Episode 723: The Better Way to Run a Business

 Pierce Krol is back to follow up on the cliffhanger at the end of episode 720 (listen here!). He shares with Kiera the truths behind the other side of success — instilling healthy habits in your personal life. He gets real about his old self, a workaholic, and his new self, who’s happier, healthier, and more successful professionally than ever. He gives insight on how to convince yourself to put yourself first and how it’ll improve your business.

Episode resources:

Reach out to Kiera: [email protected] 

Listen to part one of Pierce and Kiera’s conversation: Episode 720, Do You Bet On Yourself? 

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Transcript:

0:00:05.8 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.

0:00:50.7 Kiera Dent: Hello Dental A team listeners, this is Kiera, and you guys, I cut the podcast with Pierce Krol at a cliffhanger, and I did it on purpose. I didn't even let him say goodbye, because I wanted you guys to hear, bet on yourself, make your own luck. Pierce was so inspirational on that, and I wanted to bring him back on for part two, where it's the other side of success. So if you missed that one, be sure to go snag it, because I purposely cut it, so Pierce and I could come back. Pierce, welcome back to the show. One of my dearest friends. Pierce, how are you today?

0:01:20.5 Pierce Krol: I'm doing fantastic. I'm excited to pick this back up.

0:01:23.2 Kiera Dent: Awesome. Well, guys, Pierce, if you didn't hear the backstory, we've known each other for the last four years. Pierce is a business guru, entrepreneur. I feel like he's like a business mogul out there. Like he is just genius on all of the things. And we talked about his success, what made him super successful, he gave a lot of tips of things that he had, and he was wrapping it up of, bet on yourself. But he has another side of this, that I don't think people often talk about, and that's his health side of success, and how many of us spend our health to generate our wealth, and then we're using our wealth to regain our health. So Pierce, today we're gonna dive right into your health because you honestly have some of the scariest health things that I've ever heard, and you think it's no big deal and we giggle on our calls, but there's like a whole other side, to the success with health. So I'm gonna leave it there. I want you to pick up and head this in the direction you want to. It's your story, your share, and I'm just super grateful you're here today.

0:02:13.6 Pierce Krol: Yeah, absolutely. No, again, thanks for having me. I think, to really go down the, because we have to preface with what business has given me, but what business has taken from me. And what business has taken is has really been energy and health related. And I think there's a change now, which is great too. I'm seeing it more and more in, a lot of social circles about working 26 hours a day, it seems like a really acceptable, the only way to succeed. And I think there's obviously, based on our last podcast, there's something we said about hard work. I'm a believer in hard work, but I think there's a cost to burning the candle on both ends, if you will. And for me, that came from exhaustion, whether that's mental exhaustion and even physical exhaustion. There was a point, this was probably three or four years ago now, where I'm working all the time. I've got multiple businesses to say the least. And I'm definitely an entrepreneur at that time.

0:03:11.6 Pierce Krol: I've got less businesses now because I wanna focus on a couple and making them extremely well run and large versus 15 businesses. I thought if you had 15, 20 businesses, that was the way to do it. And, for some, that's, it can succeed. And there's a whole thing about time blocking and things like that. But, what I found was costing me was, this health piece. So my body ended up getting pretty tired. And so I've had some, nagging injuries knee injuries as an example over the years, which have really slowed me down. And then my body started getting too tired to the point where I was having heart issues. And so, I've had, AFib, they call it, where your heart goes in and out of rhythm, but it won't go back in. And so in order to get it back in, we needed a little bit more medicine. So, you end up getting shocked with the paddles, for the nontechnical crowd. And so I've had that happen to me. I think it's seven or eight times now.

0:04:06.0 Kiera Dent: Seven or eight times. And Pierce doesn't think this, he told me, he's like, yeah, Kiera...

0:04:10.3 Pierce Krol: This was years ago.

0:04:11.5 Kiera Dent: We were talking the other day, maybe like six months to a year ago. And you're like, oh yeah, it was kind of a hard month. I was like, on the table and they had to shock me back to life. And I'm like, you didn't think to start with that? Like, hey, Kiera, I'm glad I'm here. Not a guardian angel now, like Pierce.

0:04:25.1 Pierce Krol: Right.

0:04:25.5 Kiera Dent: Seven, eight times being paddled back to life. Okay, keep going.

0:04:29.9 Pierce Krol: So, [chuckle] let's for the listeners, not paddle back to life, but paddle...

[laughter]

0:04:33.3 Pierce Krol: Getting your heart to get back to where it needs to be. And, so it's fairly common, but the... [laughter] Common assumption.

0:04:41.8 Kiera Dent: No it's not really common. Please, everybody email in. If you have been paddled.

0:04:45.9 Pierce Krol: Yeah.

0:04:46.1 Kiera Dent: And you're still alive, please email me. I will like send you some Dental A Team swag because this is not normal and I need to prove to Pierce that of the thousands, we literally have almost a hundred thousand listeners out there. Kudos to all of you. Thank you for being a part of our family, but there's like maybe one in a hundred thousand that are actually paddled and that's you Pierce. So go on [laughter]

0:05:05.6 Pierce Krol: Fair. Fair. Okay. I'll give you that. I'll give you that. But what's really cool about the experience, if you can make the experience cool, and it's telling you something, was the fact that there's all kinds of medical diagnoses of, oh, you just got a weak heart, but whatever it may be. But I found out, not quick enough because it's been seven or eight times, but I really found out that it was based on exhaustion. It was based about the things that I was putting in my body, whether that's alcohol, coffee, and I'm not saying any of that's bad. If that works for you, it's great, but it wasn't working for me. So what I was getting through business, I was kind of losing through the back door, if you will, in my health. And so you start looking at people and, I'm very fortunate. I'm still a fairly young guy, so I can bounce back, but what you're seeing is, you're seeing these people work their entire life and then something takes 'em out at the end. And to me, that's like tripping at the finish line.

0:06:00.6 Pierce Krol: And so it became really important to me to almost reverse engineer what's going on. And there was more things going on, but it was really inflammation and joint pain and these heart issues that were kind of slowing me down. So it led me down a really awesome path of health. Now I'm not saying I'm gonna run 25k, like that's not who I am necessarily. But we start looking at, and we've talked about it, habits, daily habits. You hear that all the time. You hear all these high performers, these Fortune 500 companies, they've all got habits. And so for me, what I had to do right away was kinda we talk about overcoming hurdles in business, I had to show up the same way in my personal life.

0:06:37.3 Pierce Krol: Getting a pedal suck. It feels like you've been hit by a truck. It's not a lot of fun to do. So what we ended up doing is kind of looking at my health and going, okay, stimulants are bad. Maybe having six coffees a day to accomplish your work isn't necessarily okay, it goes for Red Bulls, it goes for all those fun things. So for me, it just didn't work. So I backed that off. Alcohol I felt was a trigger as well. And to be honest, we don't have to go too deep, but alcohol was more of a social relaxant. And again, I'm not drinking a six pack after work everyday. That's not who I'm to begin with. But it was those things of going, alcohol's not necessarily serving me. I'm not getting the rest I need on the weekend and the weekend's supposed to be my downtime, or at least I'm told it's supposed to be. So I immediately cut out alcohol and that was pretty life-changing in its own realm for a lot of different reasons. And if you wanna go down that road, we totally can.

0:07:28.4 Kiera Dent: Yeah.

0:07:28.8 Pierce Krol: But the cutting out alcohol, cutting out the coffee and then just looking at what you put into your body. And for me it was, again, sugars and sweets and really doing all those things that you instinctively know. But why I want to tie this all together is I had to show up for myself. If I wanted to keep performing at a high level. It's kind of what you're putting in your car. You want your car to perform, you gotta put the right things in it, you gotta maintenance the thing. And so for me, it took down a couple of different paths of health. It went down the meditation path, it went down cold baths, stretching, yoga. And then even on the other side, I was able, I went to a clinic in Panama and got stem cells, which are really powerful. And I got those in my knees and that was life changing in itself. And so, you tell me you wanna take this care, but those things were the... That was the big pivoting moment was going, I can't be all these things without actually putting in an effort for my health. So that's really, that's kind of how this story shapes up. You need to tell me where you want it to go.

0:08:30.0 Kiera Dent: No, I love that, Pierce. And I think you're leading right where I wanna go because I have some very fascinating... I'm fascinated by this story and now I get to actually pick your brain because normally when Pierce and I get on our monthly call, he loves to hear my life because it's a little bit more of a soap opera and doesn't love to share as much on his side, which is true. I'm a little more animated if you can't tell. I think paddles are bringing him back from death and he thinks it's just getting his heart back in rhythm. So you guys can see our difference of dynamics here. But Pierce, okay, so highly driven entrepreneur. If you guys did not hear his success stories, I call Pierce, my bajillionaire friend. Pierce is just so brilliant when it comes to business. He's not afraid. He takes action.

0:09:09.4 Kiera Dent: And so Pierce with that, I feel, and I think you probably feel a similar way, a lot of entrepreneurs feel that putting their health feels... We logically know it, but internally feel like it's weak. It feels pathetic. It feels like, I don't need to do this. I'm young, I'm driven. I can just keep driving and sling. How on earth did you break that or decide... Being on the table, you went eight times, so clearly it took a while, but how did you convince yourself that not making money, that not working all days, all hours of the day. How did you go from being this, I knew you, you did not ever stop working ever. Ever. You just ran a million miles a minute. How did you start incorporating this? Because I know you didn't go from where you were to where you are today overnight. How did you even start this?

0:10:00.5 Kiera Dent: I want you to get into the nitty gritties of, what was step one, step two, step three, because I think this is where people get stuck. I know I'm that way, you know me, I've got knee, hip shoulder, and now my knee leg's going numb. I haven't shared, we haven't talked our call is tomorrow. And I'm like, Kiera Dent, get it together, start doing your stretches, start doing your exercise.

0:10:17.7 Pierce Krol: Right. Right.

0:10:18.1 Kiera Dent: I'm like, No, I'm like half numb over here. It's totally fine. How did you... Was it that you were facing death and that was your rock bottom and you had to change? How did you make that transition and what were the steps you started with?

0:10:30.1 Pierce Krol: Yeah, no, for sure. I think, part of it is the support system yourself. And I've got business coaches and I've got those around me that I really trust and you start looking, and I think there's some reality. And I'm not saying I've got everything in this world that I've shot for, but I can think about things and manifest them and work and make them happy... Happen. Sorry, I believe in myself, but then you look at the health side and going, I could be a little bit better. And you just kinda shove it off to the side. So step one for me was kind of looking at that going, what's the finish line? Where is the finish line? And am I rolling through that in a wheelchair or am I walking across the finish line?

0:11:08.5 Pierce Krol: And that's really the reality. So there was such a huge goal for me of going, I've got two kids, I wanna be at their wedding. And I'm not saying I was... I'm not gonna make it. But that was the reality. And I think that's the powerful piece. You have to find that motivator. You gotta find that leverage if you will, on why you're gonna do something. And so for me, the leverage was really being there for those around me. I've got a few goals, which I've shared with you over the years, and some of the goals are business related, but some of the further goals down the line are really philanthropy, giving back, spirituality, and some really cool things like that. And I'm not gonna be able to do that if I am on fumes at that point, whether I'm 40, 50, 60, what have you. So for me it was, step one was really finding that leverage and why I wanted to do it. And then two, was finding something that made sense to me was relaxing and kind of being in that health. So whether you want to eat, nothing but salads or nothing but meat or whatever you find healthy, it was like really that leverage piece for me. So that was kind of step one.

0:12:08.4 Kiera Dent: So dive into that more, how did you find these pieces? Did you listen to podcasts? Did you read books? Did you talk, did you just start cutting out sugar? Was it the coffee and alcohol first? How did you prioritize which one? Because I think so often we just don't have a plan, so we fail to execute. So where did you really go? What things did you read, do? Where did you start from there?

0:12:28.8 Pierce Krol: Sure. Yeah. For me, I did the thing the viewers probably instinctually do too. I just looked at the things that had a negative connotation around it. And a lot of that was, yeah, big time sugar. And don't get me wrong, I'm still still gonna have sugar here and there, but it was...

0:12:40.6 Kiera Dent: I'm the humming bird on sugar over here, so you're fine. You're talking to the right bird here. I get you.

0:12:44.4 Pierce Krol: Right. Okay, perfect.

[laughter]

0:12:45.7 Pierce Krol: Yeah, so the alcohol was a really easy one for me, and it actually did more for me mentally than it did physically, which is really cool. But I just stopped drinking one day and going, this isn't serving me. I don't get my business from socializing in a bar or what have you. So, for me it just said, well, I'm just gonna stop. It's just not serving me. And it was amazing. And so to the audience, I did 18 months straight of not drinking and then I kind of came back and I'll have one here or there. But what was really powerful about that was, and what it did for me physically, was my body responded. I was getting on the weekends sleeping better.

0:13:20.3 Pierce Krol: You add a couple of vitamins there, like the magnesium, which I really like, and I just started getting better sleeps. And so that started healing your body in some ways and just getting it recharged, getting it rested so that you could really push it the next day. But the other thing that it did for me mentally was just taking control of this social aspect of my life. That again, I'll say it wasn't serving me. And the biggest thing that I found out when you stopped drinking was it bothers those around you more than it bothered me. And so the first few events I went to, it felt awkward. I'd buy a glass of wine, I'd just carry this thing around all night and try to shake it and spill some of it out. So it looks like I was drinking it.

0:13:53.5 Pierce Krol: And, but what I found, which was easier was just owning it. So the next couple of events, I just wouldn't have a drink. And they're going, well, why aren't you drinking? I go, I don't want to. And They go, well, but I want you to. And so that was really the reality. And so for me it became really powerful. And so once you can do things like that, because I just said, No, I don't want to, it would've been easier for me to say, Hey, I'm a raging alcoholic. This isn't working. And to the audience, I wasn't, but it would be easier to say that, what was really empowering was, no, I don't want to because I've got this larger goal. It's not serving me. Drink your face off. I'll still be here every step of the way. So that was kind of step one.

0:14:28.9 Pierce Krol: And how I got into that was really a lot of the social circle and the people that I follow online even they make these comments and you essentially go, yeah, that makes sense. So I had to find the piece that worked for me and the drinking was one. And so I kind of tied it together because I'm a big fan of cold plunges. And so it doesn't make sense. And I know it's not, it's not for everyone. It's not for everyone, but I'm a huge fan of it. So how do you go from like, trying to do something like that, but then I don't know, slamming cheeseburgers and beers after that, it all goes hand in hand. So for me, there was like a really small shift, and then it started to snowball and it made sense. And once you get that momentum on doing things, and then we you can talk about habits and all these cool things. So for me it was really just doing the little things, bite-sized chunks. And then the next thing you know, you look back six months later and you go, Hey, I made some pretty cool changes and it's working. So then there's that positive feedback and you just go and you expand.

0:15:24.8 Kiera Dent: Okay. So walk me through your like daily routine, because you guys, Pierce has many businesses. He's very busy. I purposely brought in someone not in dentistry, because I think Pierce so often we hang with our same crowd, which is great. But I also think looking outside of our industry of really successful people and how do they do it? And you even have a really cool thing. I'll put a like teaser out there. You have like a stretching zone, like to do yoga in your office that you incorporated since trying to be on this more health conscientious plus also growing your business. So what is like your routine? Like, do you do it in the morning? Do you do it in the afternoon? Walk me through, I know you take magnesium at night, I know you do a cold plunge, but like, what does your day in, day out life look like? Because I think people just don't even know how to grasp this oftentimes to start.

0:16:08.4 Pierce Krol: Sure, absolutely. And so I'm gonna preface this with, I do my best. I show up my best every day. And sometimes my best isn't everyday. You get a lot of these hardcores on here going, you gotta be up at 4:00 AM and you're in the gym. That's not me. That's not me, man. If I 'm getting up at six o'clock because I want to get 20 minutes of a meditation in or an hour, I'll get up a little bit earlier if I'm feeling it. So I'm doing what my body feels. I'm not gonna take a week off. I don't think that's going to do anything for you. But for me, it's a lot of things. And so what I want your audience to know, for me, I'm really into the meditation piece because I can quiet my mind and I do that in the morning. It's usually in the morning, or sometimes it's the last thing I do before bed if it was a really busy day. And it's really that...

0:16:49.2 Kiera Dent: [0:16:49.2] ____ meditation one to interrupt on that, like, do you use an app? Who do you like [0:16:53.0] ____.

0:16:53.0 Pierce Krol: So to be honest, I'm a big fan of Joe Dispenza, and if you're not familiar with Joe Dispenza, he's got this really this quantum field piece. And so I like his meditations and he's got a really cool space time meditation where he leads you through this meditation because I think what a lot of people miss about meditation, they're going I gotta get in this state. And sometimes when you don't think you're meditating, you're actually meditating. I've had a lot of cool experiences in meditation. Some you kind of go through and you go, well, I was hoping for some magical experience. Not every single one's magical, but some are incredibly powerful where you can get to the point of healing yourself. And a lot of what I've found in my life is stress induced. I'm a firm believer that a lot of this illness comes from a lot of stress and inflammation And your body's reaction, your nervous system.

0:17:37.6 Pierce Krol: And I could go on for hours and I know you don't have that kind of time, but what I think is really cool about Joe's meditations is he just kind of guides you through and makes you present. And so for me, it's really powerful. I recommend everyone to try it. Find a meditation that works for you. And so the meditation for me, what it does at the end of it all is I can get out of my mind. I can get this quiet peace. And so I'm bouncing all over the place a lot, like most people who are beginning. But I find it relaxing to the point where it becomes part of my daily habit or my every other day as I just said, daily habit. So I couple that with a few other things, but the meditation is pretty important to me. And I hope to get better and stronger and be able to educate more people around me on it. But it's been very powerful of the last I would say six months to a year. It's kind of taken over the cold bath, if you will.

[laughter]

0:18:29.0 Kiera Dent: That's amazing. And I do think meditation, we don't give it enough space and grace in our life. So to just walk us through currently, Pierce, I like that you said you show up for your best every day and it doesn't look the same. So I like that you allow it to be fluid, which especially for a serial entrepreneur who I've known to be driven, you will never stop, I think that that's a pretty impressive change of character. And I feel like if Pierce can do it, anyone can do it.

0:18:53.2 Pierce Krol: Right.

0:18:53.3 Kiera Dent: So you show up the best that you can, either meditate in the morning, meditate at night, what else do you do?

0:19:00.4 Pierce Krol: You know what, it's been changing over the years that we've known each other, obviously. I've got what I call Hippie Pierce. So we've got Entrepreneur Pierce, who just shows up every day, going to win, gonna do whatever it takes to win, whatever aspect of life. And then I've got the hippie side that's going, "Hey, why don't we slow down? Why don't we do a stretch?" And yeah, this company, that we have now, Insurely in Canada for the users listening, we're an insurance brokerage, at scale, and what I've found over the companies is your company is only as good as the employees, inside of it. And so I wanted to create this iconic brand with this, an amazing culture. And part of the amazing culture here is kinda showing up for yourself and showing up for your employees. So you're right, Kiera. We've created a space for yoga inside our office. We've had... We've got a massage... A masseuse, sorry, that shows up once a month for a couple of days and gives massages to the staff if they they need it. We've got tarot cards here, we've got the salt lamps, we've got the bouncy balls, standup desks, treadmills. And again, that's... And I'm not saying just go out and do that, that's not necessarily affordable for every user or even the application that you're in.

0:20:07.5 Pierce Krol: But what I've found is, giving myself and our employees the ability to do some of these things makes the experience so much better for both them on their daily basis and for our customers. Imagine what a group of happy people that are inspired.

0:20:25.9 Kiera Dent: We've got goal boards on the wall, sorry. And so you just show up in this way. And I think that's been a really big key to our success. And so that doesn't start with... You talked about proverbially, you don't go to the fitness instructor that's 300 pounds overweight. Not to try to be offside, but for me, trying to lead... I can't lead an organization by faking health. And I hate it because it felt kind of counterintuitive, but it's actually been very beneficial to our company, and the fact that be your best self. Your listeners are probably kind of intrigued to know like, I've showed up at our office space before, and I've walked in and the lights were off and I'm going, "What is going on here? We need to be working." And I kind of go into this room and all of our employees are laying on the floor, and they're doing a meditation.

0:21:17.8 Pierce Krol: And I tiptoed back and some of the employees said, "Hey, sorry we weren't working." I said, "No, absolutely, and absolutely not." Some firms have coffee breaks and smoke breaks. If we're taking a meditation break, kudos to you. And so we started tracking these type of people, like in our organization we've got four or five yoga instructors that are now in our business, not teaching yoga, but they're in the insurance space but they've got a yoga background. And so all of a sudden you see this thing it's building and it's just awesome, and so you have this amazing culture built on health, which is really cool, compared to 10 years ago where our culture was built on, how hard are you gonna work today? And it's such a better way of doing business because I really want to see everyone succeed both personally, professionally, and those you have around us and give people the ability to be healthy and do the things they wanna do. It's incredibly powerful and I wouldn't change it for the world.

0:22:09.0 Kiera Dent: That's really interesting, and, Pierce, and I appreciate you walking into it. And just for a friend who's watched you over these years, which I'm sure you can say similar things about watching me, something that's been really amazing that I've watched you do, that I've really enjoyed is, I remember back old Pierce, like the the other version of you, that wasn't into health, that wasn't into meditation, wasn't into healing and growing and creating this culture, I remember you called me one time and you and an employee had an encounter and you basically told them, like, "Well, if you don't agree, it's fine, you can leave now." And like, "Kiera, I probably shouldn't have said that, maybe you can help me word into this a little bit stronger." That's our differences. I can win people over all day long, Pierce can grow any business. We are a really good duo. But to watch you now love your team and wanna create a culture knowing who you are, I don't think that would've been possible if you would've given yourself that saving grace. And I feel like it started with you and because you give yourself that love, because you give yourself that grace, because you are taking care of your health and wanting to be here for the long term, you now are then able to extend that to your team, and that's something I really wanna highlight because I think so often we try to show up for our teams, and give our teams things, we're not even willing to give ourselves.

0:23:17.1 Kiera Dent: And it's the reverse, and they always use the corny metaphor, but it's so true of on an airplane, like you've gotta put the mask on yourself first before you can serve other people. And so that was something I wanted to highlight is, I love your vision, and I think all of us should think about what is our finish line and how are we going to be crossing that? For me I wanna be like sliding into home base, full energy, full steam, like ring me out. I hope I go out in flames of glory of just I lived my life to the fullest and I need a healthy body that can do that and serve that. And then second, that you really do just allow yourself, and I love that you've identified, like we've got Entrepreneur Pierce and we've got Hippie Pierce, and I'm curious Pierce, and I actually don't know the answer for this, and it could be, they might not be the exact same, it could be a coincidence because you have grown a lot of businesses, but I'm curious and I don't need your numbers, is your current business, that's a new business with Hippie Pierce, quite often in the front, is that business on track to be more successful than Entrepreneur Pierce? Financially and successfully, how are the businesses? Again, I don't need specific numbers but like where do they rank? And I have a follow up question to that.

0:24:22.9 Pierce Krol: No, absolutely. No, sorry, and I kind of feel like I know where you're going with this, but you're right, this business that we're building now is tracking so much better than previous businesses that I've sold, and to the audience I've built other insurance businesses which are brick and mortar in locations and I was able to sell those. And that took a hard eight years to 10 years to get in and out of this business. And at the end of that business, I was exhausted, I was tired, and then you start looking over your shoulder going, "I'm kind of bored. Is this really what I want to do?" And then I got out of it, and I'm going, "Oh, no. I'm gonna do this again. I'm just gonna do it a little bit differently. I love this, I love this stuff." So yeah, now, we're in more of a digital play with scale across Canada and its entirety. But to answer your question, Yeah, I looked at some of this stuff, and I'm going, it was kind, kind of felt a little hokey, kind of felt off, "Why are we doing this?" But no, this company is thriving off of these tools we put in place and we allow people to be vulnerable, and it's not just based off, "We're gonna trade you for a massage for hard work." That's not it. It's quite the opposite. We're going, "Man, you work so hard, I want to give you these things that say thank you and encourage you and be your best self."

0:25:39.0 Kiera Dent: And our business is tracking probably like to be where we were... The company previously that that we sold after 8 years, we got there, basically, in three. And so where we'll be in the next five will be tenfold, because we have so much more energy, and I have more energy, I've got a great team of people so I can do more things. You're only as good as your team, and I said that earlier.

0:26:04.6 Kiera Dent: Yeah.

0:26:05.3 Pierce Krol: So if you've got an amazing team that's willing to do whatever it takes and they share the same vision because you're treating them right and you're being a great employer like, I always reverse engineer it, and I mean, look at you... You've got an amazing business and and people love you and trust you and your audience trusts you. I trust you. And so you look at the business and go, "Is this a place where I'd wanna work?"

0:26:24.7 Kiera Dent: Yeah.

0:26:24.7 Pierce Krol: And I've been to a dental office before. Some are pretty awesome and and some, there's room for improvement. So if you look at that front desk and go, "Is that how I'd wanna be greeted? Is that where I'd wanna work?" So that goes a lot. That's what I do on a daily basis. And that's where a lot of the good ideas come from is kinda reverse engineering your own business and going, "How would I wanna be treated? Well, I would wanna be treated with respect. I'd want people to... " Yeah, I could go for days, Kiera, we've just got such a range of personality, and by letting people be themselves, wear what they wanna wear, people are willing to work so much harder, and you gain so much more versus the whole whip mentality of what's the perk of your job, job security if you do a good one. No, it's, I wanna be part of something, I wanna build something and people value me. So, like I said, I'll rant forever. So you better cut me off.

0:27:15.5 Kiera Dent: No, I love it. It's a good, it's a good one. So it's on track. And then you personally do feel like you have better relationships, 'cause I know... Like you and I both talked, our marriages, like my marriage, I'm like, "I don't even know what's happening. I never see them." You and I have definitely had the conversations around that. Do you feel like you're more present for your relationships now? 'Cause I'm guessing you're probably not working as many hours, but you're still as successful, so if not even more. How's your personal life since becoming Hippie Pierce?

0:27:43.3 Pierce Krol: Yeah, listening to Hippie Pierce is probably... It's a great call out, in the fact, and I mean, it's so tough. Like you can sit here and listen to my story all you want, and you go, "I'll go figure my own out." And I did the same thing. It's really easy to be on this other side and you've had some success. And then on the other side going, "Well, I'm gonna try to do it a different way." So, to answer a question that I've been asked before, it's like, if you could tell previous Pierce 10 years ago what to do, it really would be that. It would be like, "Take things less seriously, bet on yourself, be healthy. It'll come. Work hard. Don't give up on yourself, and do all the right things. And sometimes the right things are going against the norm." I'm not saying recreate the wheel, but treating people well, being a kind person, having a fun business to be at, having a great goal, those are some of the advice that I'd give previous Pierce other than, "Hey, see if you can work 23 out of the 24 days. 'Cause you can live off coffee and McDonald's," and, it's a total different reality than I'm in now. So I would say, I am a much better father, I'm a much better husband. And I'm a much better person. I'm not a stress case all the time of going, "I gotta get this done today so we don't fail tomorrow." We won't fail.

0:29:02.8 Pierce Krol: And so the last thing to tie that all together is what I really realized, and we've talked about this before, which is really cool, is you'll always overestimate what you can do in say a year, but you'll underestimate what you do over 10. And so looking back 10 years ago from what I was doing then, and again, the time that we've known you, and what will actually spin us to you, what you were doing three, four years ago, to what you're doing today, right?

0:29:24.9 Kiera Dent: Mm-hmm.

0:29:25.9 Pierce Krol: I would say it's a little bit different, would it not?

0:29:29.7 Kiera Dent: Absolutely. Tenfold.

0:29:30.1 Pierce Krol: Yeah.

0:29:30.4 Kiera Dent: I didn't even live at home, Pierce. I was on the road, in the airplane, all the time. It was ridiculous.

0:29:35.3 Pierce Krol: Right. So you look back and you go, Man, what you were doing four years ago to what you are today, like, it's so powerful. And so take a moment and no matter where you're in your life, where you are in your business, look back five, 10 years. 'Cause I guarantee you're gonna go, "Wow, I was doing this, or I was doing that on the weekends." So then you look at that and then go, "If I did that in the last five, imagine what I could do in the next five." And I think that's really powerful for the forecasting piece because you're only gonna get bigger, better, stronger. You're gonna have different skills. It's like going to the gym. You go to the gym, and you got a dumbbell, and you're lifting 10 pounds. Eventually, you're gonna go to 20, and you'll go to a 30. And then you're gonna look back and go, "Remember when 10 pounds was hard?" And that's what I'm finding with business. There's problems I had five years ago where I thought the world was ending. I would give anything for those problems some days. You know the conversations we've had.

0:30:22.4 Kiera Dent: Yeah.

0:30:22.4 Pierce Krol: Who would want those? Who would want those problems? Because those are now easy. So the problems don't ever go away. You get smarter. You get more involved. You get a little bit craftier. But the problems still come. It's how you overcome those hurdles. And I think that's kind of a really cool piece to look at. And that's something that experience will give you. But everyone in their life was doing something different five, 10 years ago. And so use that as that motivator, that leverage, Yeah, the sky is the limit, man. If anyone's on that ledge, just reach out to me, I'll push you off the ledge, all day long. Bet on yourself. Go for it.

0:30:53.9 Kiera Dent: He will all day, all day, every day, which is why I think we all need a Pierce in our life. So, I will put a little fun piece out there. Pierce is in Canada, I think. And when we were at Tony Robbins Business Mastery in 2019, Pierce actually created this idea of the business he's currently now running. I remember you, Pierce, writing this down, and you wrote the idea, I think if I remember right, you wanted to be like the Amazon of insurance where people could...

0:31:16.9 Pierce Krol: Bingo.

0:31:17.0 Kiera Dent: Select it, choose it, and have it all across the world. And so if you guys are in Canada, look up Insurely, Pierce Krol is there. I think you guys are like, who enjoys insurance companies? I don't. I don't even know why you're in it. But you guys do it so differently. It's very cool. So, guys, you can check him out. But, Pierce, I appreciate you in my personal life. I appreciate you as a business mentor, as a friend. And I hope you guys all took that. I think so many of us hear this and we're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, it worked for him but not for me." But if so many people say the exact same thing, slow down, you'll get there, and look at... I love what you said of, one year might seem like you're not making a lot of progress, but what will you do in 10, or in five years, it's crazy. The small compound interest in our life, in our finances, in our relationships, we often minimize the day in, day out consistency, trying to go for leaps and bounds of growth as opposed to just staying consistent. So, Pierce, I loved having you on the podcast. I'll let you say thank you, wrap up, anything, if you guys wanna reach out to Pierce, Pierce, how can they get in touch with you if anyone... I mean, if you guys need Pierce to push you off the ledge, you guys just email him and say, "Hey, I wanna hear your story." He will respond to you. So, Pierce, how can they get in touch with you if they wanna learn more about you or just need a mentor like I did?

0:32:24.2 Pierce Krol: Yeah, I think the best way... Look us up on our website in insurely.ca in Canada, and you'll find my contact info there and the team's contact info. But, no, thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure. I love having these conversations with you, and I'm so glad we got got to do this on this format because, yeah, as much as you think highly of me, I wanna reciprocate, I think quite highly of you and all the things that you've done and your audience have gained by being a part of your journey is phenomenal. So, again...

0:32:54.7 Kiera Dent: Thank you.

0:32:54.9 Pierce Krol: The pleasure's all mine. Thanks for having me. It's just so much fun.

0:32:57.5 Kiera Dent: Thank you. It was amazing. And, Pierce, I truly appreciate that. So for all of you listening, I hope you take one or two pieces from this. I feel like this is really teaching you how to hack your health, how to hack your life, and how to really make your life be the life you want, create the culture you wanna have. So, Pierce, as always, thank you. Thank all of you for listening, and I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast.

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0:33:17.6 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.