I had a really nice new family in my office on Friday. Their story was a common one. They started orthodontic therapy in Houston about 4 months ago, but the flood and a job relocation has caused them to move to Dallas.  Their 15 year old young son, a star football player, was in my chair…
Both my dad and my grandfather were dentists, so I remember what dental practices were like 45 years ago. It was truly a different world. I remember my father telling me how one could actually be “in the black” (making a profit) in as little as a few months, and there was literally ZERO advertising…
As clinicians and business owners, we rely on our team members to serve specific needs for our practices and patients. After all, how can we perform our best orthodontics without someone to help us? We rely on our team members from the moment the phone is answered until the final recall visit. Â But, do you…
The year was 1992 and I was just out of dental school. I was working in several chain dental offices, doing the best I could in a system that simply isn’t geared for high end patient care. I spent a lot of time with my non-dentist friends and a number of the other GPs with…
If you’ve ever seen the movie “A Christmas Story” you’ll remember that all the lead character “Ralphie” wants for Christmas is a Red Rider BB gun. He envisioned the fun he’d have with it, but all he heard from everyone (including Santa) is “you’ll shoot your eye out”. Was he overconfident? Were those around him…
During online discussions, we get swept up into the financial side of practice often discussing money, marketing and how to make our practices grow, sometimes forgetting that we (hopefully) went into this profession to help people. For younger clinicians, it’s easy to get drawn into the “focus on money and growth” angle, particularly when you’re…
It’s hard to understand now, but people were calling Aaron Feuerstein crazy. They said he was nuts. What kind of CEO does the sorts of things he was doing? “That’s no way to run a business!” Of course, the haters were few and far between, but to many of us it was impossible to believe…
Gary Vaynerchuck is one of my favorite speakers to listen to. If you don’t know who he is, you should. He’s arguably the world’s leading expert on social media marketing and he runs Vaynermedia, an international marketing agency, where I got to spend a day a couple of weeks ago. “Gary Vee” speaks like theNew…
Bring up “Smile Direct Club” (SDC) to most orthodontists and they get really angry. Many will start trembling with rage and you might even see some start frothing at the mouth. You’ll start hearing things like: “How is it legal?” “Why hasn’t the state board shut them down?” “Patients need to be educated about why…
Every day, I am beseeched with questions from doctors about things like where they should practice, how many assistants they should hire, what kind of lease they should sign, should they hire an associate and so on. I’m always happy to help, but I ask a simple question almost every time and then I listen for…
