Years ago when my mother was alive I noticed that she had an interesting characteristic trait… on the very day when the cleaners were coming over to clean her home, she would always want to tidy the house herself before they arrived.

I found this odd… my mother would literally be cleaning up the rooms of the house, when that’s what she was paying the cleaners to turn up and come and do for her.

To me this made no sense.

But to my mum it was logical.

She said that it was easier for the cleaners to know where things belonged in the house if she [my mum] put those things into their place before the cleaners arrived.

Interestingly, I may have a similar quirk.

For the past three years while Jayne and I have been renovating our home, our cars have not been garaged as they once used to be. We have had to leave our cars out in the sun and the rain each day, and the cars have gotten considerably dirtier as the result of not being kept undercover.

And because of this new arrangement, when it’s time for the cars to go in for their service [they are serviced up in Sydney] or if Jayne and I are having a weekend stay up in Sydney, I will always wash the car before we go for that trip…

And that’s really crazy, because when our cars are finished being serviced, they are always returned to us washed and cleaned up, inside and out.

I just feel guilty that someone parking or servicing the car will feel that because the car arrives to them in a dirty state, that I/we don’t care or look after our cars.

Similarly…

Similarly, or in a similar [type of] vein, as dental practice coaches, when we find a dentist who is in need of, and wants to have us coaching at their dental practice, what we sometimes see is a dentist trying to quickly improve or declutter their dental practice prior to the coaching beginning, in an effort to make it look as though things in their practice are better than we had originally been led to believe.

Which is the wrong thing for these dentists to do.

In reality, it’s easier for us as coaches to help improve practices that we get to see warts and all in the first instance, because we get a better idea about the starting point in relation to where the practice is actually beginning this coaching journey from…. rather than us starting from a point that has been “created” or manufactured to give a better illusion than what the absolute reality truly is…

And truth be told, often the attempts of those dentists to create a false illusion that things are better than they actually are, are actually misdirected, and those efforts being done can sometimes take the dental practice into a position of greater financial vulnerability… that it often does not need to be visiting…

Because in reality, if the practice was actually in a better position than the owners make it appear to be needing to begin from, then it would already be better.

But in true reality, the practice never really is better off with that quick fix being done….

The quick fix is often an unnecessary stall… and distraction.

Its kind of a crazy thought… it’s like trying to lose weight before you go to join a gym… when the reason you are wanting to be joining the gym is to lose weight and to get into shape.

And that’s because the gym specialises in helping people get fit and lose weight… the gym will get the member results immediately from the get-go because the gym knows what to do, and they know best how to get the immediate wins faster, and more quickly for their new member, than the member will ever work out and achieve for themselves on their own….

It’s often sad… some people who need to lose weight never do so because they fail to seek expert advice in the beginning, and getting “ready” on their own to join a gym proves to be too difficult for them.

Learning golf is much the same…

Holding and swinging a golf club is a learned skill best taught by a professional from the beginning, rather than learned by trial and error on your own….

It can be tough learning to hold the golf club correctly, and taking the clubhead back on plane… but doing it correctly gets the best results for consistent ball striking and shot making…

In your business…

Are you telling people that you’re doing OK, when you have no real idea whether what you’re doing is anything better than average?

If at all?

Or what you’re doing in your business is actually choking the results that your business could easily be achieving, if only you had received better advice?

Everybody knows this story…

In 1996, after my practice had flatlined for the fifth year in a row at $400K per annum, my dentist neighbours two doors down the road decided to retire from dentistry and sell their two dentist, four chair practice.

This practice of theirs had the reputation of being the best practice in the city, and after all, they were always busy and had been around a very long time.

It was a four chair practice, each partner operating out of two rooms.

When I asked them what sort of numbers they were doing, one of them proudly told me:

“I’m doing $200K per year, and Bob’s doing $100K…”

Well, I nearly fell over….

Here was me internally admitting that at $400K per year that I was underperforming and could do better, and these two dentists were chuffed that between the two of them they were producing 75% of what I was underproducing.

You don’t know what you don’t know….

If you think you’re doing well, but you don’t have anything tangible as a reference, you might be in for a big shock some time…

Everybody has the same twenty-four hours…

We all have the same 24 hours each day to utilise, and once the day is over, that time is gone, never to be recouped…

So the results we achieve in that day, in that 24 hours is really reflective of the way we spend our time, the way we value our time, and how smart we are with our time.

And how smart we are with our knowledge…

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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

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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