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COVID Relationship Stories

The December 2021 issue of AGD Impact was an issue that has inspired me to share more stories. For some years, I have been espousing the concept that Success is All About Relationships and have taken that concept to everything I do in business. As a result, over the course of my 35-year long career, I have seen four generations …

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Self-Care is Not Selfish

In the June 2021 issue of AGD Impact, Editor Timothy F. Kosinski, DDS, MAGD, wrote about being physically vulnerable and the need to take time for ourselves to look after our physical health and well-being. It got me thinking about some other situations that happened to me recently. Bill (not his real name) and his family have been patients of mine …

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Relationship Stories

“The Golden 10” concept developed by Roger Levin, DDS, states that if you get to know eight to 10 things about the person in front of you, you will change your relationship with them from a professional to a personal one. When this transition occurs with your patients, trust is developed, because people trust people they like. This trust can …

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The Golden 10

In a recent blog I discussed the Pareto Principle whereby only 20% of our success is based on our clinical skills and knowledge and 80% is from everything else. I also wrote a post about the importance of relationships. Additionally, in a previous blog published five years ago, I discussed assessing personalities of our existing patients so that we can customize our conversations …

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Survive, Revive, Thrive

This truly is a memorable period of time, but, for most of us, for all the wrong reasons. Most of us had our practices shut down for an extended period and are now back. What do we do now, and how do we get there? Kenneth Wong, MBA, a distinguished professor of marketing at Queens University, was recently quoted while discussing the …

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A Man of Many Hats

I was born in Toronto, the second youngest of 13 kids. We all lived in the same five-bedroom house for nearly eight years before my second oldest brother, Howard, got married and moved out. Rapidly, it seemed everyone was getting married, going to university, moving out. In five years, there were only three of us left: my youngest sister, my …

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The 2015 APEX award for Social Media, Best Single Blog Post

I am the second youngest of 13 children, born and raised in Toronto. A member of a liberal, politically left-leaning family of Reform Jews, our household was filled with 13 siblings, all fiercely individual and unique, a zany group of people. It was a happy time for me. At age 18, my father died suddenly. He was only 57. A …

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Faith in the Tooth Fairy 

It all started innocently enough. A 6-year-old girl’s baby tooth fell out at school, only to become misplaced before the end of the day. She was sure the tooth fairy could not be real, as a result, or so she thought. Isabel was a grade 1 student, having fun with her friends in the playground at school recess, when she …

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Relationships and Remembering

Erik and Margaret (not their real names) met and fell in love quite young. They married in the early 1950s under controversial circumstances, as Margaret was a few years older than Erik, but their love endured. Erik worked as a furniture upholsterer. It was hard work, but he enjoyed working with his hands, and the people he met and got …

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A Blog about my ‘Why’

So here we are early in 2015, and it is one of those times—of many—during the year that causes me to pause and reflect. It is the time when I look at my list of courses that I want to take and subjects that I want to learn more about, and I prioritize it so I can “make it happen.” …