Episode 707: You Don’t Have to Work Insane Hours to Be Successful

 Sometimes the right response to all the things the world demands of us is to do less, not more. In this episode, Kiera touches on giving ourselves time to repair — by doing less to create more. It’s all about intentionality, and Kiera describes just how that works.

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Transcript:

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0:00:05.8 Kiera Dent: Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I had 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 resultant 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 team. Welcome to the Dental A Team podcast.

0:00:51.6 KD: Hello Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera, and you guys, I hope you're just having an amazing day today, I hope that you just feel loved, I hope that you just feel happy. I hope that you just feel excited to be alive today. Because at the end of the day, you guys, this is our chance to be alive, this is our chance to live our best life. And I think today I've got some fun little topics over here, but I really just wanna empower you and inspire you to think about, "Am I really living the life that I want to live?" I think it's something where sometimes it's hard to know what we actually want to do, and I think that there's all these different pieces out there. But, are you living the life you want to live? So I've got two different ideas today for today's podcast, also want to shout out all of you listeners who are leaving us reviews, and I would just ask, if this podcast has served you, head on over, snag those five stars, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you're listening today, because that just really helps us serve and bless more people's lives. And that is my goal is to honestly get into the hands of millions of dentists and their teams and change their lives for the better.

0:01:54.4 KD: So, if you wanna help me serve and bless more people within our dental community, please do that, that's something you can do for us. So on that note, I just wanna talk about, like, I think that we're in a society right now that is demanding more and more from us, and I don't believe that that actually works for us. It's this like, "You gotta grind it out. You've gotta work so hard." And I actually believe that there is a different way to do it. I just believe it's your patterns and your habits and what you choose to do. So, hang with me, 'cause I've got a whole other side to this, and don't worry I'll be tying it into your dental practice for you. But it's this whole idea that we literally sit here, and we think that in order to have this great life, in order to have this great job, we've got to work so hard and spew our guts out. And I've just thought about it like, okay, so you guys, you know I'm not the strongest worker outer. If you're new to the show, welcome, I'm Kiera Dent. Dent's really my last name, and I want to work out, but I don't work out. So I decided I'm a social worker outer, I bet none of you could have guessed that. So I started going to this exercise class, I go to Full Pedal, it's a cycle class with Jason and Shelby and Chris. And we have a good time, there's four of us that go on Wednesday nights, and then I also go to a bar class on Saturday.

0:03:08.5 KD: And, what I found though is if I push my body... I remember I went to bar on Saturday, I had Sunday off, and I went to Full Pedal on Monday, and my body was physically fatigued. Granted, I don't work out all the time, so that's another piece to it. But if I was thinking about, if I just pushed my body everyday all day long, I think there's some level to it, but if I never reprieve my muscles, if I never allow them to have shut off time... Think about also when we go to sleep at night, we have a shut off time, we've got a down time, we've got a time where we can actually grow and evolve and shut off and allow our body to repair, allow our minds to stop. But if we don't do that in business, we don't ever allow ourselves that shut off time, we don't allow ourselves to have that peace. So that was kind of where... And I've done a podcast on this before, and like white noise time and building it in, but I really just have been feeling like we're in this culture and in this society where it's like, "You gotta work hard, you gotta do more." And I'm like, "What if there was another way of doing less, but creating more?" And to me, that's where we're more intentional with our time. Like for me, when I'm grinding and slaying and going on the way, I'm in gladiator mode.

0:04:16.8 KD: And I'm just like, full steam ahead, we're gonna just rock and roll and do this. Versus me being intentional with what I actually am trying to achieve. And so I really want you guys to think about it, I do believe that you don't have to work insane hours to be successful. I believe that there is a way for us to be balanced with our families, and fulfilled, and successful. I don't believe it has to be an "or," That I'm successful, or, I'm fulfilled. That I am successful, or, I have time with my family. I really do believe it can be there, and I think it's all about our intentionality. What are we working towards? What are we trying? What is our ultimate end goal? Because I oftentimes think that this hustle and this drive and this thrive is because we don't actually know where we're headed. So we're trying to achieve all these different paths because we don't know which one's are ours. And this is really coming... I did a book club on this, if you didn't listen to it or you haven't read it, "The Psychology of Money." When he talked about so many people do different investment plans or they're doing all these different wealth building strategies because they don't know what their strategy is. It's psychotic-ness.

0:05:23.0 KD: Then you read the book "Essentialism" where literally, I think about those two circles, the one with all the different arrows, and in true physics, if you had all those arrows, it would literally spin, or you've got the one where there's an arrow and direct intentionality, less problems, less effort, less energy spend, more results. And so I just want you guys to think about... And you can do a quick brain dump, you can do an audit of your week, last week. What did you do and what things were necessary for you to do, and were those things that actually taking you towards where you wanted to go? Or were we just doing it because, one, it was a habit and we weren't intentional with our time? Two, we weren't present? Or three, we feel like that's what we have to do in order to get to where we need to go. But that's actually just an illusion. To me, it's an illusion, and this is why I'm here today to tickle your brain and to help you think in a different way of, "Could there be a different way that could get me the same if not better results?" Something to think about. I think about the greatest athletes. I think about the greatest people in the world. They're usually very intentional in what they do. They're very disciplined on what they do.

0:06:32.5 KD: And this is gonna lead into a thing that a client told me this week. We were on a coaching call and he said, "Kiera, the change is in the consistency." And I thought about this. The change that we wanna see in our life is through the consistency. So for me wanting to workout, the change for me having more energy, more stamina, is in the consistency of working out. The change we wanna see in our practices is through the consistency of doing the meetings and not constantly being crazy and always changing our minds. To me, that consistency is the intentionality of simplicity. Wow, that was a lot of words, I hope that made... I don't even think I could repeat it if I wanted to. Go back and rewind and listen to that. But it's really in... The consistency is creating the lives we want, which is the intentionality, which actually leads to simplicity.

0:07:26.2 KD: And when we have more simple lives we're able to have more time, more freedom, less stress, less hustle. Now some of us, myself included, I literally texted Tiffany on Monday, Jason went to hang out with some friends, I had all my work done. I texted Tiff and said, "What do people do at night when they have nothing to do?" It was the most odd thing. Like, what would office managers do if they didn't have a hundred sticky notes on their screen? What would dentists or doctors or owners do if they didn't have all these emails they needed to follow up with and all these different meetings and all these different things that they had to do?

0:08:00.3 KD: What would dental assistants do if they didn't have all these patients and everything had to flip and we're constantly trying to figure out how to set up the rooms 'cause we didn't have set training policies? What would hygienists do if they weren't always running behind on notes and if they didn't have patients coming and patients weren't late? What would we do? And I think some of us don't know what we'd do, so therefore we stay in the circle, and we stay in the spin because that's comfortable for us. And moving out of that becomes uncomfortable, but that uncomfortability is where the magic is. So my question is, could we figure out where we want to go and what our practice looks like, boil it down to the top three things that we actually need to do? Top three things for every single position, and we consistently do those, could we see changes in our life, in our practice, in our profitability? Something to think about. And why would we not? I think it's because it's habit, it's ego, it's fear. It's our little ego's taken off saying like, "Don't do that. You're gonna be unsuccessful if you give up any of this time." It's interesting though, I look at patterns, I've got hundreds of doctors, the most successful doctors you'll ever meet in your life, and they do things differently. A lot of them don't work Fridays. A lot of them have their team do a lot of things for them.

0:09:10.5 KD: They delegate a lot, they're not the ones doing everything. So they have more time, more freedom, more financial success, and yet they don't do it the same way. Why? I think they're intentional. I think they have the consistency. Truthfully, offices who can stay consistent with great systems are the ones who thrive, period. But we as human beings don't like to be consistent. We don't feel like it's fun. For me if I could just consistently do three sit-ups, I know that sounds ridiculous, but think about, if I actually just did a few sit-ups every single day, I would be way better off than not doing anything 'cause I don't think I've got 30 minutes to do a workout. True or false? That consistency piece is where you're going to see the change. So I feel like we're in a society that is pulling one way, but we could push back a different way and see a different light. I do believe successful, fulfilled people live life differently. I think they prioritize their time differently. I think that they go through and they audit their weeks and see what was necessary versus what was unnecessary, and they make changes for the next week to be successful. I know for a fact that they block deep work blocks and they're very intentional and they get things to move forward. I also know that they stay consistent to the meetings, to the things that we talk about on the podcast and they do it consistently.

0:10:33.2 KD: You might not know where to start and that's okay, that's why a lot of them hire us, to know where to start, what's gonna drive them forward, but they stay true to where they want to go. Just like I was talking about at the beginning, the psychology of money. They're staying true to where they want to go. They've got a plan, they've got a path, and they don't deviate from it. Which then again, creates intentionality, which then creates a consistency, which creates a simplicity. If you're looking for a different way to live your life, I might encourage you to think about these things. And maybe look to see who would you be if you didn't have these items. Are you comfortable being that person? Guys, I was uncomfortable on Monday night not knowing what the heck to do with myself. But is it okay to sit in that uncomfortable state? I would venture to say, yes it is. I would encourage you to look to see, are you headed on a path where you want to go, and what things do you need to do to be intentional about your life? Are you intentionally living or are you passively just going through each day. It's a decision for you to make and a question I would encourage you to ponder.

0:11:34.5 KD: I love this podcast and I love this podcast family 'cause yes, we're here to do dentistry, we're here to bring you the most innovative new things. But I'm also here to train you and to teach you how to be a different type of person, to live your dream life, to help you dash and thrash, to help you realize that things you once thought were impossible could be possible. To help you realize that the life you wanna live, the career you wanna have, the financial success you wanna have, is all there, it just depends on what you're willing to do. And that doesn't mean to do more. Sometimes the answer is, do less to create more. And I would just ask you, assess your life, assess your personal life, your professional life, your day-to-day, where could you do less, simplify, to create more and not have the burnout that we so often fall into that I would venture to say is a pattern, not something of circumstance? It's not your circumstances, it's your decisions, and I would encourage you to look at those and to take ownership of yourself because you are worth it. If we can help with that, I'd love to help you.

0:12:39.5 KD: Email us [email protected]. Check our website out, you can book a call. I'd love to talk to you, help you, because at the end of the day, you're worth it and your life can be whatever you want it to be. Being intentional about it. Remember, the change comes through consistency. The change is there through consistency. Let's not hustle our lives away. Let's intentionally live our lives, would be my challenge and encouragement to you. And as always guys, thanks for listening and I'll catch next time on The Dental A Team podcast.

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0:13:11.6 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.