In one week, the New Year will be upon us. Will you be ready?
Well, I’ve got you covered on how to make the most of 2022 in my New Year Video (just one of the free gifts I’m giving away this holiday season)…
WATCH: “How To Achieve Success in 2022” >>>
In the final two Weekly Reports of 2021, I want to turn our focus to the most important part of your practice. While it might not be as valuable as the meaning of life it could very well be called the meaning of practice ownership.
Aside from your family, the service you provide, and the person you are, there should be nothing that makes you as proud than the fact that you are an independent business owner in your chosen profession of dentistry.
That’s a powerful thing. It can be even more powerful when it is applied intentionally.
Dental practice ownership is all about… Autonomy.
That’s the gift you give yourself every single day. Through risk, responsibility, sacrifice, investment, and of course hard work, you are buying yourself autonomy through independent practice ownership.
Ultimately, what else would be the point of business ownership more so than this one word. Nothing. It’s just a matter of how you choose to apply that concept to your practice and life.
Most doctors that are frustrated, living beneath their potential, and unsatisfied with their practice (either because their team, their patients, their income, their schedule, or their dentistry), is because they’ve let their autonomy slip.
Everything comes back to this. When you have less autonomy, you have less control and you feel like you are at the mercy of your practice. Instead of owning it, it owns you.
And that can come out in many different forms. Right now, it might be coming out on the team front with people coming and going or your investment in people going up more than your return from them is coming back in. It could be insurance paying you less and less. Or rising costs to deliver your standard of care to your patients while your income is going down.
Whatever is taking away your autonomy you have to get it back. It is the key to everything in your practice. It is what makes everything else worth it.
Of course, with the New Year right around the corner now is the perfect time to refocus in on correcting that. Realigning your autonomy based on your vision for the future.
That’s my first mission to you between now and the end of the year – update your vision for every aspect of your life and practice…
Your schedule.
Your clinical focus.
Your team.
Your return on investment.
Your cashflow, budget, and profit plan.
How many Practice Owners even have a Profit Plan? Well, not surprisingly, if you don’t have a plan to be profitable you probably won’t be on accident. If you do have a plan for profit – a deliberate intentional focused strategic approach for profit – then you can be certain you’ll have more of it.
Great News… part of my holiday gifts is helping you create a blueprint for greater practice profits in 2022. An actual plan that takes into account all the variables, rising cost, employment crisis, and everything else. This is your chance to take back control…
Create Your Blueprint To Greater Practice Profits & Lifestyle Balance…
Today, I’m challenging you to recommit to your own vision of autonomy and leverage your practice to get you there.
It should not only be easy but exciting to assess your level of autonomy in your practice and be very decisive and clear-minded about where you want it to improve.
Profit is one major part of that. However, autonomy doesn’t mean you will automatically be more profitable and profit doesn’t mean you will automatically have more autonomy. You have to make deliberate choices about both.
Your autonomy also requires total focus and commitment to see it through. Ask yourself what you want out of your practice, without feeling guilty or timid or skeptical or doubtful about it.
Objectively, what do you want out of your practice in 2022? What do you want your life inside your practice to be like in 2022? And what do you want your practice to provide and make possible for your life outside the practice in 2022?
You can break down the details in terms of how you want to work, how you want to lead your team, how you want your schedule to be, how you want to do dentistry, and any other topic you feel compelled to organize.
Is there anything you wish were different, better, changed, improved, lessened, increased in the year ahead?
These are healthy questions for your business; far more so than just setting some new big goal for the year in terms of collections. Which could very well be the least relevant number in dentistry. It tells us nothing – not how much dentistry you did, what type of dentistry, how much money you kept, how many hours you worked and on and on.
It’s the story behind the numbers that lead to the real autonomy.
Real autonomy is more choices, fewer obligations, and everything on your own terms. The big three are… your schedule and your time, the type of dentistry you fill it with, and the income as a result of those two.
And then you have what makes those three possible such as your fee schedule, your insurance structure, your team’s initiative, type of patients, and the experience you create to make them more valuable (to you and to themselves).
There isn’t much more than that. Everyone wants to make it so much more complicated but the magic is in the simplicity of it all. Which, not coincidentally, also creates more autonomy and control inside of your practice.
Why then does this often elude doctors where practice ownership becomes a burden instead of creating a life of true independence?
There are three primary reasons… first, belief in what’s truly possible (it does always come back to mindset); second, being caught up in the busyness of it all (grinding it out mostly out of habit); third, life changes but your practice doesn’t (the future doesn’t have to look like the past).
Tonight, on Christmas Eve, I’d like you to unwrap something you can’t put in a box or tie with a bow. It’s re-envisioning your future unhindered by the past and imagining what your life and practice can become. I promise you, you are capable of every bit of it and so much more!
The true gift of dentistry, of private practice, of being an independent business owner is this. Your autonomy, your ability to remain in control, your boundless opportunity that awaits.
Next week, we’ll go even deeper to maximize the impact of practice ownership on your life.
In the meantime, I wish you the merriest of Christmases and happiest of Holidays to you and your family.
Don’t forget, start your Dash to Practice Prosperity for the New Year now so you’ll be ready, focused, in motion before the ball drops…
