HOW AN EMPIRE CAN BE SET UP ........VISION , HARD WORK, IMAGINATION ...

HOW AN EMPIRE CAN BE SET UP ........VISION , HARD WORK, IMAGINATION ......Alok 


Growing An Empire On Low Testosterone

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Snacks, refreshments, Sports on TV--a waiting room made for men. The
Low T Center seeks to create a male-friendly clinical environment.

Mike Sisk’s dissatisfaction with his own experience treating a medical
condition led him to startup a fast-growing empire of clinics that’s
generating about $4 million per month in revenue throughout seven
states.

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Sisk was one of the 13 million men in the United States that suffer
from lower than average testosterone, or low T (see video below) and
found the treatment of the condition – buying testosterone and
injecting it at home – led him to feel that more could be done for him
and patients like him. He began the first of his clinics – Low T
Center – in 2010 in his home state of Texas. Sisk reached
profitability 11 months later.

“The first year we opened two centers, the next year we opened three
and then last year we opened 13,” Sisk said. So far in 2013 he’s added
another seven clinics to the company and expects to hit 65 locations
by year’s end.

Sisk acted as his own angel, using about $500,000 of savings he and
wife’s, co-founder Mickala Sisk,had in cash to fund Low T Center
(Sisk’s previous jobs include a sales manager at FedEx FDX +1.45%, an
account executive at Ernst & Young ,PricewaterhouseCoopers ). He has
since been funding growth by investing profits back into the company.
Though growth may seem swift, Sisk is not satisfied and, for the first
time, plans to raise about $15 million within the next 18 months.

Low T Center's Mike Sisk plans to take his company public by 2015.

“I can take it to the 100 largest cities in the U.S., coast to coast,
just using the model that I’m going on but what about the smaller
towns? The Wacos, the Temples—those would be successful operating
units,” Sisk says with the confidence of an entrepreneur who feels
he’s really onto something and has yet to experience a serious
setback. “You couldn’t fund that out of this model that I’m using.
You’re either going to have to take on venture capital or private
equity capital or you’re going to have to take it public.”

So far Sisk has been approached twice by private equity firms looking
to invest but has so far deflected offers as he refuses to sell a
majority state. He could be willing to part with about 1/3 of company
ownership at this time, he said. While an account executive with Ernst
& Young during the dot-com boom, Sisk said he saw tech founders go a
bit mad chasing funding only to lose control of their own companies.
“I was like, ‘if I ever have a good idea, I’m not going to do that,’”
he says now, chuckling.

Sisk is not just looking for capital, he wants an investor to provide
leverage, such as an angle to market to a 40 to 60-year-old male
customer base or access to resources that would allow for faster
growth, like access to medical staff. His ultimate goal is to go
public and will start to contemplate making the move once the company
hits about $100 million annual, which could be 2014 or 2015, when the
company establishes 100 clinics. Given his growth trajectory, he might
putt it off.

Sisk’s goal has been to create a truly men-oriented clinic where small
wait times for treatment are the norm. Patients arrive, blood is drawn
and within 15 minutes testosterone levels are gauged and records are
kept. If pronounced a treatable patient, a series of other tests are
run, Sisk explained. With test records accumulated from its 6,000
active patients – meaning a visit every 7 to 10 days – as well as non
active, he thinks Low T Center maintains more data points on 40 to
60-year-old men taking testosterone, than any other clinic in the
world. Since its founding it’s completed about 250,000 appointments.