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11 Safe Investments by Jay Geier

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As an orthodontist who is running a practice, you are a business owner - an entrepreneur. You can't ever forget you wear that hat, and are therefore subject to one of the most fundamental principles of profitable business: You have to make the right investments and stay away from the wrong investments.

Everyone who owns a business can look back at investment mistakes they've made. Not a day goes by that I'm not grateful for my mistakes. I hope you treat them the same way because mistakes are the ultimate learning opportunity. Unfortunately, most people resent mistakes, which keep them from taking risks and trying new things. Mistakes sometimes hold orthodontists back from growing the business.

I've compiled a list of 11 investments you should make next year. These are safe, conservative and will keep you out of trouble. But you've got to engage with them and get your head fully in the practice- building game. If you don't, you'll suffer some consequences.

As a backdrop for these 11 investments, I want to share two business "laws" that form a sort of global strategy for making sound business decisions.

Drucker's Law

Peter Drucker was a well-known management consultant who worked with large corporations, and wrote two very famous books. Drucker's Law states: "The business enterprise has two, and only two basic functions - marketing and innovation. All the rest are costs."

Ask yourself this question: "How much of my personal time do I actually spend on developing, marketing, improving my marketing reach and/or my effectiveness, and creating improvements and innovations in my business?" The majority of orthodontists spend the vast majority of their own time delivering the service. And yet, the delivery of services is not a marketing function, nor is it an innovation. Drucker would tell you you're spending too much of your time on cost functions.

No question about it, this is a huge paradigm shift for almost all doctors. You have to completely revamp your perspective on what's really important to the financial health of your practice. Cost functions drive up overhead. You must spend more of your time on marketing and innovation so you can realize the big increases in revenue and profits. This will allow you to keep delivering your services without being overtaken by expenses!

Pilzer's Law

Paul Zane Pilzer is a highly respected American economist. He has served as advisor to two presidents, founded six companies and has written nine books - one of them on amassing unlimited wealth. Pilzer's Law states: "Wealth continually grows from multiplying existing resources using existing technologies."

To apply Pilzer's Law, "multiply existing resources using existing technologies," you have to think more critically about everything you already have: your existing practice, existing patient base, existing staff, existing equipment, existing location, existing market, existing marketing strategies, everything. Then, make them all better.

Many of the opportunities to improve what you already have are what I call "low-hanging fruit." That is, they're easy to reach, easy to change and improve. It's most lucrative to maximize what you already have before you invest in something else. It's also faster and cheaper to impact what you already have than it is to come up with never-done-before innovations.

With these two laws in mind, here are 11 investments you should make next year.

1. Invest in New Talent

Be on the lookout for talented people all the time, everywhere you go! Be aware, talk to people who impress you, no matter where you meet them - patients, waitresses, flight attendants, grocery-store clerks, people who work at all the places you patronize. Identify talented people, talk to them about your practice. Gauge their level of interest in a new opportunity. Then create great opportunities for them to work in your practice. A talented person looking for a great new opportunity who can come into your practice and have an impact is a win-win for both of you.

Equally important to looking for new talent is not letting under-performers remain in your practice. You must decide quickly if a newly hired person can bring value to your practice. Adopt a 30-day policy. When I hire new people they have to pay for themselves within the first 30 days. Depending on the position sometimes a person can actually produce that in revenue. If they're not in a revenue-producing position they have to bring enough value to our company in the first 30 days to equal what we paid them.

2. Invest in Your Facilities

Your facilities include the building, the walls and everything within your office space that makes it look the way it does. Unless interior design is a hobby, you probably no longer even notice what your office looks like. You've become oblivious to it. Your patients, however, are very aware of how it looks. They pay attention even when you don't. Are the desks and counters cluttered? The corners dirty? The décor ragged? Even if everything looks fairly decent, has it looked the same for the last five years?

An untidy, outdated or dirty office is an extremely negative reflection on you. Organized, comfortable, appealing surroundings speak to the standard of excellence you set, which can be extrapolated to the quality of your practice. And while you don't need to completely remodel too often, you should regularly invest in a fresh coat of paint in contemporary colors, new lighting new furniture and fabrics, a fancy new door, new carpet. And even more often, change the flowers, the wall art, and for crying out loud, change the magazines!

3. Invest in Signage for Your Practice

I realize not everyone can apply this investment advice at the high end, but you can probably make some improvement. Best case, you should buy the largest, most eye-catching sign you can possibly get!

Just as you cease to notice how your facilities look through the eyes of others, potential patients stop noticing a small sign or one that hasn't changed in years. It just becomes an invisible part of the landscape. They not only don't pay attention to it anymore, they don't even remember it's there. That's why you just have to invest in a new sign every so often.

The cost of signage varies greatly, but you have to consider the return on your signage investment. There's something engaging and memorable about a sign that's odd shaped or flashing a message. A typical pole sign with LED lighting ranges from $15,000 to $80,000 or more. One of my clients actually tracked his new, big, flashy sign with a call tracking phone number and said he got 10 new patients from it in the first month.

4. Invest in Training Your Staff

Your employees don't spend their days off taking self-study courses on how to be better, more productive employees, or learning how to improve your profitability. So, you need to take the initiative to get your staff trained and to create a culture of continuous improvement. If your employees don't seem committed to their work or to improving business results, it's up to you to change that culture. Set different expectations and make sure your staff is trained to perform differently.

Really successful offices hold a training day once a month. Their culture is one of "We learn, we grow, we change." They also often rely on outside resources that are far more skilled at training than the doctors themselves. That's how they ensure their investment in training is lucrative - by making sure it's getting done right.

5. Invest in Your Own Fitness

Your personal health might not seem as relevant to growing your business as investments made more directly into the business, but it is. But your health, your energy level and your longevity play a huge role in your business and relationship success. Undeniably, when people feel better about themselves, they have more confidence, which improves attitudes and behaviors, which translates into greater personal satisfaction and better business results. Start by getting a physical, getting your "baselines" such as body mass index (percentage of body fat), and what tests you should have done based on your age. And if you're not already doing it, start a fitness routine.

6. Invest in Cash

Like most people in America, most orthodontists are undersaving and under-earning. This strategy will ensure you increase your savings by making the process second nature. The first lesson to learn about saving money is that nothing gets saved unless it's automated. So set up an online account, such as E-Trade or Fidelity. Or maybe you already have some kind of a pension or tax-advantage account. It doesn't matter where you do it just that you do it and start yesterday! Connect this savings vehicle to your business account, because that account usually has money in it. Then schedule to have money automatically transferred every single month into your savings account. Now you may be thinking, "I don't have enough money to save." That is absolutely not true. It's just that now you're probably spending it as soon as it hits your account so you never have the chance to save.

7. Invest in Providers

Providers are people who have the ability to produce income for you. That would be associates and assistants. If you're not employing this investment strategy then your staff 's productivity is directly tied to yours. In other words, when you go on vacation, the business stops earning. When you're not producing, they're not producing.

You need to have more people in your business, directly or as associates, who are income producers. Then employ Drucker's Law and work on the marketing and innovation to help keep them keep busy and keep them producing income for themselves and for you.

8. Invest in New Capacity

If one treatment room produces $25,000 a month then just adding another treatment room adds another $25,000 to your revenue each month. Sometimes orthodontists are bound by the space they're in and only what they can fit in that space. Think outside the box (literally) and add space, which will add capacity and ultimately add revenue.

9. Invest in Self-development

"Spend money to make money" is also true when it comes to self-development. In many ways, investing in your own self-development is what will give you the fortitude to make many of the other 11 investments. Develop your marketing skills. Develop your ability to innovate. Invest your time in reading, invest your money in seminars and training, invest in whatever energizes you and then maximize your return.

10. Invest in Relationships and Family

Your most important relationships likely include your spouse, your kids, your parents and siblings and other family members, your patients, your staff, your friends and yourself. Your family should be your most important set of relationships. It translates to business success because a happy, stable home base supports a more stable, more profitable base at work. Plan regular quality time and activities with your spouse, your kids and your whole family. That could mean vacations, projects, homework help, a date night, a family picnic - whatever those things are, get them on your calendar. Never take your family for granted, or consider them "separate" from your business success.

Ask yourself what you can do to invest in all your relationships. Plan for it and execute it. Start by writing down all of your important relationships. Then list at least two or three things that you can and will do to invest in making each one better. The personal and professional rewards will be more than you can even imagine!

11. Invest in Reducing Debt

Accelerating the pay-down of debt is a guaranteed investment. It not only feels good, but its really good business. You want to use the same strategy as for increasing your savings. That is, do it monthly, and do it automatically. Make it a habit that you don't even have to think about. Some good rules to live by that will help you aggressively reduce debt are:
  • Always make more than minimum payments.
  • Re-finance out of your 30-year home mortgage into something less.
  • Pay an extra $10,000 (or as much as you can) on your office building mortgage whenever you can. The interest savings will be huge over time, and ultimately, you'll be in a position to generate rental income from your building once you own it.
Author's Bio
Jay M. Geier is a speaker, consultant and the president and founder of the Scheduling Institute. He helps his clients reach new levels of success and create a lifestyle they dream of using their practice as the vehicle. The Scheduling Institute offers trainings in your office as well as trainings, workshops and events at our state of the art training facilities in Atlanta and Phoenix. For more information on the Scheduling Institute programs available for orthodontists, call 877-215-8225 or e-mail info@schedulinginstitute.com.
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September 2025
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