IT TOOK THE OIL tycoon John D. Rockefeller 46 years to make a billion dollars. He clawed his way to the top of the 19th-century business world. Starting with a single oil refinery in 1863, over two decades, he constructed oil pipelines and bought out rival refineries until he’d built an empire. Seventy years later, the 1980s computer baron Michael Dell achieved billionaire status in 14 years; Bill Gates in 12.
In the 1990s, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo each earned ten figures in just four years. It took Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, three years to do it. And in the late 2000s, Groupon’s Andrew Mason did it in two.
Sure, there’s been inflation since Rockefeller, but there’s no disputing that we’ve decreased the time it takes innovative people to achieve dreams, get rich, and make an impact on the world— and this has largely been due to technology and communication.
“A serious assessment of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential,” writes the futurist and author Ray Kurzweil in his famous essay The Law of Accelerating Returns. “So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century— it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).”
Here we come, Star Trek!
At the same time, the majority of marketing experts and practice management companies in the dental industry remain decidedly stuck in the past. The result: Most dental practices stop growing after a few years.
Conventional wisdom of practice management and marketing gurus on innovation and practice building has hardly evolved over the last 30 years. We’re multiplying our capabilities to provide state-of-the-art solutions and treatments for our patients and yet we still accept the notion that important progress, like how dental professionals and support staff are trained (and the specific types of education they receive) must never be too progressive (i.e., “use ideas, concepts, strategies and known facts that have are being used successfully in other professions and industries), never be rushed and should evolve over generations.
Despite quantum leaps in what we can do, most Dentists and dental companies still follow comfortable, pre-prescribed paths. They work hard, but hardly question whether we’re working smart. Working hard versus working smart… what does that mean?
eBay was built by individuals who did NOT believe in following prescribed paths as they built this online giant in the time it takes the rest of us to build a house. Pick your era in history and you’ll find a handful of people—across industries and continents— who buck the norm and do incredible things in implausibly short amounts of time.
The common pattern is that, like growth hackers, innovative thinkers break convention to find better routes to stunning accomplishments. The question is, can finding these better routes be taught?
I’LL ANSWER THAT QUESTION IN JUST A MOMENT, BUT FIRST A SHORT RIDDLE TO OPEN YOUR MIND:
PRETEND YOU ARE DRIVING a car in the middle of a thunderstorm and you happen upon three people on the side of the road. One of them is a frail old woman, who looks on the verge of collapse. Another is a friend who once saved your life. The other is the romantic interest of your dreams, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet him or her. You have only one other seat in the car. Who do you pick up? There’s a good reason to choose any of the three. The old woman needs help. The friend deserves your payback. And clearly, a happy future with the man or woman of your dreams will have an enormous long-term impact on your life. So, who should you pick? The old woman, of course. Then, give the car keys to your friend, and stay behind with the romantic interest to wait for the bus!
This dilemma is an exercise in lateral thinking. It’s the kind of puzzle in which the most elegant solution is revealed only when you attack it sideways.
Amazing and effective NEW solutions have been created and discovered by questioning long-held assumptions upon which the primary problem most dentists face monthly is based: A continual source of affordably acquired, high-quality new patients who are predisposed to accept your recommendation for treatment, follow through, pay on time then duplicate themselves over and over by referring others just like themselves - (in the riddle above: it’s that you can only help one person).
At Growth Hacker Central, Dr. Ken Newhouse applies lateral thinking (like the majority of overachievers throughout history) to your greatest challenges, then taking you on the fastest route to success.
Dr. Newhouse will prove to you that any dentist, regardless of gender, location, financial resources or any obstacle you may face can be overcome as you achieve your goals and never before imagined levels of success… faster than you think possible.
