As a small business owner, you want to have money left over every month to put in the bank. Yet, I’ll bet there have been times when you scratched your head because you were producing lots of dentistry with less money at month’s end to show for it.
Your practice belongs to you. You’re the one in charge, and it’s your job to lead the pack. Sounds like a lot of pressure? That’s because it is! Dentists feel obligated to energize their teams all on their own. And let me tell you, that can be a real challenge.
If you’re like most dentists, you’ve got a long to-do list. You stare at it and wonder, “How the heck am I gonna get all this done today?” The truth is, you won’t. There just aren’t enough hours in a day to do everything you want to do.
Unfortunately, we find that most young dentists have some assumptions about how they need to practice in order to be successful. They set up their practice to follow those assumptions, but then down the road, they find themselves working harder and harder while not making as much as they feel they should be.
Picture the tree growing next to your home. One day, you go outside to inspect it. You notice little diseased spots on some of the leaves. So, you trim them off. A few weeks go by, and the leaves grow back the exact same way. You can’t get rid of the problem!
3 Simple Strategies to Make Patients Ask for Treatment These days, it seems like patients get more and more hesitant to accept the treatment you provide, and without that your productivity plummets.
Your practice is made of data. You need data to identify problems and find solutions. Data is really important, and it can also be really confusing. Data is like a pile of Legos. You know you’re supposed to build something with them, but you don’t know what!
It’s easy to get frustrated when patients don’t want to pay your fees—after all, without those fees, your hard work goes to waste and your practice cannot function. However, I worked with a team member who once told me, “Without value, there’s only price,” and that’s stuck with me.
When you read more, you know more. With more knowledge, you can help patients beyond their dental needs. To get you started on your learning journey, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Uche Odiatu, one of ACT’s favorite health and wellness gurus, to share his ten favorite books that have kept his mind open, challenged, and engaged.
It’s incredibly difficult to find the motivation to work when you’re burning yourself out. More importantly, it starts to affect the rest of your life and the people in it. Burnout is so much more than just stress and fatigue though—it’s a medical condition, according to the World Health Organization.
