Profit Growth: Manny Skevofilax’s Top 5 Business Moves

Step back and grow slower. There's a lot of pressure on us here as Americans to grow, grow, grow as fast as we can. And a lot of us have personalities that are very conducive to that. But can you convince these people to grow slowly? They grow slowly, grow profitably, so you don't have to put yourself and your team in your business through these crazy amounts of stress. Come to the super clinic project podcast, where we take regular clinic owners and turn them into cash-based multi-millionaire entrepreneurs. Warning, if you're a doctor who listens to this podcast regularly, you will make millions of dollars. Do not listen to this podcast unless you want to be a successful clinic owner who helps thousands of patients achieve their health goals and adds more money than you can imagine to your bank account. You've been warned. Welcome to the super clinic project podcast, where we take regular clinic owners and we turn them into super clinic owners. You have me, Jennifer Gleegerich, I'm your host today, along with a banker, consultant, speaker, and author that helps business owners maximize their profits and overcome growth challenges to achieve financial freedom. He's seen business owners in his career push to be more profitable, but end up non-profitable and taking on debt countless times. And he's here today to teach us the five methods we can enhance our value as we grow our clinics. So let us welcome Manny Scavo Felix to the show today. I'm sorry I almost put you to that, but welcome Manny. I'm so excited to have you here. Thank you for having me, Jennifer. Happy to be here. I'm really happy. So you started as a banker and I remember reading that you said, you know, many times you would see, you know, customers that would come in and then as you as you moved on to your career. And they would have a profitability, but then they would push for growth like big growth and they would start pushing and instead of getting the growth, they would end up getting on debt instead and not being profitable. So basically messing up the kind of slow growth thing they did have. You want to talk about that and then how you've, you know, what you're doing today to help them. Yes. So in my experience, you know, there's two ways that you grow a business. The first way is you go and you bring on outside investors to provide a pool of capital that you can draw from. And you're focused on your goals. You're not worried about the losses because you have that pool of capital that pot of cash on the side to draw on and then you move towards your goal and you hopefully meet it very difficult to to attract outside investors to come to the company. The second way is bootstrapping when you're doing it on your own with little access to capital and you're trying to take some of the profits that you're making and use those to reinvest into the business. And we were dealing with mostly bootstrap companies because that's what's going on in America. Most of the companies small businesses here that grow are all bootstrap by their owners. And they get into unprofitable phases when they try to grow too fast and they don't have the access to that capital, which led them to be taking on debt that they couldn't handle. That often happens. We deal with a lot of clinic owners like that. And a lot of times they end up just getting into this real hamster wheel of an unhealthy cycle where they're just like marketing marketing marketing because they have no no new patients in and their current roster is barely able to sustain them. But suddenly now all these people are coming in and they have to try to get them to be in to care right so then the marketing goes goes away and then they have to fulfill on that right and then it just all starts over again and they can never really get true growth and they just become very very burnt out. So can you talk to us a little bit about ways to get off of that hamster wheel that you've seen that have been very successful with the clinics and people that you've worked with. Yeah, you know, that's an excellent point that you make. I like the word unhealthy, you know, in my experience, Jennifer, it depends on the person depends on that entrepreneur, you know, are they willing to step back and grow slower. There's a lot of pressure on us here as Americans to grow, grow, grow as fast as we can. And a lot of us have personalities that are very conducive to that, but can you convince these people to grow slowly, you know, grow slowly, grow profitably so you don't have to put yourself and your team and your business through these, you know, crazy amounts of stress. What's the sense of having this money if you don't have the health to enjoy it if you're burnt out all the time. And would you, what are some tips for that? Because obviously in business, you know, you have to be growing or innovating or you're, you're dying. There's no real way just to plateau with exactly what you're doing. There has to be some sort of growth mindset. What do you think is the difference between a healthy growth mindset and then the unhealthy growth mindset that's actually going to end up being risky for the business in your opinion from what you've seen. You know, in my opinion, Jennifer, it's more beneficial to go this slow and steady route because you're able to use your own profits to grow at the pace that works for you and you're not subject to some kind of arbitrary goal. Like I have a medical company right now that's trying to open 18 locations in 18 months. And I'm trying to be polite and say, you know what? I know you've, you've grown pretty rapidly, but this is a really extreme goal, extreme stretch goal and they don't have the capital to do it. And it's already stressed the organization. So slow and steady wins the race is what I've seen in my career. Why do you think so let's talk about that like that would be a case study. Who made that decision and why do you think they made that decision? Why that number and why that timeframe? I mean, we're just spitballing it because we don't know, right? Okay, I feel like I have a flavor. They believe that there's an opportunity and they believe that they have to execute quickly before other competitors get into the market. That's their opinion. They obviously have far more knowledge about their, you know, market and their business and their segment than I do. But I don't see it that way. Based on what I, what they shared with me, it seems like an impossible dream. But they are convinced that they're going to do it and they're going after it. Yeah, so what do you think would be more of the possible dream? Five, eight, maybe maybe maybe six, you know, maybe every three months, every quarter you open one up so everyone can maintain their sanity. It's a lot of work, right? It's not like putting a desk into an office. I mean, there's specialized equipment that needs to be purchased, installed. There's people that need to be trained, you know, on how to use it. I mean, it's involved. It's an evolved exercise on boarding a new office. Yeah, I think they didn't want to go ahead and go ahead, please. I think one of the things that you talked about is setting realistic goals, but also goals for employees. Like the idea is to improve efficiency and then to reduce overhead, right? You want to do that in your day-to-day operation. You always want to be looking at that. How can we be more efficient? And AI is really forcing some of the biggest players in the game right now to really ask that question daily. You know, because now you have AI, which in healthcare, legal, finance fields, is becoming so powerful each day as it's learning and growing that, you know, a lot of things we can just get a lot more output out. So, you know, you're able to get more done with less resources because now AI is able to do it. However, because you can do that, you have to get out more. You have to become an expert in how to do that. And that takes your own growth and that takes your own processes to change, you know. So, it's really interesting. It's really interesting about that. So, you talk about the five minutes of this to enhance value as you grow your business. So, let's say you're like you're right. I don't want to stress things, but I do want to grow. I'm growth-minded. And also, I want to increase value. I don't want to be someone who, you know, what I'm doing needs to have value. Like, I bring value to the world. That's why I decided to be an entrepreneur. So, can you talk about some of those methods? Sure. So, the first one on the list that I've learned from teachers, mentors, and my experience over my career is, you know, don't underprice your products because you don't have the confidence to ask for your value. So, that one is... I mean, that one always seems to find its way to the top of the list. And it takes time, you know, I suffered from it as a consultant. And it takes a lot of time to get comfortable, to say, you know, I am providing something that is very important and valuable in my service. I have a long history of doing it. And you have to get comfortable with it because if you underprice your product or service, you're leaving money on the table that you're never going to be able to get back. Never. The people will not value it. I actually have a case study of this. Now, it's interesting because the price of the package actually lowered. But what they were, they were tracking their data, right? So, this is someone who really tracks data. And they also tracked, we're tracking every objection they got in working on overcoming those objections. And going is the objection coming from me, am I not showing enough value, you know, really doing their due diligence that you're supposed to do. And in the end, after looking at the data and everything that they uncovered, they went, this part of my package has no value for my clientele. And they're telling me this over and over again. So, I'm going to take this part of my package out. And I'm only going to offer this part of the package. And it will lower my price. It's still going to be higher than I had ever charged before. But I feel that this is more in line. And you do know that they went from not closing a single package, only doing these monthly little memberships to closing 100%. In fact, they're coming on my show. And it was in men's health because the part of the package they had had to do with nutrition and lifestyle and different changes. And it was intensive what they were offering. It was valuable what they were offering. But every single person that they were talking to said, but I can do that on my own. Even though it was hard, even though they weren't doing it themselves, even though they weren't holding themselves accountable. It was not resonating with that market, some markets it will. So they had to look at their own data and not anything else, not even what they logically knew to be true. They had to actually look at the numbers and let the numbers tell them. And do you know they went from, they grew 30 grand in one month. Now that is slow. Yeah, that's slow and that isn't slow and steady growth. But the way to get up there was very slow and steady. And the reasoning behind it, what was a very, I'm here to grow. I'm here to make the decisions. But still it was pricing correctly, but also listening to their market. And I agree that most people are very underpriced. They had been underpriced. And so they were used to selling the underpriced membership offer because they were much more comfortable with that. But you know, in the end, they were best serving the people by giving them a package that answered all of the healthcare needs that really people wanted to have answered. So that's very interesting that you use that as number one, but I agree. Everybody needs to listen to Manny on this. Somebody, somebody taught me this, Jennifer, but that's a fantastic story. Well, it's true. It's the true ones that are happening right now that I think are most, they're actually coming on. They're going to be taping next week to talk about. And this just happened. This was June. So we, I don't know when this will come out. This might actually not come out till November. But this is, we're talking June 2025. I hate, I hate to date an episode because a lot of things we talk about are pretty universal. You know, standard for several years, but that's what we're at. Anyway, so that was number one. Don't underpriced. What would be number two? Here's a good one for you. So as you gain more confidence in selling your product or service, start building your confidence and then dedicate a portion of your marketing efforts to market. To marketing to larger companies. And I'd like to provide an example, please. I have clients that are sending, you know, 40, 50,000 dollar proposals to companies that are doing, you know, a million dollars a year in revenue. There's a lot of companies like that. And they're not getting accepted. And my clients are scratching their heads and I said, hey, hold on a second. I said, let's look at this client that's doing a million in revenue. If they're netting 10%, that's $100,000. They're paying about, let's just say 30% in taxes. So there's 70 left over. They probably want to take some of that money home as a bonus, let's say half of it. So they probably got about 35 grand left over. Hopefully that they're letting sit in the company. You know, so they can create their own growth capital. I said, and you're coming in here with a 50,000 dollar proposal. That's why it's getting rejected. I said, why didn't you go to a $5 million dollar to your company? Start talking to these larger companies that have larger budgets. And sure enough, you know, a 50,000 dollar proposal, which was impossible to sell to that million dollar client. Even though the million dollar client certainly could benefit from the value. The $5 million clients were saying, who do I make the check payable to? So the moral of the story and that change helped a lot of my clients grow their top line revenue successfully and profitably. And they built a sustainable business by going up market. Yeah. And I would say for some of the clinics that are here, they're like, there's no up market because we're a business to consumer. It is if you think about this in allowing people to afford what you have, right? So we know times are tough right now for a lot of people, but it only gets tougher if you don't have your health. So my clients are only getting people good health. And there are a variety of ways people can pay. There are different financing and I'm just talking about care credit. There's PayPal. There's there's edge edge edge. HFA. Sorry. My HFA. Rap is probably going to be there's creating. Critty's another good example. You don't even have to have a credit score at all. They don't even check credit. So there. Yeah. HFA and Crete both are different. Now it's higher interest rates. But when you're talking about the difference between being in pain or out of pain or dealing with something that is really limiting you. And you just can't seem to move forward from it. Then that, you know, they all have, you know, people pay it off and they're diligent with it. They can pay this off and then their life is different, right? So if you give people enough options, then they, if you follow the process in your funnel, then they will take that, that option. And I'm not saying use options that you yourself, like if you're like that interest rate is just ridiculous. I don't agree with that. Okay, you know, that's fine. You have to be aligned to whatever it is. But there are good companies that, you know, you can work with and you can vet. But a lot of people just have nothing, you know, and with all the lawsuits with Medicare and things like that that are happening right now. As we speak, you know, there's a whole percentage of the population that has paid for something that is absolutely is not going to get them well at all. It just won't be there for them. So we have to fight against that and provide them some other options, you know. So that's another one. So it is look for larger companies, but also to, I would say expand what you can do for your, for your offerings to go along with it for our audience. So what do you think would be number three or what do you know is number three? Number three. So try to develop ways to increase the value of your existing products and services to your customers. So let's, let me share a couple of examples. Most customers know what they want, but they don't really always realize what they need. So what people want, Jennifer is usually a commodity that's subject to price competition, you know, for example, an airline seat, you know, or refrigerator. Botox. That is very much commoditized. I'm not getting what you want. Medspies. It's all by the vinyl. But that's not what they want. Oh, yeah, it's all they want. So how much profile, how much profile and it is a race to the bottom. And so you have all of these very successful dermatologists and people who actually know how to do these injections without having half your face fall off. And they're literally having to treat a lifelong skill of knowing how to do this with these people who are selling it by a commodity. There are other ways you can add value to it. And some of it is just who you are and how you present yourself. I mean, he's absolutely right. There's a lot of a lot of ways to add value. That's interesting because I didn't know that. So it dovetails right in with this next one. When you introduce an unforeseen need, there isn't any price competition anymore because the offer is now one of uniqueness. So, so if you don't mind educating me, what could you offer on top of Botox that would make it unique? That would make it, you know, I would say right now if you can. Well, the idea is I would ask every single woman who came in or man, because men get it to every single client. You know, what is your end goal? What is really upsetting you right now? What brought you in today? And why here? And I would listen to what they're talking. Well, you're local. That would be one. Okay. That's that's one thing people would say. But, you know, let's say I really want to feel fresh and up because I'm getting married or my son is getting married or listen to the things that are telling you in your market. Different markets are different, right? You know, in high urban areas, it could be I just want to compete at my level. I work at a very big corporation. I know youth is at a premium and I feel like when I look at myself, I'm not I don't feel like I'm putting my best face forward, right? Whatever. And I would listen to what specifically I would probe probe probe on that until you can get like I feel like these deep lines and wrinkles, whatever it is for that. And I would really make an effort to understand the actual outcomes. And if those outcomes in general are something you know you can get them with, I wouldn't create a package to get them that outcome. Like I know that I can take 10 years off of you within three months and you will probably look two years, at least by the time you leave here on the first treatment, because this is what we're going to do. And then I would bundle that with red light, I would probably use a laser or something with that. And also to a lot of people have no idea how incredible the differences between medical grade skin care products. I'm going to say there's a lot of people who don't understand the difference between a medical grade skin care product and what they can get off of Tik Tok or you know all these miracle ones. And so I would enter I would offer freebies or low to try to get them onto it because once they get on that, they'll realize the huge difference of it. That's what I that would if it was if it was specifically a med spa, I would talk about all those different options and I create it and I would say what are the people asking you. You know if everybody's like I want to look great in the board room, then I would have a you know board room, besting boot camp, you know, take over the stage, you know, and I would basically be outcomes based the what's in it for them. In a way that is very different than come on, you know, selling we have $12 dollar vial Botox per vial because that's what you see that's done. I did not know that. Yeah, yeah, it's very much been erased to the bottom and the more they do that, the more unfortunately women get horribly harmed. There are every single week in the news, there's some woman who you see who went in and half of her face gets completely numbed or there's a terrible thing that can happen, especially with lip fillers where they will accidentally fill an area that has some some veins and capillaries and it can start rotting. So like to you get red and then before you know it your part of your face is rotting and you were trying to just do something well and so you know you have to the outcomes based and leaning into expertise is really important right now. That is awesome i'm certainly one of those that don't know the difference between medical grade and what you can get on TikTok so that was different perfect you know and so I like to give a simple example you know an airline ticket to Paris is one thing but what is a curated private tour of the Louvre worth. You know a whole pump and a heater is one thing but what if you could control them anywhere in the world from your smartphone so I like to use these simple examples of that extra value add and then let the client what you just did tailored to their business i think it's awesome. That is awesome it's absolutely awesome so that's great advice so that's the value of your products so that was number three and now we have foreign bite. Sure so number four would be try to create some new higher value products and services so you know in my experience and I had to learn this the hard way you're you're existing customers are in the best position to tell you what their additional needs are and what else they like to buy from you. They're probably only going to tell you what they need today you know you're going to have to ask what they might need tomorrow and that's where I had a hard time because I wasn't asking what else they would want you know how did this would they see the future so I want to give you an interesting example for me. I did not know that clients were scared to talk to their banker you know they're going bar all this money and then they're scared to talk to the banker so I there was a need and a valuable need to be able to be taught to teach that client how to talk to the bank you know here's the things that you should say here are some things that you might want to say and I ended up calling that service bank relations and there it is it was right under my nose. And I was a banker for 10 years so so by asking they told me because I had made an assumption I'm like gosh you know to me it was like pretty stupid if you've got $2 million in debt why would you be afraid to talk to your banker it didn't make sense to me because I made the mistake of assuming so so what is it that is right under your nose right as a clinician that you could first of all let's do it easy. Ask the client what else are they looking for besides that Botox besides that medical grade products what else is there that they will be looking for maybe not necessarily right now but maybe tomorrow. I think that's really interesting and I love your example because yeah I can see why a lot of people are afraid they don't want to get rejected they're afraid that they will come off they will either get talked into a product that's not really good for them or scam or some reason. Are there there's not trust but if they can know what they say and feel more confident they can have a much better conversation yeah that's interesting but that's a great service that's a great service for that okay so number five our last one. Yeah number five I threw in there what are the seek six secrets to successful price increases this is something that we're all up against doesn't matter what business that you're in. So I just wrote down the six that I was I found worked over time and again this is my training my experience teachers and mentors number one don't beat around the bush about a price increase right just you got to be straightforward about it nobody likes to hear song and dance and then. The second one is if you still can't get comfortable talking to your clients you're just in classes what I'm saying about a price increase then only raise prices for your new clients the third one and I found that this one works easily insert an annual price increase sentence into your engagement letter or your contract. That's right in there and you'll notice that a lot of our professional services firms do that accounting firms that you're dealing with when you're a business owner your lawyers it's right in the contract. The fourth one is be keenly aware of the timing of your price increase if you're having some quote unquote challenges with the client that might not be the right time to go and increase a price. Yeah right yeah and also to understand what's happening like you can't you're going to have to do the there's going to be price increases and stuff like that when things happen in the world right. But you do want to be a little savvy of what's what's going on and be be sensitive a little bit you know and even no matter when you do it if you do it on the perfect day at the perfect time there's always going to be someone who says I can't believe you did this because my best friend's dog is at the vet insert. You know they'll be so upset and you'll be like okay you know don't worry about the people like that but it you know like a big events and stuff like that you do want to be sensitive. Never make the client feel like they're getting a less from you with a price increase this is one that I've learned in later years because I really wasn't paying much attention to it in the earlier years of my career. So for example what are you getting concast is in my area is in anopoly I'm getting paid internet service from them and I need it and I don't have any alternative so they just raise the price and that just it runs me the wrong way. So I don't want to be rubbing my clients the wrong way so I make don't make the client feel like they're getting a less value by raising the price put something else in there. Maybe I can tell you some good ones for this so like a good one that I've seen is we are working for on this and this and this for Q3 we've updated our background software and we've also like added two more you know part time technicians to come in on a Saturday. Whatever it is that you're already doing and you're going to be doing anyway because it's part of business just let them know that so that they know that you're a dynamic company that's growing and this is part of operations that'll make it go down a lot easier. I think that's that's outstanding thank you for sharing that one definitely takes pain away and in the last one right the last one of the six secrets to successful price increases is this is my favorite never sit down at the negotiating table unless you're willing to get up and walk away empty handed well that was a tough one for me to learn so why would I want to go into a situation where I'm reducing my value. It never works to reduce your value because then that's going to spread they're going to tell their people that they're going to refer to you that you can get a deal and getting a deal it's not conducive to building a growing profitable sustainable business where you can take care of your employees take care of your family and take care of your community. So you have to be a little have bring some backbone to that negotiating table. Yeah they don't don't let them think that you're desperate for it you're doing it because you're there to help them you know you have they have a challenge your position to solve that challenge and you feel confident to solve it but if you're not the one hey you know that's okay too maybe maybe on the upside when you have that sort of attitude people tend to go okay well you know I'm not going to go. They will you know I don't feel pushed you know and they and you're not pushing him you're just asking them you know to let that let you know if they have concern so you can answer them so you can guys can see if it's a fit so guys very well said. We have been here with Manny Manny's going to tell you how to find a man he let everybody know how they can find you sure on my website which is portal. P O R T L C F O dot com and so you're going to be they just go there and go there and I have a free I have a free be there I put together a one page financial visibility checklist for free and this is the exact document that I use when I first start working with clients to help them immediately figure out where are there any margin leaks in this business and are there any blind spots. And you can download a copy there. Well that's awesome okay guys we have been here with Manny skevo philax and he is our outsource C F O and all of his information is going to be on super clinic project dot com if you didn't get that you can just go to our normal website click on our school will have everything there for you and links to his freebies and everything else. So in this episode we've learned the five methods to enhance your value and grow your business as well as six ways on how to when you want to increase your prices. And what to do for that so we've learned a whole lot thank you so much Manny for being here and everybody like follow and share and be sure to give us that five star review it's how we get top quality people like Manny on the show giving us such incredible value so we can be super clinic owners. Everybody have a great week and thank you again Manny thank you Jennifer. You've been listening to the super clinic project podcast if you like what you hear subscribe and stay tuned for further episodes of the super clinic project podcast.