https://youtu.be/ZHyVmSHlk1o

Carrie Webber [00:00:10] Welcome back to the Jameson Files. I'm Carrie Webber and I'm your host and I'm so excited to be sitting here today with a dear friend—Jameson client—an amazing dentist. Dr. Ashly Cothern from Dallas, Texas. Dr. Cothern, thank you so much for being with us today. Great to be here. 

Dr. Ashly Cothern [00:00:31] Dr. Cothern has practiced for 17 years and is considered year over year, one of the topmost respected dentists in the Dallas Fort Worth area and is recognized by her peers on a regular basis. And I've had the privilege of being in your practice before, so I see where the magic happens. And it's an incredible environment, working environment, practice culture. It's very special. And so I want to start first by asking you a little bit just to share your story, how you came to dentistry and how you find yourself where you are today as a practicing dentist and mom of an amazing family and ultimate servant leader in your practice. 

Carrie Webber [00:01:15] So what led you to dentistry? 

Dr. Ashly Cothern [00:01:17] Well, I always tease and say I'm not certain. I think God hit me with a lightning bolt and said, you're going to be you know, I don't have any family members that were in dentistry or physicians for that matter. But I think the story goes truly when I was seven or eight years old, I said to my parents, I want to be an orthodontist. I don't think I really knew what that meant. But about the time I got braces, 13, 14 years old, I went and asked my orthodontist, may I work in your office? You don't have to pay me. I just want to be here. And this is what I say I want to do. I want to see if this is what I want to do. And he said, no. 

Carrie Webber [00:01:50] Oh, wow. 

Dr. Ashly Cothern [00:01:51] I said, OK, I'm going to go to my general dentist, my family dentist. And they said, yes. And so I worked there summers and through high school and into college come back for Christmas. I would pop in. And ultimately, they did hire me. They did pay me. So I got to see what that looks like. And I think if I go back to the roots of it, my family history, there's a lot of divorces and oftentimes there wasn't a lot of security. And I think in my little girl mind, I wanted to be able to provide for myself. And so I think that that was something to just say. Here's a profession that's always going to be needed and I can be in demand and simply be my own boss if I want to or be an employee if I want to. It can just look so many different ways. And so along the way, I had some wonderful male and female orthodontist, non-orthodontist, periodontist, you know, all the specialties- mentor me along the way. So I got to see what dentistry looked like. And again, I don't know where it came from, but somehow, I got the wisdom to go jump inside several different offices before I even got to dental school. And I did. I went inside a different orthodontist office in college gives me and decided I did not want to be an orthodontist. That's not something I wanted to do. I wanted to have more variety. His wife was a periodontist. I went and worked in a periodontist's office and said, Yeah, I kind of like it. But again, I went a little bit more variety. 

Dr. Ashly Cothern [00:03:15] So I went into dental school thinking general dentistry. And so that's kind of where it came from. I have ever since a little girl that I was a little girl, that's the only thing I've wanted to do. And I truly have a passion for dentistry. I very early on have been able to see how people walk in and pain or people walk in. I'm not pleased with their smile cosmetically or aesthetically. And they leave and they're out of pain and they have a little pep in their step, and they have a sparkle in their eye for their new smile or whatever the case may be. And so just being able to have that impact on patients’ lives was so intriguing to me. And I think it's ironic that one of the original reasons t...