It’s big-picture time, boys and girls. As a new doctor preparing to graduate from dental school or who has recently graduated, you’re preparing yourself to champion the oral health of the world head on. This is a very exciting time for you! But there are things you didn’t learn in dental school that you need to know now. I’m writing this column to let you know you are going to have to face some harsh realities about the dental profession soon and you are going to have to make some big decisions before you get going.
I'll start off with some good news and some bad news. The bad news is most of you are coming out of dental school around 25-years-old and swimming in more than $300,000 of student-loan debt. Economically speaking, it's not necessarily the ideal
time to get started as a dentist. The good news is all of the immediate stress you're facing like major debt and where to start will merely be a bump in the road if you're smart, driven, passionate, skillful, humble and dedicated to continuing education. You are starting on a career path that can keep you going until
you're 75 (or older), and that's awesome!.
As of now, you’ve spent your entire post-grad career focusing so hard on doing dentistry just to earn your degree to become a DMD or DDS, that you haven’t had the time or even the opportunity to glance at the big picture of dentistry. Why they don’t teach you about macroeconomics in dental school is beyond me, because it’s extremely important and it affects your level of success as a dentist. It’s so important that I want to talk to you about macroeconomics right here; consider this your first continuing education course (sorry, there’s no test to earn credit at the end).
My message isn’t meant to scare you, it’s meant to prepare you. One of the reasons I love macroeconomics is it’s very simple, and once you start comprehending it, the results you get will pay off in a big way. There are only three variables in macroeconomics: people, technology and capital. That’s it. Easy enough, right, Doc? Let’s take a look how each applies to you.
People
Everyone needs to have a mentor at every stage in his or her life. When you were five years old, you might have been a mentor to your three-year-old little brother or sister. You were the one warning them not to do certain things or they would get in trouble. Now is the time in your life when you need a mentor. Did you think now that you’ve graduated you know everything
you need to know about dentistry? I hope not, because it’s not true. I’ve been practicing for 25 years and I still don’t know all there is to know about dentistry. It’s why we call it a dental practice – nobody’s perfected
it and nobody ever will. Right now you know just enough dentistry to be dangerous. It’s your job to keep improving your skills and acquiring new ones, as well as learning the business and practice-management
aspects of dentistry. Your best bet to becoming the greatest dentist in your town is to latch onto mentors who have practiced dentistry for decades.
I personally know around 100 dentists who
emerged from dental school in the last decade and
almost instantly rocketed to success. Want to know
how they did it? They simply asked for help. They
were smart enough to realize that they didn't know it
all and they were humble enough to seek advice from
veteran dentists who have been there and done that.
I started Dentaltown in 1999 just to make it easier for
dentists to network with new peers and form strong
relationships. These few young doctors leveraged the
collective wisdom of Dentaltown.com by starting and contributing to message board threads, picking the brains of seasoned dentists. And all these seasoned dentists really got into lending a hand and giving these young doctors the advice they wish they had gotten when they were just starting out!
The goal of Dentaltown has always been that through the use of this unique online community, no dentist would ever have to practice solo again. Dentaltown’s members (who call themselves “Townies”) want to help you, and they thrive off of your enthusiasm – it’s a win-win. Nobody on Dentaltown.com gets paid to tell you their advice – every Townie is a volunteer. The reason people actively participate on the Dentaltown.com message boards is because they are passionate about making the field of dentistry the best that it can be, and a big part of that is helping you become the best you can be.
You have to create meaningful professional relationships with your peers and mentors to become
successful, period. On Dentaltown.com, you don't just get one mentor who might be good in one area and bad in another; you get multiple mentors offering multiple points of view. Are you stressing out because you don't know if you should join the Navy or take a job with a corporate dental chain? Get on Dentaltown.com and say, "Hey, I'm 24-years-old, I'm
$300,000 in the hole, I'm stressing out, what should I do?" You will be shocked by the generous, heart-felt responses you will receive from our Townies and the
lasting relationships that will form.
Technology
It's likely you learned next to nothing about
CAD/CAM, dental implants, sleep dentistry or
orthodontics in dental school. This is why jumping
right into continued education is crucial. And it will
continue to be crucial throughout your entire career as
a dentist, because technology just isn't going to stop
improving. And as technology keeps improving -
allowing all of us to practice dentistry easier, faster,
higher in quality and lower in cost - if you want to be
successful, you need to expand your knowledge of it.
When you learn about new technologies and
apply them to your practice, you have more services
to sell. Distribution models of the last 200 years in
the United States show that it's extremely hard to
open up a store and sell one thing. It's why Walmart
is so successful; you can buy bread in one aisle, chlorine
for your pool in the next aisle, and a pair of
jeans in the next. You can't succeed if you're a store
that only sells bread, which forces your customer to
go to a butcher to buy meat, and then to a linen store
to buy fabric. If you pack all those things into one
store - like Walmart has - you're going to get just
about all the customers. If one dentist can only offer
cleaning exams, X-rays, fillings and crowns, but the
guy down the street can do all that and root canals,
extractions, implants, ortho and sleep dentistry, who
do you think is going to see more patients? If you
can do more procedures on fewer patients, you're
going to pay off your student loans in half the time
it takes the other guy. It's basic economics! So go
learn endo! Go learn how to place implants! Learn clear aligner treatment!
Where should you start? Well forgive me for
being a little biased, but Dentaltown.com has 130
online CE courses, each one an hour long. I implore
you to get online and start taking them; not because
you need the credits to maintain your dental license,
but because they will all improve how you practice
dentistry. I personally have taken all of them, and
they're outstanding!
And when you're done taking all of Dentaltown.com's CE courses, you need to venture out of
your town and go to dental seminars and dental conventions
like the Townie Meeting (www.towniemeeting.com) to learn even more. One of the best things
about getting out of your routine, getting out of town
for a few days and learning new techniques and ideas,
is actually a by-product of what you initially intend to
do: networking! In dental school, you ran with the
same 50 to 125 people for four years. Now you've
flown the nest and you're practicing on your own in
your own corner of the world. You've got to go meet
with your peers. You can't do this alone. Aside from
the knowledge you will absorb at these educational
opportunities, the greatest benefit of CE is expanding
your social and professional circle - it's feeling the passion
and energy that radiates from a community of
like-minded individuals. I've made some of the closest
friends at dental meetings - all people who are as passionate
about dentistry as I am and who are facing the
same issues I faced in my practice all day, every day. I
highly suggest you register on Dentaltown.com, get
on the message boards, ask questions, take our online
CE courses and then get yourself to the Townie
Meeting in Las Vegas every year so you can meet with
your online peers in person!
Capital
You have near $300,000 in student loans and you
live in one of the 20 richest countries in the world -
if you're the majority, you probably don't have access
to capital. Banks are currently eating huge losses
around the world, and the Federal Reserve is telling
these banks they need to have more capital. Their
debt-to-loan loss ratios are too high. They can't offer
what they'd consider high-risk loans anymore. So you
need to research. There are hundreds of towns in
America that have fewer than 100,000 people - some
only have 5,000 people, and that's where the cost of
buying a practice is about half of what you'd have to
spend in an over-saturated big city. You need to look
at areas around the country that are completely
underserved and you need to consider setting up
shop in those areas. A bank in a town with no dentist
is going to give you the loan you need and they'll do
it with a big old grin on their faces.
You might be sitting there weighing your
options, wondering whether or not you should join
the Navy so you can sit on an aircraft carrier six
months out of the year to do dentistry in the middle
of the ocean. But if that's not really your cup of tea,
why wouldn't you look into moving to a county in
Kansas that doesn't have a dentist? Do you realize
that if you were to visit these towns and met with the
mayor, he'd walk you downtown to Main St. and
show you three or four buildings that haven't had
anyone in them for the last 10 years and say, "Pick a
building and it's yours." Then he'd walk you over to
the bank and say to the banker, "We need a dentist
in town," and then they'd give you a signature loan.
That could seriously happen! Forget about opening
up a practice in Manhattan that overlooks Central
Park - you and about 5,000 other dentists your age
have the same idea. When I got out of dental school,
I did my research. I looked at the last 20 years of history,
and I looked at the economic and social projections.
I chose an area that was flourishing
economically, that had virtually no competition
nearby and a ton of potential customers. I pinpointed
where new developments were happening
and I set up shop in an area that had 25,000 people
living in it. And in 20 years it boomed to 75,000
people. This is all information you can obtain from
local, state and federal government agencies. You
need to be smart about this.
You live in the richest country in the world, and it's
near impossible to not earn a really decent living as a
dentist. Right now you have nothing but options. You
can be a success in dentistry, but you have to get out of
your routine, muster up a little courage and go for it. I
know you can do it, and so do you. I can't wait to talk
to all of you on Dentaltown.com. |