Edward Witt is a retired physician and longtime medical practice owner based in Alabama. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, he grew up in a close family and attended Catholic schools for 12 years. Sports and music shaped much of his early life. He began playing hockey at age five, later earned an MVP award, competed on travel teams, and played Junior A hockey before receiving a college scholarship.
Witt eventually chose medicine as his profession. After completing medical school and a Family Practice residency, he began a career that lasted roughly 30 years. He worked with Huntsville Hospital, Crestwood Hospital, and Maryvale Hospital in Phoenix before moving further into practice ownership.
Over the years, Witt owned and operated Southcare Clinic, an aesthetic clinic, and Recovery Center. His work at Recovery Center became especially meaningful because it allowed him to support people dealing with addiction and the difficult early stages of recovery. Even after retiring from full-time practice, he has remained the clinic’s owner and still helps when needed.
Medicine also connected Witt with another lifelong passion: music. In Huntsville, he became known as a “Rock Doc,” providing medical care for performers visiting the city’s major arena. His work brought him into contact with artists including Elton John, Bob Dylan, Bryan Adams, Heart, Chicago, Hall & Oates, and others.
Outside medicine, Witt still enjoys hockey, music, golf, and trail riding. Across each part of his life, he has returned to the same principle: treat people well, stay useful, and keep showing up.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
My days are different now because I am retired from full-time practice. I still own Recovery Center, so I stay connected and will go in when I am needed, but I am no longer working the schedule I kept during most of my medical career.
I try to keep some structure in the day. I check on anything related to the clinic, spend time with my wife, and make room for hockey, music, golf, or getting outside. Productivity means less to me now in terms of how many tasks I complete. I think more about whether I did something useful, helped someone, learned something, or spent my time well.
How do you bring ideas to life?
I usually start by asking whether the idea solves a real problem. Owning clinics taught me that an idea can sound impressive but still be useless if it makes things harder for patients or staff.
Once I know there is a real need, I prefer to test the idea in a practical setting. I like seeing how people respond before making something bigger or more complicated. Medicine teaches you to observe, make adjustments, and not become emotionally attached to your first answer.
What’s one trend that excites you?
I am interested in the growing recognition that addiction recovery needs long-term support rather than one isolated intervention. Early recovery can be an extremely vulnerable period. People often need consistent medical care, someone they trust, and a dependable support system.
I think the more healthcare understands addiction as something that requires ongoing care and strong relationships, the better our chances are of helping people stay alive and build stability.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
I deal with things while they are still small. If there is a patient concern, a staffing issue, a conversation that needs to happen, or something personal that is bothering me, I would rather address it than let it sit there.
Problems usually become more difficult when people avoid them. I learned that in medicine, business, sports, and marriage.
What advice would you give your younger self?
I would tell myself not to rush through the good parts because I was focused on reaching the next thing. When you are young, you tend to think everything important is ahead of you.
Looking back, some of the best parts were already happening. Playing hockey, studying medicine, building practices, travelling with musicians, spending time with my parents, and eventually building a life with my wife all mattered while they were happening. I would tell myself to pay more attention.
Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?
I think customer service belongs in medicine just as much as it belongs in any other profession. Some people dislike putting those two ideas together because medicine is obviously much more serious than a normal service business.
I understand that, but patients still notice whether you listen, return a call, explain something clearly, remember who they are, and respect their time. Those things affect trust, and trust affects care.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
Treat people well when there is nothing obvious for you to gain from doing it. That tells you more about your character than how you treat someone important.
I have always tried to live that way, whether it meant taking care of patients, caring for my parents in their final years, helping someone with groceries, or giving food or clothing to someone who needed it.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
I change environments. I might skate, play music, ride a trail bike, or go hit golf balls. Physical movement usually helps me think more clearly.
Hockey has been especially useful for that throughout my life. When you are on the ice, you cannot keep replaying ten unrelated problems in your head. You have to pay attention to what is happening around you right now.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
I paid attention to how people felt after interacting with us. My strongest business skill was probably customer service.
Patients may not understand every medical decision you make, but they understand whether you listened to them, whether your staff was kind, and whether they felt ignored. Building three clinics taught me that reputation grows one interaction at a time. If people trust you, they return, they listen, and they tell others about their experience.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
One mistake I made earlier in my career was thinking I could personally solve too many problems. Physicians are trained to take responsibility, and that can become a weakness when you are also running a business.
I learned that you have to know when to involve other people, when to refer someone, and when another person is better equipped to handle the issue. Trying to control everything usually slows things down. Good judgement includes knowing your own limits.
What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
I think there is room for a service that helps patients leaving addiction treatment navigate the first 90 days of ordinary life. Not another treatment centre, but a practical coordination service.
It could help people schedule appointments, organise transportation, find local meetings, manage basic reminders, connect with approved support contacts, and build a weekly routine. Many people know what they are supposed to do in recovery. The difficult part is maintaining structure when normal life starts again.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
I use the calendar on my phone constantly. It is not exciting software, but it works. During medicine, there were always appointments, commitments, follow-ups, travel dates, and personal responsibilities competing for attention.
If something matters, I put it on the calendar. I do not assume I will remember everything simply because it seems important at the moment.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?
I tend to get more value from biographies than traditional business books. I like reading about people who reached a high level in sports, music, or medicine because the details are usually more interesting than the headline success.
I pay attention to how they prepared, how they dealt with mistakes, and how they behaved when their career did not go according to plan. Those lessons tend to transfer well across professions.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
I enjoy sports documentaries, particularly ones about hockey. I like seeing the parts fans usually do not notice: the training, travel, injuries, relationships with coaches, and the way teams handle pressure.
Having played and coached hockey myself, I enjoy recognising the small details. The game looks very different when you understand what is happening away from the puck.
Key learnings
- Strong patient relationships are built through consistent communication, respect, and follow-through.
- Addressing small problems early can prevent them from becoming larger operational or personal challenges.
- Knowing when to involve other people is an important part of leadership and sound judgement.
- Long-term addiction recovery benefits from structure, continuity, and reliable support after initial treatment.
- Time spent with family, hobbies, and meaningful relationships can become more valuable than constant professional growth.