Episode 190 – The Leverage Effect

“When you’re present with people, they remember you.” ~Dr. Bruce B. Baird

To kick off 2024, this episode of The Productive Dentist Podcast is all about leverage. In this context, leverage extends beyond the conventional business application, and delves into the art of maximizing your time, relationships, and knowledge. Your host Dr. Bruce B. Baird emphasizes the importance of being intentional with your time, steering away from moments of unintentional idleness that can erode the quality of life. 

Drawing from personal experiences, Dr. Baird challenges the notion of mere efficiency and introduces the idea of being present – both in your professional and personal pursuits. He reflects on spending time with family – especially with his grandchildren – and the necessity of relearning how to leverage those precious moments. 

This episode further explores leveraging time and how it can impact productivity in your dental practice, delegation of tasks so you can focus on more activities you’re passionate about, and encouraging a shift away from the lone dentist who does everything.

In this episode, pay attention to the following:

• How can you leverage time, relationships, and knowledge to create a more impactful and fulfilling existence?
• What strategies can you use to cultivate a mindful presence to make the most of your time and connections?
• What can you do to reduce stress, enhance productivity, and create lasting relationships inside and outside the dental office?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Regan 0:00
Hi, Doctor. 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 now.

Dr. Bruce Baird 0:46
You know we just stay present and I think when you’re when you’re present with people, they remember you. Hello, everyone. This is Dr. Bruce B. Baird and you’re listening to the Productive Dentist Podcast, in this podcast I will give you everything that I’ve learned over the last 40 years in dentistry working with 1000s of dentists. I’ll tell you it’s not that my way is the only way, it’s just one that has worked extremely well for me and I’d love to share that with you so you too can enjoy the choices and lifestyle the productivity allows, more time for things you love, increased pay, better team relationships, and lowered stress. Let’s get into it with this week’s episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast.

Dr. Bruce Baird 1:38
Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with the Productive Dentist Podcast and looking forward to a new year 2024 is upon us and I really want to share with you a thought I had over the last couple of weeks, I had a great conversation with my partner, Dr. Jeff Browsky, many of you know him and we were just talking about, you’re just sharing information and he was asking, you know, what things that you’re we’re looking at his business and kind of how he’s doing things and, and the word came up, that really has changed the direction of my life over the over the last 25 years and that words leverage, you know, leverage for the new year and what do we mean by leverage? What we’re talking about, is the ability to be able to leverage yourself, to leverage your relationships, your social media contacts, to leverage your education, to leverage the things that you know and to leverage leveraging your time is something that I think a lot of us end up sitting around, and we’re on our computer, we’re at home, we’re doing whatever, and all of a sudden, we look up and it’s two hours later, and we just wasted two hours of our life and, you know, a close friend told me 30 years ago, said, “Bruce,” you know, I was telling him about wanting to do a course called the Productive Dentist Podcast and he said, “You know, well, you know, is that going to help you to leverage you know, your knowledge?” And maybe that question hit me and I was like, “Well, the more I can share it, you know, then I’m actually leveraging what I’m what I’m doing.” The amount of time if I become more efficient, at the dental practice, I go into work things are I’m very focused. that leverages your time because it’s those times when you kind of are just going through the motions that I really think that affects people I think it affects it affects us in a significant way. We have only so much time, you know, on the planet and you’ve heard me talk about that a lot. I talk about it more now that I have less time but I think it’s important to you know, how do I get to spend time with my kids are with my grandkids I’ve got to be able to spend time with them and to leverage that time to make sure that when I’m there I’m present you know same thing with Cynthia, my wife, you know, when I’m there I need to be present and to be able to leverage that you know, we we do things we want to do we keep track of where we’re traveling, we you know we just stay present and I think when you’re when you’re present with people they remember you that you know, and I’m I’m probably one of the worst you’ve heard in previous podcasts where I’ve said you know, I have ADD and you know, my mind tends to wander and all of a sudden Lel let’s go bike ride bikes and and that’s some than that I’ve had to really deal with most of my life and that has helped me in in many ways, because I’ve learned how to hyper-focus, and focus on things that are important but it’s also cost me in relationships and, and being present and really listening to people and really understanding people, to me that that sets a set something in motion that will carry you through the rest of your life. In other words, being present with those people that are around you, people love that.

Dr. Bruce Baird 5:36
I know I watch my wife at Christmas with all the grandkids and Cynthia is she spends time with each one of them right up in their face, when I say in their face, just looking at him IDI, and talking to him individually and that’s, that’s really the leverage of your time, you could sit there and, you know, do whatever and I’m learning from her on how to leverage my time when I’m, when I’m spending time with the grandkids, I need to make sure I’m present because, you know, I didn’t really have my grandparents lived, oh, they lived in New Jersey and Virginia and I grew up in Texas, so I never really had that. That opportunity to have them be a really big part of my life, except I’d see him at holidays. But having our grandkids close to us, that’s a new thing for me. And so I’m having to relearn how to leverage my time when I’m with my grandkids, when I’m with me, even with my kids. That’s been super, super important and I’m not the best at it, I’m telling you straight up. But it’s something I’m working on. You know, all the time. When I say leveraging, you know, when you leverage your time, if you’re sitting there packing court every day, and you’re doing crowns, packing court, and you’re making temps and you’re doing all those things in the office that you could literally have someone else be doing. Unless you just love it, then leave it let it, let let someone else do it, train them to do it the way you want it done and what you’ll find is, you have more time to do other things. So you’ve just leveraged your time, it’s by again, if you enjoy it, then, you know, keep packing cord, but as far as being someone who and they people use the word efficient, you know, and I think that’s a good word but, you know, speed comes up, if I if I prep a crown quickly, then that’s leveraging my time I you know, I’m not going to speed, I’m fairly quick at doing all of that stuff, but I’m not doing it fast so that I can measure how fast I did it, if that makes any sense but I’m doing it efficiently I’m I’m gonna prep, I don’t have a lot of wasted, wasted motion, a lot of wasted time I prep the tooth, I do what it is I’m doing and then my team comes in, because I’ve trained them and that allows me to leverage time to where I can go into another op, treat another patient, take care of another person, do the things that I love doing and by the way, it also helps increase your productivity, you know, your your production per hour goes up. Why? Because you’re not sitting there. We’re taught in dental school, we don’t have assistants and what we’re doing all day long is we’re, you know, packing cord and taking our own impressions, and we’re doing everything ourselves and that carries over, I see a lot of young dentists that are still I see a lot of old dentists that are still packing cord and still want to make their own attempts because no one else can do it as well as they can or, you know, and that was my thought. No one can do it as as good as I can. Well, that’s that’s BS, because what I’ll tell you is, I’d rather have Summer do do a temporary on me than me do a temporary I’d have somebody the other day, actually a private equity partner of mine that said, he went to the dentist, and it’s a well-known branch or franchise type deal and he goes there and he came in and the hygienist they didn’t have a hygienist for him even though he was you know, he had called and confirmed his appointment everything else and, and a dentist came in and introduced himself and started, you know, telling me he was going to claim his teeth and my buddy said, “No, I don’t really want you to claim my teeth. I really would rather have a hygienist do it,” and the reason he said that he says, “Well, I don’t figure you’ve done that many cleanings and I really want to wait and have a hygienist do it in the future. So I want to reschedule that that thought process left,” you know, he’s, he was looking at something and say, “You know, I don’t think this guy’s done a cleaning on people, I want somebody who does it for a living,” and that’s exactly, you know, if you’re doing your own cleanings, you’re doing something, sometimes that’s a necessity, I understand that sometimes you have to do it, it’s part of the, as part of the makeup of the practice, you have, hi, Janice, that’s out or whatever but my preference would be, you know, I’m, I’m just like my buddy, I would say, you know, reschedule me, and let’s get a, let’s let the hygienist do that claiming, because I don’t know which end of the scale or to use, you know, I haven’t done a cleaning since. Great, I don’t know, it’s been 40 years and I don’t want to do, you know, in a pinch, I could figure it out but it’s not what patients want or desire. They want somebody who they feel like is top shelf and personally, now you go to the physician’s office, you go in, and to a specialty physician, they’ll have two or three people come in, take all of the records Take, take all of that information and then finally, the doctor walks in. So they’re leveraging their time, so that when they’re being productive, they’re being productive. When they’re focused, they’re very focused, when they go home, they’re leveraging their time, they’re spending, you know, if you leverage your time, so if you spent 30 minutes, with your spouse, just literally talking about what their day was, like, what everything was going on with them, you know, and that, that 30 minutes is better than three hours sitting on the couch looking at our cell phones, there’s no question and it’s something that’s really hard. You know, because we’re getting so addicted to this technology that we really have to remember, you know, life is about relationships, life is about that not just knowledge, knowledge, you know, you can pick up Google it, you can pretty well find out anything and now with artificial intelligence, that’s giving me to get crazier, it’s going to separate us further and further. So I guess my word for this new year, and for myself as well, is I want to leverage my time better. When I’m playing golf with my friends, I want that to be time well spent with my friends, and I’m out playing golf or talking to each other and having fun, a lot of times you just go through the motions, and it’s all about the golf, golf. You know, I love golf, but it’s not an end, you know, it’s just a way for me to have relationships with my friends and I can say that across the board about pretty much everything, when we go out to dinner with friends, you know, want to make sure that we’re, we’re able to utilize that time to have serious, you know, serious conversations and to really enjoy, you know, each other and getting to know, getting to know each other, even better and so, anyway, I know that that’s, you know, some of you may get this, some of your may say, “Well, make sense, Bruce, but you know, I’m already running around like a chicken with my head cut off.” Well, that’s what I mean, you know, let’s, let’s not do that. Let’s reduce stress and we talked about that at Productive Dentist Academy, like, you know, let’s, let’s reduce stress, so that I can be productive and we go into that in detail about how do I reduce my stress but the fun things that we get to do in life, are all about the relationships we have in life and the things that we really, truly love, and we’re only gonna have so much time with our kids. They’re gonna grow up quickly. Now minor, you know, in rollup, got them from 20 to 40 and, you know, they grew up really quick and I want to make sure I leverage the time that I have, not just show up at home, I don’t know, in a day is at the end of the day, I have to make sure that I’m spending time with him and my grandkids the same way. Like I say, I’ve always been a hard driver, I’ve always, you know, pushed and pushed. Trying to be excellent, you know, trying to do things the best way I knew how. But the one thing that my friend told me years ago, what are you doing to leverage yourself and I’ve used that for the last 25 years to 30 years and it’s made all the difference in the world. So anyway, I want to wish you guys a happy holidays, what’s left of them, and a really bright new year things are things are happening in dentistry that are exciting, you know, with AI and with just all the new technology and robotics and all this stuff. Dentistry is never been a better never been in better position. People are worried about the consolidation of dentistry. I’ll tell you that don’t worry about that and we’re going to talk about consolidation more in the next few podcasts. So anyway, have a Happy New Year. Let’s leverage this year let’s make this year the best ever. So tell your friends about Productive Dentist Podcast, and we’d love for you to vote for us there is there is actually a a website called DentaWu, d e n t a w u, I believe it is and you can vote for your favorite podcast and I’d love for you to put a vote and for us. We just enjoyed doing what we do. So thank you guys and happy new year. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast. If you found this episode helpful, make sure you subscribe, pass it along to a friend. Give us a like on iTunes and Spotify or drop me an email at podcast@productivedentist.com Don’t forget to check out other podcasts from the Productive Dentist Academy of productivedentistpodcast.com Join me again next week for another episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast