How Dr. Daniel Margolin Built a Podiatry Practice in the Top 3% of All Podiatrists in the USA by systematizing it!

OWEN: My guest today is Dr. Daniel Margolin and he is the CEO at New Jersey Foot and Ankle Center. Dr. Daniel, welcome to the show.

DR. DANIEL: Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to be here.

OWEN: Awesome. This show is all about having you talk about what you did to actually systematize your business, because every guest we come in here, the assumption and the fact is they systematize their business and it runs successfully without them. And so we want to know how you’ve been able to do that. But before we talk about that what are some mind blowing results that you now experience as a result of going through that process of systematizing your business?

DR. DANIEL: One of the main things is you actually don’t have to be there anymore and you continue to run. It gives you back your life and the respect that you know where everything is. You can predict the future. You can actually have an income prediction you could say. A lot of my friends that don’t have systems in place are really worried on a day to day basis how am I going to survive, how am I going to make the mortgage, I don’t have those worries because I can actually predict based on the systems where my business is going to be next week, next month, or next year. It puts me back in control. And it’s a more fun environment because as we put more and more systems in as we organize it more we also find that the staff are happier. So it’s more fun, more effective, and it’s more financially rewarding.

OWEN: How has your company itself been transformed as a result of systematizing the business?

DR. DANIEL: It went from a company that was barely surviving, barely hanging in there. A company where even the staff, if they didn’t have clear descriptions of what was expected of them. And they didn’t even know was the company going to be there in the next year. There was no prediction of the future for that company. So we went to like, wow, not only are we going to be there, we’re dominating our field. There’s nobody around us that’s even competing with us. We don’t compete anymore, we actually dominate. It’s because we took that time to put those systems in place. We almost made it an unfair playing ground.

OWEN: How has your personal life been transformed as a result of systematizing your business?

DR. DANIEL: Just from a personal standpoint I got more time to spend with my family and those kinds of things. I’ve also been able to go after things that are true interest. I’m a doctor, a podiatrist so for a little while I sort of fallen out of love with that or when I wasn’t organized. Once I put the systems in I actually fell back in love with being a doctor and educator. It was really great because there wasn’t the stress there. So from [Unintelligible 00:02:29] I was living a life that is pretty stress free. So that’s pretty cool for me.

OWEN: Awesome. Since you have systems in place that allow the business to run without you I’m wondering what’s been the longest time you’ve been away from it.

DR. DANIEL: There’s several times I’ve been away for 2 or 3 weeks. When I came back it actually was not bigger than it was when I left. But the longest time [Unintelligible 00:02:51] was almost 3 weeks when we went away and the thing just kept running and running and growing. We’re really taking it to the next level. Now finally those systems have been tested I could step away from the practice and it will continue to grow because everybody knows what they’re supposed to be doing.

OWEN: Just so the listener can get some context as to what your business is all about, the size, scale, and so on, what exactly does your company do and what big pain do you solve for your customers?

DR. DANIEL: The Jersey Foot and Ankle Center is podiatry office. We handle people that come in with and heel pain, diabetics that have ulcers, infections, children that get, it’s called [Unintelligible 00:03:28] athletes, pretty much every kind of sports injury or foot problem is actually covered.

OWEN: Awesome. How many full-time employees do you have?

DR. DANIEL: Sure. Right now it’s about 17.

OWEN: Is your company profitable? What was last year’s annual revenue and what are you expecting this year?

DR. DANIEL: Right now as far podiatry we’re in the top 3% of all the doctors in the country. This year we did a little over 1.6 million. Our projects are to do a little bit of over 2 million [Unintelligible 00:03:58]. We actually had our highest ever week which is we did production $76,000, which for a podiatry office is pretty extraordinary. We’re going to go back. We really think our projections are a little bit low, so it should be probably in the high 2 million.

OWEN: Awesome. Take us back to when the business itself was not systemized and automated like it is now. What was wrong with it at that time?

DR. DANIEL: I’ll give you an example, like I said before I was starting to go bankrupt and things weren’t going well. I decided to go out to California and hire a consultant. As I was working with a consultant they came up with some great ideas. They said, “We got to get some marketing programs.” At that time we working about 50 hours a week. Seeing on average about 40 people, there was three of us, myself, an office manager, and a medical assistant. Every time I would go to the office manager and I’d say, “We got this new consultant and he wants to put in some marketing concepts. She would always have this file, like this thing she would walk out of these files and she would say, “I don’t have time. I’m really very busy.” Every time I asked her she would say how busy she way. I ended up going back to the consultant and I said, “I’m so sorry. We don’t have the time to put in these marketing ideas.” He started laughing and said, “Think about this for a second. You see 40 people and you’re working 50 hours a week. If you are organized you could probably go to the patient’s house, pick them up, treat them then drive them back home and cook them dinner. I started looking at them and I said, “That’s sort of true.” He said, “What I want you to do is I want you to cancel all the patients for tomorrow. Don’t tell your office manager, but when she gets in there you actually do her job. Catch her up on everything that was so busy.” That’s exactly what I did. I called her in the office and I said, “I cancelled all the patients. We’re going to catch you up on everything.” And she’s like, no, I don’t have time for that. I said, “We’re doing it sit down.” We spent about an hour and a half and actually went through that whole pile she’s been carrying with her every time I talked to her in about an hour a half. I said to her, “Go get the other piles, let’s finish these up.” She said, “Dan, that’s it.” I said, “What do you mean that’s it?” She said, [Unintelligible 00:06:30]. I was going to strangle her at that point because here she was telling me how busy she was for weeks and all there was, was an hour and a half’s worth of work. That was really a lesson for me. I learned that you have to organize yourself. And when you hire somebody you better know their job position before you put them in place. And you better know, this way they can’t sort of pull the wool over your eyes.

OWEN: Yeah. Back then too when the business was not systematized what will you say was one of the lowest points and describe how bad it got.

DR. DANIEL: It got pretty bad, I grew up in New York City, my parents were teachers and they always emphasized to me that you had to be educated, you got to be a doctor. I worked really hard and became a doctor, went to medical school, did the residency. And when I came out I said, “I got to make it man. This is it. I’m going to open my doors. No problem.” Unfortunately I didn’t have a business background and I had a massive amount of debt. My debt back then was about $200,000. That was in ’86 so interest rates for student loans were about 16%. That’s pretty intense. About 4-5 years into business I was going under. I was pretty much for a couple of months there going out getting drunk pretty much every night because I didn’t know what to do. This is going to sound cliché but I learned about Hubbard Management System, it actually did save my life. It was that bad.

OWEN: How did you even learn about it?

DR. DANIEL: What happened was a friend of mine who was about 20 minutes away from. I called him up one night, he’s name is Peter. I said, “Pete, you must be doing horribly as well. I couldn’t imagine…”

OWEN: Was he a good podiatrist as well too?

DR. DANIEL: Yes, he was a podiatrist and was 20 minutes away from me. We knew each other casually but I knew his area. There’s no way in life that he was doing any better than I was in my mind. I called him, “Hey Pete, you want to go out for a couple of drinks and complain about life?’ When you’re in that position that’s about what you want to do. He said, “Dan, I’m doing great.” I said, “I don’t get it.” He told me about this company. It was interesting. Here was something that was really sort of a scary moment for me, to go out to this company and doing one of the…

OWEN: What’s the company name?

DR. DANIEL: The Company was called Sterling Management. It’s in Glendale, California. So we go out there for a week was a $15,000 for the training program, one week. I had gone through my second business loan. I had $15,500 in the bank. I was gutsy, I didn’t have a choice. I spent the 15,000 and flew out on the plane, pretty much crying the whole way out there, 500 bucks left in the bank. Lucky for me I did do that. It was pretty crazy and rough time.

OWEN: What exactly was the main thing that you learned from going through that program? I’m just curios.

DR. DANIEL: The first thing was to really define what it was that I did as a podiatrist. What was the product that I produced? Once I had actually learned with that, which I figured what that was, it was most of them to figure out what things I could measure on a weekly basis that I would actually have as a sort of a directional compass if you would. I come back and I said, “I need to know the total number of patients I’ve treated in a week. I need to know the total number of new patients I’m treating in a week. I need to know my production and my collection. And that’s when I started doing it. I actually started graphing those, then I started [Unintelligible 00:10:30] and all those kind of things. But putting in statistics so I can actually measure where I was, was an eye-opening experience for me.

OWEN: Okay. What was the second step you now took to systematize the business?

DR. DANIEL: One of the most important things I would say to people out there that are interested in systematizing their business is put a lot of emphasis on getting the right staff there. You got to get the right people in and you have to eliminate the wrong ones. Because if you don’t start with people that are willing to learn and are able to learn, you’re not getting too far.

OWEN: Is it like in the sense that maybe some people work well with systems and some don’t? I’m trying to understand when you say the right people. What does it mean?

DR. DANIEL: Basically, there’s three types of staff you’re going to hire. There’s those that are willing. The willing may not always be the smartest. They may take some more time, but they’re willing. Whatever you say to them somehow they’ll just do it. There’s the defiantly negative. These are people that are defiantly negative. Whatever you tell them to do, I’m sure all of you have seen this, it can’t be done, they’re not going to do it, and they don’t have the time. The third type is called the wholly shiftless. In other words, they’ll yes you to death about doing something but it will never get done. The trick in business is to eliminate the defiantly negative and the wholly shiftless and surround yourself by willing people. It’s just a very important first step.

OWEN: Okay. Now, the first thing you did is you defined what you did as a podiatrist and then figure out the different parts of the business so they can stop tracking the data and the next thing you started looking for the right people. People that are willing to learn your system. What other steps did you take to systematize the business? I’m curious.

DR. DANIEL: First of all, there was recognition that even though it was  a medical practice, it was a business. I’ve been trained as a doctor. I was never trained as a business owner or business executive. What I found is that every business has certain components to it that carry through and they have to be working. One component is there has to be an executive division that are writing the policies. There’s a personnel division. There’s an internal marketing division, there’s a treasury division. There’s a production division. In this case it would be the doctors. There’s a quality assurance division. And then there’s a new patient or a new public division. Every business has those seven areas. Look at your own business and define those seven areas. What is each one of those areas responsible for as a product? As an example, the treasury division, it’s a product, it would me money coming in. Anyway, these seven divisions were never taught to me at medical school. What was taught to me is that the production division, the doctor division. They basically taught me about 1/7 of what I needed to know to actually survive.

OWEN: At that time when you were trying to systematize the business. I’m wondering, how did you prioritize the steps of what to accomplish first. What was the decision making factor of which areas of the business is systematized first and which one is next?

DR. DANIEL: Sure. You have to understand. I come back from this course, I have $500 in the bank. The first thing I have to do is look at what my resources were. I realized quickly that the resources I did have was 5 years of patients that had already went in to see me. The very first thing I did is I said, “With the resource I have I better start calling these people up and either reactivating them, or asking them for referrals.” They already knew who I was. They liked me to some degree. So that’s what we did. I put a major emphasis on actually getting on the phones, calling people personally. That was a big step I think people don’t realize that in their own business is that sometimes the real money and success is in the people they’ve already treated or sold things to.

OWEN: Okay. You started with getting those people on board first and I guess you also tried to get referrals from them. Back then how exactly did you document procedures and processes for the business. What tools did you even use?

DR. DANIEL: I just discussed with you those seven divisions. There’s a thing called an organizing board where you actually draw those divisions out. I actually put all those divisions on the big board. I have those in my office today. The board is about 8 feet by 3 feet, and it defines those divisions. I also bought a software program that I could then graph those divisions. I think it was called Mastertech. Then what I would do is once those graphs were… I learned how to actually battle plan out what I was going to be doing for the following week based on the trends of the graph. This was interesting and very important thing. What I learned in the Hubbard Management System was that each graph based on its trend could be called a certain thing and I’ll give you an example. If every week the number of new patients was getting slightly better, we would call that a normal condition. There were certain steps that if you did in normal it would bring it to a next higher condition called the [Unintelligible 00:16:01] is going up a little bit higher. The first step in normal is don’t change anything, then two, figure out what was making it a little bit better and increase that. And then any time it was doing a little bit worse figure out why it was getting a little bit worst. It was very specific. You’re really analyzing on a daily and weekly basis what was working and what wasn’t working.

OWEN: Because you’re tracking all the data, now you see the trend going up. And any time you see it’s reducing or going in the negative direction then it’s kind of like a warning signal, I need to figure out why that’s happening. As you go in there, dive in, and fix that, and everything starts moving again in the right direction.

DR. DANIEL: That’s right. It starts to move. When you do that and you’re looking at multiple graphs you can really get a feel for the whole practice, otherwise you’re working on a rumor. People are telling me it’s getting better or it’s getting worst. But now you know… that correct tells you.

OWEN: At that time when you were working on systematizing and automating your business, what books and mentors had the most influence on you and why?

DR. DANIEL: The Hubbard Management System to me was the most fundamental thing. It’s what everything else was built on. There are great books too. There was a book by Jim Collins [Unintelligible 00:17:29] which really emphasizes the need to actually, what we spoke of before, get great staff on board. One thing I realize is really great executives they say read 60 books a year and most people read one book a year. I always try to read a lot. It’s been a very effective thing for me.

OWEN: Nowadays in addition to books is also listening to podcasts.

DR. DANIEL: Absolutely.

OWEN: At that point what were the biggest challenges you experienced when you initially tried systematizing your business and how did you solve them?

DR. DANIEL: The biggest problem for me was always staff. I didn’t understand about the three types of staff I spoke of before. I was just learning these things. I wasn’t very secured in there myself. As you try to teach somebody else something that you’re not that secure in, if something shakes a little or doesn’t go on clearly you’re just not sure you’re pushing in the right direction. But there was a word. I love this word. This word changed my life. It was the definition of the word operational. When I say to people what is the definition of the word operational most people will say to me, “Daniel, operational means something works.” That’s true. But there’s a Hubbard Management definition of operation which not only means that it works, but it works without further assistance or attention. It does not have to be continually watched. That is a different level. So you’re setting up when we talk of systems, but not only systems that work but work with minimal intention. If you can look at that definition and say, “How do I want to look at my own business and set it up so not only do the systems work but they take as little attention from me as possible. Now you’ve got something.

OWEN: You mentioned during the pre-interview at that point trying to implement the system so that they could understand and figure it out without you having to be there. One of the problems there was how to teach it to almost anybody. How exactly did you do that?

DR. DANIEL: Absolutely, that is a big problem. What we ended up doing is… I started looking at my own business at the time and I said, “If I were to actually set-up a system how would I do it so not only could I train somebody quickly but that I would be easily duplicate by other people and then I could sell it later on. Because everything I look at, when I set it up to be operational I also want to be able to make it at such a professional level that I can sell. What we ended up doing is we made a video series. We surveyed. We found out that most people’s attention span is 3-5 minutes, and we made videos that were 3-5 minutes. We educate them in specific aspects of their job. After that we would have a workbook that would attach to it and they would watch those videos and they would do the workbook. It was so simple that anyone that could not duplicate it instantly popped out and we knew at that point that they would probably not work out.

OWEN: What was the second biggest challenge that you experienced initially when you were trying to create the systems?

DR. DANIEL: When you’re putting systems, one of the other problems is sometimes there’s a small percentage of people out there that will to some degree attack you.

OWEN: In the company or outside the company? I’m just curious.

DR. DANIEL: Sort of both actually, interestingly enough it was sort of both. Let’s look at a system for marketing let’s say. We put in systems to market and promote… As they got more and more successful what you would get is an attack by people out there. It’s a small percent, it’s maybe like 1%. For whatever reason they can’t help themselves. If somebody’s doing wrong they just attack. It’s hard to get this. If you’ve never seen this before I just want you to really get this especially for those of you that are starting in business or just really starting your businesses. One of the things that will hold you back if you don’t recognize this is. There’s a small percentage of people that when you become successful will attack you not because you’ve done anything wrong but because you’re being successful. It will be internally and it will actually be from a marketing standpoint extra. It’s just one of those things that if I didn’t recognize it learn that, when I started to market like crazy… We did a lot of promotional, on marketing. We would get people calling up saying would you please stop sending me OS stuff? Your natural inclination is to collect yourself. You sort of like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I did that. I got to really stop”, which is the wrong thing. Whenever you get this negative thing, obviously if there’s some truth to it you correct it, you flourish and prosper. You push harder in that direction. So for me when I got really trained at this with Mark, when I would get stuck on [Unintelligible 00:22:31] out of my line I would actually [Unintelligible 00:22:34]. It would get me more excited because I recognized that I was actually pushing at a hard enough level.

OWEN: Did you have any other challenges besides what you mentioned so far regarding systematizing the business that you want to share?

DR. DANIEL: Yeah. I’m giving you this information, and I sound quite authoritarian. It sounds like I really know my stuff and I do at this point. But I didn’t always know it. When I started to put this stuff in believe me, I would second guess myself at every turn. It would always be difficult. Am I doing the right thing, am I not doing the right thing. Here’s a big take away. Whenever you have an organization that you are trying to put order into, whether your business or whatever. It’s disorganized and you come up and you say, “Listen, I just listened to Owen’s seminars here and I’m going to go back and I’m going to put order in. If you think it goes smoothly you’re going to have a loss sign. When you put organization in any of the disorder that’s there, jumps up and kicks you in the teeth. The real trick of it is don’t second yourself. Just keep your head up and just keep putting order in. And eventually all the other chaos that surrounds you will blow away. It’s really [Unintelligible 00:23:51] point.

OWEN: Awesome. Given all the challenges you were facing at that point, why did you even stay committed to the goal of systematizing your business?

DR. DANIEL: Wow. I don’t even think I had a choice at that point. One was obviously, was I going to go bankrupt or anything like that? Two, it’s not in my nature. I probably more persistent than I am talented. If you put me on a course of action and you show me that this is the right thing I won’t give up. I think it’s one of the things that makes somebody successful is that persistence. There’s a book if you don’t mind me recommending. It’s called the 10X Rule by Grant Cardone and he speaks about this. He speaks about people that are successful and really what defines them, what is it about them that makes them successful. It is persistence of about everything else. They get on a course of action and they don’t give up where most people would actually give up.

OWEN: We’ve talked about what you did to systematize the business and the challenges you went through. But at what point in time were you able to… Did you feel like the business was systematized and it can run without you?

DR. DANIEL: A little bit of a complex answer to that question because I’ve actually built one business. I sold them in 2000 and it was systematized at that point. I started the consulting company around 2000 and started my practice up again. I actually retired from podiatry for a little over a year and I missed it. And so I’ve actually started it up from scratch. Working two businesses from scratch, the effective management, the consulting company, and the podiatry practice. It took me about 5-6 years to really get the up to the point that they were really systematized and I could sit back and go, all right, I did it again, so to speak.

OWEN: Basically you’ve been describing the issues that the first business, the podiatric practice had, and then you sold it. You went into consultancy and then came back after realizing that you miss the business, and started over again. Now you’re starting with the right systems in place because you’re basically replicating what you did before that worked I guess.

DR. DANIEL: It’s much easier. The nice thing now is you could throw me into any environment or business for the most part. I’ll come out smelling like the rose because I know how to do it already. I took the time at the beginning to really learn it. So it doesn’t really matter at this point. I can systematize any business at any point. It’s second nature to me at this point.

OWEN: Even before we talked about your current practice right now, I’m sure the listener might be curious. What is the consultancy about, the one you have?

DR. DANIEL: The consultancy what we’ve done, is like I said for my own businesses, as I was putting together these systems we actually did them at a very professional level. What we do is we make these training products. One of them is called basic staff training, and you could see it a basicstafftraining.com. The whole process is basically train your staff 20 minutes a day. The videos I talked about is 3-5 minute videos with a training routine that goes underneath it. The staff watches the 3-5 minute video and then they actually take the application of that in the workbook part which is about 15 minutes. Into 35 days it really spits them out as your team. We have a similar product for a professional public relations and marketing. We have one that we’re actually working on right now that’s on sales, and we have one that’s on executive basis.

OWEN: Just to be clear, this is for people who have their own podiatric practice as well. You’re just showing them how to systematize their business.

DR. DANIEL: Actually, it is for any business because these principles that I’m describing to you work in a podiatry office, they work in a bakery, they work in auto dealership. What we’re looking at is what are fundamental principles that always apply no matter the business.

OWEN: Okay. Coming back to the current practice you have which as you said is systematized and it runs without you, what are the different parts of the business, the specific systems that you have in place in each part… Imagine the business like a conveyor belt, on one end there’s this person who has the need for this service that you’re providing. On the other end is that same person has gone through your service and is raving about you guys, telling everybody about you guys and what you guys do. Inside of the business there are systems in there making that transformation happen and I want you to give the listeners that behind the scenes that they’re not privy to.

DR. DANIEL: If you’re going to look at it as a conveyor belt, the conveyor belt interestingly enough start with the executive division of the conveyor belt. The owner is the one that builds the conveyor in the first place. So that would be the individual that is writing the policies, that’s deciding on maybe what the location is, that is putting all that initial stuff. That is the executive division. Then you jump into on the next on the conveyor belt is the personnel division which is dealing with hiring people. Because pretty quickly you’re going to have to hire somebody. It also includes having some training for those individuals. How are you going to train those individuals. And then importantly as we spoke of before, how are you going to measure whether those people are living up to your idea for them. So that would be the personnel aspect of the conveyor belt. The next part would include part of the sales, how would you actually sell people things as they came in. The next would be treasure. You got them there, you’re selling some things, and how do you get paid for it? With the doctor’s office it would include insurance. There’s a whole complicated thing with the insurance. Next is the production division where you’re producing the product. How do you do that? As a doctor, how do you treat the patience? If they come in with this problem what do you do next. So that division. And then real importantly and something that people often leave out is a quality assurance division. How do you make sure things aren’t going right that without pulling you into them there’s automatic checks on all the other divisions. That would be quality assurance. The next one which is also very important is public relations and marketing. Public just to differentiate the two because people often confused public relations with marketing. Public relations is actually making yourself or your company well-known in a positive light. It’s not necessarily bringing people in for a specific item but it’s like letting people know… As an example in podiatry, we do a shoes for the needy campaign. That’s a public relations campaign. It lets people know we care about the community involved and things like that. The next is a marketing campaign which would be coming from a discounted service. Under the public relations division you would include those two things, making yourself well-known and offering some sort of reason for people to come in.

OWEN: Okay. Talking about the current practice you have what systems do you have in place to enable the employees know exactly what they need to do. You might have talked about this previously but let’s dive right into it now.

DR. DANIEL: Sure. Obviously, when we were talking about earlier, we’re talking about when the practice was fairly small and we were running on about four different grafts. Right now we have about 27 different grafts that I look at and I walk in there once a week and I’ll just actually take a look at where those grafts are. But the staff are also trained in those conditions formulas that we spoke of before. And so what they do is they present to me their battle plan for the week. That’s basically how I run the place. I’m looking at what was your statistic last week, what’s your battle plan based on the condition that it’s in to pull it up this week. And also about every 2 weeks every staff member gets a confidential note from me that they fill out. It’s like a questionnaire. Let’s [Unintelligible 00:32:27] how they feel. What’s going on well, what’s going poorly, what have they observed, who is getting feedback from these different divisions. It’s important. I would like to make this really another important point. You want your staff happy. You want their morale to be up there. Again, organization definitely increases their morale but you can’t take your staff for granted. You have to be [Unintelligible 00:32:52] for them. And so by actually asking them how things are going, letting them know that they have my attention if they needed. It will really boost their morale a great deal.

OWEN: I think you mentioned something about the basic staff training. Can you give some more details?

DR. DANIEL: Basic staff training is the system that we developed to actually train our own staff that we now sell. But they go through it the same way. Basically what we found if you’re a new staff member coming on board you go through our basic staff training and it’s 35 days, 20 minutes a day, this gives you the fundamentals. At a about 6 months we have you go through it again. The concept is that the more times you’ve seen something the more stable you are on it. Again, at about 6 months we have you go through it again. You go through every training 3 times especially over the course of a year. Another benefit to having it in video format is that if I see a staff member and see that their statistic is down, the reason for it, which is usually handled in most of the videos. I actually have them go back and just study that 3-5 minute video. And we sit down and we try to correct it. And so everything corrects very, very quickly because they’ve seen it before, maybe they had a little bit of a misunderstood on their concept there but we corrected immediately.

OWEN: Okay. You’ve mentioned this before regarding how do you make sure the quality is in place. Now let me talk about that specifically in the sense of how do you track and verify the results being delivered by your employees?

DR. DANIEL: The first thing is those graphs are right in your face. They are like right in your face. You walk in that room, you look at the grass, you know right away. Also like I said all of the staff are giving me feedback consistently. And so they’re also giving me feedback to some degree on other staff members. They’re saying, one of the questions is how are things going in your area and how are things going in other areas. Are there things you think we could do to correct other areas. And so I’ve got all these people looking at my organization and giving me feedback. And not only just giving me feedback as a problem. I don’t want people giving me problems. I want them giving me solutions. Another very important thing is that when you train your staff, if you want to ever be able to pull out of your business you don’t want to know every single, little, stinking detail of every little thing. You want them to handle the little things. And the things that are a little bit bigger, if they’re going to give you a problem, you want them giving you the solution with the problem.

OWEN: Making the effort to at least try to solve it and show you what they’ve come up with so far.

DR. DANIEL: Absolutely.

OWEN: Now that you have more free time in the business I’m wondering which areas do you focus on now in the business and why?

DR. DANIEL: Like I said earlier my dream was always to be a doctor, but it was really an educator. My direction now is really going more in terms of helping other businesses through the consulting company, effective management. It gives me a great thrill to watch other businesses take off and other business owners to get the excitement of being able to see these systems work, and those kind of things. I’m heading more in that direction. I’m actually doing more and more public relations, marketing myself. I’m going out doing more interviews. I just wrote the book Fast Tracking Your Prosperity so I’m sort of going on a little bit of a publicity tour on that. So, these are things that I really enjoy doing at this point.

OWEN: What is the next stage of growth for your practice right now, what are you planning to achieve next, and why?

DR. DANIEL: We really look at our facility now as a training facility. Our goal is to actually start to purchase other practices and then bring the doctors on the board, get them trained up for our practice, and then sort of spit them out almost like a cookie cutter, same with the staff. Our goal we said in the next 5 years, our ideal goal whether we hit this or not remains to be seen. But we’ll certainly get close is to buy about 14 practices. That’s really my next venture.

OWEN: Awesome. As we round up the interview so that the listener can have a summary of the steps they need to take in order to transform their business so it runs successfully without them. What will you tell them in summary?

DR. DANIEL: First of all, you have to be really good at what you do. That is the most basic thing. But unfortunately it’s not really enough. Once you established the point that you’re really good at what you do then you want to find somebody that has been successful at what you do and use them as a mentor. Here’s another thing Owen. We’ve got three [Unintelligible 00:37:37]. People that are truly successful are usually the nicest people. There’s not a problem going to and they’ll usually help all those people that aren’t doing that well, that really hold on to their information. I always say, seek out those people that have been successful and things that you’d like to do. Get in touch with them and then duplicate those things that have been successful for them. And then as you get more comfortable with it, obviously change those things. You don’t want to completely duplicate everything. You want to put your own name on it. But first put the fundamentals in. Learn those things, find people that have been successful and use them as mentors.

OWEN: Yeah. Is there a question that you’re wishing that I’ve asked you during this interview that would really add even more value to it that I didn’t get to ask you. Go ahead and post that question and the answer as well.

DR. DANIEL: First of all Owen, thank you so much for the interview because I thought it was an in-depth and wonderful interview.

OWEN: Thank you.

DR. DANIEL: Absolutely. One of the things that I do find in people that start out is that they don’t have the confidence sometimes in themselves that they need to have to make it. They don’t realize how touch the world that is out there. And so they go in and they want to start a business, and they’re just like… [Unintelligible 00:39:01] think about. “I’m going to do it. It’s going to work great.” It won’t work great, you have to believe that. The question for me would be like what is the single most important trait on a person that will make them successful. I do think it’s persistence. I really think that that is the one thing, that you believe in yourself enough and you just know that that is going to work out, and then you make it work. And then you make it work out no matter what anybody says or what the environment does to you. You just make that decision.

OWEN: Thanks for that. What’s the best way for the listener to connect with you and thank you for doing the interview?

DR. DANIEL: If they want to email me directly they can get in touch with me at dan@effectivemanagement.net. They can actually look at our programs at basicstafftraining.com.

OWEN: Awesome. Now that I’m speaking to you the listener. If you’ve enjoyed this interview all the way to this point you can go ahead and leave us your feedback on iTunes. To do so go to sweetprocess.com/iTunes. If you have an Android app and you want to leave your feedback as well you can go to sweetprocess.com/stitcher to leave us your feedback on there. If you’re at that point where you’re tired of being the bottleneck in your business and you want to get everything out of your head so your employees know what you know, feel free to sign up for a free 14-day trial of SweetProcess. Daniel, thanks for doing the interview.

DR. DANIEL: Thank you.