Why Dentists Hit A “Success Ceiling”… And How To Break Through
Show Notes
In this episode, Dr. Laskin highlights a problem many dentists face when it comes to success…becoming complacent. Listen to learn why now is the best time to be a dentist, but the worse time to be complacent.
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Episode Transcript (Auto Generated)
Welcome back to the patient first podcast i’m your host dr brian laskin where i am looking to help increase the influence of today’s engaged dentists and dental professionals thanks for being here it’s early on in the year 2022 and frankly i’m just jazzed i’m so excited the new year is one of my favorite times here even though even though in minnesota it is freezing it is freezing and this week in my office no heat 50 degrees when i got here because there’s other other tenants in the building my frankly my dental
practice so my dental practice is
keeping my technology companies where i
am now warm but uh it’s been 50 degrees
so if it looks like i’m trembling it’s
because i am freezing if i just stop and
pause please send help just kidding i’m
fine but it’s been very cold this week
in my office hopefully your office is a
little more warm and you had a
phenomenal holiday season and new year
and you’re getting ready to get back to
work and i was thinking about sort of
what’s gone on in my life over the last
year and it’s been it’s felt it feels
like 10 doesn’t it uh every year it
seems like the last few years has felt
like 10 but i was thinking about success
and the problems that success can bring
and i think it’s very pertinent for us
to talk about this in relation to how we
take care of patients today talk a lot
about on this podcast how i think
strongly that this is the best time to
be a dentist and the worst time to be a
dentist what do i mean by that it’s the
best time to be a dentist if you are
looking to make the small seemingly
insignificant changes to adjust your
practice in line with the patient’s
expectations and it is the worst time to
be a dentist if you don’t because just
like there’s a great reshuffling of
employees in dentistry that we’ve talked
about there’s a great reshuffling of
patients and patients are their
expectations have fundamentally changed
and those of us that make the small
changes to address the patient’s
expectations this was this has been true
for years however it’s absolutely
crucial right now and in that context i
was thinking
about success and i believe that success
is problematic it really brings across
two different problems the minority of
people so the very and i think the very
small minority of which i am
pathologically one is success breeds
people to want to level up in some
people so they some people have trouble
myself included not chasing the next
thing so as soon as soon as they hit a
milestone they hit success they look for
something bigger which is its own issue
and problem that and pathology that uh
that we’re not going to talk about today
what we’re going to talk about is the
majority of people the majority of
dentists i believe that leads them to
not make the changes the small changes
that is
required to really not not just compete
but to survive in today’s marketplace
basically what success does to most
people is success
breeds complacency and this
makes all the sense in the world if you
think about it evolutionarily if you
think about it logically you know the
average person including dentists
is going to once they hit success they
have something to lose and the fear of
loss is more powerful than
than the opportunity of gaining
something new for the vast vast majority
of us so when we have something to lose
when we have success we act out of fear
of that loss which means we act with
complacency and
the average dentist today produces makes
earns about twice what their family of
origin did
so the average dentist
grew up in a household that made
about 70 to 80 000 and the average
dentist is probably making around 150
000 a year so that means that they’re
making about twice what the family of
origin is and it feels like you won the
lottery the problem is dentists don’t
typically have their own 401k or you
know they have to fund that out of their
income they have to they have to pay for
other people’s income and our wages our
profitability as i’ve talked about
several times recently on this podcast i
think are are under siege i think that
that income is under siege and i think
again this is the best time to be a
dentist it’s the worst time to be a
complacent dentist right so if you’re
thinking about the sale of your practice
as being like your retirement plan i
think that stinking thinking right now
actually is actually a very good time to
sell i think practice values are high
but everything’s high right now and
inflation is going crazy but there
there’s certainly going to be another
side of that story who knows when but i
think that a lot of dental dentists
believe that the value of their practice
is their retirement and if you’ve done
the numbers and i would recommend you do
or sign up for abundance you can hit a
button
and you can see the value of your
practice you might be shocked so this
you know success breeding complacency is
one thing but what really breeds in
addition to success that breeds
complacency in most dental practices is
we are just too busy
right most dentists don’t take enough
time off to restore themselves
let alone time to run their practices to
really take that thousands foot view and
look at your practice and make the small
changes to even know what those small
changes are right there’s a i think a
key aspect of practicing dentistry is to
take a
pause regularly at least quarterly and
inventory your practice and see what
small changes you can make to help
position yourself better and i think
that most of us don’t do it because
success breeds complacency and most of
us feel successful and
we’re too busy
it’s hard to do this i don’t mean to
to downplay the difficulty if you’re
successful to not be complacent or if
you’re busy to pause those are both
incredibly hard things to do
so i don’t mean to say that these are
simple concepts it still means that
they’re very difficult to act on so the
fact that you have success looking for
an opportunity that’s going to be
difficult to chase is not
inconsequential neither is the fact that
if you’re very busy
taking the time to pause
is a challenge this is challenging it’s
very difficult so i think we do need to
pause step back and make the small
adjustments necessary so that our
practices and ourselves personally can
reach our peak performance so we don’t
just end up working harder and harder
and harder and getting less and less and
less which is what i think will happen
for those that are complacent in today’s
marketplace they’ll it’ll be like death
by a thousand cuts where you’ll look
back in five years going what happened
over the last five years what happened
was the world fundamentally changed
right around now
so that complacent dental practices will
be basically withering and and i think
it’s important and so
i wanted to bring a story of hope or or
maybe a story of inspiration for the
dentists that are listening today going
what are you talking about like what are
the things that i should be focused on
and it’s one of my favorite stories
about john wooden so john wooden won 10
national titles at ucla from 1964 to
1975. he was the first person to be
inducted in the basketball hall of fame
both as a player and a coach and what’s
really cool about john wooden is that
from from my perspective because i don’t
really know much about basketball but i
do know that he was a
champion coach and player and one of the
things that made him a champion i
believe is that he focused on the
fundamentals on making the small
adjustments and looking for small
improvements that make a difference
every single year what he did he started
off not by having the defense practice
or three three-pointers or layups
that was too advanced so he started
every year
with one thing and that was having the
players practice lacing up their shoes
tying their shoes that’s a fundamental
right getting everybody to be able to
tie their shoes correctly he felt was an
important way to start
every single year every year right
that’s the opposite of complacency in my
mind he
was consistent he focused on the
fundamentals and he didn’t over he
didn’t think oh well we got that because
he practiced it last year every year he
went back to the very very beginning and
looked at it and saw how can we improve
how we tie our shoes and the reason why
was he didn’t want blisters he felt that
those blisters would affect the players
in the game
what can we bring from that into our
practices oh i would argue
that the opposite is complacency is this
type of consistency of looking at the
fundamentals and practicing practicing
practicing the fundamentals in your
practice what are we doing when it comes
to our core values and our core purpose
what why are we here who are we as
people have you re regurgitated that to
everybody on your team over and over and
over again so you want to choke on the
words because it’s just everybody is
just it’s ingrained in who we are and
what we do and every how often do you
revisit those is this truly who we are
as people on this team is this really
what we’re about
about your facility have you taken a
tour and looked at at every aspect of
your facility or updated systems instead
of setting a system from 10 years ago
and just expecting it to go on for a
decade do you revisit it all the time
every time and training obviously that’s
a big piece people don’t just need to be
trained they need to be retrained and so
i think with this new year i’d like to
have you take a step back and think
about the shoelaces in your practice
what can you do that’s fundamental to
your patient’s experience to your
delivery of care to how your office runs
from a big picture all the way down out
from your core values which are you know
foundational all the way down to how you
set up your rooms how many cotton rolls
you’re placing out for that procedure
and get detail oriented because blisters
lose games
right
our profits in dentistry as i talked
about on a very recent podcast are being
crushed
uh and and i think it’s important for us
to look at our practices from a
foundational aspect and if you need help
uh we have our upgrade day coming up
it’s january 21st of course it’s a
virtual event so you don’t have to be
there january 21st that’s just when the
courses are going to be available you
can watch them whenever you want to
at your own time we have some phenomenal
speakers the faculty have done a great
job putting together some really great
courses i believe you know we’ve had
we’ve had over 3 000 dentists go through
our first two upgrade days and now we’ve
got
uh upgrade day three coming up on
january 21st just go to upgradeday.com
to sign up and you’ll get free access to
my course
which is three steps to massively
increase your production where i will
actually go through some foundational
aspects like we’re talking about today
and present to you some some ideas of
some shoelace
type concepts that you can work on in
your practice so that so that you can
win the game and
just kind of move past the complacency
take a pause on the busyness and take a
look at your practice so we can make
those small adjustments that i think are
required today to help meet patients
needs meet the needs of our team members
and then of course
so you can live the lifestyle that you
want to
and
increase your influence as an engaged
dentist so thank you very much for
joining me again on
the patient first podcast i look forward
to talking with you next week
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