Ep 13: How Physicians Can Add New Income Streams with Dr. John Jurica

Everyone, Omar NPT here, head of growth at Jensen health. And this is another great episode of journey to private practice. My guest today. Good friend of mine, Dr. John jury, that you guys might recognize him because he did a fantastic and extremely popular webinar for us. Um, a few weeks ago on nonclinical income, streams and careers.

Um, lots of people registered for it, uh, to this day. It’s still getting people who are discovering it through search and signing up and watch. And so he’s a clinician by day entrepreneur by night and on the weekends. And maybe a little bit more than that too, but we’re really happy to have him on, on the show today, Dr.

Johns Eureka. Hey, you got really good. Really good. Thanks so much. I appreciate that introduction. It was fun doing that last presentation. That was a good time. No, absolutely. Well, people loved it a lot, so yeah. We want, we had to have you back on the podcast. I’m sure you’re going to be one of those repeat guests.

So yeah. And you’re, you’re, you’re very good at good at it too. So, but you know, for some of our audience, um, we’re just, uh, learning about you today. You know, why don’t you give us a little bit of your backstory, a little bit, your origin story, where are you from? Um, you know, why’d you choose medicine and where you are.

Oh boy, we’re going to go all the way back now. I’ll make it as brief as I can, since I’ve been around for a long time. So I grew up in, in the Midwest. Most many people don’t know this. I’m the oldest of 10 children. I have nine siblings. So that taught me a lot. But as we were growing up, I always wanted to be a physician.

I think it was just the TV doctors that attracted me. So I was good in science and math and all those sorts of things had pretty good. Grades. And so at that time it seemed like anybody that had good grades, a good, uh, high GPA was in university. We all were going into medicine. It was just like the thing to do.

Nobody was going into business, you know, engineering, wasn’t that big of a deal. So, uh, so yeah, so I applied to medical school, but the other thing that’s interesting is one of the best things ever happened to me is I was rejected. So I worked as a food chemist for two years. Kept applying finally got into U of I, when it’s a, you know, uh, that finish that in the U of I system completely.

They went to a U of I based family medicine residency, and then went into private practice with two other partners outside of Chicago. And yeah, I thought, oh, things are great. You know, we’re just practicing and building my practice. And I was looking for things to do as like a moonlighting gig, but most of them were ended up being nonclinical.

So I started working in utilization management as medical director. And I found that I liked that kind of thing. And I kept kind of adding hours to that. And then I asked the CEO, if he needed a VPMA at the time, there weren’t that many CMOs, chief medical officers. So he said, yeah, let’s do it. So I became the vice president for medical affairs and then the CMO and senior executive.

So I was in the senior team up for medium sized community hospital for 15 years. And then I decided to drop that in, uh, invested in an urgent care center where I’m the medical director to this day and part owner, the phasing out of that. And then along the way I started a blog, it was kind of fun. And then I really love listening to podcasts.

So I thought, well, why don’t I start a podcast in this kind of, I did it because I wanted to learn about other nonclinical careers. So I had been in clinical. I went completely out. I went back in for urgent care. Um, and, but I still love this whole concept and finding out there’s so many nonclinical careers out there, which is what led me to doing the webinar for you.

But so I’ve been doing the podcast. I have almost 200 episodes. Now, most of those are interviews. I have about 130 or 40 interviews with people that are doing clinical things. And that pretty much brings us up to today. Yeah. And it’s a great podcast. I, I was very, uh, uh, grateful to come on. We had a lot of fun.

Yeah. We had a good interview. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, I think, I feel like all the time that, you know, with medicine sometimes, and it’s because it’s a very conservative culture, it’s a little bit late to adopt certain things, whether it’s technology or, you know, modalities in business, but, you know, yeah.

Omar, we are everything. I mean, we still fax things on a daily basis to, and from our office, Isn’t that crazy. That’s my doctor, the other day wanted something from me and I said, well, can I go ahead and shoot this to you via email? Or, or a secure file? He’s like, no, can you just please fax it to me? I’m like where I’m like, I don’t know.

I’m going to have to go to staples. I went to staples and even the guy who was. Are you sure you want to fax this off? Yeah. Oh, it’s funny from, I think it’s still true, but from HIPAA and all that, technically they never did put the clamps down on faxing, you know, like anyone with a fax confirming information and that’s kind of disclaimers on it and they have, but it’s not really secure, but it’s what people have depended on.

And yeah, things change very slowly in medicine. Tell me about it. I think, you know, like my father, uh, he was a general surgeon for a long time. And I think this idea of having a side gig, right. Or a hustle side hustle, like it’s always been there, but when, but in medicine you never think about it. So from my dad, you know, when he was doing general surgery back in the two thousands, you know, more and more specialties were picking up.

The, um, high producing or high revenue, um, procedures from general surgeons. And so on the side, my dad started doing like little by little, uh, vein treatments and varicose veins. And then he, eventually that little side weekend project started doing better, making more money and he made that switch. And then he opened concede vein center.

Did that for almost 10 years, you know, he’s retired now. So, John, what I’m wondering is just in your experience, What has been sort of maybe the top three or top five, you know, what are some things that are not so obvious, but are really good ways for a practicing physician, whether they’re DME or private practice to start generating sort of some side income and then make that switch over if they decide to do it, or maybe they want to do like a 50 50.

Yeah. You know, I mean, there’s some things that. Will be a good longterm side business for someone who’s in practice. So maybe I can think about those first before maybe talking about things that they might want to eventually just face out of effects from. Um, so, you know, if you think about, but 

If you’re in private practice and you’re already working with patients, then there are certain things that would actually help your practice.

For example, medical writing is one. It’s very flexible and you can make extra money on the side, just writing for journals, mostly news journals. And we’re not talking about scientific because you’re not going to be doing studies here in your office, but you can get on a list of authors for CME companies, for journalistic medical writing, for medicine today, or podiatry today. There’s a whole bunch of these specialty associated journals and they want not only things where you’re teaching each other about things like CME, but also just updates on different things.

Some of them are just opinion pieces and you can get paid for some of that. But if you start writing things geared for patients, you know, you can use that. Not only some patient facing journal or a local newspaper for that matter, which that you probably won’t get paid for, but you can write articles for your own patients.

And then that can become the basis for a blog, which can be helpful for marketing. And that kind of pays for itself in the sense that you’re communicating. And you know, you’re going to stand out if you’re doing something like that regularly, weekly, biweekly, um, Then you’re going to stand out about all those other internists or family doctors or pediatricians.

And I mean, I know one pediatrician, he loves being a pediatrician, but he is a well-known online, uh, personality actually in two areas, he’s known by people like me that do podcasts. Cause he has his own podcast. He has actually two or three of them and some are for his patients and some are for, uh, for like small business owners, not preneurs and actually physicians who own practice.

But he, he puts a lot together for his own patient base and that he doesn’t generate money except through his practice. But for the other side, he actually earned money selling courses to other physicians that are implementing his productivity tools and things. So, so writing, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of writing.

There are lots of ways to use writing if you like to write for both your own patients and the larger national audience. In fact, I’ll go one step further. I have interviewed an orthopedic surgeon who was starting to put online different things for his patients. Post-op, pre-op, things like that. Now he has an entire online course with dozens and dozens that he sells to people — some of which he gives away free across the entire country.

People want to know about knee injuries and problems related to the knees. He has a course just like mine, on Teachable, or Kajabi, or one of these platforms. He’s selling courses and he’s using it to keep his practice full. 

So that’s the first one that comes to my, uh, what about those? I mean, and, and again, you know, our interest here is, is to help physicians regard regardless of what they want to end up doing.

But, you know, so for example, um, and I will mention, I know he’s listened to the show, but there’s a good friend of mine who is a, um, who went to med school was really, really not enjoying it, stuck it out. Went to residency and didn’t just get into any residency, got into orthopedic residency, which is really hard to do.

And now he’s a, you know, a year or two in practice, any talk to me the other day. And he’s like, I hate this. Like, this is not for me, man. There’s surgeons who, you know, we finish a 35 hour shift and they want to go for another few hours. Cause they wanted the case cases. Like I don’t, that’s not me anymore.

I want to, I want to stop somebody like that. W what, what are some great options that come to mind if they want to make that switch? Yeah. I mean, if they want to do a complete switch, then of course it’s a big deal. Um, you know, you have to try, you consider that. Well, you know, you’ve got to consider the, uh, the income that you’re foregoing.

Yeah, the lifestyle is always, when you’re doing something nonclinical, it’s almost always a lot better. So you have to keep that in mind. So if you’re not making 400 grand, maybe you’re making 200 or 300 or whatever that number is. Keep in mind. You have time with your family, you know, your kids and what have you.

And you can have time to do your hobbies and get some sleep. Whereas if you’re third year, whether it’s ortho or general, maybe not. So let me think of the ones. Um, Can we, can we sit, can we go back to that one thing you mentioned it’s so important and I think so many physicians, they need to hear that, especially coming from another physician, which is, you know, 

You mentioned that you do have a decrease in salary, right?

Especially if you’re making four or five, 600 grand a year, and let’s say you want to go into the startup world or you want to do whatever career work. You’re going to take a paycut by 50%. And yeah, that hurts. But your point that you just brought up, which is so important, is that you get better quality of life and you get back more time.

And when you have that extra time, you can do other things with it. Investing, maybe start something, right? Would you agree? Is that the right way to look at it? Because so many physicians just look at us like,  I’m going to cut my incomein half. I’m like, “Yeah, but how much time are you going to get back that you can do something with and make up that income?

Two or three X, you know, in the long-term that’s what I was going to say. I mean, it is true, but number one, keep in mind again, the quality of life. So there’s some value to that and, and I’ve cut back on many jobs over the years, simply because I wanted a better quality of life and it’s like, you know, it’s not worth making an extra 20, 30,000.

I just burned out. But 

The thing is, every physician that I’m aware of that has made the switch ends up making equal to, or more than what they did before. Almost without exception. Because whatever you go into, if you go into an employed position, whatever it is, whether it’s in pharma or an insurance company, or something else. You end up, normally, if you want, to become a leader in what you’re doing. You start out as a medical writer employed by somebody and end up becoming an editor, and then you become a medical director. There’s a dip that comes and then you get back.

When they need a physician, when the word ‘ medical’ is in the term, whether it’s medical director or chief medical officer. It’s only physicians that can do it. I mean, it’s a very tiny group of people. And so ultimately you’re going to get that value. So there might be a temporary lag in the income and you should prepare for that.

But most everything you do on the other one, I was going to say the logical one too, that it has really great opportunity for income is going into hospital leaders.

You know, become a medical director of a unit or something let’s say, even in your, your friend’s situation, if you could just tough it out long enough to get a little experience as a medical director and maybe do two or three different things, get on a lot of committees. And then if he were to jump into, uh, you know, a VPMA or CMO job, uh, I mean, yeah, starting salary is around 300,000, but you know, are CMOs like CEOs and CFOs are, you know, making over half a million a year.

The bigger the hospital, the bigger the system, the more you’re going to make. It’s a very lucrative thing to do. So, uh, yeah, there’s some jobs that will outpace it. If you think about it, you know, as a physician, we think that we’re taking a step back or a step down. But again, the, the, the number of people that can fit that role, the further up you go or further along you go, the narrower it is.

So you’re not, you’re actually taking a step up and they’d be like saying, then attorney becoming a judge is taking a step down because he’s leaving the practice of law. It’s like, no, you taking that next step up in most jobs that I’m talking about are step up or step forward. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that’s the big thing, you know, at least, I mean, for me, I didn’t go into practice, but I did leave when I left medical school halfway through, like, I had this, I had this struggle because, and it’s, you know, only gets harder, which is majority of my life through high school, college, everything I had this identity of I’m going to be a doctor.

And when I left that, I mean, I did have an personally a bit of an identity crisis. And again, I was totally normal. I can’t imagine what it’s like when you’re in practices. Um, but you know, something, something that I was, I was going to mention, and I was going to see if, you know, you’re, you’re someone that a lot of students look up to because, you know, you’re, you’re in practice, but you’re also exploring all these nonclinical, you know, uh, pathways and you, you become, you know, very much a thought leader in this.

Do you yourself feel that as a physician, you, you have two specific superpowers that make you. Uh, I would say skilled and talented outside of clinic clinic, which is, you know, how to work really, really hard for very, very long. And on top of it, I can’t think of anything on this earth where you, you, on a daily and weekly, daily basis have the superpower of learning like self-taught learning and learning.

Have you seen that as, as, as a superpower of yours and other clinicians, when you start looking at non-clinical things, is I bet I’ve at least experienced. You’re taught that from day one that even in med school and they’ll even tell us, they just tell us you are going to always learn because you’re in a field where you have to keep learning, or you’re just going to fall by the wayside and you’re not going to be licensed and you’re not gonna be able to get malpractice insurance.

You’re not gonna be able to take care of your patients. You can’t. You know, did Jackson and Procardia from 30 years ago to cheat, you know, heart disease and things. So it’s kind of beat into us. Now. Some of us are, you know, are more aggressive in terms of the learning, but yeah, and I look at physicians as a group, like as a, like the equivalent of like, uh, of like a military group, you know, a green brace or something like that because we just have it indoctrinated.

We have this medical school, we go through, most of us go through resumes. It’s getting a little bit easier in a way, but I mean, you know, for most of us that are out in practice, I mean, you know, residency was intense and so weeds out a lot of people that don’t have that stamina don’t have that desire to continuously learning and are pretty bright.

And I’m not really bragging. I’m just saying that you can’t get to that point. Let’s just, well, in a way, memorize a lot of information and hopefully understand a lot of information very quickly. Otherwise you just won’t make it through today. Um, but you know, you can lead to burnout and all these other things that are causing people to look for these other types of jobs.

So, um, let me give you a really short story that I think helps me think about this issue and then help get other people understand if I was on a ship, a boat with, you know, 10 other people. And the thing was going down because, you know, I run into an iceberg or something and we had three, you know, these, uh, life racks.

And we got to pick who we could be in the life raft with. And I was, you know, I had an actor or a writer or a salesman, maybe a teacher, some other people, an engineer, and a physician who am I going to pick to be in that, in that boat with me, the engineer and the physician, you know, because the physician, a lot of science, a lot of things they know, they know about how to care of animals and people and this and that.

And they have a lot of science background. The engineer’s going to help you to, you know, build a shelter or whatever. Um, a physician makes an awesome employee, but it doesn’t mean they should all be employees. You know, like you said, earlier, startups and entrepreneurial endeavors and starting your own companies.

And I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve dealt with people that have done, you know, kind of bootstrap as well as, you know, startups, the big startups with the private equity and that kind of thing.

Yeah. And I think that’s, I think that’s, you know, such a good point. Um, you know, I, there was, um, a post the other day I saw by Andy. Um, I forget his last name, but he’s very, he’s very big on LinkedIn and Twitter. And he has a blog called healthcare pizza showing how, you know, every year there’s, there’s less and less, uh, physician owned practices and more and more of corporate corporate, uh, ownership.

Right. And the unfortunate thing is that. The more that physicians are employed and more practices are owned by corporations. The cost of healthcare actually goes up and the quality doesn’t improve either. I mean, I there’s no data on the quality of care, at least not that I’ve found specifically, but me personally and, and design, like I’ve had better experience and better care when I’ve been, when I’ve gone through like a physician’s office.

I then when I go to a large hospital, it’s just like, it’s just the fact of that. You know, and so maybe, I mean, you know, what we don’t want is for all physicians to be like, you know, I’m going to quit medicine because, you know, we need, we need physicians, but maybe, you know, this, you know, something that I feel like COVID, uh, made happen.

I’ve noticed more physicians like, and recently some people who are heads of their departments and chairs, like really prestigious. Because of how their hospital handles COVID or just, you know, other reasons decided that they’re like, Hey, I’m leaving, I’m going to start my own practice by wonder, is there a future where physicians can keep, you know, you know, band together and small, you know, small, small groups where you’re, I guess, somewhat part time, and then you’re able to do other things.

No, I don’t know. It’s not even possible. Yeah. I think the thing is, you know, as a few years, when more than half of, uh, you know, graduating residents and ended up going into, uh, an implied situation, some of those in play situations are actually with large physician groups. So that’s, that’s a good thing. I think because we know physicians w which, uh, that are in a group run by other physicians, tend to have more engagement and more satisfying.

But you’re right, you know, right out of residency. And also a lot of practices are being bought up. You know, we went to a previous cycle like that, that fell apart. And, uh, I guess was in the nineties and my practices were bought up. And then those organizations, they, they overpaid and they didn’t, they did even more poorly than they’re doing now and they fell apart and they all went back into practice.

But I can get a feeling that there’s a big push to try and go into private sector. I mean, some are on the fringe, you know, doing concierge medicine and direct primary care, which I don’t really consider that a friend, but I think, you know, while I spend my time working a lot on the nonclinical, because I see so many physicians that are frustrated, um, I really, I have so many colleagues, whether they’re doing podcasts or other online businesses that are helping physicians to remain in private practice or to start a private practice, small group and so forth.

So I think that’s actually going to come back because. Um, positions are too valuable. I mean, just because of the length of education and everything, you know, they cannot be abused forever. I mean, at some point they’re going to stop doing it and they are so many options, you know? So, so anyway, so I’m, I’m positive about that.

And I like it when I can find other physicians who, you know, maybe instead of teaching what I’m teaching or teaching them how to stay in practice, how to be more productive. Collect, you know, they’re, they’re built better how to market better, how to compete. You know, I mean, we were a little lazy, I think, in the past because our customer service was bad.

And I think now with technology and other things that we can do, we can, we can do the followup calls, the automated calls, and, you know, we can do other things that, that some of the big companies and the other industries are using. So, yeah. And now I think the other thing, like you said, if you want to go back into practice, you don’t want to necessarily sort of see patients for 60 or 70 hours a week.

There are other things you can do, um, you know, to supplement it. One thing that I think I would do if I was going back, because I’ve become an expert witness, you don’t have to be an academician, you know, at a big university, you need to know, you know, the standard of care in your community. And there are lots of attorneys looking for expert witnesses and you could do experts.

This chart reviews and maybe some depositions for eight to 10 hours a week and bring in as much income as you would in the other 30 or 40 hours in patients. I mean, to a physician 40 hours. Part-time so, but you know, so yeah, the, you can do things like that. And I, you know, it’s funny because I’ve seen physicians who have taken out in 1, 2, 3 other side hustles while running a private practice and they’re happier than they would be if they weren’t doing it, even though they’re 10 times busier.

They know how to juggle things. And they like the overlap of the clinical and nonclinical and they can make some extra money. And it also prepares them for that day, you know, a few years down the road or five or 10 years down the road, when they might to say, you know, I’m really going to pull back and that’s in part why I went back into urgent care because I can’t do, I couldn’t do a CMO job.

Pardon? And I was to the point where I wanted to have a little more control. So I went into the urgent care. It was an investment, uh, kind of getting back to the entrepreneurial part, but it was also something that I knew and I have done it in the last, you know, that was six years ago. And, uh, over those last three years, um, I cut my hours back to where I’m just working one day a week in my clinic, and then I’m doing these other things.

So yeah, it does add a lot of flexibility and another source of income. And I’m still doing that. Uh, CME editing, by the way, I always forget to tell people that I’ve been doing that for about 10 or 15 years, where I just edit a manuscript and, uh, for, uh, for a national CME company Sunday, I like to do little different things here.

And I helped my wife run her a home helpers business, which is her own business. But every once in a while, she asks me some medical advice about her clients. So. Very nice. Yeah. And, you know, I think just thinking about that the day, that the time that we live in, you know, we’re living in, in a very, in a digital age.

And so whether you’re a physician or not, you’re used to seeing variety, right. We have different social media platforms. We have different things on Netflix, there’s all these things. So I don’t think it’s also surprising that people are starting to have more things on the side because the majority of your time you’re getting exposed to all kinds of stimuli.

So you can’t just go to your job and only do that. And maybe, you know, that’s the neck, that’s the thing that most physicians should do, which is, you know, you know, you know, it’s hard to, especially if you have failing kids, it’s like, it’s hard to just make that transition, right. Especially from us from a financial standpoint.

So maybe the, the, the happy medium, right. To find side gigs and, and income streams to try out, right. That kind of stimulates your mind, you know, it kind of gets you through your day job. Right. And then over time, you’re able to see one, what you’re interested in, in what you like to more importantly, what you’re good at and three, what actually is going to bring you in more money.

And then it makes it a lot easier to say, okay, I tried like three or four or five things these past three years, these two things. I’m really good at it. And it pays, well, let me double down on it. And then that’s when you make the transition, is that the right way to think about it? Yeah, I think that’s a good way.

And there’s so many options out there and some of them lend themselves to the part-time and some don’t. The other thing that I’ve seen, some of my guests on the podcast do is they did these things almost well. They did it as a hobby. Uh, or they did it within their practice, but then they found that they were really, really good at it.

So then they turned around and sold the service. They were providing themselves in their practice for somebody else. Like I mentioned the pediatrician before, uh, there’s a guy who wrote a book on health care, finances, and how to other, how to run a practice from the financial side. But he was just doing it in his practice.

Initially he became the, I guess he was the lead physician or the basically. The CEO of his group, which he had about 15 anesthesiologists or something, but then he took what he learned and sold it. And again, initially it was like for fun, you know, on a blog or a podcast or something, but then he wrote the book and then he started doing consulting on the side and yeah, it just grew from there.

And again, he made his business practice even more fun because he was teaching others how to do what he was interesting. The other thing you, you, you had talked about. I think that some physicians, they get worried that it’s, it’s like it’s it’s taboo, but you know, it, I think there’s a lot of interesting opportunities in the world of industry, like specifically like in medical devices, pharma and biotech.

Um, what what’s, what’s your take on that aside from, you know, sort of the obvious things, which is, you know, you use a product and you speak on the habit, but there, there are other opportunities. Correct? Yeah. I mean, pharma is huge. Um, I would say of the people that I talked to and run into it’s the second or third, most common.

And the thing is when you talk about pharma, there’s so many different jobs that it’s, I mean, for example, one it’s really popular in the Facebook group that I am an admin for is a medical science liaison. Now that is a pharma job. It’s an educational job. It’s considered for many like an entry level.

Cause you don’t have to be residency trained to be an MSL. Um, and me, you know, and there are many MSLs that are medical science liaison, but they take the information on new drugs and they get it out into the field and they interact with, uh, key opinion leaders and so forth. And they’re kind of, they look like in a way salesperson, but they do no sales.

It’s all education effect there, the FDA bars them from doing any sales. So they do education. In fact, they can discuss with physicians like off-label uses and the current studies that are going on, whereas a salesperson can’t even go near. But then, you know, you’ve got medical monitors that help, uh, you know, do the, uh, studies out in the field, you know, for different sites that are involved in, uh, let’s say a phase three trial, and you’ve got all levels of medical directors that are in there in medical affairs.

I mean, there’s at least 10 distinct different jobs you can do. And all the way to actually doing clinical research, which you don’t have to be an academician to get into that. I mean, you can, you might be working for a university, you know, medical school and then booms just switch over to. Clinical research side, uh, at a pharmaceutical company, but you can actually do that from practice.

If you just happened to be, you know, especially a specialist. And if you’ve participated, you know, getting patients into a trial, you can then actually move into pharma. And then there’s a whole CRO is a contract research organization, which is an organization that helps pharmaceutical companies. And they employ a bunch of physicians, everything from a technical writer to the medical monitors, and sometimes they employ MSLs too.

So there’s a huge number and, uh, kind of scope of jobs in pharma and the medical device is very similar to that. If you think about it, it, the rules for medical devices, aren’t exactly the same, but the ideas, you know, in terms of how you bring something to the market and how you promote it. How you educate physicians about it and so forth is pretty much the same.

What about, you know, so interesting question for you is, um, you know, there are, uh, plenty of people who. Go through and finish medical school. They have an MD in the, they decide for whatever reason not to go into residency. So they’re an MD on paper, right? Right. You know, outside of some of the, the roles like, so the medical science liaison sounds like a, uh, like a really good, good, you know, place to go.

But outside of that, what are some other certain nonclinical careers that someone who just graduated medical school and they decide, again, they don’t want to go into residency. What are some other things that kind of come to mind? For me when I’ve come in, I can name about six different positions, one of which is a stretch.

But, um, so we already talked about medical writing. So that’s open to any. There’s a different form of medical writing called medical communications. At least that’s the way I look at it. They work for ad agencies for pharmaceutical companies. And so we can get either residency trained or non residency trained.

They will definitely take that. Um, I talked to a guest who was an expert in clinical documentation improvement, which is something that pretty much every hospital needs a medical director for our physician advisor. And, um, he was not residency training. He was a foreign medical graduate came. He kind of worked in a paramedical kind of nursing level in M and things at a hospital.

Then he did some official certification. And it became an expert in clinical documentation. So he did that. And then he started working for a consulting firm, which brings up the other, which is consulting. And you can do, you know, I guess if you’re right out of med school and you don’t have any special skills, you wouldn’t do a freelance consulting, but you definitely could be hired by a McKinsey or an Accenture ECG, or I don’t know, there’s, there’s probably 12 to 15 major international.

I will call it management consulting firms that have healthcare consulting arms, and they all hire physicians. Both those that are, they have a lot of clinical training and those that have no clinical training outside of medical school. So I think I caught most of those, uh, yeah, the CDI, the consulting medical writer.

So there are definitely things. And then, you know, there’s just the, one-offs where you just find them. You know, they get started with a startup, let’s say, or a bid. Something is completely different, but it’s hard to sort of decidedly a trend in terms of a consistent, um, field. But that way, and part of, you know, I think a big part of this is that.

You know, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so I think getting exposure, uh, is, is probably the most important thing. I always encourage people to get on LinkedIn and whatever. They have an interest in to essentially try posting and writing about it because, you know, eventually it attracts people who come and bring you opportunities that you never really.

The other thing, of course, I’ve been sending a lot of people to your website, the non-clinical physicians.com and I’ll leave it in the show notes, but, you know, tell us a little bit more about the Facebook group that you’re an admin, you know, what, what’s the name of it and what are the conversations like?

Cause I think that’s the big thing for anyone, which is, if you’re going to go try something new that you’ve never done getting a group of peers who are doing it or thinking about it, it just makes it so much easier than doing it on here. Well, yeah, you can get a lot of free information on different groups.

Now, there are LinkedIn groups on non-clinical careers. You can kind of search for those, but the engagement’s kind of minimal really from my experience. Yeah. LinkedIn groups never seem to have good. I don’t know why that is, but you get an occasional comment or posts, but yeah, it’s the opposite. Okay. So the physician nonclinical career hunters, Facebook group has been around about four, four and a half years, and it has 16,000 physician members, their offices.

If we find someone that sneaks in, we pick them out, but I consider an oral oral surgeon and a podiatrist to be a physician. And, uh, you know, and then there’s others that maybe aren’t. So, I mean, is there there’s sometimes there’s a blurry line, but it basically it’s all physicians. It is international and it has mostly us, but all over the world, people come in and they’re just there.

And there’s a bunch of coaches in there too, because people come in, they join the group. Like we’ve had a thousand joined just in the last three months, I think. And, you know, they have the same questions from, you know, three years ago. So the coaches come in and answer questions. There’s the admin who, the other admin who actually founded the group.

Her name is Laura McCain. She engages a lot. I try and answer questions, but there are dozens and dozens. Well, all the members interact on a daily basis because they have information of their own and people do go in there and actually post jobs sometimes. And so we don’t allow any kind of promotion, but if somebody already works in a U M company, you know, a third party, you M com.

Epicor or one of those. And they say, and they know that there’s a certain job openings that were posted and it is for certain specialties. I’ll just put it in there and, you know, and then people ask too about companies like, ah, there’s a locums company that wants to hire me. Can you tell me about that or a telemedicine company or even at the completely nonclinical, but there are other groups.

I mean, that’s not the only one. Um, there are, there’s a, a group on, um, Home-based careers. Uh, I forget the name of, I think it’s remote careers for physicians. That’s another group that started only about a year or so ago. It’s got 8,000 members and I mean, I’ve been interviewed the head of that. Uh, the Tali he’s a coach and, and that’s growing fast.

Uh, there’s another nine. If you put in nonclinical use, I think it’s alternative careers and another one. And I don’t know that much about it, but it’s kind of like over 20,000 members. So there’s a lot of activity and just postings, put questions out there and then you can search in Facebook of course, by a topic.

And usually you’ll find the old threads, you know, they’re buried in there somewhere. Yeah. And you know her for some of the, the, the roles that you, that you recommended, like for someone who’s listening, who wants to try it. You know, whether it’s, uh, uh, you know, you know, medical writing or anything else, you know, a lot of these things that you can do it on contract and part-time do you recommend for a physician who’s listening to explore, to just try two or three things all at all at once just on contract basis and see how it goes for a few months, or should they choose one thing to do for a certain amount of time?

Well, what’s the best approach. By start by, uh, either getting a book like 59 clinical careers by my friend, Sylvie, Stacey, or there’s just two or three other books, or go into the Facebook group to see what’s to talk about. So you can get like a broad like scope. Okay. There’s here. There’s like 2030. I found it or potential, but try and narrow it to two or three, you know?

So you, cause you got a focus at some point, there’s just too much information. So, so focused. Um, and then get into, you know, look on LinkedIn about that specific and actually in LinkedIn. It’s a good resource. Not only connect with people, but they have a whole job listing. So any other jobs I’ve talked about are listed on LinkedIn and you can find an MSL job on LinkedIn.

You can find a medical monitor. That’s the other for a med school graduates as a medical monitor. Um, and just read through all the different job descriptions. Cause that’ll tell you how much travel is it Homebase? You know, can you do some remote? You have to be there nine to five. You know, and you get an idea.

So that’s kind of, part of the research is just reading job descriptions once you’ve had it narrowed down and then yeah. Try some things out. I mean, some are easier than others to just try. I mean, you can find a bunch of publishers and just ask for their instructions for authors and you could, you know, we start off the bat trying to write an article and get paid for it rather than just do it for free, you know, what you can always do.

Um, and then, uh, You know, check out if you want to be a medical expert, you know, it was just a lot of information out there on that. Uh, talk to actually your attorney, your liability insurance attorney, you know, if you’ve ever been involved in a lawsuit, well, there, you got a firsthand contact. If you want to learn about MSLs, talk to a sales rep, they’ll introduce you to an MSL.

They’re, you know, they’re not as an MSL, but if you have a sales rep, it’s selling you some drums. Just talk to the sales rep and say, you know, and I talked to one of your MSL, you know, colleagues. And so there are ways to get the information and then, and really dig into it. And, um, and then you can apply.

Um, but you gotta be serious when you’re applying or they won’t take you serious. Seriously. You have to have a nice cover letter and you have to have a resume that is geared to that job specifically. If you’re, if you’re looking for employment there. Um, so, but other things, like I said, the medical writing, or if you can chat with the recruiter and find out what the recruiters looking for, it’s another way to get information, whatever industry you’re interested in.

Absolutely. And that’s something, I mean, I’ll make a comment because even with the young marketers that I mentor all the time, I tell them, you know, well, not just market with anybody, the most important relationship you’re going to have in your career is with a good recruiter. And it’s just like in sports, like.

You need a good agent, right. And hard to find. I’m going to tell everybody right now that like for every, you know, for every one recruiter you find that’s like really good. You’re like, wow. They, they, they, they really get it. There’s going to be like 10, 20, just apps. I hate to say just completely worthless ones.

But I think, you know, getting on the phone and speaking to different recruiters to talk about. What your interests are and what you’re looking for now, somebody else who you’re not paying is going to be going and searching for those jobs for you in the end. For some reason, there’s a, there’s a misconception that when a recruiter finds a job for you and places you, that you pay them, that’s not how it works.

If you were using a recruiter like that, that’s, that’s not a good recruiter. No compost. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But, but I think the other thing, John, that you mentioned, and I, I don’t know, I’ve noticed this sometimes in medicine that I think because physicians. Have trained to be really self-reliant to learn and do things on their own.

They sometimes do that to a fault. And so I really encourage people who are listening that, you know, when you’re interested to explore different careers or just learn about it, you know, don’t just do it on your own, you know, start by looking, looking at different jobs and looking at discussions, but use LinkedIn.

Yeah. You know, find physicians who might be either in med tech, you know, or they might be doing, uh, some interesting nonclinical career and then connect with them and shoot them a message to say, Hey, you know, I’m interested in potentially following your same career path. Can I get you on the phone positions?

The one thing I’ve noticed is that they all love to teach. They all love to help. And I think that’s like the most important thing. Right? Cause then it kind of gives you a shortcut through that mentorship of like what to do and whatnot. Yeah. I mean, unless your physician has been involved in some kind of cutthroat business or something, it seems like physicians just share, they just give away all their information.

You know, if you ask them, you know, because they want to attract you to whatever they’re doing. So definitely the physicians will do that. And I am, I. Yeah, you got to figure out about the recruiters, but a lot of them are very, you know, they just want to get you where you’re going to get, you know, in a good position in Southern, you’re going to tell you what you need to know it.

So most people are usually pretty. I always trust people. They demonstrate they don’t deserve it for them. Absolutely. And I, and I will have to add, like, you know, I have to, I have to plug you in, I mean, I, I I’ll put it in the show notes, but you know, everyone should definitely go and check out non-clinical physicians.com.

And of course, you know, your podcast is fantastic. I mean, those 200 episodes, these spans such a wide variety of topics. And I think just getting exposure to that, like when you driving a work and listen to those episodes are super helpful because then it starts. Priming your mind start looking for these things.

Yeah. There’s a lot of content there now, so you really need to kind of scan through it and see if there’s certain topics, certain guests that resonate with you. But yeah, and you’re getting the information right from the horse’s mouth. So to speak, like most of them are physicians who were clinical. Some are like, you know, stop it after med school, even the middle of residency and that kind of thing.

But they’ll tell you their whole story and most of my interviews and how they did it and actually how, what they learned and things to avoid. Uh, yeah, just kinda pick and choose and see which ones resonate. Um, I do have an academy that’s going to be opening up in a few weeks. We called the ninth grade academy.

So I’ll be sending emails. If you go to my website, nice clinical physicians that I’m actually, if you go to  dot com forward slash. Free guide if R E U D free guide get a download, it has 10 careers in it and gets into a little more detailed, but you also, you joining my email list. So that way you’ll learn when I’m opening the academy.

And actually I’m just starting to another, I’m starting a mastermind group, um, actually this weekend. And so later on, I’m probably gonna be expanding that. So there’s all kinds of things you can do to help your progress and your, if you’re going to do a part-time or full-time nonclinical or. Fantastic.

Well, you don’t be sure I’ll, I’ll, I’ll circle back with you to get those links. But in the meantime, John, you know, before we let you go, what’s the best way for people to, uh, get ahold of your folly. I know we have the website, but no, which, which I guess, which social media channel are you most publicly active on?

Well, I, they would, they could go join a physician, not clinical career hunters, Facebook group, and then, you know, they can because they can friend me if they want, but actually in the group we can just interact. Are going to LinkedIn and just connect to that. I do nurture that a bit. So anyone that is a physician, that type that wants to link up with me, then we can communicate that way.

And then, then I can always send you my Gmail address too, which is out there over the web anyway, but I think LinkedIn is a good way to get started. Fantastic. Well, John, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s great to finally have you on, I know we’re going to be having you back to cover some more, you know, specific topics, but great to have you, and thanks for sharing fun.

Apps. Always, always a lot of fun. Well, thank you all for joining us on another episode of journey to private practice. I’m your host, Omar MTV, and we’ll see you next time. All right. That was, that was good.