Tea Nguyen, DPM (00:53.856)

Athletes need coaches. They are high performing, high achieving individuals who optimize their year by ensuring that not only do they stay up to date on their skill set, input muscle memory into the movements that they make, but they also have ongoing guidance to ensure that their blind spots are addressed. Whereas physicians who are also high achieving individuals

In our culture today, having a coach has not yet been normalized, but we are seeing a rise in coaching for doctors as an important and I think necessary way to optimize the physician's performance as the doctor, the surgeon, and even business owner. I'm often asked what I think about other coaching programs and the answer might surprise you because I've done a few.

And some were led by physicians, others were led by multi-million dollar generating entrepreneurs. And my simple answer is this, choose the one that feels right for you in the current phase you're in. In this episode, I'm going to give you five ways to ensure success in any coaching program that you choose so that you don't ever overspend or feel like it was a waste of time. So backstory.

A year ago when I was building my program, a doctor had reached out to me in a private message and was very interested in increasing her revenue so that she's less dependent on insurance. She had gone through the modules and I hadn't heard back from her, so I didn't know how things were going. So I decided to reach out because I can see and track how people are using the program, how many modules they've gone through, and if they wanted to give me feedback,the program allows you to do just that. So when I hadn't heard from her after a few months, I reached out and asked for her feedback, because I wanted to see how she was progressing. And she wrote this to me this. I honestly felt this was a waste of my time because I already have my practice and I've been with insurance for a long time, not looking to drop it anytime soon. So that was the gist of it. So immediately I panicked and thought,

Tea Nguyen, DPM (03:17.774)

Where was the miscommunication? I literally talk only about direct care on my LinkedIn or maybe 90 % of the time it's about how doctors can reclaim their time back by not contracting with insurance. What was missed? So I took it really hard on myself because I want to improve the doctor's experience, but I have to also understand where they're coming from.

The projects that I put out in the world, I want it to be an A plus project. And this did not feel like an A plus experience. And the thing is, what I produce, it's not graded. Nobody's watching me what I do. No one's saying that's a good job or that's not a good job. I rely on the feedback for the physicians who go through the program and we tweak it. It's kind of like an iPhone. You know, there was the iPhone version four and now we are up to 17, right? Every iteration gets better over time based on the feedback of the ideal users. So the experience that I wanted to provide to people who listen and consume my stuff is to give them a different experience in the healthcare landscape through direct care. It's my name, my reputation. There's no investment in anything that I do. This podcast is free. Nobody pays me to say anything in a certain way. I really just put my heart out there in all that I do to help the doctors who are looking for my help. And oftentimes it feels like I'm standing on stage giving a talk naked. It's pretty vulnerable to stick my neck out there to say what I think and feel and share my opinions. So I share this story because I have learned as a business coach to create messaging that aligns with the right person at the right time in the right stage of their practice.

And also as a user of many programs now available out there for physicians in their businesses, I have spent lots and lots of money and all these things that I've learned. I've consolidated and created my coaching program to help doctors launch their practice and eventually leave insurance. So there has to be a bridge and the bridge from insurance based practices to a direct care practice requires a few things. It requires to have a financial runway.

Tea Nguyen, DPM (05:42.632)

and a marketing plan, which is all available in the course. So everything you need to know, whether you're starting from scratch or you have an insurance practice and you need to leave it, you want to leave it is in the program, but you have to go through the program intentionally, set the foundation, and even park aside the idea that you already know it all. That is one way to waste your money is you buy a program and you say, I already know all this.

but you don't apply the principles. You don't set the foundation for success. So here are five ways to ensure your success in any coaching program you invest in. The first is to set your intention. What do you want to gain if you purchased a program or work with a coach? And what is the plan to get you there? In my personal experience, there is value to all of the coaching programs I've invested in.

And it was really dependent on what I was intending to get out of it. So if I intended on joining a program because of the community, I made sure that that was always front of mind. That I came here, I joined this program for this specific thing. That is the thing I want to gain. I want to gain the knowledge of the group. And that has always proven to be valuable. I have walked away from programs that I didn't really love.

but I love the people I connected with and that in itself has been worth gold because as a solo practice owner, I don't get exposure to a lot of people. My day-to-day interactions include me talking into the mic, people reaching out into the DMs, or my patients, which are often a one-to-one interaction. I'm not a big social butterfly, so my exposure to people is pretty limited. And to be able to be put in a place that is curated specifically to be amongst other individuals who are similar to me with similar goals is really valuable. The last time I've had that experience was in residency, which is well over 10 years now. And so anytime I'm put in a circle with other like-minded doctors, it is always a win for me. So set your intention as to what you wanna gain from the coaching program, from what they promise you so that you ensure your success in that program.

Tea Nguyen, DPM (08:00.354)

The second thing to consider is what are you willing to give? It might be money, it might be time, it might be the effort, it might be giving up your current reality, it might be giving up who you think you are right now to shift into who you want to become in order to get that new thing, that new transformation that the program was going to offer you. So realize when you want to change something in your business, in your life,

You're going to have to make an exchange. Money, time, effort, your reality, your identity. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to shape shift to become the person who can have massive success in your practice, in your business, in your life? If you are unwilling to change any of those things or invest in any of those things, then of course, when you buy a program and you resist change, you will waste your money. You will also waste your time because being a passive learner does not induce change. It's your effort to induce change. And in order to receive the ticket to get in the door, it's gonna cost you money. And in order for you to achieve change, it takes time. It takes time to strategize, to implement, to learn the lessons that keep on recurring in your business, and that will change you. You need to lead the program changed in order for your practice to shift.

So you must be willing to make that trade. The third thing to think about is what is your budget and what is your bandwidth? There are many excellent programs out there of a variety of durations. You can do a few weeks or there are longer commitment programs out there. And you have to decide for yourself what is your current budget and bandwidth. So if you have a lot of money to give, to invest in a program, but you don't have the bandwidth to do and implement the things that they recommend, that's a waste of money. If you have the bandwidth, but you don't have the budget, well, then you don't have the ticket to get in, right? So the budget and the bandwidth are incredibly important to deciding what program you will invest in. And it's part of the consideration on how you want to use the program to your advantage. The fourth thing here,

Tea Nguyen, DPM (10:22.018)

To ensure your success in any coaching program is to speak to others who have gone through the program so that you have the right expectations. Is that person even where I wanna be? Because if so, then okay, you have a good idea as to whether or not it could work for you or not. They are of a similar archetype, meaning they have a similar background or the program have produced results and they share those results with you so that

You know they're not fake or scammy. And you can even ask the coaches, who's gone through your program that would be willing to talk to me so that I can have the right expectations on whether or not this would be a good fit for me or not. And number five, even the best programs out there will still have a few students who won't succeed. And that could be a user problem. It could have been the wrong program for the wrong phase of their practice. It could have been a variety of things.

It's very much like residency, medical school, where the foundation is there. You can succeed, but you have to do the work. Great programs will always have somebody on standby to direct you, to give you resources for the phase that you're in. So take advantage of that, reach out to the coach or the team advisors in order to know what you need to do next. The strategy that I like to think about when I invest in any programs out there, whether it was $100 or is to implement this one simple strategy. It is to set the intention to ensure that I get a 100X in return on the investment because I know the results will always rest with me. Coaching programs, medical school, residency, they all offer a foundation. You get what you give. And there are people who get great programs but don't succeed for the following reason. Number one, they rely on others to do the work for them. Number two, they just depended on passive consumption. They're jumping from course to course, program to program, never really implementing the strategies, or they don't implement it long enough to see the results. And number three, waiting for enlightenment, waiting for that next shiny special thing that you've never heard of to be the secret to success, when the reality is the simple stuff works.

Tea Nguyen, DPM (12:50.498)

The foundation needs to be set. You gotta rinse and repeat, learn the lessons that you need to learn, make decisions based on data, and follow the program. So many people are just waiting to hear something new and innovative. They're waiting for that aha moment like this is it. But the thing is every time you receive that aha moment, you're getting a nice release of happy hormones. And then you start to crave more of it. But you also have to have the introspection to recognize

If you're just course jumping or program jumping in order to seek more of that aha moment, like aha, I get it now. Now I gotta implement it, right? That's just the first step. The insight is the first step. The action taking is the next. And some people just continue to learn more as a way to avoid doing the actual thing, doing the boring thing, doing the hard thing.

Business strategies that work and still work and have always worked are often boring, unsexy things. It's repetition, it's volume, meaning if your practice needs to grow, you need to be more exposed to more people. More people need to know about you, so that's a volume gain. And then time, allowing time for it to mature, for you to produce a lot of results for people, for you to get those Google reviews, for people to talk about you in circles that you're not in.

All of these things are staged and some people just quit when it gets really boring and they jump into another program and they're seeking for that enlightenment to give them that motivational boost. But you have to know that boring, simple things scale. It's unsexy. A lot of people just give up because they're seeking a high. They're seeking for that dopamine hit of excitement and motivation, but it really comes down to discipline.

If you believe your success is inevitable, that you make a promise to yourself that you'll never give up even when things get messy or they get boring, that all experiences you have are learning opportunities, I promise you this, you will always win in business and in life. I look forward to chatting with you again next week. Take care.