Starting a business doesn't require perfection. It requires the right mindset, a willingness to learn, and the persistence to keep going through the inevitable challenges.
In this session, Phoebe shares her practical framework for launching and growing a business, from validating ideas and building systems to marketing, pricing, and creating a sustainable practice.
• Why clinicians need to adopt a beginner's mindset when becoming entrepreneurs
• What you actually need to start a business—and what you don't
• How to identify and validate business ideas
• Why competition is proof that your concept has demand
• The importance of building your personal brand
• How to price, market, and grow your services
• Why systems and workflows matter before outsourcing
• How to balance attracting new customers while serving existing ones
• Why persistence and community are essential for long-term success
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[00:00:00] Hey, y'all. So what I wanna do in this session is So You Want to Start a Business, kind of Phoebe Consulting edition. So interestingly enough, as you can all probably imagine, I get approached with a thousand different ideas and some are let's build a private practice, some are let's do coaching, some are I wanna build a, clinical intelligence tool.
I want to, come up with a proprietary program or algorithm. Interestingly enough, for every idea or every project or every business, it all follows the same framework or at least that's how I approach it as somebody who at this point has now owned and had way too many companies and some have succeeded, some haven't.
all in all, let's get into really what it takes to launch, grow a business, and then, really how to stay [00:01:00] focused, dedicated, and give your business enough time before you try to abandon it. So let's get into it.
So one key thing that I tell all my clients is you gotta be in the right mindset. So for PAs, it's really easy to think about, "I'm the expert. I'm the clinical expert. I'm a specialist. I understand, exactly, what I would clinically do in that, that, position." But you're not an expert business owner.
You're not an expert marketer. You're not an expert operations lead, right? Historically, you always had a team around you. You're now having to jump back into the learner seat because even though you might be feeling okay clinically, you're going to be doing some new but very cool things, that, will hopefully push you and challenge you and make you grow.[00:02:00]
So now that you're in the driver's seat, you're going to be, working on something that's your own, and it is definitely like the trade that, I would say all day is worth making. As you go through the mindset shifts that are going to impact you, you're gonna start high, right?
It's really cool to have an idea and to really go, "Look, I'm gonna do this thing." As you dive in and start to research and explore, you understand the complexity that it takes, right? Okay, maybe I thought it was gonna be easier, and now I have to go through, I need to find a physician to, actually partner with me in my practice, or, oh my gosh, the software that I think would be so cool, nothing HIPAA compliant exists, so I have to build this from scratch, right?
You start to get a little bit down, can you do it? Answer is yes. With enough time, you can. That's where the grind comes in. You're gonna dig a little bit deeper 'cause everywhere you look, every deliverable you have, [00:03:00] every, item in your business plan comes with 100 to-dos or 100 things that you need to figure out, right?
You're gonna be getting questions from people, and that's gonna force you to make some tough decisions, and ultimately, getting that feedback from people forces you to pivot and refine your approach until you get that validation that it's clicked and it's working. So the dip and the grind are really your pieces of learning.
You're learning what you wanna do. You're learning what your customers wanna do. You're learning what your patients wanna do. You're learning what you wanna do, to be perfectly honest, right? And that whole trial and error experiment, I like this, I don't like that. none of us get in a car and go, "Hey, I'm gonna go drive in the wrong direction because it just seems like a really good idea," right?
We have a map. We have a roadmap. We know exactly how to get from point A to point B. Unfortunately, think that if there were no roads and think if we didn't have Apple, you know, iPhone and maps , we would need to take [00:04:00] the time to figure out how to get there, and there would be twists and turns, and it would be a little all over the place By week three, that's when you're just gonna start, like the motivation is gone, right?
I'm tired. I don't wanna keep working on this thing. Is it gonna pay off? You're not getting that validation yet. So dedication is really key. If you are not willing to put time and effort into this business that you're building, nobody else will. And so you really need to make sure that this is something that you wanna do, and if you don't have the motivation and you need the accountability, like you need a consultant or a business coach or, somebody who's gonna push you a little bit further.
That was one of the reasons why we built IPAC was because, we didn't want to spend too much money on, the business coaching and all of that. We wanted to support each other as a collective, because at the end of the day, you really can't fail if you don't give up. And part of that is just saying yes too [00:05:00] many times and not saying no, and continuing to show up day in and day out, and making baby steps of progress.
From a clinical standpoint, there's so much that you can do. So you can do coaching, you can do wellness, you can create products, you can create supplements, you can build a collective, a community, you can have shared services, you can consult, you can build a private practice and you can, be offering clinical care, whether it's through your own company on a telemedicine platform, through an enterprise.
There is so much you can do from, having a clinical license. And so ultimately you wanna blend those things together to figure out what is your passion? Is it clinical, but I also wanna layer in some coaching? I like the content side and the educational side, so perhaps I could do some free education.
Ooh, yeah. Or maybe it's straight up I wanna have a community and I [00:06:00] really just wanna drive engagement with other people, like-minded folks like myself. Can you do all at the same time? It's tough. In a perfect world, you would roll these different things into how foresee your long-term goal.
But from my clients that I've, identified, interestingly enough, motch of... most of them roll the clinical care and the coaching together. Some start with coaching first, some start with clinical care and then transition to coaching. But usually it's that kind of approach because as you can imagine, coaching has a lot less regulatory load than the clinical care, does.
And that definitely impacts what you should do from a financial standpoint, but it also limits you if you're just doing coaching
Again, we all have an idea. So the first thing is before starting with overwhelm, just get rid of the myths, right? To start exploring an idea, to start building a business plan, to [00:07:00] start talking to people, to even sell your services, you do not need a plan. You do not need an LLC, or a, a PC.
You don't need a logo. You don't need a website. I put on here you don't need a lawyer, but always, I'm not a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer if you need to talk to a lawyer, or want to talk to a lawyer. But what you really do need is your idea that is niche enough and that you are passionate about. So when I say niche down to your passion, I mean pick something that's specific enough but that speaks to you.
Do you resonate with it? One thing that I found is the clients that I have that have the best private practices were clinicians that started their private practice or business primarily because they were impacted by it. A woman going through menopause who could not find a local [00:08:00] provider and decided to build her own practice.
A parent who was really frustrated with school-based care, for their children who said, "You know what? I'm gonna step in, and I'm gonna create a program and a company that can deliver the care that I wish my kids had." I wanna help new moms that are struggling with breastfeeding and postpartum support so they aren't so overwhelmed, and they have a resource and a tool for them.
The idea is if your answer is, "I wanna go do this thing to make money," and because hims and hers and Ro and all these other companies are doing it, I think that's the non-starter there. You have to really be speaking to the idea and making sure that it speaks enough to you because, again, personalized is niche.
We are all niche in our own way because we have our own personal, opinions, our own personal experiences, and as clinicians and providers, you have your personal touch of how you wanna deliver care. That's really important
One of the really interesting things that [00:09:00] I've seen with a lot of clients, especially in the early phase, is they come to me and they have this idea, and, let's say you already have a private practice, but you wanna do something else, right? Or you wanna do, another s- service offering, or you wanna layer in, a different program.
I get this constantly where it's like, somebody's already doing this in my area, and I don't think I need to do it because somebody's already doing it. There's competition." first off, that's great. Competition means it's validated, proof of concept. You have that instant validation.
You also have some really great companies and service offerings that you can compare to. You also have, experiences that you can test and go through. What did you like? What didn't you like? I really liked the overall experience, but the pricing was, like, way too high. I could never afford that long term.
what could you cut to bring the price down? Or maybe it's that the [00:10:00] price is really low, but the clinical care sucked, right? Or maybe it's that they didn't have any guidance or education for patients. Maybe it's that you wish that they offered another prescription that, you felt you needed, but they didn't offer that You wanna be a customer and run through the workflow themselves.
You wanna talk to as many real people that have these, problems, and you wanna see what those people will pay for something similar based on all this comparison. What, what would they buy from you? Now, I do also wanna preface this because this is another thing that I've seen, time and time again with clients.
You're gonna be talking to a lot of people that are gonna go, "I would absolutely buy that from you." About maybe 20% of them will, unless it's something really special, really niche, a really huge problem that honestly really directly speaks to them. you want to take that with a grain of salt and not roll that [00:11:00] in as, guaranteed income because, a lot of times it, it's really hard.
It's really hard to have these honest conversations 'cause you don't understand where people are coming financially. but again, the simple fact is would you buy it? Does the price make sense for you? Do the services make sense for you? How I'm thinking about packaging it, does that make sense for you?
That's really what you're, really hoping to address. The other piece on the research and discovery phase is if you go through a company and you go, "Look, everyone's offering these things in this way, but I can actually differentiate myself slightly," not 100%, right? So sure, you wanna offer GLPs, and you wanna offer, hormones, and you wanna offer, maybe a peptide.
but let's say you also are really interested in is, food is medicine, and you wanna come up with menus that you can offer to your people, your members once a week. That is a great differentiator. [00:12:00] Think about those things that are low-hanging fruit for you that you could, again, just layer them on as add-ons or other things that you could potentially, differentiate yourself.
After you've done some of the initial research and you in your brain, I've scoped the plan, I've built the plan, I know the idea, I'm here, I'm good, now it's actually time to really start building the plan. This is where, you kinda slowly start to dip a little bit. And this again is where I go, like this is the grind, right?
the dip is this piece. I'm gonna actually have to go build the plan and oh my gosh, I'm gonna realize that the thing that I thought would take me a week has 140 deliverables That's great. You know what's to come, you know what to expect, you've had it mapped out, you can see where you need help.
Planning is really important. Now, I'll be honest, I speak this, I preach this plan. I do loose planning because as I've already said, you're gonna be pivoting a lot. [00:13:00] So don't over-engineer the plan so that it's so unwieldy that you can't adjust or pivot or feel like you can rework things when it's not working.
The goal is it gives you enough of a framework to get to, the next month But ultimately, if you need to adjust your strategy, you gotta adjust your strategy. So when you're thinking about the plan, I think about it in like the six phase, steps. You focus on your legal and business, structure.
What does that take? How do I make that happen? Do I, if as I'm a, as a PA, do I need a, a physician owner? Do I just need a collaborator? How does that piece work? How do I structure that, and what is that all gonna cost? You then start to go a little bit more into your offer and your pricing.
here's what I sell. Here's my value proposition. Here's, what I'm thinking about in terms of, for mu- how much, and here's how I'm really... who I wanna market to. Am I doing, insurance? Am I doing cash [00:14:00] pay? what are some of those other factors that come along with your offer and your pricing?
'Cause that's gonna inform, do you need pharmacy contracts? Do you need to get an EMR that has, labs integrated? Understanding that helps inform everything else. You then go into marketing. How are you gonna market? What are you gonna actually market on, and what are your strategies there?
You move into the funding bucket in terms of do you need partners, investors? What does that look like for you from a perspective of how you are going to bootstrap this or actually make it a reality? You then wanna, I love a good profis- profit and loss sheet. Reverse engineer that. That actually helps tell you should you price it higher, should you price it lower.
Make sure you're profitable Profit and loss is like a P&L. So if you ever hear finance bros talking about it, it's a P&L. And then ultimately trying to think through, your operations and your tech stack. So what are you actually going to [00:15:00] be investing in? And this is, to me, this is the part where don't talk to your friends.
It doesn't matter who Suzy, who has the, concierge clinic uses. It matters does this work for you? So thinking about what your baseline requirements are. I need it to text my patients. I need it to integrate with lab orderings. I need to do retail pharmacy, but I also want compounding pharmacy.
These are the things that you want to include in your map. Now, this deviates from a traditional business plan, right? But these are the things that I've seen people make a lot of mistakes with early on, because they didn't actually have a good understanding of what to do in each of these buckets, and they weren't asking the right questions From a PA perspective, one thing that always comes up is, do I have independent practice?
And the interesting thing to me is, as much as I think people really want to have independent practice or a small private practice [00:16:00] doing this alone, I think that honestly, doing it alone actually puts a lot of risk on, tons of things. And so for me, I really like to think of these things as not so much as a regulatory requirement, but things that you're going to wanna have in your, on your bench to help support you.
And even if you are l- like a physician, right? Even physicians are collaborating with other physicians, it's important to have that thought partnership, especially when you're leaving a traditional infrastructure or foundation. so the way I think it is, of course the physician side, but you also have the clinical support side, whether that's specialist, referral relationships, or, community advisors, so other PAs, our I- our IPAC community, an attorney, a really good CPA, a billing company, like really good vendors.
so to me, a lot of this is as you're thinking about the partnership [00:17:00] side, who you actually have matters more than what the regulatory requirements say. I think a collaborating physician is a really great resource if you find the right one. And for, those of you who know me, I'm very passionate about this, the subject because again, I think that this isn't just a collaborating physician thing.
If you find the right consultant, if you find the right clinical community, if you find the right group, if you find the right patients, it ultimately sets you up for success where you feel supported, you feel confident, you feel empowered, and you feel safe. You feel like a place where you can go and ask honest, raw questions with no judgment, which we know happens a lot, especially to clinicians, when, the whole malpractice and all of that really riles people up and scares people
When you think about, your operations or compliance, compliance really lives in your operations. Everyone really loves to speak about [00:18:00] compliance as like a one and done. Let's just do compliance. And this again is something where time and time again, I have clients of mine that, retain my services and are like, tell me this is compliant."
And it's but it's not. You haven't actually operationalized anything in your contract. So you always wanna think about, certain things because it... Again, it's like compliance is like a ladder. You'll have your physician oversight, so depending if that's, a rule or a regulation.
But really it's are you actually talking to your collaborating physician? It's great that you can independently practice, but even if it's about strategy, even if it's about business, even if it's about a patient that is driving you up the wall, having that interaction gives you physician oversight.
Because maybe you're doing something wrong from a billing perspective. Maybe you're doing something wrong from a marketing compliance perspective, and you don't even know it. It might not have anything to do with your clinical care. [00:19:00] It has to do with compliance. Are you operating under an approved protocol?
So I've actually had clients, come to me today and go, "Look, I don't need a protocol. I'm in the state, I'm a PA, I don't have to have it." And I go and I'm like, yeah, but don't you want some standardization for your own practice?" So even if it's not a physician protocol, do you have some sort of, rule of thumb process?
How do you assess and escalate emergency situations? How do you determine if you're going to prescribe this or that? and again, a protocol is really just a process. It's what I use with my staff. It's what, we use at large companies. It doesn't have to be the clinical emphasis, but in, getting started, it is important to have something that is a, an approved protocol.
An approved formulary, so making sure that you're prescribing things that are okay with your, the physician oversight. Sometimes that just requires a conversation. Let's talk about this thing. Let's have some [00:20:00] conversations, because perhaps might be wanting to prescribe something that is, unsafe.
I don't know if that's gonna happen, but again, it's like having that conversation and documenting it. Of course, we go to the patient consent side or the, the patient engagement side, which is, consent and education. Usually that's consent forms, terms of service, all of that stuff.
You have the follow-up piece, so where you're, following up not just with physicians, not just with your, your patients, but you're building that into kind of your workflow. And then having solid documentation. So just like you document, your, in your EMR, you kinda wanna document when you do these things.
If you've had a conversation with a physician and a physician told you to do something, if you talked to a patient who was, really, not wanting to comply with, the treatment pathway,you wanna have a system because at the end of the day, this is the stuff that gets really unwieldly if you don't have like the checks and balances
Then there comes the marketing [00:21:00] strategy. So you think about it in terms of, there's really three ways that you can, get seen, let's say. And I always say this to my clients because I think there's a lot of misconception about how clinicians should market themselves and what the right or wrong ways are about doing it And
whenever I talk to my clients, basically what I say is, pick the marketing strategy that you hate the least because they all are not fun to do. The first is, building your brand. Now, you're gonna have to build your brand anyway. But when I say building your brand, it's building the brand and the voice that's you.
Are you going to, be up on social media, having your face on websites, posting in community forums, getting out there, doing that thing, showing up? [00:22:00] It takes consistency and it takes time, but clinicians are so well-positioned to have a really strong clinical footprint on social media. The key thing here is sometimes you have to say unpopular stuff, and you have to say stuff that people might not wanna hear, and that is okay.
but you have to be okay with that too. So if you are watching this or just listening, you'll see that this slide deck has memes throughout it, right? I have taken the marketing strategy of I am my own brand. I am authentically me all the time. I love memes. I love Instagram. I hate putting my face on anything, and I hate not having an opinion about certain things.
So when I do my content, it is very clear and front and center that it is me. This is what I mean. And if you don't like it, that is absolutely [00:23:00] okay. We can have a disagreement. I'm not here to speak to the masses. I'm here to just speak my piece, and if it resonates with you, that is wonderful. When you think about building your brand and your voice, that's really important that it's not generic and it doesn't go into, layered into what other people are, potentially talking about and positioning it as.
Now again, it can be similar to what they have, but I've talked to so many physicians where they were marketing, their, a GLP-1 program, and it wasn't until I talked to them personally that I got to understand their take on GLP-1 medication, which was really cool to hear, versus them actually, posting something that is You know, a little less specific and seems a little bit more generic but safer.
The second marketing strategy is networking and community, right? So doing events, boots on the ground kind of stuff, finding local partners, getting those referral relationships, passing out [00:24:00] flyers, talking to people on the ground level. That's like your traditional, networking strategy.
And then the third is like ads, advertisement, and this is where I think I struggle the most because I have so many clients that wanna compete with, a Hims and a Ro and a MedV or a Middi Health, these really large organizations that are spending millions of dollars on ads. You will not be able to compete with them.
You unfortunately just won't. And so the unfortunate part there is that, you can layer in a small advertising budget, but to think that you're gonna be able to build your own private practice or your own community or your own educational, platform or even your own tech tool without building your [00:25:00] brand and networking community first is a really big mistake.
So when you think about, the marketing foundation of really what you need to start is you need a basic website so you can refer people to, to, there, and then you need like one social media channel, IG, TikTok, LinkedIn. From the basic website, that's where I say start writing blogs. Now you're gonna talk to most people who are gonna say, it has to be SEO worthy and SEO content.
You can go to SEMrush and figure out like the algorithm of how to do it." Or you can do it my way, which is when something speaks to you and you're passionate about it, write about it and post it to your blog. You're slowly but surely building your brand voice on your website, and it will slowly compound over time.
I have blogs that have hundreds and thousands of views that I posted years ago when I was a state regulator [00:26:00] They did not have that when I first posted them. They did not have that two years after I posted them. So again, you're, you slowly but surely will start to, get your persona out there, which again is really important to what you're trying to do.
You did not jump into this, whether it's entrepreneurship or practice ownership or telemedicine or any of this because you were so happy living under the guise of somebody else that you didn't have an opinion. We all had an opinion. We all had a voice that we probably thought wasn't being heard. And because of that's why we're even exploring some of these things.
So just remember that, go back into mindset. Remember that when you,are doing these things and you're so tempted to copy some of the stuff that other people are posting, or you're so tempted to copy, other, kinds of like blogs. A really good thing is, that I do is I actually will use a lot of my client questions as [00:27:00] content.
So as patients are asking you all questions or families asking you questions and you're like, "Wait, I have an opinion about that," take a short video, write a short blurb on, what that means and why, why that's important to think about. don't over-engineer this. Don't make this more complicated than it already is going to be
If you do not take any of my advice and just wanna sell the product, which is, advertisements and treatments and prescribing, and so there's no face, you're selling a product. You're entering yourself to what I consider a race to the bottom because the product is actually a commodity. Anybody can go, honestly these days, anywhere and get cash pay medicine.
There's tons of educational, resources, tons of free YouTube videos that people could watch. Instagram, TikTok, there are, so many different methods that people can get [00:28:00] either the education or the support, or even, the product. You are the premium. They are paying for you. So just like the meme that I have on this, it says, "A product can be copied.
The person behind it can't." They want your clinical expertise. They want your opinion, your brand, your education style, your coaching. and ultimately, what is your worth? You're gonna price your services for what you are worth because that is the value. That's what's missing in traditional medicine today, right?
As we think about it, they're trying to sell medicine and saying you get 15 minutes of it, and we're going, consumers like myself and in the sh- in the insurance world are going,wait. I have a lot more questions. I don't feel like certain things were addressed. I would... I'll pay cash. I just want somebody to talk to me."
And they're going, "Nope, doesn't matter," right? You are the premium product here, and you have to remember that as you're, thinking through your overall [00:29:00] plan
When you slowly start to get closer and closer to, having a product or an offering, the big thing is you gotta validate that by selling it to people. And it's really hard to sell something to people when you don't have other customers, you don't have validation, you don't have proof of concept, you don't have testimonials.
You need to be able to, again, have the comfort level and, openness really to
the openness to really sit and listen to the feedback, right? At the end of the day, you are going to think that your product is the bee's knees, it is the best thing on earth, and you are so proud of yourself because you've just done something that you haven't done before, right? But you actually want to talk to them and understand, what is missing?
What could you do better? What do, what do they [00:30:00] hate about your product or your process or your program or your offering? In a lot of instances, you have to give work away for free, whether that's free visits or free advice. I get a lot of pushback when I tell clients, "You gotta have a free 15-minute consult.
You got to." And the reason for that is because at the end of the day, they're getting to know you, they're getting to, understand you as a provider. And early in the days, it's really important because that also serves as a way for you to collect that early, early customer feedback. The last thing is you also wanna just, constantly network, and you wanna network early.
So as you're starting to get this product idea up and more refined, just like you're giving work away, free to, the direct-to-consumer, patient bucket, you also wanna start talking to potential partners and [00:31:00] referrals. And you're gonna get told no more times than yes, and you're gonna reach out to, 50 times more people than are gonna respond.
But you don't need 100 people to partner with. You need two, and you need to talk to them, and you need to really use them as early partners, so you can make sure that you're building something for an actual customer versus for what you think a customer wants
When you think about your offer and your pricing, I like to think of a little bit of a ladder. So as I mentioned, the free consult. I think the free consult is really important, especially in the early days, where again, you are the product. So do they like you? Do they know you? Are you giving them some sort of nuggets of information where they wanna come back?
I had a client today, and it was really sweet, and she met with somebody. It was a free consult, and he had insurance and has to get carved out of that. And he had said,I learned so... I learned more from this free consult than I have from my PCP." And that is a [00:32:00] really val- she will probably have that patient for some time, right?
That's what you want people to walk away with. I will pay whatever because I'm buying you, and I'm buying your time, and I'm buying your care, and that's what these other companies don't offer. Hims and Hers doesn't have a free consult, right? CVS doesn't have a free consult. These other companies don't offer that because they're not the commodity, the prescription is.
You can also think about giving people founding member discounts. So going, "Look, you'll be a founding member. You can, get a exclusive, rate." And you know that they'll be a little bit easier to deal with, and they'll, hopefully be a little bit,open to giving you ongoing feedback.
But that's another way that you can get some, initial feedback but also still get, the pricing. Third is you can also have referral discounts. So a founding member or a free consult refers you. You also can give, some discount. And then you also have, your [00:33:00] full, priced client.
And once you have your first client that comes in inbound, willing to pay, no questions asked, like that's really where you realize, "Okay, like I, I have it down and it's going." And this is really what you're gonna like rinse and repeat as you think about adding additional services, additional offerings.
It's the same kind of thing, right? As you get more validation, more people signing up, that also informs is your price correct? As you get so busy, do you need to raise your price a little bit so you can actually not be so busy and have so many patients or, members? Or are you doing something on a group setting where you can actually maybe lower the price?
There's a lot of different ways that you can structure some of these things. But again, this method really helps you get that feedback loop that is really important for customer retention and long-term growth. When you think about funding it, you really wanna know, know the math and not set yourself up [00:34:00] for failure early on.
my philosophy is always you wanna bootstrap, as much as possible, but also really think about putting together a profit and loss sheet. So a lot of the clients that I work with, I try to tell them, it's "I don't know how you can put your pricing together without understanding, what are your fees and what's your overhead and, what are other competitors doing in this space?
And, how many members do you wanna have? Is that enough? do you need to have less? What are your different offerings? Do you have some that are, like, higher tier, maybe a higher price point?" Layer all that in and let a profit and loss sheet do it for you. It can tell you really what you should focus on, what you shouldn't focus on, and give you kind of some goals on numbers that you can reach.
So if you're not reaching those or meeting those, it's a good indication that you might need to like pivot. Now, full, transparently, I've never hit a forecast, [00:35:00] not a single time. I have with clients, with large, telemedicine companies, I have, absolutely. but it's also given me the baseline of, I need to pivot.
In some instances, it's actually been, "Oh my gosh, I really need to raise my price because I have three clients and I can't actually withhold the operational flow. I thought it was gonna be easier," right? In some instances it's like, "Oh, okay, like, all right, I guess I can continue doing this and once I, slowly hit my goals, but I guess, I thought I would get r- you know, three new clients a month, and actually I'm only getting two.
Let's update the profit and loss sheet so I can better forecast." It really just helps giving, giving you some, ability to think through, things long term You wanna think about your tech stack. tools are ultimately are what going to, run your practice or run your company or whatever.
the best thing is go explore. Go explore. The most amazing thing that I get to do when I work with,large companies is I get to play in technology all day. [00:36:00] So whether that's a vibe coding app or a different, LLM or a different EMR or a different CRM, I get to play and understand what I like and what I don't like.
I get to do lots of demos, I get to talk to lots of users, and those are things that you definitely should be doing as well. So, you know, foundational for any practice, of course, is like your EMR. if you're doing some sort of coaching, that's a CRM, right? They're the same thing. How do you manage, track, engage, invoice your patients or members?
there's a bunch of other stuff that you'll wanna think about. Do those tools, the foundational tools, your EMR or your CRM, have the other things that you want? does it have an AI scribe or notetaker? Can you text from it? Can you connect with the appropriate partners like prescribing or a lab?
does it have all the features that you need it to have to make your operations simple? and [00:37:00] then separately, of course, you're gonna think about other things. I need a payment processor, I need a business email, I need to do, contracts and secure storage. but at the end of the day, the ultimate goal for this whole technology stack is can you actually build an automated onboarding process that sticks for your patients or your members, right?
Can all the stuff you're putting together... 'Cause at the end of the day you're building it for them, right? Can you actually get them to use those things, onboard those things, and get you to, use your service so they are returning customers? Most of your day as an entrepreneur, especially early on, is gonna be admin.
So just plan for it. Once you have revenue and traction, you'll be able to outsource. But it's really important that you actually do this stuff in the beginning because you cannot actually train a person on how to do it if you have not done it first
So for people [00:38:00] that are like, "Oh, I'll just get a virtual assistant who's gonna help me with these things," how? If you haven't established your workflow and you don't know how you want patients communicated with, and you haven't figured out how to run payroll, and you haven't figured out how to do these very simple things, you can, one, of course, d- delegate it to them, but most of the time they also won't know how to do it, so how could you hold them accountable?
but also it's gonna be really important for you as the business owner to really understand those things. some of the stuff that you can definitely offload, and this is once you get the volume, is like responding to inquiries and messages, scheduling, following up on labs and, different results and helping, follow up with patients on like intake process, paperwork, billing chores, following up with vendors, all of that good stuff.
that is, again, you need to have a protocol or a process that really lays it out so whoever you're delegating it to understands the ask, the expectation and can, ultimately be [00:39:00] successful in it
One of the reasons why I say you have to do it in order to figure out the process is because sometimes the process that you think is going to be the most helpful or needed is actually not. it, ultimately, doesn't, yeah, it ul- ultimately doesn't do you any good because you've written something that's really hard to operationalize.
So a lot of times you have to actually operationalize it and then adjust and pivot and do these things. Really great tool to do some of this is, go brainstorm with Claude, my fave, Claude my man. brainstorm and talk about, some key operational workflows, where the, where there's gaps, where there's issues, where you can, shave things off, where you're overcomplicating things.
At the end of the day, sometimes for me, it just has to stay manual, and that is okay
The teeter-totter that you're always gonna face when you are growing and operating and launching [00:40:00] and trying new things and getting the validation is how do you protect your current paying customers versus constantly chasing new customers? And it's the teeter-totter that you will always struggle with.
You're either gonna be too busy with existing patients and overwhelmed, or you're going to be too busy chasing new patients, and then you're going to be overwhelmed when the other patients don't feel supported. So you wanna make sure that you, of course, really protect your current patients because those are acquired.
The hardest part is getting somebody to book with you, right? So every hour that you are chasing new patients, think about what you can do to actually engage with your existing ones, right? Can you talk to them and see if they can give you referrals? Can you really go above and beyond for them and see if there's anything that they can do to, help you [00:41:00] grow your business?
There have been plenty of times where I've actually had clients off-board and I've approached my clients and said, "Hey, if you guys know of any referrals, I'm desperate right now. I would love one or two new patients or clients for the next couple months." And when you have a, paying customers that really value what you've done and you've really showed up for them, they will wholeheartedly come to bat for you.
The one piece that you really wanna think through as well when you're building this, and especially as you're talking about, the new patients or new clients versus existing, is the onboarding process really earns you success. So having some, collateral or content that explains what it means to work with you and so they get that, day zero.
Understanding what the expectations are when it is working with you, how it works, how it operates, expectations, because you don't want them to get upset because they're expecting you to respond to a text message at eleven o'clock at [00:42:00] night when you're like, "Wait, common sense says normal business hours."
no, we... Let's pretend nobody has common sense, and we wanna put that down on paper and explain it to them on day zero or day one so it's very clear what they're getting and what they're not getting from you. Week one, you always wanna check in. How's it going? What can I do? What is happening, right?
Are you feeling okay? And these are things that can be automated as long as you have the appropriate operating, tech stack. These are things that should be relatively simple, which if you think about it, this is technically four emails that you would have to draft and throw into Claude and have it design you something really pretty
At the end of the day, you are going to have to part ways with clients or patients, and that is okay. As I said early on, I'm a really big believer that I'm the right consultant for some people, and I'm the wrong consultant for others. I'm blunt. I'm [00:43:00] direct. I have, a very solid strategy of how I launch businesses.
And for some that are really expecting to do tons of, ad spend or, want to, do fear-based marketing or want to try to do stuff that's a little too, experimental or maybe a little too tech-forward without the funding. there are certain things to me where I'm like, w- I- I'm gonna be doing a disservice to you if I actually remain in partnership with you.
And because of that, we should just separate, and that is okay. You actually learn a lot from clients that where you don't necessarily see eye to eye. You learn what you like to work on, and you really learn what you don't like to work on. And so even some of those bad partnerships show you where you have, weakness in some of your contracts or your operations or your offers or your strategies or your partnerships.
So key things to [00:44:00] think about is if the time outweighs the money, right? If it's costing you more time and it's something that you don't want to learn. There's a big difference between going, "Look, I'm not really an expert in this, but I enjoy it, so I'm willing to dedicate the time that it's gonna take for me to learn and understand this because I kinda do wanna master it at some point," versus, "I have zero interest in this, and I'm only doing this for the money."
The second is if you can't make them successful. So if you're not positioned to deliver the slam dunk for them You know, that's also a really good indication. if you have, patients that want treatment plans that you don't really agree with and you would only do it because they're asking you to.
if you have, I can go on and on. but ultimately at the end of the day, it feels good to make people successful. It feels good to make people, happy with their care, and if you can't do that, it's just going to probably stress you out more than it's worth. And the third is, really making sure that they have realistic [00:45:00] expectations, and if they don't, no version of you or the service you provide were, will ever be enough.
So separating from clients isn't a failure. It's honestly streamlining and niching down even more. As I have done trial and error with lots of different kinds of clients, I've learned that. I've learned that, right? I've learned that my niche or my area of focus is really in the private practice, telemedicine, physician kind of led or owned, practice structure, where you wanna build a really solid compliant framework and, you wanna dabble in cash pay, right?
So as you think about, what I said early, you can't fail if you don't give up, you understand that you're going to constantly have to have that mindset of this is hard. And, I'll be the first to say, I go through weeks where I'm overwhelmed and I'm [00:46:00] stressed out and I don't wanna talk to anybody, and oh my gosh, I should just work for a company and, And then I go back to I have my IPAC group that asks me questions that I know they wouldn't get answers, from anywhere, besides what I can provide. I have my clients that are building their dreams and, really hoping to change medicine and change their lives and their career.
I think about all the positive I'm doing, and it puts me back in that space where, okay, it's all worth it. So don't forget that as you're doing this, you wanna always go back to your goal, your why, your mission, and I promise you, it really is, especially if you've... you're bootstrapping this, it will click with enough time, dedication, and attention, truly So for the IPAC team Join our Slack and be sure to post some of your questions [00:47:00] and all the different things that you,are stuck on.
We're also rolling out some new cool stuff, for the summer sessions. So we're gonna be doing Practice Your Pitch and Teach Us Something, which we're opening up to other members, so you're gonna be able to come and actually, pitch an idea. A lot of times once you scratch the entrepreneurial bug, you're gonna get lots of different ideas, and so it'll be like, "Should we do this?
Should I do this?" It might be cool. Hopefully some partnerships come out of it. It's my goal. and then teach us something. We all are learning every single day, and whether it's a hack on time management or a, simple, really cool thing that you learned with your EHR, teach us something.
Let's go back and support, each other as peers, as partners, and really give people, a place where,you can also flex that educational muscle and teach us a thing or two. I would love that. we have [00:48:00] tons of resources in the independent PAC, portal. So we have some business planners.
We have the P&L sheet. We have social media guidance on how to get started. We have, research specifically for PAs. I think we have some stuff on EHRs and tech stack, but, we're slowly but surely beefing that up with resources and content, especially as we have, more and more sessions.
And then this summer we're gonna be opening up our Business Startup 101 session again, where I facilitate that. we are also starting our clinical sessions. So we're going to be having, our first one, which is Lifestyle Medicine 101, and then we're moving into other, sessions: Avoiding Burnout as an Entrepreneur, Onboarding, Boundaries, and Breakups, I can't wait to do that one, Favorite Tech Tools, and Delegate to Grow.
we are now also going to be doing a new addition, which I'm so excited about, a clinical care [00:49:00] roundtable. So this is actually going to be clinical-focused. So remember, when you worked in a large hospital system, you would have those, monthly team meetings where you could bring a complex case and kind of discuss it with a multidisciplinary team?
that's the goal of this. of course, we're not sharing PHI, but it's a place where you can come and go, "Look, I had this complex patient. I had to actually turn them away. I wasn't able to support them, but what could I have done differently, or what should I have, done differently?" Or Has anybody experienced that?
It's a place where we can, you know, as you all as clinic owners and me as a consultant trying to arm clinic owners and private practice owners, it's a place where you can get that same level of clinical support from your peers in a collaborative setting, just like PAs love to do. so we're gonna be opening those up
the third week of the month every month, [00:50:00] and our lovely, amazing Ashlyn will be facilitating it . But it's only gonna be as good as we get, others joining and, partnering on these things. So hope to see you there on Slack. if you are struggling, tell us where to go deeper on, and we'll build the next sessions around you.
So our goal is to support you and to support your challenges and your nuances and your niches, and we are willing to do the work to show up for you. So please share with us what we can do, where you're challenged, and let's help, you get over that ugly, dreadful dip in the process so you can get back to that amazing win and launch and growth feeling.