Request An Appointment
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Are you frustrated that your efforts don't always produce the results you desire? Have you ever pondered why some people appear to effortlessly achieve success while others struggle? This insightful episode with entrepreneur Daniel Johnson is a must-listen! Daniel dives deep into the power of starting with your desired end in mind. He argues convincingly that visualizing your end goal before embarking on any venture will enable you to purposefully plan your actions, providing you with a roadmap to success.
But having a clear goal isn't enough, Daniel warns; you need to be adaptable. Sharing struggles and victories from his own business experience, he emphasizes that your end goal may shift along your path, and that's completely normal. The key is your willingness to accept change and probe new opportunities that align with your remodeled objectives. It's not about sticking firmly to the original plan, but continuously evolving it as you learn and grow.
What You'll Learn in This Episode:
Seize the moment, tune in now, and unlock the winning strategies of starting with the end in mind!
For DSO integrations, startup solutions, and all your dental IT needs, let our sponsors, Darkhorse Tech, help out so you can focus on providing the amazing care that you do. For 1 month of FREE service, visit their link today! https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/darkhorse-deal/
You can reach out to Daniel Johnson here:
Website: https://drkylestanley.com/
Phone: 254-652-5717 (Cell)
Email: djohnson@lucentspot.com
Email: mdirectordds@gmail.com
Mentions and Links:
Events:
Useful Terms:
If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:
My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/
The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041
Michael: Hey, Daniel. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning.
Daniel: So my advice that I've always lived in is, to start with the end in mind, I think a lot, what I've done in business and personal, and I know it was a lot of help. People have done this, but what I, what I mean by that is when you can visualize what you want at the end of what you're doing.
So let's say it's a race school or starting your dental office, whatever it is, is what do you want to end up with? So do you want to end up with? Five offices or you want to be a single practice owner. Um, and you want to just be a small little office and make, be a 2, 000, 000 office. But start with that 2, 000, 000 in mind instead of saying, I'm going to start here because then what you do, you can plan out to it.
So it's like I do with my goals. All my goals is, is what do I want to accomplish at the end? And then I work my way backwards. And so I say, okay, if I'm going to run, so like I was talking a little bit, we ran the Disney half marathon. So I start with my time. I know I have to run 13. 1 miles. I want my time to be this.
And then I work backwards. How do I get my time through workouts and training to get my end goal? Does that make sense? Same with the practice. So if I want to be a 2 million practice, what does that look like? Can I do it with one op, or do I need five ops? Do I need one hygienist? Do I need three hygienists?
And then plan it backwards and go backwards. So if it's a 2 million office or a 5 million office, how does that look? I'm going to have to hire an associate sometime. So you have to plan that and get that all planned out. willing to be flexible. You know, I think the thing with when you start with Indian mind is you have to be very, very flexible knowing things are going to come.
We all know life goes ups and downs. And so when you, but, but when you have your end goal, it gives you something to shoot for. And my thing is I always shoot for bold. So like my Indian mind might be a bold goal because I know a lot of us will set goals or, or, or, and it'll just be something we know we can hit.
And I like to do it a little bit harder. So like Going back to the race, if I'm going to set a goal of, I usually run about an eight, 30 minute pace for, um, a half marathon. So if I set a goal for eight minutes, um, it's a bold goal, but then I have to push myself. So it gives me a reason to push knowing that I'm a little bit out of my comfort zone.
So that's really my, thing that the one piece of advice I'd give you is start with the end of mind and then work And that's You can go for personal, you can go for school if you're still in school, it can go for where you just start your business and even go if you're at the end of your career and you're looking to sell.
So your end goal would be sell my practice. So let's say you're 50 years old or 55 and you want to get out in five years. so what does that look like? I want to sell it. Okay. What'd you have to do to get to your, I want to sell my practice for X amount of dollars. So don't just have it as a, I want to sell my practice.
Be specific, you know, we've all heard of SMART goals, but be specific about it and then, work your way backwards. Okay, well I need to build up my patient base because I know my equipment and my building might not be worth as much as my patients. So that would be my advice. And there's lots of ways to do it.
So, lots of people have talked about this, it's in lots of books, but for me it's always been the one thing that I've done with my goals. And it's helped me achieve the majority of my goals. Yeah.
Michael: Like the reverse engineering part. Has it ever happened, Daniel, where halfway through the end kind of changes your end goal, you're like, Oh, and then it, it kind of just derails you from everything else right
Daniel: now.
No, not derails for me when it changes like that, what happens is usually it changes where I, that end goal might switch to something else. So let me give you this is, um, something in business, you know, I started a business, eight, nine years ago, it started one way. And as that business started to grow, I realized there was another product that we were doing that was actually going to be better than what I started out with.
So my end goal was to get this one, part of the business growing. And I realized probably a third of the way to know it, my business is going to go this other way. So all I did was readjust. I moved my goal saying, okay, this business is still viable, but I'm going to move it to what's really working so I just readjusted the end goal.
So I don't think end goals need to be a, uh, like a rock saying, I, I'm going to put my stake here and that's the only way I'm going to go. You have to be flexible knowing that you might have that in mind, but it can change. And if you're willing to be flexible with the change, usually it's even works even better because, in a dental practice, you might have an end goal of 5 million.
You know, like you want to be a 5, 000, 000 practice, but you realize, wait a second, you know, maybe it's not going to work in traditional dentistry, maybe I'm going to end up bringing on an or somebody else like that, where it's going to go a different direction, but it's going to bring me to my, my final goal.
That's why if you. On your end goal, if you can, uh, be specific about it, you'd be willing to be flexible. it helps. So things do change. I mean, welcome. We all know life. I mean, I have four kids. I thought it was gonna be easy. All my kids are gonna be the same. Yeah, right. You know, they all have different personalities.
They do different things. They like different things. And so you just have to be willing to, uh, be flexible. But my own goal with my kids is. Get an education, grow up in a happy home, things like that. And so the main part of it didn't change, but their personalities and what they want to do has all changed.
Michael: Gotcha. Do you have like specific, like big, big, so for example, you said you own businesses, right? And I'm sure the end goal for that was like, cause I want to have like freedom, right? I want to be, I don't want to have to clock in, clock out. I want to be able to do all that. Right. So that would be like the main, main goal.
Right. And then you're kind of reverse engineering. Okay. I need to own my own businesses. I need to do that. And this, has it ever been to a point where you're like, um, I'm not that you lose the vision of the end goal, but you're, you're stuck in a part of the goal for so long and you're like, should I just give up?
Should I change it? Should I do it's been years and I haven't even hit this yet. And it's another associate quit or another associate quit or something like that.
Daniel: yeah, I don't think, uh, the quit part of it is not something I would ever do, but adjusting. Absolutely, because I think, um, if you're not willing to adjust, like you said, associates, I mean.
If you're in a practice, we have five associates in our practices. So we have three practices. We just opened a fourth one. And so we have associates and you have team members quit. And so they derailed, but that doesn't mean the goal needs to change. It just might put it out longer. Right? So if you had a five year goal and all of a sudden something happened, let's say you get divorced.
And your, your spouse takes half your stuff, that goal doesn't need to change. You just might have to adjust it to a longer timeline, right? Or you know, I was talking about businesses. My end goal was, was I call it beach time. where can I get to where I'm making money where I can chill on the beach?
So I'm on the beach and I'm still making money. It's just kind of a broad perspective. And so I realized in dentistry, we can make good money in dentistry, but really where we make the money in dentistry is doing other things, investing in other products, you know, and crypto was big a couple of years ago, I did a bunch of stuff into crypto worked out very, very well for me, and I did it early enough on, but it's the same thing with stocks and investments, real estate, you know, those things that are long lasting investments, dentistry is going to be bread and butter.
So for my goal, the end goal of, beach time or, or making beach money. Was what do I have to do to surround myself other than dentistry that will help me get there? Because dentistry makes a great living. You're never going to get super wealthy being a dentist. Some people do. You hear people like I, I sold a DSL and I had 10, 15, 20 practices.
Great. That's really, really good. But majority of dentists are not like that. Right. They go to work like everybody else. They make a good living, but they don't become wealthy off of it. The ones that become wealthy are the ones that are willing to take a little risk in investing in other businesses or looking outside the box saying, okay, dentistry is my main bread and butter.
But what can I do? So if your end goal was to, let's say, retire at 50 with, 20 million dollars, whatever it is, okay, the industry is not going to get you that. So what other things you have to pull in, real estate might be one, and, uh, you might want to invest in another company. Maybe somebody's coming out with a new, um, intraoral camera, It's like, Hey, you should invest in this.
Things like that. Where do you find little niches where you can invest in that can make more money? But with that, you have to be willing. I've done that a bunch in different things and you lose money too. And so you do go up. It's like, like you go up and then you have step backs. But it doesn't mean it changes that end goal, So those setbacks should actually just firm your resolution of, okay, what else do I need to do? don't be stupid and keep investing in stupid things, be smart, do your research. but the key is is you always have dentistry to fall back on. Like dentistry is going to be bread and butter.
So I tell people like, if you have extra money, you have to be willing to lose it. Money will help you make more money. I think that's where a lot of wealthy people become wealthy is because they use their money that they've made to make more money. And they don't sit on it. I mean, some are maybe be frivolous with it, but most of them are pretty smart with what they have and they invest in other things.
And they, counting on maybe two or two out of 10 things are going to work, but those two out of 10 things really do very well and it can help them expound on, um, their end goal.
Michael: Yeah. No, that's good. Can I ask? Daniel, what were the like two out of 10 things at the beginning for you where you're like, wait, I recommend you should invest in this.
If somebody were to show you like their options.
Daniel: So for me, number one would be real estate. If you have a chance getting real estate, it can be a pain in the butt in the beginning, it's not a get rich tomorrow thing. It is a get rich long term thing. You know, so buy your practice, buy your property for your practice, pay yourself.
Uh, uh, lease, you know, if you can buy other properties where maybe you, maybe it's in a strip mall, maybe it's, so it can be both commercial and residential, and then in the beginning, build it where you, if enough to where you can manage it, but eventually hand it off to somebody else to do it.
It's the same thing with your team in your office. You know, you're not answering the phones, doing hygiene, you hire people to do those things for you. And it's the same thing with real estate. You get to a certain point where you're like, all right, I need somebody to manage my buildings. They manage all my stuff for me.
I'm going to pay them. A percentage. It still works out for you very, very well in the long run. And then the second part is do the investing, you know, stocks, all that stuff, whatever you want to find. That's another good way where it's a longterm short term. It's just, you got to find things that maybe, are new into the market.
It doesn't have to be dentistry. Um, it can be really anything. And so find groups or people that you can, uh, trust and. Be willing to lose money. So those investments those the ones are going to make you the most money the ones that are risky so like for example, I talked about crypto.
I invested a bunch of money into crypto. Um, man Five years ago into crypto farms where they actually made do and I even built my own Crypto machines because I want to know how it all works. I built yeah, so if you looked in my office, I have a pet in our back one of our back rooms I probably have a hundred crypto mining machines that are just chilling there now because crypto is just doing okay.
So it's either break even, but when it started, I just took a chance. And it made me very, very good money. I got, I got lucky. that's really what it was. It, it was up and coming thing, COVID happened. It, and so crypto prices just, skyrocketed. but it's those types of things that can help you.
Now, not everybody's going to do those things, but the best thing about that is I was, when I invested into those things, I realized like if I lost it all, I still had my, my job and I still have my brain. And I think that's where people forget, like get so worried about. Either you or a spouse or, or somebody you're with get worried about losing everything and they don't want to start over.
cause all of us get comfortable, but the ones that can make real good money are willing to lose it knowing that if I lost everything today, tomorrow I'd start over and I know that I can make it all back by working hard and just doing what I know. Right. It's not like, it's not like when we were starting over, think people would think like, Oh, you're not gonna have any money.
You're not gonna have any food. No, that's not how that works. if you, if you have a practice and you're working, you're still Making money, you can still put food on the table. You just lost everything you invested in. So let's say if it's 300, 000 or 500, 000 or a million dollars, you lose all that.
It's gone. It sucks. It does suck, but you can start over again. and I think that's where a lot of people get a little nervous cause they're like, I just, I can't risk this 50, 000 really like 50, 000 for a chance to maybe make a quarter million dollars. It's risky, but would you really be that worse off if you lost that 50, 000?
I mean, yeah, it sucks, but it's not going to kill you. Like you're not gonna lose your house. You're not losing your family. You're not gonna have not have food on your table. I mean, we live in America we've done mission trips in different parts of the country for dentistry and you see the way other people live and you're like, man, dirt floors.
Buckets in the corner for the bathrooms, we would never have to worry about that. And so it's just a kind of a different mindset. So a lot of it, all this deals down to mindset, like knowing, starting with the end in mind, having a mindset of moving forward, no matter what, being able to adjust as needed and then be willing to take risks.
Nice.
Michael: Awesome, Daniel. Thank you so much for this. And I appreciate it. And if anyone has further questions, where can they reach out to you?
Daniel: we put a link up or something like that. They can just reach out to me if they want to call me or send me an email, either, either one.
Like I have no issue talking to people, what we've done, me and my brother, to build our practices and also invest into other things. Like it's. I'm not a financial advisor. So this is just would be just what we've done. everybody's gonna have their own thing, but that would be the best thing.
I'll give you that information. They can just reach out to me.
Michael: Awesome. So guys, that's going to be in the show notes below. So definitely check that out. And at the same time, Daniel, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Yeah. Thanks for having me.