Episode 834: Build a Fun (& Productive) Culture

 This episode is all about celebrating your team and practice. Kiera gives ideas for adding more fun to the work day while still keeping things professional. Remember, applying flavor is a culture builder, marketing tool, energy amper, and more.

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Kiera Dent (00:01.298)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is honestly, in my opinion, the best day of the entire year. And I am so excited to be sharing today with you today. Today is actually my birthday. Uh, and it actually is Tiffany's birthday. Spiffy Tiffy. We were actually born on the same day, a year apart. It's my grandma's birthday. It's my great grandma's birthday, all on the maternal line. And I'm here to celebrate it with you. And so,

As much as I would love to talk about myself today, I actually have a fun thing that's going to tie into birthdays and celebrations for you. But before we get started, I just want to say thank you for being a part of my family. Thank you for being someone that I want to share my birthday with. You guys, I truly do believe that it is a national holiday. We have these really fun lights on our house that we can change out and we can turn on for holidays. And last year I put on hot pink for my birthday and our neighbors asked my husband if we were doing a gender reveal party. And my husband said, no, no.

Uh, Keira just believes that her birthday is a national holiday and so she turns on lights for it, but I just believe that birthdays are so fun. It should be birthday month. And I just appreciate you guys for being a part of my life.

of being people that I learned from, people that I'm able to grow with, people that I am able to just look at you with awe of how much you're doing and how much good you bring to this world. So cheers to you. And if this is helpful for you, be sure to share this with someone today. Find someone that we want to celebrate and share this podcast with them today. Be sure to download, subscribe, share, tag us while you guys are listening. I want to know where you're listening on my birthday today. Even if you're listening to it a few days after my birthday, that's fine. Tag it.

Um, love the happy birthday love. I love to see you guys. I am someone that if you tell me I'm awesome, you rave about me, you're my greatest friend and I will probably do anything for you. So, uh, truly just so grateful for you, but honestly, you sharing is how you're going to help me achieve my mission of being able to get this podcast into the hands of every dentist in the world to positively impact them, to give them practical tactical tools, to give them their lives back, to give teams the empowerment, to be able to grow this in leadership.

Kiera Dent (02:01.342)

So do me a favor, happy birthday. The only gift I want from you is for you to share this with one person today that you know it would change their life. With that, this year's birthday is incredible. So I know you're listening to this. I am not recording this today. I did pre -record this. Don't you worry. Today is gonna be so fun though. So to tell you, every year I love to travel for my birthday. And so what we're doing this year, I like to have extravagant things. Last year I threw myself my first grownup birthday party.

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Kiera Dent (02:29.79)

If you haven't done that, I would highly recommend it. I had friends fly in. Um, I was supposed to have a Rita's Italian ice ice cream truck, uh, but they didn't have drivers. So we ended up just having an ice cream bar. I did one of those like cellophane balls, uh, where you roll the dice and it was just so much fun. We had a barbecue at all my friends. We did the tortilla challenge with water in your mouth. Like it was just so much fun to be surrounded by people I love. Cause I have friends from all over the nation. And so to get us all together was a blast. And so this year I'm topping it off even more.

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Kiera Dent (03:00.126)

My husband always knows in his PTO, it's usually a week from my birthday. And so this year what we're doing is I will be in Disneyland. I love Disneyland. Last year I went to Disneyland every single holiday in the entire year. It was so much fun. And this year, I mean, I'm gonna go for the national holiday of Kiera's birthday. So we'll be in Disney today. If you're there, come say hello. But then after that, what we're actually doing is we're flying out that night and we will be headed off to Paris.

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Kiera Dent (03:28.094)

Uh, the reason why is because I love Taylor Swift so much and Taylor is performing in Paris. I put it out there last year and I'm actually going with some of my really good friends. You guys know them. So my husband will be coming with me. No BS. Brit is a huge Taylor Swift fan. I went to opening night concert with her in March. And then you guys, if you don't know her, you should definitely know her. Tell her, thank you. Alex who writes the show notes is also a massive Swifty fan. And somehow I was able to convince Brit and Alex and Jason to all come with me.

And believe it or not in Paris, it's actually cheaper to get floor tickets than sitting. So it's going to be us in a huge mosh and we cannot wait. We're going to be there. Uh, and so this year definitely celebrating in massive style. I cannot wait. And I hope you always celebrate yourself and going on this theme of celebration. I wanted to come up with some ideas for you guys today of how do we actually bring celebrations and fun into our teams, into our practices? I believe, and this is, does it have to be your mantra?

but growing up, my mom always made holidays such a big deal. And I realized there's not oftentimes as much good in this world. And so finding the opportunities of good and making it fun. So what I believe that holidays and birthdays and celebrating and loving on our team is really a good way to shake up your culture and have fun. So like find reasons to celebrate. So celebrate the holidays. When it's Valentine's day, pull out the hearts and do cookies or have a day where you shut off for an hour or we take a lunch and we do.

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Kiera Dent (04:53.726)

cooking making or March for St. Patrick's Day, like put coins and have a jar and have all your patients guess the coins and then have a lucky winner and for Easter, doing Easter egg hunts. And if you don't believe in holidays, find another way to celebrate and have fun because life is meant to have fun. And there's a book who it's part of our book club, a little plug for our book club. And it's how to have more fun. And I cannot wait to like talk about it because I just think in life.

Like we only get one life to live. Why are we not living a life that is fun? And I used to like downplay holidays and downplay my birthday and I just realized like why? Why not find more reasons to celebrate in life? Why not find more ways to have more fun at work while still being super productive because they've proven that happy people are more productive. We're more profitable. We're less stressed. So my husband is all about laughing. Every single night we do something of laughing.

There's a great thing called laughing yoga. Oh my gosh, like get into it. You will be crying. Your sides will be hurting. Laughing yoga is so much fun. We watch your daily dose of internet every single night. It's just a quick 60 seconds of just fun, giggles to just really almost decompress. And I feel like celebrations in teams and having fun is how we also decompress dentistry is stressful. We are working in a small space. We're moving quick. We're moving fast pace.

We're giving the best patient care. We've got to have our bedside manners there. And so it's just something where I want you guys to realize like, why not have some fun and look for those opportunities. Now, if you're an office manager and I just said like, let's start doing the holidays, you don't have to do it. You can actually rotate the holidays. You can rotate the quarters by department and have your team get in on this where it's fun. Like we can make t -shirts for Halloween. We can have competitions of the costumes. We can do carving pumpkin contests.

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Kiera Dent (06:40.104)

But really being able to bring that fun and it's super interesting shout out to Midwestern University's dental college where I used to work The students were there and I remember just watching them and I just thought dental school seems so stressful How can I I worked with the first and second year students for several years? And I just thought how can I make this be a little bit more fun? And so for every holiday I decorated the sim clinic. I during Easter I went to an Easter egg hunt for those students

They all wanted mirrors. I don't know if you remember in dental school, like, I don't know how your school was set up, but for us, the mirrors, like we had to limit the mirrors that we'd give out. So that way they would stop scratching the mirrors with the burrs and, but mirrors were like the hot commodity. So I would go hide mirrors. I would hide extra teeth. I would hide like all the things that they coveted and wanted so desperately. I made a little Easter egg hunt for them. Um, I would put up hearts and I put all their names up for them. I'm just reminding them that they're noticed that they're loved and that they're seen in.

Some of the students are starting to work with us now. That's why I built the company was actually for the students. And one of the students, I was talking to him the other day and he said, Gira, you made dental school so fun. And I just think about like these little celebrations that these opportunities to add the sprinkles in life and the opportunities to celebrate, make it a big deal. I know some people don't like public recognition and that's okay. We don't need to make them feel awkward, but making them feel loved, seen and heard. So,

If you're in a big practice, I know a lot of them do like a birthday cake for all the people that have the birthdays in that month and they celebrate them and it's just a fun time. I know in smaller practices, maybe you guys do lunch on birthdays, build this into your budget. I literally have a celebration budget within our company.

and look for little ways to have fun and then get your patients involved. I think having like a jar with all the conversation hearts and having them guess it. And you can actually turn this into a marketing opportunity where they're guessing the hearts in the jar and then ask them what they're interested in. Are you interested in ortho? Are you like smile, like enhancing your smile, whitening, Botox and have them circle on their guests. And then that way you actually can go through all the guesses and find all the patients who are looking for things you can run.

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Kiera Dent (08:46.238)

promotions, you can contact them about doing it, but you turn the fun also into a fun marketing for you. But do something that makes you stand out, that makes your practice a little bit more fun. Our team, every time we do a birthday, it's really entertaining. We are on virtual and the other day, shout out to our marketing team, they sing happy birthday and did a dance for the person. It was really entertaining. Like it was total impromptu, but now it's

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Kiera Dent (09:12.126)

Whatever the day is, whether it's a tip, we give a tip for how they can have their best birthday, a core value shout out to that person, something that we're thankful for them about, or what's the most fun thing that they've like from the last year of memories about them. And so really just highlighting our team. So again, whatever day of the week it falls on based on the themes of our morning huddle, that's what we do. And then just something fun, like what does that person enjoy? But finding ways to add more celebration and more fun into your practice is a great culture builder.

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Kiera Dent (09:40.158)

And like I said, it can also be marketing. So look for it. Get people on your team, split it up by departments, rally the departments. But I really do believe that the fun is how you build culture. The fun is what sets you apart. Everybody goes to a job. But does everybody get noticed? Does everybody be, are they all seen, heard, valued? And it's crazy. Make sure you do it in a way that values that person. And I know dentists sometimes feel like, Oh my gosh, like here, I'm not like you. I do not think my birthday is a national holiday.

But look for ways to embrace the fun. Like I said, I feel like there's so many things in life that are hard. Why not enjoy the fun that we get to experience? Why not enjoy this beautiful thing called life? And I do believe that holidays and birthdays and anniversaries, let's make our team feel special, seen and heard and easy ways to do it are you can have it set. So like you can have swag in your office. I know that there's a practice that does this. So for all their anniversaries and birthdays, they get to choose something out of the swag. So a jacket, a hoodie.

socks. And what's great about that is it's branding for you walking out and around on the birthdays and the anniversaries. Other people do flowers, other people do cakes, other people do birthday cards for them. Everybody does. Some people have done a day off for their birthdays. To me that got stressful because I'm like, what if that falls on a day where we have like Think Tank, our private doctor mastermind, or what if that falls on a day that we're presenting content?

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Kiera Dent (11:02.814)

And so what we do for our team is they always get to take time off early on the day of their birthday. And if they want to take time off by all means, take PTO by all means, but then we always try hard to make sure we celebrate, make it fun, send them a personalized gift. And I just feel again, have freaking fun with your team. Make the moments count, add it in, turn it into marketing if you can, get your patients involved, but again, enjoy, have fun.

embrace the celebrations. Today is Tiff's birthday too. She's right there with me. But find out what does your team love. Whenever we hire a new team member, we always have them go through. We just have, it's on type form and we have them fill out a survey. So like what are the ways that they feel valued? What would be their ideal gifts? What are their favorite colors? So that way throughout the year when we want to send gifts or we want to do something of appreciation or want to send birthday presents or whatever it is, we already have it.

it teed up from the day that they are hired. So I think there's so many little things you can do of how to do celebrations within your team. But I want to remind you, life is short, have more fun. Life is short, have more fun. And like I said, there's a plug for the book. I want you guys to read it. If you guys want, it's just the reason I got excited about it is because it honest to goodness has confetti on the front cover. And I just think it's like, I was like, absolutely. And I bought it on Audible as opposed to not on Audible.

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Kiera Dent (12:22.782)

Because I wanted the confetti. I'm like, well, the actual book does not have the confetti on it. This one has the confetti on it. And so again, just come, remember that life is short. We can have more fun in life. We get this opportunity. And the book, if you guys want to read it with us, is called The Power of Fun by Catherine Price. And we will be reading it as a book club. But The Power of Fun, and again,

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Kiera Dent (12:47.678)

There is so much power in having fun and celebrating. So happy birthday to Tiffany. Happy birthday to all the other May 8th birthdays out there. Cheers to you. Find the celebration, celebrate your team. Life is short, have more fun. And if we can help in any way, reach out, hello at the dentalateam .com. Come join us every single Friday, 8 30 AM Pacific, 11 30 Eastern. Find out more about the Dental A Team. If you're ever interested in consulting, we do consulting and I cannot wait to serve you. I cannot wait to celebrate you. Cheers to an incredible year. Cheers to you.

And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.