THE PRODUCTIVE - PROFITABLE – BALANCED DENTIST

by Bill Williams, DMD

What do most dentists want? To live a great lifestyle, enjoy their family time, produce really fine dentistry on gratified patients with the help of a tremendous team, and be able to retire with enough saved to continue their accustomed lifestyle… What I call, “Finish Well.”

But somewhere between the dream and final bell, reality sets in. The business of running a dental practice is not easy. The work consumes and patient demands rise. Team hiring, training, and turnover seem a never-ending chore. Without realizing it, decades pass and the light at the end of the tunnel is no brighter. By the time they get 20-30 years into practice, they want to work less but not take a cut in pay. They want less stress and more team harmony.

Yes, it’ a journey played out tens of thousands of times across the continent. Dentists get up, go to work, and slog through each day, only to find themselves blinking as the alarm clock goes off, telling themselves it’s time to do it all again. Did the dentist plan to fail or did he or she fail to plan? Likely the latter. Proper and careful planning is just as critical to your career as it is to your two week vacation if you want your career to turn out just as you dream.

My Story

Case in point: I sold my good practice in Stone Mountain, Georgia, moved thirty miles north to Suwanee in 1997, and started over from scratch at age 48. I wrote about the process of how we grew one half million dollars a year for ten straight years in my #1 Amazon best seller in the Dental Business, Marketing the Million Dollar Practice. I had a vision that started small but evolved over that decade. By employing what I learned in CE and mastermind sessions, I was able to far exceed my expectations by following a formula outlined by my mentors, J. Conrad Levinson, the father of Guerilla Marketing, Australian billionaire entrepreneur Brad Sugars, plus Doctors Omer Reed, Charles Martin, Carl Misch, Barney Jankelson, and many more. By combining dental skills and the entrepreneurial mindset as set out in the E-Myth by Michael Gerber, I was able to design, then create the ideal practice for me.

The Ideal Practice

The ideal practice evolves over time correlated to your skills, knowledge, experience and debt. Yes, debt is figured into the career plan. To build skills and experience, I worked five days a week until I was out of debt as a young dentist. After a while, I began to invest in more and more CE, therefore eventually cutting my patient care days to four per week. I was working on my business, not just in my business.

Because of this change of mindset, I grew much faster and found that adding an associate dentist made sense. Most dentists do not plan ahead in their careers. They just let their careers unfold as time flips by on the calendar one day after another.

The Big Five

When a dentist considers The Big Five in Dentistry: 1) Mindset, 2) Team, 3) Facility, 4) Marketing, and 5) Capacity, and organizes a career around a goal with set principles in each, the outcome can be outstanding. The ideal practice model evolves to look like this: practicing three days a week with one, two or even three associates providing the additional manpower to drive a powerful, productive and profitable business machine. The owner dentist establishes the system, the facility, and the patient flow. The associates learn, gain experience and enjoy working without assuming further debt. The team wins because there is always opportunity for an array of career opportunities, job-sharing, upward mobility, flexible schedules with a full or part time position. The facility can be maxed out with patient-friendly extended hours and days. Because of this, profits are higher and team bonuses a distinct reality.

Bottlenecks

What impedes this formula from happening in most dental practices? Mindset is the #1 bottleneck. Most dentists don’t believe it is possible or desirable. They don’t envision themselves a business man entrepreneur. They see themselves as a producer, not a manager. And when they finally become the manager, they may not progress to see themselves as the investor/entrepreneur. They plan day to day, not year to year. 

Bottleneck #2 is facility. They don’t build flexibility or expand-ability into their plan. They are stuck in a solo practice facility. Those are the two bottlenecks. Some will say it’s not enough new patients, but that’s a false flag.  The proper marketing and a well-tuned team can easily eliminate that bottleneck.

Understanding how to operate within the Big Five in dentistry can multiply your career success many times over. That’s why exceptional growth can and often does happen. Remember, “If it’s been done, it’s probably possible.” Omer K. Reed, DDS

The Accelerator

Capacity is the accelerator. Capacity is the willingness and ability to push through to get the result you want to reach the goal you set. Those who have or develop capacity will evolve their ideal dental practice to the point where they are super productive, have loyal patients who literally beg for appointments and readily accepting their treatment recommendations. When a dentist arrives at this point in their career, they can work two days a week and produce a full-time income. Everything has come together and the dream is now a reality. Yes, there is a formula for a career to be able to Finish Well!

The Possibility Curve

The possibility curve is generated by a successive series of overlapping arcs creating growth by adding services, team members, facility expansions, efficiencies, dental associates, expert patient care systems, astute overhead control, CE, and team training. A focused growth formula applied to a typical dental practice will then negate the rise and subsequent fall in production as the practice matures and reaches its usual bell curve peak in growth followed by the drop in production that individual practitioners often see.

For more details on “The Formula” look for The $10,000 A Day Dentist book available online at Amazon.com.

Dentists, look for The 10K Way: The 5-Day Challenge on how to grow your practice at the FB Group, 10K a Day Dentist. Starts soon and is free so, dentists, join the group today.

Get your notice to join the challenge by being in the group here: If you are a dentist who wants to be in the TOP 1% Dentists in the world there is a way, the 10K Way. https://www.facebook.com/groups/10Kadaydentists/