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Howard Speaks: Unknown Unknowns Howard Farran, DDS, MAGD, MBA, DICOI, Publisher, Dentaltown Magazine

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Unknown Unknowns
– by Howard Farran, DDS, MAGD, MBA, Publisher, Dentaltown Magazine
“As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
— Fmr. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld; Feb. 12, 2002; Department of Defense news briefing

Say what you will about Donald Rumsfeld, his quote above rings true for just about everyone – including you. When you get out of dental school, you have a good base of dental knowledge, sure, but there are still plenty of things you simply don’t know – and even more, there are things you don’t know that you don’t know. Here’s some advice I’d like to impart to the future of dentistry:

Find a Mentor
When you’re starting out in this profession, the first thing you need to realize is you’re going to make a lot of mistakes. But you can lessen these mistakes if you listen to the stories and take the advice of those in dentistry who have been there before and learned from their own mistakes. My counsel to you is, once you get out on your own, find yourself a mentor. Anyone I’ve ever met who found a good mentor when they were young ended up a success. And by the time they are 40 or 50 years old they always return the favor, paying it forward and mentoring someone else. The best students become the best teachers.

When you are looking for an associateship, you might end up in the interview thinking, “OK, this place is three miles from my parents’ house,” or, “This is where I want to live and this is where I want to practice and this guy is going to be selling his in a year and a half.” And you start thinking about the sale price of the practice and when it would be turned over to you. You’re going to think about revenue, overhead and expenses. But what you should be asking yourself is, “Will this doctor teach me how to do dentistry?” You’re right out of dental school. Is he going to teach you how to build a staff? Is he going to teach you how to market and advertise? There is so much more to think about than a purchase price.

Say two associates pay half a million dollars for their own practice. Dr. One joins a practice where he idolizes the doc he’s inheriting it from. Dr. One works with his mentor for several years, learns everything from this guy and then when the mentor retires, he still comes around to the office and continues to teach Dr. One until he drops dead. That is priceless. Dr. Two pays half a million dollars to some stupid guy he doesn’t respect. Dr. Two thinks his doc’s dentistry sucks and he is just waiting for the guy to retire. Where does that leave Dr. Two in the long run? Find a mentor you can work with and respect. The interview process is as much an information gathering session for you as it is for the doctor interviewing you. Learn as much as you can about the doc you’re going to work with.

Remember: Experience Counts
Let’s say you bypass your associateship and start your own practice. The dumbest thing a young dentist does is fire all the employees who have worked there 15-25 years because he thinks the staff is too old and overpaid. These staff members know the names and dentition of all of your patients and you’re going to can them for a bunch of cheap, inexperienced young hygienists and assistants? When I started my practice, my dad gave me some great advice. He said, “Look man, you graduated in May and your office opened in September. You don’t know thing one about how to set up a hygiene department. You’d better hire the oldest hygienist you can find.” Then he said, “You don’t know anything about dental assisting, either. So you’d better hire the oldest, most experienced dental assistant you can find.” When you’re starting out, you need to surround yourself with the most experienced support staff you can find. I hired a support staff who had decades of experience, and I became their apprentice. They taught me so much, like when my impressions were good (or not). I’d read X-rays and they’d giggle and show me all the cavities I missed. It takes a lot of courage to admit when you’re wrong, but that’s how you learn; and I learned so much from my experienced support staff.

Register and Participate on Dentaltown.com
Social media is the biggest explosion on the Internet, and Dentaltown.com has been around longer than MySpace and Facebook. As of this writing, Dentaltown.com is home to 144,000 registered dental professionals from all all over the world. If you can’t find a mentor in the real world, you’re going to find one on Dentaltown.com; I guarantee it. The great thing about finding a mentor on Dentaltown.com is you can have one mentor who just mentors you in endo. You can find another who will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about ortho or pedo. And you can find another mentor, like Sandy Pardue (who graciously wrote two articles for this special edition) who will teach you everything about practice management. You want to learn about marketing, you can learn it from guys like Fred Joyal, the founder of 1-800-Dentist, or Mark Dilatush from New Patients, Inc. On Dentaltown you can literally have 30 different mentors.

Build Your Clinical Skills
When I got out of school I started taking some continuing education courses, and at the end of one particular course I was asked, “Do you want AGD credit?” I had no idea what AGD was! So I asked, and an older dentist who overheard me told me, “Young man, you must join the AGD! When you take a class, they record the number of hours you’ve spent in CE. If you take 500 hours you will receive your fellowship (FAGD), and if you take another 600 hours, you’ll receive your mastership (MAGD).”

I asked the doctor the most obvious question, “Why would I want a fellowship or a mastership?” And he simply replied, “Because you will become a better dentist.” I thought, at the very least, if I went for either, I could spin it in marketing to potential patients. Even though I really had no idea what I was getting myself into, I went for it.

When I joined the AGD I took a bunch of classes in areas where I experienced problems – mostly fillings and crown and bridge – and that’s all I took classes in. I found out the hard way that I had to take necessary courses in 16 other segments if I wanted to earn a fellowship. I scanned the list of courses that were required to earn my FAGD, and as a young GP just out of dental school, I thought, “Why the hell would I want to learn ortho? I don’t do ortho. Why would I want to learn about placing implants? I don’t place implants. Why would I want to learn about endo? Root canals scare the crap out of me. Why would I want to learn about pediatric dentistry? I don’t even like kids.”

But my quest to earn my FAGD became an obsession, so I forced myself to learn other areas of dentistry, even though I thought I’d never do any of it in my own practice. I remember walking in to the first day of a two-day implant dentistry course taught by Dr. Carl Misch. I was so angry I had to sit there and listen to a course I didn’t care much about in order to earn my fellowship. Honestly, looking back it was like I’d just stumbled upon some lost continent. It was the coolest damn two days I had ever spent! I fell in love with Carl Misch’s course. Next thing I knew I signed up for his eight, two-day, hands-on surgical courses. I loved it so much I got my diplomate in the International Congress of Oral Implantology.

Later on I got a tip from another dentist that if I wanted to earn my FAGD and MAGD quickly, I should start taking courses at the Pankey Institute; you take weeklong courses that earn you 40 credit hours. So I signed up! I got turned on to TMJ, occlusion and full-mouth reconstruction. There is a reason there are 30,000 members of the AGD – docs who have been at dentistry for 30 or more years, have developed the best curriculum to blast your career into stratospheres you never even knew existed.

Now, with the Internet and Dentaltown.com, you don’t even have to travel anywhere to get the CE credits you need! Dentaltown.com has some of the greatest online CE in dentistry. We have more than 130 courses. Every one of them is ADAand/ or AGD-approved. It costs a few bucks to earn your CE credits. We have courses in all 29 subjects from endo, perio, pedo, prostho… you name it. Now that you’re about to embark on your career, every night before you go to bed, or first thing in the morning, you should commit to watching one of those courses. It would take you about five months to get through – and at the end, you’d already be in a much better place as a dentist.

This edition of Dentaltown Magazine is just for dental students who are in their third and fourth years, and for new doctors who have been out in the “real world” for a little while. This book is chock full of useful information, good suggestions and helpful tips from some of the dental profession’s leading dentists and consultants – most of whom are members of Dentaltown.com, aka “Townies.” When I graduated from dental school in 1987 and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to open my own dental practice, a magazine like this would have sat on my desk to use as a reference for years. I certainly could have used it. You’re going to make mistakes and like they always say, good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment – you won’t always know everything, but with enough time, you’ll get better at it. Good luck, best wishes, and welcome to the best damn profession in the world!

Seminars
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.
January 13, 2012 • Phoenix, Arizona
Limited Local Engagement • Farran Enterprises
colleen@farranmedia.com
Colleen Hubbard – 480-445-9712


April 2 and 3, 2012 • Birmingham, UK
The Dentistry Show
www.thedentistryshow.co.uk		 February 17, 2012 • Tarzana, California
Southern California Oral/Facial Study Club
Stephanie@sccofs.com
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818-996-1200

April 21, 2012 • Destin, Florida
Excellence in Dentistry
Jennifer Jones – 800-337-8467
eid@theprofitabledentist.com
www.theprofitabledentist.com
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