I live 130km outside of Sydney. The drive to Sydney is mostly motorway.
Sometimes when I drive this trip I will see a car travelling in the outside lane that is not meant to be IN the outside lane.
You know what I mean, they are driving too slowly to be in the overtaking lane.
Aren’t these types of drivers annoying?
Sure, they get to their destination EVENTUALLY, but along the way they waste so much time and cause significant disruption to other drivers in a process that should be a very simple.
But is “SLOW” always the best way to go?
Many years ago in the Mt Panorama Bathurst Motor Race an entry was received from a street car standard Volvo… it was a nightmare for all the supercars as they had to negotiate their way past this annoyingly SLOW car that entered the race just to “prove a point”…
Going the “SLOW” way is not always the wise way…
Taking it slow is not always smart.
If you needed to travel from New York to LA, would you do it by plane, or by car?
Or by horseback?
Or by bicycle?
The guy on the bicycle thinks that he’s making good progress, until a car goes whizzing past him…
And the guy who flew, well he’s down at Long Beach sipping Mai Tais and watching the sunset…
There’s a couple of important lessons here:
The first lesson is, that if a long journey is going to take a longer time or a shorter time to complete, most people given the choice will want to complete the journey over the shorter time so that they can then spend the time saved DOING SOMETHING ELSE.
The second lesson is this:
It makes sense to think “Bigger Picture” most of the time about things.
This includes asking the question:
“Is there a better way?”
And if there is a better way, why am I NOT DOING things in a better way?
Because results are only “relative”…..
You will always win the GOLD MEDAL when you’re competing in a competition of only one.
It is only when we have a point of reference that we can truly gauge our performance.
Way back in 1992, my dental practice was producing and collecting double what the average dental practice was producing, and I thought that was pretty good.
And in 1996 I was still producing double what the average dentist was producing, and I was at peace with the world, until I met a dentist who was doing double what I was doing….
And all of a sudden I needed to know more.
Because my POINT OF REFERENCE had been shattered by reality.
Over the following fifteen years from 1996 to 2011, I increased the collections at my dental practice by a multiple of 8.5X, because each and every year I sought out for myself an answer to this question:
“There must be a better way….”
Today I spoke to a dentist who told me that his practice was adding sixty thousand dollars each year to its annual collections, and he thought that this was OK…
So I asked him this:
“If I could show you a way to add one hundred and twenty thousand dollars or more each year to your annual collections, would that be worth looking at?”
Because results and improvements without a comparison, are irrelevantly not relative to anything….
And funnily enough…
And funnily enough, we live in a land where the population are geared to drive miles out of their way to buy cheaper petrol for their car and save a few cents per tankful…
And yet some dentists happily concede hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to insurance companies setting the fees they can charge, just to be “in network”, or to be “preferred providers”, just so they can be busy and not be profitable….
Hundreds of thousands of dollars each year….
Here are the real numbers:
In any population, 20-25% of the population will do business with you and not be concerned how much your competitors are charging, because they are more than happy with the service you provide and consider it to be a fair price for what you charge them.
20-25%.
According to the Pareto Principle these same clients will provide you with 80% or more of your income.
Your aim as a business owner should be to look after these 20-25% of your clients and encourage them to visit more often and refer to your business more often.
You cannot fail in dentistry by building a dental practice that caters for and panders to the wants and the needs of this very specific 20-25% of the population.
Trying to work out [on your own] how to do this in your dental practice is serious SLOW LANE mentality, that will fail.
The ship will have sailed by the time you work it out.
There is a FAST LANE APPROACH….
Good advice is worth paying for. It’s worth paying for over and over and over.
Paying for good advice gets you to your destination far more quickly.
And its only then, while you’re sipping on that third Mai Tai, that you realise the benefits of your wise choices.
And not the regrets…
*****
LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Friday July 30, 2021 in Melbourne, VIC.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
The aim of life is simple. Help people to get what they want.
And that’s what a service business is all about.
Dentistry is a service business.
All we need to do is help our clients get what they want.
And what they want is teeth that don’t hurt.
What they want is a mouth that is healthy and free of disease.
What they want is teeth that look good and feel good and last a long time.
Delaying necessary treatment delays our patients and clients from getting these desired results.
Deferring treatment and avoiding treatment allows disease to continue and “move the needle” towards more disease and more harm and greater risk of pain.
Delaying treatment is not in the best interests of the patient.
As health care professionals we must do everything in our power to help our patients receive the treatment that they need as quickly as possible.
To do that we need to develop a process that makes a visit to the dentist an enjoyable EXPERIENCE that they must have completed as soon as possible, rather than a process or a commodity that they feel they can do when they feel like it, if at all.
And it is when we are able to “flip this switch” in the minds of our customers, it is then and only then that we have truly created a dental practice of importance and influence.
I don’t know exactly when it happened at my practice, but I do know that there came a time where the patients who were scheduled to see me were always going to turn up to see me.
What happened was that there came a time in the evolution of my practice and in patient care where we had a practice of such “presence” and position that NO-SHOWS or Fail To Attends [FTAs] dropped to zero.
Our processes and systems in our practice became so good that Failing To Attend became a non-option.
Because the doing of the dentistry was only a part of the process.
And providing our clients with AN EXPERIENCE became so much more of our process.
We made going to the dentist fun.
We made going to the dentist a relationship.
And an experience.
When we coach dental practices and team members, we work on creating the culture that we would never speak to a dental patient in a way that we would not use if talking to a friend or a new acquaintance at a cocktail party, dinner part or at a barbeque.
We need to treat people as people.
And as equals.
There is no power or hierarchy bestowed upon us just because we work in a dental office.
The number of times that I hear employees in a dental practice speaking rudely on the phone to people calling in to that office [be they new patients or existing patients] is quite disappointing.
Think about the things you are saying and the questions you are asking and the TONE and the MANNER that you at the dental practice use when you speak to people both on site and on the phone.
Are you being polite and courteous all the time?
Or do you sometimes morph into a staccato toned data collector?
There is no need to be rude and abrupt and short.
Our aim is to always be pleasant and persuasive and courteous.
It was Zig Ziglar who said it best:
“You Can Have Everything In Life You Want, If You Will Just Help Enough Other People Get What They Want.”
Help your dental practice patients to receive their treatment and achieve a healthy, disease-free mouth.
And you will achieve greatness….
*****
LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Friday July 30, 2021 in Melbourne, VIC.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
One of the most important principles of being in business is finding out what your customers are wanting and then over-delivering to those customers in spades.
Under-delivering and failing to deliver to your valued customers is a sure-fire way to ensure that your business always struggles…. and why would anyone want to do business that way?
It logically makes sense that nobody out there in their right mind would sabotage or self-sabotage their business, subjecting their business to unnecessary pressures and hurdles that delay or hinder the growth of that business.
And yet people do get in the way of their business’s success.
And some employees will also set out to deliberately inhibit the growth of the business that employs them.
But for why?
What’s wrong with these people?
I’d much rather work in a business that is motoring along fine than in a business that is continually looking for that next customer in order to keep the wolves away from the doors.
A business that struggles to survive, and struggles to pay bills and struggles to make payroll and therefore struggles to make profit is not a very motivating place for people to come to work in.
Whereas a business that is profitable with an endless supply of grateful and satisfied customers is a business that is a pleasure for employees to work in.
The dumbest thing I ever see business owners continue to do is to try and work things out for themselves when things aren’t going well, instead of seeking professional help.
Or hoping that things will magically get better on their own for some reason, as if there is some magical force out there that suddenly comes out of nowhere and rescues their business from its problem.
In most things in life, be it business, personal wealth, health, equipment maintenance or gardening, what I’ve found is that doing nothing and hoping for improvement is a certain pathway to failure and disappointment.
It’s a fact of life. Gardens need weeding and pruning. Finances need monitoring. Ailments need attention while they are minor niggles. And equipment and machinery need servicing.
Doing nothing is never the answer.
And hope is a very poor business strategy.
I don’t know about you, but when a warning light comes on on my car dashboard, putting up the hood and taking a look at the engine does not magically shed light on what is causing the problem.
That’s where I need a specialist.
Last week on Sunday on a return trip from Sydney, an engine warning light came on on my wife’s car dashboard.
A quick check of the owner’s manual confirmed the light to be for the emission control system. The manual also warned me to contact my service repair specialist ASAP and to not drive the vehicle.
I investigated YouTube for videos on ways to rectify the problem without incurring significant expense. There did seem to be a way to plug in a device I could go and purchase from Amazon that would override and deactivate the dashboard warning light….
But to me this method looked to be fraught with dangers.
What if the warning light was there to encourage prompt action and to prevent significant serious damage to the engine that might be incurred by failing to take any action?
I phoned my [Sydney based] dealership service department.
Immediately they arranged for complimentary towing of my wife’s car up to Sydney to investigate the problem.
Once they had the car, they were able to easily diagnose the issue, replace some parts, and have the car roadworthy.
And they organised for the car to be re-transported back to me.
To me this process was simple.
The best outcome was achieved by use of logical processes.
Taking action in this way is called Competent Incompetence. I knew what I didn’t know, and because of that, I sought expert advice to solve my problem with minimal delay.
It should be the same process needed to be used by everyone in most situations….
When your body starts acting up, my thoughts are that it is best to seek a doctor’s learned advice and help, rather than ignore those symptoms and hope that things get better. They rarely do.
When people hope that things get better on their own and stumble and bumble on regardless, this is an act of Incompetent Incompetence. It is a result of not knowing what you do not know.
The Incompetent Incompetent must learn to be able to identify their own incompetencies, and take the appropriate actions when needed to become a Competent Incompetent.
When you have the knowledge and can diagnose and fix your own issues, that’s what we call Competent Competence.
In business you need to be able to know what you don’t know…
When you know what you don’t know, you then have the ability to quickly and efficiently seek the right help and move through your periods of difficulty with the least amount of disruption.
There’s nothing smart about taking too long to try and solve things yourself that others can solve and rectify quickly for you.
Especially if the cost of acquiring that solution is way less than what you would earn in the meantime?
Time is our most precious resource of a businessman, and the logical and efficient management of the value of that time is crucial to business success.
The ability to appropriately delegate the solving of issues that we aren’t trained in remedying effectively is one of the greatest assets a business owner can possess.
“Pushing on regardless” is the one of the dumbest things a business owner can do….
*****
LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Friday July 30, 2021 in Melbourne, VIC.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Given the threat that concussion poses to the game of professional Rugby League football in Australia, Peter V’Landys the Australian Rugby League [ARL] Chairman was insistent this weekend that the future of rugby league depends on a continued crackdown on contact with the head and neck during tackles.
“Concussion, like it or not, is the biggest threat to this game, and the biggest threat it’s ever had…. I have a responsibility to give (the players) a safe working environment,” said V’Landys.
He went on to say:
“We need to eradicate any hit around the head. If we don’t, the whole future of the game in 10-15 years is in doubt”.
Some of the game’s biggest stars [past and present players] slammed the NRL’s [National Rugby League] crackdown on contact with the head and other infringements that resulted in eight sin-binnings of players in just two games on last Friday night.
V’Landys said:
“The customer has to appreciate that we want our players to have a future when they get out of the game.”
He continued:
“They [the past players] will get the message. I’m not going to listen to all the white noise coming from a minority because the future of the game rests on it being free of head injuries.”
What was interesting about this:
It was interesting to hear the ARL Chairman refer to the NRL fans and supporters as customers.
And he’s right… these are the people who follow the teams, who go to the games and watch the games on television.
Many of them live, eat and breathe NRL. They are loyal fans supporting their teams.
V’Landy’s reference to the fans as the customers and to the long term future of the game show him to be a visionary.
Although the current crackdown on rules [that have not been enforced as vigilantly as they should have been] is now apparently here to stay and is upsetting some traditional purists and current players of the game, ultimately the game must concede to the fact that actions on the field must also be consistent with the laws of the land.
And this is what the fans want to see… they want to see sport not slaughter.
There will always be accidents that will occur in sporting contests, but the crackdown now serves to eradicate carelessness and to have players concentrate and be more responsible and more purposeful with their on-field actions.
The fans, or customers will not continue to support a game that condones or ignores attacks on the head.
The mums watching the game will not be wanting their children to play and be subject to such physical trauma with long term health and wellness consequences.
Many businesses have failed to see….
Many businesses have failed to see and act on the changing expectations of their customers. And the results of these blind failures have been catastrophic.
Kodak failed to see that their customers were wanting digital photography, and persisted with film for cameras.
At their peril.
Sure, we do need visionaries to blaze the trail where no one has walked before… and I believe V’Landy’s decision to ensure a future for players and the game and its fans, is the correct decision.
In your business…
In your business, are you looking to be the visionary owner that your customers are wanting to follow?
It is visionaries who have the businesses that attract and keep more customers.
Those businesses that react AFTER THE FACT are the ones who struggle to be truly great.
But what is the true secret to visionary greatness?
It is of course collaboration…. You need the right support network in your business to truly achieve great things…
*****
LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Friday July 30, 2021 in Melbourne, VIC.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Sometimes the things that are common sense aren’t common thoughts, and don’t become logical thought processes sadly, until after things go wrong. And after you have to fix the errors.
Training your pet dog in obedience training is a good example of this sort of process.
I started doing some research on the web about dog trainings, and the various types and ways of dog training, and the various results achieved by those different ways.
The thing about dog training, or obedience training is this:
EVERYBODY WANTS THE SAME RESULT!!
Everybody wants a dog that sits when you tell it to, comes when you tell it to, and never barks and never fights.
Lofty goals. Difficult to achieve without putting in the hard yards.
The same can be said about training people.
Training people for sports. Training people for music. Training people for singing and acting. Training people for employment and vocation….
If you want to train your dog there are many things you can try:
Try doing it yourself.
After all, how hard can it be? Dogs only have small brains…it can’t be that difficult to educate them?
Take your dog to obedience classes.
In these situations, groups of dog owners attend with their dogs [of different breeds] and of different levels of training. Depending on the number of attendees, you might be lucky to get five minutes of one-on-one time with the trainer.
Internet lessons and videos
Translating from the internet via you to the dog may be a disjointed process. And how do you the dog owner know that you are doing things correctly and getting the right message across to your dog?
Send your dog away to be trained
Do they beat your dog when you send your dog away? What happens there? You certainly end up with a very obedient dog…
Have private one-on-one lessons with just you and your dog and a dog trainer.
Kind of like having a personal trainer at the gym. There is education and accountability. And at each lesson the trainer knows EXACTLY at what level of training your dog is at, and what your dog has been doing between lessons.
There is no hiding in this type of training. And there is no fudging. It’s like those dreaded weekly piano lessons. If you haven’t been doing your scales and your practice, you WILL NOT And you will be found out….
I read an article on the web from The K9 Company about what dog trainers do not do, with a sub-heading simply put:
Why do professionals do things differently than non-professionals?
I’ll share the writer, Cat Saunders’s comments here:
“In almost all of my work with dogs, be it group dog obedience classes or an in-home personal training consultation, I am often explaining, as well intended their actions are, owners are inadvertently creating and or compounding many of the stresses and behavioural concerns they have with their dogs. As a society we learn a lot from our environment. If we see something that “looks” like fun, we often wish to try it ourselves. The tricky part is when we are dealing with a different species, often our well-intended actions are anthropomorphic [ascribing human attributes to a being i.e. a dog ], and can be quite detrimental to having a sound, confident and well behaved dog. This is simply because we see something we believe to be a positive and good thing for our dogs, without knowing the consequences of what you don’t know…. There are so many sources of information and the web is full of opinions, agendas and half science related articles and advice when it come dog training. It’s a bit like self-diagnosis, you can find “facts” to confirm any prognosis. When reading and researching on the web, it is important to remain objective and open minded.”
These are interesting observations…
As well intended as humans are, the results and effects of our use of Dr Google to be the solution to everything can often be harmful and irreparably scarring with respect of the original intention that we started off to achieve.
If we want to have an obedient dog that behaves perfectly, on all occasions, then the best results will be achieved by calling in the professionals rather than scouring the internet and composing a Heinz recipe on dog training…. And then trying to magically develop a super-power and become an overnight “world’s greatest” dog trainer.
And yet in dentistry:
And yet in the career of dentistry, seemingly well educated people [dentists] with high IQs suddenly decide that they will miraculously become HR trainers and train their team members in roles that they [the dentists] have never performed themselves, but have somehow researched about on the internet, and become an overnight authority.
And yet these dentists did not get their dental degree on the internet.
They learnt dentistry and the principles of dentistry over a number of years from people more knowledgeable and more skilled who were celebrated educators.
Seriously, it makes no sense to take a day off from doing dentistry to stay home and clean your house, and wash your car and do your lawns. You can pay someone to do these things while you can produce a lot more money doing a day’s worth of dentistry. In reality, the hired help will have the house and the car and the lawns and the gardens looking a lot better than the dentist could, in a fraction of the time.
So why would a dentist take “drilling time” off from his patients to do something like teaching his practice staff phone skills, when in the time it would take to be only “half good” at teaching something that the dentist does not do and has never done and never learnt, the dentist could have produced enough dental treatment to pay for ten to twenty lots of phone trainers and educators, who would do the job of training way, way better.
The business of dentistry is a crazy model.
I’ve written before about a friend of mine who went through a serious 16 week onboarding process to work for a national stationery supplier. And twelve of those weeks went by before she was allowed to interact with live customers.
Just to sell pens!!
Yet in dentistry, dentists often hire someone with “experience” to come and work for their practice, and then rely on that person bringing supposed skills that a previous employer had given them, when those supposed skills may not actually be suitable and appropriate for their new practice and their new role.
Or dentists allow new team members to “practice” their processes on live patients of the practice.
If McDonald’s and Officeworks can invest so much time and effort into onboarding and educating their teams and getting things right from the get-go, then why do dentists on the whole do everything in an upside down and back to front and illogical manner when it comes to onboarding and training team members?
Like I said….
Like I originally said, sometimes the things that are common sense aren’t common thoughts, and don’t become logical thought processes sadly, until WAY WAY WAY AFTER things go wrong…
If you were setting off on a holiday, it would make sense to set the Google Sat Nav before you began driving rather than one to two hours after you’d started, just in case you inadvertently took a wrong turn early and you didn’t know that you had…
Because you might find yourself way off course, or way off track, because of your blind ignorance…
*****
LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Friday July 30, 2021 in Melbourne, VIC.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
You can order your copy here: 
You can order your copy here: 
