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A MESSAGE FROM T-BONE
Dentistry is one of the greatest professions that exists. As a dentist, you

are the unique combination of a healthcare provider who helps people

and an entrepreneur who controls your own destiny.

The truth is, however, too many dentists aren’t prepared to retire. Too

many dentists work too much and fail to achieve the financial rewards of

dentistry or the professional satisfaction they deserve from the dental

profession. The tasks involved in both running a successful dental office

and achieving personal and professional balance can seem daunting.

If you follow the traditional dental business principles of the 1980s while

practicing dentistry in 2019, it is especially daunting. Most dentists fail to

realize the value that is already embedded within their practices.

As a practicing dentist, I understand the struggle. The good news

is I have helped thousands of dentists create healthier practices by

combining common-sense business practices with practical clinical

techniques. In this book, my goal is to help dentists see a path forward

that allows them to achieve greater financial rewards, more family time,

and increased professional satisfaction.

By reading this book, I hope you’re encouraged to take a deeper look at

how you are growing your practice. The answer to growing your practice

is no longer just adding more patients.

In order to create your Dental Practice PIVOT, your focus must shift to

performing more higher-value procedures rather than simply attracting more

patients. I’ll show you how to pivot your practice in the pages that follow.

PAGE 1 OF 27
I want to help you earn more, work less, and do more of the procedures

you enjoy so you look forward to Mondays. If you feel stuck in a rut,

know there must be a better way to create the practice you desire.

Or if you dread going to work, then discover the power of the Dental

Practice PIVOT.

Enjoy the book.

Here’s to Your Successful PIVOT!

DR. TARUN

T-BONE
AGARWAL

PAGE 2 OF 27
THE NINE KEYS TO CREATE YOUR
DENTAL PRACTICE PIVOT
1. Understanding the Three Components of Your Practices

2. Uncover the Hidden Potential Already Hidden Within Your Practices

3. Create a System of Firm Financial Arrangements to Help Your Patients

Achieve Their Dental Desires

4. Why It’s Important to Categorize Patients into “No Treatment,” “Minor

Treatment”, “Major Treatment”

5. How to Increase Revenue By Filing Medical Insurance

6. Why Implementing Dental Sleep Medicine Will Have Your Patients

Thanking You

7. Discover an Untapped Market And Serve More Patients by Utilizing

Implant Dentistry

8. Best Practices for Embracing Orthodontics

9. Oral Conscious Sedation: Helping More Patients Say “Yes” The Three

Most Common Mistakes Dentists Make in Their Practice

PAGE 3 OF 27
WHY DON’T MORE DENTISTS
ACHIEVE PERSONAL AND
PROFESSIONAL BALANCE?
If you’re struggling to achieve personal and professional balance, I

want to assure you, you’re not alone. Dentists are driven people. We

don’t get through four years of undergraduate schooling, four years of

dental school, and then open a business without having some level of

drive. That drive is also one of the reasons we struggle with carving out

professional and personal balance.

Dentistry has its own set of unique challenges in that dentists work on

patients who, generally speaking, don’t like being there.

We’re working in very tight quarters in the mouth, doing things to people

that oftentimes create pain, surrounded by team members who aren’t

always the most self-motivated or educated people, and dealing with all

the pressures of the insurance and financial issues involved in running a

practice. These factors drive most dentists to work continuously.

There are also many social pressures that go hand hand-in-hand with

being a successful dentist.

Dentists are expected to do well financially for themselves and live a

certain lifestyle, providing above and beyond the amount an average

person provides for the traditional family.

PAGE 4 OF 27
This can make you stuck in your work, in order to just keep everything

moving forward. When you spend more time on your professional life, it

affects your personal life.

I certainly speak from experience. I have three young children and a busy

practice; I have goals for what I want to be, what I want to achieve, and

what more I want to accomplish. Frequently, goals like these can take

over your life and keep you from dedicating time to creating that personal

balance you desire.

I think Tony Robbins said it best when he asserted that the concept of

personal and professional balance is a bit of a misnomer. It’s more about

work-life integration and how you can meld your personal life and work

into each other and make that work quite well.

Within the last three to five years, there has been a tremendous influx

of venture capital and larger group practices into dentistry. These

group practices put significant stress on the traditional practitioner. It’s

bad enough that for so many years, traditional practitioners dealt with

the pressures of dental insurance, allowing it to control their fees, add

pressure about the way they run their practices, and limit what they could

do and when they could do it. Compound those existing issues with large,

group-venture capital practices, and it’s a tough time in dentistry. All that

being said, it’s still an unbelievable opportunity to be a dentist; I wouldn’t

change my profession for anything in the world.

Why the Dental Practice PIVOT Will

Give You More Freedom

“Pivoting your practice ” is about working smarter, not harder.

PAGE 5 OF 27
In dentistry, as in every other industry, there is now a stronger pressure

on efficiency. In dentistry, efficiency generally allows you to see more

patients; however, seeing more patients, whether or not it’s done more

efficiently, should not be your goal. Your goal should be to increase

your revenue.

Most dentists want to increase their revenue, but the only way they have

been led to believe they can do that—the most common way to do that—

is by being more efficient and seeing more patients.

Practice PIVOT is about transitioning from working as a practice owner to

being a business owner. Many dentists don’t want to be business owners,

but they probably won’t have a choice in the coming decades. The option

of being a single dentist practitioner will only be left as an option for a

few people. For most dentists to survive and thrive over the long-term,

they will have to be business owners with a few doctors.

Unfortunately this means there won’t be as many solo dentists because

of the pressures they face. The pressures of running a practice, plus the

evil dental insurance companies, create big challenges. Add increased

competition from venture capital and large group practices and things get

even more difficult.

While I’m one of the biggest proponents of technology, technology

creates challenges for practices. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the most expensive

tool a dentist would buy for the practice was the dental chair, which cost

about $8,000. Today, technology in dental offices is reaching the price

point of $100,000.

PAGE 6 OF 27
You can’t add technology to your practice without making a significant

investment and in order to be competitive those investments are

necessary.

You’re competing, in a sense, against practices backed by venture capital,

larger practices with the ability to amortize the cost of technology over

multiple doctors.

You have to leverage technology to increase your revenue, not through

efficiencies or more patients, but through a greater scope of care for

your patients.

In a nutshell, if you buy into the concept of pivoting your practice and

give it a go, you’ll be able to

• see fewer patients

• produce as much, if not more

• take more time off because you’re seeing fewer patients

• increase your income because you’re lowering overhead by completing

more profitable procedures in less time

• work on patients who are more appreciative and thankful for the

services you provide It’s a complete win for your practice.

Everyone else is trying to teach people to do more in a day, but I’m going

in the opposite direction focusing on quality rather than quantity.

PAGE 7 OF 27
 There are large, untapped, potential
markets out there that can increase
your revenue while creating a more
balanced practice lifestyle at the
same time.

THE NINE KEYS TO CREATE YOUR

DENTAL PRACTICE PIVOT
Before diving into the nine keys, I want to point out one thing: if you’re

looking for a magic bullet, this is not a magic bullet. It takes some time and

dedication, and there will be ups and downs along the way. I’m proposing a

different way of thinking. Dentists are being led and taught using principles

of dentistry and business dentistry from the 1980s, but they practice with

the modern technologies of 2019.

Practicing in the same way you did in the ‘80s and ‘90s won’t work as

predictably as practicing in a more modern way. That conclusion is based

on what I’ve seen in my practice over the last five years.

Key #1: Understanding the Three

Components of Your Practice

The first key in your Dental Practice PIVOT is to understand the three

components of your practice.

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The first component is general dentistry , the second is advanced

dentistry , and the third is emotional dentistry.

General dentistry is the bread and butter—the basics—of your practice:

drill, fill, bill, remove teeth, do root canals, do dentures, etc.

I firmly believe that 70% of your practice, by volume, should be general

dentistry. It’s the way to pay your bills and provide you with a life that’s

much better than average. You can be a great general dentist and live a

wonderful life.

General dentistry is the bread and butter—the basics—of your practice:

drill, fill, bill, remove teeth, do root canals, do dentures, etc.

I firmly believe that 70% of your practice, by volume, should be general

dentistry. It’s the way to pay your bills and provide you with a life that’s

much better than average. You can be a great general dentist and live a

wonderful life.

Over time, many dentists are striving for three things: more time, more

money, and more satisfaction. At the end of the day, general dentistry

is about fillings, crowns, and all the other procedures that are limited

by dental insurance in terms of chargeable fees. If you’re a network

insurance provider, then you know the insurance company sets your fees.

No matter how good your fillings are or what materials you use, you will

still get paid the same. It’s the commoditization of dentistry.

Moving your practice to advanced dentistry is about adding technology

to your practice and performing procedures that are more profitable.

When I speak to groups of dentists, I give them a survey to complete.

One of the questions I ask is about the procedures they provide in their

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practices. I provide a list of ten procedures for them to choose from.

Nearly 100% of practices represented in the audience report that they do

fillings, crowns, cleanings, extractions—all the basics of general dentistry.

The drop-off in the number of dentists who do advanced dentistry— root

canals, dental implants, minor bone grafting, etc.—is amazing. Only about

20% to 40% of dentists in the audience provide those services.

Advanced dentistry leverages technology to add procedures that pay

more for the same amount of time, or even less. You can do a filling that

takes you 45 minutes and get paid $150 from your dental insurance

company, or in 10 minutes you can do a bone graft after removing a tooth

and get paid $200 to $300. The second procedure is significantly more

efficient, and just requires a bit more education.

Once you’ve mastered advanced dentistry, you’re ready to move on

to emotional dentistry, which is dentistry that changes the lives of

your patients. After emotional dentistry, your patient hugs you, thanks

you, and writes wonderful reviews about you—not about their good

experience, but about how you changed their life. When you’re doing

emotional dentistry, you’re seeking satisfaction. You want to come to

work, you love what you do, you want your patients to appreciate you,

and you want to be moved by the work you do for them.

As you move from general, to advanced, to emotional dentistry, think of

the progression as graph. You will see that emotional dentistry takes less

time than general dentistry and you will see only one-tenth the number of

patients to produce the same amount of revenue. When you do advanced

dentistry, you will see half the number of patients as in general dentistry

to produce the same amount of revenue.

PAGE 10 OF 27
I’m not telling you to stop offering general dentistry as you move along

the graph points of progression. I’m asking you to add an associate or a

partner dentist to your practice, who can focus on the general dentistry,

freeing you up to do the more advanced and emotional dentistry.

Key #2: Understanding the Potential

Already Hidden Within Your Practice

The second key in your Dental Practice PIVOT is to understand the potential

that already lies within your practice. The truth is that you’re sitting on a

goldmine. The traditional gurus of practice management will tell you that

bettering your practice is all about the unscheduled treatment plans.

You can work your butt off chasing after patients and rescheduling fillings

and crowns, but if you’re so busy, where will you put those patients?

The untapped potential already within your practice lies in those patients

who love and trust you, and with whom you build relationships. You need

to convert those patients to more advanced and emotional procedures,

like sleep apnea and dental implants, and treatments that utilize medical

benefits, like cosmetic dentistry. You don’t necessarily have to go out and

attract or capture those patients; you just have to create an environment

within your practice to allow your existing patients to accept treatments.

Key #3: Create a System of Firm

Financial Arrangements

The third key in your Dental Practice PIVOT is to create a system of firm

financial arrangements that make it easy for your patients to accept

dentistry. The cheapest work you do today as a dentist used to be the

PAGE 11 OF 27
most expensive work done by dentists. That being said, your patients

can’t always afford to write a check for the dentistry you want to do.

That’s why you need to have a concept of firm financial arrangements

and deal in payment plans for your patients.

I believe in offering an internal payment plan system that allows your

patients to have short- term, non-interest-bearing payment plans.

Certainly, you also have to offer third-party financing that allows your

patients to finance treatment over one to four years to be able to afford

the dentistry. This is no different than options for people to buy furniture,

cars, and houses. These items need to fit into monthly budgets, and

dentistry should be no different.

By ‘firm financial arrangements’, I mean you should have a financial menu

that tells patients exactly how they can pay for their treatments. This

menu will make sure that patients know the exact cost of the treatments

before the work starts, and how they can pay for them.

In order to schedule an appointment, I suggest that you have your patients

sign this menu and leave a deposit. Many dentists face the challenge of

no-shows—patients who don’t show up. Having patients leave a deposit

won’t get rid of no-shows altogether, but by getting a commitment from

your patient to do the dentistry, your no-show rate will drastically drop.

The worst thing you can wish for is a patient not to show up.

Key #4: Categorize Patients into

“No Treatment,” “Minor Treatment,”
and “Major Treatmet”

PAGE 12 OF 27
The fourth key in your Dental Practice PIVOT comes into play in the

hygiene chair, during examinations on your patients. You should classify

your exams into three categories: patients who need no treatment, patients

who need minor treatment, and patients who need major treatment.

A patient who needs no treatment is self- explanatory. They should leave

with their next hygiene visit scheduled.

A patient in the minor-treatment category needs general dentistry— a

filling, one or two crowns, a root canal, one or two teeth removed. Minor

treatments vary from practice to practice. For example, in our practice,

a minor treatment generally costs in the ballpark of $4,000 to $5,000.

For patients who need minor treatments, we believe in putting together a

treatment plan and having firm financial arrangements in place on the day

of the treatment.

If a patient has lots of issues with his teeth and mouth, that patient would

be classified in the major-treatment category. Major-treatment patients

are treated a little differently; you shouldn’t let them disrupt your schedule

by creating the plan right there on the spot, getting talked into things you

don’t really want to do, and creating a system in which you’re guessing and

doing piecemeal dentistry.

I sit down with these patients and say, “There’s a lot going on in your

mouth. I would like to have the opportunity to study your case and put

together a plan showing exactly what your treatment will look like. Then

you and I can sit down together, I can review the plan with you, and we can

decide on the best way to move forward.” With Major treatment

PAGE 13 OF 27
your goal is to create a plan. Discuss the details and map out the steps,

just an architect would design a blueprint for constructing a home. You and

your patients need to understand the steps involved in Major treatment.

There is a small fee associated with this because we take photographs,

X-rays, and models. We give patients a ballpark idea of the fees associated

with treatment, so they can choose if they want to move forward. Often,

the patient says they don’t want all that treatment. That’s great because

it means you can find an area of focus and move them into the minor-

treatment category. We can put together a straightforward plan and move

forward with treatment.

Since our implementation of this system, we have simplified our treatment-

planning process for hygiene exams tremendously.

Key #5: How to Increase Revenue

By Filing Medical Insurance

The next four keys to your successful Dental Practice PIVOT— keys five,

six, seven, and eight—are about the clinical side of your business. I’ve

covered practice management on the business side of things, but these

last four keys focus on how you can improve your practice by creating

revenue from within it.

The first step is to increase your revenue by using medical insurance or

medical benefits. There are many procedures in dentistry for which you

simply don’t get paid well enough. The first item on that list includes

exams. When you do an exam through dental insurance, a typical

reimbursement is in the range of $30 to $40. When you do it through

medical insurance, depending on your state and plan, your reimbursement

PAGE 14 OF 27
can be from $80 to $150, which is a significant increase. If a typical

practice sees 30 to 50 new patients per month and uses medical

insurance, that number represents a revenue increase of $3,000 to $5,000.

The side benefit of utilizing medical insurance for exams is that it doesn’t

reduce the maximum you’re allowed through dental insurance. That leaves

more money in the pot for your patients to utilize for the restorative

dentistry they need.

The other way you can use medical insurance is for those things you have

always bundled in and given away, like post-op follow-ups. When is the last

time you went to your physician’s office without being charged a co-pay or

some bill to the insurance company for just walking in to get test results?

Somehow in dentistry, dentists have been convinced they should see

patients as an included part of the overall treatment—for instance, when

you see a patient for a follow-up after a more difficult tooth removal.

There’s a cost associated with seeing that patient, from somebody having

to make the appointment to somebody having to confirm the appointment

to setting up the room. There should be a reimbursement for that visit. The

follow-up visit is a great opportunity to bill insurance.

Another area for medical insurance is the use of medical insurance for

billing for more advanced radiological procedures, like a cone beam

computed tomography (“CBCT”) and 3D X-rays. Many dentists follow three

procedures: invoice as a panorex, don’t charge patients, or selectively do

these procedures. The whole point of having 3D imaging is to be able to

see and diagnose your patients better. In these situations, you can utilize

medical benefits to help patients and provide treatment more often.

PAGE 15 OF 27
 Key #6: Why Implementing Dental
Sleep Medicine Is a Big Win For
Your Patients and Your Bottom Line

The next key works in unison with medical insurance: dental sleep

medicine, which is treatment for snoring and sleep apnea. This area of

dentistry is absolutely underserved. The number of people with sleep

apnea and those who snore is rapidly increasing.

People are growing larger and larger, so obstructive sleep apnea is

reaching epidemic stages. Dentists can be a first line of defense in the

fight to treat patients suffering with obstructive sleep apnea.

The beauty of treating sleep apnea is that it’s a medical condition diagnosed by

a medical doctor; therefore, medical insurance reimbursement is available as

dental therapy for this medical condition. The therapy is a simple oral appliance

that you can fabricate for your patient; they can use it to help treat sleep

apnea. This appliance has been a game-changer in the practice, and it’s one

of the most enjoyable things for dentists to do. It earns the most compliments

and thanks from not only patients, but patients’ spouses and significant others.

You can use a four-step approach to treat sleep apnea in your practice:

create awareness, get a diagnosis, work with medical insurance to reduce

your patients’ financial burden, and treat the condition. Medical insurance

goes hand-in- hand with sleep medicine success.

Key #7: Discover An Untapped

Market and Serve More Patients By
Utilizing Implant Dentistry

PAGE 16 OF 27
Adding dental implant therapy to your practice is the seventh key. In the

United States, dentists remove approximately 40 million teeth per year.

They only replace about two

million in implants, so only 5% of all removed teeth become dental implants.

There’s a 95% opportunity out there! To get more patients to say yes to

dental implants, you have to do three things for your patients: make it more

affordable, make it less time-intensive, and make it less fear-inducing.

Technology is dramatically changing what you can do with dental implants.

You should leverage technology: utilizing modern-day CAD/CAM with

modern-day 3D imaging to make a two- to three- visit implant appointment

cover from A to Z; doing implant dentistry at the highest level; and utilizing

technology to have “X-ray vision” to see the patient’s exact amount of

bone. Then you should decide which cases are right for you, which are

more complicated and should be referred out, and which are safe for you

to treat.

By leveraging technology in our practice, we’re able to complete a patient

from start to finish in about 1 ½ hour treatment time, including placing

and restoring the implant. We produce about $2,000 per hour for that

procedure because we’re able to leverage technology and use quality

materials and quality parts.

Key #8: Embracing Orthodontics:

Why It’s Important to Give Your
Patients What They Want

The eighth key to your Dental Practice PIVOT is the addition of

orthodontics. There are three different types of orthodontics. The first

PAGE 17 OF 27
type is invisible braces, which you often see in ads. The most common

brand is Invisalign®. The installation of invisible braces is mainly a cosmetic

treatment, focused primarily on the teeth that show when a patient

smiles, and making bite changes. More and more patients are demanding

this procedure.

The second type of orthodontics is the use of clear brackets with tooth-

colored wires, which can move a patient’s teeth in six months. This

treatment focuses on just the teeth that show when a patient smiles,

makes no significant bite changes, and can be completed in a short

amount of time.

The third type of orthodontics, which practices don’t utilize enough, is

minor tooth movement. It uses either removable oral appliances or some

type of clear aligners to treat a patient who has one or two teeth out of

rotation, or a patient who has a minor rotation. This patient doesn’t want

to spend two years—or even nine or ten months—in braces, or they don’t

want to spend thousands of dollars to get their issue fixed. To be able

to offer treatment to patients searching for minor corrections has been a

tremendous benefit to our practice.

Key #9: Oral Conscious Sedation:

Helping Patients Say “Yes”

The ninth key to your Dental Practice PIVOT is oral conscious sedation.

This procedure applies to fifty percent of the patients who avoid going to

the dentist.

This same procedure applies to a large percentage of the patient

population who are fearful of dentists. Adding oral conscious sedation

PAGE 18 OF 27
will help you appeal to a much broader spectrum of patients. With oral

conscious sedation on board, you’ll also be able to perform more high

skilled, time consuming, and high reimbursement procedures.

In summary, these are the nine keys to create your Dental Practice PIVOT

1. Understanding the Three Components of Your Practices

2. Uncover the Hidden Potential Already Hidden Within Your Practices

3. Create a System of Firm Financial Arrangements to Help Your Patients

Achieve Their Dental Desires

4. Why It’s Important to Categorize Patients into “No Treatment,” “Minor

Treatment”, “Major Treatment”

5. How to Increase Revenue By Filing Medical Insurance

6. Why Implementing Dental Sleep Medicine Will Have Your Patients

Thanking You

7. Discover an Untapped Market And Serve More Patients by Utilizing

Implant Dentistry

8. Best Practices for Embracing Orthodontics

9. Oral Conscious Sedation: Helping More Patients Say “Yes” The Three

Most Common Mistakes Dentists Make in Their Practice

There are no magic bullets, however there are many opportunities for a

dentist looking to take action. These keys are critical to helping you future-

proof your dental practice against an unknown pressures. They will also

make a huge difference in your personal life as well.

PAGE 19 OF 27
THE THREE MOST COMMON
MISTAKES DENTISTS MAKE IN
THEIR PRACTICES
I see three common mistakes dentists make in their practices.

The number one mistake, without question,

is a lack of investment in your team.

You have to surround yourself with the right people and invest in them

because you only have two hands, one of which you use for dentistry—

unless you’re ambidextrous. You have to enlist those around you and

empower them to be champions of your procedures.

One of the philosophies we teach (in which I firmly believe) is developing

champions.

A champion team member is someone who takes leadership in

implementing medical insurance, sleep medicine, implants, and

orthodontics. When you have a team member become a champion, it

increases their sense of ownership and their investment in the success

of the practice. When your team members are engaged, morale is higher

and you gain freedom from daily pressures so you can lead on top level

initiatives.

Without a great team behind you, you will never achieve what you want

to achieve. Investing in a team also allows you to maintain and attract the

best people. It doesn’t come down to just paying people the most; you

need to invest in them and allow them to earn as much as they want.

PAGE 20 OF 27
One of the biggest mistakes I made was always feeling that people

wanted to make more money, but not every person is driven by that

motivation. Some people want more time off, some people want to be a

part of something, and others want to make an impact. Investing in your

team and understanding what they’re after, what makes them tick, what

drives them and what motivates them—bringing them into the business,

in a sense—is unbelievably important.

The second mistake is the lack of

commitment to lifelong education.

Your education does not stop the day you graduate dental school. In fact,

that’s when it begins. Dentistry changes on a daily and yearly basis. If

you’re not keeping up with education, then you’re doing procedures that

will get you paid at a 1990s level. To keep up with the current level of

dentistry, you must be committed to lifelong education.

Continuing education doesn’t have to be expensive because you live in

the Internet age. There is so much general knowledge you can learn on

the Internet (through Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc.), but nothing is a

substitute for live workshops. Live workshops are not always necessarily

about the education itself, because you can get a lot of that online.

Workshops are about the camaraderie and the energy that comes from

being around like-minded individuals and all the energy that brings to you

in your practice. Sometimes you just need to get outside of your practice.

The third mistake is the lack of

investment in technology.

PAGE 21 OF 27
Being in a computerized office is no longer being in a high-tech office; a

computerized office is a basic requirement.

Being a digital X-ray office is no longer being a high-tech office because

that is almost 80% market penetration today. You must invest in

technology that truly makes a difference to the clinical dentistry you do.

If somebody asked me to name four pieces of technology that a practice

must have, first and foremost I would say, “A digital camera.” A practice

cannot function without a great extraoral digital camera.

The second piece is CAD/CAM dentistry, so basic restorative dentistry

and more complex restorative dentistry can be made more patient-

centric and more easily completed in a timely manner.

The third piece of technology is 3D imaging because the gateway it

opens up, to being able to communicate and diagnose at the highest

level, is absolutely unbelievable. Fourth is a home sleep test because it

removes barriers for patients to get diagnosed with sleep apnea.

I believe a practice needs to invest in those technology items.

To summarize the three common mistakes dentists make, they are not

investing in cultivating a great team, not committed to lifelong education,

and not investing in the technology that allows their practices to grow.

I’m sure there are dentists reading this saying, “I’m busy, I don’t have time

to learn keys to pivot my practice and still work with patients. How did

you manage it?”

A lot of this was just a natural evolution of my practice over time.

PAGE 22 OF 27
I faced two major struggles in my practice. The first was in 2001 when I

opened my practice. I was led to believe that if I built it, patients would

come, and that I could be a cash practice focused on solely complex

restorative and cosmetic dentistry. I nearly went bankrupt in 2001 trying

to build that type of practice. That’s when I decided I had to take dental

insurance, and my practice started growing.

Then we reached a point at which we were too busy, and I wasn’t doing

the type of dentistry I was trained for and wanted to do. After the fall

of 2008 when the economy essentially tanked, we struggled. We didn’t

struggle so much that we were going bankrupt, but we struggled to make

ends meet. In 2008, I realized diversification was unbelievably important

and that having tried- and-true, patient-friendly and patient-focused

conceptual systems was essential.

Nine or ten years ago, I was a general dentist; I did restorative dentistry

only. My practice suffered for it in 2008 because I wasn’t recession-proof.

Today, we’ve transformed our practice into the ability to do nearly all

phases of dentistry. For the things I’m not the best at, we bring in other

dentists who can provide those services for our patients.

As I grew the mix of my services, the patients wanting general dentistry

didn’t go away, so we decided to bring another dentist into the practice.

That was a very difficult decision for me. I was unbelievably scared about

how to afford it and how our patients would accept it. Four years later, I

look back and realize that having another dentist in the practice frees me

up to focus on the dentistry I want to do and on growing my business, not

just working in it.

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It frees my time so I can take more vacations— more time away—and it

makes practicing more enjoyable than it already was. I see fewer patients;

I produce the same income, if not more; I do the dentistry I want to do;

and I get to learn more. It’s been an unbelievable journey for us.

To me, it’s a matter of common sense and sound business principles

combined with good clinical techniques. It just happened for us. I didn’t

set out to achieve what we are achieving, but I am setting out to help

other dentists achieve that and love (what I believe is) the greatest

profession in our country.

HOW TO ACHIEVE PERSONAL

AND PROFESSIONAL BALANCE
BY CREATING YOUR DENTAL
PRACTICE PIVOT
If you are interested in making the PIVOT, I believe there are three

different categories of dentists with whom I work:

1. The do-it-yourself (“DIY”) dentist

2. The dentist who wants a little more guidance

3. The dentist who wants an entire program.

For the DIY dentist, this book and my podcasts are great ways to get
started. If you think you can’t afford support though, my response would

be that you really need to afford it.

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For the second level of dentist, the person who wants a little more
guidance while learning specific things, we offer live workshops along
with our online training courses.

This allows you to learn in much more detail and have somebody give you

the exact systems we use, so you can recreate them or make them your

own within your practice.

Then there’s the dentist who wants an entire program or system. For

the third type of dentist, who is all in and ready for an entire
program, we’re creating a Dental Practice PIVOT Mastermind.

This helps you immerse yourself and your team into becoming champions

and developing a great practice lifestyle. You’ll complete our live

workshops and dedicated Mastermind meetings. Your team will come to

our office and spend a few days there with our team members for one-

on-one focused attention. This will really drive home the systems. We’ll

be able to monitor and follow you over a period of one year to see how

that’s working.

HOW TO CREATE YOUR DENTAL

PRACTICE PIVOT
Option 1: Register for 3D Dentists
Workshops

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I provide a step-by-step format via our workshops at www.3D-Dentists.

com where you can learn the 9 keys taught by experienced professionals,

in a state of the art training facility, with a small student to teacher ratio.

Option 2: Join our Dental Practice

PIVOT Mastermind.

Enjoy live workshops that go through each of the steps. These workshops

are designed for dentists and dental team. We help you train your team

to be champions of their own area of expertise. Learn from experts who

are enjoying a more balanced life, higher revenue, and a competitive

advantage.

Option 3: FREE-Download T Bone Speaks

and Listen to the Weekly Podcast.

Each week I share insights into overcoming challenges in your practice

and how to make the Dental Practice PIVOT.

The best place to get started is to visit our website at

www.3D-Dentists.com or to call Laurie at our office at

855-332-2285.

You can also email info@3D-Dentists.com and we’d be happy to talk with

you and review the different options available to you.

If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll have the same results.

As a successful dentist you already know how to make a good living, but

do you have the personal and professional life balance you thought would

come with running a successful practice?

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A good living pays your bills, but you can’t stop working or the money

stops flowing. A great living is one where you get to enjoy some of the

better things in life, you have flexibility to achieve and chase some of

your dreams that you’ve put on hold while you went to school and built

your practice.

That’s where I come in. I help dentists just like you earn more, work less,

and perform more of the procedures you enjoy. I’ve seen it over and over

again, dentists who used to be chained to their offices can now take

multi-week vacations and know their practices will thrive without them

even being there.

I’d love to guide you to achieve personal and professional balance by

showing you how to create your Dental Practice PIVOT.

www.3D-Dentists.com

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