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The Mint Door: Clinical Mistake
54 Plays2 months ago
From Dentistry to Life Coaching: A Transformative Journey! This week on #DentalFuel host Tanya Sue Maestas welcomes Karen Tindall and Laura Schwindt, co-founders of @TheMintDoor, to discuss their inspiring transitions from clinical dentistry to life coaching. Karen shares her journey from the UK to the U.S. and her shift from orthodontics to life coaching, while Laura talks about her 21-year career that led to burnout and a major life pivot.
Explore the challenges dental professionals face, particularly burnout, and discover the importance of setting boundaries. Karen and Laura share insightful anecdotes about their clinical experiences and the lessons learned from their mistakes. This episode highlights the necessity of balancing professional and personal lives and the transformative power of life coaching.
Key Takeaways:
- Importance of Boundaries: Both Karen and Laura emphasize the need to establish and maintain clear boundaries between professional and personal lives to avoid uncomfortable and stressful situations.
- Managing Burnout: Laura highlights her journey through burnout and how life coaching became a pivotal tool in her recovery and eventual career transformation.
- Learning from Mistakes: Both guests share specific clinical errors that forced them to reevaluate their approach to patient care and productivity, underscoring the growth that comes through learning from mistakes.
- Transition to Life Coaching: Karen and Laura illustrate that there are alternative paths within the dental profession, such as life coaching, that can offer personal fulfillment and professional rejuvenation.
- Authentic Conversations: The importance of having deep, authentic conversations to support mental health and professional satisfaction is a recurring theme, as highlighted by the origins of The Mint Door.
About the Guest(s):
Karen Tindall: Karen Tindall is a former dentist and orthodontist who qualified in England in 2000. After nearly two decades in family dentistry and orthodontics, she moved to the U.S. in 2015 and transitioned to being a stay-at-home mom before retraining as a professional life coach. Karen now focuses on supporting dental professionals through life coaching and co-founding The Mint Door, an organization dedicated to the well-being of people in dentistry.
Laura Schwindt: Laura Schwindt is a former dentist with 21 years of clinical experience. Having served as an associate in various practices and eventually owning her own practice, Laura faced severe burnout, prompting her to seek life coaching. Inspired by her transformative experience, Laura became a professional life coach to help other women in dentistry. She co-founded The Mint Door with Karen to focus on the holistic well-being of dental professionals.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Dental Fuel, the podcast that focuses on what no one else is talking about. Mistakes. The dental world is full of before and afters and no one is talking about the middle. Dental Fuel brings you the unspoken in-between. Welcome back to to another episode of Dental Fuel. Dental Fuel is brought to you by 90 Day Jumpstart, a program to help you increase production and break free from financial stress. This week, we have Double the Fun with Karen Tindall and Laura Schwint, co-founders of The Mint Door. We have an opportunity to discuss their journeys from clinical dentistry to life coaching.
00:00:36
Speaker
This conversation dives deep into the challenges faced by dental professionals, especially the prevalence of burnout in dentistry. We talk about the joys of clinical experiences and the need of balancing professional lives and personal lives. Let's listen in. Laura Schwint and Karen Tindall, welcome to Dental Fuel. How are you all doing today? Very well. Thanks so much for having us. We're excited to be here. Yeah, this is going to be an exciting conversation. We're really looking forward to it.
00:01:06
Speaker
Well, i'm I'm very excited to speak but with both of you all and hear a little bit about your story and share with our listeners some mistakes that maybe you all have made ah along the way in your career. But before we get into the nitty gritty, I would love to hear a little bit about both of y'all's background. And Karen, why don't you start us off with that? Yeah, well, thank you very much for that. So you can tell from my accent, I'm not originally from the United States. um I qualified as a dentist in England back in the year 2000.
00:01:36
Speaker
um I was in family dentistry for a short period, probably of about almost two years when I realized that wasn't for me. And I then made a move to orthodontics where I found my home um and I loved doing what I was doing. However, at the end of 2015, I finished work as an orthodontist and moved to the United States. So that's where my clinical career came to a close. And from there,
00:02:05
Speaker
I had a period of being a stay at home mom, which was a privilege um because I had never had that opportunity before and then retrained as a professional life coach and found my way back into dentistry, but in a different way. Oh, well, we'll dive into that a little bit more, but ah Laura, how about yourself? Uh, thanks. Um, so my story is similar to Karen's just, uh, rearrange some of the details, but,
00:02:31
Speaker
practice dentistry for 21 years. It was an associate dentist for many, many years in different practices um because my husband was training all over the state. So we kind of moved around a little bit. um But finally opened my own dental practice and about halfway through that period went into a very dark, deep burnout. um At which point I hired a life coach and I credit her with saving my life. um And so working with her, For ah just about a year at the end, I was just like, gosh, I i really wish I could give this gift to other women in dentistry. um Because I know if I'm going through something like this, there's got to be other people that are. And she said, well, why can't you? And that was the seed that was planted. And so similar to Karen, we had a family event, medical event that went through our family. and
00:03:27
Speaker
we decided to kind of change the way we were living. So we moved across the country, sold my practice. We sold everything except one car, kept our kids, so that was good. And and and that's when I decided to pursue becoming a professional life coach. And so a similar similar story, just a few different details. But then a mutual friend of ours, Ann Duffy, the the leader of DEW introduced us and Karen and I hit it off right away, became fast friends and that's sort of how the mint door was born. Wow, I love that and and you know a powerful story, a powerful message there. Burnout is just so prevalent in our profession and um you know that's just and another another avenue and another beautiful thing about our profession is that we have different avenues that we can you know share our expertise in our
00:04:22
Speaker
and our just our history and our story of practicing with patients and being in the profession and maybe you know pivoting to a different way and and still helping others and and in what you all are doing, probably helping a lot of dentists across the nation. yeah yeah but i I would love to know more about how you all all met. I know that you hinted to it, but tell me more about the details and how things came together for the mentor. Awesome. Karen, you go ahead. I i i just finished. Okay.
00:04:52
Speaker
So in 2000, it was 2021, Laura and I met for the first time in real life because met before the pandemic, then all of that came in and put a stop to everybody traveling everywhere. And we lived at that point on completely opposite sides of the country. And so we got together at Vanessa Emerson's jumpstart meeting, as it used to be called. And from there,
00:05:19
Speaker
We just kept in contact and we realised we both had a passion for the wellbeing of people in dentistry and we just agreed to follow it. Our rule is always best friends first, business second. So we followed our passions and that we had over dinner with another dentist one evening that We realized that there was something that we could do to support people and teams in dentistry to feel better about how they're living, what they're doing, and how they feel when they get home in the evening, because we, both of us, really recognize that we're whole people. We're not just the professional title that we have, even though that professional identity is really important to us.
00:06:19
Speaker
I think sometimes it overshadows the who we are away from that professional title. So Laura and I, Ben, in August 2021 on a walk, because as we like to say, walks just have, provide the opportunity for great ideas, great conversation. We came up with the idea of the mint door. So that was the start of the mint door. So we're going to be three years old this summer. Wow. That's wonderful.
00:06:48
Speaker
Laura, did you have anything to add to that story? a No, just that I think that, like Karen said, on that walk, we just realized that there is a way that we can transform um people's lives and support them in this profession that is very um giving, nurturing. We nurture so much and we wanted to elevate the fact that it's time that we nurture ourselves as well.
00:07:19
Speaker
Very well said. Well, here at Dental Fuel, we are dedicated to learning from each other's mistakes. And I'm going to throw it back a little bit to y'all's time and in the clinical days, but I think that there will be some revelants as well too along the way. And it doesn't just have to be clinical, but I would love to know about some of the mistakes that you all have made in your life and what you've learned from them. And together we will learn ah from them. But to start us off, I would love to know if you all can remember a clinical mistake that you remember making and what that you know meant for you, how you pivoted it from that, how you grew from that and what you learned. ah But Karen, why don't you start with us with that clinical mistake? Well, this is such a great question because I think when I was practicing clinically, I was so scared of making mistakes. um It seemed like the last thing in the world I wanted to do. So when I was thinking about this question, I was like, oh, what's a mistake that I made?
00:08:16
Speaker
And it's a difficult one to answer, but the thing that I came up with, and it's related to clinical work, although not necessarily the actual clinical practical side of work, is saying yes to treating the children of friends. m That for me, being an orthodontist, um I took on some easy peasy, and they're not the ones that I would say were mistakes.
00:08:45
Speaker
But hiding in that bunch, there's going to be he somebody, a child, who is a bit of a nightmare to treat, refused treatment, cries in the chair, creates a scene, doesn't want to sit down, doesn't want to open the mouth. And what it became for me is that whenever I saw this particular child's name on my list for the day, oh, my heart would sink.
00:09:13
Speaker
I'm like, Oh my gosh, why did I say yes to this? And it became a really heavy thing to be seeing this particular patient because there's a blurred line, isn't there between being somebody's friend, being somebody's clinician, um and how far the boundary like the boundaries are different. So I think that was a lesson probably backed up by mistakes that I've made in life. In life, but I'll give you another one that I made. One of my patients mums was an interior designer. And I love chatting with my patients and their parents like that for me is the was the highlight of my that's why I did what I did. It's about the people really teeth will take it or leave it people. Yes, please. Yes. And
00:10:10
Speaker
we'd had lovely conversations. And being an orthodontist, you get to see these parents really frequently over a really short period of time. And maybe you think, oh, I've made a friend here. So I invited the interior designer over to, we were building our dream house. And I thought, oh, she'll be able to give me some good pointers. And I basically stepped into the biggest sales pitch when she arrived at my house, she was offering to for me to swap from the contractor that I was using to her contract. I'm like, I'm midway through this job. like it was It was so awkward. And yet again, that was an example of a boundary blurring between Karen the professional and Karen the friend away from work and the two of them not gelling. So I learned from that. Be very careful how you mix friends, family and dentistry.
00:11:09
Speaker
great pearls there. I i think that, you you know, you you, you said it just right. Identifying your boundaries clinically, ah outside of clinic, non clinically as well, too. I think that those are two things that as people, you know, dentists are not, it's really important to identify. And being firm with those, I think is really good. But man, good pearls there. And definitely some big life lessons there as well. Yeah, important. And I've used that going on from that point that It has made a difference. And I think that's, I love to look at mistakes as a way of moving forwards. It's experience. Right. We use, we use the word mistakes lightly, but, um, it is a nice way for us to coin it for the podcast, but yes, just kind of stepping stones and and things that we learn along the way. What about you, Laura? Yeah, these are great questions and I love the kind of the reframe of mistake as, you know, a learning
00:12:05
Speaker
But I think that that's the key, too. And I just I would like to applaud you guys for bringing this out because we learn from each other's mistakes. And so this can be very valuable. And what Karen and I really love is authentic conversations where we do get a little deeper than the surface. So so even though it's sometimes very hard to talk about your mistakes, one of mine was a gentleman came in for a restoration on the upper right side and you know, I proceeded to get him numb and he ah did not get numb. You know, I started on the tooth and he wasn't numb. So we gave him more anesthetic at which point I got a message from the front saying your next patient canceled. So you have a little extra time, which to me, I was like, Oh, that's nice because he's having a challenging time getting numb. And so I thought maybe it was just going to take him a little while to get numb. So I said,
00:13:00
Speaker
You know, you have a restoration on the upper left. We could get that numb and then give that a few minutes and then maybe the one on the right will be ready. Great. He thought that was a fantastic idea. And I said, a little bit of time freed up so we could do two restorations instead of one. um Just trying to be productive with my time, right? Anyway, long story short, he ended up not getting numb on either tooth.
00:13:25
Speaker
So instead of one restoration that was incomplete that I had to temporize, I now had two restorations that were incomplete and I needed to temporize. um I was behind schedule at that point and I had probably lost a little of his confidence in the meantime because he felt, why can't you get me numb? I ended up using what I felt was the maximum amount of anesthetic. I didn't want to give him anymore. So um so yeah, that taught me to,
00:13:55
Speaker
not focused solely on production. You know, I could have instead had a conversation with him and just given the anesthetic a little more time, kind of had a nice calm experience, taught me that multitasking isn't always a great thing. And yeah, so I think I learned from that to, you know, stick with the plan. And there are times when you need to pivot for sure.
00:14:20
Speaker
um But really kind of weigh that and rub it up against what's the real outcome I want from this, this procedure. that You know, as dentists, we want to do, we always want to try and do so many things. I think that's just kind of how our brains are wired, just to know be productive and ah do the best for our patients. But that's another another good lesson there. And it's just another message on how challenging dentistry can be sometimes. And ah what a frustrating situation, you know, both for you and for the patient.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was one of those where you kind of felt like you go back into your office. You're like, I am a failure. Yes. We've we've all been there. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's dentistry in a nutshell some days. It's just really, it's challenging. Dentistry is hard. Thanks for tuning in to our first episode with the ladies at the mint door. You can find them on Instagram at the mint door club. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at IgniteDDS and at DentalFuel. If you're looking to grow your practice and need some help along the way, be sure to check out 90 Day Jumpstart. You can start for free by contacting Dr. David Rice. Check out the link to his calendar in the show notes.