Got entrepreneurial pain? This back surgeon and business coach tells you how you can heal and ‘bragg’ your way to success

Got entrepreneurial pain? This back surgeon and business coach tells you how you can heal and ‘bragg’ your way to success

By Jim James, Founder EASTWEST PR and Host of The UnNoticed Entrepreneur. 

Virginia-based Dr Winifred Bragg is the author of four best-selling books and has a YouTube channel featuring various content. In the new episode of The UnNoticed Entrepreneur, she explained the “The Bragg Factor” and talked about how entrepreneurs can remain healthy whilst getting noticed.

Image from The Bragg Factor

The Bragg Factor

Dr Winifred’s “The Bragg Factor” is a play on her name. The extra “g’” in “Bragg” also stands for “gratitude,” which is the first thing that she wants people to understand.

Bragg, the methodology, is composed of five steps.

• “Behave as if.” Entrepreneurs need to ask: Who do you desire to be like? Can you find what you can do to model yourself like them? To help you out, it’s important to have an executive or business coach. As what she learned in life, speed matters. And a coach can give you some tidbits to help you go from where you are to where you want to be much faster.

• “Resist the urge to.” Especially now that inflation and many other things are going on, entrepreneurs like you can be discouraged. You may be wondering, “Can I make it?” Despite all this, you have to resist the urge to quit and complain.

• “Accept no limitation.” Barriers will happen. There will be setbacks and disappointments. But you have to learn to accept no limitations.

• “Grow your gift.” In coaching entrepreneurs and business people, Dr Winifred found that often, people’s best business ideas come from their skills, hobbies, or passions more than something that they were trained for. For instance, a young woman came to see her in a workshop and her hobby was graphic arts. She was training in marketing but she wasn’t doing well in that. After helping her dive deep into her hobby, that client was able to put together a business plan. Now, she has a business wherein she does websites and uses that with marketing. She was able to use her knack for graphic arts.

Dr Winifred usually tells entrepreneurs that if things aren’t going well, they have to look back at their own purposes and the things that they like to do. Integrate those and you may just find out that you have a better business idea.

In her case, she trained as a physician; she went to school to be a doctor. Now, she also coaches executives, entrepreneurs, and business people. She’s also a speaker. And she got her training in speaking by talking to 25 to 30 patients all day long, which was a sort of one-on-one coaching.

The takeaway from here is that sometimes, you just have to seek how something you like to do can transcend and become another profession for you.

• “Gratitude.” To live in a state of gratitude is something that she always tells entrepreneurs.

Health and Entrepreneurship

Your physical self can impact your ability to implement the Bragg methodology.

Image from Unsplash

Everything starts with ourselves. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs often tend to put themselves at the back of the line. What they need is to put themselves at the front because it relates to their health. Keep in mind: There can’t be a business without a healthy you.

Make sure that you’re getting seven or eight hours of sleep — adequate sleep can make a tremendous difference.

As a spinal doctor and an interventional pain specialist, Dr Winifred also teaches people how to take care of their back pain without surgery. And one of the ways to do that is to not sit for more than an hour and a half without getting up and stretching.

Based on her experience talking to bookkeepers, accountants, and salespeople, they’d often complain about how their back is killing them. That’s because they sit too long in front of the computer. With COVID, more and more people have been sitting at the computer all day long, which causes back pain.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you got to take care of yourself. Eliminate that long sitting and make sure that you’re doing stretches. But apart from that, you also have to have a good mindset and focus so that you won’t develop imposter syndrome.

She also advised having a good morning routine — whether it’s doing Tai chi or exercising or listening to music.

Personally, Dr Winifred starts her day by doing stretches to minimise back pain. She also makes sure to get enough sleep. As she wants to begin her day with confidence, she also doesn’t look at her phone early in the morning because that device is filled with emails and different things that can distract you from your goal.

Mindset Matters

Through The Bragg Factor, you can move from an arena of pain to function — and it all starts with your mindset.

If you get up in the morning and say, “I’m not going to make this sale today” or “I’m going to have pain all day. My back hurts” — and such things are what you’ll be feeding your mind all day — then it will become reality. It’s because our brain has a Reticular Activating System, which is a network that filters out things and takes what you’re focusing on, much like that water filter in your kitchen sink.

People wake up in the morning with about 90,000 thoughts and a lot of them are negative. If you keep saying that you’re going to hurt all day, you’ll hurt all day. But it’s also the same thing if you’re claiming positive things. You have to fill your brain with positive thoughts — and that will take you from an arena focusing on pain to one that focuses on function.

You can move through that by simply trying to behave as if you’re a person without pain.

Image from Unsplash

One thing that Dr Winifred learned is that when people experience back pain or if they hurt their hamstring or whichever part of their body, it’s going to be stiff and painful and they wouldn’t want to move. The same thing is happening with business people and entrepreneurs. When they have a setback, failure, disappointment, or challenge — they act much like someone with back pain: They don’t want to move.

If this happens to you, the first thing you need to do is stretch. Stretch your mind like how you’d stretch your back and your muscles. When you stretch, it helps you move past those barriers.

Also, remember that there are two kinds of friends. One who’s going to stretch your idea and another who’s going to shrink your idea. If you have a good business plan, sometimes, you may share it with the wrong person. And that person may tell you that you can’t do it. But, bearing in mind the third step in The Bragg Factor (“Accept no limitation”), you need to press that delete button in that relationship. Delete them from your circle of people with whom you share your ideas because they’re shrinking your ideas rather than stretching them.

Her Beginnings

When Dr Winifred was starting out, people advised her that she had to market herself.

She didn’t grow up in Virginia but in Alabama. She was thrown into this place where she knew no one. She came to Hampton Roads with a briefcase filled with payment coupons from her student loans (She had about a hundred thousand dollars worth of those). But she has this Bragg-worthy goal of having a thriving practice.

And so she went on to all these networking events and introduced herself to people. When no one was really noticing her, she realised that she was getting nowhere fast. She had to develop some strategy so she can reach people and they would want to engage her.

This was when she came up with what she now tells clients: You have to learn, in 30 seconds, how you can promote yourself. You have to “bragg” yourself quickly in 30 seconds — make it controversial, make it memorable, make it quick so that people would want to engage you further.

She was able to build her practice using this 30-second Bragg technique. Now, she has seen over 20,000 patients. And, as she emphasised, any entrepreneur can do it as well. She herself is a doctor. She didn’t have marketing and public relations (PR) skills. But today, she’s teaching people how to do an effective 30-second Bragg when they’re pitching their company, products, and services.

Image from The Bragg Factor

In case you’re wondering, she uses this spiel for her own 30-second Bragg: “I'm Dr Winifred Bragg. I'm a physician, and I teach people how to treat their orthopaedic and spinal problems without surgery. Only 5% of people with back pain need surgery, but in the United States, this happens over 600,000 times a year. When you want to know how you could get better without surgery, I'd be happy to see you. I'm Dr Winifred Bragg.”

Within this period, she’s able to raise an issue, present a solution, and state facts.

Leveraging the Digital World

As an entrepreneur, Dr Winifred has been leveraging social media to build her personality online.

She has a website called TheBraggFactor.com. She also has a YouTube channel of the same name. Every Tuesday, she provides entrepreneurs with tips through “Tips for Terrific Tuesdays.” Most of us start off the week with all these problems and she felt that come Tuesday, it’d be essential to hear a tip that will help us stay focused and confident so we can move forward.

She also gives tips to patients dealing with physical pain through “Pain Free Friday.” If her Tuesday show helps her audience deal with business and entrepreneurial pains by telling them how to move forward and build habits so they can be successful, this show tackles physical pain.

She also has a Facebook page that goes with both her medical practice and consulting, coaching, and speaking practice.

Screengrabs from YouTube

Creating content isn’t easy. But the hardest part is getting the viewers.

Dr Winifred has an advantage as a doctor because she’s seeing patients every day. She uses that opportunity to introduce them to the thing that they want to know. Then, she promotes that she has these YouTube stations where they can get access to free information to learn more. She further provides cards and encourages them to tell their friends and networks about her as well.

People tend to get a little shy and they don’t want to “brag.” The way to promote is to tell people that you have this or that information and that they can subscribe to you. But don’t forget to ask them for good feedback, too — what they like and what they don’t like. Just make sure that you’re asking people that you know are going to be honest with you.

You can also do digital ads to attract more viewers.

Dr Winifred’s Best-Selling Books

Dr Winifred currently has four books to her name and she has been self-publishing.

Her first book is about back pain and it’s the best-seller titled “KnockOutPain® Secrets to Maintain a Healthy Back.” In this book, she gave all kinds of practical tips to help people treat back pain without surgery.

Image from Amazon

When she became a speaker and coach, she realised that she needed materials to give to people. This is why she created a series called “The Bragg Factor.”

The first of the book series focused on goal setting. This is a topic that many people don’t want to talk about and do: No matter what age we are, we tend to not like sitting down and putting our goals in pen. However, it makes a big difference when you write down your goals because you can look at them objectively. You can see if you’re moving from where you are to where you want to be and identify what’s holding you back.

The book contains questions that if you ask yourself can help you move forward — whether your goal is personal, professional, or spiritual.

• What is it that you really want and why do you want it? It’s the “why” that’s going to sustain you.

• When do you want it? Your goal has to have a timeframe. Otherwise, it’s just something in the sky.

• What’s holding you back? Is it someone in your environment who’s holding you back? Perhaps a friend who is shrinking your ideas? Are you starting your day off wrong? Are you not doing any meditation, not keeping yourself healthy, and not staying focused?

• How you’re going to do it? A lot of times, people start with the “I can’t do that” mindset. However, you have to stay focused on your “why” because that will propel you to get to the “how.”

She also has a book for college students that teaches them how to do a 30-second Bragg so they can get internships and jobs.

The third in the series focuses on business people and professionals. She has templates on how you can create a 30-second Bragg for your company or for you personally. She also provided assessments to help you know: Do you have a character flaw? Is it something about your courage? Or are you not committed? Are you lacking confidence?

Image from The Bragg Factor

The Need to Communicate

You may be asking: Why would a doctor who’s plainly busy dedicate themselves to teaching people how to communicate?

In her journey and in talking with a lot of people, Dr Winifred learned that communication is the key. It is the thing that can take you from where you are to where you want to be.

Looking back on her life, the single most important skill that she learned is effective communication. Because even if you ask a question the right way, that's not going to get you noticed in different environments. You have to communicate confidently — and that's how you get better jobs; that's how you get better sales and more profit.

Her legacy now is to take the things that she learned as a physician and a business person and impart those to other entrepreneurs and business people so that they can have successful businesses.

Find out more about how you can effectively do a 30-second Bragg at www.thebraggfactor.com.

This article is based on a transcript from my podcast The UnNoticed Entrepreneur, you can listen here. 

Image by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash