Your practice belongs to you. You’re the one in charge, and it’s your job to lead the pack. Sounds like a lot of pressure? That’s because it is! Dentists feel obligated to energize their teams all on their own. And let me tell you, that can be a real challenge.
Unfortunately, we find that most young dentists have some assumptions about how they need to practice in order to be successful. They set up their practice to follow those assumptions, but then down the road, they find themselves working harder and harder while not making as much as they feel they should be.
Your mind is like a rubber band. You gotta stretch it every day to stay limber and strong. Stretching involves going outside your comfort zone so you can learn new things. If you don’t stretch, then you won’t grow!
Like me, I’m sure many other dentists have been struggling under the yoke of PPOs. At the beginning of each year, we look back on the previous year and see the numbers showing exactly how much money you wrote off—all the work you did that you’ll never be paid for.
There’s a saying that Kirk frequently uses: “Time is the new rich.” As we move through life, we realize that what’s important is the time we spend with our family, loved ones, or even by ourselves pursuing the things that bring us joy—not the money we get from working too much.
There’s an incredibly high risk in dentistry of getting burned out, and it affects your entire life when that happens. You’re a different person—your family sees it, your friends see it, and your practice sees it. It becomes difficult to practice dentistry effectively if you’re constantly exhausted, so it’s vital that you make changes to ensure that you’re not putting too much strain on yourself.
Your practice would be nothing without patients. But that doesn’t mean they should run the show! Your team is in charge, and patients need to see that. If you don’t set boundaries with patients, they can (and will) get away with anything.
There’s an unfortunate tendency for team meetings to turn into nothing more than a gripe session where you recycle the same grievances over and over again, wasting everyone’s time.
You’ve heard the complaints about the weekly meeting: they take up too much time, they don’t accomplish anything, and they just repeat the same information over and over again.
