Want Better Results? Think Who, Not How
As experts we often think we have to do everything ourselves… But that's our greatest handicap. Here's why
Nov 19, 2021 •
Doctors seek me out when they get stuck trying to grow their practice.
This is often after months –years, even– of just “doing it themselves”.
But, as they soon find out (even if it takes them years to accept it…) operating in this way is not very smart.
In this article I will share with you:
- Whom I learned this concept from.
- Why it is such a great concept.
- Why doctors –more than others– tend to want to do it themselves.
- How you can begin overcoming these natural tendencies.
Who Not How is a brilliant book authored by Dan Sullivan and written by Benjamin Hardy, PhD.
It distills Dan’s philosophy of operating, as much as humanly possible, in your zone of genius.
In order to do so, you need to get other people (your WHOs) to do everything else that’s required for a particular business or project.
This is such a great concept that allows you to leverage other people’s area of expertise –be it graphic design, marketing strategy, advertising, copywriting, etc…– to fulfill your vision.
Instead of trying to teach yourself how to do X or Y –which will invariably be out of your zone of genius–, find out someone who already knows how to do it, does it well, enjoys doing it, and will be happy to do it for you!
As a doctor, you are your patient’s WHO.
Think about it…
No doctor would agree that a patient should go to medical school in order to solve her persistent headaches, right?
Or that she should just try different methods and eventually, with enough persistence, they will figure it out…
Instead, the smart thing to do, is to seek out somebody else who has the experience and expertise to treat her headaches.
Someone who has studied the potential causes of her headache.
Who can identify the type of headache she has.
Has treated hundreds –if not thousands– of headaches before.
Enjoys treating headaches.
And is happy to provide her with treatment as well.
Yeah, but… How hard can it be?
This is the worst question you can ask yourself when trying to achieve a result you’ve never achieved.
Because it puts you in HOW mode.
It makes your brain look for ways in which you can learn and/or do whatever it is that (you think) needs to be done.
But it fails to show how using your time to (1) figure out what it is that you actually need to learn to do; (2) learn how to do it, and (3) doing it, has a very poor return.
If instead you only spent time figuring out what you wanted to accomplish and then, thinking WHO can execute it for you, you can then continue using your time to do the things that only you can do.
We are problem solvers
In fact, in medicine, the higher your skillset and expertise, the more crucial it is for you –and only you–, to perform your craft.
I mean, you don’t become a top surgeon by delegating your surgeries, right?
But this thought process embeds in our minds the idea that nobody can do anything as well as I can.
And it is this thought process that makes us wear too many hats in our practice.
That has us believing that we should be the ones doing our tax returns…
And booking our travel…
And managing our own schedules…
And having every decision go through us…
We effectively become the bottleneck of our entire business and, if we are not there, the entire system stops working.
Start thinking WHO, not HOW today.
I want to challenge you to take a step back and look at your practice, or at that side project you’ve not fully launched.
Look at where you currently stand and what’s missing for you to either finally launch it or get to the next level (whatever that next level may be).
Write it all down.
Everything that needs to be done.
Everything that you don’t yet have.
Now see how many of those tasks you have self-assigned and keep procrastinating on.
The reason you procrastinate on them is because you either don’t know exactly how to do them,
Like starting a podcast.
Or because you hate being awful at it,
Video editing anyone?
Or because you simply don’t know what you don’t know about it and it’s frustrating to keep bumping into that wall.
Like the feeling you have when you burn another thousand dollars in Facebook ads and get no results…
Finding your WHO
Now that you’ve identified your problem areas, I want you to ask yourself Who can take care of that for you?
Who do you know that just loves to edit video and that you can ask to create some great patient education assets based on your talks or seminars?
Who already knows how to plan, produce and launch a podcast so you can just focus on using your expertise to create the content while someone else does the technical and heavy lifting for you.
Who can audit your marketing, sales and overall business strategy and ensure that you’re getting the best results possible?
What’s next?
If you liked this post, share it with anyone you think could benefit from it.
And if you have questions, just leave a comment here or connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m happy to help out!
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