Explore Dr.Sonia Chopra's journey in the Endodontics Industry

Yes. It’s crazy, I’m a root canal specialist. When I hear ‘rootless’ the only thing that comes to mind is what I do for a living. I basically take the nerves out of the teeth. I go into the roots, clean it out and leave nothing in there. For me, rootless kind of describes my job. You still have a root but what’s inside the root is gone. I’m sure that’s the first time someone has given this answer. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I was born without eight teeth. So, I was basically married to my dentist because I was always having dental problems. Didn’t think anything of it during my childhood and it didn’t mean anything to me until I got my adult teeth. Finally, when I graduated high school, in 1995, I had all these missing teeth and the only thing my mum wanted was for me to go to college and eat properly. So, she made sure that I got everything restored. I spent my summer going to graduation parties and the dentist. Soon after I got all this work done, I started to get tooth pain. Nobody could tell where my pain was coming from. I ended up seeing 6 to 7 doctors who couldn’t find out. They just couldn’t pinpoint it. This went on for nine months. So, I went to college and had to keep coming home because of the toothache I was having. Finally, my pain got so bad I swelled up. The doctors said they needed to take my tooth out because they didn’t know how to fix it. They took it out but apparently, it was the wrong one. After my anesthesia wore off, I still had my toothache and an infection. Then I was sent to an endodontist who saved my life, saved me from pain, made me understand what was going through with my body and allowed me to re-trust my body. His whole demeanor was amazing. I was 17 years old and that really made an impression on me. I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up at that time. I am Indian-American so I basically had very limited choices. My parents always told me I could be a doctor, dentist, lawyer or engineer. My mum and brother are both physicians. My mum is an anesthesiologist and my brother is a neuroradiologist. My dad is an engineer. They had already checked those boxes. I’ve always been at the dentist, and have always been a patient. I’ve literally had every medical procedure done on my mouth so I know what it’s like. So, I picked dentistry. Plus, I was very interested in what happened to me and why it happened the way it did. That’s what got me into dentistry but I wanted to take it a step further. I wanted to know more about my pain and my experience. That’s what led me into endodontics which is a particular specialty in dentistry. When I became an endodontist, I realized that I still saw the same story in my patients coming into my practice. They didn’t know where the pain was coming from and nobody could give them answers. I was shocked that nothing had changed in years. The education system is broken. The way we’re teaching this topic in schools is broken. I felt the need to do something about it because I knew how it was like to be in that position and I wanted to change it for other people. That’s why I decided to go beyond my practice and start my own education platform. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I didn’t know it was my mission back then. I think it was organically brewed in my soul while I was a practicing endodontist. I knew it was there but I kind of ignored that feeling for a while. I had information that needed to be shared. I started lecturing locally in Charlotte, North Carolina where my practice is. I realized that there were more people who needed to know that. I wanted to take everything that I knew and pack it. Why stay local when you can go global? That’s kind of how it went. As time went by, it continued to grow organically. It has now spread the reach because there are so many people all over the world who don’t have access to this type of education. So, it feels nice to be able to share it. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I remember the anxiety I experienced during the fourth year at my dental school. I felt like I wasn’t ready, like I was going to lose the safety umbrella of the school. If I made a mistake, I would be in trouble and I didn’t feel ready. I’m sure so many people feel the same way. So, I knew I wanted to do the next step which was a General Practice Residency so I did a GPR. I also wanted to live in New York for a year so I moved there and got into a residency and continued my education for another year in a hospital umbrella. I learned so much and started to notice that I had a little desire to become an endodontist. I would consult cases with my fellow residents. I liked to switch cases. I would give dentures to someone who wanted to do them and they would give me root canal work. I started to see where I was gravitating to. So, I gave myself that extra time to know where I desire to be in the field of dentistry. Then, I had to face the real world, what I was dreading. I didn’t start my own practice right away. I was an associate who used to work in different offices. When I was in New York City, I couldn’t find a job that was full time. I had three part time jobs going at once. I would be all over the city on different days. In two years, I had nine different jobs and I hated it. My growth was stunted. I knew I didn’t have any job where I couldn’t flourish as a clinician or leader. I saw the way I was being treated as an associate. That made me realize I needed to be a practice owner. I had to experience it though. I needed to see what I liked, what I didn’t like. I decided what was worth emulating and what I would do differently from my bosses. I made a lot of decisions at that time. I had one job where I was the only person in the practice. I was the front desk, I answered the phone, was the hygienist, was the assistant, took my own x-rays, did my own billing. It was horrendous but in retrospect, I learned so much. So, I’m glad I went through for that short period of time. I saw the value of what team members make. I hadn’t realized that before. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I think it depends on the location. I think in bigger cities it’s more common than in a rural area where you would be needed for a full time position. In Charlotte, North Carolina, associates are mainly full time but in New York City it wasn’t that way. I was making $400 a day and my rent was $2,000. So, I was barely scraping by. That was a big factor that led me to reevaluate my life at that time. I noticed I loved doing root canals and that was the procedure that I kept on doing over and over again. That’s what differentiated me from other dentists. Was I doing it well? Probably not, especially if I compare it with the working standard I currently practice. I saw that I loved getting people out of pain. I paid attention to the feeling I had inside while I was performing these things. I started to gain a level of confidence because I was doing it over and over again. I realized that maybe it was time for me to make that decision. A lot of people like to do general dentistry because they like to do a mish mash of things. I don’t like to be just ok at everything, I want to be really good at one thing. So, my brain is designed to be a specialist. So, I decided to apply to Endo and after I got in, I moved to South Florida. In between, I took two months off. I went backpacking around Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. I sublet my New York City apartment because I wasn’t making any money and I could live with 18$ a day in Thailand and I couldn’t do that in New York city. So, I sublet my apartment, my rent was paid for and backpacked in East Asia because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it again for a long time. So, I took some time off. Afterward, I did my endo residency. After that I went to South Florida and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina because that’s where my fiancé and his family lived. I didn’t know anybody, couldn’t find a job because the economy tanked in 2008. Nobody was busy enough to hire an associate. So, I could either be unemployed or start my own practice. I knew I needed that because one of my core values is growth and I saw how stunted in growth I was in my other jobs. I needed to be my own boss and that’s still one of my golden rules. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

Resilience, perseverance but most importantly, commitment. The more I commit to something, the better it gets done and all of that contributes in my growth. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I was actually very lucky because I had my husband who is also a dentist. He was already in practice here. I had a lot of support from him. There is also a system already in place. You need to find commercial real estate, find the perfect location from you. You’ve got to have a banker because you need a loan. My husband did my business plan for me. I’m sure there is a template you can get somewhere to create the business plan and get your loan. Then, you have to pick a dental supply company and they actually help you create the design of your practice. There is a lot of built-in support which is nice and everybody knows each other, it’s a network. So, you work in a network. You also need IT and construction consultants. You have the option of starting your own or buying an existing practice. It depends. There are many things you need to consider in your own life. I could afford not to take a paycheck the first year because I could live off my husband but not many people can do that. They are the sole breadwinners and need to find that practice that has the patient and workflow. You’ve got to figure out which is good for you. Maybe you can be an associate for a while in a practice and buy it later. There are a lot of different options. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I think you need to figure out what services are really your niche. Even as a general dentist, you can specialize in certain things within your own practice. Maybe you like to do implants, Invisalign, etc. you can kind of create anything because it’s your office, you brand. If you have a story to tell like I have a story. My story is about my toothache. I encourage people to share their stories. The more you share, the more are people able to connect with you. Everything that I do now is that I kind of built around my story. I’m a tooth saver to the max, I don’t want anyone to take out their tooth unless they need to. I really value teeth because of my personal story. My tagline is “Give teeth a chance”. I think that my niche is still being developed even after thirteen years in because we’re continuously evolving and growing. It used to be all about singing up with insurance companies to get patients and now I realize that doesn’t fit my brand. I want people to choose me for me, not because of who I’m in network with. For example, if you don’t value the technology that we use in our practice to provide you this amazing care, you’re not in my niche. We need to be okay with saying goodbye to certain people to make sure that our brand lives on. I think insurance policies are absurd. Let’s say you have a toothache and it’s painful. If you come to my practice, I’ll tell you that their insurance will pay for the root canal but won’t pay enough for me to tell you which tooth you need to have the root canal on. I have to tell the patient to cough up a certain amount of money because the insurance doesn’t cover it. However, if the patient does the evaluation today, I can treat him tomorrow. How stupid is that? They’ll pay if you do it on two separate days but if you’re in an emergency situation and your pain level is high, I can treat you but you’ll have to pay for one or the other. We have the clients pay for the cheaper of the two out of the pocket. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

For me, even back in the beginning, it was always about doing the right things and the experience. It starts from the moment people walk in the door to saying hello to my front desk to having the treatment and then leaving. Sometimes, maybe your treatment won’t work. What are you going to do about it? There should be no questions asked or some sort of guarantee. I don’t let people ask me for a refund. I’m happy to do it again with no charge. I care about just sticking to my brand, to what I do, sticking it up to the end and making sure the overall experience is great. As long as I do the right thing, the money will come. It was never about the money in the first place, it was always about taking care of my patient. I felt that if I stayed true to that, everything else would come to place. I think there is a difference between being a practice owner and working for a chain. I think people who aren’t invested in the practice that has their name written all over everything, act differently. There are unicorn dentists that work in these places that are really good, I don’t want to bash them but I think I do see a difference. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

As a specialist, a lot of my clients are referral based so I believe in relationships and I like to work with dentists that I’m aligned with. I think it’s better for everybody and is a better experience for the patient as well as they transition from one practice to the next and then back to their dentist. I think it’s really helpful when there is a relationship between two dentists. Sometimes treatment plans can get very complex and you need to have that conversation on the patient’s behalf. Sometimes you have to speak for the patient’s advocate and go back to the dentist. That’s one piece. It was 2016 when I started to realize that if I didn’t make a shift into the online world, I was going to be missing out. My number one referral one is what I call “Dr. Google”. Having that online presence has made a huge shift on my practice. Some patients have found me for a treatment one day, others have found me from across the world because they’ve landed on my blog and were surprised by it. Some people have even flown in to see me which is kind of crazy. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

Dental school lasts four years in but there is a two-week crash course. When we graduate, most of us are allowed to do four root canals before we graduate and afterwards, we’re allowed to just do it. I was one of those people. I was doing root canals as a general dentist and I’m pretty sure a lot of those failed. I remember one in particular; I know I missed the canal because I didn’t fix the whole tooth but innocently thought I did. The patient called me back a few days later saying her tooth was still bothering her. I told her to give it some time. Afterwards, I moved from New York and I don’t know what happened to her. This is something that continues to happen. Almost 50% of my practice consists of fixing other dentists’ root canals. They were not ill-intentionally done wrong but someone really thought they were doing it right. They do what they can with the resources they have. I know that the breakdown and education is really there. We have people in dental schools who haven’t done a root canal themselves teaching others how to do them. That’s a little scary, we need more education. I became a board-certified endodontist in 2014 and I had to go back and restudy everything. I had to give an oral examination and really had to know it. What I realized when I went through that journey of restudying everything was how much I learned. I had this basis, this foundation of clinical knowledge from being in practice from 2018 to 2014 and had to go back and relearn it on top of that foundation. How much I learned was astronomical. That’s kind of where I started to develop the confidence to teach it. I thought about people who were out of school and how they needed to relearn it the right way in their clinical expertise, skills and confidence and I started to develop my little end of residency as I like to call it. It’s called “E-school: Endo made easy”. I basically take everything I do in my practice, every template, trick, hack, everything that I know that got me to where I am thirteen years later, put it in a program and teach it to the general dentist so that they can track their success. Patients get to keep their tooth; they only need to pay for it one time and they don’t have to meet someone like me to redo it. There are more successful root canals out there and less tooth ache for the patient. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I think it’s important to really give yourself unconditional time so that you can dream and figure out what your brand is. So many dentists say that they’re frantic with their families and running a practice, doing the clinical work and forget to really think about what their brand is. Anyone can have a brand. You can be an associate working for somebody else and still have a brand within that organization. You don’t have to be on your own to have a brand and I think that’s really important. Everyone has something to say and they should share it. You can’t be shy. You have to take a leap of faith, put yourself out there and see what happens. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

Managing a team and all the personalities that come with 15 females in an office is a lot and that was probably my weakest link when I graduated. I learned so much clinical stuff but they don’t teach you anything about business. I had to learn on the job how to be a manager, how to decipher insurance claims, read an AOB. It all comes on the job; they don’t teach one minute of it. I was complaining that they only give you two weeks of endo in dental school, they don’t give you one minute of business there. They don’t teach you anything about mindset. All of this is really important. I think a lot of us graduate while thinking we can run a practice, we don’t equate it with running a business, we don’t equate dental care with a business. I didn’t graduate with that mindset but now that I’m in it, I know this is a business and I need to know how to run it. I needed to be a good leader and that is where I sucked. I was not good at all. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would read more books, listen to more podcasts early on because that’s when I started to notice my shift. I had a lot of turnover in my team. It felt like I was running on this hamster wheel. My practice was growing regardless but I couldn’t keep up with the growth nor could push the needle forward because I was not a good leader. Once I started working on myself and my leadership skills, I learned how to maintain a team and grow it. I currently have a big leadership team but I had to learn how to lead before I could do that. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

It took me at least ten years just to get through the Impostor Syndrome I was experiencing. I had no idea that was a thing. I finally felt confident enough to teach, be the expert. I think the next generation is smarter than us. There are more resources available to them. I feel like you can fast-track it a bit more than ten years but I feel it takes ten years to become an expert, to have that confidence that you can carry yourself through visibility. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I noticed that the energy I bring into the practice impacts the way my team performs on any given day. If I’m not functioning, they are not functioning either. I need to make sure I’m consistent with that. I’m simply working on my mindset to make sure it’s positive and not get caught up in the negativity. I love learning something in the morning, sitting in the dark. I have a meditation corner and sometimes I’ll meditate, read a book or listen to a podcast. I’ve always liked to educate myself in the morning or listen to some music that is going to get me pumped on my way to work. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I used to be a blamer. I blamed everyone but me. I took a good deep look into what the problem was and it was me. If I couldn’t fix myself, I couldn’t fix anything else going around me. Just learning how to communicate properly was key. My intentions were great but only I knew that. They never came out right. Once I started making sure the words came out right and understanding my boundaries, everything changed for the better. When I’m working with a patient, I’m with that patient, I’m not thinking about anything else. I want to be so present with the patient, I want that treatment to last forever. If I’m working and I get asked about where to put a patient with an emergency on the schedule, I don’t have the bandwidth to answer on the spot. That’s acceptable and they should be okay with that boundary. They can’t demand I take care of the problem a patient may be having about their bill when I’m working with another patient. I need to work Monday through Thursday on patients and I’ll become the manager on Friday and will put out all these fires. Just know when to come to me. Nobody is going to die because I didn’t attend to their bill on Wednesday when I know I can do it on Friday. I can get snippy because I stress out about the procedure and I don’t want the stress to be lashed out to someone else because they’re asking a question that is not relevant to what I’m doing at the moment. I set those boundaries and I was open, transparent and vulnerable with my team. I let them know how I am, how I want to be and how I want to show up but I need their support to stay the same way. Having that awareness, setting those boundaries and working on those communication skills totally transformed my life and allowed me to maintain a team. We actually hang out with each other even after work. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

It’s changed over the years. When I first started the practice, I worked five days a week. Since then, I have added two doctors in my practice. I’ve also added three children in my life so I had to be really intentional with my life. I started designing my life. I felt like I was in total control, I could work when I wanted. Every time I added a doctor, I dropped a clinical day and every time I added a kid, I would drop another day. I now work two days a week. On Monday I see patients from 7am to 7pm and on Tuesday from 7am to 5 pm, have a team meeting for an hour and a half. On Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, I work on my online business and on being a mum. As a specialist, you may be working 8 to 5 in your practice but you have to go out and form relationships. So, I was constantly out having dinner, maybe even lunches. Nowadays, I have a network. Right now, it all seems fun but in the beginning it was hard. I think it’s something to consider when looking to become a specialist or run a referral-based business. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I disagree when they say that leaders eat alone but I think it doesn’t have to be lonely at the top. When you share your vision with your team, friends and family, you’ll have their support. I used to think leaders sometimes felt isolated but so far, I have seen how connections play a part in not making that a reality. – Dr.Sonia Chopra

I think it’s really important to be in tune with yourself, know yourself, understand what your personal dreams are and how you want the world to see you. Everything is doable, possible. You can have a mid-life crisis like I did and totally rebrand yourself, repivot your whole career. I feel like possibilities are endless. You just have to be totally aligned with yourself, keep reminding yourself what your vision is, keep going back to it and let it lead you down your path. – Dr.Sonia Chopra