How many failures to success?

Physicians are averse to failing. It simply wasn't allowed in our training. But business is different. We learn from failures so the more you have, the more it will serve as your life lesson. It's an essential part of business ownership and it should not be a reason for not starting your Direct Care practice.

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Dr. T  0:00  
Owners of a direct care practice are more likely to experience higher job satisfaction than the insurance based practice. And it's no wonder why direct care is independent of insurance. Patients pay the doctor directly for their expertise. The doctor gets full autonomy in how they care for patients and how they get paid. They have chosen this path with a love of medicine. This is the direct care way. 

Dr. T  0:24  
By listening to this podcast, you may even start to believe that you too can have a successful direct care practice. Come listen with an open mind as I share my personal journey and how I pivoted from an insurance based practice to direct care right in the middle of the pandemic. And the valuable lessons along the way. This podcast may be the very thing you need to revitalize your medical practice. I'm your host, owner of a direct care podiatry practice Dr. Tea Nguyen.

Dr. T  0:52  
Nobody wants to talk about failure how normal it is to fail, especially in medicine. I've talked previously about what it means to fail, and how to show up in spite of fear of failing. But in this episode, I'm going to dive a little bit deeper. I'm going to answer the question how many failures you'll need to experience before you achieve success. Now that might sound like a really weird title, like who wants to fail, who does the things that they want to do? On purpose to fail, right? But this is just another perception on how to deal with it. I'm going to give you some examples of famous businesses that you might be patron of and how many failures they've had. And then that is what got them to where they're at today. 

Dr. T  1:40  
So let's take for example, Kentucky Fried Chicken KFC, this was my favorite food item. When I was in sixth grade. It brings back a lot of memories. And it's kind of funny to read about the history of Colonel Sanders. Right? How many attempts did they make before KFC became a big, big thing? I googled it. And it says there was an attempt of at least 1009 different businesses that they attempted before KFC became a success. Now, do you have the patience for failing 1000 times? I have no idea. I know I don't. But they persisted, because they believed in the business enough to keep going. 

Dr. T  2:22  
Now what about our modern day electricity Thomas Edison of The Electric Light Company, he made over around 1000 unsuccessful attempts, before inventing what we know as today, the light bulb? Can you imagine 1000 attempts you have to be really neurotic to continue to push through. Or you just have to really believe in the vision to push through right? 1000 Another 1000? That's insane. 

Dr. T  2:53  
What about Dyson Dyson, the vacuum cleaner company, right? They had about over 5000 prototypes before achieving the success of what we know as of today as the vacuum cleaner. 5000 over 5000. Now I'm sharing all of this to show you that even if you don't want a business as successful as KFC, or inventing a light bulb, or even Dyson, that some of that's just really just showing you data of what these successful businesses went through in order to achieve the success that they have today that we know of today. And there are so many more, but just drawing you the picture and normalizing failure in business. It's just part of the game. What's the point I'm trying to make here? A lot of people are afraid of failing. So they just never try. And often most majorities will always stick to what they perceive is safe. And I say perceive because a lot of the fears that we have, where does it come from? It comes from our mind, right? It comes from the voice that sits back there that we believe is our own, but sometimes it's just the way we were raised how we were conditioned, but it's just a voice. It's not you. It's just sitting in your subconscious. And you believe that voice. And so maybe you don't try. 

Dr. T  4:16  
So people believe that employment is safe. But let me tell you, employment as we know as of the pandemic for physicians is not safe, you can easily lose your job, which then if that was your only source of income, you have that dependency on one source of income and you lose that job. It can really venue around it gives you a lot of challenges. If you lose that job and you are susceptible to losing that job for a variety of reasons, maybe not your performance, maybe it's the economics maybe your position got replaced by a cheaper alternative. 

Dr. T  4:51  
Everyone's trying to increase their profits and cut their overhead and they're replacing physicians with with cheaper alternative Or maybe they're automating some of the work that people used to do. And now they're introducing AI. Right? So employment is not as safe as it has been perceived to be. And we've seen this happen in the past several years. Now think about the safety net of working with insurance. Is that safe? Or is it just a perception? insurances are lowering their reimbursement? So how could this possibly make economical sense to continue? While the cost of running a business increases, your staff needs to get paid, they need to get their raises, the cost of all the goods that you sell, taxes have gone up shipping has gone up production of the products that you want to sell, or offer to your patients. Those are going up. So how does this make economical sense long term, while the reimbursements to physicians go down, it's not safe. It's a perception. It's a perception because that's just what everybody else is doing. And so following social norms, we feel that if everyone else is doing it, then it's safe. But a lot of us were hit straight in the face. And now we see that it's not safe at all. Now, there are risks in both employment, as I've just demonstrated. So there are risks in both employment and business ownership. I'm not going to hide behind the fact that owning my business has been challenging, but the challenges are different, right? I'm in control of my success, and my failures. And I accept that to be, I would have never proceeded in owning my own practice. If I wasn't pushed against the wall. Honestly, I had no idea that I wanted to own my practice, except when I was pregnant. And I knew that the employment situation was just not viable. And then I moved out into my own practice doing the insurance thing, thinking that was safe. And I found myself with a negative bank account, even after I took out a business loan. That's a lot of money, I still needed to pay back my educational loans, six figures of that, nothing I did was safe. I just had to figure out a way to make it work for me so that I can live day to day with some sense of peace. Yeah, I was in a lot of dead. 

Dr. T  7:06  
But I was able to control my own schedule, having my own business. And when I started to opt out of insurances, I was able to command more money, because I was deciding the prices of my stuff, not a third party payer, and you know, insurances, their coupons, taking insurance is essentially a coupon, you're going to get a discounted amount, no matter what you, Bill. So I saw how that was not safe. For the longevity of my practice, I want you to start thinking about how you are defining failure. Do you think that it means when you fail out one thing that it defines who you are as a person? And is that true for others? What about these other businesses who had 1000s of failures? Do they sit with that belief that they are a failure? Or do they persist, because they believe at some point, they're gonna find that secret sauce, they're gonna find success and all of the work that they've invested in all of the lessons that came out of those failures, right? 

Dr. T  8:04  
One of the businesses that you currently rely on right now never existed because the Creator felt like a failure, and they just wanted to play it safe. Do you buy stuff from Amazon? What if Amazon never existed? We wouldn't have access to all of the things that leaving our home, right? How often did we have the inability to leave our home, but we needed a thing. And we relied on Amazon, or DoorDash, or all of these services that eventually became successful? What if the doctor who has all of the knowledge that you have chose to stop doctoring, because they did not want to fail the one person or they had a really negative outcome from a surgery? That one time and that finished them? Think of all of the people that one physician did help? Now let's take a wider view? What if you're not just looking at the immediate fear of criticism? you're attaching failure to your self worth? But let's, let's go even broader. What if your purpose on this earth was to discover what your meaningful contribution to the world is? And then you were given lessons along the way, but then you chose to stop learning. You chose to stop understanding what it means to push through hardships? Are you really living in your full purpose, then, if you are afraid to make choices that are hard, that are challenging that tests you and your commitment? Do you even have a purpose? I guess we should start with that? Do you have a purpose of what your life was going to be here on this earth? Do you want to have a meaningful life? Because if you do, then you'll need to take these calculated risks. 

Dr. T  9:43  
So here's what I'm saying. Doctors with no business background whatsoever, are terrified of running a direct care practice. They might be enthusiastic at first glance, they might even have a business that's very successful in the insurance model. We all come from a different background. But when it comes down to doing the actual work of developing your direct care practice that is totally different than mainstream, totally against the grain of insurance models, some dogs hesitate to move in that direction. And they give themselves all of the excuses to not move forward. Like, why would I leave insurance when it's safe, when it's a big pool of patients to pull from when it's giving me this income, but then they find themselves incredibly stressed out. And they're functioning at a level of stress that they thought was just normal part of practicing medicine. And I've talked to a bunch of doctors who did not know they were subjecting themselves to chronic stress until they left the insurance model, and had their direct care practice. And that was the point when they realized all their health issues and mental issues, mental health issues, was really the result of that insurance model. And they were living yet not realizing that's what it was. 

Dr. T  10:58  
So now ask yourself, if you're thinking about direct care, whether it's going to be a hybrid, or fully cash, think of what's the worst that can happen, work through your fears. So the worst that can happen is you actually fail at a direct care practice that's possible. Or you can fulfill your dream of being independent of the system, controlling your schedule, making whatever you want, because you are setting the price. Those two things are plausible outcomes, right? But what do the majority of us do, we live in this space of we might fail, and then we end the story. And then we're done with that option. But few of us actually think about it deep enough and say, but what if I actually succeeded? I kind of find it hard in this day and age with the technology that we have with the access to resources in the brain that we have our knowledge base is intense is the 1% of the population that went to medical school succeeded, proceeded on with residency also succeeded. And living in the world world as a physician helping others we are the 1%, who pushed through a whole heck of a lot, and we're good at it. But somewhere along the way, we accepted the fear and believed in the fear that moving into a director practice might lead to failure. And as you can see, it's not a healthy place to live right mentally, to believe that a decision might lead to failure, it's hard to make decisions in that space, it's hard to make decisions when you're in that brain space of really survival mode, where you're making decisions because you're afraid. 

Dr. T  12:33  
So what I was going at is I find it impossible to really not succeed. That is my mental capacity at this point in my life. There is an abundance of information out there, we've already done the hard things, there are people who are incredibly successful. And they're putting out free information, because that's their purpose to help others. They're putting out podcasts, they've got courses, they're coaching, they're giving talks, they're networking, people who are highly successful want to give back, because they're no longer living in survival mode, they are thriving, they see the benefits of the risk that they took. And they want to encourage others who are deserving of this type of life. And they're putting out free content, literally everywhere, by just typing Google, whatever it is that you're struggling with. And there's an answer for that. Everything that you need is out there. And it's within you, you have to make those decisions, you are smart, you are ambitious, and you are deserving of what you want. You need to get out of your head and take even the most micro movements to prove your fears wrong, to take this little steps that eventually when you take enough of them will accumulate to a big thing. 

Dr. T  13:43  
Failure is part of the process because these are the learning lessons are the stepping stones that you need to know what works and what doesn't. There is no book on how to become successful. There isn't one exactly for you and your circumstances in your life stage in your professional stage. So how do you really know what success takes its life lessons, these failures are going to test your commitment about how badly you want this, how often do we have an idea and we just don't pull through because we just in our hearts weren't fully committed to it right? I'll share with you that maybe you heard me talk about this in the past, I did my public health course simultaneously as I was getting my doctor of Podiatric Medicine degree. And I didn't complete the last capstone project because my heart just was no longer in it. And I kind of let the voice of my husband kind of pester me like it sat in my mind that and I believe the voice in my mind that said, this degree is not going to do anything for you. That's not going to add to your income. It's not going to be valuable. People don't really care and so on. Right? And I let the thoughts of those words penetrate deep enough for me to say, at the end of my capstone what I had to submit in order to get the degree. I got lazy and I said, Maybe I didn't really need that after all. And I spent 1000s of dollars for this course, I had the knowledge, the education to pull through and make and get that degree. But I let my fears my laziness and my inner voice kind of take over. And so I never completed the Capstone never ended up with my MPH. And do I regret it a little bit, I don't have anything to prove that I did the work. That's besides the point, though. So don't let that inner voice get in the way of you accomplishing what you want to accomplish. I know I took you on a little bit of a tangent Boulevard there. 

Dr. T  15:32  
But the point is, you're going to be tested a lot of negative talk, whether it be in your head from the outside world, they're going to test you they're going to shake you up and see, are you truly committed to what you want to achieve? Or are you going to crumble at the first sign of a bad review? Maybe your patient requests a refund? You have dissatisfied customers? Like can you really tolerate success if you don't understand that failure is part of the process. Now, if you're on the fence about opting out because of these fears, then ask yourself this. What if this actually works? What if I start opting out of insurance? And then I get paid three, four or five times as much as I want to because I'm finally in control of what I'm charging. And I see fewer patients like, what's the worst that can happen? What if this actually happens live in that space? What would my life look like? If I can have total control of my schedule and make money easier than what I'm doing now? What will that do for your mental health, which we'll move on to different parts in your life, right, the relationships you have with your family, with your friends, with others and with yourself. 

Dr. T  16:38  
And for the people who need what you have to offer, what will not do for you, and the life you live on this earth, what I want to invite you to do is to make decisions as if you were already successful, as if you know it's bound to happen. It's kind of like, when you first entered into medical school, you're like, I'm fully committed, there's nowhere else to go. But you're going to figure out a way to be resourceful to get the help that you need. And you're going to get through all of the hard stuff and look at where you're at now. So function in a place as if you are already successful, that you already have what you wanted. Because when you do, it's the law of attraction, you start attracting more of those things like will attract light, you function in a place of positivity, in confidence. And the more that you can see that positive future, you are more likely to make the right decisions that will lead you there. When you work in a place of fear, you show up differently, you're less confident, maybe you're in survival mode. And the outcome is just it's just Okay, right? You're just tolerating. But what's worse about this space of thinking is that you might actually never get to see what you're fully capable of. And you might even burn out of medicine. But we need doctors like you to stay in clinical practice. And whether you choose to do this part time or full time, people need you, you're good at what you do. You've worked for this, you deserve to be rewarded for the commitment and sacrifices you've made up to now. 

Dr. T  18:04  
And so I'm telling you there that life does get easier indirect care, direct care, it is straightforward, it is simple. And it's giving you the life that you've worked really, really hard for my coach told me that being brave is not doing things in the absence of fear. It's doing things in spite of it. It exists fear exist, failures is just part of the process. We need to normalize that failing is just what it takes to be a business owner. And so I hope that this resonates with you too, and that this actually lights a fire under your ass to get moving to ignore the fear and just do the thing. Do the thing that will give you the most satisfaction in your life while you're here on Earth. So to answer the question, I first started with how many failures until you achieve success, however many it takes. unsatisfying, I know. But those are facts. That's all I've got for today. Thanks so much for joining me. I'll catch you next week.

Dr. T  19:05  
Thank you so much for being here with me. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, please like, share and subscribe. So more people like you can have access to another way of practicing medicine, that direct care way. Let's connect find my info in the show notes and send me your questions. That might be the topic for future episodes. 

Dr. T  19:24  
And lastly, if you remember nothing else, remember this be the energy you want to attract. See you next time.