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In recent episodes, we’ve seen examples of unique career paths — those that involve mashing up various skills and experiences to achieve career fulfillment and success. But how can you create this personal mashup while also delivering impact in wider society?

Annette Grotheer is a doctor, healthcare advocate, Forbes 30 under 30 Class of 2020 recipient, and the founder of The Shop Docs, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing preventative care back to the minority community. 

Doctor Grotheer believes that parallel pathing of passion and purpose, with both traditional employment and entrepreneurial ventures, is how people can make the most impact possible in and out of the workplace. 

In this episode, Dr. Grotheer shares

• Her career journey to deliver impact and align to her passions

• Why a career mashup is so important to fulfilling all of her 

• What it takes to create that business traction which taps into your diverse interests, experiences and goals 

A Goal to do Good at an Early Age 

Throughout Annette’s career to date, she’s made strategic choices to ensure the delivery of meaningful and lasting contributions while still progressing in her career. 

While some of us find our purpose later in life, Annette’s childhood shaped her goal of helping others and having a global impact at a young age. Traveling back to Liberia, where she was born, gave her exposure to the hard conditions and intense hardships that many faced — something she wasn’t exposed to growing up in the U.S.

That eye-opening experience motivated her to give back and have an impact in a meaningful way, and she saw healthcare as a pathway to doing that.

This innate empathy she had for others coupled with the desire to help those in need also hit home on a very personal level. Her adoptive mother struggled with her own medical issues and lacked the assistance to support her. So, she wanted to advocate for those who were not able to do so themselves.

Seeing the Possibilities that Created New Opportunities

While these experiences were underlying motivations for pursuing her eventual medical profession, being a doctor wasn’t even on Annette’s radar in the beginning. 

She perceived that many doctors didn’t possess key qualities that represented her or the approach she wanted to take in supporting others. The dominant demographic was also older white men who she couldn’t identify or really connect with. It wasn’t until she had the opportunity to work with physicians who also had an MPH that she witnessed a more empathetic and compassionate way of practicing medicine.

Further, having a female role model who represented the possibilities and broke the norms of what a traditional and conventional doctor reflected was a critical driver in Annette’s decision to make that pivot and pursue the profession. 

This passion for advocacy coupled with her purpose to deliver impact eventually led her to work on two goals in tandem: pursuing a medical career while establishing a healthcare non-profit, The Shop Docs.

Marrying Passion, Purpose, and Impact by Leveraging an Existing Framework 

Annette has always had a deep interest in advocating for and supporting the minority community. During her college years, she was involved in various community-based programs and engaged in fulfilling volunteer work. 

These efforts had shown her the power of being able to truly motivate and educate others by delivering consultative and personal support. That was the inspiration for The Shop Docs, which started off as the Capstone project for her Masters in Public Health degree, which was in addition to her Doctor of Medicine degree. 

Annette took an existing framework and adapted it to work in the environment that she was in. What was key was identifying the specific audience she wanted to support based on a clear need, yet being flexible in continuously adjusting the experience based on what she and her team learned. 

Her nonprofit goes into barbershops and does preventative health screenings while men and women wait to get their haircut. It’s healthcare done in a different way by connecting with a population that typically has the worst health outcomes in a setting they are most comfortable with so they can learn about how to best improve their own health.

“There really is this barrier between physicians and the people that we want to be helping because they don't necessarily think we have the best motivations behind what we're doing. They think we want money. They think that we're willing to, negate whatever their best interests are for our personal gain. And it's a very persistent and probably, perception of healthcare, especially in minority communities”

With The Shop Docs, Annette identified a way to mashup her community advocacy with her medical training and created alignment between passion and purpose while fulfilling an unmet need. 

Creating the Mashup to Have That Double Impact

Annette sees a growing number of people willing to challenge the status quo, be creative, and take risks. You don’t have to only be a consumer, you can be a creator and pursue those interests through a side hustle, which could scale into your primary job over time. It’s not just a pipe dream anymore. 

“In my mind this whole, entrepreneurial spirit comes from a desire to improve the world around us.”

She’s always been a person who has parallel pathed multiple efforts and she credits this for helping her grow as a person and expand her horizons. By actively engaging in one’s diverse interests through your side hustle, Annette believes it not not only stimulates the mind but more importantly it enables you to reflect who you really are. 

At the end of the day, it’s about connecting with what fulfills you most and realizing that you can turn something that you do almost every day into your side hustle and, eventually, a business that supports you.

Key Takeaways

• Understand what service/product people really need and test as many ways as you can because that will enable you to have the most impact.

• Don’t get caught in the trap of traditional and close-minded thinking in building a business where you think of selling things to people. That's a limited view.

• You are probably already doing something in your spare time that someone would consider a valuable service. You don’t need to invent your side hustle out of thin air.

• If you want to start a side hustle, pick something that already excites you and you're already spending your free time doing it.

• Think of ways to leverage pre-existing systems that capitalize on your prior interests (e.g. things that you're already doing as hobbies or activities you have already spent a lot of time doing) to help you get started. 

• Start with a mini version of the business that you want to have, which can be achievable even with a full-time job. 

  • It’s important to understand what your limitations are. It’s understanding what you can do as well as what’s that minimal viable impact you want to have. 

  • Once you feel it gets traction, you can determine if this really something you want to commit to more fully. 

  • By taking these small steps, you can see if what you want to do gains traction. You’re also parallel pathing to create this multi-threaded career.

• Having frequent and ongoing conversations with others and getting their feedback helps you solidify your mission and ultimately convey what you are trying to do. It will help you stay focused and determine what opportunities fit and don’t fit.

• Testing, learning, and iterating is so crucial in today’s world to provide what is actually needed vs. what you think is needed. Plus it helps you adapt when change and uncertainty is constant. 

• Acquiring new skills will be critical to helping you progress. But it really is the people — those important relationships that you will develop along the way — that will illuminate where the gaps are and how to bridge them.

Resources:

• Annette’s Instagram

• Annette’s Twitter

• Visit The Shop Docs

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