Get the Freedom to Put Patients First (E.235)

“There’s a freedom that comes when you’re truly in control.” ~Dr. Bruce B. Baird

In this powerful episode, we’re diving into the concept of freedom – what it really means and how we can achieve it, both in business and life. Dr. Bruce B. Baird, Victoria Peterson S.s.D., and Regan Robertson share their personal and professional experiences to living freely and discuss how freedom extends beyond financial success, exploring inner peace, clarity, and the strength to make courageous decisions. Discover how you, too, can tap into freedom and take charge of your path to a fulfilling and purpose-driven life.

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

• How can I maximize profitability without compromising patient care?
• What systems can I put in place so it runs smoothly even if I’m not there?
• How can I build better relationships with my patients so they trust my care?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

[00:00:03] Dr. Victoria Peterson: The shortest path to freedom as a business owner is to tap into the power of your team, which means you have to invest in your team. You have to spend money on your team. You should think about that just as you would a marketing expense.

[00:00:17] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: 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 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, and I’d love to share that with you. So you too can enjoy the choices in lifestyle that 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.

[00:00:53] Regan Robertson: Doctor, do you ever feel like you’re putting in all those hours, but you just don’t see the growth you deserve? Imagine how it would feel knowing you have a clear path forward with action steps where every decision sets you and your team up for success. This Cyber Monday Productive Dentist Academy gives you the chance to make that vision a reality. Register for the PDA conference and you will unlock an exclusive one day virtual business planning session with PDA’s CEO Victoria Peterson and Dr. Maggie Augustin. PDA clients, just in the last 10 months alone have boosted collections on average by $219,000 using these strategies. Don’t wait. This offer is only here until December 13th or it sells out and once it’s gone, it’s gone for a year. Go to productivedentist.com right now and guarantee your own growth in 2025. Welcome to a special three-way episode of Everyday Practices Dental podcast combined with Investment Grade Practices starring Victoria Peterson and the Productive Dentist starring Dr. Bruce B. Baird coming to you quasi live in three different locations across the globe. Everybody welcome. This is going to be a really exciting episode because we are talking about tapping into freedom, tapping into freedom in your life and what it means. Bruce and Victoria, welcome to our show.

[00:02:10] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Thank you

[00:02:10] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Thank you

[00:00:12] Regan Robertson: Absolutely. As business owners and leaders, we ourselves have been going through an eight-week business planning process. This is the time of year where it can feel like a joy, or it can feel like walking through sludge at times. It is the work that matters and we know that when we put our feet to the ground and can stay focused, it sets our year up for incredible success and that takes a lot of commitment. So we’re doing that right now and we’ve also just released the new run of show for the PDA conference coming up in March and it is all about tapping in. If you listener right now are thinking, “This is great, Regan, I am, I’m exhausted. I’m tired. I want to get to Turkey day. I want to eat my Thanksgiving. I want to have holidays,” and then I’m going to think, “Uh, we’re here to help you re energize and stay in the game, keep you focused. That’s what we’re going to talk about is tapping in.” Our first topic of the day is freedom and I’m curious, Bruce and Victoria, with both of your just incredible careers and your experience that you carry so strongly, what does freedom mean to you?

[00:03:15] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Oh, I mean, Freedom to me is to live life on your own terms. Um, and it’s not easy. It’s certainly I’ve lived it without freedom where I was tied to the chair. I was tied to, you know, the being a father, being a husband. I was tied to all those things. I didn’t feel free at all and then, uh, you know, over the years, I realized What it takes to have freedom and it’s not just financial, you know, there’s so much more to it, but I always like it when people say I’d rather ride in a limo than I would in another car. So, I mean, it’s okay to be financially free, but that’s not the only way to have freedom and you know, my last 14 years in practice, I became so productive that I was able to take Most of the week off Monday and Tuesday was the only days I worked for the last 14 years and that allowed me to start to see what life was like. Could I have it all? You know, could I have a great practice and great income and great time with family? Great time with friends. To me, that’s, that’s what freedom has meant to me.

[00:04:18] Regan Robertson: Victoria, how about, how about you? How do you define freedom?

[00:04:22] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Um, I love that. I agree with a lot with what Bruce says. Um, for me, it’s also peace of mind, like inner freedom. I’ve been in times where I’ve had a lot of money and freaking out. I’ve been in times where money was contracted and I’ve been very happy. So I think the freedom for me is doing the inner work to know what deserves my attention and growing my leadership to the point that says if the whole world is burning down and freaking out, you know, your team comes to you with this drama and that drama and this and that you learn and you grow as a leader to kind of rise above it but at the same time, read the deeper currents. So for me, the more I’m clean and clear within my own. own congruency, right? I call that the internet, my inner self, the more congruent I am about living on purpose and doing the things that bring me joy, doing things that bring value into the world, then I can read the deeper currents and when everybody else who may not have been doing this inner work around you gets pulled off, then I can read I’ve got the freedom of peace of mind, clarity, and advisory. So I, I think that’s one of the things I love working with doctors is they’ll come in not knowing what to pay attention to and so you don’t have that peace because I looked at my bank statement and I have no money but my P& L says I have money and so there’s this confusion and you don’t know really what to pay attention to. So that’s one example of yes, financial freedom is great, but how do you get there and how do you create certainty when it’s up or when it’s down? Like you just, you’ve got that strategy, you get to this place. So for me, freedom is an emotion, but it’s also a way of life. It’s a choice to live in this place of I choose how I’m going to react about this. I choose how I’m going to educate myself on the things that I’m afraid of that are unspoken because if I don’t educate myself on this stuff, well, I’m just going to be freaking out my whole life and that’s no way to live at all. That’s, that’s not freedom to me.

[00:06:29] Regan Robertson: Oh, I love that. Our late great Skip Miller, for those of you who don’t know, author of Proactive Selling, he taught sales, some of the biggest corporations in the world. He used to say, you know, fear really is just the unknown and fear itself is almost always bigger than, than what your actual reality of it is. Both your definitions are powerful. You know, when I thought about what freedom is, to me, I think I’m pretty plain-spoken about it. If I apply it to myself, I always wanted to do what I want, I think. And when I was a kid and trying to figure out what my career was going to be, I thought, you know, I don’t want people telling me what to do, you know, if it’s exciting to me and I can go down a path and develop my skills, I’m going to do that and I think I’ve worked hard to make that a reality so that I have the freedom to contribute where I feel like I add value and I have space to say, “You know, what do I want to focus on? Where do I want to go? Like you said, deeper, where do I want to grow my skillset?” And I have to align myself with people, with companies that have that similar philosophy. So obviously for me, PDA is a great house for that because I have had the freedom to grow intrapreneurially and, and develop my skillset. Those skills. So that’s a big part of how I define freedom to be able to choose the direction that I go and be, you know, really unshackled, I guess, would be from, from a lot of worry, not that I don’t have worry cause I definitely do and that means that I’ve had to make own concessions in my life to be self-reflected and ask myself, where do I have to grow and mature and be real with myself and say, you know, as, as I grow in my role, just like if you’re listening right now, you know, and you’re thinking to yourself, yeah, I, I got the title of business owner slapped on me and therefore I am a de facto leader, but nobody trained me how to do this. I, I feel you, I can feel you intimately. in that journey and you have to be self-reflective and so I, I’ve done that and said, “Where can I grow to, to fit these shoes?” So yeah, so that’s kind of how I define freedom and the end result is amazing. When I hear you, Bruce say, you know, the freedom to do as you choose, the freedom to live the life that you deserve, all of those pieces are great. That’s on the other end of it and there are times when it’s certainly doesn’t feel like it and I know all three of us don’t feel free all the time when we are in the middle of crunchy conversations and getting through things that are hard. We don’t have the freedom necessarily.

[00:08:49] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Um, when you’re bursting the bubble here, Productive Dentist Academy is easy peasy all the time. You know, where’s that pedestal we should sit on.

[00:08:58] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: When I see people, I see people that get freaked out about something. And it’s costing them their time, their thoughts, they can’t get rid of it but the one thing that they’re afraid to do is have a crucial conversation to get rid of that problem or to get rid of that situation. You know, I talk about it. Something stresses me out. If something stresses the patients out. If something stresses the team out, I find a way to reduce that stress. We have to do that same thing in our own lives, or we can get consumed with everything that’s around us. Now, a lot of people go long time. Some of you docs have a office manager that kind of came with the practice and that you’re paying more than anybody else, but you just can’t have that conversation, but it causes you stress all day long and you just wonder, “Why am I paying this person this much?” Because you’re afraid to have the conversation but guess what? You have those crucial conversations and things either get better or you get to invite that person to a happy place, not near you and all of a sudden you’re stressed. is so much better and all of a sudden, now you’re thinking, you’re creating, you’re doing all the things that God put us on the planet to do and, and I am the worst. I had four daughters. You know, I don’t want to say anything that I’m going to upset somebody because that’s just, God has a sense of humor. He just goes, I’m just always worried I’m going to upset somebody and if I do, that’s when summer comes to me and asks if I’ve taken my meds but overall, I will say that a lot of people aren’t free because they’re afraid to have a crucial conversation that they need to have.

[00:10:27] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Can I tap into that Reagan?

[00:10:29] Regan Robertson: Absolutely.

[00:10:30] Dr. Victoria Peterson: I love that so much because there’s a mindset about freedom and that’s what you’re tapping into Bruce is like, it takes courage to do the things that you’re afraid of doing from a system standpoint, like building a practice that gives you that freedom. Imagine if you were proactively hiring instead of reactively hiring. You had the mindset and your team knew here we grow again. We’re going to grow five or ten percent this year and ten percent next year and you’re in this growth mindset and you’ve done your employer branding. You’ve got a careers page. You always are ready to accept new team members into your practice because here’s the thing, talented people are not always looking for a job when you think you need somebody. Matt Hutchings on our team does a great job with employer branding and so, we think about proactively marketing for patients, but we don’t think about proactively marketing for our team members and so, I see why you get afraid. It’s like, “Well, crap, at least she’s here and what would I do without her?” And I don’t even know how to turn on the computer. So your systems aren’t even set up to have the conversation when you need to have the conversation.

[00:11:40] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more.

[00:11:41] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Yeah. There’s a mindset piece and there’s an operational piece to it.

[00:11:45] Regan Robertson: Man. When you, when you can get into the right mindset and be willing to navigate the weight that’s on your shoulders as a business owner. That is, that is one of the most difficult pieces and to your testament, Bruce, when you say you have to be honest with yourself about how you’re going to handle conflict, are you somebody who explodes? Are you somebody who lets it bottle up? Cause he can feel just my personal opinion. When I get to a point, it just explodes and then I’m like, “Oh, now the pressure’s released. Well, yeah, I’ve just spewed all over everybody around me and expect them to pick up the pieces.”

[00:12:17] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Been there, done that, you bet.

[00:12:21] Regan Robertson: Well, me too and I think it’s an act that I have to practice every day, but to the point of what you were saying, Victoria, it’s that that systems and operational side has helped me carry a much heavier load than I think even a lot of people are used to carrying. I think I enjoy that because I get to tap into frameworks that work for me and that I struggled with for many years. I beat myself up instead and said, it must be me. I must be crazy. I must not X, Y, Z. When I found business made simple through Donald Miller and y’all said, “You can go get that certification and hold that.” That gave me actual tangible ways that I could apply internally into PDA and I realized like, it was like a dumbbell to my head. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is what we do through our marketing group, through our coaching, through our conferences, we give these pieces out,” and because I’m not a dentist, I think I hadn’t quite made that intimate connection in the same way, but that gave me my intimate connection of, I can take the weight of being a leader and I can take the weight of whatever we’re facing as a company and what external or internal pressures are applying in order to go farther and I think there’s a lot of power that comes from that. I would wondering if you guys could talk to me a little bit about this upcoming conference. In March, it is a new format for us and I’m very excited because it is all around combining those two pieces so that doctors can get to that place of freedom where they enjoy it. Bruce, can you talk to us about this special run of show and what we have in store for us?

[00:13:49] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: You know, I mean, I tell patients when I’m doing an exam, I pretty much say the same thing for every new patient. Productive Dentist Academy has been extremely consistent. Over 20 years. We’ve also changed. We’ve had to stay with the times as we’ve gone through the last 20 years, but we’re embarking on the next 20 and this program in March is going to be special. It brings AI into focus. It starts to bring technology into focus, but we all know you can have all of that but without the great communication skills, without the ability to be able to get somebody on your team, when I say on your team, I’m not talking about your dental team. I’m saying, get them on your side. You’re able to do that in five minutes or 10 minutes. Once you learn the proper verbal skills, then all of a sudden you’re finding that you’re going to have fun. The teams all get together and you know, you, you get to talk to your team. You get to spend time with your team and teams talk and pretty soon you’re, you’re, you’re entirely surrounded by excitement and you know, when people get excited about things, that’s the time to make the changes and that’s the time to talk about making changes and that’s something that you’ll find at Productive Dentist Academy. Not only do we have world-class marketing, not only do we have world-class coaching, it’s a world-class program that you’ll be at in March. You’ll be hearing from some of the top communicators in the world and the top clinicians in the world. So really think it’d be worth your while to come this year and we’d love to see you in March, for sure.

[00:15:12] Regan Robertson: Isn’t it interesting how technology continues to advance in really cool ways? I mean, amazing, amazing ways and AI being a strong feature moving forward in dentistry and so much of it still boils down to communication and relationships.

[00:15:28] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Hundred percent

[00:15:29] Regan Robertson: Yeah, it just continues to blow my mind. And Victoria, you’ve done an exceptional job keeping the compassion, I would say, keeping the emotion and the compassion and the patient-centric care together, and then helping that go through the team because imagine doctors, how much time if you were to engineer this and put this in Excel sheet, how much time right now do you take up talking to either your office manager or your team around little miscommunications that happened throughout the day, or if you were to track for a week, how many little missed patient connections happen, things that you thought were being done that aren’t being done because Susie Q left, you got a new employee and they weren’t fully trained. It didn’t get handed off that all boils down to communication and that actually impacts not just your day-to-day revenue and operations, but it can impact the long term value of your business. I was wondering Victoria, if you could talk a little bit about what it means to have an Investment Grade Practice and how this conference supports that.

[00:16:26] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Absolutely, and I’m going to tap into what you were talking about, Regan, as a starting point, the best way, the shortest path to freedom as a business owner is to tap into the power of your team, which means you have to invest in your team. You have to spend money on your team. You should think about that just as you would a marketing expense, and there should be a return on training, right? And I remember Cheryl Brunel, uh, we coached her for years. She was in Rochester, New York, and I interviewed her for a magazine article because she had such an extraordinary team and she was building her second and third location, which is very hard to do. You’ve got to have a lot of dedicated, committed team. You have to be confident in what you’re delegating. And she said, “You know, people notice how much I take my team all over the country for training and they say, “Cheryl, why do you invest so much money in your team? What if they quit?”” And without hesitation, she said, “Yes, but what if I don’t train them and they stay?” And I think that’s the bigger risk and so it’s a joy to invest in you for business made simple and story brand and all of the things that we do, because you have just taken it, like you said, like unconstrained and found a way to apply it as best practices through our marketing group to help our doctors get their authentic story out. Now we could have said, “That’s a lot of money. You know, that’s 22, 000 over the course of a couple of years. Why would we spend that money training a team member?” Well, because it gives us what we want, which is a better outcome for clients. And everything about building an investment grade practice, everything about our workshops in 2025 is about pointing to a cultural North Star. Once you get that, and we believe, you don’t have to believe this, but this is kind of what we coach to, is comprehensive patient care. That’s our cultural North Star. So when you think about productivity, when you think about profits, There’s a lot of paths to get there. You’re like, “Hey, just do that crown prep faster,” or “If you want to grow 30 percent instead of doing one crown in the morning, one in the afternoon, do two crowns in the morning and one in the afternoon.” We don’t teach any of that. We teach be in relationship with your patients, just like Bruce was talking about, form a bond and then be their advisor and say, if this were my mouth, if this were my family, I This is what I would do and Bruce teaches the most remarkable sentence. I’ll give it to you on this podcast. When a patient says, “Hey doc, can you fix my tooth?” The answer is always yes. I mean, there are very few things that you couldn’t say yes to but he says, “You know, you asked me if I could fix your tooth. The answer is yes but the better question is, can I fix your tooth in a way that it stands a chance of lasting you the rest of your life?

[00:19:17] Regan Robertson: Yes, that.

[00:19:19] Dr. Victoria Peterson: “Right? Because what God gave you is already broken down. So we’re going to work with you on your lifestyle habits. You’re taking meds that dry your mouth or you’re drinking Dr. Pepper all day long. Well, your work’s not going to last as long.” So I want to give everybody a preview of what it means to be productive because building an Investment Grade Practice, you’re not doing a lot of remakes. You don’t have a lot of emergencies. I mean, maybe you have an emergency slot in your schedule, but I don’t see our doctors like really wrestling with the same problems as unproductive doctors. They’re not worried about where’s my emergency exam going to go and who’s going to take call this weekend. The quality of care is really high because of that cultural North Star. So it drives your patient care and then your patient care drives your business. And your patient care inspires your team. So it all kind of works together.

[00:20:11] Regan Robertson:  You know what this is? This is, this is tapping into counterintuitive thinking and so much about PDA can feel counterintuitive. So being productive, that means I have to work faster and harder, right? I have to do more hours. I have to turn the handpiece more. It’s not, it’s the complete opposite of that. Being productive must mean that I just got to charge more. It’s not that and like you said, It is counterintuitive to think about how you invest in your team and, and allow guides to come in and take some of that weight off of your shoulders, it’s when you know where to apply it, that it suddenly takes off and becomes a really great solution for you. I want to read both of you. This five-star review that we got just a few weeks ago from Michelle Valentin, and it is about the conference. This entire experience, Michelle says, “Has been life-changing. I have never experienced a refresher that addressed all concerns, not only in a dental practice, but acquired new fundamentals to apply in my personal life. This is beyond amazing!!!!”

[00:21:13] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Awesome, awesome. That’s what excites us. That’s why we have so much fun doing the program.

[00:21:17] Regan Robertson: It really, it really does and I think another, something that is a bit counterintuitive is that the things that you learn, you’re going to apply in the dental practice and not take it home with you as well but we all know that that is a big myth. You cannot really separate and compartmentalize like the olden days, the internet and texting and everything. We’ve changed our culture. Everything is, is blended together. One of the areas that I am so passionate about is tapping into authenticity because of AI, deep fakes, the way that just our world is moving. I think there’s so much out there. That’s exciting and great and the need for authentic, genuine connection is stronger than ever, especially in healthcare. And I know the barrel Institute, they come out every year. They’re a group that looks at patient experience and the top three. Things that matter to patients most regardless of geographic region is not, do you have the latest and greatest is not, do you have the prettiest facility? They are all around listening. Am I heard? Am I communicated with clearly? And do I have a clear plan of action? The only way you’re going to get to those three things is if you’re really skilled at blending emotion, understanding the heart of the patient with data and facts. It’s easier said than done. I know Dr. Wade Kiefer is one of our incredible doctors. He’s on PDA faculty. He’ll be at the conference. He, Bruce, I mean, picked your number to a T and I hear him have the patient experience much like you do. Very conversational. You break it down for them in, in a way that they can understand, but they don’t have to get the engineering side of it. You’re great at getting in relationship with the patient and what does that boil down to? Trust. It really all comes down to trust and so to tap into authenticity, that doesn’t mean that you don’t get to do that until the patient is sitting in the chair and it’s all on your shoulders. You can have the freedom of a lighter conversation and build trust long before a patient ever gets into the chair and so I know I’m excited about presenting. I’ll be there with Sarah Hansen, and we’ll be talking about authentic marketing, and there are 21 different ways. 21 intersections your patient goes through before they even see the doctor and, you know, if you’re wondering about that miscommunication doctor, and you’re listening right now thinking, “I don’t know if our recare system is going strong and consistently, I don’t know how the phone’s being answered. You know, somebody else takes care of that.” That should be a red flag. If you say somebody else takes care of that and you haven’t checked it in a while, go check it. Walk through your patient journey. See if you can even identify, I’m not going to tell you what the 21 steps are. See if you know what all those are and you can list out 21 and then go to your team and if you’ve got some holes, we can help you at this conference. I think that will be what I’m particularly excited about. We’ve talked a lot about the conference and what it means to have freedom. Victoria, I’m going to go to you first. What are you most excited about for the conference? What is one takeaway you can give our listeners today?

[00:24:04] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Oh, well, when you said the word holes, I think one of the most popular breakouts, we started adding a lot more breakouts. So if it’s been a while since you’ve been to PDA, come back. There’s brand new level-two content breakouts. There were two that were really popular. Number one was financial freedom as a business strategy. So for owner doctors, we’re really going to talk about what does it mean to become financially free while I’m still in practice? You don’t have to wait until you sell and go into sunset to start enjoying the things that Bruce was talking about. But then the most, most popular was finding money leaks in your practice. So from marketing and missed opportunities on your phone, to the way we enter data, to the way we post our claims and follow up. So the whole revenue stream cycle management journey. We have a great breakout on that with Joanne Miles. She’s a FADOM, DADOM, brilliant, brilliant, former office manager and she’s going to walk through every step of where you could leak money. You know, with rising inflation, I think it’s more important than ever to pay attention to the little things. It’s never any big thing. If it was, it would be easy to spot. So this is the class I say if you’re not profitable, you’re probably experiencing death by a thousand paper cuts and this helps you figure out exactly where those little holes are. So I think most practices can be and should be more profitable than they are and it’s not by working harder. It’s just by making sure these systems leaks are clear.

[00:25:34] Regan Robertson: Bruce, how about you? What are you most excited about coming up for this conference?

[00:25:37] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Oh, I think the most exciting thing for me is meeting all the new docs. That for me is, that’s my jam. I, I just love meeting new people and, and they’re in my profession and, uh, they all have their unique situations and I just love to find out about them, where they’re from and more than likely we know somebody that we’ve each known the same person somewhere. So, uh, that’s what I’m looking forward to and I also look forward to the fun and you know, the cocktail party afterwards and listening to everybody play, talk and write notes on, on cocktail napkins or coasters and you know, that that shared information and what you’ll learn at the conferences is an enormous amount, you know, again, drinking out of a fire hose, but at night at the cocktail reception, when you’re talking to so and so from so and so and so and so from somewhere else, and pretty soon you guys are sharing information and that, that really is the value of having dentists as friends and that’s what I look forward to.

[00:26:34] Dr. Victoria Peterson: It’s been fun to be a partner with Bruce for 20 years. He so walks his talk and we measured his practice for the first 10 years that we started PDA. He grew, he’s the instructor. I thought at 12. 50 an hour, like that’s it. You don’t really go much higher than that but Bruce grew 300 an hour year over year over year over year and I said, Bruce, “How are you doing this?” He’s like, “Well, I just come to the conference and I talked to some guys and they’ve got some ideas and I come back and I try those.” So the networking is so powerful. This is not like your local study club where everybody’s lying about their numbers and booing any new ideas. This is where the gold is. That’s right.

[00:27:14] Regan Robertson: My favorite thing about you, Bruce, is your genuine motivation to help people and something that you’ve said for so long is, you know, just become the best at what you can, uh, at what you wanna be, and then share it with others and both of you embody this generosity and sharing and I think that comes from both walking hard paths, you know, early in your career, Bruce saying, “It shouldn’t be this hard. Why did I go through all of this and, and is this what my future looks like?” And I think that can be a rude awakening. I also believe that when you make that investment to become a doctor and you get to that other side, it feels like it’s supposed to be that Valhalla moment. Like it’s, you know, now you’ve made it and the reality is as you go up in leadership. The challenges just become harder. It’s like a video game. It just gets harder and it’s difficult to stay encouraged and motivated without a proper support system around you and guides that care and both of you care, you care about moving the industry forward. Um, I want to read this from Clayton Gray too, because I think that this is important and I think this embodies. So this was from our event that just happened in September. So Clayton Gray, Clayton says “PDA has been a catalyst for re-imagining what success can look and feel like in the future. dental practice with an emphasis on creating predictable business outcomes and reducing stressors in order to prevent burnout, scale the business and set the stage for growth and performance improvement.”

[00:28:37] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Wow. Awesome.

[00:28:39] Regan Robertson: So we’re on a mission and a half days. It is a lot in two and a half days. It is the fire hose and, you know, just like the rubber band theory, I think, you know, you have to pull back tight a little bit and choose your directions before you fire and when you do, when you go forward, you can just really be, you can reimagine what success looks like for you. So, you know, if you’re feeling down, if you’re feeling like, man, I, you know, I’m doing good, but I want to be great, I’m ready, we’re proven to have those frameworks and methodologies to help you get there. So thank you both, uh, Bruce and Victoria for this. Special try episode of everyday practices Dental podcasts, the productive dentist and investment grade practices. Final thoughts, Bruce, anything you want to add?

[00:29:18] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Golly, you know, it’s, it can’t be that hard. It really can’t be because I did it. When I look at it, I’ve always telling people, I said, “Look. If I can do it, you can do it. I had a lot of difficulties being a manager, a lot of difficulties being a boss and I just share what I learned, you know, trying to get out on the other side.” So that’s my last thought is if I can do it, you can do it. It’s just simply a matter of doing it.

[00:29:42] Regan Robertson: Yeah. Taking that action and, and that, that can be, I guess, I guess my final, uh, thought on this and then Victoria, I’ll ask you as well. You know, a lot of times when you grow in your career and you have advanced, you are definitely not the dentist that you were five years, 10 years ago, or even 15 years ago. It can be really frustrating to get into the business side of it and be like, man, I thought we had this down. We have to go back to fundamentals but I have learned from professional sports specifically, how important it is to go back and be mindful and trust, but verify, but really do go deeper than that, even and remind yourself, your team has not always been with you. The way patients react, is changing every day. We have to be marketing to a different generation with a different set of ideals. So in order to stay on top of your game, that does mean staying up on those fundamentals and combining it with growth for the future. Victoria, your final thoughts.

[00:30:34] Dr. Victoria Peterson: I always say that the workshop starts when you register because the commitment is there and we are doing some special things. So for everyone who registers now, I’m going to encourage you to register before the end of the year, because you’re going to have prep time and myself and Maggie Augustine, as many of you know her, she’s on faculty as well. We are bringing back a program that we did during the pandemic called business impact, and I’m going to do, uh, I call it a one day, but it’s It’s probably about a four, a really solid four or five hours on Friday, January 31st and Friday, uh, February 7th, same course you can pick either day, but this is going to get you ready because nine times out of 10, the doctors that we meet have not had a great course on business. So understanding goal setting and overhead can be a little tricky in a dental practice. So we’re going to help you get really clear before you even come to the market. What are my goals? What are my expectations? How much could I grow? Where are the opportunities? And I’m going to walk you through step by step. So this program starts when you register and we’re going to be emailing, you’ll be assigned an ambassador. You are never alone in this. You can start working with our team two months, three months before the conference starts. We want you to come and get every ounce. That you can really excited about this shift. I guarantee you that you come and tap in to everything that’s available. There’s no way you could stay where you’re at. You will grow. It’s just guaranteed.

[00:32:06] Regan Robertson: Well, thank you both for this exciting episode, giving everybody a sneak peek. If you’re enticed right now and you think, “Man, I want to be productive before 2025. I want to get started today.” Go to productivedentist.com and there’s a pop-up right on screen. You’ll see Bruce and Victoria tap into reenergize your practice. Click on that. We would love to see you. Our seating is limited in March. It is limited. So be sure to grab that and like Victoria said, register before the end of the year and you can get that special. I forgot. Thank you, Victoria, for mentioning almost all practices grow. They grow in their hourly production before they even attend. That is an incredible benefit as well.

[00:32:42] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Thanks Reagan for having us.

[00:32:48] Regan Robertson: 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. Yes. Okay.