Coming soon.... an opportunity to learn from the pro's.

Another sneak peek!

One of the most exciting and fun parts of my job is to interview physician entrepreneurs who have "made it".

I use that term broadly because some of them have made it financially, some are successful because they are exercising a latent talent that is deeply satisfying, and others feel great because they have stepped away from their version of the treadmill and are engaged in meaningful work.

I value their insights and hard-earned wisdom - they have all, to a fault, been candid about the challenges and mistakes that have plagued their decisions. And they have generously shared tips - the "I wish I had done this sooner or differently" stuff.

Now it is my turn to share their discoveries with you!

Within the next two weeks, I shall be releasing the first of The Entrepreneurial MD Audio Series - "Conversations with Trailblazers, Volume 1". This audio series contains six interviews with our successful entrepreneurial MD colleagues, each of anywhere from about 15 to 30 minutes long, plus the transcripts for you visual learners who prefer to read. 

Amongst the interviews, you'll hear from a physician whose family pain led him to a career as a pharmaceutical company owner, a physician whose greatest key to success as an entrepreneur was to partner with the right person (a fellow physician) and a physician who was restless with the status quo in residency and who was driven to co-develop one of the most widely recognized and used pieces of software amongst physicians.

Stay tuned for more!

Ten Laws to help you thrive as an Entrepreneurial Physician

The November 2006 issue of The Entrepreneurial MD Newsletter is now available!

The most common lament I hear from my clients is "how can I be sure this...or that.... will work?" Well, as most good doctors know, there are no perfect solutions or panaceas - there is just the commitment of the person to making an effort, and following some suggested guidelines based on sound principles!

This month, I have chosen to focus on ten "laws" that, if respected and enacted, will contribute significantly to your success in business or practice.

Here are the Ten Laws (does this sound rather biblical?) from the article. Unlike the law of gravity which works ALL the time, these laws have been tested in many different situations and work most of the time. I offer them in the spirit of "here's what works for most successful people - why don't you give them a whirl as well?"  

 Read the details by clicking on this article link:

1. The Law of Clarity - be clear about who you are, what you want to accomplish and where you are heading.
2. The Law of Small Successes - break gargantuan goals into teeny tasks and take pride in crossing each small task off the list

3. The Law of Momentum - once you get started down the path, your small efforts snowball and the snowball rolls with increasing ease and speed
4. The Law of Hunger - acknowledge and indulge your passions or abiding interests - they will sustain you when the going gets tough. Really want it!!

5. The Law of Habit - practice and preparation make perfection unnecessary 

6. The Law of Focus - what you put your attention and focus on happens 
7. The Law of Experience - You CAN learn from your "oopses" and failures. Just rename them "experience"!

8. The Law of the Trail - the success of others leaves a trail for you to follow, so follow it!
9. The Law of Modeling - find someone who is doing, or has done, what you want to do, find out how they did it, and model you activities on theirs. Most people love to share their knowledge and acquired insights!
10. The Law of Enjoyment - chuckle, smile, giggle, laugh, soften, ease up while you do it. Otherwise it isn't worth it!

For the curious, the calligraphy image I selected today is a Chinese symbol for "learning".

May you learn well and share your learnings here with your colleagues!

How my acting debut provided lessons for becoming an entrepreneurial physician.

I'm in chilly St Louis at present, attending the International Coaching Federation annual conference. It's wonderful to be surrounded by colleagues and breathing the air of intellectual stimulation and enthusiastic learning - it's been a while since I have participated in a continuing education setting, and I am realizing how much I have missed it.

We have been graced with two wonderful keynote speakers so far - Dan Pink, author of Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind (see my review of the latter book here), and Lynne Twist, philanthropic fundraiser and author of The Soul of Money. Tomorrow I get to listen to Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur and author of Art of the Start

The power of Dan's presentation came from his persuasive analysis of the forces affecting the 21st century workforce, (including doctors!) and the compelling argument he made for developing the right brain's ability to synthesize, see the big picture, do simultaneous processing , create context and engage in empathy and artistry. His skill with words (he was a political speech writer after all) and his lively self-deprecating humor and quick wit had us laughing and oohing - a consummate actor on the stage.

Lynne, on the other hand, spoke with a deeply moving sincerity and conviction born of her lifelong commitment to making the world a better place and her touching experiences with some of the most "resource-poor" people of impoverished areas. She evoked tears and loud sniffing from the spellbound audience. I have seldom been both a witness to and a participant in such an ovation as she received. I envied and admired her ability to hold the emotions of her audience so completely.

Which brings me to my main topic - acting for non-actors like me.

I participated in an acting class this afternoon - it was offered as an "opportunity to play in the sandbox".

Why would you bother with that? you may ask. 

I felt that I could benefit from the loosening up such a class might entail, and, feeling daring, I wanted to put myself into a potentially challenging and unfamiliar situation to see what I could discover about myself.

Well, I had a lot of fun! I learned that I could let go, be playful in a crowd of largely strangers, and give up the need to put forward a "correct face". I also picked up some valuable tips that I hope will serve me well as a presenter and public speaker.

It got me thinking about how what I learned in acting class might be applied to physicians in transition to a new business or career stage. Here's what I came up with:

1. The ability to think quickly on your feet and to improvise are valuable and learnable skills. It didn't take much effort for us to pick up techniques to express ourselves and our thoughts articulately in response to rapid-fire questions. In fact, it was hard for many of us to shut up once we got going!

2. Realize that you communicate a great deal through the non-verbal use of your face and body. Duh, you might say! But I believe we are largely unconscious of the effect we have on others when we are feeling a lot of emotion. Perhaps you might be agitated about a decision you are struggling with about leaving your practice, or you're excited about your impending but still secret departure from your group. Be aware of how your emotions are detectable and even palpable. It was a fascinating exercise to decide on an emotion we wanted to communicate to a partner, without the use of language, and have them perceive the emotion accurately.

3. Be willing to take risks and put yourself "out there". You might be surprised by how much fun it is to escape the prison of your usual way of being, and to experiment with previously unexplored possible selves!

4. You always have your breathing to return to and to help center you in times of stress. We did several of the breathing exercises that actors are taught, and we were universally struck by how present and calm these exercises made us feel, despite the anxiety of having to "go public".

5. Your ability to visualize and imagine make your actions possible. To my amazement, I did not have to fake sadness or a choked-up feeling when it was called for. All I had to do was picture, with the engagement of all my senses and with my eyes closed, the memory of a sad event, and my "acting" just happened. Likewise, I was able to imagine feeling intense excitement and enthusiasm, and a genuine bounciness and energy emerged
What if you were able to visualize a desired outcome, with the attendant sensual experiences of touch, smell, sight, sound and perhaps even taste, that was sufficient to energize you - past your procrastination and hesitation - to Just Do It? 

Remember the saying "fake it until you make it"? I suspect there is a lot more to that sentence than meets the eye!

10 Essential Small Business Tools

With the imaginatively named business, Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch provides a wealth of resources to help small businesses succeed, particularly in their marketing efforts.

He periodically complies his "Ten" lists, offering his opinion as to why the items qualify for his list.

As I was browsing through my filed e-mails, I came across this one, called Ten Essential Small Business Tools, to share with you. 

A few comments:

I recently gave up my Spamarrest account as I switched my e-mail account to Gmail. I discovered that Gmail is great at catching spam, gives me a glimpse of the first few words of the e-mail without me having to open it and saves me the cost of paying for Spamarrest, which did well as a spam blocker/catcher, but still allowed as much spam through as Gmail does. 

Instead of Bloglines, I use My Yahoo as my feedreader. No special reason - it just works for me, and most blogs have an easy sign up to receive their blog feed for My Yahoo.

I own a copy of ACT 2005 that I planned to use. However, I never got around to investing the time to learn how to get the most out of using it (isn't that the story of so many purchases we make?).

Instead, I took a wonderful 6-week tele-class series called Outlook for the Entrepreneur by Paul Wagner, the Software Magician, on how to maximize my use of Outlook 2003. And that demolished any need I might have had for using ACT as my contact management software! Instead, I became a whiz at using all kinds of features in Outlook that I never knew existed!

Please share resources that you consider indispensible for your small business. Thank you!

Is an MBA worth it?...

..... is the title of an article written by Wayne J. Guglielmo in Medical Economics that I came across this afternoon.

I am often asked this by physicians in conversation, and it has been one of the questions I have often posed to the successful physician entrepreneurs I have interviewed for my Conversations with Trailblazers Audio Series.

It turns out, according to the article, that the answer is "maybe...or maybe not".

As quoted in the article, an MBA offers certain benefits.

"An MBA degree can:

• Enhance your credibility in the business world. It can change people's perceptions of you, as several of the doctors we talked to said. With it, you're no longer considered "just a doctor"—someone who's probably superb at what he does but who may not know beans about the commercial world. You've been admitted to the club, so the calls you make are more likely to be returned, and your ideas taken seriously. In short, the added credential boosts your clout in the world beyond medicine.
  
  
• Introduce new subject areas and new ways of thinking. An MBA degree can also give you the knowledge, vocabulary, and perspective you need to succeed in business, whether that means running your own practice better or building a new business.
  
  
• Build teamworking skills. The business and medical school approach to education is very different. The MBA's team approach and its disciplined system for tackling projects have proved life changing. When students who've had business-school training come back into the medical world, they're much more accepting of working as part of a team," says Ken Veit of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. "They know they can't simply dictate. They're eager to work with the nurses, techs, and administrators to make, say, an OR schedule work better."
  
  
• Renew your love of learning. Even if you have no practical goal in mind, getting an MBA can simply be a lot of fun—a way to meet new people, learn new things, and stimulate another part of your brain."

All but one of the physician entrepreneurs I have interviewed to date have started and grown businesses without an MBA. Reflecting on their decisions and experiences, they made the following remarks:

• An MBA can provide valuable theory, but it cannot put the fire in your belly that you need in order to cope and thrive as a business owner or product inventor.
  
  
• There has been nothing as valuable as hanging around with other entrepreneurs and successful business people.
  
  
• In order to open meaningful doors as an entrepreneur, unlike a physician healthcare administrator, it would have been necessary to get an MBA from the top 10 MBA schools - places like Harvard or Stanford or Wharton.
  
  
• Either mentoring or good partnering, or both, have been the biggest keys to building confidence and helping overcome lack of knowledge. In several cases, they took advantage of a "vicarious MBA" by partnering with trained business folks.
  
  
• None of the interviewees regretted not having gotten an MBA, even though some confess that it probably took longer to gain access to funding, and to build financial and marketing expertise.

Are you surprised?

I was, as many of the physicians I have interviewed run substantial consulting, investment banking, software development, and other companies. Others are "solopreneurs" with strong businesses, and incomes that exceed those of clinical practice. In some ways, these single self-employed doctors face greater challenges as they have had to master all the aspects of running and growing a business.

What emerges above all else from my conversations with physician entrepreneurs is their restlessness with the status quo and their impatient desire to fix what is broken, improve on what is mediocre or merely adequate, and invent what isn't yet available. In retrospect, stopping along the way to get an MBA would have caused a frustrating delay and consumed valuable dollars needed for channeling into start ups.

Any comments? I'd love to hear your thoughts, as I feel certain there are strong opinions about this decision!