Power Of Letting Go When Starting A Ketamine Clinic

Today, we’re going to share with you an interesting story about the importance of letting go. Starting our ketamine clinic, we have had to continue to practice the art of letting go! We all have things in our lives that have been of great importance to us, but sometimes life will need us to let go of these “tools” that no longer serve us. Our challenge is learning to let go and move on to new and better things…like starting your ketamine infusion clinic!

Some tools which helped you get through medical school, residency, and made you a good doctor won’t be the tool to help you start and run your clinic.

Time To Let Go

Once there was a man who had to cross a wide raging river. With no bridge in sight, he began to make a boat and successfully crossed the river with it. Once he reached the other side, he got out of the boat and picked it up. His boat carried great significance for him. He traversed the river safely and efficiently. As he got out of the boat, he gazed upon it. He built the boat with his own hands. He went through a lot with the boat. The boat was special to him and he could not part with it. Carrying this boat, he continued on his journey. 

As he was balancing the boat on his head walking, he saw a forest up ahead. He saw he needed to enter it. In that forest, the trees were growing so tightly together. He attempted to move between the trees with his boat in hand. Scraping and forcing his way between the tall great trees. With exasperation, he realized he could get through this forest a lot easier and quickly if he let go of his boat. But that boat served him and it helped him get through the river. He felt discomfort in letting go of his boat, but at the same time, he was ready to continue on his journey. 

So with gratitude, he put down the boat, and continued on his journey with a measure of more ease.

The mindset and strategies won’t be the same. Just because it worked in one arena doesn’t mean it would work in another.

Let Go Of The Old Boat: From Old Tools to New Tools

So what does that story mean for you? What we took from it was that the “tools” which made us good patient-centered doctors wouldn’t translate to making us successful business people. Sure there will be some things like grit, perseverance, and being patient-focused which can very much help in starting a business. But sometimes other mindsets or strategies which got you through your medical training could potentially undermine your ability to start out and run your private ketamine infusion practice. Let’s go over a couple examples (which come from our personal experience!):

Old tool: Follow “the rules” → New tool: “break” or make new rules

First, you learn the common and the routine during your medical training. You often find that most things fall into the routine category. You follow the algorithms. You get into a mindset of risk minimization, and rightly so if it is for your patient’s best interest. Well, guess what? Following “the rules” can sometimes hinder your ability to start your own clinic. When we first started out, we were so indoctrinated in medical education and training. We searched for the “standard-of-care” for starting a ketamine clinic. There wasn’t any. When we realized that there wouldn’t be any, we started looking at what was the “best” way to start a private medical clinic. We got stuck trying to follow all this advice from individuals or online that we got so caught up in learning all the rules or how to avoid failure that we delayed our start many times Finally we realized we had to break the rule, or rather the belief of having to do things perfectly. Sometimes you just need to “break” the rule and take action. Now we aren’t advocating breaking laws and not doing your due diligence to make sure you are practicing with integrity. Rather, expressing the mindset that  “you must follow the rules” can hold you back. 

Old tool: Study before taking action  → New tool: Jump in head first

When we were training to intubate or in Kim’s case, perform cataract surgery, she would practice on a simulator or on cow eyes before she would go near a person’s actual eye with a scalpel. We studied hours and hours before taking a literal step. Sure there were exceptions but we think you know where we are going with this. While preparation and practice before doing the “real thing” was important for the health and safety of our patients, this same approach doesn’t cross over well when you are starting your ketamine clinic. Yes, preparation is key when you are starting your business, but what we have personally mistakenly done ispreparing too much. We have witnessed our colleagues do this as well. This practice of“researching and preparing” – as we would do for taking care of patients – actually is a form of procrastinating. Your “pursuit of excellence gets changed to “analysis paralysis”. The desire to do things safely and correctly, turns into no action at all. The new tool is TAKE ACTION. In the grand scheme of things, like making a mistake of hiring an expensive website developer (we did that) is nowhere near the kind of mistake you prepare to avoid when performing life or death treatments. Unless you take this to heart, you are more likely to never start your ketamine clinic, than actually making a mistake you fear you will make.

Sure you could use that same wrench that got you through your medical education to whack the nail in, but a hammer would be more effective.

The Importance of Practicing Discernment

Now, don’t completely throw away your old tools just like the man did with his boat. Just remember you might need to pull out the new ones first. Of course sometimes the old tools are still appropriate for particular situations. Your old tools that make you a great doctor will still be useful when you are working on the clinical side of your ketamine clinic. Treat your patients with the same integrity-filled, evidence-based medical care they deserve! The key is to recognize that sometimes you need to adapt (especially on the business side of your clinic). More importantly, sometimes you are holding yourself back because you are so adamant  on using that old tool.  You could just end up slowing yourself down or getting stuck as you carry that boat through your journey through the riverless forest. 

Are you ready to take the next step? Join our email list and be notified about the next free webinar and open registration for Ketamine StartUp.

When we made the shift from working in the hospital to becoming ketamine clinic owners, we had to let go of some tools that no longer served us. In this blog, we talk about our learnings from letting go and why you should even let go in the first place.

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