If I had to summarize the most common ‘request’ and wish list item I receive when Doctors come to me, it boils down to these five things…
A Lifestyle Practice, usually defined as working less and making more. I just say, ‘working on your own terms.’
High Value (meaningful and profitable) Dentistry, doing the dentistry you love and are passionate about that utilizes your skills, impacts your patients and pays you what you are worth.
A Rewarded World Class Team, that is loyal, high performing and well paid with incentive to continue to grow and be committed to the greater vision and purpose of the practice.
Loyal and Appreciative Patients, with a practice that is grown through referrals and patients who willingly comply, appreciate what you do, don’t complain about fees and don’t rely on insurance.
And of course in order for all of these things to occur and take place you must have and ensure your practice is highly profitable. Plain and simple, you can’t have these things if you don’t have profit and not coincidentally you can’t have profit if you don’t have these things.
There are a lot of other ‘small’ details that Doctors just like you often complain about but ultimately this is what its all about.
Everything else really fits into one of these key pillars and principle components of your Dental Practice as business and profession…
Fulfilled Doctor
Meaningful Dentistry
Effective Team
Appropriate Patients
Profitable Practice
I can’t imagine anyone wanting anything less than this.
However, we have a BIG problem.
Most, probably you, accept a whole lot less than this, less than they deserve, less than their practice is capable of.
In what ways do you accept less than what you truly want?
It is with this in mind that I’m going to dedicate this month of Independence Celebration to the deep dive into the most powerful essentials to creating a truly liberated practice that is independent of anything you don’t want and inclusive of everything that you do want.
If you want to build an Ideal Practice for yourself, the perfect practice FOR YOU…
One that invigorates you that you just can’t wait to run into the office to play the game – and – at the same time affords you exactly everything you can imagine, dream and desire outside the practice when you walk out the door.
Then join me as we embark on the journey through the creation of these success pillars within your practice.
To begin, next week I will pave the way for you to understand and if you choose take ownership over your own Lifestyle Practice Manifesto.
Catch the most important two words real quick before we move on… “YOUR OWN”
That’s right, the biggest reason why Doctors fail or come up short or live inside of their practice secretly disappointed or for that matter do everything they can to escape their practice is because they aren’t working towards, in control of, creating their OWN Lifestyle Practice.
Either…
They (You) have your Practice dictating your life by feelings of need or necessity (but still always by choice), maybe you just don’t know any better or how to have it all.
Or
They (You) are trying to follow some other doctor’s, company’s, trendy industry vision, plan, model, like a cookie cutter checklist of steps applied to a business. And it’s not truly yours and it’s just not the same. Nor should or could it be.
Replicating “models” work if we are putting together a toy airplane or a box of legos – not so much with an independent dental practice filled with variables of personality, clinical philosophy, team member dynamic, demographics, geographies and many other things that vary from place to place and practice to practice.
You don’t get much more of a personalized and unique business from one to the next than dentistry. And that should be to your huge and definitive advantage.
It can be. If you have your own Lifestyle Practice set-up and structure.
Of course, principles, systems and pillars of success matter and are the same. Just like the last 7 Parts to the Patient Experience of Trust Building Factors I just released to you over the past 2 months – the same for every single practice and every single patient and every single doctor and team.
There are things that hold true and they always will. But…
Those without factoring in critical variables and really defining your own structure, vision, approach, short and long term objectives (including AT WHAT POINT you reach “practicing because you want to not because you have to, financially”), and your idea of exit or transition. All of this matters.
First, we’ll start with the things that hold true for every Doctor and Practice.
Next week, part 1 of Your Own Lifestyle Practice Manifesto.
Before we go there, you must go deep inside of yourself and ask…
“What Do I Really Want?”
“What Do I Really Love?”
“What Do I Really Hate?”
“What Would I Really Change?”
If you want some help…just go back to those 5 Key Pillars of Success Above, which should help you to form some initial ideas.
The point of all of this is one thing above all others – CLARITY.
Your own clarity. Before we can have anything else. No plan matters, no strategy can work, no success is sustainable, no happiness can be had without first having – CLARITY.
to be continued…
