Title - Origin story for backend marketing Tags - callumstory originstory
We were £2000 per month in the hole.
It was December 2019 when we first opened the doors of our private ultrasound practice.
Maria was pregnant, so we knew it would be tough. Without her, there was no business, and we’d still have to make the loan repayments - as well as rent, utilities, and other fixed costs.
In a way, we knew we were setting ourselves up for a fall. But like a couple of kids preparing to jump off a cliff face into angry waters, we figured - what the heck? No, I’m joking. Ok… half-joking…
“If you don’t want to do this, it’s ok,” I said to Maria.
“Wellll…” she replied, staring at the floor, contemplating.
We sat in silence for a couple of minutes. A wad of neatly-prepared paperwork sat between us on the sofa waiting for our signatures.
“It’s £90,000. Should we be concerned about borrowing that amount of money?” Maria asked me.
“Well, yes, I suppose we should,” I replied.
I could see that Maria could hear her dad’s voice in the back of her mind. He’s a farmer. An old-school, cash-and-barter-are-all-you-need kinda farmer. Unlike his friends, John was strongly against lending money, preferring instead to tighten the purse-strings and run an efficient ship.
“Forget about the money for a sec,” I added. “The real question is: do you want to do this?”
“Yes. Well, no.” Maria paused. “But I don’t want to be doing the same job for the rest of my life. And I’m worried I’ll regret not trying,” Maria confessed.
“Same here,” I agreed, trying to ignore my concerns about the debt, starting a difficult business that relied on Maria (when she was pregnant) and how it might affect our lives with a baby on the way.
Maria picked up the papers and began shuffling through them, not really reading, like she just needed to be busy while making a decision.
“Let’s go for it,” said Maria, looking into my eyes.
“Ok,” I said, smiling back at her.
So we did. We went for it. And boy oh BOYYY.
I’m not one for regrets. Can’t change the past, can ya? But in the thick of the action - and the torture - my values were being tested.
Maria was being sick multiple times a day from pregnancy. Still, she was committed to working 2 days for the practice and 2 days for the NHS. She dreaded going to work.
I wasn’t much happier. Granted, I wasn’t carrying a baby or being sick. But I felt like an inmate in my own prison. I was working probably 60 hours a week. I was trapped in the business, trying to make it profitable. I was creating the website, running Google Ads campaigns, adding to our social media channels, scheduling appointments, managing finances, dealing with suppliers, and so on.
Not that I minded any of that, in and of itself. If anything, I enjoyed the challenge. What really hurt was that, for all our hard work, our reward was a whopping £2000 per month… LOSS!
How on earth could that be? We were filling all of our scan appointments, getting rave reviews from patients, and even charging more than our competitors for each scan. And yet, the practice was still losing money.
The answer is pretty obvious with hindsight. I mean, everyone knows the formula: Profit = Income - Expenses. In our case, the balance wasn’t in our favour. Expenses too high, income too low. So the solution was simple: decrease expenses, increase income. Simple? Yes. Difficult? Hell yes.
First reason: most of our expenses were fixed. Asset finance repayments for the £60,000 ultrasound machine. £50,000 repayments for start-up loans used to buy other equipment and prepare the clinic. Rent, utilities, scheduling software.
Second reason: income too low. High fixed costs in mind, this should be the easier category to fix, right? Increase income. Simples. But how? Easy! You sell scans - so do more scans. Idiot! Ahhh. Well. Great idea… but…
We could see two ways to do that:
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Do more scans in the same time-frame. This would require sacrificing quality for speed. Commercially, that made sense. Morally and ethically, nada. We’re responsible for the health of pregnant women and unborn babies. Compromising safety ain’t even on the table.
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Extend scanning time. As I said, Maria was scanning 2 days for the NHS, 2 days for the practice. She could drop her 2 NHS days. But then she’d lose maternity pay. And wiping out our only income source at the time would have been reckless.
Another option: recruit a sonographer. Well, there was a dire shortage of sonographer’s in the UK. Nevertheless, we did try. And we did, later on, recruit one of Maria’s NHS colleagues to scan in her place when she gave birth. Which did help. It covered some of the costs. But it all it really covered was the cracks. Plus, when we did the maths, even recruiting a full-time sonographer would barely be profitable. Not exactly motivating, is it? All that work to just breakeven.
“So let’s look outside of the business,” I thought. If we get enough money in from other sources, it won’t matter if the practice is losing money in the short term. We can figure it out when Maria is back to work. I’ll just need to produce enough to cover the costs plus some on top for household income.
So I took on a few marketing clients. I squeezed in projects here and there. But I soon hit a wall. With two small projects on the go, my time was already accounted for. The rest of my time was being sucked up by the clinic - managing finances, handle enquiries, admin- all of those small things that keep a business alive but add up to a full-time job.
So that approach fell by the wayside.
By now, I was beginning to realise something -
We were f***ed.
I couldn’t see a way out.
Except shutting up shop and cutting our losses.
But I wasn’t ready for that and neither was Maria.
I was determined to make it work. But something radical had to change. Quickly.
What, though?
I had no idea.
One thing I did know was that I felt like a failure. I wanted to make the practice a success. I desperately wanted to provide for my family. Especially now, with our first child on the way, so the burden was heavy.
I guess, with hindsight, it was the gut-wrenching agony that kept me going. I was determined to turn the pain into happiness, the failure into success. So I dragged myself up by the shirt collar and went searching for answers.
I analysed the business. I spoke to our accountant, Jon. I re-read the many books I’d invested in since leaving my radiography career behind.
How on earth could I go from business losing £2000 per month - sucking up all of our time and energy like a blood-thirsty vampire - to being financially secure with plenty of excess to provide for my growing family?
Enter Jay Abraham.
Jay has grown over 10,000 businesses in more than 1,000 industries, and advised Fortune 100 companies, Tony Robbins and Daymond John from Shark Tank (the US version of Dragon’s Den).
He is well-known and respected in the marketing world, so I’d already read some of his books. But it all seemed a little pie in the sky at the time. Perhaps because there was no urgency to act on the ideas.
Now, though, the opposite was true. I was desperate. I needed some wisdom, a whisper in my ear from the marketing God’s. I needed to turn my business and life around - I needed to do it quickly - and I couldn’t do it alone.
Jay’s unconventional wisdom helped me take the practice from a £2000 loss to a £2000 profit in a few short months. What’s more, I achieved this without increasing the volume of scans. Because of Maria’s limited capacity, the clinic still only opened for two days per week. But now it was profitable. Not only that, I had more time to spend with Maria and Mabel, our newborn daughter.
I’d finally broken out of our self-built jail.
How did this happen?
Jay helped me discover that I didn’t have to increase the number of appointments to grow the practice and make it more profitable.
I’d been investing most of my time, energy and money in getting new patients. But we had no more capacity. Which is why I felt stuck.
But when this idea sank in, I told myself: don’t even try to increase the number of patients. Forget it. Move on. You have other options.
What was even more exciting was that these approaches were faster, easier, cheaper - and much less risky - than trying to increase the number of new patients.
Looking back, it was so damn obvious that, if I could kick myself in the bee-hind, I would.
But to be fair to myself, the marketing strategies, approaches and investments that turned the tide, are incredibly simple, but far from obvious.
Now, when I look back on the journey - at the pain, struggle and how close we came to bankruptcy - I feel a fire inside me to help other practice owners get from where they are to where they want to be.