How To Find A Better Way

This episode of beyond you'd why Podcast is brought to you by Dentistry Roadmap. After working for the past 30 years developing and growing my practice, I've learned that a great practice starts with a great message. I've narrowed down the essentials to developing your practice message into a six part online study club where I show you how to do this for your practice. So make sure to head over to dentistryroadmap.com to learn how you can take your dental practice to the next level.

So today we're going to talk about the why of to find a better way. Now if you remember, these are people that are always looking to find a better way. Always taking something that's already there and improving upon it, making it better and making it something that other people can use. So they're great innovators. They're great at looking for things in other areas like different businesses and applying them to their business so that they can make things better. Now, if you haven't discovered your why yet, make sure that you go to whyinstitute.com, discover your why, and then come back. Because this will make a lot more sense for you and have much more impact for you when you know your why. Now, today I've got a great guest for you. He's a friend of mine. He's a dentist from Lawrence, Kansas. And let me read a little bit about his bio for you. He's been in private practice for 36 years, so he's got lots and lots of experience. He and I met through a mutual friend and I know we both went through the Pankey Institute and have had lots of continuing education, but his name is Dr. James Otten. He is a visiting faculty member at the Pankey Institute. He is a visiting faculty member at the Spear Education center in Scottsdale, Arizona. He's the Assistant Director of Education for Newport Coast Orofacial Institute and generally a great guy. So you're going to enjoy listening to his story and and how BetterWay has applied to his dental practice. So, Jim, thanks for being on with me today. I appreciate you spending a Friday with me.

Hey, it's great to be with you, Gary. I always appreciate the opportunity to connect with you and to talk about why we do what we do and what we believe and the reasons for our beliefs and how they're shaped and how we can apply those in our personal and professional lives. So, yeah, I'm happy to be with you. You know, I used to play a lot of golf on Fridays, but I stink at it. So this is a Much better use of time.

Well, golf is quite the challenge. At least we can watch golf. Right? Tiger's on his way back up. Making things more interesting.

Yeah, yeah, we're watching a lot of basketball here these days. You know, we've got a number one seed, we got through our first game and so we're. So for the next couple of weeks, you know, it might be kind of crazy around here. And that'll be the focus of everyone's attention.

All right, give me a prediction. Who's gonna, how far is Kansas gonna make it?

You know, I'm hoping they can get to the final four. They've been a little up and down sometimes this year, but you know, before, before Bill Self was coach here, you know, Roy Williams was coach. And I always loved Roy's saying, you know, he said, you know, you always have to remember that you're betting your fortune, your future, your future fortune on the behavior of 19 year old kids. So you know that, that you can't, you can't ever forget that they're very talented, but they're still 19 year old kids. And you know, I look back and when I was 19, I didn't really have all that much wherewithal and.

Consistency, let's say. Yeah, exactly. And you guys make it to the final four and then. Final four. Yeah, yeah.

Who do you have winning the whole thing?

Geez, that's a tough one. You know, Michigan State looks tough, Virginia looks tough. You know, we could do it. It's any given day, you know that. You just never can tell. If we show up, we've got as good a chance as anyone. We're not real deep this year, but coach Stealth does a great job of utilizing the talent that he has. And so, you know, a little bit of luck and.

A lot of concentration and focus and then we could take it.

Awesome. Well, let's get to some dentistry here. Tell everybody a little bit about your story. So I know a lot of people will know your name, a lot of people have maybe seen you at these different institutes that you work with, but they really don't know your story. So go back a little bit. How the heck did you get into dentistry? Why did you get into dentistry? And tell us a little bit about your practice.

Yeah, so, so, you know, going back along, sometimes when I'm speaking, you know, I'll. People introduce me and I'll say, well, thank you very much, but I'm the last person you should really think of, you know, in terms of getting advice. And the reason I say that is if you ask my parents, like 40 years ago, they would tell you, you know, this guy, we're not sure if this kid's going anywhere. And they had good reason for that, because I was always this kid that was. I was the, you know, the black sheep. I was always the kid that was kind of causing a little controversy and getting in a little trouble, you know, pushing the boundaries. And so the joke was, when I finished dental school, I was doing a residency, and Kansas City is very in close proximity to Leavenworth, Kansas. And so I told my parents I was going to do a residency in Leavenworth. They weren't real sure what I was talking about, and they were a little nervous, thought I had gotten into trouble again.

And so that was the joke. And then I realized later it wasn't a joke to them at all. They seriously thought that I could have been in trouble.

It's a better way thing.

That's a better way thing, right, exactly. So I grew up always challenging the norm. And your work and Simon's work has really helped us clarify that. That, okay, Now I look back historically and say, oh, that's what I was. You know, that's what I was about. I was always about my why. My belief system was to find a better way to challenge the norm, to challenge the conventional wisdom and see if we could think about something differently, think about it better, think about how to make it better. So I wasn't real good with contradiction. You know, I wasn't real good with authority that wasn't equally applied. I was always the person that says, well, this doesn't make sense, or this isn't fair. And so that's why I was always challenging convention and challenging authority and getting in a little bit of trouble doing it. That's a whole other webcast, though.

But I managed to turn that curiosity around. And so, you know, coming out of dental school, it's the same experience. You know, we don't really know what we don't know. You know, one of my mentors said, you know, you have to realize that when you come out of school, you just know enough not to be dangerous. And that's really kind of right. You know, you've got some basic skills and you're trying to find your way. And you can get so caught up in the analytics of dentistry, of, you know, cutting the perfect prep and doing the perfect impression and making, you know, choosing the right bur and the depth cuts and all that sort of stuff that you can lose sight of the big picture, which is, well, why are we doing this in the first place. So I muddled the wrong. I wasn't, you know, being an independent thinker. I thought, you know, I was pretty smart. And, and so I muddled along for a number of years without really connecting with great mentors. And then I met like Dr. Pete Dawson and I realized just how dumb I was.

How ill informed I was. And so I thought, well, you know, if I'm going to, if I'm going to challenge conventional wisdom and if I'm going to look for a better way to do things, then I ought to associate with these type of people and start to learn from them. And so I did. And I intentionally, you know, made, you know, forced these people.

I'm sure I drugged them kicking, screaming to become my mentors. You know, they weren't sure they wanted to take me on either, you know, but it worked out. They saw something in me. And what you find is that, you know, when you ask for advice from great mentors and great teachers, they really go out of their way to help. And so I've been pretty darn fortunate to learn from who I think are the best in the business and people who I think are just phenomenal. But I've made it a point to go find them. The Peter Dawson's, the Irwin Becker at the Pankey Institute, the Frank Spears of the world. These are people who really, really have it going on and learn from start to apply it in practice. And so I went from a very busy volume oriented practice because I thought that the model that I really wanted was what everybody else wanted was thousands of patients and coming in and really doing a lot of volume. And I realized that's not going to be consistent with who I was. And I'm not saying this is right for everybody, it's just who I am. And if I'm trying to exercise this innate curiosity that I have and trying to find a better way and apply it in my practice, I have to be more thoughtful in my approach which means I have to build my business in a more thoughtful way that reflects my beliefs, that reflects my own values and lead the people on the team in that way. Because we know that the why of the business is going to be the why of the leader. And so building that practice then it started to reshape things and I looked at more of a relationship based practice which fit for my style better, less volume. And then that allowed me to start looking at better ways to do things as well. So now we have, I think we have a great restorative practice with A great team who understands the why, understands that we're there to enrich lives through beautiful, healthy smiles. That's our why. We believe that lives are enriched in this way. And everything then stems from that statement. What we do and how we do it stems from that statement. So we've got a great restorative practice that really focuses on joint health, on breathing issues. And then from those are found, those are fundamental. And then we've expanded that into a diagnostic protocol that was developed by Bill Robinson, Jeff Rouse, called Global diagnosis, which allows us to organize our thoughts in very effective ways and then organize our practice that way as well.

Wow.

What was it that made you not want to do the faster, more volume, higher.

Number of patients model?

Well, you know, I found it too distracting. You know, one thing that happens when I'm pretty right brained, which is not typical for most dentists, most dentists are more left brained. I'm very right brain, very philosophically oriented. And so to me.

You know, having to function in that environment was very difficult because it perpetuated the fallacy of multitasking. You know, we really can't multitask. We try to delude ourselves into believing that we can, but the brain can only function one space at a time. And mine is really like that. So I have to have the time to be with patients, the time. And if I'm looking for a better way and a better life for them, then I have to be able to listen to what that means to them, to let them articulate that to me. And you can't do that with that kind of attention deficit type of approach just running from here to there. If you think about it, and this is what I talk about for dentists who would like to think about this model, it takes you approximately seven to eight minutes to shift your brain from one task to the next. So if you're in, you know, trying to say you're in a process and you're trying to do four veneers and you're trying to really reshape those teeth beautifully, be very conservatively conservative in your preparation. You know, think about how much depth you need, all that. And then you have to stop and you have to go into a hygiene room and then you have to interact with another patient who's maybe trying to make choices about their care or has periodontal concerns that you need to verify. It takes you seven or eight minutes just to shift into that mode of thinking. Then it takes you another seven to eight minutes to get back to where you were. So you've blown about 15, 16 minutes of concentration, plus the time you're spending with the patient. And so I just found it to be exhausting, honestly. And for some people, it works. I mean, and I'm not saying it's just what's right for me, me. So that's when it started to shift. And I said, you know, I can still be very effective and be efficient if I structure the model that's more consistent with my beliefs.

How important do you think it is, Jim, for dentists to know who they are as they start to build their practice?

It's absolutely critical. There is, you know, and, you know, going back to the philosophy at the Panke Institute, know yourself, you know, know your work, know your patients, apply your knowledge. The know yourself part is. Is absolutely critical. That's what Dr. Kripanki talked about in his philosophical construct. And it, and it, it resonates so well if. Because, you know, I see, I see. I talked to hundreds of dentists who are frustrated in their practices and, and my future goals, as I probably do less clinical dentistry, are going to be more towards helping them engage in ways that do exactly this. Identify who you are and what your core beliefs and values are and structure your life around it. The thing that stresses you most is not the fact that, you know, you're busy and you've got to get a lot of things accomplished during the day. It's when you're busy and you've got to get a lot of things accomplished and, you know, they contradict your values.

And they're not consistent with who you are and what your beliefs are. That's what, that's what was frustrating for me. You know, early in my career, I was. I had a real successful, you know, quote unquote type of practice. Thousands of patients getting good income, we're paying the bills. Seemed to be pretty profitable. I didn't really track my numbers as well as I should at the time, but, you know, income was coming in, so it was. It's easy to make money in dentistry. That's not really all that hard. But the stress comes is when you're spending all your days, you're going home at the end of the day going, you know, that wasn't really my best stuff. I want to go home every day and say, it might have been difficult, it may have been challenging, but it was pretty interesting and it was fun and it was consistent, and I did my best stuff. I gave it my best effort.

You know, that kind of takes me back to the. I don't know if you've ever heard this, but have you ever heard of someone ask, what is the most significant invention in the history of mankind? Do you know what that invention is?

No. I've heard the question, but I don't remember the answer.

The answer, which surprised me was, it's the plow. The plow was the most significant invention in the history of mankind because it allowed us to colonize. And until we could colonize, we never had time to think about all these other things that we could do. Like, we wouldn't need cell phones, we wouldn't need neighborhoods, we wouldn't need anything if we weren't able to colonize. So it gave us time to stop hunting and gathering and allowed us time.

To sit and think, grow and to plant seeds.

And plant seeds, which is very much like what you're talking about. If your day is spent just running, running, running, running, running, running. Money, money. Got to make money. Got to fill, got to see more patients, got to do more, more, more, more, more. It's awfully hard to sit and think about, okay, now what's important to me.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You've got to be able to take that time. And, you know, I often say, and thanks to you, you know, I've. I've taken a broader perspective about this. And you work with a lot of organizations, and we're involved in a lot of community organizations and philanthropic, you know, ventures and other boards of directors, and that as well, and you probably see this trend as well, is that I always say organizations are like families. They're all dysfunctional. It just depends on the degree. And so some aren't very dysfunctional, and some are very dysfunctional. And you notice that the ones that have the most trouble are the ones that don't stop and do the hard work of identifying why they exist. And why should anybody care? You know, if you can't answer those questions, then you know what you're doing and how you're doing. It doesn't really resonate, but most organizations go to, okay, what is it we're doing, and what do people need? And how can we fill that in? And the object is, as we all know, is that people don't buy what you need. They buy what. What they want. You know, and if you can and if you connect with them at that emotional level, well, how do you do that? When you think about all the patients that come in to see you and the ones that just really get it, they connect with you because they believe what you believe. They connect with you at that philosophical level. And so if you don't understand, you know that about yourself, and you don't understand about how that applies to your business, then you can't invite those people into that space. They can't. They don't see that in it and feel it. It's not something that you just say as a statement. You know, we have. We have our why, how, and our what statements that focus our attention on what's important. And. But then we say, okay, how do our systems develop in accordance with that to make this all resonate with people who believe what we believe?

And I think that's just absolutely key. You've got to take the time to do the hard work. If you ever go through therapy, we've gone through couples enrichment and things like that. And anytime you sit down with a counselor or coach, they ask you questions that make your mouth say things so that your ears can hear them. You know, it's not. It's for your benefit to hear your mouth say, speak your truth. You know, that's. That's what it's about. It's like one. One therapist I work with, one coach I work with, he was funny. He goes, yeah, if you could email this stuff, it'd be easy. But you can't. You've got to. They prompt you to say your truth, and that's what you do. You know, even with the Wine Institute, you prompt people to speak their truth, but you don't. It doesn't become part of you until your ears hear your mouth say it. So it's important to take the. To do that work, to articulate those things in ways that are clear and concise so that you can refocus all of your personal and professional life around fulfilling those beliefs and those virtues.

You know, it's interesting, Jim, when I look at people that I know that have gone from good to great, let's say, that were just cruising along and then have taken their. Their career, their business, their dental practice to different levels. It's when they fully transform into themselves.

Yeah.

It's like transformation is not about trying to be someone else. It's not about me trying to be, Jim. It's about me trying. Me being me. And that happens when you know your why, how, and what, like you were just talking about.

Exactly. You know, and, you know, we all get off track, you know, and I don't want to tell anybody that this is a smooth sail and you never have to. You don't have to readjust your course and readjust the navigation because you do it's easy to fall into default behaviors that take you off course. But you're exactly right. In the times that I felt most fulfilled and been most successful and more importantly, most significant are when I've stepped back and rethought.

Why do I do what I do? What are my beliefs here? Am I manifesting them in different parts of my life and how can I readjust, reset the sales, reset the compass to get it back on track? That's when you start moving into significance. And I think it's critically important. You're exactly right. Look at the people who are really, really successful and really significant. They all do that. They all connect back to, you know, really start back at the beginning of who they are.

So, Jim, I'm a newer dentist and I'm just trying, working my rear end off, I'm trying to figure all this stuff out. I got so much coming at me, running my practice, hiring, firing, doing the treatment, doing the, you know, all the stuff that we've got to do. As a dentist now, how do I go from that to, to being able to know where I want to go, being able to make good decisions, being able to create the practice that I really envisioned when I started on this path?

Yeah, it's a great question and it's one that is just absolutely prolific in our profession. And so what I say to people is this.

It'S all about the colonization, it's all about the community. It's all about the mentorship that you develop. So find a community of people or mentors that can help walk you through this, that can help you discover your why.

And you know, the mark of a great teacher is, and this has been true in every circumstance in my life is that when I have significantly achieved or moved to a higher level of being and doing, performing, it's always been because one of my mentors saw something in me that I didn't see in myself, you know, and so there are a whole lot of us out there that are willing to share our experience, our knowledge and in ways that can help people move into a better place for themselves. And you know, like I said, I represent one model of dentistry, but there's, there's lots of them and you have to, you have to decide what's best for you. But it really is the mentorship and the community that you associate with. That's what I like about teaching where I do at the Pankey Institute, at SPEAR Education, there's communities of people that are like minded thinkers, you know, and.

There'S some resources there. But Also, you have to have just, you know, personal mentors that are close to you that can help you get back on track. And if you have something that you feel like you're going off the rails somewhere, they can help look at it from a different perspective, help you define it better, and help you kind of get back into the path that you've defined. And you have to be intentional about it. You can't just say.

This will come about. If I define my why, well, then everything will happen. No, you have to go back and think through these things. And does every system reflect it's this constant improvement? You know, excellence is about being a little better today than we were yesterday.

But that has to come under the framework of knowing who you are, knowing your work, knowing your patients, and applying your knowledge well. So mentorship is critically important. Study clubs are critically important. The cool thing is, is that like we're doing now is that there's a whole bunch of stuff online you can do, you know, and, and you can really be part of a community that way to get information. But then, you know, one on one on one, you know, a personal relationship is really critically important. Those that you take advantage of, people who are experienced. You know, somebody told me one time, there's no sense in trying to, you know, create a whole bunch of mediocrity when you can copy genius. And so that's why I went and found. I always go seek who's the best thinkers in dentistry right now. And I make it a point, you know, to associate with them, to ask for their advice, to connect with them, befriend them, ask them to mentor me, you know, even after 36 years, you know, will you still mentor me and help me in my understanding and help me to find that better way and apply it, you know, because my curious mind demands that. And so it's very, it's essential, you know, and then there's. There's ways you can find people like that, too, that, you know, if you just look in those, in those. We all drink from the same watering holes, we say sometimes. So you'll find that dentists are at certain, certain meetings and certain institutes. And, you know, there's. There's just, you know, good, good thinkers, you know, in dentistry, and there's plenty of them out there. Find one that really has done it well and looks like the model that you, you described to and go latch onto them, you know, go buy a dinner.

So I.

Exactly, exactly. So it's pretty. I see how better way has played out in your life over and over and over and it's, and it's helped propel you to heights and your practice to the level that not that many get to. What have been some of the challenges with having the why of better way that you've encountered as you've gone along?

So in my particular circumstance, you know, looking for a better way is pretty counter cultural. In other words, you know, people's, most people's dental benefits and insurance and what we call dental insurance, we all know it's really not, it's just some small benefit they have. But, but that stuff is totally countercultural to helping people find a long term path. And I've told Dennis, you know, I've been around watching this now for long enough that I can see it's. If you're, if you're really wanting to spend time with patients, if you're really wanting to learn how to develop, you know, create more value with people, that's kind of a dead end street. You know, it's going to become more limiting.

Less financially.

Successful, which it already is. And it's going to be challenging for you to be able to.

Do the creative work that you need to do and to individualize care when you have these models that compress the care and are just looking at doing faster and cheaper. So that's a big challenge to differentiate yourself in this kind of practice. You need to be special and you need to be able to articulate that. Now the cool thing about understanding who you are as a person is that if you understand that and you build your systems around it and you build your reputation around it, it's totally genuine and authentic. And so you need that authenticity and you got to be willing to work hard at it. You know, you can't, you can't say, well, just because I've defined this and because I am who I am, then people, if I build it, they will come, not so much. You know, you've got to get out and get your message out. Well, in social media, across platform, it's got to be different. You know, it's got to resonate with your genuineness, your authenticity, your uniqueness. And so those are the biggest challenges that people have is trying to make a financial model that relies on people who desire something better for themselves and seeing that value and be able to step outside of the limited amount of benefits that they may have in defining what it is they will accept and treat for themselves. And again, it's about connection. People buy what they want. Mostly they don't buy just what they need. Insurance is All a need based thing. You've got to be able to move beyond that. So it's a challenge. And you've got to be able. And we're constantly redefining it. You know, we're constantly looking at different ways to help connect with people so that when they, they look at their benefits thing and they do not see our name on there because we don't, we're not on any of them. They still pick up the phone and call. And if they do, they see value and say, okay, I've got this stuff that's going to help me pay for it, but it's not going to dictate who I see or what I do. So that's one part. The second part is changing the model that you have to use for your financial picture and your scheduling. You've got to learn to schedule effectively now. It doesn't do any good for you to block schedule for things if you can't do the type of dentistry that, that block scheduling helps. So for example, in our schedule, it's been this way probably for 20 years or so. We look to make sure that we know what our daily goals are and we want to do 80% of our daily goal before our lunch break, which is 1pm and so we have blocks of time there that just say we want to do long procedures in these blocks of time and we want to accomplish one or two procedures, one or two patients, that's it. And we want to accomplish at least 80% of our goal in that time. Because then what I do in the afternoon doesn't make that much, doesn't make that much difference, doesn't make that much impact. And by doing that now, we've also been able to.

Avoid disruptions like for example, we have the long blocks of time and we're doing longer procedures. I can focus on one person and my hygienists know that I'm not going to be available at that point. I don't want to be interrupted, it's too distracting. So we put our exam, our hygiene patients with exams on a hygiene block schedule so that we know where those are going to be, where we're doing more back and forth things in the afternoon. Seating crowns, adjusting splints, doing an Invisalign scan, whatever those are things that can be, we can do in a pretty quick appointment. And then I have a little time in between to do exam. So you've got to be able, you got to start rethinking, you know, your, how you charge for things, how your, how your Fees will be structured. You have to start thinking about, you know, building that exceptional value, experience for people. And. And then you have to start thinking about, well, how do I lay out my day and my schedule to make that all happen? But it's got to start with that, with that, with the purpose, with the why, with the belief system, because that's what anchors everything thing.

So the whole thing. When you look back at Pankey, when he talked about know yourself, that at the time, I remember when I went through the Pankey Institute, which was probably, gosh, maybe 25 years ago, I remember seeing that, but it didn't have the impact on me like it does now. Yeah, you know, you read, you saw it, and you're like, oh, yeah, know yourself. Okay, I already know myself. All right, what's next? Give me something next. Give me something I can go do.

Right. What am I going to do? Yeah, give you the 10 steps to knowing myself and then give you the 10 steps on how to prep a tooth. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. And that's. That. That's again, like I said earlier, you know, most dentists are more analytical thinkers. So we like to think in lists. You know, here's. Here's 1 through 10, and here's how you get it done. And part. And this is a good point that you bring up, part of the challenge is you have to have some ambiguity tolerance. Now, you do have to work very efficiently to build value for patients, but you have to have enough ambiguity tolerance to say, well, it may not go exactly that way, and I've got to have a plan for when it doesn't. So, for example, the new patient experience with your patients is so important, and it's got to totally reflect who you are, from the first phone call to the entry of the office, to the greeting, to the warmth to the environment, to how they interact with your team. All of that has just got to exude, you know, who you are and how much you care about these people that are coming to see you and what an honor it is to serve them. And if it doesn't, then you're going to look like everybody else. You know, so. And so sometimes my staff always says, well, we're going to give you like, 40 minutes. Is that. But you run over. And I went, yes, sometimes I do. You know, I've got. I'm not going to stop and say, hey, you know, I'd love to listen to your story, but that's enough. Got to go, you know, you've got to have enough. You got to have a team that can flex and say, well, he's going to need another 10 minutes here, or, you know, he doesn't look like he needs quite that much time and we can maybe do something more. So you've got to have some ambiguity, tolerance and saying, I've got to be efficient, but most. Mostly I've got to be effective. And we've got to be able to, you know, play a little basketball here during the day, and if somebody's not shooting well, we've got to pick it up for them.

More basketball analogies, or somebody else has got to step up and take the ball here. If I'm in a conversation that's really important to that person and I don't want to be interrupted. So, yeah, it's really quite an interesting challenge, but it's a fun challenge because you're doing your best stuff and that. That's what. That's what matters and what's best for you. And then to go back to your original point, yeah, the know yourself was just sort of, oh, that sounds really cool, you know. Yeah, I know. I'm a good dentist. That's okay, you know, Got it. Move on, you know, next step, next step. Right.

So you work at. You work with a lot of students at the different institutes that you. That you are visiting faculty member at. And what are some of the biggest challenges that you see others facing right now in the dental world?

So what we talked about already was changing the model, really shifting from this volume model into something that's more effective. And the implementation piece is really very critical.

You can go to a lot of courses, you can do a lot of workshops. Fact of the matter is, is that, you know, a lot of that doesn't get implemented because you get back to your office and you get back in your routine and you get back to default behavior. And maybe the team's not quite on board and, you know, somebody's going a different direction, or maybe it's just. It's just too much hassle sometimes. Some days to try to implement something new, you've got to have people around you that have the same kind of curiosity. And so the implementation piece is the thing I think is a big barrier. They learn things in the workshop, but they have to come back and be able to apply those in ways that make sense. And yes, it's great to learn about it, but you also have to get paid for it, too. We can't do everything as an altruistic exercise for our own learning purposes. That's important. Important. And I've given away millions of dollars worth of dentistry to make myself better. But at some point, you have to learn how to get compensated for that. And if you can't get compensated for it, you're not going to do it very long, because you got to be profitable. So that's where I think the next part of my career is going, is to teach people, teach these. These dentists how to, you know, even that are really committed to learning. How do you take that, and how do you implement it in your practice? And can you be able to connect with somebody to help you put it in play so that when you come back for your workshop and you know Mrs. Williams is coming in the next week, and you go, wow, she's got some stuff going on there I didn't know about before. Now I know about. Well, what do you do with it? You know, how do you. How do you apply that? And how do you apply it in a way that can make it work in your practice? And there again, you've got to have mentors and people that you can connect with to help you do that. So the implementation piece is really critical. We'd all like to think that we go home doing our best stuff every day, but it's challenging, and you've got to work against a lot of forces that are working against you. I say often, and some of my mentors, like Jeff Rouse, and we repeat this a lot, that we're kind of a product of the medical model, too, and we're getting more like that. And oftentimes the medical model is like two steps behind everybody. We need to get in front of people's problems and learn to diagnose well so that people have a plan moving forward. And if we do that, then we differentiate ourselves well. But again, you have to be able to implement that. You got to have it on the shelf so you can deliver it and find ways to deliver it that are consistent with your level of learning. There are certain things you can't. The risk assessment is really critical. If I do this, what's the upside and what's the potential downside? Especially when you get into more complex things like complex joint and airway problems. They're fun to solve, but they can be pretty treacherous. If you get off too far on the edge, you'll be right off the cliff before you know it. So you got to know where's the boundary and how do you structure those things, but overcome your fear. Knowledge is power, and if you have somebody who can help shape your knowledge in ways, then that's powerful and you do risk assessment. You can do a lot of stuff for patients that's very carefully done and keep your risk low and be very well compensated for it and feel really good about yourself. For example, most of the joint stuff we do, most of the TM joint stuff we do is management. We don't have.

A plethora of surgeons and a plethora of solutions that can surgically treat a TM joint. They're difficult to operate on and they're very complex joints. So most of it is management. And people do really well. But you can. You can really do some great things for people if you know who you can help and you can differentiate who those people are and you can put processes and practices in place that help them get healthier.

So if you could sum it up, Jim, in like, say, three steps. You got a dentist here that's on, that's listening, that's saying, you know, I'm working my tail off. I got all this stuff going on. What are the three steps that I need to know to get the practice that I want to have? What are those three steps?

So the first one, like we said, is know who you are and clarify your own beliefs and your own values. You've got to know that you know and clarify your why. Why do you do what you do? What do you believe in? Why? Why does your practice exist? And why should anybody care? You know, and you've got to answer those questions. That's the first thing. Get people to help you on the journey. Figure out who your Pete Dawson is, or your Jeff rouse, your Jim McKee or your Mark Piper.

Or your Frank Spear. All These people, Gary DeWitt, all these people that influence in my life, surround yourself with people that can help you, and a lot of them are really close by if you just seek them out. There's a second thing, and then the third thing is develop a vision for yourself that builds a team and processes and systems that support you. If you don't have people around you.

That believe what you believe, now, you got to define it for yourself first, because you don't know if they're going to be on board or if they're consistent with you or not. You don't know what you. What you believe and why you're doing what you do, and get people on board. You can't do it yourself. You know, you've got to have a team and systems and environment that supports that. You get those three things in place and the rest of it comes naturally. Yep, you can. You know, I often said you Know, given enough time, you could teach a monkey how to cut a crown prep. You know, that's not. That's given enough time. But you know, that. That stuff you can learn. That's that technical skill anybody can learn. But how you apply that just is all in the context of those other things.

The didactic stuff of that is really the easy piece of it, and you'll figure out what it is you need to learn once you realize.

What constitutes your best.

That's exactly what I would say, too, from my 30 years of being a dentist, I would say the same thing. Number one, you got to know your why. Number two, you got to know where you want to go. And then number three, you got to have mentors to help you get there.

Yep, absolutely. And there's plenty of them out there. Just do some research, you know.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So what's next for Jim Otten? What do you want to do in the next 10 years, 15 years? Where are you going?

So, thanks for asking. You know, I'm. I'm looking forward to my next career, you know, so I've been at this a long time, and I enjoy practice. But, you know, at some point, at some point, clinical practice becomes physically more challenging, and we want, you know, we want to have more time on our own. So what we're working on now is we're working on developing networks to help facilitate the independent dentist. That's what we're working on. How do we help people? How do people like me and others, how do we help nurture those people who want to move forward? So we'll be sharing some things. It's in the early stages of development right now. And so, like, we're doing things like surveying practices as to why they contract with insurance to get, you know, really at the core level, why do people sign up for these things? Does it help them do their best work? Does it not? And then we're going to start talking about those things online, and then how do you move from that model into something that maybe is more in alignment with you? And so it'll be an online platform to help with diagnostics and treatment planning of patients. It'll be helping you develop yourself in terms of your own clarity and systems. And, you know, and it'll hopefully even be maybe a patient portal to help with cases, with individual cases. So that's what I'm looking forward to in the future, is just mentoring the next generation of people, next generation of practitioners to be even more successful than we've been. I could imagine I would be this successful when I came out of dental school, so it's been a really good ride and my parents never even thought as possible, so.

Your parents, what's that? You surprised your parents?

Surprised the heck out of them, yeah. Sure did. Sure did. Yeah.

Well, Jim, thanks for spending an hour with us and sharing your knowledge. You've got so much to share. You've done so much already. And I know you being someone that wants to help others find a better way and you've gotten so many better ways and now you're going to share them. That's going to be awesome to see how that all turns out. And I'm definitely happy to help you any way that I can because getting them to their why first just makes all the rest that much easier. So we can talk about that as we move forward.

It sure does. Yeah. Anybody wants to contact me, it's, you know, jamesotten dds.com look us up on the web. We're in Lawrence, Kansas. We're easy to find. Just shoot me an email or through the website or give the office a call and tell me how I can help you. I'll be happy to do.

So you want to give everybody your email or.

Sure. The best one. I'll just give you the one I use personally actually is the best one for these sort of things because then you don't have to. We don't have to filter it through the office. It's just J O T T e N J ottensunflower.com J ottonunflower.com Shoot me an email. Tell me where you where you heard what we were discussing and how I can give you a hand. I'd be happy to help.

Awesome. Jim, thanks for being here today. Appreciate your time and your effort.

Well, appreciate the opportunity, Gary. And thanks for all you do for dentistry and for business in general and all you've done for me personally. Appreciate it.

Sa.