If there is one thing you can do to start your year off right in 2023, it is to go into January laser focused. Not just focused on your goals but your actions that are going to get you to those goals.
My challenge to you every year is to do more of what you love, less of what you don’t. Making more time for things that are higher value and matter more while giving less time to those things that are lower value and don’t matter at all.
There are very simple concepts to help keep you on track throughout 2023, not just in the first week. As we move weeks and months into this calendar year, you want to have the same (if not actually more), vigor, motivation, drive, and desire as you had on day number one.
How do you do that?
Well, it begins by having a bold enough mission that you don’t let anything stand in your way or get you down. It takes a constant fight for your goals and equally so a battle against distraction, discouragement, and all the things that try to rob you of your energy.
You cannot fail. Your purpose is too significant, your mission is too worthy. You must stay the course and make this the best year of your life – every year of your life – that’s the point isn’t it.
Specifically, now that the rah-rah celebration of the new year is over and the holiday break is wearing off, it’s really important that you move your goals into more specific measurable and tangible actions, intentions, strategies, and tactics in order to implement your best year ever in reality.
My goals for you are very straight forward… have more fun, keep more money, enjoy those you love with more quality time, and of course make an even bigger difference in the lives of all the people around you.
Just in case you are behind a little here in 2023, your goals are not big enough to challenge you, or you lack the clarity necessary to get super specific, I’m going to walk you through the basics and then into the most powerful ways to make 2023 the best year of not just your life but your team’s and your patients’ lives too!
The obvious decisions are easy…
You can either start with how many days you want to work or how many days you don’t want to work; or you can start with how much money you want to make or how much money you don’t want to make. The combination of these 2 halves that make up the whole are what matters most in setting your expectations for 2023.
When we apply my reverse engineering concept to this, we want to focus on your earning potential and your creation capability; not just your production potential (though we do have to factor in what your actual capacity to help patients get healthy is in your practice). And then we want to maximize that like never before.
That is how you make a bigger difference and become more valuable.
For example, you can start with number of team members, treatment rooms, providers, and then you can reverse engineer the number as to how much revenue you believe to be possible each day and then multiply it out by the number of days you want to be in the office and we now have your earning potential.
Of course, it’s much more complex than this but it is not more complicated.
The reality of practice design and what I call the lifestyle blueprint is getting these three numbers to meet in the middle with a collaborative approach.
Days worked, income desired, production potential, and badda-bing-badda-boom you have yourself a winning formula.
Then we get to break it down by categories (hygiene, patients of record, new patients), and ultimately we segment by procedural niche, specialty or type of treatment.
For our DST Doctors, we never factor in hygiene production (it’s our ‘overhead’ slack adjuster). We treat it as the cushion and we always know it’s there but we never depend on it otherwise (and mark my words this will always happen), you will produce down to your goal because you have hygiene to pick up the difference.
For our practices that are focusing on various specialties, everyone has their version of hygiene though it might require more of the doctor or none of the doctor at all. Don’t get stuck on the words. Then recurring visits, think of the items your clinical team can carry for you, think of your follow-ups and other therapy visits or implant checks, or ortho or jaw or airway appliance adjustments, think laser, myo, perio and so on and so forth.
You know my mantra is always the same and rock solid consistent: focus on building it for the state of ideal and live it as close as possible to the state of ideal – but deal with exceptions and adjust whenever necessary using the True North (state of ideal) as your guide to the standard.
It doesn’t matter how hard it is or how many team members are gone or whatever else happens today (including patients falling out), no day, no week, no month, and certainly no year is going to be exactly perfect; especially if you have goals of any ambition and meaning. However, that should not stop or deter you from adhering to your formula and staying grounded in your principles.
Bluntly, those that hit their goals stop giving themselves so much room for error and instead of planning for what could go wrong they focus on ensuring that things always go as right as possible regardless of the circumstances or situation.
And specific to your production capability and capacity, always beginning first with diagnosis, you want to challenge yourself to produce up to your potential. Set a higher standard and expectation for this and then take ownership over it.
It is the craziest thing to me that a doctor feels at the mercy of everyone else (patient, team, schedule), as to what their numbers and performance are when in fact there is no one who has more control over what they produce in a day than the doctor.
From diagnosis to treatment planning to standard of care to expectations of how it’s delivered to patients… 100% doctor. And it should be, that’s why the quarterback calls the plays, they see the field, they read the defense, they know what it takes to win, and what their team and themselves are capable of.
Now that we have all of these things on the table, we can finally set some specific goals, create the action plans, and make the decisions necessary to follow-through to achieve our desired outcomes.
Here is the 10-part formula you should be thinking through right now…
1. How do we increase our new patient values by enhancing our patient experience
2. How do we better cultivate meaningful treatment out of hygiene
3. How do we generate more quality referrals
4. How do we more efficiently and effectively schedule for great patient experiences, profitable days, and value weighted dentistry
5. What are our training schedules and topics going to be for our team
6. What fun ways are we going to become a better, more collaborative team
7. How do we see ourselves giving back to the community this year
8. What have we always wanted to do for our practice, team, and patients that we’ve never done that we can commit to in 2023
9. What are the things that have been getting in our way, the list of our biggest frustrations, and how are we going to eliminate them for good in 2023
10. Ultimately, how will we define success… what will it look like, feel like, and add-up to in 2023; and what are we going to do to reward and celebrate our accomplishments
This is how you build a real practice organization, whether you have 3 people or 30, 2 chairs or 20, whether you want to make $1,000,000 or $10,000,000.
Champions go into the ‘new season’ with absolute clarity over what they want to achieve and they have a rock solid plan in place to make it happen. Keywords by the way: make it happen.
And that my friend, this Weekly Report right here, is what will make all the difference for you.
Ironically, most Doctors not only never do this but they don’t even know what they should be doing. They either shoot way too low and set themselves up for failure or they have no idea how think about and structure progress.
That’s why you have the advantage, that’s why you show up here each week, that’s why I exist.
I serve the independent dentist (you), who has everything they’ve ever wanted in terms of their dental education but has never had enough of the resources they needed in terms of their business education but now is ready to maximize their life and discover their ultimate potential.
Stop learning from trial and error or the school of hard knocks letting years go by settling for less than you know you are capable of. This approach will never allow you to become as great as you deserve and desire to be.
If you are serious about this ‘New Year’ thing, about your own personal success, about fulfilling your potential, and about earning the rewards that you and your team deserve, then you will commit to being very very deliberate about your success in 2023.
If you want to start this year with the focus, confidence, and a game plan that’s going to guarantee you to have your most successful, fun, exciting, and impactful year of your career then I would like to ask one more thing of you…
I’m putting together my plans for the key topics I’m going to cover in 2023 and I want to make certain they’re focused 100% on the challenges that matter most to you.
So, I put together this quick 3-Question Survey – if you could help me out with just 5 minutes of your time, I’m going to gift you one of my most popular books.
Plus, at the end of the survey, you’ll have an opportunity to take part in my Friday Office Hours where you and I will spend one hour together blueprinting your record-breaking 2023. Now is the time to create the roadmap to your practice’s more prosperous future.
