We are now entering into the haunted house of Dentistry. It’s not ghosts we are hunting, however, it’s the fright-inducing myths that lurk in the darkness. Armed with the light of truth, we’ll expose these deceptions from the deep corners of the industry, making way for brighter days ahead.
These horrifying myths, as I explained last week, are filled with “must-do’s” and “can’t-be-done’s” along with a few “patients-never.” They creep into every aspect of a practice, scaring even the most informed teams into ill-fated habits.
You’ll recognize their bone-chilling chants… “You have to have early hours, you have to have evening hours, you have to have weekends, you must take insurance, patients won’t pay in advance, patients never accept complete treatment plans.”
The myths continue… explaining how you are literally at the mercy of what your peers will think, what your team will do, and what your patients will allow. That you actually don’t own this business – everyone else owns you.
Now, that’s some scary …
But it gets worse.
It doesn’t stop by just infiltrating your mindset about your business and who is really in control, it’s what these end up doing to you.
You feel guilty when you try to change schedule or put yourself first. You’re made out to be selfish when you try to fight the trends and defeat the status quo. You’re judge not by the lives you impact but by your compliance.
The attacks, both real and perceived, all produce the same result. They hold you back from being true to yourself, they lock you in a box, they chain to the same-as-everyone else standards far beneath your potential.
Then, as if this tale needs to become even more ghastly, you start believing that the made-up stories, the fake rules, and the artificial guidelines are actually real. You’ve become cursed, as these are the spells that bind.
Well, not anymore.
We are going to bust these myths once and for all. Chains be broken, spells be gone.
MYTH: You have to conform to a predetermined practice structure.
Here’s the truth… Your practice can be set up with any model and any schedule you want because the success formula is limitless in its possibilities and can be customized to your preferences.
It might sound scary at first, once you decide to be the engineer of your own life and business. However, take confidence in the fact that I have proven through countless doctors with unique cities, practices, skill, personal definitions of success, and visions of practice ownership that anything is possible.
It starts by debunking the next myths that will open up opportunity and prosperity. Breaking down the walls of the box reveals the endless options available to you – you just have to believe it first.
Patients will show up when the practice is open. And when it’s closed, they won’t even come to your house; at least with rare exception these days (only kidding).
They will respect your hours and your schedule if you respect it first.
And that’s not all. They will also value what you tell them they should. They will decide what should be important to them based on what you illustrate to be important to you.
Again, those that won’t are rare exceptions. While they may stick out and your team might have more conversations about these exceptions, they don’t ruin your day unless you let them. They don’t fill up your practice unless you let them. They don’t have control over you unless you give it to them.
What you focus on and work at creating most is what will be most prevalent in your practice. Design it with the best patients in mind, and your practice will be full of the best patients. Design it with naysayers in mind, and guess what you get.
When you break this myth of doing what everyone else thinks or says you should do, the positive energy and the entire culture of your practice will shift. When everything is aligned between your practice and your life, it benefits everyone else involved.
Here’s how you win…
Instead of being told by others what you should do or trying to follow the crowd; decide instead what you want your state of ideal to be and charge forward while ignoring those telling you it can’t be done.
Rally everyone else around your vision. Your team and your patients will follow your leadership. In the end, you will multiply the good you are doing for others by being true to yourself.
All that is left is casting some spells of your own and setting your practice up the way you want. This is why…
You can work when and how you want. And you can do the dentistry you love and on your own terms.
The reality is you have the patients already, it’s just a matter of believing in them enough to give them an opportunity to realize optimal health. Your patients will be a product of your experience instead of your practice being a product of your patients.
There’s one more key to unlocking this new approach. That’s understanding that you can’t see every patient – there’s simply not enough to time in the day. You attract the patients who resonate with your clinical philosophy and give them your full attention.
That’s precisely where we’ll be heading to next week.
We’ll debunk the myth that the answer to every problem is more patients. An approach of quantity (of patients) over quality (of visit) is the problem; not the solution.
It’s not because we don’t want to care for as many as possible and help everyone get healthy. That’s a recipe for seeing more patients but doing less dentistry. Doing more dentistry requires more time with patients – an impossible task with a packed scheduled.
Not to mention, it increases all the things you don’t want (stress, time, overhead) – the grueling things that keep you up at night. That is until next week and then you’ll be sleeping easy without any magic potion necessary.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of our myth busting series where we’ll expose the high-volume fallacy of more patients equal more dentistry.
