Episode 224: The Fast Track to Success

“Braden has been producing over a thousand an hour as an associate dentist – just 13 months out of school.” ~Dr. Bruce B. Baird

In this episode of The Productive Dentist Podcast, Dr. Bruce B. Baird sits down with his nephew, Dr. Braden Baird, a remarkable young dentist who has already made waves in the industry just 13 months after graduating dental school. Braden shares his journey from being inspired by his dentist parents to becoming a top-producing associate dentist, earning more than $1,000 an hour.

Listeners will gain valuable insights into Braden’s relentless pursuit of excellence, including how he maximized his dental school experience, secured his current position, and rapidly advanced his skills. Dr. Baird and Braden discuss the importance of mentorship, continuous education, and the mindset that separates top-performing dentists from the rest. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to fast-track their dental career and achieve extraordinary success in the field.

As you listen to this episode, we invite you to think about the following questions:

• Am I taking proactive steps to maximize my learning and hands-on experience even after my formal education?
• How can I leverage mentorship and networking opportunities to further my career and skill set?
• How committed am I to continuous education and actively seeking opportunities to expand my knowledge and skills?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 

[00:00:00] Intro: The Productive Dentist Academy Podcast Network

[00:00:02] Braden: went to a number of in person courses, and I just knew this, I loved learning, you know, I loved expanding on that dental school experience right away.

[00:00:13] Bruce: Hello everyone. This is Dr. Bruce B. Baird, and you’re listening to The Productive Dentist Podcast. In this podcast, I’ll give you everything I’ve learned over the last 40 years in dentistry, working with thousands of dentists, and 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 in 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.

[00:00:48] Regan: Doctor, are you living the dream or just dreaming of living? It is my honor to announce the PDA 20th anniversary special conference this September 12th to the 14th in Frisco, Texas, the nation’s leading course  on dental practice growth. If you feel isolated as a leader who is frustrated that your schedule is unproductive, maybe your team is disjointed or your systems are inefficient. This is the conference for you. The PDA 20th anniversary conference has all new features, including keynote speaker, Emmett Smith, who is a pro football hall of fame, running back and entrepreneur. You can choose your own educational track to customize your learning experience. Go to www.productivedentist.com and click the pop-up, or select Productive Dentist Academy Conference under the Dental CE and Events tab. That’s www.productivedentist.com. Seating is limited. Register today and we look forward to helping you make your dreams become reality.

[00:01:39] Bruce: Hi, my name’s Dr. Bruce Baird with the Productive Dentist Podcast. I have a special guest with me tonight, and it is Braden Baird. Uh, who happens to be my nephew and my brother’s son, who is a dentist here in Texas, and he’s been on a whirlwind. He just graduated dental school 13 months ago. Is that right, Braden?

[00:02:03] Braden:Yeah.

[00:02:04] Bruce: I mean, it’s happened pretty quick, but the reason I wanted you guys to hear from Braden, and I’m going to ask him a few questions here and there, just because. He’s 13 months out of school. He’s an associate in a practice. It’s a PDA practice. It’s been through PDA, but Braden has been producing over a thousand an hour as a young associate dentist.  So I’ve got some questions for you, Brayden, about first of all, your mom and dad are both dentists. So my brother and sister-in-law are both dentists and so that had guided you initially to get into dentistry, would you say?

[00:02:40] Braden: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and first off, thanks for having me on here. I’ve listened to every episode of this podcast so far. So it’s, but yeah, absolutely. Starting out, um, you know, I didn’t always know I was going to be a dentist, but once I got a little time in as a summer job, as an assistant in high school. Then I really started to pick things up, start to gear in that direction.

[00:03:05] Bruce: That’s awesome. Now, at first you were thinking you might wanna be an orthodontist. Wasn’t that true or did I just hear that through your dad? Were you thinking you might wanna do that initially?

[00:03:14] Braden: Yeah. I have never been one to tie down to one thing, I’m I,

[00:03:17] Bruce: Good for you.

[00:03:19]Braden:Than general dentistry. I think

[00:03:21] Bruce: Good. Good for you. Because I hated, hated ortho. I’d always bring somebody in if I could to do that kind of work. Tell me a little bit about your dental school experience and what, what you picked up in dental school and what things were important to you during that four years and Braden, by the way, went to my alma mater, the University of Texas, San Antonio. What influenced you there?

[00:03:44] Braden: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first in San Antonio, I had no shortage of opportunities there. You know, as hard as I wanted to push, as much as I wanted to learn, the opportunities were there and I knew from the very beginning, first year, really where I wanted to go. I want to be in general practice. I want to end up, I was one of those, quote unquote super GPs, and I want to be able to do a wide variety of things and so I right off the bat, I knew that I wasn’t going to really do a specialty. I wasn’t going to get really caught up in the Krebs cycle and, and all that stuff. The first two years I wanted to get with my hands first, get the quality. Of course, my buddies and I started practicing and timing ourselves on our little preps, you know, we grade ourselves too, but we really got some of that timing down and that really set me up to be able to get a lot more experience going into third and fourth year but third and fourth year, I think is where kind of really separated because there’s a lot of people working hard in the sim labs, but we got into the clinic and I just found that it really sucked at first relying on our schedulers to fill the schedule. You know, there’s kind of a process of people getting screened, filling out stuff online, and then the scheduler would put in  four and a half hour new patient exam. You said, yes, great, you got to learn it for sure. Um, but pretty quickly, I, you know, started picking the scheduler’s brain. I was like, is there, you know, is there a list for these people that fill on the forms online? Like, can I just start calling some people, fill in some gaps? And there, I found there was thousands in this list of people that clicked online. They’re interested and I just started cold calling patients and, you know, for long, I was almost running two chairs in our general school, just. Doing as much as I could, like, you know, eight to five, whenever there’s a clinic hour, I wasn’t going to go home early. I was going to put patients in there and learn all I could with that experience. Just the biggest thing, like just not taking it easy, not taking the early afternoon and morning off or just trying to get all the experience I could.

[00:05:51] Bruce: Wow. That, I mean, that’s a great story because I probably wasn’t quite like that in school, although I will tell you I finished my requirements every year a little early, so then it allowed me to go up to the third floor, oral surgery and do some of that and a few extra things, but I also found time to goof around too some, but that was just my MO.

[00:06:10] Braden: We definitely had plenty of fun too.

[00:06:12] Bruce: Oh yeah.

[00:06:14] Braden: There’s great people there too and I definitely can’t discount all of the mentors I had there in school. Um, you know, it got to be pretty close with some of the oral surgery, the geriatrics department, and that really kind of opened some doors there when they took time really to work with me on that and start to show me some of those more complex surgical things.

[00:06:34] Bruce: I mean, that’s awesome. Once you graduated, did you know? You know, I know your mom and dad practice in Brenham, you were thinking kind of the way I was, you know, kind of wanted to go back home, but I didn’t want to go that close to start with.  What was, what was your, you know, you’re practicing now in Middle Oath in Texas, living in Mansfield or south of Arlington, what guided you in that the first initial decisions?

[00:06:59] Braden: Yeah, that’s a great question too and that process really started like in the third year of dental school too. Dr. Bowsky, your partner there, you had mentioned to me with my business group to have him down to speak down and, and he just really struck it forward with me and what he talked about then I, I started doing his coaching, went through his trainings and the third and fourth year of dental school. That’s, that was amazing with the dentistry business, but also just life there and that’s where I met my current boss. So he was,

[00:07:29] Bruce: Oh yeah, that’s right.

[00:07:30] Braden: He was a coach within all of that. We just really started connecting there and I wanted to break out of, you know, I know what my parents know, and I wanted to be able to get, you know, some more perspective, some different experience with IV sedation and surgery and stuff and we just have really connected through that coaching. So we jumped up here, really went to Midlothian just for him there. He’s been a really great mentor. He’s really supported me in every way he could. He wants me to be successful in his practice.

[00:08:01] Bruce: That’s awesome and that’s a huge deal as so many associates go in and gosh, once they start making money, the dentist, the owner of dentists thinks that they’re taking it from them and all of a sudden it causes this little chasm between, between people, but the doc that you work with, obviously, and you’re still working with Jeff, aren’t you, uh, with his coaching, are you still doing some stuff with him?

[00:08:24] Braden: Yeah. Yeah, we are.

[00:08:25] Bruce: That’s awesome.

[00:08:26] Braden: It’s not made a huge difference to just,

[00:08:29] Bruce:  I’m going to have Jeff. Jeff and I’ve talked about it. His, his new program. Is called from prisoner to producer.

[00:08:38] Braden: So that’s kind of like part of it through his Limitless Dentist Academy, basically.

[00:08:42] Bruce: Yeah. Which I’ve just been so impressed with what Jeff’s doing and he kind of frees up the brain to learn more. he knocks down a lot of the barriers that people. Put up for themselves. A lot of times it’s how we grew up or whatever reason. I love what Jeff does creating that. Jeff and I have been partners and buddies for 25 years. It’s been a interesting time. What was your thought process once you got out as far as doing CE, doing continuing ed? What has been your goal? I know when I got out of dental school, I went in the military. So I spent four years with Uncle Sam and I got to do a lot of stuff and so that was good. But I still, when I got out of the military, I felt like I really needed to go get some training on some other things.What was your guide for that? What was your thoughts?

[00:09:29] Braden: Well, I started CE. I think I got like 75 separate hours of CE and then during dental school went to a number of in person courses and I just knew that. I loved learning, you know, I loved expanding on that dental school experience right away and what I started with was really wanting to expand into like the third molars, implants and start to do some full arches with crowns and so I’ve done, you know, another hundred or so hours this year, um, which is another thing. Dr. Nguyen, the owner of my office there, he supported me with that. He actually put a lot of the CE. end of the contract. You know, I got a number of courses there and it’s really been supporting me to take that time and go do it. That was a big thing. I wanted to just expand those skills and be able to not have to refer things out as, as quickly as I could.

[00:10:20] Bruce: Now, are you seeing your docs out there that own Praxis? Are you hearing this? I mean, are you hearing this or just at home bitching about your associate? Because, uh, you know, that’s what happens and, and bottom line is your commitment from the get-go, and this is going to be my assessment, your commitment from year one in dental school through the last five years, four years of dental school and one year in private practice, or as an associate, really you have chosen to put yourself in the top 5 percent of all dentists, because most dentists, first of all, they’ve never done 75 hours in dental school and another a hundred hours in a year after dental school. So people would rather, this is my experience and I’ve seen so many people they come in and there’s always other reasons why they’re not productive. There’s always, “Well, you know, the sun was in my eyes, the gloves too big. You know, I couldn’t catch it.” Everybody has excuses, but. The ones who are in the top 5%, and I would venture to guess in the top 1 or 2%, they don’t have the same excuses.  I’ve seen this, you know, and I’m so proud of you, by the way, I’m just, just tickled to death because I think it’s something I know I spent a fortune when I got out of the military to go to all these courses because I wanted to be the best I could be the same way you I didn’t want to do one thing but I felt like I want to go to the places where I felt like and my mentors people that I respected said you’ve got to go here you got to go check these guys out but you also came to Productive Dentist Academy early on

[00:11:53] Braden: Yeah I’ve been twice already once in dental school and then the first year out

[00:11:58] Bruce: You brought some buddies from school with you and how much fun was that?

[00:12:01] Braden: Oh, that was amazing. We, we went at just the right time where I was able to start talking risk factors, really changing the way that I’m doing exams during dental school, before I’m even out starting to work on some of those things. That was a big game changer of just even diagnosing and seeing the patient. Not what we were learning yet.

[00:12:21] Bruce: Right, right. It’s crazy and for those of you who don’t know, Braden going to come. We’re having our 20 year anniversary, um, in Frisco and Brady’s agreed to come in and talk to the associate docs that we have there to give them a little ray of sunshine and hope because they’re not all in the same situation you’re in and to talk to the senior docs on how to be treated. If you’re an associate, you know, how do I treat associate and I think Dr. Wynn has done a phenomenal job. He understands productivity. He understands all that stuff and the opportunity for you to be treated. In my opinion, to be in a PDA practice puts you on kind of a different level far as being able to be productive. Obviously for a dentist doing over a thousand an hour, that thousand an hour is what we call our grand slammers. These are docs that have been out Usually it’s 10 years, 15 years, 25 years that we’re doing 400, 500 an hour, 600 an hour, which the national average running about 475 and now you’ve got somebody right out of school, a year out of school, that’s doing over a thousand there and you might think it’s about the money, but it really has nothing to do with the money and I think you’ll agree with this, Braden, when I say this, it’s about taking great care of patients. It’s always tough at Productive Dentist because you talk money, you talk scheduling, you talk all these things, but I’ve always told people the better care you take care of your patients, the money always takes care of itself. Have you seen that same thought process?

[00:13:48] Braden: Yeah, absolutely. Like you’re always saying the relationship first. And I know at the beginning, even I was always the limiting factor in my production and how well I could connect with the patients and how well that I felt I was taking care of them. One thing that’s always stuck with me that you’ve said before, if you look back at a week, And couldn’t remember who you saw, you knew that was an issue and, and I caught that pretty quick and really just started focusing on that relationship, taking care of people. And you’re right. It, it changes a lot from there. People feel it and they, they can tell someone who doesn’t have that in mind.

[00:14:23] Bruce: Yeah, someone who cares about you, you know, they, the way they talk to you, the way you listen and that story that I always tell about, I don’t remember who I saw this week when I see my numbers go down, that’s what I evaluate. Do I need to do my crowns faster? No. Do I actually remember the patients I saw this week? No and what you’ll find, and you’re going to find this, you know, you’re doing over a thousand an hour now, you’ll still have months that. You don’t, that’s fine, but you’re consistently going to be producing at a different level than other dentists, because you’ve learned that it’s more about relationships than it is about cutting crown prep. You obviously are doing some pretty phenomenal dentistry, but again, it comes right down to the patient’s appreciated to the patients look at you afterwards and say, “Man, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for this, but I want you to do it and let’s figure it out.” Now, when you leave a room and you have that kind of buy in from the patient, everything changes. So anyway, I have another question. Talking to, talking to your mom and dad, both dentists, they’ve got to be so proud of you. What have their thoughts been?

[00:15:25] Braden: Yeah, they’ve absolutely been really proud of me. They’ve supported me through the whole way. They didn’t try to get in my way going to another practice where that could have been a touchy subject. People have always envisioned, you know, passing down their practice to their son, but they’ve been nothing but support the entire ways they want to learn some of the things I’m doing and eventually bring that back possibly and, and so they’d been over the moon to catch up with them and they just get all excited.

[00:15:51] Bruce: That’s awesome and there may be a possibility that you might in the future go back to Branham and kind of take over that business. You think that that’s something that’s on the horizon?

[00:16:00] Braden: Yeah, that’s, that’s something that’s on the horizon. If it works out that way. That’s something that I’ve always envisioned.

[00:16:06] Bruce: Yeah. What I do know people is this, that no matter where Brayden ends up, Brayden’s going to be successful and the reason he’s going to be successful is because he’s chosen to be successful. Uh, that’s a difference. People who are successful. You think, “Oh, they’re just talented. They have X, Y, Z. They grew up this, whatever.” No, you know, I tell people, my dad lost his job a month before I graduated from high school and said, good luck, son but you all have a choice to be successful. Everybody’s listening to this podcast. It’s up to you to be successful. Do you run into some bad stuff? Yeah. Have I got posed a few hundred times? Probably, but it’s not. What you do when bad things happen is one of the lessons you are not wanting to go through that again. It changes perspective and I always have looked at failure as being the best teacher that you can possibly have and I’ve certainly failed on certain things, but that wasn’t the end and, you know, I was telling my daughters. When they’re growing up, you know, they would say, “I can’t do that. You know, I can’t do math. I can’t do, I’m not good at math.” I said, “Well, if you say you’re not good at math, you know what that means?” They go, “What?” I go, “You must be good at math. You must.” They go, “What do you mean?” I said, “No, if you say you can’t do something, then you have to commit yourself to become good at it. Whatever it is, if you want to make a difference, if you want to be that person who excels at the highest level, and all of us want to do it, but very few are willing to sacrifice the time, the effort, the failure, the money.” Many Americans would rather just bitch about their life sucks than actually doing something to make their life different and I hear it from Dennis all the time, but that’s why I created Productive Dentist Academy and what we try to teach guys. It’s not about the money, it’s about care, it’s about relationships. Just what you said. On top of that, Jeff will be speaking. Dr. Bowsky will be speaking at PDA on Friday. He’s going to be doing his prisoner-to-producer little hour program, which is going to be crazy. If you haven’t heard Jeff, I know you’ve heard him a lot, but for those of you who haven’t, he won whatever his deal is. He won the big gold belt.

[00:18:20] Braden: The Dentistry’s Got Talent.

[00:18:21] Bruce:  That one? Yeah. Dentistry’s got talent, uh, down in Florida two years ago. He won it, he won the whole darn thing. And what was funny is he had made it through to the finals and everything else. And he was in the back of the room and he came up to me and he said, “Man, you know, I’m nervous.” And I said, “It’s good to be nervous, but here’s the one thing I want you to always remember, just tell them what you know.” If you’re helping people, you don’t have to make up stuff. You just tell them what you know, you don’t have to say you were a XYZ if you never were an XYZ. Just say this is the struggles I’ve had, these are the things that I’ve been able to accomplish. These are the failures I’ve had. Yeah, the more transparent you are, the closer you get to people and I think the more influence that you carry as you go forward. So what are you thinking now? What other courses are you wanting to go to now? What things are you thinking?

[00:19:11] Braden: I’m always looking to surround myself with more and more great mentors. Dentistry has been really such an amazing place where people have been so open to teach whenever you reach out to them. The next courses, I just actually got on the list for Kois.

[00:19:26] Bruce: Yahoo. You’re going to get blown away. I’m so proud of you for getting involved with John and back when I went with Mish, Carl Mish, or back when I went with Pete Dawson, you know, both guys have passed, but when I was with them, I knew I was in the presence of excellence. I knew I was in the presence of people who commanded unbelievable respect on the things that they had done, the things that they teach and I wanted to learn from them the best of the best and, boy, with you going down there with John Kois, You’re going to the best of the best. He’s the one that helped kind of form my thought process on the new patient exam with risk factors. That was John that did that. So you’re going to have a blast. I can’t wait for you to do that. Anyway, well, I have absolutely totally enjoyed getting a chance to visit with my nephew. I hope you guys, if you have questions that you want to ask, right? And I’ll have him back on the show and I’m more than happy to, uh, foster that and to ask him the questions for you. So this is one special young man and young dentist who is already in the top two or three percent of dentists in the country. He’s only been out for a little over a year. So I’m super proud of you, buddy. Thanks for being on.

[00:20:40] Braden: Yeah, I’ve really loved it. I’ve loved it. I appreciate you and everyone else that has really been pouring into me. I know we’re just, just at the beginning

[00:20:49] Bruce: There’s a lot more fun to be had too, I’m telling you. So, all right guys, and thank you guys for voting us the number one podcast in dentistry this past year, and I look forward to our next one. So thank you.

[00:21:01] 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 at productivedentistpodcast.com. Join me again next week for another episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast. The Productive Dentist Academy Podcast Network.