If you're a recent graduate or soon-to-be dentist your choice of career makes you among the luckiest people in the country. That's not just my opinion—most career studies name dentistry among the top choices and last year's U.S. News and World Report annual "100 Best Jobs" review ranked dentistry at the top. If you are just entering the profession, your future is rich in so many ways.Exactly how rich and rewarding your career ends up being depends on some crucial choices you make right now. Dentistry is a profession that practically guarantees an adequate return to anyone who puts in the minimum effort. If the words "minimum" and "adequate" don't excite you, don't worry, this is a profession that has spectacular possibilities for those who have the passion and drive to explore the full range of their abilities.
The sad fact is that the average dentist invests about $900 a year in continuing education—less than what most of them spend on their cell phone plans. They take the minimum mandated amount of education—whatever is available locally and conveniently— and they go about it in an unfocused, piecemeal way. This is what the average dentist does, and this is why they are average.
If there is one thing that dentists who achieve great success have in common, it is that they have an investment mindset. These dentists are not just prepared to invest in their facility; they are also committed to invest in themselves to get the most from their career. It's about recognizing that being a high-level dentist is about being an entrepreneur and this means devoting entrepreneurial energy right from the start.
I recognize that this can be a difficult thing for a new dentist to accept. When you have just spent several years and well over $200,000 becoming a dentist, the last thing you want to hear about is spending more time in a classroom. However, education at the post-grad level is different. The education you get in dental school is what is required to get you started in a career. It's about providing the foundation for a career in dentistry. What you do to build on that foundation is up to you.