How Health Practices Find New Ways To Expand Their Revenue

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If you run a private practice and you’ve done for any serious amount of time, then you have probably already realized that you need to think about medicine as a business. Not just in how you maintain professionalism, effectiveness, and efficiency. You also need to think about profit, which many treat as a dirty word in the industry. However, getting more tight-fisted is not the only way to ensure you see more money. Instead, you should consider looking at just how your business could offer more and thus make more.

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Make use of that expertise

Besides thinking like a businessperson, to succeed in running a practice, you need real medical expertise. That same expertise could be the very same tool you use for finding new opportunities for bringing revenue into the business. Not only are blogs good ground for monetization through advertising and affiliates programs. They can also be a tremendous way to build your visibility and your personal brand online. You can also look into providing your advice as a premium product, by producing eBooks or getting into hosting webinars. At the same time, getting more involved in the community around you can help, too. Lots of experts find paid speaking opportunities to share their knowledge at seminars and other live events.

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Reach new patients

Naturally, trying to get as many patients into the business is the most obvious way to try and expand your ability to gain revenue. But you shouldn’t just think that outreach and marketing are the only ways to reach more patients. Instead, you should think about what might be preventing certain portions of the market from reaching your services. For instance, for some the barrier is physical. Some people are not mobile or well enough to reach your practice. To that end, some practices are starting to expand their services to those who need them not only by visiting more patients. Many are using more time-effective telemarketing methods from services like Chiron Health. Not only can you improve your patient portfolio, but you could be providing your services to those who have in dire need but lacking this whole time.


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Finding new niches

You might also be able to get more business from existing and new patients alike by simply offering them something that you weren’t able to do so before. When starting a practice, it’s a smart move to ensure that you’re spending on the essentials, investing in the equipment that can supply you with a steady enough flow of work to keep the doors open and the lights on. However, there are ancillary treatments that require more specific equipment or training. If you’re in a position to grow the business, then it might be time to invest in changes to the business that could open you up to extra services such as allergy testing and treatment or urgent care without an appointment.

As the practice grows, you may want to think about branching out into another location. However, that is a significant cost, so for those who want to grow without going to such lengths, the three strategies above can be tremendously helpful.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Taxing: Simplifying Your Business Tasks

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Think of everything you have to do in your day as a business owner. Think of the mass of tasks and work you have to perform. Think of the systems you rely on.

When you stump it all together like that, running a business seems like hard work! And it is. There is no doubt about that whatsoever.

Now, technology moves at such a fast pace in the modern age. If you want your business to succeed, you’re going to have to build a good relationship with tech and understand exactly how it all works. You’re going to have to appreciate that your gadgets and computers are going to be outdated. You’re going to have to adapt to thrive and the future is now.

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Now, let’s return to the beginning. If you are adapting so your business can thrive, you’ve still got heaps of tasks to complete. It is now time to knit everything together and see how we can simplify your business tasks.

Let’s talk money first. Accounting software like Sage accounting online is going to save you a lot of headaches. Not only can you keep yourself in the know with your finances with some simple data entry, but it’s also going to be automated and can save you the hassle of replicating invoices and calculating your tax. What does this mean? Well, it means you can spend more time on your actual job than counting coins!

What more is there to know about money? Well, payment is crucial! Sites like Paypal can offer you a cloud-based payment solution that automatically exchanges payments into a currency of your choice – meaning you’re not the one heading to the exchange! This is an amazing solution whether or not you have a lot of overseas customers.

With accounting and currency exchange out of the way, there are already two heavy tasks dealt with. Now, it’s time to talk communication.

Basecamp is an amazing software package that can do it all for you. Basecamp’s Campfire organizes your internal communication and projects in a single dedicated place. The advantages of this are too often underestimated and having a single platform for multiple, yet linked, subject matter (like work) is a brilliant way to increase the productivity of your staff. The campfire app within Basecamp allows you to communicate instantly, like an old school instant messenger app, and in-real time and you can even link to work. This cuts a number of steps out the process and allows your workflow to be centralized with a single piece of software. There are no more messy and long email chains between staff members. Instead, Basecamp offers topic based message boards, instant chat tools, to-do-lists, staff check-ins and instant work reports. Not only can you simplify your staff’s communication process, but you can get everything moving forward in the same direction.

Communication, work flow, accounting and payment – four huge tasks have been broken down and simplified with technology – find out what else you can simplify and launch your business forwards.

4 Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business – Failure Point 4: Don’t Close Your Ears to Experts

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When I launched my second business, a publishing company called Sigma Communications, I was filled with passion but knew next to nothing about publishing a magazine. Without proven competence, I desperately needed guidance. Sure enough, I came to learn that the Chairman Emeritus of Time Warner, Dick Munro, was in the neighboring office. I could not imagine a better advisor for our startup publication and decided to introduce myself.

As I walked down the hall for our initial meeting, I wondered if someone of his stature would take the time to speak to an entrepreneur new to publishing. It turned out that Dick was more than willing to open up to me. He listened carefully as I told him about my idea for my magazine. But I was surprised when he cautioned me that publications usually take a long time to become profitable.

“You’ve got very lofty goals,” Dick said. “When we started Sports Illustrated, we didn’t make a profit for six years. Are you prepared to wait that long? Do you have enough funding to last six years, if necessary?”

I assured Dick that we would do whatever was needed to make our journal successful. In the back of my mind, I had a different thought: We had launched USI and turned a profit in four months. Why couldn’t we accomplish the same with Sigma? I was determined to beat the normal ramp-up to profitability in the publishing industry.

By the close of our discussion, Dick agreed to be our advisor. He immediately started reaching out to his network and introduced us to the publisher of Garden Design magazine. Garden Design‘s publisher was amazingly friendly and generous with his time and knowledge.

As he took us through the mechanics of starting a publication, he, too, explained that magazines take a long time to make money. First, we would need to build an audience. Then, we’d have to sell advertising space. He warned us that revenue from advertising would not start flowing immediately, and even then, it could be just a trickle for several years as we built our subscriber base.

Garden Design‘s publisher was straightforward and very honest. He shared that publishing a magazine was an ongoing challenge. Achieving profitability was a constant struggle with progress measured in years, not months. Because I was used to moving at breakneck speed and expecting immediate returns, I felt we could outperform the publishing industry norm. Rather than listening to my advisors, I allowed my passion for our magazine to distort my views about timing, funding, and reaching breakeven – a fatal mistake.

My unbridled enthusiasm for becoming a publisher, combined with my lack of distinctive competence, put blinders on me. I did not heed the advice of industry experts with superlative track records. Allowing my passion to overrun the common sense of listening to my advisors was Failure Point #4.

4 Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business

In this series we have shared four failure points that can undermine the efforts of even the most seasoned entrepreneurs. Why not learn from my mistakes?

  • Failure Point #1: Starting a business based on your passion, rather than building a business based on your distinctive competence.
  • Failure Point #2: Convincing yourself that “the world will beat a path to your doorstep” without securing preorders to prove your business model.
  • Failure Point #3: Taking the risk to launch a business without sufficient funding to reach breakeven.
  • Failure Point #4: Allowing your passion to overrun the common sense of listening to your advisors

About the Authors

Ed “Skip” McLaughlinEd “Skip” McLaughlin is the founder of four businesses and is currently running Blue Sunsets LLC, a real estate and angel investment firm. He bootstrapped his first business, United Systems Integrators (USI) Corporation, a corporate real estate outsourcing firm, and grew it into an Inc. 500 company. In 2001, Ed earned Entrepreneur of the Year honors from Ernst & Young. In 2005, he sold USI to Johnson Controls, a Fortune 100 company, and at that point, became CEO of JCI’s Global Workplace Business for the Americas. A member of the Board of Governors for Tufts Medical Center, Ed founded its David E. Wazer Breast Cancer Research Fund. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. Active in philanthropy, Ed lives with his wife in Connecticut and has three adult children. Contact Ed at [email protected] or connect with him on Twitter @purposeisprofit.

Wyn LydeckerWyn Lydecker is the founder of Upstart Business Planning, where she works with entrepreneurs to develop plans that answer the questions investors ask most often. Previously, she was Managing Director of Business Plans International in New York and Co-Director of the Small Business Resource Center at Norwalk Community College. Wyn has an MBA in finance and marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She serves on the board of a local nonprofit she helped found, At Home In Darien. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and has two adult children. Contact Wyn at [email protected] or connect with her on Twitter @upstartwyn.

4 Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business – Failure Point 3: The Dark Side of Bootstrapping

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When we launched my publishing business, Sigma Communications, I was so passionate about the magazine, and so confident that it would be a runaway success, that I decided to self-fund. After all, I had successfully bootstrapped my first business, USI. Why couldn’t we bootstrap Sigma, too? Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way that bootstrapping is not always best.

I came to realize that I did not properly factor the size and scale against the funding needs of Sigma. And I completely miscalculated the time it would take to reach breakeven. Sigma’s quarterly magazine, The National Register of Commercial Real Estate, consumed capital at a rate far greater than USI could generate it. Since I had never manufactured and shipped my own product before, I underestimated the continuous cash drain from ongoing production and distribution.

After almost three years of losing money, things started to become stressful. Our business model was not working as planned. Advertising revenues were slow to trickle in. While some major holders of real estate agreed to place listings, many did not. The deep recession in commercial real estate had forced corporations to freeze all marketing budgets. Many of the big real estate holders were not allowed to spend a dime on advertising, even though corporations were spending millions just to maintain their surplus real estate.

Selling display advertising to non-real estate advertisers also proved to be extremely challenging. As a new publication, we did not have an audited distribution to prove our circulation. While we planned to sell a full-page, four-color ad for $10,000, no advertisers would pay that rate. We were lucky to get $5,000 for a four-color ad and $2,500 for a black-and-white ad. When we approached big advertisers like Absolut Vodka, they said they would love to put an ad in our magazine, but they would not pay us anything for the placement because they felt their brand name gave our magazine credibility. We were forced to accept their terms.

With little advertising revenue flowing in, we had to rely on USI’s profits to fund most of Sigma’s cash needs. To make matters worse, we found ourselves spending 80 percent of our time on Sigma and only 20 percent on our cash cow, USI.

By its third year, Sigma was still burning cash. Quarterly advertising revenue was averaging $100,000 per issue, while expenses were running at $200,000 per issue (20,000 copies × $10 per copy = $200,000 in expenses). We were losing $100,000 per issue and could not forecast when we would break even. We started to hit a wall.

Generating a profit from a publication was a slow process. Sigma had begun to run an annual deficit of $400,000. We could not continue to bleed cash and rely on USI to fund the shortfall. USI needed money to fund its own growth. If we had planned properly, we would have raised enough financing to see us through the gestation period of a national publication.

Bootstrapping was not enough. We needed outside capital to reach breakeven – but my desire to maintain control and my ego stood in the way. Having insufficient funding was Failure Point #3.

About the Author

Ed “Skip” McLaughlinEd “Skip” McLaughlin is the founder of four businesses and is currently running Blue Sunsets LLC, a real estate and angel investment firm. He bootstrapped his first business, United Systems Integrators (USI) Corporation, a corporate real estate outsourcing firm, and grew it into an Inc. 500 company. In 2001, Ed earned Entrepreneur of the Year honors from Ernst & Young. In 2005, he sold USI to Johnson Controls, a Fortune 100 company, and at that point, became CEO of JCI’s Global Workplace Business for the Americas. A member of the Board of Governors for Tufts Medical Center, Ed founded its David E. Wazer Breast Cancer Research Fund. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. Active in philanthropy, Ed lives with his wife in Connecticut and has three adult children. Contact Ed at [email protected] or connect with him on Twitter @purposeisprofit.

Wyn LydeckerWyn Lydecker is the founder of Upstart Business Planning, where she works with entrepreneurs to develop plans that answer the questions investors ask most often. Previously, she was Managing Director of Business Plans International in New York and Co-Director of the Small Business Resource Center at Norwalk Community College. Wyn has an MBA in finance and marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She serves on the board of a local nonprofit she helped found, At Home In Darien. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and has two adult children. Contact Wyn at [email protected] or connect with her on Twitter @upstartwyn.

4 Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business – Failure Point 2: Concept Validation Is Not Enough

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At the time we launched my second business, Sigma Communications, and its flagship magazine, The National Register of Commercial Real Estate, the biggest issue facing chief financial officers and real estate executives was their surplus real estate. Capital was extremely scarce, and interest rates were extraordinarily high. The nation was awash in unsold and unleased commercial properties. Malls and office buildings sat empty, ushering in the term “see-thru buildings.”

These circumstances made the market ripe for our business idea – a central exchange for commercial real estate. We first tested our concept for The Commercial Property Exchange with a targeted group of real estate executives from Fortune 100 companies. We also made a point to engage insurance company executives because their companies had been the major underwriters of real estate development in the United States. We knew they were anxious to unload their holdings.

Since the Internet was still in its infancy, our business model called for selling classified print ads in the form of commercial real estate listings, traditional display ads, and subscriptions. For the first time, a buyer in San Francisco could easily learn about a building for sale in New York without engaging a broker. Corporations with headquarters in Atlanta could discover properties on the market in Denver without flying to the local market.

Don’t Confuse Concept Validation with Preorders

Virtually all of the real estate executives we interviewed said they could use a central exchange for surplus real estate. One executive was particularly enthusiastic. “We need a vehicle to let buyers know what we have.” With encouragement like that, we were convinced that Sigma was going to become a quick hit because it so clearly filled a need to make the market more efficient.

With validation of our concept, I made the fateful decision to launch the magazine without first testing our business model by securing preorders. With the huge number of commercial properties available, we figured we’d be raking in the advertising dollars very quickly. As it turned out, this assumption was dead wrong. Even a market flooded with surplus property needed time to adjust to a new way of doing business.

In the end analysis, I took a huge gamble on a concept business with an untested business model. As a result, we lost the opportunity to establish a paying customer base and generate an early revenue stream. This oversight cost us precious time and made our path to profitability that much more challenging.

Looking back, I realize that our neglect to prove our business model by lining up preorders for listings prior to launch was Failure Point #2.

About the Author

Ed “Skip” McLaughlinEd “Skip” McLaughlin is the founder of four businesses and is currently running Blue Sunsets LLC, a real estate and angel investment firm. He bootstrapped his first business, United Systems Integrators (USI) Corporation, a corporate real estate outsourcing firm, and grew it into an Inc. 500 company. In 2001, Ed earned Entrepreneur of the Year honors from Ernst & Young. In 2005, he sold USI to Johnson Controls, a Fortune 100 company, and at that point, became CEO of JCI’s Global Workplace Business for the Americas. A member of the Board of Governors for Tufts Medical Center, Ed founded its David E. Wazer Breast Cancer Research Fund. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. Active in philanthropy, Ed lives with his wife in Connecticut and has three adult children. Contact Ed at [email protected] or connect with him on Twitter @purposeisprofit.

Wyn LydeckerWyn Lydecker is the founder of Upstart Business Planning, where she works with entrepreneurs to develop plans that answer the questions investors ask most often. Previously, she was Managing Director of Business Plans International in New York and Co-Director of the Small Business Resource Center at Norwalk Community College. Wyn has an MBA in finance and marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She serves on the board of a local nonprofit she helped found, At Home In Darien. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and has two adult children. Contact Wyn at [email protected] or connect with her on Twitter @upstartwyn.