Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
Building a Resilient Dental Practice in Tough Times with Dr. Steve Rasner
This episode features Dr. Steve Rasner discussing his journey from dental student to practice owner, emphasizing the importance of continuing education and the power of oral sedation in enhancing patient comfort. Dr. Rasner shares practical steps for dental practitioners to grow their practices by focusing on patient empathy, effective communication, and fostering a positive practice culture.
• Dr. Rasner shares his background and struggles in dentistry
• Emphasis on the value of continuing education for career growth
• Introduction of Dr. Rasner's oral sedation protocol
• Importance of addressing patient anxiety in dental practices
• Tips for managing finances and building a sustainable practice
• Advice on communication and empathy in patient care
• Key takeaways for dental practice success
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I help dentists create thriving practices that make more money, require less of their time, and empower their teams to run the office seamlessly—so they can focus on what matters most.
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As dental owners, we are always looking for the low-hanging fruit, the easy button or that one simple thing that's going to change everything. Today, we interview Dr Steve Rasner in a highly engaging and insightful episode on what has made all the difference in his career, from his proven oral sedation protocol to his top three tips for career success. This episode is packed with advice you can use right now to grow your practice and stay inspired. You are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we help you create and scale your dental practice so that you are no longer tied to the chair. I'm Dr Paul Etcheson, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a $6 million group practice in the suburbs of Chicago. I want to teach you how to grow and systematize your dental practice so you can spend less time practicing and more time enjoying a life that you love. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to Dental Practice Heroes. I'm your host, dr Paul Edgerton. I got a really special guest on today. This is somebody that has been a mentor of mine, somebody I've always very much looked up to, and someone I saw speak very early in my dental career. That made a pretty big impact on the way I run my practice. He is a podcaster, he's a lecturer, he's an instructor and he's just a kick-ass dentist. Welcome to the podcast, dr Steve Rasner. What's happening, steve?
Speaker 2:Thank you, my man. I appreciate you having me on. Hi everybody, I know you guys listen to a lot of podcasts Besides Paul's, I'm sure I assure you, anything I'm going to give you today is meat and potatoes. It means take it back to your office and you'll be able to use it. You'll be able to run with it, because I know your time is valuable.
Speaker 1:I love it, man, and I love if you could share. You've got an interesting story. I don't want to spend too much time in it because I find listeners are just like they want to get into meat and potatoes. They're hungry, yeah, but talk about like your practice and you know the demographic and how that changed and then how it led you to realize your new way of practicing. That took you through your career.
Speaker 2:So I was an undergraduate psych major that took the electives in case I wanted to go to Med or dental school. I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I decided dental school. I get in University of Pennsylvania and I got my ass kicked. For the first two years I was pretty good in clinic, but by the time I graduated two years I was pretty good in clinic but by the time I graduated nobody was giving this guy a GPR. My rank was too bad. So I went back to my hometown because my dad was a dentist and he didn't even want me. I'm sure if he had like one more candidate he would have taken that guy.
Speaker 2:So I'll never forget that feeling and that's what I mean. That probably resonates with some of you Like I felt like I'd stayed back in school. You know, I'm in my hometown of southern New Jersey, a town that was going down. I hate to even say that when we do these podcasts because, as you're going to find out, that town has been very, very good to me over the last 40 some years, but at the time it's 1980. I know that's unthinkable to. Some of you Probably think I worked on Benjamin Franklin or something, but it's 1980. The town that I'm in in Southern New Jersey is plummeting and I remember the feeling like I am better than this I mean, this is not going to be my story and I even knew in 1980, 81, that CE was my ticket out of here, that CE would be becoming a really good dentist and I didn't know if I was good or not because you know, I had to judge was my grades and stuff. So I became this amazing commitment to CE that never stopped. Like one example, like in the nineties. In the eighties I discovered Bill Strupp. I'm sure many of you know who he is. In the nineties I discovered Spear and Coys because they were just coming to be who they are. I went out to Frank's office like 19 times and when you're at courses and live CE, you meet like-minded guys and you not only learn whatever Frank's teaching about the facial generated treatment plan and that stuff, you're learning all kinds of things because you're live for three days with people you can't help but grow. And it gave immediate dividends. Like you know, it changed the type of quality of people I needed next to me, whether it's a dental assistant, a front desk person, and we just grew exponentially. Now that practice I was able to develop into a fee-for-service, high-end, well-known practice, as some of you know, throughout the country. So part of today is that's what were the key things that got me there.
Speaker 2:But that's my background. I mean, back of my class, stuck in a town I didn't want to be in, like some of you guys are stuck in a associateship that you don't want to be in. I get it Because I not only worked for my dad, I had enough sense to work for two or three other people. And so I think about I always compare us, paul, to like physicians. I mean physicians get their ass kicked the first three or four years. They're working 100 hours in a hospital, getting paid minimum wage, basically, or you know what I'm saying doing what's required in the model to become a physician.
Speaker 2:If you want to become a specialist, you know I don't know exactly how it works, but it's two years of training and four years and then four hell, they don't even become what they are till they're 35 or 40. So for me I don't think it's a big. Or to you guys, I don't think it's a big sacrifice your first five years in dentistry to dive into CE, work in multi, unless you're like, coming from a family which few of us are. It's got a historically iconic successful practice, but most of us are not the children of Frank Spear or Dennis Tarnow or all these other legends.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting that you know, we see these physicians and they go through a four-year residency where they're making stipends of I don't know, $45,000, $50,000 a year.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what it is nowadays. But then yeah, we always had this expectation as graduating dentists that if we come out we should be making $250,000, $300,000 a year just right off the bat, saying you know what I'm going to take that money that I am going to make that's way more than the physician spend it into CE and just grind for a few years and really get good at what they do. I mean, I can tell you like there's so many people that claim, you know, if you just do the clinical CE, it'll take care of you, and I think that's a big part of it. But it's also a lot of practice management. But I think a lot of what fueled my practice growth was my passion for CE and passion for doing the best dentistry possible and just figuring out a way to convey that brand to the patient so that they felt it was special too. But I couldn't have done that without CE and I could not have done that without all the people I met along the way, like you mentioned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I know I'm much older than most of the people probably watching, but I have a young spirit and I am very in tune to what's going on in the profession and I know how much money and how in debt you are when you get out. And the last dental school and if I knew a better way and I thought about it for many, many decades to train a young dentist than a dental school does, then I would have introduced it and done it. So I got to shut up because I don't have a better way. And what I do know is that you're not ready coming out of dental school. You're just not. So how do you get ready? That's what I'm talking about. Just like he said, like take three to four years it's not a big chunk of your life and become amazing at something.
Speaker 1:It's funny when people say where did that passion come from? Did I wake up when I was 12 one day and be like I'm just, I'm just so passionate about teeth, I just need, I just need teeth in my life? I think the passion comes from. The mastery of it is that you just you find something gratifying in that you get paid back on the energy that you put into it and you get results. And I'd like to pivot a little bit and you have went into a certain area. I guess it's an interesting area of dentistry that I don't think many people even explore because of fear or of what it is. And what we're talking about is sedation and a lot of people are saying, well, I'm just too scared to do IV, but you don't need to learn IV to help your patients. So talk about what sedation has done to your practice and why you really latched onto that model and helped that to grow.
Speaker 2:So let me tell you how I got there. I trained everywhere. I mean I just did like a lot of you. And then I remember somebody telling me about this guy in Pittsburgh, pennsylvania that's really good, and he's doing these things on implant dentistry. I didn't even know what implant dentistry was. I thought it might be a phase that came and went, and his name was Carl Misch. Okay, so when I went out there, one of the instructors turned me on because you can't do that kind of work without some type of sedation. You just, I know some people might do it, but you shouldn't do it. And number one you shouldn't do it even for you, because it's too stressful. The number one thing that'll take your skill away is losing control of the patient in your chair. In other words, if you think you're hurting them or their blood pressure goes way up or something goes wrong your suturing skills or whatever you got, kind of go out the window.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, ask me how I know. So what happened is this guy turned me on to this oral sedation regimen that I'm going to turn your audience on to today. That the most remarkable thing. You know how, like you hear in life, that's bullshit. And you know I'm all over Instagram and guys tell me it's bullshit because they haven't used it. If you use it one time, one time in your practice, you're going to see what I see, because it's unbelievably easy to replicate. And in 26 plus years of me using this oral sedation regimen, I have not had one incident ever that I had to call 911. Hell, I once packed cord and had epi on it and I had to call 911 for that, for a crown and bridge patient I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:So here's what do I give patients, and obviously I'll give you the protocol, paul will give you my email and there's a whole written thing I have. It's for free. I mean, I'm not selling you anything, it's just this, but basically, real quick. It's triazolam, which is a benzodiazepine, as you know, which most people use, but it also adds Benadryl, which makes patients sleepy. It's 25 milligrams of Benadryl, 0.25 triazolam, and then it's 50 milligrams of Atarax, which is another antihistamine. Well, why that? Because if you Google and look it up, it has an anti-anxiety component of it. Listen, I didn't invent this stuff, but I was recommended to me and I tried it and it's remarkable. Why is it so remarkable? Well, it works on 95% of your patients, if not more.
Speaker 2:So, yes, once in a blue moon you'll get somebody that needs IV sedation, but it's so predictable what do I mean predictable? You give it to them 90 minutes before their appointment. They walk in, and nitrous oxide is also highly recommended. I've added that to this protocol because nitrous takes you this way, because sometimes you give them those pills and you're done Okay, I mean, you don't need to give them anything else. And how do you know that? Well, your eyes and ears, you know they're sleeping when you get them in the reception room. So, yes, there's a lot of details that you might need to know, like you have to have a wheelchair in your office for patients like I described. But most of them are going to walk back, they're going to get on the nitrous I mean light nitrous like 20% and within 10 minutes they're snoring. So what else do I like about it? Because you can tap them on the shoulder and wake them up anytime you want. Okay, I'm not going to go and bore your audience with all the details, but you have to monitor them, right? So again, so why is this in the conversation? Here's why Because, if you think about it, I don't care if you're the best what state are you in Illinois, illinois?
Speaker 2:I don't care if you're the best cosmetic dentist in Illinois. It doesn't make your phone blow up as much. You don't blow up slowly over time. If you're an amazing cosmetic dentist, I get it, but the thing about that is, when patients spend $10,000, $20,000, whatever it is to get a new set of whatever, most patients don't like to tell everybody.
Speaker 2:That Isn't that true, right? I mean, most patients just want to be noticed as if they dropped 30 pounds. And hey, what's different about you? And oh, what's different about you? And oh, what's different about me? Oh, I just spent 30K with Reznor in New Jersey. No, they don't say that you did what. They want you to think that you did something natural, right? So even people that you do beautiful work on are not going to scream to the world. And that doesn't make your phone blow up. Think about this. Everybody in the world thinks it's amazingly cool that their dentist doesn't hurt them. Not only does he not hurt them, they don't even remember their appointments. Yeah, well, what happened when they were there? Because the cocktail that I described to you is very amnesic. So, it's true, that's a very strong component of it, and so everything gets easier for you and they'll tell everybody. By the way, full disclosure some states make you get an IV sedation license to just dispense oral Most states are pretty lax, though correct For oral.
Speaker 1:I mean, I know Illinois is one of those ones that I think it's changed in recent years. But when I got started I didn't have to do a whole lot at all. And what's interesting about your protocol is where I was trained we could take the weight and we do all this, we do the calculations oh, what should we use? And then I was just like you know what? I'll just get everybody 10 milligrams of Valium the night before. I'll give them 0.5 milligrams of triazolam an hour before. And then I was just like okay, this works for everybody, but I still have some resistance. And I throw in 50 milligrams of hydroxyzine, which is similar to Benadryl, and now they just sleep and it's just like well, people are like how do I know how much to give them? I'm like give them 10.5 and 50 every time.
Speaker 2:And it's Well hydroxyzine is. I'm pretty sure that is Atarex that I use. Oh, is it? Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:It is Because yeah, so then we're using the same protocol and I don't change it very little.
Speaker 2:No, you don't. And yeah, I'm telling you something. I mean, I don't get paid by the drug reps to tell you this. There's nothing, no agenda here. Just to tell you it's life-changing. Wherever you're sitting right now has a segment, a big segment in that city or rural area of people that are fearful. And you know why they're fearful Because dentistry sucked in the 50s and 60s. It did, and there was not a lot of attention that paid to TLC or not hurting people.
Speaker 1:Where I went in the 80s and 90s, it sucked growing up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hate to indict the whole profession, but that's what happened. So there are people with really big fears, so you want to also blow your mind. I don't even charge them for it. I don't even charge for sedation, so why would I possibly do that? Well, number one, it doesn't cost a lot. The three pills that Paul and I discussed, I think, are like $12. Naturally, nitrous is much more expensive, but it brings in so many giant cases, one after the other, and you know what the thing is.
Speaker 2:I want you guys to feel this. When you're in a room and you're recommending whatever you recommend to that patient in front of you okay, let's say it's scaling and root planing that's a hard thing to be passionate about, because, a you don't know when you're going to need it again. B it's not an amazing procedure. Yes, it's amazing that it stops perio disease and all that. I get it or a crown, or maybe you're amazing at a smile makeover and you can feel that passion.
Speaker 2:But when you have a scared patient that's sitting in your chair and that's why they came to you and you've used this protocol that Paul and I just discussed, you're 95 to 98% sure it's going to positively work, no matter what their history has been. And you might say to yourself, well, why not just IVs today? Because, number one, you can't offer that for no cost. Number two, you obviously have to admit that the consequences or the complications are significantly higher. And you know, paul, I don't know how you feel about this I've heard for the 26 years I've been doing this well, you can't titrate it that way, right, and by giving them the way you and I give what we give. So again, you heard what I give them. I don't know, I mean 26 years, probably 15,000 patients and not one incident Seems like a safe protocol to me. Doesn't feel lucky to me.
Speaker 1:I'll tell a story. When I first got into this I was trying to titrate Okay, how you doing, how you feeling? I still feel awake. Okay, let's give you some more. I got up to one milligram, full milligram, of Trislam. So that's, that's four of these little blue pills, and she's still not feeling it. So I gave her another, another one, and I came back and checked on her five minutes later and she was out. She was gone, and we got started and she was fine. I mean we monitored the vitals the whole time. I mean she might've like, I mean she didn't remember anything, you know. So I think she was probably in retrospect. She was okay before I gave her that extra pill, but she just wasn't going to sleep and she was just fighting it with everything she had. But you know what? I've had so many patients that I'm like I think this is the patient that needs IV, and I have been surprised so many times that they don't. They are totally fine with the protocol.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would do want to say one thing about what you just said. So the percentage is extraordinarily high, I mean, and there's no learning curve. By the way, I mean, if we sit here talking about implants are the greatest thing and I teach implants in my institute and if I was to tell you that that's a great yeah, it is an amazing clinical skill to acquire, but the learning curve is long. You can do certain things very well very early, but there's no learning curve, zero, other than paying attention to common sense, protocols and safety. What medications are they on? Are there any contraindications? Check with their pharmacy, check with their primary care physician. Bingo, you're in. And never be afraid to say you know what, I can't do this.
Speaker 1:I think we need to think about this as dentists is that I know patients don't realize that when they are horribly anxious and they're showing it, everybody in that room wants to get out of there the assistant, the dentist and it's not a fun. People think we're just sadistic and we like doing this. We don't like work, we don't like hurting people and when you are putting somebody through that sort of trauma it doesn't feel good. I don't care how much you pay me, I don't want to do that. Now did you decide to go? We're going all in on sedation, or was it just as time went you were like wow, this is really starting to turn into a sedation practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it started because I was training for implants. So when I came back and started to get my first couple implant patients maybe not for a single implant, but multiple implants, you know, a mandible between the foramen, all that stuff. You know a two-hour procedure, maybe three hours I felt a need to sedate them. So that's how it started. And then I realized, well, what about a three-hour crown and bridge case or what about whatever it is, you know, a three-hour just operative case? Back then and also you got to imagine I mean this like these procedures are being done in my office multiple times a day, every day. So the confidence level and the predictability level, not just for me but my associates over the years, even my dental hygienist that would be scaling the route planning the sedated patient, was just going sky high. I saw no reason. So it's obviously here's how it works. 100% of the people that come to my practice don't ask for sedation, but I will ask them, depending on. Look, if they come in and they need one crown, I'm probably not going to ask them that, unless they brought it up, but if it's a couple crown case I'll just casually mention. Hey, I don't know if you know this about this practice Most people do. You know we offer sedation to our patients. We don't even charge you. If you're interested in that, you can have it. When you say that, even though, like a 75-year-old guy that looks like he's a Marine, right? Those very often say hell, yeah, that sounds good to me. And let me just tell you what happens. Your life just got a lot easier. Once you start sedating patients, even if you're an associate in a practice, you will become the main person of that practice. If you're an associate right now and you make it a goal in 2025 to go get your sedation permit, if you're in the state of Massachusetts, illinois, california, I don't care where you're at right Within six months that practice, your practice in that practice, is going to start to blow up in a positive way.
Speaker 2:Everybody's going to want to go to you, I'm telling you, and you can be so much more productive. So scheduling becomes a whole different thing. I'll give you an example. Somebody is coming in, was in yesterday. So quadrant scaling left side of the mouth. That gets done. They flip over to me. I did multiple extractions left side of the mouth. Now they're coming in. Next week we're going to do the right side of the mouth. Just a million ways to do it.
Speaker 1:I'm curious what do you do for the single root canal crown, you know, the single extraction, those sort of things where IV sedation might make more sense because of the quicker onset and quicker it's on and off, quicker than the all day event that sometimes oral sedation turns into. What do you do for the smaller procedures?
Speaker 2:Well, for root canal for sure, I mean, or even a single crown. It's clearly an up to them thing, and to me, I always prefer them to be sedated.
Speaker 1:If you start taking your practice in this direction or if you just add this to your practice and this is where your practice just goes with the life of its own, which is a very high possibility, what would you say? We're seeing a lot of people that need a lot of dentistry. Is there something special? You're doing a different way, that you're presenting financials, handling financials, financing, because we're looking at larger cases, oh sure, and I think there might be a lot of dentists listening saying you know what that would work in your town, steve, but that doesn't work where in my middle class blue collar America.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay, so what you need to do is Google Cumberland County, New Jersey. My area is ranked as the second worst place to live in the United States by USA Today magazine. So I am your town. That's quite an honor, Okay, Thank you. So I am your town, you know, and honestly I can never put it's not like a dangerous town. It's just a rural, economically depressed area in America, like many, many patches of America and it. You know, you don't want to hear some good news, guys. I was able to put together a practice that you know, did hell.
Speaker 2:I was doing a million in 1980, and we've done over five for many, many, many years. Wow, I did four as a one-building practice plus, and whenever I talk about money I never want to come off like an a-hole. You know money to me in dentistry is all about this. It's all successes to me. Success means to me as a dentist that you work when you want to work and you take off when you want to take off because you can afford to.
Speaker 2:The common thread that I find with very successful dentists is that they lived normally or below their means those first 10 years. You know they acquired stuff and I didn't do that. I was the guy that had the nice car and probably too big of a house too soon. We work in a challenging profession and the only thing worse than that is working because you have to pay your bills and I know that. I know what that feels like. I know what it's like to oh my God, payroll's next week, and I mean it. And you need to know that, because my life hasn't been like that for quite a while, but it was like that for a long time.
Speaker 1:Well, it's almost like we go into practice ownership for that autonomy to be able to make decisions and have freedom to do things the way we want.
Speaker 1:But if we over-lifestyle, you lose that autonomy because now you have to work and you have to deliver to pay that stuff. And I have also been house poor, like when I was in dental school this was 2006, and they were handing out loans to anyone who could sign to pick up a pen and I don't know how, based on my wife's income at the time, we got the house we got. Now fast forward, you know, with lots of debt coming out of dental school, not so much from dental school but from the fact that we were over leveraged in our house. And it's a shitty place to be. When you have to work and when you can get to where you can take off time and not worry about the shutdown in production because you're like I'm just enjoying my life, that's a wonderful place to be. So I think it comes down to that autonomy. When we lose the autonomy, when we overspend, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2:So that's what I meant by taking the first three to four years out of dental school. I mean, look, we all put in a big sacrifice to become what we are, right, I mean, it's a minimum of eight years, it's not little. And then we all know that's kind of the beginning, because then you're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on and time oh my God, it's CE and you've got to balance that with your life and if you don't do that you end up in divorce and don't pay attention to the things that really matter. Yeah, I mean it's a lot to put together, but hopefully you listening to him and other podcasts and being not reclusive in your office and working burned out and going home, going to sleep, get up, working again burned out. He's going to give you my email and you know I can only answer so many, but I'm one of the people that of many that could help you at least sounding off ideas and stuff if you're struggling.
Speaker 1:I will put Steve's email and all this information in the show notes. If you do want to reach out to Steve, he is a wealth of knowledge and happy to help. You know, and just let's close it off, Steve. And if you just had three pieces of advice for a dental practice owner, your three best pieces, let's close out on that. What are they?
Speaker 2:The first piece of practice dental advice would be this Implement this protocol that I'm going to give you. It's a piece of cake, starting as soon as you can. The number one reason you get new patients in your practice is because they could not get in to their dentist that they've been going to. So they called their dentist and nobody got back to them. Or they called their dentist and they got an appointment two weeks from now or something. That was unacceptable.
Speaker 2:So I wrote a book 20 years ago called the Protocol Book what to Do when and that book was a product of me becoming tired of all the things I didn't like about my professional career. So one week I'd have a great week back in the clinic and the front desk would not be great, and then it would flip and I could never get everybody on the same page. So I spent a year every time something happened. I didn't like writing it down and how did I want to fix it. It was really epic to do that, because it's easy to say it's hard to actually do it. It's easy to say it's hard to actually do it, and one of the protocols was the orange sheet protocol, so it's literally a yellow or orange neon piece of paper that you would see at your front desk and that piece of paper is an alert to you you, the doctor or your manager that someone called in and needs attention that wasn't on your schedule called the orange sheet product. It's an emergency slip, okay, but there's got a lot of things to it. And then right attached to that is the call back in an hour protocol. So that means anybody that calls you, right, you have to call them back and either give them an appointment or some kind of attention within the first hour, like, if people aren't willing to give me an hour, I don't know what to say. Hopefully we can get them a little better than an hour because you're looking for an appointment time. Another thing I would do that's connected to that. Now, this may sound silly to a new dentist that's out there, but I would block out a couple half an hours a day and learn to give myself catch-up time, and I'm going to tell you what's going to happen if you don't.
Speaker 2:We dentists are funny guys sometimes and gals, and we measure our success by how many dental hygienists we have, and when you have one, everything's great. But when you get successful and you have three, nobody factors in the time it takes during your given eight hours of working to go check hygiene. It's not in there. So the second worst thing in dentistry, besides not having enough money or working to pay bills, is being stressed because you don't have enough time. You don't even tell me. I'm telling you, I know, I have a feeling. You don't even know what room to go in because you are that far behind. So what's my takeaway? Here's my takeaway Commit early on, like right out of school, to take CE to become amazing so you can charge appropriately.
Speaker 2:Because if you charge $1,400 for a crown when you should be charging $2,000 or $2,200, because you're not sure you're that good, because you haven't taken much CE, then you can't do what I'm about to tell you. What I'm about to tell you is slow down, add a half an hour to a couple procedures during your day and put in a block spot on top of that. So even though visually, when you look at next Monday or Tuesday, it doesn't look packed, we all know what's gonna happen in most successful offices that day is gonna get filled up and it takes the stress off of you. So train for excellence, charge for excellence. If you go through your career.
Speaker 2:Being the person that you're scared to raise your fees because you're going to lose patients, then you're going to live your life fearful because you are going to lose patients if you raise your fees. You are going to lose patients when you become fee-for-service. If that's one of your goals, which it should be, and that goal goes along with everything I just told you. You can't be fee-for-service if you don't take active CE, because you're just not current enough. To have a patient go out of network and pay more out of their pocket is a product of you becoming a really good clinician. So I said more than three things, but the last thing is this Treatment plan not only the courses you're going to take this year, of course, in your patients oral health care.
Speaker 2:Treatment plan your personal life from the beginning, meaning have goals like to stay fit. You don't have to be on the cover of a muscle magazine, but you should aspire to be reasonably healthy and fit and you should aspire to quality time with people that you love if it's your significant other, your children, whatever Because I've learned a lot of lessons in my life and I'm giving you this advice because I missed it. I was so caught up in CE that I'm lucky. My children love me the way they do, because I missed obviously was there, but I wasn't present, mindfully, all the time I was too impressed with this procedure or that procedure I was learning, I overdid it too much, and you should never be too busy to not be able to have a catch or kick a ball around with one of your children and have a date night with your wife or husband. That's my advice.
Speaker 1:Loving All right. Well, thank you so much. I love where we started from and I love where we ended up. I think there's just so many gems in there and just wisdom, man. There's so much wisdom there and I can relate to so much of it in my own experience as well.
Speaker 2:Thank you, man.
Speaker 1:I just think that's what I love about you is that the reflection and the knowledge and just the experience that comes in, that you're willing to share it with the dental community. So thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:You're welcome, paul, and kudos to you for having a vehicle to help so many dentists stay connected, because we didn't have anything like this in the
