Christopher and Debra Shunn have been happily married for over 44 years.  They have spent the majority of their working careers in the dental industry.  Debra (Debbie) helped her father, Dentist Ronald Packard, by working in the family Packard Dental Practice while in high school and during college.  Christopher (Chris) was introduced to the world of dental laboratory shortly after graduating from Brigham Young University in 1978.  Chris worked as a in-house dental laboratory technician in the Packard Dental Clinic for nearly two years.  He then establishing the first of 14 different commercial dental laboratories in four western states.  During that period of time, Chris worked with nearly 1,000 different dental practices.

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After 15 years as a dental ceramist and dental laboratory owner, Chris began working as a dental practice marketing consultant.  His career in dentistry allowed him the opportunity to work with some of the most respected dentists in our time, most notably Gordon Christensen, Omer Reed, Woody Oaks, and Bill Kimball.  Chris has lectured at dental seminars & state dental meetings, had articles published, and was the publisher of several denatl publications.  It is estimated that he has been in over 3,000 different dental practices in his career.  "I have learned from and taken away something profound from every dentist that I have encountered.  Most of it was good...but you can learn a lot from a bad example."

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In 1978, Chris was finishing his university studies at BYU.  His major course of study was Communication, Advertising, and Marketing.  In 1978 advertising and marketing was considered unethical, unprofessional, or completely illegal.  Early in  1979, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on a case that "deregulated" the dental and other professions as effectively "price fixing" by not allowing competitive advertising of pricing.  Since that time there has been an increasing volume and huge diversity in the ways that dentists advertise and market their professional services.  I have basically seen it all...and much of the self-promotional advertising and marketing are expensive, ineffective, copycat, and unprofessional. 

 

I have been on a mission for several decades to educate dentists about the wasteful marketing and advertising used by most dentists.  And, I have been on a crusade to identify and share the best dental advertising and marketing practices.  Actually most dentists agree that their new patient generating methods are expensive, very similar to competitors in their area, and not very effective.  I believe that there is a high road approach to attracting quality patients to your practice.  I believe that if dentists would begin effectively promoting the profession and do less self-promotion that every dentist would be busier.  And while it may never be possible to get agreement among every dentist, the few dentists that adopt this positive approach will greatly differentiate their practice from the run-of-the-mill general hoard of self-promotional dentists.