From Dental Associate to Dental Maverick (E.242)

“When you micromanage and when you are doing everything by yourself, then you don’t really have a team.” ~Dr. Bruce B. Baird

Are you taking control of your future, or is your practice running you? In this inspiring episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast, Dr. Bruce B. Baird welcomes special guest Dr. Tuan Pham, also known as the Dental Maverick. Dr. Pham shares his journey from uncertain associate to thriving practice owner, educator, and mentor. Discover how a pivotal decision to embrace ownership transformed his career – and learn why setting goals, even lofty ones, can be the key to unlocking your potential. 

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

• Am I clear about my long-term goals, and do I have a plan in place to achieve them, both professionally and personally?
• What steps can I take to better understand and control the financial and operational aspects of my practice?
• How can I embrace challenges and self-investment to unlock my full potential as a dental professional and leader?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Announcer: The Productive Dentist Academy Podcast Network.

[00:00:03] Dr. Tuan Pham: You know, I’m a firm believer that you should set some goals, even if they’re a little lofty or arbitrary. Write it down, you know, put it in your mind, put in your Apple notes in your phone or something like that but the point is, if you have a goal, even if you reach a 50 percent, 75 percent, you’re well ahead of where you’ve been just so far sitting here, you know, doing nothing.

[00:00:19] Dr. Bruce Baird: Hello everyone. This is Dr. Bruce B. Baird and you’re listening to the Productive Dentist Podcast and in this podcast, I will give you everything that I’ve learned over the last 40 years in dentistry, working with thousands 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, 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.

[00:01:01] Regan Robertson: Doctor, did you know that PDA coaching doctors grew 219, 000 on average in just the last decade? 10 months. If your revenue goals fall short this year, and you suspect that patient communication and inefficient systems are holding you back, Productive Dentist Academy can help, but you have to take action. Register today for the PDA conference, March 13th through the 15th in Frisco, Texas, go to productivedentist.com to snap up your seat. It is the nation’s leading course for growing your practice and your team. Plus while you’re there, you can set up a free 60 minute session to identify your own unique opportunities for growth and if you act fast, you could score a one on one with PDA’s co founder, Dr. Bruce Baird. That’s right. We’re only offering 10 and then his calendar is full. Don’t wait. Go to productivedentist.com right now and have a great 2025. We’ll see you in Texas.

[00:01:49] Dr. Bruce Baird: Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with Productive Dentist Podcast and I’ve got a special guest on today. Dr. Twan Bam, who is also known as the Dental Maverick. Welcome.

[00:02:02] Dr. Tuan Pham: Welcome, sir. Uh, I love talking to you. Thanks for the invite.

[00:02:05] Dr. Bruce Baird: Oh my gosh. You have been creating a lot of excitement in the dental market, and I personally know multiple people who have been through your programs, and I love the way that you put together stuff. I was looking at your website yesterday and noticed, uh, free training for the dental students. I mean, that has a special place in my heart. I still lecture at the dental school some and things have changed so much in the market that, you know, they’re, they’re a little bit trying to decide where they want to go, what they want to do and all of that and explosion, everything else, but we’ll talk about that here in a bit. I just want you to tell us a little bit about yourself and your travels and your, you know, from, from getting out of school and then into dentistry and everything else, just share that with us and I want to also hear about your family.

[00:02:50] Dr. Tuan Pham: Great. Great. Well, thanks. Have Uh, again, for the invite, Bruce, you know, I have to start by just saying that you are one of the first people that opened my eyes to what was possible in dentistry. My story, you know, I’m a, I’m an Asian guy. You know, I grew up in a household where it’s like study, get good grades and because you work hard, you put your time in, that’s where you will become successful and successful is definition for different for everyone but we’re talking about financial success. Uh, you know, that’s. That’s, that’s of course relative too, but that’s what my parents taught me. It’s a linear path of life. It works. You put your time in, you work hard, you work long enough and you will predictably be fine but again, that’s not what I wanted. You know, like my first job worked for a very fine dentist. Uh, he was the president of the dental society fee for service office. He taught me many things. Best thing he taught me when I was younger was this, this comment. He’s like, you know, you need to do whatever allows you to sleep at night and I’ve never forgotten that and I use that as a guide for myself. So when I do work and I’m on the cusp of trying to decide this or that, I think about what would I do for myself and my family and I go with it and I feel good at night, but again, I was just an associate at that point. I was 25 years old. All I wanted was some beer money. I was still young. I wanted to hang out my friends. Friends go out. I didn’t really think about life and money or success, financial in general. That was the most that I’ve ever had. You know, my first job, I made 83, 000 us dollars. That’s amazing. I didn’t even know what 83, 000 was. You know, I blew it on. I remember I blew my first entire paycheck on a DLP HDTV and then I blew the next one on a TiVo just because that’s what I wanted. One of the dumbest purchases ever.

[00:04:22] Dr. Bruce Baird: You know, I remember at PDA. You said, all I really want is an Audi, an Audi AA, or you said, I’m going to get it too and I said, I believe you, man.

[00:04:25] Dr. Tuan Pham: You know, I’ve gotten multiples of them since then. I believe it. Yeah. Anyway. So as an associate, that’s all I knew. My world was shaped by my parents, shaped by my first job. It was nice. It was easy, but I didn’t know it was possible and then, you know, everything in hindsight, we can evaluate and see our perspective on things, but you know, the guy offered me to buy the practice. Very fine practice. I probably should have bought it, but I was young, you know, I look at these numbers and I’m like, how can I even afford that? I don’t understand this. You know, I was just, wasn’t that right part of my life yet. So then he sold it, of course, which I expected him to and of course, one day I expected that I would be let go and in the moment I was very disappointed, you know, the security of having a job, it went away but then you mull about it. You, you upset about it, but then by night timeframe for me, I was like, “I’m going to do something about this,” and I thought about what I wanted and I’m like, “I don’t want this feeling. So I must take control of my life.” You know, it’s funny because when this happened a couple of weeks earlier, my dad was like, “Why don’t you just have your own practice?” And I remember getting an argument with him and very upset saying, “I don’t want to own a practice because I don’t like business,” but then this moment happened and then it made me think about everything and so I started the journey at this fire. I went into my office and I like to be really good, just like you, at things that you do. If you’re going to do something, you might as well be good, be successful at it and then I said, “You know what? I don’t know how to be successful at this.” You know, I started my practice. It was doing very well. Uh, we’re in the, uh, we made money the first month. I think I had like 60, 70 new patients fee for service. But like, I just didn’t know how to take it to the next level. I was limited. So I was like on Dentaltown, you know, I’m a big fan of Dentaltown. I’m still on it. You see me every day posting. I’m flea game fishing on there. But like, I remember I kept seeing PDA, PDA, PDA and I was like, “I’m going to take it. I’m going to jump in. I’m going to take this course. Like, uh, this is what I need,” and, you know, you taught some very good information that I kind of in my training, like I, I take some of it and I add to it, but I of course always credit you and some of the things that I say, I expand on other things, but like one of the best things that I learned from your course was just simply being there. When I was there and I looked around and I saw all these other dentists. that I didn’t know, but I can tell by the questions they asked or they were repeat attendees to your course, I knew they were very successful. And I was like, I look at these guys, they’re not better quote unquote than me somehow, you know, like they’re not super handsome. I got the charming looks or whatever it is that will make them successful. So I thought to myself, “Man, this is amazing. Here he is, Bruce, has a group of all these people that want to see him. They’re learning from him. They’re relearning. If these guys can do it and ladies can do it, then absolutely I can do it.” That was one of the best things that I gained from you. Like just the exposure to open my mind to the reality of what was possible. Once that was done, you know, again, we all have different goals. There are people want ESOs. There are people that want multi practice stocks in the one big practice. They want to hit two, five, 6 million, whatever it is. We all have our own goal. You know, my goal in life was nice fair income where I could save money. Save a lot and retire young and do what I want and here I am, I’m a come January or so I should be on the track to just calling it quits and then I’m just going to work doing whatever I want at my own steady pace without a worry about income, you know, again, all relative. But for me, I’ll take care of my family. It’s something that I’m going to take a risk because, you know, I read this thing by Jeff Bezos, it’s called regret minimization framework to help decide things. It’s like he says, “Imagine you’re 80 years old and you think back, you know, a lot of us analytical people, we make the pros and cons and lists and write things out,” which I did, but I couldn’t decide and then I saw his video on YouTube about it, his interview and I was like, I must do this. I’m going to take this risk. So I’m going to take this risk. I’m going to take my kids to Italy this summer. Hopefully with my family, my wife for two, two and a half months, I’m already starting to learn Pimsleur’s Italian again, because I used to love learning it but again, all this, I will say, I must thank you because

[00:07:56] Dr. Bruce Baird: you took it to a whole other level too. And I mean, with what you did, what made you decide, I mean, I did the same thing. I took courses by Dawson and Carl Misch and, you know, business courses by Schuster and Paul Homley on communicating. I’m like you, I’ve taken hundreds of thousands of courses, but it becomes you, you know, PDA became kind of the way I thought about it, the way it comes out in my brain, you know, and how it was success and it seems that, you know, you have done the same, really the same thing and I’m so proud of you, man. I’m just, I can’t tell you how proud I am and tell me a little bit about your thought process in developing Dental Maverick.

[00:08:36] Dr. Tuan Pham: Okay. So there’s also a funny story, you know, I started Dental Maverick 2014, so it’s at least a decade old. You know, back then I was not married. I was single. I didn’t work Fridays and so I just hung out on Fridays and I used to run this local group for entrepreneurs, you know, like stuff like thatand it was just fun. We would just meet up, do activities and have a drinks afterwards. And I remember one guy was like, “Hey, Juan, you always talk about teaching people. You seem to enjoy it when we discuss this in your eyes, light up, why, why don’t you do this?” And then he looked at me, he’s like, “I know what you do on Fridays. You drink beer. That’s what you do,” and I’m like, I looked at him. I was like, “You are absolutely correct. I have no excuse. I have a whole Friday to myself.” So I said, as for fun, let me just do it. So, you know, I, I have a lot of thoughts in my head, very writing and it was just fun. It was just like conversation that I would teach people or I had with like a local colleague. So I just started writing and writing and writing and writing and before you knew it, I had like this huge stack of papers. Like if you printed it out and it was like literally 15 hours of me eventually recording, talking or something. So, you know, I, I, you know, I, I’m the type of person, like, like my wife, for example, she’s a perfectionist. She gets worried if things aren’t perfect when they are released, right. I’m more rough around the edges. You know, I believe that, you know, if you don’t try something, you don’t do something, it’s not going to be perfect. It’s never going to be perfect cause everyone else has different viewpoints. I just said, I’m just going to do this. I wrote it, you know, I remember back in the day, we Jerry rigged this teleprompter with a green screen using an iPad and everything like my buddy and I doing it and then you look back, you’re like that doesn’t even look that professional, but whatever. That’s the best we had back then. I’m with our resources, you know, it’s all about content, you know?

[00:10:09] Dr. Bruce Baird: Yeah. It’s all about the content. I’ve got a stack of yellow notepads cause I never quit writing. I still write on these yellow notepads and it’s kind of funny. It’s almost like journaling. Well, I guess it is journaling. And I go back, I lift up my sack and I go, “Gosh, this is from 19. 93 and I read it and I go, huh, those were interesting goals.” You know, I reached some of them. I didn’t reach some, but at least I had it written down, you know, and it was part of the deal. So, uh, so tell me, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Yeah.

[00:10:39] Dr. Tuan Pham: I was going to say, I like your comment about goals. You know, I’m a firm believer that you should set some goals, even if they’re a little loftier, arbitrary, write it down. You know, put it in your mind, putting your Apple notes in your phone or something like that but the point is, if you have a goal, even if you reach a 50%, 75%, you’re well ahead of where you would been just sitting here, you know, doing nothing because if you have a goal. Hey, I don’t reach some of my goals for you. I, I look at you and I’m like, “Man, this guy’s the bomb. He’s reached seemingly every goal that anyone can imagine.” You know, I’m just a firm believer in action. Like to this day, you know, I’m still in dental town and it so frustrates me. You read all these dentists and they’re just like complaining about this or that. And I don’t know. I call them drive by posts or whatever. They ask for help. People offer help. I reached out to them, like, Personally, I even give a lot of people free courses because I track these people in downtown. If they’re really in need, I really want to help them, but what I’ve seen over the years is there’s different types of people. There’s people that like myself that want to learn, they come to courses like you or whatever they choose to do, and they’ll take advantage of it. They’ll accept it. They vet it out. Whomever they want it to learn and they do it. Those doctors are amazing. You’ll see their success. They just need the data and knowledge of what they’re lacking but like, you know, there are other doctors and it’s so frustrating. It’s like, they just want empathy and sympathy, but they don’t ever take action. You know, we’re lucky in the dental field that the profit margins, well, pre COVID especially were pretty decent, but now things are being squeezed. You know, doctors that want to be either of higher volume because they are on lower paying fee schedules. There’s a limitation. There’s a limitation on how hard we can work, how fast we can work, how efficient we can do things until we drop off and there becomes errors to some degree, you know, like it’s harder. We have to shape up and it’s just so frustrating me when I see dentists that talk about change, but don’t ever take the change. You know, I’m guessing like, you know, people that take your course, they, I don’t know if you keep track of the percentage of people that have changed, but like, I don’t know you guys are, you guys are very motivating. How you present things and you get people to want to do it.

[00:12:26] Dr. Bruce Baird: You know, what’s crazy is when, when I started PDA in whatever year with 2004, I thought we would have the worst of the worst people, the people that needed it the most. You know, the ones who were just on the edge and I thought, “Well, I’ll give ’em hope,” but we didn’t find that, you know, we found some, but mostly I’d say 20% of all the people who came and made a difference were the ones who, you know, were ready. I mean, they were like, okay, I gotta go to the next level. I wanna, I wanna do this, I wanna do that. They were exciting and everything else, and, and you know, we had a few that. We’re struggling and they, you know, we, we would help them just like you, you go on, on dental town, we get some that call us and, you know, we’ll say, “Come to the course, you know, just don’t, you know, don’t worry about the registration fee. Just get your butt up here. We’ve got students.” My nephew is actually working. Uh, he just graduated from UT in San Antonio. That’s my brother’s son. My brother’s a dentist and his wife’s a dentist down in Brennan but I went down and lectured at the school every year. He was a freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. He got out. He’s in Middle Otheon, Texas, right up there.

[00:13:35] Dr. Tuan Pham: Oh, yes, yes, yes.

[00:13:37] Dr. Bruce Baird: And he’s, he’s working with, uh, Danny.

[00:13:39] Dr. Tuan Pham: Yeah, Danny, Danny is, Danny is one of my students that took the course and look at Danny now. He’s living it up.

[00:13:46] Dr. Tuan Pham: Yeah, he

[00:13:46] Dr. Bruce Baird: is. And so he’s working with Danny and he is doing 1200 an hour. He’s 18 months out of dental school. I know. And I’m just going like, dude. And he said, well, he’s working with Jeff Boosky. My, my partner from, he’s working with Jeff and he’s working with Jackson Bean, which, you know, Jackson too. It’s just, I just told him, I said, man, “Go learn as much as you can go everywhere. You can, cause you’re never going to be perfect.” Uh, you, you may want to have a model practice. That’s what I used to say, but I knew I didn’t have it. But I wanted to keep pushing towards that goal of whatever, because what your thoughts are, they change, you know, I’ll be 70 this year. So it’s like, “Oh my gosh, you know, I’m, I’m now, uh, self reflecting about everything that’s happened over the last, oh gosh, 30 years of teaching.” Tell me a little bit, uh, dental maverick again, I’m so, so proud of you. You’ve helped so many dentists and that, that’s just, I don’t know. That’s, that’s just so amazing. And I’m so thankful for you. Tell me a little bit about your family.

[00:14:42] Dr. Tuan Pham: Well, um, been married for what? Seven years. My wife will kill me if I forget. Yeah. Seven years. You know, I, yeah, I’m the most, if you met me like business wise, I’m very analytical, like I’m very systematic and so, you know, I, I applied it, that notion to my personal life. I never thought that I would get married because all these years of like meeting people, I didn’t like them and, you know, like I never dated anyone long cause if I didn’t see any future potential, I’d just be like. Well, it was fun, but I think I’m done. I’m good. And so one day I met my wife, um, met her randomly. She was dating this other guy. I thought she was pretty, but that was it. Long story short. Eventually I realized she was breaking up with that guy. I said, “Hey, let’s,” I used to do these bar exercise classes, like, which is the most hardest exercises I’ve ever done. And I invited her to go and she said, yeah. I’ll come with you. And I was like, oh, invite your boyfriend too, because she was a cool dude. And he’s like, “oh no, we’re breaking up. We’re broke up.” So that was my chance. Perfect. I asked her out. Yeah, I asked her out for a drink after, and then before I knew it, within six months we were engaged and now we have two kids. Uh, I have a almost 3-year-old and a 5-year-old and we’re taking them around the world. Like we’ve took them to Japan and Korea last year. They’ve been everywhere. They got more passport stamps than most people, but yeah, we’re taking them to Austria and the Czech Republic and everything goes as planned, you know, uh, part of the reason I want to retire is that I want to take my kids and live in different countries or extended time during the summer, you know, and. You know, it’s like everyone goes in phases in life like you were mentioning earlier, like thoughts have changed over time. I live my life in phases and my clinical phase, you know, I’m, I’m at the peak of my game, like I can do things these days that I’m just like, “Dang, I didn’t realize I can do that, you know?” And sometimes you think like, oh, is it worth giving up? But why not? You got to take a risk in life. You have the opportunity to, you should, because you never know it’s going to happen but the next day, you know, we all have patients that we see and one day they’re sick and it’s like they work their whole lives to do this. You know, I’m not going to say that it’s happened to any of us, but there’s a potential. So like, yeah, I’m going to take this risk. I’m going to take my kids and my wife and we’re going to go do things fun. And we’re going to live and enjoy life and see where it goes and I can always work. I mean, I can do anything. I can figure out anything to do.

[00:16:42] Dr. Bruce Baird: Right, I kind of went the route of my last four. I put the handpiece down five and a half years ago, and I, I actually did veneers on my daughter, number two, three weeks ago and seated them this past week and I thought, “You know, I still got it. If I have to, you know, I can go back and do it.” Uh, it’s like I only work two days a week, the last 14 years. So from the time I was a little older when I started doing that, but I was probably 49 and I just thought, you know what, I’m not, I’m not gonna kill myself. I want to enjoy my kids, my family. Uh, we I’ve got six kids now, three extra kids. So I’ve got eight girls and a boy plus 13 grandkids and so life is a lot of fun and, and, uh, especially, you know, at this time of the year, I’m just so thankful. to know you and to be a friend and we know a lot of the same folks and again, I’m proud of you. I just want to have one more question for you. Tell me about your artwork. I mean, I see this doing with the fish. I know you’re a big fisherman. I know you love fishing. Tell me, I mean, are those water color? What are those pencil drawings? What is that? And what got you?

[00:17:47] Dr. Tuan Pham: I had, I had no idea that I could water color. Like the last time I touched art things was like maybe sophomore year, freshman year in high school. So my daughter would wake up and she wanted to do activities in the morning. So I was like, we had these paints and I was like, let’s just paint things. I would just draw these silly things. I didn’t even, you know, just for my daughter and then one day I was like, let me try to draw a fish and my first two iterations were terrible, but then like, I just sat there and I was like, I look at a picture, a real picture, and I’m like, “These are like line angles on teeth. I just need to imagine the line angles in each little subsection and then tie it together, you know?’ So eventually I just, I don’t know. I just started figuring out the technique and I could paint these really. Oh, it’s, uh, pretty impressive fish. Yeah and then I post them on like fishing forums or whatever for fun. And people are like, “Oh, do you sell these? Can I buy this?” And I’m like, “No, I just paint for my daughter.”

[00:18:35] Dr. Bruce Baird:  And I, no, I know, I know. It’s, it’s just like, I, I just love ’em. I mean, they are beautiful and I, I did some art stuff when I was, gosh, when I was early, early. in dentistry. I was just piddling, doing some painting. and, uh, but I really kind of want to do some wood carving. That’s going to, that’s going to be, I keep saying I want to do it because, you know, back when we were in school, we had to carve teeth and do all that stuff, wax blocks. I was pretty good at it, but I just haven’t found the time. And I, you know, I’m going to, I’m going to follow your advice. Sometimes you just have to do what you got to do. You just make it happen. And, uh, I’m going to do that. So I just want to tell everybody how great it is having Tuan on the podcast today and take care of those kids. Sounds like you guys are just having the time of your life.

[00:19:20] Dr. Tuan Pham: Well, Bruce, thanks again for the invite. You’re an inspiration. Anyone listening to this should realize how inspiring you are. And I think you’re right. You know, you take some risks. If you want to do something, find the time for it. Cause if you don’t, it just gets pushed back and before you know it, five years has gone by, whatever it is for enjoyment or for productivity of your office, industry can be extremely lucrative if you do it right and you set up the systems and you follow through. My main advice for anyone is just take the risk, just do it. Buckle down for a bit and after you solve every little problem, that’s why I believe every little problem can be solved and they may seem small, but exponentially added up together. It’s a huge, huge change and it’s cumulative over time.

[00:19:55] Dr. Bruce Baird: I love it. Yeah, just do it. Thanks so much for being on and thanks for voting us number one podcast last year. We’ll see how it goes this year. Thanks again, Tuan. I look forward to seeing you guys soon. 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.