Most dentists got into this for the lifestyle; the freedom, the autonomy, the life only ownership can buy. Most of them aren't living it. The practice that was supposed to set them free runs them instead.
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If working harder were the answer, the hardest working people you know would be the wealthiest people you know.
Have a look around. They're not.
Two docs, twenty years apart, both highly skilled, both producing well. One is trapped and breaking down. The other cut his chair time by eighty percent and kept every dollar.
The difference wasn't skill. It never is.
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A couple of months ago, I was speaking at a big industry event, which I do from time to time. And as I came off the stage and walked down and went into the kinda hallways that everybody does at a standard dental conference, I was approached by a particular gentleman that I recognized by his name tag. We've had some interaction off and on over the years, but very little of really knowing each other. The interaction's always been kind of digital. Uh, received messages from him time to time, and I responded where and how I could to try to alleviate many burdens of his. And he brought his wife over to meet me, and we had a most interesting conversation. What I wanna share with you next, I have to add the disclaimer that absolutely nothing of what I am about to say is in any way a judgment, but it is an observation and an assessment. To hit pause for a second, I think it's worth asking ourselves from time to time. Maybe you have an answer for this. It's something I ask routinely wherever it's appropriate or I get the chance. The question: how do you define mastery? How do you define mastery? Dental school, of course, has strong influences on everybody, not the least of which are the professors, some of whom inspire and some browbeat. Some really invite us to step up to a different version of ourselves, and others really just make us feel crappy about the current level of our skills or what have you. But It's been my experience that very few people carry around in their mind a clear definition of mastery. I reference dental school because you would have seen it or you would have seen those who claim it. But even still, there's no working definition by which we could say they are great. Mastery, this person has mastered this particular process, this skill, this treatment, whatever the case might be. What is your working definition of mastery? It seems strange to me that we wouldn't have one, yet simultaneously claim or believe or assume that we are definitely on the road to or committed to mastery. How will we know? I'll give you mine. Mastery is the ability to produce the same or better results in less time. In less time. Mastery is the ability to create the same or better results in less time Let's look at this as a filter and come back to what I'll call Dr. Benjamin that came up to me at this conference with his wife. Sweet gentleman who was explaining to me the nature of his practice and his journey. He's been actively practicing in the chair for 22 years, in his own practice now for 20 of those 22 years. He, uh, very much enjoys his work, definitely a clinical geek, but is currently working four and a half days a week. His production is obviously providing well for his family. As I say, he enjoys the clinical work, but immediately started speaking about and kind of lamenting how he's trapped inside this role. This only happens all the time. He's trapped. He doesn't have an associate. He has not built out the infrastructure to change it and to onboard and ascend an associate, so he is trapped. He has definitely built something of a gilded prison for himself. But what's particularly striking is that Dr. Benjamin, by his own description, has been now for twenty-two years, twenty of them inside his own practice, producing pretty much, with some minor inflation-adjusted change, the same results for about eighteen of those twenty-two years. He points right away to the fact that this affords him and his family a great lifestyle, which I don't doubt. It's wonderful. But then there's a pause where he delivers that he's breaking down, unsurprisingly. His hands, his neck, his fatigue. He's running out of enthusiasm for the same work. My question is, using this framework of mastery, this description or definition of it, could we say that Dr. Benjamin is on the road to mastery? Is he on the road to mastery? By his own numbers, inputs and outcomes, he is not. He is not. Is this a tragedy? No. But is it something that is sustainable for him? Absolutely no. And that's what he spent all his time lamenting. One of the things that happened next is something that happens so commonly it makes me sad every time it does. His wife turned to me and said, "I just wish that he would work less." And I said to her, "How long have you wanted that to be true?" And she said, "Definitely the last ten years." I asked her to say more about that. What did she do? Well, what any nurturing mother would do. Point to the amount of time that this has taken away from him being with his kids. Those kids are now grown up and just going into college, and that window has closed, and he is actively paying the price for not working on mastery Had he have spent five of those last 18 years of producing the same results with the same price, he would be significantly further along, and he would be able to, again, creating the same results in less time, provide the same benefits and resources to his family at a reduced time cost. Which is to say that this input versus outcome formula that everybody assumes is the only way to success, you've just got to work harder, you've got to read more books. If that were true, the hardest working people you know would be the wealthiest. The most intelligent people would be the wealthiest that you know, and the most intelligent and wealthiest people you know would be the hardest workers I do not judge Dr. Benjamin, but I do feel sadness for him. He just didn't know. What he didn't know is not just that he was working without a framework to measure his personal success outside of dollars in the bank. By the way, that's an outcome that is very much downstream of the journey to mastery. It is a l-lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. What is a leading indicator is time. He could have measured his relative production starting immediately. So it's not just that this is somebody that is feeling the burden of the absence of mastery, but it is as importantly somebody that is working inside of a broken model. A broken model. You can have the most sophisticated skill set on the planet, but you try to deploy those through a broken model, and your skill set will amount to far less than it otherwise could have. Just like we can have the most capable people on our team but fail to build an incentive system structured around them to produce the outcome of their brilliance, and their capabilities mean nothing What Dr. Benjamin needed some time ago, though it's not too late, is a model redesign that assured mastery ahead. As much as he has lost eighteen of the last twenty years, by his measure, not my own, he can cover a hell of a lot of ground in just the next two. How do I know? Because I have seen the same in a client of mine and myself many times in many iterations and my own docs that work for me and have over the years. We'll call him Dr. Pedro. Dr. Pedro came to me as an incredibly high-level post GPR clinician, super functional, high clinical outcomes, great standards, very efficient, working in his one practice five days a week and Saturdays in his CEO time, as he referred to it. Effectively six days a week. He needed a model upgrade. What he had fallen into is something called the paradox of merit, where he was doing the thing that most immediately and measurably rewarded him. The most dangerous part is most immediately. Coming out of dental school, he was burdened with debt and put his axe to the grindstone, trying to produce as much as he could. And of course, next thing you know, he's turning out great numbers and really great numbers. Somebody with a high level of clinical skills, great social affability, a good team around him, but not a model that was built for him to improve his mastery. What's he gonna do? Produce more income in those five days, or maybe start dialing back the time and producing the same income? You can see there's a couple of ways that we can cut this to get back on the path of mastery. Within ten months of Dr. Pedro and I working together, his entire life had changed. I give him all the credit, make no mistake. Ideas, mentorship mean nothing in the hands of somebody that is not an aggressive deployer of them Dr. Pedro gets things done. Ten months later, he was working in the chair one day a week, owned two practices, and his income was exactly the same. Now, an untrained eye would say, "How did that improve his life? His income didn't increase." You're paying attention to the wrong end of the horse. You're paying attention to the P and not the L. You're paying attention to the assets and not the liabilities. It was the time savings that radically changed his life. Of course, if we do the math, it's not very difficult. By cutting back from five days in the chair to one and his income staying the same, not to mention leveraged amongst two practices now instead of just one, Dr. Pedro's effective income had grown four hundred percent. This is mastery. Dr. Pedro has achieved in the space of just these ten months of example, a completely different level of mastery. The tragedy is for Dr. Benjamin, who is eighteen, twenty years now his senior, but has the kind of life that Dr. Pedro was smart enough to completely engineer around. He didn't want that. He wanted time, and he wanted mastery and all of the privileges and benefits that it gives. So what can you do about this? Why do I share a tale of two docs, Dr. Benjamin meets Dr. Pedro? Because you can notice right away, or at least I would hope that you would notice the very first place to start, which is to measure Not assume, but actually do the math to measure your level of progress or regress toward mastery. Here's a simple exercise. Look back at your clinical work, your professional work if you're a practice owner, or clinical work if you're an associate. Look back two years and ask yourself this question. Number one, what was the gross household income I was generating for myself exactly two years ago? The second question is, how many hours per week, legitimately, how many hours in total? If you were doing notes on the weekends or calling patients back at night, that has to be factored in. There's no point cheating here. You're, you're, you're cheating yourself. Fast-forward to today, run the same audit. What is the gross household income that you have produced for your family in the last twelve months? And what is the true and total accurate, brutally accurate time cost for doing so on a weekly basis? You'll know right away whether or not you're on the path to mastery. One of two things will emerge. One is you could feel great about it. You could look back at the last couple years and say, "Man, I'm actually trending. Two years ago, it was taking me 35 hours of full work to generate this income. Now here I am doing the same in 25 hours or doing better in 25 hours." If that is you, congratulations. For you, I have just one question: Does your model support a replication of the same outcome, the same growth going forward? Every model has its limits. I'm advocating for you to get in front of it now instead of, as Dr. Benjamin has, 18 years too late. Again, the question for you, if you feel good about your results and the progress you've made as measured by the price you pay, time of its production, beautiful. Does the model support the same or better going forward? the other outcome is the math is brutal. It doesn't give you what you wanted to see. The math shows you that in fact you are paying the same or bigger price for the same or less results. This is exactly where Dr. Benjamin found himself in his conversation with me. If this is you, if you are looking at the ugly cold truth of this mathematical reality, then I have two questions for you. Number one is who else is paying a price for this lack of mastery? Who else in your life is paying a price for this? Question number two: How much longer are you going to allow yourself to stay exactly where you're at? I want you to know I have no judgment here, just as I have no judgment for Dr. Benjamin. I have only his sadness that I felt in that moment, the disappointment that his wife has carried, the experiences his kids will never have had But I do have something for you, which is advocacy, encouragement. Do the math. Reassess your model. Upgrade everything for everybody you care about There is still hope for Dr. Benjamin, but his hope will begin with the level of honesty that he brings to this personal audit of the results that he's creating and the time it is costing him. It starts there, and you can do that right away
Speaker
That's it for this episode. Thanks for being here. Hey, there's only two things that you have in your life, your time and your attention. That you've given both to me for these few minutes of today means
