Make 2011 Your Best Year Ever by Luis A. Colón
Success in the New Year – There is Hope! by Luis A. Colón
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 21.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Make 2011 Your Best Year Ever
By Luis A. Colón
President, MGE
With the New Year coming up, you may have made one or more resolutions about what to accomplish in 2011. This brings up an interesting topic to discuss — FUTURE.
Setting future goals is a vital part of life.
Have you ever felt like there was just no sense in trying anyway? (Apathetic). Or on the brighter side of things, can you recall a time when you felt the whole world was at your fingertips and the future was bright and shiny with endless possibilities? (Enthusiastic and excited). Seems that your emotional attitude and the way you look at the future go hand in glove!
For example, if you felt that there was no future for your profession, you wouldn’t be very motivated, would you? Conversely, if you knew that a majority of the population needed and wanted your services and would be willing to pay for them; and you knew that you could promote to them, sell them and organize your business so that it was not stressful and made a profit, your future would look pretty bright. You see, it all goes back to the state of mind you have regarding your future.
Do this experiment:
- Write down your new year’s resolution(s).
- Now at this point I want you to look at it as a done — not that you’re going to do it, but that it is actually accomplished. Good.
- Now look at it again and list out all of the possible stops you may run into in achieving this goal of yours. That’s right, look at any stop, barrier opposition or noncompliance to this goal (you might get tired looking at this but that’s okay, just push through it). Write these down.
- Now work out a solution or a handling to remove these barriers one by one (you’ll probably start waking up and feeling good again). Notice that once you’ve decided to remove the barriers and oppositions to your goals, your future is assured again and you’ll feel bright and cheerful.
This should serve as a good lesson in being causative. By causative we mean able to control or influence something. For you to be causative, you need a future. That should tell you at once that whenever you feel like you are influenced by something out of your control, you might feel that way because for some reason your future was in jeopardy.
You can be causative over your future by looking ahead and planning to accomplish real goals that mean something to a lot of people. Then start going for it, removing as you go along all of the barriers and oppositions to it. If you can’t even get yourself started, realize that maybe you have bought the idea that you have no future (apathetic). Well, you don’t have to agree with that, you know. It is all a matter of your viewpoint.
Making goals, while not difficult, is extremely important. Where most people fall down is when they hit barriers that they are unable to overcome. From there things start to go downhill.
You may have seen this in yourself or a colleague: You start your practice with a goal of providing the best treatment possible for your patients. Included in this goal might be practice prosperity, lots of new patients, a great staff, etc. Then “reality” sets in. You have staff trouble and new patients are few and far between. For some reason, patients don’t understand the importance of their treatment. You are not busy enough so you join some plans. Throughout all of this, you have most likely continued your clinical training, thereby being more capable, as a doctor, to deliver additional or higher quality services. Unfortunately, you are not suffering from lack of clinical skill, but rather lack of knowledge about running a business. By the end of all of this you find that things did not quite turn out the way you envisioned.
As you can see from this example, the problem was not with the goal, but rather with the barriers. So, this begs the question: What enables you to overcome barriers?
The answer is: training!
If not enough new patients is a barrier to your goal, then the handling is to learn HOW to get more new patients – become trained in the subject and then do something about it! At MGE, most clients start out the program with the New Patient Workshop. The New Patient Workshop provides the knowledge about marketing and promotion that you have been missing. You learn how to effectively and economically promote your practice and attract the fee-for-service new patients your practice needs.
We train our clients on how to get more new patients, increase case acceptance and just about every aspect of management from staff acquisition to organization and financial planning. Training puts you in control and makes you more causative. It removes the uncertainties, stops and barriers and helps you realize your full potential. Your future actually means a lot to me. You are very important people and many people depend on you.
I want to you to do something for both you and me: Make a decision to really flourish in 2011. Make this your best year ever. This is it – the year to flourish and prosper like never before. Give it an all-out charge! A great place to start is to learn how to get more fee-for-service new patients at the New Patient Workshop. Give us a call and we can help
I wish you the best!
PLEASE NOTE: This article provided by MGE: Management Experts, Inc. consists of suggestions and ideas that could be used to help improve the solvency and viability of a dental practice. There is no guarantee that the information provided is appropriate to your practice. Each practice, their owners, officers and staff are individually responsible for ensuring that any system implemented in the practice complies with the applicable federal, state and local accounting, tax and employment laws, rules and regulations governing the place in which your practice is located. These suggestions do NOT constitute legal or accounting advice. You should seek advice from your own accounting and legal advisors as to what is appropriate to implement in your practice, prior to implementation. MGE: Management Experts, Inc., its officers, directors, shareholders, employees, agents and the writer of this article, are not responsible for any claims, real or otherwise, associated with this material and information or any part thereof.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 22.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Success in the New Year – There is Hope!
By Luis A. Colón
President, MGE
A couple of things I noticed recently got me thinking. It appears the mass media still seems to be beating the “bad news drum” harder than ever. For that matter, if someone were to take what passes for “objective journalism” today and show it to me twenty years ago – I would think they were kidding me. While mass media has never been known as a source of uplifting information, it’s become much worse over time. The way it operates today borders on the surreal and ridiculous.
One other factor I find fascinating came up in a conversation the other day with my business partner, Dr. Greg Winteregg. In addition to his seminars here at MGE, Greg lectured to doctors all over the country last year (about 70+ lectures from coast to coast). Most of the doctors he lectured to while on the road were not MGE clients. Complaints about economic conditions affecting collections (despite the “recession” being over) came up quite a bit in these groups of non-clients.
MGE clients tend to do well, regardless of economic conditions. They know that the cause of their success lies with themselves – it’s not “over there.” Yet here Greg is running into quite a few people who think the opposite. They’re sitting in a situation where the “reason” is the “economy,” which 1) is something they can’t do anything about and worse 2) is not the real reason – as proven out by how well MGE clients are doing right now. For that matter, many MGE clients did wonderfully when things were really “bad” (according to the news) about two years ago.
Let me give you an example:
At the height of economic uncertainty in late 2008/early 2009, I visited an MGE client who was producing more in one week than he used to in an entire month. With everything going on around him and the mass media churning out gloom and doom more than ever, he was doing just fine.
While I was there, he asked me to inspect his office and give him my feedback. My inspection turned up what I expected to find based on his statistics: The management methods he learned on the MGE Power Program were well applied. One “key” was that he didn’t pay attention to or dictate his life according to the bad news. His attention was (and is) focused instead on how to expand, flourish and prosper, by providing excellent service to his patient base.
While the focus today in mass media is not as economy heavy as it was, say, two years ago, tuning in today is not particularly “refreshing.” In this client’s case, he was just avoiding it altogether. He didn’t run his life by it.
Now, you might say: “But Luis, if I don’t watch the news or read the paper, how am I going to stay ‘informed’ about what is going on in the world?!”
Let me ask you this: How do you feel when you get a piece of bad news? Better? Worse? You may notice that the more terrible the news, the worse you feel. Now, your general attitude has more to do with your success than you can possibly imagine. If you are walking around feeling like the world “caved in” on you, don’t you think it might affect how you handle things in the office or with your staff?
Getting back to this client, during my visit I could see how he had taken to heart a number of simple, yet powerful ideas he learned on our program:
- Excellent promotion that truly attracted attention to his business.
- The laws of income and how to apply them.
- Creating a caring and friendly environment for his patients, with this winning attitude spreading like wildfire to create a prosperous office.
- Teambuilding: building a team that is organized to win.
- Knowing the formulas of how to take 90% of chance out of business operation or personal economics (my personal favorite).
- The five basic causes of failure and how to avoid them.
I could see that he built a friendly, busy and prosperous organization. He didn’t (and to this day hasn’t) gone into agreement with the bad news.
This client knew how to promote, sell and deliver as well as how to organize and manage a team. As a result, he was not experiencing the adverse effect of the economy—he was (and still is) booming! He’s having fun!
Now, let’s take a look at one of the successful actions this MGE client applied:
He didn’t pay attention to or dictate his life according to the bad news. His attention was (and is) focused instead on how to expand, flourish and prosper, by providing excellent service to his patient base.
I’m not advising you to live in a “cave.” It’s fine to be aware of and informed of facts that you need to succeed and control your environment. I am saying that you don’t have to subject yourself to sensationalized bad news for no apparent reason.
Referring back to this client I visited, some of his basic successful actions were:
- He decided not to pay attention to or go into agreement with the bad news.
- He decided to flourish and prosper.
- He really “poured the coals*” on providing great service to his patients.
- He decided to expand.
In line with this, some additional steps you could apply to improve your situation right away for this coming year:
A. Decide to flourish and prosper—go ahead, just do it! You might feel funny doing it, but push through it anyway. Stop listening to people who say you can’t. When I do this I find that I have to disagree with “everyone” or the “group agreement.” So what? Be different and just decide that you are going to flourish and prosper.
B. Make a list of any successful actions you are applying or have applied in the past when it comes to providing better service for your patients, getting more new patients, etc. Immediately re-implement any successful actions that may have dropped out. In addition, with your focus on service, make a team effort to contact your patient base (via the phone, email and mail), especially those who haven’t been in for a while and get them back into the office for needed service.
C. Decide to expand! Write down what you want to achieve this year as your goal and go for it.
Realize that you’re going to be doing all of this into the teeth of heavy agreement that everything’s bad, etc. Hasn’t it always been that way to a greater or lesser degree? Also keep in mind steps A-C are just a temporary fix until the cavalry arrives, which would be you learning and applying the technology and management methods yourself.
You need the technology of how to succeed (no matter what) or you will most likely have trouble sooner or later. So, part of this plan has to include arming yourself with the management methods and technology we teach on the MGE Power Program. While this program does take persistence and dedication to complete, anyone who really wants to succeed can get through it quicker now than ever before.
The sooner you start, the better. Call us to find out more.
So, my wish for you for the New Year: Don’t listen to the bad news and decide that you will do whatever you can to flourish and prosper. And then do it!
PLEASE NOTE: This article provided by MGE: Management Experts, Inc. consists of suggestions and ideas that could be used to help improve the solvency and viability of a dental practice. There is no guarantee that the information provided is appropriate to your practice. Each practice, their owners, officers and staff are individually responsible for ensuring that any system implemented in the practice complies with the applicable federal, state and local accounting, tax and employment laws, rules and regulations governing the place in which your practice is located. These suggestions do NOT constitute legal or accounting advice. You should seek advice from your own accounting and legal advisors as to what is appropriate to implement in your practice, prior to implementation. MGE: Management Experts, Inc., its officers, directors, shareholders, employees, agents and the writer of this article, are not responsible for any claims, real or otherwise, associated with this material and information or any part thereof.
