How psychiatrist Dr. Duncan Gill transitioned from employee to entrepreneur and built a thriving behavioral health practice serving children, teens, and families.

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business.

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Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez  00:13

This is Henry Lopez. Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. A special guest today, Duncan Gill. Duncan, welcome to the show. Thanks, Henry. Good to be here. Great conversation we’re going to have. You know, many professionals like Duncan – Duncan is a doctor – are highly informally educated and trained in their particular field, but I’ve discovered, and I find that when it comes to running a successful business, that requires often an entirely different set of skills. And so, Dr. Duncan Gill, founder of Direction Behavioral Health, his practice joins me today to talk about his journey from being a psychiatrist to now still practicing, but having his own business, the challenges, the lessons, and the rewards of building a successful practice as he has over the years. So, that’s what we’re going to chat about today. You can find all of the Howard business resources, including the show notes page for this episode, and more information about my one on one and group coaching programs at the Howard Business com. I also invite you to please support the podcast by joining the Howard Business community and subscribe wherever you might be listening, so you don’t miss any new episodes. Let me tell you a little bit more about Duncan. Doctor Duncan Gill is a board certified child and adolescent psychiatrist and the founder of Direction Behavioral Health. Before founding Direction, he served as a staff psychiatrist with Community Council of Nashville’s Child and Adolescent Program, and he also worked with the Southern New Hampshire Medical Center and New Hampshire’s court system. Today he leads a team of dedicated, a team that is dedicated rather to helping children, teens, and families through structural behavioral health programs. And so, outside of work, he’s enjoys playing the electric guitar. He’s a musician, and he plays in a band, and he stays active through sports. And I’ve had the pleasure of serving as Duncan’s business coach for two and a half years, you’ve been dealing with me now, Duncan.

 

Duncan Gill  02:05

Yes, I have.

 

Henry Lopez  02:06

It’s been a while. So, Duncan Gill lives in the Nashville, New Hampshire area once again. Duncan, welcome to the show.

 

Duncan Gill  02:12

Thanks, Henry.

 

Henry Lopez  02:13

Let’s start right off the bat. We always kind of want to explore the journey. Why did you want to become a psychiatrist? When, when did that come to you in your life?

 

Duncan Gill  02:22

Probably conception, really. Yeah, it’s a genetic illness in the family. Got a father who’s a psychiatrist, grandfather, great uncle, sister.

 

 

Duncan Gill  02:35

great, yeah, a couple great uncles, actually. Everybody else is a therapist, so I tried to escape. Actually, I really did try to escape, but I couldn’t do it.

 

Henry Lopez  02:43

And is that where the music comes in, or what else did you think you might do?

 

Duncan Gill  02:48

No, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a doc.

 

Henry Lopez  02:50

Okay,

 

Duncan Gill  02:50

music runs in the family too.

 

Henry Lopez  02:52

I see, I see. Well, I didn’t know that, that you had so many people in the mental health industry in different spaces, but that’s fantastic. Why the focus on children and adolescents? I

 

Duncan Gill  03:03

actually was in residency in my last year of adult psychiatry, and really had a single day epiphany. Actually, I remember being in the office and thinking about the next patient and thinking about the following year and realizing I kept looking forward to the younger patients, particularly adolescents, and I thought about a little bit more, and it was.. I find it fun. I find them funny. There’s a levity to it. There’s a malleability to teens that adults really don’t have, and I can kind of act like a kid and still get paid for it.

 

Henry Lopez  03:38

Yeah, that’s fantastic, though. That’s wonderful. And did you, did you think early on that you wanted to have your own practice? What were your thoughts?

 

Duncan Gill  03:47

No, I don’t think so. I planned, I went and worked at Community Council of Nashua, which is a large organization serving primarily Medicaid population, and I figured I’d just be employed either at a hospital or a center like that and clock in and out and enjoy my psychiatry and that would be my career

 

Henry Lopez  04:08

and so why what leads to tell me the story of what leads to starting direction behavioral

 

Duncan Gill  04:13

so it was great for about two years and I was there a total of four and I realized increasingly I didn’t like doing things the way other people wanted me to do them, and found myself embedded in a large bureaucracy with all kinds of regulations, and some wonderful people, but also some people who I didn’t think had ideas in the best interest of the patients who didn’t have the best ways of doing things, and I constantly had more and more patients put at me, I had to sign documents I really didn’t feel comfortable signing, and I was concerned about liability at some point, but I looked around and doctors tend to be followers, and it’s very tempting just to go with the flow. That’s what you’ve been doing since med school, essentially, is just sort of following a track, but I started stepping outside and say, How come no. Nobody else is concerned here as to what we’re doing, and how come nobody else doesn’t like being told what to do. So I started thinking about opening up this model that I currently use, which is Intensive Outpatient Program. It’s a model during residency I really enjoyed. It really, it’s a combination day treatment of several hours per day, where kids come in, and we do group therapy, and we do medication management, we do parenting groups, and it’s all encapsulated in about six hours in the day. And moving to New Hampshire, there were no programs like this,

 

Henry Lopez  05:32

I see.

 

Duncan Gill  05:33

So I probably would have joined one, but there weren’t any. So that coupled with wanting to do things my own way, I met one of the therapists who brought a kid in, and we started talking, and he had similar aspirations to do his own thing, and frustration with bureaucracy, and we said, “Hey, let’s go ahead and do this. So, he was

 

Henry Lopez  05:51

your partner initially.

 

Duncan Gill  05:53

He was my partner, actually, had two partners initially, and both, unfortunately, have passed since, both pretty young. So now I’m a sole proprietor, essentially, but yeah, the three of us got together, and all three of us wanted something more. And as much as I liked the psychiatry, I also was sort of interested in a new challenge, having by then done it for, including residency, eight years or so. So I said, ‘Hey, why not give it a go?

 

Henry Lopez  06:16

Did any of the three of you at that point have any prior business experience or training or knowledge.

 

Duncan Gill  06:22

No one of us, Joe, who’s a partner I worked for longer with, had a very good business sense in terms of dealing with other people, so that really paid off in our relationship. I was good with numbers and spreadsheets and creatively thinking about how we could package the whole thing, but he was very good at the part I had trouble with, which is something we’ve talked a lot about during our coaching, which is how do you deal with difficult people, which is sort of ironic, because that’s what I do on a daily basis, but it’s a lot, yeah, but in a different

 

Henry Lopez  06:52

setting, right, it’s a little different when they’re your employees or your contractors, very different, so we said, hey, let’s, let’s just go give this a go, early on, when you think, well, first of all, I’m always curious when it’s partnerships. Were the three of you three-way partners, or was there somebody who was a minority, excuse me, a majority partner?

 

Duncan Gill  07:09

Yes, I learned a lot about partnerships as well, and it’s interesting. Our attorney, this was years later, but I had a discussion with him, and he said, yeah, I’d never open up a business with a partner, because even if you get along great, somebody gets sick or somebody gets divorced or things you can’t predict, and there’s a real.. it was really nice in the beginning, but we ended up having differences. One of the partners who ended up potentially being bought out, and then Joe got his health issues. I would say really was helpful in the beginning, but partnerships are difficult as well.

 

Henry Lopez  07:40

They’re difficult. I mean, I talk about this often on the show, as you probably know. I have been in a lot of partnerships, and I tend to – at least I’ve always felt I prefer partnerships, because I enjoy the dynamics. I enjoy having somebody that you can, you know, that’s there with you along the challenge, along the journey. So, there’s that benefit, but, like you said, and I’ve talked about this. What happens is, you, you get out of alignment, inevitably, or a life event happens, right? Like, somebody, or somebody passes.

 

Duncan Gill  08:08

Yeah, exactly. So, I certainly don’t regret it, but there’s pluses and minuses to each, each way of going.

 

Henry Lopez  08:13

All right, you chosen already been, but give me the synopsis of how this works. You know, you have the intensive outpatient programs, so just describe that, so everybody understands how you offer these mental health services.

 

Duncan Gill  08:29

Sure, so five days a week, kids come in, and we’ve expanded the program to include younger ones, so we got kids between six and 21 or so. Kids are growing up later and later, so we’re calling 21 year old kids now,

 

Henry Lopez  08:42

is that right? That’s something you’ve seen as a trend. Seriously,

 

Duncan Gill  08:45

absolutely. And it’s one of the problems we, we deal with. I could certainly talk about at some point.

 

Henry Lopez  08:52

Conversely, earlier age anxiety type issues, or so both ends of the spectrum, or not as much.

 

Duncan Gill  08:59

I would say, well, I would say sort of what we see a lot is over involvement of parents and over protectionism, and so kids, it’s nice they, I think there’s more empathy and support for kids when they’re younger. However, there’s not a really good transition to adulthood that’s supported, usually it’s continued management, so kids get to 1819, 20, and they really don’t have the skills or confidence to go forward, so a lot of them, as we say, sort of fail to launch, and they’re at home in the basement, and just not, and parents at some point say, “Gee, you know, we need you to move on, but they really aren’t prepared for it, so right, that’s one of many issues we deal with,

 

Henry Lopez  09:39

so they come into this day program, and then is there like a process, a curriculum, a method to it? What is it that happens then? And how long are they typically in the program?

 

Duncan Gill  09:50

There is, it’s primarily group therapy. So we have, we’ve grown, you’ve helped me grow to the point of having about 3035, kids in the program. We’ve got maybe. 10 young ones, six through 12, and whatever the remainder are, teens, and they come in. They’re part of a group. We really just create a nice, positive place for kids to be, because so few of them have the kind of healthy culture that we have. I see all the kids on the intake. I also see them at least once a week for med management. We do a parenting group with the parents as well, we get kids from hospitals, we get kids from ERs. They basically need to be more trouble than just needing once a week therapy or once a month med management, but don’t need to be in the hospital. So we’re sort of an in-between level of care. Kids are usually there for several weeks and then move on, so Henry, this is

 

Henry Lopez  10:43

Henry Lopez with a quick message about our show sponsor and trusted service partner, the Franchise Guide. Giuseppe Grammatico is the Franchise Guide, and he provides expert consultation services to help you find the right franchise small business. If you are considering a franchise business, I recommend consulting the Franchise Guide. Giuseppe is a franchise veteran who simplifies the process of franchising and excels at guiding his clients to the franchise model that best suits them. He helps people like you find flexibility and freedom in their lives through franchise business ownership, and as your guide, he will help you answer any of your questions about franchises. Once he gets to know you and what you’re looking for, he creates your own personalized model and shows you which franchise opportunities are a best match for your needs and preferences. The best part, it’s all free, there’s no catch, like with real estate or business brokers. Giuseppe’s fees are paid by the franchise company. So, if you’re interested in a franchise business, take the first step and schedule a free, no-obligation call with Giuseppe to learn more and to schedule your consultation with the franchise guide, please go to the show notes page for this episode at the howabusiness.com There’s also a link to the show notes page in the description of this episode. When you think back to those early days, what do you remember as one of, or two of, the biggest business challenges, things you really had to figure out and learn that you didn’t anticipate going into it.

 

Duncan Gill  12:05

Yeah, the big thing is people, and how different it was from dealing with patients, parents right off the bat, hiring the right people, but also learning how to work with them in a way that’s very different from a friend or a doctor-patient point of view. But becoming a manager, I really leaned on Joe a lot, because it involves being in the healthcare profession, really attracts people who are agreeable. One of the things I’m good at is, as we’ve talked about, getting along with people and finessing relationships and finding consensus. You can’t do that all the time. You can’t run a business that way. It doesn’t work out over the time, over long term, so I had to learn how to step back and be a manager, and not just be friends with all my employees, which is the seduction, seduction for me. Yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  12:50

no, and that’s that’s such a hard thing for any small business environment, because you do get to know these people very well, and they become friends to some extent, but I always think that you have to have that boundary there, but I think also what can happen is that you try to save people, but sometimes people is just not the right fit for them, right, and they have to go, and that’s a hard thing to come to a decision on.

 

Duncan Gill  13:16

So, there was the early process of just having a small team figure out how to work with partners, how to work with secretary, other mental health providers. So I got decent at that. And then when I started working with you about two years ago, I really wanted to expand the business and practice and delegate more, and that was a whole nother wave of another skill set, managing people who manage people, right? Exactly, and exactly, and having to let people go, and probably miss hires, but also not monitoring. I was actually good at delegating; that was actually easy for me. I wanted to do it, but I delegated without supervising early on in this transition. And learn everything – every day is a learning day, essentially.

 

Henry Lopez  13:55

Of course, most of your revenues come from insurance reimbursements. Correct,

 

Duncan Gill  14:02

that’s right.

 

Henry Lopez  14:02

And so that, and in managing that has been quite, quite a learning experience in and of itself. Yeah, it

 

Duncan Gill  14:09

really has. And I would say that actually is an extension of managing people to some degree, because we’ve worked with billing companies, we’ve worked with people in house who’ve billed, and actually, the billing companies were much harder, but that comes down to an assertive requirement as well to go to a company and say to monitor them, which I made the mistake of not doing well, and then stepping in and saying, hey, this isn’t working out, what are we going to do about it, which I could have been more assertive about early on, so to me that sort of falls into the same category as dealing with difficult people, right? Yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  14:47

but it also touches on your point about delegation and not having a verification process, an audit process. I think what you’ve learned tremendously is that needs to nonetheless identify what you still. Have to have the finger, your finger on the pulse of, and certainly the flow of money through the business is critical.

 

Duncan Gill  15:04

Yes, yes, exactly. And as I get farther away from it, delegating more becomes more important. I could have been monitoring it better right from the beginning, but I could get away with it more when the practice was smaller, and your employees, and but as it grew became increasingly important this whole monitoring process and KPIs and that kind of

 

Henry Lopez  15:26

exactly, exactly what you’re doing so well now. What do you think makes you a successful psychiatrist?

 

Duncan Gill  15:32

I’d say ability to see people’s points of view and be agreeable and make relationships with all kinds of folks, find things I like about people, get people to like me, not in so much a manipulative way, but I sort of a natural way. So I would say that, above anything else, being able to connect with kids.

 

Henry Lopez  15:52

Yeah, and so then we’ve talked about this already, but then if I ask you, what makes you, as you are now, a good business owner. Why do you think you’re a good business owner now?

 

Duncan Gill  16:04

Ability to adapt and learn from mistakes, ability to ask folks for help, ability to stick to it. When things, as I think probably all business owners do, at some point you have crisis of faith. Is this going to work out at all, money wise, employee wise, even the state of the healthcare system? You know, if that shifts, you have to adapt, so a willingness to adapt and a willingness, a competency, we’ll figure it out somehow.

 

Henry Lopez  16:33

Yeah, and you also, you’ve taken some bold, relatively bold, I think not risks, but called it risks, as you have expanded, you know, you took on more space, you took on an even more space, and so those were scary things to make a decision on, but, but obviously that’s what you have to do as a business owner, is you have to kind of predict the future and move forward in confidence if you’re going to grow a business.

 

Duncan Gill  16:56

Yes, and I’ve found that usually my guts write about most of these things, and things which I find inspirational are usually the right way to go. A lot of chances I’ve taken, and we’ve talked about chances I have turned down, probably wisely, but typically, if it sort of raises my pulse a little bit and gets my interest, it’s typically it’s worked just like launching the business, and one of the great pieces of advice you gave was I was looking at this other space, which is twice as big, and there was a basketball court and all kinds of stuff, which was really a crazy thing to do from a standard medical person turned business owner to do. I said, “Hey, I’m thinking about this. Sure, you’re going to say, ‘Hey, that’s a really crappy idea. And you said, ‘How you’re inspired, the team’s inspired, go for it. And that sort of just reinforced typically gut leads you good places, as long as you can pause a minute and say, ‘Hey, wait, you know what? Are the real exactly?

 

Henry Lopez  17:57

Analyze it, if it put some numbers to it. I’m definitely in that direction, but I think what probably struck me then is that if nothing else, a business that you’re running and putting in all this effort and energy into has to be fun. It has to inspire you. Otherwise, what the heck are you doing? Right, you can go get a boring, non-inspirational job if you wanted to. So, a business needs to give us that. I think

 

Duncan Gill  18:23

absolutely makes employees happier. It makes me happier. I enjoy coming to work. That’s what owning my own business has done. Yeah, so

 

Henry Lopez  18:32

well said. I’ve always observed, and tell me if you.. I’m seeing.. I think you found this as well, and with your partners as well, that in your case, in medical school, there’s very little on the business side of training or education, but what did you get? I mean, you attended Harvard for your undergrad, correct? So, did you get much education on running a practice?

 

Duncan Gill  18:57

Zero, and that’s a great failing of the medical school industry, even residency, and that’s why I think a lot of doctors end up stuck in machinery and hamstrung in a lot of ways, but no, they’re zero talk about business, how to run a practice, even thinking about money. When I applied to residencies, one of the residencies, and these don’t necessarily translate exactly what the undergrads are like, but I got into Yale, and I got into UConn, and I interviewed it both, and I asked the one of the questions I had was that UConn paid significantly more for residency, and docs don’t make a lot during residency, so it made a difference, so I asked the Yale folks, you know, sort of brought it up, the elephant room, and was sort of looked at as if I were crazy by the residents, and said, you know, it’s the, you know, what are you worried about? It’s Yale, exactly, and yeah, there’s not a good common step mentality, you know, it doesn’t, it

 

Henry Lopez  19:56

shouldn’t surprise me, because I talk about this often, that in any. Educational path from primary school on to secondary and university, it really is a system that’s still designed to create employees, and it’s the same thing for professionals as well.

 

Duncan Gill  20:11

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

 

Henry Lopez  20:12

Music, so it’s a big part of your life. I’m always curious, for people who are musicians, how that influences either your practice, your business sense, is there any of that that you think helps you, and how you think.

 

Duncan Gill  20:26

Yeah, well, it’s a creative pursuit. I like making music as well as performing it. I would say there’s a number of different ways it helps. One is it’s an outlet, so I think everybody who owns a business? Everybody should, but you need an outlet, a creative outlet. The actual performance side of things, I think, really helps in being a CEO, being used to standing in front of people, being used to the spotlight being on you, having a little bit of stage presence has helped both with not seeing kids, but also with working with employees and being a boss,

 

Henry Lopez  21:02

and leading groups, and that type of, especially

 

Duncan Gill  21:04

leading groups, it’s helped me one way. It’s helped is it allows me to connect with kids who, during the initial intake, you need something to hook them, and if I can find some way to connect with them, and it’s usually sports or it’s music, but when you can start talking about music, they say they play guitar, and say, ‘Oh, what kind of amp you have? That sort of piques their interest a little bit. So, yeah, it’s been useful in lots of sort of ways, that in that respect. Brilliant,

 

Henry Lopez  21:29

brilliant, you know, I’ve always believed and looked at that starting a business or practice, whatever kind of business is a creative endeavor. We’re creating this thing, we’re putting it out there into the world, and it can be rejected or accepted, not unlike getting up on stage, right. So, there’s a lot of similarity there. So, that helped you, like you said, and not only at a, at a micro level, but at a higher level, to say I’m okay. I find it as often what holds people back is they’re afraid of the rejection of whatever it might be, either because I’m going to go pitch somebody to generate referrals or I’m going to start the business, and that helped you with overcoming that.

 

Duncan Gill  22:09

It did. That’s a great point. It helped me with being okay with being embarrassed, and for love people to love it. I

 

Henry Lopez  22:15

just listened to a podcast with Scott Galloway, I follow him, and he was talking about that one of the key things that young people need is to learn to hear the word no, and it’s probably ties to what you’re talking about as well. Yeah, to hear that word no often and early, because learning to deal with rejection is a key to success in anything in life.

 

Duncan Gill  22:39

Absolutely, all

 

Henry Lopez  22:41

right. You touched that a little bit, but what do you enjoy most now? You’ve owned the business for how long? The practice for how long?

 

Duncan Gill  22:49

18 years.

 

Henry Lopez  22:51

What do you enjoy the most about it now?

 

Duncan Gill  22:53

Oh, I love sitting around with Val and Aaron, who are senior therapists with me and leadership team essentially, and throwing around ideas like, hey, let’s get a big space, hey, let’s start a podcast, hey, let’s create a school, which is really on the list, hey, why don’t I just go ahead and get a studio, music studio, I can do podcasts there, and then moonlight and do music, this whole idea of being able to do site, you know, lately we talked about getting a farm, and you haven’t, you haven’t addressed that, not yet,

 

Henry Lopez  23:27

but that might be a little

 

Duncan Gill  23:28

premature, but just the ability, the independence, the power to come up with ideas and give it a shot, and some of them will work out,

 

Henry Lopez  23:39

yeah, you get to experiment, you get to explore, of course. You know, the beautiful thing about what you do is you’re having an impact on young people, on everybody, but everybody in the family. But that, that’s got to be very rewarding.

 

Speaker 4  23:50

Oh,

 

Duncan Gill  23:51

I was going to say the other thing is being able to do this job of being a psychiatrist the way I want. I’m able to take things which I think don’t have value like long inane meetings, and say we’re just going to have the smallest one possible, but usually if you work in a system everything’s prescribed, but to be able to cut out the stuff which doesn’t make any sense and focus on things which does to me is huge. That’s

 

Henry Lopez  24:17

fantastic. The other thing you’ve done so well is you’ve built a business that allows you to step away from it, not just in the endeavors of music, and so forth, but to travel and to take some time away, and that you’ve done a phenomenal job of again making sure that the practice is not dependent on you exclusively, and that you’ve got the right people in place that you can step away.

 

Duncan Gill  24:38

Yeah, learning to delve, yeah, making the business not need you, something we’ve talked about quite a bit. Still working at it, but getting closer.

 

Henry Lopez  24:47

Well, part of it, and I believe you and I have talked about it as well, is there’s an identity crisis that happens sometimes as well. Once you do get to that point, well, wait a second, nobody, everybody doesn’t have to come to me anymore. So, what do I do now? Right, so there’s some of that that comes into play, is that is that fair, Duncan?

 

Duncan Gill  25:04

Oh boy, yeah. And I’ve had that a few times where things are finally working well, particularly after a period of crisis, and suddenly people don’t need you, and there aren’t quite so many kids in the program, and it’s this sort of what else is there. It’s really, I’ve heard people who win the lottery can sort of feel the same way. Yeah, I’ve had

 

Henry Lopez  25:24

clients and even partners that, when they’ll sell a successful business, then it’s like, okay, that was my identity, now who am I?

 

Duncan Gill  25:32

Yeah, exactly. A lot

 

Henry Lopez  25:33

of it speaks to, though, the well-roundedness of having other interests, like you said, and that’s one of the things that Muzik and everything else that you’re involved with does for you, you’re not just, you know, Dr. Duncan Gill of direction behavioral, you’ve got other interests as well,

 

Duncan Gill  25:49

right? It’s, it’s a balance that I still have to still striking, so it’s easy to sort of fall back in the trap, but continue to remember this isn’t everything, right? Yeah, have other interests,

 

Henry Lopez  26:00

and if there’s a young professional, maybe they are at that job that you were at, and they’re thinking about starting their first practice. What would you, what advice would you share? When I’m sure you probably get asked this question, but what’s your typically your advice to them?

 

Duncan Gill  26:15

Do it. You have to plan, but I found it so freeing, and in this field I was told by our, you know, CEO there, essentially, I know it’s not going to work. Basically, you know, you’re going to fall off the end of the world. Yeah, the liability is too high. The how are you going to take care of the taxes and accounting and just stay with us, and that’s probably not that unusual for a place trying to keep employees. However, for folks who’ve gone through medical school and really used to just sort of following a line, it takes a lot to sort of break out of that mindset. So definitely do your homework and think about it, but I really would encourage more physicians, caregivers to start looking at ways they can go their own way, rather than just follow the herd, essentially. Yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  27:04

a couple things there that you touched on, but one is that, of course, you got to be careful who you’re getting advice from, right? That person who told you that probably had never started a business themselves, so they’re projecting onto you, and to some extent, exactly. Not only are they also wanting to keep you as an employee survey, so they’re trying to scare you, but the other thing I got to think comes into play is the mindset of, boy, you’ve spent all of these years in schooling, you’ve accrued a certain amount of debt, you just want to make some money, right? So the thought of now investing even more to start a practice, that’s daunting.

 

Duncan Gill  27:36

It is, it’s a risk, and that’s probably part of the reason more physicians don’t do it is they’ve accumulated quite a bit of debt, and they just want to make sure they can pay it. However, no risk, no reward. And at some point, yeah, I just got sort of bored with it. Will intent, you know, worst case, I can find a job someplace. Exactly,

 

Henry Lopez  27:56

exactly. That’s that’s such a great point I always make, is what’s the worst case scenario,

 

Duncan Gill  28:00

right?

 

Henry Lopez  28:01

Yeah, you’ve got to have even some more debt, but you know, probably nobody’s going to starve, and you’re going to be able to get a job if that’s what you need to do, right. We’ve talked about direction behavioral health, I think we’ve explained pretty well what you do. You serve people in that New Hampshire area where you’re at now, correct? Is that primarily where patients come to you from

 

Duncan Gill  28:20

Northern Mass, as well, but New Hampshire Northern Mass,

 

Henry Lopez  28:23

and what’s the website that people can go to to learn more about

 

Duncan Gill  28:26

it, www dot direction Behavioral health.com

 

Henry Lopez  28:31

and I’ll have that link on on the show notes page for this episode as well at the Howard business.com I’m always looking for book recommendations. There’s something that comes to mind that you would recommend?

 

Duncan Gill  28:44

Sure, and may sound sort of standard, but for a guy who came from, again, a medical background, the E-Myth and Traction, it’s the content to some degree, is almost less important, but it’s the way of thinking about it, and we use sort of traction as a model here, but I think probably other ways would work as well, but just starting to define the various areas and have regular meetings and think about it from a business point of view was again just a different way of thinking. So, for that reason, those were very helpful for me. Yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  29:17

those are two seminal books. E-Myth is the number one over 10 years that I’ve been doing this podcast, now number one recommended book, and I recommend it to everybody. I think it’s a must read. It’s really, if you’ve ever heard of the concept of working in versus on your business, that’s one of the key concepts that came from there. But is that was that one of the key takeaways for you when you read it?

 

Duncan Gill  29:39

Absolutely, absolutely. And how to.. oh, I remember certain things like finding the functions and assigning every box gets a person, all the functions need to be split up and decided, everyone needs to own it, so lots of things like that.

 

Henry Lopez  29:55

Yeah, and it’s interesting because the original version, I think it was she owned. The character that he was consulting on their bakery or something, so

 

Duncan Gill  30:04

that’s right,

 

Henry Lopez  30:05

and but it, but it translates to that whole concept of he talks about if you go into business as the technician, which is completely appropriate to a medical professional, then you think you’re the one that you can’t possibly grow a practice, and because you have to deliver the service, right? You can’t possibly grow beyond you, but it can be done, and that’s a big limiting factor. I think traction gives you that operating system that’s so essential. That’s another very popular book. I had the pleasure of having Gino Wickman, the author, on my show a couple years ago. So, those are two great books. Thank you for those recommendations. I’ll put those on the show notes page as well. Alright, we’ll wrap it up. Duncan, what’s what’s one thing you want us to take away from this conversation? If we look at it from a business perspective, especially in this arena of professionals starting a business, being successful, what’s one or two things you want us to take away?

 

Duncan Gill  31:01

Sure, I can speak particularly to folks in the healthcare industry, going for it, that having been sort of my background, but going for it, really preparing and realizing you need to learn a new skill set, and embracing that is a challenge, and something that can be enjoyable. It’s to some degree seeing the kids and parents right now is the easy part for me, it’s the business management that’s currently the challenge, but boy, does it give me a sense of purpose every day. So, I would encourage folks to explore other opportunities, to explore going their own way, and get a business coach, get some people who you rely on to give you some sound outside advice, otherwise you’re sort of living in an echo chamber.

 

Henry Lopez  31:44

Yeah, that is so critical to get that input from people who have done it before. I think is critical. I tell us where to go online again. The website,

 

Duncan Gill  31:54

sure, www dot direction behavioral health.com

 

Henry Lopez  31:59

Excellent. So glad I got a chance to have you on the show. It’s been my pleasure serving as a coach, like I said, over the last two plus years. Thanks for taking the time to be with me today.

 

Duncan Gill  32:10

Ton of fun, thanks, Henry.