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BTS (behind the scenes) post #1 - Challenges of being a Weight Loss Clinic Director :-)

I come from a military family and proud of the decades of service my father provided to this nation. While I did not serve myself – there are lessons and viewpoints from being brought up in and around the military that have seeped into my own viewpoint on life, how I’ve always managed people/teams, and now in how I run our business.


One of those which I try to adhere to in almost all facets of my life is always have a Plan-B ready.  The Navy Seals have an ethos around this which is summed up easily as “Two is One, and One is None.” 


This effectively means if you don’t have a backup to something – when things go wrong, as they do in life in general, your one critical THING, which could range from a key piece of equipment (your only car), your credit card processor, your internet provider, to even your only employee (for a small business). If something goes wrong with any of those critical items, you are toast.  Being toast for a medical clinic is one thing, for a military team it is obviously a completely different level of impact.


They promote having 2 options for everything critical, which in their viewpoint means they’ll probably be able to complete their mission as one of those two will most likely fail, but having the backup will get them through.


Our main supplier of our prescription medication is located in Florida – and knowing the fragility of Florida in the late summer/fall season to be impacted by weather events, I ensured we always had a second Pharmacy for continuity reasons located well far from there (in Idaho).  We’ve moved into that Two is One mode right now for some of our orders, as Hurricane Milton has put the hurt on Florida. And while there was a one day delay in transitioning some active medication orders – I’m happy to say none of our >200 patients have had to miss a single dosage. 


This is because even with the delay, we have a backup plan to the backup plan – and are able to keep a stock of medication available in our Clinic for the extreme emergency cases to provide to patients in-clinic injections to get them through the week.


The other Two is One approach we have is to our internet connectivity.  I didn’t think of this ahead of time, but early into our being open, Comcast Business decided that in the middle of the week they would be doing infrastructure improvements to our neighborhood and for two consecutive days for roughly 5 hours at a time we were without connectivity.  We cobbled together quickly a few laptops to run from my iPhone Hotspot, but this was a sad case of learning what One is None really means.


Today we have on backup a Starlink dish, a Big Lithium Phosphate Battery and a weather proof ethernet connector to run from our parking lot all the way into our cable room. Should we ever lose broadband again, or have a bad power outage, we can stay connected for at least 48hrs straight with great broadband from the sky (thanks Elon) and run everything from our Laptops (instead of desktops).


All our software runs in the cloud - Email, Pharmacy Interface, our Patient Records System, our Doctor scheduling software, our payroll, our accounting, and our marketing and VOiP/Texting service. We do about 95% of everything highly dependent on high-speed connection to the internet.


So – homework assignment for you all - figure out what your “One is None” critical things are in your life, your work or your Business and get yourself a backup.  Figuring out what your backup should be when your primary has failed is not the time to start thinking about it! TWO is ONE – ONE is NONE!


Daryl

Pacific Northwest Medical Group




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