The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ – Start, Grow, and Simplify Your Business

54: Can I Really Leave Dental Hygiene?

• Carmen Ball – Dental Hygienist Career Change Coach & Myofunctional Therapy Business Mentor

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Are you quietly Googling "Can I leave dental hygiene?" and wondering if you’re being dramatic or if you’re finally being honest?

I’m diving into this because I wasted nearly 16 years staying stuck in a job that didn’t fit me anymore — and I know you’re not looking for more information.

You want transformation.

You want a path that’s simple, organized, and actually doable while you keep your paycheck and your sanity.

In this episode, we talk about how to discern what’s really going on, how to decide if this is a fix it or freshen it up situation, and how income replacement actually works in real life.

This is for the burned out, bored, hurting dental hygienist — and for the trained myofunctional therapist who still feels stuck starting, growing, or simplifying.

You’ll walk away with clarity, a next step you can actually take, and proof that you don’t have to blow up your life to build something different.

Grab your ☕coffee and your courage - and let’s dive in!

Xo,

Carmen

Join The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1295968461846242

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's a new you, and you might be the same old miserable person in your job who is Googling in your downtime, can I leave dental hygiene? If that's the case, then my friend, you are going to want to listen to this because the process of transitioning out of dental hygiene and building your myofunctional therapy business is much simpler than you think it's going to be. If you're a burned out, bored dental hygienist who knows that you can't do this forever, or you've already taken myofunctional therapy training but feel stuck on how to actually start, grow, or simplify your business, welcome, my friend. You're in the right place. I'm Carmen, a dental hygienist who once sat exactly where you are. And wanting the fastest, simplest, most organized path forward with someone holding my hand along the way. This podcast is for women who don't want more information. They want transformation. They want clarity, consistent clients, predictable income. Without building a business that takes over their life, they also want support while they do it. So if you're ready to stop spinning, start moving, and finally make sense of what comes next, grab your coffee and your courage, my friend. Let's build a business that works for your life, not one that runs it, so that you can build a life that you're genuinely bonkers about, because that's my superpower. Well, hello, friend. Welcome back to the podcast. I want to start today by saying something out loud that I think a lot of dena hygienists are quietly wondering, and also probably Googling late at night, or during those tiny pockets of downtime during your chaotic day in the office when you feel like you are at wit's end, but don't really feel safe admitting it. I mean, if you were listening to this in real time, it is early January, right after the holidays, and I know many of you find yourself again questioning can I really leave dental hygiene? And my friend, I know exactly where you're at because I was doing the same thing. Pretty early on in my career. I remember thinking, good gravy, am I really gonna be doing this for another 20, 30 years? Oh my gosh. And it wasn't because hygiene was terrible, but it just didn't feel, it just didn't light me up. It did not um just put that excitement in my heart. And I wasted nearly 16 years of my life in a job that drained me. And often on, I would Google whether I could leave and what my options were. And trust me when I say I would rather pound my toes flat with a rubber mallet than do most of what came up. No, thank you. I don't want to be a researcher. No, thank you, I don't want to be a salesperson. Okay. No, I didn't want to do any of that stuff. So fast forward to now, and I get to have conversations with so many of you inside the profitable myofunctional therapist Facebook community and on our get unstuck coaching calls. And the messages, they're starting to sound eerily similar. You're saying things like, I can't do this forever, my body hurts, my neck hurts, my body needs me. Um, I want something different, but I don't know how to do it. I can't blow everything up. I don't want to blow everything up. So what I see over and over and over again, you guys, is not a lack of Googling for answers, okay? It's fear driving the bus. Fear that you can't replace your income, uh, fear that you're gonna need to go back to school, fear that you don't have the means to invest in yourself to learn new skills. So today, I want to slow this conversation way down. This is not about having to make a dramatic decision. It's about helping you see that it's possible, and it's probably a lot simpler than you think, to keep your job, keep your paycheck, keep beanie weenies on the table while you start building something different. And if you are listening right now and you think I am directly talking to you, good. You're welcome. You are in the right place. So to kick it off, I want to share something with you that, gosh, I do not, I don't taught, I don't take this lightly. And honestly, it's a little bit uncomfortable to admit it and to go back in time to that moment with that version of Carmen. But for me, the final straw wasn't just a terrible money-grabbing boss, okay? Or the fact that somebody else was building their golden parachute on my back. It was that my job was slowly turning me into somebody that I didn't even recognize. I've shared about this before. I started having really bad heart palpitations on my way to work. And now thinking about it, they were probably maybe less heart palpitations and probably more anxiety or panic. I don't know. But my body was screaming at me to pay attention. And instead of listening like a wise woman, I just did it the old Carmen way and I just kept pushing on through. And I'm embarrassed to say this, but I think that it matters to say it out loud. I've never shared this, but I started smoking during all of this. Talk about hypocritical, a dental hygienist with a Marlboro 100 hanging out of her mouth. Oh my gosh. The the thought of it just in in my brain makes me cringe. So at first, I was smoking just on the way home from work. Okay. I had an hour and 15-minute commute each way. And I told myself, I was lying to myself, I told myself that I was just gonna do it on the way home to decompress. And and I did at first. I wouldn't light up until I was safely out of town, okay? Out in the Tuli Watts where nobody was gonna see uh my car cruising down the road. But over time, my misery got worse. And what do you think happened? Right? Eventually, I wasn't even out of the parking lot before I was sparking up, okay? I I didn't care who might be sitting next to me at the first traffic light. And then I got worse, you guys. That same dread, that pit in my stomach about going to work had me smoking on the way to work, too. That was my wake-up call. Not because smoke, smoking was the problem. I mean, it was the problem, but I knew it wasn't a long-term thing. What really was the problem is that it was showing me how deeply unhappy and disconnected I had become. And my body was paying the price for a career that no longer fit. Okay. And I'm not sharing this for shock value. It's really rather embarrassing. Um, but because I know some version of this is happening for a lot of you. Maybe it's for you. Um, maybe it's not smoking, okay? Maybe it's an anxiety. Um, maybe it's Sunday night dread. Like you can't even enjoy the weekend because crap, it's already Sunday. It's Saturday night, crap. Sunday night's gonna be here in no time. Okay, maybe it's chronic pain. I am talking to so many of you whose body is paying the toll for you being afraid to do anything else. Um, maybe you have become that person that snaps at the people you love. You're not a mom that you're proud of, you're not a wife that you're proud of because you're exhausted and trapped. And then another thing that I have heard from several of you guys in coaching or in our calls is that you're physically feeling it and seeing it in your body. You're not sleeping well, so yes, you're exhausted. You have chronic pain, yes, because good sleep is a modulator of pain, but you're seeing it in your waistline, you're seeing it in your blood panels, you're seeing it in your Dutch test, you're seeing it with your cortisol, with the stress, all of this stuff, okay? When your body starts waving red flags, my friend, it is not weakness, it's information. Okay. And that's why we're gonna have this conversation today. So we're gonna talk about um how you do leave hygiene. Okay. So step one, you have to, I call this diagnosed before you decide. So a lot of hygienists will jump straight to, you know, can I leave? Without ever trying to figure out why she feels stuck. Okay. What's the problem? Is it your body? Is it your schedule? Uh, is it your lack of boundaries? That, you know, you're only supposed to work X amount of hours and your boss because your boss can't get anybody else to work in the office. Now you're left holding the bag, okay? Is it boredom? Is it the stage of life you're in? All of these things you're going to know when you kind of just get quiet and still and download. Okay. And I don't mean from the computer, guys. I mean from the universe. So just sit with that. You're gonna know, okay, which is gonna take you to step number two. Is this a fix it or a freshen it up situation? Okay. Some of you guys really need to fix it. Yeah, and that means planning an exit from dental hygiene, okay? Because dental hygiene no longer fits your body, your life, your future. It is not aligned with where you want to go and who you want to be, okay? For the rest of you guys, you do not need to burn it down. You just need to freshen it up, okay? Maybe that's reducing your hours, maybe that's um adding myfunctional therapy, creating a side hustle. Uh, shameless plug. This is the easiest way to do it, okay? Uh, and and you get to buy yourself some breathing room. So both paths are valid. Okay, they require the same thing. You got to get some clarity and you got to have some confidence in yourself. So let's talk about step three. How income is actually replaced. So, this is the where the fear tends to lie to you, okay? You're not just jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, my friend. Your income replacement is in phases or slowly, okay? It's not instant. Most people do not replace 100% of their income before making changes. Okay, they replace pieces of it, they reduce their hours, they create parallel paths, and that looks a whole lot like putting the gas on one thing and the brake on the other. So, in my case, that was me working full time, and then I went to part-time, and then I did some temping, and then I was just out. Okay, so you get to control that. But so many of you guys come to me and you say, Hey, when am I gonna be able to, you know, when can I cut back or when can I leave hygiene? Like, well, you have to figure that out. But typically it's a little bit of gas on my own, and it's a little bit of break on the other, the other being dental hygiene. All right, so let's talk about skills. So this is another thing that that really makes you apprehensive about leaving dental hygiene, is because you have to get some new school, uh, some new schools, some new skills. Um, but you don't really have to start over per se. Yes, some careers or some alternative careers to dental hygiene, you are gonna have to start over. But with myofunctional therapy, you do not need to start over. You already have more transferable skills than you even realize, okay? What you do need is direction, you need support. And you need to have a willingness to be a beginner on purpose, okay? That's the biggest thing, is you have to be willing to do that. Now, you guys need to trust me on this. I went to graduate school and got an MBA, thinking that going back to school was the answer. Turns out that the answer was right under my nose. And it had been since 2004, when I kept listening to fear and kept saying, Oh, I need things, I need a paycheck. I spent all this time going to school, which was true. Okay, in 2004, I was very early on in my hygiene career. I needed some money, but I didn't need to do it for 16 years. I can tell you that. I wasted 16 years of my life when I could have been happier, a whole hell of a lot wealthier, and I could have been free years before. I know that you guys have heard me say this. It is at first, it felt like it was about the money, and now it is about the absolute freedom. The freedom to control my calendar, the freedom to work from anywhere or decide if and when I'm working. Um just freedom overall, freedom from a job, freedom from building somebody else's dream. That that to me is the ultimate thing. Okay, but a caveat. You don't have to, like I said, you don't have to go back to school. Obviously, you have to get trained, okay. Um, you you have to get the skills. And guess what? Hello, I can help you with that. Um, if you want to be CEO of your of a life that you are bonkers about, you need to have skills in six areas. Okay. So, yes, you need your my, well, I guess seven areas, okay, because you need your core um myofunctional therapy skills. But as many of you are learning, you're taking some other, um, you're taking some other course which doesn't teach you the other skills that you need to have that business, or they teach you very, very minimum. Okay. Having your myofunctional therapy, your your clinical foundational skills are so important. But my friend, you need to have skills in six areas, like setting your prices and creating an irresistible offer so that you can do marketing, so that you can do sales, so that you know the operations of your company, so that you can have great client success and um and have fulfillment, okay? And also the CEO responsibilities. So those are six other areas. Seven if you include your myofunctional therapy training skills, um, the foundational things. So you have to, like I said, you need direction, you need support. Okay. I could get off on a whole tangent with those skills, but we'll save that for another conversation. The next step, my friend, is a responsibility shift. The the loving truth is that clarity doesn't come before you invest. Okay. Um, now clarity may come with you saying, hey, I'm miserable and I don't want to take up smoking as a pastime. Um, but clarity doesn't come before investment, okay? Confidence doesn't come before taking action. If you keep waiting for whatever your reason is, okay, till you're less busy, till you're less whatever, you're gonna stay stuck exactly where you are because life is gonna keep lifing, my friend. You wanna learn how to build this parallel skill alongside you while you are busy, okay? Um, and at some point you have to decide that staying stuck is more expensive than trying to do something else. So before we land this plane, I do want to tell you real quick about um the January workshop. So a lot of you guys are trying, you have this goal of building a profitable myofunctional therapy business, but if you don't have time, you have a problem. Okay. And I am not talking someday time, I mean real usable white space, time where you're not exhausted, rushing, or trying to build something in the margins of your life. Uh, the first step towards building a business is about creating white space on purpose. Okay, white space being free time. So the question that I get asked all the time from many of my students is oh, okay, I get that, but how do I do it? And thank you for asking, because in January, our workshop is going to be all about how to realistically create time, how to protect it, um, how to use it to start building something different without quitting your job, without blowing up your life. Okay. So if listening right now has you thinking like, hey, I do want out, or I at least want to understand my options or to work on planning my dental hygiene exit, right? The Facebook group is where you want to be. So wherever you are listening to this, you will find information to join the profitable myofunctional therapist Facebook community. All right, guys. So there you have it. If this episode stirred something in you, if you know something needs to change, but you are not sure where to start, this is exactly why I offer get unstuck calls. So if you're a dental hygienist or a trained myofunctional therapist, who knows that you cannot keep doing things the way that they are, but you don't want to blow up your life, you don't want to make a panic move, um, book this call with me. We are gonna zero in on one specific thing that's keeping you stuck. We're gonna map a simple uh a simple path forward and identify a few tactical steps that you can actually put to use. Okay. And then of course, if it makes sense, we'll talk about how my programs or my private coaching, anything like that could support you because, my friend, clarity without action doesn't change much, does it? So that is all I have for you today, my friend. Until next time, go build a life you're bonkers about, and I will be back soon to teach you how to start, grow, and simplify your myofunctional therapy business. I hope you loved today's episode, friend. I pray that it lifted you up, motivated you, and taught you something. If so, would you stop right now and go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review? And lastly, make sure you've joined the profitable myofunctional therapy. Facebook community. Links to all the goodies can be found wherever you're listening to this podcast. That's it for now. Cheering you on, my friend, and we'll chat soon.