Ep_52 Think About Your Thinking with Dr. Chris Majors_mixdow...

SPEAKERS

Shawn Zajas, Mark House, Allison House

Welcome to the authentic dentist podcast join Dr. Allison house and house Dental in Scottsdale and Shawn Zajas, founder of zonna, a company helping dentists to extend their care beyond the chair as they lead dentists deeper along the journey of authenticity, to reach greater fulfillment in their professional lives, and to deliver remarkable patient experiences. At the core of the authentic dentist is a belief that the answer to the current challenges in dentistry is dentists discovering that their greatest asset and point of differentiation is their personal brand. And that forming that brand out of their authentic selves is the best strategy for success in dentistry today.

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Hey, guys, this is Sean and Dr. Allison house with the authentic dentist podcast. And once again, we are podcasting here at the voices of dentistry event in Scottsdale, Arizona. And we have a special guest with us today. Dr. Chris majors. Okay, awesome. And it's just gonna be a fun conversation. So I will actually throw the seat Dr. Has.

Well, Dr. Majors and I were talking a little bit about being in private practice. He's recently retired. And what she does a little bit about we are practices and how you got to where you are today.

01:29

So I came out of dental school in 1998, and immediately bought my father in law's practice, who had been a practicing dentist for a long time. And so I jumped in there. And I realized quickly that how much I needed to learn about what it meant to be a dentist. We all come out learning how to do fillings and crowns. But the question is, do we know how to live our lives in such a way that we're doing meaningful work? And so I had to set out and say, Okay, who am I really, I mean, it might just a dentist. And so I, I began to explore things such as the business side, and then I realized quickly in my career, that the secret to my own success was going to be having margin in my life, where I not only emotionally, physically and psychologically, but financially had margin in my practice, and in my work. So that is sort of why I'm here, I just want to bring the topic up to the younger generation of dentists and help them explore why margin having margin in your life is important.

So when you're talking about margin, you're talking about finances, I'm talking

02:36

finances, but I'm also talking about the emotional side, the psych, the physical, and then also time reserves. So margin defined, is the leeway space between our load and our limits. The reason we have margins on a piece of paper is if you start to right off the end of the page, you're really not going to make sense. It's just as easy in your life to run on full in your gas tank because it is on empty. And so what what would it look like if we all had more margin in our life.

And I think the trap here is that young dentists, with their energy with their reserves with their ambitions, often think that they don't have limits. And they ended up with bad habits that now 1520 years in if if not checked, but we hear about tinnitus all the time encountering burnout and not just burnout in like a small way we know people in your generation that you know, they know someone that was on the verge of possibly suicide, because I mean, your good friend, Dr. Alan Stern.

Yes. Alan Stern talks about that quite a bit. Because we do we push ourselves to the limit, because for some reason, we think we're superhuman, right? Yes.

03:48

Yeah. So I mean, one example is, a lot of times as a new dentist, it's like, oh, I'm only seeing six patients a day, I need to see 15. Well, really, I found that dentistry is really not a game of volume, but a game of margin. And sometimes the more time I had with the patient, the better dentistry that I actually was able to do when I had more time. So part of the margin message here is having that leeway space in your schedule, from a time reserves aspect, having money leftover at the end of the month, so you're not running on empty, and then also just emotionally and spiritually in all aspects of the human life. Just have space.

That is not what we've been taught. We've been taught that we need to cram in a few more hygiene checks and, you know, at least a couple more crowns every single day,

04:38

right? And I realized that you run behind and you run into that hygiene exam, you're like, Okay, I did a really poor hygiene exam there, but, but I gotta make up time, and I found that the time that I would actually set aside to do a longer hygiene exam, it was always better. The patient was treated better, the staff rallied around me better. So It takes effort. This just doesn't fall in your lap. But I think it's a good message.

So how would you create that? How did you do that? In your practice? Oh, man,

05:09

you don't arrive. So you start over every single day. You have to take time in the morning. For me it was looking at my schedule, never the night before. I never looked at my schedule the night before, because I would stress about it. And I Oh, no, you know, Joan is on the schedule, you know, that would be awful. I would arrive early. Running to your first patient is not the way to create margin in your life. So I would arrive early, I'd give myself leeway to be able to look at the schedule and think about the patient say, oh, that's gonna be a great day. And so, yeah, the mindset does matter. And so creating that, and it's a daily thing, it's not a, okay, now, I've been doing this 10 years, it's easy. I'm gonna run it, you you start over every single day.

I think it's so nice. Because one of the things that younger dentists need is just permission permission to know, I can I can be successful, I can do the dentistry that I want to. And I don't have to be redlining it. Right. And there's this wisdom that comes with Yeah, if you redline it for 510 years, there's a chance that you're going to experience emotional breakdown, physical breakdown, and then all of a sudden, like, prevention is so much easier. In every area, you guys tell your patients this all the time. That's why it's so important to prevent big issues in dentistry in the same exact way. It's important to prevent burnout, emotionally, physically, spiritually. salutely.

06:31

Absolutely. So that

go ahead. Oh, I just wanted to know what you're doing now. So you're

06:37

prepared. You know, I'm gonna clarify, I'm kind of weird about words like retirement, I hate the word retirement. You know, the goal for me was not retirement has this sense of, I'm just going to get up in the morning, watch TV, play pickleball in the afternoon, and have drink scotch at night. I mean, that's just a terrible idea to me. I'm not picking on people who that's their goal, but that's not mine. So I'm living into a 2.0. I've shifted careers, I don't see myself ever not working. I think work is healthy. I think work for me is is investing in the lives of people. As dentists, that's all we've ever done. We've invested in people. Now we did that by way of drilling and filling and putting on pretty smiles. But the second half, and I'm just going to encourage the senior or the more established doctors to think about the notion that the goal is not retirement. The goal is to continue to be a lifelong learner and continue to invest in the lives of people it may not be in patient care, it may be in a whole new journey. So for me, it's it's a journey, and it's a journey of lifelong learning. I'm curious about a lot of things such as, is there an alternative to dental insurance? I mean, every single day, I'd go into my office and just file these we'd file claims and except write offs. I don't like the margins in in, in what we're getting from dental insurance companies today. And I'm concerned about that. And I hope that a group of established doctors will think deeply about what what is an alternative to dental insurance. So that's been one of the things I'm working with a firm called fair market health. And we created a little digital platform for trying to bring an alternative to dental insurance. That's one area. Another area is just coming alongside and coaching young dentists and and senior doctors on this notion of well, you don't you don't want to quit? I mean, yeah, you're you're done practicing dentistry at age 60. But what about a whole nother career of investing in people? So that's my mission.

That is an amazing mission. You and I talked a little bit about dentists from one year to five years and you had created something.

08:54

Yeah, so I'm thinking about from the financial aspect, I have some concerns, you know, we It doesn't take a PhD in dentistry to or excuse me, an economics to know that there's a lot of inflationary pressures. insurance fees are not going up. staff wages are going up. Consolidation is going up in dentistry, you know, the acquisitions from private equity. And the demographic changes are definitely a part of our marketplace. So as I think about that, there's a lot of from a financial standpoint, marginal compression. And so with that, what I'm trying to do is build maybe a framework for dentists that are in their first five years to think about the earlier you begin to invest. The earlier you get out of debt. The early you pay down those loans, and the early you start to to accumulate the resources. You'll have options in life. I'm very blessed at age 50. I was able to step away from that and start this but the only The way I was able to do that was through stewarding the resources early in my career.

That's a difficult thing for somebody to do. That's a half million dollars in debt.

10:10

Absolutely. If I can give a little hope in 1998, I had 200,000 in student loan debt now that that's great today, I guess. But then 1998, that was a lot of money. And I bought into a dental practice, found myself about 1,000,003. And dad at age 26 years old, and just now grabbing a handpiece for the first time in private practice. So there's hope. But you have to plan and you have to aim at something. Hope is not a strategy. And so my encouragement and so I'm building a framework for younger doctors in their first five years to think about a way to handle their money and the resources and get started early.

So do you have like online teaching? Or is it more in person coaching?

11:00

Right now, it's it's in person, but I'm going to start a dental community, it's going to be online. So we're a little early in this, I wish I had an action step for your listeners to jump into. But you'll be hearing really shortly. And I hope to circle back with you guys within the next three to six months with a place for your, for your listeners to actually join a community of experts and seasoned professionals who are going to help that next generation,

you know, in just a little bit. So from my perspective, I'm not a dentist. And I would say for now, like maybe 12 or 14 years, I've just been in the trenches learning about business, I learned a lot from my dad just tried to start a few companies in dentistry. And it finally dawned on me like five, six years ago, like, oh, my gosh, the same exact pressure that I have on me to run a business is what a dentist has absolutely, except they have an entire clinical responsibility that I have no understanding of like I didn't like I don't have to manage both. Right. So that gave me like a really deep respect and honor for the struggle. That dentistry is like I just think dentistry is crazy difficult. And that's why if, if a young dentist can find a mentor like you that's already been through it that knows how to face adversity challenges and overcome that. I mean, that's, that's gold that's worth its weight in gold.

12:22

Well, thank you. And that is my hope. And it all begins with think about your thinking. And one of the ways that dentists can begin to flourish early in the practice, is by not managing their practice, but stewarding their vision. And so we need to give them tools for stewarding vision. That's more powerful than just managing your practice. And so that's equipping your staff, investing in them coaching people having coaches come in and creating a culture of I don't want to say winning but yeah, having a high performing dental practice.

Wow. I mean, we would definitely want to check in with you again. Think of some ways somebody could contact you now.

13:09

Yeah, my email address is Docmajors@me.com. Or you can text me I'm not scared to get a text 316-650-5245

That is wonderful. Thank you, Chris. Thanks.

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