Tea Nguyen, DPM (00:54.188)

If you're somebody who has an attention span that is struggling to stay focused and you're saying things like, I feel like I'm doing a lot, but what do I actually need to focus on? Then this episode is for you. When you're building a business, there are different phases of growth that's going to require a different version of you to show up. And in the beginning, when the honeymoon phase is over, that first excitement of the idea of starting your practice wanes out where things start to get real.

And you're in the trenches of despair. You're waiting for patients to show up. You're waiting to see your revenue go up. You need to create a foundation. And it's got these three things. It starts with asking yourself and revisiting this question, why are you even doing this? You are creating a practice that less than 1% of doctors are actively choosing to work without insurance or to work less with insurance, to build a practice or build a system that works for you.

Why is this important? What is your mission at the end of the day? When you revisit this time and time again, it's going to change your perception and get you focused as to why this work is important to continue to pursue, which is why those who are kind of half in and half out, you may not last as long in this model because it's going to challenge you in ways you've never expected. Being a business owner is one of the most humbling experiences of self-development.

It will expose all of the wounds that you've been avoiding. There's a saying that says what you avoid will persist. So, in your foundation, when you're building this practice, revisit that over and over again. What is the ultimate mission as to why you're taking on this path? The second part of the foundation is creating a community of people who are in your situation or are ahead of you or even behind you for emotional and business support.

These are the people you can lean on when things get really hard, or you need to bounce ideas off of, or you need clarity. Because oftentimes many of us are solo business owners and we're kind of just talking to ourselves. We're trying to self-soothe and navigate difficult things. And sometimes logic isn't enough. You need other people's bandwidth to borrow when things get really hard. So creating a community is incredibly

Tea Nguyen, DPM (03:19.534)

Important, which is why I have the free Facebook group, the Direct Care Society, and you're free to join that if you're a doctor who's interested in this model. So creating a community and staying with them in your business journey is going to help you get much further than if you were to do this all by yourself. And the third part of that foundation is to rest intentionally without guilt.

So often I see doctors feel guilty for not doing enough, for not feeling productive, or when they take a vacation, they're still anxiety induced, they're stressed out, they're checking their phones, their emails, waiting for something bad to happen. But the thing is, rest has to be intentional. It's kind of like pulling back the bone arrow where you kind of lean back, you're not really doing a whole lot, you're restoring your energy for forward motion, for forward propulsion.

So rest intentionally without guilt so that you're not exhausted when you go back to work the following day. Now I mentioned how being a business owner is incredibly humbling. It is a big part of self-development because what can happen if you don't deal with the stuff that shows up in your business? People pleasing, for example, shows up as underpricing your stuff. Or the scarcity mindset is thinking that.

You need to take all opportunities that show up, even if the client is not a good fit, or if you have this fear of disappointment or simply a fear in spending money, that shows up in a way where you're not asking for help. If you're a doctor who's in the early stages of your practice and you're starting to feel the heat of entrepreneurship, of doing everything yourself, here are two things I would focus on. Number one, at every level of your practice,

You will have to evaluate everything that you're doing and intentionally choosing to focus on the few things that matter. This is the 20/80 rule or the Pareto principle, which states that 80% of your outcomes are dependent on 20% of the work you produce. So wherever you are in your financial block, you're going to have to let go of something that's holding you back. That means you can't do everything.

Tea Nguyen, DPM (05:44.184)

So what does that look like? In the early stages of your practice, you're wearing at least 20 hats. You are the social media manager, you are marketing, you're doing a sales call, you're probably also doing janitorial work in your clinical practice. That's something that I did. You may also be a parent or a partner. You're a business owner. So you're doing a lot of things early on. And I forgot, you're also the doctor, right? All of these things that you're doing, all of the decisions you're making are energy depleting. 

And if you're not intentional about what you focus on and you're just kind of doing everything as they show up, this is going to take away time from the work that actually brings you joy and money. And what that means for you is for you to really take inventory of everything that you're doing, everything that's on your plate, and start sorting out the stuff you're spending time on that is not actually making you money. And it might look like

Taking control of how much time you're spending on social media or watching TV or it's activities that you know you shouldn't be spending that much time on. Now I'm not saying not to take breaks, remember that was one of the foundations is to rest intentionally, but you also want to make sure that you're not wasting time. Rest is not wasting time, but scrolling endlessly for hours on your phone is wasting time.

So keep track of where time is being wasted if it's not intentionally built in for rest or restoration or doing productive work or what's not going to add to your bottom line. The second thing I would focus on is hiring key help. We are at such a great advantage where we have freelancers available at our fingertips. These are people that you don't necessarily have to hire 40 hours a week long term.

It can start with as little as a few hours a week. So you hire somebody for a specific skill set, and you're functioning now as HR, in some sense, as a human resources department. And I want to invite you to read the book called Your World Class Assistant by Michael Hyatt and the book Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. It teaches you how to function like a CEO. So having key help will help you take away the stuff that

Tea Nguyen, DPM (08:03.202)

Maybe you shouldn't be doing it. Because if you're a doctor charging five hundred dollars an hour, but you're doing twenty dollars an hour type of work, that's not the best use of your time. And let me tell you, I have a virtual assistant who's been with me for three plush years and she's been phenomenal. Any task that needs to get off my plate, admin task, is handed to her. And she takes ownership of that work. And that took time.

Because I had to set her up for success. I had to set up expectations and protocols and continually be in communication with her to guide her to what success looks like. I don't know about you, but I don't have a whole lot of experience in hiring people. And if you're in the same situation, the best way for you to learn is to actually do it, to learn how to hire people, to go through the process of knowing what to select for. And that just comes with a lot of experience. Hire lots of people, figure out what it is you're looking for, create that relationship and expectations and those protocols to set them up for success. And once you hire that key person, that key person can then start to help you in hiring more people for different skill sets. You can also go to places like Upwork or Fiverr or onlinejobs.ph. Those are the places that I've looked for all the gigs I needed to have done.

Things like my Facebook ads, my social media content, anything that requires a phone call, I have people doing that for me, except where I have to actually be there, like doing the webinars and taking consult calls. So those are the two things I would focus on right now if you feel like you're doing everything and your revenue is just not reflecting the work you're doing. Making sure that you focus on the 20% of activities that will move your bottom line and hiring key players. So here's a natural progression of things that I see for new business owners. The doctor who opens their practice, they offer a lot of services. You're trained to do a lot of different things. And many don't realize you can actually be very selective about what you offer. When you're not selective, you have like 20 different service items that are sold at different price points. Your attention gets diluted. The focus of your practice also gets diluted.

Tea Nguyen, DPM (10:20.556)

And when you start to train your medical assistants, there's a lot of different protocols to follow. So you're not really focused on the few things that matter. You're focused on everything. And that could be energetically expensive. So a lot of doctors I see are focusing on selling a hundred dollar service there, five hundred dollars there. And that's okay in the beginning. You're just testing out the waters. You're trying to figure out what's actually gonna work for your practice. The transformation actually happens when you're focusing

On selling one high-ticket offer, maybe that's a $2,000 package or a $5,000 package, when you're focused on that exclusively, that's when you start to see the money really roll in. That's not to say you can't offer the other things. It's saying that focusing on the few things that make a lot of money for your practice is worth prioritizing. And when you prioritize the few things that you love doing,

That also generates money, you find yourself in a different financial bracket. So if you've got a hundred dollar service here, but you also sell a $5,000 package, wouldn't it make sense to focus on the $5,000 package instead of selling $100 to 50 people? Right? It's the energy that you have to focus on to narrow in over and over again. Here's where many doctors get stuck. They don't trust the process. They don't trust that focusing on the few things.

Is what's really going to get their revenue bumped up. All successful businesses, business owners, CEOs, executives, they all follow the rule of focusing on the few things that make a lot of money. That's the simplest way to explain it. The second place where doctors get stuck is they're unwilling to spend money to make money. If you want to make money and you want people to know you, you have to spend money on ads. If you want to make money, you gotta

Spend money to get people to help you to do the things that you shouldn't be doing, like the admin work. So instead of doctors trying to buy back their time to focus on the 20% of meaningful work, they would rather waste the time by doing work because they're not willing to spend the money to get help. And then they become drained and they find themselves saying, I'm doing all the work, but I'm not making the money. Please help.

Tea Nguyen, DPM (12:43.01)

The business owners who grow the fastest also move very fast. They are quick to realize when something is draining or it's not moving their revenue. They are evaluating their data. They're making data informed decisions. And if something is not working based on the data, they either drop it or they outsource it. So there may be some services in your practice where you're like, I can technically do it, but it's not really worth the effort then that's a good indicator to no longer offer it so that you can focus on the other things you want to do that can generate more money, that is more valuable, that is more fun for you. 

Business owners who grow the fastest are also fast at hiring. In this gig economy, if the work that's needed is not being produced in a timely manner or you're not able to communicate with these people, you need to find somebody else who will. Does this skill take time to develop?

Yes, you are effectively a hiring manager now. Do you also have to have systems set up to ensure that you're not relying on them to read your mind to be at your level, but they actually understand what success looks like to you? Yes. You do have to slow down and train them what success looks like and have that system set up so that you can create this machine. These are the things you have to build endurance for, because on this path,

Everything is a learning opportunity. Most things are experiments. You're testing a hypothesis. You're asking, is this actually going to work? And then you do the work and then you read the data. And then you stick to what's working and you cut out what isn't. Don't drain your resources simply because you are emotionally attached to a situation, a person, a service, whatever it is. Use the data. The data will be your decision maker. If it's not making you money and you're feeling totally drained or financially stuck, then that service has to go. Or you have to expose yourself to more people. And that could be a marketing problem where you're not out there enough, or you are out there a lot and you're still not seeing things move, it might be time to spend money on ads or price better. There are a lot of solutions for every single problem that shows up. Once you realize that

Tea Nguyen, DPM (15:03.202)

Business ownership is a game. It is a literal game. Your experience in it will change. It will become fun when you figure out which levers you can pull to generate more money. In the early phases, you are simply building that system. And that takes time, it takes patience, and it takes a lot of reflecting. And remember, I said business ownership is a really humbling journey in your self-development. Listen, you've done hard things. You can do this too.

If something in this episode resonated with you and you're serious about taking the next step, I want to invite you to take that direct care readiness assessment, which will help you decide if direct care is for you. From there, I'll hop on a call with you and you will leave with a plan to start your direct specialty care practice. Just follow the links below, and I'll catch you next week. 

Take care. Thank you for listening to the Direct Care Podcast for Specialists.

Remember, you always have the power to choose. So what will you be choosing today? Wishing you peace and possibilities.