The 5 Proven Steps for Doctor’s Success | The Science Of Goal Setting

Hey, did you know that there's a science to success in business? Yep. Just like in medicine, that there's a science to helping cure a patient or help a patient feel better. There is a science to success and achievement in business. And in today's podcast of the Practice Profit System, we're gonna dive deep into the science of achievement. Stay tuned. Hey everybody, it's Matt D'Amelio. And yeah, it's been a little while since we've had this podcast out, but hey, we're back and we're really excited to dive into this. And one of the things you're gonna find is that we're gonna talk a lot about science in these next few episodes. And the first bit of science that I wanna talk to you about is the science of achievement. Now, here's the interesting thing. Most people don't realize that business is incredibly scientific. Yeah, believe it or not, it's incredibly scientific. In fact, it's so much so like medicine that sometimes I kind of lose sight of the fact or forget that business is a science just like medicine. So let me kind of paint a picture for you. In your world, in the medicine world, anytime that you want to help a patient feel better, what do you do? Well, you go and you look at what the research tells you it means and what is working these days. So let's say you have a patient. That is in for a, I don't know, a knee issue, let's say. Well, or maybe they're actually overweight or they're borderline type 2 diabetic. You have at your fingertips research that'll tell you, based on peer reviews and other research and studies, what is working best these days. Now, what's really, really cool is you can find all kinds of different research, right? You can dig into all different things. There's different ways, there's different diets. There's paleo, there's vegan, there's all this stuff. There's all this data, right? In this data, scientific data, you can actually research the way that they did the study. You can research the control group. You can start to really dig deep into this to really understand whether or not their data or what their science is using was on target, etc., etc. And then it's reviewed by your peers, right? So we get all that. Well, what if The same was true with business. Well, the reality is, is that it is. Business is incredibly scientific. So let me take you inside my world. All right. So I'm in my mid-50s at the time of this recording, and I have been in and around business since I was about 15 or 16 years old. I knew at a very young age, in fact, I wrote when I was 13 years old that I was going to own multiple businesses, that I was going to be an entrepreneur, that I was going to be a successful business person. Just like you, when you thought that you were gonna be a doctor, I'm sure you knew this at a, like, at a younger age. A lot of my doctor clients and friends, some didn't know until they were like 18, 19, 20, but a lot knew at an early age that they just had a draw to it. Okay, so the reality is, is that in my world, in the worlds that we run, that I run in, when I get together in my mastermind groups of fellow business owners, you wanna know what we talk about? Scientific results. Now, business, like medicine, begins on a question or a theory, right? There is always a question of why is this the case? Or what happens if we change this? Will that improve the outcome? Well, we do the exact same thing in business. What we do is we sit around and we'll say, hey, we'll talk about, say, landing pages. Is there a color button that improves conversions? And people will debate. I think it's going to be red. It's going to be blue. You're an idiot. It's going to be green. It's going to be yellow. And there's always somebody in the group that goes, I'll go test it and find out. And they come back. And they go, here's what we found out. Oh, not only did we find this out, but if you're targeting women, it's this color. If you're targeting men, it's this color, and so on and so forth, right? And we do this in everything. We do this when it comes to finances. We do this when it comes to making an offer. We do this when we go into a market. Everything that we do is incredibly scientific, okay? And we have a basic saying in my world, and that is the math always wins, right? So the math for us The way that we determine whether or not we are getting the outcome that we want is based on sales. Okay, so business is incredibly scientific. Here's what else is incredibly scientific is achievement. There is a science to achievement, and there was a recent study published in Psychology Today. And when I say recent, actually they did the study in 2015. And in 2015, a psychologist, her name is Dr. Gail Matthews, and she is— see, she's out in California. She's at Dominican University in California. She did this study about goals and achievement. Okay, now for the record, her study was done on children. Okay, but the numbers hold true with regards to adults. Okay, so there isn't a break, by the way, There's some application changes she does talk about. If you read her study, she talks about the use of apps and things like that and gamification of reaching goals that at the time of this study worked better on children than it did for adults. My suspicion based on current information that we know to be true today is that the gamification of anything actually helps improve and curb conversion and consumption and compliance. Okay, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay, so they were looking at how do we get children to achieve goals. What they came up with is their study determined 5 things, 5 ways to help children set and achieve goals. Now again, don't get— this is children and teens, right? So this still, this works for adults as well. Okay, so rule number 1, put goals in writing. Goals that are written are concrete and they're motivational. Okay, now we've heard this. You've probably heard the Harvard study that they did, a study of Harvard people and people that graduated and the people that wrote their goals down and all this stuff. Well, the funny thing is, is that study is actually slightly urban legend. Okay. But the numbers are actually pretty accurate. Okay. So what we do know is that when you put your goals in writing, now everybody wants to know what kind of writing. Well, you know, does it have to be written on paper and You know, does— can I use my phone? Can I use a whiteboard? I don't have any scientific data on that. I will tell you what I see in coaching, I don't know, 6,000 entrepreneurs worldwide over the last 25 years. Okay, here's what I see. At the end of the day, physically writing something down, not typing it, physically writing something down improves your chances, improves the reaching of the goals. Okay, now again, I don't have any studies on this. They did do some work on this in this scientific study, but we know that written goals, written down, okay, versus typed down or spoken out loud, specifically better, way better than spoken out loud. Written goals dramatically improve people, the science of achievement. Okay, they, like she said, they do have some apps and there's some game achievement, but again, written goals. Second, second thing that we know in the science of achievement, self-commitment. For a goal to be motivating, it must give meaning to a mental or physical action to which you are committed to. Okay? This self-commitment becomes the key element in what we call self-regulation, because in what we know scientifically, in order for you to reach your goals, for you to hit achieve, to have achievement, you must have self-regulation. Okay, so this is your ability to monitor, control, and alter your behaviors. Okay, you can't expect an external force to monitor all of that for you. Now we'll talk about that number 5, you can be part of a group. I'll talk about that in a second. But this doesn't mean that you should— like, your friends or your teammates shouldn't be involved in goal setting. In fact, they'll act as great facilitators, but What is important is that it— this goal must be motivating to you. Okay, now let me give you an example of this. We recently set the goal in our company that we're going to free 100,000 doctors worldwide from the tyranny of insurance-based care by the end of 2033. I was talking with a good friend of mine, John Gugel, yesterday. We were catching up. He's a very successful financial planner, manages money for— does— manages big-time money for clients. Anyway, John and I were talking about this, and he's like, "Yeah, you've got a very clear and specific goal. I don't doubt for a second that you're going to hit that." Okay, so it is motivating for us. Like everything that we do is centered around that. Now, I'm not here to toot our own horn. I'm using this as an example, right? And I've done this number of times, right? I've done this for weight loss. If you saw videos of me three years ago, I was thirty-five pounds heavier. I'm in the process of losing another ten pounds. I have another personal goal with regards to. My golf ability. Like everybody has different sets of goals, but they have to be. There has to be meaning. There has to be. It has to be motivating. Okay. Number three, be specific. Now you've probably heard this: goals have to be specific, measurable, smart goals. Right? It's still true. Right? This is the science of it, folks. This is a study that's done. So we know that the goals have to be specific. Okay. Goals must be more specific. Than just like making more money or seeing more patients. Okay, so I'm going to give you a formula that worked that they actually did in the study. And that's— this is a very simple formula. All right. So I will blank, right? Raise my personal income, lose 10 pounds, whatever, by doing— okay, so I will blank by doing blank. This is a really important part. You have to specify the actions that you're going to do on a daily basis In order to get the result, and I think this is where a lot of people fall down. Now again, this is based on science. This is what the science is telling us: is that you have to be very specific about what you're going to do. Now I tell this to my team all the time. There are specific things that you have to do each and every single day. Nick Saban talks about focus on the process. Okay, because most people what they want to do is they want to set a goal, but then they. Forget about all the individual steps. Very few people want to do the work that's required to be excellent. Okay? So you have to do the work each and every single day, and you have to specify what that looks like. What are the things that you need to do every single day and/or not do every single day in order for you to hit your goal? Okay? This is the science of it. This is the science of achievement. And then number 3, when, how, with whom? Okay? So it might be that I'm going to reduce the number of carbs that I eat by, I don't know, 30, or I'll spend 15 minutes fewer a day on social media, whatever. Okay. You get the point, right? And then you have to be measured by, and I'll go over this again. So you have to measure the increased amount of time spent or the increased amount of calories reduced or the increased number of miles ran or the increased number of patients that you talked to, the increased number of patients that you, or offers that you made. Whatever. Okay, so here it is. Here's the simple formula: I will blank by doing what. Number 3 is when, how, with whom. Okay, and it's going to be measured by X. Okay, this is really important. Like, we do this in sales all the time. Like, I have a goal that my team has to— each salesperson has to reach out so many to so many new leads a day. They have to make so many new contacts a day. They have to do so many specific actions a day. And what this does is it actually helps them. Before they know it, they have like a lead flow coming in. I think this is where a lot of doctors get in trouble with lead generation is it's not steady and consistent. Okay, again, another topic for another day. Okay, number 4, stretch for difficulty. Again, this is the Science of Achievement. This is an actual scientific study on what is key to reaching your goals, goal setting, achievement. You have to stretch for difficulty. Goals should always be challenging enough to be attainable, but not so challenging that they become sources of major setbacks. Okay. When working on goals, goal setting, what you want to do is we do this in a group, right? And we have some very specific goals of the number of people that we want to add to our company, to our coaching program, our Business Mastery Fellowship program in 2024. And there are specific steps, by the way, that we have to do each and every single day to do that. And there are specific things, right? Get it? It's all starting to come together and you see how this comes together. Which leads me to number five, and the final one in this scientific study about the science of achievement: seek feedback and support. Seek feedback and support. Part of the fun and motivation of setting goals is working on them in a supportive group environment, and I will tell you there's nothing better than reaching those goals and getting a high five from the group. Okay, now I have been an entrepreneur, like I said, since I was sixteen years old. I have always, always, always, always. I've been in mastermind groups, and within those mastermind groups, I've always had a core of people that are my friends, that are my confidants, that are the people that keep me accountable. And I'm in a group right now that is probably about 120 people in a, in a large group mastermind. In there, we have an advisory board of about 6 or 7 people, and I talk to each one of those folks. Some of them I talk to weekly because we've just become very good friends, but we're supportive. And here's the thing you're going to understand, by the way, as you go on this journey. As an entrepreneur, there are very few people that are going to be able to relate to what you are looking to accomplish. Okay? There's just very few. And by the way, there's even less in the medical field because it's a much more conservative type field. So one, if you think about your group of friends, really close friends, they're probably other doctors. In fact, they're probably people that you went through residency with or maybe med school with, or, you know, you're in a common field and you see them every single year. Now, they may not be in your town. You may not see them regularly for dinner, but those are your closest friends. Well, those are my closest friends. My closest friends are other entrepreneurs and they live all over the country. In fact, all over the world. They're my closest people, my closest friends. Okay? And so these are the people that I seek feedback and support from. Now, if you don't have a group, get one. There's a lot of great local groups you can do. You can do Vistage. There's, you know, Young CEOs, although you might not be, I think you have to be under 40 for that. There's a bunch of different groups out there, or you can Join ours, right? This is clearly an opportunity where if you want to be within a group of other doctors and medical professionals that are looking to change their community and change the world and run cash-based service practices that no longer rely on insurance, and you want to be within a group of people that are doing that worldwide, well then join us. Learn about Business Mastery Fellowship. On this, you will find a link where you can actually book and apply actually to be a part of Business Mastery Fellowship and book a call to find out more about it if you Don't already know about it, or by the way, you could just get my book, The Anatomy of Seven Figure Medical Practice. It's right there. If you are listening to this, their links will be on the page as to where you can go get it. But be a part of a group. See, this is what the science tells us: you can't go this alone. Okay, it's impossible to do this alone. So that's it. Those are the five. Those are the five scientific approaches to achievement, and they are: I'm going to review them again. Put your goals in writing. Two, self-commit. 3, be specific. 4, stretch for difficulty. And 5, seek feedback and support. That's it for this week. Hope you enjoyed it. And don't forget to like this podcast. Don't forget to like the videos or subscribe to the channel or subscribe, subscribe to the podcast. Take advantage of our free resources. Come be a Maverick. Join us. Let's get a bunch of doctors free. In fact, let's get 100,000 free. Let's get your friends free. And you know what? I just bet that in 10 years when we have 100,000 free, we can make a pretty positive impact on this world and the health of society. Come join us. Be a Maverick. We'll talk to you soon.