Dr James :
Fans of the Dennis who Invest podcast. If you feel like there was one particular episode in the back catalog in the anthology of Dennis who Invest podcast episodes. That really, really, really was massively valuable to you. Feel free to share that with a fellow dental colleague who’s in a similar position so their understanding of finance can be elevated and they can hit the next level of financial success in their life. Also, as well as that, if you could take two seconds to rate and review this podcast, it would mean the world to me.
Jessica:
What that would mean is that it drives this podcast further in terms of reach so that more dentists across the world can be able to benefit from the knowledge contained therein. Welcome.
Speaker 3:
Welcome to the Dennis who Invest podcast.
Dr James :
Welcome back everybody. It’s been a while it’s been too long since I’ve shot a podcast. I’ve been incredibly busy. I’ve been a busy man these last few months. I’ve had a lot of plates on the spin and now we’re looking back to getting regular broadcasts, regular, regular podcasts, out on the airwaves for your enjoyment. We can resume regular service, of course, because, as I say, it’s a month and a half has been a little bit too long for me. We ended on a bit of a crescendo last time with Andrew Craig’s podcast. Andrew, very well-known chap in the world of finance. That was an amazing podcast I enjoyed. Hopefully everybody enjoyed listening to that one as much as I enjoyed shooting it. Now, as I say, we’re returning to regular service and we’ve got even more guests lined up. One of them is sat here in front of me right now. Burnout and the overwhelmingness of dentistry are two very contemporary subjects, not so in this day and age more than ever For me. As I went down this path of learning more about myself and putting myself out there on the internet and creating my Facebook group, my community, I’ve encountered this whole subculture of dentists who are here to assist dentists when they hit that barrier, when they hit that imaginary wall or that glass ceiling in their dental career where they feel like they can’t go any further. They feel disillusioned. Maybe it all gets a little bit overwhelming. I don’t think that this has existed very long. This whole world, this whole network of individuals who are there to assist us, or at least it’s kind of something that’s become more to the limelight contemporaneously or more recently, and that’s something that I’ve noticed personally, and maybe it’s just because I’ve been thrusting to this world myself very recently, and that’s why I wanted to make this podcast. We do things about investing investing in the financial sense, but also about investing in yourself. I’ve got a wonderful doctor sat here in front of me today on Zoom. You may not have seen her on the group. She’s only recently joined someone that I’ve just got to know recently myself. She runs burnout classes for dentists. Now she might shoot me later for completely butchering this description, but this is the best handle that I’ve got on it right now. It’s for dentists who are at a halfway house and they’re deciding themselves. Hmm, do I take that leap, do I take that plunge? Do I leave dentistry or do I give it another go? What are the tools? What is the information, what is the knowledge that I need to help me decide? And that’s what our wonderful guest, dr Jessica Metcalf helps dentists with. Jessica, have I done a good job of describing you, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:
Hey, thanks so much for having me. You did an amazing job. It is that in between and it can happen at any point in your career, and I think that that’s where there’s this illusion or disillusion of the fact that, well, it only happens with young dentists or it only happens later on in your career, and it’s that self doubt, the fear, failure of going into work, thinking that how am I supposed to do this for the next 25, 30 years, but in the background thinking, well, I can’t leave dentistry because I don’t have any skills, and at that point in time that’s really burnout. Everything seems hard. At that point you feel like you’re not accomplishing anything anymore, that you’re not a great dentist. But that turns into this warped opinion of yourself. And then it goes into well, how do I understand what is happening and how do I create new self care plans for myself?
Dr James :
Amazing, and that’s where you come in With. That is where I come in the Alchemist, that’s what it’s called.
Speaker 3:
That is exactly yes. So and that’s how the Alchemist dentist came to be was the fact that alchemy in and of itself is finding this kind of like magical potion, but realistically, it’s in each one of us. We just forget to ask ourselves what we want and what we need in life, and so that’s what I help others do is get to that point, so then they can create accountability and sustainability for themselves. So then they don’t get to that point where they’re at the burnout door, thinking that they have to make a decision right. If we create these interventional strategies and prevention strategies for stressful events or stressful situations, then you don’t have to wait till you’re fully burnt out, thinking that you need to make a change.
Dr James :
Do you know, from having met people who run similar things, who are in your position online business which helped dentists in that niche? Almost always, there is an incredible brand story behind it, so I’m going to read between the lines and be a little bit presumptuous and just say that this perhaps comes from personal experience.
Speaker 3:
Is that correct?
Dr James :
Jessica? What happened? What inspired you to create it?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so a few years ago I was in my deepest, darkest hole.
Dr James :
I was in my third burnout and third yeah, do you want to ask how long you’ve been a dentist, jessica?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so I’ve been a dentist for six years now, and so the other burnouts that happened, looking back, I didn’t even know I was experiencing it. And the second burnout happened in the middle of dental school and the first burnout happened in the middle of undergrad. And I tend to take a lot on for myself. I like to be consistently doing things, always trying new things, whether that’s hobbies or in dentistry, and I pushed myself to the limit and I forget to take care of myself at times. And so in my third burnout, at that point I was diagnosed with clinical depression and a generalized anxiety disorder and I had to start taking anti-depression medication and anti-anxiety medication. And mental health, or mental illness, has always been in the forefront. My mom’s bipolar and so and she’s been bipolar my entire life, so the experience of mental health has been in the forefront, and so I understand it, I get it, and yet when it came to my diagnosis, I felt like an absolute failure. It’s like I had all this experience with mental health and mental illness and I felt like I should have been able to avoid it or that can’t be me. And so I felt like I failed as a daughter, I failed as a sibling, as a friend. I felt like I failed as a dentist and I thought what is happening? And so I started to get the help that I needed. And when I started to come out and started to recognize that I was in my healing phase, I kind of stumbled down this research hole, which is totally my personality, and I came across imposter phenomenon and you may have heard of imposter syndrome, perfectionism and ultimately, how the combination of them can be one of the strongest predictors of an individual developing psychological distress, ultimately leading to burnout. Wow.
Dr James :
And I was like Can I just say one thing? That is like you’ve taken the boxes of dentists who burn the character profile of a dentist who burns himself out. Perfectionism, I think it must be number one. From the people that I’ve spoke to, and even when I feel myself strained on that path, we’ve all been there. You know, perfectionism is the enemy of the good, as they say. It is the enemy of the good, and particularly in dentistry. Not to go off too much for tangent, but when you spend a little bit too much time on Instagram, some of those composite films that you see out there it’s just not realistic. Yes, I agree. It’s just not realistic for 99.9% of dentists. And you know what. The patient doesn’t even care half the time as well, and you can always. That’s the annoying thing about dentistry you can always think. There’s always one little thing that happens in every procedure where you think, oh well, did that little bit of saliva get in there when I wasn’t looking? When I turned my back for two seconds in that rubber jam, Was my isolation perfect? Yeah, Did I etch the whole surface of that tooth? Anyway. But yeah, all I’m saying is perfectionism, yes, it’s okay, but being a perfectionism to the point where it’s destroying your mental health, that is something that we need to collectively work on as dentists, because that is counterproductive.
Speaker 3:
So it’s okay, no, please, oh, my goodness and that’s one of the things that I speak on is the fact that perfectionism doesn’t actually exist, because your perfectionism is not my perfectionism.
Dr James :
True, yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. What a perfectionism. What is perfectionism? Yeah.
Speaker 3:
Right. So to me, that’s where I had to really wrap my head around. And back in the day, you only saw perfection at conferences, right, and I remember attending like really early on, being like why don’t my cases look like that, right. But now with social media, it’s at our fingertips every second of every day, and so you’re consistently comparing your dentistry, and so that then overflows into your life because of the fact of that perfectionist mentality where now on social media, you’re also seeing the perfect life right, where it’s like, okay, well, did I have the perfect wedding? Did I get the perfect job? Am I at the perfect office? There’s so many different dimensions to it, but if you’re always seeking perfection when it doesn’t actually exist, you’re never going to be happy. And so that’s the biggest part is trying to understand, because perfectionism can be broken down into three components, the first one being it’s the setting of unrealistic expectations, so not high expectations, not healthy expectations, but those unrealistic expectations. The second component is you’re consistently linking your self-worth to achieving. So your identity, your professional identity, is now linked to your self-worth. So if you’re not doing dentistry, who are you Right? And then the third one is is that because you experience perfectionism and you keep setting these extremely unrealistic standards, you experience negative consequences, which are the depression, the burnout, the physical responsiveness of happening where you develop stomach ulcers right or you’re chronically fatigued. That is all encompassed in perfectionism, and so when I used to call myself a perfectionist, I now look at it and I never want to call myself a perfectionist again.
Jessica:
Real quick guys. I put together a special report for dentists entitled the seven costly and potentially disastrous mistakes that dentists make whenever it comes to their finances.
Dr James :
Most of the time, dentists are going through these issues and they don’t even necessarily realize that they’re happening until they have their eyes opened, and that is the purpose of this report. You can go ahead and receive your free report by heading on over to wwwdentistuneinvestcom forward slash podcast report or, alternatively, you can download it using the link in the description. This report details the seven most common issues. However, most importantly, it also shows you how to fix them Really, looking forward to hearing your thoughts. How did you reconcile being a perfectionist? How did you improve? How did you help yourself overcome that? People need to hear that.
Speaker 3:
I need to hear that. So for me, it’s when I set my goals. I set them and then I take a look at them and I say, am I actually being realistic, especially when it comes to setting goals with how much time I have? Because we can create this massive list and want to get it all done in a day, or want to get it all done in a couple of weeks, and then that time comes and things come up and there’s family obligations. Maybe I just have a new puppy, so there’s puppy obligations that you didn’t foresee. That’s fine. But then when you don’t necessarily meet those goals exactly the way that you wanted to, it’s then giving yourself permission to be kind to yourself, to then recognize that I’m human and that I will get to these things. But maybe I didn’t actually set them in a way that gave me some realistic expectations. So then I go back at those goal setting, whether it’s doing dentistry or starting a new business or learning how to invest Right. Sometimes we think that we need to pick up investing really fast, because we’re uber smart and we’re like, oh well, why isn’t it coming easily? Well, dentistry didn’t happen overnight, right, which means that we’re not going to become professional investors overnight either. So give yourself the permission to learn. Give yourself the permission to make mistakes. Be kind and compassionate to yourself and I have to check myself with that all the time, because it’s super easy to slip into that negative inner critic of always berating me. Instead of that inner cheerleader, your inner critic is really ugly. That’s so true why?
Dr James :
is that? Why is that? We all want to beat ourselves up. It’s not 50-50 by any stretch. No, not at all 99%, someone, as you said, berating in the back of your mind, saying, oh, you’ve done that, but you could have done it better, you could have done it quicker and there’s some sort of weird psychological I don’t even know how to describe that Like a psychological. Would it be a through some words out to me, through some words out to me? A psychological? I don’t know what you’re looking for. A psychological, Go on, go on.
Speaker 3:
It’s a way to motivate ourselves and because we’ve used that negative tone and we see it in society. Maybe there was personal attachments with the way that we were raised, from family obligations, it’s just a way that we’ve used to motivate ourselves and it’s really easy, and it’s almost kind of relating it to the fight and fight response, right, where it’s easy to remember where the poisonous berries are. So then you survive and you remember not to eat that, right? So if we continually berate ourselves, it’s a way to motivate. But what if we motivated ourselves in a more neutral or unbiased way? What if we motivated ourselves the way that we would motivate our friends and our family? That’s true.
Dr James :
Yeah, how come we’re that? Yeah, why are we always given that we give ourselves a hard time? Yeah, and then we go super easy on them? Yeah, that’s true.
Speaker 3:
Right. So if we just changed the way that we spoke to ourselves, it would change the way that we show up every single day, and then that becomes that much easier to be compassionate and kind to yourself.
Dr James :
Wise words. I never thought about it like that. It’s like a status quo. You just take it for granted. I’ve actually never rationalized that before and hopefully that speaks to some people listening. Hopefully that helps. Man, that’s something I’ve learned. I’ve actually never thought about that.
Speaker 3:
So the way that I like to coach individuals or teach people to try to change the way that they’re speaking to themselves, because it’s all well and good to be in a really stressful situation and for me to tell someone oh, just calm down, oh, just change, like that one word and it’s going to make you feel better that’s not the case, and because you’ve done this for so long, it’s not going to change overnight either. Right? So now it’s changing the vocabulary that you use. It’s separating yourself from the dental words that you use. So, instead of saying I suck at dentistry, which is self-doubt, change it to idea doubt, which is this margin sucked. Right by you separating yourself. Right, because you don’t suck as a dentist. But it’s easy for us to go that way. Right? If you say, ok, that margin wasn’t the greatest, why wasn’t it the greatest? Ok, the patient was moving. Ok, there was an abundance of saliva, whatever it was, but that separates you from turning it extremely personal. So, by automatically changing those words and those ideas, you’ll then actually start to believe it, and that’s all it is. And so when you check in with your body, this is how you know you believe it is. Did your heart rate decrease? Did your breathing all of a sudden go back to a normal rate? Is that creeping sense of dread or that nausea feeling settling down? And even if it changed a little bit, then you know that internally, you’ve truly believed it now.
Dr James :
Wise words, jessica. You know what we were talking about earlier. I, before I, sidetracked us and we went on that whole dungeon you did. I actually really am curious, given all of those things that you’ve just said and obviously you’ve learned through experience there was. You just got to the point where you were talking about your third burnout and how that served as the genesis for the alchemist. We just reached that point before we. I sort of sidetracked us there, so I’m really really, really curious to hear how that happened.
Speaker 3:
So what ended up? When I started to, or when I ended up in that research rabbit hole, essentially, and then I started to recognize what I was experiencing, I still felt extremely alone, and that’s where you had said initially where there’s this world that didn’t we didn’t realize existed, of helping each other, or why haven’t we been talking about mental health, or has it existed in the past? I felt very alone because people weren’t having these conversations. I remember when I started to feel a little comfortable not sharing fully with friends yet, but just almost asking for a friend, being like hey, a friend so and so had mentioned like this Do you experience this too? All of a sudden, all of these people started to share the same sentiment. Instead, it went from asking for a friend to hey, this is what I’m feeling, do you ever experience this? When I started to share more and people started to open up about their self-doubt, their fear of failure, their fear of being sued, the fear of complications, the fear of perfection or the fear of success and the responsibility that then comes with it, when I started to notice that, in combination with all the research I had done, I was like this is a very natural transition for me to turn into speaking and coaching and consistently help others. Education has been my jam from the get-go. I was previous education director for well-renowned cancer center in Toronto and I recently just moved. What I love the most about it is that everyone has different learning styles. That is my goal is to give you different opportunities to try to figure out what works best for you. I had already been speaking on treating the oncology patient from a general dentist point of view. I was like I need to start incorporating how I felt when I was treating these patients with my burnout, thinking that who am I A couple of years out after residency? How am I treating this specialty population and how am I their general dentist? When I started to share this, people then started to recognize okay, I can now change these thoughts that I’m having. I need to change the way that I think about my own dentistry. That’s how the Alchemist dentist came to be.
Dr James :
That’s awesome. Like almost always, the thought feel there’s a bit of a personal story there, because you can only ever be as passionate about something as a motive about that unless you’ve been through it. We can all relate to a lot of things that Jessica said just then. So you’ve branched out. I started dentistry. How terribly exciting. Now you’ve got yay it’s fun, isn’t it?
Speaker 3:
It’s so much fun.
Dr James :
It’s so much fun. Right Now you’ve got this online business. How do you manage balancing those two? How does your schedule look? How does that work for you?
Speaker 3:
That is a great question. So for me, I realized that I needed to practice what I preach, and so a month and a half ago, I left my position at the Cancer Center and moved across country for a lifestyle change, and I’m taking the summer off from clinical dentistry, working on the Alchemist dentist, and in September, when I go back, I’ll only be doing clinical dentistry two days a week, making sure that I still create that self care for me, because we can only help others, help our patients, if we help ourselves first. Right, so that is what I am doing. So it’s finding that balance, but knowing as well though that balance works for right now, but maybe in a year, maybe six months from now, that balance isn’t working at that point and I need to reevaluate. And it’s giving again yourself the permission to be able to consistently evolve as a human being based on your interests at that time as well. Awesome.
Dr James :
Cool. So for the moment you’re focusing fully on the Alchemist. But you anticipate this return to dentistry very soon. Yeah, and two days a week, oncology dentistry as well I’m going to. That’s probably, you know, one of the fields of dentistry where you can, probably you probably don’t want to be doing four or five days a week at the best of times, but never mind oncology dentistry. Yeah. I imagine there’s a lot of very sad stories there and you know psychological and yeah, and you know what it’s.
Speaker 3:
I’m very grateful because I’ve learned a significant amount from my patients from a lifetime and work perspective. And that’s actually one of the reasons when people are like, well, why the move? I’m like, well, one COVID put things into perspective. It really made you think right. And then the second was I kept hearing the same story over and over again from my patients being like don’t wait until it’s too late, because you wait until retirement to all of a sudden be able to live the life that you want to live. Then all of a sudden you get a cancer diagnosis or something ends up happening, and so because of that, it’s really starting to understand that you’re allowed to do what you want when you want it essentially like find the time that gives you your enjoyment. If that’s clinical dentistry right now and you just want to do five, six days of clinical dentistry because that’s what really makes you happy, do it. But then, if you’re like five months into it and you’re like this isn’t sustainable, I need a balance of some sort change. Give yourself the permission to be able to make that change.
Dr James :
Do you know it’s actually resonates with me a little bit that, or it kind of reminds me of a book that I was reading recently called Millionaire Fast Lane by I think it’s called J DeMarco, is something like that. Have you heard of it or have you read it? I haven’t, no, yeah, so basically in the book, what he basically describes, that there’s three sorts of people, there’s three broad categories that we fit into as human beings, with our relationship with money. So the first one is I think his name is Sidewalk Steve, something like that. And Sidewalk Steve, yeah, it’s all about, so Sidewalk, is how quickly these people get to financial freedom or they get to the ultimate destination. So Sidewalk, steve, slowly and fastly, and fastly and fastly, something like that. And he makes the point that if you are Sidewalk Steve, it’s fine. You can go through life. You maybe don’t really ever have an overarching goal. There’s not. You don’t really see money as something that you need to stash or hoard or save. You just acquire it just so that you can have a good time in the short run or in the short term, which is fine and that’s totally cool. That’s your philosophy on life. That’s not wrong. That’s not right. He’s just saying that that’s if you are someone who outwardly says and acknowledges that I want to be financially free but you live that life. You’re only ever going to be taking the Sidewalk effectively is what he’s saying. And then you have slowly and Steve. So slowly and Steve is when we read these books about investing and it’s all about stash little, save little and plenty every month. You’ll get rich in 20 years. These methods have been proven over many decades. To be true, you will get rich, but by the time you get rich, you’re going to be 50, you’re going to be maybe 60, you’re going to be 70. You’re going to have the majority of your life behind you, but you will get there, which is fine. Okay, you will get there. But you’re not because you’re removing risk as a factor, because you’re not willing to take a leap outside of the received wisdom about what you’ve been given in terms of investing and saving. You’ll only ever get there via the Sidewalk and it will take you some time. A lot of people act like Sidewalk Steve, but they actually want to get to being financially free as soon as possible, okay, but they don’t act like the final person, which is Fastly and Frank, who is willing to take on risk, is willing to accept that they might spend money on something that might not work out. But it’s only through rule and the dice that you’re, and being embodying some of the elements of that person, that you’ll actually get to the point where you might be free and also have the most of your life in front of you, even though that would contradict what your FA say you, what your financial advisors say, what your parents might say, what people who are considered to be full of wisdom that might wag their finger at you and say otherwise and say, oh, you don’t want to risk this, you don’t want to do that. But really, until we accept that there is going to be some risk, until we accept that actually maybe we should start our own business or maybe we should do something above and beyond or lot in life or immediate viewpoint or immediate position of being a dentist, unless you’re willing to accept that you’re probably going to be spending most of your life working very, very hard for someone else to eventually get rich. And if that is something you’re happy to do, that’s fine. But if you do want to get rich and you do want to be, you do want to do that when you’re very young or earlier. Yeah, there’s a hell of a lot more risk involved. Yeah, there’s a good chance that things might work out. But you have to take on a little bit of that responsibility and roll the dice a little bit. And maybe that’s what struck me when you were talking there about starting your own business, and that’s what doing what I do and having what I have has taught me as well that, realistically, if I do want to pursue my dreams and I don’t want to spend my whole life working for someone else and get rich very slowly by the time I’m 50, then I have to accept. I have to do this, I have to think a little bit outside the box, I have to go down this path, whether I like it or not, and the simple essence of the point that I’m making is that lots of people want that life where they get wealthy very quickly, but they actually don’t live like that person. And that might be because of fear, that might be because of some sort of barrier that they put in place and that might be because they feel like others will wag their finger at them and judge them and maybe look down upon them if things are not successful. But you have to inherit, and intrinsic to being that person is overcoming those people and maybe perhaps a lot of people just haven’t heard that message Overcoming those people in so far as being able to block them out to a degree and just go for something and just see if it works out. And if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. And I, from what I gather about what you’re doing, it seems to be going well. But maybe that is a thought process or a thought journey that you’ve been along before. I don’t know if you find that interesting or not or if that made you see things from another point of view, but it definitely made me see things from a different angle. I didn’t actually realize that I’d already been doing some of the Fastly and Frank things until I read that or until I saw that in that book. What do you think of that? Did you like that?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I know what it was. Was that a load of mongo jumbo? Was that an absolute?
Dr James :
load of waffle.
Speaker 3:
I know that you wouldn’t say that.
Dr James :
You’d be very polite and tell me that it wasn’t. Even if it was, perhaps everybody listening thought that it was. I’m sorry everybody, I liked it. Ok, I liked it.
Speaker 3:
It was good. I know I resonated with that so much, and the way that I can explain how I resonated with is when I was working those those first couple of years. Doing dentistry is working like six, seven days a week, and that’s exactly. I was like I need to pay off my student debt, I need to make money, I need to do this so that I can live a quote, unquote dentist life. But that also came from me comparing myself to others on social media and I’m like but this isn’t the life that I also want to be living either, right? So then I had to change and I had to reevaluate and I was just like, oh my goodness, how am I going to make it to 60 years old doing clinical dentistry in this fashion? And all of a sudden I felt very, I felt like I had a very scarcity mindset. And now all of a sudden, that initial scariness of starting a business, especially in our industry, where you consistently have to feel like you need to prove yourself right. And so you feel that heavy judgment. You feel that if you fail, people are going to be then talking behind closed doors or whatever it is, or behind your back. But I don’t think you realize the amazingness that then comes from you trying and challenging yourself consistently, because now it was like, or previously I was always like, ok, I just need to make it to 60. And then I can start being happy. Now, especially with this business, it’s like, oh my goodness, I can see doing this until I can’t like, until I’m in the ground. It’s all of a sudden these, this journey, this excitement, the opportunities that I feel exist out there are beyonds, like. I feel like there’s no limit anymore. Versus before I had this very scarce mindset, and so it does. I feel like that’s what it comes down to. And initially, early on, when we’re trying to figure out who we are as dentists, I think we kind of get lost in finding out what we want out of life and what time we have and how precious it is, because once it’s gone you can’t get that back. And so exactly that comparison where you’re comparing Fast Frank and Sidewalk Steve, I can totally see that. And but when you’re comparing yourself to people on social media as well, it makes this easy to kind of feel stuck. And now, here’s the thing.
Dr James :
Maybe we’re very blinkered. We’re very blinkered, right so blinkered Because dentistry is our world and that’s the essence of what I’m trying to get at. There is so much more out there.
Speaker 3:
You just gotta go.
Dr James :
Because we’re so embroiled and fascinated with teeth and we just want to be the best dentists, we just want to know all these things. We’re missing out on 90% of the fun Because, let’s be real, how many people outside of dentists actually think about teeth? And they seem to get by perfectly well in life, don’t they? And we’re obsessed about it.
Speaker 3:
It’s so true.
Dr James :
We’re obsessed about it and there’s plenty of success for people out there who aren’t dentists. And all I’m saying is that perhaps we don’t see the woods for the trees sometimes. Come on, yeah.
Speaker 3:
Best way I can put it. I love that. I love that so much. It is, and it’s so important. The one advice that I want to give to people is that don’t let what you think other peoples are thinking of you stop you from doing what you want to do, because there’s going to be the naysayers, there’s going to be the haters, there’s going to be the judgment joes Like they’re all going to be all of that out there. But if you find passion in what you’re doing, keep doing it, because then, all of a sudden, you’ll be surrounded by the people who enjoy and do what you do Right.
Dr James :
And then all of a sudden They’ll find you. They’ll find you.
Speaker 3:
They’ll find you. It’s so weird. It’s so weird and I love it so much. It’s that once you start doing what you’re doing, those people end up now in your circle and all those other individuals who said that you could never do something or that, no, it’s not worth it, those just kind of fall off, because now you’re surrounded by these individuals who believe in you and you also believe in them, and it’s a whole different journey.
Dr James :
It’s a positive feedback cycle that you never, ever, ever knew existed, and you’ll never appreciate the magnitude off until you start putting out something that you love on social media. I promise that it’s there. People will find you, they will approach you, they will talk about things that are similar to what you’re interested in. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s beautiful. Go for it, take the plunge.
Speaker 3:
I wish I had done it sooner, and it was my own self-sabotaging and limiting beliefs that I didn’t do it sooner. And if I had just believed in the fact that that support system is out there, then I think it would have been that much easier to start to put yourself out there. But start small, and it doesn’t have to even be big, but it’s starting small, whether it’s in different parts of investing or investing in yourself. Start small, that’s all you have to do.
Dr James :
I know that you had your amazing anecdote and your sort of journey into starting your online presence, your business. How did you actually take the leap? What did that day that you took the plunge look like? So you just said actually I’m gonna put stuff out there on social media about burnout or I’m gonna create this website. I’m gonna put a little piece of me on this website. We’re gonna see how many hits we get If it becomes something that could be a side gig, it’s gonna be a side gig, or did you sort of set out with that path intentionally? Was there someone that inspired you? How did that happen? Yeah.
Speaker 3:
So the start of the business for me. I, like I’d said initially, I had already started speaking on treating the oncology patient and I thought to myself, I love this so much, I want to find other topics. And I started humming and hawing about the research that I just dove into about the imposter phenomenon and was like, oh, this is exactly where I wanna be speaking. So I remember I was talking to someone, a local dental society, and they had heard about me through other speaking opportunities and so they were like listen, dental oncology isn’t what we need at this point in time. And they dropped the line of we’re actually looking for leadership courses and I thought you know what, I’m just gonna pitch an idea. I had no clue what I was doing. I remember the friends that I was with I was getting ready to actually go on a weekend trip to Montreal and we were getting ready to pack the car and I said you know what, I’m just gonna do it. And I pitched myself. And I pitched, talking about imposter phenomenon, and they came back saying, yeah, this is definitely good, this is it. And you know what, If I didn’t, if I didn’t just say you know what, Just go for it, I don’t think that would have started the process of okay, now what’s next? Okay, I need to find a website or build a website. I need to start social media. I need to start putting workshops together. I need to start doing this. And that it was that one conversation where, out of the blue, I wasn’t even prepared for and I pitched myself. I ended that conversation and the friend who was sitting in front of me she’s like wow, she’s like that’s so good. How long have you been putting that proposal together? I was like I just pulled it, Got a thin air. And she goes don’t say thin air, that definitely wasn’t thin air. You’ve definitely been thinking on it for a while. You just actually made it a realization now and I was like, oh, all they needed to do was believe in my own self and that’s how the Alchemist dentist came to be.
Dr James :
That is a complete well, I was gonna say there was almost some irony in there because there was imposter syndrome on your speech on imposter syndrome, but there was zero imposter syndrome. That was the thing, because you just went for it. Yeah, wow, awesome, cool. So moral of the story just go for it.
Speaker 3:
There’s something that you feel strong about.
Dr James :
Just go for it. Put yourself out there. What’s the worst that can happen? Doors can open, and Jessica’s been a huge beneficiary of that because she now no longer needs to rely on dentistry as much as she did previously, and and and, and she is someone that is. Previously. You’ve had your struggles is it fair to say, your tough times with dentistry, and can you imagine the place that you would be in possibly right now, having to rely on it solely, being someone that has evidently you know dotted it as a long-term career choice before? To me, there’s a lot more. You must be able to sleep a lot more easily at night, or a lot with a lot less anxiety and concern that it’s not your only. You’re not just a one-trick pony.
Speaker 3:
You’ve not got this whole other dimension. Yeah, you know what, when I started to sleep better, I realized that this was the right choice, and it is it. It. So, dentistry I found certain parts of dentistry I found just depleted my energy. And the alchemist’s dentist, even though there’s so much work that goes into it, it reenergizes me so much more and that’s how I know I’m doing the right thing and I have the right purpose.
Dr James :
Amazing, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool Guys, I really, really hope that we’ve inspired a few people out there listening today to at least look at things from another point of view and maybe see some of the merits of grabbing the bull by the horn and just taking that plunge, so to speak, because it’s better to have some momentum. It’s better to have momentum in some direction rather than have direction or thinking about a direction but zero momentum whatsoever. Cause at least that way that you can make progress. Jessica, it’s been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast with you as a guest on it today. I hope that you would feel the same reciprocally, in so far as being a guest and appearing on my podcast. Is that too presumptuous to say?
Speaker 3:
I hope not. I am so grateful to be here. Thank you so much for the invite and having me.
Dr James :
My pleasure, Jessica. We shall speak again very, very soon.