Why Your Team Hates You

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 a 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.

I'm looking forward to delving into this chapter. This is a rich one because we're going to discuss what it means to be mindful of the culture you are creating in your office and how staying in integrity to your word and agreements will transform your culture. As we start this chapter, Gary, you tell the story of Charlie Brown and Linus having a discussion about who loves him. Have you found that doctors and team leaders are notoriously unaware of the animosity that teams might be feeling about them and their leadership?

Oh, yeah, there's no doubt about it because, you know, if you missed the 15 minutes in dental school when they went over, you know, how to lead a team and inspire a team and influence a team from a positive standpoint, boy, you are in trouble. So I figured, you know, every dentist should know how to do this. And, you know, you had mentioned something there about, you know, you know, culture and the distinction of culture and agreements. Like you said, a whole mouthful in there. There's a lot in that one statement. But the key here for doctors to know is if you're struggling and you want more time off and you want to make more money and you want to have more harmony and peace, this is the source point. Happy teams that implement sustainable results. If you go to work in this one particular area, everything works from this. This is the source point for having everything work in your practice is your culture. And the culture is the mindset, the beliefs, the default mechanism that unfolds when you're not there. So you don't have to. It's not a police state. Especially now, you know, with all the stuff that's going on, it's like, you don't have to police this. This is just how it's so, and here's how you know it's really working, that you don't have to be there and a new person comes in and the team mobilizes around that new person to get them up to speed and into the culture doesn't, you know, invalidate them, kill them off or a big effort to get them into the beliefs or the thinking or the level of play, like professional level, World Series level, you know, super bowl level, Olympic gold level. A players pull in players to play like a players inside of a positive culture.

So what you're saying here is that a paycheck doesn't buy.

Yeah, it's just like Charlie Brown thinks Snoopy is his, is his guide. And it's just because he feeds Snoopy, right? It's like my dog loves my wife way better than Bowie loves me. Only because my wife makes sure he's fed. And that's the relationship. The old adage of because you're feeding your team dollars and a paycheck is over. Millennials have come in and the emerging generations have debunked that thing. You know, it used to be, you know, in the baby boomer generation, when you work for somebody, you cowed to them and you were a slave to them. Basically, in some form, he or she is paying me, therefore I have to toe the line. That game is over. And so I love it because I became a millennial and I learned that I used to be pissed off and that I thought they were entitled, but I think they're really smart because they don't put up with bureaucracy and they don't put up with strong handed management techniques. I love it because it's reinventing the leader, the manager role, and then how you retain people is completely different. With meaningful purpose, with power versus force. If you're still delivering force and loud tones of voice and pulling people up a hill, you know, you're in the enabling world versus the empowered world. And you know, I'd like to distinguish that. I think it's really important. We'll get right to the heart of the matter. If you find yourself more committed than your team to your practice, then you have an enabled world, which is not going to allow you to ever get peace and abundance to be created. When you have a committed team, more or as committed as you are as the practice owner to the mission behind the work, then you are going to have a culture that is going to win. The biggest lesson is your team did not wake up this morning to make you rich. That is the old model. You Know the team's gonna make me rich and make me money and. No, no. But when you have a common purpose as an owner of the business, a meaningful point of difference that differentiates you from your competitors and that also has you attract and engage a players because people want to work for a mission and then happen to get paid for it rather than I pay you. And then we have like a meaningful point of difference as a back end thing.

Well, one of the things I know you've said in some of the other chapters where you talked about, you know, there's your broken agreements and promises that, that you go to the, the weekend seminar and you learn some new thing and you're going to bring it in and you're going to say, oh, this is how the culture is going to change now how do you start to change that and get into integrity with that, that we're building a culture without it seeming like this is just another one of your weekend seminars that you're going to just implement for about five minutes and then it's going to be over.

Yeah, well, the first place is dentists have to get at their expectations straight here. Imagine having a practice that whenever you go to a weekend course, the team is ready and prepared to receive what you have because they know how it fits inside of the vision, purpose and values of the business. And they know what agreements are, they know what new ideas are and they're open to them. And they're not going to get overwhelmed when you bring the next flavor of the month home from a weekend course. And that takes a re leveling, a resetting of the expectations of the practice owner that really what needs to happen is you need to work on the soil, not on the seeds. They're trying to throw seeds into a. There's a great, great documentary called the Little Big Farm or something like that where they, this couple goes from Santa Monica to the middle of Central California and the first thing they do is they, they build good soil. And when you build good soil, then you can grow great things that brings in the wildlife and the ecosystem that allows you to have a flourishing practice that eventually decentralizes the doctor and gets them completely out of the center of it all. And you have a team driven practice with a foundation or a chassis of a business model that you have full control over. If you don't have a chassis with full control and you don't have a team that is fertilized knowing that when they accept new things, their world, their impact is bigger and their world gets better, they grow Personally, professionally, and financially. If you have that set up, then you can drop implants, sleep. I don't care what you go 3D printing, it doesn't matter, because you have a fertile ground. And doctors don't think I need to create a fertile ground. They go, I want to get better clinically. And if I get better clinically and bring the next procedure back, then I'm going to be, you know, great. Or if I buy a cone beam, that's going to change everything. And we know that that's not true. They just become pieces of furniture that are going to eventually be in a tag sale in somebody's front yard. Like the spin cycle or the treadmill or the Bowflex.

Right. Okay. So Larry was managing by emotion rather than by results. So how do you. How do you switch from that. That emotional spot to being results focused?

Yeah, it's. And this is. This goes back to the chassis. Yeah, the chassis, Amber. If you don't have a chassis and you don't have an agreement, any management by agreement system. So there's two components to remove emotion and manage from fact in a business. And if you're not managing from fact, and then your team basically is reacting to emotions. And so the first thing we have to do is what we call create daily primary outcomes. And how we do that is we take how much money? The first question I ask doctors is how much money do you want to make and how much time do you want to take doing it? That is a designed lifestyle with paying the practice owner first. Most of the time, practice owners, Amber, are paid last. Or they have to, like, just keep throwing time at the problem, which we don't do that. We put a finite amount of time and a finite amount of money around. This is how much money we're going to make, and this is how much time we're going to spend doing it. We figure that out. We take 12 months. We divide by 12 in time and money, and we divide by each day that a provider is there. And then we map that dollar amount. Let's just say, if you want to do. I'm just going to pick a quick one. A million dollars. You're a single practitioner with a single hygienist. You know, let's just say it's 5000 for the doctor each day and 1000 or 1200 for the hygienist each day you have to present 7500 to get $5000 accepted each day. So the only three numbers that we. That's why we are. Our programs are so Important that I'm introducing here because they have four elements to it. Every one of our system has four elements. And it's called, we call it the past. We get rid of the past. It has to be predictable. It has to be aligned to the doctor's values. It has to be S simple. And then the T is, it has to be team driven. If it doesn't have those elements to it, you're never going to get freed up as a practitioner. So now what we did was, let's say if you want to do a million dollars, collect a million dollars, you want to work four days a week, you want to take six weeks off, you need to do 5,000 a day for the dentist. If you need to produce at 5,000 a day, Amber, you have to present 7,500 a day. Because if you, let's just say I'm doing some quick numbers, it's going to be 67% case acceptance. If I present 7,500 a day, which is very, very low. And doctors come to us and they go, well, that seems high to me. Well, it does. When. If you don't have what is known as a healthy mouth baseline. A healthy mouth baseline, you can go to our website@nextlevelpractice.com that healthy mouth baseline describes what's healthy and what's not. When I ask doctors what's healthy and I say, what percentage of your patients soft tissue and hard tissue are healthy. Dentists usually say 50% and hygienists say two people. Not even percentage. Right. So they get the reality like they haven't been diagnosing and they don't do it from a benchmark state of agreement around soft tissue, hard tissue and whole body health, once they get that they're like 7,500 is actually extremely low. And it doesn't mean that you're presenting treatment. It's not needed. It's all needed. And then when you present 7500, with a good case acceptance system, you'll collect 5000. When you collect 5000 in, let's say we're in June, we present and close 5,000 in June. I know that 5,000 is going to set up equally in the month in July. So therefore the doctor is going to have their schedule filled. So it's a simple program. And then filling the hygiene schedule to 1200. If you have 25 to 35% soft tissue, you know, 43, 41s versus 11 tens, which is appropriate in a whole body health practice. Because if your soft tissue, your bacteria and your Inflammation is not managed. You're affecting the whole body. And post pandemic. Extremely important that you're coming from a place of whole body health in a dental practice. Soft tissue is the foundation of it all. So just my point is the first thing that you, the way you move out of emotion is you put in facts about leveling the playing field of the currency of what the practice owner needs, which is 5000, 1200 and 7500 presented and then by position. So now our appointment coordinators, 1200 for the hygienist, 5000 for the doctor. Then when they do that, they get a bonus system. And we'll talk about the bonus system as we go through. But the appointment coordinator has an accountability by position. They get bonused only when the practice collects, in this case, 85,000. If they're a million dollar practice, they have to collect enough to pay the bonus. That's how you get a triple win chassis underneath. And we break this out by position and it's in the book, but that's number one. So the first element is building the chassis, moving from emotion. And emotion is this. See, most team members are humanists. They care about people. And so if you're a humanist, your currency is how much people acknowledge you. Like, oh, you did such a beautiful job on my smile. Thank you so much. You're such a great person. Thank you so much. That's their currency. I love that. You know, I'm a humanist, I like to be acknowledged for the work that we do. But you're also running a business simultaneously. So there has to be a revenue number that they have to be responsible for. So a hygienist needs to present, needs to do 1200 a day in production and present 7500 if you're the sole hygienist. If there's two hygienists, they get to split that. So it'd be 3750 for two hygienists to get seven, you know, 7500 and presented. You see, Is that making sense? Am I being clear today? Just doing a check in Amber.

Yes, absolutely, I'm getting that. So this is where I think that the doctor has to really be on the same page with their, with their team. Is that what you're saying here? Because when you don't have the team following the vision, purpose and values, then they don't understand like that healthy mouth, baseline if they're not on board with that. So it's a matter of bringing everybody into that. So how do you start there where are you going to start with?

Well, the paradigm shift is the practice owner's playing golf, individual game on a football field, team game. And because there's more of them on the team game, you gotta get them to play on the currency that you want to play on. So you got to get your football team playing that less strokes wins the game. Meaning how many. What is the currency? That's not touchy feely, feel good acknowledgement. What is the currency of the game that's being played? So you got to let them know that. And that's reverse engineered, like I showed you just now. The other part is creating what we call management by agreement as a culture. So every upset or inefficiency in a practice, Amber, is rooted in one of two things. There's either a missing agreement or a broken agreement. A missing agreement is, I made a promise to you to be here today to record this at 11 o'. Clock. I thought it was 11. You thought it was a 10. There was no agreement to 11. And we did. We had an upset. And then if we don't talk about it, those things fester and get between you and me. And you're like, that guy doesn't care. He doesn't keep his word. I can't trust him. You're going to leave and you go to another company. But, you know, I'm a man of my word. So when I make a promise, what happens is that promise is going to happen. Like, I've been late for our meetings and it's just been a lot with you, Amber, because Heinz, like, it doesn't work. And I sat down with you and noticed that I was not keeping my word with you. And I said, amber, I know that you and I have had agreements to do work together to get our podcast done. And I've been late. And I want you to know I noticed that. And I'm cleaning that up on my side of the street. So thank you for your understanding. And I take the time, whether it's 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and it's been 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 6 minutes, and it's just adding up. And doctors you want to get. This may sound so simple. It is simple, but it's not easy. And it is a game changer. This is how you create the fertilizer for your team. Because when your team knows that when you say X, X is going to happen, and when you say Y, Y happens, and when you say Z and Z doesn't happen, and you acknowledge that Z didn't happen, now all of a sudden they trust your word as power and that is the equivalent of a handpiece. Your word as a leader and a manager, your team leader and managing by agreement is all about your word and that's your handpiece. You can't work without a handpiece. Chair side to get outside of the chair, your word is your handpiece.

Great. Okay, so one of the things that I noticed about this is that you talk about that sometimes the team's been running the business because there wasn't any strong leadership, there wasn't any, there wasn't any agreements in place. And so that, and the humanist doctor just like, oh my goodness, you know, I don't want to stir the pot, I don't want to get everybody upset. So I'm just going to let you know, a team leader or actually a, you know, just a strong personality in the office run the office. And that can be havoc sometimes because they're not, they're not leading from a place of integrity. So how do you start to correct those issues?

Oh my gosh. You just described 75% of the practices that we deal with. Non confrontational doctor, heavy handed team leader causes the breakdown, the team's wounded, you lose people and they think force is the answer. It's not. So this is the turning point for every doctor out there. And the only reason why I know this works is because I did it myself. I'm a humanist acquiescer, non confrontational guy who wants people like me and I can still be liked and respected and I can get my word across and I don't have to do it. I was brought up in Italian Hungarian home where heavy fisted martial law ruled. And so, you know, if you want to stop pulling people up the mountain, this is the way to do it. We call it the line in the sand conversation. And it's five simple steps that really changes that. You're inviting people to play on your football field, not having you go on their football field. And that is an extreme difference. And it's the difference between setting up the team to be fertilized or to speak into an unwilling team. And by the way, nobody's bad or wrong here. Here's what you're grappling with. And I got to the underbelly of it. Team members are playing not to lose their job. Doctors are playing to win. And because people don't listen, and the reason why they don't, teams don't listen is because when you give them something new, they are, you're putting them in a vulnerable spot to fail and make A make a mistake. And people don't like to fail and make mistakes. Right Amber?

Oh, I can attest to that. I am the biggest one to tell you I don't like to fail and nor do I like to make a mistake. I like, you know, I strive for perfection. But it's also if something new comes up, you're kind of like this is, you know, I'm not, I'm not 100% at this right now and is there going to be space for me to actually fail a little bit without losing my job, you know, kind of thing.

Yeah. And so this underbelly drive that's inherent to almost every human being is the nature of force. And this is the difference between willing team members and unwilling team members. Difference between having management and leadership be forceful or powerful. So this is how you do it. You invite them to play on your team. So it looks like this see a lot of doctors, especially pre pandemic we're going, I can't hire anybody so I can't confront them because if they leave, I'm not going to have anybody. It's that, that, that treadmill of golden handcuffs that held down once you realize that you deserve to have an A team. And I'll tell you the number one way to get rid of an A team is let B players play on an A team. You know that we clean that up ourselves.

Absolutely.

And this is all counterintentional and counter intentional. These are counter fear based approaches that we're giving you. That's why it's better to do it with a coach. But you could do it alone if you just follow the systematic process like you can go Gary, that makes all sense. But for me to do it is a different thing. The line in the sand conversation is so powerful. It's team I love you. Step one, I respect you, thank you for who you are. Step number two is I'm taking a new level of responsibility as leader of this practice. And then you self deprecate. I know I haven't told you gave you clear direction. I know I haven't given you training and coaching. I know that I am late and you can't count on my word. I know that you know I have approached this in a bad way where I was forceful or I put this team leader because I was non confrontational. I hired a person who was confrontational replacing what I wanted to really tell you but it was done in a way that was harmful to your soul and your spirit. And you just, you come transparent. And when team members know you're transparent. They know you're humbled. Like, I watched the Lance Armstrong documentary on espn. He is not humbled. He's like, he's still arrogant. And you don't get that he learned any lesson. He wasn't moved by the pain, except for when he said his son had to defend himself. And he, like, showed a glimpse of it. But it's just who he is, and it's okay. The minute somebody sees your humbling from knowing that you're not doing that, it creates a space for them to go, okay, this guy or gal really is like, in a humbled state. Let's now listen. It creates the listening. Once you have the listening, then you say, what got us here isn't going to get us where we're going. How we operated before is not a triple win. You know, you guys were winning. The patients were winning. The practice was not winning. I haven't paid myself in, you know, five months, and I just can't continue like that. And I want to do something about it, but I want us all to win along the journey of it. And so what I'm doing is I'm going to be implementing the complete health model. We're going to implement the triple win model. You're going to be able to grow personally, professionally, and financially. It's all. We're all going to work together. But I need your help to come on. And I'm telling you that this is not going to be the same practice. I want to be clear because I know that you haven't signed up for that. And I'm letting you know that how I'm going to be and how the approach we're going to take is not the one that we took before. We can't post pandemic anyway because the world has changed. The patient's not the same patient. I'm not the same person. You guys are not the same people. The world isn't the same place. And if we try to do business as usual inside a place that's changed, we're in an irrelevant practice, and we can't do that. I want you to know I'm going to make mistakes. I. I want you to know that I'm not going to be perfect. But I, you know, if you hire somebody from the outside, I've hired somebody to guide us, who I really trust and honor, and they're going to guide us. They're going to be a part of this. They're going to take care of as you. As they're taking care of me as the owner. There's a balanced approach to here, and it's simple and it's predictable and it's aligned to our values and it's team driven. And it's going to be all better for you. And I want you to know I've done my due diligence and we are going to get on the court and do this. I'm championing it. But you don't have to come with me because I understand this might not be for you. I'm inviting you to come on the new bus that's leaving the station today. And this is doctors. I'm stepping out of my script now. You have to really get that. You have to be detached from your team, whether they come with you or not, because this is where the difference between fertilized willing team members and unfertilized defiant members do not carry people who are defiant into your new world. It will not work. Because then we're going to spend our time training and changing the behaviors of a defiant person that you allowed on the team before. Look, the vase has been broken. The vase is your. Do you say vase or vase, Amber?

I say vase.

Yeah. I say vase. I'm going vase. All right. I say potato, you say potaho. I say tomato, you say tomato. I say vase, you say vase. Ultimately, it is. The vase has been broken. The vase has been broken and you get to glue it back. And if you don't glue it back with you in paying yourself first, Designing the team the way you want to design your team. If you don't do it now, you're going to finish your career and your career is going to have the poo poo you had in it pre pandemic. Don't do that. I am standing for you. Do not do that. This is the only time that we naturally have a break to invent something new. Once we get it back to business as normal, after we get going again, after a few months, you're not going to have the same opportunity. The window is closing. That's why. Listen to this podcast and take action now. And don't bring back the old school. And then you say this. You're on the bus and now you're getting agreements. Agreements are who, what and by when. Teach your team about agreements here. So I'm asking for an agreement. I want you to understand what an agreement is. In the past, we used to do things and I used to say things that would go into the air and it wasn't something tangible or palpable. That is an agreement. An Agreement in our practice is going to be who's going to do it, what are you going to do and by when will you get it done. And our team leader is going to manage that. They're going to manage the agreements that we have in our business. And when you listen to an agreement, listen that it means it's a contract that you're making a promise to. So I'm going to ask you to agree. You don't have to agree. There's not going to be any force you get to choose. Do you want to play on the bus? Because it's leaving the building. The way that I'm describing it, and I know some of you are going to need more details, but what I'm saying to you is let me give you an overview. The way we played the game before is not the way we're playing the game now. And in the future I want you to come with me. But if you can't come with me, this is your time to opt out. And I don't judge you. I don't. I support you. I will write, you know, acknowledgements for you. I will take calls from your new employer. I will help you get your next job if you need my help. I'm just saying please don't commit to coming on the team. If you're not committed and it's completely fine, or if you need to have a dialogue with me, schedule a time and I will meet with you and we can work out any past based things that you want to have a dialogue with me about. Ok? So I am going to go around now and you can declare if you know now you can say, Amber, are you on the bus?

I am absolutely on the bus.

Thank you, Amber. Kelly, are you on the bus?

Yeah, Gary, I'm on bus.

Hey Mickey, are you on the bus?

Yes, I'm here.

You know what, Mick, it sounds like you might want to talk to me about that because I sense some trepidation and it's completely fine. Mickey, let's schedule a time this afternoon so that you can talk because please. And I know we're really being honest in a group, if you can't be honest, just say, you know, I got to think about it. Or if you're saying yes and you mean no, if that's what you need to do to be here, I respect that. But please pull me aside and let's have the dialogue. Because life is too short. We spend 70% of our waking hours. We have new protocols that we have to put in and if we have any Defiance like we did in the past, it's just not going to work anymore. So I love you. I respect you. Thank you all for coming. I will give you by 24 hours to have any final conversations with me. If I don't hear from you, I'm assuming you're on the bus and you're willing and you're committed to take the actions we need to take. We're going to fail together, we're going to win together, but we're not going to stay the same together. We're going to grow. And I love and respect you. And if there's anything you need from me along the way, I know I haven't been there fully for you in the past. Please come to me because I will be in your corner and your partner to get whatever you need, support in training, development, conversations, fear. I'm here for you.

So there, right there, that's the restoring the integrity of your word and restoring faith in your leadership right there for the team. That, to me, was very powerful. Even just hearing it in this podcast where we're just chatting about this, that's. That raises goosebumps, because to me, I can hear that happening and I can hear the change that could happen with that, you know, because it's like, okay, this wasn't what it was in the past. We're not going to be there anymore. When I'm working with my clients, you use the bus, I use the rowboat. And my thing is that if you're on a rowing team and you've got somebody on the outside of the boat that's hanging on the outside of the boat, you're going to spin that boat in circles. And I tell people all the time, I'm like, you need to ask them. I, are they going to get in? Because a rowing team is an absolute beautiful thing. When everybody is working together, it is great. But if you've got someone hanging on the outside of the boat, they're just going to be, like, pulling you off course. You're never going to make it. So everybody has to be in and everybody has to pick up the oars, and everybody has to be rowing together. And I love that kind of. That thought, you know, is that, are we really willing? And, you know, at this point, by people's. By their word, them giving their word that they are willing to get in with you and go wherever you're leading. And that's powerful.

I love that visual, Amber. It's really beautiful because, you know, I remember I was in this swan in Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. My grandmother was in the back seat and she was wading the swan down, and we were going around in circles in the middle of this pond and she was screaming at me going, gary, drive it straight. And I'm like, I can. And you just brought back a really bad flashback of a six year old, embarrassed kid on a little, little swan boat in the middle of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in Dutch Wonderland. But the coxswain is, is the person who says ro, and that's the, you know, the team leader or the doctor. And then each team member is rowing in harmony with one another and they're the ones that win the gold medal. And that's really where we're at right now. And, you know, it takes some courage. It takes some. You know, my friend Lloyd said it best. He was the first of my friends to have kids. And I go, how do I be a parent, Lloyd? I go, you've been doing it a while. I got a son coming. He goes, look, one lesson, either they're going to cry now or you're going to be crying later. Meaning you're going to have to come face to face and give them direction. They're not going to want to do what you want them to do. But if you do that in the short term, they just line up and they know how to play the game. And then you just have to, you know, use flippers to get them back on the path, not fraternity paddles to whack them over the head to get them straight. And obviously you're not doing that in 2020, like my dad did to me in 1975. But, you know, you know, it's a different world, right? The sensitivity is higher than ever. You don't want to be in force. You want to be in power. And you want it the way you have no more force is you ask people if they're willing to do it. And if they are, like going back to those DPOs, once you set your team up, like I set them up today, you go, are you willing to fill the schedule to 5000 and 1200? And if you do and you do that, as long as we collect 85,000, I'm going to pay you $10 per column per day. You can make $20 extra per day. And if you're working, you know, 20 days, that's $400 extra. And that's a legal Michael Kors bag, not one that fell off the truck through looting. That's probably. I don't know if that. I probably shouldn't go there today anyway. I Just walked to work today and I saw the sad experience of all these businesses just completely looted on the way to my office. Nintendo right next door. It's like, sad. So anyway, it came out of me. I probably shouldn't have said anything because I don't want to bring up anything political or sensitive in today's world. But I think it's important to actually acknowledge that it's a very sensitive time. So you don't want to be using force inside of your practice because of the sensitivities that exist. You want to use power. You want to use asking people and then letting them choose to participate. I think post pandemic, post protest, I really think people are going to be protesting against things that they don't believe in in a brand new way because there's so much awareness about it. That's why I brought that up. I think it's really an important time culturally. If the culture of society is going to be sensitive and protesting, the last thing you need is a defiant person inside of your own business, most definitely.

And I think one of the ways that you start to make that change is, is within next level is that you help the doctors to understand that changing the name of the. What you're calling someone, you know, using that, a new name for their position actually elevates that position, elevates how they feel about themselves. And that's going to make a change in how they react to things and how they behave in that position. So instead of calling a assistant, what is the name you call for an assistant instead of an assistant?

Well, I was an assistant, Amber. And when I first did this, I'm not a dentist and I wasn't a dental team member. So I'm like, I better know what everybody does. So for two years in total New Jersey, I sat in everybody's chair. I was an assistant, and I sat in the experience of being an assistant. Low man on the totem pole is how I felt was not treated with respect by my doctor and the rest of the team. I, you know, so therefore I was resentful. I was unwilling. I was, you know, when they asked me to use an intraoral camera to take pictures of a patient, I was, you know, genuinely defiant. I lived in that world. And I learned a lot of lessons. And the lesson I learned is what I learned as a kid, because I was invalidated as a kid emotionally and physically, I grew up feeling unworthy and unwanted. And so when I was an assistant, it was the perfect setup for me to have that experience of unworthy and unwantedness and low man on the totem pole. And so what I learned is that it wasn't until I realized that if I didn't handle my self worth and my self esteem and somebody actually acknowledged me, I could not take on something above wiping down a chair or sterilizing instruments. And that's what we're asking. The most trusted person by the patient is the dental assistant. And so when I saw that, I'm like, we got to get dental assistants enrolled and engaged in the world of the work we're doing, including presenting and educating patients on the problems that they're having using intraoral cameras and things like that. So I realized how what I learned is in management leadership, when you speak to somebody as they ought to be, they become it. When you speak to somebody as they are and show them what's not working, they get worse. And so I'm like, all right, I'm going to use that concept. And I'm not going to, you know, if I'm a, hey, he's an assistant. I go, I don't want to just be an assistant. When you go, hey, he's a ninja. I'm like, Like, what do you mean I'm a ninja. Yeah, you know what ninja stands for, Amber? No, I'm not just an assistant. And I all of a sudden step onto the playing field and go, you know what? No, I'm not just an assistant. You know what I am? I'm a loving, caring person. You know what I am? I'm a great dad. You know what I am? I'm a great husband. You know what I am? I. I'm a great person who cares about people. But if you go, he's just an assistant. You didn't do that right. And you didn't do this right. And you didn't do that right and you didn't do this right. I just fall into that six year old kid that I was in and it's like, that's my normal. But I found that I started calling people ninjas, like my fellow assistants. And we started walking around, we had pep in her step, we had swag. The ladies were doing their makeup, they did their hair because they cared about themselves more. They showed up and, and we had swag. When we walked in, we created this little mini ninja nation inside this practice. And I'm going, this is a miracle creation. And then we go, hey, doc, you know what? We matter. What do you want us to do? But we're not going to take this BS Just like the protests are going on. They're not taking being less than. And when you start treating people. And again, it's not a political message. This is a dental message. But it works. And I know it works because I came from nothing and I created something magical. More money than I ever thought I would ever have in my life. I help people with it. I take care of people with it. And it's not that I've taken it from somebody. I found a model that works where everybody wins. And when you live inside of that, and here's the real product that our company offers is we create better people. And when you get the product is an enhanced quality of life. When you start looking at your dental practice, that when I help people live better lives, my internal customer, my team, by elevating how they think and how they operate and how the money they make. And by the way, most doctors want to share the money with their practice or their team members. The problem is they do it on a group bonus where no behaviors are changed and it becomes a drain on their profitability versus growth in their practice. That's why you have to have individual names for each team member. Let them give them to you. And by the way, these are trademarked Ninja. No, I'm not just an assistant. Hygienists are not. They're hygieniuses. Trademarked hygienists. Pieces of furniture. You know, front desk people are DofI's director first impressions. And our treatment coordinators and money girls are financial freedom fighters. Our associates are leaders among leaders. When you treat them that way, they elevate their game and they want to learn more about how to be a leader. Spouses are VIPs, very important people who don't enable the doctor to have reoccurring conversations at dinner, at home, and so on. And when you speak to people inside of that context, they start to relate to their work very differently. And all of a sudden, they take it serious. And now they're coming to you to say, how do I get better at what I do? Because the thing about it is the first question I ask a team, Amber, and I'm going to ask them this now. Do you want me, as your coach, to speak to you as an Olympic crew? Like, you're in the summer Olympics, you're on the crew team, and do you want to play for the Olympics, going for the golden crew? If you do, then you're going to understand why I'm bringing a conversation to you. Do you see how that's very different than, oh, let's hire a team leader or they used to hire me to fire people when I first started. That's all the consultants were doing. The dentist didn't want to confront it. The team leader didn't want to deal with it. They go, you come in, come in on site and tell people what to do. And here's what I know. You ready? She convinced her, she convinced against her will is of the same opinion still. The reason why you don't keep forcing people and you don't use force on people is because if they're convinced of something inside their brains, stop convincing them against their will. Go to work on what they believe and have them believe what you believe. And if they don't believe it, like I did with the, the, with the line in the sand, if they don't believe, just find people that believe. And now you're not having to convince them against their will.

There you go. So this is, this is the secret to creating happy teams who implement sustainable results. Am I correct?

You know what? In 50 minutes, 5, 0, 45 minutes, you now know how to create a happy team that implements sustainable results step by step. Very clear.

Yeah, great, great. Well, Gary, it has been a pleasure chatting with you today about this. This is something that I can tell you as being a member of your team at next level practice that we practice, that we talk about, that we live and embody and we work on and then perfect it so that we can bring it to dental practices as well. So I love that part.

Thank you. And thanks for being on the team and thanks for accepting my request to play on the playing field that we are playing so that when times get tough for you, you know that it is for your well being and growth and the people that you get to serve. Because here's what I've learned. You can't give away something you haven't done or experienced for yourself. There's a lot of people out there espousing things, Amber, that they have conceptually, but they haven't lived. And you know, I've lived through my personal alcoholism, my wife saying she didn't want to be married anymore, and I had to deal with that. And by the way, we're happily married 17 years, I'm sober 12 years, my son's autism. Had to confront that. 9, 11. I dealt with downtown practices that lost spouses that worked in dental practices and were shut down for months. And 2008 North America dealt with practices who had investments in real estate that lost everything and we had to keep the practice going. And now I'M gonna say this is on the backside of the pandemic where 40 million people are unemployed. We have riots and protests going on in downtown areas where we have practices boarded up, where now they can open and they still can because they're in downtown urban areas. And we are walking through together, arm in arm and coming to the other side of it. When you deal with crisis and you. That's why you want to work with somebody who is not afraid to walk on coals. I walked through on coals. Tony Robbins. And it's like when you walk on coals and those coals are real and you've been able to land on the other side successfully. And by the way, if you really get, like, every crisis, you can grow on the backside really fast. You know, that's why I wrote the book, the eighth edition of Million Dollar Dentistry called Bounce Back From Anything, because it's got the context of the backside and understanding the backside, when you land on your feet, you hit the ground running. So that's key.

That's great. Thank you, Gary. I appreciate that. We'll look forward to chatting with you next time when we talk about that storage closet that you claim has a fortune in it.

Oh, my gosh. The biggest return on investment in square footage and dentistry. And it's all used for a storage closet. So we're gonna bust that thing open and we're gonna clean it out and we're gonna use it for a productive expense and turn that. Turn that into a profit center.

Great. That sounds great. I will talk to you next time.

Thank you, Amber.

Thanks, Gary.

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.