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Dr. Steven Guelff: Expert Advice
57 Plays3 months ago
In Dr. Steven Guelff's final advice episode on Dental Fuel, he tackles the doubts people may have about becoming a dentist. Coming from construction, Dr. Guelff knows the value of grit and perseverance. "Are you going to have grit or are you going to quit?" Discover key insights on playing the long game, improving skills, building relationships, and balancing life and work. Don’t quit too easily—face the GIANTS in your life and turn obstacles into confidence!
About the Guest:
Dr. Steven Guelff is a seasoned dental professional with nearly three decades of experience in the field. Known for his profound expertise and dedication to patient care, Dr. Guelff has excelled in dental and orthodontic practices. His career is distinguished by continuous learning and mentoring, which has deeply impacted the dental community. He is recognized for his ability to foster strong relationships within the industry, contribute to professional development, and advocate for balanced personal and professional lives.
Episode Summary:
In this insightful episode, Dr. Steven Guelff shares his extensive knowledge and wisdom accumulated over 29 years of dental practice. Dr. Guelff emphasizes the importance of adopting a long-term perspective in one’s career, continually honing skills, and the value of mentorship. He shares practical advice on improving dental procedures during lunchtime and underscores the significance of building strong professional relationships.
Focusing on work-life balance, Dr. Guelff discusses creating harmony between various aspects of life, from personal to physical and spiritual well-being. He also narrates his journey from the concrete construction business to dentistry, drawing parallels in skills and lessons learned. The episode concludes with important insights into dealing with fear and the necessity of perseverance in achieving one's professional dreams. These profound reflections are sure to inspire both new graduates and seasoned professionals in the dental field.
Key Takeaways:
- Play the Long Game: Success in dentistry requires a long-term perspective, constant learning, and enjoyment of the journey.
- Skill Improvement: Use practical strategies such as practicing new procedures during lunch breaks and seeking mentorship from peers.
- Relationship Building: Dentistry is fundamentally a people business, making relationships with patients, team members, and the community paramount.
- Work-Life Balance: Strive to balance personal life, relationships, spiritual growth, professional development, and physical health.
- Perseverance and Facing Fears: Overcoming challenges and fears head-on with grit and determination is essential for long-term success.
Connect with Ignitedds: @ignitedds Contact Dr. Steven Guelff: [email protected]
Connect with Tanya Sue Maestas: @tsmaestas.dds
Learn more about Well Received: wellreceived.com/ignitedds
Recommended
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 another episode of Dental Fuel. This episode of Dental Fuel is brought to you by Well-Received. Did you know 69% of patients say they would switch providers for a better experience? To level up your practice, you need to ensure your patient experience is better than your competitors. So where do you start? From the very first hello. While received is a 24-7 answering service for dental practices. Their team of professional receptionists are on hand 24-7 to support your callers. That's day and night.
00:00:46
Speaker
365 days a year. Set your practice apart by guaranteeing your patient's calls are answered quickly and by a real person every single time. Ready to level up your patient experience? As a dental fuel listener, you can enjoy an exclusive 50% off your first three months of service. Head to wellreceived.com slash IgniteDDS to get started. Dr. Gelf has shared a wealth of knowledge and a ton of pearls along the way. In this last episode, he provides some expert advice that I think that we will all appreciate. You've shared so much knowledge and and wisdom during our conversation. If you could give some more expert advice, I know you've given a lot of advice and thoughts, but if you could give some expert advice to our listeners, what would that advice be?
00:01:34
Speaker
So, I'll take a couple plays out of the Dr. G playbook here, okay? um but How about a few things, a few words of advice with 29 years experience for some of the new doctors that are just graduating, okay? Or maybe even some doctors that have been in practice for a while. I think the first thing is play the long game. okay I think all too often that we want things right away and we have to be willing to enjoy the journey. you know The journey that we're going on and so I would say play the long game.
00:02:10
Speaker
okay ah And I also, you know, when we graduate from dental school or orthodontic school, um you know you know the basics, but you got to improve on your skills. So I call it starting at the shallow end of the pool, okay? And so you got to learn how to tread water like heck before you start swimming and backstroking and doing all the fancy strokes, right? So, and one of the ways that I, did that is so if there's a procedure that I wanted to learn how to do a little better, do it at lunchtime. you know try Pick a lunchtime, have one of your assistants with you, and do that procedure. It might take you five minutes, or it may take you 50 minutes. You just don't know sometimes. but But your lunchtime is really a great time to learn and to get better. um Get great mentoring, I think is another powerful thing. um
00:02:59
Speaker
Visit other dental offices or visit other orthodontic offices. You'll be surprised what you can learn from your colleagues and your friends, okay? And steal shamelessly from them. Please do. You know, I cannot tell you, I've had many, many orthodontists in my office over the years and and it's always a great time. You know, come for a day or two. Love to have you. um realize that dentistry is a people business. okay that we It's all about relationships and building those relationships. And again, that ties into playing the long game. right and ah But you know we have we have relationships with our patients. We have relationships with our team. We have relationships in our community. We have relationships with other professionals and other specialists. right
00:03:49
Speaker
And that's what it's that's what it's all about, okay? Another thing I would say is create balance in your life, okay? Create create that balance. ah Myself, I kinda, I'm gonna kinda put things in different blocks. I have my my personal life, okay? And what I would call my relationship life, okay, where you're trying to make your relationships better with others. I have my spiritual life where I'm working on my relationship with our Heavenly Father. um I also, you want to work on your business life. Okay, so that's another little component where you're working on your business and your profession. And then you have your physical life where you're working on your body. And I'll say a special thing about that. I've seen many of my colleagues over the last 30 years that have had terrible
00:04:40
Speaker
physical problems because they do not take care of their body so start early start often get up go for a walk get to the gym do something active every day because you don't want to end up with like carpal tunnel or back problems or neck problems and things like that it will extend the longevity of your career significantly. um
00:05:02
Speaker
Find things that you can make a difference in. Make a difference in other people's lives every day. If somebody's having a bad day, make it a good day. If any of your team members is having a not so good day, make it a good day. And that's a choice that you make every day. So every day I come into my office, I want to put my fingerprint on somebody's life. And one of the great joys for me, having done this for like 29 years, is now I'm treating the kids of the kids, okay? Or I have the kids, that I treated and they're bringing their kids in and hopefully I'll do this for another 10 years I'll be doing the kids of the kids of the kids so there you go but that's a great great feeling
00:05:41
Speaker
um And then, ah what is your legacy gonna be? I think that's a question we need to ask ourselves. you know where do we we always eat My mom used to say something, we always wanna leave our sandbox better than where we found it, right? And so, how are you gonna make the what's the legacy for your patients? And what's the legacy for your team? And what's the legacy for your business? And what's the legacy for your profession? So I think that's that's a another great pearl. so
00:06:12
Speaker
Those would be some things some highlights or some things that I could share. I love those. I think that i mean you have such a great way with words. I feel like I need to record your voice so I can have you know a morning kind of devotional or or i just to hear yourself, to get ready for the day, ah just to say some po positive positive affirmations is what we call them. um Just really really awesome things that that you have shared one thing that that's stuck out to me is balance Finding balance in the unbalance, you know of our career and our profession can be very very difficult. What would your advice be to? um Find that balance in your life Well, I think one of the first things you have to realize that things are out of kilter are out of balance right and so um you know if you're 30 pounds out of our weight and You might wanna think about something, right? If your business is horrible, but okay, you might wanna think about that. If you don't have a relationship with our heavenly Father.
00:07:12
Speaker
That's a choice we make. okay And our family, okay all the relationships there relationships we have with our kids and with our wives and our other family members, you know that's ah that's paramount. And so in my life, it goes God, family, and everything else. ah that And so you need to know what your priorities are. And you need to, I think we all need to strive with our balance. And I'm not saying that it's gonna be, everything's gonna be in perfect balance all the time, okay? But we need to strive for that. And should be sometimes you're gonna be working really hard and there's gonna be, sometimes you're gonna be spending a lot of time with your family and and and all of the above, but it's trying to create that balance. Just being aware of it will help you create something. But then it's a mindset too. What am I gonna do? How am I gonna do this? You know, how am I gonna spend my time, okay?
00:08:02
Speaker
Out of curiosity, if you could go back in time um for your professional life, what is one thing that you wish you could change?
00:08:13
Speaker
That is a great question. That is a really great question. um So let's start. Let me start with something that I wouldn't change. How about that? can we Can I switch that around a little bit? So if you think about this for a second, I worked in the concrete construction business for eight years. And if my mindset was was I can't be a dentist or I'm not good enough to do this, okay, that wasn't my mindset at all. My mindset was this is what I'm gonna do. And I took the lessons that I learned in the construction business and I actually applied it to what I do every day in the dental business. And let me give you an example about that. For for example, I learned how to run a crew and work with people.
00:08:58
Speaker
and talk to people. I learned how to keep a schedule. I learned how to look at things in 3D and looking with the end product in mind. okay I learned how to ah budget things and run a business. okay I learned how to pay taxes. um there I learned how to sell and how to keep my customers happy so they would be repeat customers and so I hope I you don't mind me switching that up a little bit but that would be just one thing so if I would have said I'm not good enough I'm gonna quit ah that's not good enough you know that that wouldn't fly and the same thing when
00:09:41
Speaker
maybe I had a problem with my chemistry class like three or four times, which I really did. and i could ah you know Am I gonna am i goingnna be a gritty person? Am I gonna have grit or am I gonna quit? It's a choice that you make, right? So I decided to carry on and go forward. so but those would be just two examples. You know, third one I could probably throw out there would be fear. Okay. And we all have fear in our life. Okay. If we're really honest about it, but it's how we face that fear and we need to face the giants in our life. Okay. And, and do our best that we can. And when we face things head on, our obstacles head on, it will, we can turn things around and
00:10:25
Speaker
and get that confidence to go further and go better, but you don't want to be a quitter. you know everybody I think we give up too easy. Too many people give up way too easy these days for different things that they're doing, whether it's going to dental school or hygiene school or ah you know they're going to start their own business or whatever they're going to do. so I have truly enjoyed our conversation today, and I'm sure that our listeners will as well too. and If our listeners would like to connect with you or or perhaps would like some more positive affirmations for their life, where can they find you and how can they contact you?
00:11:03
Speaker
they're but They're welcome to contact me at drgelfatyahoo.com. my i My email address would be great. Dr. Gelf, thank you so much for your time. And I wish you the best of holidays and hopefully that we will cross paths in person at some point. Thank you, Tanya. Thank you for having me today. Are you ready to level up your patient experience? Be sure to visit wellreceived.com slash IgniteDDS to find out how you can master patient communication and offer exceptional service 24 seven, 365 days a year while getting valuable time back to focus on growing your practice.
00:11:43
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in to our conversation with Dr. Gelf. We hope you enjoyed it and we hope that you will tune in to future episodes of Dental Fuel. Please be sure to check out Lori's light and the Gelf family esophageal project. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at dentalfuel and at IgniteDDS.