Yesterday was a gift, wasn’t it? An extra day. A bonus. I wonder just how much difference it will make in the year as a whole? Will you see 1/365th of a bump in your numbers, happiness, or anything else?
Here’s the thing about this…to some people, one day can make all the difference just like one decision and yet to most, all the days in the world won’t matter. If there were 8 days a week, 25 hours a day, leap year every year, even an extra month every 12. Nothing would change. It’d function be like water…same amount just spread out.
This is because “MORE” never works. Quantity, volume, capacity never wins.
Size of anything has no relevance, at least not to success in terms of value or quality or significance!
The only thing Leap Year means to most is ‘one more day of exactly the same as all the other days’ and this, my friend, is no different than what it means to most (nearly every single one) of the dental practices in the country.
One more day, one more treatment room, one more hour, one more insurance, one more team member, one more patient.
One more doesn’t matter because they are always stuck in a never-ending cycle of settling.
And the only way to break-through is to break-free from the preconceived ideas and self-limiting beliefs about size, space, time, and capacity and instead embrace my greatest leverage factors for growth.
Which brings me to today where I begin our journey through the 8 Myths that have been made up to get in the way of Independent Dentist’s success, to Private Practice’s Prosperity.
All of the things that have been shoved into the minds of Doctors who have ambition and desires to improve their practice but who do not desire to become high-overhead, large-building, volume-based operations.
Regardless of size. Regardless of chairs. Regardless of hours. Regardless of team. Regardless of any other variable that you have ever seen as an obstacle.
…We are about to turn into an opportunity.
The questions I always get are:
“Can I still win?”
“Are my goals even possible and realistic?”
“Is this going to work, to be worth it?”
Resoundingly, my answer is always the same:
“In dentistry today, you can be successful in any practice model, in any modality of care, in any size, shape or success level you choose as long as you choose to embrace it, you go all in with it, you commit to shaping your practice around your vision and stop being at the mercy of other people’s ideas or letting your mind get in the way of all that’s possible.
Yes, you can have it all.”
And I’m going to show you exactly how.
This will be a March like no other because I’m going to show you how to MARCH victoriously to your greatest potential, your biggest wins, your most rewarding year of your life.
First, we’ve got to make space for you to achieve more by eliminating what you don’t want in order to open up to all that you do.
To start we must get rid of these…
The 8 Myths That Cause You to Self-Sabotage, Destroy Your Potential, Stop Your Growth, and Rob You of Profits and Patients.
These are all the ways you’ve let our industry and your mindset hold you back from the unlimited prosperity in your Private Practice that you are capable of creating, enjoying, and achieving for yourself!
Myth #1 — The Size of my Practice dictates the Size of my Production.
Obviously, this one sounds almost silly to say. There is no such thing, no rules or regulations that say you can only produce X amount of dollars per chair or per square foot or per team.
There is no link, no metric, no barrier to doing as much dentistry as possible in a small space with a small number of team members and with a small number of chairs.
You can do as much dentistry per chair as you want. Most of my amazing doctors are doing somewhere in the range of $1,000,000-$1,500,000 per restorative / operative chair working a lifestyle based schedule which means 3-ish days per week taking at least 4-6 weeks off per year, many as much as one week off per month.
This has everything to do with how you schedule, diagnosis, perform, and organize your clinical patient flow between you, your team, and your patients.
Stop thinking size has anything to do with dollars. It doesn’t.
You will make as much money and do as much production as your mind is ready to receive and as your practice model is built to create. When you are ready for your next breakthrough, ready to not be stuck under this plateau, ready to really grow then you’ll take advantage and embrace the Private Practice Prosperity I’m bringing to you in the next couple weeks.
Myth #2 — I have to work more hours to be more accommodating to my Patients if I want to grow.
I hate this idea. Yes, you can have convenient hours. And yes, one of the ways to expand your practice and grow your potential and overall practice opportunity as a business is to expand your hours so you increase your capacity.
Here’s the problem. Most practices aren’t even close to maximizing their capacity in the practice hours they are open right now—so expanding hours only dilutes the same patients and production you have and spreads it over more time.
Unless and until you are pushing somewhere consistently and significantly over $1,000-$2,000 a clinical hour (and technically that’s still very general dentistry)…you haven’t even begun to hit your stride and maximize your opportunity in the hours you have now and the patients you are seeing already.
Why would anyone want to work more hours or hire someone to do dentistry and give them most of the profit (if not all of the profit, as most Associates make 30%+ of the production and by the way… most dentists do not earn 30% profit on every production dollar on their own production). Of course, you know I’m a big fan and proponent of Associates in the right circumstances when you are ready for them and you have reached your capacity and potential. They can be a legitimate growth strategy—we’ll talk about this in the Private Practice Prosperity.
The bottom line is, you don’t need to work more to make more, you do need to be better organized, better disciplined, better optimized for growth and profitability of the dentistry you are doing. You do need to have a schedule that facilitates and is based on your daily desired money goals instead of just time driven volume of patients in the schedule. That puts you at the mercy of your schedule, not in control of it, and that limits you to small dentistry instead of big dentistry no matter how many hours you work or are open.
Myth #3 — I need tens or hundreds of new patients (and possibly the only way to get more patients is to join PPO’s).
No—wait, stop, don’t. This is one of the biggest problems and the most profit-killing destructive ideas in our entire industry. The primary myth is the idea that you need more new patients or more patients in general.
You might. And that’s okay because that’s a very easy fix. Far easier than you are going to believe or think possible. Remember, it’s not quantity—it’s quality. When you position yourself for a highly profitable big dentistry practice then you actually need fewer patients.
Please, whatever you do, never let anyone talk you into the idea that you need to be in the discount dentistry business and that it will somehow push you over the edge to your practice growth. There is no way you can achieve profits based solely on volume when we are talking about a time-bound human-based business.
There is a simple truth that you can either believe now or I will prove it to you later. If you can’t make money with a small number of patients or with the patients you already have, you won’t make money with more of the same.
Big Dentistry is not necessary ‘big numbers of patients’ and usually the exact opposite…because it’s about one number and one number only.
Amount of dentistry per patient…for new patients, 1st 30 days, average value of treatment diagnosis, accepted, scheduled, produced, and collected. Work on mastering that number and you will see your profits grow exponentially.
Don’t worry, I will explain exactly how to do this and you’ll see where you might be going wrong, missing opportunity, or sabotaging yourself. We’ll fix it and you’ll propel your profits with each and every patient. Plus, they will be so happy that you are delivering life-changing dentistry to them instead of seeing so many people you never have the time for the good stuff; the dentistry that really matters.
I always see a reduction in value with an increase in patients after a certain threshold and yes it’s even true in Specialty Practices though it’s a higher threshold to begin with. This is where my Reverse Engineering principle comes into play.
Myth #4 — The only way to do high value dentistry is to do only really big cases and I don’t have any of those type of patients in my practice or I’m not capable even if I did.
Obviously this isn’t true. And it’s a really fun thing for me to talk about it so we’re going to save it for next week.
Know this, I’ve talked to dentists of all shapes and sizes, age and experience levels, big cities and small towns. They all say none of their patients have any money. Of course, they are all wrong.
The bottom line is it’s about patient impact. Imagine each patient getting a little bit healthier. Imagine just another crown a day or a sleep, TMJ, implant case.
Sure, it’s exciting to get a full arch or mouth at a time but it’s not the only way. Often, the consistent way is to establish a more reliable foundation to your daily performance so that the more comprehensive cases take you over the top not just to your baseline objectives.
Let’s quickly summarize today’s message.
Get rid of the idea that size matters altogether.
The only numbers you need to grow in your practice are the size of the yeses of your patients’ complete health dentistry and that requires you to slow down, enhance the experience, to be on purpose with your treatment planning, and remain in control of the schedule.
Remember this: customize to maximize every patient opportunity and you will never be at the mercy of capacity again.
Here’s the hard truth: every doctor is with one patient, in one room, doing one thing at a time. This is all about leverage and optimization of size, people, space to get the most out of your capacity.
The more you try to get there by volume and ‘doing more’ of anything (other than ‘dentistry’ in a patient’s mouth), the more you will run up your overhead and stress and lower your quality.
Instead focus on making the most of every opportunity, every team member’s skill, every patient’s health and you will be amazed at what happens.
For more than two decades, I’ve proven that seven figure transformations in growth and profit are possible no matter what your practice looks like or what your current numbers are.
I can take a practice doing $700,000 or $800,000 and in under 12 months raise it up to $1,700,000 or $1,800,000 or more all by breaking through these myths, getting the dentist out of their own way, and removing all the inhibitive thinking that has been crammed into their brain. The same applies to a practice doing $1,000,000 or $2,000,000 or $3,000,000…there’s another million in there that can be cultivated and captured right before your eyes.
Same practice, same people, same # of chairs, same number of new patients, same hours (and actually maybe a lot less) all by focusing on what I call the Private Practice Prosperity.
We’ll pick up right here next week…
