I would like to share with you a key factor in successful dental practice management and your future regarding NET WORTH STATEMENTS.
Even more important than an INCOME STATEMENT is a NET WORTH STATEMENT. A NET WORTH STATEMENT shows your actual WEALTH BUILDING, not just the amount of income you have coming in.
Having a NET WORTH STATEMENT is essential to planning for retirement and savings.
Sit down with your spouse or significant other and discuss this entire concept that I am presenting to you. If you’ve been willing to work and sacrifice for your goals and your spouse hasn’t been in this line of thinking, you can be sure he or she won’t be with you at first. Give your significant other time to digest the ideas, think about them, time to learn about, adjust to, and contribute to your new interest in Goal Setting in line with Creating Wealth.
How to create your NET WORTH STATEMENT:
- Sit down and pencil out your NET WORTH STATEMENT so that balances what you own today with your debts included and NET WORTH. Put a fair market value on everything you own and add up all those selling prices The total will be your TOTAL ASSETS, not your NET WORTH—don’t ever let yourself think otherwise.
- Next, list how much you owe. Include every debt that you have; add all your debts up and write down the total. Now subtract what you owe from what you own. The figure that’s left, your NET WORTH, is the number that really counts.
- For planning and goal setting, you want to create two NET WORTH STATEMENTS. The first is your CURRENT REALITY, or today’s reality. Your first NET WORTH STATEMENT shows what you own, owe, and are worth TODAY. It is imperative for you to know where you are right now.
Your SECOND NET WORTH STATEMENT makes up your 10-15-or 20 year NET WORTH GOAL STATEMENT.
- In other words you must start to develop a statement of exactly how much you will need and how your NET WORTH in the future will be realized.
- Begin with a list of how much CASH, STOCKS, BONDS, REAL ESTATE, GOLD, SILVER, NOTES and DEEDS RECEIVABLE, and other property you want to have.
- List what you want to own and what you are willing to borrow against these assets (if anything) and what you want your NET WORTH to be when what you owe is subtracted from what you want to own in 10-15-20 years.
- Write these figures down on a yearly, monthly or weekly planner and refer to it often.
- I would feel really great if I thought that each of you were going to sit down with your spouse and create your FAMILY NET FIGURE, the Cash out figure you want to have in 20 years or whenever your ‘Wealth and Freedom Date” is in your future.
- Then start working back to that today. The work back from your Wealth and Freedom Date is the whole purpose of this exercise because it leads to the strategies and actions that you’ll take in the coming months and years to make your goals come true.
This exercise could create some questions for you as well as answers, but it will help you break through the barrier of the most fatal assumption that most professionals make, and that is INCOME equals NET WORTH.
If you have questions about creating your own NET WORTH or questions about your dental practice, please call me at 800-288-9393.
This is the starting point: To grow, you must set a goal in terms of dollar growth in revenues and profits for the next 12, 24, 36 months! The effectiveness of your growth depends on the clarity of your goal and the Intensity of your commitment to achieve it!!
It is critical to dental management to understand that each engine has the potential to drive growth when it is strong, but weakness of any of the Seven Engines will limit vitality, growth and profits. The weakest driving force is always a major limiting factor for the other engines in the practice. If you’ve ever felt like you were working harder than you should for the results you’re getting, it’s time to stop and objectively evaluate the Seven Engines that drive you, your team and your practice growth.
Here in brief are the Seven Engines of dental management that create the Energy that drives practice growth:
1. The Attraction Principle™: You must have a process to know, attract, serve and keep the patients, your market..
There must be a need in society that your practice serves. Patients are attracted to your practice because their needs are satisfied in an environment that creates great service and a rewarding experience. If they are not continuously attracted, this engine isn’t working.
2. The Professional Advantage™ : Have a plan to employ the right team members for the right roles and help them achieve personal and professional growth.
Your team must be a group of individuals who contribute their ideas, talents and energies to delivering services that activate the Attraction PrincipleTm.
“Good people with good systems produce outstanding results.”
W. Edwards Deming
3. The Business Blueprint ™ : Create a clear and coherent design for your practice—no loose ends.
Organization often seems vague and mysterious, but it is essential to create energy within the other driving forces. Energy is dissipated and growth is thwarted if all the Driving Forces aren’t working together to release the energy of the dentist and team to drive growth.
4. The Time Treasure ™ : Control the most valuable resource you have -- your time and your life.
How you manage your time determines how your practice and life goes. In today’s world we have more opportunities than we have time for. Planning, prioritizing, gaining or re-gaining control of time is a vital driving engine to empower and release your energy and the energy of every team member.
5. The Profit Creator™ : Have complete understanding and control of your Money and Cash Flow to enable you to make sound business decisions.
To Create Wealth and Abundance it is a requirement to control the flow of money or money will control you, limit you, and limit your growth. There is nothing that requires more control than money.
6. The Patient Journey™ : Have an engaging process that helps your patients make good decisions.
Create a new patient engagement process where patients arrive at making good choices. Pushing or manipulating patients into treatment choices that don’t fulfill their needs or they don’t understand is a mistake. Never be afraid to sell. Everyone sells.
The referral sells, the first phone contact sells, the office décor sells, the first visit to the office sells, the smiles of doctor and team members sell. Every contact, by phone or in person, is a ‘moment of truth’ in the selling process.
7. The Communication Connection™: Develop a clear, consistent
style of communication that articulates the Future Picture (where you are headed and why) of your practice and encourages people be inspired to go to the next level of performance.
If we are to find meaning and purpose in our practices, it will be when we are connected to others and doing work that is meaningful and purposeful to us. Communication that is open, friendly, and honest creates respect and trust which are the foundation of all relationships. No matter how high quality the dentistry you offer, if your communication style doesn’t attract and engage people in a cooperative way, your practice will not grow.
Whatever you believe is the Primary Engine driving your practice; it is still dependent on what the other Six are doing. It may be easier to handle and drive the Money engine, but only when all engines are working synergistically together will growth be easier and occur naturally.
“All unhealthy families are unhealthy in different ways.
All healthy families are healthy in similar ways.”
---Virginia Satir
We find the same is true in dental practices. We are all different. No two of us will ever be exactly the same nor will we have exactly the same practices. There are, however, patterns in healthy practices that we see every day and try to instill these strategies and actions into all practices, through our dental practice management program. Here are five recurring themes that we observe in the great practices that do well in any economic climate:
- They create meaningful relationships with their team and patients.
- They work to co-discover what their patients really need and want. They take the time to listen and co-create treatment plans that are in the best interest of their patients. In many cases, they routinely stage treatment relative to dental and economic circumstances.
- They constantly work to provide a high-trust culture for their teams and high-trust environment for their patients. The perspective of this high performing group of dentists is dramatically different than the other 90%. This group focuses first on the best interest of the patient, and secondly on themselves. The irony is by truly believing and living this spiritually humanistic strategy, by focusing on the best interest of the patients first, this top 10% is 2-4 times more profitable than the next group.
- They have a highly organized practice, where patients are seen on time, whatever is completed is delivered on time and patients have a WOW experience.
- They strive to provide high quality dental care for their patients. This is not the perfection-centered group of dentists. They strive to provide their best dentistry they can but don’t obsess on it. They provide the best the patient can accept and pay for with gratitude and appreciation and have a positive, grateful attitude with their patients. Their focus is on meeting and exceeding the needs of the patient.
You have 100% control over these five areas. The most important activity you can do right now is to focus on your relationships.
Your Best Dental Practice Marketing Tool
If I had to pick one strategy and one strategy alone that would make the most difference in a dental practice it would be the New Patient Experience.
NEW PATIENT EXPERIENCE
This is, by far, the most important strategy or process you ever do in your professional practice. The comprehensiveness of your examination determines your DIAGNOSIS, and your TREATMENT PLAN determines whether your practice is ORGANIZED, PRODUCTIVE, WORTHWHILE, is SHORT TERM or LONG TERM
In short, your New Patient process defines YOU and it also defines your PRACTICE.
Key Points:
1. If you don't really know what your patients want, you can't possibly ever satisfy them.Some people want short term treatment regardless of the long term costs.
2. If you don't fully understand the severity or risk of various problems or issues that any person has, you couldn't possibly be in position to offer them any true professional recommendations.
3. There is no way that you can plan comfortable, useful, worthwhile days when you are reacting with your patients to their disease and their problems.
4. You can't help your clients make really good decisions unless they have adequate information to make a good decision.
5. Too many dentists delegate the important work of discovery, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment planning to people who are unprepared or unqualified to provide important recommendations.
The New Patient Experience is not only the Key to your patient's future, but your future as well.
I often apply the principles taught by Stephen Covey, the modern day Dale Carnegie, to what I teach dentists about practice managemet at The Schuster Center.
- BE PROACTIVE---take responsibility for your life.
- BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND----have a plan of what you want to Create before you begin.
- PRIORITIZE---first things first. One thing before another. Some things are more important than other things.
These are concepts we teach in our dental management program. If you were to take a long look at Nature and Biology, you would see that.There is a certain ORDER in the Universe. We are born DEPENDENT on nurishment for our mothers. We are not capable of surviving on our own.
Then, in time, if we develop as human beings, we become INDEPENDENT.
We gain INDEPENDENCE by learning to take responsibility for our lives, making plans and prioritizing our activities so that we don’t miss steps and make too many mistakes.
Too often in our culture, people suffer not because they haven’t gained INDEPENDENCE but because they haven’t evolved, developed and matured to the next level which is INTERDEPENDENCE.
Using Nature as our guide, everything in the Universe is limited in its capacity to grow until it learns how to Create and Sustain syergistic, collaborative relationships.
Working together with others produces results far greater than competing with others or remaining alone and INDEPENDENT. Growth is limited in NATURE for those who remain self-centered, ego-centric and INDEPENDENT.
As one year ends and another begins, we have a chance to wipe the slate clean and get a fresh start, a "do over". For those of you who didn't have the stellar 2011 you were hoping for, this is a good thing. You have a chance to set new goals and to focus on what you want to achieve in the coming year. One way dental practices do this is by engaging with a dental practice management company.
Financial Goals for 2012
Many of the dentists we speak with are mainly concerned with money. Not having enough, not having control over it or not having a savings plan in place for retirement. When choosing someone to work with to help you achieve your goals, it is important to find someone that can help you realize YOUR vision and YOUR goals. After all, it is your practice, right?
Time Management Goals for 2012
Another important element in working with a dental practice management company is to be sure they don't just want to make you busier but they want to make you more profitable. Yes, it IS possible to be less busy and make MORE profit. The Schuster Center has helped thousands of dentists around the world achieve their financial goals, while having more time to do the things they want to be doing.
If you are interested in having your most profitable year in 2012, fill out the Profit Potential Profile request and receive a complimentary, personalized analysis from one of our practice analysts.
Happy New Year!
Part 2 of 5: Our Choices and How They Affect Us
The CREATIVE PROCESS has had more impact, power and influence, and success than any other process in history. All the arts, the sciences, architecture, pop culture, and the entire technological age we live in exist because of the CREATIVE PROCESS. Why has the most successful process in the history of civilization been made to seem like a mystery? Why have most people had such little exposure to it?
First, it is missing in all of education. Educators think that learning how to create isn’t important. The power the Creative Process is mind blowing. It is a game and life changer.
You, like me, have a choice. Everyone does. You can simply REACT to the events that occur in your life and practice or you can CHOOSE to become the dominate CREATIVE FORCE in your life and CREATE the DENTAL PRACTICE and LIFE you want.
The CREATIVE PROCESS is at the heart of the work we do at the Schuster Center and that alone separates us from every other dental consultant, dental management company or dental coach. Not that others aren’t good people or don’t get results; they do. But they more often get the kind of results that cripple your life with being so busy that you are under constant stress of production; or doing the kind of work that you really don’t enjoy; or of never being really in CONTROL and suffering from the distress of BEING CONTROLLED rather than the FREEDOM you went into practice for in the first place.
After a period of time and using one dental consultant after another; one dental management company after another, you end up with a life and practice that looks like anything but the real you. But now you’re stuck or are you? You’ve now have a lifestyle to support; you may have several cars, sometimes several houses; taxes, kids’ education; you know the drill. And here you are: TRAPPED, certainly not in CONTROL and far from the feeling of PERSONAL AND PRACTICE FREEDOM.
I like to say that those who REACT end up building their own TRAP. Like the spider weaving a web to catch food to eat, by reacting you end up being the caught by the web you have built.
Dr. Michael Schuster, Founder of the Schuster Center
Stay tuned for: Part 3 of 5: Reacting VS. Creating
Part 3 of 5: Reacting VS. Creating
But there is a way out. You, like me, have a choice. You always have a choice. You can be dead honest about where you are, and begin the CREATIVE PROCESS in your life and practice which never fails to lead you towards more CONTROL, FREEDOM and POWER in your life and practice. Once you choose to become the dominate, creative force in your own life you become the INFLUENCER rather than being INFLUENCED. You become the one in CONTROL, not the one CONTROLLED. Gradually day by day you experience a greater sense of order, control, predictability and yes FREEDOM. The same tasks done in a REACTIVE ORIENTATION which drags you down emotionally are done with GREATER PURPOSE and MEANING when you are involved in CREATING SOMETHING THAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU.
And this is the final thing I want to say about CREATING TODAY. To be in a CREATIVE ORIENTATION, you have to be bringing something into existence that is important to you. In other words, you have to LOVE your CREATION enough to bring it into existence. And that’s the rub.
If what you are doing is to try to make more money, or increase your production that is NOT A CREATION. And since the vast majority of dentists have been mistakenly taught to FOCUS ON MONEY AND PRODUCTION, they are trapped in REACTING and can’t be in a CREATIVE ORIENTATION.
PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THESE WORDS as they are based on working with over 3500 individual dentists and their dental practices in the past 34 years!
Dr. Michael Schuster, Founder of the Schuster Center
Stay tuned for: Part 4 of 5: How the Creative Process Will Affect Your Dental Practice
Part 4 of 5: How the Creative Process Will Affect Your Dental Practice
MONEY is a byproduct of the CREATIVE PROCESS. In fact, I can prove that dentists using the CREATIVE PROCESS net 2-3 times as much as dentists trapped in the REACTIVE PROCESS. I can prove this with over 100,000 months of data that we can collected as we have worked with dentists one-on-one these past 34 years!
When you use the CREATIVE PROCESS in business the result is GROWTH, real growth in NET PROFIT. When you join together the organizational process of practice development with the Creative Process you always experience true growth, more freedom, control and peace of mind.
What I have found and why it is so important to dialogue and interview potential clients of the Schuster Center is the fact that we can predict who will be truly successful and who won’t. It is this simple and powerful. I can predict that in a 30 minute conversation. Do you want to CREATE SOMETHING DIFFERENT, SOMETHING IMPORTANT to you IN YOUR PRACTICE and LIFE or don’t you?
THOSE DENTISTS who have something very important to THEM to bring into existence ALWAYS PRODUCE AMAZING RESULTS in our process, and those who don’t are moderately successful but never break through because they have never truly gotten into the CREATIVE PROCESS. Sure it takes some longer to get there than others, but the joy is in the CREATION as well as the END RESULT.
I’ve watched men and women build airplanes that took then 10-15 years to build and they enjoyed every minute of the process because they were building something THAT WAS IMPORTANT TO THEM. In fact for many of these people, the very act of building their plane was more important than the end result of flying it. So it is with all creators; they end up loving the process as well as the destination or end result. This is why THE CREATIVE PROCESS IS LIFE TRANSFORMING. It changes the entire experience of LIFE and PRACTICE from reacting to life to CREATING what REALLY, REALLY MATTERS TO YOU!!
Dr. Michael Schuster, Founder of the Schuster Center
Stay tuned for: Part 5 of 5: The Conclusion: Make the Choice to Continue your Education in Dentistry
Part 5 of 5: The Conclusion: Make the Choice to Continue your Education in Dentistry
At the Shuster Center, our dental coaches and consultants can tell if there is urgency to CREATE or if the people we are talking to are PROCRASTINATORS. Procrastinators have no urgency; they really aren’t going anywhere and sadly, that’s the majority of dentists; they simply aren’t going anywhere different than they are right now.
Remember this: Creating has nothing to do with personality, location, race or religion. Creating is a process that works and has nothing to do with background, education or experience. Creating is a process that begins when you have something IMPORTANT TO YOU TO BRING INTO EXISTENCE.
If you are chasing more money, then you will be chasing more money when you are 50, 55, 60 and even 70, and guess what, you still won’t be happy because you’ll never have enough, but worse than that, you will have spent your life REACTING TO LIFE and never have had the life and practice you truly wanted and deserved.
It is right there, right now, right in front of you, like it is for me, to CREATE THE DENTAL PRACTICE and LIFE we truly want. The first step is to call and talk to a coach that can give you insight to dental staff training, dentist financial planning and even dental sales training. Call today to start changing your life now.
Dr. Michael Schuster, Founder of the Schuster Center
