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Do you have what it takes to be your own boss?

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Are you sick and tired of working for someone else? Putting in long hard hours just to benefit the owner of the company and shareholders? Working the 9 to 5 grind week after week with no end in sight? Yup, we’ve been in your shoes. We know how it feels. Depending on the culture of the place you work at, you feel like just another cog in the wheel. So, are your finally ready to be your own boss and start your own company? GREAT!

The first thing you need to know about being your own boss is that it isn’t all rainbows, glitter, and unicorns. It is liberating and exciting, but it has its pros and cons just like anything else. Before you ride off into the sunset to start your own company, make sure you know what you’re in for.

Setting Your Own Schedule. I think this is one of the biggest draws to being your own boss. You have the freedom to create your own schedule. However, you may find that like so many other business owners, you are working longer hours than you anticipated. You still have the flexibility to determine when your day starts and ends, when you take vacations, and handle all your personal obligations.

Creative Freedom. You determine what your products and services will look liked, when they will be available, and how you want to deliver them. If something isn’t working, you have the power to revise those offerings to ones that customers may respond better to or terminate them if they no longer interest you in providing them anymore.

Creating Your Own Core Values. You get to set the tone for how your company is see. What’s most important. You can align it with your own personal values and infuse it into every aspect of the company.

Money. You don\’t draw a regular paycheck, not like you would if you were an employee of someone else. You get paid with what is left after expenses, taxes, etc. And you are solely responsible for generating your income. If your business idea flops or you don’t follow the right steps to create a successful business, you could lose your entire initial investment. BUT you also aren’t limited to what you can earn. If you work hard and set yourself up for success, it\’s possible to generate great wealth when you run your own enterprise.

Tax Benefits. Business owners can take advantage of a range of tax benefits despite paying higher Social Security and Medicare rates. They are allowed to accelerate or delay particular expenditures, hire family members and write off a greater variety of business expenses. These options can dramatically reduce the tax burden.

Health Benefits and Retirement. You’ll have to pay for your own health insurance unless you have a spouse who works at a company who provides them. If you are purchasing them yourself, you’ll find that you are paying higher premiums vs. what you paid as an employee. You’ll also be responsible for contributing to your own retirement account without any employer match.

Being your own boss can be both satisfying and terrifying. If you put in the hard work and dedication, you can achieve success in being your own boss. Just remember that it does come with its advantages and disadvantages – and you have to look at them all. The best way to make sure you start out on the right foot, is to have a mentor or coach, who can help you set yourself up for success and make sure you are ready to take the leap. Being your own boss can be far more rewarding than you can imagine.

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Urgent Care Centers and Protecting Your Practice’s Bottom Line

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When a new urgent care facility opens up around the corner, should you begin to worry about patient retention and reduced profits? Perhaps. Anything that impacts your medical practice’s bottom line could ultimately compromise your patient satisfaction due to reduced staffing, fewer services, reduced hours and more. I’m sure none of this is shocking news – but you do have options.

The appeal of urgent care – If you want to compete effectively, you need to know what makes urgent care centers appealing. Specifically, it’s:

  • Open long hours, so people can go at weekends or after work.
  • No appointment necessary so people can go when they need to.
  • Specialized services – Some urgent care facilities provide highly specialized services like orthopedics.
  • It’s less expensive. Many people view health care services as a commodity – price is the point.

So how do you compete?

Proactively marketing your medical practice differently. We know more than a little about marketing, and when it comes to healthcare, it’s all about standing out, providing a personal touch, being there for your patients, and building trust. In short, it’s all about creating a connection, a compelling reason for them to come to you instead of going to your competition, where they’ll just be treated as a number.

This is about creating an excellent customer journey for your patients. Training your staff to be flexible and accommodating, providing a complete, holistic suite of healthcare services, and being accessible and convenient.

It’s about becoming a bigger part of your patients’ lives, when they’re well in addition to when they’re sick. Marketing can help you do just that – Email, interactive websites, patient portals, referral networks, and more all help to promote your services and encourage patients to trust you.

Will this help retain patients? Not all – but many will see the value in the connection and forgo the convenience and the dollars. If your patient goes to an urgent care facility, ensure you follow up.

You know your patients well, much better than an urgent care facility or similar provider. Use that to your advantage, to build a connection. Ensure your patients know to list you as their PCP or preferred specialists so medical records get routed back to you or your patients know to send you record of those visits.

There will be times patients will go to Urgent Care facilities out of pure convenience when you are closed. Acknowledge the fact and support your patients in their decision but make sure you stay in the loop of their care!

Focus on the positive things your practice does. You do much more than treat the sick. You almost certainly have wellness programs, specialized clinics, great advice on diet, exercise, and lifestyle, counselling services, guidance, and other services you can tailor to every one of your patients. Spend some time thinking about how you can promote those services, and become more than just a place people go when they need help.

Be more accessible and convenient. If a patient is ill, they need help there and then. One big advantage urgent care facilities have is that they can easily deal with walk-ins and are open long hours. Well, two can play at that game! Consider opening for longer and creating “walk in” slots and specialized clinics for your patients. You might also want to make signing up and onboarding patients quicker and easier, so that’s not a barrier to them coming to you.

Taken together, these three things can help you build more trust with your patients, let them know about your full range of services, and be there when they need you. If you get this in place, you’ll be in a much better position to give them the care they need. It’s not such a delicate balancing act now, is it.

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Healthy Options — Do Your Patients Know Everything Your Medical Practice Does?

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To the average patient, medical information and healthcare can be a strange place. It seems locked behind an arcane door of unpronounceable medications, conditions with Latin or Greek names, and baffling procedures. It doesn’t help that the only time most people interact with their doctor is when they’re sick.

We know that’s a problem — Marketing your practice isn’t easy. However, we’ve never shied away from a challenge (except for that pumpkin pie eating competition that one time), so we’ve got some pretty good ideas. It all comes down to a few things:

  • Making your patients aware of everything you do.
  • Keeping them healthy in addition to curing illnesses.
  • Giving them more options in their healthcare and medical choices.

How does that look in (medical) practice? Sharing your full range of services[/x_custom_headline][cs_text]It’s important to move people’s perceptions away from your practice just being somewhere they can go when they’re sick, and instead focus on how it can help them stay well. That starts by giving your patients an easy-to-understand list of services and how they can benefit their health. For example:

  • Nutrition advice — Tips on eating well to live a healthier life and feel better.
  • Exercise and fitness — Advice on recommended classes, programs, and routines for people of all abilities and age groups.
  • Smoking cessation — Services you provide to help people quit smoking.
  • Pre- and post-natal services — Helping mothers-to-be through pregnancy and after
  • Screenings and prevention — Details of the various diagnostic and screenings tests you can do to reassure patients or detect early signs of a problem.
  • Any other services — Referrals to alternative holistic options such as life coaching to focus on mindfulness, therapy, acupuncture and more.

Once you’ve collected together all of the great things you do, you need to do two things:

  1. Centralize all the information in one place — We’d recommend your website, and in various leaflets you can hand out at the practice.
  2. Tell your patients about the services — This could be through posters in your practice, via email, through a letter to their home address, or other personal channels.

The main purpose of this is to wow your patients and create trust with them — And that’s vital when it comes to healthcare. What specialized treatments do you provide? Another area to think about is any specialties your practice has, Review the skills, background, and experience of your staff and check you’re representing the various treatments you offer. Examples include:

  • Addiction treatment — Helping people get over alcohol, drug, or other types of addictions.
  • Counselling — Recommendations on good psychotherapists and counselors for helping people deal with mental and emotional issues.
  • Options for medium- and long-term treatments — Providing choices and options for longer-term care of persistent conditions.

With these types of services, it’s best to take a case-by-case approach.

Ultimately, it’s about putting choice and information in the hands of your patients. Once they’re properly informed, they can make better choices about their health and discuss them with you. This all helps to build better relationships with your patients that you can use to enhance their lives and the services you provide.

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