What gave me the audacity to think I could do this?

Episode 52 of the DPC Life Podcast: Dr. Claire Russell is back, three months out of residency, no job, no house, and a lease in the works on an old bank on Main Street. Here is what the last stretch before opening actually feels like.

The part nobody warns you about

Claire is one of the boldest people I know, and she told me she has never once picked comfort over growth. Then she got close enough to touch the thing she has been building toward and something new showed up.

"It's way scarier to be on the precipice of getting everything you've ever dreamed of than it is to just not try, because you could fail. And if you never tried, at the time I guess it feels less heartbreaking, but then at the end you probably look back and say, well, I was just heartbroken the whole time instead of trying."

What we talked about

We covered the practical stuff first: how she found a 2,500-square-foot former bank off the medical plaza strip on purpose, why she wants medicine back on Main Street instead of clustered around the hospital, and what she plans to do with five exam rooms and an empty vault while she builds her panel. She walked through choosing Atlas MD, the legal support that came with it, and how her interest form has around 45 to 50 people on it heading into enrollment.

Then we got into the harder conversation about the medical training that teaches you to wait for the next supervisor to sign off, and what it takes to undo that in your own head. What surprised her most was not how hard the information was to get. It was how freely people gave it once she said out loud that she did not know how to do any of this.

"I've just been like, I don't know how to do any of this. Who can help? And it's not just one person, it's multiple people."

You Don't Have to Wait Until You Feel Ready

Medical training teaches us to look for the next step, the next person to approve the decision, or the next level of training before moving forward. But opening a DPC practice requires something different.

At some point, there is no supervisor coming to tell you that you're ready.

Claire is learning that in real time. She is building the clinic, making decisions, asking questions, and figuring things out as she goes.

“You're walking and creating the path as you're walking.”

That doesn't mean you have to do it alone. In fact, one of the things Claire discovered is that people are often willing to help you just have to be willing to admit what you don't know.

For anyone preparing to open a Direct Primary Care practice, that may be the most valuable reminder: you don't need all the answers before you take the next step.

Building a Solo Practice Doesn't Mean Building Alone

There is a difference between owning a solo practice and doing everything by yourself.

Claire's journey is a good example of that. She may be the physician building the practice, but she is surrounded by people who have helped her along the way. From legal support and practice management tools to conversations with other physicians and people in her community, she is building her DPC practice with support.

That is one of the strengths of the Direct Primary Care community. There are people who have already taken the steps you are about to take.

Sometimes, the fastest way forward is simply asking them what they learned.

The Takeaway

Claire is opening in October with a big, hairy, audacious goal and no guarantee any of it lands the way she pictures it. That fear she is feeling right now is not necessarily a sign she got it wrong. It might simply mean she is standing close to something worth building. And the way through it is not having every answer. It's asking the people who have already done it.

Something else stayed with me from this conversation. Claire said the thing she expected to be hardest getting real information about how to start a clinic turned out to be the easiest part once she started admitting out loud that she did not know how to do it. Medical training spends years teaching us that not knowing can feel like a liability. Opening a Direct Primary Care or solo practice means learning to see it differently.

If you are somewhere in the pre-launch stretch right now, you probably have a version of this conversation running in your own head.

Ask the question you think you should already know the answer to. Ask it out loud in a group or to one physician who is a year ahead of you.

That is usually where the next step comes from.

Catch the full story from the beginning: Episode 40 with Dr. Claire Russell https://open.spotify.com/episode/7J8RyyFKpu8YZ0GuwNYeJL?si=iWRX_pFXQNCASNaTj2U28g

CONNECT WITH DR. RUSSELL

Website: clinicbytheseadpc.com

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Are you a new DPC physician drowning in admin work before you even hit 50 patients?

The Harmony Ops Early Practice Plan was built for doctors who have opened their practice within the past six months or are opening very soon.

The goal is simple. Get your systems set up before things get busy, so when the patients do come, everything runs smoothly in the background while you focus on what you actually went into medicine for.

👉 Go to Harmony Ops for DPC to learn more about the Early Practice Plan.

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