26: Life Stages of a Dentist

Welcome to DSO Secrets. I know what it's like to be an entrepreneur in the dental industry. I've had my ups and downs, just like you. There's so much opportunity to be excited about, but so few resources to get answers. From here on DSO Secrets, we get you those answers so you can change the lives you're meant to bless and achieve your personal success.

When I was working as an associate rat at a school, I never imagined I could own these many practices with this amount of support. So thank you.

You have helped build my marketing mind to a whole new level.

You have this natural talent, this unique ability.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. This is your fearless host, Emmett Scott. And today we're going to talk about, just real quickly, the life stages of a dentist. I mentioned this in the last podcast on recruiting associates, and so I just want to do a deeper dive into these life stages. I get lots of questions around what are the stages of clinicians and how do we recruit them for different stages? All right, so we've classified clinicians into five stages. Number one is the student dreamer. Now, all of us can relate to this. This is when you're in school, you're creating really high expectations of what the work life is going to be like after school. You know, typically you're receiving counsel and advice from professors or others who probably haven't practiced in a long time, or even friends who don't have a ton of experience about how you just need to go out there and you need to have this expectation from your employer, or you just need to go start your own practice or whatever it might be, or you might just through reading or your own personality, be thinking to yourself, you know what? Five years out of school, here's my goal. I want to have four practices. I don't want to be chairside anymore, etc, etc, etc. So all of us have been there. It's part of, you know, not having any life experience. But the reality is when you go in to recruit from these schools, you have to know that they are starting from the perspective of student dreamer. And student dreamer doesn't have to just be from an entrepreneurial perspective. That might be that they plan on only working three days a week or only in the mornings or whatever it might be. But there are those expectations that might not perfectly align with reality, but you still need to be able to address those in a way that's transparent, but also leaves a carrot out there for the dentist. If they have that motivation, if they have those capabilities that you have a path to help them get there. Okay, stage two is that associate with debt. Now, what we've noticed is associates right out of school with debt, though they're low on capability, they're high on motivation, they're typically pretty slow clinically and they're very fearful of mistakes, rightfully so. They are doing clinical work and they're probably still struggling with some of the demands and realities of the clinical work life balance. They're working with a practice manager, X ray tech assistant, and they're really feeling responsible in some degree. Even though we might be providing them support, they're having to interact with those at a new level. But their biggest strength is they are motivated. They're taking it all in, they're excited to learn it all. It is overwhelming. But, man, that debt also is sitting over them. And so they want to get out there, make money and get that debt paid off. And with that motivation, in time, they move to stage three, we call the proficient clinician. Now, these guys and gals, they've really found their flow and they know their core capabilities. They know what they like, they know what they don't like. They know how to work with their team better. They might even know how to work with other dentists or referrals better. They're just willing to support the team better, too. They're not quite overwhelmed by all the moving parts and pieces, and they've really started to settle in. Typically their income is high because of that. They found that connection with the patients, and they know how to connect with the patients and move them to treatment acceptance. And in the best case scenario, too, they're getting that student loan paid off or paid down and ideally just paid off. And what we notice is as they really get their arms around being a proficient clinician and, and they get that student loan paid off, they move into either stage four or stage five or some blend of both. Stage four we call the entrepreneurial newbie. This is the clinician who says, all right, I've earned my stripes. It's time for me to own my own practice. They're interested in creating that passive income and living out that student dream finally. And though they're great clinicians, they know that there's a new level of leadership capability that they don't know, and they're excited to learn it. There's business principles and risks that they want to take on because their ultimate goal is to really own their own empire of dental practices. I think they're very motivated with that idea of that additional passive income and Just knowing that not every dollar comes in from the effort that they're doing day in and day out. But it's a new kind of effort, a leadership effort that they're learning. Now. We call them the entrepreneurial newbie because they haven't done this before. And so we can talk about a little bit how we support at each of these, but we look and say, okay, we've got to support them to be successful and in those ventures. And then stage five, we call the lifestyle dentist. These are really matured clinicians, if you will. They've definitely paid off their student loan debt. They're comfortable with kind of finding that minimum income to effort ratio, whereas before they might have been, you know, I want to make the max possible. Now they're kind of trying to figure out how to go home a little bit earlier, work less days. Maybe there's certain cases that they're avoiding if the patient flow is high enough. So they're really just looking for that work life balance strategy. And oftentimes if dentists don't get the opportunity to own their own practice, then they'll move to this lifestyle dentist piece. If they do get to own their own practice, they're going to have to step up with their energy level to learn all these new leadership capabilities and then they'll eventually also want to balance that with the lifestyle component. Now listen, you might wish that every one of your associates would just come out of school not with the student dreamer mentality or even the associate with debt mentality where they're clinically a little more. So you just want every associate to be the proficient clinician, found their flow maximizing income, and to stay there for the next 20 years. But that's just not reality. So I think you have to start thinking about how are you going to build your model to either have a path for dentists at each stage so that they can, you know, meet their expectations, if you will, their maslow hierarchy of needs. And are there going to be ways that in different practices you're going to have the ability to meet these different needs that they might have, or are you going to really work dentists to be that lifestyle dentist and you have a set of practices that work fine to have them be seeking that work life balance and that that doesn't disrupt what you're trying to do with your patients? Let me give you an example. If you are able to have a profitable practice working nine to five each day and maybe three or four days a week, then obviously you're going to be fine. With any lifestyle level dentist who's mature on their capabilities, and if you're not expecting them to take on anything real intense or outside of their general dentistry needs, then that's going to be much easier to continue to have a clinician who stays in that path. If you're asking dentists to work longer hours and you really appeal to those dentists who, who want to work longer hours, who want to make higher incomes, you also have to realize that that might not be sustainable for all dentists and especially those who might have families or other, you know, interests and commitments that they want to do. Also, those very motivated dentists who really do treat that patient flow at all hours of the day also tend to be entrepreneurial. So you have to start thinking through what is going to be your partnership path so that you can retain and frankly even recruit some of those top A level dentists. So I'd love your feedback if you have a different way that you think about the life stages of a dentist. Please give us your comments and thoughts over on our private Facebook group, DSO Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to DSO Secrets. Join our community on Facebook @DSO Secrets and get answers and resources to some of your most challenging questions. If you want to get a copy of the seven secrets of any DSO, go to our website at dsosecrets.com and we will get that emailed to you. Remember, don't go at this alone. Let us copy your team while you build your team.