Finding my purpose as a physician, artist, investor and entrepreuneur
Key takeaways:
Selling a product or interviewing for a job isn’t about you, its about the customer, the user and the company respectively.
Identify the world as it is, recognize the incentives and levers in place. After doing this, the path you should follow will be easier to pick.
The easiest way to build a product is to build something for your past self.
Transcript
Hi everyone, today I'd like to talk to you guys about my journey to where I am in my life right now. I've been spending quite a bit of time recently thinking about my purpose, my why, and really looking at the research behind the subject.
To give you guys a bit of context, I'll start with my med school days. I graduated med school in 2012. It was an interesting experience where I really did not find med school to be my passion until fourth year. So I didn't do too well in med school and by the end of it, I think it was a bit too late. I failed one of my exams called the Step 2 CS.
Now this exam was looked as a marker to see if you could communicate in English and because I failed it, I essentially did not get any interviews for residency programs. For those of you who are not in health care, After medical school, you have to do residency or you can think of it like an apprenticeship.
And if you don't do residency, essentially, you don't have a chance of being a physician, at least in North America. I had a debt of about 300, 000 as well at this point. So the only path to really repay that debt was to get a residency. After I didn't match, I cold called a lot of different programs and I knew what I needed to do is stay in clinical medicine in whatever capacity I could find.
I had a friend who was working in a research capacity at a hospital affiliated with Columbia University in cardiology. I did research there for about a year. I was under the impression that I will get a residency spot for their program if I was contributing effectively in the research. I had a visa issue as well as I was a Canadian citizen staying in the States.
I did not end up matching to that program, but I did get a lot of different experiences and research and publications, which I value and I think which helped me eventually down the line as well. I remember I was crossing the border back to renew my visa and I got denied entry into the States. My parents were in the States at this point as well, so I really didn't have any place to stay or anything.
Any place to stay or any form of a stable place in Canada. Nonetheless, I had friends and I'm very thankful for, um, for my friends who let me couch surf on their, um, couches for months at a time. At this point, without, uh, any in with clinical practice, I kind of learned the power of cold calling. I called every program in Canada asking for observerships.
Essentially, I just shadow physicians and I help out here and there when I can. So I must have, I think I looked into this before, I must have called about a thousand programs in various emails just asking to let me shadow help and research volunteer work. Thankfully, I was lucky and fortunate that a few of these programs and clinics gave me an opportunity.
Um, and I, I did the best I could in these overships and I got some letters of recommendation. I moved to Alberta at one point because to apply for residency in Alberta, you had to have a resident status. So I moved there, got a driver's license, met with the program and I was planning on applying for residency in Alberta as well.
There's a program in Canada where you can come back and do a practice ready assessment if you've done residency elsewhere. So I looked at other countries where I could do residency based on my medical degree. Jamaica was one of those countries, so I went to Jamaica. I met with the Minister of Health, and I remember this conversation very clearly.
The day of the meeting, I could not find My dress pants. Um, so I went in jeans and that was a big no, no. And essentially, from what I remember, he said, you will never get residency here because you're not dressed appropriately and you're not taking this seriously. And funny enough, my dress pants and my tie was in the front zipper of my back or my suitcase, and I didn't, I didn't, um, I didn't think to look there.
I was back in Canada, my brother matched residency in Winnipeg, and I finally had a chance to stay there. So I moved to Winnipeg. Manitoba had this program where if you've done an MD, you can take this exam, and if you pass it, you can work as a clinical assistant, um, which has a really good salary. It's, it's not the same as a physician, but it was definitely a path I was looking at.
So I took that exam and I passed and I got my clinical assistant license. In the meantime, I kept applying for. residency spots as well. I did really well in an exam called the Nagoski, and because of that, I got multiple residency interviews in Ontario. You notice for British Columbia, where I eventually did my residency, initially rejected me, and I wrote them back saying, you know, I think I'll be a really good culture fit for you guys, um, and I'd love to have the opportunity to interview you.
That's all I said. I remember them, um, emailing me back, spelling my name wrong, uh, but I, I think it, it shows effort. and commitment, um, that I did write something. I'll kind of pause here to, to highlight the first lesson I learned. When you're applying for a job, when you're selling something, it really isn't about you.
It's about the customer or the company or the workplace. And what you really want to do is identify what they are looking for. What are their goals? What are their aspirations? So at UBC or any medical school residency program in Canada in family medicine, what they're looking for. is to select people who want to be, uh, family doctors, who are capable, um, but to be frank, to an extent, post medical school, post our exams, most of us are capable, so it really comes down to, well, do you, is this what you want?
Are your goals aligned with our goals? So by this point, with my multiple rejections, cold calling, I had learned that lesson. And in my interview, eventually UBC did invite me for an interview and my first time in B. C. was for my interview, which is another thing going against me because usually residents from the ground, especially out west, um, they look for ties to there because they don't want to train you and then you leave the province and go somewhere else.
Um, but you know, I didn't really have many ties in Ontario either, so I had that going for me as well, or in Manitoba, which is where I was living at that point. I did well in the interview, and I got into residency at UBC. I did my residency on Vancouver Island and Campbell River, which is an amazing program, I think, great group of people.
I was under mediation during residency, and I think, again, my goals were misaligned with the program's goals. And the way the program monitored residents and evaluated them is not something I agreed with. And I think this is a lesson number two. If you want to decide what you want to do in life, the first step is to identify, I think, the roles you want to achieve or your goals.
Say you want to be, um, you want to start a company, you want to be CEO, or you want a nine to find your job and, um, have a more balanced life. And once you identify them, then work backwards. and figure out how people get to those roles. Um, and residency is one of these things where you are in some ways trapped, and if your goal is to furnish your residency, you just have to figure out what your program values, and how they evaluate residents, and just meet those metrics.
Um, I had figured it out, but I didn't accept it. I was still fighting it. Figuring out how the world works, the incentives in place, how leverage happens in this world is one thing. But accepting it is another thing. You have to accept it as well. Once you've mapped out these different paths to different goals you have, then you can decide, you know, which path you want to take or which game you want to play in this life.
So after residency, um, I did fail another exam called the CCFP. Um, and I passed it on the second try. And again, I think both my exam failures was... Linked to hubris, ego, and me not taking those exams seriously. Um, after I finished residency, I was working as a hospitalist at Sutter Memorial Hospital. Again, a great group of people really enjoyed my time there.
But, I was finding medicine and clinical practice monotonous to an extent, and I realized the immense privilege in that statement. You know, I did not grow up rich. I grew up in India. Um, and I remember when we moved here, the four of us left and here being Canada on 40, 000 a year for lots of years. And we were, we were more or less happy.
Um, so that's, that's all to say that, you know. Being able to be unhappy at my job and being able to have the privilege and the luxury to just sit and think about what I want to do, identify the paths, and then again, being able to pick the path I want to take and go on that path is an immense privilege.
I, uh, I realized that completely. So not being happy as a hospitalist, um, I was craving excitement. I was craving growth. There's a big arrival fallacy in medicine and other careers as well, where you learn, you learn. You go through tons of education and then when you arrive, you are at your maximum earning potential in medicine on year one post residency.
The earning potential really does not increase that much. And if you want to chase academic goals or titles, um, that's more of a status game. It's not a game I'm interested in playing, uh, although my ego at times drives me that way. I, I try very hard to temper that ego and largely because the path to success in that game and going back to what I was saying previously is not a path I'm interested in, in taking.
So what I, I kind of uncovered the world of entrepreneurship and the world of startups. Um, I had no idea about business, but I didn't recognize what I need to do is identify pain points in my user and my customer's journey. And again, in healthcare, the user and the customer are very different and I need to pick which pain point I can solve or I am best suited to solve.
And I landed on automated consoles. I started a startup, um, in a telemedicine space called ClinicUp. I have a full video, uh, about 18 minutes outlining my lessons from there, so I won't go through it, uh, for this video. Essentially, my startup closed down last year. It was not a successful exit. I did not make any money off it, but I wanted to stay involved, and I was still working full time in clinical medicine throughout, and I'm still working in clinical medicine in some capacity.
I wanted to stay involved in the startup world. I was really enjoying my time in the startup ecosystem. I really loved being a founder, building something. But I knew family life and that path is not possible with balance. And I'll kind of pause here. There's, there's two ways to go about planning your work life.
One is a balanced life, um, where you have time for family, friends, and your hobbies and interests on a weekly basis. The other path is when you work a hundred hour weeks, or say six months or a year, and then you take a break. I think I prefer the latter path, but my life isn't set up to take that path. At the current moment, I have two young kids, um, I have a loving wife.
And I want to give my time and energy and mental bandwidth, um, to my family. So I said, okay, I can invest in startups as a way of staying involved. So I'm closing it in my fifth investments. Um, I had a couple of friends in the startup ecosystem at this point. Um, and I had one friend in the BC world who introduced me to an angel syndicate, uh, Halo Health.
So I joined them and they taught me a lot and they were very, um, kind in, in teaching me about startups. I launched my own angel syndicate as well, which is health tech investors. It's the focus on education and run a podcast, um, just this podcast and a newsletter as well. And again, I wanted to identify, say, I want to be a venture capitalist or a founder or a successful podcaster or have a successful newsletter.
I wanted to identify what is the path to that. And it's something I'm struggling with right now is as I outlined these paths. It becomes clearer which path I want to take or which path best fits my personality or my goals. Um, and how I want to live my life day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year.
For venture capital, I kind of realized there are four things I really need to hone down if I want to raise my own fund. The first one is having a track record, which I'm building right now. The second one is deal flow. And the best way to get proprietary deal flow, I find, is just putting myself out there, my thoughts as a physician, what I think is broken in healthcare, where I think the market in healthcare is heading, and what are the opportunities.
You need to be really good at picking as well. This is something that sometimes gets under looked. Picking startups is. I don't want to use the word easy. It is simple in structure. Do doings in startups, if you Google the term, you will get lots of hits. And more or less it's accurate, you know, you look at the founding team, you look at founder problem fate, you look at market timings okay, you look at what they're building.
You look at to see if the founders can build this and can they hire talent as they grow as well. You look for humility, you look to see if they have strong ideas loosely held. And then you get deeper into diligence and technical diligence. Um, and I won't go into due diligence, I've done a couple of videos on that as well.
And the last part is how do you add value to the startup post investment? So for me or for physicians, um, who are venturing in this field, physician founders, I add value because I have a founding experience and also because I have a vast network of physicians. Well, I can call on for startup advice or, um, or potential customers.
I won't go too much into podcasting and newsletters. Um, I find consistencies that can all make different episodes to go into more detail there. I wanted to give you guys some framework on how I am going on finding my why or my purpose. The first framework I want to say is ikigai, which is a Japanese concept of purpose for being, or what gives your life worth or purpose.
It's the intersection of what you love or your passion, what the world needs, your mission, what you're good at, your vocation, and what you can get paid for, your profession. And at the intersection of, of these four things is what your why is, what is your purpose. I don't know my purpose completely yet. I love building communities.
I love sharing my knowledge, my thoughts, which I would say is my selfish goal, or my selfish purpose. Um, my selfless purpose is partly, I see that physicians and clinicians are not involved in healthcare innovation and haven't been in the capacity I would like them to. I think healthcare would be better off, both in terms of equity of access and in terms of quality.
If clinicians were involved in the next startups in the next unicorns in healthcare The two best ways to be involved is either be founders or be investors Um, and as investors, I think we are backing the people doing the hard things which is founding a startup The second concept I want to introduce is called the hedgehog concept.
It's Introduced to me by jim collins and his book good to great a great book. I recommend everyone reading and that's Uh, lies at the intersection of what are you deeply passionate about? What can you be the best at the world and what drives your economic or resource engine? I want to pick on the second point.
What can you be the best at the world? And i'll tie in Naval Ravikant, AngelList. I recommend his almanac as well. I'll put all the book recommendations down below. Is what is your specific knowledge? What are your experiences, your skill set, and what is unique about them? And how can you leverage your specific knowledge to provide value to the world?
And again, going back to what I was talking about, doing something, and it could be anything, isn't about you. It's about what value can you offer to the people? that you're trying to, and I'll use the word sell here, sell to. So, and sometimes, you know, you look at what value can you offer to yourself five years ago, because there are several people, likely in thousands, if not millions, Who are in your shoes that you were one year ago, six months ago, two years ago, five years ago.
And I find this framework helps as what, what value can I offer to myself Last year when I started Angel investing and there's immense value there that current me can offer. And you know, that's, that's something I can package into a course possibly or run more pitch competitions like I did. Um, and I would encourage you guys to kind of write down, okay.
Imagine you're talking to yourself six months ago, or maybe five years ago, and what can you tell yourself? Um, and go in as much detail as you want. Another concept I want to introduce is the Simonson X Golden Circle, which is a why, how, and what. And really hone down into why are you doing this? Why are you doing what you're doing?
And what do you want to do differently? And I do want to double down on the privilege of all of these concepts and being able to say, okay, I am now trapped in a third world country where I don't have opportunities to an extent, where my why how what is putting food on the table, and that is the beginning, the middle, and the end of my why how what.
I have the privilege, and I think a lot of us listening to this video do, of taking time to think about this. I would like to end with, um, I think finding your purpose as you try and... Identify if you want to be a lawyer, a doctor, an entrepreneur, an investor, a podcaster, and you want to be a newsletter person.
Identify those vocations for what they are. See the world as it is, not as you want it to be. You know, identify the games, the structures, the incentives in place, and accept them. Because the world is as it is. You wanting to change the world. And then you can change the world, but again, identify how people have changed the world and how you can change the world.
And once you have these paths to whatever you wanted to lay it out and you have different options, then you can pick which game or which path you want to take. The hard thing about this is not the picking, it's the identification and the accepting.
