28: Be,Do,Have with Holly Mitchell

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and I am so excited to be with you all today. I have a really interesting and different path I want to go with DSO Secrets. Today I have my first interview on DSO Secrets, and I've really protected this podcast to be principle based so that we as leaders can continue to learn what it takes to really be a dental support organization. But I met Holly Mitchell, and that's kind of changed the way I want to do this. I want to introduce some of the principles that she has and utilizes both in her personal life, but also as the CEO of Central Park West Dentistry. Now, I'll give you a little background on Holly here. She has a degree, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater from New York University, and she's a master practitioner in Neuro Linguistics programming. So already she's more interesting than I am here.

So.

So, Holly, welcome to the show DSO Secrets.

Thanks for having me, Emmett.

It was just so great meeting you at the conference.

And so we had so many good

conversations over that weekend, and I felt like we were kindred spirits. And now looking at the whiteboard behind you, that looks like A Beautiful Mind exploded, and it's mirrored behind me right now. I have the same. Same kind of whiteboard. I know that that's absolutely true.

It was a little wacky. We had not, you know, zoomed before. And so when we pulled up offices, it looked like we were sitting in mirror offices somewhat, except our handwriting's better. But yeah, in fact, if you're a whiteboarder, come on to our private Facebook group at TSO Secrets and take a picture of your whiteboard. We can all just share whiteboards and go change the world from that, couldn't we?

Sounds good.

Yeah. So, Holly, I'm just going to give a little bit about your practice, and that is right now, you have a single practice that you're running with your Docs that has a revenue of 8.2 million and six chairs. So I'm just going to let that hang out there and somebody else is going to, you know, or maybe on another podcast we can dig into how you do that. But for this one, I really want to go into some of the principles and culture that you utilize within your company. And I have to start with one that's a little bit fun and wacky, which is right behind you is a picture, a painted picture of a dog. Right. And then showed me that you have dog pictures all around your support center there. So tell us a little bit about that.

It's kind of this inside joke that took on a life of its own. It started with Svetlana, who's one of our practice directors, and she is obsessed with dogs.

She will literally send me pictures of

dogs that she met on the street. I met a dog today and talked to me all about that dog's personality. And so dogs was kind of part of her vocabulary. And everyone here at CPW Dentistry loves dogs. And so she started saying, oh, you're a grumpy dog today, or you're a productive dog today, or I'm a happy dog today. And so now we sort of call each other, are you being a lazy dog? Are you being an excited dog? And it sort of took off. One of the cool things that we use in our culture, we just started

doing this recently, is we needed to

come up with a word to call out people who weren't living up to our standards of our culture.

And I'm sure everybody who's gotten to this level of success knows deeply what their core values are in their organization. And so oftentimes we do, in our job descriptions or in our core values, define what it means to be successful. But we don't often define the opposite. What do we not want to see?

And so we created this culture call

out and it's the word pause. And so you put your hands up

like paws, like dog paws.

And so let's say somebody's coming in

and they're really frustrated and they sort

of start trash talking another team member because they're in a place of frustration. If all you do is say pause or put your hands up like little dog paws, it's a nice way to remind your co worker of the standards that we've set.

Wow, that's awesome. So, yeah, I'm thinking Oz principles here. Below the line, above the line thinking. So when someone's in that below the line kind of victim mentality, etc, or negativity you're using pause as kind of just a way to pause.

Right.

And you've integrated this even into, like, production reports and things like that?

Yes. So our hygienists get a big report every month that shows their hourly production, the number of sealants whitening fluoride that they did, and it compares all of the hygienists. But we don't want people to feel bad, so we use secret dog code names so that they can see how

they're doing in relationship to the other team members, but they don't have to feel bad if there's a little bit

of work to do.

So, you know, a hygienist will know, oh, I'm Pomeranian, and that's me. And I had the most fluorides this month or the highest acceptance of Perio.

So it gives them motivation without demoralization.

Okay, we've got to psychoanalyze this just for a second, because I think it's important. I've got two people that I bet are listening to this on the spectrum. One that says, okay, so what I heard was, I need to start integrating dog culture in order to do more revenue. There's these literalists who think that it's that way and the other way who says, this is the most quirky thing ever. And this is probably messing things up within your company or, man, I would never work there. What do you think it's really doing? Is it adding an element of fun? Is it just identifying a certain culture type? Like, you have to be able to be able to get out of the seriousness in your head a little bit and enjoy kind of this metaphor.

Or

I do think it's interrupting a pattern. I think that it is getting people out of their head and taking things a little less seriously. But what's really powerful about tribal language or the power of the inside joke?

I mean, I'm sure you have friends of yours that all you have to do is say one little phrase, and everybody knows exactly what that means, and

everybody has a chuckle. It's. It brings people together, and you can design inside jokes inside your organization if you're really listening. If somebody says something a little out there and you find it interesting or funny, find a way as quickly as possible to call back that same phrase

and then use it over and over

again, and suddenly it becomes an inside joke for everybody, and it binds us together around language.

Now, has this leaked out into your patient interactions? Or is this all support, center, internal? Or, like, if I walked into your practice, would there also be Dog pictures around there.

You mostly see them in the back of house, but our patients are very dog friendly. And I'm sure there are a lot of dog conversations happening chairside, but it's really an internal.

It's like secret code that we have

that brings us together.

Do you ever have someone who's like, they're just having an intense day and they're like, I'm sick of the dog thing. Can we just have a real conversation here? Or do you think that. No, this is part of, like, who we are is being able to use these code words with each other. And in some ways, it's our jargon that allows us to have the deeper conversations.

It really is. And it provides a level of accountability and communication and an authentic and high level, even though it's slightly silly. It's us.

Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. Having that us component. Right. That allows you to really be a family and a community and then work through the hard times and stuff. The quirkiness that we each have is what makes us us. Right. So interesting. Okay. Anything else we should say about the dog culture you have?

I wish I had a dog.

You don't even have a dog.

I don't have a dog.

I love dogs. Yeah, no, I'll take pictures of dogs, too, and send them to my team. We've been talking, actually. Dr. Lota, the owner of the practice, has a really interesting dog rescue dog,

and

she's a little funny looking,

a

face a mother could love. But we've been talking about bringing her on as a support dog for some of our patients and maybe making her a provider in the office that they could request to sit on their laps during the appointment. So I'll let you know if that idea takes off and what happens with it.

I had a question once in a conference where someone said to me, what happens when all of the practices consolidate and there's just only. Do you ever see that there's these major dsos out there that just control the whole universe and it just becomes boring and bland. And I'm like, that can't happen. Because humans are so interesting and creative and innovative, and they look for different tribes based on their passions. And so we're constantly coming up with other ways to approach products and services that really speak personally to us. In the B2B world, business to business world, and then there's the B2C world, which is business to customer world. But really we've moved to a B2I world, which is business to individual world. We want everything around Our passions. And so as much time as we spent on this dog thing, I think it represents. And really the millennial culture, your millennial culture is bringing that to us, is a level of customization that I think gets embedded into a product. And I think the business A type personalities who kind of look at things more sterile are going to find themselves struggling compared to those who are willing to be a little more vulnerable and express their interests and attract specific, instead of trying to attract everyone, attract people specifically. That really fit to your culture.

It's really powerful, and it's such an asset to be able to create that. But you cannot force it. You can't try to wipe Borg culture and then say, this is what we're gonna do. It has to be something that you build and that you reinforce on the daily. And it comes from an authentic place. Because when it comes from that vulnerable and authentic place, that's what people really emotionally connect to. And if you think about your employees as your internal customers, you're creating that brand over time, and people are connecting to it. They're creating their own identity out of it. This is us. This is me. I'm a part of this. And that's where you get the stickiness and the loyalty that increases profitability.

Well, we're such in a great industry as a dental support organization to really suck in the culture and wisdom around either our clinicians or a head hygienist or whoever it might be who's helping to lead that culture to say, our job as a dental support organization is to extract that wisdom, extract that personality, extract that quirkiness, and then turn it into a megaphone and say, here we are. Who's interested? Stick that antenna up and attract our tribe to us, both internally as employees, staff, and team, and then externally as patients as well, Right?

Absolutely. And the sky's the limit when you can do it. Yeah.

And you have total alignment. You don't have individuals on the team or patients coming in who don't match to that tribe. Right.

Well, when you define it so clearly, then if somebody's not that, they realize it too, and they self select out.

Yeah. As humans, we get so much momentum when we have alignment. Right. And most of the friction that happens is, man, we just don't even think or believe the same way. And so some of these components, too, can just bring that belief and that alignment together. Like, are you willing to be kind of silly with us? Are you willing to align with something that's already established? Or do you think you have to change everything? I Mean, there's things that I think internally happen by having things that are uniquely us.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Okay, good. I love that principle. We could probably keep going on it. So you're definitely one who goes to principals first, which I think also created our alignment when we were talking and I think makes you really appropriate to have here on DSO Secrets. One of the things that we were talking about before the show is kind of a platform of thinking that you use a framework around be, do have versus what most of the world is using, which is do, have, be and be happy. So let's kind of unpackage that a little bit and talk me through how you tried to implement that as a leader.

It's something that I'm trying to bring myself back to every day, and I'm really in the process of rewiring myself. So even as I share this philosophy,

I'm still holding myself to it and struggling with it constantly.

So that's the great thing about a podcast. We can talk in idealisms as if we do it every day, but we all know we're really striving to actually become these principles. Right?

Yeah. I took this hypnosis class, and the teacher wrote on the board the words be, do, have. And he put arrows in between. Be, arrow, do, arrow, have. And he said, this is the natural order. If you focus on the state that you're being, this will inform what you do, and then you will have all of your needs met. But most of us either focus on what we're trying to have or what we're trying to do in order to have things so that we can be happy. And this concept really shook me. I actually got teary when I was understanding this because I was confronted with the fact that I am always doing, and I am really good at doing, filling my schedule and trying to do pack in as much as I possibly can so that I can have whatever I am trying to reach, so. So that maybe at some point I can be happy with who I am and what I've accomplished and what would I be like if it weren't that way. What if I went to every meeting focusing first on the state that I want to show up in for my coworkers, and that will help inform the decisions that we make so that we have all of our needs met. But if I'm always trying to do, I'm never really going to be at peace or happy with myself.

Excellent. It's excellent. Tell me if this ties in. And that is. I've heard this definition. I just really. Internalized it, which was. Or maybe this principle, which is anxiety is when the outside feels bigger than your insides, and confidence comes when your insides feel bigger than the outside. And I found two ways that I can shrink the outside. One is to kind of step back and just see it within perspective. In other words, I actually make the outside event that I was so concerned about. I look at it across the whole of eternity, so to speak, and my life and say, okay, at the end of the day, it feels really important right now, but it's really not. You know, I almost take the pebble that I'm holding up to my eye and think it's a boulder. I throw it on the ground. I look at it within perspective. But the other one that I think more ties into what you're talking here is sometimes I look internally, I look at the whole of what I've accomplished, what I'm accomplishing, who I really am, and I boost my perspective of myself and I say, you know what? Me as an individual is. I'm bigger than what is happening here. Right? And I'm not. My identity isn't tied to whether we're successful and hit our production numbers or whether this team member likes me or doesn't like me. It's who do I want to be? Which is bigger than the events of what's happening in my company or the dso. Does that tie into some of what you're saying?

Yeah. If you can come from a place of love and service, then you're going to reach success. It's like when I'm about to speak for a group, sometimes most people, especially me, you're feeling anxiety, you're thinking about all the things that you need to do. Right. Let me not forget this.

Let me not screw this up.

What if they don't like me and then I stop and I pray for the people who are in the audience who are about to hear what I'm about to give, because they've come here for a reason. They know what they need. I don't know what they need. But something I say today is going to give them the path that they need to follow. But it's not about me. It's about service. It's about coming from a place of love and the moment that I turn it from what I'm doing or about to do from myself and make it about the people that I'm serving and giving. 2. Suddenly I have no anxiety. And

it's awesome. Holly, this has been amazing. So thank you. I know that there's some A type business personalities out there that really struggled with this one. And having been one who graduated in accounting and loves the numbers and so forth and loves staying in my head, I've had to learn over time that leadership, especially in a service organization, is about being in touch with the human side of things. And, you know, we're such a. Students in some categories and these things that we're f students in, so to speak, we like to discount and say, well, that's not, that's not really important. It's all important. Right? And it's all about our, our development. So I love this conversation. I'd love to have you back on the show and we'll have you over on as as on the Facebook site DSO Secrets. So if other people want to ask you questions, maybe get resources from you, would that be okay?

That'd be great. I'd be happy to come back and talk more.

Awesome. So we'll, we'll have you back soon. And thanks, everybody for listening. And until next time, keep smiling.

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