How Dental School Let You Down (And How to Fix it!) – IC019

Jaz’s Introduction:
Hello, Protruserati. I’m Jaz Gulati and welcome to this interference cast. I’ve got Dr. Paul Goodman from Philadelphia, USA. He runs this amazing community called Dental Nachos. Just a great resource of positivity in dentistry, and so much help and courses for dentists all over the world. It will be so obvious to you from our conversation, his enthusiasm and his great analogies and way of communicating. I’m just a huge fan of Paul Goodman. And I love the theme that we discuss, you know, how dental school let you down. Now please, please, please. I have so many colleagues are working in dental schools and I’m well connected with dental schools. Listen, we are not bashing dental schools. Okay, we are not bashing dental schools. We are merely just raising a few real world points that perhaps, perhaps in some areas of dentistry, and maybe even clinical experience that there was a little bit of a shortfall. Now it’s okay. It’s alright. We get it. We understand why okay? There’s only so much dental school can fulfill and it takes you back to being on orthodontic clinic and one of the tutors goes to me, she goes tp me, Jaz, did you learn to drive before passing a driving test? Or after passing a driving test? And I’ve only recently got my license, I was like Well, I think afterwards because I still really don’t know how to drive yet properly. So it’s just same in dentistry, okay? Dental school will give you that certificate, will give you that license to drill. But actually how you communicate with patients, how you can formulate really good treatment plans that are appropriate, how you can get your hands skills to whether you want them to be where they need to be. That takes time, devotion, mentorship, and it is universal, that we have to learn that once we qualify. That kind of process is only enhanced and fast tracked through good mentorship and being around good people in dentistry. And let me tell you what Dr. Paul Goodman is a good person in dentistry. Let’s listen to the interview.

Main Interview:

[Jaz]
Paul Goodman, Dr. Paul Goodman from the USA from the Dental, from the nachoverse. How are you?

[Paul]
I’m doing awesome Jaz, really thrilled to be talking with you. I love this topic. I love that you’re out sharing knowledge. I mean, all of your listeners and listeners of podcasts everywhere I was listening to a podcast in the walk over should just be grateful that we have so much content to learn literally while we’re walking around, getting coffee, in our ear. So I really really admire what you do.

[Jaz]
I just pointed out for those of you who are listening right now not watching this also goes up on YouTube, as you guys know, but those listening right now, I’ve got Paul in front of me. He is doing a wonderful job professional mic. He’s got his Nacho Hoodie. I’ve got my Protrusive Hoodie, and he’s on the walking treadmill. And I’ve also got my walking treadmill but I’m not using it. But already that’s a huge similarity I found there. The other similarity I found it between us is you having this amazing community, the dental Nacho community, which I want everyone to check out and what a wonderful job you’re doing, your community is just so much energy, so much activity going on. So I can only aspire for my community to become like yours one day, so brilliant. And the other thing is that the kind of things that we’re talking about is A) trying to uplift our profession, trying to really get everyone thinking all the positive, but B) being down to earth and actually reflecting on dental school as an experience. So that’s very much the topic we’re covering today. Just tell us for those people, perhaps in the UK, in the world who haven’t heard of the nacho verse before dental nachos, how that came to be and what you stand for?

[Paul]
Well, like most good ideas, I have my wife to thank for the name. I have myself to thank for my obsession slash passion with Mexican food. So I was a restaurant server at 19, 24 years ago for a corporate Mexican place in New Jersey. I learned so much there about systems, working as a team how to treat customers so it was a wonderful experience. I always loved, I also was a little I was the kid, Jaz, that when you this how it works in the US. I don’t know in the UK I don’t know how simple when you sat down at a Mexican restaurant. When I was a kid they would immediately give you free chips and salsa. So I love that you could have food before you had the food right? There’s a South Park joke on that. So I thought to myself, I want to make a group I do a lot of different things. I’m a dentist down to practices. I’m a speaker, I’m a broker. I’ll have a like a lot of toppings. So let’s name it dental nachos. And then really the metaphor in the analogy you know if you if you do get a dental nachos swag, we’ll send it to you someone’s gonna say oh hey Jaz what’s dental nachos, right? They’ll say that the gym, they’ll stay at a coffee shop say it’s like a Mr. Rogers Neighborhood for dentist because dentist need help being nice to each other. They’re nice to patients. And I always say dentists are very good with patients, not as good with people because dental school makes us very, very weird. I really believe this Jaz. When my friends who I’m friends with today, we’re doing finance and business, and HR, we were in a basement burning ourselves with wax trying to make a tooth. And I think that we didn’t develop the skills, ages 22 to 26, 23 to 28, where social developments feels like my best friend works in finance in New York, when he was 25. Jaz, he was standing with a glass of wine at 11pm at some sort of networking event next to a guy who made $10 million. And his boss said, You got to talk to that guy. So they had to figure that out. So that’s where not just came about a place where we can learn, share, have fun, work on our business, have uncomfortable conversations with respect, buy things, you know, I have made it kind of like a 24/7 virtual exhibit, we have sponsors. So you don’t have to buy anything like a free part. But you can if you want. So that’s the nacho verse for you.

[Jaz]
Well, I’ll put the link for everyone to join. So if you haven’t checked out the dental nachos group and the community and the website, you must check it out. So you can obviously hear or watch Paul’s enthusiasm and his passion and the way he explains things is just brilliant. I’m a huge fan. And I read a lot of your stuff, and I watched all your stuff. And the common theme, which can be the theme of the podcast we’re covering today is how dental school let us down. Now, I hope that you agreement that this, we’re not making this to, I don’t know, hold up a grudge against dental schools or trying to point blame finger at them. There are certain circumstances that dental schools have to you know, be complicit with that leads to the kind of downfalls but really, I think the, I hope you agree, Paul, that the reason for doing this is to make essentially dentist realize that we have the shortcomings, but what we can do after dental school to make up for it. Would you agree with that?

[Paul]
I totally agree such a great point, I get known a little bit as being I say just be nice jbn, which is about being nice to your colleagues about if somebody decides to do a crown when you would have done a large filling, don’t call them the worst dentist in the world. Don’t make fun of them. But JBR is just be real. And being real is taking a look at what’s happening to in the dental school world. Taking a look at the lack of fundamental skills that dentists are getting in dental school for surviving and thriving. I’m a big I have to say I have the most amazing parents. They’re not alive right now. But they’re amazing parents, but they lied to me Jaz, you want to know why they lied to me?

[Jaz]
Yes, absolutely.

[Paul]
Because they, there was this theme. Instead of parenting. I have two awesome children. If you work hard enough, you can do anything you want, right? If you work hard enough, you can be anything you want to be. Well, I wanted to play professional basketball in the NBA. And that dream did not come true. So I joke with my parents, grew up without my parents. So what I share is if you played basketball, and you went to basketball school for four years, and they only taught you about dribbling, never taught you about passing and say when you’re going to learn about passing, you’re going to figure that out later. Well, when you get into the game in the real world, and you don’t have passing skills, or shooting skills or playmaking skills or defensive skills or what to do when the ball gets turned over. You become your morale goes down, your ability to to help patients go down. So I just really try to be a voice in a kindly, annoying way. One of my things is I kindly annoy people, my wife might say I regularly annoy people. But one of my best friends Dr. Todd Fleischman. He’s been our podcast. He’s a teacher, speaker for us. He’s done Kois, he’s done Spear. He’s amazing dentist, but even more amazing human being. Early on in dental nachos. I kindly annoyed him to become a speaker because I said you have to share this talent, Todd, and he goes, I don’t want to do it. And I say I don’t care. We’re gonna kindly annoy you to do it. So he’s always said, the more Paul Goodman kindly annoys you, the less annoyed you’ll be yourself.

[Jaz]
Excellent. I love that basketball analogy. And I think we there’s so many different ways that we can run with that analogy. And one way we’ve already touched upon is the communication aspect. Like, you know, being that little basement waxing up compared to our peers doing other subjects, we’re getting different kinds of real world experiences, more interactive with people who are not just in their own sort of, you know, economy, I guess, so it’s great to draw that comparison. But let’s draw in on another tangent here, which is the clinical skills itself. I mean, you you obviously in US, the tuition fees are astronomical compared to the UK. And one of the themes I get is that okay, I just paid all this money and so much debt, yet I only did X number of procedures. In the UK, I want to learn from you because we do have an episode about comparing UK and US but it’s one learn from you that in the UK nowadays, obviously because a pandemic has affected it as well. A dentist can graduate having done one molar root canals, or maybe two or three crowns. So how does that compare to, you know, you’re very much in tune

[Paul]
Exactly, it’s very much the same, even worse, some schools doing none so I will use another analogy I’ve learned a lot about analogies for teaching. So over this summer, we had a party for my seven year old at a place called primping play, it was where all these girls and guys can get, the young kids can get stuff done. So I’ll just use the example when I bought pizza for that party. And there was 12 Kids, if I only bought enough pizza for eight kids, I’m going to have four disappointed kids, right? So using this analogy with dental schools, if they accept more students than what they have clinical procedures for those students to learn, they are literally going to mess up their lives, they’re literally going to cause emotional problems. Because right now they are giving degrees to dental students. One of the things I thought during the pandemic, Jaz and I don’t know Scotland did this. But as soon as the pandemic happened, I said they should stop taking dental students for a year, skip a whole year of taking students. Now I do not know the economics of higher education. I do not understand if that makes places shut down. But what I saw was, the people graduating during the pandemic, through no fault of their own, got even less experience than what was already a problematic experience when I went. My dad was a dentist, who I work with for 11 years before he passed away. He said to me, Paul, private practice isn’t going anywhere, do a GPR, get as many skills as you can, you can never learn too much early. But What’s unfair Jaz is a GPR, AEGD, that’s extra training for the US. Dental students are paying for four years of school to get a degree in general dentistry, that if you want to use an analogy, like drinks at a bar, it’s watered down, it’s debilitated. It’s not what they paid for. And I believe that this is going to cause an enormous crisis in our industry, I believe it’s going to cause a mental health crisis. I believe it’s going to cause a practice transition crisis. I think if you are a dentist on Earth, who’s working, unless you’re retired, it’s gonna affect you. And even if you’re retired, you still need a good dentist, right? So I think these awesome young students to no fault of their own, and also what I think is cool about dentistry, as people start when they’re 35. So they’re not necessarily always young in age, right? They have been misled as to what the dental school experience is going to provide them to be able to use their career successfully.

[Jaz]
So how can we, what advice can we give to that young dentist who maybe has just come out of dental school, and they realize that they’re, you know, doing a cramp operation makes him nervous, doing extractions, scares them, because they did not get the backup of the procedures didn’t get the mentorship that they deserved? And they were all that while during dental school that you touched on this, they had mental health challenges, nervous breakdowns? Because they were trying to oh my god, am I gonna qualify? Am I gonna graduate? Because I only had X number of canals on the systems, they finally got through that. They’re on the other side, how can we give them some nacho, dental nacho..

[Paul]
One are the signs in my office, one of quotes is “Everything that matters needs a system and everything matters. But always make the best decision in the moment.” So you may have a system that a patient has to pay ahead of time. That’s your system. But Millie comes in. And she’s a great patient, and she’s had a personal crisis. And for whatever reason she didn’t bring her credit card. Well, maybe in that moment, it’s best to let Millie go, right? I’m just using an example. So back to, your dental, graduating in Dental School. So now, this is one of these things. So I’ve been alive for 44 years, and I’ve been through a lot of different nutritional themes in the US, right? The processed foods used to be good for you now it’s not good. Maybe it was never good for you. But they made it seem like it was good. Eat whole foods. But have you heard that like, there’s such thing as good fats, right? But I’m in the 30s like good fats, avocado, right? So I’m like, I guess I could eat is you could eat good fats to be less fat, let’s say. So back to these dental students. That’s uncomfortable. For someone who’s grew up in the 80s. I still don’t feel totally comfortable when they say oh, you can eat these good fats. It feels weird to me, right? So when you have a lot of debt, I know it feels weird. You must invest more money in time into stuff that really matters. One of my friends, Lincoln Harris, who was on Ripe, you should interview him. He has an 80,000 member

[Jaz]
I already have Paul, and he’s the one who introduced me to you believe it.

[Paul]
He and I spent time in Philadelphia, we think a lot of like. Lincoln is a phenomenal dentist much, much, much, much higher clinical level dentistry. So for example, Lincoln put together this program where anyone from around the world can learn in their operatory. And maybe I don’t know what it cost. So maybe I’m saying too much or too little. But let’s just say that’s $10,000 for a year, but what I’m saying is okay, 20,000 a year you got to say hey, I just spent 500-, 600-, 700,000 on dental school 300, four years. I know I don’t feel like doing this, but these are the tips. These are the tools from Lincoln Harris that’s going to help me and I have to figure out a way to invest. Maybe I asked parents maybe I take out a loan because what happens is if you miss out on Fundamental dribbling, passing and shooting skills early, you may never learn that. So that’s one way. Then the other way. I’m a big fan of utilizing free resources I use them in through podcast is to really invest in how to learn to talk to people, how to learn to communicate. One of the, I do like three things well, Jaz, but one of them is being a public speaker, I’ve done training, I spoke at the DEO in front of 300 people when I got off stage, people go, you’re such a natural up there, which is ridiculous. No one’s a natural at getting up in front of 300 people. I put in so much training, and so much time, there’s a, on YouTube has been viewed millions of times how to speak by Patrick Winston, you can put in the show notes, how to speak by Patrick Winston, an MIT professor. I listened to it before every big speech I get. So it’s not about public speaking, it’s about getting your point across the people. So who do young dentists have to do that with jazz their patients in the operatory, their team, the dentist that owns the practice. So I was talking about your dental core, or your clinical hand skills, your mind skills, and your word skills. So if you’re a new dentist, use a Lincoln Harris type thing to work on those clinical skills, but combine it with both your business skills and your communication skills.

[Jaz]
That is fantastic. So we’ve covered two key key themes already, which is the lack of clinical skills, and how although the cost of dental school could be astronomical, especially in your side of the pond, is about investment so that you can come out on the other side and make up for the shortcomings. Let’s talk about the fact that the techniques that we were taught in dental school, they are very frustrating because they’re not cutting edge. And then when you come out of dental school, the first thing that my mentors taught me is Okay, forget everything that they taught you at dental school this is actually how you do it. So in this world what we navigate and like you touched on already, one dentist might say okay, do a crown other dentist might say oh, that dentist was the worst dentist in the world because he did a crown where something needed a restoration. We should be nicer. I really appreciate that sentiment. But how do you know, how, you know, who’s right, who’s wrong? How do you know which philosophy to align? Should you go Spear? Should go Pankey? Should go Kois? There’s so much noise. How does one navigate through this noise because when you come out you had limited experiences and what you were using wasn’t cutting edge.

[Paul]
So good. I want to point out, so John Kois is one of my favorite people in the world. When I was a resident, I sat the Hyndman in Atlanta, I heard him, I love how he teaches you know, patients don’t accept solutions to problems they do not have. What happens if you nothing. I had the honor of being on a stage with him. And just a funny story. So he was like my idol. I love him. He didn’t know anything about me. But I did with him the night before. And he’s such a classy individual that when he opened up this speech as the headliner first he goes, You know, I’m Dr. John Kois. I’m going to talk about occlusion. Dr. Jason Elixis. He’s going to talk about Aesthetic Dentistry. Jason litski is very good. Very good. In Florida, Gary tachiz is going to talk about practice management. And Paul Goodman is going to talk about nachos. And I just thought that was such a funny moment for me. I love that. But Kois said this so well, at that event. One dentist treatment plan of helping a patient is another dentist malpractice. And he says we have such bad standards. And it’s messing up everything. So what I would share is if you’re not learning, I always say dental school teaches MySpace of dentistry. And then you get out and no one has a MySpace account. And people go out. I don’t love this. This I think is just kooky talk Jaz when people go, you have to know how something was done. Even though we don’t do it anyway that way more. I think it’s the on the statement ever, right? The most dumb statement ever. You don’t know how, you do not need to know how MySpace works. You can know MySpace was an original social media thing. And it morphed into Facebook and I went oh, this is so like, you don’t need to know how to invest and cast a gold crown. It’s pointless. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of time. If you want to know gold was done. And maybe sometimes people use it occasionally. But you’re not going to have, I always ever showed why in dental school, would they take people who didn’t know anything. I let them play with this thing that spun around and like shot out fire. Right? I don’t know if you did that in your dental school. But we didn’t have any luck. So what dental students and new dentists need to do is just to embrace whatever they are learning in the real world and strive to discard stuff that doesn’t make sense. Keep things that do make sense. There’s dental students right now learning how to prepare a crown in a really great way at dental school, right? So keep that. There’s also dental students doing the fourth reset of a denture or an alter cast RPD which is likely going to be discarded and I just have to share it’s a very, very difficult thing. But strive to hang out with dentists who are doing the up to date things in the real world and embrace that technology.

[Jaz]
I would say, to add onto that, get exposure, get out there, shadow other dentist because you will get your eyes open to what is out there and then you’ll be able to figure out okay, what is it that really is your calling within dentistry? I mean, one of the many episodes and themes that we covered is finding your niche and I just know you’re going to have a good analogy or an answer for this. If you were to give a dentist, any dentist I don’t care how experienced they are, some advice about find out what is going to be their happy place in dentistry. Any ideas in terms of how that dentist can figure out what it is that they can really make their thing?

[Paul]
Get right. Yep, sure. I have a good one. It’s the Goldilocks thing, right? So Goldilocks said, This is too hot. This is too cold. This is just right, right? The only way for you to do this, like Gary Vee said is to taste test a lot of things. In dentistry, what I would encourage someone to do right now wherever they are in their career, but especially a dental students associate is to walk into dental offices and go up to the front desk and say Hi, my name is Dr. Paul Goodman. I’m a dentist in this area. I would love to learn more about what dentistry is like in this area. Could I take the practice owner out for lunch? Could I take the practice out for lunch? If you do bring cookies for the front desk or fruit if you do this magic will happen because I already tested this. A dental student did this and one time was offered a job on the spot by doing that.

[Jaz]
Wow. I totally get it.

[Paul]
We’re such a cave mentality. But it’s not about jobs. It’s about seeing how other people operate. So maybe someone takes every insurance and that’s for you. Maybe someone takes no insurances. I’m friends with Jason Smithson, amazing dentist, one of the best on earth just like on Lincoln. I don’t know exactly how dentists in the UK works. But seems like either people can pay out of pocket or kind of be in this government funded, you know, plan. He’s not in that. Maybe there’s merit to doing that. So go and see how other dentists practice in a kind, humble and genuine way. Because I want to share this with you. If anybody lets you into their dental office, to watch them, they’re doing you the favor. They are going out of their way. When someone comes to watch me. It’s more stressful, I have to work slower. I have a stranger in the office. But I’m doing it because I want to showcase what dentistry can be like. So if you go and ask, you’re going to get people say we’re not interested, you’re going to get people hanging up on you. But if you go into dental offices, and just say that, “My name is Dr. Paul Goodman, I’m a dentist in this area. I’m a dental student. I would love to know what dentistry is like, Could I take the practice owner out to lunch?” Just say those things and magical happen.

[Jaz]
Well said and I totally agree. And I think the opportunities are out there. And sometimes centers were shy to ask or what if I get rejected? It’s like, you know, when you’d be giving treatment plans Or what if I get rejected so I’m not going to be comprehensive? If you don’t ask, you don’t get and I think the, you have way more to lose by not messaging your peers that you respect, they can learn so much from than getting rejection, it doesn’t matter. I think I totally agree with you. What a great way to do it the way you suggested.

[Paul]
And well, you just made a point, I’ll just add just one minute of value. So Lincoln Harris is amazing at talking to patients and then amazing at doing dental care. I learned a lot about implant through my career, but I do not do the clinical things that he does. But both of us talk a lot about how to communicate with patients. And my secret to getting high case acceptance is one sentence. My secret to getting high case acceptance is one sentence. I do not care what the patient chooses in any way. I care about delivering the menu. I care about saying salsa gwoc nachos, which one sounds best to you. I say even if you decide to do nothing, we can still be friends Jaz people laugh, right? And it comes off of my body. It comes off of my energy that I do not care in the kindest way what they choose. But I care a lot about presenting all the options to them in a genuine and patient friendly way.

[Jaz]
Phenomenal value there. And I love the whole get menu, you almost, you might have missed it in, the ways that menu and the way you back it up with the food two choices. That is amazing way to relate it. And I love that. Paul, the mic is over to my friend. Do you think there’s any other major point that we haven’t covered yet that we should do to finish on in terms of how Dental School let us down but how we can overcome that? And what’s the best way to overcome that

[Paul]
Yeah, so one of my, one of the best things people have a phone and they have notes in their phone. And if you look at mine, I’m sure I’ll show you mine in a sec. You’ll see like 83 notes started because whenever I have an idea or something I want to remember I use my notes. So what I would encourage people to do in dental school is to and this is one of my consultants to make a ‘keep doing’, a ‘start doing’, and a ‘stop doing’ list. And whenever you find something like maybe you listen this podcast and I don’t tell people Jaz that their teeth fail, I say their time for their teeth to retire. So maybe you have this thing and say Paul Goodman says Don’t say fail say retired. Okay, don’t say that. You put that in the ‘start doing’. ‘Stop doing’ might be I saw my dental school instructor. Share with me that if I don’t do this this way, I’m not going to be successful and it’s some sort of thing technique from the 1950s say, I’m not going to do it that way, you could still be nice to the dental school instructor, you can still be kind, and then start doing right I’m going to find out about Lincoln’s courses, I am going to find out about how to buy practice. One thing that dental students do is they wait until it’s too late to take action. So prepare and aware yourself early. This is your career. This is what you’re going to be doing for 30 years. One of my good friends, Laura Brenner. She runs dentistry side gigs. She retired from dentistry after 10 years. And she said, I feel like dentistry is a career you marry. And buying a practice is like having a baby with a career you marry. And I’ve said that numerous times, the practice purchase is a three year old child that never grows up. I have a three year old in my house. It’s part awesome. All the time, insane. So my message to you is there’s four decisions in your life, finding a job, career, finding a job, buying a practice, hiring an associate, selling your practice, figure out how to be successful in each one of those worlds. That’s kind of my parting thoughts.

[Jaz]
I love that. And I think I’ve enjoyed the high energy, high impact value of this chat with you. Please tell us for those listening right now who haven’t come across nachos, What’s the best way to connect into the nacho verse?

[Paul]
So I’m a huge sports fan for anything. So I created an ESPN style website for dental nachos.com. So, you know, I do, I’m really, really proud and I’m really thrilled to be on this. When I do this online C course I call it Nacho-C on TV, I get dentists from India, and England, which is great, right? So I have a text code for anyone who wants to get a free C-course it’s text nachos to 2155436454, but sometimes Jaz, it doesn’t work with their cell phone. They’re so they can just email Nacho gift to salsa@dentalnachos.com So if anyone emails, Nacho gift to salsa@dentalnachos.com, we’ll send them back a free resource, they can go to dentalnachos.com I love meeting new dentists from all over Earth. And so grateful that you had me on your podcast.

[Jaz]
Amazing. Well, I’ll make sure I get that link on there. So people have a direct link to get to that email. And that phone number is definitely worth it guys, and also join the Facebook community. So much positivity, you know, there’s so much negative stuff, especially in the UK, Paul, and you’re on the dental groups. It’s a lot of negativity. But when I anytime I see something from nachos, it’s always positivity galore. So do join that guys, and check out Paul’s amazing content. And it’s great to connect with you, Paul. I’ve been following your stuff. So it’s nice to have you on the show. And our mutual friend Lincoln. His ears must be burning. Have a lovely day, my friend. And thank you so much once again for coming on the show.

[Paul]
Thanks, Jaz

Jaz’s Outro:
Hope you enjoy that little interference cast with Paul. Listen, if you want to catch any of the links that he said, any of the resources, just read the show notes and you’re like, Well, how do I read the show notes? Well, if you’re unfamiliar, it’s going to be in the YouTube description. Or if you’re listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts, you should be able to click and expand. It’s not so easy on Spotify. It’s much easier on Apple podcasts or Google podcasts. I’m not the biggest fan of Google podcast by the way. They kind of had hidden a lot of my episodes basically. So the best way to consume it is protrusive.co.uk, the app which should be out by now at the time of recording this so the app will have all the links easy for you to click onto. And of course the protrusive website. Anyway really appreciate you watching, listening all the way to the end and I’ll catch you in the next one