3 Ways to Scale Your Medical Business Without Going BROKE!

If your business isn't working the way you expected, it's not because you're bad at business. It's because no one ever taught you.

How it actually works.

We were trained to master algorithms in medicine, but when it comes to revenue teams and growth, we were never taught anything. We weren't even told to figure it out. We just assumed somehow we'd know. Like it would magically make sense. But it doesn't. The era of the seven Figure Physician CEO is here.

And it's not about working harder.

It's about learning entrepreneurship as a system. The same way you mastered ACLs and pals, you can master the algorithm of building a profitable scalable business. That's why I recorded the seven Figure Physician CEO audiobook. Whether you're building a medical or non medical business, and whether your goal is your first million, first 2 million, first 5 million, first 10 million, this is where the journey starts. There is no Calvary coming to save us.

We are the Calvary. So.

So go get your audiobook now. Www.entremd.com 7Figurebook and let's rewrite the narrative for physicians starting today.

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 the more profitable your business will be. Because what that means is every team member is pulling their own weight. Hi docs. Welcome to the Entre MD podcast where it's all about helping amazing physicians. Just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms, I'm your host, Dr. Una. Well, hello. Hello my friend. Welcome back to another episode of the Entre MD podcasts. As always, I'm super pumped to be in your ears. I have heard this statement for many physician entrepreneurs, especially as their businesses start to grow, they cross the seven figure mark and all they're like, Dr. Una, 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 with without going broke? And this is a question I'm going to be answering on this episode of the Entre MD podcast. So when we started the Entre MD Business school and we had had it for about two years, I started having doctors walk up to me and say, Dr. Una, we need something else. We need something more. We're having new problems. And in the armchrim, the 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 always be stuff for me to work on, my business is a construction site. Because 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 profit, 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 entrepreneur 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 kinds of things. 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 businesses and create burnout and all of that. So. 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? 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 3 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 the negative, so they have more revenue. They have this really fantastic team, but they're literally making no money. 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 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 or, you know, say you're a direct primary care, you wanted another doctor, or you want 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. So 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, 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. So that's the first thing. I really, really, really like that. Okay, so that's pacing your expansion. 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, 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? So think about every team member as a profit center. How does this person contribute to the. 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, you're pulling the weight. Like I've seen this a lot where you have, maybe the private practice owner is the one 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 respons 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 of the 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, 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, add 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, you know, 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 investments 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. This does not make you bad or make you greedy or make you callous or make you some evil business person. Like the way Hollywood 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? If you have something that is your biggest quote, unquote expense, like I said, I like to call it investment. If it's your biggest investment, if your biggest expense, right, Then you want to make sure that it's 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 in the entre md Business school, we take a lot of time talking about the revenue generation framework. Like, these are all the revenue generating activ. 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. They're 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. 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 ob GYN or their family medicine. And then these laser companies come and like, ooh, 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. That's not really my area of expertise. I'm a pediatrician. But I will tell you, I've spoken to so many people, especially before they became 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. If a doctor pays off 300,000, $400,000 in five, 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 ineffectively 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. 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 it's easy. Money is 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. 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 to do. I was like, oh, 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 going to be able to. Are you going to market. Are you willing to do the work to market it? She was like, no, because it'll 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. 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? And she was able to look at it and say, oh boy, like, that would have been a disaster. And we did the math. It was about $400,000, right? So she was just going to 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 super, super exotic. But they're 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, who wants to grow, you know, like grow the revenue, then 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 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 going to 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, I, I'm also excited by the boring things. I'm excited by doing the same thing over and 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. 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 are going to work. We're gonna hit this revenue mark and then we're going to bring that person in you. It's like, okay, how can I control how much I make? I mean, like, they're 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, so that's the first thing I want you to do. 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 that those are priority tasks. Like, this is how you, you. This is the part you play in keeping this company afloat. Like, do they understand these are their priorities, right? Because if they understand that, then they leverage that more, then chances are they're not going to 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, and then now them, and we're all pulling our way to attack the bottom line, right? 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 object. 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. 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 100 to 260 to a million to 2 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 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. And if you're a doctor and you know, like you're running a business, it's over seven figures in revenue and you're bumping against that. Like the profits are now much thinner, 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 really hard hiring, you know, and all of those things. Then there is a place for you. It's called the Entrepreneur 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. Okay? You can book a call with my team on trendy.com forward/call and they'll be 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. We'll 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 wanna leave you with this thought, okay? Scaling your business can be fun. 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. As always, remember, you're a part of the Calvary, bringing change to the entire physician community. So I want you take this episode, take a screenshot, share your biggest aha. On social media, tag us Entre md And I want you to share this episode with the doctors in your life. Tell them 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 Entre podcast. Sam.