The Importance of One's "Must-Have" Mindset

In all the years of interviewing successful physician entrepreneurs for my Conversations with Trailblazers podcasts, there is one consistent piece of advice that physicians have shared, and this belongs to Bill Murphy Jr.'s Rule Number 8 in The Intelligent Entrepreneur: How Three Harvard Business School Graduates Learned the 10 Rules of Successful Entrepreneurship.

Persist, persevere, prevail.

In fact, Chapter 20 of the book opens with this reinforcing quote from President Calvin Coolidge:

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race."

Harsh? Perhaps; but also very true according to my interviewees ... and from my own personal experience.

I've written previously about the role of luck in entrepreneurial physician success —

there will always be both good and bad luck, and timing, and serendipity. But, as Murphy writes, "The key is persisting long enough to take advantage of the good fortune that does come your way".

What I'm referring to is a mental model — our way of interpreting the way the world works for us.

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