In every industry, it’s common for someone in a high-pressure corporate job to aspire to become an entrepreneur: A software wunderkind at a tech start-up wonders why he’s working on a new phone app for his future monolithic company instead of doing it for himself. An employed mechanic dreams of fixing cars in his own shop. The dream of entrepreneurship is often a part of most employees’ American dream. What holds them back from taking the leap? It’s usually the same thing that prevents O.D. entrepreneurs from realizing their own potential: Mainly, abandoning the “sure thing” for the dark, murky unknown of being self-employed.

But, for O.D.s who are already self-employed entrepreneurs, how does this apply? What “sure thing” do they actually abandon?

TEN STEPS TO ABANDONMENT

Our consultants have seen the pattern so many times: entrepreneurial abandonment syndrome. Developing it includes 10 steps:

1. The entrepreneurial light bulb goes off and is fueled by megawatts of excitement and energy. Encapsulated in that is always, “Nothing will hold me back. I will succeed.”
2. With hard work, much of it trial and error, the practice eventually goes from $0, and many sleepless nights, to money in the bank and a good night’s sleep.
3. Successive years bring small incremental successive growth.
4. Owners feel that for the amount of energy being expended, the output of the revenue machine is less than it should be.
5. Doctors pedal the machine faster, spending more time in the practice instead of addressing the machine’s internal workings.
6. The doctor expends more and more energy, a finite resource, until the entrepreneurial gas tank eventually drops to “E.”
7. The doctor realizes it’s time for a change.
8. No change is made. After all, as outlined in step three, the practice is still growing, albeit a small amount each year.
9. As in the case of the car mechanic, fear of abandonment of the current secure “job” that pays the bills, sets in and paralyzes the doctor.
10. Not willing to give up the “sure thing,” the O.D. presses on.

RETURN TO THE ‘WHY’

The solution to the above is to turn the clock back to the initial motivators that started the journey. O.D.s should get back to the “why” of the practice and the desired entrepreneurial dream. That’s often reported to us as, “I want to be my own boss and control my destiny.” Yet, after the syndrome takes hold, doctors report they feel out of control and are being owned by their practice. The machine they created, and intended to control, is now in control of them.

Of course, looked at objectively, other than in a science fiction movie, a business entity, like an O.D.’s practice, can’t control anything, especially the owner, unless we let it. The same goes for external factors, such as competitors. Competition surrounds every career and every profession, but it has no control of our decisions as entrepreneurs. It may influence decisions, but influence and control are not the same.

TAKE BACK CONTROL

The first step in taking back practice control is recognizing the problem. The important second step is making changes to the practice that are consciously, purposefully, actively and strategically abandoning the “old practice” with a firm measurable, executable plan that is grounded in the personal entrepreneurial “why.” We should view the abandonment of the old practice as letting go of old baggage holding us back from rekindling the energy we had when our entrepreneurial light bulb was first lit. OM

DR. GERBER is the president of the Power Practice, a company specializing in making optometrists more profitable. Learn more at www.powerpractice.com , or call Dr. Gerber at (888) 356-4447.