In a television interview, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said that in the early days of his company, he collected packages bound for his customers, loaded them into his personal vehicle, and drove them to the post office. You won’t see Jeff waiting in line at the post office to ship packages these days. By Cyber Monday 2013, Amazon was selling items at the rate of over 300 per second! The company had net sales in 2014 of $89 billion and Amazon is on track for $100 billion in sales in 2015.
Jeff Bezos is an inspirational figure. He started a very small business, scoffed at his critics, and created an empire.
There are start-up dental practices that have few patients. There are doctors in these new practices who are wondering if they can generate enough revenue to keep the doors open.
While the challenges are daunting, there is always a market for excellent dentistry. Every day 10,000 people in the United States turn 65, and our youth-obsessed culture creates a continual market for cosmetic services, even as patients need care for periodontal disease, the replacement of missing teeth with dental implants, and basic restorative services.
The next time you wonder if your fledgling dental practice is going to succeed, think of Jeff Bezos carrying packages into the post office. He started with a vision, understood that people wanted to take advantage of easy, online shopping, and built his business even while the skeptics were wringing their hands. Now consider the latest brainstorm from Mr. Bezos: delivering packages to your front door via drone. It is easy to imagine all sorts of practical problems, not the least of which are drones falling out of the sky and causing hazards, but that vision of drone package delivery will probably also become a wide spread reality.
Entrepreneurs with imagination and perseverance often succeed, a lesson that applies to dental practice management.
David Schwab Ph.D.