Get Off the Dental Treadmill Podcast: Great Dentistry by Dentists Who Lead

Ask the right question and you will figure out the answer. I’ll say it again: you get what you intend, not what you hope for.

The right question is, “How do I build a mature practice, and when do I want to get there?” This isn’t about building multimillion-dollar practices with dozens of Stakeholders, unless that is what you’re shooting for. This is about creating the lifestyle that you want for you and your family. You can do that with a practice of almost any size.

You use a GPS to get to where you are going right? Whether it is dinner reservations, a sporting event, or your kid's state championship, understanding where you are going and where are, are monumental! What about with your practice?

The Seven Stages of Practice Ownership

Part I How You Got On the Treadmill

There are seven stages in the maturity cycle of practice ownership.

In this podcast, we take a good look at the first four stages, because these are the four that teach us how we got on the treadmill. Stages Five through Seven are the ones that get us off the treadmill, so we’ll walk through them in Part II of this podcast next week.

We have separated work and personal life since the Industrial Age.  How do we reintegrate them and USE our practice to build our Ideal Lifestyle in support of our Lifetime Goals?

Let's dive in and figure this out!

Two Step Decision-making is this simple:

Step One – Whoever has to execute/carry out the decision should make it.

Step Two – Whoever is affected/impacted by the decision should have input.

Yes, it is utterly simple, but we have found that in many companies steeped in Factory System hierarchy it takes a few months for people to actually work it out in daily life at work.

Understanding why you are doing what you are doing, and how to allow it to pull you through adversity are both essential to establishing your culture, and thus grow your practice. Your BIG "why" needs to be something that can never be checked off as completed. Once something is checked off, you are done with it, something like "having a million dollars in the bank" simply isn't strong enough to keep you going. The importance of this often gets over looked due to the chaos of the immediate.

Let’s change our intentions from creating revenue and/or profit, to building a practice that serves our Ideal Lifestyle, and then we can figure out how much revenue and profit we need to do that. It’s a very fine, but very important distinction.

 

You might be thinking, “But my practice is unique.” Listen to the podcast for the The 1000 to One Principle to get you started, and remember what Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t…

The host of the Dental Heroes Podcast, Paul Etchison, DDS joins us to help understand how important the Participation Age is to our practices. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Does everyone know what our values are, and could they describe them?

2. Do they talk about it? DO they bring them up to me, and others within the team?

Core values, mission statements, do they really matter?

The Mission Centered Organization

We should teach everyone that “The mission is the only boss we all have.”

Everything lines up when you fully embrace that simple, but powerful “rule”. To build a great practice and create a happy and loyal patient base, the Mission is the boss.

Currently 8% of practice owners own multiple practices, and that is said to be moving to 38%. But, is this trend real, and is it the best way to reach the success you have your sights set on? We take a deep dive on this with Dr. Farran and explore all of the possibilities on the business side of Dentistry.