One Doctor's Journey

[LuckyPup]

Yeah, the incentives issue is a conversation in and of itself, as is the socialization trend. I do think we're headed there, but it will take another 20 years, and then only if there is tort reform, educational reform, etc.

To that point, is your product something that could be applied to fee-for-service practices, or dental and vet medicine?

Quoted for excellent insight! Thank you for your support, and I hope that you and your spouse find a way out of the grind.

As far as misaligned incentives...I *think* that this is the most difficult nut to crack. I'm not sure how to fix it, unless you did a totally socialist thing where all doctors make X, and certain specialties (Neurosurgery) make more...

As for the tear....I dunno, I guess that I'll feel better once I have my first sale. Like Vick ...when does it become real? To me, when that first customer payment hits the bank account. And then I want to be like Vigilante: being a legendary company while being addicted to passive income deposits while living part time in HI.

 

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[LuckyPup]

Vick? Vigilante? Not familiar. As for HI - highly recommend Kauai!

. Like Vick ...when does it become real? To me, when that first customer payment hits the bank account. And then I want to be like Vigilante: being a legendary company while being addicted to passive income deposits while living part time in HI.

 

[Iwokeup]

Maybe align with some practice management companies, score some quick victories, scale a bit, then develop a relationship with one of the bigger fish in this fragmented market, say Epic or Allscpripts. Exit strategy to sell to one of them?

I'm not so sure about aligning with practice management companies....what value do they usually add to a practice? Besides, this product might be a competitor of sorts and they might try to block its adoption...I would think (could be wrong).

Definitely want to scale and we're definitely considering developing a relationship with the bigger fish. The problem is the politics of it...I'm not sure how one gets to be of sufficient scale that (for example) EPIC would be willing to allow us access to their API. We're still trying to figure that out. We've definitely considered the acquisition exit strategy..

 

[Iwokeup]

Yeah, the incentives issue is a conversation in and of itself, as is the socialization trend. I do think we're headed there, but it will take another 20 years, and then only if there is tort reform, educational reform, etc.

To that point, is your product something that could be applied to fee-for-service practices, or dental and vet medicine?

Yeah, the incentives issue is a conversation in and of itself, as is the socialization trend. I do think we're headed there, but it will take another 20 years, and then only if there is tort reform, educational reform, etc.

To that point, is your product something that could be applied to fee-for-service practices, or dental and vet medicine?

Could be applied to ANY practice where there are inefficiencies. Doesn't really matter.

 

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[LuckyPup]

Dunno what the product does but I do know the space, so I'm just spit-balling here. I had thought of PM companies because I thought it might be a value add for them, and a way for you to access a larger audience - that is, if your product lends itself more toward private practices than hospitals or systems.

I'm not so sure about aligning with practice management companies....what value do they usually add to a practice? Besides, this product might be a competitor of sorts and they might try to block its adoption...I would think (could be wrong).

Definitely want to scale and we're definitely considering developing a relationship with the bigger fish. The problem is the politics of it...I'm not sure how one gets to be of sufficient scale that (for example) EPIC would be willing to allow us access to their API. We're still trying to figure that out. We've definitely considered the acquisition exit strategy..

 

[Iwokeup]

Dunno what the product does but I do know the space, so I'm just spit-balling here. I had thought of PM companies because I thought it might be a value add for them, and a way for you to access a larger audience - that is, if your product lends itself more toward private practices than hospitals or systems.

Interesting. What PM companies are out there, and which ones are worthwhile?

 

[LuckyPup]

Oh, the PM companies often run the back-end of private practices - HR, accounting, billing, rolling out the EMR, etc. They take a 5-8% cut in return. As I understand it, they can be a conduit to the EMR companies.

 

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[Iwokeup]

Re-started the Miracle Morning routine today. Going to try again to get this habit started and embedded into my daily life. Read a couple of pages from Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich," exercised, and have already been grinding.

Morning meeting got cancelled due to their end, but we're working on a reschedule time.

Reaching out to 10 practices today and seeing if I can get a meeting.

Developer skype call @ 11 AM.

 

[Iwokeup]

Oh, the PM companies often run the back-end of private practices - HR, accounting, billing, rolling out the EMR, etc. They take a 5-8% cut in return. As I understand it, they can be a conduit to the EMR companies.

Thanks man. I put in a text to someone I know with contacts in the PM space. We'll see what he thinks. Cheers!

 

[LuckyPup]

Which is great for you, because they're ALL inefficient!!

Could be applied to ANY practice where there are inefficiencies. Doesn't really matter.

 

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[Iwokeup]

Which is great for you, because they're ALL inefficient!!

Boy howdy

 

[Iwokeup]

Re-started the Miracle Morning routine today. Going to try again to get this habit started and embedded into my daily life. Read a couple of pages from Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich," exercised, and have already been grinding.

Morning meeting got cancelled due to their end, but we're working on a reschedule time.

Reaching out to 10 practices today and seeing if I can get a meeting.

Developer skype call @ 11 AM.

* Developer call was pretty great. Guy has the technical chops to do what we need. More importantly, he really does seem to understand that space that we're in. Would be a huge strategic advantage to us.

* Posted an update to the blog

* Reached out to medical school classmates (~10 practices) for help with product validation

* Another Dev meeting at 4 pm

 

[Iwokeup]

Second DEV meeting went well. The guy brings certain other strengths to the table. We'll have to see what he comes up with wrt a bid for an Minimally Viable Product.

One more dev meeting in the morning. This time with a professional shop.

Today may have been a pivot day as to who are ultimate customers will be. Also we may have come up with another distribution channel as well.

Mentally exhausted. Will post later.

 

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[Iwokeup]

Dev meeting this morning went very, very well. He may be the best one we've interviewed yet - systematic, thoughtful, with "in house" UI/UX. His dev shop does a lot of local high touch stuff and he has a team of 45-60 coders working overseas that bring overall costs down while improving turnaround times.

And at the end of the meeting, he was asking if my partner and I could provide him value in the form of introductions to other markets, if we would consider being advisors for his startup, since the Partner and I have subject matter expertise in two different areas that he is trying to get into.

So a very value given, value returned interaction. Yin and Yang.

Wife's birthday is coming up, so I'll be slowing down for a few days.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Funny doctor story: Pt comes in complaining of an infection "on (her) stomach." Says that it's been there for a couple of days. She is VERY LARGE (think small moon of Jupiter large) and points to regions below. Oh, and by the way she's about 2 weeks pregnant but has yet to see her OB. So I go to examine her and I have to have two nurses in the room to help lift this woman's HUGE pannus. It turns out that the underside of the pannus is extremely red, swollen, and clearly infected. The kicker is that the underside has several (about 5-) wooden splinters which seem to be the infection sources. I asked her how they got there...
Well, her husband's friends had used a piece of wood to lift up the pannus so that her husband could "do her right" and get her pregnant.
Yeah, that actually happened.

Absolutely disgusting.

Dev meeting this morning went very, very well.

Just to get this straight, you are doing all this leg work while also working in the ER 3 days a week in 12 hour shifts?

 

[throttleforward]

Absolutely disgusting.

Can't wait to meet you guys in person and tell you all about the decaying half-eaten chicken wing I found under a man's breast when I was working in a hospital.

 

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[throttleforward]

@Iwokeup do you guys have clickable wireframe mockups (or an actual beta) to demo yet to prospective clients? Went to a great meetup in DC and heard a step-by-step B2B sales funnel presentation that I think could apply to you guys.

 

[Iwokeup]

Absolutely disgusting.

Haha. Yes. Very much so.

Just to get this straight, you are doing all this leg work while also working in the ER 3 days a week in 12 hour shifts?

Well, I'll work 5-6 days in a row (and work on stuff during the off shift time), have some free time, then go back to work again. So it works out to about that time commitment, yes.

 

[Iwokeup]

@Iwokeup do you guys have clickable wireframe mockups (or an actual beta) to demo yet to prospective clients? Went to a great meetup in DC and heard a step-by-step B2B sales funnel presentation that I think could apply to you guys.

I would LOVE to see that presentation man.

We have a mockup that basically lays out our workflow and basic screens. We're prospecting for developers to build the alpha/beta product...

 

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[Iwokeup]

Today's progress:

* Got up at 0500 to finish prepping my presentation to the local EM residency
* Gave said presentation to good response
* Was asked to strongly consider continuing to give multiple presentations in the coming year over various topics, even though it was clearly understood that I'm not an academic and that I have a software startup as my first passion.

~ Probably a good move as it allows me to keep my speaking/presentation chops sharp and may give me exposure to the physician community in my home town as something other than "Just another ER doc."

================

* Validation calls today:
- 11 calls
- 1 meeting sked for Monday
- 2 email addresses given so that we can arrange a meeting
- In touch c one COO who promised to call back (we'll see)
- left 6 VMs (strong voice, "This is Dr. X, please call back at your earliest convenience."
- only 1 flat out refusal "we're not interested."
- Also reached out to another para-Medical/health type practice to see if they could use this product. Why not?

 

[throttleforward]

(strong voice, "This is Dr. X, please call back at your earliest convenience."

Unfair advantage!

 

[Iwokeup]

Unfair advantage!

Gotta use whatever works, man.

 

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[SteveO]

Funny doctor story: Pt comes in complaining of an infection "on (her) stomach." Says that it's been there for a couple of days. She is VERY LARGE (think small moon of Jupiter large) and points to regions below. Oh, and by the way she's about 2 weeks pregnant but has yet to see her OB. So I go to examine her and I have to have two nurses in the room to help lift this woman's HUGE pannus. It turns out that the underside of the pannus is extremely red, swollen, and clearly infected. The kicker is that the underside has several (about 5-) wooden splinters which seem to be the infection sources. I asked her how they got there...
Well, her husband's friends had used a piece of wood to lift up the pannus so that her husband could "do her right" and get her pregnant.
Yeah, that actually happened.Click to expand...
Absolutely disgusting.

To each their own...

 

[Iwokeup]

To each their own...

You would not believe what humanity experiences. I can only thank my luck that I live when I do...in the pre-medicine/antibiotic days. *shudder*

 

[jon.a]

Funny doctor story: Pt comes in complaining of an infection "on (her) stomach." Says that it's been there for a couple of days. She is VERY LARGE (think small moon of Jupiter large) and points to regions below. Oh, and by the way she's about 2 weeks pregnant but has yet to see her OB. So I go to examine her and I have to have two nurses in the room to help lift this woman's HUGE pannus. It turns out that the underside of the pannus is extremely red, swollen, and clearly infected. The kicker is that the underside has several (about 5-) wooden splinters which seem to be the infection sources. I asked her how they got there...


Well, her husband's friends had used a piece of wood to lift up the pannus so that her husband could "do her right" and get her pregnant.

Yeah, that actually happened.

That's just f*cked up.

 

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[Iwokeup]

More sales calls made, less successful today.

However, one of the emails from yesterday turned into an in-person meeting with the practice manager and the Practice owner. Lots of good feedback and even an offer to introduce us to other potential customers (which would be a new but related niche for us. More social proof and potential customers! )

Aaannnnd, they could very well be interested in helping us fund our MVP, be a beta tester, etc. Now I just gotta see about getting the close this week....

In addition, they have a side business that helps medical practices improve their billings collections. They're at the point of needing to grow the biz and are looking into an outside company to do that. As a result of reading @Andy Black's posts on SEO/Adwords, I was able to ask them a few questions to see what kind of help is being proposed, and offered to figure out if they're getting a good offer or not. So thanks to this forum (and especially Andy), I was able to provide them with value as well.

Now to go and bake a Carrot Cake

 

[Iwokeup]

Carrot cake was a hit!

So I had a meeting yesterday with another practice with a bit of a different focus than traditional practices. However, they were interested in our product and possible kiosk applications as well. Lots of good feedback. Thought about asking them to be an early investor but backed away. I came to the meeting asking for validation; initially didn't think that they would be a fit for us in the first five minutes of the visit. However, I just continued to ask questions and a potential software solution (based on our proposed product) arose organically from the convo. Pretty neat. They agreed to be a beta tester for us and to help us develop the product in general and were very helpful.

Take aways:

* I really LOVE going out on these product validation calls
* I'm wondering if I should be trying to ask for $$ support for development right then, or wait a bit then come back to them. Anyone have suggestions?
* The medical field really IS a small world. Reputation precedes (or follows) you.
* The more I talk the more I'm convinced that SOMEONE in my space needs to step up in a big way. I can see a path where we get big enough to get acquired by a company that ISN'T in this space (APPLE would be my choice) but by their entry it would be a huge wake up call to the myriad players. It's actually a matter of national importance.

 

[Iwokeup]

In the interest of openness to future entrepreneurs: having a job that pays really well can sometimes be a hindrance. Sometimes I feel lazy. I know it's because I know that I'm not gonna starve if I don't get this startup going right now.

My antidote is the imagining myself back at my old job in two years because I need the job.

That seems to do the trick, every time

===============================
* Bank account for the LLC done today
* 10 more sales calls. No call backs today and more of what I would expect normal cold calls to be.

I feel like we've got enough validation to move forward and start getting the product in front of beta testers/potential customers. We've met with 7 or so developers and the alpha specs will be sent out in an RFP on Thursday. It feels like we're in a valley now...

Which means that I need to work on the neglected parts of the pre-launch:

* blogging to build authority and demonstrate social proof

* building brand awareness through
- Meetups
- FB page (need to create)

* Considering a cheap SEO test to see what kind of traffic I can send to a landing page

* Need to rearrange the website to:
- Move the blog to a separate page
- Create a landing/squeeze page in order to capture email addresses
======================

On a bright note, I've managed to start a couple of good habits over the past month:

I now do the "Miracle Morning" every day,Monday - Sunday.

My body has become attuned to the early wake up, early to bed routine and I am fantastically productive at six in the morning. I've learned the hard way that if I don't get up, even on a "day off," that the day feels completely out of sync. It also syncs well with the four month old's sleep schedule so that my Wife can sleep more.

I'm almost to the end of my first cycle in a new workout routine.

I'm following "The New Rules for Lifting" program and I have to say: it's pretty great! I've been lifting my whole life but I've apparently been doing it wrong. And I feel better and stronger in this routine than I ever have. While I've managed to get into the groove wrt the physical aspect (and I'm now active at least five days per week when it used to be five days per month), I haven't nailed down the diet part. I used to do ultra low carb but had a very difficult time following this while living in a household that wasn't on board. I've been trying to follow the diet in the book, which seems much more balanced and realistic and makes a lot of sense, but I find myself going carb crazy.

Just saw something that MJ posted regarding meal planning & prep for the week, and I'm going to look into setting this up this week.

Implementing systems around the house

One thing that I've heard over and over again is how successful businesses have systems to automate or reduce the uncertainty of various processes. It occurred to me that we could do the same thing around the home to make life easier. To wit:

- Automation of all bill payments
- Hiring a lawn person to take care of that bizness once per week
- Interviewing cleaning staff to come clean the house twice per week so that the Wife can devote her considerable brain to other endeavors
- Getting the 4 year old into 5 day per week pre-K (vs 3 days) so that again, the Wife can devote......
- Setting up an LLC for my medical practice, hiring a CPA/Bookkeeper, and automating taxes, accounting, etc.

 

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[Iwokeup]

- Requirements (RFP) have now been sent to the developers. Partner met with another dev yesterday, bringing our total to 7 that received RFPs.
- I'm off to ten days of work in my satellite facility (@ nights, 12 hours) so will be trying to work in a very focused way in the afternoons after I wake up.

While out of town:

o REALLY, this time: will do 2 product validation calls while out of town.
o Create content calendar for blog
o Create my first e-book for visitors who visit the site and sign up to our list.
o Create Facebook page
o Try small adwords test to see if there's an external market for the product.

 

[TTG SS]

Really love this thread! Very informative, and inspirational! Keep up the good work!