Goal setting can be fun and stressful at the same time. Dr. Deb shares how to stay on track to meet your goals and grow your practice while maintaining your sanity and personal life.
Do not miss these highlights:
02:08 Start making progress and changing the landscape of your life and your business to accomplish a bigger goal
02:24 You need to have a plan on how you’re going to get there, just like going on a trip
03:53 It's easy for things to derail us in our life, the same way for businesses. You might derail from your original goal.
04:40 Write down your goals for one year, five years and 10 years, break them down and reevaluate
06:17 Your desired future - Track your progress.
09:37 The desired future statement - It lays out where you're going in the next 12 months and how you plan to get there.
11:08 Define your objectives - Outline how you're going to reach that desired future, determine what must happen to achieve your goal over the next 12 months
12:24 Follow your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) - Define what it takes to accomplish your goals and your objectives.
15:15 It is your job as the leader in the practice, to tell people what you’re thinking, share the objectives, goals, and the expectations to help reach the goal
Resources Mentioned
Join Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook. You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/
Transcript of Epsiode #29:
0:01
You're listening to the Functional Medicine Business Podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Devin has a wealth of knowledge, and he's eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive. And for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry, because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools of how to manage money, taxes and patient care, she will discuss it all with you.
0:54
Hi, welcome back to the FMBI podcast. And today I want to talk to you about accomplishing your goals. You know, every year we set goals, and oftentimes we set them and we forget them. Now, at the end of every year, I go through and I look at what did I accomplish last year, I pull out my goals that I wrote down at the end of the year before and I see what I accomplished and what I didn't. But part of the problem with doing that is when we set our goals and I was notorious for this, when I first started out in business, and even just in my personal life, I would write down all my goals and I would be excited about accomplishing them. But then I'd forget about them. I put them in a book and I'd never look at them again until the end of the year. And if I manifested them, and they came true, great. And if not, I'd put them on the list for next year, when I really got good at setting goals, and not only setting them, but each week writing down what are the big three things that I'm going to do in my personal life and my professional life to accomplish my bigger goal is when I really started making progress and changing the landscape of my life and my business.
2:18
So it's important for us to know big picture, where are we going? What are we doing? But then we have to have a plan on how we're going to get there. If we don't have a plan, then oftentimes it doesn't happen. It's kind of like going on a trip right? Back in the day before we had GPS, we'd have to have a map. And we'd we'd write out like where are we going? Where were we going to stop? How are we going to get there. And then we knew by you know, 10 o'clock on Tuesday, we would arrive at whatever destination we were going to. With GPS, it's a little different nowadays, we don't have to plan so much, we just have to put in our end destination and let GPS take us where we want to go. Now, if any of you are like me, and you've used GPS before, sometimes it takes you to a destination that's not on your target. I actually remember one time I was with my mom and we were in New Mexico. And we were looking for this ghost town we wanted to go see this ghost town. And we plugged in the address. And we went on this trip. And we started taking all these cattle roads and we were way in like the middle of nowhere. And all of a sudden we got the sign from GPS saying you've arrived at your destination. And the only thing around us were these huge rock outcroppings. And we looked at each other and started laughing and said, I don't think this is the ghost town we were looking for. But we are in the middle of nowhere. So if something weird happens, well, I guess we hit the ghost town. And you have to laugh a little bit about things like that, because it's easy for things to derail us in our life. And our businesses are the same way. We can write down a goal and have an end in mind. But maybe an employee leaves or someone gets sick, or you don't have the funds that you need to make that dream happen. Or even something better happens you get a new person, and they have a completely different outlook on what they want to provide. So you now transition your goal and you start focusing on adding a new service adding a new employee marketing that person strategy and expertise. But it derails you from your original goal. So I always like to set up goals in small fashions and big fashion.
4:39
So I would say you know write down your goal one year, five years and 10 years. These are our big picture goals. Where do we want to be what do we want to be? Who do we want to be when we grow up right? And then you need to take a step back and say okay to reach that one year goal, what do I need to happen? Each quarter to reach that goal, and then break it down again, what do I need to do each month, and then each week to make that happen. And if at the end of the week, we are starting to look at and say, Okay, I had three things in my professional life that I needed to accomplish to hit this goal by a month, and it didn't happen. And week after week, after week, it doesn't happen, then we need to reevaluate our goal. Is that goal really important? Or are we not going to meet that goal, because maybe it doesn't matter anymore, maybe something bigger or better came in, and we want to change that whole outlook on things. Or maybe we're saying, you know, what, I'm letting other things get in the way of me achieving this goal and I need to become more disciplined about achieving that goal. I need to really buckle down and do what I need to do to make this work. So that each week, then we look at that, and we evaluate tha and it allows us to be honest with ourselves and be honest with our goals and decide whether or not these goals are going to make it or not. So that's my first thing about accomplishing goals.
6:16
The next thing I want to talk about, is the term desired future. We use this term a lot, what is the desired future? What does winning look like in your company over the next 12 months? What's your annual goal over the next 12 months? Now, you should track your progress. And we have a tool called the financial tracker that we use to track our progress. We track the number of patients we see the number of patients or new patients that we bring into the practice. And then we track individual financial value to the practice, how much did each provider bring in to the practice, and we can look at that month over month, quarter over quarter. And we can see if we're growing, or if we're stagnant. And we can see if all of the marketing expenses and all of the marketing things that we're doing, are actually driving more traffic and more business to the practice? Or are we not driving anything is our business not growing with the marketing aspects that we're doing. So I really love the financial tracker, it's been really helpful for me, it even allows me to go back to my providers and say, hey, you know, you're asking for a raise. But this is how much you've brought into the practice, this is your contribution to the practice. And I can either meet that raise, or I can maybe even give you more because you've brought in x to the practice. Or sometimes unfortunately, we have the conversation and say, I can't have your salary be more than what you're contributing and bringing into the practice. So we need to look at this a little bit. And how about if we make this goal, if you bring in X to the practice, then I can give you x in a salary. And here are the steps and the things that we're going to do to help you gain that financial future for yourself and for the practice, I will do this, but I need you to do that. And so this, this takes all of the emotion out of these financial things, because let's be real financial decisions are more emotional oftentimes than they are objective. And our first knee jerk reaction is always, oh, somebody wants more money, well, I want more money too. And I can't do it, right. That's always our first thing. But if we can objectively look at the numbers, and we can justify that raise or justify that bonus, because that person's brought in so much money to the practice, then it's not an emotional discussion anymore. It's just a hard fact. It's numbers, it's business, and everybody wins when we can be objective about it. So write down what your desired future is 12 months, five years, 10 years, write that out. Once we write it down, it becomes real, it becomes solid. And then we need to have a plan for how we're going to get there. So if your goal is to be a multimillion dollar company in five years, well, how are you going to accomplish that? Then we need to break down those goals one step at a time so that we can continue to grow and we can continue to reach that mark. That's one of the most important things for us.
9:36
The next thing is a desired future statement. This name suggests that your what is your desired future. It lays out where you're going in the next 12 months and how you plan to get there because I think it's so important to keep this statement front and center. Simple and easy for not just you but your team as well. That way everyone is clear on where we're going and how we're going to get there. And then everyone can become clear on what is their role to help the company get there. And what's in it for all of them. Once the company gets there, that's another important factor. And we can't ask people to do things for the company, if we're not willing to give back to them for their hard work and their expertise as well. So it's really great to have that objective outlined. So an example of that would be by October 2023, I will have started my practice, and I'm seeing five clients a day, something like that. It can be small, it can be simple. Maybe it's grandiose by December of 2025, I will have not only started my practice, but my practice will be valued at $2 million by them. Okay, bigger, brighter, harder to obtain, more concentrated, like, if you're going to have a big goal like that, you need to be more concise on how you're going to get there. What are you going to do to get there, so write down that desired future statement.
11:08
Next is define your objectives. outline how you're going to reach that desired future, determine what must happen to achieve your goal over the next 12 months, just like what we've been talking about. Don't get overwhelmed by it, break it down into the big three each and every week, we really recommend three to five, no more three to five statements every single week of what you're going to do to accomplish your goal. And don't forget to write down your personal ones too. We can't forget about taking care of you. So if your three business goals are, I'm going to connect with 10 people on LinkedIn, I'm going to mind for another practitioner. I'm going to do videos to get myself out there. So people know I exist. Okay, those are great business goals. But what are you going to do on the personal side to take care of you, I'm going to have a sleep hygiene routine, maybe I'm gonna exercise, I'm going to spend time with my kids or my spouse, I'm going to have date night. Think about those things that are going to help rejuvenate you so that you're not just working 24/7 And not everything is focused on your business, you need to focus on your personal life as well. Next thing is key results. Oftentimes, this is called KPIs. But we want you to define what it takes to accomplish your goals and your objectives. KPIs are Key Performance Indicators. These are usually set by the owner of the business, but you can also have your individual practitioners set their own KPIs. So what are their key performance indicators? What are they going to do to know that their practices growing, that they're contributing to your business, that they're contributing to the clients that they take care of, you know, track that progress and these activities by a number, a percentage, $1 amount, or a simple completion or incompletion, I really like to track numbers and dollar amounts, because at the end of the day, that's what we're using to grow our business. And so if I can show a practitioner that works for me, that last month, they saw 20 people this month, they saw 40 people, we've got growth. And I can go back to my support staff and my front desk people and say, You guys are doing amazing at booking these patients and getting them in with this provider. If those numbers aren't changing in the direction that we want, I go back to the provider and say, Okay, let's take a look at what you're doing with recurrent patients, like are you scheduling them for a follow up? Are we having a problem with getting patients to follow back up with you? Because maybe there's a problem in how you're delivering your message to them? And I can go to my front desk and say, Okay, what are you guys noticing? What are you seeing with reschedules? follow ups, new patients? Are people calling for her or him? Are they not? These are the kinds of discussions that are really important to have as you're trying to grow your business. And if you're not having these kinds of discussions, and you're just assuming that everybody's doing their job, and everybody's doing what they're supposed to do, I'm going to tell you, you're going to be disappointed. Because people don't know if you don't tell them. We assume that everyone thinks like us. Everyone knows what we know about business. Everyone has the same concepts that we do. But I'm going to tell you after 20 years in practice, and having thought that way for the for many years in the beginning of my practice, I was extremely disappointed and frustrated. And it wasn't until I realized that not everybody has that business mindset. Not everybody understands the goal, and partially and my fault. Well, the reality is it was all my fault. I didn't share are with them what was in my head, I just assumed everybody knew what I was thinking because I talk about it and, and share it, but I wasn't sharing it in a way that they felt like they were part of it or they had to contribute to it. So it is our job as the leader in the practice, to tell people what we're thinking, share the objectives of what our goals are, and then share with each individual person, what is expected of them, to help us reach this goal. If we don't share what's expected, they don't know what to do. And you will not get the outcome that you're looking for, you really need and want to share that expertise with them. And let them know what you want to do and what you need them to do to be successful.
15:47
So I hope this has helped you guys set your goals and accomplish them in a different light and have a little bit more detail in this. And I'd love to help you reach your goals and share all of the excitement that you guys are doing out in the world helping to heal people. I love what I do, and even more so I love to help practitioners reach their goals and help more people. So stay tuned. Join us for another episode, share this like this and help us grow our practitioner base so that all the practitioners around can be successful.
16:23
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others. post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest for me. You can follow me on Facebook at FMBI, join our free group where we support one another and share our struggles. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.