Episode 108 – Mentoring in Dentistry

I had the great opportunity recently to sit down with my nephew and a friend of his who are in dental school. They just really blew me away with their questions and interest in the business of dentistry. You know, when I was teaching at Baylor University, I was sharing all these practice management tips and I would have maybe three or four students come up to me with questions about business afterwards. The rest seemed uninterested. 

But that doesn’t appear to be the case with this new crop of students coming through the dental schools; they seem to have a totally different thought process about business. They’re hungry for it. And, in my opinion, we as experienced dentists and business owners have a great opportunity to mentor these younger dentists.

You know, in dentistry we tend to think of ourselves as on our own little islands or in our own silos, but the reality is the more information these younger dentists can get, the more set up for success they are. And I think we have a calling to help set other dentists up to be successful. So today, I want to talk more about mentoring in dentistry, including:

• Sharing the mindset of an independent business owner
• A mindset of abundance
• What you as the mentor gain from a mentoring relationship

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with The Productive Dentist Podcast. And today we’re going to start episode number 108. I had the great opportunity this past weekend to have my my nephew who’s actually in dental school, and is just starting clinic, junior year, and just had so much fun just sitting and talking. And he had one of his friends up with him too. That’s another Junior in school with him. And just kind of getting, you know, it’s been 41 years since I was in dental school, but to see the excitement and to see kind of the the questions that they were asking, and the things that that they were interested in, they’ve started several different groups. And I’ve had the fortunate the fortunate opportunity to go down and lecture to the students down there. But they’re forming a business group across the country with dental schools, and they’re trying to expand and grow that. And I thought, Wow, that’s amazing.

When I was teaching at Baylor several years ago, 20 years ago, I remember I’m sharing all these practice management tips and in all those things that are really, really going to be important when they get out and potentially set up their own practice. And I would have three or four of the dogs come up afterwards and ask questions and the rest of the class seem to not really be interested that much in business, they were just hoping that, oh, if I could just pass my board gene, am I you know, and I remember those days, you know, if I can just pass my national boards, and then if I just need to pass my state boards, and there are things that are obviously very important, you have to check the boxes to get out. But these these kids seem to have just a totally different thought process.

And that brings me to something that I think is critical in in our opportunity to help other dentists. And I know we’re kind of in our own little silos or in our own little worlds. But what a great opportunity to mentor. And that’s really what I wanted to talk about today is is mentoring, you know, younger dentists, I think I was telling them, you know, I’ve never worried about competition. I’ve never worried about somebody coming down the street. I remember years ago, when I came here, one of the dentist said, well, there’s, you know, dentistry is really tough here in Granbury. And you really ought to go out to Stanford, Texas, or somewhere out west Texas, that they they really need a dentist and and that’s not where I wanted to practice. I wanted to practice here. And so the help I got was pretty minimal.

I remember a couple of the docks that were in town, I called him up and I said, Hey, would you guys like to do a study club? You know, and I’m a young dentist out of the military for years and, and they said, Oh, we tried that several years ago, and it didn’t work. And I’m thinking to myself, What do you mean, it didn’t work? I mean, you know, if you’re going to have a study club and showcases and work together, I mean, and so I think dentists, we tend to have that. I don’t know, we’re on our own little island. But we would love to have others that we talked to, but mentoring the young dentist right now, I think is critical to the long term success of dentistry. I was concerned they were telling me about the the ADA is student section that goes into all the schools and it’s just totally inundated with DSO dsos, that are telling them how great great it is. It’s supposed to be an education class on Practice Management or whatever. And it turns out to be a sales job from the dsos to come to work there. And that’s our ABA, providing this. You know, it’s an arm of the American Dental Association.

And you know, we’re paying we’re paying for that just doesn’t make sense to me. So I got the really wonderful opportunity to spend probably five or six hours, we just sat around and talked and to realize really what’s going on in the dental schools today. They are really heavily being recruited, you know, by the DSOs. And that’s fine. I mean, I wish I had a DSO, that’s what I’d be doing. But what are the opportunities that we have to mentor, these young dentists? And they started, I started asking about clinical stuff first, and they’re just now getting into the clinic and starting to see patients and I asked a kind of a silly question. Well, it wasn’t a silly question. It was a, I was asking about when you guys are casting your crowns and doing that stuff, you know, because we used to cast our own crowns, wax them, and cast them and do the whole nine yards, well, they don’t really do that anymore.

You know, they don’t have casting wells, they’re not using investment, and investing crowns and casting, they’re scanning stuff and sending it to a laboratory in the labs doing doing that work. Which, that’s cool. I mean, that I would rather than be learning other things that are going to be much more important in their, in their journey in dentistry, than investing in casting a crown. But I look back, and I think, well, at least I did that back in the old days, you know, the wagon train days of dentistry, when it helped me, I guess, have an understanding. Plus, I learned how to make jewelry. So that was good. And but you know, there were just those things that have changed so much in dentistry.

But what really hasn’t changed is the dentists knowledge of business, and how you run your business and how you do those things. And these guys are forming this group nationwide, that really wants to help dentists in their business and start starting in dental school. And so, you know, as a, as a practicing dentist, if you’re practicing dentists, and you know, a dental, dental dental student, or somebody that’s in dental school, or if somebody comes by and says, I’d love to observe your practice, I’d love to watch your practice, please take that opportunity to give back to to dentistry, because I really believe that the future of dentistry really is going to be it’s either going to be driven by DSOs, catching them early in school, or some type of mentoring that dentists can do. amongst themselves, you know, the study club concept and those those different things that we do.

But talking about business, talking about scheduling, with the pay, how do you schedule and I had the, you know, the great opportunity to say, you know, most dentists in the country, they schedule very inefficiently. And he said, Well, they taught us how to do it, you know, they don’t really talk to us much about any of that. They talked to us, you know, and they talked to us about you know, how to do an on lay, or how to do a crown or how to do a felling restoration. But the business class that you had in dental school 40 years ago, which we didn’t have, they still don’t have. And I think it’s almost a game plan swear, if if you don’t understand business, then you’re going to go and you’re going to either struggle drastically when you’re trying to open up your own, like most of us did. Some some learn more than others.

And, or they’re going to go go into a DSL and just try to try to learn that way. And I think dentistry should be much. I think we should have a much better situation, have some type of business training for students when they either in school, and I remember at productive dentist Academy we’ve had, gosh, some of the most successful dentists in the country actually came through productive dentist Academy when they were in dental school. I can name off multiple that ended up with multiple practices, huge offices, huge production.

Just because they understood the business from the get go. And I think a lot of us, I didn’t have that. And when I when I started out, I mean, I’ve told this story before but I mean, I suffered and, you know, after seven years, actually after about three years, I was just really disillusioned with dentistry because, and I was we were doing well I’ve seen new patients and everything else but I just didn’t know how to run run the business. So you know what, I guess what I’m saying is If you get an opportunity to help mentor, a younger dentist, it’s it’s really something that, gosh, I just enjoyed it so much. And I think they were so appreciative of just kind of getting a different perspective, not even a different perspective, but a perspective about business, because they’re really not getting that in dental school.

So help them haven’t come walk through have them. And when I told them is when you have the opportunity, you know, and my nephew, his mom and dad are both dentists. So he’s had a great opportunity to watch business and to learn it. But he’s still wanting to learn more before, you know, as a junior beginning of the junior year, both the guys were just really wanting to understand that. And so I spent this time talking to him about communication skills, you know, how do we talk to the patients? What are the best things that you can do to get into a relationship with patients? What are the things that that tend to cause most of the issues, and some of that might be financial arrangements and patients not showing up for appointments? These are all things that if they can get more information now, it’s going to help them when they do go into practice, whether they’re associated in a practice or whether they’re in their own business.

But by shortening that learning curve, there’s no reason why we can’t help dentists become successful. I’ve had dentists say, Well, why would I want to help dentists become successful, they’re going to set up across the street from me and you know, it’s going to be competition. Well, that’s, that’s a, that’s a very scarcity mentality. I’ve never looked at dentistry that way. When I started in Granbury, Texas, there were five dentists, and 3000 people. And today there’s about 6000 people 7000 in the city limits, about 50,000 in the county, and we have over 30 dentists, 35 dentists. So and my philosophy was, well, if I have an associate leave, even though we have covenant not to compete, and they sign up across the street, and all my patients start going to them. Well, I don’t look at them as my competition, I look at them, I look at myself and say, What are they doing that I’m not doing? And so, really, let’s, let’s think differently, let’s let’s, let’s help manner, younger dentist, and I think through mentoring another dentist, and I think what it does is it really expands your own. You know, it expands your own vision of what you want your own practice to be like.

You start talking about things like for instance, and I really talked to him about scheduling a lot, because most dentists are running behind all day. And I said then patients are waiting and and so I went through that whole scheduling that we talked about with them and their eyes were just, you know, open, you know, and they were really listening to every word and, and for me that I don’t know, no, no one, no one shared that with me. It was just the old school of hard knocks. And by the time you get through it, you’ve either been successful in getting through it or you ended up being disillusion and then ending up not having the practice that you wanted. And so it’s not about competition. It’s about helping people. And it’s about and it’s not, it’s not what you get, it’s what you get.

I heard a great sermon this last weekend from Jonathan Evans. Tony Evans is one of his dad is one of the most well known pastors in the country are in the world and but Jonathan really is his son played in the NFL for different five different teams. He’s the Cowboys chaplain the Mavericks chaplain and, and but he said, you know, if you give you get and but everybody’s so worried about getting and so I just share this with yet. It was a great weekend for me. I just looked at it as something that was that God wants us to do.

You know, Share, share our experiences with younger dentists or dentists who are just starting out, share your experiences, give them give them an easier road, it’s not easy, no matter how you do it, but it’s certainly makes you feel good when you’re able to help help others and, and so think about that. Think about mentoring, younger dentists, even somebody in your town that’s already practicing. Talk to him about setting up a study club. it’ll it’ll grow you as much as it’ll grow them. So anyway, I hope this podcast was was good for you and and I look forward to next week. Stay safe. Tell your friends about The Productive Dentist Podcast.