Scott Leune: This podcast is sponsored by dentalmarketing.com and they have agreed to give the listeners of this podcast a free competitive marketing analysis. This analysis is going to show you very clearly how your practice is doing compared to your competitors. It's going to give you the health of your SEO, it's going to give you a website grade, and you'll also see what your competitors are up to. This helps you know what ad strategy you should have today, how clean and effective is your marketing right now? Find out by getting this free and detailed analysis. Text the word marketing to 4 8 6, 5 9, and you'll receive this competitive analysis from our sponsor dentalmarketing.com. Welcome to the Dental CEO podcast. My name is Scott Leune and this episode we're talking about love, love, love as a leader, love as an entrepreneur, love and dentistry. What does that mean? How can we impart love into the patient experience, into the employee experience?

I'll ask you, have you had struggles with patience not behaving how we want them to behave, not walking away as raving fans, not sending us a ton of other like-minded patients. Have you had struggles with employees that seem to leave you, just leave you for the next person offering a little bit more money? These are the types of symptoms that we see when we're missing this concept called love. This speaker, Seth Mattison has been named one of the top 50 keynote speakers in the world. He actually is an entrepreneur, he's an author, he's a CEO. He is one of the experts in connecting with people in having relationships that are fruitful in business to create success. You have to listen to this episode. It will change. It will make you think how you can be different in dentistry with your patients and with your employees. All right, Seth, so thank you again for joining us. We are excited to have you because so often in dentistry, all we do is talk to other dental people and we get kind of stuck in this dental bubble, but what I'm trying to do is find amazing people outside of dentistry that have made it almost like their life's work to help entrepreneurs, and you are definitely in that category. So thank you so much for joining us.

Seth Mattison: Oh, Scott, I appreciate the invitation to be here, and you're totally right. We've dedicated a life to this conversation, so I'm thrilled to be here and have it with you.

Scott Leune: Awesome. For people who haven't heard of you before, could you give a bit of a synopsis of who you are and what you do?

Seth Mattison: Yeah, we really have two businesses that we're operating right now. The first is I lead an organization called Future Site Labs. We're a research and advisory firm. I sort of tell people everything that we do. The team and I is focused on one thing and that's helping leaders in their teams prepare for the future. Now, when I say leaders preparing for the future, the future for us is really just, it's a framework. It's a lens to think and talk about change. And we're really trying to do it on two fronts. One is study some of the external shifts that are impacting the marketplace with our customers and clients, trends with talent so we can attract, retain, and develop the best people. So what's happening out there and then spending time in the trenches with high performing leaders and teams to understand what do the best of the best do in response to those external factors to scale and grow their businesses.

I will say we we're industry agnostic, Scott, meaning I get to touch a lot of different verticals. So in my business, we'll probably deliver 75 live events this year where we're getting invited to speak at other organizations events, and it's usually leaders in the room. The split is 60% internal, large organizations, usually Fortune 100. And then the other 40%, and I think this is going to apply a lot for your audience, is comprised of associations of professions or industries. And so over the last almost 20 years, we've spent a lot of time actually in the dental industry helping owner operators think about either their individual practice or as they're scaling up with multiple locations, what does that look like? And as your folks know, there's a big difference between leading a Fortune 50 and the kind of budgets and resources you have at your disposal versus if you're a small operator, which is essentially what I am, and you're wearing all the hats and you're doing all the things to try to attract a great team, create great experiences, develop your people, keep 'em, et cetera. And so we try to meet people where they are. So that's that side of the business. And in a second, I'll just say briefly, I'm a founding partner in another business called Impact 11. I've got three business partners, we've got 15 employees, and that business is a hundred percent dedicated on helping thought leaders and oftentimes executives who come out of industry maybe exit a business and want to write a book and want to develop a thought leadership business. And we've got this beautiful thriving community of close to 500. It's essentially a community platform that does development. And so again, I referenced that, Scott, just to say on that side, we've got 15 employees over there. I've got five employees at future site labs despite all of the external research. At the end of the day, I'm an entrepreneur too, trying to figure this out. Just like all of your great leaders, this community.

Scott Leune: Yeah. So let me give you maybe a quick little download on where dentistry is today. We've got about a third of dental offices have been kind of rolled up and bought up by corporate groups, and they're now multi-billion dollar groups that are kind of behind the scenes helping run dental practices, the two thirds of the axes. Those are pretty much the people I speak to a lot. And that's comprised of, let's put 'em into two different categories for now. You've got the entrepreneur that wants to scale and grow and they want two, they want five, they want 10, they want 50 locations, and they don't quite know where that stops, but they just know they want to do something big and epic for their part of the world. And then you've got the other side that is a dentist who really wants almost like a lifestyle kind of practice, a practice that brings 'em a million dollars or more in pay, take home pay, and maybe that's a couple locations. Maybe it's they're taking a bunch of insurance, maybe they're not. They're really just wanting to be wealthy without necessarily doing something big and scaling themselves. And those are really the two kind of audiences that I speak to a lot of outside, of course, the students or the young dentists that are early in their careers and they haven't started the journey of entrepreneurship yet and they're listening to this maybe for information or maybe to get some hope and some vision.

Seth Mattison: Totally.

Scott Leune: So that's where we're at right now. And I could tell you that one thing that you talk about well on your website, which everyone should go to by the way, what is your website? What's

Seth Mattison: That? Yeah, I appreciate that. So it is just Seth Mattison, all one word, M-A-T-T-I-S-O n.com. And I'm easy to find across social channels as well, just at Seth Mattison. And yeah, we're trying to share as much of what we're seeing with the world as we can for sure, but that's how folks can find me.

Scott Leune: Yeah. So one thing I saw on your website, and man, I was just so pleasantly surprised to see it made with love in quotes, made with love. So many people talking to entrepreneurs are talking about things in the weeds to grow and to leverage and systemize and technology, but a lot of people aren't focused on the people side of this. Can you explain what made with love

Seth Mattison: Means? Yeah, it's a great prompt and it's been a journey to bring that to life and to make the big decision to put that out front on my website. I've been doing this work for close to 20 years. I understood and understand the potential risks, the connotation of leading with love. I mean, I have very squared away straight laced clients where it's the idea of love in the workplace, but I just felt really compelled around it and it really was the convergence of two things. One, and I've been doing this a long time and just sort of looking at the trends, commenting on what was happening in the world, I felt this deeper calling of wanting to explore a richer, more meaningful, more timeless concept. And that was really the word. It's like trends are all about what's happening, what's new, what's next? And I started asking a different set of questions of what's timeless, what's true, what's eternal, what will always be relevant, number one.

And number two is obviously I was seeing the emergence of artificial intelligence and new automation technology and watching and seeing with our clients, and I feel it in my own work too, is as many many folks watch as more and more of the work that they have historically done, their value creation in the marketplace, slowly being taken over by technology. And of course it's different across the board and it'll be different in the dentistry industry than others, but seeing the impact it has on folks, it's discombobulating, it's unsettling, and we talk about this trend of jobs are changing faster than people, and we're all sort of wondering this question of what work is going to be left for me? And really honing in on as humans, where will our value creation be in the marketplace? And the part that is left with the part that technology can never touch is your ability to bring your love, your essence to the work, to the craft, to the trade, to the experience.

In fact, I use this model that I think will be helpful for your audience, and I've done this with all of our clients in the past six months of as we look to the future, I think there's going to be two types of winners, and we talk about this on the website, and those two winners are either the extremely fast or the extremely human. Now, when I say extremely fast, these are your brands that you would historically think of like Amazon, sheen, McDonald's, even the Marriott Bond voice of the world, where the strategy is essentially we are going to leverage as much technology as possible to remove as much friction from the customer and client experience as possible. And there may or may not be a human involved. It's sort of irrelevant. That doesn't matter. You don't care if you go to McDonald's and you order on a kiosk or you talk to a person from a dental standpoint of when I walk into the office, am I interacting with some technology or is it a human?

If on the extremely human side, oftentimes the brands that come to mind there are what you would historically think of as luxury brands. It's the Four Seasons, it's the Air Mes, it's the brands. If it was a physical product, it's craft, it's artisanship, it's exceptionalism. And if it's an experience, it's like a four Seasons esque experience. Now, here's the challenge that I find owner operators get into is they look at this model and they see extremely fast and they see extremely human and they say, well, I want to do both. We got to do both, right? They're saying we got to get as much technology and as possible to remove as much friction and I want to create a great customer experience. But the challenge is if most people are honest while they're in pursuit of both, they end up in the middle, not good at either, and we call that the black hole of commoditized mediocrity, and it's the danger zone because you're going to get your lunch eaten by someone who's either mastered and perfected the art of extremely human or has removed all the friction and created a frictionless experience with technology.

And so my prompt, especially to small to mid-size operators, this isn't a message to say you're not going to use technology. Of course you are, but it's not where you're going to win. Technology becomes table stakes. Everybody has to have it. In fact, if you don't, then you're out of the game. But where you win if you're going to take the strategy of extremely human is to help yourself and the team think of what would it look like if everything we made was made with love? And I'll give you just a brief definition around that of when you say something is made with love, what does it mean? What's fascinating in live events, Scott of I'll hold something up and I'll say, if you think of a product or a service, an experience, something that's made with love, what does it have in it? If it's made with love, what's in it?

What are the characteristics or qualities? And it gives me goosebumps thinking about it. You can be in a room of a thousand people and people will start shouting out. It's like, it's time, it's care, it's passion, it's dedication, it's thinking of the customer above all else, it's artisanship, it's devotion and the definition I give people, and if you're tuned into this right now, I'd have you write this line down of for something to be made with love, I think it is to leave a part of yourself in the thing. And I think it's a beautiful prompt for us as leaders, as owner operators and with our teams of whether it's an exchange with a client that just came in, whether it's a product that I'm making throughout the entire arc of did I leave a part of myself and that experience are my fingerprints on it that I give my very best?

The truth is the marketplace recognizes when something is made with love it and it's rewarded without a doubt. So it's been a message, honestly, we spent two years researching the theme and I just launched it live this past fall and it's been fascinating to watch our clients start to contemplate and grapple what would it look like? What would it mean if we brought a philosophy and ethos, a culture in everything that we did in ensuring everything we made was made with love? That's the spirit, that's the essence and the idea and the framing of why we think in this moment that it is the strategy for unlocking your ultimate competitive advantage regardless of your industry.

Scott Leune: Yeah. What's really interesting, as you described this, by the way, I've got so many questions, but what's really interesting is as you're describing this, I'm thinking that so many dentists, and this is going to sound completely not related for a second, but so many dentists are in network with insurances. What that means is that their pricing is fixed And fixed at a low rate that kind of lends itself towards dentists trying to just get faster. They can't increase their price. So if I am putting more of myself into it, I'm spending more time, I'm giving my human touch, I'm taking care of that customer, that patient more, and it takes more time. I can't charge more. It really kind of cuts out my profitability. However, being in network is a choice and it's a choice that dentists have kind of thought is mandatory, but it's not. And at some point, especially if our schedule is full, we have more demand than we have capacity or schedule to see patients. We can go out of network, we can have our own pricing, and the dentists that follows what you're saying will be in a very strong position to do that because they are going to have customers that are coming to them because of that experience. You say there's some quotes on your site, you say customers turn customers into advocates, so what does that mean with Made with Love?

Seth Mattison: Well, it's such a great prompt because you sort of think about the experience that we create for everyone of leaving a satisfied customer leaves without a story to tell. Okay, great, so they don't go and complain. But it also wasn't, you didn't touch me in such a way that I have to go tell someone about that experience, which is essentially what advocacy is about of like I am actually invested in your success. You touched me in such a way, and by the way, I totally appreciate what you're saying about folks that are in network and we're at max capacity and the price is set and the day is scheduled and it is production line. It's like get through it as fast as possible, and I would just challenge everyone to be like, am I trying to get through my day? Am I trying to get through every customer, client, patient exchange?

Because in order to make that moment matter, sometimes it's not that it takes more time, it takes more intention. Scott, some of it is about intentionality of you didn't even look at the person. You didn't take just a second to actually drop and engage. You didn't create the systems around it to be able to know that When I jump in the chair, we've chatted about the fact that my wife is an interior designer and she's launching a new business and you're seeing me every six months. What's the update it takes? How much time does it take if you have the systems in place to have known, to have a profile on me to know two or three things to care enough to prepare two or three effective questions that I don't even know. I just think I sat down and I'm like, how in the world does Scott remember that about me? I think we overcomplicate what we think it has to be to be this exceptional thing to turn someone into an advocate. A lot of it really does. It's less about time and more about intentionality.

Scott Leune: And if we were to combine that, so if we were to do what you just said, we have an area of our chart where we've kind of written down facts, we've learned about someone about their life, so that can every time we see them come up with a conversation to continue that if we add to that kind of the systemized patient experience, they walk in and it smells a certain way, it looks a certain way, it sounds a certain way. They get a heated pillow, they get a weighted blanket, they get eye patches and they get headphones and they get all these perks. So the facility and the process is choreographed and then the conversation the human touch is prepared for with intentionality. The result of that would be that, as you said, they're going to leave with a story to tell, and now we've left ourselves on their impression. Did I say that correctly?

Seth Mattison: 1000%. And I love the language you use. We talk about that a lot of choreographing the experience and from a culture perspective, from an empowering your staff and your people perspective too of how do I help my people feel like this is more than just a job where they're just kind of going through the motions and part of it is to invite them into that process and helping them see the connection of how vital they are in that choreography, in that overall experience. They play a critical role. The second the person walks into our office, into our lobby and waiting area, all of that matters, and I love the things that you rattled off of the weighted, all of those experiences add up. It's a little touch point. And then I think, and you've probably talked about this a lot, I'm just sort of reflecting on my own experience sitting in the chair, my dentist as they're sort of going through the evaluation and the state of my teeth of coming across things.

And it's not just like we could do some work and I'm going to put everything that we could do we're going to do, I'm going to sign you up for it versus being like, you know what? We're going to keep an eye on this. I don't think we actually need to do, especially if you're not in pain right now, it's not. What that does is it's building trust. I don't feel like you're just trying to add more on bring me back into this experience of you're looking out for me, you're looking out for my wallet and you're looking out for my health. All of that adds up. That's a made with love experience in my opinion.

Scott Leune: So in an area where there's kind of this gray area of dentistry, I mean some things are broken, some things are healthy, but then there's this gray area. So what you're saying is point out the gray area, but let the patient know, Hey, we're just going to be here for you, but we're not going to push this into trying to do more. But on the flip side, if something's broken, we may also kind of with intentionality, invest in specific software. For example, AI on the x-rays that point out to the patient without you having to believe the dentist in a way, here's wrong or smile simulation software. So you can see if you did have some cosmetic work done, what your face looks like, smiling, that kind of technological experience also could build trust. What's standing out to me right now as I'm listening to you is when we do this, our patients are happier.

So our employees are getting this daily drip of happy moments with patients doing a level of work that is much higher than the norm in dentistry. That employee, if they work somewhere else, it's trying to just get through the day and the patient's just trying to get through the appointment and the doctor's just trying to get home. Right? Exactly right. Exactly. But in this company that you are, you're painting this vision here, we've got a practice where patients actually have a story to tell, and that was a positive kind of feedback loop to the employee who therefore is probably more proud of what we do and knows why we must do things this way and they're going to look at this job and say, well, this is the kind of place I want to work.

Seth Mattison: I love how you sort of frame that. So true. Patients trying to get through the experience, our teams, our staff are trying to get through the day, we're just trying to get home. I think it's such a beautiful, just prompt for self-reflection for everybody who's tuned into this conversation. I certainly have done this and that's some of my best coaches have sort of helped me think through that of how many times do you find yourself trying to just get through the day, how many times you just trying to get through the week, just trying to get through the month, and then you sort of reflect back of what is the goal of all of this? By the way, I'm just trying to get through life. I'm just trying to get to the exit because it ripples through every single experience. Now the reality is that as owner operators, as leaders, there's a lot of responsibility on us to be the genesis of all of this because I love the saying of the experience that our brands create for our patients. It mirrors the experience that we as leaders create for our people. And it's a great prompt of it's impossible to create exceptional patient experiences if our staffs are having a crappy experience, if they walk in, if the way we treat them, the way that they're developed and poured into, if we're not pouring into our people, how can we expect our people to pour into our patients period.

Scott Leune: This is such wisdom here because when we think about brand, then our brand is made up. Of course the marketing and the imagery of it, it's made up of this overall personality. People sense as a customer when they experience our business, but it's also made up of our team and they are basically continuing our intent with our brand and they could either do it in the way we want or they could be so disenfranchised in our company that they're actually hurting our ability to build this brand. So if I have this practice, you're kind of painting here, I have this intentional patient experience. I have this facility that's beautiful, these amenities for people, and my team autonomously knows how to do this choreographed motion with patients. So they're almost running the show every single time the patient gets on stage.

Seth Mattison: Totally.

Scott Leune: And the intent now is that our brand is made up of all of these ingredients, and our brand will also define in a way our dentistry. So if a patient sees a modern facility and has modern technology and the team was thoughtful and caring and attentive, then our dentistry is probably going to be modern and safe and good, right? A thousand

Seth Mattison: Percent

Scott Leune: Because we're struggling right now in dentistry finding and retaining team members, it's a massive problem. So are you saying then that I as a dentist might need to slow down and maybe not commoditize my dentistry on an in-network fee schedule, but have control so I can then be more intentional about the people side of what we do? Did I say that correctly?

Seth Mattison: Yeah, I think it's a beautiful prompt. I get the appeal of the alternative path, and I'm certainly not trying to push some hard advice here, but I do think it's worthy of deep consideration. You are only going to in this industry, in this business, people still matter. You're only going to be able to grow to the extent that you're able to attract, retain, and develop and grow the best people. And the truth is your greatest recruiting asset are your existing people. That ripple effect, just without a doubt. Yes, there's other strategies and I will say, and you're probably going to have these great conversations. I think recruiting is where we're going to see some of the richest low hanging fruit with AI early on. There's already huge efficiency that we can get from a recruiting standpoint. Obviously you got to go down the talent pipeline and get 'em into the schools to grow 'em up. But I'll just give one really practical frame before we kind of get close to the close around how you help bring out the best in your people. And it really comes back to this idea of development. We talk a lot about this idea of PPFs, which are personal, professional, and financial goals. This is not overly complicated, but it shocks me how many small to mid-size operators do not do or think about this with their people. So every single one of my team members needs to have a PPF, personal, professional and financial goals identified, laid out, articulated. And I'm in those conversations and sometimes people will say, I get the professional goals, but personal and financial, I don't know that I feel comfortable being in those conversations with my people. And I'll always ask, have you ever had someone leave you for because of money? You're like, well, yes. Okay, great. So you're already in those conversations whether you want to be or not. Isn't it better to understand and know where that person is trying to go financially in their life, especially if they're a younger generation trying to understand expectations? Where are they trying to go? And the best thing I would say the most servant leader, heart led leaders that I work with understand the vision that people have for their life where they're trying to go. Or you get people who nobody's ever helped them articulate a vision of where they're trying to go in their life. What do you want to build? What do you want to create? Where do you want to take your career? And being selfless enough to recognize that where they're trying to go, you might not be able to scale your business fast enough to help them expand into it.

Although I will say that's a part of our responsibility. You have to grow your practice to create opportunity for your people to be able to continue to grow. But if you don't, it's to be able to be selfless enough to say, we're going to build something together for as long as we can. And when you're ready to take the next step, I'm going to help make sure you go on to someplace great and you keep them in your ecosystem of cheering for and developing. And I think a great definition of a leader is what's the legacy of all of the people that have come in contact with you, even if they're no longer in your practice? You look out at this incredible network of leaders that you have developed and grown because you have been pouring into those people. So my prompt to you is who are you pouring into? Do I have personal, professional and financial goals identified for every single one of my team members?

Scott Leune: So in the weeds then I might have this kind of annual process with each individual person says, Hey, let's define your personal, professional and financial goals. And then I might meet with them quarterly once a quarter to kind of check in and see how those things are going. So maybe their professional goal is that they want to learn these new clinical skills, maybe their financial goal. I can find a path for them to achieve through our office bonus plan. Maybe their personal goal involves I can help them with that if I can give them time. Right?

Seth Mattison: Totally.

Scott Leune: And so does that sound in alignment with what you're saying? Would that framework work

Seth Mattison: A thousand percent? So the prompt here is a lot of us for those, I find folks that do it, it's like, oh, it's the annual review. It's the periodic, it's systems process routine. You talked about that on a lot of different fronts of our operations. The same thing has to be true with our people of like, and I get we're busy, but if it's a five minute check-in weekly, a drop in, what were we working on this week? What did you do from a development standpoint this week? What progress you're making towards your goals? What can I help you with? If I'm not just doing a five minute touch base, I'm locked in with people, I'm fully present. It's just again, it's communicating this intentionality of my success, our practice's success is predicated on your success. We only grow to the extent that you grow.

And so we are committed to growth here and I am committed to your growth and we're on that path together. And more than anything, Scott, I just find is first and foremost, I think people would be shocked how many of our employees, nobody's even asked them these questions before, owner operators we're kind of wired for this stuff, but a lot of times nobody's challenged them of personal and professional goals. What do you want to build and do? Even on the personal front, you want to run a marathon, you want to take an incredible trip, you want to be able to bring your mom who's never traveled to Europe before. Great, let's talk about how we make that happen and we're checking in every week on making progress. Be the coach for your people that maybe you wished you would've had early on in your career.

Scott Leune: And man, that is made with love, that is loving our people almost like we would want to coach our children and our friends in the same way. Our family that is loving patience to be thoughtful about their experiences and about just investing and being intentional about how we impact them.

Seth Mattison: This is actually how the whole theme of love came into being in my practice in 2018. It just sort of organically came out. A leader came on stage to introduce me for an event and he sort of made an off the cuff kind of flippant comment. I don't remember what the prompt was, but he essentially said, and I don't really like people, and everybody sort laughed in the room and it just didn't sit right with me. And when I came on stage, I didn't say it to attack him, but it came out of my mouth as a challenge. And this goes back to what you were just saying, and this is the way to close of, I really believe today that you can't be a leader unless you love people.

And that might sound simple, but I think it's a beautiful prompt of and loving people doesn't mean that we don't carry incredibly high standards, that we don't set expectations that it doesn't mean sometimes we have to let people go. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is send someone onto their next adventure, but it is the gift opportunity and responsibility of being a caretaker and a steward of other human beings as we bring them in their practice. If we're going to ask them to help us scale and grow our practice, we owe it to them to pour back into 'em. It's really been an honor and a privilege, Scott, to get to share this time and have this conversation with you.

Scott Leune: Yeah, that someone I would trust, that's someone that would inspire me, that would influence me. That's someone I would be loyal to. And that's what I think we all want as leaders, man, Seth Mattison, this has been incredible. I hope we can cross paths again. Maybe we could dive into one of these things deeper in the future. I just really hope that happens. This was very giving of you to our industry to say these things and give us this wisdom. Seth Mattison.com. You're also on Instagram Made with Love. God, I hope I see you in dentistry on a stage. There's a lot of events in dentistry as you've already know, so I hope we can hope we can be on the stage together as well. Any last words before we wrap this up?

Seth Mattison: Just I appreciate the opportunity individual prompt for all of us as leaders. When was the last time you left a part of yourself in something? When was the last time you made something with love? And I think if we do that, I think we just unlock unbelievable potential and opportunity in our practices and our people. Thanks for the conversation, Scott.

Scott Leune: Awesome man. Seth Mattison, thank you so much. So now for the dental download, what would a cool episode made with love? So let's tie it to dentistry. What can this mean for us? He said that we need to leave a part of ourself in the thing, leave a part of ourself, whether that's leaving a part of ourself in the conversation with a patient or in the dentistry we do or in the conversation with our team member or even in their career, we need to leave a part of ourselves and what does that mean? How do we do that? If we break this into patients versus employees, two different categories. On the patient side, he spoke about being thoughtful, about having a profile for every patient where we record a couple personal things about them so that when they come in, we're continuing a conversation about that patient, about their life, our relationship with them. Seeing them every six months is one long conversation, one thoughtful conversation about caring for them and what's happening to them. We also talk about on the patient side, having a facility, having patient amenities that are also improving the patient experience. He actually used the phrase, I wrote it down here, he used the phrase touchpoint. All of these experiences are touchpoints that add up and what do they need to add up to? They need to add up to patients leaving our practice with a story to tell. So let's get a little granular on this. What story could they tell? They could tell a story about how modern and how beautiful the practice is. They could tell a story about how comfortable the patient experience was because of all these amenities that we put in. They could talk about how nice and caring our employee like our hygienist was because the hygienist took the time to talk to the patient about their life or the hygienist took the time to always do things in a gentle way or to ask the patient throughout the appointment if they were comfortable, if there was anything else we could do.

They could tell a story about the doctor, about how the doctor had a great bedside manner. What does that mean? That really means asking the patient about themselves and validating their concerns, repeating back to them what they've said, just being very thoughtful about how we speak to that patient. Every employee has a moment where they can leave their positive mark on this patient and when those moments add up, we have a story to tell. Now, I kind of alluded a bit or I spoke about some of us are in this PPO hellhole of a practice where our schedule's full of set fee, controlled fee dentistry, and the only way to have more success sometimes feels like we just have to cut corners and go faster and cram more people in. And I kind started this challenge on this episode that said, Hey, if we take the time to be thoughtful, and he said it doesn't even have to take that much time, but if we take the time to be thoughtful in our experience, we take the time to be thoughtful about our facilit and the amenities and the profile and the words and the conversation we have with a patient so that we leave a mark where they leave with a story to tell.

If we take that time, we will recruit more patients like them, more patients that want those experiences, and we will be able to drop insurances over time as we always intended so that we can deliver a higher service at a very fair fee, a fee that is not ti down and handcuffed down to a low PPO level. And we also talked about the employee side of this and the employee side of leaving our mark, giving love to them in a professional level was he talked about the personal, professional and financial goals of an employee that we need to know what that is. As a dental entrepreneur, we need to go to our team and maybe once a year we have a formal process of defining personal professional financial goals with that one employee and maybe once a quarter we have a formal meeting about it as well. How are things going on the personal goals, professional goals of financial goals, and then maybe we even take it down to just a check-in a weekly or monthly check-in about these specific things. It is our responsibility. We are stewards of our employees' careers in a way we are impacting their lives personally, professionally, and financially, and we need to take it upon ourselves to be invested into those results. So personal goals might be I want to run a marathon as he said, or I want to get in shape or I want to be able to visit Europe for the first time. Professional goals might be, I really want to learn how to use a laser. I want to do facial aesthetics procedure. I want to learn how to assist on an all in four case. Financial goals might be I really like to start saving money, maybe saving an extra thousand dollars a month or so.

Those types of goals, we need to find a way to align with them so maybe we can have a budget for that. Maybe we have a budget to help with the personal goals. Maybe if someone's personal goals get in shape, we pay for their membership, maybe we have a continuing education plan for the professional goals. If someone wants to learn facial aesthetics, we go plan and schedule that out so that over the next two years they are going to take four different facial aesthetics courses so we can help them achieve their professional goals. Financial goals can be our bonus plan, our bonus plan, and of course we could help them. We could have our office bonus plan that enables us to share our profits when there are excess profits and the sharing of profits could go into their financial goals. This all builds kind of an environment where when we treat patients and employees with this business love, we end up having a business that retains patients and retains employees and we have happy moments with patients and happy moments with employees and it's led by a leader who has thoughtfully invested into the patient relationship and into the employee relationship.

He spoke about what's your legacy with your previous employees? Have we treated our employees with love so that even if for whatever reason they could no longer be working for us or with us, they have an immense amount of respect and positivity when they think about us and their time and our company. That is kind of a minimum standard we need to achieve. And to do that, we have to take time. We have to get on a schedule. These things that we need to do. So we need to meet with our people over these certain things. We need to talk to our patients about those other things. We have to do, have to have the time set aside to do it, and those things will help us build our culture. Culture meaning what our employees see and feel and it'll help us build our brand, meaning our patients will see and feel that.

And ultimately, if our brand and our culture are aligned and they are serving our patients and our employees with these positive experiences, these thoughtful moments of love, of business love, then we are going to end up not just successful, but we're going to end up maybe proud of what we're building. We're going to end up with less burnout, more energy, hopefully more money, more trust, more trust in our team and they will trust me more, maybe even more autonomy with our team. We're going to end up maybe in the practice we've always wished we had, but it's hard to do that if all we do is just cut teeth from sun up until sundown and we're just trying to cram more in. It's been a theme in my other episodes. I've just noticed over the last two decades in dentistry, this kind of assumption that we got to be faster, we got to do more dentistry, faster, cram more in, and I just see that as when we do more faster, we actually have less, we have less time, we have less energy. Ironically, we can have less money, we have less health, we have less patience, we have less kind of leadership effectiveness. We have less accountability when we just go faster and cram in more. So maybe health in business as a dental entrepreneur, as a CEO, maybe health in business says we're going to carve out a significant amount of time to definitely cut teeth to do our thing, to be that dentist or that professional, and that time needs to be efficient for sure. We don't want to be wasteful. We do want to use technology. We do want to find the fastest way to do things well, but in addition to carving out time for dentistry, we need to carve out a significant amount of time to run the company. We need to carve out time to serve our employees and we need to make sure that there is enough time within the patient experience that we can also thoughtfully serve them to the point they walk away with a story to tell.

Seth said, culture is everything we do and we show. Culture is everything we do and we show everything we do. Everything we show needs to be thoughtfully done, needs to be thoughtfully created. It needs to be focused on serving people. Otherwise, as Seth said, we end up in the black hole of commoditized mediocrity. What a cool phrase. Commoditized meaning we're just like everyone else. We're just the same. A crown's a crown, a dentist is a dentist, an employer's an employer that's commoditized. Mediocrity is the worst trap. It is barely good enough to sustain. Barely good enough to keep going is mediocrity, and we could end up doing that for the rest of our life. It's not success and it's not so painful that we have to change. It's the worst thing. It's barely good enough to keep doing so commoditized. Mediocrity is a horrible combination and that's why I call it the black hole of commoditized mediocrity.

What kind of practice I challenge you right now if you're listening to this, what kind of practice in the black hole of commoditized mediocrity, what does it look like? What does the lobby look like? What does the operatory look like? Black hole of commoditized mediocrity. What does the schedule look like? What kind of employees work there? What are those employees? What is the dentist like? What would the patient say about the dentist and their conversations with the dentist? What kind of technology are we or are we not using? What kind of fees does that practice have that's stuck in the black hole of commoditized mediocrity? I hope you're not describing your practice right now. I mean, I hope you're not describing where you work right now, but if you are, let this be a moment to recognize that a change might be needed and the change. I mean, there's so many ways to change a practice, of course, but maybe in the things we want to change, we need to identify the people things. How are we going to upgrade how we serve patients so that we're connecting with them on a personal level and they walk away with a story to tell? And how are we going to invest in our employees on the professional, on the financial and the personal side? Maybe that needs to be part of the change and in order for us to have the time to do it. Damnit, stop working from 8:00 AM until 5:30 PM How about you start at nine and you invest an hour a day into changing and growing and perfecting your company? How about you leave earlier so you can go pick up your kids? How about you stop taking every freaking insurance there is. How about we take time out of this black hole of commoditized mediocrity and use that time to build the practice we actually want to have in the life we actually want to have?

That's my challenge to you. I hope this episode got you thinking. Please subscribe and please leave a review. Do those things to help us keep this thing going. I hope we can keep it going and your help would help with that of course. Also, I think this is a great habit to have at the end of your day, end of your week, or while your workout, so please subscribe and listen to these episodes. We've got another one coming next week. And check out Seth Mattison, excuse me. Check out Seth Mattison. He was awesome to give his time to us and to give this wisdom, go to his website, read his book, look at Les videos. He is again one of the top 50 speakers in the world and it was a pleasure having him on our episode. Alright, I'll see you on the next episode on the Dental CEO podcast. My name is Scott Leune and I thank you for listening today.