Show me the money!

Just A Quick News Tidbit:

A recent study by WellFargo/Gallup looked at how much money it took to start a business - not as much as I would have thought, and yet quite a stretch for many. They reported that it took an average of $10,000 to get going, and here's what they had to say:

"Many small business owners started businesses with their own money, and with very small amounts. Seventy-three percent of business owners surveyed primarily funded their businesses with their own personal savings, while 37 percent obtained loans and lines of credit. More than half of those surveyed (53 percent) indicated they would have had an easier time had more money been available at the outset.

The study also revealed a need for business knowledge and information. Only thirty-one percent of small business owners surveyed started with business plans. Forty-nine percent say they would have had an easier time had they asked for more advice from experienced business owners, while an additional thirty-nine percent indicated a better understanding of financial management would have been an asset."

Oddly enough, I set aside exactly $10,000 to start my business - nice to know I'm average!

My thanks to Jeff Cornwall of The Entrepreneurial Mind for alerting me to this study!

It's okay to peek!!

One of my commitments as a blogger is to share my own story as an evolving physician entrepreneur.

So...... today is a special day for my business, as it's the birthday of this website and blog, The Entrepreneurial MD. Not The Big Bash, yet ..... just the Sneak Peek at what is to come!

After long hours of writing web pages and working with my wonderful blog designer, Shari Horne and this grand new blogging platform at SquareSpace, I feel ready to put my work out there. It's dedicated to all you physicians who are dreaming of a more creative life, who are fired up to reinvent yourselves, or who have ideas that will improve life for yourself and others.

My dream is for The Entrepreneurial MD to become your playground for generating great business ideas, learning how to get started in business, sharing and commiserating, and offering others resources that we can all benefit from knowing about.

Come and visit regularly.... I look forward to sharing my own adventures as an entrepreneur. But even more so, I am excited to hear from you!

Do You Ever Stop Being a Physician?

I received an e-mail from a physician client recently, and its poignant message had me pause and reflect back on a difficult part of my journey from practicing physician to non-clinical business owner. She wrote the following, with fierce passion (and with her permission and my minor editing):

"I am grieving because I have finally made the full decision to leave medicine. Ischemic limbs, metastatic cancer, coronary artery disease--these are what I do on a daily basis and have done for more than 30 years. This is who I am. This is my purpose for being. This is my calling and my soul. In "Wild Minds: Living the Writer's Life" , Natalie Goldberg talks about writing in this way. For me medicine is elemental.  "Once you have tasted its essential life, you cannot turn from it without some deep denial and depression."  She was talking about writing. I am talking about medicine. For me, it is the same......... This may take a while to grieve, but I will get over it as I have every other loss in my life. And it may finally make me free. Did it not hurt you to give up medicine or was it not such an integral part of your soul as it is of mine?"

Yes, dearest client, it DID hurt me to give up medicine 10 years ago - but it was the medicine that I once knew and fantasized about. I missed the intimacy of my relationships with patients. I missed the special thrill that comes from delivering a baby or caring for three generations of a family or seeing a patient recover from a hospitalization. I missed gabbing on the phone with a pleasant specialist about a referral.

But I did NOT miss the bleak lunches with grumbling doctors in the hospital doctor's dining room, the indignation of patients armed with sheets of Internet downloads who weren't being given the medications they deemed necessary, or the panicked JCAHO-haunted medical records' staff messages telling me I hadn't signed my verbal orders that same day.

It took a seven-month intense "soul-search" to give myself permission to step away from my identity as a clinician and to expand my physician wings.

Even though I no longer want to be called Dr. Kennealy (just Philippa is fine), I am STILL a physician at heart - I still want to make things better - I still love to hear the jubilation in a client's voice when he or she sets and accomplishes a goal - I still want to address dis-ease, only this time it's the lack of ease so many physicians feel about their professional goals and new dreams.

And I want to become more - an accomplished woman, a loving spouse and parent, a friend or relative to be counted on, a creator, a fulfilled soul, and a responsible citizen. I believe I can stretch to accommodate all these elements of my being, AND continue to cherish the roles I have already played.  

I'd love to know your feelings about being a physician. Especially if you are considering a change in professional direction!

A Dozen Questions to Probe Your Business Idea

If I had to own up to emulating a model for creating this website with its content and resources, I'd confess to it being Startup Nation. Jeff and Rick Sloan - yes, they're brothers that seem to get along quite fine - have put heads together to offer a wide array of articles and tools for wannabe entrepreneurs of all stripes.

I haven't come across any physician entrepreneurs in their interviews and articles so that is how I can justify the existence of The Entrepreneurial MD. And who knows, maybe they'll be emulating an aspect of this site one day <grin>!

In today's weekly eNewsletter, they remind their readers of a key chapter from their book Startupnation, in which they urge prospective business owners to answer the "Defining Dozen" questions. Spend a few moments looking them over on their site (the questions are linked to more in-depth discussion) - see if you can provide solid answers. Your responses to these questions will, in effect, generate a good business plan.

Here are their questions:

1.  What's your idea? 
2.  How does your idea address a need? 
3.  What model suits you best? 
4.  What's so different about what you offer? 
5.  How big is the market and how big will you grow? 
6.  What's your role going to be? 
7.  Who's on your team? 
8.  How will customers buy from you, and how much will they pay? 
9.  How much money do you need and how much will you make? 
10. Where's the startup money coming from? 
11. How will you measure success? 
12. What are your key milestones?

BTW - I think this is why I am going to love blogging so much. I get to look smart by keeping current with the bright minds of many experts out there and then bringing you their words and thoughts. And this "plagiarism" is highly encouraged by other bloggers as it brings links to their site, which in turn makes the great Google god smile favorably on them. It's vicarious living at its finest. It's also a lot of fun!

Goals - To set , or not to set? That is my question!

There's lots written about the value of setting goals (here's one of my favorite more provocative ones that disapproves of so-called SMART goals). I have found it handy to have some structure to help me accomplish tasks but.... okay - so I confess  - I don't always practicing what I preach. Guess what - those are also some of my less productive moments!

In getting this new website set up, I found it very helpful to specify my goals and then break each one down into the steps and then tasks, and even sub-tasks, I wanted to accomplish. I used an Excel spreadsheet, which functioned fine, but it lacked flexibility and I had to keep adding rows in the middle of the spreadsheet as new tasks came up. Today I discovered this handy interactive goal-setting tool which looks like it may solve that problem. The coach in me enjoys the challenge of the questions: "Am I totally committed to this goal?" And "why is this goal important to me?" They dare me to stop kidding myself!

To access this tool for your own use, you can save it to your computer by doing the following: Right click on the link above and then click on "save as" to your desktop or a folder. You can also open directly with a left click.

I'll be giving it a run for a month to see if it helps me accomplish more, without fussing with a spreadsheet. I'm planning on adapting the tool somewhat to have it work better for me - instead of My First Action, I'll list all the actions (or tasks) needed to accomplish that particular goal.

Do you have a favorite goal-setting tool to share? Or an opinion as to whether they make a difference?