Who We Are/Who We Work With:
Mara: Today you have not one, but two Shorrs’. You may have seen us before, or listened to us before, or watched a video, shook our hands when that was actually appropriate. But I am Mara Shorr, one of the hosts of Shorr Solutions, the podcast, and with me, I have my partner in crime, my business partner, my Pops, Jay Shorr. We are a father-daughter team and we really love everything about what we do and getting to work together. If you haven’t already listened to our story, I encourage you to listen to the very first episode of Shorr Solutions The Podcast, all about how we got started. Today, Jay and I are going to talk about what it’s like to work with Shorr Solutions, the consulting company. We started this company almost a decade ago. Jay started this company almost a decade ago. We have grown a whole heck of a lot since then. Jay, let’s talk first and foremost about who Shorr Solutions works with and who is our typical client?
Jay: Well, thank you, Mara. Our typical client is anybody in the aesthetic, cosmetic, plastic surgery world or Med Spa world. We’re specialists in the cosmetic and aesthetic medical community and we’re proud to work with both medical spas, also known as med spas, as well as cosmetic surgery and plastic surgery practices. Our clients are based throughout the United States. It’s pretty interesting because I would think we’re based in Florida, I’m in South Florida, and you’re in Central Florida, we would have a lot of Floridian clients, but due to the nature of where we lectured and things like that we have a lot of Midwest/West clients because of the Vegas community. The joy of today’s technology is that we’re able to meet by phone, FaceTime, Zoom, GoToMeeting, Skype, text, email, you name it.
Mara: So it’s pretty easy to say that we can work remotely with our clients, right? That’s something that we are absolutely able to do is work remotely because our clients are all over the country. We get that question a lot as far as people asking, can you, how can you work with me if you aren’t physically sitting in my office right next to me? Now, granted, we get this question a lot less this year and last year than we did at any other time because remote learning has grown so much. But that is a question. We used to get a lot more and sometimes still do. So, Jay, do you want to talk a little bit about how we make this work?
Jay: Because now more than ever, and I say now more than ever because depending upon when you’re listening to this, whether it’s during or semi or post-COVID, we live in a remote world just like all of you who may be listening to this. People used to think and I heard from a lot of people, Hocus Pocus telemedicine, but it is here to stay, even after the post-pandemic times. Whether you prefer texts or emails, phone calls, or video conferences, we’re here to communicate with you in your preferred method of communication. We do offer options of in-person training sessions for those practices that are taught or prefer to have us on-site COVID permitting, which can be arranged on a case by case basis. We have done so many on-site visits prior to COVID and it’s a way to get ourselves interacting with your staff. They can see us, they can talk to us, we sit down, we break bread.
How We Can Help You:
Mara: We’re doing a lot of virtual coffees these days, and we work with our clients on a number of different services, it’s a question that we get asked a lot is, how can you help me? Which in-house services do you provide versus what do you bring to the table? How can you help me with those services that you may not provide? Jay, let’s talk a little bit about the services that Shorr Solutions actually provides to help them get started and get stronger.
Jay: Well, the services that we offer, it’s very important to understand that we work with operational, administrative, and financial help and guidance of medical practices. We work hard to maintain positive vendor relationships to bring you when you need it the most. These vendors include, but they’re not limited to, device manufacturers for capitalized equipment, suture vendors in care supply, group purchasing organizations and group buyers clubs, credit card processing, patient financing, website companies, event experts, healthcare attorneys, and other types of fellow consultants as well. These vendors are our colleagues and not competitors. We know that they’re going to provide quality and excellent services to practices just like you. We believe in collaboration versus competition. If it doesn’t work for you, we’re not going to recommend any of these vendors for things that we don’t do ourselves. We want to bring all of the best people to your front door.
We Work With Practices in All Stages of Life:
Mara: We have so many people that are asking about exit strategies. If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to listen to our podcast episode on, What Is My Practice Valuation. That’s a great episode if you’re thinking about an exit strategy, but also how to open a practice, how to strengthen your practice, how to deal with HR issues, how to deal with COVID issues, we are just hearing an overwhelming need for this in the industry. We’ve helped practices apply for financial assistance, and apply for PPP funding, help them with their loan forgiveness paperwork. So really, if it’s looking at negotiations, if it’s looking at assistance, that’s where we really are so strong. We get the question a lot about life stages of what life stages a practice should be in or could be in it for when to bring in Shorr Solutions. Let’s talk about the different life stages that we work with.
Jay: There are many different stages and maybe you graduated from your residency, maybe you finished a fellowship, maybe you went to work in academia, maybe you went to work with institutional medicine, maybe went to work with a privately owned practice for several years and then you just feel that it’s time to embark into your own private business venture. So it’s not just the new guy or gal on the block. It could be somebody that’s been out for a while but once they test the waters and do it on their own, and we’ll help you start your own practice. Starting with a business plan, the financial visibility analysis, and helping you get funding now, once you’ve been in business, if you haven’t used a consultant and you just want to get that one step ahead then you hire a consultant to help you fine-tune those skills.
Then when you’re in the final stages of your project National Career visa theme versus a Mara, you may want to consider and you really should consider this way ahead of when it has to be a succession plan or an exit strategy. It is best that you plan for this on your own versus a premature condition that forces you to do this. If you listen to another podcast or webinar that I’ve done about my exit strategy from owning a practice you would understand about premature demise and how situations may have been happening for you instead of you doing it on your own.
Mara: Some of that is touched on in that first episode of Shorr Solutions: The podcast. I always say that within a practice, you don’t know what you don’t know and it’s like that with any business that you run, you just don’t know what you don’t know. The practice that you start and really have started from the ground up is going to look very different when it’s just the doctor, the injector, a surgeon, etc. then when you have maybe two employees and one or two rooms that’s going to look so incredibly different than when you have five to ten employees. You’re going to deal with different issues when you have ten employees versus when you have twenty employees and the issues that you had when you first started are going to be very different than what you’re dealing with when you’re ready to sell the practice. That’s where we provide assistance anywhere in there. I like to say we fit in pretty seamlessly. Jay, you and I always talk about being part of the team, we become part of each other’s family. That’s what our clients say to us too is that you fit in so seamlessly to our practice. So let’s talk about how we do fit in with their company structure, not their legal company structure.
We Are Coaches:
Jay: Let me try and explain first that bigger isn’t always better in the size of your practice. The more people you have, the more problems you’re going to have. As far as us integrating into your practice, we’re coaches and we’re not anybody’s Boss. Ultimately, we strengthen your bottom line because we always sign a nondisclosure with our clients to protect your data to protect confidentiality mutually. We work well with your other consultants in the sandbox, including your accountants, your attorney, your PR firms, your website designers, and what we do is act as a liaison. When I’m negotiating, when people ask me, Well, what is it that you do? Are you an attorney? Are you a doctor? No. Are you a legal analyst? Well, I’m not a licensed legal analyst, but yes I’m legal and it’s because I’ll interpret your contracts for you but have it always memorialized by an attorney, potentially a healthcare attorney. They may be good attorneys and they may be good accountants, but they’re not going to see what Mara and I see either PR trends in the industry or how your business relates to others in the industry.
Mara: It’s so incredibly true. I mean, this is what we do all day, every day and I mean all day every day. I was working on this document over the weekend and I was working on applying for this paperwork for this client at 6 am. It is not abnormal for us to take a call at six o’clock, seven o’clock at night, especially because we have clients like we said all over the country which means we have clients in all time zones. So if a client in Washington or California needs us to take a call, we can’t say that call needs to be wrapped up by 5 pm eastern time because that’s only two hours. Our clients needs come first.
Jay: There are many days during the week that I may not start till 9:30 am or 10:30 am because I’ll go on till 7, 8, or 9 o’clock at night because there’s a three-hour difference between us here on the east coast and those clients that are just coming out of the OR on the west coast. What is an emergent situation to a client is always emergent to me. So there are times that Mara may not start until later in the morning, I’ll take an earlier shift we have that worked out between us.
Mara: Exactly and that’s why we have team members that work later in the afternoon because our clients have needs and quite honestly, they may need to take meetings at seven o’clock at night. That’s just what happens. We are available and we become like we said we become a part of your team.
We Understand Your Business:
Mara: People ask us all the time, how can you understand what my business needs? The answer is because quite honestly, our team has been doing this for decades. It’s Jay who started at 18 years old as a paramedic. So when you talk about that is the length of time he’s been in the industry. He says that 100% of the sutures that he did in that time period came out within what, Jay, an hour?
Jay: I’ve done over a million sutures. Not one is still there.
Mara: As partners in the medical practice management industry our time has been spent inside the practice watching patient flow, Jay spent I can’t tell you how many hours in an O R. So when we have those questions, it’s that we’re able to really dig to the root of the problem and not necessarily just glance and gloss over the surface. So people say what makes you different honestly, that is one of the biggest differences that we can say about what makes us different and how we can understand a practice’s needs. Right off the bat.
Now, one of the final questions we get a lot is how our billing structure works. We’re not going to get into the actual pricing model here, although I truly encourage you to contact us for specific packages. I will say that specific detailed packages during this past year the year that was 2020 leading into 2021 have obviously changed due to COVID but we offer everything from a six-month plan, a 12-month plan for somebody that wants ongoing coaching and consulting. So you want us there for 4,6, 8, 10 hours. We talked about how many hours you actually need based on your needs but we never ever, ever want to oversell ever. It’s like you as an injector, you don’t want to overfill your patient because then that is your work that’s walking around on the street.
What I will say is that we also offer single service contracts. If you’re looking for a practice valuation, if you’re looking for a specific project then we do for single projects as well, and you have the advantage when you work with Shorr Solutions, you have the advantage of working with our entire team. It’s not just you, it’s not just me, but it is our marketing manager and our marketing team. It is our process and protocol team. We have other team members that are available. We know that some people need Jay’s strengths and their practice is going to really rely, for example, a p&l analysis, negotiations. We have others that deal really, really well with somebody that understands true HR issues, we have some people that that’s what they need and they’re going to deal with and work with both Jay and myself. We have others that really, really just need marketing guidance, assistance, and planning and that’s where they are going to have the advantage of having a marketing manager and a marketing team as well.
So you have the advantage of working with a team of boutiques. Quite honestly we are a boutique company, we’re not 100% Company. That’s not our goal. Like Jay said bigger is not always better. So you have direct one on one access to numbers and our E signatures quite honestly they have our cell phone numbers. I’m not giving anything away. We do that on purpose. We want you to be able to email us directly.
References:
Mara: Finally, can you talk a little bit about when somebody says to us, Do you have references you can show me?
Jay: Somebody asked me for a reference I asked him to call Mara.
Mara: I say, absolutely you can call my dad and he’ll tell you how great I am. This is perfect.
Jay: We have references depending upon the type of practice that you are. We have references from and because we’re In South Florida honestly, we can give you a reference from New England to Mid Atlantic to South Florida, all the way through as West of Dallas and all throughout the country will have references for you in cosmetic surgery, facial plastic surgery, body plastic surgery, and aesthetic cosmetic medicine, and dermatology. A lot of people say, Well, but if you give me a reference, of course, they’re going to give you a good reference. I’m from Philadelphia, maybe you could tell by my accent. Anybody in South Philadelphia hear the Italian merchants yelling bad fish for sale. So be very careful when people ask for references because you’re naturally going to get a good reference point truly ask us for a specialty within our wheelhouse and we’ll give you several and then you can just choose and pick.
The one question I always ask is would you hire the consultant again? And number two, how easy or difficult is it to get in touch with them when you need them? That’s probably the single most important question. I don’t care if it’s on a weekend, I don’t care if it’s on a holiday, I don’t care if it’s 3, 4, 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning. You’re probably going to get an answer by eight because I’m up early, and if it’s late at night, you’re probably going to get an email back from me if I don’t have the information available you’re probably going to hear I’ll contact you in the morning with the information that you want. What’s most important to our client is more important to us.
