Ask George: How to Survive Burnout in Dental Practice Ownership

And this was one that really stuck out to me because I think that oftentimes dentists don't understand just how important burnout is as a general topic and i want to burnout obviously sounds like a qualitative topic right when we talk about quantitative and qualitative qualitative are the things that make you happier or make your work more enjoyable or any of those things and quantitative are financial right so your net worth your income all of that And I want to start by explaining why I view burnout as a quantitative factor, not only a qualitative factor.

I mean, obviously, how much you enjoy what you do is very qualitative in nature.

But there's a very important element.

As a dentist, we have the opportunity to to have access to a vehicle to grow wealth and earn a large income that is very unique in the world, right? This is why dentistry, at least for a lot of maybe business-minded dentists, was something that they thought about in their undergraduate life or why they picked the industry is because it has a high earning potential.

And so really, when you think about it, your ability to...

So we all, for the dentists out there, we all went to dental school.

We all... took on a large time and financial investment to become a dentist.

And now how do we get that return on investment? How do we pay back our student loans and have net worth to show for it at the end of our career? Meaning that financially, we made a very good decision being a dentist.

If you were, and maybe for me, it's interesting because I practiced clinically for two years, but I don't really view... practicing clinically as my way of being a dentist.

I think that what I'm doing right now and what I've done throughout my entire career, I feel like my whole career has been using my degree as a dentist.

It's just maybe in a non-traditional way.

So I think that where I would kind of use myself as an example is say, okay, let's just say I practiced for two years and And then I said, you know what? I'm done with dentistry as a whole.

I'm going to leave the dental industry and I'm going to go to real estate or I'm going to go to whatever other industry.

That would be me leaving dentistry, right? Me leaving chair side practicing of patient care is very different than me leaving dentistry, right? So when I'm having this conversation, I'm talking about leaving dentistry.

selling your dental practice and exiting the field and doing your wealth creation and income generation in an industry completely separate from anything related to your dental degree.

And so if you think about it, right, if we went through all of this time, effort, and investment financially to become a dentist...

And being a dentist offers us the ability to grow our net worth by growing our practice and also earning a high income.

Really, when you think about it, the way to get the most financial value out of your degree and training is to do it for the longest.

Because your income is per year, your practice note gets paid down each year, and your practice grows, hopefully, each year.

And so each year that you practice, you are accelerating yourself financially forward, maybe incrementally, but when you compound... 10 good years on top of each other, at the end of it, you have a really good result to show for it.

And so what's been happening a lot in the dental industry now is that I think post-COVID, there has definitely been an increase in stress levels of dentists when it comes to Right.

There's a lot of personnel problems.

The dental workforce has been shrunk.

There are rising costs with inflation.

There is reduced insurance reimbursements compared to inflation.