“ I am a doctor and my aim is health” , focusing on other things like “commercial things “ , “marketing” is unethical . This is something I hear on a constant basis and that , honestly , in the first part of my career I also thought .
Focusing on practice ,focusing on the final “product “ . the clinical work .
Charged with this idea it seems obvious that the “product “ is the main key to get success in your working life. Sadly it isn’t.
Coming back from my holidays in Greece I needed a stop for the night and I selected a small hotel . I just needed to sleep few hours for the night so to complete my travel back home so , honestly , I took the cheapest available (august is high season and here there are crazy prices across this month ). Well aware that a cheap price was probably a “so and so “ place but fine with that , I arrived to that place around midnight .
My expectations were low or very low .
I arrived in a small square with an ancient church in the middle . The place was on the top of a hill with a stunning view over the coast . A breath taking view despite it was night . The hotel was next to the church . It was the old monastery of the church . It was developing in a sort of vertical way across the hill with an uncommon architecture .
Everything inside the place was rebuilt in an exquisite way . New furnitures , comfortable bed and pillows . Big Flat screen TV , brand new air-conditioning.
Clean and shiny everywhere , really a place worth much more the price I paied .
After a good night of sleep I had my last surprise enjoying a very good and abundant breakfast for my whole family included in that cheap price and had the chance to talk for a while with the owners of the place.
His story was an example of a typical bias of “too much focus on the product “.
The owner was a quite wealthy retired person in his 60’s . He was literally in love with his small village and the historical attractions . Indeed this place , the exact name is Rossano in Calabria , was one of the most important and strategic cities of the Byzantine empire in the period around 500-1000 a.c and around 900 a.c it became also the capital in Italy of this empire . Still very important during the following dominations it started to lose prestige just in the last centuries .
A place with more than a thousand of year of history , a small hotel of the highest quality in a stunning position and location …the perfect “product” ….so thought the owner during the long work of rebuilding …..sure of the success of his idea.
Sadly it wasn’t.
Rossano is slightly not enough recognized in the typical travels people do for historical attractions , Rossano is not close to the sea and in calabria the majority of people moves there looking for sun sea and beaches . The demand for this place is low…so low that he had to lower the price in order to become attractive….at least a little .
Being in love with the product being blind to other factors is not a winning strategy in his field , nor it is in dentistry .
Beside the product (in this case the dental treatment ) you have to look carefully to where you live , the economy of your area , the cultural level of your patients , and to fine tune your service in order to fit their needs .
I know that most of the colleagues , especially young , maybe would love to do esthetic cases with veneers and work on beautiful people . Simply in most of the places (included mine ) this is not the dentistry you will be able to practice . And trying to push that kind of dentistry would backfire your office .
In this era of social media and “perfection “ if we wanna be successful in the real life we have always to ask ourselves how much “ show “ like at the cinema we daily see on these cases and not to be too much in love with the “product “ but look at 360 degrees what we do .
At how many things are you blind every day if you are completely honest with yourself?
[03/10/24, 21:19:22] Andry: educational
[03/10/24, 21:19:23] Andry: ok
the Dental Purgatorium
19 December 2024
