Howard Speaks: Are you Shark Tank-Worthy? by Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, publisher, Dentaltown magazine

Would Shark Tank invest in you? Shark Tank is an amazingly successful series, and if I were a young dentist, it'd be my new best show to watch. The business-themed show has pulled in some awards over the years, and I think it's one of the few reality shows worth watching.

The premise is simple: Aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners enter the "tank" and pitch their ideas to a panel of business sharks. If the pitch is good enough, the "sharks"—millionaires and billionaires such as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and cybersecurity mogul Robert Herjavec—agree to fund the project ... but not without making sure they get their ROI if the newly funded business protégés make it big time.

The presenters have only a few minutes to make their pitches, and then the sharks come in with the questions, most of which are the same for everyone. I've seen enough episodes over the eight seasons that within the first minute of questioning, I'll know with about 90 percent certainty whether someone's going home with funding or just going back to square one.

The first questions most get asked are: "What is your background? What made you get into this business?" These are soul-searching questions with an important and sharp business edge. So, let me ask you: Why are you a dentist?

Some of the most successful pitches on Shark Tank come from the most passionate people who've created something that directly relates to their background. Parents create dolls to help build self-esteem in young girls. A nurse invents a new method to calm babies. A teenage environmentalist creates clothing out of plastic bottles. But just as in business, passion isn't enough if your background doesn't give you the foundation you need to be taken seriously. The most successful investments on Shark Tank—and in the business world outside of prime-time television—are made in those with the right background and the right passion. Not one or the other. You must have both if you're going to make it, and because you're most likely a dentist if you're reading this, then your background is taken care of. Focus on passion.

Everywhere I go, there's always a dentist asking me right off the bat, "Well, should I specialize in endo?" My response is always the same: I don't even know why you're a dentist, but I would hope that you specialize in endo only if that's your passion. Same for any specialty. All of you have the background of a dentist, but you need to find your passions. Because if you love what you're doing, you're never going to work another day in your life. And if I'm going invest in you (or your patients), and you're just doing this for money, I know where you're headed: Burnout. Depression. Disease. You're going to quit.

But if this is your passion, no one can stop you. This isn't the world of opening dry cleaners or owning pizza franchises; you're competing in the world of dentistry. When you look around at the competition, you're looking at people who went out and earned an undergraduate degree, then a dental degree. People who have already spent eight years in education before they even get to call themselves "doctor." Like you, your competition is coming out of dental school with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. (Debt is just the investment you've made in yourself. You better believe you're worth it.) If you think you're going to survive all of that and then enter the profession without passion, you're dead wrong.

If you're not the secret sauce of your practice, then get out of practice now. And no, I don't mean go out there and earn some more letters to throw behind your name. Patients don't care about the alphabet soup trailing your name. Those details are not what patients invest in, and they sure are not the things I'd look for if I were a shark looking to take an investment-sized bite of you.

Here's what I'd invest in: If you put two doctors in front of me—the best dentist on Earth who has an average chairside manner, and an average dentist who has the best chairside manner on Earth—I'm going to throw all my money behind the latter. For 30 years, when I ask new patients who come to my office, "Who did your crown?" they never remember. So, I ask, "Well, did you remember waking up on the sidewalk, feeling like your mouth had been jackhammered and that you were going to have to pick the doc out of a police lineup for what he did to you?"

Patients don't remember exactly what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel. Every one of those patients is a potential shark. Sure, they're not likely to invest a million dollars into your practice—but you can easily achieve a million-dollar practice if your patients are constantly impressed with your passion and how you make them feel.

Like the entrepreneurs on Shark Tank, you've only got a few moments to make people believe in you. They already know you're a doctor—they're sitting in your chair, aren't they? So don't bother trying to impress them with your acronym collection or your latest certificate. Impress them with your passion and show them you care, and you'll have all the investment you'll ever need to measure success in more than one metric.

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