ing your community… and making a fortune all at the same time. Pretty good stuff. And then, while on the path to your success someone changed the rules. Things happened, like changes in insurance, changes in Medicaid, the creation of corporate dental companies, and deeper and deeper discounted insurance plans all have altered the landscape. Yet -you are still there, more knowledgeable, better than ever at what you do. You are helping people, loving your family, strengthen your community, and you are trying to figure out how to change your game with the changing rules. You try to make the best living you can for yourself and your loved ones. Because you are part of the American Orthodontic Society (AOS), there are incredible resources available to you right now. There are mentors, colleagues, friends and educators. As part of this organization, your opportunities to grow and build your own resources are massive. Learning from your own personal experience from and with other dentists who provide orthodontic care and having a mentor can make you able to turn the downturns into the positive. That’s what you have at your disposal in the AOS. The reason I believe so strongly in the AOS is that this organization challenges me to improve myself professionally. Then, it gives me the opportunity to do just that. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”~ Jim Rohn Think about it. Your dental school education provides you the opportunity to make a living. Now, with self-education, you can make your fortune. Your experiences, your own “practice evidence base” your CE, your knowledge gained in running your practice, coupled with that of other AOS members and mentors, are all the stepping stones to your fortune. You simply can’t experience everything. So, when you add others’ experiences and learning, failures and successes to your own, as my Daddy used to say, “Now you are cooking with gas.” You are affected by what you know. You are often even more affected by what you feel. When you learn to take your most challenging things and let them make you stronger and teach you MORE, it is because you look at what you do feel, what you want to feel and accomplish, and start to find ways to go about it. Your challenges can help you LEARN and KNOW more. You and your practice are affected by changes in the marketplace, including insurance discounting, appeals and paperwork, corporate dental growth, and Medicaid changes. But, you have a great supply of new knowl-edge to be used to change your self and your practice. Your income is determined by your philosophy! This was proven when I established the orthodontics practice for the existing pediatric dental practice. Both my formal education and self-education had taught me orthodontics. But it was my beliefs about myself that allowed me to provide that million-dollar practice with amazing potential for transforming the lives of the patients, parents and the pediatric dentist and his family, as well as the staff who I trained, taught and inspired. This filled me with joy and success. You may be wondering what beliefs and learning I used. I used simple daily disciplines–little productive actions, repeated consistently over time–that add up to the difference between failure and success. First, I chose to believe in my ability and in excel-lence, in love and in orthodontics. Each person who came in to the office was greeted warmly with a smile, and immediately. The staff chose to smile with every-one. Appointments were managed on time in every way possible. The phone was answered by a person, and promptly. The staff answering the phones was smiling while on the phone call. Evening calls from me followed difficult or complex appointments (from the patient’s/parent’s perspective), as well as surgical procedure visits. All guests -patients and family members — were greeted by name. No ortho case was started without a sit-down private conference with the doctor, and all treatment and financial information completed. By these simple actions, we avoided simple errors in judg-ment, which would have prevented the success of that orthodontic practice. Author Jeff Olson calls this the “Slight Edge,” which he says is using a way of thinking that creates your atti-tudes, which creates your actions, which creates your results, which creates your life. The Slight Edge enables you to make the daily choices that will lead you to the success and happiness of your dreams. Medicaid has stopped covering more than 95 percent of all orthodontic cases in Texas. There were probably many practitioners who felt their success “rug” had just been pulled out from under them — and it had, indeed. However, they did not realize a magic carpet floated nearby, waiting for those practitioners to hop on and ride. www.orthodontics.com Summer 2017 23
Journal of the American Orthodontic Society Summer 2017/Buyer's Guide: Page 23
