After We’ve Beat COVID-19: Dentistry’s Future

Rolando Mia, from Zyris, hosts a video series focused on the latest news, topics, and conversations happening in dentistry featuring dentists across the nation. Dr. Mark Hyman, DDS, MAGD and Top 100 ranked speaker by Dentistry Today made an appearance on our series to discuss how dentists can prepare for the future of dentistry after we’ve beat COVID-19.

Watch this video to learn the following:

• • Aerosol management in relation to COVID-19
  • Ways to stay in touch with patients and employees during this time
  • Education and learning platforms to get ahead of the curve
  • Importance of continuous HVE
  • The aftermath of COVID-19 relating to dentistry

Transcript

Rolando Mia:

Good Afternoon, Dr. Mark Hyman – what a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Here we are with Zyris. My name is Rolando and we have a wonderful special guest here. Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr. Mark Hyman is a dentist first and foremost, but he’s also probably one of the most inspirational dentists that I’ve met in addition to having been in practice almost 30 plus years. He’s also one of the “Top 100 Dentists” chosen by or selected by Dentistry Today and lectures all over the country.

In addition, he’s a professor at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, which is not where I went to. I went to Wake Forest, but we’re not going to talk about that. I notice all the Chapel Hill paraphernalia that’s sitting back there, but that’s okay.

The purpose of this is to basically spend some time with Dr. Mark and get his insights into a lot of things that are going on here and speak to him because he’s so knowledgeable and he spent a lot of time. Before we begin, how are you sir? Are you safe? Is everything good? How are you feeling?

Looking Back at the Challenges We’ve Beat in History

Dr. Mark Hyman:

Great. I’m extremely grateful. I just was talking to my coach here, my mentor, Dr. Cathy Jameson from Oklahoma and we were counting all the good we have in our life. So much of what we see going on in the media and talking to people is who’s lost their job and who’s died, and who’s on ventilators.

It has been the most difficult agonizing time for our country and for our world. The message that I’ve tried to say to folks, Ro is, “This too shall pass.” We’re going to beat this thing. We’re going to get out of this and we’re going to be better than ever. I’m very grateful. I’m lucky I married way above myself. I have three kids. My middle child, my oldest daughter was supposed to get married in a few weeks so we had to move it back to labor day, which is fine. You know, we’ll just deal with this. Everybody will, it’ll be that much more of a gratifying party I hope. Or if we can’t do it then we’ll figure it out.

I was going to say those of us with a few gray hairs, I look at you Ro. I’m not supposed to mention hair. I started dental school in 1980, Ro. Prime interest rate was 19%. I remember 1987 Black Monday when the stock market dropped 23% in one day. I remember both space shuttles blowing up. I remember the horror of 9/11. I remember 2000 the.com bubble burst, the 2008 real estate crashed. At each of those moments, I remember thinking, “The world is over. How could anything ever get worse?” And you know what? We got through it.

We’re Americans, we’re citizens of the world. We’ll figure this thing out. For us in the dental profession, we’re going to come back better than ever. There’s no question in my mind. We just have to forward thinking and positive and we’re going to beat this thing.

Ro, I’m honored to be here again. Love having a Wake Forest grad. Wake Forest is everybody’s second favorite team and you know we love Wake Forest people cause you need someone to work for you. So, Gorgeous campus. Love Wake forest. So glad to be here today. Thanks for having me.

Rolando Mia:

What I’d like to do is I’d like to spend a couple of minutes with you. I’ve seen so many of your presentations and what’s amazing to me is how inspirational you are. You inspire dentists, dental assistants, hygienists to do more, to be more, to really love this profession.

To your point, given everything that’s going on, definitely with COVID-19 and everything that’s happening there, organizations are having to furlough people. I’m curious and would love to get your perspective on what could you think we should be thinking about to help inspire us. Especially those in our profession who are being affected by this.

Dr. Mark Hyman:

Ro, it’s been terrible. It’s been painful. I have seen my colleagues in agony trying to figure out how to honor their dream team and keep some teammates on or on part time – doing something to help them out. So, I don’t know when this is going to end, but you know that it’s going to end, and dentistry is going to come out better than ever before because we’ve been through this.

When I started dental school, we didn’t wear gloves, we didn’t wear masks. I mean we wore gloves if we pulled teeth for surgical extractions, but people didn’t – you think that the blood and guts, they used to fly all over us and then we’d go home and not give it a second thought and then the HIV happened. Then it got real, we took a hit as a profession when there was the whole issue of the dentist in Florida, David Acer and his patient, Kimberly Bergalis. It crushed dentistry briefly and we came back better than ever with the public knowing they can trust their dentists because we’re going to do everything in the world to protect them.

Inspiration in Spite of COVID-19

So, the same thing’s happening with COVID-19 we just have to figure out exactly what it is. I spoke to one of my mentors and dear friends in dentistry this morning. He said, “Mark, you’re influential. You’ve got to get the profession open right now.” And my answer was, “Boy, do I want to help? I want to do everything to get dentists working tomorrow, but we’re not ready yet because we don’t have everything figured out and how we’re going to protect our teammates and protect our patients and protect ourselves.” We’ve got to figure out how to deal with this virus and whatever’s coming next and if the masks that we had before, the COVID-19 particles are so small, they get through those masks, then that’s not good enough. We’ve got to figure it out. One issue I’m sure we’re going to discuss in some fashion is aerosols.

You know, it’s almost in amusing in dentistry and now it’s not funny when you see a big plume of blood and guts and saliva flying out of a procedure, so we got to figure out what’s the modern way to deal with that. We dealt with hepatitis, we dealt with HIV. We’re going to deal with COVID-19 and be even better, but we as a profession before we can open up, we’ve got to make sure the public can trust us to deliver extraordinary safe care.

We have to make sure our teammates can look at us as leaders of the organization and say, “We’ve got you protected. You can go home to your family and know you’re going to be safe.” Ro, what’s that going to look like? It may vary. Probably be face shields for everybody. It’s very probably going to be wearing smocks so your arms aren’t exposed and your neck isn’t exposed.

It very probably is going to be relooking at our business areas, our reception areas and say, “We’re going to take out every other chair, so people aren’t sitting so close.” I have four hygienists. When I left private practice, at eight o’clock you had four hygiene patients sitting side by side and maybe we change our scheduling now so that those four, 8AM patients, in fact one comes in at 8AM one at 8:05AM, one comes in at 8:10AM, and one at 8:15AM so they rotate through with less people in the reception room and they check out with less people around. It may be we have our patients stay in their cars and we call them and go out and greet them with hand sanitizer and with a mouth rinse of some sort. We’re not crystal-clear what rinse will deal with the COVID-19 virus yet.

Those are some ideas, but we don’t know yet. And frankly we need our leadership to trust science and let the science say, “Here’s exactly what’s going to work.” So, we’ve got to get the public’s trust that we can take good care of people. So it’s upsetting times. It’s crazy times, Ro.

I’ll tell you, I turn for inspiration a lot of times to my leaders, to my coaches, to my heroes, and one of my favorite writers, authors, people is from West Wing, Aaron Sorkin who wrote, Our greatest days clearly are going to be ahead of us, our darkest days today are followed by our brightest days tomorrow.” And that is what’s going to happen. We’re going to beat this thing and we’re going to be better than ever.

Rolando Mia:

Thank you for that. That’s, that’s amazing. I agree with you. Every time I hear you speak and to those of you who are listening to us live, if you have any questions, this is a beautiful time because Dr. …Oh, here we go.

Dr. Mark Hyman:

I had to – it got a little too serious for a moment.

Rolando Mia:

So one of the things and looking at what you just said there, when you think about all of the kind of fear that patients have right now, what would you want our community to hear or patients to hear who see this? Right now, they’re all holding back on going to the dentist. What would you recommend to people who are missing their procedures right now? What do you do?

Reassuring Our Patients That We’re Going to Beat COVID-19

Dr. Mark Hyman:

So right now, what I have to do is use their Sonicare or use their 5,000 part per million fluoride brush and floss like mad men and women and hang on. A true dental emergency…don’t dare go to the emergency room. Call your caring dental professional and we will figure out how to get you out of pain short term so we can figure out a long term solution. What should the public think about dentistry going forward, Ro? It’s that we’ve been there before for you.

You’ve trusted us before to deal with hepatitis, to deal with HIV, to deal with all of these things. Dentistry of any healthcare profession, man, you look at all the autoclaves, the gloves, the masks, the fins, the snorkels that we wear. We’re going to figure it out – what’s appropriate for our patients cause that that is the word of the day Ro: What is appropriate for your patient at this time in their life?

What is appropriate for them health wise today, right now? It’s not appropriate to get elective dental care because we haven’t got this thing figured out. But we will. And again, as I said, I don’t want to beat a dead horse deader, but we have got to make sure our teams are safe. We got to take great care of our patients. We have to protect ourselves. You know this is a scary time.

My youngest child, my Evie Michelle is a high-risk labor and delivery nurse in Denver, Colorado. Oh, you think about blood and guts, flying all over the place during a normal delivery, much less a C-section. And I worry for her. And she’s like, “Yeah, dad chill.” I asked the hospitals themselves, was there any problem getting PPE, getting your personal protective equipment? She said that they have to sign out for a face mask.

Okay, so we as a country, like I said, we beat 9/11, we beat 2008, we recovered from space shuttles blowing up. We’ve had presidents resign and we as a country have gotten through our darkest days with our finest hours. So, it’s time to step up and us all say, “Exactly what is the science say? How do we protect our patients?” and let’s get it on, let’s get it done and let’s move forward.

Rolando Mia:

That is awesome. Thank you. Love the message. So, there’s a question here and I was just about to ask you, you are a professor at Chapel Hill Dental School and there are students across the country that are that are on hiatus. They’re doing remote learning, which is great. Third and fourth years, D3 and D4 – I’m going to show the message here. What advice would you give fourth year students who are coming out of dental school graduating right now? How should they handle this because they’re not in clinic. What advice would you give them?

The Importance of Furthering Your Education

Dr. Mark Hyman:

Tyann, I do appreciate your question. What I would tell you is you are going into dentistry at the single greatest time there’s ever been to be a dentist. This is the absolute greatest time there’s ever been to be a dentist. What we can do for our patients with gentle pain free dentistry, with gorgeous cosmetic dentistry, with Cone-beam, with implant dentistry, with CAD Cam dentistry using intraoral cameras to communicate – what a joy.

People talk about some mythical golden age of dentistry back in the 80’s. Man, I wouldn’t want to practice back then near to what we have now. Do we have storm clouds? Yeah, you betcha. But we’re going to figure it out. So, what I would say is while you as a fourth year, with the procedures that you’re missing, I would be online. I would be watching every webinar or podcasts that I could, the giants of dentistry have stepped up. The Pankey Institute has complimentary podcasts that you can watch. Spear Education has podcasts.

Mr. Kurt Barron’s ACT is marketing business organization consulting, Jameson management out of Oklahoma. You just go through the champions of dentistry are putting free information that you can get – continue education your education. So, I would every day set a goal to do 2 or 3 hours of podcasts and just start to build your knowledge. If I was trying to hire you, I would say, tell me what educations online classes you’ve been taking.

So if you’re saying as a 4^th year dental student, “Dr. Mark I only got to do 2 crowns and 4 root canals, whatever it is.” Well then if I’m looking to hire you, kiddo, say, “During the COVID-19 crisis, I watched 50 hours of podcasts. I spent eight hours watching the Pankey Institute podcast. I spent 8 hours with Dr. Cathy Jameson, learning how to create a healthy work environment, how to collect what I produce. I spent time on Kurt Barron’s ACT podcast. I watched the Zyris podcast.” So, we can tuck our tail between our legs and say, “We’re beat.” Or we can say, “Thank God there’s this technology that while we have a pause clinically, we’ve got tens of thousands of dollars of continue education being offered for free.”

So, I want our seniors, our D4 dental students, my students at the school of dentistry, I weep for them, but we have gone to completely online education. Now we’re going to figure this thing out. We’re going to get our work our way through it and it’s going to be tough, but we’re going to work our way through it.

So one thing that I talk about, Ro, when I speak is books that my team and I read together every 3 months I would give the team a book, we would all read it and we would talk about it as a team. So, for our young dental students right now, if I was looking to hire you, a question I would ask is, “What does your success library look like?” And if you turn to me and say, you say, “What?” I’ll say with my love and respect, “You haven’t shown me that you really got the eye of the tiger.”

So my entire team, all the women that I worked for all read Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, “Who Moved my Cheese?”, “Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment”, “Raving Fans”, “Millionaire Next Door”, “Good to Great”, “Creating a Healthy Work Environment” by Dr. Cathy Jameson, “Collect What You Produce”, “Start With Why” – people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. So you all can get an MBA, you can get a fifth year of dental school of knowledge while you’re on the sidelines. Right now, the temptation is to be frustrated and I get it man, and I’m so sorry. We can sit back and say we’re beat or we can pick up a weapon and stand opposed and fight our way through this.

Find Leaders in Dentistry Who Go To bat for You

That’s the only way. I don’t drive 55 – I’m not a right lane driver. Ro knows that about me. The police force in Greensboro know me well. I drive with primary intent. I don’t live my life at the speed limit and I just don’t know any other way. So that’s what I want for our young doctors watching this. I so appreciate having you on this podcast.

So, I would just say attack, hit those webinars, start reading success literature, reach out to mentors in dentistry and talk to people. You can call Jameson management and have a conversation with Dr. Cathy Jameson. You can reach out to me on my speaking website. Send me an email, a text, whatever. If you need a shoulder to cry on, you just want to go on zoom and have a beer together and talk about your future.

This is part of being in the dental family. I’ve had so many men and women in dentistry go to bat for me. Linda Miles from Virginia Beach, Virginia, the grand Dame of practice management leadership. Dr. Cathy Jameson from Oklahoma was a Montessori school teacher and ended up with two PhDs. Dr. Irwin Becker from the Pankey Institute, chairing education at Pankey. Dr. Gordon Christianson who only started two dental schools, dentist, prosthodontist, PhD. So there are men and women that care about you that care about this profession. I just would say fire up, get excited about your future because it’s going to be glorious.

Rolando Mia:

That is absolutely amazing. What advice would you give people who are unfortunately furloughed at this time in the dental practices and in the companies that are working alongside dentistry because everything is shut down. What advice would you give us?

Setting a Path for Your Future

Dr. Mark Hyman:

The furloughed men and women, I will tell you I know you are in deep pain and your doctors are too. No one’s happy about this, but there are things that a team can do right now to prepare when we get back. The demand is going to be awesome. There’s going to be a backlog of care. So part of it is going to be as a team is you should have, and humbly, team’s should have some zoom, Skype, FaceTime, however they choose to communicate and the team led by the doctor should set out some parameters for your preferred future.

So to me, the practice management software, leadership software, the communication stuff that we have like Weaver, Solution Reach, Dental Intel, all these different companies. You should be communicating with your patients right now, checking in on them. You could be calling all your patients saying, “Are you safe? Are you okay? Are you having an emergency? Here’s my cell phone number if you need me.” The minute the office is open and safe, we promise we’re going to let you know. Teams can be going back and looking at little things.

Do they have accounts receivable that’s due or insurance claims that haven’t been filed.? If you’re worried about your cashflow, you’ve already done pre-procedures and it’s sitting there, and you haven’t filed the insurance. It’s crazy. The insurance companies have money. Let them pay off the claims that they’re owed. I was speaking to Dr. Cathy Jameson today about it. If people have dentistry that’s coming up, we always offered a 5% bookkeeping courtesy of people prepaid for a procedure.

So you’ve got somebody on the books for 10 veneers that had to defer the care you can offer to them, “If you want to go ahead and pay it, I’ll give you 5% bookkeeping courtesy, or in fact, I’ll go ahead and give you seven. I’ll give you 10.” Which will give you some cashflow to work with your practice going forward. So there’s all of so many ideas what you can do to refine your systems. We may look at things Ro and say, “Okay, we were 8AM to 5PM office, now once or twice a week Dr. Wonderful is going to come in at 7:00AM to see a restorative patient to get a couple of crown preps done before morning huddle before you start your day at 8AM.”

In addition, maybe we look at how we change the scheduling, so people aren’t side by side or maybe we do 30-minute lunches. The backlog and hygiene, our blessed at hygienists who we love, our “high geniuses”, we may assign a dental assistant to them and do some accelerated hygiene where the hygienist and in great state of North Carolina, you can only have two hygienists per doctor.

By law, the hygienists are the only ones that can do the scaling and the probing, but our blessws dental assistants could floss, polish, fluoride, Digital Doc control camera, take the money, book the next appointment, and all these other little things. So, you can have each teammate do what they are uniquely qualified to do and defer other things to their fellow teammates.

So again, doctor, this takes leadership, you’ve got an opportunity right now while we’re furloughed to train, to set a vision for your preferred future, to dream some big dreams, to decide who you really want to serve. If there’s a segment of your patients that you look at and they come late, leave During our precious time going forward, why not make a list of patients you’re going to fire?

I’m not saying cause someone’s hard to work on or because they’re hard to get numb, but if someone really doesn’t fit your practice, why are you going to waste your precious time with them? My dear friend Keith Phillips and teaches with me at the UNC Adams School of Dentistry, he has an expression, “Your patient is always right. They just don’t need to be your patient”, which I love.

Use COVID-19 to Reassess Your Business Model

It’s okay to look at your patient and say, “What you need is not what I do. So, let me help you find someone else that’ll take good care of you.” So Ro, that there’s free will. We can do this, we can beat this thing. So when someone’s furloughed, what a great time to get on your software and email, text everybody in your practice consistently and say, “Are you okay?” Look at undone treatment.

We are a huge care credit office. One year we put over $400,000 on care credit. I’ve had people say to me, “Dr. Mark, that means you have to pay 360,000 – look at all that money you just lost.” I’m like, “No, that means I got paid 360,000 that potentially I got zero.” So, if you contact your care credit contact person and ask, “What does this office have open to buy?” Open to buy means a patient has been approved for care credit but hasn’t used it yet.

I almost guarantee offices listening today has $100,000 of open to buy on their books, care credits, stuff approved and not used. So, while you have time at home, why not call 10 patients at each are approved for $10,000 a dentistry and you call all 10 and one agrees to come in. When you open back up that first day, you just had a $10,000 morning.

Ro, I love the expression. Two things happen when you ask and one when you don’t. So what I ask our listeners today is, “What’s the worst thing that could happen if you ask?” If you get turned on and fired up and just say, “I’m going all in, I’m going to take care of my team with every ounce of everything I’ve got and we’re going to reach out to every patient in this practice that we want to take care of and love on them and listen to them and check on them. Are they okay?”

Make sure they have emergency contact numbers and say when we get started, “How soon do you want me to reach out to you? What’s your best day? You like mornings or afternoons? You like Mondays or Wednesdays or Fridays? If we had some 7:00 AM hours, Ro is a busy businessman, would that be helpful to you?” So yes or no. Do you want to come in cause money’s tight is not answering the question. The question would be, “Ro, when we get you in for those two crowns, do you prefer morning or afternoon? We’ll go ahead and reserve a time for you 30 days out and if this keeps moving, we’ll keep moving the appointments back. So, I’m going to make sure we get this to secured before you end up needing a slow, painful root canal. Is that okay?”

Rolando Mia:

Love it. Love the advice and I love the perspective which is, “Don’t look back.” What are you going to do going forward? That’s beautiful. Love the message. That is awesome. Thank you for that.

Invest in Technology That Helps You Overcome Uncertainty

Dr. Mark Hyman:

Ro, technology is going to set us free. So, I know we’re going to talk about that. One of the most critical purchases to me – there’s two things that I think every office has to have. The first is an intraoral camera in every operatory. So, we have 8 operatories. We have 8 digi doc cameras. It’s a California company American made. It’s going to cost you $21 a day. If you work 200 days a year, I slam guarantee you cannot possibly use an internal camera on every patient, not at $1,000 a day. You work 200 days a year. That’s $200,000 over the next 12 months. It’s $1 million idea in five years, so you absolutely have got to take a picture. Every patient, every procedure before, during and after to document what you’re doing.

The second thing every office has to commit to in my opinion with 8 operatories. We’re going to have to deal with the issue of spatter and splatter. We’re going to have to deal with aerosols, Ro. Do you know anything that people may be able to, I’m just trying to remember our time or diseases setting in…?

Zyris is a company that has Isolite. Now, I am an Isolite addict. I’ve worked with the Isolite for over 20 years in my 8 operatories. We use them on every patient, every procedure for hygiene. Time is going to be crushed when we get back. Think about the time it takes you to do scaling, root planning, roughly. If you guess it’s an hour per quad, how would you and your boss and your patient feel if you do two quads in an hour?

We sure want less appointments to have to decontaminate the operatories, right? Less confirmation phone calls, less billing to the insurance company, less people getting off work. So in my experience, I’ve been in dentistry over 40 years, Ro. I started when I was 19 as a dental assistant. I’m about to turn 62. See, that’s where everybody’s supposed to say, “Dr. Mark, you don’t look 62 very humbly.”

So, use the Isolite on everybody, time and motion studies have been done. It says that that will save you an hour a day. It will cut the time to do a procedure, 30-50% in my humble experience. So one of my favorite professors at UNC said, “Just because you’re slow, Mark, doesn’t mean you’re good.” So, let’s think about how do we be more efficient and effective? If you use your intraoral camera, you got pictures, you don’t need to take so long to talk. You pop in your Isolite, you got control, you’re not fighting the tongue. Think about your verbal skills chair side if you just got the patient’s stuffed full of cotton rolls, “Open wide, bite down, don’t do this, move your tongue, stop that.” It just becomes a fuss fest and that’s no fun.

Importance of Reducing Aerosols

Rolando Mia:

Also, you mentioned the aerosols and the constant evacuation issue.

Dr. Mark Hyman:

My understanding from the brightest men and women in dentistry, Doctors Gordon and Rella Christianson talk about how we’ve got to consistently get the aerosols away from the patient and out of the operatory. We’re going to have to have 100% suction the whole time during a procedure when aerosols are being created.

I know very few ways to do that. A rubber dam was a phenomenal technology, still has a place in dentistry, but our blessed dental assistants are running the case. They don’t have time to suction 100% of the time with the other hand try to run the procedure.

That is the beauty of the Isolite, it’s a 5 in 1: bite block, tongue retractor, cheek retractor, suction, LED light. It’s a 5 in 1, crazy man. Absolutely crazy not to use it. It doesn’t cost anything compared to the benefit and the upside is huge. When you pull teeth, baby teeth on little rug rat ankle biters, you pop a little pedo Isolite mouthpiece in there, little tooth pillow and they love it.

Anybody, any of us, besides me, has pulled a tooth and the kid swallowed it when you’re trying to pull it and then the tooth fairy doesn’t have a tooth? Not a good day. The Isolite with a light, it’s got the safe light. You turn the safe light on when you’re bonding your adhesive dentistry. So, there’s a hundred different reasons – I’m not here hocking product, but this is an idea whose time has come. I used to always talk about Isolite by looking at the beauty of how much more efficient and effective you can be.

You can save an hour a day, you save 30%-50% of time to do a procedure. Now you may save someone’s life with the aerosol issues, COVID-19 issues, with HIV, with hepatitis. Who knows what’s going to happen next year, what the next virus could be. So this is an American company. It’s invented by Dr. Tommy Hirsch from California and his brother, Mr. Jim Hircsh, an engineer. I hate him cause I wish I had invented it. It’s one of the nicest families I’ve ever met in one of the kindest companies. What you all have done for dentistry changed my career. As I said, I’m a total Isolite addict and if I didn’t have my Isolite I just wouldn’t practice. So it’s as simple as that.

Rolando Mia:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that and totally unnecessary. But thanks for drinking out of that cup too, by the way. Thank you for that. So, shifting gears slightly, there are a lot of practices that are under stress right now, especially the young dentists, new dentists, these practices that are starting up, and then all of a sudden to think about shutting down for months. What advice would you give dentists facing the prospect of, “I just started this, I have debt up the wazoo. What am I going to do?” How can you inspire them not to give up and give them something to focus on right now so we can beat this?

We’ve Got to Fire up and Beat This Together

Dr. Mark Hyman:

Again, for our young doctors, I understand exactly how you feel. I feel for you with every fiber of my being, I’m not belittling this. I’m not poo-pooing. It is a time of uncertainty and agony, but it’s also a time for champions and heroes. So, the first thing I’d say is, “Take a good look at your life, your financial life. What are your extravagances? What can you do without?” I would look at the money. People in your life. You can go to your banks, your landlords and say, “What flexibility do we have? Can we delay a payment for 90 days? Can I delay a school loan?” You could look at family members, you can look, if you own a home, you can take a home improvement on your home to have a deductible loan for the interest. For those of us who have a 401k, you can borrow up to half of the value of your 401k.

My understanding now, it’s for one point over prime, the prime interest rate is like nothing. So my wife and I have a wedding coming up in a few weeks or few months now and we just bought a condominium in Chapel Hill, so we were going to just pay cash. Then a lot of the free cash went away, and we were going to get loan and then we just looked at it and said, “Right now we borrowed against our 401k at 1.25%.” So, if a bank will give you cheaper than that, God bless, but you’ve got your own money that you can borrow from yourself.

Essentially borrowing a hundred thousand dollars for a year, it’s going to cost you about a crown for interest for the entire year. So flush one crown down the toilet and then you’ve got free money so that you’re not in such agony so that you can take care of your dream team and you can make sure you have the right equipment.

So, when we fire back up, you’re firing on all cylinders. I think we have to spend small money for huge results when we get back. If you’ve got 8 ops, I want you to have 8 isolates. If you have 8 ops, I want you to have 8 Digi docs. I want that those success systems to kick in from day one. I want everybody trained and prepared so that you work as efficiently and effectively and joyfully as you can in dentistry.

For the young docs, just do remember we have been through tough times before. We’ve been through times when we just couldn’t see straight again. I know you all have school loans. Look at your school, loan number, and imagine if the interest rate was 19% instead of what I believe many of you have is 4% or 5% or something of that rate. I’m not belittling that one bit, but 19% interest rate, that was devastating – we got through it.

9/11 I remember walking to my reception room and a patient came in who had a son in New York who said a plane hit the world trade center, and I thought, “Oh, I’m sorry, a prop plane, a little duster one? I hope no one got hurt. I hope it was okay.” I had no clue that we were under attack and what happened. What a hideous, helpless feeling day, but we won, and we will win in dentistry. We’ve got the greatest profession in the world. We have unbelievable technology. We have amazing men and women.

So, now’s the time to battle plan, now is the time for heroes, it’s time to talk to your consultants and coaches in dentistry. Like I said, if someone doesn’t know which way to turn anybody that’s ever heard Dr. Mark do a seminar – you’re a part of my family now you’re entitled to a one hour complimentary discovery call from Jameson management just because. It doesn’t cost a thing just to get on the phone with an executive from Jameson and tell them your story and let them give you some ideas about how to guide your career.

You know, I had again, so many giants looking after me in dentistry and taking good care of me and I didn’t make all this stuff up. People taught me this and I had wonderful coaches like Linda Miles and Cathy Jameson, wonderful training at the Pankey Institute and at Spirit Education. I bought great equipment from great vendors who I believed in and supported, and I had a glorious career, Ro. I feel for these young docs, but they’re going to be okay. I promise.

Rolando Mia:

That is awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Thank you for taking the time. I know you’re busy. You’ve been pulled in all sorts of directions. We are definitely in a crisis. The words you speak of, “We have the ability to do things – do it.” The world needs heroes right now and we’re not talking about people who like jump out of buildings. We’re talking about individuals and I love that message. It’s something that’s incredible and I so appreciate you saying it. Any final words as we close this down that you’d like to tell our listeners and then the folks who are going to be watching this after?

We’re Going to Win

Dr. Mark Hyman:

You know, Ro, again, I appreciate Zyris, the Isolite, and the family for trusting in me and putting their faith in me. One of the cool things for me teaching at the UNC Adams School of Dentistry is Isolite. They donated a fabulous love gift to my school in my honor, donating I believe $200,000 of Isolites to our dental students about 5 years ago, which changed their career. It absolutely blew their minds and let them see possibilities. So, they didn’t know what they didn’t know at the time. They didn’t know how great and how much fun dentistry could be. Because as a dental student, you’re often working by yourself. The two words that I’ve tried to use in every webinar that I’ve done, Ro is, “Fire up.” I just don’t know another way to do this is. We have to attack this thing with passion and enthusiasm and keep our sense of humor and look to our preferred future. Because we’re going to win. We’re going to beat this thing. Promise you.

Rolando Mia:

Thank you. Thank you so much. I am remiss. I totally forgot, and thank you for reminding me, before we close down, I also want to tell everyone who’s on and anybody else who was going to be watching this later on. Dr. Mark Hyman is instrumental in our dental education partnership program and because of that 30 plus of the schools have our system in them. It’s because of the passion and the advocacy and just the inspiration that Dr. Mark has.

So, sir, thank you for taking the time. Thank you so much for having the ability to be yourself and for sharing that with us. To those of you who are watching, if there’s other things that you’re looking for us to cover, please let us know. If you like this and you enjoyed Dr. Hyman’s feedback, please share it with your colleagues. There were some incredible pearls in there about how we’re going to beat this. And again, he’s so inspiring. In watching what he does and listening to the advice that he gives. It’s real, it’s genuine and very much appreciated. So thank you everybody. Please stay safe. Dr. Hyman, stay safe. We love you. You’re awesome. Happy Passover and Easter. Everybody be well. Thank you, sir. Take care.