How Passion in Your Dental Practice Determines Success

“I think, first of all, you have to define success. The definition of success is so dependent on the individual. But I’m going to give you a quick story that I think will answer that.

I was speaking at a conference a while back, and after I spoke on passion, a dentist, he came walking up to me and he was huge. He had to be like 5’ 6”, 5’ 7”. The guy was very massive. He also had this thing called an attitude. You could see it in the walk. And he had his little posse behind him. Everybody was in pajamas. He comes walking up to me and he said these words and when he said these words, he completely blew my mind. He said, ‘You know what, if I didn’t have anything negative to say, I wouldn’t have anything to say at all.’

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And then his team — I would say his staff, because staff is an infection – his team looks at me and gives me an attitude look like, ‘Yeah, so what are you going to do about that.’ And it was this feeling like the air left the room. And then he looked at me and said, ‘What do you suggest I do?’

Well, I was filtering that day, a little bit, but I didn’t at that moment. And I looked at him and I said, ‘I suggest that you find a cubicle in the middle of the desert somewhere and maybe go stay there for the rest of your life and never communicate with another human being for the rest of your life.’

Now I know that sounds extreme. But I’m telling you, life is way too short to live it in pragmatic all the time. To be the leader of a team and think that the best way to communicate is with negatives is absolutely ridiculous. When I teach on passion and I talk about passion,it’s not a matter of just, ‘Yeah, I’m just happy.’ We don’t come into the dental practice and think it’s a therapy session.

Passion is powerful man. It’s a thing that motivates you from the inside out. It fires you up. No job is too little or too big when you are passionate. The biggest thing about a person who is passionate when it comes to the team, they don’t stab each other in the back, they watch each other’s back. Passion makes a difference in the team.”

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