my one caveat, and I'm going to say it once so I don't talk you out of your own future. It's not automatic and it's not instant.

All right. Let's move on. Because the money is not even my favorite part of this. Second benefit, it builds career optionality, and I think this is the big one. And this is the part that if you're anything like the doctors I talk to all day, it's going to hit closest to home. A platform that's yours is leverage. It's a plan B that isn't simply quit medicine and hope. And let me say what a lot of you are feeling, but maybe you haven't said out loud. A lot of physicians these days feel boxed in. Not because they're not smart enough, not because they don't have value, but because every bit of their income, their identity, their schedule is tied to one thing. Showing up to the clinic and trading their hours for money. And if that ever stops, an injury, burnout, a contract that goes sideways, you're just being done, there's no other engine running. But a podcast can be that other engine. It's one of the lowest risk ways I know to build a voice, a network, and an off-ramp while you keep practicing. You don't have to bet the house. You don't have to quit anything. You just start building the thing on the side quietly before you need it. And optionality, that word isn't always about leaving medicine. Sometimes it's about having more ways to be in medicine. More ways to teach, to consult, to speak, to advise a company, to invest, to partner. None of which depends on you being physically in a room with one patient at a time. And so that's really honest version for me. Having my own podcast gave me a platform that gave me more opportunities and it puts me in front of people I never would have met otherwise. Before I had a platform, I had ideas. But after I had a podcast, people had a way to find those ideas and that changed what was even possible for me.

Now, if this is landing for you, a quick thing, we've built a free 2-minute podcast readiness self-check. It just tells you straight whether this is even worth your time. It's just a few minutes. You can go and find the link in the show notes or let me just tell you right now. Go to doctorpodcastnetwork.co, not .com. doctorpodcastnetwork.co/readiness. That's all in lowercase. Podcast readiness. So, let's finish the podcast and you can get to it and it sign up and it'll be in your email.

Okay. Here's the third benefit. A podcast lets people hear how you think before they even met you. And that's a bigger deal than it sounds over time. And I mean over time, this is just having one episode thing, you stop being just, quote, a cardiologist or just, quote, an endocrinologist or just, quote, a surgeon. You become the one known for a specific problem, a specific kind of patient, a specific point of view. And that compounds in every direction. Patients hear you thinking and show up already trusting you. Peers learn exactly what your niche is. Referral sources finally know what to send you and what not to. Event organizers know what you speak about. Partners and media can actually see a body of work, not just a CV. Now, none of that happens because of one Brain episode. It happens because episode after episode, you're building a public record of your expertise. That record is the asset. It just sits there. It's working while you're doing other things.

Now, the fourth benefit, it opens doors you can't open otherwise. Podcast opens doors you simply can't open any other way. And here's why. I think the interview format changes the ask completely. So, think about it. If I email somebody I admire and say, "Hey, can I pick your brain for 30 minutes?" That's a favor. They're probably going to ignore that email, right? But if I say, "Hey, I'd love to feature your work on my show and have a conversation my audience will benefit from." Hmm. That's a completely different invitation. Now I'm offering something. Now I'm giving them a room and an audience. People say yes to that who never say yes to just, "Hey, let's pick your brain." And I've got a few examples. Dr. Ann Hwang, founder of Doctor Boss, found my show as a listener. I had her on. We recorded an episode. And then I I said, "Let's have you on again. We just have a great conversation." Click, that conversation eventually led to a business partnership. So, we're partners now. But it started by she was listening to me. There's no version of a cold email where that happened. Another instance was I was involved with selling part of my company. They did their due diligence by actually listening to my episodes. They had told me that that further. They like what I had to talk about. They liked my thinking and that actually led to that business proposal. Now, this isn't some vague doors will open nonsense because I don't want to give you a vague version. This is These are exactly things that happened to me in my life.

All right. Now, I've been doing this long enough to know exactly what some of you are thinking right now. So, let me just say it for you and deal with it. Let's talk about objections. Uh cuz I get this all the time at the Doctor Podcast Network listeners to my show. Like, I don't have the time. And I hear you. And here's the truth. You don't need to produce a weekly masterpiece. The doctor who makes this work keep the format simple. Often times they batch the recordings, and they hand it off to production. That's what our company does. They might spend an afternoon a month, maybe a few afternoons. Done right, that can become several episodes. The editing, the publishing, the sponsorship outreach, this is exactly what our stuff that our our network takes off your plate. And the grind that makes people quit, you hand it to somebody else. Number two. Oh, I don't know. It kind of feels self-promotional, kind of cringe. It only does it if you treat it like a performance. And I think the better way to frame this and this is how I actually think about it is service. You're answering the questions you're already answering in clinic. You're teaching the lessons you already teach. It's about education. Most doctors, we love to be educators. You're just making your thinking available to more than one person at a time. That's not bragging, that's leverage. That's generosity with a microphone in front of it. And number three, and again, you may not intrinsically think about this, but it is a question that I hear. They might not say it out loud. It's like, who am I to do this? Almost every physician who ever started feels that same way. Everyone. Here's the reframe. Authority isn't the thing you need before you start. Authority is the thing you get from showing up consistently around something you actually care about. You don't wait until you're till you're the expert to start the show. The show is part of how you become the expert.

All right. As I promised, let me tell you who this is not for because I'd rather lose you here than waste your time. You A podcast is not for someone who is trying to chase viral fame. If you want overnight money, if you're looking for a shortcut to become internet famous, a podcast isn't that. I'm not going to sell you that because it's not real. Podcasting rewards consistency, rewards specificity, and it rewards patience. I know those words can be boring, but that's the actual deal. But, if you got a real point of view, a real niche, and that instinct in your gut to build some leverage before you actually need it, then I think you should take this seriously, like actual seriously.

So, I want to leave you with this. The question isn't, shouldn't every physician start a podcast? We already settled this. The answer is no, but I think the better question is the one worth actually answering is, do I have the ingredients that would make this worth pursuing for me? And that's exactly why we built this podcast readiness self-check. It looks at the things that actually matter before you start, your topic, your audience, your time, your niche, your business goals, and it tells you honestly whether podcasting is a smart next move for you right now, or whether it's something maybe you need to revisit down the road. And listen, either answer is useful, okay? So, go to this website, drpodcastnetwork.co/podreadiness. again in the show notes. All right. So, if you always thought is podcast ready for you, that's the place to go. All right. So, this show is the reason my expertise didn't just stick stay stuck in exam room. It's how I met people I would have never crossed path with, found opportunities I wouldn't have found, and built a career that doesn't live or die by my clinic schedule. Look, you already have the expertise, you're already there. You've already done the hard part, which is becoming good at this. The real question left is whether all that stays trapped inside your clinical schedule or whether you build something that carries that further than the next appointment. And the best time to build that is you already know it's before you need this. So, if you want to find out whether this makes sense for you, go to doctorpodcastnetwork.co/podcastreadiness. Again, we put it in the show notes. Guys, as a physician entrepreneurs, 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.