Edgar Radjabli is a dental surgeon and entrepreneur in Boca Raton Florida. Edgar grew up in Moscow Russia, and eventually made his way to the United States where he lives today and runs his corporations. Edgar has several passions in his business life including dentistry and data analytics and has run successful businesses in both. Edgar Radjabli received his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from The University of Maryland, and even while in school, he was able to launch his first company, which combined his knowledge of data analytics and dentistry with his business that used data to allow medical professionals to choose the best location for an office. Since then, Edgar has launched many successful businesses from his own dental practices to businesses in the technology and finance sectors. Edgar was practicing dental surgery with his practice full time until a serious car accident sidelined his dental career, and now he spends his time as an entrepreneur with several successful companies.
Where did the idea for Medical Finance Professionals come from?
We started Medical Finance Professionals on the simple premise that we wanted to build a solution for the complete lifecycle of borrowing needs a doctor will have, bringing them the best across the industry in one convenient place, with one contact point.
What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?
My day starts with getting my daughter ready for school. She wakes up at 7 am so that is a great time for me to also do a quick check-in with my team via email, to see if there are any priority issues to address. Then, after taking my daughter to school, I’m at the office with a cup of coffee and ready to start the day. I also focus on overall health, taking daily vitamins and exercising, which always helps me retain focus and boost energy levels, as well as alleviate the everyday stress of work.
How do you bring ideas to life?
The first step is to create a plan, recognizing strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats that will be faced when working towards the goal of realizing the idea.
What’s one trend that excites you?
The biggest game changer is big data analytics in healthcare. It can help increase effectiveness, reduce costs, eliminate human errors in healthcare delivery and create a much better patient experience
What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?
Don’t put off for tomorrow what can be done today. Prioritizing action items is important, but low priority items can become urgent if not addressed effectively over time. It’s much easier to meet deadlines when work has been completed step by step ahead of schedule. I make sure to allocate time in the day to address long term goals that we are working on slowly. It reduces stress and last minute scrambling.
What advice would you give your younger self?
I would say to surround yourself with good team members early and let them help you. Too often, I’ve tried to go at it alone because I thought I didn’t need help or expert advice, only to find out a bit too late that there were gaps in my knowledge and skill that would have been easily filled with great team members and would have allowed me to progress much faster.
Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Within 10 years, we will have a worldwide digital currency, likely built from a basket of the world’s top current currencies (such as the Special Drawing Rights currently being used by IMF/World Bank) that will be accepted universally and reduce all payments to mobile/touchless.
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
Keep your mind clear and reduce stress by living a healthy lifestyle
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?
Deliver exceptional service. Under-promise and over-deliver. The most important thing is not to just get the sale, but get a happy customer. Happy clients naturally become fans and lead to organic growth. That is why our sales people are all our customer service agents. We believe that the customer relationship should be managed by one person throughout its life, from first point of touch to after sale service.
What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
I was once a bit too trusting with business partners, focusing on the excitement of what we were going to build rather than checking their credentials and skillset. When it became obvious the person had misrepresented what they can bring to the table, it created significant strife and led to closing the business down and starting from scratch. On the second go around, I partnered with the right people, and the business grew faster than I expected.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
I would like to see an AI tool that analyzes medical billing to detect errors by comparing the billing codes with procedure notes and images. Billions are wasted each year on incorrect medical billing, and billions more spent on personnel reading and manually checking codes.
What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?
We bought a bunch of fireworks to put on a show for the neighborhood. All the kids came out and left with huge smiles on their faces!
What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive?
We use Jira for our task management. It’s an excellent tool that allows to track, prioritize and time various activities a team is doing. It’s also great to measure efficiency of team members, to help identify the all-stars vs the clock-punchers.
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg. It’s an excellent book that explains why service is more important than sales, and how focusing on the former organically creates the latter.
What is your favorite quote?
“Customer service should not be a department. It should be the entire company.” – Tony Hsieh – Taylor Chastain
Key Learnings:
- Physical health leads to mental health which leads to better work productivity and reduced stress
- New technology will rapidly change old industries, like healthcare.
- Great service leads to great sales, not the other way around
Steve (Stefan) Junge hails from Germany and helps with the day-to-day publishing of interviews on IdeaMensch. While he and Mario don’t share a favorite soccer club, their enthusiasm to help entrepreneurs is a shared passion.