With the Fourth of July Holiday weekend ahead and those in Canada celebrating just yesterday, I wanted to take time to remind you just how much independence you really have. As I believe it’s often taken for granted.
To me, being a business owner is the most powerful form of independence available.
This is very important to me because it is in fact one of the reasons I chose and continue to choose to be here with you and why I am honored to call dentistry my home.
Doctors ask me all the time “why dentistry?” or “how did you get started working with dentists?” and the backstory, which you should certainly know by now, is interesting and worthy of my retelling it at some point.
However, the real reasons I deliberately decided “dentistry” is because of three very specific reasons.
First, my kind of doctors – you as example – are entrepreneurial in nature. You might define or classify yourself as a Dentist but you wouldn’t want to be one if you weren’t also a Practice Owner and for that matter an Independent Practice Owner.
You are here because you are entrepreneurial and because you want to be independent from limiting factors. You want to decide what your business looks like, how you practice, and how you serve patients. It’s not enough for you to just ‘be a dentist’ or ‘do dentistry.’
Which leads me to the next reason which is also about independence and that is the fact that dentistry, for the most part, is free from burdensome regulation. Meaning that no one tells you what to do or when to do it.
For the good guys and girls this is wonderful news. Nearly every thing with any significant regulation is designed to keep people the same and to literally standardized care and therefore by definition make everyone settle for mediocrity.
Yes, there are the almighty dental boards that at times try to keep the ambition minded entrepreneurial doctors from reaching their potential for fear of making the rest of the community look bad. None the less, dentistry as a whole, is free from overly-strict regulation.
Even after you’ve got the letters behind your name, you still continue to grow and evolve your career in your own way because you can. You get to choose what you study, what you implement, what you do and don’t do inside of your practice, what technology you use, what procedures you provide, and even how much you get paid.
All, a choice because you are independent.
And when you add those two things up together, you get my third reasons and that is because of the incredible leverage that you have as a doctor business owner.
No one dictates what your schedule becomes, what your days are worth, what your income will be, or what your practice will produce. You have skills that allow you to leverage up your time and to earn whatever you decide to because you can build your business anyway you want and do whatever dentistry you prefer.
Of course, not many doctors see it this way and because of that they choose to be dependent on their practice instead of using their practice to be a catalyst for their independence.
As I have been writing about all week long and do every year at this time – independence is a choice. It must be created, controlled, acted upon, fought to sustain, and defined by each individual.
I very proudly only want to do certain things with certain people and I want to have a lot of fun helping other people by doing what I’m best at. Therefore, I had to choose an industry and a business model that offers leverage for it’s owners.
Just to make it very clear, the math is simple and we’ve already gone there with my most recent advanced training, now on-demand … two crowns doubles the fee but doesn’t double the time, the same with quadrants versus single units and it goes up from there with specialty procedures or bigger cases.
I proclaim here all the time that it doesn’t matter about the size of team or the hours in the day or the number of patients. It only matters how much dentistry is provided (and therefore value you exchanged), that determines everything else.
On top of that, when you learn to optimize your overhead, maximize your capacity, and realize your potential, you will see that the majority of growth is all profit. It is the funniest of outcomes when you work less and make more all because of these dynamics being brought to life.
Now, of course, the other reason and the very personal reason I chose dentistry is because of the life changing impact that what you do has on the people you help, serve, and care for.
I’ve had experience consulting and working with every different possible type of healthcare related business in my career. There is only one business that checks all those boxes and truly provides the pathway to complete and total independence and that is…
Dentistry.
So, congratulations for being one, being here, being you!
The fact is “independence” is the entire theme around and really the underlying foundation supporting the “universe” we have created in Dental Success today, that you are very smartly a part of.
Of course, each of these reasons I’m sharing begets several thought provoking questions and it’s the perfect time for a mid-year assessment of your own on just how you are doing.
First and foremost…
Where are you holding yourself back from believing and achieving true independence with your business as an owner?
When you step back and put your business owner hat on in order take a hard look at your practice, are you as independent as you’d like with… your schedule? weekly or daily routine? vacations? administrative work or busyness?
If you were to take your independence to the next level what would that look like? What would be different than it is today?
You are independently able to practice as you please and do the dentistry you desire. We agree on that. But are you?
Are you practicing on your own terms? Are you diagnosing the dentistry you want to do? Are you using all the tools, resources, and team to help you bring to life your clinical philosophy?
Where is your confidence waning that keeps you from taking the next leap you want to make whether clinically or financially, practice growth or lifestyle structure?
How can you better live out your independence as a doctor and a practice owner – you have all the liberties you could ever want – but are you taking them?
And finally, have you given yourself permission to deliberately engineer your practice with more leverage to create more value and profitability?
I will leave you with this and we’ll continue this topic next week…
You are as independent as you decide to be. You can actually have it all and build it for your own freedom, fun, and financial success. What else would be the point of owning your practice and proudly being an independent doctor?
If you’d like more independence than you have now or you feel stuck in a certain way questioning where you could push the limits, expand your vision, increase your income without increase your time, or you’d just like to see what this is all about by being more involved in Dental Success Today, just respond back to this Weekly Report and my team will be sure your message gets directly to me.
Additionally, if you would take just a few extra minutes I’d love to hear about your path to independence… why you love dentistry, what you’ve done to achieve the freedom you’ve got, and how dentistry has liberated you from other limitations. I’d love to hear from you and learn about your story.
Now, go celebrate our great country and all that it represents, especially the path you’ve chosen to achieve ultimate independence!
