We are a group of Dental Consultants who offer, improved practice morale; a happier, more profitable patient base;and improved home life; increased collections. (And yes, our average is 35% in year one.)

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Monday Morning Choices

Welcome to choice 6 of Monday Morning choices, you are know halfway through changing your life.


This week we will be focusing on, "The Persistence Choice... Learn from Failure."






It is okay to fail. We can learn as much from our failures as we learn from our success. And it is important to preserve through our failures in order to find what we seek at the end of our journey.  We will not find success in a day or two. It takes time and it is what we do everyday over a long time that determines whether we will actually succeed in our goals.

Fear is a natural emotion that everyone feels at some time in their life. This is okay. But you should not let it hold you back from making choices or from moving forward. Have the courage to face your fears and move through them.

It is easy to give up and give in when you have failed over and over. However, it is the choices we make in the moment of failure that we can find the piece that is missing to help make a product more successful.

Train yourself to accept failure as a part of life and instead of dwelling on it and letting it hold you back, let it drive you forward into making the best decisions you can make to help you be successful in your business. 



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Monday, October 29, 2012

Monday Morning choices

 
 


We are on week 5 and today we will be focusing on chapter called, "The Do-Something Choice... Don't vacation on "Someday Isle."




I'm sure you are all familiar with the phrase, "Someday, I'll be happy when I..." This is a place that doesn't exist so make choices not on when you are going to be happy or lose that 20 pounds but focus on what changes you are making right now. 

Great ideas that move us forward or only great if we put them into action. It isn't enough to talk about change you have to be willing to put that into momentum and movement. Change is hard, but talking about change will not actually cause change to occur. 

One of the important choices in this section, is making, "the choice to read everyday."  David Cottrell states in the book, "the bigger houses have the bigger libraries and that this is not a coincidence. The more you read the more you learn and the more success you will have."  You have to be a life long learner and in order to do this you must read. 

Although, you may be limited by the people you meet you are not limited by the information you can learn from historians, business executives and great leaders when you pick up a book. The information you can now learn and grown from is limitless in a book.

David further suggests that it does not matter what you read, it just matters that you do it. Don't give up on learning right after you graduate make yourself a long term reader and learner to enjoy long term success in your life.

This week focus on making decisions to keep winning. Because, "winners keep winning." Just because you won an award once or were the top once it isn't enough. Keep do what you need to in order to keep winning over and over.

Communication:

Communication is written language, how well you listen and how well you verbalize answers to questions.  People make a judgement about you in the first six seconds. It is critical to make sure you are efficient in each communication area. If you are not you will want to find a class, book or group that will help you increase your skills in that area. You cannot be successful if you cannot answer a question sufficiently or if your emails contain spelling errors.




There is no try. You can create excuses why you couldn't get the project done or why you didn't make those important phone calls when you use the words, "I'll try." Instead eliminate this from your vocabulary and only use words about it already being done.

Begin your success today by making a change today.







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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Monday Morning









Welcome to week four of Monday Morning Choices, Morning Choice # 4 . Hope that last week was a successful week for your group and you were able to evaluate your enemies with an open mind.  It's important to continue meeting and making time for your conversations to happen.

"The Integrity Choice...Do the Right Thing" 

Integrity is the fabric of who we are. It is important that we don't comprise this integrity. Here is a little exercise for you to complete this week.
"Write down the first five people that come to mind that you consider to be trustworthy. Now look at your list and evaluate with characteristics they have in common?" (Pg. 47)

Now make another list of the five people you don't trust. What characteristics do they have in common?



 Our integrity is the most important trait we have in this world. It means we do what is right even if there isn't someone watching, a prize at the end or a bag of money. It means that we do what is right when no one is watching because at the end of the day all we have is our integrity.  Some of our greatest hardships may have come from someone who proved that their integrity could be compromised. 

Do you know someone that values their own integrity above all else? Or a company that doesn't care what the cost is they always do the right thing?

Johnson and Johnson did, when they found out that individuals were poisoned they did what they needed to in order to protect society. They didn't worry about the millions of dollars they were losing they focused on the lives they were saving.

A final important point from this section, "Integrity is usually lost not by the big decisions but the small choices we make everyday."

Don't let the small choices change what you stand for today.
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Monday, October 22, 2012

Monday Morning Week 4





Welcome to week four of Monday Morning Choices, Morning Choice # 3 . Hope that last week was a successful week for your group and that now you are into the swing of your meetings.  It is important to continue meeting and making time for your conversations to happen. Don't lose momentum.

This week we are going to focus on evaluating our friends while focusing on choosing the right enemies. 

Values are the beliefs that we hold closest to us. Know your values and stick to them, because you will always have enemies.  Your enemies according to, "Monday Morning Choices," are created because your values are in direct competition with their values or beliefs.

No matter what you do you will likely have enemies of some sort. Whether it's because your better at your job, prettier or more organized you will have people that stand on the other end of the line from you. It's important to make your choice on who your enemies are going to be by sticking to your values that you hold close.

This chapter suggests that you need to ask the question, "who are your enemies?" This will help you answer other questions, for example, why are they your enemies and who are they as individuals?

When I was growing up my parents constantly told me, "that who I hung out with determined who I was." I didn't believe them. I thought that I would be defined by the choices that I made, but it was not true then and it is not true now. Who you surround yourself with in the office will determine what path you are on. However, it may also save your work life.

We cannot make everyone like us all the time. You can chose your values, stick to them and then surround yourself with people who feel the same as you.

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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Monday Morning


   Monday Morning Choices Week 3





Last week we featured the beginning decisions to help support changes in your office. We discussed finding a team, setting aside time to talk to your team about the weekly chapter you read and making a commitment to complete each week's reading.

 I hope that week 1 went well for your team and you were able to keep your commitments to your team. 








This week we will focus on Chapter 3 of Monday Morning Choices Week 2.

This week we will be focusing on making our commitments a passion in order to succeed. This chapter focuses on the idea that sometimes you map out the plan, chart the course and then lack follow through. 

Monday Morning Choices, Author David Cottrell says, "Commitment isn't as simple as being able to check off what we've accomplished toward our goal. It's a choice, an attitude." 

Your assignment this week, envision your goal-draw and create a visual representation of that goal.  Then write out your goal. David presents in his book that one of the issues individuals have is that they plan their goal but then after time enthusiasm fades. 

However, when we write down our goals and then monitor ourselves towards that goal we begin to accomplish the goal we set out for ourselves. 

Second item we need to focus on this week is diving in with passion. It isn't enough to just believe that you can accomplish the goal, however, you need to be able to and be ready to make sacrifices in order to succeed at your goal. See, hear and breath your goal and your mission and don't hesitate to do what you need to in order to accomplish this goal. 

Attributes from David Cottrell of People who have passionate commitment:
1. They do what they say they are going to do.
2. They vividly see their success.
3. Put their words into goals and accomplish those goals.
4. You can believe in what they say.
5. They commit, they invest.
6. Learn from mistakes and continue to move forward.
7. Make success a top priority.
8. Failure is seen as a success.

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Monday, October 15, 2012

Special feature this week


Blaine Parker Co-Author, Billion-Dollar BrandingCo-Founder, Slow Burn Marketing LLC


COULD YOUR PRACTICE BE EASIER TO MARKET, MORE FUN, AND MORE PROFITABLE?
                                                                           In this economy?

                                                                        Is that even possible?

                                                                   It is. We have the evidence.

                 And the recipe is now available in a fun to read, easy to digest, affordable book-size form.

                                                    (Yes, a book. NOT a high-priced info product.)  

                                If you’d like to cut to the chase (and the exciting free bonuses!), click here:
   

                                                                      www.BillionDollarBrandingBook.com
 

IF YOU’D LIKE TO READ MORE, STRAP IN AND HANG ON
By making smart use of a widely misunderstood marketing concept, we’ve seen businesses (including dental and medical practices) do things like:

  • double their revenues in a year;
  • double their new customer base in as little as two months;
  • walk away from a single client meeting with a quarter-million dollars in new revenue.
This widely misunderstood concept is going to sound insanely simple. And there’s a good chance you believe it’s not for you. The concept is (get this): Brand.

Really.

Sound too simple or too expensive or too difficult or too something else? It’s not. Despite what you might believe or what you may have been told by experts, you can Brand. Do it right, and it can pay off. Big.

If you want to get right to the book and the bonuses, feel free to visit
www.BilliondollarBrandingBook.com

Otherwise, keep reading for some more backstory.


AND SOME ENTERTAINING BACKSTORY IT IS…
I’m Blaine Parker, Minister of Covert Ops at Slow Burn Marketing. Along with my wife, The Fabulous Honey Parker (Slow Burn Marketing’s President For Life), we work with small businesses so they can be stronger and more potent in their marketing.

As lifelong players in the game of advertising & marketing, we love doing this. And we have developed a philosophy that pays off quite well for our clients.

The thing is, we can’t do this for everyone. But Brand is a mission-critical component from which all marketing should grow.

It should be the foundation of all marketing. Yet many, many businesses—especially dental practices—never build this foundation. Their marketing is built on sand. You don’t need to know much about construction to know that sand is a lousy foundation.

All business owners need this. So, in an effort to share what we know, we have written a book called Billion-Dollar Branding.


THIS BOOK IS GOING TO ANNOY SOME PEOPLE
Especially the ones who make money perpetuating the lie that Brand is not for small business.

We smash the common misconceptions about Brand.

We replace them with solid, actionable information on what Brand is and why it matters.

We also illustrate the argument with big, national brands, as well as small, local brands—namely, our clients.

One of them is a sole proprietor who has no marketing budget. Many experts would say Brand is wrong for him. Well, brand is for him and has significantly improved his life.

Honey has spent her career working with some of the world’s biggest and most important advertising agencies on huge national and international accounts. From Acura to World Vision, Honey has helped create needle-moving campaigns for companies you know. You may even have seen her work on TV, in magazines, in movie theaters, online, or heard it on the radio.

I’ve spent my career creating advertising for small businesses you’ve probably never heard of. Just like Honey, I’ve had the honor of winning big national advertising awards. Unlike Honey, I’ve had the opportunity to create campaigns that have generated as much as 2,000% ROI in as little as two weeks. (As Honey has said, if she had ever generated ROI like that for Honda, they’d erect a statue of her outside Honda headquarters.)

We started Slow Burn Marketing because we believed that we could help small businesses do a better job of marketing themselves. Using the same kind of thinking that goes on in big advertising agencies, we began creating small business marketing from the Brand up.


THIS IS KEY: WITHOUT A SOLID BRAND, IT’S MORE DIFFICULT TO CREATE EFFECTIVE MARKETING OR BUILD A LOYAL FOLLOWING
By using big agency thinking to build Brand for small businesses, here are some of the results our clients have experienced:
  • a country doctor whose business was flat for three years has re-branded, revamped his advertising, and doubled his new patient base in two months;
  • a management consultant who was tired of the business, and ready to sell it, re-branded, built a new website, and doubled her client base in six months--AND her staff is totally re-energized and enjoying their work more than ever;
  • a house painter with shallow pockets and no Brand identity was repackaged with an upscale Brand and doubled his business in a year;
  • a specialty contractor, before his re-branding was even completed, used his new image and packaging to land an additional quarter-million dollars in business from an existing client;
  • a dental office that wanted to advertise a specific service was instead convinced to create an entirely new Brand—and now does over one-million dollars in business a year with that Brand alone.
These are a few of the success stories from the Slow Burn archives. And all of these clients get to claim these successes in a recession. Heck, we started our own business at the height of the recession. We went in with a singular mission and a well-defined Brand and began attracting clients who wanted what we so distinctly offer.


THE BOTTOM LINE IS: BRAND RULES
No matter the size of your practice, whether it’s 100 employees or just you, having a proper Brand can change everything—as the stories mentioned above illustrate.

That’s why we wrote Billion-Dollar Branding. It’s an effort to share this vital, actionable information with as wide an audience as possible. It’s time that small business owners were empowered to behave like the big guys.

Billion-Dollar Branding is our antidote to the misconceptions, untruths, and plain, downright wrong information being disseminated in the name of Brand.
For anyone who buys the book right now, we’re offering bonuses that are unavailable to the general public. Visit
www.BillionDollarBrandingBook.com

Thanks for joining us. Go forth. Brand Big.

Best,

Blaine Parker
Co-Author, Billion-Dollar BrandingCo-Founder, Slow Burn Marketing LLC
www.BillionDollarBrandingBook.com

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Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Monday Morning


Choices 
Part 2 of 2 

Chapter 1: The No-Victim Choice... Don't Let Your Past Eat Your Future

You have already taken important steps to changing your life. You picked your top five, you set aside time to meet, and you have made the choice to change. 

Now, begins the hard work.  It is easy to let life happen to you and then make excuses for why those bad things continue to happen. There are people in life that let life happen and their are others who adjust and change when life happens in a way that they don't like. According to, David Cottrell, it is not a coincidence that some people have all the bad luck.  

http://www.123rf.com/photo
Make a choice. You can be what is called, "a passenger or a driver." A passenger sits in the car looking at the world pass them by but they do not make any choices on the path that they are taking. They do not stop the car when it is on a collision course of bad changes and they do not accept that they have the option to change what is coming their way.  While a driver is the person in charge. They make the choices and they are moving forward.  However, they also have the power to change when life is going in a direction you do not want. 

Unexpected downfalls will occur to you. It is something to accept.  The problem is not that bad things happen or that their are events that occur out of our hands, but it is how we handle those problems that determine where our life goes next. It is truly the choice you make with the problem that determine your success or failure. 

Take ownership of your decisions even if failure occurs. It is okay to make mistakes or have things go wrong. But, it is what you do when this occurs that will help build a strong team and a strong business. People around you will have faith in your management abilities when you show them that you are willing to accept responsibility when things are good and bad. It is often with failure that greatness happens and it is when we find out what we are really made of.  Make the choice to own your failure and your success.  Do not let someone else be in control of your business decisions because it is easier to be a, "passenger." 

 "The key to accepting responsablity-no matter what-is to take ownership of your mind, thoughts, actions, and reactions. Only you can accept this ownership-and, once accepted, it is yours to keep," David Cottrell.





1. Expect things to go wrong.

2. Look for other solutions to your problem through reflection. 

3. Do not get stuck in the trap of victimization.

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Monday, October 8, 2012

Monday Mornings


 Choices: 
Part 1 of 2

Do you dread going to work on Monday's? Do hit the snooze bar a few extra minutes while you lay their begrudging your alarm clock because the ring woke you up from a perfect nights sleep and a fantastic dream?  Or are your Monday's filled with bad decisions that set your week going down the drain? 

Well the book Monday Morning Choices by David Cottrell has some great suggestions on twelve weeks of Monday Morning Choices that can help change your life and the success of your business.

Author David Cottrell suggests doing a few things before you delve into the book.  

First: Find a team of people
        A wise friend once told me that you are who you hang out with. Pick the top five people you want on your life changing journey.

Second: "Make sure everyone has a copy of the book."
       Team huddles is a team gathering time. Set aside uninterrupted time with your five to discuss the suggested Monday change. This is a good time to talk about how your going to the decision that leads to unsuccessful decisions.

Third: "Make a commitment."
         Don't let your team or yourself down. Make a commitment that you are going to do the work it takes to change.  An activity can become a habit after 120 days but it will not be overnight. 

Fourth: "Change your Mondays and Change your life."
        Getting up on Mondays does not have to be you drudging through the mud to earn your paycheck. You can wake up, enjoy your day and enjoy the success your life has to offer. 

                              
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