Last week, I gave you a literal battle plan to better your best in the year ahead. I did it in two forms.
First, your call to action to choose your challenge, define your victory, layout your meaningful mission, and set targets that would drive your purpose.
You also saw that in my New Year Video for the DST Universe.
Blow by blow. Point by point. Quote by quote. Pillar and principle by pillar and principle.
You won’t find a more definitive and transformative gut check in your entire year than that video. It was intended specifically for an ambitious-minded, intentionally-renegade, extraordinarily-maverick, all-trends-bucking, mold-breaking, refusing-to-conform, record-setting, entrepreneurial independent private practice doctor – you.
I backed that up with last week’s Weekly Report with 10 of the highest value and most important areas of focus and prioritization for 2023 and beyond.
Champions show up in the New Year looking for all the ways they’ve won, what could have gone better last year, and how they can leverage for growth by putting their focus on what they know they can control in order to create sustainable, profitable, and impactful outcomes.
With the mindset from the video, the foundation from your Think System, the leverage from the pillars, and the priorities worthy of organizing from my top 10 areas of focus, you are destined for the greatest year of your life in and out of your practice.
And for those of you who are included in my Top 100 doctors, you received my Private Memo which contained the secret of all secrets to achieving more in 2023.
All of this combined makes you… UNSTOPPABLE.
That is – almost – unstoppable.
There is one missing piece to this whole New Year puzzle. However, it’s very simple. The newness wears off because the toil it takes to actually maintain the same as you are used to, the standard you’ve set by the accomplishments you’ve already conquered, and your ambition to level-up your achievements are always difficult. Somewhere around the middle of January, you realize that it’s not actually ever going to be easy to do anything of great significance.
This is a powerful revelation and a truth to embrace, rather than resist or resent.
In fact, understanding this and becoming one with it actually makes victory sweeter, success more significant, impacts greater in magnitude, and fulfillment richer in meaning. Truly, most don’t ever get to live and experience these types of results.
It’s not difficult to ‘think’ about the 10 things from last week just like it’s very easy to ‘watch’ the video I created for you.
Instead, it’s doing something with them, it’s becoming better and more valuable, it’s actually following through and executing that matters most.
That’s why today I bring you the final piece, the prerequisite of all success, the part of any year that no one talks about; well they might complain about it… but they don’t do anything about it.
Greatest is never possible with just the glory, it’s the guts that matter.
Today, I give you your gut check before you need it to make sure you’re ready. To make sure you realize the real rewards of your year won’t just be about the accolades or the money or even the life changing stories of patients you’ve impacted or the breakthroughs your team has or the vacations you took…
It’ll be everything it took to make all of those things happen.
It’ll be your guts that pull it out, that see it through, that delivers in the end, that give you a great not just a good year, that makes 2023 your very best ever.
If you were to figure out one common underlining characteristic of the greatest performers in any profession (sports, business, entertainment, arts, dentistry – literally anything), what would you say it is?
Perhaps vision, ambition, focus, discipline, determination, tenacity.
What else would you add as Championship Players’ traits?
You should have this list for your team members and you should check all potential candidates against that list before you give them the privilege and opportunity to work inside of your practice.
You should have that list for yourself too; if you want to be your best and keep getting better.
Still, none of these attributes top the one that makes all the difference between the champions and the runner-ups, the haves and have-nots, the achievers and the wanna-bes, the real-deals and the pretenders.
There is one characteristic that makes someone great. It defines their guts and their ability to make the most of whatever is thrown at them and to always come through regardless (even in spite of) whatever challenge arises.
It’s about the ability to be CLUTCH when it matters most.
The ability to perform and deliver, stay focus and finish – under pressure. When circumstances aren’t favorable. When things aren’t easy. When the deck is stacked against you.
When you have fallout in hygiene or you have half a team show up or you get a bad review or snow days that disrupt your schedule or a bad week or a worst month or failed procedure.
Everyone deals with all of these things.
And yet, some come out on top despite it all, while most others do not. This is why we say winners win. It’s just what they do, it’s who they are.
There is no success without pressure. There is no winning without clutch play. There is no glory without guts.
This does not mean you have to be super-fast or in a hurry – time is always a factor in everything but not speed. It does mean that you have to live the saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
As we enter the playoffs for football, there is a lesson to learn. The teams that make it not just to but through the playoffs: they have to keep getting tougher and tougher; they have to play to the finish; they have to be clutch under pressure.
Because the closer you get to your goals (your biggest case, your record month, your state of ideal, your perfect day), it will always get tougher to maintain and keep it there. It will be a fight to win because winning is not ordinary, it is not average, it is not common place – all of which you can coast and take it easy, anything more than that is a fight.
There are a lot of people where you know immediately, just by their stated goals and their obvious actions, that they will never win at what they are trying to do. Because they won’t be able to take the pressure. Having a million-dollar practice (or two or three or four or more million), just means that you have a bigger mountain to climb every month.
Working a lifestyle schedule while increasing your income means you have to perform and produce more per day and per hour. Any day or hour that is off becomes a lot harder to make it up.
You want to play smart, play with leverage, and play with pressure because the best always thrive under the more difficult circumstances.
If you go to work on using this to your advantage, you will see incredible things happen, things you never thought you could achieve, levels of success you never imagined your team members capable of.
In all of the things we do, talk about, train on, and work at – this may be the most pivotal and critical piece that is missed… for every team member in every position.
Ask yourself: why do they practice the two-minute drill in football? Why do you shoot free throws at the end of practice?
Everything in sports, or any other type of performance, is all about being able to excel when everything is on the line. For your practice, that looks like…
- Closing cases with objections, not free of them.
- Dealing with new patient calls when patients are standing in front of you.
- Keeping the doctor focused when there is other activity going on.
- Never missing diagnosis and patient engagement opportunities no matter how busy.
I challenge you today to go to work on performing better under pressure, to keeping focused on your goals, and being able to handle anything without losing sight of the main objective.
The days are never perfect, you know that. It’s better to know how to win with all the what-ifs than to just pretend that they are never going to happen.
For a team exercise, have each person define their own “pressure plays” when they lose themselves or get distracted or are running behind. Then, as a group, decide how you can overcome the challenge and win despite the increased difficulty.
Lastly, don’t forget to define your list of Championship traits that make up your team. Make sure everyone exemplifies these winning traits every day and, if necessary, has a plan to improve.
Watch my New Year Video for the DST Universe as part of your 1st Quarter Team Training and use last week’s Top 10 Priorities as your practice success battle plan for your best year ever.
You can achieve glory in 2023 – just finds the guts to be clutch when everything is on the line!
