by Dr. Reza Ardalan, Dental Slang Podcast
Dr. Reza Ardalan welcomes the renowned Dr. Amanda Seay. Dr. Seay, a prominent figure in the world of dentistry, discusses a wide range of topics from comprehensive restorative dentistry to her roles at the Kois Center and the Seattle Study Club, Dr. Seay offers valuable insights that every dentist can benefit from.
The episode takes a deep dive into the power of social media in dentistry, with Dr. Seay sharing her journey of connecting with a global audience, showcasing her expertise and personal side. If you're looking for tips on how to leverage social media effectively in your dental career, this is a must-listen.
Last but not least, hear Dr. Seay's candid advice for young women dentists who are embarking on their careers. Her insights on finding the right balance between clinical excellence and the business side of dentistry are eye-opening and will set you on a path to success.
So, whether you're a seasoned dentist, a recent graduate, or even just someone curious about the world of dentistry, this episode is a treasure trove of knowledge and inspiration. Dr. Amanda Seay's engaging conversation with Dr. Reza Ardalan will leave you eager to explore the full podcast and absorb the wisdom she shares. Don't miss this opportunity to elevate your dental journey. Tune in now!
For more information on Dr. Seay's new membership website, visit SeayWithin.com.
Listen to the full podcast on DentalSlang.com, or read the recap below.
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Dr. Ardalan: Please welcome Dr. Amanda Seay! Amanda, how are you today?
Dr. Seay: I am good, I’m so excited to be here! I actually was going to have this song playing on my phone, ‘Glamorous’. Because, you know, after a day at the office, you think you're going to get home by a certain time and everything's going smoothly…. and then it doesn't. So, I walked in the door 10 minutes ago, literally had my hair in a bun, my scrubs on and I'm thinking… let me at least put a little lip gloss on, put my hair down, and pretend like I'm ready. This is the glamorous life of, you know, Amanda Seay.
Dr. Ardalan: You just explained every single day in a pediatric dental office, when something goes wrong, we've still got be there to put on the show.
Dr. Seay: That's right.
Dr. Ardalan: I know I have you for a limited amount of time, so I'm going to get to it. But before I do, I must share this story with the audience. A couple years ago, unlike everybody else, I, as a pediatric dentist, wasn't as familiar with the amazing Amanda Seay as everybody else was in all your cosmetic dentistry prowess. But, a couple years back, I came across a webinar that you were doing on dental photography. And listen, my photography skills were less than stellar. So I said, all right, let me see what I can learn. And after looking at the webinar, I realized that not only did I have a long way to go on my photography skills, but when I finally met you in person, I think I said this to you. I said, “Amanda, I saw this course and I felt so horrible as a dentist. I said, on my best day, I can't do like 10% of this.” I was so upset that I ended up signing up for not only your photography class, but then this year I came back for your hands-on composite class. After seeing it firsthand, I definitely still have a long way to go, but I feel like there's hope for me
Dr. Seay: Yeah, but you know what, Reza, there are people that talk the talk. And when I met you and you were joking around saying all this stuff, you signed up and you took those courses. And to this day, I don't think I've had any pediatric dentists take my photography course or my composite course. So kudos to you. I love it.
Dr. Ardalan: Yeah, I'm still prepping teeth. I'm practicing my prep teeth and still studying. So I wanted to start with the photography side because that was my initial introduction to you. And your new book on dental photography, SEE, S-E-E for our listeners, has attracted readers from around the world. Can you tell our audience a little about the major themes of the book and any skills they can hope to learn if they end up buying it?
Dr. Seay: The obvious is, yes, you're learning the fundamentals of photography about equipment and settings and exposure and framing, but more than that, the theme for me that I wanted to really hone in on in the book is what you see when you look through the lens, hence the title, ‘See.’ because with photography, when you look through the lens and you see the subject on the other side, you tell them to smile or turn this way or look this way. We all do it, right? But what is the beauty of what you see on the other side? That is the piece that is so personal, it's so unique, and it evolves for each of us. Because I know for me, and I try to tell a little bit of my story in that, is that when I first learned photography, I learned from a very scientific standpoint of exactly what I was talking about, the exposure, the settings, all those things, and my goal was really simple. It was just to have nice before and after pictures that I could display or show my patients. But as I honed my skills in photography, and the more photos I took, what I started to realize is, you know, there are no rules really as to what beauty is or what we consider the standard to be. And every patient is different, every person and their personalities are different, too.
You know, your patients that you treat, there are some that are very comfortable in front of the camera and there are some that aren't. So how do you capture that essence? How do you show the patients how you see them? When I discovered how I could show them in a photo how I could see who they are in the photo without just saying like, “smile,” it was a connection that really set me apart. I feel like that connected me with the patient and our relationship changed. When they were like, oh my gosh, like that is the most beautiful photo that someone's taken of me. And not because the lighting was spectacular, it was just very raw and real.
And so I discovered my style in photography and that's what I encourage in the book is what you see through the lens, what you see on the other side. And the more photos you take, you start to discover what that style is, what you like, or what that beauty is.. I believe that it evolves and I that you can't find it until you take tons of photos. If you take a thousand photos, within those thousand photos, surely there is like the one photo that's going to speak to you. I think that's where the art comes from.
Dr. Ardalan: I remember when your book came out, I went immediately on Amazon and got a copy, and it’s not only visually stunning, like the photography and just the design of the book, but I loved how it kind of tells a story. So yes, for those listeners, if you don't have it yet, it does give you sections where it is very much step by step. This is how you edit, these are your settings etc. But it also has a lot of real life examples of your patients, your family, your kids. It was more than just teeth. You will absolutely learn how to take photos of teeth, but the facial profiles and all of the other things that you can do, I don't think I've ever seen in a dental photography book. And that's what I thought was amazing about it, is that it's so much more than that. And it just flows so nicely from the beginning all the way through the end. It was just fantastic. Thank you, thank you.
You are really known as an educator, and I was curious, because I know you're affiliated with both the Seattle Study Club and with the Kois Center out in Seattle. So, how do your roles with these two well-known continuing education programs differ?
Dr. Seay: I mean, they're so different. Seattle Study Club is truly a university without walls, where you have a study club, a tribe of people that literally come from all walks of dentistry, meaning they might have trained at Kois, at Spear, or LVI, or wherever, and it's really about all of these clinicians coming together and treatment planning, diagnosing, interdisciplinary care, and how do we make all of this work to give our patients the best treatment? The focus is really heavy on treatment planning no matter where your school of thought is. So, we can agree to disagree, but it's about learning in the process. Seattle Study Club is truly very unique in that sense where you're bringing together specialists, general dentists, you're bringing together people, again, that are trained from so many different places to meet in these study clubs all over the world. And then we, of course, have our annual symposium that we do every year that is a fantastic program of all educators, all disciplines. We also recently just started a Rising Stars Forum, which is kind of like our symposium but for younger clinicians coming out. So a university without walls in that sense is Seattle Study Club.
Kois is where I get fed, just like, when you say, you like to work out? Yeah, I like to work out. Where do you work out? I work out at this gym. So I think as dentists, if we all love education, we want to be better, we're seeking the path of excellence, we're gonna find training somewhere. So whatever gym that is that you work out at, right, doesn't make one better than the other, they're just different. And for me, where I'm fed, my home, my school, my gym is the Kois Center. I've done other places, but the Kois Center is what really speaks to me. It's my philosophy style and how I've implemented my systems. When I was done, and I graduated in 2009, I knew I wasn't done because when you love learning, you know, you never really want to be done. And so the next step was, like, I want to keep coming back. So I got my mentorship, and two years later I was asked to be a clinical instructor there. I've just always been connected with the center, and I just keep going because we keep finding out more, and I want to be current with the science. I want to be current with everything and, it's what's worked for me. I adore the place. I think it's great, but very different. So you can't really compare Seattle Study Club and Kois because Kois is a university, in a sense, with walls. You know, you go there to learn Kois philosophy. Seattle Study Club is a university without walls. I love it because I get to meet people from all different places, and it helps me broaden my scope of things that sometimes I don't think about. You know, I certainly don't have all the answers. And it's nice to be collaborative with specialists and understand the difficulties that specialists have sometimes in working with restorative dentists that I never thought of as well.
Dr. Ardalan: One thing that I'll mention that I have some folks asking me questions about now, the Kois Center is actually in Seattle, but just so our listeners out there know, the Seattle Study Club is not just in Seattle. I know in Florida, we have several local chapters just down the road from me. So, if you were looking for a start with interdisciplinary care, Seattle Study Club. If you're looking to take your education to that next level and really get into studying, Kois Center. I just wanted to differentiate, as I know some people are like, are they both in Seattle? It's like, well, not really, no.
Dr. Seay: I see my co-workers all the time, so yes, that's right. I mean, chances are there's a Seattle Study Club near you, and if you have a question, certainly you can get online and ask on the website and we will help find the nearest study club for you, because we have a lot.
Dr. Ardalan: With this next question, I feel like I've got some groundbreaking news or like an exclusive…but the word is kind of getting out that you're going to be launching a new membership-based online education program on cosmetic dentistry. Can you tell us a little about the site and how that kind of differs from your hands-on aesthetics curriculum?
Dr. Seay: At the hands-on course, we teach you the fundamentals and then we have you do the hands-on component (which people love). But, we only have two days to cover a lot of content. And so, the purpose of my member site is to help provide ongoing support for people at home, after they’ve have been taught the fundamentals.
Often, after a great course, when you go to practice, you're like, “hey, now I still have a question that I didn't think of before when I was in the class.” With the membership site, I have broken out lessons into 30-minute increments, but then I also have a ton of ‘dental pearls’ where I walk you through all different kinds of cases from A to Z, how did I intake the patient? What I do next from the business side, the clinical side, from the scheduling, paperwork, what postop instructions did I give them? So, all the things that people always ask me in a two-day course, but we don't have enough time to dive deeper into the clinical implementation of those things.
My member site will offer short digital online lessons, but I will also frequently be doing cases and loading them on the site so that there's a variety of different cases that we can review—secret fun stuff that members will have access to too, but I can't tell you much more than that!
Dr. Ardalan: Seems very thorough. Now, my follow-up question to that is, can you see IMPRES students also joining your membership site? Like, they've taken your hands-on and then jump over to your site as a follow-up?
Dr. Seay: Yeah, for sure. For example, you've taken our photography course, and you took our composite course. So, a perfect example is, I'll walk you through the case of a patient coming in with a missing lateral where I decided to do a composite bonded Maryland bridge. What I would do is kind of tell you, okay, patient comes in, this is how I would treat and plan it, this is how many appointments it would take, this is the follow-up, and I'm going to show you all the steps from the photography to the post-op. So, you kind of get all the disciplines of what we teach in aesthetics, but now we're applying it to real-life cases.
Dr. Ardalan: I'm going to kind of switch focus here for a second. As one of the most current trends in dentistry, which we saw in pediatrics a little bit earlier, is that there's a much larger influx of women in the dental profession now. As a mom of four, do you have any advice for women who are having difficulty balancing the demands of their patients with their commitments to family?
Dr. Seay: Yeah, you know, number one, I couldn't do what I do without a supportive husband. I know there are single moms out there, but having a supportive spouse is really so important. So I just have to say that I couldn’t do what I do without him. But, I think having your plans laid out in the sense of, a short-term plan with a six-month goal, a one-year goal, and other goals like, I want to take at least like two big hands-on CE courses this year, or I want to do two courses in the next three years, or I want to take a course at the KOIS Center. Be intentional and map it out. And when I say map it out, map it out: what's it going to cost, how much time is it going to take away, not just from the family, but also income from the practice. You have to think about all that stuff because it’s very stressful to do things without really thinking about the impact they will have, and then you go back and you realize your cash flow may not be right or you missed all these things with your kids. You feel guilty too. Being organized, being intentional and having a plan is so important.
And sometimes you fall short of what you intended to do. But if I have a plan, like, I wanted to get my website loaded by the end of last year and I wanted to finish all my recordings. And I almost got there. But not quite. But that's okay! I still moved closer towards my goal. Right? I didn't do nothing. I did something. It's the same with anything you plan in your dental career, map it out and revisit it frequently. It just takes little, small chunks that are achievable. And every time you accomplish something, it makes it seem a little easier to do the next thing.
So that’s number one: Be organized and be intentional. Number two, I wish that somebody would have been able to get through to me earlier and say, “Amanda, like, this is your deserve level, like, have a deserve level.” And I say that because I felt this pressure on myself. Nobody put it on me, this pressure to be the kind of mom that can bake gluten-free, peanut-free cookies and bring them to the school for a two o'clock party. And also, being a dentist that is this high producer, and to be a high producer I've got to work four or five days a week and maximize all the things that are going on and blah, blah, blah. I was just on this hamster wheel of feeling like I've got to do it all, be it all, and work harder. If I work harder, it will be better.
Ultimately, I had to hire a coach. I hired a consultant that I paid a lot of money for to sit down and tell me what my deserve level was. And to tell me, it's okay to work one hour less a day so that you can take your daughter to high school because she just started a new school. I remember when my daughter started high school. I'm like, “oh my gosh I'll never be able to drive her to high school because I can't get to work on time,” and blah blah and thinking that I am now going to have to work later now. But, my consultant told me: no, you can just start an hour later. And I thought, no I can't do that! But you can, you can give yourself permission to do it. I think women sometimes, especially with a career and being a mom, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves that way, and you need to know your deserve level. Give yourself some grace. Because life's too short, right? Life's too short, you will never regret choosing your family and putting them first.
I've learned to put family into the work when I can. So, when we travel for certain work trips, I bring them with. I get to make most of their basketball games and competitions, and so you know, I don't know that I have perfect balance, but when I'm with my family, I make it count. Balance to me makes it sound like you have equal parts play, equal parts work, equal parts family. And I don't know if I have equal parts of any of those things, but when I come home, I try to close my computer. I try to put any work calls away and just be with the kids, cook dinner, have fun, and let that be it. And so my advice to other women out there is like, yes, have a plan, be intentional, give yourself some grace, and you deserve to live life in the now. We don't work till this magical day that we retire and then we get to live the life we want. We have to live the life we want as we go.
Dr. Ardalan: That is such powerful stuff. That is awesome. And it's funny because as a pediatric dentist, in my daily practice, I'm completely surrounded by females. Not only with my team members, but obviously the majority of the parents coming in are moms. And I see firsthand a lot of times the pressure that they're putting on themselves if something goes wrong with the tooth or whatever it is and I'm always the one that's saying like “it's okay.” There's a lot of self-sabotage with putting so much on themselves, so hearing it coming from you I think is really really powerful stuff.
One of the other things that I've noticed is that you have become very well known for your successful use of social media. I’m curious, has it been as important to the growth of your practice as it has been for the advancement of your career as a dental key opinion leader?
Dr. Seay: You know, I certainly don't consider myself social media savvy by any means. I started the account a while ago, without really having any idea who my audience was going to be or who it was for. I did it because I was like, well, my other dental friends have social media accounts, so I guess I should have one too. And they show dentistry…so I guess I'll show dentistry. So what has evolved my @DrAmandaSeay account is that it has become mostly for other dentists, technicians, specialists, dental students and women that are following me. Not so much patients, right, there are patients, but mostly it’s about my role as an educator. But with that, it's funny, Instagram and Facebook are two very different beasts. I've had Facebook way longer than Instagram, and on Facebook for a long time I was posting all my cute kids’ stuff like, oh, we had a basketball tournament, or you know heading to Disney World, and all family personal things. I never put work onto Facebook, not once. And I remember the turning point with my Instagram account, which was all business, and when I started getting messages that were less about dentistry and more personal. They would say things like: “Are you a mom? Do you have kids? Because you know I'm four years out of school and I'm finding it really hard, and I want to do the kind of dentistry that you're doing but I don't know what courses to take.” And, I mean I get these all the time and I try to answer them all, because I realized that my account doesn't really show anything about me. It just shows teeth and good dentistry, but people wanted to know more than just that.
I remember the moment where on Instagram I started to just show a little bit about myself, and it is kind of uncomfortable! Because we're in a different generation Reza, we didn't grow up like, taking a selfie, I learned how to do that in the past five years. So, I remember when I finally shared a little bit about myself, and it was like an outpouring of people who really supported it. And that was the moment where I rethought, who is this account for now? Like, maybe it has to be bigger and broader. I had no real script or vision, I was just kind of doing what my gut told me to do. And so that's when on Facebook one day, I remember I was coming back from a KOIS symposium, gone all week from my family, taking the red-eye home like I always do, and whenever I'm on a plane while I am waiting before takeoff, I always go on my phone and look at pictures of my kids. Always, you know, and I kind of go through all the pictures and I favorite them and I do all these things. And I looked at it in that moment, I'll never forget. And I said, you know what? I'm going to do a Facebook post about dentistry, about being a mom, and what it feels like in this moment. Because I was so tired, Reza, I was so tired. It's a red eye, you know. And so I posted this long post on Facebook, and I said exactly what I just told you I said, you know I I travel all the time for dentistry, and I love being surrounded by people that influence me and help me grow, but there's always a voice in the back of my head that makes me feel like I'm missing important things at home. I think we feel this desire to be so many things that, and when we fall short, we feel terrible, you know? So here I am, this is me on a red eye, feeling vulnerable and putting it out there and sharing with you. And then, again, I got so many messages from that post. And then that prompted me to begin sharing more. And, again, I probably don't post as regularly or as often as I should, but I just do it when I can and when I think of it and when I think it's relevant. But I'm feeling more comfortable sharing bits of my life and of my family. In the beginning it's weird when you've never done that to kind of be like, “people are going to know what my kids look like.” I mean, I don't know if I want that, but you know, I also can't live in fear. I really think that it does more good than not. You know, there's always going to be crazy people in the world, so I can't be scared of that.
Dr. Ardalan: 100%. That's such good advice. I know I’ve got to let you go in a second, but I have one more question. You obviously must know you have many true fans out there…and when someone found out I was going to have you on the podcast, they asked me to ask you a specific question. So, this last question is actually coming from your fans, and I think it's a fantastic question. And the question is: what advice would you give to young women dentists who are just starting out? What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you first began your career?.
Dr. Seay: I wish I had dove into CE earlier and I wish I would have found mentors or consultants to help me with the business side of it, right from the get-go. Because all I focused on was the clinical side; and while I was a highly trained person, so to speak, meaning I graduated from 10 different places, I've got a gazillion CE credits, I had no clue how to make it all work together and make business sense. And if you can't do that, you won't be happy either. Right? You'll be stressed and overwhelmed. So, I wish right from the get-go I had found mentors. You don't have to spend all this money to hire somebody, but find somebody that's doing business well, it doesn't mean that they have to have amazing clinical skills, but they run a good business and they're a good leader. Find out what they're doing and ask them questions. Shadow them, because I was kind of alone on an island. So, I think that your trajectory would be so great if you figured that out right from the get-go.
Dr. Ardalan: That's amazing advice. I have a feeling that after this podcast comes out, you're going to have a lot of people hitting you up for mentorship, but if there was a way people wanted to contact you, would you mind giving your Instagram or Facebook handles so that people who want to kind of follow along with with your story and your life can do so?
Dr. Seay: @DrAmandaSeay on Instagram, and then we can kind of go from there!
Dr. Ardalan: That's awesome. Amanda, this was such powerful stuff. I so appreciate you taking the time and being on the DentalSlang podcast. I appreciate everything that you said today and I know our listeners will as well.
