The biggest concern from new and potential students is believing they don't have enough time to start their clinic.
This belief is 100% false.
People who believe they're too busy, in almost all cases, actually lack clarity and focus on what they're trying to achieve.
If you've been through med school, nursing school, or gotten an advanced degree, you've already proven that you can do this. What made you successful is knowing that you had a goal and a plan to achieve it.
The good and bad of being in school is that someone else had already come up with the plan for you and all you had to do is follow it. Opening your clinic means taking on the responsibility of creating your own plan and then executing it.
So how do you do that on your own if you've never started your own business before?
First, we have to start with the One Thing. It's a philosophy popularized by Gary Keller of Keller Williams…
“What is the One Thing I can do that will make everything else easy or irrelevant?”
The problem for most people is not that they have too much to do, but they're doing too much of the wrong thing. Getting clear on your One Thing will act as a filter for everything you do. If it doesn't support achieving your One Thing, then you don't do it.
If your One Thing is to open your clinic by the end of the year, it makes it easy to say no to everything else.
Does watching two hours of TV every night help you achieve your One Thing? Probably not. Cut it out and put those two hours towards your One Thing.
Does that extra shift at the hospital support your One Thing? If you need additional funding to start your clinic, then yes, it does. If your time is better spent setting up your PLLC and business bank accounts, then it's easy to say no to that extra shift.
The beautiful part about the One Thing philosophy is that you can keep breaking it down into smaller and smaller goals.
Let's look at how your month can be broken down into One Thing blocks.
One Thing for this month: Build an online presence.
OT Week 1: Get a website up and running.
OT Week 2: Get a Facebook page up and running.
OT Week 3: Set up Google My Business Page
OT Week 4: Create your email list.
Now instead of having this big, semi vague project for the month, you have some clarity on how you're going to achieve it. Breaking it down into weeks gives you a chance to focus on, you guessed it, One Thing each week instead of trying to do it all at once.
Now, these are still big projects, so the next step is to spend some time once a week thinking about the One Thing tasks you'll perform each day to complete the bigger One Thing.
If we're trying to create a website, you can break that down into tasks like research and pick the best website builder (Wix is a great choice), buy a domain, create the homepage, create an about page, create a contact page, etc.
Now some of you might be thinking, “That's great, but I seriously don't have time even to do that much.”
That's the beautiful thing about the One Thing philosophy. It doesn't matter how much time you have each day. It matters that you're spending it working towards your bigger One Thing goal.
If you only have one day a week, you can work on your business. All you have to do is alter your timelines a bit. Maybe it takes you two weeks to set up your website, that's fine. The important thing is you're getting it done with the time you do have.
And if you start spending time each month and each week thinking about your One Thing goals, you'll naturally begin to find more time in your day for those tasks. And the more you do it, the better you'll get at managing your time and predicting how long things will take.
What's even better is that if something takes longer than expected, you readjust your next week or month. We're striving for progress, not perfection.
None of us can predict the future, and often goals aren't achieved as quickly as we want them to be. The problem is people focus too much on the end goal instead of trusting the process.
While you might not ultimately open your clinic by the end of the year, if you start now, you'll be much further along on January 1 than if you decided to “wait for a better time.”
All you need to do is take the smallest step to get started, and once you start, the momentum will build.
If your goal is to open your own clinic, then take some time this weekend and write that down as your One Thing. Then come up with a One Thing goal for the next week to move you towards opening your clinic. And finally, plan out One Thing to do each day to move you forward.
It could be as simple as reading your state's nurse practice act and making an appointment with an attorney. Progress is all that we're looking for here.
Just start.
-Jason Duprat, MBA, MSA, APRN, CRNA
PS If you're still sitting there thinking you have absolutely no spare time at all, I have two suggestions for you.
First, look at how much time you spend on your phone. The average person spends almost 4 hours on their phone each day. That means looking at your phone has become a full-time job for people.
Even if you're only spending 2 hours a day, that's still 14 hours a week you could devote to getting your clinic open.
Second, track how you're spending your time. Set an alarm to go off every hour, and then write down how you spent the last hour. It can be pretty eye-opening, and more than likely, you'll find some activities you can cut out and devote towards opening your clinic.