15: Tools For Ambitious People

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When I was working as an associate rat at a school, I never imagined I could own these many practices with this amount of support. So thank you.

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Welcome everyone, to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and thrilled to have you here today with me. I've been thinking about ambition lately. I think it's because we're in this consolidating industry. There's so much opportun, so much hard work, but the vision and the possibilities almost seem endless at times. You're building out different technology capabilities, you're working with people and systems, you're building out your organizational chart, you're buying practices or fixing practices, and you're always at events where people are talking about the possibilities and what could happen. EBITDA multiples and everything else that goes along with the excitement and energy of a consolidating industry. And so it's got me reflecting on the power as an entrepreneur and as leaders that we have because we are naturally very ambitious people. And I think as I interact with ambitious entrepreneurs, entrepreneur, dentists and others, leaders in general, you can just feel this common thread of ambitious people. And so I was reflecting on the strengths and also the weaknesses of ambitious people. And how do we enhance the strengths within our teams and within our personal life and within our business of being ambitious? And then where are the places that we need to make sure that we are proactively solving for our weaknesses that come with that strength? In fact, I kind of live under the mantra that our weaknesses are simply the overuse of our strengths. And so to the extent that sometimes we want to overcome our weaknesses, it might be just turning down our strengths or offsetting those just slightly. So, I mean, what's the obvious strengths of an ambitious person? You know, one, I think that ambitious people are naturally very curious about the world. They're asking questions, they're digging in. They're, they're clearly very driven. They're future thinkers. You know, it's not about today, it's about the future. I think one of the powers, superpowers that they have over their peers is they are not worried about the past. The past is simply the raw material for them to say, okay, that's what I learned from the past. But there are no failures in the past. There's simply learning opportunities. Right? They're very much focused on the future, what's coming down the pipe, where is the world going in general and how do we prepare ourselves today to be ready for where the world's going? Ambitious people think like that, really comfortable with change. Ambitious people, hey, let's rip that apart, let's change it now. I think all of us have a tolerance when our own personal lives or some of our own paradigms are changing. But in general, compared to the rest of the human population, ambitious people are comfortable with change. In fact, sometimes they feel more uncomfortable when there isn't something changing because they realize that that means we may not be evolving, we may not be preparing for these future things that I'm seeing. And so they are more comfortable with change happening than probably they are when they feel like change isn't happening. In fact, they have an expectation within their group that everybody should be evolving, changing, growing, developing. And I think in general they're always willing to improve. They're seeking the truth more than being right. So when they're sitting in a meeting, ambitious people really want to understand what the truth is because they know that that leverage and catapults them towards this future ambition and possibility rather than their point is the only point. Now having said this, I know that everyone's thinking of ambitious people that are egotistical, self centered and not seeking the truth in any form. And that absolutely exists as well. But I'm speaking to you all and I know that you're all just humble and willing to to do whatever advice that you're giving. So I'm assuming as such. So even if you think about ambitious people in a very positive life, curious, driven future thinkers, comfortable with change, always willing to improve and seeking truth. Someone with those kind of strengths, what could possibly be the weaknesses that come from that? And I think two, at least, that aren't always on our radar screen. To be ambitiously offsetting is, number one, enjoying the present. I think that being an ambitious person, we love and get so much energy from what's coming down the pipe and what the possibilities of developing and and evolving could be that it's so easy to start missing the present. And when that happens, we also can start turning people into objects instead of seeing them as humans. We start discounting the realities around people's feelings and emotions and the reality of supporting other people in order such that we can have better connection with people and ultimately reach our goals. And so I think enjoying the present is something that ambitious entrepreneurs, you often find after they've been in any industry for some period of time that they find that something's lacking and they start seeking different coaches, mentors, and different morning routines even that allow them to become more present and to enjoy the present. I think that that's critical. It's a little bit like ambitious people are Ferraris that are built with no brake system and no steering wheel. And I think that enjoying the present allows us to tap the brakes. You know, it's cool to have a Ferrari that goes fast, but not one that you're constantly crashing, self sabotaging because you're just going too fast without having some other capabilities. So that actually for ambitious people, we have to develop out how do we enjoy the present time? We get so much out of the future, but the present is where everything's happening today and it's where all the connection and really the essence of life is happening. Number two on the weaknesses, I think these are the main ones I just want to talk through in this podcast is we are not good at measuring success. So because we're so future thinking and so driven when we are in the present, oftentimes we see that as where we're failing. Meaning if I'm measuring today off of this future ideal, in the future that I'm trying to achieve, then today just is a bunch of places we're not doing well. And I think we have to be careful of that. I think we can be very ambitious, but come across very cynical and pessimistic as leaders to our team members. If every day we're living so much in the future, that today is just a representation of everything we're not doing right, that starts to bleed out into all our interactions. And in the beginning, people are very motivated, excited about, about our vision of the future. But if it never translates to any enjoyment or appreciation for the present, then I think that eventually your best team members will start to leave. They don't like the feeling of constantly being under failure and not ever achieving ultimate success. And I think we deceive ourselves at times that say, once we're here, then I'll be happy. Except we're such ambitious future thinkers that we blow past that future goal so fast and then we've designed a new one in the construct of our mind for, for our next goal that we never even really appreciate where we are today. So here's a little trick that we do before every meeting, and that is we measure all of our success by looking backwards. And this is a concept, an idea that I credit to Dan Sullivan and my time in strategic coach. But it's such a powerful concept of taking the time personally and before every meeting and just going around and say, if we were looking backwards, where have we progressed? Where have we evolved? You can do that over just the last week, what successful things have been solved for this week, or you can do it over longer periods of time when things aren't going well. You have to sometimes go back and say, well, a year ago we were at this place and now we're here. And I could just tell you that if you will institute that simple tool of kind of measuring your success by looking backwards by. But continue your motivation and excitement and vision for the future. If you can balance those two things out, you can have team members who see the vision, who are excited to climb the mountain with you and overcome all the obstacles, but you can also have a journey that is way more enjoyable because the reality is you've got people around you who are slaying dragons every day and they need us as leaders to slow down enough to give appreciation. And that only really happens when we can kind of look backwards and say, you know what? A month ago, we weren't able to even think about having ambition towards this goal. But because my team has overcome X, Y and Z, or six months ago or a year ago, we couldn't even have dreamed of trying to solve this problem here because we were still back working on these things over here. Even when negative things have happened. Oftentimes those are setups to allow us to catapult into the future so we can even take negative events looking backwards and say, had that not happened, we would not have had the culture, the capability, the motivation, the vision to make sure that it doesn't happen again and that we have these tools, resources and systems in place to ensure our success as we scale in the future. So I hope as listeners that I know are very ambitious people who have a lot of vision around where we can go in this dental industry. I hope this little nugget you can pull a piece from and say, where could I apply this in my organization, in my personal life, to continue to drive with a lot of power and speed, your Ferrari, ambition and entrepreneurship, but also have a series of brake systems and steering wheels that allow you to not crash the car and to have an awesome time on this journey. So hope this is helpful. Love to have you join us on our private Facebook group, DSO Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to DSO Secrets. Join our community on Facebook @DSO Secrets and get answers and resources to some of your most challenging questions. If you want to get a copy of the seven secrets of any DSO, go to our website at dsosecrets.com and we will get that emailed to you. Remember, don't go at this alone. Let us be your team while you build your team.