610: The 3 P’s to Avoid Burnout - Dr. Christian Coachman

The 3 P’s to Avoid Burnout

Episode #610 with Dr. Christian Coachman

How do you enjoy dentistry for 72 years? To reveal that secret, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Christian Coachman, founder of Digital Smile Design, to share the story of his father and the three things he does to keep his love for dentistry alive. If you're tired of it before 50, there's a problem! To learn how to reignite your fire and to hear how DSD can help, listen to Episode 610 of The Best Practices Show!

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Main Takeaways:

Take good care of your physical health.

Find ways to keep your passion for dentistry alive.

Maintain your beginner’s mindset and be ready to learn.

Create a legacy through your dentistry you can be proud of.

Figure out the unique “cool factor” that you and your practice have.

Quotes:

“Dentistry is tough. It’s very stressful. If systems are poor, we go crazy very easily.” (2:42—2:49)

“Dentistry is an extremely stressful profession. It's known. We know that. It's scientifically proven. There are articles about it. It's one of the most stressful professions out there. It's an amazing profession. Amazing profession, but also a very stressful profession. And the distance between amazing and very stressful is very little. There's a thin line between, ‘I'm loving what I'm doing,’ and, ‘I'm not loving it at all.’ So, first of all, I think it's important for us to acknowledge how stressful dentistry is and to understand the reasons why dentistry is so stressful, physically and mentally, and then start to ask ourselves why some dentists are not stressed at all, why some people can just work, work, work and have fun working, and others — what I see, unfortunately, the majority are struggling.” (6:04—7:17)

“I always use, as an example, the story of my father. My father is a dentist. He's 72 years old. He's in great shape. He's still working more than ever, Monday to Friday, at least. He does charity on Saturdays, many times, treating patients. And in Brazil, it's very common that people work like 12 hours a day. He's been doing that for 50 years — five decades. I compare this to some of my friends, dentists — even good dentists — that are tired. They are not even close to the age of my father, and they're like, ‘Man, I want to do something else. Maybe I can start lecturing to break the routine. I need to diversify the way I make money because I don't know if I can do this for ten more years.’ These are common comments that you probably get as well, ‘I want to get out of it. I want to exit.’ When you're thinking and feeling like that before you're even 50, or around 50, you have a problem.” (7:20—8:40)

“I started to ask myself, what makes the difference between going in the direction that my dad was able to go, and going in the direction that you feel like you're struggling. And I was able to find three things that my dad — consciously or unconsciously, I don't know exactly — did that I believe are the magical recipes for him to still love what he's doing and every single morning say, ‘I want to do it again.’ I call it the three P’s: passion, pride, and performance. I was able to realize that my father, from time to time, is able to reignite his passion for dentistry, cyclically. He never lets passion drop, and he finds ways to be passionate about it. I realized that my father is always reframing his pride for what he does — expanding his pride, finding things that gives him more meaningful pride. And I realized that my father is constantly open to improving his performance, to challenging himself, to having an open mind for new things, new ways of doing what he's doing, even though he is a very good dentist. Thirty years ago, he was already a very good dentist. And he's constantly reinventing himself. So, for me, this is the magic formula. You're nurturing your three P’s. So, the question is, how can we nurture our three P’s?” (11:56—13:58)

“How can you keep your passion going? I believe that passion comes from knowing that you're doing something different. Many times, being different is more powerful than being better. I love analyzing the difference between being better and being different. For me, being different is more powerful than being better. As you find ways to do dentistry in a different way, you keep your flame alive. Being in the comfort zone is the killer of passion. Doing things the same way you always did kills passion, so you need to leave some time — of course, you cannot create chaos by changing everything all the time. And many times, you're doing things very well and you want to keep that. But you need to always leave some time every week for you to think about, ‘How can I be different?’ Not only being different, but making people see you as different.” (14:47—16:11)

“For me, a compliment that somebody tells me [is], ‘Christian, you are great.’ That's a good compliment. Fantastic. But if somebody comes to me and says, ‘Christian, you are different,’ that is, for me, ten times a better compliment. So, it's not only about being different, but making people perceive you as different. That makes you feel alive because you know you're creating an impact in a different way. [It’s] one thing for people to come to you just because it's convenient to go to you. [It’s] another thing for people to go out of their way and drive to the other side of town — or to fly into a different city — to see you because they feel like you're different. So, making your team also understand that what you guys do is different and special makes the team more passionate.” (16:11—17:14)

“I think that there are many ways to be passionate about what you do. One way is to practice this exercise of asking yourself, ‘How can I be different? How can I make people perceive me as different?’ Just this pursuit makes you alive again. So, I think that it's something that we need to exercise. And if that doesn't really fit you, you need to ask yourself, ‘How can I reignite my passion from time to time?’” (17:15—17:54)

“What I noticed in my father is that he's very proud of his work. He's very proud of his legacy. He's very proud of his team. He’s very proud, not only about his dentistry — and that's the difference here. Of course, when you do a great surgery, when you finish a great case, when you bond a great composite, when you do a great implant placement, when you perform something very well and you know you did well, you're proud. But that's a technical proud. Right? That fades. You're proud of your implant placement once, then twice, then ten times, a hundred. But when you get to 500 implants and you're doing it exactly the same way, and you're doing it very, very well, you're not proud anymore. It's just in auto mode. So, technical high performance makes you proud, yes. But it's not the type of pride that I believe will make you do dentistry for 50 years, or even 30 years. The pride that I'm talking about is the pride of generating a much deeper impact on the people around you. So, not only on the patient, but mainly on your staff.” (19:26—20:51)

“What I realized about my father is that he's proud of his dentistry. He's proud of the compliments that he gets from his patients, yes. But above all, he's proud of his team and he's proud of how his project made their lives better. That's the ultimate level of pride, for me. If you want to not be tired of doing dentistry, you need to generate an environment. You need to transform your practice into a project that makes the lives of your team members better. When you see that happening, you're so proud of yourself, and that pride feeds you forever. You wake up, and even on a tough day you find the strength to get through when you look at your staff. You look at the project that you started, your practice, your baby, your little company, and you realize that this does not belong to you anymore — it belongs to everybody. And everybody there feels like that, and they live for that. They are proud of being there, and they want to be there forever. Their lives are better because they are there, and their spouses are proud because they are there, and the kids are having a better life because they're there, and everybody is growing together. You look back, and you see people working with you for 10, 20, 30 years. My father has people working with him for 30 years. And you say, ‘Damn, this is amazing. I can do this all over again.’ That's the level of pride that I'm talking about. And so, my suggestion is to find that inspiration with your team by making changes and creating the structure to make your team have a better life because they work there with you. This is going to be an auto feed of energy that will make you not want to quit.” (20:52—23:09)

“Great leaders don't get tired of doing what they're doing. Period. If you see great leaders, they do what they do forever, and they're never tired. Why? Because of the legacy that generates this pride. One thing is to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, get everything, save your money, build your financial situation. And then, of course, if you're working for that, you will always dream of the exit every single day because you're working for that. You created that scenario. And even unconsciously, your team feels it energetically. And I believe in energy. Energetically, people know when you are there to cash out . . . And then, you don't feed this circle with this beautiful energy that comes from pride of being there.” (23:33—24:42)

“My father was able to build a legacy where even patients felt like part of the project. It's amazing. Patients felt like part of the project. I would speak with some patients of my father, and they would speak to me as if they were partners of the practice. They felt like investors. They would defend the practice, and they would compliment — they would talk about it to others as if they were shareholders. They were emotional shareholders. That's how I would call them. Many patients and many of the staff members were emotional shareholders in the practice. I think you cannot be more proud of it than this. You look around, and you see this happening. He can see this, and that keeps him going.” (25:11—26:10)

“The third “P” [to help you avoid burnout] is performance, because you can be very passionate about something but very bad at it. I'm very passionate about guitars, but I suck. So, that’s two different things. You can be very good at it and not be passionate as well, the opposite. I'm very good at whatever, but I'm not super passionate about it. We see people with natural talent. So, the beauty is to combine both, to love something and to be very good at something. Again, being a good dentist by itself will make you want to continue to be a dentist. But that's not enough, because I mentioned the example of colleagues that are very good, and they are struggling emotionally, and they're tired. So, just performing very well is not enough.” (26:10—27:11)

“What I saw in my father when it comes to performance — being good is a given. You have to be good. Right? But the plus comes from being open-minded to reinvent your performance. It’s the beginner's mind. That's the lesson I learned from him, the beginner's mind. There's a beautiful Buddhist description of the beginner's mind and why, as we become good at something, we stop learning. And the key is to always learn. Become very good at something and continue to learn. That means that even if you are a master at something, you need to pretend you're not. You need to pretend you are a beginner. When you're listening to others, when you're going to a lecture, when you're listening to your assistant, when you're listening to your technician, pretend you are a beginner. Take your super expert hat off and put your beginner's hat on. And just by mentalizing and pretending you're a beginner, you already listen in a different way.” (27:12—28:28)

“Listen to learn. This is something that I learned because I was always very good at answering. I missed many opportunities in my life to learn because I was listening to...