Peter is a busy father of 2 in his 6th year of his PhD who decided to draw a line in the sand this year and finally go online.
His biggest shift during the process of writing his book, had nothing to do with his topic or writing… listen in to Peter's story.
PREFER TO READ? HERE’S THE TRANSCRIPT OF MY INTERVIEW WITH PETER BUECKER
Sylvie: Welcome, everybody. It's Sylvie McCracken from sylviemccracken.com. Today, I have one of my incredible clients Peter Buecker, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right.
Peter: Correct.
Sylvie: From mindpointe.com, welcome, Peter.
Peter: Thank you.
Sylvie: Thank you for being here. So I just wanted to bring Peter on to highlight a little bit of what he's been doing. First of all, why don't you tell people, in a nutshell, all the different millions of things that you do. All the different businesses that you have and that you run as a trained orthopedic surgeon, transitioned into a little bit more mind/body stuff and whatnot. So why don't you share what it is that you do?
Peter: Exactly, so yes, I'm a classically trained board certified orthopedic surgeon. I practiced in my home community of Louisville, Kentucky for about 12 years. And then, I decided I wanted to partially, for lifestyle reasons for myself, but also for reasons of making bigger impact that I could make, I thought, one-on-one with a lot of the changes going on in healthcare that I could make a bigger contribution. So around 2012, I started with a PhD program in mind/body medicine at a place called Saybrook University in California. It's kind of a hybrid online, in-person model, and really learned a lot about root causes of disease really interested in why people get to the point they get to and how to meaningfully, sort of get people out of the situations of inflammations, stress those are the kinds of areas I'm most interested in anyway. And then, now, and so, culminating with that degree which is a lot about, was a lot about web-based education and self-guided education for people who are motivated to do something positive for themselves and how can we maximize those opportunities, sort of have combined all my worlds in. And if you call, I think, in our, sort of pre-discussion you referred to me as a serial entrepreneur. So currently, I'm in, I think, my 4th or 5th iteration now of this business, which is mind-blowing, and it's really combines those worlds of dealing with the cross-section of where stress causes health issues where inflammatory disease, which just becomes really chronic and miserable for a lot of people. Really treating those in meaningful ways and I do that in-person and online through platforms like Zoom. And then building, and then moving into that is how do I scale that impact cause there's so many people out there who need the help who are looking for something, looking for solutions to these really, I think, what are often sort of called black-boxed situations in healthcare. We have these people that just continue to be miserable and have no answers and feel like nobody gets them, nobody understands my story, nobody knows what I'm going through, even at home. So when they go to the professionals and they don't know what to do, or offer solutions that don't seem to really add up or work out, then it's kinda like, it's very frustrating and disheartening. So, I really want to offer something meaningful to those people in a scalable way and so that's why I came into the program cause I thought, well the ebook was a tremendous way to start doing that and immediately, I had 3 or 4, 5 ideas of things I wanted to do and finally honed in to the persistent pain category and then, of course, the web courses, which is also part of dissertation work. It's something I've played with before. Using a lot of the concepts from the program, I've really found it very helpful in building web courses and marketing courses and doing that as well.
Sylvie: Well, that's such a great point and we'll come back to that in the web courses and kind of how there's that overlap in when you're creating anything. When you're creating a system, when you're creating a program, when you're creating any intellectual property in whatever form you want it in, it's really the same system. It's really how do we instill that expertise and knowledge that you have, that intellectual property that, right now is like a bunch of gold necklaces tangled in your head, into something that is consumable and in a way that's helpful and actionable for the reader or the viewer or the whatever.
Peter: Absolutely.
Sylvie: So, yeah, so that's amazing. So, first of all, you're doing a million different things and it sounds to me like, is it possible that as you know, in your prior life as a classic orthopedic surgeon, did you see a lot of kind of the end results of not taking care of these mind/body things that now so now you're so passionate about helping people with?
Peter: Yes, absolutely, so that's why I'm, I kinda went this route, because I often say a lot of these symptoms that people develop, and it's different for everyone. Today, I talked to a woman who has an issue with what she referred to as sugar addiction that she could never get rid of. I have had people with skin conditions. I've had people with pain conditions and so it manifests in different ways, but when I say it's like, it's kinda like when your plumbing springs a leak, and you get a hole in the side of a pipe and it sort of starts spraying water everywhere and you walk over and you patch it and you say, “Okay, great.” There's no more water pouring into my home and then a few minutes later, another leak springs out and then you patch that and then another one. Unless you fix the situation with the pipe or the water pressure going through, you're gonna continue having new problems. Now, we see that with people where we get them through one thing.
Sylvie: Yup.
Peter: They say okay, great, my knee feels better, awesome, and then 6 months later, they come back and go, “Oh, my knee feels better but now I'm having all this pain in my shoulder,” or “I'm having this pain in my back,” and so the symptoms just kind of or I'm seeing this other doctor because I have this other problem and the symptoms keep popping up in different ways because we're not dealing with the underlying problem.
Sylvie: Yeah, and I love that you as an MD, is talking about this because MD's can get a bad rap sometimes. You know, of really just kinda treating things in a very conventional, traditional way, writing scripts, surgery and whatever else, which of course is necessary and thank God for all of that when we need it, but often times, some docs don't look at the root cause and don't you know, don't treat the root cause and whatever else and that's, you know, it just seems to be this thing. So I love hearing you and of course, a lot of people give credit to MD's just because you've been through a hundred years of school and have an alphabet soup behind your name and all of that good stuff. You know, for fixing these conditions, and I love that you're doing this in a very mass, you know, what's the word, you know, kind of like, unmass.
Peter: En masse. Right.
Sylvie: In a way, you're really, you're able to kind of package your knowledge and really say, “Let's see if we can save you from the scalpel if possible”.
Peter: Yeah, absolutely.
Sylvie: Let's have that be the last resort, yeah.
Peter: Yeah, absolutely and its kind of our system is sort of upside down a little bit, like we go the way we're trained anyways, we go straight to you know, medications, injections, surgeries, you know, invasive procedures and then later when all that doesn't work, then we go well maybe you should also look at these things. Whereas we probably should say, “okay, well here's the things you can do for yourself, here's things that are noninvasive,” and then we'd move into the more aggressive things including pharmaceuticals, which you know, we know because we've watched the commercials and see all the stuff. I had a mentor of mine say, you know, when you see the long list of side effects, realize those aren't side effects, those are the effects. So that's what they do and they're maybe unwanted, but they're part of the deal. So, I think we're moving into, I'm hopeful that we're moving into an era where we're gonna having to be a lot more conscious about things. If for no other reason, because of cost and how things are scaling in that way.
Sylvie: Yeah, a little less trigger happy with the prescriptions and whatnot, yeah. So, that's amazing. So, okay cool, so you know, it sounds kind of clear as to why you decided to kind of, you know, join the program and really write a book and all of that good stuff. Tell us about the progress you made in 8 weeks. I just got back from London, so if I say progress, that's why. But yeah, like, you know, what did you accomplish in 8 weeks, which is really not a lot of time.
Peter: Yeah, it was, it was a little bit like drinking out of a fire hose, they say, at times. But it was wonderful because like, I was really motivated. I really wanted to get as far as I could in that time to take advantage of the resources, which were amazing. The feedback and the Q&A's and the communication with the other people going through is really tremendous and so I was able to obviously get my idea honed down, it took me the first couple weeks probably to get my ideas solid. I got my mind maps built, which I love, I use MindMeister for everything now.
Sylvie: I love it! You organize your whole life.
Peter: Everything, everything, I love it. And then, I was able to create my outline. I did a, created a competition for my book cover, got 2 book covers. Really struggling as to which one I'll use, I'm kinda saying that when I get most of my content written, it'll become clear to me which one is the right one, and I was able to at least get a rough draft of the first like 3 or 4 or 3 and a half or so, chapters, of the actual book done in that time, so in 8 weeks, to go from nothing and wrote kind of a sort of a draft level sort of sales page that I didn't really like, but at least got it done to the point where I kind of understood why I liked it, didn't like it, where I needed to go from there. So, I mean, a lot accomplished in 8 weeks. In this life, I didn't mention this part, the other businesses I'm part of. So, in a really busy life and plus raising 2 daughters at the same time.
Sylvie: That's great.
Peter: Was able to get all of that accomplished, so and it's only because 2 things, one is tremendous support and help and feedback and quick turnaround from Millie on a lot of things, and then secondly just being very motivated to wanna get it done during that time cause I know like, for instance, now that I'm out of that 8 week period, things move a lot slower, like you know…But I've also been creating other stuff cause I got motivated to create the web course, so I kind of went that direction, but using, like we said, a lot of the same concepts.
Sylvie: Yeah, I love that, and I also love, you know, you really do have a hundred things going on, so I'm curious, where did you fit that in, like what did your schedule look like and where were you able to kind of carve out the time to make it happen?
Peter: Yeah, you know, I've witnessed people, one of the advantages of being in the medical world all those years, is I've witnessed how people build efficiencies into their life, because this hectic lifestyle and you might be academic, you might be trying to publish research papers, you might be reviewing for journals, you might be, you're trying to work family life in between all this stuff, and I've just witnessed how people can get in a zone of where they never really stop moving, and that's not always been my personality. I've, you know, chance to sit down, take a break and whatever, I will. But what I found was, being so motivated towards those things, I would just find those little crevices in the day where I would say, “Okay, well, I've got an hour, let me just sit down and play with my mind map and see. Really, once I had that, that's just like a cut and paste job to make the outline really.
Sylvie: Yup.
Peter: And then, writing for me, is something that's always come relatively easy. Like, I can write, and that's not the way it is for everybody, but I've done, being in this PhD program the last 6 years, it's a lot of writing. And so, I've got kind of a process I can go about and organize my thoughts.
Sylvie: Yeah.
Peter: On paper, and again, it's rough draft. There's a, like, one of those chapters, I'll go back, basically, and completely rewrite now that I have more experience with it. But, just found ways of whatever I was motivated to, at the moment, I'd say, “Okay, I have an hour what am I motivated to do?” Well, I'm gonna write, or let me check in on my cover design contest and see what's going on there, and communicate back and forth with those designers. So, whatever I was feeling most motivated to at the time, but it might be I woke up an hour early before I was going anywhere. It might've been I stayed up a little bit later at night. It might've been I just, sitting around flip my phone and look at Facebook, and play games, I was saying, “Well, let me do something productive,” and cause it was fun. I was having a lot of fun with it too.
Sylvie: Yeah, that's so interesting because, you know, I mean, what we found is really everyone has the time, more or less, or somewhere in between, but it's really about making it a priority like you said, right? And really saying, “Okay, maybe I can skip the game and do that instead.” So, that's awesome.
Peter: It's fun too, and I think, you know, the promise of, well, I'm doing something really meaningful that I could maybe make some money off of, and that really adds to it. It makes it a lot more, and it makes it something to be motivated about.
Sylvie: Yeah, no doubt. So, what strategy or module or, you know, part of Ebook Engines program would you say was the most helpful for you?
Peter: Well, I think that for me, a lot of it was probably the, I mean, the nuts and bolts stuff at the beginning was awesome. But I think, really, probably more, the marketing and sales stuff at the end was probably the stuff I needed the most because it's just, it's foreign to me, and I've not really figured that out in life, and I think it will serve me very well in all these things that I'm doing.
Sylvie: The 17 businesses that you have.
Peter: Yeah, so I took a lot of notes, and I've rewritten them, and sort of reorganized them 2 or 3 times to really make sure I kind of understand it. And so, I think that that piece really makes the program invaluable. I think you can go, you can kind of piece together a book, you know, logistically. But to understand, I think, the mindset stuff, which obviously is something you'd hammer week after week after week after week, but the really, it's even now, I'll wake up in the morning and I'll say, “I don't know,” then I'm like, “No, wait, stop. That's yourself talking, let's get over it.” That's really shifted how I think about everything I do. Though, maybe that too, but from the logistic…
Sylvie: Maybe that too, that's huge, I mean, because, so, it's so interesting right? Because that seems like a non-tangible, so, you're like, “Yeah, well whatever.” But the truth is that is a lot of the times a root of just about everything, right? We kind of think about things, we, I don't know, we manifest things into being, so it's just interesting to kind of start with those mindset shifts. So, would you say that, I found that really interesting, you know, when you start in your kind of negative self-talk, perhaps, kind of defaults to that, which that's just kind of the world we live in, and now you have this conscious shift that you can make. Is that something that's kind of trickling into your life outside of work; outside of business?
Peter: Everything.
Sylvie: Yeah, so can you give us an example of where that is in, whether it's your parenting, or your personal life.
Peter: All of it. All of it. And so, that's how I approach who I'm gonna hang out with at the moment, it's how I approach what activities I'm gonna get involved in. It's even, like, to do this call. I mean, honestly, if I would've been invited to do this before this program, I might've been like, “Ah, I don't know.” But I was like, “Oh, absolutely, why wouldn't I do this?” You know? And it's, yeah, everything. How I view relationships, how I view parenting, how I… everything, everything that I do. And running this business, and building these courses, and all of it, and I've noticed I'm building the courses. Again, I know I have a very unique set of credentials with the mind/body medicine degree, and the orthopedic background, but then, still, there's that part of me that's going, “Well, I don't know, maybe I'm not the best person.” You know, I mean, you still…
Sylvie: Yeah.
Peter: That still sneaks in, and then it's like, wait, stop, just stop with all of that. This doesn't to be perfect the first time, it just has to be something that you can stand behind and put it out there, and then it's gonna shift and change and morph, and that's okay, but the people that are gonna be watching this have maybe no information in this regard, so anything is better than nothing, and so, we just keep moving.
Sylvie: Yeah, it's amazing how much mindset really holds most people back, in terms of that self-doubt or that limiting belief of, “Yes, I've been through 600 years of school, and have all this experience, but maybe I still need whatever else until I'm qualified.” So, that's huge, so I'm glad you shared that because I think that not everyone is willing to admit that, perhaps, but so far, I have yet to have a client not mention it at some point in the journey.
Peter: Right, absolutely.
Sylvie: So, that's huge. That's fantastic. So, that's amazing. I mean, I feel like another thing that's sort of popping into mind is cause you have these 2 kids, these 2 incredible kids, what age are they?
Peter: 15 and 11, two daughters.
Sylvie: Yeah, okay, got it. So, 15 and 11, so, have they seen you working on this? Do they know what you're doing?
Peter: They see me working on all my stuff, yeah. They have been a part of all these serial businesses I've been doing, and yeah, they see all of it as well.
Sylvie: Got it, and so what do they think? How is this affecting them?
Peter: They probably think I'm a nut, but they're very supportive, and yeah. You want to hope, obviously, what you hope is that this sets a good example for them to see that they can do positive things. They can work, there's alternative ways to do work, to make income, to make your stamp in the world, other than just going, signing up to sit in an office from 9 to 5. And for some people, that's perfect, that's great, that's awesome, but there's other ways to do it and I always want them to reach big and dream big, and reach high, and again, get over those little mountains that we all build for ourselves. And so, yeah, passing a lot of that mindset stuff onto them as well.
Sylvie: Yeah, and I absolutely love it when those lessons kind of trickle in, right? Because I'm sure that they're dealing with a lot of these things right now in their own little way, and you're able to kind of share what shifts that they can make now, so that they're, hopefully, at our age, not dealing with as many of them.
Peter: Exactly.
Sylvie: That is fantastic. Well, I appreciate you so much, Peter. I absolutely love the way you've shown up in the program, I love how resourceful you were, especially when it got tricky to narrow that topic, and we had to kind of go back and forth for a little while, and you hung in there and made it work, and you're making it happen. So, I appreciate you taking the time to share that with everybody. I think it will really resonate with them.
Peter: Yeah, I'll say thank you for everything that you and your staff have done. It's been just such an amazing journey. It continues to be. It was partly, the other reason that I really felt compelled to do this was just out of gratitude, and to say thank you for everything. You know, there's some sticker shock on the program at the beginning, but then you look at what you get and what that has propelled me to be able to do in my life, and you really can't put a value on that. It's tremendous.
Sylvie: I appreciate that. That means a lot, and I'll definitely pass that along to the team as well, so, without them, we couldn't do it, so appreciate you for that. Is there anything else that you would want to tell to any docs, or health professionals that are listening that might be kind of on the fence on whether they should create an eBook, whether now is the right time or not? Anything that you'd like to share?
Peter: Yeah, well, there is no other time than now. I always look at that quote of, “There's no time like the present,” like, well, really there's no time other than the present. So, if you're gonna do it, now's the time, and I think in the healthcare world, and I think a lot of docs know this, which is the healthcare world is getting harder and harder to really do healing work. It's getting harder and harder to really reach your patients in a meaningful way, and it's such a powerful way to get your information out, to follow your passion to…Just like, how do I put myself in this book and make it so that it's like I'm having a personal conversation with every person who reads it. And it's such a powerful healing medium that I wish that everyone, every doctor who had an area of expertise or interest or something they're passionate about, could pursue that. And the other thing is, what you're passionate about may or may not be the thing you do in the office every day. It may look different once you're really open to that, and not limiting that view to, “Well, here's the one thing I'm most known for.” Well, yeah, but that may not be the thing you're most passionate about, so what is it that really gets you out of bed in the morning, and gets you excited, and write a book about that because then, the power of something like that is immeasurable.
Sylvie: Yeah, no doubt, when you bring that passion to it, it's incredible. And that's really our goal: to reach as many docs and health professionals as possible, and really, collectively, make a huge, huge, impact in the world, and really change lives in a much more meaningful way than the broken one-on-one model can do.
Peter: Right, absolutely.
Sylvie: Anyway, well, awesome. Thank you so much, Peter. And for those of you listening in, if you think that you'd like to create an eBook, if you've seen our webinar and are wondering if you can do it, if you've got what it takes, book a call with our team. The link will be right below this video. It's sylviemccracken.com/call, and our team will talk to you and figure out can we help you or not, where is your business right now, what do you want it to get to, and can we help you bridge that gap or not? So, book a call with the link below, and we'll talk to y'all very, very soon.
