Think Your Way to Success (Ep.197)

Think Your Way to Success

Catherine Maley, MBA: Welcome to Beauty and the Biz. Discover how to grow your practice with effective cosmetic patient attraction, conversion, and retention advice. From author, speaker, trainer, and cosmetic practice, business and marketing coach, Catherine Maley, MBA.

Hello and welcome to Beauty and the Biz, where we talk about the business and marketing, and how to think your way to success.

Plastic surgery. I’m your host, Catherine Maley, author of “Your Aesthetic Practice, what your patients are saying”, and consultant to plastic surgeons to get them more patients and profits; as well as coach on how to think your way to success.

Today’s podcast episode is called “Think Your Way to Success”. So, while consulting with plastic surgeons since year 2000 and interviewing them on my Beauty and the Biz Podcast, I have found the most successful think differently.

And the good news is it can be learned. So good thinking is a skill worth practicing. It can generate revenue. Solve problems and create opportunities. It really can change your life. However, it’s different thinking than the kind you did to become a surgeon. Your training was based on science and specific techniques taught by others before you.

Now, this structured thinking was crucial to you becoming a great surgeon, but not so helpful. When trying to become a successful business person. So, you need to think differently when you run a practice, lead a team, manage the business, and compete in a crowded marketplace. But have you ever heard the saying; thinking is hard work if you want to think your way to success.

That’s why so few do it, So when you take the time to become a better thinker, you are investing in yourself. So, I’m going to give you 11 strategies to help you become a much better think. Here’s number one, feed your mind with good stuff. So good ideas don’t typically just happen. You search for them to get the mind juices flowing so you find good ideas by reading books, reviewing trade magazines, listening to podcasts like this one, and spending time with other good thinkers to expose yourself to thoughts you haven’t thought before, but ideas come and go quickly. So, you want to jot them down immediately in order to think your way to success. Keep paper in pen handy, or add ideas that come up to your iPhone notes.

Now, I personally get lots of ideas when I’m walking my dog and listening to podcasts. So, I text them to myself and then I transfer them to my file of ideas that I refer to.

Now, here’s number two on how to think your way to success. Schedule it. Life will keep you focused on the busyness of your day, so there’s no time to stop and think unless you make the time. So, block the time on your calendar just like you do for new patient consultations. That’s how important this is. This can be. One hour per week, one day per month, or a couple of days per year.

Grab a pen and paper, find a quiet place with no distractions, and then ask yourself really good questions to get the ideas flowing. For example, you could ask, how can I increase my revenues without working harder? Or how can I enjoy managing staff and building a more productive culture? Or what skills could or should I learn to help me grow my practice?

Now here’s number three on how to think your way to success. Find your thinking place. Everyone is different. So, notice where you are and what you’re doing when the best ideas come to you. It can be in the shower, the car, the park, while you’re jogging or flying or cooking or falling asleep or whatever. Now just go to these thinking places more often, and your mind will condition itself to think of more ideas more often.

It’s that simple.

Now, here’s number 4 on how to think your way to success. Journal for more clarity. If you like me, find it challenging to sit quietly and wait for thoughts to come to you. Here’s a strategy I’ve used for years, so I have a folder on my desktop called notes and they’re labeled by each year. Now I ask myself a question. I set the timer for 10 or 20 minutes, and then I just type, and frankly, I type faster than I hand write, so this works better for me.

So, at first, I’m just kind of typing and babbling, but then my brain starts to slow down and focus and it starts opening up, and the babble turns into thoughts. And some of those thoughts turn into an idea. Now most just clear my mind, so I feel better getting certain thoughts off. But I’ve gotten some of my best ideas that have grown legs and made me money.

So, you might want to give this a try to think your way to success.

Now here’s number five on how to think your way to success. Share if your idea affects anyone else. Think it through before sharing. So, ask yourself., if you believe it has merit and you have confidence in it, that it could make a difference. If so, present it to others to get their insights and feedback.

Sometimes though, when said aloud and discussed, you realize it’s not that great of an idea after all. But other times, the feedback you get back grows the idea to something worth pursuing and getting excited about to help you think your way to success.

Here’s number six on how to think your way to success: Take action immediately. A thought is just a thought until it’s executed to think your way to success.

So, ideas come and go on how to think your way to success. So, if you have a good one, immediately act on it to keep it alive. For example, you think of a good idea from pondering the questions above, and that is to hire a patient liaison whose primary responsibility is to follow up on the leads coming in, so you take the next step. And let’s say that is to have your office manager write and place an ad for this patient liaison.

Now, if you need help with that, like how to execute it, you can get all those details about how to hire from visiting www.cosmeticpracticevault.com. Now, in the vault, I lay out exactly how you find the right person, how you train and motivate them, and then how you hold them accountable. Just saying.

Now here’s number 7 on how to think your way to success

Thinking is a learned skill. Becoming a good thinker is a discipline that you can get really good at By practicing. Just open your mind, be curious, ask why, and how. A whole lot more often, such as, why do we do this task? Or how could we do it better? Or could we do something else instead that is faster, cheaper, easier, or more.

Now here’s number eight on how to think your way to success: Think big picture.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the minute details versus the overall bigger picture when thinking your way to success. An example would be you reminding your staff regularly that customer service. Is more important than double booking and making patients wait. Instead, you figure out how to avoid no-shows in the first place so you don’t have to double book.

For example, you can charge a consult fee or at least reserve their time with a credit card while when they’re booking. Um, and you can even text multiple appointment reminders and so on. Get a lot more creative about how to. Good customer service rather than the opposite.

Now, here’s number nine on how to think your way to success: Always be learning good thinking, in order to think your way to success.

Surgeons stay open to learning and growing for a lifetime. Even though they spent many years learning to be a surgeon, they realize there’s more to it than that. They now have to learn to be a good leader, manager, and marketer to stay.

Now, here’s number 10 on how to think your way to success. Listen to the experts. You can get a Reader’s Digest shortcut education just by listening to others who have been there and done that.

The specialized experts have already done the heavy thinking on a certain topic, so you don’t have to, which helps you think your way to success. For example, you can spend 40 hours on the weekends learning the latest marketing hacks, or you can pay an expert in plastic surgeon marketing to customize a proven marketing plan for you. So, for example, if your time is worth at least a thousand dollars an hour, which it is, and the consultant charges 10 grand, that’s a savings of 30 grand and you’ll have an actionable plan to execute.

Doesn’t that make more sense to think your way to success?

And the last one is, number 11 on how to think your way to success: Think big.

This is different than thinking big picture to think your way to success. This is more like 10 times in your efforts and results To make that happen, you would have to think. How could you do that? It will expand your mind and your thinking. So, for example, if you currently bring in 1 million a year, thinking big has you asking yourself, how could I bring in 10 million instead?

Now, whenever you ask your brain a question, it has to give you back an answer, which is key on learning to think your way to success. So, listen and take notes when the ideas come, and some of those ideas will be something like, raise your prices or bring on more service providers who have big following. Or train other surgeons on your innovative techniques, and that’s just to name a few examples on how to think your way to success.

If you sit still long enough, the answers are within and they will come to you. So, to wrap this up, I wanted to leave you with a few quotes to bring the point home. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, everything begins with a thought. John Locke said, what we think determines who we are, who we are determines what.

James Allen said, our thoughts determine our destiny. Our destiny determines our legacy. Now, my own advice that I learned from Wayne Dyer, the spiritual guru, is if you change the way you think about things, the things you think about change. Gosh, that is so true. So that wraps it up for me. If you haven’t already, would you please subscribe to Beauty and the Biz and then of course check out www.cosmeticpracticevault.com.

It’s got everything you need to know about the business and marketing of running a very specific successful plastic surgery practice.

Everybody that’s going to wrap it up for us today, a Beauty and the Biz and this episode on how to think your way to success.

And if you have any questions or feedback for me, you can go ahead and leave them at my website at www.CatherineMaley.com, or you can certainly DM me on Instagram @CatherineMaleyMBA.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode on Beauty and the Biz, please head over to Apple Podcasts and give me a review and subscribe to Beauty and the Biz so you don’t miss any episodes. And of course, please share this with your staff and colleagues.

And we will talk to you again soon. Take care.

Go to www.CosmeticPracticeVault.com and let’s grow your cosmetic revenue.

-End transcript for “Think Your Way to Success”.