The problem is that ideas are ‘sticky’, that is, they are hard to get rid of and change people’s minds, even when they are wrong.  When you develop opinions based on ‘weak evidence’, you’ll have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts the opinions you already have.

“When you’re wrong, what’s right seems wrong.”

People don’t change until they have to.  When people learn that what they are doing isn’t working, they are ready for change. A lot of what is currently taught to unsuspecting dentists is ‘toxic’. That’s right it is toxic and highly manipulative.

A practice, like any business, can be grown in ‘any economy’, but it won’t be grown if the focus is inward.  If the focus is on what I am going to get, and how I rate and judge every staff member in my practice, I’m in trouble.  This is the most highly manipulative and toxic system known to man.  It always leads to conflict, fill-drill-and bill dentistry and of course working for PPOs, staff conflict and a dentist in conflict with his/her own values.

This is not an opinion. This based on human biology. When and if you focus on doing more than asked, delivering a better service than expected; taking better care of your staff (and I don’t mean manipulative bonus incentives) when your focus becomes doing the very best for every person you meet, you will become what it means to be a PROFESSIONAL.

• There are 46 Key Strategies that Drive Growth
• There are 7 Core Elements that make up every practice
• There are 96 Management and Leadership Systems.
• There are 96 Management and Leadership Systems

Every Driving Force, Strategy and System must be structured to deliver your Purpose. (Purpose, your Why is in some way organized on how to make a difference in the world, in someone else’s life)  If your purpose is TO MAKE MONEY, and your purpose is centered on YOU and your personal lifestyle, then this is trouble.

You are competing now competing with 95% of the rest of dentists who think the same way and practice the same way.  Making money but not provide outstanding care and service to their patients.

Yes, there ARE dentists that are thriving, and they are thriving right now.  They are the top 5% who are really working ON their practices and ON themselves to Create Non-Stop Growth.

“Guiding Dentists to Freedom and

Financial Independence”

If you want to go to the next level, click on the link below, fill out the form and let’s have a One-On-One conversation about your future!

http://www.schustercenter.com/contact_us.aspx

• What do you love to do?
• What kind of environment do you love to be in?
• What kind of people do you love to be around?
• What excites you, charges you up, turns you on?

Another set of Clues

• What are you good at ?
• What do people compliment you on?
• What do you seem to do better than most?
• What are your unique talents?

To have a life that is really enjoyable and exciting, one must find a Purpose and have Passion for it.

• Could someone have a passion for ending disease?
• For transforming people’s lives in some way?
• For educating kids?
• For enhancing patients self-esteem?
• Passions are the process of what turns you on in your life.
• Goals are about the outcomes.

From Born to Believe by Drs. Mark Waldman & Andrew Newberg:

• The more you turn up the volume in parts of your limbic system that generate positive emotions, the happier, more productive and worthwhile practice you will have.
• When this happens you release dopamine, endorphins, and a variety of stress-reducing hormones and neurotransmitters.
• The more you focus on what you truly love, the healthier you are likely to be, and the more you will feel the positive effects of those stress-reducing neuro-chemicals n your body and mind.
• You actually get a double whammy. You will experience a decrease in negative emotions and an increase in positive emotions when you align yourself with what you believe is most important to you.

When you have a Purpose and Passion your world expands. When you don’t life and practice contracts.  There are definite reasons some are thriving and others aren’t.

• So, what does this mean for you?
• Are you in alignment with others that have a Passion for their Purpose?

Are the systems and structures of your practice lined up with your Purpose?

Over a period of years I found myself in a Leadership position, offering dentists an ‘alternative approach’, which differs from the mindless, senseless fill—drill—and bill, disease centered, reactive approach to dentistry and life.

I didn’t set out to be a leader. I didn’t sit down and write out on my Life Goals List that I wanted to lead a movement of Private Care—treating people with dignity and respect and caring for people in a meaningful and profound way, providing the highest level of care that dentists can for grateful patients and be compensated fairly.

I never did that. But I did sit down and write out my life’s goals.

Certainly I was influenced by my parents, LD Pankey, Harold Wirth and John Anderson.  When my own practice and life went through a profound transformation from being so busy that I became sick to a place where my family, spiritual, physical, emotional and practice health were in harmony everything changed.

Leaders I think see something in the world (that is outside of themselves) that needs transformation.

My lifetime goal was to transform the lives of the people I worked with and for and in the process transform myself.
I wanted to make a significant difference in the lives of my patients.

Later, when I saw so many dentists struggling but never finding how to complete significant dentistry on an everyday basis, I found my life’s mission.

I then left a lucrative private practice in which I was the Principle in a Group practice that in today’s dollars would be over $10M in gross revenues taking inflation into consideration.

I’d do it again, even though I make 1/5^th of what I made practicing dentistry in that environment.  Leaders have a calling and in many instances, a calling that they cannot refuse. For if they refuse their calling to greatness or even to go to the next level, then they retract and gradually die.

I had no clue when I went to the Pankey Institute how it might change my entire life.  I only knew I wanted to get better.  I had no clue when Loren Miller asked me to be a Cadre (one of 15 chosen to be lifetime Cadre of the Institute). I had no clue what it would mean when LD chose me as one of 7 dentists to carry on the Pankey Philosophy.

And yet each of these ‘opportunities’ which I could have refused has shaped my life and enabled me to guide and shape the lives of many dentists, who in turn influence and guide their families and patients lives.

I truly believe that each of you has opportunities for leadership.  When challenges of any kind face you—you can DRIFT, DROWN, DECIDE YES or NO to accept the challenge to the next level of growth, of renewal, of leadership possibilities.

I was blessed to have my nephew John Ottavi working by my side for 5 years. What a light. What a mind he has.  John made this statement to me one day:

“Mike, you can always tell the LEADERS; they keep moving forward, in spite of risks, challenges, they say YES to opportunities that the rest say NO to”.

Yes my life was influenced and changed dramatically by LD Pankey, Loren Miller, John Anderson, Harold Wirth, and many others, but I wouldn’t trade my life’s journey with anyone for anything. Sometimes difficult, sometimes rewarding, but always challenging and growth oriented.

I’m proud to say that I’m not done yet and I’m still learning, growing and evolving.

I hope I do until my last breath.

What about you?

What are your challenges?

Are you standing up and learning what you need to learn?

Or retreating and going backwards?

Who are your mentors?

What are your LIFETIME GOALS?

How do you want to spend the next 3 years of your life?

The next 10 years?

If you knew you were going to die in six months, what would you do?

How would you live?

What are you waiting for?

God is allowing you to live…what gifts do you intend to bring to the world?

How would you change it for the better?

The world is round. We are under the gravitational pull of the SUN, but the SUN is NOT the center of the UNIVERSE.  Life is NOT lived on a STRAIGHT LINE, but rather is CYCLICAL.

Everything is cyclical.

• A clock is cyclical—time is cyclical
• A year is cyclical.
• Summer
• Fall
• Winter
• Spring

• Our very lives are cyclical.
• We go through stages or phases of life
  • Youth
  • Adolescence
  • Early Adulthood
  • Late Adulthood
  • Elderhood
  • At any stage of life a person can renew and revitalize themselves
    • A business life is also cyclical.
    • A business goes through predictable life stages
    • A business can continue to renew itself and never die
    • A business goes through predictable stages just as everything else in the planet goes through stages that are not simply linear or straight line, but are circular and cyclical.

This is the story of life.  If you think it is any different, then you are in for a long, unhappy life. As long as you are alive, can think, eat, breath and move you are part of the Universe’s Story and can re-vitalize, renew, and grow again.

The central purpose of life is to LEARN.  If you ever get stuck and feel like you are going backwards, or aren’t moving forward in your life or business, then this is a message that you have something to LEARN. In order grow, evolve, renew, re-vitalize, continue to stay in the CYCLE of life, you have something to LEARN.

I’m not sure what it is that you have to learn, because I don’t know your exact situation, the problems you are facing, what you already know, but I know this for absolute certain.  Life is about LEARNING.

If you want to continue to feel great about your life, (the only one you have) you better start thinking in the 21^st century, not the 16^th!!  Life is not lived in a straight line, where everything works out exactly as you thought it would. If you think things are supposed to be a certain way because it was that way before, or someone told you it was going to be that way; or you expected that things weren’t supposed to be like they are right now, then YOU are a LINEAR, STRAIGHT LINE, LEFT BRAIN thinking person and you are basically screwed.  How’s that for a line to get your attention.

Now you say I already think the world is round.

• OK, but you realize that life, your life, is really cyclical?
• Do you understand that the problems you face today hopefully are different than the problems you faced several years ago?
• If you are still stuck trying to solve the problems you had 2 years ago, 1 year ago, then you are a LINEAR THINKER.  Sorry.

LINEAR, STRAIGHT LINE thinkers by their very nature can’t see the BIG PICTURE. In fact, they don’t see the big picture, as their entire thought process is limited to a LINEAR, FLAT sort of view and life.

LINEAR THINKERS are shallow people.

LINEAR THINKERS don’t invent things and make things happen.

LINEAR THINKERS are busy trying to re-invent the past, rather than create their future.

LINEAR THINKERS spend their lives in the STUCK MODE, waiting, thinking that things will somehow get better on their own.

The majority of dentists are LINEAR THINKERS. Tinkering with people’s teeth every day; usually one episodic event (a crown) after another on patient after another, with absolutely no relationship  to the larger cycle of a patient’s life.  Dentists, as a group are LINEAR THINKERS.  Dentists as a group solve people’s problems one  tooth at a time, which is exactly what  LINEAR , STRAIGHT  LINE THINKERS do, because they don’t see anything bigger than  what’s in front of them at  that moment.

This is another reason why only 4% will ever create wealth. Wealth is a BIG PICTURE concept. It takes into consideration, INCOME, BUSINESS OUTGO, PERSONAL OUTGO, TAXES, and SAVINGS or INVESTMENTS.

This is a BIG PICTURE concept, not simply a LINEAR or STRAIGHT LINE or single idea.

When and if you start to think in a CYCLICAL MANNER, then you  can begin to see that everything impacts or affects everything else. You can step back and view whatever you are looking at from a totally different perspective.  You can STEP OUT OF YOUR LIFE at any moment and observe yourself in the scheme of the very life story that you are currently writing.

There is a certain amount of HOPE here and also a great deal of SADNESS, at least for me. Most dentists I meet have sooo much potential that they aren’t even coming close  to living, and this brings a certain sadness to see the majority, living such shallow lives. On the other hand, when any of us ‘gets it’; when we see that the world and our lives are not simply lived LINEARLY, then life takes on a whole new meaning.

Usually something wakes us up.  It seems that schools and most other training that we receive in our lives is LINEAR, and thus we begin to observe life and then live life from this shallow perspective. If you do wake up, then your life becomes far more interesting; you aren’t as impacted by daily events, good or bad, and you see yourself and your life in a whole new perspective.

I would go so far as to say, a life changing perspective.

So, if your WORLD FLAT?

Michael Schuster

My Grandfather was a dentist in Cheboygan, Michigan. He used to say, “you can tell the state of the economy by the amount of loose change a dentist has in his pocket.”  When you see your production going down; when you see slowing of new patients; when you experience less acceptance of treatment;  when you see your retirement account getting smaller; all of these things make it more difficult to focus on the patient’s well being rather than your own.

These ‘are trying times’.   More and more are doing the opposite of what they need to be doing.  We need to realize that we are on a long term plan and though there may be difficult times, we can’t let these times define us as individuals.  We ARE moving into a new era; it is always painful when the old dies and the new begins.  Dentistry WILL be different.  It will be far better for a few and far worse for the majority.

My close friend, Dr. Hal Stewart attending a seminar in Dallas recently and a notable speaker said to the audience:

“If you don’t become a PPO, managed care dentist, you won’t be in practice within 5 years.”  With that Hal told the speaker as he left at the end of the morning; you aren’t talking to me because my practice is 100% fee for service and always will be.”

I do fully concur that this is a time of ‘down leveling’, starting in Washington, DC., and it is easy to get pulled down and Mastery/Excellence seems only to be rewarded in sports, but I still don’t believe it.  For a few, those who really focus on providing the finest ‘transformational experience’ for their patients, this will still be a great time.

I talk with too many students and alumni, all across the country that are not only surviving, but are growing. No, their growth isn’t what it was in the 80’s, but those who are choosing to work ON themselves, work ON  their practices will be the minority at the top; which is the same as its always been.

As Dr. Pankey told me when I was a young dentist: “strive to be the best that you can become. Compete with no one other than yourself.  Strive to be the best because there are so few who do, and those are always the ones who end up on top.”

So, you ask, what’s new?  I never said the road to Mastery/Excellence was an easy one; I’ve just always known it was the best one.

More later.

Dr. Mike Schuster

7-20-10

“How you handle or mishandle MONEY tells the world who you are, but more importantly it tells YOU who you are.”

My long term friend and advisor Ron Price used to say, “ show me a person with a money problem, and I’ll show you a person with a spiritual problem.”

We all need money. We need money to live. We need money to pay for not only our NEEDS but also our WANTS, and our wants can go to extreme and thus never feel fulfilled.

You’ll be reading a lot from me about LIVING ABOVE THE LINE versus LIVING BELOW THE LINE.  My perspective is my own. No one else can take responsibility for or take credit for these ideas. Having been a coach since 1974, I can tell you for sure that unless you have some sort of BUDGET in your business that you CONTROL, and some sort of BUDGET in your personal life that you CONTROL, you will never have enough money.

If you are going to give your children 3 things, I believe they would be these:

1. Raise your children in a God-centered home, for without a relationship with a HIGHER POWER, they will be helpless when they face trials and tribulations in their lives, which they are sure to face.

1. Provide an environment where your children can grow up with POSITIVE SELF ESTEEM.  Self-Image and Self-Esteem are the controlling factors relative to what any of us will achieve, accomplish or become in this life.

1. Teach your children a healthy respect for money and help them become responsible for how MONEY works in their lives.

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he

will not depart from it.”

Proverbs 22:26 (NKJV)

How in the world do you get a patient to feel that way, and actually say it to other people? Talk about referrals!!!!

I can only write about my experience because it happened to me. I knew of this dentist’s reputation because he had been through The Schuster Center Management Program quite a few years ago. He had a practice in Illinois, but 10 years ago he moved to Scottsdale, AZ.

Not only was his office decor and design top of the line, his team was wonderful, the dentist was wonderful (kind eyes I like to say when I see some little twinkle of kindness in someone’s eyes). I was shown the entire dental office right down to the sterile room. And if you couldn’t ask for more, the treatment room dental chairs face the gorgeous McDowell Mountains! So close you feel like you could reach out and touch them. The office was mostly very open with many glass partitions and everything was neat and in it’s place.

My new dentist did a thorough examination listening to me about how I felt about my teeth, my concerns over technical quality, margins, etc., what I’d heard from other dentists about my teeth and then of course how I wanted them to look.

I’m an artist, so my view may be different than others, I didn’t want bright white perfect looking teeth. I wanted color variations from tip to top of tooth like my teeth and striations like my teeth. In other words, I wanted my teeth from when I was about 30 maybe, because I’m older now and I didn’t want people to look at me and think, “she just had her teeth redone, “ but instead think “she still has pretty teeth for her age.”

This dentist said to me, “Vicki, I’ve been doing this all my life and I know what you want because I’m an artist, too – just in dentistry.” He said we will pick out color together and will discuss our process together every step of the way.

I was sold before I ever got to the “case presentation” room. I felt he was honest, he was technically good and he was an artist because he showed his work with patient’s pictured “after” on his walls as art. “I was at home.”

Just a side note for all dentists out there, please put together a portfolio of your work. Especially if you’re selling cosmetic dentistry. And, for heaven’s sake, have your own teeth done. I can’t tell you how many dentists do not have their teeth in the state they are trying to sell.

After the exam, I was escorted into a very comfortable private room (not his personal private office) but a room with a computer and room for obviously (at least to me) case presentation with patient, spouse or significant other, and attending team member.

I know a little bit about case presentation (the dreaded “selling” that dentists feel they have to do). Honestly even knowing about it, this dentist listened to my every concern, gave opinions, showed me his work, gave me a price break when he saw I was feeling overwhelmed with paying out a large amount of money in these economic times (and not a lot – just a bit to make me feel that he was trying to help me) and offered delayed payment plans if I needed it.

How much more could I ask? He didn’t get full mouth restoration, but he got half-mouth restoration.

The appointment was set up and of course any patient waits anxiously for that arrival date. It was a 3.5 hr. appointment. That day arrived today. I was shown his wax-ups. They looked great but I had a few concerns about the size my teeth. I’ve always thought my teeth were too big. It’s hard to judge what teeth will look like in one’s mouth vs. on a model.

He explained to me that he did not know what dentistry was done underneath the existing crowns, but he would explain the process to me and we would discover together. Which we did. I was always asked if I wanted a mirror to see what he was discovering. Usually, I did.

A problem arose with a front tooth that I broke when I was 9. I wore temporary caps until 17 then crowns the rest of my life. He found a crack in the tooth so I need a post placed for strength. Pretty much standard stuff under other crowns during the prep and then finally new resin temporaries were placed and I got the mirror again. I shouldn’t have worried about size, they look beautiful and still are only temps!

I was truly amazed at the difference in my appearance. I love the new teeth with just a couple of tweaks which any self respecting artist would make! Meanwhile, I will wait anxiously for my next appointment – for the final porcelain crowns and my new smile.

When I was done I complimented my new dentist and his chairside assistant. I told them that I had gone to three dentists, but when I came here, I felt at home! They thanked me, and I thanked them. Then, the doctor said to me, “You tell Mike for me that he was instrumental in putting me on the right path over 20 years ago – that is the reason I am where I am today!”

Once again, Dr. Michael Schuster has helped change a dentist’s life. By the way, Dr. Schuster’s Case Presentation course is probably the “best” in the country! If you want to know more about it, please call us at 480.941-9393 or visit our website: www.SchusterCenter.com.

I didn’t ask permission to use the dentists name in this blog so that is the only reason I left it off, but I will refer any one who asks me to this dentist once I get his permission. You can reach me at vicki@cfpd.com. (And dentists, I’m also talking to you – get your teeth done if they need it.)

Law of Attraction

Law of attraction says that all your thoughts, all images in your mind, and all the feelings connected to your thoughts will later manifest as your reality. In other words; everything you have in your life now has been attracted to you through thoughts in your mind.

Understanding And “Consciously” Implementing The Power Of Thought

If you would like to read the entire article on The Power of Thought please visit our website at: www.schustercenter.com, click on FREE NEWSLETTER link for our complimentary subscription to our bi-monthly newsletter, The Schuster Perspective. Every 2 months you will receive our newsletter via a .pdf file that you can download and read at your leisure. We cover dental management, investing in a troubled time, doubling your net profits, dental team development, case presentation and much more. If you are new to our blog site, please take a look at us while you’re on the website for our schedule of events and seminars throughout the United States. 3.5 AGD credit hours apply to any attended event sponsored by The Schuster Center.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! – Chris Ellison, Practice Development Coach/Faculty and The Schuster Team