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Great. It does take a second to go out. That should be coming up soon. I think we've got a few people joining. Yeah, that's good. It's always difficult to know, isn't it when to get started? Like how long do we give people to get their laptops out? Get set up? I hope you've all got a drink, something to keep you hydrated. Um Yeah, I a half cup of water here. Perfect. So that is us. Just live now. Um So welcome everybody and thank you so much for joining. I just wanted to say thank you so much to Ellie um for joining us tonight and she's going to be sharing about her experiences of um working in medicine and also running businesses alongside medicine. Unfortunately, Matt wasn't able to make it tonight. He has got tonsillitis. So he's had a last minute, but he's hoping to be able to provide some resources after the event and maybe another event in the future. So thank you all for joining. Um If you want to fire into the chat where you're joining from, that'd be great. Um Just to kick us off and I also have a few pills and I've never used metal before. So I'm like, clicking around. Trying to figure out. Yeah, trying to, like, figure it out. It is. Actually. I find it really useful actually. Yeah, it's very good. Yeah, there's loads of different, um, events on it. It's amazing. Yeah. Perfect. Ok. Um, so we will get started. Ellie. Would you mind just telling us a bit about yourself? Yeah, of course. So, um, as I said, hi, I'm, I'm Ellie, everyone and I am a part time A&E doctor. So I'm technically an fy six. I graduated from the University of Oxford in 2018. Um and I now spend time working part time in A&E but also running my own businesses. Um and then spending the rest of my time doing everything and anything else that I enjoy, which is largely anything like active or outdoors based. Um And yeah, I've started more recently, um sharing what I do on social media, um and helping others who are similarly feeling maybe a little bit disheartened about medicine, thinking about maybe quitting, um just trying to help in parts which may or may not involve still working as a doctor. Hopefully it does. Um But also obviously starting their own business because I think there's lots of medics that um feel similarly like they want to solve bigger problems. So, yeah, that's me in a nutshell. Perfect. Thank you very much. And I guess I should probably introduce myself as well. So I, I'm James Finley and I am a final year medical student at Queens in Belfast. And I also really enjoy traveling. So I've been to South Africa, I've been to Australia and, and New Zealand over the summer there past and I've been to Canada twice in the summer. I'm hoping to go to Southeast Asia, so I'm looking forward to that and also run a very small online business just selling um products on ebay. And yeah, and we'll ask you another question. So when did you first discover your interest in business? And how did that come about? Um So I think, kind of so to begin with, like, I never had um like a specialty within medicine that I was like drawn to or like fully attached to. And when I was at university, um I was getting towards the end of part of my degree. And I was wondering like, oh, is this the right, is this the right job for me? Like, I don't know how comfortable I feel being a doctor, I was quite an introvert and suddenly like being on the wards. And at Oxford, you have like a very preclinical part of your degree where you're in lecture theaters. And then the second half, you're like in the hospital and you're in front of patients. And I found that really quite daunting, intimidating. And I thought, oh, I don't know if this is the right environment for me And so I started to like, look at other options and that's kind of when I um got introduced to management consultancy and a more kind of corporate and commercial world. And I guess it was at the point that I was exploring that as a potential career change that I started to realize about, there's like so many other problems within the world that are being solved and looking at the bigger picture. And I guess that's the first thing that kind of really sparked my interest in like other things, other industries and, um, businesses that solve, I suppose, bigger problems then I've always, well, I always tutored, um, whilst I was at medical school. That's something I started when I was doing like my G CSE S and A levels tutoring students in the year below me. And it, I guess it wasn't then until I'd finished, um, university and I was working as a doctor and I read a book called The Four Hour Working Week. And it made me, it made me just think actually hang on a second. Like, maybe I could start my own business. Maybe I don't need to work for a management consultancy firm and, like, learn about businesses that way and get experience within businesses that way. I could maybe do this myself. So, yeah, I guess that's kind of like how it evolved, um, in the sense that there was an interest there. And I guess lots of passions and like skill sets that I enjoy, that might be quite similar to other doctors. Like, I really enjoyed problem solving. I enjoy, like, you know, being creative and like, being quite like, um, therapeutic is not the right word but like, you know, like, organized with things and I think all those inclinations make you curious about solving the problems and having a wider impact. So, yeah, that's kind of how it evolved. Yeah. And can you tell me a bit more about what consultancy involves? Because I, I've always heard about it, but wouldn't really have any idea about what management consultancy. So, so big disclaimer, I'm not a management consultant. So this is like my understanding from the job interviews that I did and the experience that I had just basically going through the application process, but essentially management consultant is someone that's providing like businesses with advice on various different elements of their business. It's usually aimed at helping them grow, but it can also be aimed at helping them cut costs. Um OK, and ultimately a team will go in and try and provide an outsider's perspective as well as um industry kind of like expertise and experience working with other businesses and other business models to go into another business and say, hey, maybe we could be doing this to help you achieve and you know, make these changes to help you um improve or get better outcomes. So yeah, so you can work you work with a team, there's usually lots of traveling um depending on which company you're working with. But the idea behind it is that you're working on projects within other businesses, you quickly have to like um understand a different industry and understand a different business to then help like analyze data and figure out ways to for them to overcome problems. So, yeah. Oh, perfect. Thank you. And then how do you manage your time working in any and also managing your businesses as well? So I started the first business that I started properly was with my brother when I was an F two. And this business is a property like tech platform that we came up with. The idea of essentially we came up with the idea slightly before the pandemic. But it wasn't until we hit the pandemic that we were kind of like let's actually now start working on this and actually progress with it. And during that time I was working in A&E. So my second rotation for my F two was in A&E um because that was during the pandemic, we got frozen. So I was on A&E again and I think this was quite, for me, this was quite lucky because it meant I was doing lots of obviously medicine and shift work. But it like within A&E it's more shift work in the sense that your rota is like any anyone working in A&E will know that the rota just isn't the same. Like every two weeks, there will be some days where you're working like a, a 1 to 10 shift for four days in a row and then you'll be going on to a 4 to 1 a.m. shift for like two days. Then you'll have a day off and then you might go on to some nights. And the way that works meant that for example, days where I was working like maybe a 1 to 10 pm shift, I had the morning to like, get up at a normal time and do a couple of hours work and then go to the hospital or I would have like an eight or 58 or five are difficult because you come home and I'd want to like, go to the gym and do other things. But on those days where it was maybe like a later A&E shift in the evening, it was much easier for me in the morning when, um, like my willpower was strongest. They say your willpower diminishes throughout the day. It was much easier for those shifts for me to get up and actually just start trying to do a bit of work. And I, I'm a big advocate of like setting yourself small tasks and I'd essentially like, assign myself something to get done in that morning and work on that for that day. Um So it did take a lot of juggling and there were like, there's positives and negatives to it in the sense that positives aren't meant I had to be really efficient with my time. Um in the sense that if I had a job that I needed to do, I couldn't, like, sit and like, positively procrastinate about it. Um Which I think is quite a good thing about, you know, starting a business alongside another job. It, it forces you to like crack on with things. Um But obviously, it does mean that things take longer and if you're on your own as like a solo pre as they say, then obviously it's going to take you um more time to get things moving and get all the things done that you need to get done. I was really lucky that I started my business as my brother. So essentially, there's two of me working on a business, which is our multiple businesses. So arguably we're now back to a patient of 1 to 1 or 12 businesses. But yeah, um it's just, it's trying to be productive with the time you have and it might mean things like getting home from a shift and like, especially if you're working like an eight or five shift, like getting home and whilst you're still, whilst you've still got that momentum, like, don't let yourself get into that state where you get home and just sit down on the sofa and put your comf on because you're not going to move. And that's why I thought I just would have moved from that position. But if instead I got home and I knew in my head. Right. I've got this one task to do, which is to outline the different revenue models that I think we're going to incorporate. I'd get home, make myself a cup of tea, like, maybe get changed into my company still. But go and open up my laptop at my desk and just set a timer for an hour to try and be as productive and as efficient as I could. Yeah. And then just following on from that, how did you come up with your business ideas initially? Was that something you and your brother discussed together or was it? Yeah, something that you just come up with? Yeah. So um coming up with business ideas, this is like my favorite topic because I love coming up with business ideas and um I've often come up with business about like loads of other random things. But essentially the way we came up with our business idea is we were um we were starting to learn more about the property industry for our own reasons and thinking, you know, like long term, this is something that we a market that we want to invest in and like build a portfolio in. And so we were learning more about the property industry and as we were trying to do that, we've identified a problem and essentially every business idea arises from um someone identifying that there's a problem with either a service or product that's been delivered and it might be that there's, you know, it might be that someone's come along and said, oh, hey, no one likes renting out movies from Blockbusters anymore. We need to make sure that they're all online. That's a really news problem. But it could also just be like, I always use the analogy of people going, oh, I like buying candles, but I'm really tired of buying my candles. And every time I finish using them, having to chuck away the container, like that's a load of waste, there needs to be a recyclable container. So the problem can be a problem that's not niche or it can be really niche. There's a whole spectrum, but ultimately, you need to have found a problem but realize there's a problem that people are. Um and it's best for yourself to have identified that problem because if you have experienced a problem, then ultimately you are a customer for your business and you will then know your customers as like the best because you have to relate to them, which means that you can then market your business to them. But yeah, so I came up with, we came up with this problem or we identified this problem and then basically brainstormed what a solution would be. Um And yeah, put it all together and we came up with Mark. So Mark is essentially a platform where we help people to buy, sell and invest in property. Um It's a completely website based business which is a little bit like, I sometimes describe it as like a dating app in the sense that we have customers that come to us who need help and then we introduce them to the right people. And we saw this problem of people needing help within the property industry. And we were like, well, what's the best way to help these people? And we came up with loads of ideas. We were like, well, we could maybe try and offer them advice, we could maybe try and provide the service that we're looking for ourselves. And we then realized that the industry is full of property professionals who offer expert advice, but no one knows they exist and no one can find them. So for us, it was the obvious solution was to create a platform where we introduce these different people to one another. And I guess if you want to come up with a business idea yourself, then you have your problem and there's loads of ways you can solve it. And it's then just trying to figure out what the best solution is for you based on your expertise, based on how much time you want to put in, how much money you want to put into the business. So, yeah, yeah. Um What's the biggest challenge you faced with running your businesses? Um Biggest challenge I face a lot. But I think, I think to me, the biggest challenge is um going from being a medic to entering the world of entrepreneurship. And the reason for that is because it's so, so different. Um as medics, we have become really accustomed to following a, a set career path. You know, we often a lot of us will have chosen from a very young age, like maybe during our G CSE S that this was the career that we want to follow. And so we then studied at school for those exams, we then went on to our A levels and then we went to university knowing that we were going to then graduate and go on to work um like clinically as doctors and choose a specialty. And that path is like, you can see it like, you know, you can see all your peers before having done it, you can roughly anticipate what challenges people can face in terms of like needing to apply for jobs and there being like limited number of jobs in certain locations. Um and it's really relatively like risk free the road of entrepreneurship and like starting up your own business, like is not the same. There is no, there is no path. Um A lot of the steps like you initially take in terms of like the logistics of setting up a business are pretty predetermined. Like, you know, you need to register on public's house, you need to get all your legal policies in place, et cetera. Um you know, get a business plan, put together, have a marketing strategy that you're initially going to start with. But after that, after you've created your product and you're starting to advertise it, like essentially you can take that business in whichever direction you want to. And there's no one that says this is what you have to do to start a business. Like there's no, there is no set path to follow that you can go anywhere. And I think that's really difficult as a medic, we've suddenly gone from this really train to like a roller coaster where some days are great, some days aren't. And then that for me is then the other thing in the sense that as doctors, we really don't like failing and we really, you know, we are perfectionists and we do, we are typically high achievers. Um, and when it comes to starting up your own business, like you will fail, you will make mistakes and things will go wrong. And we're not used to that as medics. Um, and it's something that can be really hard to get used to. Um, you do get used to it like I've got used to it and II embrace it as part of the process and you learn from the mistakes you've made, but it is still quite a shock because it's not, it's not something that we handle very well. I think it's such a contrast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I know we had talked about this um whatever you would call and just about how medicine has actually benefited you in your business. Would you mind sharing about that as well? Yeah, of course. Um So first of all, like, so when I, when like as individuals, we need three things to start a business, we need time. Um we need money and we need the, the right mindset. And for me continuing to work as a doctor has helped me with all three of those things. Um And I think this applies. I know obviously everyone here will be medics, but it, it applies to anyone starting a business and like maintaining a career alongside starting a business. And this whole idea of starting a side hustle which I know has like, there's quite a lot of negative connotations around like side hustling. I don't agree with hustle culture, but in terms of like having something that you do alongside like an employed role. And the reason for this is so from a time perspective, I kind of touched on it earlier. But um going from like having to organize my week working shift and then not, it means I have to be efficient with what I do. And instead of having like huge expanses of time where I'm like, oh, I've got like the whole week to sort out this and decide how I'm gonna like create my product. And market it. I was, I was more of. Right. Well, I've got, tomorrow, I'm gonna be working and then the next day I'm not. So I've got that day to do that and then the next day I'm back in the hospital. So I need to, like, get that done in that time and chances are I'm maybe gonna need to give myself a bit more time because I'm probably gonna, you know, underestimate how long it's gonna take me. But it forced me to like, just get on with stuff rather than me, um like inefficient. So it helped me from a time perspective, like, ironically, you might think that, you know, you need more time, but I'd argue that that can be negative then it helped me obviously financially. So like starting a business, it, it is, is going to eat money like a business to the same way we as humans need money to survive. And it's really hard starting a business without having cash flow coming in for yourself personally. So ultimately, there's two ways you can go about starting a business, you can basically quit your job and set up a business and provide it with a pool of money hoping that obviously that business is going to generate money to then pay yourself, right. That's why we let lots of people start businesses for that, for that reason. Um instead of like um charities, et cetera, but a there's no guarantee that your business is definitely gonna make any money. And b even if it does make money, you just don't know when that's gonna be. So if you're starting a business and leaving your job behind and your source of income, then you're relying on whatever savings support you've put aside to injection into that business. And that's got to not only support you and your lifestyle, but it's also got to support your business and you will, you will need to make investment into your business. You will need to test different marketing methods. You will need to obviously maybe buy a product or build a product depending on whether you're a product based business or a service based business. Um, so having that, having medicine next to me, I often describe it to lots of other doctors. It's like having a parachute. Um It's keeping me afloat like it, like mentally. It's so comforting to know that I've got that there, especially in the last couple of years where like the businesses that I've been working on have taken time to build, to build revenue, particularly for the tech business that I was talking about. Mark my brother and I did inject quite a lot of capital into that ourselves to get that initial website built. And the whole, the whole process developed and had it not been for medicine. I don't know if I would have been able to like do that as much. I certainly wouldn't have, we'd have probably ended up relying on loans from either the banks or from family and friends. And then that puts you in a really compromised position. So from the money perspective, it's helped massively. And then, and then similarly with the mindset, like, um it's really quite lonely starting your own business, especially if you're a solo rene. Like luckily I've got my brother to work with, but having a, something on the side like medicine, especially where it's so team based, especially for me and A&E like you're constantly interacting and engaging with other people um in terms of colleagues, but also patients, it helps you kind of get out of any negative spirals that you're in, it forces you to talk to people, which helps, you know, for me, it helps me with my creativity, it helps spark curiosity you to ask questions and it also forces you to talk about what you're doing, which is I think one of the things that most entrepreneurs just don't do when it comes to starting a business, everyone's really scared of a like admitting that they're starting their own business. We kind of get this like imposter syndrome of like, oh God, I can't really admit I'm doing this. Like, am I really doing this? Like, am I actually, am I just playing at this at the minute or not? But then also we worry about people stealing our ideas and um from my experience now having set up a few different businesses. It's the worst thing you can do not talking about your business idea because it helps you get that really early market research. You can start talking about people talking to people about what you're doing and it might be that they go, oh, that's really interesting. Oh, that's something I'd use. And you can, then, you know, you can almost start collecting market research, like, on the ground, market research. Um, so, yeah, for various various different reasons, like having that other stimulus for me, um massively helped with my mindset, like usually, um and I'd encourage anyone, any medics that of um like starting there and worrying about whether they could or couldn't pursue medicine alongside there. It's, it's obviously different if you've got a business, I had someone reach out to me the other day who explained that they were looking at raising investment for a business that they started whilst as a med student. And they were then as to whether to go and start their foundation training. And if you've raised investment from other people, it might be that you have an obligation to carry on working in your business and they might, your investors might expect you to work in your business full time. Um Which obviously then makes that, you know, the decision is almost made for you. But if you as an individual have the choice, you know, you're starting up your own business. And the only person that you are held accountable to is yourself, then at least try doing it alongside medicine. Um And like, and see how you get on, see, see, like how it affects you. Um, and from my experience there's m many more positives and there are negatives. Yeah. Yeah. And was there any courses that you did um to help you with running a business or has it just been all learning from experience? Yeah. So, no, I didn't, I haven't done any courses. Um, and I think this is something that as medics, we think that we need to do. And this is exactly why I, so this is why I was considering management consultancy as an alternative career because in my head, I was like, do you know what, I'd love to have my own business one day? And so I was kind drawn to management consultancy because I thought a, I think I'll enjoy the work, but B II had in the back of my mind, I think this will be the perfect stepping stone for me to then go on and start my own business because I'll learn loads of stuff about business and, you know, in different industries. Um But it wasn't until I saw someone very close to me who had like no a levels, um like no experience in tech or like building a company, um set up their own business and raise a significant investment for it and, you know, start working their way along that journey themselves that I suddenly had this realization. I don't, I don't need experience in, I don't need, you don't need anything to start a business. You really just need an idea and the willpower and some basic literacy and numeracy skills. And anyone as a doctor will have those and we will have lots of other transferrable skills. We're fast learners. There's so much information that's available for free online that will teach you more than you need to know about, you know, the ins and outs of what you need to do. Um It's something I often talk about on my social media of like the different things that you need to um like actually accomplish to like get a business set up and things like that and it's all stuff that we can learn and pick up really quickly. Um I think lots of medics think that we've become accustomed to think that we need a degree to do something and so lots to kind of sway towards maybe getting an MBA or doing something like that. But you really don't need to, don't, don't put that as a barrier in front of yourself. I often think of it now, like when I look back and I consider things like that myself and I, I think that for me that was just me kind of like, it's, it's, it's another form of positive procrastination, isn't it? It's creating barriers because you just want to, you want to just delay, like taking the leap. Um And I think it's one of those things where you just need to have trust in your own skill set and try and like you can learn that you're more than capable with the skills you have and something like leading on from that, that, you know, there's other things that when it comes to starting business. So obviously, you need to, for example, depending on what your business is, you'll need things like um like legal documents, right? You'll need terms and conditions, you'll need a privacy policy because you'll need to be compliant with GDPR. But if you've got a website, you'll also need a cookie policy and lots of people think. Oh, so I'll need a lawyer to start up my own business and et cetera and I get it incorporated. Like again, you don't, you don't need a lawyer to do that. It's really easy and quick to incorporate your own business on company's house. Um in terms of creating legal documents and things, what my brother and I have done is we've, you know, every website needs terms and conditions. Um any company that you engage with will have terms and conditions. And depending on what your business idea is, you will be able to go on like other websites and like look at what their terms and conditions are, look at their cookie policies and things and look at their privacy policies and you can create your own versions of these documents that apply to your and then you can go to a lawyer and say, hey, I need, I need someone to like, I want to create legal documents for my business. I put together these documents, like can you check over them and you'll need to have a consultation with them so they can then understand what your business is and how it works. But instead of them, you know, starting from a blank canvas and having to draw up these documents themselves and you then paying them for all that time. Instead you've gone to them saying like, do you mind if we create the documents ourselves and then you read over them and check over them and that saves you so much money and you're more than, you've got more than enough skills to do that yourself. So there's lots of things where as metics like we have, you know, all these skills that we have, we can take advantage of them and use them to make the process more efficient both from a time and money perspective like, yeah, yeah. And then following on from that, would you do your own taxes or how did you find like managing taxes with like your work as a doctor and running businesses, income perspective. So, um so first of all, with my, the way I work as a doctor, I'm, I work as banks. I'm employed by the hospital on a zero hours contract and they do all my py e from my income, that perspective. So if I wasn't earning anything from any other um like sources of income, then essentially that's all my tax sorted and it's all done through my employer. When it comes to starting your own business. You are a director of a company and you can either pay yourself as an employer for like your time invested in that business or as a director, you can pay yourself a dividend um from the profits. Now, it's only been so the property slash tech platform that my brother and I run. We have, we've been revenue generating for over a year now, but only very recently have we become like profitable in months. Um And that money that we are are making a profit on, we're now just reinjecting back into the business. So neither of us are taking an income from the business and we're not at a stage to be like giving out dividends because essentially we just, we just want to put the profit back into the business rather than taking it out. But I have set up another business which is called um not another gift company where I become profitable a bit faster. And the capital from that I will be, I might declare it this year. I I'm playing around with some other ideas or I might invest it into some other product ideas. But if I do, basically, I've had tax advice. And I've, I've got, I've basically been taught how to do a self assessment myself. And so I will very much help to do it myself, but it will be a case of making sure that I keep an eye on a what that income is keeping logs of any income that I've earned from that business and expenses. But also being very cautious of what tax I'm then likely to pay on any dividends. I'm paid out from that business because I will need to obviously declare, I will need to pay that tax on my self assessment. And I can't spend that money before I pay or I can spend it. But I need to be wary that I may need to pay the tax man more. So it is a case of keeping an eye essentially on your income and your expenses and then just compiling that information at the end of the tax year so that you can then declare it. But I think the biggest takeaway for me from all this is like, aren't this is stuff I worried about really early on as well when it came to starting a business thinking or how am I going to manage all the taxes and the accounts and things like that? Like, is this something I'm going to be able to do myself or do I need to speak to an accountant? Now, it's going to take you a lot longer than you might anticipate to, um, start making money. And I think i, it's something like I always say, you know, if you're worrying about like 10 steps ahead, you, it's gonna make it really, really hard for you to take the first step and it's good to have these thoughts in your head of like, what am I going to do and what do I need to be wary of? And you can do really quick basic research online to get an understanding of what I need to be keeping an eye on. What kind of ways will I need to structure things? You can similarly like even like book a consultation with a, an accountant or a tax advisor, so that you kind of have an idea of where you're going to go in the future. But don't let, don't let these problems stop you from thinking about just getting started if that makes sense. But yeah. Um so no, so it is just essentially just a self assessment at the end of the year and you can do it yourself and we're more than to do it ourselves. It is just a case of like keeping records. Um But obviously you can pay to have an accountant do it for you at the end of the year. But again, you will still need to be keeping a log of all those records and essentially you just send them all those records, um which they will then process for you. So, yeah, perfect, thank you. Um, did you ever, I haven't told you about this question, but did you ever think about, um, having a business within medicine or something? Medical or were you always thinking, um, it would be nice to have something different just for a break from? Yeah, this is a really interesting question. I actually get asked this quite a lot because obviously lots of people start a business within their area of expertise. And it's something that lots of people, you know, lots of people think you need expertise in an industry to start a business. And I always argue that I think you either need um like specific knowledge as such or you need connections or you need to be like really passionate about the industry. I kind of like falling a little bit out of love with medicine in the sense that I was feeling quite unfulfilled, working like towards the end of my F one and certainly like towards the beginning of my F two. And I just wanted like to solve bigger problems and I think there are bigger problems to solve with the medicine. But II just wanted to, I just wanted to dissociate myself from it and have a different stimulus completely. Um And I think that's what kind of like led me to like, look at other things. Um I've never really considered, yeah, I've never, I never considered a career or like starting a business within medicine and such like creating a product or like a service. Um And I, it's something that I do think back on now, like, like, I'm really, I wonder why I never did and I do think it was just because I was just, I just needed something different. I needed a different stimulus. And that's another thing that I really enjoy now about, like, working within my business and medicine is that they are so different in terms of the, like the stimuli or the stimuli. Um You know, I can have like a few days of like working on business stuff where I feel like I'm like, you know, hitting my head against a brick wall, like trying to push a rock up a hill or water up a hill, I think the expression is and then, you know, it's like, OK, it's fine. I just, I'll forget about that and let's go on to now solving other problems and it's just, it's just so refreshing to go from one environment what you're doing and solving one type of problem to another where you're then solving different problems. Yeah. And obviously all our medical knowledge. So, yeah. So it's nice having that. Yeah. From both. Yeah. And is there anything if somebody was considering setting up a business or just in the process of setting one up that you would, what advice would you give them or anything you'd sign them to? Um So I would, the first thing that I would say to anyone starting up a business or thinking about starting up a business is, first of all, you obviously need a business idea. Um, and you really need to check this business idea before you get started and the way I do this and would suggest anyone does this is like within an hour, you can kind of do this as an exercise. You go, right. Don't worry about thinking about what the, what the name of the business is going to be like, what the branding is going to look like, anything like that. You know, start thinking about how am I going to actually create this product and what's it gonna cost me to make that product? And what am I likely to earn? Like, very like this is very gross numbers. Like obviously you're not gonna factor in things like, you know, like running costs on the business, things like that. But so, um let's say I take back this like, um this, this candle business idea that I came up with in terms of, you know, say you've, you know, you're sick and tired of like um burning candles and throwing away the pots and you are like, ok, I want to make candles that come with a recyclable. Like they come with a pot that's recycled, but you can then just buy the candle that you just like refill the pot with that you so you keep the consumer keeps the pot and then just gets a new, like in enough basically. And if you were to like, you know, do some very basic market research online, you can go online and you can go ok, well, how much does a, how many candles are sold? Like within the UK a year? You can find this information out all online. You can figure out like, how big is the market? Is it a growing market? Is it a shrinking market? Like that's the first thing then you can go. Right. Well, how much does the average candle cost? Like, what roughly would someone be prepared to pay for a candle? And then you can go. Right. Well, how much do I think I'd sell my candle for like, is it going to be roughly the same or is it going to be less like is this going to be a premium candle? I sell for like 40 quid and then people buy the recycled, it's like 20 or is this going to be kind of like competing with, you know, your, your like high street brands or your supermarkets where they're selling candles for like a fiber? And so you say you decide, ok, I'm gonna sell my candles for like 15 quid. You can then go on to like Alibaba or some wholesaler sites and say, right, how much will it cost me to buy some like candle um refills or some wax candles, like wax candle inserts? And you might find a supply that will, that will be p by them for you for small bulk, like a fiver or two quid or whatever. And you can really quickly figure out that your gross profit mark is going to be like 10 lbs, probably less because you got to package the thing and you've got to post it to your customers. Right? So you might be making like a fiver. How many of those candles do you want to sell a month? Well, if you want to match your salary, you're gonna be needing to sell like a couple of 100 candles, right? If you were then like going into this business to, you know, thinking that you could like quit your job and like buy yourself a really nice new car, then you're going to have to sell like thousands of candles a month. And similarly, if you were hoping that this was going to become like a new international brand that like everyone bought up when you could then retire and live on a beach the rest of your life again, you're going to have to be like millions of candles. And do you, are you if this whole process isn't fulfilling you with excitement and you're not feeling like energized by this and you're thinking, yeah, I'm prepared to do all that work for that kind of return or that kind of reward if you're actually sitting there thinking, oh my God, that's a lot of work to try and, you know, make enough each month to just pay off my, like to just match my current salary or? Gosh, that feels like a lot of work to just be making that per sale, then this probably isn't the right business idea for you. Like, if you're already having those downs, like in that initial brainstorming process, like either go back to the idea and think, ok, is there a different way that I could create this product that would like, give me a better return for what I, what you want personally as an individual or maybe like, go back again to like another business idea and scratch that one off and go, do you know what? That's not a viable idea? That doesn't fill me with energy? It doesn't make me excited, like let's leave that one there. And so instead of wasting loads of time going through, you know, going OK. Yeah, I'm going to make a like a candle company and it's going to be called, I don't know, bright lights or something like stop, stop, go back to the drawing board and like start just like doing really basic, like what's the process of the business going to be like? Um And so obviously, like when it comes to things like um so take my business, which is a tech based business. OK? I don't have to go through the kind of like the packaging of a product and um I do for my other business, but like, let's take my tech medicines. I don't have to go through the day to day packaging of a product or doing things like that. But the thing that I it's really important that I get excited about is am I excited about the marketing methods that I'm going to be using to help grow this business? Because if that's not, what if that doesn't excite me either, then it's going to be really hard for me to market my business or it's just going to be really hard for me to make my business grow. And I'm not going to feel excited about working on it. So, yeah, go through that process for any ideas you have and make sure that your energy by it. Um And something that I think helps ensure that that is the case is if you choose a business idea in an industry that you're passionate about or an idea that you're passionate about because you're going to be so much more motivated and inspired if, if your business idea is incorporating something that like that, you know, um energizes you in that way. Yeah. Yeah. No, that was actually really helpful. I feel like I'm always that guy who's trying to take up with a nice name and the good designs. I get excited. Well, I'll tell you a little story. So the company that I have is it is now called not another gift company, but it was initially called Mug shop Monday because as my brother and I had set up our, our property website, we were, we were like a year into it and we were finding just like the roller coaster of entrepreneurship quite lonely and it was also in the middle of lockdown and we were kind of sick and tired of being home. We got really isolated and we just like, gosh, it's hard work being like an entrepreneur. And I'd seen um Sarah Blakely who's the founder of Spanx. She used to post on her linkedin, like photos of mugs, like her face with a mug. And she'd be like, and it would just say a quote on the mug like something like motivational and they were always really awful mugs like, you know, like a sports were horrible. And I was like, I really like this idea of having a mug that you turn to, especially like on a Monday you get up, you've not got a boss to account to as an entrepreneur. You've got to say let's do this, you've got to crack on and chances are the first thing you'll do is go make yourself a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and you pull a mug out of the cupboard. And if there was something on there to kind of like, you know, that just made you smile or made you think, OK, I've got this crack on. So, and I was like, I can we then we can have a lot of nice community where people will like have photos with their mugs and they share their mug shots every Monday being like, hey, I'm here checking in. So hence we decided we were gonna sell some motivational mugs and the brand was gonna be called mug shot Monday. And we ordered a lot of mugs. So we got like 300 mugs. We found a supplier and we then started trying to sell mugs and we sold a few mugs. Um but we didn't sell anywhere near as many as we thought. And probably about a year later, I, I just thought I need, we needed to pivot a bit and change the, just change what we were selling. And I created some motivational prints and they started selling a lot more and we now sell a lot more prints than we do mugs. And it just, it didn't fit anymore with the name. The company didn't fit at all. Um And it was a classic case of me getting really excited about an idea and not really thinking through the long term um implications of naming a business and having such a narrow, like a narrow name with such a narrow idea in mind. And it was that excitement that just kind of like it fed me and it kept me energized and kept me working on this idea, but I did get carried away by it and it's something now that I ii know myself and I get much better at like, going through the described of like, ok, let's now be a bit more. Let, let the excitement, you know. Well, for a bit. Ok. But now it's sit down on a piece of paper and back off and do a bit of number crunching and see if this is actually viable. And most of the time I quickly realize that I'm just, you know, just dreaming about things, which is fine. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That could definitely to that excitement you like. Oh, this is the best idea. Yeah. Yeah. If anybody has any questions for at least feel free to find in the chat, please. Um But yeah, so I hope that's been helpful. Hi, can I ask her to find information for funding for a business? Gosh, there's loads of places that you can find funding for a business. It really depends on what your business is and what uh like what industry it is um involved with. So, for example, within the property space, there's lots of grants that are issued for businesses that work with, for example, um hm land registry documents. There's something called Ge Ovation who offer grants. Um Then you've obviously got like.gov offers and issues lots of um innovation grants as well. So it's, it's just something you need to Google go on the.gov website. You'll see what all sorts of grants and um loans they provide, you need to be careful with some of these grants because they sometimes you will find loans that charge like hefty interests and they aren't actually like, they're not a grant as such, they're like a loan. Um but do a bit of Googling and then um I would really recommend. So, something that we did is we started to find like networking groups within our industry for like tech based businesses. There's lots of different groups that you can join. So for example, we looked at raising investment through using a, a company called CD Legals who um kind of like sort out all the the accountancy stuff that anyone looking to raise and they've got loads of forums explaining like different ways that you can raise money. They've got loads of different networking events and groups. And so just starting to immerse yourself within the industry that your business is in, you will start to learn more about funding opportunities um and grants that are specifically available for your um industry and like area of interest. Yeah, perfect. Um Any other questions? I can't actually see any questions. So if we're coming to you, oh, we've got a few here. Perfect. Hello. Um Looking for any medical students, people with medical background to form a team to carry out this idea as a team organizing more cost skiing events or aspiring medical students. So first of all, I would find out if you, I I'm guessing you're a medical student, um which means, or you're a doctor, ultimately, your peers, like, speak to your peers, speak to other colleagues, other doctors, they are gonna have, they're gonna have the knowledge that you need. Um And ultimately, like, use, use your network, you'll have a network of people that, you know, and so lean on those people, um talk to them about your idea, ask them if they'll help you. Um And then go from there, they're like, they're the best people to help you. Like, ultimately, you need people with some knowledge um to help you execute that idea. So you don't want to just be kind of getting um random as um how do you stay passionate about your business with a baseline medical path to fall back on? Maybe for me, business, medics suffering a creative slump. So this is, this is one of the things about entrepreneurship is it is a roller coaster and there will be some days where you don't feel as passionate about it as you do others. Um And this is where as I was trying to explain earlier, having medicine to fall back on all those days where you've just had enough and like, you feel like you are hitting your head against a brick wall. It's really nice to kind of just like put the tools down and go OK, I'm going to pick those back up in like two days time or tomorrow. Um And the, the thing for me, in terms of staying passionate is our, our passion for things ultimately will always be there like as a baseline. But what changes is our motivation to like do something and to, you know, to get going and to actually like execute a like our to do list, you know, and crack on with things. And for me, the way in which I try and overcome that is with consistency, like trying to form really consistent habits when it comes to like, setting myself a task to do for the week, uh or like a series of tasks to do for the week on certain days. Um trying to get in a habit, like productivity, like from productivity perspective, like in the mornings or in the evenings, like I was describing after work, you know, try not to get into the habit of coming home from work and just getting straight onto the sofa and turning on the TV, like try and form a better habit of like making yourself a cup of tea or like, you know, a drink and sitting down at your laptop to try and execute something. Um So try and, you know, try and I often use the analogy of, are you living your life on easy mode or are you living your life on hard mode? And as medics, probably quite a lot of us are used to living on easy mode. We like preparing for exams. We like making sure we sort of things organized, you know, and working on your own business is the same thing. Like try and make it easy for yourself in the sense that you form good habits. You set yourself tasks that are achievable and not like too ambitious for the day and be kind to yourself when you aren't feeling as motivated to get on with those things and create like little, like I said, habits essentially that will help you be consistent on those days when you're just not feeling quite into it. Um, with regards to, um, if you're, if you're talking about more like long term passion and me, like looking at the future and going, oh, is this something I want to continue working on for me? That's never really been something that I've, um, considered an option. I've now got to the stage where I just, I really enjoy being in like, better control of my time and I very much adopted the mindset that like, things will only fail when I quit. Um, and I'm not gonna quit because I don't, I don't want to like, I will continue to push forward and work on different things and it might be like I've described already, I've had to pivot with businesses. It might be that other businesses don't do as well as I hoped. And I will then just start working on those businesses. But for now I'm, I'm happy that, that, that's the direction I'm going and I'm pretty confident in the decision I've made that I don't at this stage want to pursue a medical career. And I'm happy that I'm not progressing along the medical career path, but that's only something that you can come to term with yourself. Um, yeah, it's, it's not easy to come to like to make those decisions and it takes a lot of thinking. But um you've got, you know, you've got to be content with your decision and not have any regrets. OK, let me um go on. Did you, what, what people would think of you when you made the decision to quit working as a full time doctor? To your other passions? Yes, I did. I, I worried a lot. Um And I've actually, I've written a post on this quite recently on my Instagram um about some of the thoughts that I was having about um like pursuing other things. And I often, you know, would think that people weren't thinking I'm taking my career seriously that I was wasting everything that I'd work hard towards. Um It wouldn't make me a proper doctor, things like that. Um And I started to realize that ultimately, like the only person's opinion that really mattered was my own. And I needed to focus on what I knew rather than what other people thought that they knew about me and my decision making. Um I knew I would only regret not trying to pursue my other things alongside medicine. If I just stayed working as a doctor, I similarly knew that I would remain like a really conscientious doctor. I always have been really conscientious in my practice, even as a student, going through to like being a medical student, through to being a doctor. So I knew I wasn't, I wasn't suddenly going to become a bad doctor in that sense. Um So I did worry about it, but after a lot of thought and deliberation, I realized that I needed to just embrace the decision that I was making. And I had all these, you know, this proof in my head of why this was an OK decision. I didn't need to focus on these negative thoughts that I was having about other people. And that's the other thing. We always worry and have negative thoughts about what other people might think. We really focus on negatives and positives. So yeah, just try and put them in the back of your mind if you can OK, the risk of starting a business. So this is the nature of the game. Um It is a, it is a risky business starting a business. And this is why I think we're in such privileged positions as doctors who can. There are ways like I've described in which you can continue a career in medicine alongside starting your own business, whether that's working full time as a doctor, reducing your hours, even going like part time, completely part time, like I have where I'm on a zero hours contract and essentially self employed as a doctor. Um We have provided, we stay up to date with our clinical practice and have our appraisal each year. We have that like safety net. That's, you know, it's our parachute guiding us down. Um We have that income there that can help support us. Um and it, it massively desks the like our future if that makes sense provided you are you, you know, you can support yourself and you're happy with the income you're making from your medical career. Whilst your business might, might not essentially what you're doing in terms of starting a business is relatively like risk free from a long term perspective. So I think for me that really helped me um kind of just embrace the journey of like, let's just see what happens with the business. Um But yeah, there is no guarantee as I've tried to explain multiple times that it will succeed. So it's just one of those things if you've got a bit of doubt in your mind to start a business and you're like, oh, I kind of really want to but I'm scared it won't work. Like are you going to always sit and regret not trying? I think that's the best question to ask yourself. Um um talking about other people in businesses, connecting your medical education. Oh, perfect. Yeah, then we get, so we've got some people like trying to reach out and connect. That's amazing. So, yeah, if anyone else has got any other questions, I hope that's been helpful. Um Yeah, thank you so much, Ellie. Yeah, thank you. Um I guess just to direct people um your website for the articles. Um your Instagram. Do you want to just Yeah, yeah. So I II try and share as many um like free resource as possible. I talk a lot about everything on my Instagram. Um And yeah, my handle is at then L EG and Todd. I don't know if I can pop it in here. Um um But I've recently, something that you might be all interested in is on, I've got my website is I'll put it in here too. It's really confusing. It's Gabrielle Todd because I my full name is Gabrielle and my parents nicknamed me Ellie from the end of Gabrielle. But I'm creating a free resource which is um essentially a business idea incubator, which is going to be like a, a short guide that I'm putting together of some example, business ideas with different revenue models um kind of explaining um ways in which those different revenue models and business types like structures might suit different people depending on like how much time you want to invest in a business, whether you want a business that's completely hands free um et cetera. So if anyone would think that they find that kind of um document helpful coming up with a business idea or helping them kind of decide if a business idea is right for them, whether that's their own business idea or an like an existing one or a new one that they've come up with, then there's a, there's gonna be a, there's a link on my website where they can um download that. So, yeah, perfect. Thank you so much. Have chats with anyone if anyone ever wants to like, book a call with me, I offer pick my brains calls. So yeah, anyone can, can um just book a call. Yeah, genuinely. I feel like I would recommend Yeah, it's just nice. I feel like you're so vulnerable and you just say that like whatever your businesses you have had to like pivot with it or like just that you did worry that other doctors maybe like what you thought about other doctors as well and whenever you're going into medicine, it's just nice to hear somebody else kind of your, you have options. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. That's nice. I appreciate it. Um Really appreciate you giving up your time tonight, especially while you're on holidays. Thank you so much Ellie. Yeah, that's fine. Well, thank you so much, everybody for listening. Um I hope I haven't waffled too much, but yeah, just feel free to reach out to me if you need anything. I'm always around to chat and thank you so much James for hosting this. I've really enjoyed answering all your questions. It's been great, great and everyone there will just be a feedback form to fill out as well. Um Then you'll get like a certificate for attendance. Perfect. Um Thank you very much Ellie and enjoy the rest of your holidays. Thank you, all of us everyone. Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year. Bye. Thank you. Bye bye.