150: Ken Kaufman's Transition: From the Journey Growing CDP to Seeking a New Challenge

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

You have helped build my marketing mind

to a whole new level. You have this natural talent, this unique ability.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and excited to be here with Ken Kaufman, who's done amazing job on multiple podcasts here on DSO Secrets, and we'll continue to do so. But Ken and I have a unique situation happening that we thought, man, this is an opportunity to have a much deeper discussion and much more vulnerable than we probably had with any guests we've had on. And we thought, man, this would be interesting. So I'm making an announcement here on Facebook and within this podcast that Ken Kaufman's going to be transitioning from community dental partners. And just the way that it's played out, the way that we've worked together to make this a great transition for each other, we thought, man, we got to talk about this, get other people's feedback and so forth. And, Ken, you and I have grown up as entrepreneurs in a lot of ways, and we've done it wrong before, so that's probably why we appreciate it. Right? I mean, we've gotten to the point where a transition needed to happen, and we just started villainizing the person behind their back. And it just. By the time they left, we all hated each other or whatnot. You and I have known each other for a long time. We've grown this company over the last six, seven years together. You still have equity in the company, but we just reached a point where we knew that a transition had to happen. And so that's an interesting place because I think you were feeling it for a period of time. I started feeling it, seeing things, and so.

And I was trying to deny it to some degree during that period of time. Right. Because it's ride for the CDP brand, and we're building and we're growing, and I believe in the vision and where the company's going and our nine pillars and the culture. Right. There's so many things, so it's easy to go into a Little bit of self denial, which. Which I did for a while.

Yeah, that's a good call out. And I think especially now, there's. This has been an interesting play, as I've thought about this, is there's capability and then there's almost like an energy and passion for something. And what can be a little bit deceiving is what if you have a team member who's got all of the capability to do it, but you're noticing that the passion and drive to do it is going down. And what's even more interesting is if you've got a good company that's helping get things segregated and delegated out, you could end up. And I have a family member who owns a business right now. It's got the same situation. They've done such a good job delegating some key tasks, they're ending up in an area that's actually not as interesting to them and not where their passion is. So I'm curious, Ken, just kind of your takeaways on this journey. I know you've done quite a bit of reflection and, you know, what has it led you to that makes you somewhat excited about this, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Very excited for the transition, but also excited for the future of cdp In. In every way. I see. I see amazing growth, maybe world domination. If I was just, you know, I'm kidding.

But limit it to that. We'll limit it to that.

Maybe just sort of the United States. Dominique, Whatever. But what's interesting in the journey is

that

we start to feel pulled one way or another. And as we've grown so dramatically over the last six and a half years that I've been in the business, my role as the CFO of the company has changed. And when I look at where the company's going, it's going to change even more. And it's forced me to ask myself, how excited and passionate am I about that role and when I really am honest with myself, and that's what started to happen. And then I started to try to deny the thoughts and say, no, no, we'll figure it out somehow. But I realized that I really am ready to step into a CEO president role of an organization, and that that's where that's the best use of my unique ability. And what's cool is, is wherever I end up, you're going to get somebody with massive finance background and savvy and expertise, and that's obviously going to be helpful. But, you know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about my unique ability And I'm going to turn because I've got it right here on my wall. But I've learned that about myself. My unique ability is leading and lifting people, organizations and industries to the next level. And as I thought about my role at CDP and stayed in the CFO role, I realized that I was not going to be true to what I do best, so to speak. Even though I do it really, really well, it's not what I do best. And was going to probably end up grinding me down more than me having the energy to show, you know, just keep showing up. Because, you know, Emmett, like when you're growing a company, all the inertia forces you to not grow. You have to show up and beat those doors down every day to keep driving and growing and building the business. That. And that's where I started to feel even a little overwhelmed at the thought of, oh, I don't know if I have the energy to do this. And it all kind of came back to where I feel like I'm being called and pushed to use my skills and abilities.

Well, I think we're a clinician. You know, if you're, if you're listening to this, where this could happen to you is let's say you started off, you know, loving dentistry, loving taking care of your patients, and you're really successful at that. So that success drives you to want to bring on an associate, want to open another practice, want to develop out dental support organizations, start to scale and grow. As you're doing that, you're getting farther and farther away from the patient. As you do that, you get, and you're more successful, you get farther and farther away from even the clinicians. And if you're in that CEO role, the job could become more about legal compliance and looking at contracts and, you know, all of those pieces. And you might hire cfo, coo, others to do that. But even for them, that can evolve as you scale bigger and bigger. The volume of those things can be very small in the beginning and become very concentrated and almost full time. Especially for someone like cdp, where we've got the government pay component that's always there, we've got JV partners on scale, multiple locations, lots of allocations that have to be done, et cetera. Just the level of detail, cash management pieces that has to be done is much different than all the strategic growth, which is also there. But the CFO role becomes less about going out and finding new opportunities because people are doing that and more driven to. Can you review this spreadsheet? Can you develop this spreadsheet. Right. And for those who know Ken Kaufman, he'd much rather be on a podcast than be in a spreadsheet, but he'd love to interpret that and where that could take you. Right. So anyway, it's been. It's been a cool development, I think, for both of us, because there's, you know, I say business is like the CrossFit of personal development and starting to. With us having such a good relationship, it's somewhat weird to say. Actually the best thing is for Ken to be able to go. And I'll be honest, I think Community Dental Partners kind of build CEOs, kind of builds entrepreneurs. Right.

That's exactly what I was thinking. And what I was going to mention is I really, when I look at the last six and a half years, I mean, first of all, amazing personal and professional growth for me and the opportunities and the things I've learned, but it's been an absolute honor and a treat to see you, Emmett, in your CEO role. And I've learned much from you at how you've led through the great times, how you've led through the really difficult times, you know, the ups and downs, the. The boring times, the exciting times, all of that in between. I couldn't have. I didn't know I was doing this, but if I were to go back and rewrite the story, it would be, hey, for the next six and a half years, I'm going to find the best CEO, president mentor I could find, and I'm going to hang out with them as much as possible all day long. It means I'll join their company and follow them around and interact with them and get coaching from them and push back on them when I think that maybe they could do some things better. You know, we could always go back and write the historical script exactly the way we wanted. That, you know, that's actually kind of what. That's how it's all ended up playing out when it's all said and done.

Yeah, I think. Incredible.

And it's a. I think it's a testament to you, Emmett, as a person and a leader. It's also a testament to CDP and the culture that's been built where everything's about development and learning and personal growth and. And getting to the next level. So it's amazing.

We celebrate a lot within cdp and I think we do at DEO when we are able to take individuals who start off at the practice level and really develop them out, which is awesome. Anytime we've got plenty of those stories too. I think we have to celebrate at times when people leave that we've developed them past what we have opportunities for today. And those can be some of the toughest because it feels like transitions should have some negative flair to them and maybe sometimes we almost build it up to that and we just need to open up the conversation, you know, earlier and yeah. So hopefully this gives, you know, just some mindset. I'd love others thoughts along the way. By the way, Lori Noga did a shout out to you and to cdp. So thank you.

Lori is a rock star. She's one of my favorite. Yes, she is, no doubt.

So for Dentist Entrepreneur Organization for deo, Ken Kaufman's alive and well, still involved and we'll continue to work together there, continue to be on DSO secrets, podcast, etc.

But yeah, we need to call that out for a minute just so people know. I'm still going to show up and do podcasts. And even though Emmett and I aren't working in the same company day to day, we, we have so much fun doing this and creating this content and engaging. I just, I want to make sure the listeners know that I'm still planning to host podcasts and all those kind of things.

So yeah, Ken Kaufman's out on the marketplace, guys. But yeah, so thank you, Ken. Appreciate everything you and your team has done over the last six and a half years and we're going into an interesting time and I think your experience at CDP and your experience in DEO and with all of these different opportunities is going to be needed more than ever to help us all figure out how to navigate these weird financial components and continue to bring high value to our patients and to our doctors. So anyway, just wanted to do a big thank you and if you guys have any questions, feel free to reach out to me directly or to Ken directly. You guys can chat with us. Nothing's off the table to ask and we continue to be, you know, a transparent group. So anyway, thank you all so much as always. If you want to continue the conversation, come over to DSO Secrets on Facebook and until next time, keep smiling.

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