Book Review of: Business for Doctors: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom Without Stress

I was recently invited to review the new book Business for Doctors: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom Without Stress by Dr Verne Weisberg.¹ The book is a 461-page thesis on creating a mindset and framework for the reader to understand basic business concepts within the setting of a medical practice. Dr Weisberg clearly states in the early chapters of the book that the intention of the text is to create value within a particular physician’s (or plastic surgeon’s) private practice with the intention of providing an exit strategy through an eventual sale of their practice.

The text is explicit regarding the personal story of Dr Weisberg selling his plastic surgery practice in Maine for $700,000. He attempts to create a methodology for practice success by examining various business strategies within the disciplines of finance, operations, and marketing/sales.

Within the introductory chapter, the author describes 7 master steps that he feels were critical to the success of his practice. These steps involve a myriad of lenses for a practice owner through which to view their practice. These include examining the practice as a whole, defining employee roles and categories within a practice, as well as implementing a series of key performance indicators (KPIs). It is the recommendation of the physician-owner to utilize this framework for business decision-making.

The book contains 3 additional longer chapters that concentrate on finance, operations, and marketing/sales. Each chapter creates an unstructured monologue illustrating the author’s approach to these practice silos followed by a series of potential questions that a reader may have in reference to each chapter structure. Throughout the text, various concepts and illustrations are revisited and repurposed.

STRENGTHS

The biggest asset to the text is encouraging the reader to create a framework that allows a physician-owner to view their practice as a chief executive officer would do within a successful company. Within the context of the chapter subheading, Dr Weisberg also attempts to create a methodology for the physician-owner to implement various business strategies through the lens of a chief financial officer, chief operating officer, and a chief marketing officer.

Throughout each chapter, the author continually commends to the reader that the ultimate strategy for success lies in the action of encouraging one to change their framework through the strategies extolled in the text. Dr Weisberg validates this business acumen through virtue signaling, complimenting the reader for “the fact that they are reading this book right now.”

Any successful business has a methodology for making certain that their choices can be measured and validated. In light of this, Dr Weisberg attempts to make a valid connection between business decision-making, implementation of action items, and measurement of those action items with the specific financial, operational, and marketing KPIs. This holds demonstrable value for the reader. Unfortunately, the author is exceptionally vague over what the specific mechanics of these KPIs are. A few vague KPIs are described after 231 pages; however, the author provides little insight as to how these parameters are measured by his office staff, implemented through the patient or service experience, or specifically utilized in decision-making.

At the end of the text, a chart illustrates various useful websites or apps for the physician-owner to utilize for business management. The author has found significant success in integrating tools from these websites into his practice. The informatics market does offer several integrated software suites (ie, Nextech, Modernizing Medicine, etc) that have demonstrated variable utility for integrating the continuum of electronic medical records, billing, marketing, and business management. However, this is not mentioned in the book.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson in the text is one of the only personal anecdotes the author describes from their his personal practice. Dr Weisberg recounts a story of hiring his former nanny (a personal friend) to answer phones in the practice. This action, over time, resulted in a mutual loss of confidence and eventually resulted in litigation. This is a valuable lesson for any physician or chief executive officer to avoid hiring personal friends, family, or relationship acquaintances. As the author insightfully surmises, when these relationships and responsibilities fail, it can result in disaster.

WEAKNESSES

With over 460 pages for the reader to slush through, I certainly would have expected a bit more structure to the text, which often reads without a central theme. Each chapter is exceptionally convoluted, reminiscent of a stream-of-consciousness strategy to teaching business acumen. The text lacks central direction and focus and is overtly repetitive. For example, the author utilizes a funnel diagram (ie, “The Results Model”) of conceptualizing what he describes as unlimited possibilities focused on specific actions for channeling successful decision-making. Reinforcing its perceived importance, this diagram is reprinted over 20 times in the book.

The author is heavily influenced by the success of motivational speaker Tony Robbins (who is mentioned over 25 times in the text). Although many readers and attendees of his conferences find Mr Robbins to be energetic and engaging, the practicality of implementing business strategy into a specific business circumstance, specifically within a medical practice, is often where the “rubber does not meet the road.”

Within each chapter of finance, operations and marketing/sales, the unstructured description of framework is accompanied by an extensive “question and answer” bank. These questions range from overly simplistic (ie, “how many hours a week should I spend on operations?”) to questionably irrelevant (ie, “what exactly is an avatar?”).

Within classical business education, there are several subsets of business strategy critical to development of success, particularly in reference for a medical practice.² The book is almost devoid of any reference to human resource management as a business construct, which routinely is the largest cost to any practice and perhaps its greatest asset. What adds value to a medical practice (and specifically a plastic surgery practice) is the service component provided by not only the physician but the entirety of the office staff. This is of critical importance in adding value to a practice thru retention of patients and potential word-of-mouth marketing. Furthermore, the author makes no mention of the customer experience. In a world of Yelp reviews and verbose online criticism (which is accessible at the click of a mouse), a practice can be built or destroyed by its online reputation.

Within the marketing and sales chapter, Dr Weisberg devotes a paltry 2.5 pages to social media. In current times, a physician’s online social media presence is a direct connection to their consumer base.³ Social media provides unlimited opportunity to highlight a physician’s expertise, provide patient education, and creates a venue for direct-to-consumer marketing.⁴ The author devotes little time or energy to this concept in the text.

There is little subject matter devoted to financial accounting, such as how to create, read, and interpret financial statements. While these are mentioned with respect to KPIs, they are not explained to the reader in any functional detail.

The disorganized style of Dr Weisberg’s writing, in addition to the Socratic question and answer bank at the end of each chapter, is antithesis to classic entrepreneurial business strategy that is taught at most business schools.⁵ At times, I found the author’s philosophy to be reflective of the “chicken before the egg” paradox. For example, successful entrepreneurs routinely start with a written business plan to illustrate the goals of the business venture, the methodology for attaining those goals, and the exit strategy of the business venture.⁶ Business plans often start with a vision and mission statement that clarify the owner’s idealistic emotional future of the company and their value proposition to the consumer, respectively. The business plan also takes a deep dive into the environment of the business structure, an analysis of competition and threats to growth. Finally, a business plan creates a detailed yet succinct description of a company’s financial, operational, human resources, and marketing plans. Many business writers will agree that this is a primary step in providing a clear value analysis for a potential investor or buyer. It is unfortunate that Dr Weisberg does not mention this useful tool throughout the entirety of the text.

Perhaps the most troublesome weakness of the text is the lack of mention of a strategy to becoming a successful physician (or plastic surgeon) vs running a successful business. For example, the most successful plastic surgery practices are run by passionate surgeons who possess exceptional skill, have pristine bedside manner, and interact communally with referring colleagues. Best practices in creating a successful business are a natural result of perfecting these qualities. Although Dr Weisberg attempts to characterize the mechanics of a successful business, he spends very little time on discussing the strategy of maintaining the skill of good doctoring. In my opinion, both go hand in hand.

SUMMARY

Business for Doctors is modestly successful in creating a mindset and framework for a reader to understand basic business concepts in medicine. Strategies such as defining areas of focus and developing KPIs, if implemented correctly, can be useful tools for success. However, the lack of defined structure of the text and an omission of specific detail of implementing these tools unfortunately miss the target of the author’s intended message. My apologies to Tony Robbins.

RATING: 2 OF 5

To purchase:https://businessfordoctors.co/asj/

Disclosures

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article.

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