Client Mini-case – Peter McCann, CEO of Growth Orthopedics
Peter McCann is CEO of Growth Orthopedics (“Growth Ortho”), a private-equity-backed, orthopedics-focused Managed Service Organization (“MSO”) that started working with Topline Strategy (“Topline”) in 2022.
McCann came to his role with more than two decades of healthcare experience. Still, the orthopedic MSO sub-sector was so new that making mistakes would have been easy even for an experienced player.
“The orthopedic private equity space is only about six years old. It’s still developing,” said McCann. “You need guidance to tell you you’re in the right lane.”
McCann was experienced enough to know that insights were more important than ego when growing a new business.
“I didn’t want to know if I was right. I wanted to know if the business was right,” McCann said. “I needed to know: Do we have the right people? Are we going after the right customers? In business, you can’t validate yourself. You need an outside group with a process to do that for you.”
The outcome of Topline’s research didn’t produce any big surprises, but it did help the company narrow its vision to the areas with the most significant opportunities.
“The engagement with Topline kept us aligned, validated some things, and gave us some things to work on,” said McCann. “The executable that came out of it was great for us. It helped us realign our M&A efforts and validate the customers we should have been going after. That kept us focused.”
That focus gave Growth Ortho intelligence on which physicians and practices would likely sign up. This metric is a critical element of Growth Ortho’s valuation. Since the partnership cycle can take twelve months or more, identifying which orthopedic practices were most likely to join helped Growth Ortho supercharge its expansion… and avoid time-consuming mistakes.
“We took some advice on the volume of touchpoints. We made adjustments to that,” said McCann. “Topline validated the best subset of customers we wanted to go after. Ultimately, we went to three hundred potential customers from an original subset of four thousand.”
Growth Ortho also used Topline to refine its messaging and make the messages it delivered clearly understood and credible. “Topline helped us do both,” said McCann.
Using surveys, Topline created structure and scale around gathering insights about the client base.
“When I started, I was doing eight pitches a month. I needed to strike out a few times to figure out (where the messaging was falling short),” said McCann. “When I’m pitching now, the messages resonate differently. Getting feedback from the physicians in the other MSOs was a real eye-opener.”
For Growth Ortho, the Topline difference wasn’t just about the process but, also, the Topline staff.
“I think the key differentiator was the level of commitment and expertise Topline brought to the project,” said McCann. “There wasn’t a learning curve for Topline. That’s impressive because the space is so new. The caliber of individuals that Topline brought to the table could execute what we needed, and that’s very difficult to do in healthcare.”
“I’ve worked with probably hundreds of consulting firms, and most of the time, I have to teach them about the healthcare space,” McCann added. “I didn’t have to do that with Topline.”