A Well Run Orthodontist Practice

My dentist had been getting on me from when I was in my early thirties to get my teeth fixed.  One of the burdens of being an entrepreneur is the pressure manifests itself in multiple ways.  I am a teeth grinder and when I am under pressure, it clearly is reflected in my teeth.  Since I have had multiple high-pressure situations over the years, my teeth had reached a state where they required attention.  As my dentist put it
“you can either fix it now or fix it in the form of losing your teeth”.  He recommended Dr. Arnstine and so finally in 2005 I went to Dr. Arnstine to get my teeth fixed.  Two years later, my braces finally came off.  Over the course of those two years, I went to Dr. Arnstine’s office multiple times.  Even after those two years, I have had to go sporadically into his office to replace a retainer, fix permanent lower braces, etc.  See below the beautiful work that Dr. Arnstine and his team did.

This past week I had to go in because I had knocked off several pieces of my permanent lower braces.  I went  into a full waiting room as usual.  What wasn’t usual was that I had to wait a half an hour to get in.  Now, if this was a typical doctor’s office, I wouldn’t have been alarmed, but this was very unusual for this practice.  Normally, I am right in after about 5 minutes.  They had apologized for the delay because there were several emergency situations.  So when you are used to a well oiled machine, it is strange when it doesn’t happen. 

Dr. Arnstine was acutely aware of the delay.  In fact, he knew exactly how long I had been waiting and again apologized.  His normal average wait time he told me is 7 minutes and he routinely picks up patients because of how well he runs his practice.  So here is my observations on why Dr. Arnstine’s practice is so successful.

1. Every patient movement is tracked.  When I arrived into the waiting room, it is noted.  Without data, you can’t know how you are performing.  He had the systems to support the data and he had metrics with which to measure their performance. 
2. The Arnstine “team” knows exactly each their role.  Further, on any given patient, Dr. Arnstine may give instructions on the fly and everyone knows what they are to do.
3. Dr. Arnstine gives his “team” full responsibility.  He wasn’t constantly looking over their shoulder.  He wasn’t micro-managing. 
4. Dr. Arnstine maximized his time.  How could one guy see so many patients?  There are I think 5 or 6 chairs all served by one orthodontist. 
5. He was flexible.  One time during my tenure with my braces, the wire broke out and was exposed.  It was very painful as it rubbed against my cheek.  Dr. Arnstine saw me in his house and yanked the wire out in his bathroom.  That meant a lot to me.  Especially when a big football game was on. 
6. He and the team were enthusiastic and upbeat.  it is bad enough wearing braces, but you can’t make it worse by a bad attitude.  Everything in the place was upbeat and comfortable from the music piped in to the goodies routinely out. 
7. The results were what was measured.  Dr. Arnstine treated me even after the expected time for the overall treatment had lapsed because his standard was what my teeth looked like and not what the time spent was. 

I applaud businesses like this and it seems like they are rarer and rarer.  If you are looking for a good orthodontist, you would be well-served to go to Dr Arnstine.  You can find him here.  This is an unpaid announcement. 

Cleveland vs. Pittsburgh

After the Super Bowl, I got to ponder further the relationship between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.  Having lived in Cleveland for nearly 40 years out of my 51 years on this earth, I have observed much about these two cities. 

There are a lot of transplants between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.  I know personally three transplants and they walk defiantly with their Pittsburgh terrible towels.  We give them grief jokingly, but secretly we admire the winning tradition and the fact that they have a team that consistently wins. 

If you go to eastern OH say around Youngstown, you will find more Pittsburgh Steeler fans than Browns fans.  The state of Ohio does not assure allegiance.  However, none of those fans would even contemplate rooting for a college team in Pennsylvania.  We are all Buckeyes when it comes to college sports. 

The Browns have beaten the Steelers only once in the past 15 tries and that was last year when our team despite its record actually won.  We gloated about that for weeks.  Steeler fans don’t take nearly the pleasure out of beating the Browns because it just is expected.  Reminds me of when I was a kid, I would sucker punch my big brother and then run away.  Eventually he would find me and beat the tar out of me.  I enjoyed the sucker punch but it was clear who was the stronger one (at least at that time). 

I am hoping things will change eventually, but I am not holding my breath.

Super Bowl Ads – Low Tech Wins

We have a tradition like a lot of people where we go to our friends house to watch the Super Bowl.  We always look forward to the ads because there is always something new and different.

Maybe it was me, but the ads this year were not very good.  The general theme seemed to be high tech or elaborate sets, or lots of themes that play on each other.  In other words, complex and expensive.  Paying $3 million for a Super Bowl Ad seems to mean you have to pay $6 million to produce it.  Like the Kia ad where everyone seemed to fight over the right to drive it.  Stupid and overdone.

By far and away the best ad had little to no technical complexity, was simple to produce and virtually everybody identified with it.  In fact, the key thing is probably most everyone could remember it was a Volkswagon Passat being advertised.

The lesson – focus on simple and making it something your audience can identify with.

The Estate Tax – An Immoral Tax on Success

Over the past few months we've heard a lot about the estate tax. This opinion piece in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the estate tax summarizes the opinions of many of course unaffected by the tax. The writer, like many others believes the estate tax is a valid tax simply because it applies to so few. He says, "if you are fortunate enough to receive a windfall of money from a deceased person, then a portion of that windfall should be taxed and go to the government. No one likes taxes, but certainly this tax is one of the most fair. It applies only to a very small percentage of his estates." "Estate taxes opponents argue that the estate tax is unfair because it taxes people twice. Of course we tax people twice on lots of things, including our purchases and our income. The fact that something is taxed twice hardly makes it unfair." "Here's a tax that only affects those who benefited the most economically from government and society, namely the wealthy."

This remains to me to be the continuing effort to tax success regardless of its form. The argument that "we tax lots of things multiple times anyway" is again stating that is okay to tax the same things over and over again simply because one is successful. When you consider that by the time net worth is passed down, it will have been taxed at least 3 to 4 times, it is absolutely immoral. The argument that "it only hurts a few, therefore it's okay", is scary because it simply states that you should be taxed because you're successful.  Finally, the argument that one somehow benefited from our government in his or her success in therefore should return that success back to the government is simply illogical and stupid. We constantly pay for the cost of government multiple times over.  Most of estates belonged to small businesses that lack the liquidity to be able to pay the onerous estate tax and are forced to make poor decisions or make complex decisions to avoid paying it.

The bottom line – I have yet to hear one clear, sound argument that would support this immoral and unethical tax.

My Poor Shriveled Cleveland Sports Heart Revisited

How much more can one take? While Pittsburgh is in the Super Bowl for the umpteenth time, our Cavaliers have lost 24 straight, our Browns are going through yet another coaching change, and our Indians are once again position for mediocrity.

When I wrote my blog on my poor, shriveled Cleveland sports heart about a year ago, I never dreamed it could get worse. But yet here we are with three losing sports teams. It is a test of intestinal fortitude.  Fortunately, we have Cleveland State basketball, we have Ohio State football and basketball, and the endless abundance of high school sports. Our shriveled pro sports heart can get filled from other venues. Looming strikes in the NFL and NBA will not stop us from getting our sports fix. In fact in Cleveland, it may be a good thing because there will be no more pain.

WikiLeaks – The Ugly Side of the Internet

I saw an interview with Julian Assange the founder of WikiLeaks last Sunday. In the interview, he completely defended the publication of classified materials as "freedom of speech". He even said that he went well within the bounds of the law that any newspaper publisher would follow.

In life, there are often things that we could do, but we just shouldn't do. WikiLeaks does not exist to promote some higher calling, but to bring down others. It appears to be a clear manifestation of an individual's ego and not some higher purpose of free speech. By publishing classified materials and threatening to publish other classified materials, I cannot imagine that anyone would think that good could come out of that. And we have already seen the damage that this can cause.

The Internet is a wonderful thing. We can make ourselves heard in a nanosecond across the world. But with that kind of power comes the need to have restraint. Just like in a conversation, we don't say everything that we could say but we exercise restraint in saying the things that we should say. The mark of a human being is being able to control his tongue.  The Internet has the ability as an unmonitored  conversation to wield great damage. WikiLeaks is nothing more than unbridled lack of restraint whose intent is to bring harm. It is particularly sad when such lack of restraint hurts innocent bystanders. It also serves to restrict the flow of conversation between the published parties which would seem to be the opposite intended effect.

Recalling the Blizzard of 78

This past week much of the midsection of the United States was hammered with a major snowstorm. It was deemed "one of the worst snowstorms in years". As we all get older we remember how difficult we had it and we often make comparisons to other similar events in our lives. So of course the blizzard of 2011 was compared to the blizzard that I went through in 1978 as a student at Valparaiso University.

I was on the wrestling team as a freshman and we were making a trip to southern Indiana to wrestle Franklin College. We were on our way back from the event when it started snowing and blowing hard. I remember the radio blaring to "seek shelter immediately". Our coach who was also our driver decided to stop at a hotel on the way back and see if we could bunker down for the evening. The hotel was full but there were cots in the lobby. The hotel owner graciously offered to let us stay in the hotel, but our coach decided to press on.  What turned out to be almost a catastrophic mistake.

As we started up highway routes 65, it began to get worse and worse. Visibility was near zero and wind chills were well below zero. Then, a defining moment. Our van battery froze over and we were stuck on the highway with no visibility. When this happened, our coach uttered a line that I will never forget. He said, "Men, we're F – – – – D". Obviously this is a family blog and I don't want to repeat what he really said but you get it. Within a short amount of time, a trailer tractor almost ran right into us and jackknifed into the median. That was our first close brush with death. Fortunately, the driver was not injured and one of us talked to him and found out there was a Holiday Inn about a little over a mile up the road. Given that we were sitting ducks sitting on the highway, we decided to walk in blizzard conditions to the hotel.  Further, sitting there was not a good option because even though we could see rescue snowmobiles, they could not see us because we had no lights.

Wrapping up in our singlets and our warm-ups, we bravely walked up the highway shoulder led by our captain until we could see the hotel lights. We had to jump over a fence into about 6 foot high snow drifts and by that time many of us were getting frostbite. Fortunately, by God's grace (I was not a Christian then either) we were able to get to the hotel where we were stranded five days. As it turns out, we were snowed in with the University of Minnesota basketball team and bonded with them (remember shooting pool with Mychal Thompson and Randy Breur) in the boredom of being stuck. I was able to find this archive from the front page of the Chicago Tribune with a brief mention of our ordeal.

So now any major snowstorm is met by skepticism on my part that nothing could beat my experience as an 18-year-old in 1978 going through that snowstorm.

And I have the clippings to prove it!!