Episode Transcript
Key Takeaways
- The paralysis of analysis will kill your practice.
- You are the master of your own destiny and must take responsibility.
- Perfectionism in business is not progress.
- Success is not knowing; success is doing.
- Time is more valuable than money, and action is essential.
The Paralysis of Analysis
The one thing that will kill your business is doing nothing, sitting there analyzing it to death, right? The paralysis of analysis will kill your practice.
The paralysis of analysis will kill your practice.
Accountability and Responsibility
Welcome back to another episode of Practice Perfect, the podcast for those running cosmetic, aesthetic, medical practices, and anyone that’s trying to improve their business and their lives. All right, today’s title is going to be If Your Practice is Failing, It’s Your Fault. And I want you to get a handle on your mindset and your limiting beliefs.
So, this podcast is going to be all about the way that you think, all about the way that you are holding yourself back. And ultimately, it’s going to be about accountability. I want to keep you accountable. I’ve seen too many doctors fall into the victim mentality where they’ll start blaming everyone from their staff to the marketing companies to the economy.
Taking Charge of Your Future
Anything they can think of just to avoid taking responsibility for the fact that they are in charge of their own practice. They are the masters of their own destiny, and I want you to get that. You are in charge of your future, and it’s your responsibility to move yourself forward. No one else is going to do it for you.
If you want your practice to succeed, the buck stops with you. And I’m telling you this, even if everyone poops to bed, if all of your suppliers, your marketing company, everybody soils the sheet, it’s still your responsibility to fire them and course correct. Don’t sit there wallowing in your own self-pity about things not working. If something isn’t working, figure out why and fix it.
Caring for Your Practice
Because at the end of the day, nobody should care about your practice more than you do. I’ve seen this over and over. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I got to tell you that one of the most damaging things that I’ve ever seen in medical practices is when the physician cares less about his or her practice than I do. When I care more that the phone is being picked up and that the emails are going out and that people are showing up for the procedures than the doctor does, that practice isn’t going to go very far.
Because at the end of the day, nobody should care about your practice more than you do.
The Instincts Holding You Back
So let’s examine where that comes from. Because the thing is that the same instincts that make you a good doctor are killing your business. Your compassion and your loyalty to staff, your unrelenting analytical thinking, fear of making mistakes, thinking because you got through med school that you’re qualified to do everything yourself, all of that is holding you back. And the only reason you think you can do everything is because you’re arrogant.
Arrogance vs. Experience
Because society has put into your mind that just because you went to med school, you’re qualified and intelligent enough to do everything. I’m going to let you off the hook here because you don’t have to know it all. Just because you’re great at medicine doesn’t mean that you’re a great marketer. The funny thing is that I was speaking with a doctor just last week.
Someone wanted to sign up for services with us and we go through an elaborate vetting process with them. We do a full interview. And the thing is that even though he’s never built an eight figure practice, he thought that he was qualified to have an opinion on my recommendations. Because he read a few books or he went to some seminar or he went to one of the big meetings and some guru on stage told him one thing or another.
There’s a difference between arrogance and experience.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
And here’s the thing. Most doctors, they are not great business people. They’re not great marketers. That’s okay because they’re great doctors.
And that’s the craft that you should focus on. In the years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve seen maybe less than 1% of doctors that can do medicine and business great at the same time. And the ones that do it have to sacrifice a lot. They’ve sacrificed their family, family time, or their ethics.
Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
And when I talked about those instincts, perfectionism. Perfectionism is a disease. Perfectionism is one of these things that you need to have in medicine. You need to have when you’re doing your surgeries.
You have to do things right. Business is not the same way. Perfectionism isn’t progress. Analyzing something to death is another disease.
The paralysis of analysis is a disease. Where you get paralyzed just trying to think about which way you should go. Again, fantastic instincts for a physician. Excellent instincts if you’re doing surgery.
The Marketing Placebo Effect
And after all, the goal at the end of the day is to have a great result with high satisfaction and happy patients. If charging them more gives them a higher sense of satisfaction, you have a moral obligation to do so. You have a responsibility to your family, to yourself, to your staff, to your practice, to your future to charge more for your services and to root out these limiting beliefs. To treat them like the disease that they are and use your medical instincts now to fix your practice, to get to the root of this disease and treat the problem, not the symptoms.