"I've been a Sterling client about a year and a half. Before Sterling I was getting burnt out on dentistry. My practice was growing but I just wasn't enjoying it. I was never satisfied with where I was at - staff and management problems kept coming up. There was a lot of stress, not knowing exactly how to manage my staff, not having set programs I could implement to take care of certain conditions as they arose. Practicing dentistry before Sterling was very stressful.

"I went with my wife for Sterling's training in Glendale. It was nice getting away from my environment, from being here in Minnesota in my practice. I enjoyed the coursework, even the simple basic study skills course. I pulled things out of the coursework and applied them right off when I got back. The communication skills were especially useful right away. I used to wonder sometimes why there were upsets. I learned about basic understanding and why people react in certain ways. It helped me with my staff immediately.

"I also put in the communication system - the three-basket system - right away when I got back, which made a big difference. Each thing we did helped lighten the load on stress and boost my production.

"My practice has been growing from the time I started. Before Sterling, I probably averaged in the mid-forties. Last month I grossed $77,000, only working three and a half days a week. Our collections run about 94% of our billings on a regular basis. It's been growing a lot faster! "When I am more stress-free, I can be the technician I was trained to be. Dental school didn't teach me how to be a businessman and run a practice. The Sterling program has allowed me to get some of my staff to do that for me and has freed me up so I can focus on my dentistry, providing more stress-free dentistry and better quality dentistry.

"I am a better executive now. My communication skills allow me to handle staff problems and nip problems early on before they escalate. The Sterling training has really helped me handle my staff. "Keeping statistics gives me a pulse of what's going on in my practice and shows me what areas I need to focus on. It helps me figure out trends, what things work and don't work in my practice. It gives me a lot better feel for what is going on, a lot more control.

"The organizing board that my consultant helped me create has put responsibility on people and made them accountable for their posts (job descriptions). It has made things run a lot more smoothly and helped spell things out much better for us in the office. "There were a few office policies they fine-tuned for us. They also implemented things which were never in our office policy before. For example, there were some gray areas regarding staff benefits. After we discussed it and put it into policy, the staff knew exactly what their benefits were and what to expect, so there was no guesswork. "It took me about two months to pay off the Sterling program, based on extra production and collections. Since February, we have been hitting new highs almost every month.

"For me, Sterling was definitely a move in the right direction. I just didn't have the right management skills that I needed for my practice. It took a lot of stress out of my life. If you are having similar circumstances or problems, you need to try out their technology - the Hubbard management technology. The Hubbard management technology makes sense and works great!

"Three or four years ago I was trying to figure out ways of retiring by the time I was 48 or 50. Now I don't ponder on that at all. I know that I will have the money to retire by that time but I will probably choose to keep working because I am enjoying it!"