Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey. Hey.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: I'm Shauna A and you are listening.
[00:00:02] Speaker A: To delightful audio sodes, the email audio episodes where I share you strategies, tips, and tricks to help you get your side hustle moving. In today's episode, we are going to.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Be talking about putting all your eggs in one basket.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: And here's the show.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: So last week, there was a bit of a situation, and for clinicians, this was really tough, specifically for clinicians who accept insurance, and they are directly credentialed with those insurance companies. Even the clinicians who bill through those big companies, they were also affected by this, too, but it worked a little bit differently for them. Essentially, what happened is UnitedHealth change, the healthcare unit. They take a large part in basically looking at the claims, reviewing the claims, and then clearing it. And there was a ransomware outage, and you could not perform many of the things that you needed to perform, like verifications. There were some pharmacies that couldn't do refills. Anything really that was based off of insurance transactions were pretty much halted. And this was really scary for many, many providers. Even hospitals were affected by this. But a big thing that was affected by this was also clinicians, right? So from group practices to small private practice owners were affected by not being able to submit claims, not being able to verify. And so if you can't verify an insurance, you can't tell how much to bill that person for their copay. And they were essentially saying, well, you'll have to cancel your clients, right? And that's how many, many clinicians make their money. They make money through seeing people and through billing the insurance claims. So this was a very scary thing. This literally went on for most of the week last week, and people were just so worried about whether or not they were going to get paid, if this was going to be cleared anytime soon. And it was just like an overall frustration. And one thing that came to my mind is how much I tell clinicians that it is quite risky to be putting all of our eggs into one basket. And I often say this as offering a single service. Right? Offering that direct client to care, that direct one to one therapy services is putting your eggs in one basket. But specifically, many of us do insurance based only or do insurance mostly, and then still offer their private practice fee on the side. And when you do that, essentially all of those fees are tied up with an insurance company. And it's not terrible if you're able to submit your claims and do everything that you need to do as they need to be. But on days or weeks like last week, when it's not working, it becomes very concerning and many people were in a panic. Now, I'm not saying that you drop what you're doing because that would affect our clients in a negative way. But what I am saying is that it is time that we broaden our horizons and there's going to be many different ways that you can do this. So when it comes to broadening your horizon, you really need to stop and think about what that means for you. For me, when I talk about broadening our horizons, I mean that it is time to look at diversifying your income streams. And I would tell this to clinicians and I would tell this to other people, that if you have the capacity to be able to create a side hustle that complements the work that you already do, you should do that. Why? Because it helps to create flexibility for you, it helps to create additional finances, and it helps you to do some things that you might not be able to do based off of that one income stream. In this case, it would also help for you to create a basket so that if something should go down in your business, you have a place to dip into. You have income that is coming in that is not tied up in this one area.
And essentially, that's what putting all of your eggs into one basket is. It is tying up all of your funds in this one area. So if something is to go wrong in this one area, your funds are also tied up into that. And that can be very, very scary. So if side hustling is right for you, let's talk about how you can go about creating a side hustle. That's not complicated at all. First things first. When you are creating a side hustle, I believe that side hustles should complement the work that you are already doing. If you are doing something and it is outside of your realm, or you are doing something and it doesn't interest you, what's going to happen is that that's going to drive your burnout, and it's also going to lower your motivation because it's doing something that you're not really interested in, that you might not have a lot of time for. That doesn't align with the work that you're doing. So you might have to put extra into it than you normally would if it's something that you're eager and excited about. So look at your skills, your knowledge, your experience. The next thing you want to do is you're going to utilize the free tools at your fingertips. What am I talking about? I'm talking about AI. We as clinicians, we shy away from AI because it is new, it's technology, and not many people really know and understand how to utilize it just yet. Really. Our first access to it was just about a year ago. There have been many people who've been actively utilizing AI, but I would say, like mainstream. It came about a year ago. So with that being said, you have some catching up to do, but this can still be a really good way for you to help you generate ideas, for you to put some outlines together and really help you move along in your business. I would utilize an AI search. I utilize chat, GPT. But you're going to go ahead and search about what people are doing in your industry right now.
You want to know what they are into and you want to know what products or services are in high demand but has a low competition. Again, you want something that people are into that they are looking into a lot, but you also want to have low competition because you don't want the market to be saturated. That's going to take away from what you could potentially do in that market and you're going to have to work so much harder in the marketing. Right. Marketing is tough as it is. You want something that has low competition so that you can get your feet wet and you can actually see some sales from it. Then after you've done your preliminary searches, you want to create something on a small scale that could be a journal, that can be a coloring book, that can be a course or just like a mini course or webinar. It doesn't even have to be a course, right? It could be a quick class, but you're going to create something that your people are into. That, again, is high in demand, low in competition. You're going to go ahead and put that thing up for sale. And all along, as you're building this market. Market, right. You're building your conversations with people that are in your area, that you want to sell to. And when, I mean in your area, within your audience, you are building those connections, you are having those conversations. You are learning about what's troubling those people. And maybe that's even a question for AI, right? What are people into? What are they purchasing the most and where do they find shortages in the items that they're purchasing?
Where are the setbacks? What do they like about these products? What don't they like about these products? Where do they want more from these products?
And then as you're marketing this and you're selling these items, you're going to rinse and repeat this step. And every time you do that, you can scale up because now you found a formula that works for you and you scale up into the next thing.
At the end of the day, if you don't try, if you don't take actions, it's never going to get done. So you need to start today. And again, it doesn't have to be a side hustle. That is the thing that I find to be the most flexible for me and this is the thing that I teach on when it comes to ambitious entrepreneurs, is building that side work that complements what you love and what you already do. But there can be many ways that you build income and there can be many ways that you split up that basket so that it's not on all one thing. But at the end of the day, I do believe that it is healthier for your business to pull out some other baskets and not put all of your eggs in one basket. Go out there and try. And for those of you who don't know, it is officially the last month of the first quarter. I am so excited because I have done so much work. I have dedicated myself to taking an action step every day. Plus, I really found the twelve week year to be so amazing as far as being able to motivate me into taking actions and seeing some of my goals come into fruition. And we are going to talk soon. I hope you have a great week. Bye.
