Rx1_Podcast_Dana Corriel, MD, Founder, SoMeDocs: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Rx1_Podcast_Dana Corriel, MD, Founder, SoMeDocs: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Narrator:
ForbesBooks presents: Entrepreneur RX, with Dr. John Shufeldt, helping health care professionals own their future.

John Shufeldt:
Welcome to the very first episode of Entrepreneur RX! Today, I'm joined by a physician turned entrepreneur. Her name is Dr. Dana Corriel. Dana is a board-certified internist and founder of SoMeDocs, a platform that connects physicians across the globe, allowing networking opportunities to help form successful online brands. Dana, thanks for being on the show. So I understand you're actually skiing in Colorado right now?

Dana Corriel:
Yes. Hi, John. We are in Colorado. We come here every year. Obviously, this year was a lot more complicated, but we decided to actually go for it. And we're following all the rules and we got tested and we're following precautions and we are skiing. So it's great.

John Shufeldt:
That is impressive. I went skiing about six weeks ago and I think I tore my labrum while skiing, so I got, no more bumps for me.

Dana Corriel:
Oh wow!

John Shufeldt:
There were small bumps, but anyway, thanks for joining! You have a really cool background. So let me just ask you some questions, because I want to bring the listeners up to speed on you because you're a little bit odd, which is cool. OK, so you went to medical school, you came here and went to medical school in Israel, right?

Dana Corriel:
Yes, I was born in Israel and I immigrated here at age 10 to Los Angeles, actually. And then I went to UCLA for undergrad and then I went back for medical school, to Sackler School of Medicine.

John Shufeldt:
And is that, is that a four-year degree there? Like it is here? Is it pretty similar?

Dana Corriel:
It is. It's actually an American program. So you finish undergrad, I earned my neuroscience degree at UCLA, and then I went to Sackler for four years and then follow that up with an American residency at Albert Einstein Montefiore.

John Shufeldt:
And you did internal medicine?

Dana Corriel:
I did.

John Shufeldt:
Why internal medicine? Why anybody would do internal? I'm just kidding. But why internal medicine?

Dana Corriel:
Well, you know, it was hard for me to just choose one part of the body. Like, I could not picture myself committing myself to just one thing. And that's so funny because it's kind of reflective of my personality. Like, I just love dabbling in everything. And I sort of have difficulty committing, obviously, short of a family. I'm happily married for many years that around 17 years at this point. But as far as a career goes, I just love everything. I love the prospect of having people come into an office where I could literally be like a Sherlock Holmes and I wouldn't know what would be presented to me each day and each visit. Each time that I opened the door, it would present with a new symptom. And I think some of that maybe you can identify with as an E.R. physician.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, absolutely. It's I think I'm really blessed because it's a perfect career for my personality, you know, it's the six minutes-kill-him-or-cure-him. But I like that quick bond that you develop with somebody and whereas is a, oh, I say, I may not be able to tell you what's wrong, but I'll tell you what's not wrong, which is more important. So if you do leave.

Dana Corriel:
That's awesome.

John Shufeldt:
You're going to leave here knowing you're not having a stroke or subarachnoid hemorrhage or am MI or what have you. So I love that aspect of it. But yeah, I know, I agree with you. I love the, all the different things that come in.

Dana Corriel:
The everything, except in internal medicine, you can't leave it at that. You have to actually solve the issue as an issue.

John Shufeldt:
Yes. So you did that. So you were an internist on the East Coast for fifteen years?

Dana Corriel:
Right. Because I was raised in Los Angeles, but I married someone that was raised in Brooklyn and actually went to medical school together. And so we decided to go back after medical school to the New York area. He did his training at Mount Sinai. I did mine at Albert Einstein. And we just remained there and raised a family there. And yeah, the East Coast.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, that's, I've never lived on the East Coast, but it's a, doesn't feel a little different. Though, I read about you, you know, you and I have talked for a little less than a year now, I think. But I read about you that you became disillusioned with health care and decided to basically strap on your entrepreneurial boots, what prompted that decision?

Dana Corriel:
Yeah, that's a great question. And it's actually there's such a long answer to this. So I'm going to keep it brief. As a primary care physician, I just didn't find that the health care system worked, neither for me nor for patients. And I'm speaking about corporate health care, primary care doctor that works for a larger organization, which is unfortunately becoming increasingly our reality. As times change, physicians that are in private practice are finding that they need to be bought out by the larger corporations because there's no other way. So many different factors went into my decision, so many different factors. But at the end of the day, it was hurting me, it was hurting my patients, and I decided that I was going to somehow make a change in health care and I was going to actually create that change and take action. And I was able to do that not just poof, like by magic suddenly, I had been working on it for several years as I was practicing. And so when I finally, the straw that broke the camel's back, it wasn't just one thing, it was many things. But I knew at that point that I was going to commit my full time to the venture that I had already started. And that was SoMeDocs, that I know that we're going to speak about.

John Shufeldt:
Wow, that's, that had to be that, the evening of your last patient when you went home and took off the stethoscope for good, obviously, apparently, probably. What does that feel like?

Dana Corriel:
Wow.

John Shufeldt:
I'm afraid to do it, candidly.

Dana Corriel:
Yeah, I get it. I get it. It was so bittersweet. It was both exhilarating, right, because I'm like, whoa, I am now officially starting a new chapter in my life and a chapter that's undefined like this territory that's so nebulous, so exhilarating, but also very frightening, because here I am, a physician who you're supposed to traditionally see patients and you're supposed to do things the way you're supposed to do and you commit like what, thirty plus years of your life to being there. And suddenly I'm saying, bye bye, so very frightening. Very, very frightening. And I'm not really sure that that fright, that I've gotten over, that fright, that that feeling has left. But I try to remind myself all the time that I'm doing something that has good at the end. I'm still doing something with my degree. I'm still trying to create something. And so hopefully I'll succeed. But it doesn't make me a lesser doctor because I've chosen to do something different with my degree.

John Shufeldt:
It definitely makes you a more courageous physician because I mean, I've done other health entrepreneurism things. I just don't know that I'll ever be able to, I'm sure I will, but at this point, I don't know. I can't imagine taking off the proverbial stethoscope for good. So I have to give you a lot of kudos for that, because that's, that's tough.

Dana Corriel:
Well, I appreciate it, but I want to know quickly here that I did consider dabbling in it while I do this. But again, to stress that, as a primary care physician, the key there is continuity, right?

John Shufeldt:
Right.

Dana Corriel:
And I feel like I can't serve my patients well if I'm not in it completely. So, I mean, I was already working somewhat part time. And, you know, in E.R., that's more shift work. And so you can sort of pick up a shift here and there and still do what you do. But in primary care, it's much harder to continue. Yeah, it's much harder because people like need you at all times. And if they're sick, right, and you're just not working for a few days or for a few weeks, it doesn't serve your patient pop. It doesn't actually work in primary care medicine unless you're getting urgent care, which is very similar to E.R. So.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, or maybe hospitals who can work. Now, you've said before, and feel free to fact-check me or correct me, but you said physicians could really make a significant difference by leveraging the incredible untapped medium of social media. What turned you on to that epiphany? Because I'm not a big social media person or was it a light bulb moment for you?

Dana Corriel:
Well, for me, it was actually doing it myself. It was that first hand experience of having dabbled in it, having discovered not only personal satisfaction and a personal growth perspective of it, right, like, wow, writing out my feelings about X, Y and Z that doesn't work in health care just totally liberated me. From a personal perspective, it was like almost like a therapy session with literally a therapist, except I wrote everything down and expressed it on virtual paper and then pushed the published button. I mean, the feeling there is incredible that you can actually express how you honestly feel and then let people read it, so there's a personal satisfaction there. But also my career advanced in putting myself out there and pushing the envelope and sort of getting over that fear. Career doors started to open. I was started getting quoted in publications and I started to get awards like the top, you know, top interns to follow and the top influencer by Medscape, etc., those kinds of things. And I was also getting courted to come to conferences. I served yearly at the Harvard Writers, the health care writers conference that Dr. Julie Silver puts on, that's fantastic. And I started connecting with people and seeing that I could actually really help others, including doctors, in a very satisfying way. I think at the end of the day, I went into medicine because I love connecting with people and I love helping them. But I realized that it doesn't have to be in a clinical setting like it could be in this newly defined space where I was in control and I was the boss and I could create the rules. And as you know, as an entrepreneur yourself, there's magic in that.

John Shufeldt:
There's a lot of magic in it. And for me, you know, entrepreneurism has really helped me not be burned out after 30-plus years of practicing in an emergency department. Now I have it easy. I work 4 to 8 shifts a month, so I'm not grinding out like I used to do. But, you know, I think what you said there was so interesting. You're still helping people, you're helping physicians and you're helping patients and by sharing what you've learned, and what you've gained, you're helping a actually larger group of patients, you may not be touching them anymore, but you're at least helping their construct and how to navigate the medical field, which unless you're a physician, unless you know someone's a physician, it is extremely hard if you have a diagnosis of cancer or something to get on that path, the right path where people are really helping you out because it is so convoluted.

Dana Corriel:
Yeah, that's where the magic happens. And that's actually like what I'm doing is I am kind of leveraging this online space that to me it's more than social media, it's the online world, but to me, it's just this big space that we haven't yet tapped as a health care community. And it's a huge connector, right, because at the click of a button, we could connect with someone across the globe. And so there's magic in that because now you've got patients that want to maybe find an expert in a certain field, but you don't always have to get to them physically and you can even soak up some of their intellectual property. And what I mean by intellectual properties, some of their content and their expertise, you can soak that up online. You don't have to go and see them in person. You can read about their expertise and what they know and what they've learned. And the same thing goes for the expert themselves. They don't need to wait until a health care visit behind a closed door, one-o- one. They can now suddenly write, let's say, just randomly picking this, but write something in a blog and have an impact that's greater than one-on-one. They can have an impact that's one on a million, if they have a million followers, for example. And that, to me is the future. Is that because that connection is so powerful and is so exponentially big, that's where we're going to turn, is these connections that are sort of online because of the power. Now that just understand me so that nobody misunderstands what I'm saying, I'm not saying that we should replace that one-on-one physical connection because you can't replace it, you can't have someone give you true, truly valuable medical advice that's not there to touch you or to see the expressions on your face and the other sort of things that are important to pick up when you're there live. But still, there are so many valuable ways that we can connect and impact using a virtual connection.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, I think that's so that's so prescient. You know, Bill Gates said in the 90s, content is king. And clearly what you're doing is putting out content that people want to absorb to improve their knowledge and physicians want to absorb it and share it. And now you're helping physicians improve their connection on social media. So a couple of years ago, your name was on the top ten in terms of follow on Twitter, I don't think I'm even on Twitter and Twitter would scare me, what you, particularly times of covid, what do you do with all the folks that, you know, you write something out there that's from the heart and you get this, what do they call them? Trolls, who just rant back at you and you're like, are you kidding me? What? How do you manage that?

Dana Corriel:
There's trolls everywhere. I'm on every social, I'm on every major social media platform, so I've definitely got my finger on the online pulse. Twitter is, you know, great, again, I've got a nice following on every social media platform. It's not my favorite, if I could be honest. I mean, I'm heavily focused on entrepreneurship and I don't think that Twitter is super entrepreneurial-friendly. Again, I might be focused in the wrong communities because I do kind of dabble in the med Twitter community. And I do think that doctors and entrepreneurship are like an oxymoron. We shy away from it for whatever reason, like a lot of physicians and especially academicians, I find interestingly, we almost, I don't know, I don't know if it's the altruistic nature that's inherent in physicians that feels almost guilty to talk business, but it's the world. So I actually don't think that Twitter is, especially med Twitter is the perfect place where entrepreneurship is concerned, but maybe we can change that around by starting conversations. The key, actually, and especially as a health care social media expert that consults with people on what platform to use, right, the key is figuring out what your goals are and figuring out the platform and what works on the platform and then using it to your benefit. That being said, sure, there's going to be trolls everywhere and that's going to be especially true when the platform doesn't match what you're trying to do. And you could take entrepreneurship as an example. Like, I know that you're very big on LinkedIn, and I personally love LinkedIn, too. But the reason for that, in my opinion, from thirty-thousand-foot-view is that LinkedIn is about entrepreneurship, like that's where people dabble to meet other entrepreneurially minded folks. Twitter's different. Twitter to me is just a platform where you're literally just tweeting out random ideas and messages in very small tidbits, right, because you're limited in every tweet to 280 characters. So it's almost like the people there that are sort of revered are those that are like saying really clever things and 280 characters or inspiring in a very leadership kind of way. It's learning to leverage the platform based on what works for the platform.

John Shufeldt:
OK, so that makes the most sense. You have to make sure what you're trying to accomplish actually fits the platform you're using. Donna, let's get into your company SoMeDocs. Now, you went from being a full-time internist and part-time entrepreneur to a full-time entrepreneur, and you found that SoMeDocs, which is short for doctors on social media. OK, so why SoMeDocs? What was the genesis of that?

Dana Corriel:
Yeah, so the genesis was what I discussed earlier, a, which was that I experience growth myself and career impact. And I was like, whoa. I said to myself, and I've lectured on this before, that I was an, I'm an N-equals one, like I am one person, how much am I going to really impact health care? Because, listen, at the end of the day, I'm a very introspective person. I recognize that I have a lot of intellectual property that I can dispense that people can benefit from. But imagine all the other expert physicians who are so smart and where all my weaknesses lie, they can sort of fill in the gaps and I can amplify them or we can amplify one another. We could collaborate. But there's, there are so many other physicians besides me that are impactful or have potential or want to do it. So I was like, let me figure out how I can sort of help doctors to do the same. Now, that doesn't mean I knew what I was going to be doing, right? I sort of knew what my intentions were and knew what I had experienced. And I was also forward-thinking in that I could predict what will happen in terms of the online world and the impact and like all the negatives and the double-edged sword. But I wanted to be, to spark something that could fuel health care innovation. I felt like I didn't see enough doctors becoming innovators, and I felt that that was a shame because I think doctors should be the ones that are innovating in health because they're the ones that actually get to link up with a patient and study all the studies and actually create all the studies. So I felt like doctors needed to have a louder voice online and that I realized that I had skills and talents which could help to fuel this, so that's where SoMeDocs was born. And then over the last few years, I've been able to sort of experiment and shape it into what it is today. And I'm still sort of learning as I go and sort of tweaking it to sort of offer the most to the people that want to take part in it.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, I mean, it's I mean, that's an amazing lead-in to this. I mean, what you're really doing is helping bring medical knowledge to laypeople through these specialists, through their use of social media, where they were probably not, like me, very comfortable using social media much. And I'm more comfortable with a lot of physicians. But I but I'm much less comfortable than most people I know using it. So that I mean, what a phenomenal calling you've touched, you've run out from touching one person all the time to touch him, like you said, up to millions at a time. I think that's remarkable. And you did and left traditional medicine at the same time. It's remarkable.

Dana Corriel:
And I want to just add here, because you did say to be able to sort of amplify medical content, but I do want to add here that the beauty of SoMeDocs is we're not just focused on medical content. I think that the just, the generality of it, right, I mean, doctors can come online to speak about medical content that they're experts in. But guess what? Doctors can do other things. SoSoMeDocs actually helps physicians with tools to amplify their voices, regardless of why they're online, so you take doctors that are have become authors and say, yo, I wrote a book, how can I get my book out there? Or doctors that have services for other doctors, right, there's a ton of doctors that are becoming coaches and they're saying, hey, how can I get my voice amplified? And that's where SoMeDocs stands out. Is that, like you said, content is king and SoMeDocs is trying to stand out by creating content with the doctors that choose to trust in our brand that stands out and allows them to become thought-leaders in whatever niche they decide to be in, whether it's talking about stuff and otolaryngology or in anaesthesiology that they know about or stuff in the financial realm or in the investing realm from a physician perspective. And so that's the beauty of SoMeDocs.

Dana Corriel:
That is and I can see so much value, and just personally I can see so much value in what I'll, what, but I'll continue to use SoMeDocs for. But I see so much value for physicians who want, I always think physicians who started down on this entrepreneurial path, whether it's the toe in the water, 10 percent or like you, you're jumping in the ocean and you're in a swim, have to have some method to communicate what they're about and SoMeDocs sounds like the perfect way to lead into that, to help them get, to dela from this 10 percent entrepreneur to the jump in the ocean entrepreneur. So phenomenal job doing this really so early. Who has been an influencer of your? Who's, who has helped you find you down this path you're on?

Dana Corriel:
What a great question! You know, I think that, that because we're so easily connected, you know, we're consuming information at such a rapid rate nowadays that honestly, like, I am constantly inspired, like on a momentary basis, like all I need to do is turn on my LinkedIn or turned out, turn on my Facebook feed or whatever feed possesses like contains the people that I follow and I can like with a scroll of a thing or find inspiration that I need at that moment. And so it's really hard for me to point at just one person. But honestly, to me the biggest inspiration comes from the people that are taking a chance, the people that literally are doing different, because I honestly, I feel like I am experiencing the doing different, and the feedback that you get from people that don't get it or that roll your eyes or that want to sort of put it down because maybe either they really just don't believe in it or they just don't understand. So for me, it's the people that are like pushing limits and pushing the envelope and just saying I'm going to go for it. And it's regardless of if they succeed or not, like it would be very easy for me to say the person I looked up to the most of the most successful person or whatever, but it's not, it's anybody that sort of gives their dreams a shot, even if they fail at the end.

John Shufeldt:
I literally could not agree more. It's The Man in the Arena poem by Theodore Roosevelt. It's the Mannarino who's bloody and sweaty and dusty, gets up again and again, and knows the great meaning of the trials and tribulations. I, yeah, totally.

Dana Corriel:
I was I have respect for those people, honestly, like those are the people that inspire me because they're me, right? Like I am that person. Like I have failed a gazillion times and I embrace failure to this day. Like I am still understanding that maybe SoMeDocs won't succeed and I'm OK with that, but I'm going to give it my all. So to me, all the people around me that are doing the same, whether they've succeeded or not, are truly my inspirations.

Dana Corriel:
That's very cool. OK, what do you say to physicians who are burning out? And I know I know a lot of them. I was talking about this last night, actually. I never, ever remember feeling like, oh, God, another patient. Oh, the stupid patient. Oh these nurses. I don't recall ever feeling like that. And I, no, I'm not sure why because, you know, if you work in the emergency department, you see some crazy things. But I never got there. And I've always attributed it to the fact that I've gotten to do other stuff that I love to do. So times I spent in the emergency department, even though I was working a lot. So I thought, this is pretty cool, I want to do this my whole life. What do you tell people, these physicians now who are in their mid-30s and they're like, I'm really burned, but I get it completely with covid. But what do you tell them?

Dana Corriel:
Well, that's a great question. I think that that's actually to me, it's one of the keys of solving our burnout is actually doing the different. And you touched on it because I think that the problem is we're in a field where we're almost forced to be fully committed because how else do you become a doctor? It's such a difficult field, right? You dedicate thirty-plus years, but it's just words to say that when you're actually in it, when you're in the battlefield of studying for it and being up twenty-four/seven, studying for your test, needing to constantly be certified, blah, blah, blah, like, and with the ridiculous amount of things we need to do nowadays to maintain our licenses, et cetera, there's no wonder that we're burning out. And so part of the solution, in my opinion, is finding the different, doing something different, developing hobbies, getting a side gig. And that to me, is why SoMeDocs is so precious, is that it helps you to do that in so many ways. And so to me, it's about action, right? It's about finding a community with like-minded people that value doing different. And not just doing medicine, and by the way, there's nothing wrong with doing just medicine, there's just something wrong with being burntout. So if you're totally happy doing medicine full-time, then more power to you. I mean, what I'm trying to say is don't leave medicine. I don't want people to leave like I did, but I want people happy in it because otherwise, right, how are we going to properly treat people, including you, including me, including my children? So to become happier physicians, we need to ensure that we are satisfied completely. Allow yourself exploration, keep an open mind, join a community like SoMeDocs, and then when you figure out if there is something else in life that you would like to give a chance to, or if you'd like to package up, virtually package up your intellectual property and do something online that's a more, you can link up with SoMeDocs and you know, we can help you to do that. Or you can link up with John, right? And you can help them do it from an entrepreneurial perspective. But the point is, just give that a chance if you are burning out.

John Shufeldt:
All right. So last question. And I ask just to a lot of folks, a lot of physicians, I mentor a lot of premed kids and I love it, I help with their personal statements and it's just I have a blast, what do you tell the 19-year-old college kid today who wants to go into medicine?

Dana Corriel:
That's a good question, because I have a 16-year-old son myself who has, is contemplating it. And honestly, like, as much as I feel like the health care system is broken right now, it's still a really beautiful field. And so that's sort of a difficult situation for me to be in because I, health is obviously important and we need doctors. So I don't want to dissuade anyone from entering the field, but we need change and we need leaders. What I would advise, you know, a teenager that's contemplating it, is just, you know, I'd want them to make sure that they want to do it because it's a huge commitment, I want them to make sure that they've dabbled in other things as well to make sure that you actually, that's something that you are going to enjoy for the next whatever amount of time, right, because it's, again, a huge commitment. And I would want them to really keep an open mind because again, I think that the world is changing in the way that we communicate within it. So I think it's important to bring in innovators to our field. So I hope that that answered the question.

John Shufeldt:
No, it was a perfect answer. And I generally encourage people, but with the same caveats you did, this is not the profession you go into if you are money-focused, this is a little.

Dana Corriel:
Right.

John Shufeldt:
It's a way of life. And if you're not patient-centric, it just doesn't work. And, you know, ... Kids in medical school, are like this guy will not or this one will not last long in medical school because they are not in it for the right reason.

Dana Corriel:
Right. and I agree and I do think it's a stable field as well. I think there's such stability. So I think that's beautiful. And again, I think it's a beautiful space to be in, so I don't dissuade anyone from being in it. But you're right. I think it, I don't know. We like as a society put it up on a pedestal, but don't really talk about all of the difficulties of actually, first of all, training to become a physician. But then once you're a physician, like a lot of the obstacles that are faced and that's obviously shown by the high rate of burnout that we're experiencing at this point.

John Shufeldt:
Well, and they seem to be getting worse, candidly, there's a lot difference now than when I started. OK, Dana, this has been for me, incredibly enlightening. Where can people find you?

Dana Corriel:
Well, I have a personal website. It's at DrCorriel.com. It is undergoing a facelift right now. As I figure out exactly what I should post there. I took off a lot of stuff from there. But DrCorriel.com's my personal website and then, of course, the SoMeDocs adventure is that SoMeDocs.com and across social media, you could use either handle at DrCorriel is where I have all my personal things and my consulting and those things. And then @SoMeDocs is the handle for everything SoMeDoc, what we offer and also showcasing all of the physicians that decide to come in and either become members or use our content creation to get their thought leadership out.

John Shufeldt:
Donna, thank you so much. This has been phenomenal. I really appreciate your time. Make sure you're wearing a helmet while you're skiing, and stay warm.

Dana Corriel:
Of course. Of course. Thank you so much for having me on.

Narrator:
Thanks for listening to Entrepreneur RX with Dr. John Shufeldt. To find out how to start a business and help secure your future, go to JohnShufeldtMD.com. This has been a presentation of ForbesBooks.

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