Moderator:
Welcome to today’s episode of True to Form with your host, president and co-founder of Crystal Clear, highly regarded speaker, and two-time Inc. 500 Entrepreneur, Tim Sawyer. True to Form is a podcast that highlights leaders making headway in the aesthetic, anti-aging, and elective medical industry. Learn from the experts to discover the secrets of success and pitfalls to avoid when growing all aspects of your elected medical practice.
Moderator:
This week’s episode is brought to you by TouchMD, the all-in-one aesthetic technology hub that educates your captive audience in the waiting room and consult room, consistently captures and manages photos, provides digital charting and consents, allows patients to take their experience home to share what they learned with friends and family via the practice’s patient app. Please join me in welcoming your host, the authentic, the transparent Tim Sawyer.
Tim Sawyer:
Hello. Welcome to True to Form, the podcast that connects you to the people, technology, and hot topics that shape the elective medical community, provided to you by Crystal Clear and brought to you by this week’s sponsor, TouchMD, the leading all-in-out aesthetic technology hub. I’m your host, Tim Sawyer, and to our returning guests, welcome back, and for our first-time listeners, we appreciate you joining us and encourage you to become a subscriber.
Tim Sawyer:
In the last episode, we spoke with CEO of Crystal Clear, Adam DeGraide, in which he addressed the alarming challenges that have come to light since Google’s most recent ad ban on some of the most popular elective medical treatments, including things like PRP and stem cells. They get you for every one. If you missed it, we encourage you to check it out. And as always, and with all that said, just when you thought the program couldn’t get any better, once again we are headed out west today via New York City, and we’ll explain in a minute.
Tim Sawyer:
As promised, we bring you the movers and shakers. And today we have a very special guest. It is my pleasure to introduce Anthony Castore. Anthony is the Chairman and CEO of Fortis Medical Group and CEO of Ziering Medical, the leading hair restoration practice in the United States. Castore is a seasoned sales leader and business expert for improving profitability and accelerating growth for elective medical practices. It’s been a pleasure to get to know Anthony over the past couple of years and work together in various capacities. He’s got an incredible, incredible algorithm and platform for the modern elective practice. He has also been published in Inc. Magazine.
Tim Sawyer:
And it is my pleasure and honor to introduce to the program Anthony Castore! How’s it going, Anthony?
Anthony Castore:
Very good, Tim. Thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here.
Tim Sawyer:
We appreciate having you. So, for starters, it was great, and I probably should have mentioned in the intro, Anthony, that it was great seeing you in Las Vegas. For those of you who were at The Medical Spa Show, you probably bumped into Anthony along the way. He was faculty, distinguished faculty, at the show. He spoke on his unique, proprietary financial model used by some of the top, fastest-growing and largest elective medical practices in the U.S., if not the world.
Tim Sawyer:
And so, Anthony, first of all, how does a guy like you, from your background, end up in the position that you’re in as CEO of Fortis?
Anthony Castore:
Tim, totally by accident. I was called upon by an attorney friend of mine that does business with a lot of the elective practices in Beverly Hills, California. Asked me to come out and be able to do an assessment for one of his practices that was leaning a little bit more into the wrong direction. And when I came out to Beverly Hills and saw the opportunity of being able to utilize Fortune 500 algorithms in the system of these practices, it gave them the opportunity to be a lot more profitable and run much more efficiently.
Tim Sawyer:
Wow. And just a little bit, what was your financial background like? What was that part of your life?
Anthony Castore:
I started in the late 90s down on Wall Street working my way up from equities into the investment banking department, and then finally into mergers and acquisitions, and from there worked at some of the top consulting firms in the country utilizing my algorithms, as well as the companies’ that I worked for infrastructure, to be able to provide companies with maximizing their profitability and efficiency across the board.
Tim Sawyer:
Wow. Now I want to stop because our listeners may be hearing things like “algorithms” and “financial algorithms to scale your practice” and they’re thinking to themselves, “Hey, I’ve got 10 employees, $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 in revenue, how does your methodology apply to me?” How would you respond to that?
Anthony Castore:
It doesn’t matter what the size of your practice is. You are a business. And you need to be able to utilize the right controls and systems and budgets and tools to be able to make sure that you understand where your profitability should be. So something that we spoke about in the conference that, when I asked everybody, “What is your biggest expense?”, your biggest expense should be profit.
Tim Sawyer:
Interesting.
Anthony Castore:
And that expense is supposed to be paid to you. But not knowing what your profit is supposed to be is going to be the wall that separates you from the profitability of your med spa or your practice or any business that you’re in.
Tim Sawyer:
And you and I have talked about this. Obviously, the challenges with financial controls get exponentially harder as the business gets larger at some point. But you’ve got a unique approach. And I was looking at this and what was interesting me, and I think this would be applicable and our listeners would really like to hear your take on this, is you talk about the areas of interest in a typical elective medical practice, or dermatology, whatever it is, that impact profitability. I’m just going to list out nine and then I’ve got a few questions about each one.
Tim Sawyer:
So you list here leadership, organizational structure, cash management, profit and expense controls, tax-planning strategies, sales and marketing, compliance, employee evaluations, and company strategy. So what I glean from that, Anthony, is that, essentially, you’ve established best practices in each of those nine categories. And then I assume there’s some methodology that you go through when you’re looking at a practice, and somebody could go through on their own, to determine where they’re at in each of those categories. Talk a little bit about that methodology.
Anthony Castore:
Okay. We can start more or less with [inaudible 00:07:15] go down the board. I’ll let you name them and I’ll dig into each one individually.
Anthony Castore:
We can start with leadership. It’s very important to understand who is in control of the ship and making sure that they establish what goals that they have for the company, where they want to see the company go from six, 12 months, three years and five years out. And it’s very important for the person that’s leading that ship to be able to understand what the flow of the practice is supposed to be. And that’s very important. It doesn’t mean that that person has to have key knowledge of every different position within the company, but needs to understand the mechanics of what leadership is.
Tim Sawyer:
Got it. And again, leadership, we know how complex that can be in a $10,000,000 Beverly Hills practice. But I would think that, again, that those same KPIs, and I want you talk about that a little bit in a minute, those same metrics that you’re looking for, if you’ve got five people in the practice, add a million or two million, that leadership is probably still a huge component, right?
Anthony Castore:
Correct. Because it’s leadership’s opportunity to really lay the groundwork for what the goals are for their employees. So they need to be able to set specific incentive programs so each individual person that works there, whether it’s three or it’s 100, knows the journey that they have to take to be able to get that company to where it needs to go.
Tim Sawyer:
Got it. And that dovetails in with organizational structure, right?
Anthony Castore:
Correct. That’s your next most important part.
Tim Sawyer:
Talk a little bit about that.
Anthony Castore:
Your organizational structure is knowing what employee has [inaudible 00:09:00] job duties and responsibilities. You walk into a Fortune 500 company, you have the CEO, you have the CFO, the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, everybody understands what their job is and who they answer to and why. Whether you have five employees or you have 100 employees, each employee needs to be able to understand where they sit in that organizational chart, who do they answer to, and what their responsibilities are. And who to go to to help them with situations that are not their responsibility so there’s clear transparency amongst the team.
Anthony Castore:
By being able to do that, the organizational structure as you grow will be able to [inaudible 00:09:43] more like, if you would think of it like the Army. You have your captains, you have your lieutenants, you have your sergeants. Everybody understands how to be able to pass the orders down to the person that’s in the field. And by having the right type of organizational structure, it gives true transparency amongst the team on what needs to be done, on how it’s going to get done, and when is it supposed to be getting done by. And that will take away a lot of the non-efficiency points that you would normally lose on. Because if you take, say, three different employees out of five, if all three are working on the same project, you’re not getting done what needs to be done and you’re not maximizing your employees’ time properly.
Tim Sawyer:
Right. And the next two are important. And along the lines, so, a lot of companies, even small companies, would start what with a basic, what’s called an organization chart where they put CEO/owner/at the top and then kind of draw who reports to that person and how they interact. And I think a simple org chart is beneficial because, again, it helps you to understand the workflow of the practice as they grow.
Tim Sawyer:
And so the next two would be, and I guess are intermingled… And I did have the benefit of seeing your presentation in Las Vegas as it relates to profit and expense controls and cash management, specifically as it relates to what percentage of your expenses should be allocated to specific parts of the practice. And that was probably the most concise and elaborate forecasting spreadsheet that I’ve seen.
Tim Sawyer:
Talk a little bit about how you arrived at those key performance indicators and those ranges for each expense category in the practice.
Anthony Castore:
I spent a significant time doing research within the different specialties of elective doctors over the past couple of years, purchasing many reports and going through them to be able to see everything from what is the most advantageous product to be able to sell from an elective practice as to what procedure is the most expensive.
Anthony Castore:
And by looking at that, I compared them to other businesses that we’ve utilized in the consulting world and built a matrix for business owners to be able to understand where their money should go, or utilizing what their operational expenses should be as a percent of [inaudible 00:12:29] revenue so they can be able to generate a good understanding of where their net profits should be, and most of all to be able to understand when to be able to hire and to fire employees so they can grow each division properly as the company is growing as a whole.
Anthony Castore:
So every specific area that you have, whether it’s from your marketing, whether it’s from being able to bring on a new provider, what type of systems and software do you want to be able to use. You have to be able to keep those budgets in balance with those percentages because every person walks into your office every day with a great new idea that’s the best thing since sliced bread. There may be a new device that came out that has the opportunity to bring you a 10X ROI. That may not fall into your fiscal budget this year. And there is no reason for you to be able to take chances on opportunities that you cannot be able to know or understand what the proper ROI is going to be.
Anthony Castore:
So, just for an example, if you know that at the end of the year you’re pacing to be able to, let’s say, do $1,000,000 in revenue for the year, and your net profit should range around 25%, is $250,000. You don’t want to put yourself into a situation where you purchase a new device for $250,000 without properly calculating what your ROI is going to be and does it fall within my percentages of operating costs. Because by carrying that note on that device, you might have been able to take that money and properly invested it into marketing and be able to get a 6X return on your investment, as opposed to having a negative return on your investment.
Anthony Castore:
So, by keeping those expense controls into place and knowing where to allocate your money properly and staying within that system, it’s going to give you a better chance of your practice or med spa being able to grow in the right direction.
Tim Sawyer:
That’s a great point and I want to talk about sales and marketing in a minute. But on a practice level, so let’s say we’ve got a dermatologist, a medical spa, a laser clinic, and they’re somewhere between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 and maybe 500,000, and they’re managing leads with their phone, and they’re great and so they’re making some money and taking some money out of the practice. But now the person’s listening to this podcast and going, “Oh, man, I got to reign this thing in.” When Fortis goes into a practice, what are some of the most egregious deficiencies are that you see repeatedly? And that would be where the person would want to start.
Anthony Castore:
Some of the areas that we probably see in most practices usually starts with the leadership. When you walk into those practices and you see that most doctors or med spa practices hire family and friends because they want to be able to help them out and they give them positions within the practice, but they don’t have the qualifications or the certifications to be able to manage that position. So right off the bat, it starts with the leadership because if the person doesn’t know what they’re supposed to be doing, how are they going to teach other people to be able to do it? And that’s something that you see a lot.
Anthony Castore:
Also, what you see tremendously, which goes time and time again, people will invest millions of dollars into what the aesthetic look of their practice is, but not going and allocating the right money into their software systems and into their marketing where that’s where they’re going to see the best return on their investment. When you go in, the first thing when you spend, say $800,000, to be able to build a beautiful med spa, that’s great but the only benefit that you’re going to receive from that is the depreciation on your tax return. That does not make you any more additional money; it just looks pretty.
Anthony Castore:
As opposed to maybe building out a $600,000 med spa and taking that $200,000 and purchasing the right customer relationship management program, putting together the right marketing budgets that you need, hiring the right employees that you know have the right type of credentials and that have proven track records to be able to bring into your practice. So it starts from where you need to allocate the money before you even up the doors. Those are probably, I would say, some of the main areas that we see. Because by that time, you’re so in debt or the practice or med spa [inaudible 00:17:34] losing money, that now you have to borrow additional capital to try to really be able to get those areas correct.
Anthony Castore:
I would say another big area that we see is not being able to follow through with keeping up on where your lead generation comes from. Everyone spends money between pay per click and between social media. You need to be able to zone in and understand how many leads am I receiving a day, how many consultations is that providing with me, how many procedures am I booking? And without the right type of software to understand that, it’s like driving your car without a dashboard. It can be done, but who wants to drive 90 miles an hour down I-95 or 405 and not know how fast you’re going, how much fuel you have in the car, what’s your RPMs what’s the temperature of my car? I mean, you’d be insane to do something like that. So why not utilize that same type of dashboard within your practice?
Tim Sawyer:
Right. And what you’re referring to is CRM technology, right? Opportunity management technology that allows you to not only automate marketing to those folks, but give you the reporting that you need. And I know, I mean, you manage some pretty big practices and you spend a lot of time looking at marketing reports and managing the sales funnel. And so there’s a lot of guesswork around marketing.
Tim Sawyer:
So a couple of things. Number one, as a rule of thumb, what would you say is a good benchmark for a practice to spend on marketing as a percentage of revenue?
Anthony Castore:
They should be spending, especially within the first three years that the practice is open, you should be spending 20% of your revenue back into marketing.
Tim Sawyer:
Wow. Now, what would you-
Anthony Castore:
Or until you’ve sold-
Tim Sawyer:
[inaudible 00:19:24] “oh my gosh, I don’t know how I would do that”?
Anthony Castore:
Yes, but you would spend 20% building up your practice until you’re at least an 85% efficiency rate of the volume that your practice can handle.
Tim Sawyer:
Okay. So you’re looking at, you’ve got to spend somewhere around 15, 20%, whatever that number is, to get to 85%. And once you hit 85%, then you can start to dial that back a little bit and it can sustain itself. Is that kind of-
Anthony Castore:
Correct. Yeah. As you’re building in your marketing, remember something you also want to be able to calculate what your retention rate is. So, you may be spending 20% of your marketing now. Let’s use, for instance, the average med spa. And we’ve worked with a lot of them together because every one of my accounts that I have with Fortis, we utilize the Crystal Clear and the SPC system. And when we go in and utilize that marketing system, as well as the performance reports that we get, you can see that year over year, let’s say if the practice [inaudible 00:20:34] “we’re just starting out so we’re going to allocate $20,000 a month into our marketing,” which would be $240,000 a year, we’re saying that we’re looking to do $1,200,000 worth of revenue for the business for that year.
Anthony Castore:
So let’s reverse engineer the number. What’s our course of acquisition of patient, how much is that patient going to spend throughout the process of the year, and then we keep those numbers within our KPIs to actually build the practice to get to that point where then, eventually, our marketing should be dropping down to 10% and being more involved in branding and name notoriety, as opposed to looking for your direct investment into marketing itself for lead generation.
Tim Sawyer:
Right. And as that med spa, that dermatology practice, whatever it is, is growing through that, it feels like… because the pushback that you always get is, “Well, I spend money and I don’t know what I’m getting back and I don’t know if it’s worth spending,” whatever. So what you’re suggesting, what would be a reasonable expectation for an elective medical practice, from an ROI perspective, on their allocated marketing dollars?
Anthony Castore:
We average, I would say, in the range of between 375 to 425% on our marketing dollars.
Tim Sawyer:
Across the portfolio of practices you’re involved in?
Anthony Castore:
Correct. Some would be a little bit more, some might be a little bit less. But I would use that range very strongly, and that’s amongst multiple different types of marketing platforms. That includes your social media, your pay per click. That’s a blended rate. You’ll see a better ROI in specific certain areas but there’s only so much money that you can put behind it.
Anthony Castore:
I’ll give you for an example, Yelp has been a very good factor in a lot of my med spas. But you can only spend so much money with Yelp to get so many patients. So, we may see a 700% ROI on Yelp, but there’s only so much money that we can invest in it. So, you would have to look at your marketing portfolio the same way that you would look as if it were your investment portfolio. You want a little bit of stocks, you want a little bit of bonds, you want a little bit of real estate. That’s how you want to be able to set yourself up for the future because if one goes the wrong way, the others should be able to supplement the difference.
Anthony Castore:
That’s the same way in your marketing. You should have a little bit of pay per click, a little bit of Google ad displays. You should have some Yelp, maybe a little bit of [inaudible 00:23:27] all based off of what your practice is. But your marketing should be a portfolio, not just one stock like you’re going to the [inaudible 00:23:36] table and you’re betting on [inaudible 00:23:38] and you’re rolling the dice. It needs to be calculated so you have that understanding that you’re protected from all sides.
Tim Sawyer:
How would you respond to, and this is a popular refrain now, particularly in the med spa space, “I don’t want to do all this marketing. I’m going to post on Instagram. I’m not even worried about my website. That’ll be fine”?
Anthony Castore:
Instagram is a great feature or tool to be able to get some of the [inaudible 00:24:09] but like anything else it’s just one area. So, when they see your information on Instagram, you have to swipe up, you have to swipe up to a website. And that website needs to have all of the specific keywords. It has to have enough information per procedure to be able to be ranked on Google properly so you can be able to have the opportunity for when you search for that company’s name in your computer you’re going to fall within the first page.
Anthony Castore:
So there’s so much that goes into it. Instagram is great but [inaudible 00:24:44] across the board, I would say Instagram probably counts for between 9 to 11% of our new business. And it also accounts for the millennial side of the business. So, you’re talking about the range of 18 to maybe 30 years old, where the real people that are spending money are still in the Generation X area where we still use Google search opportunities and go on to the computer and look to see what someone’s credentials are.
Anthony Castore:
So, Instagram is just one of many tools that you have. You can’t build a house with just a hammer. You need nails. You need wrenches. You need different tools to be able to put up sheet rock and to be able to measure where you are. So I would say Instagram is a great tool, but it just complements other tools that you have as well.
Tim Sawyer:
Right. And as I mentioned in the introduction, a lot of the folks in our portfolio that we work with are anti-aging and, prior to coming on board with us, they were running their anti-aging practice purely on pay per click. And a huge part of that was stem cell work and PRP. Well Google banned that. And imagine if that was your entire strategy, you know, what do you do on the next day [inaudible 00:26:05] right? [inaudible 00:26:06] nothing-
Anthony Castore:
You have a problem.
Tim Sawyer:
Yeah. You’ve got a problem on your hands. So, I like the concept of a blended strategy, obviously that makes sense. And how do people, I’m curious, when… You’re a financial guy, you’re a business guy. There’s no fooling around with you, these are the numbers. If you manage these numbers, you put best practices in place in sales and marketing, there’s a fairly predictable, you know, there’s some mitigating factors, I’m sure, but there’s a fairly predictable outcome that you would get.
Tim Sawyer:
What are some of the reasons that, when you talk to people, Anthony, and to other members of Fortis Group and you’re out, I know you go to a lot of shows and do public speaking, what’s the reaction that you get from some people who go, “I’m just trying to get through the day and run my med spa. Yeah, I do $1,000,000 a year but I don’t need financial controls and I don’t need to worry about leadership,” how do you respond to that?
Anthony Castore:
When someone speaks it in that specific type of language or talks like that, it gets me nervous. Because then I start to think when I look at them, “Is this person looking to just have a career? Or are they looking to build wealth?” And there’s a difference between the two. It takes a special person that wants to be able to sit down and really understand the who, what, why, and how of their business, and how to be able to properly grow their business.
Anthony Castore:
Espeically in the med spa world, you have a lot of nurse practitioners and you have a lot of RNs that are phenomenal at what they do. And it’s an art to be able to take a needle and stick it into somebody and make them look beautiful. Okay, that is something I can never do. If you ask me to be able to go in and perform a micro-needling [inaudible 00:28:03] PRP, I would look dumbfounded. But that person that’s sitting there has specific type of protocols that they use when their performing that procedure. From the time that they click on that device they know they have to put their gloves on. They know they have to sanitize a specific area.
Anthony Castore:
Running your business is the same exact way. You just need to understand what the protocols are of that business. One of the big things that I hear all the time is, “I can’t afford you.” And I say to them, “That’s not the question you should be asking me. The question you should be asking me is, ‘Okay, your price, for argument’s sake, is going to be $5,000 a month. What’s going to be my return on my investment for the $5,000 that I pay you? Where are you going to take my business for that $5,000?'” And those are the questions that I want to be able to hear from my clients or the constituent or person that I’m dealing with.
Anthony Castore:
We had a big laugh when we were over at the conference and I said that everybody says, “My practice is different. You don’t understand.” I do understand [inaudible 00:29:17] very simple. We have credits and we have debits of your business. If you have more credits than you have debits, you’re making money. It’s the same methodology if you’re selling glass cleaner in a store or if you’re providing, you know, an erbium laser treatment. But for every treatment that you perform, you would know exactly what you’re doing step by step. The principles of your business should be exactly the same.
Anthony Castore:
So those types of questions that you should be asking is, “Okay, I may not be able to afford this payment right now. But how do I work with you to be able to get my practice to where it needs to be?” And if I see a client is taking that initiative, I have no problem working with them. But when I see that someone is just sitting down and everything is, “Well, I can’t do this. I can’t afford this,” “I know a practice, they do all their marketing from social media,” or “I know someone who has six practices and they’re doing $7,000,000 a year and they don’t do what you’re saying to do,” then I tell them, “Sell your business to them and go work for that company.” Because everybody who has a successful business has a successful plan behind it. Because if you don’t plan correct, then plan to fail.
Anthony Castore:
And so those are some of the areas that I work deeply with my clients and those are the key questions that I want to be able to hear from them so they understand that everything has a return on investment. From the employee that you hire to the location that you choose, you’re doing that for the main reason is, “What is going to be my return on that investment?” So I hope I answered that question the right way and didn’t run off a little bit because of all of the factors.
Tim Sawyer:
You did [inaudible 00:31:04] You answered it right on the button. And I have one more question for you and then we’ll start to wind this down. Because the people that I have met in my life that were able to really help me were people that could stretch my mind. There was a great quote that I heard a long time ago and it says, “The mind once stretched will never return to its original form.” And what I love about the approach that I’ve seen through Fortis and other financial people that I’ve met along my journey as an entrepreneur is they have the ability to stretch my mind. In other words, my natural [inaudible 00:31:47] is not finances. I don’t love looking at spread sheets, I don’t love looking at PNLs. I don’t love it, but what I’ve come to grips with in my 15, going on 20 years as an entrepreneur, is I’ve learned to appreciate what the numbers are telling me. I may not like it, but I’ve learned to appreciate it.
Tim Sawyer:
And so what I love about people like you and guys and gals like you is your no-bullshit approach to, “Listen, I know this is unique, I know you’re artistic, I get all that. However, if you follow this formula, your chances of getting to where you want to go increase demonstrably, dramatically, if you put that in.” And so the best financial people I’ve ever met, they’re kind of counselors in a way. [inaudible 00:32:44] not just about finances; it’s about keeping the person from losing their mind because they don’t want to talk about money. That’s the hard thing. And so I assume you spend a lot of time in that counseling role. That must be exhausting.
Anthony Castore:
Sometimes I feel like the therapist [inaudible 00:33:00] because I say this all the time and I preach this at every seminar that I speak at, the only thing that will never to lie to you are the numbers. They always tell the truth. It’s the way you want to be able to perceive the information and accept what the truth is. So, by me looking at your numbers, I see a story.
Anthony Castore:
And every company is its own breathing entity. It’s like a physical person, it breathes a certain way, it sleeps a certain way. But those numbers tell me a story of how you run your business. And it’s my job to be able to show you what the story is that is being told. Then it’s your opportunity to be able to rewrite the story that you want to be able to achieve. I can only take you to the water; I can’t force you to drink it. And that’s, when we spoke earlier and, you know, you and I have been working together hand-in-hand for a while and it’s great when I have these opportunities to be able to speak. I don’t know the performance or what [inaudible 00:34:05] behind the software that your team builds out and how particularly you need to be with your programmers.
Anthony Castore:
But I do know that when I want to see something from a specific perspective, I call you because you’re an expert in that field. I say, “Listen, I want to see this particular type of KPI. I want to look at it from this perspective.” And then you go in with your team and you fix that or you put that together for me to be able to see. That allows me to be able to run my business better.
Anthony Castore:
What I think a lot of problems that most of the owners of the practices that we deal with don’t understand that it’s okay to ask for help in areas that you don’t know. Stick to what you know best and hire the best to facilitate everything else for you. And that, I think, is probably one of the top five key mistakes, Tim, that we see every day when we walk into a practice is just people making decisions that they’re not qualified to make.
Tim Sawyer:
Right. And it was interesting what you said. So [inaudible 00:35:10] summaries, then I want to wind this down. So number one, super prophetic, a few things that you said to me really stand out. One was that leadership really is important. I would not have guessed you would have said that, but I really do respect that you said that and it is truly important.
Tim Sawyer:
Another thing that you said that was super prophetic is that your largest expense should be profit. And you start with, “How much profit do I want” or “want to try to get to,” and then re-engineer to that, and then have the financial discipline to stick to that over the course of three months, six months, and a year. I think that’s very prophetic.
Tim Sawyer:
And then the third point that you made that I think is really good, is you said when you’re talking to people, instead of finger-pointing to that practice or this [inaudible 00:36:01] and they say, “Anthony, if I give you X, or if I give John Jones X, or if I give Fortis X, what do I need to do to get a positive return?” then you know you’ve got somebody in the right mindset. And I think a lot of our listeners, they should kind of do a little self-evaluation on that and ask themselves are they the person that goes, “That’ll never work.” Or are they the person who says, “Okay, I’m open to that discussion, but what are the expectations on me?” And then I think that opens up a lot.
Tim Sawyer:
So, with that being said, we’re always grateful, I know as the CEO of a large medical practice and also the CEO of a large consulting group, that you’re a super busy guy. I really appreciate… I know you’re on the East Coast today, although you hail from Beverly Hills, and I can’t wait to get out there again.
Tim Sawyer:
So, couple things. Number one is where can people get a hold of Fortis, Anthony? Do you have an email, a phone number, a website?
Anthony Castore:
The best way [inaudible 00:37:04] website is fortismedgroup.com. Our telephone number is (424) 901-2701. And you can just go right to the website and you can be able to fill out a submission form. The information will come right to one of my salespeople that will be able to sit down, or as we say, a senior business analyst will be able to work with you hand-in-hand and be able to speak to you. And we can be able to work. If you mention that you’re coming from the podcast, we will definitely honor our one-hour free consultation with you. That’s probably valued at $500.
Tim Sawyer:
Thank you.
Anthony Castore:
And we’ll be able to sit down and work, no problem [inaudible 00:37:51] if you come through the podcast, we’ll give you a one-hour free consultation to be able to just go over a general understanding and ideas. And I think if I’m correct, I will be speaking at the… in April, I will be attending… hold on a second. Let me pull up my calendar. I think in April… I should have had this set up a little bit faster. You caught me off-guard, I wasn’t ready for that.
Tim Sawyer:
No, no problem. Listen, we appreciate you taking the time today.
Anthony Castore:
Yeah, I’ll be speaking on April 4th, which is a Saturday, in Dallas, Texas, at the A4M Business Summit. And I’ll also be speaking on May 14th in Orlando, Florida, at the A4M Spring Congress Precon Workshop. So, that’ll probably set you up through May. And then if you have additional questions and you go to the website, you’ll be able to find out more information on other dates and times and where I’ll be speaking as well.
Tim Sawyer:
I think that’s great. And at the end of the day, what it comes down to [inaudible 00:39:03] for our listeners is there’s best practices that Mr. Castore has laid out today, Anthony has laid out, right guys? We need to focus on leadership, organizational structure, cash management, profit and expense controls, tax-planning strategies, sales and marketing, compliance, employee evaluations, and company strategy.
Tim Sawyer:
And on a personal note, I had the extreme pleasure of watching Anthony speak in Las Vegas. We had almost 500 people [inaudible 00:39:31] in the room and the line of folks waiting to speak to him afterwards was really incredible and it was a great thing to see. I know you’re a busy guy, you’ve got a ton of speaking to do. I know you spend a lot of time, you’re in New York City today and hang your hat in Beverly Hills, I can’t wait to get out there and see you again.
Tim Sawyer:
So I want to thank you. I want to thank our listeners today. And as always, guys, we appreciate your support. If you’re interested in learning more about Anthony and Fortis and his life, you’ve got his contact information. If you want to learn more about Crystal Clear and what we do, as you may have noticed we’ve recently released new software packages starting as low as $395 a month. And you can check those out on the website at crystalcleardigitalmarketing.com.
Tim Sawyer:
So we want to say thank you to our listeners this week. We want to say Anthony, thank you for coming on board. Everybody have a great week and we’ll see you again soon.
Moderator:
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s episode of True to Form, brought to you by TouchMD, the all-in-one aesthetic technology hub. To learn more about your podcast sponsor, visit touchmd.com. And to learn more about your podcast provider, Crystal Clear, visit crystalcleardm.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to the show on all your favorite music apps, including iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, and TuneIn to stay up to date with the newest episodes. Thank you for listening.
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