Why I Quit Medicine
So let’s talk about me quitting medicine and why I chose consulting as my next step.
This is not going to be a very interesting or exciting post. I just wanted to share the story of me leaving medicine and starting this next chapter of my life as a consultant in NYC in the hopes it helps others think through there life.
I’ll talk briefly about how I feel now a year after leaving medicine and the reasoning that made me leave, reveal a few of the key discussions and turning points that made me make that decision (that I didn’t reveal before), how and when I evaluated and found options outside of medicine, why consulting, and finally how everything is currently going and my future plans.
So if you’re up for just me talking, no fanciness, [other than that! me doing funny hand movement, that’s fancy] for the next 30 minutes to one hour, let’s dive in. Otherwise, I’ll be back in two weeks for our regularly scheduled programming.
Evaluating My Options and Why I Chose Consulting
Ok, so background up to now: I was as a biomedical engineer in undergrad, I liked the human body and decided to go into medical school, took three gap years where I worked in venture capital and took the MCAT, went to medical school for 4 years, finished my intern year of internal medicine, left medicine, and joined consulting. I’m now 31 years old, living in NYC and working as a consultant.
But let’s back up. Even before medical school I always had somewhat of a thought I wanted to do something else. I had an itch for something else. Maybe that’s where this YouTube channel comes from, maybe it’s where some of my other projects are coming from, and maybe it’s why I’m a huge wierdo.
But, I thought this “thing” would be something I do concurrently with being doctor, or being a doctor for a couple of decades before changing to the “thing.” So, before medical school, and during medical school, I had a few contacts in medical education, medical technology, Pharma, venture capital, and consulting. But, here’s the best part, I had no idea what 80% of these things even did and didn’t learn about them until much later. I just had friends that were in these things so I would talk to them about it and 90% of it went over my head.
So, in medical school, and even those first months as a doctor, the thought was DOCTOR DOCTOR DOCTOR. I would never change so soon right? Especially after putting that much work into it.
My first 2 months practicing as a doctor was agony. But not because of the work, the work was fine, the patients were fine, but because my body and mind were in disarray and I had no clue why.
I then quickly realized I felt awful because I somehow knew this wasn’t for me. Clinical medicine wasn’t where my curiosity was, my drive, my ambitions, where I felt I would make the biggest impact on the world, and it created a whole new mess in my mind, “Well then what am I doing here?!” Because if I wasn’t going to be a doctor, what the heck was I going to be? I put 10 years into this! I was a mess.
Throughout my whole life, if I didn’t have some sort of a plan, I’d be stressed out. I like to plan my lunch and dinner meals, what time I’ll be working out, when I’ll be hanging out with friends—everything! (this is something I need to work on).
Anyway, at the end of those two months, sleeping way less and being stressed way more, I decided, finally decided, that I was going to leave at the end of my intern year as an Internal medicine resident.
Ahhh, a decision is a MAGICAL thing. It centered me on this one path. And now I had something I was working towards. Something I could follow. Now that I was leaving, I knew I could plan my leaving medicine. Bam.
But counter-BAM this unearths a completely new path, which revealed more paths and more paths, and very quickly, I was lost in the mines of Moria. What do I do after medicine?
So, what I did, is during residency, start having LOTS of conversations with people who worked in those medicine-adjacent areas I talked about earlier. Except this time, I tried to actually learn what they were doing and how I could actually get to do these things too.
The first conversation I had was with someone who took the standard medical school path but left immediately after medical school to join a consulting company. Who does this? Why would someone do this? He didn’t even apply to residency!
And what is consulting? What do you do?
He explained to me he was starting a family and didn’t see Residency as being beneficial to his wife and his new baby. Also, he wasn’t interested in being a clinician from the first place. He was more interested in the business world of medicine, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, working with hospital systems, all things that completely went over my head. So I asked questions.
But each new question created a new question, a new person to have a conversation with. And each conversation created 17 new conversations.
Because if you connect with one person, they usually have a couple of people they know who it might be helpful for you to talk to.
And, very quickly, I had about 9,000 different job paths and 1,000 new Linkedln connections all the while getting crushed 80+ hours a week in the hospital as an internal medicine resident. I was juggling these things called “coffee chats,” 15-minute informal but also strangely formal and structured chats with people in this business world. There was a formula for these conversations: introduction and admiration of the other person → a mention of something specific they do → targeted questions → then, if you are lucky, maybe som real questions about what you actually want to learn about. Because, what you have to do, is play the game. Anyway, more on that later.
Throughout these questions I quickly earned this MD to business stuff wasn’t that abnormal. AND that one of my medical school advisers had actually lied to me about people not going to residency. This person said NO ONE didn’t go to Residency, when, I later learned, 3 individual people actually didn’t go onto residency from my class and went straight into industry.
Where were the conversations on the other options? The opportunity to learn about these other options? Many of these jobs have fantastic and huge impacts across the globe on patients and medical innovations. Aren’t those good things? Why didn’t anyone tell me about it before?
Deciding Among The Many Options
Throughout my conversations, I had some truly groundbreaking realizations. One was that patients can be helped around the world, without me physically giving them drugs or diagnosing their conditions. Two, money isn’t necessarily evil, in fact it drives a lot of the research, discoveries, and innovations that have changed the face of the world as we know it.
HIV was transformed from a death sentence to a manageable condition because of investments from investment companies. Hepatitis C was cured because a venture capital company. These drugs and life-saving therapies may have never existed if it wasn’t for the proper utilization with money.
And beyond drugs, many hospital innovations were born in consulting companies. Reducing patient wait times so people can spend more time with their doctors, decreasing medical errors, and even telemedicine have had massive technological leaps from consultants working with hospitals.
One of my mentors to this day created a company to help medical students around the world learn better and more effectively, even through residency. Allowing medical students to treat patients better and learn key concepts more quickly.
In fact, the majority of these innovations not only come out of America, but they come out of people who aren’t practicing medicine. It’s mostly researchers, businessmen, and entrepreneurs who drive these world-changing impacts to the finish line.
Now, of course, this is only the positive, there are counterpoints and arguments in the negative direction as well. But I had no idea how much of an impact these companies could have on the world.
I realized there were a couple options for me:
- Venture Capital: where I would help pick investments into earlier stage companies in the hopes their science and technology was successful. Like deciding to invest $50 million into an HIV cure company so they fund a clinical trial of their new drug.
- Consulting: where I would work with various companies on nearly any topic imaginable to help them improve one part of their company or impact. Like researching ways a hospital can reduce it’s wait time.
- Start-ups: where I would work with a much smaller company in the hopes of building something new and exciting. Like a new software for medical education, a new drug that’s only been tested in lab rats to stop glaucoma, or a medical device that implants into the brain to stop seizures.
- Bigger/Normal companies like Google, Pfizer, the FDA, or Medtronic that have a set of products or services that they own and have made that are trying to help people in a certain way.
Again, I was trying to figure all of this out while in residency and not to mention the application timelines, skills I would need to have, and more.
But these conversations were amazing, there were so many unknown unknowns!
Around this time, I had narrowed it down to a medium-stage startup, doing my own thing completely, or a consulting company.
The problem, however, that I realized is that selecting one of these things or the other would eliminate my optionality or put me down a certain path.
For example, if I went and did my own thing for 5 years, it would be difficult to enter into a classical big company like Google, or a consulting firm, or even go back to medicine.
The other thing I had to think about was finances, so if I stayed a doctor, I wouldn’t make good money for another 6-8 years. These other jobs offered me fairly good money fairly quickly, with opportunities to advance to somewhat ridiculous money after 10 years or so.
However, again, my family paid for all of my school, and YouTube has done decently for me, so I have no debt and could live a decent life without doing anything really at all. This is a very very lucky and advantageous position to be in. So, I want to use that position as best I can paradoxically selfishly and unselfishly at the same time.
The paradox is, that I’ve realized, is I do my absolute best work, my top 1% of top 1% work, when I am doing something uniquely interesting to me. Paul Graham talks about this, Naval Ravikant talks about this, Steve Jobs talks about this, but it’s really finding the thing that truly calls out to you, where your curiosity lies, what feels like play to you but work to others.
Then, when I find that thing, because I’m so into it, it will add so much value to the world, to people, that the most selfish thing I can do, is also the most unselfish thing I can do.
I’ve felt that occasionally with certain parts of my YouTube career, certain parts of my medical career, some of my writing, some of my world adventures, and some of my business interactions. I still, however, don’t know exactly where that lies. So, anyway, in this extremely lucky position I am in, the thing I am not thinking about that much is finances. What I do think about all the frikin’ time is “what can I do that I love doing that adds value to the world?”
One of the hardest questions to answer ever.
The way I realized, however, to speed up this process, is to try as many things as possible with as many touch points as possible.
Finally, the third part of the Venn diagram that I used to choose my next step in life was, well, life. How much will this thing let me be with my friends and family? Exercise? Have fun? Again, because, paradoxically, I know, the more selfish I am with these things, the more unselfish I am with my outputs to the world. In medicine, and certain investment firms, and even certain times at consulting firms, it is very difficult to maintain a normal life because work consumes so much of it.
So, in the end, that’s how I made my decision. I based it on financials, curiosity, and lifestyle.
(Drum roll, but you know the answer already) I decided on consulting because of those three things. The financials were great, the curiosity was the best, and the lifestyle was medium to poor. All this information came from the conversations I had with consultants. They were doing exciting work, working around the world, and had amazing optionality and learnings from their time as a consultant. I felt consulting would not only teach me the most, but also give me the most exposure to different thing, and also give me the most optionality.
I would learn about business, be exposed to people in medical technology, pharmaceuticals, hospital systems, insurance, and more as opposed to if I went to Pfizer, for example, I would only be doing a certain set of drugs and only a certain role around those drugs. Like business development.
So I chose consulting.
Another click. Another lock-in. Another piece of stress was created. But, now even more things are created. Getting into consulting requires you to plan at least a year in advance. You have to learn this thing called “casing,” and you have to be damn good at it.
So now my networking as only with consultants and with people and companies I wanted to work at. My time outside of the hospital was spent on doing these practice questions like, “How many hoses are bought in the USA every year?” or, “Pfizer has seen a drop in profits by 5% in the past 5 years, how do you fix that?”
I, amazingly and luckily, began securing interviews. These were way way different than medical school interviews. You had to be on point. You had to talk with certain terms and in a certain order. And you couldn’t get frazzled or stall significantly. If you did? Rejection.
Anyway, about 9 months after starting this process, I had 3 job offers and was waiting to hear back from one company that was my top choice. Then, after about 17 rounds of interviews (no-joke) and interviewing with leadership, I got a call one Friday night, very similarly to when I got my call for medical school, and I was given an offer. I accepted on the spot and began planning my life around this new job.
It was in New York City, which meant another move and leaving Philadelphia. My feelings about NYC were always lukewarm, some excitement, but a large part of me felt like I was old and wanted a backyard and green space. But, this was exciting, everyone should live in NY at least once right? Who am I to poo-poo this opportunity. So, I had several months of pretty much nothing to do before the job. And these were magical months because I had my life planned, the dream job secured, and could pitter and ponder and tinker with whatever I wanted.
I wrote a book, I traveled to Hawaii and Europe, I tore my ACL, I spent time with family, and I didn’t do that much work. It was great.
And, maybe this is because who I was, or maybe because the stage of life I was in, but I was anxious to get started. About three months before the job started, I struggled to do much effective YouTube work or other work in any sense. I was just envisioning my new life, trying to find apartments, trying to figure out where my life is going.
Finding apartments in NYC is absolute hell by the way.
Anyway, eventually, I found a place, and I moved.
And now, you see me, standing in Central Park, talking to you, on a crisp fall morning, as a consultant. I’ve been doing it for about a month now as of recording this video and it’s been nearly a year and a half since I left medicine.
What’s it like so far and my future plans
So, as of recording this, I’m on about week 4 of the job. What do I think of it? I am learning SO MUCH. Seriously so much. The people are very very smart, very very quick, and seem to be constantly working. The hours aren’t that much different than Residency it seems to be honest except Fridays are more relaxed and there is no weekend work which is HUGE.
There is some travel, the offices and workspaces are much nicer, and the clients I work with are amazing. I feel regularly out of my depth and can’t believe some of the people I am talking to and actually advising.
And this is good. This is good for me right now. I am learning at such a rapid rate about business, various medical industries, and finances. And it’s all interesting.
Who knows how I’ll feel as I become more tenured but for right now I’m liking it.
NYC, honestly, is a little much. It feels like everyone has hyped it up so much and are die-hard fans. Maybe I’m too old? Maybe it’s not for me? Maybe I just need more time to get settled? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the combination of a completely different life than I’m used to and being in a new city.
Anyway, overall, I’m not sure what the next next step will be in my life. But I feel like I’ve made the right choice in job for now, but maybe not city. I think I’ll give myself a couple more months to get settled but if things don’t feel right, I’ll move, lifes too short.
My plan is to keep hunting for this deep curiosity, growth opportunities, exciting people, and a fulfilled life. All hard things. But if I keep trying maybe I’ll get close?
Anyway, that’s it, thank you so much for reading and sticking with me. I hope this was somewhat helpful to someone out there, as I felt like I’ve just rambled forever.