Wow. What a week it’s been. Could anyone have predicted this election cycle, including the plot twists and turns that happened weekly during the past two years? Like many Americans, I can say that I have never experienced the divisiveness and hatred that I’ve witnessed during these past two years. Like most Americans, I can also say, “I’m glad that’s over.” But is it, really? Something ugly was stirred up in our collective reality. Can we ignore it? Can we afford to? I can tell you from painful experience that ignoring a festering wound by covering it with a Band-Aid just makes things worse.
I’m really lucky. In my family, we have doctors, a dentist, a waitress, a nurse, a personal trainer, a lawyer, an IT guru, teachers. These are my go-to people when I have a medical or dental question or if I have a question about chemistry or why my printer isn’t printing. Is this something serious I should have checked out or is this something normal? I’ve “gotta guy.” So lucky!
What I don’t have in my family is an investment advisor, an auto mechanic, a politician, an athletic coach, a builder, an accountant, an airline or travel specialist, a landscaper, or a clergy person. Other people do, and they are lucky too. We all have someone in our lives who is the person we go to when we really need the best advice about some issue that’s come up. Someone we trust to help us out and steer us in the right direction. Someone we go to before we hit the Yellow Pages or do a Google search.
From talking with people, I can tell you what they don’t want.
They don’t want to be cheated, tricked, overcharged, or given unnecessary treatment. From what I hear, that sort of thing is still going on! It’s pretty unbelievable to me, but that’s what I hear.
They want to know they can trust their dental team. Makes sense. Sounds reasonable. But how do we assure them that they can trust us? Is it the kind of thing that develops over time like any strong relationship? Maybe so. That’s how we approach it: one patient at a time. Trust builds through one conversation at a time.
Why do we buy? There are so many reasons, if we want to be thorough, but primarily, I think we buy things to solve a problem. The problem may be that we need food, that we need clothing, that we need transportation, that we need medical care. It may, of course, be that we need a gift for someone or that we need a pick-me-up. Perhaps we need to maintain the items we’ve already bought or that we already own, such as an oil change for the car or a haircut. No matter the reason, we all buy things. We also usually have a choice about where we buy. That choice is the crux of it all for a business owner.