Episode 57
What happens when you stop taking the lower rate and start setting your own? Dr. Janeeka Benoit is internal medicine and sports medicine boarded, based in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and the founder of Invessel, a fully telehealth practice for high-achieving women navigating midlife and metabolic health.
She got there through locums work: three months away from home at a time, constant credentialing, and rates that kept dropping no matter how hard she negotiated. She was already doing telehealth on the side, so when her fiance asked why she didn't just start her own practice, the answer became obvious.
"Creating my practice, I create my own rate. I dictate how I want to be compensated."
She is licensed in 12 states, but most of her patients live in Tennessee, where she can show up in person. She joined her local chamber of commerce, goes to networking events, and tells people plainly that she has no brick and mortar and is accepting new patients. She also looks for people who already have groups of her ideal patients: owners of yoga studios, Pilates studios, aesthetics practices. One aesthetics business already offered weight loss, so she almost talked herself out of reaching out. She asked anyway, and found out their patients were looking for a woman physician.
"Even though it may be scary to make the ask, still make it because you just never know."
The messaging took longer. She hired a marketing company at the start because she felt overwhelmed and didn't know what to say about her own practice. The copy looked good and sounded like someone else, so she scrapped it and did the work herself: her philosophy, her values, how she wants patients to feel, and the exact thing her high-achieving patients walk in believing, which is that they are doing all the right things and must not have enough discipline. Once her own words were out there, people started telling her they had seen her on Instagram.
"A company, they can't do it the way you can because you go through years of hearing patients say the same things."
What almost stopped all of it was in her head. She was hung up on not having her obesity medicine certification yet, even with years of experience behind her, and the hesitation showed up most when it was time to ask for something. A business coach helped her see those thoughts for what they were, and she still works on them. Everything else is systems: every business card goes into a spreadsheet with where and when they met and what they talked about, Tuesdays are her follow-up day, three meetups a week, a free body composition quiz that feeds her CRM, and a weekly newsletter that keeps the conversation going with people who are not ready yet.
"These are just thoughts that my brain created that are far from the truth."
The name Invessel stands for invest in vessel, meaning mind, body, and spirit, and it runs through everything from her website buttons to the way she talks about health as compounding returns rather than a number on a scale. It also applies to her: the coach, the certification, the work on her own mind, body, and spirit are the same investment she asks her patients to make. For any physician sitting on the idea of a practice of their own, this conversation is the practical version of how one gets built.
About Dr. Janeeka Benoit
Dr. Janeeka Benoit is an internal medicine physician and fellowship-trained sports medicine physician in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and the founder of Invessel, a fully telehealth practice focused on metabolic health for high-achieving women in midlife. The name stands for invest in vessel, meaning your mind, body, and spirit. She graduated in 2021, worked as a locums physician in primary care, sports medicine, and hospitalist medicine, and is licensed in 12 states. She is currently pursuing obesity medicine certification and also does sports medicine telehealth.
Website: https://invesselhealth.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjaneekabenoit_do
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