MD at a crossroads

[Happyheart]

Hi,

This is my introduction. I am an MD who is currently working in science. It has taken me a long time to get where I am, from a bumpy start with lots of hardships in adult life, to a professorship.
I presume the academic ladder was some kind of compensation for the shame of having been an unwed student mother and experiencing abuse and such. That and I like a good challenge - when people say it can't be done, I will prove otherwise.

In the course of the years I noticed that I would be the one to do the extra things, optimize work flow and stay until late at night. And for this reason I vowed that one day, I would be working for myself. A few years ago I started a pet project to make the world a better place and this has as a by-product resulted in more revenue than my regular, relatively meagerly paying job. I have hired an assistant who does 90% of the work, but do some marketing and website building myself.

At this point in time I am at a crossroads. There is a larger project that will result in a lot of revenue (absolutely CENTS suitable and such), but I am somewhat short on time, having a lot of children the professorship, my medical private practice and the project of the heart. I have to make a hard decision for the future. At this point in time I tend to the following plan:
1. Cut hours from my academic job (done)
2. If Possible take on a different, less time-consuming, academic function in the future, as the title is useful for my projects.
3. Cut back on private practice (done)
4. Either go full-on in the academic / medical research direction for fame and honour with sparse money, unless I go into the pharmaceutical industry, which I do not want to do.
or
5. Drop the academic development to pursue the CENTS business and become so rich that I can do research as a hobby.

The solution sounds obvious, but remember that I have almost 30 years invested in education and training and sleepless nights in the laboratory and writing publications that could have been spent with the family to get to this level and stopping now will make me obsolete in 3 years or so. I feel rather sheepish writing this. In short: sunk cost.

As to the new project: this will require some programming and a lot of marketing, but would probably better the future of my family.

Thanks for listening,

Happyheart

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Only you truly know the answer. Strangers who don't know you, or your history will not have the answer. You know yourself best, and what you're capable of. Therein lies your answer.

Yes, it will be terribly hard to leave any profession with 30 years of sunk cost. For me personally, I would have to make sure my venture has been proven and validated, with the right numbers for scale, in order to leave the past behind.

 

[Albert KOUADJA]

Vous seul connaissez vraiment la réponse. Les étrangers qui ne vous connaissent pas, ou votre histoire n'auront pas la réponse. C'est vous qui vous connaissez le mieux et ce dont vous êtes capable. C'est là que réside votre réponse.

Oui, il sera terriblement difficile de quitter une profession avec 30 ans de coûts irrécupérables. Pour moi personnellement, je devrais m'assurer que mon entreprise a été prouvée et validée, avec les bons chiffres pour l'échelle, afin de laisser le passé derrière moi.

Thank you dad MJ for your reply to her post.

 

[FreakyThomas]

Dear Colleague,

I understand you. I still have difficulties to let go my own sunk costs, which are just med school and surgery residency, so I can't imagine when it's a 30 years top level academic career.
However, it means one thing : you're a high achiever. And probably the goal of being free will be a great motivation for you.
I hope you will let us know how it turns out for you ! And that you will give your fastlane venture a chance !

Ps I totally agree with the idea of testing before leaving/slowing down your other jobs. If you want to look for ways to "test" or validate your idea, read " the mom test ". It's great especially when you're looking for a logical, almost scientific process.

 

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[Happyheart]

Only you truly know the answer. Strangers who don't know you, or your history will not have the answer. You know yourself best, and what you're capable of. Therein lies your answer.

Yes, it will be terribly hard to leave any profession with 30 years of sunk cost. For me personally, I would have to make sure my venture has been proven and validated, with the right numbers for scale, in order to leave the past behind.

A big thank you to everyone for their thoughts and good words. Took a lot of thinking, but all in all the plan is this:
- Quit prof job by end of September (earlier is difficult because of contractual obligations)
- sustain title via different route (in the works) as it is useful to business
- diversify course business to be able to thrive in the economic situation of the next few years: more diverse target group, more MDs
- take on other new and promising projects

The business that currently brings in the income, started as an aside project. I always wanted to start business “some day” and one day decided to just start or I would never do it.

Started it as a charitable venture on the side 2017 with 1 client in 2018 and earned 1056€ which only covered the bare cost because I did everything myself.
This year we will have ca. 240.000 revenue - so much for charity -, which is not bad for ca. 1 full day of work per week, but I have the feeling I am spreading myself too thin.

During the last few years I have learned a lot and the business revenue has looked like this:

2017	- 6,000		- no clients and I did not know what marketing was - hired help, who got pregnant and was more hassle than it was worth
2018	1,000		- help thankfully quit before I could terminate her but told me about facebook advertising - first client and did everything myself, barely covered cost
2019	12,000		doing ok, but stressed out traveling every other Saturday for the business from 05:30-20:30 and managing logistics and everything aside from family and work
2020	41,000		- Covid hit, digitalized everything overnight, others in the field stopped, but we did not flinch. - overwhelmed with work while working 80 hours in day job as MD and business logistics with having too many clients on the side - started wild facebook marketing to get more clients because I wanted to hire some help and I needed to finance this - the friend/coworker that had agreed to work for me kept pushing the starting date further down the line (this went on for > 6 months - I have to conclude that I am a gullible sheep)
2021	113,000		- gave up on the friend and hired employee for organization and logistics (0.9 FT) - restructured courses, added locations, diversification - reduced day job to 60%
2022	145,000		- automated processes are only slowly coming along - My assistant does most (90%) of the daily work, but other things, I am still doing myself including: marketing, website building and maintenance, content creation and content system maintenance, some live courses, taxes and financial administration (I am not a good administrator), answering calls (because I feel, that my employee is not very good at marketing to prospective clients), writing newsletter.
2023	ca. 240,000		- hired 2nd employee (minijob 200€/month) - plan on stopping day job in October

At the time, I work on the business 1-2 days a week.

I have made many mistakes along the way, especially being too lenient and spending too much time on details because I like things to be perfect and getting distracted - surely you all know what I mean. What I did right is - in my opinion - making changes fast when needed and taking new opportunities as they present themselves.

As some of the kids are still living at home / some homeschooling and the current 60% day job, this also takes time, but doing business can be combined with family - much better than a regular job.

Plans for the coming time:
- delegate more (marketing, content creation, newsletter) to make myself utterly dispensable
- perfect automation
- develop new digital product that I have been planning for some time / I will use the highly interesting thread on this forum to do that

Thanks again and I will keep you posted.

 

[FreakyThomas]

Wow, awesome ! Well done! Inspiring thread

 

[Happyheart]

Plans for the coming time:
- delegate more (marketing, content creation, newsletter) to make myself utterly dispensable
- perfect automation
- develop new digital product that I have been planning for some time / I will use the highly interesting thread on this forum to do that.

Automation is in the works:
1. Registration and onboarding of users was until this day done with a web form and emailing back and forth. Now we will use Formstack to capture the forms and generate the needed documentation, Calendly for the onboarding call.
2. Prospects will be managed with Sendinblue (Brevo) email management, taking much hassle out of these processes.
3. For other groups of clients I use Learnworlds, but I am not quite sure if I like it as much as it is advertised. I like the payment and invoice automation, but I do not like the learning system itself as much as Moodle.

As mentioned above, I want to change/cut out the academic job and am looking for an alternative so that I can retain the perks without much of the hassle:
- I applied 3x and now have 3 invitations for the coming month.
- because of contractual obligations, it may take until early 2024 to lose the headache Job.

New CENTS-compatible digital product:
- I will try to do it with my son, who wants to study computer science, but he has just finished school and also - understandably - wants to have free time with friends and next semester he will be away to university. So we will see.

 

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