Changing Industries

The Problem:

Bob was unhappy in his job in for-profit hospital administration. He desperately wanted to focus more of his energy on delivering direct patient value and less on driving ROI and negotiating reimbursements. Bob’s dream was to build and run a healthcare-related nonprofit.

The challenge was that Bob had no formal nonprofit leadership experience, making him uncompetitive for the nonprofit executive leadership roles he had seen on the published job market. He also needed to make more money than traditional nonprofits were willing to pay. He had all but given up the cause.

The Solution:

Job Guy helped Bob think differently. It was clear that the only reasonable path forward was to persuade someone with private sector ambitions to fund his zero-profit vision. A little cursory research uncovered a local angel investor who had funded an electronic medical records startup that was struggling to establish relevance. The venture was a great concept but lacked industry credibility and a population of advocates to inspire the healthcare community to sign up.

Bob persuaded this entrepreneur to start a non-profit clinical information registry, which Bob would lead, to enable an additional channel of contacts that could be converted into prospective clients. Additionally, the registry could be used to build the patient record base for the for-profit enterprise down the road.

The Result:

By persuading a well-funded entrepreneur of the value of the non-profit arm to the overall business objective, Bob was able to achieve his goal of becoming a nonprofit executive director while earning the equivalent of a quite lucrative private sector paycheck.