Along my business travels I’ve come across some red flags that I think are worth sharing.

Mind you, most of these are from a physician’s standpoint:

1. “I like to let the doctor be a doctor, while I take care of all the business stuff”

HUGE red flag.

These types generally speaking want to middle man their way into your practice and generally want a hefty cut to do so.

I’m not talking value propositions, I’m talking about the “let me do everything and just trust that I’m doing everything right.”

Trust but verify.

I won’t work with anyone who says this to me if I can avoid it.

Trust but verify.

2. Financial products specifically aimed at physicians.

Money is money.

It doesn’t matter so much how you earned it.

A good financial advisor should be able to help you regardless of whether you earned your income from seeing patients or selling cattle.

Advisors who market like this are basically targeting physicians as cash cows.

We tend to earn a lot of money (notice I didn’t say accumulate wealth), but generally are very bad at keeping it.

Ask your accountant which advisor you should use, they see everyone’s’ money.

If you don’t have an accountant, you should get one.

3. Meeting for a lunch meeting where we don’t eat lunch or get coffee.

This is a more personal one, and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s a real turn off!

It says to me that I’m not worth sitting down with and you likely have a “what’s in it for me” mentality.

Relationships generally don’t work out for me with these types.

Please add some red flags if you have them, I always find them fascinating.

Maybe we can learn from each other’s mistakes instead of repeating them all ourselves.