One of the ways that I see group dental practices struggling to make progress, is simply trying to make too much progress in too many different directions. Trying to make movement in lots of different directions means often that you don’t make any movement in any. So, having a focus is really critical for group practice growth.

Now, when we see practices that are growing very rapidly, one of the disciplines that they have is focusing on the items, the initiatives, that are going to give us the biggest result for the least amount of effort. They always play in that field where they’re just picking the low-hanging fruit so that they’re always making progress, which builds their confidence, builds their momentum, and builds their teamwork so that they can tackle the more difficult things as they make progress. But, always focusing on the thing that will give us the most progress with the least amount of effort is so critical.

So, I have an example of someone that has followed me around to meetings, to conferences, always sitting in the audience, never been a client. He was introduced to me by one of our clients, and they had very similar practices when I started working with his friend as a client. So, what’s happened over time is, I always talk to this guy about becoming a client and us helping him. He says, “oh no, I came, I saw you speak, I got so many great ideas, I’ve got this list of things I have to do. And, as soon as I get through the list of the things I know I need to do, then I’m going to come and become a client of yours.” At the same time, very similar practice, very similar situation, very similar demographics, very similar everything, the one that was a client, we helped him identify what these low-hanging fruits were. And, his practice began to grow dramatically. His profitability grew dramatically. He went from one location to two locations to three locations, now building number four. Number 1, 2, and 4 are large locations, complex operations, and he’s killing it.

And, the way he did it was by simply focusing on the easiest things first. Now sometimes these easy things are very hard to identify when you’re in the heat of battle, right? You can’t see the forest when you’re in the trees. That’s one of things that consultants can help you with, is to identify what those things are.

So, having great focus and focusing on the simple things are the ways that you’re going to make the most progress in the shortest amount of time. One of my best resources that I have on focus is a book, it’s called Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt and it has business-focus items in this book, it has personal-focus items in this book, it’s very, very simple. It’s a very easy read, and he has a very, very simple process to follow in order to improve your focus.

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