I must say, when sharing news about healthcare, it’s not often that I get to feature a story highlighting two of my most established other interests: Psychoanalysis and Seinfeld.
Bruce Brandes, the managing director at Martin Ventures who serves on the board of advisors at AirStrip and Valence Health, seems to feel the same way. In a HIStalk editorial, he outlined when and where letting your ego do its thing has value in the healthcare world for entrepreneurs – and when it doesn’t.
His premise is inspired by the words of none other than Sigmund Feud and George Costanza. Freud said “The ego is not master in its own house.” Costanza once criticized his boss with the New York Yankees in an episode for apparently ruining the institution because of “all for the glorification of your massive ego.”
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These concepts have inspired some reflection by Brandes, and it’s an interesting subject to examine when thinking about the nature of being an entrepreneur in the field.
For an entrepreneur, ego is both a critical ingredient in the recipe to build success as well as a foundational risk to predestine failure. A keen self-awareness of when to intentionally fortify one’s ego versus the appropriate time to acknowledge the fine line between self-confidence and pride in order to relinquish one’s ego may dictate your fate as an early stage company.
Brandes goes on to explain the inevitable interaction with naysayers, who anyone starting out with a new business must get past. He points out that when AirStrip was conceived in 2004, the culture wasn’t even close to being immersed in the continuously advancing technological world we live in currently, which would imply success was doubtful. But ego prevailed in this case. After tribulations at the start of the company’s growth, he explains, things ended up turning out quite well.
Two years later, not only had they [Cameron Powell and Trey Moore] secured multiple patents and FDA clearances, AirStrip delivered live clients that reported actual clinical and financial outcomes. Their progress attracted attention from a global healthcare technology company which signed a distribution agreement to sell AirStrip’s first product. Like Kramer ignoring Elaine’s negativity regarding his idea for a coffee table book about coffee tables, the AirStrip founders had enough ego to overcome cynics to earn early validation that they were on the right path
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Believing in what you’re doing and having an ego in the confidence, maybe even in an audacious sense, can be very useful, he points out. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to keep yourself in check.
The best entrepreneurs surround themselves with others possessing complementary skills and experiences. Be honest with yourself to know your own shortcomings. Diversify your leadership team to actively invite alternate points of view to support you make the best decisions. Recognize that the skills required to launch a new venture are different than the skills needed to scale a company, which are different from those needed to manage a mature organization.
Brande goes on to share more about some of what he’s witnessed in the industry personally, both with what would eventually be considered good and bad decisions with choosing investors and who is put in a leadership role makes a big difference.
Then he wraps up with this quote from Jerry Seinfeld. In this scene, Seinfeld is telling George how to improve his life, and Brande believes this is equally relevant in business – although it might be a little bit of an extreme analogy.
“You know you really need some help. A regular psychiatrist couldn’t even help you. You need to go to like Vienna or something. You know what I mean? You need to get involved at the university level. Like where Freud studied and have all those people looking at you and checking up on you. That’s the kind of help you need. Not the once a week for eighty bucks. No. You need a team. A team of psychiatrists working round the clock thinking about you, having conferences, observing you, like the way they did with the Elephant Man. That’s what I’m talking about because that’s the only way you’re going to get better.”
Here’s a good clip, but a little disclosure first: This “master of his domain” Seinfeld scene demonstrates how a man could become so…in his own world, as it were, that not needing the love of a partner could end up being detrimental. In business, this could be analogous a case like when a company falls apart after being started by someone from the ground up. Gotta love the show about nothing for giving us little lessons about something.
[Photo from Flickr user Lee Rogers]