Mini Episode: 3 Mistakes to Avoid

In this mini episode, I break down the three most common mistakes I see physicians make when stepping into the startup world and how to avoid them. I talk about why it’s so important to understand your real value, what it takes to adopt a true growth mindset, and how to navigate the steep learning curve of entering a completely new space. I’ve made these mistakes myself, and I’ve seen how easily they hold physicians back. This episode is about helping you avoid the same traps so you can lead with confidence, contribute meaningfully, and build the kind of career that aligns with your expertise and ambition. 

Episode Highlights:

[00:00] - Introduction to Startup Mistakes
[00:58] - Understanding Your True Value
[03:24] - Mindset Matters: Rigid Thinking vs. Growth Mindset
[07:39] - Navigating the Learning Curve

Transcript

Alison Curfman: 0:24

What is so important is being able to translate your skills into this new environment, because you really do have a lot of skills, and where you really shine is in your clinical skills and the amount of patients you've seen and the amount of problems that you've worked through, and the amount of you know, intuition you have about how the healthcare system works, and I think that the fact that these skills can be, you know, undervalued, sometimes prevents people from even exploring this area. Welcome to Startup Physicians. Please like and follow our show to join our community of physicians who are reimagining healthcare delivery. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Startup Physicians Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Alison Curfman, and today we are going to do what I'm calling a mini episode, I guess, partially inspired by Bluey. For those of you who are parents, I'm sure you've all watched the Bluey mini episodes, but wanted to do a couple of quick episodes to talk through a couple key points that I think will be really important for you guys. So today, what we're going to talk about are the three biggest mistakes that I see physicians making when they want to enter the startup space, because I see this over and over again, and I want to really highlight these. And then on the next mini episode, we're going to talk about the three things you can be doing right now, no matter what phase you're in. So first off, some of this may sound familiar, because I do say some of these things a lot, but I want to kind of package these into a set of three things that you guys can try to avoid. But the very first mistake that I see people making is not understanding their true value. And this is really multifactorial, partially, because one, when you do something new, it's always a little bit hard, and it's always a little bit intimidating, can lead to a little bit of imposter syndrome. And so I think that sometimes we initially have this concept of like, oh, I don't know what I can do over there. And really, I think what is so important is being able to translate your skills into this new environment, because you really do have a lot of skills, and where you really shine is in your clinical skills and the amount of patients you've seen and the amount of problems that you've worked through in the amount of you know, it intuition you have about how the healthcare system works. And I think that the fact that these skills can be, you know, undervalued sometimes prevents people from even exploring this area. And I think that I've interviewed a number of different physicians on this podcast and given a lot of examples, myself included, of physicians who have not only been able to create a lot of value for startups, but have been able to also then build additional skills on top of the clinical skills. So the solution to this mistake is really to start to get to the bottom of what is your actual expertise, what is your unique story? What sorts of problems do you want to contribute to? What sort of experience do you have? Do you have skills that are really translatable to the business of startups and industry, and so I think that's a really good exercise to do. The second mistake that I see people make is also related to mindset and kind of the way you approach things, but it's twofold, really approaching things with too much of a rigid mindset, or approaching with too much like pride and hubris. And these two sort of go together, and I've seen this a lot. I think that sometimes physicians have a little bit of a reputation in the startup world as potentially being harder to collaborate with in a really fast paced and very highly agile environment, because we're used to putting things into really step by step frameworks and workflows and things that are, you know, guidelines, which is perfect for when we're practicing medicine, but I think that we always need to be asking why. I think we need to be understanding, like, why something is done a certain way, and being willing to question if it could be done a different way, or even if a piece. That could be done a different way. And I think about like, when people have, like, high school debate team or something, how they get, you know, even just assigned a perspective and be like, I want you to argue this perspective, and you might not even agree with that perspective. But using that sort of exercise can be really valuable if there's something that you feel like is really not the right approach in medicine. Like some people may like blanket statement, AI shouldn't be applied to medicine. And it's like, okay, that's like, really, there's a lot you probably don't know about AI, or maybe there's, like, a lot of use cases that could make sense, but it really needs a lot of oversight and quality work. I think back to when we were implementing a lot of telehealth stuff like pre pandemic, and I literally remember giving a presentation at a national conference and having some people line up in the aisle and kind of yell at me that like telehealth will never be able to, you be used in health care high quality way, because you can't, you know, palpate an abdomen. And that was a really rigid mindset, because there's just a lot of use cases of types of visits that you don't need to palpate an abdomen. And so I think that we've obviously adapted to that over the past years as telehealth has been more implemented, but I think that approaching with too rigid of a mindset and being like, no, there's only one way we can do this, and this is the way we've always done this, can really limit your opportunities and make it hard to work with you, and even being able to be willing to ask the question of, Why? Why Why do we do that? Why? Why don't we do it? Another way? Could we do it? Another way? Is there a piece we could do another way? And then kind of going along with that mindset is coming in with too much hubris or pride. We are highly skilled. You know, I just told you, I want you to value your skill set. We are highly trained. We've gone to school forever, but you're brand new in this other area. So, like, it's almost like starting over as an intern and recognizing, my gosh, there's so much I don't know. There's so many terms I need to understand, and so many processes and so many, you know, cultural things that I don't understand. And sometimes physicians are like coming into the industry space and really not approaching with a level of curiosity and a growth mindset and wanting to learn and wanting to grow and and really to absorb all these things, because that's really how you add more skills, right? It's how you you come with your clinical skills. You get some opportunities, you you add more exposure and more more projects that you work on, and then those become marketable skills too. And so I think the big difference between someone who succeeds and someone who doesn't succeed is what sort of you know attitude you're coming in with. Are you coming in with a very rigid attitude and feel like you are the authoritative expert on everything, or are you coming in with a growth mindset, curiosity and creativity? And finally, the last mistake that I'm going to highlight is giving up too soon, or having, like, the wrong expectations about the learning curve and the growth curve. So I just spoke about coming in with curiosity and a growth mindset, recognizing that the place you would be starting. Here is a starting point. So you're learning new skills. You're You're it's like a See One, Do One, Teach One. So you're like, learning about what I can do in the startup world, and then you're doing it. And quite frankly, the first time you ever did like a laceration repair as an intern, it probably wasn't the best. You know, you learn, you grow, you apply your knowledge and and when you first get started in this space, there's going to be things that you have to do that are really kind of foundational and like starting point things to do. But you're not gonna have to do those forever. So one of the things I encourage people to do is to do a lot of like cold outreach on LinkedIn, which it is not a long term growth strategy at all. It's a practice. So I get people to understand, like their own narrative and their own interests, and to do lead prospecting on potential companies that they would be interested in, and like literally reaching out to either the founders, or if there's a physician advisor, reaching out and giving a blurb about yourself and saying you're interested in the company that is not really the long term plan of how to grow a book of business as a consultant. Because, yes, a lot of people won't respond to that, but if you've never done any outreach, like you're probably not primed to be, you know, managing a business development pipeline and a bunch of intro calls and, like all of these things, again, take practice. And so some people will look at this and be like, why? I have to start with, like, you know, a smaller project, or maybe not the highest rate that I've, you know, envisioned, or cold outreach that's not going to be very effective. Like, these are practice steps. So you I don't want you to parta, I don't want you to misinterpret that this early stage of the growth curve is like the Forever rate of growth, because it then becomes sort of exponential. It really builds on itself. And so I think that these major mistakes are something that we can all be self aware about. We can start to think about how we can change our perspective and our mindset as we're entering this space. Be willing to put in the work. Be willing to surround ourselves with people that are also going to be encouraging us along the way. And so I hope this is helpful. I'm going to do another mini episode next about the three things you can be doing right now, no matter what stage you're in, and so that you can kind of compare and contrast. Here are the things I'm not going to do, and here are the things I can do. So thank you guys for joining me for this mini episode. It might not have been as entertaining as the Bluey minisodes, but you should check those out too. But yes, thank you guys so much. I'd love for you to reach out on LinkedIn or my website if you have any questions or comments, and I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to Startup Physicians. Don't forget to like, follow and share. you.