How do you grow a dental practice without going insane

You have to treat patients. You also have to manage your business. And you also have to promote your dental practice, especially when you’re just starting out. 

How can you do all this without going crazy? And how do you achieve everything while also maintaining a healthy work-life balance?

There’s no perfect answer to this because everyone is different. 

But here are just a few tips used by some of the busiest CEOs in the world. If they can do it, you probably can too. 

1. Set goals. But set them realistically

We all know how important goals are. But the problem with most business owners is that we tend to overestimate what we can do. 

And this means we sometimes set the goals too high and we don’t take into account that unforeseen events might occur (and usually do!) which mess up with our plans. 

When you set goals, take into account that everything will take longer. And we only have 24 hours in a day. 

Here are some examples. 

If you set up some dental marketing goals, don’t expect to get 100.000 new visitors in 2 months, especially if your marketing budget isn’t that high. 

Maybe a more realistic goal would be to get 40 new patients per month and a subgoal of that would be to get 10.000 new visitors on your website per month.

Or if you are setting up financial goals, don’t try to make 10x what you are making now in less than 3 months. 

Try doubling your revenue. 

When you achieve your goal, this makes you feel good and gives you an energy boost that will help you overachieve your goals eventually. 

On the other hand, continuously not reaching your goals might put you in a depressed mood. And sadness won’t help you move forward. 

2. Define areas of expertise and delegate

Running a dental business without getting burned out starts with acknowledging 2 important things:

1. You cannot know everything (and you don’t need to)
2. You only have 24 hours in a day

In the usual, “unprofessional” life, we tend to get this. 

We get our cars to a mechanic when they broke, we don’t try to repair major damages by ourselves, right?

We go to an eye doctor when we don’t see. We don’t go to medical school to get our eyes fixed, right?

We hire a plumber when something in the house breaks. 

But when we run our own business, we suddenly transform into a one-man knows everything. 

We try to do everything by ourselves because:

1. We think we can save some money
2. We think we can do it better

In both cases, we actually:

1. Lose money
2. Mess things up

Here’s an example. 

A lot of dentists try to market their dental practice by themselves. 

Which is a good thing. There are a lot of dental marketing tips out there. Some blogs are crap, but there are also a lot of blogs which share some really useful tips because this is how they get new clients for their marketing agency.

For instance here’s a dental marketing guide that explains how to promote your dental practice step by step. 

And here’s another huge article full of dental marketing tips and strategies if you want to do all the dental marketing by yourself. 

And this was just a 10 seconds Google search. I’m sure you can find more too. 

The thing is, information is not a problem anymore.

But here’s why trying to do everything by yourself will cost you more in the long run.

These marketers spend their entire day figuring out how to attract new patients for a dental business. 

They know the ins and outs of dental marketing. 

You spend your entire day figuring out how to fix people’s teeth. You know the ins and out of dental treatment. 

It will take you a lot of time and effort to learn to do marketing as good as a dedicated marketing agency can. 

And that extra time and effort might be used better somewhere else. 

The idea is this: focus on what you’re already good at. Delegate everything else. You’ll save a lot more money (and you’ll be happier!) in the long run. 

3. Enjoy little wins. Don’t be too hard on yourself. 

We want to accomplish a lot of things. Which is great because it keeps us motivated. 

But often times we tend to be too hard on ourselves.

It’s ok to do nothing. It’s ok to enjoy some time off. It’s ok to spend time with friends without working or thinking about work. 

And it’s ok (and really helpful) to celebrate little wins too. Because those little celebrations will give us energy to move forward and tell us that we’re on the right track. 

And there’s one more hidden benefit to this. 

Sometimes, when we get too overwhelmed with work, we tend not to see the forest for the trees. 

A lot of times in history, breakthroughs and those brilliant ideas came from scientists who weren’t working in that moment. 

Instead, they were relaxed, happy and enjoying a moment. That’s when creativity is at peak.

Why?

Because even when we don’t actively think about it, our subconscious mind constantly works on fixing problems and organizing thoughts and finding an answer to a situation we’ve been struggling with. 

So, don’t wait until you get burned out to get some time off from your dental business. Set aside some regular breaks to do something you enjoy. 

Maybe it’s spending time with your family. Maybe it’s doing some sports. Maybe you start a new hobby - dancing, cooking, swimming, whatever. 

These might not seem to have any impact in growing a dental practice. But give it a try and you’ll see that you’ll have a different energy, you’ll come up with better marketing ideas and you’ll feel better overall. 

Conclusion

We could write a book on how to grow a dental practice and another one on how to be productive. 

But here are the 3 important aspects we’ve talked about. 

1) Define how success looks like. Set realistic goals (and specific)

2) Don’t try to do everything by yourself. You’re a human being with 24 hours just like everyone else

3) Don’t work at all. Take some breaks. And enjoy them.