There is a major difference between being ambitious and being in a race. It is only fair to want to own multiple 5 chair practices around the country; but it is a completely different thing to want to own ‘more than’ the person you went to Uni with. While the former gives purpose to your life, the latter completely annihilates your definition of success. Professional growth starts with personal development. You cannot put yourself in the backseat and let your undefined notions of success guide you to an unknown destination. The ongoing pandemic is a wakeup call for anyone and everyone who has been short of time to get a better understanding of their goals and objectives – personal and professional. Here’s everything you need to know on how to develop personally to grow professionally:

Don’t Be the Jack of All Trades

We all want to do it all. Trusting someone to take care of your patients, your marketing or your accounts is never easy. You never think anyone else would be as focused and determined to give their best as you would be. But the desire to do everything yourself comes at the price of not really being able to focus on your priorities. You need to learn to let go of tasks and delegate them to your team members. They are there to assist and support you and you should make best use of that support. Invest time and effort in finding the right candidates, nurture and train them and then trust them to do the right thing.

Find the Definition of Success

We all want to be successful, but as they say one man’s heaven is another man’s hell. The term ‘work life balance’ can be quite misleading. Your work should be a part of your life’s balance. Don’t take work as the means to an end. Define your meaning of success and then balance all your responsibilities and obligations to collectively work towards that goal. If being successful means being able to spend more time with your friends and family then you’d need to create processes that will automate your work load, giving you more time to be with the family. Sure, the revenue may take a little dive, but if it comes at the cost of you being able to make more time for your top priorities then all is good.

Power of Meditation

Meditation can be an extremely powerful tool to help you centralise your plans, thoughts and emotions. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation regarding meditation that leads people to believe that it requires a complete revamp of your lifestyle. Meditation can be as simple as leaning your head against the sofa, closing your eyes and quieting the noises in your head.  You can start with as little as 5 minutes a day to as much as you personally feel your mind requires to help clear up your thoughts and have clarity. You could also find support groups or read up on different techniques of meditation to find something that best resonates with your lifestyle and beliefs.

Journaling for Clarity

Journaling is another great way to jot down your thoughts and ideas. Just a simple scribble every night can help clear up your thoughts as to what needs to be done the next day, week or month. You’d be surprised as to the chores and tasks that were weighing you down would seem so easy once you write them down. It doesn’t have to be anything too fancy or time consuming. 

Dealing with Failure

It is the word itself that weighs heavy on you. If you call something a failure, you immediately associate it with your inability to perform well. Instead, if you’d only call it a setback, then it would seem like a temporary glitch that can easily be fixed. It is how you perceive failure that defines you. You could sit down and dwell in self-pity or you could actually look within yourself and identify where is it that you can improve.  Say, if there was a setback in your marketing strategy, you could wallow about lost opportunities and resources, or you could use it as an opportunity to learn from your mistakes to better strategise next time. For every setback, try to take a step back and soak in the situation from a rational perspective rather than being emotional. Are you approaching matters the wrong way? Is there something that you are doing wrong in your practice? How can you improve your systems so as to let them serve you more efficiently? Is it the way you communicate? Asking all these questions would help clear up your mind and take away the emotional baggage of dealing with a setback. Fact is, dental school doesn’t teach you to be the best communicator or the best business person, and even if it did, it does take a lot of trials and errors before you get it absolutely right. So just be easy on yourself and allow yourself to make mistakes and learn from them. 

Be the Best Version of Yourself

Your only competition should be yourself. Don’t let other people’s definition of success define yours. Just try to be better than what you were yesterday. Just because someone else owns four practices doesn’t mean you also need to own four or more in order to be successful. You should only focus on the goals that you define for yourself and work towards them without any regard for what others are doing.

Be Humble- Always

There is nothing more attractive than humility. It is a personality trait that truly lures people towards you. People will be drawn to you and they will come to trust you. When you are humble, you switch from being the speaker to becoming the listener. And when you speak, you lose the opportunity to learn something new. Every time you listen, whether it be a 10 year old, 40 year old or an 80 year old, who has your ear, you give yourself the opportunity to learn.  All these skills, practices and traits might sound right out of a self-help book you might read on Christmas vacation.  But the fact is, the more you invest in yourself, the sooner you’ll be able to reap the benefits in your personal and professional life. 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

Uncertainty might be an understatement considering the current situation worldwide. Coronavirus has really overtaken this year. Everyone is at a pause. Some call it the ‘big break’ we all needed. But what this pandemic does not do is define us. What will define us is how we come out of it.  Businesses are getting severely affected, but if your plan is to ‘ride this storm out’ then you might find yourself on a deserted island once all this is over. This is not just the time to reflect and relax – it is the time to plan and prepare. So rather than going into hibernation, you need to dust yourself off and adapt your practice and your marketing strategies to this new turn of events. Not sure why or how you need to manage your marketing when you are literally closed for business, possibly indefinitely? Here’s everything you need to know:

Have a Consistent Plan

Not just during uncertainty, but in normal circumstances many businesses fail to plan their marketing strategy. Their strategy usually takes a rollercoaster ride depending on how the business is doing. So, when those less than ideal patients start to walk through the door, they start marketing heavily, and when they get to their desired patient numbers, it is like the business vanishes, the marketing stops, until the patients begin to drop. This is called helicopter marketing. Helicopters burn most fuel during take-off and landing, and not much while up in the sky.  Marketing strategies are the same, it takes a hefty capital to start a marketing campaign from scratch, but maintaining a consistent strategy isn’t as costly; but is more effective. The first thing you need to do is to use this time to create a consistent marketing plan for during this time of uncertainty as well as when it is business as usual. 

Adapt to the Situation

Does this mean you start talking about the importance of self-isolation and washing your hands? No you don’t – enough people are doing that already. What you need to do is focus on how you can interact with your potential and existing patients in a way that they feel connected with you. Let them know that while you might not be open as normal, you are available for a chat and on call in case of emergencies.  Or you could talk about the importance of dental hygiene, or tips and tactics to prevent toothache or other dental issues. You could also get very creative with your marketing by offering tips and tactics for using dental floss or toothbrushes for cleaning or organising the house. The options are endless and offer great potential for reaching out to your target audience. You may not be able to make a sale right now, but you can make sure that you are the only dentist they remember when the uncertainty clears.

Don’t Copy What Others are Doing

By doing what others are doing, you just help strengthen their message. For instance, if another practice in your region offers boutique services with free-Wi-Fi and you too start conveying a similar message, then all you’ll end up doing is reminding potential patients about ‘the practice that offers free-Wi-Fi’ because they have already tapped into it. Now, there is a fair chance more than 60% of dental practices already offer free Wi-Fi, but if that one practice is the only one doing it, then steer away from it. The only exception is if you could beat their offer. You know that infamous story of two hairdressers where one offered haircuts for $50 and the other offered it for $10. The first one could have lowered their price, but instead they relied on effective marketing and advertised their business as ‘the one that fixes the $10 haircuts.’  Try to be unique and true to your own brand and vision.

Internal Marketing

This is your pot of gold right there! The worst thing you could do is lose your position as ‘the go-to dentist.’ People like to create this sense of ownership around the people that they do business with. So, a hairdresser isn’t just a hairdresser, she becomes ‘my hairdresser’, ‘my mechanic’, ‘my dentist.’ And as the professional on the other end, you need to continuously remind them of this connection. Remind patients that you know them better than anyone else.  In times of uncertainty, this sense of ownership should become all the more important. Reach out to patients and let them know that you are still around. It could be just a text message reassuring them that you will soon be open. It may be something like ‘we can’t wait to show you our shiny new practice’, or ‘we have been working hard in our practice and can’t wait to introduce you our new offerings, or new teeth whitening service, or new ortho service’.  Your regular patients are your most valuable assets and you need to work at retaining that ‘my dentist’ status!

Tips for Making This Time Productive

Apart from proactively marketing your practice, following are a few tips and tactics to make the best use of this time:

• Check your current marketing strategies and see how they have been fairing recently
• Marketing metrics can be really helpful in strategising and improving your marketing game. For online marketing, use Google metrics and other resources to stay up to date. 
• Newsletters give you access to your target audiences’ virtual living rooms. Even if 20% read it, don’t let it dishearten you! At least the other 80% haven’t unsubscribed yet.  
• Use this time to go back to your subscription list to fix any incorrect data. You’d be surprised by the number of addresses that have comas instead full stops or email addresses are wrong. 
• Further educate yourself on marketing techniques. Listen to podcasts, read books and learn new skills to help enhance your marketing strategies. 

Fact is, this is a temporary situation; it will soon be over. But what will define you and your dental business is how you bounce back from this pandemic. The better prepared you are and how wisely you use this time could immediately put you ahead of your competition.   

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

What is Branding?

When we think of branding, we think of logos – the bitten apple for the technology giant of the same name or the little tick for Nike that is a movement in itself. But is that all branding is about? Creating an attractive logo using the right colors and fonts? Experts would beg to disagree.  Branding is a lot more than just the visual representation of your practice. It is a voice that talks about your values, a reinforcement of your beliefs and a story about your journey. Branding is neither the sole responsibility of the creative writer nor the graphic designer of your team; it is a collective effort that starts with understanding your vision for your practice. 

Where Do You Start?

The first step to creating an impactful brand identity is positioning. It is one of the most essential components of running a business successfully. Your positioning is basically where you sit in the marketplace.   For a dental practice, the core target market is the community. Hence, you need to position yourself according to their beliefs and values. Where do they spend their time? What are their challenges? Their pain points? What is your ideal customer’s avatar?  We have spoken about the importance of an ideal patient persona multiple times. Understanding your brand message is just as important in establishing and successfully running your practice as understanding your patient avatar and other aspects of business.  You cannot be catering to everyone with a set of teeth in your community. You need to narrow down your ideal patient base and then position yourself accordingly. And with time, that would just become your identity, your brand. 

Influencers

If there is one thing that social media marketing has taught us, it is that paid advertisements aren’t half as effective as having an influencer endorse and refer your services. You need to find these influencers in your community. Who influences your target market? They could be entrepreneurs, coaches, media sources and other people that you can align your message with who have similar values as you. 

Your Brand Architecture

Your brand architecture consists of your company purpose, its core values and your brand driver. You need to figure out what moves your brand forward and what are your strategic pillars. You need to know the driving force that is unique to your business that nobody else does in their practice.  Your brand architecture will also focus on your greatest strengths and talents. Your goal should be to look for ways to maximise that. Say, for example you are great with kids. You could use this as your strength and align your marketing efforts accordingly.  Again, this is not something that you need to develop. For most people starting their own business or practice already know what their values are, they just need to identify them and align that message with that of their business.   

Biggest Pitfall that Restrict your Growth

Do your business values change over time? Likely not. Does that mean you need the same message and same tactics to brand your business month after month and year after year? Most definitely not! One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make is to think that what worked for them in the past, and whatever is working for them now, will always be enough! The saying ‘change is the only constant’ cannot be truer for marketing. You need to be adaptive of new marketing and branding innovations and offerings in order to remain relevant. To retain patients you must always remain relevant.

Identifying Trends and Movements

There is a major difference between trends and movements. Trends can change on a daily basis, perhaps even faster. Movements on the other hand steer the world in a certain direction. You don’t necessarily need to jump on the bandwagon of every trending topic. If it aligns with your practice’s message, then you should use those trending topics to further convey your message. But you don’t necessarily need to address every trending topic under the sun. 

For instance, the current Covid-19 situation will have a great impact on how we do business moving forward. It will influence all our decisions from here on. The sooner you acknowledge this movement and align it with your marketing strategies the stronger the impact of your connection with your target market. 

Getting the Message Right

Every little marketing strategy needs to send the right message. Without proper planning you will leave your target market confused. Once you have your values defined, you need to direct all your messages to help build your practice as a brand. This message needs to be easily visible on your website, in your practice premises, in your blog, on your social media pages and all other online and offline portals where you are present.

Personal Branding vs. Business Branding

In service based businesses like dental practices, oftentimes dentists are confused whether they should opt for business branding or personal branding. The answer lies mainly in your long term goals. Having a personal brand can be very successful, but it will likely not have the longevity of a business brand. If you’d like your business to be a separate entity than you, and have it grow whether or not you are part of the equation, then you’d want to consider branding it as a separate entity. 

Quick Word on the Future of Marketing

We live in ever-evolving times. It could almost be impossible to say where the world of marketing is headed. Businesses have moved from dedicating only a fraction of their budget to online marketing a few years back to mainly focusing on the digital offering. The key takeaway from the current global crisis is that we all need to be willing to adapt to any changing business environment and realign our messaging accordingly in order to remain relevant and at the top of our game.   

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

It has always been a little difficult for the general dentist and a specialist to amicably co-exist. But the fact of the matter remains, both of them are equally important components for providing the highest possible care for patients. However, a lack of communication and trust with referrals can add complications that not only cost patients valuable time and money, but also costs each dentist the rewards that come from doing business together. But how do you build trust, communication and an environment of mutual interest that could benefit all parties concerned? Here’s everything you need to know!

Understand the Business Model of a Specialist Practice

Nobody wants to go to a prosthodontist until things have really taken a turn for the worse. Commonly a general dentist tries everything in his capabilities before realising that the case is best handled by a specialist. By that time, the patient has lost more than just a few dollars. Most specialists often complain of only being consulted to fix mistakes made by other dentists, and there may be some truth to that.  A specialist needs more than just a few ‘special’ cases to remain in business. Only dealing with complex cases leads to a drop in profitability that affects their bottom line. It becomes very difficult for a specialist to stay in business if they are only seeing very complex cases. And especially if they are getting them too late in the process.  Most general dentists are equipped with the knowledge and technological support to conduct complex procedures themselves, and even when they aren’t, they tend to wait until the last minute to consult with a specialist for fear of losing a patient.  This conflict of interests leads to resentment and a lack of communication. However, by just respecting each other’s space and the understanding that there will always be ‘work for everyone’ both the general dentist and the specialist can create a bond that will help build each other up. But again, it is easier said than done. Following are a few tips, tricks and tactics to help bridge the gap and build a team that can work together to positively influence the bottom line for everyone involved.

How Can you Work in a Collaborative Environment?

The best way to co-exist is to accept and respect each other’s areas of expertise. A general dentist should have a relationship strong enough to consult and refer patients without fear of losing the patient. The best way to do this is to use more than just notes to communicate with each other about a specific case. By taking time to discuss a patient’s diagnosis at length and all the procedures that need to be conducted, a lot of the apprehension a patient may feel can evaporate.  Consultation doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on a patient. A general dentist could seek advice or an opinion on how to deal with complex cases. A specialist can help identify problems and provide solutions that may not be too obvious. In many cases, just a little consultation could help a general dentist provide better solutions to their patients. Even in cases where intervention may be required, a specialist would highlight areas where he could help and leave the rest of the treatment to be taken care of by the general dentist. 

When Do You Call in a Specialist?

This is an extremely important question. Do you wait until things get out of hand or is it best to refer prior to attempting to fix the problem all on your own. Ideally, you should consult with a specialist the moment you have a complex case in the chair. You should request a meeting at a time suitable for you, the specialist and the patient to discuss options. You could then have a one on one meeting with the specialist to discuss the processes and delegate procedures relevant to your individual areas of expertise.  Doing so helps create a cohesive plan that would help save both time and money for the patient and also help create a healthy cash flow for yourself as well as the specialist.

The Future

More and more dental practices are working towards a business model of general dentists complimented by a trusted panel of specialists they work very closely with. The understanding that both dental professionals are on the same team and have similar objectives helps them work together and create a collaborative and financially rewarding relationship.  

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here  

As we live amidst the most trying of times in modern history, uncertainty seems to be the keyword. COVID-19 has shaken up the entire world. From a business perspective, there is a numbness with no sense of direction. What do you do? What can you do? What should you have done to prepare for such uncertainty? How could you better prepare for risk in the future? Is risk even controllable? It is alright to be overwhelmed by all these questions. Not just dental practice owners, but businesses of all types and sizes are going through similar conundrums right now. And the best way to answer these questions is to understand business risk and different methods and processes for mitigating it. And that is what I will cover today. Let’s unpack my strategies to manage risk. 

The Risk Analysis

The value of a business is determined using the basic formula where value is equal to the repeatable and sustainable earnings times a multiple. But another important criterion for determining the value of a business is its ability to manage risk. A business that can manage risk efficiently can sustain through trying times. The best way to analyse risk is to understand the factors that could disrupt the business’s future stream of earnings and then take measures to mitigate those risk factors.  Primarily, there are two categories of risks- the controllable factors and the uncontrollable factors. 

The Controllable Risk Factors

These factors are easily controllable but are often overlooked in the mist of day to day operations. 

Over-Reliance

This is one of the most common, and seldom realised factor. Over-reliance could happen in multiples forms. For example, a practice that heavily relies on preferred provider schemes for patient flow only focuses on one customer group; or overly relying on one supplier or one manufacturer. Over-reliance could also be on specific members of the staff so much so that losing that member could compromise the practice’s ability to operate well in the future.   In order to mitigate risk related to over-reliance, a business needs to make conscious efforts to distribute their customer base across different platforms, delegate tasks efficiently among all team members and stop relying on single sources of providers and manufacturers. 

Cash Flow

In a nutshell, a business is only sustainable in the long run if it has a healthy cash flow. Businesses that have table cash flow, and where the cash flow is predictable have more value compared to businesses with cash flow that seems like it’s on a roller coaster ride. As a practice owner, you need to implement a structure that allows for repeatable and sustainable production of cash through the business.  

Rainy Day Reserves

Another great way to mitigate risk is to prepare for it well in advance. Your risk management measures should be jotted down on your balance sheet. A property investor takes into account the vacancy periods of a rental property when determining monthly rent. Similarly, you need to prepare for those ‘vacancy periods’ well in advance. You should have cash reserves for emergencies. Ideally, this rainy day reserve should total around three to six months-worth of expenses. This doesn’t necessarily need to be in the form of cash, but it’d be good to have instant access to it should you need it. 

External Input

Did you know how many coaches Tiger Woods had when he was at the pinnacle of success? Five! Now, one would think why does a person on almost a never-ending winning streak need five coaches? He should have been arrogant enough to not even keep one; but he was smart enough to opt for 5 instead because, in his own words, ‘he couldn’t see himself swing.’  Just like you cannot see yourself swing.  We all have blind spots. Our decisions are driven by past experiences, our own set of information and our value system that sometimes limits our perspective of what the best decision should or could be. Intelligence runs low when emotions are running high, just like they are right now. It makes sense to get some external input to get a better perspective on matters and on how to tackle them. 

The Uncontrollable Risk Factors

These are factors that you cannot really predict or control yourself. For instance, if an influential person in power ends up making a controversial statement, it could instantly have an impact on the stock market, or a natural disaster or other environmental, social or economic disasters. Obviously, we cannot change those circumstances, but we can make changes that could help us prepare for those times or how we respond to those curveballs. 

The Economic Conditions

The best way to tackle uncontrollable economic conditions is to maintain a healthy cash flow. 

The Industry Specifications

These are factors that are specific to dentistry but are uncontrollable. For instance, you can’t influence the number of dentists being trained or the activities of the health insurance companies or preferred provider networks. The best way to mitigate such risks is to strongly position yourself in the market, 

The Regulations

These include the laws imposed. Of course, one could try to influence the outcome to some extent, but for the most part, you don’t have any control over it. Once the decisions are made, you just need to run with it. 

Competitors

This is one factor that most businesses focus too much of their time and energy on; and wrongfully so in my opinion. It is better, and more beneficial to focus on your own race rather than how others are doing it. 

Mitigating these Risks

When it comes to mitigating risks we all need to find ways to achieve certain levels of control. Your objective should be to increase your level of control over the different types of factors highlighted above. Control over everything of course isn’t possible.  Sometimes we have to accept we can only control so much. Recent events have shown that to be true. But from every challenge and every adversity, from all of the heartache we have experienced as dentists and practice owners in recent weeks, and the uncertainty we still feel, we can find lessons about risk that will be lifelong.  

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here