Your I.V. is Jivey

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.

Join us today as we discuss raising your healthy deserve level. Hi Gary, how are you today?

Hey, Amber. Sorry for interrupting you. I'm just so excited to be here. So I, I do my own. Amber, let's do it.

We are back. Well, great. Well, let's just jump in again. Last time we talked about mindset and how our unconscious thinking about money can really get in the way of welcoming abundance if we don't acknowledge and confront any poverty mindset that we might be hanging onto. In your book, Raise youe Healthy Deserve Level, you tell us about how you had a realization after having hip surgery when your post op pain control was a patient controlled morphine pump. And as you recognized that the experience of giving yourself that automatic shot of relief whenever there was discomfort in your life, that that might be how using money and spending money could be a quick shot of pain relief when we're really not wanting to feel something.

Oh my God, Amber. I love retail therapy. It is good. It is so good. But it just numbs the crap out of me. I get an adrenaline dopamine flying. It's awesome. And yeah, going back to my hip surgery, well, of course I'm going to have crazy realizations when I'm pumping morphine into myself. Like I'm going to have psychedelic, you know, insights, which I actually did. And you know, it's, it's interesting, you know, right? Hip replaced 2003 and they gave me this thing and they go, just press this button when you feel discomfort. And I was just like, ding, ding, ding. I was pressing it and like there's a, there's a catalytic converter on there. I don't know what they call it in medicine, but it's like they don't allow you obviously to just like overdose on morphine. So I guess, like, if you press it too much and too fast. But I was high as a kite and I just remember I'm like having the realization, like, how often do I numb myself? And, you know, in about five years of that time, I still drank. And, you know, when we have circumstances that are uncomfortable, we numb ourselves out. And I didn't, you know, my nickname's Party Fresh, you know. You know, you add a little alcohol to this, brother, and I am a lot of fun. Now there's a problem when your wife comes to you and says, well, Gary, you don't have to quit drinking, but you can stay here. My son was diagnosed with autism. My wife said, look, I have two sick boys here. If you want to, if you want to be an adult and step up and be responsible, you can come with us, but I'm going to get our son healthy. I'd like you to be with me. But, you know, this just doesn't work the way you're numbing yourself out. You know, drinking a bottle of wine every night and watching reruns of like, you know, American Idol, you know, and stuff like that. Like, know, just numbing myself out, not dealing with life. And I think we all go through these stages where, you know, life gets, you know, too much for us. We're looking for a relief. And, you know, whether it's a morphine, you know, patient controlled morphine pump or it's alcohol or whatever, whatever it might be, it could be, you know, social media. You know, there's, there's, if you watch, there's a great documentary on social media and we really see it in like China. The China owns TikTok. And it's like they actually, like, give you dopamine. Like, they see where you spend your time and then they, they. There's an algorithm that feeds you more of those videos. So there's people that talk about, like, you know, on, on TikTok, they're like saying, I've been on this thing for like four or five hours watching these videos, and it's because it's feeding your mind what gives you thrills and dopamine shots and you literally can't get off of it. And Zuckerberg, the same thing with Likes and Facebook. And it's really profound when you really dig into the world that we live in today that we just default into, and it's just a big numb fast. Not to mention what's going on with opioids and things like that. So my only point here is really taking a look at your life and noticing where you're addicted, like. And, you know, addictions could be in different ways. And I believe all of us human beings have some form of addiction because we're looking to escape living and dealing with life. You know, it's like, it's the ostrich with our head in the sand. It's like we're looking for relief. And in my own experience, it's like, you know, I did it for my. I did it for myself. And I noticed, you know, how this often happens with dentists and once. And dental teams. And once you become aware of this, there's possibilities of stepping out of it. And that's where true fulfillment lives. You know, I work with a lot of men who have addictions, and because that's how I stay sober, you know, the pathway to happiness is being of service to other people. And the way I stay sober. And now I'm going into my 14th year, which is a miracle. I mean, I drank for every day for 20 years. How do I stop for 14 years consecutively? And it has to do with happiness. You know, service is the pathway to happiness, being of service to others. And we turned our entire company into a service organization where it's all about contributing to other human beings. And it's the context that we wake up into every day. We have a meaningful purpose because we exist. We stand for people's lives being better. And, you know, that's. That's definitely shifted a lot of things. And then really helping. I help a lot of men get, you know, off. Off of addictions. And there's three types of, you know, rushes. One is an adrenaline rush. One is adultery, and the other one is addiction. So men fall in one of four categories. Those are the three that I've experienced. You know, people, you know, men walk into, like, when they're not wanting to deal with life, they. They do some form of adrenaline, whether it's like a Harley or jumping out of a plane or, you know, where they can get a rush. Adultery is clear there. And then a form of addiction, whether it's gambling, it's porn, it's, you know, alcohol, it's drugs. And so they're trying to get out of themselves. And how you get to the other side of it is purpose. So when you have a purpose, that's the natural, healthy way I found in really helping people get off of those three A's. Adrenaline, addiction, and adultery and get into purpose. And when you get into purpose and being of service to people, you're actually set free. Like, you really live a peaceful life, a connected life, and a life that really, you know, transforms. Because not that those things are bad, riding a Harley and all those things, but if you do it in excess or you do it for, like, that's the only way for you to live a happy life, and you're not fulfilled and happy at work and at home, there is a way to get connected. And speaking of service, like that.

So I like that one of the things that you talk about here that just like with drugs or alcohol or anything like that, the more you do, the more you can become immune to the dose. So you're no longer getting that fix anymore. You're not getting that kind of thing. So you have to increase your spending, or you have to increase, you know, or withhold your spending. I think there. I think both of those play in that way. So, you know, either overspending or not spending, offending it all. So that's that. That, you know, doing too much of it to numb out or withholding it because you're in poverty. So there's like, this whole thing that can go on in your mind and it'll numb you either way. Do you see that?

Oh, yeah. There's no doubt about it. And, you know, again, understanding that money is energy and we're given two hands, it's give and take. If you're hoarding, you're taking, and you take your two hands and you grab everything, and that stops the natural flow of money, and you'll reach a plateau and you won't get past a certain place. See, what I've learned about money is end time. If you don't have a good, purposeful place for money, you won't create more of it. Because what happens is you have more than enough money to live your life. But, you know, you want to live a different kind of life. But if you don't have a clear purpose for what that is, this spigot just gets shut off and there's no flow towards you. It's really an interesting phenomenon. And then the same is true with time. If I don't raise, if I think of myself as an administrative assistant and I'm doing those types of duties, and really, the best and highest use of my time is helping doctors build a strategy to implement in their practice. And I'm doing things like administrative things. It's like I'm consuming time and robbing people of, you know, the things that I do best. And so, you know, I thought I had to do everything and therefore I. You know, just because you can do anything, it doesn't mean that you have to do everything.

I love that. Say that again.

Just because you can do anything doesn't mean you have to do everything.

Profound. Very profound. That's. Yeah. I'm speechless because that right there speaks to me in, you know, and you know, we talked about this before in the way I am. And my numbness is overworking.

Yeah.

It's just, you know, that's how I numb is by how much, how much work can I do? I mean, and I love to work. So it's like I have to like find that balance for my own life. And that's, you know, when is it crossing the line and when is it just being so passionate about what I do, you know, and finding that Definitely.

Yeah. And it's everything in balance, everything imbalance. Whether it's food, whether it's alcohol, like, and then if there's like an obsession, even workouts, like all of it. Right. And so. And you had a. You didn't work. You related to your work differently at. You moved from a doer to a facilitator. And I got to tell you, I watched you do it and it's really pure joy to me to see someone who is as talented as you are and build out an entire university and do it within budget and a deadline. And now people have access 247 to every solution that there is in a dental practice. Now, that wasn't going to happen if you thought you had to do what you were. You originally started, you had to do everything. Right. But now you have a team of people that you can trust and you can facilitate to and you can get, you know, way more things done in way shorter time inside of a budget where if it was Amber and Amber and Amber, you know, you can only go so far, right.

And that's, you know, it's so true. And it was, it was stepping out of the way of my team is also. And letting them literally shine. So, you know, to actually let them do what they do best, you know, because just because I can do something doesn't mean I need to do it all.

You know, this is how we decentralize doctors. We get doctors out of the middle of their practice. And these are control freaks, non confrontational people pleasers that are addicted to workaholism because that keeps them numb. So addictions are so strong. And when you can show somebody how to break free from that, all of a sudden the opportunities are huge.

I love that, Gary. So we talk about numbing or masking pain when we don't want to face the actual source of our discomfort. And I think a lot of us are sometimes completely unaware that we're even in pain or discomfort. I can speak to that because I'm one that let my appendix perforate rather than going to the doctor because, you know, because obviously the pain wasn't bad enough. It was bad enough I would be dead or so, you know, whatever that I don't even know what I, how bad I thought it should be in order for it to be bad. But that's, you know, we've been, we just run for so long at such a speed that we've forgotten how to stop. I think sometimes and feel it and then decide how to handle it. So I think there's a lot of ways that we mask or deny our core pain. What do you think?

Well, there's no doubt. And what happens is then there's this like shaming or guilt where it's like when you're at the office, you're going, I need to be on vacation. When you're on vacation, you're doing work. And so wherever you are, there you're not. And so just beginning to get present to look at your feet. Get connected. Get connected to who you are as a dentist or a team member and relate to your purpose. My favorite thing of breaking free from this, like I call it the treadmill with no off switch. You're just on a treadmill going around in circles is really getting connected to your own personal purpose. Like my personal purpose is to, is to provide freedom to be for all people. The freedom to be, do and have whatever anybody wants to be, do and have. That's when, when you connect with me. That's what my natural default mechanism is. And the reason why that happened is because I became an accidental expert in this because I lived in a personal prison. I was always grounded, I was always like confined. And when you confine a human being and then you find a way to break free, then you go, this is why I live in the world. And when we do this exercise with people to get people connected to their natural default, like every single human being has their own unique purpose that, that it's a God given thing that, that only you have. But you know, most people have it, but it's not distinguished or identified. And the minute you distinguish it, it's like you get chills. And then when you reside and come from that place of purpose, that's where fulfillment lies. And here's what I Learned the craziest thing. I started selling everything off. I had land I was going to build a house on, you know, I don't know, it was like nine acres. You got to build a 6,000 thousand square foot house. I hate big houses. I hate wasting energy. I need a cozy place for three people, you know, and all the things I thought I needed in my 40s, I sold off the minute I turned 50. And I got this distinct called, you know, my purpose. Like my purpose is to create the freedom to be. And that's what I put out in the world. And that's the systems that we put in practice. And whether it's a dental team member or a doctor or a spouse or anybody connected to a dental practice, they have access to be free, to do and be who they want to be. And once they see that for themselves, all of a sudden they have this new level of peace, joy and connection. Not like woo, woo, but like really living that experience of life. And, you know, you see our team, I mean, it's part of being on our team. You have to distinguish your own purpose. It's, it's always aligned with the company's purpose of enhancing the quality of people. Our company's purpose is enhancing the quality of people's lives, starting with our own. And we believe that you put the oxygen mask on ourselves first and live a full life and walk our talk. And then we give it away to other people. And that's how we keep it, by giving it away to other people. And that's what we do with dental offices. You build this inside of your practice. And by the way, millennials love this, you know, for people that are having a hard time attracting great team members, I mean, we just had 96 people interview for a coaching position we had. We can't like, we can't even like, accommodate them all, obviously, but we have a pick of the world and for people that are like top talent and, you know, it's pretty profound. So, like, all the things that look like problems in the world are if you keep approaching them with the same type of mindset. And that's why, you know, really getting present to your own discomfort and pain, noticing and taking responsibility for it, plugging in a purpose and being of service to other human beings. And all of a sudden you have a new experience of living life and it's one of fulfillment, it's joy, it's frustration free, it's debt free. And it's, you have the time, the freedom of time to enjoy it. That's what happens and we have this proven over and over again.

I love that. Gary, I'm kind of gonna kind of switch here and talk a little bit about the kind of the transformation that would happen there. What happens there? We mention, or you mentioned in your book, that we need to be aware of how we truly feel about ourselves. If we try to think positive thoughts and not deal with the actual negative self image that we end up just putting icing, or I think this is your word, scary. It is icing or frosting on a poo poo cake or a poo poo sandwich. Anyway, I usually say that pretty icing over moldy cake does not make it edible.

Oh, that is very Southern of you. Bless your. Bless your heart. So I did it the Yankee way. It's like putting icing on poo poo pie. And you go, it's like. It's like pretty icing covering molded cake. Bless your heart. Like that kind of crap. Don't give me that crap. It's icing on poo poo pie. Come on, Amber.

I was justified. We don't say poo poo in the south, you know, of course, I understand. So are you suggesting that we have some deeper work that we might need to be working through here?

Yes, please. Look, everybody wants a bonus system for their team to motivate them. But if you treat them like poo poo pie and your culture is negative and you put a bonus system on top of that, it's not going to work because it's how you treat people. And I'll tell you, man, I used to treat people like, can I say the word? I'm going to leave poo poo out. And I'm going to say the real word like, shit. Because I was brought up in scarcity and fear, and I was fear driven. I was. There's two fears that we have in our life. Fear of not getting what we want and fear of losing what we have. So, like, I would, you know, I wrote this book and I told you I catastrophize things. And if somebody makes a mistake with a client or something, I would lose my mind on them. I'm like, what kind of crap is this? And in today's world, it just does not work. And, you know, I was trying to get culture surveys. We do a culture survey of our internal customer, our team, and I was getting poor results. And it was because, you know, operating with the stick with millennials has them go to another place. Operating from experience, providing a good experience, providing a learning environment, allowing people to make mistakes and correct them. You know, creating a fun squad to make work fun. You know, like, I wasn't brought up for work to be fun. It was like, you got to work, you got to get hard, and you got to put the nose to the grindstone and. Excuse me. And it's like. And millennials don't work that way. So we have these emerging generations that are completely different in the work, and it's not their work ethic. Because, you know, amber, you know, 80% of our team is millennial, and these men and women are badasses if you know the proper care and feeding of these smart people. And look, we don't work nights and weekends. Zero. You. You know, you've been with me a long time. When did I ever say you got to work a night and weekend? Zero.

Never.

You know why? Because if we're really efficient at the time we work, we have more than enough time for the things that matter. And, you know, we got these millennials, and they love it because they get to go have a life. They don't work to live. They live to work. They don't live to work. They work to live. And they want to have fun, they want to go. They want to go hiking, they want to go have fun, they want to travel, and we want to create an environment and a culture that does that. Please do that for these guys. I can't tell you how often there's baby boomer managers and owners, you know, operating in an old model, and that doesn't work anymore. And so, you know, with 65% of the people in dental practices being of the millennial generation, if you don't change, you're going to get eaten alive. They're going to eat you alive, or you're going to get craploads of turnover.

And.

And, you know, this goes back to gratitude and work with, you know, you know, supporting them. And when you do that, you retain your team. They work their tails off when they're at work. And you have a really solid business in. In 2022 and beyond, because this is what's living in the world today. And if you're numbed out and you. You're. You're. You're beating people up and having negativity and micromanaging. I understand it comes from. You're responsible for making payroll and all those things. And if you put a system in, you put accountabilities in, you put reward system in, the machine works like a freaking awesome. And then you're free. You'll work three days a week or two days a week or whatever you want to work because the team's got here, they got your front, back and sides. So that's what I mean by having a solid foundation, having a workplace that you love to go to, and not throwing icing on poo poo. Like a bonus system to motivate your team when you're demotivating them on how you interact with them. And by the way, I do know that you don't want to be that way, but it's the only way you know how to do to hold it together. So there is a better way. And of course you'll see it in million dollar dentistry and raise your healthy deserve level.

I love that. So, Gary, you suggest, and the name of this chapter in raise your health and deserve level is your iv. Your IV is jivy. And you suggest that just ripping that IV out, that the pain is only temporary when you rip it out, but that you have an opportunity to experience a full life if you'll do that. Now, I think you do suggest that that is something that there's. Some people are going to need a little detox. They may need someone to kind of walk them through that process. Because you don't want to replace one pain reliever with another pain reliever. It's kind of like when you're getting sober. You know, you don't want to. You don't want to start overworking, you don't want to do those kinds of things. So what do you think? Do you think there needs to be like stages of detox kind of thing?

Yeah, I'm a big believer in gradient processing. Most of us that run businesses are perfectionist and control freaks. And I couldn't let things go until I knew that things were being taken care of. So you don't want to just pull the plug without a plan. You can get on my calendar. I do a half hour for podcast listeners. You can get on my calendar and I'll walk you through what there is to do. I'll find out. Specifically because we customize everything for every practice. I would just find out your story, what you want, how you want it, and then you can then build out accountabilities by position. It's all outlined in million dollar Dentistry. Like if you want to make a million bucks or you want to generate a million bucks, you want to work four days a week, you want to take six weeks vacation, you need to do 5000 a day in the doctor schedule, 1500 in the hygienist schedule. Now you're putting Accountabilities in as outcomes per day. And you have control points in. You just don't want to pull the IV out and go, okay, I'm not going to micromanage anymore. And you know, you got to put a system in, you got to put a process in that gives you healthy control, not unhealthy control. Healthy control is like, like, like traffic signals signals, Amber, like red light stop, green light go, yield sign, be cautious. And there's ways to put that into your dental practice. You know, if you just ripped out and said, okay, free for all, you know, with no traffic signals, you know, you'd have a lot of accidents. Right? You just don't want to do that. That doesn't make sense. So you know, putting in structures, gaining the confidence, like putting something in and looking at it and go, oh my gosh, I am one step closer to freedom. I just didn't go, okay, Kelly, you know, put in KPIs for the entire team. Okay, Amber, you know, here's the vision of this. No, you, you give what the outcome is. You put in structures, you put in measures and then you make sure that all of that is matching up. And you have check ins. I had check ins every half hour, I mean half hour every week. And I know how things are going. There's a five step process that we deploy that does this. First is discovery. Next is clearing the space or blank slating. 3 is co creating a plan with your team. 4 is putting in agreements and 5 is putting in measuring, monitoring and making it go right. That system is the gradient process of implementation and letting go responsibly, not just letting go. Notice I said letting go responsibly, not just letting go.

Exactly, I love that. So you mention in your book that we are already enough. We already have in each of us everything we need and that having a healthy deserve level is more than just positive thinking. What do you think it takes for people to truly move from the place of thinking to believing?

Yeah, it is putting out a structure in your environment. For instance, we put daily primary outcomes in a dental office. And so that, and that equation is built on what the business owner wants to have at the end of the year, end of the month, end of the week, end of the day. When you delegate outcomes to people versus delegating tasks, you're now having people be self responsible for causing that. When you delegate tasks, you have to stay on top of the tasks and you can never get ahead of that. So you can't outrun task, you know, task delegation. But Giving people an outcome and then seeing them deliver it, you're going, oh my gosh. Like when I keep adding that up every month, I'm going to have more money and, and more time and more time off. And you can start doing the math in a new world. So it's like normal, get facts in reality. Explosion, new normal. The explosion is, oh my gosh, I wish I would have known this years ago because I would have been set free and I would have fished a lot more days, I would have golfed a lot more days, I would have been mom a lot more days. I would have been traveling a lot more days. You know, all those elements get created from those, those steps and it's, it comes from awareness, acceptance, and action. Becoming aware that the unacceptable is unacceptable. Accepting what's so right now, like, I don't have enough money to pay my bills, or I don't have enough money to retire or whatever it might be, or I don't have enough money or time to have the life I have. Making that unacceptable and then accepting where you're starting from and then getting into action. I don't care where you are. I have guys coming to me when they're 62 and they have a few hundred thousand and they end up with a few million.