Medicine, Technology, Dharma
1.
It’s a cliché to say that being an entrepreneur is hard. Long hours, poor rewards and deep uncertainty – which is to say, almost certain failure – all take their toll on those who are foolish enough to start their own business.
And if you’re fanciful enough to have opened a restaurant or gastropub, you can wave goodbye to both your pension and any semblance of work-life balance. Alcoholism, divorce and bankruptcy will follow as night follows day – or so I’m told.
Even for those of us in the relatively sober and loosely defined world of MedTech face an emotional rollercoaster and more than our fair share of sleepless nights.
So it may come as a surprise to hear that my primary assertion is that being an entrepreneur is actually not that hard.
To illustrate this, let me offer you a thought experiment. Imagine teleporting (this is MedTech after all) to a random inhabited location, somewhere on the surface of this earth — missing out all the oceans, polar ice caps and man-eating forests – and then walking until you find another human being. Now compare yourself.
The odds are 1000:1 against that you (the hard-pressed entrepreneur)are actually in a tougher position than this hypothetical, randomly chosen, fellow human being.
Despite the optimism of Factfulness, 30% of the world’s population don’t have access to running water, a quarter of the world’s population is underfed, there are millions of refugees who no longer have (or never had) a home to call their own. Millions are under threat of war, flood, famine or pestilence.
The result of all that social and political hardship? Lives blighted by a burden of disease that is almost unfathomable for those of us who are healthy enough to read online magazines, surf the news on our smartphones and pontificate about entrepreneurialism.
Closer to your pre-teleportation home, it is likely that one in six people currently suffer the distress of mental illness. Cancer, heart disease, dementia, diabetes – and the excesses of the healthcare industry itself – all shorten, constrain and ultimately make intolerable the lives of millions.
So when I hear, or feel, that being an entrepreneur is hard, I try to remember the relativism of that statement. I try to remind myself of the blessings that accrue to my daily life: a dry bed, a roof, a plate of food, a glass of crystal-clear drinking water and a hug from my happy, healthy children. I remember that in the future when – not if – I become sick, I will be cared for by family, friends and society.
2.
The hard problem of being an entrepreneur is therefore not the sleepless nights worrying about cash flow or team cohesion or how to generate success, fame, and enough money for a fast car and a second home.
The hard problem is not within us and our businesses, but without us; in the world we seek to change. The question is how we, individually and collectively can solve those hard problems to reduce the burden of disease, both in our own communities and globally.
Entrepreneurs and their companies will fail, daily, in their thousands. But some will succeed. And those successes will bear fruit as businesses that improve patient outcomes, make healthcare safer, more accessible, more efficient and maybe even better led.
To that end, we — who count ourselves as MedTech entrepreneurs — should share and understand what might make success more likely. We operate in the margins, in a liminal and Darwinian sense, looking to become the fittest and the favoured. We do not operate in a zero-sum game. Many can succeed. And more can succeed if we learn from each other.
3.
Which leads us to a question. Can bloggish musing improve your struggle to be a better entrepreneur? I don’t know - but I’d like to help.
First, I can offer a set of evolving ideas and guidance and perhaps insights on how to survive and thrive as a MedtTech business owner. Evolving, because I am currently working out how to survive and thrive in my own business. Like Quentin Crisp’s teaching of tap-dancing, I may be only one step ahead – but perhaps one step may help.
Secondly, I am a voracious reader and happy to recommend and summarise some of the many books on the subject of medicine, entrepreneurship and business or the dharma that might be helpful or relevant to the budding billionaire. If I read them, perhaps you won’t need to.
Thirdly, as a doctor, I may have views and reviews of the technologies that are emerging. And with the stethoscope - that badge of office - metaphorically slung around my neck I might even provide some thoughts on the practice of medicine itself.
4.
And so finally to the question that heads this page.
Why reluctant?
As an aspiring buddhist practitioner I recognise the futility and pain that results from being overly-attached to anything. And that includes being overly-attached to being a buddhist practitioner. In all our lives, the rear view mirror is littered with passions gone cold, ideas not followed, and failures of every flavour. Which is, of course, not just allowable but expected. This too will pass.
And yet, being an entrepreneur, and indeed being a doctor, requires a degree of passion, a need to follow your ideas and a tenacity-in-the-face-of-failure that seems to fly in the face of this primary insight of buddhist teachings namely that over-attachment — to your business, your career, your funding — will cause you pain.
Here lies the rub. It is the word “over” in that last sentence which is key. It is over-attachment which causes the pain.
So it is with sense of reluctance — a small degree of unenthusiasm — that I recommend we all pursue our goals. Just enough hesitancy and relaxation to allow ourselves and our teams to flourish, without increasing the pain and suffering as the world changes.
So … get a good night’s sleep. And try to both go-for-it and let-go-of-it, just enough to be happy.
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