I’m really excited to take you on a little journey and we’re going to do this in a few parts.
This is all about the entrepreneurial way of dentistry. It’s understanding what you are doing is not about the dentistry. We are going to align your business model to match your entrepreneurial vision – what you set out for when you became a private practice, independent doctor.
What I want to say to you is that you’re not in the dental business. In fact, you’re in three completely different businesses that are all integrated into one.
Here is where most doctors go wrong:
They confuse dentistry the business with dentistry the vehicle.
Dentistry is the vehicle and you’re taking this vehicle somewhere you want to. Don’t think of it as just a destination (yes, you will arrive at the place you intended) but it’s also the journey along the way. This is the life you are creating while doing dentistry.
So, ask yourself…
Where is dentistry taking me? Where is this vehicle taking me?
The place you’re going, the life you are leading – that’s the ultimate vision. That’s what matters here.
Is dentistry moving you closer to your State of Ideal every single day? Closer to your goals, your dreams, your aspirations? Or is it driving you further away from them?
So you need to ask yourself whether dentistry the vehicle is actually elevating and enhancing your quality of life.
Because that’s exactly what you do for others. You’re in the business of helping people improve their health and their quality of life every single day.
But here’s the thing: who’s helping you?
If you’re delivering quality of life to others, but your own is suffering – well, that’s out of alignment.
You’ve got to get back in alignment. And it requires you make a mental shift to redefine what it means to own and operate your dental practice.
You are in control, you have the power, and you can make the necessary shift. That means you must stop confusing the vehicle, the modality with the business.
It’s A Shift Every Entrepreneurial Doctor Must Embrace
You – as an entrepreneur – need to embrace this mental shift. Because the business you’re really in is a trifecta, an equilateral triangle where all sides are equal and all sides must work together.
Here’s the trifecta:
First – you’re in the people business.
That’s relationships you have with your team and with your patients.
If you don’t understand that you’re in the people business, nothing else works.
Second – you’re in the money business.
Now this one is simple: the money business is about profit.
You can have all the collections in the world, all the production in the world, all the activity in the world, but if you’re burning through it and not getting where you want to go – then it’s not advancing you towards your goals.
It’s the difference between walking on a treadmill and walking along a path. You can be running fast on that treadmill – producing, collecting, busy, busy, busy – but ultimately you’re going nowhere.
Or… you can instead be moving forward as you do in real life where every step gets you closer and closer. It’s a journey built by every experience, every moment, every memory done on purpose, by design.
THAT is the business I want you in. Where every day your practice is generating profit that funds a life lived on purpose, by design.
And that leads to my favorite – the precise path you are following along…
Third – you’re in the life business.
This is what I do for all my doctors. I help them define not just a business plan for their practice (there are only four leverage points in dentistry, after all), but a vision plan for their lives.
Because that is what gives the practice significance. When the practice exists to fuel the life you truly want, that’s when you win.
Yet so few doctors think FIRST about the life they want to lead and what’s necessary to bring it to realization. Most take whatever time and energy is left over after leaving practice and deciding what to do with it. It’s completely backwards.
Think of it this way:
If you’re a professional athlete and you just played the regular seasons every year but there was no championship, what’s the point?
The point isn’t the seasons – it’s the championships. It’s crowning a victor at the end so all of the games have merit and meaning. There has to be a culmination. There has to be a purpose to the activity.
In your life, your culmination might be based on the age of your kids or grandkids. It might be based on YOU, your personal ambitions, your hobbies, your travel goals, your next business venture.
It might be based on working by choice, not necessity. It might be based on loving what you do so much you never want to leave it because you are doing it on your terms. It might be based on lifestyle along the way.
That’s the life business.
And this is why I want you to really grasp this point, because that is what entrepreneurial dentistry is all about.
It’s not about the dentistry.
It’s about the three businesses that come together into one.
The dental practice is the vehicle – the modality that facilitates your people business, your money business, and your life business.
The Question You Must Answer
So, now the question becomes:
Do you have a business plan for your people – the patients coming in for treatments and for the team members who help you serving them once they are there?
Do you have a business plan for your money – how profit is made and extracted from the practice to fund your wealth and lifestyle?
And most importantly…
do you have a business plan for your life – the reason why you are doing all of this?
Those, my friends, are the businesses you are really in.
And that should be the most exciting thing you’ve ever heard in your entire life. Because it means there’s a bigger mission here. A bigger vision here. A bigger purpose here.
It’s not about doing more dentistry. It’s not about cranking out more procedures, seeing more patients, filling more teeth, doing more surgery.
The dentistry is just the vehicle.
Next, we are going to take the wheel and drive it exactly where YOU want it to go.
