‘Bigger isn’t necessarily better’: This month, Chris Barrow shares the key principles for successful dental business ownership.
Business coach Dan Sullivan teaches us to focus on our unique ability and loosely defines this as the work we are doing when we are doing our best work.
The feeling that an athlete shares as being ‘in the zone’, and perhaps when a creative finds content effortless. Maybe a clinician seeing everything going according to plan.
The founder of the ‘Full Focus Planner’ Michael Hyatt (a client of Sullivan) expands on this approach by advising that, after creating a list of your unique abilities (permission granted to have more than one), your objective as far as ‘everything else’ is concerned is to:
- Delegate – find someone else to do it (whose unique ability is the task you are delegating)
- Automate – find software and AI that will do the task while you sleep
- Eliminate – simply stop doing it.
Given that I first heard Sullivan share his theories in 1993, you could say that I have become accustomed to this approach.
Here at Extreme Business, I have the right people and technology, and we are pretty good at not doing the wrong things – but that has been a 30-year journey. I still meet people every day who are taking the first steps in simplification and focus.
In fact, the world could be accused of leading us in the opposite direction – asking us to do more things and doing them ourselves.
As comedian Jack Dee observes, ‘They did a great job at selling us the internet – telling us we were surfing. In fact, we are just typing.’
Avoid complexity
In January 1980, I arrived for my first day in a new job (financial services sales) and, having been given a desk, chair, telephone and whiteboard – I wrote in the top left-hand corner of the whiteboard: ‘Focus and simplify.’
This is a mantra I have followed throughout my professional life – except for when the pursuit of money and/or fame led me in the wrong direction.
I can sometimes be a slow learner.
Coach Michael Myerscough taught me in 1998 to ask myself a simple question before any major decisions: ‘Is what I’m about to do going to increase or decrease the level of confusion and complexity in my life?’
Needless to say, his advice was to avoid confusion and complexity.
Each time I ignored that advice, life became miserable and my bank balance shrank.
When I listened and followed the coaching, life became happy and my bank balance increased.
Hardly a week passes without an email or message asking:
- ‘I’m a frustrated associate – should I buy or open my own practice?’
- ‘I have X surgeries/locations and would like two X surgeries/locations – how do I go about that?’
Another cliché occurs
‘Bigger isn’t necessarily better – bigger is just bigger.’
So, when advising a new client, it is very important to get under their skin and determine their unique abilities, their definitions of happiness, as well as any material goals.
I meet too many miserable people in my work chasing targets, working stupidly long hours, not seeing their kids and wondering what the point is.
Perhaps the most sinister and insidious are taking on lots of debt to get on the ownership ladder and then constantly living in fear of the monster that consumes them.
Apologies if this reads somewhat negatively. I just want you to be happy.
That isn’t defined by what your profession or peer group tell you.
As poet and author Oriah Mountain Dreamer tells us in The Invitation, it’s about being happy with the company you keep when you are alone.
Catch up on previous Dental Business Coach columns:
- The Instagram associate – asset or liability?
- Are you happy tired or sad tired? It makes a difference
- Heading into Q2: what’s the name of the game?
- Does your dental team have fun?
- Are you worried about your practice’s financial position?
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