Advice to a young physician entrepreneur

I'm often asked about how to pursue a physician entrepreneurial career pathway. Like Peter Medawar opined in his?"Advice to a Young Scientist", allow me to offer some advice :

?1. You will not learn about innovation or entrepreneurship in medical school or residency. Medical education is designed to teach students clinical care and research methods. If you have an entrepreneurial interest, you will have to pursue it using alternative pathways.?Medicine is a culture of conformity not a culture of creativity.

2. Physician entrepreneurs need to be physicians first. Complete a residency and get clinical experience. It will provide you with the insights you will need to identify opportunities and the ecosystems that create them. Work on reading about business topics, identify local resources, build your network, find a mentor , get some experience when you can, like taking a gap year or leave of absence, and join social networks of like mined people for social support.?It's called "physician?entrepreneur" for a reason

Sometimes, though, it becomes increasingly clear, for many reasons, that you chose the wrong specialty. You then must make a choice whether to persist, pivot or punt. But how should you approach making the decision?

In his book, "Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right", author Joseph Badaracco suggests asking yourself four questions derived from classic philosophers to resolve what he calls right v right decisions:

1. How do my feelings and instincts define the dilemma? In other words, what is your heart and gut telling you and making you feel? Some call this the "sleep test"
2. Which of the responsibilities and values in conflict have the deepest roots in my life and in communities I care about? Know thyself.
3. Looking to the future, what is my way? Become what you are.
4. How can expediency and shrewdness, along with imagination and boldness, move me toward the goals I care about most strongly? How can I shrewdly use my power.?

3. Do not pursue being a physician and being an entrepreneur sequentially, but, rather, concomitantly. The time and effort to be a doctor is overwhelming and leaves time for little else.?However, begin to develop an entrepreneurial mindset by using free materials and reading outside of your field of interest as often as time allows.

4. Bioentrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity using scarce resources with the goal of creating user defined value through the deployment of innovation?using a VAST business model..?Walk before you run. Involve yourself in projects that address a clear customer need, be they educational, social or otherwise, and participate in creating a solution that adds value.

5.?Be a problem seeker, not a problem solver in the early stages.?Most businesses fail because they don't create enough customers willing to pay for a solution that does not solve their problem or they have an unsustainable business model that does not create enough profit to last.

6. What got you to where you are now will not get you to where you want to go.?But, you have many transferable skills to learn to use them.To develop as a physician entrepreneur,you will need education, resources, networks, mentors, experience, support networks and policy partners and advocates. Every great entrepreneur is a great networker. Every great entrepreneur stands on the shoulders of advisers and mentors. Every great entrepreneur understands and avoids their blind spots and fills those gaps with people who are smarter. You not only need the right people on your bus, but they need to be sitting in the right seats at the right parts of the trip.

7. Follow your instincts when it comes to getting more involved. There are few ,if any specialties, in medicine you can practice part time and still maintain your diagnostic and therapeutic acumen. On the other hand, there are many ways to get involved as a physician entrepreneurs that will give you the experience and insights you need to know whether you want to get more involved. Serving on advisory boards is a good next step.?Here is a guide to non-clinical careeers.

8. What got you into medical school and made you a good doctor is different from what you will need to deliver in business.?The clinical mindset is not the entrepreneurial mindset.?Advisory board members, for example, are expected to deliver management advice, customers, money, new product feedback and key opinion leader marketing help. When it comes to the business of medicine, assume that you don't know what you don't know. Find a place to learn what you don't know and then a place to answer the questions.

9. Don't kick a dead horse.?Only about 1% of physicians have an entrepreneurial mindset.?If you don't have the?basic entrepreneurial DNA, then move on.?Don't be a wannapreneur.

10. Surgeons who don't have complications don't operate enough. Entrepreneurs who don't fail haven't been involved in enough businesses. Business and clinical judgement comes from experience.?Experience comes from failing and making mistakes.

11.?Sick care cannot be fixed from inside.?Go to events and meet people who have nothing to do with biomedicine.

12. Shamelessly steal ideas that work in other industries that can be tweaked to work in medicine.?

13. Whatever you do, make it personal but don't take it personally.

14. Here are some thoughts on how to pick a residency if you are interested in entrepreneurship.

15. Understanding the business of medicine should be an ACGME competency

16. Advice to a medical student entrepreneur.

17. Advice to STEM students and premeds

18. Get your financial house in order

19. Always have Plan B

20. Get a side gig

Here are some differences between a business person and an entrepreneur. However you slice and dice the definitions, don't buy into the myths that "doctors make lousy business people".

One in five physicians say it is likely they will leave their current practice within two years.?Meanwhile, about one in three doctors and other health professionals say they intend to reduce work hours in the next 12 months, according to recently published survey research. However, what they say is not necessarily what they will do.?Here's why.

You should?think twice before throwing away your white coat.

Biomedical and health innovation will be the only way out of our global care crisis. We will need increasing numbers of talented, passionate, dedicated physician entrepreneurs to be part of the solutions. Seeing 20 patients a day for 40 years is one way to add value. Creating a company that changes the lives of millions of patients, employs hundreds, and adds a substantial economic boost to the regional economy is another.?However, those are but two of many or the roles, holes and goals.

Remember: Make it personal, don't let school get in the way of your education, and create a portfolio career ladder.

Good luck with your venture.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is The President and CEO of the?Society of Physician Entrepreneurs?on Substack