Chances are, if you are reading this book, you are the owner or the office manager of a dental practice and have been running it for at least a couple of years.
Even though you might have support staff (front desk, dental hygienist, dental assistants, office manager etc.) you are probably wearing 100 different hats everyday:
- Figuring out which equipment/tech to buy
- Finding out if the website guy is doing his job properly
- Keeping tabs on the AdWords guy
- Attending to patients
- Keeping your staff happy
- Pacifying anxious/upset patients
- Responding to negative reviews
- Making sure your practice is profitable
- Have a potentially draining talk with a team member when you decide to let them go etc.
All of this is causing you a lot of stress but you know that if you stop doing all of the above, your practice will run into a lot of trouble.
Why?
Well, because no one in your practice is as invested as you are in making sure that things work out.
Your practice is your baby.
You are directly in charge of running it smoothly.
As they say, you have a lot more skin in the game than the staff you hire.
So yes, there is probably a lot of stress and you probably have been working long hours because of it.
You might think “I get done at 3 PM everyday and go home to my family…” but the truth probably is that while you are at home, you are still thinking of the issues to attend to tomorrow.
Because of this, you cannot give enough time to things which is actually important: Family, friends and hobbies.
I know this because I have talked to many dentists over the last couple of years and many of them are stuck in this vicious cycle.
Even though they might have decent incomes, it is the mental, physical and emotional exhaustion that is taking a toll on them.
This book will educate you on strategies which will reduce your stress levels, increase your revenue and even help you hire more help so you can cut back on work if that is what you desire.
However, before we go forward, I’d like you to really focus on one simple word:
Lifestyle.
See, more often than not, dentists are working so hard that they totally forget about their lifestyle goals.
You didn’t study for 8 years to get a DDS or DMD (or 11 years to become a specialist) so you would work long hours, take a lot of stress and grind away at your practice for the next 40 years.
You probably wanted to become a dentist so you could have your own hours, work the way you want, have no boss and enjoy the things you want to enjoy.
So I’d like you to really ask yourself, “Am I happy with the lifestyle am I currently living?”
Chances are that the answer to that question would be “No”.
Then you should ask yourself, “What kind of lifestyle do I actually want?”
The answer to this simple question will decide where you will go so please at least 10 minutes to think about it.
Put this book down and really think about what you really want…
Do you want to work 6-8 hours a day at your practice?
Probably not right?
However, there’s a good chance that you do want to make more money, work 3 days a week and take frequent vacations.
You also probably want to reduce your stress levels and actually do things you absolutely love.
Spend time with your wife and kids for example.
You also probably want your staff to take care of all the redundant stuff so you can focus on spending more time with patients.
You might also be thinking “I’d like to get an associate on board so they can attend to patients which would allow me to cut back on my hours…”
Here are the major components to the lifestyle question:
- How many days a week do I want to spend with my family?
- What kind of monthly income am I happy with?
- How many days do I want to work per week?
- What do I want to be doing while I am not working?
- What kind of patients do I want to work with?
- What kind of car do I want to drive?
- How many vacations do I want to take every year?
- What is the maximum level of stress that I want to take on?
- What causes do I want to work with or promote in my free time?
- What do I want to do in order to improve the satisfaction I get from life?
- What do I need to do in order to become really happy?
Yes, these are some deep questions.
And yes, this book will benefit you a lot more if you take the time to answer the questions above, not simply in your mind but actually write the answers down on a piece of paper.
See, something magical happens when you write down your goals, dreams and aspirations instead of just trying to “keep them in mind”.
The goal here is to create a flexible but meaningful lifestyle statement.
Let’s assume you come up with this lifestyle statement:
“I want to work 3 days a week, make $20,000 a month, spend the rest of the time with my wife and 2 kids, drive a Mercedes C-class Coupe, avoid too much stress, exercise 2 times a week, hire a part-time associate, delegate work to my staff and finally travel around the world at least once a year for 30 days…”
All of this is very much possible if:
- You change your mindset
- You learn something new
If we go deeper, in order to achieve your ideal lifestyle, you would have to:
- Stop working in your practice and start working on it
- Hire the right people and incentivize them for good work
- Focus on patients/procedure where you make the most money
- Set up systems which automate most of the day-to-day tasks
- Set up systems which bring in patients on auto-pilot
- Set up systems which automatically get patients to keep coming in for years to come
Yes, this will take some work.
However I promise you that the rewards will be well-worth the effort.
Living your ideal lifestyle can add tens of years to your life.
It can dramatically reduce your stress levels.
And it can radically change your life.
