Episode 131

Hello Reader,

Startup Life in Residency with Dr. Daniella M. Dennis

This week on the podcast I spoke with Daniella Dennis, MD, a first-year emergency medicine resident who has also started a podcast, published a book, and built a software company called PayScope MD. Medicine tends to tell people "not yet": not until you match, not until you are an attending, not until the loans are paid. Daniella decided not to wait.

We started with her path into medicine. She grew up in New Britain, Connecticut, the youngest of four in a family from Jamaica and the first in her family to go to college. Her mother was a certified nursing assistant, and after school Daniella waited for her at work, which is where she first noticed the people in white coats. A college mentor told her she did not have to go straight to medical school and pointed her to a technician job at a level one trauma center. She started in December 2019, one month before the pandemic.

Her plans changed more than once. As a college freshman she intended to go straight through. In medical school she was sure she would be a pediatrician, until her third year. Her advice is that you do not need everything mapped out. You can adapt and pivot as you go.

I asked what people are waiting for when they say they will start something later. Daniella thinks they are looking for a balance that does not exist. Her co-residents with children tell her they "just do it." If she waited until she was an attending to start a business, there would be a new reason to wait then.

She sets monthly goals rather than daily ones, since an ICU block can take every hour of the week, and breaks each project into weekly steps: create the account one week, post one video the next. Her priorities stay in a fixed order: residency first, then the business, the podcast, and the book. Medicine is one part of her identity, she said, but not all of it.

​PayScope MD came out of Match. She started looking at attending salaries and saw senior residents paying high attorney fees to review contracts they did not fully understand, without knowing what they should be paid. The platform uses AI to explain physician employment contracts and benchmark salaries, as a resource alongside legal advice rather than a replacement. She built the beta herself after teaching herself AI coding tools from YouTube, and now has an engineer on board for a paid relaunch planned for late October or early November. We talked about why this matters: physicians are rarely taught to talk about money, and women, people of color, and people from lower-income backgrounds face the most barriers when they negotiate. Time and flexibility belong in that negotiation too.

For someone with a quiet idea and no one to talk to, Daniella suggests writing the idea down, then using social media to learn. She learned the difference between a sole proprietorship and an LLC from short TikTok videos in about ten minutes, found her local chamber of commerce and a Connecticut group for AI founders, and uses LinkedIn to ask for help. We closed on AI. Her view is that every clinician should understand how these tools work, whether or not they like them, because they are already in our documentation and medical records.

The gap between what people are capable of and what they believe they have permission to do is one we see in coaching all the time. For most people with an idea, the obstacle is not time or capacity. It is permission.

Starting small counts. One account, one form, or one page is a start, and residency or clinical work can stay the first priority while it happens.

Here's my question for you this week: what idea have you been holding until the timing is right, and what is one step you could take on it this week?

You can find Daniella on LinkedIn and Instagram under her name, hear her conversations with physicians building outside medicine on the Resident Founder Podcast, and follow PayScope MD at @PayScopeMD. Tell us what you'd like the podcast to take on next at hello@transforminghealthcarecoaching.com.

🎧 Listen to the podcast sneak peek episode below and listen to the full episode on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Podbean, or Amazon Music.

Stay mindful and keep leading,
Lillian
Founder & CEO

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