Scott Leune: Welcome to another episode of the Dental CEO podcast. I'm your host, Scott Leune, and this is brought to you by dental marketing.com. I'm excited for this interview because as you know at the Dental CEO podcast, we talk about dental things and have episodes on dentistry itself, but we also try to come outside of dentistry and find really talented CEOs and entrepreneurs and people that give us a completely different perspective. In today's episode, we are speaking with Josh Linkner. Josh Linkner is the founder and CEO of five different tech companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He's a managing partner of a venture capital firm that's returned over a billion dollars to investors. He's helped launch and scale actually hundreds of startups. He also happens to be a very accomplished jazz guitarist. He has had over 2000 concerts. He's an author. You can learn more about him on josh linkner.com, but man, he's got an amazing resume. But more importantly than that, though, he's so thoughtful, well-spoken and intelligent and positive that this episode is bringing a ton of values and pearls. I guarantee it. So I hope you sit back, you listen and enjoy because Josh Linkner is awesome.

Welcome to the dental CEO podcast. I really appreciate you kind of giving your time for me to interview and for you to, in a way kind of give to the dental community. So thank you so much for that,

Josh Linkner: Scott. Great to be with you. Thank you.

Scott Leune: Before we kind of dive into some business questions, I thought I'd ask you a dental one. When you think of dentistry as an industry, like a business or just when you think about being a patient in dentistry or if you know any dentists, what's your thoughts about dentistry right now?

Josh Linkner: I think it's at an amazing time of transformation actually. As new technologies and new procedures emerge, I think it gives patients not the opportunity to look better, but to ultimately think about dentistry as a holistic part of their overall health. It's funny, I work with a personalized doc and every year we do a whole bunch of screens, all kinds of cancer screening and all that to stay ahead of the curve. One of the tests that he does is a mouth bacteria test, and so I recently did this. He's like, Hey man, you have an elevated bacteria you probably are experiencing no discomfort. No, I didn't know anything. Anyway, went to a specialized dentistry professional and took care of that. It was a pretty simple process, a couple of intensive deep cleans with some rinse, and I was able to get ahead of that. As I learned about that, I was kind of blown away that the impact that type of problem can have on long-term health, far beyond the mouth. And so to me as I start to think about dentistry, dentistry, it's not just clean your teeth in the old school way, but it's really looking at a much more holistic view of that area of the body and how it affects overall health.

Scott Leune: I just interviewed Daymond John from the Shark Tank and he said something very similar to you as well. This whole kind of holistic approach and being a patient in a dental office doesn't just have to be about the dentistry of decades ago, but now we're taking a more tech enabled approach as well to medicine and the dental office in that visit is an opportunity to screen for those types of things as well. I love that answer. Thank you for saying that. Now I'd like to dive into some business stuff and some stuff about you, and of course we did the intro on you already, so I don't want to waste our time with just kind of telling your story. You might do so often when people interview you, but I want to ask you some different types of questions. The first one here is if your life is laid out in these chapters, we think about past chapters, but if we think about this chapter, this next chapter, for you personally, what would the title of that chapter be? What's it about? What are you doing? What are you doing right now?

Josh Linkner: Yeah, thanks for asking. It's funny, every year I have a theme of the year instead of a New Year's resolution, I have a theme. Last year was velocity, which is the intersection of speed and direction, and I built my whole approach to the year around that theme. This year. My theme, and I think to answer your question is probably the chapter it transcends just this year is transcend. And when I think about transcend, I've had some great success, great luck to enable that success really. And so now I'm in a phase of life. I'm sort of in my early fifties, which is how do I continue to have the work that I'm doing transcend to transcend the impact that I'm having on others and really just start thinking about more of a legacy, not only, it's funny, a friend of mine said it very well, at one point in your career you shift from something to prove to something, to give something to prove to something. Now it's something to give. I feel like in this phase of transcendence, it's really more around something to give.

Scott Leune: Wow, something to prove then to something to give. That is an awesome quote. I'm writing it down right now. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. So what's a piece of advice that you constantly catch yourself, giving people, whether it's colleagues or leaders of companies you're working in or investing in, or is there something like that, a piece of advice or a series of things with a philosophy that you just catch yourself continuing to give others?

Josh Linkner: Yeah, a few things actually. One of 'em is start before you're ready and very often when people see an opportunity or a challenge, instead of going after it with vigor, they pause and maybe they're waiting for ideal conditions or a perfect game plan, which never occurs, and so we end up either waiting too long or not starting at all. I like this notion of just thrusting yourself in motion and not even if you can't see the finish line, you kind of navigate and find a way as you go. So one thought is start before you're ready. The other one is a phrase called I like to say, break it to fix it. And many people often use that phrase, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. By the way, that's terrible advice. I don't know who came up with that. That's a really bad piece of advice.

Think of what that's saying. That's saying you're going to win until a system fails before even considering an upgrade. That's nonsense. I think we owe it to ourselves, our patients, our communities to do better, which is to proactively examine stuff which might be looking fine on the surface, and I'd say, is there a better way? Can I improve it even marginally? And so the idea of being in a constant phase of reinvention rather than sort of blindly clinging to conventional wisdom or the processes of the past I think is really helpful and instructive. So we stay ahead of disruption rather than false victim to it. The last one I'll just say quickly is a phrase that I like to say called seek the unexpected. Very often people gravitate to the tried and true. What's everybody else doing in the dental industry? I'll just do that. And my loving prompt here is that maybe you can push your creative boundaries a bit and find that unexpected, unorthodox, even weird idea that might be really dramatically better and might help us stand out when patients and grow our practices.

Scott Leune: Man, I love these. So this kind of leads me so the start before you're ready, this leads me to a question that I was going to ask you. In dentistry, there's a lot of very, very well educated, very analytical people that they want to be entrepreneurs, they want to be wealthy, but they're kind of stuck in this, the kind of trap of mediocrity they're making kind of enough and they have a job that's good enough to keep, but they really want more and they tend to overthink and overanalyze. What would you say to, let's say a dentist that's stuck in mediocrity and they've talked and dreamed about doing something big, opening their own group of offices, but they're just not moving forward. What might you say to someone like that?

Josh Linkner: Yeah, great question. I think what you're talking about is sort of building the creative confidence to move forward. One thing I'd say is that very often, especially high achievers, like folks who are dentists are sort of the emerge in the perfectionism trap. They think they have to be perfect. They can never make a mistake. They have to be the smartest person in the room all the time. And what I've learned from working with CEOs around the world, billionaires, celebrity entrepreneurs, even people in the arts like Grammy award-winning musicians, is that they take a little different approach. They recognize that setbacks and stumbles are part of the process, that you're not going to actually truly innovate unless you make a mistake here and there. So instead of thinking win or lose, it's more like win or learn. And so when the inevitable setback happens, it's not gutting.

You're not humiliated and ashamed. You're like, oh, that's interesting data. What can I do differently next time? And so the prompt is that instead of feeling like you have to be perfect, which is a giant scary overwhelming vibe to walk into a room of the unknown, knowing that you're going to come out strong on the other side, but not because you're going to get it all right, you're going to know how to recover. And so I think about that as creative confidence where you're able to pursue something new. It might feel a little scary. Again, you're not going to be perfect. Something bad will happen, you'll make a mistake, hopefully not on a patient, but maybe in the business side of it, but then you'll figure it out. You'll find a way as you go through sort of creativity and tenacity. So that would be one thing.

I'd say the other thing is to anchor into your broader purpose, which is it'd be one thing if we had some technology to make french fries crispier and that would help obese kids become more obese. That might be profitable, but it certainly wouldn't be helping humanity. The great work that's done in the dental industry is the opposite of that. So the product itself helps people by definition we're healers. And so in that regard, the bigger a practice gets, the more good we're doing in the world. And I think if we can align with that purpose coupled with a drive for commercial success coupled with the idea that we don't have to be perfect, but we're going to recover quickly, all those things come together and I think it gives us the boost that we need to pursue the bigger dream rather than sort of accepting things as they are.

Scott Leune: Yeah, so when you were talking about this trap of perfectionism, and I'm looking at you and I see guitars behind you, and I can't help but think of, I'm picturing this young jazz musician that is put on stage with some guys that can play and he's thrown a sheet of charts and now he's expected to improvise with those guys and he doesn't know where he is going to go, but he's anchored into the courts, he knows the framework, we've got the rhythm, we've got the feel and the style of the song, and we've got each other talking to each other musically. And it doesn't have to be perfect, but it's this confident creativity. You said where he goes and he's going to find his way in that moment. If he was expecting perfectionism, he may be too scared to even strum or blow that next note. I just can't help but think of that analogy. I'd like to talk about that a little though. Of course you've got this passion of music and you've been heavily involved since a young age in playing and you've played countless times with countless musicians. Do you see any connections between the success you've had on the business side with the success that you've created on the musical side?

Josh Linkner: Thank you for asking that 100%. And actually jazz music was a wonderful teacher. Me, I basically got my MBA playing in jazz because what jazz musicians do, when you take the notes and musical instruments out of the picture, what do you do? You're solving problems in the face of ambiguity and having to be an active listener to drive better outcomes. You're constantly navigating uncertainty and change. You are bouncing back quickly from setbacks from which there are many, and ultimately you're improvising to deliver the best possible outcomes. That is exactly what we do in business and certainly as entrepreneurs, if you're building a dental practice, exactly. The problem is that most of us are trained as a classical musician, which is play the notes exactly as Mozart intended issue here is that we don't live in that world anymore. There's not a checklist of success, there's not a proven game plan.

Just follow these steps and you're going to win it. We have to play jazz. The world's too complex, too volatile, too much uncertainty and change. And so really what the work of businesses is just like jazz, you're improvising, your navigating, it's real time. And again, that confidence is not from thinking you're going to make zero mistakes. Every concert I've performed almost 2000 concerts at this point. I've botched a bunch of stuff. So back to that, you say, I'm a young musician with a bunch of senior people getting a chart thrown at me. That's exactly what happens. And you know what? I made a bunch of mistakes. Even 40 years later, I still make mistakes. And so it's really how do you recover from those mistakes? How do you get back in the groove and how do you push your creative boundaries? Also, I'll say in jazz, if I go out there and play it safe and just play only what I know, take no responsible risks, no one wants to hire me, that's boring.

On the other hand, in jazz, if I play a bad clunker, like a really bad note, you play it twice more and call it art. Everything is fine. The reason I know it's a little playful is that the cultural dynamics of a jazz combo encourage responsible risk taking the cultural dynamics that we were mostly trained in encourages no responsible risk taking. And so I think we have to do as medical professionals and business leaders alike, is to give ourselves a little space, maybe don't take radical risks, don't risk a patient's life. Obviously don't risk your entire practice, obviously, but it's making those small little risks, the little experiments, little prototypes, little bets. And what that does is it allows us to experiment and drive progress without the corresponding overwhelming scary risk. And so that's the thing that we have to navigate. But probably I think for all of us, we can step a little bit more into the jazz musician inside of us.

Scott Leune: Yeah, I love the analogy. It's like dentists have been trained actually on the facts, on the best practices. We call 'em the best practices, the classical music of what to do. Yet as an entrepreneur, we have to play this jazz and we hit that flat five note on accident and it hit it again, and then the piano player hits it again and suddenly we roll to the five. And it seems like we were just creating tension to get where we needed to go, and it sounded amazing. And that adjustment, I think is the key as entrepreneurship is this windy path. And many times the lessons on that path lead us to a whole different spot than where we thought we were going to go.

Josh Linkner: Building on that too, obviously you have some musical understandings, which is really very cool to me. Sometimes that weird mistake turns out to be a happy mistake, not a sad mistake. A lot of the best inventions in the universe, things that we now celebrate as universal truths, were born out of a happy mistake. And so mistakes don't even have to be bad sometimes it helps you discover something new. I like to say mistakes are the portals of discovery.

Scott Leune: Oh, I love that. Well, I've got a different kind of question for you. You work with a lot of successful leaders. For example, in your story, you've delivered back over a billion dollars to investors from the venture capital side of your life and you've helped start and CEO of different tech companies. When you're working with other successful leaders, people that you respect, you admire, there are some great minds in the room. What do they call your superpower? So when you're at that room and they're thankful you're there because of what is that superpower that they feel you bring to the table?

Josh Linkner: It actually gets back to our previous paragraph or two, which is jazz. I play jazz, and so I think I'm pretty good at listening, so I'll listen both for what's said and what's not said. I can sometimes find and identify the white space of opportunity that others don't see, and I'm usually want to toss over it an unexpected or an oddball idea. So if you're in a room with a bunch of other folks, they might come up with the six or seven obvious approaches, and I might come up with a ninth one, which is the oddball one, but sometimes those oddball ones are the most effective ever. So I think that's what they appreciate for me, I'm able to sort of solve problems and navigate uncertainty in a rather unique and creative way. That all sounds very boastful. By the way, I will say this, all of us have that capacity.

I've been researching human creativity now for 20 plus years. The research is crystal clear that we are born creative, that's our natural state. We're hardwired to think the way I described. So it's not that I'm some creative guru or something, I just develop those skills a little bit more. And so the way to think about creativity is not that you're born with it or you're not. The way to think about it is that it's a muscle that can be built. And so even a little bit of exercise, couple minutes a day on it starts to build that creative muscle, which in turn leads to the ideas that are so noteworthy.

Scott Leune: Wow. Well, one thing you said earlier was break it to fix it. When I talked to entrepreneurs, I talk about how the fact that when we grow in our career or grow in our company as we're maybe scaling something, we outgrow ourselves, we have to break and throw away the old version of ourselves and rebuild it with these Lego pieces of who we are to create something new. When you think about your personal journey, whether it's as an entrepreneur or a CEO or angel investor, what are some moments you found that you had to kind of personally mature, you had to break the old way and become the new version of yourself?

Josh Linkner: I love that question. It's so funny you say that. I had a phrase, I still say it all the time. I've said this phrase hundreds, hundreds of times so much that every time I kept saying it, my folks would roll their eyes and I kept saying it anyway, the phrase is simply this, someday a company will come along and put us out of business. It might as well be us. I think the same is true for us as individuals. Someday a person will come put us, you and me out of business, so it might as well be us. So I look at it really as a series of ongoing reinventions. It's a work in process of course, but think, can I put the Josh of six months ago out of business with the new version? And so then you start future casting. What does the new version of you look like?

It doesn't have to be impossible. It doesn't mean like, oh, you're going to be an ADON with a six pack in a day, but what does the next version of you look like? And then what incremental changes might you make to help bring that new version to life? So in my career, to answer your question, I've had some big ones. I went from jazz musician to entrepreneur, from entrepreneur to venture capital investor, from entrepreneur to author to professional keynote speaker. And so I've done a couple big ones, but I'm actually more excited about the small ones, which is those little adjustments that we make on an ongoing basis. One of my books is called The Road to Reinvention. I really studied how people reinvent, and of course we celebrate and notice the big stuff, but it's the little stuff that's really the fuel of it.

So you might reimagine the way you hold your Monday morning staff meeting or the way that you word an email. And so these are little, think about them as micro reinventions, not macro reinventions. I think there's so much utility that because it's way less risky, it doesn't feel overwhelming, and any of us can do that. So instead of thinking like, Hey, once a decade I'm going to complete the reinvent and then do nothing in between. How about once a month they're going to make two small changes, and those small changes really lead up, in my opinion, to large scale reinvent.

Scott Leune: Yeah, the quote, small hinges can swing big doors. That comes to my mind, right? With these small, small changes sometimes my wife and I have had five children together and we've been married 22 years right now, and our little small change was we're going to go on two date nights a week and we're going to even force it even if we're upset with each other or we're tired, even it has to be a Sunday, we're doing it. A tiny little change that kind of swung a big door I think in our marriage. Another question, we were talking about creativity, but when I think back to music and jazz specifically to be at our best or top of our game with creativity in improvising, for example, we have to have all that discipline and work before that, learning the scales, the arpeggios, transcribing other people's solos and understanding history and musical theater, a lot of discipline there. How do you view discipline, whether it's in business, whether it's in your personal life, trying to also of course have a focus of that while you're busy in business? Where does discipline come into the picture?

Josh Linkner: Yeah, great question. I think discipline is much more about consistency than it is about Herculean effort. You've heard the story, someone goes to the gym, they're committed to making a change, they work out for three hours, they kill themselves and they don't go back for six months. It was so painful. That's not the way to get in shape, and that's not the way to drive business, of course. So to me, discipline, I like to think about it in small births rather than giant leaps. So for example, you back to music, not now a little bit more it's experience, but even if someone is learning the guitar and they practice 15 minutes a day, I'd much rather than practice 15 minutes a day than four hours one day and then zero the rest of the week. And so the idea behind it for all of us is carve out little blocks for discipline.

If that discipline is listening to your podcast, for example, which is an incredible opportunity for people to learn and grow, do that once a week. That's an intentional way to grow and learn and thrive. So maybe you pick a couple high value levers of discipline and it doesn't have to be grind it out and kill yourself and burn it into the ground for 65 hours a week. No, not at all. Look for small, high effective bursts. Think about minimum, minimum viable dose sort of discipline because the reason I like that better is you're more likely to stick to it and be consistent.

Scott Leune: Yeah. You mentioned burnout and it reminded me of a question I sometimes ask in dentistry. Now, owner dentists, they kind of have to be the guy that owns the restaurant and the guy that cooks and makes every dish until they're able to leverage time and leverage of the people and maybe build a large organization and scale in a different way. But that's not what a lot of people want to do. They don't want to scale that way. They really just want to solve some of the struggles, mediocre profits, hard days, employee issues, ups and downs and their professional life stealing away time from their health or time from their personal life. And they're sitting here, they're like, I just wish I had more money with less work and I was happier. When I describe this scenario to you, what are some things that come to mind or what might you say to someone that is in this kind of situation?

Josh Linkner: Yeah, that's a really thoughtful question. I think a few things. One is in that case, you're the product and the phrase don't break, the product comes to mind. And so I think it's that giving yourself a little sleep or a little bit of exercise isn't robbing from your business. Quite the opposite. It's investing in your business and so if you're burnt out and comped, you're just not going to be an effective, you're going to stay in that state forever. And so I think it's taking that longer term view and giving yourself rest. And so you're the product, you're functioning with it. The next thing is it could be inspiring if you feel like you're stuck in that I'm going to be doing this for the next 25 years. That's overwhelming and awful. Do you remember in the karate kid wax on wax off and you're painting the fence?

And those were motions to build muscle memory that ultimately unlocked the character's ability to win championships. If you're in that earlier stage where you're everything, it's solo practitioner, you sweep the floors and all that, think about that. Instead of drudgery as wax on, wax off, that you are learning patterns, you're getting a close front row seat to the business that's going to be in instructive for you later on. And when you're overseeing 37 practice office or office practice. So the idea behind it is instead of looking at the drudgery as drudgery, you look at it as muscle memory. You're building skills. And then the other thing I'll say is that the growth often isn't a straight line often. So there are points where there's a step function. So let's say the next step function for you, I'm just making this up, is to hire an office manager so that office manager isn't on board.

Now your cost basis is zero. The minute you hire that office manager, your cost basis is $90,000 a year or whatever the number is. So that's not gradual, it's on or off. So the question you might think is, if I have to give it a burst, if I have to give it a push, how can I get to the point where I can make that step function and then relieve some of the burden? It's like a release valve by bringing this new person in. And so when you think about that, again, it makes it feel less burdensome because you're like, okay, in four months I'm going to be able to hire this person. So I don't mind hustling for four months as long as it's not four years or 40 years.

Scott Leune: Yeah. Wow. What an awesome answer. Thank you for that. I'm curious, as we talk about burnout, as we talk about the stresses that can happen as we're building our organization, I think of boundaries. How do you look at boundaries? Do you have boundaries that you've put into your life that help you decide when to say yes, when to say no, whether it's on the personal side or whether it's on, are you going to be investing in this next potential company? How do you think of boundaries?

Josh Linkner: Well, I'm very good at that in the business. I'm really lousy at it for myself, to be honest. I can tell you the right answer, but it's easier said than done. The thing is, and I keep telling myself this, every time you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else. So for me, it's very easy to say yes and very hard to say no, some friend of a friend wants an hour of my time or whatever. But what that means is I'm saying no to an hour with my kids or I'm saying no to an hour growing one of my businesses. And so I think it's helpful, the barometer to say, okay, by saying yes to one thing, what am I saying? No to second, the thing is that in prioritization, it is always helpful to really say what matters most. I think Warren Buffet was really good at saying this, what are the three things that are most important to you?

And recognize that your biggest source of long-term happiness and success is doubling down on those three things. And the biggest detractor, it's not thing number 30, which you already know isn't important. It's the thing number four through 10 because the things that seem important but aren't the most important are often the biggest pitfalls, the biggest traps. And so maybe it's as simple as making a list. What are the four or five things or three things that are the most important to you, family, health practice, whatever those three things are. And then when the inevitable invitation comes from number four or number six, maybe those are the ones we proactively and intentionally say no to. Not because we're a bad human being, not because we don't care, we care so much, but we care more about the higher priority items than the lower ones. In business, for me, it's much easier because you can systematize it When we make an investment and we have all kinds of checklists, and that's actually an easier process. That's almost the way you would triage a patient in the hospital. It's a little bit more prescriptive, but for personal time, that's the hardest for me and I would guess the hardest for many listeners.

Scott Leune: Yeah. Okay. Let's switch a little bit to the financial side here. So dentistry as an industry is bigger than the NBA and the NFL combined, and it's pretty, I mean, maybe only 25% or so has been consolidated into some sort of corporate structure. And so there's a lot of opportunity here for an entrepreneurial dentist, young or older to say, you know what? I want to really make something big. I want to either build a big group of locations or I want to buy and duct tape 'em all together and then professionalize them and go to scale with that. Or maybe I want to build a company like use AI to analyze x-rays and find and try to get that out to the industry. You're on the venture capital side and you focus heavily on tech companies. What are your thoughts when you hear me describe some of this stuff from the business standpoint, from the investor standpoint, what do you hear? What interests you, what do you see?

Josh Linkner: Well, a couple things. For many years of my life, I would always think that big is better, and now I know that better is better. And so someone can have a wildly successful practice that makes tons of money and serves patients and have a beautiful harmonious life and existence on this planet. And it doesn't mean you have to have 875 offices that are working 24 7. So again, I would just say that set a goal that is fulfilling and enriching on all dimensions, but it doesn't have to just be going after big. Back to your question, the way I look at it from an investor standpoint is where can you create asymmetric leverage? And so if a dentistry practice, for example, I'm just making this up, I don't know the intimacies of it, but let's say a 10 person office between support staff and docs is able to drive again, just making this up 3 million of revenue a year.

So I would say, what could you change or do such that same office of 10 people could generate three x the revenue or 13 x the revenue. So again, back to big isn't just better, better is better. And so for me, it's like, okay, are there ways to inject technology to the practice? You mentioned using AI for example, as a copilot or for diagnostic reasons. Is there ways to create more efficiency, not by making patients wait longer, by the way, please don't do that, but by finding ways to streamline the practice, are there ways to drive scale that are not human-based, just throw more bodies at it, but maybe you're throwing more technology at it or reduce costs. Right now, let's say the cost to acquire a new patient is a thousand dollars a patient. What if you could do it for a hundred? And so that's how I would look at it from an investor.

It's not so much as somebody who's doing the same thing. More of it, it's more like, how can you grow or create more better results using leverage and therefore creating an asymmetric return. And then the next question is, once you do it in one small way, can that scale? So if you could do that in one practice in Des Moines, Iowa, can you do that a second practice in Wichita? If you could do it in Wichita, can you do it in San Diego? And so that's how I think about my investor mind starts to think is look for asymmetric growth opportunities or leverage opportunities. And the second question is can you scale it pretty efficiently?

Scott Leune: Yeah, you're reminding me of actually our story in helping build and manage now a couple thousand practices. We found early on that we could reduce costs in a thoughtful way that adds about 10% to our EBITDA margin. So instead of being a 10% margin, we're 20% margin. And then we were able to double the revenue very consistently from normal, and we ended up with this kind of five x profit in the organizations that we then went nationwide with. And these are not practices that we own. These are just dentists, private dentists that are being coached by us. So I see a lot of similarities in that. That leads me to this next question. So frustrating to me as one thing I do is I educate, I teach people how to do this, but what's so frustrating to me is all the people that don't decide to learn, they never show up to learn at your scale. You are just a thousand x bigger in many ways than the listener of this podcast, but how do you view at that view, how do you look at learning at whether it's simple learning, okay, I've got a company in our portfolio and I want to learn how they generate new customers to very complex learning and dealing with structures of capital raise and things like that. How do you view just this concept of learning even someone at your level?

Josh Linkner: Well, that interesting. I'm not higher than anyone else. We're all doing our best and walking on the path together. But I will say that learning to me is fundamental to success and not learning. Like, hey, 30 years ago when I was in college learning, learning every day, kind of learning, continuous learning. In software, we talk about if you want to change the outputs, you got to change the inputs. In a knowledge worker environment, the inputs are learning. So if you crave any different kind of output, learning is the fuel, but it's even more profound than that because the world is changing so dramatically, so quickly that what you learned. It's not like if I don't learn, I can just do what I'm doing and I'll stay the same. If you don't learn, what's going to happen is you're going to start to decline. There's a great quote, old quote by Jack Welsh former CEO of General Electric.

If the rate of change on the outside is greater than the rate of change on the inside, the end is near. And that's pretty dramatic, but I think real that can be instructive as much we were talking earlier about putting yourself out of business, that's the way you do it is constant learning. Now, first of all, I love to learn. So I'd say make learning fun for me. The way when I read physically I do because I like to read, but I get tired sometimes. So i's some audio books all the time. I watch Ted Talks, I watch videos, I have conversations, but I love learning. So if you can have a love affair with learning instead of thinking about it as a chore, that would be helpful. The other thing too is that when you think about how do I make a change and be successful, the best way to boost your odds is to have more insights, more information, more learning.

And so think about learning is not just an optional thing, but it fortifies the probability of your future success. The last thing I'll say is you mentioned many folks just are uncomfortable with change. One thing I've learned, man in 35 years in business is that too often people overestimate the risk of trying something new, but they underestimate the risk of standing still, and they think they're mistakenly that the status quo is a really safe thing. But turns out that's actually one of the riskiest states of all like, how's Pan Airlines doing these days? How's Oldsmobile's business? What happened? These stood still. And so I think we owe it to ourselves, our patients, and our communities to fuel growth and progress and change the inputs and that input is continuous learning.

Scott Leune: Wow, what an awesome quote. We overestimate the risk of new underestimate the risk of staying still. That could even apply to a young dentist out five years working in a job, in a practice that they're not proud of. It doesn't represent what they want to do or stand for. Their income isn't great, but it's good enough and the risk of staying still in that is dramatic to their life, and they may be overestimating the risk of betting on themselves, on learning how to then do something for themselves. I love it. I want to switch a little bit. So you've got the Finding a Way framework. I'd love for you to introduce what that is or what that means. What is this? Finding a way framework?

Josh Linkner: Over the years, I realized I had an insight of what people who are leaders' real job is. And I came up with a philosophy, which I just call find a way. Find a way is sort of the intersection of ingenuity and resolve. It's a deep commitment to get into the outcomes that you crave, but it's knowing that you're not going to have it perfect. You're going to have to, well play some jazz, but kind of navigate it along the way. You find a way which means you're going to figure it out. You're committed to figuring it out. And it's not just brute force, it's not just hustling more, it's using, you're leaning on your imagination and creativity to find that way. And so find a way is I think the way that we're being called to lead, probably called to practice medicine too. The truth is that as our world continues to grow with AI and automation, anything that can be automated will be automated.

What's left for the humans, the stuff that can't be automated, empathy, compassion, kindness, care and all that, which essentially is the fuel that helps you find a way. So if you wake up every day saying, all I've got to do is a checklist, I think you've got a problem. If you wake up every day saying, I have to navigate ambiguity and I have to use my creative abilities to find a way and navigate change, that's actually what leaders do today. And so I think to me, it's almost like a call to arms that this is how we're being called to lead and this is the pathway to drive meaningful success. By the way, back on ai, I get asked the question all the time, how do humans fit in with ai? I thought about that. I really reflected on it and it finally hit me.

The answer comes from 1966 from Star Trek. Star Trek launches. There's two main characters, captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. Captain Kirk is deeply human. Sometimes he gets upset, he's passionate, but he is empathetic and warm and very, very human where Mr. Spock is very analytical and very detail oriented and can't feel emotions. That show wasn't successful of one of them. It was successful because the intersection of those two forces, and I think that's how we should think about it in the AI world. It's not that we should think like, oh, AI is going to replace me. It's more like, how can I live in harmony with AI and offload the burdensome drudgery to ai, let that do the heavy lifting so I can actually step more into my humanity, more into my creativity and allows us more to find a way.

Scott Leune: Wow, what a cool analogy. I know we're running low on time. I want to be very respectful of your time, so appreciative that you've agreed to give it to dentistry. As we kind of wrap up here, I had like to ask you two things. Number one is if someone wanted to learn more about you, where would they go and what would they do? And number two, any kind of a last parting words to the dentist in the middle of their career wanting something big and great and impactful, and they're on this podcast trying to either be taught how to do it or to find inspiration to do the next thing.

Josh Linkner: Well, thank you for having me on the show, Scott, and also thanks for the great work that you're doing. I think you're doing really meaningful and impactful high leverage stuff to help the industry you love so much. So I'm grateful for the opportunity to share. If someone wants to get in touch with me or learn more about my work, just go to my website, which is just josh linkner.com, J-O-S-H-L-I-N-K-N-E r.com, and there's links to my venture fund and all the weird stuff that I do to your question, what do I have to say to that person? Two quick quotes came to mind. I kind of in a quote, gee, one of 'em is negative and one's positive. The negative one is by a guy named Erics, if you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less. And while I know that's sort of a punch in the face, I think that can be true.

It doesn't have to be scary, but it is saying like, Hey, we can't just stand still. That's not the game plan. We're going to need to lean into new change, new visions, reimagination finding a way. But the second one I like even better, which is an old Chinese proverb, he uses the word man, but I interpret it to say man or woman. The quote is, man says it can't be done. Should not interrupt man doing it. I've always loved that because as you lean into change and ambiguity is you push the boundaries, you're going to get met with resistance, but don't let the haters win. Others are going to complain and point fingers and say, it can't be done. Who else heard that? Every person who's ever made a difference in the universe. And so you have to go out on a limb and have a little bit of confidence to do that and know that you're going to navigate and you'll make mistakes, but eventually you'll get there.

But I think right now the practice of dentistry is in a significant transformation. We're in an inflection point in this industry and there's a beautiful wide open opportunity to lean in and own that. And so instead of you don't want to be the curmudgeons 35 years later in your career saying, I wish I had done. You want to say I'm proud. I did. I'm proud I took the risk. And that opportunity's there for all of us, population is increasing, technology is increasing. There's nothing that will get in the way other than ourselves. Let's give ourselves a little bit of boost of energy and get after it. I guess I'm saying let's find a way.

Scott Leune: Wow, Josh Linkner amazing words. I swear I could print 20 t-shirts with all the quotes and the kind of just pearls that you gave on this. Again, I want to thank you for logging in and spending some time to give to dentistry. It's a wonderful profession. It's a great industry. A lot of people are helped and there's tremendous business opportunity, but we dentists, we entrepreneurs, we CEOs, we need to be devouring new content, devouring things that can inspire us, that keep us going, and this is definitely going to be an episode that people do that for. So again, I really appreciate your time. Josh linkner.com for anyone that wants to connect with you. Again, thank you so much for this.

What did this episode mean to, at least to me, when I think about dentistry? So one thing Josh talked about is he has a theme of the year. He mentioned in the previous year, his theme was velocity. His theme now is transcend. And what that means to me in dentistry is that sometimes we get stuck in doing the same old thing. We just try to get through the day, try to get through the month. We just finished another year, but we didn't really have a purpose or a direction. We weren't thoughtful about it. Maybe if we stopped and got organized and said, okay, what's our theme this year? What do we want to accomplish this year? And then kind of touch back to that once a quarter. That would give us some direction. Maybe our theme this year is we want to have the final great team of rock stars that we've been wishing we'd had, or our theme this year is we want to open a second and third location, or our theme this year is we want to incorporate aligner therapy or we want to incorporate 3D printing.

If we just sit down and identify that that is likely going to start driving a behavior change, it may give us direction, it may fuel us. We may be inspired, we may be more excited about what we're doing. It may become interesting. It leads us down a journey that will likely result in more success. So I love that. He also said something else. He said something to prove versus something to give. That's interesting. He talked about as his career evolved, instead of trying to prove or gain something, he started focusing on something to give. And in my career, there was a point where I was actually building a company for the benefit of the employees. I wanted to give them a bigger payday, a bigger opportunity. And what's interesting is when I took that approach, the team I had became really loyal and worked harder and better and more thoughtfully, and it just aligned all of us.

It's like that saying, when you give, it will come back to you. So I found that interesting. I've also thought of times where I've given things to patients, I've given things to dental clients, and even if nothing comes back to me, it gives me purpose. It gives me a sense of goodness that I've done something good, and I think that's very important that we put that into our career. Another thing he said was, start before you are ready. Start before you're ready. I think about the dentist that wants to become an owner, but they just don't know if they're ready or they want to buy a second or third practice or they want to do a startup. They just don't know if they're ready and they can go years without doing it. He says, start before you're ready. Start before you're ready. That's the key because if you wait until you're ready, you may never start because we never know what it's going to be.

We never know where we're going to end up. We never know what it's going to feel like, but if we can know it's the right direction, let's start walking now. We'll figure it out along the way. He also said break it to fix it. Break it to fix it. Don't wait until it breaks. So he said, break it to fix it. What can we break that If we fix it, it becomes better? Can we break something as simple as how we present dentistry to a patient? Can we go break the old way and do a new way to fix it? Can we break the old way of marketing? Can we break the old way of having meetings or of leading and come up with a new way that proactively fixes things? Kind of the idea when you hire a new employee and you say, well, here's how we want to schedule, and they say, well, back when I worked in Dr.

Jones' office, we did it that way. And all you want to say is, look, you're not in Dr. Jones' office. Don't do it the old way just because you think that works and you don't want to break it. If it works, no, break it. Let's do it a better way. There's so many examples of that I think that you could think of when you learn to do something new that's better. Even though the last thing wasn't broken necessarily, shouldn't we do it better? We got to break the old way of thinking. We got to break the old way of doing in order to do something new and better. He also said there's this trap of perfectionism that I think really applies to dentistry. We are trained to seek perfection. We're trained on what they say are best practices, which means the other practices aren't best, right?

We're trained down to the millimeter of what to do, and we're kind of wired that way too. It's one of the reasons why we might've gotten into school and dental school, why we've been attracted to the profession in a way we seek this perfection. We even criticize each other when it's not perfect. He's actually saying that's a trap. The trap of perfectionism can lead us into not being creative, not doing new things, not taking risks to be constantly disappointed. We talked a bit in this podcast of the analogy of being a musician, a jazz musician, how you kind of have to go in and not be perfect when you improvise or play a solo in order to create something new and to go down this journey that in the end is a success. We can't get trapped in trying to play every note the perfect way, the perfect time, the perfect note, because if that's the case, we'll never build anything new that could become better.

Another thing he talked about is he said, don't break the product. And in dentistry so often the dentist are the product. He said, don't break the product. And the context of that was don't get burned out. Don't overwork. Don't be in a pressure cooker of a situation. Don't let your practice steal from you. Your health steal from you, your time, your happiness, your relationships don't break you. So it's okay to say, I'm not going to work until 9:00 AM because I want to take my kids to school. It's okay to say I'm going to stop at three because I want to work out and I want to be home and present with my kids and with my wife. It's okay to say I'm not going to work five days a week. It's okay to say all of those things. It's also okay to say, I'm not going to be surrounded by a team that puts added pressure and stress on me.

I'm going to replace someone that is going to fit more and align more with what I want. Even though it's painful to do that. There's more pain though in breaking. It's okay to say, I'm feeling burnt out. I'm not happy. I'm not making enough money. This situation isn't working. I can't break me. Kind of reminds me of in a relationship and being a husband, being a father. If my marriage is breaking me, then I'm actually not the father. I should be either. I'm not the business person I should be. I can't break me when I'm the product, and we as dentists, we need to try to protect ourselves and be thoughtful and invest in ourselves and our health and our happiness to not break ourselves. Another thing he said is when you say yes to something, you're actually saying no to something else. Or when you say yes to someone, you might be saying no to someone else.

When we say yes to opening a new practice, we might be saying no to something. Or when we say yes to taking an insurance, that decision ends up saying no to other things. When we say yes to expanding our schedule, we're saying no to dropping insurances. Sometimes, for example, when we say yes to chasing this opportunity, it may cause us to say no to time with our kids. So just something we need to, some of us I think need to realize. Those of us listening to this tend to say yes to everything. We may not understand how often that yes is actually a no to something else, something that may be more important. Another thing you said is there's 10 things in front of us to do and we need to understand what are the three that are really important so that those other seven, think four, think five, think six, or aren't stealing away from the things that are important.

Because so often those other things are really loud. Just like in dentistry, what's really loud isn't necessarily where all the value is. The loud thing in front of us can suck us into a game of just putting out fires, and we never fix the practice. We never start building the culture we need. We never learn how to do newer treatments or learn how to market. Better open that next office because all the loud stuff day-to-day is getting in our way. There's something about the discipline of being focused on what's important that helps us build boundaries to the things that are not important.

He said so many things, and another one was big is not necessarily better. Better is better. Bigger is not necessarily better. Better is better. I think back to some of the dentists I coach. I've got dentists that actually, quite a few that have small practices, five ops, they're the only dentist. They've got a team of five or six people, yet they're taking home more than a million dollars. Take home, pay more than a million dollars, take home pay. They might be collecting 2 million, taking home one. Compare that to the dentist that's got bigger. They've got a group practice of three doctors and they're doing three or 4 million a year, or they've got multiple locations and they're having to manage this army of people, the different locations, these associates that might come and go and all these extra patients, and they're so busy, they're still also trying to do dentistry, and you step back and they're not taking home near as much.

They're not taking home a million. They might be taking home half or even less than that. Managing this bigger thing. Bigger is not better. Better is better. Better. What? What's better for you? Better profit. Is it better net worth? Is it a better schedule? Is it better dentistry? Is it a better team, better kind of day? That feels better. That's better, right? So maybe this shouldn't be some kind of contest on who's bigger, how many locations we've got, how many dentists, how many patients we see grow. Big, big. Expand. Expand. No. Maybe we should say, okay, what do we actually want to have is better, and let's focus on that.

Another thing you said is learning is fundamental to success, and he called it continuous learning. It's fundamental. What are you learning regularly? I would imagine a lot of us are learning things on the clinical side, but are you learning on the business side? Are you learning not just the business side, but maybe the financial side? Are you learning on the communication or the leadership side? What about health? What about your relationships? Are we learning? Because with learning comes proactive change that leads us to success, but also with learning comes a new chapter, new direction. That gives us purpose, it gives us growth. We feel like we're going somewhere new. It gives us the fire. We need to show up in a positive attitude and accomplish the, I would hate to be stuck in a monotonous kind of mediocre world where learning doesn't happen and I just dread the day.

When we learn, maybe we find new, drive new happiness. Learning is fundamental to success, and last thing I want to talk about here that he said is people overestimate the risk of new and they underestimate the risk of staying still. I think back to the dentist that I coach in the seminars and every time I lecture, every time, which is dozens of times per year, someone comes up to me and says, I wish I took this course 10 years ago or something like that. I wish I would've learned this earlier in my career because to them not learning it cost them a million dollars a year. Take home pay for every year. They waited to learn it, literally not learning. It meant that they paid the universe a million bucks every year for the decision to not learn. The risk of staying still is immense.

We get outpaced, we get out competed against, we under earn. We might have to overwork in an antiquated way. We just think that success comes from doing the same thing faster and faster and faster and more and more, and that brings us a ton of risk to our life and to our money, to our happiness. People overestimate the risk of new. He said, we overestimate how risky it is to do something new. How risky is it to learn how to do 3D printed aligners? How risky is it to 3D print restorations? How risky is it to open a new practice or to add an associate or to drop half the insurances? How risky is it to rebrand ourselves and to be known as something new? We overestimate that risk. We also forget that we can undo things too. If things aren't working, we can just turn right back around and do it the old way or we could just take a left and adjust.

We forget those things. I don't know if I'm speaking to anyone right now, but if I am, if someone here is the kind of person that gets worried about doing things new because they just overthink things like so many people I've interviewed, he is saying, you are overestimating how scary it is, how costly it is, how risky it is, and that if you don't do something new, you're actually, that's costing you more. What a wonderful interview. What an amazing list of quotes Josh Linkner gave us. I hope that while this wasn't necessarily about dentistry, I hope speaking to someone that has brought billions of dollars of value and is saying these kind of and simple statements, I hope that brings you value as well, and that this has kind of caused someone listening to this to be motivated to do something good for yourselves. This was very enjoyable for me. I want to thank you again for listening to the Dental CEO podcast. We've got more episodes coming up. Subscribe if you haven't already, so you don't miss another one of these. Thank you so much.