Being a great dentist can seem like a complicated thing. After all, you have to be many things at once: an accomplished clinician, empathetic listener, effective team leader, and an entrepreneurial businessperson, to name just a few roles.

But if there is one piece of advice I would give to any dentist who is feeling overwhelmed by it all, it is to remember this:

It all begins in your "10 x 10" space.

This is something a very successful dentist told me years ago, and I have never forgotten it. He said that no matter what was going on around him in the practice, when he was in that 10 x 10 operatory he was in his element and he knew that if he was at his best there, good things would flow out from that. It reminded me of the athlete or performer who has achieved what many would consider a distracting measure of celebrity. They might have a lot going on in their lives, but when the game starts or the curtain rises they are in the zone. That kind of focus is what made them successful in the first place.

This is advice I particularly like to give to dentists who perhaps don't have as much control over what is happening in their day to day work lives because so much of what affects them occurs outside the operatory. My advice is to put your mind and body in the same place. There is one area you always have absolute control over, your own 10 x 10 operatory. If you are going to carve your own path, your focus has to be on establishing the code of conduct within that space, for yourself and the assistant beside you. If you are pure and consistent about doing the right things with each patient that is in front of you, your influence will naturally start to spread outward and your relationship capital will build.

To be a great dentist you need to be able to master the workings of the practice as a whole. Great dentists do great things beyond the operatory such as philanthropic efforts and mentoring or teaching. However, every success they have "out there" is ultimately a function of what they were able to accomplish in that simple little space where they are face to face with a patient. This is the space that every great dentist calls home.


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