Podcast Episode 30 – “My Burnout Solution: Quit Medicine and Grow a Multi-Million Dollar Business” with Dr. Katrina Ubell

Episode 30 – Too many of our colleagues are facing burnout these days. Over half of all physicians report plans to go part-time or reduce their hours. Up to 70% of physicians report experiencing burnout. This week’s podcast guest, Dr. Katrina Ubell, experienced that too.
After a decade in private practice as a pediatrician, she was feeling burned out and left medicine altogether. She decided to reinvent herself, starting a highly successful weight loss coaching program for busy women physicians. Years later, she has a podcast with millions of downloads and a highly successful business.
She has had to learn how to grow and scale a business on the fly, and she has become a highly successful business executive. Whether you’re thinking about growing a side hustle, going part-time, or just looking for some inspiration, this conversation is for you! Dr. Ubell has great insights into what it takes to be a successful businesswoman, and she’s here to share those insights with us.
“As you grow, you have to let go of some things or you become the rate-limiting step for the growth of your organization.”
– Dr. Katrina Ubell
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Listen to the episode and leave a review on Apple Podcasts
Meet Dr. Katrina Ubell
Katrina Ubell is a Master Certified Life and Weight Loss Coach and host of the popular Weight Loss for Busy Physicians Podcast. After completing her pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Dr. Ubell worked in a private pediatric practice for 10 years during which time she lost 45 pounds in 12 months without surgery, pills, unhealthy crash diets, or fitness apps. Now, Ubell leverages her experience as a pediatrician and as a mother to help other busy doctors prioritize their health and achieve permanent weight loss.
Katrina’s work has been featured in notable outlets like NPR and on several industry podcasts like The Doctor’s Life with Dianne Ansari-Winn, MD and The Science of Self-Help with Dr. Jennifer Greer.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS FOR DR. KATRINA UBELL
- Website
- Instagram: @coachkatrinaubellmd
- Podcast: Weight Loss for Busy Physicians

Free Resource: Setting Reachable Financial Goals
Join the Business and Personal Finance for Physicians and Dentists Facebook Group!
Most physicians and dentists come out of training programs with a huge amount of personal debt and little to no idea of how to actually run a clinical practice. This Facebook community is for anyone who wants to learn more about how to manage their business more successfully and master their personal finances.
Check out the Doctor Podcast Network!
The Doctor Podcast Network is a group of physician and physician family podcasters with incredible messages to share with physicians. I’m incredibly excited to be a founding member of the organization. We are a large and growing network with incredible outreach.
We podcast about any and all topics that are important to physicians and their families including:
- Financial wellness
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- Real estate
- and much more!
Click here and come check out the great podcasts that are a part of the network. If you’re thinking about starting a podcast, we’d love to have you join us! Help us reach out to physicians all over the world!
One-on-one personal finance and business coaching
If you need a little more individualized help figuring out:
- How to build and implement a successful long-term finance strategy
- How to budget effectively without going crazy
- What to do in order to get you and your spouse on the same page with your finances
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- Or anything else related to business or personal finance
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Click here and email me to set up a free consultation today!
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Show times
- 00:00 – Introduction to episode 30 of The Scope of Practice Podcast.
- 01:45 – Subscribe to the podcast, and please leave a review!
- 02:24 – Join the “Business and Personal Finance for Physicians and Dentists Facebook Group”
- 02:46 – Contact me for one-on-one financial coaching.
- 03:40 – Introduction to Dr. Katrina Ubell.
- 04:35 – Welcome to Dr. Katrina Ubell and her journey from pediatrician to successful business owner.
- 06:51 – She clung to hope for mutual respect and value in her old clinical practice and just never felt like she was getting it. So, she left!
- 12:02 – She made deliberate choices that made it possible for her to quit working when she started feeling burned out. Had she not been intentional about paying off her loans early, she would have felt trapped into staying in medicine.
- 14:22 – Dr. Katrina Ubell was in clinical practice for 10 years and then got certified to become a life coach. Eventually, she started a practice coaching physicians how to lose weight.
- 17:06 – While getting certified to become a life coach, she got six months of business coaching, which was incredibly helpful to her entrepreneurial journey. She realized that business coaching and life coaching was tremendously valuable to her future business.
- 19:07 – After coaching a few women physicians, she decided that by getting on a few podcasts, she could really market herself and her business. The key to her business was getting organic mentions in women physician facebook groups.
- 21:57 – All of a sudden, Dr. Ubell realized that she had so many business opportunities that she had to start seriously pivoting her business model to scale. After a year or so, she brought on an additional coach to help her with the coaching side of the business.
- 24:27 – Once she started getting a lot of business clients, she had to quickly learn how to scale her growth.
- 26:07 – In the last year, she has started to add new layers of leadership to help scale the business.
- 27:12 – Dr. Katrina Ubell says that learning how to delegate and let go of certain things was critical to her success as she began to scare.
- 30:07 – Dr. Ubell shares how she subscribes to the idea of “hire slow, fire fast.” She knows that failing to fire people who don’t the job done well will lead to problems. She sees it as “advocating for your business.”
- 34:00 – Dr. Ubell tells us about the specific choices that were major turning points for her business, starting with her podcast. Enrolling people through a webinar format was the other big move she made that was incredibly helpful.
- 36:04 – Per Dr. Katrina Ubell, having a high-quality advertising/marketing team member is incredibly valuable. She’s also excited about writing a book eventually, and having a marketing team for that will be helpful as well.
- 38:02 – She invested about $40,000 of her own money in the business up front in order to get things off the ground. Hiring people to get the podcast editing done and work on the website enabled her to focus on things that she needs to do in order to scale her business.
- 39:21 – She gets a lot of referrals by word of mouth which helped grow her podcast listenership quickly.
- 41:10 – Dr. Katrina Ubell speaks to the 25 year-old version of herself and gives some outstanding parting advice.
- 43:10 – Connect to Dr. Katrina Ubell at www.katrinaubell.com/six.
- 44:22 – Summary of the episode.
- 45:19 – This week’s free resource: Setting Reachable Financial Goals
- 46:08 – signing off
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Related posts:
career, debt, early career, physician, practice management, side gig, side hustle