It’s a New Year, the time and opportunity to start new, think new and be new. Time to create new realities for ourselves.
Many of you have contemplated becoming a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, and may be wondering if, as a nurse, you’re cut out to be an entrepreneur and own your own business. After all, none of us were born entrepreneurs. It’s not like when we were born our moms asked, “Is it a boy or a girl? And the doctor said, “No… it’s a little entrepreneur.”
We often look to outside experts and when I started my legal nurse consulting business in 1982, I wished that nursing school had trained me better for managing a business. Nursing school didn’t offer classes such as marketing, accounting or business management. I wasn’t confident that my nursing education and nursing experience had in any way prepared me to own my own business. However, I soon recognized that nursing gave me most of the answers for successfully starting my own business. I also quickly discovered that I was better trained as an RN than most MBAs are for the world of entrepreneurship. Here are 10 things nursing taught me well about owning a business.
Success Lesson 1 – You Have the Power to Take Control of Your Nursing Career
We all know that patients heal faster when they take control of their health and practice healthy habits. Even the smallest positive action can give a patient a sense of control and empower the healing process. Placebos are proof that if a patient believes he can be healed, his body does the necessary work for him.
You too have the power to practice the healthy habits essential for taking control of your career destiny. Educate yourself about the necessary steps to achieve career health, including new career options like legal nurse consulting. Then take control of your career destiny by taking action on those steps.
Success Lesson 2 – Don’t Give in to Fear
As a nurse, you often treat different patients who have the same progressive disease, yet they experience dramatically different outcomes. We all have known patients who lived years after their predicted demise and other patients who should have lived but didn’t because they gave up. The fact that so many elderly patients die within months of losing a spouse is a sound example of the mind-body connection. In almost every case, the patients who died too soon had given in to their fear.
As Frank Herbert said in Dune “Fear is the mind-killer.” Fear can paralyze you and keep you from making decisions. There’s also a mind-business connection that will influence the health of your business. When I give in to fear, I become the biggest obstacle to my success. Practice mind control and exercise your mind daily for positive thinking. Shake off any lack of confidence and negative thinking. Don’t let fear be the reason you don’t live your career dreams. Always remember the mindset of the patients who live and the patients who die. The good news is that in business as opposed to nursing, bad results usually aren’t fatal.
Success Lesson 3 – Nurses Can Do Anything
If you can make life and death decisions in the middle of the night, heal sick patients and handle life-threatening emergencies as easily as you make your bed in the morning, you really can do anything – especially something as straightforward as starting a legal nurse consulting business. Whenever I face a business crisis, I remind myself, “I’m a nurse and nurses can do anything.” I’ve repeated this same message to myself for every obstacle I’ve had to overcome in my business.
Success Lesson 4 – The Nursing Process Is Your Friend
When I left hospital nursing to pursue my legal nurse consulting business full-time, I thought I could set aside the “nursing process” forever. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Business requires that same process of assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. Every case you get involved in requires you to assess the possibilities and needs, diagnose the problems, plan how to achieve the goals, implement the plan and evaluate the results.
Your nursing jobs have prepared you well. You can apply the nursing process to any business situation and challenge. You will thank your nursing instructors for this one. Every time you review a medical-related case, interview with an attorney or face a challenge, you will rely on the process they taught you. Today, thanks to the analysis powers I gained from the nursing process, I handle things easily and successfully that would have seemed impossible 28 years ago. Aside from drawing blood, almost none of your nursing experience will be wasted in business.
Success Lesson 5 – Act Quickly and Decisively
As an RN you know that seconds make a difference in patient outcomes. You rarely have lots of time to ponder or brood over a clinical decision. Act as quickly and decisively in your CLNC® business as you do as a hospital nurse and you will seize the opportunities that slower peers miss out on.
Will you always be correct? No. Will you make mistakes? Yes. But one thing for sure, you’ll never be paralyzed into inaction. Don’t miss your chance to succeed. Act quickly and decisively to grow your CLNC® business.
Success Lesson 6 – What You Focus on Is Where You Yield Results
Nurses are often overwhelmed by short staffing, heavy caseloads and lack of support from hospital administration. Even the general public knows that working conditions for RNs are worse than ever. We quickly learn to triage and focus on what we need to do to heal patients in this less-than-ideal environment. Nursing taught me that where I focus my time is where I yield results.
That skill comes in handy for legal nurse consultants. It’s as important to triage and prioritize your actions in your CLNC® business as it is when working with patients. Every day I’m confronted with dozens of challenges, five things that must be done at once, and 20 new creative ideas for my business, but I rarely panic. The organizational and multitasking skills I learned as a nurse have served me well. When you start your CLNC® business, you will not receive any extra hours in the day. In fact, the days will feel shorter because you’ll be enjoying your newfound freedom. Your ability to focus on what’s really important is the perfect training for your successful CLNC® business.
Success Lesson 7 – This Is Just Business, It’s Not Cancer
Ministering to patients and family members helps nurses put life, with all its problems and challenges, into perspective. Today when I overreact to a problem or feel I’m in crisis, I think of sick and dying patients. I think, “Now fighting for your life is a REAL problem.”
In business I’ve had lots of ups and downs. When the down moments come, I remind myself, “This is business – not cancer.” This helps me focus positively on solving the problem rather than embarking on a pity party. I’ve thrown plenty of those “parties,” and not only did they not make me feel any better, they never helped me solve a single business problem. As you grow your CLNC® business, it helps to ask, “So what if that one attorney says no?” or “So what if my favorite attorney-client retires?” and to remember it’s just business, not cancer.
Success Lesson 8 – Illness Can Wake You Up
All nurses have treated some patients who only began to live after they almost died. We’ve all had patients who said they are glad they got sick, because while they were well, they weren’t living the life they wanted. The health crisis forced them to wake up, reassess their lives, decide what was truly important to them and go for it.
If your career is facing a health crisis, this is your opportunity to wake up and change things for the better. Today at work, ask yourself whether your nursing career is healthy and whether your nursing career is affecting your health and well-being. Wake up and remember that there’s always time to make a change for the better – but it’s better to do it now while you can still enjoy the change!
Success Lesson 9 – Business Is Personal
Even though technical skills are vital for nurses, the relationships with patients and their families are usually what matters most. Those relationships pay off. When I was a young nurse, I made a mistake on one of my patients and he knew it. To my surprise the patient requested that I continue to be his nurse despite my error. I attributed his continuing trust to the relationship we had established together.
Just like nursing, business is personal. I have all the technical skills to lead my seminars and run my business. In fact, at this stage I could hand off some of those responsibilities to others. But I still teach every CLNC® 6-Day Live Certification Program we offer and speak to students daily because those relationships are what I thrive on. No one else could replicate my relationship with each and every nurse. As a result, most of our business comes from referrals by practicing CLNC® consultants and graduates of Vickie Milazzo Institute.
Legal nurse consulting is a service business where you will apply the same relationship principles you learned in nursing to your attorney-clients and prospects. Provide quality service and excellent work product that no other legal nurse consultant can replicate, and soon you’ll feel like you’re in a short-staffing situation all over again.
Success Lesson 10 – Take a Deep Breath When Managing Your Employees
One more thing I learned, it’s easier to manage an ICU full of patients than a room full of employees! At least you can sedate your patients.
Every lesson I learned from nursing, I apply to my business today. You’ve already learned similar lessons yourself. Take a moment on this New Day of this New Year to revel in everything nursing has taught you. These lessons will help you manifest any dream you desire for 2010 including becoming a CLNC® consultant.
Success Is Inside!
| P.S. |
In the spirit of what nursing teaches us, I’ve got one more lesson just for you on January 4. See you then. |
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