Myo Life
Myo Life is a podcast for bored, burned out dental hygienists (and myofunctional therapists) who are ready to work less, earn more, have total control of their calendar, enjoy geographic freedom and most of all - make a bigger impact for their patients - while ditching the long hours, constant aches and dreaded Monday's. You will learn simple and effective strategies and tools to start and grow your profitable myofunctional therapy practice. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing!
Myo Life
#31 How to Start Your Myofunctional Therapy Career Without Quitting Hygiene (Yet)
Let's Connect! Text me here or email me myotrainingacademy@gmail.com
"Is It Time To Ditch Hygiene?" is a self assessment workbook to help you get honest about where you are, see what's actually possible in a career you’ll love and to help you decide what comes next!
Hey, I'm Carmen and welcome to Mayo Life. That's short for my outrageous life, which is exactly the kind of life I get to live since I found the courage to ditch dental hygiene and build a life I'm bonkers about as a Mayo functional therapist and entrepreneur. Here you will find all the things Mayo business and how to build a life that you, too, are bonkers about. I'm very happy you're here. Shall we dive in. Well, hello, friend, and welcome back to the Mayo Life Podcast. Let me guess you're tired, not just end of the day tired, I'm talking soul tired. You used to love hygiene, or maybe you never really did, like yours truly, but now you're running on autopilot and you really, just, all the way to your bones, feel like you want something different, more purpose, more meaning, more time to actually help people, and you don't want to start over from scratch. So maybe you've been eyeing myofunctional therapy, but your brain keeps chiming in with unhelpful thoughts like you can't quit hygiene just yet. You need the money. You can't do that. You got bills to pay. Cool, I get it. You don't have to. Today I'm walking you through exactly how to start exploring a career in myofunctional therapy without quitting your hygiene job yet, or maybe never Just depends, totally depends, on whether you want to or not.
Speaker 1:This is the episode for the hygienist who's craving more purpose, more passion and more possibility, without throwing the baby out with the bath water. Okay, I remember when I was just starting working in hygiene and it was like all about the paycheck which is partially why I stayed in hygiene so long is because I need to get paid and I totally get it. And that's really one of the biggest things that holds a lot of interested dental hygienists back is they just don't think that they have the time. They need that hygiene income because, let's face it, not everybody just has $100 bills stacking up in the uh, in the safe right, uh, many also just wonder if they can even do it. So here's what I want to tell you Every single successful student inside the Ditch Hygiene Academy started in this same exact place. So, spoiler alert you're normal, okay, you can do this. The thing is, you don't have to quit hygiene. You just have to start myofunctional therapy, okay, so let's talk about that. You can learn while you're still in the op. In fact, I want you to, okay, because that's where you're going to get to practice conversations and looking around and being able to just kind of get your feet wet. You also can earn tens of thousands of dollars while still doing hygiene. That's exactly what I did. This isn't about jumping ship. It's about building something solid enough so that one day you don't need that ship anymore. That is exactly what I did.
Speaker 1:If you know anything about my story, I was working three 12-hour days Tuesday, wednesday, thursday. I was commuting three hours a day. Okay, so I had Mondays and Fridays, so I started building my business in the margins of my life. Now I needed out of hygiene. I was having heart palpitations on the way to work. I was miserable, so I needed out. My friend, I set a five-year goal to leave hygiene and I had my first paying client in May of that year. I cut back to part-time in July and then 13 months later, the next August, I was out.
Speaker 1:Okay, so please know that you do not have to follow my path. You get to do it however you want. But remember, the Ditch Hygiene Academy is named because people want to ditch hygiene. Okay, it was created to give you the fastest path from burnout and boredom to earning a living. Okay, you are totally in charge of how fast or slow you get to go. Even if you're working full time, you can do this, okay. So let's talk about how you will what I will say start smart, okay, even with a full time schedule. So the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to block off three to five hours a week to start learning, not 20. We're not practicing perfection here. We're not studying for our hygiene boards just three to five hours a week, okay.
Speaker 1:Now you might be thinking I don't have time, and this is one of the the, the fate, everybody's favorite all-time excuse, and I'm going to just be very clear with you here right now. Friend, you are absolutely welcome to fight for your limitations, but I'm not going to. I have not met a single person who wanted change bad enough that they couldn't carve out three hours a week. And if you won't, then, with all due respect, I'm not even sure why you're here, because you're never going to move forward. You're just going to spiral around the dream. So I want you to ask yourself how much time do you spend on social media? Bet you can find three hours. How much time do you spend consuming other people's content instead of creating something of your own?
Speaker 1:My friend, if you want different, you have to do different. Let me say that again for those in the back If you want something different, if you want to build a life that you are absolutely bonkers about, a life like I have built, where I am in total control of my calendar, my wallet, I'm building wealth, I have geographic freedom. That requires you to do something different. Now, also shameless plug if you are somebody who wants extra support and you are listening to this in real life, in real time when it comes out then you definitely want to make sure that you join the Ditch Hygiene Academy in September, where I am going to be leading supported September sprint okay, which is a fully supported stick you in my back pocket, hold your hand and lead you through stage one, which is all the foundations of Mayo, so that you are ready to hit the ground running in January with your first paying client, okay. So if you're trying to figure out how to do this transition, then you definitely want to take advantage of that bonus. Okay, now I'm done. Shameless plugging.
Speaker 1:So first, you're going to block off three to five hours a week. Then, number two, you're going to do your, my own math. Okay, you've heard me talk about this before. Figure out your freedom number. What is your enough? What is that bare bones, bottom line, cheapest that you can get by? That gives you some breathing room. Okay, do you know this number? It is really important for you to know. Uh, a great example is one of my clients, one of my coaching clients, was working a full-time job and she only needed like 14 hours a week to pay her bills. That gave her plenty of freedom time to work on her business. Okay, that gave her plenty of freedom time to work on her business. Okay.
Speaker 1:Now you might not be interested in replacing all of your hygiene income right away. Okay, maybe you're just wanting to have a little bit extra. Okay, that gives you control. That that little bit of extra earnings gives you more control over your calendar and your energy. Okay. So do the math, do your mile math, know what that number is. If you only need to work 15 hours a week, by golly don't be working 40. Okay, it's just not going to give you a lot of margin to chase this dream. Also, remember, it depends really on what you're wanting to do.
Speaker 1:Okay, like I said, you get to choose the pace at which you do this. If you are hating hygiene. If you are so bored and burnout and it is just not filling your cup, then you probably want to focus on getting out of hygiene a little bit faster than, say, somebody who has enrolled in my program just because they want to breathe some fresh air into their career and continue their hygiene job and continue helping people. Okay. So you have to just kind of figure out what your ulterior motive is, and then the third thing is going to be to take ugly imperfect action.
Speaker 1:Now, inside the Ditch Hygiene Academy, I teach you how to launch a minimum, viable program, and that's basically just a fancy way of saying the most basic, helpful version of your services. Okay, you don't waste time building out perfection and all the things. You get your education down, which is what I help you with in the supported September sprint. You get that foundation down, that stage one, those first initial eight down, which is what I help you with in the supported September sprint. You get that foundation down, that stage one, those first initial eight lessons, which are so important, and then you are ready to start helping people. Okay, much like when you started cleaning teeth you just had to start. You didn't know how to do it perfectly. So that's exactly how you're going to do it. So let's, let's talk about how this actually is done. Okay, so the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to start your learning. This is a biggie.
Speaker 1:So this is your, your mild learning, taking the lessons about things like what is an oral facial myofunctional disorder? You know how do I identify it. You know how do I identify it. What are the goals of therapy? Tongue ties, phrenectomies, you know airway focused orthodontics, sleep disordered breathing all of those things. Those are the big, huge pillars. Okay, you got to do your learning.
Speaker 1:My friend, you have to stay in the material, and by that I mean don't take an hour and watch part of a lesson and not come back to it until a month later. This is like trying to read a book that takes you all year. This is very challenging for my students, and so I always encourage everybody I don't care what pace you're working at, but stay in the material. Stay in the material so that when you come back to a lesson, you know what you were just learning. Okay, and for the love, stop multitasking. I get so frustrated with students that will tell me that they're not as far along as they would like to be, and that's because they are multitasking, meaning they're listening to a lesson on sleep disordered breathing, while they're making dinner or while they're folding laundry or while they're, you know, doing something else. You cannot multitask and learn some of the most important things in this field. You just can't. It's a complete waste of time. You have to be all in, all ears, taking notes, watching the slides, paying attention, okay.
Speaker 1:Next, you're going to decide when you can see clients. So this is going to be setting your schedule. This probably seems so foreign right now, but this is the first thing that you will do, and the reason this is is going back to my example when I was building my business on Mondays and Fridays, when I started having conversations with people about myofunctional therapy and they said, wow, I need, I need to book an exam with you. When do you see clients? I knew exactly that I was seeing clients on Mondays and Fridays. Okay, so that is exactly what you will do. So that three to five hours that you blocked out for your learning, that's also where you will start seeing clients, so you will start treating that time as client time.
Speaker 1:Okay, long before you have clients, you will next start telling people that you can help them. So once I get you through stage one, that is just really the meat and potatoes. Okay. So then at that point you can be telling people hey, I can help you. You're going to get your business basics set up. We don't have to start the full blown business, we just need to make sure you are legal and you have a way to get paid.
Speaker 1:Okay, you're going to start earning money and then eventually you can trade one day of hygiene for what I like to call a whiteboard day in your business. So that's a, that's a free day. You don't trade a day of hygiene to, uh, go to the pool Not if you want to build a life that you're bonkers about. You trade that day of hygiene so that you have more business time. Or, if you start getting busier, then you trade that day of hygiene so that you can now have another day to offer to clients.
Speaker 1:Okay, and this is really the point where hygienists really start to consider part-time or temp work. The nice thing about working part-time or doing temp work is it gives you more control over your calendar, so you have time to build your business, but also you're in control and you can kind of dial it back. That's all that happened to me is, I just dialed it back, dialed it back, dialed it back and really I started wondering, like where's all this money coming from, and I just forgot oh hey. Oh yeah, I still have a paycheck, okay. So that's just kind of how you titrate your way out of hygiene. I always tell my students you're never going to trade dollar for dollar, because at some point you're going to have to open up more time in your schedule for clients before you can replace every dollar with hygiene. But, in all honesty, you guys, my students that have retired from hygiene they followed the framework that I taught them. They did everything that I taught them and they were just so in love with myofunctional therapy that it was just such a nice easy transition. You know they were making more money in myofunctional therapy so they could afford to cut back in hygiene, okay.
Speaker 1:So the biggest takeaway for you, my friend, is you do not have to quit hygiene today, okay. You don't even have to be ready to quit. You just have to be willing to take one small step towards something that actually excites you. Okay, and if you're still here listening, then I think that's you. So if that's the case, then absolutely, the Ditch Hygiene Academy is where you want your butt to be. Okay. Your future self is going to be so glad that you didn't wait. So stop hiding behind the excuses that I don't have time, I don't know how to do this. All those things we're going to help you with all of that kind of stuff. And life is never going to get any less busy, my friend. So you might as well start your myofunctional therapy career while you still have the comfort of hygiene, and then you get to do it at your own pace. So that is it, my friend. I will be back with you soon to talk about some more myofunctional therapy business goodness.