"No matter how hard I tried to make my office go the way I wanted it to, it still wouldn't go," says Dr. Masunaga. "I tried a lot of things, none of which were successful. I went to seminars, I listened to speakers, I even hired a consultant.

"In fact, even when I finally met up with Sterling in July of 1996, I wasn't sure that Sterling could do it. But I talked to some other dentists who had gone through Sterling. They had needed to get their office production going, and they were all successes.

"When I got to Glendale, California, these people were very professional, very very organized, and they knew exactly what they were doing. I liked the setup, and I liked the technology right off.

"What I liked best was the technology dealing with understanding about human nature and human relationships, because to me that is the very basic of management. Still, many consultants I talked to didn't address that. They would tell you about this or that as office procedure, but you have to get more basic than that to be successful.

"Part of that was I didn't realize I didn't have the right people in place. Sterling taught me you need to be able to select the right people to be successful, and taught me how to select them. The other management consultants I ran across would tell you, 'This is what you need to do,' but without the right people, the harder I tried, I still did not go anywhere. All I was getting was a pep talk.

"The truth of it was, we were having severe staffing problems, severe attitude problems. So some months later the prior consultant calls me back, and says, 'How are things going?'' By this time I was using Sterling, and I told her, 'I had to replace everybody in the office, now things are great!' And she said, '0h, that's what I thought would have to happen.' But she hadn't handled it. Everything she was doing was just a band-aid.

"Sterling said, you'll have to replace them, and helped me do it!

"Now we have a wonderful staff, the atmosphere is happy, positive, and productive. They want to work. They want to be successful. Before I felt like I was dragging a big heavy cart. Now I feel like I'm driving a car; I step on the gas and it just goes!

"Sterling also handles a cruel kind of misconception: that if you have skills as a doctor, and you are a nice person, you will automatically succeed. That alone will not guarantee success.

"Sterling, on the other hand, gives you the tools to increase production. Ours used to go up and down. It is now steady and now leveled off to double what it was previously.

"Furthermore, the patients love it. The atmosphere in the office is such that the patients feel something is special here.

"I would definitely recommend this to other dentists, although I have to admit I might hesitate to recommend it to my competition. Sterling is my secret weapon!"

Dr. Masunaga says he also learned how to get the staff to help him accomplish the practice's goals. "Sterling has taught me how to be a better leader," he says. "Without someone in charge and providing a direction, the staff may want to excel, but not have the tools and the structure to do so.

"If I were going to point out one thing, the most important is to get to the very bone, the very basic of human management, and that is human relationships. And no one else I've spoken to, no one else but Sterling, has been able to address that."