Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Doctors Express - Mark Damico

As we start the New Year, many of us think about making resolutions to better ourselves or our lives in the coming year. Resolutions are like goals. If you don't write them down and have an action plan, they will probably fall by the wayside. Take your resolutions seriously and implement your action plan. If you do that, you can better your life and there are no limits.

My resolution for this year is to coach my clients to see beyond their limitations and never let my limitations get in their way.

Our story this month is about an individual that made a resolution to become a business owner. In fact, he has ambitions of owning several businesses. He's implementing his action plan and being rewarded for his efforts. He's in charge of his destiny.

Congratulations Mark and welcome to the world of entrepreneurship!  

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   Mark Damico

 AFC/Doctors Express 
 
As Mark and I met over breakfast, it became apparent to me that Mark was a polished executive and at the youthful age of 43. Mark graduated from Princeton with a degree in Economics. He spent the past 15 years of his career working for Fiserv, a financial services company, as a group President. Most recently he had been President and CEO of Stone River, an insurance spin-off of Fiserv. As we continued our conversation I learned that Mark was currently in a career transition exploring his options. He had a strong desire to do something on his own and had been thinking about that for the past year and a half. He had a couple of ideas for businesses that he could start from scratch and also evaluated the purchase of a few existing businesses. He had never really considered franchises, but he was willing to keep an open mind and explore all this options.

Mark was not looking at business ownership as a "job". He wanted to find a business or perhaps several businesses that had a strong growth potential with a sustainable annuity type income stream that he could develop over time. In other words, he wanted to work "on" or manage the business verses working "in" the business as an employee or technician.

Mark completed our various assessments and we worked on the profile of his hypothetical business. Mark was open to various ideas. He realized that the business would be a vehicle to the life he was going to create for himself and his family. Mark also informed me that in addition to working with me, he and a partner were exploring the possible of opening several laundromats across the country and also a solar opportunity. He had a vision of managing several companies and we were working on one piece of the puzzle.

Mark expressed some basic concerns that we needed to address during his discovery journey:
  • Would a franchise model suppress his creativity?
  • Will the franchisor be someone with whom he wanted to be in business?
  • Would it provide a strong enough return to make it worth investing his time and money?
  • Will he enjoy and have fun building the business?
  • Will the opportunity be sensitive to economic swings?
  • Will he be able to find a reliable team to execute the model?
  • Would he lose too much time and flexibility with his family?
  • Will it be saleable in the future?
These were all great questions and I assured Mark that we would work together to get him answers.

We decided to look at business models that could be run as a semi-absentee owner. With this type of model, the owner puts a manager in place from day one so he can concentrate on business development. In our initial investigation we decided to validate franchises in automotive repair, urgent care, health and sports supplements and a martial arts studio.

There is a very important point I want to make to my readers of which Mark was well aware. You don't have to be a car mechanic to own an auto repair shop, a doctor to run an urgent care facility or a karate black belt to run a martial arts studio. The owner of these businesses will hire employees, technicians or managers to run the day-to-day of the business. The owner will concentrate on business development, marketing and promotions.

Mark liked the martial arts studio concept. It built character and confidence of children and taught them respect for others. Mark had been a coach for kids football and basketball and saw the value in this franchise. In this investigation, he discovered there was a chain of five karate studios in the area. Although any good concept has competition, he decided he wanted something more unique that he could build over time.

The supplement franchise didn't show the financial potential he was seeking. The auto repair franchise was looking for a regional developer to bring their franchise brand to the state. This would require Mark to solicit and develop new franchisees rather than own an individual or multiple stores. Mark decided that he would rather own a store and develop and manage a team.

The franchise that really caught Mark's interest was an urgent care franchise called Doctors Express. This was a newer franchise that was starting to spread across the country. There were none in Wisconsin yet. Mark liked the industry. Health care would always be in demand. Costs were soaring and urgent care was a way to bring affordable health care to a large segment of the population and help minimize emergency room visits.

Mark validated the franchise and this is what he had to say. "Growing up on the east coast, I was familiar with numerous independent urgent care facilities that very effectively competed against the large hospital system in their respective markets.  I saw a need for that in Wisconsin.  A full service urgent care that existed only to make patients feel better quickly and had no agenda to drive the patients to other specialists or affiliated providers made a lot of sense to me.  So, as complicated as the franchise was, the business proposition was dead simple--create a customer experience that exceeds the competitors.  It all comes down to three simple things--care, convenience and cost.  If we can provide a broad range of top quality healthcare services in a comfortable and convenient setting, short wait times, no appointments needed, extended hours of operation, and at a cost commensurate with seeing your family practitioner (in many cases less expensive than even the drug store clinics) then we'd have a place among the large competitors in the market."

Urgent care centers are different from emergency rooms in many ways. While they provide many of the same services, they do not have the same pricing schedules or wait times. For non life threatening illness, urgent care is an excellent choice because emergency rooms are busier and more expensive. The average urgent care visit costs patients $71-125 for basic care, with additional costs added for shots, x-rays, and labs. The average emergency room visit costs $1,318.

Mark continued his investigation of Doctors Express and in December of 2011 he decided to buy the rights to open five clinics in Wisconsin. "There is a real change in the health care industry over the last few years," he said. "The convenience of the clinics and the number of people without a primary care physican are in my favor. The increase in health plans with high deductibles has made patients more aware of the costs and are more open to getting care in new settings."

In April of 2013, Doctor's Express was purchased by American Family Care. AFC is a 30- year-old company that operated 37 clinics and primary care facilities in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. The Doctors Express acquisition made AFC the second largest privately owned urgent care operator in the country. After some reorganization, Doctors Express continued to franchise under the new name, AFC/Doctors Express. The combined company expects to have 160 sites in 26 states by the end of 2014.

It took Mark over two years before he opened his first ATC/Doctors Express in Waukesha, Wisconsin. I asked him why it took so long and this is what he had to say.  
"I spent a significant amount of time finding the right lead physician, since he would be the face of the franchise.  Without the right lead physician, the patient experience and work environment would never add up to what it needed to be to excel in a market currently dominated by healthcare systems.  Oh, and did I mention how important it is to find the right location?  No matter how good the physician and staff are, if people can't find us and we aren't visible in the community then it will take entirely too long to become established in any meaningful way."  

Marketing the business is part of the support Mark gets from his franchisor. He had an open house in November that attracted front page coverage in the business section of the local newspaper. Doctors Express Waukesha partnered with LeRoy Butler of Green Bay Packers fame to bring LeRoy's inspiring message of anti-bullying and leadership to the students of Les Paul Middle School in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Mark has a marketing person to call on businesses that eventually will need urgent care for their employees, drug testing or flu shots.

Mark is excited about his new business and this is what he told me."As the word has gotten out, we have seen the patient volume increase on a weekly basis.  The real tribute to the success of the model is that we are getting return patients and many friend and family referrals. I am excited to get up and come into work every single day!  I love the team of people who I work with and I sincerely believe that we have built a business that will be adopted as the preferred place for quality healthcare in the Waukesha community simply because every single staff member strives to create an exceptional experience for every single customer!" 

AFC/Doctors Express treats everything from cuts and bruises to fractures and colds and everything in between. They have on-site lab tests, x-rays and prescriptions with no appointments needed. They're a state-of-the-art urgent care center with physicians on-site every day. The centers are open every day with extended hours. No appointments are needed and they accept most insurance plans. For those needing to pay cash, the cost is substantially less than visiting an emergency room and you will still be seen by a doctor.

If you or a friend or relative live in the Waukesha, Wisconsin area and need some medical help and want to avoid the long wait and high prices at the emergency room, stop in at AFC/Doctors Express located at 1700 Coral Drive. They are open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week. The clinic is staffed with two full time physicians and one part time physician as well as supporting staff. They can be reached at 262-232-6200. No appointments are needed.  


Mark made a resolution to himself to explore his self employment options. He kept his options open and considered all kinds of possibilities. He understood that his management and transferable skills could be used in any business or several businesses. The business was going to be the vehicle to the life he was trying to create for himself and his family. Mark and his partner did open a landromat and they plan on opening several others. So Doctors Express is his second business. He's working his strategic plan with more store openings and perhaps additional businesses in the future.

So what is your New Year's resolution? Have you been telling yourself for years that you are tired of being unappreciated at work or tired of making money for someone else? Have you been thinking about starting or buying a business and you just don't know where to start? It's the start of a new year. Make a resolution to take the steps to learn about your business ownership options and possiblities. Dreams and wishes only come true if you take the steps to make them happen.

Success doesn't happen overnight. It's a process taken one step at a time. Whether you are a corporate executive, manager, office clerk, mechanic or working mom, and if you have a vision or desire of being your own boss and being self-sufficient, reply back or give me a call so we can discuss your life goals and aspirations. Are you ready?

Wishing you and your family a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year. Make 2015 the best it can be!

Your comments and feedback are always appreciated.