Latest / Health, Life & What’s Next / I Spent $100K Building a Business That Couldn’t Pay Me. I Was Ashamed to Admit It.

Transcript

I Spent $100K Building a Business That Couldn’t Pay Me. I Was Ashamed to Admit It. · Health, Life & What’s Next

• 0:00
  this is very uncomfortable.
• 0:00
  All right.
• 0:00
  But I have to do this,'cause as I promised with the Health, Life and What's Next with Dr.
• 0:00
  Jennifer Genti, I promised myself and I promised you I was gonna be 100%, 100% real, and talk about all the things that are happening or happened in my life, in my business, in my practice, in my health.
• 0:13
  So I'm gonna be honest with you, and I hope as you are listening to this episode, you can see where I'm coming from, and you can see that my goal is to help you prevent or make less mistakes.
• 0:30
  Okay?
• 0:31
  Even my voice is changing, there's something I have been embarrassed to say publicly that I've been holding to myself, that I have not released until today.
• 0:42
  So yes, many of you know me as the Dr.
• 0:46
  Genti.
• 0:47
  I own a very successful functional medicine practice.
• 0:52
  Patients are coming to me through the doors.
• 0:55
  I had employees.
• 0:57
  From the outside, I looked like a very successful doctor who had opened her own clinic.
• 1:03
  But there were months, and I say months, I wasn't paying myself.
• 1:09
  Yes, I was living off my savings.
• 1:12
  At that point, I had put somewhere around$100,000, probably more, into building this business.
• 1:22
  When I look back at some of those losses now, and I have to tell you, not only I'm ashamed, I'm still embarrassed because people love asking entrepreneurs, small business owners,"How much money?" Are they making?
• 1:35
  How much money they made.
• 1:37
  Nobody's asking them how much money they lose or lost learning how to make it.
• 1:43
  And I almost didn't record this podcast'cause I'm like,"Oh my God, I am literally putting my business out there." Because The Wellness Corner NJ back in 2018 is a completely different business now.
• 1:57
  But this is important to me because as I am asking patient to invest, I'm asking them to spend thousands of dollars, I wanna tell you that I've been on this journey myself.
• 2:07
  I have spent m- multiple dollars, and I've lost multiple dollars, as you're gonna hear in this podcast.
• 2:17
  So I recorded part one.
• 2:18
  Part one was easy, right?
• 2:20
  Part one makes me sound brave and courageous.
• 2:23
  I got fed up.
• 2:24
  I left the ER.
• 2:25
  I bet on myself.
• 2:26
  I opened a clinic.
• 2:27
  That was a great story.
• 2:30
  So if you have not listened to part one, go ahead and listen to it.
• 2:33
  But this part, this is where I tell you what happened after the courage wore off.
• 2:40
  This is where I tell you about the low months, the bad decisions, the money I spent trying to figure out what I didn't know, the times I wondered whether I was actually good at business, the times I thought,"Okay, maybe I was only successful because someone else was giving me the structure.
• 3:00
  Maybe I was only successful working for someone.
• 3:03
  Maybe I should have stayed employed.
• 3:06
  Maybe my family and friends, they were right to question what I was doing.
• 3:11
  They were right for telling me,'You're crazy.' Maybe I just know how to be a doctor, right?
• 3:16
  That's it.
• 3:17
  Maybe I really suck at this." And to say this publicly i'm very embarrassed.
• 3:21
  But if I'm going to tell the story, I'm not giving you the cleanup version.
• 3:26
  I'm not gonna show up here"Oh my God, I made a million dollars and didn't spend any of that money, and just people were flocking to my door." I just opened my door and I just post a few times on social media, and guess what?
• 3:40
  My patient roster was full.
• 3:42
  This is all BS.
• 3:43
  That was not the truth.
• 3:45
  That$100,000 was in eight years of normal business expenses.
• 3:51
  It was a concentrated stretch of months where I was trying to turn the clinic into a profitable business.
• 3:59
  I had taken business financing after discussing with my CPA, telling my CPA,"Okay, I have literally no money for this business," right?
• 4:08
  So he told me, go ahead.
• 4:10
  It's...
• 4:10
  Don't be ashamed.
• 4:11
  A lot of successful people, they take loans.
• 4:13
  They use other people's money." And that's what I did.
• 4:16
  So I invested in coaches, in programs, in website, in marketing, in consultants, in team, in software, in system, new offers, new strategies.
• 4:25
  And every investment came with the same hope.
• 4:29
  Maybe this is what I'm missing.
• 4:32
  Maybe this coach understands how to get me there.
• 4:36
  Maybe the problem is the website.
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  Let's fix the website.
• 4:38
  Maybe I need to hire another marketing company.
• 4:41
  Maybe I need a better funnel.
• 4:42
  You know what?
• 4:43
  That's it, because people talk about funnels and the steps and emails.
• 4:48
  That's what I need.
• 4:50
  Maybe I really need to post 300 times on social media and show up every day, or maybe dance.
• 4:57
  Maybe my offer is wrong.
• 4:59
  But the niche is wrong.
• 5:00
  The people I'm serving is wrong.
• 5:01
  Maybe this is the thing that's finally going to make everything click.
• 5:05
  Some of those investment helped me tremendously, and many of them did not, and some were just expensive mistakes.
• 5:14
  But guess what?
• 5:14
  That's business.
• 5:16
  But when you are the, when you are the one making the mistakes with your own money, it feels very different from saying that sentence like this is...
• 5:26
  These, those expenses were really like mistakes.
• 5:31
  It's different when you say that years later.
• 5:33
  I think one of the most dangerous things about being a new entrepreneur is that everybody you meet has an answer.
• 5:40
  And when you don't trust your own judgment yet, certainty is seductive.
• 5:46
  Someone says,"Hey, here's your problem." And you think,"Oh yeah, finally somebody knows, so let me pay." You implement.
• 5:53
  You wait.
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  It doesn't produce what you expected.
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  Now another person says,"Nope, the real problem is this." Guess what?
• 6:01
  You pay that person too.
• 6:02
  You change again.
• 6:03
  You build again.
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  And before you know it, you have spent enormous amount of money trying to buy something nobody can actually sell you.
• 6:10
  You know what that is?
• 6:12
  Business judgment.
• 6:13
  People can teach you.
• 6:16
  People can shorten the learning curve.
• 6:18
  Good coaching can be invaluable.
• 6:21
  I still believe in investing in an expertise.
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  As a matter of fact, I just spent like overall last year in 2020, 2025 to 2026, 30K in my business with my coaches.
• 6:31
  So yes, I still believe in investing.
• 6:34
  But eventually you have to know your own business.
• 6:36
  That's why they cannot outsource.
• 6:38
  I didn't understand that yet, so sometimes I was investing in strategy, and sometimes I was investing in because I was scared, because I wanted result, fast result.
• 6:48
  I wanted a quick fix because I was desperate.
• 6:51
  At the same time, there were months when I wasn't paying myself, and that's the part that really got to me.
• 6:58
  The employees got paid.
• 7:00
  The rent got paid.
• 7:02
  My vendors got paid.
• 7:04
  My coaches got paid.
• 7:05
  The marketing companies got paid.
• 7:07
  Everybody seems to know where to send an invoice.
• 7:11
  And then I would look at what was left and think,"Okay, nothing for me again." Like literally I would look at my bank account, I'm like,"Oh my God.
• 7:19
  What?" And I couldn't tell my fiance that.
• 7:21
  I couldn't tell anybody in my family that I was struggling I left a doctor job where I knew exactly how much money I could make.
• 7:29
  Now I own the clinic, and there were months when the owner did not even get a paycheck, and I'm the owner.
• 7:37
  I was using savings I had built from years of working in emergency room and urgent care, night shift, weekend, holidays.
• 7:44
  There was a time when I was working seven days a week, moonlighting all over the place.
• 7:49
  Okay?
• 7:50
  So that money represented security, and now I was using it to keep me alive and keep my dream alive.
• 7:57
  There were moments I thought,"Dr.
• 7:58
  Jenti, what are you doing?
• 8:01
  Girl, what are you doing?
• 8:03
  You could go back to the ER.
• 8:05
  I know how to make money there.
• 8:07
  They will hire me in a heartbeat.
• 8:09
  Why don't you get a job on Indeed," right?
• 8:12
  "Why am I putting myself through this?" And that thought is very different than once you already told everybody,"I'm building my practice." I said goodbye to the ER.
• 8:23
  I said goodbye to, to the other places.
• 8:25
  I'm like,"I'm building my own practice." Now I'm going back?
• 8:29
  Because now shame, gets involved.
• 8:32
  I didn't want people to know I was struggling.
• 8:34
  I didn't want my family wondering if I had made a mistake.
• 8:38
  I didn't want employees sensing instability.
• 8:41
  I definitely wasn't going to tell patients that this doctor over here decreased her prices.
• 8:47
  And then I have more patients I'm treating, but the revenue was very low.
• 8:52
  I didn't want other successful doctors and entrepreneurs look at me thinking,"She doesn't know what the heck she's doing." So I got very good at holding two realities at once.
• 9:01
  The clinic was functioning.
• 9:03
  Patients were coming.
• 9:04
  There were things to be proud of, and privately I was worried.
• 9:08
  But for true, This is one of the loneliest parts of owning a business.
• 9:14
  Everybody has somewhere to bring the problem.
• 9:17
  Eventually, the problem comes to you The employees comes to you, the patients will come to you, the vendors will come to you, the marketer will come to you, the bill comes to you.
• 9:27
  And sometimes I would just sit there thinking after hours when everybody's left, where exactly am I supposed to take these, these things?
• 9:35
  Where exactly am I supposed to take my problem?
• 9:37
  Where do I go with my problem?
• 9:39
  There were days I did not need another strategy.
• 9:42
  I needed somebody to say,"Dr.
• 9:44
  Jencie, you are not crazy.
• 9:46
  This is hard.
• 9:47
  And struggling with this does not mean you are failing." I didn't have that.
• 9:52
  I felt like I was a failure for months building this business, okay?
• 9:57
  And social media did not help because while you are privately questioning whether you know what you're doing or not, everybody online seems to be having the greatest months of their lives.
• 10:08
  50K month, six figures, seven figures, sold out, best, best launches ever, scaled while working four hours a week.
• 10:18
  And why has my revenue dropped this month and I panicked, right?
• 10:21
  Why is I spent$12,000 on something that didn't work?
• 10:26
  I don't see anybody saying I paid everybody and didn't pay myself.
• 10:30
  I hired the wrong person.
• 10:32
  I changed direction three times because I had no idea what the heck I was doing.
• 10:36
  I didn't see any of that, because that's entrepreneurship too.
• 10:40
  And I'm not criticizing anybody for celebrating the wins,'cause I do that too.
• 10:45
  Celebrate, awesome.
• 10:47
  But when the only story we tell is the winning story, people in the messy middle starts assuming something is wrong with them, and I did.
• 10:56
  I'm like,"Something is wrong with me.
• 10:58
  I cannot build a business because everybody else is winning.
• 11:01
  I'm over here stressing." And a low revenue month became personal.
• 11:07
  That's something I eventually had to stop doing.
• 11:10
  When the schedule was full, I'm doing well.
• 11:13
  When it slow down, something's wrong with me.
• 11:16
  Why aren't people booking?
• 11:17
  Why my prices are too low or too high?
• 11:20
  Maybe the program is wrong.
• 11:22
  Maybe people don't want this.
• 11:23
  Maybe I need something new.
• 11:25
  Maybe I need to change my niche again.
• 11:27
  And this is where I started doing something that cost me both money and clarity.
• 11:32
  I started chasing whatever looked hot.
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  Hormones are booming.
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  Let me help hormone people now.
• 11:38
  Maybe I should go harder into hormones.
• 11:40
  Weight loss is exploding.
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  Let me create a program about weight loss.
• 11:44
  Maybe that's where the business needs to go.
• 11:47
  Whatever I could see other people succeeding with, I started wondering Should I be doing that as well?
• 11:53
  And I had a lot of legitimate clinical interest, so I could justify almost every pivot.
• 11:59
  But eventually, the business started becoming a collection of everybody else's good ideas, and you lose the thread of your own, and that was exhausting.
• 12:10
  Comparison does more than make you jealous.
• 12:13
  Comparison can make you make terrible decisions because you are no longer asking,"What do my patients need?
• 12:22
  What am I uniquely good at?
• 12:25
  What makes sense financially?
• 12:27
  What fits the practice I actually want?" I find myself asking,"What seems to be making somebody else money right now?" Those are completely different questions, and every time I chase somebody else's answer, I became less certain about mine.
• 12:43
  That's when my confidence really started taking a hit because I was used to being competent.
• 12:50
  Medicine was hard, but I had trained for it.
• 12:54
  I understand what I was doing.
• 12:56
  Business kept putting me back into beginner mode I would think,"Maybe I'm not good at this.
• 13:02
  Maybe I'm good at being a doctor and not at building." Those thoughts were real.
• 13:07
  And I think entrepreneurs sometimes will write the stories once things work.
• 13:11
  They will say I always knew." I didn't always know.
• 13:15
  There were days I absolutely questioned myself.
• 13:18
  There were days I wondered whether I made a very expensive mistakes.
• 13:24
  And then there were the pressure of patient care, the part deserve its own truth.
• 13:29
  When you own a medical practice, patient outcomes become deeply personal.
• 13:34
  These people did not just come to a hospital where I happen to be working.
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  They chose me.
• 13:40
  They trusted my approach.
• 13:42
  They invested money, so I wanted them to succeed, and I still do.
• 13:47
  But somewhere along the way, caring about outcomes became caring outcomes That's different.
• 13:54
  If somebody wasn't improving the way we hoped, I'll think about it.
• 13:59
  I'm like,"Did I miss something?
• 14:00
  D- do I need to do more?
• 14:02
  Should I give more time?
• 14:04
  Should I call?
• 14:04
  Should I change something?
• 14:06
  Is the patient disappointed?
• 14:08
  What if she thinks this didn't work?
• 14:10
  What if she tells somebody, someone else?
• 14:13
  What if she leaves bad review?" And when you build a practice around your own name, criticism does not feel like criticism of a company.
• 14:23
  It feels like criticism of you.
• 14:25
  That can make you start patient-pleasing instead of simply practicing medicine.
• 14:32
  So what did I do?
• 14:33
  Those past few years, I over-gave, I over-explained, I made exceptions.
• 14:37
  I wanted people to be happy.
• 14:39
  I bend my rules because somewhere in my mind, a happy patients meant the business is safe, and dis- and a disappointed patient meant something is wrong.
• 14:48
  That's not sustainable.
• 14:50
  I had to learn one of the hardest lesson in medicine and business.
• 14:55
  Providing excellent care is my responsibility.
• 14:58
  Making every person happy is not.
• 15:01
  Those are not the same thing.
• 15:03
  I can practice, I can communicate, I listen, I adjust.
• 15:07
  I can own real mistakes, but I cannot guarantee an outcome, and I cannot control how every person interprets the experience and how to take actions.
• 15:18
  I am not a miracle worker, and the more afraid I became of disappointing people, the harder it became to say the things good medicine sometimes requires.
• 15:28
  "No, not yet.
• 15:30
  We need more time.
• 15:31
  I don't recommend this.
• 15:32
  You need to detox.
• 15:33
  You need to repeat the, this process.
• 15:34
  You need to stop eating the food that are actually giving you the symptoms," right?
• 15:39
  "We need to change direction.
• 15:40
  I don't think another test is appropriate." You also have a role in this outcome.
• 15:45
  You cannot practice good medicine if you're terrified of being disliked.
• 15:48
  I had to learn that as well.
• 15:51
  And then you add the team.
• 15:54
  One of the biggest wake-up calls as entrepreneurship was realizing you can delegate the work, you cannot delegate ownership.
• 16:02
  If an employee makes a mistake, the patient doesn't necessarily think that employee made a mistake." They think Wellness Corner, Dr.
• 16:08
  Jense made a mistake," my business, my reputation, my patients.
• 16:13
  So I started checking, following behind people, making sure things were done, watching details, trying to catch mistakes before patients ever saw them.
• 16:22
  And at first I felt like responsible leadership eventually became exhausting.
• 16:28
  I became the bottleneck in my own practice, okay?
• 16:33
  Because every mistake someone else made became something I carried emotionally, and that's how anxiety operated in me in business.
• 16:43
  The irony is that the more I checked everything, the more the business depend on me checking everything.
• 16:50
  That became another lesson later.
• 16:53
  But at the time, I felt like I had no choice.
• 16:56
  I, because I was carrying, again, all the outcomes, all the responsibilities, the growth, the revenue, the reputation, the mistakes, the decision, and my own fear, that's a lot of weight for one person before I continue, I want to take about forty-five seconds to speak to those of you who originally found me because of my work in functional medicine.
• 17:17
  If you've been thinking,"I know something has changed with my health, with my body, but I still don't understand what's driving it or what I should actually do next," I'm hosting something very special for you.
• 17:31
  On Saturday, October seventeenth at ten AM Eastern Standard Time, I am opening up the way I actually think through these cases doing a live online health strategy session with Dr.
• 17:44
  Jennifer Jenty.
• 17:45
  And it's titled from"I Know Something Is Off" to"Here's What We Do Next." This is not another webinar where I spend an hour listing symptoms you already know you have.
• 17:56
  I want to show you what happens after you realize something is off, what deserve investigation, what information actually matters, what can be done once you know more, and how do I determine which kind of support makes sense for one woman versus the other.
• 18:14
  If you are actively looking for answers and solutions, not simply more health information, because AI will give you all of that, right?
• 18:22
  The social medias, the YouTubes, and the podcasts, you get all of that.
• 18:26
  I want you in this session.
• 18:28
  So I'm gonna put the link below.
• 18:31
  And I want you to click and reserve your seat.
• 18:33
  Again, we are live October seventeenth at ten AM Eastern Standard Time.
• 18:38
  Now back to the part of entrepreneurship people don't normally post.
• 18:42
  At some point, I got tired.
• 18:44
  Not tired of the clinic, tired of being scared of the clinic.
• 18:48
  That's different.
• 18:48
  I got tired of every quiet week becoming a crisis, tired of every expert having a new answer, buying another solution because I felt uncertain, changing direction, tired of comparing my business to businesses that were not mine.
• 19:04
  And that frustration finally pushed me into a different question.
• 19:08
  What is actually happening inside of my business?
• 19:10
  Not what somebody online says every clinic should offer, but what is happening inside of my business.
• 19:17
  What do our patients actually buy?
• 19:20
  We have to do a business audit.
• 19:22
  What are we spending money on?
• 19:24
  Where is the money leaking?
• 19:26
  Which marketing actually produces patients?
• 19:29
  What am I good at?
• 19:30
  What belong in this practice?
• 19:32
  What have I been keeping because I already spent too much money to admit it was wrong?
• 19:38
  Who is working?
• 19:39
  Who isn't?
• 19:41
  I had to fire patients.
• 19:42
  I had to be patient with patients.
• 19:44
  Okay.
• 19:45
  But who's not really implementing?
• 19:47
  Because these are not my ideal patients.
• 19:49
  What problem am I actually trying to solve?
• 19:52
  And those questions changed me and changed everything in my business because I finally stopped asking another people, another person to tell me what business I should build, and eventually the business became profitable, and that's very important.
• 20:08
  The$100,000 period was not years and years of endless losing money.
• 20:13
  It was an intense period of learning, investing, making mistakes, adjusting, and finally understanding what the business needed.
• 20:23
  But becoming profitable didn't erase what happened.
• 20:26
  It changed the way I operated.
• 20:29
  I became much less impressed by revenue because revenue sounds sexy.
• 20:35
  Profit is what allows the owner to get paid.
• 20:38
  I stopped being impressed because somebody told me the business made a million dollars.
• 20:43
  My next question became,"Okay, how much did it cost for you to make that million dollars, and how much did you keep?" That is a real conversation.
• 20:51
  I also became less impressed by confident people selling certainty.
• 20:56
  I ask more question now What exactly are we solving?
• 20:59
  And how do I know I'm getting results?
• 21:02
  What, how do you track my progress, right?
• 21:05
  Like, how is this going to make me money?
• 21:08
  How do we measure whether it's working?
• 21:10
  What happen if it doesn't?
• 21:12
  Does this actually fit my business?
• 21:14
  Do I understand this well enough to make the decision myself?
• 21:18
  That's what the$100,000 really bought me.
• 21:22
  Not one magical strategy, but judgment.
• 21:26
  Some of the money I spent, I wish I had not spent it.
• 21:28
  A lot of that money, I'm like,"Oh my God, why did I do this?
• 21:32
  Why did I give this person my money?" The signs were there, right?
• 21:37
  So of course, a lot of them I would love to give that money.
• 21:41
  And when you have a SBA loan, you gotta think about interest, I had to learn the hard way, and I had to make mistakes, and I continue making mistakes, right?
• 21:49
  But there's a freedom in not needing to make every failure look profound.
• 21:54
  I embrace my failures, and I share them with people.
• 21:58
  I make people see that I am not perfect.
• 22:00
  I'm on this journey as much as you are, but I think the hardest thing for me was separating a bad business result from my identity.
• 22:08
  Company fails, that doesn't mean I'm a failure.
• 22:11
  A month is slow, that does not mean the clinic is dying.
• 22:14
  An employee makes a mistake, an employee quit, that does not mean I am a terrible leader.
• 22:19
  A patient doesn't get the outcome we wanted, that does not automatically mean I'm a bad doctor.
• 22:26
  Someone says no to an offer, that does not mean nobody wants what I do.
• 22:31
  It took me a long time to learn this.
• 22:34
  Not everything that happens in your business is about you.
• 22:39
  When you own the thing, that is surprisingly difficult to believe.
• 22:43
  Your business is not you.
• 22:45
  Okay?
• 22:47
  So this is the part I think people miss when they look at successful entrepreneurs.
• 22:51
  You see what survived.
• 22:53
  You see the beautiful website, not the ones they replaced.
• 22:57
  You see the team that works, not every hiring mistakes.
• 23:01
  You see the offer that sells, but not the things nobody bought.
• 23:05
  Okay?
• 23:05
  You see the confidence, but you don't see the season where that person questioned everything.
• 23:11
  You see the revenue, you do not see the losses.
• 23:15
  So this is part two.
• 23:17
  I feel better.
• 23:18
  If I'm being honest with you, I'm like, I let it out.
• 23:21
  So I'm a way better business person now.
• 23:26
  So I hope you enjoy this one.
• 23:28
  Stay tuned for part three, where I'm gonna discuss about something else that I want to share with you.
• 23:34
  Now, if you're liking this type of episode, please share with someone else.
• 23:39
  And if you are wondering what else could I be missing?
• 23:42
  Why am I still waking up every day with the symptoms?
• 23:44
  I want you to join me in any online events that I'm hosting, whether it is the strategy session or the Connect the Dots masterclass.
• 23:53
  So always look in the show notes below to see what is the next event that I'm hosting, and I want you to join me.
• 24:01
  Bring your question.
• 24:02
  See how I help my patients go from struggling, sick, not feeling like themselves, with all the symptoms, to them sending me messages telling me,"Hi, Dr.
• 24:12
  J, I feel so much better." The energy is there, and they are thriving and giving me five-star Google reviews.
• 24:18
  All right.
• 24:18
  So I love you.
• 24:20
  Thank you so much for your support.
• 24:22
  Subscribe, and I'll see you on the next podcast.
• 24:24
  Bye.