Life coach and self-help author, Tony Robbins, states, “Progress equals happiness. Even if you’re not where you want to be yet. If you’re on the road, if you’re improving, if you’re making progress, you’re gonna love it. You’re gonna feel alive.”
Working with dental practices from their early stages through to success, I have observed a trend. When you are heavily involved in your dental practice’s journey towards success, you often become blind to the incremental progress you are making.
A recent example that I can tell you about is a common challenge for new dental practices. The goal at the start was to fill all the available spaces in the appointment book. Time passed along with a hundred decisions and action steps to become ‘busy’.
Then, they came to me with a problem.
There was a substantial number of patients who did not appear to value the services the practice was offering. They would ask for discounts and fail appointments. The practice owners were frustrated as they could see how this type of patient was distracting the team’s attention away from providing the best service to their happy and satisfied patients.
To this client, I said “Congratulations! You are achieving your goals!”
What they saw as yet another problem to overcome, I saw as progress! In the journey from zero patient in a start-up business to a strong and viable dental practice, the practice owners first needed to accept all patients in order to fill their books. As they grew, however, they reached the next level of success, which is to become selective in the patients they accept and treat.
JPPS Co-Founder, Charles Kovess, says that our reward for solving problems is…BIGGER PROBLEMS! Charles explains that the more skilled you become, through the solving of problems, the bigger will be the new problems that you will attract.
Once the practice owners realised their problem was not a problem at all, but an indicator of their progress towards achieving their practice goals, they embraced the challenge and started re-designing their systems and promotions to appeal only to their ideal patient. I am looking forward to seeing the results. I am also looking forward to this practice’s next BIG problem!
