6 Ways To Sabotage Your Business

The missing link in business ownership is not about knowing more medicine, it's developing the mindset of an entrepreneur.

Key Takeaways

1. Awareness is the first step. Most sabotage is unconscious—whether it’s perfectionism, avoidance of money conversations, or overcommitting. Once you can name the pattern, you can interrupt it.
2. Mindset shapes results. Running a business isn’t just about systems and strategy—it’s about building the mental fitness to lead with clarity, resilience, and confidence, especially when challenges or fears come up.
3. Sustainability requires intention. When doctors align their habits with their long-term vision—rather than reacting to short-term fears—they create a practice that not only thrives financially, but also sustains their well-being and impact.

Where other coaching programs just tell you what to do, I teach doctors how to have sustaining results. The Launch Lab is open once a year and starts Sept 10, 2025. You ready?

Transcript

Dr. Tea Nguyen (00:00.0)

Practicing medicine without insurance is possible. Imagine a private practice where you get to see your best patients every day providing medical services you truly enjoy, all without the hassle of insurance. My name is Dr. Tea Nguyen, and I'm a recovering specialist who was completely burned out from insurance-based medicine. I pivoted into direct care, where patients pay me directly for my medical services and have never looked back. If you're a private practice owner or planning to become one, 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (00:30.648)

who's looking to be free of the grind of insurance and your craving simplicity, efficiency, and connection with patients, you are in the right place. This podcast will help you map out your exit plan and uncover the mindset needed to thrive in today's economy. Welcome to the Direct Care Podcast for Specialists. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (00:53.602)

Here are six ways to sabotage your business. If you're new here, welcome to the podcast. I'm having a very hard time finding words and completing sentences. And I'm attributing this to perimenopause, which by the way, I am starting hormone replacement therapy thanks to my lovely urologist who I am so happy for, who is able to listen to my problems. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (01:21.458)

and try to work with me to figure this stuff out. So I am brand new to the idea of hormone replacement therapy. So thank you so much for that. And thank you to the doctors who are helping others go through it. This goes to show you how much doctors are still needed, even in the age of AI, where people can type stuff up in chat, GPT, in cloud AI, in whatever land. And most people are gonna try to self-treat. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (01:50.898)

And the nuance is so much more important. Doctors are going to be so much more valuable because, I don't know if you know, but AI can hallucinate. It can take you on the wrong path because it's designed to make it agreeable with you so that you can continue to use it. So that's kind of the harm in AI if you don't know how to use it correctly. Anyway, that's where things are with me and I'm wondering how things are with you. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (02:19.052)

I put this episode together because it's so important to name things and know how to deal with it. And I don't think I understood the idea of self-sabotage because right off the bat, when I hear the word self-sabotage, it sounds like I am to blame, right? It's a blaming game. And I want to ensure that you understand that I'm not blaming you. I'm blaming the system. I'm blaming the system that we were not trained to know better. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (02:47.062)

on how to run our business and really to navigate life. Life is super hard and it's even harder right now for me as I'm going through a hormonal shift. And the thing about perimenopause is that there isn't a single test that says, yes, this is it. It's the whole picture, right? We have to look at the whole picture of the symptoms because sometimes the labs don't line up or the labs are wonky because of these other things. So it's just so not black and white. And for me, 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (03:17.582)

Some of that is hard information, but nonetheless, let's talk about the business side and why people like me need doctors like you to stay in clinical practice because I am willing to pay out of pocket to get this level of care, to get this nuance that AI simply cannot provide. So the more we get into these tools that are available to the world, the more... 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (03:42.904)

That's going to be needed from professional experts who know the nuances, who have the practice and experience to help patients get better. But sometimes smart people like you, doctors, keep yourself stuck because we over intellectualize or we allow fear to be our business mentors. So I wanna help you get out of that. So here are the six ways that doctors often self-sabotage and how to get out of that. The first one is, 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (04:10.616)

Perfectionism. If you've ever been called a perfectionist, listen to this one. When I was called a perfectionist back in the day, even before undergrad, I remember an instructor saying to me, you have a perfectionist attitude. I thought it was a compliment. It turns out it is not. Why is it not a compliment? Well, perfectionism is a safety mechanism. It's how we keep ourselves safe and protected. How? 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (04:41.15)

It's delaying the work that we inevitably have to do. It's spending or wasting time on stuff that probably needs to be outsourced. Things like tweaking a logo, adjusting the website, changing the colors of your logo, things that don't actually generate money. These are things that we do to distract ourselves from doing the real hard work of going out there and meeting people, for example. That's part of business. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (05:09.474)

Development is doing the hard stuff, but then we trap ourselves in doing the easy stuff or doing the low Revenue generating tasks that we can easily outsource for like five dollars an hour So I have a virtual assistant who helps me a lot doing research in certain topics on certain things that I need and I started her off I think it was five or six dollars an hour and Each year that she is with me. I give her a raise depending on performance and all the things but 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (05:39.552)

It works out for us both. I have had previous virtual assistants tell me that they have their nursing license, but they have a better work life working as an assistant and they are getting paid better than being a nurse in their respective countries. So this all ends up working out for everybody. And it's not that big of a deal. It's a big deal if you don't know how to use help when it's readily available for you there. And that's 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (06:09.42)

why I have my coaching program, that's why I have the Direct Care Society, the free Facebook group where you can show up and ask the question and ask where you can get more help. But the thing is, if you find yourself in a situation where you're trying to get things perfect, you're waiting for the perfect time to open a practice, you're waiting for the perfect time to invest in a coach, you're waiting for things to line up perfectly, well, that's... 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (06:37.43)

the version of you that's afraid to actually show up. And what happens is you lose time or you lose opportunity to learn through doing the work. You lose momentum and you also lose the opportunity to help people who are actively looking for you. So the solution to perfectionism is to recognize that this is a defense mechanism. It's recognizing that you are delaying doing the hard work. And so to shift away 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (07:07.084)

from trying to wait and delay the work that you need to do, you really want to think about what's the simplest thing that I can do right now. And depending where you are in your business, it could be something like making a decision, making a decision to ask for help. It could be asking a colleague for help. It could be hiring for help. It could be looking for experts in the thing that you need help with. Some examples of that is I was messing around with my logo for ages. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (07:36.864)

months even. But had I just reached out to a logo expert, somebody who does this all the time, somebody who is in the industry, who knows what they're doing, who knows color combinations that are attractive, who knows how a logo can convey a certain message, like they know all the details and the nuance of a logo. If I had just started there, I would have saved myself so much time, so much headache. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (08:06.06)

And I really could have invested that time doing something else, something that I'm actually good at, which is being the doctor and treating the patient. Number two, people pleasing. If you have a people pleasing saboteur, this could be helpful for you to hear. How it shows up is that you're afraid to charge what you're worth or what your services are valued at even. So you're undercharging. You're giving lots of discounts. You're saying yes to things that 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (08:34.732)

drain you and your time. The consequence of fearing to let somebody down is that you burn out, you work harder than you have to, you start getting resentful, and you build a practice that's not financially sustainable. You're feeding into the loop of pleasing others without really looking at your business first. So it's kind of like when you fly in an airplane and the flight attendant says to put the oxygen mask on you first. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (09:04.108)

before the person next to you, you have to do the same in your business. Make sure that you secure your business first before you start giving out unnecessary discounts or undercharging or just being afraid to upset somebody. So the solution to pleasing people is empathy, saying to yourself, how do I honor myself and the patient in this conversation? So what that could look like is if it requires the patient to fully commit in their treatment plan, 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (09:34.35)

Well, this is the price. Maybe it's $1,500, for example. I'm just throwing a number out there. If it takes the patient $1,500 to get a comprehensive plan from you, then it costs what it costs. When it costs that price, you are honoring yourself and your education and the years worth of experiences that you have in knowing these nuances, and you're gonna show up at 100%. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (10:06.05)

because the patient has also demonstrated that they have skin in the game, that they are also going to invest in meeting you there too. So this is a partnership where the patient has an investment and you have the commitment to meet them where they're at because now they have your focused intention. Instead of you overworking and undercharging, you are now fully focused because that's what it takes. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (10:33.262)

It takes $1,500 in order for you to be fully focused with them instead of undercharging and then worried about when the next patient is going to show up to pay whatever that undercharged amount is, $50, $500, whatever, right? So in order to get your full attention, it has to cost this much. And that's the point of running a business, to be profitable, to be sustainable, to be able to focus on one person at a time. That's the kind of business 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (11:01.954)

We have direct care and that requires that you realize and honor both yourself and the patient, which is reflected in the way that you charge them. Which also means some people are just gonna say no. Some people can't be served in your business and that's okay. You're not in an emergency room. There are some people you cannot help. The third thing here is the fear of judgment. Being worried about what other people think about your life decisions. So yeah, there's gonna be colleagues who... 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (11:30.796)

dislike the fact that you're opting out, they're going to criticize you for doing that. There's going to be patients who judge you for that. And the fear of judgment is painful because I think we all chose to be in medicine to help people, but we're seeing that people have their opinions about how doctors choose to help people. And if we're choosing to not take insurance, it's not that we are refusing patients, we are just refusing to be part of a system that has not been working for 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (12:00.558)

us or the patient. So being afraid to be judged, I know is very real, but it's also going to hold you back if you don't let go of that fear, if you allow people to have feelings about you and that dictates what you choose to do. So this fear keeps you stuck in a system that you know doesn't serve you. So how do you resolve that? What's the solution to that fear of judgment? 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (12:29.026)

You can choose to be curious and realize that they are reflecting their inner beliefs, which has nothing to do with you. So if they're choosing to judge you for opting out of insurance, what does that have to do with you? You have your life to live. They have their life to live. They have their biases. You have your biases. We can all do our own thing and just mind our own business, to be honest. And let them, let them feel what they feel. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (12:58.188)

You're not there to serve them. They are not going to help you grow your business, obviously. So cut some ties. Some things have to go in order for you to grow. And if you really wanted to, you can engage in curiosity. You can ask them a question. You can say, okay, well, what do you think about this? Why is it that you think this way? And you'll find that oftentimes they're just expressing their own discomfort. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (13:24.952)

So getting curious underneath the judgment, there is something deeper that maybe you can connect with. And if you want to, you can try to understand, or if you don't want to, that's okay too. But don't let that consume you and your decisions that you have to make for your business. Because at the end of the day, you gotta put on your own oxygen mask first. Number four is trying to control everything. You're trying to control all the little pieces, the facets of your business and it's consuming. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (13:53.558)

and it does not allow room for creative growth. It does not give your staff autonomy in doing their job. That's what over controlling every single situation can do. It could be crippling. It can stop you from actual growth. It can actually interfere with you charging your price because you're busy doing these administrative things because everything has to be perfect. So this is about being overly controlling. Now there are some things that you do need to have 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (14:22.99)

control of, you need to have the pulse on, but it doesn't have to be everything. And I think not having enough experience in running a team can lead to some of us wanting to control everything because we just don't know how things work. And we want to have a sense of control in our business. And so we try to do that and we over control every little thing, thinking that our way is the perfect way and not accepting that 80 % is good enough. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (14:51.5)

And that's the thing, when you're hiring a team, you're asking for help, they will not have things the way that you have it. And you have to be okay with that. You have to be okay with training somebody to get them to a place where, okay, you're at 80%, let's get you more towards 85 % or 90%. If you try to control everything, you are going to exhaust yourself. You will think that success only comes with more hustle. You fill up 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (15:20.834)

the empty times with doing more work that really doesn't generate revenue, it's just busy work. And then you end up being exhausted and then there is no room for creative growth. So how do we resolve the need to control the situation? It's allowing space for innovation. It's delegating, it's experimenting, it's trusting others to have expertise in the things that you need them for, like perhaps logo making. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (15:49.696)

or website designing or social media content creation. There is so much that could be outsourced to the actual experts who know how to do their thing really well so that you can focus on doing your thing really well. It doesn't make sense to try to learn at all. You have to know if you hired the right person for the right thing. But ultimately, wanting to have tight control of things is a fear mechanism. It's being afraid of the unknown. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (16:18.304)

And realizing that, labeling that, is going to help you realize that it's a fear response. Trying to control everything means you really don't have control of your business. It means that you're not hiring for the right thing. It means that you don't trust other experts in what they do. So things that you might be hiring out, maybe it's marketing, maybe it's online ads, maybe it is SEO for your website. There's all these little parts to business development, right? 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (16:46.124)

If you try to do everything, you're not really great at any one thing. So let go of the need to control so that you can preserve your energy for the work that truly counts and that's you being the doctor. Number five, the worrier, being hyper vigilant, wondering when things are gonna go wrong. This can cost you analysis paralysis. It can cost you chronic stress. It is the chronic worry 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (17:15.137)

that nobody will come, nobody will pay my price, all the things, it's all the what ifs. So how do you solve this? You come back into your body. You come back to breathing exercises. You move away from your brain, the intellectual side, who has to worry about everything, and you pay attention to how your body is feeling. It's getting you back to home base. It's getting you back grounded to where you currently are and paying attention to your nervous system. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (17:45.858)

And it starts with breathing, deep breathing. It could be a touch exercise where you gently remind your body that you're in a safe place and you rub your two fingers together. This will help you calm and focus on the present. When you're calm and in the present and you recognize what's happening, then you can make decisions in a place of clarity rather than a place of fear. And the sixth way to sabotage your business is playing victim. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (18:14.944)

It's feeling like the world is out to get you, that the world doesn't support your success. It's blaming other people for your circumstances. It's not taking ownership in the work that you have to do. It's buying courses and thinking that those courses will fix you, but you didn't do the work and therefore you blamed wasting money on these things that just don't work. It's not taking accountability for your action or inaction. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (18:43.542)

And this is something that luckily I don't see a lot of, but I do see it come up from time to time where people are blaming external circumstances. They're blaming, there's too much competition. I can't succeed or this person's program was garbage and therefore that entire system doesn't work. But it's not taking responsibility and ownership for your own doing, for the work that you did or did not do. So how do we resolve that? It's recognizing that that is a protective behavior 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (19:12.876)

of not feeling exposed and vulnerable, that yeah, there are some things that you don't know. And for a lot of doctors, that's hard to admit, to not know. But that's what it takes to own a business, is to expose your vulnerabilities, is to realize, yeah, you don't know it all and you don't have to know it all. That's the thing. You can outsource the part that you don't know to the people who do know. So there you have it, the six ways to sabotage your business, your progress, and your own evolution. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (19:43.33)

Recap, trying to be perfect, trying to please people, fearing the judgments of others, trying to control everything, being a worrier, and playing the victim. Those things will absolutely hold you back from creating your dream practice and having the freedom that you truly desire. These negative emotions usually start off as protective mechanisms, but when they persist for too long, when they override all of your decisions, that's where it really holds you back. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (20:13.314)

That is where it's hijacking your brain as to who you truly are. Realize that these negative emotions, it's not you, it's not the core of you, it's a protective mechanism that we learned as we progressed through life. The good news is we can unlearn them and reprogram our brains so that it becomes a lot quieter and almost invisible. Now these things may never go away and that's okay, but we can lower the volume on that. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (20:42.264)

so that we can be in a place of clarity and make decisions that are in alignment with what we truly want in our business and in our life. So these six self-sabotaging behaviors do not mean that you are broken, it just means that you're human. The good news is you can build on your mental fitness, you can intercept them at any moment, shift into the sage mode, which is the opposite of the saboteur mode, and then 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (21:09.922)

take action so that you can build your dream practice. If you're ready to stop self-sabotaging and start sustaining, that's exactly what I teach in my direct care coaching program. If you wanna know the updates about when those programs start, hop over to my Facebook group, the link will be down below, and I'll show you exactly how to build this mental fitness so that you can replace the worry and perfectionism with resilience, focus, and joy. I'll see you on the other side. Take care for now. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (21:39.904)

One last thing, if you took anything from this episode, whether it's a small dose of inspiration or even an aha moment, could you please share it with a friend or post it on LinkedIn? The direct care community depends on doctors like you because no one is coming to save us. So it's up to each and every one of us to keep the conversation going to a point where direct care becomes a normalized path for private practice and not some secret that we have to mine for. 

Dr. Tea Nguyen (22:09.08)

Thank you if you've already done so or if you've given this podcast a review, really does mean a lot to me. Sending you peace and possibilities. I'll catch you next week. Take care.