Imagine being on a beautiful scenic road in your favorite
vehicle, enjoying the view and your driving companion and feeling on the top of
the world, and then suddenly without warning, your car careens off the side of
the road down a mountain in free-fall.
Not a great feeling, right? Scary, no doubt, especially when you did not see it coming.
Well that is
what happened to us in 2008. We had just moved our orthodontic practice into a
brand new building that we purchased in 2007. We took out a huge loan to pay for the building and the
tenant improvements, but felt 100-percent confident our practice would continue to
grow now that we had the additional space.
Within a period of about six months of our November 2007
relocation, our practice declined 30 percent, which meant some serious economic
changes for us personally as well as our employees.
In my book, It’s All About Millimeters, I share this story
in more detail and the ultimate “turnaround” of our practice. One of the most important things we did
to bring our practice back and regain all we lost and continue to grow each
year since 2010 was simply to reinvent ourselves.
By focusing on a “millimeter” approach, we decided to
“niche” our practice and standout from the crowd of 30 other orthodontists in
our area. This process of focusing
on a particular “niche” and changing the way we provided orthodontic services
helped us recover and get back on the track for double-digit growth that has
continued despite ongoing economic uncertainty.
The “millimeter” approach to reinvention can help you make
those changes needed to succeed in your business, your career, and even in your
personal life.
