Stephanie Portoglou: How to Turn Doctors Into Successful Business Owners | One Thing That Worked

Stephanie Portoglou

Medical business consultant with 15+ years in healthcare operations — on helping doctors move from clinical practice to owning their own medical practice, hands-on consulting that embeds her team on site, and why trust and quality drive real business growth

Watch on YouTube Work With Stephanie
17 minutes
Practice Ownership · Hands-On Consulting · Clinic Finances · Trust & Quality

About the Guest

Stephanie Portoglou — Medical Business Consultant

Stephanie Portoglou has spent over 15 years in the healthcare industry, particularly in medical practice management and business operations, before building her own healthcare consulting company

She helps doctors transition from clinical practice to owning and running their own medical centers — guiding them through operational setup, practice acquisition and compliance with a hands-on approach that embeds her team on site rather than advising from afar

Doctors Into Owners
helps skilled practitioners open and acquire their own medical practices while they stay focused on their patients
A Two-Week Setup
once delivered a full practice acquisition and compliance setup, streamlined and perfect, inside a tight two-week window
Hands-On, On Site
her team physically embeds with clients on a quarterly basis for a full week rather than just handing over advice
Growth Through Trust
built the business on referrals, networking and quality of service — because it all builds itself off trust

Key Quotes

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Whereas I get physically involved. I partner with my clients and my team partner with our clients just so that we can guide them the whole way through.

Stephanie Portoglou
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It’s about quality of service and people will pay for quality. They’d rather pay for quality than quantity fast and not having the outcome that they want.

Stephanie Portoglou
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It starts off at trust. If your trust is broken, the whole pyramid would fall.

Stephanie Portoglou

Episode Chapters

0:00 Intro 1:02 About Practice Medical Consulting 2:44 Success Client Cases 4:54 Pivotal Strategy 6:06 Biggest Pain Points 7:39 Starting Out as a Practice Manager 10:17 What Works Best in Finding New Clients 12:26 Financial Literacy Advice 13:49 Increasing Earnings 16:14 Work with Stephanie

Full Transcript

BTW: This episode of One Thing That Worked is produced by Beverly Media. Featuring entrepreneurs and podcasters who share the one decision, strategy, or habit that had the biggest impact on their business.
0:00 Intro
Stephanie Correct. Exactly right. And that’s every doctor’s passion. When they tend to work at other practices, they look at it going, I’d love to do this myself. I had a client come up to me and they were acquiring a practice. And they had engaged me quite late in the service. And they said, I’m opening up in 2 weeks. I need absolutely everything done. And in Australia, our compliances are so technical with Medicare and all of our paperwork and everything for transferring of ownership.
Sergey Hello everyone. Welcome to One Thing That Worked. Today my guest is Stephanie Portoglou, who’s a medical business consultant. Stephanie, welcome to the show.
Stephanie Thank you so much.
Sergey So tell us about your company. What do you do?
1:02 About Practice Medical Consulting
Stephanie Yeah, certainly. So I have built a healthcare consulting company. I’ve spent over 15 years working in the healthcare industry, particularly in medical practice management, business operations. And throughout that time, I kept on seeing the same thing. Doctors are incredibly skilled at looking after their patients, but when it comes to opening up and acquiring their own medical practice, they seem to found a bit of a struggle in doing so. And then that’s when I came in and I created the healthcare consulting business. And this is to be that person behind the scenes to help practitioners on their journey through operational setup to starting up their medical centers, acquiring their medical centers and being that person through that entire journey all the way through and supporting them so they can continue focusing on their patients while I help the business grow and flourish and operationally move.
Sergey Wow, this is very interesting consulting industry. So you work with doctors who are ready to start their own thing. You help doctors to become entrepreneurs and business owners.
Stephanie Correct. Exactly right. And that’s every doctor’s passion when they tend to work at other practices. They look at it going, I’d love to do this myself. And that’s where I’m like, you know what? Let’s help the little people on their journey and make them big and make their businesses succeed and flourish and grow and become something that they’ve always dreamed of having.
Sergey Wow. So tell us a little bit about some of your user cases, things that you are proud of.
2:44 Success Client Cases
Stephanie Yeah, certainly. So I have had a fair few challenges along the way and one of the biggest challenges I had which I was so proud of was I had a client come up to me and they were acquiring a practice and they had engaged me quite late in the service and they said I’m opening up in 2 weeks. I need absolutely everything done. And in Australia, our compliances are so technical with Medicare and all of our paperwork and everything for transferring of ownership. And I ended up accomplishing it perfectly and streamlined within the two weeks. Don’t ask me how I did it. It was a miracle in itself, but that was one of the best things that I did. And one of the other things that really stood out for me in my career path was when I worked for a clinic and we actually made it the epitome of a perfect operational practice. We were always innovative. We always looked at enhancing business and when I came on board they had about three to four doctors and then we built it up to 16 doctors within a year or two. So seeing that growth and supporting them and then making the business so profitable was something that was super rewarding for me and starting off with barely any profit to then building it up to be million-dollar profits moving forward.
Sergey Can you name the names of the clinics? We will show it up as B-rolls.
Stephanie I think I’ll need to get their permission to name them first and foremost from a privacy perspective but I’ll definitely love to share it in future if people are keen to know. There is a lot of blogs on my website as well of clinic successes that I’ve done.
Sergey Cool. Well, okay. So these people who don’t understand how to run businesses, how to run clinics, you come in, you streamline the process or teach them how to do stuff. So for you, let me ask you the signature question of my show. What was the one thing, one habit or strategy or whatever that really was pivotal for you and that worked the most in your career, in your business?
4:54 Pivotal Strategy
Stephanie Yeah. So the one thing that I saw that was pivotal and what changed in the industry is my competitors are very used to the typical consulting support where you just provide them advice, you give them some ideas and you move on. Whereas I get physically involved. I partner with my clients and my team partner with our clients just so that we can guide them the whole way through. We believe in a physical presence in order for us to do appropriate auditing. We don’t just do okay we’ll do a brief audit then we expect us to implement these things and then they go off with it. We go in to see how the processes are running. Are they actually working? Is there anything with the team that they’re finding as pain points? Because the business is built around your team. That’s what helps your business thrive and that’s what we want to do to support them. So, we look at it, we review, and we see what we can do to help enhance, help develop, and just be there with them on a quarterly basis for a full week on site and help them all the way through.
Sergey But I mean, what are some biggest pain points that you help them solve?
6:06 Biggest Pain Points
Stephanie Yeah, so from financial and having a look at all their finances, that’s a big pain point. I see a lot of clinics at a financial loss, not being able to even keep up with payroll of their staff, struggling to be able to make ends meet and build up revenue, where this is where we look at strategies to help implement things. We have a look and do an overall budget review. So many practices I’ve walked into have no idea what a budget is. So being able to sit with them, put a budget review in place, see what our overhead costs are, what can we do to optimize government funding because there are certain things that we can get as government funding for general practice to help support here in Australia. And then having an overview of okay, where can we cut down on certain things and what can we do to help build in more revenue? What item numbers can we optimize? Because in Australia you can co-build certain items that will help us build in revenue and a lot of doctors unfortunately have never had the training. The government doesn’t supply the training for practitioners and then that’s what I do when I come in is I educate them. I train them and I support them and going this is what we can build and this is how we can do things to help optimize and make the business flourish more.
Sergey For someone who wants to become a consultant and to work with high-end professionals like you do, how do they start? What do they do? How can they enter a medical consultancy field in the first place?
7:39 Starting Out as a Practice Manager
Stephanie Yeah. So a lot of people that I see are consultants. They’ve worked as practice managers for a lot of years because a lot of practice managers in Australia, you don’t require an actual degree or any form of study. A lot of them are receptionists that move into that management role that then move their career up from there. But I really advise people if you really want to learn consultancy or become an entrepreneur yourself, always look at business. Learn business. Start joining entrepreneur groups. Have a look at things that help with a referral basis or studies and learn off of the big entrepreneurs out there that have really made it because that will help you on your journey. A lot of reading, a lot of studying and that will make you the best consultant out there listening to podcasts, listening to things that will help you understand overall structures rather than just sticking to one lane of the basics of what you’ll understand.
Sergey Yeah, big picture. And I think this is a common advice that I hear and I can definitely attest to it that it’s easier even though a startup culture is so sexy and it feels like you have to be super young as to be a starter, in reality the researchers show that the most successful entrepreneurs are over 40. So there’s nothing bad in learning and working at the big corporation, you know, just soaking in all the knowledge from top managers, CEO, whoever and then only then you can go on the path of either starting your own thing, your own business, you’ll have the network in addition to the knowledge, right? Because networks is instrumental in our business life. Or you can pick then another direction which you picked and become a consultant. Right.
Stephanie Correct. 100%. And there’s so many different avenues you can go through to learn it. And that’s where, you know, I’ll support a consultant that’s coming up. I’ve had so many reach out to me and I will mentor them and help them because I love seeing other people succeed. And I don’t look at it as a competitor. I look at it as somebody that we can teach, we can grow, and then they can create something just as amazing. You’re never too old to start. That’s what I always say. You can always start no matter what age and you can do amazing things.
Sergey Let me ask you a few best things or most workable practices or approaches. So, what is one thing that works best for you in terms of acquiring new clients?
10:17 What Works Best in Finding New Clients
Stephanie So, the biggest thing that’s worked for me has been more on a referral basis. Networking has been massive for me. Embedding myself in the right industries that work with healthcare professionals. Getting a good partnership with them, develop the same values. So values is a big thing for me and as well as working with the right partners is huge. And we want to make sure that we create that journey for our clients that it’s something that we can partner on and create. Like I’m going to use a scenario here. There’s a service that I’ve recently created that is in the center. It’s a service that’s never been done before and there was a breakdown in it and I researched everywhere around between New Zealand and Australia if this service is in there but it’s not. So the service is more working with the IT integration. So when someone wants to change from one software program to another, yes they’ve got their IT component. Yes, they’ve got everything there with the software component, but they don’t have a middle person that can help them with the hard manual process that you need to move across because not everything transfers within a transition. So, that’s where I physically come in and I go, you continue your day-to-day operations, you continue to go with supporting your team, helping them, and we will do the training on site because otherwise they’re on hold or they’re watching Zooms and not everybody comprehends through a Zoom. And we will do the full onsite training. We will do the nitty-gritty manual transfer over. So when you’re ready to go live, everything’s already in the system and you don’t have to worry about a thing.
Sergey All right. And let me ask you about the financial literacy. What would you advise to all the entrepreneurs or people who want to become consultants, solopreneurs? What would be your advice in terms of keeping track of their finances or how to basically become financially literate as a business person?
12:26 Financial Literacy Advice
Stephanie Yeah, of course. Look, it’s always good to sit down and create, like I say, a budget plan. Have a look at what your overhead costs are going to cost you. Review all of that and then see your structure of the service you’re providing. What’s the value of the service that you’re providing and how is it that you can create a service that will be cost effective that will benefit the client and not drive clients away but also be something that could help you within a profitable process. So always having a look. Consultancy isn’t a big overhead business. There’s not a lot of overhead costs within a consultancy business. It’s only going to start being an overhead cost as you start growing, bringing more people on board. And salary and wages in any business is your highest cost. But it is quite minimal. Your websites are quite minimal. Marketing is a really good big cost as well. But you just have to look at seeing okay, how much have we got? How much can we leverage? And what can we do to profit? So having a look at your marketing plans, your business plan, review that on a regular basis every six months, what can we do to improve and innovate, being innovative, looking at things that’s going to help grow your business and make it more profitable through that process there.
Sergey But do I understand correctly that you earn more, you increase your revenue by introducing new services but also main thing by upping your price. Is that correct?
13:49 Increasing Earnings
Stephanie Correct. And it’s more about the service you provide. It’s about quality of service and people will pay for quality. They’d rather pay for quality than quantity fast and not having the outcome that they want.
Sergey Right? We’re very picky as human beings, but we’re happy to spend the money if we know we’re going to get a great outcome.
Stephanie So, if we review it, we’ll be able to sit there and go, okay, if we know we’re at that level where we can make it so seamless, they don’t have to worry about a thing and we take 90% of the stress, they will invest in you. And having a look, like I said, at services, see what services you can implement that are additional things that are lacking in the industry or what’s out there that you can partner with something else or another company as a contractor or things like that that can help bring revenue in and it’s all about relationship building. It’s about an in-person relationship with your clientele, creating an awesome environment for them that they feel confident and comfortable to come to you even outside of a work question that they can come to you and be like, you know what? I can give Steph a call just to be like, hey, Steph, I’m struggling with this with something else, but nothing to do with business, but I’m happy to be there. And we can guide them and support them because that’s what they’re coming to you for is that advice and that support no matter what.
Sergey Yeah. People are talented in everything. So pretty much I think if you develop relationships with people and you say like hey I have an idea how we can streamline something or improve in your company we can do it, they will trust you because you’ve got track record of someone who completes the work, right, and make their life better.
Stephanie Yeah. And it just builds itself off trust. Exactly that. It starts at trust. Like I look at the five dysfunctions of a team. That’s one of my favorite books that I’ve read and I even take that to practices and I hand that over to the owners and I go read this, understand it. It starts off at trust. If your trust is broken, the whole pyramid would fall.
Sergey Okay. I mean, what is the way to contact you or what types of corporations or clients are you interested in as we’re wrapping up?
16:14 Work with Stephanie
Stephanie Yeah, so I cover a whole range of services. I’m interested in assisting allied health professionals, general practice, and specialists. And we’re even looking at dental as well. So, assisting people within dental businesses. And getting into contact with me is jumping on my website www.privatepmc.com.au. You can email me or you can call me. We are looking at even expanding into the New Zealand market as well. So, we’re looking at expanding as much as we can, helping everyone and potentially moving overseas as well and supporting people all around the world.
Sergey Great. Thank you, Stephanie.
Stephanie Thank you so much.