Issues

As I speak to dentists around the country about what it means to succeed in dentistry, I’m struck by their assumptions about success.

Shortly after my “Seven Slides” article was printed in the previous issue, my phone started ringing off the hook. Doctors couldn’t wait to request copies of the slides.

I have always wanted a beautiful smile, but as a child my parents did not place a lot of importance in our teeth.

Very rarely do we have an experience so moving, so emotional, that it compels us to dramatically change our behavior. Recently, I had such a breakthrough.

I lead the Total Team Training seminars for the Dr. Dick Barnes Group, and I consider it a privilege. Not only do I get to practice and teach active listening skills, my heart is touched often by attendees’ responses.

Dentistry stopped being about income and instead became my personal means for giving back to people.

Today the dental practitioner is faced with a variety of implant strategies. They involve the location, number, inclination, and distribution of forces required to support functional and parafunctional demands of occlusal loading.

In graduate school a professor lectured on something he called disruptive technology. In a nutshell, his point was that periodically a technology comes along that destabilizes or fundamentally changes some aspect of a business model.

Last year I observed basically two types across all age groups and skill sets. These included dentists who were struggling financially and dentists who were unaffected by the economy.

For me, dentistry was not fun. I had my own practice with a decent number of patients, and I spent my days doing what I thought dentists did: checkups, fillings, and the occasional crown.