I’ll use this phrase when people come to me asking about a certain business that is going bad, or a business philosophy that may be travelling poorly.
They’ll often ask me if I can identify the problem that is occurring, and whether there’s a way of fixing that problem.
Most commonly, the person who comes to me with the problem is often the person who is causing the problem… and sadly, although they are the cause of the problem, they are totally unaware that they are the cause.
Often I’ll say something like this when I observe a serious problem happening:
“If they’re looking for the solution to their problem, all they need to do to find it is walk into their bathroom and look in the mirror…”
When we understand the factors that contribute to failure and success in organisations, LEADERSHIP is the number one key factor.
All successful businesses, organisations, and countries will easily recognise that their success has been driven by the presence and efforts of a strong persuasive leader.
Conversely, lack of leadership and poor leadership are major contributing factors in the failure and demise of once successful businesses, organisations, and countries.
When we witness business failure, it doesn’t require the wisdom of Nostradamus to put one and one together and solve the problem regarding the cause of that business failure.
And that cause of that business failure will be poor leadership.
Leadership that is misdirected, or non-directional.
Leadership that lacks the ability to inspire its troops.
Leadership needs to always be…
Leadership needs to always be strong, powerful, and persuasive.
It needs to be inspiring. It needs to inspire action.
There is no bad smell when there is strong leadership.
The only smell associated with strong leadership is the sweet smell of success.
*****
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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.
I write them down and collect them.
And refer back to them.
These are quotations that I have read or heard that I believe are very meaningful. These quotations have had a positive effect on shaping my life, and they have helped to make me who I am today.
When I read over these quotations, they positively affirm the choices in life that I have made to arrive where I have, and where I am right now.
I have a significant collection of relevant quotations, and I’d like to share two of these quotations with you today.
Firstly, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is quoted as saying:
“If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”
In business, it is impossible to please everybody all the time.
For example, there will always be customers who believe that your prices are too high, despite the fact that they know that your prices represent exceptional value and are reflective of the great service that your business provides.
And there will always be employees who are looking to put in less than 100% effort.
In business, it is impossible to please everyone all of the time.
You can’t offer great service, best quality, and lowest price all at the same time.
That’s impossible.
And so to achieve lowest price, and to compete on price, you will need to compromise on the quality of your goods, or the quality of the service you provide.
And in compromising your standards, as Margaret Thatcher said, you won’t keep everybody happy.
Following on from this:
Following on from this thought, one of my mentors John R. DiJulius III said this:
“Making price irrelevant – based on the experience your customers consistently receive, they have no idea what your competition charges.”
DiJulius believed correctly, that there is a percentage of the population out there who will value the service that you provide them SO HIGHLY that no matter what your business charges these customers, they will believe that your business and product or service represent EXCEPTIONAL VALUE, and they wouldn’t consider going anywhere else for that same product or service.
In so doing, the EXPERIENCE that your company has provided has been so exceptional that you have successfully made the price that you charge irrelevant.
Statistics show that 20-25% of the population out there display this high degree of customer loyalty, because they truly value the experiences they receive when visiting certain businesses.
What I have found:
What I have found, in my own dental practice and in the dental practices of my clients, is that when we have focused on creating an environment of exceptional care and service towards all of our customers, we have truly moved our businesses away from the noise and pollution of haggle and mediocrity and raised it up into the rarefied air of greatness.
It was a process that I learned in my own business by trusting myself.
And it’s a process I teach my own clients to achieve by metaphorically holding their hand as they learn to trust their own abilities and believe in themselves.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
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.
There’s been some interesting discussion recently in dental forums as to the VALUE and PERCEIVED VALUE of coaching services to help grow a dental practice.
So let’s try and take emotion out of the discussion and look at things logically….
Firstly:
It’s human nature for most people to believe that they can do things themselves rather than pay money for somebody else to help them, assist them, or advise them.
And usually the smarter or more intelligent that person is [or believes they are], the more they believe that they are smart enough to do things successfully on their own.
Even if having somebody else there gets the job done more quickly, or achieves a better result…
There’s just this certain feeling of pride and accomplishment in not having to give credit to someone else or anyone else…
Yet…some people just don’t get it…
It’s not a sign of weakness to pay someone to mow your lawn on a Saturday, while you could be relaxing, or playing with your children, or taking your wife out to lunch, or working on your business… and in reality, the guy you pay to mow your lawn will do a better job than you will, and in less time and with less complaining…
Secondly:
Statistically, at age 65, ninety-five percent of the population are either still working or dependant on third party financial assistance.
Or they’ve died.
Which means that at age 65, most people are either dead, or broke.
Or dead broke.
It’s a fact of life.
Thirdly:
“If it has been done it can be done.”
This is true in business.
Anything that has worked successfully in business will work again.
The reason people fail to succeed in business is because they deviate from the proven path of success.
And when they deviate, they never apportion blame on themselves and their deviation as being the cause of the failure.
More often than not they will point the finger of blame anywhere else than at themselves.
I believe that the main reason for failure in business is that people are looking for shortcuts that aren’t there while travelling along the pathway to success.
Fourthly:
DO THE WORK!
JUST DO IT.
Legendary golfer Ben Hogan said this about his success as a professional golfer:
“If you can’t outplay them, outwork them.”
And he also said:
“I always outworked everybody. Work never bothered me like it bothers some people.”
When people are looking for an easier way, the first thing they usually do is they stop doing the necessary work required.
They stop doing the exercises.
They stop doing the laps.
They stop lifting the weights.
Successful athletes and sports stars always train harder than the game or the event will be.
Michael Jordan said that he always trained harder than a game would be. He said that way, when things got tough during a game, he knew that he could get through the game, because games were not as tough to endure as his own training sessions were.
Sadly, in business, not many people ever put themselves under that much extra pressure.
And that’s probably why the majority of people underachieve in the workplace…because they just don’t do the work required.
Steve Hunter said it best:
“Successful people are ordinary people that consistently do the hard things that most ordinary people find too hard to do.”
And that’s why people say that coaching doesn’t work, or that it didn’t work for them…
I get it.
The first coach that I engaged for my business was a disaster that ended up in a legal battle.
It wasn’t the sort of coaching that I wanted.
Fortunately for me, I quickly found a second coach who I worked with for six and a half years and during that time my dental practice grew dramatically and tripled its production.
Putting it bluntly…
Coaching works when the client does the work.
When the client listens, and trusts, and acts, then the coaching advice works and works wonders.
I’ve been working with a client for ten months now who has totally trusted the coaching process and has seen a 44% increase in her dental practice collections during the second quarter of 2023 compared to the second quarter of 2022.
And all that improvement has been achieved without working any more hours, without doing any more marketing, and without adding any more staff.
The only thing that this client did was that she trusted the coaching process and she trusted her coach’s recommendations.
Stupid is as stupid does…
Paying for business coaching and ignoring the coach’s recommendations and not doing the necessary work is like paying for university education and not going to classes.
Success doesn’t happen by osmosis.
We read that most diets fail.
It’s not that the diets fail.
It’s that the people who start dieting fail to stick to the discipline of dieting.
There’s a simple answer as to why coaching isn’t working for most people in their business.
And that answer is found in the mirror….
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
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.
Lee Iacocca is famous for his leadership roles at Ford Motor Company [1946 to 1978] and at Chrysler [1978 to 1992].
His visions at Ford saw him participate in the successful designs of the Ford Mustang and the Ford Escort.
At Chrysler, he brought ideas to fruition that had been rejected at Ford, that ultimately turned Chrysler around from the brink of bankruptcy. These included small compact front-wheel drive cars [K-cars], and the minivan.
He was also responsible for Chrysler purchasing America Motors Corporation and acquiring the Jeep Grand Cherokee design.
He was a business visionary.
Lee Iacocca is quoted as saying:
“There’s no great mystery to satisfying your customers. Build them a quality product and treat them with respect. It’s that simple.”
And it is that simple.
And this philosophy works in any business.
So long as your business delivers a product or service of exceptional quality, and treats its customers with the respect they deserve, your business will be successful.
In dentistry…
In dentistry it’s pretty simple.
Your dental services need to be performed well, and need to be delivered as painlessly as possible, and they need to last a long time.
Alongside this, your customers must be made to feel valued and important, and they must feel respected.
You must always seek to solve your customers’ problems, and you must make sure that your customer fully understands exactly what their problem is, what you are going to do to solve their problem, and they must understand fully what will happen to them if they choose to delay their treatment away from the time frame that you have recommended.
When your dental clients and patients understand fully what their best course of action needs to be, and when they understand the urgency of that treatment, then you have created the necessary strong foundation for an ongoing relationship of mutual trust and respect between you and your patients.
It really is that simple….
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
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.
From time to time in dentistry and in dental forums the discussion arises as to whether dentistry is a profession or a business?
Dentists who own their own practices are considered to be business owners.
By the government.
By the regulatory authorities.
By the tax office.
By other businesses.
By their employees.
And by the general public.
And frankly, if a dental practice is not a business, or considered a business, then it must be a charity.
And a charity it is not.
So therefore, a privately owned dental practice must be a business.
So by definition:
By definition, a business is described as “the activity of making, buying, selling or supplying goods or services for money”.
What that business does with that money is important:
Some businesses invest in employing more people.
Some businesses purchase more equipment and assets.
Some businesses pay their owners dividends.
Putting it simply, the money made by the business fuels economies both locally, and distant.
The money made goes around.
Businesses need to be regulated:
A business needs to operate to certain pre-determined standards.
It must pay its fair share of tax.
It must operate with safety and follow regulations that are set and determined to be the SPECIFIC STANDARD as determined.
People who work for that business need to be confident that the business is operating safely and ethically.
Otherwise…
Otherwise without regulation, it’s not a business, and it’s not a charity.
It’s at best, a hobby.
And at worst, it’s a free-for-all.
Some consider the practice of dentistry in private practice to be a profession, and not a business.
I don’t.
There’s a lot of effort and sweat equity that goes into the education required to qualify for dental school, and there’s a lot of effort and sweat equity that goes into getting through and finishing dental school.
On a balance sheet, to me, that’s a debt that needs to be repaid.
And speaking of debt, now students graduate from dental school with a government imposed “education tax debt” that needs to be repaid…this education debt is the graduating dentist’s DUTY to repay to the state for the opportunity of being educated… ???
And this despite the fact that as high earners and high achievers anyway, dentists as a whole will earn more and therefore pay more tax throughout their careers anyhow just as a result of becoming dentists…
Step 2:
So after graduating and being employed for an amount of time, a dentist then either buys and takes over an existing practice, or they pick a site and establish a brand new dental practice.
These are decisions that both of which can at times be speculative and risky…
And with risk comes….
And of course with all risk, there should come a degree of reward.
A reward for effort.
A reward for taking a risk…
The reward for the effort needs to be financial.
The reward for taking that risk needs to be financial.
Commendation and applause are not a good reward.
Commendation and applause are pleasant, but you can’t buy food at the grocery store with a wheelbarrow full of commendation.
And nor can you divide up your applause and commendation and pay your employees with it.
Dentists who are owners of their own practice need to be paid in three ways:
1- They need to be paid by their practice as an associate dentist working in that practice.
They need to be paid for doing the dentistry.
Most owners do not pay themselves this way.
Most owners need to pay themselves this way, because if they are ever absent from their practices, they will need to hire someone else to come in and operate as an associate dentist in their practice, and the practice will have to pay that associate in this way.
2- They need to be paid for all their management roles.
Similarly, if an owner performs management roles, such as HR, payroll, marketing, if these duties were not being performed by the owner, they would be tasks that another employee would be being paid to perform.
3- They need to be paid a dividend as a shareholder in the business.
If the business cost say, $1Million to purchase or set up, the dentist owner needs to be paid a dividend for the investment of that $1M, in the same way they would receive rental income from a $1M property investment, or a dividend from $1M worth of shares.
To underpay on any or all of these three roles is at best charity, and at worst, stupidity.
To not consider practice ownership as a business…
At the end of your life, in retirement, if a dentist owner falls on difficult economic times, those people that he’s ever been charitable to along the way will be conspicuous by their absence from the line of people forming to offer a helping hand.
As a dental practice business owner, it is your duty, to yourself, to your government, and to your family and to your community, to earn sufficient profit from your business career that you are never ever going to be a financial burden to anyone or anybody during your twilight years.
The purpose of being in business is to provide for a comfortable life and to provide for a comfortable retirement.
Any profit beyond that can and should be invested wisely.
That investment could provide for housing, or could provide for investment in other businesses that stimulate employment and further investment.
Or that profit can be donated to charities.
Or it can be taxed and that taxation money can be used by governments to pay for infrastructure and welfare.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
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.
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