There is a major difference between being ambitious and being in a race. It is only fair to want to own multiple 5 chair practices around the country; but it is a completely different thing to want to own ‘more than’ the person you went to Uni with. While the former gives purpose to your life, the latter completely annihilates your definition of success. Professional growth starts with personal development. You cannot put yourself in the backseat and let your undefined notions of success guide you to an unknown destination. The ongoing pandemic is a wakeup call for anyone and everyone who has been short of time to get a better understanding of their goals and objectives – personal and professional. Here’s everything you need to know on how to develop personally to grow professionally:
Don’t Be the Jack of All Trades
We all want to do it all. Trusting someone to take care of your patients, your marketing or your accounts is never easy. You never think anyone else would be as focused and determined to give their best as you would be. But the desire to do everything yourself comes at the price of not really being able to focus on your priorities. You need to learn to let go of tasks and delegate them to your team members. They are there to assist and support you and you should make best use of that support. Invest time and effort in finding the right candidates, nurture and train them and then trust them to do the right thing.
Find the Definition of Success
We all want to be successful, but as they say one man’s heaven is another man’s hell. The term ‘work life balance’ can be quite misleading. Your work should be a part of your life’s balance. Don’t take work as the means to an end. Define your meaning of success and then balance all your responsibilities and obligations to collectively work towards that goal. If being successful means being able to spend more time with your friends and family then you’d need to create processes that will automate your work load, giving you more time to be with the family. Sure, the revenue may take a little dive, but if it comes at the cost of you being able to make more time for your top priorities then all is good.
Power of Meditation
Meditation can be an extremely powerful tool to help you centralise your plans, thoughts and emotions. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation regarding meditation that leads people to believe that it requires a complete revamp of your lifestyle. Meditation can be as simple as leaning your head against the sofa, closing your eyes and quieting the noises in your head. You can start with as little as 5 minutes a day to as much as you personally feel your mind requires to help clear up your thoughts and have clarity. You could also find support groups or read up on different techniques of meditation to find something that best resonates with your lifestyle and beliefs.
Journaling for Clarity
Journaling is another great way to jot down your thoughts and ideas. Just a simple scribble every night can help clear up your thoughts as to what needs to be done the next day, week or month. You’d be surprised as to the chores and tasks that were weighing you down would seem so easy once you write them down. It doesn’t have to be anything too fancy or time consuming.
Dealing with Failure
It is the word itself that weighs heavy on you. If you call something a failure, you immediately associate it with your inability to perform well. Instead, if you’d only call it a setback, then it would seem like a temporary glitch that can easily be fixed. It is how you perceive failure that defines you. You could sit down and dwell in self-pity or you could actually look within yourself and identify where is it that you can improve. Say, if there was a setback in your marketing strategy, you could wallow about lost opportunities and resources, or you could use it as an opportunity to learn from your mistakes to better strategise next time. For every setback, try to take a step back and soak in the situation from a rational perspective rather than being emotional. Are you approaching matters the wrong way? Is there something that you are doing wrong in your practice? How can you improve your systems so as to let them serve you more efficiently? Is it the way you communicate? Asking all these questions would help clear up your mind and take away the emotional baggage of dealing with a setback. Fact is, dental school doesn’t teach you to be the best communicator or the best business person, and even if it did, it does take a lot of trials and errors before you get it absolutely right. So just be easy on yourself and allow yourself to make mistakes and learn from them.
Be the Best Version of Yourself
Your only competition should be yourself. Don’t let other people’s definition of success define yours. Just try to be better than what you were yesterday. Just because someone else owns four practices doesn’t mean you also need to own four or more in order to be successful. You should only focus on the goals that you define for yourself and work towards them without any regard for what others are doing.
Be Humble- Always
There is nothing more attractive than humility. It is a personality trait that truly lures people towards you. People will be drawn to you and they will come to trust you. When you are humble, you switch from being the speaker to becoming the listener. And when you speak, you lose the opportunity to learn something new. Every time you listen, whether it be a 10 year old, 40 year old or an 80 year old, who has your ear, you give yourself the opportunity to learn. All these skills, practices and traits might sound right out of a self-help book you might read on Christmas vacation. But the fact is, the more you invest in yourself, the sooner you’ll be able to reap the benefits in your personal and professional life.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:
1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
