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Connect with Dr. Jennie Byrnet:

About the Guest:

Jennie Byrne, MD, PhD
Chief Patient Officer and Co-Founder at Belong Health

Dr. Jennie Byrne is a board-certified adult psychiatrist focusing on high-quality, convenient, and innovative care for patients in a variety of healthcare settings. She is a pragmatic strategist, leveraging a diverse skill set in population health strategies for specialty care, telehealth strategy, and virtual care delivery as well as clinical research and basic research in Neurophysiology. She is focused on delivering efficient and effective outcomes through nimble change management. Jennie is an approachable, hands-on leader connecting ideas in new and unexpected ways for start-up environments. She drives leadership development by employing psychological insight and people skills.

Dr. Jennie got her Bachelor’s Degree in Biological Basis of Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania and later did an MD-PhD joint program in Neurophysiology at NYU and has clinical work in psychiatry and neurology.

About the Episode:

For this week’s episode of Entrepreneur Rx, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Jennie Byrne, Chief Patient Officer at Belong Health. We talked about her entrepreneurial journey leading Belong Health and the lessons she has learned throughout her career as a healthcare leader. Belong Health is a company that works with regional health systems to create dual-eligible insurance plans and provide value-based care to the patients who qualify for them.

Jennie, a brain and behavior expert, was inspired to become a “solopreneur” after working with adult psychiatry practices. She has focused her career on providing patients with high-quality behavioral and mental whole-person care. This eventually led her to become Chief Patient Officer at Belong Health.

She then discussed the different entrepreneur archetypes she’s identified, ways to be empathetic, and the importance of self-introspection and teamwork. We also touch base on her new book, Work Smart: Use Your Brain and Behavior to Master the Future of Work in which she explains how the future of work is being a better human. In this book, entrepreneurs will learn how they can work smarter, how to better manage their time, and how to master communication.

Entrepreneur Rx Episode 63:

Entrepreneur Rx_Dr. Jennie Byrne: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Entrepreneur Rx_Dr. Jennie Byrne: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

John Shufeldt:
Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of Entrepreneur Rx, where we help healthcare professionals own their future.

John Shufeldt:
Hey everybody! Welcome back to Entrepreneur Rx. I'm your host, John Shufeldt, and I am excited to be chatting with, I'm a little scared because, you know, when you tell this psychiatrist you're thinking, My God, what are they diagnosing of you, but it's Jennie Byrne. She's a board-certified adult psychiatrist, and she focuses on high-quality, convenience, and innovative care for patients at a total variety of healthcare settings. She's also the chief patient officer and co-founder of Belong Health, and she's coming out with the book. So, Jennie, welcome.

Jennie Byrne:
Thank you, Dr. John. Great to be here.

John Shufeldt:
As I say frequently, there's many people here that you go, okay, she is so cool. How did she get where she is? So give us a little spec of your background. How did you get there?

Jennie Byrne:
So the quick version is that like many people, it was a very meandering path. So I was not someone who knew I wanted to be a doctor, when I grew up. I was a music performance major originally in college, and then I was a French major, mainly because I wanted to live overseas, and then I came back and landed in a brain and behavior class and just fell in love. So I would say most everything I've done in my career has circled around brain and behavior in some form or fashion, including doing basic science. I have a PhD in neurophysiology, clinical work in psychiatry and neurology, and then out into entrepreneurship, which I know we'll talk about, and national healthcare leadership consulting, coaching. So you can hear from me, I like to learn new things very, very curious, but really I would say most of it circles around brain and behavior in some form or fashion.

John Shufeldt:
Well, so what? Where did you undergrad?

Jennie Byrne:
University of Pennsylvania in Philly.

John Shufeldt:
What was your musical instrument? You probably had a couple, but what was your specialty?

Jennie Byrne:
I had a couple. I started the, it's a funny story. I started on bassoon because I was a violin player and I learned that there are a lot of amazing violinists, but you can be a pretty mediocre bassoon player and be the best in the state. So I took on bassoon because it gave me more opportunities than violin.

John Shufeldt:
Wow, so you could, you, so I guess to be first chair in violin, you got to be at the nth degree, but to be first-year bassoon, you could be just pretty good.

Jennie Byrne:
Yeah, yeah, nobody plays bassoon. It's pretty hard and awkward, so, yeah, you can be pretty mediocre.

John Shufeldt:
That's classic. So you are, no pun intended, so you're the ultimate left-brain right-brain person. You do basic science, but then you also have this now writing and musical deal. That's amazing.

Jennie Byrne:
Yeah, and I talk about that in the book, but really this accessing creativity and I think a lot of doctors are actually pretty creative if you ask them. But to me, accessing the creative part of the brain has really opened up a lot for me in my career and in the entrepreneurial work especially.

John Shufeldt:
Totally, okay, so you went to Penn and then you obviously took some time because you had to go back and do all your basic science and stuff, I wasn't part a bassoon playing.

Jennie Byrne:
I crammed it all into about three semesters, believe it or not, and then I took a year out to go do research so that I could take my MCATs. So I had one year out and then I got back on track.

John Shufeldt:
Wow, okay. Where'd you go to medical school?

Jennie Byrne:
At NYU, so I did the MD-PhD program, the joint program at NYU, with most of my clinical rotations at Bellevue.

John Shufeldt:
Wow, so now this would be a dumb question because I probably know the answer, you know what I'm going to ask you? Did you ever read House of God?

Jennie Byrne:
I did, and I oh, boy, we could talk so much about that book, but there's so much in there. You know, Bellevue is such a fascinating hospital, in particular with such a rich history, and some of my best stories are really from my days at Bellevue, honestly,

John Shufeldt:
I can only imagine. Well, you know, as you know, Samuel Shem is a psychiatrist. And yeah, I read that book way young, and I don't know if it helped me or I'm not jaded, but it help me or gave me a weird perspective of medicine because he certainly had a weird perspective.

Jennie Byrne:
Yeah, I think, psychiatrist, I always like psychiatry to surgery, actually, people think they're very different. I think they're very similar because we really just get to the crux of the matter, we don't mess around. So I think he had a very biting look at what he felt was the crux of being a doctor in what was then the modern hospital.

John Shufeldt:
So when you went to medical school after your neuroscience, did you think, okay, I'm going to be a neurosurgeon, neurologist, or psychiatrist, or you're always like, No, I'm going to be a psychiatrist?

Jennie Byrne:
No, it was again, brain and behavior was the focus. So I was really, really struggling between those three, the neurosurgery, it just seemed too long, honestly, at that point. I'd been in school forever already. And then I love neurology, I just love neurology, but back then it was kind of depressing. There weren't great treatments and it's a very buttoned-up culture, neurology, how each specialty has their own little culture, neurologists tend to be very buttoned up, and I'm not terribly buttoned up, I can be, but I like the quirkiness of psychiatry, which again, that's a whole other topic, that psychiatry is known for being a little bit more quirky.

John Shufeldt:
The way that you say a little bit.

Jennie Byrne:
Just a little.

John Shufeldt:
Okay, though. All right. So how did, so you got out to just start practicing just traditional psychiatry?

Jennie Byrne:
So I made a big leap of faith when I finally decided to end my relationship with academic medicine and research, I made a leap of faith out of New York City, down to North Carolina, which is where I live now. And I wanted to be out in the real world, so I took a job doing house calls, driving all over the state of North Carolina for a geriatric. Yeah, well, it was a geriatric medicine group, and I was there for a psychiatrist because they knew there was such a need. And so I just, you know, they gave me a lot of autonomy to design kind of a consultative program and drove all around the state, learned geriatric psychiatry in the trenches, assisted living, skilled nursing, and private homes. I did that for a couple of years and then I got inspired to become an entrepreneur myself and to solopreneur, well, I didn't start with that vision, but it ended up being a solopreneur group practice.

John Shufeldt:
So you transitioned out of there and said, I can do this to myself, and started doing was it virtual psychiatry, or were you just.

Jennie Byrne:
No, it was, yeah, it was still in person. I didn't want to be just a geriatric psychiatrist, which I felt like that's where I was headed. So the practice I started was adult psychiatry, and it was just me looking at the wall, no patients, no money, as many entrepreneurs do. And I really wanted to create something that was what I would want if I were a patient, like I wanted to kind of recreate that whole experience. So it was in person, this was back in 2010, although I did add in telehealth pretty quickly, which was not very popular or accepted back in 2011.

John Shufeldt:
Yes, I'm laughing, Me, and I started a virtual coming in 2010, called Me, and the reason I started it was to do because I'm in an EM position and there's so many patients in emergency department who had behavioral health issues, they were totally undertreated or untreated. I said, okay, this is a clamp, this is a slam dunk to do this virtually and got near zero. I had a great PhD with me, psychologist and I had near-zero acceptance. We transitioned to typical basically urgent care medicine virtually, and that's how it kind of took off, but my initial goal was, was psychiatry, psychology. So I understand.

Jennie Byrne:
Yeah, and you know, the medical boards were not very supportive of telehealth. And so the reason I started doing it was because I lived down the street from UNC, so a lot of my patients were students, just convenience. And they go home for the summer, they take a semester abroad and they were like, like, let's just have appointments. And I'm like, No, I'm supposed to find you a doctor back at home and transfer care. You know, I was trying to do like according to the rules, but it didn't make any sense, it was impossible. And so eventually I was like, okay, let's just try it. You know, you're adept with video communication, and let's just try it. And then I documented the wazoo out of everything to try to protect myself, and I just did it because it was the right thing to do and it made sense, but it wasn't popular or really accepted back then.

John Shufeldt:
No, and did you have trouble? Was it all cash pay?

Jennie Byrne:
It was. I tell people I wasn't smart enough to come up with insurance-backed psychiatry practice that would keep my bills paid. So I wasn't smart enough to do that, and I don't know anybody who was really smart enough to do that. But I would have liked to not be cash, but it just wasn't an option.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, particularly at the time. So talk to me about Belong Health.

Jennie Byrne:
Yeah, so Belong Health is a very exciting organization. It's, as of right now, about two years old, a startup, we have a series A funding cycle, and it was really designed to meet the need of what we were seeing for some of the underserved populations that are dual eligible, meaning Medicare and Medicaid eligible. So those are typically either people over 65 with Medicare who are impoverished or people who are under 65 who have a disability putting them on Medicare. So these are really complex sick patients and it's really hard to take care of them, and the health systems and the health plans are very, very complex because some of them are state-based and some of them are federal-based. So a dual-eligible health plan is designed to help them. So Belong was designed to work with regional health plans to do joint ventures to really create dual eligible plans that were going to meet the needs of the patients and be fiscally responsible under value-based care.

John Shufeldt:
Was it focused on behavioral health or was it focused on whatever value-based care need they had?

Jennie Byrne:
Whatever value-based care, whole-person care, whatever you want to call it. But of course, in this population, we know that mental health and substance use and all those other things, the prevalence is even higher than the general population. So that's obviously a big part of it too.

John Shufeldt:
Was that your first nonbehavioral health sort of venture?

Jennie Byrne:
No, prior to Belong, I was working at an organization called CareMore Health, which is now under Elements under Anthem. And CareMore was also known for being very innovative in Medicare, Medicaid space, and I started with them as their chief behavioral health officer nationally, but then they really liked what I did, and I quickly took on all of specialty care and post-acute care. So I had executive leadership positions with whole person, what we call whole person care, and then I have some consulting clients that are whole person care as well. So my ideal portfolio of work includes both behavioral health-specific, mental health-specific, and whole person, and I like to do health tech, too.

John Shufeldt:
Wow, so you're back to left brain, right brain.

Jennie Byrne:
Exactly, yep.

John Shufeldt:
So what projects are you focused on now?

Jennie Byrne:
So most of my time is with Belong, they're kind of, ... co-founder. I am not the chief clinical officer. I hired the chief clinical officer who is amazing, Dr. Ramon Jacobs-Shaw, and I also spent some time consulting with other, typically healthcare companies that are doing a pivot or need to upskill their leadership or doing an acquisition. I'll work with them for like a brief amount of time. And then I like to do coaching, I typically have like a couple coaching clients at a time, typically physicians, again, who are either in leadership roles or looking to make a change. And then as I mentioned, I wrote my first book, which is a really L.A. Press nonfiction book on the future of work through the lens of brain and behavior, and that's coming out very, very soon. So again, you can hear I like to do a lot of different things. I feel like for me, connecting the dots between ideas and people is what I think I really bring value and impact. So sometimes I'm connecting ideas between people and sometimes it's between organizations. So doing more than one thing I find adds to everybody. It's very synergistic.

John Shufeldt:
No, I definitely like that approach and it's the whole connected out to the Steve Jobs, connect the dots backwards sort of mentality that it all makes sense retrospectively, but it's hard to write. It's Soren Kierkegaard life, you know, life has to be lived in the rearview mirror like ... months, looked at in the rearview mirror. What have you found now in your coaching and entrepreneurial? Are there some arch-type entrepreneurs that you found to be more successful, more apt to success than others, than other archetypes?

Jennie Byrne:
Yes, that's a great question. I find a lot of the people who go into entrepreneurship, especially physicians, are people who are either fixers like, I'm in a system, I don't like it, I want to fix it. Like I just want to fix problems. And then you have kind of the visionary folks who really see things differently and want to create something really differently. And then I've met a number of people in more recent years coming out of the venture capital world who are more like this built for purpose, where they kind of go out into the white space and try to figure out what's the next best thing. So those are the main types I've worked with in terms of like, who's most successful? Gosh, that's a great, I mean, in healthcare right now, things are so wide open as you know, that like there's so much space to innovate and improve. I think that all three can be successful. It's more that you have to know your own limitations and bring partners or people to help you who meet things that you aren't good at. So if you're a visionary, you need to make sure you have a good, loyal skeptic by your side, right, to help keep you grounded. If you're somebody who just wants to fix things, you might need somebody who is a little less operational, a little bit more people-oriented to kind of help you. So I think the myth for me is the solopreneur, which I tried to do myself and I learned maybe the hard way that there are things that I probably could have gotten help with earlier in the solopreneur journey. So I think everyone can be successful, especially in healthcare, but it's really like that self-awareness and making sure that you're bringing in people to help you at the right time.

John Shufeldt:
Where do you land in those three archetypes? You know, you do the solopreneur stuff, but where do you land in those three archetypes?

Jennie Byrne:
I just recently did my Enneagram. I don't know if you've ever done that. I like to do these kind of assessments, and I'm an enthusiastic visionary, which I think is pretty accurate, if I'm honest with myself. I've done the other things too, but at my core, I think that's who I am. So I can, as you heard, I like to do a lot of different things. Sometimes I need people to pull me down to earth and say, That's great, Jenny, but that's like 20 years in the future. Like, can you reel it back to like today? Because you're, you're way out ahead of where we are today?

John Shufeldt:
I would probably it's funny you said that, Jenny. I would probably describe myself the same way. So you're, who is your bring you back to earth person? Or do you have different ones for different businesses?

Jennie Byrne:
I have a couple. I would say that the most important one in my life is my husband. He is definitely my loyal skeptic partner. He's an attorney by training. So he's got that like paranoia that lawyers have. So he's by far my biggest help in life, I would say, he's very important. And then I've had people, one of the things attracted me to working at Belong, for example, as a startup is I can be part of the hiring and bring on people that complement me and the other leaders like the CEO and pay attention to the interpersonal dynamics and think about building a team. And I think we've built an incredible team, like truly kind of incredible team, and that has been really enjoyable. So now I'm a little bit more self-aware, I'm getting older, and getting more self-aware and helping other people be self-aware too, and thinking about the people components. I've enjoyed that quite a bit.

John Shufeldt:
So I used to be involved in a business that we would, it was physician coaching and when I say involved, I kind of started that, but I had psychologists who are doing the day-to-day and the group that we focus on was nursing, and I know this will be an enigma to you, but narcissistic physicians, mostly men, mostly surgeons, and they were top of their game, but their medical staff or the hospital would engage us to work with them to try to coach them into normality or becoming self-aware. And so what the psychologist, the psychologist told me was there, this is an incurable disease, but you have to teach you. We don't try to cure the problem. We teach people how to act in the community. Like when someone says this to you, here's a normal response, not even typically having. So as you're trying, as you're working with these companies and you're trying to build this culture, what are you looking for and how are you trying to engage some of these folks that may be uncoachable?

Jennie Byrne:
Well, if I have the choice on who to hire or who to bring in, I'm really looking for people who are curious, people who are learners, and people who are open to change and trying things. If I have the choice to bring that in, because if you have someone who's curious and open, you can really move quickly. But let's say you're working with somebody who isn't that way by nature. I think I focus on self-awareness, you know, like that's a first step. Like at least know yourself and trying to get them to feel some interest or comfort level with that. And then I think the idea right now, after years of pandemic living, the idea of empathy is really out there in a way that it wasn't before, and empathy can be trained even if you're not a naturally empathetic person. Compassion is a little different. So empathy is kind of an umbrella term, and there are different types of empathy, one of which is compassionate empathy, where you actually feel someone else's pain. That's what most people think of when you say empathy. They think of compassionate, like I feel what you feel and that's one type of empathy. But there's a more intellectualized type of empathy, which is I can put myself in your shoes and imagine what you're thinking or you're feeling, even if I don't think it or feel it. And most people can train to do that through active listening or other skills, and I always give the example, and I wrote this in the book, too. I was not naturally good at that. I train, you know, psychotherapists train years and years, we train how to be good listeners, and you train on how to be empathetic. And so it is a skill that can be trained, you have to be open to it, though. So in the case of a surgeon, you know, they have to, there has to be some why for them to want to do it, otherwise, they're just not doing it. So the why is, all your nurses are quitting after three months of being in the OR with you? Maybe that's powerful enough, why? Or if the why is, like, we're going to fire you, we can't take it anymore, that could be a why. So if there's enough.

John Shufeldt:
Those are the whys.

Jennie Byrne:
You have to have the why, but if there's no why and you're just trying to get physicians to change their behavior, I mean, we're human, we're like everyone else. Like, why would we change unless there's a reason? So you have to find the why. I think sometimes that's a big part of it.

John Shufeldt:
So when you're looking at building these cultures and you find somebody who is not necessarily, at least at this point, a cultural fit. So you've probably seen that four quadrants, you know, the culture and competence. And if you're in the upper quadrant, you're a keeper. You know, we'll do whatever we can to keep you. But if you're in the high competence and low culture, I've always struggled with this group. What do you do? And they're usually, you know, if you listen to Jack Welch or others are usually like a one-shot deal, like, okay, here's where you need to be, blah, blah, blah. But the general theory is and I kind of found it to be true, they're probably not savable. What have you found? Because you're going to be the expert on this.

Jennie Byrne:
I would say if somebody is not a culture fit for your organization, and different places have different cultures, right? So you might be a fit at one culture and not a fit another. When I've managed folks or worked with folks like this, first of all, I try to use my empathy, right? I try to really understand where they're coming from, and if I can't imagine it, I just ask them, like, Can you explain to me, you know, I've observed this, Tell me, like what that comes from or what that is. And then if the person feels that you're invested in them and that you actually care about them as a human being by being curious about them, then you kind of have the come to Jesus, which is what we call it down south, right? Come to Jesus talk, which is like, Hey, this is you, from what I understand, this is you. This is, the behaviors I'm observing. This is the culture of the company. I think there's a disconnect here. What do you think? And if they say, Yeah, there's a disconnect, too. And I say, well, maybe this isn't the right place. And if they say, Well, I don't think there's a disconnect, then you say, Well, let's get curious and dig a little deeper. But in terms of being salvageable or not, sometimes it's just behavior, sometimes they are an okay fit, but they're just doing behaviors that are not a fit, and through self-awareness, they can see their behaviors better. And then sometimes they're just not a culture fit, but if they're not a culture fit, I think the best thing to do is just again, try to say, Hey, I respect you as a person. I just don't, this just isn't the right fit, Let me help you. And then I actually help them find a better fit. I'll be like, I think this place would be good. Do you want me to call someone over there and introduce you? Or like I care about you as a human being? I just don't think this is the right place for you.

John Shufeldt:
And that's been kind of my approach. But where I deviate, as I usually, I'm like, here's where I see you, here's where you have to be. I can't ... because I don't have your training. I don't get into the why, you're why. How did you get here? Like, did your parents not hit you enough or whatever? But most people I say this to look at me like, what? Like I can't believe you don't think I'm a fit here, so I'm clearly missing something in my delivery.

Jennie Byrne:
Well, I think if you can keep the curiosity there and be like, well, you know, you know, I'm curious. I say this a lot, I'm like, I'm curious, like, what do you think is the culture here and what do you think, what are your values and the culture values here? Like, tell me, I'm just curious, like, what do you think? You know, and then your delivery and your tone has to match that, you can't be sarcastic. You have to be genuinely curious. And I always tell when I coach, I find that a lot of leaders, because they're switching gears a lot in their day and then they have these conversations that are like hard, they're not really prepared to have the conversation within themselves. So to show up with that like neutral, non-judgmental, curious attitude, you have to be calm, collected, you know, like you have to be in a good space, you can't be multitasking. So you got to prepare yourself, and I think most leaders undervalue or don't realize how much it takes, you have to take care of yourself to show up with that right energy. And they don't, I don't think they invest enough in like the energy that they show up. And when you're a leader and you've seen this, I'm sure, everyone's watching you. You know, the CEO is in the room, every little movement you make or every gesture, people are watching, and to show up with the right energy, it's really hard. Like you have to really take care of yourself and be self-aware.

John Shufeldt:
That's a great point. What do you, what advice do you have for physicians who say, look, I want to be you when I grow up and I want to be, you know, I've done X, Y, Z for a number of years, but I want to change the world, I want to be an entrepreneur, but I don't know where to start. Because I think a lot of folks who listen to this are going to be in that world of like, what you guys are doing sounds really cool. I want to do it. What do you tell them?

Jennie Byrne:
I would tell them a couple of things. I would tell them, first of all, especially if you're a woman or another underrepresented group, I would say don't look for role models because role models will lead you astray. The person you want to be, the leader you want to be may not exist. You may not find them out there. So try to take mentorship away like ideas and things from people, but don't look for like a perfect role model because they just, I never feel like one existed for me. So mentors can lead you astray. I guess that would be my first tip. My second tip was again, just get to know yourself. You got to know yourself. What are your core values? What is meaningful to you? What does the perfect day, the perfect week, the perfect month look like? And if you may need to do some introspective work before you're ready to go out in the world, whether that's a therapist doing personality assessments with a coach, whatever that is, but you got to really know yourself first. And then I think for me, I try. I like to plan. I was a planner as a kid, right? I like to plan stuff out and I think it's good to have a plan, but over time, what's been more helpful is like, what am I going to say yes to and what am I going to say no to, and then managing my time. So making sure that like I say no to things and get things off my plate. And again, that's where the self-awareness comes in, like what is important to me? What are the things I want to do and what are the things that aren't important to me? I'm just going to have someone else do them. And so I tell women, especially who are interested in this, for me, I don't like taking care of my house, so I don't, you know? I'm fortunate enough as a physician leader to have funding, so I don't cook, I don't clean. I don't literally do anything all my time. My quality time at home is with me and my kids and me and my husband, like the house I just kind of don't care about. That's me, you know, for someone else, it could be something, maybe they love to cook, but it's something else. So, you know, deciding what's not important to you and then just don't do those things. And you have to really be firm in yourself to do that because there's a lot of society pressure to do things as a man or a woman or, you know, so just being you and like making your time reflect what's important to you.

John Shufeldt:
That's phenomenal advice, and I learned, I'm still learning it and I learned it way late as far as the saying no, and spending your time on the things that you derive the most joy or value from. And, you know, I was definitely the, okay, fine, I'll do it, as opposed to learning to say no. I'm, and I'm probably a pleaser just on my nature, so that made it more difficult.

Jennie Byrne:
And a lot of physicians are, right? And I think the final thing I would say is like, it's taken me a long time to realize this, but sometimes not working, Working, quote-unquote, makes work much better. The quality of your actual work sometimes is improved by things that are not work at all, whether that's exercise or for me, music or whatever. Like, not working is often where your brain cooks up the best stuff. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, especially like doing nonwork things sometimes is where your best ideas come from. I'm sure you've had those experiences, like in the shower or on a walk or, right, or vacation or whatever, and then sometimes your best entrepreneurial ideas come to you in those moments when you're not working at all.

John Shufeldt:
Totally, shower and running for me.

Jennie Byrne:
Yep.

John Shufeldt:
I was laughing, oh my God, that's kind of weird, but yeah, shower. Well, any final thoughts on those folks who want to be you? What did you, what did you say? God, you know, if I had known now, by knowing that what I know now, I would have done something differently. What? What different would you have done? Different would have done.

Jennie Byrne:
Oh, gosh. I don't know if I would have done that whole PhD, to be honest with you. That was one of those things where I had loss aversion, I had sunk cost into that thing and it took me five years and I probably should have taken the master's and cut off three years. I think that was one. I think the other thing, and I don't know if this is as me as a woman leader in particular, but knowing my value was really hard. You know, medical school and everything just trains you to be humble and be a servant, and I think that's beautiful, but, you know, we got student loans. It's like everyone else. And like, so knowing my value, I think that was a hard one. Having a good partner, I mentioned my husband like that has been so important. Wow, I had no idea, like, how important that would be. And then just again, knowing myself and being comfortable, taking risks that I knew other people wouldn't approve of, especially family. I don't have an entrepreneurial family except for, I have one sister who is, but they were very non-entrepreneurial, shall we say.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, that's my, that's where I come from as well. But yeah, it's funny like, what are you doing? You have an MD, PhD, and you're doing what, you're wasting your, I can almost hear it.

Jennie Byrne:
And just this year, you know, they're like, you're writing a book. Why are you writing a book? That has nothing to do with this. But I know myself and I know I know what works at this point for me, and it'll change in the future, but that's okay. I think you, the more you spend time with yourself and just kind of feeling confident in that, like that's really important.

John Shufeldt:
Well, you know, one thing you said really struck and I think we are guilty of this, physicians, and probably female physicians even more so, is that we don't recognize our value, and if we recognize it, we don't argue for it. Yeah, I mean, I, probably still way under bill and all sorts of things because I'm like, no, it's fine.

Jennie Byrne:
Right? And money is very uncomfortable, and that was something, took me a couple of years of psychotherapy on the couch with my own therapist to get through. That was a hard one for me.

John Shufeldt:
No kidding, really?

Jennie Byrne:
Yep, New York on the couch. I even, I got to the point where I was even, like, lying down on the couch, like.

John Shufeldt:
Wow, all right, well, I have, so clearly, I have some work to do. Well, Jennie, this has been really cool. Thank you very much, I'm really impressed. Where can people find out more about you and where you, where is your book going to be?

Jennie Byrne:
So best place to follow me is LinkedIn. So, Dr. Jennie Byrne on LinkedIn. I have a website, DrJennieByrne.com. The book is called Work Smart: Use Your Brain and Behavior to Master the Future of Work. It'll be on Amazon so you could search Amazon for my name Jennie Byrne, and then Work Smart. And I love meeting new folks and spreading the word. So please, I hope people will reach out to me, especially other physicians who are trying to figure it out. That's kind of near to my heart, one of my favorite groups to work with.

John Shufeldt:
That's awesome. Now, do you have a book on Audible? Will it come out on Audible too?

Jennie Byrne:
It will, I actually have to record it. I've never done this before. That'll be another first for me. This summer I'm going to be doing the audiobook.

John Shufeldt:
I will tell you, it's tremendously harder than you think.

Jennie Byrne:
Oh, no.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah.

Jennie Byrne:
I bet, I bet it will be. Everything, the writing the book, and again, you've been through this too. Like every time you do something, you're like, Wow, that was hard, everything else would be easy. And then you go the next thing, Oh wow, that was really hard. So everything is hard.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, well, I want to talk to you after you record it because I literally realized all my imperfections while I was reading these books. I'm like, I suck. Like, look, Jennie, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

Jennie Byrne:
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, and I hope, wish all the best wishes to your entrepreneurial audience for the new year.

John Shufeldt:
Thank you very much. Well, folks, thanks. That's been another great conversation. Jennie, thank you, and we'll see you soon.

John Shufeldt:
Thanks for listening to another great edition of Entrepreneur Rx. To find out how to start a business and help secure your future, go to JohnShufeldtMD.com. Thanks for listening.

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Key Take-Aways:

  • Training the creative part of the brain can be beneficial for entrepreneurial work.
  • One way to approach venturing into the healthcare space is by creating an experience or a product that you would want as a patient.
  • Dual-eligible patients are those who are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare, typically either people over 65 who are impoverished or people who are under 65 who have a disability.
  • Three entrepreneur archetypes are the fixers, those who seek to fix a problem; the visionaries, the ones that want to do something differently; and the ones built for a purpose, those that are trying to come up with the next big thing.
  • The solopreneur individual is a myth.
  • As an entrepreneur, you have to know your own limitations and bring partners to help you with things you aren’t good at.
  • Empathy can be trained even if you’re not a naturally empathetic person.
  • Take ideas from mentorship, but don’t look for a perfect role model.
  • As an entrepreneur, you are finding your own way, so avoid replicating someone else’s.
  • The quality of your actual work can be improved by things that are not work-related at all.

Resources:

  • Connect with and follow Jennie Byrne on LinkedIn.
  • Follow Belong Health on LinkedIn.
  • Visit the Belong Health Website!
  • Explore Dr. Jennie’s Website!
  • Read Jennie’s book “Work Smart: Use Your Brain and Behavior to Master the Future of Work” here!

 

  • To find out how to start a business and help secure your future, go to JohnShufeldtMD.com