We opened our doors to patients on May 23rd, 2017. On our first anniversary, we wrote a blog post, entitled ‘What we’ve learned in our first year’ – a partly serious, partly tongue-in-cheek review of how steep the learning curve of clinic ownership actually is (I just checked, and ‘steep learning curve’ is the same expression I used back then – guess my writing skills haven’t evolved much).
Now, on our 8th birthday, we’ve decided to have a look back at what we wrote then, and give you our updated version of all the things we’ve learned.
In 2018, we said we had learned that:
- Three owners>one owner.
In 2025: Still true. The value of sharing the load has been enormous.
- Mints>chocolates.
Hmmm…COVID took our mint bowl away, and it didn’t ever make it back. We were giving too much to the Dollar Store next door anyway.
- The amount of traffic through a dollar store in a day is incredible.
Absolutely unbelievable, especially with the increased cost of living in recent years.
- Just like pretty much everything in life, you learn more from the things you did wrong than the things you did right.
I think this one will be on our list forever, for business and life. True.
- Orchids are really hard to keep alive. Snake plants are more our speed.
Have you seen Snakey lately? We’ve had to repot him a few times, he just keeps on growing. That orchid, although we think we did a damn fine job with it, has been gone for some time.
- Social Media is not as ‘free’ as people think.
We feel a bit prophetic on this one – at the time, most of our marketing was organic. Look at what’s happened in the past 8 years in the world of digital marketing!
- The doctors of the Westshore are great to work with.
Aside from the fact that there aren’t enough of them (we know they agree with this), this is still completely true.
- The bones of any company are its people – when you have excellent staff, your company will thrive.
We consider ourselves pretty darn lucky to have the team we have. Makes coming to work easy — and fun!
- Our wives are even more patient than we thought they were.
So, so patient…
- For every problem, there’s a solution.
We’re at just over one million solved problems, and counting.
- Timelines for different projects rarely align.
We may have had a couple of projects align, but by coincidence only. Mostly still true.
- We are not webmasters.
Still not webmasters. But we’ve found a great group of them who keep us looking sharp online.
- It’s better to farm specialized work out to the people who can do it well, rather than spend hours doing a less effective job. Case in point:
We are not webmasters.
Thank you @Caorda!
- If you’re building a business, make sure it’s close to Costco. (And Bin 4, and Three Gringos, and Poncho’s Coffee House, and Frontrunners…)
We still love all these places – especially the locally owned ones!
- Lawyers are expensive. And absolutely critical.
Thankfully, we haven’t needed many lawyers, but this one absolutely holds up as well.
- Prepare for the worst, expect the best (see previous point).
We have expected the best and can truthfully say we’ve gotten it, for the most part.
- There are lots of ways to measure success.
…and if support from the community is one of them, we’re winning. Thank you to each and every one of our awesome patients who put their trust in us to help them get back to the things they love.
