Work-Life Balance vs. Work-Life Integration

Gary Takacs: Welcome to another episode of The Thriving Dentist Show. I'm Gary Takacs, your Thriving Dentist Show podcast founder and co-host. Very excited to bring a new episode to you that's titled Work Life Balance versus Work Life Integration. Hmm. This is a topic we've never covered. They are different. And I think you'll enjoy the content in this podcast episode. Before we get into that episode, two quick announcements to make. First announcement I have is that you may know, as a regular listener to The Thriving Dentist Show, that we routinely put on virtual events. We host virtual events, they're Thriving Dentist virtual events, and we have a Thriving Dentist Virtual Summit coming up in September. The title of that summit is, Do You Know the Three Numbers That Control Your Dental Practice's Profit? It's happening on the 29th of September.

Gary Takacs: It's three hours of CE, three hours of CE. You'll get three hours of credit if you stay to the end. It starts at 6:30 PM Eastern Time, so go ahead and do the time translation for wherever you are. And you're gonna really benefit by that Thriving Dentist Summit. Do You Know the Three Numbers That Control Your Dental Practice's Profit? Lots of information. We have a panel. We have multiple experts on that summit, and you're gonna benefit greatly from that. You do have to register. There's no tuition for any of our virtual events, however, you do need to register. So, to register, go to thrivingdentist.com/events and grab your seat. The next announcement I have is we have a new clinical guest. We call this the Thriving Dentist clinical segment. It's Dr. Kristin Yont, and this topic is one that is very interesting. The topic that Dr. Yont's going to cover is The Chairside Reset Every Dentist Needs Between Patients. I think there's amazing information here. No further ado. Here's Dr. Kristin Yont with The Chairside Reset Every Dentist Needs Between Patients.

Dr. Kristin Yont: Hi, everyone. I'm Dr. Kristin Yont. Here's a clinical tip that has nothing to do with composites, occlusion, or implants, but it actually may improve every procedure you perform today. As dentists, we spend our entire day making thousands of decisions under pressure. Every patient brings something different. You're diagnosing, you're treatment planning, you're managing time, you're leading your teams. You're regulating anxious patients while trying to regulate yourself. By noon, your brain has been working incredibly hard. The problem is that most of us just keep pushing and pushing. We move from patient to patient, carrying the stress from the previous appointment into the next one. Now, research and neuroscience tells us that stress gradually narrows our attention, reduces our working memory, affects decision making, and makes us more reactive instead of more responsive. We don't usually notice it happening. It simply becomes our normal.

Dr. Kristin Yont: That's why I teach what I call the 30-second chairside reset. Think of it as recalibrating your instruments. You're already sharpening your instruments. You sterilize your handpieces, you calibrate your equipment. Why wouldn't you recalibrate the most important instrument you use every day, your brain? So, here's how it works. When one patient leaves, don't immediately jump up and move to the next task or the next patient. Just take 30 to 35 seconds. Sit comfortably with both feet on the floor. Let your shoulders soften. Take one slow breath through your nose, and exhale a little longer than you inhale.

Dr. Kristin Yont: Let's just try it again. Inhale slowly and take a longer exhale. Now, just take a moment to simply notice three things. Notice one thing that you can feel, perhaps that's your feet on the floor. Notice one thing that you can hear, and one thing that you can see. That's it. No perfect meditation, no emptying your mind. You're simply giving your nervous system permission to shift from constant activation into a more regulated state. That longer exhale activates your parasympathetic nervous system, helping your brain regain cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation. So, in other words, you think more clearly, you communicate more effectively, you make better decisions. You stay calmer when something unexpected happens. When does that happen? All the time. And here's what's really interesting. Your patients notice. Stress is contagious. Calm is contagious as well. So when your nervous system is regulated, your team tends to become calmer.

Dr. Kristin Yont: Your patients feel safer, and the entire environment begins to change. The best part, you don't need 20 minutes. You don't even need five. Let's go with 15 to 30 intentional seconds repeated throughout your day. Maybe when you're curing composite. All of this can have a meaningful impact on your performance, your energy, and your resilience. Because your greatest clinical instrument isn't your handpiece. It's your brain. Take care of it just as carefully as you would take care of your patients. Thanks for watching. I'm Dr. Kristin, and until I see you again, keep practicing your chairside reset.

Naren Arulrajah: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Thriving Dentist Podcast. This is Naren, your co-host. Hope you enjoyed that clinical tip from Dr. Kristin, The Chairside Reset Every Dentist Needs Between Patients. I enjoyed it. Hope you do. If you enjoy it, share your feedback. Go to thrivingdentist.com . We always love hearing from you. Gary, today's conversation is a very, very interesting conversation. Everyone talks about work life balance, and the idea is that if you want work, life gives; if you want life, work gives. But this new idea, which again, is not necessarily new, but has become more popular, is this idea of integration. Imagine you go to work and you are excited, and you are energized, and you are happy, and you come back with that happy momentum. And then at home you're excited and you're energized because you're doing fun stuff with your family and doing things that you love.

Naren Arulrajah: And then that, again, reinvigorates you back at work. So this idea of integrating and doing the things you love and just making every part of your life, whether it's work or life, as we used to call it, fun and exciting. It's almost like you can't jump out and go and do that thing that you're about to do. So that's an interesting concept, and I'm really interested in hearing your perspective. You have been doing this for 46 years, Gary, and you've seen everything under the shade. And of course, now as a grandpa who values time — you used to be on the road a lot. You've talked about how you missed life for many, many, many years. And you have made it no secret. And how now you have prioritized life first, and work and life work together, seemingly. So I'm really, really interested in this topic, Gary. Let me just jump right into this. Let's start by defining work life, quote unquote, balance, the old way of thinking, versus work life integration. And in the context of dentistry. Maybe you can give us some insights on this.

Gary Takacs: Well, let me set this up a little bit, Naren, that my evolution or my thinking around this is evolving, right? I've spoken very passionately for many years about the importance of work-life balance, and helping doctors achieve an effective work-life balance. Because I feel like in many cases, most dentists will report that they do not have an effective work-life balance. That if we're putting it on a scale, the scale is heavier in the prospect of work and less in life. And I've been a tremendous advocate for helping dentists achieve an effective work-life balance. However, my thinking is evolving on this. So, what does it mean to have an effective work-life balance? Let's start there. What does that mean?

Gary Takacs: And to me, that means that your practice allows you time to pursue other activities, to pursue continuing education, to pursue, on the personal side, more time with your family, more time with your partner, more, if you have children or grandchildren, more time with your extended family. And most doctors will say they spend so much time working that they don't have time for life. Yes. And traditionally, the question was, what do I mean by dentists having an effective work-life balance? What I mean is that we've got enough of both. We've got enough time and some other things like time for fitness, time for wellness, time to recharge, where we literally look forward — it's TGIM instead of TGIF. Thank goodness it's Monday instead of thank goodness it's Friday.

Gary Takacs: And that's what I meant by a traditionally effective work-life balance. Dentistry's hard work, Naren. It's hard physically. It takes its toll on the body, takes its toll on health. And it's hard. There's nothing easy about being a dentist, from a physical standpoint. It's also hard emotionally, very much. And the idea with work-life balance was to be able to have that time to recharge so that literally every week it could be a TGIM. And my thinking is starting to pivot and starting to change on that. I'm not giving up on work-life balance, but I'm starting to think about it a little bit differently. And that's what we'll get into more in this episode. And what my hope is, is this lands for many of our listeners to start to make some subtle changes that will have them feeling a lot happier about their profession.

Gary Takacs: Naren, something I've been talking a lot about lately is a sobering statistic that I discovered recently. And I love data. A sobering statistic I learned recently was posted on a very large private Facebook group for dentists. In fact, it's the largest private Facebook group. I'll leave that group unnamed, because I don't have their permission to name them. But it's the largest one, and it's a very, very large group. And the moderator, who's a good friend of mine, posted a question. And the question was, to this group of tens of thousands of dentists who are members of that group, knowing what you know now, would you advise your son or daughter to become a dentist? Very interesting question. Very thought provoking question. However, as I read through the responses, it was very sobering for me to see that two thirds of the responses were no. And in some cases, an expletive in front of the no. I won't use the expletive, to keep our podcast in its G rating. But it was expletive, no. That made me really sad. And I gotta think that if they wouldn't advise their son or daughter to become a dentist, they probably don't have an effective work-life balance. Is that a fair assumption, Naren? Yeah. 

Naren Arulrajah: Or something is missing. They think something's wrong. Yeah, something is wrong. Exactly.

Gary Takacs: Something's wrong. And I'm on a mission to change that. And I think this concept of work-life balance, work-life integration might be something that could shift — and I don't mean just a subtle shift, but I mean a transformational shift where maybe two thirds of dentists, the other way around, would absolutely advise their son or daughter, if they're interested in a healthcare career. It might change it to where two thirds said, yeah, this is a great career. This is a great way to make a living and help others. And I'd like to just turn it on its end and have it be a very positive the other way. But work-life balance to me has meant more, do I have enough time in my life to do the other things that I like, which may include somewhat work involved. I don't have enough time to take the CE that I'd like to take. So it's not just that it's on or off, but it's, do I have enough time, based on my responsibilities in my practice, do I have enough time to also pursue life balance? That's what I've meant by work-life balance in the past.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. I'm gonna ask the question, but I'm gonna also share my perspective, not for dentistry, but just me as a human being. And then of course, I want your response. As far as dentistry is concerned, how is work life integration different from work-life balance? 

Gary Takacs: You wanna start? 

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, I wanna share my perspective, Gary, if that's okay. So when I first started, I thought, work so many hours, you spend time with your family so many hours. I thought that's what I was supposed to do. And let me be honest, I spent more time at work and less time with my family, and if I had to redo it, I would redo it. But over time, I realized these are not separate things. We can sit here and talk about don't bring home to work and don't bring work to home, but we always do. Just because if something is bugging us with our daughter, we are gonna think about it. If something is bugging us in terms of our health, we're gonna think about it. Same thing with work. If something is bugging us, we are gonna think about it.

Naren Arulrajah: But as I grew older, and now I'm 50 plus, what I'm coming to realize is — and I guess this becomes really sharp, at least for me, the older I get — that I have a limited amount of time on this earth. So the question is, how am I gonna spend that time, whether it's work or whether it's balance? And I felt like, and I don't know if this is true for others, I was on autopilot. I did what I thought I was supposed to do, work hard so I can provide. And that became a habit. And then it's work, work, work, and then at the expense of health, at the expense of other things. And I stopped after my mom passed away, and I thought about what do I want from the rest of the years I have left, whatever number of years.

Naren Arulrajah: And I started writing down relationships — which relationships, what kind of relationship — and then on and on, health, experiences. And now I kind of create my life, whether it's at work or whether it's personally. And I guess some might say, well, you are lucky you are able to do that. You don't have anything that's like a handcuff around you, that you have to do this, so you have to do that. But regardless, I honestly feel like all of us can visualize what we want from work and life and start creating it. And I think if you start creating work and life the way we want, I think it's fun. And when it's fun, at least in my opinion, one makes you more effective in the other. In other words, it recharges you when you do things you want to do versus you do things you think you have to do.

Naren Arulrajah: And a lot of times, you and I know dentists, there are a lot of people even today that are stuck in PPO plans. They hate getting up in the morning and going to work, but they feel like they have to do it for whatever reason. And they have these reasons. Of course, it's different reasons for different people, but I honestly feel like those are all not that powerful, the reasons. If you really want to, you can break it and you can create the life. So for me, this whole idea of work life integration starts with me creating my life and making the choices, saying no to certain things, saying yes to certain things, starting certain things, stopping certain things, but it starts with what do I want? I would love to hear your thoughts, Gary.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. For me, how is work-life integration different than work-life balance? As I started working on work-life balance with our coaching clients, with Thriving Dentist coaching clients, one of the things that I've noticed is that, as I would talk to doctors about this, when they talk about more life balance, they were talking about getting away from their practice. Escaping their practice. And I started to listen carefully to the kind of words that they used as they were talking about this with me. And they wanted to escape it to do something else. And that made me really think, and that was what maybe started me on this pivot in my thinking towards calling it work-life integration. And work-life integration means to me that you have — if you are a practice owner, you can absolutely do this. Because if you own the practice, who gets to decide? Naren Arulrajah: You, you are the boss.

Gary Takacs: Now, if you're listening to this and you're not a practice owner, I would encourage you to set a pathway to become a practice owner. I'm a huge champion of entrepreneurship in dentistry. I think all career paths in dentistry could be a rewarding career path. But I think the ultimate career path, if you have the aspiration to it, is to become a practice owner. Because then you can decide. Now there's rules and regulations and such. We don't have complete control, but you can control. And so to me, work-life integration is having a practice that you enjoy so much that you don't have to escape it. Now, I still want more time off, okay? Don't get me wrong. I still want more time off, but it's different. It's, if you have a practice that's so enjoyable where you can't wait to get in there Monday morning, then that's what we're talking about with work life integration. You're enjoying what you're doing. You are living the dream. You're doing what you wanna do, you're helping people. You're making a difference in the lives of others, in the lives of your team members, in the lives of your patients, in the lives of everyone you come into contact with. You're making a difference. And you feel tremendously gratified from that. So you don't have to escape that. So I really want both, Naren. I really want work-life integration where your practice is absolutely as good as it could be by intention, not by accident. It's as good. Yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: If it's good as it could be, it's fun. Right? 

Gary Takacs: Why would you escape Naren Arulrajah: it? Yeah. Why would you escape it? Yes. So you're saying this whole idea of life balance came from this idea, it's gonna suck anyways. So it's like, how do we Gary Takacs: Well, for some, it is just like, I just need more time. So yeah, there is a time part of it. Yes. But again, if you own the practice, you can set that up. And by the way, I'll give you a little sneak preview. Statistically, most dentists in the United States work four days a week clinically. Four days a week clinically, right? And remember, if you own the practice, you're not done working yet because you have more time where you have to handle the administration of your practice. The business side, the admin side, the HR side, all of that. So even if you're working clinically four days, your workday isn't over. Let's say that was Monday through Thursday — typically could be any number of days, but let's say it's Monday through Thursday — then you still have more time where you're working on your practice.

Gary Takacs: And I think most doctors would like to have more time with their family, their loved ones, their activities, their hobbies, their interests, and so yeah, I want both. And here's the part that you might have to take a jump in faith with me, doctors. With the right plan, any of you listening to this could produce just as much working three days a week as you're currently producing in four. If you don't believe that, then take a jump in faith with me and imagine that it could be possible. Naren, why can I say so confidently that that's possible? 

Naren Arulrajah: 'Cause you've done it, Gary. At least I've seen you do it a dozen times, if not more. You've

Gary Takacs: done it. It seems irrational to say you can produce just as much three days a week as you — and I don't mean three 12 hour days. Yes. I mean three regular days, you're not adding to your work schedule. Right? I do have a number of clients that have very good work-life balance as a solo practitioner working three days a week. They've chosen to be solo. However, I do think there's a model that makes that more viable. And that's to have a second doctor in the practice, whether that be an associate doctor or a partner — that's TBD, to be determined — where we could now provide enough hours for our team members, provide enough hours for our patients, and have a nice work-life balance and work-life integration with the two doctors in that format. But now we're getting into a little bit of details. But that's essentially what I mean by work-life integration, where your practice is so darn enjoyable that you can't wait to go into work Monday morning.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. That's awesome. And I'm very proud of myself for the next question. So I'm gonna ask it. I've heard you talk with the Thriving Dentist coaching clients about the three year question, the three year question. Can you explain to us what this concept is all about? 

Gary Takacs: Yeah. The three year question comes from a mentor that you and I follow, Dan Sullivan. And I wanna give Dan credit for that. But it's a great question. And the question as it applies to any of our listeners is this. Imagine that we're recording this late summer 2026, which is accurate. We're recording this late summer 2026, right? If we were to be together — and let's assume we'd be together face to face — if we would be together face to face three years from now, so late summer 2029. Oh my goodness, Naren, that's only three years away. Yes. If we were to be together, let's say we're enjoying a nice dinner together, we're face to face, and your practice was as good as it could be. So I'll put this now in the context of our listeners.

Gary Takacs: Doctor, if you and I were together face to face three years from now, and your practice was absolutely as good as it could be, what would that look like? And a lot of times when I ask the question to our clients, they start to respond without any limitations. You mean I could really do whatever I want, right? Within the boundaries of guidelines and legal and practice act requirements. As good as could be. Yes. What would that look like? And here's what — I asked that question to all of our coaching clients. Yes. And what's interesting about it is the response that I get first time is, I've never really thought about that. So, in other words, they're locked into the day-to-day. I don't wanna necessarily call it a struggle, but they've sort of locked into the day-to-day where they are not where they could be.

Gary Takacs: Right? And I tell 'em, give yourself the luxury. Go to somewhere where you do some great thinking. It could be at the beach, it could be on the top of a mountain. It could be alongside a river. It could be on your back porch. It could be in your recliner, in your den. Go to the place where you do great thinking and say, if my practice was as good as it could be, what would it look like? And then come back to me and we'll talk about that. And once they can define that and we get into granular detail about what that is — how many days would you work? What kind of dentistry would you do? What would your team look like? What about your office facility? What would your marketing look like? What would your schedule look like? And once we have that, that now represents a goalpost, Naren. And if we know where you are now, all we need to do is reverse engineer it from the goalpost to figure out what do we need to change from where we are now to get there in that three year time period. And that's — I just described our coaching, Naren. That is what we do from a big picture standpoint, right? So first

Naren Arulrajah: you asked them — let me just summarize. Yeah. First you asked them where they want to be three years from now, and then you 

Gary Takacs: in the context of it, as good as it can Naren Arulrajah: be. Yeah. As good as it can be. And then you help them get there with step by step. What's step number one, what do we do in year one? Let's achieve it. Once we are there, okay, what do we do next? And so forth. Right? So it's like creating the future. I think you hit on something very interesting, Gary, which is if people are trying to escape work, that means they're not enjoying it. They're not living the life of their dreams. They're living this very inferior version of what they wanted to have when they got out of dental school.

Gary Takacs: It's a limited — well, think about where we are in the profession. Yeah. I don't think there's any practicing dentist that enjoys having their fees subjected to a PPO plan. Yeah. I don't believe there's any — well, no, some might think it's a good idea to participate because it provides them patients, because they don't know any other way to do it. But I don't think any dentist likes to have their worth determined by some third party that doesn't have any interest in the quality of the product that's being provided. And yet, there's not hard data on this, Naren. This is an educated guess. Less than 7% of the dentists in the country are either fee for service or have a greatly reduced PPO footprint. That means that 93% are very involved with PPO plans. 

Naren Arulrajah: Right.

Gary Takacs: So that was just a granular example of something that relates to satisfaction in your practice. But that three year plan, that you all could do this, anyone listening to this, ask you, 

Naren Arulrajah: I think they should book a meeting with you, Gary, if they're really serious about changing their future. I have seen you in action, and I think, like you said, you are at a place in life where you don't need to do it. You choose to do it. You choose to help those who want to create a better future for themselves and their patients and their teams. I think just your experience — you probably have asked this question hundreds of times, right? Over the last several years. So you have wisdom, like you can

Gary Takacs: It's transformational there. Yeah. One of the things that I've noticed is that with a new client, we ask that question, as good as could be, what would that look like? And they define it. And then as we go through it, there's somewhat, hey, Gary, can I go back to that? And can I make it bigger? Yes, you can. 

Naren Arulrajah: The vision grows. The vision expands. Yeah.

Gary Takacs: And bigger, doesn't it? It can mean a lot of different things. Yeah. Yeah. 

Naren Arulrajah: Could be working less, could be, I've got a bigger vision doing only these kind of dentistry, or it could just change, right? Yeah. 

Gary Takacs: And their vision gets bigger because they take the blinders off and the limitations off. Yeah. And they ask the question of how good it could be. 

Naren Arulrajah: And now they know it can be done because they have already worked with you for a year, and they already see, like, man, a lot of things I thought I would never be able to achieve I've achieved in like six months or one year. So it's, no,

Gary Takacs: No. I wanna put this in context. You've heard me talk about this, but I'm not sure that our listeners of the podcast have heard me talk about this. Let's reflect back to when you were applying to dental school, doctors. Now for some of you, that's relatively recent past if you're younger, right? If you're along in your career, it could be a long time ago. But remember when you were applying to dental school, and you maybe applied to multiple — in some cases you've applied more than one. You applied to multiple dental schools. And back in the day, the way dental schools would inform a dentist of their acceptance was a letter in the mail. Now, all that's changed, it's now normally confirmed by an email.

Gary Takacs: But back — imagine you're mid-career or later. You would go to the mailbox every day, waiting to see if you've gotten something in the mail from the dental school or schools you've applied to. And imagine when you finally — here it is, it's in the mailbox, and you nervously open it up, and you hesitate a little bit. Okay, okay, did I get in? Did I get in? Did I get in? And then you open it up, and the first line in the letter was, congratulations. Pleased to inform you that you have been accepted. Yes. Now that happens by reading an email. Yeah. But imagine how you felt, and I might suggest that up till that period in time, that might have been the happiest day of your life. Now, granted, if you were married or you had kids already, maybe your marriage date was your happiest day. Maybe the day your kids were born was your happiest day. But I'll guarantee for all of you, that was a happy day. 

Naren Arulrajah: Of course. 

Gary Takacs: And then what happened? 

Naren Arulrajah: Good question, Gary. 

Gary Takacs: And you'll have to answer. Yeah. I think for many people it's like, well, it wasn't what I thought, or I didn't know what PPO plans were. Yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: And I think the number one mistake that I made, and I think most humans make, is they stop believing they can create the future they want. They just accept this is the way it is. You know what I mean? And I think what you change with your clients by asking this three year question, not just when they become clients, but on a regular basis, is what do you want your future to be? Now, what do you want your future to be? And let's work on building it, creating it. Why are we letting the world tell us what our future is? Why don't we — and again, I think your experience, your wisdom, your knowledge, having done this so many times, makes a huge difference. Gary, by the way, if anyone is trying to find the link to book a meeting with Gary, it's thrivingdentist.com/csm  Just do it. Because I really think whether you work with him or not, I really think you need to think about your future. I think it's

Gary Takacs: You owe it to yourself to have that conversation. Yeah. What's really interesting about it is, as I mentioned, as we start to go down the path of achieving that three year — answering that three year question, as good as it could be, what would it look like? Yeah. I've often noticed that the opportunity enlarges, and it becomes bigger. And that's the very cool, when we go back to recapturing that excitement you had about your career when you opened the letter. Why was that such a happy day? Because now you were one step closer to achieving your goal of becoming a dentist. You were one step closer. You weren't done yet. You still had to survive dental school. You still had to pass the boards. You still had to go through the transition to become a practice owner, if that was your wish. But you were one step closer. And if all this episode does is reignite that passion, I will consider this episode a huge success. And you owe it to yourself. You deserve that. You deserve to have the practice be as good as it could possibly be. And here's the interesting thing. Let me be encouraging, Naren. Guess what, it's been done before.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: There are dentists that can absolutely report, with a polygraph on their wrist, the lie detector test. Yeah. Is your practice as good as it could be? They're gonna say, absolutely. And you know what it is. So it's been done before. My great mentor, Dr. Robert Reed, taught me a very wonderful saying. If it's been done before — complete that sentence, Naren. If it's been done before, 

Naren Arulrajah: it must be possible. 

Gary Takacs: It must be possible. Yeah. So guess what? It has been done before. Yes. And now you have the opportunity to do that yourself.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. What is marketing, right? It brings a consistent amount of the right patients month after month, and it is happening 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without you having to worry about it. You meaning the practice owner. So, are you showing up on Google for all the right services? Are you dominating it? Are you by far the number one, without having to spend money on ads and making people believe you're not good, that's why you're running ads. Do you have a system to get those love letter paragraph Google reviews? Again, that's consistent. You have a team that is doing it. Do you have an awesome way the phone is being answered? Again, that's consistent. One of the things that Gary does, which we don't do, and I wanna give him credit for, is the conversion rate.

Naren Arulrajah: Making sure the phone is ringing and those calls are converting into appointments in the schedule. So all of these combined, Gary, creates that work-life integration, creates that amazing practice that both gives the doctor the time they want to do the things they love, while being very happy and successful, and creating an environment that they can't wait to go to work to every morning, not just on Mondays. Gary, if anyone is interested in learning more about marketing, if you want marketing to help you with work-life integration and work-life balance, go to ekwa.com/td  and you can book a marketing strategy meeting. We will spend quite a few hours researching you, your competition, based on your dreams and aspirations, and help you come up with a plan.

Gary Takacs: And in 15 plus years with my involvement of producing this podcast, I like to think that all of our episodes have been useful. But I might say that this might be the most important podcast episode we've ever done, because of the difference it can make in all of our listeners' lives. If you'd like some help with achieving work-life balance and work-life integration, let me encourage you to schedule a coaching strategy meeting. Go to thrivingdentist.com/csm . Marketing is, as Naren so eloquently said, a very important part of this equation. If you need help with marketing, go to ekwa.com/td  and book a marketing strategy meeting with the Ekwa team. On that note, here's to you achieving an effective work-life integration that also provides work-life balance, that also will maybe change that statistic about, knowing what you know now about being a dentist, would you recommend that as a career path to your son or daughter? Maybe this episode will change that. On that note, thank you all for the privilege of your time. Naren and I look forward to joining you on the next Thriving Dentist.