Episode 776: How to Tackle Obstacles with Ease  

 It’s the final book club selection of 2023! Kiera shares her thoughts on The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday and how we can turn adversity into success. She talks about common obstacles in the practices the DAT is visiting, like operations manuals, and how each practice can overcome these challenges.

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0:00:05.3 Kiera Dent: Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host Kiera Dent. And I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you. We are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team podcast.

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0:00:52.9 Kiera Dent: Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and oh, today is Book Club Day. I hope that you are so excited. It's our final book club of the year. We have gone through 12 books together and we are now on book number 12. So I hope you guys enjoy Dental A Team's book club this year. I'm not sure I'm still to be determined if we'll do book club next year. So if you enjoyed it and you want us to continue, be sure to reach out [email protected]. Tell us that you enjoyed it. Otherwise, I might just create a Dental A Team's 2024 book club for every single day of the, or every single month of the year. That way you have it. It can be on our website. But I wanna wrap us up because we have done a lot of fun books and I appreciate you as podcast listeners because you've held me accountable to reading all 12 of these books, of following through, of making a podcast.

0:01:45.6 Kiera Dent: And so our last book is Ryan Holiday. The Obstacle Is the Way, which I think is absolutely so fitting. I purposely put it in December because I wanted you to really get the focus and the emphasis of the obstacle sitting in front of you is the way. And I love Ryan Holiday, lots of amazing books with Ryan Holiday. He's got so many good ones. This one, I remember when I read it the first time, I was just blown away at how changing my perspective of the things sitting in front of me, the boulder sitting in front of me is really what I need to tackle instead of going around walking over, avoiding picking a different path. And I think about the story at the very beginning of the book. For those of you who read it, you'll know. And those of you who didn't, who are just here for the recap, I support both of you.

0:02:33.2 Kiera Dent: But like they talk about, like a big boulder in the middle of the path and how some people would walk around it, some people would walk over it, some people just turned back and walked the other way. But then somebody, a group finally picked up this boulder, moved it out of the way and the path was clear in front of them. And I just think with The Obstacles Is the Way there were so many good highlights. But for book club, if I was doing this with my team, I might say like, what do we think are the obstacles sitting in front of us? What do we think are the pieces holding our business back? What are the ones that maybe we're tolerating or that we're walking around because we just don't wanna deal with it? I will just call a couple of them out that a lot of offices struggle with, and that is operations manual.

0:03:21.6 Kiera Dent: So many of us complain and complain and complain and complain that we don't have systems and people don't follow things. And I always ask, do you have your protocols written down and do you use them regularly? No. So many people complain and complain and complain, Kiera my schedule. I can't hear productivity. And I say, do you have blocked scheduling in place? Well, no, no one follows it. I'm just gonna giggle. Like your answer's right there. The answer is right in front of you, but you don't wanna do the work. Yeah, it's heavy to move that obstacle. Do you think it was easier to move it or to walk over it? Well, it's obviously easier to walk around it or walk over, but it wasn't clearing the path. It wasn't actually solving the problem. So for you, you've got to find the way of how do we move these boulders in front of us and actually tackle them instead of complaining about them?

0:04:10.8 Kiera Dent: And what I found is until that problem becomes a true, real big problem, and I just ask all the time like, all right, you tell me, is this truly a problem you're willing to solve or are you willing to continue to tolerate it? Because if we're not truly a hundred percent willing to solve it, we're never ever, ever going to move it. We're going to continue to tolerate it. So they just talk about how, like I loved in here just helps you endure the struggles of life with grace and resilience and turn adversity into success rather than problems. So I don't know. I just think that there, that's what I would be taking to my team of what are our obstacles, what are the obstacles personally and professionally in there? Because like what stands in the way becomes the way. If you just move them out of the way, if you just solve them, the way flows. It flows easily.

0:05:07.1 Kiera Dent: And I think so often we become used to having this boulder in front of us that we've almost forgotten what it looks like without that being there. Or maybe we've never even experienced what it looks like without it there. So for you, just making sure that you truly do move those obstacles out of the way. They said there are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We must try to be objective, to control emotions and keep an even kill, to choose to see the good in the situation, to steady our nerves, to ignore what disturbs or limits others, to place things in perspective, to revert to the present moment, to focus on what can be controlled. And then the next one is, there is no good or bad without us. There is only perception. There's the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.

0:05:58.2 Kiera Dent: And that one I love because another book that we didn't put in book club this year is, Michael Singer's The Untethered Soul. And I remember them talking about how like death is actually happening every single day, but unless it's something tied to us in the story we give it, it doesn't impact us. Like sure, if I hear about it on the news, I will feel sad, but I'm not thinking about it every day. Or we think about, like think of it, if you ever had a breakup and you were so happy to finally break up with that person, it wasn't a sad day for you unless you gave the story feeling an emotion. And it says perspective has two definitions, context, a sense of a larger picture of the world, not just what is immediately in front of us and framing an individual's unique way of looking at the world, a way that interprets its events.

0:06:52.8 Kiera Dent: And so I thought about this of really are we having the context of it versus the framing or the story or the weight I guess that we give that event. Like you can give the weight of an operations manual. All this framing of it's so hard and it's gonna take us forever. That's truly you looking at it from your perspective and you interpreting it versus an operations manual is going to be truly the guide of what I need to happen. And if I just, we're just gonna get through this, we're gonna take the next quarter and we're gonna crank this out, it's two perspectives. It's the same obstacle. It's just a different way. It's been framed in a different perspective. And so I just felt like this book was so good at showing you to take life's challenges and to take life's problems if you will, and turn them into a different perspective.

0:07:42.9 Kiera Dent: I think like so much of life has shifted my life literally by perspective. For those of you who have heard my story in the past, for those of you who have listened to the podcast for a while, I have shared that I've had some dark times in my life. And the reason I love Tony Robbins so much is I was listening to one of his, it was on YouTube and I was in the shower. I'm super depressed in life and I remember hearing the line, life is happening for you and not to you. And that was a moment where I literally was rock bottom in life. And to hear that I felt, oh my gosh, like if life really was happening for me, if every single thing in my life, good and bad, and I had had a lot of bad recently, if all of that bad was actually for my best good, how would that change my life?

0:08:37.5 Kiera Dent: And it did. That one perspective shift changed Kiera Dent's life forever. It gave me hope. It gave me future. It gave me a shift. I was able to then see all these problems that I had felt were like the parts of my life that ruined me instead is something that grew me, that changed me, that made me into someone better and greater than I ever was. And so for you, looking at this, that's what I think about The Obstacle Is the Way is you're seeing things from a different perspective. You're seeing it as the way and not just ignoring it, but really tackling it. So some ways to make this a little fun for you and your teams is let's list off the obstacles. So I want you to think of like the big rocks that if we were to move them would make us super successful.

0:09:21.9 Kiera Dent: So like I said, operations manual, building a leadership team, hiring an office manager, getting our profitability to 20%, those are big obstacles. And sometimes you might look at that and feel like it's too daunting, but if you'll just build your "rock obstacle list, then you'll be able to figure out how do we lift that huge boulder and move it out of the way and have this become the way. Another thing about this is thinking, it's just like so much of this book was perspective. And another thing you guys could do is how can you reframe the issues in your practice? So when we go into offices, oftentimes I'll do a little exercise of filters with them and have them write something that just drives them nuts. Okay, so you can do this with me. What's a problem in your practice that just drives you absolute ludicrous.

0:10:15.5 Kiera Dent: It could be like insurance is the worst thing. Late patients mean patients. It could be that the phone never stops ringing. Okay, those are all things. Now, I'm gonna ask you to flip the script. If I were to say the obstacles of that problem is the way to your greatest success, how could you flip that into that problem being your greatest success? So the phone never stops ringing. Well, that's a very negative thing. The phone ringing are patients that I get to serve. Well, now that just flipped the script. And now every time that phone rings, I'm like, oh my gosh, that's another person I get to help and serve. That one flip of the script made it look different. On another podcast I shared about how my Tuesday call day used to feel like, oh my gosh, I've got calls. Well, if I realize and I flip the script now it's today's magic moment.

0:11:08.8 Kiera Dent: I get to go make magic moments for all my clients. I will literally tell you that one filter shift has made my Tuesdays some of my most favorite days of the entire month as opposed to a day where I didn't dread it, I loved my clients, but I mean it's a 12hour day and it's like constant output. And so it was more of just like a, whew, this is a really long day rather than a today is magic moment day. And it's crazy, the energy and the feeling and the excitement that I have just with a filter shift. So for you guys, you could really take this of like, what is an obstacle sitting in front of you that's your biggest annoyance in the practice? And let's flip the script. How can we flip that script? Another one is, if I say no and have boundaries, people don't like me.

0:11:52.9 Kiera Dent: If I say no, I'm able to say yes to more things that I truly wanna do that support my vision and my why. Okay, I'm gonna start saying, no, I got it. Just that simple perspective shift. And so hopefully you guys loved this book. I felt like it was such a good ideal podcast to do for you at the end of the year. Because if you can look at all of your "problems from this year as the way to your success," how much more successful will you be? How much happier will you be? How much less stressed will you be? All of these things, they're at your fingertips. They're capable for you. It's just a matter of you taking it on, of you accepting it, of you, of seeing it that way. So that way you really can say, this obstacle was the way.

0:12:41.9 Kiera Dent: My obstacle of not knowing business is what led me to hire Liz as my coach. So I was at an event, we were talking about businesses and I felt like, oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm doing here. I left the conference room, walked out into the hallway, and I remember literally like tears just welling in my eyes. I felt the absolute most overwhelmed I've ever felt in my entire life and felt, I don't know how to do this. Like I literally don't know how to do this. And I had a moment where I'm like, Kiera, just leave. Give up. You don't know what you're doing. You're not even cut out to be this. You don't know what you're like all these other people, They know so much more than you do. What are you even trying to do? Trying to be a business owner?

0:13:30.5 Kiera Dent: And I literally almost walked out and I think about what I would've walked out on. I would've walked out on this podcast. I would've walked out on meeting all of you. I would've walked out on my team. I would've walked out on opportunities to grow myself as a person. I would've walked out on my life like the life I'm living today I almost walked out on. But instead I decided that's it. I'm going to do whatever it takes to become an elite business owner, whatever it takes. So then I had that filter. I met a guy named Oz. Oz talked to me about this girl who was in dentistry, who knew this girl named Liz. I called Liz. Liz had just left a consulting company. She was one of the top tier who had been there for years and they had sold. And so she was just, you know, looking for her next thing.

0:14:17.9 Kiera Dent: I talked to Liz. I convinced Liz to be my coach. Liz came back to me and said, Kiera, it's gonna be $5,000 a month. And I remember I literally was like, whew, I'm not even paying myself that much. But I had a conviction that I was going to do whatever it took. I would rather go all in than not. That's literally like, I'm gonna go dig this boulder. $5,000 a month. I don't even know if I can handle this. That's over 50,000. We're like barely even making that a month. And I'm gonna pay that to some coach. And I will tell you, I hired her. The next month I wanted to fire her 'cause I was freaking out and I didn't feel like I could afford this. I remember telling her like, you need to hang up 'cause I don't wanna talk to you anymore 'cause I feel stressed out.

0:15:03.9 Kiera Dent: And she said, Kiera, I'm not gonna let you go. You hired me for a reason and we're going to fix this. And one year later I knew my numbers. I knew how to read a P&L. I had new products. I had my sales team figured out. I had my consulting better dialed in. I had a process for how we were consulting. And when I went back to a meeting a year or two years later, I think it was two years, it was during 2020. So it was 2020. So a year later, I went in 2019 and 2020 with the pandemic. So don't worry, that was like right after thank heavens I hired her 'cause I don't know if I could have survived the pandemic without her.

0:15:43.3 Kiera Dent: I went back to that meeting and I knew my numbers and I wasn't a fraud. There was still so much more for me to learn, but I actually was a more elite business owner. And it was because I'd said, I will do whatever it takes to move this obstacle in front of me out of the way. I will do whatever it takes. I will learn sales, I will learn marketing. I will learn what I need to do to make this be the most successful company. I will figure out how to help clients get better results. I will figure out how to hire and retain people better. I'll figure out how to build a culture like holy cow. That was a lesson in all lessons of how to build a successful culture when I had a not great culture, whatever it takes. And it was a humbling moment.

0:16:30.4 Kiera Dent: It was a terrifying moment and it was a life changing moment. And so for each of you, there's an obstacle sitting in front of you and you probably know the. For me, I knew I needed help. I didn't know it, but I'm really good at finding people who do know it. So I committed. I am going to go find someone that knows this better than me, that can help me and I'm going to do whatever it takes. I was terrified. I still remember paying that first bill. I was like, oh my gosh. Liz paid for herself five times over. Liz grew our company so much. Liz grew me as a leader so much. She called me out on it. She said, your culture's terrible and it's because of you. Wow, thanks Liz. Glad I pay you a lot of money to tell me I'm terrible.

0:17:15.9 Kiera Dent: She was right. And without her Dental A team would not be what it is today. And so for each of you, I want you to look, look at your life. What is that obstacle sitting in front of you? And are you committed to doing whatever it takes? And if you're not, it's not really that big of a problem. But if it is, commit right now that you will do whatever it takes. Go after it. Be tenacious. Figure out how to move that giant boulder sitting in front of you that way because that truly is the next layer to your success, to your happiness, to your fulfillment. You just have to be willing to get uncomfortable. And I mean really uncomfortable. It's awkward. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to admit you don't know the answers. It's uncomfortable to do those things. But I promise you that's where the happiness is.

0:18:02.4 Kiera Dent: That's truly what you're searching for and seeking. Don't be afraid. You are worth it. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to have every ounce of happiness you ever could possibly have. You truly are worth it. So take a bet on yourself. You know you can do it. You're just scared. I literally was afraid. I was afraid of being a sham. I was afraid of being called out. I was afraid that I would look like a fraud. I was afraid that I would embarrass my team. Those are all just stories. Those are all perspectives. That was me framing a perspective rather than a reality. And once I decided it doesn't even matter. I don't care how stupid I look. I don't care. I need help. And I owe it to my team and I owe it to me. And with that, did what it took.

0:18:52.3 Kiera Dent: And this year, the next layer, I know what my obstacle is. And we're gonna go after it with tenacity and I'll do it you guys I've hired multiple, Our next one is marketing, figuring out marketing consistently. I have hired coaches and fractional CMOs and I said, I don't care what it takes. I'm going to figure this out. And we're getting a lot closer. So for you, crack your big obstacle. Make it become the way. And if we can help you, reach out [email protected]. We truly are dental experts that know the way. We know how to help you. We know how to help you have happier lives, happier patients, less stress, lower overhead. Most of our clients see a 10 to 30% increase in revenue in their first 30 to 90 days. They also have a decrease in overhead, but the intangible is they get their lives back. They figure out why they're doing this.

0:19:43.4 Kiera Dent: They get direction and focus on where they're going. They have a plan. If that sounds exciting to you and that's what you know you need, reach out. Don't be afraid. Book the call like I called Liz. It's gonna scare you. You're gonna feel like you can't afford it. And what I'll tell you is you can't afford not to because every day that you wait is just one more day that you spin in that same circle, in that same pot, until it gets worse and worse and worse. Make the call, make the decision. Commit to seeing every obstacle as the way to your future and your success. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team podcast.

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0:20:23.0 Kiera Dent: And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental A Team podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.

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