We’ve been knocking down a few Michaelisms (highlighted in bold print) covering a myriad of topics. It’s time to reflect on where you are and why you are not where you thought you would be. Each of these Michaelisms can stand on its own, but none of them will yield solutions and growth for your practice if you are not acting on them.
It doesn’t have to be New Years Eve for each of us to take a long, hard look at our score card this year. I do it every week. I try to be proactive and take on the challenges that come along, quickly. You don’t get a do over button in life. You have today, and then there is tomorrow. You eventually get so many yesterdays that your “use before date” pops up. I would venture to say that most of us repeat history rather than create it.
Surely you understand that what you act on today, rewrites tomorrow. It can ensure more opportunities in the future and elevate your practice above just “average”. John Maxwell likes to say that “in life there are no mistakes, only lessons. If you fail to learn a lesson it gets repeated. If you still don’t learn the lesson, the universe adds pain.” When will you know you learned your lesson? When you change what you are doing.
Could life be so difficult because we are destined to repeat mistakes, failures and history because we didn’t pay attention the first time? One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Oddly enough, there are good things that “can” come from failure. In fact, I would argue that it is essential that each of us act quickly, make new mistakes, and experience new failures. Just pay attention to why! I have heard that one definition of “expert” is someone who has made more mistakes than anyone else in their chosen field of expertise. Pay attention, change your action, and try again. I have learned far more from my mistakes than I ever did from my successes. Bottom line is that each of us can rewrite our future today. The secret is viewing failures not only as the output of unsuccessful activity, but also the input for a successful one. Ryan Blair said it best: “You learn to become strong because you have experienced weakness. You learn to become bold and courageous because you have experienced fear. You become wise because in the past you were foolish. And you become successful because of the lesson you learned by making mistakes and experiencing failure. Get out there and make big things happen.”
With our clients, we encourage them to make really large goals and knock them down. BHAGS. Big Hairy Audacious Goals. The goals you would make if you knew you could not fail. Much like a person with a magic wand. If you have made it this far in Michaelisms, it is time to step up and set those goals and act now. There is no perfect timing. Just do it, now.
If you don’t know these facts, you are going to be a perfect example of “one form of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. A simple truth taught to me in a shooting class in military school in the mid-sixties. Too many of us read about some super practice or wildly overstated results on social media and then feel like a loser. In response we adopt the attitude of: if they can do it, so can I. In shooting, as in dentistry, you must first perfect your action slowly with intention and attention to detail and consistency until it is ingrained in your psyche. As you slowly perfect a procedure or system, you will also notice you are doing it much smoother. This also improves your aim and target acquisition. Without even noticing it, when you begin slowly, but precisely, you become smoother, and ultimately faster without really trying to just be fast. It is the execution of the steps that perfect the result.
Anything worth doing is uphill. You get what you deserve, not what you want. Any new goal will create obstacles and difficulties. It is in the realization that a new level of commitment and results always takes extra focused effort. Don’t assume that you can just slip one of these Michaelisms into your daily routine without upsetting everything else. It is a process of doing, adapting, and redoing until you perfect it. Make it yours. Arrive at a new level of commitment.
Steven Covey: Always begin with the end in mind. This is an extension of the old adage of “what you can conceive, you can achieve”. If you can imagine a new future and better results, it is possible for you to make it happen. Will it be easy? No way. Will you make mistakes? Always. Will it be worth it? A resounding yes. When you can see your desired results, it will automatically program your subconscious mind to find ways to get your there. It’s like magic. A vision, with engagement, plus hard work and boom. You are there.
TLC is the secret to consistent growth. Let me explain. TLC stands for Think Like a Consumer. To be remarkable in the eyes of a potential client, you must stand out. No one is looking for another “average dentist” or average office. It is standing out, doing things differently from the crowd, that elevates you in the eyes of potential clients. Think about what you would want in a dentist. Be picky. Be selective and compare what you think is ideal to what a non-dentist would be looking for. It probably is not what 90% of dental practices do on a daily basis. It’s not an average office. Strive to be remarkable by thinking like a consumer.
Creating the practice you always thought you would have. This is tough, in your face, throw down of reality falling far short of how you see your practice. If you are not growing, you are not inspiring your clients. If you don’t have at least 50% of your new patients coming from internal referral, there is something wrong. Acknowledge it, admit it, deal with it and change what you are currently doing. It will not just happen. It takes intentional actions to counter unintended results. If you are not growing, you are not meeting your patients needs. You must be the one that precedes your practice to the next level of productivity. You could actually call this area the fatal flaw of unintended results. Falling short seems to just happen where consistent success is intentional and difficult but necessary.
The double standards in dentistry and the hypocrisy of thinking like a dentist. As obvious and prevalent as this is, few give it much thought. This lack of seeing dentistry as it truly is will hold you back. Too often, if we think like a dentist, we miss the connection with our patients. Go back and read the definition and application of TLC. Many times. No, almost every time I see doctors with a rhetoric/reality gap in what they say, do, and think. They say one thing and do another while all the time not actually seeing the incongruent behavior and how it affects their success. There are too many double standards in our profession, and while the public feels they are glaringly obvious, most dentists are clueless. Here are a few examples. We, the doctors or team members, get upset when patients are late, yet we, ourselves, always run late. Always maybe a little strong, but damn near always run late is pretty accurate. There are no excuses for this. A well-run office can stay on time, and those that do will look remarkable in the eyes of their patients. We are frustrated with patients when they recoil from the prices of our services. Fact: a majority of potential clients cannot afford a one-time $500 out of pocket expense without going to savings or robbing an already too tight budget to pay it. If we were truthful, many dentists are in the same boat. Here’s one: We, the dental community, hate insurance and pull our hair out when patients want to make sure we are in-network. We don’t want insurance and the patients do. Yet (and you knew there is a yet coming) if we look at our own medical insurance purchases, we always buy a PPO and will, for the most part, always find an MD that is in-network. This sounds like a double standard to me. Now I’m not saying that you should not move towards a fee-for-service practice, nor am I suggesting that you sign up for every insurance under the sun. But a majority, if not all “average” practices must deal with this duality. I would venture to say that over 90% of the current dentists would never make it in a fee-for-service world. That’s another topic for a different time. Bottom line is that you need to take a hard look at what you do and what your potential clients want and see if there is a way to give patients more of what they want and less of what they don’t want, while striving for a 40% profit or more, having little if any staff turnover, and a less stressful practice that grows 15% plus every year.
Price will always be a consideration because value in the mind of the consumer is difficult to quantify. This is the result of the “commodification of healthcare”. Through ads, dental marketing, and a more educated consumer base, competition, and demographic denial, the consumer as a whole considers dentistry and most of what we “sell” to be a commodity. They feel that a crown is a crown, a cleaning is a cleaning, dentistry is just dentistry. So, and I don’t agree with this, most consider dentistry from a cost and convenience perspective. I will say that well over 50% of the dentists I know and the dentistry I see fall way below the standard of care I would want in my own mouth. Take a mirror and tip it up and look at yourself, your office, and your results and see if you are all that you could be. Are the services and dentistry you deliver at the highest level of competency. Many of us will turn away from that mirror because we know we are falling short.
If you are still reading this, I hope that this is a soft indictment of being accountable for everything you do in dentistry. Regardless of what is going on around you, the buck stops with you. By omission or commission, you are ultimately responsible for the day-to-day results you are getting. If you don’t like the results, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is definitely insane. If you want a different result, you have to do everything differently. Excuses are the number one sign of entitlement and instant gratification gone crazy. People who justify their results with an endless list of excuses are rarely good at anything else. When you lose your excuses, you will begin to find your results.
Michael Abernathy DDS
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