It doesn’t matter if you are opening a restaurant or a medical practice, there are three vital components of every business. You must understand these components if you want to operate a successful practice. If one component is neglected, then the other components will be affected and ultimately your business will never reach its full potential or it could fail. What are these?

1. Your service and/or product line.
2. How you are going to sell that service/product (MARKETING).
3. Managing the business finances.

Those are the 3 most vital components of any business, including medical practices. If you give each component equal energy, then you will have a well-rounded business. If you are good at one component but not another, you better outsource that component to someone else or your business will have difficulties.

I am good at developing services/products and selling them. I have a natural creative knack and also happen to be pretty good at marketing. These things didn’t just happen, they took years and years of self-development and study. What I am not very good at is managing the finances behind the business. I would say I am fair at it, but there is definitely room for improvement. This is why I use an expensive CPA to help manage my finances, taxes, and bookkeeping. It is a weakness of mine. I identified that and fixed the problem.

This wasn’t always the case. When my medical cannabis business exploded in growth, my business checking account was overflowing with cash. What did I do like other new and naïve entrepreneurs who experience tremendous success? I blew a lot of money on dumb things. I also was so enveloped with the quick success that I achieved, that I neglected important tax filings with the state. These two things resulted in thousands of wasted dollars and some nasty letters from the state. I quickly realized that I needed help. That is when I found my amazing CPA and outsourced work to them. What did this result in?

Being able to focus on what I was good at!

This allowed me to aggressively grow my businesses and ultimately start The Elite Nurse Practitioner.

You need to look over the 3 vital components of a business and determine what your strength and weaknesses are. If you can identify these, you will be more successful.

Your service and/or product line: This is the idea of the NICHE. You must develop that specialized niche service if you are opening a medical practice. This can be anything from primary care, men’s health, medical cannabis, stem cell therapies, telemedicine, etc. Identifying your service line is the most critical component of starting a practice. Developing new services for an already existing practice is how you grow and scale that practice even more. Some people are great with idea generation while others are not. Are you a think tank or do you prefer just to follow a standard model? Is this a strength or weakness?

How are you going to sell your service/product: This is just another fancy way of saying marketing. Once you find your niche idea for your practice, you must promote it. No one knows you exist until you tell the world about it. You have to know how to sell your service to the world. This skill is PARAMOUNT to your success. Ingrain this into your mind if you want to be successful: MARKETING IS THE NUMBER ONE FUNCTION OF YOUR BUSINESS. If patients are not coming through the door to be seen, your business will fail. The reason why a business fails is because the expenses exceed the revenue. Its that simple. This is why you must either learn how to market or outsource it to someone else. Are you good with generating excitement over social media? Do you have a knack about figuring out ways to promote an idea to people? Is this a strength or weakness?

Managing the business finances: If you cannot manage all those juicy dollars flowing into your account from the sale of your services, you will drive your business into the ground. You have to be able to manage the finances behind your business just as you do with your personal finances. I am good at saving and investing, but bad at managing day to day operational finances. This is why I outsource a lot of this out. Are you a miser? Do you pinch pennies and use coupons? Do you have a schedule to pay your bills? Or do you live paycheck to paycheck? Is your personal account close to being over drafted all the time? If you have trouble managing your personal finances, then you will be bad at managing businesses finances. Identify if this is a strength or weakness.

Figure out what your strength and weaknesses are in regard to these 3 components. Even if you are planning on starting a business or operating one currently, you need to understand what needs improvement in each area. If you can do this early on, your practice will be a solid rock. It will be difficult to fail if all 3 components are being nurtured. Just be careful that you don’t spend too much money outsourcing these components!