"Once you become a physician, finish all medical
specialty training, and have a few years in private
practice under your belt, it marks a turning point
at which most physicians unknowingly start
slipping backwards financially in their medical
practice business and to some degree
in their medical practice management."
"If your medical education lacks a formal business education (which
insures you of a highly successful medical career), you will fail to
some degree, regardless of how much you try to prevent it."
Your burning passion and rugged determination for your medical career goals is not enough to overcome the barriers to your planned and expected maximum success in medical practice. It’s reality that you shouldn’t have to face, and that you don’t deserve.
There are reasons why. And what you can do about it. It’s one of the most distressing, yet understandable factors leading to medical practice business and career failure. The meaning of failure as used here, is the complete inability of over 95% of medical doctors to reach their maximum potential as a medical doctor--for private medical practice business and financial
lack of income
It also includes your inability to create and maintain a medical practice that will ever reach the profitability potential it has the capacity to foster. In clearer terms, unless you are prepared to
do what needs to be done to reach those highest levels of accomplishments, you will fail.
The inability refers to the absence of medical training and education that are required to rise
above the others. As a result you are effectively programmed to fail by the institution that qualified
you to be a medical doctor.
Consider a few medical practice factors that lead you to this unholy position...
1. You have not been provided with the essential tools to run your medical practice business efficiently and profitably... meaning no business or marketing training or education.
It's a challenge to your intellect and common sense.
Is it possible in our present economic environment to create a successful, constantly growing, medical practice business when the medical doctor owner has no real knowledge about how to do that effectively and without expert help?
A “no” answer indicates you are quite comfortable about extracting from your medical career
just enough abundance and satisfaction to make do. In other words, you being a hostage/victim
of your circumstances.
A “yes” answer indicates that you have not yet matured in medical practice business far enough
to recognize that all of your sheer brilliance in medical knowledge is never enough to create a maximally productive medical practice business—just enough to get by with for a while.
2. You have “educational burnout” without even recognizing it. The evidence of this is obvious when you consider these issues...
a. Why was it necessary to require medical doctors to complete CME
hours for maintaining medical licensure?
b. Why is it compulsory to recertify for specialty credentialing?
c. Why is it that once you start medical practice there is no urgency or
self-implied obligation to voluntarily maintain and continually update
your medical knowledge? Unless forced... most won't.
d. Why is it that the need to have a business education is such an
unnecessary and objectionable necessity that is totally ignored by
most doctors as well as all 174 credentialed medical schools in our nation?
Yes, you promised yourself there would be no more burning the midnight oil again.
e. What possible reason would medical education pundits have to neglect
the need to provide a business as well as medical education to medical students?
Could it be that they knew about the educational burnout phenomenon and
didn’t want that to happen during your medical education and training...but OK,
if it came afterward?
3. Your passion for practicing medicine gradually becomes crowded out of your mind. That’s because once you become aware of the fact that your medical career is not able to provide you with the higher goals you had in mind at the start, turned out to be a pipedream.
For those medical doctors who already have wealth and adequate funding, there seems to be no real concern about these kinds of issues. But, for most medical doctors that is not the case. My concern is about the latter.
The real-life examples of how these arcane medical practice factors are born...
The sequence of ominous changes in your passion for your medical career is one of the most distressing, yet understandable, factors leading to career failure. It begins with graduation from medical school, sometimes even sooner. It’s something older medical doctors see in their
rear view mirror.
Prestige, recognition, fulfillment, happiness, and expectations in your medical career seldom increase with time but rather, fade with time. As you proceed in your medical career goal setting beyond medical school, the bright lights, celebrations, and spectacular accomplishments disappear in the sunset. It starts almost immediately.
The day you completed your internship, were you given a loud sendoff, glory and recognition that would shake the pillars of medicine? Did you deserve that? Absolutely, but it doesn’t happen.
The revelation hits you in the face that there will be no more public pats on the back. From now on your dedication to your obligations and career success becomes an investment in
personal satisfaction.
Your rewards for completing a residency in your specialty are whittled down into a medical certificate of residency completion, not a rousing cheering crowd. Your self-esteem benefits, but your wallet suffers.
Either you are headed for private medical practice of some nature, or you are feeling the security of becoming an employed physician.
Right here, you are at the highest level of your medical knowledge with the incredible skills and ambition to take on any of the world of medical practice challenges put in front of you. From here on you are on your own.
No one is there to push or inspire you further and higher, except yourself. Previously, you had back-up, now you don’t. Even your family that has not lived in your shoes themselves can’t really help you much in your medical career choices and goals.
The next step in your career is even more stressful, as well as being outrageously insulting to all
new medical doctors. Why? Because you don’t deserve this as your reward for years of sacrifice
and struggle.
Medical practice is your real teacher and mentor...
This new environment of medical practice has a bundle of harsh lessons to teach you. Of course, no one had discussed these things with you in any depth because they didn’t want to discourage you. It leaves you naïve and vulnerable, which is much worse than giving you the truth to begin with.
This one thing is far more damaging to your medical career than you can believe. Every medical doctor is affected to some degree during his or her medical practice career.
What are your options for avoiding or resolving these destructive factors regarding your future medical practice career?
As with the activities and strategies required for success, there is no one simple laser guided answer for every person to follow to arrive at their personal highest level of achievement that
they call “success.”
But, there is only one commonality found among the successful people that you may not care
to hear about.
“It is a stronger, deeper, more unrelenting commitment to
success, far beyond what most can ever marshal."
----(Source: No B.S. Marketing Letter,
GKIC, Dan Kennedy, Nov. 2012)
This simple golden rule of success implies that we must reach a point in time when our minds become aware of chain of events, predictable side-effects, and consequences that are adherent to your decisions. Thus, it enables you to correctly ascertain whether a decision you make is complimentary to your objective, diverges from your objective, or is in direct conflict
with your objective.
Your decisions about your medical career are even more complex than any you have previously made. It involves making good decisions at the start but doesn’t exclude good decisions made throughout your medical practice business years.
For most physicians and other medical professionals who haven’t lost their desire to perform at maximum levels, it will often require one or more of the following...
1. You must know yourself-- What are you skills, talents, interests, activities that create satisfaction, biases and toleration limits, among others?
You need to spend a few hours quietly putting these attributes in order, even in priority. Sometimes it takes several sessions with other people (usually parents) who know you quite well listening to what they see in you that you don’t see.
Many college graduates are unaware of who they really are inside, and what capacity they have to succeed. So, they stumble along relying on their “above average” intelligence to keep them on track to a few objectives.
If you aren’t aware of what you need to do to be happy with your life and profession by the time you finish college, you are likely not to discover that later on. This factor becomes a life long millstone around your neck.
2. You must continue to set goals to be accomplished during your whole life----Without goals,
you lose your passion and determination.
Over 95% of medical doctors are hamstrung because they either have no idea what they are really capable of accomplishing, or have fears that prevent them from moving to higher levels of accomplishment such as...
A. Fear of being taken advantage of... easily led astray...
analytical minded
B. Fear of not being a success... of failing
C. Fear of not fitting in... ostracized by peers... not a leader...
hides in the herd
D. Fear of lack of approval of peers and friends... always social,
energetic, and fun-loving
You don’t set goals because of these same fears. It’s why so many great people tell you to face
your fears and go right on through them no matter what.
3. Don’t expect a blueprint for success-- Lee Milteer, professional highly regarded business mentor, says, “Success Is An Inside Job.” She teaches that you create your own success using the path from “visualization” to “mindset.” If you don’t understand that process, you need to find out how it works and trust it.
4. Create a laser focus on one primary objective-- When you dilute your path with multiple goals, are multitasking, and are constantly changing your decisions you have set yourself up for a watered-down life and career.
If you find you have chosen the wrong objective, then move to a new focus on another primary objective... never more than one at a time. If you have the time for more than one goal at a time, then your private medical practice is not growing and you need more patients.
5. Real success in your medical career results from maintaining your family obligations--Your level of career success is corrupted when you neglect your family relationships. Divorce, broken homes, financial disasters, and lack of a religious heart results in not being able to fully enjoy your success when and if it arrives.
6. Make your personal integrity the basis of your career: Your integrity creates your character that others see and respect. You must maintain the principles you live by under all circumstances in your profession. When your “word” is unreliable, you corrupt everything around you one way or another. You then live off the garbage other people discard.
There are many more examples of solutions you probably have experienced and know the value
of that may be just as important as the ones I’ve mentioned above. If you thought I was going to give you a 1-2-3-4-5... answer to gaining total control of your medical career, you haven’t been reading between the lines of this article well enough.
Business experts agree that medical doctors are set up to fail. If you care to debate the point, you should start by reading what Michael Gerber, business expert, and author, has confirmed by working with many medical doctors over many years. He presents that in his bestseller book, The E-Myth: Physician. Give yourself a huge dose of reality! Then swallow it with a gracious new genius
of understanding.
Requirements for maximizing your medical practice income
1. Good knowledge of medical practice management
2. Having the energy for continuous medical practice marketing
3. Medical practice business planning is important.
4. Marketing for physicians and their office staff is a winning set up.
5. Learn what makes a medical practice business successful.
6. Your medical practice business system is essential.
7. Bothe practice marketing and physician marketing is rewarding.
8. Business success is the objective of all physicians in private medical practice.
9. My business website— www.marketingamedicalpractice.com
----Professional Probe----
"My success is unlimited NOW!"
When you think about it, there is nothing in the practice of medicine that is easy and is
sometimes backwards. Nor does it come without constant effort not only to maintain your
medical knowledge, but also to ride the wave of constantly new medical knowledge coming
over the horizon.
Your own personal level of success in professional practice is dependent on how you define "unlimited." For most, it means to reach a level of success where you feel comfortable, not
the level at the top where your maximal potential in private medical practice business is reached. The difference between the two can be reduced dramatically by perseverance and recognizing
that you are capable of doing much more with your professional life than you think possible.
The critical element for every medical doctor regarding the upward path is a mixture of desire, family obligations, knowing your limitations, passion, commitment, and satisfying you own goals in your medical practice career.
The greatest rocket boosting factor in medical practice is learning how to manage and run your medical practice business marketing using known business principles.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #39, 3-16-22
