7 Habits of Highly Successful Practice Owners
Practice owners who thrive, while others fail, have these seven habits in common.
_____ 1. Daily Passion. Passion stirs the physical and mental energy you need to succeed. Passion for your patients, profession and personal success drives you forward. Without passion, you should do something else.
Stirring your passion every day creates energy in others. Your patients get excited if you are excited. Your staff is motivated if you are motivated. Passion is a vital, powerful management tool.
_____ 2. Communication. Constant, open communication with your staff, your patients, your colleagues and your advisors is essential to your success. You give and receive vital information for efficiently managing your practice, making solid decisions and providing outstanding service.
Without steady streams of incoming and outgoing communication, you and your people are flying blind. With open communication, you get the information and support you need to get and stay in control.
_____ 3. Habitual Courage. As a highly effective practice owner, you automatically face every difficulty or challenge without hesitation. You never flinch or avoid critical employees, upset patients or difficult decisions. For example, if a bully is terrorizing your receptionist, you jump in and face him down.
You build your courage through education, exercises and small successes. You abolish your fears by facing them and acting in spite of them. You confront problems despite all reasons you should not.
_____ 4. Automatic Patience. You are the leader because you are faster, smarter and more competent than others. Yet because others appear slow to you is no excuse to push them farther down.
Anger, anxiety or exasperation hurts your judgement. Irritation in your voice builds stress in your practice. Step-by-step steady progress gives you a solid team and lifetime patients.
Boost your patience by observing the limitations of those you deal with, listening to their information and carefully explaining what you need and want. Over the long term, you get more work done.
_____ 5. Constant Learning. Highly effective practice owners learn something new every day. They learn from all the books, tapes, seminars and consultants they can find.
As a successful practice owner, you never fully quench your thirst for knowledge.
_____ 6. Unwavering Confidence. Great practice owners never doubt they will succeed. They see situations that seem negative and provide optimism, hope and confidence.
Focus on the positive. Assume you will succeed. Believe in yourself.
_____ 7. Steady, Stable Production. Successful practice owners can work everyone else under the table. They get more done in less time with higher quality than average. They never seem to get tired.
Of course, everyone gets tired. But working on, despite your body’s resistance, shows your personal power. Working hard every day is a habit you cannot skip.
Hard work is easy when fed with a steady diet of small successes.
Recommendations
1. On a scale of 1-10, rate yourself on each of the above seven habits.
2. Write down ONE action step you can take to improve each habit this week, if not today.
3. Do each action step.
Repeat these three steps every week until you form all seven habits.
Have A Great Week! Brian Rakestraw, Managing Partner