by Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, Publisher, Dentaltown Magazine
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We’re all trained to think that reading makes you smart. Well, information makes you smart and you don’t necessarily have to read to get information.
Podcasts, my friends.
Reading is great, but let’s save our eyes. We can do that with podcasts. Dentaltown.com is making podcasts with some of the most knowledgeable, innovative people in the industry. Huge names. We’re talking everyone from Gordon Christensen to Mike DiTolla. You have to hear these people!
So what is a podcast? It’s an audio recording. It’s like listening to a radio show, but from a computer or smart phone. Plus it’s “on demand” which means you can listen to it whenever you want. Podcasts are online. You pretty much just click a link.
So let’s say you want to listen to a podcast on Dentaltown.com. Put “Dentaltown.com” in your browser. This will take you to the Dentaltown.com homepage. Find the tab that says, “blogs/podcasts.” Click it!
Now, choose either “most recent podcasts” or “most popular podcasts.” Now you’ll see podcasts you can choose from. Click on the title that looks the most interesting to you. Press play.
You are now listening to a podcast. It’s that easy. On Dentaltown.com you can also upload your own podcast. Through our magazine and online offerings, we’re connected to 300,000 dentists around the globe. That can be your audience. Use it! We’re sharing the space. There’s no charge to include your podcasts on our site, and there’s no charge for audience members to listen to them. Next month, our Dentaltown podcast director Richard Low will be writing a column about how you can make your own podcast.
So what’s so great about podcasts anyway? They allow you to multitask! You can listen while commuting, when you’re on the treadmill, or mowing the lawn. You can’t say that for seminars. At a seminar, what can you really get done for your practice or your personal life while you’re listening to a lecture? Not much.
Women seem to like podcasts even more than most men do. About 10 female dentists have sent me pretty much the same email. They say, “Howard, I’m not a male, married dentist like my colleagues. I don’t have someone who can sit at home and watch the kids on the weekend while I go to a seminar.” They say, “I’m a divorced mom with kids, and I work full-time Monday through Friday, and Saturday I do about four hours of laundry and dishes and household chores. And I love your Howard Speaks podcasts because I feel like I’m at a dental seminar while I clean my garage and watch my kid’s soccer game. I’m there in the bleachers waving to my kids, rocking out to a Howard Speaks podcast.”
Anytime you want to break from a podcast (like to cheer for your kid), you just press pause. So easy! Every time a podcast is over, I can’t believe it’s already done. It’s the fastest hour of my life. Podcasts are also perfect if you get bored easily and don’t want to sit in a chair and read a black-and-white book for two hours. I love reading and I bet you do too, but if you’re a dentist, you’ve probably already read half a library.
You crushed it in calculus, physics, chemistry and biology. And people who could get A’s in those four classes got into dental school, which means you’re wickedly smart. Well, people who crush it in the sciences, they’re readers. I’m sorry to say but a lot of us were readers because we were nerds. For three years of undergrad, every night I heard the same voice over the intercom: “Ding. The library will be closing in 10 minutes.”
And the first word out of my mouth was, well, I guess I can’t put that word in the magazine. But after that word I’d start thinking, “How come I’m paying $6,000 a year for this stupid library to close at midnight? Why can’t it stay open all night? I remember going to the dean of Creighton University and chewing him out about closing the library at midnight.
He got up from behind his desk and he walked over and he put his arm around me and real sweetly, he said, “Maybe at midnight you should just go to bed.”
We were losers. Yes, former dental students, losers.
Then there were the students who at midnight were coming home drunk with dates hanging on them and making out in the elevators. And we were looking at them like they were some vile person, making a mockery out of a higher institution of learning.
Well, they didn’t want to read. Maybe you still want to read. Guess what? You can read a podcast. That’s right: we transcribe every podcast we have on Dentaltown.com. That’s because I don’t want my readers to have to stop and write down the name of a speaker or website or anything. It’s all there for you.
Dentists aren’t exactly known for being high tech. But really guys, get in on this podcast thing early anyway. It sounds weird: “podcast,” but remember, it’s just a free recording you get off the Internet. Simple stuff. Remember apps, how they seemed sketchy five years ago? I mean, what were those? Well now pretty much everyone has at least one. That’s how podcasts will be: they’re not too common now, but in five years almost everyone will be listening to them. That’s how it worked with our message board. When I started Dentaltown, the first four people posting were:
- Me
- Another dentist
- My ex-wife
- My ex-mother-in-law
Now we have up to 2,000 posts a day and I make fewer than 10 of those posts. Podcasts: listen to one today, and look out for that March article by Richard Low about how to make your own. We want to hear you. – See more at: http://www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=384&aid=5240#sthash.3n37wQKC.dpuf
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