FEATURED IN CANVAS REBEL
Meet Dhivya Srinivasa
Dhivya, appreciate you joining us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?
I have never once regretted being a business owner, because I started out in the “regular job”. I was fresh out of fellowship and the academic system makes you feel grateful for any job at all, undermining the value and expertise in your training. I joined a prestigious institution in Los Angeles, and the red flags were abundant from Day 1. I was the only female in the division, I was not offered equal pay to a male colleague despite my overwhelming contributions to productivity (we have numeric metrics for this, it is not up for interpretation), and I had no real control over my time and schedule. I decided to leave and launch my own private practice and I am so excited to see more and more physicians doing the same. Here’s the thing, when you work for these big hospital systems, you have no control over your staff and very little control over your own time. You are told how much clinic to have, when you can do surgery, and your other hours are spent on committee and research meetings. Having my own private practice has its challenges, but there is not one day where I am not directly compensated for my work, where my staff does not reflect who I am and the ethos of my practice, and never do I spend time doing anything that doesn’t fill my bank account or my soul.