Shawn Dill - None of Your Business: A Winning Approach to Turn Service Providers Into Entrepreneurs

It was 1996, New Years Eve, approximately one year after I graduated from Logan Universitys College of Chiropractic and the first anniversary for my private practice in San Jos, Costa Rica. Outside of my apartment, the locals partied, preparing for the clock to strike midnight, when the real fun began. By all rights, I should have been outside celebrating with them.

I wasnt.

At twenty - four years old, as the owner of my own business, with no boss to tell me what to do, I should have been leading the festivities. After all, Id made all the right decisions. The Clinton administration had made the move toward managed healthcare, and no one knew what the reimbursement landscape looked like for providers, but I had a pretty good idea. (I was twenty - four years - old , so, of course, I knew everything .)

I had decided that the best way to avoid the uncertainty of the managed - care environment was to practice outside of the United States. My initial plan took me to Nicaragua, but a friend there who also happened to be a high - ranking government official at the time advised me against starting a business there.

If you like it here, head for Costa Rica, he said. So I did.

I didnt care that I didnt speak Spanish. I didnt care that there were maybe only five other chiropractors in the country and that even they werent doing it full - time . It never occurred to me that because of that fact, most of the citizens didnt even know what chiropractic was .

What mattered was that I had been smart enough not to set up shop in the States during a potential reimbursement crisis for healthcare providers. I should have been living the life of a young, rich professional, enjoying the well - earned downtime, taking advantage of the spoils of owning my own practice.

I wasnt.

Instead, I went to bed early that night. Before that, I ate the last of the beans and rice Id purchased two weeks priorbeans and rice Id bought by going grocery store to grocery store with garbage bags full of empty soda bottles in an attempt to collect my return deposit on them. I lay back in my bed, my stomach barely full, my head echoing with the same question.

How did I get here?

I had a vision of changing the world through healthcare. I was a talented clinician. Yet despite the managed - care changes implemented, my fellow graduates and peers were making it work stateside and making it work well. Granted, they had to play the insurance game in order to make it work, but I wasnt going to do that. I refused to sell out. I was going to run my clinic with integrity and passion because I knew that that would be enough to be successful.

As I soon discovered, I couldnt have been more wrong.

At a time when everyone was tracking their appointments on PalmPilots, I kept a three - by - five scheduling book in my back pocket. That little notebook, sadly, was more than large enough to keep track of the four patients a day I was seeing. For those of you not in the healthcare profession, its not uncommon for a provider to see four patients in an hour , let alone a day.

Lying there in my bed, hungry and broke, I knew I had to make a decision. I could throw in the towel, move back to the States, and learn the insurance game. I could educate myself on and enroll myself in HMOs, PPOs, and the assorted other alphabet - soup insurance plans. Doing so would make the dollars in my pocket practically guaranteed. My friends had been doing it with no small amount of success.

Personally, and professionally, I wasnt ready to pay that cost.

Giving up wasnt an option. I had too much drive to make my business succeed and too much passion to let go of my vision. I had come to Costa Rica specifically to avoid having third - party reimbursement providers dictate the type of care I would provide for my patients. Yet my passion for delivering the highest - quality care wasnt enough to achieve the level of success Id imagined. There had to be better way.

There was.

I made the decision to use every resource available to me to get my name out into the community. Id knock on every door, make every cold call I could possibly imagine. I did all of the regular things youre supposed to do: free spinal screenings, handing out business cards, and other traditional networking methodsall to no avail. Then, early in the new year, lightning struck.

I was invited to appear on the television show Con Asombro , hosted by Nono Antillon. The program was the Costa Rican equivalent of the Today show and represented an opportunity for massive exposure not only for me but for the field of chiropractic. I would finally have the opportunity to educate the public on the service I could provide for them, allowing me to help them in the way I had envisioned.

Problem was, I still spoke almost no Spanish. I prepared translations of answers to what I thought would be questions theyd ask: What is chiropractic? What kind of conditions can chiropractic help? I memorized the responses, confident that Id perform well and take my practice to the next level.

She didnt ask any of the questions Id anticipated. Not one.

True to form, I gave the answers Id memorized, no matter what the question. I figured this was my only shot, so I was going to take it. Judging from the odd looks Nono gave me throughout the awkward interview, as I continued to provide answers for questions she didnt ask, I assumed that this was my first and last Costa Rican television appearance and that I had sunk my business. But I was wrong.

After the show, business picked up a bit. Then, about four months later, Con Asombro called and invited me back for another appearance. My Spanish had continued to improve, and the show went wellso well that they invited me back again and again, until I was appearing on the show once monthly. By the end of my second year, the practice was seeing two hundred patients per day, five days per week.

Eight years later, right before I left Costa Rica to return to the United States, I spoke with Nono at a going - away party. She recalled my first time on the show and told me that she didnt know what in the world I was talking about but that when she looked in my eyes, she saw something therea story to tell. She told the producers, despite their initial protests, to bring me back, and to keep bringing me back until I got it right. She saw my passion for my profession and my desire to share that message with others.

She was right about that passion, that desire. But it took that first year of near failure for me to realize, both for myself and now you, that passion and desire arent nearly enough to realize the success you envision.

Whether youre an allied healthcare provider, a massage therapist, or a hair salon owner, if youre reading this book, chances are better than average that youve asked yourself this question more times than you care to count. Youre a service provider with a skillset that exceeds not only that of your peers but even some of your mentors and educators.

Beyond that, youve got a vision. Youve got passion. You believe wholeheartedly that you can change the world for the better with the talents you have to offer. Youve also seen yourself living the lifestyle of your dreams as a result of taking the risk of going it on your own, being your own boss, and answering to no one.