Today (and in preparation for next week’s Radically Better Way To Practice Dentistry Webinar), I want to share with you some powerful mindset changes, shifts in perspectives, and new ways of thinking that will position you to be ready for these three dramatic opportunities that exist in your practice. Because, as you well know, it all begins with you and your belief of what’s possible.
Doctors that are always trying to find the fixes outside or always blaming the circumstances around them or making excuses for why they are not doing better – fail to grasp the concept of what ownership is all about.
I’ve always called it “practice on purpose” which is the entire point of independent private practice ownership. Most people simply accept the results they get each and every month. Perhaps they complain about it, but do nothing different in order change the outcomes.
Doctors like you and those reading this, choose to take control by reverse engineering a plan to achieve their desired results. After all, that’s what ownership is all about. It does begin with your mindset and belief that you have the control over your own practice… meaning that you have the power to do dentistry the way you want on the patients you choose with a team you can count on and earn what you deserve.
Now, before I go over the three changes in mentality that will combat the erosion of your profits, I want to explain how the money is leaking from your practice in the form of invisible profit thieves.
Then we’ll get you ready for your next breakthroughs with being insurance independent and setting your own fee schedule, working dramatically fewer clinical days to achieve your goals, and achieving a 50% net profit by keeping one out of every two dollars you earn.
In the meantime, if you haven’t yet registered to attend my Advanced Training where I walk you through this unique and powerful business formula for enhanced lifestyle, less (or no) insurance, and greater profit to achieve A Radically Better Way to Practice Dentistry – then go here now…
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Let’s start with the first profit pilfer… there’s no mistaking that inflation is only going one direction for the foreseeable future.
Your “cost of good sold” as it’s called on your Profit Loss Statement is going up. You will in fact make less money tomorrow than you are today if you keep everything else exactly the same.
This is why I say go on offense. Quite frankly it’s the only choice if you want to even just maintain what you are earning today. If you really want to achieve radically better income and profitability then you have to rework the cash flow formula and the way money moves through your practice.
You tackle this from all sides…
Get paid more for what you do… Do more valuable, higher fee dentistry… Have less time available so you tip demand into your favor.
Think of it this way: protect your time, protect your fees, protect your profit.
They all go hand in hand and you’ll see a completely 180 reverse against the rising costs of inflation and begin to see rising profits instead.
There are two other giant issues that you are faced with over and above inflation that both attack the profit position in your practice and have the exact same effect I’m talking about here.
The next profit thief is the insurance dynamic. Insurance is doling less for procedures while simultaneously covering less. Essentially, they are giving out fewer dollars for services their policy holders need. Most likely you’ve already seen cuts on reimbursement this year.
So, think about this… your costs are going up and yet what you are paid is going down. You are getting cut at both ends. You’ve got nowhere to hide if you are following the same old approach.
Bluntly, your only hope is taking my advice.
If you keep playing the insurance game, you are at their mercy and soon you’ll have no profit left because they won’t pay enough to cover the actual costs of the procedures you’re being paid for. You might be experiencing that now and not even know it.
The next rising “costs” that eats away at profitability comes in the form of your people.
It’s harder to find enough people who want to show up and work, let alone who actually want careers, and yet they command more money simply because of the employment environment that we’re facing. You end up paying more to more people for the same (or less) production.
Your costs for doing dentistry are going up, your reimbursements are going down, and the largest line item on your expense sheet, your payroll, is increasing as well. You’re getting squeezed on all sides all at the same time.
Clearly, it’s incredibly tough out there. But, it doesn’t have to be.
Because you don’t have to keep playing the same game as everyone else. You can choose to play a totally different game and recreate your own radically better way to practice dentistry and take back control over all of these variables and actually use them to your advantage.
That’s exactly what I’m going to take you through in my Radically Better Way To Practice Dentistry Webinar next week… Save Your Seat Now
Now, to get you ready for the in-depth webinar, let’s talk about the mindset shifts that will help you tackle these 3 profit thieves…
First, you stop seeing “more” as the solution to your problems. More patients. More team. More time. All that leads to is more holes in your profit bucket.
Why would we run up the number of insurance patients you are already losing money on? Why would we keep doing dentistry you aren’t paid enough to make it worth it in the first place? Why would we keep adding new team members who want to be paid but don’t want to commit?
Let’s flip it all upside down and see the positive in this puzzle and take advantage of the opportunities these current circumstances bring us.
The only way to combat inflation is by achieving more with less.
Imagine allowing yourself to slow down your practice, take more time with patients, layout the rules of engagement of how you want to do dentistry, educate patients on what health really is, and show them how you help achieve it not just today but for their future.
You simply can’t have a great experience if you are leaking floods money, forcing you to pinch pennies everywhere you can, and constantly fighting the clock with every flip of a room and turn of a patient.
There is a better way, a radically better way, to achieve your goals while at the same time aligning with what is best for your patients and what you believe in.
Next up is insurance. You never have to lose another patient on the phone because you don’t take their insurance. And you can present dentistry without any consideration whatsoever to their insurance whether you are in or out of network, it is completely irrelevant. Insurance patients are not bad patients, in fact just the opposite.
Generally speaking, if patients have insurance then they also have some form of income whether earned from their own employment or someone else’s or from their existing financial resources.
The best practices don’t stereotype insurance patients nor do they make assumptions that because they have a certain type of insurance they will view and value dentistry less.
Instead, what you can do is take leadership with these patients and reprogram how they see their health and give them back their own responsibility to make decisions based on what they deserve.
Practices lose patients every day by letting insurance be the deciding factor when patients would love a better alternative than what their insurance provides.
Upgrade them. Move them off insurance to a better way – a better path to health.
Practices change how they phase treatment out, scheduled visits, even diagnosis and treatment plan based on insurance dynamics.
Stop. Don’t let the insurance (or the patient for that matter) dictate how you are going to do dentistry or run your practice.
Here’s the magic: change the way they make decisions by changing the way they see their health. Instead of what insurance covers and saving money in the moment, it becomes an investment in life enhancing benefits that reduce the risk for any long term problems, need for dentistry and therefore spending later on.
Be proud of the fact that you care for patients directly instead of letting their insurance dictate their health.
I’m going to show you exactly how to make the math work and give you the confidence to remove your dependence on insurance no matter if you are on a contract or not. We’ll give you your power back and your patients permission to make their own decisions for their health.
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Finally, the third big profit challenge that I brought up is your team.
The truth is you don’t want them there if they don’t want to be there. There are extraordinary, self-motivated, loyal, and dedicated people – some you have on your team right now. And, here’s the deal, this isn’t volume-based factory work. You actually can do radically better with fewer more capable team members.
The idea that you just need “bodies” doesn’t cut it anymore. Bad bodies are worse than no bodies.
We want great team members and we want to pay them more than they can get anywhere else, period. However, it’s not just for showing up, but for doing meaningful work and making a difference.
If you attract and retain better team members, you will create a better experience. If you have a better experience, you will cultivate and build better patients. If you have better patients, you will deliver life changing dentistry. If you deliver life changing dentistry, you will command better fees. If you have better fees, you will have greater profit. If you have greater profit, you need fewer days and hours in the practice to achieve your goals.
This is about stacking the deck in your favor, giving yourself an advantage, and engineering your practice to make the math work in your favor.
This is about taking all of the current trends and circumstances crashing down around you that make it more difficult, stressful, and daunting to be an independent private practice owner and saying…
“I’m not going to take it anymore! I’m choosing to do something different instead trying to fix every problem with more of the same that is causing the problem in the first place.”
It’s true, it can be the worst of times or it can be the best of times… it is always the same times just different people, different doctors, different practice owners, and different decisions.
The time has come to make a change. Let me show you the path to prosperity with A Radically Better Way to Practice Dentistry…
Register for Tuesday’s Live Webinar: A Radically Better Way to Practice Dentistry
