Sometimes I’m amazed at the simple things I see that Dentists put up as roadblocks to sabotage the success of their Dental Practices.
Success is easy to achieve.
It is not difficult.
All you need to do is find somebody who has been successful, find out what they are doing, and then copy those things.
That’s all.
And there are successful Dental Offices out there to copy.
But there are way more Dental Offices out there that are not successful.
Dr Omer Reed told me four years ago that in the USA ninety-five percent of Dentists on reaching age sixty-five cannot afford to retire.
Ninety-five percent!
Only one in twenty Dentists can walk away from their handpiece at age sixty-five.
I feel blessed that I have been able to do that at age fifty-five.
But it wasn’t always this way.
In 1997 I had to do what I hope no Dentist ever has to do.
In 1997, with a one year old and a four year old, I had to tell my wife we needed to sell our family home in order to keep my Dental Practice going.
I truly hope that that never happens to you.
You see, I’d made some “ordinary” business decisions, and they had turned sour.
Cash was tight.
It’s well documented. I had begun working with a coach, another Dentist, who unbeknownst to me, was also working in partnership with one of my competitors, nine hundred meters up the road from my Office.
Instead of information passing from him to me, it was the other way around.
What I did learn from this experience was that this person was simply the wrong coach for me.
It wasn’t that having a coach was the problem; it was the fact that I had the wrong coach.
That was the problem.
Fortunately, shortly after, as if by fate, a small flyer from another Consultant came across my desk.
At my first meeting with this next consultant, he said:
“We can walk into a Dental Practice and find one staff member costing that practice $200,000.00 per year!”
And I said to myself under my breath:
“THAT’S MY PRACTICE!”
It was a light bulb moment!
And so true.
One of the things I hear now on a regular basis from Dentists is:
“My staff won’t let me do that!”
And that’s just crazy!
Because the staff have no skin in the game.
The staff have no money invested in the business, yet they’re dictating the direction the business needs to be going?
It makes no sense.
And from time to time I also hear staff tell me:
“We’re already doing that. We’re already doing that.”
They tell me repeatedly.
To each and every suggestion.
But I know they’re not.
They’re not “already doing that”.
Because the proof is in the numbers.
And the numbers tell the story.
If I can do better, with a working-class background and a public school education, then so can you.
If I can build a multi-million dollar Dental Office in the heart of working class Sydney, where people drive average cars, live in average homes, earn average incomes from average jobs, then surely, anyone can copy and replicate what I did and achieve the same success, or better, in their location.
“But, my practice is different….”
I hear this often.
It’s a roadblock.
It’s an imaginary excuse put up as a reason not to change and improve.
It’s a ghost.
In 1997, my Dental Practice was doing it tough.
So tough, that I had to sell my family home and go rent.
Rent for five years.
But in that time, with the right advice and guidance, I turned my business around.
In 2002 my personal collections were three times what they were in 1996.
And in 2011 my personal collections were five times what they were in 1996, and my practice collections were more than eight times my 1996 numbers.
If all you did, in the next five years, was double your practice collections, would it be worth the investment, in having the right coach, to point you in the right direction?
If all you did, in the next ten years, was improve your practice profitability so that you were able to put away for your retirement and successfully walk away from your drill, at age sixty five or sooner, would finding the right coach to help you, be worth it?
If all you did, in the next twelve months, was gather the right sort of people on your team that allowed your Dental Practice to break free from those shackles that are holding it back, would that be a plan worth implementing?
Zig Ziglar used to call it *Stinkin’ Thinkin’*
It’s your attitude.
Is your stinkin’ thinkin’ attitude holding you back?
Are your team’s limiting beliefs affecting and influencing your true financial destiny?
In 1997, I changed.
I had to change.
I changed my stinkin’ thinkin’.
I changed my limiting beliefs.
I changed my limiting staff members.
And I changed my destiny.
The answers you seek are out there….
******
My One-Day Workshop in May covers in greater depth how to address these two BIG areas of leakage.
For more details on my Australian workshops, in Perth and in Sydney, CLICK HERE.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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