What is your purpose in being in business?

Is it to be the best you can be at your chosen profession?

Is it to be recognised by your peers, and by your customers as a leader in your field?

Is that your goal of being in business?

Is that your only goal?

Or is your goal in business to create an income that allows you to do other things rather than work?

Imagine that…. your business creates an income stream that allows you other benefits.

Such as:

• To spend more time with those you love
• To spend more time doing those things you want to do
• Helping you to help others who need help.

I was talking with a client this week about a dentist they know whose family relationships have now disintegrated to divorce because of the dentist’s focus on her business at the expense of spending time with her family.

Is that worth it?

I believe that life is all about planning, and priorities.

Firstly, without a plan, and I mean a business plan and a family plan, the chances are that you’ll end up exactly where you deserve to be … and that’s NOWHERE!

So what’s your family plan?

What are your desired amounts of times to be spent with your family?

What are your desired vacation times and destinations that you would like to take with your family?

What are your preferred educations for your children?

Where would you like to live?

Secondly, what other time outs do you need away from your business?

Do you have spiritual or social goals that require your time or your financial contribution?

What hobbies do you have that could require time?

Is it possible to design a life and then engineer your business to allow you to fulfil your life plan?

Do you have a clear vision of what your family and your life is going to look like in five, ten, twenty or thirty years time?

Or are you happy just to let life take you where it leads you, without a plan?

I must say that having a plan for my family was the biggest driving force that I could have applied to help grow my business.

Because it gave me focus on what I needed my business to do for me to help me to reach those personal goals.

Some people see what their business can do and then decide to do what they can with what the business produces.

That’s like riding a donkey backwards.

You never know where you’re going to end up until you get there, and often it is the wrong destination.

Sometimes you don’t ever depart and sometimes you end up going backwards.

Sounds like some dumb plan to me….

Once you know what you want your life to look like it’s then time to see whether your business has the ability to produce the income to achieve those outcomes.

If your business can’t do that then you need to change your business:

• You need to change what you do in your business so that it produces better for you.
• You need to improve the skills of the people in your business.
• You need to change the people in your business.
• You need to change your business location or your business customers.
• You need to change the industry you are in and do business in a different business.

There’s no point whinging and whining that your business and your lifestyle are at odds with each other when there are so many variables that you can tweak to change and improve the relationship.

But how do I improve my business?

Learn to be a better marketer of what you do than a doer of what you do.

And that marketing is internal marketing as well as external marketing.

The public assumes that as a dentist you are good at what you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be allowed to do what you do.

Your customers will come to you because of who you are and how you treat them and how your business is run and how your business treats them ahead of how well stained and characterized your posterior composites and porcelains are.

And when you market your business make sure your whole team is on board.

There’s no point in change and improvement if there’s a weak point in your organisation.

Everyone needs to be pulling in the same direction.

Understand that nobody is going to run your business the same way that you are going to run your business.

So lead by example.

“Do as I do, not do as I say”

Nor “Do as I hope….”

If you fail to plan then you plan to fail.

The onus is on you.

It can be done….

Once you decide on what you want, you can achieve it.

But you need to plan…

*****

Have you read my book , How To Build The Dental Practice of Your Dreams [Without Killing Yourself!] In Less Than Sixty Days.

You can order your copy here: Click Link To Order

*****

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

Did you like this blog article? If you did then hit the share buttons below and share it with your friends and colleagues. Share it via email, Facebook and twitter!!