Hey everybody!
My name is Adam, and I’m super excited to be welcoming you to the first episode of Medical Entrepreneur!
This is the podcast for you to take control of your destiny and learn more about being a medical entrepreneur.
I want you to see for yourself firsthand what I’ve been through, to help shine a light on whether or not this kind of journey is right for you!
So without any further ado… let’s get right into it!
Back to Where It All Started…
When we were growing up… me and my family were extremely poor.
Like poorer than you could imagine.
One day when one of my friends who lived beneath us came up, we actually had to hide the food because otherwise, he would take some (his family didn’t have food either), and we just didn’t have enough to share around with my friends.
The first time I ever realized I had the entrepreneurial instinct was when I used to look through the dumpsters and find things I could re-sell to other people.
This was what first made me realize that I actually didn’t have to rely on anyone else to make my own money.
How One High School Dance Changed My Life…
So as I got older, I started to meet more and more girls.
One time… I took a girl to a high school slow dance. I didn’t really know what it meant at the time but it sounded good to me.
So as the slow music came on, we were about to start dancing together until suddenly…
BAM!
I looked to my left, and one of the guys had jumped off the balcony, breaking both his legs in the process.
Just to top it off… There was another group of boys who were in the bathroom fist fighting each other… and ended up with broken hands and fingers. Craziness.
Well… for me, that was my slow dance ruined. But still, it changed the pathway of my life…
“You Started College at What Age?!”
So after this event, I basically decided that I wanted to see if I could skip high school and go from middle school straight to college.
Low and behold, I was able to.
The next thing I knew, every evening, I was on a 3-hour bus for $1.75, traveling to the local community college center to take my classes.
It was tough, but it worked out. I graduated 2 weeks after my 18th birthday.
Back then, I wanted to make the jump forward to medical school, but the MCAT application was done in paper back then.
And guess what…
Mine got lost in the mail.
So that was a real bummer, But I got over it because a friend from New York had phoned me at the time.
He explained to me that he was in Manhattan, and everything was kicking off. The year was 1999, the internet was now a thing, and now I was able to move to Manhattan and work with him.
We actually built our first company together, building websites. We were able to sell it on, but it was still a super exciting time, and we learned a TON about business.
Snapping Out of It
So after our New York adventure, I had to decide exactly what I wanted to do next.
My gut instinct was to go back and train to be a doctor. That was originally what I wanted to do anyway.
So I went to the Medical Department at the University of Texas. When I was here, I had the opportunity to see so many different fields of medicine.
This is where I first came across anesthesia. I instantly loved it.
In fact, on top of being the yearbook photographer, I earned some extra cash as an anesthesia technician. Over time, I actually became quite proficient in it, and by the time I graduated, I had a huge amount of experience.
As I learned more and more about it, I became especially interested in trauma. So I had a decision to make: stay in Chicago or move to Miami.
The blue ocean and palm trees convinced me.
The Sunshine State
I learned quite a lot from my time in Miami. One of the biggest things I learned was that no matter where you’re from, what your language is or what color skin you have… people only treat you based on the job you do.
I have to admit that’s something I really liked.
It’s such a diverse place too. I learned so much more about the medical entrepreneurs’ world.
I learned about how things work in this world. I became savvier about the power plays between physicians, administrators, and nurses. All that kinda stuff.
It was in Miami when I learned that I really wanted to own my one medical business.
At this stage, I also realized that it would be best to set up 1099 for a whole bunch of reasons.
Mainly because they were easier to set up and because I could be independent and didn’t need to have anyone telling me what I had to do.
So I ended up finding a contract in a small town along the Arkansas/Oklahoma border.
It was at this little place where I met a woman who was dealing with pancreatic cancer, and she was in a whole lot of pain.
I then started quizzing them about why they had no pain program in place. They explained that it was unprofitable.
Pain management was easily one of the most profitable subfields of anesthesia at the time. So for them to tell me it wasn’t profitable was just crazy!
So I pointed out to them that there were large sections of the hospital that were just abandoned. And said, “Why don’t we transform some of these old rooms and we could open up a new line of services.”
Because of all the research I had done at the time, I knew it could have been really profitable for us.
But unfortunately… They said no.
So I ended up going to this oral surgeon who I did anesthesia for and asked if I could rent out his clinic at night. He agreed, and soon enough, I started seeing patients in my pain management clinic at night.
First troubles
Quite soon, this became tricky.
I realized how hard it was to recruit people, especially when in this little town in Arkansas. Secondly, it was extremely difficult to lure people away from whatever job they had previously.
Mainly because I hadn’t made any real money yet, and most of the funding was coming from my one salary.
But things got even harder because something started to change in the healthcare industry. Insurance companies became harder to deal with, and this was a real pain in the butt for us.
It got so bad that I remember one time we had to phone this plumber to come fix our toilet that a patient jammed up.
I remember so vividly he left a bill on the table for $350.
I thought to myself that this plumber was somehow earning more per hour than we were at the time, and we were doing spinal surgeries and neck surgeries with patients. It was just craziness.
Building a Med Spa
Once we built a Med Spa, things became so much easier for us. People started paying in cash which meant that we didn’t have to deal with insurance companies.
In my eyes, this became a different pathway between traditional medicine and this newer entrepreneurial way. We were now able to make the same off 10 patients that we could have from 30-40 previously.
This is what really made me fall in love with the business model that we had. It was such a breath of fresh air, not having to deal with forms, faxes, and calling 100 different people every day.
Not to mention that we even thought the patients were much kinder and less stressful to deal with.
Additional Resources:
– Join my challenge here!
– Check out my website here!
– Sign up for our Aesthetics training here!
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Medical Entrepreneur is a podcast dedicated to those who are trying to escape mainstream medicine and start building the healthcare business of their dreams.
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