In this episode of Telemedicine Talks, hosts Phoebe Gutierrez and Dr. Leo Damasco interviews Sharmeen Aqeel, on simplifying financing for independent healthcare practices. They cover breaking down P&L statements, tracking patient metrics, and choosing between banks and private lenders for fast capital. Discover tips on simplifying finances, avoiding common pitfalls, and securing loans efficiently to grow your practice.
What if securing capital for your healthcare practice didn't mean drowning in paperwork or facing endless rejections?
In this engaging kickoff to 2026, hosts Phoebe Gutierrez and Dr. Leo Damasco chat with Sharmeen Aqeel, about demystifying finances for independent healthcare providers. From breaking down P&L statements into simple cash inflows and outflows to navigating options like big banks versus private lenders, they explore how to track key metrics like patient statistics and fixed costs without needing an accountant. Sharmeen shares real-world examples of clinics overcoming funding hurdles for marketing, equipment, and growth, emphasizing the role of revenue-based funding and quick capital. Drawing from her design background and fintech expertise, she highlights Lyyvora's AI-driven platform that matches borrowers with multiple lenders for the best offers, plus tools for assessing readiness and improving financial health. Phoebe and Leo add insights from their experiences in telehealth and startups, discussing bottlenecks like cash flow for marketing and scaling tech.
If you're a physician, clinician, or entrepreneur building a practice in telemedicine or beyond, this episode provides practical advice on raising capital, avoiding high-interest traps, and pursuing your business dreams with confidence.
Three Actionable Takeaways:
About the Show:
Telemedicine Talks explores the evolving world of digital health, helping physicians navigate new opportunities, regulatory challenges, and career transitions in telemedicine.
About the Guest:
Sharmeen Aqeel is the founder and CEO of Lyyvora, a fintech platform simplifying capital access for independent healthcare practices via AI-matched loans from private lenders (8-15% rates). With a design background in UX and product leadership, she focuses on human-centered solutions, demystifying finances like P&L statements and patient metrics. Her Advice: Take risks, persist through rejections.
LinkedIn: Sharmeen Aqeel
Website: https://lyyvora.com
About the Hosts:
[00:00:00] Hey, welcome back everybody to telemedicine Talks. Happy 2026. This is our first, episode of the New Year where we have somebody joining us and, yeah, this is a great one. I'm excited to talk about this. We have Sharmeen Aqeel, she's the founder and CEO of Lalo, and it's a FinTech company that Reimagines how independent healthcare practices access capital .
I think, again, this is a good topic 'cause a lot of us here are looking into. How we start our own businesses and not a lot of us are that business savvy in how to access money. and just furthermore, Vora builds financial solutions that respects your time and operational focus and enables you, the healthcare leaders to secure funding without being buried in all the paperwork that we all love, right?
We're already stuck with documenting and, EHRs, so forth and so on, and really. again, a lot of us don't know the money side, don't know the business side. So I'd love to delve into, what [00:01:00] your solution is and really how your approach to that. And please educate us on, the business aspect.
So Charlene, thank you for joining us. totally appreciate you taking your time. Thank you so much Leo, and thank you for the wonderful introduction. I'm so excited to speak about, those financial challenges and I have some experience now with working with the clinics and I can tell you that in terms of work, I don't think that solving financial problem is the best thing doctors wants to do in their day or during their day.
Yeah. I don't know, I don't know about the other docs here or providers here, but I think I skipped out on that class during medical school. 'cause I have zero clue on how to do it. I skipped out on a lot of classes in medical school. Don't tell anybody, but yes. No. So this is definitely needed info on our end.
Now, before we delve into that, I warned you before a time, but the one question we always ask the guests is. Or one of the two is,doing what you're doing now, is this what you always wanted to do growing up or did you have [00:02:00] another plan for yourself? I had, you know what,I always remember this phrase of, Steve Job is that your life is a breadcrumbs you are going through your past experiences making your way to the future.
And, to answer simply at your question, no. Who would imagine, going in our financial, but one thing is, sure, there, there's one small thing which is the, value and, the direction where I'm going as a company and as a person is human centered design. So this is something I would say directly related to what I wanted to do when I was a teenager.
And that what I'm doing now. giving you a little bit of my bio, I started, my education as a designer. I love design, but soon I wanted to make a design more useful for people. And after, once I've done my graduation, I started working as a user experience designer, which evolved towards product designers, evolved towards, product leadership team.
So I was leading teams for last seven years, and [00:03:00] then I started. looking at small problems and I feel like I'm too qualified to solve small problem and. Switch to solve a bigger problem, which is this gap of,banks and land risk, which are extremely,financial focus, to make a bridge with the healthcare who do need capital, who need to run their clinic and do need under financial understanding.
Also money through the loans. So how can I make things easier for both parties to landers who can get qualified borrowers, and to the borrowers who will get approved as quickly as possible whenever they apply for loans. And so this is where I started solving the bigger problem, just through the life that I have been leading so far.
No, that's amazing. yeah, a lot of the CEOs we talked about,it's funny, started out design right. started out, Hey, we have a problem. And, trying to fix that, whether it's handbag design or any other design, yeah,[00:04:00] it's a recurring theme. No, but no. Thank you for taking your time now.
getting finances, getting money, not, a lot of the providers here, the doctors here,a lot of their experience has been, just strict clinical work, right? They've always been employed, they've always been in some system and, they've never necessarily had to think about finding money or raising capital, so forth and so on.
and it. in your experience now that you've been doing this, especially working in the healthcare world, what do you have good tips and tricks on how to do that? Also, multiple part question is, what don't we know? What do the providers, the people that are establishing this, especially with our background, what do we need to know to start?
that's the core of the. Business that I'm doing is to helping healthcare practitioners understand where they are today and where they are going. and in terms of [00:05:00] understanding, I would say that I'm not a finance person, I was a designer. But when I started looking at this problem, I started, deconstructing all the complexities in this finance world.
And, after so many months, working with the clinics, I found that we made. Things extremely complicated, which they are not. We are using some jargon to make a p and l statement. And as you said, if someone had been employed the whole time, they don't know what is VPNL statement?
the PL statement. if I say in the simple words is that how many, cash is coming in at the end of the day? the P-L-P-L-L statement, which looks extremely complicated in reality, is nothing but money coming.
And at the end of the day, you are looking that either you are losing. Or you are in the profit. So those simple things can be, and uh, could be understood in an easy way, but we make those statements, spreadsheets, and this entry, that entry in cash inflows, cash [00:06:00] outflows. So what I want to say here is that, one of the first thing that we are doing is we are helping healthcare practitioners to understand their numbers and to say that if they need to track a few things, what would be those few things without their accountant.
Yeah, no, providers are notoriously known to make things way more complicated than it really is. and to try to sound smart and try to, show people that, hey, I understand, but sometimes they make it too complicated. So what common, other than making too complicated and doing that, what's the best way to do it?
What's the best way to approach it? And, what are. Other mistakes that you've seen that, that you've had to reverse and help these healthcare practitioners backed out of and kind of straighten away? Yeah. So I would say the number one thing that Healthcare practitioner, looking at, especially when they're in the growth phase, is, their statistics, according to the patient, the patient is their lifeline of,or any [00:07:00] healthcare business.
So if they're looking at a patient, for example, if it's a dental clinic, the per patient cost is higher than what the patient is paying, you are going towards the loss. looking it from the, patient's, Perspective, it makes things easier and also makes your calculations easier than you expect.
The more patients you have, the more,per machine or per someone that you have hired. For example, one hygienist, how many patients she can handle if, her schedule is not fully booked. If you, she has only 20% book, it means that the hygienist might be too expensive her to hire, so maybe she should Have a contractor. So those kind of statistic, starting from the patient really gives them a good lens of how their business is doing. I want to add one more thing in here, is that we have this,that I, there is this term of cash inflows and cash outflows. So again, people are using the [00:08:00] extreme jargons in reality is that.
What are your fixed costs and what are your, occasional costs? So if you see that, for example, one,clinic, they have to pay the rent, they have to pay the, loan for their equipment, et cetera. Those are ev all those things which are going every month. So understanding that what are the fixed costs and what are going to be the variables is also helps them to understand what's going on.
Even though if you have lower months, because healthcare is also all about seasonalities. December was a great month for, so many,healthcare areas like dentist. The insurance was about to be done, so everyone was getting their treatments done whilst, January is going to be a slower month. Yeah.
in this seasonality, you cannot. Change your fixed costs. understanding what are the fixed costs and how you are going to manage it in slower months. Also give you a good understanding of where the clinic is going and if you want to grow the clinic, how you'll be controlling [00:09:00] this, a graph of multiple months together.
Yeah, no,that's good info. You're right. And now looking at Vora, right? I think one of your big focus is. Finding the money. Finding how are we gonna find the money to pay for all this? Not a lot of our providers could go out and, bootstrap and bankroll themselves.
can you speak about the different options that, these healthcare practices have to help finance themselves and, and how lavo and how you could help them do that? Yeah, so that's another interesting angle for a growth of a clinic. Nobody can be bootstrapped maybe initially, but not after six months.
When, six months when you see that you need some more, you cannot cover your working capital or you need to pay for the payroll, then you do need finances. So there's, there are two things. One is, in this finance world, big banks, which can give you the [00:10:00] best interest, on this time. But the problem is the process is slower and you don't know if you will be approved or not because there are more towards risk servers.
On the other hand, we have private lenders, compared to the banks, their interest rate will be slightly higher. I would say slightly. Not always like double or triple. It's slightly higher, they can provide fast capital and they are not as risk averse as the bank. So you are standing in, in this way and you need to see that what is the best option for you today.
So in elaborating on this example. I would say that if someone needs to go towards acquiring,an existing business, so I would say the first thing they should do, and if this, person has four to six months to understand that this is the business they should be buying or a acquiring, then I would say first option should be the bank because they can think about it.
Bank will give the best interest rate, et cetera. If it's a [00:11:00] running business for six months, they need to hire a new equipment, for example, a MedSpa. they need to, start laser treatment for their patients. They need a fast capital because they might already have bookings, but their, the capacity of current laser machine is not enough, so they need to add more machines.
In that case, bank is extremely slow. if you calculate the interest rate, how much higher it's going to be compared to the banks, it'll be marginal because losing, patient treatments is going to cost more than the interest rate. So I would say, go always towards fast. alternate lenders and voa, this is what we solicitate.
Wherever the, someone is looking for a loan, which is not a higher, amount, and they need it fast, we help them out. And, the, there's also another thing which we called term loans, revenue-based funding. Those are also things that banks are running behind and to assess what [00:12:00] is the right,term for the clinics who are looking for alternate lenders.
They are more flexible. They are more in the list. Thing more. And also they're more competitive. They want to beat the other lender. So what VOA we do is that instead of matching with one lender, we match your application with multiple providers so you get the best offer. So I would say that yes, you have different scenarios where in sometimes bank is going to be a favorable option, but there are scenarios where bank is not an option.
if you want to grow,you have to go towards other areas, and I recommend them to explore what options they have now in, in the telehealth space. I see, especially in the growth phase. Stevie, what are things that probably that you've seen in your experience, especially when you were building kind of your, startups, what were the bottlenecks in terms of, cash flow and, examples of, Hey, we needed cash.
It was hard to [00:13:00] find, we needed this for this. do you have any good examples of that? When in, when you were building your. Yeah, no, and I think it really depends, like it, to me, from my experience in working with different clients, I think it really depends on their model. So for me, anybody who's doing anything brick and mortar, of course you're gonna have a higher overhead.
And I've seen, like to your point, like they, they did, they needed investors, they needed partners, they needed something because they didn't have, $200,000 to come out of pocket. On the flip side, I think one of the things that, that my clients underestimate. Is the need for cashflow when it comes to just marketing?
Yeah, so it's the idea of it takes money to make money. And I know like for me as somebody who's like, I don't do ads, I don't do any of that. I have a, great referral network. But in such a competitive market, it is, you have to go that route. And so I think some of it to me is, when I talk to clients, especially in the telemedicine side, the majority of it goes towards.
staffing to make sure that they have the right [00:14:00] people. from a private practice, perspective that's a little, less needed. And then on the flip side, like the marketing spend of you gotta invest to go to conferences. you need some sort of capital to be able to set you up and get you so you can focus.
I think the big thing for me is, when you think about the investments, you wanna make sure that you have enough. time and cash flow so that you can actually focus on your business versus, having to split time still working. W2, you know that whole thing. And also too engineering as well.
I think, what I've seen too, oh yeah. with the business that I worked with too, as the patient base grows and as they're scaling, the kind of the tech platform that's built out or the solutions that were built out can't handle the increased flow or the increase, the change in workflow and there's a scramble.
And I think, I think Charlene to, to your point. people are gonna need fast capital , right? Because a lot of these changes, [00:15:00] marketing, engineering, I think a lot of 'em are done in retrospect, right? ideally you wanna do things prospectively, right? But then. I've seen a lot of instances where, problems arise and they need to throw money at it to fix the problems.
And how long does a bank take usually to, if they're like, oh, this is a good idea to, to get the money from the banks versus, the private lenders. Can you comment on that? this is where again, private lenders plays a big role. frankly speaking. according to what I have learned so far is that bank, they have a very high cost of underwriting.
So they are looking for bigger loan types, and those bigger loans sometimes don't fit on the marketing expenses or, some other kind of, engineering expenses. they're more looking for the private acquisition and then, or you are adding a new room. you have hundreds of thousands of, capital that you need.
And the bank will love you, but when you need a couple of thousands of dollars, like [00:16:00] 50 K, 70 k. To boost your, marketing area. This is where the private lenders, they come in and, one other thing that I love about the partners that I'm working on is that they're more looking at your vision, the story you are going, giving you a recent, client that I was working with, she had a dental clinic, and she was extremely nice.
She thought that she's gonna open the clinic and the clients will come well known. She has to invest in Google ads. She has to do this right. And that, that those were the costs she underestimated when she applied for a bank loan. She got the bank loan. now she has an established service, but she has to pump continuous money towards marketing and, towards other areas.
And this is where, the private lenders come to fill the gap so that those areas will not stop, any clinic to grow. Yeah, that's a good point, right? 'cause the bank is not gonna underwrite that, right? What are you gonna give the bank? A promise of marketing. A promise of good engineering, right?
I don't know. I don't know. I don't see the banks [00:17:00] really necessarily being like, oh, what a great idea. Yeah, I'll definitely give you money for that promise. And, no, that's a good example. Now, in, in that scenario, how hard was it for your client to find somebody to finance and, in terms of being successful in that process.
how have you found your clients to be successful in selling kind of their business? any tips or tricks to, on how to sell your business when you're looking for money, when you're trying to approach these private lenders? Yeah. there are three things I would say that if they have it, then they have a, 80% chance of success, even though they cannot explain how they're going to spend their money in marketing.
So number one thing is, what are your revenues? Private lenders, they're looking at how much money coming in your bank. they're looking at your,bank statement, which is the second point is how much you're spending versus how much is coming. And for those things, you don't need accountant.
All you need is to connect your bank with the portal, and [00:18:00] then all the information is going to be securely provided. These two things are not only easy to have, but it gives the health of the business that this business is growing. The person who's doing it knows how to handle, everything altogether.
So those give you a snapshot of who you are and where you are going. the third thing is number of months and number of errors in the business. This is something extremely underestimated. As, it's not a finance thing, but the private lenders, they need to build a confidence that if you will be able to give them back the amount that you have asked for.
And if they see that you have been running this practice for some time, you have, because consistent revenues, your bank statement gives you a better picture. Then they can go and ask for money. They don't have to create an extensive business plan just for marketing. I believe that if you need to acquire a new business, yes, you need to go through to many [00:19:00] areas.
But for small, capitals, for example, for the payroll, you have a tight cash for next two months. it is gonna pick up after two months you will get the money back, but for these two months you need some quick cash. With those three things, private lenders will provide the capital.
So again, this is what I was saying at the beginning, that clinics think that finance world is extremely complicated. But if there are few basics that they can understand and they can start discussing With all this, revenues, bank statement number, a number of months or areas in business, they have a higher chance to get funding if they don't have these three.
Now, what if the startup is in their growth phase? It takes what? Just to break even if you're lucky, six months, two years, 18 months to, up to two years to break even, and two to three years to turn profit. How are you gonna convince these private lenders to be like, Hey,I'm good.
especially if you're, expectedly like bleeding money, especially in the startup time. That, [00:20:00] and that's a time where you really need the money. as a healthcare providers starting up your business,what's the best way to do that? and set yourself up.
That is a very interesting question. And as you said, they also know that any business needs, at least one and a half year to two years to become profitable. And so you don't even need to explain it, but what they are looking for is that, do you have a clientele or not? This is going to be the backbone of your argument.
If you have business for six months and you have five clients so far. You might going to have a hard time to get loan, but you, if you see that yes, you have a higher cost, but you are doubling your clientele every two months, then it shows that you are in the right direction. yes. One more thing that people underestimate.
It's also, again, not a financial thing, but how much your calendar is full. How much bookings you are going to have in next six months. And in many practices. Especially [00:21:00] in,in the dentistry, people do booking in four months that, okay, the new checkup there is one more client who's going to be returned in next four months.
So those are the things which give the projection to any lender and enough confidence that this clinic will provide, the money back that they're, lending them. Oh, that's a good point because, Yeah, it's, in my mind, it's gonna be hard to strictly buy, your money numbers alone in the startup phase to convince people to, yeah, to stay.
it's actually pretty interesting. So I'm bootstrapped, I've been bootstrapped since day one. I'm in a different industry, so I've zero overhead. so it's very different. But I think the interesting thing about it is that. they request a p and l.
they really just wanna see, 'cause I did actually end up going and seeking a line of credit and,they just wanna make sure that you have clients coming in and that your idea has been validated enough to where you have potential people that you can sell to. I was able to again, pretty [00:22:00] simply get approved.
I do have one question though. 'cause one of the things that was a shocker for me was like the interest rate of some of these business loans. Can you talk to us a little bit about what are some of those expectations that people could see and that are normal versus some that are not?
So I'll be like, I got a business line of credit through like my normal bank. it was like 40% interest. So I've never used it because I'm like, oh my God, it's a good question actually. What in the world? but to me, I think that was something that shocked me a little bit for, from somebody who's not, in that space so much.
that kind of took me off guard or caught me off guard. Yeah. You know what, this is also the scariest point of going towards private lending is we don't have an idea and a normal person who has never asked for a loan, they don't know what kind of a loan, interest they will receive.
But I would say today the numbers is between 8% to 15%. they're always better than the credit card loans. one thing I would say, even though my [00:23:00] lenders are fast and they can't unlock funding within a week, credit card is even faster. But the problem with the credit card is that they is just, rate is extremely high, and I would say there's also the gap of education.
They don't know that between big banks. The lower interest and the highest interest rate of the credit card there is something which is in the middle. And this is where these private lenders are sitting. one thing that I learned that, in terms of is whenever someone is looking for loan, the first thing they do is to go to their own bank and search in the search bar of the bank what loans exist instead of going outside and asking.
this is funny. if we get rejected or we. Our, thinking that maybe bank is the only option we have. We get depressed, we had it. Okay, nothing else. And then maybe credit card. But there is this middle world which might not be as good as bank, but it's still something that you can afford and you can get [00:24:00] help to get, grow and follow up.
Question to that. That's a great point is yeah, what do you look for? What's a good like. Private lending bank or loan terms, Phoebe, thank God you didn't use a 40%. but yeah. So what, knowing, trying to educate, you know what people don't know, what should they look out for?
what are the red flags? You're like, oh, this is a sucky loan, versus, Hey, this is something that I could actually work with. I would say the first thing they should do is to compare,you, you get to one option and you think that's it. I would say that, this is where also I'm filling the gap with the, with Vora is that, with one application, you can get three to four options and you can see which option is best for you.
Comparison is the only way that you will see that if who is the best provider. And I would say that there is, on one hand there is interest rate. And the second is that what kind of loan you are looking for. There is something new that I learned, in this business is revenue based [00:25:00] funding and revenue based funding, even though the interest rate might not be as lower as, a term loan.
But the revenue is, money is always attached to how much, revenues you have in, in one month. So I'll give you an example. if you had a good month, you got, 40 K in a month. Your interest rate is going to be 10% and you will be able to reimburse. Is, as, like then you expected, but if there's a slower month and you got 15 k, you still 10% of your revenues.
the revenue based funding goes up and down with your revenues. So yes, looking at interest rate and comparing is one thing, but on the other thing is also what kind of loan, term is best suited for your business. No, that's a good point. I'm actually trying to read up on that right now. in terms of shopping around for loans, then, what's your recommendations on how to shop?
How many lenders should you approach? what kind of questions should [00:26:00] you ask? in terms of, the different kind of loans you've talked about, one of them, is there a certain, what verbiage do you go in there? how do you sound smart when shopping for a loan?
it's hard to say that, how to sound smart. Your numbers speaking who you are. Yeah. So again, if you have these three things handy that you are a growing business, maybe not profitable today, maybe not next year, but you are growing and your clientele shows it.
and second is yes, you have. Money coming in your bank. So you, the lenders, they started being attracted to you only with those information because lenders and they also have a lot of money and they want to give loans. you want to, I would say, when I started Vora, I thought that it's going to be extremely hard to create the networks of lenders and, as well as the, borrowers.
But I was shocked that lenders, when they came to know that I'm building a platform where. Qualified borrowers will come and, ask for loan. They said, do you want to be your partner? Like it was, I [00:27:00] cannot say how much, how easy it was for me. long story short, if you are looking for a loan, your number of years of business or months of business, your revenue statement and just telling them that how much clients you are getting more and more every month is more than enough to attract lenders and give you the best offer.
and so approaching your platform, as an example, and you'd say no if you don't wanna say it, but like, when you go, you, somebody says, Hey, can you find me a loan? What's, how many people do you approach? Is it just the entire network or do you pick and choose?
Does certain lenders look for certain things, You know it, why use Vora, right? Versus trying to do this on your own. the answer's probably very obvious. doing it on your own is very time intensive, so forth and so on. You probably don't have the network or no, but, yeah.
So yeah, what are the pluses to do that? So the number one thing is, each, lender is different. they all give me their credit boxes. So what I mean from credit box [00:28:00] is, some lenders, they want, business from six months. Some they say that no, we want, 12 months. Some of them, they are, they're capping, with certain amount,a hundred K.
They cannot give a loan more than a hundred K. Some of them, they are up to two, 2 million, and they, the one who has 2 million, they are not interested in a hundred k. So looking at the amount they're asking, the, the number of errors in the business. Voa, we have this platform that, I call it a borrower portal.
Whenever someone apply for, for a loan, we match their information with the lenders and the AI software. it does the work because it has all the information of the different lenders and it, we can choose the lenders which will be attracted to this kind of business. So this is where I see a gap of technology in finance and the healthcare business.
I, personally, being a product designers, I knew how to create this workflow, but I was so shocked that it was not a rocket science to understand, different lenders, create boxes and create one [00:29:00] platform where we will be able to match. I believe in next few years, thanks to all the development in the ai, it's going to be more and more, democratic everyone will have access to this kind of platform where they can, apply once and get multiple offers.
And so this coming back to your point. yes, you can shop it by yourself. It's going to be time consuming, and also you might not know, that if, this is the right lender for you. And lastly, I would say that I have this trust with my lenders and I provide them only qualified borrow. so going through website like Vora, it just filters who will qualify and who will not qualify.
And one thing that we do also is if some, if a clinic is not call is not qualified today, I provide them. The financial templates and a little bit more interesting areas where they can exactly improve. So we have developed this borrower readiness portal, which give them [00:30:00] a scoring that, okay, you have, you are this much month in business, you have this much, profit per patient, and where you are standing, if your score is low, we'll tell you exactly at what area you need to be to improve and if your score is high.
You ready to go, just apply. And you get funding. So this is where we are developing, an ecosystem where we can help a clinic wherever stage they are. Yeah, no, that's reassuring because yeah, I know a lot of people out there, especially starting their instance, right? They don't have the time to do this.
This is super time consuming. And again, as much as doctors think we know everything we just don't know where to start. Sometimes, most of the times we don't know, where to go and yeah,it's reassuring to hear that there's somebody doing it for us and knows how to do it.
And plus it sounds like too, the lenders trust the process and I know there's no real success rate, but it sounds like it, it'd probably be more successful going through a known process like this versus, [00:31:00] going it out on your own. And also, as I started in the beginning, healthcare especially, they don't know how the finance world works.
And so during my initial interviews, I found many back and forth with the bank managers. They have half of the document and they go back and then get more different and then, and most of the applications, they are extremely standard. So they don't even understand that what kind of business, they're in.
that this is where we are targeting as a company, that how we will be able to understand our business good enough that we will provide them, the best lenders who will work with them. Actually, that's a good point. in your experience, do you have the top three examples of.
When healthcare providers approach you, you're like, oh man, this it, this is a problem again. what is the top three recurring things that you see when the healthcare providers approach you and you're like, oh, yep, here it is.
Yeah. I would say the number one thing is the p and [00:32:00] l statement. a recent example is I was speaking to a clinic and she got rejected with her own bank. she's already three years in business. she hired two more people in her c clinic and she started taking her own salary that she was not taking before.
And the bank Rejected her is because she got $1,700 of loss. In our PL statement. She has all the signs that how much growing is the business and, and $1,700 is nothing to, to a growing business, but the bank just rejected.
Yeah. And so this is the one struggle I see is that sometimes the, providers, they are extremely, focused on the spreadsheets and not Okay. Let's see what's happening. There's this human connection that is sometime missing as to understand what's your vision, where you are going. And coming back to the point of the marketing, if you are spending a lot of money marketing, it'll not give you results in next month.
It will give you the results in next six months. So this is the [00:33:00] time that you have to wait. So I would say if the most common is the, PL statement, which looks bad on the paper, but in reality there are few things we started working, which go into the good direction, but the p and l doesn't look good.
And, my private lenders, this is not something that they ask for the first time. they again ask for these three things and they deprioritize, PL statement. They ask it if really they need it. No, that's interesting. no, that's a good tip too, because I could see how that's a problem.
People get really excited, and just don't know, and it seems pretty harmless, But, yeah, I could see how that could hurt them. I think too, I mean it's, you have to understand like this is all like business stuff, right? how many physicians, and I know there are a lot of physicians, there are a lot of clinicians who have MBAs and have, taken that route, but you don't really learn these things, right?
So like in my experience working in health tech, like I got to understand what it meant to be do a p and l, right? Like I understood what that was. I understood the difference between, [00:34:00] profit and revenue and how to calculate overhead and how the marketing and the sales cycle and not to, over.
Forecast and estimate, whereas I think that a lot of providers don't quite have that same experience or kind of like insight into the direct experience. And so when they jump in, I think it is, it's a little bit of a shock of oh my gosh, I'm not getting patients and I need more money than I thought.
And oh my gosh, this is a lot harder than I expected. And so I think like giving them options, especially like with the lower interest rate. where, to me, Leo you kind of know where I stand. Like if you don't have to go the VC route, don't you lose control? Yeah. it turns you into something different.
And so if you're able to still build the practice you want get to control everything and then just pay the funds back. to me that's just, it's such a safer, and I know it sucks. Everything sucks when you have to pay interest, but It is what it is. Like it's the world we live in. It ask you unless you have the capital up front.
But yeah, really, who does that? Nobody really does. [00:35:00] And really, you're right. not a lot of us know this, Yeah, you're right. A lot of people went through MBAs, but really just talking right now. I'm like going through Google and trying to catch up on just the terms that you're talking about and, just trying to understand the concepts here, because again, we're never taught this.
I think that's on purpose, to be honest, but we're never taught how to do this and how to approach this. So this is extremely helpful knowing that one,there are people out there, people like you that. have the processing, have the tools to help us out. And not just that, but willing to work with the providers, with the healthcare,businesses to get them where they need to be.
So that's super, super reassuring. So we are getting on time though. the last question we always like to ask is, Hey, Thinking of where you are now and what you've learned so far, going back to yourself right after you graduated college, what's a one piece of advice that you would give yourself after, [00:36:00] after, learning what you've done?
You know what, if you have asked me the same question before I started voa, I have responded in a different way. But, the fun thing being, owner of your own company,I can relate myself to other health clinics who are dreaming or who want to start their own practice. I would say that,
If you think that you can do it, you can do it. I, I believe that I'm a bit late, but you should never say if you started, you're already ahead of, uh, but, I would say to younger, she mean is, don't be afraid, take risk. And, eventually nobody knows anything. and this is actually very important that nobody knows anything.
If you are getting advice from someone who had never tried, of course they'll say they will give you a conservative advice. So I would say to myself that,go for your dreams. If you want to own something, start it. It might take some time. don't think yourself as a Mark Zuckerberg.
I would say 99% of the entrepreneurs are not Mark Zuckerberg, but I think [00:37:00] 99.999%. So you have to struggle, but you'll get it. So nothing is more beautiful than, pursuing your dreams. That's a great piece of advice. A lot of us out here, especially a lot listening, We've started in this pathway and we've realized, hey, this is not the pathway we wanna end up.
And I think a lot of us have hit this wall, right? Is it hit this wall one, it's the golden handcuffs, we're making enough, and, why am I gonna take the risk but hit this wall thinking that no, we can't do it. 'cause this is the only thing we've trained to do. And that's refreshing to hear that, hey, yeah.
it's a risk, A lot of providers, we are very risk averse, right? It's just in our train. if we're that risky in healthcare, maybe somebody will lose a life or not, but, but, trying to translate that into the business world, it's, that's a whole different ballgame.
So that's awesome advice. any last things you wanna say? and just last things you wanna impart to our audience. I would say,one thing that I started being really [00:38:00] good at is what kind of capital you might need. So we discuss it all along to our chat is you might not have enough, capital to grow your business.
So go and look for the options you have. If you get no from one, one bank or one lander, don't be disheartened. Just go for another one and another one until you get a yes. This is also something I would say to younger me is that, no is a sign of persistence. and the same thing for the capital. You got rejected by one.
it's it's not necessary that you will get rejected another. So understand why it happened. Maybe today's not that a good time, but tomorrow it'll be, or maybe this is not the right provider. don't accept no as a no. build your business. Grow your business, and,do whatever it takes where you want to go.
Amazing. No, thank you so much. Now, how do they get in contact with you? How can they find Vora and how can they reach you through Vora? I'm extremely active on [00:39:00] LinkedIn every day I do some educational content. It's. Especially, the experiences I'm having with my clienteles, why they got, loan and what are the things which we're missing.
So I would say follow me on LinkedIn. contact me through direct messages. I am always available, for them. they can go to my website, www.deliver.com,just, message me or what, how I can help them. And, yeah. I'm extremely available for whatever help I can give to my clients.
Now, your LinkedIn is your name, right? Charmine ael, S-A-S-H-A-R-M-E-E-N, A-Q-E-E-L. And Lara's website, is it's L-Y-Y-V-O-R a.com, correct? Yes, correct. Perfect. Perfect. Awesome. No, and yeah, no, this is great advice. Again, I think those out there that are starting their own business looking to starting their own business, this is definitely a viable solution and it sounds like a great solution [00:40:00] and there's somebody willing to help you out.
Go check Char out Lara. also. thank you for joining. if you wanna drop us a line at telemedicine talks, it's leo telemedicine talks.com. Phoebe loves at park, phoebe@telemedicinetalks.com, at info@telemedicinetalks.com. Char, thank you so much for your time and joining us, and thank you so much for the education.
I think, a lot of these topics, I love having these topics where, yeah, it's things that we don't necessarily know. It's not second nature to us. Thank you so much for, adding to our knowledge base. Yeah. Thank you so much. it was a lovely talk and, yeah, let's get connected.
thank you again. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm sending my LinkedIn connection now. Okay. Thanks.