IAM2270 – Founder and Podcaster Passionate About Family Dynamics in the Medical World

Lara McElderry is a founder of the Married To Doctors podcast. She holds a master's degree in teaching from the University of Arkansas, focusing on family dynamics.

Lara navigates the medical world for 17 years while supporting her husband through various stages of his medical career, all while raising five boys.

She created her podcast to provide a supportive space for physician's spouses, addressing the unique challenges they face.

Laura explains how her niche podcast connects physician spouses, allowing them to share their challenges and support one another.

She also discusses her business growth, including securing sponsors and the significance of consistency in content creation, celebrating her first year of uninterrupted podcast publishing.

Website:  Married To Doctors

Instagram: marriedtodoctors

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Transcription:

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Lara McElderry Teaser 00:00

Offering resources. One of the things I do is I connect people. So I've been fortunate enough to have a few sponsors, maybe their life coaches or therapists or someone in the financial world and they need in need of my audience. And then I get to play the middleman and connect them.

Intro 00:19

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:45

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Lara McElderry of Married to Doctors podcast. Lara, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Lara McElderry 00:55

Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 00:57

No problem. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Lara so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

Lara has a background in family sciences and graduated from the University of Arkansas with a master's degree in teaching.

She has worked with youth and adults and has a strong interest in family dynamics. Lara has navigated the medical world for the last 17 years as she has supported her husband through medical school, residency, a specialty change, fellowship, as well as raising 5 boys.

She is the founder and podcast host of Married to Doctors. Her show is an interview-based weekly podcast.

Spouses of physicians share their stories and experts share advice as Lara leads a discussion asking personal and hard questions that explores the joys and challenges of being married to doctors. Lara, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Lara McElderry 01:44

Yes, I am.

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Gresham Harkless 01:45

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Lara McElderry 01:51

Ah, it was multiple things, right? So it was it was life experience these 17 years of being married to a physician. It was also my love for teaching.

And I think podcasting is a great way to, to kind of teach or counsel with people in kind of a personal way.

And I just wanted to create a space for physician spouses. It was something that didn't really exist or didn't exist on a very large scale. And so I wanted to help grow that space.

Gresham Harkless 02:16

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I've always loved that, especially about like a podcasting space, because there's so many kind of niche podcasts of things that you didn't even think about.

But then obviously, there's a tribe around usually what you build. And that's what I love about business, love about podcasting and entrepreneurship is that if you have and see kind of an opportunity, you kind of just take advantage of that. So I appreciate you for doing that.

Lara McElderry 02:36

Sure. Yeah. Like there were several Facebook groups I was a part of, and I would hear just like little, a couple of sentences from people, but I was like, man, I would love to get to know that person better.

And so finally I just thought, let's do this. Let's start this interview based podcast and really learn from each other.

Gresham Harkless 02:51

Awesome. Yeah. In true entrepreneurial form, you decided to create it yourself. So I appreciate you for doing that.

And I wanted to drill a little bit deeper in here a little bit more about the podcast and everything that you're doing.

So could you tell us a little bit more about that and how you're helping to support your clients?

Lara McElderry 03:04

Yeah. So I think my business is fairly new. It's about a year old. And so the first goal is just to exist.

Right? And so it's starting up the business. It's getting it out there. It's being very consistent in content.

I'm happy to say that I have not missed a week of publishing a podcast, which for anyone in the podcasting world knows that that's kind of a big deal.

I've made it a complete year coming up in just 2 weeks. It'll be a complete year without missing an episode.

And then I plan on taking my first 2 weeks off around Christmas. So I'm super excited about that and I think being consistent in the content so that the audience can actually grow has been really important.

And then offering resources. One of the things I do is I connect people. So I've been fortunate enough to have a few sponsors, maybe they're life coaches or therapists or someone in the financial world and they need and need of my audience. And then I get to play the middleman and connect them.

Gresham Harkless 04:01

Yeah, that makes sense. It's all about, being able to connect to that audience. And a lot of times, like I mentioned, there's so many kind of communities that people don't know about.

But then, like you mentioned, the life coaches, people that once actually connect with that audience, you're able to kind of play that connector, so to speak.

Lara McElderry 04:16

Yep. That's kind of my role at this point. I hope to in the future have my own products as well, but those take time and so I'm working on some of those.

Gresham Harkless 04:24

Yeah, and then sometimes the hardest part is building that community. So it definitely sounds like you're well on your way and definitely congratulations for that consistency for this year.

And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And you might have already touched on this, but this is what you feel kind of distinguishes you or sets you or your podcast and organization apart.

Lara McElderry 04:40

Yeah. So one thing I think is the niche, like finding something that maybe wasn't there or wasn't there in a very big form.

The other thing I think is how I involve my audience. So  thing I wanted to do with the show was to have experts on that could give advice.

But I also wanted just to kind of have quote unquote regular doctor wives and doctor husbands on the show.

So my listeners become part of the show when they are on the show. And then I feel like they're more invested, they share it with their friends.

So I have a very engaged audience because in fact my audience can be part of the show.

Gresham Harkless 05:14

That's powerful. I love that kind of niche because your listeners are also the people that you have on your show.

And then even if they're not on your show they sounded kind of sounds like they have that connection with the people that are on the show anyway so they kind of feel like they are going through the same things

Lara McElderry 05:28

Yeah, or maybe they have a connection like someone will write in and say, oh my gosh, I heard from so and so, and it happens that they studied at my same school. Or just little things like that that help people to feel more connected.

Gresham Harkless 05:39

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, imagine if it's probably a very connected and niche down kind of community.

So you probably, you being able to kind of bring all those people together in kind of a different way definitely provides those opportunities for that.

Lara McElderry 05:54

Yeah, because I think there were a lot of spaces for physicians together and talk, but physician families, physician spouses, like what do we have in common other than the fact that we happen to marry a doctor, right?

But yet we actually do have a lot in common because we have these shared life experiences, but no one to really vent to about it.

What is it like when your spouse has 6 figures in debt and the neighbors think you're wealthy?

What is it like when they work holidays and weekends and aren't there for your kids' band concert or whatever?

And these are things that aren't common just to medicine, but I find that physician spouses have often had a hard time voicing their frustration with these things because we are so proud of our spouses and their work.

We are thankful to be married to doctors. And so it's always walking that fine line of yes, showing gratitude, but also recognizing some of the sacrifices and dealing with some of the real problems like physician burnout, physician suicide.

Actually, there's a really high rate of physician spouse suicide. So there's a lot of things to consider and I just wanted to have a better place to be more open and honest about this journey.

Gresham Harkless 07:04

Yeah, and that's definitely awesome because you would never know that unless you're part of that community.

And sometimes if you're not even a part of that community, sometimes you may feel like you're alone, that you're just struggling with it yourself.

But the fact that you built that community provides an opportunity for people to engage, have those conversations to understand that, hey, it's not just me going through this.

This is something that's common and this is how we can deal with it. This is how we can work through it. So that's awesome that you've been able to do that.

Lara McElderry 07:27

Yeah, thanks. I think it's been well appreciated because A lot of people have thought, man, I wanted to say these things or put a voice to this, but I was nervous too.

And I was too. I was extremely nervous to start this show. But by and large, it's been met with positivity.

Gresham Harkless 07:43

Yeah, it definitely sounds like that. Definitely you have given people a voice, which is always important to do.

And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an Apple book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as an entrepreneur in business.

Lara McElderry 07:59

I like the Canva. I like using Canva for all my social media stuff. It's been great, fairly easy for me to figure out and social media has been important to me as kind of a free means to grow an audience. So if you're not using Canva, check it out.

Gresham Harkless 08:15

Yeah. And if you want to make sure that it also converts to whatever size for whatever social media channel you use, it's great at that. If you're a designer or you're not a designer, you could definitely use that.

Lara McElderry 08:27

Yeah, and I find that really helpful if I want to do Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and in my line of work, being multiple places has been important.

And so with the click of a button, it magically resizes and I'm not recreating it each time. So it's very handy.

Gresham Harkless 08:43

Yeah. And any way you can save time is of course of extreme importance. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget.

And this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Lara McElderry 08:57

I think it's that you have to ask for what you want. So I started my podcast really as a passion project.

Like I said, I wanted to start this. I felt like there was a real need for it. But at some point it was like, okay, the podcast is costing me money.

We're one of these physician families with 6 figures in debt. So at some point I have to figure out, what am I going to do to make money?

And one of the hardest things for me as an entrepreneur was to just ask my audience and say, hey, I'm making this content for you week after week. Would you be willing to give a donation?

And the other thing is to reach out to sponsors because I'm like, well, I'm not that big, I'm so niche down.

But then there's a lot of people that are actually, you know, happy to talk to physician families, they have products and services for those families.

And so for me, I think if I could go back, I would say, you know what, trust your idea, reach out to the sponsors sooner, reach out to your audience sooner, and don't be shy to ask for what you need to keep your business going.

Gresham Harkless 09:59

Yeah, That makes perfect sense. And it's definitely a great reminder because there is a saying that kind of the riches are in the niches, especially because people want to try to connect with, the physician, the spouses of physicians.

And being able to provide an opportunity for people to do that and then have it in alignment with what your community actually wants. It creates that perfect synergy where awesomeness happens, so to speak.

Lara McElderry 10:19

I hope so. That's the goal. We're getting there. I'm very happy to have had sponsors within the first year and I hope to see that grow in the future.

Gresham Harkless 10:27

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And I'm hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show, but I wanted to ask you what does being a CEO mean to you?

Lara McElderry 10:40

To me, being a CEO is, is being able to create something that didn't exist before. And it's also allowing me to still be the kindergarten homeroom parent.

Gresham Harkless 10:50

Absolutely, that's definitely important. It creates that balance and that freedom to be able to paint your own canvas, so to speak, but also the freedom to be able to be where you need to be whenever you need to be, which is also of extreme importance.

Lara, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know and how best they can get a hold of you. And of course, subscribe to your podcast.

Lara McElderry 11:13

Well, thank you so much. It's been really great to be here. And I want to encourage everyone who's trying new things to just keep going and to trust in your ideas.

You can find me wherever you're listening to this podcast. Just search for Married to Doctors.

Even if you're not married to a physician, I find a lot of people relate to the content because a lot of it is just marriage content and good marriage advice.

So if you're married to anyone, you might enjoy it. We cover all types of things from sex and romance to alcoholism to depression to anxiety.

So I think you'll really enjoy it. I have a lot of great speakers. So again, that's Married to Doctors.

You can just find it where you're listening to this. And of course, I do have a website which is marriedtodoctors.com.

Gresham Harkless 11:56

Awesome, awesome, awesome. We'll make sure to have those links in the show notes just so that again, you can search through however you're listening to this but also check out our show notes as well, too.

So we'll have links as well there. But Lara, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Lara McElderry 12:11

Yeah, I appreciate you having me. Take care.

Outro 12:13

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at CEOhacks.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you

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