Killing The Practice Before It Kills You
…is finally in print. The first edition is available for order if you go to: http://www.killingthepractice.com/.
Take the short assessment on the home page to see if you have any of the signs that your business may be killing you.
Vacation Tension
I was recently talking with my newest client and he asked me this question: How do you know if your practice is killing you? I offered up a list of several indicators for his consideration. One of them was the following: “On a weeklong vacation, it takes three to four days to unwind. You feel like a new person for one or two days, then the tension builds again, welling up uncontrollably, tightening every muscle. Sunday nights are the worst.” His reply…..I just returned from a vacation week and that is EXACTLY what happened to me. I’m all tense and worried about what to expect, even after I came in early on Sunday to catch up on all the mail.
If you want to see several of the other indicators visit: http://www.killingthepractice.com/
Here is my question: What do you do to eliminate this kind of tension when you are on vacation or have taken time away from the office? If you never “tighten up” before coming back into the office from a vacation, please share your wisdom as to how you do it.
When is Ok, Ok?
Things are moving along OK.
The income to the practice is OK.
When asked about your hygienists ability to recommend needed treatment, you say OK.
Your new patient flow is OK.
The team members have no concept about what it costs to run the business and that too is OK.
When you get asked, “how ya doin”, you reply, OK.
I was OK with these same issues. BAM! I had a heart attack when I was 41. Not OK after all.
Are you OK?
Defining Your Success in your work?
Have you ever viewed he success of your practice as defining who you are, your personal self-worth, as well as your external view of yourself?
I did and it nearly killed me.
Visit http://www.killingthepractice.com and download Chapter 4 from my book and see if it resonates with you.
One Essential Tip to Re-focus Your Dental Practice or Business
I was asked this question recently:
What is one tip you would give to a seasoned business owner who is looking to re-invent and re-focus on their business?
Start with the end in mind…. a Steven Covey mindset. Dream and envision what you want! What will make the biggest difference, and yet one of the toughest things to implement, is to identify who you are via your own Core Values. Armed with your Core Values, the strategic plan magically begins to unfold and any time you get stuck…refer to the values.
–You can download a *f*r*e*e chapter of Dr. Ron’s popular book at:www.killingthepractice.com
Dental Fees and Practice Management
I was recently asked this question: In your book, you tell the readers how to raise their fees – and still keep their patients, clients and customers. What are some tips you can give us on how to do that?
After years of listening to the “crowd” tell me that my fees had to be “competitive” or the lowest in town (a real disaster waiting to happen), I finally made the decision that I was going to be paid what I was worth and I expected to connect my compensation with the value, the love, care, and extra attention I brought to my patients’ dental health and life. No more of this conversation about if the insurance will or will not cover it. Or, that’s over “Usual, Customary, and Reasonable.” That old thinking had to go. My practice was not usual and customary; we were extraordinary. Here are my new fees, and those fees were to be effective immediately.
- T. Scott Gross in his Positively Outrageous Service book tells us that discounting is a short-term cover up of long-term problems.
- If you must discount your fees to survive, your prices are too high, your service is lousy, or your quality stinks.
- Be determined to put “extraordinary” back into your service quotient and get compensated for being so different from the others. Be really different and not just “lip service”.
- If you insist on discounting it won’t be long before people discover what your product or service are really worth…about the same value YOU put on it?
- I chose to put a high value on what I, along with my team, were delivering.
- We were not simply filling holes in teeth; rather we were creating smiles and developing trusting relationships.
- Raising my fees was easy…and the results were wonderfully positive with banner profits.
Dental Practice Management is Not New!
In the past 3 months I have received calls from doctors who want to hire me as their dental business coach. When I ask them what their #1 challenge is they tell me STAFF. After discussion we both agree that a person(s) are getting in their way of forward movement. When we discuss leadership and setting expectations and consequences they say: “I do all that.” When I ask them to “belly up to the bar and deliver the consequences they say: “I can’t do that.”
These people never are invited to become my clients.
Consequences are the natural step after expectations. Most of us don’t have the b_lls to show up.
What do you think?
We’re So Different We’re the Same
Recently had the fun opportunity to meet face-to-face a dentist from Australia that I have befriended over the past several years. Our email communications and Face Book posts never came close to allowing me to appreciate his energy, entrepreneurship, and sense of humor. While our language and accents are different; the way dentistry operates in either country is different; there were amazing similarities between Dr. David Moffet and me…and our profession.
- The same desire to grow, be better, serve more.
- The excitement shared about our profession and how we treat our patients and clients.
- The yearning to take care of our family.
- Looking for ways to stand out and be distinctive…to set ourselves apart from the pack.
Dr. David reminded me that bringing like-minded people together is an incubator of new thoughts and ideas that enable us to be distinctive. Thank you Dr. David!
Would You Kill the Practice?
You’ve been out of your office for 5 weeks recuperating from a heart attack and on your first day back……near the middle of the day, you walk into the private office that you shared with your brother, an orthodontist, and an oral surgeon, to see two notes laid prominently in the middle of your desk. Mind you, this was your very first day back after surviving a heart attack and being out of the office for five weeks…and you requested your staff “lay low” on the administrative hassles for the first week or two so you could gain your bearings back in the practice.
One note said,
“Are we going to get our uniform allowance today?”
and the other said,
“When do we get our bonus checks?”
How would you handle this?
“Gimmy somethin new”
A dental friend of mine was meeting with a group of dentists who gather monthly to “lament” the current state of their practice slow-downs. Being a client of mine, he offered up some ideas as to how to “pick themselves up out of the doldrums”. In a common “I’m a smart dentist” reply they said: “hey those ideas are worthless…they don’t work…I tried them……..gimmy something new!
This is a multiple choice question. What do you think the answer might be? The reason these dentists are in practices that are tapering off is because……
a) These dentists are stuck, never to get out of their rut?
b) These dentists are not as smart as they think they are?
c) They are living in “stinking thinking?
d) They are lazy?
e) These dentists are looking for the “magic pill” that doesn’t exist, they know it doesn’t exist, yet they still want the pill?
f) They need to look in the mirror and know it all begins with them?
g) Each one might do well to ask for help…even the Lone Ranger had Tonto?
Answer: a-b-g; c-d-e-; b-d-f; All of the above