(800) 560-6066Providing the highest standard of care for your patients starts with enjoying and having confidence in your dental work. In this piece, we’ll share a conversation we had with Dr. Desiree Yazdan, DDS about a time where she was uncertain about her future in dentistry and a patient stepped in telling her, “don’t give up on your dream”. In 2020, she saw 20% growth in her practice.
Top 3 takeaways from this Dental Voice session:
- Always be learning. Incorporate new technology into your workflow
- Life is 50/50. Accept that there are challenges.
- Set a goal for your 3-year plan. How can you excel 1% each day for 3 years?
Rolando Mia: Welcome to Dental Voice Season 3. The purpose of Dental Voice is to hear from our clinicians, to understand their perspectives, get opinions, and advice. One of the things we’re trying to understand is what clinicians need to thrive in their practice. Today, we have a very, very special guest, Dr. Desiree Yazdan. She is a cosmetic dentist down in Newport Beach.
You also have your business Grow with the Gram, which is helping healthcare professional’s kind of use Instagram to help their businesses.
Dr. Desiree Yazdan: Yeah, that’s exactly what it does.
Rolando Mia: What I’d like to understand, and this is in the context of thriving in your business, I saw a post a little bit ago about a time when you were in your practice, when you were having an especially difficult time. You noted that one of your patients noticed that you were experiencing stress, angst and he came to you and he said, “Don’t give up on your dreams”, like out of the blue.
Dr. Desiree Yazdan: Totally.
How to Enjoy Your Job When Times Get Tough
Rolando Mia: And now, fast forward, look at what you’ve done. Look what you’re doing. You’ve made it through 2020.
So what I’d love to understand from you specifically is kind of, what could you share with our viewers about how to overcome some of those things so that you can thrive and enjoy your practice?
Dr. Desiree Yazdan: Yeah. So I think understanding the first thing of like, life is 50/50 and so there’s always going to be like 50% that’s really incredible and really amazing and 50% that’s not quite as fun.
So when you just accept that that’s kind of like the human experience, that life is like truly 50/50, then the times that are more difficult, you can look at them as like learning experiences, and look at them as ways that you can be challenged and ways to grow from it.
I was actually talking to somebody the other day and I was like, yeah, like if you’ve never made a dollar in your life and somebody gives you a thousand dollars, you’re going to be in such scarcity because you’re going to be like, “Oh my God, I can’t spend this. I have to make good decisions. I’m going to lose it.” However, if you are able to just, if you create the thousand dollars, then you understand that even if you lose that thousand dollars, you could create that thousand dollars again it’s not that big of a deal.
So like, when you’re having a rough time, look at it as like, I’m going through this challenge and I’m growing as a person, as a business owner, as an individual or whatever it is, as a clinician. On the other side, I’m going to have such a tremendous skill, that nothing can get in my way. So, that’s like one way of how to get through some of those tougher times.
Channeling Energy in Your Dentisting Day
Rolando Mia: It’s amazing because, in light of everything that’s gone on, and you’re right, not everything is awesome.
When things aren’t awesome, where do you find kind of the, the energy?
Dr. Desiree Yazdan: Honestly, I just really love what I do. Dentistry is so fun to me. I was telling my staff today, “This is my zone of genius.” You know? That’s where I feel like I can do anything. I’m really able to help people. That’s where I get the energy from. I like to feed off the fact that I love it so much. So I think that’s where that comes from.
Rolando Mia: That’s cool. When you were struggling, what was it that was that was kind of getting to you? I mean enough that someone could feel it, could sense it with you. What was going on at that time?
Don’t Give Up on Your Dreams
Dr. Desiree Yazdan: So, I think that that specific patient knew the situation, but he didn’t know anything from me. He just knew kind of what was happening. I had an, unfortunately a bad business partnership. It was a very alarming situation and that dentist stopped practicing dentistry very shortly after the partnership began, without any notice to me.
So, it was just a really difficult time because a lot of the, most of the patients left the practice and I had just made this huge investment. I was like, “Oh my gosh. How am I even going to keep the doors open?” So, that’s what I was dealing with behind the scenes.
It was his first time coming in since that had happened and I think he probably got wind of it because he’s very well-known in the community. I didn’t tell him anything but he just came in and said all the right things, at all the right times. That day specifically I was having like a really rough day. I remember, behind the scenes, that I was on the phone in my office with my husband probably really teary-eyed I was kind of like, “Yeah I don’t really know what I’m doing, like how I’m ever going to make this happen” and then he came in and he was like, “Listen to me…”, and he had all this wisdom and all of these things to tell me. I kind of felt like it was a gift, like a sign.
I didn’t expect him to say anything. I’ve never talked to him about the situation. He’s never heard from me or anyone in my practice, anything. So I was like, if he’s saying all these things like maybe I should stick it out.
Rolando Mia: And you did.
I love the context of, don’t give up on your dreams because it’s such a powerful, very simple, but very deep statement.
What are some of the things from that point, what are some of the things that you did? Or what did the commentary around that or the energy that he gave you, inspire you to do from there?
Deliver the Highest Standard of Care
Dr. Desiree Yazdan: You know what, it really just inspired me to focus on taking care of every patient that I had. Like really deeply focused on them and what I’m able to do for them. I wanted to over-deliver in every single way I could in their experience at my office.
I loved that I had done that because I truly care about the patients. It’s more about them and what I can do for them then like, “Okay, how much money can we make in this business?” Right? It’s like, I always know that if you give all of yourself and you give everything you have, the business will end up running itself in a way and you don’t have to worry about every single dollar that’s coming in and out. You just have to focus on giving the best care that you can and doing the best work that you can do. So, I think that’s one of the things that really came out of it.
Rolando Mia: Oh, that’s wonderful. When you look at how your business is thriving, you mentioned that through 2020, a lot of practices have really struggled through this period.
It sounds like you were able to come through that even though it wasn’t as, you know, as crazy or busy. Yes?
Dr. Desiree Yazdan: I mean, I fortunately, I was really busy. So I was able to grow my practice by a little over 20%, which is pretty amazing actually. So, you know, it’s just a testament to like, whatever you put your mind to, you can accomplish. I mean, my business was closed for three months in 2020 and I still was able to grow and collect 20% more. It just comes down to like, you can do whatever you put your mind to really.
Rolando Mia: So for viewers, for people who are sitting here, for people who are experiencing or potentially experiencing less growth what are the top one, two, three pieces of advice that you would give them?
What’s Your 3-Year Plan?
Dr. Desiree Yazdan: So, I like to think of like, knowing what you want and thinking of your long-term goal in three years from now. Sometimes, five years feels so long away and one year feels like a lot of pressure. Three years I think is a really good. Where do you want to be in three years? What do you want to be doing? How do you want to live your life? I think thinking of like how you want to be living and what you want to be doing and how you want to be spending your time, and then kind of thinking every day, “What can I do that’s going to push me forward by just 1%?” I love looking at it by like 1% because it’s not this huge change that you have to do. There’s no pressure to like do a bunch of stuff overnight or whatever. It’s just like, just 1%. Like anyone can improve something by 1% right? So I like to think of it that way. That would be probably, my first thing.
The second thing, again, like remembering that life is 50/50 and accepting the bad. And again, once you accept that sometimes 50% of life is not as fun, you can just look at anything that you’re going through as like, “Okay, so how am I going to learn from this? Where can I, for example, fix the holes?” Always think of your business as like a bucket and like having a bunch of holes in it. Then like, if you have any leaks coming through the bucket, how can you plug them up? So like, bettering your systems and stuff like that and just accepting that any of the bad times are temporary.
Sometimes, I actually, I think I just posted about this tonight, but like if you’re having a really, really good day, even that’s temporary, so enjoy it while it lasts and celebrate it and be excited about it. When you’re going through a rough time, that’s temporary too. So, just remind yourself of that and then see where you can learn. And then the other thing is, in dentistry, to always be learning because there’s always new things coming out. There are always new ways to do things and it’s good to keep learning.
I think in healthcare in general, we always have to be learning. That’s the best thing. I see, you know, a lot of people who think they know it all and you never know at all and I see the opposite, of a lot of people that are always willing to learn. It seems that the ones that always willing to learn, from someone younger, older, more experienced, less experienced, just end up having greater skills, having- just everything seems to be a lot better in that way. So, always be learning. Those are my favorite things.
Finding Inspiration
Rolando Mia: I love it. Are there any people that really inspire you or that have really come through when you really needed them?
Dr. Desiree Yazdan: Well, of course my family. Also, I’d like to think a lot of my colleagues, in my area really have been supportive of me. Maybe that’s another thing, like building relationships in your community and making friends with people.
So, you know, if you’re going through a rough time you could lean up a little bit on people. I remember when I was having my daughter, I had so many people reached out to me and were like, “If you need anyone to cover, just let me know. I don’t want you to worry. Just spend your time with your daughter, it’s so precious. You’ll never get that time back. And I was like, “Wow, that’s like really sweet that people would like reach out and tell me that.” And you know, they just really wanted to be there for me. So yeah, that would be like a secret fourth tip.
Rolando Mia: Well, first of all, that’s absolutely wonderful. I love the posts. I love the sentiment and the message that you’re giving out there. There’s a wonderful positivity and a caring that you have. Clearly, I’m sure your patients can see that, your team, your family, it’s absolutely wonderful.
Dr. Desiree Yazdan: Well it’s such a pleasure to be here and I just have to say, I love your guy’s products. You guys have awesome products. If any of you guys are dentists watching and you have not yet gotten the Isolite®, I don’t really know what you’re doing. Go look it up and like it is, you know, it’s some next level, really high quality stuff.
Rolando Mia: Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for that. Have a wonderful rest of your evening.
