As we conclude our Myth Busting Magic to unlock the full potential of your practice, we are going to destroy the final fable of our great industry. It’s one that holds so many otherwise very smart and capable doctors back from generating the outcomes that they want.
The evil part of this myth is that it plays tricks in two contrasting ways and pulls you in opposite directions ending in confusion and frustration.
You can’t have it all.
and yet,
You have to do it all.
This dark evil delusional magic is of the worst kind with the most ill intentions and it leaves you dazed and disoriented in your understanding of how dental practices work.
And here’s how it comes across in industry terms and language, “You must be all things to all people.”
It shows up in the form of extremes… the musts, the have-tos, the can’ts, the shoulds.
If you were to sit down and talk with any one of my doctors, the first thing that would become very obvious is that they are NOT conformists.
They make their own rules, design their own practice, control their own outcomes, and play their own game.
The only extremes they accept are the extremes of success they desire and the extremes of their vision without limitations – all define by them.
Here’s the result of evil spell “Dr. Do-It-All”… you end up adding too much, seeing too many, and constantly chasing what’s new. The industry’s job is to convince you that every other practice is upping their game and adding new tricks, so you better keep going deeper into the dark forest to get something better.
It’s all illusions and hocus pocus.
In reality…
You Can Have It All
and
You Do Not Have To Do It All
In fact, the secret to ‘having it all’ is actually doing less of anything that isn’t in alignment with your highest and best use of your time.
Setting yourself up for success is about three things more than anything else (we’ve talked about two of them as we’ve written our magic myth busters)…
First, your belief in yourself and permission to pursue “it all” as defined by your own desires, goals, ambitions.
Second, the clarity you have on what exactly you want and how you wish to operate in your practice.
Third, the greatest magic multiplier of them all, is your ability to focus on your mission, purpose, objectives, and executing your practice without guilt or self-doubt.
Belief.
Clarity.
Focus.
These three things link together to form an unbreakable force that gives you the power to create the outcomes you want.
If you aren’t getting the results you want or if you aren’t satisfied with the time it takes or if you aren’t happy with anything else – simply reset and use these three words to align your actions to your objectives.
This will break the curse of being directed by everyone else…
They say you need new equipment, so you buy it.
They say you need more patients, so you chase them.
They say you should do more crowns or perio or anything else, so you listen.
They say you should take insurance, so you accept it
They say you should work longer hours, so you comply.
This is the start of a long list. And that’s just the industry.
What about the demands you feel from your patients, your team, your competition, your family, or anyone else?
The more you focus on what others are doing, saying, thinking about you, the less control you will have over everything in your life.
This can be evident in your insurance protocols, inn your treatment planning approach, in your fee structure, in your team accountability, and even in your own schedule.
If you review it all right now, there are decisions you make and actions you take in your life that are the result of outside expectations.
Instead, start with this mentality…
I can have it all but I do not have to do it all.
The other part about this myth is something that you should love to hear and find very refreshing: you are trying to do too much… of so many things that are a waste of your time and get in the way of your success.
Get rid of everything that doesn’t move you forward to your goals and facilitate the success of your desired outcomes.
By the way, that is why I literally wrote the book on Creating Your Million Dollar Schedule. An exact structure and precise formula customized to your own clinical approach to earning a seven-figure income. You can grab a free copy right here…
The bottom line to all of this is for you to assess what you are doing because you want to and what are you doing because you think you have to.
To finish up our Month of Myth Busters, I want you to focus on these four key pillars within your practice that you have total control over.
You get to define what you do for your patients. That means educating them about your clinical philosophy.
This is especially important for the front-end phone calls and the welcome process you have in place. It is also important for the insurance conversations and the actual implications of insurance in your practice.
The next pillar is you get to design every aspect of your patient experience and practice operation. for every point of engagement in your practice, you want to ask yourself “what is the outcome I want?”
What do you want to accomplish… with hygiene patients, with implant follow-ups, with ortho appointments, with therapy or adjustment visits, with case starts or case finishes, with everything.
If you know what you want to create and what you want the result to be, then you can work backwards to design everything with more intentionality and therefore more influence over your patients.
This leads us to the next pillar: your diagnostic protocol.
The more structured and more engrained with every person in your practice, the more reliably it will be followed and more consistency it will produce.
I can tell you this, the doctors who are most successful follow a proven diagnostic approach that is customized to their personality, their clinical philosophy, their team structure, and the type of dentistry they want to do.
It’s not dependent on the time of day. It’s not dependent on which team member is with the patient. It’s not dependent on insurance or money.
Finally, and most importantly, we finish with the most important pillar. That is how your practice fits into your life. This is about what you choose to do and not do. This is about who you are and who you aren’t.
It is very simple, either you focus on what you want or you suffer at the mercy of the hocus pocus of others.
My challenge to you is to take greater control of what your practice looks like by being empowered by the one truth that no one can deny – you are the most important part of this whole thing.
Without you – there is nothing – no magic happens, no lives are changed.
Now, with these myths busted, masks removed, and truths revealed, you are liberated from the hex of the rest and free to cast your magic for good. They are all out of tricks to play, from now on there’s only treats headed your way.
Happy Halloween
