Set Your Own Goals – Don’t Let Your Goals Set You

I get a lot of questions around New Years from doctors wanting to set goals for their offices. The first things I tell them is that they cannot set their goals for their offices in a vacuum – that their office is a part of their overall life. They can only set their office goals in conjunction with setting their personal goals (family/travel/community service/religious/physical/office/etc…).

If someone tells me that they want to spend more time at home with family, more time in the gym, more time taking vacations but they also want to double their office sales – they are probably setting off on an incompatible course of goals. You can’t simply double your time allocation everywhere – you have a finite amount of time. We can make improvements to your office with the time you have – but to double sales takes a major effort that includes more time

When planning your goals for your office – figure out what you want your life to look like for 2014. Do you have high school tennis matches you want to watch for your kids? Soccer? Orchestra? Mommy & me? What things are important to you that supersede your office goals? Is it eating dinner at home with your kids? Is it Thursday night date night? Is it Wednesday bible study? Is it one hour in the gym with a trainer? Block all these important times out of your schedule!

Now look at your calendar – that is the time you have to open your office and make the practice magic happen. You might find that your available calendar does not provide the best opportunities to produce the income you desire – simply not enough hours to work. When you find your work calendar and your ideal calendar don’t mesh – look hard at what you will be giving up to gain more dental office hours. Is it worth it to make more income but miss dinner with the kids? Is it worth it to miss your kids tennis matches at high school? Only you can decide the answer to those questions. The one this that I do know is that you can always make more money – but you can never make more time.

Be wise in choosing where to invest your time in 2104.

Dr. Corey Gold
President
www.aces4ce.com

Does My Office Need a Website?

Probably the most common question I get asked by dentist is “do I need a website for my dental practice”? In 2012, the answer is an emphatic “YES”!

Today, people go to the internet for almost everything. Whether we are surfing the net on our computer, iPad or phone – we are all internet crazy. If you are still paying for a Yellow Pages ad and you don’t have a practice website then you have it backwards. People look for a local dentist much more often online than in the local phone books.

In future posts I will discuss what features that you should have on your website and what features actually are liabilities for your website. For now, the important concept is that you must have a website.

Another quick tip – unless you are a legitimate website designer, DO NOT try to build your own practice website.  Nothing will send a prospective patient running to another dental office faster than a practice website that looks amateurish. The prospective patient will think if your website looks crummy then your technical skills might be as well. Your website does not need to look all tricked out it only has to look professional and clean.

In future posts, I will also discuss the benefits of hiring a local website designer to build your site versus hiring a company that specializes in creating dental office websites. Both options have advantages but I do prefer one option over the other. Your website does not need to be expensive to be effective for your practice.

There will be many dozens of future posts about how to make the internet your practice’s best friend. Don’t worry – you don’t need to be an internet wizard to make the web work for you.

Dr. Corey Gold
President - Advanced Continuing Education Systems
www.aces4ce.com

Is Your Office Google Friendly?

Where do you look for items you want to purchase or services you need? Well, the answer for most people is that they look on the internet!

We are an internet crazy, iPad loving nation and that trend will not be reversing.

Knowing the internet is the place you need to be seen, the question you need to ask is, “how easy is it for LOCAL area people to find me on the internet”?

When someone types ‘dental office my city name’ into their Google or Bing search engine – do you pop up near the top? Is your dental office on the first page for your city search? If not – YOU LOSE!

Although the internet is worldwide, you are really only working on marketing to the area local to your office. You need to focus your marketing of your website to target the people who are looking for your services.

It is NOT expensive to tune your website to draw viewers from local area, both in organic (free) traffic and in paid traffic (Google AdWords & Bing/Microsoft Search). Paid traffic is very inexpensive because you will be targeting a very small demographic area.

In future posts – we will talk about how to accomplish these vital marketing steps. You MUST be near the top in web search for your area – any less is a huge financial loss for your office.

Dr. Corey Gold

President – Advanced Continuing Education Systems

www.aces4ce.com

Am I Pollyannaish?

I received a few notes that my previous post was Pollyannaish. The people said I was minimizing the need to make money and provide an income for the family.

I was not minimizing the need for each dentist’s business to be successful – to provide great care and make an income. Rather, I was asking questions surrounding balance and priorities.

Each year I speak to dentist who own highly profitable offices. When I ask them what their next goals are they invariably include more production and more profit. While I love bigger and more successful – I always ask that dentist about their non-dental life and happiness.

Funny thing is that most of these dentists see themselves as being two separate people: (1) the non-dentistry person and (2) the dentistry person. They don’t see that they are one person and by keeping moving the bar farther on building bigger practices that they are taking away time from the other parts of their lives.

I simply ask dentists to see themselves as one person and that they can only allocate each hour once. How big is big, how much is a lot – I tell dentist to start seeing their practice as a conduit and part of their building a perfect life. That a well-run and managed practice can provide them with both the time and money to enjoy the life they truly want.

If you goal is to have a larger top line income and bottom line is simply to break records – consider at what cost. I know my kids are happy I make a few thousand less but at am at all their sports games, musical performances, school parent nights and that I know their friends and do their homework with them… WHAT IS THAT WORTH?

Dr. Corey Gold
President – Advanced Continuing Education Systems
www.aces4ce.com