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Hi Everyone! MY name is Zack and this is my intro. I am a Dentist and I have owned my practice out right for about 5 years now (was a partner in it for 6 years prior then bought my partner out).
I am married with 2 young boys ages 10 and 5.
So when I officially took over the reigns of the practice completely I discovered that I really knew little about running a business, and as I became disappointed with the offerings that were specific to my field, I looked outside the world of Dentistry and stumbled upon entrepreneurship. So for the past couple of years I've been reading my butt off trying to get a bead on everything and in my quest for knowledge I stumbled across Unscripted by one MJ DeMarco.
A major issue I had been having was that things were going well - after I bought my partner out I had to re invent the practice and work on branding and marketing and things we didn't do during the partnership era and things I was not comfortable with at all and things finally started clicking and the ship was turning around and I was increasing revenue and growing the practice again. Everything was going great but I was still dissatisfied and it was driving me crazy. This summer I reached the pinnacle - buying a building to accommodate the expanding practice and getting out of a crappy lease I was in, updating the space with new equipment and creating a beautiful space to work in and at the end of it all I should have been on cloud nine - but I wasn't. It was worse.
Why? Because at the end of it all - no matter what I do, how much things grow, how successful I am, I am still an hourly employee in this profession. I had mastered the slow lane script to a T. Highest education, buy a practice, buy a building, plan on enjoying life in 30 years when I've paid everything off and I sell the practice to someone else - I did it all and I did it right and it sucks.
It's amazing how maddening and enlightening it all is when you stop sipping the kool aid and you realize what you've been doing is following a script laid out by those before you, and when you look around at those who wrote the script, it didn't look too promising.
And to top it off my wife is a physical therapist (not working at the moment but staying home with our kiddos)- we are a slow lane super couple!
So armed with the knowledge of the source of our discontent, we are starting a couple of projects to pull us out of the slow lane. I know it goes against MJ's tenets of one thing at a time - so we'll see how it goes, but I'm putting together an online course for Dentists to help them learn what it took me so long to learn about running a business. This information is surprisingly hard to come by and most avenues lead you towards buying into an extremely expensive consulting program which is frustrating as hell. There is a big need for it and I want to help those in the same predicament I have found myself in about our egregious lack of business knowledge.
The other thing is we're working on launching a line of food products. We're in the process of recipe development and because of the dietary restrictions of my oldest who has some special needs, we've found some gaps in transitional foods for those trying to abstain from dairy or who can't physically consume dairy, that we have some answers for. Whether the market agrees or not remains to be seen but we're working on it! My wife is the point man on that venture but we're moving forward on that, talking with a couple of food consultants and interviewing co-packers in our area, seeing which options are the best for moving forward once we have our recipes down.
When I first started my business education the focus was on money. Thanks to Unscripted and I'm reading TMF now (I know I did it backwards) we've switched our focus to value - what value can we add to the lives of our target markets. We've also switched our focus from the outcome to the process. Both of our lives were focused on the outcome and some much of the present passed us by and we're changing that. We've learned a lot already but it's just the beginning. This has helped me in my Dental practice as well.
I look forward to learning more from everyone and for the first time in a while I'm excited about the future. Thanks MJ for the forum and spreading your knowledge, and thanks to everyone for reading this!
I am married with 2 young boys ages 10 and 5.
So when I officially took over the reigns of the practice completely I discovered that I really knew little about running a business, and as I became disappointed with the offerings that were specific to my field, I looked outside the world of Dentistry and stumbled upon entrepreneurship. So for the past couple of years I've been reading my butt off trying to get a bead on everything and in my quest for knowledge I stumbled across Unscripted by one MJ DeMarco.
A major issue I had been having was that things were going well - after I bought my partner out I had to re invent the practice and work on branding and marketing and things we didn't do during the partnership era and things I was not comfortable with at all and things finally started clicking and the ship was turning around and I was increasing revenue and growing the practice again. Everything was going great but I was still dissatisfied and it was driving me crazy. This summer I reached the pinnacle - buying a building to accommodate the expanding practice and getting out of a crappy lease I was in, updating the space with new equipment and creating a beautiful space to work in and at the end of it all I should have been on cloud nine - but I wasn't. It was worse.
Why? Because at the end of it all - no matter what I do, how much things grow, how successful I am, I am still an hourly employee in this profession. I had mastered the slow lane script to a T. Highest education, buy a practice, buy a building, plan on enjoying life in 30 years when I've paid everything off and I sell the practice to someone else - I did it all and I did it right and it sucks.
It's amazing how maddening and enlightening it all is when you stop sipping the kool aid and you realize what you've been doing is following a script laid out by those before you, and when you look around at those who wrote the script, it didn't look too promising.
And to top it off my wife is a physical therapist (not working at the moment but staying home with our kiddos)- we are a slow lane super couple!
So armed with the knowledge of the source of our discontent, we are starting a couple of projects to pull us out of the slow lane. I know it goes against MJ's tenets of one thing at a time - so we'll see how it goes, but I'm putting together an online course for Dentists to help them learn what it took me so long to learn about running a business. This information is surprisingly hard to come by and most avenues lead you towards buying into an extremely expensive consulting program which is frustrating as hell. There is a big need for it and I want to help those in the same predicament I have found myself in about our egregious lack of business knowledge.
The other thing is we're working on launching a line of food products. We're in the process of recipe development and because of the dietary restrictions of my oldest who has some special needs, we've found some gaps in transitional foods for those trying to abstain from dairy or who can't physically consume dairy, that we have some answers for. Whether the market agrees or not remains to be seen but we're working on it! My wife is the point man on that venture but we're moving forward on that, talking with a couple of food consultants and interviewing co-packers in our area, seeing which options are the best for moving forward once we have our recipes down.
When I first started my business education the focus was on money. Thanks to Unscripted and I'm reading TMF now (I know I did it backwards) we've switched our focus to value - what value can we add to the lives of our target markets. We've also switched our focus from the outcome to the process. Both of our lives were focused on the outcome and some much of the present passed us by and we're changing that. We've learned a lot already but it's just the beginning. This has helped me in my Dental practice as well.
I look forward to learning more from everyone and for the first time in a while I'm excited about the future. Thanks MJ for the forum and spreading your knowledge, and thanks to everyone for reading this!
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