Regardless of the business you are in or how long you have been running your practice, there are a few key components universal across the business world: people, strategy, execution and cash. All these components are essential to a productive and successful business, and it’s important to consider each one individually to ensure your business is on track to reach all your short- and long-term goals.

To help you think about the cash part of your business, there are three questions you can ask yourself. These questions can help you evaluate your practice and identify key areas where you have room to grow.

1. What’s The Overall Health Of The Business That You Are In?

When you own a business, it’s essential to critically analyze your profitability. Are your profits growing at a rate of 10 to 20 percent or more per year? If they are not growing at that rate, you must consider whether there is an issue with your business strategy or if you have the wrong people in...

Once you have a quality team assembled and a solid strategy in place, it’s time to focus on the third component of operating a successful dental practice: execution.

Without proper execution, even the best strategy and the most competent team is devoid of value. As business owners, we must relentlessly do what we say we are going to do—instead of just talking about it.

Execution is the practice of leveraging your team to accomplish the goals you have set in your strategy. As the leader of a dental practice, it’s your job to create a culture in which things get done.

The single-most powerful and valuable people in the business world are those who can take things from idea to execution the fastest. It is paramount that you learn to execute your ideas and empower your team, providing your people with the tools necessary to follow through on the strategy you have established.

There are five key behaviors that can destroy your team’s ability to...

At the heart of every successful business and dental practice lies a carefully thought-out strategy. Dentists should continually reevaluate their strategy to identify which processes are improving their practices and which aspects of their strategy need to be replaced.

Although strategy is significant, it is important to understand it within the context of the big picture of building a successful practice. Once you get the people component working in the right direction, only then can you start working on a cohesive strategy.

The key piece here is being authentically honest about yourself. When you are self-aware, it means you are critical of how you are contributing to your own problems.

After you give your strategy a realistic self-evaluation, you can set up a plan to make it better. Learning how to score your own strategy and recognize its faults and flows will provide you with the tools necessary to redevelop it and redefine your practice.

Establishing Life Balance

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It is important for a dentist to not only build a fulfilling career, but also to make progress and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Dentists should feel like the benefits that they are reaping from their practice are in equity with their efforts.

To that end, they should be getting back from their practices what they’re putting in. Unfortunately, that’s where a lot of challenges come from. Dentists often get distraught or stressed because their practices do not meet their expectations.

As you likely know, dentistry can be a high-stress profession. A number of professional organizations are creating movements to protect the emotional and mental health of dentists, as they are at an unusually high risk for suicide, drug abuse and divorce. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicates that dentists are 2.5 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. Student and practice debt, fear of litigation and long, thankless hours are just...

Most dentists want a great team of people who are committed and engaged with the work that they do, but few dentists actually achieve this goal. Many dentists are too busy managing their practice and focusing on patient care to actually invest time into cultivating an engaged team, but this seldom works out well in the long run. Even though it’s challenging to find the time to support your team members and increase engagement, it’s worth it when you consider how much more productive your practice will be. You can work towards this goal of increased engagement by focusing on one simple thing: communication rhythms.

Communication rhythms are regularly established sessions where team members are brought together to get on the same page. These meetings are structured, scheduled and consistent so that every member of your team knows exactly what to expect. During meetings, you will discuss patient care and practice care with your team members in a structured forum that is...

When you consider some of the most well-known businesses in the world, such as Amazon, Netflix and Apple, it’s clear that their success is defined by an essential product they are all selling: time.

Amazon can get a package to your door in just a couple days, Netflix allows you to browse thousands of titles in seconds. Apple offers high-tech products that enable you to connect with your friends, family and the world around you in an instant. The most successful products are the ones that help you maximize your time. In the same way, the most successful people are those who maximize their own time.

We all have the same number of hours in a day to work with, but the most successful people are intentional about how they use it. The real secret of successful dentists lies in how they manage their time. Increasing your success doesn’t mean that you have to increase the time you spend working. In fact, the real key might be to take more time off for your own rest and...