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Our National Debt Crisis: What does this Mean for Private Health Care Professionals

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

I have made this video about 2 months ago. I have found that many dentists and doctors are not aware of how the national deficit problem will filter down to all of us. There is some kind of a “detachment”, some kind of idea that “whatever happen on a national level will not affect me on a smaller level.”

So I am releasing this video here.

 

The last 15 years has been the best financial years in our lifetime in this country. Credit was easy and consumers could purchase easily. Patient referrals come easily and doctors could get by with little to no external marketing efforts to keep their practice surviving.

However, in the last 2-3 years, trends have changed.

  • Consumers are no longer as affluent as before.

  • Patients are caught in the recession with job losses and thus insurance losses.

  • Insurances are cutting re-imbursements to doctors.

  • Patients are no longer as loyal as before – they are looking for the best deal as there are so many choices out there.

  • Word-of-mouth is no longer enough to make a practice full with good new patients

  • Direct marketing has lost many of its percentage in returns and it has become a price war of ‘which doctor is cheaper?’

In the next several years, money will never ever flow as easily as it has been in those last 15 years, and yet most dentists, doctors have not been able to set a nest egg aside in those last 15 years.

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Surviving the Hard Economy

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

The following applies to all people in this country and on this planet, even though my experience mainly lies in helping dentists in dental marketing and have also helped doctors and small business owners to become financially successful in their businesses, the problems and solutions talked about are severely applicable to everyone.

First I want to share my fundamental belief with you:

When a person sees something which is obviously wrong – even though only in his viewpoint – he better speaks out and channels his energy to right the wrong.

Commonly this can only be done by making the rest of the group aware of what is happening and help them fixing the situation for them.

One should also simply not support the entities who have caused the wrong.

This is what Gandhi did – stop giving support to the entities that are harming the greatest good. Don’t participate, don’t support what you do not wish to support and the situation will right itself eventually.

I believe that one must stand up for such things regardless of immediate personal or family danger.

Sounds radical? Sounds dangerous?

Of course, one could lose it all – especially financially — as for instance some doctors, who have disagreed with the FDA and started treating patients with holistic or alternative medicine, have had their licenses being taken away.

The current attempt to hijack the country – even the world – and its people in it – is modern financial slavery and there will be no regards for people’s lives. This is far more devastating than any bad FDA regulations or any bad government insurance regulations even though those things are part of the hijacking and are forerunners.

To survive, maybe only survive in a literal sense, you will need cash – lots of it.

I did not quite believe I would ever say such a thing so heavy, but there are huge writings on the wall that the dollar will collapse, your real-estate will be worthless and if you have loans on it you better make truckloads of money to keep it or let it go and buy – with cash — a new one.

America is in such bad financial shape that we currently have a deficit of 13.3 trillion! If Americans were taxed 100% of their income it still wouldn’t be sufficent to balance the budget. With the so-called ‘economic recovery’ beginning to lose steam, Americans will soon experience a major decline in the purchasing power of their savings and income.

What is the solution?

Sell a lot more of what you have to the people (about 15 – 25 % who will still be able to purchase your services.) and sell a lot more NOW.

Now, in truth if you think about it – making money – marketing your services or products when others can’t always has and always will be the most important thing.

Economics at any level is simple – make more than you spend.

Even though cutting back on expenses has its value at times, but at any times you MUST – absolutely MUST — know how to set yourself apart from the competition in a big way, shine more than the competition, shout louder than the competition, – in short be seen better than the competition, be perceived better and more likable than the competition.

Especially in the period of this great economic recession, making your products and services well-known and well-accepted is the most important factor of surviving financially well.

These principles are always at play to determine who are winners in the business world – but they are paramount when times are real hard.

Building a better mousetrap – meaning providing better service as a doctor or in any field — is NOT what will achieve domination of your business sector.

Being seen, liked, trusted, and thus being endorsed by the community at large whether they have ever been clients or patients, will be just about the ONLY thing you can do to ensure the survival in the next two to eight years.

Stop thinking that you can only be affected by economic trends and that you have NO choice but can only make money when times are good (most people never do as you might see yourself that after the last best decade of economical advancement, most people – doctors included – have not accumulated enough wealth to ride through the current econonic storm).

Please also do not think that you must also suffer in your business because your peers are telling you how their businesses are down.

History has shown that during hard times, huge amount of super rich people and companies have been created.

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going is something which you need to do. Get on the ball!

Only 2 – 5 % of people business owners or doctors will get on the ball as history has shown.

Again, the only and absolutely best asset anyone can have is not real estate, stocks, 401k’s, health insurances – not even gold (even though better than the previous items) – the best asset is your ability to produce something and have the ability to sell it well to the masses who would still buy from you.

Whether you are a business owner or a dentist, smart business and dental practice management begin with knowing how to get lots of people buying from you with smart marketing strategies that reaches lots of people without the cost of traditional advertising.

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Marketing For New Patients or New Customers: How Much Business Do You Want To Do?

Monday, February 15th, 2010

new patients marketing Marketing For New Patients or New Customers: How Much Business Do You Want To Do?

Marketing, Public Relations, and Advertising are three big misunderstood words for most of all business people and people in general.

Who am I, Helmut Flasch, to say that?

Simple, 98% of all people in this country retire broke at age 65.

Sure, you say, that is because of the government, taxes, the economy, etc. Maybe you even say, “Well, that is life and only the crooks survive well.”

I agree, after all “success is a matter of luck, just ask any failure”.

So I hope I got your attention. Let’s talk about marketing.

It is not a question whether marketing at one time was not necessary. It always was. It is not a question whether your prospects will think ill of you if you advertise. They don’t—it’s in your head only.

It is a question of how much business you want to do!

In fact, if you do NOT market, you give a message just the same — a message that you are small, that you don’t have what the others who market have, that you don’t care since after all “marketing and selling” are the means of educating people about good products or services.

I look at this in this way: the amount of money you make reflects directly how much of your good service you delivered. How many people did you help? That is if you have a valuable service – do you?

What is the purpose of your practice? Do you believe you help people? If you do, then market the hell out of it. If not, then get the hell out of what you are doing –NOW.

80% of people don’t get the regular dental, chiropractic, dietary, and general health care they should get. Most of you doctors are concentrating on the 20% of the chronically ill who go to a doctor because it hurts.

You have, so it seems, forgotten to do preventive care. At least the individual practice is not promoting to those 80%. You are not educating the population in large enough quantities.

Most of you are not promoting at all or in quantities which could be considered a “drop in the ocean”.

Do you know about one of the definitions of “Doctor” in the Webster dictionary?

Doctor:  noun [derived from old french or latin doctor, teacher. Derived from past participle of docere, to teach]  1. Origin, a teacher or learned man …

“Teacher”. Yes, a teacher. Does it make sense?

So when are you going to start teaching in numbers which count?

Who did you think was supposed to do it – the government, the schools? They do what they can, why should they do all of your teaching?

Or should I say why should they do YOUR MARKETING?

Let me ask you how did you find out about some brand new equipment and technology, let’s say ‘laser dentistry’? From some advertising or a salesman maybe? I bet if you have not been one of the developers of this, then the answer is 100% YES.

How would you feel about your neighbor who is a heart surgeon, not telling you about a new cure for a heart disease because you did not come to him and asked and your loved one is dying from it? You see, he only did what is “professional”– don’t advertise! “If you are good, people will come to you by word of mouth”.

Balderdash!

How can you expect people to look for things they don’t even know exists?

So, you must do marketing, advertising, and public relations, or you will do a disservice to the people, the profession and to yourself.

How much marketing is needed?

About 500 times more than you think in your wildest nightmare.

Advertising and marketing does cost, and it makes, if done ethically (don’t promise things you can’t deliver), money always — always, always!!

The trick in making yourself known is only modified by your ability to reach as many people as you can, and using not only your own money and resources, but using the money and resources of other entities to help you.

To reach a great amount of people you better bring the cost of reaching those people way down.

I know that most advertising companies tell you to do the “best quality marketing” (good printing, etc.) and spend enormous amount of money getting the “best” mailing list. Once you have all that high quality stuff then usually you, of course, have no more money to actually mail them out.

Over and over again, I see doctors putting promotional material together which cost 50 cents to two dollars per piece, —not including the postage. Considering the high price, they sent 200 – 2000 pieces per month and hope there are returns.

Why does nothing happen? After all it is such a ‘nice’ brochure!

Balderdash, first of all, you properly described you and your practice perfectly which was the first mistake, a real big mistake! Then you expect some magic 5 or even 10% return. Or you say, well, even at 1% something should have happened.

Not so!

I say, a percentage of one (or ten) can never really be averaged out without minimally having sent 20,000 mailings minimally three to five times. That makes 60,000 — 100,000 sent in a one to two months period. Remember what I said: minimally three to five times to the same people or you waste your money!!

And by the way, 1% is high for your service! There is not a marketing expert who will not tell you that if you don’t hit the same population five to ten times, every two to four weeks, you might as well not do it and go to Las Vegas with your money.

In marketing you are always better off hitting a small segment many, many times rather than a large segment once.

Here is another thought: most people ponder about all the money they lost and might lose when yet the real money you lose is the money you neglect ever getting.

Could you see this? It’s the millions you never make which are hurting you!!

Set aside everything you “know” about marketing and about “how people react to marketing”, and stop being penny-wise and dollar-foolish.

Start making noise. Start making noise, in a way you never did before.

Keep in mind that if you change nothing, discredit everything I and other marketing experts are teaching as “not workable”, “not functioning”, “not in my area”, “not over my dead body”, — then of course nothing will change in your practice.

There is a world out there waiting for good service and products, — tell this world loudly that you have them!

If you have not already done so, speak to us about the latest automated internet marketing tools that will reach out to approximately 100,000 to 200,000 people, at only pennies on the dollar.

Click on this link to request an appointment.

Helmut G. Flasch
CEO
Doctor Relations

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Practice Management: 5 Popular Excuses For Not Making Our Business Goals Come True

Monday, January 25th, 2010

The Secret of Doing the Impossible During the Recession

small business growth expansion goal Practice Management: 5 Popular Excuses For Not Making Our Business Goals Come True
I hear from different doctors on how they need to cut back on their expenses because of the slower economy and how they could not attract quality new patients because people are losing their jobs.

In fact, there are many things – it seems – one always needs to sacrifice or not do them due to many reasonable excuses.

Let me share with you my own story in this and perhaps it may help you to discover some of those roadblocks and thus you can literally accomplish all that you want during this recession.

I remember a few years back when I was looking into launching a new addition to my Un-Advertising marketing program.

I did pretty well with my existing business and of course was busy as well.

At the same time, I was also thinking of expanding my consulting activities in India and believe it or not, I was also very intrigued by the phenomenal expansion in Dubai over the last decade and wanted to start some business projects there too.

For a few hours every day, my mind was going at 100 miles an hour and I was excited. I mean — really excited! You see, new projects, new countries always have gotten me going. After all, I have worked in 12 countries and four continents in my lifetime. I like change.

But for every hour that I was excited about all my new plans, I had at least three hours where I was overwhelmed.

After all, there was so much to do right here with what I had going.

Well, it took my wife to put an end to all this wanting to do but having no time and really don’t know where to start as with the Dubai project — I had not even visited Dubai yet.

Here was what my wife said – actually did:

“Fushing,” — she calls me ‘Fushing’ which means ‘lucky star’ in Chinese—“Remember every winter when you don’t want to go skiing because you have so much work?” Yes I said.

“Remember that I always tell you to go because there will never be a time where you will have no work?” Yes, I said.

“It is the same in this case. I know that you have traveled the world without ever having any pre-planning, so why start now with having to have it all nicely figured out? It will never happen.”

“Just do it. I am booking you a trip to India and afterwards directly to Dubai. You are leaving in 3 weeks so enjoy it, do what you can do, come back with some business, or not. It is not important, just get into it and the rest will come.”

I arrived in India after not having been there for 10 years, announced to only one person that I would come, and ended up speaking to almost 100 business owners in four seminars, and had many more bookings for future.

On my trip from Bombay to Dubai I did not know what to expect except some sightseeing. I knew nobody whatsoever.

Believe it or not, I ended up speaking in a hotel lobby to a travel agent who also enrolled in my service. Wow! I found out what was needed and wanted in that increasable city, even bought a piece of real estate, and purchased a mailing list of all potential clientele.

I have been back twice since.

For at least one year, I was running around with just about every excuse under the sun why it was not a good time to start all that and all that blew — swept away with a whisk from my wife booking the flight.

Oh by the way, my addition to our Un-Advertising program also rolled out within that same year.
Many new clients are enjoying it.

So here are some excuses that have prevented people from doing all that they want and achieving the ‘impossible’:

Excuse #1 “I am not quite ready yet”
medical and dental practice management delays Practice Management: 5 Popular Excuses For Not Making Our Business Goals Come True
I remembered when I was working at a five star hotel in the French speaking part of Switzerland. There were at least ten other German or Italian speaking colleagues working who all, just like I, were trying to learn the French language.

When going out after work, a friend of mine was constantly turning over most conversations with French speaking people to me. I told him that he spoke French as well or as bad as I did and why he had chosen not to speak to those people himself. “I am not ready,” he said. “I want to be perfect before I speak to these people.”

I guarantee you, because I know, he still does not speak fluent French and has never gone very far in the hotel business in Europe which requires several languages to be spoken.

I can think of many of my own projects, such as the latest DVD series on growing a business, which had been delayed for years and for no reason other than “I am not quite ready – not perfect yet”.

You also do not know how many doctors I have had telling me that they need to get their shop (practice) in order with good personnel, better equipment or sorting out even such things as departments before starting to really, really market and get lots of new patients in.

Some of them – many actually – we never got on our marketing program and guess what, years later – a few years later , they still are singing the same song just a bit more sad – their business has gone down and yet they still are trying to ‘organize’ and be perfect before they market.

Excuse #2 “I am not qualified”

Sure, you do want to be qualified in your profession. But there is a difference between having to prove many times a great result before being able to trust yourself and others and just going for it with some reasonable knowledge about it

Ok, maybe a brain surgeon should have more than reasonable knowledge but even he ALWAYS does his first operation (and probably always without telling his patient) without ANY proof that he has done it successfully before.

There is nothing wrong with being a professional and having experience in any area. But NO expertise or experience will ever make even for pure purpose, enthusiasm, willingness to take risk and belief that it all could work out.

Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm pulls the switch.

Look at Mr. Obama, and every president before him. No presidents ever have had the experience before taking office for the first time.

And yet, let’s face it – we live in a great country –and having worked in 12 countries, I am an expert on this.

Most doctors I know are technicians and believe that perfection (whatever that means in their head) is needed for everything. They want to have everything ‘certified’ and ‘proven’ before indulging in it.

Most requests for being ‘proven’ block any and all progress – disorderly progress it may sometimes be, but progress nevertheless.

By the way my very, very first client, a dentist from Brooklyn, tripled his income with much less hours of work, no more take-home paperwork, after working with me for only a year.

I had no – absolutely no — experience in consulting anyone and definitely am not a dentist. I even did not know what a crown is. This dentist, my client, did notice my ‘inexperience’ (he told me a couple of years later) but was too scared to say anything and according to his words, it all did not matter to him as he was at the end of the rope anyhow.

Don’t let some quest for perfection or even outright not knowing how to go about accomplishing something stop you from going wherever it is you want to go.

Learn on the way, hire coaches and trainers, make mistakes and don’t worry too much. It will all work out if you have your eye on your goal, and if you keep going.

Excuse #3 “I don’t have time”

If I would have a dime for every time I heard that, – heck, if I would have a dime for every time I said that, the money I would have would be very phenomenal!

How do very successful people get so much done? They have the same 24 hours.

Do you realize that most people spend more time “evaluating or checking out” new ideas or projects than just doing them?

Sure, there are major organizational basics which will help any business owner to delegate work to the degree that you will have all the time in the world to get involved in any project you like.

But putting that team together starts with you.

Decide that you have time.

Do you know that it has been proven that people who spent at least an hour a day on any subject will be a total expert in about 2- 3 years?

So, imagine what you can accomplish, since you hardly need to be a total expert in anything — except maybe being a doctor. But in that area you probably are already doing what I am talking about.

If you still can’t find time after reading this you might want to force yourself to spend 30 min a day on finding out (reading) how to have time. Oh ,yes – one can learn how to have time.

Read books on this subject on having time, hire coaches, observe others, including your kids, or simply force yourself to do nothing for 30 min.

You will soon realize that YOU DO HAVE TIME. You will be surprised how fast you will have all day for whatever you want.

You think I am kidding with the all day stuff – right? Wrong! Try it, it works!

Excuse # 4 “I am overwhelmed”

This is just a different wording for the above “I have no time”.

Winners in all areas, such as sports, businesses, wars and even parenthood do not get overwhelmed.

Most doctors tell me that they are too overwhelmed with the running of the practice so that they have no time to read my or other people’s literature on marketing or on how to become a business owner who runs the practice instead of being run by the practice.

How can they expect to sell their service well and being able to retired at the age they want with the money that they want?

If you do not make enough money and yet have no time – how do you expect to expand and make more money? Realize that something fundamental in your thinking and acting needs to change or nothing in your life will change.

Doctors do not realize that their excuse of being overwhelmed is literally stopping their lifeline.

Many doctors do not want to learn outside their medical profession – heck, they don’t even want to talk to sales people ( who can teach them quite a bit about marketing and all other kinds of important stuff).

How is it possible, in a time where competition is stiff and where all services look alike to the buyer, to successfully sell one’s service, medical or otherwise, without spending some time to find out all there is to know about marketing and how to differentiate yourself?

It is simply not possible.

Excuse #5 “I can’t afford it”

Bestselling author Robert Kiyosaki in his book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” said that poor people stay poor by saying “I cannot afford it” and other people get rich by saying “how can I afford it?”

He also said that he had met no rich man who had not lost a lot of money, but he had seen many poor people who had never lost anything.

It is like with the student who is too afraid of asking a question in fear of looking stupid for a moment, and thus stays stupid his whole life.

The fear of losing money will keep you poor all your life.

The money or knowledge for any innovation, revolution, marriage, probably your studies or practice was not there either when the thought was first born.

Learn while you go, and surely do not try to save yourself to prosperity. It does not work. The money somehow will also come, just as the knowledge.

Literally all major achievements and advances on this planet came about without “having” the knowledge and money first!

So, which one of the excuses is holding you back?

Drop them like a hot potato and life will become very full – very enjoyable as well as prosperous.

Mission impossible accomplished – and it is not even all that difficult, even if it scares the hell out of you right now — as beautifully expressed here:

“Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile…initially scared me to death.”
(quote by Betty Bender, speaker and communication consultant.)

May you reach for the stars and achieve the ‘seemingly impossible’ in 2010!

Could you think of some other excuses which I have not covered here ? Leave me a comment!

Helmut G Flasch

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