251: Hard Truths Every Dentist Owner Must Learn

A lot of us feel like we have no idea what we're doing. We're shooting from the hip sometimes, but I think that if you have a vision and you just stay locked into that and are always shaking hands with new people and getting advice from others such as yourself, such as others from deo, and just do your best, you'll be surprised what you can accomplish as long as you stick to it and keep betting on yourself.

Hi, I'm Emmett Scott, and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show, we talk to dental industry, solve problems, and get you the answers you need to face these challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started.

All right, Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the DEO Thriving Leaders podcast. I'm Jordan McIntyre and I am so excited to have you guys here tonight. One thing that I know about most of you that are either listening to this episode or joining the call live with us tonight, you're either running practices, you're managing teams, and you're trying to scale and trying to do everything at once. So some days you feel like you're crushing it, other days you feel like you're just surviving, barely getting your head above the water. So just wanted to start that off. That is the reality of leadership. Welcome. But there's one difference between everyone that's joining this call and those of you that are listening today is that you understand that the only way to grow is to know. Lucky for you, tonight we actually have an amazing guest that we get to learn from. Someone that's made mistakes, someone that has successfully scaled. So I want to introduce to you tonight we have our guest, Dr. Tyler Toolbear. His story is pretty intriguing, so I'm going to allow him the opportunity to introduce himself, but really quickly. He is a dentist, so he did graduate. He has been practicing. Tyler started the Pursuit of Ownership podcast. He's been coaching dental students, professionals in his practice ownership career. He's launched multiple practices. As a clinical director, he has overseen 35 plus offices. He is responsible for the hiring, the training, the auditing performance, mentoring doctors across the entire organization. So when I say we have a gold gym, we've got the gold. So welcome. During that time, he also founded, you see his lovely sign behind him, the Fix podcast. So he's an expert at this. It is the first podcast I Believe that's really dedicated entirely to full arch dentistry. So it's nice. If you guys are not a follower, please subscribe. Listen to that. But, yeah, welcome, Doctor. I would love for you to kind of kick us off, give us a short introduction and what you're hoping that they get out of tonight's episode.

Yeah, that's quite an intro to follow. I appreciate it, Jordan. You know, it's funny, when I look at my own resume and kind of look at what I've done in the past and what I'm doing currently, I can kind of understand where people come from and being so impressed by it. I get it. But at the same time, I think that I, I. My experience of it is very much like everyone else's and whatever that they're doing. A lot of us feel like we have no idea what we're doing. We're shooting from the hip sometimes, but I think that if you have a vision and you just stay, you know, really locked into that and, you know, are always shaking hands with new people and getting advice from others, such as yourself, such as others from deo, and just do your best, you'll be surprised what you can accomplish as long as you, you know, stick to it and keep. Bet yourself. But. But, yeah, just kind of a brief intro. So I'm originally from Macon, Georgia. That's where I was born and raised. I went to dental school in Augusta, Georgia, the Dental College of Georgia. I graduated in 2021. So I was a Covid grad, which meant that I essentially didn't do any dentistry for pretty much the last year of my education. But it was actually pretty cool because that gave me an opportunity to do a lot of, you know, outside education as well. So throughout all of dental school, I had this intention that I wanted to own an office right out of school. And so that was, like, really my, my big thing. And from the time that I joined in, and I know I'm jumping around a little bit, but when I was getting into dental school, I knew that dentistry was great in its opportunity to, you know, make a good income but also be able to run your own business and make your own choices about what you want your lifestyle to be like. And I like the sound of that. And so I had gone through the whole podcasting world of dentistry that I kind of discovered whenever I was wasting time at the job that I had at that time while I was taking a gap year. And I found some podcasts that really inspired me, and I was reaching out to a lot of them and Ended up getting essentially what was an internship for a podcast. And so throughout all of dental school, I was in the dental podcasting space. I was helping with evaluating practices. I was coaching dental students and dentists alike on how to get to practice ownership. So I learned sort of that whole process as it went. And my idea was that in the time leading up to graduating, I was going to find a older, soon retired doc, inspire them to sell to a young, you know, bright eyed and bushy tailed dental student and by a practice right out of school and did everything I could to prepare for that. And then things just changed. There were a lot of things that sort of changed my mind about what kind of dentist I wanted to be. I got really fortunate to get a implant scholarship, so to speak, to go through Implant Pathway, which if you're not familiar, is a training facility out in Tempe, Arizona where they teach implants pretty much 0 to 1, all the way from single implants, doing full arch and beyond. And I was able to do that like my D2 year. And it just really trained, transformed my interest. I'd always kind of seen myself more as a business owner than a clinician, but that kind of changed my mind and showed me the kind of impact that I could have on patients. I said, okay, well maybe I'm kind of getting into the surgery thing, maybe that that's what I really want to focus on. And so by the time I had actually graduated, my focus was a lot more on full arch and doing implants. And the company I was working with at the time actually wanted to start some denture and implant offices. So they had started one, their first office was out in Phoenix, Arizona. So that was actually my first associateship right out of school. I went and did that instead and sort of cut my teeth on that. I mean, I. It was a lot getting into full arch implantology with as little actual surgery experiences I had. But throughout that time in Covid, I was able to take a whole bunch of CES and learn as much as I could about clinical dentistry. And so I spent just about a year really practicing that and just focusing on clinical skills and got up to the point where I knew it well enough to, you know, start to teach people how to do it as well and rose up the ranks in that company to clinical director. And I was responsible for recruiting and hiring and also involved in the practice startup aspect of things as well. And so in a very short time, that group had grown to about 35 offices and I was responsible for about half of them. I Had another clinical director that was more responsible for different regions than mine. And we would fly around the country helping out people with their surgeries, fixing problems, helping people that were newer to the game. And after a while, we felt that we were in a group that had some symptoms of really aggressive horizontal expansion without really investing in same side growth and development of their clinicians. And we saw some things falling through the cracks that we just weren't happy to be representing. And so we decided earlier last year that, you know, we had a lot of ideas of things that we wanted to do differently and if we wanted to get them done and we wanted a seat at the cap table, that we had to build something ourselves. And so we decided to bet on ourselves. And I got together with a couple partners. Dr. Caleb Stott, who started the original Smile now office on his own in Boise, Idaho, and Dr. Soren Poppy, who was my cohort at our last company. And we all, yeah, we all broke off and we started to franchise this whole Smile now model. So Soren started another office in Denver. Caleb, of course, already had his in Boise. And another office was identified in the Tri Cities, Washington area that was available. And there were no other, you know, full arch gigs out there. And it looked like there was a decent market for it. And so that's really where it all started. And then over the course of, you know, the past year, we've expanded to nine locations. We've got some really fantastic partner doctors in all those locations that seem to be happy and they're producing more than they ever have in their whole lives, and they've got some practice ownership to boot. And we're really proud of what we build. It's kind of amazing to look back on, you know, the past shoot. I guess it's coming up on maybe 18 months or so of growth, and I think it looks like a bottle rocket that just, you know, took off and it was just like this really reckless thing. But, you know, we have been measured and we've, we've been principled throughout all of it. And we've always doubled down on clinical excellence and making sure we had competent people in the right places. And I think when you, when you have the right people in the right jobs, not only at the clinic level, but at the operational and organizational level, you'll be pretty amazed to watch your, your garden just kind of grow as you go. And at no point have we ever felt like we completely had control of everything that was going on, you know? Right. I mean, when, when you start building a bigger company, and there's a lot of money coming in and out. I mean, it can sometimes feel like chaos, but at the end of the day, we built something that's high revenue, very profitable and I think is, you know, a pretty decent product here. So we're really happy what we built. We've stayed principled and kept our values the whole time, and I'm really proud to be doing that. And, you know, we're all still practicing four days a week, just being dentists ourselves. So we're kind of reaching a bit of a critical mass point where now we need to build a little bit more infrastructure to continue to scale. So it's an interesting time for a company, but. But yeah, I think I've been droning on long enough, so.

Well, honestly, Doc, I will say, like, where you're at, a lot of the members that are on the call tonight, a lot of those of you that are listening to this episode afterwards, that's really where they're at. So you're, you got to this place where you're like, okay, hey, if I could give one piece of advice, right? Ev obviously learned you've supported several offices. Now you guys are up to the nine locations. If there was one lesson, let's just say you had to pick one lesson that you had to learn the hard way that you other dental entrepreneurs to maybe learn now versus as they scale so they can avoid this lesson, what would that lesson be?

You have to pick your tribe really carefully. I think that a lot of the changes that have happened for all of us in the past 18 months or so have really revolved around the people that we were working with and people that we were trusting. I think it's important that the people that you build something with have skin in the game along with you and that there is something, you all have a similar understanding that you're building something that's bigger than any of you. And so it kind of eliminates that sort of partisan, you know, scarcity that sometimes comes out of partnerships, I think can, you know, really tear them apart. I think partnerships can be very dangerous. I mean, we have a three way partnership. It's very easy to have a two out of three majority and leave one person feeling stranded. And that's always a tenuous balance. But if you're really careful about the people you choose and you know, you can trust them and they have similar values to you and they see this as a bigger thing than themselves and they, and they can be a part of that. It's a really beautiful thing. And you really see some synergy evolve out of that. But when I look at people that I've worked with in the past, you know, some of those people were, you know, people I'd really looked up to in terms of their financial and business acumen. At least I thought so. And they seem to be trustworthy and many of them I consider very close friends. But ultimately, had I not bet on myself and kind of see the writing on the wall and surrounded myself with a different group of people, I'd still be in that same place. And, and when I look back at that, I think that would be kind of tragic compared to how things are now. And so it really, it really is. The people that you keep around you and the people that, you know, you trust with this thing that you're wanting to build, it makes all the difference.

So when you say the people around you, I'm going to double click on this a little bit because I end there maybe in a chat if you're like, hey, like, I'm looking to scale, I'm looking to partner. Partnership is a lot of the conversations I have on a lot of coaching calls that I support what makes a good partner. Right. How do you know? Because you, you're very ambitious and you're ready to like, like you were saying, it could be a two way, could be a three way. But if you had to put your finger on, you mentioned earlier, like a horizontal vertical. So hearing this is like, hey, we need to like go deep before we go wide, so we need to like, get in it before we try to expand, is what I heard. How do you identify that potential? Like, like partner. What, what would they be looking for in their ideal partner?

Yeah, I mean, it has to be naturally, has to be someone that you feel you can trust. It has to be someone that has values that are aligned with yours and someone that exhibits qualities of being able to be a part of something that's bigger than themselves. You know, how you want to really parse that out? I mean, it's, it's not an easy thing to do. Fortunately, with these particular people, I'd known them for several years and worked closely with them and we kind of been through similar troubles and there were, there were a lot of things that happen along the way where I learned that I could trust them more so than others. And so it's kind of this like blood bond that you make. I mean, it's really, it's more impactful. I also got married in the past year and I can honestly say that I took a Bigger risk in a business partnership than I did in a marriage. Right. Even though they say, like, who you marry is like the most important decision you ever make, it probably is true, like holistically. But in terms of business solely, who you partner with is a much higher stake decision. So you have to be extremely careful with that. You have to see people that aren't always choosing themselves over others, people that are willing to self sacrifice for, for a greater good, people that are willing to treat your back as if it's their own. I think that's really what it comes down to. And I know that's a bit immaterial. It's not something that you can just read off of a resume and figure out, oh, this will be a good partner. But, you know, if you're just reading off a resume, that's probably not a good partner. You need to really know who this person is because you're going to be strapped along with them for the whole ride. And, you know, friendships and businesses fall apart. You know, with partnerships, it's a very dangerous thing to go about. But it can also be beautiful when you have the right people.

Yeah, the right people. I want to kind of ask that outside of partnership, right. Because of course there's the partners that are driving the company and the scale and doing all this vision with you, but you have operators, you have team members, you have other things happening. What do you guys do when there's like chaos happening? How do you guys come together and solve that?

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, oftentimes it starts with a one on one because typically, you know, people feel a little bit more comfortable being vulnerable in a one on one conversation. And then once we kind of glean some details from that, we'll usually open it up and the three of us will have a conference with a particular person or however many people are having some type of chaos or dispute. But what I find is, you know, whenever problems come up, you know, you have to be willing to tackle them head on and do so personally. I think, you know, maybe that's not true when you scale to a much larger business. But for us, you know, we're still very much in the trenches, you know, working very closely with our regional managers who are responsible for these offices. And you know, we meet with them, meet with them weekly, we talk with them daily, and we're always discussing ways to better take care of their offices and sort out disputes that happen along the way. And we're always showing that support there. But yeah, I mean, I would say that's, that takes up a lot of the work, right? It just. In supporting the people that, you know, you're trusting with your business. But at the same time, you know, it's a balance, too, because while you do want to take care of these things personally, you have to look at the kind of problems that are, that are arising. You know, one, one, A book that my dad gave me right when I was starting this business was called A Message to Garcia. And I won't bore anyone with, like, the. All the gritty details of it, but basically it's. It's set during the Spanish American War, and I don't know how true this actually is, but there President McKinley make us believe it. So, you know, basically President McKinley is trying to, you know, get a letter down to a General Garcia, who's, Who's down there, and he entrusts a person with taking the letter down there, and instead of giving him a laundry list of, you know, how to get it over there, he just says, I need you to take this to Garcia. And so the, the book kind of describes all the things that Lieutenant Rowan is the name does to get this letter to Garcia. But, you know, what actually ends up coming back to McKinley is, okay, I delivered the letter, right? So there's just so many things that were taken on, but the person that entrusted with that task managed to take care of it and, and, and execute on what they were told to do without then reflecting back onto the person that told them what to do. All these things that came up and all these, hey, how do I do this? How do I do that? Which actually just creates work, right? So it's like when I, when I ask someone to do something, does that now create work for me to tell them exactly how to do it? Or does this person take the direction and then figure out how to do it and take on leadership with that task? And I think that when you kind of use that as a sieve, you can tell the kind of people that are going to be competent leaders in their positions, like, and in every person that has a leadership position. That's what we're looking for. We're not looking for people that, you know, need a long laundry list of directions. And, you know, we want to see people that can, you know, try to mitigate situations on their own if they get to a point where they're completely stuck and it's now going to prevent them from getting something done, sure, you know, bring it back. But the kind of things that people come back to you with and how much. They've actually worked to solve the problem on their own. Tell you a lot about how much leadership that they're willing to take on.

I think so, yeah. And I like how you're going on the people segment. So I know one thing kind of you and I jammed out on and I kind of read about you is you had an aha moment where it's like, hey, you know, Jordan, I, I figured out that it wasn't necessarily always the how. Right. You can have the SOPs, you can have the how to put everything in place. But what I'm hearing is you're actually saying like, the real bottleneck is the who, like who is it that you have in charge of these things. So, so tell me about that unlock moment. When was that in your career? How did that happen?

Well, I think, you know, it, it happens in, in a microcosm. Right. It happens in an office. Right. So when I first started the Tri Cities office, which was the first office that, you know, I guess technically the third office in Smile now, you know, I, I went through a series of office managers. I think I had five before we landed on one that was actually pretty stable. And this was all in like a very short period of time, which maybe that says something about how I am to work with. I don'.

But wouldn't be self reflecting here.

Yeah, yeah, but I, I found myself so often, you know, always seeking the good in people and wanting the best for them and wanting them to flourish in a position. And there were so many times where I realized that I should have realized that the person that I had in that seat just wasn't the right person. And I would get frustrated with them, I would micromanage, I would get emotional with myself saying, like, why is this person not doing what I need them to do? Why are they not getting this? And I would get so frustrated about it. Trying to, you know, turn someone into something that they weren't right, Even though, even if they really wanted to be that, you know, if the results weren't there, if the performance wasn't really there, I could have been more objective. I could have said, you know what? I don't think this was the right call. Maybe you can be better using this position or maybe you'd be better off somewhere else. And if I'd done that a lot sooner, I would have wasted a lot less resources. Right. And so that scales, you know, as you grow the business and you grow out of just the office and you're looking the organization as a whole, it should inform that you know, the right person when they're in that spot that all of a sudden a lot of things get easy really quickly. Like when I finally did get a competent office manager that knew how to take on incoming leads as they came in, they knew how to engage them, they knew how to get people in the door, they knew how to form rapport and really engage these people and become a part of their story and provide solutions for them and not just problems of how are we going to pay for this type of thing. When I saw them really perform and extract the potential that was in that office, we went from doing somewhere between 120 to 150,000amonth to I think 509K. And that happened in a span of two months of taking this new person on. And I realized that, you know, I didn't really change a whole lot. I mean, some of the expectations and things changed. Some of the structure that I provided, you know, that had been built while I was trying to get people that weren't really fit for that position to do their job. That helped for sure, that helped expedite that process. But ultimately it was the person that was in that position that made all the difference. It wasn't really any additional work that I had to do to, to, to, to turn a person that was maybe a four out of ten for a position into a seven out of ten. If I started with eight out of ten, I could easily get them to a nine, nine and a half. Right? You just, you can't, you, you can only build so much greatness. Like you have to have the right ingredients in the first place. You know, it's like making a pizza. Like if you got really frankly shitty ingredients, like you're not going to have a great pizza. That, that's just, that's just the end of the world. I mean, end of story. So yeah, just, just focusing on, on the who's and making sure you have the right people and learning how to identify those people for that given role is more important than, you know, over systematizing and having a super stepwise function of how someone should do their job. People can frankly even be kind of sloppy at their job, but they can still be really effective if they have the right qualities. And so yeah, we focus a lot more on the who. We get to really know people inside and out and understand how they handle things. And there's just some more, there's a little bit more gut to it now I think. And just finding who is going to be emphatic about a position who's really getting after it and trying to learn as much as they can. Who is treating it like more than just a job and taking ownership over their position. That's really important.

So do you feel like you mentioned you went through like, five managers before this, like, aha moment kind of happened? So.

Yeah, I'm not very quick to learn. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm, I. But this is important because I think a lot of, like a lot of us as leaders, what I'm hearing is like, we, it's called force fit. Right? We're going to force you into this position. Yeah, we need you in this position. And so I'm, I'm hearing that a little bit. So if you have some force fit. So let's say you got the right. Maybe you're the right person, but wrong seat, and you're just forcing them into that role. How would you like suggest that we, we go about that conversation? How do we start that? What does that look like?

Well, I think it, it always comes down to just, you know, it comes down to crucial conversations. Right. Being able to sit down with a person one on one and, you know, ask them how they feel about how they're doing and where might they improve or where might they, you know, where certain aspects like here, here's you and then here's the job. And let's talk about how well suited you are for that position, what works for you, what doesn't. What are you struggling with the most? And, and I think that through that conversation and through asking sometimes challenging questions, but asking it in a empathetic and understanding way, a lot of times people can arrive at the correct conclusion themselves. A lot of times people can figure out, you know, let's say, you know, let's assume someone really isn't right for that position, they're not growing in it, that they've had enough time to get up to speed and they're just not there. Well, well, you know, if you have clear expectations for what is asked for in the position and they haven't been meeting those expectations, you know, it's. If you spend enough time with that person, you really talk them through what they've been struggling with and why they've been having those problems, and you explain and you show all the ways in which you try to support them, eventually they can find their way to the conclusion that maybe that's just not quite the right fit for them. And like you said, maybe there is another seat that makes sense. Maybe there is another. Other set of responsibilities that will work, but it's kind of like, hey, let's work together and let's solve this problem. Because I want you to feel empowered in your position. I want you to flourish in the position. I want you to like coming to work. I don't want you to dread this, and I want you to be full of anxiety and just know that you're not doing things wrong. Like, let's figure out what you can do right here. And if there's no position here that's going to work for that, well, let's not waste time, right? Like, let's. Let's find you. Like, you need to find something better for yourself, and that might not be with us, and that's okay. I think that we make it. We often get scared of how people will respond to that type of confrontation, but really, it's the most empathetic thing that you can do. One of the worst things that you can do when someone is struggling in a position that's not really well suited for them is to just let that happen and be mad about it internally and never really confront that and have that conversation with them. You know, and if you just kind of let that fester, what you're going to end up with is you're going to have someone send you a text Monday morning saying, hey, I'm not coming in. Right? And then. And then now you're in a compromising position.

They.

They've kind of have done something that's kind of unceremonious, and it's just not a good situation. It could have been stopped earlier if you just kind of tackle that sort of thing head on and had a crucial conversation a lot earlier about how someone was doing. But it all starts with, like, really clear expectations and, and checking in with people and seeing how those expectations are being met. And, you know, if, if, if the ends can't meet, then, then they can't meet, but set those expectations ahead of time and know that people are being evaluated as they go and know what's expected of them. And I, I don't think those conversations are as hard as we make them out to be in our head.

Head.

Yeah. So I'm here. So what about those of us, like, let's say I'm conflict. I don't like conflict. I just would rather just not have the conversation. I'm sure there's. There's some of us on this call that don't like conflict. How would you coach a leader through? I know you said, like, clear expectations, having the conversation, but what if I just don't like conflict. Like, how, how would you coach me through as a leader to break through that? That.

Well, I mean, I would say that that's probably been my biggest limitation as a leader is I'm very conflict avoidant. I, I generally avoid talking to people and I mean, I love people, but it, it can be a little bit draining sometimes, especially when there's something sort of tense to be discussed. Like, I can, I can find a million reasons not to have a discussion, right? I can, I can think of so many different excuses, but at the end of the day, I think you have to be able to compartmentalize yourself just a little bit from how the, the sort of fears and assumptions you make about how a conversation is going to go. And just remember, like, what is actually best for my business? What's best? Yeah, what's best for the business? What, what, what do. What does. Not me, but what does a leader need to do right now? What does a leader need to do to take control of the situation and then just describe that. And actually the scenario that you just created for me is exactly what I do for myself, right? It's like, okay, if I, if I'm going outside of myself and someone is asking me what they should do about this situation, I'm going to tell them exactly what they need to do. Now. Now telling myself to do that is really hard, but I can tell someone else to do it. And then when I. Then at the very end of that, I just say, you know what, everything I just said to that theoretical person, I now need to do myself, and I just need to do it right and just, just go. And when you really get used to that, that just go thing, like, if you can just identify what needs to be done and then there's the go. And if you can just make that a straight line, then you can do this effectively. And it's an exercise. You have to, you have to engage in this to make it easier to do. And over time, I find that the anxiety and the pain around that does subside and you actually get a little bit of reward from it. You know, when you go through something that you're scared of. Like, I'm also terrified of heights, but I've gone on skydiving, right? And I was, I was scared the whole time. It wasn't exactly a fun, right? But like, I lived in that afraid. I lived in that discomfort and I got through it and it was like one of the most euphoric feelings once I touched ground, because I'm like, wow, I just did that. Right. So you have to kind of take those leaps and work yourself through that discomfort on a regular basis to kind of dull that edge a little bit. But. But, yeah, I mean, I think, in short, that's probably the most powerful thing you can do is just externalize yourself and give yourself that advice or give someone else that advice, but it's really you, and then just do the thing, you know?

So I like that. So I think I'm going to pause here for a second. So I'd like to give. Those of you that are listening now, maybe you can chime in on the chat. Come off mute, Get a little vulnerable here, but just want to pause because I feel like what you're saying right now is important. So I want to make sure that the. That it's. That it's heard. So what I'm hearing is leadership isn't always about, hey, I'm going to make everyone happy. As a person would like to make everyone happy. A leader's goal is, okay, how can I get them to understand what's expected of them? Hold them accountable with clear expectations, because it's about what's best for the business. So I'm curious, those of you that are listening, if anyone feels like they can come off mute at. Maybe this is a good time to change it. Chime in. Are you going through this? You have some questions? Anyone listening want to kind of chime in or feel vulnerable enough to.

I can. So we just. We just got through a experience where one of our employees was, like, threatening to sue us for, like, harassment discrimination from one of our office managers. And it was like. It was just, like, not ideal, not great. And we didn't know about, like, EPLI Insurance, so we didn't have it at the time. And so we had to pay for, like, all the attorney fees and, like, legal fees, like, out of pocket. And that sucked. Like, we, like, settled and with him, like, outside of whatever. And it was brutal anyways, that. So that just, like, kind of came out of me and Ian's pocket.

It.

And I think for us, it got to the point where by getting burned, we just realized, like, hey, because we. We with this particular employee, like, we were very, very kind, really generous, spent tons of time with them. And I think it got. It was an eye opener for me that it's just like, hey, we. We have to. If we ever have to prioritize anything, it needs to be like, we prioritize our business over anything else. It's like, if you have a conversation with me and, like, that puts Our business in jeopardy. Like, unfortunately, I have to do what's best for the business. I can't put you first. I can't, even if we're friends or I like you or whatever. So I think it made us a little bit more selfish or I think, protective of the business. And I think it got us to a point where we are now, I guess, like, a little bit more willing because I'm super nice and I don't like to have hard conversations. I think a lot of us would probably say, oh, I don't love Alex having those difficult conversations. The other thing was, we implemented this thing. It's called the Star Method. Alex Hormozi talks about it. He has a podcast that talks about it, and he tries to make it a way where you make sure you're really, really clear about expectations and you go over everything that you, as a leader, might fail on of. Did I explain the what, Did I explain the how when the, you know, all those types of things, like, go over that. And then if somebody's not doing something that you need them to do, it's like going through that of, like, kind of assuming that you were the issue as the leader first with the person. Like, hey, did I, you know, was it unclear on this? Was it unclear on this? Was it unclear on this? And then it's like, if, if you did do all those things and it's okay now, I can kind of point it back to you, but it just seems less like, hey, you, you're not doing your job, whatever. It's like, let me ask to see, like, these were the expectations, but maybe I did, I didn't do a good job as a leader. So you kind of start with that. So I think it makes it less difficult to have, like, that difficult conversation, I guess. But that was just one thing that's been helpful for our practices.

Yeah, that's, that's great. Are you Ian or Max?

Sorry, I'm Max.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry about that.

Yeah. Hi, Max. No, I really appreciate that input. So I, I, I looked this up because I think I saw, like, a little tidbit from Alex Horosi, and he described this, but I didn't remember the actual acronym. So it's Setting clear expectations is the S. Training for skill, assessing for knowledge and readiness, removing blockers, and then most importantly, following up on problems. And I, and I love that because it's just, it's a, it's a process framework, you know, that everyone can just participate in. And it's not just like this sort of flying by the seat of our pants, like, having the occasional uncomfortable conversation. And so I love that you shared that, and I think that's really valuable. And the first part I really like, too, because you talk about just doing what's best for the business, and I think that, you know, kind of going back to the concept of partnership as well is like a really tough partnership is where it's like you and another person or. Or more people. All of you own a business, right? It's like all of us now share this thing, and it's kind of this independent thing. But if you sort of change that relationship and say, well, the business is up here, actually, and we all work for the business in equal parts, it's a totally different relationship. And it helps you be a little bit more objective, you know, think that you work for the business, right. And that just kind of changes that relationship a little bit. And it kind of almost puts us in a little bit of an employee mindset where we can be like, okay, this is what I've been told to do. Now I can do this. This is my job. This is my role. And I think just externalizing our feelings just a little bit and just thinking purely about what the business actually needs in that moment can really provide that sort of clarity. And then it's just like doing the thing. And it sucks for the time that you have to do it, but it's going to be so good when it gets fixed. It is so painful to let a problem, especially a people problem, just exist and persist and grow and just get more bitter and acrimonious. And it puts you into this, you know, a potentially litigious situation over time. Like, the longer we nurse it along, and it's painful, man. I. I mean, I. I totally identify with. With a lot that you just said. I think we're kind of similar people in that regard.

Wow.

For sure.

Yeah. And I think one thing I'll add on you guys, those of you listening to this call, just from a perspective, what I'm hearing from Tyler, what I'm hearing from is remember that the person you're speaking with is one person, right? So when you're having this difficult conversation with this one person, it's one person you're having this difficult conversation with. But remember, as a leader and as a business owner and as a partner, think about the families that you. You need to stay in business for. You need to have your safe because you're feeding their families, you're providing an income for them. So I just think this. This Conversation is so powerful. That's why I wanted to pause us, see if there's anyone vulnerable enough to come off and talk with Tyler about it and jam out, because it's awesome that we have have him on. So let's see. Corrective coaching is like a muscle. The more you do it, the stronger you are. Amen. Yes, absolutely. So love that. Okay, so I am curious. We're going to kind of shift gears just a little bit here. So any last kind of questions on this leadership topic before we kind of shift gears? Anyone? Anyone want to pick Tyler's brain before we shift a little bit? Okay, cool. So here's where I do want to kind of chime in. So let's talk about picking the right people. So we've talked about how when we have the people in the seat and they're maybe not performing, Tyler, how do we pick the right people?

Oh, and sorry, Jordan, can I ask a quick. A quick question before we go? It was just about what's like your org chart in terms of like your. Not orchard your business, but the owners. Like, how have you guys. Have you, like, divided roles or are you guys all clinicians? Do you guys. Is it a clinician you. And then you've got like a CMO and as what like that are. Is marketing heavy? Not. I'm just kind of curious, like, how you guys have created that, like, dream team for you guys.

Yeah. So yes to everything. We're. We're all clinicians still working four days a week.

We.

Which I think early on was absolutely a virtue in our model because we. We really understood, you know, the Dr. Perspective of it, and we've been very, you know, Dr. First and. And getting these started. But as far as our roles, sort of in the C suite, we really divided up as Dr. Papi is CMO, so he oversees a lot of our marketing strategies. He manages spend across all the offices. He looks at new marketing avenues, arranges for our tv, our social media, all those kinds of things. We all have our hands in different baskets, but that's sort of like his. His primary, you know, tier. Dr. Stott has been our CFO, slash CGO, perhaps you could call it where he's got his hands more in the finances of things. He's managing the bank accounts, intra company transfers, things like that, making sure the books are good, working with our accountants and wealth management as well. And then I've taken on the role of essentially coo. So it's mostly operational, trying to, you know, go through all of our practices, making sure that all of our, you know, SOPs are being followed and things like that. And a lot of that's really been distilled through our regional managers. They're really the more closer touch point with the actual practices themselves. Whereas I'm not talking directly to office managers in most cases, but we are establishing all the operational systems and things and making sure that those are being executed and obviously iterating them, Iterating on them over the time. I would say that, you know, we've called me the CEO. I'm not entirely sure I identify with the term. I think it is kind of a tripartite role right now where the three of us work in conjunction to make, you know, executive decisions about the direction of the company and the vision. But, but yeah, you know, I think it can be a little bit awkward in a partnership sort of divvying up those roles at times because it's hard for, to just take their own swim lanes at times because we're all kind of similar in our skill sets, I think. Right. Like, we're all dentists first. Like, we're not, you know, non clinical, you know, corporate people. Now that we're starting to, you know, grow and expand a lot more, we're, we're actually taking that on. Like right now we're, we're in the process of hiring a, a full time COO to really take on my job in a more official capacity and allow me to kind of focus a little bit more on my clinical capacity and supporting the doctors themselves, themselves, spending a little more time in their offices, helping out with surgery and things like that. So I hope that answers your questions, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that's a good question. Cause that's kind of leading us right where like, hey, it's important to pick the right people that's going to be on this journey with you. So it's, it's pretty crucial in that. So I am curious, like Tyler, is there, is there a piece of advice or maybe something that you've used when you're, when you're assessing the talent you mentioned, like, hey, I'm in the operation seat right now, kind of working in that role. You're looking for a coo? How are you assessing the talent? How are you, what are you looking for?

Yeah, that's actually been a, that's been a really cool process and it's one that I have to give a lot of credit to Michael Irving on. He's been coaching us through this process and I, I, you know, I don't know how we would have approached it without him. So we managed to locate a, a headhunting service that sort of procures, you know, high level people that match, you know, what it is that you're looking for. Um, and you know, they're people with prior experiences and things like that. So we, you know, that helped us get, you know, high quality candidates for what we were looking for. And then we had, we would obviously review the resume, see who kind of lined up. We'd have an initial interview where we just sort of just a quick get to know you, what is your vibe? Basically just trying to assess that. And then we created homework. So we had a project where we have everyone that we're Interested in sign NDAs and then we put together all of our financials, you know, our balance sheet, our cash flow statement or profit and loss statements trailing 12 months and gave it to them and said, hey, what are you going to do with this? Right? And they then returned to us projects that said, you know, this is the, this is my analysis of where you stand, this is my understanding of where you're wanting to go and this is how I'm going to help you get there. Right? And so the people that we really liked were the ones that had less chat GPT heavy responses to that and had a lot more, you know, organic input in it and had really insightful things that we had not seen. And people that got really granular as well and were like really, really focused and attention to detail. Detail. They packaged up everything very nicely. There was clearly a lot of intent in making things look very pretty and presentable and sensible. And then we, you know, talk with them to discuss what their findings were and ask some questions about that. And then that really helped us narrow it down to just a handful. And that's kind of where we're at right now. Our next step is now going to be an in person. So we're going to fly them out, we're going to have dinner with them and just really figure out if this is someone that we can see ourselves working with long term. So I think it really all starts with totally understanding what it is that you need first instead of just kind of expecting someone to fill a spot that, you know, isn't really well defined. So that, that, that's really where it has to start is like, what is it that your business needs? What is this? What does this position actually look like? What are they going to be responsible for? And then, you know, you, you filter your candidates, you create a project out of it. You, you see what they can make of it. And you know, above all, it has to be someone that, you know, you can see yourself working with.

I love that. Kind of would be for every role. Then I know we have a question chiming in about associate. So yeah, I'm hearing kind of that you've created an avatar, you know, what the business needs, you know, or you create an avatar of a person that you're looking for. But what about associates? Associates are a little unique. How did you guys identify how many associates are you working with? What does that look like?

Yeah, right now. So when we, when we start an office, and I appreciate that question by the way. So when we start an office, we always start to start it just with one doctor. Right. So part of our model is that, you know, we've really broken up. You know, historically with full art treatment, this really isn't a mode anymore. But you know, people would get referred to an oral surgeon to do surgery. They go back to their dentist to restore the teeth. Sometimes there were more people involved. There were a whole bunch of steps and things grossly inflated the cost and treatment times and people quickly got tired of that. But that's, that's very much gone by the wayside. But what did become more prevalent, you know, with ClearChoice and Nuvia is like a dual provider model or more right. Where you have prosthodonts and surgeons and now there's still different people, but they're all under one roof. But in our case, you know, through the advent of digital dentistry and some, some creative workflows, we've made it such that, that, you know, a really competent surgeon that, you know, understands the restorative aspect of it and can think in reverse and knows what, where the case needs to go and then, you know, gets back to the point of the surgery and can do that competently. That's really the best way for us to do this. We need one person that's going to be responsible for that and then we have a really competent team that's, that's working under them. And so really what we look for, you know, in our years of doing recruiting and training, we got a really good sense of what kind of skills were necessary to be able to do what we do. It's a pretty hyper specific, you know, skill set. We're not just looking for general dentists. But you know, we have to know that people can execute surgery well. We have to know that they have a certain stomach lining for taking on, you know, sometimes I don't want to Say risky cases, but a little more high stakes, right. Like you're taking on all of someone's mouth. It's a multi hour surgery. If people tend to get really nervous or they're particularly concerned or maybe they stay up at night thinking about cases, this may not be the most stable person to have in that position. You know, you want someone that's going to be long term and bought in for a while. And so, you know, we evaluate their cases, we have them send us casework, we ask them, you know, I kind of had this like survey that I send out and it returns a, it fills out a Google Doc where I can, or Google Sheets where I can go through and see all the responses to what their experience look like, what they see for themselves in a leadership position, their sort of, you know, personal philosophy about leadership in an office, things like that. You want to see a degree of leadership for sure. You want people that are not just going to try to show up for work, clock in, clock out type of thing. You want them to take a sense of ownership. But we also wanted people that really wanted to focus on the clinical aspects of it. Cause we wanted people that were really focused on clinical excellence and didn't so much want to deal with all the administrative and you know, personnel challenges that come along with running an office. Because that's really the crux of it, right? Like you can be a fantastic full art surgeon, but just be absolutely dog at running an office and we can solve that part of it for you and allow you to like really, really focus in on just doing the best possible treatment you can. And if that's something you value and you want a little bit of skin in the game, you potentially want some equity in an office, then we can provide that for you. And that has a plan, lot of, you know, really big upside. Right. And being a part of a organization that has scale that you know, can negotiate lower prices and get a better bottom line for you. And you can also participate in, in a private equity event, should that happen. That can be a pretty attractive thing for certain associates, but it's not right for everybody.

Yeah, love it. So the, what you're doing is so the one doctor coming in and you mentioned like it, it's kind of shifting or the, the industry is changing a little bit. I heard that, that pretty quickly. Can you elaborate a little bit? What do you feel is kind of like what about this full arch landscape is changing? What's evolving, what's happening?

Yeah, I mean what we're really seeing is an explosion in the full arch capable general dentist, it's not an oral surgeon, it's not a prosthodontist, it's a general dentist that is hyper focused on implants and just does the surgery and restores the teeth as well. So they're taking care of everything from start to finish. And digital dentistry has made this, has really lowered that barrier to entry. It's made things a lot. You know, when I first started this, whenever we would start an office, I mean you had to, for one, you had to have a much larger footprint, right? Because you needed an in house lab. You actually needed a lab technician which you know, could be a 80 to $120,000 a year employee that was highly trained and focused on, you know, the sort of analog workflow aspect of that. So that's sort of like your in house lab nowadays. I mean you can fit a lab in a broom closet. I mean it's pretty amazing what you can do. And when you outsource the digital design, things like that, and you've got really competent designers on one end of it taking care of a lot of the process aspects of it and you just have to be really hyper focused on taking accurate records. It makes it a lot simpler for people that are surgically focused to also be restoratively competent as well. And so we try to make that as simple as possible and bridge that gap. And so I guess to address your question more directly, what's happened is full arch has been democratized and I think that that is potentially a dangerous thing because it is becoming fairly easy to market yourself as someone who is confident in doing full architecture charge without fully appreciating all the different things that go into it and all the risks associated with especially long term. And so that's something where we've had to get, you know, really, really particular about the people that we trust to treat patients in our offices. And you know, we, we've had Mrs. Like anybody could. But I think we've, we've been a lot better at, you know, picking the right person from the very beginning and having them strapped in with us, you know, long term. And, and we've got some people that I think are going to be with us for a long time. And, and, and that's something we're really proud of. And, and we don't take that decision lightly.

Wow.

Okay. You seem pretty tech savvy. See I gotta ask, how are you integrating with like AI technology? Where do you see this space for you in the next three to five years?

You know, I I think that right now, in terms of our implementation of AI, I mean, we've messed around with some of the AI receptionists and really kind of tuned those. You know, one of the hardest things, things for us is this is a very, it's, it's extremely important that the person that is responsible for closing cases in your office is taking in new patient calls and whenever new leads come in, that they get to those leads as soon as possible. And so those people need to be very designated towards those things and all those calls need to be routed directly to them. And anything else, as far as an existing patient or someone having problems or things like that, we need to make sure those people are attended to, of course, with just as much urgency, but we need them routed elsewhere. And so, and so that can be a person which in most of our offices there is another person that's handling the phones for those types of calls, but you know, for after hours and when someone calls at some odd hour of the night or on the weekends or something like that, what has helped us to some degree is an AI receptionist that can filter some of that. And it has gotten better. I think when we first started, it was, it was really frustrating and people were getting frustrated with it and they were complaining about it. More recently, I've been monitoring those calls and it's actually gotten a lot smarter. So I, I can see some progress there, but I think it's a lot more interesting to talk about what that looks like in the next five years. Like, yes, actually, I. Right before we got on this call, I was doom scrolling on my phone and I saw a video and I remember seeing this video two years ago, and it's an AI generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti and two years ago. And it's like showing how this has progressed over time. So they've been, you know, repromping this over time with more and more complex, you know, LLMs and things. And you know, two years ago this thing had like 10 fingers. It was constantly shifting like no one could ever be fooled that this was a video. And it was hilarious. We're like, oh, you know what? We're safe. The AI revolution, it's 20 years away, we're fine. And then they show a year ago, and all of a sudden this thing is starting to look like something that would fool someone that wasn't more Internet savvy. And you're like, huh, you know what? For a second there, I thought that was, I thought that was Will Smith. And then now, you know, you fast forward to you Know what we're seeing right now and it's the same video, Will Smith eating spaghetti. And I mean it's like this could have been a scene in Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I mean it's like it's just on your TV. This is, this is Will Smith from the 90s. He's just eating spaghetti. Even some of like the, the idiosyncratic like facial expressions and things like that, they're just so spot on, right? And so AI is like so vastly expanding and it's becoming so much more human and indistinguishable that its integration into every single industry that we know of and, and ones that we, that maybe don't even exist yet is going to be so universal. And so I think as far as dentistry is concerned, you know, we'll see, you know, a lot more, you know, intake of leads happening with AI and that being directed really well. There may even be pre qualification that happens in terms of finances and things like that. You can have higher, better pre qualified leads that have already had financ and line it up before they've ever talked to a real person. On the, you know, actual clinical side of things. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. I think we're really not that far from a patient coming into the office, taking cbct, having some pictures or facial scans taken and then the AI literally plans their entire case right in front of you, has different scenarios for where implants can go. It can help you along with what that plan is going to look like and give you a best probability of success for that. You're going to be able to do your surgery and then take your, your records, pump it through the AI and almost instantaneously it's going to have a perfect design that's run through finite element analysis and it's figured out the absolute, physically most perfect design for those teeth in, in just a matter of minutes. And then it goes right to the print. So that cuts out a whole lot of fat. So yeah, I think the whole design fabrication side of things is going to be completely revolutionized by AI, but also the people element as well. And so it's, I think it's only going to make things better.

Better.

It's only going to, you know, help with the cost effectiveness of things. It's going to make us more effective as clinicians. And I'm excited about it. I think that, you know, the more on top of it you are and the more ready you are to implement as soon as things are viable, the better off you're going to be, you can't, you can't ignore this kind of thing. So. And also documentation as well is extremely important. There's a lot of AI bots that are helping out with chart notes and things and making sure those are really complete and exhaustive, and that's extremely important in this industry. You have to protect yourself in all of your cases. You have to document extraordinarily well to make sure that you're protected in the case that there's a, a board complaint or an upset patient, what have you. Because especially if you're a general dentist trying to do this. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it. A lot of people haven't quite come around that, you know, we can do this competently. We can, but not everyone knows that yet. So documentation is extremely important. AI helps with that too. There's, it's easier to enumerate the things. It's actually harder. Sorry. It's harder to enumerate the things that AI won't affect in the next three or four. It really is.

I mean, the only thing I would say, maybe I'm wrong is dentist. You have job security. AI.

I don't know. Job.

So I wouldn't be so sure.

Debatable. I don't know.

I really wouldn't be so sure. We're seeing, you know, the robotics are coming a long way. I don't know. I think, honestly, I think the, the, the bottleneck there, like the actual limiting reagent, is not the AI, it's people accepting it. It's people accepting being treated by a robot, being treated by an AI, not being treated by a person, not being able to have a conversation. But if the results are there and people are having a lot of success and the data is there, and, you know, I, I think with future generations, people are going to be a lot quicker to adopt that kind of thing, especially when they're getting raised nanny, you know, like, it's not. People are gonna have an issue with that. So, you know, I'm really grateful I'm not trying to be a dentist 20 years from now, because I think it'd be a lot harder. I'm grateful I'm right here in this window when AI is still sort of in its infancy.

So we're training it to do this.

Yeah. As we're training it to replace us. That's, that's, that's literally what's happening. There's no question about it.

Well, I'm excited. I mean, honestly, guys, this has been like, you've had so, so many aha moments throughout this call. So I really, really appreciate you taking this time with us tonight. Night. So I want to kind of pause, open it up if anyone wants to drop in a question at the chat. Come off mute if you want to ask any questions while we have Tyler on the call this evening. Any, any last minute kind of questions or things you guys want to tie up on. Give everyone a second and then let's see here. What AI company are you currently using?

So we use Mango as our VoIP, and they've recently started with an AI, so we've been working with that for the past few months. Um, I don't, I don't know for sure that I'd recommend it because I haven't tried other products as well. So I, I, I wouldn't say, oh, like, you definitely gotta go with Mango. I mean, Mango's a good service in general. I would say that the AI has come quite a ways and we've done reasonably well at tuning that, but there's a lot of options out there. So I really, I don't know who's doing it the best. Um, I definitely think that wading your way into the waters for now and like, seeing how some of this works and kind of learning the, the nuts and bolts of it is probably a good idea. And if you already use Mango, it's a pretty easy thing to implement. So, so I'd recommend it if you're already there. If not, you know, maybe you can shop around and, and see what else is out there. But, man, I, I think, you know, when I was at the last DO summit, I mean, I, I saw like 40 different AI receptionists, you know, and, and they're all like the, the leading AI receptionists. So like, I, I don't know how you parse that out. I don't know how you figure out which one's most sophisticated, which one's going to learn the best. I, you know, I wish I could help you there, but, but yeah, we use Mango. Fantastic. Question, please.

Yes.

Okay, so when do you decide? Okay, I've given like, do you give a second chance to the employee that's

not in the right fit? When do you decide?

Okay, we just gotta move on.

Yeah. How do you make that decision? No, that's a great question. So, I mean, there, there obviously has to be interventions, right? Like, you can't, you can't expect people to do something you didn't tell them to do.

Right?

And, and you know, a lot of times I think the assumption for us is if someone does something wrong and they haven't met an expectation, the first thing we're going to assume is that we didn't do our job. And I think we still operate with that. Right. And then our job at that point is to then take to that person and say, hey, this was the expectation, this is what we got. This is the gap there and this is what I need you to do. Like, let's first talk about why did we not get there, right? Like approach all the little things that we're blocking. That Star method, by the way, that Max brought up. Brilliant. Talk about those blocks, talk about how we're going to address it, attach a timeline to sort of remediating that thing and say, hey, we're going to re approach this after a set amount of time, after implementing these things, and let's see where we're at. Then, you know, after that point, that second conversation is really easy because we already talked about exactly what we're going to be reviewing exactly when we look at. And it's a very objective thing at that point. And if people have corrected that action, fantastic. Like you solved the problem, you've worked with someone, you created some trust there. This person's growing in the position. Like, that's a really good, really good thing. If not, if they, if, if like nothing has changed and nothing's been implemented, you pretty much already know that's not the right person. You both know. Okay, that's great. Yeah, I think you exactly. It allows you to both know, like, they know they didn't do what they were asked to do and that they didn't, they didn't make that connection there. And so the result is it's almost a foregone conclusion. And now you just help them find another thing that might be a little bit better for them. But, but yeah.

Do you ever demote? Do you ever demote?

Yeah, yeah, I've been done that. And the employees are happy. They'll stay or they just, they leave once. You do know, you know, I, I, I have seen, you know, in my personal experience, that did not work well. In my personal experience, I would say that in some other clinics we've had situations where somebody was sort of brought on as like a lead assistant, then they got graduated to an office manager, and then they were more or less like demoted back to assistant. And, and you know what they said? You know what? I thought that that was all for me. I actually hate it. I was, I just want to be assistant. And it actually worked really well in that Sort of transparency and relationship put that person right where they needed to be all along and now they don't sit there thinking, oh, what if I were an office manager? You know, sometimes the most toxic thing you can have is a dream that isn't actually going to work out for you. Right. So having visited that and figured out it's not going to work might actually be a blessing for a person. But in my personal experience now, it didn't work out so well. They seem to be on board with it and then, you know, they just kind of up and left and I should have just of kind it off to begin with. Thank you. No, thank you. I appreciate the question. And I also appreciate that you're still in your surgical ground. That's awesome.

It's still, it's still 5pm in the specific.

I. I am. Where, where, where are you at?

We're still working out here.

Yeah, no, I'm at the, I'm in Seattle. So I'm. I'm at Seattle.

Okay, so you're at the west coast.

Okay, cool, cool. Awesome. Well, pleasure to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you as well. Absolutely.

All right, guys. Well, we have covered a ton of ton this evening, so from. I'm just going to sum it up real quick, as quick as I can from going deep, you know, before you go wide, our who versus our how, what real partnerships look like to where AI is taking us. So lots and lots of conversations that were happening tonight. I do want to give Tyler the chance. Before we wrap up, I just want to give you one last word. What's one thing that you want to tell everyone on the call or listening to this podcast that you would hope they walk away away from tonight?

Oh, boy. Yeah. How to tie all that up in a bow. Well, first of all, I want to thank everyone that came in to listen to this. It's humbling to have so many people in the room. I actually, to be perfectly frank, usually when I podcast, it's like a one on one thing. It's pre recorded, we can edit it. I can take out all my aunts and Oz and stuff like that. I didn't know, I didn't know we were doing it live, but I think it actually went really well. And just the fact that you guys are willing to spare some time, you know, at the earliest, it's like five o' clock in the evening for you. I mean, some of you on the east coast, my God. So just the fact that you're sparing that time means that you're. You're well on your way to whatever success means for you. So I really appreciate that, that you were willing to do that. And then secondly, I got. I don't know that I really gave enough credit to, to my business partners, Dr. Caleb Stodd, Dr. Swarm, Poppy. Those guys, I mean, they, they keep me accountable to being the best version of myself at all times. And it's really easy to work hard when the people working alongside you are doing the same thing. And, you know, when you're in a relationship where you truly feel that you're looking out for each other. You know, I think with, with partnership, it's, it's not just about. It's easy to think about the things that you can win together and the things that you can build, but it's also about the things that you could lose. Right? And it's the fact that your partners, like, they have families, they have people that depend on them, and, like, that's your family too. Like, you. You are literally responsible for them as well. And, and making sure that you're showing up every day and being the best version of yourself and knowing all the people that now depend on you, like, there, that can create a lot of stress, but it can also be a really huge driver. And I think when you really lean into the true meaning of partnership and understand that you're accepting all the good things and all the bad things that come from it as well, and you're all going to look out for each other and support each other, it's just a beautiful thing, and I wouldn't do it any other way. Like I said, partnership is a dangerous thing. But when it comes together in a great way, it's truly beautiful, and I wouldn't have it any other way. So for all of you that are out there navigating partnerships, my hats are off to you. I. I hope it's a successful one. I hope it continues to be one. I, I believe that I'm in a. A very fortunate position, and I'm humbled by that as well. And, and yeah, I think, you know, the most, the most generic but very true advice is, you know, you're the sum of the people you spend the most time around. And if those people are great and they're the best version of. Of you that you hope to be, then you know you're in the right place.

So, bam. That is a high note to end on. So thank you so much. This has been incredibly valuable, you guys. From what? Not how. Going deep before. Why the reality of leadership. Remember, it's not just about making people happy. It's about making them understand, hold them accountable, do what's best for the business. So to everyone that's listening to this podcast, everyone that's on the call this evening, I just want you to remember, this is just the beginning. The difference between surviving and thriving isn't luck. It's not just you wake up and, oh, you're lucky. You're. You're surviving. You go from surviving to thriving. That's not how this works. So keep growing, keep learning, put yourselves in the right room. It really does matter. That is what the deal is here for. We're not just here to share success stories. We're actually here to be along the journey with you, with the community. So thanks for joining in this evening. Thanks for joining us, and thank you so much, Dr. Tolbert, for joining us. We really appreciate you sharing your journey and all your vulnerability that you had with us. So keep smiling, keep growing. Until next time, thank you for listening

to Dio's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook group and meet other dental leaders. Get questions answered and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join DEO's Growth Secrets Group on Facebook. And until next time, keep smiling.