424: It’s Time to Check Your Ego

It’s a quick episode today, but an important one. Kiera reminds listeners to not forget the people who made you great. Yes, you took risks and became successful, but a lot of people along the way who made that possible for you.

  1. Write down a list of names of people who’ve pushed you forward.

  2. Pick two or three names off that list and write them thank-you notes.

  3. Be willing to have hard conversations with the challenging folks in your life.

At the Dental A-Team, we’re here to make your office more organized and on track, but we also want you to remember who you are. The greatest secret to success is humility.

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Podcast Transcript:

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0:00:05.7 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.

0:00:50.5 KD: Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera, and you guys, [chuckle] I love this topic. Yes, I've just kinda been... I have notes on my phone, so when I'm in offices, when I'm on coaching calls, when I'm driving down the road, when I'm waking up early in the morning when I can't sleep at night, I add all these podcast topics, and I've got quite a few of them that I'm just jazzed to do, and so, this one... This one... I just had a panic moment. I went to grab my phone, and I had a blank note, and I was like, "Oh, shoot. Did I just delete all those podcast topics?" That would have been a funnier podcast, but no, I did not, you guys. So, the one I wanted to do is, don't forget the people who made you great. Yep, that's the topic. Don't forget the people who made you great. As I've been watching a lot of offices, I think this is just a reminder, also for myself, of, you guys, remember when you first started out? Your brand new practice, you didn't know anything. You really relied on your team, you relied on your patients, your relied on your family. You were just trying to survive. And then we get a little bit smarter, and we grow. And then we can actually start to fall into the egotistical world, the entitlement world.

0:02:05.5 KD: And I wanna remind you guys again, this might be a podcast for Kiera, it might be a podcast for you. I don't know who this podcast is for today. It might be for everyone listening; I hope it is. I try to make these podcasts for all of you out there, and thank you. Thank you for listening. I truly appreciate it, and I truly appreciate you following along the journey, and also being some of our amazing clients as well. So I was thinking about this, and I thought, "Kiera, do you forget the people that made you great, and do you forget to thank them?" Clients, my family, my team. Sometimes, I get a little egotistical. You guys, I will 100% tell you, I used to not have a personal assistant. [chuckle] Do you know how much I appreciate Shelbi? Shelbi, Kaylee, all my personal assistants who have been here. I cannot imagine doing what they do day in and day out, dealing with my crazy schedule, dealing with my demands, dealing with my flights. And they love doing it, and they're so kind, and like Shelbi, the other day, told me, she said, "Kiera, I just wanna make your life easier, as easy as I possibly can." Who is this person, and where did she come from?

0:03:09.7 KD: I want you guys to remember the people that made you great. I don't know if you need to go journal today. I don't know what you need to do, but write down all the people who made you great, who made you a success. What about your mentors? What about podcasts? What about books you read? What about the team members who stood beside you? And don't forget about them. I know, your job is to provide them with a job. I get that. You're also human, and they're also a human. Don't forget the people that made you great. I've talked to a few doctors lately, which is why this is coming up. And there's this piece of, we feel frustrated. We feel frustrated with... Oh, guys. There's the whole debacle right now, of do we have to pay for vaccines? Do we have to deal with team members taking time off? Guys, that sucks. I'm not gonna lie to you, that is the suck of being a business owner. There's also the great things of being a business owner.

0:04:05.6 KD: Are you guys sick of trying to figure it out on your own? I know I am. When I'm trying to run a business, sometimes, I just think like, "There's got to be a better way to do this." And so for me, my answer has been to find someone who's done it and does it really, really, really well. I'm talking the best of the best of the best. I want someone who's been in my shoes, somebody who understands what I'm going through. When I was looking for the consulting business, I found a coach who literally has run a consulting business. Well, that seems like the perfect fit. So you guys, right now, we have a few spaces open in our Platinum Consulting. That is in the consulting where we actually come to your practice. We help you get systems implemented. We don't just tell you what systems to implement, we actually implement them with you and for you. You guys, it is one of the best investments I've ever made is to hire a coach who understands the business I'm in, who's lived it, who's done it. And that's what we in the Dental A Team do. We literally, physically fly to you. So if you're sick of trying to figure it out on your own, if you just want somebody who understands you, join our Platinum. I'd love to have you, I'd love to have our consulting team come out and see you, be in your office, be with your team, and truly help you get onto the easy path of dentistry. It doesn't have to be hard. So join us in the Platinum; we'd love to have you.

0:05:25.9 KD: I want you guys to, well, I don't want you to. I'm going to encourage each of you to possibly write some thank you notes. Maybe choose two or three people that made you great, that made you who you are today. Again, it could be team members, it could be people... I think about team members a lot of times. There was an office I was just in. This office, they were moving patients a lot. And the team smiles, and they'll call the patients. And then they call the patients again. They want to make your life easy. [chuckle] They want to help you out. I will say there are probably very few team members that I've ever met that want to make their doctor's life miserable. They love their doctors; they love you; they wanna take care of you. And yet, sometimes, I think we forget how hard those people's jobs are.

0:06:14.0 KD: So I'm gonna encourage you to do a few things. Number one, write down a list of all the people who made you great. Write it down. Just remember all these people; over the years, go back to day one of your business. Go back to before that; who inspired you to start your business? Go back to mentors. And don't forget the people that actually were really awful to you, because those people will find you, they shaped you and they molded you, whether you want to accept it or not. As soon as I said that, I have a person in my mind that was downright awful to me. Guess what? That person is one of the greatest blessings in my life, because that person taught me more about strength and pivoting and shifting, because it was so hard. I had such a hard experience with this person. [chuckle] Really, really, really horrible. And yet, I think a lot of my stamina and a lot of my resilience came because of that person in my life, so don't forget those people as well.

0:07:08.3 KD: Next up, choose two or three people on that list that maybe you didn't ever say thank you to. Maybe they don't know how much you appreciate them. Maybe it's people that you should have said thank you to a long time ago, that you just didn't do, like Tiffanie. Tiffanie Trader, guys, she has been with me since day one. That girl has gone through the wringer with me. There are times that I get frustrated with her, there are times she gets frustrated with me. I will tell you, 99... I'll say 95%; I won't sugar coat that. 95% of the time, Tiffanie is amazing. I don't feel like I've written her thank you card of just how much I appreciate her jumping in and trusting me with this crazy business, and pivoting, and rolling, and changing, she'll jump in. When we had a team member leave, I was devastated, and Tiff said, "No problem. I'll make sure I'm on every single morning. I don't care; you can count on me to be there," and she has. She pops out of offices to make sure our team's taken care of, because she knew I needed help. Tiff literally has been with me since day one, almost, of the business. That's somebody that I don't know. I know I've told her in passing, "Thank you." But I haven't written her a letter of how much I appreciate her, and it's crazy to think up a letter. Those things mean a lot to a lot of people.

0:08:17.4 KD: Right, mentors. Even if you've had a bad experience with them, let them know. I don't care if they don't respond or not; it's for you. It's for you to tell these people how much you appreciate them. It's for you to remember who helped to make you great. This also is called a great dose of humility. It helps us put our egos in check. It helps us not get entitled. You guys, sometimes, I feel like flight attendants should be a lot nicer to me than they are. That is my freaking ego, and it needs to be checked. I'm just Kiera Dent. I don't care that I run Dental A Team; I don't care that I'm exhausted. That doesn't matter. That flight attendant does not owe me anything. Yes, they should kinda be nice to me; that is their job. [chuckle] But at the end of the day, they don't need to give me any special services or favors, and I need to check my ego. Team members, they don't have to do anything for you guys. Yes, they need to do their job, but that's it! But those team members who go above and beyond consistently, when was the last time you told them thank you? When was the last time you just sent them a nice message and said, "I can't tell you how much I appreciate you doing X, Y, Z," and being very specific.

0:09:22.9 KD: I also wanna challenge you guys right now to drop your ego a little bit. Who is maybe somebody that you might speak negatively about, that maybe you just need to have a hard conversation with, instead of letting it just run your life and run you frustrated? Who do you maybe just need to have a heart to heart with? Get on the same page and remember you're same teaming it; you're not against one another. Who are those people? I just wanna pop it out there, it's a shorter podcast today. Hopefully, it's one that makes you think. Don't forget the people that made you great. Keep your ego in check. Stay humble. Don't forget to thank your team. Guys, when they're moving your schedule, it's a pain. It is a pain to reschedule patients. It's annoying to have them yell at me. It's annoying to have to tell them that their insurance is maxed. It's annoying to have to do that, and I get it; that's my job.

0:10:12.8 KD: It also feels good when somebody notices it. It also feels good when I feel like my doctors, who I will do anything for, recognise that. It doesn't have to be all the time, but periodically, telling me, "Hey, you make my life so easy. You make my life so great. I am insanely thankful for you, and I hope you know that." Just tell them. You'll feel better, it'll also keep you humble. It'll help remind you of all the people that do a lot for you to be successful. Yes, I get it. You took the risk, you are successful, but there are a lot of people along the way that made that possible for you. And also, don't hang on to team members that are being toxic, because you're gonna run out your really good team members because of it. I just watched it happen in a practice, and it literally destroyed me. An amazing team member left because of a toxic employee, because it's... The leader of the practice wasn't willing to have the hard conversations with the toxic employee beforehand. You guys, the worst that you can ever do is tolerate poor behavior from a bad employee; that's the worst thing you can do to your good employees. Have the hard conversations. Be a leader. Do your job as a leader. That is your job. I don't care if you signed up for it or not; you did when you decided to have a business. And don't forget the people that made you great.

0:11:30.6 KD: Guys, I created this podcast 'cause I wanted to share with you how to do dentistry and run practices, not teaching you guys how to do dentistry; you know how to do that, but how to be more efficient in your practice; how to level yourselves up. And today, I'd also like to do the personal side of it. [chuckle] I'd like to help you see different sides of your life, and how maybe you can grow individually. Team members. Don't forget who made you great. Write it to mentors that helped you, 'cause I had a lot of mentors help me become really good at billing. Oh gosh, that was a hard zone for me. Tell them! Tell them how much you appreciate them. This does not apply only to the leaders of the practice. This applies to every single team member in the practice. I have seen some snooty, arrogant hygienists, dental assistants, front office, office managers, doctors. It goes across the board. Every single one of those positions, I've seen it.

0:12:22.0 KD: And I think sometimes, we forget who we are. I think sometimes, we forget that a lot of people have helped us get there. And I think sometimes, we forget that the greatest secret to success is oftentimes humility. So go be humble. Share the goodness, write somebody a letter, tell them thank you, send them a quick text message. And remember, a lot of people stood behind you. A lot of people do a lot of things that you don't even know. A lot of people do a lot of things that are completely behind the scenes to make your life amazing that you don't even realise. So don't forget that. Go tell them thank you. Share goodness. And as always, guys, thank you so much for listening. I hope this inspired you today. I hope it made you think a little bit differently. And I hope you remember that you are great, and it was due to a lot of people helping you get there. So go be great, share with other people, mentor somebody, give back. It'll make you feel like a million bucks. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

[music]

0:13:16.6 KD: 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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