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Dentists, Puns, and Money is a podcast focused on two things: The financial topics relevant to dentists leaving clinical practice and the stories and lessons of dentists who have already done so.
1. The stories of dentists who have transitioned from full-time clinical dentistry.
2. The financial topics that are relevant for dentists making that transition.
If you’re a dentist thinking about your exit from clinical, and you’d like to learn from the experiences of other dentists who have made that transition, be sure to subscribe to your favorite podcast app.
Host Shawn Terrell also dives deep into the many financial components of exiting dentistry, including tax reduction strategies and how to live off your assets.
And, we try to keep it light by mixing in a bad joke… or two.
Please note: Dentists, Puns, and Money was previously known as The Practice Growth Podcast until March 2022.
Welcome to Dentists, Puns, and Money. I am your host Shawn Terrell. And we have two guests together on today's show Dr. Karen Tindall and Dr. Laura Schwindt. Both are dentists to left clinical practice several years ago to pursue a different calling, providing total wellbeing programs for other dentists and their teams. listen in as Dr. Karen and Dr. Laura share how the achievement trap of dentistry, as they call it, can lead to unhappiness and why they also believe a healthy practice is a wealthy practice. As a reminder, our company dentist Exit Planning helps dentists leading clinical with the financial peace of that transition specifically how to reduce that massive lifetime tax bill and also how to optimize living off of your assets. If you are interested in guidance on your taxes and your income as you exit clinical schedule and initial consultation with us on our website, which is dentists exits.com. And with that introduction, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Karen Tindall and Laura Schwindt. Dr. Karen Tindall and Dr. Laura Schwindt. Welcome to this Ponza money. I'm excited to hear more about your stories and thank you each for joining me today.
Thank you so much for having us.
We're excited to be here.
This is a little bit unusual that we have two guests on the podcast but my favorite place to start is always the same. I like to hear a lil bit with the audience a little bit of the background of the guests. So maybe starting with Kieran, let's hear a bit more about kind of your journey to this point and how you've reached this current point of your career in dentistry.
So I'm originally from England, which is where the accent is going to come from. And in England, I was a family dentist before finding my way into doing orthodontics for 12 years and I love my job. I love making smiles for my patients and then in 2016 I moved the United States with my husband and my family that was my husband's job. And I didn't have a visa or work permit and I couldn't just easily transfer my qualifications of being a dentist or orthodontist over here so I got to be a stay at home mom, for the first time in my career put it that way. I've always worked. That gives me an opportunity to learn something new and I studied to become a professional life coach and stepping back from dentistry and being a life coach enabled me to see that the life that I had in dentistry was gonna be stressful, demanding was challenging. Didn't have to be that way that there were some other options of how to do life and I developed a passion for supporting people in the dental industry through coaching. And my passion matched very nicely up with Laura's passion, and I'll let you tell her let her tell you a bit of her story and then how the two of us passions together. Go ahead Laura.
It's interesting how our stories parallel and very similar, very different but very similar path. I was a longtime family dentist after several associate's associate ships opened my own practice from scratch. It was a small boutique practice and running that was a dream come true. But about five years into that adventure, I suffered extreme burnout. And I credit my very first life coach with saving my life, worked with her for about a year and turned around that feeling of burnout and completely changed the way I practice dentistry that completely changed the way I ran my office and saw some light and it was a beautiful thing. And on our last call. I said to my life coaches that I wish I could I could give this gift to all women's dentists who said you can and that stuck with me And so fast forward my husband ended up having kind of a major surgery and it shook us up a little bit. We decided to radically change our lives. We sold everything and moved across the country to the mountains, which was always a dream of ours. And that was right before COVID. And so that is when I decided to transition out of clinical practice and become a life coach so that I could follow that dream of mine and then it was early. 2020 When a dear friend of ours Ann Duffy from new produced Karen and I and we met virtually on Zoom, January of 2020. And instantly, just like we had so many similarities, so many of the same passions and missions we became instant friends and we're friends first and now business partners. So
two great stories and I hear a lot of similarities as you said that I would in your stories and that you both sort of discovered around the same time that there's more to life than dentistry and there's maybe a better way to live life within dentistry. And then you found each other and that led to your current venture together the door so it'd be a little bit more about what the mid door is and who helps.
Yeah, certainly we love talking about it is our passion so the main door has two main arms to it manufacture the first one and the lower you can take over and the second so we are very proud and it's our passion to deliver practice wellness programs to dental practices, what that means because it is a very innovative thing to do. And if it's anybody else doing this part from us, we go into practices support the practice owner, the doctor, look after the total well being of their team and also themselves so we're looking after the doctors too. And we do this through small group coaching call team in person days team coaching and one to one coaching people as well. We have been able to achieve incredible transformations and results, turnaround practices where maybe there was tensions, maybe the team are feeling frazzled and starting to burn out. And maybe practices were roles between people and teams weren't all that clear and everybody was getting stepping on each other's toes a little bit. How we can help is very varied and sort of practices that we work with that practice. You as the practice owner or the doctor genuinely care about your team. You know you want to look after them. As in any practice owner Doctor role is so much to do on a day that you maybe don't have the time that you need, you know your team needs from you just don't have that to be able to give that's where we can come in, and we will help nurture your team. We will be part of that team with you. And that's where our greatest pleasure comes from. We become part of somebody's team and we're allowed to see inside and help these practices flourish rather than struggling. So that is part one of what million dollars or maybe you could share part two
Yes. Well, part two was born through a genuine authentic conversation between Karen and I and another woman dentist over dinner. And we all three got real vulnerable and we're talking about some of the challenges we had when we practice dentistry. And at the end of that conversation, we realized that we had more in common than we had ever dreamed possible. And that through authentic, vulnerable conversations in a place where you feel safe, you can number one not feel alone. Number two, you can gather support. And number three, you can find wisdom from those that have gone through something similar to you that may have some pointers or some suggestions and that is where the membership site of the mentor idea was born. Wanted to create a space where women dentists could come and be comfortable sharing, have great conversations, connect with others and then just increase their wisdom and their feeling of togetherness in this very challenging role. And so we initially opened up the mid door membership site for women dentists. And we have since expanded it to women in health care because we recognize that we have more in common than we do not and that membership site is a place where you can choose to be there just on demand or you can choose a more intimate relationship where there's one on one coaching, group coaching that type of thing. So that is the second arm I
want to shift back in first arm and just talk a little bit more about the practice wellness program with Karen and then maybe we'll add a little bit onto the membership program with Laura as well relates to the practice wellness program and you hit on something that kind of stood out to me and that you know dentists are so busy just running the shop and seeing patients and you know rubber gloves or water supplies or you know whatever it is chasing their tail on a day to day basis. How does someone even begin to pull back and do something proactive that is better in the long run for the practice when so much of the day to day is just sort of staying alive? Yeah, verbally speaking?
Yeah, I mean, that's a great question to answer because you're right when you describe chasing your tail, and your your example of needing gloves and so it's only just from you as a dentist in practice, you wear so many hats in one day from being hopefully getting to do the job that you were trained to do. Clinical dentistry. Also people manager, you're also probably a technician that fixes equipment when it's broken. You're also somebody that's maybe an agony to help listen to problems and there is just so much going on. I think very easy to feel that you're not really devoting attention in the way that you want to to everything because you have to share it around because I wasn't the only one of you, the two of you but up there's not enough share and that your time and attention to all these things in the way that you want to look after and that's why with our practice wellbeing program, we have like different levels of how people can be involved on that practice wellbeing program. So you can just dip in and have a virtual on demand video library that you can access or it can go all the way underwater in person one to one coaching levels of how much people would want to get involved to dip your toe in. Virtual program is a great place to get started because if you have you know that you want to support your team know that you want to see your team well. You want what what is it well team don't do well well team turns up, they don't even sick. A well team is more productive, they appear are happier, and they appear happier to the patients that walk through the door. We like to say a healthy practice becomes a wealthy practice. Because when all these tasks are working well together, we'll definitely have an impact on the productivity of your practice. That's something that all dentists and practice owners I think can agree that they want is they want a practice that has weight reduction, but also happy people. So being able to know first of all that you need to do something is a key point to say Yes, I'm ready for something like this that you might be thinking I know I need something I'm just not quite sure what that's where we would suggest just dipping your toes in and doing the virtual program for your team. And we're really proud that with our virtual program, what people do is they earn themselves not in the business sense of an MBA, but you earn a WNBA for your practice. And that stands for well being aware. This is something that you can use you get a certificate for the wall or digital badge for your website, but it's something that you can then show to prospective employees to come and work for you. We're a practice that we really care about the people on our team. And also your patients are going to see that as well. Like hey, this is a practice that cares about people. current climate as
we record this in early 2023 of staffing and employee retention being such a big problem right now in dentistry, I would think that that would be a differentiator as you're trying to attract and retain really good team members for your practice. Shifting back to the membership program. You talked about sort of creating a space where not only women, dentists, but just women in health care can be and be vulnerable and share dealing with what's the response in there. What are some of the things that you've learned since you've launched that?
One of the things that I think brings me the most joy is when somebody has that realization that they're not alone. They don't have to go through the challenges alone. They can reach out to somebody that there are so many other people out there that can walk the path with them. That is one thing that we pride ourselves on is collaboration. Because none of us realized when we were practicing dentistry that we sort of had blinders on. We had no idea of the amazing people out in the world that could help us and enhance our lives. And so a big part of the membership site is bringing in those other bright lights in our industry and shining a light on what they do and how they can help as well. And bringing that information to our members. So that they can take those blinders off and say, Wow, somebody I've never thought of doing that. That's that's somebody I could reach out to and ask them questions. That has been just a beautiful part of it that I didn't realize was really going to happen. But as it has happened, just seeing that aha moment, those moments of relief when you realize, hey, you're not alone and be there's so many people to reach out to.
And you said something more to stay on you for a moment in the beginning that getting a life coach at a certain point of your career saved your life. I don't think you chose those words on accident and maybe just to talk a little bit more about you're not alone and the space that membership program provided the mentor and what's I've been able to provide for other people who maybe were suffering in silence for lack of a better way to articulate that.
I think that that's one of the most important pieces that we talk about it the more we talk about it the better but yet you need a space where people feel safe to talk. It is still really hard to take off that mask of I've got it all together. I'm doing it all you know because we are as the professionals expected to have everything in order to be prepared to know everything to have all the answers. So the more we realize that talking things through somebody that you feel safe with can lighten the load and burden some of that heavy energy and let you take off that mask for a little bit. So that you can then see that there are solutions to the challenges that you're having. There is a path. There is a different way maybe of doing things that will be for your own personal well being and the well being of the people you love and take care of.
Now getting to know both of you a little bit before we hit record on the podcast. You guys mentioned a phrase called the achievement trap of dentistry. How do you define that? And I think we're dancing around it. But how can a dentist identify if they're stuck in that trap? And I guess what are some ways that they can
come out of it? Well, we didn't have any hard statistics about number of dentists stuck in achievement traps but I would be guessing everybody was a dentist who has been at some point or still is stuck in this trap. We had dental school it was very, very good at creating protectionist training that we go through and how we develop over the course of that training turns us into people that are expecting perfect every single time just as we know in the real world. isn't possible dental school when as a student, you may have three hours to do a procedure. You can get it so that your instructor is super happy with it and you know it's pretty much perfect real world you've only got 20 minutes it's completely incomparable. But yeah, this is what we see is that so many people are then judge themselves against the standard like expectations and what they need to be doing not only in the clinical work but tonight because I completely agree turning out your best possible clinical work is a standard of care and you don't compromise that terms of everything else that goes with it. We're very good at blaming ourselves at not doing it when something doesn't go according to plan and then going home, reliving that moment, again and again and again. And that's what we've seen talking to dentists and some of the most rewarding conversations that we've had is with dentists who are seriously thinking that is dentistry, the career for them, they're upset, and they don't know where to turn because they spent so much money becoming a dentist, all they've ever known, they feel that they don't have any other skills. They genuinely love patients and they love what they do. But things stuck in this achievement gap as we call it for them really, really difficult. And that's when some of the most beautiful Transformations is when we've talked to dentists who are thinking, I just can't get out of this. You have to do something else. And actually when we've been able to help them through conversations and strategies and goals and different approach to turn around for them, and we just had an email just this week from a dentist that we helped. And Dennis was so pleased with how life had turned around for them because they had started to see things from a different angle. Interesting, thank
you for for sharing and for diving deeper into that I've noticed and became acquainted or become acquainted in the last several months to a year that this is a big problem within dentistry. And as a result, there are companies and people and consultants that are sort of in a similar general area as you guys with the mentor in trying to help dentists be happier within their career and helping them deal with burnout, in some cases, trying to avoid the achievement trap. This is sort of a backdrop and a lead up. Who do you guys work best with and sort of what is the differentiator in terms of personality types? That's gonna be the best fit for Karen and Laura and the mentor?
That's a great question. And I think that when we think about somebody, so much of this kind of goes back to the achievement treadmill, in dentistry, it's easy to start moving towards someone else's definition of success and start going down paths that aren't home to you. And I think that when somebody starts feeling that disconnect, like they're not they don't feel themselves, parents that maybe they're starting to doubt whether they even want to be in dentistry anymore. They're starting to feel that prickliness inside that there Something's just not right. And they want to know what that is a perfect person to start working with us because we love to do is we love to through like parents and questions, strategies, techniques, really dig into what's important to that individual. What are their values? Is there a definition of success? Can they work towards that and get back to that person that feels joy that feels fulfillment, and is comfortable knowing that they're walking their path?
That's been? Absolutely. Laura's disclosure was eloquent. It was it was great. I think what we do that complements the way we work with people is that you can work with anybody who has that Inkling. We do it in quite a unique way to everything that we do. And this is one of my favorite words. Nora has adopted it too. Now. Everything that we do is bespoke. So it's about English when it's talking about Old English with everybody tells me English people speak a little bit old fashioned this way It means custom made made to order tailor made. Everything that we do with our clients is tailor made them their practice, so there's no cookie cutter. This is Karen and Laura system. What they're going to bring to your practice is going to be specifically for your practice. So no do dentists have the same program going on? Because we really believe that our clients, their dentists and teams that we work with, they are the experts in practice, know what works well. I have the pleasure and the privilege of working very closely with practice management consultants. We differ from what a practice management consultant does. So UK because we often hear this one thing people say, Oh, I love what you do, but I'm working with a consultant at the moment. That in a way now becomes music to our ears because we know in the relationships we have in practices where somebody already has a practice management consultant, the great things that that consultant is doing and bring in a practice wellness program. Instead of just having let's say x amount of benefit, you're gonna get x plus y and it's gonna be even better. So everything is individual. That's why we are able to adapt how we work with many different types that as long as that it's that that feeling goes first, then personality wise practice style, because it's more that doesn't matter because we will craft something that works for that team.
And I can relate to in my business and by industry, so such good stuff. There. We've covered some really interesting ground is there anything that we haven't hit on that you feel would be important to mention today as we start to wrap things up for either of you. I
think that the one of the things that I'd like to share and just encourage is that there is so many that can help and really it is finding the fit for you. I think that that's the most important and knowing that discovering that right fit is is part of the process. And so we love to encourage anybody that's that's looking to do something to make a change, to explore a new path to really explore the people that can help on that path and know that that's what we want for you too. You want the right fit for people that
sounds like it might be the right fit for them. What's the best way to get in touch with you guys to take that first step to start to explore whether it is a fit?
You can find us our website is an indoor dotnet we love hanging out on Instagram. At the middle club. We also have a Facebook page but a Facebook group as well, which is a mental club. You can find us basically on LinkedIn, we also have a LinkedIn too. So we hang out on social media from time to time we are mindful not to spend too much time on it fitting in with the whole concept of well being. But yeah, find us drop us an email at the middle club@gmail.com reach out in any way Lauren I love having conversations and if we can have a virtual coffee chat with somebody it brightens our day. We love learning about the people the world who are out there in dentistry, hearing their stories and learning about them and then thinking how can we best support
that person? Like to end on a light note the name of the podcast is anticipations and money what either of you like to take a shot at your your Best Worst dental joke.
Okay, well, I have a dental note and I tested it out on my six year old niece. This is the level of the joke it is simple, because I'm not tend to tend to be very good at remembering. So my joke is what is a dentist favorite dinosaur?
Is a dentist's favorite dinosaur. I have a five year old son who loves dinosaurs, so I'm gonna share this with him, but I do not know the answer. I'm ready for the punch. The
answer is a sloths the Raptor was a raptor. It sounds like it could be a dinosaur. There's a loss around that. So I think it's something along those lines.
It's a Philosoraptor velociraptor. We know that because as I said my five year old has punch cards with like 97 different species of dinosaurs that have no memory so that's awesome.
My niece is a dinosaur excellent job, so I thought I would test that when she liked it.
It reminds me and I didn't think I had one but it reminded me of one is speaking of floss.
What do you call a bear who doesn't floss? Do not know what you call it barely doesn't floss, a gummy bear.
Very good. That is. That's awesome. I love it. All right. Well, thank you very much. That is Dr. Karen Tindall and Dr. Laura Schwindt, dentists and co founders of the mentor Dr. Karen. Dr. Laura, thank you for sharing your stories for sharing your wisdom and for being guests on dentists puns and money.
Thank you for having us. Thank you.
Thanks for listening and following along. Are you a dentist nearing your retirement from clinical or have you already hung up your handpiece? Would you like a treatment plan for the financial components of your exit from clinical? Our company that does exit planning helps dentists like you reduce taxes in retirement and optimize how to best live off your assets including the ideal time for you to start taking Social Security. If you'd like guidance on those critical pieces or just a second opinion, schedule an initial consultation with us on our website. Our web address is dentists exit.com, and there's no obligation for your initial consultation at website again, dentists exit.com. As a reminder, Dentist Exit Planning and Terrell advisors LLC is a registered investment advisor. The information presented should not be interpreted or construed as investment, legal tax financial planning or wealth management advice. It does not substitute for personalized investment or financial planning from dentist Exit Planning or Terrell advisors LLC. Please consult with your accountant and attorney for tax and legal advice. This podcast conveys the views and opinions of Sean Terrell and his guests and the information herein should not be considered a solicitation to engage in a particular investment tax planning or financial planning strategy. information presented is for educational purposes only. And past performance is not indicative of future results.