I’ve been in this game for over 20 years, and let me tell you: I’ve stepped in every pothole you can imagine. I’ve been piss broke, overworked, and dangerously close to walking away from medicine more than once.
Looking back, most of those disasters weren’t because I was a bad clinician. They happened because I kept falling into the same traps that almost every practitioner I’ve ever met stumbles into. Let me walk you through five of them.
1. The “If I Build It, They Will Come” Myth
When I opened my first clinic, I thought patients would magically show up just because I was good at what I did. Spoiler: they didn’t. I sat in an empty office way too many afternoons, hoping the phone would ring.
Here’s the truth: a brilliant practitioner with no business model will starve, and a mediocre practitioner with a solid patient journey will thrive. I had to learn marketing, patient communication, and systems—stuff I never wanted to touch—just to survive.
2. Pricing by the Hour
My first practice was basically “Jordan’s Discount Time Shop.” Sixty minutes was this much, ninety minutes was that much. Sound familiar?
It nearly killed me. I was undervaluing myself, trading hours for scraps, and resenting my patients without admitting it. The shift happened when I realized patients weren’t paying for minutes—they were paying for outcomes. That’s when I started building treatment plans instead of selling sessions. It was terrifying at first, but it saved my practice.
3. Being Out of Congruence
There was a stretch where I was preaching balance and “whole-person health” while pulling 70-hour weeks, eating like crap, and falling asleep at my desk. Patients can smell that kind of disconnect a mile away.
Congruence is about alignment—your values, your actions, your clinic, your life. When you’re out of sync, trust erodes. It took me burning out hard to realize I couldn’t preach integrity and live like a hypocrite.
4. Hitting the Money & Success Ceiling
The first year I cleared six figures, I felt like I was doing something wrong—like someone was going to come audit me for being too successful. That’s what I call a setpoint. Those subconscious beliefs about what’s “too much” or “not allowed” will sabotage you if you don’t confront them.
For me, it meant undercharging, over-giving, and sabotaging growth until I finally sat down and did the inner work to reset my financial and emotional ceiling.
5. Trying to Treat Everyone
In the early days, I treated anything with a pulse—headaches, fertility, kids, you name it. I was spread thin and mediocre at everything. It wasn’t until I narrowed my focus to complex pain and orthopedics that my practice finally clicked.
The day I stopped trying to be everything to everyone was the day my referrals exploded. Specialists get remembered. Generalists get ignored.
The Takeaway
Every single one of these pitfalls damn near tanked my career. And honestly? I’m glad they did, because those failures forced me to realign.
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in one (or all) of these mistakes, good. That means you’ve got the chance to shift now—before you burn out, go broke, or give up.
Because the truth is, medicine isn’t about being perfect. It’s about learning, adjusting, and building a practice that feels like it belongs to you.
