coach Archives - NonClinical Physicians

See Her Massive Professional Rebirth From Intensivist To Coach – A PNC Classic from 2020

John Jurica — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 13:20:22 +0000

Interview with Dr. Jessie Benson – 401

In this week's PNC Podcast episode, John presents his conversation with Dr. Jessie Benson, who describes her transition from critical care specialist and intensivist to coach. During her journey, she became a homesteader, musician, and professional artist after practicing anesthesiology and critical care medicine for 10 years.

Jessie received her medical degree from West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine. She then completed an anesthesia residency at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a critical care fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic.

Jessie spent the first 3 decades of her life chasing achievement and approval. Her life was marked by perfectionism and a fear of failure and rejection. Through dedicated self-work, she broke free from this way of thinking. That's when she really started living.

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A Coach, Musician, and Professional Artist

After practicing anesthesiology and critical care medicine for nearly a decade, Jessie took a leap of faith in 2014. She left medicine to build the life of her dreams.

She now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia on 5 ½ acres of heaven. Jessie’s days are filled with doing what she loves. She works with life coach clients. She creates and sells her beeswax and oil paintings as a professional artist. And since building her house, she now lives the life of a homesteader each day.

I just knew it wasn't the life for me, and so I decided I wanted to have a different life and that's what I do now.

In addition to developing her artistic impulses, she brought music back into her life. She began playing the cello, sometimes performing for others.

Shifting from Intensivist to Coach

Jessie has steadily grown her coaching practice to a vibrant one. In addition to meeting with her one-on-one clients weekly, Jessie leads workshops and retreats. The culmination of this work is her Brave Is Beautiful Circle, a year-long immersion program helping women connect with their authenticity and creativity and “find their brave.”

Jessie's Journey Didn't Stop There

Art and music weren't all that Jessie fell in love with. In preparation for her transition, Jessie completed yoga and meditation training and certification. Then, she traveled around the U.S. in an RV, hiking in many state and national parks. This helped her to select a location to settle down and begin her new life.

After her traveling journey, she started her life coaching practice. In her practice, she focuses on what she calls barrier beliefs. These are the obstacles to moving forward productively. Ultimately, that led her to develop her year-long coaching program. In it, she integrates much of what she has learned over the past several years. Now, she is super excited about her Brave is Beautiful Circle program.

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jessie Benson discusses why there is hope that each of us can find a more balanced life. Since leaving medicine, she now spends her time as a life coach, musician, homesteader, and professional artist. She now loves her life. And she encourages all of us to follow our own path to a more balanced and authentic life, whether in medicine or not. But it requires effort and commitment, and sometimes some coaching.

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 401

See Her Massive Professional Rebirth From Intensivist To Coach - A PNC Classic from 2020

- Interview with Dr. Jessie Benson

John: Dr. Jessie Benson, life coach, artist, and homesteader. Welcome to the PNC podcast.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Thank you, John.

John: This is going to be fun.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yes. I'm very much looking forward to it. I've been excited all week.

John: You know, my audience just loves hearing stories about physicians who have successfully transitioned to whatever it is they transitioned to. So just to give a little preview for the listeners, we're going to hear about homesteading today, we're going to hear about art today, we're going to hear about coaching and some other things in between. So that's why I knew I had to get you here and really get into some of these topics.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Well, I'm very much looking forward to sharing my journey because it has been so much fun.

John: The other thing I like to share with people when I have guests on here is inspiration and hope. Just from what little I know about you, I get the feeling that you really enjoy what you're doing, you feel very balanced. You're doing different things, and to the extent that there were things in the past, maybe, that weren't so great ... which I don't know anything about, but it just sounds like you where you are now is fantastic. So we're definitely going to want to hear what led to your transition, because you are a physician. You're still a physician. Obviously, we're always physicians, but you're not doing medicine anymore and so this is going to be good.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yes. I definitely love my life a lot more than what I call my medicine years, for sure.

John: Okay. Well then, without any further ado, then why don't you tell us about that? You were practicing for almost 10 years, and maybe just give us a little snapshot of what was going on and what prompted you to transition to what you're doing now.

Dr. Jessie Benson: So I practiced anesthesiology and critical care medicine. I was board certified in both and I did practice both, and I had been caught up in this cycle of chasing approval and achievement year after year, and my thing was A's. So chasing A's through grade school, high school, college, and so when the adults in my life said, "Go to medical school," seeking approval, I said, "Okay," and so I went full force. I was first in my med school class. I was best fellow at Cleveland Clinic, and eventually about 10 years ago, I realized that that life of approval and achievement was empty and I wasn't really enjoying it. I loved helping people, but the life ... I just knew it wasn't the life for me, and so I decided I wanted to have a different life and that's what I do now, and it wasn't just that easy. I had to overcome a couple of things. One of them was perfectionism and one of them was fear of rejection and failure. And so 10 years ago I was able to make a lot of progress in those areas and that's when my new journey began.

John: So I think we want to kind of get a kind of picture of how that looked. Some people ... I've had the occasional guests tell me, "Well, I just stopped doing what I was doing and just took six months off or a year off to figure it out." Others said, "I did a lot of soul searching and really a lot of research before I decided to leave medicine and I kind of tapered off and then converted and did something else and then something else, and now I'm where I am now." So kind of walk us through how you actually made that ... what were those kind of steps in between?

Dr. Jessie Benson: So mine was about a four year journey from ... from that moment 10 years ago, when I really decided to start having a good life, when I decided to start doing what I love, and that became art, that became music. I picked up playing cello. That became sprint triathlons. It became anything I wanted to do because I no longer only did things I thought I was going to "Get an A in." I actually started following my heart and doing things for fun, and so that was maybe 2011, '12, '13, '14. I became a professional artist. I was selling my art in galleries and at shows. I was playing cello professionally with a guitarist, and I just looked at my life in early 2014 and I said, "Medicine is keeping me from the things I love." I couldn't schedule concerts. I couldn't commit to shows because we had to pick our vacation a year in advance.

And the schedule wasn't good for me and neither was the mental and emotional drain on me, and so I paid off my $250,000 med school debt in March of '14, and so that was really the last string tying me to the career, because I knew I really needed to pay that debt off before I left to do something different, and I did, and then three months later, July 4th weekend in '14, I gave a six months notice to my practice and enrolled in life coach school because I had learned about it and realized, this is what I want to do. I want to work with people, helping them create lives that they love, and so I finished. My last night was December, 2014 in the ICU. I actually brought my cello and played for the nurses and the respiratory therapists and the patients. So it was a really wonderful last night of being on shift as a physician, and since then, I haven't looked back. People say, "Do you regret it?" Not many, no doctor, but other people will say, "Do you regret it?" And I say, "Absolutely not. I am truly living the life of my dreams and it gets better every day."

John: How did you get exposure to the life coaching? Where did that come up?

Dr. Jessie Benson: So I was reading an article when I was still full blown in medicine and it talked about what they do, and I realized, this is what I do for people. I listen to them. I inspire them. They come back six months later and say, "That thing you said that time in the locker room, I want you to know the difference it made in my life," and I realized that I could actually do that for living, not just in the locker room between cases. I could actually dedicate my full life to those moments with my clients, and so I researched schools and I picked one that was one of the original ones, and it was in Florida and then virtual, and I enrolled and actually started before I even finished medicine. I started in '14 while I was still practicing, my training.

John: All right. Yeah, one of the things I think several of us on the podcast have remarked on over the years is that one of the things about coaching is it kind of has all the good stuff that you do as a physician or a clinician and none of the bad stuff, the long call and the long hours and frequent call and what have you.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Absolutely, and I tell people, I get to help people, but I don't have to worry about life and death. Because as an anesthesiologist, responding to codes, responding to airway calls on the floor, taking care of patients in the ICU, that threat of death, even in a routine case, was ever present, and it weared on me, and now I get to help people feel better and I don't have to stress about that.

John: No, I think we forget that some ... I mean, I've talked to physicians that they don't even realize how stressed out they are because of those kinds of minute by minute decisions. Some are life and death, some it's just onerous, just paperwork that never ends and knowing that if you don't do it, it's going to be sitting there tomorrow and someone's going to be unhappy. I mean, all these things just are there and we kind of take it for granted, but if you step back and think about it, it can be quite painful and not even know it, and it's good that we realize it and decide how we're going to do something to change. Now some people can adapt and they love it. They love the intensity and they love the decision making like that, but I feel like most physicians, in 10 or 20 years, they're kind of worn out and need to do something else, but some of us learn that quicker than others, but we still need good physicians out there, don't get me wrong.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Please, don't all leave. But yes, for me, this is a more relaxed quality of life for sure.

John: And I think we're all entitled to that, and as I've said before, I mean I think all physicians are sort of part of one big family and we want each other to have great lives. So we're going to come back to the coaching later, but I want to talk about these other things that are interesting to me and I think to the listeners. So I want to hear about how you develop this whole interest in art, and maybe throw in your music, and then also this concept of homesteading. So you can go wherever you want with this.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Okay. Well I will go in chronological order.

John: Okay.

Dr. Jessie Benson: So art, I always enjoyed art and I always appreciated others' art, and even would support other artists by buying their work, but when I was still in that perfectionistic, A seeking mode, I just was unwilling to try. I wasn't willing to try anything, even if I thought it would be fun, because I was afraid I would fail, and I didn't feel like I could endure what I considered failure. So when that lifted, about 10 years ago, I just went and tried every art that I could. I tried charcoal and watercolor and oil paint and acrylic and sculpture and clay, and I loved all of them. And then one day I was at an art show and saw an artist who made her paintings out of beeswax, and I said, "What is this surface?"

And she said, "It's encaustic, it's beeswax," and so I went and bought everything. This is still while I was a physician in practice, and set up a place in my house for my home studio and just started creating. I bought two books and I did everything in those two books, and nothing looked like I wanted it to look. I wanted fine detail, and so the idea came to me for the technique that I do now, which is an original technique, and this is where I melt these wax and paint it on a board, and then with a very fine tool, I carved intricate nature drawing. So bird's nests or birds or trees, and then it's still just the wax, that light colored wax, and then I oil paint my lines and then the drawing comes to life and then seal it. And so in '13, that inspiration came to me and that's what I've been making and selling since.

John: Yeah. So, and we're talking about the art now. You have a website specifically for your art, is that correct?

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yes. It's my name, Jessie Benson Fine Art. So jessiebensonfineart.com, and I'm actually having a show ... I have occasional shows. You can kind of check back in and see virtual shows that I have yet, but I do a lot of commissions, actually, which are custom pieces. Someone might have me make one to honor a sister's wedding or the passing of a loved one. So a lot of my work is custom.

John: How do people find out about that? I mean, how do you develop clients in that particular part of your ongoing career?

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yes. So a major part that people find out about me is I was doing shows across the Eastern US, like Florida all the way up to Pennsylvania, and weekend shows that you might see in your own town, where artists set up booths for the weekend, and I gained a lot of exposure that way. And I still have people who will email me years later and say, "I saw you at this show. Will you make me a piece?" Or, "What do you have right now that you're selling?" And so that's a main way, and then I'm in galleries, and so folks will go into galleries, they'll see my work and they may not see something that they want there, or even if they do, then they'll get my contact info and email me for a custom piece.

John: All right. Well, somebody might track you down just for your advice on how to expand their art exposure.

Dr. Jessie Benson: I absolutely will help, because there are definitely tips, for sure.

John: All right. Well, I'll put the link to that website in the show notes. We have some others to talk about. So to go from there, chronologically then, the other things.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yes. So then the next thing was cello. It was really just music in general, but especially cello, which is the instrument that I've actually trained on. Again, loved music my whole life, but unwilling to try. The story of my life up until 10 years ago, and then I was at a music festival with my friend and she saw her friend playing cello and I said, "Oh gosh, can I try your cello?" And he said, "Sure," and as soon as I touched that instrument, I knew that I would do cello. Everything in me said, "You are going to play cello," and so I went right away ... I was still a physician then, practicing. I went and rented a cello from the local string shop, and within six weeks I had already found a teacher, was dedicated and decided to buy my own cello, which is a substantial investment, and went with my cello teacher, picked it out. My cello's name is Grace, and just love playing cello. I've played at shows and I play on my own and house concerts. So cello's a big part of my life only because I was willing to try.

John: Now do you have people you that you tend to play with or do things with other than your own ... you said, I think maybe before we started the episode, the interview here about maybe doing something with a guitarist or something else?

Dr. Jessie Benson: When I was in Raleigh, which is where I lived, I knew a lot of people who would play music, and I would duet with any instrument that would be willing to duet with me. So I have played duets with trombone, with banjo, a female banjo player that was a vocalist, with guitar, with piano. I was basically in this place of anybody, let's play together. Yes, so definitely I duet with people, and then also just play at home for myself.

John: Yeah. We definitely need to practice for sure, but it's fun to ... it's just playing. I play the guitar poorly, but playing is just fun. It's just something you just want to do and could probably spend hours, depending on your mood and all that.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Absolutely. I love to play outside when it's raining. When I'm covered to play during the rain, just it's a beautiful. It's a wonderful experience to share, playing music.

John: Well, I do talk about sometimes doing the bluegrass thing on my guitar. Now, guitar players and bluegrass are a dime a dozen. So what I always encourage people ... Anyone in the Chicago area that plays banjo that's listening to the podcast, get in touch with me because I could really use someone like a banjo player or a mandolin player or a fiddle player for that, any of the above.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Banjo is such a wonderful instrument to duet with, for sure.

John: Yeah. That's great. Okay, so we're going down this path. So you're getting into the cello after starting your art. You're doing both of those things and he thought, "Well, I don't have enough things to be interested in," so what's the next thing?

Dr. Jessie Benson: So I fell in love with both of those things, art and music before my last night that I described in 2014, and then in '15, I got my yoga teacher training, meditation teacher training, life coach training and certification, and then when all that was finished in late '15, I went on an eight month trip around the US in an RV, hiking many state and national parks, and at the end of that, after looking at many different communities, wondering if this is where I want to spend the rest of my current life, and I decided I wanted to settle in a little place I'd heard about called Floyd, Virginia, and I went to college at Radford University, which is in Virginia, and Floyd had this reputation for being the sweet little arts and music town. I never visited, but it stuck in my mind, because 20 years later I pulled that 40 foot RV up into a nearby town and went and explored Floyd and said, "Okay, this is where I want to live."

And so three weeks later made an offer on property and two weeks later owned it, and that's when my homesteading journey began, and what homesteading essentially means ... and I actually call myself a hybrid homesteader, but what homesteading means is to essentially try to do as much as you can for yourself. So it's this idea of reliance, and so what that looks like in my version of homesteading is the biggest project has been designing and helping build my house, and so when I got this land, it was basically land and a pond and a well, and now it's my dream home, my art studio, and still the pond, which is beautiful, with a half built dock, which is not finished yet, because that's what homestead life is, just a series of projects in different states of completion, and all of that took work. So just from designing my house on a piece of paper with a pencil, to getting the building permit, to meeting with the engineer to confirm the framing plan.

I had to learn building code. I had to learn so many things, and my cousin is a builder and he led the way and I helped with so much of it, and that's what homesteading is. So that's the house, and then for me, it's also growing my own food. I try to grow as much of my food as I can, and then I do things like bake all my own bread, make my own pizza crust, which is my personal favorite, and then just tend the land. Need cut down, trees need cut off around the edge of the pond. Just land takes constant maintenance, and homesteading is doing that maintenance as much as I can myself, and it's fun.

John: Okay. That's awesome. Now this is what happens typically, because I'm an introvert and when thinking about questions as you're talking, I have to go back, and my guests hate this when I do it, but you had gotten really involved in yoga, the coaching and meditation certifications, I think and those things, then you went on the RV trip. So was the RV trip mainly to look around geographically? How much of the planning for what you were going to do occurred ... well I'm assuming it did during that process as well. You were kind of figuring out how to put those things together?

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yes. So the main reason ... although in the back of my mind, I was thinking, "Well, I might find a neat community," because I did downsize my belongings when I left and I did put my house on the market. So what I knew was I'm not going to live in Raleigh anymore and that was it. I'm going to be a life coach. I'm going to keep doing art and music. I'm not going to live in Raleigh, and then it was blank slate from that point on, and so as I traveled those eight months, it was mostly just to have fun. I had been in this regimented, constricted environment, as much as any employee ship is, and I just wanted to be free. I just wanted to see the country. I just wanted to feel what it felt like to hike a new place every two or three days, to wake up and see new scenery. I just really wanted that, and so, yes, I was considering a community, but more, I just wanted to have fun and have an adventure.

John: Now, one of the things that some of the physicians on the podcast talk about is this feeling, kind of this pressure they get from their families or friends or people like, "Well, what are you talking about?" Was there any kind of pushback on that when you explained to whoever, your cousin, the builder, whoever, "Hey, I'm just going in my RV for six to eight months."

Dr. Jessie Benson: No, the people in my life, I'm very fortunate that they have this philosophy, if you're happy, I'm happy, and in fact, of everybody .... and I told, of course, everybody in the hospital, and I was there for six months, because I wanted to give them plenty of time to replace my specialty, and of everybody who over those six months knew I was leaving, everyone was just happy for me. There was only one physician who asked, "Well, really what are you going to do?" But everyone else was just happy for me, and I think too, a part of it was ... and more than one said, "I wish I could do it," and I would say, "You can," but it was total support, thankfully.

John: That's good. That helps. That helps. You're not fighting those battles of trying to explain yourself to people that don't understand. So let's see. I think I want to now hear more about the coaching, because I'm sure that has evolved over this period of time from where you started, and so how did you ... because I think for some physicians, this is really an attractive career, coaching. It's got all the good things about being a physician, as we said earlier. So yeah, how did you start coaching? What kind of coaching and how has that evolved over time?

Dr. Jessie Benson: So I chose a school that had a very comprehensive approach, as opposed to say executive coaching. I wanted a really comprehensive approach to coaching and to be able to meet a lot of different needs for a lot of people, and so that was the training I received, and then when I first started having clients, post training, post certification, that was what I did. I just would coach different people. I'd coached physicians. I would coach people from other professions. I would coach men. I would coach women. I'd coach them about their jobs, about their relationships, just really getting a feel for who I wanted to work with and what was most enjoyable to me, and when I first was coaching, it was very project management oriented. Let's figure out what you want to do, let's figure out the steps to get there, and let's do them, and that still has tremendous value. Of course, if we want to get somewhere, we need to know where we're trying to get and how to get there.

But since my practice first started several years ago, it has become much more elegant. I focus a lot more on beliefs, what I call barrier beliefs, the obstacles for why we don't do things, our fears, because we ... just like you said, people might want to leave medicine, but their family might be giving them a hard time. So focusing on those things and focusing on the action steps, but always making sure that the beliefs are in order before the action takes place. Yeah, and it's been pretty much one to one coaching, so private coaching, and then I've done some retreats and workshops where I incorporate my coaching with my yoga teacher, with my meditation teaching, and then what I'm doing now is something I'm super excited about, and it's a year long program for women and it's called Brave is Beautiful Circle, and it's a program where I help women find their authenticity and their creativity by doing what I call helping them find their brave, and it is the culmination of everything that we've been talking about since we've been on this interview. I incorporate my own personal experience of leaving medicine, I incorporate art challenges, I incorporate other types of creativity challenges, mindset challenges, one-to-one coaching, group coaching. So it's everything I love about coaching in one year long program.

John: Very nice. It's a good spot to put the websites in here. So you do have jessiebenson.com, which probably points to the app, but then you also have braveisbeautifulcircle.com, which is specifically for this year long process of coaching and learning.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yes. Yeah, www.braveisbeatifulcircle.com is where folks can just learn about the program. If they want to just learn about me and coaching in general, the jessiebenson.com, but as you mentioned, there is a link to the circle on jessiebenson.com.

John: Okay. So I'm going to get back to that in a minute, but I have to go backwards, as usual. At the beginning of your coaching ... this is a question I get a lot, and everyone goes through a training and they're certified and now they're kind of feeling like they're ready. They have to get clients. So I guess a couple of questions. One is, were you doing sort of some free coaching? Is that part of the process of learning to be a coach? And let's say at that very early stage, how did you get the word out? Where did you go to find clients?

Dr. Jessie Benson: So the answer to your first question about whether doing free, yes. During training, especially the program that I did, there is a lot of free coaching so that I can learn how to do it. I actually had to have, with my clients' permission, my calls recorded and then we would play them for our fellow students and our instructor. We would critique each other in a kind way, and so, yes, I did lots of free coaching. Then once I had my training and certification, then I took paid clients and it was all word of mouth, because I was in this large hospital and everyone knew what I was leaving to do. Some people would say, "Well, when you start coaching, I want you to coach me." I'd say, "Okay, I'll let you know when." So I had this kind of running list, because I did make it known this is what I'm going to do, and I didn't do that to get clients. I did it because people wanted to know what my journey was going to look like and I shared it, and so from the get go I had this pool of word of mouth client, and then word of mouth led to more word of mouth. So I actually didn't do any marketing my whole coaching practice up until now, when I'll start sharing about my circle, because that's a larger group of people, but it's just been word of mouth.

John: Now, the coaching that you started doing and have been doing for the last few years before the annual type of program or the year long program, what does that look like? How often do people usually get coached? What are they trying to get coaching for? How long does their coaching relationship usually last? It's kind of interesting to hear about those type of thing.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yes, and so for all of my clients, no matter what they're coming to me for, I do a little free 30 minute thing to make sure that it sounds like what they want is something I can help them with, and then how I offer coaching as something that they want. So once we do that initial, then I do a two hour ... well, one to two hour, just depends ... life review session, and this is where we go through the nine fears of someone's life. So finances, work, relationships, rep, all those areas, and I have them rate their fulfillment on a scale of one to 10. So I get a snapshot and so today of what their life fulfillment in every area of life in this moment, and then we go from there.

And so right now I'm working with someone who's writing a book, and so we went right to career and contribution, because I already knew that person came to me ... she already came to me because she's writing a book and she wanted to support during that journey, and so we launched off from there, but we could just as easily have launched off from relationships or from self-care, like physical body care or mental care. And so from there, from that life review session, that's where the coaching happens, and then I meet with almost all of my clients 30 minutes every week, and I have one that we meet 30 minutes one time a month, but everybody else is 30 minutes a week, and then you asked how long is the relationship? It just depends. And so I have one person I've been working with for three years now. That person's been through career changes, from being employed, to being a consultant, to a relationship, to a new state, all sorts of wonderful life changes.

Another person I worked with a few weeks ago, her friend gifted her three sessions and she was having writer's block. Another author, separate author. I got a couple of authors at the same time, and we did those three sessions and we found out the root of her writer's block. She felt so lifted in this burden that she didn't even see, because that's what the help of the coach is. When we're in our own thing, we cannot see it, the idea of fish feel water, and when another set of eyes comes in, it's like, "Isn't this thing bothersome?" "Oh, that thing. Well, gosh, I hadn't even thought of that." So we did that in those three sessions and she had a really good result. So it really just depends.

John: Okay. Cool. All right. Well, I want to spend the last few minutes talking about the Brave Is Beautiful Circle. So, I mean I looked at the site and kind of the description and so forth. Now, have you been doing a version of this already? Or I this a brand new thing? Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yes. This is my coaching dream come true. So I sat down, when I started thinking about once my house was finished ... because I've been working on this house for four years with my cousin and it is finally finished, finished. I had this wellspring of time. I thought what do I want to spend it on? And I thought, I want to finally do my coaching circle I've been dreaming about. So this is a brand new program. I'm going to start enrolling people now, and I am centering it toward women, and especially female physicians, because that's a group I understand. I am a female physician. I've lived the life of a female physician. I understand the unique challenges, and so that's the focus of the group, and it'll start in the fall. If someone signs up, they'll start getting one to one with me, but the group coaching will start later in the fall, all the different kinds of group sessions I mentioned to you. So that is brand new and I could not be more excited. I was thinking, when I sat down to design it, I thought what would I have wanted 10 years ago when I was trying to break free from perfectionism, from fear of failure, from fear of rejection? And this is it. And so that's the program I designed.

John: Okay. So this is actually a good time. So we're kind of ramping up to the group sessions. Right now you're starting with the solo, the individual. So yeah, we'll definitely put the link in there and let people know about it. What else do they need to know? You said particularly women, especially physicians, just dealing with, like you said, the perfectionism, maybe the unhappiness, the disenchantment or whatever it might be.

Dr. Jessie Benson: So the main two things that someone will get from this program is connecting with their authenticity and their creativity. So, things like learning how to say no, setting boundaries, excellent self-care, getting over that concept of giving for everyone else and leaving nothing left for oneself. So all of that authenticity work, and then the other half of it is creativity. So whatever that means in the woman's life, if it's music, art, cooking, but to start tapping into that living life with this sense of adventure, the sense of creative expression.

John: Very good. All right. Well we're just about out of time. So this has been really inspirational. We can't necessarily learn in 30 minutes how to become an artist, a cellist, a homesteader, a coach, but I think it's giving people hope that you could be ... I mean, you were in an intense career. I mean, intensivist, anesthesiologist in the CCU or ICU, and here you are 10 years later and very pleased and have tried a lot of different things, and so I think that's very inspirational, and so listeners, if you feel like you're trapped, there's no need to be remained trapped. you can move on, and it doesn't mean you have to leave medicine either. We're not saying that. We're just saying that we should be more intentional about what we're doing and we should be able to find a life that brings us joy and balance and fulfillment.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Absolutely. There is absolute hope in having a balanced life, whether you choose to stay in medicine or not, because leaving medicine is not for everybody, but I absolutely feel like someone can stay in medicine and still enjoy life.

John: Very good. Well with that, I do want to remind everyone to maybe go to jessiebenson.com. That's one place where you can at least see the coaching. I think maybe ... do you even talk about the art there, or you point them even to the art?

Dr. Jessie Benson: I don't think I do, John.

John: Well, we know the jessiebensonfineart.com is a place, but there'll be links in the show notes. So I just want people to understand that they have options and maybe follow a path similar to what you've done. So I'm really happy that you were able to come on the podcast today, Jessie.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Thank you so much for having me. I've loved it.

John: I can't imagine where you're going to be 10 years from now. The arc had been so steep here, I don't know.

Dr. Jessie Benson: I don't know either, but I am excited to find out.

John: All right. Well then we'll have to touch base again and find out where you are down the road.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Yeah, episode 500.

John: Yeah, oh my gosh. I better be retired by then, I don't know. All right, Jessie. Well, with that, I'm going to say thanks again, and we'll be in touch sometime in the future, but I'll just say goodbye at this point.

Dr. Jessie Benson: Thank you. Bye.

John: Bye bye.

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Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to, and that you’ll find in the show notes, are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you, that I have personally used or am very familiar with.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. It should not be construed as medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career.

The post See Her Massive Professional Rebirth From Intensivist To Coach – A PNC Classic from 2020 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

First Find Your Zone of Genius Then a New Career – A PNC Classic from 2020

John Jurica — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:00:15 +0000

Interview with Laura Garnett – 399

On this week’s episode of the PNC podcast, you will learn how to find your zone of genius with performance strategist, speaker, and author Laura Garnett.

Laura works with CEOs and executives to identify their unique genius and purpose and leverage them in their daily work. She has consulted with organizations such as Google, Pandora, LinkedIn, and 15Five.

Before launching her own company, New York City-based Garnett Consulting, she honed her marketing, strategy, and career-refining skills at companies like Capital One, American Express, IAC, and Google.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete.

For Podcast Listeners

John hosts a short weekly Q&A session on topics related to physicians' careers and leadership. Each discussion is posted for you to review and apply. Sometimes all it takes is one insight to take you to the next level of your career. Check out the Weekly Q&A and join us for only $5.00 monthly.
If you want access to dozens of lessons dedicated to nonclinical and unconventional clinical careers, you should join the Nonclinical Career Academy MemberClub. For a small monthly fee, you can access the Weekly Q&A Sessions AND as many lessons and courses as you wish. Click the link to check it out, and use the Coupon Code “FIRSTMONTHFIVE” to get your first month for only $5.00.
The 2024 Nonclinical Summit is over. But you can access all the fantastic lectures from our nationally recognized speakers, including Dr. Dike Drummond, Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, Dr. Gretchen Green, and Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Go to Nonclinical Summit and enter Coupon Code “30-OFF” for a $30 discount.

Find Your Zone of Genius

Laura Garnett released her most recent book, Find Your Zone of Genius, in 2020. Shortly thereafter, she joined us to define the phrase and help us identify our own Zone of Genius.

During the conversation, Laura explains several other concepts from the book that will truly help anyone on their career journey:

How to find our innate talents.
Why is our purpose more important than our passion?
Why finding support is usually preferable to obtaining advice.
How your core emotional challenge determines your purpose.

Apply Your Genius

Laura explains why you should read Find Your Zone of Genius first, as you begin to apply your genius. Once you understand the concepts and start the process of self-discovery, you can then move to her comprehensive first book, The Genius Habit.

Getting into your Zone of Genius is possible for everyone, and I promise it makes work exhilarating. In the ideal scenario, you actively use your genius and feel the impact of your purpose at work. – Laura Garnett

Additional Resources

After reading her books, you may still encounter barriers as you attempt to discover your unique talents and apply your genius. You can then work through her free resources. If that is not sufficient, there are several levels of formal coaching to consider. All of these can be found on her website.

Summary

Those of us driven to find a new career often do so because we are not currently working in our Zone of Genius. The first step in addressing that issue is to identify our genius and purpose. To move into a new career without identifying these features of personality is to invite another unhappy job.

Once we discover our innate talents and purpose, we can identify our Zone of Genius. Then, by aligning our job with it, we will wake up each morning excited to go to work.

Links for Today's Episode

Laura Garnett's Web Site
Find Your Zone of Genius*[Amazon affiliate link]
The Genius Habit*[Amazon affiliate link]
How to Recognize Your Zone of Genius – 058
Why You Must Dare to Discover Your Purpose When You Retire – 258
Weekly Nonclinical Career Q&A Recordings
Purchase Your All Action Pass Videos and Bonuses from the 2024 Summit (Use Coupon Code 30-OFF)

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Disclaimers:

*Many of the links that I refer you to, and that you’ll find in the show notes, are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you, that I have personally used or am very familiar with.

The post First Find Your Zone of Genius Then a New Career – A PNC Classic from 2020 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

How To Beat Damaging National Practitioner Databank Reports

John Jurica — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 13:14:51 +0000

Beyond Credentialing Barriers – 398

In this episode of the PNC Podcast, John describes how to overcome damaging National Practitioner Databank reports that can interfere with a job search.

This topic is based on a question from a listener. The physician was concerned that NPDB entries were limiting his ability to land a new clinical position. And he was looking for strategies to overcome this challenge.

Our Episode Sponsor

Dr. Armin Feldman's Prelitigation Pre-trial Medical Legal Consulting Coaching Program

The Medical Legal Consulting Coaching Program will teach you to build a nonclinical consulting business. Open to physicians in ANY specialty, completing Dr. Armin Feldman’s Program will teach you how to become a valued consultant to attorneys without doing med mal cases or expert witness work.

His program will enable you to use your medical education and experience to generate a great income and a balanced lifestyle. Dr. Feldman will teach you everything, from the business concepts to the medicine involved, to launch your new consulting business during one year of unlimited coaching.

For more information, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/mlconsulting or arminfeldman.com.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete.

For Podcast Listeners

John hosts a short weekly Q&A session on topics related to physicians' careers and leadership. Each discussion is posted for you to review and apply. Sometimes all it takes is one insight to take you to the next level of your career. Check out the Weekly Q&A and join us for only $5.00 monthly.
If you want access to dozens of lessons dedicated to nonclinical and unconventional clinical careers, you should join the Nonclinical Career Academy MemberClub. For a small monthly fee, you can access the Weekly Q&A Sessions AND as many lessons and courses as you wish. Click the link to check it out, and use the Coupon Code “FIRSTMONTHFIVE” to get your first month for only $5.00.
The 2024 Nonclinical Summit is over. But you can access all the fantastic lectures from our nationally recognized speakers, including Dr. Dike Drummond, Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, Dr. Gretchen Green, and Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Go to Nonclinical Summit and enter Coupon Code “30-OFF” for a $30 discount.

Understanding the Impact of NPDB Reports

John describes his analysis, based on an understanding of the requirements of the NPDB for reporting:

potential employers that are required to query it,
those that may or may not choose to do so, and
those unlikely to do so.

He lists several employer types that may query the Databank, yet be more lenient when evaluating a potential candidate. He then lists situations in which a databank query would be unlikely.

Minimizing Damaging National Practitioner Databank Reports

With these considerations in mind, he suggests several possible options to pursue as an employee and several practice options that would require starting a practice. The least costly of the practice start-ups would most likely be a cash-based business.

A Direct Primary Care Practice, Weight Loss Clinic, Med Spa, or similar business, in which the need to bill health insurers is eliminated, generally requires fewer staff and no expensive billing software, and eliminates NPDB inquiries from insurers.

Summary

Physicians facing credentialing barriers can explore several alternative clinical career paths. If the physician has addressed the issues that led to the reports, there are several clinical practice options to consider as an employee or as a business owner if the physician prefers not to leave clinical medicine. If that is no longer a viable option, then a shift to a nonclinical position may be warranted.

Links for Today's Episode

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Disclaimers:

The post How To Beat Damaging National Practitioner Databank Reports appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Popular Home Based Careers You Will Love – A PNC Classic from 2020

John Jurica — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 13:50:47 +0000

Eliminate Your Commute – 397

On this week’s episode of the PNC podcast, John runs through the most popular home based careers for physicians. He starts by explaining why home based careers are so attractive.

Then he describes the benefits and challenges of each one.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete.

For Podcast Listeners

John hosts a short weekly Q&A session on topics related to physicians' careers and leadership. Each discussion is posted for you to review and apply. Sometimes all it takes is one insight to take you to the next level of your career. Check out the Weekly Q&A and join us for only $5.00 monthly.
If you want access to dozens of lessons dedicated to nonclinical and unconventional clinical careers, you should join the Nonclinical Career Academy MemberClub. For a small monthly fee, you can access the Weekly Q&A Sessions AND as many lessons and courses as you wish. Click the link to check it out, and use the Coupon Code “FIRSTMONTHFIVE” to get your first month for only $5.00.
The 2024 Nonclinical Summit is over. But you can access all the fantastic lectures from our nationally recognized speakers, including Dr. Dike Drummond, Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, Dr. Gretchen Green, and Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Go to Nonclinical Summit and enter Coupon Code “30-OFF” for a $30 discount.

Why Work from Home?

There are three main benefits to choosing a home-based career:

1. Convenience

When you work from home, you’re able to handle household responsibilities. Navigating childcare or adult caretaking responsibilities may make this type of career necessary.

2. Cost Savings

Eliminating your commute means you’ll save time, and reduce gasoline and auto maintenance costs, saving you thousands of dollars each year. And the time not spent commuting can be spent working and enhancing your income.

3. Flexibility

Home based careers offer the most flexibility. Though some require working 8-hour days, most will allow you to choose your hours. And you might be able to work from anywhere in the world, even while traveling. Or at odd hours, if you prefer.

Popular Home-based Careers

Here are the factors to consider when seeking one of these popular home based careers:

Chart Review: Performing chart reviews can be done for utilization management, disability and worker’s compensation assessments, expert witness consulting, clinical documentation, and quality improvement. You can work anywhere that has access to the Internet and phone service. Some jobs require work during regular business hours.
Medical writing: As a freelancer, you must set up your own business, and find work, initially. But once you develop relationships with several editors, you should be able to generate regular income, working from anywhere in the world. You must have the self-discipline to meet regular deadlines.
Telemedicine: This is an especially flexible career. You must ensure that you are working with a reputable company. You can start by supplementing your income by moonlighting. And you need to take the necessary steps to manage your liability exposure. You can boost your income by working when other physicians are not working, such as during weekends and holidays.
Consulting: If you're a consultant working from home, you will likely be freelancing, rather than working for a large consulting firm. You may have to do some traveling and speaking to build your authority and market yourself. But once you get started, most of your business can be done from home.
Coaching: Coaching is similar to consulting. But the term is usually used with life, health, wellness, and business coaching of individuals or small groups. It can be face-to-face, but remote coaching is much more common. You must choose a coaching field based on your personal expertise, or obtain formal training, and possibly certification.

Summary

Home based careers offer a great deal of flexibility. There are several attractive options to consider. The income levels might start out at the lower end of a clinical salary. But busy coaches, consultants, writers, chart reviewers, and telemedicine providers will experience improving revenues as they streamline their businesses and increase their customer or patient base.

Links for Today's Episode

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Disclaimers:

How To Make Meaningful Changes In Your Life Immediately

John Jurica — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 13:59:37 +0000

Interview with Dr. Michelle Bailey – 388

In this podcast episode, John's guest shares how to make meaningful changes in your life and career. Dr. Michelle Bailey is an accomplished academic pediatrician, medical director, and physician coach who first visited the podcast in Episode 124.

Helping physicians navigate career transitions since 2012, Dr. Bailey combines personal experience with expertise to guide others through transformative career decisions. Her approach emphasizes the importance of thoughtful reflection and strategic planning in making successful life changes.

Our Episode Sponsor

Dr. Armin Feldman's Prelitigation Pre-trial Medical Legal Consulting Coaching Program

For more information, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/mlconsulting or arminfeldman.com.

Our Podcast Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete.

For Podcast Listeners

John hosts a short Weekly Q&A Session on any topic related to physician careers and leadership. Each discussion is posted for you to review and apply. Sometimes all it takes is one insight to take you to the next level of your career. Check out the Weekly Q&A and join us for only $5.00 a month.
If you want access to dozens of lessons dedicated to nonclinical and unconventional clinical careers, you should join the Nonclinical Career Academy MemberClub. For a small monthly fee, you can access the Weekly Q&A Sessions AND as many lessons and courses as you wish. Click the link to check it out, and use the Coupon Code “FIRSTMONTHFIVE” to get your first month for only $5.00.
The 2024 Nonclinical Summit is over. But you can access all the fantastic lectures from our nationally recognized speakers, including Dr. Dike Drummond, Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, Dr. Gretchen Green, and Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Go to Nonclinical Summit and enter Coupon Code “30-OFF” for a $30 discount.

Make Meaningful Changes Using the Power of Strategic Pausing

Drawing from years of coaching experience, Dr. Bailey introduces her concept of the power of the pause – a transformative approach to career decision-making. She explains how taking intentional time to reflect and assess can lead to more fulfilling career choices, rather than making decisions from a place of burnout or fear. This methodical approach has helped numerous physicians discover paths they hadn't previously considered.

Her framework helps doctors identify their core values and non-negotiables, essential elements often overlooked in career transitions. The process involves creating space for deep reflection about both professional and personal priorities. Dr. Bailey emphasizes how this pause can be the crucial difference between making a reactive career move and finding a truly fulfilling path.

Transforming Medical Skills into New Opportunities

Michelle shares eye-opening perspectives on how physicians can leverage their existing skills in new ways. Her insights challenge common misconceptions about career transitions, revealing how medical training provides valuable transferable skills that can open doors to diverse opportunities. She offers practical guidance on identifying and articulating these skills effectively to make meaningful changes in your career.

Her approach helps physicians recognize and articulate their unique value proposition in nonclinical roles. She discusses how medical training develops numerous transferable skills that are highly valued across industries.

Summary

Physicians interested in exploring career transitions or seeking clarity in their professional journey can connect with Dr. Michelle Bailey through her website at DrMichelleBailey.com or schedule a complimentary career consultation at callwithmichelle.com. Her approach focuses on helping physicians make thoughtful, strategic career decisions through structured reflection and practical action steps.

Links for today's episode:

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

If you liked today’s episode, please tell your friends about it and SHARE it on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 388

How To Make Meaningful Changes In Your Life Immediately

- Interview with Dr. Michelle Bailey

John: I'm really happy to welcome back a guest from about five years ago. Back then, we were talking to her about her work as a senior medical director and some of the coaching she was doing. And I've been looking to get her back for a while, she's back to talk to us today and we're going to discuss mostly what she's learned and what she can teach us about career transition and physicians and so forth. Dr. Michelle Bailey, welcome back to the PNC podcast.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Hi, John, thank you so much for inviting me back. I'm so happy to be here.

John: Yeah, I've been following you over those last five or six years just to kind of see what you're doing. As far as I know, you still exist. You still have a LinkedIn profile. And I know that you're still doing coaching, physician coaching, it's always good to pick the brain of someone who has interacted with and helped physicians navigate their career, their life, whatever. That's why I really wanted to get you back here. So welcome back.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I've learned quite a few lessons over the last five years since we've had a chance to talk.

John: Yeah, and I think you've been coaching since around 2012. So you've been doing that for a while.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Yeah, I actually started coaching around self-care and balance between work and home-life before it was a thing. And it was just what I was seeing in my work at Duke with students and residents and fellows and even some faculty. And that sort of blossomed into more coaching work around career satisfaction and career transitions, particularly after I made my own transition back in 2016.

John: Yes, yes, that was a big change. To go from full-time, I think you were doing academic pediatrics at the time.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: That's right.

John: Yeah, and then you flipped into the other thing you're doing, which is the nonclinical work. Tell us just about that for a minute.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Sure, yeah, I was an academic pediatrician. I was seeing patients full-time in addition to teaching responsibilities at the medical school. And I decided to make the leap and move into a nonclinical career. I went to work as a medical director for a global contract research organization. And for those listeners who haven't heard of that, essentially the company I work for is hired by pharmaceutical or biotech companies to execute the running of their clinical trials. And so I wasn't sure if I was qualified to do that in the beginning, but they were very confident that I was and made an offer for me to join the team.

And essentially I get to leverage my medical education and experience and bring all of that into the world of pediatric clinical trials. And it's just been a wonderful career path for me, surprising in many ways. I still get to learn, which I love, and I still get to advocate for kids and to be a part of helping to bring life-saving and life-changing medicines to them.

John: Okay, we're going to talk mostly about what you've been doing with the coaching, things that maybe are new or just aha moments maybe that you've even had over these, let's say last five years. However, you did mention that issue about going to, I guess some people call it now biopharma, they use this kind of all-encompassing name, but the physicians often just feel like, well, how can I do that? I'm not a researcher. I haven't spent any time writing articles on things like that. But explain what you were kind of alluding to in terms of the fact that you were qualified for what you did then and what you're doing now.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Yeah, I can certainly say my journey and my experience mirrors a lot of the physicians that I have conversations with and ultimately end up coaching in that in our training and education, we don't really learn about options outside of direct patient care or bench research. And so that's really all I knew. And once I decided that I wanted to do something different, I had no idea what that would be.

And back during that time, there weren't a lot of podcasts like yours or conferences and other things around to kind of help educate you. But what I've learned over my eight plus years of being in this new industry is that we have transferable skills. So these things that we learn and skills we acquire as physicians, like leadership, for example, we have these skills that we bring with us to other industries and we can apply them.

For example, in my case, some of the skills that I get to use are just my general knowledge about children and the fact that they don't come to clinic visits alone, they come with their parents or they come with siblings. And so I'm looking at a study protocol for a research trial. And I see that the assessments for that study are going to keep that family on site in the clinic for like six to eight hours.

In my mind, that's going to be a difficult study to enroll for because as a parent, it means I've got to take time off from work. I've got to get my kids from school. I've got to arrange maybe childcare for the other kids or bring them with me. We got to figure out food while we're there for that period of time. So those are the insights that I can bring to a team that has never worked in a clinic and had these kinds of interactions with a family. And so it's things that are seemingly simple to us.

And I think we don't appreciate how much we know because it's just our world. It's what we do. But also just sort of the leadership that we acquire as a physician, the fact that we are really good at doing hard things, that's a part of our training. And also we're really good at figuring things out. So just because you've never seen something before, you don't know how to do something, you are motivated to figure out a potential solution. So that's another skill that we bring with us into these different roles.

And so I quickly understood how I could add value and contribute in meaningful ways to the team. And that really helped boost my confidence. And so what I talk to physicians about now is understanding their own set of transferable skills.

What are the strengths that they have? What skillset do they already have? And what gaps might they need to fill? But also just really paying attention to what it is they enjoy doing. Because usually there are things that we're really good at that don't feel like work because it comes naturally to us. And those are things that other people struggle with.

For me, what was really helpful was what I call the power of the pause is just stopping long enough to reflect on how I felt about my career at that point in time, what it was I wanted moving forward and getting really clear on that. And that included what I didn't want. So I had to get clear on that as well and then ask myself why I wanted that because that was going to be the motivation to help me push through the difficult moments as I was looking for a new career path. And I helped my clients with that power of the pause as well.

John: Nice. Well, I got to write that down, the power of the pause. I'm going to tell my listeners a secret right now. Actually, I've never discussed how I prepare for an interview before, but I want to discuss it now with you here because I'm going to ask you probably at least a few questions that the audience will be like, well, where did those come from? And so I'm just explaining to my listeners that when I'm preparing, some of my cohorts that do podcasts just wing it. They just know what they want to talk about when the guest comes on and they just do it. I'm so, I don't know what you'd call it, maybe insecure or is it just compulsive, obsessive compulsive?

I have to do a little research and so I'm looking at Michelle's website and I'm looking at Michelle's LinkedIn profile and so then I see these things out there. And so that's why I'm going to ask, for example, the next question. I think you may have already answered this question, but this is, I just want to let the audience know why I'm maybe being a little redundant, but you talk about getting clear on what's working, what's not working and what's missing from our lives.

That's kind of something a coach does, I think it helps their clients. And you're talking about the pause, is that when you're doing that getting some clarity or am I looking at something different there?

Dr. Michelle Bailey: No, I think you're absolutely right, John. So taking the time to pause is what allows you to have the space created to get clear. For many of the physicians that are looking to make a transition from clinical practice, they often are feeling very burned out, they're feeling low energy, exhausted.

And so from that space, if you're really just looking for how do I get out, your search is going to be driven largely by fear. It's like this sort of desperate energy of, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I got to get out of here, I got to do something. And instead, what I'm encouraging is to take that time to pause and give yourself a little breathing space to say, okay, I know I don't want to continue to do this indefinitely, it doesn't feel sustainable for me.

Given that, if I knew everything could work out well, what is it that I would want to do? And why do I want to do that? And taking the time to get clear on those things instead moves you into this energy of sort of positive momentum to move forward. It's a focus on where you're going rather than what you're running away from, you know? And I've seen how that makes a difference because I've had some physicians who've come to me after they've made a transition, but they didn't really think it through. They saw someone that they knew made this move into a different industry.

They thought, "Oh, they look happy, that's what I'm going to pursue." And so they do and they get an offer and they're thrilled about that. Everybody just wants to get their foot in the door, but only to find that this isn't a good fit for them based on the season of life and career that they're in and what it is they want.

For me I'm not afraid to tell my age, but I'm at a different stage of life. I'm 57. And so I have grandkids. I want to be able to travel with my wife. I want to spend time with my grandkids. I want to pick them up from school or go on field trips with them.

It was important to me that whatever I did next allowed me location independent work and also allowed me to be able to have a flexible schedule so that if I needed to go and pick up my grandson from school, I could do that without feeling stressed out about it. So you have to just get clear on what your priorities are and what your values are.

When I work with clients, I have an exercise I do with them to help them get in touch with what their core values are now. Because the person that we are when we embark upon this journey in medicine is not necessarily the same person we are now, depending on how much time has passed. Like most of us are young adults when we're starting out on this medical journey and life happens along the way. And so being clear on where you are and what's important to you and where you want to go will really help direct your path towards something that's going to be a better fit for you.

John: Boy, how long would you say the average client that you've spoken with or even people you've even just mentored, how long does it take to figure that out do you think normally? Because many of us have this sense that we don't know what our passion is. We don't know what our purpose is. We don't really know what we like and we don't like. We just barrel forward and do our job because that's what we'd spent 15 years of our lives learning and it's hard for us to stop and even come up with answers to those questions.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Yeah, it varies quite a bit. I will say the physicians that have the fastest results in terms of finding that next step career in the nonclinical world are the ones that already come with a degree of clarity. They have made the decision. There's no ambivalence as to whether or not I want to do this. It's like, I've decided I'm going to leave clinical practice. I want to pursue a nonclinical career.

I don't know exactly what, but this is what I'm thinking of because I like X, Y, and Z. And so that the more clarity you have, the more accelerated I would say your journey is in terms of the transition. But for some people who haven't really given it much thought, the questions that we go through are very deep and reflective questions and it can take a good six weeks for them to really figure out, okay, this is what I want and this is why I want it.

But then there's another step of giving yourself permission to actually go after what you want. There's a lot of guilt and other uncomfortable emotions that can arise in thinking about making the transition. I feel like I'm going to be abandoning my patients. I don't want to abandon my partners. I don't want to leave them in a lurch. My family won't understand.

I may have to change my lifestyle if the salary that I get for nonclinical position is less than what I've had as a clinician. So there are all of these variables that come into play and I do think it's really helpful when you have a coach that can help hold space for you to work through some of that because you don't want that to be the barrier that keeps you stuck for yet another year and you're miserable. Life is just too short and too precious for that.

John: Well, if I was going to engage a coach, that would kind of be the thing. That's why I would do the engagements. Like, okay, I don't like what I'm doing. I'm not satisfied. It doesn't mean I'm burned out or whatever. I'm just it's just no longer what I want to pursue. And I really can't figure out, I would engage a coach to do that. So that makes perfect sense. that's kind of a core addition to the process that you have. So can you give us like just a glimpse as like what you said, you had either like some method or some tool or something to help people tease that out. Just an example would be very helpful.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Yeah, sure. So one of the things that we do is to explore like what's important to you now so that you can figure out what are some of the non-negotiables that you will need in this next career. So for example, like I have one client that I'm working with now, and it's important to her to be near an aging parent so that she can be a support to them.

And so she is really looking for an opportunity that allows her to stay in her geographic region for work. She knows through this exploration that it's important to her to have social connections around work. So as much as some people think, oh, I would love to just work from home full time, it is not for everyone.

And so if you need that social stimulation and connection on a regular basis through work, then you may need to have an opportunity that is office-based or at least hybrid. Where certain number of days you're going into the office and then a certain number of days you're working from home. So these are the kinds of questions that I will ask a client so that they can get clear on what's really important to them. And that sort of builds the scaffolding so that they know this is the container. Like I have to have this and I have to have that. Those are my non-negotiables.

Now with that in mind, what kinds of opportunities would fit into that? Because often we're doing the opposite. We're looking for an opportunity and then seeing how we can fit into that opportunity instead of the other way around.

John: I'm such a practical person at times. I have to ask this question. So what I would do, it could be a little overwhelming. There's lots of things that I definitely do want and a lot of things that are like absolutely not. And so they develop maybe even a checklist so that when as they're looking at job descriptions or they're talking to recruiters or whatever, it's like, okay, I got to make sure that we got these five are in and these five are definitely out of this job.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Yes, absolutely. And it kind of helps you create a matrix that you can work from. And even for you, like if you were thinking about doing something different, for example, I would start by saying, well, John, just write down like top of mind, the first 10 things that would be important to you in your next career, in this next opportunity.

And sometimes when people are asked that question, they're not able to write down 10 immediately. So that's not an uncommon thing. But what I would do is continue to ask yourself, it's like, okay, if I'm not so clear yet on what it is that I do want, let me start with what I don't want and write that out.

Let me get clear on that. For me, as an example, I was really clear that I did not want a job with a long commute because that's what I had in my clinical work. My commute was easily 40 to 45 minutes, an hour plus if the weather was inclement.

And so, it's like, well, I need a commute that's 15 minutes or less because I want to be able to maybe even go home for lunch. So starting there can help you gain that clarity that you need for what it is you do want. And thinking about like what would an ideal schedule look like for you? What hours would you be working? Would you be sitting at a desk or would you be doing something that's more interactive with people on a day-to-day basis? So these are the kinds of questions that you can ask. And I've developed some tools that I use with my clients to kind of help guide them through that process.

John: Excellent. I think that gives everyone a pretty good idea how that goes. And I go back probably about the time when I was speaking with you the first time on the podcast, like just have an episode with a coach about why coaching is so beneficial.

And because there's a lot of resistance to coaching. I see it all the time. And people call me or they ask for advice and it's like maybe you just need to sit down with a coach for a few weeks because I don't do coaching. And I'm not going to answer your question in a short email. But they're like very reluctant at times. But so that's a good refresher and a good look into coaching.

Now, I had on my list too, I wanted to ask you about what new revelations have you had about coaching in the last five years? Is there something new about coaching or just have things evolved in terms of where we are as physicians in the whole milieu of the healthcare system itself and different forms of employment?

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Yeah. Let me start off by saying, I believe in the power of coaching. And so I have my own coach. I'm a coach, but still I have my thoughts and beliefs that at times can be limited. And so one of the things that's valuable in working with a coach is having someone to help you see different perspectives. I will say that I have noticed that there seems to be an increase in thinking about working with a coach. Like you, I've been in a lot of Facebook groups and other social media groups where I saw a fair amount of bashing of coaches.

John: Oh, really?

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Yeah. And I think there's some that really feel like there are people who are out there who are presenting themselves as coaches that don't have any training, that don't have any background and are really just looking to take advantage of physician colleagues. So I'm not a proponent of that. However, there are a lot of us physicians who have gone on to do additional training in coaching.

And there are different types of coaching as you probably know, John there's executive coaching for people who are trying to get into executive level positions who want to do hospital administration or maybe go into the C-suite for an organization. There are life coaches, there are career coaches. So there are different sort of specialty areas, if you will.

And for me, career coaching was the likely choice because people started reaching out to me to ask me to help them with their own transition because I was speaking so visibly about my own journey and how I didn't have as much support as I would have liked back then and thought something was wrong with me because I wasn't happy doing what I was doing. And so I do see that more physicians are reaching out for some support, that many of the challenges that I hear when I have conversations with physicians about their career, is they're feeling a bit stuck and unmotivated. They don't know what they would do next if they were to transition.

If they decide that they do want to transition, they don't know where to start or how to sort of get their foot in the door. And it's feeling not as easy to make the transition for a lot of physicians as it was previously. And I can say that certainly there are changes within the industry that are reflective of the economic state of the region that you're living in that can make a difference.

But even at times where we've seen a downturn, where there were fewer jobs available, there's always someone somewhere that is hiring. And so one of the most powerful things that you can do to enhance your own career and raise the likelihood that you can accelerate your transition is networking. And I get a lot of eye rolls when I say that. It's kind of like role plays when we were in medicine and we were learning a new skill and they were like, okay, we're going to do a role play. And everyone's eyes would kind of glaze over because no one enjoys doing it. But it is an activity that helps you develop a skill and get better at it.

And networking is one of those things. And the way I sort of talk about it is if you're looking for an opportunity for yourself, you are one set of eyes, one set of ears. But if you are telling other people what it is you would like to do, then you get more sets of eyes, more sets of ears.

It's kind of like boots on the ground that are going out like little sentinels that are looking on your behalf. So when something comes to their attention, they can think about you and reach out to you. So you want to stay top of mind for people. And that's one of the most important reasons for networking. Plus you learn about other things that people are doing that you otherwise might not be aware of.

John: Yeah, I just have a comment on a couple of things you said just to actually emphasize those and support what you're saying. Number one, most physicians would probably be shocked to know how many hospital CEOs still get coaching. There's so many people in business that get coaching.

They just see it as part of the job because they want to be cutting edge. They want to think strategically and they get a lot from the coaching. So that's one thing I, again, that kind of just because of this resistance that physicians have like, well, I've gone to all this school.

Well, that's not the point. And then the networking that's, there's so many it's not like you're going to a meeting and then having some drinks after the meeting and a conference room and you're networking. Nobody likes that really, at least physicians don't have time for that.

But to connect with people, whether it's through LinkedIn or through word of mouth or whatever, like you said, it just magnifies what you're doing. It just makes it so much more of a reach and exposure. So, yeah, it seems like that's becoming more important since we last spoke.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Absolutely, yeah. I think, as you mentioned, CEOs and other executives, this is just a part of the job. And often they are provided with a coach at the expense of it's charged to the company. And coaches are really valuable in helping you with a strategic plan so that there's some organization to what you're doing. And you're not just like throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Because that burns a lot of time and a coach can really help you be more efficient and more organized because you're thinking in a more strategic manner.

John: That is so true. And I love hearing that. Okay, we're going to run out of time pretty soon, actually. I had this long list of questions, but let's try and kind of focus here. What else have you got to tell us that really can be useful? I know we were talking before we got on about making changes and I was thinking, well, that could be useful not only in career transition. I don't know if we've touched on that yet, just how to implement those changes in your life or other career tips or transition tips, anything like that that you think would be helpful.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Yeah, I think there are a few skills that really lend themselves to making change. One is decision-making. I didn't give this too much thought before I started working with a coach, but then I realized I have an approach to how I make decisions.

And I'm one where I need to have all the information. I want to see it all laid out so that I can weigh all my options before I make the decision. And there's this saying, how you do anything is how you do everything. And I noticed that that wasn't just showing up with big, important decisions. It was little decisions, like what entree I wanted to eat when I went out to a restaurant at dinner.

And my wife is like, pick one. I'm asking all these questions of the server to try and weigh my options. Which am I going to enjoy more? So decision making is a skill and I think it's one that can really lend itself nicely to helping you when you want to make change in your life. I think another skill like that is, well, I call it a skill, but self-confidence.

So belief in yourself. I said earlier during our conversation that physicians can do hard things. It's just part of our training and we're really good at figuring things out. I often remind the physicians that I'm coaching that they can do hard things and that they can figure it out. And it's okay that you haven't done this exact thing before. You have what it takes to be able to do it. And so your own self-confidence plays a big factor in how successful you may or may not be in doing things in your life when you're ready to make a change.

John: Okay. No, that is also, and people, I think if they recognize that maybe they don't feel that they're portraying themselves as not confident, but if they're doing it and not realizing it, then maybe they just need to step back and say, okay, let's stop and think about what I'm doing and saying, and then let's see if I can just portray myself as I really am, which is a confident powerful person that definitely can handle this new job.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Right. And I'll tell you one way you can know if you're lacking in confidence is the action that you're taking or rather the action you're not taking. So one of the things that I do see is for a lot of physicians, they are doing what they feel is taking steps to transition, but it's honestly a lot of busy work.

That's not really putting themselves out there because they're either afraid of rejection or they're having that self-confidence issue. And so when I ask very concrete questions, like how many applications have you submitted in the last week? And they say, well, none. So being able to really look at some concrete metrics for yourself and focusing on what you have control over. So you don't have control over whether or not someone makes you an offer for a job, but you do have control over how many people you connect with to network, how many applications you're putting out there how many jobs you're exploring, like maybe reaching out to recruiters.

These are things that you have some control over and just take a look at whether or not the actions you're taking are things that will make a meaningful difference in moving your career search forward, or if it's just accumulating more information and more data, which isn't necessarily going to help you in that next step.

John: So true. Again, it's logical. But the thing is, too, if you apply to a lot of places, you're eventually going to get feedback. And then you're going to say, oh, I didn't know that was stupid of me to do that way. And you're telling me because I've now made a contact with this person, a recruiter or the HR department. And there's a lot of information you can get from that. And it doesn't happen unless you start to apply.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Right. And the caveat is applying strategically.

John: Yeah.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Right. Just applying for any job and using the exact same resume, the exact same cover letter isn't going to cut it. People are looking at why should we hire you over someone else? And so the purpose of your resume and your LinkedIn profile is to help them understand why they should hire you. Why would you be a good choice as opposed to someone else? And most of the folks within HR who are looking at the initial application to invite folks for a screening interview don't have a medical background.

They don't necessarily understand how you can translate the skills you already have into this new role. And as a result, a lot of physicians, when they look at the job description, feel like they're not qualified for these roles that they're interested in. And so that's where transferable skills come in. And I'm developing a resource that folks can use to help them identify those transferable skills and what positions would be really good, a good fit for those skills.

John: Okay. That's a good segue because this is going to be a chance to learn more about your website and contacting you. But I want to say one other thing, and I've probably forgotten it now. But anyway, I think it's, I had a guest once tell me that she, before she found her first nonclinical job, she literally had sent in a thousand resumes, but she was going to websites and putting it in. She had no contact with any company person. She never called anybody, never talked to anybody.

And so, it was just a black hole. These things were going into. And like you said, the other thing I remember was that the job descriptions are like what they would want in the perfect candidate. Here's everything we want. They never get everything they want. So don't think that that rules you out.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: And to that point, I would say there's a lot of research that's been done on gender bias. And men, when they look at a job description, if they have like a third of the qualifications will apply. Whereas women, if they don't check off all the boxes, are less likely to apply. And that may sound like a generalization, but there's a lot of literature that's been done to kind of back that up. And so I would encourage listeners to not count themselves out. And if you check all the boxes, you're probably overqualified for the position and it's not going to necessarily be a good fit for you. So look for something where you have a lot of the qualifications and you can move into that role and still have room to grow.

John: That sounds good. That's good advice. Okay. So how do we find you and tell us about your website and yeah. And maybe even if you want to do a little pitch to say, what is the kind of client you're looking for that would be ideal for you? We could give you that opportunity too. Just tell us about your website and stuff.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Sure. Folks can find my website at drmichellebailey.com. You can also sign up for a complimentary career consultation with me. I love having conversations with physicians and hearing about where you are and what you're thinking about if you're considering a transition. And I'm happy to give you just some guidance on what might help. And for that, you can sign up at callwithmichelle.com. And then you can also find me on social media.

I'm on Facebook at Michelle Bailey, and I'm on Instagram at the Dr. Michelle Bailey. And I would say in terms of an ideal client that I enjoy working with and that I think I can help the most, it's someone who has been thinking about leaving medicine for a while, but they're still ambivalent. They're not sure whether or not that's the best course of action for them. And they have no idea where to start or how to figure that out. I think having just that complimentary consultation that I spoke of earlier is an opportunity to create that space where you can pause and reflect on where you are and where you'd like to be.

And I've had conversations with a lot of physicians who haven't gone on to be clients, but had that one consultation and came back to me and said that was so helpful because I got much clearer on what it was I wanted, or I learned that I'm actually not ready to leave clinical practice. I just need a different position within clinical medicine. And so I would encourage you to just think about that. But I'm happy to sit and chat with anyone who wants to have a conversation. I enjoy helping.

John: Very good. Now, I would definitely encourage people if they've been in this mode for the last six or 12 months, thinking about it and maybe even ruminating about it and just can't get it out of their mind, but I have not taken any action, you definitely want to reach out to Michelle and see if you can get off either fix the problem or move forward to the next thing. So that'll be very helpful.

There will be links in the show notes with all those, because it's sometimes hard to write those things down while you're driving. So just go to the website. At the end of the outro of this, then I'll put all that stuff there where you go to find all these links.

All right, Michelle, I will thank you very much for coming here today. But we really covered a lot of stuff that was very dense. Like you could write a book based on that.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Thank you so much, John, for having me. I really appreciate it. And just wanted to say how much I appreciate all you do to support the physician community.

John: I love doing it. And it gives me a chance to meet people like you, which is really fascinating. And I like to see other people helping us, our colleagues who are suffering.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Agreed.

John: Yeah.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: And impact is the most important thing for me.

John: All right. With that, I'll say goodbye.

Dr. Michelle Bailey: Bye, John.

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The post How To Make Meaningful Changes In Your Life Immediately appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

How to Create A Fantastic B2B Business

John Jurica — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 13:47:19 +0000

Interview with Dr. Nicole Rochester – 385

In this podcast episode, John interviews the founder of a fantastic B2B Business. Dr. Nicole Rochester returns to the podcast 5 years after her initial appearance in Episode 127 in 2020.

Starting as a pediatrician who launched Your GPS Doc, LLC in 2017 to help patients navigate the healthcare system, Dr. Rochester has expanded her business to include consulting for major healthcare organizations, speaking engagements, and coaching other physicians to start health advocacy practices.

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We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

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John hosts a short Weekly Q&A Session on any topic related to physician careers and leadership. Each discussion is posted for you to review and apply. Sometimes all it takes is one insight to take you to the next level of your career. Check out the Weekly Q&A and join us for only $5.00 a month.
If you want access to dozens of lessons dedicated to nonclinical and unconventional clinical careers, you should join the Nonclinical Career Academy MemberClub. For a small monthly fee, you can access the Weekly Q&A Sessions AND as many lessons and courses as you wish. Click the link to check it out, and use the Coupon Code “FIRSTMONTHFIVE” to get your first month for only $5.00.
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Building a Career with a Fantastic B2B Business

Nicole's journey from clinical medicine to entrepreneurship demonstrates how physicians can leverage their expertise to create multiple revenue streams while making a significant impact. Dr. Rochester's business evolution exemplifies organic growth through network building and opportunity recognition.

Starting with board participation and speaking engagements about health disparities, she expanded into consulting for healthcare organizations and hospitals. By accepting new challenges and learning as she went – from creating scopes of work to determining consulting rates – she built a successful B2B practice.

Her approach emphasizes the importance of valuing one's expertise appropriately, with payment rates for consulting that significantly exceed clinical hourly rates.

Expanding Revenue Streams

Beyond consulting, Dr. Rochester has developed additional business streams, including coaching other physicians to start their own health advocacy businesses. Her eight-week program helps doctors leverage their medical expertise in the growing field of patient advocacy.

She emphasizes the importance of mindset work for physicians transitioning to entrepreneurship, noting that doctors often underestimate their ability to run successful businesses despite their significant accomplishments in medicine.

Her approach combines practical business guidance with strategies to overcome imposter syndrome and build confidence in their nonclinical roles.

Summary

Physicians interested in exploring health advocacy or healthcare consulting can connect with Nicole through her website or by scheduling a discovery call to learn about her coaching program.

Her journey demonstrates how physicians can successfully transition from clinical practice to entrepreneurship. Leverage your medical expertise, personal experiences, and professional networks and create innovative healthcare solutions and multiple revenue streams.

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 385

How to Create A Fantastic B2B Business

- Interview with Dr. Nicole Rochester

John: Today, I'm very happy to welcome back my guest from five years ago. It's hard to believe. And at that time, she introduced us to her new innovative work as a physician health navigator. I think that's the right term; it can probably be called other things. But anyway, her business has grown and evolved since then, and so I thought I'd invite her back to talk to us, provide us some inspiration and share what she's learned and— maybe some things we can apply to our businesses. So with that, Dr. Nicole Rochester, welcome back to the podcast.

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Thank you, Dr. John Jurica. It's so great to be back. Thank you for having me.

John: My pleasure. I know people are just gonna get a lot out of this because what you do is somewhat unique, I think. I know you're teaching others to do it, so that's awesome. But it's somewhat unique and you're running businesses or your business since, I don't know, six, seven years ago. And I see you're doing a lot more speaking recently. So why don't you catch us up? What's been going on for the past five years? You can maybe mention a little bit about your medical background before that, but bring us back up to speed.

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Sure. Yeah, so I'll start a little bit at the beginning, like you said, just for those who may not have heard the prior episode. So I'm Nicole Rochester. I am a pediatrician by training, and I always like to say that I loved pediatrics because I know in this day and age, many doctors are finding their ways into non-clinical careers out of necessity, or they're kind of running away from something. And there's nothing wrong with that. There are lots of reasons to run away from medicine these days. But in my case, I really did enjoy my job and really thought that I would work there until I retired.

And for my situation, it was the life experience that led to my transition into entrepreneurship. It was a caregiving journey with my late father and seeing how difficult it was to get the care that he needed, to communicate effectively with the members of his medical team, to advocate for him. And so I found myself doing these things behind the scenes, realizing that as a physician and an insider, I was really uniquely positioned to advocate for my dad. And then after he passed away wondering, how is everybody else managing this? If it was this hard for me, who's a doctor, one of my sisters is a nurse, how much more difficult must it be?

And so I really felt this calling to advocate for other patients and family caregivers the way I had advocated for my dad. I thought I was making this up; it turns out I wasn't. There's an entire field of what's known as professional health advocates or independent health advocates. And so as I started thinking about this business model and doing research, I discovered that others were already doing it. And so in 2017, I left my academic pediatric career and launched Your GPS Doc, LLC, which started as a health advocacy company where I was working one-on-one with other patients and family caregivers, helping them understand and navigate the healthcare system, which involves a whole lot of things.

So yeah, so that was kind of how I got started. Since then, you know, since I was last on your podcast, my work has really evolved from working one-on-one with clients, which were patients and family caregivers, to working with healthcare organizations and hospitals and health systems. And that work involves some speaking, workshops, and training, as well as consulting. And then, as you alluded to, I also am coaching and teaching other physicians how to launch their own health advocacy businesses. So a lot has happened in the last five years, and honestly, things just continue to evolve. And I think I'm still learning, growing, and figuring things out as I go.

John: Good, we can learn from you and with you then as you know this continues. There are so many things that I could say about your opening comments. I'll start by saying that I bet 99% of the people that go see a physician when they're done with their visit and they go home—if they're really sick or not really sick—they can't spit back 5% of what they were told, except, "I saw the doctor and my blood pressure was okay." I have a 96-year-old aunt who doesn't live close to me, but I keep in touch with her. She goes and sees physicians, and then when she comes home, she asks me all these questions. And she's not even given a piece of paper with what her meds are or what she's supposed to do. It's just like, "Come back in two months." So that's shocking.

But the other thing I wanted to mention when you were talking about, you said there are these health advocates, but at the time you started doing this, what percentage of those health advocates were physicians?

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Yeah, that is a great question, John. I, to this day, have not been able to get reliable, validated data on that, but very, very little. And today, very, very few. You know, there are more, and I'm happy that I've contributed to that increase. But there were very few when I first started. And in fact, I was on a mission to find other physicians who were doing health advocacy, and I found a few, you know, maybe four or five. But it's something that I think most physicians continue to not be aware of. When people find out about me, specifically other doctors, they're like, "Oh my gosh, this is the part of my job that I love the most." And to your point about your aunt, these are the things that most of us went into medicine for. We liked talking to our patients when we were medical students and being able to sit and spend that time. And the reality is that we just can't do that for so many reasons. And so I always get excited when I talk to other physicians about the work because it's the communicating and the explaining and the connecting, the part of our jobs that most of us love but don't have enough time to do in the current environment.

John: Well, I wanna learn more about that aspect of what you're doing. So let's go a little deeper into your GPS Doc business and how it's changed in the last five years. How did you kind of migrate to working with organizations?

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Sure, sure. So in terms of the work now, you know, I think the biggest lesson that I've learned and that I hope that your listeners will take away is that the things I'm doing now were birthed out of opportunities to which I said yes. I didn't go back and get another degree. I didn't go back and get more certifications. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that but I allow myself to sit in the space that they're asking me to do these things. How can I figure out how to do them? What do I already know? What do I need to learn? And we know doctors are great at learning and finding information. And I say that because there are opportunities that I easily could have shied away from due to fear, due to imposter syndrome and all those other things that we amazing, brilliant doctors face.

And so I look at where I am now, and I think about like those first opportunities that led to this pivot. And it just reminds me that we don't give ourselves enough credit for all of the knowledge and experience that we have. So what happened with me is that I was on a board. In fact, I just finished my ninth year and just fell off of the board, but I was on the board of an organization in Maryland where I live that basically serves as the primary source of education and training, leadership education and training for healthcare professionals. And so they are deeply connected to the local hospitals and healthcare systems.

And so I was on the board, and in 2020, we had a meeting in June, just a few weeks after George Floyd had been murdered. We were in the midst of the pandemic, and so we were talking about what was going on in the world. And the meeting headed to an end, and I said, "Wait a minute, like, what are we going to do? Like, what, what can we do in this space?" And we were specifically talking about health disparities and racism in medicine. And so me asking that question kind of led to me being, I won't say voluntold, but I was asked, "Hey, what do you think we should do?"

And so I thought about how could we provide education in this space and start to educate healthcare leaders and healthcare professionals about structural racism and how that impacts the healthcare that individuals from marginalized communities receive. So then that led to, "Well, would you be willing to do it? You know, can you develop a talk?" And I have been giving, you know, all of us give talks, right? As medical students, we give talks as residents. I had definitely given a lot of talks as an attending, but I had never given a talk about this. And so this was the first time I said, "Okay, I'm going to say yes to this."

I had already always had an interest in health disparities, even as a medical student, so I kind of relied on that, did a bunch of research, found out, you know, what's going on, looked at statistics, all those things. And I developed a talk called, combating, I think it was called "Combating Structural Racism and Disparities in Healthcare" or something like that. I gave that talk for this organization, and it put me in front of a lot of hospital leaders, doctors, and other medical professionals in my state. And so then some of them reached out after the talk and said, "This was great. Can you come give that talk to my hospital? Can you come give that talk to my medical staff?" And so that led to more opportunities for speaking.

And then an organization that's affiliated with that original organization, the Maryland Hospital Association—actually, I'm sorry, it was the Maryland Patient Safety Center—they reached out, and I had been familiar with the CEO of that organization, who happens to be a pediatrician, a retired pediatrician. He and I had worked together in a hospital. So again, there's a thread here, that leverages network. So he saw the work that I was doing, he attended the talk and he said, "Hey, you know, we're in the middle of COVID. We're seeing that a lot of community members who are minoritized, marginalized are saying no to the vaccine, not only in the community, but we're even seeing healthcare workers who are Black and Brown and marginalized saying no."

And so they had a project where they wanted to address vaccine hesitancy in the context of health disparities. And so he said, you know, "We'd like for you to work for us as a consultant." At this point, John, I had never ever done a consulting job. They asked me to provide them with a scope of work. I literally didn't know what that was. Said yes, got off the phone, Googled how do you write a scope of work, and looked at a bunch of templates and examples, and basically created this scope of work around what I thought would be helpful. And that led to my first consulting gig, which then led to other consulting gigs and more speaking. And now, that has really kind of positioned me as a thought leader and an expert in health equity. And so then that led to some specific health equity projects around maternal health. And it just, you know, the snowball just keeps on going, and it all started with me asking a question in a board meeting and then developing a single talk, which has led to lots of iterations of that talk and many more.

John: All right. So I can ask you many questions about this, but I'm going to focus on two. One is, a lot of people that are trying to get something like that going find themselves having to do some kind of marketing, but it sounds to me like this thing kind of snowballed kind of on its own to some extent. So were you seeking speaking engagements, for example, or doing other things? Number one. Number two. Did you at any point charge for the speaking, or did you just use that as your marketing tool?

Dr. Nicole Rochester: OK. Yes. So I definitely—I had already been doing some speaking within the context of my business, Your GPS Doc. But because I started out primarily working with family caregivers and helping people navigate the healthcare system, the talks that I was giving were really focused on that. So I was giving talks at caregiver conferences, I was giving talks for local departments of aging around that, and some of those talks were paid. Initially, a lot of free talks, and then like many speakers, you start out free, and then finally either you get the courage to ask for money or somebody offers you money and then you go, "Oh my gosh, I can make money." And then you gradually raise your price.

So definitely the talks that I'm describing now were paid engagements. And once I did a few of them and really, really loved it, I did formally market in the sense that I put a page on my website, speaker page. I put a contact form so that people could contact me if they were interested in having me come speak. And I'm very active on LinkedIn, and so I started to post. If I would have a speaking engagement, I would post about it on LinkedIn. I would post a picture. I would usually ask somebody, "Can you please take a picture of me while I'm speaking?" And I would post that photo. I would tag the organization. Inevitably the organization would comment, "Oh, this was such an amazing presentation." You know, maybe they would share my post or maybe they would do their own post. And so that definitely led to some traction on LinkedIn. And so periodically, I continue to get requests about speaking engagements, either from people that saw something on LinkedIn or maybe they went to my website and saw it there.

So there definitely has been some intentional marketing. I will say that one of the things that I am admitting and acknowledging—and I always think about this to myself—is that I really don't market myself as much as I could or should. And I've just really been lucky, blessed all the things with the opportunities that have come my way. And I also recognize that moving forward, I am going to have to probably be more intentional about marketing and making sure that I'm top of mind and that people are continuing to find me.

John: Did you end up, at least on the marketing side and, you know, whether it's emails or posts on different social media, did you hire anyone and you have any assistance or are you handling all that yourself at that point?

Dr. Nicole Rochester: There have been a lot of iterations of having help and not having help. I definitely will say I probably waited too long to get some help in my business. And so I have had a virtual assistant at times, and I've had a social media manager. And I'll also say very transparently that at times those are my two young adult daughters. So, you know, if you have kids, teenagers, young adults, they can be amazing at helping you with those things. And then I've also had other individuals that I've worked with. But a lot of it I do and have done and continue to do on my own, just organically. And I have to, you know, social media is its own beast. Sometimes I'm really good at keeping up to date. And then other times I'll look and say, "Oh my gosh, I haven't posted in a month." And so I try to balance that.

John: Well, it's tough when you're helping patients directly, you're doing the things with an organization, and trying to manage and handle everything. And then, oh, I, got to remember to, you know, go on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever. It it gets overwhelming pretty quickly.

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Yes, absolutely.

John: If you're like me, then you go in cycles, though, when you really nail it for a while and then you drift away for a while. So you had to learn how to basically write a proposal, a scope of work. And actually, like you said, one of the big things was, well, how much do I charge? I don't want to necessarily ask what you charge then or what you're charging now, but maybe like, how did you figure out what? How did you come up with that number thinking, I don't want it to be so high it's crazy, but I don't want to leave a lot on the table? I mean, I'm spending a lot of time researching and doing all this work.

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Yes, that is a great question. That is something that I feel like it's hard to know, and I will say that generally—and this sounds crazy, John—but I just, I make it up. Not completely make it up, but I try to do some research. I try to ask around and see what other people are charging. As you know, a lot of times for many reasons, you don't get straight answers with that. And then I just would try something. I would say typically whether it's speaking, consulting, and even coaching, the initial price was much too low. Like I would significantly underprice my services. And then I would realize, you know, after getting feedback or seeing how it's going, it's like, "Wait, you know, I could be charging more." And then I would charge a little bit more the next time. And If I get a very quick yes, I'm like, "Uh-oh, you know, that probably was too low."

And so you kind of inch your way up as you get more comfortable, as you get more experience. For me though, like I did go in some of the Facebook groups for physicians, nonclinical careers, things like that. And you ask the question and a lot of times you would get kind of a range or people would say it depends. But I really felt strongly that as a physician, regardless of what I'm doing, whether it's consulting, definitely in the consulting space, what I was hearing from other doctors who were willing to share is that they were charging anywhere from $300 to $600, some even more, dollars per hour. And so I felt like, "Okay, let me maybe land in the middle of that and then kind of see if they say yes and then work my way up from there."

I think that we—one thing that I've noticed when coaching physicians is that they often start... When we're talking about the hourly rate, for example, with the health advocacy, they will go to their clinical hourly rate. And if they're a pediatrician like me, we're at the bottom of the pay scale and they'll say stuff like, "I don't think I should charge more than $150 an hour." And I'm like, "Absolutely not." Especially if you're working with organizations and things like that. So I think we all have a tendency to try to compare that work to what we did in a clinical setting, and the two are little like apples and oranges. And getting accustomed to the fact that your knowledge and expertise is extremely valuable and that you know the companies that are hiring you to consult or advise they're doing that because of your unique vantage point and your experience, and that deserves to be compensated. So it's not about taking advantage of anyone, but it's really kind of standing in your truth and trying to understand and figure out what you're worth.

John: That's good advice. You know, I was a chief medical officer for a hospital, so we had consultants always coming in. And, you know, a lot of times there were big consultations, so they wouldn't even give an hourly rate. It would be like just a project that would take a year, and, you know, it would be $100,000 or something like that. Now, you know, you have to do some work backwards, I guess, and see how much time you think it's going to take. But I would say, again, this is based on nothing except just talking to people like you. Like if you're a physician doing consulting and your clinical rate is like $200, $300 an hour, you know, doing whatever you're doing, you should at least double it.

Dr. Nicole Rochester: I agree.

John: What else have you learned in the last five years as you're making this, transition to doing really these bigger things and working with more of an institution? Anything you want to share with us about your mindset?

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Oh, wow. Oh, yeah, mindset. I think what I have learned—I know that what I have learned in the last seven years since becoming a business owner is that 95, if not more, percent of the work is in our own head. It's our mindset. Everything else can be figured out. The information is out there; you can find it. But having the information, like as doctors, we always feel like if I just have more information... But for us, it's here—for everybody, but particularly for us. And I've been really intrigued with my own journey and with now coaching physicians, this idea that we represent—I don't know the exact number, but we're in the top echelon, I believe, in terms of intelligence and things like that. And we do really, really hard things as physicians, like literal hard things, like intubation and putting in central lines and saving lives. And yet when it comes to starting a business—and I'm not saying it's easy, because it is not easy—but we have so many fears and trepidations.

And I've talked to so many doctors that are like, "I want to do this, but I'm afraid to start my own business. I don't think I can start my own business. I don't think I could do it." And it's like, "Are you serious? Like you save lives every day. You're an emergency room physician. You're a critical care doc." And you don't think that you can start a business? So our mindsets are so important. And you know, whatever it takes, whether it's mantras, affirmations—for me, sometimes, John, I will actually go look at my CV, and anytime I have an opportunity to update my CV, it becomes an amazing exercise in boosting my confidence because I start to look back at like all of the talks that I've given and you know, my regular job and all the work I did as a pediatrician. Then to look at the different talks that I've given, the articles that I've contributed to, and the clients that I've had a chance to work with. And that reminds me like, "Nicole, you're doing pretty well,"

And so I think that we discount ourselves so much as physicians, and we just don't appreciate that, yes, we have the medical knowledge, but there's so much more that you can do with that medical knowledge beyond the clinical arena, and really, you know, just embracing that. So mindset, I continue to work on my mindset regularly because every now and then, it's something that you don't conquer, at least for me. Like sometimes I'm thinking like, "I've got this," and then some new opportunity will come my way and I see myself, I see that old part of Nicole trying to sneak back in. So I think mindset is incredibly important.

The other thing I've noticed specifically around speaking as a doctor is that I have had to creatively and respectfully remind organizations I'm a small business owner. And I say that because I continue to speak for free periodically, but it has to be like a very small nonprofit or a very religious organization or just a cause that really aligns with my purpose in life. But there are large organizations, like large John, that will approach me about speaking and then tell me that they don't have a budget or the budget that they have is significantly below what I would charge. And I've gotten to the place now where I just politely decline. And if there is a back and forth, which sometimes there is, I will tell them, you know, they'll say, "Well, Dr. So-and-so spoke for us last year, and he or she did it for free." But they're always naming a physician who works for an employer. And so, you know, you may recall, when I worked in academia, speaking was considered, you know, you do it for "exposure."

I love when they say, "Oh, we thought you would just do it for exposure." And it's not... to sound arrogant by any means, but I don't need—well, I don't want to say I don't need exposure. I always need exposure, but I'm kind of beyond the stage of speaking for exposure. And when they bring up a physician who is employed, I remember when I was employed, absolutely, I gave talks all the time for free. But at that time, I had a goal of, you know, maybe advancing up the academic ranks; like there was something tied to that effort. And so now, you know, my CV doesn't earn me a title of associate professor or professor, and I literally work for myself; I provide for my family.

And so I think that's another thing that I want to share. You know, certainly in the beginning, again, there's nothing wrong with doing things for free. There's nothing wrong with doing things for lower cost as you are making a name for yourself. But after you've done that, you deserve to be paid. And so I just find a lot of times because we're so altruistic, there's just this attitude that we should come speak to large healthcare systems and pharmaceutical companies even just out of the goodness of our hearts.

John: Wise words there. So it's absolutely true. And when you're going your own and run a small business, you have to earn a living and you have to put money aside for when maybe it gets a little light for a while, you know.

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Yes.

John: It makes perfect sense. That's good encouragement. Okay, now there are some people that like what you're doing and, you know, different aspects, but I'm sure there are people that like the advocacy part because that's something, again, that maybe they hadn't realized they could actually get paid to do. So you're teaching other people how to do that as well, correct?

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Yes. Yes, that is correct.

John: So tell us all about that.

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Sure. Yeah. And that's another thing, you know, there's a theme I'm realizing now. There's a theme in our conversation in terms of saying yes and embracing opportunity. Because with the coaching, I started my company in 2017. I was doing health advocacy. Within a couple of years, I became known in some physician circles as the doctor who does this. And so one, when doctors would say, "Hey, I have a family member who this happened to or this happened to," they would remember, "Oh, Nicole dealt with that when she was caring for her dad," or "Nicole now works with people."

And so I would get tagged in these Facebook posts. And so initially I would get tagged for like helping someone's family member navigate the healthcare system. But then doctors would sometimes say, often in the nonclinical groups, "Hey, is there such thing where I could just like help people understand their medical conditions or maybe when they're hospitalized, I can help them understand what's going on and communicate with their doctors?" And then I started getting tagged. They were like, "Hey, Nicole does that."

And so I would get tagged and then I would reach out to someone, I would hop on Zoom calls and maybe talk for an hour or two hours and just kind of answer their questions about how I got started and all the things. How much do you charge? Do you need insurance? All these things. And so I started doing that and then as I got busier, I didn't have the time or the capacity to have these two-hour Zoom calls. And so then doctors would say, "Well, can you just coach me?" And the first four or five or six or eight maybe times, I said no. I was like, "No, I don't do that." And they were like, "Well, can you just coach me?" "Nope, I'm not a coach."

So finally, around 2020, I started saying yes. I never advertised it. I just, you know, I said, "Okay, somebody reached out and they were like, 'I really would love to learn from you.'" And so I said, yes. So similar to that consulting scope of work package where I had to figure out what it was, I started researching, you know, coaching and like, how much should I charge? And then I thought about my journey. What were the things that I needed to know in order to launch Your GPS Doc? But even more importantly, what are all the mistakes that I have made? What are the things that I wish I knew when I first started?

And so I started developing a curriculum and I took my first coaching client and I worked with her one-on-one, and that was great. Everything went great. And so then, you know, the next doctor that came, I said, yes, I do this. But I never advertised it. I was still afraid. So if somebody came to me, I would say yes. But I wasn't out there saying "Hey, you all, I'm a physician coach." So then that led to me formalizing a curriculum that went from like a three-week program to four weeks to six weeks. Now it's an eight-weeks program. And then I went from a one-on-one to a group model.

And so since 2022, I've been hosting or leading the small group cohorts of physicians who want to start their own health advocacy business. And again, as the landscape changes, as new things pop up with the industry, I go back in, we update the modules. But right now, it's an eight-week program; there are lessons and modules and videos and downloadable templates and things that live on an online platform. And then weekly during the program, we have coaching calls, live coaching calls where I answer questions, where I deal with mindset challenges and coach the individuals. And yeah, we do that, and there's even an alumni program that I started just a few months ago because what I noticed is that a lot of the doctors that would finish, some of them would just take right off. Like they would finish the program, implement everything, start their business.

But a lot of them were still kind of nervous or scared, and they still needed a little more support. And so now we have an alumni program for those who want ongoing support after the eight-week program is finished. And it's just been an amazing thing to see these doctors in various seasons of their career. Some are retired, some have been out on disability for injury or illness, and some are still working full-time or part-time, and seeing them launch their health advocacy business and helping other patients and families has just been amazing.

John: Sounds like, though, from your standpoint, I mean, looking at what you're doing, you're definitely juggling a lot of things here.

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Yeah.

John: You know, you have, but it's interesting. I mean, real entrepreneurs, that's kind of what they do. Maybe you didn't really consider yourself an entrepreneur 10, 15 years ago, but you know, you're just meeting these needs as they arise. And some are, you know, huge, you know, organizations and some are just individuals. So it's really, I think it's very—I was going to say impressive, no, but it's very—it is impressive, but it's just, it's encouraging, I guess. It's like you said, there's so many things you can do if you just have that mindset. You could do a whole thing. It's all the mistakes to avoid because that's really like the, what did a consultant provides: "Don't do any of these things; do these things, and you're going to be where I was only it's going to take one-third of the time or whatever."

Dr. Nicole Rochester: That part. That is so important. Time is compressed when you work with somebody who's already done it. They've already made all the mistakes. Absolutely.

John: So where does somebody go to learn about that part of it, the coaching?

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Probably the best way you can schedule a call with me to learn more about health advocacy and about the program and we can decide if this is a good fit. And that's bit.ly/NHAcall. And N-H-A is in all caps. And they can also just go to my website, which is yourgpsdoc.com.

John: Well, you've covered a lot and you've really given us a lot of inspiration and actual good practical advice as well. So, anything else you—I guess we're going to get to the end here. So, I just would open it up for any advice you have for physicians. You know, my audience, a lot of them are either burned out or they're frustrated or they've been in medicine for 25 years and they're like, "You know, I just don't want to work like a crazy person anymore." What advice would you have for them?

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Yeah, one, I, you know, I—sending hugs because it's really, really difficult to practice medicine now for so many reasons. And honestly, I'm afraid as I get older, like who's going to be around to take care of me because I know that so many of our colleagues are leaving. But I guess the advice I would give is really, really embrace the knowledge and the expertise that you have—not just with your medical career, although that's incredibly important—but your lived experiences, your personal experiences, your interests, your hobbies—like all of those things make you who you are. And all of those things are potentially monetizable.

And I think that's something that I've learned and continue to learn is exactly what I'm always surprised at: What is monetizable? And for me, it's not just making money. Like that's not my, that's never been my motivation: is to make money. I'm excited that I get to make money while I'm still doing things that bring me joy. But realizing that there's so much information and knowledge that we have that can help others and that other people are willing to pay for that information. So it's a win-win. I mean, you have a way of monetizing your skills and your knowledge and you're doing it in a way that helps the broader society.

John: I agree 100% and you're a good example of it..

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Thank you.

John: All right, Nicole. I don't think I'm going to wait another five years, but if I still have a podcast going maybe in two years or so, then I think we're going to have to get together again and see what else you've been up to. But this has been very interesting, fascinating, helpful. And I thank you for being on the podcast today.

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Thank you, John. Thank you for having me. And thank you for this platform. I've talked to a lot of doctors who listen to your podcast, and that's been their motivation to step out into the deep. So thank you for what you do.

John: Well, I appreciate that. All right. Well, take care. Bye-bye.

Dr. Nicole Rochester: Take care.

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Secrets to Beating the Top 3 Categories of Procrastination

John Jurica — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 22:00:32 +0000

Interview with Dr. Heather Fork – 377

In this podcast episode, John brings Dr. Heather Fork back to the podcast to share her secrets for overcoming procrastination.

Dr. Heather Fork is an ICF master certified coach helping physicians find their best career path forward, whether in medicine, a nonclinical career, or something else. Heather is passionate about making it easier for physicians to navigate their careers.

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Procrastination: A Barrier to Success

In today’s interview, Heather helps us understand the root causes of procrastination. She describes how destructive it can be in keeping us from reaching our goals. It can be caused by simple disorganization, lack of planning skills, or deep-seated emotional barriers.

When trying to achieve any important task, procrastination can completely derail us. And the procrastination itself can be a source of negative self-recrimination.

Heather shares a model for thinking about procrastination. She breaks it down into three levels of tasks being avoided:

Small tasks that get overlooked because they are insignificant or non-urgent;
Mid-level tasks that require focus and planning that may take several steps;
Big, overwhelming projects that may be emotionally charged.

Strategies for Overcoming Procrastination

Here is a list of strategies to address procrastination, starting with the simplest:

Schedule 30 minutes to tackle a group of small non-urgent tasks in one sitting;
Set up rewards for yourself for completing an overdue task, or create a punishment if a deadline is not met;
Apply restrictions until a task is done (for example: if your delaying a drop off of clothing to Goodwill, restrict yourself from buying any new clothing until the old is dropped off);
Schedule procrastinated times on your calendar as an appointment;
Recruit an accountability partner to help you with your procrastination while you help them with theirs;
Spend time analyzing negative thoughts you have about a task, write them down, and reframe them more positively.

Bonus Strategy

Heather closes by describing how to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help you to eliminate this roadblock to your progress. Heather provides a detailed description of how she uses ChatGPT to help prevent or overcome procrastination.

You can use it to break down tasks into smaller steps, create schedules, and provide emotional support. You can start by going to ChatGPT.com and asking it to create a manageable plan for breaking down a large project into smaller steps, an outline for having a dreaded conversation, or ways to become more efficient, in general.

Summary

In this interview, Dr. Heatehr Fork draws on her years of coaching physicians to help us identify and understand procrastination, and implement some simple measures to overcome it.

Links for today's episode:

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 377
Secrets to Beating the Top 3 Categories of Procrastination - Interview with Dr. Heather Fork

John: Well, I'm very pleased to have today's guest back again. She's been here before. I think we both think it's been three, although I didn't go back and count, so awesome. I'm glad she's back for another episode of the podcast. She's been an awesome source of support and advice for struggling physicians with their careers for many years. Many of you should already know her very well. She's a well-known coach and an expert on resume writing and LinkedIn, using LinkedIn. So she has courses on those that you should take advantage of. And what they represent to me, like some of those things that we need to know when we're getting into this whole idea of maybe moving to even if it's a new clinical or a nonclinical position, you're going to need a resume. You're going to need a LinkedIn and tons of other things to prepare for it. And one of the things we're going to talk about today that really has a big impact on your moving forward or not. So with that, I will stop and say hello to Dr. Heather Fork. Welcome back.

Dr. Heather Fork: Hi, Dr. John Jurica. It is an honor to be back on the podcast. And actually the week that we're recording this, the podcast that you did with me on The Doctor's Crossing Carpe Diem Podcast is out this week, and it's all about part-time opportunities for those of you who are thinking of slowing down nearing retirement. But all of those things can be good for anyone at any age and stage, and I really thank you so much for coming on and doing that with me.

John: Oh, it was fun. And, this is a few weeks later, of course, by the time this gets posted, but I will put a link in the show notes. So I would recommend if you want to hear more of Heather and myself talking, then you can listen, especially in that one with a lot of ideas if you're getting near retirement. So you've come on before and you've talked about what you do, and by the way, we're on a first name basis, of course, Heather and John. So, what I want to know is what has happened, if anything new or if you've shifted gears in any way in the last couple of years, and just also mention just all the things that you do so for those that haven't heard you before, they'll get a better understanding.

Dr. Heather Fork: Oh, thanks, John. Well, my job keeps me out of trouble. I love it very much. I get to help physicians at the crossroads, and that can be through the podcast, the Doctor's Crossing Carpe Diem Podcast. I also do coaching. So I have a one-on-one coaching program, but I also offer one-off consultation. So if you just would like some perspective on your career, but you don't necessarily need a program, you can inquire about scheduling a paid consultation for an hour on Zoom. I also have, as you mentioned, the LinkedIn course, the resume kit, and a bunch of freebies on my website. So if you just go to the doctor'scrossing.com website, and it's a freebie tab, there's a bunch of different PDFs you can download.

John: Excellent. So again, there'll be links to the website and those other things at the end here. But before we get there, then I want to bring up this topic that we're going to be talking about, because it is a barrier to moving forward if you're frustrated, if you're burnt out, whatever it might be. There's a lot of reasons to change what you're doing. And this is like a basic one, and it's extremely common, and it's not just when it comes to career change. And so, I want to hear Heather deals with this and coaches people about this particular problem, and the problem is in procrastinating. So this is going to be fun, and we're going to get some tips and how to think about it. So, do you think this is, where does this rank in terms of things that hold people back?

Dr. Heather Fork: Oh, John, I think it's enormous. Absolutely. It's enormous. And it can have minor consequences. For example, if you want to take some clothes to Goodwill and clean out your closet, well, if you delay that, like who's really harmed by that?

John: It's true.

Dr. Heather Fork: Nobody, seriously. And at the other end of the spectrum if you, for example, delay seeing a doctor, we all know, because this is what we do, that this can have really serious, even life threatening consequences. And it makes me think of when I was a resident in dermatology at the VA in Miami, there was a patient who came in and he literally looked like he had a brand muffin stuck on his forehead. It was just this huge brown glob that looked like a brown muffin on his forehead, and it turned out to be a basal-cell carcinoma. And I asked him, "What made you decide to come in now? Why did you wait?" And he goes, "Well, it's been there for decades. And I just, I got sober." And he came in.

And this story in some ways, I think explains some of the complexity across the nation, because there can be things going on just with your personal life. It can be fear, such as, I see this thing's growing on my forehead. It could be a cancer, but I don't really want to know it's a cancer, so I'm just going to pretend it's not there. And it can be the problem of, well, who do I call? I need to make an appointment and getting to the appointment. Maybe I don't have transportation. So I like this topic of procrastination because it's actually fairly complex and there's not a one size fits all answer. So there's a lot we can talk about and hopefully give people some help for whatever they're dealing with.

John: Is there a way that you think about procrastination, or well, just tell us when it comes up as being an issue for maybe some of your coaching or even in your own life, how would you start trying to compensate for that or overcome that?

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, I recently came up with a framework because I've been listening to a lot of podcasts on procrastination, reading about it, I did a podcast myself on it. And the basic gist of that podcast was that it's not that you're lazy, that you're procrastinating, there's some kind of underlying internal conflict. So that's often there, but doesn't explain all types of procrastination. So to try to capture more the breadth and depth, the procrastination, I came up with my three different types. You ask yourself this question, is it a mouse, a monkey, or an elephant that I'm procrastinating on?

John: Interesting. Okay. Well, that helps us remember the three, but I have no idea what the three things relate to. So, go ahead and tell us how does that help us break this down?

Dr. Heather Fork: Absolutely. So, well, let's start, let me just ask you, John, first is, what's something that you may procrastinate on? And we'll see maybe what category it fits in.

John: Well, the thing that I think about when I'm thinking about procrastinating is I hate to talk on the telephone. So it affects every part of my life. For example, I try to stay in touch with my children. One's married, one's not married. I mean, my three step kids are married and I hate calling them. I just don't like getting on the phone. So I will procrastinate on that knowing that, gosh, they're going to think I'm not thinking about that. That's one side. The other side is like, as let's say the medical director for the urgent care center, some things come up, behavioral issues come up with the PAs or the NPs, or potential, maybe complaint or something, who knows.

And so then I'm talking to the CEO or to one of the managers and they say, "Well, could you call this person and talk to them?" I'm like, "Yeah, certainly that's something I should do." And I just dread it. And I don't dread it because I'm afraid of it. I just don't like being on the phone talking. And so I have to try and come up with a way to put a deadline, like I have to do this by this date or I'm just not going to do anything else. So those are the two types of things, but to me, that's one sort of minor in a way. And one big one, or maybe they're both big.

Dr. Heather Fork: All right. So those are really great examples about really not liking to talk on the phone. And it affects different parts of your life, and certainly too, if you have to have a bit of a challenging conversation. So we'll go through the mouse, the monkey, and the elephant, and we'll see where you feel like it fits in. And we'll also look at strategies to address each of these. And then just procrastination in general. So the mouse, as the name implies, is like, it's a small sort of issue that you're procrastinating on. It's not big like an elephant, it's annoying. Maybe it squeaks at you sometimes, but often it just screws away and hides and it's off the radar, so you don't really deal with it.

So some examples of things that could be in the mice category would be making a doctor or a dentist appointment, hanging up or framing a picture in your house, sending an email, making a phone call, paying a bill, returning an item to the store or to Amazon. These don't tend to be things that have a lot of underlying emotional content to them. They're just sort of nuisancy things. So that's in the mouse category.

John: Okay.

Dr. Heather Fork: Do you think either of those things are in the mouse category?

John: The way I laid it out, I made it sound like calling my daughter, for example, was on the mouse, but it really isn't because that's one of the most important things in my life or my relationship with my kids. Yeah. So I don't think that either of those are mouse categories now that I think of it.

Dr. Heather Fork: Okay. Good. Okay. So let's go on to the next category, which is the monkey category. So monkeys, obviously, they're bigger than mice, they're smaller than elephant, and they jump around and they're curious, they're wily, they can have a sense of humor and be pesky. So there's a lot of nuance to monkeys. So some examples of what might be a monkey is preparing a presentation, a talk that you have to do, decluttering your closets, going through piles of paper or stuff that's in the garage, or attic. It might be planning a vacation. So it could even be something positive, but you might feel like, oh, I can't leave my practice. I don't get paid when I am away and I don't know where I want to go.

So it can even be fun things we procrastinate on. It could be finding the right help, that might be a house cleaner, a therapist, a tutor, a handyman, or a doctor for yourself, for your child, could even be doing a hobby or interest that you enjoy, maybe playing that banjo like you do you play your banjo. Maybe it's being neglected. Doing artwork, writing, learning a language. So these are bigger things and they may be bit more thought and emotion that comes up when we try to address them.

John: Yeah, that's definitely, those are much bigger than some of the more trivial mouse type things. I'm thinking that for me, actually, as you were talking, I'm thinking both of the ones I mentioned are probably in this category, because I think the elephant category is going to be really, really a critical big thing. So I'm thinking these are both things, although maybe the not talking to the employee in a timely manner can become an elephant thing. Because if I let it go too long, then it's definitely going to have a consequence. So that one might be on the edge.

Dr. Heather Fork: Right. Absolutely. So they do sound like monkeys, and so they require some more focus, they require more planning, and you may have to do a little internal inquiry to understand why the procrastination is happening.

John: Absolutely. Yeah, which makes me want to think of what an elephant one will be for me. So, well, let me hear you tell us about the elephant.

Dr. Heather Fork: Okay.

John: Unless you have other examples you want to give on that one.

Dr. Heather Fork: No, sure. I think it's a great time to go onto the elephant. So obviously elephants are big and we often talk about, oh, the elephant in the room, the thing we don't really want to address, but it's there and it's big and it's looming. And so these are often tasks, or goals that are emotionally charged, and they can feel daunting and they can create a lot of avoidance and have pretty serious consequences because they are more major things in our life. So, for example, for listeners out here that could be addressing your career situation, I often talk to physicians who've said, well, I've often talked to physicians who say, oh, I've been listening to your podcast for two years, three years, four years, and they're very unhappy, but they still haven't made any changes. And so might be like, well, if your happiness is a 3 out of a 10, what's happening? Because it's obviously a serious situation.

It could also be something like creating an online course. I know definitely procrastinating on those things, writing a book. It might be addressing a significant relationship issue. Maybe you're feeling that your marriage is in trouble, but it just, you can't even just imagine thinking, unpacking all that. Or maybe you want to meet somebody. You want to meet your soulmate, but when you think about getting out there on the internet and doing online dating, you just shut everything down because that sounds really scary and potentially hurtful to yourself. Rejection is definitely a reason to stay safe. So often when we want to keep ourselves safe, we stay stuck. Could also be taking on a personal challenge such as an exercise program or weight loss program, can be addressing your finances, looking at debt, looking at your budget, looking at how you are spending your money. If you have enough retirement, you may not want to peak and see, oh my God, this means I have to work another 10 years.

John: Yeah. I remember talking to a lot of people, I don't do coaching like you do, but I've had several mastermind groups and this thing comes up all the time. It's sort of like, we've been talking about a certain issue. They all want to do something different. I mean, that's why they were in the mastermind and yet they might come back month after month after month as come together as a group and they may have had things they were supposed to work on, are they committed to working on. And really were making zero progress in spite of having been given a lot of good suggestions and encouragement and so forth. In a mastermind type situation, you don't necessarily get to the root cause of it.

You're hoping that just by interacting and having that accountability that they'll take the bull by the horns and move forward. But it's pretty common. And I would say for me, and this probably maybe affects a lot of people that are getting right at the point of retirement, yeah, I've definitely retired from seeing patients face to face. But it's the financial. We had a plan for while we were working and we were saving money, but then, do I really know, this came up for me this week actually, do I really know whether and how I'm going to now start to access those funds that I've put away? Do I need to change the way I'm managing them? I'm putting them? It's a whole different thing. And I've definitely been putting that off for months, if not years, so I can fall into that category of type of procrastination.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yeah. And so when we look at strategies to deal with procrastination, it's obvious just from the conversation we've had that different strategies are going to be better for the mice, the monkey or the elephant. Some will apply to all of them, some may be helpful to you, but not to me. And sometimes something works one day for us and the next day we're like a stubborn petulant child and nothing will work.

John: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm interested in hearing what types of, approaches we can take for the various levels of procrastination. And then maybe I can apply one of those to the areas that I'm procrastinating in right now.

Dr. Heather Fork: Okay. Well, I like to think about this as a continuum. So for things that are more like mice, we can use some of the simpler ones. And then as we get into the elephant, we're going to involve some more complex things that really deal with emotions and the conflict that's going on. But some of the simpler ones could also apply for the big ones. So it's really just a smorgasbord. And you get to pick and choose because like anything that's challenging, just like a disease that's challenging, we often have a lot of different therapies that we may use because there's no one thing that actually wipes it out.

All right. So let's start very simply. Like number one could be just make a list. And I have a whiteboard in my kitchen and I have different quadrants on it where I put something like the easy ones, like the mice will be up in the top right corner. And I like to batch my mice. So if you've heard that term, batching, just like, instead of making like one cookie, you make a batch of cookies, it's just easier. So with batching your procrastination mice, you just say, okay, there are these five things I'm going to do and I'll do them all at one time. So batching works really well for mice, but making a list can work for any of these things. And I think so many of us as physicians, we're big list makers and we like to cross things off. And sometimes we'll even add something on that we already did, just so we can get the dopamine hit of crossing it off.

John: Sometimes if you have those lists and you've been crossing them off, I don't keep my list, but some people do. And it's like, if you keep those cards or even while your whiteboard's going to run out of space. But sometimes looking back and saying, holy macro, I actually did so much this week or this month, it's incredible. But it's just everybody has a lot of little things they have to do and definitely don't want to put them off too long.

Dr. Heather Fork: Right. And we always hear about when you set goals, you need to set a deadline. So it's good to have some type of timeframe that you want to achieve this goal by. If it's something like making a dentist appointment, well, it could just be, okay, by Saturday I will have done this by the end of the week. If it's preparing a presentation, then you might say, okay, I'm going to do this by the end of the month. I need to change my career, you might give yourself one year or two years, you might say, by six months I want to have narrowed down my options. So you adjust the timeframe to what's appropriate.

And it's also helpful to let somebody know. So this is where accountability can come in. And some days this works, sometimes it doesn't. I know I've definitely told Katie, my assistant, okay, I'm going to have this to you by this date. And then if not, I've even said, "All right, I'm paying you $100."

John: Oh, wow.

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, I hate to admit it, but I said, like, certain date, I was going to get so many videos done and I didn't get them done, and then I paid her $100. So sometimes these things work and sometimes they don't, but they can help you get closer to your goal even if you don't quite make it.

John: That's a good one. Putting some money attached to it. There'll be different ways that you could do that. I was just thinking of something else that I procrastinate on and I've got to figure out which category it's in and what kind of technique I can use. I do editing of manuscripts for CME. I've mentioned this to listeners before. I've been doing that for 20 years but they arrive randomly in my house. And I don't really set aside any particular, there's not a regular schedule. And so sometimes I'll get them done within a week or two, and other times I'm looking at, it's like, oh my gosh, it's already been four weeks. And so it goes from maybe something that's relatively minor to something that can get really serious because the longer it waits, there's somebody there waiting for that to be published.

Dr. Heather Fork: Right.

John: So I have to use a combination, I think of these methods to tackle that one.

Dr. Heather Fork: It's absolutely true. And I think one of the challenges we have as physicians is that when we think about our training, we've done all the things that are hard in terms of why people procrastinate. Like people procrastinate because they don't want to feel incompetent. They are perfectionist or they don't like uncertainty or they don't really want to put all the effort in. But in our training, we had to do all these things, work hard, be accountable, show up when we're tired. We had to take our tests when the tests were scheduled. There were a lot of negative consequences for procrastinating. And so we were in a container. And that often works well when someone else is putting in the deadlines and there are these adverse consequences. But then when we get out sort of free, we're free people floating around and we have to put those restraints and guardrails and deadlines and accountabilities in for ourselves. It's harder. So it's almost like, that muscle of personal accountability got weak because we had so much external accountability.

John: One of the things I did when I was working as CMO, and it was a little easier because that was a very structured environment and there were certain things I didn't look forward to doing. But I would just put it on my, I would have my assistant put it on my schedule and that time was blocked only to do that thing. Not that it was due that day, but that I had blocked the time out so that I couldn't the next day or a week later, say I didn't have time to do it because it was on the schedule.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes, John. And you must have ESP or you read my notes or something. Because one of the strategies is to do what I call schedule to a time. So I had a friend when I was growing up, Jenny McLaren, and she had this sign in her room, we were like 12. And it said, "I'll do it when I get around to it." And it was TUIT. So I used that recently because there was this dress I wanted to post on Facebook marketplace to resell, but I've been procrastinating on it so much that it was a spring dress and now it's fall and I hadn't done it. So I said, I'm putting to a time on my calendar, and it was going to be one hour to do all these mice. And the interesting thing is, once I had that to a time scheduled a couple days before, I just did the things, I did my mice. And it was, yeah, there was something about knowing how time set aside that I wanted to beat the clock. And I just, and this thing I've been procrastinating on for half a year, I just did it. So that's to a time.

John: Keep going. We got a lot to learn here.

Dr. Heather Fork: So another one is use a reward or restriction approach or and/or. And so when I wanted to get this dress on Facebook Marketplace, because I bought it, and when I thought I'd look great in it, but I looked like I should be on the set for a little house on the Prairie. It wasn't the western cowgirl look I was going for. But I just dragged my feet. And so I said to myself, you can't buy anything new until you put this dress on. And I'm not a huge shopper, but I like going to Marshall's and just finding a little treasure here and there. And so I said, okay, and you can't buy anything new. Well, for months I didn't buy anything new. I think I just get it up there but I didn't. So then, that was a restriction.

So the reward could be, I can get to get something. So you can reward yourself. And I think, that's really helpful. Sometimes just accomplishing it is reward enough, but if there's something like, hey, you want to go out to dinner with your friend or your spouse, or you'd like to make a small purchase, or you'd like to set aside like a fun day or get a massage, use a reward. But restrictions are important too. Like, hmm, sorry, you can't do X, Y, Z until you get this accomplished. We're used to the punitive approach I think as doctors.

John: I'm going to have to think of how I can punish myself if I can stay on track, I got to make sure it'll be something I will hold myself to though if I do that. But that's a good one. Or reward. I mean, rewards sometimes even work better if it's something you've really put off for a long time and wanted to do or have or use.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yeah. And so getting to the more complex issues like the elephants, and we can use this for your situation, is to really dig deep and understand what is the internal conflict that's going on. Because I think for so many of the things that we, as physicians, especially at the crossroads struggle with in procrastination, there's internal conflict under theirs, which is, I want to change my job, but I have these fears. So it's usually addressing the things that we're concerned about or we just have issues with. So in your situation with not liking to be on the phone, what's that about? Like, can you tell us a little bit more about that?

John: Oh, let's see. I can try. Number one, I'm an introvert. I'm not an outgoing person. I don't get thrilled by being with people. I feel most comfortable and actually most powerful when I'm by myself doing something and recharging, that usual introvert extrovert thing. So that's part of it. I'm a people pleaser. So if this phone call involves trying to have a difficult conversation with someone, they might take it a certain way. So I don't want to hurt their feelings, but any good manager or director or spouse or whatever needs to be able to have those uncomfortable conversations. But I think that's part of it. I suppose things like not like fearing the pushback or the negativity coming back at me, if it's, again, a difficult conversation. I guess those are some examples of why, that internal conversation that's going on before I make a phone call or whether I even realize it or not.

Dr. Heather Fork: On a scale of 0 to 10, John, with 10 being I really don't like talking on the phone phone and 0 being, oh, I'm fine with it, how much do you dislike talking on the phone?

John: I dislike it? Well, I would say about a seven, seven or eight. Right now, if I look on my phone, I have a weekly reminder to call my daughter. Now, I don't really plan to call her every week. But I put it on there weekly because then at some point I'm going to see it and then I'm going to do it. But if it wasn't on there, I might just put it out. So, yeah. So I mean, I just, I don't know again exactly the why so much, but that's the scale. Yeah. It's fairly, it's just when I'm on the phone and I'm already engaged, it's not a big deal. It's just the act of initiating it and just doing it. Getting it going.

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, you make a really good point there that often the biggest barrier is that first step and makes me think of this quote, "The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door." I love that. "The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door." So, like you said, initiating the phone call is the hardest part. And that's true for so many things we procrastinate on, which is another clue as to a great strategy, which is make that first step a baby step. For example, if you're trying to write a book, write a sentence, or if you're having trouble looking at your finances, the first step is to just gather the information. So if you think about what you procrastinate on, say what's the lowest barrier of entry? What's that door at the gym, if I can just get in that door, I'll be okay and start there.

Don't think of all the billion things that you have to do. Like if you say you are in a difficult relationship, and every time you think about a addressing that, it's like, oh my God, the kids, the money, the house, so this and that, that's paralyzing. But if you said, the first thing I might do is I just might talk to a friend or I just might write down why I need to do this, why this is bothering me, and just something simple. And then don't think any further than that.

John: It'll help break it down.

Dr. Heather Fork: Break it down.

John: And lower that barrier.

Dr. Heather Fork: So I know we're getting close to time here, but I do want to mention, in addition to finding your why, which is something we just talked about, that's important to just look at why accomplishing this goal is important to you. What will it do for you? How could it change your life? And if you look back in one week, one month, one year, five years, what will be different? Will that be worth it? That can be motivating. But this next thing that I want to mention to me is game changing. It can be life changing. Do you know what this next one, can you guess what it is? It's a great new resource.

John: No, just tell us.

Dr. Heather Fork: Okay. Okay. Using artificial intelligence, so ChatGPT.

John: All right. Now, how on earth is that going to help us with procrastination?

Dr. Heather Fork: It's phenomenal because so many of the things we procrastinate on, not so much the mice, but the monkey and the elephant, the monkeys and the elephants. If we say, okay, Chat, I need to address my finances. This is my situation. These are my student loan debts, this is what I'm doing for investment. I don't have a financial advisor. First you go on to ChatGPT, it's free. So just get on there and then chat. It's like having a conversation with a super smart, empathetic, compassionate person who thinks in seconds, incredibly fast. So then you just type in whatever your situation is. And then say, "Can you give me a strategy or a plan or steps to start addressing this?" And then as soon as you press enter, you count to three seconds and you have your answer there. Whatever it is.

Say you need to do a talk on something, just still chat what the talk is about and say, "Can you make 20 slides for me? Or can you make an outline?" Or if you have to, let's say career change. I did a whole podcast on using ChatGPT to help you with looking at your career. And that can be from, help me understand what nonclinical options are chat. Or help me convert my CV to a resume. Help me understand better what to put in my summary on LinkedIn. And the cool thing is chat is also like a Dear Abby, so you could even say this. So maybe try this, John, say, "I'm introverted. I don't really like docking on the phone, but I have to have these conversations. And sometimes they're where I have to give some constructive feedback and it's challenging for me, can you help me out with this?"

And chat will give you an answer. And the neat thing is, is this is a conversation. So it's not like Google where you Google something, you get an answer and you're done. But then you can follow up and say, "All right, chat. Well, that's awful. But what I really have trouble with is when I'm afraid that person's going to be mad at me. That I'm going to hurt their feelings. Can you help me with this?" And whenever I use ChatGPT with my clients and they have something they're trying to address and I show them online how to use it, all of us have the same response. Our jaw drops every single time. People are like, "Oh my God." And they usually just start laughing and can't stop because it really is mind blowing.

John: No, that's very interesting. You telling me that, yeah, my barrier to asking ChatGPT something which I don't use routinely, but would be zero. I mean, it's an inanimate thing. I can ask it. Because I Google things all the time and to me that's yeah, it's just a step beyond that. So no, that's interesting. In fact, I should probably just use that for a lot of other things. Just like to get ideas. But particularly whether it's with procrastinating or with creating something or with doing something else, it sounds like, yeah, I've never actually sat down and used it.

Dr. Heather Fork: Okay. Well, tonight, promise me tonight, John, and any one of you listening out there, whatever it is you're struggling with. And like I said, it can be a logistical thing, a practical thing. It can be emotional, psychological. It can be like I have, you might say, well, I'm dealing with loss of self-respect because I've been procrastinating so much on this and I just feel bad about myself. I'm telling you, Chats worth the best paid therapist, really, like you can get really great therapy for free.

John: All right. Well, this is how much of a novice I am. So would I just go to chat gpt.com or how do I access it?

Dr. Heather Fork: Yeah, you can go to chatgpt.com. It's also called Open AI, but go to Chat, G as in George, P as in Paul, T as in Tom. And then there's a free version 3.5. The pay version is 4.0 and it's $20 a month. I use the paid one because if you do so many searches or queries, you run out of time, you run out of searches basically. But I would start with the free version and it's just a prompt. There's a space, like a search bar that you just put in the prompt and you can also set up your computer where you can just speak. For me, I press like Ctrl twice and then my microphone comes on and I just talk to chat. I explain the situation, what I'm dealing with, and I say help me out.

John: Nice. That is awesome. Well, that's a great bit of advice in addition to everything else. Thank you for that.

Dr. Heather Fork: Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome. I'd say, that may be one of the most powerful anti-procrastination device that we have so far. So please check it out.

John: All right. This has been awesome. Anything we didn't hit on that you think we need to know about or other ideas for addressing this problem? If not, feel free to tell us again about where we can reach you.

Dr. Heather Fork: Oh, absolutely, John. So I think just to summarize look at whether it's the mouse, the monkey, or the elephant. And then there's so many different ways that you can use to help in terms of strategies such as making a list, having a whiteboard, setting a goal, getting accountability, putting something on a calendar like your to a time. When you're going to actually do these things. Get somebody to be an accountability partner. Look at your why, why it's important to you. Break it down in steps. Lower the barrier of entry to that first step. Do a really mini baby step.

Reframe your fears. Like if there's things that you're worried about, like your income going down, have you changed careers? Try to reframe that and say, well, I can look into options. I know other doctors do this. They're actually jobs where people make more. So I didn't really talk much about reframing the fears, but that's a big part. And that's mostly what I talk about too in my podcast that I did on procrastination. So yes, doctor'scrossing.com is where you can find me and I'd love to help anybody. I'd like to reach out.

John: Well, I am always amazed when I have you here on the podcast, Heather. I guess you always come up with some outstanding topics and issues and solutions and you're just such an experienced coach. So I mean, I really appreciate you. Not only have you helped a lot of physicians working their way through their careers and so forth over the years, but we've known each other for a long time and I really feel like I've gotten a lot of support from you as well. So I do appreciate you and I advise everyone particularly, I mean, if you think you might need coaching, I like the idea of a one-off. If you just want to get a sense of what the coaching would be like. A lot of us have never actually been coached.

And so we don't really know what coaching is. We think it's like someone's going to tell us what to do and I suspect it's not that at all. And so you might just do the one hour, but anyway you have so many things available on your website and the big ones that, like I mentioned earlier, that I find so useful are those pertain to the resume and the LinkedIn because they're so practical. But obviously there's a whole lot more than just that to making a major change in your life, whether it's your career or something else. So thanks again for being here today.

Dr. Heather Fork: And thank you, John. I'm a huge fan of yours. I recommend your podcast all the time and the courses and the summits that you offer and that's why you've been on my podcast multiple times and people really enjoy your episodes and get a lot out of them. So thank you so much. I'm a big fan.

John: You're welcome. So with that, I will say goodbye and maybe we'll see you back here on the podcast again down the road.

Dr. Heather Fork: All right. Well, thanks again, John.

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More On The Benefits of a Professional Corporation

John Jurica — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 12:26:08 +0000

Interview with Dr. Tod Stillson – Part 2 – 375

In this podcast episode, Dr. Tod Stillson explains more about the benefits of a professional corporation and the steps to take in forming one.

This week we build upon our previous discussion where he introduced the concept of employment light and shared his journey from traditional employment to independent contracting.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete.

For Podcast Listeners

John hosts a short Weekly Q&A Session on any topic related to physician careers and leadership. Each discussion is posted for you to review and apply. Sometimes all it takes is one insight to take you to the next level of your career. Check out the Weekly Q&A and join us for only $5.00 a month.
If you want access to dozens of lessons dedicated to nonclinical and unconventional clinical careers, you should join the Nonclinical Career Academy MemberClub. For a small monthly fee, you can access the Weekly Q&A Sessions AND as many lessons and courses as you wish. Click the link to check it out, and use the Coupon Code “FIRSTMONTHFIVE” to get your first month for only $5.00.
The 2024 Nonclinical Summit is over. But you can access all the fantastic lectures from our nationally recognized speakers, including Dr. Dike Drummond, Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, Dr. Gretchen Green, and Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Go to Nonclinical Summit and enter Coupon Code “30-OFF” for a $30 discount.

Making the Transition Without Rocking the Boat

Our first episode focused on how doctors can win as a micro-corporation and negotiate better contracts. Part 2 reveals practical strategies for a seamless transition and income diversification through professional incorporation.

The beauty of transitioning to a professional corporation lies in its seamlessness. As Dr. Stillson explains you can maintain your regular clinical presence while restructuring your business model behind the scenes. He continued wearing the same lab coat, attending medical executive meetings, and maintaining hospital relationships – but with one significant difference: a $200,000 increase in compensation.

You don't need to shout it from the mountaintops… You just need to ask for it very quietly. – Dr. Tod Stillson

The key is creating a win-win situation where your hospital isn't paying more, but you receive fair market value for their services through a more powerful business structure.

The Power of Professional Negotiation

Here's a crucial piece of advice that every physician should consider: when restructuring your practice, professional legal representation isn't just helpful – it's essential. Under a professional corporation:

Legal fees become a business expense (pre-tax dollars)
Healthcare-specific attorneys can negotiate better contract terms
Non-compete clauses and other contract elements become negotiable
Professional representation levels the playing field with hospital legal teams

Benefits of a Professional Corporation and Income Diversification

The medical landscape is evolving, and with it, new opportunities for income diversification are emerging. Today's physicians are exploring:

“Job stacking” – strategically combining part-time positions
Direct primary care models
Telehealth and “practice without walls” concepts
Multiple revenue streams from different medical services

Dr. Stillson successfully monetized various aspects of his practice, from clinic work to sports medicine coverage, ultimately creating multiple distinct income streams. This approach not only increases financial stability but also provides greater professional autonomy.

Summary

For those ready to dive deeper into professional corporations, you can find Dr. Stillson's comprehensive guide Doctor Incorporated: Stop the Insanity of Traditional Employment and Preserve Your Professional Autonomy on Amazon. His website offers both free resources and paid courses to help you navigate this transition. As part of his commitment to helping physicians thrive, Dr. Stillson also offers a free eBook titled 20 Reasons Every Resident Should Start a Corporation During Their Residency.

Links for today's episode:

Paid Resources from SimpliMD:

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

If you liked today’s episode, please tell your friends about it and SHARE it on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 375

More On The Benefits of a Professional Corporation

- Interview with Dr. Tod Stillson Part 2

Dr. Tod Stillson: And I'll say back in the day when I did this tenure over a decade ago, John, my simple goal was to let everybody in the community, including my own peers, have no idea that it was happening. In other words, I still wore all the same lab coat. I still wore all the branding of the hospital. I still did every bit of work that I was doing. It really looked like no different. I still even went to the medical exec meetings, the staff meetings. I participated. I was very willing to participate. On many levels, it looked like I was doing exactly the same thing.

But behind the scenes, the business model was dramatically different. And that's what was empowering in terms of my autonomy and in terms of my taxes and really the financial side of the equation, as I mentioned. And when I made that transition, I got a $200,000 raise just by making that transition. And so an amazing amount of money. But the point is, is that I wanted to do it seamlessly. And that's how I encourage most doctors to do it.

You don't need to shout it from the mountaintops. You just need to actually to make it the most win-win. You just ask for it very quietly, okay? And for the hospital, they're not paying you more in this system. In other words, you're not asking for a raise. Now, you're listening to me go, wait a second, you said you got paid $200,000 more. Well, I did. And that's because their stupid employee contract was a stupid employee contract that wasn't paying doctors fairly, okay? I just was now getting paid fairly for what I was worth in the marketplace. And it's that simple.

So that's not more, that's just fair, right? And that's important for a hospital. I see it in that way. I have plenty of hospitals that also pay doctors in employment-like contracts on salaries too. It doesn't have to be productivity-based. There's all sorts of PSA structures that a doctor can use that makes sense for them if they prefer that. But the point is make it win-win.

John: Excellent. Now, I don't know if you mentioned this earlier or I heard it somewhere else in hearing about your background in that.

So if you're currently employed and you have a non-compete, does that itself become a barrier in any way? Or do you still have a non-compete under your professional incorporation?

Dr. Tod Stillson: It's all about the negotiation. One of the elements that the hospital wanted to put in place with my new PSA contract when I made that conversion, they wanted to put a non-compete in that basically was non-compete in the essential services the hospital was performing while I was engaged in the contract. It didn't have a one year or a 30 day or 90 day, one year, two year wraparound non-compete around it. It was just literally during while the contract was in place. That was all about negotiation. So the point is, it's all about what you want to negotiate.

So if you convert it over and if they're like we had a one year non-compete when you were an employee. We want to have a one year non-compete in this employment-like contract. If you're okay with that, they're okay with that. But it's also a point in time where as an independent contractor, you might say, well, let's negotiate that down. Okay. Let's take that down to three months, six months, eliminate it altogether.

And as your listeners know, this is something that's a hot topic in medicine anyway, right now that it may get eliminated federally all across the board, or at least get put back into the state's hands. And there's just a whole bunch of stuff going on in that context. But the answer is, this is an opportunity when you reformulate a contract to determine the exact terms of it.

I'll bring this point up again to your audience. This is the point where I did what I would recommend them to do. I hired a lawyer who understand healthcare contracts, who negotiated and worked on my behalf. And that was one of the smartest moves I made. And one of the best return on investments that I ever made when it came to this, because they knew and understood things. And they could speak the language, but the hospital lawyers that they needed to hear and communicate it in a way that was best for me.

So when you try and negotiate it yourself, you're not going to typically beat the hospital layers. Okay. You aren't. No matter how kind they seem to be to you, they-

John: They're smiling all the way.

Dr. Tod Stillson: They are smiling all the way. And that's because they're going to kind of, because of information asymmetry, oftentimes, they're going to list that contract more towards them. That's their job. That's who they represent, then towards you. So don't be afraid to hire a contract review or negotiation lawyer. We have them as SimpliMD people that we work with. And so that's another take home message for your audience.

John: Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Because I get that question occasionally, it comes up, do I need an attorney to do this or that? And actually, when I close out each podcast episode, I say, get an attorney, get an accountant, do these things. And it's just, I mean, it's not cheap, but it's worth it. You're going to end up just being in a much better position if you really have someone who knows what they're doing, advising you and maybe even creating the documents.

Dr. Tod Stillson: That's exactly right. And I'll say when you do it like I've done as a micro corporation so my own PC professional corporation, that's a business expense. So it's not even coming out, unlike when you're traditionally employed, all these things come out of your personal pocket, right? So that's post-tax dollars. And it's feels a whole lot better spending on professional services when you're using pre-tax dollars to spend on those professional services.

John: Now, are there some other things I think, because you've written a lot on this topic, other things that you can think of just offhand that using this new model for yourself, that it enabled you to do that did end up, ultimately, basically diversifying your income or assets. Let's put it that way.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Yeah. So what's your question specifically?

John: So when you've switched to this model of interacting and creating your own micro business, there's other things you can do with it.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Oh, I see. Yeah. Got you.

John: Yeah, that are beneficial.

Dr. Tod Stillson: So first of all, it's about diversifying your income channels. And so then anytime you as a professional can diversify your income channels, the better off you're going to be. Now, a traditional employee, professionally, most of their work is being done with that one prime employer, right? So that's one income channel.

And there's doctors that do side work. They can do 1099 side hustles. Like I said, 40%, 50% of doctors will do that. And so you can have those. That's a good example of just professional income diversification, right? In today's world of younger doctors that I talk to all the time, we call this job stacking. The younger doctor, the younger population call that job stacking. And in today's world of job stacking is really cool, John, because Kate, for you and I, we grew up in this mentality of like, you work for one part, one employer, one job, one income. You're kind of, we're all in, in one place.

And that's just how you did it. And there's a lot of loyalty involved in a lot of these things because they are intertwined in that. But younger doctors don't have that same amount of loyalty. They're smartly, they don't have as much loyalty. They think about lifestyle. So what they do, their end point is not just setting down in a community and working a job for 40 years. Okay. Their goal is a certain lifestyle that they're going to then do the backwards math of saying, what number of jobs that I need to take on that will give me the lifestyle that I want to live and the income that I want to have to connect the dots to that process.

So younger doctors are not uncommon for them to not have a 1.0 full-time job with somebody. It's for them to take on a 0.5, a 0.6, a 0.7 full-time equivalent, and then take the extra time they have and stack in other professional income or non-professional income sources. So they can use their time wisely to create income channels that are not reliant on one big source, but reliant on multiple sources. That allows them to then pick and choose the levers moving forward of how they want to increase or decrease when depending on how it's going to still meet the lifestyle they desire.

Okay. So that's called job stacking and younger doctors will get that. And they are doing that more and more. I don't have to remind your listeners this, that more than, it's actually a little bit more than half of doctors now in training are women as opposed to men, and women in medicine, not to say they can't be full-fledged all in. But we see more and more women not wanting to work 1.0 full-time jobs because they've put off having kids and then they're going to start their family. And they do want to sit down in that a little bit more.

So we're seeing a lot more employers offering 0.5, 0.6, 0.7 FTE positions because you have to for the workforce, especially the women, but even for men. So there's a lot of opportunities that exist in the workforce now to do this job stacking. And that all comes back to your concept that you said, multiple income sources.

So now if you roll back to what I did 10 years ago, I developed multiple income sources and income channels out of the work that I had been doing, that was one source. So what I did was I monetized my clinic work. I monetized what I was doing in the hospital. I monetized my call. I monetized my unassigned hospital newborn call, my unassigned obstetrical call, because those are different nuances when you're covering your own practice and when you're covering the hospital's service, so to speak. And so all of those things got monetized.

I monetized my sports medicine work. I've been the local team physician for the high school for years and oversaw athletic trainers. I monetized the nursing homework that I was doing. And then I began to diversify my income channels through things outside of the hospital's control, okay, including real estate, right? So I'm medical office building. Remember you heard me say I started the medical office building and began to receive income related to the medical office building.

And we really just began to diversify other real estate related elements and other income sources that at the end led to about, all said and done, probably 8 to 10 income sources that were all contributing to my household benefit that was beyond just the one that I had when I was traditionally employed. And that diversification is number one, empowering, but number two, it's also a better way to grow your financial footprint and your financial health because you're going to grow more wealth that way.

John: Excellent. Wow. That's a lot.

Dr. Tod Stillson: That's a lot. I know. I know it's a lot. I'm sorry. No, it is.

John: I'm probably going to, we're going to run out of time here in a minute. I do have one more question I want your opinion on, although you may not be an expert because I'm going to ask you about something I don't think you've ever done, but when you do talk to people in one of the options that some physicians have come up with to say, I want to do my practice in a completely different way. So I'm going to do some kind of cash only practice.

I'm going to do a DPC. I'm going to do this, that, do you have an opinion about just the pros and cons of that model versus doing what you're describing? Is there such a thing as a combination? I don't know.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Well, they're kind of, anything's possible nowadays. So I can say that it'd be tough because of the non-compete part to do a combination. But here's what I would say is number one, employment light is hybrid. So it's like having your foot in both doors, like a private practice and a hospital employee altogether. So it's a hybrid model, if you will.

And I found there to be some great strength and benefit for that. I can see though, that there is great, one of my best friends and my former practice partners here in my local community has a direct primary care model in our local community. So when all that went down to over a decade ago, he left, he went to work for basically a bank, became their little contracted family doctor in the bank, big bank. Okay.

John: Corporate medicine, huh?

Dr. Tod Stillson: Yeah. Corporate med. He went and did a little corporate medicine in a different way, but he got away from the thumb of the hospital. And then he eventually came back into the community and started a direct primary care practice. And he's been wildly successful at that. And I know he's a good friend. I talk to him regularly and I support everything he's doing, even though you kind of, in one level, we might be, "competing" with one another. We're not. But I love that model.

I think for patients, it's a tremendous winner. I think for doctors, it's a tremendous winner. I think that there's huge amount of space and opportunity for direct primary care and kind of going, I call it going off the grid medicine where you're just doing cash only. And I think this is a great place for that. It's not going to be the right thing for every doctor, but it fits into this idea of what I, and it's really what I encourage doctors to think about is micro corporations. So back in the day, John, we would think about medicine fit into one or two boxes, A, private practice.

You ran a business, you had HR, employees, lab, building, a lot of things about running a business versus the other end of the spectrum, being an employee where they ran the business and they just gave you a paycheck. I mean, and that was the two models that have existed for about 20 to 30 years, mostly.

Now we're seeing this growing space of cash only practices. Fantastic. Love to see that. Micro corporations, which is what in some regards what I did. I mean, I'm a little small corporation who has, well, two employees, myself, my wife's my bookkeeper. So there's some reasons that we benefit from having her being a bookkeeper in that. But really only person I have to manage is myself. So that's a micro corporation, and really direct primary care is oftentimes similar version of that, right?

A direct primary care clinic might have their own building. But there's usually going to be one doctor, maybe a nurse, maybe a receptionist, it's very lean. It's that almost again, lean versions of private practice is what direct primary care is in some regards. But I'd also say in this world that we're in, John, for doctors, there's also, and this is one of the courses I teach and people can get on my website to check it out. It's called the practice without walls, how to create a practice without walls, because that's the emerging space that a lot of doctors are inspired to do. And that is exactly what I have done.

Incorporate yourself and then contract out your professional services to anywhere in the world who virtually needs your professional services. So telehealth would be a classic example of that. And so, you can be doing telehealth and while you're living in California here in the Midwest, right, you can do that from anywhere you want in the world. And this practice without walls concept is just growing significantly. Think about Hims & Hers and there's doctors behind the scenes who are filling those prescriptions. Has to be a doctor behind the scenes, right?

John: Yes, exactly.

Dr. Tod Stillson: And so those doctors are working virtually somewhat in a telehealth model, doing that, easy money, easy work for them, so to speak. All right. So there are all sorts of ways that doctors can do location independent work. You had mentioned, I think even before we got online here, that you're still an administrator with the urgent care company that you've been working with. So that to a large extent, location independent work, right? So you don't have to be there. You can do that from your home. That's your professional work, both clinical and non-clinical that doctors can do a whole lot of that.

There's legal work, there's administrative work, just a massive amount of things that doctors can do that isn't just in that traditional private practice model. Okay. So the world is our oyster. There's a lot of options and I like to just inspire and encourage doctors to look at all options rather than just blindly following the herd into traditional employment and saying, this is my lot in life. Because quite honestly, that's a miserable lot to be in nowadays.

John: For sure. For sure. Well, I think you mentioned earlier, we're going to end in a minute here, but I think you mentioned your son is in training. Has he figured out what he's going to land in when he's all done?

Dr. Tod Stillson: Oh, I literally just talked to him today and I said, "John, have you figured out yet what you want to do?" And he loves medicine, and he gets that from his dad. I love medicine. In a family medicine, there's just so many options, right? So he's still trying to figure out how he wants to land the plane, whether he wants to do direct primary care, he might do some emergency medicine too. Even today he's like, "Dad, I might just take a year. We might go out to California." Because his wife's from Alabama and they're having their first child. They're going to end up in Alabama. Let me just put it that way. I know that.

But he's like, "We might take a year when it's easy to travel and go out to California, go somewhere we want to be and just work." Again, he's a good example, creating the lifestyle that you want and then working backwards to do whatever work supports that work. And in family medicine, John, you and I know, you can go a thousand different directions when it comes to the work you want to do.

And so he's got options. I don't know where he's going to land and what he's going to do, but I can tell you this much, he's going to be a great doctor. He's a great young man. I love him. I have five children. I love all five of my children, but he's going to be a good young doctor. A lot of the things I teach, I've shared with him one-on-one and he gets it. And so he's well-equipped. He's already started his own corporation. He's using it for moonlighting while he is in residency.

And so he's doing, like I told you, he's doing what I would have told my younger self to do so that he can thrive in the marketplace. And I really have a, in fact, one of the free eBooks that I have online is 20 reasons every resident should start a corporation during their residency. I feel strongly that if a resident can enter the marketplace by saying to the marketplace, I'm a business, I'm a micro corporation, and I want to be identified as a micro corporation, not as a traditional employee, when they enter the marketplace, that's the key spot because once you get started, even 3 to 5 or 10 years in, just because of the forces of physics, it's hard to make a change.

Okay. It's true. But if you can start out at the beginning by understanding and empowering yourself in that way, you'll likely stay in that space and really learn from it.

John: Okay. Well, I think that if your son was already in practice, the advice you just gave would be just as good. And the reason I say that is because listeners, that's your advice. Look at these things and choose an option and check it out and see if you can make things better for yourself. Tell us again, the website, the name of the book, where we can get all that stuff before we let you go.

Dr. Tod Stillson: So simplimd.com, S-I-M-P-L-I-M-D.com. And my book is Doctor Incorporated: Stop the Insanity of Traditional Employment and Preserve Your Professional Autonomy. You can get that on Amazon. I have lots of free and paid resources on my website. Listen, John, this is my passion project. I retired after 30 years in the clinic and I'm doing this as a passion project, as well as a very novel telehealth business I'm going to be getting off the ground in the next three months that's going to be really cool for doctors.

Think of Hims & Hers in the form of acute infections for the world to be treated in. As a family doctor, we're experts in acute infectious treatment, right? So I'm starting a site to work on that. But I love medicine. I love our tribe in medicine. And my passion and my retirement is semi-retirement, I would call it, my wife would agree, is to help our tribe and help our world be a better place than it currently exists.

And the system is rigged and broken right now. We've got to make changes. And I'm going to keep shouting it from the mountaintops. There are alternatives. There's a better place for us to land. And I want to see us all end up in win-win relationships.

John: Bravo. I'm glad to hear that. And I think if we have more people like you pushing it and sharing and educating, we'll get there eventually. So thanks, Tod, for being here today. I really appreciate it. I've learned a lot. And I think the listeners have too.

Dr. Tod Stillson: And John, thank you for your seven years plus of doing this show and really making a difference in the world. I realize sometimes it feels like, kind of feel like you're in an echo chamber sometime. But the reality is you're making a difference one person at a time. And it's a great effort that you're making. And I appreciate you inviting me to be a part of this. It's a kind of join arms to help people.

John: Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. Thanks a lot. Bye now.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Bye-bye.

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Now Every Doctor Can Win As a Micro-Corporation

John Jurica — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 11:51:13 +0000

Interview with Dr. Tod Stillson – Part 1 – 374

In this podcast episode, Dr. Tod Stillson describes how to win as a micro-corporation. For the past 10 years, Tod has been working under a professional services contract, rather than as a direct employee, providing him with greater autonomy and income.

Dr. Stillson shares his journey from a traditionally employed physician to an independent contractor. In this revealing interview, Tod introduces the concept of employment light and explains how doctors can negotiate better contracts with their current employers.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete.

For Podcast Listeners

John hosts a short Weekly Q&A Session on any topic related to physician careers and leadership. Each discussion is posted for you to review and apply. Sometimes all it takes is one insight to take you to the next level of your career. Check out the Weekly Q&A and join us for only $5.00 a month.
If you want access to dozens of lessons dedicated to nonclinical and unconventional clinical careers, you should join the Nonclinical Career Academy MemberClub. For a small monthly fee, you can access the Weekly Q&A Sessions AND as many lessons and courses as you wish. Click the link to check it out, and use the Coupon Code “FIRSTMONTHFIVE” to get your first month for only $5.00.
The 2024 Nonclinical Summit is over. But you can access all the fantastic lectures from our nationally recognized speakers, including Dr. Dike Drummond, Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, Dr. Gretchen Green, and Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Go to Nonclinical Summit and enter Coupon Code “30-OFF” for a $30 discount.

The Rise of Corporate Medicine and Its Impact on Physicians

Corporate control of healthcare has led to decreased autonomy and increased burnout among physicians. Tod describes how arbitrary compensation caps and a lack of understanding from administrators have contributed to this problem.

He emphasizes the need for doctors to stand up for themselves and take control of their professional lives. And he describes the simple change he made to accomplish that goal.

Understanding the Employment Light Model

Tod explains the concept that allows physicians to work as independent contractors while maintaining a relationship with their current employer. This model offers increased professional autonomy, significant tax benefits, and an easier way to create multiple income streams. Some of the topics we cover in Part 1 of our conversation are:

Preparing to become an independent contractor,
Negotiating a professional services agreement,
Creating the opportunity for multiple income sources, and,
How to approach your employer about transitioning to this model.

Empowering Physicians to Win as a Micro-Corporation

Recognizing the lack of business education in medical training, Dr. Stillson created SimpliMD, a resource for doctors to improve their business acumen. He emphasizes the importance of understanding:

The true value doctors bring to healthcare systems, including downstream revenue,
How to negotiate fair compensation based on productivity, and,
The power of business knowledge in preserving professional and personal autonomy.

Summary

In Part 1 of this two-part episode, Dr. Tod Stillson offers valuable insights for physicians looking to regain control of their careers and achieve a better work-life balance. Dr. Stillson's experience and resources provide a roadmap for doctors to navigate the complex world of healthcare employment and find success on their own terms.

Part 2 of this conversation follows in the next episode of the Physician Nonclinical Careers Podcast.

Links for today's episode:

Paid Resources from SimpliMD:

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

If you liked today’s episode, please tell your friends about it and SHARE it on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 374

Now Every Doctor Can Win As a Micro-Corporation

- Interview with Dr. Tod Stillson

John: All right, NonClinical nation. I think today's interview might potentially change your lives. Our guest today is going to explain how he was able to work in a fulfilling medical practice as a pseudo-employee while maintaining his professional autonomy and earning a much higher income. That seems like nirvana to me. So let's welcome Dr. Tod Stillson to the podcast. Hi, Tod.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Hey, John. It's great to be with you and I'm excited to share my journey with your listeners.

John: Yeah, I'm excited to hear this story from the horse's mouth, so to say. I mean, I've read about you and looked at some of the things you've done online, and this just sounds like an exciting option for some of the people out there that are unhappy in their practices.

Dr. Tod Stillson: It is one of many options that exist, and I tell you the beautiful thing about the marketplace today is although corporations strongly control it, there are lots of new developments happening for doctors to regain their autonomy and not feel like they have to end up as a corporate employee, or really what I call a high-paid factory worker, okay?

John: Yeah, that's definitely what it feels like. I mean, that's what I hear constantly. In lack of autonomy and overwork, they don't understand what a physician does.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Oh, yeah, 100%.

John: It's going to lead to the demise of the profession unless we do something.

Dr. Tod Stillson: John, you and I trained at similar times and have similar experiences as family doctors, and you're exactly right. It's the undermining of the professionalization of our great work as doctors that all doctors across the country do, but it has been eroded. I'm a fan for doctors standing up and saying, that's enough. Let's take control of this ourselves.

John: Awesome. Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about your background and the mission that you have to educate physicians on how you have found a way to make things better, even if you're, "employed by a hospital system."

Dr. Tod Stillson: Yeah, and I'll tell you the short story, and then we can get into more details later if you want, but I grew up in the Midwest and did my training in Indiana and went out to Virginia to do my residency in family medicine as well as surgical obstetrics. Came back to Indiana and worked here basically in a primary care clinic in rural Indiana for nearly 30 years. And when I came back to this area to begin working, there was the opportunity to work as an employee of a hospital and really just receive a paycheck for it.

And this is way back in the day when it felt like everybody was in a win-win relationship, right? Where you were given a fair compensation. They still gave you a lot of autonomy in the practice. And as long as you know your downstream was good and everybody's working well, everybody wins. And it was very somewhat simple, but really great. Over time, though, as you know, the corporization of America really came into play. And even our little rural hospital began to lose its autonomy to a larger health system that began to take more control and try and crank out more money and in the process remove more and more.

It's the same script that we've heard from doctors all over the country, right? This just happens and happens and happens. And over time, for me, what happened was because I was a full-service family doctor, meaning I did inpatient care, newborn care, OB care, surgical OB, I really did everything in the hospital, okay? We were busy. I mean, in a rural place, any of those doctors out there that work in rural places you know back in the day, especially, you could be very, very busy. Consequently, I earned a lot of RVUs.

And I mean, I really cranked out a lot of money, if you will, and was paid fairly for it at the time for the hospital myself. They really still came out ahead because of the downstream, okay? But nonetheless, the hospital system that owned them came in and began looking at some of our rural family doctors' pay compared to the city people that were working. And they're like you guys are making a lot more money, and that just doesn't seem right. We're going to kind of level the playing field and we're going to put a ceiling on how much you can earn. Arbitrarily.

John: It sounds like my CFO when I was CMO of the hospital, you know?

Dr. Tod Stillson: Okay. Yeah, makes sense to them, right? Put a ceiling on this. How could a family doctor make that much money, right? And so, I'm like, all of us are like, "Wait a second, what are you talking about? We work hard for our community and for the sake of our hospital, and you want to just give us a pay cut and expect us to go, 'Oh, thank you very much. That's okay.'" So, the long and short of it is, as all these things kind of get dragged out, as they often do, our group of about eight doctors, we saw five of them leave, basically, over a year's time. They're like, "I'm not staying around for this." This left about three of us holding the balls up in the air, meaning we were working harder and doing more work, but still the ceiling loomed.

And eventually, we were just like, what are we going to do? Do we want to go out into private practice together here? Because none of us wanted to move. Do we want to just say, okay, thank you very much. I'll accept this contract or something else. I was wise enough to know, like most doctors are, I was business illiterate and also relatively financially illiterate. So one of the greatest moves I've made in my life was I reached out to some business consultants in healthcare and said, "Hey, this is the situation. What would you recommend to me to do?" And in the process, they unfolded this employment light concept to me that was newer and just coming out and people were using it in the marketplace.

And they proposed that model to me to take back to the institution I was working for. And lo and behold, because I was in a bit of a position of power, because I had a lot of patients, but number two, fortunately, my contract did not have a non-compete in it. And so, they knew that I had some power to take my 5,000 plus patients to any healthcare company that wanted a contract with me. And so, they were somewhat incentivized in that moment in time to say, "That's a good thought to make you an independent contractor that looks like you're an employee still, but really you're an independent contractor." And that's what employment light is.

And they agreed to that while I was in it and while the moment was in my favor, my business consultants also recommended you might consider purchasing a medical office building and having them lease it from you, wisely said and wisely done, they agreed to that. And so, and then really beyond that, I then negotiated an employment light agreement that is basically productivity-based, so compensation-based. If you remember, they wanted to have a ceiling for that productivity. But that was, here's the seat, that was for their traditional employees, their traditional employees they control, right?

Independent contractors, they have the freedom and liberty to form individual contracts. And so, I could then say, this is what the MGMA data is for what a family doctor in a rural area is doing. This is what I should be paid as work RVUs for that. And they agreed to it because they weren't forced to comply with the corporate employee model. Now, I have an individual one-on-one contract that quite honestly, John, I wasn't asking to be paid more than I was worth. I was just being asked, I was asking to be paid for what I was worth.

And they agreed to all that. And so, the long and short of that was the rest is history. That was over a decade ago. I've loved every minute of that decision. And that's led me to SimpliMD because that experience and my wonderful experience of seeing how that revitalized my professional autonomy is the message I have to doctors all over the country. This is possible. You can do this. It's not visible. It's not seen. Employers are not telling people about it, but it's possible. And that's the story I have.

John: That's awesome. Let me ask you a couple of questions that pop into my mind. And as I said as a CMO, I was sometimes, actually, I was doing a lot of the negotiating for contracts. And that was the thing, the contracts need to be somewhat consistent.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Sure they do.

John: But I think I've heard you speak in other settings about sometimes even given that if you're really producing a lot of RVUs because you're doing certain things that maybe the other doctors aren't, they want to put that cap on what you mentioned earlier.

Dr. Tod Stillson: That's correct.

John: So I guess my two questions, did you still somehow have any kind of a cap that affected you once you had made this change number one? And how do you avoid burnout? Because there's still the incentive, I think, is to work your tail off in a way. Maybe that's two questions.

Dr. Tod Stillson: That's a fair question. Spoken like a true doctor about the burnout side. So number one, I had no ceiling in it. And so I negotiated that in the contract, no ceiling. And in fact, I normally, and it's called the professional services agreement. You know that from being a CMO. By the way, for your listeners, professional service agreements are traditionally where locums are seated. Okay. If you want to think of it in a simple way, that's often what locums do, that's contracted labor, and that's often called the professional services agreement.

Employment light that I'm talking about, in my experience, is also a services agreement. So that's the big box that it goes into. And in my professional services agreement, it's a three-year agreement that renews. But we renegotiate at the end of every three years. And I had an elevator for my work RVUs in it as well. So I didn't just get paid a dollar value per work RVU per year. Each year that went up. Okay. And so because, right, because we have issues like we're all experiencing right now, inflation, right? So numbers tend to rise. And if you keep it static, you're going to end up on the backside of that. And a lot of physicians don't understand how that works.

So anyhow, I had that built into mine and there was no ceiling, and it was just fair compensation for the work that I was doing. Now, I will tell you this much, the moment that I turned that on and began doing the same number of work RVUs I'd been doing the prior year, I made a couple hundred thousand dollars more. I mean, literally apples, apples, not doing more work, not doing anything more, literally just being paid fairly, it led to a couple hundred thousand dollars difference in pay annually.

Now, to answer your second question though is, is there some challenges with that that you get into when it comes to, do you sometimes incentivize yourself to work harder than you need to, right? And I think any self-employed doctor, especially if you've ever been in private practice or ran your own practice in any way will ask themselves that question. And you have to guard yourself from going into that rabbit hole.

All right. Do the work you enjoy, do it at a pace you enjoy, do to the rhythm you enjoy, meet the expected requirements that that pseudo employer has for you, if you will, at least be a mid-level performer, if you will. And let it fall from there. I took five weeks of vacation every year. Okay. And by the way, in the model that I worked in, today's where people always talk about pay time off, right? PTO, all that business. Nope. In my model, when I was working, I got paid.

If I wasn't working, I didn't get paid. And I know what that opportunity cost was for me. If I took a week off, it was going to cost me about $14,000 of income. Just that's what it was. But you know what, for my own sense of well-being and my own sense of sustainability in it, it was very important to take that time off because indeed, I was a high-performing doctor, did a lot of obstetrics and was available a lot. But that was a rhythm and pace that I enjoyed. So your listeners, if you do get engaged in a contract like this, you definitely want to guard yourself from overworking because you're sort of incentivized by that carrot. Find that sweet spot, so to speak.

John: I'm going to have a series of questions here now to put you on the spot. But because I'm going to do that, I want to early in this game here, remind our listeners that you do teach other people how to do this in a variety of ways. And so tell us about, before I get into my laundry list, SimpliMD and everything you're doing to help physicians learn more about this.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Yeah, I'm glad to do that, John. One of the fundamental problems in my story that you heard was I had business illiteracy. Most of us go through our medical training and unfortunately, there's not a lot of financial or business literacy that exists, right? Now, we have a lot of organizations that have been populated out there for doctors to become financially literate, and it's for doctors, things like White Coat Investor, et cetera, that are really nice resources that are filling some gaps that exist in helping physicians. And I love that that's happening.

The reality, though, is there's not a lot of business or micro-business resources like that for doctors. And so I chose to develop SimpliMD as a micro-business competency website that would help doctors flourish and thrive by understanding their business powers and really understanding that doctors are a business individually. And so I have a whole bunch of resources and assets from courses, to consultations, to coaching, to free eBooks that can be found at simplimd.com, and that's spelled S-I-M-P-L-I-M-D.com. And so your listeners are more than welcome to go to that, take a look at the various products that exist.

They can look at the header and find everything. I love helping doctors. I just love helping them learn from what I've discovered and learning how to thrive through the preservation of their professional and personal autonomy. So it's a really powerful idea. And I can tell you at SimpliMD, I don't want to go too far around this rabbit hole, but pretty much the system is rigged against doctors. Yeah, I don't know if you know this yet or not, okay?

John: Yeah, it is, pretty much.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Systems rigged against doctors, okay? And it's because the corporatization of medicine has really stolen that autonomy we have. And then they funnel us all into W-2 workers, right? And then the federal government, who's the other force at play here, they love hiring doctors, hiring taxpayers like doctors who are W-2 employees, because they got no place to turn, right? And that we literally are the targets that they are looking at and saying, oh, you guys are the ones that make a lot of money. We're going to be happy to take all that from you as a W-2 earner.

And so there's not a doctor I don't talk to that doesn't say taxes are killing me. They're horrible. So whether it be burnout or taxes, doctors are having all of this erode that deep sense of when you and I became doctors. We're like, you know what? I don't need to be a gazillionaire, but I certainly look forward to the good life of a doctor, where I have some professional autonomy, where I have some personal autonomy, where I can make a good living and not feel like I'm being picked apart day by day. That's what doctors are looking for.

In today's world, there's so many forces that push back against them. And what SimpliMD is about, and some of the work you're doing I know as well, John, is all about re-empowering doctors in the marketplace to say you don't have to give into those two things. And there is a different path and a different space you can go into. That's what I talk about at SimpliMD.

John: A couple of things I wanted to say. First of all, reflecting again back to the day when I was working at the hospital as an executive the CMO, well, not CMO, the CFO, the CEO, the COO, they're going to want to get out as much as they can from their physicians. They want them to be productive. They want a bottom line. They're driven by that. And they actually, they really do not understand a physician's life. I mean, I actually had to do a lecture for the team explaining to them that when we go home at five o'clock, if we go home at 5:00, that's not the end of our day.

Dr. Tod Stillson: That's correct.

John: We could be busy doing records and answering phone calls, being on call, coming back, going to the nursing home, so many other things. And they just, they don't get it.

Dr. Tod Stillson: No, they don't.

John: So when you were talking about that, it really rang true for me.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Yeah. So there's two things to keep in mind and you understand this as a CMO. Number one, what the work you do in the clinic or face-to-face with patients, your professional services, so to speak, that's just a little, that's a small part of the bucket of what that hospital system is really looking at. They're really looking at the downstream revenue of what your work produces and it's the churn. In business world, we call that the churn, right? The churn of what you produce for them and every doctor who's in an employee situation, you need to know what your churn is. That is exactly what the real value is to your health system to them. And that is that downstream revenue.

Spoiler alert, that's usually worth anywhere from $2 to $5 million, depending on your specialty per doctor. Now translate that $2 to $5 million churn that you're creating for them, not just seeing patients in the clinic, but the whole churn and they're micromanaging every click of the mouse that you have in that clinic space and all the while are making a whole bunch of money on that churn that exists for you downstream. That's what burns out doctors. And that's where you begin to feel undervalued, uncared for, and misunderstood.

So understanding that you do have a downstream revenue beyond what you're doing in the clinic is an important part of the business model that when you become an employee, you're engaged in. And you're exactly right. The administrators don't fully respect and understand what it's like to live under that microscope that you are churning out for them and the difficulties and challenges of it, because they're really looking at you as a number on the spreadsheet.

You're an impersonal number on the spreadsheet. And here's how it looks. Physician labor, expense, period. Okay. That's your salary plus your benefits and anything else that you're doing to create money, to make the system pay for you. Okay? And then the, what you're doing in the clinic plus the downstream revenue. And that's the equation. And you need to understand the dynamics of how those things interplay and the power you have as a doctor to stand up for yourself and say, wait a second, you're undervaluing me and you're underpaying me.

John: Yeah. Now, the other thing I wanted to mention before we move on to my next question is that I did look thoroughly at your website and I felt like I was in a YouTube thing because, not because there's all videos, really, it's a lot of blogs, but the titles and the questions you're answering there are so damn interesting. You know, it's like, damn, I wish I knew that 10 years ago. Damn, I wish I knew that when I was in practice. So I mean, there's a ton of free information and it really gets to all these issues and it addresses maybe some of the questions I'm going to continue to ask you here in a minute, but I really recommend people go and check that out.

Dr. Tod Stillson: And I appreciate that, John. And I will say, I'm so thankful you said that, because to be honest, I created that website and that business with just that in mind. What would my younger self like to know and what can I communicate and share with the rest of my physician tribe that the younger version of myself, now I'm 30 years into practice and so forth, that I wish I would have known.

And part of that, John, and I really write about this in my book, Doctor Incorporated: Stop the Insanity of Traditional Employment and Preserve Your Professional Autonomy. That book was written, a little bit of my website was written with my son in mind. He's currently a third year family medicine resident in Dallas, Fort Worth with John Paul Smith Residency Program. I just was thinking, and it's really what inspired all of those, what's the best advice I can give my son to thrive in the marketplace? And all of that really somewhat began to inspire the whole work that I did with the book, SimpliMD. So intentionally, you're right. That's exactly for the viewpoint that I write those, getting those resources that can make their life better, if I would have known that 10 years ago or earlier.

John: All right. I'm glad you did it.

Dr. Tod Stillson: Yeah, thanks.

John: That's very interesting. And even though I'm never going to be practicing again, once I fully retire. Okay, here's a question. You're in the setting as a physician of being employed, you're subject to all these issues, you're burned out or what have you. I can imagine that it's not necessarily an easy conversation to say, okay, guys, I don't want you to get worried that I want to leave. I don't want to leave, but I don't want to be employed by you anymore. And I don't want to go into private practice. So I have this idea. So you help people work through that I think.

Dr. Tod Stillson: I have.

John: How do you approach that?

Dr. Tod Stillson: So there's a couple of things about it. This is important for your listeners to know. Number one, a professional services agreement and employment light, virtually every hospital knows about it. And here's why they know about it. That's because this is the pathway and the bridge they use to bring private practice doctors into their safe harbor. This is the same pathway they use. They use it virtually every year, all the time. And it's that bridge, but they want to make it a one-way bridge. They kind of want to go, well, this is what we do to engage private practice doctors to come in and become employed doctors. And this is the pathway for it.

But if you're already employed with them, it's like they've got this big kind of bar in front of them and go, you can't go the other direction with this. The reality is that they know about his existence, but it's in what I call the hidden drawer. Let me just use a real Midwestern analogy with you. I like going to the dairy queen. We've got a great dairy queen in our little community. And the day went that my wife and I went to the dairy queen and we both are going to order peanut buster parfaits. And so I order peanut buster buffet with the fudge and all that stuff was really good.

And my wife got up and she said, "I want the peanut buster parfait, but I want peanut sauce substituted for the chocolate." Okay. And I looked at her, I'm like, "Well, that's not on the menu." And she's like, "Oh, but it's on the secret menu. You have to ask for it. And as soon as she said it, they just like, "Okay, we can do it." Well, secret menus exist in all restaurants just as an FYI. Okay. But number two, secret menus exist for all employment contracts.

And the first drawer that they're going to pull out for you is the boiler plate traditional employment contract for every doctor. That's what they're going to go first. And they're going to make you think that is your option. And you have to have enough savvy to say, number one, you know there's some other contracts in your drawer there that we could also talk about. And my preference is to be considered an independent contractor, not an employee. So you have to have the business awareness and your own self-awareness to say that.

Now, if you're a doctor who's been traditionally employed and then your contract's coming up for renewal, or you want to have a conversation with your CMO, again, you got to have the awareness that this is one of the contracts that you would potentially talk about transitioning to. You're like, and here's how I coach doctors to say it. And this is exactly how I said it to my CMO.

I said, "Look, I like wearing our team jersey. I'm all for wearing our team jersey. I want to see our organization succeed, but I want to do it in a little bit different way than what we've been doing it before as a traditional employee. And I think we can do this in a win-win relationship where I'm an independent contractor that still does all the same work, still produces all the same downstream, still gets all the fair compensation from you. But what I gain from that, Mr. CMO, is A, a little more professional autonomy, and then B, an amazing amount of tax efficiency. I have now added a whole bunch of tax tools to my kit that I no longer am targeted as a just a sole W-2 employee. Now I can save 10% to 15% of my income, which for a doctor is a lot of income annually, in that model.

So guess what, Mr. CMO? I want to see you guys win. I want to see me win, and we can do this in a cost-neutral way so that everybody wins. How about it? Let's have a conversation, talk about this, and let's pull that secret menu contract out of your drawer, and let's talk through this." And honestly, it's that simple. Now, there's a couple of caveats here I want to bring forth to your listeners, John.

Number one, to be considered an independent contractor, you can't have that hospital work that you're doing as your sole contract, okay? Because the IRS is going to look at the hospital as like, hey, you're just trying to avoid FICA tax by employing this person as a contractor rather than as an employee, and they get a lot of penalties, and that's where hospitals get really uptight about these things, right? So they're like, wWell, we can't do that because we could get in trouble from the feds," and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

So it's very simple, right? How many doctors do you know that don't do some side hustle of some type? I mean, gosh, the studies show 40% to 50% of doctors do. I mean, it's very common. But to be considered an independent contractor, you'd want to have that primary contract and then a job stack, a secondary work that you do as an independent contractor. It could be nursing home assistant director.

It could be taking call. It could be doing telehealth. It could be, in today's world where there's physician jobs that are location independent, like gobs of them, there's all sorts of things you can do. And it's really not so much about the amount of money that you're making in those independent positions. It's that you're doing it. So in other words, you can demonstrate to the IRS and to the employer that you indeed are doing more than one job, okay?

That's the definition of an independent contractor, all right, you're doing more than one job. So that's an important caveat, but it all begins with you going to your superior and saying, "I'm interested in a win-win conversation, okay? This is not me against you. This is not me getting away from you. This is about us doing this together.

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How to Become an IME: A PNC Classic from 2021

John Jurica — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 13:06:39 +0000

Interview with Dr. Emily Woolcock – 359

Today we provide an inspiring story and learn how to become an IME (Independent Medical Examiner) from an expert orthopedic surgeon in this classic episode from 2021.

Dr. Emily Woolcock is an internationally recognized speaker, best-selling author, mentor, and consultant. She is among the country’s most well-known orthopedic surgeons. Dr. Woolcock is board-certified by the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery and the American Board of Independent Medical Examiners.

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We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete.

For Podcast Listeners

John hosts a short Weekly Q&A Session addressing any topic related to physician careers and leadership. Each discussion is now posted for you to review and apply. Sometimes all it takes is one insight to take you to the next level of your career. Check out the Weekly Q&A and join us for only $5.00 per month.
If you want access to dozens of lessons dedicated to nonclinical and unconventional clinical careers, you should join the Nonclinical Career Academy MemberClub. For a small monthly fee, you can access the Weekly Q&A Sessions AND as many lessons and courses as you wish. Click the link to check it out, and use the Coupon Code “FIRSTMONTHFIVE” to get your first month for only $5.00.
The 2024 Nonclinical Summit is over. But you can access all the fantastic lectures from our nationally recognized speakers, including Dr. Dike Drummond, Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, Dr. Gretchen Green, and Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Go to Nonclinical Summit and enter Coupon Code “30-OFF” for a $30 discount.

Dr. Woolcock Begins Doing IMEs

Dr. Woolcock founded businesses in Georgia, Florida, and Maryland. They include the Orthopedic and Joint Replacement Institute, the Accident Rehabilitation Center, and National Orthopedic Consultants. In 2016 she established the IME Academy. Through the Academy, she teaches students to perform defensible, literature-based independent medical examinations.

Emily is passionate about helping other physicians. So she helps them break free from the work/life balance issues she experienced early in her career. As a wife and mother, she understands the struggles physicians and other healthcare professionals face.

When she first began experiencing burnout, she found that a skill she learned in residency could solve her problem. She began performing highly compensated independent medical exams. By doing IME consulting and delegating nonclinical work to team members she cut back on her office and operating room commitments.

How to Become an IME

Emily is a very creative and dedicated physician. She balances clinical work, performing IMEs, writing books, and mentoring dozens of young people. She is busy. Yet, she loves her work. And she is not burned out.

This is the first time I had a guest with the expertise to explain how to become an IME. It is similar to what an expert witness does. But it also involves examining patients, which some of you might find more compelling as a side job.

Like expert witness work, learning to be an IME pays very well. You generally must continue to practice medicine, at least part-time.

Find out what makes you happy and learn to integrate that with your vocational calling and you will be a much better, well-rounded person. – Dr. Emily Woolcock

Emily provided inspiration and valuable information. She knows this topic well. If you’re interested in learning to be an IME you can find her course at theimeacademy.com.

Summary

Dr. Emily Woolcock describes her inspirational story. She discovered a way to reduce her work time while producing more income by performing Independent Medical Examinations. In this interview, she explains how you can do the same and improve your work-life balance.

Links for Today's Episode:

The IME Academy
Dr. Emily Woolcock Website
Dr. Emily Woolcock LinkedIn Page
My Doctor Looks Like Me, by Emily d. Woolcock, MD (female ver.)
My Doctor Looks Like Me, by Emily Woolcock, MD (male ver.)
Mi Doctor Looks Like Me, by Emily Woolcock, MD (Spanish ver.)
Looks Like Me Books Facebook Page

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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