Are you a nurse practitioner who wants to be a telemedicine entrepreneur? COVID-19 has seen the increase in popularity of telehealth and telemedicine services, and you may be looking to leverage on this trend to start a nurse practitioner side hustle. However, do you have the qualities to be a successful nurse entrepreneur? Are you willing to do what it takes to actualize your nurse entrepreneur ideas? Before getting started on a business plan, you will need to take some time to think about yourself.

What Makes a Nurse Practitioner Entrepreneur?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an entrepreneur as someone who manages, organizes, and takes on the risks of a business or enterprise. This gives us three distinct aspects into being an entrepreneur:

• Organization

As someone who organizes, that does not simply mean you put information in the right places. You also need to be a visionary, a dreamer, a thinker, a creator, an inventor, someone who thrives on thinking outside of the box. You need to be able to come up with a niche, brainstorm about the types of services you can offer that will be well received in your area, define what your telemed practice can bring to the table that isn’t already there, and so much more.

When talking specifically about telemedicine practices, you need to think about the type of service that has an unmet demand in your area and that you can offer. Are you going into children’s mental health, health coaching or geriatric health? As a NP telemedicine entrepreneur, you have to come up with your own innovative consulting business ideas to meet the needs of patients in your area. Maybe you are going to cater specifically to elderly patients who are homebound but can access you through telemedicine consultations, and your goal is to help them cut down on the number of pills they are taking.

With a clear idea in mind and how you are going to execute business ideas for nurses, it’s time to put your plan into action.

• Management

The second part of being an entrepreneur is that you are a great manager. Not only does that mean managing your own time and priorities, you also have to be a good manager of teams. That means taking on the role of a facilitator, motivator, networker and planner. After coming up with a novel idea you are going to put into action, that’s not the end. In time, you also have to take charge of a whole team on top of managing your budget, time and business operations.

When starting out, you may find that managing yourself is your biggest priority as you are probably on a limited budget and trying to make every dollar go as far as possible. However, as your business grows, you may bring on other team members such as a personal assistant, an administrative head, a clinical head, a marketing assistant, or even an IT manager. When these people become part of your team, they will be looking to you for guidance and it’s up to you to delegate tasks as you see fit.

Never fall into the trap of trying to do everything yourself – not only will you be stretched thin, but you may start to resent the responsibility and end up not enjoying working entrepreneurial jobs. To run a successful telemedicine business, you are going to need to find the right people to be in your corner and support them through it all.

• Risks

The third part of being an entrepreneur is assuming all the risks involved. This includes taking on both financial risk and the risk of failure. Is the niche you picked for your telemedicine practice going to be successful? Is the marketing agency you hired to design your website going to come through? You may not know the answers at this point, but it’s precisely the willingness and tenacity to take on this risk that sets an entrepreneur apart.

Although there’s always a chance that your venture may not succeed, going into it with a positive attitude can make all the difference. If you believe you can make it happen, you are more likely to be invested in it instead of slogging through it with the mindset that you are going to fail anyway. Even if you meet a slight setback on the way or things don’t quite go as you have envisioned, you would have gained a learning experience which you can leverage on when fixing your current projects or embarking on new ones. Either way, you win. What could be better?

Take a Closer Look at Yourself

To sum things up, you really need to take some time to sit down with yourself and answer the important questions that arise:

• Do you feel ready to run your own telemedicine practice?
• Do you have the skill sets required of an entrepreneur?
• Are you okay with taking on risk?
• Can you be a leader?
• Do you think innovatively?

If you answered no to any of these questions, starting your own telemedicine practice may not be for you, and there’s nothing wrong with that! There are many other side hustles you can get into as a nurse practitioner without becoming an entrepreneur. Or you may wish to file the idea away for later, such as when you are in a better financial position. If you can answer yes confidently to all the above questions and know you have what it takes to make things happen, it is time to determine the best healthcare business to start.

Looking for a Supervising Physician as a Nursing Practitioner?

As a nurse practitioner looking to start your own telemed enterprise, you may be looking for a collaborating physician to work with on transforming this endeavor into reality. When that’s the case, come to our team at Collaborating Docs and we can match you with a suitable physician within 14 days or less. Feel free to check out our client testimonials and schedule a call with our team for a free quote.