Dentaltown September 2017 - 16

howard speaks
column

Continued from p. 14
Some of the most successful pitches on Shark Tank come from the most passionate people who've created
something that directly relates to their background. Parents create dolls to help build self-esteem in young girls.
A nurse invents a new method to calm babies. A teenage environmentalist creates clothing out of plastic bottles.
But just as in business, passion isn't enough if your background doesn't give you the foundation you need to be
taken seriously. The most successful investments on Shark Tank-and in the business world outside of prime-time
television-are made in those with the right background and the right passion. Not one or the other. You must
have both if you're going to make it, and because you're most likely a dentist if you're reading this, then your
background is taken care of. Focus on passion.
Everywhere I go, there's always a dentist asking me right off the bat, "Well, should I specialize in endo?" My
response is always the same: I don't even know why you're a dentist, but I would hope that you specialize in endo
only if that's your passion. Same for any specialty. All of you have the background of a dentist, but you need to
find your passions. Because if you love what you're doing, you're never going to work another day in your life. And
if I'm going invest in you (or your patients), and you're just doing this for money, I know where you're headed:
Burnout. Depression. Disease. You're going to quit.
But if this is your passion, no one can stop you. This isn't the world of opening dry cleaners or owning pizza
franchises; you're competing in the world of dentistry. When you look around at the competition, you're looking
at people who went out and earned an undergraduate degree, then a dental degree. People who have already spent
eight years in education before they even get to call themselves "doctor." Like you, your competition is coming
out of dental school with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. (Debt is just the investment you've made in
yourself. You better believe you're worth it.) If you think you're going to survive all of that and then enter the
profession without passion, you're dead wrong.
If you're not the secret sauce of your practice, then get out of practice now. And no, I don't mean go out there
and earn some more letters to throw behind your name. Patients don't care about the alphabet soup trailing your
name. Those details are not what patients invest in, and they sure are not the things I'd look for if I were a shark
looking to take an investment-sized bite of you.
Here's what I'd invest in: If you put two doctors in front of me-the best dentist on Earth who has an average
chairside manner, and an average dentist who has the best chairside manner on Earth-I'm going to throw all my
money behind the latter. For 30 years, when I ask new patients who
come to my office, "Who did your crown?" they never remember. So,
I ask, "Well, did you remember waking up on the sidewalk, feeling
like your mouth had been jackhammered and that you were going to
Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, is an international
have to pick the doc out of a police lineup for what he did to you?"
speaker who's written books and dozens of
Patients don't remember exactly what you did, but they will always
articles. To schedule Howard to speak at your
remember how you made them feel. Every one of those patients is
next national, state or local dental meeting,
a potential shark. Sure, they're not likely to invest a million dollars
email rebecca@farranmedia.com.
into your practice-but you can easily achieve a million-dollar
practice if your patients are constantly impressed with your passion
and how you make them feel.
Like the entrepreneurs on Shark Tank, you've only got a few
moments to make people believe in you. They already know you're
Asteto Dent Labs
a doctor-they're sitting in your chair, aren't they? So don't bother
study group
OCT.
trying to impress them with your acronym collection or your latest
Saddle Brook, New Jersey
11
certificate. Impress them with your passion and show them you
care, and you'll have all the investment you'll ever need to measure
Toronto Academy of
success in more than one metric. ■

See Howard Live!

2017

NOV.
10

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Ontario

SEPTEMBER 2017 // dentaltown.com

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Dentaltown September 2017