Systems

Hello my name is Stephen Mugabe, I’m CEO and founder of Cod Clinic, a dental practice in Kampala. Now, most times when we start a business, we have the technical know-how. I started Cod Clinic as a dentist. I was a very good dentist according to the reviews I got from friends and family and everyone I was treating. I was very good at you know, the technical skill of Dentistry, and so I decided with that confidence to go and Cod Clinic. But I quickly realized that I’ve just created myself a job instead of a business, I was stuck working, you know, seven days a week instead of five or six days. Whenever someone called me they wanted a dentist, I quickly rushed, because I mean I needed that money. I made my team stressed because we were working longer than expected because we needed to meet our bills. It was more that that, but getting full. I was now the one recruiting people, I was training the people I recruited, I was doing the supplies, I was doing the repairs, I was cleaning the place, and yet I still had to be the dentist. I still had to get out and market, I had to do the accounting, thank God one of my friends had given me accounting software but I wasn’t even sure what I was doing, I was banning out, I was tired. I noticed that other than the business owner, I was just owning a job and I think it was better to be employed than to just own a job, because now anyone who dictates when they wanted to see you, but slowly I got out and learned how a business is built, I read some books, there’s “The Emith”, I mean it’s a good book by Michael Egaba, and I attended different courses and I started learning that if I wanted something to go beyond me, that’s when it could become a business, it’s hard to have systems and you standardize things. In that way you’re able to have a service that is standard that whoever comes to Cod Clinic is taken through the same routine, and it’s a good routine, they get a good experience and refer others. And slowly I’ve been implementing that but I started getting making documents like policies and procedures on how to do things so training became easy, such as whoever came in as a new person it was easier to train them rather than start from zero. We had our accounts straightened up and we got policies on how to bill, collect payments, even make payments and track all those payments and yeah we’ve been putting systems, and I can say in less than six months, it’s about six months since I got another dentist to work with me and I helped standardize that so that you know, whoever comes to Cod Clinic whether they are seeing Dr. Stephen or Dr. Karthy they get the same kind of service. It’s possible even with professionals that you can standardize things if you have a system. You don’t have to always be at your job for the business to run, and that’s how you get to multiply this that it goes beyond the business owner and you’re offering this standardized service. That’s how you see companies like McDonalds doing what they do, spread around the world I mean it’s possible even with us professionals. So if you get to make systems, and apart from systems, document everything so that it’s easy to train people, then it will be easy standard practice for growing your business beyond yourself otherwise you will stay a job owner, you will never retire. It’s not comforting to know that if I just don’t get systems then I’m going to work for all of my life without even getting breaks. It’s best to have a system so that your business can grow beyond you. You’re still serving people while you get to go on holiday, you get to have time for your family, you get to have time for your community I mean life is not only a job or a business. It’s made of the spiritual beats, the physical beats, relations, and the intellectual beats as well. That’s all I have to share for today, thank you