YO!
Happy Sunday. I had a great coaching call with a long-time client on Friday. I wanted to share some of the content, as I know, based on all the DMs I’m blessed to get from many of you, this topic is very relevant for many right now.
All these plans START WITH VISION.
What do you SPECIFICALLY WANT?
With a little bit of prodding from me, his 36-month vision is DIALED IN. He wants to go from a 1.5 dentist/2 his practice to a 2 doc/4 his practice, 1 facility practice where he is 100% away from the chair yet maintains the same level of income and plays an active role in the leadership and development of the business and team.
BOOM!
Trust me. This is the hardest part. I see too many people working really hard, climbing the ladder of success, only to get to the top and realize their ladder was leaned up against the wrong building.
One we know this vision info, we can develop a strategy to make it happen. We can reverse engineer the process so we know what we need to have in place in 6 months, in 12 months, in 18 months, in 24 months . . . .
My hope in sharing this message is not to answer your specific questions, as everyone has different goals in life, aspirations, and visions. My goal here is to help you with the questions you should be asking.
Once you have absolute clarity on the answers to YOUR questions, find someone to help you get there.
So, what questions need to be asked in order to have a business that becomes less and less dependent on you to operate?
Let’s start from the top.
What does the 3-year vision look like?
In order to realistically answer this question for your specific situation, let’s start with a few more granular questions.
- How much clinical work do you envision performing, if any at all, on a weekly basis? (Hours per week)
- What income are you hoping to maintain/attain at 3 years that allows you to maintain your current lifestyle?
*****Make sure you have clarity on the “founder’s dilemma” and how matching your income as a chairside provider is more difficult than a simple 1 to 1 switch out with another provider. It’s much more complicated than that but simple to calculate and program*****
- How many providers will you need?
- How much revenue will those providers generate? How can I figure that out?
- How much room (facility space) will those providers need to generate the revenue you need?
- Will you sacrifice culture (move to 5 days a week, move to split schedules and/or longer days to avoid facility changes?
- How much patient demand will you need to generate the revenue you need?
- What will the profitability be at the expected revenue number?
- What does cash flow look like and how will we manage taxes, debt, emergency and capital expenditure expectations?
- Will you be working actively in a non-clinical capacity as a leader of the office or will those roles and responsibilities be trained up and delegated in other people?
Once you have clarity on these questions, it’s time to get to work and EAT THE FROG.
What do I mean by eat the frog? You need to identify what is going to be hardest to attain and starting fighting like hell to get those solutions in place. This will be very different for everyone based on geography, current business model, current facility footprint . . . Let me try to explain.
If you vision is a 3 doc, 12 op practice but you are currently in a 5 op 2000 sq foot leased space with no room for expansion then a primary focus for you now is determining how to get in a bigger space. That takes time and this may be what you will need to the most runway for.
If your vision is a 3 doc 12 op practice and you get 1 associate doc resume every 12 months based on how remote your location is, then you need to develop a system to get a funnel/pipeline of prospective docs that want to join your practice.
DO NOT focus on something that doesn’t need your attention right now. That’s the EASY thing to do and it will not move the needle for you but can fool you into a sense of accomplishment.
Simple, just not easy.
Reach out if you need a jump start.
Much Love,
Jason
