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A friend of mine has said to me that if dentists had to form a firing squad, they’d all stand in a circle.

Which is stupid.

And funny.

But sadly, mostly true.

What he means is that, when it comes to helping each other, dentists don’t seem to like doing that.

There are pockets of dentistry where this is not true.

I’ve been privileged to be included in some dental mastermind meetings, both in Australia and in the USA, where the theory of abundance predominates.

And that is the theory that there’s plenty to go around.

And the theory that by growing the pie, there’s more for everyone.

More for everyone to share.

And that’s how the dental market should be.

Recently I was talking to a dentist I know well who was pondering about joining a Preferred Provider group.

And he wasn’t quite sure.

He was being serenaded with the story that once he signed he’d be inundated with so many more new patients.

They told him he’d be busy.

Very busy.

But my friend couldn’t work out where all these new patients were going to come from?

And how was he going to get profitable working for fees that were half what he charged now?

You see my friend is no dummy.

Here’s what he figures:

He figures that only a small percentage of the population go to the dentist anyway, so there’s a huge market of people out there to attract who do not even have a dental home.

Then of those who do go regularly, more of them don’t have any insurance than do.

And a lot of those with insurance don’t have dental insurance. They only have hospital insurance.

So my friend has a point…

You see, people who choose you because you’re with a certain fund or PPO aren’t really choosing you.

They’re choosing the PPO.

Not you.

And in that case, they have no “contract” with you.

Because their contract is with the PPO.

So you just become a commodity.

Like petrol.

Where I live, people will line up for what seems like hours to save a few cents per litre, or what turns out to be a couple of dollars only on a tank full of gas.

And that’s commodity thinking.

Because no one would work for a couple of dollars an hour?

No one would run across six lanes of highway to pick p a two dollar coin lying on the roadway?

But they’d waste an hour of their time sitting in a line of cars for a couple of bucks?

When I was studying dentistry, I worked nights in a local RSL club. A servicemen’s club.

One of my coworkers there, Phil, became my patient when I graduated, and as a reward to him for his loyalty to me, I treated his three children and him for health fund rebate only.

And while I worked as an assistant dentist, they’d drive across Sydney sometimes an hour to see me, no matter where I worked, every six months.

When I finally bought my own dental practice, I told Phil that I wasn’t going to be continuing the rebate only arrangement any more.

I never saw Phil and his children ever again.

Although they were dentally complete and really regular hygiene patients, it seemed that Phil and his family valued what cost them nothing over the relationship they had with me, which was more than just their relationship with me as a dentist.

Phil taught me a great lesson.

I told my friend that when it comes to dentistry, I don’t even know what some item numbers are. Or codes?

Because I treat people.

And dental disease.

Not item numbers.

And like you all know, I produced over $1.8M dollars of dentistry in one year without any third party arrangement.

And even now, working as a dentist part time, only three days per week, I collected just a shade under a million last year with plenty of holiday and education leave.

And I can show you how I did this…

Think abundance!

The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple easy to implement system that I developed that allowed me to build an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb.  If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.

Email me: david@theUPE.com

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