Let me tell you about the year I almost lost my practice—not because I wasn’t helping patients or showing up every day, but because I stayed the same while the world evolved around me.
It was 2011. I had a solid patient base, a working treatment model, and a couple of half-baked marketing ideas that had carried me far enough. But I stopped learning. I stopped innovating. I figured, “If it ain’t broke…” except I didn’t realize the cracks were forming under my feet.
Newer grads were coming out hungry, offering fresh procedures and packaging them with slick branding. Meanwhile, I was still banking on word of mouth and a website that hadn’t been updated since Obama’s first term. My North Star hadn’t changed—but I hadn’t recalibrated the tools I was using to get there.
That’s the thing: in this work, stagnation is death. If you’re not growing, adapting, shifting with the culture and tech and patient expectations, you will get passed by—no matter how good your needles are.
Growth doesn’t always mean scaling up or getting more certifications. Sometimes it means updating your intake process. Sometimes it means finally getting real about your brand. Sometimes it means looking in the damn mirror and asking, “Do I still believe in the way I’m practicing?”
So here’s your gut check: Where have you stopped moving? Where are you recycling old habits out of comfort instead of strategy?
You don’t have to burn it all down. But you do have to evolve.
Because this industry doesn’t owe you success. You have to earn it again and again—by staying alive to your own growth.
