Interview with Dr. Sharon Hull – 351

In today's episode, Dr. Sharon Hull explains why exploring what matters most is critical to designing your career.

From her early experiences in small-town medicine to her role as a pioneering leader in physician coaching, Dr. Hull's story resonates with professionals seeking greater fulfillment and meaning in their work lives. Today, she empowers listeners to embark on their personal journeys of self-discovery and intentional career design.

Our Show 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. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Our Episode Sponsor

Dr. Debra Blaine is a physician like many of you, and her greatest challenge was fear. The whole concept of leaving clinical medicine was terrifying. But she is so much happier now as a professional writer and a coach. According to Debra, “It’s like someone turned the oxygen back on.”

If fear is part of your struggle, too, she would like to help you push through those emotional barriers to go after the life you really want. Click this link to schedule a free chat.

Or check out her website at allthingswriting.com/resilience-coaching.

Navigating Leadership in Medicine

As a seasoned coach and mentor, Dr. Hull recognizes the importance of leadership development for physicians and other professionals. She discusses the unique challenges physicians face in leadership roles, from communication barriers to institutional politics. Drawing from her coaching experience, Dr. Hull offers practical advice on cultivating essential leadership skills, including effective communication, time management, and strategic decision-making.

Professional Careers by Design

Dr. Hull's forthcoming book, Professional Careers by Design: A Handbook for the Bespoke Life, serves as a roadmap for professionals seeking to design their careers with intentionality and purpose. Through a blend of practical strategies and thought-provoking exercises, the book guides readers through self-discovery and career planning. Dr. Hull emphasizes the importance of aligning career choices with personal values and aspirations, encouraging readers to embrace change and pursue meaningful work that reflects their authentic selves.

Dr. Sharon Hull's Mantra

Start with what matters and then figure out how you can get more of that in your life.

Summary

To connect with Dr. Sharon Hull and explore her insights further, you can visit her website at www.mettasolutions.com. You'll find valuable resources there, including her blog and information about her book, Professional Careers by Design: A Handbook for the Bespoke Life. Additionally, you can follow Dr. Hull on LinkedIn for updates and insights into career transformation and intentional career planning. Whether you're seeking guidance on navigating career transitions or crafting a purpose-driven career path, Dr. Hull's expertise and resources offer invaluable support on your professional journey.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Dr. Sharon Hull's Metta Solutions Website
• Dr. Sharon Hull's LinkedIn Page
• Professional Careers by Design: A Handbook for the Bespoke Life
• Dr. Debra Blaine's Coaching Services

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

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 351

Explore What Matters Most and Design Your Professional Career

- Interview with Dr. Sharon Hull

John: One of the things that comes up very often when I'm speaking with physicians who are looking for what to do with the next chapter of their life because they're unfulfilled or unhappy is they have this question, "How do I figure out what I should be doing or find out what my passion is?"

Anyway, they've never done that introspection before and that's why I'm so happy to have today's guest, Dr. Sharon Hull with me today. She's written a book, she's been doing coaching for years and she's addressed this particular problem many times with her clients over the years. With that, let me welcome Dr. Sharon Hull.

Dr. Sharon Hull: Thank you, John. It's a delight to be here. I've been following your work for several years and happy to talk to your audience of people who are trying to figure out how to make peace with this career choice.

John: Yes, and how to make the best of it maybe and continue it, maybe get rid of the bad parts of the particular situation and keep the good parts. Tell us about your background, what you've been up to and then we'll get into my questions and about what you've been doing. So tell us about your journey.

Dr. Sharon Hull: I'm delighted to tell you a bit of my story. I'm a family physician. I tell people by initial training and by my DNA. It was my natural fit when I went through medical school and had a wonderful 30-plus year career in family medicine, most of it in academic medicine but I did start in solo rural private practice near my hometown which was its own wild ride of an experience. People that were my second parents, my best friend and my babysitter as a child helped me paint the trim on my office the night before we opened. That's a classic small town family medicine story.

I had a great career as a physician and I realized that my life was going to need to make some shifts along the way to deal with family needs and for that reason I entered early a career of coaching kind of as a side gig with medicine. Everybody in my medical world and my academic world knew that I was doing it and I figured I would go full-time into it when I retired in my mid-60s. That was my mental plan.

And life happened and in my early 50s I got the opportunity to become a full-time coach within an academic center and build a program for coaching physicians and scientists in that center and had a wonderful time doing it but I found myself in my encore career about a decade before I expected to and I haven't looked back. No regrets about medicine and no regrets about an early transition to an encore. So, that's the short version of my story. I'll answer any questions you have.

John: That was very interesting and listeners, I recommend you look at Sharon's LinkedIn profile because you'll get a fuller picture in some ways. It's not the full story obviously but it just shows the number of transitions that Sharon has navigated. Before we get into my other questions, Sharon, can you just tell me the name of your hometown in Southern Illinois?

Dr. Sharon Hull: I grew up in a little town called Ridgeway which was the popcorn capital of the world as it claimed itself. There were 1,200 people in town and 23 people in my high school graduating class. It was a classic small town experience.

John: Do you have any idea how far away that is from Metropolis? Have you ever heard of that town?

Dr. Sharon Hull: I do. I know exactly where Metropolis is. Are you from Metropolis by the way?

John: I'm not but my wife's family is from there and some of them still live in that area.

Dr. Sharon Hull: I grew up probably about 60 miles from Metropolis, just a little bit north.

John: That's definitely Southern Illinois. It's almost Kentucky.

Dr. Sharon Hull: People think that Illinois is all Chicago and there's a whole bunch of the state left.

John: All right, let's get back to the interview. One of the things I wanted to comment on is it looked like because you're involved with academics and you're doing it with coaching, it looked to me a lot like it was leadership coaching and I think that the part they don't necessarily teach in med school and residency, you have to be some type of leader when you're a physician but it's not always the right type of leader. Any comment on that observation?

Dr. Sharon Hull: I have some comments about it. I don't think we get taught how to be leaders and I think leadership is a profession in and of itself that has a certain skill set that you might have if you're a physician and you might not have. I worked with a lot of physicians who found themselves in leadership roles because of their clinical expertise or their scientific expertise and they didn't know what to do with humans in a nonclinical setting.

Usually I wasn't working with people who were in trouble. I was working with people who were new to leadership roles and trying to build the skills. We focused a lot on communication skills, on time and energy management as a new leader and what I sort of jokingly call the institutional perspective or the politics of the whole thing. That's where I spent most of my time in leadership coaching. It's that perspective taking and communication skills.

John: Yes, as you know physicians are often put in leadership role for a team or a committee but if we work in a corporate environment, it's different, or any kind of big hierarchy. It's a whole different way of interacting with people. A lot of people are focusing more on servant leadership for the last 10 or 20 years and so that means it's not like the military approach, the way medicine used to be. That's an important thing. And you must have been contributing heavily to your organization. I don't think there are that many that were doing that kind of coaching at the time.

Dr. Sharon Hull: We were one of the early institutions. I won't say we were the first but we were among the first to really put in place a program that wasn't about people being in trouble. It was really an investment in mid-career talented people who were rising up the ladder and helping them be successful. It was a lot of fun.

John: Sounds like it would be fun. That was a thing that brought me to you when we connected on LinkedIn a month or two ago. And at the time I was setting this interview up with you I didn't actually realize you were on the verge of releasing your book and it addresses all these issues around leadership and designing one's career. I thought this was definitely something we have to talk about. So tell us what's the name of the book and why did you write it?

Dr. Sharon Hull: I'm happy to do that. The title of the book is Professional Careers by Design: A Handbook for the Bespoke Life. This book is kind of a distillation of about a dozen years of coaching professionals about how to help them make their career what they want and need it to be at that moment. Helping them realize that their needs and wants change over the course of a lifetime and that's okay. It's really kind of a guidebook to a lifelong process of being intentional about your career.

I came to write it because I kept coaching people who were asking these questions. How do I know what I want? What do I do? I've trained to do one thing and I can't imagine not doing it but I can't imagine keeping on this path. And I kept looking for the book that I could have them read and I couldn't find the book that covered what I was covering. And after about eight or nine years I decided I probably was going to just have to write it. And that sounds arrogant and I don't mean it to but I couldn't find anybody who was talking about it the way I was coaching people. So I decided to put that in print and maybe leave it as a guidebook.

John: I'm glad you did and the thing is the book hasn't been released yet as we're recording this but it's coming out very soon.

Dr. Sharon Hull: Launch day is tomorrow, John. April 30th. By the time your podcast goes live it will be live and released. We're going to do a big launch event tomorrow where I'm doing interviews of people about their career journey and we're going to have a lot of fun. By the time your listeners hear this it will be available to the public.

John: Okay, we'll get to how to get the book in a minute but it struck me as I was looking at the index for the book there's so many different areas they think are right on in terms of what we need to learn about it. Probably any professional in a similar situation. I don't know if you'd agree but there's a big group that's a lot like us physicians and that's professional athletes. They work really, really hard for a long time. They get burned out and they face things even more in a compressed way because their careers are usually shorter.

That's what I'm going to ask you about today. Some of the things in the book and you can educate me and our listeners and then go off in any direction you want but just to get things started you know what I hear a lot is that physicians say they're just unhappy. I can't really keep this kind of pace up forever. I'm just overwhelmed. I've experienced the same thing myself and that even if you enjoy medicine there's a certain point as you get older you just can't keep up that pace. You can't be on call and work long hours forever. And so, the question is always what do I do next? How do I find out or figure out what I should go towards rather than running away from something?

Dr. Sharon Hull: I'll respond to that first by saying it is good to go towards something rather than just run away. I think that's a hallmark of the early conversations when I meet with somebody who wants to think about changing careers.

The next things I do because I'm a family physician by training is I try to assess the degree of burnout and the degree of mental health compromise and assuming that people are stable and not in urgency about those things. Then we have a conversation about what matters to you. I remember asking one man in his early 50s that question and said "What matters to you right now?" And this was a kind of a classic stoic man who looked at me and just started crying and it surprised the heck out of him that he cried but when he was able to gather his thoughts he said nobody's asked me what I wanted in 40 years. And I think as professionals, it's not just men it's men and women, and it's not just physicians but as professionals we don't ask ourselves what matters very often.

And so, at the beginning of my book the front section is about discernment and it starts with that question, "What matters most to you at this season of your life?" I think that list changes over our seasons. It changes when you're early in your career when you have young children if you have children, when you have caregiving responsibilities or health issues. That's what I mean when I talk about the seasons of people's lives.

When I give them this exercise and it's the first exercise in the book, make your top 10 list of the things that matter. And I tell people, I quote a dear friend and mentor who's recognized in the book, personal and professional, it's all one life. You have a finite amount of energy. What you do with it's up to you. And so, that's kind of the ground state for the book and then I ask them to make that list of what matters and I tell them the only rule is you have to have some personal and some professional things. And there's no right ratio, just make your list. You can't be wrong it's your list.

I bring people back to talk about that and I ask them what they learned and what surprised them. And almost invariably what surprises them is the top five to seven things are personal they're not professional. For all of us, it's kind of near universal human experience with the exception of people who are very early in their careers or at a very high competitive time in their career. I have a professor who's trying to get tenure and trying to get their grants written or somebody who's trying to get through residency or fellowship. Those people it's mostly professional at the top. But for most of us once we're through that, it's about person and nobody gives us permission to do that conversation in our own heads. I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here, let me be quiet and let you do any follow-up if you want to.

John: Well, I think it's ironic sometimes when I talk to people, for example, someone who's working 60 hours a week they're trying to generate a lot of money so they can donate it or contribute it to some venture to be able to share the income to get access to and support that other thing that probably is what's important to them. And to me it's like "Well, why don't you just do something that somehow brings these together if that's really what matters to you?" And like you said life and the career aren't necessarily separate. So that's just an observation that I've made and I'm sure you've seen different versions of that same kind of thing.

Dr. Sharon Hull: Well, you do too. You reach a lot of people and you've talked to a lot of people. I have seen some of the online conversations you've had and these are common questions and you're seeing the same variations on a theme that I see. I will say they extend beyond just the profession of medicine and I tried to write the book or any professional however they define themselves but particularly people who have studied for a long time to enter a profession and have a set of expectations that they'll stay with it from society or from their family or from income needs or whatever. That's who the book is written for is the people who feel like they might be stuck.

John: I'd like to go back to something that you mentioned earlier and it's this whole idea of a life and a career by design. Maybe that's something everyone should be taught either in high school or college about actually taking time to try to design your career, design your life and maybe go back to it from time to time. Growing up I was good at math, I was good in science, I got good grades, so I guess I was going to be a physician. So, how should we really look at that? How should we conceptualize that?

Dr. Sharon Hull: I devote some time in the very beginning of the book to talking about the idea of design thinking, kind of the idea that you make the best first choice you can make and you keep tinkering. And it's people who design furniture or design machine parts do that. Thomas Edison did that when he invented the light bulb. He had 1,500 ways he failed and he said "I didn't fail, I had 1,500 ways not to do it." Sometimes I meet people that feel that way about their careers. And so, the idea that we're designing always gives people that sense of agency to reassess.

And my real unstated goal, I guess I'm stating it here so it will be out of the bag is to get this book in the hands of young trainees as early in their careers possible. I actually think that people younger than you and me have handle on this that we didn't have and they're going to reiterate their careers multiple times. This is just a guidebook to how to do it.

John: Well, I have to agree with you. I have seen some examples that I thought "Wow, they had so much insight in an early age and they were really thinking two or three steps further than I ever thought." Again we're such old school I think, we're from a different era but I couldn't see past that horizon so I just kind of plugged along and did my thing until maybe I felt like it just wasn't the right thing anymore.

Again, I mentioned this earlier but if people look at your LinkedIn profile I think it was a good example yourself and again it might not have all been by design at the beginning but it does demonstrate that you can make significant changes, you can evolve, you can shift from you know patient care to some non-patient care position but still doing what you love and maybe like you said what matters.

Dr. Sharon Hull: It doesn't have to be static but people do have constraints on their decisions. And we talk about that in the book. Perhaps when you're young you have fewer constraints. And we enter a time in our late 20s early 30s to maybe our 40s mid 40s where there are a lot of personal constraints. They might be financial, they might be child rearing, they might be geographic. There are lots of reasons people feel stuck in that period. But if they can see light at the end of the tunnel or see that they do have choice, they can come through burnout a little differently, I think. At least that's my hypothesis, we'll see.

John: I think that's right on at least from what I observed. You mentioned the term "agency" a minute ago. We don't use that term very often. Maybe in a corporate environment I might have heard it once in a while it's a bit of jargon but has a certain really applicable meaning to what we're talking about. So, can you explain what that means to you?

Dr. Sharon Hull: I will. I will first say that as a young family physician I was taught the term self-efficacy, the ability to believe I could do something about a problem I was facing. And to me agency is maybe a just a different term, maybe it's more corporate speak, maybe it's more ethical psychological speak. We are the agents of our own lives and we don't talk about that much. That doesn't make us selfish. It does make us responsible for the choices. I have a coffee mug on my desk over here that says "Never complain about what you permit." And when I first saw that quote it hit me right between the eyes. It's like yeah, if you don't like something, figure out how to change it without just creating chaos around you. And the book is about how not to create chaos but to do it intentionally.

John: Yes, it's odd to me that we feel that in spite of being part of one of the most educated professions on the planet we don't feel we have any options and we don't have any control over life once we get locked in and we've finished residency or fellowship, whatever it is. And you kind of feel like "I have to do this, I've invested so much into this role." And that whole thought process holds us back. But we're not actually obligated to do anything.

Dr. Sharon Hull: I actually have two things I'd like to say about that if I could. The first is that I spent a number of years as the dean of students for a medical school. And my job was to run orientation for the first year students and it was about three weeks long. And at the end of three weeks I would meet with them in small groups and I would say "If in the last three weeks you've figured out that this is not the place for you, and this is not the profession for you, could you say that?" And in eight years six or eight years of doing that job no one ever said yes. Three weeks in people felt stuck.

Now the second thing I want to say about that is our friends in law will tell you my law degree teaches me how to think but it doesn't mean I have to be in the courtroom. They see the skills as a doorway to do all kinds of things. And for a long time I was envious of my law colleagues and then I thought "Well, I have some skills that could open some doors for me too. I just need to think about it differently." So, I got fascinated talking to my law friends.

John: When you were just talking about that question you asked your students as a dean, I always kind of looked at it as a conspiracy. I can't imagine any of my instructors professors or other teachers would tell me "Oh, yeah, after you get into this or maybe eventually you want to do something else outside of medicine or something that applies medicine in a different way where you're not subject to being stuck with dealing with insurance companies and all the regulations and the long hours doing in the EMR."

It seems like they're part of that system and they want to continue this system. They don't want to let anybody out of the system and that might be overly cynical I'll admit. And at least you were there asking that question. I personally have never talked to anyone who's had a positive response to a physician in training who was thinking about leaving medicine. They'll usually do whatever they can to keep them there for a lot of practical reasons too.

Dr. Sharon Hull: Some of the earliest informal coaching I did was with medical students who really did figure out the answer to that question that they really didn't want to do clinical medicine. And much to the chagrin sometimes of my superiors I became a safe place for them to talk. And that may have been where I kind of learned my pathway was going to have a place here.

John: As I suspected your superiors weren't necessarily real enthusiastic about that.

Dr. Sharon Hull: There's this whole mentality of societies investing in your training and you owe society back. They've invested in you and this is a calling. There are lots of parts of that myth and it's not entirely mythical you have to decide what part of it applies to you.

John: It shouldn't be a surprise though when you consider that most of us made a decision to go into health care when we were children.

Dr. Sharon Hull: That's where the term agency comes in. I'm the agent of my own career. And sometimes the choices before us aren't great but we make the best one we can in the moment and get really intentional about what's next.

John: Well, there's more about that in the book, and I am going to ask you one more question before you go. But first let's talk about where they can find the book and then tell us the title and the easiest way to get the book when it comes out.

Dr. Sharon Hull: They can find out more about me obviously through LinkedIn and I'm assuming you'll put my LinkedIn in the show notes. But my website is www.mettasolutions.com. Metta, that's the name of my company, Metta Solutions. And on that website they'll find my blog, they'll also find a page devoted to the book which is titled Professional Careers by Design: A Handbook for the Bespoke Life. On the book page are several options for buying it. You can also find it in the common places like Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Goodreads. But that book page on my website collects all of those in one place.

John: Okay, excellent. Well, we are going to run out of time pretty soon now so I'll put those links to everything you mentioned in the show notes, of course. In thinking about your kind of typical clients or my listeners, any last words for any professional who might just be frustrated or unhappy in their career and how to maybe be better at designing it.

Dr. Sharon Hull: Start with what matters. That is my mantra. Start with what matters to you and then figure out how you can get more of that in your life systematically every day and let the list change as your life changes. That sounds like airy fairy kind of stuff but it's really not. It's common sense. My grandmother would understand it. Just start with what matters and the rest does come. The book can be a guide to the technical parts about what you need to deal with.

John: Yes, that's very helpful. Let's start with what matters. Maybe just sit down and start writing your list.

Dr. Sharon Hull: Top ten list.

John: And if you need help you can start by getting the book. All right, Sharon, this has been fun.

Dr. Sharon Hull: It has been fun, John. Thank you.

John: Thanks again for coming. Bye-bye.

Dr. Sharon Hull: Bye-bye.

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The post Explore What Matters Most and Design Your Professional Career appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Interview with Dr. Lara Salyer – 344

In today's episode, Dr. Lara Salyer explains how she integrates the best of traditional and functional medicine in her practice. In the process, she takes listeners on a journey of career reinvention and personal empowerment. 

Dr. Salyer shares valuable insights and practical advice for practitioners seeking fulfillment and career balance. From the transformative power of creativity to the importance of storytelling and self-expression, listeners are inspired to try something new.

Our Show 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. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Annual Nonclinical Career Summit Coming Soon!

It's time for the Second Annual Nonclinical Career Summit. It’s called Clinical Practice: Make It Great or Move On. We have 12 top-notch speakers such as Dr. Dike Drummond, Dr. Nneka Una, Dr. Gretchen Green, and Dr. Tom Davis.

We'll learn about creating a cash-based practice, MedSpa, Infusion Center, or other business, protecting yourself legally, and learning a lucrative side gig or investing in real estate.

Admission to the live event is free. If you prefer, you can purchase the recordings and bonuses for a small fee. Please join us on the evenings of April 16 through 18.

Go to nonclinicalcareersummit.com to learn more and reserve your spot today.

Our Episode Sponsor

Dr. Debra Blaine is a physician like many of you, and her greatest challenge was fear. The whole concept of leaving clinical medicine was terrifying. But she is so much happier now as a professional writer and a coach. According to Debra, “It’s like someone turned the oxygen back on.”

If fear is part of your struggle, too, she would like to help you push through those emotional barriers to go after the life you really want. Click this link to schedule a free chat.

Or check out her website at allthingswriting.com/resilience-coaching.

Reimagining Healthcare and Integrating the Best Parts

In this engaging podcast episode, Dr. Lara Salyer reflects on her transition from burnout in family practice to discovering functional medicine. During our interview, she emphasized the importance of aligning one's career with personal passions and values. Dr. Salyer highlights the transformative power of creativity and innovation in revitalizing professional and personal fulfillment.

Empowering Practitioners and Cultivating Her Speaking Engagements

Lara describes her new role as a mentor, guiding practitioners through strategies for reclaiming joy and autonomy in their careers. She shares practical tips for crafting impactful speeches and navigating the speaking circuit, emphasizing the value of storytelling and authenticity. Additionally, she explores the significance of boundaries, self-expression, and embracing “messy” progress.

Dr. Lara Salyer's Advice on Career Fulfillment

Find your path to fulfillment with WARM: If I'm feeling stuck, overwhelmed, unhappy, I start with “W.” Whose voice is in my head right now making me feel bad?… then Aim low with tiny steps, Remember your ‘why', and “M” is “Messy moves the needle,” you don't have to be perfect.

Summary

Through engaging anecdotes and actionable tips, Dr. Salyer offers a roadmap for reclaiming passion and purpose. Whether you're navigating burnout or seeking to reignite your professional spark, Lara provides hope and guidance, reminding us that it's never too late to design a career that aligns with our deepest values and aspirations. To get in touch with Dr. Salyer you can find more information and contact her directly on her website drlarasalyer.com.

And if you wish to access any of her programs, you can use the Coupon Code “CATALYST” for a $50.00 discount off the usual price.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Dr. Lara Salyer's Website
• Freed.ai Medical Scribe App
• How to Reclaim the Best Parts of Your Career – 120
• Reserve Your Free Spot at the 2024 Nonclinical Career Summit
• Dr. Debra Blaine's Coaching Services

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

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 344

Integrating the Best of Traditional and Functional Medicine

- Interview with Dr. Lara Salyer

John: Sometimes when rebooting your practice, it's helpful to speak with someone who has a lot of imagination, and that describes today's guest to a T. She first appeared in the podcast in December of 2019, and she was about two years into reimagining herself, at least her approach to patient care. And she's continued to innovate since then, and she's now mentoring clinicians, more than she was at that time. I think that she's a great one to talk to today about remastering, recreating your life and your career. Dr. Lara Salyer, hello and welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Lara Salyer: It's a pleasure, John. I was so excited to receive your email invitation again, and mind blown that it's been four years. I feel like it was just yesterday. We were talking about innovation and transforming healthcare, and look, it continues. I'm happy to talk to your listeners about reimagining healthcare.

John: Yeah, I couldn't believe it either, because I just made a point a few months ago to say, well, I got to go back to my old guests and see what they're up to. And in my mind, your name just stands out. It isn't like something I had to dredge up. It's like, yeah, Laura, she's in the Midwest, she's been doing all these things in Wisconsin. Four years. That is crazy.

Dr. Lara Salyer: It's crazy. We're practically neighbors. But see, this is the beauty of what we've all been through in this global pandemic in the last four years, the world is made larger and smaller. I feel like it's really exploded our ability to connect across the seas and virtually. With the advent of telemedicine laws changing, there's so much cool things and innovations and AI that it's really inspired me. And yeah, I'd love to dive in and just talk about all the changes. Where should we start?

John: Well, let's see. We don't have to redo everything we did last time. I will have a link to the previous episode that has a lot of the information and how you found functional medicine and got involved in that, which I think has escalated exponentially. But anyway, start from there maybe and where we were then. And just touch on some of the things that are new about you and your practice and what you're doing with patients and other physicians.

Dr. Lara Salyer: Sure. Well, this is sort of the example of creating your own career that is a self-expressive vote of the future you'd like to see. And that's really what I embody and I try to use this as my compass as my mantra every day. Just in a one sentence nutshell, I was a burned out family practice doctor, realized I was burned out, not sure if I wanted to stay in medicine, but then fell in love with functional medicine on my last CME and decided that's what I wanted to do. I opened up my practice and we had our interview in 2019 and I talked about what that entailed being an entrepreneur in this space and learning those ropes.

Well, since 2019, I've really enjoyed embracing this creativity of educating patients with online courses and having online group visits every week that provides an ecosystem of support for my patients and really exploring this sandbox of tools that we have right at our disposal to make medicine fun again. And it's naturally been sort of an attracting beacon to other practitioners looking to innovate and to explore some of these options.

I've really amped up my mentoring, not just in the functional and integrative space. I help those practitioners grow and scale a membership practice in their own community using a lot of AI and tech. But I also mentor colleagues in burnout, those that want to tap back into creativity. I graduated from the flow research collective in their high flow leadership, so I can coach how to get that flow acquisition, which for those that don't know, flow is the only time your brain produces all five neurochemicals of happiness. The more you learn how to make your day flow channeled, the happier you are, the more easeful life feels.

And so, I'm enjoying this renaissance of my own personal career, helping practitioners learn how to become and embody their ideal self. And then that naturally just extends into my international speaking career. I had the honor of being invited to the center stage in London last year, last summer, on the largest European medical conference and was able to stand beside some greats that I was honored to have shoulder to shoulder. It just keeps expanding and it's just fun. And like I tell my teens when it stops being fun, now that's the time you need to think of making a shift. But I'm still having a blast.

John: That's a lot to talk about and to consider, but it sounds very positive. I don't know if we're going to get into the flow thing a lot, but maybe we will. But maybe just for our purposes, is that flow state, whether you're working or at home doing something, I'm assuming that's the same thing that in general we talk about when you're in that zone.

Dr. Lara Salyer: Yeah, in the zone. Yes. Just simple. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term and it's anything from being in a sport or you're doing Tetris or you're balancing your books. It's just being in deep work.

John: Okay. Cool. I wanted to talk about the speaking a little bit because a lot of my listeners ask me about how to get into that. It seems to be kind of a black box. They don't know how to start. And just some tips on becoming a recognized speaker and getting some of the big types of engagements that you've talked about already today.

Dr. Lara Salyer: I've got lots of tips, John. I think I'm a shameless kind of person who is open to feedback all the time. So, be prepared to speak and make mistakes and fumble and keep getting up and trying again. But the key to establishing your own speaking career is finding your story. You have to have a story and everybody has a story. And once you find the story that is underlying this anchoring mission of why you feel compelled to speak, what are you speaking about? For me, it's speaking about healthcare burnout and the intersection of creativity and how we've lost that piece in healthcare.

And I really believe that physicians, if we could be allowed more autonomy to be self-expressive in the way we deliver medicine, we wouldn't have as much burnout. Of course, it's not that simple. If you look at my message, anybody could look at it and go, "Well, that's not the cure to burnout." No, I'm not saying it is. But it gives me the platform to tell my story, to offer things that I've learned that have helped people. I work with residencies and medical schools and I travel and do workshops. I'm able to craft this around my central story, which is I'm a physician who burned out and found a second career. Or third or fourth, however many you want to count. For anybody listening who's thinking, "How can I develop my speaking career?" start looking at your story. What's your story say? What are you passionate about? If anybody stopped you on the street and said, "You have 40 minutes to tell me something that you're passionate about without any slides, without any prep." That is what you need to talk about.

And so, right there, getting the topic and then second, crafting your PowerPoint, working with a mentor. I had my own public speaking coach, and I believe firmly in coaching. And that's part of the underlying result of my mission with working with so many residencies in medical schools and in my mission that I want to make coaching a part of medical school. That every medical student has a coach assigned. Everybody's got somebody there because we are not above needing that kind of executive help.

And so, when you work with a coach, like a public speaking coach, it can help save time and unlock some of the things that you didn't know you were doing and fidgeting. It makes such a difference. I would start there with knowing your story. What does that say about your mission and your vision in the world? And then working with a coach to help you craft that narrative and really make it professional.

John: I think that's awesome. Because when I think about things that successfully communicate, whether it's a book or a presentation, it always includes a story. Either the speaker's story, the writer's story, or somebody else's story, but it always ties back. That gives that great example of the point you're trying to make and it pulls people in, and they want to hear how the story ends. So, that's cool.

Dr. Lara Salyer: Yes. At least for me, I hated being in, and this is just my preference. Whenever I would be in a lecture or in some kind of presentation and listening to the speaker, it always felt empty to me when there wasn't some kind of transformative takeaway. And so, I like having all of my talks have something at the end that the listener gets, whether it's something that they can download or something that they can walk away with and remember you by. If you're looking to make a speaking career, develop that signature talk. Have some kind of takeaway. Like something downloadable. And if you don't have any of the fancy things like a CRM or an autoresponder, if those words don't resonate with you, you can simply just ask them to give you their email and you can send them something. You can be very old school about it. You don't have to be super polished and professional.

John: I think there are other people that think, "Okay, I'd love to have a speaking career." I don't think they're necessarily as committed because they're a little nervous to have a little stage fright. So, how do you get ready? That UK presentation, that was a big deal.

Dr. Lara Salyer: That was a huge deal. Oh my gosh.

John: How did you prep yourself for that?

Dr. Lara Salyer: Oh goodness. Well, it's that fine line of delusional almost OCD prepping and then trusting the universe that it'll be okay. I love the books. TED Talks, Chris Anderson, or Talk Like TED. Those are the two favorite books I have. I also like Rule the Room is another book, that's a resource. And I often listen to a podcast by Grant Baldwin called Speakers Lab. And believe it or not, that has taught me more than anything because he goes into the business of speaking of how to invite people or pitch to people and follow up and all those kinds of things.

I've learned a lot about the business, but when you're coming down to the wire and you're practicing, it's a combination of I would look at my slides because I was allowed to have some slides, but it was a TED style talk. I had 20 minutes to give my one message. And so, I would practice with the slides and then I would go on a walk and I would listen to myself because I recorded myself and I would listen and imagine the slides on my walk. And then I would try to see if I could anticipate the next sentence. I'd pause the recording and see if I could anticipate the next sentence, not so that it was rote memorization because a lot of public speaking coaches would say, "That's awful. You do not want to memorize your talk." You want it to feel like a conversation. And you want to allow for inflection and for moments of improv in a way.

What I would do is divide my talk into four segments of main points and I would try to anticipate, "Oh yeah, there's that next point. I'm going to talk about this." And that's all it was, was a summer of walks with my dog and just really memorizing the next point that was going to happen until I became comfortable that I felt like I could do it without any help.

John: No, that's awesome. Because you can tell, I watched a lot of TED talks in some of the smaller venues. You can tell the speaker is glancing at a monitor or screen or something to remind them of what they're doing. It doesn't really flow and it's okay, the message is good, but when you have a really good speaker, it flows and it's engaging and it goes by like in two minutes.

Dr. Lara Salyer: Yes. And don't be afraid to practice. Before that UK talk, I had other opportunities where people said, "Could you just give a 20 minute? - Oh yes, absolutely." And I remember in Toronto, I was asked to speak at a very large event for naturopathic doctors, and it was going to be broadcasted and I had no teleprompter, nothing, no slides. I thought, "This is even harder than UK. I am on it. Let's do this. This is going to be gritty test time." And I did it. And guess what? There were interruptions. Somebody walked in front of the feed when it was being recorded. There was a person that interrupted the door and I got put off. I didn't remember my next line, but guess what I did? It just took a moment. And that's the thing is when you face that kind of awkwardness and you realize you're not going to evaporate into ashes, it's okay. And you chuckle and you learn how to sidestep.

Everybody wants you to succeed. Nobody is sitting in the audience waiting for you to mess up and going, "There it is. I'm glad she's messing up." They want you to have a great time. So if you fake it till you make it in that moment and be like, "Okay, here we go", that's when you get to be that elevated speaker that people want to hear from because you're relatable.

John: That's great. That's awesome. I love that. And a lot of resources, I wrote those down and we'll put those in the show notes so people that are really interested can take advantage of those.

Okay. We're going to move into helping other clinicians, but I think before we get into that and how you're doing that, I think our listeners need to understand exactly what does your practice look like now? Functional medicine, not everybody even know what the functional medicine is and kind of tied to that. I think you still call what I would call clients patients but there's a distinction that some people make. And I think it's easier in functional medicine than let's say in doing something like yoga. You're not going to call them. If you can capture all of that in the opening of this next section here on how you help physicians.

Dr. Lara Salyer: Sure. Real quick, I do have a license to practice medicine in Wisconsin and Illinois. I have my attorney that comes in and teaches inside my mentorship for practitioners. I stay very, very close to the law. I don't want to call my patients clients. I'm still a physician, so I have a physician patient relationship. But my practice is very tiny. I call it very cozy. And I keep it that way because I have a lot of other hats I wear. Last year I was invited to be the director of practitioner activation for the School of Applied Functional Medicine. Basically I am the mentor for their school. And so, that is a job that I do part-time, but I also have my own mentorship, the Catalyst studio.

And these are practitioners that come in for 12 months and they're with me and they have a bunch of resources online. And we work one-on-one, and we also have weekly masterminding. We call it studio time. And the reason I've created this artistic metaphor is because I want physicians to create their masterpiece, their work-life masterpiece. I don't believe in work-life balance. I don't think that is something we can achieve. I believe it's a masterpiece. It's an integration of work and life. And so, they're with me for 12 months. And then in addition to that, I have one off session.

People that aren't even in functional medicine, they don't even care about integrative medicine. They might be a medical student, a resident, or just an attending who's like, "Hey, I need some inspiration on how can I pedal through some of these emotions, this burnout." I use solutions focused, positive psychology, a little bit of acceptance commitment techniques that help them tap back into flow. And I give ideas and resources and really get them back into what are they doing here. And helping them with decisions. It can be making a decision on the next step for their career or just how to play again as an adult. We forget that and kids are so good at that. I love being almost that little inspirational fairy that can help my colleagues get back into that childlike wonder.

John: Can you give me an example? And it could be even amalgam of many people, but what is the type of person that shows up at the beginning, either for the one-off mentoring or the 12 month? And then how does it look different at the end of that period? I'm just trying to get that so the listener can say, "Hey, that sounds like it's right up my alley."

Dr. Lara Salyer: Yes. That's great. I like to call this the average practitioner. They are frantic, they're rushed, they're stressed. They're feeling almost hopeless and wondering why they chose this career. But they feel stuck like "I have to be in this track." They don't see many options. They've probably not played or had their hobby dusted off the shelf for years. They probably look at you with blank eyes when you said, "When was the last time you did something fun?" They don't even know. They don't have free time. They really are a victim of their calendar. They're really reactive in their calendar planning instead of proactive. That's the typical practitioner.

And then at the end of my programs, I call them the catalysts. The catalysts, they are expansive, open-minded. They're innovative. They are very much in control of their calendar. They're very autonomous. They see those elements in their calendar and time and space and energy. They're boundaried. They're able to really keep and protect that energy and spend it on things that give them joy. They are more tapped into gratitude and creativity. And these catalysts are such a joy.

And so, I can take people through this journey. In fact, I have a 10 hour CME course that people can take online. Completely self-driven. And it helps them kind of walk through the standards that I've found have worked really well for my clients. I call those clients, my mentees, my catalyst. And it helps walk them through some of the basic foundations of finding your flow and finding your anchoring down into your "why" and how to use that throughout your day to bring joy back into focus.

John: On average, is that group of people employed at a large organization where a corporatization of medicine has kind of driven most of them crazy? Or are they in a practice and they're just overwhelmed? They may own it, but it's out of control because they're trying to handle everything.

Dr. Lara Salyer: That's great. For the functional integrative physicians and practitioners inside my 12 month mentorship, those people usually are solopreneurs. They might be employed, they might have a hybrid practice of insurance and cash pay. And these people are really looking how to strategically move that business. How to make it more streamlined and flow channeled. The one-off catalyst advantage, those are the people that sign up for just one or two or three sessions.

I have bundles of packages where they can meet with me one-on-one, and there's nothing to do with business. It's more about personal development. And those come from all walks of life. I have discounts for students and residents because I remember those days, you can't really afford much. And then it can be attendings, it can be nurse practitioners, people that are just curious about personally developing themselves. And they come from all walks of life as well. They could be independent, most of them employed.

My grand goal in my future, my five to 10 goal is I would love to be a chief wellness officer at a large organization because I've enjoyed working in this high level systemic change and seeing the results of what some of these modalities can do for practitioners is really life affirming for me. So, it's just been a wonderful journey.

John: Now as a secret in some of those to really focus on doing what you love and where the flow can occur potentially, and getting rid of the stuff that just drives you crazy. And does that require delegation? Does that require, or can it enable one to say, "Look, I'm a family physician, but I'm not going to do 100% of what a family physician could do. I'm going to focus on something that I like to do and I'm going to get rid of the rest."

Dr. Lara Salyer: Yes. Oh, I love this. It is getting comfortable disappointing other people. I think as physicians, especially family physicians, we are the bottom of the totem pole. We get everything dumped on us and we just get used to serving our patients, saying yes, doing it all. And it's time to push back. And it's okay to have boundaries. This is where I help people with those boundaries in saying, "Listen, if you are literally burning up and you are a miserable shell of a human, you're going to work, you're coming home from work and you are just not happy at all, something's got to change."

Now you can't change overnight the whole system. The system is slowly changing. But we are at a dawn of a new healthcare with AI helping. I love freed.ai. It's a wonderful program that is a charting program where all it does is listen to you and your patient and creates a beautiful SOAP note. I actually interviewed the founders. It's a resident and her husband who's a computer guy, they founded this company. It's phenomenal. And it's things like this that are going to help us fall back in love with medicine and do what we do best, which is being a healer. We are right now data entry clerks and we're not able to delegate because a lot of hospitals are saying, "No, you have to enter in those lab results. No, you have to do it all." And it's crumbling.

I really believe if we hang on, we are almost through the dark ages of medicine and we're about to enter the dawn of where AI can help us and it's suddenly going to be so much fun. It's like driving a Tesla. It's just, "Wow, everything's done for me." And so, hanging on, I think that's my role in this whole structure is helping our colleagues just to hang on and let's find a way through this that can help you stay human while we wait for AI to help. And it might mean take a day off every week and you go to your administrator saying, "I need to be different RVU. I need to back it down." Because we want to want to save you before you go out with the ship.

John: What was that link again to that AI tool?

Dr. Lara Salyer: Yeah, it's freed.ai. And what I love about them is they give you 10 free visits to try them out. You don't even have to put a credit card in. The proof is in there, amazing algorithms and AI. And then when you do, it's really affordable. You can get an industry, your whole institution can get a license, or you can get your own. If you use the code CATALYST, you get $50 off. I'll just give that out there so people can get a discount if they want it.

John: Excellent. I'll tell you and our listeners here why I am so interested in this is because my thing in the past has been "What other options can you do if you're a burned out physician?" But really, 15, 20 years ago, there wasn't a lot of focus on fixing within your own practice or something like your practice. Now I'm trying to get more people like you to say, let's go back to the beginning and take all the good things that you wanted to be when you went through med school and residency. And let's try and get rid of the other crap that doesn't help.

Dr. Lara Salyer: Yes.

John: That's just holding you down. And as we push this, I think we're going to see more of it. So, I appreciate what you're saying.

Dr. Lara Salyer: I'm glad that you've recognized that. I think there is an exodus of people. Their pendulum swung where people were leaving. Sadly, we lose a lot of people to suicide, a whole medical school class worth every year. And there's a lot of physicians that are just retiring early. But I think the pendulum is going to swing back the other way. Like you said, I want to save the career of medicine. I want to make the career of medicine something that still honors the joy and the creativity and the self-expression. Nobody wants to go see a robotic doctor. And so, I really think that we're almost there. We just got to hang on a bit and keep working at it.

John: The thing is not only are physicians frustrated and upset, the patients aren't happy. They're not happy with a five minute visit for something it takes 20 minutes normally and the doctor spends all their time documenting and sending notes in and blah, blah, blah. The whole thing has to change for patients as much as for physicians.

All right. Why don't you spend a couple minutes telling us about your website and what's on your website and how to get ahold of you and all that kind of stuff?

Dr. Lara Salyer: Oh, sure. Absolutely. We'll start to different things. If you're a patient in Wisconsin or Illinois, you can find me on my website, drlarasalyer.com. But I do keep a very, very long waiting list because I devote a lot of my time and passion to our colleagues. So, if you're a physician, a nurse practitioner, and you're curious about what creativity and flow can do to enhance your happiness and joy, again, go to my website, drlarasalyer.com and you'll be prompted through a series of buttons. It'll ask "What are you here for?" And it will direct you to the practitioner page.

And I would encourage you to take the Catalyst Archetype quiz. It's a free quiz. You'll be matched to one of the four archetypes. Are you a fervent flame, a resolute rock, a wise wind, a reflective river? And then it matches you to a two-page plan that will give you suggestions on adult play activities, things that you could do to enhance your hobbies and self-expression.

And also on that page, you'll find opportunities to do a sample session with me, a real one-on-one working session where we can just dive in and start getting you aligned with your best self. And all my stuff is there. If you need a speaker for your next conference, you need a keynote, again, I have a speaking page on my website. I love speaking. I'd love to connect with you. And there's an application form there as well.

John: Excellent. Well, listeners, I think you should take advantage of that, even if you have to skip the next few weeks of podcast listening. Spend that time checking out Lara's website and make a plan to change your life if you're not happy.

All right, Lara, we're going to run out of time here. So, just some more advice, some last minute advice before we go to our listeners who might be unhappy, out of balance, just frustrated and not enjoying their careers in particular. What advice do you have before we go?

Dr. Lara Salyer: I love little acronyms. I'm going to give you an acronym that I use when I'm feeling stuck, when I'm feeling unmotivated or overwhelmed. It's WARM and it goes like this. If I'm feeling stuck, overwhelmed, unhappy, I start with "W" and I ask, "Who's talking? Whose voice is in my head?" Is it the administrators saying, "You need to see more?" Whose voice is in my head right now making me feel bad? Is it my family of origin? Maybe it's an auntie or a grandma or something. Who's talking right now? Am I listening to my own voice or is it someone else?

The next is "A", which is aim low, not aim high. Aim low. Use Tiny Atomic Habits. James Clear is famous for that book. Atomic Habits. Do one tiny thing. Aim Low. What can you do in the next moment, even if it's just your next breath? Aim low. You're looking for tiny evidences of progress that you can find your way out of this mess.

Then "R" which is reason. What is your reason? What is your reason for medicine? Anchor yourself back into your "why." Why are you doing this? And there's many reasons. And it can shift, it could be stability. I wanted a predictable career. I wanted travel, whatever. But look at your reason because it may have shifted and maybe you're aiming towards the wrong North Star. But just look at that reason.

And lastly, "M" which is messy moves the needle. You don't have to be perfect, you don't have to have the answers all right now. You don't have to figure it out, but you can be messy and show up messy in this spot. When you're feeling overwhelmed, stressed, just remember WARM. Who's talking, aim low, find that reason, and then just be messy and give it another day. It's always going to be better.

John: Thanks for that. I'm going to write that down and see if I can apply it to something I'm doing today.

Dr. Lara Salyer: Perfect. It works every time for me.

John: It sounds like it does. I like the last one too. You're saying in there messy moves, avoid perfection. Don't let perfection drive you so much. Just do something in the right direction. I like that.

All right, Lara, this has been fantastic. We're going to have to get together again, probably in less than four years, if I'm still podcasting.

Dr. Lara Salyer: Another leap year.

John: Oh yeah. No, that's not good. All right. I want to really thank you for being here, and I'll put all those links in the show notes and share it. And with that, I'll say goodbye.

Dr. Lara Salyer: Thank you, John. Bye.

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Interview with Dr. Angela Mulrooney – 342

In today's episode, Dr. Angela Mulrooney explains how to create your ideal life and shares her inspirational career journey. 

Dr. Mulrooney's unique journey began as a gymnast turned dancer and choreographer while studying dentistry. She built a thriving practice following graduation. However, she developed an illness that made it impossible to practice. So she transitioned into coaching dentists, leveraging her experience to build a successful coaching company.

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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. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Clinical Practice: Make It Great or Move On

Recognize dysfunction, fix it, and protect yourself, or seek better opportunities

In only about one month from now, the second annual Nonclinical Summit will be starting. It’s not entirely nonclinical, however. Sure, we’ll be presenting topics related to fully nonclinical work, such as freelance Medical Legal Prelitigation Consulting, Expert Witness Consulting, and Medical Affairs Regulatory Consulting. But we’ll also have experts talking about whether it’s medicine you need to leave or your job or current boss. And we will discuss several types of clinical businesses that make you the boss, opt out of insurance participation, and build an asset that you can sell later.

If you’d like to learn more, check out the 2024 Nonclinical Career Summit, with a complete list of speakers, topics, and objectives for each presentation.

And just like last year, you can attend the live sessions for FREE, so block your calendar on April 16, 17, and 18 from 7 to 11 PM Eastern/4 to 8 PM Pacific.

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Dr. Debra Blaine is a physician like many of you, and her greatest challenge was fear. The whole concept of leaving clinical medicine was terrifying. But she is much happier now as a professional writer and a coach. Debra says, “It’s like someone turned the oxygen back on.”

If fear is part of your struggle, too, she would like to help you push through those emotional barriers to go after the life you really want. Click this link to schedule a free chat.

Or check out her website at allthingswriting.com/resilience-coaching.

From Dilapidated Practice to Referral-Based Success

Angela pursued her dental career dream by working primarily with children. She took over a rundown practice, revitalizing it over six months by implementing physical and aesthetic changes. And she converted from insurance-based to non-assignment services.

By investing in her skills, including IV sedation, full-mouth rehab, and implants, she transformed the practice into a referral-based success, targeting patients afraid of the dentist.

LinkedIn Mastery and Unleashing Influence

Recognizing the power of LinkedIn in reaching professionals, Dr. Mulrooney strategically utilized the platform to build her coaching businesses, rejecting conventional choices like Facebook and Instagram. Unleashing Influence, her coaching company, emerged from her experience coaching dentists.

Leveraging LinkedIn's Sales Navigator, she refined her approach to connecting with the right professionals. She guided them through a transformational process in her events, ultimately leading them to join her coaching programs. This approach has proven highly effective, resulting in significant success for her clients.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney's Advice to Create Your Ideal Life

If you have been plateauing for a while, you've got to decide if you want to stay plateauing or if you want to get out of your way.

Summary

Dr. Angela Mulrooney's career evolution serves as an inspiration for frustrated clinicians. To connect with her, reach out through her LinkedIn profile, where she actively engages. Additionally, search for her on popular social media platforms or visit her website Unleashing Influence for more information.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Unleashing Influence Program
• Dr. Angela Mulrooney's LinkedIn Page
• How to Start and Grow a Profitable Cash Based Medical Practice – 293
• Do You Want to Live Life and Practice Medicine on Your Own Terms? – 237
• How to Be a Successful Physician Entrepreneur – 123
• Top Five Start-Up Secrets for the Physician Entrepreneur – 087
• Entrepreneur and Business Owner – Interview with Dr. Mike Woo-Ming – 019
• 2024 Nonclinical Summit – 12 lectures & Attend for FREE
• Dr. Debra Blaine's Coaching Services

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 342

Light Your Entrepreneurial Fire and Create Your Ideal Life

- Interview with Dr. Angela Mulrooney

John: For those entrepreneurs listening and watching today, I have a real treat for you. Our guest was working as a dentist and somehow her entrepreneurial side kicked in and she created a very successful referral-based dental clinic, and then later a professional dance company, and then a coaching company for dentists. And then this is morphed into what she's doing now, which we'll get into in today's interview. I'm very pleased to welcome Dr. Angela Mulrooney to the podcast. Hello, Angela. How are you?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Hi. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

John: And I appreciate you being here. Another healthcare professional who has veered off in a direction which I think my listeners would love to hear about. Like we usually do here, why don't you just start by telling us about your background, how you went from being a dentist to doing what you're doing today. You don't have to go into too much detail, but just an overview of what you've been up to the last decade or so.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Sure. I originally was a dentist and I wanted to be a dentist since I was two. It was really a dream come true. And every day that I got going into practice it felt like I was just playing. Power tools and blood. Pretty cool. I did that for the first four and a half years. I worked as an associate, primarily working with children because I was so ridiculously shy. I couldn't look adults in the eye. I focused on kids because I could just tell them stories. And then I happened to run into one of my old bosses who was working in a locum for a 78-year-old dentist. And he was like "I really don't like doing this dentistry. Do you want to take a couple of days off my hands?" So I said, "Sure." That was on a Friday. By Sunday night he called me, he is like, "Ang, can you just take the whole thing? I really don't want to be practicing dentistry." I was like, "Okay."

I had no idea what I was getting into and walked into this practice. It was the most rundown, broken down practice I'd ever seen. The carpet was black because it had never been cleaned. Pretty gross. But every day I walked in there I just stopped and it turned into me going from always saying "I was never going to own a practice" because I was still a professional dancer at that point to me thinking, "Wow, there's potential in everything here. I think I can turn this place around."

I ended up going and seeing the 78-year-old dentist. He unfortunately was dying of bladder cancer and asked him if he was okay with me putting a bid on the practice. And it was funny because before he had always said there was no way he was going to sell it to a woman. He was very old school. And he had heard enough good things from the patients who had come to visit him like they were family. He was like, "Yeah, I would actually love for you to take over the practice." So I did.

And six months into owning it, I really scraped everything that was in there. Rebuilt the whole practice physically and aesthetically and also went from taking insurance to not taking insurance. I went from an assignment practice to a non-assignment practice and went and started investing in my skills to be able to serve.

What I saw was potential in the practice was these people who were terrified of the dentist because the old dude was pretty rough. I went and got my IV sedation. I did my full mouth rehab, implants, all these things. And that's how I created a referral based practice because most people do not want to work with patients who are afraid of the dentist because it takes a lot of time.

I had really a blue ocean market and started just sending out letters and referral pads. And every month on the week that the referral pads went out, we got a whole rush of referral of patients who either needed IV sedation or who were terrified of dentists.

So, that was awesome. I got the practice to the point that I wanted it to be at. And then I got injured out. I ended up with focal dystonia, which had been kicking in slowly over time. And then finally during the middle of a surgery, my hand completely stopped working. I couldn't pick up my drill. So, it was the last day I practiced dentistry, which was a really scary day. And so, that put me on a completely different path to start doing other things with my life.

John: All right. Did you say you were a professional dancer in there?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Yes.

John: Explain a little bit about that. We got to know.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Yeah. Actually, I was originally a gymnast as a kid and then when I went to university, the biggest social club was the University of Saskatchewan Ballroom Dancing Club. I was like, "Okay, well, that's where everyone else is so I'll go there." And the first year after I was in the club, they started asking me to teach. And I'm like, "No, no, I'm trying to get into dental school. Don't distract me." And then I got into dental school and I'm like "Please distract me, let me have a position." I started teaching and then I turned pro the day that I graduated dental school. And so, I had those two parallel careers. I would go into the studio at 05:00 or 06:00 in the morning, go and train until my shift started. And then when my shift was done, I would go back to the studio and teach. I had two careers going at the same time pretty much until I got injured.

John: Did that interfere then with the dance as well or did you end up teaching that later or at the same time? How did that fit in?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: With the dystonia, it affected styling because it was actually this very famous picture of me with my hands are supposed to be like this. So, it affected styling and sometimes control of my arm, but we just built choreography around it and got it. We just made it work.

John: Okay. Then what did you do after that? You got very entrepreneurial after all this happened from what I know. So, go on from there.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: After I got injured, everyone was telling me that you built this brand, you're known in the market, you're known to patients, you're known to the dentist to keep going with it. You can run this as a CEO and not practice clinical dentistry. I was like, "Okay, I guess I can do that." The unfortunate part was I had invested so much in my skills, I had to bring in four different associates part-time to try and cover off the skills that my patients were used to receiving. That was a bit of a headache. And after two and a half years, I'd been through the global financial crisis when I first bought the practice. And then I was in Calgary, which is an oil-based city. And the 2015 oil crash, the economy was dropping super fast. And I just was like "You know what? Every time I go into the practice my heart hurt because these people don't care as much about patients as I did." It didn't feel that way.

And so, I decided it was time to just pass the torch to someone else and start moving on with my life. I decided to sell the practice, I fire sold it, and passed it on to someone else. And honestly, the day that the deal went through, official ownership transferred, it was like this weight was lifted off me and I felt released to go and do new things. So, it was interesting how much that weighed on me trying to keep this thing alive that just wasn't a fit anymore.

John: Okay. Now I know ultimately you began at some point teaching other people how to become entrepreneurs and pursue their dreams. But take us through the way that developed or the steps to getting to that.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Yeah. After I sold the practice, I took a year away from dentistry because everyone knew who I was and what had happened. And everyone that I met in the dental world was pity. And I didn't deal very well with pity. I was having enough problems just keeping it together. So, I stepped away, spent a year just building my professional dance company.

And in that time what happened was the pieces of "why" things had happened started to make sense. I was like, okay, I've been through some really strange things from the owner dying halfway through me buying the practice to getting sued by my team to worst case scenario of being injured out of my career. So, I decided to take all the lessons of what I've done and create my coaching company for dentists. And really what my goal was, it was to help them to build a brand but also find their passion in dentistry. Because a lot of dentists really don't like dentistry and they're doing things on a daily basis that they don't like. My goal was to help them to get passionate.

That went on for about two and a half years. And how I built that company was actually getting on LinkedIn, posting content, starting conversations. And in a year of putting effort into LinkedIn, I went from 200 to 12,000 industry followers.

John: Wow.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: And so, then people started to go, "How did you do that? And can you do that for me?" I started to take a few different colleagues' accounts and I said, "I don't promise anything. I don't know if what I did was a complete unicorn or if I can replicate this, but I will try." I started working on their accounts that I was actually able to replicate the results. So that's where unleashing influence, the original iteration of it was a social media agency for professionals.

And so, that came out of me building my business coaching company for dentists. And that became an official company on January 17th, 2020. March 17th, 2020, Canada got shut down and so exactly two months the day I had some big decisions to make because I had a couple of team members. I had three different companies. I had my dance company, the business coaching company, and the social media agency. And I told the people in the social media agency to buckle in, keep yourself healthy, get lots of sleep because we are going to take this to the moon. And by 10 months into the pandemic we had gone from two and a half full times to 14 full-time team members. So, it just took off.

The dental coaching company got shut down because dentistry got shut down. Dance company got shut down because we weren't allowed to be near each other. I definitely picked the right pony at that point. And then by the end of the year I was like, "I don't want to be in lockdown in snowbank anymore in Calgary." I made the decision that I was exiting Canada to go hang out in a tropical place for at least 12 months. I want to avoid snowflakes for 12 months. So, I bought a one-way flight to Nicaragua and arrived there on January 21st, 2021.

John: Wow. That's a lot. Now I could ask you a thousand questions, but I want to go back because your experience with dentists applies I think to physicians as well. And so, I'm just curious when that thing was working and you were going to even expand it, what were the things that dentists could do with their practices that were unique to each of them? In other words, it's like with physicians. We're cookie cutter. We are family medicine, we all do the same thing, we get bored, that gets tedious and so forth. But I can imagine there are things you can specialize in certain things or you can focus on certain things. So, just give me a glimpse of some of the things that you helped dentists do before we get into the rest of it.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: For sure. Well, what happens is we're trained in university to be generalists and you're not going to be good at everything. And so, if there's things on your schedule that make you go, "Ugh, do I have to do this today?" Or if there's a patient that you see that you feel that way about, why are you doing that to yourself?

John: Oh boy, I've had those feelings. Yeah.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Yeah. Life is way too short. So, if you can be comfortable saying, "Okay, I no longer do root canals. Maybe I don't do surgery anymore, maybe I don't do kids." And focus in on the skills that you're actually talented at and passionate about. Yes, you're going to have to send some people out or you're going to have to bring an associate in to cover that stuff. But what's going to happen is you're going to get better, you're going to get more niched into your genius in that skill and you're going to be so much happier doing it and patients are going to feel that.

So, if you are not a good jack of all trades, which let's be honest, nobody is. If we can start getting away from that jack of all trades, they have to give us a jack of all trades education in university because they have to expose us to everything, but it doesn't mean we have to do everything forever. If you can hone it down to the things that you actually like doing and focus around that, you can build a practice, you can make money doing anything, let's be honest. But you have a professional degree, you have a designation that is recognized by the public. If you say you're a doctor, you say you're a dentist, people have the gist of what you're doing. It's pretty easy to market it and just focus on exactly what you like to do and then either fill in the gaps with an associate, as I said, or refer those patients out. But you can design a practice around anything that you want. There's no legalities about saying no to root canals, saying no to surgery, saying no to whatever you don't want to be doing.

John-: Yeah. I can imagine in the US where you'll say a family physician, you're on some kind of Medicare panel, you can't necessarily refuse. But if you say, "Look, okay, I'm just not going to do that anymore. I'm going to do this part of my practice. And if you don't like it, go somewhere else." That's fine. I've not really heard anyone really emphasize that aspect, but it sounds very effective. I appreciate that.

Okay, now jump forward. Basically you had started this agency, it was a social media type company. What does that really look like? I'm trying to imagine who were on that team, and maybe just explain a little more detail as to what that business looked like and was comprised of. It sounds interesting.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Sure. There was 14 full-time creatives. I had everything from copywriters to graphic designers to people who were doing video editing for me. I had one manager in place. But yeah, pretty much it was almost 14 full-time creatives. And so, there was pods working on different clients. There was lots of little moving pieces in it. And I'll be honest, there's a reason I sold the agency. It's a lot to manage because there's so many moving pieces and you have to be relying on people to keep up. And I found I had to build a lot of redundancy in because at that time there was so much turmoil in the employment market as well. So, someone would get offered another job and they'd be like, "Okay, I'm moving over there." So then you're quickly replacing. We always had two of everything and a backup plan for that, which was really stressful, especially when there was a shift. So, I was losing a lot of sleep over my agency, which is why I ended up selling it.

John: Now, who are the clients? What type of people or companies were they?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Most of my clients were actually coaches, consultants, and speakers. Because what happened when we had the shutdown, all the events were gone. Their way of being able to go and hang out and have coffee with people or speak from the stage and get clients, all those in-person marketing tactics were off the table. And a lot of the speakers as well, and even the coaches, sitting in front of a camera and trying to be entertaining when you don't have a thousand people in the room who are giving you energy, there was people who were losing their career because they couldn't pull it together on camera.

A lot of them were coming to me to be training, "How do I use my hands? How do I use the space? How do I use the actual camera to be engaging so that I can get back on track?" Because the pandemic landing zeroed the field for speakers. These people who were famous for 30 years, who were amazing in a room were terrible on camera and they realized it very quickly. And so, they had to develop a new skill set. I acquired a lot of those coaching them on camera as well as building out their social media presence so they could go out and reach and hunt new people into their business.

John: All right. Very good. Now that brings us up to almost the present here, unleashing influence. Is that right?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Yes.

John: Okay. Tell us about that in more detail and then I'll have some more questions about that.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Sure. After moving to Nicaragua, I started to really realize I did not want to work hundred hours per week. That had been my norm for the past two or three years. And so, I started to realize, "Okay, this social media agency with all these team members is just not good for my health." I sold it to one of the team members and then I was like, "Hey, this coaching company for dentists, this is not really where my heart is." Because every time I walk into a practice and or talk to a practice that's not as passionate about dentistry as I am and I'm like "I want people to practice on my behalf because I couldn't anymore" it was like someone ripped a scab off my heart. So, I decided to sell that one as well and just go all in on what I did best, which was really cracking clients open, helping them to see their potential, see what they could be in the marketplace. And also helping them to really step into their genius and fully own that and be able to burn away everything that didn't belong.

So, that's what I hunkered down to. And for three months after I made that decision, there was money coming in after selling the other two companies, but it wasn't super confirming that I'd made the right decision. So, I was a little scared. And then about three months to the day after selling the last company I got a deposit from a client which was paying in full for my services. And it was more than I would've made full-time working as a dentist. I was like, "Okay, that's a sign. This is going to work." The ball is rolling so I let it keep rolling.

I let that develop out and because I changed what I was showing on LinkedIn, people started to contact me saying, "How can I work with you?" And suddenly my book of business increased and I was like, "Oh geez, if we keep going down this path, I'm going to be back to working a hundred hours a week, back to being addicted to be an entrepreneur." And that's not what I want.

So, I took a step back and looked at what I was doing and really I was saying the same thing multiple times a week. I had these really talented clients who were feeling very alone in their journey. When you step out of corporate and step into being an entrepreneur, people think you're insane because you've taken a massive risk, especially after you've had a 30, 40 year career and now you're like, "Yeah, I'm going to do what I want instead." They had a lot of misunderstanding from the community and they also had a bunch of genius.

I decided to have some hard conversations and say, "Okay, this one-on-one thing is not working and I want you to trust me to do this group coaching thing and let's just see what happens." And it was like magic. What used to take so many years to get people through, in 90 days, we could collapse two years' worth of work into 90 days and get the massive outcomes. So, that's what Unleashing Influence became, is a coaching company and that's what I do for a living now.

John: Awesome. I think the next part is going to sound to my listeners perhaps as an advertisement for you, but really I want to hear the cases. Give us specific examples of some of the success that your clients have had just because it's fascinating and we can learn from what they learned. So, just a few cases would be fantastic.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: One of my clients, she was former CIO of NASA.

John: That's a minor job. Yeah, right.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: After 40 years in the tech industry, she came to me and she's like, "Okay, I don't want this anymore, I want to pivot." And originally she thought she wanted to be a professional speaker and I'm like, "Well, let's have a conversation about professional speaking looks like." Because I had done that before the pandemic had hit. And so, after our conversation, she's like, "Okay, I want to do what you're doing." I'm like, "Okay, let's do that."

She went through the accelerator with the other people in the group and she was able to close $150,000 the first month of working out of the accelerator. She was able to pivot fast and get her programs up and running.

I'll give you a dental specific one. She was making good money but she was working all one-on-one. So, she could only take on 10 practices and she was also traveling to the practices. And we have taken all the travel off the table and made it all online because she was like, "I want to be able to be geographically free like you. Not necessarily traveling the world, but at least have some freedom to move around without being stuck. I have to go to this practice this week, I have to go to this practice this week."

We were able to redesign her program to 10 times her hourly rate and decrease how many hours she was working a week by a 10th. Then that freed her up to design a new program that allows her to keep condensing things and stay with the group programs and be able to move that into the future.

So, what I really like doing is helping people to get away from the one-on-one because if you've done any one-on-one, you go in with your idea and someone comes in with whatever happened that day and they're knocking you off.

John: I see.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Off your path. And you're like, "Okay shoot, we didn't stick to the curriculum." But with group, especially if you're doing a high caliber per group, and I recommend creating boutique groups, not your down sell of "Oh, I'll do one to a thousand." No, these are six people in your group and they start together and they finish together and they're going through a very specific curriculum and there's a very specific outcome that they are going to be achieving. People are so dedicated to that because no one wants to show up being the kid who's like, "Well, the dog ate my homework." They're all high caliber individuals. The dog didn't eat your homework, you just didn't do it. So, it's a very different approach versus one-on-one. And what I found is what I help people to do is some of the fluff that they were putting into their one-on-one coaching, we get rid of that. It's like, "What is the 5% that is creating 95% of outcomes?" That's all that goes in your program. So, that allows us to time collapse because they're not spending time on fluff and then the outcomes become huge.

John: Okay. I hear questions coming in right now. One of the question is going to be without going into too many specifics is what did the NASA person do in terms of just what was the general feel that they went in where they could generate that with just refocusing and reapplying some of the things that you've taught her?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: She stayed in the tech industry. As a woman in tech, she shouldn't have been able to achieve what she did achieve with being the gender that she was being in the generation that she was. She goes in and works with Fortune 500 companies and helps a cohort of women to be able to raise their hand be like, "Okay, here's the innovation I want to bring into this company. Here's what I want for it." They're helping to elevate the company and they're also helping to elevate their own status within the company because that's what she did her whole career. So, we just took what she naturally did. This is what I do with everyone is, "What do you naturally do? How can we take what's happening in your beautiful brain and turn it into a curriculum that we can teach other people how you naturally did that?"

John: One thing I would add to that, and it sounds like I'm maybe disagreeing with her, but actually if you're a minority, if you're gender is woman or whatever, anything that's different companies are looking for that.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: They are now. Yeah.

John: Don't let that hold you back. Let's boom, let's do it. All right. That's awesome. Okay, other examples? Have you worked with many clinicians as a background doing something like this, abandoning the old?

Dr. Angela 0Mulrooney: Yeah, I've worked with a few dental clinicians as well. Some of them are getting injured out and they're like, "I can see the end coming" which is nice if you can see the end coming. And some of them are just like, "I'm just done. I just want to move on to other things." And again, take what they naturally do that is so unnatural to everyone else and be able to teach them a process to get to the next level.

John: Okay. Now let me ask you, there was another question I had. I'm going to ask you about LinkedIn for sure.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Sure. That's my favorite topic.

John: Yeah, that's what I thought. The groups, and I think you mentioned this on your website, but what you sounded like you were describing is what some people call a mastermind. It's like group coaching but you're all holding each other accountable. Is that a separate thing, the mastermind, or is that just basically part of this process?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: The first thing that they have to go through is the pivot accelerator. That gives them the foundation. I'm taking whatever they've got. If they already have one-on-one coaching or if they're coming from corporate and building out a new program, I do what's called a "crack you open" session. They always say that it's like "You took a look at my soul." And then you look at my experience, your expertise, passion, and then I package them and give them their brand in the marketplace. Then the accelerator is building out everything from building out their personal brand, learning how to be good on camera to create awesome content, building out their curriculum, learning how to actually sell themselves because selling for another company versus selling for themselves is a different story. And then also all the tech that they need behind it so that they can run a seven figure company with a part-time VA supported by a tech platform for it. That's the first level that they have to get through. And then once they graduate, then they can qualify to become part of the Badass Entrepreneurs Club, which is what we do to continue to become masterful at the program that they created while also scaling it to the next level.

John: Very nice. All right, we're going to get on LinkedIn, but why don't you go ahead and tell us your website URL so we at least have that now before the end of the episode.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Sure. It's unleashinginfluence.com.

John: Okay. That's easy. Unleashing influence. Of course, that'll be in the show notes. Now tell me why do you like LinkedIn so much? It sounds like you use it a lot. And I don't know if you use it to find clients or to just promote yourself. Just tell me your LinkedIn story.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: LinkedIn is a beast. And a lot of professionals, including medical, dental, avoid LinkedIn. When I was first building my business coaching company for dentists, they're like, "You need to be on Facebook, you need to be on Instagram." I'm like, "My bet is on LinkedIn." Because no one else was using it. I was able to build a six figure company in six months just leveraging LinkedIn. And all I was doing was sending out messages, putting out content that was speaking to what I believed in and that got me clients. Then when I built the social media agency for professionals, LinkedIn again was our main tool. And I have dabbled with Facebook. I've tried Facebook ads. Meta has now eaten my lunch a few times without giving me a single client. $60,000, $70,000 worth of ads with no return. Yeah. I'm not a fan of Meta. But it's still a good platform, it's just not good for me and for the clients that I'm going after.

You have to really pick your platform based on what are you offering and who are your clients. There's tons of people who do well on Facebook. There's tons who do well on Instagram. For the clients that I work with, they're professionals speaking to professionals. That's why LinkedIn is so powerful. Yeah, that's how I built a social media agency. That is how I've built Unleashing Influence as it currently stands. All my clients come from LinkedIn.

John: Now, when you are using LinkedIn, I've never used an add-on software or tool for LinkedIn. You are just using basic LinkedIn, maybe Premier. How do you use LinkedIn and how do you reach people? Are you just one at a time reaching out?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: We use Sales Navigator. With all my clients we get really specific about what are the degrees that we should be going after. Sometimes it's gender specific. Some of my clients only work with men, women, some of them only work with men. And then it's also figuring out what year would they have likely have graduated to be a certain age. We comb through those details. Sometimes it's also specific to a part of the country. Sometimes it's specific to a part of the world. It depends on the time zones that they want to work in and whatnot.

But we do get very specific about those things because LinkedIn has taken away people's ability to spam and behave badly. Now you only get 20 new connections per day on average. And so, you want to be very careful with how you're spending those 20 connections, especially if you want to get profitable fast, you want to be getting in touch with the right people. The more drilled down you can get into that as to the things that I talked about, the better off you are. And then not only do you need to be finding the right people, you need to be sending the right message to them.

I always talk about being polarizing, and it's not to be a badass or anything like that. It's just to be like you either want people to be a "yes" or "no." Not a "maybe." Because you don't have time to be talking to people who are "no." The people who are "yes", that's what you want to figure out. And you want to slowly get them dialed down by having conversations with them, getting them into an event and then getting them onto a call to become part of your program. And the faster you can push people out who are not appropriate, the faster you're going to get the result.

And a lot of people, I'm going to refer to my nationality here, are very Canadian about this and they're like, "But I started a conversation so I have to finish it." And it's like, "Well, you don't actually." You can politely find your way out of it. And lots of people, they don't come back onto LinkedIn for like six months. The fact that you didn't respond to someone who was not appropriate to you, it's not going to be a big deal. No one's going to shoot you over that.

John: I like it. Good advice. What I noticed when I'm looking at your website, and I actually signed up for one of your courses, I think it was one of the intros, but I think you used that. So, explain how that works for those that might be the right process. You have something out there, you have a LinkedIn profile, maybe you're reaching out to people. I gather the thing you want to do is just get them into that first exposure to you at some level. So, just map that out for our listeners.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Right. After we found the right people, we're going to send a message, start a conversation, and then I take over the conversation until I get them to the point where I'm like, "Okay, this seems like the right fit of person." If they're like, "I really need to talk to you because I've shown them what I do", then I will get on a call with them. But I don't really want to close them on that first call because I want them to have time with me in the room. That's what my events are for. I do five day challenges and five hour intensivess. And what those are is me taking people through what it would be like to be in my classroom, and helping them to move into a transformation. Usually what I focus on is a mindset transformation. I'm going to give you technical things to do as well, but the biggest shift is getting out of your own way. And we talk a lot about burning things away, which is usually what's holding people back. Because they're like, "Oh, but I've always done this" and so I need to keep doing it. They carry all this garbage with them and they keep redoing the things that aren't actually making a difference. So it's like how do we pair this down to the 5% that's giving you 95% results.

And so, when people experience that, they're either a "yes" or a "no" for actually becoming part of my program, which makes it easy for me. And I'm also a "yes" or a "no" for them being part of my program because I'm seeing how do they behave in the room? Do they play well with others? Are they willing to be vulnerable? Because I ask some pretty hard questions in it. So, I want to make sure that they are actually going to be willing to be truthful, not posture about what is actually happening in their life.

And also are they responsive to inputs? If they're like, "Oh no, no, no, I already knew that", they're not really likely to be coachable. That's going to make it not very fun when they're in my accelerator, or intensely trying to get through things, resistance is not great. For people who are resistant, I'll recommend that they do the Unleash Your Badass Self Profitability, it's a 30 day mindset program, and to see how they come out on the other side of that. Because it really makes it clear what your programs are, what your resistance is, what has been holding you back. But yeah, it gives people, for my clients to use it as well because of the same reasons. You get to see who's in the room, you get to see how they act, you get to see if you're a good chemistry together or not and decide whether you want them in your program.

John: Interesting. Yeah. It reminds me of someone I heard say when asked the question of whether they're interested in something. If it's not a "hell yes", then it should be a "no." That's the old adage. Okay, we are actually out of time. We went over a little bit, not a big deal, but we are going to have to wrap up. Actually, if you want to tell us anything more about what you do and convince some of the listeners to get off their something and take action, I'll give you a couple minutes to do that and then we'll wrap up.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Sure. My suggestion is if you have been plateauing for a while, you've got to decide if you want to stay plateauing or if you want to get out of your way. And if you come to one of the events, either the five day intensive or five day challenge or five hour intensive, you are going to see things about yourself that you can't unsee that are going to propel you forward. It will make you break through your plateau. It's really hard to go back to what you were before the event started. So, if you are feeling stuck and you're looking for possibilities and want to get some ideas, I highly recommend that you attend one of those.

John: And that would apply to even someone who's maybe unhappy in their clinical situation now, but still wants to see patients somehow, but just needs to have a breakthrough or something that would apply to them as well. Correct?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Absolutely. Absolutely.

John: Okay, good. Because I tend to get focused on taking people out of practice and move them into utilization management or this or that or starting some kind of company. But there's really no reason why they can't apply these principles to what you're doing now and just make it like you said, something that you love to do and get rid of all the stuff you hate. Okay. Again, how's the best way to get ahold of you?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: The best way to get ahold of me is on LinkedIn. My profile is Dr. Dr. Angela Mulrooney.

John: Okay. That's easy to find and I'll put that in the show notes. We've got your website, unleashinginfluence.com, which I'll put in the show notes as well. We've learned a lot here in the last 30 minutes. This has been fantastic, Angela. I really thank you for taking time on your world travels. We didn't tell the listeners when we started, where are you right now?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: I'm currently in Paris and in two days I will be moving to Greece.

John: Paris, Illinois. No, I don't think so. Paris, France, and going to Greece next. Oh, that is awesome. And I guess you are working obviously.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Yeah.

John: All right, with that Angela, don't hang up on me, but we're going to say goodbye for the podcast. I really appreciate you coming here and I hope to talk to you again soon.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney: Perfect.

John: All right, bye-bye.

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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. I do not provide 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 Light Your Entrepreneurial Fire and Create Your Ideal Life appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

What's New and the Cost of Coaching – Episode 327

In today's episode, John shares what's new, and explores the cost-benefit considerations of career coaching. This topic was triggered by a podcast listener's question. It is a common concern of those seeking a major career pivot, and are considering whether to hire a coach to help them navigate the process. 

He guides listeners on how to discern the right type of coach, considering multiple factors, including the cost. Before getting into that topic, he also provides an update regarding what's new with NewScript, the Nonclinical Career Academy, and former podcast guests.

Our Show 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. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Did you know that you can sponsor the Physician Nonclinical Careers Podcast? As a sponsor, you will reach thousands of physicians with each episode to sell your products and services or to build your following. For a modest fee, your message will be heard on the podcast and will continue to reach new listeners for years after it is released.  The message will also appear on the website with over 8,000 monthly visits and in our email newsletter and social media posts. To learn more, contact us at john.jurica.md@gmail.com and include SPONSOR in the Subject Line.

Understanding the Value of Expertise in Coaching

John explains his perspective on using a coach to accelerate one's professional advancement. He challenges the perception that coaching should be priced solely based on the hours spent, asserting that it's about the value derived from the coach's expertise. He explains the importance of coaches committing to tangible results, drawing parallels to his experience as a CMO where outcomes were paramount.

Choosing the Right Coach for Your Goals

John discusses the importance of selecting a coach aligned with your objectives, emphasizing that experienced coaches, despite their higher fees, offer valuable expertise. He touches upon the price range, mentioning that fees can vary, from a few thousand dollars for shorter sessions to potentially higher amounts for longer-term coaching. He advises prospective clients to carefully assess a coach's approach and seek references before making a decision. 

Summary

The best coaches are well-trained, with years of practical experience. Many have expertise in specific industries and serve as mentors and consultants. The cost of hiring a coach can be significant. But in most cases, those costs are justified by the improved lifestyles, career advancement, and higher salaries the clients achieve as a result of their coaching. 

As explained during the episode, Dr. Debra Blaine has recently released her 4th novel. It is called The Meriki Effect and can be found at most large bookstores and here on Amazon (this is an Amazon affiliate link).

And Dr. Andrew Wilner is releasing the 100th episode of his popular podcast called The Art of Medicine on December 10th. It is an eclectic collection of interviews that will entertain and educate listeners like you. It can be found on all major podcast channels, including iTunes, Buzzsprout, and The Art of Medicine on YouTube.

And if you'd like to listen to Dr. Wilner's interview with Dr. Blaine from three years ago, that can be found RIGHT HERE on YouTube.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Why Physicians Should Not Underestimate the Value of Coaching – 274
• More On How to Hire a Suitable Physician Career Coach – 216
• How Do I Choose the Best Coaches Mentors and Masterminds for Me? – 208
• Top Reasons Why Coaching Is So Essential for Healthcare Leaders – 197
• NewScr!pt

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

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 327

What's New in My World and Is Coaching Worth the Expense?

John: Okay, before I get into the actual topic for today, I'm going to tell you a little story, which obviously will relate to the question. There was a time in Russia when all religions were basically banned. Churches were closed. There were no gatherings allowed to pray, and they were being persecuted. It doesn't mean that all the activities stopped, of course, because you can't really keep people from worshiping if that's what they've been taught and what they grew up doing.

But anyway, after a while, things did loosen up and the brave believers could go back to church. There was a priest in a very small town who began to spend time every day in his church. And the mayor or magistrate of that town didn't like it. He was still against having those kinds of gatherings and allowing people to do that. He sent a soldier to stand at the front of the church every day at the front, at the door to intimidate the priest when he would go over there. When he tried to enter the church, the soldier was to demand the answer to questions. The questions were the following. Number one was, who are you? And the other was, why are you here? And so then the priest would have to take a moment and quietly and without being too aggressive, answer the questions. And then the soldier would begrudgingly let him in.

This went on every day. The priest was going every day. The soldier was there every day, rain or shine, snow, whatever. And week after week and month after month, this soldier would ask, "Who are you and why are you here?" And the priest would adjust his answers over time as he had more time to try and come up with answers. But finally things really loosened up. And the soldier informed the priest that day would be his last day because he was being reassigned and being no longer a soldier at the door.

The priest looked at him and he said, "Sir, when you finish your career as a soldier, I'd like you to come back here and resume your duties. Because you have no idea how much you've helped me by forcing me to answer those two questions each day for myself, who am I and why am I here?"

I like that story. And honestly, I heard that story from a bishop who was residing over a Catholic mass in Lourdes, France. You can imagine that the setting was kind of interesting, and I won't go into too much, but I had never heard that story before. And so, it has stuck with me.

But it relates to coaches, because for some coaching, that's kind of the crux of their coaching. "Why am I here? Who am I? What do I stand for? Who am I? Why am I here? What are my goals? What are my plans?" Things like that.

The question that I was asked earlier this week was pretty straightforward. Basically, described what he wanted, what his situation was, why he was looking to find a new career. And he had contacted several coaches with the information and had told him what he wanted, what he needed.

And one of the coaches said, "Well, she was going to provide three hours of coaching, split up three separate hours, and it was going to address the three issues that he really had asked her to address." And she was going to charge somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000 to do that. And so, the follower or the listener from the podcast that emailed me said that to him that sounded kind of "steep", it sounded kind of expensive particularly since it was going to be limited to three hours. Maybe he did the math, I don't know, but he was maybe expecting a lower number. I provided my answer, and what I'm going to do now is sort of doing an extended version of the answer that I provided to him.

Thinking about my answer to this and this issue, brings up another story, actually. We can call it a parable, but I think this one is actually real. But there was a factory, actually, a publisher owned a multimillion dollar offset press that it used to print weekly tabloids. And one day the press came to a screeching halt. It just died. It made a really loud noise, stopped running, and that was it. The people working at the print shop, they were working on this massive press, tried everything they knew to get it running again. The operators, the maintenance staff, they even had mechanical engineers at the plant, and they were unable to get that machine to run again. They were out of business temporarily until they either replaced the machine or got it fixed. The operations VP called around to all of her colleagues to try to identify someone who might know how to solve this problem, recounting everything that they had tried so far.

And there was one name that came up several times during those calls. The VP reached out and contacted this consultant, made arrangements to come by the next day. Now, I said the word consultant, and when I'm talking about consultants and coaches, there's a lot of overlap. Sometimes I'll use those terms interchangeably because when we're talking about career coaching, a lot of that is consulting too, because you're not just doing the generic things that a coach would do, which are very similar to what a therapist would do, but you get into a lot of specifics when you're doing career coaching as to how to apply, where to apply and that kind of thing.

This consultant spoke to everybody who ran the press, everybody who tried to repair it. He looked at the machine for about 30 minutes, made a few adjustments, and he was able to get that press running a few minutes after doing all of that. The thing was, the VP was pretty upset when the consultant handed her a bill for $15,000 for repairing the machine. And she asked him how he could justify $15,000 for about one hour's worth of work. And what the consultant told him was, "Look, you didn't hire me as an hourly employee telling me what to do. You needed my expertise. No one else could have solved this problem. I spent the last 30 years acquiring unique experience and knowledge to be able to fix this particular problem."

And so, that wasn't what the $15,000 for. It wasn't his time there, his ability to remove a piece of the equipment or whatever it was. Knowing what to do, having seen that kind of problem before, reaching into their mental toolbox and figuring out, "Okay, this is what's going to solve this problem."

And I'm sure the other part of the argument was, "Look, if I hadn't come today and solved this problem, you would probably at best be able to get the manufacturer to come out here in two or three days and maybe solve the problem within the next few days or even a week. And by that time, you would be way beyond $15,000 worth of lost revenue, not to mention a lot of unhappy customers."

I use that again as an example of what we're talking about in coaching and consulting. So, you have to change the way you look at this. First of all, what I know is that the most experienced and effective coaches will probably charge the most for their time. And if you're thinking about it, let's say you're applying for a job as a physician or a clinician, let's say an APN, PA or whatever, pharmacist, you're going to be making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

If you're a physician, it could be $300,000, $400,000 a year and whatever job you're going into, whether it's clinical or nonclinical. And to expect to hire an effective coach for $100 an hour or $200 an hour for you to land a job that's going to stop a lot of your problems, make you happier or make you less stressed, uses your skills. There's a lot that goes into that. You should expect to be paying that person just doing the job you would be applying for can make $200 or $300 an hour. So why would they devote time and sharing their expertise with someone for less than that at least.

And the thing is, if you need specific information, this is where I'm talking about the expertise of a really focused consultant or coach. Let's say you want to get a particular job in a particular industry that's going to pay very well, and that means the coach has probably had that job or has hired someone to that job, knows the job description, knows what the must haves and the nice to have skills or experiences needed to land that job would be, then it's going to be worth a multiple of that $200 to $300 an hour.

And again, if you're talking about just general life coaching, it's going to be on the lower end because there's just general principles that can be applied. But if you also want to get in, I need specifics of how to write my resume, how to send out a cover letter, where do I apply? What's the quickest? There's some things that you have no idea.

For example, for some jobs in pharma, let's say, you really should apply to a CRO rather to a pharmaceutical company. And a good coach that is let's say addressing pharmaceutical jobs in the pharmaceutical industry will have that kind of knowledge. Someone in hospital health systems, they're going to have specific knowledge as to what the CFO, the CEO and the CMO are looking for in hiring a medical director or even a VP for somebody in that facility.

Another way to look at it is to consider what is your goal when you're thinking about engaging a coach? And maybe this will help make it even more clear. Is it a simple task or a complex task? That's a big differential. If we're talking about, okay, I want to learn how to plant the tree, I want to learn how to fix a tech problem, or let's say repair my bicycle. Well, to learn that, to get coaching for that, it's pretty simple. You can go online, you can Google it, you can go on YouTube and within five minutes they'll walk you through a process. You can answer those questions.

But if we think about some other more complex sorts of goals like landing a new job, starting a successful business, I can imagine even winning your first election, I've never tried that, but I'm assuming that they're experts and coaches and consultants that help you do that. And they're not going to be cheap.

Even this is a good one that I talked to a podcast guest about, and that was gaining admission to a top tier medical school. Now, there are dozens and dozens of things that you should do. Now we think we know how we're going to do that, obviously get the best grades we can and write a good letter of introduction and do the application properly. But there are people that are paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars per hour because they're thinking, "Okay, I want to get into this residency in this specialty." You name it, whatever, gastroenterology or otolaryngology. And I have my eye on two or three fellowships and two or three residency programs and maybe a really top tier medical school for whatever reason. That's not how I did it. I just want to get into med school so I can be a doctor.

But there are coaches who specialize in starting with the undergrads, how to get it in the best med school, the best residency, the best fellowship they pay. They're paid hundreds and thousands of dollars to teach them how to do that because there's only a few people that have done it. And besides just being an excellent student and having a good work ethic, there are a lot of little tips and tricks that if you don't know them, you're never going to get into Harvard.

As we get into these more complex and maybe even time-wise, more longitudinal, the cost is going to go up because the number of people with the expertise is going down. Now there are caveats because just because someone says they can do this, shouldn't be you're going to plunk down $5,000, $10,000, whatever, and believe that they can do it. So, there are caveats.

One is what is the deliverable that you want to get from this coaching? Is it just you need an accountability partner who can do basic coaching once a month, once every two weeks to accelerate your progress? Pretty much any good coach, general life coach or business coach can do that, can maybe take you from something you would've done on your own in a year and get it down to six months or two years down to nine months, something like that. And that doesn't require necessarily specific special expertise.

But if you're looking more towards a deliverable that is an outcome, it's like in the hospital setting when we were talking about quality improvement and patient safety. You've got some outcomes. Well, they're not really outcomes, they're processes. I put in place a good quality improvement process, so that means I have good quality, right? No, that doesn't ensure that at all. It just means you have a process which may or may not be delivered appropriately and effectively. The real proof is the outcomes, the patient care outcomes. That's the end point.

So, it's not always easy to get a coach to commit to an end point because so much of what you accomplish when you're being coached is the commitment that you have and the time and the coachability that you have. I like to think of myself as coachable, but it's hard when you have a strong personality. If you might be a little OCD like me or whatever it might be, you might always think that you know how to do things. And so, if you're going to get a coach, you want to be coachable, particularly if you're trying to get an outcome, because most of the time the coach won't take you unless you agree to follow what they do. Otherwise, they can't guarantee the outcome.

I remember this applied too when I was working as a CMO of the hospital. When we had a consultant come in, we always wanted to know what the outcome was. In other words, we didn't want someone to come in and say, "Look, I am going to do some lectures and I'm going to teach your staff all about how to be doing utilization management and reduce your denials. And so, you're going to pay me $1,000 for every lecture. I'm going to do 10 lectures, I get $10,000, and that's how I'm going to address your utilization management and length of stay program."

As opposed to someone who said, "No, we're going to come in, we're going to have a team, and we're going to start by educating everybody. And then once you implement these new things that we're teaching you, we're going to be there side by side watching and coaching your staff how to respond to questions, how to talk to patients, how to talk to physicians, what kind of checklist to use, and really get down into the nitty gritty. And we will guarantee that you're uncollectible revenue because of denials or other metrics that represent that we'll guarantee at least a 20% improvement in that. And generally we shoot for a 50% improvement."

Now you're talking about outcomes. You have to get to that point if you want to really make sure that an expensive coach is worth it. If you're saying, "Well, I want to find a part-time remote job in either utilization management or clinical documentation improvement", and then you try and pin down the coach, "Okay, so you're going to teach me specific ways to accomplish this, and in your estimation, I should be able to land that new job within what period of time." So you might not get an actual guarantee, but you'll might get something like, "Well, if you follow everything that we tell you, come to your meetings, don't blow us off and pay us on time, then yes, we will refund part of your money if that doesn't happen." That's almost like a guarantee.

The way to do that, two things. One is you definitely have to interview your coach, and most coaches have a so-called discovery call, which actually has value because they will give you advice right on that discovery call. But the main purpose of the discovery call really is to have a 30 minute conversation, let's say with the coach, and just hear their voice, tell them to explain why they think they can help you, what would be entailed, do they have a certain way to approach this problem? And really, if at all possible, get some testimonials for sure, although those are usually provided directly by the coach or consultant. But getting references, if you could talk to two or three people that can concretely answer your question, how long were you using this coach? How often did you meet? What were your sessions like? And was there other supporting material? Did they have intellectual property they were sharing with you like checklists and, and resource lists and things that they only share with their coachees? And did they live up to their promise and did you get the job that you thought you were going to get at the end of that coaching?

Sometimes there's coaches that won't do that, but really a few thousand dollars for a few hours with a career coach for a physician is quite reasonable. I know though there are others that go as high as $5,000 or $10,000 over we're talking a year or so because career transition can take a long time. And if you think about it, there are people that spend tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars to be in let's say a monthly meeting with Tony Robbins or some really high powered motivational expert.

The bottom line on the answer to the question that I had earlier this week from that physician was, look, something between t$2,000 and $3,000, if you can make it crystal clear what you're looking for and your expectation is that you should be able to be in a position to really identify the job and apply for the job by the end of your coaching. And if the coach will agree to that, not guaranteeing that you get the job, but really sharing all that knowledge, information and advice and even encouragement, then I would say definitely.

I've paid two people in the past for a year's worth of coaching, which is basically monthly meetings for $8,000 for each, for two totally different reasons. I'm a believer and I think it was worth it. And just like I think it's worth it to pay my fitness coach and work out with him two times a week. And when you add up all the payments that I've done every week for the last few years, it's added up to more than a few thousand dollars and I'm in a lot better health.

And just to be crystal clear, I was saying that the $2,000 to $3,000 for three sessions plus whatever ansley information that the coachee would get was worth it. Now if you're talking about something that goes six months or a year, it's probably going to be much more than that. And I still think that's a good investment.

All right, that's all I have for today. Thank you very much for being here.

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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. I do not provide 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 What’s New in My World and Is Coaching Worth the Expense? appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Interview with Dr. Karen Barnard

In today's episode, Dr. Karen Barnard explains how to be purposeful with your life and career. She begins by sharing her inspirational journey. It starts with growing up and completing her medical degree in South Africa.

It continues with moving to the United States and completing her residency and fellowship training in internal medicine and endocrinology. She worked as an academic clinician for years. Her most recent transition was becoming a certified professional co-active coach.

She now helps physicians find intention and purpose in their careers, whether they're exploring new clinical paths, transitioning to nonclinical roles, or seeking to enhance their leadership skills.

Our Sponsors

This week's episode sponsor is the From Here to There: Leveraging Virtual Medicine Program from Sandrow Consulting.

Are you ready to say goodbye to burnout, take control of your schedule, increase your earnings, and enjoy more quality time with your family? You’re probably wondering how to do that without getting a new certification or learning a whole new set of nonclinical skills.

Here's the answer: The quickest way to achieve more freedom and joy is to leverage virtual medicine.

Dr. Cherisa Sandrow and I discussed this in Podcast Episode 266. Cherisa and her team are now preparing to relaunch their comprehensive program for building and running your own telehealth business.

If you want to learn the tools and skills you need to live life on your own terms – then you should check it out today. After completing the 10-week program, you’ll be ready to take your career to the next level.

The program starts soon, and there are a limited number of openings. To help you get a glimpse into the program, Sandrow Consulting is offering a series of FREE Webinars. Go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/freedom to sign up and learn why telehealth is the quickest way to begin your career journey.

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

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Dr. Karen Barnard's Unique Coaching for Diverse Physicians

Dr. Karen Barnard primarily specializes in career transition coaching for physicians. Her coaching services encompass a range of areas, including:

1. Career Decision-Making: Helping physicians who are unsure about their career path, whether to stay in their current roles or pursue alternative career options.
2. Skills Assessment: Assisting clients in identifying their unique skills and talents acquired through their medical careers, enabling them to leverage these skills effectively in their transition.
3. Personality Assessment: Utilizing the Enneagram Personality Assessment to help physicians gain insights into their personality types, behaviors, and how to break free from self-imposed limitations.
4. Values Clarification: Guiding clients through a process of clarifying their core values, which is crucial for making decisions aligned with their deepest principles.
5. Professional Development: Offering support and guidance in enhancing leadership, communication, and other professional skills.

Through these coaching approaches, Dr. Barnard empowers physicians to navigate career transitions and explore new opportunities. Ultimately, she helps them design a fulfilling life and career aligned with their aspirations and values.

Dr. Karen Barnard's Advice on Starting Your Career Transition Journey

…don't do this alone. You're not alone. If you're feeling any shame or guilt, those are completely normal emotions to have when you're kind of just even beginning to think about this. Find your resources, find some physicians who've done it. A therapist, a coach, it doesn't really matter.

Some physicians struggle with uncertainty about their career direction. To address this, she encourages “mini career experiments” to gain hands-on experience and explore possibilities.

Additionally, crafting a targeted resumé and practicing interview questions with trusted individuals can significantly enhance your job application success. Lastly, she highlights the importance of recognizing that leaving clinical practice doesn't mean you're no longer a doctor. You're simply transitioning to “doctoring differently” and taking your medical skills and experiences with you into new roles.

Summary

Dr. Karen Barnard provides valuable resources and support to physicians seeking clarity and guidance in their career transitions. Her coaching services and free resources can be found on her website, drkarenbarnard.com. Subscribe to her newsletter for regular tips and insights tailored to physicians.

Feel free to connect with Dr. Karen Barnard on LinkedIn or email her at karen@drkarenbarnard.com for further assistance in your career journey.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Dr. Karen Barnard's Website
• Dr. Karen Barnard's Linked Page
• More On How to Hire a Suitable Physician Career Coach – 216
• How Do I Hire a Suitable Physician Career Coach or Consultant? – 215
• From Here to There: Leveraging Virtual Medicine Program
• NewScr!pt

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

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 317

How to Be Purposeful with Your Life and Career

- Interview with Dr. Karen Barnard

John: I really like bringing physician coaches on the podcast here because of several reasons. First of all, I think coaching is such a good career for a physician because it meets all the needs I think of most physicians in terms of helping people and using their brain and interacting and so forth. But it doesn't have all the baggage of the risk of a lawsuit and long hours and calls. So, it's very useful for those who are on the receiving end and physicians are one group that need coaching very often. That's why I'm so happy to have today's guest here. Let me welcome Dr. Karen Barnard to the show. Hello.

Dr. Karen Barnard: Hi, John. Thank you so much for inviting me onto your show. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

John: It's going to be fun, and it's always useful and helpful to my listeners because we always go into some topic that's going to be a benefit to at least some of them. So, that's good. And then I also like it because the coaches that come on are sort of role models for their transition, whether it's part-time, full-time or whatever, just to having addressed maybe similar problems that they had before they became a coach. So there's a lot of good reasons to have coaches like you here, so I'm glad you're here.

Dr. Karen Barnard: Thank you.

John: Well, one of the things we always start with, of course, is the story. The story of how you started out and how did you end up going into coaching, and we'd love to hear that right now.

Dr. Karen Barnard: Yeah. John, I'm originally from South Africa and I moved to the United States about 30 years ago. I did an internal medicine residency in an endocrinology fellowship, and I was in academic medicine my entire clinical career, and I loved it. Teaching, education, administrative roles and some research.

And then after about 25 years, I went through my own career transition, and now I own my own coaching business, and I help physicians going through their transition. And I like to say I help them from soup to nuts. Whether they're in the soup of "Should I stay or should I leave? I don't know what to do" all the way through to the nuts of landing a job, interviewing, prep, and so on.

John: Now, just from the standpoint of me looking at this as like a nonclinical career or job, for some it's not even, some people will do it more as an advocation, but there's usually either the need to get out of medicine was the first part, or the need to just do something different. Because the nice thing about becoming a coach is you can do it part-time, and most coaches really have to anyway, because they need to get those first few clients and really make sure it's something they want to do. So, how did that happen for you? How did you make that transition?

Dr. Karen Barnard: Yes, yes. Such a great question. About two years before I went part-time and then finally quit medicine, I sensed that something wasn't right anymore. I just wasn't enthusiastic. I really loved my job, and suddenly, I now know what the name is, it's quite quitting, but I didn't identify the name at the time. I just wasn't volunteering for things. I was feeling tired all the time. Something just wasn't right.

And I didn't know what it was. I actually beat myself up over it for a while before I decided, "No, I better pay attention. Something is happening inside of me." And what I recognized is that I love to help people, and I really wanted to help people in a different way. And all throughout my entire career, I'd been mentoring and coaching students and residents around their career choices and their skills, and doing evaluations and feedback.

I was really drawn to coaching, but not at first. I didn't identify that at first. I had to do my own little exploration. And then once I decided, "Oh, coaching might be it", I did a little bit of a coaching course, and then I started my business, and all the time I was still working. And then I went part-time. And it was about six months into starting the business that I recognized, "Okay, I want to do this full-time, and I think I can do this full-time. I can swing this." And that's when I resigned from my job full-time and went into full-time coaching.

And honestly, John, I often get the question "Do you regret? Do you ever look back?" And it's been three years this past July that I've fully quit, and I haven't looked back one day. Which I didn't expect. I thought I might have some pangs of missing it, but I so love what I'm doing now that I feel very, very fortunate to be doing what I'm doing.

John: As you were talking about that, it reminds me of how we often will tell people who are sort of unhappy in whatever they're doing now, and they're kind of interested in making a change, but they really don't know what to do that one of the things that we're always told to do, and I don't know was it just was natural for you, but it's sort of like, "Well, look at the things that you're doing now that you like, what part of your job do you like?" And then if you can focus on those things which you described, then maybe that might lead to what will ultimately be your alternative, or at least something that you might want to do part-time. That just is a good example of that. And those are the things that physicians typically like to do to help and mentor and coach and even informally. So that's very interesting. The other thing I want to ask you about in that process then, you had to talk to somebody about going part-time, right?

Dr. Karen Barnard: Yes.

John: And so, that always comes up. I get a lot of physicians just offhand because I don't really do any direct coaching, but it's sort of like, "I'm afraid to mention it. I'm going to get in trouble. They're going to can me, they're going to not understand." And it's like 99% of the time, it seems like if you just have a sincere conversation with somebody, your boss or whatever, that it works out pretty well. So, what was your experience going through that?

Dr. Karen Barnard: Yes, all of the above. And for me, it was incredibly challenging actually. Almost initially it felt like I'm a failure. I can't do full-time at this which is that strange expectation we have on ourselves as physicians. But I think it was really what was pulling me outside of medicine that gave me the courage and of course, support from colleagues. I actually was working with a coach at the time.

And it's so true. It's just having that honest conversation. I can't remember the exact words that I said to my boss at the time, but it was something to the effect of "I feel like there's something different in my future and I want to cut back. I still love what I'm doing here, but I need to do less of it in order to explore that." And I'm just so fortunate that he was open to it.

There are many practical considerations here too, John. It's figuring out how much part-time can you go and still have benefits. For some, it's salary requirements. It's a multifaceted decision. But I would say to any physician listening and thinking about that, don't let fear drive the decision. Let what's drawing you to do it drive your decision to just have that conversation. And what's the worst that can happen? They can say no. Well, then you've got a lot of good information on your hands.

John: I know. And there's that fear, but what can they really say? Most of the time they're going to know that there's something pending. There's something going on. "Okay, this person seems to be unhappy for some reason." That's just the way I look at it. Although there's no guarantees. You might have one that you deal with that's going to be super unreasonable and make your life miserable, but it just usually doesn't happen from what I'm told.

All right. I was going to then ask you, now what exactly type of coaching do you do with physicians? Because really I could narrow it down into 10 different things that physicians sometimes need. Some are more general, life coaching or career coaching, but where do you fall in that spectrum in the kind of clients you tend to attract and work with?

Dr. Karen Barnard: Yeah. I really focus on career transition coaching. I do a little bit of professional development, but the bulk of my practice, and what I absolutely love is helping physicians through the whole arc of the transition. Even if it's just, "Do I stay, do I go? What else can I do? How am I going to do this? How do I do my resume, my LinkedIn, what do I need to network?" All of that I help them with. I show them how, I support them along the journey. And I have tools and resources that I share with them.

I would say that for the most part, when physicians come to me, they're stuck in a few places, but one of the most common places is they are almost a hundred percent sure that they no longer want to do patient care, or they no longer want to do patient care full-time. So, they've got that.

And often they've looked at a list of nonclinical careers or read job descriptions, or even spoken to physicians who've transitioned into roles. And now they're stuck because they're like, "Well, where am I going to fit? What's right for me?" And that's a perfect place to come to coaching, or not a coach, a therapist or somebody to help guide you through that process that you can figure out what are your skills and what do you want to take with you? And then be able to see the options in a new light.

John: Some of the coaches I've talked to will actually use different kinds of psychological testing. That might be not the exact term, but you know what I'm talking about. Do you use some of those methods in your coaching?

Dr. Karen Barnard: Yeah. One of the important aspects of my program, I have a very structured program I take people through, because I like structure and I find most physicians do is sort of the get to know yourself or really get to know yourself, like who you've become.

I do the Enneagram personality assessment. And what I love about the Enneagram is we tend to have put ourselves in a box of a personality type, or we get caught up in certain behaviors. And the Enneagram kind of shows you the box you've ended up in and also how to get out of it, if you wish to. So, I really enjoy that. And I actually had a client the other day who said, "Oh, I felt like there was somebody reading my thoughts as she read her report."

And then for others, it's variable. But when the Enneagram lands, it's a very powerful tool to help you see what are your gifts and really what do you want to take with you and what do you need in a career and a career environment. So that's one of my assessments. I have several.

The other assessment I do is a skills assessment. We really look at breaking down the skills. Because one of the things I thought I remember telling my coach, "Oh, I'm just a one trick pony. All I know is academic endocrinology." And hell no. That's so far from the truth. But at the time, that's how it felt. And so, breaking down the skills we have as a physician is really important. And then sort of piecing together the ones you really love. But that's another assessment I do is skills.

I also have several questionnaires about preferences, lifestyle needs. I also do some values work, which I think is really critical when we're in any transition in our lives, is really redefining our core principles and our guiding principles and deciding which are really important.

And John, I might just add in my own transition, what I failed to recognize until I did my own values inventory was that freedom that had been sort of in the top 10, but kind of near the bottom was suddenly like one of my top two values. I wanted to be free to live where I wanted to live, to take spend time with my family in South Africa, to have freedom and autonomy. And I realized that in my 09:00 to 05:00, I was stepping on that value. And once I could see that it was, "Oh, okay, I'm not a loser. I'm honoring my values." Those kinds of assessments are really important at the beginning to really look inside and define who are you, who have you become, and what kind of a life do you really want to live? And then build from there.

John: You find that it takes some of your clients, is it difficult for them to do this? Basically, I could see myself. Automatically, when you're in a busy practice, let's say, you just ignore those or you suppress those values in a sense. In a way, like you said, freedom is not really consistent with the values that one would need to be a full-time practicing physician who's on call every third. That's just not even going to be part of your consideration. So, those things could be, I would think, difficult to overcome and take some time. Is that what you found?

Dr. Karen Barnard: Oh, absolutely. This is the hardest work and this is what we don't want to do. And I don't think it's because we don't want to do because we don't want to do, I think it's because we have unlearned how to connect with ourselves, and that's okay. To become a competent physician or a master in a specialty, it takes focus and dedication and hard work. You can't navel gaze the entire time, you never get to the other side. It's really returning to 10, 15 years down the line, "Oh, wait a minute."

I have some clients who are like, "Well, I don't know. I don't know what I want." I didn't either. I had no idea. I was completely overwhelmed by that. How can I not know? Well, because the path has been paved for me since pre-med. So it's okay. This is normal. This is how many physicians come to this and we work through it. Start where you are. Even a little dip toe. And as you begin to pay attention to these things, you begin to see.

And sometimes it's just paying attention. One of the things I have clients do is look at your past two weeks, John. When you've been really tired and really didn't feel like doing anything and there's one thing that you did and it gave you back some energy, what was that thing? And it doesn't have to be in your work. And some clients say there's nothing at work. It's all that. Okay, well, then what about after work?

And I have one client who has this amazing hobby, and that's what lights her up. And so, we are trying to figure a way of weaving that into her next career. So it might be just as simple as doing that in the beginning to get back in touch with what you love. And by this, I'm not saying at all, follow your passion and everything will be fine. That's not what this is about. Because I think that's advice that I don't think works for everybody. But it's paying attention to what brings you alive as a starting place.

John: No, that sounds like great advice. Yeah, as you were talking, it's so true. We become stoic and delayed gratification. It's just what we have to do well in a way to go through the system that we're in. I'm not sure the system has to necessarily be that way. Unfortunately, it still is that way and we need to put everything off until we get through that.

Yeah, it's hard to change those. I remember, I don't talk about this very often, but I was in therapy for a while, mostly around my divorce. I was going to call her a coach, but my therapist would ask me to just give me a little thing to do while I was there in terms of thinking and being bringing out "What do you want? What do you need?" I would just sit there flapping my foot going. I couldn't verbalize it. It just took me a long time to where I could, "Okay, yes, I can understand and feel these things and here's what I really need." And that takes some work. So, it doesn't surprise me.

All right. Now that's one big thing that comes up a lot it sounds like. Are there one or two other things that you encounter in working with people? Maybe they've gotten past that part now and they're like, "Okay, I know what I want and maybe what I need." Are there other things that typically come up that maybe if we knew about those, if my listeners could get a little hint here, they could maybe be looking for those things themselves when they're thinking about doing this?

Dr. Karen Barnard: Yes. Several things, but the one that comes to mind is let's say we have a career in mind, but we are not a hundred percent sure. And trying to think ourselves to clarity. This is related to what we said, but I really encourage a little mini career experiments or explorations.

So, get your whole body into what you might be doing as opposed to just thinking or talking or reading a job description for pharma, for instance. Look at clinicaltrials.gov into your area and see what trials are going. Contact the PI and say, "Hey, I'd love to volunteer. I can do informed consents. I can do blood pressures. I can do health exams." Whatever. Get yourself into that space and then pay attention to how that feels.

So, cognitively, do you like the content you're working with? Do you like the problems that you're seeing being solved? Do you see yourself here? Do you like the people and the conversations you're having and what's happening in your body? Do you feel open, excited, maybe even a little nervous? Or do you have a sense of dread and contraction? To help you, yeah, I imagined that this would be nice, but actually now that I am experiencing this a little bit, I'm not so sure. So maybe it means another kind of experience in the same just to make sure, or it means okay, maybe the door is closing there for you and it's something else.

Another example is for most of my clients actually who've gone into utilization management have started out by doing some chart reviews. Do you like the process of combing and wading through the chart and writing the report? How does that feel? Do you like the content, the intellectual part of it, using your physician brain? Does that feel good? And then what's your body doing? You dreading sitting down to write those reports. Well, maybe there's something there.

Or another thing that's not easy to do, but very possible is if you're still working as a hospitalist or doing inpatient rounding, joining the QI team. Do you like quality improvement? Do you like clinical documentation improvement? Volunteering, signing up for these experiences, that can give you, bring your whole body into the decision. It's really helpful at that point where maybe you're juggling between, "Oh, should I do medical writing or should I go into education? I'm not sure." That's often helpful.

John: One of the things a guest of mine brought up once, and I was shocked that I hadn't thought about it, but you're kind of alluding to it right now. And I think it was in a particular career, but he or she was saying, you should see if you can do some shadowing. I'm like "Shadowing? What physician ever does shadowing in their mid-40s or 50s?"

But I think that is exactly what you need. Because you don't know what these different careers unless you've been somehow affiliated with some pharma and doing some studies or something, for example. If you've never done this, how are you going to know? And unfortunately, for a lot of careers there is no shadowing. A pharma company usually won't let you shadow per se because they're so close to their technology being stolen or something.

But it makes perfect sense. If you can by all means, try and find someone that you can shadow and just find out what they're doing or what you suggested, which is to actually do those chart reviews as part of a precursor to becoming a UM. Any other examples of that that you can think of?

Dr. Karen Barnard: Yeah, while we're on shadowing, I'll often suggest that for concierge or direct primary care specialty care practices to shadow somebody who is in such a practice or lifestyle medicine. Sort of the non-traditional are often easier to shadow because you can connect with a physician who's doing it and it would be like clinical externship that you're shadowing. I agree with you, you can't shadow in everything, but that lends itself particularly well to shadowing.

The other little example of the experiment is doing, and I usually don't recommend another degree unless it's really in line with where you want to go. But I do recommend free or inexpensive courses. And this is something I did. I took a medical writing course and I recognized, "Oh hell no. I don't want to sit in front of the computer all day long writing." And I really actually thought I would enjoy it, but in that experiential course, it was done deal. And it cost me, I don't know, at the time it was even under a hundred dollars, it's just over a hundred dollars now. But it was so much worth it to get that experience and put that baby to rest as a career direction. Courses can be great if they provide an experience of what we are wanting to go into.

From just my own career experiments, I took a meditation training course because at one time I thought, "Well, maybe I'll do meditation, become a meditation teacher." There was nothing wrong, but it wasn't quite right. And then I did a three day coaching basics. It's called a foundational coaching training with the program I ended up training with. And it was during that that I recognized, "Ah, this is what it is." And it was a very clear yes for me even though I knew I had a lot to learn, I recognized that this would be.

I think taking courses is another great way to get a taster. And then of course, if you can't shadow, really having a good conversation with a physician who's in that role. Now again, it still doesn't tell you that you are going to like the role because you have bringing your own unique things that you want to have in your next career, but it gives you a little bit of a taster of what the career might be like.

John: Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. Any other "aha" moments? Maybe about tactics or techniques or just things. At this point looking back a while I never realized that until I had been working with 10 or 20 people that this comes up a lot. Or anything you might have observed in the last several years.

Dr. Karen Barnard: I think just a couple of things I do want to mention is sometimes physicians do come to me and they've been applying for jobs and they've got no bites or they've had a couple of interviews and don't progress. I didn't really have to do the resume and interviewing for my transition.

But what I've really come to appreciate is a resume that's targeted to the job you're applying for is worth its weight in gold. And the goal of the resume is to get an interview. And spending some time, whether it's with your dog or your significant other, saying, preparing interview questions. I have resources on my site. There are many references and resources to give you some ideas of interview questions, practicing, getting some feedback with somebody you love and trust before you go into an interview, can really be the difference between moving along in that interview and not.

Because really once you've got an interview, it means your resume has met the bar. So now, can you convince them that even though you don't have most of the experience in the thing you don't have, but you can do this job and you're confident and you want to learn and they want to work with you? Well, that's really what it's all about. It's like, is there chemistry and can you show me that even though you don't have this experience, that you will learn fast to be able to do the job? That's just a little bit of nuts and bolts on resume interview prep.

But I think the other thing, John, that's really, and it can be, it's such an obstacle for us, it was for me as well, is, "Oh my gosh, if I no longer see patients, does that mean I'm not a doctor?" We've spent half our lives building this identity and this role. "Okay, so now you just want me to leave it at the front door?" That is really hard.

And so, what I realized in working with my clients, and in even myself, is that I'm going to take the skills and the experiences and the needs that I need in my career from what I learned in medicine, and I'm going to take it into whatever I do next. And so, I'm going to go from being a doctor to doctoring differently. I'm never not going to be a doctor. And that really is an important thing to remember that you don't have to forego this identity. You're just doing it in a different way.

John: Yeah. I have come to realize that over the years too, that a lot of these jobs, most of them ones you're talking about in particular, one of the prerequisites is they have to be a physician. Even the employer, if you're working for a large corporation, isn't asking you not to be a physician. In fact, the only personnel hired for that job is a physician. So, there's something about being a physician that makes you at least partially qualified for their job. There might be other things.

I've never found anybody that moved into a different job, a nonclinical job or non-traditional that afterwards didn't feel they were still a physician once they actually got into it. Yeah, that's one I think you're right. We question that quite a bit, so I'm glad you brought that one up.

Now you have to tell us about your website because I know there's a lot of resources on your website and or a newsletter or something that will help people just kind of address a lot of the issues you've been talking about today. So, why don't we go into that right now? Where can they find you?

Dr. Karen Barnard: I'm on LinkedIn. I'm happy to have you reach out to me there. I also will respond to every single email I get. I love hearing from physicians, even if it's just one little question. If you're stuck somewhere, sometimes I can help you just over an email exchange. And my email is karen@drkarenbarnard.com.

And then on my website, which is drkarenbarnard.com, I have some free resources. But if you go to the newsletter or just drkarenbarnard.com/newsletter, in your inbox every week, you will get some tips and trick and resources and tools to help you through your transition. It's very focused on physicians, and lots of nuts and bolts there, as well as just a variety of topics, some of what came up today and some more. So, I really welcome you to subscribe to that.

And then I have a couple of other free resources on my website as well that the only thing you need to do is give your email in exchange for those. And then working with me, I have a couple of different options. I have what I call a career clarity call, which is 60 minutes. You just would like some clarity. You're feeling stuck in a certain area and you want to work through it in an hour. I can help you do that. I can often share some resources after that. That's a one-time only. And then I have what I alluded to earlier, my career transition program, which is the structured program where we work together for a few months, and take you through what you need to learn to get you in the best possible shape for that next stage.

John: I always get questions "How do I pick a coach?" And basically what you're saying through the clarity call or even calling or in interacting with you about the other. If you can find out what the program is, that's why I advise you. You need to talk to the coaches before you make a decision who's going to be your coach and you might want to talk to one or two or three. But usually when you really feel like there's that connection, it works out fantastic. I really encourage anyone who feels like they're stuck or they don't know what direction to go to reach out and get that help.

Any last bits of advice before I let you go for those that are, again, early in the process and they're struggling still?

Dr. Karen Barnard: Yeah. I would say don't do this alone. You're not alone. If you're feeling any shame or guilt, those are completely normal emotions to have when you're kind of just even beginning to think about this. Find your resources, find some physicians who've done it. A therapist, a coach, it doesn't really matter. But get the support you need because if you're feeling unhappy in your career, there's a really good reason for that. And explore that. It might not mean changing your career, but it might mean you need to make some sort of a change because life is way too short to be in a job that you don't love.

John: Excellent advice and you're living it now yourself. So, that's good to know that you've applied all these principles after spending some time and learning and so forth. Again, go to drkarenbarnard.com if you want to learn more, reach out on LinkedIn. I'll have all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much, Karen, for being here today. This has been really helpful for me and I'm sure for our listeners. So, hopefully we'll get together again another time down the road.

Dr. Karen Barnard: Thank you, John. I thank you for this opportunity and I really enjoyed talking to you about these things.

John: I did too. It's been my pleasure. Bye-bye.

Dr. Karen Barnard: Bye.

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The post How to Be Purposeful with Your Life and Career – 317 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Interview with Dr. Heather Fork

Today's presentation is a replay of Dr. Heather Fork's presentation in which she explains how to land an awesome job using LinkedIn.

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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. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

New Podcast

Dr. Fork hosts the weekly Doctor’s Crossing Carpe Diem Podcast. And she is passionate about creating new resources to make it easier for physicians to navigate their careers.

She previously described her Resumé Writing Kit here on the PNC Podcast.

How to Land An Awesome Job Using LinkedIn

Heather begins our discussion by explaining what LinkedIn is, and why it is unique among social media sites. She notes that when she started coaching, LinkedIn was not an essential tool for physicians seeking a new career. 

The biggest mistake physicians make is not getting “in the parade” and having fun. – Dr. Heather Fork

Today, she says that 100% of her clients use LinkedIn as an integral part of their career search strategy. That's why she found it so important to help her clients and other physicians by creating a LinkedIn course for them.

Summary

Dr. Heather Fork explains why LinkedIn is important, and how to land a nonclinical job by using it in new ways. She also explained its most critical functions and points out little-known tips, including her “Alumni Hack.”

IMPORTANT REMINDER: Heather has created her own “how-to” course called LinkedIn for Physicians that anybody can purchase if they need help setting up their profile properly. This is, by far, the best resource for quickly learning how to set up your LinkedIn page and use it to network, attract recruiters, and find a nontraditional job. [Note: this link is an affiliate link so I receive a stipend for promoting it that does NOT affect the price of the course to you.- JJ]

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Doctor's Crossing Website
• Doctor's Crossing Free Resources
• Heather Fork's Linkedin for Physicians
• Your Resume is the Passport to That Desirable Job – 157
• Top Reasons to Use LinkedIn – 008
• NewScr!pt

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Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 310

How to Land An Awesome Job Using LinkedIn

John: I'm very pleased to bring today's guest back to the podcast for the third time. She's been an awesome source of support for physicians struggling with their careers for many years and she's a very well-known ICF Master Certified Coach in resume and LinkedIn expert. Hello, Dr. Heather Fork.

Dr. Heather Fork: Hello, iconic Dr. John Jurica. Thank you so much for that very generous intro. And I have to say, I am a huge fan of yours. Yours is probably the first podcast I ever listened to.

John: Well, I'm happy to hear that and I'm glad to hear it. And it's mutual because I love your podcast. Oops. I shouldn't have spilled the beans that you have a podcast. That's one of the new things you're doing. But I love your podcast, I love your coaching, and your blog too has much good stuff on it. We're not going to go over all your past history because they can go back and listen to the previous episodes if they like. What I really want to know is since it's been about a year and a half, what new things have you been up to?

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, spoiler. A podcast.

John: There you go.

Dr. Heather Fork: Now, you inspired me with this medium that I've been putting off. And when I heard you and then Amy Porterfield, I thought this is so valuable. Especially since I don't really like to write and I've been blogging for 10 years, I just had to do something different.

The podcast started last October. And as you know, it's a lot of work to do a weekly podcast, but it's much fun and I love getting my former clients to come on and other guests because they're so fantastic. And what I hear from listeners is I don't feel alone anymore. Someone else feels the way I do. I don't feel like I'm damaged goods and I have hope.

John: Yeah. Well, it's been a while since I started, but one of the things I realized shortly after I started and I heard from people is that you are part of people's life. They know your voice. I was at a meeting once and someone came up to me and said, "Hey, I recognize you. Aren't you John Jurica?" We were at a meeting about nonclinical careers. But just that whole idea that you're talking to them directly.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes, it's intimate. And I love it because you can really help people feel too what you're expressing and what the guests are expressing. I think it really changes the landscape from being something to just thinking about making changes, to feeling like it's really possible. That these people are really alive. Someone just didn't write a bunch of stuff and put it on a paper and made it up.

John: That's true. Now, oddly enough, there are some people that have never listened to a single podcast. I don't know how we get to them. But for those who are listening and want to learn about nonclinical careers or burnout or nontraditional careers or just, I don't know, feeling better about your life, definitely, you want to listen to Doctor's Crossing Carpe Diem podcast. Why did you pick that name?

Dr. Heather Fork: I just love the term "carpe diem". And my coaching program is called Carpe Diem because like Robin William said in that movie, "Dead Poets Society" that, "Before long we're going to be pushing up daisy's unless we carpe that diem." And we got on this path and our whole life has been planned out for us. And if we don't really question, is it what we really want to be doing? Is it making us happy? We'll be pushing up daisy's and saying, "Oh my God, I didn't get to have the life I wanted."

John: For sure. Yeah. Seize the day, right?

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes.

John: All right. Everyone's going to go listen to your podcast, but that is not really the main reason I wanted you to come on today because we discussed something a few years ago about creating different resources for people that we could share with our followers and our listeners and all that.

And then I saw that you, the expert in LinkedIn, recently created a course. But I'm going to just talk to you about LinkedIn. That's what we're going to spend the next 20 minutes doing, because I don't think that our listeners always understand the importance or why we should learn about it if we're not already using it. Just explain what LinkedIn is for those that have never used it, or have just dabbled a little bit and maybe why it's different from other social media sites.

Dr. Heather Fork: I'd love to. LinkedIn is considered the number one networking platform for professionals, and it has over 800 million members. So, it's worldwide. And I'd say the main thing about it, that's different from Facebook and Instagram and these other platforms is that it's really for those of you who want to have a professional platform, you can have your own profile, who want to network with other professionals with a really powerful search engine. I call it the Rolodex on Steroids. And also, be able to use your profile to apply for jobs and interact with recruiters. It's one-stop shopping and a platform that's continuing to evolve.

John: Well, I'm on LinkedIn fairly often. It's actually one way that I find podcast guests, for example. And being an introvert, I'm not a big networker per se, but it's an awesome way to network as is a podcast, of course.

But the thing is, I have never seen a nasty conversation on LinkedIn. People are like, they don't want to go to Twitter and Facebook because it's just loaded with sometimes some nasty stuff. And LinkedIn is, like you said, it's professional. It's a place where you can find jobs and post jobs, if you like. Does it come into play a lot in terms of the people you work with, that you coach or that you're teaching? I know you've done some speaking about LinkedIn. Does it seem to help them? And how often does it become a critical part of their career search?

Dr. Heather Fork: That's a great question, John. And I would say back in 2010 when I first started, LinkedIn was there, but it wasn't used as much. But now all of my clients use LinkedIn. And let me explain how it's helpful by painting a little scenario. Let's say we have two physicians and they're both applying for the same nonclinical job. One is on LinkedIn, one isn't. The one who isn't on LinkedIn applies through the regular channel, say maybe Indeed with their CV or resume. Then the other physician applies on LinkedIn. And the difference is when the recruiter gets a CV for that first physician, they just have the CV or resume. They don't see a picture. They don't see recommendations. They don't have this dynamic visual of the physician.

Then if they go to the physician who applied through LinkedIn or even has a link for their LinkedIn profile on their resume, that recruiter can click and then they already see this beautiful face. They see a lovely banner photo and then everything's right there that they need that would've been on the resume. Plus, there are a lot of additional things you can put on your LinkedIn profile. They might read a recommendation that describes exactly who they're looking for. That's not going to be on your resume.

John: Absolutely. Yeah. In my mind, I think about a Venn diagram, things overlap and a resume and LinkedIn overlap a lot, and then networking overlaps with your LinkedIn. And you're right. The LinkedIn profile is just so much more complete. Not that you want to send in a five-page resume. But if someone wants to look for that information, it's right there on LinkedIn.

Dr. Heather Fork: Exactly. So, the physician who's using LinkedIn, when they want to apply for a certain job, they could find a physician who's working in that company, and they can reach out to them for an informational interview. And then often those physicians get a finder's fee if they refer somebody who gets hired. So, there's an incentive for them to talk to you. If that person's applying and they were recommended by another physician, the recruiter already likes them because there's a much higher success rate for candidates found that way. It makes it easier. So, you can see how very quickly that physician who's on LinkedIn already has many advantages.

John: I had a podcast guest tell me once that submitting a CV on a website is the way of madness. She had literally said she had submitted a thousand resumes and had never received a response. And she noted that once she figured out that she just needed to have some connection with somebody, either find out who the hiring manager was or have somebody that she knows in the company, some touchpoint, then she had some actual jobs that were requesting she come and interview.

Dr. Heather Fork: Oh my gosh, that's such a discouraging story to send out thousands and not hear anything back. I'm surprised she persisted that long.

John: Well, I think it's misleading because it's just so easy. Oh, I'm just going to cut and paste and cut and paste and cut and paste. But no one's looking at those kinds of resumes, I don't think. My daughter is a recruiter for a big firm and they use LinkedIn constantly.

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, it's really becoming the go-to platform for recruiters. And when you apply for a job on LinkedIn, often, you'll actually see the recruiter that's connected to that position and you can reach out to them. You can attach your resume right there in addition to the formal application process. You can start a relationship. You could also just look at jobs you're interested in and you may not be ready to apply, but you can connect with that recruiter and say, "Hey, I'm not ready yet, but I'd love to establish a relationship with you."

John: Yeah, absolutely. That's so true. You mentioned how all of your clients use LinkedIn. Can you give us some examples of where it was very critical to a particular, without naming names, particular clients?

Dr. Heather Fork: Sure. Absolutely. I have some great stories. I had one client who wanted to transition into a certain nonclinical area. And we were on the phone together and we were both searching on LinkedIn. And because she wasn't having a lot of success at first, connecting with a couple of folks on LinkedIn. So, I said, "Here, let's find somebody." I found this person with her same specialty, and she sent him a message. She heard from him the next day. They had a chat. It turns out they knew a couple of people in common who were working at that company as well. She ended up getting an interview and it took a while because they didn't quite have an opening then for her specialty, but she got the job and she's working in the job and she's really happy.

John: Very nice.

Dr. Heather Fork: I have another story. This was a physician who was brand new to LinkedIn. When she came to me, she didn't have a profile or anything. She created it. It really doesn't take that long when you just follow the steps. And I taught her my alumni hack, which is one of my favorite little things to do on LinkedIn that's very powerful, is to search your alumni network. That could be people you went to college with, med school, even your training program, and see if they're working in the industry or at the company that you're interested in.

She found someone who went to her small liberal arts college who was working in the company where she wanted to work. She messaged him, he got back to her right away, and said, "Send me a resume. I want to give it to the hiring manager." She did that. The hiring manager reaches out, interviews within a week. Does another interview, gets the job. There was one and done. One application, a couple of interviews, got the job.

John: It's amazing. I think sometimes we feel like if we're reaching out to someone, we haven't seen in 20 years, they're not going to respond. But the reality is when I'm on the receiving end, if I get a note of any sort, whether it's an email or LinkedIn and they're from my Alma mater. I mean, invariably, I respond immediately. That's just human nature, I think.

Dr. Heather Fork: You are family, and those little connections are huge. It's funny how we're like that. The first time we had gone to the school, like I said, 20 years ago or before you, or after you, but you are buddies.

John: Yeah. Even if it's someone from two or three years, if you're at the same school, you just have that bond and can talk about the different things and you feel like you're somehow you owe that person for some reason in a good way.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yeah. You just feel this common connection. That really it feels like a blood brother or something.

John: Now, I hear another thing people tell me about LinkedIn is they create a profile and they should put certain keywords if they're looking to be found by someone. Is that a big thing? Is that a minor thing to consider?

Dr. Heather Fork: That's a great question, John. Now, there's something on LinkedIn called "Your headline". And this is what comes below your name, or you have your degrees and everything. And by default, LinkedIn puts in the company where you're working and your job title. That's just by default. But you can customize this headline with keywords that will help recruiters find you or the people you want to find you. For example, it might just say that you're a physician at Slippery Rock Clinic, or something like that. But you can put in, medical writer, consultant, physician advisor, you can put in expert witness, the side gigs that you might be doing. Even you can say, "Seeking position in drug safety".

John: Wow. Nice. That helps really to key off those who are actually looking on LinkedIn for someone to contact like a recruiter or something like that.

Dr. Heather Fork: You can do that. And then those keywords also are important to have in your "About section", which is like your customized bio. They can also go in your "Experience section". They can go anywhere on your profile and they are searchable.

John: That really helps. I'm telling you. Let me turn it around now. Here's the way I like to look at things sometimes is like, let's look at the other side of the coin. What are the mistakes? Now, we've kind of alluded to them in a way by what a good way to use LinkedIn is. But have you seen working with people and said, "Wait a second, this is why people aren't looking at your profile?" Any common mistakes that we make when we first start to use LinkedIn?

Dr. Heather Fork: I would say there definitely are mistakes like that, of not optimizing the profile. And there are lots of ways to do that. But some of the biggest mistakes are really just not getting in the parade and then shutting the parade down too soon. What do I mean by that? Not getting in the parade is saying, well, I'm a private person. I really don't like to put myself out there, or I'm really introverted. I don't like to network. Or you get on LinkedIn, you put up a basic profile. Maybe you send a few messages, apply for a few jobs, nothing happens. And you just say, well, this doesn't work and I don't have time. Which I completely understand. It is not the most intuitive platform. And these things that I teach in the course help you know how to use it and use it strategically so it's not wasting your time.

John: Okay. Now you mentioned the course. I mentioned it earlier and I do want to learn more about the course. I do want to remind my listeners though, of course of your website, doctorscrossing.com. That's where pretty much they can find everything. Now I understand also, you have a page there that has a bunch of free resources. That looked pretty awesome. Can you tell us about that first?

Dr. Heather Fork: Absolutely. On my website, under the freebie tab, there are these downloadable PDFs that you can have. One is a starter kit that's very extensive on how you can go from being overwhelmed at the crossroad to figuring out how to move forward. That has a lot of great information for your career process. Then there's one on medical writing. There's one on pharma. There's a chart review. There might be some others there. I can't quite remember, but you can go to the freebie tab and take whatever you want.

John: I went and looked today. I think there were at least six that were there and they address different things. I've downloaded several of them, of course, but I would recommend people to go. And you can go directly there at doctorscrossing.com/freeresources, or just go to the website and look for it.

Okay. Now you have a LinkedIn course. This is something that I have been looking forward to for a long time. One of those things that I thought we really needed. I have this little video that I made five years ago where I built a LinkedIn profile. It is so dated. It is so ugly. And then I just said, "I'm not going to do anything, because I'm waiting for Heather to come out with her course." So, it's called what? LinkedIn course for physicians?

Dr. Heather Fork: You always do quality work and you're also incredibly prolific. You put about a hundred things to my one.

John: Okay. I'm not going to argue with you except that this course is beautiful. I will say that it's a lot prettier than anything I've produced. It's just awesome. Tell us about how it's structured and what does it go through?

Dr. Heather Fork: Thanks for asking. And I have to say, this has been the hardest thing I've done in my business. It took me a year. It wouldn't take me that long if I was doing the second one, but the course is three hours of video that's broken down into 22 short lessons, five minutes to 10 minutes. And what it does is it walks you through creating your profile, then teaches you how to start networking and message people. There are specific examples and templates to use of, "Well, what do you say in that message when you only have 300 characters? What do you do when someone doesn't respond to that message, and then how do you write longer messages"? We cover networking and then we go on to "How to start searching for jobs?" Because that's another thing that really gets people in a twist is, "I see all these job descriptions and they want five to seven years and I'm not qualified" and that's another area of difficulty. I really talk about that.

And then I also show them how to apply for jobs and work with recruiters. And there's all these little things you don't really know about. For example, did you know, John, that you can put yourself in anonymous mode when you want to go look at people's profile, but you don't want them to see that you've been visiting them and then you can turn it back on and be visible?

John: No, no, I've never tried that, but it would be definitely a useful tool.

Dr. Heather Fork: It really is. You can stalk a bit on LinkedIn.

John: One of the things that I did find out though is if you have a profile and you want to make a change to it and you don't want your boss to be notified of the change, you can go in and turn that off temporarily or permanently where they won't be notified of new changes. You can be a little under the radar that way.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes, that's 100% correct. You can stop those notifications to your contacts. A couple of other things about the course is that I really wanted to make it easy to use. With each lesson, there's a downloadable cheat sheet that goes over all the steps, and in the videos, I'll teach about how to do something. For example, how to write your "About section". And then I'll go on LinkedIn in the video and show them exactly how to do it, where to click, where to go, and then show examples of other physicians about sections.

My goal was to take the frustration out, make it doable. And I love people now responding to me saying, "Oh, the course was really easy to use. I'm really happy with my profile now," and they'll send me their profile. And it's so fun to see how great they look.

John: It's good to have someone who really understands how something like this is used telling you and teaching you about it because I've been using LinkedIn for a long time. And I was just in your course a couple of days ago and there was a whole section. I was like, "Oh, I could probably really get my connections up quite a bit using this technique that you described". Which is again, reaching out to alumni or other ways of networking. And then, there's different ways that you can connect. There are some with a message, without a message. And I just really was really impressed and I'm definitely going to go back and go through that section. Especially when I'm looking for a new podcast guest.

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, thank you. And that was my goal to just make it easy because we don't have extra time to waste and I don't want people to get frustrated and then give up.

John: No, absolutely. And it can be frustrating until you really get a feel for it. Well, there are different ways that they can access this course. They can get it from your website, but I happen to be an affiliate. I have a link for it. And the only reason the listeners might want to buy it through my link is that they also get a free bundle of courses from my nonclinical career academy worth a couple of hundred dollars.

I'll put my link for them to look at, nonclinicalphysicians.com/linkedincourse. And I'll probably put that actually on my website at some point permanently if you'll let me, but that's an easy way to go. If they happen to be at your website, they're going to obviously sign up there. You've got some other resources there as well. So, anything else you want to tell us about the LinkedIn course before we move on off that topic?

Dr. Heather Fork: Before I say anything else about the course, I do want to say, please get it from John because he's so wonderful. He works so hard and I'd really like to support him. Please feel free to use his link. And if you come to my site, and you forgot his, just email me and I'll send it to you. I want you to support him, but thank you for all you do for me.

About the course and LinkedIn in general, I would just like to say that if you feel that this is not what you're naturally good at, networking or putting yourself out there, just let go of that. Because a lot of my clients are introverted. They had the same feelings about LinkedIn. They would drop their shoulders and just feel like, "Ugh, do I really have to, Heather?"

But once they get on there and do things such as usually the alumni hack and they get someone to respond to them, they're really happy. It's a game-changer. And all of a sudden, they see that being on LinkedIn is like treasure hunting. We don't have to call it networking. Let's just call it treasure hunting because you do find these treasures of people who will definitely help you out and open doors.

John: Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. Maybe I'll make you step back even further, just in considering all the clients that you've known over the years and the people you're helping now, any other advice you have for physicians who just right now happen to be just kind of frustrated with the whole process of thinking about doing a side gig or trying to overcome burnout or anything like that?

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes. Yes. And if I can go back to my parade metaphor.

John: Sure.

Dr. Heather Fork: I would say, just get in the parade. Don't sit on the sidelines and watch other people's floats go by and say, "Oh, well, look what they're doing. Why can't that be me? They probably just knew somebody or that's not going to happen to me." I say, get in the parade, start building your float. And when you're building your float for the parade, you start with your platform. And you don't have to know where the parade is going. Just start with your profile or just start thinking about what you want to do, what's working, what's not working. Build your platform.

And then when you're actually on your float and riding in the parade, have fun. Don't look around at other people's floats and say, "Oh, theirs is better than mine. I'll never be like them." Cheer them on, dance on your platform, and have fun because it's not about getting to the end of the parade, we're all going to get there, but we want to be enjoying the parade while it's happening, which it's your life. I'm there standing on the sidelines cheering you on. Get in there so I can wave my pom-poms for you.

John: That is so cool, Heather. It is. And listeners can get a sense if they haven't read your blog or listened to your podcast, they're going to get more of what you just heard. That's a good thing. Let's go over that again.

The podcast is the Doctor's Crossing Carpe Diem podcast. They're going to find that on any app, Spotify, Apple, whatever. Definitely listen to that, go to doctorscrossing.com, and look for those free resources. And if you want to learn more about the course, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/linkedincourse, and you'll have a page there where you can learn more about it. I think we've covered everything I wanted to cover today, Heather. This has been fantastic and fun. I'm always happy to be able to spend a few minutes talking to you.

Dr. Heather Fork: It's such an honor, John. I'm a huge fan of yours. And can I put a plugin for your new script app that you have?

John: Yes.

Dr. Heather Fork: I love all the things John does. If you haven't heard about his new script app is a community where you can join very, very affordably and get a lot of wonderful content, access to his courses, access to mentors. John, you can let people know the price and how they find it. But I think it's something to really look into.

John: Yeah. The nice thing about it too is it's not limited to physicians. And so, most of us work in teams, whether clinically or nonclinically. It's actually designed for any healthcare licensed professionals, psychologists, social workers, PAs, MPs, oral surgeons, and doctors. It's like less than $5 a month. It's newscript.app. I appreciate you bringing that up today, Heather.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yeah. How can you not? $5 Starbucks, miss that for one day, get the new script app and you'll be doing a jig.

John: Absolutely. All right, Heather. Well, thank you much. I guess we're at the end of our time now, I'm going to say goodbye and I hope to see you again soon and back on the podcast sometime.

Dr. Heather Fork: Thank you, John. I really appreciate you having me on.

John: You're welcome. Bye-bye.

Dr. Heather Fork: Bye-bye.

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The post Revisiting How to Land An Awesome Job Using LinkedIn – 310 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's episode, Dr. Tom Davis and John have a conversation about how we will survive as the healthcare system around us collapses.

The context is about the challenges the co-founders and members of NewScript go through, and how the collaboration between NewScript Mentors and members can benefit everybody.

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. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

NewScript: Background and Goal

NewScript developed from the realization that clinicians are less inclined to use social media platforms for researching nonclinical careers and issues around burnout. Those sites are often less discreet and private. Therefore, NewScript was developed as a private community.

Benefits of NewScript are:

1. Clinicians can remain anonymous;
2. Members can easily network with other clinicians seeking a professional transition; and,
3. There are resources to help members in a collegial and mutually supportive environment.

And NewScript brings together Mentors who are enthusiastic about assisting, training, counseling, motivating, and inspiring members.

Today's Talk Points

During the conversation, the cofounders of NewScript discussed: 

1. Services for large institutions to prevent and address burnout;
2. Financialization of healthcare;
3. Generating revenue using the Internet; and,
4. How authenticity will lead to a following that wants your services.

Advice from Dr. John Jurica

I like to remind people that there's a whole world of other things you can do outside of clinical, and you can do clinical in different ways.

Advice from Dr. Tom Davis

The only barrier to making change is you.

Summary

Healthcare is undergoing constant transformation. Much of that is unfavorable for clinicians.

But there is also reason to be optimistic. It is getting much easier to apply our education and expertise in productive ways outside of the system.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• How to Save Healthcare, Satisfy Patients, and Fix Physician Burnout – 256
• What Is the Proven Path to a Rewarding Online Business? – 288
• How Do I Choose the Best Coaches Mentors and Masterminds for Me? – 208
• NewScr!pt

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

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 297

How We Will Survive and Thrive While the Healthcare System Collapses

- Conversation with Dr. Tom Davis

John: Okay, nonclinical nation. It's John Jurica here. Tom is looking at me like I'm crazy because I was pausing for up to a minute because I didn't really realize how I wanted to start today. But it started, so now we're going.

I'm happy to have Tom Davis with me here today. This is a little different type of episode. I had this brainstorm that Tom and I should get on the show occasionally together to just talk about what's going on with NewScript and other things that he and I are both involved with. Some together, some not together.

It's because we're both interested in bringing value to you in an ongoing basis, and there's a lot going on around us in the healthcare system in general. And I think it might be fun to just chat about these things from time to time. So that's what this episode is about. And with that, I will formally say hello, Tom. How are you today?

Dr. Tom Davis: I'm wonderful, John. Thanks for having me on. It's a privilege.

John: The idea here is I'm not really interviewing Tom. We're going to just have a conversation hopefully. So, we're not going to talk about the summit because the summit is actually over even though we're recording this before the summit has been held. So, that's just the peculiarities of recording these things ahead of time.

But anyway, I want to just talk to Tom a little bit about NewScript and remind people that NewScript is out there. It's been out there for a few years. And Tom, what would you say are the most interesting or exciting things going on with NewScript recently? And maybe explain to people exactly what NewScript is for those that aren't members or haven't seen it.

Dr. Tom Davis: Well, first John, I want to congratulate you on the smashing success of the summit. It was amazing.

John: Absolutely. That's what we're anticipating.

Dr. Tom Davis: NewScript came from an idea that folks were getting increasingly wary of using the social media platforms to explore nonclinical careers and issues of burnout and career change, simply because they're not private. What if your employer is of a certain size? I promise that they have a line item in their budget to record every keystroke that you put into the various social media categories because they sell that. That's one of the things that they sell. And that's kind of understandable. Your employer wants to safeguard themselves, but they're also spying on you. I hate to put it like that, but that's it.

So we were looking at creating a kind of a private community. Nothing so grandiose like a private Facebook, although that would be nice. Just a private community people can log on, they can be anonymous and they can connect with faculty members, folks who are in the career transition space and grow comfortable with them and perhaps find their path in life, providing resources to help them and doing it in a mutually supportive environment. That's the vision. And that started about two and a half years ago. And we haven't looked back since.

John: Yeah, I remember when we started, we thought, "Okay, it's going to be somewhat like a Facebook group. We'll just have a main feed. People come in, they can share, they can ask questions, and everybody in the feed can contribute." I think it's been nice because we do have people who are designated as mentors. I think sometimes on one of those social media groups, there are people that you go to when you ask a question, but it's pretty random. Whereas we have recruited people who are interested in helping clinicians, teaching them, advising them, encouraging them, inspiring them.

And so, they're in there, they can be tapped. And it's not just you and me that are responding to comments or questions. That's one thing I like about it. And then as we come across materials that are useful, we have places in NewScript to post those. I tend to grab whatever webinar I've recently done and put a copy of that in there. I have some of my old material that I used. Well, it's still in my academy and elsewhere, and you've added a lot of value as well. So, maybe you could talk a little bit more about that.

Dr. Tom Davis: I went ahead and posted all of my telemedicine mentoring information just on there for free. I came to John as we discussed this idea with the thoughts that mentoring folks in how to create and run their own telemedicine practices. An independent contractor was a great bridge between burnout and a second career. And the story behind that is about 10 years old, but I've been doing that successfully for a number of years. And I had put up a couple of courses and they went bananas. I couldn't believe how much revenue they generated.

So, when we decided to do this, we started putting that up inside the community for free. And then offering that kind of direct mentorship that people were paying me for just free there because it had become such a demand. And I needed to scale access to myself because there are people who wanted it and couldn't access me because I didn't have the resources to offer to them.

That's just one example. We have little mini mentorships in there about overcoming imposter syndrome and we have great resources about optimizing your LinkedIn and we have a ton of folks that we refer people to for specific needs. And again, it's a great way to gain some comfort with these people that you might want to work with to coach and mentor you into a second career.

And the best part about that, John, is that hiring is so difficult now if you try to go through the front door of these large corporations. You just never know if anybody has even received your resume. And the best part about going through one of these industry coaches is that they know the back doors and they also have some credibility with the folks that do the hiring. So, if they decide to work with you and they bring you in, then you'll get access to opportunities that you would never get access to if you just try to go through the front door.

John: Very cool. One of the other things that has intrigued me and been surprised a little bit is that some of our members and primarily the mentors are trying to collaborate in more substantial ways. The summit, which was wonderful although we haven't done it yet. You're talking about collaboration, pretty much the faculty is many, if not most of our mentors. So that's cool.

And then we are toying with something now that's actually in place. I think maybe you can describe it better than me, but we get this one minute coaching through DocWorking THRIVE, or DocWorking, whichever way you want to look at it. It kind of opens up new ways to collaborate, in my opinion. So, I don't know if you have any other thoughts on that.

Dr. Tom Davis: The challenge for all of us who are career transition professionals is how to scale access to our offerings, to the people who need it. And the folks who are selling this to the healthcare organizations, they have found that getting traction, with that set of customers is pretty difficult.

The health systems talk a good gain, but when push comes to shove, they'd rather retain their resources internally and not purchase outside services like One Minute Coaching or 24/7 crisis counseling or access to career coaching. I believe it's a two reasons. One, it's to make sure that they husband their resources, and two, they want to make sure that nobody actually gets encouraged to leave their job. And I guess that's understandable except doctors are committing suicide at a record rate. So, there is a higher purpose there.

These folks have been talking to us about engaging with our platform and offering their services at scales to individuals instead of selling it as a package to a health system. And DocWorking is one of those. And they have a fantastic product. It's called One Minute Coaching. They have a tremendous stable of coaches that have great wisdom to offer. And so, they offer bite side coaching every week for you to engage. And we're in the process of aligning ourselves with that particular product. So, folks that subscribe, they will get access to that particular resource if they want to reach out and get it.

The point that I think that you and I tried to make when we created this community is if the product is free, then you are the product. In NewScript, we charge a very modest subscription fee compared to how much the thing costs. But it does send the message that you're not the product, we're the product and we're here to serve you.

John: As you were talking about that, it occurs to me I've been interviewing people for five years or more now about their nonclinical careers and working in the hospital environment, which I'm most familiar with, and all the burnout, as you mentioned, suicides that have occurred. And many clinicians, I'm sure it's not just physicians, it's all of them.

I consistently ask the question particularly when I'm talking to coaches or people that produce services for large institutions to prevent or address burnout. And there's many out there and not too many systems that I'm aware of really take it seriously. And even in those that I've asked about, where they've put in place a burnouts program, or let's just call it more of a clinician support program of some sort. It might be under their EAP or something like that.

I've not found one yet that's told me that it's actually been implemented, been successful, and they're really happy with it. It seems like they do a survey, they do some things, sometimes they ignore the survey. That's what they did in my hospital. We did a survey every two or three years of the physicians, and I don't remember us ever putting in place anything substantial or consequential that would actually address the issues that were mentioned in the survey.

So, you can imagine that the physicians and the other clinicians that do these surveys end up not responding, or they don't really take it seriously. It worries me, it bothers me that these systems haven't seen the light because they're going to find themselves unable to get any kind of clinician to work for them long term if they don't address these issues.

Dr. Tom Davis: Indeed. And you see that that is the fruit of the financialization of healthcare. You look at the financialization of society, the folks who have the experience and the vision, they are systematically isolated from those who need to benefit from it. And in healthcare, that is the same process that has been going on. You and I, we should be adjunct professors at our local medical schools, we should be in senior leadership positions in whatever practices that we have. And we should have at least a few clinicians who have identified as role models and come to us and help us for mentorship. And that's the model that you and I developed or grew up under. And that's the model that the people that mentored us developed professionally under. But that model is gone. It is dead.

And so you and I, and all of the other wonderful coaches that see this and feel a need to pay their good fortune forward, are trying to create a space on the internet where that mentorship, that engagement can take place. Unfortunately, it's a new paradigm and even though the less experienced clinicians grew up in the cyber world, it's still something that they're just a little uncomfortable with. And that is always a challenge to try to overcome old patterns of thinking. And if there's one thing that medicine socially is, it's a conglomeration of old methods of thinking, and the folks calling the shots are trying to turn that to their advantage. We're just trying to offer a space where people can come and engage on their own.

And John, it is very, very hard to generate revenue consistently through the internet. You really have to work at it. And of all the people that don't want to spend money, doctors are at the very, very top of the list. And of all the people that they don't want to spend money to, it's other doctors, good lord. And that is a huge barrier. It's a huge social barrier to try to overcome. However, it is a commentary on the social fabric of our profession that it is increasingly being overcome, not just by NewScript, but by the entire constellation of coaches out there.

John: Yeah. I guess we just need to keep reminding people that we're here, there are lots of other people out there, other physicians and clinicians of various sorts who are trying to offer support and help.

I like to remind people that there's a whole world of other things you can do outside of clinical, and you can do clinical in different ways. There should be hope out there for you, but you've got to look around and really dig into it and find out that they don't want us to know about these options. So we're not going to get into those options today, but suffice it to say there's a place where you can make good money, not really treat patients, but serve patients in other ways and be happy and free and have some autonomy and move forward with your career.

Dr. Tom Davis: Healthcare is the most regulated space that there is. And the one of the reasons is that costs for labor, that's you and me, have to be suppressed. Otherwise the system becomes wildly unaffordable. It's wildly unaffordable now, imagine if physicians got paid market rates, it would collapse on day one.

And because of that suppression, the compensation that clinicians can earn outside of the system, both clinically and non-clinically, not only equals what you can earn inside the system, it far exceeds it. Especially if you factor in the liability risk, the suicide risk, and the amount of effort, if you want to measure it in hours or stress, however, that you have to put in to get it.

I worked with a neurosurgeon back in the day. Now this guy's a neurosurgeon, so he's pulling down seven figures doing neurosurgical stuff. He quit. He quit after 10 years because he built his own surgery center, identified how to do that best. And he started consulting with other neurosurgeons about how to build his surgery center. He started about by making way more income and then he suppressed his income by taking a piece of the action in every surgery center that he built. And that's fantastic. That's phenomenal.

It is just one example of even at the highest levels of our profession and recognized compensation, the opportunities out there are huge. And that is simply because wages have been suppressed for decades. And now that particular chicken is coming home to roost. Most people who listen to this probably don't understand how much revenue they can generate for themselves outside the system, and that's because that information is being suppressed.

But you go out and get a corporate job, it's a medical science liaison or even administration, not necessarily hospital administration, but administration say as a medical director as an insurance plan, you can exceed your current income very, very quickly, especially with all of the deferred compensation plans that you have. When I started my journey, one of my mentors told me, when you step outside the system, not only will you be amazed at how much revenue you can earn, you'll be astonished at your quality of life. And I have found that to be absolutely true.

John: That's great to hear because it's true. Yeah, I just can't really say anything more to add to that. I do want to shift gears here though because I heard we had talked about before we got on this call that you're doing some new things or taking some resources you've had in the past and putting them all together in a new way. So I thought why not talk about that since we're into helping as many people as possible.

Dr. Tom Davis: As you all know, one of the principles of NewScript is walking the walk. You and I are not just on, they're flapping our gums telling people that they need to go to nonclinical careers. It's kind of a George Plimpton. If you don't know who that is, look it up. George Plimpton asks and we try out some of the things that we recommend and the ones that we can't try out, we try to get faculty members who have.

For me, I'm a big one on using the internet to generate a side revenue and perhaps having that side revenue develop into a full-time job. And it's very, very challenging to do it. But it's also very straightforward because with the connectivity of the internet, you can reach people that previously you needed to go through a gatekeeper to reach like an editor or theatrical agent or somebody like that. It used to be you need somebody's permission in order to access mass media, but now you got mass media at your fingertips and you have the means of production so that the quality of your production is not a distraction. The only thing that's lacking is your desire to do it and then the lack of information about how to do it.

So, we try to model that. And one of my primary gigs is doing business consulting under value-based care. And I really found myself in quite a bit of demand for that service when I first started out. So, I didn't really need to do a lot of internet marketing, but now I'm wearing a bit of the grind, even though the expertise I have is way more valuable since we're all going to be paid under value-based care by 2030 by decree of CMS.

I've taken all of my different sales funnels for my services and I'm putting them into a one gated community. The idea is to make that gated community be my discovery call. And business people who want to engage you for your advice usually want to talk to you first, and usually, you don't get compensated for that. And so, it can eat up a lot of time. And I used to really love doing that. I found that is something I don't love now.

So I've created this gated community with all sorts of free information in there, sprinkle in a few courses, and then give you a clear shot at engaging me if you want. But if you need to have a discovery call, then you just need to look at all the free stuff there until you're comfortable engaging me as a consultant. And it's probably going to greatly decrease the number of engagements I get, but the people who reach out to me are actually going to pay me and they're going to be the highest quality folks.

I figured I'd give that a shot and see if I can take the power of the internet to the next level. Now, that's kind of an advanced thing because I've been messing with it for 10 years and I've hired an exceptional marketer to help me with that. But for the average person out there, all you have to do is start a TikTok channel, start a YouTube channel, start talking about your expertise, and everybody who's listening to this has their expertise. Develop an audience, set up a website that you drive people to. Offer free stuff there. Offer a Patreon, people who appreciate you, give you a donation. And if you feel like it, you start selling some courses that offer a little bit more in-depth information.

What folks are trying are looking for right now, John, is authenticity. They want a connection and they don't find that in healthcare. In healthcare, people have been commoditized. Healthcare is essentially human trafficking now. The healthcare system. That's essentially what it is. Now that's harsh, but if you look at the fruits of the system, it's 100% true. And I'll defend that to my last breath.

When you're in that situation as a patient, you want to connect with somebody. And the connectivity internet has lowered that barrier to the point where it's completely up to you. If you want to do it, you can, and you don't have to be Chris Pratt or Sir Laurence Olivier or anything like that. Just being an average 60 year old guy. Just offering your expertise free in easily absorbable formats on a consistent basis, you build your audience. And if you get a couple of thousand people that will buy anything that you sell, your true fans, that's a living. That's a living. And there are 5 billion people on the internet. All you need is a couple of thousand. They're out there, you just have to connect with them.

John: No, that's so true. If you're a nurse with a lot of experience, if you're a physician, if you're a speech therapist, it really doesn't matter. You have so much expertise already. There's a whole bunch of people out there that could use what you know. It's just a matter of connecting and this thing is what you're talking about. And then you're investing a little time and effort in making it work.

Dr. Tom Davis: And you can't be afraid of making yourself look like a fool. One of our hints as far as dealing with imposter syndrome, it's just take a second and just scroll through TikTok or YouTube at random. You don't have to worry about looking like a fool. Look at these other people.

And the other issue with the other opportunity to the internet, John, is actually very, very recent. But it is something like one of those rare things that's new under the sun. When you put yourself out there, when you put your real face out there with no filters, nothing like that, your real self out there, up until now, you've been competing with other people who are putting their real selves out there. But going forward, especially in the next 18 months, we're all going to notice that the internet is going to be filled with crap, homogenized crap created by AI that is specifically designed for a purpose, usually promotional, not with a sense of service.

That's what you and I will be competing against. And people will be starting for authenticity.

The internet has always been filled with crap, but it's been authentic crap. Now it's going to be computer-generated crap programmed by somebody that says what combination of words will help us sell more biscuits or whatever. That is a gargantuan opportunity for anybody who wants to put their authentic self out there. And I am very curious to see what happens in the space over the next 24 months. People who offer themselves are going to be rare, and what is rare is valuable, and that's an enormous opportunity for every healthcare professional because we all have something of value that people want to offer.

John: Absolutely. Nice thing about being authentic is you don't have to remember to say a certain line or act a certain way that you did the other day that wasn't authentic. Be your authentic self. It's simpler. It's like don't tell a lie because you're going to have to remember that lie later. Just be who you are, tell the truth and offer things that are going to be of help to other people.

Dr. Tom Davis: If you want to see authentic, go to our TikTok channel, @nonclinicalcareercoach, you'll see authentic.

John: Yeah, that is very useful, entertaining and informative information every time. I'm just starting to dabble in TikTok, so I'm going to get my posts out there soon. You reminded me when you said the AI. Now I'm getting inundated with AI generated emails, and it's like, wow. Since that opened up, I'm just getting all these emails in response to just my website, the info link. I got to figure out a way to filter all that out. But it's not accepted, it's not something we want to see or we want to use when we see that kind of garbage. We just eliminate it and move on.

Dr. Tom Davis: It's made to seem authentic, but something just through the sheer volume for nothing else, you understand that it's just crap. One of the big things in value-based care is using AI to select specific patients and target them for outreach opportunities and whatnot. I see a lot of tech firms trying to sell this, and you and I as doctors know exactly where that's going to lead. The people are going to check out even more than they check out before.

I talked to patients in my focus groups, they actually block their doctor's offices. Now who blocks their doctor's office? It's like, oh my gosh. So, there's an answer to that, but it's just an example of how AI is going to change everything and it's a huge opportunity for those of us who are driven to be authentic.

John: Yeah. And I guess in the future episode like this, maybe we'll talk about some ways to actually work around or use AI if it ever gets to that point where it's actually useful. But for now, just be yourself.

One other thing I'm going to mention and then I think it's going to be time to go. You mentioned about implementing the things that we're talking about. I had a guest on my podcast a couple of times and I think he's currently a mentor, Armon. Is he a mentor for us in NewScript? I believe he is. Anyway, I went through his whole course and in another future episode of the podcast or YouTube or this or whatever, I'll explain how that was and whether I successfully implemented what I learned through that medical legal consulting conference that I'm going to put together.

But, it was really awesome. I'll just say that as a plug. I'm not going to put a link in or anything to that, but there's so much information in NewScript and around what we do that it's just somewhat overwhelming and you just have to pick and choose what's right for you.

All right, Tom. Well, I think that's it for today. I'll remind people that I'm doing the occasional webinar for NewScript, members in particular, although I'll usually invite other people if there's room, to watch for that. We will be reporting on the results of our summit in a future episode of this. Anything else you want to tell us before we let you go, Tom?

Dr. Tom Davis: Just that the only barrier to making change is you.

John: That's it. All right, Tom, thanks a lot and I'll be talking to you real soon. Goodbye our listeners. Thanks for being here.

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The post How We Will Survive and Thrive While the Healthcare System Collapses – 297 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's episode, John interviews Dr. Ryan Bayley to find out why physicians must wake up about threats to their ability to practice.  They also discuss his new book, “Physician Non Grata: A Survival Guide for Clinicians Around Poor Communication, Boundary Issues, and Disruptive Behavior.“

Ryan explains why the system is becoming more dangerous, how to avoid exposing yourself, and what to do if you find yourself accused of disruptive behavior or breaching personal boundaries. 

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. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

What Happens If Physicians Don't Wake Up

Dr. Ryan Bayley was the guest on Episode 64 just over four years ago to discuss his experiences as a business and success coach. Since then, the element of his work that seems to have grown the most is helping to resolve or prevent so-called disruptive or improper behavior.

There is an increasing number of physicians being placed on administrative leave and having their licenses suspended or revoked. So, Dr. Ryan has been studying this subject. Since he was unable to find any book addressing the subject, he decided to write one himself. 

His book serves as a warning and offers potential solutions to this problem. Residency directors and administrators have been providing the book to their trainees. And any physician would do well to implement the advice Dr. Bayley offers.

Damage Control

And state medical boards and human resource departments can unceremoniously sanction physicians with no warning, and little recourse. According to Ryan, if you are notified of an allegation against you, don't expect due process seen in criminal investigations.

Then take these steps:

1. Acknowledge the notification without becoming defensive.
2. Gather information and express your concern and willingness to cooperate.
3. Find a lawyer with experience in this area quickly.

Dr. Ryan Bayley's Advice

…. avail yourself of all resources. And I'd say those three things are the first three things you've got to do the moment you hear your name in the same sentence as “complaint, disruptive behavior, problematic.” Anything negative at all, you need to start thinking this way.

Summary

Physicians who provide direct patient care are at risk for complaints against them at all times. Having your license suspended can result in losing your practice, even if it is reinstated. It can be very difficult to successfully contest these charges. All physicians are at risk of losing hospital privileges, being dropped from an insurance provider panel, or losing their license.

Ryan's book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can check out his services at solvingcareers.com.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Physician Non Grata: A Survival Guide for Clinicians Around Poor Communication, Boundary Issues, and Disruptive Behavior
• Bayley Coaching Solutions Website
• Dr. Bayley's LinkedIn Page
• The Interesting Life of the Professional Development Coach with Dr. Ryan Bayley – 064
• NewScr!pt

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 296

Why You Must Wake Up Before Bad Behavior Ruins Your Career

- Interview with Dr. Ryan Bayley

John: Today's guest first appeared in the podcast over four years ago. As an executive performance coach, he often works with professionals, including physicians whose license is being threatened. In fact, he just released a book addressing this very topic called "Physician Non Grata: A Survival Guide for Clinicians Around Poor Communication, Boundary Issues, and Disruptive Behavior." Sounds really important to me. Welcome Dr. Ryan Bayley.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Great. And thank you, John. Thank you for having me back. And it has been four years. It's been a bit longer than expected partly due to COVID but it's great to be back and excited to talk about this.

John: I think this is a super important topic. I can't believe it. I've been doing this podcast about five years or so, and every once in a while something comes up that's like "I've not addressed this issue." Anyway, this is definitely one of those. We do want to do a little review before we get into your book and what you're actually up to in terms of coaching and so forth right now. So, go back a little bit. Just tell us a little bit about your story and how did you become an expert in so-called bad physician behavior?

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Well, the one word answer is unintentionally. If you had asked me a few years back was this where my coaching was headed, I would not have said yes. But as you know as we've discussed on the podcast, I became an executive coach because I just saw the need in medicine. Medicine at that time and still today is probably the only educated profession where executive coaching is still very underused.

John: True.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: I had a wonderful experience with an executive coach myself in terms of working on career design and burnout. And so, I looked around and decided that I should become an executive coach. I just saw the need, and especially for physicians trained as executive coaches. And so, that was how I got started many years ago.

My intent was to work mostly on career design and burnout. And I still do a lot of that work. But what started happening is as I immersed myself in the physician burnout world, as I started going to AMA conferences on physician well being, as I started interacting with medical boards and state physician health programs, what started happening is I started getting referrals. But the referrals were never really for burnout. The referrals would always be for a specific behavioral issue. They would never say, "This physician is burned out. Can you work with him or her?" They would say this physician is having a lot of trouble interacting with non-physician colleagues. Or this physician just keeps saying inappropriate things in the OR. It'd be a very specific behavioral request like that.

And what I started realizing as I got into it was that, yes, some of these behaviors are a manifestation of burnout. And there's certainly a lot of burnout with these physicians that I work with. Boundary issues, disruptive behavior, poor communications certainly can be a manifestation of burnout.

But I also started realizing that a fair number of these physicians were not necessarily burned out. They just lacked these skills. And I think it makes sense when you think about it. No one ever sat me down in medical school and said here's how you talk to an upset patient. These are the emotional goals that you need to achieve before you can have a rational conversation with this person. This is the script or the tool for diffusing the situation. I never had any formal skills training. Instead, I just watched my attendings and the fellows I worked with and they sucked at it. And so, I learned to suck at it. And I think most of us as physicians, were actually pretty bad at some of these skills.

I think there's a skills deficit. There's some burnout that plays into it, but regardless of the causes there is an epidemic of physicians who are engaging in poor communication, who are being labeled as disruptive, who are being accused of boundary issues. And these physicians are losing their licenses. They're losing hospital privileges, or they're getting dings on their national provider database report, which if we have time, we can talk about. It's essentially a death sentence professionally speaking.

And physicians have no idea that these levels of behavior are having such huge consequences, particularly in the last few years. And so, that's sort of how I segued into this work. I just started doing it and developed a niche for it. And ultimately that's what led to the book and some of the keynotes that I give.

John: Yeah. In some ways I'm shocked, although when we talked back four years ago or so it seemed like you were doing a fair amount of executive coaching, professional coaching, and this kind of had fallen into your lap as there was a need and you were meeting it.

I'm a little nervous when you're saying it's getting worse, because I can remember back when I was early in my career, some of the things that my colleagues were saying and do in the OR for example, they'd be shocked today. They wouldn't lose their license. They'd be crucified more or less because they were awful. And it seemed maybe things are getting better, but I want to hear more about what your experience has been and why it continues to happen and maybe how to prevent it. But definitely to give our listeners a heads up, that's for sure. Do you feel like this is pretty darn common given the potential consequences?

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Yeah. And you raised this really good point. I think every one of us has stories from our training. There are things that I saw in the OR that physicians did to other physicians, to nurses, on the wards, the way people behave towards each other. And if you were to do that today, it would be criminal almost. Like you said you wouldn't lose your license, you'd just be dragged outside the hospital and shot. And so, it really begs this question, what's going on? Are bad behaviors becoming more common? Is it an actual quantitative increase? Or is it that people are recognizing more subtle behaviors for the problems that they are? So is it like a recognition phenomenon, or is it a reporting phenomenon? Are we finally just willing to do something about it?

I think the answer to all of those is all three. And this is something I talk about. I'm actually giving a keynote in a couple of weeks to the International College of Surgeon's annual meeting in Texas. And one of the things I talk about in that keynote are these reasons.

I think on the recognition front within medicine as physician wellbeing gained traction around 2010 the physician burnout movement got underway. Initially we looked at individual resilience and stress resilience, but over time, that focus on physician burnout has shifted more and more to looking at systems and organizations and culture and are we creating cultures of psychological safety and how are we treating our colleagues? And as part of that, I think there's been a lot more scrutiny of inner physician behavior.

So, it's a recognition issue. We're recognizing more and more that these problems are actual problems. And then of course, that parallels what's happening at the societal level. There's much less tolerance for microaggression, that implicit bias. There's much more scrutiny on seeing subtle forms of racism and misogyny. And so, all of these things coalesce. I think these behaviors are being recognized and called out more, and therefore reported more.

For the reaction piece, I think institutions also now react more strongly because they have to. 10 years ago if you said something bad to a nurse, chances are it would get reported to your clinical supervisor and they would slap you on the wrist and say don't do that. Now it gets reported to HR. Right now with the business of medicine, so to speak, we have the introduction of formal HR and corporate practices into the medical world, and they bring with them paradigms from the corporate world. And in corporate America, these things have not been tolerated for a long time. Medicine is always behind.

And HR professionals look at these behaviors and they don't care about you. They care about what is this going to do to the institution. So they're much more aggressive in reacting and punishing. And also I think they have to.

With social media, it's very hard for organizations to hide things now. If a bunch of nurses keep talking or keep reporting a physician, 10 years ago they would sweep that under the rug if the physician was a high revenue generator. Like someone who was hard to replace, like a neurosurgeon or an interventional radiologist. But now if you do that, those nurses go on TikTok, they go on Instagram, and it can be very powerful because that will then get picked up by mainstream media. And the accountability is thus much higher.

All you have to do is look at what's happening with HCA right now. You look at how HCA is getting eviscerated on TikTok and how mainstream media has started picking that up. And so, organizations have to react because there's just more accountability structures in place. And then the cherry on top of all of that, I think is that the behaviors are increasing. Because I think intolerance has increased in our society. I think most social scientists and political scientists will tell you quantitatively that there's less tolerance in developed countries over the last 10 years.

And when you have less tolerance, it leads to more incidents of incivility and interpersonal friction. And so, I think the behaviors are increasing. They're being recognized more, they're being reacted to more. And all of that is the perfect storm whereby physicians will engage in behavior that again, when you and I trained, we just took for granted. That's just the way medicine was. That attending is a horrible person, but he's a great surgeon, and so it's okay. And that just doesn't work anymore.

And so, physicians are getting called to task on their speech and behavior at much sort of less intense levels than previous. And all of a sudden, they find themselves losing hospital privileges or in front of the medical board, or referred to their state physician health program and they just don't even know these things can happen. They're real threats to their career.

John: Okay. Well, I'm going to have to ask you to give us a couple of examples. I may not have prepped you to do this, but I know you know many examples. Pick a couple that maybe aren't so obviously egregious that you're like, "Well, this is what happened, and they ended up being suspended for a period, or they lost their license." And just a couple of examples that maybe we're not really thinking that these kinds of things would be a trigger.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Sure. I give a lot of examples in the book, and some of them are pretty egregious, but some of them are definitely more subtle. For example, a physician I worked with not that long ago, who's a surgeon, always had a friction filled relationship with the OR manager who was a nurse by training and ran sort of the OR turnover. And they always were butting heads. The rooms aren't turning over fast enough, you're not doing your cases fast enough.

And so, one day she approaches him in the hall and says we can't start your case because we can't find the consent form. And he knew the consent form had been signed, and he thought she was just dragging her feet and whatever. This kind of escalates. And he has two med students with him, and he says let's not talk here. Let's go talk in your office and puts his hand on the back of her shoulder as they're starting to walk to their office. I don't think he in his heart of hearts in any way meant that to be aggressive. She did not like that.

But long story short his hospital, like almost every institution has an absolute zero tolerance policy for touch. You cannot touch a colleague under any circumstances. If they drop dead in the hallway, you might be allowed to do chest compressions, but that's probably it.

And so, regardless of who escalated that conflict, and what she said to him, he touched her and he was clinically suspended for multiple weeks. He was referred to the state medical board, he subsequently was referred to the state physician health program, and this turned into about a yearlong process where he was under very increased scrutiny and lost revenue because he was clinically suspended and was at high risk of losing privileges permanently.

And to him that moment of touch, to him felt like really nothing. And yet the landscape has changed and you can't hug anyone. You can't touch anyone. You can't even gesticulate wildly in an aggressive manner. That will all be interpreted as hostile. So, that's just very typical of a lot of the examples. I think a lot of people assume that physicians who are referred to me are doing very bad things and they're doing them repeatedly.

But I will tell you 90% of the physicians I work with are doing things more along the lines of what I just said. And most of them have never been called the task on their speech or behavior before. Most of them have perfectly clean records, so to speak. They've never had issues with the medical board or state physician health program. And yet they're finding themselves immersed in these systems being scrutinized.

Another example. An orthopedic surgeon. I'm sorry I'm giving so many surgical examples, but it's not just surgeons. But an orthopedic surgeon was at a hospital he worked at. There was a CRNA who he knew well. They had worked together for many years. They had a very collegial relationship in the OR. They would talk about all types of things during cases, and she went out on personal leave for breast augmentation. And this was well known. This was something that she had talked about openly with the surgeon as well as other staff. Everyone knew why she wasn't at work.

She comes back to work a few weeks later and they're walking down the hallway and he just makes a comment to her, something along the lines of like they did great work. And said it in front of a couple colleagues, all of whom had been privy to the previous conversations that she was getting a breast augmentation and excited about it. He thought the comment would be well received, and he didn't think it was particularly out of keeping with other conversations that they had, but she was clearly flustered and upset. You could tell by her face according to the surgeon.

She reported it to her HR. And we can talk about this a little bit more what happened subsequently, but it ended up resulting in a national provider database line item, which every future employer, every time you apply for privileges, every time you apply for medical licensure or even every time you just try to get billing privileges with an insurance company these types of national provider database dings will haunt you. And it made serious problems for him moving forward.

John: Yeah. He definitely stepped over the line, there's no question. But yikes, you just think for a minute, you lose your concentration, you say something stupid, and there you go.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: And that's what it is. And please understand, I'm not defending him. He clearly made content of a sexual nature. And even though she had brought it up previously, it was clearly a bad call on his part. But I think the degree of reaction, the ramifications is something that as physicians we are not used to or we don't anticipate. I think 10 years ago, again, if that had happened, she would've reported it to her clinical supervisor, which would presume would be the nursing supervisor who would then go to the clinical head of orthopedic surgery, and then that person would have a talk with the physician. And that would probably have been the end of it.

And that is not what's happening now. All it takes is a moment of incivility with a colleague, an inappropriate joke, violating someone's personal space, coming across hostile in an email. Just capitalizing words in a text, that's interpreted as hostile or passive aggressive. That's all it takes for these incidents.

John: That's crazy. How do you read into a text that technically has no emotion in it, but obviously people all the time get an emotional response thinking that it's emotional. You have five minutes to explain to a brand new resident, protect them for the rest of their lives. What are the things you would say in terms of "Be aware of these things?" These are the most common that I see or these are the things that we don't think about. Maybe just give us a quick rundown of a few things to know when you're entering into these environments and being subject to all that scrutiny.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Yeah. I think the most important thing to know is that you are in fact subject to all that scrutiny. And I think that is a change in the landscape, and arguably for the good. But nonetheless, I think it's something that physicians just don't anticipate or understand. And it's moving pretty quickly, the amount of scrutiny on your behaviors is increasing, if nothing else.

Just the fact that if you're going to lose your ability to practice, it's not going to be or unlikely to be through malpractice or personal disability, or some huge regulatory snafu. These are the dangers you know and these are dangers that we protect ourselves. Again we have personal disability insurance. We practice extremely conservative medicine. That's how we protect ourselves against those known threats.

But it's really these unknown threats that are going to get you. And then I would probably just list the chapters of the book. Each one of those chapters is a key area. But I'd say the big five are incivility. And incivility is a subset of unprofessional behavior that's less intense when it happens. But nonetheless, no less problematic. And actually going through examples of incivility so that they understand that incivility is not just verbal, but it's sematic. It's how you use your body. It's how you opt out of things. Incivility is sometimes the behavior you don't do. Giving them a real good grasp of incivility in where they might be prone to it. That's one major category.

The other category is just not so casual conversations. There are just things you can't talk about. I think where we get in trouble as physicians is when you work 60 hours a week, plus another 10 to 20 hours of unofficial uncompensated time, your work is the bulk of your waking hours. And when your work is life as it is for many physicians, work has to be the place where you vent and flirt and talk about politics and make off-color jokes and you do all these life things. But it can't be any of those things anymore.

And so, you really have to have other social outlets, and you also just have to know what these topics are. Someone has to sit you down and just list them. And some of them are pretty obvious, don't talk about religion, but some of them like I'd say an area where a lot of people screw up is like LGBTQ. Especially with various issues around transgenderism being in the news.

As physicians, there's a lot we can say about the biology of being a sexually reproducing species. And we can sort of approach those conversations empirically. But when we do so, we have a tendency of negating other people's personal lived experience. And so, one of the ways we get in trouble is we talk about a lot of conversations, topics, very cavalierly or from a very sort of scientific perspective, when that's not how they're received by someone who may be actually living that experience. A physician or nursing colleagues. Understanding that there are elements of privilege in these topics that we have a tendency to doctor eyes them and that never works well. Just understanding how these conversations are pitfalls. So, that's number two, is casual conversations.

Number three is really electronic communication. And I use that as an umbrella term. The problem with all of these ways we communicate electronically, which includes social media use, and I think particularly for younger physicians, that's a huge pitfall, is there are just so many ways to get in trouble, not just with HIPAA, but with sort of conduct unbecoming as perceived by your institution.

If you're a physician, you should not have a social media presence. And that's a very hard concept for people who are under the age of about mid-thirties to understand because they grew up as digital natives. But it really is only downside when you post things on TikTok or Facebook or whatever your preferred social media is. That's just quicksand and there's so many ways to go awry. Just as there are so many ways to go awry with the HER, with all this electronic texting that we do now with systems like Halo and Click. We don't call anyone anymore in the hospital. We just text them, right? HIPAA compliance solutions.

And just like you mentioned earlier, we were touching upon, when you text someone, it doesn't have the benefit of your tone of voice or your body language. No one can perceive all those non-verbal aspects of communication. And so, a text can be very well-meaning for you and be interpreted completely differently by the recipient and result in a complaint made against you. And it's going to be very hard to talk your way out of that because in these cases, perception is nine tenths of the law. And in these cases it is not innocent until proven guilty. It's really the opposite. And that's sort of how administrative law works in regards to medical privileges. You're going to have a very hard time convincing people that you meant something else. And so, electronic communications are a pretty big pitfall as well.

Another area I would focus on is what I call disruptive advocacy. I think as physicians, particularly given the challenges of the current medical system, we spend a lot of time trying to advocate. Advocate for patients. We spend a lot of time dealing with administrators trying to convince them why they should or shouldn't do something. And what we see as heartfelt advocacy really comes across as disruptive and almost belligerent.

And unfortunately, organizations have figured out that the best way to shut a physician up is to label them disruptive. And so, this term has almost become weaponized. You really have to have a skillset for dealing with the people above you. Administrators. Over 50% of physicians now are employed physicians, meaning we all have bosses. And a lot of us went into medicine thinking we would never have a boss, but we all have bosses now.

There's a whole skillset called up managing. How do you deal with the powers above you? How do you advocate and have influence and get your points across without generating friction? And so, I would really implore any young physician to develop that skillset. And those are the big areas that are coming to mind.

I mentioned five. The fifth one would just be touch. I think what is considered acceptable in terms of touch has changed dramatically, even with patients. Obviously a patient comes to us and the assumption is they know we're going to examine them. They know we're going to touch them. But even then, you have to be very careful with obtaining verbal consent and making sure you always have a chaperone in the room.

And of course, there's pressures in contemporary medicine to not have a chaperone. If you have to slow down your patient encounter to go find a nurse of a different gender to be in the room with you, that's a pain in the butt and you've got 30 people to see today.

But nonetheless, it's just not worth it. It's just not worth not doing that. And so, I think being very aware of touch, how you communicate with the powers, how you use electronic communication, just your overall content of conversation at work, and also just your tendency to be uncivil. Those stress points that we all have. I'd say those are the big pitfalls, and it's a lot. That's not a five minute answer, but that's what every physician in training needs to have figured out before they're attending or before they're a resident, to be honest.

John: Yeah. Yeah. It can happen at any point while you're interacting. I'm going to ask you to expound a little bit on the issue of why physicians are confused in the sense that we live in a free country and I'm innocent until proven guilty, and that's not really the world we're talking about. So, explain how that works.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Yeah. For lack of a better word, there is a hidden system. And hidden sounds nefarious, but hidden just that we're not educated about. There's a whole system for dealing with these issues. And I think what happens is, as physicians, we assume that if someone's going to accuse us of something, that there's a certain way that process is going to play out. And we make those assumptions based on what we know about criminal and civil law.

And due process for civil, and particularly for criminal law, is very different than what we're talking about here. These things, hospital privileges, the privilege to practice medicine in a given state. These privileges fall under what's known as administrative law. And administrative law grants very broad powers to the agency or the organization itself. The organization is going to be judge, jury and execution. What they call due process is not going to be what you think is fair due process. They do not have to be transparent. They don't have to involve you as much as you think they would when a complaint is made against you.

And perhaps most importantly of all, you are not innocent until proven guilty. That only applies in a criminal court. In a civil court, they have to prove more likely than not you did something bad. In administrative law, the burden of proof is even lower. It's really whatever the hospital wants it to be. And so, it's very hard to defend yourself in a lot of these situations because these situations come down to perceptive. If someone says you were hostile during a consult or said something that was sexually inappropriate, or moved your body in a way that created a lack of psychological safety for someone, it's going to be very hard to disprove those things. And it doesn't really matter what your intent was.

And so, I think the way people get blindsided straight out of the gate is they assume a due process. They assume that this process is going to play out in a certain way, and it just doesn't because they're ignorant about administrative law. And then there's this whole domino effect. There's a good chance as part of this issue, you're going to be reported to the medical board or the state physician health program, or you're going to go to the medical board and they're going to refer you to the state physician health program and the state physician health program most physicians have no idea that such a thing even exists. But there's one in almost every state.

And they will do very elaborate assessments to try to figure out what's driving this behavior, and then they're going to have recommendations like working with a therapist or a coach, or taking a boundaries course, or some type of educational component that you're going to have to pursue. And if you say, no, that's fine, it's voluntary, but your organization's probably not going to allow you to have privileges unless you play along. And so, it seems voluntary, but it's really not.

And the next thing you know, its 18 months later and you've spent tens of thousands of dollars dealing with this and going to courses and having a physician coach or therapist, and you've been under incredible scrutiny and a zero tolerance performance improvement plan. And most physicians who go through this say this is worse than malpractice. Most of the physicians I've worked with say "I've been sued and I've gone through this process, and I'd rather be sued."

John: Wow. That's something.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Yeah. And so, it's incredibly time and money intensive. It's incredibly cognitively and emotionally expensive. Again, for behaviors that a lot of physicians just don't think will, for lack of a better word, "be" this big a deal. And so, that's what I try to communicate to physicians. This is how it works. And you need to understand this system. You need to know what to do if you find yourself in it. And more importantly, you probably just need to avoid it, which means really educating yourself on how you are at work. Because it's not the clinical stuff that's going to get you. You're going to do clinical care fine. It's this stuff that's going to screw your career.

John: Man. All right. This is really an important topic. We're going a little long, but I have one more quick question that comes right from that. And again, we can read all about this and should read all about this in your book, which we will really talk about just for a minute and where they can get it. But if I get a whiff that this is happening, if I have someone say, "Hey, we're going to have a meeting because you were reported", or whatever it might be, what would be the first one or two or three things that you should do or not do?

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Yeah. I have a whole chapter on this called damage control. The first thing you need to do is you need to take it as seriously as a heart attack. Again, what happens as physicians is when we're training, it's all about clinical and technical competence. When we're training, it's about learning patient care, and that's all anyone judges us on.

And so, what I think happens is we carry that mentality forward. When someone comes to us with a complaint, the first thing we're going to ask is, "Well, how'd the patient do? Who died?" And of course, these types of situations, they're almost never about a patient and the patient doesn't die as a result. And so, as soon as we realized there's not a patient care component, we're like, "Oh, okay, this is nothing. This is not a big deal."

That's I think where you set yourself up to be blindsided. As soon as someone calls you to task on your behavior or says there's a complaint against you, you need to seem like you care. You need to be responsive. Someone asks you to set up a meeting, you make that meeting, and you make it happen.

Someone sends you a request for a response, you create that response promptly and non-defensively. You play the game and you act like a concerned participant. I think about half the physicians out there shoot themselves in the foot because they're lackadaisical from the get go. I'd say that the first thing is to take this extremely seriously.

The second thing is don't assume due process. Don't assume for the reasons we just discussed. If you assume those things, you're probably going to get blindsided. The third thing is lawyer up or find some resource. A lawyer is a great resource one who specializes in employment law, one who hopefully has interacted with medical boards and hospital executive committees.

But even if you don't find a lawyer, a mentor, someone who's been in the organization a long time, someone who may be held an administrative role and kind of knows how these things play out culturally within your institution. Just some type of advocate and resource. My book is a good resource, but I wouldn't stop there. I would avail yourself of all resources possible because it is that serious.

And if you get a lawyer, for example, they can't jump up and object and argue the way they would in a court of law, but in these types of proceedings, you're almost always allowed to have an advocate with you.

And your lawyer can sit there and interpret and help you craft responses and help you understand your contract and make sure that everything remains above board so they can be a huge asset.

I've seen a lot of physicians just again, be very passive. They don't want to escalate things, they don't want to make things adversarial. So, they go it alone with no knowledge about how this system works with no one on their side. And your entire livelihood is at stake. If you have to pay $5,000 for a lawyer, that's probably the best money you've ever spent regarding your medical education. Yeah, avail yourself of all resources. And I'd say those three things are the first three things you got to do the moment you hear your name in the same sentence as complaint, disruptive behavior, problematic. Anything negative at all, you need to start thinking this way.

John: A lot to think about but good advice. All right. Tell us where we can get the book.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Yeah. The book right now is available on Amazon as both paperback and Kindle format. My last name is Bayley. I think sometimes the hardest part of finding the book is spelling my name correctly, but as you said, it's called Physician Non Grata. I of course have a copy right here for anyone who can see the video, but you can get that on Amazon right now. It'll be available on Barnes & Noble probably in about two to three weeks as both a paperback and Epub book.

I would recommend don't wait until something bad happens. I think half the value of this book is as a cautionary tale. I have a lot of interests from residency directors and administrators who really like the book to try to get it out there before bad things happen. Because once you're immersed in the system, once you have a complaint against you, you're really fighting an uphill battle. And so, as cheesy as it sounds, prevention is the best medicine. I think that's a lot of the value of the book. So, yeah, I of course think every med student in the country should be reading this book, but I might be a little biased there.

John: You might be, but I think the earlier you are in your career, probably the more important it's to get this book. Because if you've made it 30 or 35 years through and never had a problem, then maybe you're going to be okay but I suppose.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: You hope, but I will say the age range of physicians who are referred to me, there is no consistency in that pattern. Two years out, 20 years out, you would be surprised. Yeah, you would assume that if you've made a couple decades in medicine that you're going to make it maybe another decade without an issue. And yet even very seasoned physicians find themselves in these situations. And nine times out of 10, they probably could have been avoided with a little more social emotional awareness, a little more sense of what the healthcare landscape is really like in terms of working as a healthcare provider. Understanding how current trends in society are impacting that. I think the book it's of value to anyone of any age, any point in their career.

John: All right. And what if somebody wants success or professional or business coaching? Obviously, you have a website we can go to and find out about that.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: I do. My website is solvingcareers.com. It's all one word, solvingcareers.com. And that's really my composite website, which talks about my individual coaching as well as my institutional work. And if you go on the contact page, it actually provides links where you can just access my calendar directly and we can set up a session and talk.

Sometimes all it takes is one session to help people figure some things out and move things in the right direction or sometimes it takes more than one session. I'm available always, whether it's dealing with career design and nonclinical transition, or about 50% of my work now is these types of issues that we just talked about. If you find yourself immersed in one of these processes, don't hesitate to reach out. As I said, avail yourself of all resources because it's that important.

John: An institution that might want to have you come and talk to their staff or something can obviously do that as well, I'm assuming, particularly about this issue.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Yeah. And that's already happening with this book. Even the pre-public copies have resulted in speaking gigs. And I have a keynote that I give as well as workshops, not just on the content overall, but each chapter really lends itself to an individualized workshop. And so, I've done all of that. And as we mentioned, I'm talking at the international College of Surgeons annual conference coming up. I'm hopefully distributing some of these books at the Federation State Medical Board and Federation of State Physician Health Program conferences that are coming up. And so, yeah, there's lots of opportunities like that. But if you're an administrator or in some type of institution or practice group and you want a little preventative medicine for your group, I'm more than happy to facilitate that for you.

John: That's excellent. solvingcareers.com. We'll put that link in the show notes. We'll put a link to the book Physician Non Grata in the show notes as well. And maybe we'll have to swing back sometime in a year or so and see if things have quieted down in terms of this issue. I hope they do.

All right, well, that is all the time we have. I really want to thank you for coming, Ryan. This has been really interesting and important. To me, I really feel like this is one of the most important conversations I've had in this year and last really about this topic. So, I'm glad you contacted me, let me know about the book.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be on the podcast and to see you again. We mentioned before, we're not crossing paths quite as much as we used to with conferences being canceled from COVID but hopefully that's all coming to an end now and we'll see each other in person soon.

John: That'd be great. There's more live events, that's for sure. Okay, Ryan, thanks a lot and I hope to see you then. Bye-bye.

Dr. Ryan Bayley: Thank you.

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The post Why You Must Wake Up Before Bad Behavior Ruins Your Career – 296 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

This week, John explains how to develop a coaching or consulting business as a health advisor without creating a formal physician-patient relationship. In doing so, he mentions six guests from his podcast who are improving their clients' health or wellness while generating income outside the traditional medical setting. After reviewing each of their businesses, he offers recommendations for launching your own such business.

Each of the physicians offers wellness and health improvement guidance and coaching. Some obtained special training in Lifestyle Medicine, Functional Medicine, Meditation, or Yoga. 

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. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Being a Health Advisor

As professionals, physicians are dedicated to addressing patient health issues.  However, at times we'd like to do the same for individuals who aren't our patients. Rather than treating illnesses and injuries, we might emphasize prevention, health maintenance, and well-being. 

Lastly, by working outside the formal physician-patient relationship, we avoid certain regulatory and liability threats.

Six Examples

John describes six examples of physicians who focus on health and wellness coaching and consulting. Each of them enjoys the satisfaction of assisting clients in improving their health and preventing illness in their own unique way. 

1. Dr. Lara Salyer – Episode 120
2. Dr. Jessie Bensen – Episode 158
3. Dr. Jill Wener – Episode 172
4. Dr. Heather Hammerstadt – Episode 185
5. Dr. Rachel Beanland – Episode 250
6. Dr. Shelly Bhowhmik – Episode 257

Todays Quote About Mentors

…talk to someone who's doing what you would like to do. It gives you a real reality check as to whether it's doable and how difficult it is…

Summary

It is definitely possible to create a business as a wellness coach or consultant, or health advisor. It meets a physician's desire to help clients feel better and improve their overall health and fitness. But the flexibility, avoidance of regulation, and lack of medical liability make for a more enjoyable experience for the former clinician. 

John recommends consulting an attorney to be certain that you avoid the appearance of medical care. The health advisor may need to publish formal disclaimers. And in most cases, it is important to remind clients that before adopting any new diet, exercise, or use of supplements, they discuss these plans with their personal physician.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• How to Reclaim the Best Parts of Your Career – 120
• How to Be a Life Coach and Professional Artist – 158
• Can Meditation Offer Help for Burned-Out Physicians? – 172
• Can Lifestyle Medicine Help Me and My Patients? – 185
• Find the Fulfillment of a Freelance Remote Yoga and Meditation Teacher – 250
• Why Preventive Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine Make for a Great Career – 257
• Inspiration from the Author of ‘How to Lose Weight for the Last Time’ – 279
• NewScr!pt

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Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 286

How to Become a Health Advisor With No Physician Patient Relationship

John: I would like to spend another 20 minutes or so addressing a question that came up in my nonclinical career mastermind. And the question is this, "How do I create a business that allows me to provide advice to clients without creating a physician-patient relationship?" The question is, "Have other physicians successfully done this?"

Now, the factors that sort of underline these questions are the following. As clinicians, we enjoy and are committed to helping address health issues in our patients, but we'd like to do the same thing to help others, maybe who aren't our patients. We would like to focus more on prevention and health and wellbeing rather than treating illnesses and injuries. And we like to be able to control our hours, work remotely and not be exposed to medical liability.

Let me just put this as a disclaimer. To some extent, these issues, these questions, fall into the area of legal questions. They should be discussed with an attorney. If you're really having a hard time deciding whether the kind of services you're providing fall in the area of physician-patient relationships, then you might want to sort through that with an attorney.

I would suggest to see an attorney anyway if you're going to develop a business like this because you'll need the attorney for other things that I'll talk about in a minute. But let me try and address the issue to some extent by making a few comments and by presenting six physicians that I've spoken with that have created that kind of business. They're all a little bit different. They all have different kinds of things that they promote and teach and advise on.

All of these physicians make it very clear to their clients that this is a business relationship. It is not a physician-patient relationship. And in fact, I think most, if not all of them advise their clients to discuss what they're planning to do with their personal physician if there's going to be, let's say, some recommendations for certain types of foods, certain types of activities and so forth. In some cases, the kind of advice being given is clearly not of a medical nature. But let's say I were to tell you that, "Oh yeah, you should start training for a marathon once we get you healthier." That should obviously be discussed with your own personal physician.

And even if some of these I would say coaches or consultants, advisors are making advice about, "Well, maybe you should consider getting on certain medications", they usually are saying, "Talk to your personal physician about using those medicines and getting prescriptions for those medicines."

They definitely, clearly, from what I know, separate those two domains. And so, they can avoid the issue of liability. They cannot have to be on call and still provide very, very valuable, meaningful, and often very successful kinds of consulting services to their clients.

All right. As I said, I want to talk about six specific examples of physicians that have done this. I will say even before I start that I think at least three of them have what you might call board certification. Now, I don't think these boards are recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties, but they are boards. And so, they're a fairly in-depth type of certification. One is in functional medicine, two are in lifestyle medicine, I believe. I think all of them have some kind of extra training. And so, we'll get into it as I explain each of these physicians and their businesses.

With that, let me go back. The first physician that I had spoken to on the podcast about an issue like this was Dr. Lara Salyer. I believe she's a family physician, and she was searching for something to do just like this that we're talking about. She became interested in functional medicine and I believe she became certified in functional medicine and she set up a solo consulting business.

And I think it was set up initially very much like a private medical practice in the sense that she had a clinic and she had regular appointments. But if I recall correctly, in speaking with her, I found that she did a lot of remote work. She did a lot of work offline. She created a lot of standard written materials. And so, the amount of face-to-face time, either in the clinic or even remotely was limited and once she really got things going.

Now you can find her in my podcast list as episode number 120. But again, I'll put links to all of these in the show notes as well as a link to these different websites. I'm going to mention the two certifications that I mentioned a minute ago but I'll show you that website right now for those on the YouTube channel. This is the Institute for Functional Medicine and it does provide for certification and the program is listed right here for those on YouTube. And again, it's something you might consider in the process of moving towards this kind of a career. Okay, that's the first one.

The second one is Dr. Jessie Benson. Now she's very interesting. She was in episode 158 and she is a life coach. She's also a professional artist, which you might be able to see some things on her website here for those on YouTube. She's also a musician. And so, she obviously does life coaching and she integrates that all into what she does. And again, she is not a practicing physician per se, and she has successfully built this business over a period of years.

The third one I wanted to mention is Dr. Jill Wener. Now her training is in meditation. I think she might actually do some yoga, but her claim to fame and as you can see from her website here, she provides meditation services. She has pre-recorded services, she has live services. She does something called tapping. And so, those of all come out of her training primarily in medicine and meditation.

Now, the next one I want to mention is Dr. Heather Hammerstedt. She created something called Wholist Health. And she has a pretty vigorous program or two. She has a lot of coaching. She employs or engages other coaches to help her. And a lot of what she does is remote. She's also one who is trained in lifestyle medicine.

Let me switch over to that for one second. There's the American College of Lifestyle Medicine in this slide. And you can obtain education, you can get certification. There are some other benefits of membership that you can access including educational programs other than in preparation for certification. So, there is definitely a site to do that. And if we look here on Dr. Hammerstedt's site, you'll see that there's all kinds of programs from weight wellness and personal coaching, fitness mindset. There are some culinary sessions and some dedicated strictly to physicians. That is the fourth example.

The fifth example of a physician who has moved into this kind of coaching or consulting is Dr. Rachel Beanland. She presents The Mindful Doctors Coach. Dr. Beanland is a yoga instructor. Let's see, I'm just looking at different pages here. She was trained as a physician as a public health medicine specialist but she teaches now mindfulness meditation and yoga and other similar health enhancing programs. And again, she's not responsible as a physician-patient relationship, but as a consultant or coach.

And then finally, the sixth one today is Shelly Bhowmik. Oh, by the way, Rachel Beanland was in episode 250. And Shelly Bhowmik is in episode 257. She's trained in preventive medicine and she's also certified in lifestyle medicine. Now she does provide services for wellness, overcoming burnout and so forth. And she really focuses a lot on the corporate side working with medical groups, specialties, societies and specialty groups and health systems and hospitals to bring programs to prevent and overcome burnout in their clinical staffs. So, that's another approach you can take. And again, building on her background in preventive medicine she's able to do that.

The answer to the question "Do these kinds of practices exist?" is yes. They appear to have successfully separated the legal liability associated with the patient physician relationship, reduce or eliminate that while creating more of a client and consultant relationship. I do have a few recommendations if you're thinking about moving into something like that, chances are you already have an area that you'd like to focus on such as meditation, yoga, fitness, lifestyle, maybe we would call it a multi-specialty approach.

But anyway, here's what I would do. First of all, I would really think about what you want to do. And the first step, once you have a good idea what area you're going to focus on, I would consult an attorney to discuss two major questions. First, in your state, can you set up a business like this that does not result in the establishment of a physician-patient relationship, but rather a coaching or non-medical consulting relationship? And the second question would be, what is the business structure for that type of business that you're proposing? In Illinois, it would probably be some type of LLC, but each state is a little different.

Number two, try and consider early in this whole process if you might need additional training and or certifications. You don't have to have those to get started and you can even start doing this while you're working on that additional training and certification. But certainly, if it's something that's going to help from the standpoint of marketing your services, and helping add to your authority, then you should start that early because it might take several months to a year or two to complete that kind of training and or certification.

It's okay to do this sort of as a hobby if you like, but I would say if you're serious, you should prepare a written business plan. It can be pretty high level. You can look at examples of business plans online, but you would definitely want to think about and write down how you might approach these issues. Number one, identifying your intended customers. Who exactly are you going to do this for? Is it a certain age group? Is it a certain gender? Is it a certain background?

Number two, do a financial projection for the business. What do you think you might charge for your services? What kind of services? Will there be all one-on-one? Will they be face-to-face? Online? Remote? Will they be done in group sessions? Will there be anything that you can record ahead of time to provide that can be an ancillary service or even standalone?

And just try and see if this is even something viable. Because then you can do a pilot and try and get some clients and see if it works out the way you think it'll work out. How long does the average client stay with you? Is it something that's one and done or that goes on for three months, six months, a year? And really think through those things ahead of time and do a high-level marketing plan to figure out how are you going to reach out. Are you going to be using social media? Are you going to be using email? Are you going to do word of mouth? Will you be doing presentations, free presentations, paid presentations to try and establish some authority? So, it's good to think through those things before you really spend a lot of time and energy and money on pursuing this.

And then somewhere in that whole mix, and you can do this through LinkedIn, through word of mouth, through going back to old medical school and residency cohorts that you were with. Try to find someone who's a mentor. Try to find someone who's doing what you would like to do. It's a lot easier to envision it and to visualize what it will look like if you've talked to someone who is doing it or has done it in the past.

Even rather than say just contacting a business expert about how to set up your books and set up your business, but actually talk to someone who's doing what you would like to do. It gives you a real reality check as to whether it's doable and how difficult it is, whether the time constraints, what would you do differently? Just remember that with a mentor, usually a mentor is someone that you ask to help you. They usually volunteer. They usually do it for free. So, you don't want to monopolize their time. You just want to learn what you can and little bits here and there as you move along the journey towards your chosen destination.

That's basically what I have to say about answering that question. The question did come from one of my mastermind group members. So, you might consider joining one of my mastermind groups because we do answer these kinds of questions and we also deliver mentorship, encouragement, brainstorming, accountability and a built-in network of other clinicians to speed your career journey. So, if you want to learn more about the mastermind, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/mastermind for that. I think I'll leave it there for today's episode of Physician NonClinical Careers.

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The post How to Become a Health Advisor With No Physician Patient Relationship – 286 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Dr. Laura Kaufman shares her thoughts on advanced degrees and other decisions as she moved from traditional practice to consulting.

She recently quit her full-time clinical position and launched her consulting business. And she enrolled at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to pursue a master's degree in patient safety and healthcare quality.

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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. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Pursuing Advanced Degrees and Other Decisions

Dr. Kaufman began her private practice because she values its efficiency. Since completing her residency, she has mostly worked in obstetric anesthesia and served on quality and patient safety committees.

She was concerned about treating patients properly and safely. And she became frustrated when her patients seemed to be rushed through preoperative evaluation in spite of her concerns about their medical readiness.

So when her employer was acquired by another company, she began her consulting company and reduced her clinical hours. She started her nonclinical activities by providing medical opinions in legal proceedings and worked as a consultant for a respiratory therapy device company and an infection control consulting firm. But her main area of interest is improving quality and safety for obstetrical anesthesia care.

Choosing her Master's Degree

As she made those changes, she evaluated master's degree curricula that would support her transition. The Johns Hopkins program provides the coursework and the flexibility she needs.

Dr. Laura Kaufman's Advice

Build your connections, link to other people on LinkedIn because that's how those people find you.

Summary

When Laura became increasingly frustrated with constraints on her ability to practice the way she preferred, she took steps to make a shift in her career. She focused on a consulting business that would meet her desire to improve patient care quality and safety. And she took steps, including evaluation of advanced degrees and other decisions, that would improve her knowledge and authority in her chosen field. 

You can reach Dr. Laura Kaufman on LinkedIn.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Dr. Laura Kaufman's LinkedIn Page
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• Physician Leaders: Top 10 Reasons to Pursue a Business Degree
• Which Advanced Degree Will Be Right for a Nonclinical Career? – 191
• How to Use Consulting and Advising to Find Freedom – 249
• How to Build a Terrific Freelance Consulting Business – 145
• NewScr!pt

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 283

Advanced Degrees and Other Decisions on the Road to a Nonclinical Career

- Interview with Dr. Laura Kaufman

John: I connected with today's guest on LinkedIn a little while ago because I was drawn to her interest in patient safety and quality improvement. Something I was always interested in when I was a CMO. But anyway, she's a little bit earlier than a lot of my guests in her transition, but I thought her story is interesting and I thought we can learn from her. So, I would like to say hello and welcome to Dr. Laura Kaufman.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Thank you. Thanks for having me on the show.

John: I'm glad you took the time to join us. We're going to learn a lot from you and. I think it's interesting to talk to someone who's kind of still feeling their way for part of it and making that transition. And so, I look forward to really hear what your thought process has been in this transition that you're in.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Well, thank you. Yeah.

John: Okay. Why don't you tell us some bit about your background, your education and clinical experience before we get into some of the other things that you're doing.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah. I did my residency from 2007 to 2011. I'm a little over a decade out from residency. I'm an anesthesiologist by training. I did my undergrad and my med school at University of Missouri in Columbia. My husband and I are both physicians, kind of corny. We're the couple that met in training and we both went up to Rochester, New York then for residency. He was finishing up his neurosurgery residency, I did my anesthesia residency up there.

And then we went down to Atlanta and I started private practice work. I thought I was destined for private practice because I like efficiency, I like speed. I thought that's where I'm going to keep things rolling. I went into private practice then, and I've done private practice ever since. And my husband did his fellowship at the time, and then we came back to Kansas City where I'm from. I did mostly OB anesthesia, it was kind of my area of specialty, kind of 50% or more. That was basically what I did for a decade plus after residency up until May of 2022.

John: Very good. So, you've got a lot of clinical experience, you know what it's like to practice. But for some reason you decided, "Well, maybe I should try something different." I like to hear what was it that triggered you to start thinking of trying something outside of clinical medicine or something in healthcare that can be helpful obviously to patients and to physicians, but is not necessarily giving direct patient care all the time?

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah, I've always been interested in patient safety and quality. I've served on patient safety committees, quality committees, really since finishing residency. But there have been times throughout my career in residency and especially post residency where I thought I really don't know if this is being done as safe as it could have been. I wish that this patient had been more optimized before surgery. I wish that this process was better standardized for the patient. And a couple of patient cases where I got really frustrated and thought, "Wow, I just really don't think we're doing this right for the patient."

That came to a head a couple times in 2021. So, the year before I stopped practicing full-time clinically. While we were on family vacation, I reached out to a few master's programs and I thought "I can get frustrated, I can get mad, I can just say that's it, I quit. I'm not going to do this anymore because it's not safe, it's not the way I want it to be. I don't like it. It's not what I want it to be. I'm not going to do it."

But I found the master's in patient safety and healthcare quality at Johns Hopkins, and I spoke to the advisor there, and it really just seemed to click, it seemed to be what I wanted healthcare to be or be able to take me in the direction of when I wanted healthcare to be. And so, I started working on that master's last year. Honestly not knowing quite where it would take me, but just kind of excited about what that course of study was. And then the unit where I was in charge of OP anesthesia had a corporate buyout in May of 2022, and that's when I transitioned to the master's full-time.

John: Oh, okay. There was an obvious sort of draw the line somewhere because you would've had to do something different or acclimate even to a new system. That's where a lot of people find it's really tough.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah, yeah. A forced transition of sorts.

John: Yeah. Now I wanted to clarify too, most of us have a combination of things that are pushing us away and things that are drawing us to it. And so, you described that to some extent. For a lot of us, it's burnout. would you say you were affected or by that much at all in terms of just the volumes and the pressure to see more patients, that kind of thing?

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah, for sure. There were moments, especially because of the pandemic, we had not enough staff. We were working 72-hour calls. We were Q2. Every physician has their moments of stress when there's a lot going on. But we were trying to hire, and it's hard to hire when you're showing someone a Q2 schedule.

John: Yes.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: And so, I think that on top of changing to a system where we're transitioning out of the unit where I was in charge, you pile all that on top of a situation where you're already frustrated and it's only a matter of time.

John: Right, right. I was impressed we were talking offline before, and it wasn't just the fact that maybe there were times where it got busy or that kind of thing, but you were really concerned about doing the right thing and treating patients appropriately and in situations where it wouldn't necessarily have really caused a problem to delay. Tell us more.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah. There were a couple of cases that really prompted me to call or to look into the master's programs where they weren't even necessarily my patient cases, but I was as aware of them or became aware of them. And I wanted to have conversations with other people about them. I talked to my colleagues, talked to other people in the hospital, talked to administrators, and I said, "Look, I really feel that maybe this patient would be better served if they were optimized before coming in, or if they saw other specialists or if they were able to see their primary care doctor before coming in in this context. Or maybe if they weren't treated at this hospital, but they were treated at a different hospital that was more specialized for it."

It wasn't that people weren't willing to listen, but it was more "We hear you, but we still think that we can do it without taking those steps." And I didn't feel that was appropriate and I wasn't personally involved in the care after voicing my concerns, but I just thought this isn't the way it's supposed to be. I need to find a way to fix it. And I'm probably not going to fix it overnight but it needs to be fixed. This isn't serving the patients in the long run.

John: Right. And particularly when you're in a situation where you're asked to maybe give an opinion or you just happen to have to be part of the care for that patient at the time, you definitely want your concerns to be listened to. I think in general, and maybe this isn't true of your institution, but a lot of institutions we get a sense of they just don't appreciate us. They're not really grateful that we're here. They just have us here because we have to be there. We have to sign off on things.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Right. Right. And you're not trying to be a barrier to getting things done, and you're trying to get that across. That it's not that I don't want to work, it's just that I want to make sure that everything is done safely and, in the patient's best interest.

John: All right. That was one of the things that helped you make that decision. And then you mentioned the other things that went into that. So, what do you think long term? I'm trying to get what your mind is thinking in terms of do you feel like you will maintain your license that you'll be still seeing some patients? Or is that kind of up in the air at this point?

Dr. Laura Kaufman: It's a little up in the air. I have two state licenses because I live really close to the state line of Missouri and Kansas. And I have renewed both of those state licenses into 2023 for both. And I've spoken to a couple of groups around town about doing just some kind of vacation PRN coverage because I don't know that I'm fully ready to step away from clinical work.

But when some other folks have offered me a part-time job, that's not what I'm looking for right now. I like the consulting work. I like working on the masters. And I would like to head more in the direction of the consulting and patient safety and quality work. So, I know some people when they head in the direction that I've headed in are ready to just fully abandon clinical work and send it out the doorway, see you later. But I like keeping that door open.

John: Well, I know a lot of physicians who basically balance the nonclinical and the clinical because they get bored with either one, honestly. They like doing both. And particularly if you're in quality and safety, well, it doesn't hurt to have continued exposure to patients and seeing what is happening in the real world because you're still doing some as opposed to being out completely. And even like the CEOs of Cleveland Clinic and Mayo still see patients or worse, seeing patients one day a week or something. So, it's not like you can't do any kind of even high-level job and not still do...

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah. Yeah.

John: Now on the consulting side, consulting is like this giant possibility. Everybody means different things by consulting. Some do some coaching, they call consulting. Some actually are employed by healthcare consulting firms. Of course, we're talking about freelance consulting type of thing.

Tell us a little bit of what you've done and at this point where you hope your consulting goes, because I think it'll probably evolve, but it's good to hear where you are and what you're planning on doing going forward.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah, absolutely. The easiest thing, or the first step for me, was legal chart review. I come from a family of lawyers. Much more of my family are lawyers than doctors. And I have friends from growing up and from school that were lawyers. And so, over the years I had family and friends ask what do you think about this case? Or what's your take on this case? What would you have said about this case?

You have enough of those conversations and then maybe someone says, "Can you look at this chart? If I sent you this chart, could you look through this chart, give me an opinion as to whether we should consider settling this or whether we should move forward with it?" And you get a big chart on a CD. Or even before the CDs, it was the giant stack of paper.

And so, I started doing it that way. I really haven't even moved past just doing chart reviews or opinions. I don't do them directly for family members. I think that would probably be a conflict of interest, but my family members and friends have referred me to other lawyers. I haven't done depositions or done court appearances. I'm not opposed to it, but it just hasn't gotten to that point.

But that was what I did mostly in the beginning. And that doesn't take long. It's usually a few hours, but it's nice. It's like a big puzzle. And then I'm usually telling them like, "Yes, I think you're good. I think this is a case that you can easily argue or oh gosh that didn't look good. You might want to think about whether you want to settle."

And that was what I did a lot in the beginning. In the last month I talked to a company that's trying to start out with some anesthesia CME. They're in business doing other types of CME, but they were trying to break into the anesthesia world. So, they wanted to talk about how to structure anesthesia CME, what anesthesia CME is already out there, what I like about anesthesia CME, what I don't like about anesthesia CME, what price points I thought would be appropriate for CME, which was a good question, how the CME could be delivered that people would and wouldn't like. And that was over the course of five hours.

I spoke with a company that wanted consulting for a respiratory therapy device, which I thought was interesting at first. Why are we talking to an anesthesiologist about this? But because we used other devices. That was about an eight-hour job of just talking through respiratory support devices in the recovery room and whatnot.

I've done a little bit of infection control consulting as well. So, it's kind of been just a little bit here and there. When people reach out to me and they have something that I really don't think is in my field, I am going to be honest with them and say, "I'm not sure I'm the person for you." And every once in a while, that's happened and they'll say, "Well, why don't we talk through it anyway?" Or they'll just say, "Well, thank you. I appreciate the honesty."

John: Yeah, yeah. Boy, there's so many things we could talk about. One thing that a lot of beginner consultants talk about is, "How do I price my services?" I think sometimes it's a negotiation. Sometimes it's like the person looking for your help just has that idea in their head "Look, this is what help I need, this is what I'm willing to pay. Is that okay?" So, what have you found so far in trying to come up and especially if you're doing different types of consulting?

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah, that is an excellent question. I will say that I think you should ask for double what you would charge for locums. I think that's a good rule of thumb. And then come down from there.

There was a company that was looking for a physician. By this description, people might be able to find them on LinkedIn, but there is a company that's looking for a physician consultant for a health and fitness app. And I gave them a number and they wanted to pay like a fourth of that. And I said, "Well, good luck." Because they're looking for someone for five to 10 hours a week, and the rate they're looking for is so low. I was willing to negotiate with them for maybe two-thirds to even half of the rate that I would've charged that they were just trying to get a physician for a ridiculous amount of money. And I think they just wanted to be able to say they had a physician on staff.

John: Yeah. I think a lot of startups especially, they'll even try and get you to work for free and they'll maybe promise you some kind of payout when they go public or something crazy, which is years down the road. I know of people that have done that, but it's something you have to have other sources of income and a lot of patience.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah. And they'll negotiate with you and sometimes they'll even give you a number. The respiratory company, they said, "Can you send us your CV and then we will send you our quote?" And their quote was twice what I would charge for locums. So, I was like, "Wow. Sounds good. Thank you."

John: Now let's go back to the other thing, the educational, that you're in the middle of it now, the master's degree. Explain what the master's degree that you're doing is, the title of it, what is being taught? And also, how you ended up at this one? And I'm trying to think in my head. If I'm in the east coast and I happen to be around a lot of medical schools and it would be really easy to find a master's with pretty good quality, but there's so many things online now too. So, I'd like to hear a little bit about how you decided. I mean, Johns Hopkins is a big name. It's a good story. But tell me more.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: I honestly just started looking at master's programs. Who has masters that I can access? Because there are universities here in town, here in Kansas City. I could have looked for an in-person program. I didn't think I was looking for an MPH. I wanted something that was geared towards quality and safety. And so, it was kind of great that that was all in the title Masters of Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality. At least when I started looking, there were two to three programs around the country.

The nice thing about the Johns Hopkins one is it is fully online. Because some physician's masters do require you to travel a few times a year. Not that if the masters that you really want to do, that should necessarily prevent you from doing it. Because I've met some people that were working on MPHs or MBHs or MBAs that traveled and they thought it was definitely worth it for that degree. But I really loved that this was fully online, that most of it was asynchronous except for a few live talks. They were willing to work with you if that live talk time that was at 7:00 PM really didn't work for you, that you emailed the professor and explained it and it was okay.

And also, their goal is that you finish it within two years, but it's a soft two years. If you need to stretch it out, your advisor is pretty reasonable. It's not easy coursework. The statistics and the epidemiology, it's graduate level. They're not softball for you just because you've already done an MD, which is fine. Because the degree should mean something when you're using it later. But I also really liked that the advisor talked me through it. She said, "These are the other master's programs we have. What is your goal?" And then when we finished talking about it, she's like, "Yeah, I don't really think any of the other masters would be right for you."

John: Let's see. I have other questions about that. In an MBA it's typical, of course, that is a business degree, it's a little different, that usually you end up working in a team on some project or something like that. Is there anything similar to that in this kind of master's program?

Dr. Laura Kaufman: There are a couple of classes that have group papers. There is some online collaboration in Google classrooms and then there's some chat boards in the classes that are interactive sharing of articles and topics and things like that.

John: Okay. Because one of the things I hear on the MBA side is that the networking sometimes is as valuable as the actual education. In other words, you might come out with a cohort of 15 or 20 contacts all of whom are going into something. And for the ones that I'm know of, that involves physicians.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Oh, sure.

John: There might be like the UT PEMBA is a Physician Executive MBA. Not only do they learn all those things, but then they have these contacts that over time may help with their careers if they're working in their system or something. So, it seems like a lot of the masters do. I did a master's in public health many, many years ago and it was remote. But there was very little kind of collaboration among the students in the program I did. I missed out on to some extent. But it's just amazing what's available now for people to start looking.

The other advantage, of course, of being in a program, not so much for someone like you who is kind of starting their consulting business, but to get a job, it demonstrates your commitment and it shows that you're really interested in that particular thing. Even though you don't have the degree when you're looking for let's say a job with an institution or something, even just being in the program can be very helpful.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah. Yeah.

John: Well, let's see. That's all useful. Now what about LinkedIn? I'm just curious because that's how I found you or you found me. We found each other.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah.

John: And we've talked many times about how useful it can be. Anything going on there with you at this point yet? Have you found it? You have a good profile. I looked at it and it's there. And if people that are listening want to reach out to you, they can definitely just look for Laura Kaufman MD on LinkedIn and find out more about what you're doing. But anything about LinkedIn you'd like to share at this point?

Dr. Laura Kaufman: I definitely would say I learned a lot about LinkedIn from the Physician Nonclinical group on Facebook. I knew nothing about it or resumes before that group. I used Heather Fork's resume builder to build myself a resume because I had a CV. I had a CV, not a resume. Very different. I made that mistake for a month or so.

John: Do you hear that? Do you hear that bell? That's my acknowledgement to plug for Heather Fork. Sorry, go ahead.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah, absolutely. I was not using a resume before I used that. And my LinkedIn did not look good before that. But the legal review stuff, because I had the connections, I think I could have done without the LinkedIn, but the companies that have found me have found me through LinkedIn. I think that's huge. I think you have to figure out how to build your LinkedIn in order to find the consulting, especially if you're doing the freelance like I am right now. Otherwise, I don't know how you would find those people. So, definitely build your connections, link to other people on LinkedIn because that's how those people find you. And so, that's great.

John: Yeah. I think if you even just connect with people that seem to be doing similar things in your industry or in your line of work or that kind of thing, see if they're posting things, maybe start posting things. I've known people that have done that as a way to just generate some interest and collaboration when they see what you're actually doing. But I think what you've put in there already shows your interests and people can definitely find you on LinkedIn if they're interested in getting some consulting for quality improvement in patient safety.

Is your focus to get back to that, the consulting itself? Is it focused on any particular setting? Is it mostly because of anesthesia and OB anesthesia and so forth? Is it more in the hospital setting? Is it large groups? I don't know, there might be things in public health, I don't even know. But what have you found so far to be the opportunities other than being the medical expert?

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Oh, sure. Mostly inpatient, really, because that's what I know. Yeah. I've got to be honest, I'm not as familiar with outpatient ambulatory clinic. Inpatient is more where I'm comfortable. Inpatient ORs, I love OR consulting. That's where I'm most comfortable. Absolutely. Yeah.

John: Well, that's good to know because there are a lot of people that listen to the podcast, so someone that's in that setting might even pick up on that. I will say this too, as a CMO, in my prior life, we hired a lot of consultants.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Oh, yeah. I bet.

John: Every time we had a new project, we wanted to start a new service line or we needed to adopt a latest trend or whatever it was in patient care or coding and documentation, you name it. And that's where the money is for sure, because groups really don't have money to spend on consultants for the most part. But there's other agencies that do. Okay, that's very useful.

So, where do you see things going? Do you have any big plans for the next six months? Are you going to keep plugging away on the masters and just keep lining up new clients? Anything new that you're going to be trying?

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah, that's a great question. I think I'm just going to keep plugging away. I've got two classes signed up for the spring and I've told a couple groups that I can do some vacation coverage for them here and there. Trying not to get too over-committed clinically though. But it's actually really refreshing to not have a definitive "This is where I will be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday." Especially as type A physicians, it's kind of fun to have it be a surprise what the next project is. Yeah, let this ride for a little bit.

John: Yeah. For some people that might be too scary, but I think I would enjoy that too. There are different things, you're being sort of tested in a way differently in different environments. Let me ask you this one side question though.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Sure.

John: Have you been able to charge more for your clinical work as a part-time fill-in as kind of like a mini locums?

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yes, I have. Yes. And I don't know if that bubble will burst, but yes.

John: When they need someone, it's like supply and demand, right?

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Right, right.

John: Now you not only have an easier clinical time of it because you're not doing so much, but you can actually get paid at a higher rate.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah. Yeah. And it could be location too because the Midwest is probably a harder place to bring people into.

John: Yeah. Especially when you get out in the country.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah, that's for sure.

John: That's really hard. All right, Laura. Well, this has been interesting. We're going to have to have you come back in a year or so.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah. To give an update.

John: I think it's been very interesting and I think the listeners will get some good insights if they're a little leery about doing something like you've already started to do.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Hopefully it'll encourage some people to take some chances or to think about taking chances if they don't feel as adventurous.

John: I think it will. And if they want to reach out to you, again, connect on LinkedIn, Laura Kaufman MKD. I guess that's it for today. I want to really thank you again for coming on and sharing this with us.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Yeah, thanks for having me.

John: You're welcome. All right. Bye-bye.

Dr. Laura Kaufman: Bye.

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