In today's episode, we share John's firsthand experience with Zoom to apply when presenting your first summit. Discover the valuable insights and lessons he gained while preparing for this event.

From meticulous preparation to seamless execution, John shares his valuable insights, tips, and lessons learned during this groundbreaking virtual event. With an unwavering commitment to delivering an exceptional summit, he applied overlooked settings in Zoom's basic meeting version that were critical to its resounding success.

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Newscript Summit Success Story

Planning and hosting a large meeting requires careful consideration of major subtasks. There are generally more than a dozen major planning steps. And it's critical to properly use the Zoom settings when presenting your first summit.

Here is the list of major tasks during the planning and delivery of the Summit:

1.  Draft the Summit design with topics, proposed faculty, schedule, intended audience, etc.;
2.  Develop the marketing plan, including logos, email, social media, affiliate marketing, and podcast appearances;
3.  Create a new website with a sales page, registrations, payment handling, and a place to post recordings and bonuses;
4.  Select the method of holding the Summit (e.g., Zoom meeting, webinar, or other software);
5.  Communicate with presenters (titles, objectives, times, and dates);
6.  Enlist and advise affiliate promoters;
7.   Create marketing materials, including emails, social media content, and images;
8.  Fill orders for free attendance;
9.  Plan the Summit delivery with a daily checklist to smoothly present and record 4 lectures and Q&A each evening;
10.  Edit the videos and audio recordings and post them to the new website;
11.  Collect and post the bonuses to the website;
12.  Pay affiliate partners for their sales;
13.  Send links to All Access Pass holders; and,
14. Address technical difficulties and assist customers to access the recordings when needed.

When it came to choosing a webinar platform for the NewScript Summit, Zoom proved to be the perfect choice. It has widespread familiarity. And since many course creators already own a license, there is no need to invest in a new platform.

Useful Zoom Settings When Presenting Your First Summit

Here are the 7 important settings to use when using a basic Zoom One Pro meeting plan:

1. All participants should be automatically muted on arrival.
2. Select the “Optimize for video clip” option when sharing my screen to play a prerecorded video (already opened on the desktop).
3. The 2 cohosts should record every session so there is a backup if one loses their connection.
4. It's best to assign two cohosts: one to run the meeting, and the other to manage the Q&A via the Chat function.
5. Assign the speaker the third cohost so they can easily open slides and share their screen if needed.
6. Use the “Spotlight” function to “spotlight” the moderator and the speaker, then “un-spotlight” the moderator during the talk, and “un-spotlight” the speaker when the Q&A was over.
7. At the beginning of the presentations turn off waiting room notifications.

Exclusive Summit Offers Await!

Take advantage of our exclusive offers today! Access the complete Summit Recordings with bonuses (the All Access Pass) for just $249.00. Learn more about that by going to the Nonclinical Career Summit.

Better yet, if you're not already a NewScript member, if you join NewScript now you can receive a 15% discount when registering for the All Access Pass. Hurry and secure your spot at NewScript.app before the Summer price increase in 2 weeks.

Summary

The NewScript Summit stands as a testament to the power of community, collaboration, and strategic event planning. Through the efforts of the NewScript team and the invaluable feedback of its members, this live event became a transformative experience for clinicians seeking nontraditional career paths.

By harnessing the collective wisdom of mentors, fostering engaging presentations, and incorporating interactive Q&A sessions, the Summit accelerated clinicians on their professional journey. As NewScript continues to evolve, it remains a source of inspiration, fostering a supportive community, and empowering clinicians to embrace new possibilities in their careers. And by implementing these tips when presenting your first summit you will deliver a smooth, problem-free event for your audience.

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

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Links for Today's Episode:

• Behind the Scenes Look at Planning the First Nonclinical Career Summit – 294
• How Physicians Can Use Online Courses to Boost Income – 239
• NewScript Nonclinical Career Summit
• NewScr!pt

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 301

7 Important Zoom Settings When Presenting Your First Summit

John: NewScript had been up and running for almost two years, and we had hundreds of members looking for information and advice about pursuing non-traditional jobs for a variety of clinicians, because NewScript is open not just to physicians, but to nurses and podiatrists and dentists and oral surgeons and therapists and anybody else who's a licensed professional in healthcare who's been going through similar things that we all have, that we address in NewScript, and as a side effect of that, or a normal consequence of careers to help get out of that milieu that's killing us and move on to something that's more satisfying and fulfilling.

We also talk about inside NewScript nonclinical careers and non-traditional clinical careers like telemedicine, locum tenens, med spas, and other non-traditional clinical activities. And so, that's whose in NewScript. It also has free webinars and podcast episodes. It has a few complete courses. It has links to other paid resources. Once you're a member, everything in NewScript, except for those few paid resources, are free. And of course, you can also access mentors in NewScripts. So, that's another benefit that we've built in, and we've got other things coming even as we speak.

So things were going well, and Tom Davis and I had a brainstorm about six months ago. We thought, "Why not organize a summit for our members?" We could invite mentors to be presenters. We could create a free version, and then we could sell recordings afterwards as an all access pass to help support NewScript. Because there are a lot of expenses in keeping NewScript going and getting it up and running. So, it does help if we can produce some kind of income.

We decided to move forward, but to help start the planning process, we needed more information. We sent out a survey to NewScript members, and also to my email subscribers, many of which who weren't in NewScript yet. And to find out how we could structure the summit, how our followers, how our members would prefer to get the information that we're talking about providing.

The results of this survey led us to develop a live event rather than recorded lectures or interviews, and presented over three week nights. On the survey, there was definitely a preference for live event. There was a preference for making it free, presenting it in the evenings, in the middle of the week rather than on the weekend, rather than a live event. And it also supported us doing live Q&A. That was one of the reasons why they wanted it to be live. So not only would the speakers be live, but then there could be a Q&A afterwards. After getting the surveys and looking back through those, that's what we decided to do.

Now, at first, I thought this would take a few months to plan, so I was kind of trying to squeeze it into the end of the year in 2022. But luckily, Tom convinced me that a five to six month planning timeframe would be much better. Even with the extended timetable that we decided to adopt, it seemed like we were always behind schedule for the tasks that were required to get this done. It was just a lot to do.

Now, luckily, I had done a lot of project planning when I was working as a hospital chief medical officer, and I was able to use those skills to develop a timetable for planning the summit, like I said, which was held a few weeks ago. I thought I'd start today.

My main purpose today is to try and talk about how we were able to use Zoom meetings as the platform to hold the event. But I thought in case you're thinking of doing something similar, I'd like to talk about the major sub-tasks that we needed to get from a decision to hold the summit to get everything posted and bonuses available for the all access pass after the fact. There obviously was a lot of planning in between that had to happen.

What I want to do now is just go through the 13 or 14 steps that, at least in my mind, the way I thought about them, that we had to go through to get this thing off the ground and implement it. So, here's a list of the sub-tasks that we had to do, and this actually comes from the giant Gantt chart. If you don't know what a Gantt chart is, it's just like a spreadsheet with different tasks and timeframes and when to get them done. And then as you go through and get things done, you can mark them off or you can check them, whatever.

This came from that. Now, that one had my Gantt chart on this. The project plan had about 45 different discreet things on it, but really well down to these 13 or 14 items. So I'm going to go through these pretty quickly.

First thing was, number one, figuring out what the summit design was going to be. The topics, the faculty, the schedule, the intended audience and all that. Just kind of put it in perspective. And so, Tom and I worked on that. And once we had that in mind and we can envision what the endpoint would be, well, then we could start working back and filling in all the gaps as to what had to be done, because the endpoint for that to happen, certain other things had to happen right before the endpoint.

And for those things that happen, there were certain other things that had to happen right before that pre endpoint and so on. And so, you work backwards really to the present day. Sometimes we get distracted because we like to do certain things. And so, we jump into those. Let's say one of us really likes to do a lot of marketing or emailing. Well, we want to get into that right away, but in fact, you have to plan this thing out from the beginning to the very end. You have to delegate some things. You might have to hire a consultant to do certain things, but let me again, get to the major things.

Conceptualize the overall design. And by the way, these are not in order from beginning to end, but these are things that some of which had to be done concurrently anyway. We had to figure out a marketing plan. What were we going to do? Were we going to create new logos? What kind of email marketing were we going to do? Were we going to use social media? Were we going to use podcasts? Well, yes, we were, not only my podcast to let us get the word out, but also being guests on other podcasts. And were we going to use affiliate marketing? Which we decide to do, which means engaging other people, sharing it with their audience, but paying those people a percentage of whatever funds are brought in.

Now remember, this was a free seminar, free summit. We were involved live. If you came and attended live, it was completely free. But if you wanted the recordings, you could purchase an all access pass. And so we had to have a way to track that. But again, this is at the beginning, just setting up what will the marketing plan involve.

Number three was, originally I was going to use Teachable to host everything, to serve as the affiliate site, to put the recordings after the fact. But honestly, I don't think Teachable is a good channel or good platform to do that. So, we had to create a new website. That was an entire process in and of itself with its own sales page, ability to register for the free and the paid sessions, had to collect payments for the all access pass. And we had to be able to change the payment, which we did over time. At the beginning it was $19 and it went up to $39, and it went up to $79, and now it's $249, which will be the evergreen price, at least for the time being.

And then we had to figure out number four, how to hold the summit, where we are going to use Zoom meetings, Basic Zoom. I think I have a Zoom Pro. And what it is, it's for meetings. And many of us have done meetings with 2, 3, 4, even up to 10 or 15 people. I'm on meetings all the time with different boards. There are often 10 or 12, 15 people on those.

But that's different than holding a meeting for let's say 300 or 400 people. So, then you have to decide, are you going to use a Zoom meeting? Are you going to go with the Zoom webinar, which is a different level, different cost, or maybe even some other platform? For example, I happen to own WebinarJam. Sometimes I'll put my webinars on WebinarJam. I'll hold them live there, and then I'll replay them. We had to make that decision, and we chose to use Zoom, and I'm going to spend the second half of today's presentation talking about that.

Then we had to figure out about communicating with our presenters. We had to identify them, which we did maybe in phase one, where we're just kind of conceptualizing the whole thing. We were going to use as many of our mentors as it made sense and as we're available, but we'd have to use other non-mentor as faculty. And we had several of those. And Tom and I both have many connections. And so we reached out, but we had to figure out how are we going to talk with them. How are we going to communicate with them? Do we have them sign a form, consent, or do we have them become affiliates? Do we have them market it, which we planned on doing? And so, how to communicate with them, keep them involved, and figure out during that communication, who was going to decide on the title of their presentation, the objectives, the time and date. If we were doing three evenings, four presentations per evening, how are we going to fill that schedule? That was step five, step six. And again, these aren't in particular order.

Identifying and communicating with affiliate marketers. Some of whom would be presenters, if they had an audience, if they had a following and they wanted to do that, that'd be great. But why not invite other people that we know? I've had people on my podcast, some of which have been on two or three times, they have a large audience. And so, then I would reach out to them. Tom has some contacts as well. And so, we had to have a whole separate process for communicating with and deciding how we were going to interact with our affiliate marketers, which also led to another phase of which was part of the marketing plan, but was creating everything that would go into the marketing, particularly to support the affiliates, which is actually step eight on my list.

But that concludes all the emails. I wrote 25 emails I think that people could use during the process. They would customize it and send it to their list and then I would send the same ones to my list. Some of them were my stories, but people could use that. They call them swipe files. So they're email, social media, content, images and then how to deliver that.

So, what I have down as step seven, let me go back one is that we had to spend some time identifying other podcasters as part of the marketing plan and get Tom and me scheduled on their podcasts early enough so that we could get on there, present something of interest and value, and also mention the fact that we had the summit coming up as part of our marketing process.

Okay, now, jumping back to number nine, when people decided to attend, we didn't just send out the link and say, "Hey, anybody that wants to come, just show up." Now we had to have them register even though they were going to attend for free, so that we would know that they were registered, then we had to send them out the link. And I did that two or three times just to make sure everybody had the link. And then there were people that didn't get the link, didn't get the emails, the link wasn't working. So, that takes time as well. But we had to communicate with our, I'll say registrants. Many of those were NewScript people. Many of those were followers of mine and Toms and the other affiliates who weren't in NewScript. And so, we did that.

Then to really put together the plan for running the summit with a daily checklist so we could smoothly present four lectures and Q&A each evening and record everything, we had two of those 12 presentations involved presenting a video of the presentation. One had a video, and then a live Q&A. One had a video, which included a recorded Q&A. It wasn't always consistent.

And then some of our speakers wanted to show their slides during their presentation. Some of them used the slides, I would say, as an outline to follow, but they weren't actually presenting them, they were just talking to the camera. And then there was a whole lot of other things I had to do while the event was going on, which I can talk a little bit about in a minute, running something like this on Zoom.

And then let's say we were all done. We had recorded everything. We had downloaded the video. Zoom does that automatically, but you've got to then pull them from the download files and organize them and title them and all that. That was the planning and the checklist Tom and I both used as we were going through the process was number 10. Number 11 was then making sure that we had the ability to edit all the video and audio recordings and get them posted to the new website, which had already been created so that the people could sign up.

But then all these recordings would go onto that website on another page, which was behind a paywall, I guess is what you would say. And then we had to figure out how to get all the bonuses and post them in a way that people could access them if they paid for the bonuses without us having to manually send them their bonuses. They could just go and download them. And then that was number 12.

Number 13 was figuring out how to pay the affiliate partners and then actually paying them. I took a little work on my part on that. And then the last one that I wrote down here as far as steps in the planning and producing the summit was to send everyone that had paid for the all access pass, the links so that they would be able to get into behind the paywall into where the bonuses and the recordings were. So they could either download them or access them, watch them, listen to the audio and access the bonuses. And there were a couple of glitches in that. It really wasn't all that bad. It worked fairly seamlessly. And I'll put a plugin for Tom Adams who is the guy that does my websites. He's really an SEO guru. His company is called Buzz Your Brand.

He put that whole website together and put all the plugins to manage all of this that I've kind of covered in terms of having a place to pay, having a sales page, having a page for the content, and then actually posting all of that. That was a high level, all the things we had to go through to get that off. And it came off pretty darn well and I learned a lot. And one of the things I really learned about was Zoom. I'm going to get that in a minute. But we could spend the rest of this show talking about the specifics of the planning. I could go into each of those and explain that. Maybe I'll do parts of that at another time if you'd like me to. But I want to shift gears then, and describe. I think I have about seven features of Zoom that I used that I didn't know about necessarily beforehand, and that were critical to doing a meeting like this.

One of the surprises to me was when it got to this point because we weren't sure we were going to use Zoom at the beginning because we weren't sure we had the type of Zoom that was able to handle something like this. We were thinking we could have up to 300 to 400 or 500 people on the free version of this. We didn't get that many. We had somewhat over 200 sign up for that. That's still a lot.

So when you have a meeting with over 200, there's certain things you've got to decide. And we did a little research and Tom and I talked. For example, do you allow people when you get to the Q&A to unmute themselves and then ask their question? And we decided no. We decided that we were going to remind people to put their questions in the chat, during let's say the last five or 10 minutes of the let's say 30 minute presentation. Because we did a 30 minute presentation, 15 to 20 minutes of Q&A. And we thought we just had to manage it that way.

I had looked at some things online from other people that have managed large meetings. They said, no, rarely would you want to have them unmute. The thing about not being unmuted. If you have 200 or 300 people in a meeting and you have more than really the speaker and the moderator unmuted, you're going to get background noise and you can never identify where it's coming from because you have so many. There's a process you should go through to make sure that nobody's unmuted. That's one thing we had to decide. We decided to do that, Q&A comes through the chat only.

I wanted to say that the advantage of using Zoom besides that we already had a version of Zoom that we could use, or I had my own version that I used. Tom has his. Most everybody in this field does have their own Zoom. But I had the most basic version of Zoom, and I did have to add an extra kind of add-on so that I could accept up to 500 people because I'd never run a meeting that had more than let's say 40 or 50 because I have done a number of webinars. Anyway, the advantage of Zoom too besides using some other platform is that everybody's familiar with it. The very few people that you ask to join your meeting will get confused about how to join a Zoom meeting.

Now, the first time you go on a Microsoft meeting or whatever their version is, or a go-to meeting or some other thing a lot of corporations use, sometimes is a little confusing. You need a special link, you need to download the software. Well, most people have been on Zoom meetings. That was another reason we wanted to use it. And I got that advice from one of the gurus in online sales and emails that I follow. And they had held a summit like this about six months ago, and they're very successful. They have very large meetings and they have decided to continue to use Zoom and to do their events live and then use the chat for the Q&A.

Some of the things though that I found out, when you are going from a moderately small or ever size meeting to a large meeting, potentially, there's certain things that you should do. That's really what I want to spend the next five minutes talking about. I would say unless you are going to be posting a meeting that has over 400 or 500 participants, unless you really need to have some sophisticated management of that meeting, maybe you want to market during the meeting, maybe you want to have different rooms. Then you would probably need to do a Zoom webinar. There's other software that I've seen, but to really just have a very large meeting, Zoom is fine.

But here's seven things that I had to change or at least learn a little bit about. Some were pretty new and some were not quite that new that I had maybe heard of but never used. But these are the seven, these are just hints. If you want to hold a large meeting and you don't want to buy some fancy software, here's what I would do. And some of these are pretty basic. Seven things to implement.

Number one, just go ahead and set the settings to automatically mute all the participants. That's it. When they come in, now I use a waiting room rather than trying to use a passcode. I've never done the experiment using the passcode. Now, according to what I'm reading in Zoom, if they come in using the link that you send them, the passcode is already incorporated into that. But I don't know, I got in the habit of using a waiting room as a way to a gateway to hold people off until it's time to start the meeting and to verify in part that's done for reasons of security by Zoom. So I left that.

But what I did was number one, make sure that the setting was, that when they came in, when they were let into the room, they were automatically muted and they could not unmute themselves. That's how it works in Zoom. Once you automatically mute at least the settings I was using, then they would have to ask, they would've to raise their hand to be unmuted, and then a moderator can then unmute them if you like. We could have had one or two ask questions during the Q&A, but it just wouldn't go quickly enough. By doing it with the chat, we just ran through them and the speaker could just answer the question and then if it needed clarification and the person could then ask a second question, it would scroll up through the chat.

And number two was since we had two pre-recorded lectures. One was because of the scheduling issue and the other was that Chelsea Turgeon was actually traveling in Europe. She was on an eight hour time difference. And so she really wanted to record hers. We hadn't planned to record any of the lectures, but we thought, "Well, better we do that."

What you do is you put the video on your desktop. So it's sitting there at the beginning, obviously it's not on, it's just sitting there. And it's in a window on your screen. Then you share your screen, you select that window with the video, and then you make sure you click the button on the bottom, the little box that says "Optimize for video clip." Now, I had forgotten to do that during one of our dry runs. Now we did at least three dry runs beforehand so I can make sure that things were recording properly, that the videos would play well. That was one of the things I played the video the first time we had a dry run and nobody could hear it.

When you click the "Optimize for video clip", it does some things to optimize the actual video file. But then it also makes sure that the sound coming from the video is shared with everybody that's on the meeting. That's number two. Make sure when you share your screen, click the button that says "Optimize for video clip" if you're going to be showing a video. That worked like a charm. We had two of those and they worked beautifully. That was great.

The other thing, it's just a tip really more than some special setting, and that was Tom and I both recorded every presentation. I've done a lot of podcast interviews, I've had a lot of meetings, I've recorded a lot, and it's been pretty consistently working. But actually I lost my connection in the middle of lecture on the third day. And so, thankfully Tom had his version, he sent it to me and it was a backup and it included the Q&A, the part that I had missed. My recorder had gone off completely and I actually had to reboot my computer and everything. So, that was the third tip I guess I would call it, is to have another person record every session if you're going to be using the recordings later, of course.

The other thing is when you're on there, you definitely need to assign someone as another moderator. It's called a co-host, I think. Every day, every hour, every minute that we were on there, I was running the meeting because it was my Zoom that we were using, we left it on for the full four hours. We didn't turn it off. And I guess meetings can go almost, I don't know if there's even a limit on them, but we did three days of four hours each. And at the end, when you close it down, all the recordings will download to a file on your desktop or in iCloud, or in the Cloud.

Anyway, Tom and I were always both co-host because that way he could look at the chat, he can manipulate the chat, he could respond to the chat. And then when he was doing his presentation, I could do the same thing. He can mute and unmute people. I could mute and unmute people. We could let people in. Both of us could let people into the meeting from the waiting room. Again, just besides both recordings, make sure you have a co-host and who's really a co-moderator.

Basically the other thing that verifies in that and ensures is that I wouldn't have had a backup, if it hadn't been for Tom being a co-host, because I don't think the recording is quite the same and they don't have the same permissions unless you're a co-host. But once you're a co-host, you can do anything the main host can do, essentially. And basically when the host goes offline, then the meeting just keeps going. When I went offline, nobody else even noticed except that they didn't see that I was participating and they couldn't see that I was on the list of participants.

If you make someone the co-host, which is kind of my fifth point, that allows them to open their slides and share their screen, which they can't otherwise. That means you should make your speaker a co-host too. When we opened the meeting before we let anybody in, I made Tom a co-host and we were both hosting at that point. And then as soon as we added the speaker, we made that speaker a co-host so that they could freely pull up their slides, run their slides, show and then close that down.

The other thing, and this is number six, this is the first time I ever used a spotlight. The spotlight is a way of assigning someone to show up at the screen. Let's say that you have 50 people on there and you can set it to gallery, you can set it to speaker, but the thing is, if anybody's unmuted and there's noise, it'll pop to that as the speaker. And so, it can switch back and forth.

And by spotlighting the moderator, at first, then you as a moderator, when you're talking and giving instructions, you'll be on the screen. Then you can spotlight the speaker who's already a moderator, and then you'll both be on the screen for everybody. Then you unspot yourself. So now you have the speaker on there, they do their 30 minute talk and 15 minute Q&A.

And the Q&A was read by Tom who was not on the spotlight. So he was just a voice. And the speaker is just on the screen answering the questions. And then as soon as the Q&A is over, then you unspotlight the moderator and take them off as a co-host and then they can stay and listen and otherwise participate. But they're no longer the focus. Then we would close and have a short break.

And then the other thing I wanted to mention, the number seven, which sometimes it was easy to forget, but this is why we had a checklist for the meeting itself. And that was the beginning of the presentations, we turned off the waiting room notification. Normally you'll recall that when you're in a Zoom meeting, let's say you're on time for the meeting, everybody else is on time except there's two or three stragglers. And then as they as the stragglers come in, you can not only see that someone's in the waiting room because you get an announcement, a visual announcement, but then you get that little ring tone or ding dong or whatever it is like a doorbell. And so, we made sure that when the meeting had actually started and somebody was speaking, even when we were introducing the speaker, we had turned off that notification.

I think you do that by going into either the chat room, or the part that says chat, or it says presenters, one of the other. I think it's chat. There is a button there at the bottom on the right, you can click it and it gives you that option of turning off the notification. Those were the seven things that I used in Zoom and let me go through them really quickly. I muted everybody. I made sure to optimize for video clip when I played those videos. Tom and I would both record videos, actually record the meeting. We had backups.

I automatically made Tom a co-host. He and I were both co-hosts from the very beginning. I made the speaker a co-host before they started speaking so they could open their slides and share their screen if needed. And then I also used the spotlight for myself or Tom or the speaker and then unspotlighted them when their turn was done. And then the last thing was turning off the notifications that someone had entered the waiting room.

Doing that made things go very smoothly and the meeting went without a hitch. Other than me getting kicked off for less than two minutes, we recorded everything. I was able to patch everything together that I needed to send it, edit it, and post it within... I could have done it probably in less than a week, but it took me about a week because of other things I was doing.

I think we met our objectives presenting the summit. We provided free and low cost options, which will help clinicians both in NewScript and outside of NewScript now and in the future through, because the recordings will continue to be made available to our customers, listeners, followers, and clients. Tom and I learned a lot while putting on this conference.

Our mentors benefited by demonstrating their authority, getting exposure to a larger audience. I think several of them had people that joined their lists and downloaded their bonuses and a few of them earned commissions as affiliate promoters. We kept the cost really low the way we did this thing and brought in some income to help support NewScript and NewScript attracted some new members, I think at least a hundred or more. I didn't count exactly, but we got a lot of new members in NewScript and my email group because I was doing my own emails as well as the NewScript emails. And so, that's what I wanted to tell you.

Now, I want to make you two offers today that are related to this topic. First, we are running a promotion for access to the summit recordings. All the recordings are loaded and all the bonuses are included. And we've even added a couple new bonuses, just lists and things that are very useful for people looking for a nonclinical career. We've added those since the summit was held since we originally loaded up the recordings. You can get all of that right now for $249 by going to nonclinicalcareersummit.com and checking that out.

Now, if you're a member of NewScript, and I talked to Tom about this today, we'll give you a 15% discount off that price. You just look in NewScripts, since you're already a member. You'll probably get a notification, but we're going to be promoting that inside NewScript for the next week or so that you'll get a 15% discount off the price, which is about the equivalent currently a four months of membership in NewScripts. It's kind of a nice bonus for NewScript members.

And if you're not a member, join now and you'll get the same 15% discount, which like I said, is worth about four months of NewScript membership at the current price, which should be $7.99 something like that. It's a little less than $8 per month.

The other thing to consider though, in this whole conversation is again, this is being released in the third week of May, basically, and in June we're raising the monthly price for NewScript.

I think it's going to be around $9 or $9.97, something like that. So it's going to go up. Another reason to A) sign up with NewScript and B) get the all access pass and the bonuses and all the recordings that we have. They're really good recordings with a lot of information there.

Now, how do you become a NewScript member? You go to newscript.app and you can sign up. But most people sign up through their iPhone. If you have a different type of phone, you can also sign up that way as well. And again, get the savings on the recordings and avoid the increased monthly price for NewScript. And then the next time we do something like this, of course, you'll be ready to go. You'll get access to the free version right away. I'm not sure when we'll do this again, it might be a year from now. But again, we're promoting this year's and there's a lot of value in those videos, I tell you. They're just fantastic.

If you'd rather not join NewScript, but you want the recordings, just go right to nonclinicalcareersummit.com, buy the all access pass for $249 and you'll be able to go through all 12 recordings or download the audio or listen to the audio and the bonuses and so forth. And hopefully that'll help you get on your path to a new career or do some other things that we mentioned and talk about during the summit, including whether to get an advanced degree, whether you should get success coaching, what you think should do to maintain your relationships while you're through a stressful situation like this. There's a lot of good stuff in there.

Anyway, it's hard to remember these things. I have the links mentioned a minute ago and links to related content at nonclinicalphysicians.com/importantzoomsettings.

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Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

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 7 Important Zoom Settings When Presenting Your First Summit – 301 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

This week John and co-founder Tom Davis and their team are putting the final touches on NewScript's first Nonclinical Career Summit. It is designed primarily for NewScript members but is open to anyone interested in learning more about nontraditional opportunities for clinicians.

The Summit is a free live event that will be held next week! Mark your calendars for April 11 to April 13 from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM Eastern Time.    

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 is NewScript?

NewScript is a community of mentors, career transition experts, and clinicians. It is designed for licensed healthcare workers seeking professional fulfillment and resources to help overcome burnout and transition into more fulfilling nonclinical and nontraditional careers.

As the community grows, John and Tom decided to present the Summit for these reasons:

1. To help clinicians who are dissatisfied with their jobs.
2. To broaden our reach and spread our message.
3. To leverage the expertise of our Mentors and enable them to reach an even larger audience.

What Is the Summit Agenda?

This 3-day event consists of 12 live lectures and Q&A sessions with 4 topics covered each day. 

Below are the speakers and topics being covered.

Tuesday, April 11, starting at 7:00 PM Eastern Time:

1.  Jen Barna on Success Coaching
2.  Norman Chapin on pursuing an Advanced Degree
3.  Andrew Wilner on Locum Tenens
4. Cherisa and Alex Sandrow on Telemedicine/Telehealth

Wednesday, April 12, starting at 7:00 PM Eastern Time

1. Debra Blaine on Writing and Self-Publishing
2.  Nerissa Kreher on Pharma Jobs
3.  Jeep and Vanessa Naum on Marriage in Professional Couples
4.  Tom Davis on Venture Capital Advising

Thursday, April 13, starting at 7:00 PM Eastern Time:

1. Maria Abunto on Becoming an MSL
2.  Jonathan Vitale on Remote UM Jobs
3.  Chelsea Turgeon on Location-Independent Work
4. 12. John Jurica on Hospital Management Jobs

SUMMARY

In today's episode, John discusses the planning for the first Nonclinical Career Summit sponsored by NewScript, including the goals and expected outcomes. He discusses why he and his partner chose a 3-day live Zoom Conference Call format.

The faculty experts will be providing a lot of information beneficial to physicians and nonphysicians, including APNs and PAs, dentists, podiatrists, oral surgeons, social workers, and other therapists. 

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:

• Sign up for the FREE live conference of the Newscript Summit
• Reserve your All Access Pass (video recordings, audio recordings, and bonuses)   
• 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 294

Behind the Scenes Look at Planning the First Nonclinical Career Summit

John: Sorry if today seems like it's going to be a 25-minute promotional episode but I think we can get some good information from this. Really putting together a summit like this brings together a lot of the things I've been working on for many years. From doing marketing and emailing and social media and creating the podcast and learning how to use video and audio and run Zoom meetings and all that.

So, let's move on and let's talk about that today. That's really what I want to cover. Let's get into first of all what a summit is. Now summits have become very popular recently, and it may be a little bit amusing because really what distinguishes a summit from other types of conferences, I would say a summit is a type of conference.

But let's see how it may be different from the typical conference you might be attending live or online. Well, first of all, most summits are online. They're an online form of conference. The second thing is that the live or the basic version of a summit is usually free or extremely low cost. And then usually there's access to recordings or ancillary or bonus content that's normally sold for an additional fee. You get the free aspect of the summit. In our case, it's almost 12 hours. There are breaks in there, but it's 12 hours over three days of lectures followed by Q&A.

And the whole thing, like I said, is free. You can learn a lot, and you can take notes, but if you want to get recordings and you want to get all the bonuses that might come up to support the lectures, then you're going to have to buy the all access pass.

And usually it's focused on one particular theme. A lot of times it's something related to business, like real estate investing or careers or marketing or any other business topic. And it generally involves anywhere from 10 to even 30 or 40 presentations done over a few days up to a week.

And the other thing that usually happens with the summit and why there are so many support programs built, have grown recently to help support summits is that usually the presenters are also serving as affiliates to help market the program. So, in other words, the speakers we have, most of our speakers are mentors on NewScript, but we have some other experts that Tom and I know. We ask them if they want to go ahead and get on and give a lecture for 30 minutes, answer some Q&A for 20 minutes, and in exchange, they can get a little bit of authority, be part of something that's a positive thing. And they can also promote this to their followers, their listeners, some of their customers, and their email subscribers and make some marketing affiliate commissions. And so, it all kind of pulls together.

Now, the way they vary sometimes is a lot of summits are pre-recorded. They'll record all of the lectures and maybe even have some sort of pseudo Q&A, but they'll just record the sessions and then they'll either drip them out during the week or during the day, or each day they'll post, let's say if they're doing a three day summit or a four day summit, they'll post one third or one fourth of the lectures for that day. People can access it at their own rate and then wait till the next day when the others are dripped out and the next day and the next day. And again, usually during that time it's being promoted and people are buying access to the recordings.

Now, sometimes they're done live, which is what we decided to do. And part of the reason was that I did a survey and I pretty much asked people what they wanted. People that are on my email list, people in NewScript. And they basically said they wanted to do it in the evening, that they wanted it to be live and have a Q&A.

And there have been other summits that I've attended that this is the process that's been used. And it's really good because there's a lot of interaction and it seems more real. And really when you're learning, if you can ask questions, it's a whole lot better than just listening to a prerecorded 20 or 30 minute video that may have some good content, but then you can't follow up.

We decided, "Okay, we're going to go low tech, we're just going to run it on our Zoom. We're not going to pre-record anything." There's a little exception of that because we had a couple of speakers that for whatever reason, it would be almost impossible for them to be live on the summit because of the timing. We have a couple of them that are going to be recorded, but they'll be posted during the live event. So, we're not going to send those out to people that have signed up. If they want to really get the free version of even the recordings they have to attend, you'd have to attend.

So, we decide to do it that way, make it live, make it exciting. There might be glitches. We're prepared as best we can for that. And that's what we're going to do. And the night that we do it, the three nights that we do it from April 11, April 13, we're going to be recording the sessions including the Q&A. We're going to get those posted as quickly as we can. And anybody that buys you all access pass will have access to those forever. Plus it'll be not just the video recordings, but an audio version plus any bonuses that we have. I'll talk about the bonuses later.

I wanted to go through in detail how we approach this and the principles we decided to follow. We're going to keep it as low-tech as we can. We're not going to hire some outside firm to try and coordinate and put this whole thing together and market it and so forth, only because they take a huge chunk of money, and we're trying to keep this as low cost as possible. Hence the fact that there are 12 hours of free content. Just show up and it's there for you.

We want it to be convenient. As I said, the survey said people wanted it during the week, they don't want to screw up their weekend. And because people can't usually work during the day, it's going to be run in the evenings for four hours. As I thought about this, I thought, "What did I get myself into? I'm going to sit on a Zoom call for four hours, three nights in a row." I think I might go nuts, but I think it'll be fun actually, and I'll be really pumped when the time comes.

It needs to be affordable, which it will be. Even the all access pass is going to be so low cost, it's just crazy. We wanted to do it live to have that Q&A and we wanted it to be really powerful and impactful. We really want to help the people we serve.

Tom and I run NewScript and so we kind of gear this for them, clinicians who are looking to get away from burnout and lack of satisfaction and fulfillment in their jobs and feeling that they're being taken for granted at their jobs. And so, it's that audience, but obviously, there are a lot of people who aren't in NewScript that have the same feelings and are looking for the same things. And so, we're going to be putting this out to a very, very large audience.

All right. So, what did we do? I talked about the survey, we talked about the timing. When we first started talking about this, I think was in October of 2020. And I thought, "Well, let's see. We got three or four months, maybe we should just try and do this in the middle of January.

We're past all the holidays and everything should be quieting down." Of course, I'm talking to you now. I'm recording this in March. So that obviously didn't work out, but we looked at our calendars and Tom in particular said it's going to be tough to squeeze that in. I've got some things going on in January. So, it looks like maybe April will be better. And I'm glad we did that because there are a lot of things we had to do upfront to get this thing rolling.

And so, I'm really happy that I still have another few weeks to finish up what my part in putting this together is. And then once we made that decision, then it's kind of like Stephen Covey used to tell us "You start with the end in mind." Starting from, okay, here's what we want to create.

What do we need to do to plan this thing? I have some experience in planning big projects. I was basically in charge of the implementation of the first integrated full hospital electronic medical record, which meant it had to integrate with radiology and the pharmacy and the nursing, and all the doctors who had never done order entry before. In that project, we had at least seven different committees, call them subcommittees, and they were all working on their part of it. Of course, everything for the summit is basically Tom Davis and me. And so, it's a mini version of that.

What do I want to go into first? Well, we decided also that we wanted to try to stick with the most popular topics that were asked about in NewScript and outside of NewScript in terms of burnout and overwhelm and starting a business, starting a new clinical, or nonclinical position or non-traditional clinical position or job, side gig, full-time activity.

We wanted to use our mentors. We have over a dozen mentors now in NewScript. They're all experts on those kinds of things. Some are experts in particular industries like pharma or hospitals or academic settings or insurance or things like that. Some are coaches. Some have other expertise. We wanted to use as many of them as we could. So, we started by creating the draft schedule and we started reaching out to people to get commitments for the topic. It was early enough that I don't think the timing was going to be a big deal, meaning that we were so far out (two, three months) in advance that most people had open schedules.

We thought back and forth about how to promote this, and how to post it. Originally I was going to post all of the recordings on my Teachable account, where I have the Nonclinical Career Academy. It has a pretty slick affiliate section because what can happen is I can get affiliates for Teachable to promote my courses. Some of you may have seen that from time to time.

But at the end of the day, consulting some other people and talking, we decided to set up a separate WordPress website, and then add a plugin that could handle all the affiliate marketing, meaning that it would create the affiliate codes for people who are promoting this. It would track who sold things, and who sold access to the all access pass, and then it would automatically process their commissions as the payments came in.

And by the way, we thought about, again, keeping this affordable. And this is another feature of summits, is that a lot of times what they'll do is you've got the free version and then if you purchase the bonus side or the all access pass or there are different terms used for it to get the recordings, to get other things, then there's a small fee. In our case, it's $19. So you can get all 12 hours of everything we're doing for $19 if you sign up for that all access pass before the start of the summit on April 11th.

Now if you wait till after, there are going to be some people that won't even know about the summit, of course, for whatever reason until the summit is going, and then people might be sharing that with their friends and so forth. So, we're going to be marketing it during that week, of course. Once it kicks in on the 11th, then the all access pass increases to $39. Again, nothing. This is a ridiculously low price, but it's going to go up. And part of that is just to promote people to get off the fence and sign up because the price is going to go up.

We'll see probably a little peak on the 10th or 11th in the morning before the price goes up. Then during the summit for three days, if you come in, you're halfway through the live event and you say, "Well man, I really want those lectures, so I'm going to sign up for the pass. It's going to be $39 to do that."

Now, at the end of that three-day period we're going to be promoting it hard on the last day, and then the next day on that Friday, the price goes up to $79 now. That way, in retrospect, if someone goes to the whole thing or attends a lot of the lectures and says, "Boy, in retrospect that was really awesome and I didn't really take a lot of notes, so I want to purchase it." Then for two days, we'll be selling it for $79, and then after those two days pass, we'll be sending out a bunch of emails, letting people know, on that third day after it ends, the price is going to go up to $279 I believe.

It'll be up to us and our affiliate promoters who basically for the most part are speakers to decide if afterward, they want to sell it. And they can do that. They can do it intermittently. We can do it sometimes maybe three months later. We'll decide, "Hey, we had a great summit looking back and maybe we'll promote it again and sell it." And so, we'll keep doing that for probably several months afterward. So, that's how it works. We kind of came up with that plan.

And then we had to think about bonuses. Definitely, the recordings will be something worth a lot, but we thought, "Well, some of the lectures will have supplementary materials and we could try to distribute those during the live event." It's a little difficult. The easiest thing to do is take those bonuses, it might be a checklist, it might be a list of some topic. If the topic is about starting a UM job, it might be a list of companies. If it's about telemedicine, it might be a list of people or companies that hire physicians to work in telemedicine. For me, it's a list of 70 nonclinical jobs.

And also I'm going to put in there, because I'm talking about hospital management, one of the bonuses is going to be access to a 10-course bundle, all related to hospital management jobs. And so, I'm just going to put that up there for free. So, another reason to maybe spend $39 or $79. That course alone is worth about $270 if I remember correctly.

I had to figure out all that stuff ahead of time and how to communicate with our speakers and affiliate marketers, how to get that set up. And I had an associate, one of my social media people, actually is the guy that does my website, set up the website and the affiliate component of that.

And then we had to write a marketing schedule and plan. What does that mean? That means for us to do marketing of the summit, but also to write a bunch of emails, put together some images, some social media posts that the affiliate marketers and speakers could use without having to spend a lot of time promoting it to their customers, their followers, their listeners, readers, whatever it might be.

As of this recording, I'm about three-quarters through writing that. I've already written about 12 or 13 emails. And again, they're completely optional for people to use. They're the ones I'm going to use. But it makes it easier when people don't do a lot of affiliate marketing to be able to say, "Hey, I'm going to pull that email over. I'm going to change a few things about it, make it my own, send it out, and let my followers think about coming to hear me speak." Because each of these affiliates, for the most part, are speakers and to possibly sign up for the all access pass.

We had a lot of conversations about whether we would be able to do this with Zoom. I have a software called WebinarJam, which is actually created to do webinars. It has a lag in it and also it does not enable people to interact verbally at all on WebinarJam. And it's great software. I've made many webinars on that and promoted them, but you can't interact verbally. And so, you have to rely on the chat for people to put in their questions. It works okay.

But we thought we really want this to be live. We'll probably use the chat for most of the questions, but if we want to get someone on and say "I don't quite understand your question, why don't you raise your hand or we'll unmute you and you can ask your question directly, and we'll do our best to answer that question live during the Q&A." Right now, we're 80% of the way there, and so far so good. The thing that we're going to have to face, we need to do another dry run with a bunch of people on the call so we can make sure everything works appropriately in the version of Zoom that I'm using.

And the other thing we have to do is figure out how we're going to turn around the recordings because obviously, we'll be creating four different sessions per evening during the summit so we can hopefully try and get the video and audio recordings edited and ready for placement in the website within a day or two of the actual event. That's another thing we're working on, and trying to coordinate right now.

Those are the main things that we talked about and that we had to do to get this thing off the ground. Right now I'll just summarize where we are with the actual summit. We're on track to deliver those 12 lectures in Q&A sessions starting with four speakers on April 11th at 7:00 PM Eastern, 4:00 PM Pacific, and then four more on the 12th and four more on Thursday the 13th.

The speakers that we have, you may have heard of these people before because I think most of them have been on my podcast, if not all of them. So, let's see. We got Jen Barna who's talking about success coaching. Norman Chapin on pursuing advanced degrees. Andrew Wilner on locum tenens. Cherisa and Alex Sandrow on telemedicine, telehealth. Debra Blaine on writing and self-publishing. Nerissa Kreher on pharma jobs. Jeep and Vanessa Naum. His name is George, but he goes by Jeep. Jeep and Vanessa Naum who are going to be talking about marriage and professional couples particularly as it relates to the stress of burnout or pursuing a new job, new career, which is very stressful on families.

Tom Davis on venture capital advising. Jonathan Vitale on remote UM jobs. Chelsea Turgeon on location independent work internationally. She has a very interesting story. She's been on my podcast, but she's going to get into this in great detail and she's learned even more than she told us about when she was on the podcast a year or so ago.

I'll be talking about hospital executive jobs and I'm pretty certain that I've got someone to cover medical science liaison, which is really an important topic. It's one I talk about a lot because it's one that's accessible to physicians who don't have residency training. It's good for those with residency training and experience as well, but it's one that's commonly sought by those without residency training or board certification. My plan is that that will be Dr. Maria Abunto. All of my speakers are physicians. All of my speakers are physicians although NewScript is designed and run for all clinicians, licensed clinicians who work in the usual healthcare environments where they're abused and taken advantage of.

But a lot of the material that we're going to be talking about would be useful as well to nonphysicians like APNs and PAs and dentists and podiatrists and oral surgeons and social workers and other therapists in the hospital or office setting. We think it's going to be great. And if it goes well, then we'll plan on doing it in the future again. Maybe tweak it a little bit and expand it and we'll go from there.

That's really all I wanted to talk about today. I don't know that I hit every last topic, but these things just need to be approached like any major project. I wrote a project plan which sometimes they're called a Gantt chart. It's basically a large graphic in which each sub-project task is listed on one side. I guess that'd be the Y-axis. And then on the bottom is the X-axis, which has the dates. So I made mine a weekly and what was supposed to happen during each period of time.

And then that way you have this big graphic visual look at when things need to be done. You can check against your plan, you can adjust the plan, you can add things to it pretty easily. I just do it on Excel. That's how physically I put the plan together with Tom. But basically, we split up the different activities and just got going. And so far so good.

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Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

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 Behind the Scenes Look at Planning the First Nonclinical Career Summit – 294 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Today, my guest explains why locum tenens is the best way to practice on your own terms. This is especially true when starting your career following residency or fellowship.

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.

Stephanie earned her medical degree from the University of Alabama School of Medicine. She completed her Internal Medicine Residency at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and her Critical Care Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

She also completed a Geriatrics Fellowship at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. And she obtained an MBA at Auburn University.

Locum Tenens Is the Best Way to Practice

Stephanie started working in a private medical group after completing her fellowship. The group attempted to transition from its traditional outpatient-based practice to an in-house hospital-based service. It did not go well, and ultimately Stephanie lost her job with the group as a result.

But that provided an opportunity for her to complete her MBA. And while searching for her next opportunity, she discovered locum tenens. She was amazed by the practice model. It aligned well with her needs and her desire to run other side hustles.

Coaching and Speaking

Stephanie's enthusiasm is contagious. So is her love of locum tenens as a way to practice on her own terms. If more of us would follow her example, I think we might enjoy our clinical careers much more. She has developed her speaking and coaching by teaching others about locums and other nonclinical careers.

To learn more about all that she does, you should visit her website at drstephanieicu.com. Better yet, if you want to access Stephanie’s Free 5 Step Process for getting a locums position, go to freelocumstraining.com.

Licensed to Live Conference July 16 & 17, 2021

I know that I’ll learn more about locums myself when I attend Dr. Stephanie’s presentation at the upcoming Licensed to Live Conference in Philadelphia. It’s not too late to join Stephanie and me there. I will be sharing my expertise about unconventional career options based on almost 4 years of interviews with experts on the topic.

You can learn all about the conference at www.licensedtolive.com. Don’t forget to use my Coupon Code “nonclinical” (all lower case) to get a $50 discount on the registration fee. That also lets Dr. Jarret Patton know that I invited you.

Summary

The passionate coach and speaker Dr. Stephanie Freeman explains her reasons for choosing locum tenens as the best way to practice. And she provides advice and inspiration for physicians looking to bring more freedom and success to their professional lives.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode that you can download or read.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Dr. Stephanie Freeman's Web Site
• Free Locum Tenens Training
• Licensed to Live Conference (Use “nonclinical” coupon code for a $50 discount)

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 Episode 202

- Why Is Locum Tenens a Doctor's Top Career Alternative? - Interview with Dr. Stephanie Freeman

John: In less than three weeks from the release of this episode, I will be participating in the live licensed to live conference at the Marriott Philadelphia hotel, organized and presented by Dr. Jarret Patton. I can't wait. And one of the esteemed presenters at the conference is here with me today. She's a sought-after speaker, author of several books, expert on entrepreneurship, nonclinical careers, and locum tenens where she's done a lot of. So, Dr. Stephanie Freeman, welcome to the PNC podcast.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Thank you so much John for having me. I'm so excited and honored to be here.

John: Well, it's my pleasure because I love to hear about non-traditional careers. So that's where the locums come in. I also like to talk to other people who are doing coaching for physicians or with physicians and teaching entrepreneurship. So, we have a lot to cover today. Before we get into the nitty-gritty here, I need to know about your background a little bit and clinically what you have been doing, but where your education was. And then we can segue into what you're up to now.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Yes. So, I'm Dr. Stephanie Freeman. I'm a double board-certified critical care physician, born and raised in Alabama. So, the accent is a real accent. I am a true southerner. I was born and raised in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I live in Houston, Texas. So, like I said, I am a true southerner.

I did medical school at UAB School of Medicine. I did an internal medicine residency at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Then I did a geriatrics fellowship, and then I did a critical care fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. And then I got my MBA at Auburn University and I'm double board-certified twice over. And it's about time for me to recertify in internal medicine in 2023. And so, those recertification years, whew, they kind of come at you quickly.

And I've been doing locums since 2008. And so, I am a locum's expert. I live the locum's life. I am currently on a locum assignment in Alaska right now. I work anywhere between 14 and 21 locum shifts a month. So, I am truly living the locum's life.

John: Awesome. So, we're going to definitely get into that because I have a lot of questions about just your personal experience with locums. But I do want to segue a little bit, or at least make a right turn here because I know you're doing other things. You're teaching other physicians, you're a speaker, you've written several books. So, tell us how those activities started out.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: You know how in medical school and in residency, there was always that one physician that was always doing other stuff, that always had like a side hustle going on, that was always the one that was moonlighting? I was that physician. I was that girl. Because it goes back to how I was raised. My parents got divorced when I was young and my mother is a teacher and she just retired after 42 years of teaching. And so, my mother was the teacher and she was raising two kids on a teacher's salary and it was tough. But she always had extra jobs. In addition to the full-time teaching, she always taught extra jobs, always did extra stuff, just so that she could take care of us. And so, I picked up that from her.

And then my mom was also an entrepreneur as well. She always told us about the importance of owning your own business. Then she had always been a strong believer that entrepreneurship was the way to go. So as a matter of fact, my mother was the one who told me to go back and get my MBA because she's an English teacher. She reads, she knows about the different trends that are coming because she spends all day reading because she's an English teacher.

And so, she was like, "You really need to go back and get your MBA because I really foresee that that's something that physicians are going to need". So, I kind of had that in my bones. Always about, I love medicine, but I love entrepreneurship. And there are so many other things that I want to experience and do and be.

I would tell you that I fell into locums and that it was a fairytale story, but there are no such things as fairy tales. Actually, the way I fell into locums was the fact that after I finished my training at the University of Pittsburgh and John, you know how we are all so idealistic when we finished training. And we think that we're just going to save the world because we think that everybody's going to welcome us with open arms and experience, love us for what we have to offer as physicians who want to change the world. Well, we know it doesn't happen like that.

So, my first job out of fellowship, here I was finishing up a critical care fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. The University of Pittsburgh was where critical care was born. So, we're all about critical care and right here, right now with the intensivist model, I had really fallen in love with Pittsburgh and I wanted to stay and there was this nice little community hospital 10 minutes from my house. And I thought I was just going to work there and settle down and get married and have a family. And that didn't work.

So, I take this job with the private group. And so, you know where I'm going with this. So, a private group, pulmonary critical care doctors, here I am coming from an academic center that was used to the intensivist model. This private pulmonary critical care group is not used to that, but they're trying to transition to an intensivist model, and needless to say it didn't work out. So, my contract was not renewed and I was devastated. Because you don't hear about physicians undergoing contract non-renewals are A.K.A being fired. Nobody tells us about that in residency and fellowship. Nobody tells us about that.

The traditional physician employment model is either you are employed as a physician or you're in private practice or you're in academics. And the traditional model is that you stay at one job forever. So, we weren't prepared. And I was not prepared for this churning of the medical marketplace. And I was surprised and devastated needless to say, but remember, I'd always been that fellow and that resident that always had a moonlighting gig. I always had something in my back pocket. So, I was just able to be like, "Okay, well this isn't working out. Let me just call so and so from the hospital down the street, I still have privileges. Let me just slide into their schedule". Fine. No worries.

Then I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And I had these other business ideas that I was kind of dibbling and dabbling in. And my mom was like, "You really need to consider getting an MBA if you're going to do all of this extra stuff". And I was like, "Sure, I'll do it".

And the way I fell into doing locums, it's the funniest thing. I was at a critical care conference with my critical care bestie. One of the locums' companies had a display and I was like, "Huh, what is this?" And they just started talking to me. I was like, cool. They explained to me what locum was, but you have to remember, I had always done moonlighting. So, I was used to that concept of sliding in, filling in for a shift or a couple of shifts where I'm needed, leave, get paid, rinse and repeat.

I was already used to that concept. So, I was like, "You can really do this". So, when I took my first locums assignment, I was like, this isn't bad because I went, worked, and had a nice time. Money was in my account the next 10 days. And at that time, I was transitioning to getting my MBA. And I was like, I'll just work enough shifts to pay my bills, to support what I need to do. And I can focus on getting my MBA. So, that's really just how I got started with my locum's journey. It was kind of by accident, but by design.

John: All right. I got a comment on some of those things. First, you're right, in terms of the traditional way that we practice, because we're the type of business as a physician that you have to usually build a practice. So, if you're going to be a hairdresser or you're going to be a barber, or you're going to be a plumber, or are going to be a physician, you want to build a practice over time. It's kind of gone out the window now with the way people are churned through, you got a two-year or three-year contract, "Oh, we're not going to renew it for whatever reason". So, there's a lot of that now. And it has changed a lot. So, you didn't know though what locums wasn't necessarily, other than what you were doing with moonlighting, but once you found out, you really were attracted to that model.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: I had no idea that it was a thing. I knew moonlighting was a thing, but I didn't know it was a thing and an entire industry. And there were higher agencies who did nothing but that. Because where we're coming through, we weren't exposed to that. And if we weren't supposed to, it was kind of like, "Oh, what's wrong with them? Why can't they get a real job?"

John: What was that first one like? Was it something that was recurring like every month after month, certain days? Or was it like a set for six weeks or weekends? How was that whole structure of that first one?

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Maybe in a critical care physician, we work in shifts. So full-time critical care is like fourteen 12 hour shifts a month. And so, the staffing model is kind of like seven days on, seven days off 12-hour shifts either day or night shifts or day shifts with call. So, for that first assignment, I went to Pikeville, Kentucky. That's a whole nother conversation. I went to Pikeville, Kentucky. I worked at this hospital seven days in a row and took call at night. And at the time, for me, the money was bonkers. It was ridiculous. I'm like, "Y'all are paying how much money? Sign me up!" And so, I went really in the middle of nowhere, middle of Appalachian, black girl, black doctor, and I came out alive, survived it.

John: So, was that recurring? How long were you doing those seven days shifts?

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: I think I did that assignment for maybe four, maybe six months. And that's kind of typical for these things because when you take a locum's assignment it is usually because of one or two reasons. It's usually because the place is trying to build a program or they just lost some physician. So, they only need you for a couple of months until they're able to recruit and onboard their new physicians. And that's exactly what locum is. Locum is Latin for placeholder. That's exactly what you are. You're holding a place until a permanent physician arrives. And usually, they only need you for two or three months, three or four months, and you just fit into the schedule like they need you. And then it's off to the next assignment.

John: You've been doing locums for a long time, from what I understand. So, you've mentioned some of the reasons you like it or love it. Tell us some of the reasons why it's a good option for physicians. Particularly I would think someone who was looking to do something different, wants a little more freedom.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Absolutely. It's a great option because it allows you time to transition. We are all so tired. We've been in school for 20 years. And then when you get out of school, it's this constant grind, not of just being a physician, but also of having to, like you say, build a practice or establish yourself, or build a rapport or get being an attending physician under your feet.

And then there are the finances that everybody deals with. But we're not honest enough about it. So, you got these loans or you have these other obligations you need to pay back. But then again, at the same time, you're tired of living in self-deprivation. So, then you want to have a nice lifestyle. You want a house in a nice neighborhood, in a good school district. You want to be able to start taking some vacations.

Locums gives you the opportunity to say, "Okay, this traditional medicine thing isn't working for me. And I may not have quite figured out what I want to do, but I need to figure it out. But meanwhile, I need to be able to pay my bills". Locums give you the opportunity to transition. So, you can go from being an employed physician that has a whole bunch of restrictions, because you know that the employer physician contract is very restrictive. You may not be able to moonlight. You may not be able to write a book. They want to claim your intellectual property. You may not be able to go speak anywhere. They want to give you permission. You may not be able to do case reviews or legal depositions.

When you're an employed physician, there are so many things that you can't do. Meanwhile, we are all multitalented and the whole world needs all of us. And you want to transition to some of the other things, but you still have bills to pay.

So, I look at sometimes locums as being that middle ground that's going to help you get to your promised land because you can leave traditional employment, transition to nontraditional careers, nonclinical careers, but locums will give you the finances that you can still do it. Because you can still moonlight. You can still do locums because you're an independent contractor. You're still making a great salary, but you don't have the restrictions of an employed physician.

So, these places where I go work, they know me as Dr. Freeman. They don't know me as Dr. Stephanie. They don't know that I do locum coaching. They don't know that I have books. They don't know that I have webinars. They don't know and they don't care because they've contracted with Dr. Freeman. Dr. Freeman is going to work these 14 days. Dr. Freeman is going to do her job and take care of the patients and not mix and mingle things.

While I'm working for them, I'm doing critical care work. But when I'm not at that hospital and when I'm not on the clock, what I do with my time is my time and they have no claim to it. And that's not necessarily the case when you're an employed physician. So that's what locums are able to help people do. Locums can be the bridge to, like I said, your dream life from where you're coming from.

John: Yeah, I hadn't thought about that before. I've talked to people who've done locums and it never occurred to me that it's ideal for those that are natural entrepreneurs. People diversify their income through other passive income or active income activities. So yeah, it really gives you, you just have to plan things out appropriately, obviously, during those times when you're not working as a clinician. And I would assume also it varies a little bit by your specialty. But yeah, it sounds pretty attractive.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Oh, it is. It's amazing. I was just on the phone the other day with a gynecologist who is going through a horrible time at her job. But she's an entrepreneur and she's building an amazing beauty brand. And I'm like, "Honey, let me help you do locums so that you can fulfill your real dream and your real calling with your beauty brand and your entrepreneurship. Let me help you with that transition". Because I'm like "You know it's time for you to go. It's time for you to leave that job and transition over. And that's why you're having problems on that job because you know you need to leave. Let me help you transition through".

John: All right. We're going to talk about some of the other things you're doing, but I do want to have you maybe give us two or three landmines to avoid, so to speak, or things that we need to be a little careful about if we decide to pursue locums.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: The first thing that you really need to be careful about, I say your locum's experience is really made or broken based on the company you choose to work with. And so many physicians when they get started have a bad experience because they didn't work with the good locum's company or a good locum's recruiter who really explained the process to them. A lot of physicians ended up kind of feeling like they've been taken advantage of.

So, I would say the first thing you need to do is really vet these companies and vet these recruiters so that you can make sure that you're getting somebody who is going to treat you fairly. That's the first thing.

The second thing, and I think this is the biggest thing that a lot of physicians fall prey to, is not managing their expectations. A lot of physicians have either unrealistic expectations of what locums is, or they just don't know what to expect. And they think everything is going to go perfectly. And we physicians are type-A people and we expect everything to be done decently in order.

But one of my favorite recruiters used to say something to me that really made a difference. He said, "If these places that need your services had everything together, they wouldn't need you".

John: That's true.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: So, think about it. If they had everything together, they wouldn't need temporary physicians because their physicians wouldn't have quit or they wouldn't have been in turmoil if everything was together. So, I have to tell my physicians who are going on these assignments to keep an open mind and to go with the flow because things are not going to run smoothly. Because if everything was going to run smoothly and be perfect, they wouldn't need you to be there.

And so, once you kind of lower your expectations and be like, "Okay, it is what it is. I'm just here to see the patients and make sure these patients get the care that they need and let everything else kind of fall into place".

John: Now, at the same time, I've heard from some of my friends who have done locums that they usually welcome you. They're looking forward to having you there because they really need you.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Yeah. Some of them are. They're like, "Oh my God, you're here. Thank you for coming. We need help". So, it's actually been kind of fun, but at the same time, you can walk into some pretty nasty political situations. And that goes back to getting a good recruiter who is giving you the 411 about what is actually going on and why you're actually there.

I've walked into some situations in which it's like the group that was there, unceremoniously lost their contract and it was a big deal. And then they're bringing locums in until they can bring the other permanent doctors there. And so, then it's a lot of chaos. It's lot of hurt feelings. People have chips on their shoulders and they're taking it on the locum's doctor. And you're like, "I'm just here to work. I don't know anything. I'm sorry". So, I've been in those situations as well too.

John: But you're there to take care of the patients, right? The patients need you. And so, you've got to fill in while they're trying to sort through their political messes.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Exactly.

John: We're going to be at the conference in a few weeks with Dr. Jarrett Patton. And so, are you going to be covering this topic? What are you going to be talking about at the conference?

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: What I'm going to be talking about in the conference is how do we locums and considering locums during this pandemic. And the reason why I'm talking about this is because, as you know John, this COVID pandemic has completely ended the way medicine is practiced. And I think a lot of physicians are now realizing that we are seen as disposable.

We have physicians who literally put their lives on the line, continue to work throughout this pandemic, which is still going on. We worked extra hours. We faced unsafe situations. We worked with a lack of PPE. We will call it heroes and some of us got thanked by what? Getting fired? Contracts not renewed and facing pay cuts? And that's because the market has changed because money has changed. Cash flow has changed.

And so, I'm here to really talk about how physicians who are in this churning of contracts are being renegotiated because hospitals and healthcare organizations are redoing their practice models and their financial models, how physicians can utilize locums as a way to kind of shore up themselves personally and professionally and financially.

Because even though we think the pandemic is over, we physicians know it's not over. The numbers are dropping, but we know this isn't over. And we're now seeing the financial ramifications of this. I've talked to many physicians who have just lost their jobs. I've talked to many physicians whose contracts are being renegotiated and not in a favorable way.

So, I'm going to talk about how we can use locums and the types of locums that we need to be doing in order to be able to navigate these market changes that have happened as a result of this pandemic.

John: Okay. So that's going to be awesome. I'm definitely going to have links later in the show notes for the conference. Licensedtolive.com basically is going to be where you go. But I'll talk more about that in my outline. But the thing is not everyone is going to be able to come to that conference. Although I want everyone to come and say hello to both of us if they can. So, they can get some more information and training about locums from you directly, from what I understand at www.freelocumstraining.com.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: That's right.

John: So, tell us a little bit about that. What will we get out of that?

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Yeah, this is just a little introductory course that really will give you the basics about what you need to do to get started doing locums right now. Just an easy five-step process. And I've had so many people get this and get started with it because I tell everybody the time to get started with considering locums is now. If it has crossed your mind, then it's time to get started now. And so, that's what that course is about. It's a free course, and it talks about just the steps you need to take in order to begin your locum's journey.

John: I'll put that link in there, but there is planning involved in doing locums from what I understand. So, you don't want to just jump into it and think you're going to have your first position in a week from now.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: No, no, no. I will take you through the process.

John: That'll be awesome. But now with the locums that you've done, and you're obviously creating courses for people, but you're doing some other things. I saw that you're a speaker. Can you tell us some of the venues you've talked at?

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Yes. I have spoken at The Momentum and Medicine conference, which was amazing. I've also spoken in The Women and White Coats virtual conference. And then I also did a talk about locums for the virtual conference for the American College of Osteopathic Obstetrician and Gynecologists. And that was amazing and it was extremely well-received.

John: Very nice. And then you've got some books. I read that your most recent book is about locums. So, we can get those on Amazon, right?

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: That is correct.

John: And of course, you have your website, which is drstephanieicu.com. Also, you're doing some coaching. So, tell us about that.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Yes. I am doing some coaching. And I have some online coaching programs and online courses because what I really want to do is to allow physicians to know that they have options. There are so many people that are on the verge of just hanging up their white coats and their stethoscopes. And I'm like, "You don't have to do that. There is a better way. Let's figure it out".

So, I do some one-on-one coaching and I also have some online courses that are designed to walk physicians through the process in more detail and tell them about not only how to get clarity about why you're doing locums, how to look for good recruiters, how to choose assignments, what is a good market rate to get paid for your assignments, but also some of the business issues and the tax issues and the legal issues that are associated with being a locums doctor and an independent contractor. So, I do have some online courses for those as well.

John: Yeah. I think that's a big thing that some physicians forget about is if you're going to be doing any kind of freelancing or locums, things like that, you really have to have your own LLC and set up the proper structure, protect yourself liability-wise.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: And pay those taxes.

John: Taxes? Oh, yeah. You've got to make those estimated tax payments during the year, or are you going to be in for a big shock at the end of the year. But it's good. You're a natural entrepreneur and your mom pushed you for that MBA. That gives you a little head start than let's say the typical physician who's come right out of residency and never thought about those things.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: You know what? I love working with residents. I do. And I think it's an excellent way for them to get started in their medical career. Because what I like to tell residents who are about to be attending is to say that "You don't know anything about your style as an attending. You don't know what you value. You don't know what's important".

And sometimes they feel a relief that they can just do locums and not have to worry about signing a three-year contract right off the bat. So, it gives them some leeway. It gives them some breathing room. It gives them six months, eight months to take some time to relax and know themselves as human beings and really a way through this job market and to make the right choice. So, anybody can do locums at any stage in their career.

John: It sounds like if you're doing it at the beginning, you get to check out some different geographic locations around the country, different structures, big groups, little groups, rural, big cities. So yeah, it makes a whole lot of sense, especially at the beginning, but I've known people that have done it at all parts of their career too.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: All parts.

John: All right, now we're going to have to go soon. So, do you have any last bits of advice for our listeners who are thinking about nonclinical careers or locums, or other nontraditional careers?

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: I say, go for it. There are so many opportunities out there. And I say, do your research, keep an open mind, but don't be afraid to go for it. And the time is now.

John: Awesome. Great words of wisdom. I can't wait to talk to you face to face in Philadelphia in a few weeks. That's going to be fun and we're going to really try to inspire the guests that come and listen to the students and people that attend. And so, before we go, I will, again, recommend if you are interested in locums to go to www.freelocumstraining.com or go to drstephanieicu.com to see everything else that Stephanie is up to. And I want to thank you for being here today. It's been great. And I think my listeners are going to love this episode.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Thanks for having me and I'll see you in Philadelphia.

John: Okay. Bye-bye now.

Dr. Stephanie Freeman: Bye.

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Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

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 Why Locum Tenens Is the Best Way to Practice on Your Own Terms – 202 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In this episode of the PNC podcast, I present an excerpt from the upcoming What to Consider Next Virtual Conference that may help you find your new career!

This live, interactive online conference is being presented by Michelle Mudge-Riley and Physicians Helping Physicians in July 2020.

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, with over 650 graduates. And, unlike other programs, which typically run 1 – 1/2 to 2 years, this program only takes a year to complete. Recently, Economist Magazine ranked the business school #1 in the world for the Most Relevant Executive MBA.

While in the program, you'll participate in a company project, thereby contributing to your organization. As a result, the University of Tennessee PEMBA students bring exceptional value to their organizations.

Graduates have taken leadership positions at major healthcare organizations. And they've become entrepreneurs and business owners.

By joining the University of Tennessee physician executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills needed to find a career that you really love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office by calling (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Three Principles

Physicians are all “family.” We're all part of a guild or fraternity/sorority because we've all gone through a shared experience as part of our education. So we feel a kinship. And we hurt when other physicians are unhappy or distressed.

Secondly, like everybody else, we deserve a career that we love. We're not more entitled than anybody else. But given all of the years that we spend studying and preparing to serve others, we should at least find a career that we love.

The other principle is that physicians are natural leaders. It's built into our training. Many potential nonclinical careers involve leadership. And physicians are desperately needed to serve more leadership roles in healthcare.

Here's Where You Might Find Your New Career

There are dozens of careers that have this one thing in common: they are only available to physicians. Here are a few suggestions to help you find your new career.

Hospital-Based Positions

There are utilization management, clinical documentation improvement, and informatics. And these may lead to an executive career as Chief Medical Officer or Chief Information Officer.

Medical Writer

Medical writing is a diverse field. You might start as a freelance writer, and work from home. Or you can join a medical communications company as a writer, and then move up to editor or medical director. 

Coaching

Coaching has become a popular career. It allows physicians to apply much of what attracted them to medicine. But there are none of the insurance hassles or on-call duties.

Other Careers

The list goes on and on: life and disability insurance, consulting, teaching, public speaking, and nontraditional clinical careers such as telemedicine and locum tenens work.

The Conference

The speakers are awesome. They are all experts in physician career transition, starting with the organizer, Dr. Michelle Mudge-Riley. She has been coaching and teaching physicians for over 15 years.

Then there is Dr. Michael McLaughlin, who wrote one of the first books addressing physician nonclinical career transition. He is also known for:

• founding the Physicians Renaissance Network,
• creating his own medical communications business, and
• moderating the Non-Clinical Careers for Physicians LinkedIn Group. 

In addition to the great speakers and mentors, this live online conference is set up to allow you to network with other attendees, speakers, and mentors during designated break-outs. Using a sophisticated platform, you can move from virtual table to virtual table, asking questions, and getting feedback directly from the experts.

The whole experience is designed to allow you to interact with colleagues and speakers without the cost of travel and lodging or the fear of exposure to a pandemic.

Summary

There are dozens of unconventional careers for physicians. Some are open to physicians who have not completed a residency or who no longer have a license. With so many options, your real problem is going to be selecting one and preparing yourself to land that first job.

Download This Episode:

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

The Clinicians Career Cooperative Official Launch Was June 1, 2020.

This is the ONLINE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS for nonclinical, and unconventional clinical, jobs and side gigs. We have started with some of the most influential names in clinical career transition, including:

• Maiysha Clairborne
• Michelle Mudge-Riley
• Tom Davis
• Marjorie Stiegler
• Phil Boucher
• Mike Woo-Ming
• Jarret Patton
• Jill Wener
• Christopher Loo
• Lisa Jenks
• Mandy Armitage
• Brent Lacey

There is an automatic 7-day Free Trial. So, this is a no-risk opportunity to connect with experts and begin your career transition today.

To check it out, head to the Clinicians Career Cooperative.

Follow 4 Easy Steps:

After clicking the link and heading to the Cooperative and watching the Welcome Video…

1. click the Teal Colored JOIN NOW button, then,
2. select the annual or monthly membership by clicking the Sign-Up Link, then
3. add your registration information, and
4. click REGISTER HERE to join the Cooperative.

It's that simple.

Imagine what it will be like 6 to 12 months from now to start a fulfilling career, and leave behind the headaches, long hours, and constant threat of a lawsuit. Joining the Cooperative is the first step on that journey!

So head over to the Clinicians Career Cooperative.

The post Is It Really That Hard to Find Your New Career? – 148 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

I’m still super excited by the conference I attended last weekend in Austin, Texas. And I want to talk about it today.

Enjoying Austin Texas

I apologize for any confusion around the numbering of today's episode. I recorded this after my interview with Marjorie Stiegler, so this is Episode 85 and the next one will be Episode 84, because it was too late to change the numbering on it. But no big deal.

The Physicians Helping Physicians Networking conference took place on April 6 and 7. There were close to 100 of you attending this first meeting. It was great.

Michelle Mudge-Riley did a great job pulling this off. She and all of the presenters were very pleased by the response – by your interest and engagement.

And it was a fantastic experience. Austin is such a cool city.

I arrived a day early and spent Friday with a close friend I hadn’t seen in several years. Rich had the whole day planned.

Visiting the Bullock Museum

We started by heading to the University of Texas campus to watch the Bullock Museum's 16-minute film Star of Destiny. Historic events such as the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 come to life with special lighting, and amazing sound effects. The seats shake as a gusher explodes from an East Texas oil derrick and the Saturn V takes off as if youre seated at Mission Control in Houston. Sound and sensory effects, such as wind and smoke, made it a truly memorable experience.

Revolving Suchi Bar and Ziplines

We ate lunch at one of the revolving sushi bars in Austin, where you electronically order your soup and it arrives via a conveyor belt 2 minutes later. Then you can pull a dish right off the lower conveyor that presents a continuous stream of sushi, sashimi and other Japanese delights. It was quite an experience and the food was very good.

We had a quick drink at the Oasis Restaurant with its awesome view of Lake Travis, then headed over to Lake Tavis Zipline Adventures. The experience included a ½ – mile zipline. It ended with parallel ziplines in which Rich and I raced each other on the fastest ziplines in Texas.

The conference ran from Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon. Michelle welcomed everyone and kicked it off – then we heard each of the presenters describe their career journeys.

Between sessions, the other mentors and I had a chance to meet with many of you. I was pleased to personally meet those of you who have engaged on the Facebook group, connected by email, or spoken with me by phone.

Collaborating with Excellent Speakers

I had the opportunity to reconnect with online colleagues and former guests, including Heather Fork, Brian Young, Mike Woo-Ming, Dara Lipshutz, Jon Larson, Lynette Charity and our host Michelle Mudge-Riley.

I enjoyed partnering with Dr. Jay Dave to speak about six careers for non-residency trained physicians. Those careers include:

• Medical Science Liaison
• Medical Writing
• Clinical Documentation Improvement
• Med Communications
• Consulting
• Medical Monitor

Dr. Jesse Lopez and I addressed podcasting. I was surprised at how many of you were thinking about doing a podcast. We had fun sharing our experiences with you.

I also talked about my experiences in hospital management. The highlight may have been when I used Guidestar.org to demonstrate that the CMO of a community hospital just outside Chicago was paid over $800,000. The salaries for hospital and health system executives are very good.

Great Speakers and Mentors

Let me mention the rest of the speakers. They included Heather Fork, Lynn Marie Morski, Mike Woo-Ming, Leslie Bohl, Swarma Balasubramaniam, Matt McGuire, Brian Young, Christopher Leonard, Natasha Nurse, Jon Larson, Tom Miller, Jim Klopp, Swati Shah, Rich Berning, and Dara Lipschutz.

We addressed many topics of interest to those considering a change to their current job situation: mindset issues, careers in pharma and hospital management, entrepreneurship and start-up investing, UM medical director, personal branding, online marketing, public speaking, informatics, expert witness, independent medical exams, coaching, weight loss clinics, locum tenens, resume writing, optimizing your LinkedIn profile, and more.

There were some videos recorded, and I may be able to make those available to you in a few weeks. I’ll let you know when they’re available.

To those who said hello and told me that you listen to the podcast – I really appreciate you. You’re what makes all of this worthwhile.

It was a very exciting conference. I plan on bringing several of the faculty onto the PNC podcast over coming weeks.

I apologize if I have forgotten to mention anyone involved in the conference.

Before I go, I have a quick request of you. I could use a few more ratings and reviews. It helps to get the word out about the podcast. If you get a minute scroll down to the bottom of your favorite smartphone app or go to iTunes on your desktop and post a quick comment and rating.

Please join me in a few days for episode 084 when I present my interview with Dr. Marjorie Stiegler. Her career has been remarkable and I know you’ll enjoy it.

Our Sponsor

This podcast is made possible by the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program offered by the Haslam College of Business.

The UT PEMBA is the longest running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country, with over 650 graduates. It only takes a year to complete.

University of Tennessee PEMBA students bring exceptional value to their organizations. The curriculum includes a number of major assignments and a company project.

If you want to acquire the business and management skills needed to advance your nonclinical career, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office by calling (865) 974-6526 or going to vitalpe.net/physicianmba.

I hope to see you next time on the PNC Podcast.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and leave a review on iTunes.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton.

Disclaimers:

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. 

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

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

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

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The post What Is the Most Exciting New Nonclinical Career Conference? – 085 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

My timetable for the podcast prep this week was a little compressed because I spent 2 days attending the 15th Annual SEAK Non-Clinical Careers for Physicians Conference. And that put me a little behind.

I recorded my observations during the conference, and I’m going to share those with you today.

I wouldn’t ordinarily spend an entire episode promoting a conference. However, many of you have asked about it, and I believe it’ll be helpful to tell you more about it. Some of you may need a little more information to help you decide whether to attend next year.

To be clear, I have no affiliation with SEAK. And I registered and paid to attend just like everybody else.

A Unique Resource for Physicians

But this is the only meeting that presents an overview of career options for physicians. The SEAK meeting has two other unique features.

• 30 to 40 physicians working in nonclinical careers, including career coaches, meet with attendees in 15-minute appointments to give advice and answer questions about nonclinical options.
• A small number of employers interested in recruiting physicians to nonclinical jobs attend the conference to answer questions and set up interviews.

This year’s meeting was held on October 20 and 21, at the Crown Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel and Conference Center It's actually located in Rosemont, Illinois. That puts it only 10 minutes away from the airport. So, it’s easy to get to if you’re flying into Chicago.

I happen to live just south of Chicago, so I was able to commute to and from the conference each day. As a result, I don’t have any insight into the hotel accommodations. But I didn’t hear of any complaints.

An Apology

Before I go any further, I want to apologize to one of my listeners. Shortly after arriving, as I was entering the conference space, one of the physician attendees said hello. And she mentioned that she enjoyed my podcast. I think I responded with a nod, and hardly slowed down, as I tried to locate one of the mentors.

I want you to know that I’m truly sorry that I didn’t stop to thank you for listening to the podcast, and for your encouragement. That was very rude of me.

I should have stopped to chat. I’d really like to hear what you have to say about the podcast, and if you have any suggestions for improving it. So, PLEASE — email me at john.jurica.md@gmail.com or call me at 815-263-3486 so I can apologize in person and chat for a few minutes.

The 2018 SEAK Conference

The conference is laid out well. All of the meetings were held next to the hall where mentors and vendors were set up.

The SEAK staff confirmed that the conference continues to grow, with attendance easily exceeding last year’s. I estimated that there were well over 400 physicians at the meeting.

In addition to attending the individual sessions, and catching up with friends, it was fun to speak with physicians at the meeting, to hear their stories.

For example, I had a chance to chat with a physician while waiting for the first plenary session to begin. I’ll call him “Robert” to keep up his anonymity. He appeared a bit somber, as he explained how he lost his license and had been unable to practice while involved in litigation to recover it.

His efforts were unsuccessful, so he decided to attend the meeting to learn about nonclinical careers he might pursue. Since I had attended last year’s meeting, I gave him advice to help him optimize his time at the meeting. I did catch up with him later to see how things were going. I’ll describe his comments later.

Feedback from Attendees

The enthusiasm and optimism that many of the attendees expressed by the end of the meeting impressed me.

At lunch on Sunday, I spoke with three physicians who were all very hopeful. An anesthesiologist nearing retirement was intrigued with becoming an expert witness. He plans to slowly build such a career part-time, while winding down his clinical activities. The others at the table identified several leads on careers they were going to evaluate further.

I spoke with a pediatric physiatrist, only a year into her clinical career. She found it unfulfilling and was considering several nonclinical alternatives.

Three physicians recognized me and told me that they enjoyed the podcast. That made my day. And it helps motivate me to continue. They also provided me with helpful feedback and ideas for future episodes.

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash

I ran into “Robert” several times during the conference, and each time he seemed very positive and more optimistic. When I asked him how things were going, he responded “fantastic” with a big smile on his face.

My Take-Aways

There were too many take-aways to list them all, but a few stood out for me.

• The presenters and mentors all expressed a great deal of hope and optimism.
• In just 2 days, we heard about more than 25 potential nonclinical careers or part-time jobs.
• Many presenters emphasized the importance of networking as the foundation for finding a new position.
• Several also mentioned the importance of maintaining a complete, professional-looking LinkedIn profile.
• Pharmaceutical companies have multiple categories of nonclinical career opportunities – with variations in educational background, travel requirements, and ability to work from home.
• Consulting, medical writing, and medical science liaison are often open to foreign medical graduates, and those who are not residency trained or board certified.
• Hospitals, Independent Review Organizations, and health insurers need utilization reviewers. And previous experience is often not required.
• Telemedicine can be a great job for physicians who prefer to work at home, or as a bridge when shifting from clinical to nonclinical work.
• The field of hospital and health system quality improvement demonstrates a growing need for medical directors and chief quality officers.

Conclusion

I could go on, but you get the idea. There is an ever-expanding need for physicians willing and able to take on these and many other nonclinical careers.

Attending the SEAK Annual Conference is one way to learn about those careers, while obtaining mentoring and exploring employment opportunities.

I hope you found this episode helpful. If you have any questions for me, send me an email at johnjurica@nonclinical.buzzmybrand.net.

Sign up for my twice weekly newsletter, including my weekly update called Creating My Online Business, by going to vitalpe.net/newsletter.

Please join me next week for my review of the book The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks, and a discussion about how the principles presented in the book apply to your career transition.

Disclaimer:

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

The opinions are my own, and my guest's, and not those of any organization(s) that I'm a member of, or affiliated with. The information presented is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. It should not be construed as advice, such a medical, legal, tax, emotional or other types of advice.

If you take action on any information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult a professional, e.g., attorney, accountant, career counsellor, etc., before making any major decisions related to the subject matter of the blog and podcast.

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

The easiest ways to listen:  vitalpe.net/itunes or vitalpe.net/stitcher

The post Despair and Hope at the 2018 SEAK Conference – 057 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.