For over 30 years I’ve lectured at least 30 times a year and spoken to hundreds of dentists in every area of the United States. Last month I spoke to a small group of dentists near Detroit, Michigan. Three of the dentists in that group had just completed the best quarter ever in their practices. What were these three dentist s doing that the rest weren’t? Answer – A lot!

The following is an overview of the thinking and behavior that separated them from the rest..

Growth is a natural process that’s occurring all time. People grow, businesses grow, and economies grow. The process of growth is a natural mechanism in all living organisms and organizations and is propelled by meeting certain foundational needs that must be met by every human being and every organization if that person or organization is to SURVIVE, GROW, THRIVE. These 7 Core Needs built into our DNA are:

• The need to live, grow, procreate
• The need for control
• The need to give and receive love
• The need for power
• The need for freedom, to choose how we will conduct our lives
• The need for fun, enjoyment, variety
• The need for meaning, purpose, significance

To be alive is to be driven. Rarely are any of us so relaxed that we feel nothing inside of us pushing for attention or satisfaction. These genetic instructions are built into the very core of our human existence and we must satisfy these core needs continually.

Through careful study, research and evaluation, we believe that we are all driven by these Seven Needs and that together they make up the energies that drive your growth and that of your practice. All human beings are designed to grow and thus all businesses must be designed to grow or they will stagnate, plateau or die.

A dental practice is by its very nature, like human beings, complex. There are, I have discovered, Seven Driving Forces or Engines that when synergistically organized together, drive growth of any practice. The strength of one engine will drive growth, whereas the weakness of another will limit growth.

A dentist can get into trouble attempting to solve a complex patient problem with an over simplified solution. The same is true in attempting to create growth. Working with a single driving force is not enough to drive and sustain growth. Continuous growth in revenues and profit is the result of identifying and enhancing the energy within all Seven Engines of your practice.

Traditional thinking has led dentists to focus on increasing numbers of new patients as the primary focus for growth and profits. This focus on money and production as the main driving force of a dental practice leads to poor quality of care, lack of patient retention and referrals, and an exhausted and overworked dentist and team.

The Profit-Ability Management Method™ that I developed is based on identifying and enhancing the Seven Driving forces which are the key to continuous growth in revenues and profits. In fact, almost any dental practice can double it’s net profit in 3 years! This may seem like a bold claim to some, but 30 years of experience doing it shows it is possible.

This is the starting point:: To grow, you must set a goal in terms of dollar growth in revenues and profits for the next 12, 24, 36 months! The effectiveness of your growth depends on the clarity of your goal and the Intensity of your commitment to achieve it!!

It is critical to understand that each engine has the potential to drive growth when it is strong, but weakness of any of the Seven Engines will limit vitality, growth and profits. The weakest driving force is always a major limiting factor for the other engines in the practice. If you’ve ever felt like you were working harder than you should for the results you’re getting, it’s time to stop and objectively evaluate the Seven Engines that drive you, your team and your practice growth.

Here in brief are the Seven Engines that create the Energy that drives practice growth:

The Attraction Principle™: You must have a process to know, attract, serve and keep the patients, your market..

There must be a need in society that your practice serves. Patients are attracted to your practice because their needs are satisfied in an environment that creates great service and a rewarding experience. If they are not continuously attracted, this engine isn’t working.

The Professional Advantage™: Have a plan to employ the right team members for the right roles and help them achieve personal and professional growth.

Your team must be a group of individuals who contribute their ideas, talents and energies to delivering services that activate the Attraction Principle™.

Good people with good systems produce outstanding results.
—W. Edwards Deming

The Business Blueprint™:Create a clear and coherent design for your practice—no loose ends.

Organization often seems vague and mysterious, but it is essential to create energy within the other driving forces. Energy is dissipated and growth is thwarted if all the Driving Forces aren’t working together to release the energy of the dentist and team to drive growth.

The Time Treasure™: Control the most valuable resource you have — your time and your life.

How you manage your time determines how your practice and life goes. In today’s world we have more opportunities than we have time for. Planning, prioritizing, gaining or re-gaining control of time is a vital driving engine to empower and release your energy and the energy of every team member.

The Profit Creator™: Have complete understanding and control of your Money and Cash Flow to enable you to make sound business decisions.

To Create Wealth and Abundance it is a requirement to control the flow of money or money will control you, limit you, and limit your growth. There is nothing that requires more control than money.

The Patient Journey™: Have an engaging process that helps your patients make good decisions.

Create a new patient engagement process where patients arrive at making good choices. Pushing or manipulating patients into treatment choices that don’t fulfill their needs or they don’t understand is a mistake. Never be afraid to sell. Everyone sells.

The referral sells, the first phone contact sells, the office décor sells, the first visit to the office sells, the smiles of doctor and team members sell. Every contact, by phone or in person, is a ‘moment of truth’ in the selling process.

The Communication Connection™: Develop a clear, consistent

style of communication that articulates the Future Picture (where you are headed and why) of your practice and encourages people be inspired to go to the next level of performance.

If we are to find meaning and purpose in our practices, it will be when we are connected to others and doing work that is meaningful and purposeful to us. Communication that is open, friendly, and honest creates respect and trust which are the foundation of all relationships. No matter how high quality the dentistry you offer, if your communication style doesn’t attract and engage people in a cooperative way, your practice will not grow.

Whatever you believe is the Primary Engine driving your practice, it is still dependent on what the other Six are doing. It may be easier to handle and drive the Money engine, but only when all engines are working synergistically together will growth be easier and occur naturally.

Some cars work better than others. Some practices work better than others, and with far less stress and effort.

I like the Driving Force and Engine analogy I’ve been developing here because it implies that you have the power to control your destiny, regardless of city, type of practice, specialty or current economic conditions. When all engines are identified and improved, growth is the natural result.

When I speak of the Attraction Principle™, I’m referring to your perception of your market, to the emotional needs of your patients, and to whether what you are offering fulfills the emotional needs of your patients.

When I speak of the Business Blueprint™, I refer to the way you use your technical capability to fulfill the needs of your patients.

When I speak of the Profit Creator™, I mean the way in which you proactively control the flow of money in your practice and your life.

When I write of the Professional Advantage™, I’m writing about activating the energy that your team can bring to practice every day. Do they display an enthusiasm? Are they engaged? Do they have fun at work?

When I speak of the Business Blueprint™, I’m not referring to an organizational chart that is abstract or limiting. No organizational chart ever doubled anything, except perhaps excess payroll and bureaucracy.

Organization is the most misunderstood and unappreciated driving force.

Organization, in its truest sense, is what creates the synergistic relationship between all the other engines. When working together, the 7 Engines can produce almost unlimited growth, fun, freedom and a sense of meaning and purpose in our practices. And yes, Wealth Creation and Abundance are natural outcomes.

Seldom do we step back and look seriously at the biologic energies that drive growth. We all want to grow. We all need to grow. Growth has been designed into our DNA, but the knowledge and skills of growth must be learned, and then applied to our personal lives and businesses.

True growth, consistent long term growth is never an accident. There are always Principles, Methods, Models and Actions that create growth, driven by needs and 7 Driving Forces.

Doctors, start your engines.

To view the full article, please click Start your Engines!

FREEDOM FROM THE CHAIR is more than a cliché. It can be a business and life strategy. Becoming “free from the chair” and creating a second stream of cash flow equal to your practice income doesn’t mean you will retire, or do something other than dentistry. It simply means you are free to do more of what you want to do and not let the lack of money determine how you conduct your practice or your life.

It is amazing how many let money rule their lives rather than gaining control over money and making it a friend rather than an adversary.

Fundamental Principles:

• All energy follows a path of least resistance. (Electricity, water, money, time, etc.)
• Money is energy, nothing more, nothing less.
• The underlying structures of your life and business determine your path of least resistance and how money, time and relationships function in your life and business.
• You CAN change the fundamental underlying structures of your life and business.

There are four essential components of every dentist’s life that must synergistically work together to create wealth and freedom…

To view the full article from Dental Economics, please click Freedom from the Chair.

As a private practice dentist, you face a unique set of challenges in today’s complex environment. From ongoing research and classroom discussions with other dentists, we have created white papers on topics related to management, leadership, sales, team synergy, freedom, and the creation of wealth. This is one of those papers.

Research suggests that a typical graduating dentist in 2008 will incur $150,000 or more in school debt. Two years after graduation, he or she will buy or open a dental practice and be faced with $1 million or more in liabilities which can prevent the accumulation of wealth. While most practices will generate a great deal of cash flow, they will not create wealth or freedom.

In many instances, without proper planning, today’s dentist won’t be debt free from school and the start up of his or her practice until age 45 or older…

To view the full article from Dental Economics, please click Tied to the Chair.

The “GOLDEN AGE OF DENTISTRY” is now. There has never been an opportunity to experience more fulfillment, enjoyment, and yes, profitability in dentistry than there is today.

This is especially true for dentists with advanced training in esthetic dentistry, occlusion, implants, orthodontics, and prosthetic s.

Dentists who are able to resolve complex dental disabilities, issues of esthetics, tooth wear, or tooth replacement have a great opportunity in this wonderful time. Now is the time to make a big difference.

Dentistry at this level changes and transforms lives. In the process of transforming the lives of our patients, our own lives are transformed. This is the best part. I’ve been blessed to experience this in my own practice and in the Schuster Center’s work as well. I would go so far as to say that those who visit the Schuster Center and stay connected do so because it is life transforming…

To view the full article from Dental Economics, please click Golden Age.

If your practice income is such that you should be Wealthy, but haven’t been able to accumulate money and CREATE WEALTH— then this message is for you!

Over 30 years of working with my colleagues tells me that Creating Wealth is simple, but not easy! I’d like to share with you some vital keys to Creating Wealth that can make all the difference in your career as a dentist.

First and most important, you must know exactly how much is enough and by when. You have to Create a MASTER PLAN. Obviously the earlier you do this, the better. In reality this is more Neuroscience than it is Science. The way our brains work is simple, but most are too busy to stop and consider how their brain works and how their Mental Mindset determines their life!! Your brain works in two ways. First, the energy is directed towards seeking a goal and why you want this goal; the second is to discover and take action to accomplish the goal.

YOUR GOALS are your plan for the future.

In concrete terms you need 20 times the yearly income you plan to Create Wealth or abundance. If its $100,000 a year, then you need $2M. $200,000/ year, then $4M and so on.

Those intending to Create Wealth, PLAN, the rest don’t. In fact the Wealthiest people I know are planners not plodders.

Your MASTER PLAN takes into consideration the FOUR main areas of your planning process. A MASTER PLAN takes into consideration your goals for Production, but also your goals for expenses in every major category of your practice and life. Your MASTER PLAN also takes into consideration what your life will be like when you pursue your goals. The major pieces look like this: 

• The money it takes to run your practice (this is first because you can recapture the most money here!)
• The money it takes to run your lifestyle.
• How much money goes to taxes, FICA, State and Federal taxes.
• The amount of money you need to SAVE or INVEST each month.

The second most important action is to have a MODEL of PRACTICE that enables you to go to work every day with a plan and a process helps you Create the Life and Practice you want today, but are Creating Wealth in the Process.

The vast majority are working without PLANS, without a BUSINESS MODEL that has at its core the Creation of Wealth. When I write that you have to have a model, this is what I mean.

• You have to know what Wealth means to you.
• You have to know how much by when.
• But equally important is how your practice will Create Value for those who come to you as patients.

One of the greatest mysteries to the unaware is the following:

“To the degree you Create Value for others is the degree that others will help you Create Wealth.”

Your MODEL of practice has to create value for the patients you serve. When I say create value, the value that is created is not in your mind, but rather is in the mind of the people you care for. If they do not see, experience, feel, sense, want the value you are offering, no matter how hard you work or try, they are not going to be willing to pay you the price you deserve for your services.

Since I’ve been privileged to work with many of dentistry’s finest dentists, I see and feel the difference when I talk with them, when I visit their practices. We are truly in the ‘experience economy’, and the MENTAL MINDSET and ENVIRONMENTS of those who are Creating Wealth versus those who aren’t is strikingly different.

Those who are really Creating Wealth talk about how great a team they have, what more they can do for their patients, how they are working on various aspects of themselves and their practices to create even more value for their patients.

Whereas the majority focus on Production, this smaller group focuses on how they can deliver a great service that fulfills the requirements and needs of their patients in an empathetic, caring, informative way.

This is the Reality of your business:

• Your practice exists for a PURPOSE, and that purpose isn’t you.
• Your practice exists to make a difference in some way for the people you serve.

If there is any recurring theme of those who are NOT CREATING WEALTH, it is that their thinking and practice is focused on themselves and not on the value they are creating for their patients or their team.

Requirement Number 3: Those who are Creating Wealth have Wealthy Mentors, Guides, Coaches; men and women that have been down this path before and have Creating Wealth themselves. Successful people leave clues. The top 3% of dentists are 10-100 times more wealthy than the rest.

“If you want to be a Winner at anything hang around with Winners”

Weekly I talk with dentists from all over the country who are 55, 60, 65, have worked hard their entire lives, taken care of their families, educated their children, have had good lives, but one thing is so common that it could be called a crisis;

95% can’t afford to retire on anyplace close to the same income they have while in practice.

Keep this in mind. These are good, well intentioned people, but they have operated their entire lives without a PLAN, without GOALS, without A MODEL, without MENTORS or GUIDES, and lastly without

Requirement number four which is MONITORING. Every person who I know that has achieved Wealth in dentistry has had an ongoing (long term) relationship with a Mentor, Guide, or Coach who holds them accountable to what they said they were going to do.

• Master Plan
  
• Models
• Mentoring
• Monitoring

The four requirements of Creating Wealth.

I recently lecturing in New Jersey to a group of 160. I asked everyone to stand up. I started the day by asking five questions:

Question # 1: I asked everyone who didn’t have GOALS to sit down. About 40 sat. This means that 25% didn’t have any goals whatsoever.

Question #2: I then asked everyone who didn’t have WRITTEN GOALS to sit down. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, all but 25 sat.

Question #3: Then I asked those remaining standing to sit down unless then had written goals for more than their career or financial life. That eliminated 13, leaving 12 standing.

Question #4: I asked the remaining 12 to sit down unless they had a written plan that accompanied their goals. That left 6 more, leaving 6 standing.

Question #5: I asked the remaining 6 to sit down unless they reviewed their goals, plans with a Mentor/Guide or Coach on a quarterly basis.

Only one dentist remained standing.

Several points need to be made. When I wrote The Science of Creating Wealth, I wrote it based on 30 years of working exclusively with dentists. There are some key points to keep in mind.

• The most money to be recaptured is in your PRACTICE since we are dealing with ‘gross income’.

With average overheads in the US approaching 70%, it is clear that if one lowers their practice overhead 10% then this is 10% more of gross dollars that could be saved, invested for Creating Wealth. The majority of money to be recaptured is here.

• Second area is home expenses. No one thinks they are spenders, and yet without some form of budget or understanding of what we spend at home, we’ll spend whatever we make unless we have plans to contrary. I’m not recommending keeping tabs on every penny you spend, but I am recommending that you have a plan or a budget for outgo or expenses. No matter what your income, you need to know what your ‘lifestyle’ costs you monthly.

• The third area is taxes. It is important to plan ahead for taxes as Uncle Sam is a partner in all of our lives and businesses. Being PROACTIVE with Taxes is vital to Creating Wealth. Our experience suggests that most are paying $10,000 to $20,000 too much in income tax every year.

• Save and then Invest. It is important to become a saver first and an investor second.

It isn’t that we dentists as a group don’t save, but we don’t save enough.
To view the full article from Dental Economics, please click Science of Creating Wealth.

Success leaves clues.

We live in difficult times. You can look forward to 2011 with Hope or Fear. I suggest you choose HOPE. 2011 can be either a difficult year or it can be a year where you learn the most, grow the most personally and practice wise and prepare yourself to thrive.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until its faced.”

How do you approach the coming year? You have two fundamental choices. You can choose to do everything you can to continue to survive through the impending recession or you can remain inactive and join the 90% group that spends their time complaining and doing little or nothing to take charge of their destiny.

There are E, external factors that we have little or no control over, and there is I, internal factors that we have tremendous control over. There is little or no satisfaction in trying to fix a weakness, but there is great satisfaction in developing your strengths. This attitude is elegantly and powerfully stated in the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the power to accept

the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

In reality, this prayer is the embodiment of a theory of HOPE. Work on the areas of your life and practice that offer positive outcomes, and let go of those aspects over which you have no control over.

Having survived 6 recessions since I started my first practice and guided my colleagues through 5 of those six, I have some simple, but useful strategies to recommend for the following year.

• Invest time in preparing your POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE.

This isn’t hype, but it vital to your success in the coming year. Get up every morning, roll out of bed and spend at least 10 minutes focusing on everything that you are Grateful for. Remember, you are the leader of your business and perhaps your family. People are looking at you, counting on you to show the way. I’m not saying this is easy, but it is a simple and powerful way to prepare yourself or the day ahead, no matter what it brings to you.

• Invest in yourself to develop your God-given talents and abilities. If you’ve been in practice 8 years or more, you already know how to deliver technical dentistry but more than likely are having difficulty getting it off the shelf. This is NOT I’ve got to go learn something more technical.

• It’s an ORGANIZATION ISSUE (how you deliver what you deliver and create a great experience for your patients in the process).

• Or it’s a COMMUNICATION ISSUE (having a simple and effective process to communicate with your team and patients with CARE, COMPASSION, EMPATHY to create HOPE and TRUST.

• Or it’s a LEADERSHIP ISSUE. You know where you want to go; you know your PERSONAL STRENGTHS and PRACTICE STRENGHTS and you are aware of them, focused on them and developing them every day.

You are the Leader of your life, your team and your patients. Leaders do one major activity; they influence those that surround them. They influence them in positive, productive, performance enhancing ways or they do the opposite. A person cannot NOT communicate. When you own your own business, you cannot NOT influence those who surround you.

Leadership affects practice performance and in big ways. Zenger’s and Folkman’s research revealed ability directly affects the performance of the practice. Dentists who rated in the top 10% in Leadership ability were 400% more successful (profitable) than those in the bottom 10% and 45% more successful (profitable) than those in the middle 80%!

Zenger’s and Folkman’s research mirrors our own at the Schuster Center. We study the most healthy and why they are healthy and then repeat those patterns. If you spend your time studying what doesn’t work, you will turn negative and never learn what really works.

There are five recurring themes that we observe in the great practices we are associated with that do well in any Economic climate.

• They create meaningful relationships with their team and patients.
• The relationship with their staff members mirrors the relationships they create with their patients.
• They work with their patients to co-discover what their patients need and want; they take the time to listen to their patients; they take the time to co-create treatment plans that are in the best interest of their patients. In many cases they routinely stage treatment relative to dental and economic circumstances.
• They constantly work to provide a high trust culture for their teams and high trust environment for their patients. The perspective of this high performing group of dentists is dramatically different than the other 90%. This group focuses first on the best interest of the patient, and secondly on themselves. The irony is by truly believing and living this spiritually humanistic strategy, by focusing on the best interest of the patients first, this top 10% is 2-4 times more profitable than the next group.
• They have a highly organized practice, where patients are seen on time, whatever is completed is delivered on time and patients have a WOW experience.
  
• They strive to provide high quality dental care for their patients. This is not the perfection centered group of dentists. They strive to provide their best dentistry they can but don’t obsess on it. They provide the best the patient can accept and pay for with gratitude and appreciation and have a positive, grateful attitude with their patients. Their focus is on meeting and exceeding the needs of the patient.

These and more are all things that you have 100% control over. In difficult times we can focus on what we don’t have or what isn’t going well, or we can make the time to continuously develop ourselves, our strengths.

The most important activity you can do right now is to focus on your relationships. Although we all realize that negative relationships do exist, we must focus on ‘relationship’ in a positive light:

“Relationship is the process of investing in another person by doing those things for that person’s own good without consideration of self reward. Ultimately, it is the sum or our responses to another human being.”

The very fabric of your practice and your life is constructed person by person, patient by patient. As our positive relationships increase, we benefit geometrically; our practices become richer, and we expand our influence and build our strengths. Many think that Leadership and Relationship building is soft, but observe any dentist who is really, really short on patients right now and I’ll show you a dentist who is low on the relationship scale.

Our practices develop best when our relationships are strong and meaningful.

Relationships are critical elements in our ability to develop and use our strengths.

To view the full article from Dental Economics, please click Hope.

The assumption is that INCOME IS WEALTH!

There are three fundamental mindsets and approaches to money that reflect the segment of society in which you were brought up . Your upbringing has a powerful influence on your relationship with money. In all my years of lecturing to dentists and professionals, only one dentist in over 30 years said he was born with a ‘silver spoon’ in his mouth. In other words, only one dentist was born into and raised in a family of great wealth.

Children in families of great wealth are raised with the principle idea of preserving the wealth they inherit. Parents and grandparents know that it takes a certain mindset or culture to preserve the wealth that their children will inherit.

The mindset of children raised in middle class families (like the majority of dentists) is vastly different than the mindset of those raised in wealthy families. The mindset of the middle class culture is INCOME IS WEALTH, that is THE MORE MONEY I MAKE, GROSS OR EVEN NET, THE WEALTHIER I AM.

This is a fair explanation as to why ADA statistics and our own, together with other leading financial experts, suggest that in spite of earning $25 to $50 million dollars or more in a lifetime of practicing dentistry that fewer than 5% can retire on the same income they made in their lifetime.

This middle class mentality of measuring wealth on income is why the vast majority are still tied to the chair when they are 50, 55, 60, 65 and even 70!

The lower class has  a different relationship or mindset regarding money.

Since they have little hope of creating much income they don’t even try to create wealth. (They do, however, buy lottery tickets and eat at McDonald’s.) America is the only place on earth where our poorest people are overweight.

Everyone I have met who has created wealth understands that there are two fundamental mindsets in relationship to money: INCOME and NET WORTH. The most important financial statement you get from your accountant or financial advisor is your NET WORTH STATEMENT. Listen, you can take in $500,000, $1,000,000, even $2M from your practice and yet not be creating wealth.

Your INCOME STATEMENT tells you how much you are making. Your NET WORTH STATEMENT tells you how much you are keeping. Most people don’t realize that they are self-employed even if they are working for someone else or punching a clock.

Let’s look at a dentist who grosses $950,000 a year, nets $300,000, and spends it all in lifestyle and taxes. Then, let’s look at another dentist who grosses $650,000 a year and saves $75,000 annually. Although the first is making $300,000 more a year in income, only the second dentist is actually creating wealth. With $75,000 more accumulated per year, the second dentist is able to take advantage of opportunities that the first dentist is not.

The lack of a wealth mindset and the discipline to go with it nails a high percentage of dentists, other professionals and small business owners as well. Now let’s take a closer look at how the INCOME and NET WORTH statements fit into a Goal-Setting Activity that can help you Create Wealth and Freedom:

INCOME STATEMENT: Your income statement shows exactly what you’ve earned, what you’ve spent, and what you’ve brought down to the bottom line. Don’t look for HIGHER PRODUCTION, look for higher NET PROFITS. Net after all costs of doing business, net after all personal expenditures, net after taxes—the dollars that are left are the only ones available to make your LONG TERM GOALS real. Plan your future by preparing an INCOME STATEMENT in advance that lists all your expenses and income. Then, as the year goes by, you can easily check how you’re doing.

Unless you actually see in advance where your money is going, all you can do is react to it. Your accounting statement won’t help you create wealth. It will help you REACT to the MONEY you have but it will not help you to Create Wealth and Freedom. As you check your INCOME STATEMENTS during the year, if you find your NET PROFIT below your forecast, take action to raise your earnings or cut your expenses.

NET WORTH STATEMENT: We have all seen a lot of changes in our world and in our society. Our culture is changing. I believe the following statement to be pivotal to your long term success: “I am totally and completely responsible for my own life and success.” For years we’ve been sold on the concept that from the day we start working, we should plan for retirement. To me, retirement is another word for ‘early death’. It has been true for many people I’ve met. The records prove that when people become inactive in retirement, their lives are shortened drastically.

You don’t work to retire. You work to be fulfilled. You work to create meaning and significance in your life and the lives of the people you serve.

On the other hand, it is our obligation to be ready when it comes time to enjoy our golden years.

To view the full article from Dental Economics, please click Assumption.

I can’t tell you what you should do individually, but I can share with you what many of my students are doing to survive, create stability and even grow in these trying and difficult times.

A turbulent, recessionary economy teaches us many things. As I visit with current students, past students, and dentists around the country, I gain an understanding that I wouldn’t otherwise if I were to simply sit behind a desk or just stay in my own practice.

Recessions teach us more about ‘systems’. Many dentists would like to think and act independently. Yet, you discover that no man and no dentist is an island. We are impacted by everything that is outside our small practices as well as what is going on inside. The only thing you have control over is what you do in your own life and practice.

In the 1990s’, when the S&P Index went from 295 to 1585 (a 500+% increase in value), all you had to do was be in the stock market, or be in the housing market and your portfolio and dental practice grew. We were like a boat going down the Mississippi River, simply going with the current. As long as the current was moving, we were doing fine and many went to sleep thinking the values of the stock market, homes and businesses would increase forever.

Regardless of your political affiliation or beliefs about debt, Americans are drowning in it. We have sacrificed our futures for the present. Currently, each American has accrued an average of personal debt of $90,000 just in this decade. Every child born in 2010 will be born with a debt responsibility to the U.S. Government of over $100,000, and we certainly aren’t done turning our failures over to the government to pretend to solve for us. There is just no easy way out.

Every single one of us is impacted by the climate in which we live. For several decades, we have been warned of the impending crisis. Like the band playing on the deck of the Titanic as it was sinking, Americans, the government, and Wall Street played on like nothing was going to happen.

Greed appears to be the Achilles heel of the American Capitalistic Economic System. We see it on both a macroscopic and a microscopic level. I don’t pretend to know how to solve it, but it is essential to your survival that you understand it.

We are all impacted by emotions. When things are good, we feel secure, happy, engaged and even euphoric. When things turn negative, our emotions turn towards fear, indecision, doubt, procrastination. Of the six basic fears listed by Napoleon Hill’s classic book, Think and Grow Rich, fear of poverty is at the head of the list and has the most power over us.

Now, we come to my last key point. In times like these…

Darwin’s ‘Survival of the Fittest’ seems the most appropriate theory to draw on right now. For some of you, this will be vital as you ponder your survival and your future over the next few years. If this recession does last 4-5 more years (as the most knowledgeable economists of the world are predicting), the spending patterns of Americans will be changed forever.

Witness the Japanese economy that has never come back from its previous spending patterns. The Japanese buy just 50% of the automobiles they bought a decade ago.

A deep, lasting recession impacts individuals and societies at its very core. Not a totally bad thing, unless you are overleveraged yourself. My parents went through the depression. My mother’s parents had vast land holdings and lost them all in the depression. This made an indelible mark on my parent’s psyche. They could not handle any level of financial risk. When I invested or expanded my practice, my mother always cautioned me about what ‘might’ lie ahead. While not always bad, this thinking tends to paralyze people.

The keys to your survival and ability to thrive (if you can imagine that) are the skills and capabilities that you have as a practicing dentist.

All growth, and thus all opportunity, lies in the innate human

ability to develop new skills and capabilities.

All human progress is dependent on the never-ending development of new skills and capabilities.

Thus, all of your progress as a dentist is dependent on your motivation, your desire and willingness to develop new skills and capabilities that you can transfer for the direct benefit of your patients.

In work at The Schuster Center, we interact with FOUR LEVELS OF DENTISTS:

To view the full article from Dental Economics, please click Survive.

All behavior is shaped by the reward we believe and expect the behavior will produce.
–Thorndike

There are distinctly different types of motivation that work in distinctly different directions and with different results. Individuals and organizations are either MOVING TOWARD what they want or MOVING AWAY from what they don’t want. We have all developed both a TOWARD MOTIVATION and an AWAY FROM motivation: TOWARDS fun, comfort, satisfaction, peace of mind, or AWAY from pain, problems, distress, complications. Both forms of motivation are useful in different situations. We all use both types of motivations. Yet for most, one type of motivation predominates.

It is vital to understand the PREDOMINATE MOTIVATIONAL DIRECTION of each team member and patient with whom we work. We’ve all met individuals who get up early and are excited about life in general and need little or no guidance, feedback, or prodding of any kind. On the other hand, we’ve also worked with people at one time or another who needed the threat of job loss to motivate them to do better.

Both types of motivation work. However, when anyone predominately uses an AWAY FROM MOTIVATION, once they are away from danger or out of sight, there is no more desire to move onward and upward. Generally those who use AWAY FROM MOTIVATION, are doing so because they are experiencing discomfort at some level. In my observation AWAY FROM individuals nearly always LOSE MONEY when they invest and are rarely very high health individuals. Let me explain.

In an AWAY FROM motivated person, the pain has to get really severe before they take action. They feel the ‘threat’ and they see the value of their investments going down, but they don’t act until they have usually lost a great deal of money.

Another example is with health and disease. Last week, I talked with a dentist who was still procrastinating about making a decision to improve his practice. He was in the hospital, more than 100 pounds overweight, diagnosed with diabetes and a blood clot in his leg so severe that he might actually lose his leg. Here’s what he said, “I never thought this would happen to me, I thought I was invincible.” This is an amazing true story about the AWAY FROM MOTIVATION. My question is, how bad does it have to get before he becomes serious about his life and practice? Individuals with AWAY FROM MOTIVATION often lose their desire to improve the further away from threat they are.

Since AWAY FROM individuals are moving AWAY FROM facing the truth about where they are, they generally end up in a place they don’t like. When the mind is preoccupied with what you DON’T WANT rather than what you DO WANT, you generally continue to repeat your past and make little or no long term progress. Rather than focusing on the desired future, people are so busy running away from what they don’t want that they run right into it.

PROCRASTINATION is the sneak thief of life. When I talk with a procrastinator (generally a person with an AWAY FROM orientation), they live in a great deal of anxiety and pain already, and have built up a resistance to it. So it takes a great deal of pain, anxiety and discomfort before they can overcome their fear and move forward. For many, still the first attention paid to diet, exercise, proper eating habits, and stress reduction behavior is a near fatal heart attack.

I’m not sure what percentage of the population is AWAY FROM versus TOWARD MOTIVATED, but my best guess is that 80-90% are AWAY FROM MOTIVATED rather than TOWARD MOTIVATED. To show how predominate this AWAY FROM MOTIVATION really is in our culture, let me share my experience of many years in working with dentists regarding MONEY and INVESTMENTS. Every week now, I talk with one or more dentists who have lost 50% of the investment value of their retirement, 401K or college planning accounts. Several times a month, I lecture to small intimate groups of dentists and upon asking why they came, invariably someone will respond, “My 401K is now a 201K or 101K.” This absolutely mystifies me. But it proves again that AWAY FROM MOTIVATION predominates.

So the top of the S&P was around 1565, and the bottom was 677! That’s a decline of more than half. Every time we have a recession, which is about every 8-9 years, the majority looks for new investment managers. Why? Because they have lost so much money. AWAY FROM investment advisors and investors ACT when they really experience GREAT PAIN or DISCOMFORT. After every major drop in the value of securities is always a rise. It always comes back, but what you own may not come back. The companies in which you invested in the past may have experienced ‘CREATIVE DESTRUCTION’ and may never return to their former value.

Since AWAY FROM motivators have to have EXTREME PAIN before they act, it is easy to see how they can let the value of their investments slip to great depths before they do anything. These same people could wake up and understand themselves and then realize that they must protect themselves, rather than wait to act under severe and serious distress.

A TOWARD MOTIVATOR is always looking FORWARD to specific goals and objectives. Both can and should have a specific strategy rather than simply relying on emotions. Since the value of any investment is determined by the emotions of the masses, it is critical to have a plan to protect your health and your wealth. TOWARD MOTIVATED people are CREATORS; AWAY FROM MOTIVATED people are REACTORS.

To be effective, both types must understand THEIR MOTIVATIONAL DIRECTION, as it impacts every aspect of their lives and businesses.

All success requires a PLAN and a STRATEGY. I tell my investment advisor that no matter what, I never want to lose more than 10% in any year, ever. So I personally invest 33% in cash like instruments, 33% in municipal bonds and 33% in stocks, mutual funds and real estate. I realize that I won’t make as much money when the market goes up, but I also won’t lose nearly as much when the market goes down. Every 3 months I have the entire portfolio rebalanced to minimize my risk and optimize the gains.

Let me share an interesting piece of data with you that proves my point…

To view the full article from Dental Economics, please click Motivation.

• Joseph Schumpeter has named our current economic situation ‘Creative Destruction’
• George Land would call it ‘Break Point’
• I refer to it as a ‘Turning Point’

Whatever you call it, it is a time of change. And change always brings a crisis to some and opportunity to others. It is times like these that leaders guide and show the way to an optimistic and hopeful future. As a practicing dentist, I often wonder what would have happened in my life of dentistry had I not met, befriended, and been mentored by some of the finest dentists who have ever lived. When I meet others who are stuck, on a plateau or struggling, I think of a statement I heard years ago:

You’ll never be any better than the 5 people with whom you spend the most time.

We all need mentors, guides, and role models. A mentor is someone who takes a personal interest in you. In reflection, I’ve been more blessed than most to not only have studied with but also been mentored by Dr. Bob Barkley, Dr. LD Pankey, Dr. F. Harold Wirth, Dr. Henry Tanner, Dr. John Anderson, Dr. Peter Dawson, and Dr. Charles Wold. The best dentists I am privileged to work with today all have had significant mentors or role models in their lives.

Our technical mentors provide for us the ‘vision’ of what our treatment goals should be for our patients. We gain the picture of the ‘end result’ from our technical mentors. Those with a dental school education alone have some knowledge and limited skills and abilities to resolve minimal problems. Once we gain the picture from our technical mentors, we either have the motivation, determination, and resolve to help our patients move towards it or we don’t. I am writing not only of my own experience, but the experience of working with thousands of general dentists, endodontists, periodontists, orthodontists, oral surgeons and pediatric dentists, as well. As I reflect on my personal experience with my mentors in dentistry, they gave me and others far more than technical leadership.

Great mentors also serve as potentially great role models as to how to live and conduct our lives. Within each of the mentors I listed above, I gained tremendous insight relative to professional ethics: doing the right thing for my patients, for the right reasons. In fact, I still keep pictures of all my mentors in my office today. Early in my career I was influenced heavily by Drs. Pankey, Anderson, Dawson and Tanner. The idea of ‘do the best you can for the sake of the patient’ was a common theme within all of them. Later, I met F. Harold Wirth, who befriended me and treated me like his own son. With nothing to gain, he nurtured me, helped me, and guided me as I moved my practice from Dubuque, Iowa to Scottsdale, Arizona to practice and begin The Schuster Center.

When you would meet and have dinner with great people such as Peter Dawson, Charles Wold, LD or Harold, the conversations always moved towards doing something significant with or for people. I cannot ever remember a conversation that was about them or what they were getting or how much money they were making. The conversations were always about how to help dentists, or make the profession better or how to improve the lives of patients in some way. The conversations were always about finding ways to make a difference. Sometimes those differences were in the lives of dentists who, in turn, impact their patients every day in positive life affirming ways or negative ways.

I am absolutely convinced that your professional life as a dentist is powerfully influenced by the people with whom you associate (the five you spend the most time with) along with mentors or guides who care deeply about you and your future.

Of course, our parents can be wonderful guides and mentors as well. But, normally their greatest influence happens within the first 2 decades of life. Once we start dental school and our career, the influence of our parents subsides and the influence of our dental mentors becomes much greater.

As we become busier in our practices and personal lives, there seems to be less time for guidance, reflection and contemplation about what we are doing and why. Even though I’ve taught technical dentistry for years, I’ve found that how we manage ourselves and our practices, how we lead ourselves and our practices has as much or more influence on the success and advance of our practice and personal life as our technical mentors.

We gain the ‘vision’ of what we want to achieve from our advanced technical training. But, we obtain the possibility of creating it from our management and leadership models and mentors.

What I found as a common thread within all of my mentors was that they each possessed a strong philosophy, a set of values and beliefs that guided their day to day life and practice.

I think it would be tough to fill a seminar room on a course listed as — ‘How to Instill Your Philosophy into Your Day to Day Practice.’ But in essence, this is what our mentors help us with. We see them, study with them, observe their success, not only in practice, but in life…and we want to emulate them. All the most successful dentists I’ve met are successful because they’ve copied or learned the strategies, methods and models that created proven success for dentists…and their success becomes our success. Success is simple if we find the right mentors, study with them and observe them, and spend the time to get to know them. Too many dentists jump around from one treatment philosophy to the next and never really learn any of them well enough to excel.

I can remember LD saying over and over…

To view the full article from Dental Economics, Please click Great leaders.