Bite-sized dental wisdom in under 2 minutes.

There are things I genuinely hate.

Camping, mushrooms, running, calling strangers on the phone.

And as an adult, one of the greatest privileges is being able to say, “Nope, not for me,” and move on with my life.

I do not need to become a camping person. I do not need to order the mushroom risotto. I do not need to pretend running is fun.

Some things you just hate, and honestly, that’s fine.

But there’s another category that gets mislabeled as “I hate this.”

And that category is:

Things I’m not good at yet.

Because sometimes “I hate this” is true. But sometimes “I hate this” is just a very convenient way of saying, “I’m bad at this, and I don’t like how that feels.”

Which is different.

I think we do this all the time. We say:

“I hate marketing.”
“I hate posting on social media.”
“I hate talking about money.”
“I hate managing people.”

But for me, what I really hate is feeling awkward. I hate not knowing what to say. I hate not fulling understanding something. I hate the beginning phase when everything feels hard and uncomfortable, and I’m very aware that I’m not good at this yet.

That part is not fun. But that is also the part you have to get through.

And this comes up a lot in dentistry.

A dentist says they hate presenting treatment, but maybe what they really hate is feeling salesy because no one ever taught them how to explain value clearly.

An owner says they hate managing people, but maybe what they really hate is having hard conversations because they’ve never learned how to do it without either avoiding it completely or coming across bitchier than intended .

Someone says they hate marketing, but maybe what they really hate is posting something and feeling like a cringey influencer against their will.

And that basically describes my life right now.

There are plenty of things I would love to put in the “I hate this, therefore I am excused from doing it forever” category.

But if the thing is actually important, you don’t get to hide behind “I hate it.”

You should be asking yourself the better question:

Do I actually hate this or am I just not good at it yet?

Because those are not the same thing.

If you genuinely hate camping, great. Don’t go camping. I’ll see you at The Four Seasons.

But if you hate talking about money and you own a dental office, that might be something you haven’t learned how to do confidently yet.

If you hate managing people and you have a team, you might need to suck it up and learn how to do it better.

And the good thing is that skill issues can be fixed.

You can learn. You can practice. You can get better.

And sometimes the thing you thought you hated becomes a lot less terrible once you stop being awful at it.

So yes, keep the real hate list.

Just don’t let it become a hiding place.

-Dr. Alex

P.S. A lot of dentists tell me they hate running their office. The morning huddle never happens right. The end-of-day checklist gets skipped. Nobody knows who is supposed to do what.

But I don't think they actually hate it. I think they just never had a system that made it easy.

That's why I built Milo. It's the checklist and accountability tool I needed in my own practice. I put 50 of my best templates inside it - onboarding, hygiene audits, end-of-day close, all of it - and you can start using them today.