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Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo Ming. Welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD, the podcast for physician and healthcare entrepreneurs. I think I've got a really cool topic that you guys will be interested today, and I know I talk with a lot of doctors thinking, "I want to start up my own practice, but I don't know what the best way to do it." I want to give you guys five steps to launch your first practice in 2025 without having to rely on investors.

Here are five things that you need to do to start up your practice today. Most doctors feel trapped in the system. There's no doubt about it, right? I talked to them.

I talked to my colleagues. We engage in long conversation about how the medicine today is a lot harder than it was like 20, 30 years ago. And I think a lot of times it's what's in our head that is stopping us. We wait for permission that never seems to come in.

And you know, doctors, we don't have any experience starting up businesses. We don't get any business training, not in medical school or residency. And so, they have this idealistic way of how they think practice should be built, that it needs to have investors. You need to take out huge loans.

You need to spend thousands of dollars on renting or even buying the office space. The reality check is you really don't need any of that. And so, what I want to give you by the end of this podcast episode is a step-by-step roadmap that you can use that you can actually start by doing it this week. It's where you don't have to rely on debt.

You don't have to rely on investors, but there's no waiting. So, if this is your first time listening to me, I've started my own cash-based practice back in 2012. We were able to grow that to three locations where I've now worked with a company and now have partners who are helping franchise the company into women's health practice. And I started this on my own, started it from my laptop, outside finding investors.

I think I even tried to get a business loan and they didn't really give it to me, which is why I have the name Bootstrap MD because I literally have bootstrapped this. So, I want to give you guys the framework, a five-step process, of what you could do to launch a practice today. So, without further ado, let's get started. First step, you need to pick a profitable niche.

And I think the big mistake that I often hear with doctors is they pick based on passion alone, you know, you know, I'm sure you've heard it, what are you passionate about? And what happens is that they try to serve everyone. He said, "Oh, I want to serve everyone from cradle to grave. I want to help men, I want to help women, I want to help kids, I want to help adults, I want to help seniors." The results is, if you try to help everyone, you're helping no one, and you actually become invisible.

And that's when you end up becoming broke because you want to be available to all, and you really need to focus on a niche. So, let me give you three questions that I think could help you validate that niche. First is, who do I want to serve? What population do I want to serve?

Get very, very specific. It's not people with health problems. It's, I want to serve busy executives, I want to serve stay-at-home moms, I want to serve aging athletes. Get really honed down on who do you want to serve.

Second question is, what is an urgent problem that I can solve now? So, what does urgent mean? So, I focus on cash-based practices, and urgent means that they're willing to pay for it now. It's not general wellness, not prevention.

It's, what can I do now? So, some examples of this could be the gal who wants to lose weight and has tried everything else. The one whose low energy is killing their performance on the field. Hormone issues that are ruining their lives.

Sexual health problems that are affecting their relationships. Get very specific on that urgent problem. What can you do to solve right now? And then three is can I deliver it profitably?

That's what a business is all about. You know, that means it's a high perceived value to the patient. It's a low overhead for you to deliver that. And it's a repeatable process here.

Again, a common mistake that I see doctors, even doctors who end up going bankrupt, is because they think that they need to get spend hundreds of thousands dollars on massive equipment. Solve complex problems that they need to have these very expensive procedures. Don't do that. I see doctors who take out a part of their mortgage to invest in a laser that ends up being a coat rack.

And they don't let that happen to you. So, examples of niches that I see, weight loss, you know, weight loss is something that you can bring in anywhere between 300 800 a to month. Aesthetics has high margins. Got to be careful on this because there is some competition.

And again, that's why I value that you really focus on those three questions that I just discussed about honing down on a niche. Sexual health performance, my partner Dr. Antoine, she is you know, killing it serving this community. They're underserved, but there's a urgency to help with that.

Longevity and performance. Longevity I think is where you can have ideal clients. They understand the importance of longevity and they can charge premium price on here. Okay.

So, a little way that you can help define your niche is what they call the North Star statement. And I've talked about this on previous podcast before. It's where you fill in the blanks. It's I help blank or I help who solve blank what problem so they can get this result.

I help Who do you help solve what problem so they can get blank or get this result. So, you're not just saying like, I'm a feeling practice doctor." That's not a statement. A good one is, "I help busy executives optimize their hormones so they can perform like they're 25 years old again." "I help women over 40 lose stubborn weight without giving up wine or their social life." Again, this is something that you can say on an napkin.

This is like your elevator pitch that you can say in 30 seconds. Can you write one sentence? This is your action step today this week. Write one sentence.

I help who solve what problem so they can get this result. Write one sentence. That's your entire positioning. Okay, step one we discussed about finding your niche.

Step two, build that MVC. What is MVC? In the tech world, you've heard about building your minimal viable product. This is your building your minimal viable clinic on here.

Again, we're bootstrapping everything here, guys. So, a trap that most doctors fall into is they spend 6 months on the setup. They burn through their savings and guess what happens? They never launch because they focus on the wrong things.

They focus on, "Well, I want to get that perfect office space, that park place, a Madison Avenue stuff. I want to invest in fancy EHR systems. I want to hire 15 employees. I want my logo to be beautiful.

I want my branding to be beautiful. I want my staff to have this. I need to have complex legal structures on here." If you have focus on these type of things that I just described, you're going to end up having analysis paralysis. You're going to have death by planning and you know, more poorly, you're going to have zero or negative revenue.

So, here is the minimal viable clinic formula, my MVC formula because you need to have exactly three things. You need a way to see patients. What are you going to do? Are you going to do this brick and mortar or you can even start with telemedicine.

You can use telemedicine. you can use a free platform like doxy.me, d o x y dot me, or simple practice, practice now. Getting it up there. You don't even need a laptop.

You hopefully you do have one, but you can use your phone. You can use Zoom. Just make sure it's HIPAA compliant. Okay?

That's one way is to do telemedicine. Option B is you don't even have a lease. There are a lot of opportunities. I'm in San Diego.

I see these people where they have these spaces and you know, I see ads where like they're looking for people to sublease. So, you could other doctor's offices, a chiropractic office, a physical therapy office. That's where one of the questions that we had looked in when we had started. This allows you to do co-working medical spaces.

This in some places gets to be under four figures a month to just sublease it for maybe one to two days out of the week. You're starting something. We're not starting it from 40 hours a week, we're starting, you know, I do 5 to 10 hours a week. You can do this easily if subleasing space, okay?

Telemedicine and a subleasing space. Guess what? Now, you need to have a way to take payments. You can set up using Square.

Zero dollars set up. You can use Stripe. You can use PayPal. I've even seen some doctors use Venmo or Zelle.

You need to have a way to get payments, okay? Again, that's going to take you 10 minutes to figure that out. Then, you need a way to deliver your results. You're going to need an EHR.

There's a lot of simple EHRs out there. Healthy, h e a l t h i e, Charm. You know, I wouldn't recommend like Google Docs, but have something that's very, very simple, low cost on here. Lab orders.

You can use Access Health, Rupa Health. You have Everlywell, you can have direct lab accounts, okay? Very, very simple on here. You need a place to write prescriptions.

You can use Simple Practice, other prescription ways on there. You need supplements for a product. One of my favorites is Fullscript. They actually can drop ship a lot of these products to you.

I shouldn't use the word drop ship, but you know, they send it directly to you the patient and then you can charge whatever you wanted on top of that. And you can have a link to your website on there so they can start ordering on there. Again, simple way to deliver results on here. And you're going to have to have your tech stack on here.

Total cost is probably less than $200, $300 a month. You need a website. You can use Squarespace, you can use Wix. The one that I've been liking a lot is Carrd, c a r r d.

It does these simple opt-in pages on here and you know like $20 a month. You can schedule appointments. You can use Calendly, everybody uses Calendly on there. Use the paid version, they can actually schedule appointments with you.

We talked about payment, you can use Stripe. I think it's like free and then they charge per transaction. I think it's like 2.9% or something like that. You can use EHR, you can use Charm, Simple Practice.

Again, that's $50 to $100 a month. And then you can use telehealth, doxy.me. I've given you five ways and you can set this up in the first week on here. Okay.

Again, when I first started it, I started up my clinic very very slowly. You know, using a lot of the tech stack that needs to give you. You can get this up and running in a weekend on here. Okay?

And then you have that basic setup and guess what? You start generating revenue, you start generating income. You can always upgrade your systems later. Hey, go to town if you want to get an expensive EHR if you want.

Okay? But you need to start something simple. I see this in a lot of different areas, why not For some people say, "Oh man, this is You can't get a very basic." But I see this in every other industry that I'm in. The gal who wants to start up or guy who wants to start up a dog walking business on here.

It's very very simple. I work with a pool guy. They use very very simple to understand payment processing. You know, very simple website, but they're really really busy.

Don't overcomplicate this, guys. You don't need to build a monument. All you need to do is build momentum. You've heard of perfect is the enemy of the good, you know, here.

You don't need to I see doctors who take 2 years to learn something. You can get this done in 2 weeks, all right? Revenue fixes everything. You start small, you get your clientele, and then you can build.

Systems follow sales, it's not the other way around. Okay? All right. Just focus on the essentials, you can ignore everything else on here.

All right. So, we talked about that. Step three is you want to craft your irresistible offer. So, what do I mean by that?

I'm a big fan of Alex Hormozi. I'm sure you've heard of him. If you haven't, his books are incredible. I think he made like $80 million in a weekend recently on here.

Uh and this is something that I learned from him is people don't buy services, they what they want to buy is transformation. So, what is the transformation? You call it the value drivers. You need to create an offer that helps them achieve their dream outcome.

It's not let's see what happens. It gives them a specific measurable desirable result. I want to help you lose 15 lb. I want to get you fix your sexual dysfunction on here.

I want to get your energy back to like when you were 25. So, how fast they can they get it? Ideally, you want to get something in 90 days to 6 months. We do 12-week programs because time is important.

Time is valuable. We are all busy. Is there something where you can get a quick win for 2 weeks and then you get the full results in 90 days. Once they do that, they're going to love you and they're going to keep coming back.

Another part of the value driver is how easy will it feel? Is there a reduced perceived effort and sacrifice? You know, can they lose weight without spending hours in the gym? Will they still enjoy their life?

Is there an easy result that they can do? And then the fourth aspect of the value driver is how confident are they that it will work? You can increase their confidence by showing case studies, credentials, your credentials. You can do guarantees.

You don't see this often in medicine, but guarantee is like, you know, if you don't lose 10 lb in 60 days, I'll refund you and work with you free until you do. Again, this is unheard of it in medicine, but we're starting to find a lot of these different things because it makes it very easy. You just don't want to end up just giving a discount just from you a discount.

You're just going to end up being commoditized. We see this unfortunately aesthetics where people are going to the lower and lower number like, "How low can I charge for unit of Botox?" And then when the answer happened, they just go to the cheapest place. You know, so change it from the term like weight loss to I want to do a 90-day metabolic reset. Where they're going to get lab panels, they're going to get video consultations, they're going to get personalized nutrition.

They're going to get weekly group coaching calls. They're going to get a supplement protocol. They're going to get their medication. Now you can charge something like $1,500 versus $100 a month on here.

We talked about having an offer statement. You can create what we call a unicorn offer statement. Where I help who achieve a dream outcome in a time frame without a big objection. So example, you know, I help busy executives lose 20 lb in 12 weeks without meal prep or giving up client dinners.

I help weekend warriors perform like they're 25 years old again in 60 days without spending 10 hours a week in the gym. So create that unicorn offer statement. I help who achieve dream outcome in a time frame without a big objection on here. Okay.

So step four, you want to get patients before you get fancy. And so what I mean by that, the deadly mistake that I see, they spent two months trying to set up an LLC or getting a logo design. They spent four months trying to get the perfect website. They spent another couple months designing an office space and then hiring staff.

And then finally, they're ready to see patients after about a year. Meanwhile, they burn through probably $50,000. There's no revenue and they're giving up. So, you want to focus on can I get my first five patients?

That's in week one you launch it. Week two you get your first five patients. Week three, can I get 20 patients? Now what you you have proof systems when you generate in.

Now you can go back and own the revenue. Where do you get the patients? Find 50 people that you know, your friends, your family, your colleague. Hey, I launched a practice.

Would love to tell you about it. Can you have a few minutes, you know, over coffee? You get 10 of our conversations. Five people say they're interested.

Three people become your first patients on You can do local Facebook groups. I love mom groups on here. Join it. Post value.

Give them tips. Give them many guides on here. I see one where they just post on a group and they see the same ad they've done for the last month on here. Focus on another method.

Focus on partners. Who can work with you that have a like-minded audience, but they don't actively compete with them. You know, for us, we're in the weight loss and the hormone space. We work with gyms.

We work with CrossFit studios. We work with yoga. You know, we work with chiropractors. We work with other areas, physical therapists.

They don't compete with us on there. Do a couple solid partnerships on here. Exchange. See how you guys can have a win-win situation on here.

All right. So, that was a lot of info on here. And then finally, step five, you want to systematize, simplify, and scale. The bottleneck that I often see that kills practices is you get to 10 to 20 patients and then you end up being the bottleneck.

When you're bottleneck, it's because every question goes to you. Every decision goes to you. You end up working 50 to 60 hours a week or more. You hit a revenue ceiling.

You're going to eventually burn out. Then you signal you need to start learning about systems plus people equals scaling it. So, you need to start automating things. We use the Dr.

Boss system. You can go find that information at few Dr. Boss where you have a system that automates all of these different things. So, then you client signs up, they get a welcome email.

They get an intake forms automatically. They can go ahead and schedule their appointment. Payment is done. Again, we use Dr.

Boss. You can use a combinations of Calendly, Practice Better, Healthy, Zapier on there. Again, I'm not trying to complicate things, but you need to start putting in automation on here. Do a membership, they have recurring billing billing.

If they invoices aren't paid, they get an automated reminder on here. Everybody else uses automation, why not in your clinic on here? We set up automated emails after they come to the appointment. They get an email day three, "Hey, how are you feeling?" Day seven, "Here's a quick check-in." Day 14, "Hey, just a reminder you need to labs done." Day 30, "Hey, it's time to reorder your supplements on here." Hey, day 60, "Hey, I hope you enjoyed this.

Would you like your honest review?" Again, having all of these follow-up sequences automated on here as well. Another important thing is you could start your first hire could be a virtual assistant. They can get this overseas, very inexpensive. They're very trained in doing this.

They can respond to emails and DMs on Facebook. They can schedule appointments. They can send reminders. You know, you can use a place like onlinejobs.ph, virtualatinos.com.

You can use Upwork. My last interview was with hiremymom.com with Leslie Pile. I like you to learn all that assistants. You can go check out that video on here.

And then finally, you need to know your numbers. You need to be able to track weekly how many new patients they're getting this week, what are the total active patients, our retention rates, what are the metrics that we need to follow, what is your revenue, recurring revenue, total monthly revenue, how much revenue that we get per patient. And again, this is something we're using just a simple Google Sheets that follows all of these different metrics.

You start doing this, you're going to start scaling and you're going to you're going to have an amazing an amazing practice on here. So, to recap, I guess we'll call it our simple launch blueprint. Step one, pick your profitable niche. What are the foundation questions?

You want to have your North Star statement. Step two, build that MVC, minimal viable clinic. Spend less than $200 a month to build a tech stack. Focus on the three essentials.

You can launch your practice in the next couple of weeks. Step three, craft that irresistible offer. And I'll invite you to check out Alex Moses' 100 million dollar a money models book, best seller. Learn about value stacking, learn about having packaging pricing.

Step four, start getting your first 10 patients. You don't even need a website. Find 10 patients. Call your friends, your family.

Start developing your sales call, your sales framework. Find other potential partners out there who have like-minded audience that you would have. And then step five, systematize, simplify, and scale. Find out things that you can automate, those are repetitive tasks that you're doing again and again and again.

Start hiring a VA, track your numbers, build and scale and grow your business on here. Remember, guys, you don't need investors, you don't need to get big loans, you don't need a fancy office, you don't need a big team, you don't need years of planning. What you do need is a profitable niche, irresistible offer, momentum beats perfection all the time, and the willingness to start grinding on here.

Just realize the bottleneck is you. It's usually Stop waiting for permission. Start this wet week and having yourself everything else. So, I think we did this in done under 25 minutes.

I think this one would be good to rewind and listen to again. If If want to check out what we do, we do help doctors helping them to start up their own practice. Find more information at bootstrapmd.com. Just remember guys, as entrepreneurs, you're going to have your ups and downs.

Do a little something each day to get you closer to your goals and keep moving forward.