Mindset matters.
Your mindset is (almost) everything. Of course, you must combine it with strategy, actions, and commitment to achieve your goals.
However, you can’t make even the best strategies work with a bad mindset. Nor can you take the greatest opportunities and turn them into anything of value if you are sabotaging yourself mentally first.
This is actually a common theme for our Weekly Reports because this is where everything else begins.
Recently, we discussed the error in reducing your treatment plans to serve the 80% of patients who do the least possible. As a result, you miss the other 20% and never even offer the optimal health that these patients desire.
This is poor strategy but it’s a result of your mindset. What you believe to be true dictates where you put your focus, attention, and effort.
I’ve outlined the precise formula you must follow to beat the bad economy in my Recession Proof Practice Plan Video Series. You’ll find the money, the math, and the mindset necessary to thrive…
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Mindset affects everything. It determines whether you will work smarter and achieve more or work harder and achieve less. That’s because the leverage of mindset is real.
In my Wealth Group meetings this month, we are doing an introduction to Alchemy. I’m using real life examples showing how mindset makes things more or less valuable with the only variable being you. With all other things constant, your mindset is the determining factor for the results you’ll experience.
You do this with your patient experience, your education, your diagnostics, your communication, your leadership, and every other component of your practice. These are all products of your mindset.
You must have an abundance mentality; rather than being desperate and focusing on what you do not want. Believe that there will always be enough patients, dentistry, opportunity to win the day, beat the month, achieve your goals, and take your success to the next level.
Ask yourself how is it possible for two dentists in the same town to experience different results. In reality, for just about everyone, someone is doing more, better, faster, bigger, bolder, more profitable, or more successful.
Now, it’s not a competition but it’s not an excuse either.
You are either your own worst enemy or your own best asset. And you get to decide which one with simply your mindset.
Here are two more quick examples.
First, your mindset about your team members. Without changing who they are, let’s instead change how you think about them, alter the standard for their performance, and truly believe they are capable of so much more. Guess what, they will rise to meet your elevated expectations.
Far too many doctors complain about their team without providing the support, clarity, training, resources, and most of all confidence for them to be able to succeed.
You improve your mindset and you improve your team. Try it out and let me know if I’m wrong. Spend the rest of the month with nothing be optimism and belief; I know you’ll see real progress you can build on next year.
Next example: your mindset around insurance. If you expect your patients to only move forward with what insurance will cover, they will do exactly that. However, if change your practice culture (i.e. mindset) to make insurance less a factor, patients will begin to invest in their own health.
This is another one you can test out for yourself. First, count how many times you and your team mention the word insurance during a typical patient visit (from the first phone call through completed treatment). Side note: I would bet, more often than not, you are bringing up insurance first before the patient even does.
Now, to test out mindset hypothesis, go an entire week – heck, go one day – without using the word insurance (again, from phone to exit). Get rid of this excuse, stop placing emphasis on this barrier to treatment, and start helping patients focus on optimal health rather than coverage. Replace the word with phrase such as “Our practice believes in delivering optimal health and will never let money get in the way,” or “Let’s figure out, together, how we can get you started on a pathway to health because that’s what is most important here today.”
Same patients with a different mindset equals better patients.
Again, if you want more details and strategy, I dive deep into this during my Recession Proof Practice Plan Video Series. Which is not just about ‘preparing’ for the recession, but more so about building a better practice across the board for your future…
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Lastly, for today, I would like to end with this…
A proper mindset is one that pre-determines a commitment to success with clarity and confidence about how to create the outcome, design the results, and engineer the path to victory.
It is not one that worries or doubts or has concerns or makes excuses or operates out of fear or is indecisive.
Not with your time, your priorities, your patients, or your goals.
These are the principles that never go out of style and will always work no matter what. Such as not pre-judging patients, raising your fees every single year, getting pre-payment for everything as to not be held hostage by production or paid after the fact by insurance.
Some see this as bold others just see this as sensible… what a difference in mindset.
This is how you become undeterred by any economic circumstances, immune to recessionary impacts, and unwavering in your disciplined agenda. You are in control over your own environment, your own economy, your own world inside of your practice.
As the saying goes, you choose to be a victim or a victor. It boils down to your confidence and belief in yourself.
You might disguise it as concern over your patients’ ability to pay or seeing trends of patients falling out of your schedule or having a hard time keeping your team members present.
While it may not always be easy and it might look differently in terms of how you get to the number… it is still always possible as long as you don’t give up control over your outcomes and take personal responsibility for your own success.
In the months ahead, while most become timid, bashful, reluctant, passive and even apologetic about their dreams – we do the opposite.
We double down and accelerate progress. We use challenges as a catalyst to get better and level up. We find leverage to unlock greater potential. We discover more profitable opportunities by not just looking for them but by creating them.
It’s the same time, same economy, same recession, same industry, same opportunities – the only difference… mindset.
More to come next week. In the meantime…
