Interview with Dr. Nneka Unachukwu – 350

In today's episode, Dr. Una returns to the podcast to teach us how to use her visibility formula and to tell us about her new book.

Two years ago, Dr. Una introduced us to the transformative power of entrepreneurship for physicians. Now, she shares the strategies that have propelled her clients to success, with practical advice for physicians ready to embark on their entrepreneurial journey.

Our Show Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast. The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Our Episode Sponsor

Dr. Debra Blaine is a physician like many of you, and her greatest challenge was fear. The whole concept of leaving clinical medicine was terrifying. But she is so much happier now as a professional writer and a coach. According to Debra, “It’s like someone turned the oxygen back on.” If fear is part of your struggle, too, she would like to help you push through those emotional barriers to go after the life you really want. Click this link to schedule a free chat. Or check out her website at allthingswriting.com/resilience-coaching.

The Visibility Formula: Unlocking Business Success for Physicians

Dr. Una explains the core principles of her latest book, The Visibility Formula. The book aims to empower physicians to overcome challenges in marketing and branding their businesses. From redefining introversion in entrepreneurship to practical strategies for increasing visibility, she offers valuable insights into building a thriving medical practice.

Practical Strategies for Physician Entrepreneurs

Dr. Una shares actionable tips and strategies for physicians venturing into entrepreneurship. She provides concrete steps for building a sustainable and successful medical practice or business, from identifying target audiences to leveraging social media. Drawing from her own experiences and those of her clients, Dr. Una offers valuable insights into overcoming common challenges and achieving long-term business success.

Summary

From homeschooling her children to leading The EntreMD Business School, Dr. Una's journey is filled with insights for physicians seeking to navigate the entrepreneurial world.

In her latest book, “The Visibility Formula,” Dr. Una unlocks the secrets to business success for physicians, offering practical strategies to overcome introversion, master visibility, and build thriving practices.

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

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

Links for Today's Episode:

• Dr. Una's website [EntreMD]
• EntreMD Podcast
• The Visibility Formula: Taking Your Business From Best Kept Secret To Household Name (Amazon Affiliate Link)
• The EntreMD Method Book
• Purchase Your All Action Pass Videos and Bonuses from the 2024 Summit
• Dr. Debra Blaine's Coaching Services

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 350

How to Apply the Visibility Formula to Become Known

- Interview with Dr. Nneka Unachukwu

John: I found that one of the best ways for physicians to thrive in today's healthcare environment is to opt out of the traditional corporate employment. That just doesn't do it for most of us. And as an alternative, build your own practice or a healthcare-related business. And to do that, of course, you need business knowledge and marketing knowledge. And that's why I brought on today's guest because she is an expert in both. Maybe we'll get she's taught so many people how to start a business, run a business, optimize a business, market a business. And so, I want to welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Nneka Unuchukwu.

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Hi, John. Thank you so much for having me back. This is a treat.

John: Yeah. And of course, you are being a presenter at the summit, which starts a week from now, but it's actually in the past by the time this is posted. I do want to mention it though, because people can still buy the videos after the fact. You are our kickoff speaker next Tuesday. I'm very thankful that you're going to be doing that for us.

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Yeah. And I think it's a gift to the physician community really, because we really do need all hands on deck and for people to see examples of what is possible. And you really gathered a really great group of speakers who are speaking on so many different things and everybody should be able to find something that resonates with them. And then hopefully just change the trajectory of their lives really.

John: Yeah. And not the least of which is just get to know some of these speakers who maybe they've never met before or seen and just say, "Wow, I didn't know there was someone doing that, that I could emulate or I could reach out to." Because pretty much all of us, if we're doing this for mentors or coaches or something along those lines too.

All right. Let's see, you were last here about two years ago. Of course, I can never go back and remember where things were two years ago, but just give us an update on maybe how your life has changed and some of the newer things you've been doing since we last spoke back in, I think 2022.

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Yeah. A lot has changed since then, but on a personal note, I started homeschooling my older two kids, which has been so good because they get a full education. They get the academic piece. I'm teaching them business, leadership, real estate, character development, and they get a lot of hands-on because I have them hands-on in the business. They're 16 and 14. It's been so rewarding. And some of the things we're going to talk about today are the things that made that possible because I was able to create that space so I could do that. That's been really good.

From a business perspective, I've done a lot, but really focused. As you know we have The EntreMD Business School, which is really about helping doctors build six, seven, multiple seven figure businesses. And for the last two years, I could have started many, many other programs, but I really poured a lot of energy into that. How can I help the doctors get bigger results? How can I help them get results faster? How can I help them see as many examples as possible of what is possible?

And really over the last two years watching them, we're talking docs, building multiple seven figure businesses, taking vacations once a quarter. Their marriages are better. Their relationships with their kids are better. Their health is better. Everything is better because they're back in control. They're back in control. And so just watching that has been so great. I'm really glad. The school is almost four years old now. Just the sheer amount of focus that I've put on that.

And then I really took to writing. I figured we didn't get a business education and everybody's not going to come into the business school, but I did really want physicians to have all these blueprints of how they can change their businesses, how they can grow really great brands and things like that.

This year I was like, "I'm going to do a book a quarter and we see how that goes." For the last two years, I've done a book a year. But then this year I was like, "I'll do one a quarter." That's my tall order for my own self.

John: That sounds like a challenge. It's hard. The way through that and with everything else you're doing, but it's a good challenge.

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Yeah, I'm up for it. I committed for a year, so we see what happens after that.

John: Yeah. Well, maybe by then you'll have written everything that needs to be known by anybody. So that'll be good. But that's why we're here. We want to talk about your latest book. You wrote The Visibility Formula recently, and published it. I've had a chance to look through it, but why did you write that and what aspect is it focused on?

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Yeah. I started off in entrepreneurship as a socially awkward, super shy introverted introvert. And I think many physicians are introverts and all of that. The problem with that is if we adopt the traditional sense of an introvert, it's almost impossible to make a business work because then the introvert will say, "Well, I can't go out and ask for referrals because I'm shy and I can't speak on stages because I'm shy. I can't ask for reviews because I'm shy." And it goes on and on and on. And I had treated that like a handicap, but being able to show up and promote your business and promote your brand and all of that, it's not really a personality type. It's like a skillset. It's a skillset. And I found so many physician owned businesses struggling, not because they don't have a great service because we lead with service. We have amazing services, but the thing is nobody knows about them. Obscurity is the big problem.

And so, I wanted to create one book where you can go end to end and discover how to build a business that is like a household name where people start saying you're everywhere, where all the people you want to serve can find you because there are so many people who have the problems that our businesses fix, but again, they don't know we exist and if they don't know we exist, they can't say yes to working with us. And so I wanted every doctor to be able to lay their hands on something that they can follow, their team can follow, and it will take them over the course of time from obscure to household name.

And then once we get to that place, we're in a position where we can help the people we're called to serve and we can create financial freedom at the same time. So that's kind of what drove me to write the book.

John: Oh yeah, I think most physicians, it's not something they're aware of or exposed to the idea of marketing or sales or, I don't know, branding even, that kind of thing. Maybe you can walk us through the components of the book or of the visibility formula. Obviously we should all go by the book if we want the details, but you can at least give us a high level overview of at least two or three, or maybe all.

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Yeah. The starting point of all things visibility is really recognizing how powerful it is. And when I talk to people about them, if your brand is visible, you get to attract more people that you can work with, which is what you want to do. You get to attract more people who refer people to you, because again, there are people looking to refer to people just like you. They just don't know you exist. You'll get to attract people who will come work for you.

I have so many doctors in The EntreMD Business School who now have one of them over the last three months has had six doctors from different states reach out and say, "You're the person I want to work with. I will move my family cross country to come work with you." Visibility does that.

And then one of my favorite things is that the visibility formula will do for you is it sets the stage for what I call the unknown. There's so many opportunities that can fall in our lap. That could be investments, that could be partnerships, that could be so many things, but they're not things that are on a vision boards and not things that are goals, but they can fall in our lap if people can find us. And so, if we understand how valuable visibility is, we'll be willing to embrace some of our discomfort to be visible. And so, that's the starting point.

Then the second thing, especially for physicians, because when I started out as an entrepreneur, I thought sales marketing, all those things are sleazy things, that used car salesmen did, not professionals like me. But redefining what that is. For instance, I could see selling as something you do to manipulate people to take their money, which is not what selling is. Selling or even being visible is really putting yourself out there loud enough and long enough so the people who have a pain that your business solves can find you. And so, the truth of the matter is putting ourselves out there is sometimes some of the best service we'll do to the people we're called to serve, because they have real problems.

Dr. John, if you think about it, there are problems in maybe your life, your business and things that you're thinking, "If I could just find somebody who does this, I'm willing to pay them whatever. Whatever they want, I'm willing to pay them. I just need the person." But there's somebody else who has a business who solves that. The reason why you're not working with them is because you don't know they exist. And it's the same thing for us.

If that person were to come to you and the person tells you, this is what I do, you're not going to say, "Oh my goodness, this person is sleazy and manipulative." You can even almost hug them and say "I've been looking for somebody like you." And so, being visible is not a slimy thing at all. It's a good thing. It's you serving your people. And if we can just reframe the way we think about it, everything becomes better. These are almost like prerequisites. Once these two are here, it makes embracing the formula, it makes it much easier.

As far as the actual formula, the starting point is who do I serve? Who do I serve? Who is the person? And a lot of times people will tell me, "Well, I can't choose. What I do will help everybody." And I'm like, "They're 8 billion people. You're not going to help everybody." And they're like, "No, but I really can't choose." I'm like, "Yeah, but you're an OB-GYN. You're not a pediatrician, you're not a dermatologist, you're not a heart surgeon. You chose a specialty so you can choose."

Really identifying who is the person my business serves, because when we talk to everybody, we're talking to nobody. And that's the rule of the game. You want it so that this way, everything you're doing is strategic. You're talking to your person at all times. That's the first part of the formula.

The second part of the formula is the person you serve already exists. They're not going to be born. This is someone who's going to swipe a credit card or swipe a card to work with you. They already exist. And so, they're out there in communities and groups and tribes where they've been gathered.

The second part of the formula is identifying where they are already gathered and going to them. For instance, Dr. John, I'm on your podcast and there are people who are listening now who have never heard of me, but they hear of me because I'm here. And the same thing, if you go on somebody else's podcast, there are people who've never heard of you, but they're gathered and you show up there and they're like, "Oh, now I've met Dr. John. Let me go find his podcast. Let me go attend his conference."

And so, we go show up where our audience already is. Because a lot of times what people do, they start a business, they open a social media account and they're talking there all day, every day, but nobody knows them. You have to go find the people. The second stage is going to find the people.

The third stage is then creating what we call a headquarters where people can come and binge on your stuff. Think about Netflix for business. If we use this example, Dr. John, I'm here on your podcast. Some may listen to this and be like "I find what she's saying is really fascinating." They could come to my podcast. My podcast has 414 episodes at this point. So they can binge away. They can see, "Oh, this is what it's like when people work with her." They can see, "Oh, this is what she's about." These are the principles to stand for. "Oh, she showed me this. I can go apply it in my business now and get wins and all that." Everybody kind of wants to own that so people can come home, if you will. They come to the headquarters and really experience you.

And done right, your podcast, YouTube, blog, those are the three main types of headquarters. They really can be a full-time employee in your business because while you're asleep, Dr. John, someone just listened to you talk about the conference. So someone's like, "Yeah, I heard you say the conference has passed, but I'm going to buy the replays and stuff like that." This could be happening at 02:00 A.M. You're asleep where your podcast is working like a full-time employee. Identify who you want to serve, go out there, go find them, build an HQ for them.

And then the fourth stage is really around "How do I set this up in a way that it doesn't take over my life?" I don't want to spend all day every day doing the podcast, creating, pitching where I'm going to go, all of that. Because sometimes people hear about this, they're like, "It's too much. It's a lot of stuff." And that's why we talk about things like repurposing, batching, getting a team, delegation, all of those things.

You can do it because I've had a whole month period where I didn't record a single podcast episode because I wanted to take a break. But I batched and I created six episodes, which is for six weeks. So of course I can take a break. My podcast didn't take a break, but I took a break. So there are ways to do all of these things and it will look like you're everywhere doing all the things at all times, but not really. That's not what's really happening because you've learned to leverage all these other things.

And the truth of the matter is we put ourselves out there long enough, loud enough, and we're strategic with inviting people to work with us and all of that. We will just build a brand. We will build a business where we can serve all the people we want to serve and really create massive change, which is what we really want to do. That's a long answer to your question, but that's kind of the formula.

John: That's a good overview of the formula. Now I'm going to get into the specifics of a couple of questions. One of the things I've become more interested in is instead of pulling people into just these nonclinical jobs, working for UM or an insurance company or something, but going back and saying, "Look, just start your own practice. Maybe do a cash only business of some sort or concierge or whatever you want to call it."

I just want to know when your experience, when you're working with those people, are there certain techniques that they use? Looking for patients geographically around them, do they go out on LinkedIn on social media or do they just do ads in newspapers or what?

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: That's a great question. There's a lot of things they can do, but I'll tell you almost in order of importance, if you will. I'll give you some. When you have a brick and mortar and you're going to be serving people locally. When we talk about going out to where the people are, a lot of times they're local referral sources.

I'll give you an example. I'm a pediatrician and a great referral source for me would be an OB-GYN because we serve the same person in different ways. The OB-GYN will take care of the mom. I will take care of the mom's kid. And so, there's no competition there because we do completely different things.

Now, if I were to have build a relationship with six OB-GYNs and they're all preferentially referring to me, I'm busy, the end. The end. Because their moms are going to keep having babies and they're going to keep sending them to me. So I just have this constant stream of new people who are coming in.

I will give you an example of one of the docs in The EntreMD Business School, she does weight loss, brick and mortar, and she had been courting this orthopedic surgery group. Because they would need for their patients to have some weight loss to qualify for certain surgeries and stuff like that. And it took her a minute, it took her about 11 months of following up with them and all of that, but it's a big group. And so, the day they said, "Oh, come do a lunch and learn from us. We want to learn more about what you do." She ended up with 42 new referral sources, 42. If they sent you one patient a month, that is 42 new patients a month from one referral source. You see what I mean? And so for brick and mortar, that right there, it's so powerful, it's super powerful. That's number one.

Number two, because private practices tend to be high volume for the most part, except they're concierge like DPC, they tend to be larger volume than say a coach would have. Unleashing your current patients is so powerful. Many of them will refer, but they don't refer because they don't know you're accepting new referrals. Case in point, I was taking care of a patient one day and she said, Dr. Una, are you accepting new patients? Because I had this friend, she has three kids. She asked me who my doctor was and I was like telling her how you were amazing and all of that, but you're busy, I'm sure you don't take new patients. Here she is thinking she's doing me a favor by not referring patients. Meanwhile, I'm actively recruiting and accepting new patients. If we don't tell them, they won't refer. Now sometimes they will, but we won't experience the real magic of it if we're not telling them.

It's as simple as maybe I see 12 patients a day and I decide every day I'm going to ask four people to refer people to me. Especially when they're like, "You're the best thing since sliced bread." What they're literally telling you is ask me for something. Ask me for something. When they tell you that, oh, that's so amazing, that we're looking to build this practice up with patients just like you. Do you have any friends or family who you think deserve to be in a practice like this? And then they're like, of course, yes. And there they go. Because again, one person may give you five people. One person may be someone who's very influential, leads an organization, may give you 20 people. But if we don't ask, that's not happening.

Now people can do ads, but for me, I usually say ads is like gasoline on the fire. You want to make sure there's a fire. You want to make sure there's something already happening and you're doing the ads. I usually put that as last. And social media is also really powerful. Even if you're not getting a whole lot of engagement, do not be confused by it. People are watching, people are referring, people are sharing the video because they're like, oh yeah, this is my doctor and stuff like that. It's so powerful.

I've had clients who they're like, "I'm not getting a whole lot of engagement", but they keep hearing their patients say, "Oh, I see you. I see you online all the time and I shared your video with somebody else." They've gotten paid speaking gigs from that. They've had speaking gigs where they were in front of their ideal audience. They went to speak somewhere and got 20 new patients from one Facebook video that 25 people watched. It's really powerful. If they do the referrals, internal and external, and they do the social media, it's amazing what can happen.

John: All right. Well, let me shift gears to another. As you were talking, I thought, "Well, this whole idea of automating is a good one, because otherwise we just get overwhelmed." Do you have like a one or two of the things that you found that really just made a huge difference in any aspect of your business or your practice?

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Yeah. For me, delegation is one that's made the biggest difference. And I like to talk about it because I struggled so much. Because I'm good at a lot of things like most physicians are. And so, I'm like, yeah, I can do it. It'd take too much time to train somebody else to do it. But the problem is that one is too small a number for greatness. There's no way to build a great company with one person. And if you do the opportunity cost is pretty high.

And so, if you can always ask yourself this question, "Is this the best use of my time?" Either as a physician working clinically, or if you're working as a CEO in your business, you are the most expensive person on your team. The question is, would I pay somebody else what I will have to pay me to do this task? I had a client who loved to play on Canva. And if she listens to this, she'll laugh, she knows herself. Loves to play on Canva, loves to create graphics and do all this stuff. I'm like, "Look, if your hourly rate is $350 an hour, and you spent two hours creating this graphic, that's a $700 flyer. Would you ever in this lifetime pay somebody $700 to do that?" And she's like, absolutely not. I'm like, "So stop it. Find somebody else who you can pay appropriately to do that. It's too expensive."

Delegation is it, but one of the struggles with delegation is then we don't want to train the person to do it. They should come, they should know what to do, and they should read my mind and all of those things. The rules that make delegation work are really around you have to be very clear on what you want them to do. You have to be very intentional about training them to do it. You have to be willing to do some hand-holding in the beginning so you can set them free. And it's kind of like you're free for a really long time.

I'll give you an example. The last time I onboarded an executive assistant, I knew she was going to have a lot of tasks to do for me and all of that. I did a 30-day bootcamp with her. 30 days. 30 days, I met with her. I'm like, "This is how you do this. This is why we do this. This is my thinking about this." I did that every day for the first 30 days.

Now, after the first 30 days, she has been able to take so much off my plate. I kid you not, I probably have 12 hours a week back. But the cost for her to be able to do that, do it so efficiently, I represent the brand so perfectly, is a 30-day bootcamp.

John: Yeah. I appreciate what you're saying because I hired a podcast coordinator/assistant. And one of the things she said, "Hey, do you want me to do some of those images, those graphics for your social media and for your podcast?" I'm like, sure. Of course, she does them 10 times better than I ever would. And it actually takes her less time than I was spending doing them. And so, yeah, it's just amazing. You can't get away from having that human person that replaces what you do in spite of all the automated tools we have these days. Ciara, if you're listening to this, helping me with my podcast, then I'm giving you a shout out right now.

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: That's awesome.

John: Okay. I want to hear more about everything that you do, starting with the book, so we know where is the best place to get the book and so forth.

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Yeah. To get the book, it's really simple. You can go to entremd.com/visibilitybook. And you can get the book there. We have other books that we've written, The EntreMD Method, and then Made for More, which is a compilation book from 40 doctors from the EntreMD Business School came together to tell their stories and stuff like that. So, that would be the place to get the book.

John, the way we like to look at this is we call the EntreMD podcast the free MBA for physicians. We deliver a lot of high value talking about business principles, how to scale, what you need to do to take your practice, for instance, to the seven figure mark, how to build a formidable team, all those kinds of things. We talk about all of that there. And it costs nothing. You're on a podcast platform already, just pop in entremd.com and go there.

The second thing we call our $15 MBA, and that will be our books. The Visibility Formula, Made for More, The EntreMD Method, and all the other ones I'm going to write this year. And then the third thing really is for the doctor who is committed to building a six, seven, multiple seven figure business. They're committed to their goals, but they're like, I need some mentorship. I want to be in a community of people who are doing the same things. I don't feel like I'm a unicorn doing something that nobody else has ever done and I can be inspired by people who are doing that. I need accountability because I'm not always motivated and nobody is.

And so, that would be the EntreMD Business School. That's our year-long program. It is a place where it's an alternate reality in medicine really, because you'll see people from starting up to all the way to eight and a half million in revenue, people who are monetizing their personal brand. So, they're working jobs, but they're building their personal brand as their business to private practice, DPC, DSC, speakers, event hosts, people with products, all kinds of businesses in there. The results that they're going on to create are just unbelievable, because you know what I think. Doctors, we make some of the best entrepreneurs, but all in one community creating those results. And so, all of these you can find on the website entremd.com, but these are the ways we support physicians. Those are the three MBAs.

John: Excellent. I think that's fantastic. We know what we know clinically, we're all well-trained. I think there's a big fear of venturing into the practice environment, but I think that's going to be our only saving really. Yeah, there's some good organizations that treat their physicians well, but you don't have the autonomy. Someone is telling you what to do, and you have this 15-page contract, and it's like, who wants to live like that? I would definitely take advantage of this if I was starting my practice, just to learn those business and marketing and promotional things, and just the common sense things that people that have already run a business know about.

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Yeah, you talk about fear, but I think that we should be afraid if we don't evolve. Because with the way it is, the burnout is at an all-time high, loss of autonomy is there, and there's no way to explore your full potential, which is one of the things that entrepreneurship allows you to do. There's no financial stability, let's not fool ourselves, because anybody could be fired any day. And so, yes, there may be a fear to venturing out, but you never know. That could absolutely work, and there's so many evidences of people it's worked for, but this other one is a guaranteed fear. We know this is not working. Choose your heart, choose your fear.

John: Yeah, think of a strategy. Maybe you're coming out of residency or fellowship, and you think, "Okay, let me be employed for a while, but make sure that I can get out of that in two or three years, and in the meantime, learn all these other things I need to know, so I can create the perfect situation for myself." But I tell you, I never thought about things that way back in the day, but maybe it's an option for some of the newer grads to consider.

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Yeah, very different times. We've had a lot of new grads in recent times, fresh out of fellowship, fresh out of residency, and watching them thrive in private practice, now that's been something. We have what it takes. I always joke, and I say, if we could learn the Krebs cycle, we can learn business.

John: Exactly. All right. Well, I think we're going to be out of time here momentarily. Any last bit of advice, just because you know my audience, it's a lot of physicians, some of whom are unhappy, some are frustrated, some are just looking for fulfillment. But what's your advice for my audience these days?

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Yeah, I think the best thing I could say now is with the way the healthcare space is now, the requirement for our evolution, it's a mandatory requirement. We have to change, and we have the capacity to. We're not fixed, we're not stuck. The way it is, it's not the way it always has to be. We can change. We can learn business skills, we can learn speaking skills, we can learn how to monetize brands. The things we're uncomfortable with, we can become comfortable with them. But I want to invite everybody to embrace becoming different, becoming an upgraded version. If you would like 2.0 because the healthcare space and you having autonomy, living without burnout, having financial freedom, having time, freedom to do what you really want to do requires that you evolve. The old model is not working, it's not going to get better. We have to change.

John: Very good, wise words. All right, Dr. Una, thank you for being here today and we'll get you back on in a couple of years again, if I'm still around. But I'm looking forward to hearing your first presentation at the summit and on a future podcast I will definitely give everybody a review of how things went. So I thank you for being here again today.

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu: Thank you so much for having me. And thank you so much for what you do for physicians everywhere. We appreciate you.

John: Thank you for that. All right, with that I'll say goodbye.

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In today's episode, John offers his opinions on email marketing. And he describes a particular email strategy he has been using. He explains why email is a great marketing tool, and why starting early in your business is important. 

Email marketing should be a fundamental part of most small business marketing programs from the beginning.

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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 Email Marketing?

Sending a commercial message via email, often to a group of people, is known as email marketing. Every email that is sent to a current or prospective customer is part of your overall email marketing strategy. Using email appropriately enables the small business owner to build authority and trust that generates sales at a very low cost compared to other marketing methods

However, it significantly differs from social media marketing since it focuses on bringing in fresh prospects and defining a business brand. And email marketing emphasizes and develops ties with devoted clients

The Advantages of Email Marketing

1. You own your list. It is not subject to manipulation or being “de-platformed” the way social media is.
2. It can be automated to a great extent, with the ability to create sequences of emails in advance and target specific segments of an email list with different customized messages.

[See Below for a Special Offer for Podcast Listeners]

Unique Email Strategy

John describes a unique email strategy that he has been using. After implementing it, his open and click rates improved dramatically. These parameters generally reflect the degree of engagement, trust, and likelihood to buy.

This strategy incorporates the following features:

• higher frequency, up to 5 to 7 days each week,
• shorter, taking less than 1 or 2 minutes to read,
• includes an amusing or thought-provoking personal story,
• ties the story to your product or service, and
• eliminate “dead weight” from the list (those that never open or click your emails).

Summary

Using this approach leads to much higher engagement, as demonstrated by higher open and click rates. This enables those online marketers with even small lists to build an engaged audience that buys more products and services.

You can learn more about this approach to email by purchasing access to this course from the League of Email Marketing Heroes.

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:

• Stop Making These Business Email Mistakes

  EMAIL MARKETING HEROES’ Bottomless Email Strategy Course (I am an affiliate partner for this course)

• NewScr!pt

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 284

Why Adopt This Email Strategy in Your New Business?

John: I just want to tell you a short story today before we get into the main content, but it's apropo. About a year or so ago, I started looking at a new way to work with my emails. And I was doing what we normally do. I was doing weekly or biweekly newsletters, mentioning what's going on in my business, or things I've talked about on the podcast. I usually send out an email every week to announce my latest podcast episode and that kind of thing.

But I came across a couple of partners that were teaching a different email strategy, and I started to use that strategy. Now, my email list, it got up to about 1,400 - 1,500 just to put everything on the table. I don't have a big massive list of 5,000 or 10,000 or 15,000 people. But the engagement seemed to be quite small. It seemed like the open rate was low. The click rate was low. And I could tell that there were probably hundreds of those listeners, or followers rather subscribers who really never even opened an email.

I looked at their approach and I adopted that, and I started doing emails much more frequently. And as a result, my open rate increased. Well, actually more than doubled. My click rate improved quite a bit, and it seemed like there was a lot more engagement. People were responding to my email.

I want to share with you what I know about using email as a marketing method and what I've been doing for the last year or so, how it's different from what I did before, and why you might consider using this very same technique.

For those that are watching on YouTube, you'll notice I'm using slides today. It doesn't really matter to the podcast listeners here. You're not missing anything because I don't really have any content on my slides that I'm not talking about. But for the YouTubers, it provides some variation. You get to see the slides and breaks things up a little bit when you're watching a video instead of just watching a talking head. The objectives I'm following today are the following. What is email marketing? Why is it important? When should you start? How do you set it up? And what are the metrics to follow? Those are kind of the general areas that I want to cover today.

So, what is email marketing? Well, I'm not going to go through a long history of where email came from, but as you know, email when it first came out, we probably didn't think about it as a marketing tool. I'm sure there were businesses that did, but we saw it as a way where we could communicate with people in an asynchronous fashion electronically. We could send notes out at will. They arrived instantaneously, and it enabled us to connect with friends and family on a regular basis. It was essentially free of cost after we got through the first year or so. AOL and others have very low costs. Some are free. Yahoo I think is free because they sell other things on the service. But it was just an interesting and brand-new technology. And now we take it for granted.

Well, early in the process of adopting email across the world, people saw, "Wow, we can use this as a marketing tool. We can send notes to clients, to customers, to followers, to readers, and we connect with them. We can actually sell things through our email." And so, a marketing approach started to develop. You'll remember in the past when we first had Google and the internet and emails, everything had a lot of flashing brightly colored symbols and giant letters, and it was pretty gross. It's become more and more sophisticated over time and we came to find out that we shouldn't be crazy with our email. Let's just connect and communicate with people.

What happened as email is being used more and more is there were more and more features that were added to email providers. Most basic email providers like AOL, which still exists actually, I still have my AOL account. It's probably an antique now. I have a Gmail account too. And then there's Yahoo, and then there's a bunch of other email marketing. You'll see them after the ads. There's iCloud and even if you have a website today, you'll have probably an email type of program associated with it. It's usually at even a more basic level than just your AOLs and your Gmails.

But anyway, it's a way to communicate with customers, readers, listeners, followers and develop some rapport with them. The thing is, it's become much more easy to use because the tools we're using now where they're emails, unlike what you can do with Gmail and AOL and so forth, is you can start to automate some of the functions and streamline some of the functions. Now, you can also keep track of multiple audiences and you can do other things that I think I'll be talking about in a minute here. I just wanted to give an overall description of what email is and what email marketing is.

Email marketing is using your emails to sell ultimately, to market and sell. But it's not that simple and there's lots of ways to optimize it. Why is it important? There are several reasons here. I think it's super important. When you use email, it has advantages over other types of marketing approaches. It's often compared, for example, to social media. Can you do similar things on social media? Yes. Can you do things on Facebook where you post things like sending an email? Yes. Can you sell on social media? Yes. Can you do advertisements on social media? Yes.

But let's look at some of the advantages of email. In fact, I think these advantages make it like the foundation of your marketing. Probably email should be the basic first thing you try for marketing before you try paid ads or other ways to promote your services. There's nothing wrong with let's say promoting yourself on LinkedIn for free but there are limitations, and that is the following two that are the bigger ones.

First, social media can be manipulated in the sense that they can be changed over time. They can change the rules, they can make it difficult for you to succeed. You adopt one set of rules, they change the rules. People that have monetized social media have been demonetized. People that have depended on social media for major amounts of income have been taken off that social media site. Unlike that, because you own your email program, you own your email list, it can't be taken away from you and it can't be manipulated in that way, and it can't be shut down. Those are two big reasons. The rules don't change really over time, except some of the different government entities put some regulations on it. But other than that, the rules stay the same. It becomes easier to use over time as the technology improves and it's not subject to being shut down or taken away.

Can you imagine if you had 100,000 followers in a Facebook group and Facebook just canceled the idea of a Facebook group? Pages used to be very popular in the past, then the pages went away. Now the groups are better. But every day you're getting more and more features on, for example, Facebook that make it more and more difficult to use. And in fact, while someone's in your Facebook group, they're looking at competing ads constantly, which are thrown up on the site by Facebook. And the same is true of other social media sites. That's the first thing. It's part of your basic marketing strategy, and it's a foundational part in part because you can't be stripped away from you.

Now, what does email do for you? Well, with the emails you're sending to your list on a consistent basis, whether it's your entire list or subsets of your list that we can call segments. It gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your authority in whatever it is you're teaching. You can do it on social media. I can do posts. I used to do posts all the time on Facebook or on LinkedIn talking about I'm starting a small business, nonclinical careers, how to become a CMO, et cetera, et cetera. Well, you can do exactly the same thing in your emails and over time, that helps you build your authority in whatever business you are trying to promote.

Now remember too, this applies even to a brick-and-mortar business. I went to a bakery the other day to buy a cake for my wife's birthday. They were beautiful. And after eating it, the one that we had was delicious. And I thought, this place has got to have an email strategy because people are coming and going every day, and they may not think to come back next week or next month, or six months or a year from now.

And I'm going to talk to you about a process where the way you use your email would have those customers coming back on a regular basis, probably double, triple, quadruple their sales in a very short period of time. Anyway, that's because it enables us to demonstrate our authority, whether a coach, a consultant, whether we're selling some service, or even online products or brick-and-mortar types of products, because you can communicate on a regular basis. You have to do it the right way though.

And so, then what that does is it creates a warm audience or a warm customer. When you go out and do ads, let's say on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, whatever it might be, Pinterest, you pretty much have a cold audience there. You're just picking an audience, you're defining it, you're paying a bunch of money and you're sending ads out, and a tiny percent will respond to those ads.

And usually, and when you're doing those ads, you're actually not selling the product directly. You're bringing them into a so-called funnel. And it's to get them to sign up for your website, for your podcast, for your email list. Then you can start teaching them, supporting them, encouraging them and inspiring them. And that's where you are nurturing this warm audience. It's an audience that knows you, loves you, and is already primed to buy, which you can actually enhance by using your email in certain ways. And the cost is almost free.

Obviously, you're paying for a service to enable you to manipulate, monitor and write these emails, but it's a lot lower than paying for advertising on social media like LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, any of those things. It has a lot of obvious advantages over the social media and other forms of marketing. That's why it should be sort of the first thing that you really start doing other than maybe word of mouth.

All right. When should I start my email list? I'm thinking about a business, maybe I've just started a business, or I've got a business. Where in that path, where in that transition, should I start using email? Well, from the very beginning. It's like when should you plant a tree? Well, 10 years ago, because you want the tree to be mature. It doesn't start giving you shade until it's grown for 10 or 15 years. The same thing with email. You're not going to get a result with it quickly. You have to build something first.

And part of the whole thing about starting your email is not only what you should use as an email service provider or a CRM or how it should look and all that. It's when should I start and do I plan at the beginning and what do I do with it? There are some things you have to think about, but the thing is, it should be integrated into your marketing plan from day one.

And if you're selling online services or if that's where most of your activity is, let's say you have online courses or you're doing coaching, which can be done remotely or something like that, then you should start from the very beginning. I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about how to build an email list, but let's just suffice it to say that you need to use some kind of reward for people jumping on your list. That usually means you're giving away some kind of what we call a lead magnet or an opt-in bonus or something.

Let's say you're trying to build your business. You find that it aligns with somebody's podcast. You go on the podcast as a guest, and at the end they allow you to promote your business. And you say, look, if you go to my website and click on this button, I'll send you a free list of something they're interested in. And in exchange, they give you their email list. And by doing that in different venues, you can do it on social media, you can do it on these podcasts, you can do it on blogs, you can do it on your website. You get people to sign up for your email list, but they're going to drop off quickly unless they get something worth reading. And we'll talk about that in a minute. That's why you have to start early because it's probably going to take you six months to a year to recruit, to develop a decent size email list that you can then begin to nurture, and then later we'll get to actually selling through email. When to start? As soon as possible.

All right. Well, how do you set it up? I'm not going to go through a long litany of how to set up an email program, email marketing plan. The basic thing to tell you is there are tools for creating your email market and marketing program. How do you set it up? What I mentioned earlier was a CRM, which is a customer relationship management system. Now there's really sophisticated CRMs which are integrated across all kinds of things from selling and billing and just keeping vast records. But the basic ones are designed to help a small business owner stay in communication with their customers and potential customers. And it automates a lot of things in a way that you can't really do on your usual email platform.

If I go into Gmail, I guess I can create different groups and I can send mass mailings out, but it's not really designed to manage that and to track all kinds of metrics on who's opening, who's clicking, who's responding, our sales attached to that email. That's why these other systems were created. One of the early ones, and I've still used it to this day, is Mailchimp. It was fairly rudimentary when I signed up with it five or six years ago. But it really has all the features you need, pretty much ConvertKit and Keap, which I think used to be Infusionsoft. A little more sophisticated. ConvertKit is actually newer, but it was designed specifically to work for those people that use online businesses and has a lot of automation.

Keap Infusionsoft is really a much more expensive program. It's been around a lot longer, but it is very sophisticated and you can create all kinds of protocols for sequences and if then statements in your marketing. If the customer does this, you go this way. If it does this other thing, you send this email and so forth.

But I've been happy with Mailchimp. You can just go to Mailchimp.com to check it out. Also convertkit.com to check it out. It's one that's been supported and I think is on the board is Pat Flynn, some online expert you might know. And Keap who used to be Infusionsoft is more expensive. Actually, Mailchip and Convert Kit both come in a free version until 300 to 500 members or subscribers. And then you have to start paying a fee. Also, it only has certain features. Keap is a two-week trial that's free, but after that you do have to pay significant dollars. It's kind of hard to justify when you only have a few email subscribers. So, you want to build it up very quickly to justify the cost.

So, that's how you set it up. You just find one of these CRMs. There are others, but if you find one of those, I will recommend Mailchimp.com. I don't get any payment or I'm not an affiliate for Mailchimp, but it seems to be working for me. So, that's why I mentioned it.

Now, once you have that system, it allows you to track metrics, which I'll mention in more detail in a second. It also allows you to add tags, create segments so you can segment your list. It allows you to keep all kinds of metrics and follow. Most of them will allow you to do A/B testing where you create one email, change it in some way, and you've got A, you've got B, some have more. You can then send both of those out simultaneously and compare which one has a higher click rate, for example. And then that'll tell you, "Oh, this factor should be used in future emails."

A good example would be, let's say you have two emails, exactly the same, 10 paragraphs, a hundred words, and one has subject line A and the other has subject line B and that's it. They go out and you find subject line A works a lot better than subject line B. Well, then next time you can go ahead and use that one if you're going to use it again or some version of it.

The other thing that these do, they also automate the process where you can take let's say a third of your audience send out A and B. And then after three, four hours, whatever length of time you want to use, the system automatically tracks the open rate or the click rate and whichever one's higher, the rest of your list, the other two thirds are sent to that one. So, it actually optimizes the process of sending an email out while it's being sent out.

The only problem I didn't like with that was that the timing would change. Maybe you think the optimum time is to send at 08:00 in the morning. Well, into this scenario, then you would send it at 08:00 but the next batch wouldn't go out till let's say noon. If the day of the week or the timing doesn't make a difference, it can work fine. You can send the test email out in the morning today and then 24 hours send the next batch to the winner.

But the metrics you should follow. I've kind of alluded to the open rate, the click rate, the sales that come from it, which you cannot usually run measure directly, although in ConvertKit you can do that and probably in Keap as well. And then the AB metrics where you can compare so you can measure that. That's kind of four basic things. I usually look at open rates and click rates. However, I will say this. Open rates are notoriously inaccurate. Some email providers like the AOLs and the Gmails and others of the world, Yahoo and so forth, if the email that you send goes into their inbox, it's counted as being read even though it's not been opened.

In other cases, they may count everything that's in your email box as unread for some reason. So, they're very unreliable. The only thing they're good for is looking over time or comparing as long as within your system, two different emails, then if one had an open rate of 30% and the other 40%, you could say, okay, the second one definitely did better. But whether that was really 30% and 40% or 20% and 25% you really don't know because there's other reasons why those things are not consistently applied to every email that you send out. That part is inaccurate.

Click rate on the other hand is fairly accurate, close to 100% accurate. Let's say in the past I've had open rates of 20% and I had a click rate of 1%, and then I make some changes. My open rate goes up to 30%, but my click rate goes up to 2% or 3%. That's a big difference. And I'd be more interested in that change in the click rate than in the open rate because again, the click rate is much more accurate. So, when I get up to let's say a 2% or above click rate, that's extremely high for me. It's one thing for someone to open an email, but to actually go in and click on something, they've got to take action. That's a good thing. That's what you want. And so, those are the metrics that you should measure.

Then you can do the A/B testing later when you get much more sophisticated. And it probably doesn't even make sense to do that unless you're up over 2,000 email subscribers. Because again, you're comparing, let's see what did I say, it was one third and split those in half. So, you're taking 500 compared to another 500 or even less in my case when I've only got a thousand email subscribers. So, there's no sense getting into that.

And then as far as sales, right now, the only way I can tell is I can just look and see how the timing is. Most things are going to be sold out an email within a day or two after it's sent, obviously, because after that it just kind of disappears into the ether as new emails come in. All right, those are the metrics I recommend you follow.

Now, email marketing philosophy. This is the crux of what I want to talk to you about today. I was talking about why adopt this strategy in your new business. Like I said, people send out newsletters. It's not uncommon for people to only send out emails when they have something to announce. It's not uncommon for people to build and build and build their email list and only use it when they have a product to sell or some kind of course to promote. And that could be very infrequently to the point where it's not uncommon for people to be on your list, my list, who haven't opened one of our emails in over a year or two. That's completely dysfunctional. It's completely a waste of time and you're missing a huge opportunity.

So, what is the alternative? Well, let's look at it in a new way. What we want to do now these days, and it's been shown to be very successful, and I'll give you some more examples in a minute, is that we want to have regular frequent connections with our audience. In other words, we don't want to be a stranger to them. We want them to know us, feel comfortable with us, and look forward to reading our emails. Oh, is that possible?

And at the same time, as we're doing that, as part of that, and maybe before starting that process with intensity, we should get rid of those that are already unengaged, although we need to do something to maybe allow them a chance to become reengaged. I'm not going to go into detail on this, but basically what we need to do is get rid of the flack, the dead weight, but we have to give them a chance to show that they really aren't dead weight, that they're out there waiting to hear something.

So, here's what you do. This is an abbreviated version of how to do this without going into every step. Most email providers or I'll say CRMs like Mailchimp can tell you how engaged your readers are, and they will look at open rates and click rates and they'll look at how many, what percentage they've responded to and when was the last time they actually opened one, when was the last time they actually clicked on one. Was it a month ago? Was it within the last two days? Was it six months ago? Has it been over a year since they've opened one or clicked one? Again, given the constraints of open rates, and they will tell you ranking.

In Mailchimp you get a five star, four, three, two, one. One is like get rid of them. A two is pretty, pretty unengaged. And they'll define what that means. They call each email a campaign in Mailchimp, but how many campaigns have they opened?

So, what I did before I started this new way of doing a more frequent email approach was, I didn't just use the system that Mailchimp has, but I defined what it was. It was three to six months. They hadn't clicked on a single email, but I didn't just get rid of them or put them aside in sort of suspension. I sent them a series of emails that said, "Hey, I see you have not clicked on any of my emails in six months. It doesn't appear that you are interested in what's going on here. I'm getting ready to kick you off my list. Before I do that though, I have a link here to a free download that has 70 nonclinical jobs on it." It's the same download I use for my lead magnet to build the email list. And I give them an opportunity to click. If they click, they automatically are off that list. There's a group that doesn't click any of those. So, let's say it's 20% of my list. Actually, for me it was almost 35% of my list that hadn't done anything in like a year.

So, I sent them that first email. The next email I sent was kind of a different approach or different comments. I said "You know what? I see you haven't been opening my emails in a long time, you haven't been clicking on them, but I have this free course in my academy. And if you do this course, it could have been anything, but I would say I would teach you about how to become a medical writer." And then I would send it out. If they click and open that again, it's free. They don't have to give me their email address because I already have it. So, it's a pretty low barrier. Then they get off the list.

Maybe the last one was, "I've got a webinar that I recorded for you, and it'll tell you the five myths of nonclinical careers and why you should not believe those myths or those myths are being dispelled. It's a 25-minute video, click here, you'll get the free video, you can watch it whenever you like." I go through that. Of those 35% that had not responded in a year, maybe half of them will click on one of those, then they're off. The remaining 17.5% or whatever that is I just eliminated them. Boom, cleaned them up.

Now that by the way is automatically going to increase your open rate and your click rate because you basically have removed many other people that never opened and never click. But it also focuses down on a group of people that are interested. And again, on my podcast, I usually say what I want to do, I want to inspire you, I want to encourage you and I want to teach you. So, these are people that want to be encouraged, inspired, and taught by what I talk about, which is nonclinical careers.

When I did that, I pretty much brought my list down to a thousand ultimately, after I went through that process a couple of times. But the open rate is currently run above 50%. Now, they were running about 20% back then. And my click rates are consistently somewhere between 0.6-0.7 all the way up to 1.9-2.0. Sometimes depending if some special things will get as high as 2% or 3%.

When I send my Tuesday emails out there mostly about my podcast, sometimes 3.5% of people will click those either because they want to click to go to the podcast or they're clicking on something I'm talking about or promoting, or a freebie or one of the links. There are so many links in my emails for my podcast to other episodes that the click rate is much higher. Now that's an engaged audience, but that's only part of it.

Once you find the audience that does want to hear from you, now remember, if you're only sending an email out once a month or so, the fact that they even click on that once a month is pretty amazing because you're so much out of their mind. The big part of this strategy is sending more frequent, shorter, funny or interesting or inspiring emails. You want to do all those things at the same time. All right, I'm going to give you a resource in a minute on that.

Here's how I do it. I try to send an email almost every day. Actually, my goal is to send five emails a week. Now, one of those is automatically a Tuesday email about my podcast. Now I only have to prepare four emails. But the emails are much shorter, they're funny, they're to the point I sent and they come from my life. There's always a story in there pretty much every time about something in my life. Something happened when I was a kid. Someplace I've visited, I've traveled a lot, so I have a lot of stories about travel.

I did a lot of things in my 40s and 50s. For whatever reason I went on kind of a binge of trying new things from golf to scuba diving, to rock climbing, to traveling, to you name it. International travel. I went to Jerusalem twice. I went to Nepal and track in the Himalayas. Anyway, a lot of stories that we can use and everybody has those stories. It's not unique to me. But I tried to do an email every single day during the week. Five a week. One was for my podcast, the other four were new. And I would do them on weekends. Sometimes I'd skip a day and then I'd do one on a weekend instead.

Emails like these can be prepared all at once, batched five in a row or five at a time, 10 at a time if you want. Because they're not really related to timing unless you're talking about something in the news. But I would do that. They would be shorter and I would try not to spend too much time developing them. And I would jot down ideas for emails as they came to me. I might be brainstorming sometime or doing something and all of a sudden, I've had a good cup of coffee or two and I came up with ideas for three or four or five different emails. Things that happened before I went to med school, things when I had roommates. Just all kinds of ideas. And I would always tie them back in some way with something that was informative or inspirational or encouraging. Things I have experienced like they have.

At the top right of the email, I put in that it's going to take less than one to two minutes to read. And the other thing is, it usually has some clickable links in it because you can't really measure the success unless you have something to click. Now those clicks might really not go anywhere except like I said to a podcast episode, a blog post, me being interviewed by somebody else's podcast host. It's all kinds of things you can do, but it's more frequent and it's shorter. It's to the point.

The other part of this philosophy is not a lot of pictures or a lot of colors. It's basically like a short note you're writing to somebody that can be read quickly, digested quickly, and usually get a little chuckle, a little insight, something like that.

Like I said, my metrics just doubled in terms of the open rates and the click rates. I really started seeing more engagement. I recommend you do that. And the idea here is they're getting to know you. Now as a podcaster, it's funny because people listen to my podcast consistently. They know me because my voice is in their head just like it is right now if you're listening to this, which you obviously are or watching it on YouTube.

But you may not have a podcast. Maybe all your engagement is on a website or maybe you do some videos, YouTube videos, another way to do it. But if you're doing this email thing, you are going to really start to connect with those people and you will see that those rates will be quite high. And if you're a really good writer, and again, don't use that as an excuse, but I do say when I do write the emails that I go back a couple, two or three times, sometimes I sent them aside for an hour or two or even the next morning if I'm writing them the day before and I go through them and I really try and get rid of all the unnecessary language, all the extra words.

Get it down to the core message, the story, and then whatever call to action you want them to take, if any. Ask them just to reply to the email with comments or suggestions or requests. And that's it. You'll find over time that that is about as warm an audience as you'll ever get when it's time to start selling. Basically, that's what I want to talk about today as far as a new approach to email marketing strategy.

I usually like to put resources in. I would say Mailchimp is the one I would just recommend you check out because you can try it for free for months at a time until you reach a certain level. And even after that, it remains very reasonably priced.

The only other resource I would give you is the nonclinicalphysicians.com/emailstrategy. That's a link. And if you go there, you can buy the course that I learned this approach to with the League of Email Marketing Heroes. If you go there to my link, nonclinicalphysicians.com/emailstrategy, it'll take you there. And for $39 you can buy their course on how to implement this. And it goes in a lot of detail about everything I've talked about and then a whole lot more. That's the one resource I would mention today.

Thanks for joining me today. You can find links for today's episode at nonclinicalphysicians.com/adopt-this-email-strategy. And there you'll find the link that I just mentioned as a resource. And again, that link is nonclinicalphysicians.com/emailstrategy where for only $39 you'll learn exactly how to implement the bottomless email strategy is what that's called. It's the approach I use in the product that teaches a tried-and-true email framework that helps business owners create psychological connections. That's what it does. It helps create that psychological connection that their lists are looking for. That's basically it today.

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

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

The post Why Adopt This Email Strategy in Your New Business? – 284 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's podcast, Robin Landa describes how to unlock your creative potential and find great ideas worth pursuing.

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.

The book will be launched in November and it is currently available for pre-order on Robin's website, Amazon, and other booksellers. Additionally, it can be found online at Berrett-Koehler and Penguin Random House. 

Unleash Creative Potential with the 3 G's: Goal, Gap, and Gain

Since Alex Osborn introduced brainstorming in 1953, Robin's method is the first fresh approach to enhancing one's creative potential to develop new ideas. Her method for problem-solving and foreseeing issues involves the “Three Gs.”

Many concepts are fanciful and only concerned with profit or novelty. The “Three G's” in her method ensure that the concept is valuable and not frivolous. The first “G” is Goal.

People wrongly believe that once you develop a good idea that you're finished. But that is only the beginning, according to Robin. That is the result you seek. The Gap is then extremely important in determining how an idea may actually meet a need.

The final “G” stands for Gain, which denotes that there must be a benefit to society, the environment, and/or living things.

Robin Landa's Encouragement

I think anybody can come up with a worthwhile idea. It's not the person, it's the system you're using. So that if the process you're using isn't helping you, try the three G's, try goal, gap and gain. It's proven to work…

Summary

Being receptive and observant is what Robin dubbed “golden habits to form,” and they are necessary to unleash creative potential. Whether in design or developing a new business, the “Three G's” can be effective.

The goal of the book, “The New Art of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential” is to enable readers to apply Robin's framework.

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:

• Robin Landa's Website
• Robin Landa's New Book: The New Art of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential [Amazon Affiliate link]
• How to Validate Your Business Idea
• How to Select the Best Online Business Niche – 110
• NewScr!pt

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Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 263

How to Unlock Your Creative Potential as a Physician

- Interview with Robin Landa

John: I'm really looking forward to have today's guest with us, because number one, I like book authors, and I think it's really important for you listeners to be able to come up with creative ideas, particularly creative ideas that are worth pursuing. That's the second half of that equation. Our guest today definitely can tell us all about that. So hello, Robin Landa.

Robin Landa: Hi, Dr. Jurica. I'm honored to be here with you. Thank you for having me as a guest.

John: I'm really happy to talk to you today. You have a book coming out soon, which is really the main core of what we're going to talk about, but I will mention, as I did in the intro that you're a professor and you talk and teach about branding and just being creative, how to come up with ideas, design, other things in marketing. So, I think there's a lot we can learn from you. So, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background in addition to that, and then we'll get started with my grilling.

Robin Landa: Thank you so much. I'm a Distinguished Professor at Kean University in the Michael Graves College. I'm a designer and I started out as an artist and then segued into being a designer and then switched over to being an author. And that's pretty much what I do when I'm not teaching. I'm the author of 25 published non-fiction books by esteemed publishers like Berrett-Koehler and Simon & Schuster. And I'm very, very interested in diversity equity inclusion in making sure my students do well in the industries and making sure that they are at the top of their game when they leave our program. And that's where my intense interest in creative thinking comes in.

John: Well, the name of the book, since we've mentioned it already is "The New Art of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential." And we're going to get into that. But the thing that kind of struck me when I was looking at that, and this is a quote, "How to get great ideas worth pursuing?" So how to get the ideas and then kind of show or at least have an assumption or a belief that they're worth pursuing. So, how do you identify an idea that's worth pursuing? Is there a secret to that? I mean, once you've come up with the idea.

Robin Landa: Yes. I'll talk to you about coming up with the idea as well. But to answer your question directly, for me, there has to be more than just making a profit from an idea. There has to be what people refer to as the triple bottom line: profit, people and the planet. And so, I only see ideas that are worthwhile as those that have some benefit for individual society, the environment creatures, our planet.

John: Okay. Yeah. And I think maybe we'll get into that as we get into the Three G's. So, why don't you just take us through a description of the Three G's and maybe intertwine even the ideas about why you decided to write a book about this topic as you go along.

Robin Landa: The Three G's that you're mentioning are my process. And my new process is the first new creative process since brainstorming was introduced by Osborne in 1953. And what's really, I think, very good about my process is that it's actionable. And there are three components, as you said, the Three G's. There's a goal, the gap and a game.

And many people mistakenly think that a goal is your idea, but that's just the beginning. That's what you want to achieve. And then the gap is really crucial. And I think your audience will really understand this in a way that many other audiences that I've spoken to don't because they are physicians and scientists, and they really understand that there are missing pieces in research. There are questions that haven't been answered. There are neglected diseases. There are endemic problems that we haven't addressed.

So, thinking about a gap, whether it's a product or service, a mediated mechanism for delivering vaccines. We all know that wonderful breakthrough saved so many people by Dr. Katie Kariko and Dr. Weisman. That was a gap, right? We weren't using messenger RNA to deliver as a mediated mechanism. And so, they came up with that, against the star chamber, I should mention. The gap is crucial in really identifying how an idea can fulfill a need.

And then the third G is the gain. And I can tell you how I came to that, which is an interesting story. But for me, the game means that there has to be a benefit for, as I said earlier, individual society, the planet, the environment creatures. And so, those three G's really ensure that your idea is worthwhile and not frivolous. Because many ideas are frivolous and they're just about profit or novelty and I'm not interested in it.

John: Okay. Well, let's see. Maybe we should go back through each one and get a little deeper if we can. I remember people that I've interviewed, for example, I had a urologist I interviewed. She was working clinically, but she had a side gig. And the thing that she came up with is that her patients, her younger women that had, let's say urinary problems didn't have stylish undergarments they could wear. So, she actually created a line. That was just such an aha moment for her. It just drove her. She had never intended to even go into business on the side. She just had, which she was solving a problem. Is there a way to stimulate those kinds of ideas? I don't know, that I guess would fall into the gap perhaps, but maybe just in your model, maybe talk to me how things like that might fit in and if someone's thinking about trying to solve a problem.

Robin Landa: That's an excellent example, by the way. I should have put that in my book. I wish I had spoken to you sooner. That's what I would call a pain point.

John: Okay.

Robin Landa: If you notice a pain point, whether something like that, or he noticed that his wife had arthritis, was having difficulty using normal utensils and tools to open jars. And he realized that that's a pain point that he wanted to solve with his company. So, pain points are definitely an entry into a gap, into as you said, solving a problem.

And so, you can use my method, my process to solve a problem. And you can also use it to anticipate problems, to think ahead and wonder and notice, ask questions. Like, is there a more sustainable method? Is there a way to address a crisis before it's urgent? Well, I guess a crisis is urgent, but how do we address it when there's a hurricane, is there a way we can figure out how to create temporary shelters before it actually hits? So rather than in the moment where we're thinking about it ahead of time.

Pain points, as you mentioned, are a fantastic way. Kat Nouri was in the kitchen making lunch for her three children, and she was putting the sandwiches in disposable plastic bags, and she thought, "Boy, this is really wasteful. This creates toxic waste. Is there a way to create something that is reusable baggage? And she invented Stasher which SC Johnson bought from her. So, there is a moment where you think about what you're doing and how do you solve this problem.

John: Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. I guess maybe it's not before the second step, it's just the way it happens to be modeled, but the goal is more of an overarching, like kind of are you working in this field? Is it a medical issue? How would you describe the goal?

Robin Landa: Well, the goal can be anything. The goal can be very general. For example, an attorney, a friend of mine, and this is kind of like your audience, decided that law wasn't for her anymore. She went into it as a very pragmatic decision in life. And so, she took a very early retirement and she wanted to explore creative venues because she's a very creative person.

Her goal was very general, to explore a different creative track. She became a docent at a museum and then became the head of the docents. She took dance classes. She expressed herself by wearing very fashionable clothing. And somebody on the street in New York City stopped her and said, "May I take your photograph?" Well, now she's a fashion influencer at the age of 50 plus. She had this very general goal of being more creative, leaving her attorney job and doing that.

So, the goal can be general or it can be very specific. I want to create a brand of underwear that is more aesthetically pleasing. You can come to that goal in a specific way or in a very general way or through a passion. Many people come to a goal through something that they really love to do.

John: Okay. And then in terms of the gain, perhaps you have two or three ideas, but then you kind of vet those ideas in terms of how many people or how the environment or how something else is going to benefit from that particular idea.

Robin Landa: Exactly. It's a way of vetting it. And to me, that is really important. I came to that in a couple of ways. One main way is just understanding people, that people want something. We all want something. But by teaching advertising, we always think about the audience and what's in it for the audience. So, when you're watching a commercial, "What's in it for me?" That's the question. And so, we always tailor our advertising solutions to creating either a practical benefit, meaning something very functional, like this hair color will cover your gray hair or something emotional like you'll feel younger and feel better because of this hair color.

So, we're always thinking about benefits. When I thought, well, it's human nature to want something, but it's also in my opinion to want to make sure that the planet is okay, that we're thinking about sustainability, that we're thinking about other people, that we're thinking about underserved populations, neglected diseases, questions that haven't been asked or explored, the new James Webb telescope out there, thinking about things that we haven't answered yet. So, there's so many paths to take.

John: All right. I think that's a good model. It's a good way to look at things, step back and really look at it from all those different perspectives. Is there any secret to unlocking creative potential? Because that has to be part of this process. I know that's what people complain about. Like "I just don't have any good ideas" or "I don't know how to come up with an idea." How does one unlock that?

Robin Landa: Yes. I teach this. There are really many behavioral things that you can do. And what I call golden habits to form. One is to be observant and to really notice things. So, if you listen to really good comedians, observational comedians, they notice things that other people might miss and they turn them into humor. Velcro came because he was walking in the woods with his dog and noticed that burs were sticking to his clothing, right? So, we notice things. Or the famous story of penicillin. Being observant is crucial to being creative. And children are very observant and we kind of lose that as adults. And one characteristic that I've noticed in myself is that I notice everything. And it can be very fruitful. It can create a fertile mindset.

The other habits to forum are being receptive. And that's kind of being open to possibilities, open to potential, open to other people's points of view. And I'm not saying to listen to the ramblings of ignorant people, but if you present an idea to me and let's say it's MRNA and I'm like, "Well, no, we don't use that to deliver vaccines."

I should listen and I don't necessarily have to move forward on it, but I should be open to your educated point of view, because it really expands one's thinking. And being a mindful listener. The characteristic of great leaders is that they not only tell stories, but they are good story listeners. They really listen and listen very carefully. And I've developed that as a professor. I have to listen very carefully to my students to understand and to empathize. And then being resilient, of course, you know as a scientist that you don't go into an experiment knowing the outcome. You go in and things fail because we don't know the outcome. We're in there to figure it out, an experiment. So, you have to be resilient. And then there are other things that I can go on about, if you'd like.

John: Well, let me just observe that especially when you're talking about being receptive. It's so common when you're just having a conversation or talking about an idea that the first thing the person's thinking about is how to respond and how to argue with your thoughts. But you're right. It takes either a lot of practice or really thinking like, "Okay, I'm not going to respond. I'm going to keep my mouth shut. I'm going to listen to this idea and really try and get to it and maybe ask more questions."

I'm reminded of, I was leading a mastermind group and the core thing about that is don't jump in with solutions, just ask more questions and then you can get to the core of what the real issue is. And then there is probably some logic to it. And particularly when you're trying to be creative. So, I really like that reminder. How about one more?

Robin Landa: One more. Well, let me just say that you're a terrific listener and that's one of the reasons your podcast is so successful. So, you've put that into practice. And I think what you do is develop dialogue rather than debate. And that's a secret. That's a golden habit. I'll give you one more.

John: Okay.

Robin Landa: There are two questions you can always ask that really pose possibilities and they are questions that a lot of science fiction writers pose. And that is "What if?" What if we had a digital twin of you who would live on and carry all your memories and all your knowledge? What if we could be a fly on the wall and nobody would notice us? All these possibilities that we see and wonderful ideas that you see in science fiction films. "What if" is a wonderful, wonderful question to really get the creative juices going.And then the other one is "If only." And it's not about regrets, but again, it's about possibilities. If only I could fly, if only I had aesthetically pleasing underwear, if I had a urinary problem, right?

John: Right.

Robin Landa: Those two questions really let you get out of your own realm of experience and into alternate possibilities.

John: Yeah. I'm assuming that there are conditions that exist that make it easier to go through this process and be creative. And I think one of the things I was going to ask you about was diversity and inclusion and how that actually enhances this process.

Robin Landa: Yes. I think it's crucial to get multiple perspectives and you really need to have a diverse and inclusive group of people to do that. And multiple perspectives really broaden the thinking. And diversity equity inclusion also goes against groupthink, right? We want to avoid groupthink where it's a kind of forced thinking about people with the same values and the same background and the same attitude. So, I think that really great ideas are amplified when you get multiple perspectives from different people. And it also becomes more inclusive. You're really thinking about a broader audience.

John: Absolutely. When you were talking about that, all of a sudden it hit me. I was a chief medical officer for a hospital for a while, about 14 years. And we would have these strategic planning sessions. And the thing was, what the CEO did, that was great. He made sure everybody was included in the conversation. And we had people in that group, it was about 10 people in the senior team. Some were introverts, some were extroverts. Some were older, some were newbies. Some were different backgrounds, where they grew up and different experiences. And really the organization always came out the best when we had everybody's input and could try and kind of put it together and people would come up with would seem like the oddest suggestions or the most out there. And they turned out to be the best solution for that particular problem.

Robin Landa: And that's where being open comes in because they could have been shut down.

John: Exactly.

Robin Landa: So, you were a great leader in that case by getting everybody to listen and not shut down the discussion. That's a great rule of improv. The yes-end. You say yes and you move on it.

John: No buts, only ands. So, you keep things moving, the conversation is going and come up with more ideas.

Robin Landa: Yes.

John: Well, okay. We're going to pause for a minute because I sometimes wait till the very, very end to talk about my guest products, book in this case. So, tell us how the book is laid out and maybe even a little bit about how you wrote it. I'm always interested in hearing about authors like the process they go through. I mean, you've done so many it would be interesting to hear your advice for fledgling non-fiction authors.

Robin Landa: Well, I can give you an hour or more of that on what to do.

John: I'm sure.

Robin Landa: This book is really very, very close to my heart. I got to work with an extraordinary editor, Steve Piersanti, who is the founder of Berrett-Koehler. And he really pulled out of me I think the best that I could give. I really wanted to make sure that people understood how to use my framework, my system, whatever you want to call it, the process to get to what they need, to get the best results. I tried to get them to understand the process and then gave many, many examples from different disciplines, because this really could be used in any discipline. I came to it through my own, but it really can be used across the board. I gave an example of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton. If you reverse engineer a lot of great ideas, you can see how my framework comes into play. But I'll give your listeners a clue, a tip, a big tip about writing non-fiction. Most people don't read beyond the first chapter.

John: I could believe that. I'm kind of so OCD, I will go through almost any book I start, but I agree. Okay. So, what's the solution for that?

Robin Landa: The solution for that is then in a non-fiction book, you have to lay out your entire premise in the first chapter.

John: Oh, okay.

Robin Landa: You have to give it all to them in the first chapter. And then the other chapters go on to explain different aspects of it, but everything is laid out in that first chapter. And if your listeners do want to think about writing a book, they really need to do a fantastic proposal because your book proposal at this point in time is really a marketing pitch. Not only is it about the content, but you've got to pitch it to that acquiring editor that they're called the commissioning editor in England, and a senior editor here, an acquisitions editor. Different titles, same person. That person is the first gatekeeper. But beyond that person, if that person says yes, it's got to go to the editorial board and the marketing team. So, it's got to be part marketing pitch.

John: Yeah. And that's one place where physicians are not that good at marketing and selling themselves. It's amazing. They're obviously interacting with the public constantly, but they kind of have this thing about selling themselves. But basically, that's just sort of letting people know that you're there to help and you have skills that they might need.

Robin Landa: Absolutely. And it's even difficult for me coming out of it because it's about yourself. I can advertise a brand or a product or you, but about myself, it becomes all of a sudden more modest. And so, I've had friends read my bio and say, "Really? That's all you're going to say about yourself? You've forgotten, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." But a non-fiction book proposal at this point in time is heavily part marketing pitch. You have to let editors know what makes your book special and why you are the right person to write this book.

John: That's a good point. Yeah. I hadn't thought of it and never put it that way. So, tell us what's the best way to get your book? It's in pre-order status now, right? Because it's coming out in November and this will be released basically in early September. So, we have a little bit of time, but we can pre-order it. So, what's the best way to do that?

Robin Landa: You can go to any of your book sellers, you can go to my website, which will take you to a bookseller. It's really all over the place at this point. It's on the Penguin Random House website. It's on the Berrett-Koehler website, it's on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, but I would like your listeners to know that right now, anybody who buys the book, whatever money I get, I'm giving to the red cross for Ukraine for humanitarian relief. And once the book goes into regular sales, once it's published, I give 80% of my money to scholarship funds for students in need.

John: Very nice. Yeah. That also was very encouraging when you're purchasing something like this. That's another reason to buy it. You're doing some good through that process as well as learning something. So that's fantastic. The website is www.robinlanda.com. So that's there, you can find a place to buy the book there. I will put links of course in my show notes and make it simple.

All right. Any last words? I guess it would be more of encouragement for my listeners, what they might get out of the book and in general, how it might help them in terms of looking for a new career or a side business or something like that.

Robin Landa: Yes. I think anybody can come up with a worthwhile idea. It's not the person, it's the system you're using. So that if the process you're using isn't helping you, try the three G's, try goal, gap and gain. It's proven to work. I taught thousands of people to use it and they're all gainfully employed and have terrific hustles and side hustles and jobs. So, it's not you, it's the system you're using. You can do it.

John: It's amazing how these things that seem to be ephemeral or "Oh, I just have to think." There are systems, there are protocols or formulas you can use. And lo and behold, they actually work once you implement them the way they can be.

All right. This has been so much fun. I'm definitely on the list to pre-order the book because I could use some help with being creative. So, Robin, thank you so much for being here today and hopefully I'll contact you when you get your next book out as well.

Robin Landa: Thank you so much, doctor. I'm honored to be with you.

John: Okay. You're welcome. It's been my pleasure. Take care.

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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 How to Unlock Your Creative Potential as a Physician – 263 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today’s interview, I interview Omar Khateeb, the Head of Growth at Gentem, about how to save private practice using persuasive branding and marketing. 

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.

Branding and Marketing Can Save Private Practice

Omar has been involved with the branding and marketing of healthcare companies since leaving medical school in 2012. He is also an entrepreneur, and one of the few people I know that completed Seth Godin’s altMBA program.

Aside from his foray into a nonmedical start-up, all of his marketing jobs have been with healthcare companies. Now he is working for a physician CEO and applying these skills to growing that business. But he joins us today to discuss how marketing can be applied to promoting small medical practices.

Knowledge of Business Principles

Omar is not a physician, but he definitely thinks like a physician in many ways and has been around physicians a lot. The CEO who founded Gentem, where he works now as Head of Growth, is a physician, as is his father. 

I think it should be pretty evident today that small practice owners must compete with the bigger systems. But it takes a working knowledge of business principles, including marketing. I enjoyed getting some of those issues clarified by Omar during our conversation. 

Maintaining a Competitive Advantage

We also spent a few minutes discussing Gentem. The company is using AI to improve billing and collections. And it has added a unique program that physicians in small practices may find helpful.

Once engaged, Gentem can use knowledge of a practice's projected revenues and earnings to provide short-term loans to physicians at lower rates and with less paperwork than through a typical bank loan department. Between the enhanced billing and the ability to access cash when needed, this physician-run company will definitely contribute to efforts to save private practice.

Free Webinar

Between recording this interview, and posting it, I provided a free webinar for Gentem's customers. It was an updated version of my lecture on the Top Nonclinical Jobs for Physicians. There is a link to the replay below.

Summary

If you’re in that situation, you should check out Gentem.com. When I was looking over the site I saw that they were offering an assessment and the first month of services for free. It’s worth taking a look if you are part of a small group or run your own practice that does its own billing or pays the usual 7 to 8% of claims.

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

Links for Today's Episode:

• Gentem Website
• Omar Khateeb's LinkedIn Profile
• For a free demo/billing assessment courtesy of Gentem click here 
• Replay of Life Outside Medicine: Top Nonclinical Careers for Physicians

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 194

How Persuasive Branding and Marketing Can Save Private Practice

Interview with Omar Khateeb

John: My guest today is not a physician, but he definitely thinks like a physician in many ways. And he's been around a lot of physicians, from the CEO who founded Gentem Health, where he works as head of growth to the previous health care companies that he's worked for, to his stint in medical school, which we'll get into. So, this should be pretty interesting. Omar Khateeb, welcome to the PNC podcast.

Omar Khateeb: Dr. Jurica, it's very, very good to be here. It's an honor. Thank you for having me on. I was looking forward to it. Happy Monday.

John: Yeah. It's not a bad Monday where I am, the weather's good. And I'm just looking forward to having a great conversation.

Omar Khateeb: Same here. Same here.

John: Okay. So, what we usually do, you're going to have to give us the background and get a little bit into how you happened to start medical school and decide not to finish it, what drove you to make that change and then what you've been doing since then, and we'll go from there.

Omar Khateeb: Yeah, sure. Sure thing. So yeah, just a little bit of backstory on me, and I'll be concise with this. I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, son of immigrants. My father is a surgeon from Iraq, my mother is anatomy professor from Turkey. So, I grew up in the US Mexican Border in El Paso, went to college at University of Texas El Paso and studied biology and chemistry. And like every pre-med, that's what I did, but unlike most premeds I actually stuck to it because I think everybody was pre-med at some point in college but I actually continued, I did a lot of research, did some work at Johns Hopkins. And I went on to medical school at Texas Tech University.

And after my first year there, I think I was very unhappy and I think my intuition was kind of telling me that I was in the wrong place. But you put so much time, blood, sweat, and tears to get in that I really ignored that. And so, I ended up having to repeat my first year, got through it, got to my second year, and I was feeling the same way. And I'll never forget that I sat down to speak to my father, a general surgeon. I'm a firstborn and his son, and I told him, I said "You know dad, I'm really unhappy. And I can see myself doing other things, but I don't know". And I just talked to him, like I wasn't telling him I was going to leave. I just didn't know what to do.

And I'll never forget, he looked at me, he said: "It's not going to get any easier. And if you can see yourself doing other things and you're not happy and you want to leave, I fully support you". And so that really meant a lot. And so I ended up leaving medical school, fortunately with no debt. I was lucky enough to have an academic scholarship, which was great. And so then after leaving, this was back in 2011, 2012 I didn't know what to do with myself. I almost had an identity crisis because since I was a kid, I was like, "I'm gonna be a doctor and be a surgeon", blah, blah, blah, et cetera. And I leave, I have no identity now.

And so, the logical thing was like, I have this knowledge in medicine, and I seem to like sales and marketing. I was marketing manager for The Princeton Review when I was in college. So, I was like let me try and get into med devices, try to get in. And recruiters, people told me like, "Oh, you have no background. You have no sales experience. You're going to have to start off selling band-aids" or something. And I just didn't believe that. And luckily enough, there was a little, surgical robotics company, which back at the time still is, but back then, to get into robotics was like the pinnacle of med devices. It's very, very, complicated and very competitive to get in. And it's a little Israeli company called Mazor Robotics. And the first robotic spine and neurosurgical company in the world was about 30 people. Two of which were med school dropouts like me.

So, they took a chance on me and I was fortunate enough to get in. I was mentored by some greats in our industry, Christopher Prentice, who was eventually the CEO of the U.S. division. Now he's CEO at Harmonic Bionics, Krista Purcell who's my late mentor who unfortunately passed away a year ago. Tim Moraski. So just absolute greats in our industry.

And I started in sales and they noticed that I seem to be talented in marketing. And after some convincing, they got me to take on the U.S. marketing role. And I really never looked back since, so I've done marketing in surgical robotics. I went to aesthetics. I did robotics, surgical robotics is there as well. I launched a fashion inventions company on the side through Kickstarter called PS Mister. It's still functioning today.

I got very much into content creation, videos, podcasting, writing articles back in 2014. I went over to Potrero and I became the first head of growth in the medical device industry. And then recently I took over as head of growth at Gentem Health, which stands for revival. And what Genten is, it's a Silicon Valley-based company that's developing a SAS platform. It is founded by a physician, Dr. Fisayo Ositelu who's a Stanford-educated physician and a former Facebook software engineer, Manny Akintayo.

And essentially what we're building or what we've built is a platform that helps simplify, accelerated, increased reimbursements for private medical practice. So, you never have to worry about it again. It's something my father struggled with at some point. And our biggest thing is if we use data and techniques such as machine learning, and later on AI to help maximize the amount that a physician is paid through reimbursement and accelerate that, then they have a chance to actually keep their practice to stay independent.

In my humble opinion, that's where the best medicine is delivered. It's not delivered in these large corporations where essentially they're run by business people and like any business people, I don't fault them. They're trying to maximize profit and minimize costs. So less time with patients, less resources, et cetera. And Gentem really focused on helping these private medical practices thrive and for providers to stay independent, to keep their practices.

John: Oh, that sounds awesome. I want to comment on a couple of things. First is going back to your decision and not really letting anything hold you back in terms of who you're going to try to find a job with, because I get a lot of listeners who email me or contact me one way or the other. And they feel like, "Well, I can't do this. I don't have the experience. No one's going to hire me. And I'm just frustrated. I want to get out of medicine". I tell them there are so many times I've heard someone tell me a story similar to yours in medicine, a nonclinical career. It's like, they just talked to an old classmate or they got introduced to somebody or they were networking. And they're like, "Yeah, you have the transferable skills I need, I'll hire you for this job".

So, people just go into it with the fear and then the lack of confidence. So, I think it was just what you said, it matches that, it's the same exact thing. Don't let anything hold you back. If you think it's worth shooting for it, you may be surprised.

Now, as far as the company you're working for, that was one of the things that intrigued me about having you on the show today. And I think we'll get back to that at the end because while this podcast typically is about nonclinical careers, I certainly support physicians. And there are many listeners I believe who are still in private practice. And they're doing that as their alternative to the corporate practice of medicine.

The burnout usually comes from being the hamster on the wheel in a big corporation that really doesn't care about you. And so, I think that we're going to get an increase in private practice and different formats, some of which would or would not be appropriate for, let's say help from Gentem. Like some of the concierge types of practices might not be because they're not really billing people. But let's talk about that at the end, because I think some of our listeners would be very interested in that.

But now I want to pick your brain about these terms that you've thrown out. You said something about sales, and then you said, "But then I shifted to marketing" and I'm thinking, "Well, isn't sales part of marketing?" And then you and I had talked beforehand about branding. So, I need the thumbnail sketch for our listeners, particularly the private people still in full or part-time practice in terms of how we should look at that whole bucket of marketing sales, branding, and so forth.

Omar Khateeb: Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. And I think it's important because of the ability to delineate and understand the differences between those two, those very various terms. So, I'm going to put it back on. This is like choosing your own adventure. So, which one of those would you like me to start off with first?

John: Let's talk about marketing first.

Omar Khateeb: Okay. So, marketing means a lot of different things. And back 50, 60 years ago, marketing used to be sort of a sub-department of sales until it's separated off. And what I would say is, I was in sales first because I liked the one-to-one communication. I like the persuasion, et cetera. But at some point, I got very bored. Salespeople are going to get ticked off but I'm going to say this. A lot of sales it's kind of the same thing. A lot of it is persistence, timing, et cetera. And because I was a student and I still am a student of persuasion, I wanted to do that at a mass scale. And so, that starts introducing you to more strategy. And that involves also the future in terms of how we develop products, et cetera. And that's what kind of took me into marketing. So, I'm a sales guy that happened to go into marketing because I liked the sort of high-level strategy. I liked dealing with products, et cetera.

Now there's a big difference between marketing and branding. Branding is just another way of saying reputation, right? Whether you like it or not, you and I, we have our own reputation. We have a brand. It's the same thing with companies. And the best way to think about it is just like a reputation when it comes to your brand, what do people say about you when you're not in the room? Did they say that you have a great product? Did they say that your product is okay, but it's the cheapest? Did they say that your service is amazing? Did they say that, "Hey, their service sucks, but this product is amazing, it's worth every penny"?

That's really how you should look at a brand. And you don't develop a brand through marketing. This is the surprise, right? A lot of marketers actually get surprised when I say this. And that's because marketing is definitely strategic, but it's also tactical, right? It's where you spend the money on.

And you can't spend money to build a reputation. Well, I guess to a certain extent you have to. So, brand is really built off of public relations i.e., what third parties are saying about you. What are customers saying about you? What is the press like? A fortune magazine or your local newspaper, what do they say about you? That's how you start to build your brand and reputation.

That's why when a new product comes out, they do a press release. But then after that press is out, you've circulated that news to build that reputation, you use marketing to start amplifying it and defending it. So there's a lot of philosophy that comes along with it. That's I would say the tip of the surface when it comes to the difference between marketing, branding, and sales.

John: Okay. But it seems to me that a lot of physicians just totally blow it off, in a way. So, let's say I'm a physician and I just want to do a good job. So, I'm going to always be on time, I'm going to have set hours, I'm going to answer the phone quickly. I'm going to do all those things to kind of at least build that core of a reputation in terms of performance and delivering what I'm doing.

But what would you say just from your experiences, dealing with physicians, or maybe your father or anybody else over your years of experience, what would be the things that look like we're just such low hanging fruit, and you thought, "Man, that physician could be just blown the doors off this thing if he or she could just do this or that, do little sales or do a little different type of marketing or work on the brand"? What have you seen?

Omar Khateeb: Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm going to use my father as a great example. When my father was practicing, he actually had a vein clinic later on in his career. He had it for about 10 years. And in his late fifties, it might've been even sixties, he invested in a new medical device, I think a laser for sclerotherapy. I might have mixed those terms up, but either way. And like most physicians, he believed the company that when they said, "Hey doc, you buy this thing, we're going to support you with marketing, we're going to send patients". None of that happened. They left him for dead practically. And that was right around the time that the financial crisis happened.

And so, my father, and I'm very proud of this. My father was against the wall with bills. He literally was taking his credit card and maxing it out just to pay his employees and going into debt himself because he refused to fire anybody or let them suffer because of what was happening. And so, he had a choice. What he decided was, he took it upon himself to go to the market. So, he worked with the little TV station and he shot a simple video and put that video up on YouTube and then paid some guy at the time, just a little bit of money just to help him set up a Facebook page and everything.

And so, from there, it started to help for him to get patients because patients were finding him. He wasn't relying on people to refer patients, although that's an important channel. He wasn't relying on the med device company. He relied on himself and he put himself in a position where he got to the patients before they had the problem. So, they knew about him. So that way, whether it's them or an aunt or whatever when they had an issue with vans, they were like, "This guy, Dr. Khateeb is on the East side of town. I really like his video. Let's go see him". And then he would have an offer. His offer was, "Hey, on Saturdays, we do free varicose vein examinations. So come in for free. I'll examine you and then I'll give you a free consult".

That's the easiest place to start. Obviously, there are so many other aspects when it comes to branding and marketing, but that's the easiest place to start because I think what physicians have the mistake of thinking is that you just open your practice and people just come in. But unfortunately, because of these large corporations, which I would do the same if I was in their place, they're buying primary care practices and everything. So, your buddies can't refer to you whether they want to or not.

And so that's the first place to really start. It's to say, "Okay, what's my bread and butter in my practice. What am I really good at? Okay. If it's this procedure, how can I make a video to show people who I am as a person? So, people say, I really like this doctor. He looks fun or she looks very warm and sweeter or funny". And then some patients say, "I went to Dr. Janet, whatever, and she really took care of me". And "Oh yeah. She took care of my mom".

How do you put that story out there? Because at the end of the day human beings have a brain for pattern recognition, which is really bad to have pattern recognition, but we resonate with stories, not through facts and logic of stats. And so, you need to put stories out there for people to discover them, and then essentially use that story themselves to justify why they're going to come to you versus let's say someone else. Why would somebody go out of the network and pay extra money to go to you? They need a story to tell themselves to say, "I'm going out of the network. I'm paying extra money. Because this doctor said in the video that she's done this for over 10 years, her patients look really happy. I know I have to pay extra, but I don't care. I'm going out of the network for this". That's what you have to think about.

John: Yeah, that makes sense. It's not really that much different from even like marketing and online business or something, those testimonials are helpful. Who goes on Amazon and picks out a product without looking at testimonials?

Omar Khateeb: Exactly.

John: I just go with the five-star. I don't even have any idea.

Omar Khateeb: You don't even look at the reviews. Look for me, I buy a lot of books and I'm not really a big fan of a lot of business books. But if I go see a business book that has over 2000 reviews, I don't care what it is. I'm just like, "This is worth me buying".

John: Yeah, the same would be true obviously to a physician. And the other thing that occurs to me is a lot of this is electronic now anyway for a practice. Everyone has a website, but what's the point of having some kind of static website that doesn't do anything. You said your father did some videos, so people can access those for free and just learn about whatever he's talking about.

Omar Khateeb: Exactly. And look, this is the easiest way to do it. I don't know if you know this, but Google owns the internet and Google also owns YouTube. And so, you can shoot a simple video, put it up on YouTube. Put a link to your website, take that video link, have that sitting on your website, that way it's driving traffic there. But then, more importantly, there's no money in easy things anymore. And so, I've seen doctors with beautiful websites and beautiful content. But if it's sitting there waiting to be discovered, you're doing it wrong. This is very proactive, they call it blocking and tackling marketing things that you have to do. And it is exhausting, but this is why, find a simple local marketing agency that for $500 or $1,000, or even $2,000 a month can do it. And a lot of doctors are like, "Oh, I don't want to spend $2,000, $3,000". Okay, this is how you justify it. You have to think about your acquisition costs, right?

So, if you on average, and this is, this is so important. If your customer actually goes to genten.com under our webinar section, there's a webinar I just did with Dr. Obinna Nwobi. It's on vein clinic success to maximize your revenue, but it's applicable to any private practice. You got to know your numbers. So, if you're doing a certain procedure and you look at your numbers in for, let's say the last month, and you say, "Hey, I saw 50 patients and I did 20 procedures".

Invest in marketing, give it one full quarter to see if it does anything. And let's just say that you only got one extra patient. Let's just say, that's it. Hey, that one extra patient is paying for that marketing, and then some. That's how you have to think about investing in your business. Because if you don't know your numbers, and then you can't delineate between what's coming in. And then if I make this investment in marketing, how much does it go up?

Look, nobody likes to spend a whole lot of money on marketing, but the other option is you don't and people go to your competitors. So, my friend has a plastic surgery practice, I think they spend about $200,000 in marketing, I think just like last month. That's an insane amount of money. That's how you have to think about it.

John: That's very interesting. No, absolutely, and it's worth spending a little bit and really doing this test, and see if it's effective. Now, do you have other videos on the website at Gentum? Because I couldn't find them when I looked at the website. So, what other kinds of videos might you have there that would be applicable to my audience or physicians?

Omar Khateeb: Yeah, absolutely. I just took over as head of gross. Maybe a couple of weeks ago when you first looked, they may not have been there, but we just added a webinar tab, I think sometime last week. So, if you go to gentum.com, we have awesome resources there. I have to brag about it a little bit because let me use Gentum as a perfect example.

At Gentum we have a platform that has to do with reimbursements and billing and claims. So, if you want to get more out of medical billing and your revenue cycle, you come to us. Does that mean all the content we create is just purely on the medical billing revenue cycle? Absolutely not.

So, all the content you'll see on Gentum has to do with, how do you become a physician entrepreneur, how do you increase the valuation of your practice? How does a practice manager do his or her job better? Because when you develop a brand around helping people with a certain area, so Gentum wants to help practices stay independent.

So, what does that involve? That involves marketing, finance, all these things. So, if we have more reasons for our physician or their staff to come to our website, use our resources for free, get engaged with the brand, the day that they have the pain and they say, our revenue cycle management is not good. Our medical billing needs help. And they say, "Why don't we just use Gentum? I know about that company". That's how this works.

The chief marketing officer of Mercedes-Benz said something very, very important. This is a long time. He said that he has to start marketing Mercedes-Benz to you the moment you turn five or six years old. Because from the time that you're five years old, you have to start seeing that as a status symbol so that when you get into high school, you see it as a status symbol. And when you get out of college, you start making money, then you think, "Hey, I've made it. I'm a business professional. What's the car I'm going to buy? Mercedes-Benz". Because you've been conditioned for your entire life to associate that as a signal, as an indication that this is what you buy when you're professional.

So again, what a lot of companies make the mistake of doing, especially doctors, they say, "Hey, I'm going to market and brand when people have the problem, they should think about me". But guess what? Everybody's doing that. You got to go more upstream and teach people something else.

Let's use varicose veins as an example. A lot of teachers get varicose veins, right? So can you maybe write a blog, maybe do a video to say, "Hey, if you're a teacher, here are five things that you should make sure to do from today to help prevent getting varicose veins". You're cutting into your business, technically doing that. But guess what? It's a lot more fun when you control that and you take your own business out that way than someone else doing it. And as a result of that, you've developed brand equity. You've developed a reputation, right? People respect that.

I'm Turkish. In my opinion, we're the masters when it comes to trade and bazaars. But this is why in the bazaar you try to always help people. If you go to a bazaar in Turkey, if I go to a rug shop, if I ask for directions, not only will they point me out, they'll say, "Hey, do you want some tea? Do you want anything?" They won't sell me anything. It's just purely trying to be helpful. Because it becomes a story, it becomes an emotion so when I want to buy a rug or someone else does, I say, why don't you go see these people? They're really, really nice. It sounds simple, but that's really how the world works these days. It has for thousands of years.

John: I think I was at the bazaar. I remember coming home from a cruise stopping in Turkey. And I think I had like 10 pounds of tea that I couldn't drink in my whole life after we had gotten the directions and the help and the welcome and doing all that.

So, okay. We're going to cover a couple of other things because we're going to run out of time. But that makes a whole lot of sense. And besides, you talk about, well, I'm cutting my own customers, but no, because you're expanding your audience by five times or whatever that number is, people come to you as an authority, then there's going to be people that get varicose veins no matter what they do.

All right. So, I was going to take a detour for one minute, and then we're going to come back to Gentem. You're one of the few people I know that did the altMBA by Seth Godin. So, I think I may have mentioned it in the past in other episodes. So, tell us just briefly what that is and what was your experience of doing that for what was it like three, four months?

Omar Khateeb: Yeah, actually, I want to say it was a full month. They might've extended it a little bit, but it's a very intense course. The funny thing was that, it was right when I got laid off from my first job, my first company got acquired, so I was laid off. I had a mortgage and the first thing I thought was, "Hey, I'm going to spend a few grand and go to this thing".

Essentially what the altMBA stands for is an alternative. AltMBA is not about certification. It's not about a degree. It's about a way of thinking. How do you show up and deliver and ship? Because at the end of the day, as that old saying goes, 90% of success is just showing up. Part of it is can you make a promise and can you continue to deliver on it?

So, for a full month, I'm connected to amazing people, leaders in medicine, business, technology, et cetera. And we rotate groups. And every week we have three big projects to deliver. I mean, these are really big projects. We have a new project, two or three days to deliver on it. Then we have a new team, a new project. And we do this for a full month. It's really intense. I'm telling you right now, there's never a good time to do it. I have friends who are like, "Well, I have kids, I have a job". There's never a good time to do it, but I promise you that when you do it, because it will squeeze you, it will force you to grow. Those growing pains are there for a reason. It will transform you if you let it. And I credit the altMBA for a lot of who I am today.

Because after going through the altMBA, I started writing an article back in 2014. People thought I was crazy. They're like, why are you writing these articles in marketing? Those articles paid my way to San Francisco to Silicon Valley. My last job I was hired by the CEO because he was reading my work when he was a director. And to this day, I've been doing my own book review every week. I do a full video on reviewing a book. I've been doing that for three years straight now, never missing a week.

And it's because of the leadership skills, the way I was taught to think about leadership by content, about authenticity through the altMBA. So, it's a transformative program for your listeners. Because if they're listening to the show, they are definitely the kind of person that the altMBA wants. If you go and apply to the altMBA, you can list me down as a reference, Omar Khateeb, and that kind of helps you because I know a lot of people do apply. So, if they see that they're recommended or they heard about the program from a graduate that helps a lot.

John: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, Seth Godin is sort of considered a guru genius. He just stands out from the rest. He's written tons, he's got multiple books out. And yeah, I think it's seen as something that if you can do it, do it, it's worth it. Again, it's not a long-time commitment, but when you're in it, from what you're saying, which makes perfect sense, you're going to be really committed to doing that during that time frame, otherwise, you won't get anything out of it.

Omar Khateeb: Absolutely. And one thing I'll tell you that I really learned from Seth and I preach it and I'll tell you, I think this is important for all the physicians listening. We learned from training and residency and we'd just be really hard on ourselves and expect perfection. But when it comes to marketing, when it comes to business, you can't aim for perfection all the time, because when you do that, it just makes you come up with an excuse to delay. And so, sometimes vulnerability is the answer. And in my opinion, it's the answer all the time, whether it's with your patients, with marketing and everything, put yourself out there. That's what I would say. Put yourself out there.

A lot of times when you think about marketing, people look at the whole staircase, they look at the whole building, like, "Oh my gosh, I got to climb all of these stairs". And they just say, "I'm just not going to do it". Just look down and look at the first step and just take one step. Maybe put out a little post, make a crappy iPhone video, put that out there. I don't care. Just take the first step. Then the second step gets easier, than the third step. And then before you know it, you're on the 5,000 steps, you're running, you're killing it. But don't look at the whole staircase, just take one little step.

I tell a lot of physicians today, like my classmates who graduated, don't worry about all this. Just start a LinkedIn profile and connect with some people and like some posts. Just start like that. Maybe after a few weeks, maybe post something, maybe leave a comment. Little by little. It's just like anything in life. When you're working out, you're not trying to become Arnold Schwarzenegger on day one. When you're a surgeon and you're training, you're not trying to become like Michael DeBakey after a week. It takes time. It takes patience.

John: Yeah, absolutely. That's good. That's awesome advice. Okay, I want to hear a little bit more now about Gentum. Because I really think that for the listeners here that are in private practice, it's a struggle. Everything's a struggle in private practice to some extent. You're trying to see patients. You're trying to run a business. You're going to do the marketing perhaps. And you're going to do the billing. Billing is the bane of every practice that I've ever been in. So, what is Gentum doing and how would it help that? Is it really geared more for the independent small groups or independent physicians?

Omar Khateeb: Yeah. What I would say is, we do help physician groups that are bread and butter today are really physicians that one to five in the practice, maybe up to 10. That's usually getting a little bit big. We can take that on, but especially physicians for like one to five, they really love us because we do so much.

We're kind of a combination of technology and service. So, we do have certified billers and certified revenue cycle managers. The people who love us the most actually are not, the physicians love us, but their staff, their billing team loves us as well. Internal billing team that is just because we do a really good job of not only maximizing how much they're reimbursed and how fast, we stay up to date on what's changing. That's where a lot of physicians will say, "Hey, we figured it out with what costs you", et cetera, that changes in a few months sometimes, maybe a quarter. And so, if you're behind, you just lost out on a certain amount of money, right? And that's how these things happen. So, getting plugged in with us is really, really helpful.

The other unique thing that we do. And I'm very proud of where I work. I only go to companies that really have a shot of doing something transformative. Because we're very data-driven, and a physician will benefit because we're plugged into so many different specialties, we use that data to maximize reimbursement.

The one advice I'd tell physicians, and I didn't realize this. When you're starting to expand your practice, let's say like my father, he opened a vein clinic. Don't go to the bank and take a loan. Do not do that. Banks do not understand your business. They do not care about it. They're just more than happy to give you money and then essentially, charging high interest for it.

With Genten because of our data, we're able to evaluate the risk of a claim. And so anytime a physician wants, let's say they want to invest more on a new device and they need the money, they can press a button in our portal and we do what's called "Genten Advance". It's essentially a cash advance. So immediately we advanced about 85% of the claims. So, if it's a $1,000 procedure, we advance about $850 of it. You do whatever you want with it. Then we go and collect the remaining percentage and then redistribute that to you as well. We charge a very, very low percentage. It's under 5% right now. It's a pretty low percentage for that compared to a bank.

And the reason why this is valuable is that you are now essentially taking cash based on your business. You're not going and borrowing money from somebody. And a great success story, the webinar I mentioned with Dr. Obinna Nwobi, the vein clinic one, he used Gentum Advance last year on a variety of procedures to essentially build up cash. And he went and acquired a $2 million surgical practice and just expanded it like that. Didn't go get a loan from a bank, nothing, purely through our advanced payments.

And so, I think that's the future when it comes to medicine is using technology and having different financial products so you can strategically, as a physician decide how are we going to maximize profit? How are we going to advance into certain procedures, or maybe start getting cash advances to buy something? Instead of doing what we've been doing for who knows how many decades. Going and dealing, no offence to business people and lawyers who do not understand medicine. And because physicians don't understand business, these people are more than happy to give us that money, to give us those contracts at a very high interest. And then over time we ended up screwing ourselves. So, we get rid of all of that.

John: Oh, that's awesome. I'm just trying to think through this, like how this would apply, but basically, I see any tool that we can have for physicians to maintain that level of independence is awesome. We're competing with these big systems, they got CFOs, they got finance directors, they got accountants, how do you deal with that or compete? But at the same time, that's a lot of overhead that they invest in. I can tell you from being in a hospital system, there's a huge finance department and nothing in a hospital has done efficiently by any means. If this kind of technology can just help the individual physician to kind of bypass all that and have access to some cash that they otherwise wouldn't have, just from a time standpoint, that's really helpful, the cash flow.

All right, well, I think our listeners should go watch some of the videos you have, and then if they do have any need for these kinds of services, billing and revenue cycle and so forth, it doesn't sound like it would be that difficult to find out more about it. So, they would just go to gentem.com?

Omar Khateeb: That's right. Go to genten.com. I'll provide a special link just for your listeners and they can click on it in the show notes. They can go and not only get a demo, but we also do a bit of a billing and revenue analysis kind of for free. So, I recommend doing the demo because even if you don't go with us, you're going to learn a lot about your business just by talking to our team.

John: Awesome. That'd be great. Okay, I'll put that in there for sure. If they want to get a hold of you, they could probably go through Gentem or they can look for you on LinkedIn.

Omar Khateeb: They can look for me everywhere. Omar Khateeb, I'll give you some links to put in the show notes. They can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat. I'm everywhere. I'm not on TikTok though. I'm pretty much everywhere else.

John: All right. Well, this has been really fun. I think we're going a little over now. So, I guess I am going to just say thanks a lot for being here today, Omar. It's been great. And hopefully, I'll talk to you again in the future. Maybe we'll talk to your CEO about coming on to the program sometime because he is a physician. It might be interesting to get his perspective. And I guess with that, I'll say so long.

Omar Khateeb: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

John: You're welcome.

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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 How Persuasive Branding and Marketing Can Save Private Practice – 194 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Dr. Marjorie Stiegler describes how she developed her expertise in online strategies for physician branding. She’s an entrepreneur, author, and accomplished keynote speaker.

Marjorie is an anesthesiologist and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is an expert and national speaker on patient safety, simulation, medical decision making, cognitive errors, and critical event debriefing.

She completed medical training at Emory School of Medicine, Internship at Georgetown University Medical Center, and Anesthesia Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In today’s interview, we learn about the maternity active wear business she started in 2009. “We started it with just a few hundred dollars. It rapidly became a six-figure-a-year revenue generator…and a labor of love. It's so rewarding. It's really fun.”

She describes her early forays into online branding and marketing, which led to many of the online strategies she uses. We get into the weeds a little about how she develops and delivers her online courses. It’s a fascinating conversation and I feel like we’ve just scratched the surface.

Starting with a Blog

Marjorie set up a physician web site and Twitter account as a safe place to try social media. She thought no one would notice or be interested in what she posted.

“I wrote about what I thought about certain cognitive bias, which is sort of the underpinning of medical decision making and why we have preferences to try or not try something else. When people would search for a medical expert in decision making… I think I rose to the top of the SEO.”

Social media was a boom to her academic career. “I got invited to a lot more speaking opportunities, particularly international ones, and for bigger stages, than I think I would have.” And she began to notice how her online strategies were enhncing her reach.

Reducing Clincal Activities

While she was building her speaking career and authority, she was still practicing full time. As she has increased her coaching and course creation, she gradually reduced clinical time to one day per week.

“I do love taking care of patients, and that's one of the reasons I think that non-clinical activity is so helpful and important. It really gives me, and I think gives a lot of people who I know or that I've taught, the financial freedom to choose how much I feel like working.”

A career with clinical and non-clinical work can help prevent burnout. “When I go to work, it feels rewarding, instead of somehow…burdensome. I don't find myself over committed anymore. I have creative outlets all over the place. So, it's a great balance.”

Turn Ideas into Money

“There are many, many courses on how to launch online businesses or how to do courses. But I think physicians have some different challenges.”

Click here to download the TRANSCRIPT

Marjorie recommends paying close attention to contracts and policies with affiliated partners and organizations regarding intellectual property and money.

She has written several “how-to” books, courses, and other educational materials for physicians that focus on the online strategies she has developed. “It's fun to help people have success in this way that can seem really overwhelming. There's a lot of stuff you could do…but really not that many that make a difference to the bottom line.”

Marjorie helps people figure out how their ideas can make them money, and how to utilize online strategies to promote themselves. “That's what people want to do with their businesses, and that's where people seem to struggle.”

Our Sponsor

The University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, is the proud sponsor of this podcast. You’ll remember that I interviewed Dr. Kate Atchley, the Executive Director of the program, in Episode #25 of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 650 graduates. Unlike most other ranked programs, which typically have a duration of 18 to 24 months, this program only takes a year to complete. And Economist Magazine recently ranked the business school #1 in the world for the Most Relevant Executive MBA.

University of Tennessee PEMBA students bring exceptional value to their organizations. The curriculum includes a number of major assignments and a company project. Hence, students immediately contribute to their organizations while in the program.

Graduates have taken leadership positions at major healthcare organizations. And they have become entrepreneurs and business owners. If you want to acquire the business and management skills you need to advance your career, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office by calling (865) 974-6526 or going to vitalpe.net/physicianmba.

Links for today's episode:

• Dr. Marjorie Stiegler
• Dr. Marjorie Stiegler on Facebook
• Dr. Marjorie Stiegler’s Facebook Groups
• Online Strategy for Doctors: Blogs, Social Media, Side Gigs, and More
• The Social Prescription
• The Speaking Prescription
• Physician Nonclinical Career Hunters Facebook Group
• Emory School of Medicine
• Mass General
• UCLA
• UNC School of Medicine
• Kajabi
• Teachable
• Katrina Ubell
• Amy Porterfield
• Daniel Kahneman
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by  Daniel Kahneman

Thanks to our sponsor…

Thanks to the UT Physician Executive MBA program for sponsoring the show. It’s an outstanding, highly rated, MBA program designed for working physicians. It might be just what you need to prepare for that joyful, well-paying career. You can find out more at 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.

Here are the easiest ways to listen:

vitalpe.net/itunes  – vitalpe.net/stitcher  

The post How to Employ Powerful Online Strategies with Dr. Marjorie Stiegler – 084 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.