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[00:00:55] Welcome to The Very Dental Podcast, where you'll find entertaining and relevant conversations with visionaries, clinicians, and your friends in the dental space. Now here's your host, Dr. Alan Mead. Very dental people, welcome to another episode of The Very Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Alan Mead.

[00:01:15] And today I'm going solo. Why would I go solo? Normally I have a guest on the show. Alan Mead experiences usually the one where I go solo. But here's the thing. I had something happen to me.

[00:01:28] I had something that inspired me to the point where I feel like it deserved a little bit longer of an episode for me to talk about it. So that's what I'm doing. I'm going solo today.

[00:01:37] I got a couple things I want to start with first, so before I get into my main topic, if you will. But so this Friday, the day this comes out is the week before the Chicago Midwinter Dental Meeting.

[00:01:54] And the Midwinter, I might start on the Wednesday of next week, but I'm going to get there. I'm driving there Thursday morning. I have a lunch thing. And then I'm going to go over to the floor, go to McCormick Center to be on the floor

[00:02:08] at Midwinter on the Thursday afternoon of Midwinter. And I'll be there all day on Friday. And so my intention is to, I have a couple interviews already kind of planned out, but

[00:02:21] my intention is to, instead of sitting at a booth like we have in the past, I have sat in the premier booth multiple times. I have a little bit more mobile recording gear. See, I haven't been out to record at a dental function since, honestly, since Voices of

[00:02:37] Dentistry 2023. Like we didn't have one in 2024. And I didn't do anything. I didn't go anywhere really. I didn't do to Greater New York. I didn't do any of that stuff like I normally do. So this is the first meeting I've been out and about.

[00:02:50] Instead of planting it at a particular booth like I have in the past, I'm going to have a mobile setup. So I will be able to record with one, two or three people with this mobile setup and I can do it anywhere.

[00:03:03] I can do it in a person's booth or whatever. So I think I'm going to do that. That's my plan. And I'm going to try and run into people that want to talk. So a couple things.

[00:03:12] First off, I'm going to walk around the floor and I'm going to see all the new stuff. I've talked about this before, but when I was first in dentistry. To be frank, when I was early in dentistry, the internet didn't exist the way that it does now.

[00:03:25] So a lot of times you would go to the Midwinter and honestly, whatever was on the floor was brand new to you because unless you saw it in a movie, in a magazine, you'd never seen it before. So there's a lot of stuff you went out there.

[00:03:38] It was the first time you ever saw it. And I was dumb enough to buy stuff like that. Like it was the first time I ever saw it. I just buy it. So I remember my team would, the weeks after Midwinter, we'd get random boxes full of stuff

[00:03:51] that I had bought that I even forgot that I bought. Like I bought so much stuff. It was ridiculous. And honestly, I look back on that sort of nostalgically because I always went with my dad and a bunch of my dad's friends from dental school and stuff.

[00:04:03] So it's like the same crew always went every year. We had a really good time and we'd all kind of walk the floor. And then we'd go to dinner that night, which frankly dinners with other dentists, like after

[00:04:13] a meeting like this was always sort of the inspiration of the idea of the podcast in the first place. We'd talk about what we saw or if we'd taken any classes, anything we might be buying or what we're looking at or whatever.

[00:04:25] You can imagine it was very exciting. It was super exciting and it was always a shot in the arm. Dentistry always seemed more exciting when you came back after going to the Midwinter. And honestly, dental meetings have changed a little bit.

[00:04:38] They just are not, they don't have the same draw to me somehow. It's not to say that they're not cool, but I haven't felt the same way about them. And I think since COVID, I think dental meetings have just gotten smaller.

[00:04:49] I think there's less people that exhibit there on the regular, but there's always still lots of stuff going on. And frankly, there will be a lot of people that I meet with. But my hope is that if you're listening to this right now and you're a regular listener

[00:05:01] and you're going to go to the Chicago Midwinter, that you'll contact me. Best way to probably contact me is if you're on Facebook at all, just look me up on Facebook and drop me a message. If we're not Facebook friends, friend me there.

[00:05:12] Or you can even go to the Very Dental Facebook group, which would be great. We can keep in contact over there. And if you're not a member of the Very Dental Facebook group, you're going to need a password to get in.

[00:05:23] I only let people that listen to the podcast in using a password. The password could be Timmerman, Hornbrook, McWethy, Lipscomb or Papa Randy. Any of those five passwords or all five of them, if you'd like. I'm cool with all that.

[00:05:39] I just want to let people know that they listen to the podcast to let them in. So it's a smaller Facebook group. In any case, if you're there and you want to meet up and say hello, I'd love to see you there even more.

[00:05:50] I would love to record with you there. And one of the things people like, well, what would we talk about? And that's, I've got something for you. If you don't have a lot to talk about or you're nervous about what you might want to talk about.

[00:06:00] I want to start a new show or a new feature on the network. I don't know exactly what we call it, but I was on a Michael Arias's podcast. Oh, a couple of months back.

[00:06:12] And what was cool about it was he said, okay, we're going to do a short 15 minute or less hit. I think it ended up being like 10 minutes. And it was basically, I want you to give me a piece of advice to someone in

[00:06:23] dentistry, maybe someone newer in dentistry than you. What's a piece of advice that would be actionable and really quick? And so it was like a one point thing. And I talked about multitasking and how I don't believe anyone can actually multitask the way that people think they can.

[00:06:37] So, and it was a great podcast and it was quick and it was really, it was a, it was an easy thing to record. It was mellow. But what was really cool is I brought the topic to him. He didn't prompt me at all.

[00:06:49] And I thought to myself, what a great, what a great format. And it would be a good format for someone who has, who's never really been on a podcast before. It doesn't have a ton that they think they have to say.

[00:06:59] I want to find people to give me tips, clinical practice tips or practice management tips, but just like a single tip, a quick tip that is, that they use in their office. And they might, it might be something that they learned from someone else.

[00:07:15] It might be something that, you know, you've never even heard of from anyone else, but you do it in your office and it works awesome. And it's something quick and fast that we could put out there.

[00:07:23] I'm actually going to call the, the, this kind of episode reusable tips, which is sort of a play on words because in dentistry, we do have some things that are reusable and the tips that you'd be getting from this podcast are definitely reusable.

[00:07:36] So if you have an idea for a reusable tip and you're going to be at the Chicago midwinter, I want you to flag me down on Facebook or you can email me. My email is simple, but not easy at gmail.com or shoot.

[00:07:49] You can text me a nine eight nine eight five nine six three zero two, any of those. And I'll make sure we, we hook up and record or talk, or we could even just go, you know, uh, get a coffee or, or go look at booths or whatever.

[00:08:01] I'm literally just going to be on all day Friday. I'll be floating around the floor at McCormick Thursday afternoon. I will be there too. I'm planning on, um, having the Cadre guys show me everything that they've got going on.

[00:08:13] And of course, no one Cadre, there's a lot, there's printers, scanners, uh, CTS. They got everything over there and there they are. They are doing really well at dental meetings. A lot of places like think dental meetings are dying, but I'm going to tell you what

[00:08:27] I think Cadre is doing really well. Part of it's because they deliver great service, but they also have a lot of really great stuff. So I'm hoping they'll show me everything, including clinics, which is their, their browser based, uh, CAD design.

[00:08:40] So I'm pretty excited about all that stuff. So looking forward to the midwinter meeting. So I'll be there, uh, Thursday afternoon and Friday, possibly a little bit on Saturday too. I'm planning on driving home Saturday, but, uh, I might go to, if there's good

[00:08:53] stuff that I missed that I got to go see, I could go over there on Saturday morning too. So again, contact me if you're there, I'd love to run into you. And as always, I appreciate you listening to the show and interacting and all that stuff.

[00:09:04] Uh, so midwinter looking, looking forward to it. I kind of, kind of put this midwinter trip together to last second. So this is, you know, the reason you're just hearing about it now, but pretty excited about it.

[00:09:13] So, uh, moving on to my main topic, I want to set it up. I want to set it up with, uh, something that happened last week that I, that just got my mind thinking. It was just, it was just a, it was a great experience.

[00:09:27] Last Thursday, I actually took the day off. My son is a 10th grader and I've talked to you guys a lot about Sean. He's a musician. He plays the tuba. And, uh, interestingly, he's a 10th grader and he plays in the symphonic band at, at Dow high.

[00:09:43] That's the high school. I'll tell you the high school I graduated from Herbert Henry Dow high school in Midland, Michigan. Uh, but he also goes there and they have a, they have just a great music program there.

[00:09:53] And he's in the symphonic band, which is the highest level band. He had to audition to get in and he's, he's a pretty accomplished tuba player, something that I'm very proud of for him.

[00:10:01] He was invited by the director to be in jazz one, which is their, their, the higher level. They have two jazz bands, the higher level jazz band. And of course, tuba is an odd instrument to be in the jazz band.

[00:10:14] Um, what's interesting is he ends up playing a fourth trombone part. So he does a lot of the, the baselines and stuff. Uh, he really likes it. It's hard because the fourth trombone part is very high on the bass clef for a

[00:10:26] tuba, but he's, he's, he's doing pretty well with it in any case. Um, so he had, uh, he's in the jazz band and for the second year running now, I have gone over with him, uh, and, and my wife, uh, but, but I was there all day

[00:10:42] with him at the central Michigan university jazz festival. So central Michigan university is a, is a middle-sized university. Uh, it's located in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Mount Pleasant is, um, it's just about an hour, not quite an hour north of Lansing.

[00:10:58] So it's really located centrally in the lower peninsula of Michigan. Turns out that my house is about 20 or 25 minutes from, from central Michigan. We're actually quite close to that. It's it's I'm as close to central Michigan university in Mount Pleasant as I am the town I practice in.

[00:11:12] So it's, it's, uh, and it's a middle-sized university. That's where my graduate, my wife graduated from central Michigan. So we have contacts there and Sean takes actually his tuba lessons from one of the professors at central Michigan university.

[00:11:26] So we have a lot of contacts at the music, uh, in the music program there, but, and this is the second year in a row that I have gone to the jazz festival, which is, I love it. It's, it's super fun.

[00:11:36] So what, what happens at the jazz festival? Well, mostly it's high schools from all over the state come and play. So they have small schools, big schools, fancy schools, not so fancy schools, all kinds of schools. And they go and there is a main stage.

[00:11:56] So some of the maybe bigger jazz bands, more well-known high school jazz bands get to play on the main stage, but then they have other smaller breakout rooms where small, like there's, they have two jazz bands at Dow high.

[00:12:07] So jazz one, which was the higher level, uh, jazz band played on the main stage early on in the day. And then jazz two, which is the lower level, the, some of the younger kids

[00:12:18] maybe, or, or kids newer to jazz band played in one of the breakout rooms. And what's really cool about the breakout, all these festivals always have lots of people there to adjudicate, which is basically they judge performances and they give tips and how you can do it.

[00:12:34] What I really liked about the jazz two, uh, performances that they had like two or three clinicians in there listening to them who each broke out and gave them very specific tips on, on performance, jazz performance. I mean, you can't help but think these kids that are interested

[00:12:50] in jazz could really learn a lot. I never did any of this. Well, I was in the jazz band, but I never, we never went to any jazz festivals or anything like this. So it was really, it's a great experience. It really is.

[00:12:59] Um, I have to say that as much as it's easy to point and think that things were better in the good old days, man, the music programs are so good now. They're so much better now than they were when I was there.

[00:13:11] So just a ton of different high schools and a ton of different levels of, of proficiency and, and it was just a lot of fun. And so Dow High, the jazz one played on the main stage and I was very proud of it.

[00:13:23] I will try and include a couple photos and maybe even some video of, uh, of them playing, cause they're pretty good. They're pretty good. Um, Dow High's jazz band meets on Wednesday nights. Basically they start as soon as marching band is done in the fall.

[00:13:38] They start jazz band. So it's like they basically trade marching band rehearsal time on Wednesday nights to jazz band. So if you want to be in the jazz band, you basically switch over from marching band on Wednesday nights. So it's, it's once a week.

[00:13:51] Um, it's, you know, it's not, it's not an, uh, it's, it's, it's some rehearsal, but not a ton of rehearsals. Not a huge commitment of time. Okay. So you've got basically high school is anywhere between ninth grade and 12th

[00:14:05] grade, the kids are of ninth grade and 12th grade when you think about that. When you think about the level of musical experience between a ninth grader and a 12th grader, it's, it's a, it's a lot of difference.

[00:14:17] There's a lot like the 12th years have a ton more experience than an anchor. When you figure that these kids essentially started their public school instruments in fifth grade. Right? So fifth grade to ninth grade is, you know, that's four grades, right?

[00:14:30] Like, and then literally ninth grade to 12th grade is like three or four grades. So essentially you get a ton of your musical experience while you're in high school. And so the, the, the potential for improvement and just, in, in just

[00:14:42] experience in, in musicianship happens a lot in high school. So to see some of these jazz bands that were quite good, uh, it was really fun, you know, but, but you could see such a wide variety of, of, of ages of students,

[00:14:56] you know, that you could tell, you know, some students have had less experience, more experience. It was just, it was really cool. It was, it was really neat to see the wide variety of, of, you know, talent and experience and engagement.

[00:15:06] And, you know, some kids are brand new to jazz whatsoever. Some kids may have been listening to jazz and playing jazz for a while. It was, it was, it's kind of fun to see that. So Dow High actually placed for overall best jazz band.

[00:15:23] They, they placed, they were second runner up. So they were like third place. And honestly, it's kind of cool. Uh, the director was saying he was sort of surprised, but when you think about it, Dow High had probably had six or seven rehearsals in total before

[00:15:37] they went to this jazz festival. They just, like I said, they only meet on Wednesday nights and we've had several cancellations due to snow and cancellations due to other commitments by the director. So there just haven't been that many rehearsals and they sounded pretty darn good considering.

[00:15:54] Uh, I really, I mean, I enjoyed their program. I enjoyed what they were doing. And honestly, I'm not gonna lie to you. It was a real honor for Sean to be invited as a tuba player, as a 10th grader into jazz one.

[00:16:03] So, I mean, I was just, I was so proud. My heart was beating out of my chest. It was great. But I sat in the main stage room and watched a lot of these different jazz bands play.

[00:16:14] And I'm going to, I'm going to drop a YouTube video of this one particular, it's not even a fair comparison, but there is a jazz band in Michigan, a high school jazz band that's kind of famous.

[00:16:25] It's known, it's well known as just the most exceptional thing you've ever heard from a high school jazz band. Jazz band is called the Byron Center Jazz Orchestra. Byron Center is a town outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and they're known for the Byron Center Jazz Orchestra.

[00:16:40] Uh, they have played at Carnegie Hall. They've played, uh, they've played in all these big competitions nationwide and they are amazing. They are, they are a phenomenon. It's just unbelievable. Now I cannot imagine that kids don't specifically go to Byron Center high

[00:16:58] school in order to be in the jazz orchestra. They, they play every day. Like it is a class. It's a regular class. It's I don't think it's an afterschool activity. I honestly think it's a class. Um, and there, the band leader is, is a really well known.

[00:17:13] I found out a little bit more about him. He went to central Michigan and apparently he was, he was like their lead saxophone player for four years in their jazz band. And he just, he's just sort of a, uh, he's an unbelievable teacher. He was real inspiration.

[00:17:27] Obviously he pushes these kids like crazy. And if, if you didn't know better, if you didn't know these were high school kids, you would think it was like, uh, Doc Severinsen's band from the tonight show with Johnny Carson or something like it was a big band, you know,

[00:17:39] it's, it's big band sound. So it's not, it's not electric. It's, it's mostly big band. Uh, man, were they good, man? Were they good? And, and, uh, like you're, I saw him last year and I, the whole time, like

[00:17:52] this must be like a guest from a college that's invited or something. Or, or, I mean, they seemed awfully young to be professionals, but they were that good. I was just, I was just shocked by how good they were.

[00:18:02] And, uh, they just, they had so much poise and they had so much professionalism and they just, they had so much confidence. They, every one of them had so much confidence. It was just, it was just unbelievable.

[00:18:13] So you're seeing, you see some kids that are like ninth graders that have never played in a jazz band. And they're just kind of getting the hang of it. And of course, jazz involves, um, well, for one thing swing, you know, uh,

[00:18:25] it goes against everything you've learned in music up to that point. Music is supposed to be a metronome. You're supposed to, you're playing classical music that, and to learn how to swing all of a sudden it's a little bit different, you know, it's a little bit looser.

[00:18:36] It's a little bit, it's a little, it's a very different concept. And so this is brand new for some of these kids. And it's a whole different way of playing. Plus more importantly, jazz, jazz ensembles are probably best known for improvisation where you are playing.

[00:18:52] A lot of times you're playing a solo that you're improvising and which is to say, you don't exactly know what you're going to play until you play it. And improvisation is a funny thing. You have to stay to make it work.

[00:19:06] You have to understand rhythm and you have to understand, you got to know your scales. You got to know what key you're in. You got to know the changes of the, of the music. So, so you're staying in key.

[00:19:15] You don't want to play, you know, out of key in the wrong instrument. And I have to tell you, I played, I played in a couple of jazz bands. I played in high school, but more than that, I played in college and I was,

[00:19:26] I was so outclassed at Miami university. I, I think I played second tenor saxophone. I was horrible. And occasionally they'd throw me a solo and I was horrible at it because I didn't practice. I didn't, I didn't know my scales. I didn't understand the changes.

[00:19:39] I didn't know, I didn't have any background in how to improvise. And so a lot of these kids were the same as me. They were asked to do solos in an improvisational way.

[00:19:49] And a lot of them, you know, I think you just kind of have to learn how to do it. You could tell the kids that knew had a basic understanding of how improvisation works to stay within the right tone within the, within the music.

[00:20:02] You could tell that there were some kids that did and some kids that didn't. There were some kids that did fine or just muddled through it. You could, and you could tell, you could tell that there were just some kids who

[00:20:12] felt a lot more confident, um, and, and just had a lot more experience with it. And it isn't, it's not something that comes naturally to people. I mean, it's something that you really have to work at. It's improvisation is on an instrument is a really tough thing.

[00:20:26] Unless you just have a natural talent at it. I mean, it takes practice and honestly, it's the boring stuff. It takes this, you gotta learn your scales. You gotta learn your rhythms. You gotta learn all that stuff.

[00:20:36] Anyhow, so you could tell the kids that were thrown into it because they, they did okay, but they were not, you know, they were not spectacular. There were, there were some kind of sour notes. Some of the rhythms were pretty basic and sometimes it was almost

[00:20:48] painful to watch these kids do it. But, but a lot of them still, still did it because that's what they, that's what jazz was and they wanted to learn and they wanted to be into it.

[00:20:57] And then you'd see some kids in some of the higher level bands who had had some, some background in this stuff and they were tearing it up. Some of those kids from Byron center were really tearing it up. It was, it was awesome.

[00:21:07] It was kind of great to see them. So, so like there was this huge variance in, in the level of talent experience. You could tell who had practiced and who really had learned this stuff and who hadn't. But even more impressive, this is so funny.

[00:21:20] Uh, they have a guest clinician that comes in and, and it's a professional musician, a professional jazz musician. And he comes and he'll play with the jazz bands, the central Michigan university jazz bands will play. And he'll play with them and he'll be the soloist in there.

[00:21:35] And so, so he will, he would, they played a few pieces and then he answered a lot of questions from the kids in the, in basically he's playing for all these kids from different jazz bands and in the, in the audience watching.

[00:21:47] And then he takes questions and the guy that came to play, it's really funny. I actually recorded an episode. Uh, years ago about it's not this it's, it's the player, not the saxophone is what I think I call it.

[00:21:58] I'll, I'll put a link in the show notes to that guy by the name of Chad LB. Um, and Chad has a Chad's full name is Leibowitz. I can't remember exactly. He just goes by Chad LB because it's kind of hard to remember his last name.

[00:22:12] The dude is amazing. I've been following him on Instagram for years and he was talking about how most of his influences were real, real old school jazz, like, you know, Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins and some of the, some of the greats, but I have to tell

[00:22:28] you, I think he sounds just like Michael Brecker. Michael Brecker is a, is a more modern, uh, tenor saxophone player. Um, unfortunately he died in the late 1990s. I think I used to follow him. Oh man.

[00:22:39] When I was in college, I wanted to be Michael Brecker and this dude was a, it was just a phenomenal musician. I only found out just a few years ago. Not only was he like, he's my favorite saxophone player of all time, but, but

[00:22:50] he's an unbelievable drummer too. So the guy just had talent oozing out of his pores. I think this Chad LB guy sounds just like Michael Brecker in any case. Uh, Chad LB was exceptional. Just so good. So good to listen to.

[00:23:03] And, and he answered questions so generously and graciously. He just seemed like a great guy. Everything about this whole experience was fantastic. But Chad LB is a guy who's literally at the very top of his craft. I mean, he's, he's a jazz musicians, jazz musician. He's recorded.

[00:23:21] He's been professionally recording. Shoot. He said he was, he was gigging since he was 11 years old. So in other words, he was, he was a, he was a natural. He was, he was even as a little kid playing this stuff and he played,

[00:23:33] he's been playing for a long time. I think he's in his mid to late thirties and, uh, just amazing, just an amazing saxophone player. And of course he's put his whole life into this and he's got records and he's been recording forever. It was really cool.

[00:23:46] So what, what was interesting was that I was able to see a level of experience and talent and frankly, engagement with jazz music at like the very beginner level, kids who are just starting the first, the first time they've ever really played jazz in front of a group.

[00:24:05] You know, if you can imagine the ninth graders in like the jazz too at Dow high, these, these kids have never played really in front of a group, this style of music. So they're brand new at it.

[00:24:14] They like it, but they're still kind of figuring it out and they're still, and then you get these, these kids that have been doing it for a while, who have some, who have some experience and who are kind of, kind of into it.

[00:24:24] And they're really learning their trip. They're, they're getting their experience. They're getting their reps in. They're not perfect, but their confidence is good. They get more and more confidence as they go. And then, and then you see a guy who's a professional literally at the top of his

[00:24:37] game, like there's kind of no one better than this guy. And I got to see all three of these levels on stage. And of course, because of the way my brain is broken in a very special way,

[00:24:50] I can't help, but apply everything I see in life to dentistry and how I look at dentistry. So I just saw these different levels of, of, of, uh, ability and talent and engagement with jazz music. And I thought, geez, you know, what do I take away from this?

[00:25:08] Well, first off I have, I remember I have just broken self-esteem. I have low self-esteem. I always assume that I'm the worst at everything all the time. So my thing was like, if I were a kid playing jazz, you know, in the Dow high

[00:25:23] jazz band or in one of these high school jazz bands, and I heard Chad LB go and tear it up on stage like that. I think I'd be really discouraged. Like I'd go, God, I don't think I can ever be that good.

[00:25:32] That is, that is, that is next level. That is amazing. And I, I, I probably, if you were mature and you looked at things correctly, you should look at that and go, man, maybe someday I can be like that, but this guy is amazing.

[00:25:45] What can I learn from him? That's probably the right way to look at it. It's not how I probably would look at it, unfortunately, but that's probably the right way to look at it.

[00:25:52] But then the first question that came to mind is when I'm listening to Chad LB, who's literally like one of the best saxophone players I've ever heard. I thought to myself, why in dentistry do we turn to the most exceptional

[00:26:09] clinicians in the entire world to teach us stuff? Why do we do that? I'm not sure if it's the right move or the wrong move, to be perfectly honest, but I look at this and okay.

[00:26:18] So my friend Jason Smithson, who's been on countless times on the podcast, I love talking with him. He's, he's a good friend of mine and he's, he is an exceptional dentist. He has in everything I've seen him do is just, just next level.

[00:26:33] He's just a, he's an excellent dentist delivers dentistry at a very high level. Uh, documentation, just delivering everything. He's fantastic. He's really, he's good at showing how he does it and he's good at doing it. And, and he's really, really good.

[00:26:46] He's, he is, he is like a Chad LB level of good. And I've taken classes from him a bunch of times. And guess what? I did not turn into Jason Smithson. I have stayed myself. You know, I have, I learned some great things from absolutely.

[00:27:04] Have I changed techniques that I use because of what I saw from him? Yeah, I really have. I've learned a lot from him, but I'm not him. I'm not him. I've said this multiple times. I think, unfortunately, uh, you know, there is a bell curve of, of ability

[00:27:20] and talent in this world. And I think that, I think that Jason might be on the far, far right. As far as just, just really talented. I think he's going to be really good at everything he does because he has a bunch of natural ability. Okay.

[00:27:35] So that's the first thing to talk about. But I'm also curious. Why is it that we ask of these amazing clinicians to come? I think, you know, I think continuing education for a long time used to just be.

[00:27:47] You'd get someone to show you amazing cases and you'd go, wow, that's amazing. And then you'd go back home and do just what you've always done for, for a long time, that's what continuing education was for me. And so you get these clinicians that are amazing.

[00:27:59] Not only were they amazing at delivering the care, but they were also amazing at treatment planning and getting patients to do the care. And I think a lot of us feel like in our practices, that's a somewhat unrealistic way to look at things.

[00:28:10] Maybe it is, maybe it's not there. That's a discussion to have, but we turn to these clinicians because as leaders, because they're really great at their craft. I tend to think that sometimes that's a little bit of a broken system.

[00:28:23] Maybe because I have such low self-esteem, but I feel like sometimes we should be creating systems and procedures based on what most of us can do consistently. In other words, I feel like we should probably be aiming, aiming for jazz

[00:28:39] performance that's, you know, like Dow High Jazz one level at the end of the year after the, so versus Chad LB level. Cause I don't think everyone has the level of talent that they'll reach to that.

[00:28:51] And it isn't to say that we shouldn't strive for all that kind of excellence, but I think that bell curve is reality. And I'm not sure that we should be having everyone, you know, I'm not sure we should in everyone's brain.

[00:29:04] They should be able to deliver that level of care when a level of care kind of closer to the middle of the bell curve of ability is maybe a more realistic. Expectation for the rest of us.

[00:29:15] This is not to say that we shouldn't strive for excellence, but the reality is in, in, you know, most dentists and most patients are more average. That's how averages work. You know, on some level, that's how averages work.

[00:29:29] So this was all going through my mind as I'm trying to watch a jazz concert. You could imagine how conflicted that I was, you know, I'm one moment. I'm listening to a, a 10th grader do a solo on the trombone.

[00:29:41] And the next minute I'm thinking about how this affects dentistry. So the other thing that came to mind is a book by a guy by the name of Seth Godin. And Seth is, I've read a lot of his books. He's he's a marketer.

[00:29:54] He was, he was just huge in the, in the early two thousands. He was like the marketer's marketer. It was kind of before social media became a thing. He's still doing a great podcast. Uh, he, he, and he has a great blog. Seth's blog is fantastic.

[00:30:06] It's basically worth checking out every day. He's, he's still putting stuff on. He's the reason I started blogging back in 2008. And, and honestly, I think the blog kind of got me into podcasting anyhow. So I owe a lot to Seth. He wrote a book in 2007 called the dip.

[00:30:21] And the dip is basically a little book about when to quit and when not to quit. And, but the other thing that I thought was really cool about, about the dip was that you should be the best in the world at what you do and you're thinking yourself.

[00:30:33] And when I say that, I'm like, okay, that's the Chad LB thing. Right. And except the cool part is you get to define what the world is. So you can be the best at communicating your, with your patients and offering them excellent care in your little town.

[00:30:53] That doesn't mean you have to be the best. It doesn't mean you have to be better than Jason Smith and at layering composite. It doesn't, it doesn't mean you have to be a better than Chad LB at, at, uh, at soloing on the tenor saxophone.

[00:31:06] You get to define what your world is. And I think that's, I think that's a really good way to look at this. When, if you bristled when I said, well, we've got a bell curve and we all

[00:31:14] have our own natural abilities, that's fair, but you get to define what your world is. Remember that that's maybe the more important part. So I want to go through a couple of things like what I was thinking.

[00:31:24] I'm like, what makes, how do you become the best dentist in the world? First off, you define what your world is. And I'm not even going to go into that too much because frankly, that could be,

[00:31:33] you could be the best endodontist and, you know, in Saginaw Township, or you could be, uh, the best at scaling a root planning of any hygienist in, in your practice or whatever you get to decide what your world is.

[00:31:48] And I think, and that, that is a very convenient way to look at it because it allows you to set it. It's sort of a set point for you and it's, it's how you can strive.

[00:31:57] But also there's a lot of different, different ways to gauge how good you're, how good you are and how well you're doing at things. And, and frankly, I thought of, I thought of this list. I just want to talk about it.

[00:32:10] You know, each, each one of us has certain abilities and skills that we've developed or that we have naturally, or, or that we can develop. And I think we need to think about that first off. It's worth knowing about natural ability.

[00:32:27] It's worth understanding natural ability, I should say. So people with natural ability never talk about their natural ability. It's truth. I'm telling you, Jason Smithson is really damn good at, at all kinds of stuff. As is at, as aesthetics, aesthetic dentistry, uh, color blending, layering,

[00:32:52] making, I mean, he can make a tooth that looks so natural out of composite. It's unreal. And I've talked to him about this. I've talked to him about this. He won't admit that it comes naturally easy to you, but he has admitted that to

[00:33:07] me because he's convinced he, he sees color in a different way than the rest of us do. And I've seen him do this. Like, it's really like he can, he can color, he can look at a tooth and see all

[00:33:19] the different colors in it where I just can't, I just can't, you know? And, and he would never admit this on a podcast, but, but he's told me, he's like, yeah, I just, it, it, it's not difficult for me. I can somehow see this.

[00:33:30] I always have been able to do this. So like everyone probably has a set of things that they're naturally good at. And if you're blessed, you actually knew that and were able to develop that. I mean, there's a lot of people that are naturally athletic that, that become

[00:33:46] athletes in high school or, you know, or what have you. And, and, you know, they may go on to college and professional and all that stuff and they, you know, these are people with natural abilities and they get developed.

[00:33:59] Now the, the rotten deal is, is sometimes you have natural abilities that you don't even know that you had. I think about how naturally recording and podcasting has come to me and literally being able to talk into a microphone.

[00:34:13] And just, I've had people tell me that they, that my voice, they like my voice and they, they like the way I say things. And, and I have to tell you, um, that's always been there. That's always kind of been there.

[00:34:23] I don't know that I, I, yes, I have a lot of practice because I've done it a lot over the last 10 years, but, but the reality is it's always kind of the gift of gab has always kind of been there.

[00:34:32] And frankly, it's something I use with patient care too. I mean, I can, I can talk a nervous patient down just by, just by with the gift of gab a little bit. So everyone's got natural abilities.

[00:34:42] The, you know, if, like I said, if you're lucky, you know what your natural abilities are and you can use them to your advantage, but also there are some people that are just naturally going to be better at stuff like hand skills.

[00:34:53] Every, everyone in dental school remembers, you know, we were told that we were supposed to have certain hand skills and, and there were some people that found, okay, I think of second year fixed prosthodontics at the university of Minnesota and we were prepping teeth. And waxing teeth.

[00:35:10] And there were some people that like the first time you ever put a bird to a tooth. Uh, it was pretty unnatural, right? It was, I mean, pretty small, real small, actually, when you think about it, I mean,

[00:35:22] unless you are, unless you were like a woodcarver or something, it's pretty small. That's not a natural thing that came to, but some people were just really good at it right off the bat. It's okay.

[00:35:30] You can't hate on them for that, for having natural ability, but there are some people that just better at it than others. There's some people that were kind of terrible at it. I struggled, I struggled.

[00:35:39] I had to take, I failed operative dentistry at the end of my second year. I had to stay over in the summer to retake operative and, uh, before I was able to go to clinic. And there were, you know, what a shameful thing to admit now.

[00:35:52] What a shameful thing then as it turns out, you know what that was? I was particularly dumb, but I needed more reps. I needed more reps to kind of develop the muscle memory and some of that stuff.

[00:36:02] I mean, the reality is you get out of dental school, you don't know anything and you haven't done anything as much as you think you've done a lot. You haven't done anything after you've got out of dental school. You there's so much, so much.

[00:36:12] You have to develop so many reps you need to get before you're feeling more comfortable. If you can imagine the very first time you had to drop an interproximal box with a burr and have to go to the dentist, you had to drop it in the dentist's office.

[00:36:25] And how, how, how anxiety producing that was compared to how you, you know, when you're prepping a tooth and you, you break the interproximal now, how commonplace that is, you don't even give it a thought.

[00:36:36] And there was a time in your life as a, as a dentist where to me, that caused me a lot of anxiety. I was, I, you know, I didn't quite know how it was going to work out. You had a lot of stuff. Well, shoot this.

[00:36:45] Would you do that all the time? It's, you just had all the reps, you know what you're doing. So some people found that easier early on and other, some people needed more reps. So you, the natural ability thing that's real.

[00:36:56] Now here's something that you, you don't have any control over natural ability either. I mean, some people are just, just have that skillset to start with. They, they have that ability to start with and other people really have to develop it.

[00:37:07] The one thing that I would tell dental students and new dentists is understand that you can develop those skills. It doesn't mean you may not ever be Jason Smithson, but with reps and training, you can develop those skills. And they never told me that in dental school.

[00:37:23] I felt so terrible about myself because no one ever said, you know what? You do this for a little while. You're going to get better at it. You're going to do, you're going to be fine with this. This is okay.

[00:37:29] They never told you that they let you believe that you were going to suck forever. Let me believe that. And I mean, I, I took that to heart, man. That was, that was rough on my life for a while. So that's natural ability.

[00:37:40] Now then the next thing you have a lot of control over a lot of control over it's the amount of training you have. Uh, and this is where, this is where continuing education comes in and, or having a mentor or whatever.

[00:37:53] Basically you can learn anything, as I just said, you know, with enough reps and the right mentors and the right training, you can make up for all the natural ability there's, you know, in a world with a lot of training.

[00:38:05] So, and that is something that you do have a lot of control over. And it's also, you get to choose what you like to do and then what you want to do more of. You get to train in that. So that's, that's really cool.

[00:38:15] That's something that, that you can change and choose to do. And frankly, for those of us like me that I haven't gone out of my way to, I used to take a lot of CE. I don't take that much CE anymore.

[00:38:26] I should take more, but you should never quit learning and you should never, you know, you should never think you've got it all figured out and that you can't learn anything new cause you always can.

[00:38:36] Uh, but like I said, training is something that you have a lot of control over. If you feel like you don't have the skillset you need, it is not hard to go find it. We've talked about lots of different places to go do these things.

[00:38:47] Um, I mean, whether you're talking like, you know, spear or Coys or even an online thing like dental online training with Dr. Dennis Hartley, who's freaking amazing. One of the best teachers out there. There's a lot of, and, or ripe.

[00:38:58] Think about the whole, the whole ripe with, with, uh, uh, Lincoln Harris and Mike Melkers and Lane Ochi and all those amazing teachers. Literally it's all online. It's all, it's all done. You don't have to go, you don't have to go anywhere to learn these things.

[00:39:10] It's, there's just a lot of ways you can, you can be trained in these, this is. There's no limits on what you can choose to train. The limits are, you know, how much your spouse is okay with you leaving or your, how much your children need you.

[00:39:23] Or the reality is like, you can kind of spend as much time training as you want. A lot of people really get hooked on, on continuing education and training, which is great. Uh, you need a little balance in your life perhaps, but there's frankly where

[00:39:36] natural ability leaves off training picks up and you can, you can make those differences. Now, another thing that makes, could make you the best dentist in the world is experience. And that's the story is I think a lot of times young dentists don't want to hear

[00:39:50] it, but, but frankly, you talk to a dentist that's been out for 20 or 25 years from dental school and how they felt about the dentistry. They were doing it five years out and they'll laugh at you because they're like,

[00:40:00] I thought I thought I knew everything and I didn't know anything. And that has everything to do with the experience you have, the experience running a practice, the experience, seeing patients experience having repetitions over and over again, you know, uh, a classic thing, something that no one

[00:40:18] really talks about as a, as a standard. But how do you know when a tooth is shouldn't be restored? How do you know, how do you know when to give up on a tooth? I mean, you'd think that there's a cut and dry to read this tooth.

[00:40:30] This tooth is worth saving. This tooth is not worth saving. Well, man, having a lot of experience, seeing a lot of failed teeth, a lot of teeth that maybe you restored that you shouldn't have or something like that. That's huge. That's a huge thing.

[00:40:42] So literally just having some gray hair, having some experiences, good, bad, and otherwise having, having a few bad Google reviews out there where you've had some stuff go wrong and you knew, and you, and you handled it and you live through it. That's a big deal.

[00:40:56] Like an experienced dentist that goes a long ways. And I know that it's frustrating for a new dentist who's deep in debt to hear you know, hold your horses. You need a little experience. They don't want to hear that, but, but there's nothing, there's nothing that

[00:41:11] gives you a better perspective on the career than just having some experience, having some years. And I say that as someone who graduated in the late nineties, uh, I've seen a lot

[00:41:21] more stuff now than I had when I was, I was new, even though, you know, back in 2005, I thought I had it all figured out. And guess what? You know, 20 years later, I did not have it all figured out.

[00:41:33] There's still, there's still a lot to learn and there's still a lot of experiences to be had. So experience goes a long ways. I am convinced this next thing might be one of the more important things to becoming the best dentist in the world in your case.

[00:41:47] And that is confidence. And I say, this is a guy who struggles with confidence, but okay. So every one of you knew some people in dental school who walked in even as a relatively new dentist and, and acted like they had the world by a string.

[00:42:04] You know, like I remember, I remember going into, uh, I will drop names here. I remember going into oral surgery rotation. And, and what's amazing is, you know, you can read about how to extract tooth all you want. You can read about that.

[00:42:20] Now we've got YouTube videos and to be perfectly frank, that's probably helpful. Seeing videos of people actually doing this stuff probably makes a big difference. We didn't really have that when I was in dental school. I mean, how do you describe how to, to luxate a tooth?

[00:42:34] How do you describe how to, how to get an elevator on a tooth and put the right pressure on it to get that root loose before you pull it out? It's really, it's a funny thing. Like I think if you've seen video of it, it's very useful.

[00:42:46] We didn't see any video of it, that oral surgery instructors would explain it to us. And I didn't understand it. I'd go in and I'd break stuff, but I had friends specifically. I'm thinking right now of Darren O'Brien, who's been on the show before.

[00:42:58] He was, some of you might know him. He teaches a lot. He's, he walked in there like he owned the place. He always did. And I don't know if it was real or fake, but it helps. It helps to, it helps to have that kind of confidence.

[00:43:10] It really does. Um, and I gotta tell you, if you had confidence like that from the very beginning, like, and I don't love surgery. I do surgery. I take teeth out, but I don't love surgery.

[00:43:22] And that's one of the reasons it's hung up on, I've been hung up on implant placement because surgery, surgery still wigs me out 20 some years later after graduating, I'm still a little bit, I'm not super confident. I don't love to suture tissue.

[00:43:35] I'm not, and I'm not, I don't have a lot of reps at it. And so since in the less I do it, the less confident I am. And it's sort of, it's sort of. Sort of forms itself. And I think having confidence does the same thing.

[00:43:46] The more confident you are, the better you do at it. The next time it's not as scary the next time you're so confidence building confidence is really okay. So what do I have confidence in? I have confidence that I can, I can prep a crown pretty fast and

[00:43:58] get a pretty great impression. I have confidence in some of the basic stuff that I do. Um, so confidence makes a big difference in, in much like natural ability. There's a wide variation in what people. Have confidence wise overconfidence is a bad deal.

[00:44:16] Overconfidence will get you in trouble every time. Uh, an appropriate level of confidence for your, your ability and skillset is where you need to be. Uh, but I do think it makes a big difference in frankly, approaching

[00:44:27] your training with a lot of confidence makes a big difference too. When you walk into a training situation going, I can do this. I am a good enough practitioner. I'm smart enough and I can do this.

[00:44:39] You add that to some experience, getting some reps and you're on the way. Thought about this one too. Uh, judgment. Like I think of judgment specifically in, in the way of like treatment planning. I tend to be a pretty conservative treatment planner.

[00:44:54] And when you can sit, when you're a relatively conservative treatment plan, that means you probably wait on treatment longer than you should in some cases. And I'm not gonna lie to you. Uh, when you run into a string of crown preparations that you're doing, let's say,

[00:45:08] let's say you're doing a couple of crowns and you realize when you get in there, like, Ooh, this is gonna be a tough crown prep because there's, there's just more decay than I realized, or it's more broken down than I realized.

[00:45:18] And like, you're thinking it would have been great to do a crown on this tooth, like two years ago or something like that. That's because my judgment wasn't so great on that. On the other hand, being overly aggressive, not so good either.

[00:45:30] So like having an ideal balance between too conservative and too aggressive that comes with experience, but it's also just like your judgment makes a difference. And I'll tell you what, when you have good experiences with the level of,

[00:45:42] of aggressiveness or, or your treatment planning instead of bad experiences, you'll, that will be reinforcing. In other words, I'll say this. It's easy to treat and plan the crown too early, but I don't have a lot of regrets when I think I do that. To be perfectly honest,

[00:45:58] it's easy to say, you know what? This tooth, probably a crown might be a better or crown or an onlay or something might be a better outcome than, than a filling in my hands, knowing when to do that.

[00:46:08] That's something that you develop with experience and confidence as well. The last thing is that, and this is really important and I think it's hard. I think it's kind of a hard thing especially with social media and the internet

[00:46:22] because, because like I started my dental career and there was essentially no internet. There were the internet dentists talking to dentists on the internet. Just wasn't a thing. And I think that we think that patients are paying attention to dentistry a lot more than they actually are.

[00:46:41] I think that if you think that dentistry is as important to your patients as it is to you, you're just plain wrong and you need some perspective on that. I learned this every day and there are in, as a, as a very online person,

[00:46:56] I struggle with this. I get this wrong quite often as well. But having some perspective about the fact that your patients are not thinking about dentistry in the same way that you are and you have to bridge that gap between their perception of dentistry and your perceptive,

[00:47:10] your perception of dentistry. And that's a big deal. That's not easy. It's kind of hard actually. And honestly, the people who are able to draw a less interested person in to understand their condition, that is a real talent to develop.

[00:47:26] Having the perspective of understanding where your patient is and meeting them there and bringing them to a different level. That's like Paul Homley stuff. That's, that's a level of understanding and communication that is a big deal.

[00:47:38] And if you can develop that, that will make you a much better dentist. And frankly, you'll have much more fun in dentistry. If your patients can understand where you're coming from and appreciate it, not that you're dragging them into loving everything about dentistry,

[00:47:54] but understanding kind of where you're coming from. It's a big deal. It's, it's a big important skill, skill. And so having that kind of perspective and being able to separate your passion and love for the profession from what a patient experiences is a big deal.

[00:48:11] And it's worth its own podcast to be sure. But so those are, those are a few of the things that I thought about that could make you the best dentist in the world. And remember the world is what you define it as.

[00:48:22] I hope you guys have enjoyed this. I have to say this all started at this jazz festival last week and I'm like, this is worth an episode in and of itself. I hope you've enjoyed it. I kinda, I liked kind of sussing this out a little bit.

[00:48:34] If you have any questions or comments, let's talk about it on the Very Dental Podcast Facebook group. Again, just go to Facebook, look up Very Dental Podcast. And if you're not in, give me the password and ask for an invite. Give me the password,

[00:48:46] which is going to be, let's see, Timmerman, Hornbrook, McQuaffie, Lipscomb, or Papa Randy. Any of those will get you in. We'll have a talk about it. It's a good place. And if you're at the Chicago Midwinter and you want to talk about this or you

[00:48:58] want to talk about a reusable tip that would be helpful for the listeners of the podcast, other dentists, if you just want to talk to me, if you just want to say hello, let me know I'm going to be around.

[00:49:08] I would love to run into you and say hello. Looking forward to Chicago. It's been a while. I think it's been since before COVID that I went to, I think I went to the 2020 Midwinter. So it's been a while. Pretty excited about it.

[00:49:19] It's because it's a meeting that's meant a lot to me in my career. So I hope I'll see you there next week. I hope you guys enjoyed the podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you get a chance,

[00:49:29] give us a rating or review on whatever podcast software uses, helps people find us or tell a friend even better. Tell a friend like, Hey, I heard something that was really useful or helpful on the Very Dental Podcast

[00:49:40] Network. I thought Zach and Kevin's last episode was awesome. Or, Hey, I'm a dental student listening to Muhammad and the Very Dental Student. Just let me know what you think. Let me know what you think and let other knows,

[00:49:49] let other people know about the show. That'd be very helpful. Again, thank you a ton for listening. I always appreciate it. And we will catch you next episode.