Raise Your Healthy Deserve Level

Welcome to Million Dollar Dentistry with your host, Gary Katie, brought to you by Next Level Practice. Next Level Practice is the leader in dental practice management. In fact, they are the best in the world at creating happy teams that implement sustainable results. Your host, Gary Katie welcomes you to this podcast as he discusses the common concerns, challenges, and shares his decades of experience in empowering dentists and dental teams to go from good to world class. Gary Katie is the visionary voice of Next Level Practice and has for the past 20 years interrupted the status quo of the dental world. He continues to bring national attention to the oral systemic connection and believes in the complete health dentistry model. He is a powerful educator and advocate for dentistry, dentist and dental teams. He is inspired every day by the courage and personal successes of the doctors and team members he has the privilege of working with. Welcome, Gary.

Hey, Amber. So good to be back with you, man. I feel like it's been too long. We got to stop taking these long gaps here. We got to, we got to rock out. I'm super excited for the sequel to Million Dollar Dentistry, which is Raise your healthy deserve level. I wrote it right after Million Dollar Dentistry because I saw the need for it and it was really amazing, wonderful.

So when we left off last time, we had wrapped up and we were talking about how practice owners could take their practices to the next level. Today I really want to chat. Let's go to really what is next? So if they've implemented all of your suggestions from Million Dollar Dentistry, they're clicking along and then all of a sudden we realize that some of that old thinking, maybe some filters, some automatic negative thoughts are starting to pop up and they get scared and they start undoing all of the great work that they had been doing. So I want to talk about how to really check in on those issues and behaviors. And I know you wrote this book after Million Dollar Dentistry. So what happened that made you kind of like know that you needed this as the second piece?

Well, the turning point was I started seeing this consistent dismantling of success. And it also happened something that was going on with me personally. I was three years into my sobriety and I was as, as an alcoholic for 20 some years, you know, drinking straight. I wasn't present for actually what was happening in my life and what I got to see after three years of sobriety. See, when you are in recovery, you get into discovery. There is a new level of discovery because you are not numbed out to things. And what I learned was, and it was so profound when I sat down and had this idea was that I look back even on my own life. And what I saw was in life and in all things that I had, I didn't get what I was deserving. I was getting what I thought I deserved. So I got what I was thinking I deserved. So it had nothing with like, I had like, oh, I want to make more money. Then I had a complaint that I didn't have more time. And then I'm like, you know, oh, I can have money and have time simultaneously. That wasn't a concept ever. And then I was like, the energy to enjoy it. So time, money and energy. I. I was like, I would run over here and then I would have money and then I wouldn't have time. And then I would be over here and I had time and then I didn't have any money. And then it was just this crazy circle of heck. And then I didn't have my health and then I didn't have love and connection. And so when I got to see this, I sat down and I had like this moment of clarity that the doctors that I was working with, Amber, they were taking three steps forward and going five steps back, and then two steps forward and then three steps back. And it was this crazy pendulum of not really getting really head. Like I would talk to guys that had 20 years and they would still have a thousand patients and they would still be making the same amount of money. And I really started investigating this and I had a breakthrough that in life and in practice, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you think you deserve. Nothing more, nothing less. Then I saw a whole nother thing happen. We would spend our curriculum, we have a three year curriculum. And in year one, Amber, they would build this thing and they would have growth of 300, 500. We broke, we had breakthroughs. One single doctor, three hygienists, $1.1 million in growth. In a 12 month period we had down in Atlanta. Our biggest growth was 1.7 with 3 doctors and 5 hygienists. Like insane things. And then guess what would happen. They started undo it. They started undoing it. And it was, it was so a slow week. And it was such a. Over a period of time and it was such a subconscious awareness they were not aware that they were undoing it all and then went back to the same thing. So I was like, not on my watch. Let's create a curriculum that, that we can guard against self sabotage.

See, I love that because, you know, it's one thing to go out there and just Kind of give them all the tools, give them the platforms, give them the processes to actually change their bottom line. But if we don't transform, then it doesn't matter. No, the transformation comes in that next level.

Well, yes. And let me give you like a visual of this. If you have a half million dollar practice, it takes certain thinking strategies and mindsets to have a million dollar practice. Then once you get to a million to get to a million and a half, the container that holds that is actually the successes that got you from 500 to a million are the barriers to get you to 1.5. Because let's say you're a really good doer or you're a really good practitioner and it's all centered around you. You have to start decentralizing yourself when you want to get to one and a half million up to two million. Because if you're in the center of it, there's no possible way because the bottleneck is you. And if you're a control freak and if you're a perfectionist and if you're an, I call it an octopus dentist. Octopus dentist has his hands, eight arms in answering the phone, giving people vacation time, running PNLs, presenting care. And by the way, when you decentralize yourself and you bring on an associate or decentralize yourself and go into multiple units, you have to have more controls, not less controls in place. And if you're being controlling, then that's where you have no time and energy because you're just, you're used up at the end of each day. And that's the problem that people bump into, but they don't look at the growth of 500 to a million, a million to million, 5 million, 5 to 2 million. That's when it starts getting like you can't get beyond yourself and then you need more units. You know, I mean, I have one doctor that's doing 6 million in one practice. But that's a very specialized situation. But the general practitioner, there has to be a reinvention and a transformation on each time. And the transformation, Amber, is not in doing. It's in a realm that most people don't deal with. It's the. There's the three levels. And I'm going to give you that as content here. There's being, there's doing and there's having. We work in the realms of being and having and these, you know, if I ask people, oh, you know, doing. Most people go to do more, to have more. And you can you. If I asked anybody out here if you're listening on this podcast today and you're going hey, hey, I got more stuff for you to do. You know, I really wanted to say. S h I, you know, I wanted to say that I'm going to be honorable here today. I really would like to, I really want to swear sometimes because it's like, you know, I just do. But I'm going to be really respectful. I'm going not put $20 in the jar every time I swear. So I don't want to do that. I'm practicing being clean, clean mouth. So. But there's no more time to do more. So you have to be. And being is defined as how you show up for yourself and others. Right? How do you show up for yourself and others? Most people don't work in the realm of being. Do you escalate or de escalate? Do you, do you humanize or dehumanize? You know I have a tendency like because I'm, I like talk straight. People feel dehumanized from my communication and that's not never my attention. But I don't have, I don't have the gene that's like slowly communicate things. I gotta get stuff done and move on and you know, that's just how I am. And I know. So that's why I don't communicate with a lot of people on my team. I do work with three people because they understand me and I could just talk straight and get it done. That is just an example of that. Right? So that is beingness, being plus doing is the equation of your ability to have. And your ability to have is what we are talking about here is your ability to receive, receive love, receive money, receive time, receive the ability to receive and hold onto and be okay with having money, having time. See, there's a lot of guilt and shame that operate that people operate on top of. And that's why they don't have time and money. Because shame and guilt are underneath it. And they don't even know that. They don't know to even go to work on this realm. And the minute I did it, when I got out of my ability to stop drinking and had some clarity, now I can help doctors receive because you know, you can't give away something that you don't have for yourself. And the minute I had this breakthrough, I just wanted to give it to every doctor that I ever met on the planet, every team member on the planet. Because if you don't expand the doctor's ability to receive and the team members ability to receive, you're going to get stuck and not grow your practice period. End of story.

I love that because in that receiving, there's five things that you talk about that we might really want to enjoy more. And that was peace. And you said a sense of serenity in our minds to go along with the outward success that we have created. That's number one. And number two was control, a sense that we are riding the wave instead of being carried along by the wave. The third thing you said was time, and is a sense of having enough time instead of being strapped for time given our many responsibilities. And then money. And now it's not a question of how to earn more, but a question of what to do with the abundance we have created and what is our legacy going to be. And fulfillment is the fifth. And so we are now fulfilling our word, fulfilling on our promises to our patients with an office standard of a healthy mouth. But somehow we aren't feeling exactly fulfilled ourselves. So that is what is really interesting to me is that we can start to build all of those things and then all of a sudden realize that the money wasn't the issue at the core of it.

Yeah, it's called the black hole that you could never fill. See, I had a. I had a black hole that I could never fill. And, you know, I spent a lot of time and a lot of money investigating why we have the behaviors that we have or why I have the behaviors I have. And I'm the guinea pig, so I do it for myself. And then I figure out a way to codify it and simplify it so that it could be understood by other people. And we all have what I call the black hole. Some thing that if you just answer the question like this. If I just had blank, then I will be blank. If I just had more money, I will be more secure. If I had more time, then I will be free. If I had X, then I will have yes. And it's. And it's usually because someone else gave it to us that this is what good, big, or we made the choice for ourselves to say this is where I should be. And then you live shooting on yourself. You know, you're sitting there. And I should. Should, by the way, is a. Is a guilt and shame. It's a shame word. So really, removing should from our vocabulary really creates a healthy sense of things. Now, I could spend days on these five elements, but I really want to get to the heart of the matter in this podcast. It's really about noticing that there's this black hole and you're trying to fill it. And no matter how much money I had, I would never fill it. It would just never be filled because, you know, it's like more is better, you know, too much is not enough. And so, you know, I really study this stuff. I study addictions and I help other people with addictions. And the reason why that's really important is because. And how it applies to dental practices is because sometimes you're chasing the carrot that you can never fulfill on, right? So we have to get to enough. And that's what really abundance like there's this distinction between abundance and poverty thinking. And when you get into this concept of abundance, it means that there's more than enough for everyone. But if you're trying to fill a black hole that can never be filled because it's really a mindset, it's really a spiritual condition that's underneath it all. It wasn't until I started to work on myself. And there are five domains of complete health in the model that we have. One is financial, one is physical, one is social, one is mental and one is spiritual. So again, I am not going to go all woo woo on you here. But there is being connected to something greater than yourself and really honoring that when you are spiritually healthy. I found like you are connected to the people around you. Really. Do you know why I want more money? I wanted more money for so many years, Amber.

What was that?

Because money equaled love and acknowledgment for me and freedom. I made money money because I was an 8 year old kid trying to get out of a very tough situation as a kid. And I found that when I made money and I worked hard, I would get all the things that I wanted. Acknowledgement, safety, security, freedom, very. Those are emotional, basic. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, those are survival and safety needs. So all of my survival and safety needs were I got from money. And then what happens is it's like Pavlov's dog, you know, the salivation, the food, the salivation, the food. But then you get older and you can't outrun it. That's the problem, right? So you have to get to this thing called how much is enough. So once you distinguish enoughness, that means that when I have this, this is what I need. And then you reverse engineer it and you use your business as an asset. You're not trying to fill your empty black hole which you can never get to. So we get to practices to be how much is enough for reverse engineer and this way the business works for you. You don't have to work for your business endlessly and tirelessly. And thinking this is where the thinking happens, Amber, it's really profound. You start thinking I have to work harder to have more. You start thinking that if it's up to me, it's meant to be. If it's meant to be, it's up to me. You start thinking that you can't trust somebody else with your love, security, all that. And when they make a mistake, you become a bad leader. Because that was me. Because I would step on people's toes, they would leave, and then I would never get ahead because all I was doing was dealing with the turnover in my company. So you can see the cascade of beingness that shows up based upon trying to fill the black hole or being threatened by it. And really just, I mean, I can go deep on each one of these. But peace, control, time, money and fulfillment are all connected to stop chasing the endless black hole that you can never fill, come from abundance rather than not enough. Move out of safety and security and get into belonging needs, which is purpose driven in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And now all of a sudden you reverse engineer and you figure out how to have your business fulfill on what you need and want so that you can be fulfilled, you can have the peace, you can feel a sense of control. By the way, the other reason why there's no sense of control in a dental practice, because the old model doesn't work. There's no control points in there. It's sort of like, you know, it's Nazi Germany. If you don't have structure and control, it's like you have to be a dictator. We move people in practices from dictators to what I call healthy control, which is traffic signals stop, go on ramps, off ramp speed. That's the type of practice you want to create that have control points in it and measures associated that therefore you're in full control and you can scale wide.

I love that. I like the word that you used in this book called success. Excuse me. Successful discontent. Is that the black hole that you're referring to?

Oh, yeah. You're never, you know, you look out from the outside in, you know, my outsides didn't match my insides. So successful is your outsides. Discontent is your insides. Living in never enough was how I woke up every morning. Now, when you use that in a positive sense, you're driven, you produce results. But what happens is the pendulum swings and then you don't take care of the self perpetually discontented. Then you end up on your deathbed and you look around at the people and you go, I wish I would have done life differently. And that's what HDL is. There's been hundreds of thousands of readers of HDL over the years, and I can't tell you how many texts, emails, Facebook, IMs that I've received over the years about how people have transformed their lives because they don't chase the cheese. That's not down that tunnel anymore. And this gives structure to it. And now all of a sudden, when people's insides match their outsides, you know what three letter word is that comes out of it?

Tell me.

Joy.

Joy. I love that word.

Joy.

Joy.

Fun. Another three letter word. You're not, you're not using four letter words anymore because you're frustrated, you're angry, you're discontent. You're going, he didn't do this and she didn't do that. And then you try to put more controls in place, and then people get pissed and then they leave. And then you got to rehire and then you got to do it all over again. And then you start blaming people. There's a lot of blame in that. There's a ton of blame in that. And you know, when, when you point fingers, one finger goes out, three come back at you, and one goes up to your higher power. Now all of a sudden, you know, blame takes on a whole different thing. And when you take 100% responsibility, your successful discontent melts away. You are purpose driven. And now all of a sudden, a new outcome happens. Amber, I want to give you the three P's. I mean, the three A's and P. See, a lot of, A lot of people really bump into this, especially midlife. They walk into the 3, 8, they need adrenaline because they're, they're like, they're worried about success and failure or boredom. So they get into adrenaline addiction or adultery. They turn to, you know, money, sex, and rock and roll. So adrenaline addiction, adultery. But getting out of that, those three, because I was in one of them, was having a high purpose and being of service to others. See, that's the way out. And taking 100% responsibility. But people never get to this place. And what they end up is, they end up in looking regret on their life. And that's what this is all about. You know, Million Dollar Dentistry is about how to build the business model, and HDL is how to live a full life now, not someday when.

That is amazing. Because to me, that kind of wraps this up and where we're talking about that the opposite of success isn't always failure, but it can also be boredom. And so that's when those three A's come into play, is what that boredom kicks up and shows up.

Well, when you drink alcohol, it's an adrenaline rush. If you drink too much of it, it becomes a detrimental and. Or if you jump out of planes or, you know, I had a guy run a motorcycle into a wall, like that is one of the biggest things that I want to help remove. You know, dentists are known as the biggest suicide. And we have suicide prevention here that we support because I get the depression. I can't. I hate losing another dentist just because. And it's needless because they don't need to be depressed. They don't need to be. I came from all that depression. I did not want to live and I didn't want to die, but I didn't know how to live a full life. And this is. This was the turning point for me. And so if you're struggling out there, we have a hotline for suicide prevention. And, you know, you don't have to suffer, you know, pain. And dentistry is necessary. That means you need to make a change. Staying it is suffering. And suffering is optional in dentistry.

Absolutely. So, well, thank you, Gary. It's been really great chatting with you again, and I'm looking forward to continuing and deepening this discussion in our next episode.

Amen. Amber, thank you so much for the privilege. And listeners, let's play a big game and have fun enjoying our lives.

Thank you for listening to Million Dollar Dentistry with Gary Katie. This podcast is brought to you by Next Level Practice. Next Level Practice is the leader in dental practice management. In fact, they're the best in the world at creating happy teams that implement sustainable results. If you would like a copy of Million Dollar Dentistry, please contact Amber Keithley at Next Level Practice. You may call us at 212-388-1712, extension 119 or go to nextlevelpractice.com podcast and request a copy in our Ask a Question box. We look forward to brightening your smile.