Scott Leune: So something that's bothered me my entire career is that the largest supply companies give huge discounts to the large DSOs, while private dentists have to just pay more and more and more for things every single year. What's also bothered me is that there are some buying groups out there in dentistry that claim to save private dentists a bunch of money, but those buying groups are still utilizing the big companies that have been overcharging dentists the entire time, and those buying groups aren't necessarily giving dentists the low pricing that the DSOs still get comes a solution, a new sponsor of ours, I'm super excited to announce that the Private Dental Alliance is trying to solve this problem. Finally, someone's doing it where private dentists only join their alliance and they get super low pricing on equipment supplies and lab fees, competing with the DSOs, putting them on a level playing field with the DSOs.

If you want to understand how much money you would save, text the word savings to 4 8, 6 5, 9 savings to 4 8, 6, 5, 9. Do that right now, and you will be able to see very quickly a price comparison of what you're currently spending with whoever you're spending it with to what life would look like if you were in the alliance. Be a private dentist that takes advantage of this. Save a ton of money. Don't keep going month after month, losing money because you just haven't gone through the process of joining the Alliance. That's Private Dental Alliance. Super excited. Finally, we can save some real money as private dentists, So we're all doing either the right thing today or we're at least getting the right lessons. That's kind of the theme of this next episode that we've got with someone who is quite well known, quite famous. I'm excited to have this episode be presented to you guys. This is Zach Anner. Zach was born with cerebral palsy and has been in a wheelchair his whole life and has found a ton of success. Ended up winning a contest and having his own reality show on Oprah's network. You could actually find Oprah interviewing him on one of her episodes. He's also a writer and a guest star on TV shows on A, B, C, and on Apple tv. He's an ambassador for the Cerebral Palsy Foundation. He is absolutely hilarious. He's a YouTube personality, millions of views, everyone go look him up. But he is one of the great examples of leading a purpose first life, innovating through your challenges and finding gratitude, finding community and connection with people. And all of this relates to the dental CEO and aspects of how we can run our organization, how we can live. So I hope you enjoy this next episode with Zach Anner on the Dental CEO podcast.

Alright, Zach, so thank you again for joining us. I've been super excited. I saw this coming up on my calendar and I've been excited to talk to you. You're always hilarious, by the way, online and you've lived this really big life. I'm excited. For our listeners who haven't heard your story yet, could you please to start out, kind of give us a CliffsNotes version of who you are, what you do, what's your story?

Zach Anner: Sure, yeah. I'll give you the one minute elevator pitch because I spend a lot of time in elevator, so I should be good at this. My name is Zach Anner and I am a motivational speaker. I'm also an author of a memoir called If at Birth You Don't Succeed because I have Cerebral palsy. I got my big break when I won a reality show on the Oprah Network, and then I got to host my own travel show on that network about what it was like to travel around as a wheelchair user and embrace everything that goes wrong on vacation. And then from there I created a lot of content online with a company called Soul Pancake that was run by Rain Wilson. I hosted a show called Have a Little Faith where I explored world religions, and then I hosted a show called Top of the Monday that made people feel good on Monday mornings. And then I am also a film and television writer, and I wrote for a show called Speechless on ABC about a nonverbal teenager with cerebral palsy. Then I wrote for Josh Sundquist, Joe Best Foot Forward about his life growing up and going to public school as an amputee, but mainly

Scott Leune: I'm just a goofy guy online. That's awesome. And gosh, you are heavily followed online as well. Your videos are hilarious. If someone wanted to kind of connect with you or find you online, where would they go for that?

Zach Anner: Go to zachanner.com or just Google my address and follow me on the street. I'm pretty accessible. You can just, I'll be hanging around downtown Burbank pretty easy to spot, but zachanner.com is probably the place if you want to connect with me, that would be the place to start.

Scott Leune: Okay. Now one thing, I read a quote of yours that really spoke to me. A lot of people don't know this. I was temporarily in and out of a wheelchair. I broke my back in four different places and it didn't cut my spinal cord, thank goodness, but it did crush the nerves to my legs and it was too painful to walk. And so one of your quote mentioned a wheelchair, it said, don't build the life around the wheelchair. Instead build the wheelchair around the life. What does that mean to you? Don't build the life around the wheelchair, but instead build the wheelchair around the life.

Zach Anner: I think that just means focus on what you want to do with your life and this unique experience of being human rather than the challenges you're facing and what you can't do. I think my parents always instilled in me, they didn't say, oh, you can't do this because you have cerebral palsy or you are using a wheelchair. They said, what do you want to do with your life? For example, my dad always knew that I wanted to be a filmmaker and he saw my wheelchair as a tool to make me a better filmmaker. So when I was younger, he built me a monopod on my chair so that I could put a camera on there and use my wheelchair as a dolly and get all sorts of cool shots like that. So think of your challenges as opportunities to express

Scott Leune: Yourself. Yeah, that is amazing. And now you said you did a travel show and

Zach Anner: I've done several. Yes.

Scott Leune: Yeah, so one thing that stood out to me when you said that is I remember when I was in a wheelchair, we went to Rome and that was a horrible experience because the cobblestone streets and the steps and the,

Zach Anner: Oh my gosh, can I tell you, Rome is actually where we got the idea for making a travel show. My dad took us to Rome when I was in high school and it was so inaccessible and we took a little eight millimeter camera with us and it was so hard getting around. All the trains were inaccessible and we had to break down my big 300 pound wheelchair just to get me on the train. We went to Pompeii, which is a city that is famous for being covered in volcanic ash, and for some reason they didn't have a lot of wheelchair access there, but it was such a experience to try and figure it out that my dad was like, you have to make a travel show about all these unique challenges and learning how to just roll with it and have a good time regardless. If we had planned that trip better, we may have never gone, but because we were able to go and just kind of say, oh, this is part of the experience, we were able to have a wonderful time. And that was actually my first travel log that I ever filmed. And from that, when Oprah was announced announcing this competition and I had to go and pitch what I wanted my show to be, we used that experience in Rome for me to impress the producers and Oprah because I knew exactly the show I would make. What I would say I learned on that trip is that fear and fun are cousins and you could highlight the fear and say, oh, I'm not going to go because it could be terrible. Or you can say, oh, I might use that nervous feeling and turn it into excitement and just see what the experience brings. Because if I hadn't had that experience in Rome, I would've never have gotten to host my own travel show.

Scott Leune: And that reminds me of something else that you've said. Well, you said a couple things. One thing that I have here is that you said innovating through your challenges, innovating through your challenges, and you also said, I love this quote. I'm sorry, I've got your quotes in front of me just because I was going crazy with this. No,

Zach Anner: This great. I have a book of your quotes

Scott Leune: Here that we'll dive into later. So another thing you said is we can't prepare for every possibility, but we can get comfortable with the idea that anything is possible. And that kind of stems from what you just said because you said, had we planned this trip, we may have never gone because you would've been stuck. You're trying to prepare for every possibility and you would've seen all, we can't. You can't prepare for all that, but it's possible to still enjoy Rome and still enjoy Pompeii and to build a travel vlog around it. And that leads to these amazing things. I'm just curious because you're a motivational speaker. Am I correct in saying that we all have our own version of this, our own version of cerebral palsy, our own version of a wheelchair, our own

Zach Anner: Fear? Well, we all have challenges. We don't all have wheelchairs because they're very expensive, and if you don't need one, I wouldn't suggest buying one just because it's an unnecessary expense. But we do all have challenges and I think even though cerebral palsy and the experience of being a wheelchair user isn't universal, the experience of living in a world that is not set up for you and is not the perfect circumstance, that's a universal experience. And I think the one thing that having cerebral palsy, living life with a disability has taught me overall else is how to be a more resilient narrator of my own story. And we can't prepare for everything that's going to go wrong, but we can build up our emotional stamina to be ready to enjoy whatever comes at us. I think one of the things that I have learned about myself recently is that it's not anything unique that I have that has allowed me to get through this life and to be successful, but I do have a sense of joyful grit as I move through the world, which is that it's not just about finding the good in everything, but just finding the fun through the toughest of times because you can, the challenges that we're all going to face, there's this narrative of you get through the tough time so you can experience the good, and I think we all have a single lifetime on this earth and we have to find a way to enjoy as much as possible, even in the challenges. It's not about saying, oh, everything's going to be perfect, or it's not about denying that there's challenges and that there's pain in this life. It's just saying, can we find a way to through our own resilience to enjoy even the most difficult times? I have a trick that I use when I am going through a rough time. I try and tell myself the version of the story. If I drop two milkshakes on myself or something

Scott Leune: And I'm really embarrassed or humiliated, that actually happened to me last week. I know it's a universal experience, but if that happens, I try to tell myself the version of the story that I would tell to my best friend to make it funny and I see how far I can get from this sucks to, I'll learn from this to what can I learn from this all the way to what can I learn from this now? What do I already have in my life experience toolbox that can make this difficult situation no matter how small or big, meaningful or even funny in the moment? Wow, those are amazing, amazing words because thinking back to even simple things on the dental, if we relate this to the dental side of things, we have a schedule for today that we don't know how we're possibly going to get through and we could respond as a victim of the schedule and, oh, poor us and poor me, and whose fault is it and how is my life like this?

Or could what you said is we're the narrator of that story. Those are actually a very powerful statement we get to narrate. Is this going to be a good day or a bad day? Is this going to be a horrible thing or learning moment? Is this going to become something funny to talk about? Is the trouble of today going to be celebrated at the end of the day because I got through it with the people I want to be with and we tackled it together. So that's such a strong thing to realize because I know that especially as entrepreneurs, man, we as entrepreneurs get hit left and right and up and down by all kinds of things and all kinds of people constantly, and I think it's that resilience that makes an entrepreneur great in some ways. You said we need to have the joyful grit in finding fun through the tough times that joyful grit. So grit meaning it's hard, but joyful meaning

Zach Anner: Grit, meaning is difficult. Joy, meaning we get one life, so we have to enjoy as much as possible. I think that really is the key. I think particularly in the entrepreneurial space, it's easy to just say, I'll enjoy the fruits of my labor later, but if you can find a way to enjoy that work, enjoy that journey. So you're not looking back and saying, wow, I sacrificed so much so that I could get to this point. Because I think really we're all sacrificing and we all have to decide what we want to do with our time, but really the more life that I've lived, the more I've realized that this experience of being alive on this planet with you here in this moment, it's all about human connection and building community. And I wouldn't be successful without the community that I've built and without the connections that I've had with people. And I would say don't sacrifice your humanity for your success. Remember that humanity is a team sport and we all need

Scott Leune: Each other. And as a CEO of a dental organization, we have this team that supports us but also relies on us that is led by us, but we also lift them up. And so as I hear you say this, I'm kind of imagining a version of me that has learned your lessons and this version of me has gratitude to the team because I have compassion, I have been through hard times as well, and I understand what that feels like and the grit we have to have. That version of me also looks at challenges and finds humor and finds purpose and finds positivity in it. That version of me is resilient. That version of me doesn't get stuck, that version of me does the next thing we need to do and does. So with a light instead of bringing darkness to everyone, I'm describing a really good CEO as I say it out loud as I'm trying to use your words and apply it to me. I'm describing the kind of person people want to work for and work with and want to support. And it's so interesting to me how that happens. Well, I think

Zach Anner: I was given a little bit of a leg up in that department in learning those lessons early because I've always needed people. I've never felt like I can do it alone. And to me that is one of the greatest gifts of the life I've been given, is knowing that I need a community, that I need a lot of help because so many of us are taught that, oh, you need to be completely, but then you miss out on all the gifts. So many people want to hide their weaknesses, and I was given the gift of never having a choice, and so I could make the decision to use my vulnerability as a point of connection and find people who had the strengths that I didn't have. And I think that that's a lesson that's often overlooked when you want to seem like you have, excuse me, all your shit together, when really part of that process is finding the people who have the skills, the talents that you don't have, and appreciating them

Scott Leune: On a deeper level. We struggle in dentistry with being able to retain employees, and part of me thinks that it's because of what you just said that we're missing, that we're not finding people that are truly bringing in the strengths to up for our weaknesses and then appreciating them for that, whether it's appreciating 'em financially or appreciating 'em from a community standpoint or connection standpoint. I feel like in dentistry, people feel unseen and underappreciated, and it's almost like the leaders have this dictator way of just telling people what to do and thinking, God, I should just do it myself. I could just get it done better if I did it all myself and they're playing the wrong game, I believe. Does that make sense to you?

Zach Anner: Yeah, yeah. I think it is a vulnerable thing to say, I need people, I can't do it alone. I always say, I'm not a self-made man, I'm a community made man. And I think it's once you can get to the point where you are self-assured enough to say when you need help, and I know in dentistry I'm sure there's a lot of burnout. There's a lot of people working long hours and doing very intricate important work, and the message has to be, you're allowed to be human, you're allowed to be a human being, you're allowed to struggle. You're allowed to ask for help, and that has to be a part of the narrative of success because the idea that you need to do it alone, I always ask, why would you want that? Why wouldn't you want to share success with the people who have helped make you successful? I mean, it's so much better. You can get all the money in the world, you can have all the success. This could be the number one podcast, but if you can't look around and be like, wow, we got here together, then really what's the point?

Scott Leune: Yeah, that is very profound. One thing that I do personally that my company does is we coach entrepreneurial dentists one-on-one, and it's such a huge privilege and it's so positive because these are dentists that are open to and wanting help, and they might've been struggling for a decade and then within three months with help, they see their business differently, they see their life differently, and they're in a much better, much happier spot with the help because they were so stuck with only wearing their own lens before that, only seeing the world how they saw it. It's so positive to work with people like that, that are at the point of saying, I am better off with help. But most people in dentistry are not that way. Most people feel like other people are out to get them, not help them. Do you

Zach Anner: Remember when you got to that place where you were like, not only am I somebody who needs help, I'm someone who wants to help others with the skills that I have. Was there a moment for you? Scott Leune:

Yeah, what a great question. I think when I had big failures, big pain points that gave me new lessons and I was able to lift myself up out of that, those lessons, I couldn't help but want to give everyone. So these like, oh my God, I wish I would've known how to do that 10 years ago. Now I know I need to tell the world because oh my God, this is a better way. That's when it started happening. It came out of my low points,

Zach Anner: And I think that's the most important thing. People don't feel like they should be sharing their low points as they're going through them. I think a lot of us have a perspective when we're able to look back on things in retrospect,

But I think part of the joyful grid idea is that how quickly can we get to a place where we can appreciate the difficult moments that we're in? I know that there are people listening right now who are in a low point and they're thinking, oh, when I get out of this, maybe I'll have something to share. And what I would like to say to them is, you matter right now. Your story matters right now, and I see you right now and don't worry about the success that will come. And don't beat yourself up for the moment you're in right now. Beating yourself up today is not going to help you get energized for tomorrow. So be able to show yourself some grace and know that those lessons from this moment are available to you. You've experienced a life, you've lived a life that has prepared you for this moment. And try your best to not just get through it, but actually experience it and realize that this is an important part of your story as

Scott Leune: Well. Yeah, that reminds me. I'm someone in the past that was very closed off, not open. I deal with struggles internally. I deal with challenges as the best I could, but I now look back in the times I did voice something like, Hey, I'm over here in this kind of tough spot right now. It's amazing how many people are dying to assist and help and support, and it's almost like a gift to them that they get to step in and say, oh my God, we can get this fixed. We can get you out of this. And sometimes you need is just one right person to say, you got this. Sometimes that's literally all you need to give you the drive to say, okay, you know what? Let's go right instead of left.

Zach Anner: And the thing that I have experienced with a disability is a lot of people always asking to help. And as a kid and as a young adult growing up, whenever somebody would try and open a door for me or do something that I could do myself, I would get very indignant and push them away. And now that I'm 40, you know what I do when someone tries to open the door for me, I just say, thanks. And if you can delete the ego from your story and just being grateful for the little moments of assistance that we all need, it makes life a whole lot better and a whole lot easier because it creates opportunity for connection. So I would say, I'm not going to say put all of your stuff out there, but that's what I did, and my life got a whole lot better when I started sharing those things that I was embarrassed about. And I realized that they weren't just these isolating and othering experiences. They were moments to build community moments to find purpose. So yeah, I agree with you. It always comes. The deepest lessons come from the lowest points. I think

Scott Leune: That reminds me as well, is there's some people online entrepreneurs, dentists as well that are kind of documenting their story and starting their own company or their own practice, and they're talking about the things they screw up. They're talking about the things that are working. They're talking about just all the little details, and it's such a gift to everyone else to validate their own feelings and their own difficulties, or to give them perspective or give 'em ideas or to just show them that this is the way it is. It's such a gift to share these things with other people. That reminded me of that. Well, I'd like to pass it back to you for one last time. Are there any final things or any words you'd like to kind of part with say to our listeners before we have to wrap this up?

Zach Anner: I would just like to say to your listeners that no matter where you are in your journey, you're doing a great job. I don't know your listeners individually, but I think we need that little bit of encouragement every now and again. Even if it feels like you're not doing everything right now, the lessons from the experiences that you're experiencing right now, those will come. Those will come if you're ready for them. So I want to wish you all good luck with your practices, and I would like to say a blanket to all dentists. I'm sorry I'm not flossing as much as I should. I'm sorry. Hopefully I will be in your dentist chair at some point and you'll be able to make some money off of me. It's the least I can do.

Scott Leune: I appreciate that. Well, Zach, thank you so much for taking time out to talk to just a bunch of dental people. This is

Zach Anner: Alright. I will talk to dental normally when I can't talk because my mouth is open and being drilled. So this is such a wonderful and

Scott Leune: Rare opportunity. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This has been wonderful and positive. I cannot wait to get the feedback from this episode. Your story, of course, is an amazing story and what a great reminder of some of these wonderful life lessons that you've said on this episode. So Zach, thank you again. I hope to talk to you again, man. I would love to dive into more of your story and these lessons. You're just full of wisdom and I'm super appreciative of that. For everyone listening to this, hopefully you were able to get a bunch out of this episode. And again, Zach, to find you online, they can just Google Zach Anner, A-N-N-E-R, correct. A-N-N-E-R, and they can find you. Yep. And

Zach Anner: That's Zach with an H.

Scott Leune: Zach with an H. Well, is there other ways to spell Zach? That's the right way.

Zach Anner: Yeah,

Scott Leune: This is the only way to spell it. Come at me, Zach, with a k dentist. I'm ready for you. Awesome. All right, Zach. Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much being on our dental CEO podcast. So let's relate this to dentistry. Now in the dental download, we all have these moments of our life of struggle, our version of a wheelchair or cerebral palsy like Zach has. And one thing that I quoted him on and he said, don't build the life around the wheelchair, but build the wheelchair around the life. So some of us come with trauma, with struggle, with bad things that have happened outside of industry or in industry. Let's not build our life around those bad things. In other words, let's not be controlled by 'em or labeled by them and be compromising everything because of 'em, but let's just go have the life we want or the business we want and we will make those past traumas and struggles become an ingredient in this recipe of the life we want or the business we want.

I think there's a tremendous amount of learning in those statements that he gave us. Another he said is we can't prepare for every possibility, but we can get comfortable with the idea that anything is possible. So we can't prepare for anything that could happen to us, anything that might go wrong, whether that's going wrong in our day, going wrong in our career, going wrong in our life, but we can know that anything's possible, that no matter what happens, we can call an audible, we can adjust and we can still find value and happiness. He spoke about, he and I talked about going to Rome and how horrible it is to be in Rome in a wheelchair, and that actually spawned his idea of having a travel show. And he said, had he planned his trip right, he may have never gone to Rome. In other words, had he thought through it all and come up with a plan seeking a perfect way to do it, making sure everything is perfectly prepared, he would've realized that he didn't even want to take the step forward.

But what was the result of going down this imperfect path, going to Rome, one of the most inaccessible cities in the world, I swear. And the result was he was able to find laughter and happiness in it, and he got help and he experienced it and decided to make a show out of it, which led to him winning the TV show with Oprah, which then led to him becoming a writer for TV and an actor. And he took this hardship and got the lessons and the experiences out of it and just stayed positive with it. I think a lot of times in dentistry, we are scared of conflict, we're scared of things going wrong, we overreact to negativity. He almost like under reacts to negativity and challenges, he says he's going to tell his narrative himself. He said, we need to be more resilient narrator of our own story is what he said. So when something challenging or bad happens, let's tell that story with resilience. Let's tell it in a way that makes it funny or that makes it a lesson. Let's not tell it in a way where we're now a victim and we're negative and we implode.

I think a lot of us in dentistry are burnout. Sometimes we're stressed. It's just a stressful day to be a dentist. It's stressful to be a dental entrepreneur, it's stressful to deal with people, but when we think through how he deals with struggle and stress at the level he has to deal with, it puts our stress into perspective. And we can see that his strategy of positivity works. His strategy of being open and asking for help works, connecting with people. It works. If we're struggling with something in the practice, what would happen if we were just raw and honest and talked to the team and said, look, I'm struggling with this right here. What can we do? Can any of you help me? What would happen? I bet people would step up, they would help. They would feel like it's safe to come up with solutions.

They'd feel like it's safe to have the autonomy to do it, and maybe that might be the first time they actually feel like they're doing something more valuable. That might be the first time they feel seen. They feel respected because we're trusting them to help us. I know that a lot of us already think this way. We're already super thankful for the team. We have the office manager maybe that's holding everything together. We say to other people, God, I couldn't do this without my team. All of you that think that way are being validated by this episode. But there's a whole nother side of dentistry that I might call the majority that doesn't feel that way. They don't say I'm here but of my team. They say, I'm here because of me and I need a better team. And I think that's a very difficult way to be a leader, be a CEO in an organization, is to take the credit yourself to be controlling and to blame team for the challenges.

When we listened to Zach, it's almost like every sentence he had was a quote that should go in someone's book. It was just such words of wisdom. He talked about he was given a gift of never having a chance to hide his weaknesses. You can see he's in a wheelchair. He's got cerebral palsy, he has to have help. And he says that's a gift because it gave him connection, it gave him community, and it enabled him to be more successful than if he did not have the connection, didn't have the community. He says, we need help. We need community. And another thing he said that I love is we need a sense of joyful grit to find fun through the tough times, joyful grit. So when we're dealing with a staffing issue, let's say we're shorthanded one front office person and a dental assistant for the day. Can we have grit to get through the day with joy? Can we go to our team and say, guys, this is our journey for today. We're short, these two people, I'm so glad that you're the team. I have to do this. We're going to get through it. I'm going to run around like crazy. We're all going to run like crazy, and by the end of it, we're going to share some drinks and laugh about this because it's going to be a crazy day. That's a joyful way of approaching the day.

Is that a muscle we've built? When we want to implode and be upset over something negative, can we trick ourselves? Can we control the narrative of that story and lead by saying, Hey, this is going to be difficult, but there is joy in this. There's lessons in it. I started this episode and introduction saying, we're either doing the right thing, which is great, that feels great, or we're getting the right lessons. So that's a positive way of looking at it. We're either doing this right or we're getting the right lessons. It's not we're doing it right or we're doing it wrong, it's doing it right, or we're getting the right lessons. And those lessons help us audible, call the audible to then just do it right. So we're always finding that joy. He referred to the concept that we need to find happiness every day.

That doesn't mean it's easy. We have to have grit, but we have to find happiness every day. And we find that through connecting with people. I'm not someone personally, I'm talking about Scott, me. I'm not someone that easily connects with people. I definitely am someone that has a tendency to do stuff on my own to not rely a lot on people, and definitely to not always ask when I could use some help to ask for the help. I'm kind of in that position where so many people rely on me for help personally and professionally, that I'm not someone that asks for help. And so this episode speaks a lot to me, to my development. Some of you listening to this episode, it doesn't, this is just a reminder maybe, or validating how you already operate. But if we talk about what does it mean to be an amazing CEO, I think an aspect of an amazing CEO is grateful, asks for help, connects with people, has grit, but does it so in a positive way, they are able to control the narrative, what the story they say to people to themselves.

They're able to say it in a positive way with resilience. We're describing an amazing CEO, but those lessons are coming from someone that's had to overcome challenges that most of us will never even understand. And that is why I feel like this episode is definitely a wonderful thing to listen to this week. I appreciate you guys listening and your support, and I also appreciate the fact that some of you get a lot of value out of episodes like this. Some of you get value out of the dental specific episodes, and I hope that all of this just makes us well-rounded and this becomes a wonderful habit in your day in listening to this podcast once a week, maybe on your way to work or as you're working out. So thank you again for your support and I will see you next time. My name's Scott Leune, and this was the Dental CEO podcast.