There is that saying in life: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Despite its ubiquitous presence, it’s terrible advice.
All too often I see doctors trying to fight a losing battle by doing what everyone else is doing. Commoditized dentistry. Discount marketing. Involving more insurance. Trying to cut ‘costs’ (really investments) on team and quality to shrink overhead never realizing that they are actually suppressing their ability to create opportunity, grow revenue, and build profitably.
When you try to “join ’em” you lose yourself in the process. Unfortunately, it doesn’t become evident until you’ve gone too far backwards.
Here’s the key to this whole deal…you must clearly define what winning looks like to you. What precisely is a victory on all layers and levels of your practice?
- Time Autonomy
- Patient Care
- Financial Independence
- Clinical Mastery
- Team Culture
These are the factors of freedom and independence that private practice ownership is supposed to bring with it. Sure, it’s not about not sacrificing or avoiding work. It’s about making the work and sacrifice count it because it provides for you the life that you deem worth it in every way.
This was my high-level discussion with you last week. Choose what you want more of is far more important than just randomly trying to make everything more or even better. If you are trying to solve the wrong problem then the solution is meaningless; regardless of how much more, better, faster it is. That will only leave you demoralized, burnt out, and inevitably resenting what you’ve built. Making corrections will become even more difficult as you are filled with self-doubt in your own abilities.
We can’t let this happen to you. Instead, choose to proudly march to the beat of your own drum and be ever in pursuit of your best self, living your best life, chasing your own dreams.
As I often remind my Private Clients and Wealth Group Members…you want to make decisions about your future based on where you want to go, what you desire most—not rooted in the past. After all, no destination is arrived at by looking in the rearview mirror.
You just have to persistent, even if you haven’t quite figured it out yet. If everything you do in life you decide that you are going to give up if you don’t get your way, if you don’t figure it out, if you don’t win with the first attempt—then you are setting yourself up for failure.
I can tell you story after story and introduce you to so many doctors who have failed by falling into this trap. It’s usually a result of listening to the advice of someone who has a hidden agenda (or maybe not so hidden).
A very common theme in our industry is telling every doctor they need the same thing and that bigger is always better. That volume is the cure to all your problems. Actually, that’s only a prescription for more headaches and less freedom.
You’ve heard this message before…to grow you need a bigger building, you need a state of the art building, you need all the insurance, you need more team members, you need to spend $100,000’s on marketing to fill your practice up with a whole bunch of random patients that you don’t know whether they are good or bad or right or wrong for you.
All of this is about “joining” the model of volume-based dentistry, discounting (baiting and bribing) people to come into your office, and otherwise commoditize what you do very often creating more dependency on insurance.
Guess what…it doesn’t work. The only parts that are guaranteed to go up in this model are: increases in overhead, headaches, stress, payroll, and hours.
Nothing can guarantee your profitable growth except—more dentistry. And setting up, designing, and engineering your practice operationally to be in alignment with the way you desire to work and creating a harmonious integrated model that gives your patients the best experience possible.
What happens next is these doctors blame insurance for the reason why they aren’t getting better case acceptance or the new marketing tactics for not bringing highly qualified patients. So, in response, they decide they need more patients to offset the lower-case values. With more volume, they shortcut the time and attention each patient receives—only to exacerbate the problem. Not realizing, if you want better quality patients you need to create a better quality experience.
And now the cycle repeats with even more volume, more overhead, more work but no more profit.
Oh sure, there are people who do it effectively. It is possible, BUT only if you also practice the art of customized care and you have foundational structured systems in place that ensure you are running effective new patient experiences and you are not basing your treatment plans on insurance or emergency care.
I have a lot of practices getting 50, 80, 100, 120+ new patients and every one of them is doing it without being in network with all the insurances. They also have something else in common too. They all wish they could get FEWER patients. You heard me right. Smart private practice owners don’t ask for more patients they just ask for more dentistry which is better for everyone.
If you can get more with fewer, then you bring your overhead numbers down and your profit up. Here, everybody wins, including the patients that you now have time to give them a real experience with attentive comprehensive care.
Here’s the thing…no one has the right or should be telling you how you should practice, what your business should look like, there is no “right or wrong” way of doing things.
There is only ‘your way’ that is going to work when you align your preferences with the appropriate business model for you. It is all based on your goals, your team, your future, your personality, your desired mode of working, your preferred style of management, and of course your philosophy of dentistry.
Ultimately, all that matters is that you figure this out. Then you go to work to differentiate yourself and ensure that every single point of contact and engagement with your community, your referral sources, your patients is exemplifying this.
At the end of the day, you should judge your success by how much fulfilling dentistry you completed that makes a real impact on your patients; by how much profit you made for the time you sacrificed and the investment you put in; and whether you are able to take care of your team in a significant way.
All of these things are only going to come from more profitable dentistry—not necessarily more patients. And more profitable dentistry always comes from being true to yourself, knowing your identity, and having a model of practice that you can differentiation from others.
For a limited time, I’m accepting applications for qualified dentists to essentially (virtually) walk into my office, pull up a chair, and for a full hour pick my brain to uncover exactly how to make their practice more fulfilling and profitable.
This is the exact analytical process I provide exclusively for my Inner Circle Doctors—where together we craft a Strategic Action Plan to create the kind of lifestyle-driven private practice you’ve always wanted.
This is my way of giving back and making sure you don’t have to give in. You can reclaim the Pride, Power, and Prosperity of Private Practice.
Yes you can still have it all in dentistry. You can have dental success today—every day of your career if you commit to it, if you want it bad enough, and if you do what’s necessary to make it happen.
Your next move, your future, your profit and all that you deserve—starts right here:
Reclaim the Pride, Power, and Prosperity of Private Practice…
Everyone deserves a chance to learn that there are other ways to win and be successful—to practice on your own terms.
There is dentistry available to you right now that isn’t what all the shovel salespeople are selling, what the industry is touting or what the insurance company is preaching. Independent Dentists are doing better than ever, as they are more secure and more profitable than ever. And you need to hear this.
I will not stand idly by and let other people, those with the biggest blow horns, sway you to go against what you believe and know is true.
Understanding, embracing, and then leveraging sound business principles for your practice is the key. My book is your path to find your own plan to have everything just the way you want it inside your practice, so you can have all that you deserve outside of it too.
Create your own game to win on your own terms by mastering the advantages given only by Private Practice.
Next week, I will give you the single most valuable and essential mindset shift you can ever make to bring to life your grandest ambitions and most extraordinary entrepreneurial spirit!
I’d like to leave you with this…
The reason I write to you every week and publish new books year after year is because if I can help just one more dentist become reinvigorated, breakthrough plateaus, find a practice vision, achieve their dreams, and make an impact doing what they love – then I will have succeeded at my mission. I hope that one dentist is you.
I just released my most provocative and comprehensive Private Practice Playbook for Success with my newest book.
