A patient walks into your office and tells you that she’s just been to a “competitor” down the block and hated their office. The front desk lady “kept saying ‘umm’ every other word” and “put her on hold for 10 minutes and then hung up on her”. Then, while she was getting her new patient…
I’m not a huge fan of TV “investigative reporting”. I’ve often found them to be “hit pieces” where some person or company gets destroyed by a sharp tongues reporter or clever editing. However, this past week, NBC did one heck of a job questioning SDC about the complaints from customers. Unless you’ve been living under…
There are many studies that show that bonuses can have significant downsides. From motivating employees to use unscrupulous tactics to achieve bonuses, to the long-term negative motivations, it’s been proven that offering people incentives for performance can have disastrous consequences. If that’s the case, why do we still find doctors offering bonuses to their teams? Maybe…
I once worked for felons. Yep, actual, plead guilty to fraud in federal court, serve time in prison, felons. As a really young dentist just happy to have a job, I didn’t see all of the warning signs when I worked for them, but I guess looking back now, the fact they carried guns everywhere…
As you’ve heard me say many times, orthodontists are a smart and accomplished bunch. Many speak multiple languages, play several instruments, have excelled at elite-level sports or have achieved exceptional accomplishments such as Eagle Scout. So why is it that so many of these previously well-coached individuals rarely use consultants. I’m not talking about going…
If you’re like me, you probably get frustrated when things don’t work out. I’m not talking about surprises. I’m talking about that time the assistant comes to tell you that the lab case isn’t back on time and the patient is due to come in the next day. This, after you’ve carefully built a lab…
This is my first blog post of 2020 and looking back on last year, I can unequivocally tell you that it was a tough year. Why? I learned to embrace my vulnerability and accept the fact that I’m wrong. A lot, and it’s better than OK. It made me a far better person to realize…
I once knew a guy who was reportedly worth over a half a billion (yes, that’s with a “B”) due solely to some savvy real estate deals he’d made in a relatively short amount of time. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that he hadn’t created anything, nor had he…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again publicly: it is at best irresponsible and at worst criminal that schools allow residents to get into as much debt as they do without some form of structured business program as part of the curriculum. After all, the majority of ortho programs are either part of,…
I remember when I first visited my dad’s dental office. I must have been around 5 years old and it was the early 1970’s. There are a couple of things I remember about that visit, namely, we had to walk downstairs to get into the basement dental office and the only evidence of my father’s…
