I’m surprised that there are dentists out there that are making no money.
Dentists owning dental offices but living off the incomes of their spouses.
Their dental offices are a hobby.
A break-even prospect at best.
All that work. All that management. All that ordering. All that HR. All that marketing.
What the heck for?
For charity?
Really, what is the point?
What’s the point of studying all that time, for year upon year upon year and accumulating all that student debt, and then not trying to get back into the black?
And then some?
For dentists it’s really crazy.
In the USA, dentists graduate after all that study with up to a quarter of a million dollars of student debt.
In the USA the country’s student debt surpasses the country’s credit card debt.
It’s seventy-one percent more!!
It’s an industry in its own right!
And here’s what happens:
After graduating with a student debt, the young dentist then borrows even more money to either purchase or start up his dental office.
Add another four or five hundred thousand dollars of debt for that purchase on top of the student debt and then you’ve got a five thousand pound albatross…
That means a graduating dentist can owe around three quarters of a million dollars before they even begin drilling teeth.
And with that sort of debt, there are dentists who only want to be dentists as a hobby?
There can’t be dentists who don’t want to pay down that debt as quickly as possible, and then start to make a profit?
I mean, start to show a Return On Investment?
Why shouldn’t they?
Why would you not want to receive a dividend for investing three quarters of a million dollars, plus all those years of blood, sweat and tears?
And then there’ll be people, and then there’ll be companies who tell you that you have no right to charge the prices that you do.
They’ll tell you to keep your prices low, so that the people who choose to eat the rubbish and not practice good oral hygiene can receive their treatment at the lowest cost so that they can then go out and spend the money they save on more things that can ruin their teeth?
There will always be people who want to guilt you into a compromise.
As long as it doesn’t affect them…
But if that were the case everybody out there would be riding bicycles rather than driving cars.
Let alone European luxury cars.
While ever we cater to the lowest common denominator we’ll never attain our true potential.
Who’d watch the Kentucky Derby if the horses all sauntered around the track?
That’s right…. they go their hardest.
To be their best.
And there’s really no reason why we as professionals, with the investment of time and money we’ve put in to this point should NOT be going our hardest.
To gain that Return On Our Investment.
What gives anyone who’s not us the right to tell us what we should be doing, and earning?
What gives anyone the right to guilt us into a fee schedule that doesn’t reward us for the education and the money that we’ve invested in ourselves.
I read last night that in the USA there are insurance companies who need to scrutinise every claim before treatment of the patients is approved because there’s apparently a very small percentage of dentists [in their words] who may be over-servicing their patients.
Well this is a rule that punishes the ninety eight percent for what the two percent may be doing.
And it insults the integrity of the ninety eight percent, who have their treatment plans subjected to scrutiny by pimple-faced bean counters.
You have to be kidding me.
I’ve seen some of the things that these bean counters want to do or not do..
The sooner that all businesses toss out the third party middlemen and go back to a simple relationship between the purchaser of the service and the provider of the service, then and only then will sanity be returned to the arena of free trade health.
But while ever there are dentists who falsely believe that there’s a need to work in this manner at prices fixed by the bean counters that have little or no relevance to market forces, then we’ll always have a society of doubt and indecision.
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My upcoming in depth two day workshops will be held in London in August.
You can reserve your places here: Click Link To Order
*****
Have you read my book , How To Build The Dental Practice of Your Dreams [Without Killing Yourself!] In Less Than Sixty Days.
You can order your copy here: Click Link To Order
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The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create 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 at david@theupe.com
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