I’m often amazed that people don’t always see the solution to their problem. Yet to others the solution is sometimes so obvious.
I’m reminded of the story of the construction worker who every day, without fail, at lunchtime would open his lunchbox, look at his meal, and say:
“Not peanut butter sandwiches again? I hate peanut butter!”
Every day he would say the same thing.
Without fail.
“Not peanut butter sandwiches again? I hate peanut butter!”
Finally, one day, one of his co-workers asked him:
“If you don’t like peanut butter, why don’t you get your wife to make you something else?”
To which the first guy answers:
“I make my own sandwiches”.
It’s the same in dentistry.
I hear Dentists say, I want to provide better customer service, but I only have one chair.
They say, I want more patients, but they only have one phone line and they only have one person answering the phones.
And the same person is checking patients in, and checking patients out, amongst a whole pile of other duties as well.
They say, when we get busier, I’ll put on more staff.
They say, when I get busier, I’ll add another chair, someday.
But the someday never comes.
In 1994, when I went from two treatment rooms to three, I plumbed and built for four.
“If you build it he will come.”
A great quotation from the movie Field of Dreams.
Probably just as important a line from that same movie was when James Earl Jones’s character said:
“Go the distance.”
Indeed.
To be successful in business we need a vision, we need a plan, we need ambition, we need goals, we need faith.
We need faith in ourselves and faith in our convictions.
Not blind faith.
Logical sensible faith.
Dentistry is a great profession.
It allows us the opportunity to heal and to treat.
It also allows us the opportunity to impact positively on people, changing their health, changing their appearance, improving their confidence, changing their lives.
But some of the most gifted and skilled Dentists I knew at Dental School never went the distance.
They never built it so he would come.
We all attended the same University.
We all received the same education.
And it’s not easy.
It’s a lot of years. A lot of dollars and a lot of commitment.
And with that sort of investment, we need the business of Dentistry to provide us with a suitable return on those levels of investment.
What’s the point of seeing the problems but not taking action to gain improvement?
We need to improve.
Daily. Weekly. Monthly. Yearly.
And with improvement comes reward.
We owe this to ourselves, for all the time and the money and the commitment we have put into our careers.
We owe it to ourselves and our families to be the best we can be.
Not second best.
Not third best.
Not average.
That’s not what we’re here for.
We’re not here to keep getting in our own way.
What’s the point of that?
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