I wrote the Stay on Target blog about 10 years ago; it was another metaphor based on the original old-fashioned first Star Wars movie where Luke Skywalker is in the channel of the Death Star getting ready to fire the torpedo that will blow it up while being attacked from behind by the enemy.
It's hard in those situations to stay on target and focus on what you're doing (I imagine).
But we're repeating the pattern again 10 years later in the extraordinary race to the bottom that our dental industry (And I think our country) is prone and susceptible to time and time again.
Everywhere I look, everybody is going cheap, and all of our competitors, both clinically and educationally, are going cheaper and cheaper, just trying to grab the business and survive.
At times like this, it's easy to forget the reason that you're here. At times like this, it's easy to give away everything you've built in the knee-jerk reaction that drags you down to the bottom of the swamp.
What we have to accept in difficult times is that we get less, and everybody gets poorer together.
That's not an excuse for catapulting your values out of the window and becoming what you hate and are not.
For me, it's hard; you're just trying to maintain a business, trying to keep it floating along, trying to keep everyone paid and upbeat and happy as you watch everywhere else, everybody trying to undercut and undercut and undercut.
The real secure long-term businesses don't do that; they pilot the ship through the terrible, disrupted rough waters to the other side.
It's a cycle; we just have to sit back and look at it with a longer-term view.
Difficult though.
Blog Post Number - 4022
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