👉 Ready for the next step? Book a call: https://program.www.entremd.com/call
Here's what happens when your business first starts to grow:
It’s no wonder so many new physician entrepreneurs fall into the trap of sacrificing profit for rapid, unsustainable growth, which ultimately leads to them going broke and having to shut down their businesses.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. Today, I will share 3 ways to scale your business efficiently and sustainably!
If you want to make the right calls and future-proof your business, this one’s for you.
Tune in!
Key Takeaways:
—
Additional Resources:
When you are ready to work with us, here are three ways:
To get on a call with my team to determine your next best step, go here ...
👉 Ready for the next step? Book a call: https://program.www.entremd.com/call
Here's what happens when your business first starts to grow:
It’s no wonder so many new physician entrepreneurs fall into the trap of sacrificing profit for rapid, unsustainable growth, which ultimately leads to them going broke and having to shut down their businesses.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. Today, I will share 3 ways to scale your business efficiently and sustainably!
If you want to make the right calls and future-proof your business, this one’s for you.
Tune in!
Key Takeaways:
—
Additional Resources:
When you are ready to work with us, here are three ways:
To get on a call with my team to determine your next best step, go here ...
Think about every team member as a profit center. How does this person contribute to the bottom line? How does this person pay for themselves, pay for the overhead they generate and create profits? Right Like how does each team member do that? The clearer you are about that, the more profitable your business will be, because what that means is every team member is pulling their own weight.
Speaker 1:Hi docs, welcome to the Entree MD podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians just like you and race entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, dr Ibnah. Well, hello. Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of the Entree MD podcast. As always, I'm super pumped to be in your ears.
Speaker 1:I have heard this statement from many physician entrepreneurs, especially as their businesses start to grow. They cross the seven figure mark and all Like Dr Ibnah, my business is making a lot more in revenue, but I'm also spending a lot more, so my profits are much smaller. How do I scale my business without going broke? And this is a question I'm going to be answering on this episode of the Entree MD podcast. So when we started the Entree MD business school and we had had it for about two years, I started having doctors walk up to me and say, dr Ibnah, we need something else. We need something more. We're having new problems, and in the Entree MD business school, one of the things we say is that the reward for solving problems is new problems. Right, so as long as your business exists, if you embrace this concept of there will always be stuff for me to work on, my business is a construction site. You'll make your journey as an entrepreneur so much easier. So they started talking about this and I started digging, like I had been through this multiple times so I kind of knew what those challenges were. But I started digging and the issues are really around maximizing profits, leveraging team and really building these systems. So you're building a true business, not a job, right, you're building a business with systems and processes so it can work without your true business asset. And so we launched this tier of the Entree MD business school called EBS scale, and that's for doctors who are doing over a million in revenue. They are still interested in hyper growth and all of those kind of things.
Speaker 1:So this conversation comes up a lot how do I scale without going broke? And I want to give you three things that you can do. Okay, because what we don't want to do is get bigger for the sake of getting bigger. What we don't want to do is have all this revenue but have no profits, like what is the point right, and we don't want to, you know, continue to grow our business and create burnout and all of that. So let's talk about this and I'm going to give you three things. There are multiple things, but I'll give you three of my best, right.
Speaker 1:So the first thing is to pace your expansion. Pace your expansion. One of the things I see is someone say, oh my goodness, we did a hundred thousand in revenue this year, let's go to three million, right, and let's hire all these people and let's do all of those things. And usually what happens is the overhead like really just balloons out of control, and they're just not left with a lot of margin, they're not left with profits. Sometimes they go into negative. So they have more revenue, they have this really fantastic team, but they're literally making no money.
Speaker 1:So the version I like is pacing your expansion, and I'll give you a simple way of like a quick and dirty way to think about it. So let's say, you started your business and it was just you and as an assistant, and you guys took that business and you grew it to a hundred thousand dollars in revenue, right, well, what you've done is you've created the capital to then hire other people, right, and so maybe you've wanted a marketing manager you know like a marketing person to work with you. Maybe you've wanted, if you're coaching business, another coach you're, you know, say, you're a direct primary care, you want another doctor, or you wanted a nurse to work with you, or whatever it is. You've made yourself cash flow positive. You've created the money that you're going to use to hire that person and then, when that person comes on, they pull their weight and you create more revenue and you continue to expand and expand your team. But what you're doing is you're pacing that expansion. What you'll find is that you will expand for sure Until you hire at a pace where you are growing as a leader, as you continue to bring on higher, higher capacity people so you're able to lead them. What you'll notice is that you do this in a way that's really quote unquote comfortable. So when I say comfortable, I don't mean like you're completely at ease and all of that, but it's a comfortable pace. So you're growing. You're growing, surely, right? Surely. And when I say slowly, I don't mean slow, I just mean it may be slower than somebody else who goes and hires everybody in the world and gets all the gadgets and all the fun stuff. It may look like you're slower, but you're more sustainable. So that's the first thing. I really, really, really like that. Okay. So that's pacing our expansion.
Speaker 1:The second thing is you want to think about every team member as a profit center, and sometimes people are like you know, I don't want to really talk about profits, you know like it's about the people and all of that. Please understand that a business is an entity that serves and earns. Okay, both of those things go together. It's not one or the other, it's not a whole lot of one and a little of the other. We serve and earn. Okay. Now, if the intent of a business is to serve and earn, when you bring your team on, what did you bring them on to do? You brought them on to help you, and so what would they help you do? Serve and earn, right.
Speaker 1:So think about every team member as a profit center. How does this person contribute to the bottom line? How does this person pay for themselves, pay for the overhead they generate and create profits. Right, like how does each team member do that? The clearer you are about that, the more profitable your business will be, because what that means is every team member is pulling their own weight, as opposed to having a business where you're pulling the weight Like I've seen this a lot where you have maybe the private practice owners who are pulling the weight. That's the person responsible for all the new patients that come in. That's the person responsible for the visibility of the business. That's the person responsible for everything that has to do with, you know, like patient attraction. That is a lot of weight to bear. Meanwhile, they have seven other doctors. Now what if you had seven other doctors doing the same thing? Then the load becomes so much lighter right Now. Granted, there are other ways that you know they could contribute to the bottom line, but I'm just using that as an example. So I want you to think of it that way For each role.
Speaker 1:How is this role monetized? And you might say, okay, well, I have this person who is an administrator, but the thing about administrators is that you can still give your ad some revenue generating activity to what your administrator does, so that they're adding to the bottom line, or you identify how many hours they're saving you or saving somebody else and how much revenue is being generated with those extra hours. So either way, you want to treat each one as a profit center. Now think about it this way Chances are that your payroll expense I like to call it an investment, not an expense your payroll investment will be the largest number on your expense line, like chances are that's what it will be. If that is the case, look at it as an investment, which means you want to get a return on your investment.
Speaker 1:This does not make you bad or make you greedy or make you callous and make you some evil business person like the way Hollywood like will like to portray you know portray. You know business people. This just means that you're a savvy person who is trying to build a sustainable company, because if there is no revenue, if there's no profit margin, company has to go under, like it just has to, right. So if you have something that is your biggest quote unquote expense like I said, I like to call it an investment If it's your biggest investment, if you're biggest expense, right, then you want to make sure that is leading to the creation of profit, because, again, you're there to serve and earn. You're there to do both. So you don't want to have a team of 20 people and all they do is serve but they do nothing to earn, right, okay, so? So that's the second thing you want to think about.
Speaker 1:In the on-trendy business school, we take a lot of time talking about the revenue generation framework, like these are all the revenue generating activities you could be doing, your team could be doing, but these are the things that move the needle forward. You want to make sure that your team members have those and you can calculate and say, yes, this person is there, is paying for themselves, they're paying for their overhead and they're creating a profit. Okay, all right. So that's the second thing. The third thing is, as you start to scale, you want to really take the time to make sure that you're investing in true assets and not shiny objects.
Speaker 1:Okay, I will use one of the examples that you know probably breaks my heart the most in, and that's when you know people start. You start a business, they start bringing in some revenue, so there's some money to play around with. And then maybe this is somebody who's an OBGYN or their family medicine. And then these laser companies come and like, oh, buy this laser, and if you have only eight patients a month who get treatments, then you know you'll cover for it, we will help you market it and we will help you do all the things. Okay, I probably don't speak for any every laser company, because you know that's not really my area of expertise I'm a pediatrician.
Speaker 1:But I will tell you I've spoken to so many people, especially before we came clients of mine, and they're like, oh yeah, so I did this. And I mean, like the payments are like a mortgage, right, and they had no intentions of marketing it. They did not have patients who would use it, so this their patient base will not use it. They have to go find patients from somebody, somebody else and they get this stuff and they're waiting and you know, after they signed the dotted line, that's probably the last time they see the salesperson, right, and they're like, yeah, you know, we kind of sort of market it. We put your name on a website somewhere if they did even that, and they're stuck with it and the contracts are so ironclad that they don't get out. So for years they're paying like the equivalent of a mortgage payment for this shiny object they acquired right, and so I want you to think about it. The doctor pays off $300,000, $400,000 in five years.
Speaker 1:I mean that stuff that could have been profit. That is stuff that you know like the mental load of it is just insane. The amount of energy they spend in effectively marketing it. You know you factor all of that in, like it that it's, it's expensive, right, and once you start bringing in revenue, shiny objects will show up everywhere. So you have to ask yourself where am I trying to go with this business? Who am I trying to serve? If you know, like what? What are the things that I want to do? If this salesperson didn't come to me, would I even be considering? If I just saw a friend of mine doing this, would I be considering adding this to my practice at all? If I couldn't make it work, how do I eat the cost? Like these are just things to think about. Right, but you want to avoid the shiny object syndrome.
Speaker 1:I had a doc who came is like oh, you know, dr Una, I've been working on this. You know private practice it was a cash pay practice. I've been working on it and you know I'm only seeing very few patients and all of those things. But I had this laser guy. They came they said, oh, if you just have seven people a month, you cover the overhead. And his easy money's passive income oh, my goodness, like what about a laser? Is passive income right? And they're like you know, so you do all these procedures and it's passive income and all of those things.
Speaker 1:And I just had her think about it the way I would have you think about it, like okay, how, how much is it? I'm like okay, the current patient base you have, how many patients are they? And she said the number so clearly it's not a number who that could support what she was trying to do, as I could. Great, okay, great, your average patient, are they the people who would use this? She says no, I have to go look for other kind of people. But they said they'll market it. I said okay, let me play devil's advocate here, because I've seen many people say that and not market it. If they did not market it, are you gonna be able to? Are you gonna market? Are you willing to do the work to market it? She was like no, because it will take me off what I'm trying to do for my practice. I'm like, okay, great, so let's say you get it, they don't market it. You don't want to market it.
Speaker 1:How much of a payment are you stuck with? And she says the amount. I'm like okay, so how would you pay that if, on this side, you're not even generating enough, enough money to make this happen? And she was like I have to. You know, like I would put it on a credit card or whatever. And I'm like so then what's the point? So what do you want to do?
Speaker 1:And she was able to look at it and say, oh boy, like I, that would have been a disaster. And we did the math it was about four hundred thousand dollars, right. So she was just gonna acquire that, right, and that's just one shiny object. She could have acquired a bunch of shiny objects, right. And so there's nothing I've talked about here that is like super, super exotic.
Speaker 1:But there are also things that are kind of almost boring, like like, yeah, who wants to calculate to see, you know like, if every team member is a profit center, or who wants to grow, you know like, grow the revenue that hire somebody else and grow the revenue when I can do all of these things. So the thing is this this is the thing you need to know business successful businesses are boring. Successful businesses are boring. They do the basics, they do the classics, they do the proven things that work over and over and over and over again. If the only way you thrive as an Entrepreneur is if there's something shiny and exhilarating and exciting and all of those kind of things, you're gonna be in a lot of trouble because business is boring. Now Am I saying like, if you've met me, I'm, I'm always excited, right, like I'm always excited, but I am also excited by the boring things. I'm excited by doing the same thing over, over and over and over again, because I know this is the path to To greatness, right, and so I want to invite you to kind of embrace that concept, right? It doesn't have to all be exciting, and if you avoid the boring things, chances are you you avoid the things that really, really work in business.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what do I want you to do with this? I want you to do a few things. First thing I want you to do is you know, just set a target for yourself. This is my next critical hire and, with the team I have right now we're going to work, we're gonna hit this revenue mark and then we're gonna bring that person in you. It's like, okay, how can I control how much I make? I mean, like their revenue generating activities. There's activities of marketing, of selling, of leveraging referral sources, asking people to continue to work with you. Like you know, we've done many podcast episodes on this. But set a target right. Set a target. This is what we want to do and want to bring this person in right. Like so that's the first thing I want you to do.
Speaker 1:The second thing I want you to do is I want you to look at every team member like how, how does this person's work directly relate to the bottom line and does this person understand that those are priority tasks? Like this is how you keep you this is the part you playing, keeping this company afloat. Like, do they understand these are their priorities? Right, because if they understand that, then they leverage that more. Then the chances are they're not gonna think like you would think, except they're trained to think that way. Right, but at least you can help them establish what is a priority and what is not. And even for this new critical hire that you've taught, you've thought about, like how is that role going to be monetized? How is that person a profit center? How do they come and start pulling their weight? So now it's me, the old team, and then now them, and we're all pulling our way to attack the bottom line, right?
Speaker 1:And then the third thing is you know, make a commitment, like look at the things that maybe you've looked at in the last 30 days and kind of categorize them this is an asset, this is a shiny objects, this is asset, this is another shiny object and make a commitment to yourself Like I'm not going to fall for shiny objects you know what I mean Like I'm going to do the work and when an opportunity comes my way, I'm going to objectively Evaluate it. Now, does that mean with no faith and because you're not going to exactly know? But there are some things that will show you. This is a shiny object, right, like this is just shiny and exciting. Okay. And if you do these three things, what you'll be doing is you're setting yourself up to build this business that is Sustainable and it can scale and you can really still just enjoy your life Scaling, like you're not all bent out of shape.
Speaker 1:I have built multiple companies and I have, you know like, and I've done this for a decade, almost a decade and a half at this point and we've had companies that we've grown, we've scaled, we've taken from a hundred to two hundred and sixty to a million to two million right in the in the course of four years, and I have not had to give up my health, I have not had to give up my family. I had not have to do any of those things, because I am not interested in scaling, like, in a way that is not sustainable. I'm not interested in scaling in such a way that I could go broke on the way to scaling. I am not trying to scale in such a way that I could lose the business, which people do. People do right, and so this is a safe way to do that. So audit your business. Okay, take those three things. Audit your business.
Speaker 1:And if you're a doctor and you know like you're running a business is over seven figures in revenue and you're bumping against that, like, the profits are now much thinner on, your systems are not working as well. You, you're not really leading your team because you're, like you know, don't really know about that You're, you're finding it really hard hiring, you know, and all of those things. Then there is a place for you. It's called the on-trendy business school scale. Okay, it's called scale, ebs scale, and we would, we would love to have you there if that's something you really want to do. You're still interested in hyper growth. You want to evolve as a leader, like you're an entrepreneur now, but you need to be a leader and you want to lead your team in a profitable way and do all of those things. Then you know, come check us out.
Speaker 1:Okay, you can book a call with my team on tremdcom For slash call and they'll help you. Happy to walk you through what it looks like and help you see if that is the best Next step for you. Again, on these calls, we're not a high pressure sales type of company will strong arm you because it is a close, close-knit group, if you will, and we don't necessarily want someone who doesn't want to be there to be there, right? So nobody's gonna force you to do that because it's a I mean, it's a group of complete, complete Unicorn level rock stars, right, okay? So I want to leave you with this thought Okay, scaling your business can be fun.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean it's not hard work. I would never tell you that it is work. It is hard work, but you can do it in such a way that, as you're doing it, the other life, the other aspects of your life, are growing as well, right, like where you're doing that, and your marriage is better and your relationship with your kids are better and you're in the best shape of your life and you have more time off to take with your kids. And all of that there is a way to do it, and the starting point Really is deciding to do it and then auditing your business to make sure these common traps that make people go broke in the process Of scaling are not traps that you're falling into. Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:As always, remember you're part of the Calvary, bringing change to the entire physician community, so I want you to take this episode, take a screenshot, share your biggest aha on social media, tag us hashtag on tramd, and I want you to share this episode with the doctors in your life, telling you have to go. Listen to this because, as physicians, this is our time to build the most innovative, most impactful and most profitable company companies inside and outside of healthcare. Okay, I'll see you on the next episode of the on-trimmed podcast. I.