You don't need another business course.
You need somewhere to build and grow.
A safe, supportive space for female doctors turning ideas, side projects or a clear business plan into something real and tangible, often alongside medicine, family and their busy life.
You've got lots of ideas.
Buckets of passion and excitement.Â
You might know exactly what you want to build, you may not have a clue.Â
You might've already started seeing paying clients.
Or have several ideas and not sure which one deserves your attention first.Â
Or maybe there's just a nagging feeling that there's something else you'd like to explore beyond medicine.
You just need to have the right space within which you can give it a proper go.
The Start Up Support Surgery Programme is a place to work it out and build it.Â
Not on your own.
This 12 month programme gives you the structure you need to do the thing.Â
Stay longer if you need it.
Graduate when you're ready.
This has been tried and tested with hundreds of medics just like you.Â
These are the steps that I have taken to build my own side projects online and offline alongside a growing family and a portfolio medical career.Â
You don't need to have it all worked out.
The good news.
You don't need a polished business plan to start this process.
You absolutely do not need 20,000 followers on social media.Â
You don't need to feel you identify as an entrepreneur or have done a course in marketing.
You absolutely do not need to quit medicine.
You might want to or feel like it but sometimes that is just the presenting complaint, doing something alongside your day job can often shift that feeling.Â
You do not need another qualification to be good enough to start.Â
For a lot of people, joining the Start Up Support Surgery (SuSS) Programme is the point where they go from "I've been thinking about doing something...” to "I'm actually making something here."
Many people come withÂ
➪ An idea, or seven of them
➪ A clinic you'd love to open in theory
➪ Knowledge and training to become a 'thing' like lifestyle medicine training, coaching or menopause trainingÂ
➪ A half-built course sat in the Notes section of your phone or a Google Drive
➪ A newsletter with 3 people signed up, one of which is your mother
➪ Something already running that isn't quite bringing in clients yet and you have spent hours of time on but feel lost
➪Simply a sense that there's something else out there in the world for you that enables you to help people in a different way
Knowing isn't the same as doing.
There's no shortage of business information out there at the drop of a hat.
Google, books, podcasts, courses, AI.
You can have fifty three answers to one simple question before the kettle has boiled.
More answers don't make things clearer.
Sometimes they just give you even more things to think about, and procrastinate over.
This became really obvious to me during the recent British Society of Lifestyle Medicine conference when I did a live 'Hot Seat' Clinics.
I met brilliant, experienced medics who weren't short of knowledge or ideas.
Some had qualifications, websites, offers and even people asking to work with them.
And yet they were stuck with something.
Because knowing what to do and actually doing it are completely different things.
Businesses get built through deciding, testing, talking, marketing, selling, learning, adjusting and trying again, not through knowing more stuff.
Doing all of that consistently, alongside medicine and an actual life, is hard.
That's why SuSS exists.
Not just to give you information.
To give you somewhere to pull it all together.Â
And somewhere to ask when you get stuck.Â
You need someone who has your back.
Business doesn't happen in a nice predictable straight line.Â
There are no set exams to pass or competencies to acheive.
No one is coming to tell you that you are ready to do things.Â
Uncertainty comes with the territory. Â
You decide what to offer, get it out there, learn and tweak it.
You might finally launch your website and then discover nobody can actually book anything.
You plan the video content to a reel for weeks and avoid posting it hoping it will go away.
You launch something and nobody buys, or everybody buys and you've got a different problem entirely.
Your NHS work gets ridiculous and family demands take over so you stop doing the thing.
You stop doing the things and feel a huge sense of failure.Â
Your confidence disappears.
Life happens.
Then you get more capacity and want to start over again.
That isn't you doing business badly.
That's what building something alongside a real life actually looks like.
With the right support around you, when any of this happens, you bring it back into SuSS and can have help in a variety of ways.
➪ Bring it to a 'Hot Seat' Clinic that happen twice a month
➪ Ask in the WhatsApp Feed anytime for support from me and peers
➪ Thrash it out at with a peer in the monthly connect call
➪ Come to the weekly co-working and get it done in that time with accountability
➪ Ask for support from someone who's already tried it from the community
➪ Send me a Voice Note and thrash it out and move forwardÂ
Bring the problem.
We'll SuSS it out together.
"Medicine trains you to learn first and act once you're qualified. Business doesn't work like that. There's no official curriculum, nobody signs you off as ready, and there's rarely one right answer to any problem. At SuSS, we don't wait for perfect clarity before acting. We get clear enough to take the next useful step, then learn from what actually happens." Dr Jo Watkins
CLARITY ➪ CONNECT ➪ GROW
You'll have a roadmap, yes.
But not a rigid blueprint.
 ➪ CLARITY First
Make sense of your ideas.
What are you actually trying to build?
Who is it for, and why does it matter to you?
What fits your life?
What could you test before you spend months building it, and what belongs on the 'Not Yet' list?
Â
 ➪ CONNECT Next
Stop building in secret.
Start talking about it.
Find your people.
Build relationships.
Test your thinking.
Become more visible.Â
 ➪ Then GROW
Take what's working and build on it.
Refine your offers, marketing and systems.
Develop your network.
Create something sustainable around the life you actually want.
Same framework.
Very different businesses.
Every month, we come back to these three things...
DO
What's the thing that matters now?
Your first offer.
Finding clients.
Testing an idea.
Getting visible.
Launching.
Making something you've already built work better.
DROP
You can't build a business alongside medicine and a real life by endlessly adding more.
What can you stop doing?
What process or activity can you simplify, postpone or decide doesn't matter right now?
CONNECT
Who do you need to talk to?
A potential client?
A collaborator or local business owner?
Someone who knows something you don't.
Or simply another medic who gets what you're trying to build.
Â
Then we use coaching, co-working, teaching and the SuSS community to actually do that work in a safe, supportive space.Â
With absolutely no expectation that everybody's building the same business, at the same speed, towards the same version of success.
Marketing without becoming a marketer
No Medic ever has relished the idea of marketing themselves.
Most absolutely cringe at the concept but brilliant ideas and solutions to problems don't go very far if nobody knows they exist.
This isn't about posting daily, becoming an influencer or learning algorithm hacks.
It's about making it easier for the right people to discover you, understand what you do, trust you, and eventually buy from you.
You'll learn to talk about your work in normal human language, build relationships, create useful content and, more importantly, actually make an offer to help people.
Â
You'll have me in your corner
Sometimes you don't need another module.
Sometimes you do.
You often need somebody with experience and knowledge, who is not just wanting you to succeed because they love you, to look at the seven things you're considering and say.
Start with that one.
I've spent more than 25 years in medicine and over 17 years building, running and learning from businesses of my own, plus time alongside hundreds of medics doing the same.
I'll help you see through the fog, spot the rabbit holes, and make better decisions faster.Â
“Don't spend money on that yet.”
“Stop faffing with the website and talk to five people.”
"Put that on the 'Not Yet' List."
"That's good enough. Put it out."
You don't need me, or anyone else, to build your business for you.
You need someone experienced in your corner while you learn to build it yourself.
That is how sustainable businesses are built.
More than simply direct access to Jo
The answer isn't always speed dial access to Jo or another intense 60 minute 1:1 on Zoom.Â
Sometimes you need someone who understands websites or systems.
Sometimes your Video Buddy tells you to send the bloody video.
Sometimes another member says, “I tried that too, here's what happened.”
You're not just joining a programme.
You're plugging into the most supportive and wonderful ecosystem of people you need around you as you enter into this world of buisness and personal brand.Â
Peers to build alongside
Entrepreneurship can be lonely as a medic, your colleagues won't get it, your friends and family may be supportive but completely baffled. Inside SuSS, you don't have to explain why before you can talk about how.Â
You will find your tribe of medics doing things differently.Â
Members actively help each other.
Appearing on each other's podcasts, sharing contacts, testing ideas, making introductions and collaborating.
The SuSS Trusted Network
You don't need to become an expert in everything but you need to know how.Â
You can't do everything for yourself either.
Over the last two decades in business and medicine, I've built a network of people I trust for the bits that aren't your thing, websites, design, copy, mindset, ads, CQC systems, PR and more.
Not random names from Google.
People I know and have seen do great work.
People think they're buying business knowledge.
Then they discover they're buying people to build alongside.
Come for the strategy.
Stay for the community.
Different people.
Different lives.
Different businesses.
Dr. Ruth Machin
Retired Radiologist feeling lost to Health Coach. Beta course to paying clients and 25K You Tube Audience.Â
Dr Emma Presern
From burnout to lost with business ideas to first paying cohort of clients in 5 months
Dr. Mari Walling
From redundancy to investing in her own learning and co founding an online menopause clinic in 12 months
Dr Manisha Bhatnagar
From many ideas to committing to starting a joint health clinic and founding The Liverpool Clinic.
Dr Rebecca Ryell
From GP Partner to writer, podcaster and travel coach for families wanting to travel more adventurously.Â
Dr. Verity JonesÂ
Salaried GP studying Mind-Body Medicine and growing her own online practice alongside young children and a career.
Grow something that fits your ACTUAL life
You don't need me to build your business for you.
There's no SuSS definition of success.
Success means different things to us all and we all have different resources, like time and money. to put into a business.
You might want a substantial business and aim to leave medicine, or to earn enough to drop one clinical session.
You might want to open an in person clinic.
Get your first paying client.
Run your first workshop.
Build a professional identity beyond medicine.
Or simply explore an idea properly and find out if you actually want it.
What are you trying to build, and how do we make it fit your actual real life?
You absolutely need to know this before you start.Â
Why 12 months?
You don't need another year of thinking about it.
But you do need at least a year to build it.
Businesses aren't built in six weeks, contrary to what Instagram will have you believe.
You need time to think, test, market, sell, learn, change direction, build relationships and try again all alongside the day job and your actual life.
That's why your first SuSS journey is a minimum of 12 months.
But 12 months isn't an expiry date or a deadline. You are not kicked out at the end of that time.Â
SuSS isn't a cohort where you finish Module 12 and get shown the door never to be seen again.
The aim isn't to make you dependent on SuSS, it's to help you become confident making decisions and running your own business, on your own terms.
At the end of your first year, we will look at where you are and what you need next.
What's actually included
Your first 12 months inside the Start Up Support Surgery
✓ Clarity → Connect → Grow. Recorded Modules of learning.
On demand, listen as a Podcast with exercises to do in your own time
âś“ Two monthly Q&A/Hot Clinics live on Zoom with Jo
âś“ Three co-working sessions each month early in the morning on Tuesdays 6-7am
âś“Â Ongoing adhoc teaching and workshopsÂ
âś“ Dedicated WhatsApp feeds social media feedback, Q&A and sharing support on Linkedin
âś“ Visibility and accountability support with Video BuddiesÂ
âś“ Access to the SuSS Trusted Network to experts to help you at various stages
âś“ Weekly check in messages from Jo and weekly wins shared
âś“ Access to the SuSS Trusted Network
âś“ Monthly 'Masterclasses' with expert guests on Zoom, recorded
âś“ Monthly 'Community & Connect' call to network with other medics in the group and peer support
âś“ Curated masterclass library of over 30 Expert MasterclassesÂ
âś“ WhatsApp access to Jo who works asynchronously but will answer within 24 hours
âś“ Introductions and collaboration opportunities within the group and Jo's extended network.
âś“Â Voice Note support from Jo to work through any issues you may have that can't be supported on the group calls
Essentially, you have me, in your pocket, helping you work out what matters next.
You don't need certainty
Well, you might need it but you can't have it in this world I am afraid.
Entrepreneurship = Uncertainty.Â
I can't promise the idea you arrive with will be the business you're running twelve months from now.
I also can't promise a straight line, or that everything you come up with will actually sell.
I can't promise there won't be weeks when medicine takes over and nothing gets done.
I'm not going to promise you a six-figure business.
That's not what SuSS is.Â
You don't need to know exactly where this is going.
You need to become confident you can work out what comes next.
That builds a sustainable business and personal brand that can grow with you as you walk through the seasons of life. Â
Who this is for
Female medics who are ready for change and looking for a tribe to do it with them.
You might have a young family and want to grow something that you can invest more time in when the kids are older.
You might have more time having retired or have an empty nest.
You might be looking for a complete change of career and need inspiration.Â
As a 52 year old portfolio GP who started my first proper business as a young GP partner with a 3 year old and a 1 year old and who now has four kids 19, 17, 13 and 11 alongside an online business I can run from anywhere in the world, I have been through seasons of growth, crippling anxiety, mindset issues and difficult times while earning a living doing what I love.Â
That is why I can help you with yours.Â
You've done enough thinking.
Now let's build the thing.
You don't need to do it perfectly.
You don't need to know exactly where it's going.
But you absolutely don't need to do it alone.
Come for the strategy. Stay for the community.
Let's SuSS it out together.
Frequently asked questions
