What If Your Career Were a Business?

Nobody taught you business in medical school. And yet the way your career actually works looks a lot like one, whether you own a practice or collect a paycheck from someone else's.

A business, by the definition I found, is an organized entity that provides goods or services to customers in exchange for money or other value. Strip it down and it has three core pieces: a value proposition, a target market, and a revenue model. Here's what each looks like in your life.

Your value proposition

This is the unique benefit your services provide to the people you serve. It's the whole reason we have job interviews: to show we're the right person to care for the patients, lead the team, or run the practice. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you're an excellent physician, because excellent physicians tend to be the ones the system burns out. You are a great deal to whoever you provide services to. And there is no cost to starting to believe that.

Your target market

If you're employed, your target market is your employer, because they are the ones who contracted with you to provide medical services. Patients are who you serve, but your employer is who you contract with. If you own your practice, your patients are your target market, and when you're hiring, so are the people you want to recruit. It's a tricky shift, but it gives you agency. You can show up differently with leadership and at evaluation time.

Your revenue model

The money moves because you see a patient, create an encounter, and that generates a bill. Insurance pays what it pays, the patient may owe something, and some portion flows to you as salary, RVUs, a percentage of billings, or a membership model. Even if you don't want to touch money with a ten-foot pole, understanding how it flows matters. We are not a charity. If services go out and nothing comes back, that isn't a business, no matter how kind-hearted you are.

You are the talent

If your career is the business, you are its talent. If the talent runs dry, the business can't deliver. No one from the outside comes in to hand you time off or extra money, and you can't take out a loan for energy. This isn't a call to add more to your to-do list. It's a reason to look at the decisions you're making, including your FTE, and to ask who is on your team. Your team is anyone you pay to take something off your plate, like a nanny or a meal service, plus the friends and family who help. If that circle is small, you may need to hire out more, or you may decide to reduce your FTE. If you do, be intentional, because your income goes down with it.

The admin nobody does for you

A business needs licenses and insurance. Your career needs licensure, a DEA registration, CME hours, dues, and board certification. Your employer might remind you, might even give you time, or might not. Either way, no one can do it for you. So decide when it happens: during clinic time, on PTO, or on your own time. I lean toward PTO requested in advance, spent somewhere pleasant.

Imagine how much easier things would feel if you stopped taking the frustrations personally and started seeing them as simply how the work is set up. You'd be removing some of the drama and claiming more agency than most of us feel we have.

If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call. You can also find me at www.healthierforgood.com or email me at [email protected].

This post grew out of my time with EntreMD Business School, the business coaching community for physicians led by Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, MD, aka Dr Una (https://entremd.com/).