75: Leading Your Dental Group, Your Team, and Yourself Through Crisis with Steve Bilt

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and today I have something really special for you. We just finished the 2020 summit for DEO, and it was a virtual summit, and it was absolutely amazing. If you missed it, go buy your tickets for next year because you need this to accelerate your business. But there was one event, one interview that I did that Jake Poole, the CEO of the DEO, and myself felt really needed to go out to the world. So here's a gift for everyone who's part of DSO Secrets. All right? Awesome. Awesome. So, Steve, I mean, we've known each other off and on, and I'll just tell you personally, like, I've been very impressed with your leadership, and I think it's fair to say that your journey has not been just up and to the right. There's been some ups and downs along the way. So I hope you'll be open to disclosing some of those things and how you've navigated those and how that's helped you become who you are, because I'm impressed with your leadership. Steve co founded Smile Brands and OneSmile, and in 2016, combined the two businesses collectively into Smile Brands. Steve was integral in SBI's three initial platform acquisitions and led the acquisition of Monarch and Castle. And Steve has also overseen the development of the operations of 200 de novo practices at Smile brand. So I'm guessing there was a little bit of complexity associated with that. You've been recognized, and I've seen this, and I got to visit early on, actually, before we really knew each other, I attended an Adso event and we toured your location, and it was just so impressive. I could tell the team culture. So not surprising. Smiles Brands has been recognized as Best Place to Work by Glassdoor for three straight years. So, anyway, just tons of accolades and well done, Steve. So let's start kind of. There's so many great Places to start. And as you all have questions for Steve, just like we did yesterday, feed those in. And Jake, you're going to help kind of represent the group here a little bit and give us questions kind of.

Yes, I'm going to follow the chat and you can ping me and we'll integrate it all there.

Okay, great. I think that'll help to get them represented here. So let's talk about like, like current events for a second before we go to the past. We've had both the coronavirus components coming in and so maybe we start there. I mean, what was your reaction as a company and what was like your process, if you will, as a leader that you use like a framework in order to manage the. Through this.

So it's interesting, Emmett, and I'll probably. History always has a way when you retell it, there's slight revisions, right, because it's how you remember it. But I'm actually very happy to have you dig back in and say, how did it really unfold? Because there's elements of how it unfolded that I think are relevant to people too. But you know, the first thing sort of if I think again, there's some retelling, if you will. But after probably trying to get myself to pass as quickly as I could through the denial phase of what this thing was, I pretty quickly was able to center us on our three word mission, which is smiles for everyone, and then think about what that meant in a longer term context, meaning how do we survive this so we can continue with that mission. Which got my focus out onto the horizon rather than on the now, which I think was critical for us. And at that point, I think it was that just long term vision or focus on our long term vision freed me up to start taking actions quickly. So we very quickly drew down our full revolver, we took all our debt, pulled it onto our balance sheet that we could. We moved into a furlough stage pretty quickly, knowing that unemployment benefits and federal support would come in for individuals that could help our people see their way through the crisis. But we said right at the beginning, our first big webinar, the only thing worse than going through this and perhaps being in a recession on the other side would be being on a recession on the other side and having your company gone. And so my job is to make sure your company's here for you. And we're all going to take some hits along the way. And no one in the company made it through without dramatic pay cuts between, you know, between 25% and 100% so we all had to make, you know, sacrifices there to get through it. But it was that long term vision in mind and from that very quickly, and I do think there's a great power in metaphors and in terminology people can grasp onto. So smiles for everyone being our true vision. But we developed a canyon metaphor. And the canyon metaphor actually has continued to build out through this journey. Right. You don't have to know exactly how it's going to play out, but the idea of the canyon originally was we were up here on a ridge, living pretty happily, probably looking off in the direction of the plains, maybe not even realizing what was behind us. And then suddenly we were shoved backwards and we tumbled all the way to the bottom, and we were battered and bruised and in pain down there, and we had to gather supplies and fight off coyotes and all the other kind of stuff you have to do to survive. Then as that metaphor emerged or started to build out, we said, hold on, we're not climbing back up to the other wall. This isn't a mountain metaphor. We didn't get pushed off a mountaintop. It's a canyon. We got pushed into the canyon and we're climbing back to a new place, a different place. And so we were able to dialogue together about what do we need for supplies to survive while we're down here. And that had to do with, like, moving to the cash basis of accounting. So every day we ran an accounting. Did we add to our cash balance or deplete our cash balance? Early on we were depleting it, and we said, how much burn do we have before we're dead? Right. Then we started to actually build it because we got better down there. Then we started the journey out. But the journey out was to a new place. So we had a mental model of what do we take with us, what do we leave behind, and what do we have to reinvent for that new place, which had us revisit everything in our business. So there's a real power in you develop the metaphor and you build it out together as a team, as opposed to thinking you know the entire answer.

I want to pull a couple principles because again, I know your history and I know that those principles are now intuitive to you. But principle number one, I bet you apply this in a lot of crisis situations, is, okay, I need to mourn the loss for a second, you know, have my pity party. We all need to go through that. Now. I need to set the objective of where do we want to be after this? It seems like once that's in Place some of the clarity at least of how to take action for the next few steps actually opens up which kind of goes into number two. And I love the way you've organized that is we've got to let go of the loss and actually plan for and not try to preserve it. But actually now, with the perspective of the new objective, decide what we're going to take with us and what we're not. I've often heard that part of the reasons that immigrants to America do so well is because they get two luggages, suitcases that they get to bring, right? And a lot of times, like through this crisis, everything needed to fit into two suitcases of like, what's going to go with us, and the rest of it needs to go in our past and we're going to build a new future. So is that something you think has been a pattern?

I think that's been a pattern for sure. And there's something else that I think came up a little bit when I was listening into the session a second ago that underlies this because everyone on this call is a leader, right? So we're here to talk about leadership and developing ourselves as leaders. I talked about the power of that metaphor, the power of locking onto your long term vision. People start businesses and they have a pretty clear vision of what they want to do. In our case, smiles for everyone. Most people, I would actually bet everyone on this call who started something had a pretty clear vision. And then what happens is the execution, the challenges, they get in the way of that vision. And suddenly you go from absolute clarity out here to confusion in here because of all the things flying at you. And this is an extreme version of that during the COVID crisis and now what we're going through. So it's important, I think, a couple things to free yourself as a leader. And you have to know, you obviously know yourself. And you talked about this a minute ago, Jake. And you, how do you free yourself to move into this unshakable place? Well, you actually had it when you started your business, otherwise you'd still be working for somebody else. You made the leap, so you had this unshakable vision, but then it gets lost in crisis. So when I talk about focusing on the long term, smiles for everyone. I'm unshakable in that, but that's not necessarily enough to free me. So I actually started dialoguing with my team. I said, guys, this is my first pandemic and I'll bet everyone on this call, unless you look really good for 135 years old, it's your first pandemic to manage through. And so just saying, guys, it's my first pandemic. The next one, I'm going to get this 100% right. But this one, you got to bear with me. So to some degree, that frees them up to know it's their first pandemic and we're all going to struggle through it. But it at first frees me up as the leader to go, hey, don't expect yourself to get this. All right? Then I said, I have an expiry on every decision we make right now of 24 hours. So I'm going to take the best information I have, make the best decision I can make for the next 24 hours, and then tomorrow we're going to have our same crisis management meeting. And I might go, oops, that was wrong. And I might be wrong because it's a bad decision. I might be wrong because the world changed so fast. But again, those free us up to make decisions because it's paralysis. That's the most dangerous in these situations. So I think that's really important is what are you doing to free yourself up, to get clarity on your vision again, and then free yourself so you can actually make decisions because they're coming at you so fast.

Well, and you hit on a big topic that we had a lot of discussion within a lot of the DEO Facebook groups, which is, where is the balance as a leader between vulnerability. Right. And then kind of fortitude and direction. And I love how you broke it down depending on how big the chaos is, create milestones, you know, for something of this. It was a 24 hour milestone. Right. And all of us went into planning meetings and by the time we walked out, the world had changed and we were back in the planning meeting again. So I think creating some level of milestone and then again, knowing where you ultimately wanted to end up, now you walked right out of that with the rest of us. You know, I say right out of it because it's somewhat of a norm now. Right. The chaos is somewhat of a norm right into all of this social chaos, too. And you're in how many states now?

20?

Yeah, 20. So again, each of those governments you had to manage and juggle through. But then on a social basis, you have a lot of different cultural perspectives too, that you're managing. How did you take on those conversations? Because one thing I know about you, Steve, is like the grass does not grow under your feet. If something's happening, you bring it up on the Table and you're like, we're going to talk about this, we're going to set a vision. So how have you managed through that?

Well, a couple things I'll share with people on that is that, you know, the CEO playbook is something political or social is happening. You know, hey, stay out of it, right? Try not to comment on it. That's kind of your historical playbook. Then you get in a world like this, coming off of the COVID pandemic, and we're still in it. You see the social unrest that people are struggling with, all of us at some level, and it just begs to get engaged. And then what I find happening is because it's so prevalent, you guys talk about social media and the echo chamber people exist in. Social media is not news. It is your thoughts recycled at you. That's the way it's curated, right? So it's actually harming your ability to empathize with other people. It's reinforcing your worldview. That's the way it curates. So it's very dangerous. And so what happens is people are being fed all this. It feels like the world agrees with them and then they end up in a forum like a zoom call or something like that, and they start using words like they are doing this or they are doing that. And all of a sudden your company is unintentionally taking a position on something that it probably has no business doing. Because the diversity in the company, you know, we were recognized as a top diversity in one of the top diversity large companies in the country. But all of a sudden that gets challenged. You go like, wow, do people really empathize? They understand. And so what we did is we stepped in, or I did first. And then we as a company and a lot of conversations in the company, which partially, I got to tell you, you'd have to have the conversations. And what we did is we said, we use the metaphor again, everything's a metaphor. We use the metaphor of a tent. And what do we tolerate in our tent? And that's what we're going to stand for. And so we said, systemic racism or institutional racism. Would we stand for that? Nope, wouldn't stand for it. So we came out firmly inside the company. We will not stand for institutional racism. How about violence? No, we wouldn't stand for violence. So we say, no violence, we stand against that. How about if someone has a complaint, you say, sorry, you didn't voice that complaint properly or you didn't send that to the right email box so that complaints invalid. You lost, you can't be heard. Nope, we wouldn't stand for that either. So we wouldn't stand for that obfuscation of saying, hey, you didn't bring it up in the way we're comfortable with, so therefore your complaint's invalid. So we set those three pillars. Now, I personally had to come to the company with a little bit of a mea culpa, I guess, of sorts, which is, you know, when I, when I brought out Smiles for Everyone. And this goes back as a three word vision statement going back 15 years. Now, when I brought that out, I brought it out. The first thing I introduced was Martin Luther King's I have a Dream video. And I said, you know, this is mine, this is my dream. Smiles for everyone. And so I came to the company and I said, I'd be happy to share it with people, but I shared with them. I said, look, you know, I invoke this imagery years ago for my dream. But let's make no mistake, my dream was a safe one. His was a very risky one. In matter of fact, we know how risky it became. It took his life. Right? You have also you, all of you here, any number of you, have faced struggles and discrimination that me, as a privileged white male could never understand. So I just want you to know, I know that I'm not saying I understand your struggle. I'm saying I know I'm so privileged I couldn't possibly understand it. Then I said, look, that doesn't change in my mind that we can stand for the things we stand for, right? Which I just laid out. Doesn't take away the fact that we just saw the Me Too movement sweep through the country not too long ago and change the world that fast. Right? All of a sudden, institutions could stand up against that kind of attack and take action. So this is an opportunity to see institutions able to do that. So let's be excited about that. And then finally, when we look down at our wristbands, let's commit to the concept of smiles for everyone in our communities, in our company and more broadly. And that's what we stand for. And I'm not going to. I have no business commenting on what happened in an individual city, an individual rally, because I don't know, right? But I know what we can stand for inside our tent. I know what we can stand against, but we can allow and not allow inside our tent. And that's really where we took our stand. And that led to a lot of conversations, a lot of people speaking up about what they've Experienced. And you just hear it right. It's perspective. And that perspective is valuable. And I think that's the part that moved us at least towards empathy. I won't say we're empathetic as an organization. I think that's a very high bar to be truly empathetic, but at least moved us in that direction.

I hope that members of the summit and Jake, I'd love to hear if there's any questions around this. I hope you can see when we're talking about things of how do I deal with my front desk gals who are arguing with each other, which technology should I choose? Or, you know, should I go multi brand or single brand? The level that Steve Bildt is thinking at solves a lot of those problems because of those principles that are there. Those tactical things can get solved if you can get your mindset right. So I know that if you've listened to me, you know, I constantly go back to, man, if I go to a conference and my mindset changes, then my whole world around me will change. Because the limiting factor, just like it's laid out on Jake, on your growth model there, it starts with you. And like when your mindset's right, you can lead the team like Steve's talking about and the organization comes along with it. And those other things, man, they just start getting solved. So, Jake, any questions from the group?

Just a few observations and we have a couple questions. But you know, I've watched a lot of videos of leaders and statements and things in the past two weeks. And Steve, when I hear you talk, I'm just like, I really hope we realize in this industry what we have. Steve, what you just said is probably the most gracious and eloquent statement on all of this that I've heard in anywhere I've heard. And we have you in dentistry, you know. And so I'm just so grateful for that. I have a lot of questions. But yeah, we're just, we have a great group of leaders, like incredible, inspiring group of leaders. So thank you for that, Steve. That was really, really amazing.

And you can see, Jake, when people are sitting over in their social media throwing stones at a DSO structure, how limited they have, how much they have put themselves in a limited mindset because they've they limited access to these kind of thinking. I mean, where Steve's at and who he's leading didn't come because of a private equity firm. When I hear, well, they just have a lot of money behind you. I mean, let's be honest, private equity doesn't necessarily help through crisis because they sit there with as many questions as everybody else looking to the CEO saying, so how are you going to solve this without us having to put any more money in? Right. So doesn't necessarily provide the, I guess, the blanket set of solutions and opportunities that most people think exists. And it's just out of, you know, ignorance.

So, yeah, I can throw a few questions with you, Emmett, if you'd like.

Great, let's do it.

You know, and for you all, if you the folks are taking notes and the recordings like that is one you'd come back and look at and just jot down how he said that and do if you believe, if that's what you believe, because it can't be said any better. And I'd imagine just be like a balloon being popped in the room of your, of your team. The feeling that would come of being understood by all parties like what you said, Steve, covers everybody. Even if you disagree with some of the things going on, your viewpoint, because you're not saying it right is still valid. So one of the questions that we had, Steve kind of going along with this was what are some. So just to reiterate, your company was voted one of the best places to work in all industries. In all industries. And which is just huge. And so what are some of the keys for folks that are working with 30, 50, 100, 200 employees? What are some of the keys to kind of doing that if they want to replicate what you've done?

You know, I think you're. The first thing is to set a true north, which again, you started the company, you had a true north, you had a vision. Otherwise you'd still again, you'd be at the job that you left. Right. You had that vision. So now if that vision takes you five notebook pages to write down, or even a full notebook page to write down, get out your still and start distilling it down. You get a few drops out the bottom of that thing of what's the essence of it. So one of the challenges that I've always said is you can get your mission statement down to three words. Anyone can get it down to three. Now you want to pick four, you want to pick five, you can do it. Three is kind of our magic number. But really distill down that vision of what you want to do to a very digestible amount. So do that then make sure everyone in your company can find themselves in that vision. So in our case, we say, I'll just dissect ours for half A second. Which is smiles. Okay. A smile is a subjective thing, right? Either. Either you decide to smile, Jake, or you don't. Right? It's like I say cheese for a picture, but a true smile comes because you decide, right? So smile, that puts the power to the constituent, right? And then we say for everyone. Who's everyone? Well, that's our patients, our employees, our providers, our vendors. Right? So it's our investors, hopefully. Right? It's everyone. So if we let everyone subjectively make everyone subjectively happy, we've succeeded. Right? So that becomes our vision. Now, if everyone can find themselves on it and everyone knows how they contribute to that. Right. If you're the front desk person Emmett was talking about, how do you create smiles for everyone? Well, it'd be a smile on your face when you answer the phone. That would be, you know, greeting the patient and guiding them through the process and presenting gratitude for the fact that they trusted us with their care. That's what you would do as that front desk person. So you have a vision, you distill it down, then you democratize it. So you push it out. You let people. Now, does that mean everyone has to say the same thing at the front desk when the person walks in? Trust me, I've been trying that for 20 years. It doesn't actually happen. Right, but do they smile in their eyes when they. When someone walks through the door? Right. Do they authentically mean it? And we've talked about this. Keep it simple. If someone had a VIP walk through the front door, they know how to provide great service. You know, their favorite Hollywood star walks through the front door, man, they're going to provide great service. They're jumping up from behind the desk, they're coming around. How you doing? Great. They make that person feel welcome. They know how to do it. You just have to have them feel like it matters and that they're part of the vision and truly deliver them is just as important as anyone else.

It's so. It's so good because what, again, I want to. I want to pull on this. Some of the mindset can get a little bit intense around having the perfect SOPs. Like, oh, I got to have all these checklists just right, etc. And what you just said, Steve, is actually just people having the right perspective on the outcomes that they're supposed to be getting to drives the right sop. Like you said, you haven't been able to get everyone to say the exact same thing. But to the extent that you can say, we want you to treat everyone as if they're your favorite Hollywood star or whatnot. Right. You can start getting closer to the outcome that you're looking for on customer service.

Yeah. And I think you can then model it. Right. So, for example, this is a little bit dated because there used to be this thing called the corporate office and used to go into it every day, and there used to be a receptionist there at the front desk.

Pretend we're in the world days ago.

Yeah, I know, but when I. One of the things you talked about was sort of this straight line journey that I've been on. And, you know, the reality is that, you know, I helped co found the company in 1998. We built it to be the largest DSO in the country, the first national DSO in the country. By 2003, sold it a couple of times. Then by 2000 and into 2013, I got fired. Then I was out, and I started a new one, and the new one bought back the old one. And so, you know, I've been through kind of these things, but when I came back in 2016 and reacquired smile Brands with the new company that we had started because it was in big trouble thinking about bad things happening. I came back, and the receptionist at the front desk, you know, I walked in and she just was, you know, busy on the phone and typing in orders and doing whatever the heck they had her multitasking doing. And I said, you know, hey, first of all, I introduced myself, I got to know her, and I said, hey, you know, it's really important to me that, you know, a great greeting is kind of one of our hallmarks of service. And so when someone comes in, you know, it'd really be great if you looked up and just said, welcome to Smile brand and really meant it. She goes, all right. And I went to my office, and then the next day I came through, same thing. And I kind of lived with it. You know, next day came through, same thing, and I ended up having a meeting in the boardroom, which is right behind the reception desk. And I was in that meeting for like, 10 minutes. And I said, I can't take it. I walked back out of the meeting, I said, hey, come here. I just want to talk to you. And I said, you know, I just. It really matters to me that when I come through, you know, not me, but anyone who comes through, you know, you really set the tone for this service platform that we have. And it's a great greeting is the number one thing. So she goes, all right. It's really important. And so that that didn't actually get it done, but about two more times of doing that. And now, literally for the last four years, you know, again, it's no longer appropriate. But, you know, I'd walk by and she'd high five me and ask how the day was and great greeting. And she became like a hallmark of our company with just making sure anyone who walked into our building got that greeting. And I've received so much feedback from people visiting our company, like, wow, your receptionist really makes sure I feel welcome. And some of you guys on this have been there to our building, and it's like she became the shining light on that. So I would just offer that up. That it doesn't necessarily come easy. You have to create the connection. You have to create the importance to why it matters to you. And you guys, by the way, you guys carry so much weight based on what you care about and what you emphasize and what you recognize. It's beyond imagination. You don't realize it. You don't even feel it in the feedback. It's not like she went, wow, this is one of the most amazing moments of my life. I'm going to change my behavior now for every day going forward. She didn't say that to me, but that's actually what happened. And so, you know, it's hard. Like, one of the things I tell my team, I'll just pass this on and I want to throw it back to the question. One of the hardest things is. And I'll ask all you guys, how many of you guys. Let me ask Emmett, because you're looking at me. Are you comfortable going to someone and saying, I'm proud of you, that's not your kid, or maybe someone that works for you that's older than you. You say, I'm proud of you. I mean, or does that feel like, wait a minute, that's not humble. And who am I to be proud of? You. Right. But you're the CEO, you're the founder, you're the voice of the organization. You. What could be more important for someone who's working in your organization than for you to be proud of them?

Wow.

I'm so proud of you. It's amazing what you just did, but it doesn't feel okay to give yourself permission to say that.

Yeah. You know, I think one of the problems, and I've voiced this Steve, so I'd love your perspective on it, is I think Steve Jobs biography and a lot of the perspective on him has ruined more leaders than it helped, you know, because Steve Jobs wouldn't have put up with that. He would have fired her day one when that didn't happen, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the reality is that that's not true first of all. But you know, and then I hear, you know, hire slowly, fire fast. Right. Oh man, I would have had to. That's not true either. Right. Because so many people are humans and they change and you don't know which ones are going to change. Like how do you kind of manage through that? Because I'd love for this summit attendees to have a new operating system to organize. Like where would have been the break point where you would have said she's just not the right fit. Like this isn't the right place for her, clearly. You know, I often say our company isn't the end all be all for every human. Right. So if it's not the right place for them and where we're going, let's free them to find that match. Right. So what would have been the decision tree around that? I know it's hypothetical, but you, you have to do it all the time anyway, so.

Sure. Well, you know, I think it's, it's around not presuming my infallibility in that particular instance. So in that particular instance it would have been like, hey, you know, I would have went to my assistant who's been my assistant for the full 20 years of the company. I said, hey, Judy, could you talk to her? Just ask like why this doesn't seem to be important to her. Because it's super important to me and I feel like it should matter if I'm saying it's important. So can you maybe have that conversation? Because something's missing. And I'll bet you what would have happened is she, Judy would have found out. Well, she was told that, you know, it's more important to make sure the phone doesn't ring twice before it gets answered.

Doesn't get those phones answered. She's going to get fired and she's scared about that and she's getting driven by. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. And I didn't know I wouldn't known that. So I think, Emmett, to answer your question, it's let someone else who might be more empathetic than me or maybe just better at asking the question or safer for that person to give feedback, to sit down with that person, say, hey, you know, we're not getting what we think matters here and it feels like something you'd want to do. So what, what's wrong here? Right. And you'll find. And I think that does apply and that applies all the way up into the executive level. You have an executive that became ineffective. And if you really start, like, what. What's happening here? Like, I feel like I've lost your focus. Like, I feel like. And sometimes I might hear, no, I'm focused. I'm in no problem. Then I might, you know, have my senior VP of HR and have that conversation, and she goes and finds out, oh, my gosh, the person, you know, their child is sick, their father just died. They're. I mean, it's like you find out a million things. You, oh, well, why don't we have her, you know, or him take a little time off and recharge and come back and it turns out it's okay. But they didn't want to tell me that because maybe that maybe they thought I would think that's a sign of weakness to let personal getting to work. Who knows? I think there's a process and there's multiple people trying to have that conversation. And then at some point, someone could just say, yeah, I just. The smiles for everyone thing, I hate it. It's stupid. Okay, well, you know what? Good time to move on. Good time to move on. You know, so that's different. But at least. At least it's been multiple voices and multiple perspectives to let them, you know, make sure that it was. That the signal wasn't crowding out the noise. The noise wasn't crowding out the signal, if you will, but make sure that they had a chance to hear that expectation is. And it wasn't perfection, by the way, the expectation. You know, I mean, trust me, if our receptionist would have caught me going, hey, you know, if I would have walked by and she would have said, oh, I didn't get greeted. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I missed you, I missed you. That would have actually endeared me more. Right? You don't have to be perfect to show me you care. Right.

Steve, first of all, thank you for being so generous with what you've shared. I mean, to think that we took the CEO that's gotten the award for one of the best places to work, and he just, like, shares, here's how I think about this and created it. I think you also just sent a torpedo through the industry that said, anyone who thinks that the CEOs of these DSOs are trying to roll up a bunch of capital, and then that's all they care about. Like, that's why they can't get past one practice, right? Because that mindset is never going to get them past managing four People who are turning over every six months. Right. So I really appreciate, like, these are the foundational things that get you to have bigger and bigger impact. The capital pieces are a pain, and you have to figure them out, but they're a pain. Like technology is a pain and everything else is a pain. Right. But this is where, like, the core of dentistry really lives. Jake, is there anything you want to add to that?

Yeah, I've got another really good question. Yeah, there's lots of great comments, Steve. Radical candor is inspiring. So the anxiety kind of existing in practices right now with all of our teams and employees, it's kind of a change management kind of things going on. How are you managing? How can we manage all of this in our offices?

Steve, you know, I'm actually really glad you asked that before we. Before we wrap, and that's that the most dangerous thing we could say right now is, I'm halfway through it or I'm three quarters of the way through it. That's very dangerous to your success. We don't know what's coming. We don't know where we are. So there's principles, you know, the Stockdale Principle, which is Stockdale Paradox, excuse me. There's Viktor Frankl that talks about tragic optimism. And what they focused on in prison, of war camps, in Nazi concentration camps, is when they were asked who died, they both said, stunning. They both said, oh, that's easy. The optimists. And it's like, what do you mean by that? And what they meant was, there were people who had set an expectation of being freed. They'd say, I'm going to be out by Christmas. I'm going to be out by my anniversary, be out on my birthday. Those things would come and go and they would die of a broken heart. The ones that survived had an unflinching confidence that they would ultimately prevail or get out. But they set no expectation of how fast that would happen. I had a chance 20 years ago, 15 years ago now, to sit down with Nando Parrado, who was the Uruguayan rugby player who, you know, crashed in the Andes, and a whole bunch of them died. And they had a whole lot of. Lot of elements of that story. But he's one of the two guys that walked out. When I sat down, like, how did you do that? He said, you know, ultimately, what it came down to was I knew the last step I had just taken was not my final step. I knew I had one more in me. I had no confidence I was even going the right direction. I had no confidence I could ever get out of here. I had no confidence how far away it was. But I knew I didn't die on that last step. I knew I had one more. And so all those stories converge on the idea of, like, don't say, oh, it's behind us, Right? You don't know if it's behind you. You don't know what's going to happen. Is there a recession coming? Are people going to be more afraid to go to the dentist? Less afraid to go to the dentist? Is your staff going to come back? There's all kinds of challenges that are still coming. But you've got one more step in you. You've moved in the right direction. Actually, you know, more than Nando did. You actually know you're moving the right direction. Right. Because you're moving the direction of your vision. So you know you're moving in the right direction. But you have one more step in you. One more step in you. But don't set a date to go, oh, this is going to be over. When? Because then if it's not over, then all your gas is out of the tank. Your heart can break, and that's where you can fail, because your organization will see your heart breaking.

This has been, like, so amazing. This is where, Jake, I say, if you're not in this room, like, everyone who just missed this, like, they're sitting over in some Facebook page arguing over, like, implant strategy or something, right? And, like, wondering why they're not getting to the next level. So, Steve, thank you again for taking the time with everything that you're managing, for contributing to this group, like, so generously. So really appreciate it. Yeah. If people just want to check out Smile Brands or whatever, like, where would they go? And then I'd love for you to, like, I don't know, give one or two books or something, because I'm sure some people are like, okay, I'm not at Steve's level. Like, I want to start down that path. Like, are there. Are there ones that have been helpful to you?

There's a lot. I've got, you know, shelves full. So I probably, you know, what I might do is I might come back to you with a couple that I think are really the ones that I would recommend, kind of. Because what's coming to mind is the last two I've read. But I think I'm really more into the, you know, what would maybe be the most critical, because there's a number that I've worked with, going over the years that really just stuck with me in a huge way that I want to make sure. I'll shoot you back though, because I want to make sure I give that a little bit of thought. And then obviously smilebrands.com and you know, is where we're show up. But I think I'm happy to have people reach out through you guys, through LinkedIn, whatever and just happy to share thoughts. Hey, Steve, what were EEOC secrets?

Love it. What was the two. What was the last two? You read if people. People would wonder, even though those aren't the two, what were the last two?

And Steve's Andrew Secrets. And so we can have him posted there too. That would. That would be awesome as well.

Yeah. Well, the one I'm working on right now is called Positive Intelligence, which is just a book about kind of freeing up your mind for just to hear other people. It's very empathetically driven kind of approach. And the other one got the title, Get Away from it sitting right upstairs. It has to do with the fact that you are allowed to be. I'll get to the title. But you are allowed to be sort of maniacally focused on aspects of your life at a given time. Sort of. It goes to this notion of the perfectly balanced life is a myth. Right. There's gonna be times when you're over indexing the personal. There's times you're over indexing the business. So I'll get to the title.

It's like a deep learning type book. Yeah, it's us.

And yeah. Yeah.

I will tell one other secret. I don't know if you do this all the time, but, you know, when I am sitting next to Steve at Adso or whatever, I'll kind of look at, you know, eavesdrop on. He has a notebook. I don't know. Do you always have this notebook? It said something like. It said. What's the front cover say, though? Like you had a funny like front cover on the one of like wild ass ideas or whatever.

Oh, yes. So it's interesting you say that, Emmett. It was. God. What was the fact. It was like. It had to do with. It was kind of like Mark Master's thing, you know, something about stupid ass ideas or something like that.

That's what it was. It was stupid actually.

But on this one I actually. Because it comes out of what I'm reading is. I've got. You probably can't see it, but I drew a hammer and a paintbrush and it was. It comes from this concept of this positive intelligence, which is. Those are both good tools, depending on whether you're trying to hang a picture or paint a picture. And so it's sort of teaching you, like, don't think of an either or don't think I'm supposed to be one or the other. It's just, do you take the time? And Viktor Frankl said, between every stimulus and response, there is a gap. And that gap is our humanity and our choices. Right. So if you can avoid immediately reacting and you can decide, in my example here, am I picking up a hammer to hang a picture or am I actually about to paint a picture, which tool am I using here? And so that's really a lot of. I think what's important on the journey is just, are you making that choice versus just reacting? And you react out of a whole lot of reasons. Fear, anger.

I mean, being a CEO like that is absolutely in every conversation now. I'm going to think of that. Do I need to pick up the hammer or the paintbrush? Right. It's so, so good. All right, Steve, I think we could spend the entire day with you. I think we could also just like, I'll go home and, like, ponder what we just heard. But again, thank you so much.

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