Why Setting New Years Resolutions Is A Waste Of Time.. Do This Instead

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Hey everybody, it's Matt and a happy new year to you all. Well, today what we're gonna talk about on the Practice Profit System is why setting New Year's resolutions is a waste of time. Yeah, you heard me. We're gonna talk about why setting New Year's resolutions is a complete and utter waste of time. Now, before I go into that, hopefully you had an opportunity to completely unplug and relax over the last couple of weeks of the year. I personally took 2 weeks off, didn't really check in at all except for here or there, just kind of to make sure that I didn't have a pile of emails when I came back in. But there's a reason why you do that. And I would encourage you to not only do that at the end of every single year, if you didn't do it this year, what I want you to do is I want you to go ahead and schedule that right now. So what I've done in my schedule is that I've actually laid out big chunks of the next year. I've already blocked a couple of vacations. I know that I'll be, uh, out the last 2 weeks of December. I let my clients know all of that. I take the week of Thanksgiving off. I have a week in July that we're completely out and completely unplugged. And I just encourage you to go out and do that right now with your calendar if you haven't done it already. And the reason why you do it is you want to pre-schedule downtime before you schedule work. I have a simple saying in our company, and that is most people try to fit their life into their business. I want to fit my business into my life, and my life is much more rich, much more enjoyable when I can take time off, lots of time off. And so that's what we— that's what I want you to do. I want you to go ahead and take that time right now. And I want you to go ahead and I want you to schedule your vacations and your time off right now. And what I also like to do is I actually will go in and put deposits down on vacations because that way, well, guess what? Then you're going to have to take them. This is just COVID be damned, and I'm just kind of assuming that we're at the tail end of this thing. Of course, I've been saying that for a long time now. I think a lot of people have. So that's just kind of the first thing that I want you to really focus in on, right? If you didn't take time off these last couple of weeks, if you didn't completely shut down I hopefully— what I want you to do is go ahead and book that next year. Unless of course you're like some of my clients that the time between Christmas and New Year's is kind of a big push, then schedule time at the beginning of December. Do you have a time in your calendar? You know your business when things are slower. Take that time off, completely unplug, completely unwind. Brings me to my second point that I want to discuss with you today, and that is why I don't set New Year's resolutions. And I'll explain to you why. So I used to be like a lot of people. I would plan these, I'd take the end of the year, I'd do all this planning. The next year, this is going to be my year. It's going to be a great year. This is the year that we finally break through. And what I found in coaching 3,500 entrepreneurs worldwide for the last 20 years, I find a lot of disappointment when that happens. And so over the years, and now that I'm 54 at the time of this recording, I've developed a different way of approaching the new year. Well, first and foremost, I don't really view it as any other day. Truth be told, I was in bed and asleep by probably 10:15 or 10:30 on New Year's Eve. Katie and I really didn't do much different. We cooked a little bit nicer dinner maybe, but we just kind of hung out. And frankly, I was up out of bed probably about 6:30, 7 o'clock in the morning on New Year's Day. Wasn't hungover, felt great. It was fantastic. But I don't do the big New Year's resolution thing. What I do is I— what I found was that when people did that, they get really disappointed really, really fast. And I do the same thing with my clients. What I really want you to do is I want you to change the way that you look at your business. Most people are taking this time and they're saying, okay, this is the reset of the year. We're going to make all these big plans. Your plans should be calendar agnostic. And what I mean by that is there's nothing magical that happens on December 31st. There's nothing magical that happens on January 1st. You can decide to make a change at any point, in any day, at any moment in your life. And I want to illustrate this with a personal story. Now, if you've been listening to my podcast, by the way, this is episode number 52, I believe. So we've been doing this for a full year. Thank you for those of you who are avid listeners. By the way, if you like the podcast, love the podcast, please do me a favor and give it a 4 or 5-star rating. Share with other doctor friends and other medical professionals. But I want to tell you a quick little story about a transformation that I made. And I think this is the best way to illustrate why it is better to make micro-transformations than it is to make a big declaration. So, if you know my story at all, owned a number of clinics, did really, really well, sold those off in November of 2017, and went through some personal stuff, went through a divorce, my parent, last parent dying, all that fun stuff. And my health got out of whack. And what really happened was that a year ago at this time, my triglycerides, believe it or not, were 500. Yeah, you are hearing that correctly. My triglycerides were 500. Now, I am 5'7.5, maybe 5'8. My weight had ballooned to over 215 lbs. I have always been around 180. I have always struggled a little bit with higher triglycerides, but had been able to, you know, done all a variety of different things. But I don't want to get too far afield. I was also borderline type 2 diabetic. Now, being in the industry that we are in, I know that that path, I know what that path is, and I knew that that path was not good. So, I had tried a bunch of different things to be able to try and Hack my numbers in half. And maybe I might quickly get my trig numbers down to like 350, but then they'd spike back up. I get my blood work done every quarter. I'm in an executive health program with Dr. Mickey Barber. And so what I did was I realized in my early 50s that the path that I was on was not a good one. And so what I did was I decided to change some of my micro habits.

Okay?

Now, I want you to notice kind of some of the nuances that I put into this. So last year at this time, what I did was I decided that I needed to make some microHabit changes in my life to get my numbers in line because I refused to go down the traditional path of taking statins and all that other fun stuff. I knew that my issue was related to my weight. And so what I did was I made a couple of microHabit changes in my life that over time had paid big, big dividends. See, the problem with most New Year's resolutions is people go, okay, I'm going to lose 25 pounds. And by Friday they're eating donuts. Okay? What I decided to do was I wanted to make some microhabit changes in my life, utilizing some people that had great skill sets at making those microhabits. Changes in my life. So what I did was, one of the first things that I did was I said, okay, I have tried a bunch of different things. I have tried intermittent fasting. I have tried Prolon. Nothing wrong with Prolon. It just doesn't work for me. Tried a bunch of different things. Tried going keto. None of it worked. Okay? So I had to take a really hard look at what I was doing. And the microhabit I decided to change was stop drinking. That was the biggest microhabit that I changed. Now, that may not sound like a big one, right? But it might sound like a big one, but it's actually a very small one. Okay? And I'll explain here in a second. I knew that by drinking bourbon, drinking red wine, for me, didn't work. Okay? And there were other compelling reasons as to why I wanted to make that microhabit change. And then one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to make that microhabit change was Frankly, I was sick and tired of waking up tired. I was sick and tired of losing days because I had drank too much the night before. Now, I'm not going to tell you I was an alcoholic. I was not. But maybe I was headed on that path, or who knows? But I just knew that I had to change that microhabit. Now, I had failed a number of times doing that prior. Okay? So what did I do? Well, see, my compelling reason as to why I wanted to make that change is, Alcoholism does run in my family. Won't go into that. That's their discussion. 2, I lost my father when he was 60 years old. I was 13 years old. Didn't want to do that. There were a bunch of compelling reasons. So that was the first thing I did is I made a decision I was going to change that microhabit and I stopped drinking. Okay? And I just literally took really the AA approach of, I'm not going to drink today. Maybe I'll have one tomorrow. But of course, tomorrow never comes. It's a trick that I learned from one of my brothers who's 30 years sober. Okay? So I changed that microhabit. I didn't stop drinking. I just said, maybe tomorrow. Okay? And that really, really made a big, big difference. The other thing I did was I did a weight loss protocol and program. I did OPTAVIA, for those of you that are familiar with it, calorie reduction. And so my weight, in the span of 35 days, I lost 25 pounds. Fast forward to having my next lipid profile done, my tris went from 500 to 235. Pretty darn good. My A1C went from 5.9 to 5.6. Okay, all my other numbers changed dramatically as well. This is really important for you to understand. What I did, and I want to reiterate this, I didn't make a New Year's resolution. Okay, I didn't stand there on December 31st and say, okay, this is what I'm going to do. What I did was I decided that there was something in my life that I could make better, not change, but that I wanted to make something better, that I could have a better outcome in life, that I could have a better quality of life, that I can hopefully, good Lord willing, live longer. Okay. Microhabit change. Everything that you want to change in your life can be done through changing microhabits. Not by making a big declaration. I'm not going to go on social media for the next 60 days. While that's a pretty good thing, I'm not going to be on social media for the next month or something like that. What I would recommend that you do is say, Get a tracking software that tracks the number of hours that you're on social media and where you are online and use a tool to restrict it. Make a change microhabit. Now, I was already working out, by the way. I was already working out 3, 4 days a week. I still work out 3, 4 days a week. So I had all of that in place, but I knew that I had to make that other change and change it microhabit. So how do you do this in your business? Well, The big thing is we just finished at the beginning of December. Everybody in my private client group came to Las Vegas and we did 2 days of planning and working on their businesses. And one of the things that we talk about consistently, one of the pure fundamentals of how I transform businesses is focus on less. Fix one thing. Take 90 days and fix something to make it better. That's it. It's the changing of a microhabit. The problem is, is most people try to change too much and the body and the subconscious mind are going to go, wait a second, let's snap this back.

Okay?

We don't want to do that. What I want you to do is I want you to look at where your business is right now. And what I want you to do is say, okay, this is where I want to be in 3 years. Just Give me a number. Okay, let's say your practice right now did $250,000 this last year, and let's say you want to be at $2,000,000 in the next— in 3 years. Okay, it's that simple, right? That's basically a 20% growth pattern per quarter. Okay, now if you did $250,000 in the year, so let's just say that you're doing— let's just say you're doing $20,000 a month. Okay? Just grow it 20% this next quarter. That's it. That's all you have to do. So if you did $20,000, it was $60,000, and you want to grow 20%, that means the next quarter you're going to do $72,000. And I want you to focus on one thing that you can do in order to get that 20% increase. Okay? And it's not about getting more training on a piece of equipment or learning a new way to do whatever. It's how do I do— how do I sell 20% more, $12,000 more of this one thing? Resist the temptation, by the way, to say, oh, we could do this and do this and do this and do this. Make it simple. Define the little micro habits that have to change In order that, that are going to make up and complement that transformation. Okay. When you do this, what happens is that you get your team focused and rowing together in the same direction. Okay. And one of my other secrets, by the way, is give yourself a reward, which for the record, I'm on the process now of losing another 15 pounds. And I have a reward identified, which we'll talk about that at some other time. But it's a little micro habit. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Don't take on too much. Just take a little chunk. Say, look, in my business, I'm here, I just want to grow at 20%. If you grow your practice 20% per quarter, think about this, to add $12,000, what is that? 3 more procedures? 4 more procedures at $3,000 a pop. That's all it takes. It's basically one every 3 weeks. That's all it is. What are the little things that you can do to make that transformation? Get your team on board. Just stay focused on that. Don't come at them with big plans of, okay, we're going to do $1 million this year, up from $250,000. If you grow 20%, you go to $72,000. Okay? And then you go to, let's say, add on another 15%. That's what, $87,000? Then you add on another $20,000 or so, that's $107,000. And then you add on another $25,000, that's $132,000, $132,000. You're at a pretty good number right there. You're a 20% increase from $250,000. You're well over $325,000 very, very easily because it's going to grow compounded. Then the next year you do it again and the next year you do it again. And I'm going to tell Tell you right now, if you do that once a quarter, this grows compounded. Before you know it, you're staring $2 million a year in the face, and you, you aren't overwhelmed by the process. Okay, so let's recap. Make micro changes to your habits and to the habits in your company. You want to grow your practice 20% this quarter, focus on doing one thing better that's going to generate revenue.

Okay?

Not learn a new skill, not hire this. I'm talking about what can you do? What's the one thing that you can do to generate 20% more revenue this quarter than the last quarter? Just focus all of your energy, all of your efforts, all of your team on that simple process. And I promise you, I can virtually guarantee to you, That will have the biggest positive impact. Don't focus on putting in a new EMR. Don't focus on getting a new billing company. Okay, focus on what can you do that's going to grow your practice 20%. Focus on the one thing, and I promise you, you will see greater returns just from that skill set and the development of that skill set than anything else. There you go. As always, check out our You can always get a copy of our book at srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. Uh, you'll hear more about that here in just a moment. As always, thank you so much for listening to the Practice Profit System. My name is Matthew Glogli.

I look forward to helping you have a great 2022 and beyond.

Thanks everybody, talk to you soon.

Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, take a moment and share it with your fellow medical professionals, or Post a positive comment and rate it on wherever you just listened. Now don't forget, you can get a copy of my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Practice, for free. Just pay $7.95 in shipping and handling. Plus, you'll get over $1,197 in free bonus material. Simply go to srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. That's srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next week.