“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” You’ve probably heard this before. Despite its popularity, this is terrible advice. All too often, I see dentists trying to fight a losing battle by doing what everyone else is doing… discount marketing, commoditized dentistry, and getting involved with more insurance. They try to cut “costs” (really investments) on quality and team to reduce overhead but never realize that they are actually suppressing their ability to create opportunity, grow revenue, and build profitably.
Whenever you try to “join ’em,” you lose yourself in the process.
Unfortunately, this usually doesn’t appear until you’ve gone too far backward. Instead, there’s a key to this whole deal… you must clearly define what your winning practice looks like to you.
What do you deem a true victory when it comes to every level of your dental practice?
The main factors of independence and freedom that are supposed to come with owning your own practice include time autonomy, financial independence, patient care, team culture, and clinical mastery. It’s not about sacrificing or avoiding work. It’s about making the work and sacrifice count; this provides you with the life that you deem worth it in every way.
It’s far more important to choose what you want more of than trying to make everything more or even better in a random way.
If you develop a solution that is better, faster, etc., it won’t matter if you are solving the wrong problem. This process only leads to feeling burnt out, resentment, and demoralization in the practice you’ve created. And if you are in this state of self-doubt about your abilities, making corrections will become even more difficult. But the good news is that this doesn’t need to happen! Instead, make choices where you focus on your best self, living your best life, and chasing your own dreams.
Stop looking at the past and make future decisions based on what you want and where you want to go. After all, you can’t reach any destination by looking in the rearview mirror. You must keep moving forward, even if you haven’t quite figured it out yet.
Are you going to give up on everything if things don’t go your way or you can’t figure things out on your first attempt? This just sets you up for defeat.
I have heard many stories and can introduce you to numerous dentists who have fallen into this trap and failed… usually because they listened to the advice of someone who had a hidden agenda (or maybe not so hidden). It’s very common for dentists to hear that they all need the same thing and that bigger is always the better way to go to cure any and all problems. However, this just brings more stress and reduces your freedom.
You’ve heard the message before… to grow, you need a bigger, state-of-the-art building, all the insurance available, more team members, and to spend hundreds of thousands on marketing to fill your practice with a large number of random patients that you don’t know whether or not they are good or bad or right or wrong for you!
This common theme of being part of the model of volume-based dentistry, discounting (baiting and bribing) people to come into your office, and otherwise commoditizing what you do… usually creates more dependency on insurance. This just doesn’t work. The only guarantee with this model is that you’ll have more stress, overhead, payroll, and working hours, and the only profitable growth will come from doing more dentistry!
Then, the dentists who “join” this model often blame insurance for why they aren’t getting better case acceptance, or they fault new marketing tactics for not increasing the number of highly qualified patients who come into the office. The response to all of this is to try to get as many new patients in the door as possible to offset the lower case values. With this growth in volume, they shortcut the time and attention each patient receives, and this only exacerbates the problem. This is a negative cycle that repeats with more volume, overhead, and work… without more profit. It can only be broken by bringing in better quality patients and giving them a higher-quality experience.
Now, there are many dentists who do this effectively, but it’s only possible because they practice the art of customized care. Plus, they have foundational structured systems in place that provide effective new patient experiences and treatment plans that are not based on insurance or emergency care. These dentists also have something else in common; they wish they could get FEWER patients. You heard that correctly. These smart private practice owners don’t ask for more patients; they just ask for more dentistry, which is better for everyone.
When you get more with fewer, you bring your overhead numbers down and your profit up.
This way, everyone wins, especially the patients, because you now have the time to give them a true experience with attentive and comprehensive care. Remember, no one has the right to tell you how you should run your practice or what it should look like. There is no “right or wrong” way to do things. There is only “your way” that works when you align your likes and dislikes with the appropriate business model for you.
All of this is based on your goals, personality, team, future, the way you want to work and manage others, and, of course, your philosophy of dentistry. What really matters is that you figure all of this out first. Then, you work to differentiate yourself and ensure that every single point of contact and engagement with your patients, community, and referral sources exemplifies this.
When you finish each day, judge your success by how much fulfilling dentistry you completed that made a real impact on your patients, how much profit you made for the time you sacrificed and the investment you put in, and whether you cared for your team members in a significant way.
All of this comes from more profitable dentistry—not necessarily more patients. And more profitable dentistry always comes from knowing your identity, being true to yourself, and having a model of practice that is unique to you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Recognized by thousands of dentists across North America, Scott Manning is an accomplished author (“The Dental Practice Shift” is the #1 most requested book in dentistry) and highly-sought-after public speaker. For almost two decades, he has dedicated his life to inspiring and motivating dentists worldwide to create wealth and lifestyle-based practices. Today, when he is not sharing his positive messages worldwide, he loves to travel and spend time with his beloved wife Kristen and daughter Saylor.
To learn more, visit https://dentalsuccesstoday.com/.
FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: Nialowwa/Shutterstock.com.
