Marketing Psychotherapy and Psychiatric Practices


I have heard other clinicians claim that they have "full" practices. That has never been my experience in 30 years of practice. Maybe it's due to my business model - relatively high fees and not participating in the insurance Read more

Innovating


As I wrote in my eBook, I had happily practiced psychiatry for 20 years, never entertaining doing anything but seeing patients in my office 5 or 6 days a week. But a vacation to South America several years ago Read more

Service Design


Taking time away from my busy clinical practice and other life routines allows me time and mental space for thinking and writing. Yesterday's poolside reading in Bloomberg Businessweek provided the seed for this post. Audi sells very popular, high quality Read more

Productivity in Your Practice


Long ago I believed everything I read. Really. Sort of. Now I do my best to fold a dose of skepticism into any thing I read, especially in works such as the one I am about to quote. But the Read more

The Tao of Growing Your Practice


Verse 63. Tao te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation Act without doing; work without effort. Think of the small as large and the few as many. Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series Read more

Your Limbic Systems Tells You to Play it Safe


We are ruled by subtle, unconscious currents. Does the thought of running your own business right out of residency terrify you? “In the 1890s Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology, formulated the doctrine of “affective primacy.”7 Affect Read more

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CLPC Rush Psychiatric Resident Seminar

July 14, 2012 Bill Lynch Blog Leave a comment   , ,

Into the Light

Earlier this week I had the honor of meeting with a small group of psychiatric residents at Rush Medical School here in Chicago. Daniel Levin, MD, psychiatric residency training director, once again invited me to speak to his trainees about the business of running a psychiatric practice. This has always been an enjoyable experience.

The group consisted of five young physicians just beginning the fourth year of their psychiatric speciality training. This time next year they will either be in a fellowship obtaining even further specialization, working in an institution, or launching their own business.

I started the meeting with introductions and questions about their future plans. None of them had specific plans made already but each had a general direction in mind. Next I stressed the importance of networking. They needed to get started now in preparation for their business start up in 2013. I urged them to get their own business cards from moo.com and give them out to everyone they meet. Since they didn’t yet have a location for a business I suggested the card should include their name, email address and cell number. In addition I encouraged them to get their own website/blog right away and start writing. And to become familiar with and use social media as a marketing tool.

Naturally they had many questions about the nuts and bolts of the business and I fielded them pretty well. I saw my mission, however, as planting the seed of thinking of themselves as entrepreneurs. I had my copy of The Start Up of You and urged them to buy and read it. Setting up and running my kind of business is simple. Most can figure it out on their own or with a bit of help from mentors. A major hurdle for many, however is the overestimation of risk, so clearly spelled out by Casnocha and Reid in their The Start Up of You.

We face uncertainty every day. Don’t confuse that with fear. Have an dream of your ideal business, plan for the possibility of failure, and persevere through the inevitable hardships. Going it own your own requires courage, energy, and enough money to pay the bills until your practice takes off. How do you manage uncertainty?

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