The foundation of the Elite Nurse Practitioner Model is having a part time job. For my regular readers, you know that I advocate having 2-4 part time side businesses. Having multiple small side businesses creates redundancy (redundancy in this context means a system design that duplicates resources to provide alternatives in case one resource fails) in your financial and professional life. If one business fails, then you have others as back up. It diversifies your income streams. You have multiple sources of income coming in every month from different sources. One of these sources needs to be from a part-time job, preferably paid as a 1099 contractor.
You might be telling yourself “This guy is crazy, he is advocating working and having side businesses?!”
YES!!!!!
When you have a part-time job while spinning multiple side businesses, you are MASSIVELY secure financially and professionally. This job will be the foundation of your financial life. You will always have this as a backup. It is a secure and predictable income.
Listen, businesses fail. Businesses have slow months. Sometimes it can take a while for a business to start turning a profit. If you rely on your business to provide for your personal life, you will be much more stressed than the person who has a regular job. On the other hand, if you have a side business and a part-time job, you can always rely on that part-time job to cover you.
This is why I advocate for always maintaining a part-time job while having 2-4 side businesses. This is the foundation of the Elite Nurse Practitioner Model. Everything stems from this principle.
What are the benefits of maintaining a job while having side businesses?
Financial security: Lets pretend you own a Med Spa. You are making $20,000 a month in revenue which results in a $12,000 profit a month. Nice! You are making $144,000 a year with your own business. Let’s pretend a recession hits the United States. Do you think a lot of people will be purchasing your Med Spa services? No, business will slow down. Your income is cut in half! Are you stressing? You better believe it. What if you were also working 2 shifts a week at an urgent care though? Are you stressing now? A little bit, but you know that you have a reliable and predictable income stream to cover your personal expenses.
What if you have 3 side businesses that you spend 8 hours a week each on while working 2 shifts in an urgent care every week and a recession hit? Are you stressing? Barely! Business would slow down with all 3 side businesses but you also have that back up income from your part-time job. You would cruise through the recession without much of an issue.
What if the inverse were to happen? What if you lost your job yet had those multiple side businesses producing a monthly income? You would not be nearly as stressed as the person who does not have another income source to cover their life. Do you see what I mean by having multiple income streams? This protects your financial life. You are immensely secure!
Income to start your business: If you are still working during the startup phase of your new business, you can use the money from your job to fund the business until it goes on autopilot. Your new business will not be profitable for 3-6 months. This is a fact unless you come up with some amazing new idea and it takes off. But let’s stay in the real world. It takes time to start making money. If you continue to work while starting your businesses, it will make the initial phase of the business start up much less stressful. Imagine if you stopped working and dove 100% into a new business and that business failed. Could you imagine the stress and anxiety that would produce? It would be very bad. You do not want to go there, trust me.
Taking more risks: When you have a predictable and reliable income, you can take more risk when starting a business. You do not need to be as conservative as the entrepreneur who is going 100% in on their new business idea. You can be more aggressive and start a business no one has ever done in your area. You can start small and scale up if business takes off. You can also start multiple small projects at the same time and see which idea takes off. This takes courage, which ultimately is a risk. But guess what? If it fails it fails, you have that backup income that will always protect you!
Keeping your CV active: When you are working a part-time job, you will always have an active job on your CV. Sure, you can put your side businesses on your CV, but having an outside job on it looks better if you ever had to find another position. If all your businesses fail (which is practically impossible), and you need to find a full-time job, that active part-time job on your CV will help you find that full-time position much easier.
Maintaining clinical skills: Let’s hypothetically say you own a medical cannabis clinic, a small Med Spa, and 2 vacation rentals as your side businesses. If you did nothing but these activities, your clinical skills would get rusty. If you were working 2 shifts a week elsewhere though, you can keep those clinical skills sharp and active. I still learn new medical material on a weekly basis working 2 shifts a week in an urgent care. It allows me to still practice urgent care medicine while keeping my skills sharp and updated.
These are the main benefits of maintaining a job while having 2-4 side businesses. Maintaining your financial security is paramount and should be enough to convince you to continue working on a part-time basis at all times.
I am extremely secure. All of my businesses could close tomorrow and I would be just fine. Would it hurt? Of course, but I would not be panicking and loosing a tremendous amount of sleep over it compared to the person who does not have a reliable income source to fall back on. This is why maintaining a job is the foundation for the Elite Nurse Practitioner Model.
Now imagine if you were debt free, had low personal and business expenses, and were operating cash only businesses while maintaining that type of financial security. How invincible would you feel financially? Very. I go over this in detail in my upcoming book: The Elite Nurse Practitioner Model. In the meantime, put some serious thought into what I have discussed. If you are serious about starting a side business, you need to keep working at your full-time job until that business becomes profitable. At that point, you start your next business and then drop to part-time. This is what I did and it worked amazingly well.
9 Responses
Very POWERFUL and Encouraging write up.
This is the first article from this site I have read. Amen is all I have to say. I have done this business model for a number of years and people always tell me how crazy I am. Here to tell you, it works!!! Not only does it give the security but also freedom and flexibility of time. Keep spreading the word!
Thank you. It works fantastic and many people should give it a try.
Any ideas for side jobs for a psychiatric NP besides suboxone or medical marijuana?
Suboxone or medical cannabis should be your side businesses! Have you looked into telemedicine consultations?
Any side business ideas for a FNP with a few months of primary care experience in a collaborative state?
Thanks
Your biggest uphill battle will be the collaborative agreement required. Therefore, before you consider opening a practice you need to ensure you have a physician willing to go in with you. If you do, great! I am not aware of your experience, but HRT, Suboxone, and weight loss are easy low risk practices to learn. They are also relatively cheap to open. Without knowing more about you, I cannot really give you much more advice. Consult with me if you want more direction.
Due to legalities I have no idea how to be credentialed with one job through Medicare, Medicaid and 3rd party Insurance and start a “cash pay” side business. You need to give up your credentialing in order to do that from everything I read and understand. If someone knows a way around this please let me know! I am already a 1099 contractor but one of my contracts still bills through these insurances. They bill with their EIN and my NPI. I’m unsure if obtaining a separate NPI for my business and a separate EIN, if that makes any difference. My PCP has been off the grid for years with direct pay and she told me she had to give up all credentialing and write them letters, this was about 5 years ago. Are you going to go over that type of information in your new course set to come out this Friday the 26th? Thanks
Sandy,
This only applies with MEDICARE, not medicaid and private insurances. Listen, you do not need to opt out of any insurance carriers you are credentialed with to start a cash business. All you need to do is just avoid accepting Medicare patients or offer services that medicare does not cover. Check out this article here that explains this more. The course coming out on the 26th is about marketing, which is the number one function of your business. I do not go over anything else in that course. It is a wealth of information in itself. If you want to start another type of side business, check out the courses section for other ideas.