Effective Management
Dr. Dan Margolin has been a podiatrist for about 30 years, and his New Jersey practice ranks in the top 3% in the country. He said he entered practice with no business background and only later learned management through a program that changed how he ran his clinics. He felt he owed that help back, and that desire became the basis for Effective Management.
To train staff without repeating himself, Margolin first wrote job descriptions and later turned them into short videos. The videos run three to five minutes and fit into a 15 to 20 minute daily training window, which staff could spare without frustration. The company then packaged this into products including Basic Staff Training, a 35-video library, and the Podiatry Survival Blueprint, a course that sells for about $6,500. Margolin said the work took about four years to put together before launch.
Margolin had no large email list. He called people he knew, including former consulting clients. He recalled that his first sale came when an old client he phoned while walking to the grocery store agreed to buy on the spot. Later, the company shifted its focus toward podiatry conferences, where Margolin met practitioners in person and showed them the products, which he described as a "pretty much of a slam dunk."
The company reported about $300,000 in 2015 sales, with a 2016 projection of around $400,000. Margolin said the company had about 300 business customers. He estimated that 300 customers at $2,500 each would come to roughly $750,000, then corrected that to a range of 300 to 400 customers, which he called "not the best" as a precise figure. The business was also moving from one-time fees to recurring monthly memberships, and at that point only about two people were on the new membership model.
Margolin's podiatry practice had reached about $2.5 million in revenue in 2015, and he said it was approaching $3 million. He was shifting focus toward the Podiatry Survival Blueprint because it had a stronger market, since he was seen as an opinion leader in the field. He also launched a personal website and a free book to build his audience.
- •Margolin's credibility as a successful practicing podiatrist let him sell training to peers who trusted his results.
- •Turning his own internal job descriptions into short videos created a product that was built from real operational use rather than theory.
- •Selling in person at podiatry conferences targeted buyers who were already gathered in one place and open to purchasing.
- •Packaging the training as a sub-20-minute daily routine lowered the friction for staff and buyers, which made it easier to adopt.
- 1.Document the processes you already run internally, then convert the most repeated ones into short training videos.
- 2.Start sales with people who already know and trust you, such as past clients, before building a broader marketing funnel.
- 3.Take the product to industry events where your target buyers gather and demonstrate it directly.
- 4.Keep training modules short enough that users can fit them into an existing workday.
- 5.Once you have proven one-time sales, test a recurring membership to create steadier revenue.
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