Sometimes, you can’t help but focus on all the negatives. You had two cancellations today. One of your patients refused to pay. And someone “forgot” to take out the trash! What you focus on grows and multiplies. If you focus on garbage, all you’ll see is garbage.
Every dentist has that patient who thinks they’re always right. You know who I’m talking about! They say things like, “Ten o’clock? I thought my appointment started at eleven.” Or, “I’m pretty sure I paid that off last time.” Patients get details wrong all the time.
You know the value of your practice. Your patient care is incredible, your procedures are professionally done, and you have the best team you could ask for. Sadly, patients don’t care about all that stuff. Crowns and fillings are all the same to them.
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.
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.
Your mind is like a rubber band. You gotta stretch it every day to stay limber and strong. Stretching involves going outside your comfort zone so you can learn new things. If you don’t stretch, then you won’t grow!
Like me, I’m sure many other dentists have been struggling under the yoke of PPOs. At the beginning of each year, we look back on the previous year and see the numbers showing exactly how much money you wrote off—all the work you did that you’ll never be paid for.
There’s no denying that PPOs cause headaches for a lot of practices, but when you start the transition away from them, those headaches begin to vanish. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about what it means to drop PPOs, so I recently interviewed my good friend Dr. Bill Crinzi about his journey away from PPOs to show what it looked like for him.
Conflict happens to the best of us. But do you know WHY it happens? When things go wrong, your team tends to focus on the problem itself. What they actually need to focus on is the root cause of the problem.
There’s a saying that Kirk frequently uses: “Time is the new rich.” As we move through life, we realize that what’s important is the time we spend with our family, loved ones, or even by ourselves pursuing the things that bring us joy—not the money we get from working too much.
