Episode 178 – The Study Habits of Productive Dentists

“If I were to go back to school to get my MBA to run my practice better, the cost of opportunity would be in the millions.” ~Dr. Chad Johnson

In this episode of Everyday Practices Podcast, co-hosts Dr. Chad Johnson and Regan Robertson introduce a brand new subseries in which they will dive into the world’s leading business books and share summaries of the valuable lessons you can apply to your dental practice. The aim is to help productive dentists improve their management systems and maximize their time efficiently, while also exploring various professional and personal topics.

This all began with Dr. Chad’s simple desire to learn more about management systems, but as he looked at the overwhelming cost of earning an MBA, he decided to take a different approach and turn to business books on topics he wanted to learn more about. Together with Regan, Dr. Chad will share the top three takeaways from each book, discuss the points each author is trying to make, and provide insights on how to apply these business tips to your own dental practice. 

Asynchronous learning is key, as we encourage everyone involved to participate and engage no matter what your schedule looks like. Will you be expected to reach each book to enjoy this podcast? Absolutely not! You can certainly read along if you like, or you can simply listen to our summaries and gain valuable knowledge that you can apply to your practice the same day. We are so excited to explore the world of business literature and help you build a successful practice that leaves a lasting legacy. As you listen to this episode, we want you to think about:

• What are your priorities in your practice, what do you want to focus on to improve the business side of your practice?
• How can you maximize your time and resources better?
• What are you looking forward to learning from leading business books?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Regan 0:00
Hi, Dr. Regan, Robertson, CCO of Productive Dentist Academy here and I have a question for you. Are you finding it hard to get your team aligned to your vision, but you know, you deserve growth just like everybody else. That’s why we’ve created the PDA productivity workshop. For nearly 20 years PDA workshops have helped dentists just like you align their teams, get control of scheduling, and create productive practices that they love walking into every day. Just imagine how you will feel when you know your schedule is productive, Your systems are humming, and your team is aligned to your vision. It’s simple, but it’s not necessarily easy. We can help visit productivedentist.com/workshop that’s productivedentist.com/workshop to secure your seats.

Regan 00:50
Now anybody can apply these study habits, right? It can be done with a little bit of discipline and intention, and I know you and I were talking about the last IGP Summit, which is Investment Grade Practices Summit, for those of you that don’t know, productive dentists attended, and we were just in like a round table and somebody mentioned a TV show and another doctor said, “Oh my gosh, I don’t, I don’t watch TV, who has time for TV?” and I realized that everybody at that table that was productive, chose to use their time and apply it differently. Welcome to the Everyday Practices Podcast. I’m Regan Robertson, and my co-host Dr. Chad Johnson and I are on a mission to share the stories of everyday dentists who generate extraordinary results using practical proven methods you can take right into your own dental practice. If you’re ready to elevate patient care and produce results that are anything but ordinary. Buckle up and listen in.

Regan 1:50
Welcome to Everyday Practices Dental podcast. I am your host Regan Robertson here with my trustworthy, loyal, smart, amazing co-host Dr. Chad Johnson. Dr. Chad, how’re you doing today?

Dr. Chad Johnson 2:01
But you forgot to say good-looking. I was you know,

Regan 2:07
Dashing.

Dr. Chad Johnson 2:08
Dashing, fair enough, I’m neither.

Regan 2:10
Devilishly handsome. I don’t know, what does, what does Sarah say?

Dr. Chad Johnson 2:17
She says, “Get over yourself.” Well, welcome, everyone. I’m glad you guys could join us today. So Reagan and I have been prepping for this podcast because I originally had an issue where I was trying to figure out, okay, if I were to go to school and get an MBA in learning how to run my business, you know, like, what would that look like? And so I was, I went on to maybe 15 or 20 different MBA programs and was figuring out okay, how much does it cost? And if you remember Regan at the time, it was Chris Moriarity finishing up his MBA program, and I was like maybe motivated, maybe you know, start an MBA program with that.

Regan 3:01
So wait, so what was the year that you started looking at MBA, 2016?

Dr. Chad Johnson 3:08
I don’t think yeah, it might have been 18, let’s say. Yeah, maybe 18 Going into 19, some,somewhere around there, and, and so I was talking with Victoria about it, and I said, “You know, I think I want to do an MBA program.” Victoria just said, “Well, then why don’t you just get the books that you want to learn what you want to learn and not take the MBA, like, you know, you, you I’ve already run a business at that time for 15 years. Why do you need that?” So I, I paused and was like, “You’re, You’re right, Victoria, you know, like, that’s exactly what I should do,” because when I was looking at the opportunity costs, I was thinking, “Okay, if this takes me a couple 1000 hours to get done over the next few years, and if my production per hour is 1500 an hour, and I multiply that out and stuff, and I’m just like, okay, so this is going to be like, a $3 million cost to do.” So, you know, and not just the cost to be in the program, but the opportunity cost, and so I was like, man, you know, I don’t want to pay for an MBA when maybe because I don’t need those letters behind my name. I need the information, right, right? So my solution, you know, came out to be that I was just like, why don’t I you know, get the books on the subjects that I wanted to so I started looking into that.

Regan 4:33
So I want to back up one second. So you decided you wanted to get the MBA because you wanted to, you wanted to apply it to run your business more profitably or like your entrepreneurial lifestyle, like you were, you were all of it, going to use it to maybe see about alternative revenue sources, like what was the big goal with the MBA?

Dr. Chad Johnson 4:51
Yeah, all of it. I think I was just like, you know, let’s, let’s maximize. There have to be inefficiencies that I do not see. So how do we, how do we improve upon this? I mean, you know, I see a bunch of people running their own businesses, not just dentists, but you know, people running their business, and it’s, you know, we all have opinions about how they do their business and it’s like, man, if they did it, right, they do X and Y, and Z, but the fact is, it’s just like, I’m sure I’ve have blind spots that I have to like, if someone that actually ran a business, well came in and said, “You know, how you could actually do this, well, is this and that.” That’s what I want to know. So yeah, so that’s when I ran across audible, and it was just like, you know, it afforded me to be able to listen to books quicker than I would get my eyeballs on the page.

Regan 5:39
Well, I’m excited to dive into this subject with you more, because our topic is productive, the habits, the study habits of productive dentists and I have long been very interested, especially listeners. Last week, when we recorded, Chad greeted me with a welcome message in Italian and I said, “Yes, and Italian, but you know, for other languages, and you casually mentioned, “Oh, yeah, I’m learning Italian now,” and that gave me great pause because I was just talking with my own children and being like, “We need to learn Italian, we should learn another language.” We don’t, we’re only, we’re what’s the word mono-angular mono?

Dr. Chad Johnson 6:16
Monoglots.

Regan 6:19
Yeah, and then you went ahead and already started it and you were already using it. So you blew my mind with that. So I’m highly excited about the following season of podcast episodes that we’re going to pepper in that we’re going to talk about the 20 books that you’ve digested and your study habits along the way, because I think, I think you’re a genius, but really, anybody can apply these study habits, right? It can be done with a little bit of discipline and intention, and I know you and I were talking about the last IGP Summit, which is Investment Grade Practices Summit. For those of you that don’t know, productive dentists attended, and we were just in like a roundtable and somebody mentioned a TV show, and another doctor said, “Oh, my gosh, I don’t I don’t watch TV, who has time for TV?” And I realized that everybody at that table that was productive, chose to use their time and apply it differently. So we all have those same 24 hours in an allotted time, but what are you doing Chad that’s different and then and then I’d love for you to give the Cliff Notes, I think for the books that you recommend that you’ve learned from and where people can kind of, you know, not cut corners, but just be efficient with their studying.

Dr. Chad Johnson 7:26
Yeah, I’ll give kind of a synopsis for the first part. So the 20 books that I want to have us go over so that way you guys can know basically the three main points and the take-home message and stuff like that. So I’ll list them off here, ‘Talent is Overrated’ by Geoffrey Colvin, ‘The Obstacle Is The Way’ by Ryan Ryan Holiday, ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ by Timothy Galloway, ‘The Four Hour Workweek’ by Timothy Ferriss, The Hard Thing About Hard Things’ by Ben Horowitz, ‘Shoe Dog’ by Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, ‘Margin’ by Dr. Richard Swenson, MD, all these you can find on Audible. ‘Everyday Millionaires’ by Chris Hogan, ‘Profit First’ by Mike Michalowicz, obviously you know is a guest on our show, ‘The Compound Effect’ by Darren Hardy, ‘Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go’ by Beverly I.K and Julie Winkle Giulini Gio, Gio Leon Jolie, on Boy, that’s a tough one.

Regan 8:35
Giulini.

Dr. Chad Johnson 8:37
‘Checklist Manifesto’ by Atul Gawande, ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman, ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins, ‘Extreme Ownership’ and ‘The Dichotomy of Leadership’, two books by Jocko Willing and Lee Fabian, ‘Traction’ by Gina Whitman and Tom Bower, ‘Rocket Fuel’ by Gina Whitman and Mark winners, ‘The Four Disciplines of Execution’, which is a contrast to traction and rocket fuel, ‘The Four Disciplines of Execution by Chris Chris Mack checks, sorry, by Chris McChesney et al, and ‘Titans of Dentistry” by doctors, David Maloney and Justin short, and lastly, you’ve heard me talk about it probably 10 times on this podcast over the last couple 100 episodes, Jordan Belfort ‘The Way of The Wolf’. So those are the 20 books, and probably by the time we get done with those, I might have another five more, 10 more, who knows. Those are, those are all business folks focused. Those aren’t even my favorite books per see, like, you know, I have other books that were fascinating, but they’re not quite business related. So we’ll keep this to how this can improve your business, but the first part of your question, or should I say the first question was, was what again? Because you asked the second part, you know, which look sorry, they and then maybe the first one was how did you get into these are like?

Regan 10:06
Well, it’s so it goes back to the topic of the MBA. So Victoria Peterson recommended, why don’t you just study what you want to study? So to me, in my mind, the assumption is that you said, “Okay,” and you went out and you sought out these books. So you sought out publications. In other words, you decided not to take Coursera courses or enroll in college and go the MBA route. So instead, you decided to grab these business books and then start to implement them and insight is one step of the puzzle, and applying them are another step of the puzzle. So what did you just Google best business books? Did you look at your mentors and ask them what business books like? How did you, using your engineering mindset, how did you say, “Okay, I don’t want to go and commit the time to get the MBA and spend the money, but I will do this? And then how did you make that list up?

Dr. Chad Johnson 10:54
So actually, she had recommended that I check out and she being Victoria Peterson, had recommended that I check out the DEO group. So the Dentist Entrepreneurial

Regan 11:09
Organization,

Dr. Chad Johnson 11:11
Organization, yeah and so I checked that out, and I was kind of on their email drip campaign, and they were saying, “Hey, here’s a list of 100 books,” and so honestly, like, this is more 50 books, maybe this is more condensed because again, this is Chad’s favorite. I’m gonna, I guess refer to myself in third person now, but it’s, you know, my favorite 20 out of those and furthermore, I’m going to go through if even if you don’t want to do the audible of it, the take-home message, and we’ll talk about some of the business principles, because some of these, it’s stuff you’ve talked about before, right? There’s nothing where it’s just like, why, you know, one might, you know, for example, be you know, like, wake up and, and, and, you know, reflect on your day and stuff like that. It’s just like, it’s nothing that’s going to be like what, I’ve never heard of such a thing, but having it in concise format will hopefully be advantageous for the listeners.

Regan 12:10
So as we as we go over this list, over the upcoming months, yeah, and if I’m listening here along with you, I am listening because listeners, I am going to be going through this with you. So I will be reading and absorbing. What’s the prereq for us? Like? How can we know what’s the study guide for us? How can we get the most out of the books that you’re going to kick us off with like one, what’s the first book that we’re going to cover, and then and then two my assumption is you’ve got some tangible application, so these books were not just used as insight for you, but you were actually able to apply the things taught within these books into your own life.

Dr. Chad Johnson 12:51
So recently, I gave a presentation where I had to get concise with this. So the good news is, I won’t just be coming up with this off the top of my head, it will be prepared and ready. It’ll be chatted as at its finest, again, referring to myself in third person, but I’ve got in essence, seven different book categories that I like, bouncing back and forth because if you did all of one category, man, your bright brain is going to be fried after a while, right. So it’s kind of nice to be able to do something light and then do something heavy, and then do like some heavy, maybe someone else loves just going heavy, heavy, heavy, more power to you, but I’m going to, what we’re going to do is we’re going to, you know, at the end of each podcast, I’ll say what our next book that we’re going to cover is and the first book just to give it away that we’re going to be going over is ‘Talent Is Overrated’ by Geffrey with a G, Jeffrey Colvin, C O L V I N, and so we’ll have that listed and what not, but ‘Talent Is Overrated’ will be our first book, and yeah, I’ll have some, some general takeaways, my favorite point of the book and then at the end of it, you know, I’ll just say okay, and then the second book, which I already listed at the beginning of the of this podcast is ‘The Obstacle Is The Way’ by Rob Ryan Holiday, which is basically a stoicism, you know, reintroduced. So yeah, I’ll just say there’s a, do you have to read these? No, I hope to actually make it tangible enough that someone could just say, I’m not I don’t even have time for, to do that, but if you did, you know, you could listen to it, you know, 1.5 speed a lot of times I actually listened to these at 1.8 speed. I think that goes back to one of your questions like what are your habits for that? And in a roundabout way, I’m letting you know, you know, another thing that I was showing you Regan before we hit record, was the idea that you know, your books make up who you want to become and who you are becoming you know. They become, those authors in essence, become friends of yours that they are teaching you how to think and they’re remoulding how you think and stuff like that. So I’ve, I found that to be really cool to also another thing on what if you’re listening on Audible, there’s a little button that you can hit to snip a certain section, and then you can write a little note, even if it’s a key word and so you don’t have to just listen and just be like, “Well, I wish I could remember that,” but you can’t highlight. It’s like you can you can do a little snip and, and then type in the keyword. Sometimes I’ll even just write a great quote, and so that way later, when I’m like, where’s that great quote, in that book? You know, it’s like, there it is, you know, so

Regan 15:32
That is really cool, I did not know you could do that with Audible.

Dr. Chad Johnson 15:35
Yeah. So yeah, we’re gonna start with ‘Talent Is Overrated’, and we’ll talk about, in essence, the top three points that I have from the book, and, and then, you know, I suppose just kind of have a dialogue about it, and I even just thought, you know, ‘Talent is Overrated’ was kind of a book that I should, you know, probably read even a couple times, because it was just so like, in order to fully grasp it, like it was just, it was heavy, to really get the small concepts, but at the same time, like, there’s, there’s three main points, and we’ll just kind of go over some of that stuff. And I mean, for example, just, you know, to broach the subject, the lesson number three, out of the three lessons, you know, I’m just giving it away, you know, because whatever, you can let your inner drive develop over time by forcing yourself to practice. There you go, there you have it, it’s simple, you can let your inner drive develop over time by forcing yourself to practice. So we’ll talk about that, and, you know, it’s these, are secondhand thoughts, because I’m not Jeffrey Colvin. So, you know, I’ll basically be talking about his points in the book, and we’ll just go through some books and talk about business concepts, to in essence, help you get a Cliff’s Notes version of an MBA ,to getting you closer to developing the business acumen that you hope to get.

Regan 17:08
How many books, when you were on this journey of consuming all of this great knowledge, how many books a month for your reading?

Dr. Chad Johnson 17:18
Um, well, now I do one a week, like a book a week, and so you know, like, so I’ll do 50 In a year. I suppose I could do more, maybe, but like, you know, I have other stuff in life too, so I just do one a week,

Regan 17:35
Like you said, I like to ruminate, which I love that I’m going to take that I could, I could go over Donald Miller’s elements, and I see a lot like our doctors that come to productivity workshops, multiple times, they say, “Each time you visit it, you get something different from it, and you’re able to apply it on a deeper level.” That’s exactly how I feel, so I am always ruminating and going back and going back to the same book or the same, you know, area of teaching so that I can get something, see it a different way, get something a little bit deeper from it, and reapply it. So I think it’s, I can see the going through a book a week, where I have a struggle with which will be really fun to go through with you here like kind of in real time, is applying that knowledge. So making sure that it sinks in. So I’m gonna go through ‘Talent is Overrated’, put it on my audible, make sure that I can read it like physically as I’m going through it. So it sticks in, and then finding out how much I’m actually able to apply. So if I’m going for those in a month, I don’t know if my brain could actually apply as much as I’m learning. So it’s going to be really exciting to see because I might be able to apply way more than I realized, and I think that would be quite earth-shattering in and of itself, and would really highlight a limiting belief, a belief, a limiting assumption on my part, there you go, you know,

Dr. Chad Johnson 18:53
I think actually, by me, going through these with you, that in and of itself will help us marinate and ruminate more on it, because my trouble has been, as I’m reading these books, and not really having a book club of anyone to talk to about it. You know, like, then are you really, you know, challenging yourself to all the thoughts from different angles, but it’ll allow for us when as I’m going back through this to actually contemplate more on, “Okay, so now, I’ve got application steps, but what do I do with those, or how have I applied those?” I think those will actually be challenging me to be like, “You know what, I’m not sure I have, I mean, maybe I have it on some of these.”

Regan 19:36
I just was listening to a presentation this morning, and it was they were talking about different issues on basically changing behaviors and one of the issues was you’re able to see the insight, but you fail to create the muscle memory necessary to make the change stick and I thought it was such a crystal clear way to communicate. Seeing is one thing, doing is another or theory is one thing and application is another, and so I think it’s going to be, I’m really looking forward to this, it’s going to be exciting. So, okay, so study habits for us, one, listeners, you don’t need to read these books, this whole series is going to be designed to give you the top three takeaways. And then if

Dr. Chad Johnson 20:18
And if you do ever read them, then you could go back and reference this, you know, to, in essence, be part of our Asynchronous Study Club. That was a word of, vocab word that I used during MBA was, you know, like, so do I have to get on at 6pm when I’ve got soccer practice for my girls? And, and it was like, “No, some programs are asynchronous, meaning you could get on at 1am or 1pm, or whenever you want,” and it’s like, “Oh, yeah, asynchronous? That’s cool.” I don’t know. So this will be asynchronous learning for everyone, you know, involved. Well, listeners, I’m excited to go with you and obviously, Regan is to, we’re going to start the next time. No, we’re gonna have other topics. So this isn’t going to be just 20 weeks in a row. It’s going to be a sub-series of discussions that we’re going to sprinkle in over the next who knows, year or two years. It might take a while for us to get through these, and then we’ll go maybe through some of my fun books just for fun. I don’t know. Regan was asking autobiography. Yeah, Dolly Parton’s autobiography is one of them. Green lights, green light, or whatever it is by Matthew McConaughey. fascinating book, and those are great light reads in between. So if anyone’s actually interested, I mean, come on, you can find your own, but I’ll give you some of my fun. You know, like, easy reading books after I’ve done a heavy book. You know, some of the heavy books that I do Regan are actually not business books. They’re the spiritual books, they’re the political, you know, but then after you get done with that, sometimes it’s like, “Man, I, I might just read an economics book, you know on Audible for my light one after that, you know, the gravity of the matter.” Yeah.

Regan 21:58
You are a nerd, you read Economics for fun?

Dr. Chad Johnson 22:01
Well, there are some that are actually, you know, fascinating. You know, so yeah, I know on the onset, that sounds ridiculous but um, yeah, there are some. It’s Thomas Sowell, S O W E L L. He’s an economist, and he’s really fascinating to read because he is quite a contrarian, and so yeah, for entertainment, I’ve actually been on you know, two or four-hour bike rides and listening to a whole Thomas Sowell book because he’s just fascinating to listen to. So just, yeah, I know that has to sound stupid, but it indeed can be light reading, especially after a heavy.

Regan 22:39
I love it. I’m just teasing you that you mentioned that on tape. You listened to great expectations. I was laughing in my head because I remember at the time I had a Nissan Sentra, and I had on tape Dean Koontz. So you were listening to ‘Great expect, Expectations’, I was Dean Koontz’s ‘Seize The Night’ and I remember it was just like transformative to me but it was like a six cassette tape set for having to yeah, and it was it was not a CD it was before the CD. So I had to put the cassette tape in.

Dr. Chad Johnson 23:12
Dean Koontz

Regan 23:12
Seize the night.

Dr. Chad Johnson 23:13
Odd Thomas? Oh, yeah, watchers and the eyes of darkness. Dawn playing. Well, thanks, everyone, for being good listeners, this is kind of an introductory to our stuff but hopefully, there were a couple of good nuggets to get out of this. I mean, one is just seriously download audible, and if I were to challenge you enough, hopefully half of you are, you know, making enough that you can, you know, afford a subscription to upgrade it to, you know, like X amount of books per month or year or week or whatever, and stuff like that, but there are also free options, you know, some libraries have free downloadable books and whatnot. So you can do that. Something else that I’ve done was when I don’t understand a book, and it’s mostly like, in the genre of what I you know, broadly called classics, you know, so there’s different subcategories of classics, but I’ll, I’ll go on to YouTube and look up basically a 10 minute or five-minute synopsis of the book, because I’ll be like, “Did I understand that, right?” Like, I seem to have a trouble with fiction, you know, like, I’m like, grasping the like, I’m like, “Am I getting the themes here? Am I understanding the character development and like what’s going on?” Because I just, I don’t I don’t know I’m a poor reader in that kind of subject matter, and so I’ll go on and I’ll watch a YouTube video and I’ll be like, “No, I think I understood is just that I thought there was something more to it than that or, or oh, something more is going on.” So yeah, that’s another little hack that you can do is go on to YouTube and honestly watch a book review on blank or blank or whatever. So ‘Talent Is Overrated’ as book number one. Let’s do it.

Regan 24:57
Thank you for listening to another episode of Everyday Practise Podcast. Chad and I are here every week. Thanks to our community of listeners just like you, and we’d love your help. It would mean the world if you can help spread the word by sharing this episode with a fellow dentist, and leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Do you have an extraordinary story you’d like to share? Or feedback on how we can make this podcast even more awesome? Drop us an email at podcast@productivedentist.com and don’t forget to check out our other podcasts from Productive Dentist Academy at productivedentist.com/podcasts See you next week.