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 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 7, 2018 | Legendary Leadership
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One of the most important aspects of running a successful practice is putting in the time and effort to be a good leader. Dr. Tim McNamara is a shining example of this, and his success in dentistry is a testament to the strong focus he puts not only on creating a great customer experience, but also on leading his team so they know exactly how to deliver that experience.
After more than seven years doing business consulting in the healthcare field, Tim went from helping hospitals mitigate risks to starting his own dental practice. His unique path into dentistry—along with his ability to see obstacles and turn them into opportunities—has given him a fresh perspective on the industry that we can all learn from. In this episode, he shares what it takes to be a great leader, the lessons he learned from his consulting career that still help him today, and his tips on how to shorten the learning curve on your own path to building your dream practice.
Key Quotes:
- “What you have in a business is risk, and how you control that risk is everything. And then how you lead your people to implement those controls will dictate what your revenue is.”
- “It’s funny to me because everyone talks about secrets in dentistry. … The secret is you. If you just spend some time on leadership and understanding your business, that’s the secret.”
- “When I opened, I did so kind of with this wild idea that demographics matter, but that the dentist and the systems probably matter a little bit more.”
- “The best way to grow is, yes, boost marketing, but turn the customer service experience on.”
- “What I’ve noticed in most dental clinics is lack of leadership.”
- “We need a place where people can ask real questions without getting beat up for it. And so what do we do? We create a community.”
- “I judge a lot of my practice and how it’s operating by how well I sleep at night and how little stress I have at home.”
- “All of my breakthroughs have come when I stopped being so frickin’ independent and realized that there is help out there.”
- “Your advice should be coming from people who are in your exact same situation, that actually stay awake late at night in the fetal position, and that have figured out how to get out of the fetal position.”
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by Karah Karah | Feb 28, 2018 | Bold Biographies
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There are many roadblocks presented when developing a dental career. From financial struggles to battling introversion and depression, Dr. Russell Kirk shares his journey through all of it. He talks about his valuable experience in the military, how he learned humility, anger management, leadership, and how to prioritize the important things in life.
In this episode, Russell speaks in-depth about his military career and how valuable it was to his dentistry career and education. He also shares some struggles and issues along the way and how he overcame them and learned valuable lessons from each. Russell emphasizes the importance of a strong work ethic, self-responsibility, being open to criticism, and accepting help. Through developing these traits and practices he has become happier and more successful in his life and career.
Key Quotes:
- “There’s a lot of, a lot of learning to do as soon as you get into practice.”
- “The older I get, the smarter my parents and grandparents were.”
- “Anything worth doing isn’t going to be easy. If you can outwork the other person, you can sometimes outwork talent.”
- “The educational opportunities in the military are really robust.”
- “Early in the game I liked to blame everyone else that things weren’t going right, and it was pretty frustrating, and now I realize that at the end of the day it’s all on your shoulders.”
- “A lot of us have similar stories and there’s variations but the underlying theme is, it’s a tough profession and life is tough but there are other people out there and we’re trudging along and doing okay.”
- “You get out here on an island by yourself and it’s easy to get discouraged and it’s easy to get frustrated then you go to a meeting or have a conversation like this and you come away with a little bit quicker step.”
- “You have to stop being the victim and start being accountable for everything in your life.”
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