Dr. Souyias (00:00):
Thanks for listening to The Special Lists presented by Referral Lab, the podcast for dentists and dental specialists. What's the reward for good work?

Cameron Full (00:34):
More work.

Dr. Souyias (00:36):
More work, right? So that's a challenge. But what I like the way we say it better, solving one problem just shows you what the next problem is. In my own practice, my schedule was broken and I was four months out for a consult with both myself and my associate, and we worked together to fix the schedule in my practice. And all of a sudden, now we're down to a reasonable two to three weeks. And then all of a sudden it's what's the next? And I was like, oh good, now we'll be able to go on cruise control. Well, nope, it's not cruise control. It's now the next problem shows its head because you fixed the more urgent one. And I think for the longest time I thought that there was this button, like I picture a pilot on a plane, it's just like autopilot and can just let it go and forget it.

(01:23):
And I realized it's just constant, constant work that you're constantly working, you're constantly evolving, constantly improving and making things better. Yeah. It's fantastic. It's rewarding when you get through that problem and you get to the end and you're like, okay, now what's the next thing I get to work on?

Dr. Woodyard (01:48):
I got a great team though. I mean, I really do. And one of the reasons I don't. I mean, I do have some turnover, but the reason that you don't see them is because they aren't here very long. Because when I see that happening -

Dr. Souyias (02:00):
You deal with it fast.

Dr. Woodyard (02:02):
Again, my next one is don't hesitate to let somebody go if needed. Do not be afraid to let somebody go. I had a employee that was here for about two weeks and she said she needed to talk to Jennifer and I. So she began to sit down and tell me what this person was doing wrong and what that person was doing wrong. "Oh my God, I can't believe they were doing this. "I'm like," Really? Okay, so it sounds like we've got some problems. ""Yeah. Okay. So well just, hey, you stay right here. Okay? Jennifer, pull up a couple of more chairs." And so I brought in the people that she was talking about and we all sat down together and she goes, "Well, what are you doing?" I said, "Well, you were telling us about some problems that we were having with the team, and here's the team, and this is how we fix those.

(02:36):
You coming to me and just complaining about it and telling me I can't say anything to somebody doesn't work. So unless you're willing to discuss it as a team, as an adult and go through and fix these problems, this might not be the place for you." And guess what it was? It wasn't.

Dr. Souyias (02:51):
Bye-bye.

Dr. Doobrow (02:54):
So it's funny because as faculty of the program, we were giving a lot of ROIs to kind of guide them. But Jason, the interesting, really crazy, interesting experience was the questions that we got. And they were super heartfelt and all over the map. And one really stuck with me, and it was actually to our entire panel. So there was probably 200-something people in the room. And one attendee said, "What do I do? I'm not sure where I'm going. Let's say I end up in some type of setting where I'm basically, it's a machine. You just have to roll out the procedures." And many of us know those type of practices. And the question was, and the president of American Dental Association was even in the room and answered this. The question was, what do I do when I get in a compromising situation? And this person's paying my salary and telling me what I'm supposed to do, but I'm not comfortable with the situation.

(03:47):
And all of us on this podcast have been in that situation before. The uncomfortable. And something I always say to that to give you back that answer was sometimes we have to be, and a lot of times actually, we have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Cam, you and I talk about it all the time. We got to be comfortable being uncomfortable. So Jason, that was actually the biggest kind of surprise on the weekends was the magnitude of the questions we got. And they were real, they were profound, they were organic, and these residents really wanted to know. And it was really neat, really, really empowering.

Dr. Ritter (04:22):
Branding is more than a logo or an icon. It's everything that the community, the patient views you upon. So whether it be your website, the way that your marketing pieces go out, the way that you answer the phone, the way that the office looks, the way the office is dressed right now, we're all dressed in J. Barber, which is phenomenal. It's J. Barber clothing.

Cameron Full (04:48):
Plug, plug.

Dr. Ritter (04:49):
Yeah, it's a plug. It's a plug. I was just with the owners. It's just the quality of their materials stand out. We went from shitty scrubs that look like garanimals to a level above with figs, but this is a level above figs. I mean, this is sleek. This is just the highest quality. And everybody wearing the same sneakers. Believe it or not, patients look at these things. They really, really do. And so it's a total package of branding. Plus, I like to think of it as integrity marketing. I know that the image I want portrayed of me outside of that practice, I know there's a level that I will accept and anything underneath it is completely unacceptable to me because I do not. What did I go back to the original conversation? I don't want to be embarrassed. So I don't want anything out there that's going to embarrass me, my name, my brand.

(05:38):
All I have at the end of the day is my signature in a sense. It's who I am. So I'm not going to go ahead and compromise that at all. Matter of fact, okay, one more. The protocol wristbands? On the back of it, it says no compromise. There is no compromising on your brand because once you start compromising on your brand, they're going to make sure that they're going to tear you down and they're going to ask you to compromise on everything else that you do in your practice. So there's no compromise on that.

Dr. Godat (06:08):
Mastermind group of Periodontist from all over the country are not really competitors with each other. Just come and share practice, how to practice, how to run the business side of stuff, how to take care of patients in ways that are amazing and eye-opening to them and to your practice and then grow in so many amazing ways. It's just an amazing group. 2008 - ish, I'm like, "Man, I'm at the top of my career. I'm eight years in practice. There's nothing more I need to know and do." And not that I was cocky, but I just felt like I'd hit that Zenith already, that top, that Apex. And I'm like, I went to that meeting and I realized there was a lot of other people that had the same mindset.

Dr. Catalano (06:53):
He wants you to meet the team and see if they give you a thumbs up. So I'm like, "Holy crap." I mean, here I am at the lowest point in my life. And then I'm like, I mean, I was in David's study club in San Diego. I was taking tons of classes from him. So I mean, he's my idol. So I remember that Monday morning, I'm just putting in a coat and tie and I'm rushing down there and I'm interviewing with them and they're like, "All right, you're good. Thumbs up. We want you here." And so I ended up, that was my role. I became an associate there, helping him out, helping him transition all these patients and quickly learning the high level of dentistry that he was doing. I mean, I walked into dentistry that I had been studying and dabbling into dentistry that was at another level.

(07:36):
I mean, David is world-class, but this is where my vision came in, and this is so strange, and I understand it now. But as I looked around, as I was there, I looked at my vision and I realized that everything that I wrote down on my vision was in David's practice. I believe that God was steering me in that direction in some way because I could not stop the downfall of my practice. Whatever I did, I was trying to control everything.

Dr. Stoner (08:10):
And I want to talk tonight beyond dentistry because these things are things that any business you would take and use. I'm fortunate because I stumbled upon great opportunities and I took advantage of them at a young age, and that helped me grow, but I did have a pathway. And it just really, a lot of it, you have to define for yourself what success looks like. And for me, it was never about dollars. It's always been about having a great brand and doing the best job I can with patients. And that will take care of everything else, and it has.

Dr. Patel (08:54):
Well, I mean, I think also it goes back to personalities. There's going to be some individuals who graduate from school and they don't feel like they need a mentor, even though they might need one, they just don't know it yet. I'm cut from the cloth that I want to be the best. My first conversation with Jason was like, "I want to be better than you someday. So I need a good mentor." I needed that path. I'm like, "If you give me that path, I will knock it out of the park." But I needed somebody to light that path. And my previous employer didn't do that well.

Rashed Din (09:27):
It's always hard, right? It's always hard, period. But I think it gets easier as you live it yourself. And if the clinical leaders, if the staff, if the people who have been there for a long time demonstrate those same qualities that you look for, I think that's the first thing that you need. Because we're the leaders, if we're the ones who take shortcuts or don't completely follow that, that's the first part you're going to lose fast.

Dr. Saldua (09:56):
I always say we're lone rangers. We go in there, we have all the tools in our tool belt, but really every single treatment plan, every single clinical call, every single complication that we have to explain, it's all us. And we obviously have a ton of support with our teams, amazing assistants, amazing front desk. They're obviously going to support us. But when push jump comes to shove, it's you. And it's just you making those calls and your whole reputation, your livelihood, everything depends on you.

Dr. Cochrane (10:34):
Definitely excited to be here, and I think this is a good place to start. Talking point one, first thing on my list, we are never really ready to make big changes in life, big decisions in life. And at some point in time, you actually have to just say, "Hey, I'm going to do this. Why wait until tomorrow? Today's the day and we need to go with it." And I think that has really transcended into a lot of what I've done, both in starting Coastal Perio, but in also how we have adapted and changed over time. The actual startup process, I had no idea what I was doing, and ultimately just had to put one foot in front of the other.

Dr. Cook (11:17):
If you think of, especially throughout our career, starting out in dental school, we had to do a lot of work individually to get there. Get good grades, study, do all the things. We're often told we're the best and the brightest and all the things. I do a lot of leadership work with the dental students to try to show the minute you graduate, it's not just up to you. And now you're a leader in the community and you have to set a good example for that. So instead of it being related to you as an individual, it's like you have to really focus on the team. So Cam, thank you so much for the kind words. Also, it takes an actual village. My team is humongously important to me. Very special, very bright humans that help me do a lot.

Dr. Burch (12:06):
I manage 15 dental practices with a network of 23 dentists. So it has a mix between periodontics offices and general offices along with pediatrics. And Team Never Sell. What that means is that I never plan on selling my shares of the practice. And what I do is I partner doctors into my organization and they're only allowed to partner if they have a growth strategy that follows my vision of the group practice that we built. So it has a core of the intention is to partner doctors. And about 18 years I've been doing this and out of the 30 doctors I've hired, we still have 23.

Dr. Patel (12:56):
We're at three locations. We're consolidating to one big center. We just found the spot here recently and we're getting the contractor to give us bids. So we're going to have about a 3,000 square foot facility with two oral pathologists and an oral medicines. We implemented oral medicine just this last year.

Dr. Souyias (13:13):
Wow.

Dr. Patel (13:14):
So now we're able to treat TMD and oral facial pain, which is huge. So we've really opened up the scope of what that group can do. And it's all private practice, fee for service. They see close to, I don't know, 150 new patients a month, 125, 150 new patients a month, over 200 referrals coming in. So it's been great. It's saving lives. It's getting people out of pain. It's not the most lucrative, which is not why we opened it because it's not very procedural based. It's more management and prevention, which is we're totally, that was never our goal was to make this a huge business venture. It was more to give access to oral pathology.

Mike Gergen (13:59):
A lot of times dentists, they want to do analysis by paralysis. Which course should I take? And they'll have a list of 50 different courses and they're looking for someone to validate it. I always tell them, "Just go, man. Just go to a course. It's going to make you better. Find out if your people are there or not. But I guarantee you, no matter what you do, you're going to become a better dentist. You're going to become a better leader, you're going to become a better person. Just go. And sure enough, you'll go and find people that you like, people that you don't like." And all of a sudden that journey starts. So just start it and go.

Dr. Seda (14:32):
So are we starting on the list?

Dr. Souyias (14:34):
That was item number one. Yeah. To to my failure of introduction on that part, that whole topic was number one.

Dr. Hill (14:45):
It's a journey for sure. And I don't know, Cameron, thank you for saying those are very kind and humbling things to hear about oneself. I think the highest compliment anyone, one of my co-residents who's a pediatric cranio maxillofacial trauma surgeon, I mean, he would out cut me any day. He's phenomenal. He's an unbelievably gifted surgeon. And the highest compliment he ever gave me was, he said, "You really have perseverance." I said, "Thanks." But I think that was it. So sometimes it's just perseverance. Yeah, don't deviate from it. Stick to your goals. I didn't look at it so much as delayed gratification because I really enjoyed learning even through the hard parts. I would come away from a hard thing and be like, "Wow, I really learned a lot from that. I'll take that to the next time we go do something like that." And so I loved it.

Dr. Zalewsky (15:37):
So look, we're getting to that size. And I mean, I think every organization struggles with this. Change is hard for everybody. Nobody likes change. It's uncomfortable, but it's necessary. And I love change. I mean, my team has guardrails and if things are going too well, they know that I'm going to come in and try to blow something up. It's just because I'm always looking for what's the other shoe to fall. So if things are going too well, you need to be worried, I usually feel. It's my highly optimistic personality that I guess goes that way. But organizational adaptability is like, I believe in change. I want to always constantly be improving. So if you don't have change, you can't improve, then you're stagnant. And as the organization gets bigger and larger, it's harder and harder to make changes. It's like a small boat versus a big boat.

(16:34):
When you're in a small speed boat, you can make the change and the turn quickly. As the boat's bigger, it's harder to make that change. So I'm always forecasting, and as the CEO of the organization, my primary job is don't hit the iceberg.

Geri Gottlieb (16:48):
And that's exactly how I look at it as well. And I talk about it when I start to work with a practice. I always work with the doctor owner first. And they'll say, "Do you have a vision statement?" "Oh yeah, yeah, I've done vision and culture work. "Really? Let me see it. And then tell me about it. What does it mean to you? And then they can't even answer those questions because it was like, somebody told me to write this thing up and I did this thing and I come up with integrity and this and that. It's like, no. What does it mean to you, Michael? What does this look like to you? And what is it supposed to look like every single day? What are those behaviors? So for me, that's core values, right? Core behaviors that have to be in place every single day and in everything we do. And then Dr. Owner, give me specific examples of what that looks like in action. Because people can't be what they can't see. And if we're not actually also modeling it every single day and/or this whole holding people accountable to it, that means ourself. Then the culture is exactly whatever we're tolerating.

Dr. Nguyen (17:56):
So it's funny because I've never been a big reader. But what happened was, so sleep dentistry was never my thing. I didn't like it. My thing was cosmetics and sleep dentistry. These oral appliances were just jacking all the bites. And I was like, I just don't get it. I am taught to dial in with shim stock. How am I not supposed to care when I put an oral appliance in? And then what happened was I met Jeff Rouse and he started introducing me to this concept of airway dentistry. Shout out, Jeff. Yeah. And then I went with it. And then I started to read. It's funny because Jeff will say, "I've been trying to talk about this for 10 years, and now you're getting some people to talk about it." And I joke around and I tell him, I said, "I just made it sexy. That's all." I was like, "You just didn't have that."

Dr. Skasko (18:46):
I would always instruct on where he was or what he had to do. As I saw him advancing each step of the way, he did more, he did more, he did more. Now he's doing reconstructions and doing beautifully. He knows the fundamentals, and he also knows that he's always got me looking at things and checking with him and working with him to help develop him. He works with me on Fridays only now because he's in our other practice Monday through Thursday. So what happened was we built him up and gave him some abilities to understand interdisciplinary dentistry. And so he was kind of in this SSC residency in a way in my practice. It was a really great thing, but it was a lot for me to give up because I'm paying him for this by the way. And I'm teaching the whole time I'm doing procedures.

(19:33):
And the procedures I do are pretty intense. I'll prep 28 teeth at a time and buildups and this and that and lots of stuff going on at one time. Basically then what we did is then he and I developed a practice together.

Dr. Traynor (19:49):
So I am a highly anxious person, anxiety ridden. You think? Whether it's because I saw how my parents worked hard or whether that's just my genetic makeup, but I am very anxious. And so if I were to go back and look, talk to my younger self, I wish I could have told myself that everything is going to be okay. It's all going to work out. It's all going to be okay. I don't know if I would've believed myself, but I really wish that I had said that to myself. It's all going to be okay. And even the mistakes, thankfully, not patient mistakes obviously, but business and practice mistakes, they're all part of the growth and it's all part of the process and the journey. And really, it's really about your journey and your growth and who you end up becoming. And so the scariness of it really should be embraced because it's really through that that you become somebody that you were supposed to be. You know what I mean? Your path will guide you to your future.

Dr. Kinzer (21:12):
What does it mean to be digital? Because I think unfortunately today, if you have a scanner, if you're a dentist and have a scanner, you go, "I'm digital." The real digital application starts after the scan is taken. That's what makes them digital. How are you using that data and who is using it? Because I think most digital is on the technology side. It's on the lab side of it.

Dr. McClellan (21:37):
She's an incredible individual, wicked smart, passionate about private practice and everything that it brings, the challenges where many academics, as we know, just don't necessarily live in the world that we in. But to get back to the point, I knew very quickly that she did not need me there. She had the skills, she had the intelligence, she had the ability to accomplish the clinical goals. And so by removing myself, I did not introduce the possibility of referrals saying, "I'm going to still send you patients, but I want to make sure Dr. McClellan sees these patients." It wasn't even an option. So that has very much helped in many ways throughout all the offices to establish that this is the clinical provider, this is who's going to see your patients. Dr. McClellan is still a part of the practice. I go to all the practices every week usually.

Andrew Jowett (22:32):
For sure. So in the simplest way, it's a creative storyteller for brands. And so I've done photography and video for a number of years and probably over a decade now I think is where the number tracks. But I think everyone has a story to tell and doing that through visuals is a powerful thing. And so that's where I come in. And whether it's photography, videography, those are my two main things that I think I'm really good at in this world. So I've been shooting for a long, long time. And I actually started in journalism. I mean, that's a good thing for anyone that is new to photography or wants to get a job in photography that's starting out. I think journalism taught me so much about interacting with people more than anything, not hiding behind your camera, which has served me so well throughout the years.

Dr. Austin (23:24):
And that allows me to use all the different tools. I can look at occlusion now as if I have mounted models on everybody. I can run simulations on people. So within three minutes with one iPhone photo and a scan, I can show them what they look like if they did ortho, what they look like if they did veneers. We do this for all-on-four patients now. I can in three minutes, five minutes, simulate what it's going to look for them after they get an all on four. And then once you realize that once people can see it, they start saying yes to treatment.That's the key. And it makes me wonder, how did I ever get yeses on comprehensive dentistry before I had any of these simulation tools? It's like just using my words. I talked people into it. Just hear dumb luck. And so the key is visualization for virtually every procedure you'd like to do more of.

Dr. Dawson (24:15):
For a young doctor or for a doctor that just has a young family, I've got five kids, 10 and under.

Dr. Souyias (24:22):
God Bless you.

Dr. Burch (24:23):
So I've got three 10-year-olds, a seven-year-old today.

Cameron Full (24:26):
You're not lecturing more? You're lecturing less?

Dr. Burch (24:31):
Yeah. And then a two-year-old is there's a time you have to work really hard on your practice. Make no mistake. There's a time you have to grind. But if you have buckets, you have your practice, you have your family and your wife, and then you have your hobby or the thing that fulfills you. Adding to one doesn't fill the other. So working hard on your practice, as a young doctor, I thought if I worked hard that my family would fill that, then I'm working hard. It doesn't. It actually takes marbles from that bucket. So you have to be careful not to overtake. And remember that you have to kind of keep them all equally full. Otherwise, one suffers.

Dr. Seda (25:15):
Well said.

Dr. Souyias (25:17):
Thanks for listening to The Special Lists presented by Referral Lab, the podcast for dentists and dental specialists, featuring a special list from a specialist. Got a question for us? Send us a message at speciallists.com with two Ls. Transform your referral workflow with Referral Lab, purpose-built platform for dental specialists to track, manage, and convert every referral. Request a demo at referrallab.io.

Dr. Seda (25:50):
We'll do it live.