What It “Costs” To Become A Ketamine Specialist

We’ve owned and operated a ketamine clinic since 2018. Despite doing this through a pandemic and starting a family, we have not only continued to be open, we are continuing to grow. But it did come to us at a cost: both financial and non financial. In this blog post, we’re going to share what it “cost” for us to go from former salaried physicians to becoming ketamine specialists and thriving business owners.

Starting any new venture, just like a ketamine clinic, has its own set of trade offs.

“Cost” Of Being A Private Ketamine Infusion Doctor

When you go from a salaried position to starting a new entrepreneurial venture, it is exhilarating and, on the other side of the coin, terrifying. The safety of the familiar salary, paid sick days and holidays, etc. to the unfamiliar can really put your mind through a loop. But many of you reading this are ready or at least thinking about leaving the gilded cage of being a salaried physician and embarking on your own. 

We want to share with you what the “cost” and trade offs of starting your own ketamine clinic are. These fall into two categories: time and financial.

Especially during the early days of opening your clinic, you will be working longer hours than in your hospital job. Plus, these extra hours are unreimbursed time.

How Much Time It Costs To Be A Ketamine Infusion Specialist

Any small business owner or physician who owns their own private practice can tell you there aren't really any set work hours. We are always thinking about our ketamine clinic, even after clinic hours. The nice thing about working for someone else is that you could turn off your brain after a long shift or a tiresome clinic day. But that isn’t the case when you own your ketamine clinic. 

Unless you outsource, you take on the role of human resources, janitor, office manager, and administrator. You begin to appreciate all the different people that have helped you focus on your job in the hospital. When you take on these very important roles, you are taking time away from other activities, like family and friends.

When you first open your ketamine clinic, it’s kind of like getting a newborn. Lots of time and energy is focused on the baby. The good part is that it's your baby (plus eventually the baby grows up too!). But we’ll be honest, with the number of hours spent on the clinic, Sam made much more working the ER from an hourly basis. The bottomline is that you are going to allocate a lot of overtime to your clinic and it's a lot of unreimbursed time. 

Owning your own ketamine clinic reminds us of the saying, "Entrepreneurship is working 80 hours a week for yourself to avoid working 40 hours for someone else."

Leaving your hospital job to start your own venture means saying goodbye to benefits like sick leaves and retirement. Starting a ketamine clinic also requires a significant amount of capital to get the business up and running.

How Much Money It Costs To Be A Ketamine Infusion Specialist

Starting out, you are going to lose all the benefits like paid vacation, paid sick days, retirement, etc. To be precise, you are losing all the administrative staff that figured that all out for you at your old job. Eventually, we were able to work out a retirement plan for ourselves and our staff through our clinic. It takes time for the money made in a ketamine clinic to replace or surpass that of your previous salary. 

In a prior blog, we discussed how much it costs to start a ketamine clinic. There we do a little back-of-the-envelope calculation and recommend $75K-150K in a business checking account for initial startup costs and a cushion for six months to one year of expenses. Your expenses are going to affect how much money (i.e. revenue you bring home). Some of your biggest costs are going to be your workforce such as medical assistants or front office staff. Now, if you are willing to do everything yourself, then that does drop the cost down. But then you’re trading your time for money.

Here’s a list of some other money-related costs to starting your ketamine clinic (from our personal experience):

• Ketamine and psychedelic related conferences to stay up to date

• Travel expenses to conferences

• Marketing: paying someone to do it, or learning how to do it yourself

• Maintaining your medical license & continuing medical education (definitely miss that CME money)

Explore more about expenses related to starting and running at ketamine clinic at our blog, Are Ketamine Clinics Profitable? Part 2: Exploring Expenses

When it comes to deciding whether you should start your ketamine clinic or not, it all boils down to the sacrifices that you’re willing to make and your purpose in life.

Running A Ketamine Clinic: Is It Worth Your Cost?

We often get asked, “What’s it like to start a ketamine clinic?” To be fully transparent, it’s great and we love it. We love being business owners and perfecting how to provide transformational ketamine infusions. We appreciate and are in awe of seeing our patients’ lives forever changed. But this wonderful opportunity of operating a ketamine clinic does come at a cost and these costs boil down to time and money (and some days we are exhausted!)

But don’t most costs in life boil down to time and or money? So the question actually becomes, “What are YOU willing to pay with your limited time and money?” That is where the rubber really meets the road. We’re more than willing to let go of the security of a salary and risk of a low cash flow month because we are willing to “pay” for a ketamine clinic. The way we run our business and care for our patients are aligned with our “why” and life purpose. 

When living your purpose, there is no cost too great. Running our ketamine clinic and teaching other medical professionals how to start their own clinic is part of our life purpose, and that’s worth the cost.

Are you ready to begin exploring the possibility of opening and managing your own ketamine clinic? Join our email list and be notified about the next free webinar and open registration for Ketamine StartUp.

Related Questions

• How much time a week do you work on the non-clinical aspects of your ketamine clinic if you are doing everything yourself?

  Ballpark is 5-20 hours a week for Kim focusing on marketing (website, SEO, blogs, videos, branding, etc.) and bookkeeping.  For Sam it can be 10-20 hrs a week working on managing staff, customer service, etc. 

• How long does it take for ketamine clinic profit to equal or surpass that of your old salary?

  Depends on how much time and money you are willing to put into your. How much you are willing to put into increasing your ketamine clinic's revenue will factor into how much money you take home. It also depends on how lean (i.e. keep your expenses down) you operate your clinic. With the way we operate, we were already able to recoup our initial clinic investment within six months of opening. 

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"Expectations vs. Realities of Opening A Ketamine Infusion Clinic "

Sometimes, starting a ketamine clinic isn't as it seems. You may be let down and discouraged by your expectations. We're here to talk about the realities for you so that you know what to ACTUALLY expect. Read all about what it’s really like to start a clinic at our blog. 

Making a life-changing decision, like starting a ketamine clinic, has its own set of “costs” and sacrifices. We’ve experienced this ourselves, too, when we made the decision to leave our hospital jobs. In our blog, we talk about the costs you will face to become a ketamine specialist.