Greg :
If you ever want to stop trading all your time for money and you want to be able to leave your clinic, you want to be able to leave your business and have peace of mind and be rest assured that the business is going to run well, you better have someone or a group of people that are on your team that treat this thing like it's theirs and they're compensated in that way if they go above and beyond you. Welcome to the Secrets for Success podcast. I'm your host, Greg Todd. Thanks for joining me, as always. So recently I was at an event, and on the second day of the event, by the way, the event was a bunch of practice owners in a room. And the second day of the event, someone brought up the term of giving additional opportunities to their employees and calling them entrepreneurs. I've heard that term.
Greg :
That's actually one of our commandments here at smart success healthcare is that everyone here is an intrapreneur. And I guess all the people in the room had glass eye look and they were just like, what the heck is that? So they asked people, has anyone heard of the term intrapreneur? And only three, I think three or four of the 200 plus people that were in the room have heard of the term was myself. It was one of my clients who was sitting next to me. It was her staff member who was sitting behind her and like one other person. And I realized that people don't know what an intrapreneur is. So I want to use this episode to talk about intrapreneurship. I think it is an amazing path for many people, and I think many of you that are struggling, that have staff and you're struggling to keep staff and to keep people motivated and engaged and being able to create an ascension path for them. I really want you to listen to this episode.
Greg :
So we're going to talk about intrapreneurship and the difference between intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship, and we are going to talk about ways that you create an intrapreneur environment. So there is an episode that I did, I don't remember the episode number right now, but it's an episode that I did with Brittany Lewis, who works with me here at smart Success healthcare. And she talked about her journey of being an employee, moving to entrepreneurship, and now becoming an intrapreneur, and how she has just come to terms with that is the best path for her. And it's allowed her to be able to make the most amount of income she's ever made in her life is through intrapreneurship. So if you want, look at the show notes and you'll see that episode. Maybe we'll put it at the end of the podcast for you to hear from someone that is an intrapreneur. So let's talk about first what an intrapreneur is. So let me give you the definition that I believe.
Greg :
I believe the definition is someone who takes ownership and operates a portion of the business and is willing to do so, not taking on a financial risk. An entrepreneur is someone who owns and operates the business and is willing to do so at a very high financial risk. That is the only difference. An intrapreneur takes ownership of the business. An intrapreneur operates within the business, just like how pretty much most entrepreneurs do, at least do initially. The only difference between the entrepreneur and intrapreneur is that the entrepreneur is willing to do so at a very high financial risk. Business is very risky. It is probably the most risky.
Greg :
It's the most risky. The riskiest investment that you can make is business. It's a very risky investment. It has so much potential upside, but it is a risky investment. And some people don't have the risk tolerance. So for those of you that are like, oh, my gosh, I want to have autonomy. I want to be able to do things in my way. I don't want to be just a traditional nine to fiver, and I just want to clock in and clock out.
Greg :
I'm willing to go above and beyond. I'm willing, if there was other opportunities out there, I would take it like I would do it. I would do all those things. I just don't want to take out a third loan on my house. I just don't want to go into $50,000 credit card debt. I don't want to do those things. I just don't want to do that. Well, I would highly advise you to look into intrapreneurship as an intrapreneur.
Greg :
What you are saying is I not only am willing to take on the responsibilities of the business, I'm willing to do whatever it takes. I'm willing to go above and beyond. I'm willing to work whatever hours is needed to make this thing happen. I'm willing to start to think and create ideas, but also execute on those ideas of whatever it is that I create. I'm not going to be the problem projector. I'm going to be the person that comes up with solutions to any problem that I see. I am willing to create ideas. I'm willing to use my mind, and I'm willing to communicate and convey that message, not just to myself, but to the other members of the team and people that are customers of that said company.
Greg :
That's what an intrapreneur is. So, you guys, I think it's really important to understand, is intrapreneurship right for you? Well, do you have a massive risk tolerance? If you have a massive risk tolerance, then intrapreneurship is probably not going to be your best path. It's probably going to be entrepreneurship. But if you don't have a very high risk tolerance, I think the intrapreneur path will be a great path for you. Now, are you someone, by the way, there's nothing wrong with this. Are you someone that's like, listen, I will work, but I want to be able to clock in. I want to be able to clock out. I don't care about financial gains.
Greg :
I don't care about making more money than what my base salary is. I want to be able to shut it off when it's time to shut it off. Okay, then maybe intrapreneurship is not for you, but for a lot of people, they want to have the opportunities without all the risk, but they're willing to put in the work, the effort, and the time, and that's what I think intrapreneurship is for. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you guys a few examples of how I've made intrapreneurship happen within my businesses. All right, so why don't I start with smart virtual staff? Okay, so, smart virtual staff. Our CEO, Luis, is an intrapreneur. She's an intrapreneur. Did she put up the money for smart virtual staff? No, that was me.
Greg :
I'm the co founder. She is a CEO. But here's what she's willing to do. She is willing to take on the role of the CEO. She is willing to basically learn every single part of the business that was needed. She's done the sales. She's done all the VA work. She did all that stuff for me.
Greg :
She had to learn the finances and understand those things. She had to learn how to train. She has to deal with a lot of the customer problems. Now, over time, we've been able to grow the company from four employees to six employees to eight employees to ten, to 15, to 20, to 25 to 40. We even got it up to, at one point to 65 employees, and now we're down to about 40 employees. But she's had to learn all those things. Do I do those things on a day to day basis for the business? No. She will go to different countries in Asia to meet potential customers or to meet her current customers.
Greg :
Do I do those things for business? No. But I was the entrepreneur. I was the one that was willing to pony up the money to get the company started. And when the company has had lean times to continue to fund the company, that's what I do as an entrepreneur. So I don't even own and operate the business on a day to day basis. She does that along with the rest of the team that she has, but I'm the one that does so with financial risk. She's not. Now what she has is she makes a lot more than all the other virtual assistants and all the other employees there.
Greg :
She makes more than any VA would ever make. But that's because she's an intrapreneur within that company. Okay, that's one example. All right, let me give you an example of within my clinics. So within a clinics, here's how I would set up those that want intrapreneurial responsibilities. What I would do is if you wanted to be an intrapreneur, I would give you different opportunities that I saw were available. And I gave my staff, my team members that wanted this opportunities for them to come up with not only ideas, but if you're going to come with the idea, you have to basically tell me how this is going to happen without me being involved. Okay.
Greg :
So we've had different, when we were doing stuff with beachbody, we had our intrapreneurs that were running our fit clubs, and our fit clubs were something that we were running on Wednesday nights. And they would run our fit clubs. They would basically bring our clients that wanted to use our facility, like in a gym like setting, and they were doing all that stuff. They were basically taking care of all the clients needs. They would set up the entire program. They would do all the follow up, they do all those things that were needed. And they were the intrapreneurs. Who put up the money? Me, I'm the entrepreneur.
Greg :
So that was one way that we did it within our facilities. And then if you were a clinic director, if the company, we set it up to where you were an intrapreneur clinic director, which means that you were taking ownership and operating the company at that particular facility. And when there were certain levels of profit, we gave the intrapreneur additional things that a typical clinic director wouldn't get. We also gave intrapreneurs the ability to have certain perks, whether that is paid stipends for certain things. We won't even get into all of it, but basically that's what we did with the intrapreneurs there at renewal rehab. Okay, let's talk about what intrapreneurs looks like in smart success healthcare. Pretty much every employee here has intrapreneur capabilities. Before, we had a bunch of different departments, but we don't want all that complicated stuff.
Greg :
Basically, we have people with different talents and different skills. Okay. So we have some people that they're amazing with tech and they know how to teach our clients all the different tech things that they can't learn on their own. So if clients want additional services with tech and they want to actually take some of the employees time away from their regular job, what we do is we charge them a certain amount and then the intrapreneur gets a portion of that amount. Okay, we have a media department here, right? And it was just last weekend one of our media team members flew to another state to work with one of our clients, gave them an exceptional experience. The client paid us money, and that person, as an intrapreneur, got additional money that will be put into their account at the end of the quarter. Just trying to think what else. We had intrapreneurs here that were in our sales department, so they did sales for us.
Greg :
But if clients wanted sales stuff done for their particular business, then that person had the intrapreneur capabilities of basically getting a portion of whatever they were going to achieve from sales. So it's just ways for me to be able to make sure that nobody here has a cap on their ascension. If you work and you perform, you can basically make whatever it is that you want. And then if people have other opportunities or they have other ideas, if they want to be able to execute out the ideas, and I'll create some type of rev share and some type of split with them. So that's how it works as an intrapreneur. You work and you work hard and you operate a portion of the business for some multiple portion of the business. You just don't have to put up the financial risk. These cameras that we're doing this podcast on, I paid for it.
Greg :
The microphone, I paid for it. I am the risk taker. I'm the monetary risk taker. And not everybody can be that, but I've decided that I'm going to be that. And I know that all my investments won't pay off, but I know that the ones that do will pay for all the other ones that didn't. And so I'm cool with that. But a lot of people aren't, and that's what an intrapreneur truly is. So here's my advice to you all.
Greg :
If you ever want to stop trading all your time for money and you want to be able to leave your clinic, you want to be able to leave your business and have peace of mind and be rest assured that the business is going to run well, you better have someone or a group of people that are on your team that treat this thing like it's theirs and they're compensated in that way if they go above and beyond. And that's how it works for me. And I would have it no other way. So I'm team intrapreneur. I truly believe in it. And I think that if you want to be able to grow your business and have the freedom, it's not just about having more employees. It's about having the quality employee that takes on the intrapreneurial behavior. I hope that helps you guys.
Greg :
Till next time.
