Today, I’m introducing an upcoming series on the four greatest leverage points of the business side of dentistry within the confines of the four walls of your practice. All things kept exactly equal, there are no other factors that make the sum of the parts greater than the whole. These four will give you the ability to bust through your own limiting beliefs of what is possible to produce, collect, and most importantly profit in your practice.
This is not just simply math, though it all turns into numbers eventually. This is about the creation of opportunity, the cause for effect, the control over the outcome, and many other positive correlations. Inside of these four pillars are your ultimate breakthroughs to expand beyond whatever your plateaus and status quo have become.
Before we go there, it is vitally important to remember that there are only two numbers that matter in your practice life that directly and completely impact your whole life of which your practice is a part of as prosperity engine, autonomy provider, independence deliverer, and significance creator.
These are the two numbers define your practice success…
The first is your total net cashflow from your practice made up from your income from doing dentistry and profit from owning the business – the two streams combined together to provide your lifestyle plus financial independence, present and future.
But that’s not the most important number…
The other is your hours of time invested into your practice. Because no amount of time is worth all money, and no amount of money is worth all the time.
Of course, you can add into that peace of mind, passive income, sacrifice in the short term for the powerful liberation of the long term.
Nonetheless, reality says – more importantly Scott says – and my entire point and purpose for being here is “lifestyle along the way” and to build it so much so you love it, wouldn’t want to leave it if you could, and create so much lifestyle freedom that you can have your cake and eat it too.
These two numbers matter more than all the others. Actually, these are the foundational ideals that must be set for the compass to have a direction to point and your practice to have a basis for goal achievement.
For success to be engineered, we must have some benchmark targets of both time and money as you grow, evolve, change, and adapt to each stage of your life.
As you already know, the clearer you are about your state of ideal outside of your practice the more you can purposefully, precisely, and intentionally set up the inside of your practice.
Now that we’ve covered the two success metrics, we have an agreement around why the four leverage points of the business of dentistry matter. This is how we’ll evaluate their effectiveness at achieving these two foundational goals. Do they move you closer to your time and money objectives?
You can and should always seek to increase and improve the four pillars but more pointedly these are the truth-tellers of reality. They will clearly reveal whether you are succeeding or failing.
It’s quite easy to make up somewhat arbitrary metrics that allow you to congratulate yourself. Take for instance new patient appointments – you can set a new record every month but it doesn’t mean much dentistry is taking place.
Rather than focusing on a random goals or striving to get vaguely “better” or improving a statistic for the sake of it – you must have a defined reason why. These four leverage points will demand honest assessment; there will be no gold stars to hide behind here.
My deeper point is that numbers are not enough. There must be bigger more meaningful and personal reasons as well as a team’s greater mission to achieving success. Executing flawless clinical skills and always showing up with pride of ownership is obvious – but it won’t get you through the hard times. And more significantly, it won’t take you to your full potential and ensure you discover your true greatness.
This requires the magnitude of existential reasons why insomuch as they become no longer optional or once-in-a-while’s when things go right – they become obsessive necessities because you must. You must win otherwise you fail, there is no grey area. Average businesses stay stuck (often happily, blissfully, comfortable, complacently) in the middle, in the grey.
The real champions win or lose, sink or swim, victory or defeat. Not for random numbers, not for systematically derived goals, not for general objectives … but for meaningful specifics, for significant accomplishments that motivate them, for patients’ optimal health to become a reality.
Amateurs are busy complaining or filling life with a bunch of made-up distractions to take their focus away from their responsibility of professional accountability.
The peak performers win more often not only because they are proactive, not only because they are prepared, not only because they are poised for victory… but because (as a result of far greater motivation) they refuse to lose…
- Lose a phone call.
- Lose a patient.
- Lose a life-changing treatment plan.
- Lose a relationship.
- Lose a minute.
- Lose a day.
- Lose a month.
Waste, settling, indifference, doubt, negativity, apathy… the list is long as to what undermines your ability to win.
Let’s not talk about losing. Instead, let’s focus on what we want to get more of… winning.
Let’s reverse engineer your ability to win on your own terms and in bigger ways than you ever thought possible all by simplification down into the four leverage points that matter more than any others – literally they are the four that make every other aspect in your life and in your practice work.
We are going to focus on moving into a more sophisticated approach to leverage and engineering the life, practice, dentistry, and prosperity you want. Together, we’ll pull these four levers beginning next week.
In the meantime, write out your reflections to this Weekly Report and put some deliberate, deep thought into your two foundational numbers in order to create a vision of the future. In the short term, think about the end of the year into January. Longer term, maybe a year or two or three, not more than five to your state of ideal.
Give yourself a new target backed by greater purpose. That’s the only way to achieve clarity on this picture of success. Then we’ll get down to dental practice business basics with a mastery level application to show you how and more precisely exactly where your next breakthroughs of achievement, autonomy, independence, and prosperity will come from.
