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Maximizing your ROI
14 Plays15 days ago
About the Hosts:
Dr. Savanah Craig is a dedicated dentist, podcaster, and continuing education enthusiast. She co-hosts the "Beyond Graduation" podcast and offers insightful discussions on dental practices and personal growth.
Dr. Ronnetta Sartor is a seasoned dentist known for her expertise in dental care and practice management. As a co-host of "Beyond Graduation," she shares her experiences in integrating professional development with personal wellness.
Episode Summary:
In this engaging episode of "Beyond Graduation," co-hosts Dr. Savanah Craig and Dr. Ronnetta Sartor dive deep into the concept of Return on Investment (ROI) for dentists. They explore the varied ways in which dental professionals can invest in their skills, practices, and personal well-being to achieve significant returns. The conversation spans from financial investments in continuing education (CE) and coaching to physical and mental investments in personal health and relationships.
Throughout the episode, Dr. Sartor emphasizes the importance of holistic development in both professional and personal realms. She shares her journey of leveraging every opportunity from high school to dental school to build a rounded skill set. Dr. Craig echoes this sentiment by highlighting the critical role of self-care and maintaining a balanced life outside of dentistry. As they transition into more specific topics, like dental CE and coaching, the hosts shed light on how these investments bring about growth and efficiency in dental practices.
Key Takeaways:
- Holistic Investment: Investing in both professional skills and personal well-being leads to better overall returns.
- Continuing Education: CE is crucial for staying up-to-date with advancements in dentistry and improving patient care.
- Self-Care: Activities like chiropractic care and massages are essential for long-term professional health.
- Coaching Benefits: Working with a coach can help streamline dental practice operations and free up mental space.
- Resource Utilization: Tools like instructional documents can save significant time and improve efficiency.
Connect with Us:
- Savanah Craig, DDS: @savanahcraigdds
- Ronnetta Sartor, DMD: @dr_sartor
- FutureDentists Beyond Graduation: @futuredentistsbeyondgraduation
- Dental Residency Guide and Beyond Graduation eBooks: https://ignitedds.com/subscription-resources/
- 90 Day Jumpstart Program by IgniteDDS: https://www.igniteddsuniversity.com/course/90-day-jumpstart
Tune in to this enriching episode to explore the multifaceted approaches to making meaningful investments in your dental career and personal life. Stay connected for more insightful discussions on the journey of life beyond graduation.
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Transcript
Life and Career Paths Beyond Graduation
00:00:00
Speaker
Join Dr. Savannah Craig and Renetta Sartor as we navigate life beyond graduation. Real conversations about forging our own paths in our early years in our careers. There's a reason it's called practicing dentists. All right, welcome back to another episode of Beyond Graduation with Savannah Craig.
00:00:21
Speaker
Renetta Sartor. Today, we're going to talk about return on investment. you know Our biggest asset is our skills and our hands and our brains. so How do we figure out what you know what's worth spending our money on to grow this whole thing?
Continuous Education and Self-Growth
00:00:42
Speaker
Renetta, we are CE junkies and self-help. I don't know if that's the right word for the... Oh, yeah. but we We love those kind of books. I know for the types of books we read. um So I feel like we are we are always investing in various ways in ourselves.
00:01:03
Speaker
howl um How do you think about this, this topic and what you, what you invest on for yourself, for your practice, for your team? Cause you've got a couple of, a couple of plates spinning these days. I think it's an all encompassing topic, right? And it's not just from a dentistry perspective, but from a life perspective. Um, and it's a way that I've tried to live my life even like as a high schooler. So, you know,
00:01:35
Speaker
eight Once I got to undergrad or even in high school, there was never an opportunity that I was given in those phases of my life that I said no to. I tried to learn as much as I could and absorb as much as I could from those experiences.
00:01:53
Speaker
an undergrad even like volunteering at free dental clinics and doing an internship at a dental office like I had my little notepad and was writing down all the things and I wish I still had that notepad but it just it was like my journal of everything I learned that day and asking all of the questions and you know if we gonna keep going with the timeline you know what you get into dental school for some people is like okay this is my goal for so long but once you're in dental school if you have student loans or even if you don't have student loans someone's pain and tuition right.
Maximizing Dental School ROI
00:02:34
Speaker
and But it's getting the best return on your investment while you're in dental school too. um and For me, you know I would have some classmates who you know they They wouldn't take full advantage of the clinical time that we had or the instructors that we had. um But do I think I could have taken more advantage of it? Of course. um But I think for the capacity that I had at the time I took full advantage
00:03:08
Speaker
And not and only of like the dental standpoint, but the social standpoint to like being in different clubs and organizations and just becoming well-rounded. And then the same thing kind of rang true, but I think as as you accomplished the dream of becoming a dentist,
00:03:30
Speaker
a It kind of flipped back to okay i'm mastering the dentistry now but also how do i get the biggest return on investment and myself so now what they may look like is lots of self care.
Post-Graduation Self-Care and Relationships
00:03:46
Speaker
Um, making sure that my body can go. So going to the chiropractor, getting a massage, making sure that I'm doing something or multiple things each day to give back to myself as I'm giving so much to, um, my team, you know, family, friends, patients. Um, what's your perspective? What has that looked like for you?
00:04:16
Speaker
I'm so glad you brought up, uh, like yourself investing in yourself from a like a health perspective, because when we were talking before we started recording that we were talking about dental CE and coaching. And as we started going, I realized there are other investments in myself that I'm making the gym membership.
00:04:41
Speaker
Dang massage chair keeps coming up. The good part is you're getting your return on investment am on that because it keeps coming up. So the level of happiness that this massage chair has brought you, it was worth the money. It was worth the money. But yeah, and I investing in your relationships and your people and All of that is really huge right now. It's, I still have close friends from high school and college and we're all over the country. So trying to carve out time, that's a, uh, resource that you're giving. It's not always money, right? So time and efforts into continuing those friendships and investing in that way is super important too. Um, I think.
00:05:37
Speaker
We both, after graduating dental school, flipped really hard into that self-care, which is awesome because we did not have that time in dental school. It was funny. I've had the well same chiropractor when I've been in Columbus and she was in a group practice and now has her own practice. So we've sort of grown together and she did this, um, basically it's like a posture scan and showed from the very, she has my records from the very beginning, I don't know, my maybe D two year to now and how much we've improved. And I used to have to go multiple times a month just to not have headaches and neck pain and
00:06:25
Speaker
now we're going every five, six weeks. And she's like, clearly that you're able to put more time and effort into caring for yourself by strength training. And I'm not been over a desk as often anymore as I was in dental school. So, uh, those different types of investments in myself, not just dentistry wise. I'm really glad we, we brought that up too.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, we we joke about your massage chair, but earlier we were talking about my return on investment and it's delayed gratification with my garden, right? Yeah. Because I planted sweet potatoes. I don't know how long ago and I was beaming when I was talking to you earlier about how yesterday I got to harvest them and I got so many of them. And so I'm, you know, it's a return. You're going to share it with your people.
00:07:20
Speaker
i um I am. I am. It's exciting, um but I think we also have to think about that the things in our life that bring us the most gratification. um and Sometimes it is dentistry, you know seeing the before and after or seeing someone who's unhealthy it It can be dental wise or overall health wise, becoming healthy. Or it could be, you know what? I did all those things and that made me um super happy and you know I felt gratitude about it. But also I came home yesterday and I picked my sweet potatoes and now I get to share them with someone. you know It could be that.
Holistic Life Investment
00:08:08
Speaker
Yeah, i you're more than just a dentist. um And so i we definitely have to think about the investment in every aspect of our life because it's super easy to just pick one lane and not not look at it holistically.
00:08:31
Speaker
and I think it's to your point of a statement you made earlier about us loving and continuing education and us loving self-help books and biographies or autobiographies of people who have done great things in life.
00:08:48
Speaker
um Because I feel like it's not ever any of those books that I read that I don't take something away from To help improve my life and by improving our lives We have an even bigger return on investment because we're able to give to others um the same thing rings true for continuing education to just a mindset of growth and you don't have to you're not going to take ah everything away from everything so just finding those ways to enhance your life and the life of your patients and your people and I think it's it's all good things but switching gears to
00:09:30
Speaker
you know the the big money topics, the dental but dental investments. um What are some of the ways you've invested in yourself and in your practice?
00:09:44
Speaker
I would say it started as a resident and it started as an associate. I would read you know any any book I could get my hands on about leadership and communication.
00:10:01
Speaker
and um My thought process was as a resident and as an associate, if I'm able to grow those areas within myself, that once I'm a practice owner, I'll have a leg up, so to speak, um or o I'll be more confident.
00:10:25
Speaker
about it. um So I would say definitely reading in books is one of the main things. The next thing is just continuing education too, to kind of make sure that I'm staying on the the forefront of the changes that are happening in dentistry and how those will help make our patients lives better from a oral health and overall systemic health standpoint.
00:10:52
Speaker
um
00:10:55
Speaker
How do you, how do you, I'm sure this has changed, but how do you pick your CE and knowing what's going to give you that return? There are courses you can take that you can implement Monday morning. There are ones that take more time. How do you know? I mean, there's so many CE courses. How have you sort of narrowed down what you're going to do each year or What's what's the time for the investment? I guess So I think early on it was Me feeling the voids of what I felt I lacked in my education from dental school Or what I wanted more of when I left my residency program now it has transitioned more so to if a patient comes in with a
00:11:52
Speaker
you know, a sign or a symptom and I'm stumped about it. Right. Um, now I'm like, okay, well I would love to get more education on this. Sure. Because I would not only be able to help this patient, but I know they're not the only patient that's going to walk through these doors that has, you know, that going on. So,
00:12:14
Speaker
Right now that's more so where it is for me um And so, you know if it's a specific area and it could be right now um because I recently um Became a Dawson scholar so it could be some things that I got a good foundation on um Doing the core curriculum that now and I'm like, okay now I'm ready for more because I have more questions. Yeah, I And once I get those questions answered, i'm better to be you know I'm better able to serve those patients. And for me, going to continuing education and learning ah learning more, that's very gratifying to me. So there's a return on an investment there because it makes me more confident. It makes me more happy and more compelled to be able to
00:13:12
Speaker
help patients. But I think the bigger um return on investment is what I'm able to give back to my team and give back to um the community of patients that I serve.
Coaching for Practice Growth
00:13:24
Speaker
For sure. What about um sort of a ah lesser known
00:13:31
Speaker
area of education ah that you've been experiencing is coaching. tell That's not something I feel like I learned about in dental school. It was now that I'm out a little bit, you find out that people have business coaches, people have whole practice coaching. And I, as ah as a new grad, surely did not know anything about that. What's that experience like?
00:13:58
Speaker
So I think it's a different world, right? So the concept of it is we went to school to become dentists. but most of us never learned a whole lot about the business side of dentistry. And now dentistry is changing so much because we've got social media, right? So everything is about the experience and engagement with our patients. And so the thing that most of us love is to be in a chair, actually doing dentistry. Um, but while we're,
00:14:35
Speaker
doing dentistry and working in our practice, coaching helps to work on our practice, you know to make sure that we have the right systems and processes and people to help carry out those things that will help ultimately grow our practice, but not so much just grow our practice, but having the systems and processes in place to make sure that we're able to exceed expectations in um Providing you know excellent complete health dentistry as well as doing it in a way that gives the patient experience and you know Gives the patient the confidence in us as a team that we're gonna be able to meet their goals. So it's been um very eye-opening
00:15:36
Speaker
you know, things that you don't think about, you know, like what are your new patient numbers, you know, um how much treatment are you planning and how, what's your treatment acceptance numbers, but that brings a whole realm of other things that in school we don't learn about. Okay. Well,
00:15:58
Speaker
How do you talk to patients? Do you talk to every patient the same way? And that's not to say like that we're discriminating discriminating against anyone or anything like that. but If you have a patient, you know you you hear the saying, treat people how you want to be treated. right And so sometimes you have to tailor your um verbiage to you know the patient that's right in front of you. For example, how treatment is presented to you and I by a dentist.
00:16:33
Speaker
might be slightly different because the way we receive that information will be different. um And so a lot of it's more so the soft skills of denist dentistry that you don't think to like look at that the coaches are very helpful with um making it apparently and abundantly clear that it matters. Yeah. Yeah.
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah, treat people the way they want to be treated, not the way you want to be treated. Right, right. Yeah, you got it right. I said it wrong. It's the same. yeah um Do you feel like it has, having the coach has, or different different coaches or different programs have allowed you, like, has it freed up mental space to do the dentistry? Because I think people are afraid that, oh, the coach is going to take so much time or it, I mean, these are big money investments, but do you, do you think it's free? I mean, mental space is huge. Do you feel like it's, it's freed up the mental space or has it been overwhelming? I think it can be overwhelming at times.
00:17:51
Speaker
But the way I look at it is what's the alternative, right? yeah If we, if we don't work on these systems and processes and, um, you know, growing your team and growing your, um, your people, then the alternative is that you may not accomplish the return on investment.
00:18:14
Speaker
that you wanted, right? So you actually have to do the work in order to see the return, right? And sometimes it means that you're doing the work for a little while before you see the return. But for me so far, it's, it's freed mental space.
00:18:35
Speaker
in the sense that um you know I have someone that I can turn to and ask these questions. um But my team also has someone to turn to and ask these questions. And we're growing together. Yeah.
00:18:51
Speaker
And i think that's the very I think that's the main point, that it's not just like I'm doing a coaching all by myself. yeah know As a team, we're doing it together, and we're growing together, and we're implementing these systems together. And we're seeing what works and what doesn't.
00:19:09
Speaker
and um Like you said what what produces the biggest return and that return doesn't only have to be you know Financial it can be we have we're getting more patients healthy. Yeah, that's a huge return, you know, yeah I also think having like a third-party perspective is really nice because you're in the weeds and I'm sure as you know as as a doctor, as a practice owner, it's been it's been kind of cool. My practice isn't doing coaching necessarily, but my you know I'm the organization queen. So my boss has asked me to help put a lot of the processes and systems that exist on paper. you know there The practice is already running.
00:19:59
Speaker
in these ways, but they're only living in certain people's brains. And as we onboard new team members, it's really hard to make sure this information is being passed down at all, but also also in a way that is accessible to everyone because sometimes when you're the one doing this thing it's really hard to explain to somebody new exactly why you're doing it or what's the purpose behind this or how to do it and it's been kind of neat to I'm sort of the third party perspective right now of new to the office new to everything um so there are areas where I'm like what what is this about and um or have we considered doing it this way and there have been some things that
00:20:50
Speaker
Like you said, putting in the work up front to write these things down has been sort of tedious and time consuming.
Documentation for Efficiency
00:21:00
Speaker
Like the other day I created an instruction sheet for new patients getting dentures, especially with my sedation. I talked to the person and then I sedate them and then they have no idea what we've what they're supposed to do with these dentures tomorrow. That's a very, very interesting point. Yeah. And it kept being such a like pain in my butt. So I finally wrote this document and it has been so helpful. And we're like, it took me a couple of hours to synthesize all this information and proofread it.
00:21:36
Speaker
And it felt like so much of an investment upfront, but it's now saving me 15 minutes every appointment explaining this because that they've got they've got the paper. um And so there's been a couple of my colleagues that were like, oh, that seems like a lot of work. And now they're like, this denture paper is so helpful. You know, we made it we made it happen. so i do I don't know, you gotta, you gotta spend money to make money. You gotta put the time in to make your life easier down the road. So I think coaching's a really, really cool concept and I'm glad that people are offering it and that it's becoming more widely available and different like price points and time commitments and such.
Finding a Reputable Coach
00:22:26
Speaker
How do you recommend people find a coach though? Because
00:22:30
Speaker
got to You find a reputable one. did Did you interview or feel like people should interview their coach the same way they interview you know for a practice? I think for sure. like You should research, interview. If you know someone that has used Use them before word of mouth is always excellent. um I'm a big proponent of, you know, talking to them, making sure it's a good fit. And in fact, most coaching companies will have a fit call to make sure the fit is correct.
00:23:06
Speaker
Um, not correct, but you know, you want to make sure that it's a good fit, yeah especially if you're going to have someone going through all the weeds of your personal, um, in like business life, like going through all your financials and all of your processes and systems. You want to be someone that you can communicate with freely. Very cool.
00:23:32
Speaker
Um, for anybody interested in coaching, we do have a, um, I don't know, how would you
Introduction to Ignite's Coaching Program
00:23:40
Speaker
describe it? Like a little taste, taste of coaching here at Ignite, the 90 day jumpstart program. So, um, working directly with some veterans on our Ignite team on how to get your practice.
00:23:55
Speaker
more productive, more efficient, looking at your people's, your process, um and just getting getting you on board for your what's your vision of success, your self-determined future. So if you are interested in learning more, reach out to us. Reach out to um Ignite, David Rice. We're all here to you know support support as best we can.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah. And while you're at it, let us know, um, on our personal Instagram pages or our podcasts page, um, you know, what are some things that you have received the biggest return on investment from, uh, whether it be dental or just in your personal lives, we are happy to hear it. And we look forward to your responses.
00:24:46
Speaker
See you soon.
Engagement and ROI Sharing
00:24:47
Speaker
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Beyond Graduation. If you enjoyed this week's episode, be sure to share it with a friend. Connect with us on social media, Savannah Craig, DDS, and Dr. Underscore Sartor. And remember, you are not alone on this journey. This episode was sponsored by the Dental Residency Guide and the Beyond Graduation eBooks. These eBooks can be found at ignitedds dot.com slash eBooks. Thank you so much for listening to the Beyond Graduation brought to you by Ignite DDS and Future Dentists.