Dentist Shares 7 Tips to Help Develop Your Brand

how to build your brand

Becoming a financially successful dentist — as well as a happy professional — requires critical skills not taught in dental school, including how to adapt to changing conditions and deal with the human side of being a healer.

“We have a fantastic profession where we are still able to exercise our five greatest talents—care, skill, judgment, leadership, and influence for the good of others,” says Alan Stern, DDS, author of Enjoy The Ride: Lessons For The Quest To Live A Joyful, Profitable Life In Dentistry (2020, www.indiebooksintl.com).

Enjoy The Ride, by Alan SternComposed not of chapters, but of 10 lessons to current and future dentists, the book provides a blueprint of how to both operate a successful dental practice and “find your life beyond the chair.” Focusing on areas such as the importance of having a strong team, the need to establish both personal and professional goals, and living a healthy lifestyle, even how to decide when it’s time to retire, Stern shares plenty of anecdotes from his journey that will surely resonate not only with dental and medical professionals, but also with the general public.

“Although some practices are subject to the whim of insurance companies and other third-party payers, most, if not all of us can practice with little or no micromanagement to cause us to burn out,” Stern says. “We merely have to look up from that crown, filling, impression, or extraction site and see the real value of what we can do every day.”

A practicing dentist, ACE-certified health coach and behavior change specialist, and an accomplished speaker, Stern is also the founder and operator of Better, Richer, Stronger, LLC, a coaching service for dentists. After struggling for the first 30 years of his career, he found prosperity by restructuring his practice around his own unique core value: happiness. At 66, an age when many people slow down, he’s better, richer and stronger than ever.

In Enjoy the Ride, Stern offers direction on how dentists can create their own vision for success and then get excited while pursuing it. In addition to educating them on everything from creating a mission statement and marketing a practice to setting clear goals and taking care of their health, he also shares the following seven tips that will help dentists create their personal brand:

  1. Smile and look people in the left eye. The left eye connects to the right side of the brain, which governs our emotions.
  2. Extend your body toward people when you greet them.
  3. Ask people how they’re doing and listen quietly.
  4. Project only the positive in life to all but the closest people to you.
  5. If someone needs you to listen to them, listen non-judgmentally, generously (that is, without interrupting), and with concern and not pity.
  6. Dress neatly and respectfully both inside and outside the office. You project an image all the time.
  7. The overriding rule: Let your problems challenge you but never let them define you. You’re alive. You can think, reflect, laugh and love. Project gratitude for that.

“Look in the mirror every day and see yourself as you’re meant to be,” Stern says. “Get that vision in your head every day and conduct yourself as that person. Feel good about it. Control your stress, carry yourself with inner and outer confidence, and wear a smile on your face as often as possible.”

Stern doesn’t sugarcoat the challenges of dentistry, noting it’s a stressful profession filled with things that are hard to do. But, he has chosen to focus on all the positives he and his colleagues have at their fingertips.

“My purpose from this day forward is to show my colleagues that the career we have all chosen is a path to fulfillment,” he says. “By living with intent, focusing on bettering the lives who choose you to serve them, and understanding that you have so many choices on the kind of dentistry you’d like to practice, you can have a wonderful career. Let your dentistry help you define your self-vision. Maintain your sense of significance, because you are just that. Stop the poison that is comparison to others. And please have a little fun in the process.”

Source: Indie Books International; www.indiebooksintl.com

(Image credit: Anna Dudko – Dreamstime.com)

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