We’ve been talking about breaking through to a more profitable practice while achieving more of everything you want and less of everything that you don’t.
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Doctors always ask me if it’s all really too good to be true and the simple answer is that any type of practice is possible and any result you desire is possible if you are willing to do what is necessary to achieve it.
There is no reward without work. However, it can be work you despise and detest (or even worse resent), or it can be work you enjoy, invigorates you, and gives you a deep sense of fulfillment.
Sure, there might be other things you’d love to be doing with your days but if the way you practice and what you do ranks pretty high up on the list then you’ve done something right.
The question is how can you get more out of what you are doing?
Since it is – or at least typically would be – back to school time for kids, I thought a Back To School Report Series would be fitting. Plus, since all of the greatest leverage in dentistry and in your business is found in the fundamental principles that you have to operate with every single day, it makes sense to spend some time reviewing them.
As I often point out, what could possibly be the difference between a doctor who is doing $5,000 a per day versus a doctor doing $25,000 per day or anywhere in between.
After all, they are the supposed to be the “same” business; yet, some are operating it completely differently by making each of the core pillars of leverage more valuable to themselves.
And it really doesn’t matter whether you do implants or you don’t, whether you have lots of new patients or you don’t, or whether you have many hygienists or you don’t. It certainly isn’t dependent on how many chairs you have or how many team members you have or even where your practice is located.
It’s about execution and leverage, plain and simple.
(We of course can’t forget diagnosis and everything that I set up for you over the past couple weeks as the origin of all dentistry.)
Now, specific to doing more with less… let’s start with time management. As you know, time is the greatest equalizer and in dentistry it is the first and most powerful breakthrough.
In dentistry, the idea of “efficiency” is always talked about. Work faster, schedule tighter, use your clinical team more and so on and so forth.
Still, that really is NOT the first point of time leverage. Being as efficient as possible with low value tasks just gives you more low value results.
You want to commit to and learn how to be more effective with the highest value actions in your life and practice. The key words are: effective (not just efficient) and high value actions.
So, what would you say are your highest value actions in your practice?
The least of which is “what you are” – a Dentist.
I summarize the two most important actions and the highest value responsibilities you do inside your practice as…
1. Motivate Your Team
2. Diagnosis Your Dentistry
That’s it. From those two stems everything else.
Now, let me ask you a very straightforward and honest question: how much of your time, energy, and effort on a daily basis do you dedicate specifically to those two things? More importantly, do you deliberately plan out how you will do them at a higher level?
You might say, “well what about training?” And I say, “there isn’t much of a point to train an unmotivated team.”
Yes of course, you want to train your team. But, what should you be training on? You guessed it – diagnosing.
So, again, how much of your time, energy, and effort on a daily basis do you dedicate specifically to increasing yours and your team’s diagnostic ability?
You might bring up patient experience and communication skills. Sure, both of those are incredibly high value and important, it just doesn’t do much good if you are teaching unmotivated people how to communicate on less than comprehensive dentistry. You may end up with great reviews and even happy patients but you sure aren’t going to reach the next level of growth and achieve a breakthrough in profitability.
We can talk all day long about how to make your schedule more productive clinically and we will (as a matter of fact, next week), but it really is the wrong focus. Just like trying to “do more dentistry” without first “doing more diagnosing” – one most come before the other.
First, increase the value of your time by focusing on higher value tasks. Manage around effectiveness of the greatest leverage points and then worry about doing ‘the right things’ more efficiently.
Ponder this… how can doctors that see the largest number of new patients every month consistently have lower new patient treatment plan averages while other doctors who are single-handedly producing multi-millions of dollars themselves are getting fewer new patients?
There is a sweet spot for every Doctor based on your practice model. You need to find the right size and appropriate number for you. This happens to be why I do not believe in cookie-cutters or one-size-fits-all ANYTHING in Dentistry.
Still, the point is very simple: more new patients does not equal more new dentistry. It’s the wrong solution to the problem. More diagnosis equals more dentistry. In order to do more diagnosing, you must have a schedule that is focused on what is most effective and of the highest value; not most efficient because moving faster and seeing more is exactly why the average patient value goes down or becomes plateaued in the first place.
Instead of just making your schedule more productive, ask yourself how can you better utilize your time and make yourself more valuable. When you do that, it becomes very easy to get more out of your schedule… not to mention your life.
There’s enough here for you to assess, think about, and rework your own daily, weekly, monthly priorities to begin setting you up and preparing you for your next breakthroughs.
Before you jump to a conclusion about any problem, first ask yourself is this really the origin of it, is this the place I should be focused on, is there anything deeper than this – of more value – that I’m missing that would lead to a higher-level outcome.
This week, I want you to ask yourself how can you better manage your time to drive the greatest results possible by making sure you aren’t missing the highest value activities.
Most often, in all areas of life, the things that are the most important are the things we give the least amount of time, attention, energy, and focus to. Yet, we wonder why we don’t have different results.
More next week…
