by Karah Karah | May 23, 2018 | Hints for Happiness
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Growing as a leader starts with growing as a person, and no one knows that better than Dr. David Maloley. He’s going solo today to share a few things that have significantly improved his quality of life, and as a result, have helped him be a more effective leader in his practice.
Listen in to hear the top three gadgets that have become major parts of Dr. Dave’s morning routine, as well as his advice for starting your day off strong. You’ll also hear his tips for improving your mental state and what it really takes to be the leader your practice needs.
Key Quotes:
- “If you can own your day, you can use that as a building block. Then you’re well on your way to building an epic life, and that starts with a morning routine.”
- “No matter what your quest is—building a dental empire, serving your patients—meditation is a good foundation.”
- “All my breakthroughs in my practice were when I was working more on myself than on the tactics within the practice.”
- “Strong systems are really important, but you’re not going to change your life by fixing the way your phones are answered … True growth is going to happen from growth within the leader.”
- “When you transform the leader, you transform the practice, and it must start in that order, or it’s not sustainable.”
- “High performance is about increasing fulfillment and decreasing stress over time.”
- “Health is the wealth. If you’re tired and exhausted, you’re going to be kind of a coward and an ineffective leader.”
- “We’re sold this myth that as we get older, our energy decreases. I don’t believe in that at all. There’s so many ways that we can get our bloodwork right and get our morning routine right so that we have the same energy that we did as a teenager.”
- “When those difficult times come along … I want to be a higher level person so that I can take that head-on.”
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by Karah Karah | May 16, 2018 | Magnificent Marketing
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When it comes to marketing, many practices and businesses tend to focus on the wrong things. Naren Arulrajah explains what is going wrong and how to truly focus on the customer, relate to them in a real way and leverage social proof. His advice on handling failure, being an effective leader and gaining the trust of your customers is extremely real and valuable.
Naren discusses how he originally failed his way to success and how his rough start ended up pointing him in the right direction because he was willing to learn from it and make necessary changes. He also shares some great advice on how to establish authority and create real relatable messages that clients connect with. Naren provides many tools to strengthen your impact and lead people in a way that brings out their strengths.
Key Quotes:
- “Every good thing that happened to me came out of failures or came out of dead ends.”
- “I don’t believe in managers, I believe in coaches.”
- “I don’t believe in this idea of, “Let’s work on your weaknesses” because if I work on your weaknesses, you’ll have strong weaknesses. So I believe in this idea of how to bring out the best in you – your strengths.”
- “The more it was about me, me, me – the less I got what I wanted.”
- “Marketing – the way you get people to know you and then choose you.”
- “We are social animals – We do what others do. So when someone else buys a product and writes a review, now we trust that.”
- “When somebody is being grateful and at that moment you ask them for a favor, they will say yes.”
- “We don’t trust people who say they are perfect.”
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by Karah Karah | May 9, 2018 | Legendary Leadership
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It’s one thing to have a vision for your business and it’s a whole different thing to be able to cast that vision in a way that it is taken on and carried out by your team. Dr. Jesse Green drops by the show today to share his journey through practice ownership and how it has evolved into a passion for the dental entrepreneurial community. He gives us some great actionable advice on how to improve your leadership and entrepreneurial skills in a way that will take your practice to the next level.
Jesse really emphasizes the importance and value of not just having a vision but making sure you are communicating it effectively. He also discusses hiring and how there should be systems in place that make things easier for day to day tasks but don’t take away from the personality and flexibility of the business. Jesse also gives us great tips regarding leadership, financial intelligence, case presentation and marketing techniques.
Key Quotes:
- “I really applaud the people who get out there and give it a red hot go because running a business is not for the faint-hearted.”
- “Being a great dentist is, I think, an important part of being a good business owner but it doesn’t guarantee success.”
- “I found myself running a digital marketing agency for dentists which was fantastic. I learned so much about true business that I never learned through traditional practice management programs.”
- “Some of the best lessons I’ve ever learned have been outside of dentistry.”
- “We sometimes think the dentist industry is somehow different or special to other businesses but the same principles apply.”
- “People say you hire for attitude and you train them on the job but if that’s true, you need to have some dedicated training processes in there as well.”
- “The really important thing when it comes to leadership is: Creating a clear vision, enrolling people in that vision, holding the standard, and living the standard.”
- “The growth of the business will never outstrip the growth of the leader.”
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by Karah Karah | May 2, 2018 | Legendary Leadership
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In this episode, you’ll get to listen in to Dr. Dave’s recent interview on the Business of Dentistry Podcast. He shares personal stories of his own challenges and the valuable lessons he learned as he built his career. Listen in to hear his inspiring words about finding clarity, what it takes to be a great leader and more.
Key Quotes:
- “Life moves fast. I used to think about five-year plans and ten-year plans, and now a quarter goes by, and I’m like, I don’t want the same things I wanted 90 days ago.”
- “That’s, I think, a struggle in society, but certainly in dentistry as well, is like you start living out somebody else’s dream and then realize it too late. If you can always be course-correcting, I think that’s probably the best advice, to have a beacon, which would be like your annual plan or even your life plan.”
- “It takes some serious time alone to reflect and design [a life plan, but] otherwise your schedule will get full of other people’s agendas.”
- “My theory was in 2017 that if I did nothing else but worked on myself, that I could make my practice grow, and I didn’t need to be constantly turning all these knobs like hiring somebody or a new marketing tactic or new phone skills.”
- “If you’re the CEO of a dental practice, if you’re the lead producer in a dental practice, you’re the racehorse, and so you have to create ways—whether it be through delegation and leadership or just flat out automating or eliminating things from your life—so that you’re not feeling run down at the end of every week.”
- “What are you doing to take care of yourself so that you can serve? It’s kind of a paradox like you need to be selfish to be selfless is really something that we have to come to comfort with.”
- “Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s doing the things that you’re scared of because you know that gets you to the destination that you want.”
- “Sometimes we use perfectionism as a badge of honor because it sounds really good, but sometimes it’s just fear and excuses packaged in a nice little wrapper with a bow on it.”
- “Your teams need psychological safety, so they need to be able to ask their dumb questions or make their mistakes without feeling chastised; they need to know that you have their back.”
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by Karah Karah | Apr 25, 2018 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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Addison Killeen has built a network of thriving dental practices in a location that is known to be saturated with practices. Tune into this episode to get in on the wisdom and strategy that he used to successfully nurture practices and teams. Addison gives us some perspective when it comes to the importance of building relationships in the dental community and focusing on areas that are your expertise.
He discusses providing procedures that people truly want and staying away from the salesy side of dentistry. Addison also shares how his practice dropped the no-show/ cancellation rate by 2% with one simple and time effective solution. He introduces and discusses his new book and the importance of focusing on the right data to transform your practice.
Key Quotes:
- “It was really a cool experience to be able to walk into a practice where nothing else changes, not a whole lot of pressure on me other than – just don’t crash the boat.”
- “The key to our growth is through relationships. We’re just available when a selling doctor kinda gets ready to exit.”
- “All of the coolest things I’ve learned in the past couple years have all come from dentists and the associates that I hire.”
- “Dentistry was – you still get to be a surgeon and an artist but yet you can have the life 100%”
- “At first, the idea of multiple practice ownership wasn’t something that I totally thought was a great idea or main goal but just through doing things it’s kinda happened.”
- “People don’t like to feel like they’re getting sold stuff.”
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by Karah Karah | Apr 18, 2018 | Bold Biographies
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Sometimes the biggest challenges we deal with as dentists are moral dilemmas. It can be tempting not to admit to making a mistake—especially when you know a patient wouldn’t know the difference—or to advise someone to undergo an expensive procedure they don’t really need for the sake of making a higher profit. We’ve all been there, including Dr. Bryan Stimmler.
The owner of North Brooklyn Dental Care, Bryan is a big proponent of sharing the challenges we face as dentists, not just the successes. In fact, helping others to learn from his mistakes was his goal in starting The Better Dentistry Podcast. In this episode, Bryan opens up about the difficulties he’s faced along his dental journey, his own major mistakes, and the important lessons he learned as a result.
Key Quotes:
- “I don’t care that you can do veneers, you know, I can do veneers too … I want to see a screw-up. I want to learn from your mess-ups.”
- “There’s not a healthy communication on the challenges that [dentists] go through—whether it’s life or the business side of things or the clinical side of things—and we need to open up some discussion on that.”
- “To be a good dentist, to do better dentistry, you’ve got to get your ego out of the way and you gotta do what’s right. … Better dentistry is getting back in there [after a mistake] and getting it to where it’s supposed to be and then swallowing your pride and apologizing to all of the patients that are waiting for you because you screwed up.”
- “There’s a quote that kind of goes along the lines of, when you think your life is tough, someone’s always had it worse.”
- “When someone’s quiet a lot of times, and then they dish out just a one-liner—those are the ones you need to listen to.”
- “I hear from residents all the time that they don’t feel like they’re learning anything, and when you’re in the thick of things, you don’t even realize what you’re learning. We’re watching you work, and I can see your clinical proficiencies from when you started until when you ended, so you are learning, whether you think you are or not.”
- “In hindsight, [my associateship] was so valuable that I’ve actually told residents, go find a bad associateship. If you have the intentions of opening up your own office, go see what the worst of the worst is. … You’ll find out everything that you shouldn’t be doing, and that’s much more valuable than getting an associate position at a place that is a well-oiled machine and you don’t even know what they’re doing that’s so good.”
- “I always tell people to find a mentor. … Find some mentorship and read a lot.”
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by Karah Karah | Apr 11, 2018 | Bold Biographies
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Do you feel like you don’t have your future quite figured out yet? Don’t sweat it. Being successful doesn’t mean you have to know every detail of where you’re going. The key is being willing to put in the work and keep moving forward. Just ask today’s guest, Dr. Chris Green.
A third-generation dentist and the owner of Green Dental Care, Chris says he’s still figuring out his vision, and he has accepted that the road to get there isn’t always a direct path. In this episode, he shares what he’s learned along his own non-linear dental journey, as well as the importance of knowing that finding your path to success can be a fluid process that you continue to figure out as you go.
Key Quotes:
- “A smiling dental team—that’s the type of thing that can make up for a lot of flaws.”
- “When we think about leadership and owning a practice, we think so much about first impressions. But last impressions are super powerful, as well.”
- “Dentists a lot of times either put not enough focus on their practice or too much focus on their practice.”
- “That’s the beauty of the profession: You can run a practice however you want and create a lifestyle. … It’s an exciting time to be a dentist in my mind.”
- “One of the things that it took me a while to figure out is that if I was the most interesting or the smartest guy in the room, then I wasn’t learning or gaining anything.”
- “Some of these practices just need new energy—they need a young, hungry dentist to get in there and be a little bit better of a leader and be a little bit better of a businessperson, and if you’re a lot of that, then the sky’s the limit.”
- “For me, it just hasn’t been a linear road to get to the vision—I still don’t know if I have my vision totally figured out. It’s a fluid process. The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know, and as I learn more, I realize that there are many ways I would have done things differently, but you’ve just gotta keep plowing ahead.”
- “The simple epiphany I had was that I could always make more money, but I could never make more time.”
- “Sitting down once a year, or once a quarter, or however often to evaluate your vision, write it down and reverse-engineer how you’re going to get there—that will get you in the right mindset as to not expect shortcuts.”
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by Karah Karah | Apr 4, 2018 | Legendary Leadership
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Sometimes life can throw you curveballs, but it’s how you deal with them that makes all the difference. Dr. Steve Markowitz is a third-generation dentist whose unexpected leap into learning the business side of dentistry firsthand came during his first year of dental school. After a tragic accident left his father unable to practice, Steve stepped up to help keep the business running and learned key lessons that drove him to where he is today.
Now in charge of three multi-specialty group practices just outside of Boston, Steve has accomplished a lot in his relatively short career. In this episode, he shares the ups and downs of his journey through dentistry, as well as his tips on team building and leadership that will help guide you to a more successful practice.
Key Quotes:
- “Just be the best version of you. Let your patients know, and your team know, that it’s kind of an act that we’re doing, but it’s really important to be the best version of yourself when you’re in the building.”
- “I saw the business of dentistry before I even ever saw dental patients, and that was really eye-opening to me because I knew that there was a way to make the business of dentistry successful at the same time while I was learning how to take care of people.”
- “Anything I could get my hands on or listen to that made me a better person or a better leader, I would try and get it in my system.”
- “Too often in our profession, [leadership] just gets flat out ignored or people deny that leadership is even a job for them.”
- “The grind is exhausting. Always try to take a step back and remember why we’re here, why we’re doing this, so we can take really good care of each other and really good care of our patients, and then it becomes bigger than the grind.”
- “If I were to point to one fault in my career, it’s that I was way too independent and I thought work ethic was the supreme value, and I didn’t rely on resources and friends.”
- “Your dental license is really a golden ticket, and you can choose your own adventure and take it wherever you wish.”
- “Never let a patient see you sweat. Never let your team see you sweat. It’s only going to get them worked up. You are the captain of the ship … and if you’re stressed out and if they know something’s wrong, it’s going to make everything more crazy than it has to be and the results will not be as good as you want them to be.”
- “Nobody has gotten to where they are without help from someone else, and the sooner you can realize that and reach out to people and be willing to accept advice, the quicker you’ll be successful.”
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by Karah Karah | Mar 28, 2018 | Hints for Happiness
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In this day in age, it’s so easy to get caught in the trap of comparing your life to what you see online, especially when it comes to social media. The problem is that people tend to show only the best parts of their lives, so we don’t see any of the hard times. But just as important as sharing our victories is sharing when we struggle, and in this episode, Dr. Matt Standridge does just that.
Now the owner of Yates Center Dental and the man behind the popular Ketodontist Podcast, Matt opens up about a time when things weren’t so good. He talks about his battle with depression, sharing his lowest point and what he did to get his life back on track. Listen in to hear his inspiring story, as well as advice for taking care of your mental wellbeing.
Key Quotes:
- “There are so many people that are growing their business, growing their practice, while tearing themselves down, which clearly isn’t a sustainable model.”
- “I was stressed out to the gills; I did not want to get up in the morning … I even had thoughts of suicide. … That’s when I started really doing a deep dive on myself and reconnecting with, okay, what was the point of all this?”
- “With the magazines and the forums and the boom of social media and everything, you see all this great work and all these people that show their best selves online, and that FOMO—that fear of missing out—it can really creep in.”
- “The most difficult thing when you’re really struggling as a professional, as a community leader, as a leader within your practice, is that you might be in a state of crisis, but you still have that feeling of obligation to show the world that everything’s okay.”
- “The thing is with meditation, you can’t be too idealistic about it. You’re going to have thoughts. If you do it when you’re tired, you may nod off. It’s all okay.”
- “Depression from what I understand is a lot like addictions. It can come back in a heartbeat if you let it, so it’s that being vigilant to keep it from rearing its ugly head again.”
- “It took a long time to finally get it through my thick skull, but you can’t be everything to everybody.”
- “There’s really power in talking about our victories, but also our fumbles and interceptions.”
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by Karah Karah | Mar 21, 2018 | Bold Biographies
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It’s no secret that building a successful dental career is hard work. But when that hard work gives you the opportunity to create the career and lifestyle you want, there’s no question that it’s worth it. Just ask Dr. Josh Cochran.
The owner of Dr. C Family Dentistry, Josh saw his share of hardships as he worked to build his practice from scratch. In this episode, he shares the most important lessons he learned along the way, as well as what he’d do differently if he had it to do over again. Listen in to hear how he overcame the major struggles he faced on his journey to success, his advice for dentists still building their careers, and what makes it all worth it in the end.
Key Quotes:
- “As I’m building a business, I’ve learned how important core values are. … I don’t care how attractive an applicant looks, or a vendor to work with; if their values don’t meet mine, I’m just not interested.”
- “Dentistry is like a clay you can mold to fit what you want, your life how you want to live it.”
- “I went in with private practice doctors who were fantastic doctors—great with their patients, great with staff members, just the nicest people—but they didn’t have a model for growth and success, so I was kind of like that appendage attached to the practice, and not actually part of the practice.”
- “If you can find a corporate gig where your morals aren’t feeling compromised, I think that’s the quickest path to success right out of school, and you’re going to do better financially.”
- “As long as the practice you’re working for is patient-centered and not profit-centered, I think you can be very successful right out of school.”
- “If you want the results, you have to be comfortable with the labor it takes to get there. … People ask me, ‘how do you work a three-day work week.’ Well, I started with 28 days a month.”
- “Really figure out what you want—how you want your life to be, what your focus is—and then you can find the path to get there.”
- “Customers, they want it all: the low price and the good service. And if you can differentiate yourself from the dental market by providing both of those—and convenience, as well … you’re going to be successful.”
- “You’ve gotta trust your gut when you’re interviewing people and when you’re working with people, but you also need to be real clear about what your values are. That way, when someone starts to not follow your vision and your values, you can identify it and talk to them.”
- “You don’t know what you don’t know. And so if you connect with other dentists in like an open forum where you can just chat … you’re going to see what else is going on out there, and you can get a really good feel for what’s available to you and where you want to go.”
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