Do doctors make great entrepreneurs? [PODCAST]

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“We in medicine are experts in delayed gratification. We’ve been in school for what, about 21 years before residency? Then we finally become an attending.  Then we can splurge a little. But still, we were told to hold back. Live like a resident.

This is a great skill to have as an entrepreneur. Their world is tough. Countless working hours, low pay, myriad emotions, and a light at the end of the tunnel. Sounds just like residency, right?

Now I know the idea of doing another residency doesn’t sound that great, but it’s possible. You’ve already survived one. Many even more than one or a fellowship. You have the power to do another if you wanted.”

Pranay Parikh is a hospitalist and can be reached at his self-titled site, Pranay Parikh.

He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD articles, “Doctors make bad entrepreneurs” and “Doctors make great entrepreneurs.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show we have Pranay Parikh. He is a hospitalist, and he wrote a pair of KevinMD articles, “Doctors make bad entrepreneurs” and “Doctors make great entrepreneurs.” Pranay, welcome to the show.

Pranay Parikh: Thanks, Kevin. Happy to be here.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into both of those articles in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?

Pranay Parikh: When I started undergrad, I knew I wanted to go into medicine, but I did a lot of other stuff. I worked at Pfizer, I worked at Dow Chemical, and I’ve always been all over the place. I got into med school and didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, so I dabbled in a lot of stuff. I got into intern year in Tennessee, and I realized I didn’t like it there and missed California after a couple of months, so I transferred to the University of Southern California to finish residency.

Even then I dabbled in a lot of stuff. I wanted to go into pulm crit at first, but my program director said, “You’re just doing too much. You’re doing too many things that are not pulm crit. When someone’s looking at someone who’s getting into fellowship, they want a single focus.” And I’m just not a single-focused person. So I didn’t get a pulm crit fellowship after interviewing, which luckily turned out to be a great thing, because then I met Peter Kim, whom you know from Passive Income MD. We’ve done a ton of really interesting stuff, and really stuff all over the place, helping physicians find financial security and finding entrepreneurship.

Kevin Pho: Now tell me about some of those interests that you had during medical school and residency. What were some of those specific interests that kept on and stayed with you as you progressed during your physician journey?

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, so I was really interested in art, contemporary art. What I did a couple of times in med school was do a charity art show, where half of all the proceeds would go to Doctors Without Borders. It’s something I feel strongly about, their mission. It would take a lot of time, you know; artists are hard to get a hold of, but it’s fun.

Similarly, in residency, I would see something that would need to be fixed, and as you know, in the hospital there are a million things that need to be fixed, and I would just want to fix it, as opposed to everyone else, who just walks by. And that’s still what I do as a hospitalist right now.

Kevin Pho: So tell me about that connection between medicine and entrepreneurship. On this podcast, and of course in your circles with Peter Kim and Passive Income MD, there’s a lot of interest among physicians who do want to become entrepreneurs or are of an entrepreneurial bent. So tell me a little about that intersection and why that is.

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, I think us as doctors, we’re really ready-made to be entrepreneurs. We see an issue, and we want to resolve human suffering. It could be suffering as in, “Hey, you have to click too many times on something,” or it could be, you know, one of our students created a bra for people who have had to go through radiation therapy, because bras just don’t fit well, right? So it’s having that mindset. And I think just out of med school and residency, it works well for physicians to do it, but we have some things that are stopping us, you know, limiting beliefs. That’s why I did that duality of articles: Yes, we make great entrepreneurs, but there are also parts of medicine and the process of getting through medicine that make us bad entrepreneurs.

Kevin Pho: So let’s get into both those KevinMD articles, “Doctors make bad entrepreneurs” and “Doctors make great entrepreneurs.” Let’s start with the bad first. What are some of these factors that hold doctors back from being entrepreneurs?

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, so two really big things. I think it’s perfectionism, right? If you remember undergrad, you would look at a class and think, “Can I get an A in this? Could I get a perfect in this class?” And if not, you drop it, right? Or you get one B or one C before the drop period, and you drop it. And also in medicine, sometimes when you’re doing surgery, you need to have a 99 percent, 100 percent success rate, because you have someone’s life in your hands. While in starting a blog, a podcast like yours, you know, a platform such as yours, there’s a million things that could have gone wrong, but you were able to navigate it. Some things did go wrong, you know, and it wasn’t in this world, right, but it might have felt that way. And that’s the problem with perfectionism.

The other thing is not having a great relationship with money, right? It’s hard for us to ask for money for our time, asking for raises, asking for money for my patients. That relationship has been frayed, you know, and so it’s something that we need to get over. Whenever I’m doing something, whenever I’m starting a business, I want people to be happy, ecstatic, to give me money. It’s just like when I go to my favorite restaurant: I’m happy to pay for that food, because it is so delicious. And if something is sold out, I’m actually bummed, because I want to give them their money so they can give me the product. So yeah, it’s just like going to Hamilton, right? I’m going to happily pay for that.

Kevin Pho: I think what you said about perfectionism is so right. I think it was Nii Darko who said that, especially when starting a podcast, if your podcast started off perfectly, then you probably started too late, right? So what are some ways that physicians can overcome that tendency toward perfectionism if they want to start a business?

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, so there’s something in the business world called the minimal viable product. They say, you know, similar to what Nii Darko said, if you ship when there’s not enough, when there are no bugs, you know, you’re shipping too late, right? So when something is 70 to 80 percent, right, you want to be able to ship it.

Let me give you a quick example. We do a course on commercial real estate, right? The typical way people create courses is they come up with a great idea, they film it, they do all this stuff, and then they sell it, right? And sometimes there’s crickets. So you’ve just spent 50 hours of your time or more creating this amazing course, and no one is there.

For us, we went the other way around: “Hey, everyone, we’re trying to create this course. What do you think about it? OK, good. If you guys want to get in on a beta test, we need 10 people. You’re going to pay for half, and you’ll get unlimited lifetime updates.” And we did that, so we sold our course before we had a finished product. And then it was crazy when the week came. It comes out in weekly installments, so as soon as the week is done, you start filming the next week. We had the outline done, but it was different, because of that pace, where you have to get it done in a week, you don’t have time to be perfect, you know? There was a video where I pronounced one word incorrectly the whole time. It was so embarrassing, but you just go back and you refilm it. No big deal.

Kevin Pho: Oh, was it difficult for you to get over that physician tendency toward perfectionism?

Pranay Parikh: Yes. Yeah, and oh man, I’m sure you’ve listened to some of your podcasts or videos; it’s so painful listening to yourself, you know? And I’ve had to do that. I had to do my own edits in the beginning, creating really a lean model, and if that works, it works. And so you have to get over yourself, right? In the end, it’s an ego thing, right? We’re this doctor person that is pretty successful in life, but when you start something new, you’re really on the bottom of the totem pole again, almost like not even a med student, even under that, like a pre-med student.

Kevin Pho: One of the other things that you mentioned was physicians’ challenges with money. So tell me a little about that. Why are physicians so uncomfortable with money?

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, so I think it has a lot to do with medical school. We don’t talk about money at all, right? We don’t talk about salaries. We come up with all this debt that we don’t really talk about, you know? And fortunately, people like White Coat Investor, Passive Income MD, and Physician on FIRE have brought this to the forefront, so that we’re more comfortable talking about this. But they’re only a small percentage of doctors, right?

I remember when I was in a sub-internship, I asked about money, and they gave me this weird look. And then the director actually pulled me aside and said, “Oh yeah, you shouldn’t ask about money. You’re going to look too greedy.” And it wasn’t even like, “Oh, how much?” It was some difference about something, you know; I don’t remember that question. But it just tells you how much shame there is in talking about it, you know? And that carries on. It’s not that you graduate, become an attending, and all of a sudden you have this perfect relationship with money. No, that shame carries on.

Kevin Pho: You mentioned White Coat Investor, Physician on FIRE, and Passive Income MD, and of course, in our world, we’re very comfortable with an intersection between medicine and money. But do you think, over the last five years, that needle has moved outside our world?

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, I’d like to hope so. In the Leveraging Growth Summit, our first one, which you were part of, we had about 12,000 doctors sign up for that. And then our real estate conference, which was virtual because of COVID, had about 8,000 people. I know that’s still a percentage, but I’m hoping that because these people are exposed to it, they go and tell everyone else in their organization. You know, our goal, and I know your goal with this podcast, is just to help educate people and really elevate the world of physicians.

Kevin Pho: On the flip side, you wrote another article, “Doctors make great entrepreneurs.” So why are doctors great at starting businesses?

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, you know, having to get through medicine, medical school, and residency, you’re used to being able to work many hours, and you have an eye for being able to fix things. And so really a lot of it is just persistence and the ability to work, you know? I wish I could say entrepreneurship is easy, but it isn’t. You know, I work 40-hour weeks, 50-hour weeks, and then I come home and work on my business. But it’s fun. It’s the ability to use a different side of my brain.

And I really think it’s like a catalyst against burnout, because you’re using something that’s different, but it’s similar skills. So I personally have an interest in education, so like I told you, I created an online course, but we also help educate other physicians. And it’s just fun, you know? It’s fun helping people in a different way. And eventually we made some money, you know; in the beginning it was zero, but that’s fine, you know; we made a difference. And that’s it: It’s making an impact larger than yourself. And when someone gives you a dollar of their hard-earned money, it’s very satisfying, because you know you provided value to them.

Kevin Pho: Well said. We’re talking to Pranay Parikh. He is a hospitalist, and he wrote a pair of KevinMD articles, “Doctors make bad entrepreneurs” and “Doctors make great entrepreneurs.” Pranay, if a physician is interested in starting a business, or if they have an idea and they want to take the next steps, what are your recommendations in terms of where to get started?

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, so we have this summit. It will be in March; it’ll be our second time doing it. It’s called the Leveraging Growth Summit. You’ll hear from 30 to 50 doctors just doing interesting stuff. The amazing Kevin Pho was on our last one, talking about the amazing platform he created to help elevate physician writers. But we have other people: An orthopedic doctor created her own shoe, and we have people who have done ketamine clinics. It’s just inspiration. And it’s nice to see, you know, first, that we’re able to do this. I know when I first started, it was, “Oh, I’m just a doctor. I don’t know what else I can do.” But you know, that qualification is humongous, and it puts you above and beyond most people, right, education-wise. So watch that summit. It’s free.

And then after that we have something called the Leveraging Growth Accelerator. It’s an accelerator of only physicians, where we teach other physicians the basics of business, and we bring in guest speakers. There are courses in it, and there’s a community, and the community is the most important: other doctors doing interesting things and starting businesses. It’s amazing. We have a bunch of people in it right now, and everyone said it’s been life-changing, so we’re excited to open that up after the summit.

Kevin Pho: Now, there’s a perception among physicians outside our world that doctors who have side gigs, doctors who start businesses, are not real doctors, because they have interests outside of taking care of patients. What do you say to that?

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, I can tell you that having started my business, I have become a much better doctor, right? Because there are skills, especially the soft skills outside of medicine, that you need, right? Being able to communicate with people with different beliefs, being able to have a better bedside manner, being able to educate people in ways that they’re able to connect with, right? We create videos, we create PowerPoints, and really interesting interactive ways for us to communicate with our patients and to improve patient care. I wouldn’t know how to get those skills if I didn’t do anything outside of medicine. So I think, you know, yeah, medicine is great, but the innovation oftentimes, kind of like Uber, right? Uber came from outside of the taxi industry. A lot of times the innovation comes from outside of medicine, and I just think the world would be a better place with more physician-led businesses.

Kevin Pho: And my final question: What’s your take-home message that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, I would say, you know, first start off with believing in yourself, and start wherever you can. A lot of people think of entrepreneurs and starting your own business, but that might be step number three or four, you know? You can be an entrepreneur starting wherever you are. Maybe you just see a quality project, and you take that, talk to your bosses, and try to do something with that. But in the end, you just have to get started. That’s the take-home message.

Kevin Pho: And how can people find you?

Pranay Parikh: Yeah, so my website is pranayparikh.com. You can find me on Facebook. I’m pretty accessible.

Kevin Pho: Pranay, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.

Pranay Parikh: Thanks, Kevin. Talk to you soon.

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