When you are thinking of starting your business you’ll come across what I call “the Big Expense Cash Down Moments”. Economists have a more elegant term for this – fixed start up expenses. These large, one off (and recurring) expenses are going to bring you short term stress and heartburn, and act as a mental and financial barrier to ever starting. But never fear, there is a silver lining – one very large protective advantage to your business – in the longer term. What are these Big Expense Cash Down events? Premises, Staff , Equipment, Marketing, Insurances, Professional Fees etc etc. When you start, you will need premises of some sort. You’ll need essential equipment – often expensive- of some sort. You’ll need professional advice – accountants, legal, web design and marketing. And finally you’ll need staff – receptionists, a manager and maybe a nurse to assist you. All these cost money – up front. Furthermore, many cannot be split in two small fractions. You usually cannot hire half a dedicated manager, design half a website, buy half a piece of essential equipment or rent half your ideal premises. This is financially stressful because, when starting out on your own, you may have no patient list, no income and you are suddenly looking down the barrel of large one-off and ongoing
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This is one of the easier articles I will have to write. Why? Because it is based directly upon the work of the late great Jay Conrad Levinson, from his seminal marketing work “Guerilla Marketing”. I remember picking this book up in an airport bookshop in the 90s, and being immediately absorbed into it. It was only later that I realised that this was already considered a classic in the making, and the 20 years since have cemented its status as a marketing great. Levinson started this book with all 12 commandments listed right at the start – to quote him directly- “so as not to keep you in suspense anymore, I’ll give you all 12 of these commandments upfront”. So I will do the same. Verbatim, here they are. Full credit to the brilliant Jay Conrad Levinson for this. COMMITMENT: You should know that a mediocre marketing program with commitment will always prove more profitable than a brilliant marketing program without commitment. Commitment makes it happen. INVESTMENT: Marketing is not an expense, but an investment — the best investment available to your business today — if you do it right. With guerrilla marketing to guide you, you’ll be doing it right. CONSISTENT: It takes a while for prospects to trust you and if you change your marketing, media, and
“Where will all this take me? This is a question I often get asked by budding medical entrepreneurs. My answer is – how long is a piece of string? In other words, where do you want this to take you? And how far do you want to go? When they appear uncertain at my response, I explain the following: When you start on your entrepreneurial journey, you can do so in any number of directions, and the first challenge is to pick a single direction, or niche. This is often the most challenging part of the whole equation, because it all seems so distant and daunting . Once you commit to a single niche, however, the distance you cover from there will be largely determined by your enthusiasm and application. But don’t underestimate yourself……because, once you get interested in something, pretty magical things can happen. I know, because it happened to me, just like this: You pick a niche that you are interested in and enthusiastic about. When you practice medicine in a field you enjoy, you start to get good at it. Really good at it. Patients aren’t used to doctors who are really good and enthusiastic about their craft. They start to talk. They won’t only talk. In this day and age, they will Facebook, they will tweet, and they will
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