As you would expect, this is the most common request I receive from doctors just like you every day and it comes in many forms.
Independence from insurance is probably the one filled with the most emotion, passion and disgust these days. Even when someone doesn’t want to remove or is scared to completely eliminate PPO’s and move back to fee for service based practicing, they still want independence from it.
Imagine if a majority of your collections on a monthly basis are coming in the form of insurance checks. Meaning other entities that you don’t know, have no control over, never met before and won’t ever meet are sending you the money for the work you have done.
In anyone else’s mind in any other business that would be called pure crazy; not even comprehensible. As if you could go into a restaurant to eat all of the food and say, “Don’t worry, my company always pays for my meals just send the bill to them.”
Now on top of this, imagine that company calling into that restaurant to tell the restaurateur how much he is able to charge for his meals and what he will be paid after a diner has consumed everything.
Yes, I know, all crazy. No one would ever sign up for a business that lives under this context and constraint.
It’s an inarguable fact: if you are being paid by insurance, you have no control over your destiny. They can make changes (and they do and will) without you having any say or control or decision in the matter.
You get no vote.
So, every day doctors ask me to create independence from this! And I do, of course.
The other big request is the old adage of less work and more money (you probably could have guessed that). But it comes in different shapes and sizes. It could be less days per week or less hours per day or less weeks per year. It doesn’t matter really and it is different for every single doctor.
The smartest ones find their stride and commit to whatever their life/work structure is going to be and then maximize the ‘you-know-what’ out of it for a given time period. Then, every so often, they reset the compass and calibrate the settings to do it again with less clinical days per year and still work to leverage their incomes up.
I love this form of “independence” because it’s just a math problem. So many doctors don’t understand that you don’t just ‘fill up a day’ and then ‘fill up a bank account.’ Instead, you start with the goals you have and then engineer the practice to fulfill those goals. When you actually have a target, you will see just how controllable and predictable the monthly, weekly and daily values can be.
With complete clarity and commitment to the ‘independence number’ and the ‘independence schedule’ we match those two things together and you have a synergy that will become your reality (assuming you stick to the proper execution).
Other forms of independence are clinical or financial; doing what you love and loving what you do; earning what you are worth; and putting away enough money and/or creating enough passive income streams through your investments and beyond your income to your wealth (profit over and above your income you live on from your practice) to set yourself up to be free from the “have to” work in your practice.
This should be every business owner’s objective and many lose sight of it or have the wrong sights set and goals committed to that it doesn’t happen.
Either you are working a job earning income.
Or
You are owning a business creating wealth.
As a doctor, you can have both and be in charge of your financial destiny.
With only one of these, you probably have a nice lifestyle you can brag about; but with the other one you have a lifestyle that grows and enhances with every passing year until you reach a point when you can have as much or as little work in your life as you want and more lifestyle at your own choosing.
Here’s the point of today: as we look towards Independence Day, let is serve as a reminder of the glorious fact that we have been given a blank canvas in our lives to do with as we please.
And, as you know because you wouldn’t be here unless you agree, when you own opportunity you own responsibility. When you lead people, care for people, get paid to help people – you own the greatest responsibility. And when embraced properly the reward is not only prosperity but significance.
This was the focus of my most recent training. It went way beyond practice control to life control. It went way beyond dentistry on your own terms to life, health, wealth on your own terms as well!
In case you missed it, it’s the perfect way to celebrate Independence…
