"Financially treat your medical practice no differently
than you do raising your son or daughter... to grow
with a predictable determination, accomplished
only by your fatherly/motherly type decisions,
training, guidance, and teaching."
You don’t have to be a board certified financial genius to understand that anyone who can’t manage their financial affairs can’t determine their destiny in life.
Physicians who spend 40 years managing their private medical practice business without any academic medical practice business knowledge or training are not capable of, or in a position to, determine their own professional medical practice destiny, they remain recipients of what their medical environment happens to offer them.
Sure, they do OK but not fantastic. They become good physicians but not the most valuable doctors. They find refuge while floating along on their mediocre medical practice when they absolutely could do unbelievably better financially. Businesspeople always do better because they use the business and marketing tools to ensure their business success. If they don’t, then they usually all need financial help in retirement.
And, in a sense, it’s probably a good thing that physicians never learn how to recognize how much they could have accomplished in their medical practice, how much income they could have made, and how many fantastic opportunities passed them by over all those struggling years.
It’s likely the reason most aged doctors don’t have much hair left after learning the real financial truth. My problem was that I learned the truth too late in my life and career to do much about it.
So I ask you, why is it that almost all physicians come to believe that they can become just as successful, earn just as much income, and accomplish just as much in medical practice as other business people do in their businesses without the benefit of any academic business education?
However, there are a number of beneficial means for overcoming the business education deficiency during each season of your medical life and career in medicine. Along with that are some basic medical career patterns and principles that evolve over time.
Foundationally, every person that is able to create and maintain any business successfully must learn what business knowledge and education can do for them in their business… something almost all medical doctors don’t have a clue about.
Because physicians commonly don't have a business education...
- They are unable to recognize that their medical practice business is failing, in time to take
measures to prevent it. When they do recognize it, then they have no knowledge
about how to fix the problem permanently. - With no significant business knowledge physicians have no way of telling how they
are doing in their medical practice… because they don’t know how to measure that aspect
of their practice and seldom rely on anything other than the bottom line on their monthly
practice financial statements, which most don’t understand anyway. - Since physicians have little or no business education, they are never able to understand
their need for business education. So they rarely see the value of getting an academic
business education. - Business knowledge and education only becomes important to those who have been
thoroughly introduced to what business education can do for them. You have to first
see what can be done, how to do it, and what the great benefits are before they are
motivated and inspired to obtain a business education. - The most consequential result of the lack of strong business education is that physicians
are unable to either accept or to make the connection between the amount of income
they draw from their medical practice and how it equates directly and proportionally
with their personal competence as a physician.
It’s necessary to elaborate more on the last issue in the list because of it being the major transitional mode of thinking and the driving force that pulls a physician out of their comfort zone long enough to experience the excitement about finding themselves in a wide-open world of opportunities and advantages that they are unable to experience otherwise.
Elaborate financial parenting of your medical practice from the very start opens a new world of possibilities for you beyond what your imagination previously could ever have conceived for you. And it all begins with business knowledge.
What it does for you is nothing short of miraculous. The self-sustaining loop of medical practice growth created by the use of the principles of business success creates the income necessary to enable you to…
- Maximize your medical competency
- Maximize your medical skills and talents
- Become a doctor much more valuable to your patients
- Extend your medical potential higher than you ever believed possible
- Reach all of your medical profession objectives
- Meet every financial obligation you have to family and yourself for the rest of your life
Face facts... As you stand today in your own medical practice while having no academic business knowledge nor tools to fuel the process, you will eventually recognize that you will never reach the top limits of any of the accomplishments listed above.
How do you apply the concept of parenting to magnify your own medical practice financial circumstances?
Your objectives on the business side of your medical practice are to earn enough income to do all of the things mentioned above. Also included and expected from your medical career is the comfort, fulfillment, and enjoyment of diagnosing and treating your medical patients.
Even if the latter issue has always been your primary motivation, it will never work out for you if you are living in “professional poverty.”
Your medical practice is the same as your own child. It needs close attention and needs to be taught to do the right things at the right time. Your practice is brainless from the start and you need to educate it well enough to survive in the business world of competition.
It needs pampering, commitment, and coaching. It doesn’t happen rapidly but happens only with perseverance, planning, and goal setting.
Take a moment to remember that you can earn a lot of money practicing medicine but the only way you will be able to keep it is by applying attention and direction to the business side of medical practice. And the only way to do that is by having a business education by the time you start your private medical practice.
What physicians can do to learn these business and marketing tools while continuing to practice...
1. Spend an hour or two each day learning business and marketing from the experts by reading their how-to books...
- “No B.S. Ruthless Management of People & Profits” by Dan S. Kennedy.
- “No B.S. Business Success In The New Economy” by Dan S. Kennedy.
- “The Ultimate Marketing Plan” by Dan S. Kennedy
- “No B.S. Direct Marketing” by Dan S. Kennedy
- “No B.S. Trust-Based Marketing” by Dan S. Kennedy
These easy-to-read and understand books will give you a deep taste of several aspects of business that are especially appropriate to physicians.
2. Spent your first intrusion into the world of business by choosing to start off softly by viewing the books which offer some fundamental reasons that business education will always be an advantage, even if you quit medicine...
- “The E-Myth Physician” by Michael E. Gerber.
- “Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got” by Jay Abraham.
- “The New Psycho-Cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz, MD, FICS
- “The 12 Factors of Business Success” by Kevin Hogan, Dave Lakhani, Mollie Marti.
- “101 Ways to Promote Yourself” by Raleigh Pinskey.
- “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.
3. For physicians who want to use self-improvement to attract new patients without having to learn business strategies and principles...
- “Top Performance” by Zig Ziglar.
- “How to Be a Great Communicator” by Nido R. Qubein.
- “Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD.
- “Triggers” by Joseph Sugarman.
- “The Laws of Charisma” by Kurt W. Mortensen.
4. For physicians who prefer to attract patients by word of mouth...
- “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” by Al Ries and Jack Trout.
- “The New Positioning” by Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin.
- “To Be or Not To Be Intimidated” by Robert Ringer.
- “Start Your Own Information Marketing Business” by Robert Skrob.
- “Get Anyone to Do Anything” by David J. Lieberman, PhD.
5. For physicians bent on getting down to the nitty-gritty...
- “The Medical Entrepreneur” by Steven M. Hacker, MD.
- “Start Your Own Medical Practice” by Marlene M. Coleman, MD and Judge William Huss.
- “The Ultimate Sales Machine” by Chet Holmes.
- “The ADWEEK Copywriting Handbook” by Joseph Sugarman.
- “Hire Your First Employee” by Rhonda Abrams.
- “Uncensored Sales Strategies” by Sydney Biddle Barrows with Dan Kennedy.
6. Everyone would be wise to subscribe to several business and marketing newsletters written by business experts...
- Bob Bly has a practical and frequent business and marketing newsletter.
He’s an expert copywriter as well.
- Medical Economics has good financial advice and info. (online)
- Physicians Practice magazine is excellent and is online
Go online and search out the ones that interest you.
Please be aware: It’s dangerous to learn too much about business and marketing because it becomes addicting and might result in your earning much more money and faster than you can tolerate. But, your spouse will love you anyway.
----Professional Probe----
"When physicians love their medical practice like this,
miracles happen and income rises"
Be aware that crowd-funding is not the most appropriate way for physicians to go about medical practice business and financial management... mainly because in the end you will take a licking.
If this future physician is lucky enough to have parents who are willing to teach him or her how to work with money starting about four years of age, and help him or her start their own business as a teenager, then his or her future in medicine will be a testimonial to what I teach you, and what you will come to advise other physicians who are struggling financially.
Are you listening?
You don't need an MBA... but you have to learn from business experts, like Dan S. Kennedy, and NOT the college professors who have never built, owned, or managed any business in their lives.
Start by "Goggling" keywords like "medical practice business," "medical practice management", "practice marketing," medical practice marketing," "marketing for physicians," "physician marketing," "marketing for doctors," "medical practice business planning" healthcare business management," "medical practice business management."
Tip = put quotes around the keyword phrase and then you get all sites that contain exactly those words in exactly that order in the websites listed on Google. It eliminates the rubbish sites containing the same scattered words with different meanings that won't help you at all.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #56, 3-16-22
