Sweat equity is the magic formula for growing your business. As a leader, commit to researching the latest technologies and groundbreaking advancements in your field. What you know can and will help you gain a competitive edge. That sounds almost too simplistic, when in reality it’s anything but.
In my world, time and resources are the two competing forces I have to manage to stay in the know. It boils down to where you want to take your business. I’m committed to keeping up with technology to provide my patients the best care available in the dental field. This means I must I stay abreast of the latest techniques, use top of the line equipment and consistently enhance the patient experience. I also think it’s imperative to know every aspect of your business. How can you assess what you need? How else do you know if you’re getting quality?
My field requires annual continuing education and I routinely invest in 10 times the mandated amount. In making learning a priority, I pursue whatever piques my interest – honing my skills as a prosthodontist, a business owner and leader, or learning new procedures and how to deploy advanced technologies in my practice. Because I’m so attuned to what makes my practice tick, I’m able to deploy what’s necessary to consistently provide premium care versus basing my decision how much something will cost. Using the best technologies as part of my care model is a proactive step helping me identify potential issues in their infancy stages rather than waiting until a real problem arises. However, it’s easy to get excited about a new, promising technology. Often the concept is brilliant, but the kinks need to be worked out.
For example, a technology we now use in my practice was one I studied for nearly six years, offering feedback to the manufacturer until the product met my objectives. And during this time, I worked through lunch to the tune of $118,000 in annual savings that I reinvested in the business. Now two years later, this technology’s revolutionary capabilities represent a win-win for my patients.
What are you willing to sacrifice to learn how to gain the competitive edge?
By Dr. Ashley Curington
Dr. Ashley Curington is the founder of North Atlanta Center for Cosmetic and Implant Dentistry, P.C. BufordDentist.com.
The BufordDentist.com website was our original place on the web. When the format became a little dated we staked out some new real estate but many patients in Buford still found us here. We have finally updated this site to a fresh new look. Let us know how you like it.
Thank you to all the readers of Gwinnett Magazine for voting us "Best of Gwinnett Dentist" for 2014. We work hard every day to deliver the finest dental care available.
So as a Buford Dentist, we have refreshed, updated and revamped this url, our original website! Things have changed since we were first on the internet. Seems many patients like to follow our office news via a blog.
What is a blog? Wikipedia says... A blog (a truncation of the expression weblog)[1] is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Until 2009 blogs were usually the work of a single individual[citation needed], occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject. More recently "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large numbers of authors and professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into societal newstreams. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.