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II think we're in see the the light. So, hello, my name is I am a, I'm the Mind Alternative. Um All that means is that uh my role as a volunteer that me is to find people that are doing very interesting things outside of medicine or on the side of medicine. And um so we try and get them to give them a platform and um hopefully inspire uh doctors to see what else there is outside of medicine to sort of give it a go if you will. Um So we did our first talk a couple of weeks ago on someone who a doctor who'd gone into health attack. And I'm quite excited about this one as well. So I'll introduce Dr Si first contacted doctor S on linkedin. I found her there. I thought what she was doing was very curious and I wanted to know more. I listening to a talk she did on linkedin. And I thought, yeah, I definitely environment. So here we are. Uh I'd like her to tell you about essentially um questions before we start is a recording session. Uh There isn't only because that uh that doctor didn't consent for the recording going out. But we will be looking to make, sorry a bit of an echo. So I'll try and reduce that. I hope that helps. Yeah, that didn't want that recording to go out. But we are going to try and make an article of what he said to summarize it essentially. Um But yeah, just questions. So, yeah, I'm, I'm just gonna put a poll out just to find out. um, just a bit about who you are and why you're interested in this. Um Just a few quick questions. There's no rush to do that. We'll just um uh while this is going on really. So I'll put some polls out and uh any questions you can use the Q and A section or the chat section task and um we'll answer questions at the end essentially. Um So yeah, over to you, Doctor, Doctor Steam. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Great evening everybody. Thank you for joining us tonight. I hope this will give you inspiration for alternative careers, but also motivation to go and pursue the career that you really dream of having. So, really big thanks to mindedly for all the great work that they are doing. Let me know in the chat box if you can hear me loud and clear, but also use the chat box to ask any questions that might come to your mind as I'm going through the presentation tonight, talking to you about alternative careers, but also how I went from travel in sorry, from being a medic into travel entrepreneurship and what travel can offer you as well as a medic. So without a further ado, let's kick start, let's get started. So before I actually dive into how you as a medic can use your skills to create an alternative career, how you can actually have that dream balance job. I mean, do let us know with the polls which grade you are in medicine? Where are you at? With medicine? Where are you at? With your medical career? If you can add that into the chat box as well? Because as we are going through our medical journey, we start to realize that maybe there are other things that we want to do or maybe that what we're doing at that given moment is not really giving us the work life balance that we have always aspired to have. Um And before, so before I get into that, before I get into telling you about travel, before, um I get into telling you about um how you can develop a strong and sustainable alternative career, alternative income. But also how can you create strong and sustainable passive income streams in your life? Because God knows that we all need to have that passive income stream. So we stopped trading our time for money. So before I go into all of that, I'm gonna need to start with setting the scene and I'll do that by telling you guys a little bit about my story. Right? So I am someone who has graduated from Iraq. I'm an international medical graduate, um graduated a few years ago and at that time, it was the war in my country and straight as a as during actually my final year I had to leave my home because of the war. It was quite a turbulent year till I was able to finish my medical exams and qualify and end my medical school, so to speak and become a doctor. But then the period that came after that was even exceptionally more turbulent because I had to immigrate to another country. At that point, I went with my family to Dubai. I had to try and figure out the medical system over there. How can I get a job? Um And it was quite difficult. Um And I spent for a good, a good 68 months until I was able to get an unpaid job. And that was like the best option that was available there. But it was like a medical internship job. I was like, I'm gonna take it. I took that one and then I um applied for other countries and other places to see where I can further my medical career. And I ended up in Lebanon the year after at the American University of Beirut, completing an internal medicine residency program. So that's me four years, five years post grad and I'm still looking at how can I develop my career further? So I start doing applications and I applied to America. I applied to the Canada, I applied to Australia. I applied to the UK. And it so happened that I was able to come over to the UK and do my in um intensive care medicine and acute medicine training program. And it was quite um a good time for me because um I was an international medical graduate. I came over here straight into a national training program, which was a great opportunity but also was quite stressful coming overseas. I didn't, I spoke English very well, but it wasn't quite the English that we have here around here in England and I especially landed in, in Manchester. And I make a lot of jokes about the language or the accent and the dialect over there. But maybe that's for another time for me to share with you guys. So it was quite difficult. I came here with that family and it's, it was an upward battle having to fight tooth and nail to prove myself in this training program. And then after 6.5 years of completing that training, I qualified as a consultant. But as you can imagine, by the time that I have um reached to that from the background of the war, leaving my country, trying to find a job immigrating to another country, finding a training, immigrating over to the UK and completing my training, I was completely burnt out. I was running on a complete empty tank for such a long time that I hadn't even realized it. And this is really important to see to, to, to know because when we hit burn out, it is not that point that we need to start recovering from. It means that we've just been burnt out for such a long time, but we've been able to compensate and then we need a, a very long time to even recover from it. So when I was at that junction, finished my registrar training, um I had, I had been offered a consultant job, but I also was feeling quite burnt out and I was feeling a pull to do something else. I wasn't feeling, um I wasn't feeling it at all that I would be able to continue in the NHS. Be able to continue for the next 3540 years of my life to do the same job, the way that it was, there was something else going inside and I'm gonna go over the next few slides through an exercise with you because if you are going through this junction, if you are at this junction or if you end up maybe going through it in life, call upon this exercise because it's gonna help you a lot in identifying your values and identifying which direction of career path you would want to take that would would, would suit you. So, at that junction, I was feeling that pull that I wanted to do something else, but I didn't know what that something else was. And I also, I have never done anything outside of medicine and if you are a doctor or if you're a medical student and you've ever felt that you would know what it means because we, we live in this, um, not a lot of options are available for us. We get told that, oh, you can't do anything other than clinical medicine. There is a lot of um maybe taboo around it. Now, obviously, with the work of mind, the bleep and other organizations nowadays, alternative careers are becoming more acceptable and we're having a little bit more access to them. But this is was made about five years ago. The scenario and the scene was completely different. So I was at that junction and I knew I wanted to do something else. I wasn't quite sure what that um other thing is. Um But I also had the consultant job being offered to me. So at that point, I took the job because I needed some sort of income coming in. And I was like, let me take this until I can figure out what the next step is going to be. For me. I did take a period between my training and between actually starting the consultant job about five months where I was able to go traveling trying to figure out what the next steps is going to be in my life. Quite ironically, I didn't figure it out. I came back, took the job, started my work and it wasn't until a few months later that I realized actually having a travel business, creating an income from travel is not only in alignment with my wellbeing is not only in alignment with creating wealth for me, but it's also that future that I want to start pursuing. It's the alternative career that I wanted to start pursuing. And when I started doing it, I started to open up other doors and other opportunities that came along my way. So I started from from a very humble beginning in the travel industry of being like a travel agent. And then I started to develop the agency to converted it into a franchise model. I became a travel marketing director about two years ago and I've been on the top performance list in business, the top income earners globally. Um And like I mentioned, once you start going on down an alternative path, once you start to knock on some doors, you start to network, you start to meet people, other doors will start to open for you. So quite recently, I've become a founding member of the Doctor Preneurs Network which helps doctors pursue businesses and build scale and start and scale businesses. Obviously, I'm still a consultant in critical care and acute medicine, but I have stopped all of my clinical work. I no longer practice clinically. But there, there's something really important that I wanted to mention. And there's a reason why I have put there that on the slide. There is because I want to remind you guys cos there's a lot of doctors and I meet a lot of doctors who say to me that I wanna go and do something else, but I just don't wanna leave my doctor identity. I don't wanna leave that part of me behind and trust me that, that's always gonna be part of you that experience. You're gonna bring it with you, those transferrable skills, you're gonna bring them with you. And I'm gonna touch on the next few next few slides talking about those transferrable skills. So your doctor identity is not gonna change. It's just a matter of shifting your perspective from the clinical towards nonclinical work. I had a post. Well, I still have a post graduate certification in medical education. And again, this is really important and I mention it here because when I was examining the, the, what is it that I love? What is it that I don't love? What is it that I want to have in an alternative career? What are the values that I wanted? And for me, education, training, mentoring was a really important value and that is something that I have incorporated and taken away from the clinical medical sense and brought it into business um I have authored a book, Dream Big, Do Bigger. And I hope that this talk is gonna help you to dream big and to do bigger as a consequence of it. I'm very passionate about helping doctors about helping medical students or other professionals to know that there is more for them out there. And I did actually work as a Chief Growth Officer at Medic um footprints for a couple of years and I just um ended that recently so I can pursue more traveling in my life. I've been fortunate to share my story as well on Sky news and help inspire other doctors to make the change that they need to do um in their life to f to live that life that is on purpose to live that life that is fulfilled, to live that life that is balanced for them. So the number one question now, the animation came up a little bit quickly. The number one question is you really need to ask yourself the question of like, do I need an alternative career? Right? Because it might be that there is some adjustments, there might be some tweaks, there might be some changes that you can make in the current career that you have and you'll be very happy with it, right? You will restore that balance. You will be in alignment with your values, you'll get what you want out of it. I always say the number one question is not do I need an alternative career? I believe the question is, do I need extra sources of income? Because when you have extra sources of income, you create a financial security blanket, you create options for yourself and then when life changes, it's not. If life changes, life is going to change. When life changes and you need to take a break, you need to take a pause, you need to have a think you need to reconsider. There's a life event happening when you have extra sources of income. When you've diversified, your sources of income, you are in a position of power. So it's not necessarily that you need to change career to restore balance or to have wealth and well being in your life, it is a matter of having an extra source of income coming into your household to give you that security blanket because a job is not secure, even our jobs as doctors, they are not 100% secure. Um And we very much get conditioned even if we're thinking that it is um a secure opportunity. II want you to think because we very much get conditioned into um living for uh sorry, working um for 40 years of our lives to uh give up tax, which is about 40%. And then we end up um uh retiring after 40 years or or so of working and end up on less of 40% of what we used to earn. So that's the 40 40 40 rule. And if you haven't, while you are at a young age, developed your extra streams of income or developed your extra sources of passive income, then you are going to struggle when the time comes for you needing it. So going back to it, the question is not, do I need an alternative career? The question is, do I need extra sources of income? And the answer for that is always yes on a very recent survey done in the UK. And actually the data can be extrapolated worldwide is um how many in the UK population have a side hustle that brings them extra side income and actually it is 43%. So almost half of the UK population, it is needing an extra source of income and also developing an extra source of income, thinking ahead in the future. And when we think about extra sources of income, they don't necessarily need to be something that you spend an overwhelming amount of time in. They don't necessarily need to be something that is bringing you um thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds in. It can be as simple as something that is bringing a few 100 lbs into the household to help a little bit with that emergency cushion, to help a little bit with the financial um security. And according to that survey, the the people who were having a side hustle on average, they are creating about 200 lbs a week from their side hustle. And then in a month's time, they're creating probably around 1000 800 to 1000 lbs a month, which is quite a nice income really from a side hustle and it gives you quite a good cushion. So the next slide, I'm gonna take a little moment here and I'm gonna ask you to take a screenshot of this or to take a picture of it or to start writing it down because this is the exercise that I mentioned for you guys earlier, the exercise of like when you come to that crossroads and you go like, I'm not sure what I wanna do next in my career. I'm not sure if I wanna continue in a clinical career. I'm not sure if I wanna have an alternative career, I'm not sure what the alternative career is going to be altogether. Right? You might, at some point you might be feeling it now or you might be at some point later on feeling it and having those questions on mind or you might know a colleague or a friend who's going through this. So this is the exercise that I want you to sit down and do. And a really good way to do it is to get like an, a four paper piece of paper, fold it into, um fold it twice. So you end up with four squares, right? Or you can be more sophisticated and draw two lines. So you divide it into four sections and on the top section, the top left section, the first one I want you to write down everything that you like about the current role that you have or if you're a medical student and you're gonna be going into your um doctor job, write down everything that you like about that. OK? And then on the other side, right next to it, I want you to write down everything that you don't like. Right? So you'll have the things that you like on one side. And this is why I put on my slide, the love heart and then on the other side opposite to it. That's why I've put the angry face is everything that you don't like from it and then come down to the bottom where there is that beach lounger there. Um And the and the umbrella is put down what you would like your ideal life to look like what you would like your ideal career to look like. I want you to put it there and I wanna put it into senses of values, freedom, ambition, career progression, skill development, training, learning, um earning more money investing, helping other people. What is it that you would want your life to look like? And then on the question mark or the last quadrant, I want you to write down what is it that you can change about your current situation about your current career? That will move you closer towards your ideal career or your ideal working environment or your what, what career you would be doing. And for me, when I came at that crossroads and I was doing that exercise, I was writing down the things that I love about my career, right? The things that where I get to help people, things where I get to help them heal, be better, feel better things where I was um putting in like working with a team, the comraderie communication, development progression in my career, writing things down like that, the teaching, the training, the mentoring, the problem solving. All of those things that I love about my job being a doctor, being a consultant. But on the flip side, what I wrote down was I did not like the freedom, sorry, the lack of freedom. I did not like the lack of flexibility. I did not like Xy and Z how the paycheck didn't stretch et cetera. So I wrote down the things that I didn't like. And I wrote down the ideal life for me, which is basically time for I can sum it up in three phases of phrases, time, freedom, location, freedom, and financial freedom. That's what I wanted to have. That's what I wanted to create alongside me, being able to help other people as well to keep those values that I loved those things that I put in that love heart box. And then I sat down and I looked at my job of what can I possibly change in what I'm doing in my current career as a consultant to move me towards my dream career. And that's how I went through that process of figuring out what's in al, what's my values? What do I love doing? What's in alignment? What's not in alignment? Where do I want my career trajectory to take me to and what do I need to change together? And when you start going through that exercise and you be honest with yourself about it, that's when you're gonna get the answer of what your career, your future career is going to look like, whether you stay in clinical medicine or you leave clinical medicine, either way there is no shade at all because you can get to the level of a consultant and leave your career, but transition into another one works in alignment and it's in the life that you want to have. And that's for me how I figured out I wanted to live alive as a travel entrepreneur, how I wanted to start a travel business, how I wanted to build a community um around that, how I wanted to have growth in that community as a consequence of it. So I hope this is helping you guys to kind of like get tho get those cogwheels starting um and seeing how your career trajectory is going to be moving on this, on this slide here, I wanna share with you guys about starting and scaling, right? And I think the most important thing here to highlight is from my experience of working with so many medics, I mentor nearly 200 medics in, in business, by the way. So I've seen quite a bit here and I see that a lot of our us as medics do mainly two things, right thing. Number one is think that we've got nothing to bring to the business table. And we dis disregard all of the transferrable skills that we have got as medics with resilience, our sense of commitment, our sense of service, our sense of our communication skills, our teamwork, our long term vision of being able to stick with it. Right? We disregard all of those qualities while they are very essential qualities. When you're moving career changing career, you're going into business or you're going into even going into employment for um, another alternative career, whether it's not, uh, if it's nonclinical. So that's the thing that I see about a lot of doctors. And I really urge you to take a good stock of what you have because you can do whatever you wanna do. You can and you're capable of doing it when you look at those transferrable skills of yours. And you go like, well, I'm able of doing XY and Z and I can take those qualities with me. Yes, I'm not prescribing medicine, but I'm problem solving here. I'm, yes I am not working in a clinical MDT, but I'm teamwork here and I'm like conflict resolution and I'm using my communication skills. Um Yes, I am not here in medical school and then starting my junior doctor career and I'm gonna end as a consultant looking at that whole conveyor belt with that long term vision. I'm starting a business here and this is the the starting seeds and I can see the long term vision of where this is going to take me. So please take stock of your transferrable skills. That's number one thing that as asthmatics tend to disregard, but the number two that we tend to disregard is the starting. We get to think a lot and we get into a phase of where it is paralysis by analysis. Basically, we get to think, well, how are we going to do this? How are we gonna build it? How is it gonna grow? How am I gonna do? How, how and we get ourselves stopped in the, how is it gonna happen before we have actually started my biggest message to everybody is that if you've got that pull, if you've got that inkling to do something different is just start with it. Do not waste time. I apologize for the spelling mistake here on the slide. I was preparing these slides when I was in the air airport lounge today. So um don't waste time. What we call there is a concept here in business and we call it failing forward, which is mean, getting started doing the thing that you need to do, doing the things that you know, doing at the moment. And if it doesn't work out, learn from it and then move forward, get fueled by your Y power. And that's why the exercise that I showed you guys earlier is really important because it shows you what, what is it that you want to create in your life? What is it that you want to have? That's what we call your y and that's what you need to remind yourself every day as you are carving a new career for yourself. The number three in the start and scale process is to find a mentor and find a community that you can leverage their experience, leverage their support in order for you to build up your new alternative career. And for me, I mean that I, if you ask me, what's the most important thing? Yes. The first two that I mentioned are important, but this is a really key ingredient for success because again, in the world of business, we say something, we go like success leaves clues. Follow someone who's already done what you want to do and learn from them because that shortens your learning curve massively and having a community of people around you who are doing the same thing is huge cos if we're talking about you, for example, taking on an alternative career and completely shifting away from medicine. You're gonna find a lot of people that are gonna try and discourage you from doing that. And even if you are deciding to stay in the medical career, you stay clinical, but you wanna do other things alongside it, you're gonna find a lot of people that are gonna discourage you. So that's why you wanna put yourself into communities into places where you get encouraged to do the change that you want to do because that's what's gonna feed into your why. And also it's really important to choose the right opportunity with the right set up with the right positioning with the right timing. And I'm gonna come on to share with you guys in a little bit over the next few slides of how I moved into the track whole business and how I assess that to being an appropriate opportunity, especially with me being a practicing clinician holding a DMC license. I wanted to make sure that I'm doing the right thing. I'm doing the right. Everything has got the right paperwork in place. Um And I'm gonna share with you what a bit about what Harvard Business School says about opportunities and um companies, et cetera and working in finding an alternative side hustle for yourself. So one of the things that again, I wanted to mention it on here because when you start to look for an alternative career, a lot of people, again, if they start like if they get over the stumbling block of not starting quickly, if they do actually get start, get started, they start to face a lot of challenges. Um And I wanna be honest and open and transparent with you guys. Is that like anything else in life? There's going to be challenges. You know, you start a diet on Monday, today's Monday, you start a diet and then there's that like really beautiful, like chocolate alair looking at you and going like, oh, come on. Right. And you get that temptation and the same thing with anything else in life, there's going to be challenges. There's gonna be curveballs that are gonna get thrown along the way and it's really, it's the universe's way to say like, how committed are you to this new alternative venture that you want to take on board? And a lot of people kind of like, stop themselves because they go like, ooh. So I'm gonna have to start this new thing and I'm gonna have to like, invest in it. I'm gonna have to like put time. I'm gonna have to put money. I'm gonna have to put in effort. Oh I don't have all of that. And then what you do is like, you sit back in your little comfort zone and you go like, no, I'm not gonna do this cos I'm worried about the cost of starting, but actually if you're worried about the cost of going for it, you might wanna start thinking about the price of staying where you are, especially if you have already evaluated that you need to take on a new career because where you are at is not serving you, trust me, the bill of regret is gonna be way more than the cost of starting. And there's a lot of people that I see they get onto that conveyor belt of a career and they start traveling with that train and they keep on going like, oh, I should, I should change direction. I should, I should, I should, I should come off at this, but they keep on stopping themselves because they're worried about the price of that return ticket to take them back to a starting point and for them to be able to move forward again. But please know that the further you go away, the further that you go down the line in a direction that you don't want to go down, the more the price of you coming back. People ask me like, what's your biggest regret in business? And I always say my biggest regret is that I have not found this opportunity that I'm in any sooner, but I've not, this has not come my way any sooner and that's my regret. But although it's not something that I can control, but it's just for you to know that, you know, you don't keep on traveling in a direction that is not serving you fearing if you were to change direction, what the cost is going to be because the longer you stay on the wrong road, the longer it's going to be costing you. So moving on here and talking about like why travel and what's what's in it, in travel and how did travel kind of like solve all of my problems, to be honest and also the problems of so many other doctors or so many other health professionals who work with me. And as I summed it up for you at the beginning, when I was talking about the about the exercise of like where I found the idea where I found my values and what the ideal lifestyle is going to be. For me. I wanted those freedoms. I wanted the financial freedom of earning money of earning residual income where I don't need to trade my time for money. So I get paid passively regardless if I worked or I didn't work. And now I always say passive income is always a little bit of a misnomer because there's nothing that is truly passive, passive income basically just means that you do the work for a short period of time, you put in the seeds and then it keeps on paying you passively afterwards, right? So it's income that comes in for work that you have done once I wanted to have that because I was tired of working trading time for money. There's only so many locum shifts that I could take um to solve my financial problems. But I also wanted location freedom. I wanted to be able to travel. I wanted to be able to work from anywhere in the world, whether it is working from my own sofa at home, whether it is traveling and working from a cafe in Paris or whether it is being on the beach in Dubai. I wanted to have that location freedom and I've seen a lot of life examples that have that are consistently reminding me and I'm sure that you have come through it as well. Is that life is too short and definitely life is too short to be lived in one place. And I also wanted to have time freedom. I didn't want to have a fixed 9 to 5. I didn't wanna have like, oh, I'm on call this weekend so I can't do anything or I'm on a set of night. So I can't do that. I can't travel because of this or I've got it. I wanted to be able to design my own time the way that I wanted. And for me though, that's when I was coming across a travel opportunity. I looked at what my values are. I looked at what my ideal career wanted to be and I looked at what the travel business offers and I was like, this is all in sync and this is all in a match and that's why I decided to go for it. And I swinged from being a critical care and acute medicine consultant all the way, 100 and 80 degrees to being a travel entrepreneur. Now, a lot of people look at it and say, oh, that's 100 and 80 degrees. That's a very far swi that's a very big swing over there. But actually the core underneath it is that this was quite a match to the values that I already had. So I hope this is helpful in helping you guys in kind of like understanding how this has come about, but also how you can narrow the gap, so to speak between where you are at now, what you want and the kind of career that you want to go into, nothing is impossible. Nothing is too far fetched for you to create using the skills that you already have as a doctor. So mentioning on to some considerations and this is more pertinent towards starting online side hustles. Now, I'm pretty sure that when you go onto the internet and you start to look and go like what are ways or opportunities or things that I can do alongside my medical career alongside me studying medicine, alongside me training in medicine, practicing medicine. A lot of online side hustles are gonna come up and this is where it is really important to know. What, what are you going to? Which one are you gonna pick? How are you gonna select the right thing that is professional, that is ethical, that has got the right structure, the right framework. And for me, like I mentioned earlier as a consultant, as I was practicing, it was really important for me to pick the right opportunity, the one that is structured in a proper way that is set to help me grow and to grow exponentially. And when I was doing my research and I was looking through things, I saw the Harvard business review that was talking about online companies, online side hustles online businesses that you can do um home based businesses. And there's been an excessive research that has actually gone into the background of it, but I'll condense it down for you into three major points. When it comes to choosing a business or a company that you want to work with, it should be at least 18 months old. And when I looked at my travel business, I was like, yeah, it's older than 18 months. The concept, the host agency, the home company, they are older than 18 months. And why that is important is because it declares financial stability. Number two of the Harvard business review point is to have a unique product and what that means. And that's probably um, something that is, you might think it's a bit obvious, isn't it? Because whenever you're coming into business, you're solving a unique, you need to solve a unique problem for someone by having a unique product you have exactly the same thing that someone else has or you're offering exactly the same thing that someone else offers. Then what's the, what's the deal here? Like, why would someone come and pay and, and sorry, pay for your services or come and, and buy from your business? So you need to have a unique product and travel the way that it is set up within our company and the way of how we can earn an income from it. It's, it's a very unique, it's done in a very unique way and it's given our agents and our team members um a very unique access. So that was like, really important and it, it isn't like anything else out there um on the market. And the final point from the business review is that it needs to be a ground floor opportunity. And the meaning from that is that the, the number of people involved in this business, the number of people who are doing this business need to be at a certain percentage or a number, it needs to be at a certain quota and it's less than 500,000 people. And that would make it a groundbreaking opportunity or a ground floor opportunity, like they say so when I was at the point of where I was at and I was looking at the travel business, I was like, ok, it's online, meaning I can do it in any time from anywhere in the world. But also it held those three important qualities that was, that were recommended. Plus it being in alignment with the values that I held. So I was like, right, let's go for it. So I wanted to share that with you guys because a lot of opportunities can come up, a lot of opportunities can knock your door. You might go knocking on their door. Well, that's a really important, um, criteria to have those three points to look at when you're assessing. Ok. Do I do this thing? Do I not do this thing? I wanted to give you that framework for it? And then very briefly on here on this, on this slide here, I wanted to talk about the balance and profits. Um, and what I mean by that is obviously the work life balance, the so, uh, sought after the so much sought after work life balance and also having profit come in from your alternative career. Because if you're not creating profit, you really don't have an alternative career, you just have a hobby. And I'm gonna have to be blunt and honest here with you guys because the quicker that we can face it, the quicker that we can create a solution for it. But one thing I want to tell you guys about balance is at the beginning and this is something, this is a challenge that I had to go through and a challenge that I had to overcome. Cos if you remember at the beginning when I was telling you about my story, I was mentioning to you that I was already burnt out and I was looking for that wellbeing. I was looking to restore the balance. I was looking to create that time, freedom, financial, freedom and location, freedom for myself. So how do you go from burnt out to creating that? You can't go like, oh well, I'm gonna get balance first and then I'm gonna go and it, it just, it just doesn't work. You're gonna have to find a way of creating pockets of time for you to be able to invest in the side hustle that you're building up or in the alternative career that you're building up. It might be that you want to have a tech startup. It might be that you have got like a, an idea to be a content creator. It might be that you've got an idea that you want to, I don't know, change careers and go and apply for a different company. It might be that you want to start your, an online business, whatever it might be that you've decided to do for a short period of time, you're gonna have to find some pockets of time and just push your foot on the gas a little bit more until you're able to create some income coming in from that opportunity to allow you to step a little bit back and rebalance at that point. That's the point. When you're starting to have income coming in. That's when you go like, ok, what can I give up now so I can restore that balance back? And I hope this is landing with you guys because I used to find pockets of time. I would be like half an hour before I leave the house in the morning to go to work. I'd use time on my, during the day, like maybe a lunch break. And then on the time that I'm driving back home, I'm either listening to a podcast, a business training, making phone calls. And then when I get back home, I did sacrifice for a period of time not having to watch Netflix, not having to go out with my friends. And I was just focusing a bit more on my business. So then in a few months, time in about a year, year and a half that I was able to go like, you know what I can go part time now and then in three years, I completely replaced my income. So that's what I mean by balance and profits. They're gonna have to, you have gonna have to swing those hands. And when you have a mentor, going back on to the point that I was mentioning on my previous slides, when you have a mentor, when you have a community around you, they're gonna help you in creating that balance and those profits. And my big one of my biggest tips is obviously time blocking like that you can see here on the slide, but also it's focusing on the action that you need to take, not the results that you're gonna have. And this is really important because a lot of people can get started in the business in their alternative career. They can still get started in applying for new roles. But then a week, two, week, three weeks can pass by and they don't get results and they get really dissuaded or dis er disappointed and they don't carry on. But if they kept on going just a little bit longer, they will start to see the results. So really, I want you to focus on the action rather than onto um the results. And again, circling back to figuring out what you wanted to have. Your, why is just making sure that your, why does not become your, why not? And what I mean by that is when I was time, well, I wasn't even time poor. I was time broke like I was in time debt when I was working and I was seeking my time, financial time freedom. Right. So I can't be saying to myself, well, I don't have time to create my time freedom because what I want is time for time. So I can't make time, my excuse, I'm gonna have to find time somehow and a lot of people can end up into that. Um So to speak, the challenge of that into that predicament of like, oh, I'm really stressed out but I want a life that is free of stress but I'm letting my stressing out get in the way of me achieving that. Oh, I really want to create something for my family but I'm busy with my family so I don't have time to go and create the thing that I wanted to create for my family. So you're, you're making your why your why not. And, and, and really, I want you to raise, I want you to raise awareness around that because it's a very big trap that a lot of people fall into. Not knowingly. I just need to give, take a moment here and just give a big shout out to my amazing team. Uh Most of us are yes doctors, healthcare professionals, but we're also professionals from all walks of life. We're a group of people who just really enjoy traveling, really enjoy um creating profits, really, enjoy having um wealth and health and balance in our lives. And we've come together in an amazing community and we work together inside the travel business. And I really wanted to just give everybody a shout out because since I've left medicine and I have been focusing completely on, on the travel business. These people have given me that sense of purpose, that sense of belonging, that sense of like I need to wake up in the morning and I need to do more work because I need to be helping them to grow and to grow their income, their profits, their balance their, their what they they take home to their families. So yeah, I just wanted to give them um a very quick shout out, but that's it from me guys. Um I hope this has been valuable for you to learn about alternative careers, to learn about what and how to evaluate an alternative career with the correct lens and the correct framework to really urge you to think about having um side income, having a side hustle creating that financial blanket for yourself. Um And also to how you can get started, how you can scale it up, how you can use your transferrable skills as a doctor to be able to create the life that you want to have. So if you want to connect with me more, um by all means, go onto that QR code, you can just hold up your camera that will take you straight to my whatsapp. If you've got any questions about alternative careers, please, by all means, do drop me a message. Um You can join my Facebook group, the wealthy travel community or you can find me on linkedin as Dr Ola Van Styn and you've got my email and website details um on there. So I'm gonna go towards the chat box. I'm just gonna have a little bit of a look here onto the poll. Thank you. So much for helping us with that. So the one of the poll questions was saying, do you have any passive alternative income streams? And only 15% of you have answered that guys, guys, we really need to be looking into it and it is something that will future prove your financial security. Um It's never too late to start, but it's really important to start it. And like you've seen on the statistic like 43% of the general population already have side hustles and side incomes. That's very insightful that 85% don't have it here. Do you describe yourself as currently having an alternative career? And again, 85% saying no. Um Right, we've got a question. What one skill do you feel doctors need to develop the most in order to go into business and entrepreneurship? That is, that's a great question. But I am going to say doctors don't need to develop any additional skills and that might sound like a little bit of a shock for so many people, but it is always mindset over skill set. As a doctor, you do not need any additional skills to get started into going into a business or entrepreneurship. In, in general. You just need to shift your mindset and focus on the transferrable skills that you already have and get started with whatever your business idea is. Get connected with someone who can help you find a business idea or get develop a business idea. I think it is that frame of mind that we get put into as doctors that we can't do anything else that we shouldn't do anything else that if we leave clinical medicine, then we're bad people. And really guys, I want to inspire you to the notion that you're amazing people and you can create an incredible change. You can create an incredible impact on health care, on patient care, on society as a whole. When you are doing the things that are in alignment of with your values and helping people might be in different ways through business and through entrepreneurship. Another question, how can we stay GMC registered? Um So what's the minimum required to work to keep it whilst taking a period of time to complete a side hustle if that's going better? That's a great question. I absolutely love that one because it was one of those questions that I did ask. So I went part time and then I was looking at like, well, how, how much do, how much more can I drop to before I need to completely give up my um er license to practice. And the answer to that is that you need to practice four weeks in a year clinically. So if you want to take up some locus, just to keep up your clinical registration, do that for a period of four weeks in a year and you would still be able to keep up your registration, but you obviously need to do your appraisal as well. Um And you, as long as you're practicing clinically, uh you can get your appraisal done. I believe this session is recorded. Um And yes, uh Thank you for answering that question. Um So yes, guys, I hope this has been insightful and useful for you and really inspired you to start looking into diversifying your income to start looking into opportunities of how you can create something different for yourself that you know, you don't necessarily need to have a business to leave your job. You don't necessarily need to have a business to leave your medical care career. There's a lot of people that I work with that have a business on the side simply to give them that feeling of fulfillment sim simply to give them and especially like if it's in travel, like I do just to allow them to travel that little bit more just to allow them to enjoy their travels a little bit more without breaking the bank. Um So you don't necessarily need to leave your job. It's not the rule of all or none in order to have a business or a growing thriving side hustle on the side. I hope that it has inspired you to that idea, but also inspired you to, you don't need to acquire any skills. You do not need to um go and learn something new before you start a business, you already have it all. Just find the right opportunity, the right mentor and community and get started. And on that note, Jane is asking, how do you network, please scan the QR code that you can see on the screen here and that will take you straight into my whatsapp or you can find me on linkedin as Dr Ola Von Steyn or on Facebook, the wealthy travel community. Yes, I do mention um I do offer uh mentorship, I mentor everybody who works with me inside the travel business. I also offer advice and mentorship outside of that for alternative careers. So please do get in touch if I can be of help. I will absolutely be um I will absolutely help you and, and get back to you. So, thank you everybody. Thank you so much. Mind the co A for having me on um tonight. Thanks for being on. Um That was inspiring. Thanks very much. You're very, very welcome. You're very welcome. Um So yeah, I think, I mean, there are that you can get involved with you with you and thank you. I appreciate you. Appreciate the time tonight. Thank you guys for showing up tonight as well. Thank you. We'll say goodbye to you. Take care. Goodbye.