Dentaltown January 2017 - 12

howard speaks
column

'Suck It Up, Buttercup!'
I'm always amazed by people who make bad
decisions because of fear.
Let's start with debt. You knew it'd be a dumb choice
to work at McDonald's for 20 years to save up enough
cash to go to dental school, so instead you leveraged
other people's money-debt-to take student loans. But
once you've graduated and you're already $350,000 in
debt, you say that you don't want to go the next step and
borrow $750,000 to buy a dental practice. To pay back
your loans, you get a job at a corporate dentistry chain,
making $150,000 a year-you're paying $40,000 in tax
and living off the other $110,000, and your student loan
schedule is 40 years.
Suck it up, buttercup! You can't use other people's
money until you get one-third of a million under and
then say, "And now, I'm going to stop using other
people's money because I'm nervous. I don't want to be
a million dollars in debt." If you're already $350,000
in debt, you've dug yourself in a hole so deep, you have
to own your own business to pay it back.

of millions of claims, and the results show that if a
general dentist does a molar root canal, 90 percent of
them are still working after five years. If an endodontist
does a molar root canal-with all of the extra training,
the microscopes-they have a 95 percent success rate.
That works out to be one more tooth out of 20 saved.
If you're afraid of doing a second molar for fear you
might mess it up, do it!
Worst-case scenario, push back the chair and say,
"You know what? This tooth is a disaster. At this point
I recommend removing it and spending your money
on your other teeth."
The patient likely won't even miss it. In my 30 years

It's time to get to work

with fully funded 401(k) funds have

The only thing you don't have to sell in dentistry is a
root canal. Patients show up in pain, they're leaving work,
they want to come in right now ... but you're telling me
you don't like root canals-or you like the easy ones, up
front, but you don't like doing molar endo.
I don't care if you like molars or not. Does a fireman
say that he only likes to do garage fires? There are hundreds
of firemen who run into burning buildings, all to their
peril-they do it because it's their job. Taking care of
teeth-all teeth-is yours. Your parents and grandparents
all did things they didn't like, too. You have patients in
pain, in your office, begging you to
do the procedure-you don't have to
have a treatment coordinator present
treatment-but you're saying you'd
rather not do the procedure?
It's all fear-based: You think you're
not good enough, but it'll be absolutely fine. Insurance companies are
crunching the numbers of hundreds

the luxury of not working on kids.

I don't ever want to hear one person
with even $1 in debt saying in 2017
that they don't like working on kids.
Only debt-free millionaire dentists

of experience, I've never had a patient come back after
I've pulled a wisdom tooth and say, "You know, I really
miss that tooth." Nobody notices losing a wisdom tooth.
About 1/6 of chewing is on the second molars, 1/3 on
the first molars, 1/3 on the second bicuspids and 1/6
on the first bicuspids. When you lose a second molar,
you still have 5/6 of the chewing surface left. Only
once every decade has someone told me they missed
their second molar.
Pull the damn thing, give the patient his money back
and say, "Come back in six months. If you really miss
chewing on that tooth, we'll talk about doing an implant."
Placing an implant isn't difficult. I guarantee that
placing a simple implant takes less skill than pulling
an impacted wisdom tooth. I know there are probably
10,000 dentists on Dentaltown who pull wisdom teeth
but don't know how to place an implant. These are same
Continued on p. 14

by Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, publisher, Dentaltown magazine

12

JANUARY 2017 // dentaltown.com
http://www.dentaltown.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Dentaltown January 2017
