Have Sufficient Cash Flow

Have Sufficient Cash Flow

Dr. Christy Kane
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
3/13/2021

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

ai generated transcription

you need to make sure that you're looking at sufficient cash cash flow to be able to do what you're doing i think one of the biggest mistakes startups make is they don't recognize the amount of cash it will take to get a business off the ground it usually takes twice as much as you think and twice as long so it's important to be mindful of that [Music] hey everyone this is devon miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder of miller ip law where we help startups with patents trademarks and everything business related and if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we've got another great guest on the podcast they're all great guests and this is certainly there she is certainly no exception dr christie kane and uh just as a quick introduction to her so she went uh was going through her college degree and started out i think in pre-law and then moved over to psychology and kind of as she was then going through the doctorate program decided why wait let's open up a clinic and so was doing a clinic and was uh helping troubled youth uh and troubled youth with i think you bought it and anyway she'll fill it in but i think bot known to troubled youth programs kind of started that and kept it growing and then also was running an online platform to help with mental health issues as well so if that much is a very quick introduction and hopefully i didn't slaughter it too much welcome on the podcast thank you excited to be here so i gave kind of that brief introduction kind of that high level overview but take us back in time a bit to when you first started out in college and kind of how that journey kicked off for you so yeah i started in pre-law and intended to be an attorney and then switched over to psychology and within my psychology field let me i know you barely start so i want to try and interrupt too much but you know she started out as pre-law wanted to be an attorney what made you decide to switch over to psychology or to kind of switch or switch tracks well at that point it was pragmatic in the state of utah where i lived there wasn't any part-time law schools and i ended up being married and wanted to start my family and so it was either go to psychology part-time or try to figure out how to go to law school full-time while having a family so it was just easier to go to psychology and i had minored in psychology so i already had an interest in the field so that's how that switch came about so you're saying one is hey program doesn't offer for the situation where i'm at and i could either try and adjust it or i'll go into this other thing that has also interested me and presents a good opportunity and so you go so now you get or you switch from law and i'd assume that the the pre-law versus psychology is a bit of a different mindset i don't know i think all attorneys need to be psychologists or attorneys need to have psychologists you know they need to go see one i'm just kidding but anyways yeah it was you know it's still about dealing with humans and human behaviors and you know everything an attorney will do will deal with individuals whether it's a constitutional law case or whether it's a you know business law or whether it's domestic law i mean it deals with humans and behaviors and choices right no absolutely so there's an interesting psychology play there no and i i tend to agree in the sense that you know there's a lot of overlay with i think that understanding people's psychology has overlays and a lot of things everything from sales and marketing and understanding how people make purchases to the law and how they make their decision making to you know almost across a lot of this different industries i think there's you know when you're dealing with individuals and you're having to work with that there's a lot of value into understanding the psychology that goes behind that so now you make that you know that switch you say okay i'm going to go into psychology you did it you know part time as you're doing your family and that and then how did you kind of get into is as we mentioned during your doctorate program you started getting into the business side of it you know i've always owned businesses prior even going into my psychology field i ran and operated a mortgage company and so when i was in the middle of my master's um you know they started explaining what they paid interns which was zero to maybe a couple dollars because you were anticipated to pay your dues and i was like yeah i'm not gonna do this i'm not gonna work for nothing and so i figured out i could open up my own clinic and bring in a clinical director and have a supervisor and be paid a wage and so i did something very different as a matter of fact even the director of the university was like you know we've never had a student graduate and do that and i was like well you know what i'd rather make money and get my 4 000 hours then work for free so it worked really well um so that's so so hot so because i agree you typically don't hear why you're doing your graduate degree you're going to work for someone else to your point you're going to pay your dues so how did you find that opportunity of hey i'm going to actually go and make money i'm going to run something as opposed to just pay my dues type of thing how did you get that idea and then how did you actually implement it well going through my master's program you have to do internships 900 hours at different facilities and that kind of gave me a good idea to figure out how outpatient services run and know that i could do that you know and there's so much now available in electronic billing and scheduling and you know hiring an admin and hiring other clinicians and so it just worked you know i paid attention in my residential in my residency not just to the uh taking the notes and learning about you know diagnoses but i watched how they ran the businesses and went i could do this as well you know so i think anybody who's wanting to you know start or become an entrepreneur needs to learn from those who are already doing what they want to do which is what i did so now but then i think that's very insightful now how did you actually find the business that you were able to start or were going to start and then did you i think we talked about but i could be completely wrong that you bought it or you acquired it you otherwise purchased into it or kind of how did you get into that part of saying that's where i'm going to start well i started in outpatient therapy and bought a commercial building hired clinicians and staff to work for me then four years into that because i had done some of my residency in in a residential treatment centers for kids i recognized that i didn't like what they were currently offering and so i started to look at what nobody was offering so that i could offer a different residential type treatment modality i also went to a different state than the state i was in because the state i live in is the capital for residential treatment centers so i went to a state that had need and then i opened up three residential centers that were different than anybody else was doing one was a 500 head cattle ranch and two were equine therapeutic intervention programs and i took the tough kids at jjs contracts in the dhs so i had guaranteed population and so that's not what about that one question i i had as you kind of talked through that which was you know so you were still going through your doctorate program hadn't uh you know hadn't defended your you know defended your thesis or anything of that and yet so when you're hiring you know you get the building you hire these people on was there any sort of tension or hey these people you know because they were i assume and maybe correct me that they had their doctorates they'd already paid their dues and so they're coming to work on for someone that hadn't gone through all that was there any sort of tension or pushback or were they happy to be there kind of how did you navigate that so i already defended my thesis i didn't have i just on my master's level i just haven't done my 4 000 hours and no one seemed to have an issue as long as they knew that i was paying the paycheck you know people as clinicians go to work for business people who don't even have a field in psychology but they all you know they own a mental health clinic and so i really didn't get any pushback on that as a matter of fact we worked as a team and they offered insight you know if i had questions on clients that i was working with so it was very positive no and that's interesting you know because you know in my mind and what your explanation makes a whole lot more sense you know the legal field you basically you go and you're a law student for a period of time and then you graduate you par past the bar and then you you know you go either start your own firm or you work for law firm so a bit of a different circumstance if you're a law student starting your own law firm and hiring lawyers you know it would be an interesting dynamic but i think to your point hey if the paychecks are there and the business is there what does it matter who's running a type of a thing right so now so you do that and then you you mentioned and jumping back to where you're at you start doing the troubled youth programs and getting into that was that kind of an extension of what you guys were doing or how did you decide hey we want to fold that in with what we're doing it was a complete shift actually because my outpatient clinic was in utah my residential treatment centers are in this we're in the state of nevada and so um and then after i opened up the residentials i closed the outpatient because the residential had more lucrative income and required more of my time and i really enjoyed working with the adolescent population as a matter of fact had i not been put out of business by that state making some poor decisions in getting money that was uh embezzled i would probably still be running that but we ran that for six years very successfully and then i shifted over to now we run because we live in the electronic world we run a mental health stabilization platform that's on electronic devices for corporations schools healthcare entities and first responders so i've even shifted so i've gone through three major areas of mental health outpatient residential and now we do daily empowerment modules in an electronic platform so now so now that's what i was going to just get to so you shifted yet again so youth programs and now you're having to run that dynamic and then how did you get into not only that but kind of now running the online program and the online model for mental health and diving into that as well well it's an interesting time in our society and i think mental health is going to be the new buzzword coming out of 2020 with the impact of kobud right and we've seen increasing mental health rate issues at younger and younger ages and broader populations and so we have to start looking at what can address this crisis in new innovative ways because individual therapy one-on-one is never going to cover the blanket of what's needed in our society and so as a corporation started looking at that we were actually approached by some schools we were approached by some corporations to help in their mental health side so we actually created a platform to meet their needs because they approached us with their problems okay so so now was it kind of diving into that was it you know you say it live in interesting times and you know certainly covet has a large impact on mental health was it kind of in tandem with covet or was it you know what you're already looking at it and anticipating this or because it was that a pivot that was caused by covet or just happened to or line up with that we were already actively seeking to stabilize because the mental health statistics were off the charts before covet hit you look at 2017 statistics with you know 25 of the adult population dealing with mental health issues and that's 2017 and now you're coming out of 2020 with almost a 50 ratio coming into play so we were already in that aspect and then um it just worked perfect because we pivoted right into it and so even now um we're seeing more and more connections being able to you know work on mental health right now no i think that you know that it interesting how things have shifted because because i agree mental health is always a you know a major issue that uh people have to deal with regardless and it's you know it seems to be one where it's on the rise as opposed to on you know the down slope which was where we'd like it to be and then kovic comes along and only further exacerbates or cut or creates that so now more than ever so now as you've kind of made that so are you running and then i didn't catch it are you running all three still at the same time with the original clinic and the troubled youth and also the online mental health or kind of where's your focus and kind of where you where are you building towards in the future our main focus right now is our mental health empowerment stabilization platform and so you know and you'll find this interesting especially coming from the legal perspective osha has mandated for years and years for corporations to have to do different policies and procedures for you know physical health and making sure that everybody's protected and nobody's in harm's way but also has a huge side that's mental health that most of corporations and entities have kind of just sat aside but you have a bunch of attorneys right now beginning to draft um legal actions and threatening to um move forward in lawsuits against corporations who aren't incorporating mental health stabilization and so we're staying in that whole mental health empowerment platform we're not doing the we do the outpatient still because our therapists do telehealth within that electronic platform we don't do the residential centers anymore but we do work on that daily empowerment in our in our lines of corporations first responders education and healthcare and so now with with that focus where do you kind of see things going in the next six to 12 months kind of both within your business and with the the field in general i think you're going to see much more of a microscope on how do we stabilize the mental health of individuals you know it's ironic within our climate of covid which is decreased socialization and yet we know neurologically the human brain needs human connection and then we look at also the reality there's a lot of study coming out of um uc davis about the fact that the human brain is designed to grasp negativity and that negativity creates horrific divide and terrible mental health and you look at the the pivots of our society in the last year that i think you're going to see a lot more talks about how do we stabilize and empower positive mental health and go back to some of those basic neurological needs that humans have to have and one question you know kind of maybe just isn't a side but a question that came up or in my mind as you're talking through that is so you have covid which is also just lockdowns you have people working from home and it's interesting because on the one hand you have it seems to me and i could be wrong i'm certainly not an expert in the field you know as people are isolated working from home they they don't have that human interactions and it seems like generally people are wired to have or want or like enjoy human interactions the desire to you know be with other people to talk through and to have that air support group and so you remove that and yet you'll also be having a shift within the marketplace for people more and more wanting to work from home so how do you balance that on the one hand people are saying hey i love working from home because i don't have to commute i don't have to you know do those hours and on the other hand you know it seems like it's having a bit of a negative impact where people aren't getting out and socializing as much anymore you know it's an interesting statistical analysis we definitely have seen all mental health rates increasing across the board due to the isolation because humans are meant to connect we also took away people's uh coping skills like a lot of people dealt with stress by going to the bar after work or going to the gym or lots of different aspects right but we just eliminated everything that helps us cope as humans but yeah neurologically the brain is wired for human connection oxytocin and serotonin are released when we spend time face to face so we have to have that and as far as productivity that's an interesting analysis because you're right a lot of people are arguing hey i love working from home but then you also have to look at the statistical analysis of productivity by corporations and you also see especially the younger generation they're starting to say i'm sick and tired of being in social media and on my phone and in zoo meetings i want human connection i think you're going to see both some people saying they want to work from home but others saying no put me back in the office to put me back in school put me back around my peers because i need that human connection so it'll be an interesting balance no i think it's hard i mean i said as an employer there is a balance of how pro even though people say they love working from home how pro or productive are they when they're either dealing with you know mental health depression or just you know anxiety or not being able to go out but you will also be able to concentrate and also through you know be able to bounce ideas off of it having zoom fatigue and so it's a hard place to be i think all the way around as to how to balance all those issues and i don't you know it's not an easy problem to solve so i think that you know doing all or doing what you guys are doing to try and balance that and help other people out and doing that certainly has a need in the marketplace well as as we start to wrap up with the podcast i always ask two questions and so we'll jump to those now so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it you know the worst business decision i ever made as an early business owner in the field of mental health was not to fire employees as quickly as i should have and it ended up costing quite a bit in a few of my residential centers because i kept giving second chances and that was a big mistake and so i've learned very clearly to set protocol and to set guidelines and what are termination policies and then to follow them because sometimes it's better to fire than to keep an employee who can potentially damage your business and so that was one of my biggest mistakes was not to let someone go soon enough no and i think that you know it is hard you know as much as you watch the the television shows or the movies and people are just quick to fire when you're in that circumstance it's not nearly as easy to say oh you're gone you know because you know them you've probably developed a friendship with them you know that you know they're if they have a family or kids and they're supporting them and everything else and yet so you have all these you know attachments to many on the other hand a lot of times if you don't let them go and they're not performing or that it's not doing well it can either create a bit of a toxic environment or it can start to pull others down or in some a lot of times it even is they don't do well perform well themselves right in the sense that it's not a good environment for them it's not where they're going to thrive and so even you know as a courtesy to the employee themselves letting them go can sometimes be the kinder thing and yet it's never the the fun side of being the employer and yet it's a lesson you have to learn in order to make the business successful so i think that that's certainly an easy easy mistake to learn and or easy mistake to make as anybody and also one to learn from yes very much so so now we'll jump to the second question which is so if you're now talking to someone that's just getting into a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them you need to make sure that you're looking at sufficient cash cash flow to be able to do what you're doing i think one of the biggest mistakes startups make is they don't recognize the amount of cash it will take to get a business off the ground it usually takes twice as much as you think and twice as long so it's important to be mindful of that no and i think that you know it it's it's everybody always seems to hear the exception like well i did a really good job planning and i'm you know i know my stuff and everybody else they say that and that's true for everybody else but for me i'll keep it on you know time and on budget and yet it i've yet to see anybody that holds true in the sense that there's always things that come up there's always the unknown there's always things that you didn't anticipate and so take or planning on things whatever you think is your best plan doubling it or even sometimes tripling it saying it's going to take longer more amount of time and more amount of money than you anticipated i think is a much better way to plan for a business than just simply trying to do it down to them penny and down to the time and then not having that cushion built in yep so so now as we wrap up and this is a reminder everybody we do with this episode as with several others we've introduced the bonus question we'll talk a little bit about intellectual property so hang on after we wrap up the normal episode to hear that answer and or that question and that answer but as we wrap up otherwise for the the normal podcast episode that people want to find out more about the work you guys are doing they're an employer and they want to implement your program or they're an individual they want to check it out they want to be a customer they want to be an investor they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out or find out more so our website is three six zero kane k k-a-n-e dot com so 360 kane.com or 360focusmentalhealth.com and they can practice through that well i definitely encourage people to reach out find out more and uh and check it out because i think there's certainly a need for it well for all of you listeners again there's a bonus question but otherwise um if you have your own journey to tell make sure to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast also if you're a listener make sure to one click subscribe so you get notifications as all the new awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people can find out about the podcast as well last but not least um if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else with their business feel free to reach out to us by going to strategymeeting.com now with that so now we'll jump over to the bonus portion of the podcast which is now you get to turn the tables a little bit i always get a pepper you with the questions and dive in and cut you off and everything else now for on the flip side what's your top intellectual property question you know it's interesting because in soft sciences like my field intellectual property is a very blurred area because people seem to think that you know let's say you created all these statistics put together a study and you share it anybody sitting in the audience is going to be the wannabe next presenter will copy everything that you've done and and you know and run with it so how do you recommend people in the soft sciences um protect their intellectual property because it's not so much a patent like you know we didn't create a program or some type of new machinery it's more all intellectual it's research it's it's our evidence it's what we talk about yeah no that is a very a fair and valid question it's not an easy answer so i mean sometimes patents work and give you an example and then you know but i would say that's the exception one of the clients is a is a doctor we work with that deals with thought with ketamine and for other uses without getting into what he's doing but he has figured out a new way to utilize ketamine and some of what he's doing in his practice such that it lends itself more to patentability but to your point if you're doing a lot of research you're not doing a product you're not doing a software you're not doing hardware you're just really doing research and then implementing it patents generally don't apply or they're difficult unless you fit to the exception that you know the one that you can but again it's a bit difficult is trademarks sometimes if you build a brand so let's say whether it's you know tony or uh was tony rogers the big speaker that's what i was gonna say rogers didn't sound right robinson um you know he's a motivational speaker and he tells everybody he's built a huge brand and so in and of itself that brand has a lot of value because people read his books they go to seminars and even if you're a smaller brand and you're saying hey we built a good clinic it has a good reputation we want to when people think of that that goes more into the reputation and the branding you can start to protect that or if you get into lecture series or book series or presenter on a period of time you can brand it but that's again almost a bit of an exception in the sense unless you're building a big brand if you're just doing the research you're doing the development and then you're implementing it you publish some papers you may be presented to but it's not you're building a brand around it then it may not fit in the trademark the other one you can do is a bit more on copyrights and copyrights are more for books or for your that actual information and so if you're saying hey we've wrote a great book it has a lot of research details and people are starting to copy that or they're knocking it off or otherwise taking that actual information then you can protect that with copyright so that way it protects against people just blatantly copying or using your information without your permission when you've done all that research and that development now the difficulty with copyrights is that if they take the foundational information but then they put it in their own format their own way of saying speaking about it then there there isn't a good way to protect it in the sense that just the information the foundation for the you know research and the clinicals if it's published and people then use that as a foundation they do their own thing with it then you probably aren't going to be able to capture that other than if you know if you can write a book you can write those papers that are the seminal papers that everybody refer to you can you utilize the copyright there in order to say hey if you're going to quote our stuff if you're going to copy it you're going to use it then you have to get it give us a license but there is is a hard question so those are some of the ways that go about protecting it otherwise you just otherwise you're just gonna have to say hey we're gonna out research we're gonna have a better brand better reputation we're gonna be the ones that are the forefront that people just by our reputation alone you know kind of the medical doctors that everybody knows that hey they're the authority they know what they're talking about they know what they're doing sometimes it's just having to compete in the marketplace if you don't fit into any of those categories that makes sense yep it it is an interesting area especially when you're a soft science not a hard science yeah and i mean even you know you think about it if i were going to some other the service industries it kind of has some of those parallels let's say you're the world's best plumber and you're no one is a good plumber well unless you you can brand you know if you can create a brand people know it but otherwise how do you can do a really good job people know that you can you know be able to do it more quickly do it more effectively and yet how do you do that so i think even whether it's any service and plumber it can be service industries lawn mowing it can be you know doing a dry cleaning can be doctors it can be medical it can be a lot of different areas and just saying hey i just got to build that reputation such that when people refer to it you know there are avenues that i can protect some aspects of it but for others i'm just going to have to build that reputation so with that there's the answer to your top intellectual property question i don't know if that provided a full answer because there isn't an easy answer for it um but if anybody else has any other intellectual property questions feel free to go or you do as well uh or dr dr kane feel free to always reach out to reach out to me at strategymeeting.com grab some time to chat and we're always here to help and with that we'll we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast thank you again dr kane for coming on it's been a pleasure and i wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you so much you English (auto-generated)