As a successful businessowner, you’re likely asking “How do I get a scalable business worth $3 million?”
A lifestyle business is built around the skillset of a founder; it’s a business that’s operating well.
And it’s a business generating enough money for you to have all the things you and your family need; as well as providing you with the financial freedom so you can have regular holidays, pay staff decent salaries and are able to implement new business – all without stress!
Glen Carlsen was the ideal podcast guest for talking about scaling up a profitable business to a lifestyle business worth up to three million dollars.
Read on for how to build a scalable lifestyle business the savvy way…
#1 A Scalable Business isn’t for Everyone!
If you’re reaching your lifestyle goals with your small business, then don’t try to fix what isn’t broken.
Otherwise it can lead to unhealthy growth, growth in areas that you didn’t desire or predict, and growth that causes more problems in the long run.
Glen shared, “-businesses that are doing more than 15-million revenue in Australia, are profitable something less than 0.01%. It’s a minute fraction and that’s including all the corporates.”
For you, growth may include less hours operating, more profit, but also more time away from the working environment doing the things you want to do.
Remember, time is currency too!
#2 Be Willing to do the Work
Having a dentist skillset is so valuable, but you still have to do the work if you want to scale your business up.
Luckily, most dentists are accustomed to hard work and long hours; we just have to take that ethic to the next level.
#3 Consider your Business Assets
A business is made up of various assets, such as sales assets, marketing assets, operational assets and so on.
And tools such as websites and social media platforms are all potential assets, but only if they’re generating leads.
Glen highlights that the stress or frustration you and your team experience will always lead back to “an asset deficiency”.
Subsequently, it would be these deficient assets that require improvement in order to scale your business up.
Sales and marketing assets that attract high-quality leads and help you deliver great value to your patients need to be built upon.
When it comes to operational assets it’s wise to consider where and why you’re hiring, as well as ensuring you’ve taken into account compensation for expanding your team.
Improved profit is when you are able to pay everyone fairly and this includes paying yourself and still having plenty in the pot.
And remember people don’t just work for the money – not any more – employees are looking for culture assets:
Consider your infrastructure and how you can make your practice a place people want to work at: Be inspired by the culture of Google, Virgin or Facebook.
#4 Product Assets
Get yourself a few categories of product assets with the intention of capturing the attention of your target or dormant audience. You may have problem-solving products, products to capture data and even products licensed, packaged and on-sale to the dental industry.
How can you ensure customers trust you and your products?
#5 Don’t Just Write To-Do Lists
Scaling your business up to a lifestyle business means moving you from operator to owner, right?
Right!
So, stop writing to-do lists and instead make to-build lists…
This solves problems and is productive, compared with just ticking tasks off.
And I’ve said it before… here goes again include – add the tasks you’ll be delegating too! And those operational tasks you’re no longer going to do as you move up to owner status.
#6 Business Improvement
Look at your assets from a new perspective.
Just because you’re a small business doesn’t mean you have limited resources – thinking like this will create a low value perception of your dental practice.
Small businesses at around 500 thousand to 1.5 million, can improve areas of their business such as their blogging platform as a source of client information and a marketing tool, and as a result can increase return on investment tenfold.
#7 Slow Down your Hiring Process
You need new team members onboard when you’re upscaling, but much of the value of your business is the people that operate within it… so don’t rush the hiring process!
By the time you get to the stage of interviewing potential employees you want to know exactly what you are looking for.
#8 Shake off the “Imposter Monster”
You won’t scale up successfully or quickly if you always have doubt about the decisions you’re making.
Glen refers to this as the “Imposter Monster”, something that I’ve heard other people say too, and something I have experienced myself…
But we have to ride that discomfort to avoid stopping just at the point we could grow closer towards success.
At times of fear; notice your thoughts and don’t get caught up in them, remind yourself, ‘Oh, hang on. This whole pattern is playing again. I remember this. This is my old friend. He comes back every time I’m about to do something new.’
#9 Show up with Like-Minded People
If you want to scaleup then go to dentist entrepreneurial workshops, show up at industry conferences and read books by people that have already travelled the journey you have started.
In the dental world there is competition, and there are changing economic circumstances, but there’s also incredible opportunity that surrounds us every single day! And more importantly there’s a community we can all learn from.
Environment dictate performance, so if you’re stuck, just change it up!
Find a new team; and put yourself in a space where people are stretching and growing so that you can too.
#10 Monitoring the Numbers
Knowing your financial situation and all the assets is a fundamental thing that we’ve built the Practice Max Coaching Program on… which is essentially based on everything we’ve built our own practice on.
Glen says, “I’d encourage dentists to work their metric on revenue divided by full-time employees with them out of the game as their job is to be chairman almost. Then they’ll get a more realistic [picture] because their income would most likely be skewing the numbers way out because of their deployment of time.”
Final Wise Words from Glen on Scalability
“For most people… All the wealth that you want to create out of the performance business, you could create out of a highly profitable lifestyle business over ten years just managing the money; investing the money wisely. If you’ve got the desire to be a Richard Branson, go for it, but just understand, it’s a full-time game.” Glen Carlsen
Listen to the full podcast with Glen Carlsen as he goes into a lot of detail about how you can scale your business up to a lifestyle business, but also how you can take the leap to a high-performance business with high value.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:
- Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”
The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here
- Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too
It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here
- Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event
Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here
- Work with me and my team privately
If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here
