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As I write this, we’re running our online digital dental business course and one of the delegates on the course had asked me to put together a list of my top 10 business books for dentistry.  

It’s a seemingly impossible task, both in terms of the choice you have available for books which could influence your business pathway and also because there are such gaps in specific dental business teaching and there are huge holes where you would like to fill things in.

In my mind the development of dental business generally starts with the overall vision and mission in mind, then to finance and then marketing and then HR, then sales and leadership, strategy and forward planning and that’s generally how I see the world in business.

So, below I’ve tried to follow that basic theme as I write a blog here which we might return to time and time again in the blog as people revert back or ask questions related to it.

It’s not dissimilar to the 10 books for new dental graduates.

So, here we go…

1) The E Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

This was the book that Chris Barrow gave to me when we first met back in 2010/2011. It’s amazing as an audiobook too and although it’s now over 25 years old in its original form, the principles which it lays out are absolutely solid and I think fundamental for anyone working in small business. This is where everybody has to start in my opinion.

2) Seth Godin

The next thing you have to understand is that it’s on you and what your responsibilities are and so, for the first time in this list but included later on in marketing is Seth Godin. Seth was the second thing that Chris Barrow introduced me to in 2010/2011 and I think since then I’ve read almost every single blog, he’s ever written.

Seth Godin’s influence on education is one that drips on a daily basis and one I’ve continually returned to and so the first book of his to recommend is Linchpin because it spells out why it’s essential to understand that all you have to be is indispensable at whatever level you're at, in any organisation. Understand this and succeed.

3) Start with Why by Simon Sinek 

The TED talk by Puget is here and is one of the most popular of all time and the actual book from the TED talk is here.

If you don’t understand why you’re doing it, you’ll have no real prospect of success at doing it at all.

Simon Sinek also appears in this list more than once because his work is absolutely fantastic.

We would always start with why when talking to people about why they want to be in dental business.

4) David and Goliath & Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

Two books by Malcolm Gladwell but I would recommend you read everything he’s ever written anywhere.

David and Goliath is an essential understanding for someone in independent dental practice who’s trying to take on the bigger establishments and Talking to Strangers is a beautiful and wonderful exploration into why things are going wrong in communication in the modern world which is one of the most important things you can possibly learn to lead a team, to look after patients and to make collaborations and bridges to other people.

5) Finance

This is impossible as there’s nothing particularly good written about how to produce proper management accounts in dentistry and it’s so specific to individual dental businesses which are very specific.

You need to understand operating surgery costs per day and occupancy and the average daily yield of individual clinicians to manage your business but the tools you’re using to do this are either excel or a cloud-based accountancy software packing like Xero or both. So, excel for dummies and Xero for dummies might be the place to start.

So, not a book but a blog every day is Seth Godin’s blog. He is essentially a marketer although doesn’t always write about marketing and the book that he wrote which will change your view of marketing and the people you look after as your customers or patients or clients or whatever you want to call them is Tribes by Seth Godin.

There are also a million podcasts and YouTube channels related to digital marketing, but you’ll first have to understand the basics of why and how you plan to market to your chosen group and Tribes will explain to you that there is someone for somebody everywhere.

In terms of human resources there is nothing you’ll find anywhere that’s specific to dental HR management or human asset management or whatever name you’d like to call it these days.

The link here shows our handbook that we’ve written for our team and how to look after them, set around some guidelines as to how we expect, and hope people will behave otherwise I’d suggest you subscribe to Harvard Business Review or at least check it out because almost every issue is related in some way to human asset management or where things go right and where things go wrong.

8) Sales 

At this point you’ll want to think about sales and how sales will work in your business and so the book that I would always go back to initially, as someone who really struggled with sales in healthcare is Daniel H. Pink’s book To Sell is Human.

It’s actually the basis of our consultation master class at The Academy and it will teach you things about selling that you never really understood or thought of before.  

9) Leadership

Once you’ve got all that together you’ll want to know how to deliver it to a team of people and that would be leadership. The second book of the list by Simon Sinek is Leaders Eat Last which is an extraordinary exploration of stories and examples and insights into how you can look after people better and set the mission and carry it forwards.

His lessons from the military and how they lead are things we can all take to improve our lives both in and out of work.

10) Strategy

Once we’re done with all of that we’ll need a plan to put things together and that would be strategy applied to your leadership and your vision and all the rest of the topics we’ve covered.

For the basic academic outlook on strategy, look for Richard Rumelt Good Strategy/Bad Strategy which is a book we’ve used on our year-long business course since it started.

For something more sophisticated and the way we’ve integrated strategy into our business using a digital tech stack, seek out Measure What Matters by John Doerr. This will open the world of objectives and key results where google was built and countless tech companies use to frame the future of their business. It’s worth remembering that 90% of businesses don’t follow their own strategy or don’t even have a strategy and so, even to have a strategy of any kind that you follow is to become successful.

Finally, here’s three different books which are not related to business at all seemingly.

Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed will introduce you to Matthew Syed. He first wrote Bounce after he’d been a table tennis player and The Times columnist which is related to the talent myth but Black Box Thinking changed healthcare and if you haven’t read it, you must and you must start to think of human factors and the influences of human beings in the work that we do in order to make your business better.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey has sold over 10 million copies worldwide since it was first published in 1989 and is pretty much a ‘go to’ book in CEO school where people start out to run businesses.

It’s pretty good as an audiobook to and from work and a must read for anyone in business like The E Myth.

Finally, though, as a bonus recommendation, is you must read fiction and about your heroes.

Frank Turner is one of my heroes within music and out of life and his book The Road Beneath my Feet is an extraordinary tale of his journey from nothing to somebody who actually has everything he actually wanted.

Apart from that, fiction is essential. All work and no imagination make for no creativity and no progress so, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy or everything by David Mitchell, the British author (not the comedian) especially The Bone Clocks would be where you’d want to go.

Blog Post Number - 3018