Why Some Dentists Have All the Luck

Are some dentists destined to mediocrity?

With the current doom and gloom that we hear in the media every day we thought it might be good to share our thoughts about what it takes to grow a practice – in the good times and the bad. Hopefully this helps.

I had an interesting experience this week. As you probably know, we provide free webinars to introduce our program to dentists that want to learn more about marketing and business development. The webinars are done in a one-hour time slot using a product called GotoMeeting™. Attendees are sent an email when they register with the access information which includes a link to join the online portion (this is so you can see our screen on your computer), and a conference call number to call and join the interactive conversation.

Well, here is where it gets interesting: We had a person sign up for our scheduled webinar this past Friday. Let’s call him Bob. Bob happened to be the only registrant for this time slot, so he was getting an entire hour of consulting from two senior-level consultants, for FREE. When the time came to join the webinar, he accessed the online portion with no trouble at all. After several minutes of waiting for Bob to get on the conference call, I sent him a chat message to see if he was having trouble dialing in. His response was, “No, I’m at the office and don’t want to take away one of our phone lines for an hour.” So, when I suggested we reschedule for another time he got upset and typed a bunch of stuff about how he figured GotoMeeting™ worked, and how we weren’t using it right, said he would not reschedule, asked to be removed from our newsletter list, and abruptly terminated his connection.

Some people aren't worth the time!

At first you might think that we missed out on presenting to a potential client, but I was actually happy that this guy qualified himself in that way right off the bat. You see, even more important than having great marketing is having a great attitude! If we had taken this guy through our webinar, he may have become a client, but odds are he would have been very hard to work with, and probably would not have been able to get much for results because his attitude would have been in the way every time we needed to get things done.

He is the type of guy that always looks for a reason why something won’t work.

This attitude can affect all aspects of your business. Good attitude is so fundamental to happiness and success that people like Brian Tracey have built empires showing us all how to fix this. From the people that answer your phone to your hygienists and even your patients, your attitude can influence all of them.

Everyone makes mistakes and everyone has days where nothing seems to go right, but how well you handle these ups and downs will determine where you end up.

This has proven true with our marketing clients as well. The ones that have a great positive attitude end up getting great results from their marketing.  Those that have a negative expectation and second guess everything to death usually do not end up getting very good results at all because they miss all kinds of great opportunities. Their negativity keeps them from making decisions in a timely manner and they always seem to find a hundred reasons why things won’t work instead of looking at why they will.

On the other hand, people with a benevolent or positive worldview see the world around them as filled with opportunities and possibilities. They believe that everything happens as part of a great process designed to make them successful and happy. They approach their lives, their work, and their relationships with optimism, cheerfulness, and a general attitude of positive expectations. They expect a lot and they are seldom disappointed.”

“There are two ways to look at the world: the benevolent way or the malevolent way. People with a malevolent or negative worldview take a victim stance, seeing life as a continuous succession of problems and a process of unfairness and oppression. They don’t expect a lot and they don’t get much. When things go wrong, they shrug their shoulders and passively accept that this is the way life is and there isn’t anything they can do to make it better.

Brian Tracy

It starts with positivity!

If you are a positive, upbeat, glass half full type of person, good for you! I bet your practice is a great place to work and your employees and co-workers love to be around you. You are the type of client we love to work with.

If you are negative, pessimistic, glass half empty type of person, try spending a few days with a forced smile on your face and take control of those negative thoughts when they enter your mind. After a few days you will start to feel as though a weight has been lifted from your shoulders and things will seem to be going better for a change. After a few weeks you will wonder how you could have ever lived the way you used to.

Sound too hard? I thought you might think that. Give it a try.