The Most Important Book Every Doctor Turned Entrepreneur Should Read

“How hard can this be?”

That’s the question that every employed physician thinking about going solo has asked herself.

She sees herself as a very capable doctor. Certainly better than her boss. She can see all the “problems” of the business and knows exactly what she’d do to fix them.

Unfortunately, that belief comes from a technician’s point of view.

The “technician”, as described by Michael Gerber in his now-classic book The E-Myth is the person in charge of doing in a business.

It’s the accountant in the accounting firm. The designer in the web agency. The chef at a restaurant.

Or the physician in a clinic.

The technician is happiest when she’s doing her thing, completely in control of her workflow. That’s how she can deliver the outcomes that she delivers.

Technician owners are why so many small businesses fail.

At first, everything is good. She has a nice little office. She answers the phone. Schedules her patients. Has hour-long consultations. Her patients are happy, and she’s happy. This is how medicine should be!

But as her business grows, she can’t keep up. She’s rushing from one task to the next. Patients become frustrated when they try to schedule a visit or refill their prescriptions.

What used to bring her joy, becomes stressful. And that’s not even counting the admin tasks, filing taxes, balancing checkbooks, reordering supplies, etc…

What she used to look forward to, she now dreads!

To succeed, she must become an entrepreneur.

Starting a business does not make you an entrepreneur. Especially when you’re a highly-skilled individual, like physicians.

Most technicians don’t own their business, they own their job.

The good news?

Becoming an entrepreneur is not brain surgery! It’s simply a new skill set that you need to learn and develop.

And I recommend you start by reading The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber. It is at the same time simple and profound. An eye-opener!