78: Creating Leaders: The 5 Disciplines of an Entrepreneur Team

Welcome to DSO Secrets. I know what it's like to be an entrepreneur in the dental industry. I've had my ups and downs, just like you. There's so much opportunity to be excited about, but so few resources to get answers. From here on DSO Secrets, we get you those answers so you can change the lives you're meant to bless and achieve your personal success.

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

You have helped build my marketing mind

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

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. We're doing this webcast podcast world right now, and today is fun because we've got Jake here with me, CEO of the Dentist Entrepreneur Organization, and he's going to actually interview me today. So this is going to be fun because I've been working with my executive team on something, Jake, that I was really excited about. And we were going to roll out at Summit and then we got to interview the CFO of Heartland and Rick Workman, and he was like, super generous. So I'm like, yeah, get rid of my stuff. We'll deliver this to everybody later. So we got to deliberate, though, because this has just made a dramatic difference in my team mindset. And I've got a great team. I feel like they're a high performing, awesome team and we developed this and it's just trickling through our organization and just creating massive results. So anyway, thanks for interviewing me today, Jake. I appreciate it, man.

Yeah, no, I'm excited. It was funny at the DEO Virtual Summit a few weeks ago, you came on Friday and you said, man, I just have discovered something really cool. I rolled out to my team. It's made a huge difference. It's kind of a framework on entrepreneurship within an organization and I can't wait to present it to everyone on the summit. And then Rick Workman, we actually were able to reschedule him because he had kind of hurt I. And so we didn't get to do that. And everyone at the end was like, so grateful to hear from Dr. Workman. And then they were like, but wait a minute, Emmett, what about the thing you wanted to talk about?

So here we are, right? So everybody's going to get it. You didn't have to pay for the summit. Thank you, Jake. That's very kind of you for giving this to everybody today. I will tell you that this is getting written into a book so you can kind of Keep this amongst the DSO Secrets DEO Group. I would appreciate that, but I'd love your feedback, your thoughts and your comments. So let me tell you, like any good idea comes from constraints and problems. Right. And as a CEO, and first and foremost as an entrepreneur growing a company that we went from 10 employees to 180 in 18 months, I've got to be in every department at multiple times. They needed that leadership here, here, and here. And I still get to drop into departments as we continue to develop. I feel like every day we're still at the beginning starting something. And I'll start as kind of the first department head for that division, oftentimes help them get the right mindset and then grow. Well, I realized I'm using the same formula and it's working really well. And I just wanted to make it something I gave to my team. And then I was like, jake, we should just give this to everybody. So I'm calling it the Five Disciplines of an Entrepreneur Team. You ready for this, Jake? All right. And then you can.

Yes. So this is to frame this up. This is really to develop. I mean, really, it's a kind of leadership development, building your organization in a way where people feel like they have autonomy and freedom and an ability to affect change. Similar to an entrepreneur.

Yeah. And that they. Exactly. And that they can make decisions. That they have the right framework to make decisions. As if you would make decisions. Right. Because that's always the hard part, is you give somebody autonomy and then they're like, over here, and it's like, what North Star should they be using to develop out the team to make their personal decisions? Is there an easy way? Is there a shortcut for them? Is there a principle instead of having to, like, micromanage everything? Okay, yeah.

So let's get into it. And by the way, let's say that this is not just a problem in dentistry. This is a problem with any scaling organization. Right. How do you essentially develop leaders? And I think this is really one step above developing leaders. It's developing entrepreneurs inside your organization. So you've got five keys, five disciplines of this. So, yeah, let's hear about it. Emmett, what are your disciplines going to start with?

Number one. And you're going to see a theme here that I found really works well. And again, this isn't something like I just came up with. And you guys are going to. I'm already testing it. I'm getting massive results. Okay. And let me define results, too. I'm getting great feedback from my leaders saying, emmett, I know how to make decisions better. I'm getting great feedback from their team saying, I'm feeling a lot more momentum and clarity on how to help the organization where. Right. So when you start getting that feedback, you're like, okay, this worked well. All right, so principle number one, in every situation, every department, identify who the customer is that you're serving. All right? Identify who the customer is that you're serving. That's principle one. So who is this team serving? So when I go into the accounting team, what is your purpose here? If you are your own organization and you are out there hawking your services, what value do you need to be bringing? Like, who is it that you're going to be serving? And is there more than one? Because it's interesting when you think about it, if I'm the controller, my customer might be operations or clinical to make sure that they get reports on time. My customers. Also my CFO boss, right. Is he getting or she getting exactly what. What they need to go into their meetings correctly. So identifying that there was probably more than one customer, but sitting back for you personally and saying, who is the customer I am serving? And of course, we all say patient's number one. And I'll say that clinician. Right. Is right there as a direct. But then as you get a little more. So we've always been good about that part, but getting this more granule, like the assistant for this person in this department who is her or his customer. That's what we're driving now. And people are having like, hey, here's my customers, right? As something that they have at their cubicle. Right.

So I've seen this kind of laid out and rolled out, and it's a total. A total game changer. It changes everything. So let's just do a quick run through Emmett and a DSO or a group or a small group. Who are the customers? So you have accounting team. Who has your team identified as the customers?

Yeah, so they're going deeper, but I'll just give you kind of rough drafts of each of these. So accounting is very clear that, like, Ops and clinical is their customer because they're the ones that are like, hey, I need data, I need to know what's going on here, what's my expenses here, et cetera. They also know that the clinical owners, MRJV partners, are their customers. You, how are we performing? What's going on here? They also know that the company as a whole, I've got to make sure taxes are done, et cetera. So the owners there as a whole are their customers. So depending on where they're at. Now here's what's interesting, Jake. If their responsibility is to get expense reports done, this is where this gets powerful. And they're not getting the expense reports completed. Who's the customer in that relationship? Is it the regional is their customer and they need to figure out a better product to help the regional get their expense reports in? Or is accounting regionals customer and regionals whole purpose for being is to do expense reports for accounting. Right. And you can see as your organization grows, it's not, you know, when I say it like that it gets pretty obvious. Right? But it's very easy for an accounting department. I'm picking on them, but it's very easy for them to think that they're the customer. Right. It's very easy for a centralized billing team to think that they're the customer and the practice needs to serve them instead of thinking, wait, wait, wait, the practice is doing this billing wrong. What services do I need to provide to help that practice? They have patients coming in the door, they've got tons of chaos. I'm sitting in a quiet room with my headsets on. I need to reach out, I need to make this simpler for them. Right. I always joke if you're the maid complaining that the house is dirty, you're really asking to not have a job anymore. Right? So this is the part, Jake, where it gets a little more complex. You know, ops, if you have an ops team, they need to know that clinical is their customer. Right. Not the other way around. I mean that's an essence of a DSO marketing team. Like are we creating acquisition cost reports so the clinical understands what every patient is costing them? Right. So anyway, we'll get into like the details. But you can see mindset wise how it's easy amongst the individuals to get that just a little bit off and you start creating friction and the wrong mindsets in the organization.

Well, I think to take it and you go infinitely deep with that. But really what gets everyone's attention is kind of saying and pretend that your customer could hire somebody else and you've got a level that they would choose to hire you.

Exactly. That's been a huge one. I didn't realize that I did that every time I started a department. In fact, this is just my entrepreneur side. But every time I start something, I say like we're redoing some marketing things. And I say, guys, we're a marketing agency. We've got to bring product to our biggest customer, which is currently community dental Partners, otherwise they're going to fire us. Right. So I do this role play and it's different than, like, we're a department, let's make sure you know that we help. It just. It's the difference between, like, being the friend that can always like, say we're not friends anymore, versus the family member where it's like, well, you're stuck with me. I can treat you like trash. Right. I mean, it's just. Yeah. So it's creating a little bit of arm's distance from them. Yeah.

So good exercise maybe is to open up that conversation with your team and just see where it goes. It's. It's will lead to interesting conversations. Number two, Emmett, what's number two in

the number two, identify the customer's primary goals. Right. So what do they care about? So again, I'm going to use accounting. Okay. What's the regional's primary goal? I do need to get this expense report done, but my, my job is to. Their primary goal is to make that as easy as possible. Right. So if I can come and there's two accounting expense report companies trying to sell to the regional which one to use. Right. This one says you have to do all these things and this one says, I have an app. You take a picture and that's it. Right. So I got to compete relative to things. So what does my customer care about in the priority? What's the doctors caring about? Can. Can we further define the customer's goals? This is a powerful one to create even more clarity. Most of the time, the customer and Jake, you and I have experienced this with vendors or anybody else. When you say, I need this, they ask a couple questions and then they say, are you really wanting this? And you're like, holy smokes, you know me, right? Like, if you can get to that deeper level beyond systems or symptoms, and you get to like core, and you do that within the company and on how you care for each other across departments and individuals. If the practice manager says, I know who my customer is, like, these employees are looking for personal development. I'm going to help them in their career. They're part of my customer base. It's just different. So what is the customer's primary goal? And be careful to not assume you already know that. Go ahead and pressure test it. Hey, Jake, I think this is your primary goal with deo. Is that true? Right. Hey, practice manager, I think this is your primary goal. Is that true? So again, identify your customer. Let me go back to that for a second. Customer could be upstream Your boss is definitely your customer, by the way. Don't think, just think about them as your boss. If you think about them as your customer and what they need, you're going to keep your job a long time. Right. And make yourself invaluable. Look across at your colleagues. They're your customers too. Right. Because there's some kind of interaction and it may be like, this has been a big one for us. HR needs to understand that clinicals and ops is their customer. If they're not getting recruits in, if they're not on top of FTEs. My IT guy said the best thing. He said, if you come to me and tell me that the Internet's down, I'm not doing my job. I should come to you and tell you your Internet's down before you even know it. Right? Okay. That's treating somebody like a customer, right? That's like, I've got to be on top of these pings. And in fact, you know, his ultimate goal is with it. You should never know we even exist. That means all your stuff is working. Right. So he's got these different customer levels on. What is the primary goal for them? Well, hr. You should never have to go to HR in theory and say, I need to hire someone. The perfect HR is, hey, just so you know, we were looking at your FTE accounts, we looked at some of your write ups you have going on. We went ahead and got six people ready to go. Here's your three best candidates if you want to interview them on Thursday. That's treating ops and clinical like they're a customer, right?

Yeah. So the reason this is so brilliantly named, because that is truly what entrepreneurs do when you start a company, right, is you, you find a customer base that you want to serve and then you figure out their main problems and you solve them better than the rest of the marketplace. So that's kind of what you're developing inside your team.

It's intrapreneurship, right? It is, it's hey, team, I'm going to give you like the best capabilities. And then like, how does someone compete if everyone in the organization has this mindset? Okay, number three, build a customer culture within the team. So make sure that you understand, like, what is the, what's your role in supporting the customer? Right. Are we also like measuring expenses in comparison to the value that we bring? So where this starts getting into. And this will get into Principle 5 here. But if you have a customer culture within the team, you're asking questions like, if our customer was sitting in this meeting right now, how would they feel about the topics that we're talking about? If we're saying things like, man, I mean, I just hate associates, right? If we're building, like this negative culture around customer service, man, I just hate the regionals because they just never get their expense reports on time. Right? Okay, how long are you going to keep that customer? That poison is going to come through, right? So this is kind of a leadership principle. But be watching, like, hey, guys, if our customer was sitting here, how would they think about the priority of our projects we're working on? Are they self serving or are they serving them first? Now, they could be like, we're getting our platform better so we can serve them better. That would be great. But we got to ask ourselves, do we like serving this customer? Are we overwhelmed? Are we portraying overwhelm right now? Think about this in accordance with your boss. If your boss is coming to you and like, hey, I got this great idea. And you're like, you just did that to your customer. Can you imagine walking into, like, Best Buy or whatever, and they're like, hey, I really want to buy this. And you're like, the cashier's like, here they are again wanting to buy stuff, you know? So I think we do stuff again where we treat people like family members instead of like customers, right? And I'm sorry, family, I do love you, but we all know what I mean by using that analogy. Okay? So the customer culture within the team. So you've got to keep pounding that. So I said, so this is where I put this role play in, which, by the way, I'm looking at this PowerPoint here. Maybe we share it. If we were starting. My team's using this with role plays with the team. If we were starting a fill in the blank on your department, if we were starting a marketing company and clinicians were our customer, what would they want us to do for them and how would we need to take care of them to never be fired and for them to feel we brought them massive momentum. Now imagine your accounting departments asking that question. If we were starting an accounting company today, right, and ops was our customer and HR was our customer, what would they want us to do for them and how would we need to take care of them to never be fired and for them to feel we brought them massive momentum. This, I mean, it just changes your mindset. You were probably doing great before. You're going, okay, I'm up in my game. There's a lot of things we need to improve.

It's Motivating. I mean, it's totally motivating. It's exciting to try to be really, really good at what you do. It's not exciting to come into a job and fill out a role with an SOP and check off a bunch of checkboxes of a process you've built out for me. It's very exciting to try to be the best I can be for this customer that I didn't even know I had.

So, Jake, you just hit on something. We want to be the hero for someone we want to be. Right? Like, if my expense, AP expense report person feels like they are being the hero for regionals and this is what's happening. My regional team is feeling massive support, and they're, like, calling up these random departments and they're saying to them, I have never felt so supported. Thank you so much. Well, I mean, if they're doing that, on top of them already feeling excited to be the hero, you know, this is huge. Okay, number four, Speak to the customer in deliverables. This one's big. Every one of these first three were mindsets. These last ones, these are real tactical. Okay, what? Dashboards, tracking sheets, data points are going to help the customer know what you're solving and that you're solving their greatest concern in a systematic and diligent way. Now I'm going to use marriage again. Hey, honey, I told you I loved you when we first got married. Why do you ever need that again? Okay, we need consistent clarity of, like, what have you done for me lately? Right? And every entrepreneur knows that this is the risk with any customer is. Yeah, that's great. 30 days ago. I mean, Jake, I know you're on this all the time. You're trying to bring massive value to every member of deo, and you'll have a great summit. And a week later, you're like, emmett, what are we doing now? We got it. I've got this planned out. I got this planned out. We've got to bring massive value, right? There's just a mindset there of, like, I want to do this, and I need to make sure they understand it too, and I need to make sure it's aligned. So you can't assume that they know what you're doing for them. You need to say, hey, I just wanted to show you. Here's the savings that we created for you. Hey, I just wanted to show you. Here's the new customers that we've brought in, and here's the price point. And we've been able to draw this down. This cost down or whatever. So whatever your position is, start thinking through your own KPIs, your own metrics that you could give to the customer. And I'll tell you what I'm finding is those who are finding like a trending number or a trending type thing that's one of the most interesting cumulative ones are also interesting. You tend to see those like in blocks, like month over month. But when you can do some day over day, you know, or you can do it kind of trend it out like that. This isn't stuff, by the way. You, like solve quickly. This takes some thinking. But the right mindset around it of like, okay, they're going to want to know what have I done for them lately? I'll tell you that our direct reports are giving us better materials and deliverables, which, guess what, when they're giving that to their managers, then the managers are rolling that up to directors. And the directors, the directors are looking like heroes right now. On what. Because they're articulating better how they're taking care of the customer in measurable format and it's coming from the bottom up. So that one's huge.

Yeah. No, I mean, this is the thing. I mean, having customers can be difficult because you do have the, what have you done for me lately? And you're like, I just, I saved your life four months ago. You know, what happened? So you kind of, I mean, there is the carrot and the stick, right. When you have a customer, you know, you have this idea of impact, like, wow, I'm really impacting these people. I'm making a difference. I'm a hero. And then there's a stick, which is like, okay, well, they couldn't fire me if I don't perform every month. I have to get up every month and perform and every day, really. So it's a hard thing to have customers, but it really, it forces you to perform your best.

Yeah. And I think that performing your best but not articulating it to them is a big mistake that big companies make all the time, that entrepreneurs make all the time, you know, and so it's important that you not only we get so concerned on bringing massive value, but that we don't always come back and show to the customer what we've done. We don't track it, we don't organize it enough to help create gratitude for the customer. Because to your point, Jake, if you're tracking like, here's where I saved you, right. It's helpful to them to say, hey, just wanted to kind of review the last quarter, last 12 months, here's the four big things. And you do it in a humble way, right? You say, I just want to make sure that these life saving events were good for you and helpful for you. Right. I just want to make sure that this is how you want me to continue to serve you in your life. Right. And that taking this issue off of your plate, helping you with your mindset here, navigating this for you, is that okay? Is that what you want or am I on the right track there? There's an eloquent way to do that and I'm training my entire company how to do that better.

Well, it's almost like the equal and opposite. So pitfall potentially to avoid here would be developing this like us versus them kind of culture where it's like siloed. So you probably need to go into it really cognizant of that and just making sure that you're addressing that and keeping the cohesive culture together.

Oh yeah. That's why those first part about who's the customer and so forth, you got to go in with that mindset. Okay? Number five, maximize team performance. Okay? Now this ties in to some of that culture. So here's what happens in larger companies and even for ourselves individually, if the customer was looking at your daily activity, how do they feel? And you were like an attorney, okay. And you were billing for every activity you were doing, how would they feel about paying for the activities you're focused on right now? So think about that through the organization. Think about your six figure person who's sitting there typing up emails, coordinating schedule, coming to you, talking to you about activity they're doing, okay? So if we build the department and said, hey, Susie at six figure, got these 10 emails sent out and that was our deliverable, right? It cost you about, you know, $200 an hour. How do you feel about that value right now what this is doing for my leadership team is they're understanding their org chart better, right? And all through the organization, practice managers are thinking, okay, for what I'm getting paid, where should I really be working and where do I need to delegate better? Maybe even where do I need to hire better, right? Is there stuff I'm in that if somebody was paying for it, they'd say, this is not a good return on investment. Now I think we can use this as owners all day long, right? Just set it up and say if our cost is getting trickled down to the end customer, whoever we want that to be, maybe it's a Secondary person of ourselves as an owner of it. What do we think about that return on investment and should we be delegating certain activities to people? This is what I think billionaires got nailed down. This is why someone brings them water. This is why someone brings them their food. Because they know their highest and best use, right? And they know where they bring massive value. And they continue to build an organization that thinks this way. And so it's not about some kind of, you know, diva prima donna arrogance. It's really about capitalistic value creation. Right. And this is, I am in a much better position to help someone if I have these things in my life. And that's why I have my peloton and that's why I have these things. Right? So you get into some self care components on a personal level, but within the team all the time you have team members performing below their price point, below their value offering. And so I called this fifth principle, Maximize team performance. If you're billing the customer for each activity performed. And so here's my role play and we'll end with this. Jake, or whatever questions you have. How would the customer feel about the pay rate they're paying for the tasks you're doing? Would they prefer you were solving bigger problems for your price? What would you be delegating or systemizing to bring more value to the customer? If everybody in your organization is asking these things, massive value.

Well, let's think one thing. What this leads to is departments kind of building out as they grow. And you try to figure out, who do I bring on next and what and why is you have this amazing person who you realize a lot. You have a lot of amazing people who are doing pretty entry level activities with their time. They might spend 40% of their time doing things that somebody at $18 an hour could do or 20 or $25 an hour could do. And so you got three people doing that and you realize, oh, my next hire is not some huge COO to manage those three people. It's a support person to support those which, by the way, Emmett, this is how DSOs were formed, right? They saw dentists doing stuff like, you know, hr, you know, going through HR applications and like that is not an activity that.

This is not why you have a half a million dollars in debt. Right? Was so that you could do HR activities. Right, right, right.

So it's a concept, but you're teaching it to your team, which is a different part. Right? You're instilling this in their team, in your team.

So Jake, those are the five disciplines. There's a lot we can talk about. I want, I'd love to get people's feedback too on this. We've got a lot of detailed people who are like, what about this part? How would you think about this? But you know, I like, I like where you're ending too. People always ask me, how did you build your org chart? What's your next hire? And I always say, I just went off of my anxiety. If I'm anxious about revenue, which I typically am right at the beginning, then I'm hiring a lot of marketing and patient flow type support people. And then I got anxious about my accounting, I got anxious about my operation. Whatever my anxiety was, that's how you build it. Because it always put me in my higher and best use. If I reduce my anxiety now I'm driving this down to my team. And I'm also saying if you're doing your own scheduling, if you're doing emails, if you're doing other entry level tasks, we'll hire those for you. And I think, Jake, instead of being cost managers, which many dentists struggle with, right. What's the cheapest? We become investment managers. Where's the biggest return on investment? That's how you build an organization.

I think the biggest, you know, kind of pitfall that you're gonna get with folks, and it's because it depends on your culture, is this. It's a, there's a fearful part of doing that and instilling a culture of like diva ness, like you said. So that, that is a different, whole different conversation.

It's not my job, it's below me, right? Yeah, yeah.

And in fact, I've had to kind of work through that before with some folks. But it's doable and it's, this is

the dichotomy of leadership. It's never at like the extremes. But I would say if you looked at your organization right now, you might have an individual who's behaving that way and they need to like, you know, get with the culture. But I bet you have the majority of your people who are dropping down to where they feel comfortable, tactical type activity things instead of strategic results.

So I'll just leave you with this, Emmett. I mean, I've read so many business books and every, you know, virtually everyone I can get my hands on. And this is, this, this is a total, this is one of those things that, it's a very small thing. It's like you hear it in passing. You're like, that's a cool idea. But Massive shift in your business if you, if you were able to install something like this and this. I mean, the stuff you're coming up with and the stuff we're kind of coming up with in the DSO Secrets and deo, because we've seen everything and read all the books and know all the, A lot of, you know, a lot of the scaling theory, it's. You don't have it in other places. Like, this is a new way of thinking that, you know, is different than what most folks say.

You know, my history was I was coaching entrepreneurs from the beginning, right? So, yeah, you're right, Jake. This isn't like, oh, this is good for dental. Like, this is a massive, for entrepreneurs type stuff, right? So this is stuff. If we bring it into dental first, like, we just get to. Because I always say our biggest competition is everything else out there. So now I kind of want to just bring in this massive capability and let's take down all the other distractions people have and get them focused on our business model here. So, yeah, I'm really excited. I'll continue to give updates on, like, how we're utilizing this and so forth. But I can tell you my, my billing team did something really cool on this level five. They created a matrix and they said, entry level. What capabilities do you need to have?

Right.

Both from a leadership, a strategy perspective, and like tactical. Okay, if you're a lead in billing, what do you need to have as a manager? What do you need to have as a director? What do you need to have? And they built out this matrix. And of course you saw the strategy part starting to go up. She did this with the team. And afterwards several of her managers and the director came to her and said, I'm playing below my position. I'm not living up to my compensation. And so there's tactical ways, right, to start to show this. And what happened was we took our best people and we've just scaled them internally. Well, their natural tendency is to drop down where it's safe. So if you're the lead in billing and it was because you're like massively good when a problem arises, guess what your tendency is. I'll go tactically fix it. Right? I'll go get all those billings done. It's not. I'll go train those people to make sure that problem doesn't happen long term. So those little mindsets that really keep an organization from sustaining momentum, that's in the details. It's getting fixed by these principles. Love it.

Well, thank you so much. And I was kind of going to say that my secret goal is to provide the best kind of scaling and growth training and information ideas in dental that exists in any industry. So and I think that's what we're trying to do here. So thanks so much Emmett.

I've been pretty Appreciate it. You guys know come over here to DSO Secrets Facebook site if you're getting listen to this on the podcast come over and you know talk to people and chat with people who are thinking this way and you'll be in a different sphere than everybody else. And until next time keep smiling.

Thank you for listening to DSO Secrets. Join our community on Facebook at DSO Secrets and get answers and resources to some of your most challenging questions. If you want to get a copy of the seven secrets of any DSO, go to our website at dsosecrets.com and we will get that emailed to you. Remember, don't go at this alone. Let us be your team while you build your team.