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  
Welcome to another episode, I hope you really tune into this one. This is this is a deep one. I was talking to a friend who just started her business. And she was going through some hard times. So she reached out and asked me a very pointed question. She asked how do you keep going when it feels like everything you're doing is not giving you the results you want? How do you not quit? This question was incredibly hard for me to answer, especially on the spot like that. I mean, I shared with her, I started my practice in 2018. But it wasn't a decision that I had for a long time, I had only decided that I was going to open my practice. A few months prior, when I was an associate, I went to a practice management meeting and a seed was planted, that it would be possible for me to own my practice, to control the schedule to hire my ideal team. 

Dr. T  1:55  
And then I got pregnant while I was working as an associate the energy shifted, I didn't think it would be that soon that I opened my practice, it was just an idea. But then suddenly, things started to fall in place as if I was supposed to open my practice all along. So I realized that employment was really not going to work for me long term. And decided that if other people like myself can figure out how to run their business, then I can too. In fact, there were a lot of people, a lot of doctors running their businesses successfully, without any business background. Many of them just admitted it was on the job training. So my ego said, if this person can figure it out, then I will do. So I committed to succeeding. And there was really no turning back. I had to fully believe it and commit to it. It's like swimming, you can't have one foot in the pool and expect to learn how to swim, you actually have to submerge your entire body and figure some stuff out. 

Dr. T  3:05  
Do I have feelings of wanting to quit? I do. I'm always looking for ways that would be easier. There's this shiny object syndrome that a lot of us have. We are in distraction mania, chronically, I see people who are selling a singular product and making enough to replace their work income on tick tock, or people who have created online courses saying that they made enough to work part time or quit their full time job indefinitely. So they all show kind of this dreamy circumstance, that seems like the grass is greener on the other side. But the reality is they all share the same problem. They all had to start somewhere. They all started with zero patience, zero customers. And they all had to go through a growth phase. They had to make some mistakes, and they had to learn from those mistakes and then they moved on. 

Dr. T  4:08  
So I believe the hardships that we experience as business owners. That's just part of business growth. That's why not everyone is doing what we're doing. Because if it was easy, then you wouldn't learn how to have thicker skin. You wouldn't know how to bounce back from failure or rejection. You wouldn't learn how to have creative solutions. When in the world of entrepreneurship, there is no book to follow. You wouldn't know what you are capable of. Until you submitted to the life lessons that were thrown at you the things that we're supposed to learn in order to get to that new life we want. Because the current thought process that you have right now, the one that created the problem that you're in at this moment isn't going to Create a different outcome isn't going to get you in a different place. The thought process that you have right now will keep you there a year from now. So you actually have to think differently. 

Dr. T  5:12  
And that includes having these experiences and challenges, and you get to choose how you respond. So do you retreat when it's hard? Or does it make you more durable, make you more resilient. So as a business owner, you solve problems.

Dr. T  5:30  
But once you solve a problem, you encounter more problems to solve. So through this exercise, you learn how to problem solve quicker, with more resources. So you need to get that under your belt as a business owner. My analogy to this is, when I used to write scientific articles for publications, we would start with one hypothesis, create the study design, and then collect the data, only to come up with more questions. So it wasn't like one study answered that one question, we had more questions, and business ownership is the same way. This entire journey is experimental. 

Dr. T  6:12  
And as soon as you embrace the trial and errors, that is just simply part of owning a business. That's when you can learn to appreciate that the hardships are coming for a reason. You did ask for this, you asked to be a business owner. And this is what comes with it. So maybe this wasn't the answer she was hoping to hear. But it was the best thing I could come up with. I truly believe that I am destined for success. I just have to figure out how to get there. And who can get me there. This is a personal development course that we didn't know we signed up for. But it's essential. Sometimes I just have to recruit help professional help for when I'm stuck. And then sometimes I just have to sit back, relax in cry it out. This is all normal, the ups and downs of business ownership. But ultimately, as long as I don't give up, I don't keep chasing that shiny object syndrome. And I stay laser focused on my goals, and celebrate the small wins, that provides the momentum to keep going forward. Then I'll just keep going to answer the second part of the question, how do I keep going when I don't see the results, I don't focus on the results. I look at the big picture, I focus on the tasks that I need to accomplish. And make that part of my daily habit so that it's just part of my routine, like getting out of bed and brushing your teeth. 

Dr. T  7:45  
You just do the things that needs to be done. And it's a habit, and original every time you cross off a task, or complete something that feels like an accomplishment, you're releasing a little bit of endorphins each time. That's why it feels so good to just cross things off your list. That's why you need to do the small things. And that's why you need to celebrate the small wins. You don't want to get to the endpoint to celebrate. That's as silly as waiting for your child to complete college and get their first job to celebrate any accomplishments. I mean, we just don't do that we celebrate the moments that the child learns to stand by herself. uses the potty says their first words, the first time they move out of kindergarten and into grade school, we celebrate every little thing. 

Dr. T  8:39  
And you should do that for your business as well. This was something that I learned from Alex for Mozi, which I listened to a lot. He has a podcast called the game. This is not sponsored by him whatsoever. He's just somebody I really admire. And he, he's somebody that are referenced frequently in how to run your business. Because most people who run businesses are really treating it like a game, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. One of the podcasts episode talks about that if you only looking at the results as your momentum as your incentive to do stuff, then when you actually get to your end result, you start to slack off, you stop doing the things that you need to do every day. And then people get complacent. 

Dr. T  9:21  
And then you can see the dip in your progress because you had stopped doing the tasks that you were supposed to be doing. And then you find yourself being really reactive, like when your schedule is empty. And when your schedule is empty. That was a result of things that you did or did not do from a month ago. It's a delayed response. So then people panic push their staff to fill the schedule that can feel extremely stressful and unpredictable, right. But what's better? What's better is having systems in place where you can just have a consistent flow of patients that built into your staffs, day to day chores or routines and then you create that level of consistency in your schedule. Do I have the perfect setup. Absolutely not. Do I have meltdowns and cry sessions in self doubt? Absolutely. 

Dr. T  10:07  
But I choose to continue to grow and learn no matter what stage I'm in, in my practice, because that has become my routine to continue to seek out better ways to improve the flow of my practice. So that hopefully one day I can just sell it off to somebody who wants a turnkey cash practice. That's my ultimate goal. But in the meantime, I'm choosing to believe in me and maybe that's the most important lesson of all is to choose to believe in yourself that you are strong enough and you deserve the life that you want to create and the challenges that you have you will be able to rise above it. So how are you going to show up, I hope that you show up like a boss. 

Dr. T  10:48  
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  11:07  
And lastly, if you remember nothing else, remember this be the energy you want to attract. See you next time.