Making Life and Business Decisions That Matter
November 2nd, 2016 // 10:02 am @ Scott Manning
I’ve spent the last couple of days with a great friend and very successful client who for 20 years has lived on the beach and practiced dentistry in Florida.
He’s from New Jersey.
Over the past 8 years, he has spent 2-3 weeks a month (yes, a month) in California at his other beach house while his practice is run by an amazing team and driven by an associate-based dentistry business model.
His practice is in Florida, remember.
Every year, I would guess he travels a total of 2-3 months, maybe more, somewhere around the world on varying lengths of expeditions.
Because he wants to.
And still he is probably one of the most well read, educated, intellectually curious people I know. He implements and pursues more growth strategies and improvements year after year. He stays up on the knowledge of the industry putting him at least in the Top 10 of my dentists who practice full time.
Did I mention he is not yet 60?
Now, by any stretch of any reasonable person’s imagination any one of these statements would have been enough to be in awe over and think it to be pretty special.
You might even go as far as saying he’s lucky. And you’d be wrong in both circumstances…you shouldn’t be in awe and he is not lucky.
Instead, you should be asking yourself how you want your life to be designed and what would you want to be different than your current reality.
Lucky he is not, maybe fortunate for certain things. Fortunate for knowing he wanted to become a dentist at 4 years old and never looking back. Fortunate he decided to move when he did and buy real estate where he did. Fortunate because he has a supporting wife who is equally intellectual and has help build the foundation to make it possible.
But not lucky. He just decided he wanted something and then he relentlessly executed the plan that was going to get him there as quick as possible.
When I ask him when or how or why he decided all of these things, there are stories for them all but in essence (and I’m not sure he would say it this way), he just did whatever was going to make him the happiest and he created his life around that.
I think way too many entrepreneurs (and certainly dentists and all other professional practice owners), get stuck in ‘being and doing’ their role in their business. Instead of ‘living’ it and understanding that whatever it is you do – your business – is a vehicle that is suppose to be designed to take you to other places in your life.
This doctor loves dentistry as much as anyone I have ever met but he loves life more and he found a way to have both.
I’ve long taught all entrepreneurs to deliberately design their business around their life and not their life around their business but it does take one to get to the other.
So many people just never do what it takes, are not willing to sacrifice enough, don’t put in the time required and are not deliberately focused on accelerating their progress to get to the next level. Instead they just get by.
That’s called owning a job, not owning a business.
As we move forward into the most defining election in modern times with the future hanging in the balance and the consequences unknown… I challenge you to think about just how much control you are taking over your life, how much conscious design you’ve applied and how happy your business is making you.
Because I can tell you that no matter who the president is, when we wake up one week from today (while one may be the catalyst for your cause and one may try to take everything you have ever worked for), the one thing no president can make, break or take away is your happiness. That’s up to you and how you choose to live, design, set-up, pursue and carry out your life.
Take my friend as example and do something about it. Then do it again and again and again. That’s what the marriage between life and independent business ownership is all about; not just helping those you serve but serving the one who made it all possible… You.
Category : Blog
