Ahh, The InSide Gig. Not everyone gets what it is, or what I really do.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that some dentists say, “If you work with Laura, she’s just going to get you to quit dentistry.” Or they think, “I just want to find a job that is part-time, remote, and pays as much as clinical.”

I get it. That’s what it looks like from the outside, but that’s not the work that changes their lives.

I sometimes sit in my group coaching calls and marvel at the personal transformations my clients commit to. They are not just writing resumes and applying to jobs. They are becoming. They learn to dream, build their confidence back up, and begin to truly believe that if they can do dentistry, they deserve any life they choose.

I’ll admit, while I’m so happy for my clients, sometimes it makes me sad. It reminds me that there are dentists out there experiencing the same pain I once felt. They feel stuck, believing that this pain is as good as it gets.

I can also see their potential so clearly, and I just wish they could too.

I was one of those dentists who didn’t see any potential in myself outside of clinical dentistry. My biggest barrier to change was inside of me. It was my belief in the possibilities and in myself.

Not all dentists struggle with this. Something inside of them allows them to organically build whatever non-traditional dental career they want. They don’t even realize it could be scary, so they just go. But many dentists are like I was. They don’t know how or where to start.

They get stuck in the Google Spiral. Every few months they decide to Google typical jobs dentists can do. If they’re lucky, they find a handful of jobs, none of which really feel worth making the change. Then a few weeks later, dentistry feels okay, and they decide to stick with it.

Dentistry feels better for a while. But a few months go by, life gets uncomfortable again, and they’re right back into the Google Spiral– repeating the cycle every few months without getting anywhere.

I spent the better part of a decade doing exactly that. I constantly circled the initial steps of change without moving past it.

It all changed when I invested in a coach, a therapist, and a lot of personal development books (yes, I needed a team to get unstuck!) And one day, I finally saw it. I started to believe that I was strong and capable, and that belief opened the door to finally getting into real action.

Your belief has to happen before anything else can.

If you try to skip this step, you’ll get nowhere.

Don’t get me wrong. You know I love The Side Gig. It’s the perfect vehicle to help dentists make tangible, safe changes to their careers. You start something on the side and build it up while you maintain the security of your dental career. Slowly over time, you decrease your dentistry hours while you increase your side gig hours. And voila! Eventually, dentistry becomes your side gig.

But most people don’t even get to the idea stage of a side gig. And if they get an idea, they give up too soon, just like I did over and over.

That’s the missing piece. Most dentists don’t realize that their mindset is what’s standing between them and everything they want. So they keep looking outside themselves for the answer, never finding it.

You might not see it yet. You might think it’s because you don’t have time or you don’t know how or what to do. That might be true. But that’s often a mask for what’s really inside. No matter how much you want to change, you stay stuck. Maybe like me, you don’t fully believe in yourself or that change is even possible. You might fear that you won’t survive. What if you regret changing? The idea of making enough money doing something else can feel impossible. And how will you live knowing everyone will view you as a failure?

All of these fears live inside your mind, not outside of it.

Starting a side gig is an inside job.

That’s the InSide Gig. The real barrier isn’t finding the side gig. It’s everything that comes before it that will continue to support you when the work feels too hard. It’s the most important and first step that most people skip.

You think you want to bypass it, but when you commit to it, the most beautiful thing happens. You start to see what’s possible for you. You give yourself permission to have the life you want. You stop waiting for someone to hand you the answer and you start becoming the person who already knows it.

Because you deserve to build a life you actually want to wake up to– not the one that looks good from the outside, or the one you fell into.

And as long as you show up, I know how to get you there.