Orthotown March 2020 - 10

embrace progress

Tresidder says in his book, but the basics
are pretty easy to grasp and he does it in a
method I can appreciate. Namely, he makes
lists-lists worth memorizing. Kind of like
all of the bones of the face and skull with
their articulations.
Why I think this is important is because
for the practicing orthodontist heavily saddled
with debt, getting your mind around some
of these concepts may open your eyes to a
way out of the situation without taking on
more debt or feeling defeated.
Many dentists and health care professionals think in a one-to-one relationship
with their education: spending X amount of
money, owing X amount for loans, needing
to make X amount per month or year,
saving X amount to pay off their loans. In
other words, thinking of their education as
a single-use item. In reality, there may be
many opportunities to use that degree to
accelerate that repayment.
Tresidder organizes his thoughts into
three parts: the principles of leverage, the
strategies to utilize leverage and ways to
implement these strategies.
These concepts are not just financial.
Although "retiring early" is a phrase he

10

catches your eye with, hoping you'll read
more, the book summarizes how leverage
of other people's time, money and skills are
used by all of us on a daily basis. Think of
all of the things you do that are the result
of other people using leverage to achieve
their fortune and make your life easier:
Public utilities, automobiles, technology ...
all utilize principles of leverage to grow and
expand. The term these days is scale.
The principles of leverage can accelerate
financial results, multiply wealth, improve
quality of life and allow you to focus on
what you enjoy and are skilled at.
Some key points:
*	 It's not just you.
*	 Time is limited.
*	 Expand your horizons.
*	 Create value for others.
Tresidder outlines and details strategies
to achieve results using:
*	 Finance.
*	 Time.
*	 Technology.
*	 Communication.
*	 Networks.
*	 Knowledge and experience.
Implementation tips are detailed, and

it's pretty much up to the reader to take the
steps and get started.
For those of you wondering how this can
affect your life, think of the new orthodontic
meetings popping up with opportunities for
continuing education. Most of these meetings
are the result of young, entrepreneurial
orthodontists who use their personal social
media to become influential and gain a group
of patients or followers so, ultimately, a CE
meeting can materialize out of the effort.
Some of these same orthodontists are
creating followers that lead to the introduction of products and other opportunities,
which in turn leverages their education into
an additional income stream.
Another example: My business relationship with a pediatric dentist utilizes leverage
by me using my skill as an orthodontist to
bring value to his underutilized office space
and creating an income stream that never
existed. Kind of like McDonald's deciding
to serve all three meals when they started
out only serving one or two. Hey, if you're
paying for the real estate, you might as well
have it working all day long-because, you
see, their fixed cost was leveraged.
In the past, the only way to leverage our
education was to hire more auxiliaries or
open more offices. Now, with digitization,
we're able to leverage our education to see
patients from around the area-and around
the world!-with remote monitoring and
other methods of staying connected.
Lastly, the author hopes that some of
the misconceptions of leverage forever be
forgotten.
Included would be that you don't need to:
*	 Tolerate risk.
*	 Selfishly use other people.
*	 Spend a lot of money.
*	 Or proceed with unlimited loss
potential.
The book is an interesting read and
should get most of us thinking. n

MARCH 2020 // orthotown.com

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2/25/20 11:23 AM
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Orthotown March 2020

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