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[JOE]:
Are you still doing your own billing? What a waste of time. You could be doing counseling or any of the other things that you’re really really good at. My friends over at Practice Solutions are amazing at billing. They’ve collected millions and millions of dollars on behalf of their clients, counselors just like you. Katherine and Jeremy, the owners, are this amazing couple that has built such a crazy, awesome team. A team that will go after the bills, that will get them collected, and you only pay if they collect. As well, they can help you with credentialing. Take this off of your plate, put your time into something that really matters. I want you to head on over to practicesol.com and reach out to them. That’s www.practicesol.com, and let them know that you heard about it on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 487.

Well, today’s episode is part of a series all with Killin’It Camp speakers. So, this year Killin’It Camp is going to be completely online. We have over twenty speakers, we have it all getting recorded – assuming the technology doesn’t act silly on us – and we have some killer deals from TherapyNotes, Brighter Vision, and other folks during Killin’It Camp. So in early October, we’re going to be having Killin’It Camp and you can come live to those. Or if you get a ticket and you want to just pop in, pop out, though they’ll all get recorded for you as well. And so for only $95 you can get access to all of these speakers, all of the recordings, all the bonuses, gotta head on over to killinitcamp.com. These are just a couple of the speakers that I’m having here on the podcast, but we’re having over twenty speakers; it’s gonna be amazing. We have three tracks – one track is called Pillars of Practice. These are short form, TED Talk type talks that are twenty-five minutes long; they’re on very clear, particular things of private practice. The other types are fifty-five minutes long, and those are How to Scale a Practice. So that’s gonna be all around group practices, and expanding, and scaling your practice. And then we also have the Multiple Streams of Income track. And the thing about this is you don’t have to choose between the tracks. We’ve set it up that only one session is going at a time. We have one login that you can pop in, pop out, wherever you can catch the talks, so we really want it to be accessible to you. Again, it’s only $95. So head on over to killinitcamp.com, and you can learn all about the speakers that will be there. We can’t wait for this. So without any further ado, here we go.

Today on the Practice of the Practice podcast, we have Sabrina Runbeck. Sabrina is a cardiothoracic surgery PA, a public health practitioner, and a peak performance coach and speaker, empowering ambitious, young professionals, especially those who are like her working in health care, to become confident leaders who are living fulfilled and purposefully, so they can be both powerhouses in their career, and passionate people in life again, without feeling overwhelmed, underappreciated, or undervalued. Sabrina, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[SABRINA]:
Thanks, Joe, for having me here. And thanks, everyone for listening in.

[JOE]:
Yeah, I’m so excited about this because so many of the guests or speakers that we have at Killin’It Camp are people that are clinicians that have also added something to what they do, but you come from a very different perspective, which I’m so excited to have be a part of our Killin’It Camp summit. Tell me a little bit about your work as a PA, so that we can get a little bit of the back story on you.

[SABRINA]:
Thanks for asking. So my story really started about four years ago. Let me just tell you a little bit about that story. So, one morning I was in the OR, feeling exhausted, running a fever, a 101 degree, and my body just felt weak, and my hands were cramping, and those were not even the main issues. The main issue was, I was standing there with a patient, while my hands are inside of his open chest, attempting with all that I had to just get through this heart surgery with my attending physician, while knowing that I’m not going to have a break for five hours. And at that moment, I wasn’t sure if I can make it. And of course, I was the one who’s carrying the beeper that day. So my beeper goes off right in the middle of the surgery, and that just loud noise made my thinking go crazy. [Unclear] now, did I miss something? I was up so late last night, what’s going on?

Now, I think my scrub nurses, they all notice that exhaustion and that frustration in me so they were passing DayQuils and cough drops under my mask just to keep me going. But well, no, these little bit band-aid truly don’t make a significant change. So the next morning when I woke up, I’m covered in sweat, couldn’t even make out to the bathroom. So that’s the time I really had to call out. I think that was the first time, and one the only time I really had to call out sick on my professional career. However, the answer I got on the phone when I talked to my manager was, Sabrina, you couldn’t find yourself a replacement? You couldn’t tell me this earlier? I’m like, wow, you know, in any professional setting, we all treat our clients with the utter most advocacy for their need, thinking about what we can communicate for them. But we’re not really treating ourselves or our colleagues the same way.

So that’s how I started going out to a new journey, thinking about, hey, you know what, like, ten years ago, I did public health and my thesis was on self efficacy. I had a neuroscience background. Let me figure out how come there are plenty of people in healthcare, they love their job, and they’re doing it all, and how come the rest of us just hustling? What’s the discrepancy? And that’s when I had to spend these hours of training and money, to really figure out how can I fall back in love with our career again? So we can truly wake up excited while rising up as the confident leaders that we are to make these significant changes

[JOE]:
Wow, and I’m so excited about your talk at Killin’It Camp – 3 Simple Steps to Wake Up Excited and Thrive as a Peak Performer. So for you personally, what were some changes that you started to make as you learned more about being a peak performance coach, and as you started to say, I can’t live this way. I mean, as you say that it just really resonates with me. I remember when I was early in my career, I was working at a runaway shelter, and then was working at a residential facility, and on the side had a small counseling practice and that started to grow. And I finally got all these clients and I was working all these hours, and I just remember bawling on the couch, like, I’ve wanted all this and now I have it and I feel just so stressed out. In those moments when we feel stressed out, overwhelmed, underappreciated, undervalued, what did you start to do? What were some of those first steps for you?

[SABRINA]:
I think the first step is just simply recognizing if something didn’t work, it’s okay. It’s not our fault. I think all of us, we got into medicine because we’re smart, we’re driven, we’re ambitious, we wanted to make something great – not only for ourselves, but really serve others. However, the more that we do, the more load and weight that we put our shoulders, then it becomes things we couldn’t do as well. And then we start judging our own individual actions. Now that can lead into all the yeses you’re saying, it becomes eventually resentment for all the stuff that you have to do and people are not appreciating you, or not showing you the appreciation the way that you want it. And you couldn’t deliver as high of a quality because you’re not even in that physical state. Many people ask me, Sabrina, I don’t know how you can do all this now, like, you still operate, you go to work, and you do your speaking, and then you’re trying to also talk to people about coaching – what is all this? And at the end of the day it’s about accepting that every step that we did, we should be allowing ourselves to give ourselves the gratitude of no matter what, your output is to serve. And if you did that, you should be patting yourself on the back, appreciating your own self, not to feel like our identity is attached to that next degree, or the next promotion, or the next thing we have to do.

[JOE]:
Mmm. Now, how do people break out of it?

[SABRINA]:
And the really first step is figure out what do you want out of life? And I think, Joe, let me ask you this – how well do you feel, majority of the day?

[JOE]:
I feel great most of the day.

[SABRINA]:
Awesome, right? So, however, there’s study being shown more than 80% of people don’t know how awesome they are. And we don’t recognize our own quality. That’s because when we’re born, we’re born pure, we’re so intrigued about everything else in the world. But, as we’re growing, this society cast us into some boxes. Our parents are telling us what needs to be done, and what shouldn’t. We’re looking at our next neighbor, our friends, what they have, what we should be having. And these conformity and comparison make us exhausted. And then to a point, we start losing who we are as a person. I mean, like, in majority of the time, when I ask people the very first question is, what are your top three values of who you are who you want it to be? Most people can’t really lockdown, and they just have so many things they’re thinking about, and that’s just clogging their brain.

[JOE]:
Yeah, I think that even though I said, I feel great most of the time, it’s not like that just happened overnight. Realizing that if I have a standing desk for most of the day, I feel better. If I drink one cup of green tea at the beginning of the day, instead of a whole bunch of coffee, I feel better. It’s these little things that if you’re aware of how your body feels, then you can adjust away from the negative feelings and towards those things that help you just feel better overall.

[SABRINA]:
Yeah, exactly. And then one of the thing I will touch upon, especially during our Killin’It Camp, is people ask me all the time about productivity. But then I have to disappoint them to say, you know, it’s not about productivity, it’s about how you can regenerate energy, because without the right energy, productivity really do not mean anything. So for us to already have our plate full and still wanting to do more, then we have to take a step back, how can you be able to put yourself into the best state and where you can use these two minute exercise – which I will teach our audiences during our summit – is to reboot that energy so you can be more present. Get your mind more clear, get rid all that mental chatter that’s bombarding your mind all the time. So now you can be more focused, and most of the time it’s because we’re too distracted to do what we need to be doing, and then keep thinking about everything else that’s going on.

[JOE]:
Yeah, and what’s happening in the body when you’re kind of doing those resets, like what’s actually happening inside of our different systems?

[SABRINA]:
Right, so our body is realigning itself. So when we are able to combine multiple different techniques from visualization, meditation, breathing, even simple thing as breathing, when you inhale, sometimes you can actually increase your heart rate versus a slow exhale, that’s how we can decrease our heart rate. So these are smaller things that will change our physiological response. And then we can redirect our mind to forgive ourselves when things are bombarding us, even doing any meditation, visualization. Some people are not used to them so they feel like it’s not working. But in any activity it’s about repeating, rehearsing, and so you can get that into your life in a way it becomes so normal activity, you can just turn it on instantly. And that’s what I promote, these ‘mini-mental vacation’ what I call them; you can do them, two minutes, five minutes. It do not take that much time out of your life, but the significant outcome that will give you is dramatic.

[JOE]:
Yeah. How would you compare that modality to how we’re typically trained here by society as to how we’re supposed to do it – “supposed to” – compared to what you’re teaching?

[SABRINA]:
Such a great question. I think most of us in society is hustling, oh, just give me another half hour, I’ll get this done, right? Like, I see all this email coming in, I have to sort them before I can get to somewhere. And let me just make sure I finish all this patient chart, so then I’ll go to the gym with you. But if we’re just waiting for the next moment, the next moment might not ever come. And that’s also the way that we do not have boundaries with ourselves, with other people. And if you actually allow yourself to take that two-minute break… and in reality, how long is two minutes? That doesn’t really take that long, right? You probably wasted two minutes just grabbing your phone to check messages, just opening another email trying to read through things and still don’t know how to respond. So allowing ourselves to have these two minutes, especially study being shown, our concentration is really don’t last that long. The optimum duration to work on something is every thirty to sixty minutes so if we’re just pushing and pushing, we’re not allowing ourselves to be in the state that we can actually perform. We’re just procrastinating in a way.

[JOE]:
No, I think that’s so important to note that. Now, when you work with people, when you’re coaching and speaking and doing all that, what are some ways that you’ve seen some transitions, as they start using this modality?

[SABRINA]:
Well, I do it myself before I start a speaking session, like, say, this podcast, I’ll do my five minutes warm up session for my voice, so it can [unclear] my voice and it doesn’t get fatigue. And same thing when I know people are very different in their circadian rhythm and how they are in chronological. So I know I’m the person who’s like a midday person. And my peak performance hours are in that late morning. So things I need to do, right… typically our surgeries, they’re first thing in the morning, awesome. I’m most alert during that time. And if I don’t have a case, I need to work on research paper, whatnot, that’s when I do it. I know my downtime, and my energy start losing in the afternoon. And therefore I can schedule meetings because people automatically bring out energy in each other. So I will do things that way. So that’s how we work with people, is everyone has this differences in how their energy naturally lay. And if you know when is your peak hours, we can plan things more around that.

[JOE]:
Yeah, I love that. I mean, for me, I’m working on a book – it’s called Thursday is the new Friday – and the idea is how a four-day workweek is so much better for creativity and productivity and all of that. And for me, Thursdays actually, to work on Thursday is the new Friday on Thursday, is the best day for me because looking at my own rhythms for the week, if I feel like I have kind of my consulting and podcasting done on Tuesday and Wednesday, then Thursday I feel like I’m more creative than if I say, did that on Tuesday, and then ended up feeling like I have all the rest to do this week. So even just knowing what do I need on those writing days, you know, I need to have my cup of tea, I’m going to kind of protect myself from the news and from the craziness of the world, and then I’m going to be ready to write, versus just kind of showing up and then wondering why I have writer’s block.

[SABRINA]:
Yeah, that’s a such a good point to talk to the audience about is that when you’re an entrepreneur, or if you are running your own private practice, you have more of a leverage of flexibility to figure out which day you might want to dedicate to do this one thing, right? Whether it’s all your [unclear] filming, or you’re the one who like to produce videos for teaching to clients, or you’re the one who you have a designated date, just only date for clinicals, and then the separate day for all the procedures. And now you almost give yourself a pre-decision on these are the days I’m only doing this. So now I’m not distracted by something else come into my play, and I can simply say ‘no’. I think that’s the biggest thing in all of us, is I say to all my clients and my listeners, you have to say ‘no’ to almost everything – then we can say ‘heck yes’ to the only things that truly matter. And ‘no’ is a full sentence. And ‘no’ is actually a good word. When we can powerfully say ‘no’ because we already predetermined our decisions, then we don’t feel like we’re missing out on anything.

[JOE]:
Oh, that’s so important. So the last question that I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

[SABRINA]:
I will want them to know, number one, think about what was the excitement that you had when you got into school? That acceptance letter. What was that joy? Can we continue to bring novelty and joy back to your everyday life now and going forward? And if that’s the case, and then you think about who are you doing all this for? Is that for your family, it’s your patients, is that your team? Because when we can step up and show up at our best for someone else, and that’s when we don’t have to rely on our willpower. And that’s when we can continue to grow momentum and move forward in life, to truly feel purposeful and fulfilled, and feel joyful in who we are as a person.

[JOE]:
Oh, that’s so awesome. Well, Sabrina is one of our speakers at Killin’It Camp. If you want to get your ticket, it’s only $95 and you get access to the whole live event, all three days of it, all the bonuses we’re going to surprise people with, As well, you’re going to get the recordings of all of them. So we don’t expect that you’re going to be able to sit through every single one of these, but there’s gonna be one login and you can pop in and out whenever you can to come to the live event side of it. So make sure you grab your ticket over at killinitcamp.com. If for some reason it’s after October when you listen to this episode, you can still purchase access to the digital recordings over at killinitcamp.com. And we would absolutely love to have you be a part of that.

Sabrina, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast today. Oh, wait, we almost forgot to give away your free…. you have the free energy restore audio exercise. Tell us about that and how people can access that if they want to get it?

[SABRINA]:
Yes. Thanks, Joe. So my idea is that everyone can have these mini micro vacations. And that’s how you can reboot your energy battery throughout the day, and maintain that from the moment you wake up to the time you go to bed. So you will never need to feel like you need to constantly grab that energy drink, or when you get home, all you want to do is sit on a couch and couldn’t even get to the thing that you used to enjoy doing. And even just under two minutes, you can bring yourself back to a state where you feel focused and refreshed. Grab that audio exercise by going to SabrinaRunbeck.com/energy.

[JOE]:
Awesome, and we will have a link to that in the show notes. Sabrina, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[SABRINA]:
Thanks, Joe. Thanks, everyone for listening.

[JOE]:
That was so amazing. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Make sure you grab your Killin’It Camp ticket over at killinitcamp.com, where you can see a list of all of our speakers, when they’re speaking, you can pop in and pop out throughout all of Killin’It Camp, and you’ll also get access to all the videos in the form of an e-course We are so excited to be offering this to you.

Also, a huge thank you to Practice Solutions. Practice Solutions is the premier billers for therapists. Practice Solutions is the best. So head on over to Practice Solutions’ website. We absolutely love them. If you just go over to www.practicesol.com. Go over there to www.practicesol.com, and they will get you started. They will get you onboarded, they will get you all registered with insurances. They are amazing. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. Bye.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music; we really like it. This podcast is designed to provide accurate, authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.