Donald
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Donald,

You're like most dentists. You think that technical achievement will give you business success. It won't. It never will. It's a myth, a fantasy, a fairy tale.

Not that technical achievement and business achievement are mutually exclusive. Not at all. Clearly, being a great clinician has tremendous value added in having a successful business, but it's not "the" thing that makes it happen.

You need to understand,

"Being a superb clinician is insufficient on its own to generate practice success."

What's missing? What do you need to have, that you do not have, to be successful? What do you need to accomplish to achieve the same degree of business mastery as you have in your clinical dentistry?

What you are lacking is desire. Like most dentists, you have little desire to master the business side of practice. For you, leading, owning and managing the business of practice is a "have to" not a "want to." Whereas mastering clinical dentistry is a powerful "want to."

Clearly you "want" to be a great clinician. Just look at your CE history. Look at where you spend your time and money. On a percentage basis, how much time and money do you spend on becoming a great clinician? OK. Now, how much time and money do you spend on becoming a great business leader, manager and owner? Commitment shows up in two places - your calendar and your checkbook.

Donald, the undeniable fact is without a successful dental business you will never have a successful dental practice - never. You will never have a successful practice without an intention, commitment and drive to master business. On the other hand, you do have a tremendous intention to be a top-flight clinician. Here's how it goes.

Below is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

1) Survival: Hunger, safety, comfort
2) Security: Protection, safety, stability
3) Belonging: Love, family, peers, friends
4) Esteem: Achievement, competent, gain approval, independence, status
5) Learning: Knowing, understanding, mentally connect
6) Aesthetic: Symmetry, order, beauty, balance, integrity
7) Self-Actualization: Realizing your own potential, self-fulfillment, peak experience
8) Transcendence: Helping others realize their potential

You simply want to bypass Levels 1 and 2 and go directly to 3, "Belonging." At Level 3, you join a group, Pankey, Kois, or Spears for example. You immediately gain a sense of belonging. Within a short period of time you feel loved and appreciated by the group and by the group's leaders. You make friends with colleagues. You become a peer in a community. You feel you belong.

Soon you break into Level 4. Through your training and development, you now have a much greater sense of self-esteem. You feel much more secure and confident as you become more and more expert in your understanding and delivery of your dentistry. You feel more worthy about yourself as a professional. You attain a level of achievement recognized by others. You feel more competent. You feel you have broken away form the middle of the pack. And as important, you have the approval of a highly regarded group of dentists, a highly respected leader, and of dentists outside of the group. You have achieved an entirely upgraded status. You have gone from Dentistry 1.0 to Dentistry XP.

Now you are totally into it. You have much greater sense of understanding and depth of knowledge about dentistry. You easily and directly connect to the top players in this community - you currently know what the top tier in the group knows. "You can talk the talk and walk the walk." You have achieved Level 5 in Maslow's Hierarchy, true "learning." You have achieved insight and real understanding. "It all makes sense now." There is no confusion. There is symmetry, order, a clear design, beauty unto itself of the systems and components of this body of knowledge. It has integrity - it is whole and complete. Yes, you have a totally new "aesthetic" sense, you have moved to Level 6.

You now push even harder. You break through to see yourself fulfilling your true potential - a master clinician and diagnostician. You are having peak experiences in your treatment of some patients. You are totally fulfilled. You have attained Level 7, self- actualization. You have made your dream of yourself real. You are a great clinician.

What's next? What's next is you become a missionary for this knowledge, this body of work, for this discipline. You are driven to contribute it to others and have them see, feel and know what you know. You have breached the final level, transcendence, helping others reach their own potential.

But the story doesn't end here. In fact, many times it turns into a tragedy. If you're like many dentists, you try to implement what you've learned into your practice only to be disappointed. Patients and staff aren't buying. In fact your gross revenues are receding. Your staff is either more distraught or more disengaged, and fewer patients are saying "Yes." Worse, fewer new patients are showing up. It's going in totally the wrong direction.

Donald, here's what you need to confront in order to have your practice be a full expression of your vision. You need to handle Levels 1 and 2 in Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, survival and security. Survival defined by absence of hunger, safety of self and family, and comfort. Security defined as a sense of protection, safety and stability. These two levels can only be achieved by having the business side of your practice work.

Without these two levels of safety and security being satisfied, you can't successfully ascend to the next levels. It's like building a house without a foundation - it won't stand.

In order to be successful you will need to generate the same passion, desire and drive for business excellence that you do for clinical excellence. But what will move you to do that? What will give you the drive, the desire, that passionate pursuit of excellence in business, rather than just merely putting up with it?

What I say will give you the desire if you clearly realize what is possible if you master the domain of business. What I say, and what I teach having seen this countless times, is mastering the business of practice will take you far beyond survival and security, but all the way up to transcendence.

Ask yourself,

What would be possible if I became a master in business?

Conquering the business of practice would directly produce a transformation in who you are in the world. Mastering the business of practice would result in you having significantly more power, more courage, more directness, and greater intention than you ever had before.

Donald, you would need to become "the Donald." Are you up for that? What would life be like if you mastered the business of practice? I say that if you developed yourself as a powerful and effective business person, you would overcome many of the areas that hold you back, not only in business but in life. Your ability to make a contribution, your capacity to make an impact, your self-confidence and self-esteem, how you relate to people, and how you are seen in the world would be dramatically altered if you mastered the business of practice.