Episode #517: The Modern Comprehensive Mindset, with Dr. Christian Coachman

In today’s competitive world of dentistry, you need to think comprehensively. But what does it mean to have a modern comprehensive mindset? To explain what it truly means and how it can reinvent your practice, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Christian Coachman, pioneer of the Digital Smile Design methodology and founder of Digital Smile Design. Today, there is no room to be an average dentist! To learn how to differentiate yourself and become a “three-star Michelin dentist”, listen to Episode 517 of The Best Practices Show!

Episode Resources:

• Dr. Coachman’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christiancoachman
• Dr. Coachman’s social media: @chriscoachman
• Digital Smile Design: https://digitalsmiledesign.com
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Main Takeaways:

Stop practicing biased dentistry.

Understand the two pillars of DSD.

Everything starts with mindset and vision.

Great planning is what leads to great outcomes.

Create small plans that you can follow through with.

Comprehensive dentistry can only exist with teamwork.

Stay humble and always embrace your beginner’s mindset.

Quotes:

“The modern comprehensive mindset is important] because the future of dentistry belongs to the comprehensive thinkers. We know dentistry is becoming more and more competitive. Things are changing drastically, everybody says, and that's true. We are going through a disruption in dentistry. Consumer behavior is changing. Solutions for clinical execution are changing. And the corporate dental world is changing. So, dentists need to basically understand that there will be no room for average practice owners. Either you're going to become extremely special and different, or corporate dentists will take over whatever you do.” (7:21—8:17)

“What I call the three-star Michelin restaurant idea, the three-star Michelin dental office idea, is exactly like in the restaurant business. In the past 20, 30, 40 years, we had all these neighborhood family restaurants that were pretty good, and people would go and eat there. They're mainly gone since chains of restaurants that in the past were just cheap, bad food learned how to do very, very good, fancy food as well with a nice ambiance, nice environment, nice experience. And it took over that whole middle part of the industry, leaving only space for the Michelin chefs to keep their freedom and keep their individuality and keep their business going. So, as a practice owner, I believe that you need to make a choice. Do you want to become a Michelin-star dentist, or do you want to just work for a corporation? And there's no right or wrong, but that's what I see.” (8:17—9:27)

“To become this unique, special place, the main change is related to this new comprehensive thinking process. You need to think comprehensively. You need to build a comprehensive team. You need to do comprehensive diagnoses. You need to document the patient in a comprehensive way. You need to improve your first appointment to become comprehensive, research about that human being sitting in front of you. You need to expand your vision.” (9:28—10:00)

“We do what I call biased dentistry. 99.9999999% of dentistry done is biased. What I mean with biased dentistry is a dentist that sees a patient on a first appointment and sees what they like the most and what they want to see. And human beings are not fragmented like that. You don't have an aligner patient. You don't have a veneer patient. You don't have an implant patient. You have a human being that, on the first appointment, deserves a comprehensive report, a comprehensive diagnosis, a comprehensive treatment plan. And afterwards, understand exactly what they need.” (10:00—10:41)

“There's also “comprehensive” [as in] understanding the patient experience, how you change people’s priorities. How do you become special in people’s imagination? How do you differentiate yourself? How do you create perceived value? The key is, how do you position yourself, positioning comprehensively, position yourself as the comprehensive doctor in town? That is the shortcut to success in the next 10 years. How can you position yourself, brand yourself, spread the word that you are the comprehensive dental practice in town? Of course, there are other ways to achieve success. But I can guarantee that this is a very smart way to guarantee success in the next decade.” (10:44—11:33)

“We can talk about fancy, modern digital technologies. We can talk about fancy treatments, sophisticated surgeries. We can talk about new tools to develop new things. But at the end of the day, it starts with the mindset. You need to ignite this passion to challenge yourself. You need to reinvent yourself. You need to have enough motivation to say, ‘Okay, I'm a good dentist. I'm doing okay. I'm happy with my work. I'm proud of my work. But that's not enough. I want to find a more meaningful way to do dentistry.’” (12:17—13:03)

“What we do, it’s already meaningful, yes. Every dentist doing a good job should be proud. But how can we become even more meaningful — meaningful to ourselves, meaningful to our staff, meaningful to our patients? How can we go deeper? How can we become more vital? How can we make the real difference in people’s lives? People say, ‘Okay. I did 10 veneers, and my patient is smiling better, and I made a difference in their life.’ Yes, you did. But could you make an even bigger difference? The 10-veneer, cute, superficial smile is great. But how can dentistry become more meaningful? How can you really change, long-term, somebody’s life?” (13:13—13:59)

“There are so many amazing things that a dental team can do to a patient in changing people’s lives and not be stuck with what I call camouflage dentistry — superficial, camouflage dentistry, not understanding the hidden problems, not understanding the real problems of the patient, and not expending our toolbox to really address what needs to be addressed. And everything else starts to become much more relevant in our life as a dentist. And with this type of dentistry, I believe you never get tired of dentistry.” (13:59—14:46)

“That is one of the biggest bottlenecks that I see in this process of becoming a real comprehensive care provider, is building a comprehensive team, and inspiring and motivating this comprehensive team. And that is basically leadership and communication skills. We don't learn that in dental school. As I say, modern comprehensive dentistry is a team sport, different than dentistry in the recent past. It’s a team sport. When doctors come to me and say, ‘Christian, I'm a comprehensive dentist,’ I say, ‘No, you're not. Because that doesn't exist, our comprehensive teams.’ You may say, ‘I'm a leader of a comprehensive dental team.’ But by yourself, you cannot be a modern comprehensive dentist, the same way that you can't be a digital dentist. There are no digital dentists. There are digital teams.” (15:18—16:28)

“Comprehensive, digital dentistry only exists with teamwork. And that's completely different than the way we did dentistry historically, where the dentist was doing everything. And so, of course, you had an assistant. You would refer a patient to an orthodontist. But that's not modern teamwork. The level of teamwork I'm talking about is when you see a super, super, top sports team working together and delivering something together. That's the type of work that we need to bring into dentistry to deliver this type of dentistry.” (16:29—17:06)

“Comprehensive treatment planning and unique emotional patient experience — these are the pillars of DSD.” (19:54—20:01)

“Comprehensive treatment planning is pillar number one. But pillar number two is as important, and that is the patient experience, the perception of value. So, pillar number one is how to deliver more value. Pillar number two is how to make people value that you're delivering more value. Because one thing is to be great. And the other thing is to be seen as great. One thing is to be very good. The other thing is to make people value that you're completely different. So, if you're going to invest in this very challenging journey of reinventing your practice, to really move into comprehensive oral care, somebody has to pay for it. And the patient is the one that has to pay for it. And they happily pay for it if they see the value.” (20:22—21:15)

“We call DSD where great dentistry meets great business. So, it has to be great dentistry first. Because, above all, we are ethical, and we are focused on the patients. We love ideas that can allow us to deliver better dentistry, but at the same time, allow us to have a better business. Not every strategy brings both. Unfortunately, many doctors out there are focusing on the business, not on the patient. We don't like that. We don't want that. But many doctors out there do their best on the dentistry, and not necessarily getting the best on the business. So, we love ideas and strategies that can bring these two worlds together where great dentistry meets great business.” (21:22—22:15)

“We see that every dentist is doing great today. And sometimes, unfortunately, even dentists that are not very good clinically are doing great. They're basically doing great, business wise, because they are creating this unique experience and developing strategies to make people value what they do. And you see on Instagram, or you hear about dentists that make a lot of money because they're mastering the process of making people come to them and making people love what they do. Because it’s very hard for patients to actually evaluate how good they are as a dentist. Patients will evaluate everything else, and then decide that they are good dentists because of everything else. But the strategies are probably not that organized in terms of how to create a five-star dental practice experience for the patients, how to create the three-star Michelin restaurant experience in a dental practice. But we see people talk more and more about that.” (22:44—23:59)

“The first pillar that may sound, initially, as the one under control is actually the one that is not under control. When it comes to comprehensive treatment planning, first, treatment planning is much more difficult than clinical execution. And our whole industry is biased towards clinical execution. Meaning, courses, conferences, lectures, books, articles, R&D, software, technologies, systems, techniques, equipment, instruments — everything is driven to help dentists perform better dentistry. But our problem is not there. Our problem is before performing dentistry. It’s decision-making, diagnosing, and treatment planning. When we know exactly what the patient needs, it’s easier to perform. So, we see that all over the world where we can find many more great clinicians than great treatment planning.” (24:01—25:07)

“For me, the number-one problem of dentistry, by far, is decision-making. Dentists all over the world, even the very good ones, are making poor decisions every day. We can make better decisions. We need better systems to make better decisions. And it’s not standardized. Dentistry is very unprofessional when it comes to diagnosis and treatment planning decision-making. There are no books about it. There's very little know-how on standardization. And I usually say that may be why medicine doesn't take dentistry that seriously. That's maybe why if you send a patient to 10 different good dentists, you're going to come back with 10 different diagnoses, 10 different treatment plans, 10 different estimates. That's how much room for improvement we have in this area. And our focus is, what are the strategies that can help a dentist make consistent, better decisions when it comes to diagnosis and treatment planning.” (26:07—27:15)

“Our great Peter Dawson said many, many times, ‘If you know where you want to go, it’s easier to get there.’” (27:36—27:43)

“The quality of an outcome is only as good as the quality of the plan. Because there's no magic. You cannot just, poor planning, great outcome. Maybe once in a lifetime, you get lucky. Once a year, you get lucky. But the quality of the outcome of a treatment can only be as good as the quality of the plan. The seed is planning. Planning means diagnosis, tee communication, treatment planning, risk assessment, what are the options, making better decisions. So, you don't see that. You go to conferences, and nobody talks about it. Everybody talks about the clinical execution. Very few talk about decision-making.” (27:47—28:32)

“It doesn't matter how much you change. It doesn't matter the speed of change. What matters is that you're moving. You have to move, one step at a time. Don't be stuck. That's the beauty. Don't compare yourself. Don't feel like you're falling behind. No, it’s about moving and enjoying the journey every day, a little bit better.” (29:03—29:25)

“I want to hire the right people. I want to train the right people. I want to do the blueprint with the architect. I want to design the whole experience. I want to buy the right technology. Can we start from scratch, ideally? Yes, we can. Is that possible for 99.9% of people? No. So, what you need to do is to create a transition strategy, a plan. I call it a five-year plan. You build a five-year plan where you create your vision first, and then you reverse-engineer your strategies and you create steps.” (29:45—31:13)

“We know life is not easy. Dentistry is not easy. Building a successful career is not easy. But we cannot feel overwhelmed. We need to keep the excitement, the vision, and the motivation.” (31:49—32:02)

“Everything starts with the vision. You need to have a vision for yourself, regardless of if you're a young graduate, if you just bought a practice, you're already a mature practice owner, or you are already planning your exit strategy. It doesn't matter where you are. I love the idea of having a five-year plan. So, starting with the question, where do you want to be in five years, that's, for me, the key. You close your eyes; you need to know where you want to be. Even though we know that we may not get there, ever, or not in five years, or we’re going to get somewhere else building these plans, building the vision creates the energy to move. So, you have to have this vision.” (32:03—32:58)

“Don't create plans that are too overwhelming because you're not going to fulfill them in one or three months. You're going to get mad at yourself and you're going to quit. It’s exactly like we do when we say we’re going to go to the gym, and we’re going to look amazing, and this and that. We sabotage ourselves and end up, if we don't go for a while, we say, ‘Ah, that's not for me.’ I'm going to try to find an excuse and build my happier life without going to the gym. And that's who we are. So, we try to develop strategies where you can collect these early victories. I think the early victories are underrated. People don't talk enough about how to create strategies that allow people to almost have 100% guaranteed early victories.” (33:02—33:58)

“I think that the key here is to be humble, to keep our beginner’s mind. I've been working with so many great clinicians, and I'm very proud of the work that I did with these great professionals. But there's so much room for improvement, always. We have to reinvent dentistry, and we have the tools to do it. And to do that, we need to put aside everything that we’re already very good at and pretend for a moment that we are beginners. As they call it, beginner’s mind. And when you think as a beginner, everything is possible.” (38:26—39:12)

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

3:33 Dr. Coachman’s background.

7:10 The modern comprehensive mindset, explained.

11:47 Why it starts with mindset.

14:46 Comprehensive dentistry can only exist with teamwork.

17:20 The evolution of DSD.

19:47 The two pillars of DSD.

22:15 Work on the second pillar.

27:15 The seed is the planning.

28:36 Can you start this process from scratch?

31:14 Feed your energy and your motivation.

34:46 Learn to practice emotional dentistry.

36:30 About DSD Day.

38:18 Last thoughts on the modern comprehensive mindset.

Dr. Christian Coachman Bio:

Combining his advanced skills, experience, and technology solutions, Dr. Christian Coachman pioneered the Digital Smile Design methodology and founded Digital Smile Design company (DSD). Since its inception, thousands of dentists worldwide have attended DSD courses and workshops, such as the renowned DSD Residency program.

Dr. Coachman is the developer of worldwide, well-known concepts such as the Digital Smile Design, the Pink Hybrid Implant Restoration, the Digital Planning Center, Emotional Dentistry, Interdisciplinary Treatment Simulation, and Digital Smile Donator.

He regularly consults for dental industry companies, developing products, implementing concepts, and marketing strategies, such as the Facially Driven Digital Orthodontic Workflow developed in collaboration with Invisalign, Align Technology.

He has lectured and published internationally in the fields of esthetic and digital dentistry, dental photography, oral rehabilitation, dental ceramics, implants, and communication strategies and marketing in dentistry.