Dr Jeff Cornwall

My years in the health care industry taught me many lessons. One that I often stress to new entrepreneurs is to remember that the same changes in the market that give you an opportunity can just as quickly take it away.
Our early growth in the mental health market came from the emergence of managed care in the 1980s. We offered a much lower cost and more effective outcomes than the traditional treatment that involved long-term hospitalization. But the same HMOs that once loved us, had to keep delivering lower health care costs to employers. Eventually, they were able to find cheaper, but this time less effective, alternatives.
Fortunately, we saw this trend coming and had already begun to shift our business away from private managed care companies to working with state and county agencies eager to privatize mental health treatment. While this was a fundamental change in our business model, it was necessary for us to survive.
BizJournals.com offers another entrepreneur’s story of having to make a drastic shift in target markets. Veicon, Inc. had provided Internet access to hotel guests until 9/11 all but ended that market. So they quickly shifted to public access terminals in libraries and hospitals.
Entrepreneurs, by definition, operate in what my former colleague Peter Vaill calls permanent white water. That often requires quick and decisive changes in direction to avoid complete disaster. Someone once told me these words of wisdom; “Never get ‘married’ to your customers.”