Learn the 5 Ps for Success in Business from a Female Trailblazer
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Mr. Biz Radio: Learn the 5 Ps for Success in Business from a Female Trailblazer
Unedited transcription of the show is included below:
(00:05):
Welcome to Mr. Biz radio, Biz. Talk for Biz owners. If you're ready to stop faking the funk and take your business onward and upward, this show is for you. And now here's Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth.
(00:19):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Mr. Biz Radio with me, Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth in, we're gonna talk about something this week that I think is gonna resonate with a lot of the people who typically watch the show. Listen to the show. If you, if you only listen and you wanna watch it, by the way, you can go to YouTube. You actually go to mrbizradio.com and you can find all the different variations. You can watch the show as well, and not just listen to it. But we're gonna talk about, we have a, a very esteemed guest this week, and we're gonna talk about, she's gonna give us her five Ps for s creating a successful business. And before we get into all that, you might be wondering, okay, well then who is this awesome person who's gonna tell us about the five Ps?
(01:00):
Our guest this week is Dr. Robin Hall. She's an award-winning board certified family physician, author, entrepreneur, cancer survivor, and speaker. She's practiced in the Dallas Fort Worth area for over 30 years. For those of you watching, you're probably wondering, same thing I am, she must have started practicing when she was like six, seven years old. But anyway, <laugh> the last 17 of which she was the founder and c e o of Destination Health, the first of its kind concierge practice in her area. She retired from full-time practice in April of 2022 in order to finish her book travel and share her passion for preventative medicine with others. In her book is coming out in the fall. The other side of illness, unexpected Blessings is a compilation of stories of people that have gone through a health adversity in remarkable things that resulted. Dr. Hall, welcome to Mr. Biz Radio.
(01:49):
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
(01:52):
Yeah. So, I know we talked gosh, it's been too long. It's been months ago, I think, now that we talked. And originally we were like, gosh, we gotta get Dr. Hall on the show. And I mean, I guess before we dive into all of this stuff, I get so many questions to ask. Before we dive into all that though, tell us a little bit about your journey, your entrepreneurial journey, especially because, you know, coming from a, we've had some of guests on before that have been, you know, family physicians and then all of a sudden go into the entrepreneurial world. So I'm very curious to hear how that all played out for you.
(02:20):
Well, it all started back in college, actually. My degree was in biology and business. And at the time, I'll never forget, the university president said, Robin, what are you gonna do with that? Open a drugstore? But it turned out that was one of the best decisions that I had ever made. And after college, I was actually in the business world. I worked for an oil company first, and then I went into sales management with Proctor and Gamble. And four years after I graduated from college is when I decided to apply for medical school. I got in, did medical school, my internship and my residency. And I've always had that entrepreneurial spirit. So I started my first practice then. That was in 1991, it was called Colleyville Family Medicine. This is in between Dallas and Fort Worth. I was the first female physician in that area.
(03:14):
And it was a growing community, very affluent. And the practice flourished very quickly. Well, a few years later, three different hospital systems wanted to buy me out, and I didn't really want to sell, but I knew that I couldn't compete against a big hospital system. What a lot of people don't realize is that you have to negotiate for your reimbursement. And a solo practitioner is not going to have the negotiating power that a big hospital system has that has several or has hundreds of providers. But I ended up selling because I knew I couldn't compete and I worked as a lead physician for the hospital system for 10 years. But along about year eight, I became very dissatisfied because it, it became so corporate and I was trained to put my stethoscope on a person's chest, not on a stack of paperwork. And unfortunately, that's what it was.
(04:18):
In a managed care setting, we had to see more and more people as volume in replace for reimbursement. And I really wanted to treat people the way I thought they should be treated and the way they deserved. But this actual sick care model is what I call it. You don't really have time for that, and you don't have time to talk about prevention. And it just wasn't going along with my core values. So I became very dissatisfied. And I guess the straw that broke the camel's back is one day a young woman called in and said she had a sore throat or something like that. And so they scheduled her for a short acute visit. But when I walked in the room, that was not the reason she was there at all. In fact, she'd been date raped. And so through her tears she told me that.
(05:13):
And I just couldn't pat her on the hand and say, well, I'm really sorry that happened, but I have to move on to the next person. I mean, it still chokes me up thinking about it today. Yeah. So I, I'm a woman of faith and I spent a lot of time in prayer that God would show me the way to continue practicing medicine and stay true to my core values and be able to do prevention. And lo and behold, a few weeks later, a man called me in the community. I knew him, he was a recruiter for a large concierge franchise model, wanted to talk to me about it. And we went to this nice Italian restaurant and he was telling me about the concept. I was very intrigued cuz I'd never heard about it at all. And I remember when the bread was brought, I was buttering my bread and I got that light bulb in my mind and said, this is it.
(06:03):
This is what I can do. I can start this unique model of healthcare. But I knew that I didn't want to go to work for someone else. I wanted to do the model that I had a vision for. And so that night I go home and tell my husband, Hey, guess what? I wanna quit my job, start all over again. And you have to understand I was 47 years old at the time, and so he was supported by me. There were a lot of naysayers. People thought I was absolutely nuts to start over in midlife with an unknown concept and to go from having a good salary to no salary going into debt cuz I had to get a business loan. It was a hard sell for the bankers too, because again, there was no precedent for it. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. But I was able to get the loan, start the business, and we survived through the recession of 2008. I started the business in 2006 okay. And incorporated late 2005, and we continued to flourish. And then last year I sold the practice in April to my colleague who had worked for me a couple of years. And the reason that I retired early is because I developed breast cancer and I felt like I needed to stop and smell the roses. I had been caring for other people for over 30 years, and it was time for me to take care of myself.
(07:33):
Oh, it makes perfect sense. Well, I mean, kudos to you for obviously you won, you won, you won against the big C so congratulations for that. That's awesome. Thank you. Yeah, look, my brother went through a, a similar battle. And he had a very similar epiphany once he got through that battle, as he said, you know, every time I talked to him, even, even still, he says, I just look at life so differently now. And, and, you know, when he got back into the workforce, he chose a completely different path because he said, you know what I was doing before? He said, I kind of was just checking the boxes and going through the motions and earning a great paycheck, but not something that was fulfilling to me and not something that I wanted to do longer term or whatever. So I, you know, I completely get it.
(08:18):
I've, I've been hearing it from him for quite some time. I came to imagine I've got, gosh, I got a couple awesome questions for you because I went through the same thing. You know, you talk about, I was around that same age when I left the corporate world in a, a lucrative job in a Fortune 15 company and had a very similar conversation with my wife. You know, when she's like, wait a minute, what the heck's going on here? Actually I had called her from the airport in New York and she asked me if I had been drinking. That's how bad
(08:47):
<Laugh>.
(08:48):
So we're gonna hit a break here though. We're talking to Dr. Robin Hall. You can follow on LinkedIn, Twitter, her website is drrobinhall.com. Come back after the break on Mr. Biz Radio.
(09:02):
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(10:10):
Got a question for Mr. Biz. You want answered on air, email it to
(10:22):
All right, welcome back to the show's time for the Mr. Biz tip of the week. And this one is actually we got this question. We get these questions pretty frequently actually. And so my most recent book called Don't Think the Funk, we talk about my, my SMAC formula, S M A C. And someone had asked me to explain a little bit more of what the A is and the A in the SMAC formula for achieving massive success and achieving massive goals is around accountability, specifically a creating a sphere of accountability around you. Some people say to, you know, attack your goals and don't let anyone know what you're doing. And, and just surprise everybody. I I I I might work for some people. I know it doesn't work for me. One of the reasons I think it's so important to create that sphere of accountability is, and I always ask this question when I talk about this as a keynote speaker, is, who in here likes to disappoint people?
(11:12):
Raise your hand, <laugh>, of course, no one raises their hand. No one likes to disappoint people. So that's why this creating that sphere of accountability is so critically important. And there's ways in the book to do it without giving people homework, as I always say. You can subtly do it and, but you still have that sphere of accountability and it's critically important because you don't want to disappoint people. You will stay focused. It gives you kind of a, a, a team around you so to speak, that doesn't even know they're your team that are helping you achieve those goals. So that is a tip for the week this week. And we're talking again with Dr. Robin Hall. So Dr. Hall, I gotta ask, so going back, so you're in school, you, you said you studied biology and business. So was was the plan all along to become a family physician? Because obviously you got out and you didn't really do that right away and you went into, and sales was there, you kind of weren't, weren't sure, or you tried sales and you're like, no, no, that's not the path for me.
(12:06):
Well, this is definitely aging me, but back in the day, there weren't female role models for becoming a doctor. No one in my family is a doctor. But I always loved science and I always was very inquisitive. My mother said, from the time I was a little girl, I wanted to know why. Anything you said, why is that? Why is that so science was my love and when I was going to college, I didn't really know what I wanted to do and how I could utilize that. So people would say, oh, well why don't you be a nurse? Or why don't you be a med tech? Different things like that. But nobody ever said, you know, you have the competence to become a physician. Until one day I was working actually at the hospital all during college and in the, what we called the EKG department at that time, that was before you had monitors in every room.
(13:02):
We actually had an EKG machine that you had to take to the hospital room. One of the doctors saw that I was able to interpret the EKGs. I'd been studying them along with these other teammates who were trying to get into medical school. And one of them said to me, why don't you apply to medical school? And it was just like this epiphany, who me a female can apply to medical school. And so, but for different reasons, I didn't go right away and went in four years later. And initially I thought I wanted to be a dermatologist and I thought I wanted to be OBGYN and surgery, I changed my mind several times, but family practice really appealed to me because I get bored easily. And the variety that you see every day, you never get bored, <laugh>. And so that's how, that's how that came about.
(13:56):
Well, so if I can, lemme bridge a little bit here. So what I hear from what we talked about in the first segment and what you just mentioned is you are, you are someone who forges ahead. You are that, that that brush clears the brush that clears a new path. I mean, not only in that scenario, like you said, you didn't have really a role model to go through and you, you know, again, you were surprised like me, like a female can come, a physician as well. As you mentioned the, the practice you started, you were like the first female in that area, which I'm sure was, was a little daunting and intimidating. But you know, that just shows me a lot of the grit that you have and that entrepreneurial spirit that you have. You had mentioned that you, you know, you had had that as a young young child.
(14:37):
Well, you know, I never, like I said, I never really had a lot of encouragement and in a way that was good for me because I was always trying to prove that I could do something. So if somebody was a naysayer, that really just encouraged me to show them that they were wrong <laugh>. And so that's why they referred to me as a trailblazer in concierge medicine because I was the first one in my area and one of the first ones in the country to start that kind of model of healthcare. And so I'm really proud of that. And, you know, I just don't ever see failure as an option. And I, I've just always been an overachiever type a person. And so I think that that has helped me.
(15:25):
So I guess transitioning now to what you're, you're doing now since you've retired as a family physician, what, what, what made you decide to write a book?
(15:34):
Well, I actually thought about this a long time ago. I was very busy in, in my family practice and the, the one where I worked for a hospital system, I had a segment on television health segment. I was on boards for Chamber of Commerce and banks. I had a small child. I was writing for a newspaper column and a magazine. And one day I did something really stupid. I was upstairs with some house slippers on and I fell down the stairs, <laugh> ended up on my back for three weeks. And when you're on your back for three weeks, you have time to think. And I thought maybe I had to be knocked down the stairs to realize that I was doing too much and started reevaluating things. And during that time I thought, you know, this might be a good book to write about difficult things that happen and positive things that may have come out of it.
(16:28):
But even though I changed my lifestyle, I put that book aside. And when I developed breast cancer in 2021, all of a sudden that whole book idea came back and I said, now's the time to do it. And it's not just about my story, it's about people that have all different kinds of health adversities and amazing positive things that have come out of it that would not have happened had they not gone through that journey. These are all true stories and some of them are stories of my patients that are allowing me to tell others are friends, people that have been referred to me all over the country. And it's inspiring me just to write that I'm writing them all in first person after I interview the individual. And so the, the whole purpose of this is to inspire other people to give them hope when they're dealing with difficult circumstances.
(17:26):
Not only for the person that's going through it, but also the caregiver. As you know, probably from the family experience that you've shared with us. It's really tough on the caregiver as well. My husband has been dealing with stage four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for the past seven years. So I've been on both sides of the stethoscope myself, my husband being the caregiver, being the patient. And you know, I originally thought that this will really help those two individuals. But what I've come to realize by talking to other people that are excited about reading my book is that other people need to read this because it's a wake up call now. We're not guaranteed tomorrow and every day is a blessing. And by reading these stories, I think it really emphasizes how important we need. We need to be intentional about every day and what we're doing and why we're doing it, rather than just getting caught up in the busyness. And that's what I was doing before I was caught up in the busyness and, you know, thriving on all of the different things that I was active and involved in.
(18:39):
Well, yeah, and I can imagine as well, another thing that I think not only, well your story alone shows it demonstrates, but you know, when you're going through a tough situation, there are kind of two ways to react to that. You can curl, crawl, curl into the fetal position and say, why me? And, you know, which I'm sure is natural and everyone does that. Or you can start thinking about things and reevaluating. So I think that's another important thing that I'm sure comes through. I know in your story, but also in your book. So again, we're talking with Dr. Robin Hall, we're gonna come back after the break. She's gonna tell us about her five P's for creating a successful business.
(19:13):
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(20:14):
Check out all three of Mr. Business best-selling books at mrbizbooks.com. Now, once again, here's Mr. Biz.
(20:23):
All Right, welcome back to the show. And again, I wanna make sure that everyone has the information. We'll put this in the show notes and everything as well. But you can follow Dr. Hall on LinkedIn, on Twitter. She's Dr. Robin Hall on both of those her website is drrobinhall.com. And don't forget, she's got this book coming out. So there'll be a few months after the show after the show you see the show or listen to the show, but her book's gonna be called "The Other Side of Illness, Unexpected Blessings". So make sure you checked that out as well. So I, I guess Dr. Holl and, I next obvious transition, at least for me my numbers nerd head, my business head. I'm curious to hear about your five Ps.
(21:03):
Well, I have seen people start businesses because they thought it sounded good. But one of the, the first five Ps for success is having a passion and a purpose. If you are not passionate about what you want to do and the purpose of doing it, why you're doing it, it's going to fail. And that may sound very obvious, but you know, we've all seen restaurants that started up and three months later they were closed. It might not have been that they didn't have passion or purpose, but they may not have had one of the other peas that I'll talk about in a minute too. But I was, as I mentioned earlier, I was passionate about preventive healthcare teaching people how to optimize their care and do preventive medicine rather than just showing up at the doctor when they're sick. Cuz sometimes that's too late.
(21:58):
And so that first p passion and purpose, the second one is prayer. I'm a woman of faith and I think that before I do anything, especially anything big and risky like the concierge practice is, I prayed about it and also just thought, does this fit with my core values? And is this something that's not only gonna fulfill me, but help other people? So prayer is the second. The third one is plan. And again, that may sound very simplistic, but many people don't have a good business plan. And of course you consult with people all the time about that, so you, you know that much better than I. But you know, I had to write a good business plan for both of my practices, and it's not easy to get funding. So you really have to think that out. And I think a lot of people, when they make a plan to start a business, they're underfunded and that's one reason that they go under very quickly.
(23:00):
And so thinking through all of that is so important. If I hadn't thought through all of that, I wouldn't have made it through the recession in 2008. And and that leads me to one of my other Ps that I'll tell you about in a minute. The next one, number four is people. And it's not only the people that work for you and the team, but it's the people that you have surrounding you. And you mentioned that in your, your message while ago with the accountability. Yeah, you have to have people around you that are encouragers and that are holding you accountable, and you have to make sure that those people have the same vision that you do. When I started the concierge practice, I had to overcome that with team members because a lot of people thought concierge medicine was elitist and it was just for the wealthy, and that I was turning my back on people that couldn't afford that kind of medical care.
(24:00):
But if you don't have the same vision with your team members, that's not gonna work either. Mine was a very niche market. I, I took care of people that are traveling all the time. They need to be able to get in to see the doctor when they're in town. They want more prevention. Maybe they don't, they just have catastrophic health insurance. And so this was the way they get all their preventative care. So concierge medicine wasn't for everyone, but it definitely, there's definitely a unique market for it, and that was very fulfilling. But the plan and the people were so important to that. And I fired a few marketing people along the way too because they just didn't get what the vision was. But once we really talked about the core values and I figured out who that market was, that's when things started to flourish.
(24:53):
And then the fifth one is perseverance. And I know every business owner that's out there listening to you will tell you that you have to be able to be flexible, you have to be able to pivot if something's not working right, you need to change the plan. It's a constant it's constant motion. In fact, when I first set up the practice, I had standard fees based on age groups. And then as I was adding other, what I call value added propositions, I changed the model and then I changed it again. And, but also the times were changing. And if you start having competition, you have to be able to go with the flow and find out what your clients are looking for and why they're staying with you. You know, in concierge medicine, retention is everything. Your success is your retention rate. And I was very fortunate to have a very good retention rate.
(25:54):
And in fact, I still work three days a month for the doctor that bought me out. We have over a hundred people on a waiting list to get into the practice. So the retention rate has just been excellent, but we always listened to what the patients needed and we took care of every, we still take care of everybody the way we would want to be treated. And I mentioned earlier, I always had the mindset mindset's, everything is that failure is not an option. So if something's not working, seek good counsel. You know, other, other people that have been there get ideas and don't go it alone. There's nothing wrong with asking for help from other people. One of the, one of my favorite quotes is The Road to Success is always under construction. You'll see that on my website. And that's so true because what's working right now might not work next year.
(26:53):
Just think about when we used to go rent movies. Well, now you don't go rent movies, everything's on television. So you have to, you have to pivot. So those are the five Ps, the passion and purpose first. Second is for me was prayer. Third is a good plan. The fourth is people that are aligned with your vision and the last is perseverance. The other thing along the way, I think it's so crucial that people read, I I read as many business books as I have medical journals and you know, one of my favorites was Three Feet From Gold, that's by Sharon Lecter. And it's based on Napoleon Hills information. And that one's great and very, very motivating. So during the recession I read that book and that was very timely. Also, Jack Canfield's, the Success Principles is one of my favorites. Getting to Yes, because in business there's negotiation all the time, and that's a great little book for that. And How to Become a Rainmaker was one that I read too. So I have people from time to time that says, you know, what books did you read? What helped you out? And so I thought I would share those along with the five P's.
(28:09):
Yeah, absolutely. Well, this might be kind of an unfair question and like asking you to pick your favorite child, but I'm gonna ask you anyway to someone who's listening or watching right now, it's an aspiring entrepreneur and says, okay, I, I see the five P's. Which one is the most important one?
(28:25):
I really think it's having a passion and purpose because my thought process is that all of us have a purpose. Some of us it takes longer to find that purpose than others, but if you're really passionate about something and it's aligned with your core values and it's something, a gift that you can give to the world no matter what it is, I think that's the key because you have to stay motivated and you have to have a vision.
(28:52):
Yeah, I, I, I like that a lot because I think if you have that passion and purpose, some of these others will fall into place naturally.
(28:58):
That's what I feel. Mm-Hmm.
(28:59):
<Affirmative>, you have that passion and purpose. You're gonna have the perseverance, you're gonna make sure that you're treating people the right way. You know, if you're a person of faith, you're gonna always gonna have prayer involved and you're gonna plan. You're not gonna just, you know, haphazardly do a plan because you're passionate about it. You're gonna make sure you do it the right way. Awesome information. Dr. Hall. Again, Dr. Robin Hall, you can follow on LinkedIn, Twitter website is drrobinhall.com. Check that out. Dr. Hall, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.
(29:27):
Thank you. This is delightful.
(29:29):
Awesome guys. Well thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Have a fantastic remainder of your week. And as always, don't forget, Cash Flow is king
(29:40):
To become part of Mr. Biz nation, follow him on all social media platforms or never miss a show by going to mrbizradio.com. If you prefer free video content, visit the Mr. Biz YouTube channel or check out his streaming channel, which is available on 100 plus streaming platforms at mrbiznetwork.com.
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