In today’s Report, we have one universal theme (a theme that has value in every aspect of your practice, with every team member, and quite frankly in every area of your life), that I am asking you to apply to in a very targeted manner.
That is this… to not accept the status quo just because it’s the way it currently exists. Regardless of whether or not things are done accidentally or on purpose, I’m here to tell you that your willingness to challenge the status quo will be the thing that leads you to the greatest breakthroughs.
We have talked so much about increasing the value of your time, then the value of your team, and now I want to talk about the value of your treatment.
Here’s what I know: most doctors operate as though they have zero control over how much dentistry they do and therefore they give up control over how much money they can make. This is simply not the case.
In my most recent book, Creating A Highly Profitable Dental Practice (That You’ll Actually Enjoy!), I lay out why and how you should take control over your practice by doing dentistry on purpose to ensure that you are running it – not it running you.
You’ll read about how doctors changed the way they practice, regained balance in their lifestyle, and still set all-time records. None of these things would be possible if my doctors were stuck in the mindset that they have to do things the way they’ve always done things.
Doing what you’ve always done gets you what you’ve always got. Everyone already knows this.
And yet, very few doctors are willing to insistently and consistently question the status quo, the industry norms, and the ‘way things are.’ Very few doctors stop to ask themselves first if they are actually satisfied and second whether or not it is effective at producing the results you want.
People, industries, practices, businesses, doctors all evolve, grow, and change over time and that means that the methods and strategies need to do the same.
My questions for you, before we get into the topic of increasing the value of your treatment, is…
In what ways have you changed over the years with your clinical skills and expectations, with your diagnostic ability, with your overall beliefs around optimal health, the dentistry you want to be doing, and ultimately how you desire to work?
That’s a big and complex set of questions. Take some time to unpack it. It’s your life and business; no one else is taking initiative to avoid falling into the ‘business as usual’ trap of mediocrity and under performance.
Just this past weekend at my Wealth Group’s Summer Experience and Mastermind Gathering, one of my most entrepreneurial doctors said something to this extent…
“It’s funny how it wasn’t that long ago that we were all talking about record months and being excited about $120,000 or $140,000 and now if we aren’t past $200,000 we’re not happy.”
There are three points to that.
First, to each their own, numbers are irrelevant if you don’t know what their goals are, their lifestyle structure, or their level of profitability.
Second, everyone forgets where they came from and it’s important not to. Don’t get stuck in the past but don’t lose sight of it either. What once was a victory is now considered a failure and there is merit and achievement in that all by itself.
Third, on the surface of their practice nothing has change – no more days or hours or team or size or space or doctors. In fact, it’s the same doctor, owner, city, practice, even patients (in most cases). The only thing that has changed is – the number!
How can this be? Well, it’s because of one thing and one thing only. They figured out how to grow the value of their treatment.
It goes beyond just figuring out how to fit more dentistry in your days (time value) or to make your people worth more through training, processes, systems, and structure (team value). Ultimately, it hinges on what you are capable of creating diagnostically in order to make your entire practice worth more to you (treatment value.)
Sometimes it’s the most obvious changes that are the hardest to do. The switch my doctors flip from the ‘take what you can get’ mentality of insurance and patient decisions on the lowest common denominator to the ‘create what you want’ approach of orchestrating treatment building and stimulating case acceptance that makes your practice worth as much as you deserve.
To me, there is no more important and valuable topic than how to increase your treatment value.
We’re going to go through this in more detail in the coming weeks but in keeping with our theme of challenging the status quo – specifically with treatment everything from diagnosing, to patient engagement, to case building, to treatment planning, to phasing and sequencing of treatment, to your fees for big procedures and to everything in between – where are you still stuck in old thinking, what bad habits need to be broken, and what previous decisions need to be reevaluated on fresh data?
Then, after you work your way through all of that, the next questions are: what do you prefer now based on where you are in your career, who you are as a doctor, what should be changed to be more in alignment with your goals? And don’t answer in terms of yesterday or even today’s but for tomorrow – where you are headed and where you want to be not where you are at or where you have been.
Question how you structure your fees… when was the last time they have been raised, should they be bundled, are you off on the time value comparison of what it takes and what you get for it?
Question how you use photographs and technology, the way you engage patients, how you deal with insurance, build cases, discuss treatment, and ultimately arrive at a clinical yes with your patients.
Question how you layout treatment plans, why can’t it be more per visit, should it be phased differently, maybe just paid in advanced, do you start with steps and stages or do you go all in on full mouth complete health vision and work backwards from there.
If you want to make your treatment more valuable to you, you have to make it more valuable to your patients. In order to do that, you have to challenge the status quo not just of their expectations and how you educate them but how you are going to raise up their value and perspective of what you do, why it matters, and how it impacts their lives.
Done right you should have a lot of fun with all of this. And we could go further into how long you schedule for visits, how you involve your assistants, and how to accelerate treatment to consolidate visits.
Of course, I’m the last one who believes in change just for the sake of change. There are certainly tried and true principles that you should never break.
We’ll pick up here next week and talk about a few of those foundational building blocks to your practice that if you ignore you are certain to be on your path to diminishing profits and increasing stress.
In the meantime, ponder where you might be stuck and ask yourself the tough questions. Remember, no one ever achieved a goal that they didn’t question their current expectations by challenging the status quo first.
