What comes next after walking on the moon?

Back in 1995, I had the good fortune of spending four hours alone with America’s first man in space: Rear Admiral Alan Shepherd. I walked into the office of one of my bosses, Jack Lengyel, who was the athletic director at the Naval Academy at the time, to ask him permission to hold my wedding reception in the “N-Room” at Hubbard Hall. The encounter was a bit awkward, because he assumed I was coming to ask him for his car so that I could pick up Shepherd in style at the Key Bridge Marriott. I left his office with the keys to the N-Room and the keys to Jack’s car, so I picked up Shepherd (in style) and drove him to the Naval Academy, where he was going to do a signing for his book "Moon Shot." 
 
We had a great conversation, but one thing I wished I had asked him: “So, what comes next after walking on the moon?” How about you? When you achieved something big in your life (like starting your business), did you say, “I’ve arrived!” or did you say, “What’s next?”

One local entrepreneur who keeps asking “What’s next?” is Dr. Jay Greenstein, CEO of the seven-location Sport and Spine Rehab. After having some decent success his first eight years in the business, he became frustrated by the increasing complexity that occurs with any business growth. Jay knew he was a great chiropractor, but he wanted to be a better entrepreneur.

Determined to change things, 10 years ago he signed up for the Wharton Small Business Development Program, which — combined with some insights that he got from reading Jack Welsh’s book "Jack" – inspired Jay to take three bold steps that transformed his business:

1) Implementing Six Sigma. Although Six Sigma is used by many of the largest companies in the world (GE, Raytheon, etc.), Jay was sold on the idea and signed up for training. He used the process to overhaul his billing, which resulted in roughly a 30% increase in revenue. His firm now has its first Six Sigma Black Belt. If you are a small business owner – or a manager in a small business – have you ever considered using Six Sigma? Please take two seconds to answer that question in my informal, and anonymous, poll.

2) Rethinking the enterprise. The Six Sigma experience transformed how Jay looks at his practice. Rather than looking at his business as a service provider, Jay and his staff look at Sport and Spine Rehab as a manufacturing firm: a manufacturer of health care outcomes and insurance claims. This subtle mindset shift has enabled him and his staff to discover process improvement breakthroughs that would otherwise not be obvious.

3) Implementing transformational technology. Five years ago, Jay decided to make a big investment in SuccessFactors . The results were felt almost immediately; among the many subjective advantages, revenue per employee increased 7 percent within one year of implementation, even when headcount increased over 25 percent. A few years later, Jay decided to engage the online reputation management company DemandForce to transform his marketing and operations. Besides saving his clinics thousands of staff hours a year in the appointment confirmation process, the number of new patients resulting from web searches increased by 1000 percent!

What’s the bottom line? Sport and Spine Rehab is ranked in the Inc 5000 for fastest growing, privately held companies in the U.S. The enterprise has 60 employees and, during the economic downturn of the last three years, his company sales grew 14 percent annually and his staff grew by about 10 percent.
There are plenty of notes from my talk with Jay that I just couldn’t make fit above, so if you would like to learn more from him, stop by to hear his talk at the National Capital Region Entrepreneur’s Forum luncheon on Jan. 23.