Guess what I was doing at lunchtime today?

We have loads of fun at Advanced Dental...here's what I was doing today at lunchtime!

LOTS OF FUN FOR TEAM & PATIENTS ALIKE! :D

Just like the commercials! Haha!

Sasquatch Scoots!

Took a ride on the Vespa up to Tim Hale's house this past weekend and I got a photo of Sasquatch on the scooter! (Wish I could have gotten one of both of us on the thing...would have been priceless!)...in any case, here he is in all his glory!

Here's a video of him on the scoot that I posted to YouTube...ENJOY!

Thought for Jul 10...

"A business is successful to the extent that it provides a product or service that contributes to happiness in all of its forms."

-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Professor of Psychology and Management

My Vespa GTS250ie

Here are some photos of my Vespa GT250ie.

It gets 85mpg and can cruise over 90mph...not that I've been that fast on
it! (Yeah...right!)

Great way to get to & from the office. The storage case and underseat
storage area are plenty big enough for trips around town. It has really cut
down on my gas bill.

Enjoy!

Classic Chevy Car Show in CT

Last weekend when I was buzzing around on my Vespa GTS250ie I stopped at this
Classic Chevy Car Show in CT.

Here are some photos from the show taken with my cell phone camera.

Some of these cars brought back a lot of memories for me...especially the
60's Impalas. The first car I can remember is my dad's 1965 Chevy Impala
4-door sedan that I used to sleep on the back windowsill on during long
trips. Some of you may remember some of the other models...enjoy!

Thought for Jul 9...

A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent.

Three Reasons for Business Growth

Three Reasons for Business Growth
By: Brian Tracy

Three key considerations to assure that your business grows rapidly.

What to Look For
There are three reasons for business growth. Look at where you work right now and see if these three reasons apply there. Number one, the product or service is well-suited to the needs of the current market. That means that people want it and need it and can use it and can afford it and are willing to buy it now. Number two, careful market analysis is completed before commencing business operations. In other words, considerable thought goes into whether or not there's a market before the product was offered.

Do Your Market Analysis
Here are some of the questions that you have to ask with regard to market analysis. Number one, with regard to this new product or service, is there a market? This is a very important question. Is there a market? Will people buy it? Now here's the second question. Is the market large enough? Is the market large enough and concentrated enough so that you can sell enough of the product or service at a high enough price to make a living out of it?

Is the Market Concentrated Enough?
For example, there may be a market for 100,000 units of a particular product in the United States. But if it is one per community throughout the country, it's almost impossible to reach those people with any kind of advertising or sales effort. So the very fact that the market is not concentrated enough means it would be impossible to make a success of a business selling one per community.

Who Exactly is Your Potential Customer?
Another question is, who is the customer and why will he or she buy from you? Why does he or she buy? What benefits does he or she seek? And an important question is why will he or she switch from their current supplier to buy from you? Many small companies go broke because they do not have a pressing enough reason for a person to switch from their current supplier to the new product or service.

 

What Are the Alternatives?
And here's another question with regard to marketing analysis. What else is available? What other products or services are available to the same customer that you're going after and how is your product superior in a meaningful way, to the other product or service?

Control Your Finances
The third reason for business success is tight financial controls. Good budgeting. Accurate bookkeeping and accounting. Remember, practice frugality. Be cheap, cheap, cheap.

Hold on to your cash. Cash is the lifeblood of a business. All successful businesses have very careful financial controls. They very carefully consider every expenditure. They do an analysis of it. They work from very careful budgets, week by week, month by month, quarter by quarter.

Consider Every Expenditure
Carefully consider every expenditure, in advance, before you make it. Never buy new when you can get it used. Never buy it all if you can rent it. Never rent it if you can borrow it. Make it a game to conserve your cash and keep your costs as low as possible in everything you do.

Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do to assure that your business continues to grow profitably month after month.

First, be perfectly honest with yourself and your product or service offerings. Be sure that there is a big enough market that you can sell to profitably, and if there isn't, find a different product or a different market.

Second, think about your customer all the time and why your customer would or should buy from you. Inaccurate customer analysis is a major reason for business failure while accurate customer identification is a major reason for business success.

They blinded me with whiteness

Why the obsession with teeth brightening has gone beyond the pale

By Christopher Muther, Globe Staff  |  July 3, 2008

During the course of a week, it became clear to me just how much the world has changed for the whiter.

Watching the first season of "The Love Boat" on DVD, I noticed something curious about Lauren Tewes, the actress who played perky cruise director Julie McCoy. When she smiled warmly, what she revealed wasn't a row of pearly whites, but something that resembled corn on the cob. Pale yellow niblets that matched the color of her sandy blond hair appeared where her teeth should have been, and I immediately thought of salt and butter. In hindsight this makes sense. The Pacific Princess had a doctor and a bartender, but no dentist.

That was the standard in 1977 - along with flared poly-blend pantsuits and gauchos. But in 2008, seven years after the roll out of Crest Whitestrips and nearly 20 after the introduction of tray whitening systems, the standard has changed. Teeth are now preternaturally, blindingly white. Everyone, it seems, from actors on the big screen to the 19-year-old barista with the dazzling grin is fueling the $1 billion-plus-a-year whitening industry. According to the American Dental Association, whitening is now the most requested procedure at a dentist's office. These days, in some circles, it's not a question of whether your teeth have been whitened, but by how much.

"In the early days of whitening, we didn't take [teeth] that white, but now that everyone's doing it, it's a bit of keeping up with the Joneses," explains Dr. Marty Zase, a Connecticut dentist and past president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. "People see their friends or co-workers with white teeth, and they want theirs to be even whiter. It's something that everyone is doing. I don't see an end to it."

I didn't need Dr. Zase to tell me this. The day after my trip on "The Love Boat," I was having a fizzy Newbury Street cocktail with a very chic acquaintance. When my fashionable friend flashed her ivories, it was as if she had turned on a florescent light bulb. Her teeth are a shade of white not even found in the Arctic. I had to fight the urge to stare in amazement.

I was too polite to say it to her face, but I'm not too polite to say it in print. Teeth should resemble a color found in nature, not the xenon headlights that blind me in my rearview mirror as I drive. I'm nostalgic for the days when a television anchor could look like she smoked two packs of Kools a day and still get a job outside of Schenectady. This super whitening is like Botox for teeth: It's obvious you've had work done.

"I'm addicted," 33-year-old Back Bay resident Patricia Farmer confessed to me over cocktails at 28 Degrees. "I started with Whitestrips, moved on to gels, mouthwashes, and then started getting it professionally done. Everyone notices your teeth and people always tell me that my teeth are very white."

She's not kidding. Calling Farmer's teeth a little white is like calling Kanye West a little self-involved. She falls into the category that Dr. Zase describes as "people who aren't happy until their teeth look like a porcelain toilet bowl." The rule of thumb for whitening is that a person's teeth should be no brighter than the whites of their eyes, according to Zase. That way the focus stays on the eyes, not on the mouth. But rules are made to be broken.

"You see these commercials on TV where they show this blinding white sparkle and all you see are teeth," says Ginger Burr of Total Image Consultants. "Although that's what we see in Hollywood, that's not the goal. Your teeth shouldn't be the main focal point. It's like women who wear too much lipstick. You don't want lips to enter the room before you do, and you don't want your teeth to enter the room before you do."

Leslie Faust, the CEO of GoSmile, a Michigan-based company that makes high-end teeth whitening products, says the majority of its customers don't ask for teeth that look naturally white, they want teeth that are as white as possible.

"These days there's almost no such thing as too white," Faust says. "It's just like, can you have too few wrinkles? People look at teeth whitening the same way. It's a way to keep your mouth looking young."

The demand for extra bright teeth is the reason BriteSmile, a teeth whitening spa with 16 locations around the country, including one in Boston, does brisk business despite the $600 price tag (there's usually a special where the service can be purchased for $400). An hourlong treatment, and teeth drop several shades on the Vita Shade Guide, the chart dentists use to assess the color of tooth enamel. At BriteSmile, some customers have asked to make their teeth brighter than the whitest hue on the 16-shade Vita chart.

"A lot of people will get as white as they can with Whitestrips, and then they'll come to us," says Dr. Sherry Padgett of BriteSmile.

And it's not just singles and corporate mucky-mucks whitening up for the big date or meeting. Padgett says BriteSmile's customers run from teens to adults, and the slowing economy has not slowed demand for services. A growing number of people who are whitening are grandparents.

"They'll say that their grandchildren told them that their teeth look like corn," Padgett says.

If I encountered an ungrateful little brat who told me I had corn teeth, I'd promptly tell her that Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy had been in an unfortunate helicopter accident, and that there would be no more gifts on major holidays. Ever. And then I'd spend that gift money on getting my teeth whitened.

Strangely, I noticed that there seems to be a code of silence among people who whiten their teeth. When I polled my friends about whitening, no one wanted to confess. I got the same response when I called local news stations, the hotbeds of high-definition whiteness. Do these individuals expect me to naively believe that they were naturally blessed with those Clorox teeth?

There are few dangers involved in whitening healthy teeth - the biggest problems are sensitivity and the occasional blue-ish tint. Surprisingly, there are benefits to the heightened level of whitening. Well, kind of. According to Dr. Matthew Messina, consumer adviser of the American Dental Association, people who whiten their teeth are more inclined to take better care of them.

"Someone who likes their smile is more inclined to brush, floss, and see their dentist on a regular basis," he says. "It's like when you have a car you want to show off, you're more likely to take better care of it."

The man who is responsible for much of the current whitening craze, Dr. Robert Gerlach, manager of worldwide clinical trials at Procter & Gamble, also sees a benefit to the country's current whiteness obsession. Gerlach, who has done more research on teeth whitening than anyone else in the world and holds patents for Crest Whitestrips, along with other whitening products, says he's most proud that the current craze has had a huge social impact.

"Tooth whitening is now available to everybody," he says. "You don't have to be wealthy or well- connected to get your teeth whitened anymore, and that's not the case in other countries. Americans now have white teeth across the board."

I'm all for Dr. Gerlach's teeth-whitening-as-agent-of-social-change theory, I just wish that social change wasn't the same color as a Pep-O-Mint Life Savers.

Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com.