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Howard Speaks Howard Farran, DDS, MAGD, MBA, Publisher, Dentaltown Magazine

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The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
by Howard Farran, DDS, MAGD, MBA, Publisher, Dentaltown Magazine

"If only I could do it all over again…"

When I'm having a conversation with someone and he begins his next statement with the above phrase, I get frustrated because the sentence usually concludes with, "…I would have gotten my MBA," or "…I would have become a periodontist," or something else along those lines.

If you could do it all over again? I really don't understand that.

If you wanted to do it all over again would you really have to go all the way back to when you were in college to make a fresh start? What's so sacred about the ages between 18 and 22? This is the supposed sacrosanct four-year span of time where we're told everything we do will determine the outcome of the rest of our lives. You surely remember these years; your life was under a microscope and everyone took stock in your life. The pressure was on. You worked hard to get good grades. You would have fired yourself out of a cannon just to get ahead.

But what about today? Here you are, bored (maybe), complacent (probably), burned out (hope not), with no drive except to cruise into the office, see a few patients, collect your paycheck so you can head home and stream 80s movies on Netflix (definitely). And you tell people, "If I could do it all over again…"

What happened?

There is nothing sacred about 18 to 22. I'm 48 years old, and if I were to meet the 23-year-old me, I'd be able to tell after only a short conversation that 23-year-old me knew just a little bit more than nothing! If I knew then what I know now, I could have made some better decisions along the way, but that's how humans learn. So why don't we take some of that knowledge we've learned since we were 23 and apply it to something that will make us happier today?

If you say "If only I could do it over again…," you probably never had any intention of doing it in the first place. If you wanted to do it, you would do it today. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. When people say, "If only…" they're just making excuses. Go back to school. Learn something new. It doesn't matter if you're 22 or 72, you can make a new start today!

Dentists – most of whom are in their 40s – tell me if they could do it over again they would have gone to endo school or they would have become an orthodontist. What are you waiting for? Why don't you go back to school right now? You were on student loans once, go on student loans again. Or maybe you've socked enough money away that you don't have to go on student loans this time around (wouldn't that be nice?).

Maybe you've been out of school for 10 or 20 years. Things have certainly changed since then. When I was in college, there were very few jobs in computers because nobody owned a computer. There weren't DVDs or cell phones. Microprocessors barely existed. I was still buying my music on vinyl and cassette tapes. There were thousands of Americans working in the vinyl album business. Then the compact disc came out in 1983 and changed how people bought their music. Now CDs are falling to the wayside as more and more of us just click a button and download the newest Foo Fighters album to our iPods. I graduated from dental school in 1987 and I can think of only a handful of things I learned then that I actually perform now. I was trained on lidocaine and I haven't used lidocaine in years!

From 1900 to 2000 the educational format was that you graduated from high school, moved on to college, learned a specific skill set for four years and then went out into the workforce for the next 45 years until you retired. That format is becoming extinct. Now the world is turned on its head every five years. Education isn't just what you learned in college anymore – it's what you learn every day of your life.

In dentistry, technology is ever-evolving and it means we have to stay on top of our games and continue to take in every shred of new information to stay current. If I was still practicing the same way I did when I first started my practice, my techniques would be archaic now. For example, when I got out of school I used to file all my root canals by hand; now we use 300rpm NiTi files that can clean out the canals 10 times better than a hand file, and it can be accomplished in a scant fraction of the time.

Also, when I first got out of school, orthodontics was extremely difficult – it took both an artist and a long period of time to get results. Now, orthodontics has become easier for orthodontists thanks to technology, and general practitioners can facilitate minor orthodontic work in a short period of time.

We now have BruxZir crowns, e.max crowns and all porcelain crowns. When I got out of school we all had to answer to the aesthetic-health compromise. I could give a patient a white porcelain crown but it would only last half as long as a gold crown. We had to ask each of our patients which was more important to them: the looks or the long-term health of the tooth. Now BruxZir and e.max last as long as a gold crown.

CAD/CAM is another one of those technologies that I had to learn after I went through dental school. Instead of shipping all of my posterior crowns off to the dental lab, I can do them all in-house and on the same day. Patients love that!

Technology keeps changing the face of our profession, and we should all strive to learn how to implement each of these technologies into our practices. Technologies like CAD/CAM and lasers get me excited about my day. They re-energize me and they keep me and my practice at the forefront of dentistry. If you wish you would have gone to grad school to become an orthodontist 25 years ago, why don't you apply today? If you are a dentist and you wish you would have gone to law school to practice dental malpractice, apply to law school today! I went back and got my MBA 10 years after I had graduated from dental school.

It's never too late to change your life for the better. Take a look at Ray Kroc. The guy was in the malt shaker business, and every restaurant that ever bought a malt shaker from him only bought one per restaurant. That is until he sold 10 to the McDonald brothers for their 10 locations. They kept buying mixers from Kroc until they had 10 in each store. Kroc didn't believe it, so he flew to California to see these restaurants at work. Kroc was in his 50s, debt-free, and with his life savings he bought the restaurant chain from the McDonald brothers and the rest is history. He pioneered the franchise concept, put easy systems in place and by the time he died McDonald's had somewhere around 30,000 locations and Kroc owned the San Diego Padres. Heck, even Colonel Sanders didn't start Kentucky Fried Chicken until he was retired!

Bottom line: It doesn't matter how long you've been out of dental school or how old you are or even how successful you have become – keep pushing the envelope, keep learning, make yourself better and you'll never have to say, "If only…"

• To hear more of Howard's thoughts on this topic, go to Dentaltown.com and search: DTV Howard Speaks

Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, MAGD, is an international speaker who has written dozens of published articles. To schedule Howard to speak to your next national, state or local dental meeting, e-mail colleen@farranmedia.com.

Dr. Farran's next speaking engagement is June 24, 2011, at the Tunica Extravaganza Dental Meeting in Tunica, Mississippi. For more information, please call Colleen at 480-445-9712.

June 24 • Tunica, Mississippi
Tunica Extravaganza Dental Meeting
573-335-6709
www.tunica2011.com
Jls8284@yahoo.com

August 20 • Greater Nashville, Tennessee
Tennessee AGD
www.tnagd.org
www.tunica2011.com

September 9 • Minneapolis, Minnesota
Advanced Practice Management
952-921-3360
apm@yorktownoffices.com

October 26 • Raleigh, North Carolina
Nu Image – The Big "3" Dental CE
Kim Wolozyn: 919-532-3192
kim@ncimplant.com
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