There really is an underlying reason why most Doctors never reach their real potential inside of their practice – that is those who actually do wish to do better.
We know why the ones that just settle and could care less whether they do any better or maybe they don’t even believe it is possible to improve. They think they are already as far as they can get. It’s obvious why they get stuck and then ever so slowly go backwards or maybe dramatically go backwards.
Often a “losing practice” is not first seen in the numbers. No, actually you can coast for a long time without noticing the fact that the practice is being sustained on a very unhealthy foundation where there are cracks and crumbles at the base.
Here’s what I mean. You might not realize or recognize the poor and detrimental retention of your patients but you are getting by every month and year. It doesn’t occur to you to check and see what your net gain in patient count is or if your patient value is going up or down on an average every year.
I have some very important news for you…
If you keep doing the same work on the same patients eventually you will run out of teeth to fix. On the other hand, if you are doing all the same work on different patients then you won’t ever get ahead either.
You really must have a practice growing in parallel on both of these fronts if you want to get to the maximization of profitability and leverage your time so you can break free from the pure volume trap.
Value must go up on average for every new patient and you must have increases in retention. If you are a specialist and see every patient as a “new patient” then you swap the word “retention” for “referral” and it’s all the same.
Continuation of care.
Keeping patients in motion.
Acceleration of case acceptance.
Achieving completion of treatment.
I can go on with my buzzwords. Most practices achieve success (if they do) completely and totally by accident. And therefore there is no deliberate control over the outcomes and that results in zero ability to leverage – ANYTHING.
The 4-Part Video Training I’m giving away to all of my Weekly Report readers is based exactly on this. Leverage. How to get more out of your practice so that you DO NOT HAVE TO PUT MORE INTO your practice.
They are brief and poignant, simple yet profound and most of all hard hitting in the way that I take you behind the scenes of the most profitable private practices in the country. I’ll show you how we breakdown and reverse engineer their success and put them back in control over their lifestyle, their dentistry and their profit.
You will benefit more from these videos than anything you have watched, read or experienced – maybe ever – certainly than in a very long time.
Go ahead see for yourself: Start Watching Now >>>
Look, the point I’m trying to make is unless you have a handle on your practice and know what is going on underneath it all, behind the scenes, you aren’t practicing on purpose.
Now, you don’t have to DO anything extra. I’m not talking about “playing manager” or even “running the business.” In fact, the more you know what I’m talking about here, the less time you have to be involved in anything but the dentistry.
I’m saying that even a practice growing slightly (unless you are exactly where you want to be in terms of your numbers and income), then it’s quite possible you actually are going backwards if you look at the future indicators that actually mean something.
The Doctors doing nothing, striving for nothing, have zero ambition obviously aren’t going to experience any growth or take any responsibility for increase in profit. I don’t judge and I’m not talking to ‘that’ doctor; nor is that doctor here hanging out with me anyways.
The doctors I’m focused on and want to help are ambitious minded, have unfinished business to take care of in terms of what they know is possible, they want to win bigger and have more fun while doing it.
That Doctor is you, obviously, you’re here reading this.
So, why then is success often fleeting or elusive…
It’s because of one simple and yet very damaging reason.
They – maybe you – are always changing lanes, switching gears, taking detours on their paths towards their goals. Call it distraction or lack of focus or just the search for the ever-greener grass of dentistry.
The greener grass comes in many different shades and styles and make-up and let me assure you it all requires sun, rain, seeds, sod and fertilizer.
The other big problem with “greener grass” is that it keeps you from focusing on the core principles, the basics and it almost always drives you straight into the hole of making things harder than what they need to be.
Of course, they have to be hard because why else would you need to buy the next bag of tricks or technology or marketing or consultant or start tearing up your grass to replace someone else’s if it was easy to take care of your own.
Here’s the deal: don’t buy the grass. You’ve already got grass. It just isn’t necessary to start over. You’ve gotten this far… let’s go to work on making it better, on defining what you want, and then organizing the key principles around that vision.
I’m talking about and reiterating what I said to you last week. The Five Pillars Of Success regardless of the type of practice, clinical philosophy, category of patient, business model or shade of green that the grass is it really boils down to these…
Motivate the Team
Educate the Patient
Diagnosis the Dentistry
Cultivate Case Acceptance
Profitable Practice Formula
And before we begin our Practice Success Formula Deep Dive BACK TO BASICS next week on these pillars, I wanted to make sure that I reminded you that we aren’t here to change you. It’s not your fault.
You are used to being your own toughest critic and I’m guessing you could use a little confidence boost, not another excuse. The only thing that’s your fault is you’ve been making it too hard all along and searching for solutions in all the wrong places.
Instead, the answers are right here, inside of you, your patients, your team and your practice itself.
