My associate

Hi all,
I hope you had a good weekend.
Thanksgiving is only 3 days away.
Wow do we have a lot to be thankful for. Lets talk about this on Wednesday.

I started this blog on Friday and never was able to finish it because I had a physical therapy appointment on my Achilles. It is still hurting real bad. Every time it starts feeling better I go for a long run and it starts to kill. I ran out the door and never sent this. So here it is Monday and I am starting over.

First let me get some preliminary stuff out of the way.
Our football team got creamed. 42-6 (on Tuesday) . The half time score was 14-6. But after half-time they opened it up on us.
I am starting to think it is coaching (present company included). The kids don't listen really well. Some of them just don't care. Some of them just want to have fun (God forbid). I think they are having fun and really that is the important thing. I don't think one of them can tell us what are record it. The only time they are not having fun is when they are on the field getting creamed.
(We won on Saturday. We played a team with all third graders, but we played much better).

I finished the book, Beautiful Boy and I will be writing about it next week.

Well I had a weird week.
My father was on vacation this week.
So usually the poop hits the fan when he is gone. I am not saying things are always hectic but I am just saying that when he is here he is handling his issues and I am handling mine.
When he is gone there are twice the issues that seem to make your already hard day harder.
Our practice really is a two dentist practice and there are too many patients for one.
For instance, when he is gone I am doing 27 hygiene checks a day.
This kind of makes for a busy day.

I wanted to talk to you about my associate. I mean my past associate.
We talked last week and decided to end our professional relationship.
One year ago it was the perfect time to bring in someone. It was busy. We were bringing in new patients, we were generating production out of hygiene, people were asking us for treatment.
As I have told you before we interviewed a lot of people and we felt like the we hired the best dentist/person for the job. At the beginning things were looking real good. She was so nice. She got along great with the staff and our patients. And she was a good dentist to boot.
But, like I told you, things are slow.
After a couple of months after she started we discussed pushing her to hourly. She felt like if she sat around the office for 6 hours and worked for 3 it was unfair (I told you she was good like this).
But then the New Patient Exams were drying up, patients weren't asking for dentistry anymore. So anything that was coming in was being put on my dad and my schedule.
There was nothing for her to do.
At the beginning we spoke about her going to get her own patients. Well this turned out to be harder to do than expected.
You think that if you join the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary and the Woman's Club people don't start flocking in right away. You have to build relationships. These relationships still don't equal immediate response. Most people have dentists. Most people are comfortable in their present situation. But you want to be the guy/gal that is there if something goes south in that relationship.
So it may take a couple of years.
So a week or so ago, we sat down together. She sees the schedule, I see the schedule and we look at each other.
I tell her I really like our relationship but I realize I am probably holding you back from finding a job that is more lucrative.
She said she was seeing the writing on the wall. She also said she like our relationship and loved our office but that ain't paying the bills for her.

She was awesome and she will continue to be part of our family. But in the end we concurred that we couldn't work together any more. We left it at that and we agreed to revisit each other when things get busier.

It sucks...totally sucks.

I will talk to you on Wednesday (maybe),
john