Back in the sixties one of my favorite bands was 3 Dog Night. Little did I know I was in for a 3 dog life. The first dog was a playful pup, only interested in girls and getting through school with as little effort as possible - in that order. God had his hand on me when I met Jan Gates. Looking back after 42 years of marriage, we are both confused as to what attracted her to me. She says somewhere under that long hair and deep in those marijuana glazed eyes she saw potential.
I am not sure if my insatiable desire to please is a strength or a weakness but, in this case, it flung me head long into a course that would take me to dental school. I would like to say seven years, marrying Jan, starting a family, and finishing dental school made me a better person, but that was not the case. Although I had a solo practice back in my home town of Guthrie, Oklahoma, two sons and an over-supportive wife, I found myself with a practice full of unhappy patients, miserable staff and an anemic bank account. The only evidence of my hard work was an abundance of past due bills and overloaded credit cards.
The second dog life was a bulldog. I remember the day just like it was yesterday. It was June 25, 1987. I will never forget how I felt that day, walking into my office after the worst week of my life. I had just buried my 2 year old son who had died in a tragic accident. I was still feeling the pain of that and the embarrassment of having to pay for his burial with yet another credit card. I had been out of the office for a week and knew I was facing a schedule full of folks who were half ticked and a pile of unopened mail.
The person who answered my desperate call was good. He asked the right questions, was empathetic with my pain and even though, I didnt want to hear it, told me exactly what I needed to do next. He said Doctor, we can help. However, you will need to be in Glendale, CA for a training program next week.
I believe it was Mark Twain who said there are basically 2 kinds of folks, those with excuses and those with results. If I was looking for excuses that day, I had a few to pick from. I had just buried my son. I had been out of the office for a week already. Nathan, my surviving son, and my wife needed me at home for emotional support. I would need another credit card. These were just a few. However that day I was not looking for excuses, I was looking for relief. So, I applied for another credit card, told my bewildered receptionist that I was taking off another week, kissed my son and wife good bye and the bulldog headed off to Glendale for the journey that brought me here today.
My third dog life is a Saint Bernard. After hundreds of hours in classes, a stack of continuing education cassettes (this dates me), and a six-figure investment in my business education, I was able to take my fledgling dental practice from the bottom to one of the top 1% producing solo practices in the U.S. In my St. Bernard life stage, as I became more successful, I was invited to be a guest speaker in several diverse venues. Although I was fortunate to share the stage with many prestigious pros like Zig Zigglar, John Maxwell and Roger Staughbach, my favorite audience was dental students. I was and am still regularly invited to speak to junior and senior dental students on dental management. Being thrust back into the academic environment, I learned something distressing. For various reasons, dental manpower in the rural communities was trending downward. Very few new graduates had the financial resources and the professional confidence to venture out to these communities and set up a practice.
In the Oklahoma market, there are more dentists dying or retiring than new graduates willing to replace them. In 2001 I had a long-time friend and colleague approached me about working in my office after he fulfilled his service obligation to the Indian Health Service. I was hesitant because over the years I had tried and failed miserably in incorporating an associate into my practice. Not wanting to say no, I had another idea. By this time I had developed a very successful practice with proprietary systems. Could I help my friend duplicate my success in another location?
We launched what was to become the second Custom Dental practice in July of 2002. Today, Christ-directed, leadership-driven Custom Dental has replicated itself many times in Texas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, and we have plans to add many more. The unique operating model allows a dentist to be in business for themselves but not by themselves. In 2008, I left chair side practice to support and mentor my partner docs as Custom Dental has become the fastest-growing owner-operated joint-venture dental business in the world.
Choosing Custom Dental is a way to reach your professional and personal goals is a no-brainer. Our success speaks for itself. We have profitable businesses, raving patient fans, and fulfilled team members. Joining us takes the stress out of your daily life and lets you go focus on doing what you do best.
The Custom Dental culture is at the core of our success. We combine affordable, quality dental care with streamlined operations. Custom Dental offers uniform service to each office, whether it is in Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas or surrounding states. Doctors have the opportunity to learn from leadership training conferences as well as coaching sessions. Founder Dr. Kelly Brown offers both individual and group instruction on topics such as leadership, communication, and management.
We invest in training, seminars, and workshops for our office teams. We also provide several cash based incentives for training as well as excellent work performance. We offer opportunities for team members to learn from each other with corporate conferences and team-building exercises that include all locations. The exchange of ideas in an open forum is critical to our success as a company, and we value the input of each and every team member. We also strive to develop our team members and move them toward their personal goals with self-improvement training and continuing education as well as concrete financial goals, including performance bonuses and 401k accounts.
Everything about a position can be learned but you cannot always teach positivity and work ethic. Not only do we want quality people to care for our patients, we want quality people to share our day with! We want to start every morning excited about going to work, and we want you to as well. The entire Custom Dental hiring process is designed to discover talented people with a nurturing nature who work well both as part of a team or independently. So how do we find you?
The next step is a paid, working interview. This allows us to measure their skills and knowledge while making sure they would be a fit for our team while also affording our candidate to learn whether they would enjoy working with us. At this stage, Custom Dental can comfortably extend an offer to our candidate.
Starting a new job can be overwhelming. Learning where everything is and how everything is done, on the fly, can be stressful. We try to alleviate much of the frustration by offering an excellent training program along with mentoring. Well provide you with training that will highlight collaboration, communication, problem solving, and diversity. We will also pair you with a mentor for the first few weeks so that you can learn by doing and ask questions as they occur to you, learning in real time from a seasoned staff member.
You will love being part of the Custom dental family. We offer excellent salaries and benefits, including health insurance, sick days, vacation days, continuing education, an exceptional working environment, and of course, incredible dental coverage!
After answering those simple questions, please download and print this Personality Assessment Test and keep your results (we'll want those later!) We use this test to get to know you a little better and how you'd fit into our awesome culture.