A career fit guide for dental hygienists

Could myofunctional therapy be your way out of the op?

Because you can be good at your job and still be done.

Carmen Ball

CEO & founder, The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™

Tell me where to send it and it is yours right now.

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Who it is for

If any of this hits something real.

The guide asks you what you want instead. These are the answers I hear most, from hygienists who are good at the work and still done.

Your body and your time

Control over your own schedule, not someone else’s idea of your schedule. Work that does not cost you your wrists, your neck, or your back.

Your work and your worth

A way to use the clinical knowledge you already spent years building — and deeper relationships with patients than a twice-a-year cleaning allows.

Room to choose

More control over what you earn, tied to the work you actually do. Independence from one employer, one office culture, one boss’s mood.

Meet Carmen

Successful on paper. Miserable in the chair.

I spent sixteen years as a dental hygienist. Here is the part of the story I do not usually lead with.

I remember sitting across the table from my boss at my two-year evaluation. One year earlier she had called me the rock star of the office. This time she called me the cancer of it.

Nothing about my work had changed. What changed is that she took a 6% cost of living raise funded by pushing my production numbers higher — and I realized she was building her golden parachute on my back. Top it off with the denial of a raise, because I was the cancer after all.

I sat there and felt my chest go tight. That was not sadness. That was clarity.

Turns out she gave me the biggest raise of all. My freedom. I trained as a myofunctional therapist in 2017, and by August 2018 I was out of the op.

What I learned the hard way is that clinical skills do not teach you how to run a business — nobody hands you that part. I have built a life-first company that funds a life I am bonkers about, and now I teach women how to build a profitable modern-day myofunctional therapy business.

I wish someone had handed me these questions long before I had to discover them for myself.

Grab a pen and be honest with yourself while you work through it.

Carmen

Dental hygienist of sixteen years · free since 2018

What is inside

Just the questions. No score at the end.

In the order that makes them answerable. Here are four of them.

Is it hygiene, or is it time?

Not the version you would say out loud at a team meeting. The real one, the one you admit quietly when no one is around to hear it.

You are not starting from zero

Anatomy you already know. Patient education at a professional level. Comfort in a clinical relationship. A referral network you may not have used yet.

You do not have to quit hygiene on Monday

Now, training, first clients, your call. You train on your own schedule, around the job you already have.

Your career fit snapshot

Worth exploring further, I need more information first, or probably not my next move. All three are real answers.

How to use it

✓Grab a cup of coffee and set aside some time for yourself.
✓Grab a pen — several sections are yours to write in, not read.
✓Be radically honest with yourself. Nobody else is grading this.