We talk here about beginning with the end in mind and I will tell you I don’t think enough Doctors take it literally enough.
While it is a perfect time of year to be reflective and future focused at the very same time, beginning with the end in mind is something that should happen every single day.
I gave one of the most vivid descriptions of what makes one Doctor successful and another Doctor struggling to break through in last week’s Report. If you studied it carefully, I broke it down in both the tangible and intangible, that was attitude and behavior – how you think and what you do.
When both are in complete alignment with a clearly defined plan to achieve your goals, you are on your way to realizing your potential while experience a lifestyle balance.
The alternative, of course, is misalignment. In particular, an inadequate (or completely absent) plan that just doesn’t add up no matter how hard you try. This is the biggest problem for doctors who get stuck in the cycle of working harder and harder but getting less and less. They end up burnt out from the grind and lack any resemblance of balance in their personal lives.
I will say, I was very impressed by the number of Doctors who have already scheduled their 2021 Practice Success Blueprint that I offered as my gift to you to make next year your best year ever. If you missed it, I’ve added a couple more slots yet this year.
I’m committed to helping you not just get your plan done but in motion before the new year begins. Get started on Your Customized 2021 Practice Success Blueprint >>>
The fact is you can have a great attitude, be a nice person, even “do the work” and still come up short, wondering why it’s so hard or not as rewarding as you’d hoped.
That’s actually very common. In fact, that is the norm. Anything else is the exception and yet doctors try to fix it with what they know… more of the same.
This is because they get stuck going through the motions, caught in the cycle of the month, chasing their overhead, and trapped in the routine. It can be hard to look up from that.
But not for you, because you see the bigger picture. That bigger picture is where beginning with the end in mind is at.
Here’s the most interesting part, back to the story of those two doctors, so similar in every way yet so different in their dramatically different results, lifestyle, peace of mind, financial independence, and personal fulfillment, it is because every doctor has their own vision of success.
For 2021, some see their “end” as actually a transition plan to prepare their practice for sale. For others it is exactly the opposite.
Then there are doctors that are wanting the practice to be less dependent on them or others who are really excited about bringing in a new procedure or getting more comprehensive cases.
We’ll go through all of this and so much more when we figure out your “begin with the end in mind” victory list for 2021 during our 2021 Planning Session.
So many different paths for so many different doctors. The real question is what do you want to be different with your business next year than it was this year.
Wait, don’t answer that yet.
Because, the only way you can honestly answer it is by first clearly seeing your “end in mind” and then working backwards to make sure that every thought, every action, and every decision in regards to your schedule, team, patients, prices, insurance, treatment planning, and every thing else – is leading you deliberately towards your goals.
Allow me to be more blunt…
When I first ask you to tell me your goals for next year, I am very certain you will have some but I also know one of the very first places your mind goes is to your practice.
And I get it because that is what serves as the vehicle in your life that takes you everywhere you want to go.
Here is where you should start focusing… on yourself, your life, your family – defining what is on the life list before you define what is on the practice list.
It has to go in that order. If it doesn’t, you know exactly what happens, because it happens to the majority of doctors and it happened to the doctor on the losing end of the story I told from the past two weeks.
What happens is there is less room left on the life list when the practice goes first.
When you begin with the end in mind of your life experience – everything from daily routine to checking off your bucket list – you then will have all the motivation and energy to make the practice deliver.
Now we can do my reverse engineering principles not just in theory but in actuality and we can define down to the dollar what your practice profit must be to deliver on your income, savings, wealth building, debt reduction, and everything else. We can calibrate it to the hour, the day, the team member, the operatory, and (I know some people get weak in the knees when I say it – but yes) even to the patient.
Though that is NOT the point or the purpose and we never look at the patients as anything but true and genuine relationships. However, unless you want to run a 24 hour convenience store and pack them in like sardines, you need a math and money formula that adds up properly for your profit which means that it has to be filled up with patients that will equate to, invest in, and desire the dentistry.
To me, that’s fun stuff. It might be overwhelming to you, it might be uninteresting to you, none the less, if you want to have a purposeful AND profitable practice then you have to make smart decisions about it.
Do you know how much profit most doctors get out of their practice? Aside from the most accurate answer which is – NOT MUCH. Especially if you factor in a salary paid to the doctor doing the dentistry. Even if that is you, you can live off of it but you can’t get rich on it. You can’t become financially independence and “work by choice” without the profit piece.
Most doctors get ‘what’s left’ and then figure out what to do with it. That’s their profit and therefore every decision in their life is reactive in “if there’s enough money.”
That’s no way to live, no way to practice, and no way to run a business. That is certainly the fastest way to lead to a loss of motivation and an attitude just waiting for the weekend or the vacation or the holidays or the end of the year.
You deserve better.
And next week I will breakdown exactly the “begin with the end in mind” decisions that should be made about your practice and all the components of it when you compare this year to next year and you decide to create the future you want instead of just what happens.
Your challenge today is: put yourself first – focus on life outside the practice and set your personal goals to orchestrate the perfect year (that story we talked about you writing last week). Then reverse engineer that into determining how your practice fits into that puzzle.
This is a worthy objective rather than just trying to arbitrarily “grow” your practice or make changes for the sake of changes or even worse just waking up next year and walking into more of the same being frustrated with the results (or lack thereof).
Instead, doctors like you who are here reading this looking for an edge get to choose to make the most of your new year. Use it to your advantage by having clarity about your goals and beginning with the end in mind.
That begets the question…
What will you make of next year or what will next year make of you?
