4 Steps to Recover From a Financial Setback in Your Private Medical Practice

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Starting today, when things look like they're not working, we can retreat or we can forge ahead. Like, we can push forward. We can play full offense. Hi, docs. Welcome to the EntreMD podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians just, like, embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Unna. People say that the only constant in life is change, but there's another constant for entrepreneurs, and that is challenges. So today on the entrepreneur podcast, I'm going to be talking to you about how to bounce back from financial setbacks in your business. Okay? All right, now, this question is a question that somebody in the entremde Facebook group asked, because I told them I'm recording a bunch of new episodes. What questions do you have for me? And I thought this was really, really powerful. Because if we don't have the capacity to handle challenges, to move forward in the face of setbacks, to recover quickly, then it's almost impossible to thrive as an entrepreneur. Because challenges are going to come. There's nothing we can do about it to stop it from coming. And that could look so many different ways. Like, when we think about financial setbacks during the pandemic, we know the number of private practices that out of business, and that is, that is a setback, right? Like, all of a sudden you had maybe had 500 patient visits a week. And that dropped to 20. I mean, that's like, that's a significant drop in revenue. And so how are you going to maintain all your operating costs and all of those things, which are constants, Right? Okay. So it could look like that some other people had businesses that they built, like, completely off of Facebook ads. And so that was the way they got leads. That's the way they got new clients. They didn't really have, you know, sales calls, consult calls, email list that, like, they weren't really doing any of those. And there are a number of them. You know, of course, when the whole iOS thing came and the retargeting became more challenging and all of that, their businesses, some of them literally disappeared, Disappeared overnight. For some other people, they may have had a business, say, like a private practice, and they had this huge referral source who then got acquired by a hospital and they no longer refer to them. Or a hospital set a practice right next to theirs. And so many things, like, I could go on and on and on, right? There's so many setbacks that could be experienced in business. But I want to show you how you can bounce back from these, how you can recover, and how you can end up with an even better business in the process of doing this. Now, let me start off by saying, I am not trying to say in any way, shape or form that what I'm about to talk about is easy. It's not easy. It's hard, but it's doable. Okay. And there is the heart of, you know, saving your business and bouncing back. And there's a heart of living in the setback. Right. So you get to choose your heart either way. It's hard. But I would advise you to choose this because it's like an adventure. And the truth of the matter is, at the end of the day, setbacks can always be turned around to make your business even better.

Right.

Like, almost always. Okay, so let's look at. Let's look at a few of these things, and I'm going to give you about four things that I do. The setbacks that I've experienced would more so be with the pandemic. That will probably be the, the. The examp I would use where we went from, you know, like a full panel, full schedules, all of that to. Nobody wanted to come in and nobody knew what was going on, you know, so that's the version that I've experienced. But I've had many clients who've experienced all kinds, like, you know, just like the rainbow, like a full spectrum. But these are the things that. That we do. Okay, the first part is belief. It would sound weird that that is a business strategy, but it's belief. It's the belief that at the end of the day, it all works out for me, right? So will I have challenges? Yes. Will I have setbacks? Yes. I'm not guaranteed. I won't have that. But at the end of the day, after it's all said and done in the grand scheme of events, it all works out for me. And so there are a number of ways of approaching this for me. I am a person of faith, so I have the Bible and I have all these stories and I have all these scriptures that for me are evidence that, okay, you can put your belief in this. That is going to work out. But you may not be a person of faith. And this is the question I have for you. Have you not survived 100% of what has been thrown at you? Right? Like, when you think about it, like, you come out on the other side, you're okay, you're still here. You know what I mean? You've had so many challenges, so many challenges, and you came out of them. I know you had a lot of challenges somewhere between med school and residency and fellowship and being an attending at your first job and your first business and all of these things, you've had so, so many challenges where you're still standing, right? And so how about this will be like that, right? And so it's really. It's really this belief in the entrepreneur business school the way we say it is. It's working. It's always working. And people have been around long enough at this point for, you know, to see that all the things that happened in my business two years ago that I thought were not working, that now I see the fruit of those things, like, it's been working all along, right? And so it's just this belief, right? Because if we sit in the permanence of the setback, there's no motivation to do anything. There's no willpower to do anything. We don't show up with the right energy. We like. It's hard. It's almost impossible, right? So the starting point is a belief. It's going to work out. It's going to work out. Okay. The second thing is this decision to play full offense. Like, when things look like they're not working, we can retreat or we can forge ahead. Like, we can push forward, we can play full offense. And so, for instance, during the pandemic, now when we talk about the pandemic, now it's really hard to recreate the feelings and the uncertainty because we didn't know what it was, we didn't know what the virus was, we didn't know how to address it, we didn't know how it was transmitted, we didn't know how long would be unlocked lockdown. Like there was so much uncertainty. So the first thing I had was belief. I was like, at the end of the day, I don't know how well we're going to be all right. Okay. The second thing was this concept of playing for offense. So for me, you know, and I'll tell you all the areas, but for me, what that looked like was, okay, so people are not coming in. What are the objections? Like, I'm a pediatrician, the two month old still needs shots, the four month old still needs shots, the six month old still needs shots. When I think about the fact that now you have all these one year olds and all these four year olds who have not had the MMR vaccine, then what's going to happen? Are we going to have outbreaks, you know, like all of these things? And what are the kid with the eczema, what are the kid with the ADHD who now is off his medication and is home with mommy and four other kids and they're trying to figure out virtual school. Like, my services are needed and so why don't they want to come in? They don't want to get, they don't get the virus, they don't want to get this. How can we still serve them? How can we make this a safer experience? Right? So we started looking at, you know, social distancing, all these kinds of things. Great, then what do I do with the team? I had a meeting with my team. I said, listen, as of right now, this practice does not need any of your services anymore. And so I paused and when I was sure I had their full attention, I was like, we are looking for a team though. And we are looking for a team of people who are willing to do whatever it takes, right? Whatever it takes. And so I recruited the team in my efforts to bring the practice to a place where even in the middle of a pandemic, we could still be profitable. So when I talk about playing full offense, offense, it has to do with talking with a team getting their buy in. It has to do with going all in on your revenue generating activities. You don't have time to play anymore. You're running a lean, mean machine now. Right. And so what are the things we do that translate to revenue? Right? In this practice, in this business, yours may not be a practice, it may be a different kind of business. But what are those things right? For us it's patient visits, right? And all of those things, how do we get them in? How do we set up telehealth? How do we do all of these things right? It looked like collecting old debt. So for instance, think about when we had the disruption and all things billing with, you know, change, health care and all those things that happened where people, you're still seeing the patients, they're still sending the claims, but they can't get paid, right? Okay. When people told me about, I'm like, great. But you have all these people who have outstanding balances while you're working that go work those outstanding balances, that is still cash flow for your practice, right? So that's part of playing of offense. Maybe it's building new referral sources depending on what the challenge is. But I don't roll over and play dead. I don't go in the quiet place and suck my thumb. I show up and play full offense. Now you may need to go somewhere and cry for a little bit, but it needs to be a little bit only and you can come right out and you're like, full offense, full offense. We don't back down. Right? So that's my second response when it, when it comes to how do we bounce back from this? Okay. The third thing is I to look at the other side. And, and this requires a lot of growth and a lot of practice. And so I want to invite you, if it's not something you do regularly now, I want to invite you to start looking at it now. Right? It's looking at the other side. So in the entrepreneur business school, one of the things we say when we're, for instance, when we're reviewing our quarter, we say you either win or you learn. So it's not a win and a lose, it's a win and a learn. So if there's something you didn't win at, the question is then what did you learn from that? We don't call it failure. We don't call it like, what did you learn from that? Okay, so it was Myron golden, he said this on a video and I was like, man, I'm never going to forget that. He's like, there is never, you've never seen a one sided piece of paper. And so for everything that is a dis is disadvantaged, there's a part of it that's an advantage, right? And you're like, no, you don't understand. I lost $100,000. Da, da, da, da. Yeah, but we can also evolve to the point where we can stop and say, okay, I know I lost that. Now what is the lesson? Because having a setback is one thing. Not learning the lesson is a whole other thing. And that means that you have the potential to repeat this again with bigger zeros behind it, right? So you stop, you're like, okay, what is the lesson here? The lesson could be, I built my whole business on one source of clients, so now I'm going to diversify that and I'm going to create multiple streams of clients. Okay, Maybe you're like, I built it on one referral source, and then now I'm going to diversify that. I'm going to have multiple referral sources. Maybe the lesson is, wow, email marketing saved my business during the pandemic, right? Because we, we ran our practice almost like a hybrid of a brick and mortar and an online business. That's what we did. And we really leveraged email marketing, video, all of those kind of things, and it worked like it worked magically. And so the lesson, the lesson there, you know, might be, okay, I really need to embrace this email marketing, because if you help me survive during the pandemic, then what will you do if there's no pandemic, right? Maybe the lesson there is, you know, I set myself up and bought this laser device because some really smooth talking salesperson came in and I signed a contract for $450,000. And maybe the lesson is there. It's like, that's a half a million intuition. I'm going to make it count some, you know, like, this is not, this is not something, something that I do, right? And I, before I sign any contract, thinking, oh, I can just get in and get out. I want to play the scenarios. I want to look like, if. What is the best case scenario, what is the worst case scenario? How do I handle this if it doesn't work? All of those things, right? Maybe the financial setback is because there was embezzlement in your business, right? Like somebody swiped 100 GS and now you're like, okay, the gentleman's handshake version of running my practice, where on my business, where everybody just does what they're supposed to do and I have faith in everybody. Maybe I'm done with that. Maybe I'm done with that. Maybe I recognize that I have to have checks and balances, I have to have accountability, I have to have evaluations, I have to have audits. Right. Like, so just stop and say, what, what is, what is the lesson here? What did I learn here? I'm not saying it's easy, it will be so uncomfortable. But the thing is this, if you can do it, you can turn the financial setback into, you can get a return on investment on your financial setback. You see what I'm saying? Like, you can end up with a, with a better business, a better practice because you took the time to say, what was the lesson here? As opposed to hiding, pretend it didn't happen and all of those things. Now are you going to look at that like right after it happens? No, probably you'll need a minute. But yeah, yeah, ask what is the lesson here? What is the lesson here? And learn it right? And then the fourth thing is really leveraging. So one thing is to learn the lesson, and the second thing is to leverage that discovery to make your business better is to take the lessons learned and install them in your business, actually do the action installing your business. So what that means is if you were a victim of embezzlement, now you've put the checks and balances in so it doesn't happen again. If you had just one referral source, then you build a referral, you know, referral system for your business, right? Maybe you used to be on only Facebook and now it's time to set up, you know, your email list, your other social media platforms, you're like all the other way. Your text community, all the other ways you can reach your. If you can't reach them, you know, just from that, like, there's so many things, we don't want to just know them, we want to stop and install them in our businesses. Now if you do these four things, what will end up happening? Like, you know, what happened, happened, the setback that was the setback happened. But you're putting yourself in a position where you can recover from it. And at the end of the day, you can end up with a business that is so much better. I'm going to give you one more. That's number five, and that is really, really, really surround with people who can help you. And so these are people who they either have the information that you need, they have the experience that you need, their resource, you need like a lawyer, a forensic accountant, or any of those kind of things. Or they're a community of people who will keep you encouraged until you get to the other side. Right? Until you get to the other side of all that. We're people, we need people, and we thrive in challenges. Better when we have people. So surround yourself with that. And then if there are people who, you know, the whole time they're like, I don't even know why you're doing this business and all that. You know that if you share this with them, they'll say, yes, I told you, you should shut that business down. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Don't tell them about it. Like, you're already battling your own doubt. Like, don't, don't multiply by telling somebody else who's been doubting the whole time.

Right?

So five things now. So these are five things that you can do. And so if you're in a situation right now where you've gone through, you know, like a financial setback, I really want to invite you to forgive yourself. Give yourself grace. Realize that everybody goes through this and the people who seem like they have it together, they go through it. They actually go through it with more zeros behind the setback. And, you know, give yourself some grace. And then start leaning into the turnaround because the turnaround is possible and the turnaround is available, but there's a way to approach it. Okay, now this is one episode where I really want you to, I really want you to let me know how this helped you. You can send me a DM or a PM on Instagram or Facebook. You'll see the links in the, in the show notes or the description on YouTube. And really let me know how this helped you and if you have any follow up questions, because this is the deal. I want to see you thrive as an entrepreneur. Someone said this to me. She's been a client of mine for so many years and she's doing extremely well. Extremely well. And she said, you know, I had a challenge. You remember, I talked about it, you know, in my business a few months ago. And I'll tell you the truth, that was really hard. And if I didn't have the community that I had, I think I would have just given up. The reason why I tell you this is because now at this point, she's recovered and, you know, everything's great. She's had the turnaround, if you will. She, she's turned it around. She's not having a return on investment on her, on her financial setback. But the truth of the matter is, you know, there's so many businesses that could survive but that don't because it's hard. And maybe there wasn't the support and they didn't know this blueprint that we've just walked through. And so if you're going through a hard time in your business. Whether you're at multiple seven figures or whether you're at your on your way to your first hundred thousand, I just want to say virtual hugs to you. Put this into place, start working on these things. And I would love to celebrate when this turns around for you and you're even like, I'm getting a return on investment on the setback I went through. So I'm cheering you on. Let me know how this helped you and I'll see you on the next episode of the Ontario Podcast.