Today we’d like to introduce you to John Gwin and Kyle Battles.
John, Kyle, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
We’re both Minnesota boys that made our way to Chicago by way of DePaul University. We’ve known each other since kindergarten…part of our sales pitch is actually that “we’ve been best friends all our lives.” Truth be told I (John) didn’t get in with the cool kids (Kyle) until maybe 4th grade or so.
This was never the long-term game plan, but we both found ourselves in medical billing or the administration end of the medical industry after college and decided to take a chance. $700 and a laptop later we were business partners. I still remember running a finger down a list of Latin words on the internet and landing on Auctus in the wee hours of the morning over a few beers. “Growth” seemed then and remains now a good moniker for what we strive to offer our clients.
We have been very fortunate to have some incredibly loyal clients from the start that remain supportive of us to this day. Working in the niche we have tried to carve out for ourselves within the medical community has actually been instrumental in our growth, especially in Chicagoland. The plastic surgery community can be very competitive, but it is also very tight knit; we’ve made some great connections, had the privilege of working with many renowned surgeons and with hard work our network has continued to grow. Now, our business has taken us to a point where we are really ready to break out nationally and hope to make some big strides this coming year. Every day is exciting…we keep moving, learning, hustling and thus far good things have been happening for us.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth…I can think of a few other adjectives that might fit the bill a bit better. It has been fun, but I won’t lie…it has been stressful and a lot of hard work. Being able to build your own destiny comes with the weight of being the one that has to build that destiny. There’s no coasting as business owner…I think the Discovery Channel once said “sharks die if they stop swimming,” or something like that right?
I think one of the biggest challenges we’ve faced has many prongs, but all of the same point. Cultivating a work environment, culture and identity as a company is a challenge. We’re not some duo of visionaries that had the roadmap to success laid out in front of us; it was very hard to jump from two guys working their rears off, pulling all the stops and making a thing or two up along the way, to a real business where every little detail matters because it represents who we are as owners and as people to a degree. There is just so much that goes into dealing with clients, venders, partners, employees, the relationships between and within each of those groups and so on. Beyond that the weight of being responsible for someone else’s livelihood in that we’re cutting paychecks still has me in awe some days. It is an awesome responsibility.
In the end, we’ve got this growing, ever changing entity in our business…keeping it healthy and growing without losing sight of where we want to get to will always be our biggest challenge I think.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about The Auctus Group – what should we know?
Oh I know this one…the ol’ elevator speech:
“We are an operations and financial consulting firm serving the aesthetic end of medicine.”
Our goal is to offer expertise in administration for private practice physicians with a focus on finances and operations. What does that actually mean? We offer medical billing, medical bookkeeping, staffing, training, merchant services processing, operations consulting…the list goes on. All of this is focused on the plastic surgery and dermatology specialties. If a physician has a problem in the office, we want to be that resource and solution. We’ve worked on projects as small as developing cash box management for a front desk team and as big as launching a medical spa wing for a private practice.
Our backbone has always been medical billing. That’s where we started. We both have experience working for billing companies as well as in medical practice management and we built this company to be the best marriage of the two. We know our clients, their staff, their nuances, their preferences and their problems…we know their practices. As a result, we have been able to offer a genuinely higher level of service. We have the expertise and experience of a professional services firm, but offer the cohesive approach and convenience of an in house employee.
Our focus on plastic surgery and dermatology coupled with our approach of offering a full suite of services is definitely what sets us apart. There’s not another company doing what we do the way we are doing it that I’m aware of and we’re doing our best to capitalize on that.
In terms of what we’re most proud of…I would have to say it’s our client retention. Surgeons (earmuffs for any surgeons out there reading this) are not always the easiest group to please. We’re also inherently involved in the heart and soul of other small business owner’s companies because we work with the finances so there really isn’t much margin for error. The fact that we have been able to keep our clients happy enough to refer us to colleagues and friends over the years is definitely a great source of pride.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Honestly, not a thing. As corny as it sounds every mistake has been a learning experience that we’ve grown from…and believe me, there have been plenty. This business owner gig comes with new opportunities to learn every day so it is hard to say that we would give any of those lessons back.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.auctusgroupconsulting.com
- Phone: 708.966.3025
- Email: sales@theauctusgroup.net
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