Episode #283: Why Leadership is Your Most Valuable Marketing Strategy, with Xana Winans

You want to grow your practice, so you turn to marketing. But it’s not just the marketing that will solve your problems. According to Xaña Winans, CEO and founder of Golden Proportions Marketing, leadership is at the root of every problem. To help you appreciate the value of leadership in marketing, Kirk Behrendt brings back Xaña for advice on how to become a better leader to help your practice grow. Listen for more on Episode 283 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

• Problems are always traced back to leadership.
• The good news is leadership can be taught!
• Learn to delegate effectively.
• Articulate your vision properly.
• Be a strong decision-maker.
• Practice ownership, accountability, and responsibility.
• It’s never too late to become a better leader!

Quotes:

• “This idea that leaders are born is baloney. I think we all think of our natural-born leaders, the people that are incredibly charismatic, and they carry a room . . . But there are so many other things that are part of leadership that we have to be taught.” (08:15—08:34) 
• “Marketing is the entire patient life cycle, and marketing is about growing your practice. So, you as a leader have to be involved with the growth of your practice, because once that phone gets picked up, it’s out of your marketing company’s hands, to an extent. The better a leader you are, the better the results are that you're going to get from the investment that you've made.” (09:40—10:00) 
• “It’s funny because, often, I find [the clients themselves] are the very problems that get them to call us in the first place. And they don't realize that leadership is at the root of why they're having these problems.” (10:55—11:03) 
• “Everybody thinks there's one amazing silver-bullet strategy out there that's going to fix all these problems, when in reality everything that happens in your practice is a result of you as a leader.” (11:16—11:30) 
• “If you do not like the results you're getting, go stand in front of the mirror. Self-awareness is 100% of the base of this. If you don't understand that as a leader everything in your business rises and falls with you, and the decisions that you make and how you lead people, you will never be able to change.” (14:30—14:50) 
• “70% of the decisions that an entrepreneur makes are going to be right. But 30% of them are going to be wrong. But if you make those decisions quickly, you can look at it real fast and say, ‘Okay. That wasn't the right strategy for marketing my practice. Let me go back and make a different decision.’ If you agonize over it, you drag the entire process out and the marketing doesn't move forward.” (22:45—23:07) 
• “Learn how to become a better leader . . . Make it a lifelong pursuit. It’s not something that you just do on a whim. It’s got to change you as a person because it has that long-term impact if you really embrace the change that you're going to get.” (39:00—39:20) 
• “It’s not the marketing that's going to solve [the] problem. The marketing will help solve the problem once I got the leadership problem solved.” (39:47—39:53)

Snippets:

• Xaña’s background. (04:01—04:38) 
• Why this is an important topic in dentistry. (05:04—05:49) 
• Everything goes back to leadership. (06:58—07:55) 
• Can leadership be taught? (08:12—08:49) 
• Leadership is instrumental to practice growth. (09:17—10:00) 
• Problems of not having a great leader. (10:54—12:05) 
• Why do dentists look at leadership as the last thing? (12:32—13:30) 
• Don't stand in the way of your own growth. (13:30—15:00) 
• Learn how to delegate. (15:51—16:46) 
• Steps for effective delegation. (17:11—19:44)
• Be clear in your vision and articulate it properly. (19:52—20:49) 
• Example of vision casting. (21:09—21:44) 
• Be a strong decision-maker. (21:50—23:07) 
• Three questions to ask before making a fast decision. (24:00— 24:56) 
• Accountability requires accounting. (25:48—31:14) 
• Xaña’s favorite leadership principle: play “above the line.” (31:26—34:23) 
• Everybody wins with a strong leader. (34:25—36:23) 
• Lasting positive impacts of better leadership. (36:52—38:44) 
• Last thoughts on leadership and marketing. (38:54—41:40) 
• Xaña’s company and contact information. (41:53—43:07) 

Reach Out to Xaña:

Xaña’s company website: https://www.goldenproportions.com/ 

Xaña’s email: [email protected] 

Further Reading:

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni