Episode #23 – Dr Anisha Patel – Creating & Building An Audience With Digital Content (Expert)

Podcast Intro and Mission 0:00

Welcome to the Startup Support Surgery podcast, where we light the entrepreneurial spark in medics and healthcare professionals. Join me, Dr. Jo Watkins, GP, business coach and co-founder of The How People, on a journey to discover where your medical know-how meets the business world. This will help you find some clarity on how to balance work, passions and family so that you can gain more freedom and control over your life but also continue to help people, which is actually why most of us went into medicine to start with.

Embarking on this entrepreneurial adventure is not easy. It is a roller coaster of emotions, but it's hugely rewarding and exciting in the process. Drawing in on my 20 years of blending medicine and business as a GP, I am here to share experiences, insights and lessons. Expect lively chats, expert interviews and real life stories from medics who have taken their own path. Let's break free from traditional healthcare norms and explore more innovative ways of making a real difference to people's health and wellbeing, along with paving the way for a brighter future for us as healthcare professionals.

Oh, don't miss my free PDF called From Stethoscope to Startup, which is an 11-page guide in the show notes full of practical help and advice. This is your roadmap to kick-starting your journey with us. Enjoy the Show. This week, I am delighted to welcome our first pharmacist onto the podcast. Anisha Patel is a pediatric pharmacists turned podcaster and digital creator who is passionate about showcasing the limitless possibilities of healthcare careers. Through her podcast called The Pharmacist Diaries, which is now over 170 episodes strong, she shares stories of innovative pharmacists worldwide while building a career that breaks free from traditional moulds.

After 14 years in clinical practice, including stints in Dubai, working in emergency services in the UAE, she has 100% embraced entrepreneurship and is now wanting to help other healthcare professionals find their voice through podcasting. This is a great conversation because Anisha has completely embraced entrepreneurship and all of the changes and mindset shifts that she's needed to have along the way and is now passionate about helping others find their voice and create long form content in the form of podcasts.

We have linked all of her information below, including a newsletter called Ready to Launch a Podcast in 2025. And you may want to sign up for that if you are interested because she supports with instructions in a series of emails. The fact about Anisha is that her nickname is Mowgli because she spent the first four years of her life in Kenya adventuring on safaris with her grandparents and chasing monkeys in the garden. She has a huge passion for travel, which is another thing we will talk about.

And she's a massive lover of the jungle book. Welcome to the show, Anisha. Oh, thank you so much. I love being featured on a podcast because I'm so used to being the host. So it's really nice to get to share my side of the story on the other side. Well, welcome, and honestly, I can already see that we could probably talk for hours. So I am going to get you, first of all, to explain a little bit about your background.

Anisha's Pharmacy Journey Abroad 3:43

How have you got here? You've done so much. I know people are going be looking you up and I've linked everything that you're going talk about today in the show notes, but talk to us about the whole journey from pharmacist to where you are now. Yeah, so I am a traditional NHS hospital pharmacist. That's where I started my journey. Did a residency in Oxford during that time. Fell in love spontaneously. My husband was already living in Dubai. And I got to the end of my residency and had to kind of make that decision as to whether or not I'd go on an adventure, which obviously the answer was yes.

Moved out to UAE without a job. Looked for a pharmacists role, got licensed there. and initially worked in emergency services. And it was really hard to get a job, actually. It was very challenging because pharmacy is probably about 20 years behind the UK. In each hospital, they might have like five or six pharmacists, whilst most of the hospitals I work within now will have a pharmacy team of 100. Oxford has a team 500 just in pharmacy. So the difficulties around getting a And I wanted to continue in hospital, but ended up working for emergency services working, for the ambulance organization in the country.

And this is kind of where my pharmacy journey completely shifted from a clinical setting to leadership, learning more of the operational side, importing drugs from all over the world. At that time, back in 2014, you'll be surprised that paramedics had no access to drugs at all. So part of the job was to convince the government to change law, to have parameics have access drugs and be able to transport patients and treat them at the same time. Part of my role with my medical director was get that law implemented, which we did.

Can you believe as a newly qualified pharmacists with three years experience, like that's the job that I went into. But I loved it. I love the kind of project management, the operations, education and training, built my own pharmacy, imported drugs from all over the world. And it just opened my eyes to kind what healthcare had to offer outside of the UK. Loved working there, love the lifestyle, loved everything about it, but I became a parent for the first time and then everything shifted. Six weeks of mat leave, sent poor Lily to nursery like full time, and had to do night shifts, weekends, like pumping on the job, kind of crazy for first year of her life.

And though I loved the lifestyle, the income and everything else that I was building, I got to that point at one year and thought, oh, really miss my family. I do miss the NHS. made the decision to make the move and by chance I founded pediatrics once I had kind of established myself in the NHS and then part of my job was teaching students at King's College London. So really nice mix of the clinical side of pharmacy plus education. Having this amazing diverse career and teaching young people When they talked to me about their aspirations as university students, they were so surprised that there was a pharmacist who could do all of these things.

It was one of those lightbulb moments at the university where I thought, if my career is so interesting to people, how can I showcase that element of who I am and also inspire and motivate and also teach them about what is possible in pharmacy because traditionally students believe they are aware of community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy and working for the industry but they have no idea that there's so many other options which is why I created the podcast. I wanted to have a platform where my students could tune in to episodes from pharmacists from all over the world and I started it as an audio-only platform And this was in the height of the pandemic, so it was a really nice way for me to connect with other people because we weren't attending any conferences or really meeting anyone.

And my personality loves that kind of connection, collaboration, meeting people, and it's kind part and parcel of who I am, but also it is part of environment that I've been raised in. I've moved around the world, obviously lived in Kenya. My parents moved to America when I was 15, so did high school there and my first degree. So I really used to kind of like the travel element, the adventure. And I wanted to showcase to these students that kind dreams are completely achievable when it comes to being a pharmacist.

And I didn't know that the podcast would literally transform my life. It has grown organically into this mega beast and I have completely transformed with it. I've transformed from audio only to kind of the virtual video. We've now doing face-to-face video in our own home. And we've kind created this cool studio and my husband's really into videography and has turned his passion into purpose by going full-time videographer and he helps me with pharmacist diaries. But from that, just the creation of the podcast and understanding how I can build a brand, a personal brand.

All these incredible opportunities have come my way. And I've understood that just from this platform and being well known on social media around the world when it comes to pharmacy, that I've now got sort of ambassador deals, I'm working with different brands as an affiliate partner. I have been flown to Germany on three occasions to go and work with a pharmaceutical company to create all these incredible educational videos and do public speaking. And my life as a pharmacist has just like transformed in ways that I didn't even know existed.

And it's just this beautiful kind of journey of understanding like what's possible for me as a healthcare professional, but also what is possible as an entrepreneur. And building that confidence in entrepreneurship, and I'm still so early in the journey, it's been four years but I still feel like it is really early because everything has just been happening outside of my full-time job like i've got two children now i was commuting three hours a day back and forth from work doing this podcast building this brand you know building my social media which is all like it's all been actually doable because i'm amazing with time management but um It's all kind of evolved and given me the confidence to say, well, now my dream is to cut down my hours with the NHS, to find a way to shift from, you know, a full-time traditional pharmacist into this very kind-of like unconventional pharmacists who's kind like building a life that I love.

and taking my family with me and allowing us to have that space to go on adventures around the globe in the exact format that my parents and my grandparents did for me. And it's just this incredible kind of like full circle moment. I'm only in The Beginning, but so much good stuff has happened so far. Oh, it's so exciting. I absolutely love that story. And like you say, you probably don't tell it enough because you're on the other end of the microphone.

Returning to the NHS and Finding Podcasting 11:16

But what a story, that's absolutely amazing. So much I want to dive into here. You have really just illustrated what is possible. Let's go back to some sort of practicalities around when you were doing the job, especially over in Dubai, you talked about building your own pharmacy and making some really big impactful changes. Can I ask, is your husband a pharmacist as well? No, he's actually worked in HR initially, a recruitment, and then switched into health and fitness and is now doing videography.

So his career has been quite extreme in terms of the differences. Yeah, OK, great. So when you came back to the UK, I presume at that point, you kind of reconnected with people that you had trained with. And you can often see that sort of pattern progression that happens, like what normally happens or what is the traditional path of a pharmacist in the NHS in this country, just to put some context into where you were when came from Dubai compared to some of your contemporaries. So you start off as a band six pharmacist, whether you do a residency or not, where you that rotational kind of job.

Every three months you go to a new ward and you to it over three years alongside a clinical diploma. Some pharmacists do it as residency because you really want to engage with the on-calls and the night shifts and build your confidence, assertiveness, all of those kind things. But some people don't go down that pathway. Once you finish your three-years of band 6, you can then choose a specialty. You usually take a band seven job. So I left the NHS as a bound six, but instead of doing the band 7, I kind of skipped that whole element of the NHF and went into a leadership position in the UAE.

And when I wanted to come back to the UK, i emailed my old residency manager in Oxford and I said, hey, look, moving in with my parents who live relatively close to Oxford. I could commute. Can you give me a job? And can I locum and work around kind of like childcare while I'm setting myself up? And also, what kind jobs do you think I should apply for? This is what I've been doing. And he absolutely was like, you do not need to apply to band seven. Like you've already kind surpassed that. You need just have the confidence to go and apply band 8A, which is the more kind like senior position.

I was really nervous about it, but I went for it and did get awarded a job. Right, brilliant. Another great example there, if we didn't pick that up, it's just send the email, ask the question, put yourself out there. Be confident in what you've done and ask people. It's about not burning your bridges, isn't it? When you have been in a system, you made those contacts and connections, then you take that elsewhere. and you want to come back, we need to be brave enough to say, this is what I've done, what do you think?

And I think this where relationship building happens within the NHS, but we don't really know what that is called or what it means. But in entrepreneurship, that would be called networking or using your network, wouldn't it? I guess there's a couple of things around that that are really important. One, I kept in touch with my manager the whole time that I was away, and that was out of pure love and just kindness and wanting to keep in contact. But I realized afterwards that it was the perfect thing to do because when I did then want to ask for a job, he absolutely was like, yeah, 100%, we've got the money, come and work with us.

But also, it just helped me to understand when you leave the NHS, sort of what you can come back to and having that conversation, a little bit of mentorship as well, and giving you that confidence. And in pharmacy, we are very much trained to stay in our lane. We are, very, much, trained, to think band six, band seven, Band 8A, BAND 8B. That is the trajectory, especially if you're in hospital. No one thinks that you could do things outside of that. And I was completely surprised by what I could achieve.

And i just had no idea because I've just been in the NHS and and kind of a little bit brainwashed by What they expect me to do. But I'm breaking that I am breaking the mold and I and i'm thinking differently. We're going to talk about that and we're gonna go into everything. I want to hear all about what you're doing with podcasting and helping other people. Before we turn the camera on, we talked about the difference between the employee mindset and the entrepreneurial mindset. Do you want talk a little bit about about and shift that you've noticed?

Yeah, I never thought I would be an entrepreneur. I genuinely thought i would continue as an employee for the rest of my entire hospital or pharmacist journey. But what I discovered, especially now I'm a parent, is that I really like making my own decisions. So when the podcast started, part of the joy from it is the creativity of who can I interview? What's the conversation I want to have? what is this style of podcast? I'm not being dictated by someone else to actually do the job. I can create what I wanted.I can say what i want.

i can be who i wanna be. im not kind of like tied to a box. And doing episodes consistently helped me to kind of gain that confidence to say that actually, I kind like being my own boss. I really like the kind trial and error around podcasting, around what I'm doing. How can I grow the podcast? How I can reach more countries? Look at my analytics and say okay well 50% of my audience are above the age of sort of 35 to 40. How can I bring in the younger generation because those are the people I do want to inspire and motivate.

So I was doing talks around the country at different universities about careers. And that kind of trial and error really helped me to realize and build that confidence around entrepreneurship and that I could build something of my own that could get monetized and could actually eventually lead to being the one thing that helps me to pay for my lifestyle and help my kids go on adventures and travel around the world. And that mindset has shifted over the last four years. I'm at the point now where We put our house on the market maybe nine months or nearly a year ago.

We've been trying desperately to sell our home because we want to downsize and live as close to mortgage-free as possible because that shift in itself will allow me to cut down my NHS hours. So I've actually left my full-time NHS job and I'm now working as a locum. which has been amazing because the flexibility has just been super valuable. I also get paid a little bit more per hour so I don't have to work as many hours and I'm also working locally instead of working in London so i get to spend more time with my children.

i really miss my job at the Evelina doing pediatrics in a specialist hospital and doing palliative care like it was a dream job for me.

Mindset Shift to Entrepreneurship 18:38

I really want to prioritize what my family life looks like and I want prioritize entrepreneurship and make small but significant changes towards cutting down those NHS hours. So at the moment I do four days a week at hospital and then one day a weeks is solely for the podcast and my business but Maybe towards the middle of this year, I'm hoping to cut that down again to three days a week and build up to two days of entrepreneurship. And I am just really looking forward to seeing what is going to happen.

Because some of it is unknown, isn't it? And part of that is fun. It's hard. it's hard when you're an entrepreneur and you don't know where your income's coming from. And at the moment with podcasting, you can generate revenue from different formats. So you work as an affiliate for a brand and potentially recommend a product or a service and then you get a commission. You could have sponsors for your podcast episodes, which will generate some good revenue. But for me, the the high ticket items come from the public speaking because people see the pharmacist side of me, but they also see so much video content of may and they really value what I'm like when I speak on camera and how I deliver the message that they're now paying me a lot of money to go and you know, fly to other countries to come and do educational videos.

And I am loving it. I m building soo much skill set that can be transferable between my pharmacists role in the hospital but also in my business role as well. Yeah, it's like you found this sort of perfect intersection between your skills and your education and expertise and passion and family. It really feels like that you've got that beautiful complicated Venn diagram and you're sitting right in your sweet spot at the moment, which is amazing. There's so much there that I'd like to sort of pick apart.

I think you talked about risk. Now, obviously, certainly medical school does not encourage us to be a gun hoe, take risks, start before we're ready, trial and error. And I'm pretty sure being a pharmacist is not about sort sitting there behind the counter. winging it a little bit with the various potions that you come up with, in stark contrast to your entrepreneurship journey, which seems to have been a... You talked about being quite early on in your journey before we turned the camera on. And I think to other people listening, you will feel really far along.

Talk to me a bit about risk entrepreneurship, the difference between what that looks like when you're running your own business compared to when your working for somebody else particularly in the NHS? I think I'm quite risk averse and I that's quite natural being a healthcare professional and kind of having a little bit of that NHS mindset and yes to people who might be listening to this they will think that I need to shift my own mindset and have confidence to say that actually I am quite far into the journey.

But because I'm still working four days a week and I've heavily reliant on my NHS salary right now, it still feels like I m in the really early stages of business. What I have done and what I ve mastered is building a community and building an audience. And that does take time. It does Take consistency. it does. Take a lot of dedication when it comes to social media and understanding what the online digital space looks like. But I have made connections with individuals all over the globe now. So that in itself is helping me to kind of elevate what this brand is going to look like.

I've got connections with so many other entrepreneurs in pharmacy as well who have been inspiring me. You've come across my journey, which has been incredible for me because listening to your podcast has inspired me think about what my next step is when it comes to strategy. Right now, up until sort of the end of 2024, it was all about just growing the podcast. I have now built the confidence to say, actually, the podcast is probably the stepping stone to the business. Now, people could do it the other way around.

They could build a little bit of the You create content and you're in someone's headphones. You have got that one-on-one connection with them. you can really build that know, like and trust factor. People can binge listen to your content, and really get to know you and build their trust so that if you have a service offer or a product that you are trying to sell, once they get know it's so much easier for them to actually purchase whatever you've got to offer. I've kind of done it the other way around where I have just been building this brand, enjoying what I'm doing and I utilized the skill set from podcasting to now.

build a business where I'm teaching other people how to podcast. And that idea came from, number one, I've got a husband who's a videographer and podcast producer at home. So in combination, we love working together and we're going to build this brand together. It's so exciting. But what I also realized is that when you look at pharmacy and within healthcare, there are very limited numbers of podcasters out there. You'd be really, really surprised. There's probably around five million podcasts out online at the moment.

But if you look at how many of those are actually active and have published an episode in the last year, there's only 700,000. And of that, only 1.5% are in healthcare space, which is tiny. In comparison, if look a TikTok, that's about a billion users. On Instagram, it's probably about 500 million Instagram accounts. So when you look at the numbers of podcasting, like this is a perfect untapped market. It's a space where if you've got a brand that you want to develop or a service you wanted to offer, you can really get to know people through that podcast.

And one of the things I just love about podcast is A, I love the long form content. having really deep conversations with people, which is different to social media, when you're trying to get things across to an audience within 30 to 60 seconds. And when it comes to healthcare or clinical content, pharmacy content. Obviously, it's really nice to be able to deep dive into side effects or conditions or, you know, indications for different drugs or interactions, things like that. And I do genuinely believe that long form content builds that kind of trust that you're looking for.

But the other beauty is that podcasts can be searched. Unlike social media, where you might go onto Instagram, it's very difficult to search for something. Even if you do find something, you have to scroll back on someone's Instagram profile or their page months and months, months. Whilst if you go onto Google or you going to YouTube and you type in keywords, it's very likely if someone typed in pharmacist or pharmacy career, my podcast was just come up at the top of Google, so I would be found.

So as a business owner, as I develop my strategy, I'm really fortunate that search engine optimization or SEO is going work in my favor because I've already

Balancing Family, Work, and Business 26:10

built something that allows people to kind of find me through an online platform. This is fascinating. And I think anybody out there who is posting on social media and developing their own brand and trying to build their audience needs to sit up and listen to this. I'm going to expand on that a little bit. At this point, you're working four days a week in the NHS, and you have two young children at home. A lot of my audience are parents, mums, People are often juggling busy work life, busy home life.

And I was recording a podcast with Rachel Morris yesterday, who does We Are Not a Frog podcast. We were talking about those tweaks and changes that you can make to your current life so people look at you and may say, well, I'm never going to be able to do that. I'll never be going be to able do what she's done. But actually, if you look what you've just broken down and said, You've made choices, you've taken risks, but you have now put yourself in a position where you put your house on the market.

You have decided that actually you don't want that massive mortgage. you want to be able to simplify your life and pay your bills. private school fees, some people have got themselves into a real financial pickle. And sometimes the reality is we have to stop and say, what do we want to spend our money on? What sort of overheads do you want us to have? Are there any tweaks that can be made to reduce the amount of money that we need to bring into the family to be able to do what we wanna do? And I think you've probably had some hard conversations along the way, possibly not with both of you having this entrepreneurial mindset.

Maybe those hard conversation are not so hard for you. I think we have to see the element of choice that, you know, those choices that you have made to be in the position that your in now and the hard work that we've put in despite having a job four days a week. How have you managed to balance that with being a parent and having young children? So when I worked full-time and this podcast was just being done in my spare time, I would be very strategic with one or two evenings per week that I record an episode as an example weekly.

My podcast comes out weekly, so I used to do a Wednesday recording. the episode would come out the week after, I would do all the editing in the background, the social media, etc. At that time also, my daughter was still napping. So I was really fortunate to use her nap times on weekends to also work on the podcast. But because I love it, and I loved the topic. And if you are thinking about ever creating a podcast, if your listening, it has to be a topic that you genuinely could talk about for hours and hours, hours in something that your massively passionate about.

because when I sit down at a laptop and work on my podcast, it's not work to me. This is fun, this is pure fun for me, It's completely creative, innovative, I'm learning all the time and I am consistently growing as an individual as well as a professional. And that's why it's so easy for me to find the time to do it. It's kind of that hobby. I also, when I commuted, I would run to the train station or cycle to train stations whilst listening to podcasts. so that I had this three-in-one combo of exercising plus educating myself, plus doing a commute.

And then on the train, I would have a strategy as to exactly what I do in that 45-minute journey on my laptop, which works towards the podcast. So I was always thinking of creative ways to make the most of my time. I have at least 45 minutes on-the-way to work and 45 on back to the work on a podcast, so at that is a minimum hour and a half a day. Which it builds up over time, if you think about it like that. Instead of just listening to music, I had an exact list of things that I have to do. So that really helped me.

And then nap times and the once a week. I've shifted what I'd done where, and this is the biggest game changer for me, it has completely transformed podcasting for, me is that batch record my episodes. Now that i'm locaming it's a little bit easier, but When I was full-time I'd take annual leave, I take two to three days off and I would schedule back-to-back episodes for two-three days. Last year in January, I did 17 episodes in three days, and that gave me 17 episode over four months worth of content in that space of time.

And then all you have to do is the editing in the background, which is relatively easy and you can do it bits and bobs here and there. But the bulk of the more challenging part of actually recording was just done in a short space time and I've just continued that journey now. This year I've already recorded eight episodes and now I have enough content for a couple of months. I'm going to India and when I get back I'll have another eight to record and that would keep me going. So that strategy has helped me work in blocks of time which has really helped with time management.

Fabulous. And I love what you said about the commute because one of the first things I say to people is that you're going to have to find pockets of time somewhere. So for me, when I first started, When we started the how people, I was homeschooling two boys and there was no, there is literally no hours and they were no ours in the day. I got up an hour earlier than I would have done every day, probably, well, maybe at least four times a week, four hours a day to work on your business is enough time.

You're creating that an in your day that would otherwise be spent doing something else. So we've got to find pockets of time and we have to allocate and be organised with what happens in that time, not just scrolling on social media. Again, so much stuff there. The passion thing, I think, is really important. Whether it's a podcast, whether it is a business, you've got to love what you do and you have got really, really enjoy it because it does take over your life. It does become something that you want to choose to do.

We could talk about boundaries, we could all of that stuff, but you got have that love for something and this is where I find that intersection is important and a lot of medics including myself, are sometimes trying to move away from the medical side of things. But actually we have these years of expertise. So whether it's our lived experience, our training, you know, if we can find something that brings all of that together and enables us to help people in a different way, amazing. I want to just touch, before we go to kind of your entrepreneurial advice, I just want talk about the podcasting thing.

you know, a variety of people from people that are just starting out thinking about it through to people who are building their audience and doing great things. I think podcasting is seen as something that other people do. And I certainly it was something I put off for quite a long time. Several people had said to me, you should do podcast and we talked about with the how people whether we should be doing it to parents of teenagers and talking to in this long form content of either podcast or YouTube.

Podcasting Advice for Healthcare Professionals 33:38

And I just couldn't quite face the learning and then I decided one day that I needed to do it. So what would you say to somebody maybe that's quite early on? Because you've illustrated that there is this healthcare gap. A lot of people I work with are experts in certain aspects of healthcare and it strikes me that a podcast would be a brilliant way of them establishing their authority and having interviews and conversations with people, building their audience, but also building that connections and collaborative things within their professional world.

I mean, it strikes me as a no brainer. Would that be fair to say? Yeah, absolutely.I think with podcasting, you have to understand that it is a long game. It does take relatively long time to build an audience to get your message out there for people to find you. And you have to be dedicated to it. And I think the one thing that has helped me is the consistency. So in the initial couple of years of my journey, it was really hard to do weekly episodes and I was just so confident that I could do it.

And i was wrong, by the way. I couldn't commit to the weekly episode because life got in their way, kids, the pandemic and having to work crazy shifts. I got pregnant, you know, I was doing my master's degree at that time, so I, was you, know studying as well. So it was really difficult to keep up with the weekly episodes. But then over a year ago, i did shift kind of my time management, etc. I managed to do a whole year of weekly, episodes and you can see from my analytics very clearly that that consistency helped me to kind, of like completely build my podcast audience.

Now I'm not suggesting that someone who's new to podcasting needs to do weekly. What I am trying to say to you is that do what works for you in terms of your own time and also what your audience would like. So if that means you do one episode per month and that's 12 episodes for the year, amazing! Get started. Get a feel for it. Go for audio only if you feel like it's more comfortable for your rather than having to video. At the end of the day, podcast is First off a audio platform right in fact most of my podcast I listen to on audio but I enjoy doing video I enjoyed seeing people face to face when I interview them and having a connection with them, and it makes me have.

like a much more enjoyable conversation and it helps them as pharmacists to give more advice and talk freely rather than doing it through the virtual environment. But I also have my secret weapon which is my husband which a lot of people won't have. So I would say that if you wanted to start a podcast keep it simple and go with audio if your more comfortable with it because you can always change to video later on it doesn't really matter. And the consistency would be the most important thing. You could also do what you do, Joe, is that you started off with just the one season, right?

And you take it from there and see what kind of feedback that You get, you share it all the time through social media, You share with your email list, share It with people that are in your network and kind Of build your audience that way. And you can chop it up into clips that are audiograms. You can take the transcript of that episode and turn it into a blog post for your website. There are so many cool things that AI can help you to do when it comes to utilizing the content itself and repurposing it for so.

Many other things. And also if you're doing solo episodes, you. Can do what I do and batch record. So say, for example, You take two days off and just get those 12 recordings done. And then you take your time with the editing and kind of publication. But yeah, consistency is king. That's the main thing that I think I should get across. Great. And when I was looking at all of the options of who to have helped me with a podcast, obviously a shout out to Monkey Pants Pete, who I absolutely love and has helped to this point put out some really great stuff.

And I'm really, really pleased with what he's done for me. I had several conversations with people and this bit about whether or not there's a video or audio came up and I just wanted to get started with audio, but it also it appeared that there was this contrast between like what you need to do is have all the things like outfits, backgrounds, like make it into a bit of a show like the whole Stephen Bartlett diary of the CEO vibe. versus being really niche. And actually, I think for my audience and those medics out there helping people in their specific area of expertise, being super niche on who you're helping with a podcast is as important as being specific and niche about who your helping as a business.

You don't want everybody to want to listen to your podcast. Do you really want appeal to a certain group of people? Would you agree with that? Absolutely. Mine is called Pharmacist Diaries. It's the diary of pharmacists. Only pharmacist and pharmacy students tune in to me. it's a perfect niche. But now I'm even getting to the point where I want to niche down even further. I might think about looking at interviewing a whole bunch of pharmacy entrepreneurs because everything is moving towards entrepreneurship and pharmacy.

There are so many non-traditional roles coming out and showcasing what's happening around the globe. So one thing I would say is that, you know, get your first few episodes out there. If they're not perfect, it doesn't matter. Go back to my episode number one and listen to it. It's completely different to what I'm pushing out now, episode 172. What you have to focus on is not the perfectionist mindset of getting everything perfect the first time. But the second time you get an episode out, what's the 1% gain or the one percent change to improve it?

Is it that you do an introduction because you didn't do any introduction on the first episode and you just like blurted out what you wanted to say. Is that at the end of the episode you say, hey guys, I'm on LinkedIn, you know, follow my social media. And then the next time it's like, oh, by the way, I've got an email list now, guys. I'm working on building my brand. This is something that you could subscribe to and follow. And you know, you change every single episode and that's exactly what I have done.

It is so nice to see the journey for me to go back to all my old content and actually look at where I come from and where i am today. Wonderful, I could literally talk to you for hours. What about advice, what about people out there that want to go on this entrepreneurship journey? You've talked about lots of different things. I love the whole, you know, progress, not perfection, the evolution of what you've taught about the hole improving one step at a time. But what would you say maybe to your early entrepreneurial self?

What sort of advice would give somebody? particularly in the healthcare sector, regular job, not sure the steps to take. What sort of things do you wish you'd known or what advice would you give somebody that came to you? I think if you're starting on this journey, then you need to think about the idea in quite a lot of depth. You need consider the actual topic that you want to talk about. And part of that is making sure that your really passionate about that topic and you could talk that about topic not for weeks or months but for years.

It needs to be a topic you are happy to about for that long but also a broken down into multiple different pieces or lots of different interviews for years and years because actually this is what you're trying to build. Now this doesn't mean that you can't change your podcast as you evolve and as your brand evolves, that's totally fine, but just know that can talk about something for a long period of time. But look out on social media, on YouTube, through Google, what else is out there. If you use Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Pocket Casts, or any app for podcasting, start typing in keywords on that topic and see what comes up and also listen to that content.

because this is going to tell you what other content already exists. But also, what is the unique thing that you could do that's different to that person? What kind of spin could you put onto your podcast that would be different or better than that other person, because that unique element of who you are is what brings this podcast alive. People love listening to my podcast because of me. It's not just the guests. They absolutely love my story, my journey. stepping into entrepreneurship, I talk about all these things, but they absolutely love the way that I you know, gather information or deep dive into conversation, the type of questions that I ask.

I share my own journey and it is building a personal brand because I bring out who I am in the podcast as well. And so I would say that go on to Facebook groups, forums, just try and find out what is already out there. searching what kind of problems that people have. So say that you're a doctor and you are a specialist in diabetes as an example and type 2 diabetes and your thinking about starting a podcast which might help your patients and if you've got 10-minute consultations. It's really hard to get across all the information about diabetes in that consultation.

What could you refer them to as a resource that would help them learn more about the condition so you could explain pathophysiology in really easy terms in one episode. You could talk about the medication management in another, you could about complications in episode three, how to manage hypoglycemia, monitoring and how you do that, travel and diabetes. Think about all the top ten I guess, topics that you could kind of break down. And then when you go on to social media or Facebook groups or on LinkedIn and try and find where people are talking about this topic,

Travel Dreams and Closing Remarks 43:58

start writing down the problems that people have, the issues that they have the obstacles they come across, their lack of information on a certain topic because you can solve that problem. you could be the person who creates a podcast or podcast episode and solve their problem. And when they then search for that topic, they will magically find you and start listening to you. It's just beautiful. The research element is something that I didn't really think about because I just wanted to go into it.

I could see there was a gap. There were hardly any podcasters in pharmacy. They are still very limited podcaster in pharmacies. and less than a handful who do video. So I'm obviously in a very unique position. And you might be thinking to yourself, well, there's loads of people talking about type 2 diabetes, but they don't talk about it with your experience. They don' talk it about with all your knowledge. they Don't Talk about It with Your Personality. You have to remember that you are very Unique in the story and people will follow you and your personal brand and the way that You educate them.

and that's kind of where you have To start. Okay, I really have enjoyed this conversation. I honestly think you will be inspiring lots of people out there that maybe wouldn't have thought about it before to consider it. And I'm going to obviously link everything up in the show notes and people will able to contact you directly to have a conversation about this. Is that okay if people who are seriously thinking about reach out to you? Absolutely. I mean, I spend most of my time on LinkedIn. So send me a DM.

Yeah, i've shared with you my email address if people want to contact me through email directly. And I've got a newsletter which kind of goes through the whole process step by step. so a lot of things I talked about today are broken down in weekly emails, which gives you some education, but also some insights as well into how to start a podcast. OK, one thing we haven't touched on is your love of adventure and your kind of plans for travel with the kids. I can't have you here without talking about that briefly before we finish.

But that is you hope, isn't it, to be able to head off and do more homeschooling, traveling? I think you've talked about house swapping with Bex as well. Is that on the agenda? 100% on the agenda. The dream, the dream the big dream is to live mortgage free, to escape the UK and be anywhere in the world. And when I think about pharmacist diaries, The beauty of what I've created is I could interview people anywhere that I go. and this podcast can continue. Obviously, virtual episodes will also continue, but the excitement of going around the World and basically having pharmacists diarys go on tour, sounds amazing and still making money using a business that can be fully remote, which is really cool, but then still have the adventurous side of my life and be able to travel with my children.

And if we do sell this house and downsize massively, the plan is I'm going to take my elder child who's in school, she's seven, out of school from September till December and go to India to start with and then do some home exchanges because I am really excited about this whole home exchange idea in both Sri Lanka and potentially also in Bali. And obviously while we're away, we'll rent out our house as well through the home exchange program and still be able to travel without spending too much money and also still able work remotely part-time and build my brand alongside pharmacist diaries as my family.

Wonderful. I absolutely love that. And if anyone wants to know anything about house swapping, Rebecca Rial, episode six, have a look for her online. She is an expert house Swapper. As I have explained, we would not have been able to do our trip for a year with four kids back in 2018 if it hadn't been for house-swapping. It's completely life-changing way of traveling. for many, many reasons. So thank you for coming, Aneesha. Honestly, we might have to do a part two at some point. I definitely need to bring you into the community for you to talk to a load of doctors that would love to know more about this.

But meanwhile, We will keep an eye on you. We'll follow you on LinkedIn and we will continue to watch you grow and develop. Thank you so much for spending your time with us today. Thanks for having me. Transitioning from medicine to business is not easy. It's about adapting our skills while embracing the unknowns of entrepreneurship. it can be nerve wracking, but remember you are not alone on this journey. Please feel free to reach out to me via direct message on LinkedIn or Instagram, or just shoot me an email at joe at bendylegs.com for support.

And don't forget to grab the free PDF from the show notes from stethoscope to startup, which is your go-to guide and resource for diving into entrepreneurship. Many thanks for tuning in. I will see you next time. Thanks for spending your precious time with me. This has been a Monkey Pants Productions Podcast.