Dentist Story – Dental clinic to Dental Chain

Dentist Story – Dental clinic to Dental Chain

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Dental Marketing

Today I am going to tell the story of my friend ‘ANUJ‘.


My friend Anuj is a very laborious dentist. He enjoys dentistry a lot. He had done a lot of effort during his graduation and after that, he had done many courses to improve his skills. His dream was to become a famous dentist. To fulfill his dream he thought to do the job as a somewhere. By finding for jobs he got his job in one of the leading dental chain. Till now, Anuj had never worked in a clinic. After some time he started providing good treatment. One day he thought to open his own new clinic. He thought to keep his charges low and provide the best treatment and in this way, he could save few money too.

He shared his idea with his parents and friends. Everyone liked his concept and he opened his own clinic in a sub-urban place with the help of his parents.

In the starting, he suffered from the problem that very few patients used to come in his clinic. Being having good price and treatment quality no one knows about his clinic.
Then he realized that marketing is very important and he started putting double effort. He became active on social media and after that, some patients started coming to his clinic but that wasn’t sufficient. He distributed Pamphlets, hanged hoardings, started doing camps by saving his money. He got the benefit of this and the number of patients increased after that my friend Anuj became busy and marketing was stopped.

An increase in the number of patients lead to new difficulties. Anuj was not capable to handle all the work alone like keeping cleanliness, scheduling patients, delivering good treatment, doing marketing.

So finally after seeing the profits, he hired a BDS staff. She was a BDS fresher female who wanted to work because she does not want to sit at home until she gets married. Now my friend started thinking that he is a businessman now. He transferred his many of the patients to his junior dentists and he transferred some of them to practice management.

Everything was going well but suddenly a problem occurs. Complaints started coming in treatment. The right diagnosis could not be made by young BDS. Patients management was also not good. Actually BDS who was hired by Anuj was very lazy. She does not have more interest in treatment. After teaching her so good no change could be seen in her. That is why patients were not happy and some of the patients always used to ask for treatment from Anuj only. Some patients walked out due to unsatisfactory.

Anuj wanted to do marketing and handle his business on his own that’s why he was not able to give his focus on treatment. So, when profit started decreasing Anuj decided to treat the patients by himself and refused his junior dentists to do the treatment and again he started doing everything by himself.

Now my friend has extended his work so he became busier. Now he uses to do a job in his own clinic from 09:00 am in the morning till 10:00 pm at night. In between, he just takes 3 hours break for lunch and he is not utilizing that time properly.

He is not earning more money.
Neither he is giving time to his family nor enjoying anything. Now, he is just doing a highly demanding job in which salary is also less. Slowly my friend became frustrated. Now he doesn’t enjoy doing the treatment and he just wants to leave everything and run away.

After seeing all this my friend Anuj decided to keep an experienced dentist who can make his life easier. And finally, he got a talented, energetic BDS employee. Now Anuj’s work has decreased a little bit. After sometimes work has increased more and Anuj thought to hire one more employee and this time Anuj was determined that he need a talented employee only. After searching a lot Anuj kept an employee who used to see dental clinic’s marketing and patients management.
Now everything was going right.

But after doing this much profit margin started diminishing. After taking out every employee’s salary, rent, lab bill, material bill, Anuj was left with nothing much. Anuj thought to increase the charges but due to that customers get reduced and overall it doesn’t change his profit margin much. Now Anuj is running in a type of rat race trap in which he is doing the job in his own clinic and not many conditions have changed in the last five years.

Such types of problems occur during running a successful clinic.

Due to these problems, many of the clinics close or can just survive because doctors know nothing else to do and clinic is in their own property so they don’t have to pay rent too.

Research has revealed that after having much knowledge about their own work 8 out of 10 businesses fail in the starting 18 months only.
And this is not the failure of luck. Behind this there are some myths, reasons, misunderstandings which lead to failure.

Michael E Gerber tells this thing in a very good way in his book The E Myth. Today I will tell you some of his things.

If you know how to do good dental treatment then it doesn’t mean that u can run a dental clinic in a good way. And this is the biggest reason for failure. To run a good business and to be a good dentist are two different things. The entrepreneur makes a new house and starts thinking about another house too and the manager makes a house and lives there for a lifetime.

If you want your clinic to be successful then it’s necessary to have three qualities in an owner or you will need three different people to run the business.

First an entrepreneur
Second a manager
Third a dentist

Entrepreneurs are those who give vision to a company, decide big goals, make plans for the future of the dental clinic, and keep his whole team charged. These things are important for the dental business. The entrepreneur basically focuses on the future.

The manager is those who run the business in proper order, manages patients and employees and take responsibility to keep everything in order which gives a consistent outcome. A manager learns from his old mistakes and analysis after making his new strategy. The manager keeps the company in the past and learns from it.

The last and third person is a Dentist who manages the main work which means a dentist solves the problems of customers in a dental clinic.

My friend Anuj is a dentist but neither an entrepreneur nor a manager that’s why he was stuck in a rat race trap.
So for a successful dental clinic this three-person entrepreneur, manager, and dentist are needed.

If you can’t hire this three-person separately then you have to play the role of these three which was not there in my friend Anuj.

Just like Anuj, people who start a business they do this mistake and think that treatment is only the thing that they need to know.

My friend Anuj is 70% dentist, 20% manager, and 10% entrepreneur but to run a successful business all three qualities should be 33% respectively. So friends you also have to put all these three qualities in you. In my next video, we will see that how can you convert a small clinic into a dental clinic chain. And how my friend Anuj got out of this rat race.

Dentist Story – Dental clinic to Dental Chain Part 2

So we were talking about my friend Anuj. Today I will tell some of the things that Anuj used and changed his life. Every business has three phases.

The first phase is the INFANCY STAGE

Most of the business starts at this stage. In this phase, work is done according to the owner’s wish not that which is best for the business. At this stage, the dentist uses to do all the work.
For example:- when Anuj had opened the clinic he himself was a dentist, manager, and entrepreneur and this happens with most of the people.

IF EVERYTHING GOES RIGHT THEN COMES ADOLESCENCE STAGE

This stage comes when the business starts growing and dentists realize that he himself can not run the business. That’s why they hire other people or make partners so that their business can improve.
For example:- when Anuj had hired the Junior BDS this stage had come. Everything was good but problems occurred after this too.
After coming to this stage we usually get three outputs.

FIRST ONE IS BACK TO STAGE 1

When the dentist has to give his work to his junior then he has to come out from his comfort zone. After that the work which the dentist thinks that he can do better, he has to give that work to someone else which doesn’t suit him and he can’t handle that. And even they don’t like the treatment of junior dentist too so they come again to the first stage. This has happened with my friend Anuj too when he again had started handling everything on his own which was actually not a good option.

The SECOND OUTCOME MAY BE THE INSTANT GROWTH OF DENTAL CLINIC

Dentists and employees both together also cannot handle the expectations of patients and things get out of control. Then the clinic suffers a bad name.

The THIRD OUTCOME BECOMES A BIG BATTLE FOR DENTAL CLINIC

Here they have to put all their efforts to run the clinic in a stable way. Due to which dentists can neither enjoy anything nor took the business on the next level.
And on this stage, only my friend Anuj had stuck. Years passed but the situation doesn’t change.
These all three outcomes are useless and this doesn’t let the business go on the next level which we call maturity level.

NEXT AND BEST PHASE IS MATURITY hird

This is the ultimate level of a business. All the big companies come under it. If you want to earn billions of rupees you have to bring your company’s level to this level. And to come to this level you have to take some steps which I am briefing here in 1-2 minutes.

First one thinks like a Franchise

When most of the dentist open their clinic they think like a dentist only which is very short-term.
They don’t know that after 2-3 years the clinic will be on which stage or what will happen after ten years or in which direction they want to take their clinic. They have only one goal that a large number of patients come to their clinic so that they could earn more money. And the same thing does not let them move forward.

If you have to create a big business then you have to think like a Franchise from starting only. You should think of the clinic as a Franchise Phototype which can be scaled.

The second one is clinic should be system dependent, not doctor dependent

Macdonald is not such a big company today because it makes the world’s best burger. But that’s because they sell the most burgers in the world. This is because they have made their rules so good and simple so that a college student without any experience can also get a job in MacDonald and make a burger and they don’t need any expert too.

This is the advantage of making a good system which is important for Franchise and you can see this thing in any dental chain. For example, let’s see about clove dental chain. They have more than 300 dental clinics in India. They hire young dentists in which many of them are freshers but they have made their system in such a way that they can provide treatment to all their patients similarly.

Most of the dentists make their clinic people dependent instead of system dependent. If a doctor leaves a job his experience also leaves the clinic with him. If he is the main doctor then he can’t go on holiday. Because if he exists the clinic exists and if he doesn’t exist the clinic will also not exist.

Now many of my friends must be thinking that it is not possible to make a system-dependent clinic from starting. But I want to tell you that when your business is on the infancy stage, you have to start preparing your system from that time only because you know all the things of your clinic either it is financial or marketing. You have to write all the steps and all the important things.
After that start hiring people for those places where you don’t feel confident. Like if you can’t manage the things properly u should bring a manager first.

The third one is work on the business not In the business.

If your clinic completely depends upon you then you are not doing business Instead you are doing a high demand job with less income. Dental business means you can live a life with a good lifestyle, not a job that won’t let you enjoy your life.

That’s why all the small works also should be done in documents and create processes after which we will call it system. Do not work on patients in the clinic randomly. You have to create a model that can give you Consistence, predictable and excellent output.

 

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