At the time and with all the professional naiveté of a healthcare professional only a few years into a life’s work, I went about my work diligently thinking I would be the teacher and he the student. I soon learned that at best it was to be an even exchange, with me the mentee during many of our sessions.
It had to be around “Y2K”. You know that big moment when our increasing reliance on computers was going to be exposed by a moment of reckoning because the internal clocks weren’t going to know what to do with the “00” of the new millennium. Our fledgling little start-up was opening its first, and shortly after, second outpatient clinic. Dr. F was going to be one of my first regular patients, a local Orthodontist who was in the early stages of rehabilitation from a traumatic fall that fractured his spine and left him without use of his lower extremities. We started our relationship like anyone might predict - I learned a lot about him and did my best to both challenge him while being an optimistic force in what can be an otherwise hard new reality.
At the time and with all the professional naivete of a healthcare professional only a few years into a life’s work, I went about my work diligently thinking I would be the teacher and he the student. I soon learned that at best it was to be an even exchange, with me the mentee during many of our sessions.
I listened intently as he told me about the many things he had done in life - from the physical adventures of the early years, hiking, hangliding and a stint in Alaska, to the realities of building a successful business portfolio while raising young children and growing a professional practice. I could see myself in the stories. The accident notwithstanding, it seemed like a good way to carve a life. Then, one session while we were working on mobility and trunk strength, he said something that rang through my head like a bell: “your hands WILL fail you, the very best thing I ever did was to have other assets, if it weren’t for those my injuries would’ve bankrupted me”.
It was both a simple and powerful statement, the missing link in so many small business stories and strong real-world validation of other business-books I was reading at the time. Whether a ditch-digger, a highly skilled professional or anyone in between, earning a self-employed living would never be enough to insure a life with the freedoms we wanted from Pro-Activity and the “cost of insurance” was the cost of reinvesting heavily into the assets of tomorrow.
Ironically, it was one of the principles that, not too long after, pushed me out of clinic-based treatment and forced me to face the hard choice to transition clients like Dr. F and others who were among our “first” to the care of colleagues. It was also one of the principles that drove us to purchase and renovate what is now BaseCamp31, continue to reinvest heavily into refining and growing our model and work diligently over the next 20 years to build a portfolio of assets, whether those you might find on a balance sheet or in relationships that payoff in ways we never expected, it has become the foundation of our strategy for growth.We don’t cross paths much anymore, but every once in a while when I get a call from Dr. F., whether with a clinical question or just to say “I got your Christmas card, your kids are so grown up”, I think back to the power of hard-earned wisdom when handed down to those on a similar journey and hope to be good stewards of it.
-Mike E.
Comments