If asked, what would you say is the most important ingredient to a successful career as a veterinarian? It could be your grade point average, years of experience, average transaction, or it could be how good of a surgeon you are. All of these are true, but I believe the most important characteristic is one’s attitude. A person’s attitude can determine everything from how well we perform duties to how we react and get along with people.
Many of us may think that we have a great attitude, but do we ever listen to what we are actually saying on a day-to-day level? Listen to how you respond to problems and situations and see if you are truly positive or not. Also listen to what you say to other employees and clients and see if you are positive. Record yourself for one day and you would be shocked at all of the negative things that you actually say. Unfortunately, we are all programmed to think negative and all of the subconscious stuff that has been buried over the years will naturally make us very negative. We all have a lot of dark shadows in our past that are waiting to be released; however, until they actually are, they will manifest themselves by us projecting our anxieties and fears onto others, which we do by being negative or not having the best attitude. Whenever I want an answer on how to act, I always try and look at Jesus. Whether or not you are a Christian, we all know about Jesus. His life here on earth was one of complete servant hood. He had all of the power of God, but instead chose to be a servant for us. He did not brag of whom He was or what He could do, he humbled himself even unto death on a cross. How many of us truly are humble? Or do we let our ego run with us since we are educated and have DVM behind our name? Be positive and have a great attitude about everything and then see how your life unfolds. Next time, we will talk about these dark shadows and what we can do in order to release them to improve our attitude.
Why do some veterinary clinics run so smoothly and others seem to be so chaotic all of the time? Some clinics can handle many people at once and others can only handle one or two at a time. Space definitely has something to do with it, plus patient flow and flow of charts has a lot to do with the amount of congestion in a clinic, along with the attitude of the veterinarians.
Have you ever wondered why some veterinarians are very successful as far as keeping clients happy and having profitable average transactions and others either make everyone mad or have horrible average transactions? There could be many reasons for this, but over my thirty years of experience, I have seen a lot of young veterinarians come and go, some with a lot of success and some with very little. Last week I talked about the different attitude of professionalism that we see from our veterinarians today and how it does not have the same meaning as it did years ago.
We have been talking about goal setting, and last time we talked about how goal setting helps us solve problems and that we make money by solving problems. Now I would like to address the idea of planning with goal setting. If we do not plan, then how can we achieve our goals? Most people spend more time planning for a vacation than they do for their future. What if you took off for a trip with no plan in mind? You have the family loaded in the car, you start to drive, and then when you get tired you stop and tell everyone, “This is it; we have arrived, even though we do not know where we are and maybe even how we got here, but yes, sorry everyone, this is it”. No one would really want to do that, but yet we do it all the time with our lives and in our business, and then we look around us and wonder how in the world did we ever get in this position or to this place in our life?
We will continue to talk about goal setting. Last time we talked about how important it is to set goals because of the barriers we may face along the way. Goals will keep us focused on what we are trying to accomplish and not let those barriers stop us. Today we will talk about how we need to set goals to solve problems. Any organization, whether it is a few employees or many, will have problems. Instead of getting down on ourselves, we need to be focused on our goals so that we can solve the day to day problems that come up. Problems are nothing more than a way to make money; the more problems you solve, the more money you make.
