Conceive, Believe, Achieve: The Power of the Innovative Mindset

Shawn Zajas 0:00

Oh man, these moments you would love to hit delete on, but what you don’t understand is that those moments contain gold. If you would just sift through those moments of pain, you can find something there that can provide value to the person that’s coming behind you, that hasn’t tripped up like that yet, that hasn’t fallen where you fell. And I commend you if this is your story because that means you didn’t give up. The future of dentistry belongs to the innovators.

Shawn Zajas 0:27

Welcome to Innovation in Dentistry. I’m your host, Shawn Zajas, and I believe that the future of dentistry is going to be unbelievably great over the next decade and two decades. But the question isn’t that. The question is, are you going to be part of what makes dentistry great?

Shawn Zajas 0:50

Hey guys, this is Shawn Zajas. The last episode was my first episode, and I kind of just went all over the place to lay a broad concept of what innovation means. What does it mean to have an innovative mindset? What could innovation look like? But today I want to dive deeper into what it means to actually have to believe. So what does this mean? Well, it means that first and foremost, you need to be willing to believe that this can be you, that you can be an innovator, that you can be a leader, that you can be a disruptor, that you can make a bigger difference. And this isn’t about trying to follow some sort of mold, right? There’s not an innovator mold. That’s the beauty of innovation. It’s original. It’s creative. And I would say the most creative, original, what am I saying here, identity or so, it’s just who you are. It’s who everybody is when they’re not trying to be like

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everybody else. And I get it. Like we learn in school, you know, play by the rules, think the right way, like everybody else, follow the leaders, stay in the lines. And so much of what your experience has been, even in dentistry, come on, like clinically, you need to stay within the lines, at least for your first, what, thousand, 5,000 hours because of liability. You’re messing with someone else’s health. You’re a clinician. But for a moment, let’s take off the clinical hat. Let’s take off those lenses that get you to think about reducing liability, that get you to think about following best practices, that get you to think about playing it safe, being secure, being comfortable. And let’s, maybe you don’t have to put on another hat, but just make sure that hat

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and those, those lenses are off. No, no, let’s put on an innovator cap. Okay. So, so put on a cap and this cap, it doesn’t say innovation. It just says, this is me. So this is who you are. And my guess is you see the world different than anybody else. Your perspective, your experiences in life have all led you to be unique, completely unique. If you have children, your children are completely unique. Your spouse, your relationship with your spouse, all completely unique. Your story, what you’ve gone

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through, your triumphs, your tragedies, all make you completely unique. But here in this episode, the point of this episode is, do you believe that you can step up, that you can lead, that if you are given the opportunity just to see where you can bring value, to see where you can step up and help someone else out? Maybe, maybe you’re pretty far into dentistry, you know, maybe you’ve already had 20 years. And in that 20 years, you, you went bankrupt twice and you have these, oh man, these moments you would love to hit delete on. But what you don’t understand is that those moments contain gold. If you would just sift through those moments of pain, you can find something there that can provide value to the person that’s coming behind you. That hasn’t tripped up like that yet. That hasn’t fallen where you fell. And I commend you if this is your story, because that means you didn’t give up.

Shawn Zajas 3:57

You’re here. There’s breath in your lungs. You’re alive. And that means there’s hope. But yeah, that’s you. You can do it. So you’re probably thinking, okay, Shawn, is this going to get practical? There’s so much practical that that’s coming. But first you need to understand, it might sound impractical to believe. You might be like, Shawn, I just want to get information. Give me the frameworks. Give me the blueprints. Give me the business models. Hit me with innovation. Innovation is first and foremost

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who you are. It’s how you see the world. If you don’t dare to believe and dare to think you’re different and dare to think that you can actually help bring value to the marketplace, you will not innovate. You won’t. You won’t dream. You won’t listen to those crazy dreams. And I don’t want to just talk to the dreamers. Look, if you’re a dreamer right now, being a dreamer is not bad. I’ve been a dreamer for a lot of my life. But it is frustrating being a dreamer because dreamers don’t follow up with massive action. Visionaries do. So if I offended you, maybe you’re just a visionary and you do have

Shawn Zajas 5:04

massive action. But if you’re not, it’s okay to acknowledge right now that there’s some areas to improve. If you’re a dreamer and you’ve had big dreams and you’ve wondered because you feel like life’s passed you by, but you’ve always had, you know, thought you could have, you could have done this, you could have done that. I want to believe with you. I believe you could, but I believe there’s no better time than now. There’s no better time than this month, this week, today. Something

Shawn Zajas 5:27

I’m saying, take it. What you’re hearing probably in your head is more important than what I’m saying. And I want to get that as a foundation to this entire podcast. I’m going to say things. I’m going to paint pictures. I’m going to give frameworks, but it’s not about what I’m saying. It’s about what’s going on in your mind because you know, you know, the dreams that you’ve had in your heart that you might’ve given up on. You know, the times that you’ve settled, maybe compromised, maybe call the quits. And when you look in the mirror, you’re the one that knows whether you respect yourself for the decisions that you’ve made. And that’s the thing I want you to be able to look in

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the mirror and be proud of the man or woman that you’ve seen. So right now, I just want to challenge you. Believe, please. That’s the very beginning. Have hope. Take hope. Have belief that you are capable. You are competent. You can figure it out. The world is not looking for you. The world is not going to tell you to rise up. The world honestly doesn’t care, but it doesn’t mean they don’t need

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you. You see? So I give you permission to believe that you’re needed, but don’t worry. The eyes of the world are not on you. They’re not wondering what you’re going to do. Maybe he’s going to fall. Maybe he’s going to slip up. Maybe she’s going to bow out. Look, if you need to be like Tom Brady and create a chip on your shoulder or Michael Jordan that was always looking for a way they could have that competitive advantage, go ahead. Believe. The world’s against you. No one believes. Everyone doubts you. Go ahead. If that gives you a chip, awesome. But I’m telling you, I believe in you.

Shawn Zajas 6:55

Because when I look in the mirror and I see myself, I see someone that, I don’t know, could have been completely ordinary. I could have just given into my fears. I could have accepted a narrative over my life that wasn’t special, wasn’t different, wasn’t me. I could have tried to fit in, just do what I was told. Even in my dad’s company, I started as a salesman. Wow. Okay. You may not know me yet, but you’re going to, and you’re going to know. The number one fear of my life was sales. I never liked being misunderstood. I didn’t like the fact that someone could misunderstand me. And where does that happen the most? Yeah. In a unsolicited sales call. Sorry. I’m like, did I say that word wrong? Is it unsolicited? Anyway, or solicited. No, unsolicited sales call. People, it just seems like

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you’re trying to get what you want, right? Buy this, buy this, whatever. I couldn’t stand sales. So I started teaching myself. I started teaching myself design. I started teaching myself marketing. I started thinking as if I was the business owner because I knew someday I would be. I realized my dad was in great health and I wasn’t going to inherit what he had for quite a while. So instead of waiting, what if I started my own thing? But what if I created, what if I just took the natural dreams and the way that I saw value and where there could be value in dentistry and just

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made it happen? But I dared to believe. You see, I dared to believe. And like I said in the last episode, the ability to conceive is everything. It’s everything. And I’m going to continue to help you expand what you are aware of. Because unless you’re aware of something, you can’t even, you can’t conceive of something. Does that make sense? Wow. I wish I had a better analogy for this one. I’m just saying like the four minute mile, Roger Bannister. Unless someone conceived that it was possible, they never would have believed. Now they did believe because they had already conceived it was possible. Someone had to conceive that we could go to Mars, right? Elon Musk. If you don’t even

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conceive, you can’t believe. So believing follows conception. So I’m hoping that my words, that the ideas that I’m sharing, that the pictures that I’m painting can start being these seeds and that you can start conceiving of a world of a dentistry, of hopefully it’s your beloved dentistry. Hopefully you love dentistry. And you start seeing that it could look different in a year because of you. It could look different in five years because of you. And again, if you’re not one of these people that wants to be part of something crazy, some adventure, something scary, I am thankful that you’re still probably just being a

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great dentist that cares about patients. If that’s what you’re doing, awesome. But again, this this tribe of mine is probably not going to involve you. But if you want to pioneer, but you’re kind of a little scared, if you want to do something that you absolutely know is terrifying, and you have so much doubt, then this is, you’re my people. Because that’s what I do. I wake up every single day. And I just wonder, am I going to lean into what’s comfortable today? Or am I going to jump? So my hope is that this episode can just help

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you to just believe. Again, it’s not about a huge, it doesn’t have to be that huge leap. Before we make the huge leap, oftentimes we’re just taking steps forward. So take a step today. What is it you need to do today to just expand the way you see yourself? Think of the times that you overcame when people didn’t think you could. Think of that time in middle school, high school, college,

Shawn Zajas 10:28

whenever you want that, that you didn’t give up that you did persevere. If you’re listening to this podcast today, and you are a dentist, chances are you survived COVID-19, the pandemic that literally should have crushed dentistry. And yet, I don’t know how much it gave you a sucker punch, black eye knocked you out. But it sounds like you’ve gotten back up. So integrate that into who you are, integrate that into who you see yourself as. And know that you are going to go forward more confidently

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today. Just even today. Where do you need to believe because you’ve given a belief? That’s my challenge to you today. Where is it that you need to believe? What have you given up on? Where have you lost hope? Where have you entered into some sense of resignation in your life because you thought that season is over, that opportunity is gone, that ship sailed? Because I bet if you walk down and you head to the harbor, you’re going to look and you’re going to see that boat is still there.

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And all you need to do is get in and lift up the anchor. Go for it. Thanks for listening and be sure to follow so you never miss an episode. To learn more about what’s going on in dentistry, check out innovationindentistry.com.