Take your name out of the phone book, stop all advertising, lock your front door, take a chainsaw to your reception desk and fire more than 50% of your customers.
This was the approach taken by Dr Paddi Lund, who runs a three person, ‘By Invitation Only’ (referral only) dental practice in Brisbane.
As a result, Paddy makes nearly 3 times the average dental income, works 23 hours per week, has no concerns with employee turnover and is happy and contented with what he’s doing, and the result that he’s getting.
And it’s all based on a business model of no conventional marketing or advertising. Instead he has turned his patients into his own high performing customer sales force.
It wasn’t always like this though. In the early days, Paddi’s business was fairly conventional. I’ll let him explain.
“I treated my customers in a similar way to most dentists. My nurses were stressed and unhappy - quite normal - and I worked hard. When I look back at my old appointment book, I see I sometimes laboured 70 hours or more per week. I worked every weekday and most of Saturday. I had no time from my family, I did not exercise enough, and I slept badly. It was all pretty normal for a dentist in those days (and perhaps still now.)
I had a high turnover of staff and seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time training new people and compensating for their inefficiency and lack of knowledge. I made quite a healthy income....but I wasn’t healthy.”
So, Paddi commenced a business journey to improve his life and regain his happiness. In the process, he developed, tested and trialled a number of systems and discovered how to mobilise his customers into a tremendous sales force for his business.
His philosophies and systems are outlined with openness, quirkiness and a fair degree of humility in 3 amazing books – ‘Building The Happiness Centred Business’ , ‘The Absolutely Critical Non-Essentials’ and now, ‘Mobilise Your Customer Sales Force’ .
I commend all 3 books to you. They are unusual in their honesty and will help you to look at yourself, your business, your work team and your customers differently. They will also give you a remarkably different and rather challenging view of how to run a business. His approach isn’t for everyone but there are bound to be lessons that can be adapted and applied if you are willing to take the time to make your business less stressful for you, your customers and your workforce.
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