It can often seem that the ideal life you envision for yourself as a dentist is miles away from reality and that it would take years or huge improvements in revenue to get to where you want to be. But that is usually not the case. Very often it only takes a few key improvements to add up to huge changes. I think many dentists would find themselves incredibly motivated if they only realized how close they were to a significant breakthrough.

For instance, let's try a thought experiment. Let's say that you are working four-and-a-half days a week for 48 weeks a year (that's 216 revenue-earning days) and you're feeling stressed. But what if you came into the office just four days a week? That's 24 more days to yourself right there. And then what if you gave yourself another 11 days off and tacked them on to each statutory holiday weekend? Now you have 35 more days off a year, you basically have a long weekend every week, and a mini-vacation every month or so. That is an awful lot of stress relief.

So how do you pay for that extra time off? Let's go through the numbers. If you were earning $800,000 in revenue in those 216 days, that means bringing in just over $3,700 a day. Take away those 35 days and that leaves you with 181 days to do it, which translates to just over $4,400 a day.

In other words, what is standing between you and a dramatically improved lifestyle comes down to generating around $700 a day more.

I'm not saying that is insignificant – achieving an increase of $100 an hour is challenging. But it is a challenge I have seen countless dentists meet or exceed by adopting a few proven strategies. Improvements in diagnosis and treatment planning that lead to greater case acceptance, improvements in the mix of cases you see and how they are appointed, a review of your fees, is how incremental changes translate into an exponential difference in lifestyle.

Ask yourself what would make your life in dentistry ideally fulfilling. Is it more time off? More rewarding cases? An increase in net income? Then sit down and work out in real terms what it would take to achieve your dream. You may be surprised at how close you are right now.


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