Bringing Ski Patrol Lessons to Healthtech Entrepreneurship

Lesson #1: Earn the right

When you study to become an EMT or a ski patroller, you read, train, test, drill scenarios, and pass exams. Then you get the title. But the title does not mean you are done. It means you have earned the right to start learning in the field. The tests never end.

Business is the same. You do not build a company simply because you have a good idea. You do not become an entrepreneur because you want to escape a boss, a schedule, or the structure of traditional employment.

You need skills and judgment. You need reps, scars…experience failing. You also need to be rigorous about the problem, the market, the timing, the customer, and your own capacity to execute. A business does not care about your enthusiasm. The market does not grade on effort. You have to earn the right to build.

Lesson #2: Your emergency is not mine

On patrol, we routinely saw people in severe pain, shock, or fear. Screaming patients. Panicked families. Injuries in tree wells, at lift unloads, and sometimes people running directly into the clinic.

One paramedic I worked with was remarkably calm in those moments. He never matched the panic in the room, even when urgency was clearly required. He used to say: “Their emergency is not our emergency.”

It took me a while to understand what he meant. He did not mean we should be detached. He meant we had to be disciplined. If the rescuer adopts the patient’s panic, everyone loses.

Business is no different.

Clients, teams, investors, and partners often operate from urgency. Missed deadlines. Poor planning. Emotional decisions. Sudden pivots. Fires that should have been prevented months earlier.

Sometimes it felt like a start up operated on fanatic chaos because it signaled that they were indeed a start up – doing crazy mind bending things. The more the chaos, the more they felt the rush of start-up life. But leadership cannot be a mirror for panic.

If you are helping a company grow, your job is not to absorb the chaos. It is to create clarity inside it. Urgency matters. Panic does not. The best operators can move quickly without becoming frantic. Which brings me to lesson 3.

Lesson #3: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast

In emergency medicine, rushing feels inevitable. Someone is hurt. Time compresses. Ten seconds feels like forever. But sometimes those ten seconds are exactly what you need. Pause. Breathe. Assess. Think. Then move.

During one lecture, an OB doctor was teaching patrol how to deliver in the field, should that ever (god forbid) happen. And it does happen.  

“23 year old pregnant female, regular contractions, all the signs….what do you do?”, he asked the room full of wide eyed patrollers. “That’s right … .you panic” he answered wryly. “But then take a breath and get to work.”

Care in an emergency is often determined by what happens in the first few minutes. But that does not mean doing everything at once, in that moment of panic. It means doing the right things, in the right order, without compounding the problem. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

The same principle applies in business. Founders often confuse motion with progress. More meetings. More features. More decisions. More hires (and fires). More tactics. More “growth.” But speed without sequencing (or thinking) creates waste.

The companies that scale well are not always the ones moving the fastest on the surface. They are the ones building clean systems, making clear decisions, and avoiding avoidable mistakes. Move deliberately. Reduce noise. Do the next right thing. Be smooth. That is how you get fast. Patrol taught me that pressure reveals preparation. Business taught me the same thing. You do not rise to the occasion. You fall to the level of your training, your systems, and your judgment. Do not inherit the panic.