Episode 46 – Moving Your Dental Practice from Good to Great: Part 1 Leadership Focus

“Good is the enemy of great. Because too often, ‘good’ means settling for ‘good enough.’”
– Dr. Victoria Peterson

What is holding you back from greatness?

Maybe you’ve gotten used to settling for “good”…which really means “good enough.” “Good” is actually the enemy of great.

Consider this: good dental practices can create a nice lifestyle, but great dental practices create your legacy.

It’s time to top settling and get on your journey to greatness. Today, we take a serious look inwards and raise your standard of what is acceptable.

If you’re ready to reconnect with your purpose and craft a great dental practice that creates your legacy, then join me today for a challenge that will help you refocus your leadership and create the great dental practice you deserve, including:

• Where are you allowing yourself to play small (the comparison game)
• How “Yeah, buts” are holding you back from your greatness 
• Why confrontation is great for your business

Want to know if you have an Investment Grade Practice? Click here to use the completely free Investment Grade Practice calculator: What’s my IgP Freedom Number?

Want to have a conversation about your Investment Grade PracticeTM? Contact Brent at brent@productivedentist.com.
Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Investment Grade PracticesTM Podcast on iTunes & Spotify.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Regan 0:00
Hi, Dr. Regan, Robertson, CCO productive dentist Academy here and I have a question for you. Are you finding it hard to get your team aligned to your vision, but you know, you deserve growth just like everybody else? That’s why we’ve created the PDA productivity workshop. For nearly 20 years PDA workshops have helped dentists just like you align their teams, get control of scheduling, and create productive practices that they love walking into every day. Just imagine how you will feel when you know your schedule is productive, your systems are humming, and your team is aligned to your vision. It’s simple, but it’s not necessarily easy. We can help. The demand for these workshops is so high that our March 2023 workshop is completely sold out but there are still seats available for the only remaining workshop in September 2023. Visit productivedentist.com/workshop that’s productivedentist.com/workshop to secure your seats now.

Victoria Peterson 1:23
Is your dental practice good? Or is it great? That is the question that author Jim Collins asked in his book from good to great. In fact, he says, “Good is the enemy of great.” Hello, everyone. This is Victoria Peterson and welcome to this edition of Investment Grade Practices. I want to kick off by talking about focus and a leader’s focus and the subtle difference between good and great. I spent a number of years in a Tony Robbins Corporation and working with TonyoOne key point always resonated with me and has stuck with me all of these years and that is that life rewards you after the effort. So its set up in reverse, the effort, the reward never measures up to the effort, you’re going to always feel like you worked harder, did more, put in more effort than the reward and it’s set up something like this, that when you give a poor effort in life, you get punished, right? If you’re not focused on moving forward in life, if you don’t have a central point, if you get involved in drugs and crime and things like that, then life punishes you.

Poor effort equals punishment. Good effort, how many good people do you know that have poor results showing up in your life and it’s not always their fault? In fact, it never is but good effort gets poor rewards, great effort, and this is the part that’s gonna really stink for most entrepreneurs, great effort, gets good rewards. You get that nice lifestyle, you get the house, you get the car, you get the vacations, but it’s not great, that financial dissonance may still weigh in the back of your mind, and your health may be suffering because you’re striving for good, and you’re getting the poor results and so we have to move out of the journey towards good because often it turns into good enough. And when we start settling in one area of our life, it makes it normal to settle in others. So what does this journey to great do for us as business owners? Well, first of all, it, it raises the level of possibility. When you look around and say if I’m settling for good, what am I missing out on? Not in expectations of the world, but expectations and who you could become. It’s been my experience that 99% of my stress comes from settling for good.

We don’t tolerate the poor effort very long, some of us do, but poor effort we can identify. Good effort, though, is really a tough one for leaders. So where do you have good employees? Right? And they’re good, they show up, they do their job, they don’t complain day after day, they show up, they don’t complain, they show up, they don’t complain. That is a really good employee, especially in this marketplace. Great employees, though, are engaged. They’re engaged in the mission, they’re engaged in a purpose, they’re engaged in a way that their core values in life align with the core values of the company and what happens when you have great employees who are fully engaged in your mission is that creativity goes through the roof. It’s as if you have wind beneath your wings and you, you rise above problems, in fact the drama is almost gone.

When your team reaches that level of great and I’m starting here only because, I, my phone rings every day with the doctor saying can you come and fix my team? And I say absolutely. Are you doctor willing to make the changes? Because everything starts from the leader and then trickles down. So where are we being good as leaders, and where are we being great? That’s really the place to explore as you’re building Investment Grade Practices and here’s the fun part. As the owner, you stand to reap the great rewards when you move from great to outstanding, when you as leader are moving to outstanding and that’s the expectation you have on yourself, that’s when great shows up as a reward, great team, great patients, great financial remuneration, great health, great lifestyle, all of that. And we’ve seen it at Productive Dentist Academy for almost 20 years, doctors who are struggling at 300, 400, or 500 an hour, they’re, they’re great people, but they the good people, the great people, they don’t have great systems, and they don’t have a mission or a purpose. So every day we show up to do the work and every day, it gets harder and harder and you get stuck in this quagmire of goodness and you go to your local Study Club, and everybody brags about how they’re doing well because no one wants to lose faith in front of their peers.

So you don’t get a lot of information there. The message boards and the threads are very confusing. So how do you break through from good to great, great to outstanding? I think it comes down to connecting to your bigger purpose and this is, this is not easy if you don’t naturally self-reflect. And most of us, myself included, we have an external gauge of success. Someone recognizes my success, and I feel successful. So turning inward, and saying, Why did I get into dentistry in the first place? What was I hoping to accomplish? Most of the time when I’m talking to doctors, it’s because they’re very artistic.

They like to do things with their hands and they feel this great joy and personal satisfaction of doing beautiful aesthetic work. It’s their Michelangelo piece if you will. Others, their purpose is in serving people, you know, perhaps something happened to them as a child, and they didn’t have great dental care, or they were missing teeth, or they had someone who was kind to them along the way a parent, a teacher, a professional, and they want to give back to the world, that becomes their deeper mission. Whatever it is that’s driving you, working with a coach or working with someone to really pull that out and clearly articulate it so that your team understands that we’re not just filling holes and filling the schedule, we’re filling up people’s hearts with hope, now we’re getting people out of pain, we are reducing their bacterial load and their overall health is massively increasing. We are in health care and we have the privilege of taking this journey with our patients. So connecting with your bigger purpose helps to raise your standards of what’s acceptable. Because if my purpose is to help my patients become healthy, that’s a much different logic path, you’ll do things, you’ll show up differently than if my purpose is to fill my schedule. Can you feel the difference? So it’s good to fill up your schedule, and it’s good to be productive. It’s great to be mission-driven. So that’s the key really, the difference between good and great, it’s not doing more, it’s being more conscious about what you’re doing, and the deep-rooted, why behind it and you can start to take an inventory.

This is your leadership challenge here because building an Investment Grade Practice, really, it starts with the leader, it comes back to the leader. How you show up, is how the team shows up and it’s set up that way. You brought in people that you trust, people that can mirror back to your, your strengths, but they also mirror back to you your weaknesses and I know for me as a leader, I spent a lot of time being very non-confrontational, very conflict-averse.

I did not know how to talk to employees about performance issues and so, I would just cross my fingers, close my eyes, and hope to God they would go away or hope that the rest of the team would complain so much that they get the clue and start fixing meetings. I didn’t dare talk to employees about improving their performance for a cause. What if they quit? And who do I hire next? Because I don’t have a process for that. So before we get into how do we correct the team, and we’ll get into that in a different episode, you can’t build Investment Grade Practices without a great team, which means you need to become an outstanding leader to get the result of a great team. So in this episode, I want you to think about where are you allowing yourself to play small. What’s frustrating you? And seriously, pause this recording right now and take a deep breath.

Victoria Peterson 10:43
Because most of us don’t pause during the day and even take a breath. So take a deep breath and say, where did I play small today? Where was there something within myself, that I didn’t check myself on it, and I just allowed anger or fear or frustration or bitterness or busyness take over kind of my emotional command and then maybe I pulled back? You know, the pandemic taught us all to contract and pull back. We’re in an expansive time right now. Where am I playing small? Where am I settling for good? I’ll give you a great example. I was chatting, I’ve the last three doctors that I’ve talked with. There’s somewhere around the 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 milestones, and when I asked what is your goal for 2023? All I’m gonna do I’m going to go from 1.5 to 1.6 and when I say, “Why?” The answer, nine times out of 10 is, because it’s a bigger goal than this year, because it sounds good. It feels good to grow. I want to know that I’m growing. And then I ask a deeper question, “Are you growing at the rate of inflation?” Well, I don’t know. I don’t know how much my overhead is gone up. Are you growing at the rate that will get you to financial freedom? Oh, I don’t know. Are you growing at a rate that will get you out of debt in the time that you want to get out of debt? So growth for growth’s sake, is one way of being good and playing small, because you’re setting goals compared to something that you’ve already done. The more strategic way that’ll get you into the line of great leadership is, where am I going on? I’ll keep repeating it on this podcast. Your number one job as a leader is to focus on where am I going. Where am I leading this team? So in one particular doctor’s case, he wanted to amass $10 million by the year 2035, when he turns 50 years old. His savings were minimal, at this point, he’s 35, so maybe he’s got half a million.

He’s 38. Maybe he’s got half a million in the bank, something like that, we didn’t get into those details but it was very interesting. His practice is doing 1.5 million right now and he estimated that 12 years from now, he could sell it for 1.5 to 2 million, based on the way that he bought the practice, based on his business knowledge of how practices grow. And the truth of the matter is, is that is the reality. In our times, that’s how good doctors operate. They buy a practice, they maintain it, and they work on profits, which is terrific, He’s highly profitable but there is an opportunity to grow incrementally over time, at a pace that’s higher than inflation and when we ran those numbers, five years from now, not 10, or 12, but five years from now, his practice, instead of being worth 1.5 million, would be worth 4.2 million. And I share this with you because building an Investment Grade Practice takes less time and effort than it does to build a good practice. Good practices peak and plateau in real lifestyle, but they’re not building exponential value and each week when I come on here, I’m going to be doing weekly podcasts this year.

So you can thank Kashmere for that. She and Regan have talked me into weekly podcasts. I want to give you the small tips, these micro things you can work on so that you grow exponentially, not just organically. So take an inventory. Where are you playing small? Where are you creating comparative goals? Where are you creating goals that quote won’t freak out your team? Where are you creating goals that feel realistic, like it’s a, it’s a cakewalk to accomplish it? The next piece I want you to look at in your leadership challenges. What Yeah, but are you accepting as truth? Yeah, but Victoria, that sounds so good, you know, set unrealistic expectations and hope we get there.

These yellow dots, these limiting beliefs. This is what’s going to hold you back from your greatness. If you need proof, call Brent. We have hundreds of doctors around the country doubling and tripling their practices because they tamed the Yeah, buts. Yeah, but not in a small town. Yeah, but not in an urban area. Yeah, but you don’t understand. Make a list of all your Yeah buts. Why have you not created the success that you’ve always dreamt of? If you’re, if you’re good, if you’re feeling comfortable, if life is okay, but something’s niggling you and saying I’m out not really great. What are the Yeah buts that you might be hearing that are holding you back? And then also, where are you hiding out as a leader? I hid out in my inability to confront things and Bruce is so good at this. He said, ‘You know what, it’s just a training opportunity, identify it, and get on with it.” And that’s what we do.

Victoria Peterson 16:00
Now, anybody in the company can send me an email, the subject line says capital T, capital O, is a training opportunity. It’s something that we’ve noticed that we’re did not go well for ourselves, for a teammate or our clients and we bring these training opportunities up, and we examine them and we find a better way. So it’s taken me a long time as a leader to realize that confrontation is great. Confront the problem, not the person. Figure out where there are training opportunities, and that’s my invitation to you as a leader. Where are you hiding out as a leader in the things you know, you need to confront? I want to talk to the office manager because she’s been here forever and all the patients love her. I can’t talk to the hygienist because if she gets upset and doesn’t come in tomorrow, I can’t hire another hygienist.

You know, we have a lot of innate fears as entrepreneurs and coming to grips with them, putting on pen to paper. Where am I allowing myself to play small? What am I yeah buts that I’m accepting as truth and where am I hiding out as a leader just hoping that one day it’ll get better? If you can identify those three things this week, even if it’s one small thing for each category, you are going to move light years beyond where you are today as a leader into who you were meant to be as a leader. I know some of these may feel crunchy. This is really crunchy people stuff gets in and I had a real-life experience with that this week. I have been feeling under the weather for the last month or so. I finally have come out of that and feeling great but coming out of it, my inbox was filled. And I don’t know about you, but my full inbox looks like over 2000 unread messages and clearing my inbox and moving at the speed of light, I got a little grumpy and I have team members that I rely on, like my right and left hand. And Kashmere, our Podcast Producer is one of those and we had a meeting set up and she was on that meeting, she organized the meeting for me and I panicked because I didn’t manage my time well and I couldn’t find my stuff and I am known as a leader to come soaring in last minute, like, picture that running to the airplane and getting in just as they’re closing the door and then you can’t get on the flight.

That’s typically how I run my life. It’s just right there under the wire and I panicked because I felt unprepared. And I took it out on Kashmere and that wasn’t fair and when that was brought to my attention. It was appropriate, like hey, where are you and, and all of that. It wasn’t anything mean-spirited, nothing like that, but it had the impact of, of making one of my teammates feel like they had done something wrong, when in fact, it was me that was unprepared and so I have privately apologized to her. I hope she’s listening to this podcast because I want to publicly apologize for that too.

This is a new level of accountability that employees are holding employers to and if you’re working on your leadership game. I don’t think anybody on my team would think of me as a weak leader and I don’t think anybody on my team would think that I was less than for apologizing when I recognized a mistake in my own communications. In fact, I think being vulnerable with your team, and recognizing where you make mistakes as a leader opens up the whole company for everyone else to say, perhaps I wasn’t giving my best in the moment, let me do better. So as we journey together this month, I really want to stay on this theme of moving your leadership, moving your companies from good to great. Because good dental practices can build a nice lifestyle, but great dental practices will create your legacy. Thank you for tuning in this week.

Narrator 20:07
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Investment Grade Practices podcast. If you find value in this episode, help us spread the word by passing it along to a dental friend. Subscribe and give us a Like on iTunes or Spotify. Learn more about building your Investment Grade Practice at productivedentist.com today