BluShark Digital 0:00

Welcome to MedShark Insider with Bill Fukui, your expert host on all things medical marketing, and SEO.

Bill Fukui 0:08

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The MedShark Insider. I’m Bill Fukui and I am the Business Development Manager for MedShark Digital. And today we have on our program, a different type of guest , we normally, you know, chat with practices or agents that focus on practice development, marketing, advertising, how to grow a practice, you know, intake, personnel management, those types of things. Today, I’ve got a different type of guest. And I think he’s going to bring some new insights that I think will add a lot of value to practices and really the practitioners that are making these investments. So I want to introduce Sean Scope. He is Director of Sales and Operations for TSP Family Office, and we met over at The Cosmetic Show, right, Sean?

Sean Scope 1:14

That’s right. In New Orleans a few weeks back, that’s correct.

Bill Fukui 1:18

Yeah. So I want to ask you, if you could at least start by just giving a little background who TSP is so we can kind of get an idea as to some of the specialties you bring.

Sean Scope 1:32

I’ve never turned down an opportunity speak about myself, Bill. So I’ll, I’ll definitely take you up on that. So as Bill mentioned, I’m Sean Scope. I’m the Director of Sales and Operations for a firm called TSP family office. We’ve been in business for about 25 years. And I work directly with physicians, specifically, surgeons, and, and dental practices and dentists. And so my background is kind of unique, and I don’t want to take a whole lot of time on it. But prior to doing this, I was involved in doing turnarounds for private equity firms. So a private equity firm would buy a company and then with the intent of selling it quickly, and I was the guy that they would send in to drive EBITA and get the business performing at a higher level, creating greater profits, so on and so forth. And I’ve traveled, you know, pretty much the world doing that. And about nine years ago, I decided that I did want to watch my daughter grow up. So I, I gave that up and doing all of that. And I was looking for something to do when I was recruited by this boutique firm in Vero Beach, Florida called TSP at the time, and I started there in a business development role. I wanted to do something that wasn’t strenuous and crunching numbers all day, I just wanted to find clients and kind of take it easy. And so nine years later, I’m running the firm, you know, and it’s been a great ride, the family office structure means that we can affect the owners of practices, and indirectly their employees, by offering them ways to increase value in the business, create more profit, put incentives in place for people to drive those numbers. And our concentration primarily is on paying less tax, keeping more of the money that you own, utilizing the extra, extra cash to do things that are both long term and short term positive for the owners up to and including exit and transition. So that’s kind of my, my nickel speech, Bill. And we can get into more specifics, I’m sure as we dive a little bit deeper into this conversation.

Bill Fukui 3:54

Yeah, when we when we spoke, I thought the, your background, especially on some of the turnaround stuff. And just in general, insights to things that I wasn’t familiar with as a business owner, right? Business owners are, you know, in a whole different, you know, arena than somebody that’s, you know, employed and working for somebody. Right. So.

Sean Scope 4:22

Absolutley.

Bill Fukui 4:22

So as a specialist in this area, what would you say, you know, when, you’ve worked with dentists, cosmetic, plastic surgeons and such, what would you say would be common? What are the top, top three things that you consistently see, you know, opportunities either missed, or mistakes made? What would be some gaps that you would say, these are the things I would say, walk away from this, this podcast, at least look at these things. What would those three things be?

Sean Scope 5:01

Sure. So I mean, overarching principles of taking a holistic view of the practice and what that means from today, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the line, I’m often asked at what point should I consider exiting my business and my answer hasn’t changed in 35 years, it’s the day you open the practice. So if you’re not doing activities that are constantly building value in the practice, we see that there’s a lot of opportunity there. There are layers to a business. And typically the surgeon, or the operator, if you will, doesn’t go deeper than the first two layers into the business, while all of the good stuff and all the crust and all the bread, is below that, 3,5,7 layers deep. And it could be something as easy to fix as a procedure or an SOP that cuts down in time or addresses the seven, the seven wastes that take away profit. So I think that most of the operators, surgeons, dentists, whoever owns that practice, concentrate on the quality of the work that they do in their reputation, and they take a position of if I do that the profit will follow. And there is some truth to that. However, I know that from my experience, I can look at anybody’s p&l balance sheet and detailed ledger and find anywhere between 5 and 10%, more in the bottom line with no increased effort or selling more business. So this goes beyond efficiencies, I’m not talking about raising your prices and firing five people, I’m talking about take, making a concerted effort towards things that are happening in the business and can be done a little bit differently. The other thing that I see Bill is is that people don’t like to change. And this isn’t exclusive to just people that run practices. So times change technology, technology changes. If you look at you and I and our age and think about when we first started working in the world, compared to what we’re doing now, even just being able to talk on the telephone and see somebody that was reserved for, you know, the Jetsons and that was it, nobody ever thought that that would really happen. So keeping up with the times being on the cutting edge, utilizing technology to their advantage, I see as missed opportunities, they do it as a follower, most of the time, I don’t see people out in front, and taking and taking risks or chances to be the first to do something. And again, remember, the personality of a medical professional is that they are academics first and they want proof, you know, proof with numbers. So they’re not going to do anything unless it’s been proven, and it’s safe, and all of those types of things, which is fine. So getting them out of their comfort zone to do something that might be a little bit different. Now, on the other hand, what they’re not doing is is that they’re, they you know, so I make a million dollars a year, or I make $800,000 a year, who cares if I have to pay $40,000 more in tax, I’m still making 8, there’s a lot left on the table. And so there are, you know, tons of provisions within the tax code, where a lot of these operators could be leveraging them, and converting things that they’re paying for already. And after tax they can be paying for it in the business. So one of the things that TSP Family Office is really good at is converting things that they’re paying for already to legitimate business expenses by leveraging our knowledge of the code, examples, hiring the kids as models, using the Augusta rule doing, doing meetings in your house and having your S corporation pay for the rent, 14 times a year tax free. Converting personal vacations to business trips, things of that nature, missing out on capital, capital expenditures, and really leveraging 179. For those of you out there that are buying lasers and equipment and things like that, there’s a certain way that that can be done with timing and funding that is more advantageous to just I need it, I need to buy it. So an overall view would be not taking advantage of that holistic view and planning expenditures or taxation because let’s face it, taxation or tax itself will be the largest expense that anybody will have in their entire lifetime. So why not try to take control of it or just learn about it. And I’m not saying that your tolerances are going to permit or allow you to do certain things, you have to be eligible. But for someone that makes a lot of money. The dirty little secret about tax planning is is the more you make, the more you can save, because it’s all [inaudible], right? So taking the holistic view there leveraging what’s in the code, hiring professionals that know things that you don’t know, and taking a little bit of a chance to hear somebody out. I think if somebody’s heard a professional like myself or a competitor out on these things, you know, they get rabbit ears, they like what they hear, then it’s just a matter of doing it. So our company will actually implement and install all of these things for the clients. So they can continue to do what they do best, which is to change people’s lives, through their, through their procedures, and through their experience in their practice.

Bill Fukui 10:34

You know, you brought up, and I’m just going to touch on just one thing you brought up was was capital investment, right capital investments? I would say, most of my practices, they will make hundreds of thousands of dollars of investments in whether it’s technology, expansion, opening up, you know, locations, etc. But I don’t, how often would you say, do you actually have conversations with your clients, as part of that, before I buy a machine, I gotta go talk to Shawn. Right? Or we’re going to open up a new location. This is, you know, maybe I should, do you have practices, you know, clients that reach out to you, that, to participate in that decision making process? I mean, that, that’s where I see, wow, never even occurred to me.

Sean Scope 11:36

Yeah, absolutely. And part of the culture that we promote with our clients is to have that discussion with us prior to going out and buying the wife and Escalade or, or that boat or an airplane and, or whatever it is, because there’s always, the devil is in the details. And so while things might look one way on the surface, there are always these landmines out there. So with capital expenditures, anything that’s planned works better than something that isn’t planned, I don’t care if we’re talking about capital expenditures, planning a family anything, okay? It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. But you have to have a plan in place. And so what we do with our clients Bill is, we really promote developing very good habits. And those habits are things that we feel our clients are entitled to and deserve. This isn’t punitive, as somebody that makes this amount of money, and you’re investing in it, right? You’re, in marketing, in expansion, in real estate, in equipment, you deserve all of those things. But you also deserve to understand the process by which you should be gaining these things as well, because again, 2%, or 3%, on a practice that does $5 million is a lot of money. That’s a whole nother employee. That’s, that’s the European vacation. That’s half a year, that’s a year of school for your 16 year old. I mean, it adds up. So we have a saying where we were, and it goes like this crumbs is bread, and all adds up, right? So if you took all the crumbs and put them together, you’d end up with a piece of bread. So don’t, don’t glaze over something, pay attention to it make a determination on whether or not it’s worth the effort, is the juice worth the squeeze. And if it is, have somebody helped you through that. Capital expenditure conversations happen all the time, in fact, we ask our clients in Q1 of every year to have kind of a wish list or what they’re thinking of, and then by Q3, we’re either executing it because we’ve set aside, or we figured out how to finance it. And when it’s going to happen, obviously, if something breaks, you have to replace it. But if you can, if you can plan your expenditures at a certain time of the year, maybe when things spike, you know, businesses are cycular in their revenue cycles, could be weather, location, it could be a lot of things that drive that so we want to be able to grab it when when the cash flows, when the faucet’s on and that tripling and it’s more affordable. Again, coming up with terms we don’t really recommend to people who to buy something from. We look at the terms that are offered, and we don’t have any preference to any vendors. We don’t, we’re agnostic when it comes to that. However, there’s there’s a smart way to buy and there’s a not so smart way.

Bill Fukui 14:46

So, when it comes to the planning portion, you know, anything you do, you’re gonna get better results. You know, you know, if you plan it out, right even whether it’s a vacation or anything else, right, so, when it comes to, you had made the comment and I love the comment, when you, you asked me at the meeting, you said, When should somebody start thinking about, you know, retirement or wealth planning or whatever. And, you know, I think you’re right. There’s a lot of practices that think, well, when I get to be maybe in my 40s, 50s, or whatever, you know, when I’m starting to, quote, make money, when I kind of reach those, you know, I got to start stocking it away. But I think the habits that you’re talking about, in terms of whether it’s wealth planning, or tax planning, whatever I think that all makes great sense. Most of your, now, just so I can get my head around it, because I’ve got two, I got a young daughter who’s finishing up her residency in New York City, and her husband, he’s finishing up his residency. She’s a pediatric neurology resident, he’s emergency room surgeon. So they’re just going to be finishing up here. What do you say? Is most of your focus on business owners, or physicians that, that either work for somebody or air in employment situation, kind of where do you fit with those types of clients?

Sean Scope 16:21

It really, it really depends. And I hate when people give me that answer. But it really does depend. A business owner is optimal. Because we can leverage the business, most of the businesses that we see are what they call pass through entities their LLCs of some sort, being taxed as partnerships, or S corporations, which means that all of the profit that’s left flows through to them as income, they can retain those earnings, but they’re still going to pay tax on it, there’s no advantage to doing that you might as well take it. And in your situation, if your daughter ends up working for Columbia Medical or somebody like that, she’s going to be a W2, really not much that you can do there because you’re kind of pigeon holed to, to that. However, the, the partner as an emergency physician could potentially be part of a large partnership, where, where they’re able to set up their own LLC, and have their pay come from the partnership into their LLC, so that they can control their tax in that LLC. I see this a lot, we have quite a few emergency physicians, and they work for a group, it’s a large partnership. And so what we’ve done for those people have set them up with an LLC, and have the partnership, pay right to them. And the money goes into that LLC. Now, we can take those deductions for vacation, tax free rent, hiring your kids, auto expense, all of that through there to control it to drive down the pass through income and convert things that they’re paying for already, post tax to things that they’re going to take pre tax. And the difference is at that level, you know, talking about 37% tax on that, or 0% tax on. So it’s, it’s quite a savings. And that’s come in New York, it’s going to be 37 plus eight for the state at least. So you’re talking well above 40%, you’re almost given away 50 cents, 50 cents for every dollar you’re earning. So if you’re going to spend the money on your kids, on vacations on, you know, auto expense, a home office, tax free rent, you might as well do it pre tax and gain it because think about this somebody’s at a 40% tax rate that they’re giving up, they’re giving up 40 cents of every dollar. So for every dollar that I can save them. They’re you know, they’re saving 40 cents on every dollar and somebody that makes 6,8, $900,000 a year, you start to do the math and all of a sudden you’re knocking up against 30 or 40 grand a year. You’re start with me when you’re young, you do that for 10 years, it’s three or $400,000. You’ve just paid for two kids to go to an Ivy League school. That’s great..

Bill Fukui 19:20

Yeah, that’s, that’s pretty substantial. And you’re right, I think all the things that you’re talking about, I think most of our, you know, our surgeons our practitioners, practice owners. They recognize that but they don’t, you know, they don’t want to develop those habits. Like you’re saying, right? That’s probably why you have a business. Is because they don’t do it, right?

Sean Scope 19:45

Right, right.

Bill Fukui 19:45

So what do you say to the to the doctor or the business owner that hasn’t done this? And honestly, it’s just how painful is it to go through this? I mean, how am It’s time isn’t gonna take, what do I need to do? It’s the barriers of entry of the, developing those habits, right? It’s, it’s I don’t want to exercise, you know, I just never it’s just going to the gym for the first time, right? What’s, what’s, what’s, the barrier for kind of getting clients to start doing the things that you want them to? Or even start looking at this, right that we could make a difference? What’s that take? What does it take for somebody to take the leap?

Sean Scope 20:34

So, so there are a couple of different types of clients that I run into. But overwhelmingly, I would rather have somebody that’s more furious than curious. So somebody, that’s somebody that’s angry about how much tax they’re paying, somebody that’s, knows that they can be more profitable, that that client is motivated because they’re ready to change. This is not behavior mod 101, but it’s change management 101, because what we’re going to ask people to do is something completely different than what they have been doing. And like anything else, if you’re not internally motivated to change, then you’re not experiencing enough pain. It’s not my style to twist the knife, I’m honest, as the day is long, and I can tell them what’s going on. But ultimately, if they want to pay more tax and not do anything about it, it’s their money, not mine, I don’t have a shortage of people over paying their taxes in our country. So, unlimited supply, and we try to, we try to make a case for everybody that would make sense. As far as the level of effort. That’s why we have a business, we do the heavy lifting, we do 90% of the work that’s required, we just need someone to take an interest and participate in our sessions with us, get us the documents that we need. A lot of Docs will hand this off to an office manager, or everybody has a gal or a guy that does all things that they don’t want to do. So sometimes we bring them in. But there’s a fine line, because we’re dealing with personal finances as well. So depending on the relationship that Doc has with that person, if there are no boundaries, and it works well, if he’s like, I don’t want them to know how much money, then they have to do it themselves. So if it was really painful, or strenuous or time consuming, we wouldn’t be in business, we take all of that away, we take, we put the burden on us. And we’ll provide everything that they need to do to put, get these systems and strategies installed, even make referrals to other professionals that have expertise in areas that we don’t, we try to make it as easy, as, we want to create easy decisions, not difficult decisions, we never want to have to convince or talk anybody into bettering their financial life and looking after their, their business and their family, that’s on, that’s them. Either they’re motivated, or they’re not.

Bill Fukui 23:00

No, and I think your comment is, if, if they have a passion or a desire to fix or improve, they’re motivated. I mean, those are all really important elements, whether it comes to marketing or financial planning, if you’re not committed to doing this, if you’re just wanting something, you know, easy that you know, doesn’t cost much or whatever, you’re not willing to make an investment in it, you know, you’re you’re not going to get results. So I don’t think that that’s, too off from from kind of what we do. And I try to be as transparent as I can, in terms of what it is you’re going to need to do to invest, whether it’s time, resources, personnel, processes, in order to make marketing, you know, get that make it so it is the juice is worth the squeeze, right? Otherwise, you can do all this stuff, but it’ll never come out on the back end as being a return on investment or profitable investment of time, energy resources, etc. So I love that because that’s I thinka lot of practitioners look at, you know, that there’s, you know, you just plug this in, and you can save me money. And that should be easy kind of thing. But but I know there’s a lot more moving parts than that.

Sean Scope 24:24

Right, right. I would agree with that

Bill Fukui 24:26

So, let me ask, let me have you provide us with if somebody is interested in taking a look at what they can do, to just see if it makes sense to engage with you. How can they you know, do you have a website? How can they get a hold of you? What, what would be a first step?

Sean Scope 24:47

Okay. So there’s a couple of different ways that you can do that. Our website is tspfamilyoffice.com. And you can go to take the assessment, it’s seven questions. If you fill it out, I’ll be pinged and I will get in touch with you. Or I can give you my direct line right now. And it’s area code 772-646-6947. And you can text or call that number, and we can work it from there, we start with just kind of a deep dive, and finding out about who you are and what you want, and vice versa. And from there, we can provide a complimentary consultation and a plan workup. And at that time, you pretty much can decide whether or not you want to work with us, it works very much like medicine, right, we start a chart, we diagnose, we prescribe. If you don’t take the pill, you’re not going to lose the weight. So we can take it up into that point, just like doctors do. And it’s up to the individual to either participate or make a decision to change.

Bill Fukui 25:52

Yeah, and I will say thank you for that, Sean. I do see, I don’t think there’s a practitioner out there, that doesn’t recognize the cost of running a business and when you’re saying taxes is going to be the single most expensive thing they that they invest in, throughout the course of this, their practice, you know, at the end of the day, along with personnel, you know, there’s, there’s no way of, if they’re, if this isn’t on their radar, then man, they’ve got a lot of money, you know, just floating out, you know, leaving their practice. So I hope that, I encourage everybody to reach out to Shawn, if you haven’t already, even if you have somebody that’s already kind of doing this stuff for you. It’s not too different than me doing an assessment, a website, a digital marketing assessment, don’t always assume what you’re doing is, you know, your providers doing is the best or the right, or that there’s no other opportunities or gaps in what could be done to help improve kinda a your own quality of life, your own profitability, and ultimately, you know, setting aside enough money so that you can retire when, when that come, time comes, or when you want it to. Right.

Sean Scope 27:13

Agreed. Agreed. Absolutley agreed.

Bill Fukui 27:14

Super. Well, thank you again, for your time today, Sean, great insights. You know, maybe what we can do is think about, you know, maybe a little deeper dive in terms of some of the tactics, strategies, some of the, you know, things that you could be doing to help them. Maybe we can have you on on another segment.

Sean Scope 27:34

That would be awesome. And I look forward to it. I can talk about this stuff all day long.

Bill Fukui 27:39

I know you can, I love it. All right, Sean. Hey, have a great day. Thanks for joining us, everybody.

Sean Scope 27:45

Bill, thank you for your time, appreciate it.

Bill Fukui 27:48

Thanks for joining us for the MedShark Insider with Bill Fukui join us next week for another dive into all things medical marketing. All episodes can be streamed at www.medsharkdigital.com/medshark-insider

Transcribed by https://otter.ai