What is the most valuable asset you own? It's not your house. It's not your practice, no matter how highly it may be appraised. In fact, it is not any tangible possession.

The most important asset you have when it comes to economic success is your ability as an individual to generate income using your energy and the energy of those around you. Naturally we have many other precious assets in our lives – our family, friends, health and passions – that are more important than money.

But this ability to consistently and efficiently produce income plays a vital role in those areas also, because so much of life is made better when you can eliminate financial worries and fund the things that are important to you. This asset is the engine that drives your life. It's called your "human capital," and the way you optimize its value is by optimizing your clinical, positional and environmental excellence.

Clinical Excellence
A commitment to clinical excellence should be a no-brainer. The more advanced your clinical skills, the more comprehensive your diagnoses will be, and the more sophisticated cases you'll be treating. Developing your clinical skills, and staying current throughout your career, is the most direct and effective way to boost your human capital.

Positional Excellence
Positional excellence is all about creating passion for your vision in all the people around you – your team, patients, the people in your professional network and lab partners – so they engage fully with that vision and can support you in your mission to deliver the best clinical care. This also means developing your leadership skills so that you have a clear understanding of all the roles in the practice. It's also important to know how they work together and support each other, not just for optimum efficiency, but also in creating value for your dentistry.

Environmental Excellence
Finally, environmental excellence means making the right economic commitments to re-investment, so you can work in the right facility, with the necessary equipment and technology that will support the value you want to communicate, while also enhancing the level of care you're able to provide.

Increasing your attention to these three areas of excellence will drive up the value of your human capital. Investments in these areas are investments in the most incredible and reliable asset you could ever have: you.