The Business Lessons You Didn’t Expect from Dentistry – David Pearce

Everyone wants to live their best life and become the best version of themselves. But where do you actually start? As our guest nicely puts it, you go step by step.

Meet David Pearce. David is currently a Dental Coach at Ultimate Success in Dentistry. Before that, David was a practicing dentist. He turned a thriving dentistry practice into a multimillion-dollar practice before he eventually sold it. David’s secret sauce was creating a learning culture at his practice that promoted lifelong learning in every role. He also set up organizational charts with defined roles, accountability, systems, and rewards. Throughout his entire career, David always understood the importance of self-growth, so he always nurtured and cherished this learning mindset. He was living his best life both inside and outside work while also encouraging his team to do the same.

He is now committed to his second life dream as a Dental Coach in Ultimate Success In Dentistry, where he coaches dentists on the business side of dentistry.

In this episode of the Think Business with Tyler podcast, we talk about the importance of embracing learning, how to build a company culture around a shared mission, why you need to challenge yourself, and why starting small is key to success.

If you want to learn more about achieving both personal and professional success, make sure you tune into this episode to hear what David has to say.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: David Pearce

💡 What he does: He’s a Dental Coach at Ultimate Success in Dentistry.

💡 Noteworthy: David started and owned Baldwinsville Gentle Dentistry for 25 years before selling that business in 2021. He’s now committed to teaching others to live their best lives and becoming the best versions of themselves.

💡 Key Quote: “In order to be successful in anything, you have to work. It takes work, and no matter what anybody says, success is spelled W O R K. So, you have to embrace the work.”

💡 Where to find David: LinkedIn

Key Insights

Embrace learning. Learning is a life-long process, especially if you’re an entrepreneur or a business leader. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, your best bet is to embrace learning and try to soak in every minute of it. David is a huge believer in lifelong learning. He explains,  “In order to be successful in anything, you have to work. It takes work, and no matter what anybody says, success is spelled W O R K. So, you have to embrace the work. So for me, in the learning process of it, I have learned to just embrace the learning, like putting it together, figuring this stuff out, as opposed to, I just can’t understand this thing. So embrace the steps that go into getting to understanding whatever that thing is you’re trying to figure out or learn or get better at.”

Create a culture with a clear shared purpose. If you want to build a strong company culture and a lasting legacy for your organization, start by understanding your business purpose. When every team member lives and works by a shared purpose, the workplace becomes a place of inspiration and hard work. David says, “This current employee who’d been there for six, seven years said, well, if you’re going to work here with Dr. Pierce, you just have to know that you are going to become a better version of yourself. And so I thought that’s exactly the legacy that I had hoped to leave. That when you work here, you’re going to become a better mother, a better Christian, a better Patriot, a better, whatever, all those things, and a better dental professional, teammate, and so forth as well.”

Challenge yourself. Personal development is about constantly challenging yourself and striving to become a better version of yourself. That’s why it’s essential to surround yourself with the right people who have what it takes to challenge you on your self-improvement journey. David explains, “There has to be a good exchange of information. You have to feel like you’re getting challenged. You have to feel like you’re providing value. I think if you went in and it felt like it was a therapy session to make you feel better about yourself, you’re in the wrong place because you need people who are going to challenge you and say, I think what you’re doing isn’t the best, consider doing this, so forth and so on. That’s to me, the whole idea is to get on other minds who think differently than you do and get their ideas and their thoughts and their processes to challenge the way you’re doing because you’re not going to, I’m not going to come up with all the answers myself.”

Move the ball forward. If you want to get ahead in life, sometimes all it takes is to just take one small step ahead. No matter how insignificant it seems, every step brings you closer to your goal. David says, “I just write down three things that I’m going to do tomorrow that are the most important thing to get me where I need to be at that one week or that 90-day mark. And they’re not big, they’re small things, they’re going to have to be done tomorrow, for sure before I go to sleep, they have to be done. They’re probably going to be done at the office during that time, not personal time, when I leave the office. So very small things. They don’t have to be big. You have to do them every single day, and whatever you think is the most important thing.”

Top Quotes

“I never had a coach. That’s why I love coaching now because I think how cool would it be to have somebody who’s done it and they’re right there by your side and they got your back.”

“I think that we did a fairly good job on the incoming to figure that out that it just isn’t a good fit. But what did happen a couple of times was that business outgrew some people. They just looked at said, I don’t want to embrace what it takes for me to become a better version of me. I just want to do it. And then they would start feeling uncomfortable.”

“Money’s a tool. It doesn’t matter how much you have, it’s still a tool. So, if I’m going to dig a hole, a big hole, I’d rather have a backhoe than a shove. So the more money I have, the more good stuff you can do with. So just saying, to me, that’s what money does. I spend some in my own self, but it allows me to do other stuff and have flexibility, and it gets rid of stress and things that. Like a friend of mine said, if money can fix a problem, you don’t have a problem.”

“Each evening, take maybe 15 or 20 minutes and just take all the stuff in your head, like a mind dump. Take all the stuff in your head that you’re thinking about and just write them down and just say, what’s the next step?”

Links

Ultimate Success Website