Episode 459: ‘Tis the Season … for Vacation!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and people like to enjoy it by taking time off. 

And that’s okay! Kiera discusses why vacations are so important for both those taking them and those still working in the office. It’s a chance for recharge and to find out where the gaps are in your office. Not convinced? Press play to get some inspiration for why it’s great for team members to take lengthy vacations.

Episode resources:

Reach out to Kiera

Listen to episode 446, Define Your 30-Minute Downtime Window

Listen to episode 423, Help Me! Plus, the Power of Downtime

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Transcript:

0:00:05.8 Speaker 1: 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 consultants, for we have traveled 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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0:00:52.7 S1: Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera, and you guys, it is the season for family, vacations, rest and recoup, all those things, and I hope you are massively doing it with your friends, with your families. And that's what we're gonna talk about today, and I can not wait. So I hope you ready to talk all things vacation time. Don't worry, it's definitely applicable to dentistry, I would not let you down. But vacation time, vacation time, you guys know I'm a travel buff, and if you don't know this, just so you know, #2020RuinedAllMyGreatestPlans, so if you haven't been a part of the Dental A Team, if you don't know Kiera Dent through and through, I love to travel. I literally had on my dream board, it was a vision board I made when Jason was in pharmacy school, I put a little typodont mouth next to... So it was up in the top left corner next to travel the world and voila, fast-forward my life just a few years, and we now have a traveling dental consulting team where we physically fly to your practices. We get to travel the world, we get to come see you, we get to come see in your practices with hands-on implementation, and I think that truly it's so darn effective.

0:02:07.1 S1: Like we literally see massive results, massive changes with you in your practice, so that's something we love. If you've been thinking about it, if you're interested in it, be sure to reach out [email protected]. See if you're even a good fit, we definitely screen our clients, so we only wanna work with the best of the best. So definitely reach out. I would love to welcome you as one of our Dental A Team members, have you get all the perks of being a Dental A Team member, have access to me, access to our incredible consultants and just change your life. So with that said, I love what we do, I love being a consultant, I love traveling, I love helping practices, just crush it personally and professionally, and just have completely different lives than they were ever expecting to have. So that is literally what we do. And that ties into vacations because sometimes I think we are so focused on work, work, work, work, work, that we forget that there's also a flip side, and that's that recharge. I did a podcast a while ago, if you guys didn't listen to it, go check it out.

0:03:06.5 S1: I think it was called The Launch Pad of Downtime, and how downtime is the recharge, and that's kind of with this vacation time. So as much as we all say like, "Oh, people take vacations and it's really stressful." Vacation is actually a recharge and all of us need to do it. I have some practices that literally take off four to six weeks a year, it's not... It can be paid or not paid, I don't really care, but the practice is literally closed that many times a year. And it's a recharge. Everybody can recharge, reset. And I think so often we sometimes get into this grind of just work, work, work, work, work, but I love vacation time. I find it a magical special time, and I encourage my team to take vacations. Yes, it's sometimes an annoyance because we have to figure out how to do it without them, but that's also guys a huge blessing and surprise, because when people are gone on vacation, it does a two-fold thing, number one, it allows that employee to recharge. They come back a better, more fired up employee because they just went and cleared their minds for however long they took time off, they personally invested in themselves.

0:04:11.4 S1: So they come back as this recharged like animal ready to just take on the world, like really, really awesome animals not crazy animals. They're really just awesome people. And then the other thing is we get to find out where the gaps are. So when they're gone, we get to figure out what gaps are in our company, what are they feeling, and what do we not know how to do? And we shouldn't say, "Oh. We'll wait until they come back." No, there should be a protocol in place and we should be writing these things down so we can build protocols when they come back, because at any moment, at any time people can be gone, people change, people shift, like welcome to 2021, if that hasn't taught you that, you better get your protocols in play, that's why we want our operations manual intensive. So if you guys don't know about our operations manual intensive, three months to get that thing done, email us [email protected].

0:05:01.5 S1: So I think it's one of those pieces where you as a practice get to learn what things aren't dialed in, where are the gaps? As owners, I love to take vacations. Personally, I just enjoy it, I enjoy traveling and professionally, I also enjoy it because I get to see where things fell, where they didn't go well. I personally think as owners, one of our greatest opportunities is to find a way to have the practice run without us. To me, I'm very competitive, I love to think of challenges and how I can solve them, and so I like to always think about like how could I make this business run independent of me, do I have people in play? And I don't wanna get the falsehood that I think that you should know that. I think it's real. I think so many people are like, "I just wanna get my practice on autopilot." Newsflash, it probably will never be on autopilot. I don't think that exists. I think that that is something that's a fallacy that's out in this world, but I do think that it could run without you.

0:06:06.1 S1: So if you guys don't know, like I said, Kiera Dent, I travel a lot. So I've made up a game when I first started consulting to hit all 50 states in one year, seeing consulting clients. And guess what? I did it one year successfully, the second year, I think I got 48, and this year, I think I'm up to 35 states. Tiffany and I now rival each other, the other consultants, it's always a challenge to see who's gonna hit the most states for the year, and that's just in one year. And so my brother, he's four years older than me, and he... Man, I don't know what it is between the two of us, but we rival each other pretty well, so my brother always knows how to spur me on. So I remember I was talking to him one day and he said, "Hey, Kiera, so you hit all 50 states in one year, pretty impressive, but let's be real, could you hit all seven continents in one year?" Challenge accepted. Darn it 2020, I was on track to hit all seven continents, we'd just come back from Antarctica. Yes, true story.

0:07:05.5 S1: We'd just come back from Antarctica, and I had it scheduled to go, we had actually had it scheduled on my birthday, I was turning 34 in 2020, so for my 34th birthday, we were going to go to Thailand and get Asia, that was my last continent, and then in September, we were headed over to Australia and we would have hit all seven continents in one year, and COVID happened. Dang it. So I still guys have not checked off Asia, but don't worry, I've got Antarctica checked off, and my brother's challenge, we'll see. Antarctica, was real tricky to get to. [chuckle] But it was one of those magical experiences, but I shared that because when I did go to Antarctica, I was gone for about three weeks, and I had no internet, you could buy it on the boat, but I thought, "If I came all the way to Antarctica, do I really have this burning desire to be on my phone checking emails? The answer is a hard pass, no." I wanted to fully embrace Antarctica, and it was amazing. It was unreal. I felt like I recharged on so many levels.

0:08:08.0 S1: My husband didn't love it. You have to cross the Drake passage, and it is either Drake Shake, which we got, or the Drake Lake, which we did not get. And it was very rocky, I mean, I almost flew out of bed one night, it was out of control. But I wanted to fully embrace that and I wanted to be there and I wanted to smell that terrible penguin poop, I wanted to see those cute adorable little penguins, sea glaciers just shearing off into the water, to see how crystal clear and pristine it is, and to know that that water, if I fell in, I probably would die. I did do the polar plunge, it's freezing, freezing cold. I've never been that cold in my life, they literally strap a rope around you because it's so cold that some people stop swimming, and so they have to pull you back into the boat real fast. Oh Man, it was insane. But when I did that trip, I was gone for three weeks, and it was so cool to come back because I was able to see that my company could run for three weeks independent of me.

0:09:14.9 S1: Hey Dental A Team listeners. How has your 2021 been? Is it the year that you always imagined it being, was it awesome or was it maybe not your best year, or was it a great year that you know you could enhance? Anyway, as we were looking back on 2021, if it's been a year where you think you could ramp it up or you wanna take your practice to the next level, or you yourself wanna go to the next level, reach out, we'd love to help you in Dental A Team Platinum. We see massive success with all of our Platinum practices. Typically a 10% to 30% increase in revenue, reduction of stress and reduction in overhead, we focus on team's top to-bottom system development and implementation top to bottom, and making sure you're business savvy all the way around. Guys, it is the season, to make a change, you are always one decision away from a completely different life. Be sure to reach out guys, [email protected], and I can't wait to see you in your practice next year.

0:10:10.8 S1: I will constantly push the envelope to see how long can they go, to see what they can do. It gives them an opportunity to grow without me there, you put people in charge, you put people in place, you give them the power to make decisions without you and to execute and get out of their way. I remember it was another trip I had gone on and I said, sometimes I think I come back and wanna make drama to feel important, to feel like I still have a role in that place, but just realize, you're going to find something else. It's not that you're ever replaced, it's just that there are more opportunities for you to go discover and unlearn, to learn, that way you're always growing and pushing the envelope and moving forward. And so I just wanted you guys to think about that, of encourage your team members to take vacation, encourage them to take time off, consider as a practice, closing down your practice so long, talk to everybody, you obviously don't wanna hurt people from their financial gain.

0:11:07.5 S1: And so we would wanna make sure people are prepared for that, but talk about closing down for so long as a company, as an organization, that way your whole company can recharge, think about owner doctors leaving for a while. If you have associates there, can it run and function and produce the same as when you're not there? Talk about freedom. You guys, there's a lot of freedom that I have knowing I have an incredible company that whether I'm there or not, they will deliver the same results, shout out to my team. That's a huge compliment to my team, they're incredible people, they work hard, they are just amazing people that get our culture, that are going to deliver that. So I also look for the gaps, where were the gaps, where were the pieces that we struggled while I was gone or any team member while they're gone? Write those down and then when they come back, write protocols or get policies in play, so that way the company can constantly move forward.

0:12:01.7 S1: I had a great book with Mike Michalowicz, I think it's the Pumpkin Patch Plan, or Fix This Next. I can't remember which one it was and either one of them, they're both great books, read them if you haven't read them. I'm so jazz. Mike Michalowicz is speaking to our Platinum group as a private Platinum event. These are for some of the perks of being Plat, you don't even know, and we're having a private personal one-on-one event with Mike Michalowicz speaking live to our group of Platinum. And I just love that man, I'm so invested. And he's gonna talk about marketing hacks and I cannot wait. So in one of his books, he was talking about how he had, I think the girl's name was April. And she's like his right hand, and she never took a vacation. And then she took a vacation, he's like, "The whole company shut down." And he said it was so powerful, and now he makes her take long vacations because he said, "We need to see what we don't know how to do with April being gone." And I think of that with our office managers, like doctors, "Could you do everything if your office manager was out of town for say a month? Could you do everything or is there somebody in the practice that could do if your office manager is gone? Office managers, have you trained somebody who could do your job for you, if you were gone for a month?"

0:13:14.1 S1: Billers, does somebody in the practice know how to do your job and they can run it just as good, if not better than you can for a month, if you were gone? Schedulers, treatment coordinators, dental assistants, hygienist, doctors. I know that sounds scary. I promise you, you're not being replaced, you're not being fired, you are not being terminated, nothing like that. It's just, could they do this? 'Cause guess what, if you can train somebody to do it better than you, awesome, let them do that and you're gonna find the next position that you'll move into, there's so much in a practice that goes undone, things like HR compliance, things like benefits, there's things like regional management, starting another practice. There's things like lead front office, things like lead back office, lead hygienist. So many areas to grow and develop and morph into. You could be part of the business development team, you could be part of the billing and call center team.

0:14:06.2 S1: As you grow, trust me, then there's growth for the whole organization that can happen. And so just looking at yourself to see, could somebody do this job? Now, I know I've worked in some practices where people are very scared and they hold on to it and they say, "No, Kiera, that's my job security." That's that's fair, I can respect that. However, I would just encourage you and invite you to teach somebody. It will, one, feel good. Two, it will give you an opportunity to grow. And three, I really feel you have it mastered when you can teach somebody, so try it out. Let's see. And then I would encourage as a practice that everybody takes some pretty lengthy vacations. I know it hurts production, but guys, see the benefit of how many good things happen, they get to recharge, and do you also get to see where the gaps are? So try it out, encourage it, we're rolling into 2022, guys, it might be something you throw up on that board of an opportunity that maybe you haven't taken. So that's the power of vacation time, I hope you guys are all enjoying them. Email me, I wanna know where you're headed on vacation, [email protected].

0:15:08.1 S1: I'm not kidding, that's a real... It's just not a passive invite, I genuinely wanna know. I love to travel. We were headed all over, we were headed out of the country, and then it just didn't work out. And spoiler alert, well see, Kiera Dent is trying to get pregnant, so I'm real scared about trying to get out of the country with all that going on, but put out some good vibes for us guys. That's my next chapter in life. So there's a spoiler alert, a lot of people have been asking wondering, but, yeah. So we'll take all the good vibes we can get, I think it's an exciting and just scary time as well. So let me know where you guys are headed, I'm always about travel junkie. I've got a scratch map, so I wanna hear where you're headed, taking those vacations, and if there's any other way we can serve you, help you, add massive value for you email us [email protected]. And as always, thanks for listening, guys. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.