The physician entrepreneur’s gig guide

If you are a physician looking for an alternative or supplementary job or career as someone who contributes to getting ideas to patients in a non-clinical role, then what got you to where you are now won’t get you to where you want to go. Finding the right date a doc platform is hard.

Here are some articles that might help get you to your new destination:

1. The sickcare gig economy
2. Physician side gig gaffes
3. The 5 pillars of physician entrepreneurship
4. Which gig should you accept, doctor?
5. Advising is not doctoring
6. Do you want to get in or get out?
7. How to let go of the banana
8. How to build your personal brand
9. Make it personal but don’t take in personally
10. What it takes to be a physician entrepreneur
11. Where are the physician entrepreneur search firms?
12. How to create medical technology CMOs and advisors
13. When to pull the plug and learn
14. How to find the right physician advisor
15. What you’ll learn in SOPE school
16. What should be included in your personal and professional development plan?
17. How to be a physician entrepreneur despite your MBA
18. The physician entrepreneur’s guide to non-clinical careers
19. The 1099 doc
20. Barriers to physician entrepreneurship
21. How to find your place in a biocluster
22. How to be a compensated connector

Here is the side gig check list you should complete before you accept an offer to work with a company:

1. Created a personal and professional development plan for the next 6 months that describes how you will get entrepreneurship education, resources, networks, mentors, experience, peer to peer support and non-clinical career guidance.
2. Decided what role you want to play
3. Identified what kinds of problems you want to solve
4. Figured out what are your short term and long term goals
5. Have some understanding of why you want to do this
6. Understand how you will be compensated and what “work for equity” means and how long you expected to serve in your role.
7. Have done your homework on the company and the leadership team
8. Have engaged appropriate legal, accounting and personal advisory help
9. Have create a separate business entity to manage and account for your non-clinical activities
10. Understand whether and/or how you are allowed to engage in entrepreneurial activities without creating problems with your employer
11. Read your employment contract and the terms and conditions of who owns any intellectual property if created
12. Picked your entrepreneurial spot
13. Clearly understand the expectations, benchmarks and timelines of the founder or company principal and whether you will be able to satisfy them and add value to the prospective team.
14. Understand your possible job progression if and when the company grows
15. Discussed the offer with your spouse or partner

Now, do a cost benefit analysis factoring in both the tangibles and intangibles to decide whether it is a go or no-go. If you are doing this for the money, or , you say “I just want to create impact” without jeopardizing your income, then think again. The intangibles, like who you meed, what you learn and where it might lead, are often worth more than the options that will probably expire anyway.

If you want to take the graduate course, then read these too. I could have just put all this in a textbook, but who really buys those any more? Not many of you have bought this one yet.

Or, maybe I should pitch a publisher to create the Journal of Physician Entrepreneurship.

No problem. I’ll just include it on my failure resume.

Good luck finding your new gig.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurship