The Schuster Center

Growth and Dental Management

Dr. Michael Schuster — Wed, 22 May 2013 23:35:50 +0000

In nature, everything GROWS or it DIES! But in us human beings,
growth is a choice. GROWTH in a business is HEALTH.

Health is a choice. All you have to do is to go shopping and see
any group of people and you know that HEALTH is a CHOICE that not
everyone makes. As obesity, heart disease, cancer, arthritis continue
to climb, we all witness that HEALTH like GROWTH is a choice.

A HEALTHY GROWTH RATE of any business is an increase in NET PROFIT
of 15-20% per year! Few that I have met use this statistic as a measure
of their TRUE GROWTH.

When your overhead is 50% it takes a 10% increase in revenues to increase
your NET PROFIT 15-20% per year!!!

Is GROWTH NATURAL? Is GROWTH NORMAL? Well, yes and no!

Whether you grow or not is a choice that you and I make each day. The right dental practice management can help you grow in revenues and net profit!

THE JONAH COMPLEX by Abraham Maslow.

We human beings are complex. This is what Maslow wrote and I see it
every day…sometimes within myself.

“The American psychologist Abraham Maslow observed that we all have
inner impulses to improve ourselves, the urge to higher aims, the need to realize
our inner potential. But frequently we do not. It is as if there is something that
is holding us up, blocking us, obstructing what we know is possible—if only we
could achieve it.

Almost all of us know we could be better and do more. The question is ‘Why don’t we?’
As Maslow said:

We fear our highest possibilities….We are generally afraid to become that which we
glimpse in our most perfect conditions, under conditions of great courage. We enjoy
and even thrill at the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments.
And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these same
possibilities.

So often we run away from the responsibilities dictated (or rather suggested) by
nature, by fate, even sometimes by accident, just as JONAH, tried—in vain–to run
away from his fate.

The defense AGAINST GROWTH Maslow called the JONAH COMPLEX. The JONAH
COMPLEX is an attempt, often unconscious to underachieve, to do less than we are able.
(M. Scott Peck suggests that is cause of LAZINESS) We adopt a position that we could
be greater than we are if only we wanted to—telling ourselves that underachievement
is OUR CHOICE.

It is YOU who are still at the controls, still in charge of your fate. And if we are less than
we know to be (if we do not seek out the people, the tools, the methods to grow) well maybe
next year we will decide differently.

And for many this CHOICE not to grow ends up in resentment and downright hostility
against anyone else who has made the choice to GROW. Those who CHOOSE not to grow
resent the fact that others have done what we KNOW WE COULD DO, but have not done–
namely, live out our potential. GREAT ACHIEVERS remind us of our frailty, our failings.

I believe each of us faces the JONAH COMPLEX every day when we face the mirror in the morning
and we see it in most every patient we care for each day. Often our patients do NOT CHOOSE
HIGH HEALTH…and neither do we.

Maslow’s observations (whether you choose to agree with them or not) provide a background
against which we can ask the questions that are seldom asked:

*    Why do we NOT CHOOSE to GROW ourselves?
*    Why are we NOT HEALTHIER?
*    Why are we not SEEKING to be HEALTHIER…to GROW or EVOLVE?

*    Why are we NOT taking the ACTIONS we need to GROW, to become HEALTHIER?
*    Why are we NOT as healthy as we already know how to be?

Perhaps the JONAH COMPLEX is the cause of our hesitation, our indecision, our
procrastination; perhaps the JONAH COMPLEX is the cause of our own RESISTANCE
to GROW, to HIGHER HEALTH, to become all we truly are.

As you pause and reflect on what lies ahead this week. Contemplate for yourself,
just what might be causing you to resist GROWTH, to Procrastinate in doing what you
know you can and should do…

The more you are AWARE and understand how the JONAH COMPLEX impacts you
and your health, the more you will have empathy and understanding of how this
RESISTANCE to GROWTH, RESISTANCE to HEALTH, RESISTANCE to BECOMING all you ARE,
this RESISTANCE to Achievement and reaching your human potential is impacting you.

Once you become AWARE, only then can you PICK yourself up and take action. This is
as true for me, as it is for you. We as a practice management company, working with dentists everyday, see this often. It is up to YOU.

I am 100% responsible for the content of this message.

Dr. Mike Schuster

I am the creator of a Unique Process that not only grows businesses, but the people
within them as well.

Remember: GROWTH is a CHOICE.

Dental Management and Practice Growth

Dr. Michael Schuster — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:57:31 +0000

From: Dr. Michael Schuster

We hear it all the time. “We need more:

information…education…teamwork…innovation…marketing.”

Don’t Believe It!! The main thing we need is TRUTH!

TRUTH—a proper and clear relationship with reality—is the key to success in organizations, teams, relationships and careers. In fact, the departure point for all achievement is a relentless commitment to truth—truth about where you are, where you are headed, where the market is going, what our patients want, what our core competencies are (and whether anyone cares what our core limitations are ), whether anyone can help us and what our employees are thinking.

The TRUTH is difficult because most people don’t want to look at the TRUTH. The enemy of TRUTH is ILLUSION.

ILLUSION is “a false interpretation by the mind…a belief or hope that has no real substance.” Illusion comes when we perceive something to be true that isn’t true or is only partly true. Illusion comes because we want to believe the thing is true. Illusion is often—perhaps always—tied to false belief and hope.

The false hope is usually driven by our desire to avoid facing problems—the pain that comes from facing them and attempting to solve them. It’s easier to search for ways to market than it is to deal with an ineffective sales process. It’s easier to focus on marketing because the illusion is that the PROBLEM is OUT THERE, not with you.

The same is true with most patients you interact with. How do you share the truth with someone who is ‘avoiding the truth?” It’s always easier to hope that a problem will go away or solve itself than it is to shed bad ideas or abandon good ideas that have gone bad.

ILLUSIONS are living things. Like layer and layer of paint added to a rotting wall, illusions tend to produce more illusions. We may, for example deceive ourselves into thinking that the problem is MARKETING rather than acknowledging that our communication is faulty and we are not connecting with our patients.

This is a disastrous path that illusions put us on. They cause us to ‘solve’ a problem by adding another layer of illusion, and when things get bad again; we add another ‘patch’ (coat of paint to a rotting wall.)

“All progress begins with the truth.”

There seems to be a propensity to live in a ‘state of illusion’. It is only those who look for and face the truth that progress. The hardest part in facing the truth about our situation, about ourselves is our pride, our self-images, and our dreams. But when any person becomes serious about results we face the truth and take action.

Growth is a Choice

Dr. Michael Schuster — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:03:42 +0000

From Dr. Mike Schuster

In nature, everything GROWS or it DIES! But for human beings,
growth is a choice. GROWTH in a business is HEALTH.

Health is a choice. All you have to do is go shopping and see
any group of people and you know that HEALTH is a CHOICE that not
everyone makes. As obesity, heart disease, cancer, and arthritis continue
to climb, we all witness that HEALTH like GROWTH is a choice.

A HEALTHY GROWTH RATE of any business is an increase in NET PROFIT
of 15-20% per year! Few that I have met use this statistic as a measure
of their TRUE GROWTH.

When your overhead is 50% it takes a 10% increase in revenues to increase
your NET PROFIT 15-20% per year!!!

Is GROWTH NATURAL? Is GROWTH NORMAL? Well, yes and no!

Whether you grow or not is a choice that you and I make each day!

THE JONAH COMPLEX by Abraham Maslow.

We human beings are complex. This is what Maslow wrote and I see it
every day…sometimes within myself.

“The American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, observed that we all have
inner impulses to improve ourselves, the urge to higher aims, the need to realize our inner potential. But frequently we do not. It is as if there is something that is holding us up, blocking us, obstructing what we know is possible—if only we could achieve it.

Almost all of us know we could be better and do more. The question is ‘Why don’t we?’
As Maslow said:

We fear our highest possibilities….We are generally afraid to become that which we glimpse in our most perfect conditions, under conditions of great courage. We enjoy and even thrill at the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these same possibilities.

So often we run away from the responsibilities dictated (or rather suggested) by nature, by fate, even sometimes by accident, just as JONAH, tried—in vain–to run away from his fate.

Maslow called the defense AGAINST GROWTH the JONAH COMPLEX. The JONAH COMPLEX is an attempt, often unconscious, to underachieve, to do less than we are able. (M. Scott Peck suggests that is the cause of LAZINESS.) We adopt a position that we could be greater than we are if only we wanted to—telling ourselves that underachievement is OUR CHOICE.

It is YOU who are still at the controls, still in charge of your fate. And if we are less than we know to be (if we do not seek out the people, the tools, the methods to grow) well maybe next year we will decide differently.

And for many this CHOICE not to grow ends up in resentment and downright hostility against anyone else who has made the choice to GROW. Those who CHOOSE not to grow resent the fact that others have done what we KNOW WE COULD DO, but have not done– namely, live out our potential. GREAT ACHIEVERS remind us of our frailty, our failings.

I believe each of us faces the JONAH COMPLEX every day when we face the mirror in the morning and we see it in most every patient we care for each day. Often our patients do NOT CHOOSE HIGH HEALTH…and neither do we.

Maslow’s observations (whether you choose to agree with them or not) provide a background against which we can ask the questions that are seldom asked:

*    Why do we NOT CHOOSE to GROW ourselves?
*    Why are we NOT HEALTHIER?
*    Why are we not SEEKING to be HEALTHIER…to GROW or EVOLVE?

*    Why are we NOT taking the ACTIONS we need to GROW, to become        HEALTHIER?
*    Why are we NOT as healthy as we already know how to be?

Perhaps the JONAH COMPLEX is the cause of our hesitation, our indecision, our procrastination; perhaps the JONAH COMPLEX is the cause of our own RESISTANCE to GROW, to HIGHER HEALTH, to become all we truly are.

As you pause and reflect on what lies ahead this week, contemplate for yourself, just what might be causing you to resist GROWTH, to procrastinate in doing what you know you can and should do.

The more you are AWARE and understand how the JONAH COMPLEX impacts you and your health, the more you will have empathy and understanding of how this RESISTANCE to GROWTH, RESISTANCE to HEALTH, RESISTANCE to BECOMING all you ARE, this RESISTANCE to Achievement and reaching your human potential is impacting you.

Once you become AWARE, only then can you PICK yourself up and take action. This is as true for me, as it is for you.

I am 100% responsible for the content of this message.

Dr. Mike Schuster
www.schustercenter.com

I am the creator of a Unique Process that not only grows businesses, but the people within them as well.

Remember: GROWTH is a CHOICE.

How True Dental Management Can Change Your Life

The Schuster Center — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:18:26 +0000

Part 5 of 5: The Conclusion: Make the Choice to Continue your Education in Dentistry

At the Shuster Center, our dental coaches and consultants can tell if there is urgency to CREATE or if the people we are talking to are PROCRASTINATORS. Procrastinators have no urgency; they really aren’t going anywhere and sadly, that’s the majority of dentists; they simply aren’t going anywhere different than they are right now.

Remember this: Creating has nothing to do with personality, location, race or religion. Creating is a process that works and has nothing to do with background, education or experience. Creating is a process that begins when you have something IMPORTANT TO YOU TO BRING INTO EXISTENCE.

If you are chasing more money, then you will be chasing more money when you are 50, 55, 60 and even 70, and guess what, you still won’t be happy because you’ll never have enough, but worse than that, you will have spent your life REACTING TO LIFE and never have had the life and practice you truly wanted and deserved.

It is right there, right now, right in front of you, like it is for me, to CREATE THE DENTAL PRACTICE and LIFE we truly want. The first step is to call and talk to a coach that can give you insight to dental staff training, dentist financial planning and even dental sales training. Call today to start changing your life now.

Dr. Michael Schuster, Founder of the Schuster Center

How True Dental Management Can Change Your Life

The Schuster Center — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:30:44 +0000

Part 4 of 5: How the Creative Process Will Affect Your Dental Practice

MONEY is a byproduct of the CREATIVE PROCESS. In fact, I can prove that dentists using the CREATIVE PROCESS net 2-3 times as much as dentists trapped in the REACTIVE PROCESS. I can prove this with over 100,000 months of data that we can collected as we have worked with dentists one-on-one these past 34 years!

When you use the CREATIVE PROCESS in business the result is GROWTH, real growth in NET PROFIT. When you join together the organizational process of practice development with the Creative Process you always experience true growth, more freedom, control and peace of mind.

What I have found and why it is so important to dialogue and interview potential clients of the Schuster Center is the fact that we can predict who will be truly successful and who won’t. It is this simple and powerful. I can predict that in a 30 minute conversation. Do you want to CREATE SOMETHING DIFFERENT, SOMETHING IMPORTANT to you IN YOUR PRACTICE and LIFE or don’t you?

THOSE DENTISTS who have something very important to THEM to bring into existence ALWAYS PRODUCE AMAZING RESULTS in our process, and those who don’t are moderately successful but never break through because they have never truly gotten into the CREATIVE PROCESS. Sure it takes some longer to get there than others, but the joy is in the CREATION as well as the END RESULT.

I’ve watched men and women build airplanes that took then 10-15 years to build and they enjoyed every minute of the process because they were building something THAT WAS IMPORTANT TO THEM. In fact for many of these people, the very act of building their plane was more important than the end result of flying it. So it is with all creators; they end up loving the process as well as the destination or end result. This is why THE CREATIVE PROCESS IS LIFE TRANSFORMING. It changes the entire experience of LIFE and PRACTICE from reacting to life to CREATING what REALLY, REALLY MATTERS TO YOU!!

Dr. Michael Schuster, Founder of the Schuster Center

Stay tuned for: Part 5 of 5: The Conclusion: Make the Choice to Continue your Education in Dentistry

How True Dental Management Can Change Your Life

The Schuster Center — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:33:22 +0000

Part 3 of 5: Reacting VS. Creating

But there is a way out. You, like me, have a choice. You always have a choice. You can be dead honest about where you are, and begin the CREATIVE PROCESS in your life and practice which never fails to lead you towards more CONTROL, FREEDOM and POWER in your life and practice. Once you choose to become the dominate, creative force in your own life you become the INFLUENCER rather than being INFLUENCED. You become the one in CONTROL, not the one CONTROLLED. Gradually day by day you experience a greater sense of order, control, predictability and yes FREEDOM. The same tasks done in a REACTIVE ORIENTATION which drags you down emotionally are done with GREATER PURPOSE and MEANING when you are involved in CREATING SOMETHING THAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU.

And this is the final thing I want to say about CREATING TODAY. To be in a CREATIVE ORIENTATION, you have to be bringing something into existence that is important to you. In other words, you have to LOVE your CREATION enough to bring it into existence. And that’s the rub.

If what you are doing is to try to make more money, or increase your production that is NOT A CREATION. And since the vast majority of dentists have been mistakenly taught to FOCUS ON MONEY AND PRODUCTION, they are trapped in REACTING and can’t be in a CREATIVE ORIENTATION.

PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THESE WORDS as they are based on working with over 3500 individual dentists and their dental practices in the past 34 years!

Dr. Michael Schuster, Founder of the Schuster Center

Stay tuned for: Part 4 of 5: How the Creative Process Will Affect Your Dental Practice

How True Dental Management Can Change Your Life

The Schuster Center — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:54:08 +0000

Part 2 of 5: Our Choices and How They Affect Us

The CREATIVE PROCESS has had more impact, power and influence, and success than any other process in history. All the arts, the sciences, architecture, pop culture, and the entire technological age we live in exist because of the CREATIVE PROCESS. Why has the most successful process in the history of civilization been made to seem like a mystery? Why have most people had such little exposure to it?

First, it is missing in all of education. Educators think that learning how to create isn’t important. The power the Creative Process is mind blowing. It is a game and life changer.

You, like me, have a choice. Everyone does. You can simply REACT to the events that occur in your life and practice or you can CHOOSE to become the dominate CREATIVE FORCE in your life and CREATE the DENTAL PRACTICE and LIFE you want.

The CREATIVE PROCESS is at the heart of the work we do at the Schuster Center and that alone separates us from every other dental consultant, dental management company or dental coach. Not that others aren’t good people or don’t get results; they do. But they more often get the kind of results that cripple your life with being so busy that you are under constant stress of production; or doing the kind of work that you really don’t enjoy; or of never being really in CONTROL and suffering from the distress of BEING CONTROLLED rather than the FREEDOM you went into practice for in the first place.

After a period of time and using one dental consultant after another; one dental management company after another, you end up with a life and practice that looks like anything but the real you. But now you’re stuck or are you? You’ve now have a lifestyle to support; you may have several cars, sometimes several houses; taxes, kids’ education; you know the drill. And here you are: TRAPPED, certainly not in CONTROL and far from the feeling of PERSONAL AND PRACTICE FREEDOM.

I like to say that those who REACT end up building their own TRAP. Like the spider weaving a web to catch food to eat, by reacting you end up being the caught by the web you have built.

Dr. Michael Schuster, Founder of the Schuster Center

Stay tuned for: Part 3 of 5: Reacting VS. Creating

How True Dental Management Can Change Your Life

The Schuster Center — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:15:35 +0000

Part 1 of 5: The Problem with Dental Office Management

WARNING: THIS DOCUMENT COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

As a dental coach, I’d like to share a few thoughts with you. These thoughts and the use of them can transform your life. If you know me then you know part of my life story. I got off to the wrong start when I opened my first dental practice in Dyersville, Iowa. I listened to the hucksters of the lecture circuit and got lost.

I got too busy ‘reacting’ to problems that patients were having and I didn’t have the knowledge or the skills to know how to cope with it. So I simply ‘responded and reacted’ and the distress of it all put me in the hospital with an ulcer when I was 28.

That turned out to be the turning point of my life. My dad, a college professor and teacher, gave me two books to read; Maslow on Motivation and a book by Alfred Adler who was the first to write ‘act as if, and you will become it’.

I vowed when I came out of the hospital that my practice and life would be different or I would quit what I was doing and find something else to do with my life. I made a determination that I would only work with people that wanted to be ‘healthy’ or get better and that I wouldn’t spend my life simply reacting to the disease and problems my patients were having.

I intuitively made a decision to become a CREATOR not a REACTOR and that changed my life and my dental practice forever. Today is no different as the majority of dentists are trapped into ‘reacting to their patients problems’ rather than partnering with patients to create health. It turns out that the majority of dentists end up REACTING TO LIFE rather than CREATING THE LIFE AND PRACTICE THEY WANT.

Enter the Creative Process. I have been fortunate to have studied with some of the brightest and most innovative people on the planet and I have harnessed that information into a dental business school and dental seminars. In the next few blogs, I will expand on the idea of continuing your education in dentistry and how it can transform your life.

Dr. Michael Schuster, Founder of the Schuster Center

Stay tuned for: Part 2 of 5: Our Choices and How They Affect Us

Find Your Future: Continuing Your Education in Dentistry

The Schuster Center — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:28:17 +0000

CREATE the Dental Practice and Life YOU want!!

For 4 decades the Schuster Center has been the preferred dental management service for dentists who want more CONTROL, FREEDOM and a BETTER LIFE and PRACTICE!

The SCHUSTER CENTER was the 1^ST Business School for Dentists and now is the 1^st ON-LINE DENTAL BUSINESS SCHOOL. Continuing your dental education is possible 24/7 on line with LIVE PERSONAL CONSULTING and coaching.

Our dental management process is UNIQUE and PROVEN to get the results you want.

We use a PROVEN, PREDICTABLE, RELIABLE PROCESS to help dentists create the Practice and Life “they want.”

If YOU:

Sense that you are losing CONTROL over your MONEY and TIME.
Are WORKING HARDER AND HARDER FOR LESS AND LESS!
Feel that dentistry isn’t as much FUN as it used to be!

Then you are ready for RENEWAL, REFOCUS, REPRIORTIZING and RECREATING the PRACTICE and LIFE you wanted when you went into dentistry in the first place.

Dental office management doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Are you interested in taking your practice to the NEXT LEVEL?

Click HERE to fill out the PROFIT POTENTIAL PROFILE or the SELF DIAGNOSING TESTS and we’ll set a time to have a discussion about the FUTURE you want to create! Or call Mary at 1-800-288-9393 for a private, one-on-one conversation about your Future!

Dr. Michael Schuster
Founder, Dental Speaker

Join Us for Our Upcoming Dental Management Seminars

The Schuster Center — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:15:16 +0000

Determining the potential profitability for a practice is one of the most important things a dentist can do for his or her practice. After all, if you don’t know what you can achieve, it’s very hard to create the plan to get there.

The Schuster Center is very excited about these particular seminars as Dr. Michael Schuster does not conduct very many live seminars anymore. This is a chance to meet the man that has helped changed so many lives in the dental community.

We invite you to join us for the following LIVE dental seminars to listen to Dr. Schuster talk about Profitability Management and how it can affect your life.

Scottsdale Seminar
November 18, 2011 · 7:30 AM – 1:00 PM
Kansas City Seminar
December 2, 2011 · 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Hartford, CT Seminar
December 16, 2011 · Time TBD

In these fast-paced, information packed dental seminars; Dr. Michael Schuster will share powerful strategies and methods that have transformed the practices and lives of thousands of dentists over the last 30+ years. Call 800-288-9393 to register today.