S1, E12: Diversity in Medicine: An Innovative Doctor Fills the Fertility Gap

Dr Danielle: [00:00:00] I mean, if you think about our space, we are just starting. And I would say like within the last five to eight years to hire African Americans into the bigger private practice spaces, that just wasn’t a thing. And I went to Kaiser initially and Kaiser wasn’t doing in vitro fertilization, which is kind of like our bread and butter.

So like why I couldn’t stay there. And so I ended up. working in a small practice for about 18 months and then sort of went out on my own. But it’s mainly because that really wasn’t an option for me.

Georgi: Did you know the average person will work 90, 000 hours in their lifetime? What if you could use those hours to find fulfillment and become a disruptor for good?

Welcome to the work that’s worth it podcast. I’m Georgi Enthoven, and I’m here to demonstrate that an ambitious, meaningful and rewarding career is not just a dream. It’s achievable. Each episode, we’ll dive into conversations with global change makers who cracked the code on combining income and impact.

If you’ve ever felt like you were torn between a paycheck and your [00:01:00] purpose, or maybe you simply yearn for more purpose, you’re going to be exposed to the. Iam delighted to have a very special guest today who is a true disruptor for good in healthcare. Dr. Danielle Lane is a reproductive and fertility specialist who’s redefining what it means to create meaningful and impactful work in her field. As one of the few Black female specialists in her field, Dr.Lane didn’t just build a fertility practice. She created a mission driven organization that addresses critical gaps in reproductive health care. She’s not just treating patients. She’s expanding access for communities historically underserved in fertility medicine. Her work goes beyond medical treatments.

At Lane Fertility Institute, she built an organization committed to representation, [00:02:00] collaboration, and personalized care. With the most diverse donor database in the country and a commitment to serving patients across all backgrounds, Dr. Lane exemplifies how professionals can transform their field from the inside out.

Her journey is a powerful testament to how individual passion can create systemic change. I can’t wait for you to meet her. Hi, Danielle. Wonderful to have you here on the work that’s worth it podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m very excited

Dr Danielle: to speak with you today.

Georgi: Yeah, I think it’s a real gift to have you, and I am so interested in what you have to share about the medical profession and your particular niche in it, and I wanted to start out by asking you, what makes your work worth it, and if you can share What it is that you have built up.

Dr Danielle: Sure. Well, so first of all, I’m a fertility specialist. And that means by definition that while I work with men and women, a lot of my work is about [00:03:00] supporting and elevating women through what is arguably a very difficult time in their life. Right. I think that most of us grow up with the assumption. That we will be able to have Children how and when we want to.

And so I think that what I enjoy the most about my life is helping people navigate that space career wise anyway, but navigate that space when it’s not as easy as what they predicted. Sometimes I get to see women who are, you know, thinking about ways in which they’ll prevent ever showing up in my office.

Unpredicted. But most of the time I’m helping people navigate that space. And so that’s really a joy. And I guess I think the other thing that I spend a lot of time doing is trying to create spaces in the healthcare workforce for other women through internships, through coordinator positions of pre health students.

And I recently was writing some applications and [00:04:00] had to sort of reflect on that. And I think that’s actually, Equally as exciting for me because, you know, we as women still represent low percentages of physicians as African American women were 2 percent of the physicians in the country and we need to do everything we can to increase representation.

Georgi: Yeah, I Googled you before this meeting and it came up several times, but one of the things that came up is compassion said such a compassionate doctor. And I imagined the way you’ve just introduced yourself and what makes your work worth it is all centered around the people that you help. And I don’t know if people reflect that to you, but that is something that even just in this quick answer, it becomes very evident.

Dr Danielle: Well, thank you. I mean, you know, look. I have learned to be thoughtful about the outside comments that I take in. Sometimes they reflect reality. Sometimes they don’t. I hope that I’m compassionate and empathetic. [00:05:00] And I certainly. I think that I guess the other piece of that is I enjoy working with people who enjoy working with me, right?

And so, you know, not every physician patient relationship is going to be perfect. Just like not every relationship is perfect. And so I think part of what you learn over time is that it’s more important to work with people who want to work with you than it is just to work with people. Yeah. I think I have a lot of patients who feel that way, but it’s because we try and create an environment where the people who are a good fit for our practice, and not just me, but our entire team, I do not practice in a silo, find joy in working with us as a practice.

Georgi: I wonder if you can walk us through, I interviewed somebody recently for the podcast who is a politician and she said, it has to be the easiest thing in the world to start. You could just go volunteer at your local office and there are no barriers to get [00:06:00] into being a politician. Obviously, there’s, it’s hard to work your way up, but there are no barriers.

On the medical field, it’s totally different. And I wonder if you can share your journey of what it took to get. You to where you are today.

Dr Danielle: I guess I would say that there are both barriers and paths in Every field and sometimes the barrier is yourself, right? So I think that if you want to become a physician you can become a physician But you have to manage yourself, right?

I think that for me the path was relatively straightforward for better or worse I had Two parents that were in science. My dad is a PhD in computer science and my mom is a master’s in chemistry. So they took science and STEM pretty seriously before STEM was even a thing. And so, you know, I was given a handful of things that I could major in.

And at the time, you know, that might seem pretty harsh, but the intentions were of course, you know, I mean, we’re an African American family. And at that time, what. people knew was that if you became [00:07:00] a doctor or an engineer or a scientist that you would have a job, right? So that was sort of the thinking. I started out in engineering and I actually didn’t really like it that much.

I loved math and science, loved physics, loved doing problem sets. But when I went to apply it back in the 1990s, engineering, as I say, wasn’t really sexy. There was no Google or Facebook, right? Didn’t really like the application of. And so I switched and went into physiology as a major and was at McGill up in Montreal.

I have a dual citizenship, so that’s why I ended up there. And really enjoyed it and enjoyed the people that were in the field as well. So that was really important to me. I wanted to be in a field where I liked the people that I worked with, right? I then left and applied to medical school and I actually got a scholarship to go to the University of Pittsburgh.

So when we talked about this conversation about barriers, I mean, really. I didn’t really pay very much for undergrad, and I actually talked about this one in my TikToks. You know, my tuition was like 500 bucks a semester at McGill. That’s amazing. I paid nothing for med school because I [00:08:00] had this scholarship.

And my husband at the time was not my husband, but was at Dartmouth. And I really, really wanted to go to Dartmouth, but I was like, Student loans, no student loans. I mean, that was like a no brainer for me. So we commuted for four years and then we couples matched, which is an option in medicine still. So, you know, we weren’t maybe as sure where we were going to go because of that, but we knew we would be together.

We ended up at Yale. We spent four years there. Amazing experience.

Georgi: This is after medical school

Dr Danielle: after medical school. So you do a residency in something matters gynecology. And I really have spoken very highly in many places about my experience at Yale. It’s just where I learned how to take care of patients.

Right. And I don’t mean that in a, I knew, you know, how to diagnose this or contemplate that. I mean, in the. I learned how to talk to a patient, listen to a patient, respond to a family member. Like I learned all that at Yale and I think I still carry that with me when I take care of patients today. Then I did a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology and infertility and that was the first time I really hit a [00:09:00] barrier.

So we didn’t match initially. So my husband was a year ahead of me. Madison was a year earlier, only three versus four years. So he had already started a fellowship at home in pulmonary and critical care at Yale. And Yale didn’t take me as a fellow. And they had historically always taken their residents as fellows, but they didn’t take me.

And everybody else who I was interviewing with assumed that they were going to take me because Yale always takes their own. And so that was the first time that really it was like, well, what am I going to do? And so I ended up applying to fellowship at UCSF through the helps of some of my then mentors and came out here and that’s how we ended up in San Francisco.

My experience at UCSF was very different than my experience at Yale.

Georgi: And how so? How are those experiences different? I’ll tell you mentorship

Dr Danielle: and leadership mean a lot and the mentorship and leadership at Yale was. Very strong. And even though I didn’t match into that fellowship, those guys found a spot for me at UCSF.

Wow. Part of the issue is [00:10:00] that the person who I came in Through at UCSF subsequently left and the person who was there was like, who’s this person? Why is she here? Right?

Georgi: So it felt more transactional. Yeah, I got to UCSF

Dr Danielle: and that was really the first time I’d had a blatantly negative interaction with somebody and That was a lot of three years I mean I got what I needed out of it in that I got the fellowship training to do the job that I love But the interaction with people there was not necessarily a positive one.

Georgi: I would love to hear just quickly about that and how you push through something, like you said, you had three years and you knew your objective that you needed to get to this, to get to the next space. How do you motivate yourself or how did you find strength to do that?

Dr Danielle: So first of all, I will say that one of the things that I grew up with in my household was never ending Coursework in resilience, right?

Like that was just sort of who my parents were. Like, you just don’t quit. You keep going. I think there’s a time in which you have to learn how to be content and know [00:11:00] when to step away from something. But I’ve really, I’ve always argued that like my dad was worse than the surgeons in the OR. I mean, he just was like a no BS sort of guy is a no BS sort of guy.

Like just really. You got to keep pushing forward. So I had always had that in my DNA. And I think if I think about what I have that a lot of people don’t necessarily act on, it’s grit. I mean, I just have ridiculous amounts of grit and I’m not saying that’s good in every environment, but it got me through those three years.

I also had a partner, right? Like I was married by the time I got to residency. And I think it would have been much less palatable of a three year experience if I hadn’t had my husband as like a sounding board and he’s still at UCSF and he really has had a very. reasonable experience there, right? So it helped to have two of us for sure.

Georgi: Yeah. I love that you brought that in because I talk about this inner circle of people who can hold you when times are hard and nobody really thinks about that as part of a career, but it is, it’s, it’s what [00:12:00] gives you the foundation.

Dr Danielle: It’s critical to life, but it’s certainly critical to a career. And I also would say that the co fellows that I had were actually really good people.

So I’m still in very close contact with the fellow who’s a year ahead of me and who was a year below me. And even my co fellow, I mean, you know, when we see each other, we communicate. He’s still at UCSF, but you know, yeah, that was a tough three years. And actually, frankly, I would argue San Francisco has been tough.

And I would say that we came from the Midwest. The cost of living was different, how you raise a family was different, having a big family was normal. And so we’re not business people. So I’ve learned. And you have five children, right? I have five children. I’ve learned to become a business person because I have five children, but just sort of learning how to navigate the space of.

Um, a major city when you grow up sort of in the Midwest and the suburbs is an experience and a lesson in and of itself. And so I would say we were 15 years in to being here before we were like, okay, we’ve got

Georgi: this. Yeah. [00:13:00] Yeah. And that’s

Dr Danielle: a long time. It’s

Georgi: a long time. But of course it is then your children’s home too.

So

Dr Danielle: children’s home and you know, and this is where your relationships are and

Georgi: yeah,

Dr Danielle: but we, it was a long road.

Georgi: And then the shifting to be an entrepreneur.

Dr Danielle: Well, that’s a less positive story. So, coming out of fellowship in 2005, fertility was not a specialty that was at all diverse. And what I mean by that is, there were not a lot of African Americans who had been in the space at all.

I probably could have counted them on, One hand or two hands at the time I finished fellowship and I was also in San Francisco, which at the time, while it prides itself on being diverse, I can tell you amongst the fertility specialists, there was zero diversity. There was two other people of color that I know of in the entire Bay Area at that time, and we are doing much better than we were then, but frankly, I was not what people were looking for, for a private practice.

That’s

Georgi: so interesting. So it’s not that you went out wanting to [00:14:00] create a space there. It’s that you weren’t showing up in a way that people could identify with. I mean, I was

Dr Danielle: showing up as a black female and they weren’t hiring black females. So, I mean, if you think about our space, we are just starting.

And I would say like within the last. Five to eight years to hire African Americans into the bigger private practice spaces. That just wasn’t a thing. And I went to Kaiser initially and Kaiser wasn’t doing in vitro fertilization, which is kind of like our bread and butter. So like why I couldn’t stay there.

And so I ended up working in a small practice for about 18 months and then sort of went out on my own. But it’s mainly because that really wasn’t an option for me. Yeah. Again, happy to report that we’re doing better, but it’s taken a long time. Like we’re still behind the eight ball there. We also want to take care of patients of color.

I might add, right. So this is where I think I’ve been able to be impactful is being willing to take care of patients of color. I have donors of color working with patients that need surrogacy. Can’t really figure out how to navigate that [00:15:00] because people aren’t talking to them because they’re of color.

That still happens. It’s improving and I’m happy about that, but there are gaps in how we are represented in the field, both as patients and providers.

Georgi: Yeah. So you experienced a problem personally on your career path, and you’re able to turn that into something that actually allowed for representation for your clients and future clients that actually gave them a place where they could be seen and could be understood.

Dr Danielle: And I think that’s where the grit showed up, right? Like you just had to keep getting up every day and doing it differently and figuring out how you could do it better. And I’ve taken. Zero business classes really here and there, but zero business classes in my life. And that has been a big challenge for me.

So that’s something that I now have really invested in and myself to start to become much more educated in business, you know, because when you. Run a practice that makes 100, 000 a year. You’ll have to manage 100, 000 a year. When you run a practice [00:16:00] that makes millions of dollars a year, you got to manage millions of dollars a year.

And quite frankly, I wasn’t trained in either of those things. So I had to really figure out how to learn that material in real time. And I think that’s where the entrepreneurship comes in. I love working for myself. I mean, that has given me an incredible amount of flexibility to raise five children in ways that I would never have been able to do had I continued on at a place like Kaiser or even at UCSF, right?

Not because those are bad organizations. They’re actually fantastic for certain aspects of what they do, but they are not fantastic for the flexibility of needing to show up at 10 o’clock in the morning for whatever thing is happening at whatever school, right. For your kid.

Georgi: Yeah.

Dr Danielle: And so. I

Georgi: follow you on social media and I know you have a charming and lighthearted approach to your TikToks and reels.

And one of them that I saw recently said something like, I started a business so that I wouldn’t have to work nine to five and now I work all hours. [00:17:00] Making fun of yourself for thinking that it was going to be maybe an easier path, but you don’t

Dr Danielle: have a boss, but really every single patient is your boss.

Every single client is your boss. It’s different. But I mean, again, it’s different with flexibility in a way that you just can’t get if I’m working a shift someplace. So I’m really grateful for that.

Georgi: Yeah, knowing you have the flexibility and you’re building a business that you really care about and is important to you on a values standpoint.

Dr Danielle: And what’s so interesting that I didn’t expect, I mean, you kind of dream these things, but you don’t, you can never expect the children are so, and I call them children, but I’m talking about my 24 and 21 year olds are so interested in. What it means to keep lean fertility Institute or, you know, the agency that we started for surrogacy and egg donation moving forward because it means something to them.

Like they’ve watched it grow over time. And they’re like, well, what do we do mom to like, be a part of it so that we can, and I’m like. All in. It’s a family business. Yeah. It’s become a family business, which is really fascinating.

Georgi: [00:18:00] Yeah. How do you maintain your mission in a really politically polarized healthcare conversation that we’re in, especially when it comes to fertility and what barriers are you facing or conversations that you’re needing to have?

Dr Danielle: I mean, I would say a couple of things. One, we are. Incredibly lucky. We are in California and California has some of the strongest legislation for reproductive rights, as well as for things like gestational surrogacy and egg donation. And like, so we are like San Francisco. We’re a bubble, you know what I mean?

And I would say that I have heard. to not have to focus on a lot of those conversations because of where I practice, which is not to say I’m not aware of them. I mean, there are very serious conversations in our household about whether I would ever send one of our daughters to school in Texas. Like, and I’m like, I’m a hard no on that right now, because I don’t know how I help her if she needs help.

You know what I mean? And so I [00:19:00] think that when I talk to patients right now, the kinds, the types of questions I have from them are things like, If I’m using a surrogate from pick your state, that’s red on reproductive rights, you know, is that safe? What happens if that surrogate needs to have a procedure done or a termination done or, you know, if she gets into trouble and it’s a completion to a loss that’s occurring, what do I do?

And so. We’ve started to direct patients away from those states, right, which is, you know, not the decision everybody’s making, but certainly decision that we are hearing most prominently as California residents with California patients, like, yeah, really hard for patients that live here to think about interfacing with healthcare in some of these other states.

I think that’s how it’s most impacting us, you know, I mean, the sad reality is that even for folks that live in these other states, you know, if you have money, you get on a plane and you leave, and I don’t mean you move, but like, if you need to have something done, you go and you have it done. And then [00:20:00] you come back home when it’s over, right?

The people that are, you know, are really struggling, you’re falling into two categories. One, Emergency care. So like you don’t anticipate that something’s going to happen and now you’re stuck and you’re not stable to move and to folks that don’t have enough resource to do what I just described. So I read an article and it was talking about a woman who was scheduled to have a termination.

She had had, she has a couple of kids. The pregnancy had happened through unfortunate circumstances. She didn’t really want another baby. Couldn’t wasn’t she want to couldn’t take care of it. And the day before she was supposed to go to her appointment, they had stopped services. But to get to that point, she had arranged for care for her other kids, taken the time off work because she had to apply for time to be off work, rented a car that she’d saved up for to drive to this place, right?

Georgi: Let alone emotionally preparing.

Dr Danielle: Oh, forget that! We’re talking about the practical organizational operational steps, right? For them to say, sorry, we can’t do it, but we can direct you to someplace out of state, [00:21:00] except she would then have to go back, rearrange all that stuff, save up more money, and then get to that other state, by which point in time she was too far along for anyone to do the termination, right?

It’s that kind of situation where We are putting women at risk, right now, what happens if something happens to her and she has three little kids, you know what I mean? This is when people start to try and take matters, matters into their own hands. And then they do have complications, right? You know, and we’re getting rid of all the resources that we have to support these young moms and these kids that they may not be able to afford.

So it’s just, you know, it’s like, we’re kind of peeling off on both sides with no solution on either direction, right?

Georgi: I hear you like paying attention to what’s going on and feeling enormous amount of compassion for people on the wrong side of that coin, but in the same sense, you personally are in a good spot in California to treat patients and to provide services for your patients.

We have

Dr Danielle: no limitations on reproductive rights here within the [00:22:00] constraints of what have always been the laws, right? Or on fertility services, which is just amazing. I mean, you know, California is also the place where, you know, Many people come in from China and other countries to do their surrogacy and to do their IVF cycle.

So we still are sort of a hotspot for care. Yeah. I can’t pick up my practice and move to, you know, where my parents live. Right. I can’t do that. So that’s a limitation, right?

Georgi: Yeah. No Midwest life for you in this one.

Dr Danielle: So I think that’s the limitation.

Georgi: So in today’s world, who makes a good doctor?

Dr Danielle: I think you need to want to be a people person, right?

So, yes, you need to be able to, you know, take certain classes, pass certain tests, right? I mean, those things come along with the, you know, territory, but you have to want to be a people person. You have to want to help people. You have to Be able to take people as they are when they come to you. Like one of my big pet peeves is when people start to make judgements about patients.

Like we don’t get [00:23:00] to judge. You know what I mean? Like I don’t get to judge why you’re choosing to have a child at 40 Yeah. At 30. Or you know, why you are choosing, you know, same sex couple older partner versus younger. I can make recommendations based on what comes to me and what I know about healthcare, but I think being non nonjudgmental is.

That’s really important. And that is something we don’t see all the time in healthcare.

Georgi: Yeah. That’s so interesting. I haven’t heard that or thought about it, but I love how you’ve positioned that, that you’re there to provide the services in healthcare that your patients need, but not to question why they need it.

Dr Danielle: Well, a bias in healthcare is actually one of the biggest. Hot topics right now. Two months ago, we would have called it D. E. I. But I don’t know what we’re calling it right now. But you know, there’s a lot of data that supports the fact that patients present to physicians who are humans and to health care systems, and they’re met with bias based on who people judge them to be right.

And I think that the more we recognize that that’s an issue and make conscious decisions [00:24:00] to prevent that, the better off we are for our patients.

Georgi: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a

Dr Danielle: huge job.

Georgi: And that’s actually maybe where we can use some technology to help us eliminate those biases. I

Dr Danielle: mean, I think that you can use technology for sure to mitigate that, but at the end of the day, until such time as robots are taking care of patients, right?

And even in that setting, you know, there are appropriate differences that we need to think about, but then there are other differences that we. Need to stop thinking about, you know what I mean? So yes, and I think there will always be an interface with people that we have to keep working down.

Georgi: Yeah.

Danielle, part of what I really like to understand for young professionals is this combination of income and impact and how is being a doctor, like what kind of life does it allow you to live?

Dr Danielle: I think that’s a great question. And I think that it’s important to understand that there is an entire range of ways that you can practice medicine, right?

So, you know, my husband practice [00:25:00] medicine, practices medicine at an academic center in a field that’s relatively well compensated. So he’s Anastasia critical care. So he’s an academic physician and he is able to support a lifestyle in. San Francisco. I am a private practice physician in fertility, which despite all of the conversations is so largely cash pay.

And so I’m not taking insurance rates that other people have to take. So when you look at my husband and myself, like we have had to, by virtue of where we live, curate a certain type of. Practice to allow for us to be in this space. I think that’s an important point.

Georgi: Yeah. Like the combination of the two of your salaries to provide the lifestyle.

Yeah. Right.

Dr Danielle: And, you know, provide the lifestyle is just pay for rent or like a mortgage on a house or, you know what I mean? On the other hand, you know, my husband’s mother is a physician who was in Cleveland, Ohio, and does not even need to try and make the amounts of money that we need to make [00:26:00] on an order of magnitude.

Right. But at the end of the day. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and even the nicest houses in Cleveland, Ohio, they’re generally significantly less than those here in San Francisco. And so I think it’s important to recognize that there are physicians that are needed in every. extreme, you know what I mean?

And so I think that you can choose to be impactful and still have a very nice lifestyle. And that can mean whatever you want it to mean for you. I also volunteer at the Marin Community Clinic and I go there twice a month in the mornings and they pay me something that goes into a retirement fund. I never see it, right?

Like the point is it’s so not. Relevant in what I have to do to be profitable in the Bay Area in my own practice that like that is effectively volunteer work for me. And yet it’s some of the most exciting work that I do. Right.

Georgi: Well, I’d love to talk about that. Cause when I think of compensation, I think of it more than income.

So the rewards for your work. And it sounds like you’re going [00:27:00] out and volunteering extra time with. Five kids and running a business. And I know that you’re somebody who connects is a connector too. So you have, you know, friends and a life, but you’re still volunteering. So what is the reward you get from that?

Dr Danielle: So let me just say two things. One, I would say from the compensation perspective, the work I do across the board is pretty awesome. Like, I mean, sometimes people get frustrated because they’re not pregnant. It costs too much, but like, I love what I do. So across the board, that’s the case too. I want to be clear.

They do pay me, but the reason I go to the community clinic is because. First of all, because Marin has the ability to have a fertility specialist at a community clinic, let’s just like take a moment to pause on that. I mean, like very few counties in the country have the resources to have some specialists.

They don’t, not only do they have a fertility physician, they have a male fertility physician that’s a separate person at this county clinic. That’s amazing. And so I think that, you know, if we have the opportunity to take care of folks who otherwise would have. No access to [00:28:00] care at all, right? We should all be wanting to help them.

You know what I mean? And they are so grateful that somebody comes and talks to them and, you know, they provide me with a scribe because my medical Spanish is not so good and so that person translates for me and sometimes we have to bring those patients into our clinic here because they need something that’s more than what the community clinic can offer.

But then I’m always thinking of like, okay, well, how can we do it here in a way that’s cost effective? I just was talking to someone this morning about developing a low cost IVF program that would allow folks that are in that county clinic that need something more than they can provide to come on over, have IVF and not, you know, break whatever their bank is, right?

I just think we need to do more of that as an industry. And that doesn’t impact every field of medicine, but it impacts mine. And I’m excited about that a lot.

Georgi: Yeah.

Dr Danielle: So my message to folks that want to be in medicine is if you want to make a ton of money and be in medicine, you can do that. There are fields [00:29:00] that you can be in that will do that for you.

If you don’t care about money and you want to be in medicine, you can do that. There are fields that will do that for you. And it also speaks to the barriers, right? So if I was a full time provider at a clinic like Marenka in the clinic there, at least I think they still have them. I’m a little not sure the current landscape has historically been good.

Yeah. Repayment programs for student loans. So if you go out and work in a county clinic or in an underserved area, those student loans that you amassed during your training can be completely paid.

Georgi: Yeah, so there’s ways to be smart about it and to be able to serve the people you want to be serving and to have the impact you want to be having.

Dr Danielle: Yeah. I think you just have to be willing to be creative and being thoughtful. There’s always a way to do it.

Georgi: Yeah. Always. And Danielle, if you could go back to your younger self, maybe at medical school and give yourself advice, what would you tell yourself?

Dr Danielle: So this is not the [00:30:00] answer you’re looking for.

But the first thing I would tell myself is to get a business degree. And I actually tell that to anybody who’s going into really almost any industry, but certainly into medicine, medicine, we take care of patients, but in this country, medicine is a business and you have to understand the dollars and cents.

of what you’re doing, of what you’re offering to patients, of how can I make a product available to patients that’s less expensive if I don’t understand the dollars and cents around it, right? So for sure, medicine needs to be partnered with some business courses. I think more along the lines of the answer that you’re looking for is that, you know, one, that resilience and grit matter and that your resilience and grit will carry your, you further than the people who are not Positive about your journey, right to within the field of medicine.

Specifically, there is a lot of negativity. Don’t let that define the goals that you have for yourself because those people cannot and should not. be preventing you from moving [00:31:00] forward, right? I think that’s really important. And three, surround yourself with your community of people that will lift you up.

Like, you must be around positive people. I think those are the big things that you have to tell yourself.

Georgi: Such great advice. And just as you don’t want to judge your patients, I actually have no expectation of what the answer is, but I find your Yeah, your insights on thinking about business as a part of medicine is so important because we end up in these silos and often don’t know what people over the fake wall are doing.

And I think it just empowers you to make the right decisions when you do have more. Learning.

Dr Danielle: I mean, I think the other piece is, you know, even if you’re in a small practice of a handful of doctors, you’re going to have to make contractual decisions. You’re going to have to know that you can afford to do work that someone’s asking you to do.

And if you don’t understand those things, you can get yourself into a huge amount of. Challenge, right? That takes a long time to get over.

Georgi: I know we could keep providing value to all sorts of [00:32:00] listeners, but our time is coming to an end. Where can people find you and learn more about the clinics that you have opened?

Dr Danielle: Yeah, no, I am on Instagram and on TikTok as Dr. Danielle Lane. So Dr. Danielle Lane. Always DMing people and responding to people. I try my best to get to everybody’s comments and questions and, you know, I’ll just end with, we are always excited to help pre health and pre med. So I’d say that pre med, pre PA, pre nursing students on their path to their careers.

And so anytime we can be helpful, we’re here for that.

Georgi: Oh, that’s amazing. Well, so lovely to have you and thank you for being generous and sharing all your wisdom. And I look forward to keep following you.

Dr Danielle: Thank you for having me. I’m honored to be here.

Georgi: Let’s take a moment to think about the takeaways from this episode.

I’m not sure over a podcast if you can feel the heart in these conversations, but that’s what really stood out to me from talking to Dr. Danielle [00:33:00] Lane. Also beyond her professional priorities. Family time is important to her. And she demonstrates how in her case as a medical professional, she designed her career to align with her personal values and broader societal needs.

Plus, the systemic barriers are really important to highlight here. Often the people who best understand the pain points or systemic barriers Are the ones who have experienced them. It’s not always practical or even desirable to dedicate your career to filling those gaps. But in Danielle’s case, she innovated and turned her own hurdles into a valuable fertility practice, meeting her needs as well as her patients.

And no doubt her grit played a big part in making all that happen. And that’s a wrap for today’s episode of Work That’s Worth It. Remember. Every conversation we share is designed to empower you to build a career that’s truly worth your time and energy. There are [00:34:00] future disruptors out there just like you, who would appreciate the conversations in this podcast.

Please support me by spreading the word and sharing this episode with a friend or two, or visit my [email protected]. That’s spelled G-E-O-R-G-I-E-N-T-H-O-V-E N.com. Until next time, ask yourself, what problems am I solving and are they worth my valuable time? Your intentional choices today can lead to exponential impact tomorrow.

Thanks for listening!