Victoria: I think the future is really bright, especially for independent practice owners, they have that entrepreneurial spirit that says. Boy, if I own this place, I'd certainly do things differently.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Victoria: And I love that. And one of the things that they're doing differently is that they refuse to compromise on their personal life.
Mm. Male and female, they say, I'm gonna be the one taking my kids to soccer practice. I'm gonna have vacation time. I'm gonna make sure that this doesn't consume me.
Anne: Hello everyone. It's Anne Duffy and welcome to Dental Entrepreneur, the Future of Dentistry's podcast. I am so happy that you're with me today, and I have just not only a special guest, but a special person in my life the day we met.
And hugged and, uh, have continued our friendship and grown our friendship. It just feels so yummy, so special because through our friendship and our professional life, we have, I feel like grown mountains of women coming together. And it's together that we do things, for the right reasons. And we do big thingsbig things with small love.
Let me tell you a little bit about her before we get started. Victoria Peterson has spent more than three decades helping independent dental practices become something rare, truly investible. She's the creator of the investment grade practice framework, a comprehensive methodology that transforms how practices are built, led, and valued.
but sets Victoria's work apart isn't just the financials, it's the belief that a high performing practice is first a coherent one, where the culture, the team, and the leadership are all operating in alignment. Today she's here to talk about what it actually takes to build a practice.
Worth owning and worth selling. Please help me welcome Dr. Victoria Peterson. Hello and welcome.
Victoria: Hello, Anne. I love your radio voice.
Anne: I loved reading your bio because I have seen you grow so much, and one of the things I've, always admired about you, Victoria, is that you, grow and you pivot and you grow and you pivot and it just, you are still going to the top of the mountain and every time you, hit one big.
Plateau. You get to the other and the other and you really have inspired so many of us live out, principle of do, which is start and don't stop and do's, don't retire. So thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today for all you're doing. you know, tell me a little bit about what you have been doing you know, since started.
Victoria: Oh, wow. You know, I love that you said the mountain metaphor because when I turned 50, myself, Patty Suey, who was with us for a long time, and about four or five other women our age and my 18-year-old son, we decided to climb Mount St. Helen for our 50th birthday. I know, I don't jump rope.
I I don't run, I don't walk, I don't exercise. None of it like I run to the store. That's, that's I would do. And my husband thought, you're crazy. So I gave myself a year, you know, and kind of trained for it. Totally unprepared for that. And what I learned climbing Mount St. Helen's is that. Mountains are not straight up.
You climb and you go through the woods and then you get to another level, and then you climb a rock and you think, surely at this peak I'm at the top. But you're not. You go down a valley and then you come back up again and you go down a valley And St. Helen's is really unique because remember it blew She blew her top off.
Anne: Yeah.
Victoria: And so when you get to that last 200 feet, it's all ash. It's like climbing a sand dune.
Anne: Oh wow.
Victoria: I am not who close to the sand dune of my career yet. So, know, I guess what I've learned is that you take the hills and the valleys and you conserve your energy where you can and you celebrate every step.
Because they're so well earned. And 2026 has been another mountain to climb. You know, I can't say that it's not, as you know, and some of your listeners probably know, I developed Productive Dentist Academy along with my co-founder, partner friend Dr. Bruce Baird in 2000, four, and we celebrated 21 years of partnership and he passed away on January 6th of this year.
And so the last 90 days have been. About finding my feet on the ground, about, you know, the team and our clients and where is our position within the industry? How do we keep serving? And I guess the thing that I'm most proud of with Bruce and I and our relationship is that we do try to walk our talk.
Mm-hmm. And part of that and part of the investment Great Practice framework is, you know, we pulled a page from Stephen Coy that says, begin with the end in mind. So about two years ago Bruce was 68. I was 62. We said, what does the end look like? At some point there will be an end for us.
What does that look like? And he said, you know, by the time I'm 70, I would've been so many years since hanging up a handpiece, I'd like to start passing the torch. So we started doing that. You saw at our conferences, we brought in Jackson Bean and Wake er and Braden and other speakers, fabulous clinicians, masters at their craft.
And he was starting to transition podcast and things like that. July of last year, we executed his succession plan. The company bought back his shares in the company and he was working out his last year as an employee and was loving it. And in fact, the day he passed away, we were chatting and the conversation was so good.
I was like, we need to record this and do a podcast. Let's do that tomorrow morning. He's like, I got your partner. You know, I just wanna keep helping PDA grow. So that's where we started the year. It was, a
Anne: Wow.
Victoria: It was a rough start to the year.
Anne: Yeah. And, uh, beautiful part of that, and of course we, you and I before we started dedicated this to Bruce and we know he is watching down here, honest today as we, we share, but your team that you built together.
Really culture, the energy, the love, the love that you have for each other and for your clients and for the doctors. Yeah. 'cause I've seen that firsthand when I went to your 20th anniversary. I've seen that the love in the room. I mean, it was just, it was so palatable. But it just showed up. You know, you never know.
Are you really doing the right thing? Is it really strong? Is it real? And I think that, you of the things that is so beautiful to see is that it is real. The productive Dentist Academy is authentically real. Here to help dentists have a great career and now moving forward, with everything you and Bruce created and you've taken the helmet, again, kudos to you because He was so dear to you that you didn't really have time to grieve. Like probably you would like to, 'cause you're responsible for a lot of people I think that the grace that everybody gives each other, that you've built that culture of giving grace, you know, you're not alone. path?
Victoria: Not at all. And I give credit to our team because they believed in our philosophy of comprehensive care. They believe in the philosophy of diagnosing by risk factors and everything we do, that we've always done on the practice management side. Started and stopped in the patient chair. What is that experience?
Strip away the insurance. Strip away your limiting beliefs. Strip away whatever technology or excuses you have. Are you taking care of the patient? Yeah. And if you start and stop all your systems with that, things work well. And so our team honestly didn't miss a beat. They were like, okay, we need to get a plan.
We'll do this, we'll do that. You had Robin Deir, the head of our Phoenix Dental Agency,
Anne: She was on our winter cover for Chicago mid winter and just absolutely. A beautiful, beautiful story. So you know, if you haven't read her story, go to DW Life and click on the most current issue right now is her cover and her story.
Yeah. And just a beautiful person and I remember. Talking to her at the 20th anniversary and saying to her, Robin, you've got to share your story with us sometime. And then it came to fruition. Your team pushed her to do that? She was,
Victoria: we shoved, we
Anne: shoved, we shoved. Like,
Victoria: I'm not, I'm not, no, no, no, no, no.
We're like
Anne: just beautiful. And then our podcast just came out and I just love everything that she had to say about what she's doing. Also the, freedom that you've given everyone that works for you. the ESOP that you've created, I mean, right there is just a model for so many businesses and the love that they have you and where you guys are going, it just so cool.
And you've had such long-term employees and you've also, Victoria. Personally spawned so many coaches because, you know, you're, you're there for a time and then you see, okay, I wanna maybe do something on my own. And you've always given them the freedom and the grace to be able to exit beautifully, which makes perfect sense that you're the one person to write a book on investment grade practice on how to build it with the end in mind.
Talk about that.
Victoria: it comes from, like you said, I've been at this. Yeah, I think you and I both started when we were children.
Anne: Yes, absolutely.
Victoria: So I came into dentistry when I was 17. I've told my team that I'm gonna step down from day-to-day activity in July of 2029, because that's 50 years from the day I told my parents I was quitting high school to become a dental hygienist.
Anne: Oh my gosh. You've always been sassy. Okay, that makes sense.
Victoria: I've always been sassy. I need one credit to graduate high school. Why am I sticking around here for a whole year? You're so cool. Taking all these advanced placement classes when I could drive 30 miles to the junior college, get my high school diploma in one semester and start college, and my parents said, well, it sounds like you've got a plan.
And they let me do it. Good parenting. So from, yeah, assisting while in hygiene school, becoming a hygienist I turned down dental school, I was accepted, but at the time, it was the eighties and doctors were going bankrupt. I mean, left and right. Interest rates were 14, 16%. they were struggling and honestly they weren't making maybe $20,000 a year more than a hygienist.
So I thought all that education, all that risk, I would never own a dental practice. That's crazy. Fast forward after 15 years of a really wonderful clinical. Life. You know, I went from Medicaid to the top cosmetic practice in Atlanta and learned so much. Helped fortune management create hygiene mastery.
Mm-hmm. Lots of things that sparked from that. I got to teach at PAC Live and learn all the new cosmetic material. It is fun to think that we were here before widening, you know?
Anne: Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Victoria: I had already had a consulting career and retired, and Bruce called and said, Hey, I remember when you worked with my practice.
I'm starting this thing. I just wanna get inside the head of the doctor and tell 'em it's not your team's fault, it's yours. And like, get the doctor's head on straight. But now that I've done that, they wanna train their team. So we came together, that's why we formed the Productive Dentist Academy. And along the way, I had an opportunity to start buying practices. Mm-hmm. So I created a small network of about five practices that I owned. One I owned a hundred percent. The other four I owned 50 50. And then we managed about three others. So we had about eight practices in our network. And so I built neighborhood smiles and that taught me a lot.
It taught me a lot about wow liability about. True employees, like I had independent contractors and independent thinkers. This was 55 employees that lived 2000 miles away from me, that clocked in, clocked out, and weren't always there to pull together. So I experienced the embezzlement. I experienced the buddy punching on the time clocks.
I experienced the, why did you say watch that tooth? Instead of treatment planning a crown, I went through evaluating insurances of which do we take, which do we not, all of that kind of stuff, and had a planned exit on that. I was in that environment for about seven years, and the true mark of being investible is what happens after you sell.
And at the time, you know, this was 2011, 2018, so DSOs were, really hitting their stride. And the theory back then was just duct tape a bunch of practices together. Mm-hmm. And now you've got a group and you sell the group and you get a higher multiple. I had an internal buyer, my partner and I own three buildings and half of five practices, and I leveraged out for an 11 x and wow. It was great.
Anne: You have lived it, girl. You have,
Victoria: I know,
Anne: lived it. Ah,
Victoria: but guess,guess what happened after
Anne: what,
Victoria: back in the day, during that timeframe. DSOs expected that they would close down 25 to 30% of the practices that they bought, because if you duct tape seven together, two were gonna be dogs and you were gonna have to just like they weren't profitable.
And so they typically shrink in the early days. Those five practices are still going, and they've added 12 more. There's 17 of them now across the state of Wisconsin. So that's where I learned that there's a difference between. Working in, another Stephen Covey, right. Working in the business versus on the business.
Anne: Okay.
Victoria: that environment, I was forced to do both. We had to have good culture, good systems, good processes, but I also knew that I wanted to leverage out and get my money back and retire and, and have that investment. So. That's when I really kind of intuitively started building this framework of how do I pay attention to cashflow today?
'cause that's important, but how do I build this so that someone else wants to buy it and they want to buy it at a premium? And that honestly, in 2018, nobody was asking that question, because the thought of the day was, it was all about volume and acquisition. Yeah. It wasn't about same store growth, it wasn't about making each practice as strong as it could be.
Anne:
Victoria: So.
Anne: So that's, that's
Victoria: been a journey.
Anne: That has been a journey, and I think we're circling back now to, what's the future of dentistry now, having all that experience, where do you see it going? Because it, it, it.got itself in a little bit of trouble there, as you just mentioned, because they lost their footing, so to speak, on what was really important.
So we've got a lot of young dentists that listen to this podcast as well.
What do you see some of the tips for where we are right now looking out five, 10 years?
Victoria: I think the future is really bright, especially for independent practice owners, and I love that you have a young audience because the people I see buying practices right now, were in A DSO or public health mm-hmm.
Or something like that. Getting their clinical skills and their reps, and they have that entrepreneurial spirit that says. Boy, if I own this place, I'd certainly do things differently.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Victoria: And I love that. And one of the things that they're doing differently is that they refuse to compromise on their personal life.
Mm. Male and female, they say, I'm gonna be the one taking my kids to soccer practice. I'm gonna have vacation time. I'm gonna make sure that this doesn't consume me. So they're going at it in a different way than baby boomers and Gen Xs did. Where your job was, your identity mm-hmm. Is your identity. I am a dentist.
Younger doctors, I think they identify as dentists, but they say, I provide dental care.
and I snowboard. And I surf and I do this cool wicked stuff, you know? Yeah. They have life, they have hobbies. that gets infused in the culture. Where they're having a hard time is they don't yet know the structure.
They don't know how to architect the design to give 'em what they want, and dentistry's very fragmented, but consulting is even more fragmented. Mm. So I'm gonna read an article here. I'll go on Dental Town. I'm in nachos, and so and so said this was good, but then I compared it to that. So there's a lot of DIY in the younger generations, which I love chat, GPT.
Half of it'll be right and half of it'll be hallucinated. Ask a consultant, half of it's gonna be right. Half of it's gonna be brilliant. Mm-hmm. Some of it's not gonna apply. So I think they're time crunched because there's so much to sort through. Mm-hmm. There's just so much to sort through. So that's what's happening on the buyer's side, and it is a buyer beware market.
I've had four doctors this week that I spoke to. And one I onboarded. She called me on a Thursday and said, okay, I talked to your company about four months ago, and they said, when I meet my new team call you, it'll be time to start coaching. I was like, great. She goes, I met my team an hour ago. I was like, great.
And she goes, I close on the practice a week from tomorrow. I was like, wait a week, and I have all these questions. You have 15 questions that range from. Somebody told me that I need to fire the employees and then rehire them. How do I do it to, can I bring my former assistant with me? To the lease to everything, like so many questions.
Yeah. Can I buy a new computer system? 'cause we can't run the patient ed. And, and what do I do about this in my bank? Can you look over my loans? Can you look at my contracts? All of this. And Ann, she is. Amazing. She came on as a client. I said, so you're not asking about coaching. You're saying, activate me now.
And she said, yes. And I said, well, I don't have a contract, so high five me on Zoom. We'll get going, and I hooked her up with our friends at HR for Health and Ali Oram, because I legally wanted her strong on hr. She got her employee manual written over the weekend. She had job descriptions, she got prepared.
She knew exactly how to interview and on board.
Anne: Wow.
Victoria: She got her ducks in a row with her computer system. Carrie Miller started working with her. She's had her first team meeting. She's been in practice two weeks now. She's off and running and going, wow. So the new generations moves like this, and they're all sitting in the DSOs right now with those two year contracts looking around for those $750,000 practices.
And that is a special number because it points to the future. Doctors who didn't prepare for their exit years in advance. Their practices are somewhere between 700 and 1,000,900, somewhere in there. Mm-hmm. And they're selling for 65 cents on the dollar. Mm-hmm.
Anne: Wow.
Victoria: Four young doctors. It's just uncanny.
Yeah. The practice revenues were like 700, 7 50, 7 25. They're in that range and I bought it for 400. Isn't that a great deal?
Anne: Wow.
Victoria: So, like I say, every practice can be sellable.
Anne: Yes.
Victoria: And I know that those practices provided a good living for those dentists for a lot of years, but in my book, I talk about. Two practices that were in the same place and one practice chose to grow 10% in their revenues and to cut 10% off their expenses.
And when you take that out over two years, one practice would've sold for 6 75. The other one sold for 1.8 million. Like, there's small things that you can do that makes a huge difference, but you need time. And that's the other end of the spectrum, the future of dentistry. I've heard it predicted that between now and 2035, so what is that?
eight, nine years. Yeah. Yeah. We went to hygiene school. There was no math.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I gotcha.
Victoria: Yeah, so eight or nine years, 35% of dental practices will be sold. So the baby boomers, the Gen Xers are right They're the ones sitting on these lifestyle practices at seven, 800,000 DSOs and young buyers are picking 'em up for 400, 500.
When if they would just give themselves three years, five years, if they owned the real estate, they could leverage out for millions. And it's not any harder than your traditional practice management. Wow. It's just pulling different levers that they haven't yet been taught.
Anne: Yeah. They don't know what they don't know.
We say that.
Victoria: No. Yeah,
Anne: but that is so interesting. And I can believe that, because I think a lot of dentists don't believe that they would be still practicing at this time in their life. Right. I mean, they feel like they would be retired by now, and they, they decide, well, they gotta work a little bit longer.
So there's a whole group of smash them all together that are wanting to, have their legacy carried on, their culture carried on, but they take their foot off the pedal, I guess, and they just don't know. It sounds like there's, yeah, it's not like a big shift either, Victoria. It just, it's a strategic walk.
Victoria: It's a strategic walk, and for years we've focused on all the right things, but there's a different thing. So we focused on case acceptance and production and new patient head count and things like that. The shift is not on volume, it's on value. What's the quality of my revenues? What's the quality of the type of patient that I'm attracting?
How authentic is my message and does it attract people to my service mix? And I was podcasting with Gary Taka recently, and we both love him. Um, oh, he's
Anne: great.
Victoria: And we started talking about insurance. And he and I are both big believers in Fee for service. Mm-hmm. And we both know that there's a reality that PPO saturation in some areas is so dense you're not gonna get off of all plans more than likely, and, or you've got beloveds, you fall in love with the patients.
So the teachers, they're the hospital, they're this groups that's who's tied to the insurance. So you delay making a choice about it.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Victoria: But recently. I rarely see a contract that requires more than 30 or 35% write off. Mm-hmm. That's kind of standard. But as I'm evaluating practices, I'm seeing 50, 52, 58, 60, 62.
The highest I've seen was a practice that multi-doctor doing 10 million a year, and they write off 5.7 and they collect 4.3. So they collect every collectible dollar. And I said, you have a quality of revenue problem. You have, an integrity problem. There's money leaks along the way. I said, are you concerned about insurance?
And they go, no. We have somebody who does that. she does a great job. She does all of her billing. She's done it for years. And I said, when's the last time we audited the system? So when you don't know
Anne: mm-hmm
Victoria: what your administrators should be doing and you like them and they seem busy, and you just accept that insurance sucks, it wears you down.
It wears you down and you become blinded to what you could be or should be looking for. So, like I say, it is, simple, but it's not always easy.
Anne: Yeah.
Victoria: And get in this paralysis of, I don't wanna spend money on a consultant, but I'm gonna go find them $2 million. And I'm not gonna hire any more employees.
We're not gonna change much of anything except go find him $2 million.
Anne: Yeah.
Victoria: That belongs to him.
Anne: Yeah, it's like I think they're afraid to pull back the curtain and sometimes they need someone to pull back the curtain with them and give them a solution because you know, you just go on every day and there's so many hidden secrets that nobody's actually hiding it on purpose.
It's just there know, everything seems smooth sailing, but then when you start to dig in, like you decide you want to retire or sell or whatever, that's when dirt hits the fan, I guess if, you will. just made that up, I think, as you use that more often.
But anyway, it's like, I think also even just speaking to you now, Victoria, and always, I don't think that, the dentist really. Is thinking clearly if they think they can start their practice without a reputable coach, helping them honestly, from day one, like this young dentist that you were talking about, how smart is she
Victoria: she got a working line of capital.
She said, yeah, I want you to finance my practice and I need a working line of capital. 'cause I'm hiring a coach and I need to do some marketing and I need some equipment. And the banks got behind her.
Anne: It's just, you walk in with confidence, they need someone that knows, been there, done that, that's when you're happy. That's when you, you've had this great career and you look back and it's worth something. It's worth what you put your blood, sweat, and tears in because if you're running a practice for 30, 40 years, your blood, sweat and tears has been
Victoria: right,
Anne: not dumped in that practice, but dedicated to that practice, not only yours, but your whole family.
I just heard something about Scotty Scheffler, who's the head golfer now or something like that. And he, he's really not, doesn't want necessarily to be known as a golfer. He wants to be known as a family man.
And that comes first, and you're right, this generation, hey, it sounds like good idea to me to like not put your work in front of everything and it defines everything about you, but you're really a person with people. Your people are important. Your I have a
Victoria: life.
Anne: I have a life. A life,and it's possible to have both.
But when you, lead with one and don't put any. Time or effort in the other, then that's when it's, out of balance. But there's strategies that you know about that you could put into place that gives you a great night's sleep every night. and, not a lot of surprises at the back end of your career.
Right.
Victoria: That's the your head on your pillow moment.
honestly. We carry too much stress. Mm-hmm. You know, everybody in dentistry, but particularly owner operators. So when you are trained, for nearly a decade through high school, college, dental school, post grad, all of that, you're trained to be perfect.
You're trained to be precise. You're trained to work in a dark space. The size of a tennis ball that's wet and you need it dry, like everything is so precise, so everything about your. Mental, patterns, like we get entrained with patterns of thinking are going in this direction. When you take on ownership, that's people, that's creativity, that's conversations, that's give and take.
That's, trust. all of those. Totally different part of your brain that quite honestly could have been left undeveloped if you weren't intentional about it. Mm-hmm. And so now suddenly you're trying to navigate, my hygienist has a broken arm and my front office person, I don't think she's doing a good job.
We're only collecting 80%, but I can't fire her because my hygienist broke her arm. It all, it gets in this swirl. So. You hold on tight.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Victoria: You learn to hold on tight and think if it's gonna be done right, I'm gonna do it. So we take on too much and don't learn how to trust and verify to delegate with authority and have a system to check.
So we really teach doctors what the good job looks like, write up the role description to match what that looks like. Then you have a document to hold people accountable. Otherwise, is just conversation, right? And. Once you start to delegate and you learn that you can let go and you validated it and you've got it, suddenly your energy starts coming back to you.
' cause that's the number one thing our clients say is that dentistry is easy. What they identify, they don't have the words for it until the conversation, but what they're experiencing is decision fatigue.
Anne: Yeah, because as an owner you make,
Victoria: 10 decisions before your morning huddle, and there are about a thousand different things. So there's no category, there's no single folder that your mind can easily go to and say, oh. We're in human resources now. Let me complete this and close the folder before you can close that folder.
You're not in HR anymore. You're in supplies and inventory, and then you're into scheduling and patient treatment, and then you're into vacation planning six weeks from now. So your brain just never really has time to close, and you and I talk about this a lot. When I owned my dental practices, I really burned out like I was. it was a perfect storm. I was still running PDA. We had built an ad agency. I was going through perimenopause and I thought buying 50, five practices within six months would be fun. It was too much. It was too much. I had. I wanna say I had 55 employees in Wisconsin and I had 35 employees strung out across 13 states otherwise, and I can remember walking into the Amen Brain Clinic not knowing what was wrong with me.
And they did these scans and they said, you have PTSD. I was like, that's crazy. I didn't go to Nam. I didn't fight in a war. I can't have PTSD. And they go, no your cortisols are off the chart. You've blown out your thyroid. You have Hashimoto's, you have PTSD. If you don't change something right now, and I write about this in the book, if you don't make a change now, like get rid of 70% of your workload.
As quickly as possible, you're looking at lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and a whole cascade of autoimmune diseases that you won't be able to control. So that was 2016
Anne: wow,
Victoria: that was a long journey. That's what sent me. Into, okay, how do I put myself in the center of the circle?
That's what we teach our doctors too. I call it center court leadership. How do you get into the center and know yourself so well work on your internet instead of searching for the answers on the internet. That's what took me into the ash rams and learning yoga and breath work and meditation and energy healing, and all of that culminated with the doctor in spiritual studies.
So thank you for calling me Doctor. I don't want anybody to confuse me with a dentist. Although that is a noble profession. Yes. And one I wish had walked through as well, but it's hard. And it's emotionally hard. It's mentally hard. It's spiritually draining,
Anne: especially when you go by yourself.
Right? This is the thing is like you bring it back to like what? The productive dentist Academy does is it is like a menu for so many of the different verticals that you just talked about. Your, your personal health. Yeah, your practice health, your patient health, your finance health.
There's so many layers there that you try to balance all those plates and do dentistry, because it's gotta be perfection, I'm not gonna say you can't do it because maybe there are some phenoms out there that can, handle that.
Victoria: Yeah.
Anne: But you do need somebody that has been there, done that, has the experience, it's almost like there's gotta be a hack for almost everything, and we just don't know what it is until we talk to somebody that knows what they're talking about. Knows what to ask or knows that, oh, you can help with this.
Oh, I thought I had to do this all on my own. You know, there's just, it's just an amazing gift that you give to professionals to be able to. Take the load of being a dentist because that's a heavy load all on its own. Just if you're just doing clinical all day long and they know that from being in a you know, some of the DSOs.
But is something really special about being able to make your own decisions and there are some DSOs that allow that, which I think is phenomenal.
Victoria: I was gonna say, DSOs have come a long ways. corporate structure brings some value in many cases.
I think there are some that are doing really well. I'm also not, I anti insurance, I'm not anti PPOs. I think that there is a huge, population that would never go to the dentist otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. but you have to understand what is correct for me.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Victoria: You know, and when you get down to the what is correct for me, my life purpose, my family, and.
Rarely, I couldn't do it for myself. And rarely do I meet anybody that says, you know, I just sat under a tree for a while and I came up with it. This is my life. This is how, what I know I'm supposed to do. This is how the world knows me. And gosh, I all figured out.
Anne: Oh my gosh. Wouldn't that be love, miss Nirvana?
That's Nirvana.
Victoria: Yeah. I'd, yeah, I think that's, that's our whole journey on earth, right? Yeah. We plop ourselves down in the school and, and we take 50, 60, 80, a hundred years to kind of learn our lessons.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. But, I mean,parting words, Victoria, like what do you want us to know about your vision? in the perfect world for the future of dentistry?
Victoria: You know what? My vision for a perfect world in dentistry, I often say that culture rises with the maturity of the leaders. And that leadership maturity comes with really owning your identity as, I love Hazel Glassberg, Hazel, I'm quoting you here.
You're not a dentist, you are an oral physician.
there is so much research out there that shows that oral physicians, oral professionals, and hygienists, assistants, FTAs, doctors, all of us. We could identify almost 80% of chronic disease.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Victoria: We have more patient access than any other healthcare professional.
Yeah. And we've allowed ourselves to be stripped of our right to autonomy and clinical excellence. And so for me if I retired out of this industry after 50 or so years, and I knew That dentistry was moving towards a more holistic way. I was doing glucose metering in 1987. I was doing blood pressure checks because we didn't know a lot about gum disease back then.
We knew it was bacterial, but we didn't know which were the good bacteria, bad bacteria. But what I noticed was. As my patient's tissues got healthier, they were coming back and saying, boy, I didn't know that I would need less insulin. So I missed my last appointment because OD'ed on my insulin.
I went to an insulin coma and we had to readjust it. 1987 that clicked. I should have a glucose monitor and I should monitor my patients and tell them. To monitor it more frequently because as you get healthy in your mouth, you get healthy in your body.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Victoria: So what is that, 30 years, 40 years?
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Victoria: we've got a long ways to go.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Victoria: Perio is still only 10 or 11% across the nation that we're treating.
Anne: Yeah.
Victoria: So. Yes. I love the financial side of, building an investment. Great practice. I know I can help doctors build generational wealth and all of that, but I think if we all came together in advocacy of comprehensive care, we could have a healthier nation.
Yeah. We could help. So many chronic diseases that we're not helping with right now. So for me, you know, once a hygienist, always a hygienist, I'm that rebellious teenager who quit high school to become a hygienist. So that clinical side of me is gonna be infused in everything.
Anne: I feel that we're getting there. We may be on the second wave of that. It's taken a while to get that, out there. Um, but it is, a conversation that has been had in circles and circles, so that is broadening and widening and companies like yours helping to spread that, word, that dentistry is important.
it's priceless and it can be very rewarding generate absolutely not only wealth, financial wealth, but, physical and emotional wealth, for a great career that you've lived it and poured your heart into it. So I thank you. How do we get in touch with you?
Because I'm sure there's a lot of dentists that are that say, oh, dang, I wish I would've called you. Two months ago, or, 20 years ago or, oh, like your friend that called, week before she's ready to close. So how do we get in touch with you at Productive Dentist Academy and your fabulous team of Yeah.
Uh, dental professionals?
Victoria: You could go to productive dentist.com. You could also, find us on investment great practice.com. And my team email directly would be growth team@productivedentist.com, and they can get you some information and, uh. I'll say the thing I'm most excited about right now is AI in dentistry.
'Cause we're saving doctors three hours a day in note taking. Like, it's just amazing. So many cool things happening,
Anne: so many cool things happening. It's hard as down top of that when you're, your nose is down or your head's down in the, into the chair too. Yeah. So, yeah, it's just so much to learn and So much excitement for what's to come that all just lends itself to more patient care and more balance in your life. So, there's so many tips and tricks that you guys know that will help us grow, and I love that. What does it grow? Team
Victoria: growth team. I'll give it to you.
Anne: So it can be growth team.
Well, oh, it'll be in our,it'll be in our, show notes. I just thoughtthat's, so you, Victoria, that you
Victoria: growth team, the team came up with it. They're like, we don't want info at like, we wanna help teams grow, so can we be the growth team? I was
Anne: like, oh no, I love it. You give them all that autonomy and they are.
Amazing. I've,met so many, and I,I love your team. I love your company, and I love you, and thank you for joining me today. Thank you, Anne. Oh, the future is bright with you in it. Victoria Peterson, Dr. Victoria Peterson. All right, darling. I'll see you soon on the road and, take care. God bless and thank you, Bruce.
We did okay. Alright, love you.
Victoria: Love you.
