An interview with Dr. Howard Farran

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Dr. Howard Farran continues to answer questions ….

 • In spite of our best efforts the professional receipts may not increase

True. Absolutely. There are no guarantees in life. No body said life was going to be easy; they just said it can be very interesting, it can be very challenging. Again, if several new dentists move into your area, that can massively hurt. And how do you have a successful dental office when a tornado came through town and leveled your office? Natural disasters, death in the family – yeah, there’s no guarantees that your receipts will increase.

• Advantages of group practice

Advantages of a group practice areis professional the mostmostly. I mean Iit is so much fun to be able to walk back to your private office and show another dentist the X-ray and the study models. I just can’t tell you how much that would depress me if I weren’t working with two associates. I think Dentaltown.com has really provided a lot of solo practicing dentists a great service by letting them hook up with many other dentists.

• Advantages of solo practice

The advantage of a solo practice is that you only have one Pope, you have a dictator, you can do it your way. When you have a group practice, it’s just like a marriage. So I would say what is the advantage of being a single bachelor and what is the advantage of being married? Being married is nice, you have a friend you can show dentistry and you can talk about root canals, fillings and crowns, it’s great, you can brainstorm with your partner. So all of the complexities of being in a relationship are very nice. But the disadvantages are, sometimes there is drama with your partner. Sometimes there is a lot of bending and giving. It’s so easy as the only owner, you can have it your way, you can make this hamburger with our without the cheese – it’s your call. It’s always going to be tough when you always have to negotiate every decision you have to make with someone else.

• At times inspite of your best efforts you may not find the best staff. What is to be done?

I would say that in my 50 years of life, when has any sports team been done with their best staff? It seems like every body whoteam that wins the World Cup in soccer shows up next year with and a third of the new players are new. Everybody Every team that wins the Super bowl football team, there’s at least a 25 percent % turnover. So I just don’t know when you are ever going to have the best staff. And just when you thought your staff was perfect, someone can die, someone can move, someone can decide they want to go back to school. I think that staff is the hardest part about business, it’s the most important part. You only manage three3 things: people, time and money. And business only has three functions: you make something, sell something and watch the numbers. If you get an A on the right people, everything else will fall in line. If you get a C or D in the people, you are never going to catch up. So I would never put your guard down that you have the best people. In fact, I’m sitting here with my Editor Bend Lund right now and yesterday an editor from overseas sent me an e-mail and wanted to know if she could meet me. I don’t even have an opening for an editor, but I swear I sure as hell am going to meet her. I mean for all I know, Ben will be ran over by a car tomorrow, or our business will grow so much that he’ll raise his hand and say, “I need help.” So I think the best sports teams in the world usually have two or three or four full-time employees as scouts, looking at all the up and coming talent. And they want to know – I know in the most competitive industry I’ve ever seen, the NFL, those coaches hire enough stats to have their summary of every single person in college football that’s a starter. So when they decide they need a quarterback, they know every single one of them. And some scout has gone out there and looked and watched them play their game. So man, HR is the hardest – and I want to also tell you one thing: – I don’t even think I’m that good at it. The only thing I’m good at in HR is to know how important it is. But in my dental office, I have an office manager named Sandy Wilkinson and she is far better in tune and connected with those staff than when I did it my self, and the last decision I would ever make would be to fire my office manager and do that myself.

        

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