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

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

Our Sponsor

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

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

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

What is NewScript?

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

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

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

What Is the Summit Agenda?

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

Below are the speakers and topics being covered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

SUMMARY

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

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

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

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

Links for Today's Episode:

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

Download This Episode:

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

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 294

Behind the Scenes Look at Planning the First Nonclinical Career Summit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today's guest describes how to build a rewarding online business. He is the host of The Affiliate Guy Podcast, your source for affiliate marketing news, tips, and strategies to take your online business to the next level.

Matt McWilliams is also the author of the best-selling book Turn Your Passions Into Profits. He has worked with some of the world's most successful businesses and entrepreneurs, including Shark Tank's Kevin Harrington, Tony Robbins, Ryan Levesque, Michael Hyatt, Brian Tracy, Jeff Walker, and others.

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.

Matt's Journey in Affiliate Marketing

Matt is the owner of an agency that runs affiliate programs for high-level entrepreneurs and businesses. The things he learned building that and other businesses led him to write his book about building a rewarding online business. 

Affiliate marketing enables business owners to sell without taking any risks. Matt refers to this as paid-to-practice (PTP).

Startup of Affiliate Marketing

Matt introduced his ‘Affiliate Donut' approach, in which you focus on your main services. You can establish an affiliate relationship with your audience by providing supplements or other products that will benefit them in numerous ways, which will lead to them becoming recurring buyers.

There are certain advantages to using Matt's approach:

1. Start monetizing immediately
2. Training your audience to buy before you have your own product.
3. Serve your audience by recommending products right in your niche or tangential ones.

And if the performance is strong, one will be able to generate more revenue early in your entrepreneurial journey. 

Building a Rewarding Online Business

Matt touches on other business principles during our interview. And his book, Turn Your Passions Into Profits, provides detailed instructions outlining his proven path to a rewarding online business.

It covers all of the other necessary aspects of building any business, from identifying your niche, describing your avatar, building authority, creating a marketing plan, and building a team.

Summary

Turn Your Passion Into Profits is available at booksellers nationwide. But the best place to get Matt's book is at passionsintoprofitsbook.com/jurica. There are extra free bonuses for you using that link, including courses such as Matt's Email Marketing Masterclass and others. 

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:

• Turn Your Passions into Profits by Matt McWilliams
• The Common Path to Uncommon Success by John Lee Dumas
• The Positioned Physician by Mike Woo-Ming
• How to Get Started on Your Nonclinical Online Business
• How to Select the Best Online Business Niche – 110
• How to Become an Author, Consultant and Online Authority with Dr. Tom Davis – 047
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

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

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 288

What Is the Proven Path to a Rewarding Online Business?

John: If you've been reading my emails recently, you'll recognize today's guest. I've been helping him get the word out about his new book "Turn Your Passions into Profits", and I'm really pleased to be able to talk to him personally about the book today. Matt McWilliams, welcome to the show.

Matt McWilliams: Hey, John. I appreciate that and thanks for having me today.

John: And I think we were talking before we got out, we're kind of like neighbors. You're one state over Indiana and I'm in Illinois. So, we're Midwest guys.

Matt McWilliams: Yes, yes. I don't sound like it just because I grew up in the south, but I've been up here long enough, I'm getting that little bit of that, that twangs gone away. And my accents become a lot more neutral. It's kind of funny when you combine a dad from New Jersey, a mom from California, you grow up in the south, but in an area with mostly relocated Yankees, then you move up to Fort Wayne, Indiana. You end up with a weird accent. Apparently, I've been told I have a neutral to slightly strange accent because I say certain words like I'm from Boston. Other words like I'm from Indiana. Other words like I'm from Mississippi. So, I like the mix in that.

John: It sounds pretty Midwestern today, but we'll see. I'll be looking for those rare words that come out that are a tip off to some other area. All right, we're going to be talking about your book today. And I'd let you give us a little background about what you do and then we'll get into why you wrote the book. But tell us a little bit about yourself.

Matt McWilliams: Yeah. Today I'm so blessed, John. I get to live out both ends of the book. There's a reason why we titled it what we titled it, you turn your passions into profits. It's not about just having a business you're passionate about. It's not about just changing the world. I've been there, done that. My third business. Man, I was making an impact on people, changing people's lives. I'd get emails and, and blog comments and social media comments every couple of days. "Matt, you saved my marriage. Matt, I was thinking about killing myself and I didn't. Matt, you changed my life." And I'm like, "That's awesome. Yay."

Here's a funny thing though. Our kids are both in high level soccer now and it's thousands of dollars a year. And the soccer association sadly does not take blog comments as a form of payment or tweets and Facebook posts as a form of payment. The mortgage company, they never took. I tried once forwarding them an email saying, "Look what somebody said about me. I saved a guy's life." And they're like, "You still owe us $1,800." Dang it, that's not how this is supposed to work.

And I've been on the flip side, I've had a business where I made more money than I know what to do with John. The reality was, when I was in my early twenties, I was making between $8,000 and $10,000 a week teaching golf schools. At that age, full disclosure, don't ever make that much money when you're that young because you'll do what I did and do a bunch of stupid stuff with it.

John: Yeah, to squander it.

Matt McWilliams: Yeah. May or may not, I had a lot of nice stuff there for a few years though. But yeah, I made more money that I knew what to do with, but I was miserable. I hated what I was doing. And so, today I'm able to do both. I've got a great business. We have an agency where we run affiliate programs for some high-level entrepreneurs and businesses and I love that. Got an amazing team there. Got our platform at mattmcwilliams.com. Got the podcast The Affiliate Guy, got the book now "Turn Your Passions into Profits."

The interesting story behind the book because I know you said you were going to ask about it anyway, but not the reason why I wrote it, but the reason why I was able to write it is because I was in that position. If I didn't have such an amazing team, if I hadn't gotten to the point where we built the systems for the business to run, if we hadn't gotten to the point where it provided an income.

Because here's a funny thing about a book. Newsflash everyone, you're not going to make any money for a long time off the book. This was actually financial, we lost money so far, we're in the red. Even with a pretty significant advance from the publisher, we're technically in the red, if you compare it. I think we're in the red unless you count my wage at about one third of minimum wage, in which case, if you'd pay me that, we might be breakeven.

And so, we wouldn't have been able to do that. How do you do something like this? How do you invest all this time and energy into writing, editing, producing, launching all the things that we did for this book without the financial reward. It's because we have the rest of the business doing so well financially that we're able to do that. So, huge kudos, again, to the things that I've learned that put us in that position and obviously, my team, which is amazing.

John: No, it sounds like it's a great story and I think it's definitely ranking extremely high on Amazon and the other list. I've seen some of the numbers and definitely you're going to be one of those few authors that actually make money off their book. Because I've interviewed many and a lot of people write a book to promote their products or to serve their audience.

But yeah, I really like the book. I've gone through it and I get a lot of questions because I send out surveys to my listeners and my readers and one of the things they're looking for is what's the roadmap? How do I build an online business? And again, I'll say, hey, here's the book. It's out. You can get it now. And the subtitle is "The Proven Path for Building a Rewarding Online Business." I'm not going to tell my readers how to do it or listeners. It's like, just get the book. Now we can get that pretty much everywhere, right? Anywhere that books are sold.

Matt McWilliams: Yeah. If they sell books, they sell my book. Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble. It's in stores, most Barnes & Noble, there's a few that are sold out. Some of the smaller Barnes & Noble will not have it. We have two Barnes & Noble in Fort Wayne. One is massive and then the other is not even the size of our house. It's a tiny little Barnes & Noble and that one doesn't have it. But yeah, we got a deal with Barnes & Noble nationwide. Right now, at least for the next few weeks, it's front and center in almost all the Barnes & Noble we've been into. You walk in and it's right there under the new non-fiction.

So, you can grab it anywhere, but the best place to grab it, you go to passionsintoprofitsbook.com/jurica. If you go there, that's the best place to get the book because John, we've got some special bonuses for your listeners there. You can go buy it in a store, that's great. Go to the store and grab it. That's awesome. Then go back to that URL and make sure you redeem for your bonuses there. So, we've got over $500 in bonuses. Stuff you cannot get anywhere else. And so, that's the best place to do it, of course, because it's just easy peasy. But yeah, if you're walking through the store one day, you see the book, it's about the only book with that color scheme.

My mom, of course, this is a funny story. When it went on sale in stores, she had ordered a couple copies or 20 through Amazon. I was like, "Mom, we got it in Barnes & Noble." And she's like, "What's in the Wilmington and the Jacksonville one?" And she lives an equal distance between the two. This is in North Carolina. She's like 40 minutes from both of them. And she's like, I got to go. And she goes and grabs the copies and she's like, it was so easy to see. I walked in and that is the only one out of like 80 books that are front and center at the store. The only one that looks like that. There are half a dozen white books and some green books and black books. And she's like, it is the only one with that color scheme. So, I wish I could say we did that on purpose. It's actually just because that's our color scheme as a company. But it worked.

John: Yeah. It's on the logo for the podcast, I think are those colors.

Matt McWilliams: Yeah. Obviously, it's just funny. It's one of those we're behind the scenes weird stories. The iterative process for a cover, because I'm sure there's people out there, somebody listening or watching you, you want to do a book. What we did was about 14 months in advance, we started pulling my followers, my fans, my email list, and I also did it with some friends and stuff. I started pulling them on here's six covers that the publisher designed. And it was a very iterative process because the original version of this, there were a couple of things that were different. The original version of this exact one was a completely different color scheme. And the words were not tilted and none of these were tilted here. It was straightforward.

Well, what we found as we did this was the ones that had the slanted words kept doing better. That became the next iteration. We narrowed it down to slanted words. And then the two that did well were this with a completely different color scheme and a different design with this exact color scheme. And so, we were like, we combined them and that ended up being the winner.

And so, it was a very iterative process. I think we did like four rounds. Now number one, I ended up with the best cover. The actual colors that we ended up with there's a slight fade if you look closely from the bottom to the top. The bottom is our official company color. The top is actually from a course of ours, and it's a fade from those two colors. And that was the only reason why we even bothered doing like, "Hey, try that, whatever." Number one, we got the best cover. We ended up with over a thousand votes across the board. A thousand people are voting on it, you can be pretty sure it's going to be the right cover. Secondly, it's pre-marketing for the book in advance. Third, the people who voted, and even if they voted for a different cover, they were a part of the process. So, they were invested in it. So they're much more likely to buy the book.

John: Right. Good marketing, man.

Matt McWilliams: That's what it is.

John: That's what you're an expert at. When I have someone who's an author or does other things, but I obviously get a twofer. So, the twofer part of our conversation is let's use a little bit of your expertise. I have physician friends and colleagues who have started small businesses, coaching, consulting, courses, what have you. Maybe one of them uses affiliate marketing in any way, shape, or form for their business. So, since you are the expert on this topic, maybe you can just give us an overview of what is affiliate marketing? Why is it so cool? And why business owners should start doing it? Maybe to get people to help promote their products.

Matt McWilliams: Yeah. Now I will preface this by saying I don't know any states' laws about physicians and how you can operate. So please check on all that stuff. And I did not stay at a holiday express last night. So, take everything with a grain of salt in that these are basic rules and principles for business owners that I'm sure in some random state, what I'm about to tell you might even be illegal. I'm just going to preface that. So, that is not to save my butt, but to save yours. Whoever's listening, you live in whatever, you live in California and you are not allowed to do this, okay, then don't do it.

The basic premise of affiliate marketing has been around for thousands of years, John. If you think about it, I don't know, ancient Rome. I can't name anybody from ancient Rome other than Julius Caesar, but so-and-so and so-and-so are walking down the street in ancient Rome. One of them is looking for a good cobbler. And he's like, let me take you to mine. And he takes them to his cobbler and the cobbler's like, hey, thanks for referring whoever. I'm going to give you your next pair of shoes 50% off. That's affiliate marketing. If you think about it. There's no technology.

All we did 30 years ago is add technology to the basic concept of referral marketing. And then in advance, because we added that tech piece, before technology, Joe had to walk Sam to the store and say, let me introduce you to this guy before the advent of the telephone. Then we got the telephone, and the telephone allowed us for Joe to call up the shoemaker and say, hey, I got my friend Sam, he's on his way over. And boom, Joe got some credit for those shoes that Sam bought.

About 30 years ago, we added technology. So now we don't even need to know our affiliates, and our affiliates don't need to necessarily have us. But ultimately this comes down to, there's a concept I use called the affiliate donut. In the physician world, your core, if you can picture a donut with the core, the whole there, that's your core offerings. I'm simplifying this, John, but people come to you, if let's just say you're a general practitioner, they come to you when you're sick, when you have injury. That's pretty much the only time people ever unfortunately go to their doctor unless you go for your annual checkup, which reminds me, I'm due for an annual checkup last November. But I was launching a book, so I need to schedule that.

And so, that's when you go to your doctor. Annual checkup or you're not feeling well in some way, shape, or form. That's your core offer. You solve problems and perform annual checkups. Again, I'm simplifying this. I'm not diminishing what physicians do. I'm just saying that's the core offer. But think about all the other things. Do you sell supplements? Are you going to create as a doctor in Fort Wayne, Indiana or Kansas City for that matter? Are you going to create a supplement line? No. But do you recommend supplements to your customers? Maybe.

Well, why not form an affiliate relationship with those and create a single page on your site that says here's all the supplements. I'm just going to say drjohnsmith.com/supplements. And on that page are all the supplements that we recommend. In fact, you can narrow them down. For my patients that are men under 40, here's what I recommend. For my pregnant mothers, here's what I recommend. For my seniors, here's what I recommend. And so on and so forth. And you can recommend those supplements.

Now, if one of your patients become recurring buyers, for let's just say three supplements each fish oil, multivitamin, and one other. They become recurring buyers and you make $3 a quarter off of those 10%, that's $9. That is now a 90-cent increase per quarter in your average customer. You go, "Well, that's not a ton of money in the grand scheme of things." I'm just using round numbers here. Probably a little bit more than that. A $1.50, $2 more.

But those are the type of things at the end of the year, all of a sudden, your affiliate commissions could pay for an entire team member. Let's say you have three front desk staff. One and a half of those could be paid for by your affiliate commissions. That's kind of cool. $50,000 - $60,000 a year. That's a nice little vacation last time I checked. Or I don't know, you could pay off most of your mortgage, whatever it is. That's just off supplements.

There are other types of things you could recommend, whether it be various products that would serve your audience in different ways. Again, I'm making this up as I go here because I'm not super familiar with that world. But if you're a chiropractor, for example, recommending certain products. There's a one that I bought recently called Chirp. I don't know if you've heard of these, John, but think of a foam roller on steroids. My chiropractor years ago gave me a PVC pipe. He's like, don't use a foam roller too soft. Get the PVC pipe. And I'm like, it hurts. And it doesn't dig in. This chirp thing kind of digs up in there and I get on it, I just hear stuff popping. And I get up and I'm like my posture's better.

Could you recommend that as a doctor and make $10 a sale off those chirps? If 5% of your patients buy a chirp, how many patients do you have? Multiply it by 5% times $10 and it starts adding up and it creates that side income that, again, I've heard of people, specifically chiropractors who literally their affiliate commissions pay for their entire administrative staff. Their entire admin staff is paid for, not from their client fees, not from anything else they sell directly, but just from their affiliate offers.

John: Well, let me jump in here for a minute because a lot of my audience, they're getting burnt out. And so, what they're doing, they're creating side gigs that are in the healthcare realm, but it's not under their license. They're not actually practicing. So, they're building consulting or coaching or something. And obviously they can find products and actually other coaches or learning about something that affiliate marketing would be perfect for. And I've done it myself, the things I'm doing affiliated with the podcast and so forth. So, what are the other advantages of affiliate though? Because it's not simply the fact that you have this. You don't have to have any product, right?

Matt McWilliams: Yeah. That's a big one. In that instance, John, think about it. If your practice, though, is bringing in more revenue, yeah, you're burned out. But if you can increase the value of a patient $10, you could reduce your patient load by 10% and make up for that with affiliate marketing. That's one thing.

Number two, if it's bringing in more money on the side, it's building up that reserve. And I know a lot of people when they're switching careers, I have a particular client I'm thinking of, a coaching client. And she's burned out with her current platform. She's building this other platform. And I said, "Okay, the first two coaching sessions, I'm not focusing on your new platform." And she's like, "What do you mean? I want to focus on my new platform." She's doing about $250,000 a year in her current platform. I said, "I want to get that to $300,000 in the next year." She's like, "I don't want to grow that Matt."

And I'm like, "No, listen to me. If I can tweak a few things that don't require any extra work or involvement from you, but get that to $300,000 for the next two years versus going down to $150,000, you have an extra $300,000 in the bank at the end of two years. What could you do if you have an extra $300,000 in the bank at the end of two years?" And for most of us, the answer is pretty much whatever the heck we want to because we have such a load of money sitting there that it frees us up. Because one of the things, what's the thing about a side hustle? "Oh, I want to leave my practice. I'm burned out." Okay, can I just go to making $0? No. Could you go to making $0 if you had a half a million dollars in the bank? Maybe.But with that thing, we're not going to go to $0. We're going to build the side hustle. Maybe that side hustle is only bringing in $3,000 a month. I'm going to go out on a limb and say most physicians make a little bit more than that.

John: Yeah, that's true.

Matt McWilliams: But the physician side is now bringing in an extra $75,000. I don't want to be unrealistic. $75,000 from affiliate marketing. Over two years that's $150,000. Plus $3,000 a month for two years is $72,000 if I'm doing my math right. We're now at $200,000 some. You could go full-time on that side hustle now. It's currently bringing in $3,000. What would it do if you were full? Plus, you have over $200,000 in the bank. So, think of it that way.

To answer your question, what are some of those benefits and what does it do for our business? Number one, you can start monetizing immediately. This is the big one. When you start that side hustle, maybe you're building a platform around your passion and maybe your passion is, we'll just take John's for example, his passion was helping other burnt out physicians. But maybe your passion is around something that has nothing to do with medicine but sort of does. Maybe your passion it's about youth sports and the science of helping youth athletes become better. I'm just making this up.

Well, initially you might not have very many product offerings. You're certainly not going to go create physical products because physical products, I had an idea recently for a physical product and I was told the CAD design alone was going to be $18,000. I'm like, I want to do this, but not that bad. I think I'm just going to pass on that physical product.

So, we start promoting other products and I'm going to get to some of the other benefits that are tied to that in just a second. We don't have any fulfillment, any customer service. You do not need any space in your garage. For those men out there, this is less applicable to the women, just to be honest. But for the men out there, the last thing you want to do is start a business and then your wife can't park in the garage.

John: Right. Absolutely.

Matt McWilliams: Do not do that. I'm giving you marriage advice right now. Never, ever, ever do that because you will not be married in about a year. And so, we don't have to do that. And we don't have to worry. If my promo goes bad, if they don't buy, at least I don't have a garage full of crap. There's no hidden cost. When I sell stuff, I sold a couple of courses today. We sold like a thousand dollars' worth of courses today. Here's the thing. $994 is what my payment processor says we made. $994. And you go, "Hey, $994." I didn't. Not only did I have to pay my affiliates for both of those sales, $400 and change out the door. I paid 30 cents plus 2.9% on both of those transactions and credit card processing fees. So, $60, if I'm doing the math right out the door.

Almost half my revenue is gone. Our customer service manager has to email both of them and make sure that they're set up in their logins. Statistically one out of four is going to have an issue with something. Trying to log in or something's not going to work. An email's not getting delivered. That cost another $10. I'm over $500 on a $ $994 purchase. There's a lot of hidden costs. There's no risk like we talked about.

This is a big one. Affiliate marketing teaches you how to sell, it teaches you how to sell without all those risks and stuff. And so, my favorite kind of practice, I call it PTP, paid to practice. You get paid to practice selling online. You start to learn what works for your audience. Okay, what price points is your audience going to buy it? What sales strategies work? What topics are they going to buy at? What are the best promotional methods? I can send four emails or go live on Facebook for 30 minutes and sell the same amount of stuff. What are you going to do? Write four emails or go live for 30 minutes? You learn those things when you're doing affiliate marketing, it trains them to buy. That's another big one. You are training your audience before you even have a product of your own. You're conditioning them to buy. And I go through a bunch more reasons why, benefits in the book.

But the last one, this is the most important one, it serves your audience. So, let's just go with that example. I don't know it very well, but let's just go with that example. You have a physician. They're a pediatrician and they have a passion for working with kids on things like nutrition and healthcare for kids that are youth athletes.

So you go, okay, this is who I work with. Now I can create a course that teaches parents how to help their kids in these areas, but what supplements do these kids need? Well, you're not going to probably start a supplement company in your first couple of years with this business. You may not even have the money to. And even if you did, again, what did I tell you? Don't have a garage full of stuff.

So, we're not going to do that. We're going to serve our audience though, because your two options, John, are A) serve my audience by recommending supplements and recommending exercise equipment and recommending the things that the kids need to be healthy at their athletic peak. Or tell them, screw you. I'm not going to recommend anything to you because I don't have it myself. Those are your two options.

Again, you become an affiliate for the supplement company. You become an affiliate for the equipment company. Our daughter has a lingering knee issue and it's not structural, she's not going to injure it worse, but because she's having her growth spurt right now, every time she plays soccer it hurts. So, the doctor recommended just a simple knee brace. It's nothing, not clunky or anything like that. This isn't like reconstructive knee surgery. It just takes a little bit of the pressure off the knee. That's all. Well, he was like, I recommend this. I'm like, okay, so I went to Amazon and I bought it. He could have sent me to a link and I would've gladly have clicked on his link and he would've made $5.

John: Right.

Matt McWilliams: I do not make the $5. What's the point of not making the $5? Am I better or worse served by him making the $5? Actually, the truth is, I would've been better served if he'd sent me to drjohnsmith.com/resources because I wouldn't had to have Googled the complicated name of this thing and clicked the link and bought it that way. I would've been better served and he would've made actually probably more like $8. It's a free $8. That's not quite lunch these days, but it's close. It's half a lunch. Half of lunch at Jersey Mike's.

And so, my point there is it serves your audience because you're recommending products right in your niche or in tangential niches. So, when I think about, I'm going to go with this example because I'm on a roll with this example, and even though I don't know it very well.

Even though we have two youth athletes, I don't know that particular niche, but if you've got youth athletes, here's what I also know. They need to learn goal setting. Are you a goal setting expert because you're good at teaching kids how to take care of their bodies? No. Do you know a little bit? Sure. But are you going to create a course? No. But could you recommend a goal setting course for athletes? Yeah. What about time management? I know this with an 11-year-old who's in seventh grade.

The last season, last fall, we homeschooled, but she takes courses outside of the home. And we overwhelmed her, we accidentally signed her up for too much stuff. And she was doing five hours of homework a night. What about a time management course for teens? Does somebody have that course? Can I sign up for it? And it's a $200 course and I get an $80 affiliate commission. Think about that. Other products that they could buy and things that they could do that not only serve them in my direct area, i.e., supplements or braces or things like that but also in those tangential areas.

John: It sounds like there'd be an infinite number of possibilities the way this can work. And like you said, it's a way to get going much more quickly and with less investment. So, we could go through the whole book today, I'm sure you'd love to do that. But no, this has been really helpful. I like to get something tangible from and just that little lesson was tangible and useful. So again, I just want to thank you for coming on this show today. mattmcwilliams.com is the website. You can get the book there. You can probably find the podcast there. But that's called The Affiliate Guy podcast. And boy, I hope all the best with the continued sales of the book.

Matt McWilliams: Go to passionintoprofitsbook.com/jurica. Connect with me at mattcwilliams.com. Guys, you can reach out to me anytime, connect with me there. It's got my phone number on there so you can text me if you got questions or anything like that. But if you go to the passionsintoprofitsbook.com/jurica, I know you'll put that in the show notes for everybody, John. But if you go there, that's the best place to get the book.

John: And the bonuses really support even what's in the book, because I've seen some of the bonuses when I was helping promote it. So, this is fantastic.

Matt McWilliams: That's exactly what it is. The reality is my first manuscript was 117,000 words.

John: Oh boy.

Matt McWilliams: And the publisher wanted to get it down to 75,000. We ended up about 82,000 but there's still 35,000 words missing. And so, some of these bonuses, essentially, we created a little course around some of the stuff that we took out there. We took some deep dives into some stuff and then there's some bonus stuff. It's like, hey, once you have a list, we have an email marketing masterclass. That's one of the bonuses. You got a list, you got some subscribers. What emails do you write? Well, that's another 15,000 words. I didn't have time to write that in the book. So, we created a course around that though. It's one of the bonuses.

John: This is going to really kickstart people's pursuit of this. This is fantastic. Okay, Matt, thanks a lot again. I really appreciate it. It's been great talking with you.

Matt McWilliams: Hey, thanks for having me, John.

John: Okay, bye-bye.

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The post What Is the Proven Path to a Rewarding Online Business? – 288 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

This episode is a replay from early 2022 that explains how to prepare for a great job at a medical device company. This is by far the most listened-to PNC Podcast episode released to date.

Dr. Paul Hercock is an expert at landing a medical device company job, particularly in the European Union. He even wrote a book about it called “Beyond The Ward: A Doctor's Guide to Careers Outside the NHS.”

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.

How to Prepare for a Great Job at a Medical Device Company

Paul's training enables physicians to adapt their existing skills to apply to this area. The Medical Device Regulation (MDR) is new European legislation. To sell a medical device, the manufacturer has to provide evidence that it's safe and effective. Therefore, it requires scrutiny of clinical evidence and reports based on that evidence. 

The training program provides broad education on this topic. And it will boost confidence in your skills to be able to work in the industry.

Students can access live and recorded training webinars. The training is inexpensive. And income generated by working on one or two projects in the industry will more than cover those costs.

Also, the program is flexible. Students can participate between existing clinical commitments.

A Fantastic Nonclinical Career

The MDR has created a need for more physician advisors. The cost to start is minimal. And physicians can begin part-time, thereby NOT jeopardizing their current work. And Mantra Systems will direct you to the work opportunities, so there will be no delay in finding work.

These medical device company jobs are open to physicians in the U.S., U.K., and select other E.U. countries. Over time, you can increase your hours and ultimately do this work full-time. And Mantra Systems' Medical Affairs Associates Program will be there to get you started.

Summary

The combination of training and immediate access to medical device company jobs make this a great opportunity if you're looking to pivot to the medical device industry with minimal risk. You can learn more about the training at nonclinicalphysicians.com/mantra. If you're looking to learn how to prepare for a great job, this is an excellent option for many physicians. [Note that there is no financial relationship with Mantra Systems.]

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

Links for Today's Episode:

• Mantra Systems
• Mantra Systems Medical Affairs Associates Program
• MDR Regulations
• How to Prepare for a Job in the Medical Device Industry – 169
• Paul Hercock's Book, Beyond the Ward
• NewScr!pt

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 238

How to Prepare For a Great Job at a Medical Device Company

John: We have a fantastic interview today. I get a lot of questions from my listeners about, "Well, how do I get started in industry?" They usually mean the pharma or medical device industry when they say that. They say "I have no experience. I don't know where to apply for a job." So, this is going to be a great interview because today's guest solves both of those problems. Hello, Dr. Paul Hercock. Welcome back.

Dr. Paul Hercock: Hi, John. Thanks very much for having me back on.

John: Yeah. Because things are changing and when I heard about what's going on with you and Mantra Systems, I thought we got to get you back on. So I really appreciate you. By the way, he's in the UK. This is one of those long-distance interviews, which is working fine. So I love it.

All right. You were here last in about November of 2020, a little over a year and a few months ago. And we did talk about your book then. It's called "Beyond the Ward". It's got a longer title, but it's an awesome book. I've referred many people to it and they've really enjoyed it. And he's an entrepreneur because he started his own company and he is a CEO. But I think you've been expanding and you've got some new programs. Just fill us in since our last visit.

Dr. Paul Hercock: Absolutely. Yeah. It has been a busy year and a half. Things move quite quickly in the medical device space. And I've said to other people, one of the great things about being a comparatively small business is that you can change direction and you can move, perhaps faster than some of the big boys.

When I spoke to you last, we'd identified that there's a real need for connecting medical device companies with clinicians. Because clinicians have really vital skills in abundance that are in fact a real shortage in the medical device industry. And what we're really talking about here is the ability to work with clinical evidence at a high level.

Since I spoke to you last, that's the side of the business that we've been able to expand because our clients in the medical device industry are really, really finding value in having access to doctors, through our program, and thereby to the skills that doctors have. We've really tried to expand that side of the business and hopefully, that's creating more opportunities for doctors as well.

John: Well, it sounds like it to me. I love to hear that because my audience is just looking for those opportunities. They want to get out of clinical medicine for whatever reason. We won't go into the laundry list of why. I always use a disclaimer. I do want people to practice medicine. It's not like we want to siphon everybody off, but there's a need for physicians doing some of these nonclinical jobs. And there's a whole bunch of you out there looking not knowing what's available. So that's why this is just a perfect situation. Last time we spoke, you were doing some training, but the thing that kind of prompted this is that you have a really formalized training, expanded the training. Tell us about that. Why did you create the training, and what's going on with your industry?

Dr. Paul Hercock: Yeah. We can back up slightly and just put a bit of flesh on the bone around that. The initial requirement for this came out of a new piece of European legislation called the MDR, the Medical Device Regulation. And that's modeled quite closely on the FDA model. Which is if you're going to produce a medical device, you need to produce evidence that it's safe and that it works as it should do. And that, therefore, requires scrutiny of clinical evidence, and so on.

That's where the opportunities come from. As I mentioned before, doctors have the core skills, but they don't necessarily have the ability to translate that to a new sector. So the way you look at clinical evidence in practice is slightly different from the way you might use it in the context of medical devices.

The training is there to allow doctors to adapt their existing skills so that it can be applied to this area. Yeah, you need an understanding of, "Well, what is the medical device regulation? What does it say that medical device manufacturers have to do? What role does clinical evidence have in this context and how does it fit into everything else?" It's not possible to operate in a vacuum.

We want everyone on our program who's doing work for us, to have that broad education about how what I'm doing will fit into things. And so they understand why different bits are important. But also, to give them the confidence really, to use the skills they already have in the right way.

What we've done is, previously people who were interested in being part of the program, had access to, I would say, fairly ad hoc online training webinars hosted live, and that had several disadvantages. You and I are in different time zones. So that's one automatic problem with doing it that way. The other disadvantage is that clinicians are busy people and this program is designed to work around existing clinical commitments.

And we thought, actually, if we have this training hosted, on a server so that it's on-demand, people can access training, resources, videos, documents, everything else at a time that suits them. It means it's more flexible. And so we can encourage more people to participate in the program without a barrier, based on time or access.

John: Very nice. Let me ask you this, there might be a question about this. You're hiring people part-time and full-time to help you with this process, with doing this service. What would be the official title? Is it an advisor, or is it a medical director?

Dr. Paul Hercock: This is something that I'm keen to convey. What we're doing is we're offering a range of opportunities really, but it starts with just ad hoc contractor opportunities that people can do as and when they like. That end of the spectrum is for people who are still in clinical practice. And so it's the start point, it's to try before you buy life in the industry. We just call people on that part of the program, associates, medical affairs associates.

And so, what it means is if you thought to yourself, okay, I either want to get some experience or, hey, I've got a week, two weeks off work, or I've got some time at my disposal this weekend and next. The idea is that you can look up the program and the live opportunities that are available and register for a block of work so that you can use that time to earn a second income, but also to gain direct exposure to industry-type work.

And ultimately, what we want is to offer multiple levels to the program that do form a continuum all the way through to full-time employment, for people that are interested, for people whose skills are aligned with this kind of work. The level one foundation training, as we call it, is so that people can access entry-level work, which is mostly literature reviews and medical writing. So working with some of the technical documents that we need to put in place, and that is available to people immediately after doing the level one foundation training. But they don't need to leave their clinical careers, which means they don't need to take any risk to get experience in the industry.

John: Well, that's very helpful, obviously, because that is often a barrier to people to how do they make that transition? But it sounds to me like you put a lot of work into this. There must be some demand that's not being met. With the MDR and the changes, is there just this kind of unmet demand for these reviews and the writing and so forth?

Dr. Paul Hercock: Absolutely. This is a huge thing. What's happened is that the MDR came in and actually, it was supposed to be fully implemented in 2020, but they put it back to 2021 because of the pandemic. But the big change was this requirement to reduce a lot more clinical evidence and to interpret clinical evidence broadly. For example, it's not just the evidence related to the subject device, but the whole of the clinical background as well.

And this is something that some medical device manufacturers really struggle with. Why do we need to look at evidence related to the clinical background in so much context? And the analogy I use is to say, imagine you had a car and the car had been involved in 15 road traffic accidents in the previous three months. That's the evidence related to the car. Is that good or bad? Well, we don't know unless we get safety and performance benchmarks. And when you get into clinical background, well, that could be a huge amount of clinical evidence.

There just aren't enough people in the industry to meet this work demand. What we're able to provide, because we have this program whereby people are mostly in clinical practice, and they can be a flexible resource for us. It works the way around for them as well. We can help meet that demand as it arises without having vacant capacity. It also means, as I said before, for the doctors, who are involved in the program, it's direct exposure to something with no risk.

John: Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, now, as we mentioned earlier, you're in the UK, I'm here in the US. So I'm assuming that my listeners are assuming that I'm not interviewing someone who can't help them if they're in the US. I mean, I do have listeners in the UK and elsewhere. So from what I understand, there are definitely opportunities in both places.

Dr. Paul Hercock: Oh, absolutely. Currently on the program, we have doctors based in the UK, Europe, the US, in several parts of the US, including Hawaii, and also South Africa, and now India as well. We've had some interest from Australia as well.

But the people we have on the program from the US, honestly, and I'm not saying this just because your audience is predominantly in the US, they've been fantastic. I don't know whether that's the function of the type of training in the US or some knowledge of the way the FDA operates, which as I said before, is what the MDR was really aiming for.

But the other great advantage is that all good size medical device companies that sell in Europe either have the headquarters in the US or certainly have a presence in the US. And so there's a real draw there as well. From a client's perspective, what we would say to the client is, "Look, we can link you with a medical reviewer, a medical associate who's based in the US." That's very attractive to them. So, there are definitely, definitely opportunities for people based in the US.

John: Okay, good. Well, obviously that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on here today. So, we could share that with my listeners and give them one more opportunity to consider when they're thinking of a nonclinical career, particularly something they can do as a pilot. That's just fantastic. Tell us more about the program and anything else we need to know in terms of considering this.

Dr. Paul Hercock: Yeah. Another reason it exists actually, and this ties to that question is that I remember my own journey from clinical practice into the industry. And there were really two things that were missing. One was knowledge of what the opportunities were, and how to get them. But the other was exposure. There's always that dreaded interview question. "Well, what experience have you got?" And it's so easy to be in a catch 22. You think, "Well, I haven't got any experience because nobody will give me the opportunity because I don't have the experience that would unlock that door." And that is a common barrier that's faced by doctors looking to move from clinical practice into the industry.

Well, this program, we think at least, can help overcome that to an extent because the work that people do on the program can be used as direct experience, and can be cited as experience. So if you are asked by a future interviewer or recruiter, "Well, what experience do you have in the medical device industry? Or how do you know you'll like this type of work?" To be able to say, "Well, actually, I've been part of teams that write clinical evaluation reports for the European MDR. I've been involved in writing reports for digital medical devices for implantable orthopedic devices," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's quite strong, but also it's not just about ticking the box on a CV, people on the program themselves start to understand whether or not this type of work is for them, which is really important to know.

We have had people that have done the training, found it useful, found it interesting, but that have said, "You know what? It's not for me, but that is really useful information because I didn't know whether it was for me or not before, and now I have an outcome." Even in an outcome like that, that could not be perceived as a negative, it was actually perceived as a positive. But we do certainly have people on the program that have gone on to full-time positions using this as experience. That was really a big part of the motivation about giving access to experience to people, as well as the second income and everything else.

John: It sounds really useful and interesting. If I was only younger, I might look into that. Because of what happens sometimes, I wait till the end to share the information. I think I want to stop here for a minute and do a couple of things. First, I want to recommend everybody pick up the book "Beyond The Ward: A Doctor's Guide to Careers Outside the NHS". Just got to plug the book because there aren't that many books like it out there.

That's number one, but number two, on the medical affairs associates' program, I've got the link here and I'm going to do a shortcut, but it's at mantrasystems.co.uk/medical-affairs-associates. It is kind of hard to remember. So, I'm going to do nonclinicalphysicians.com/mantra and it'll take you right to that link. The page that's got the information has pretty much everything you need to know about it so that you can make a decision. I'm sure there's a question arising about what it costs. And because this might be listened to now or in a few weeks or a year from now, can you just give us a ballpark, of what the training might cost someone if they're looking to pursue it?

Dr. Paul Hercock: Yeah. In the end, we had to put a charge on it because as with anything you end up with a lot of people just from completely outside the scope. The other thing is, there is a slightly proprietary aspect to this as well. At the moment we charge 200 pounds sterling, for the training, which is quickly recouped when people do their very first work block. The hope is that we attract people who are really motivated and interested to take part, and we hope to maintain that cost into the future.

John: Yeah, that is so reasonable. I mean, I know courses right now in certain consulting fields and so forth, they're $1,500, $2,000, $3,000. So that's a low barrier right there if you have any interest at all.

Dr. Paul Hercock: We don't really make revenue from that. The revenue is from the work we do with clients, it's just about finding really good people to be part of the program.

John: One of the most common companies that employ people, or that use your services, what kind of devices? I'm thinking back to when we first spoke and you started doing some kind of infection control devices or something like that, but I assume that everything has evolved and there are some new products out there. So what are we looking at?

Dr. Paul Hercock: Yeah. We've been really surprised with the variety of devices that we've worked with and also the variety of companies that have come to us for this service. Our initial assumption would be that perhaps we'd be working with companies on the smaller side of the spectrum, and perhaps with less complex devices. And the reason we thought that was that the really big boys, the really big companies would surely have enough resources in-house to be able to meet this demand. And actually, those assumptions have been completely wrong. As I speak to you today, we have five active clients that are stock exchange-listed. We're working with devices of all risk classes. So class one, and the really simple devices, class three might be high-risk implantable devices and everything in between.

We've worked with digital devices. Under the MDR, a piece of software can be a medical device. So we've worked with several of those and that's actually an area that's really starting to grow for reasons we can come to. We've got a real variety. What we try to do now that we're getting bigger and the scope of work is broader, where possible we like to link a project to an associate's area of subject matter expertise. So if we have a gynecological implant, let's say, then if we can link to somebody in the associate's program who's in that clinical field and that's great value for the client, but of course, it means that it's an area of natural understanding for the person doing the work. That's starting to work extremely well, and there's no substitute for that subject matter expertise. It's yet another area where doctors on the program add huge value to our clients. And they love it, they just love it. So that's been really good.

The other thing we have access to because we're so international is different languages as well. And so some of the people on our program speak multiple languages and that can be amazing in really helping to meet client expectations. But yeah, we've had a real variety of all sorts of different companies, devices, clinical fields. And so, if somebody listening to the program is thinking, "Well, I'm in this sector, surely there won't be anything." Then that assumption is probably wrong. There is as much variety as you can imagine.

John: It hasn't matured to the point though, where you say, well, we really need to get someone with orthopedic background or some other background, pretty much anybody can do, although having that specific interest might help enhance it.

Dr. Paul Hercock: Yeah. The specific interest is the cherry on the cake. The core skills are possessed by every doctor. And it's just about understanding how to tweak and adapt those to this particular space. So, there's no need to. I worked in the emergency room, which is a clinical specialty, but I wouldn't say that would give me or someone in that specialty as much in-depth knowledge of orthopedics as an orthopedic surgeon. Of course, it doesn't. But a generalist as I would've considered myself is still well suited to this program. Definitely, we have general practitioners and people from all sorts of different specialties that are very active and happy on the program.

John: Now, here's another question about money. I hadn't thought about this before. And you, of course, can't make any promises, but let's say someone who'd been doing this for a year full-time, they're really into medical devices and this whole process, and they've mastered everything they need to know about MDR. What kind of salary range might they have working a full-time job like that?

Dr. Paul Hercock: Full-time opportunities in the industry, even at entry-level would be six figures sterling, certainly. But even through our program, the level one of the program, people working as members of teams, doing medical writing, literature review projects. We've got several people on the program that are well into five figures now. One person on the program actually takes more per year than I do. Because as a company founder, anything you earn goes straight back into the company. So people are doing pretty well.

But it's really a question of how many projects and complexity of projects and so on. Typically, people can expect four figures per project, with a project taking anywhere between four and six weeks, but that's not a course of continuous working. That might be a couple of hours at the weekend, in the evening, one day, two days a week. This is very much designed to work around somebody's existing career. And if it's getting to the stage where it's dominating life, that's not the intention.

Now, as I said before, we are putting in place a runway all the way through to full-time employment for people who want it. But that's really something for tomorrow through the lens of this particular program. But there's nothing about this program that means you only work for Mantra Systems. It can be used as a springboard to the industry in general. And all we'd ever do is show people by the hand and wish them well. This is not about us keeping hold of people and being possessive. It's just about saying, look, if you want to make a start, this is available to you. And if you enjoy it, we're happy to give you more and more opportunities. And then if it turns into something else, then that's fantastic.

John: Let me ask this question too because I think people just have to have the right expectations. When you're doing this kind of work, especially at the beginning, is it based on completing a particular project, or is it an hourly rate? How do we expect to be submitting our time?

Dr. Paul Hercock: Great question. The way we do this is that for each project, we invite people to a kick-off call, and projects are done as members of teams normally because it's way too much work for one person to do a loan. At the kick-off call, we always ask people to agree to a confidentiality agreement so that the client's interests are protected. We present headline information about the work, what's the device, what are we producing, whether it's a clinical evaluation report or literature review, or something else. We usually have divided the work into specific segments and we'd offer a segment to each person on the call. Once we do that, we agree to a contract, and in the contract will be a set fee for the work. So, people know exactly what they're going to be paid from the outset.

And we try and be really, really transparent. Sometimes we have an idea how many, let's say, literature sources will need to be appraised by each person. We divide them equally and pay people the same as each other. Sometimes we have a project that calls for a lead author. That would be extra responsibility. Normally these are people who've got a bit of experience in the program as well. They've got a few projects under their belt. The lead author might earn a little bit more, but it's not an hourly rate. It's a set fee in advance. And that reflects the way that we charge our clients because we charge them a set fee.

We have had occasions in the past where it becomes clear that initial assumptions about the amount of work were unfair, were perhaps not correct. And in that situation, what happens is that we, as the core team, take some of that excessive way. So we don't expect people to be working too excessively. The program works best if people are happy, feel like they're valued, but not so that they've been given excessive work for the pay. We think we pay very fairly for what people do.

John: I've noticed in the past at least in other forms of medical writing and in research and so forth. There is a learning curve, so you get more efficient over time. Does the same apply here?

Dr. Paul Hercock: Yeah. Massively. The first couple of projects will take longer. For the first couple of projects, we'd probably offer slightly lower remuneration as well because there's more requirement for either the lead author or for the core team, to spend more time reviewing the work. We also like to set up feedback calls as well. We take the time to say, "Look, these bits were great, but the only bit that you need to perhaps look at is these areas here. And these are the reasons why." That applies to post-course work that we require people to do after the training. And it applies to the live client work as well. And so, the idea is that it's educational and constructive, as much as anything else. And then as people gain experience and become essentially autonomous. We certainly have people in the program who produce work of such a high standard. I don't know who would be in a position to critique it really, they essentially are working on their own. To reflect that we can remunerate at a higher rate and that's what we seek to do.

John: Excellent. All right. Well, that is like a lot of different things. When you start out, you're not quite as familiar or it takes you longer to do things. You got to double-check your work. Just like a clinician. It used to be, oh, I can only see a patient an hour, now I'm seeing a patient every 20 minutes and just as efficient and accurate. That's to be expected.

Well, I appreciate you sharing all this information about the program and giving us an update. This has been fantastic. Any last thoughts you want to just say to physicians, either in general that are struggling with clinical or that are thinking about going into some aspect of the medical device industry?

Dr. Paul Hercock: Yeah. I suppose there are a few things that are always in my mind from my own experience. The first thing to say is, I'm going to use the word don't be embarrassed or ashamed even. I don't know if this applies as much in the US, it may do, but certainly, in the UK, there can be a stigma actually, to people that talk about leaving clinical practice. "How can you leave us? We're so busy. How can you even think about that?"

This is your career. And you are the only person that can have that career. It has to be right for you. Take positive steps, and that links to the second comment, which is "Act." Always make sure if you have a desire to do something, one of my favorite quotes ever is from Henry Ford, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." And I think it's brilliant. It applies in this sector so much. So you have to do something, whether it's buying a book, whether it's speaking to somebody in the industry, whatever it is. Hopefully, the program is one part of that.

And don't be afraid to fail or make false starts as well. I had so many false starts and got nowhere for so long, and that's in the "Beyond The Ward" book. But I remember it and feel as though am I ever going to find a way to use my training in another context? And so, just expect that it's not necessarily a smooth process and that's completely normal.

John: Now, those are very wise words, and I will just add my 2 cents as well. Number one, if you get into a nonclinical career, you're still a physician. And can you imagine if you're working in the medical device industry and you're helping to make a medical device safer and maybe more comfortable, whatever it might be, you're going to be helping a lot more patients than seeing them one at a time in your clinic. I'm just reiterating in a different way, what you said. And it's so true, and we've got to get over those myths and those self-limiting beliefs. We all deserve to be happy in our careers. That's for sure.

Dr. Paul Hercock: Definitely. And I think it's so important. That comment about the ability of a clinician in this context to really promote patient safety is massive. And the work that we're doing, looking at clinical evidence in a new way with the skillset of clinicians, this is things like the medical device regulation starting to work properly. This is what it was put there for. Too many people in the industry, too many companies view it as just a barrier to overcome. And it isn't because when clinicians get involved, they can say to manufacturers, "We found this. There might be a problem here or even better, this is an area where your product perhaps isn't working as well as it could do, but look what an enhanced version might look like." And that kind of value is massive to medical device companies. And so, the involvement of clinicians more and more in this sector can only be a positive. Definitely.

John: Absolutely. All right, good. We're doing great work here. It's excellent. Well, Paul, I want to thank you. We're about up with our time for today. I really thank you for taking the time and explaining all this to us and encouraging us as we move forward in whatever nonclinical careers we're doing. I guess with that, I'll just have to say goodbye.

Dr. Paul Hercock: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for having me back on, John. I look forward to seeing you soon.

John: It's my pleasure.

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The post Revisiting How to Prepare For a Great Job at a Medical Device Company – 304 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Dr. Chester Zoda teaches other physicians to use online courses to create passive income. He is a young physician entrepreneur from Hong Kong and a former emergency room physician who created his own online business. And now he teaches his methods to other healthcare professionals.

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.

Building Digital Doctor

With the burnout Chester experienced, he desperately started looking at different ways to earn income. He focused on creating a cash flow generating asset that makes money while sleeping. That would enable him to spend more time with his family and do the things that he loves.

He realized that the opportunity was simply packaging the expertise from his medical training and sharing it in a digital course. So, Chester started teaching small e-commerce businesses. He then began helping a small group of doctors. After 2 years, he is now serving over 350 healthcare providers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical providers to use online courses inside his Digital Doctor community.

4 Steps to Teaching Clinicians to Use Online Courses

1. Getting Started
   Understand that there's a huge market out there that's underserved and desperate for your knowledge. You can help a lot of people, especially in the online world. But you must stop procrastinating.
2. Selling
   What they do in the Digital Doctor program is to give their students a proven sales process that turns a complete stranger into a paying student within the first 14 days. Notice that “selling” comes before “building.”
3. Building
   In this step, you package the online course into a consumable format for the customer. For doctors, many already do academic presentations at conferences. So you can use those skills to create your courses.
4. Automation
   With automation, Chester teaches you how to turn your online course on autopilot. In so doing, it produces cash flow for you, even while you sleep or do what you love. His business provides all the templates for you, and proprietary tech support. 

Words of Encouragement

Look at your life like a GPS. Get clear with where you are, get clear with where you want to go, and then find a vehicle that can get you there in the most predictable way possible. It's not about looking for a get-rich-quick scheme. – Chester Zoda, MD

Summary

[Disclaimer:] There is no way to verify the success of Dr. Zoda's methods other than the testimonials on his website. And this interview does NOT constitute an endorsement of his program or methods.

However, if you join his program, COMMENT below about your experiences so they can be shared with the rest of our listening audience.

And let's acknowledge Chester's observations about business and advice for those looking to reach financial freedom because they are right on the money.

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

Links for Today's Episode:

• ChesterZoda.com
• How to Get Started on Your Nonclinical Online Business
• How to Select the Best Online Business Niche
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

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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 239

How Physicians Can Use Online Courses to Boost Income

John: I'm really interested in hearing about what other physicians are doing to overcome burnout and do things outside of clinical medicine, obviously. And I ran into my guest a few weeks ago. I don't know that much about them, but I thought, "Well, why do I do the podcast? I do the podcast so I can learn about other physicians that are doing unique things." I thought, "Well, I'll just learn about Chester today on the podcast." So hello, Dr. Chester Zoda.

Dr. Chester Zoda: Hello, pleasure to be here.

John: I'm glad to have you. We usually follow a usual type of format, and that is to start with you giving us a little bit of your background. You've got a medical degree. That's about all I know. Tell us a little bit about that, what you did after you got your MD, and then tell us what you're doing now, and then we'll fill in the gaps later.

Dr. Chester Zoda: Sure. I'm Chester Zoda. I used to be an emergency physician and especially during the little virus situation going on, I decided I was really burned out working 80-hour workweeks, three-night shifts, you know the drill. People change out of inspiration or desperation. For me, it was definitely desperation. I realized that things had to change. Right now, I'm owning an education company called Digital Doctor where we're helping doctors build passive income with online courses. And so, I'm really excited to be here. It's a pleasure to speak here.

John: Yeah. This will be interesting. I happen to have a few people that come on from time to time and talk about passive income and it's usually real estate. And of course, nothing is really 100% passive, but once you build something, it can be quite automated in some situations, whether it's real estate or online businesses, that would be actually one of the things I'm striving for with my membership and my podcast.

Tell us about how you started? Did you have a background in online business and technology> Did you start creating your own business and then found that maybe it was something it would apply to other doctors?

Dr. Chester Zoda: Yeah. For me, I've always had a strong interest in business. Even back in medical school, I would always hide in the library and read business books in order to "procrastinate." I've always had that edge, but it wasn't until the situation in 2019, 2020, when I was working as an emergency physician serving on the front lines of healthcare and just seeing how burned out a lot of my colleagues were. A lot of my seniors, they would only spend like one night a week with their families, not a lot of time with their children. I realized this is basically the path that I'm walking toward. I realized that things had to change. There has to be a better way.

I still liked helping other people, but the way I was doing it in the emergency room was very limited, in terms of scope. I was limited to only seeing how many patients I can work with each day. I was limited to how many hours I work, and the impact that I was having. I knew that especially with the digital age, that I could be doing a lot more for a lot less time. And so that's essentially, how I got started.

I eventually looked for a lot of different opportunities out there, like real estate, you mentioned. That requires a lot of starting capital. And at the time, I had zero savings and just a bunch of student loans. So that's real estate off of the list. Stocks, S&P 500, investing in index funds. Those returns may be like 8% to 11% on average, but that's each year. And that's not really something that I own and something that I control. The market can go up, down sideways. And like I said, I also didn't have a lot of starting capital to begin with. And so that was off of my list as well.

What I really needed was a cash flow generating asset that makes money while I sleep, while I'm spending time with my family, doing the things I love. Just like the billionaire investor Warren Buffet says, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, then you'll always work until the day you die." And that doesn't sound like the life that I kind of wanted to live.

I started looking at different ways. What I realized was the opportunity was right under my nose at this entire time, which was simply packaging the expertise that I accumulated in medical school, that I accumulated in my medical training and just share it in a digital course, in an online course so that I can help more people on my own terms without being dependent on my time.

John: Who were you actually serving at that time? Who are you teaching? Were you teaching patients things that they might need to know or other physicians?

Dr. Chester Zoda: Yeah. Back then, I was still venturing off into the digital marketing world, like the online world. I was basically teaching this to small e-commerce businesses. But what I realized after a certain point is that a lot of my colleagues noticed how fast I was growing and they asked me to help them do the same. To be honest, at first, I just ignored them because I was certain that only I could do this. You had to be like a tech wiz, you had to have some sort of business experience. Because of that, I just ignored them for quite a while, but the emails just kept coming in and coming in.

Eventually I started to share this with a small group of doctors, and things really changed when I was working with a mentor of mine that was in the ophthalmology niche. Like a lot of doctors in general, we love teaching. We already teach our patients, but we also present in academic conferences, we're presenting in ward rounds, we're presenting in scientific journals and journal meetings. And so, a lot of the knowledge that we already do, and a lot of the knowledge that we already have, we're already presenting in some way, shape, or form.

What this doctor wanted me to do was simply package the expertise that he was already sharing onto the online world so that he can reach more people without having to rent out a lecture hall, without having to commute, or without having to travel across the country just to present in a conference. He wants to expand his reach so that it's online globally, especially during the pandemic, this was especially important.

And so, that's exactly what I helped them with. I started teaching my methods to a small group of students, and to my surprise, the more I started teaching them my methods, the more my skillsets got better and the more they improved. That's essentially how I also had started working with a small group of doctors. And now we're serving over 350 healthcare providers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, other medical providers inside our digital doctor community.

John: Very nice. And you said the program is called Digital Doctor. Is that right?

Dr. Chester Zoda: Yes. There's a branding issue because now other nurses and non-doctors want to work with us as well. And so, we're planning to rebrand that in the future.

John: Interesting. Okay. Well, I saw some of the material about your program and one of the things, some of the marketing and promotion you talk about like kind of the four big steps that you help your clients, your customers to do. I thought, well, we'll pick your brain, learn something in the next 20 minutes. Before we do that, I do want to mention that your website is chesterzoda.com, correct? That's where they can find out everything that we're talking about today.

Dr. Chester Zoda: Correct.

John: I'll put a link in the show notes and we'll mention again, but I hate to wait till the end because some people don't listen to the end, so why not put it in now? All right. Walk us through at least the four big steps, obviously, we can't get into too much detail, but you break it down. I think the first one is something about just getting started. So, what does that entail in your model?

Dr. Chester Zoda: Yeah. There are four steps inside the program, which was inside the framework that I created, which is number one, step one, getting started. Number two, selling. Number three, building, and number four, automating.

Step one is just getting started. A lot of doctors, we just undervalue our expertise. We're surrounded by our colleagues and where we live, eat, and breathe medicine. And so, we just assume that everybody knows the expertise that's inside our heads, but that's evidently not true. A lot of us, we paid our dues, we went through years of schooling. We went through years of our medical training. And so, there's so much inside our heads that can really serve the market.

The key is number one, to first value the expertise that's inside your head. Number two, realize that there's a huge market out there that's underserved and desperate for your knowledge. That you might not necessarily value it, but you can really help a lot of people, especially in the online world. Back when I was an emergency doctor, I was limited to how many cases I saw each day, but on the online world, like literally, the impact that I'm having, even while I sleep with my team, helping the students achieve results is money way more than what is possible on the local level, in the emergency room. But also, in terms of my time.

Number three would be to stop procrastinating. It's a belief issue. A lot of doctors would procrastinate. Each year, year after year that, hey, things are going to get better. If I continue down this path in my current medical career, then things would get better. Maybe I'll get a promotion, maybe I'll get a 10%, 20% boost, and things will get better. But they use that as an excuse almost to procrastinate on the financial goals and the freedom goals that they might actually have.

And so, I would say those three things are the biggest things that we tackle inside step one. Simply getting crystal clear on who you want to serve and what you want to teach with the expertise that you already have, that patients are already paying you money for and simply packaging it and positioning you in a market to create a course that people actually need and want.

The second issue that we tackle is more so the mindset and the limiting beliefs that people tend to have when it comes to starting anything new, and starting anything outside of their comfort zone. We spend a whole week in just step one, just going through that in order to make sure that everyone is primed to get the best success that they possibly can. Because without those foundations in place, then it doesn't matter whether you create an awesome online course that people love. Your mindset wouldn't be there to really make it work.

John: This is a hard stuff to get past for some people. It's like, okay, I know all this stuff, but how do I pick what I'm going to teach? People sometimes just have an aha moment. "Oh, I know I love this thing. I know this. I'm going to do this." Do you have exercises you do? Or how do you pull that out of somebody if they can't spontaneously kind of just say, "Oh, this is what I want to do?"

Dr. Chester Zoda: First of all, the realization that I had after working with 350 health providers is that any person is just one online course away from living their dream life. And the expertise that you already have is right under the nose. Typically, that's the thing that you're the best at. And so, an analogy that I typically use is let's imagine that Dr. Jurica, you want to start an online course on teaching English. That would be crazy. We might be thinking like, "Oh, this is stupid. In the United States, why would anyone buy a course on English? Or I could just get someone from Harvard or just some random, local school that didn't even pass their SATs and have him teach English. Who would even buy a course on that?"

But then what they don't realize is that, hey, if I just popped that kid in the middle of a local college that can just speak English colloquially, and I just popped him in the middle of China, suddenly there's a giant underserved market where people need and want your knowledge. You could change lives just by putting this expertise into the hands of an underserved market. You could literally create jobs. You could literally create a new future, families, for people that are in the middle of China, that don't even speak English.

It's really about the way you position yourself. And as doctors, like I said, there are so many of us, we're surrounded by nurses and colleagues and our families. Most of us are even in the healthcare industry that we sometimes forget that the knowledge that we already have can really serve people. And it's only when we're taken out of that bubble, like a fish out of the pond that we realize that, "Oh my God". Let's say, you're at a family meeting. That's when people come to you and ask about their knee pains and their rashes and their itches, and that's when you realize that, "Hey, this expertise that I went to years of schooling for, it can actually help a lot of people." It's not actually normal and it can really serve a market that needs and wants your knowledge. And so, that's what we help our students with. Getting crystal clear on what that is and how to position them for success.

John: It makes sense too, since we're talking about online, there's really no limits in terms of who you can reach out to. But that does get you into step two, right?

Dr. Chester Zoda: Yes. Step two would be selling your online course. And even selling sounds like the wrong connotation because as doctors, we don't try to sell our services. We're just there to help people. But the best way to look at it is almost like you're preparing for an interview. It's how you package yourself for the online world. Let's say you're in the medical school interview, you have to kind of sell yourself. You have to kind of present yourselves in the most positive light.

What we basically do in the Digital Doctor program is that we just give our students a proven sales process that turns a complete stranger into a paying student within the first 14 days. That way in step two, they're already cash flow positive and already generating income from their first students without even investing in any capital, to begin with the online course. This is a really efficient way to generate more students that need and want an online course. It also does a very interesting thing, which is that it decouples you from trading your time. So that's what we cover inside step two.

John: Okay. And then the next step is?

Dr. Chester Zoda: The next step would be building out your online course. This is actually the fun part where we just package the online course into a consumable format for our students. And so, as doctors, a lot of us already do academic presentations at conferences and so on and so forth. We already have some PowerPoint slides. Some of the students that I work with, they start off from complete scratch. And in fact, that's even better because then we can start off on really strong foundations.

On the other hand, some of them have already published books. They might have started an online course, but they're charging a really low amount. They might have presented at an academic conference and they have some PowerPoint slides that they would just want to brush up and publish onto the internet. And so, this would be the building out the online course process.

You don't even need any fancy equipment. For example, right now, Dr. Jurica and I are just on a Zoom chat. It's completely free. We're using our webcam. That's also free. You look like you're having a really professional microphone, but honestly, that is optional. You can even use your laptop or your phone. The starting cost of this, it's basically $0. If you have an internet connection, that would be necessary, but if you don't, you can just go to your local Starbucks. Building out your online course, it's actually very simple. I feel like a lot of people overcomplicate it and they try to buy fancy equipment, fancy tech, fancy lights, and they try to conduct some James camera or Steven Spielberg production, but it doesn't have to be the case. We teach you inside our program, how to start and build an online course using all of our prebuilt plug and play templates so that all you have to do is just fill in the blanks with your expertise and get your course launched in the shortest time possible.

John: Something I just noticed, and I want to make sure it's clear. I've heard this elsewhere, a lot of entrepreneurs do this, but you chose your niche and you actually started to sell it, but you started selling it before you actually built it. Is that correct?

Dr. Chester Zoda: Yeah.

John: Okay. That's what I was like. All of a sudden, it's an aha moment. Look, you don't even have the course yet, but you're going to build it as soon as you see that there's some chance of selling it, correct?

Dr. Chester Zoda: Yeah. That's the magical thing that most people tend to get wrong, is that they think if you build it, they will come. These customers and students would come. But if you look at how companies like Tesla are doing it, Elon Musk, they announce that the Tesla is in pre-production first. And this is very important because number one, they can gauge their idea on whether this is actually going to resonate with the market or not. Number two, they can gauge the demand. The market is going to tell them, oh, I like this. I don't like that. I like A, B, C, but I don't like X, Y, Z.

And so, because of that, it's good marketing feedback for them to make a product that can actually serve their customers best. Without this "sell before build" philosophy, the most common reason businesses fail is that they build a product that nobody needs. And that is the worst thing that you want to do. We cover a case study inside our program, we'll go more into that. But that is the worst thing that you can do, when you spend months and months of your hard-earned time or your hard time, building something that nobody wants. It can be discouraging. A lot of people, they just give up on their dreams of passive income or financial freedom just because they've been discouraged when they build something that nobody wanted. And so, we avoid that completely.

John: Well, it's true. A lot of people go out and buy a platform or lease it, whatever. They get a platform and they spend four or five, six months on building a course. 15 lectures, all kinds of sub lessons. They really haven't tried it on anybody. And when they go to sell it, it's like crickets. There might be a few people buying it, but it's like, well, maybe I shouldn't have spent all my time, maybe make the first or second lesson okay. But let's not spend a whole half of our life doing something and then find out that it's not really that in either need or people don't want it, or it's hard to sell. We got to that part where we're building. And then automation could be tough for everybody because we tend to do a whole lot of things on our own. We might get a VA or someone to help us, but unless you can automate it, you really can't scale it.

Dr. Chester Zoda: Yeah. That's exactly true. Because the whole point of even this, "Why should we even start an online course in the first place?" it's to remove ourselves and decouple time from money. It solves the problem that most people working from 9:00 to 5:00, most healthcare providers have, which is that in order to improve my patient outcomes, I must work more. Or in order to generate more income, I must work more hours, more shifts.

The whole point of building an asset, like an online course to create cash flow for you, even while you sleep, spending time with your family, doing whatever you want is because it decouples your relationship between time and money. And so, all of this is leading us to step four, which is automating your online course.And with the digital world these days, it's crazy because I remember some of my seniors telling me about a time when medical school didn't even have computers. The technology that we have on our fingertips these days is more powerful than what the president of the United States had access to just 10, 15 years ago.

The amount of leverage that we can have using technology is so powerful. And that's why with automation, step four, we teach you how to just basically turn your online course on autopilot so that it produces that cash flow for you, even while you sleep, spending time with your family, doing what you love. And that's all in the tech. We provide all the templates for you. We provide proprietary tech. And so that literally, even while you're sleeping, you have students coming in that need and want your online course, paying you money, while they're also getting amazing results from the course that you previously created. And so, you're creating an asset that works for you even while you sleep.

John: You say you've had at least a few hundred people that have gone through this process, which is good to hear. You've boiled down, but of course, the devil is in the details. We can't get into 16 hours of learning exactly what you do. So, where do we go if we want to find out more or just learn more about it and consider learning from you?

Dr. Chester Zoda: Sure. You can find all of my work at chesterzoda.com. You can see my student successes, which my team is very proud of because we work really closely with our students. I also provide a lot of free resources in case this is just something you're interested in and trying to see if this might work for you, like free resources. What course you want to teach, or how to even get started. There's a really in-depth training on my website that you can watch. It's just 15 minutes that covers all about this business opportunity.

In 2022, the e-learning economy is estimated to hit $350 billion. And so just like how Amazon is replacing Walmart in commerce, just like how Netflix is replacing blockbusters in entertainment, we're already seeing traditional education institutions like Harvard Medical School slowly disintegrating and moving online.

Part of generating income is just about catching trends. I've been lucky to be the pioneer in this trend and lead the future generation of doctors to put their back expertise onto the online world. If you're just remotely interested in this, check out my website, chesterzoda.com.

John: I had to smile when you said put in the Harvard's out of business in that, because I think classical universities, we could replace them tomorrow. We all hear the same lecture, whatever school we go to. We got a diploma, that's great. But we spend a ton of money on things that really are virtually already available. And so, it's kind of a shame. We'll see. That part should really start to shift, I think, in the next few years.

Dr. Chester Zoda: Yeah. I'd like to see that.

John: It'd be a lot easier for our kids to go to school if they didn't have to spend $100,000 just to get through a year of a high-class school like that. Anyway, there are always options, but this is another one for earning money for physicians and helping people because you're teaching them, they need to learn these things anyway. And so, they just need to hook up with you, if you're teaching what they need.

Any other advice here? My audience is physicians. Some are struggling, some are unhappy, some are burned out and some are just worn out. If you practice medicine intensely for 20, 25 years, I know docs that go for 30, 40 years, but really it's a hard, intense demand on your thinking and intensity and focus. Sometimes you got to slow down and it sounds like at least one option. So, what advice do you have for physicians that are in that situation that are not really sure what they should do?

Dr. Chester Zoda: I think you should always have a plan. That sounds so simple. And you would expect like a doctor, a highly educated individual would have a plan. Where literally every single day we're giving people management plans and prescriptions. And so, you would expect that you would have a plan for your financial future, but I'm so surprised that a lot of doctors just don't have a financial plan for themselves and their family. This is dangerous, especially during the pandemic.In 2021 alone, there were 44,000 jobless doctors. These are highly educated individuals. They're just spat out of the economy and the medical field, which is so crazy to me. And so, if you don't have a plan, you'll always be a part of someone else's plan. Just like the billionaire Warren Buffet says, "If you don't find a way to make money, you'll always work until the date you die."

Whether you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, whether you're looking for some side income to potentially cut back on your clinical hours and just supplement your income, or perhaps you're looking to walk away completely from medicine and replace your income entirely so that you can spend time with your children, not miss out on their golden years, spend more time with the family, have the time freedom, location freedom, and the financial freedom, then you got to have a plan. You got to have a vehicle to get you to where you want to go.

One thing that we teach our students is creating a plan. I'll give you something very valuable for the people that are listening. Imagine your life was like a GPS. Everyone's familiar with the GPS. In order for a GPS to work, you must be very clear with where you are and where you want to go. Now, a lot of us aren't even honest with ourselves about where we are, and a lot of us don't even know where we want to go. So how would you expect the GPS to work? We would just be like a leaf blowing in the wind with no direction, not knowing where we're going. As a result, our financial situation is terrible. We haven't paid off our student loans yet. We don't have generational wealth. And that is a very dangerous position to be in, especially in today's economy, 2022, moving into this current decade. That is a very dangerous position to be in. And so, I will not wish that upon my worst enemy.

Look at your life like a GPS. Get clear with where you are, get clear with where you want to go and then find a vehicle that can get you there in the most predictable way possible. It's just not about looking for a get-rich-quick scheme. I don't work with anybody that's looking for a get-rich-quick scheme, but this is looking for a get-rich-certain scheme.

You want to look at opportunities that are certain for return on investment, and that are certain to help you get to the financial situation that you deserve. And so, whether it's an online course or not, whether it's something else completely entirely, that is up to you, but at least get clear with where you are and where you want to go, because that's going to make life a lot easier and make your decision making a lot easier. It's funny, but there's this thing where if you don't have a target, you'll miss every time. So just set yourself a target just by the end of this podcast, spend 5 to 10 minutes, set yourself a target and make sure you hit it.

John: Sounds like a good advice. I like that. I like the GPS analogy. It's a good one. All right, Chester, this has been fun. I think I've learned a lot today, just in our short time together here. I appreciate you taking the time and explaining all this to us. It's been great. We'll not forget that we want to go to chesterzoda.com if we want to learn more. I'll put links in the show notes and we'll go from there. So, with that, I'll just have to say goodbye.

Dr. Chester Zoda: All right, goodbye. I appreciate it. It was a pleasure speaking here.

John: All right. Take care.

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The post How Physicians Can Use Online Courses to Boost Income – 239 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's interview, Dr. Chase DiMarco explains how physicians can earn extra income teaching medical students.

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.

Who Is Chase DiMarco?

Dr. Chase DiMarco holds an MS and an MBA. And he is an MD/Ph.D-candidate. Additionally, he is the Founder of MedEd University and the CEO of Find A Rotation, a clinical rotations platform.

There is an expanding number of international students every year. We need to focus on increasing the number of rotations available.

He hosts the Medical Mnemonist Podcast and Rounds to Residency Podcast. He is also co-author of Read This Before Medical School, published in 2019. Chase is a consummate entrepreneur, author, teacher, and businessman.

Earn Extra Income As a Preceptor

As a medical student in a non-U.S. based school, he personally experienced the difficulty of arranging rotations. The process was expensive and time-consuming. At times, the rotations fell through. Painfully, he was often unable to recoup the high fees he paid to the Rotation Agencies.

As a result, he decided to solve that problem. He created Find A Rotation to link medical students to willing preceptors at a much lower cost. And he has systems in place to ensure that arrangements are secure and reliable.

To try it out, go to FindARotation.com. Click on the Register for Free Button and sign up by clicking on the Preceptor Link in the right column of the sign-up window. Chase will do the rest.

Closing

Dr. DiMarco is a good example of a medical entrepreneur who developed a business to solve two problems: finding rotations for medical students and helping physicians earn extra income. You can register as a preceptor using the above information. Or you can contact Chase directly at chase@findarotation.com or on LinkedIn.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Find A Rotation
• Chase DiMarco's LinkedIn Page
• MedEd University
• Medical Mnemonist Podcast
• Rounds to Residency Podcast
• How to Be a Successful Physician Entrepreneur – 123
• Top Five Start-Up Secrets for the Physician Entrepreneur – 087
• Want to Establish a Concierge Practice Before Finishing Your Fellowship? – 210

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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 217

What Is the Newest Way to Earn Extra Income While Seeing Patients?

John: Today's guest is a very interesting chap. He's a physician who always seems to be creating new services or products to help his colleagues. And today he is going to describe a service that I really didn't even know existed or could exist. Although, now that I think of it, there's definitely going to be a need for this. Dr. Chase DiMarco, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be an interesting talk.

John: Yeah, I've been looking forward to this. Again, a lot of my guests serve two purposes. Number one, they're entrepreneurs. They're creating something which I think is very inspirational to the listeners. And then number two, the thing they're creating, the thing they're doing might actually be a service or product that my listeners could benefit from. This definitely falls into that category today. So, we're going to learn a lot, I'm sure.

To get started, why don't you share a little bit about your background and what you're doing now?

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Sure. That's always the tricky one because there are so many different levels. How far should I go back? Well, I guess the summarized version is that I went to a Caribbean medical school and that really enlightened me to different ways of doing things than maybe some of the physicians that went to US schools.

Well, there are gaps in all of medical education, all education in general, that could be filled. And the ones involving what I went through personally are vast. I would say that, as you mentioned, a lot of people just don't know that they even exist.

I tried to work on different projects that are going to help students through this process, through these gaps that they might run into. And a lot of US students do as well. From a lot of my colleagues, I've heard some of the same issues. Finding rotations in certain specialties or learning how to learn or just how to bridge those basic sciences to clinical sciences to residency. And that has been the focus of my books, podcasts, and now FindARotation for the clinical rotations' aspect of things. That's kind of the summary of all the different projects going on.

John: All right. Well, let's take a break here and talk about your podcast then. You have at least two. I don't know if they're both active right now. So, tell us about that.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Sure. The Medical Reminisce was the first one I started back in the beginning of 2019. And it was kind of a self-exploration as well. I knew that I was having trouble with certain types of material. My memory has never been the best. There is so much material you have to memorize for the board exams, especially when step one was still a scored test, which it's going away from in the next few months. And it didn't seem to matter what materials I used, how many times I went over materials. I couldn't necessarily remember everything.

I started looking into different ways of learning. And that's really where this podcast came from. It's using more mnemonic techniques, advanced mnemonics, not just acronyms because those generally don't stick very well. You can use them for the next exam, but then you forget them unless maybe they're raunchy or violent or something like that.

And at the time, things like Picmonic and sketchy medicine were really becoming more popular. There is medicine and medical. I always mix it up. As visual representations of these mnemonic devices, memory palaces, visual markers. So, I started learning from a lot of them, from people that teach them mnemonic and from cognitive psychologists, and would have them on the show discussing how we learn, discussing different ways to implement these techniques.

That's gone on for quite a while now, and there are a lot of variations in the types of guests there from physician educators to these mnemonics trainers, to cognitive psychologists, and just kind of a fun way to learn more about how our learning works and effective learning techniques.

John: All right. Let's stop there for one second because I want to do a fun thing. I want to challenge my listeners to say medical mnemonics. Is that how you do it?

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Yes. Like mnemonics.

John: Exactly. That's worse than saying, I don't know, something else, chrysanthemum or something. So, medical mnemonics. Okay, go on.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Yeah. A lot of people can't get that word and Google doesn't recognize it as an official word either, so it's perfectly fine. And then later that year I started the rounds to residency. It used to have a different name, but now it rounds to residency. And that really was trying to bridge sort of the basic science to clinical science gap.

That mostly interviews physicians that either currently do precept students or used to precept students and helps to give those clinical learners a little insight into all the different specialties into the different demographics of patients of geographies and what is expected from them.

Because that's just something that at least at the time didn't seem like it was really covered. At least for a lot of the students I know and have worked with, you finish your basic sciences, and then you're just kind of tossed into your clinical rounds and not necessarily know what to expect or how to do your best or how to stay motivated, how to ask for a strong letter of recommendation and all of these things that are very important for your residency.

That podcast really helps to guide them on some of the different terrain, different questions. And just with the hope of making them more prepared for their clinical rotations.

John: It kind of worries me when you talk about the second podcast and the need for going from that basic to the clinical because I think it has been almost 40 years since I did my first rotation and talk about being thrown to the wolves. I had no clue. I showed up at the VA and I was going to be on call every third night. I didn't even know I was going to be on call till the first day I showed up and they said, "This is what you're doing". And much less the clinical side. So, I think every bit helps to get that transition. That sounds cool.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Yeah, there's definitely still a huge gap in a lot of schools, whether they be foreign or US schools. So, hopefully, that helps students that aren't really prepared for another.

John: Well, there's so much now available, whether it's blogs, there's a lot written, there are a lot more books. There are eBooks, there's all kinds of things that can help medical students and actually students getting into medical school, medical students getting into residencies. It's definitely a lot better than it was 30, 40 years ago. Now you were also the founder of MedEd University. Maybe you can tell us about that.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Sure. That's recently gone through rebranding. It used to be freemeded.org. And if anyone listens to my old podcast or anything, you'll hear that term thrown around a lot.

But that was something I started with my first semester in med school as just a repository of information on websites, of free quizzes online, of YouTube videos that were very popular to act as a supplemental resource. And after a few years, I started being knowledgeable enough to start making my own content for it and have partnered with others that are now making content for it as well. So, the podcasts are kind of a part of that, so I started off there.

We have a new academy that's like Coursera or Udemy that allows any instructor that would like to join us, to host their courses for free, charge if they want to, and just act as sort of an online MOOC - Massive Online Open Community for just strictly healthcare education. So that is kind of the new direction that is going.

John: Okay. I never heard of a MOOC before, but that's a good one. Massive, now that's interesting. But I say this because actually one of my partners and I are in the process of opening a community for physicians. I should know a term like MOOC.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: It's mostly something that I heard used a lot when Coursera, some of those college-based university-based courses, were becoming freely available for the masses. So, Massive Online Open Courses because anyone can join them.

Now, ours is set up similar to that, but it's really closer to Udemy where you have independent instructors and whatever material they feel comfortable in teaching, or want to teach, want to get out there, we can help support them with tools, with free hosting and really just trying to help more educators in healthcare produce the content that they want to. A lot of people want to create a podcast or want to create a course, but there's a huge barrier to entry. So, we are trying to limit that and support them with our services.

John: That's very interesting. You're really into education, but definitely from an entrepreneurial point of view. It seems like every time maybe there's an itch you need to scratch for yourself, once you master that, you're going to share it with other people. That's a pretty common trait of an entrepreneur.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Yeah. And I always say collaboration is much better than competition. We can do a lot more working together with similar goals than fighting against each other and trying to win on Google ranks or something along those lines.

John: Yeah. All right. Well, that's a good bit of background and these things of course are ongoing. I'll put links in the show notes to all of this if people want to check it out. Of course, many of our listeners are a little bit past the med school stage and residency, and now they're in practice. Many of them are looking for maybe something else to do or a side gig and that kind of thing.

That's where the next issue comes in, the next topic, which is something called FindARotation. Tell me what that is and what it provides and why you decided to start this latest venture.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Depending on the background of most of your audience, they might be slightly aware of this and some might not have any idea what this is about. But basically, what happened for me and happens with a lot of schools, whether they be newer US schools or foreign schools, they have trouble finding affiliate agreements with hospitals to send their students for clinical rotations.

What a lot of them will do is hire third-party agencies, these rotation agencies to fill the spots. And of course, the problem with any sort of agency, with any sort of agent is they take a huge cut themselves.

I ended up using some of these agencies in my third and fourth years, and some of them through the school, some independent, because there are just limitations in which types of rotations or which locations that I wanted to try to practice in, to network with.

And actually, in the end, I ended up spending around a thousand dollars per week on some of these rotations. There was no cancellation policy and I ended up not even securing the last four or five rotations through one of these companies. And that's when I said there is definitely a better way to do this. These really come off in my mind as predatory. And a lot of companies do take advantage of foreign students because they need help and they don't have options. They don't have any power locally to do much. So, I said, "Well, what are some of the really big companies right now that help to really automate as much of the process as possible to reduce costs for everyone and allow more people to get involved?" And the ones that come to mind are Rideshare, Lyft, Uber, or something like Airbnb or VRBO.

These companies allow anyone with the right credentials to join their service. They don't need to set up their own company or set up their own website or try to compete for a share of the market. And by allowing more people to be crowdsourced and offer the resources that were previously untapped, you allow for cheaper affordable services for the client, in this case, the student.

The whole goal is in the past few years we've been doing R&D for this. I have been manually matching physicians to students free of charge, but obviously, that's not scalable. We've done a lot of different I'd say alterations and updates, and it'll allow physicians, clinicians to host their sites, whatever clinical site it is. They can set the requirements they need from the student, the types of students, the number of students, and whatever their compensation is. So, it's completely up to them.

It's meant to be as simple as renting out your house or a room on Airbnb or something along those lines. And then the students can go on and search by location, specialty price range, and find what's proper for them, what they want to. Whether it be a certain specialty that is too competitive that they can't get through their school. I know my school used to offer lotteries for competitive specialties. And also, if you're trying to find a certain location, this'll give you more of a variety of options than you might have through your local university.

John: It matches people up. I've seen this with services that match, let's say a physician looking for locums to a site. Again, try to cut the middleman out, try to get enough of a number of sites and physicians to make it work. But when it works, it works great. As you said, the costs are less, it's more convenient. You're doing the work of matching things up so they don't have to call a hundred people.

Let's just see how this would work. Just correct me if I go through this improperly, but we just go to findarotation.com. When we open that, we will see a landing page or sales page or whatever you want to call it, it's the homepage. And then there is some information you can look at and download some things, and then you can hit the "register for free" button. And then that takes you to the page that has signups for students and preceptors. And obviously, if you are a preceptor, then you should just put that information in, and then boom, you'll be in the system. And can then from that point, interact with you or whoever the system, and start to look for students to fill in rotations.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Yeah. And they can go to the Preceptors tab. They can reach out through there or to sign up for the newsletter, be updated when there are updates to be had, contact me directly. And still, at the moment, I'm matching everyone individually, but hopefully, that'll become much more streamlined when the new one is released.

John: Okay. Now give us a little background on this. You've talked about why there's a need for this. What would be reasonable? We don't want people to go in there "Oh, good. I can make a couple of thousand dollars a week spending a couple of hours a day with a student". I mean, it doesn't seem to make sense to me. So, what would be reasonable? What is being paid now? If you're going to compete with those rotation agencies, I guess you call them, then they need to be competitive. So, what would you ask or expect a physician to do? Let's say I'm a specialist, there might be a bigger need for that. Tell us in more detail.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Sure. There's a lot of variation, obviously, depending on which specialty it is, and also which geographic location you're in. Some cities and states are going to be more expensive. Sometimes the hospital you work for might have more paperwork that you have to go through and just the process is longer.

But from my experiences and those of other students that I know that have used these rotations in the past, there are occasionally some physicians that will donate their time for free. And that is definitely welcomed. We would love to have a host of physicians that are offering their services that currently accept students. And we can at least take some of the work away from them. So, they don't need to worry about the paperwork and the scheduling at all. It'll all be done in that.

But those that are looking for that extra revenue stream, again, depending on the specialty and other factors, usually a few hundred dollars per week is pretty normal. Say maybe $200, $400 a week for something like a private practice family medicine, and up to around $1,000 a week plus or minus for certain specialties.

Now, granted that price also includes the agency's fee, which from our calculation is based on their numbers that are publicly available, it's about a third of the price. That right there makes it much more expensive for the students, unfortunately. Some schools will cover X amount per week as part of your tuition, but that's something that definitely needs to be discussed with them beforehand. And as soon as our new version comes out, we're going to try to form more of these partnerships, more affiliations with schools so that everything can be done more easily for the students.

John: Now, I have done some precepting in the past. I'm still working clinically very limited and I don't do any more precepting or teaching. Mostly I was with NP students, but my recollection was they had contracts. They had agreements that you have to sign and of course, have to provide them with some information so that they knew as a faculty, technically you met certain requirements, but they were usually fairly minimal. So, is the same thing applying in this situation?

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Generally speaking, yes. Especially in hospitals, they're all going to require certain types of documents to be signed. Some are pretty general and standardized. Some are very specific to that hospital system. The good thing is once a preceptor signs up, they can upload these documents and everything can be done electronically. The student or school in the future when we have school accounts, can upload any documents and send them to the preceptor.

And the preceptor or hospital can upload any of their documents, send them to the school or student and everything can be signed and documented very easily within the app. Of course, that's with the next version of it. So that's not available quite yet.

But hopefully with automating a lot of these e-signatures and the process in general, not having to print everything out, and also being able to keep records of everything, that really helps for students when they apply to residency and need proof of everything that they've completed.

John: Thinking ahead a year or two or three down the road, what do you think the scope of this would be in an ideal situation? I'm assuming that the demand for placement is going to continue. There is no other national free registry of any sort that will get people into those rotations apparently. What do you envision things looking like in a year or two down the road?

Dr. Chase DiMarco: The ability of this thing to really grow and expand is nearly exponential per year. The only thing close to this that we're aware of is VSLO - The Visiting Students Learning Objectives is what it's called and that's through AAMC. That system was really, really bad. And I know they've redone it recently and hopefully, it's better, but I've talked to dozens of physicians that used it for their schooling and never heard a positive thing about it. It was just clunky. It was usually outdated.

And even when you try to use the search criteria from them, it would always bring you to a separate website for that school, for that hospital and any kinds of fees and paperwork didn't translate. It just became quite burdensome from my understanding of it.

This can definitely replace something like that, but also there is an expanding number of international students every year. Current IMG, FMG foreign medical students, international medical students, and graduates make up something like 25% to 30% of the current physician working workforce. And the number is constantly expanding. And there is more competition between mid-level providers and MD/DO students.

There is still a lot of need for more clinicians. We need to probably focus on more ways to increase the number of rotations, increase the number of residencies and not decrease them. I think that it's going to prove to be so much easier. It's going to reduce hospital administration and school administrator time so significantly that there is no reason not to use it.

John: Excellent. I had a specific question about it as I was thinking about this and if I was in the position. Are there any sort of areas or workarounds or what do you have to do, let's say, if you want to be a preceptor and you want to make some extra money, but you're let's say one of a thousand doctors working in a large more or less corporate environment? Are there barriers to that? Do you leave that to the physician to figure out when doing a contract with the organization, and then they forward whatever fees to that doctor? Or have you even encountered that?

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Well, if I'm understanding the question right, there are a lot of different ways that a physician can be set up, as far as an independent contractor, work in private practice, working in a group setting. It does vary quite a bit, but let's say we'll take the hospital setting for instance. A lot of hospitals and university hospitals are some of the more strict ones that will have limitations. For instance, a lot of hospitals won't accept international students at all, or will only do so in a limited fashion.

But most of them do have a loophole where they will allow a physician to independently sponsor a student. You really would have to check with your institution or your group for that to see exactly how they work, but usually, there is a way around it. And it's becoming more and more common even for specialists to have independent practices and private practices. Those types of sub-specialties who it's been harder to find generally rotations are now leaving hospitals in greater numbers, which is providing more opportunities for students as well.

John: Well, certainly more care is being provided in the outpatient setting. Everything is moved out of the hospital compared to 10, 20, 30 years ago, for sure. So, you're going to need a lot of those rotations.

All right. I wanted to ask you. We're just shifting gears here to this whole entrepreneurial thing. What were some of the biggest challenges? You've done different things and this one seems to be potentially pretty complex. But if you were giving our listeners some advice, because I'm sure many of them have ideas or how to improve things, maybe this should be a business or it could be a business. So, what did you discover going through the process of the latest enterprise?

Dr. Chase DiMarco: I would say at least for this one, the biggest issue has been just the app development itself. Anyone that has actually listened to me talking about this concept in the past few years will probably follow the chronological order of, "Oh, we're using a new company" because that constantly seems to be happening.

App development for most physicians, if they're talking to us a programmer or an engineer talking to us is kind of like us talking to a kindergartener about the intricacies of pathophysiology. There is just such a knowledge gap there. They'll always promise they can save the world and give you everything that you want. It usually doesn't end up being the case.

Due diligence and really finding someone in the know that you trust to help you out can save some of those headaches. And there are a lot of new alternatives now with this kind of piecemeal DIY app development software. I don't have a lot of experience with those. Obviously, if you need something very, very complex, like my idea, it's probably not going to work out so well, but if you have a simple platform or an e-commerce site or something along those lines, go easy first. And then if nothing else, you have a concept to bring to an app development team later on and they will be able to understand how it should work better.

John: Yeah. I recently sent an email talking about creating your own app and it used to be like, "Wow, let's just create an app. It's simple. You can learn how to do it, and you can make a lot of money". Those days are long gone.

I had one guest, Dr. Kirsten Limmer. She ended up developing her own app, but she had to do a lot of studying. And she used one of the sites, I think that you're relating and mentioned where it's kind of a combination of a course/limited consultation and they'll help you, but you really have to learn how to code at some level or you just farm it out and pay a lot of money. So, that's basically your choice at this point from what I understand.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Yeah. I think bubble.io is one that's pretty popular right now. They do have some walkthrough tutorial videos to give you a basic understanding. So, you can go through that, see if you enjoy it. And if not, then you're not going to continue making something yourself.

But it's really hard finding a company too. The first one I went through was a recommendation from a company that I was working with at the time. When they gave me a "good deal", I thought, "Oh, awesome", because we know the same people. Just to find out that they really couldn't provide anything close to what they promised.

If you can find someone that does know, that might be able to explain certain things to you and translate your entrepreneurial idea into an engineering understanding, then that's a good way to go about it.

John: I've seen some people take the approach that they would basically partner with somebody as or like their chief technical officer or something. Although I have heard many people tell me that you should never have a partner in a business. So, you have to figure that one out, I guess, for yourself. My wife owns a business and she's like, "I will never have a partner. I want to make the decisions. And that's the end of that conversation".

Dr. Chase DiMarco: I tried to do that with a friend of mine that he's very knowledgeable about computers. He's basically a CTO at another company, but he doesn't know too much about app development. So, he was like, "Nah, I wouldn't feel comfortable there".

John: Yeah. That probably doesn't help much. Okay, we talked about FindARotation, how to find that, and how to sign up there. How about just getting a hold of you? What would be the best way? I think you gave me an email earlier.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Yeah, chase@findarotation.com is fine to email any questions about that. Of course, any social media accounts for myself or for the company is perfectly fine. I usually get to them pretty soon if I see them. Chase DiMarco, FindARotation, MedEd University. I know there are too many things to mention.

John: Some people like using LinkedIn, some people like using email directly to you. Was it chase@findarotation.com?

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Correct.

John: Okay. They'll figure it out if they have questions, but I think if they're interested in being a preceptor, just sign up. It's working now, you're connecting students to rotations. So, if someone wants to make a little bit of extra money and enjoys teaching, this would definitely be something they can do. And particularly if they're thinking about it and they need to make a little extra money and why not.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Exactly. And if the beta version app is glitchy, then just email me directly and I'll help you out.

John: All right. Well, this has been very interesting. Any closing thoughts before we let you go today, Chase?

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Well, I would just leave it with this. There was a huge need for this type of service prior to COVID and now with nearly two years of in a lot of instances, students not being allowed in hospitals still in many states, there is definitely a need for more individuals such as your audience to participate in this and to share their knowledge and wisdom. So, I definitely hope to see more of you participating.

John: Yeah. That kind of blows my mind. One of my kids is in nursing school and her clinical rotations have consisted of no patient care whatsoever for the last nine months. And I'm thinking seriously? Well, that's going to cause a real backup.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: Oh yeah. We have a couple of years.

John: It's been really fun. This is interesting. I love talking to physicians that are entrepreneurs. And so, with that, I'll just say goodbye.

Dr. Chase DiMarco: All right. It's been great sharing these ideas and I hope it's interesting. And thank you so much for having me on.

John: You're welcome. Bye-bye.

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

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

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

The post What Is the Newest Way to Earn Extra Income While Seeing Patients? – 217 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In this post, I want to explain why it is important to validate your business idea. You may recall that in my previous blog post in this series, I described the factors needed to select a product or service to offer future customers:

• It's an area that you’re passionate about (or reflects your purpose),
• You have expertise or skills to share,
• There are customers with a problem to solve, and
• The customers are willing and able to pay for the product or service.

Try Selling a Prototype or Presell a Course

This trial run does not necessarily have to be a fully developed product. Let's look at an example.

• there are parents of these children looking for online help, and
• they’re willing to spend money to meet that need.

I’ve since found that there are products and services that physicians are willing to purchase to expedite their career transitions. This became evident when I started helping with a Facebook group (Physician Nonclinical Career Hunters) devoted to nonclinical careers two years ago, which now has over 15,000 members.

I now recognize that there's a demand for coaching, mentoring, and training. Several books have been published on the subject of nonclinical careers. There is a growing interest in this niche. And I’ve started to sell my own products.

I created a course dedicated to finding a job as a medical science liaison. That sold fairly well. So, I created more courses. Since I planned to continue developing courses, I decided to accelerate that process and open a membership site. I started with a minimal viable product (in my mind that was 12 courses).

I was able to sell an encouraging number of memberships. Now I've put more time into improving the first 12, and have added 6 new courses. I've recruited several affiliate partners to sell my course to their followers. And I'm relaunching the Nonclinical Career Academy Membership program very soon.

Several physicians I have interviewed who are coaches have followed a similar path. They started with one-on-one coaching. After building a sufficient following, they added group coaching. Some of them later created a course developed from their coaching experiences, which scaled their business, while serving more clients.

Examples include:

• First, Optimize Your Attitude – Interview with Dr. Katrina Ubell – 035,
• How to Be a Successful Physician Entrepreneur – Interview with Dr. Nneka Unachukwu – 123
• How to Be a Shrewd Business Coach and Consultant – Interview with Dr. David Norris – 111

Summary

As you plan your nonclinical online business, be sure to validate your business idea by confirming the demand for your product or service. Begin by looking for others who seem to be successful.

Then sell a prototype, or begin with a limited run of whatever you're selling. If you are a coach, sell a few discounted sessions to get going. Assess the response of your clients and the success of your coaching.

If you're creating a course – develop the first few lessons, then try to pre-sell the soon-to-be-finished course. But only finish creating it if there is interest confirmed by sales. Then use the feedback from your first few students to help direct future lessons.

Coming Next

In the next blog post, I will answer this question: What are the legal and business issues I should address before moving on?

Next Steps

Please add you're thoughts and questions in the Comments. I will respond to them all.

Contact me: john.jurica.md@gmail.com

Thanks for joining me.

Until next time.

The post How to Validate Your Business Idea appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In this week's podcast episode, Dr. Gretchen Green explains how she became an expert witness, and how she opened her expert witness consulting business.

Gretchen describes how her expert witness business allowed her to cut back on clinical work, find more freedom, spend more time with her family, and make more money.

If you want to diversify your income with a side hustle that is intellectually stimulating and flexible, that builds on your medical knowledge and that pays really well, you are going to love today’s guest.

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

While in the program, you'll participate in a company project. That will enable you to demonstrate your commitment. And, as a result, the UT PEMBA students bring exceptional value to their organizations.

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

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

Exploring a New Opportunity

Dr. Gretchen Green has been a diagnostic radiologist since 2006. She completed her medical degree at Brown University Medical School. She followed medical school with a residency in diagnostic radiology at Yale University School of Medicine and a Women’s Imaging Fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

Gretchen did not intend to become an expert witness. However, she was contacted by an attorney who needed an expert witness with a background matching Gretchen's. She agreed to work on that case and found that she really enjoyed the work. She cut her clinical work back and studied the field and honed her skills over the past five years.

Gretchen has served as an expert witness in dozens of cases for both plaintiff and defense attorneys. This enabled her to transition to part-time clinical work in 2016 and create more time for her family. She developed an online course devoted to becoming an expert witness called Expert Witness Start-Up School.

Become an Expert Witness

During our conversation,  you'll learn exactly what an expert witness does, why it is such a great side job and the potential income that can be produced. Then we’ll talk a bit about the course she has created for physicians who want to become an expert witness and quickly build their expert witness business.

Expert witness work helped me transition to part-time clinical work in 2016 and have more time with family and for myself. It enabled me to have financial freedom to design my best life. – Dr. Gretchen Green

Here is your call to action: if you have the slightest inkling that becoming an expert witness is an option for you, you can learn a whole lot more about it at nonclinicalphysicians.com/ewcourse.

Summary

There is a short period of time to sign up. And once the course begins it will not be open again until sometime next year. So, I would not hesitate, especially if you find yourself with some extra time due to the current pandemic. So, give it a look at nonclinicalphysicians.com/ewcourse, which is an affiliate link, so I receive compensation if you sign up using the link, but the price is exactly the same.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Expert Witness Start-Up School
• John's Replay Episode on Next Level Physicians with Maiysha Clairborne
• Maiysha Clairborne's One Year Anniversary Celebration Podcast Episode

Download This Episode:

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

The post Top Reasons to Become an Expert Witness Now – 163 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

On this week’s episode of the PNC podcast, a dynamic physician couple explains how they used their passion for real estate investing to create a popular course that teaches what they've learned. 

 

After hearing about their experiences with real estate, and the success of their online courses, I was really pleased when they agreed to come on the podcast. So, today we'll be learning about real estate AND how to create a popular course like theirs.

Our Sponsor

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

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country, with over 650 graduates. And, unlike other programs, which typically run 1 – 1/2 to 2 years, this program only takes a year to complete. Recently, Economist Magazine ranked the business school #1 in the world for the Most Relevant Executive MBA.

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

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

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

Dr. Leti Alto is a board-certified family medicine physician. After finishing medical school at the University of Vermont, Leti completed her residency at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, followed by a hospitalist fellowship. She has been a hospitalist since 2011. She also started a company, ModusOne Health, with her husband and served as Chief Medical Officer from 2015-2016, before pursuing her current real estate and online training businesses. 

Dr. Kenji Asakura completed medical school at Johns Hopkins University. After medical school, he started a nutraceutical company, completed an internship at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company, then returned to UW to repeat his internship and internal medicine residency. He started ModusOne Health with his wife, before pursuing his current passions.

Risk-free Real Estate Investments

Leti and Kenji knew they wanted to achieve financial freedom through multiple income streams after reading Robert Kiyosaki's book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad (this is an affiliate link) together. They saw two paths to achieve that: start an incredibly successful business and exit with a big payoff, or invest in real estate. Pretty quickly, they chose to pursue the latter.

And they quickly discovered two primary benefits to investing in real estate:

Cashflow

Most investors begin with single-family homes or small multi-family properties. Then, you can use the cash flow, and equity in smaller projects to invest in larger residential or commercial properties. And you create a new income stream every time you lease your property.

Tax Savings

Using depreciation and other deductions inherent in real estate, investors can offset income from other sources, drastically reducing them in some cases. The advantages multiply when you become a real estate professional. But you must meet certain income and FTE requirements that the IRS demands to achieve that.

Next Step: Create a Popular Course About Real Estate

When Leti and Kenji first started investing in real estate, they offered advice to people who wanted to replicate what they had achieved. Later, they decided to start a blog, SemiRetiredMD.com, to expand their reach and make the information available to a larger audience of colleagues.

Monetizing their blog later offered another income column to support their financial freedom. And it also allowed them to build a following.

As long as the passion is there to help people… you're going to still help them regardless of whether the material is perfect or not.

– Dr. Kenji Asakura

From the blog, they decided to use what they were teaching to create a popular course based on their real estate expertise, Zero to Freedom through Cash-Flowing Rentals [This is an affiliate link – if you purchase using the link, I receive a commission.] In this 10-week course, Leti and Kenji:

• teach students how to invest in real estate,
• explain how to become a real estate professional,
• provide important tax information, and,
• introduce students to professional connections to make investing easier.

On the episode, Leti and Kenji also discuss how they created their course, and the software platform they use to support it.

Download This Episode:

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

The post How to Create a Popular Course From Your Passion – 143 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

I have decided to write a series of blog posts focused on how to get started on your nonclinical online business. It has been a long time since I wrote a dedicated blog post not related to a podcast episode. But it is time to ramp up this part of the web site!

The topics will be about starting and growing a business, entrepreneurship, and all of the online tools and tricks that I have learned over the past few years.

How Did I Get Started?

I started my first blog about four years ago because I wanted to do something creative, hone my writing skills, and help physicians. My first blog, called “Contract Doctor,” was devoted to helping with contract negotiations. The response was modestly positive, but it didn't get a lot of traction.

I found later that I was interested in writing about my experiences as a Chief Medical Officer. And I wanted to encourage physicians to step up to management and leadership positions in the hospital setting. So, I started my second blog the Vital Physician Executive.

I wrote articles about the differences between clinical practice and working as an executive. I addressed topics for physician leaders, including new skills to learn, new attitudes to adopt, and related topics. But it soon occurred to me that this topic of being a hospital leader was a subset of a much broader topic, that of nonclinical careers. So, I started the PNC podcast addressing that larger niche, and now I'm into my 143rd episode.

I’ve since found that there are products and services that physicians are willing to purchase to expedite their career transitions. This became evident when I started helping with a Facebook group (Physician Nonclinical Career Hunters) devoted to nonclinical careers two years ago, which now has over 13,000 members. And I recognize that there's a demand for coaching, mentoring, and training. Several books have been published on the subject of nonclinical careers. There is a growing interest in this niche. And I’ve started to sell my own products.

Reminder – Leverage and Growth Virtual SUMMIT is Live May 11 through May 22, 2020.

I'm a contributor and affiliate partner for Peter Kim's Leverage and Growth Virtual Summit. With over 50 expert faculty, it is incredible that you can access all of the sessions for FREE. It is designed to build freedom into your life through passive and active income streams, and help secure your family's future in these uncertain times.

My session is on May 19, so be sure to view it. All of the sessions with be released over the next 2 weeks, starting the day this podcast episode is released on May 11, 2020. Each week's sessions will also be posted again on the respective weekend, at absolutely NO COST. And you can pick and choose each day which sessions to view.

At any point, including the final days of the SUMMIT, you can choose to purchase access to all of the videos if you find them to be helpful. In any case, whether you choose to enroll in the free access or buy the video bundle, please USE THIS LINK. It is the only way that I get credit for sharing this SUMMIT with my listeners and readers. And doing so has no effect on the price if you elect to purchase the videos.

Get Started on Your Nonclinical Online Business by Finding a Niche

But the process that I followed was a bit backward. I now believe that if you want to start an online business, it is best to follow a more intentional path! Let me describe how I think you should get started on your nonclinical online business.

When starting a new business, I believe there are four requirements that must be met. Visualize a Venn diagram. Your niche must exist at the overlapping section of these four.

Engage Your Passion

Identify Your Expertise

Find Customers with a Problem to Solve

Find Customers Who Can Afford a Solution

Summary

As you get started on your nonclinical online business and determine your niche, keep your options open. Consider several. Find others in those fields and see how they are doing.

For a more extensive discussion of this topic, check out Chapter 9 in The Positioned Physician: Earn More, Work Smart & Love Medicine Again, by Mike Woo-Ming, MD, MPH. Mike is featured on the podcast in Episode 19 and will return on Episode 144.

Coming Next

In the next blog post, I will answer this question: Can I go a step further and demonstrate that customers will buy, before I sink a lot of time and money into my potential niche?

Next Steps

Please add you're thoughts and questions in the Comments. I will respond to them all.

Contact me: john@nonclinicalphysicians.com

Thanks for joining me.

Until next time.

The post How to Get Started on Your Nonclinical Online Business appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

This week, I bring you my conversation with a former academic pediatrician who now works as senior medical director for a contract research organization, or CRO.

Dr. Michelle Bailey knew she wanted to be a pediatrician since she was 12 years old. She received her medical degree from State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Health Sciences University and completed her pediatrics residency at Duke University Medical Center. She trained in the Integrative Medicine Fellowship through the University of Arizona, and served on the faculty of Duke University School of Medicine for 18 years.

Michelle worked in a demanding academic setting for many years. Then a medical scare helped her realize she needed a change. Now, she works full time as a medical director for a contract research organization, and part time as a career development coach for physicians.

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What Do You Want?

Michelle worked as an academic pediatrician for over 20 years, when she began to experience symptoms of burnout. One day she developed chest pain and sought medical care at the insistence of a colleague.

She had not suffered a cardiac event. But she took the episode as an indication that she needed to make a change in her career. She needed more balance and less stress.

She realized that she had reached a point where she was neglecting her health for the sake of her career. So, she began asking herself questions to determine what she wanted for herself at that stage of her life.

A friend of hers had recently transitioned from clinical practice to a pharma job at a contract research organization. Michelle knew nothing about the CRO world. But she was willing to learn. When the opportunity presented itself, it turned out to be a perfect fit.

Working for a CRO

CROs are companies that pharmaceutical, biotech and device companies hire to run their clinical trials. As a medical director, Dr. Bailey collaborates with a multidisciplinary team to bring new drugs to market.

She presents at bid defense meetings. These are similar to sales meetings where she shares her expertise to try to win contracts for her company. She also reviews safety narratives developed by pharmacovigilance teams to ensure they make sense.

Michelle enjoys her role at the contract research organization. Many CRO medical directors have training in internal medicine or family medicine. But Michelle says not to rule yourself out based on your specialty. She has been quite successful with her pediatric background.

According to Michelle, physicians have advantages in this industry simply based on their experience working with patients and families. However, there are other skills that can be valuable if you want to work for a CRO:

• leadership skills,
• teaching experience,
• research background,
• understanding the clinical drug development process, or
• experience working on an investigational review board (IRB) or ethics committee.

There are several roles for physicians at a contract research organization. If not qualified as a medical director, a physician could also pursue:

• a medical monitoring role,
• work as a safety physician within a pharmacovigilance department, or
• a clinical research associate job providing onsite monitoring. 

The post Should I Work for a Contract Research Organization? – 124 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.