“Humans want to move, and life gets in the way.” Those are the words of Laura, Kiera’s personal trainer, who’s the guest for this episode. Together, Kiera and Laura discuss overcoming the often quite sedentary life of dentistry professionals by bringing on a source of accountability.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.9)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today I am so freaking pumped to introduce you to one of my dearest friends, someone who has transformed my life and that I just cannot wait to introduce to this audience. Welcome to the show, Laura, my personal trainer, macro guru, the one who knows all the things, who's helped me through so many personal injuries and actually has been able to like make a busy life, work with working out. Laura, welcome to the show today.

 

Laura (00:04.089)

And so, we're going to end it here.

 

Laura (00:27.021)

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

 

Kiera Dent (00:29.614)

I'm so happy you're here because I think that you have changed my life and you and I were chatting at the gym the other day and we actually talked about, well, I work with dentists, dentists are very busy, entrepreneurs are very busy, office managers are very busy and yet figuring out how to fit in this working out, eating healthy, taking care of ourselves. And you made a comment, you said, Kiera, they invest in their businesses, but their businesses require them to be their highest self like.

 

Let's do a podcast and talk about that. So I'm super jazzed to have you here today. Talk about all things. And as a fun side note, I did look up some data and believe it or not, if you work out, you make more money. So let's just add a little plug there too. But Laura, like let's kind of tell our listeners a little bit about you. How did you get into working out? How did you get into being this macro fitness guru that you've become that's changed the lives of so many? Kind of just walk us on your journey today.

 

Laura (01:00.461)

Yes.

 

Laura (01:09.049)

There we go.

 

Laura (01:21.921)

Yeah, I would love to. My journey started in college. I, like many other women, grew up insecure, like judging myself, comparing myself to other women. And I just came to a point in college, I remember the moment where I just realized

 

I don't want to live my life this way anymore. I want to feel confident. I want to feel strong. I felt disconnected to my younger self in a way. I grew up not necessarily in high school, more like actual elementary school. In my childhood years, I was very active. I did sports, I did gymnastics. And then you get into high school. I didn't do anything in high school. And then comes college and I just felt very disconnected to myself.

 

And I wanted to get back to that playful, confident, able person, able to do the things I wanted to do. And so I started going to the gym, had no idea what I was doing. I would just climb the StairMaster the whole time. And slowly, the gym I was working out at was kind of the StairMasters where

 

upstairs and you could look down into the rest of the gym. And I would just see at that time, this was like a decade ago or more, there were no women in the gym and all the girls were upstairs on the ellipticals and the stair masters and then all the dudes were downstairs. And I don't know, I just, started to see what they were doing and copied a little bit, you know, did a couple of the machines that I knew how to do, started to get hooked.

 

and was like, you know what, what if I made this a career? And I got certified in 2014 and the rest is history. mean, there's actually a lot more to it, but that's basically how it started. And fast forward to now, I feel extremely connected to my younger self through my movement. I have created a beautiful life that I'm able to do what I love and...

 

Kiera Dent (03:13.978)

you

 

Laura (03:29.613)

And yeah, help other women connect to their own bodies and their younger selves as well.

 

Kiera Dent (03:33.914)

I love it. And I love that you went through this journey because I think so many of us, well, I'll speak for myself. I'm not gonna speak for all the listeners. I feel like an idiot at the gym. They have reels about people at the gym of like idiots using like equipment so many times and we're at the gym. Laura was originally virtual. We started out virtual and I actually wanna get into like virtual versus in-person training and if there's a difference because when people are busy, there's solutions that way.

 

Laura (03:43.629)

Thank

 

Kiera Dent (04:01.028)

but I felt like such an idiot. And I think something that you've done for me, and that's why I wanted to bring you on here is because I feel like I was the worst workout person in the world. Like honestly, I feel like Laura should have fired me as a client. So we had a really rough start and I think it was honestly fear of my, like where I was at, fear of not knowing what I'm doing. Also, I do run a busy life. Laura, you told me I'm the second busiest person that you know, second to a lawyer. So I felt like that was like, all right, my life is a little bit more exciting.

 

but I also had a lot of injuries. And so that was why I hired a personal trainer is because I was actually losing so much muscle mass that I was starting to get more injuries because the current injuries were causing me not to do anything, which then was leading to more problems. And so was thinking about how many dentists and how many team members do we sit there all day long? We're very sedentary. I remember as an assistant and doctors, you're like, I don't sit, I don't even have time to pee, which I get, hear you.

 

but we're sitting there and yes, you're ergonomically correct, but it's like we work all day long. Where do we actually put in time for this body that's serving us? That's creating like the experience for our patients. Like where do we do that? And so even in the time Laura and I have worked together, I changed it from working out to honoring my body. And so Laura, I really wanted to dig into this of like, you've worked with a lot of people, you're a personal trainer, you're freaking genius at it. I love that you have modified so many workouts for me to be able to lift, to get strong.

 

Like just yesterday we were working out and we saw back muscles on me and like, that's something I haven't had for seven years. And so I'm excited because coming from a space where I couldn't lift, couldn't squat. couldn't lunge. Like literally none of those things were in my life. I have a very strong issue with food. I grew up anorexic most of my life and Laura, I know that you've been on a journey with that as well. And I think just all these different factors. I'm busy. People are busy. You were able to find like this, like.

 

little crack of sunshine in my life and then expand it more to where in my week I look out like look forward to working out. We've like reworked my schedule to make that a priority. And so I'm just curious, you work with a ton of people you worked with me. Let's bring this to the table. How do people when they're so busy, when they're so exhausted, when they've got the kids, they've got the job, they've got all the people like how do you even start working out? How does this even become a reality for people?

 

Kiera Dent (06:22.136)

What do you tell people when they're in that spot? Because I think every person listening to this podcast is probably there.

 

Laura (06:27.225)

Yeah, I think we all have some desire inside of us to move. Humans want to move and life gets in the way. And I think the determining factor of are you going to do this or not is are you willing to think deeply enough about why it's important in your life? Like what happens if you don't do this? Take yourself five, 10 years, 15, 20 years down the road.

 

What does life look like once you've retired and you have all this money to spend and all this adventure to have, but your body is not working properly and you can't truly experience life in the way that you want because your body is failing you. Like take yourself there, take yourself to that hard, reality that if you don't figure this out, you're going to have this experience of life. Or what if you do look at your life one year from now, if you decide to just commit 30 minutes a week.

 

Even if it's 10 minutes at a time, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 10 minutes, first thing in the morning, I wake up and I get on my Peloton or I do three sets of 20 squats. Like just start so small. What does life look like in a year? If you start that now and you don't stop in 10 years and 20 years, the trajectory of your life will be so different. And I think it's, that is the, like I said, determining factor, whether or not someone commits to this for the long haul.

 

You have to be very realistic about your about your situation and what you want out of life, know We're so serious about building businesses and making money and being successful But what happens once you get there and you don't have the vessel to carry you through that's that's very that's scary to me So that's that's where I take people

 

Kiera Dent (07:57.722)

Hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (08:09.496)

I agree. I completely agree. And I love that you did this because like at Tony Robbins, he calls it the like Ebenezer Scrooge experience where you like, he literally makes you walk down. It's like terrifying. You hear all these like thousands of people screaming like how awful it'd be. But I don't think we actually like make this as much of a reality. I don't think we see it. And for me, I thought, okay, I really do have a vision of myself. Tiff will tell you, gosh, it's awesome. Tiff and I have committed that we're gonna be like.

 

98 year old grannies. I'm gonna have cotton candy pink hair. She's gonna have cotton candy blue hair We're gonna be driving jazzy's with NOS like not because we have to but just because we want to we'll have our own drones like I got this whole vision, but I thought about it and I thought If I don't have a body to get me between let's say 35 when I started thinking about it to 95 like that's a huge span of time. We're talking 60 years

 

Laura (08:41.12)

huh.

 

my gosh.

 

Laura (08:47.705)

haha

 

Kiera Dent (09:02.104)

I can't just hope and pray that my body is going to last. Like this is an engine and I remember thinking, I love cars. I really love cars. And I thought like, Kiera, if you had a Ferrari sitting in the garage, how would you take care of this? And I'm like, I'd put the highest level of gas. I would wash it. I would like keep it protected. I would drive it so kind. And I remember I was on a podcast with another person and they said, you literally, your body is a billion. That's with a B as in body, a billion dollar asset. Do you treat it that way?

 

Laura (09:31.833)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (09:31.95)

And I thought, well, if I'm willing to give that love and care to a Ferrari, what if I thought about my own body as a Ferrari and how would I treat it? And it's crazy because for me that worked. And I started thinking like, I would eat better. Like I truly would take care of it. I would work out. I would prioritize it. And just like you said, starting with where we are, I think like any amount of movement is going to help. So even reading the book, Atomic Habits by James Clear, he talks about like habit stacking.

 

and just starting and like other books, essentialism, they talk about if it's too hard, we don't start. And so it's that startup effort. So I love Laura where you're like, okay, you get out of bed and you do one squat. Fantastic. Like you could start there and that's not as hard, but I think we go from like zero to 700. And I think that's the gap. so like, let's dive into, all right, I'm committed. I've decided I see the Ebenezer Scrooge. I see where I'm gonna be. I've got 60 years that I need to keep this.

 

Laura (10:06.935)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (10:25.174)

amazing body that I've been blessed with going. I also think about, here's another thought that's helped me too, of this body is not Kiera. This body is something that Kiera was given to take care of, just like a business, just like a team. And I've thought about my body and I'm like, when I separated the thought of like, I am this body and I started to see this body allows me to have life.

 

Laura (10:37.933)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (10:49.71)

This body allows me to podcast. This body allows me to work. This body allows me to work with clients. This body allows me to do all the fun things, to travel. And if I don't take care of her, A, like who am I with this body doing so much for me? And B, how can I take care of her even more? So it kind of became this fun game of like, this isn't for me. I'm good at serving a team. Why not serve my body as well when I realize that's not me? So if that helps you as well. So, okay, we're here, we're committed. Laura, it's like kicking off the new year. We're going to work out.

 

Do they need a trainer? What's the purpose of having a trainer? Like, can I do this on my own? Do I need a trainer? Is virtual or in person better? What are your thoughts around that? Because obviously I went for a trainer because I'm really terrible at accountability and also I had injuries and I didn't want to hurt myself. But like, how do you coach people through this?

 

Laura (11:36.385)

Yeah. I think, you know, and this is speaking from personal experience too. I also need the accountability. I love having a coach. I think having someone on your team, like linking arms, let's do this here are our goals is such a useful tool. And you're not, if you don't show up, you're not only not showing up for you, your body, but you're also not showing up for this person that's linked arms with you and put in effort and,

 

like actual love. Like I will just say, I truly love working with my clients. I, and I don't speak for all trainers, but I do know so many trainers that feel the exact same way. Like you really, it's, I don't know how to say this. I'm like about to say emotional attachment, but you really do become so attached to your clients and so committed to their goals that when they stop showing up or something happens and they get sidetracked, it's, it's

 

Kiera Dent (12:19.906)

Yeah.

 

Laura (12:31.189)

It affects you as a trainer too. So what I'm trying to say is if you feel like you need that accountability, 100 % get a trainer, find a trainer that you connect with. Don't just go to a random, I mean, you can do this, but it's not my recommendation going to like a chain gym. I won't name any names of gyms, but just a chain gym where there's trainers there, they're paying their trainers minimum wage. These people probably have very little experience and are not looking to create that relationship with you.

 

Kiera Dent (12:49.326)

Bye.

 

Laura (13:00.089)

I think it's important to find someone that you really connect with that feels like an ally and listens to you, sees you. That is very important. As far as online versus in person, it's completely what the plan that's going to work is the one you can stick with. So if you can get to a gym and you can see someone in person, you found someone in person that you connect with, great, go that route. But a lot of busy business people cannot do that. I have a lot of...

 

entrepreneurs and moms that can't get to the gym. So they do 30 minute at home workouts and they follow a workout on an app and that works beautifully for them. If I were to tell them you have to come in person, they would not be able to make it happen. So it's very different from person to person. You just need to check in with yourself and figure out what would work best for you. Try it, see if it works. If it doesn't make a change.

 

and so on, but there's either way in person or online. There's, you know, we have technology on our side nowadays. There's so many beautiful ways to get quality coaching through virtual. So I think a lot of people have this like stigma against online coaching because they're like, I want to make sure I'm doing everything right. I don't think I'll show up for myself, but truly looking at my own program and you might agree or disagree, but a lot of

 

the clients that I have online are held even more accountable than the people that I have in person because it's just a more robust program. So it's very different than a lot of people expect.

 

Kiera Dent (14:37.474)

I agree. And I did not expect virtual to be as good. I had done virtual in the past and I had someone who told me this trainer, she told me, said, Kiera, I'm actually not your coach. I'm just a programmer for you. And I remember that like cut me deep because I thought like, no, you did link arms with me. Like I want you to be as invested in this as I am. And meeting you, Laura, I...

 

purposely chose you because you're here in Reno and I was like, no, I want to go in person. And I actually think something very lovely about virtual and I will speak, your virtual was much different than other people's virtual. Like Laura is, doesn't mess around. It was an hour every single week where we would actually meet. We went over every single one of my workouts that I had completed. We did videos. And what I actually loved about that was being able to watch myself.

 

Laura (14:59.417)

and

 

Kiera Dent (15:20.236)

And with you, I started to pick out like when my moves weren't great. And something I loved about starting virtual and then going in person was I feel like I, I mean, you will say it so nice. You say like, let's pretty up that movement. Like let's make this prettier to where we're doing the move. And by prettying it up, it's not like I'm trying to look pretty. It's we're making perfect moves so we don't hurt ourselves. We're working the muscles better. And it's crazy because I think I was so.

 

like hypersensitive, I was hard to catch it in the mirror. I was hard to catch things. I'm like, Laura's not gonna like that. Like move my shoulder, get myself more of a statue because you forced me to watch my videos because that's all we had to do together. And so that was something I really liked about virtual. In person, I think I lift harder and I push myself harder because you're sitting there right next to me and I'm like, I wanna quit. And you're like, let's go, let's go, let's go. So that is, but it is interesting because we don't record me when I'm at the gym. I love when we do record because then I can see the little movements.

 

Laura (16:07.704)

Yes.

 

Kiera Dent (16:15.172)

But at home, I'm forced to watch myself more than I am at the gym. So I think those are two pros and cons. But Laura, I'm curious. There's so many trainers out there, just like there's consultants out there. Like how on earth do I sift through the noise and pick like someone who actually knows what the heck they're doing? Cause I did research on you to make sure you were actually a good trainer. I was ready to invest in myself, but like what questions do we even ask for? Like, are you a good trainer? Do you know what you're doing? Do you not know what you're doing? How do I like sort through that noise?

 

Laura (16:34.391)

Yeah.

 

Laura (16:41.689)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, I think that experience is important. I think some people are have a natural skill to be able to connect with people and see how a body moves and know what changes need to be made to make it move properly. But it is like, you know, it takes a long time to master how to communicate with people. I do think I had not to toot my own horn or anything, but I feel like I

 

Kiera Dent (17:10.786)

You should, I brought you on the podcast. Cause I think you're a freaking expert at this and I think you do really well. And I worked with other people and that's why I brought you to like to drone horn because I sifted you out of a lot of people and I picked you intentionally because I knew you had eating disorders that you had dealt with. And I know food's a big portion, which we're going to talk about food next. I also checked with a bunch of people that I trusted to see, like, does Laura actually know her stuff or is she just another like nonsense trainer out there?

 

Laura (17:18.389)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (17:36.046)

Like, and not nonsense trainer. I get that everybody's trying their best, but I needed somebody who was more experienced, who knew with having injuries. wasn't like, I got hurt really bad with my other trainer to where I couldn't walk for almost a month because like I told her I had a knee problem. She didn't make sure that I did it correctly. And lo and behold, I then like basically blew out my knee for an entire month. So like, how do we not get those issues and those injuries?

 

Laura (17:41.529)

Mm-hmm.

 

Laura (17:55.289)

Yeah, think I I mean, know what you need. First of all, go into your consultation. Hopefully you're doing consultation with these people if they don't require it, ask for it. Ask for a meeting first before you commit to anything and ask them about their experience. Tell them your situation and what you're looking for exactly. And if someone see you know, I feel like we're all pretty

 

Kiera Dent (18:08.043)

Hahaha

 

Laura (18:22.081)

I feel like we can read people, know, as humans, can read people. can tell typically if someone is like bullshitting you or telling you straight up. I will be the first person to say, I do not know everything, but I am willing to put in the work, do the research to try and figure out some solutions for you. And if I can't, I will refer you out. I have no problem referring you out. So I think, I think experience and honesty are like my two things to look for.

 

Kiera Dent (18:28.953)

Mm-hmm.

 

Laura (18:49.791)

in a trainer when you're doing your consultations. And then connection. know what I mean? Can you see yourself being able to build a relationship with this person, but also see them as coach, not a best friend, as coach, and respect them? I'm trying to think, how can you determine if this person, from a beginner's mindset, looking at, say Instagram, because let's just be honest, that's where we find a lot of our people,

 

Kiera Dent (18:54.926)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (19:17.476)

grade.

 

Laura (19:18.841)

looking at how someone moves, think, don't know, Kiera, tell me if you're like on Instagram and you're seeing a random trainer girl and you see her doing some moves from a beginner's mindset, can you tell if she's doing, you know, she's connected or do you have no idea? I don't know. I'm not in a beginner's mind. You know what I mean? So I'm trying to figure out how to, to offer that advice, like find someone who knows how to move their body.

 

Kiera Dent (19:37.761)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (19:42.042)

I don't think my eye was definitely clued into it. I think things I looked for was, that person look the way I wanna look? Because I feel like if so, I...

 

Laura (19:46.402)

Yeah.

 

Laura (19:50.617)

I play walking the walk.

 

Kiera Dent (19:53.562)

Yeah, I mean, I want to look like them. So that was one thing. It's funny, Laura and I thought we were the same height when we were virtual training. And then in person, Laura's like a foot shorter than me. So that's always entertaining when I'm like, girl, that needs to go up a little higher. Like that bench is going to like cut my legs in half, like it needs to go up. So that was kind of a funny random, but I look for that now after working with you. I definitely can spot. And at first I was judgy about it and you did a good job of helping me see like

 

Laura  (19:59.53)

you

 

Laura  (20:05.721)

No.

 

Kiera Dent (20:21.956)

We're not judgy, we're just like wanting to make sure people take care of their bodies. so like looking for, I think a good trainer, watching the movements, you like get on me all the time of like, Kiera, don't go through the movement quickly, like go through it slowly. I want you super connected. Like if we're doing my lats, you you showed me a picture and you're like, I want you to visualize those lats. I want them like sucking down. I want you pulling, like right now I'm doing it. I feel those lats engaged back there.

 

Laura (20:25.273)

Thank

 

Kiera Dent (20:49.422)

But I think something I really loved was even, even having a trainer watch like maybe a squat or something and asking them like what they see for feedback. Laura, you're not afraid to give me feedback. You're not afraid to say like, Hey, like right there, need to like, like yesterday, you're like, get that hip up. And I'm like, I don't even know what you're talking about. My hips feel very up. And then it was like just a quick tilt of the hip and instantly the movement felt a lot stronger. So I think like those things as a beginner's mindset, really can help out because

 

Laura (21:14.777)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (21:17.324)

What I found is you are so meticulous about making sure my movement is not sloppy, that I'm connected. Like there was even a day I was picking up weights on my video. So it wasn't even the workout and you're like, Kiera, watch it right there. Cause when these weights get heavier, you're going to hurt your back and you need to lift these properly. And so I really think as a beginner, maybe even taking a workout, that sounds so funny, but like, Hey, could you just like tell me what you would like critique on this squat? You don't even know what the heck they're doing, but almost like taking that to the consultation. Yeah.

 

Laura (21:43.031)

Yeah, but just see how they go through. I like that idea.

 

Kiera Dent (21:46.618)

Now I can see it. I can see it a lot more, for me,

 

Laura (21:49.667)

Yeah, as a beginner, hard to know. I mean, you can sometimes you can scroll through someone's feed and see like, is there? What do they find important in workouts? What are they posting about? What do their workouts look like? Are they slow? Are they connected? Or are they just like rushing through? And I think you could spot a couple of things, but yeah, asking specific question as far as like, what is, what will we focus on when we're working out? You know, ask them what,

 

Kiera Dent (22:02.042)

Mm-hmm.

 

Laura (22:17.919)

What is your skill level on critiquing technique? Yeah, it's a hard, that's a hard, that piece is a little hard to figure out as a beginner and talking to trainers. That's something to think on.

 

Kiera Dent (22:30.858)

Mm-hmm. And that's something I would, I feel like you were so adamant with me about getting my movements perfect without adding weight. Cause I think a lot go to like wanting to get results. And for you, you don't care if my body's not changing very much at the beginning. If I'm not mastering my movements, that's gonna be what you're gonna be core focused on until I get those right. And I think to me, that's what I care about because once you master the movements, then you can lift the weight like,

 

Kiera Dent (22:57.016)

We were doing heavier weight than I ever thought. And I'm coming as a girl who could not squat, could not lunge, could not do any of that. Laura, kudos to you. You were able to work through it so much. So maybe even pretend you have all of my ailments when you go into the consultation and see, could they help you? And then you'd really know. that's something I really do love because Laura does do virtual. And so if you don't live in Reno, she was incredible. We did almost a year virtual before I went in person. And so I think like,

 

Laura (23:08.824)

Hahaha

 

Just ask Kiera to do the consultation with you and she'll tell you.

 

Kiera Dent (23:26.21)

mastering the techniques and getting into the workouts and like you, you hunted me down. And for some people virtual doesn't work, but I think for a lot of people giving that a go, I think is super helpful, but I really want to quickly pivot because I, it's going to be controversial Laura and I can't wait. And I didn't prepare you for this. but I think you'll have a good answer. Let's say I'm looking at this and I'm like, okay, I'm going to work out. but I hear like calories in like abs are made in the kitchen, not necessarily at the gym.

 

Laura (23:41.207)

Mm-hmm. Okay.

 

Laura  (23:52.963)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (23:55.894)

So what's more important to you? Is it my diet and my macros, which we'll get into macros in a second. I had no clue what it was, or is it like technique and workout?

 

Laura (24:05.642)

gosh, that's an impossible question. Absolutely impossible. It definitely depends on what your goals are. What I think everyone's goal should be is to age in a graceful way. That's such a cliche thing to say, but to be healthy, you know, to be healthy and feel your absolute best and be able to show up for your family as you age. So, and with that goal, both of those things matter. If you're not.

 

Kiera Dent (24:22.97)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (24:31.322)

I knew you'd say both, I knew it!

 

Laura (24:33.689)

I can't, can't pick one or the other. I absolutely can't. And then if we go to the other goal that a lot of people have, which is aesthetics and like looking a certain way, both also matter very much. And it depends on like your body type, you know? So I can't, I can't give you a straight answer on that.

 

Kiera Dent (24:49.081)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (24:53.402)

Okay, well let's talk food because this was like, think Laura and I talked, I think on our last like virtual session and we were like debating, we wanted to continue. And I said, I like workout Laura. I don't like food Laura. And you said, I like workout Kiera. I don't like food Kiera. So let's talk about food because for me, food was actually a really tricky thing. It was something I did not enjoy. But.

 

Like, can we just touch on macros and like why you find macros important and what macros even are for those who don't even know what the heck we're talking about. And then I will share my version of this, of how I've like worked through it as someone who has struggled with my relationship with food for a lot of my life and just had like a huge, amazing win at Thanksgiving that was just like a really incredible way for me to see the progress I've made with this food journey. So Laura, talk about macros, food, how this works with your workouts.

 

Laura (25:26.51)

Yes.

 

Laura (25:33.497)

Mm-hmm.

 

Laura (25:45.901)

Yes. Yes. So macros, just to give you guys an idea of what they are, are macronutrients. All of our food are made up of macronutrients. Our proteins, our carbs, and our fats. These are the macro big nutrients in our food. There's also micronutrients, which are your vitamins and minerals within the foods that we eat. The reason I chose to do macros, I've done everything under the sun. From the time I was...

 

very young and doing like, I can't remember the name of the shakes that my mom was doing. You know, it's like, I have been quote unquote dieting for 20 years. And so I've done keto, I've done a meal plan, I've done competitive bodybuilding, I've done, what else is there? Whole 30. I've done, you know, like shakes, like the isogenics, 30 day cleanse. I've done cleanses, I've done all kinds of things.

 

Kiera Dent (26:16.682)

yeah.

 

Laura (26:40.721)

And why I landed on macros was because with all of those other diets, it was very hard to imagine doing it forever. like for keto, for example, keto diet is where you're eating very, very low carbs and your majority eating proteins and fats. For me, I'm like, I love my vegetables. I love my potatoes. I love my bread. I can't see myself never having those things again. It felt too restrictive.

 

And with meal plans, know, coach giving you a meal plan of like, here's what I want you to have for breakfast. Here's what I want you to have for lunch. There's not much flexibility. You don't have control. With macros, you're simply given, this is how much protein I want you to eat. This is how much carbs I want you to eat. And this is how many fats I want you to eat. And you get to fill those in the way that you want. There are guidelines. Of course, we don't want everyone having packaged food, their entire, you know, a hundred percent of their food. We want whole foods.

 

foods close to earth 80 % of the time, but for that other 20 % of the time, have fun, have what you want. I love cookies. I love Mexican food. love sushi. I love going out to dinner and I can make all of that work within my macros. And with clients specifically, the biggest win I always get with the whole macro counting thing is you just learn with the foods that you love, you learn what they're made up of and you learn how to use them to fuel your goals.

 

So people that love bagels, have a bagel before your workout, have a bagel after your workout. Having those starchy carbs before or after a workout is extremely beneficial to help energize you for your workouts and help recover your muscles from the workout that you just did. And then prioritize your fibrous foods later on in the day to help satiate yourself so you're not going to bed feeling starving.

 

So there's a strategy involved. get to, you learn so, so much about the foods you're already eating. You make these tiny, small little changes that will help you get the results that you've always dreamed of. And it's something that you can do forever.

 

Laura (28:46.809)

A lot of people, not everybody. Not everyone can do it. I also struggled with an eating disorder for a decade. I had bulimia for a long time and maybe not a decade. It started when I was like 13 for no good reason. Someone else, some girl was doing it. 13 years old, isn't that insane? And my, you know, I've been healed from that for about five, six years now.

 

Kiera Dent (29:03.47)

It's insane. It's insane.

 

Laura (29:12.453)

And I feel like I have been doing macros for about five, six years now. And I do feel like it was healing for me. It truly helped me stop the bad behavior of labeling foods good and bad, of binging because I was feeling so restricted on other diets. And yeah, it's just allowed a lot of freedom and flexibility for me and healed a lot of food trauma for me. So that's the gist.

 

Kiera Dent (29:16.506)

That's incredible.

 

Kiera Dent (29:40.622)

Yeah, that's incredible. And congratulations. I think that that's a big thing. Whether you're male or female, I think body image, think food issues. I think all of us have it, whether it's binging, whether it's not eating healthy, like all these things. And I think if we go back to like what you said of aging, like for me, I wouldn't be able to say yes to like hiking Machu Picchu when I'm 95. Like I really want to be that person where my last like...

 

Laura (29:50.041)

Mm-hmm.

 

Laura (30:02.489)

And I'm gonna turn it.

 

Kiera Dent (30:06.776)

I don't know, month of my life is when my body decides to give out on me because I've taken such good care of her. And Jason's like, no, no, no, let's just go in a car accident. let's not even have that last month. So, you know, we've upped our game, but just thinking about that, the food situation for me, I think going into it, that was hard because I'm adding a workout, plus I'm adding food and my default is if it's too hard to eat, I'm just not going to eat.

 

Laura (30:16.409)

Mm-hmm.

 

Hahaha

 

Kiera Dent (30:33.442)

And so that was like my big struggle with macros, but what was super fascinating to me was realizing how much fat was in food, like shocking amounts of fat. Like I was blown away when I started looking at labels, seeing that I could have almost the exact same food, but just eating different. like, instead of bacon, like you can have turkey bacon and get a ton of protein. Like it actually grills up way easier. It was kind of a fun puzzle. And like, I just got it to where it was like simple things like,

 

I understand it's fats, carbs and proteins for every meal. And Laura, you did a great job because like Jason, I go out to eat all the time. I'm on the road all the time. And so just even learning like, what can you eat at restaurants that works within macros? And agreed, it's not good or bad. Like I can straight up pound these amazing, like I love Laura. I don't think I've even told you this. When I'm done working out, uncrustable strawberry, like it's so good and it is amazing, but to not have that good or bad.

 

Laura (31:22.041)

yes.

 

Kiera Dent (31:28.726)

is such a freeing thing. so I really think the thing I loved was you said, Keir, if you want to build muscle, you've got to actually like have enough protein to build this muscle. And so learning that I'm not having food just for pleasure. I'm having food to fuel these goals that I want of looking a certain way of having the muscle strength to be able like right now, I just don't want to be a weak feeble grandma. Like that's really my goal is to just not be that. And so it's like, build the glutes, build the hams, build the back, build the arms like

 

Laura  (31:56.003)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (31:56.728)

And it's been crazy because as I've been building muscle, I actually don't have as many problems because we've been able to like stabilize around my shoulders, stabilize around my knees. Like it still happens and there's still setbacks, but it's less and less compared to what it was. And so I knew you'd say food and workouts go hand in hand, but I think for everybody listening, I think just like a one or 2 % change in each of these areas is a great start. So it's like, do one squat and maybe think about like fats, proteins and carbs.

 

or maybe even just look at the labels of how many fats there are. Like just look at that and see. And I think that would be a fun thing. So I know as we kick off the new year, as I know we roll into this, usually we're looking at goals for our businesses. And I'm hoping with this podcast that you look at goals for your life. Goals of like, I look at my life and I want to travel a ton. But to do that, this amazing body that I've been blessed with also needs to be taken care of. And so that's what I was hoping bringing Laura on of like.

 

A, as a thank you, she's done so much for me and just like healing my, like my body. It's so fun when I hit gains at the gym and I'm like, Laura, we're freaking lifting like more than I ever thought I'd be able to. That has been so rewarding for me as a human. And so as a huge appreciation to Laura, like I want her on the podcast. I want to expose her to all of you. But secondly, it's a new year and I feel like giving you tools and resources to get on your health journey if you want to, to have resources in the industry. So I wanted Laura to be an example for you of

 

Hey, if it works great, reach out to her. If you want to chat with her, she does men and women. She tends to coach more women than men. That's okay. but there's lots of great coaches out there for men and women. She even critiqued Jason in my workouts. Jason did a lot of workouts with me at home. So it was fun. He and I did them together. I would tell him like, Laura says you need to get that leg up higher. Like it's not quite the right form. so that was a ton of fun we did together, but just having a resource out there, you could even follow her, look at kind of how she coaches.

 

Laura (33:44.217)

What?

 

Kiera Dent (33:51.758)

But just like learning the things that she's doing, I thought would be so valuable. Cause I hope that this year you give yourself not only the gift of growing your practice, but also becoming like having the body that you want, having the body that can feel your dreams and desires and truly honoring that body that does so much for you. So Laura, tell people how they can get in touch with you. I appreciate you so much. So just share with the world how they can connect with you. Cause I think you are such a gift to this world that I'm so grateful to know.

 

Laura (34:17.369)

Well, thank you so much. really appreciate it. so Instagram is probably one of the best ways to contact me. It's Laura Lee, MIT. I also have a website coached by laura.co and you can apply for coaching on that website. but yeah, as Kiera said, well, I want to add on to what you said that once you decide to start this journey, if you can commit to just like the small one to 2 % change,

 

and never stop, you're never going to regret it. It's the most beautiful, amazing journey that I have ever done for myself. And I watch women do it every single day. it's just, lives are changed and experience of life just goes through the roof. It's just such a better experience. So, yeah, just encouraging you start and don't stop and make it, make it small, make it doable, but start and don't stop. Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (35:14.042)

Brilliant. I love it. And I will say, coming from someone who did not enjoy working out, I remember you said one time, like, you never regret going to the gym. And I've thought about that a lot. And I'm like, sometimes I regret driving to the gym because I don't want to be there. You've even asked me, like, are you excited to be here today? And I'm like, no, I don't want to be here. But every time I leave, I feel so good. And I think just like, as you said, start and don't stop and think about like,

 

Laura (35:23.961)

I'm sorry.

 

Laura (35:31.842)

We'll be back.

 

Kiera Dent (35:40.226)

Our bodies do so much for us. This is the one little simple act we get to do back for it that serves it. And I think about, I'm gonna do like a cheesy dental analogy, but telling so many patients about fluoride, we always say like, this is the most proactive and preventative thing you can do for your teeth. And I feel like similarly working out and eating well is most proactive and preventative thing that we can do for our bodies for long-term health and sustainability. So Laura, thank you for what you've done. I would really recommend, I hope all of you reach out, connect.

 

Do something for your body this year. I know a year from now when we're chatting in January of next year, you will be so grateful like I am that you cared about yourself enough, that you loved that body that does so much for you, that's allowed you to have the business and the life and the job and the family and all the different pieces that taking 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour every day to honor it is the greatest gift you'll ever give yourself. So Laura, thank you.

 

Laura (36:34.275)

Thank you.

 

Kiera Dent (36:35.914)

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

Tiff and Dana start their first episode of the 2025 focused on getting the entire practice team on board with goals. This doesn’t mean just the numbers or just the patient experience, but all the pieces of the puzzle.

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:01.926)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. I am so excited to be back here today. We are recording quite a few podcasts today, Dana and I, and this is our second up, so we should still be super fresh for you. Just kidding, we're always fresh. Dana, your hair looks amazing. You guys know it's hair and leggings and workouts, apparel and...

 

protein bars for me. Like she is my girl who shares all of my same hopes, dreams, wishes, and desires in life. So Dana, your hair looks amazing today. I love it. Yeah. I used my...

 

Dana (00:33.454)

Well, you know, I'm podcasting with Tiff. I had to put a little effort in.

 

The Dental A Team (00:38.46)

Well, thank you. went and straightened it real quick, but I used my my crimper thing yesterday. I've used it quite a few times on my new haircut. I wasn't sure how it was going to work, but it worked. For all you male dentists out there listening, just give me a stitch. I'm sorry.

 

Dana (00:43.854)

Let's go!

 

The Dental A Team (00:51.26)

Dana, made her, this is like a year and a half, two years ago now, something like that. I made her give me a tutorial because she was doing this weird thing with her hair and I was like, my God, it looks so good. I need to know how to do my hair like that. She's like, just get this thing. I'm like, yeah, but I don't think you understand. I need a tutorial. So she literally did a tutorial for me on how to wave my hair. And it is actually really cute with my new cut. So thank you, Dana, for stepping up my game, my hair game.

 

and all of the other games. Your Tip Tuesdays, I'm always like dying to see what it's going to be. I have protein bars because of you. I have so many things. So thank you, Dana, for having all of the tips and the tricks in your back pocket every single time.

 

Dana (01:36.022)

can't take credit for it, I'm constantly asking my girlfriends, hey, what are you guys doing? Give me all the products too. So a lot of them are tips that have been shared with me that I just pass on.

 

The Dental A Team (01:46.182)

That's what this world is about, right? Everything we share on this podcast are things that we've learned along the way, either on our own from exploration or because we learned it from somebody else. And that is the beauty, I think, of life and really being able to have that community and that camaraderie where you can share those things. So you have your girlfriends, our doctors here at the Dental A Team have each other. We have a...

 

An amazing doctors group that I feel like is just like that, Dana, where I see things go off all the time on the little texting app and they're like, my gosh, what do you guys have for this? Or what new bond are you using? My bond sucks. Or cosmetic stuff. So I think that's...

 

That's how we do it. That's how we move along and that's how we were meant to do it. We were never meant to do life solo. We were meant to do life in groups with incredible, amazing people. And we are here for it every single day. We love our clients. We love you guys who are our clients and we love you guys who are not yet our clients. And we have those communities for you. So look for them. Instagram, Facebook, we've got all kinds of communities there for our clients who are listening. If you don't know what I'm talking about with this doctor,

 

collaboration sucker, you better be texting me right now. Same with Dana. If you are our client and you don't know what I'm talking about, you better be texting me right now. Let's get you in there. Awesome. Dana, today I really wanted to talk about teams and how doctors and leaders, so doctors and probably office managers, business administrators, can really utilize the team to help push goals.

 

I think oftentimes we have clients that come in, they onboard, and I hear a lot of the time, and Dana, I think you might as well, I don't talk to my team about numbers because I don't want them to think that I'm numbers driven. And I think it's super freaking common in the dental world because we have a really hard time differentiating black and white numbers and emotions. And

 

The Dental A Team (03:44.13)

I always like to say that emotions are fleeting, the way I felt when I woke up this morning, drastically different than how I feel right now. And that was like six hours, seven hours ago. Like within a day, I've had so many emotions come and go that if I'm constantly weighing out if something's working right or not, or if I'm growing or if I'm happy, if I'm sad, I'm just constantly trying to weigh out what that looks like based on my feelings, it's gonna be very difficult. But dentistry, we are in the

 

care profession and we are saturated, luckily I think this is an incredible asset to all of us, we are saturated with emotional beings, highly emotionally intelligent human beings that are keyed in first to how we feel.

 

So bringing in that numbers aspect can feel cold and sterile and it can feel like, Tiff, I'm here for the patients. I'm here for the patient experience. I don't wanna talk about the numbers. I've literally had a doctor say, I don't wanna look at the numbers. I don't wanna talk about them. And I said, okay, you don't want to yet, but we're gonna get there. Now Dana, I know you've had that as well. What do you feel is the reason that you've seen or reasons that you've experienced that doctors or business administrators might not want to talk about numbers?

 

Dana (04:58.923)

Yeah, I think a lot of it comes from a fear of when they talk about numbers, the team sees that only as profit, right? Or dollars, dollars, right? When we talk about numbers and dollars that go directly to the doctor or to the owner. And so I always feel like

 

The Dental A Team (05:08.433)

Yeah.

 

Dana (05:16.692)

Yeah, we want to talk about production. We want to talk about collections. We want to talk to dollars. We also want to talk about expenses, right? You want your team to have a full picture of numbers, not just the dollar, because when they have a full picture of the numbers and they also know what those numbers tell them in relation to patient care and patient experience, and all of those are part of numbers. And so I feel like you can't talk about numbers without talking about those other things too. And you can't highlight, like you have to highlight what the numbers tell you about those pieces, which are the

 

The Dental A Team (05:22.214)

Correct.

 

Dana (05:46.808)

that usually rally up the team that they really care about that are the reasons why they are there. And so when you make those connections of, yes, these are dollars, but these dollars tell us about patient care. These dollars tell us what an amazing patient experience we're creating for our patients. These dollars tell us how great we are at getting our patients to accept the treatment that we recommend to them. And these dollars come with expenses. And so they aren't just profit. They aren't just dollars that are sitting in a bank somewhere and accumulating interest.

 

The Dental A Team (06:10.789)

Yeah.

 

Dana (06:16.384)

and making you as the owner, right? And you as the owner should you take all the risk, right? So don't feel guilty about that either. You take all of the risk. It is all of your license. It is all in everything that you've created. So also don't feel guilty if you make a healthy profit from your practice. But I think when you have a full picture.

 

The Dental A Team (06:21.498)

Yeah.

 

Dana (06:33.334)

of expenses and what they tell you and all of those things numbers become really easy to talk about and team members can start to get behind those numbers when they understand what those numbers are telling them about the things that they care about.

 

The Dental A Team (06:49.692)

Totally agree. I 100 % stand by everything you just said. One thing that you made me think of is, because you're talking about this profit piece, gosh, I think a lot of dentists, you all want the profit, but I think a lot of you feel almost guilty for the profit, and especially when it comes to the numbers. That's why sometimes you don't want to talk about it. I totally understand that. But I think what you forget to see in that,

 

is how much decision making becomes easier when you know the numbers. When you know that you're truly profitable and when the practice knows you're truly profitable, the team meaning that it makes it much easier to make decisions. So can we take an extra day off next month because there's a festival in town and we all want to go to it? Can we buy the ultrasonic or the autoclave or the cavatron? how many cavatrons do we get asked for at the end of the year you guys? I just had one, I just had a call today.

 

Dana (07:41.003)

you

 

The Dental A Team (07:44.966)

They're like, hygiene department needs a cavern shot, and we need an ultrasonic, we need a sterilizer, and I'm like, cool, we've got to figure out where that's coming from. But the team, I mean the team, I just had this call with this doctor this morning, he's one of my favorite doctors I talked to, him and his wife. We have...

 

like tenfold changed their money and their financial situation and their practice and it has been incredible. They went from like an 82 % overhead to typically they're like 57 to 62 % right now. They're profiting, they're able to put money aside. He has a CE bucket I make him put money in, all of these different pieces. He's just bought a new practice to expand. It's huge. All of this stuff has happened in the last couple of years but it's because we were willing to start looking at the money.

 

Well, his team sent us this laundry list of like wishes and it's fantastic. And the office manager has gone through and she's priced everything and she's done it all correct so that now we can say, okay, well, what are the educated decisions based on the finances prior to working on this with them prior to working so hard at getting that, that overhead down by at least 20 % over the last two years. They weren't talking numbers a lot with the team. They were just going through the motions.

 

The only number that they really talked about was where's our production and are we at 98 %? Collections are higher, which are two fantastic numbers to talk about, but they weren't watching other pieces. They weren't watching the AR. They weren't watching necessarily the new patients super closely and what was happening is their AR was being padded with overpayments and so what was happening, profit was down, their overhead was high because they actually had a ton of money still outstanding, but it wasn't showing up in the initial reports.

 

know this, they didn't understand this, we had to break it down, we had to pull backwards, we had to start moving money around, all of these different things had to come into place and once the team understood what the numbers meant, what they could control, they were on board. They were like, my gosh, this is a disaster. Like how do we positively impact this? Because you guys, they care about your business too because they care about you. This specific practice, this team loves this doctor. I mean, I love this doctor and that's why

 

The Dental A Team (10:00.998)

like they are incredible human beings. Most of you guys out there are incredible human beings with teams who want you to do really well. When you do well, your team does well. And your team does well and can help promote that, like Dana said, when they know what they're going after. Does your team know how to win? Because emotions are fleeting and I might feel like, gosh, today was a fantastic day. It was so smooth and it flowed so well. And you're leaving the back door

 

complaining because we had $1,200 worth of treatment today and I'm like...

 

Today was great. Today, I wasn't running around like a chicken. It seemed to flow really well. And you're like, no, I couldn't even pay the people that were here today based off of the money that we brought in. That's the difference. And your team needs to be able to see that, to see where they can go. And Dana and I chatted earlier about really seeing those overarching goals, but then seeing how does my individual position in this practice add to that goal? So what is the goal of my position?

 

And how does that goal, that metric add into the larger metrics of the practice? So if I'm a billing representative, how does the work that I do directly affect profitability of the practice or overhead of the practice is probably easier to talk about, right? And Dana, I know we were just talking about this. So what are some other spaces like hygiene's an easy one because they're providers, right? But even as far as like treatment coordinators, billing or front office representatives, like what are you seeing with the practices you work at?

 

work with, not at, that you work with, that you're having those leading measures that are really, really contributing to the back end full arch goals.

 

Dana (11:45.622)

Yeah. And I think that that's, that's, it's, it's knowing what your other numbers tell you, right? Or what adjunct numbers then to look at that feed into some of those larger numbers like production and collections. So if I TC, right, how would you impact collections? Well, you would help increase production by getting more treatment accepted. And it's just breaking it down and making those connections for them. If I am the scheduler, well, how do I impact collections? Well, if I have a full schedule where we can produce it, then we're able to collect it. Right. So just breaking that all down. If I'm a

 

The Dental A Team (11:50.747)

Yeah.

 

The Dental A Team (12:12.24)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Dana (12:15.488)

dental assistant, well how do I affect production? Well you make sure that you're as efficient as possible so our appointment lengths can be as short as possible and you're part of reappointing right? So making sure that you get the next thing on the schedule, making sure that you're teeing things up for the doctor, all of those things help build production but sometimes it's difficult for team members to make those links or to see wow yeah like me doing that really does impact that.

 

number or that larger overarching goal. And so almost every number in the practice, each individual seat can contribute to it in some way. We just sometimes as leaders have to make those connections or draw those links for team members to see.

 

The Dental A Team (12:42.588)

Thank you.

 

The Dental A Team (12:53.308)

you

 

Totally agree. I was working with a pediatric practice last week and this was most of our meeting was spent on this and we spent at least two hours really diving into each department from the overarching goal standpoint and really the daily production that they're looking to hit to hit the monthly production and how does every department and each individual within that department control that and one of the most interesting pieces that was pulled out for them was the dental assistance and the dental assistance

 

you guys that is usually the toughest spot to like really pull something out of it. Same day treatment for sure, conversions like all those pieces but this one was really cool. It's a pediatric practice and they have their dental assistants chart prep.

 

48 hours ahead. So they're always like one and two days ahead doing the chart preps. Well, this team listed chart prepping as one of their issues when we first started our meeting. So I was like, let's talk about these chart preps. What is happening here? Well, they're spending like 40 minutes per provider at a four to five provider practice chart prepping for them.

 

And my mind was blown. And I was like, holy cow, this is taking you so long. And I started diving into it. This is just their normal every day. One of the complaints from the front office team was that they're getting last minute same day schedule changes that are necessary because the back office is chart prepping so late that they're coming up and saying, hey, we can't do that. You need to reschedule that patient.

 

The Dental A Team (14:22.352)

Well, what does that do? That tanks our production, it's bad customer service, completely changes the experience of the patient and the parent because it's a pediatric practice. So many things are entangled in that. And what we ended up doing was really breaking down that if we could change the metrics on this, right? So who's responsible for this? Who's going to do it every single day? So one of their metrics was someone is responsible for doing it and to decrease the amount of time. So their metrics right now is to get it

 

done by 838 am so the opener will do

 

this chart prep, they have to be done by 8 30 a.m. and they're they're timing themselves to get it down to 15 minutes. That is going to significantly change what they're able to do because what was happening is all of these dental assistants were like trying to get it done and it's like whoever can get to it and hey that's where I was and I started there and you can do this one over here while they're seeing patients throughout the day. So it wasn't actually getting done and when it was it was kind of just muddled.

 

So the whole point of it, like the value of the schedule was unseen. The value of same day treatment ads completely bypassed because we weren't actually looking at it and applying it to open appointments on the same day. And the value out of being cherished side and available for patients during patient time was lost. So appointments were taking too long. Can you imagine like your overall overarching goals, production collections, new patients, patient satisfaction, so your reviews, all of those pieces

 

are insanely impacted by something as easy as changing the chart prep and how they were doing it and how they were running it. I talked to the doctor yesterday and I didn't specifically look at the chart prep with her but they hit three out of four days last week they were 100 % to goal and they are over like they're over what

 

The Dental A Team (16:17.296)

producing what they should this month based on the projections. I was there a week ago and we put the attention back on it with the scheduling coordinators, with the whole team's attention is on this single day production, totally changed the game. Even just by the dental assistants looking at how effective their time use is. And Dana, what you said made me think of that because we under...

 

when it's not attached to cell fluoride, or how many night guards can we get? And I agree, do 80 % night guard case acceptance, diagnose 10 % more night guards than you usually do, recommend, whatever you want to call it. Like I agree with those, but I think we undervalue how much just time saving techniques can add back production. So Dana, you've worked with a lot of pediatric practices as well, and GP practices, but where else do you feel like from a

 

office standpoint, simple things like that. What else have you seen practices do to really get the back office on board with the goals? Because I do think a lot of times for an office we think numbers, right? It's not always, and I say that I'm a dental assistant by trade as well, but for an office thinks numbers first most of the time. Back office it's much more difficult to think the numbers because I think it's because it's more difficult to see the impact that we can have on those numbers. So what are some other areas that you've worked with practices on?

 

that have worked really well.

 

Dana (17:44.886)

Yeah, and I will say in my last pediatric practice, was we worked a ton on how the back impacts AR and billing. And sometimes they feel like, no, we don't impact that world at all. Well, actually, you do fairly significantly. And so making sure that you are walking out and attaching

 

The Dental A Team (17:59.749)

Yeah.

 

Dana (18:03.828)

everything that you did, every single thing that you did because you were in there. You know if that surface changed, you know if you added a tooth, you know. So making sure that everything is in there, making sure that you have, that the billing team has all of the pieces they need to build successfully. Did you take that pre-op x-ray? Did you take that post-op x-ray? Do we have period charting? Do we have all of the things that we need? Do we have the IOP of that decay of that tooth? So really just full picture of you guys actually impact billing tremendously and you also like you are

 

heavy hitters on the amount of time it takes for an insurance to reimburse or all of those pieces. And so we worked a ton on making sure everything was walked out, making sure everything was updated in the chart and getting them to check codes for the next appointment. You just saw the patient, you know that they had bite wings this time. So what better space for you to do than check codes for the next appointment.

 

The Dental A Team (18:38.671)

Yeah.

 

The Dental A Team (18:55.798)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dana (18:56.354)

So that's another space where oftentimes like they don't realize that they impact those things. And I don't think a dental assistant is like, well, the things that I do really impact the timely filing and timely payment of insurance claims. It absolutely does though.

 

The Dental A Team (19:10.598)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

I agree. I think that's brilliant. And when you're doing that, all you have to do then is take those pieces that Dana just spoke on and turn it into a measurement. The easiest space to do that is a percentage. Because if you say, sell five fluorides a day, or convert two same day treatments a day, a dental assistant is like, cool, I didn't have any opportunities for that today. So I got a big fat zero. So if you say we're converting 80 % of the opportunities given,

 

we can say I converted three out of five opportunities today or how many times, you what's the percentage? I want 100 % of all of the codes attached every single time. So then we can go back through and say, hey, there was 10 % here that we had to go back and ask questions or fix it. If you change that metric into a percentage or this out of this, you're going to get a much higher success rate and also doing it on a daily but weekly. So a lot of times I'll say, okay, everyone needs to ask for two

 

reviews a day, but at minimum 10 a week. So if you get to Friday and you were like, only asked for four this week, you know you have six people you got to ask today. So it's two a day, 10 a week or whatever that metric might be. But I love that you said that Dana, it truly does. And I do think as dental assistants, we underestimate that and we want to give everything away for free, by the way. We want I know hygienists too. We just want we just want to like, we just want to fix it. We want to make it better. But really seeing the value of those missing

 

those missing attachments like that $12 that $16 add that up over the course of 20 patients a month and that's a significant amount, you know, you're asking for cavatrons and I'm like, well, give me some PA's pay for it. I'll get you a cavatron tip. How can we calculate this? So just bringing that awareness up to your team I think really makes a difference you guys and they start thinking about it the same as they do their finances at home. It's finances at work as well and

 

Dana (20:57.272)

Yeah.

 

The Dental A Team (21:13.64)

in order to reinvest back into the patients, back into the practice and into your team, the profit has to be there. We have to meet these metrics. So biggest ways to get a team on board with that is to show them the path.

 

to win. If they can see it, they're going to freaking go for it you guys. If they know what that goal is, if they know what the metric is that they have to meet to say I won today, they're going to do it because everyone wants to feel really good about their jobs and this is an easy way for them to win. Just find those metrics. Dana, thank you so much. I knew picking your brain was going to be fantastic on this one. This was a super, super fun one to do and you guys, we do this all day. We do this with a lot of practices.

 

I know the back office side can be a little bit more difficult to pinpoint those pieces. office is a little bit easier. If and when you have questions, please reach out. [email protected]. You can drop something in the comments below. Give us a five star review. Let us know how you loved this. All of those pieces. Instagram, we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook. And just so you guys know, when those things come through, those questions, you email us, you Instagram message us, you Facebook messenger us, whatever the path is that you're

 

they get sent to the consulting team and the consulting team are the ones that are answering those questions for you so that it's always valuable information. We're always helping you dive into that next step. So if you're a current client, reach out to your dental consultant or the team. If you're not yet a client, you're a client to be or just a fantastic listener.

 

Please know you can reach out at [email protected] on Instagram or on Facebook or on all of those places. think we're even on YouTube and everything. I have no idea, we're everywhere. But [email protected] is the easiest, or Instagram and Facebook Messenger. All right, guys, we cannot wait to hear from you. We cannot wait to see that five star review pop through. Let us know what you thought, and go have a fantastic rest of your day.

Happy New Year! Instead of setting resolutions to start off 2025, Kiera tries a different route: identity changes. What fights can you stop starting in your personal or professional life in order to become the best person, the best dental hygienist, the best doctor, the best _______ you can be in the new year?

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.878)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and happy 2025. I feel so honored to be with you on New Year's Day today. I mean, I'm calling 2025 the year to thrive and no longer survive. Like, let's get real. Let's get on this. Let's stop surviving and let's start thriving. And so to kick off New Year's today, I was thinking about it. And usually on New Year's around this time, we're all setting our goals. We're setting our resolutions.

 

And I actually want to give you a different spin. Are you open for it? Like, let's start 2025 on a different note. And that is maybe instead of setting resolutions, let's set identity changes this year. Resolutions are fighting. Let's change that verbiage and change how we think about that. I'm so excited. I love this podcast. I love all of you. And I was thinking about resolutions and resolutions are like,

 

you know, I want to lose weight or I want to be this leader or I want my practice to be there. And I think resolutions are different than goals and changing an identity is actually the fastest way to do it. One of my favorite quotes of all time is the need to stay like the greatest, like the greatest driver within the human being is the need to stay consistent with who we believe we are, not who we actually are, but who we believe. And so changing identity,

 

is actually the fastest way to grow and to evolve and to hit the goals and to hit the resolutions. It's not just setting a resolution like up like a sticky note on a wall. Like I want to be this. Okay, great. But if we don't believe we are so like there was an example and they said like, I don't know if I can stop smoking. I've been a smoker. I am a smoker. You know, I'm gonna try really hard. Well, in their mind, they're still a smoker. So trying to put it up there, I'm gonna stop smoking is actually fighting against who they believe they are.

 

And that's a fight rather than a flow versus saying like, I'm not a smoker. Like I'm an identity. I don't smoke. I'm not a smoker for me. I've never smoked in my life. I'm not a smoker. That wouldn't even be a thing. Like, but I take it on of I'm not a smoker. And so oftentimes I love the book by James Clear, Atomic Habits. There were things I liked about things I didn't like about it. The overall piece that I really, really loved though, was when he talks about sometimes getting to these resolutions means we need to start thinking as that person.

 

Kiera Dent (02:20.942)

So if maybe today I don't feel like I'm not a smoker and I'm trying to get there, it would be like, what does a person who doesn't smoke do? And we start to act like them. And I have a really great example of my mom. My mom, she went and met with her doctor and her doctor said, you've got to start having more exercise in your life. You're not getting enough steps. You're not having any of these things and you need to start hitting 10,000 steps a day. Well, my mom, I was watching her and her and I started doing it. I had like, I'm just...

 

I enjoy a good challenge. And so when we were in Tokyo, I got several days in a row of hitting over 10,000 steps and there was a badge of hitting 30 days in a row. And so I was like, sweet, I'm going to hit 30 days. Like I'm to hit 10,000 steps. Like we're just going to do it. And my mom was doing it. I'm like the doctor told her she needed to do this. And it was really interesting. I remember meeting up with my mom one day and she's like, Kiera, how are your steps? And I was like, great. I've got like this, I did this earlier today. I set up my schedule. Like I went for my walk or whatever it was.

 

I was like, well, you know, maybe I'll get it tonight. Maybe I won't. And in that moment, I thought like, my mom has this is just like a hope and a wish rather than an identity. And not to say I was better than her. It was just for me, I had already decided like, this is what I do. This is who I am. And I'm going to hit this like, period. I don't care what I've got to do. If I've got to walk at midnight, I'll do that. In airports, I'm like rolling my suitcase up and down and walking just because it was something I was committed to. I remember my mom and I were talking and I said, mom,

 

Like I pulled James, James Clear into the equation. said, mom, like, what would a healthy person do that would hit their steps every day? And I said, maybe just consider that. And so my mom started actually asking herself the question. She's like, well, like, what would a healthy person do? They would start taking a walk on their lunch break. And I was so proud of my mom. My mom started taking walks on her lunch break. And then my mom said, like, a healthy person would get up in the morning and they'd go for a walk before they'd go to work. So my mom started getting up and going for a walk at work or before work.

 

And then my mom, was interesting. I was listening to her and she's like, you know, I've already been prepping like it's going to be winter time and it's going to be like rainy and snowy. And she's like, I don't like the cold. And so she's like, what would a healthy person do with that? They would go walk at the mall and they would plan their schedule to be able to go do that. And I was so proud of my mom because she went from someone who was like, maybe I'll get this AKA setting a resolution to this is who I am. This is my identity. I am this healthy person.

 

Kiera Dent (04:42.466)

but she had to get there by thinking of herself as this other person. What would this person do? And so when we're looking at our businesses and we're looking at our goals and we're looking at the things we want to do, what would a doctor who produces 3 million a year do? What would a CEO who owns a $3 million business, what would they do? What would an office manager who runs a $2.5 million practice, what would they do? How would they start their day? What things would they actually work on? What things would they delegate? What things would they not do?

 

What things would they, how would they present their cases? How would they close their cases? How would they follow up with their cases? If it was a hygienist who produced 3.3 times their pay, what would that hygienist do? They would be looking at their schedule every single day. They would be checking for comp exams and for x-rays when their x-rays are due. They would be looking for fluoride and adjunct services, sealants. They would be tracking their metrics. They would be tracking their numbers. They would be adding these things to their patient schedules because they're obsessed about their patients and want their patients to thrive.

 

What would a dental assistant do that could add same day treatment every single day? They'd be prepping their schedule. They would be talking to the treatment coordinators of how do we up our, how do we talk to the patients about this? They would be figuring it out. They would be looking at their schedule all the time. They'd be talking to the patients. They'd be helping the patients realize this is better for them and they don't have to come back for multiple visits. What would a biller do that has 98 % collections? And they don't spend all day doing it. They would be

 

prioritizing their time, they'd be doing their insurance verification in batches. They would be calling patients instead of sending statements. They'd be proactive with that. They'd be collecting balances when the patients are in the chair. They'd be working their 90, 60, 30 days. They would be having set aside time. They would have a schedule set up to where they actually followed through on this. They would not make excuses for it. And they would own their results. And I think if we think this way and we change our identities, and again, maybe we're not there today,

 

But as we're setting these resolutions, what would someone who has great family work-life balance do? Well, they would set up their date nights for their spouse. They would set up their kid time. Those would be the first things. They would have their work schedule in there. If they know that they only want to work four days a week, they then build a schedule with block scheduling. And they start to realize that they might add additional treatment in, higher dollar treatment, whether it's cosmetic or implants or sleep or different things like that. They would look at it.

 

Kiera Dent (07:06.06)

A CEO of a practice would be looking at their numbers every single day, if not weekly. The reality is you've got to know your numbers forwards and backwards. They would love numbers and obsess about numbers. They would love to solve puzzles and crack codes. They would make sure that they empower their team to make decisions and that they're focusing on the top pieces. They would hold their team accountable. They would have agreements. They would make sure that this team is actually operating at the highest level. And if they don't know how to do it, they would hire people to help train their team to do it.

 

a doctor who's producing three million. They're confident with their presentations. They aren't afraid to tell patients what they need. They're very good with their case acceptance. They're really good with their handoffs. They're really good with their comprehensive diagnosis. If they're not good with that, they would put in AI, so Pearl or Overjet, to use on their x-rays to make it easier for them. But they would actually get confident presenting treatment. Now, what does a confident dentist who presents treatment look like? They go in, they have a great rapport with the patient.

 

And if this isn't you, I have some doctors and we change their names. So we have like Dr. Marvelous or we have the confident guy or like whatever it is for you. I don't care. Choose your name. But that person walks in and they're confident with the patient and they would have a rapport with the patient and then they would ask the patient, I lean you back in? And they would say yes. And they would say perfect. Can I do a comprehensive exam? And the patient would say yes. they're

 

the patient up to say yes to them and they show them healthy teeth and not healthy teeth and they're able to go through a comprehensive exam with them and show them what they need to do. They're not using little league words and major league situations. They're being honest with the patient of what they need and they're being confident with their diagnosis and what that patient needs. They're using our perfect NDTR handoff of the next visit, the date to return, the time needed for the appointment, making sure their re-care is scheduled for every single patient and they consistently do that and if they forget they

 

tie a string of floss around their finger or they have this little sticky note underneath the patient's chair. I literally have doctors do this when they're so committed to doing it, but they hold it consistent. They review their cases with their treatment coordinators every single week. Where did I crush it? Where could I improve? They record themselves. Don't worry, you keep it HIPAA compliant, but they record themselves and they actually watch back their treatment cases to see what did I say? What did I miss? How could I say this better? They tee it up with their hygienist. They do what would doctor do with their hygiene team? And they say,

 

Kiera Dent (09:24.472)

All right, this is how we diagnose it. This is how we preheat the oven with our hygienist. They help their hygienist and they do CE with their hygienist about perio and how we treat our patients that way. They work with their whole team and they do whatever it is, full team handoffs or morning huddles or case acceptance, but they're doing those items. But what they're really doing is they're picking the one, two or three items that are actually going to move their practice forward the most with the least amount of effort and the greatest amount of gain. And they're really great at prioritizing.

 

And what I'm doing is I'm describing to you doctors that I work with. I'm describing office managers that I work with, hygienists that I work with, people within our consulting company that are doing this ridiculously well. I'm telling you literally, these are what these people do. A successful CEO, they block themselves. They have at least two to four hours every single week dedicated to working on the business. And they're doing it within working hours for two reasons. One, they believe in a healthy work-life balance.

 

And two, they know that if they put it during production time, they're actually going to use that time productively because they know if they're producing 500 or 750 or a thousand or $5,000 per hour, if they block those two hours, they need to ensure that those two hours are giving them at least, let's say they're at 500 an hour, at least $1,000 of benefit. If they're at $5,000 an hour, it's at least $10,000 of value in those two hours. You instantly start to think about yourself differently, but notice.

 

Well, what we've done is we've changed your identity. We've asked the questions of what would this type of a doctor do? What would this type of a CEO do? What would this type of an office manager do? And then we start to become that person. And we stopped fighting against, I hope and wish that I'll become this person. Instead, we started to be like my mom. My mom does not miss her 10,000 steps anymore because what my mom is, is someone who consistently hits 10,000 steps every day. Rain or shine, good health, bad health, whatever it is, because my mom is so committed.

 

to being that person, just like the person who's not a smoker. And they've taken on that identity of I don't smoke. That's a person and it's crazy because we can't change that. And it's like the fastest way to change is to become and to change our identity. And the way we change our identity is start to ask, what would we do in this instance? And so for you, would think, look at your goals and ask yourself, what do we want to achieve as a practice? Hopefully you've set them up. If not, or if you have, come join us January 31st.

 

Kiera Dent (11:48.814)

We are actually doing thriving in 2025 with maximum momentum and I would love to have you there. It's a Friday. It's going to be a couple hours for you guys. Don't even stress about it. Two hours. So from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Pacific time. Come join us. I would love you. Let's get that thriving in 2025 and we're gonna help you actually set your goals for this year. We're gonna help you actually build the momentum with you and your team. And as you're building this, as you're crafting it, ask yourself,

 

Who do I need to become to make these goals a reality? Who we are today, we need to rise above. think about like as gross as it is snakes. Snakes slough off their old skin. They outgrow it. They literally slough it off and leave it behind and they emerge and grow into the next version that they need to be. Penguins literally molt off their feathers and evolve. And it's for us, what do we need to shed off? What do we need to let go of? What favorite excuse do we need to have?

 

What do we need? What identity do we need to take on to become the person who rises up, who gets bigger shoulders to carry a larger practice? Meaning we become better leaders, we delegate better, we own these things. And if you need mentors or you need guides, that's why I'm so excited to, to bring together people within consulting. Sometimes we just need to see other people to see how to do it. We need someone to model after. and so if you've got a great mentor, amazing. If you've got a great idea of who you want to be amazing. If you don't,

 

Amazing. Let's give you some people reach out anytime. [email protected]. But join us for for our thriving in 2025. Maximize momentum and let's maximize let's help you. But right now on New Year's Day, I want you to decide who are you going to be in 2025 to truly thrive and then think of what does that person do and maybe even list the attributes of that person list the things that they don't do. What are the things that they're not doing to make sure that they're thriving?

 

And then let's not set resolutions, but let's actually achieve goals. Let's actually achieve dreams. Let's actually live the life that we were destined to live. Let's stop managing our circumstances and start creating our lives. Let's start becoming creators rather than managers. Let's start being who we were meant to be and not have it be a hope and a wish, but a true resolution, a true identity shift to be that person. And I promise you, you will thrive in 2025.

 

Kiera Dent (14:09.368)

Some of you may be looking back and thinking 2024 was not the best year for me. Reach out, let's thrive and not just survive. I would love to help you. I would love to be here. I will be here on the podcast with you. And I would love to help you one-on-one or in a group setting or in person or virtual, whatever it is, but commit to yourself. Let's thrive in 2025 and this is who you will be. And then commit to doing whatever it takes to get there. Rain, shine, good weather, bad weather.

 

you've got it, you don't have it, but you become that person to where when we are celebrating 2026, you look back and say, I became who I was destined to be. I achieved the goals that I set out because I changed the identity of who I was to who I want to be. And I promise you this year will be much different. Cheers to 2025. I'm committing to thriving in 2025. And I hope you're along with me. If you are, send me an email. [email protected]. at TheDentalATeam.com. Kiera, I am thriving in 2025. You can even send me

 

who you're gonna be, your attributes. I will be your accountability buddy for you. But when we write it, we commit. When we think about it, it's a wish. When we write it, it's possible. And when we schedule it, it becomes real. So whatever you've gotta do to get this schedule, then to become this person, I implore you to do so. You deserve it. Your patients need you. Your team needs you. You need this for you. You need this. And I just say, play full out.

 

Give yourself everything that you're destined to have and let's freaking thrive in 2025. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

On this final day of 2024, Kiera gives listeners a series prompts to reflect on the past year — personal, professional, and many stops in between.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.964)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and happy New Year's Eve. I cannot believe 2024 is wrapped up. We're done. Like chalk it up. We're done. Can you believe that it is 2025 in less than 24 hours? You'll be ringing in that new year and I hope you do it with Dental A Team. Of course we'll be there celebrating with you. But 2024, 2024, can you believe it's wrapped up? It's done. It's packaged up. We can't go back in time. We can't change things.

 

All we can do is reflect and celebrate and look forward to next year. And so I'm so excited. I thought I'd just pop on quickly today of let's do a quick reflection. Let's think about how it was. I love New Year's Eve. And this is probably 1 of my favorite holidays because gosh, like a few, man, this is before I got married. So we're talking 15 years ago. I only been married for 13 years. So I'm guessing 13, 14 years ago is how long ago it was. But I remember.

 

sitting there and I said, I love new days because new days are brand new days with no mistakes. And I thought about that with new years and like how much excitement is there of like, it's a brand new year with no mistakes. It's a brand new year. It's a clean slate. And how beautiful is it that we get to have this every 365 days most years to be able to clean slate, to be able to say, all right, that's who I was in 2024. And this is who I'm going to emerge into in 2025. And I think people who really are very consistent on doing this and

 

Spending a little bit of time on today New Year's Eve where we sit and we actually journal So I'm gonna give you a few journal prompts if you want To reflect back and I know I've had a few podcasts over the next couple over the last few months about reflection But today's like the pinnacle day of it So if you've already done this amazing if not, I'm also gonna give you some personal things to think about too So of course technical and life life and dentistry like I said life is my passion dentistry is my platform and so

 

Let's just think about today as we're going through. Number 1, I want you to think about your personal life. I want you to look at your physical body. I want you to look at your health and I want you to rate yourself on a 1 to 10. How is your physical body? How is your health compared to where you would like it to be? Is it a 10? Like I'm 10 out of 10. I'm perfect. I'm a nine. I'm an eight. I'm a seven. If you're on the path there, be generous with yourself. Don't be too hard on yourself. But let's look at our physical bodies. Okay. So 1 to 10, how are you doing on your physical body?

 

Kiera Dent (02:24.33)

1 to 10, next 1. How are you on your personal relationships? Like, let's start with like your marriage or your intimate relationship. 1 to 10, is that like, if I were to go talk to your spouse or your boyfriend, girlfriend, whomever it is, your significant other, if I were to ask them how, like on a 1 to 10, how are they showing up for you? What kind of a relationship do you have? Is 10 like, it's off the charts. We have incredible, incredibly passionate relationship. I feel like they support me, they love me.

 

Where are we at on a 1 to 10 with your, and that's how are you showing up for them? And also like, how are they showing up for you? But we really, we can only control ourselves. So let's rate ourselves on how are we showing up? How is our relationship compared to where we want to be? If you're not in a relationship, great, it's not a 10. How are you on that? 1 to 10. Next up is how is your personal relationship with yourself? What's your self talk to yourself? Is it positive? Is it negative? How do you view yourself?

 

Are you proud of yourself? Are you someone that you would want to know? Are you not? How is that? 1 to 10. Next, how is your mind? What do you do for your mental health? From meditation to mindfulness to stillness to having control over the thoughts that come your way. 1 to 10, how's your mind? All right, let's move on to how is your fun in life? We'll put travel.

 

I think travel is an easy 1. 1 to 10, how did you do on your vacations and the travel you wanted to take this year? 1 to 10, was it 10? Like it was off the charts for me and Jason, it was a 10. We had an incredible year this year. We traveled, we saw so many incredible things. We made so many memories. It was amazing. 1 to 10, how are your hobbies and things outside of work? How is that? 1 to 10. For me, it's like a five. Do a lot of hiking, but not as many hobbies as maybe I would like to do. Okay, so we've got quite a few things on your personal life.

 

How is that, we can also put in there like your expansion, your growth, so like reading books and expanding your mind, listening to podcasts, maybe not necessarily dental, but things. How is that? 1 to 10. How are you doing on that? Now I want you to dig into like, let's talk about your wealth and your financials. How are you financially? And we can talk in two different levels. So could have two different 1 to 10s on here. How are your financials as far as your take home pay? Where is that at 1 to 10 of where you'd like it to be?

 

Kiera Dent (04:48.548)

And then your next 1 would be, is it on your, you're setting up for your financial freedom for longterm. 1 to 10, how are you doing on that? Are we saving for retirement? Do we have our 401ks in place? Do we feel like when we want to retire that we'll be able to retire and do it with ease? Or are we not on track at that at all? And team members, this is for you too. Doctors, this is a great 1 that you can share with your team. Okay, so we've got our personal life. We've got our health. We have our...

 

Our expansion, have our finances. Now let's look at our business. How was your year this year on a 1 to 10? 10 was like, it was freaking awesome. We hit our goals. We had a ton of fun. Like I'm just living my life. It's like, you know, we're getting there. 5 is like, whoo, like treading water some days, winning some days. 2 is like, I'm treading water every single day and I don't know if I can do this anymore. Where's your practice at? 1 to 10. How about your team? Let's do your team. 1 to 10.

 

How are they? Is it the dream team, everyone you want? Do have a few bad apples in there? Just some people you know you need to get rid of and you haven't? How's your team? 1 to 10. And I know you like everybody. I know you love everybody, but how's the team getting you to where you want to go in your practice? 1 to 10. How's that going for you? Next up, let's talk about your practice. How are your systems? 1 to 10. Are things like smooth flow and easy going, we got this dialed in? 1 to 10. How is that? How are you doing on that?

 

1 to 10, or are you like, shoot, we don't even have systems. you have our operations manual done? Do your dental assistants know how to set up for every procedure? Does your front office track the calls that come through? Do we have a system for our scheduling? Do we have a system for our treatment tracker and do we review it? Do we have set KPIs for every single position? Do we review those? Do we have set mating cadences? Do we have morning huddles? Like what do we have going on within our systems? Do we have hygiene trackers? Does our hygiene team, are we tracking our perio and our fluoride and having meetings around that? How's our training and onboarding?

 

How's our firing process? How's our HR compliance? How are all the systems within the practice? How's our leadership? How's our management? How are all those different pieces? And of course, you can go through each department and rank each department if you want to go further down of how's our office manager 1 to 10, realistically leading, guiding, having the profitability, being basically the COO of the business with you. How's your office manager? What about your front office team? Let's talk your scheduler 1 to 10. How's your schedule?

 

Kiera Dent (07:13.988)

What about your TC's? 1 to 10. What about your billers? 1 to 10. What about your dental assistants? 1 to 10. You can break them out by name if that's easier so you don't lump them together. What about your hygienists? 1 to 10. What about your doctors, including yourself? 1 to 10. How's their clinical suite? How's their production? How are they doing on that? How's your bookkeeper? 1 to 10. How's your lawyer? 1 to 10. How's your financial advisor? 1 to 10. How's your marketing? 1 to 10.

 

How is your CPA on taxes? Do they prepare you for them or do they not prepare you for them? I understand me asking all these questions. You can not go back in time into 2024, but you can go forward into 2025 and make changes. So now we've gone through, we call it the yes model in Dental A Team. You as a person is the why I did that first with you. E is for earnings and profitability. S is for systems and team development. So as you look through that, look to see how many tens do you have.

 

nines, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, 1 zeros. There might be some zeros. Maybe you don't even have that. You are welcome to add any other category. And then how's your fulfillment? Like this is kind of 1 that I might just put overall. How happy are you? If you looked back in 2024, how many days of the year? Like we can't know. So this is just an assessment, right? Like there's no right or wrong. I'm not going to grade you. You can only do it. more of a feeling. On a 1 to 10, how is your fulfillment this year?

 

On a 1 to 10, how many days? So like, was it 100 % of my days I was happy, 90 % of my days I was happy, 80 % of my days I was happy, 70 % of my days. How many days were you super happy? Going to work, living your weekends, how many days were you super happy? 1 to 10. So how fulfilled for you? How happy were you? How content were you? How much fun did you have? 1 to 10? Did you have more laughs or more cries this year? How depressed were you?

 

How many friends did you hang out with? I just want you to really, really assess. And I know that it's New Year's Eve, but if you'll take the time to journal, and then I want you to write about, let's do your wins. What were the wins from this year? Write them out, celebrate them. Like, let's think back. Let's go back to January. What were some of the wins you had in January? What about February? What about March? What about April? What about May?

 

Kiera Dent (09:42.532)

I hope you had fun. That's my birthday month. So I hope May was great. What about June? July? August? September? October? November? And December? How did all of those go? What were the things that you remember? Like I can think back and I'm like, my gosh, January was a blur. February, I was in Whistler, Canada. It was freezing gold, but a ton of fun. March, we went to Bora Bora and I had a blast. April was summit. It was a wild time.

 

May was busy. did pairs with Taylor Swift with some friends and then we went to Disneyland as a company retreat. It was a ton of fun. June was the hardest month of my entire life that I've ever experienced. July, I felt like I was numb and all of July was very numb, but I went boating and I had a lot of fun and I have almost landed my 360 wake surfing. August. August is interesting. My little sister got married, so that was really fun to have all my family together for August. September.

 

Gosh, September was my husband's birthday and we went to Tokyo with his niece. So that was a lot of fun. October, October was our anniversary. Had a lot of fun in October. I think it's a magical month and we had a lot of growth in our leadership team. November was Thanksgiving with my husband's family and a lot of fun things. And then December, of course, just magic all the way around. But how were they for you? What things stand out for you? For me, there's some dark times. There's some really happy times.

 

But like, did we blur through it? Can we even remember what we did? How intentional do you feel like you're being with your life? Are you creating your life or are you managing your life? How are you doing with your business, your practice? Are you creating it or are you just freaking managing it and hoping it gets there? Are you so proud of where you are? And I hope you just say yes, no matter where you are. Do feel like you should be further along than where you are right now? Have you looked in the mirror and been like, gosh, Kiera.

 

I really thought sitting at 38, I'd be further along. If you have, it's okay. All of us feel that way, every single 1 of us. But my question is, what are you gonna do about it? What things as you're rolling into 2025, where I feel like it is a brand new slate, it's a canvas, people literally make like heroic changes in a short amount of time. What are you going to do for 2025 to be a smashing success? What does success even look like for you?

 

Kiera Dent (12:04.62)

I might encourage you to write a mission statement of what success is for you. How do you know if you're winning 2025? I might also suggest you have quarterly reviews to reveal. I might suggest that you get your team kickoff in January. I might suggest that you have a community of people around you that keep you accountable personally and professionally. I might suggest that you take massive action in whatever areas are lower numbers and commit to getting those higher. Whatever you need to do, commit to that.

 

I would maybe encourage you to have some accountability personally and professionally. I might encourage you to get some help for the departments or the areas that you don't know as well. And I might encourage you that if it feels hard to do it on your own, then maybe you join the Dental A Team. We're doing this quarterly, literally setting it up here, setting all your goals. We kick it off with your team in January. We have quarterly check-ins. We have in-person retreats for you and your leadership. And then we have quarterly check-ins as well.

 

where we literally keep track. And this year I'm so committed to doing your life and your practice. Because I believe that if we're successful in 1 and failing in the other, gosh, like we've literally had it like life without fulfillment, like success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And so helping you realize what is fulfillment? What is success? I had a hard turn this year where I realized no amount of money will ever make you happy.

 

It's like money can buy a lot of happiness, but the reality is you've got to be happy with you. Having those relationships, having people that you love, having a practice that's thriving, but not just feeding your ego through significance, but truly thriving, having a leadership team that can do this with and without you, building up a practice that runs on systems, not on you, having a relationship that's incredible, spending time doing the things that make you so fulfilled, fishing, dancing.

 

doing creative things, reading books, going to book clubs, traveling the world, going to CE, hiking, being in nature, going surfing or boating, going with time with your children, becoming the best mother or father of the year. All those things are possible. And so as we get to ring in the new year, I invite you to 1, look at your gaps, two, celebrate your wins, three, write your fulfillment and success statement, and four, take massive action, whatever it is.

 

Kiera Dent (14:24.708)

whatever you need, send the email right now. It's not going to be hard. Email, send people an email. What are you going to do? Who do you need to contact? What do you need to do to make sure that 2025, you ring it in and that year is the most beautiful canvas of your entire life. That 2025 really is the best year of your life. No matter how hard, no matter what unexpected changes happen, that it really is. And I would encourage each of you, join Dental A Team. We are literally doing quarterly. We have this set up.

 

to make sure and ensure that you are successful with minimal effort on your part and not just in business, but in life. Because at the end of the day, when you are a hundred looking back on your life, I would hope that whatever year you're going into, so for me, I'm turning 39 in 2025, I hope that when I'm a hundred, I can look back at 39 and say that was 1 of the best years of my entire life. And I hope that whatever age you're turning next year, that is equally the best year of your life. And I know that it can happen.

 

reach out [email protected]. Go enjoy, celebrate, ring in this new year. And as always, thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of our incredible Dental A Team family. Thank you for showing up for you. Thank you for challenging yourself. Thank you for doing the deep work so that way you can help more patients and more team members and serve your community and ultimately serve yourself and be the most fulfilled version you can be. Life does not have to be hard. Running a practice does not have to be hard. Having everything you've ever imagined and wanted does not have to be hard.

 

I've done it for hundreds of offices and I'd love to help you. You are worth it. Let's do this. Let's crush 2025. You guys, it's so fun. It's so fun to podcast with you and I'm so excited to bring in 2025. I'm so excited for our in-person meetups where I get to meet so many of you in person. I'm so giddy about it. I'm so giddy to just inspire you and to make life so much easier for you and to do it with brilliant other doctors and teams and share and learn together. And I just cannot wait.

 

2025 truly is going to be the best year of our entire lives. And I hope that you truly do believe that you are worth it. You deserve it and you can have all of it. And I promise you take the action today, set up your year for success and let's make it happen. Thanks for listening. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast in 2025.

Did team members in your practice have to have any hard conversations this year? Maybe about dress code or drug testing? Did that new PTO policy work? Were there uncomfortable topics with patients? Tiff and Dana give advice on how to go about updating your handbook as 2024 comes to an end, so you can be more ready than ever when 2025 begins.

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:01.422)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are so excited to be here with you today. I have Dana. You guys know I love podcasting with Dana. She's my girl. Dana, thank you so much for being here with me. know we have, it's Friday, and so we're super excited about that. We have fun things in our lives coming up and we have so many podcasts to get recorded today for all of these people and I'm so excited because it means I get extra time with you. Dana, how are you today?

 

Dana (00:27.746)

Doing good, doing good. I'm just as excited to be here. I love this time too.

 

The Dental A Team (00:32.202)

Awesome. Awesome. And we just sprung on you guys, only asked for your permission, but we sprung on you a little meetup for the consultants here in a few weeks. And I am so excited. You guys, you listeners, I know you guys know we are all kind of like super close by. Some of us are further away in other states, but we're a fully remote company. And so we don't get to see each other a lot. And so the culture that we're able to build with our company, in my opinion, is freaking incredible because we're rarely ever

 

together but we are going to do a consultant meetup in a couple of weeks and we do a Live To Give every single year where Dental A Team just kind of goes back to the the communities as best we can and we do angel tree shopping or one year we dropped off coats for

 

homeless shelters and women's shelters and kids shelters and all these different things. We just really love to give back and so we do a live to give shopping spree basically. So in a couple weeks Dana, I'm so excited. You're gonna be here. Kristy's gonna be here. Britt is here already, but I actually will see her. Kiera's flying in. It's gonna be such a huge event and I'm just so excited to get some time to crunch some things, figure some things out for the future for us.

 

and do the Live To Give and get some shopping done for some kiddos. anyways, how excited are you for it though? We sprung that on you like yesterday.

 

Dana (01:57.814)

You did. I'm truly so pumped. Anytime I can, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, get time with my consultant crew. It's some of my favorite time and they're some of my favorite people. So I would have moved heaven and earth to make that work.

 

The Dental A Team (02:14.302)

No, thank you. I agree. It's so much fun getting all of us together and

 

Just getting some fun out there and getting some brainstorming. I feel like we brainstorm the best when we're side by side and I'm excited for it. Well, on that note, it's kind of our end of year wrap up is what our meeting is about. Like what is next you're going to look like and part of those this is HR Britt is what I like to call her. in our company, she handles our HR pieces and part of what I want to talk to you guys about today is really the employee manual and towards the end of the year making sure that it's wrapped up and ready to

 

Dana (02:28.972)

Yeah.

 

The Dental A Team (02:50.132)

to go for next year. So Dana, you had some really great ideas, you always do, on updating the employee manual and where to go about those things. And one caveat I have, number one, I love talking about companies like CEDR.

 

They're fantastic. C-E-D-R, you guys. If you need an employee manual, if you don't know what needs to be in there, like we have options, we have ideas, we can definitely help you through with that. But CEDR does a really great job at pulling all of your state's laws, all of those little pieces that we don't necessarily always know you might not know. So I'll always say that. Reach out to CEDR if you use them or if you need one from scratch. Updates wise, same thing. Like what does CEDR have for your state? Right now towards the end of the

 

year, we pretty much know what the new laws are going to be coming into effect for the next year, this next year, I know what year you're listening to this in right now. But this next year is 2025. So most of those state laws have already been passed or any federal changes or laws to employee sanctions and different pieces have already been passed. So they're already there, you just got to find them. And you've got to make sure that they're all encompassing that you've grabbed all of them. So CEDR does that for you any employment lawyer,

 

Most of the lawyers you guys retain for most of your business pieces can usually snag that information for you too. So just double check. know, states like California and New York have really strict employee policies, so you just want to make sure you're always on part of there. So that's like the first layer of updates for me and the easiest space to really tackle and hit. But Dana, I loved your idea and really like looking back on the year to project for the future. Will you walk us through kind of

 

your thoughts on that and what you used to do when you were in practice.

 

Dana (04:37.142)

Yeah, sure. I think the end of the year is a great time to just kind of reevaluate. Did I have everything in my handbook or did situations come up throughout the year that man, I really wish I had had something in writing for that. So, you know, I had a couple instances and practices this year where like they had to like have some hard conversations around like drugs or dress code, right? And they didn't have those things defined or they didn't really know what to do because it's like, well, can I ask them to take a test? Can I ask them to wear something specific because I don't have it

 

in writing. So if you happen to have to have some of those hard conversations or make some uncomfortable decisions and you don't have it in writing, now is the great time as you are updating for laws or you're getting your handbook in place to begin with. Just considering throughout this year, was there anything? Did my PTO policy work? Did raises come up at times I wasn't expecting them? So maybe I put in my handbook like when I evaluate for raises or that raises are based on performance or that I follow a tier raise structure.

 

The Dental A Team (05:26.414)

I'm stop.

 

Dana (05:37.664)

you know, maybe we had some team members who they asked for some last-minute PTO, so like maybe we need to get in writing a little bit stronger of what the process is for getting it approved and what kind of notice they need to give. So just looking back through the year and did anything happen that man I wish I had had something in writing or this was uncomfortable because I didn't.

 

The Dental A Team (06:00.686)

think that's fantastic, I love that whole structure there. I love that you pointed out like drug policies, things like that. Those are things I think we forget to think about often times when we initially make it because...

 

I mean, we're all here with the mindset that people are naturally good human beings and that things are, which not to say that they're not naturally good human beings, but sometimes what we feel like is intuitive or known or like just natural thought process just isn't the case. And we find that in literally every aspect of life. So not forgetting that when it comes to the employee manual is true as well. And making sure I think Dana, as you're talking, I'm thinking like getting so granular with it that it can't be confused or misconstrued.

 

that it's insanely clear that from the smallest level possible and the biggest level possible, we can understand this entire makeup of whatever this rule or whatever you want to call it is.

 

It made me think too about smoking breaks and where are they allowed to indulge in a cigarette if that's something that you may have a team member on your team who does that or vapes or these are all the real things. These are all common factors of everyday life. Where are those things able to be handled, be done? I know for me, my practice I worked out for years, we had that it could not be on the premises at all because we didn't want patients walking into it.

 

advocate it for our patients for their health and their overall you know teeth so we had to make sure that they weren't walking into it and they weren't seeing any team members who may be on the team that did partake in those so it had to be off-site completely on their lunch breaks or what have you so I think though that's something that we tend to miss until like you said we get to the situation and we're like great awesome I actually don't have something for this so carry on and we'll fix this later making sure though I

 

The Dental A Team (07:56.116)

think too, we're having those conversations with those people. Because I can say that maybe, you know, when updates come around, and they're like, pointed, right? And then you're sitting there like, is that because of me? Did that? You don't want to make your team members feel like you're attacking them or a situation either. So I think making sure to have those conversations with them like, hey, we know that this happened. We know that this was a situation. It wasn't something I was prepped to handle. We handled it together and we did our best. We handled it beautifully.

 

Moving forward just so you know, there will be a policy in place for it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. It was obviously something that I had not known I needed to put into place, but I'm really glad that it was you and we could have this conversation and get through this. I think it's better, and Dana correct me if you think I'm wrong, then like, guess what? It kind of feels underhanded, like slighted, and that's just that space of not having the ability to have what might be deemed as a difficult

 

conversation and it doesn't have to be difficult. Dana, how do you feel that you advise your clients because you do have a ton of clients and it is time to update those employee manuals and you just said you know you had a couple of these things come up for some of your clients this year. How did you handle that? How did you have them handle those situations as they arose and how are they going to put those into place next year?

 

Dana (09:17.038)

Yeah, and it did come down to just like a hard conversation and hey, I don't have anything in writing and we're navigating this fresh and new together. And I'm going to set some expectations on the spot.

 

and you know we're going to come to an agreement and how we're going to handle this and what solutions we're going to come to and then I'm going to make sure that I have it in writing because having it in writing doesn't mean we don't have the conversation just like you said it just makes the structure of the conversation a little bit easier and there are written out measures that you can default to so I love how you said like just go ahead and have the conversation anyway it's much more awkward than just like here it is and everybody kind of knows so it is just we got to admit we don't have anything in writing we really

 

are going to handle it together. It is a new thing. We're just going to communicate and we're going to get through it and move on from it and make sure we've got it documented so that if that ever happens again there is that structure put in place.

 

The Dental A Team (10:10.092)

So how did those conversations go for your clients that you worked with? one you mentioned is a pretty, that's a pretty strong policy to have to put into place. And I do understand like there are some, you know, recreational things that are out there that have been passed as laws for that it's okay for a lot of the state. So it makes it kind of difficult to navigate those pieces, but it's still considered a drug. But how did that, how did those conversations go for those clients?

 

Dana (10:16.238)

you

 

Dana (10:37.154)

They went well. think that they were just open and honest and that the bottom line is I have to protect my patients and I have to make sure that things that happen on the premises don't affect the way that we care for patients, the way that we speak to patients, the way that we handle patients. At the end of the day, that's what I have to protect. So these are the things that we're gonna put in place. We're going to make sure that those things don't happen again and we're gonna move forward. But at the end of the day, we're gonna protect the practice and the patients that sit in our chairs.

 

The Dental A Team (10:42.507)

Mm-hmm.

 

The Dental A Team (11:02.87)

Awesome. that. I love that. And I think that's a space too, where we have to not only protect our patients, but we're protecting each other and our business too. Because if you guys don't, if you guys don't put these policies in place and protect your business, where are your patients going to go? And if we're not protecting our team, meaning, you know, we can't, we can't deviate from what is considered acceptable for someone. It's got to be fair across the board. It's got to be the same structure for everyone. Because if someone gets that special treatment, the rest of

 

the team feel slighted or confused and then guess what is really really hard to hold accountability in any other aspect. So I really want to switch a little bit, continue this conversation but within that really talk about how important it is to make sure that we're sticking to the standards and upholding the standards that we set into place and set into motion. And from a leadership standpoint doctors, practice owners, you guys are the ones that need to make sure that this is a hundred percent accurate. Your office manager

 

or business administrators may be putting this together for you. They may be communicating with CEDR or your lawyers or whomever, but you guys need to make sure that it's accurate. And then from there, from a leadership standpoint, you, your leadership team, your whole team really needs to be abiding by these. I think the spaces that I see the most frequently misused, like you said Dana, was like the PTO situation or vacation time that's not paid, unpaid vacation time, sick leave, getting

 

to use the benefits or getting paid out the benefits at the end of the year or not. One thing that I saw a lot of clients come up against is expectations of payout when they were let go, when a team member was let go or when they quit, they didn't have it explicitly written at termination. You know, they said at termination you would be paid out, but they didn't have it explicitly written that it was if you decided to leave, I'm not paying you out, but if I decide you're leaving, I will pay it out. And so they ended up having to pay it out.

 

out. But from that leadership standpoint, Dana really like pushing on them to understand we've all got to follow the same rules. And this means your office manager too. And if we have different structures laid out by different positions, that is totally fine. But that needs to be clearly defined as well. I think one of the worst things we can do from a leadership standpoint is put a leader on a pedestal, make them completely different from the rest of the team. They are

 

The Dental A Team (13:32.23)

in many ways, but make it so different that they're looked at as though they're untouchable. That there's no accountability being held in place, that they get to free for all, do whatever they want, but the team over here has to abide by these rules in this employee manual and they're like told they can't have time off and you don't even know when your manager's off. Like those pieces I think can really ruffle the team. Dana, what do you suggest to your clients as they're, because I know like I said you're building these out right now, but what are

 

you suggesting for your clients in respect to that? How do they go about that? And what do you think about all of that?

 

Dana (14:11.66)

Yeah, I completely agree with you. think that there are some instances where leadership is different when I think it comes down to like policies and like procedures for team members and it's it's team members across the board, including leadership. And I think that like having your office manager your leadership team like also

 

live that and roll that and be active participants in this is exactly what I follow and these are the standards that I hold for myself and these are the policies that you know I'm going to also abide by I think is really super beneficial.

 

The Dental A Team (14:45.027)

Yeah.

 

The Dental A Team (14:48.398)

Yeah, I agree. I agree and making sure I think that they discuss those and they have conversations around them too. Wherever you guys note that people are going to be out, make sure everybody is noted on that same schedule that everything looks the same. Like Dana, like you said, doesn't have to be everyone's clear cut gets the same because I know tenure, I know based on, you know, your position in the practice, especially PTO, things like that might be different, but you want it to be across the

 

board as similarly spoken as we can get.

 

One huge note for practice owners, business managers, all of you guys, things like that, PTO, amount of PTO that we get, payroll, our pay, bonuses, payouts, anything like that needs to be a no-go. We do suggest that this is in your employee manual, that there's no discussions around what I make. I should not be talking to Dana in a practice about, as my position, this is what I make.

 

my bonus looks like. I actually had a practice recently. The whole hygiene department is turned upside down right now because we had an issue where this was discussed and

 

We worked really hard to make it hygienist very happy and meet all of the needs and requirements that were asked for that went above and beyond as not by a lot, but above and beyond where some other team members may have been in an effort to keep this person on staff. We know how difficult it is right now to find team members, but especially hygienists and that information was asked to be.

 

The Dental A Team (16:37.474)

been kept quiet, it was not kept quiet and there's an entire team very upset, understandably, and now a doctor who's, you know, overhead is about to be pretty upside down for the next couple of months due to the fact. So I want to make it really clear and the team members that are listening, I don't say that so that you guys are slighted, so that you guys don't know what's going on, so you guys don't have the information. I say it because I truly feel with everything that I have, I always have

 

believed this and I believe this about myself. If you are worth more than what you're paying, what you're paid, you believe you are worth more than what you are paid, you need to advocate for that and you need to not expect other people to just show you how they feel you should be paid. Like they, a lot of us, think, I don't know how to say this, a lot of us feel as though our worth is shown to us by other people based off what they think we should be paid.

 

That's not always the case. My worth is from inside. My worth is what I think I am worthy of, what I think I can do, how I can show up. I want team members to understand that. I want team members to understand that it's not always equal and fair. Tenure makes a huge difference. The amount of time that you've been in the industry, how long you've been doing the specific position that you've been doing, what do you add to the bottom line of the practice for that position?

 

to add more value, ask how you can. Those are really great ways to be compensated more, to be shown your worth and your value in compensation. But on the flip side of that, as business owners and doctors and leaders, we need to make sure that it's very clear that those things are kept under wraps because it just makes really good employees feel really bad sometimes. So make sure things like that are in there. You know, just spitballing things, Dana and I have seen this here.

 

and making sure you guys are set. So I think the biggest piece is Dana, I loved your like take a look backwards on the year of what has happened, what's popped up, what's spiked that you think needs attention or you didn't have a policy and you wished you did. I love that. Making sure you communicate with somebody about the laws of your area. So whether it's CEDR, whether it's an employee, an employment lawyer or your lawyer that you have.

 

The Dental A Team (19:02.014)

deemed as your practice. Again, there's states that are heavier in employee laws than other states. If you're in a heavy state, you typically know that. Please be careful. Please make sure you follow all of the guidelines. I implore that upon you. Dana and I live, luckily for us, it's very easy or it was very easy when we were in practice to do these and it didn't take much from CDER to like update the employee manuals because it was very easy, but I know there are some states, especially on each of our borders there.

 

that are a little tighter around that coastline. So state updates and laws, holidays, PTO, etc. Anything weird that you've come up against that you were like, this is so weird and I didn't even think about this. I don't want you to...

 

think about everything. I don't want you to think that it's going to happen every single year, you're going to have something new. So write it down, brainstorm it and have a space, would say, Dana, you'll probably do this too. Have a space in your active drive where it's like, hey, these are things I'm going to update next year. Last piece, I will say, have everyone sign an employee update every year, whether you do updates or not. The employee manual should be gone through. It should be something that's just like open and honest, spoken about all the time so that there's no questions. know you still have

 

I always get confused about my PTO when I was in practice. like, I don't know how many years I've been here. I don't know how much I have. My manager was like, I don't know why this is so hard. And I was like, I don't know.

 

This is where we're at. So I think just talking about it constantly, making sure everybody understands it and making those updates and then making those changes solid with a good signature is always best. Dana, I love that idea. I love that you had some talking points today. Those were fantastic. Thank you so much for this. guys, Dana's going to help me with an operations manual update one as well. We know she's my ops queen. So Dana, thank you so much and I hope you...

 

The Dental A Team (20:53.674)

enjoy recording the rest of the podcasts with me today. Awesome. Thank you guys so much, and we'll catch you next time.

Kiera invites listeners to consider what gift(s) they provide others — whether it’s patients or team members, or in a more personal capacity.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:01.422)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and Merry Christmas. If you don't celebrate, well, happy December 25th. If you do celebrate, Merry Christmas. I love the holidays. I truly do. And this year, my husband and are celebrating with his family, which is so fun because we got married 13 years ago and I'm the second oldest of seven. And so my siblings were very young. I have one sister and she was born...

 

when I was 12 and another sister born when I was 15. so I really, when we got married, my husband's the youngest of five and I just really, really, really, really wanted to spend holidays with my siblings because they were so young when I got married. And so for the last 13 years, we have been with my parents and my family except for one year.

 

which was when my brother got married and we were with Jason's parents. And so super fun to be celebrating with his family today. I just hope you guys are with something, someone doing something fun, whether it's family or it's friends or it's by yourself, but that you are just taking this time to celebrate. I think holidays are especially beautiful. And in Christmas, I think Christmas is just a magical holiday in the sense that I feel like.

 

We give gifts to each other and we give of ourselves and also Christmas is like right before the end of the year and so you might be headed back to the practice to produce or you might be just completely done, but wherever you are today Merry Christmas, and I hope you have just fallen in love with two things number one is Being in the spirit of giving I think that that's something that's so important and parent mount for us that we are truly

 

giving. I think I've shared this on the podcast before, so some of you may have heard this. For those of you that are new, welcome. I went to a conference and our group's name was Live to Give. And I remember hearing the thing that the secret to living is giving. And so in this holiday season, I know it can feel bustly, I know it can feel crazy, but I think when we take a step back and we look at what is ultimately the season, it's the time where we all give gifts to people. give holiday parties and we give gifts to our team, we give gifts to each other.

 

Kiera Dent (02:15.23)

We're looking for those perfect gifts, but the reality is, what is our gift that we're giving of ourselves day in and day out to our team and to our patients and to our communities and also to ourselves? And so maybe today you take some time to think about what is that gift? What is my gift that I bring to this world? And I know that that can feel awkward for some people, but I would really hope that I can encourage you to love yourself a little bit more. And what is something incredible that you bring to your team?

 

In some teams, what I have them do is I have everybody draw. Don't worry, they can write words if they desire. But I have them draw who they are and what they bring to the team. And then Brittany Stone, she took it a step further with a team where inside I have them draw. I remember one person drew a visionary. So it's an eye with a cast of a vision. Another person drew Gumby because they're very flexible. But whatever it is, you draw that. And then what we had our teams do is actually, Britt did this.

 

And she had people actually write what that person brings to the team outside of it. So for example, in a circle, you could put what you bring to the table. And then on the outside of the circle, your team tells you like what you bring to the table and how you benefit and like what your gift is to the team. And it's crazy because inside the circle, we often are so hard on ourselves and don't give ourselves credit of what we bring to the table. I understand that we're trying to be humble most of the time and not egotistical. But then when we have teams do this, how much they actually share of

 

what everybody's bringing to the table. And it's just such a lovely experience because people are able to see themselves in a different light. And I think that that's actually like, as you're reflecting today, you're spending time, you're opening presents, you're doing whatever. What is maybe the gift that you bring to this world or maybe the gift that you want to bring to this world next year? Maybe you want to bring more kindness. Maybe you want to bring more humility. Maybe you want to bring more patience. Maybe you want to bring more vision. Maybe you want to bring more fun.

 

Maybe you want to bring more energy. Maybe you want to bring more balance. Maybe you want to bring more gentleness. Maybe you want to bring more positivity. Whatever it is, what is your gift that you can bring to this world, to your team, to your family, to yourself? And then also, I would ask if you were writing a letter, Dear Santa, what would be something I would ask for three wishes? One, what is the wish that you would have for your team? Two, what is the wish that you would have for your practice?

 

Kiera Dent (04:37.494)

and patience? And three, what is the wish that you want for yourself? I did this in our doctor think tank a little while ago. And it was so interesting. I asked him like, what do you want? What like what would you guys want? And the group was actually very quiet. And I realized we've forgotten to dream. We've forgotten how to ask for what we want. We've forgotten how to to be vocal about those things. And so maybe today, just look at that and see what would be my wish for my team.

 

And really like be intentional with this. What would be the wish for my practice? And then what's the wish that I have for myself? And then what I would think is how can you make those wishes come true? How can you bring and give gifts of yourself for your team? And that doesn't mean you have to do it. It means you can delegate. means you can use other people. But what would be some fun things for you? And maybe this year you want to give yourself the gift of health. So you're going to prioritize your health. Maybe you're going to give yourself the gift of a stronger relationship and you're going to

 

be done on every Thursday at five o'clock and go on a date with your spouse or your significant other. Maybe you're going to give yourself the gift of fun and you're going to plan one day a week or a month where it's just a fun day for you. Maybe you're going to give yourself the gift of a new hobby and you're going to go get into pickleball or something. But like really think about what would be a gift that you'd give yourself because I think that so often we're obsessed with giving to other people, which I agree with. And that's secret to life is giving.

 

but also let's not forget to give ourselves a gift as well. I think the greatest thing I did for myself in 2025 was giving myself the gift of health. I have been on a health journey. Some people look at me and you just might think, like we obviously have our super, like our preconceived notions. And I have had immense pain in my knee and my hip from years and years of traveling. I ran a marathon. I went from zero running in October to running a marathon in December. So I trained for about two and a half months.

 

I've had severe knee pain since then and then top like tackle that on with all the years of flying that I have of just being crunched up in seats. And I have had pretty severe knee and hip pain. And this year I just decided like, I want to be 99 years old and still active in spry and I'm hoping that my last six months of my life are going to be the ones where I phase out and maybe that's when my health deteriorates. But if that's what I want my vision to be, thank you to the book of die with zero, it gave me that perspective.

 

Kiera Dent (07:01.456)

but I've thought about that so many times of, if that's what I want to do, what do I need to do today to be able to have that vision? And maybe when you're thinking about the gift, you want to give yourself paint the vision of who you are at 99 years old. And what does that life look like? Maybe that will also help you figure out what to give your team, what to give your practice and what to give yourself. Because this year in 2024, I committed and I hired a personal trainer and we went to the gym and it sounds so silly, but for me to be able to squat and not have knee pain.

 

which I have not been able to do squats, any type of lunges, squats, nothing for seven years. Like literally my quads, my hams, my calves were all atrophying. To be able to this year, me, my coaches, my PT, I have an incredible group of people around me. We were all celebrating at the fact that I can do a squat with no knee pain. And that has been seven years in the making. It was an added benefit because I was able to wake surf a lot better this summer too.

 

But just to feel strong and to feel like I'm taking care of my body so I can be this 99 year old woman who's not frail and feeble but is strong and has strong muscles. I have to do things daily now to be able to do that. I worked on my macros. I worked on protein intake. I worked on eating healthier. I worked on figuring out what the meals were. That was freaking hard and I hated every second of it. But to see how much healthier I am today versus where I was a year ago.

 

is a gift that I could never get back. I can't go back in time and live my life differently, but I can move forward and we can give ourselves those gifts now. So maybe even today, think about who do you want to be when you're 99 years old? Going into that hundred, I hope I live to like, I don't know, 103 sounds like a fun time. I love the number three, but just thinking about that, what can you do today? What are the gifts that we could give to other people? What are the gifts that we can give of ourselves? What are the gifts that we could give to ourselves?

 

as we're spending this time, I really love on Christmas to reflect, reflect on the things that have been amazing, reflect on my amazing, just life that I have to be in this season. It's crazy, but to just see the love that's around me, to see the incredible people around me, to see the family, the friends. And I know sometimes this time of year can be hard. I used to actually hate Christmas. My brother came home and I hated Christmas. I literally would not listen to anything Christmas.

 

Kiera Dent (09:24.626)

went into it and I would just not participate in anything and my heart was so sad and I just felt cold. I felt closed off and what changed for me was I actually worked for a company called the United Way and we did sub for Santa and I remember seeing the spirit of Christmas come to fruition. I remember seeing so many people give of themselves to make magic happen for other people and I realized

 

That's what society is. That's what our communities are. We need to be more united rather than divided. We need to see how we can give hand ups, not hand outs. We need to see how we can just love people on a deeper level. And it was such like my heart went from ice cold to soft as putty the year that I was, I called myself Mrs. Claus. And I remember just seeing the magic of humanity. And so how can we within our practices, within our teams, within our communities,

 

give that magic of humanity to more people, give that spirit of love and service and gratitude because we don't realize our ripple effect. One person was able to serve so many different families and then those families were able to go on and perpetually serve other people. And I just think that the world needs more kindness and more care, that we need to give more kindness and more care to ourselves, that we need to see the beauty around us rather than all the negativity around us, that we can choose.

 

what pair of sunglasses, AKA filtered we put on to view this life. And I would hope that one, you'd give yourself a gift this year of something that's gonna help you when you're 99 or 100 to have the best life today for those future years. I would also ask you to give a gift to your team of this next year. What are you gonna give your team? And then are you gonna give your practice and your patients? And then also let's look to see how can we have more kindness, more love, more generosity as we go into 2025. You guys, this is such a magical time of year. feels like.

 

the magical clock, like Father Christmas or whatever it is, the magical clock of 2024 is ticking down. And how can we maximize and optimize these magical moments through the rest of the year? But also how can we prepare to invite and embrace this incredible 2025 that's about to be upon us? How can we learn from our 2024? For some offices, I know this was your hardest year. For Dental A Team it was truly my hardest year. It was the year that I grew the most.

 

Kiera Dent (11:44.164)

It was the year that I was refined personally and professionally the most. was the year my team grew the most and not by size, but by grit and stamina and determination. so for you, what are the lessons we've learned from 2024? How can we like soak in these magical moments as we roll into 2025? And then how can we maximize and optimize 2025? If I can be a part of that journey with you, I'd love to be there. I'd love to celebrate you and I'd love to give you even more opportunities than you could have ever imagined.

 

But really, I just hope that today you relish in the joy of your life, of you being here, and then give yourself a magical gift. And let me know if you want to email me. I'd love to hear it as always. [email protected]. But I hope you enjoy the time with your families. I hope you enjoy this magical season. I hope you remember that the secret to living is giving, and that's giving to others and giving ourselves the most incredible life we can because the ripple effect is magnificent. Like, it's just, it's so magnificent.

 

of what we as one person can do for this world. And I just challenge you to really, really maximize and optimize that this year. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time. Merry Christmas. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Merry Christmas Eve! Kiera talks about how dental teams can apply the excitement and anticipation associated with holidays to their practices and work spaces.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.856)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and Merry Christmas Eve. If you celebrate that, otherwise, happy December 24th. It's so fun to podcast with you on holidays. I love the magic. I love the anticipation. I love Christmas Eve. In my family, it's always been these fun traditions that we have. We do a big breakfast in the morning and then we all go shopping for cereal. It's been the tradition since I was little and we would always, always, always go get a...

 

cereal and being in a family of nine people our own box of cereal that we got to choose was like the greatest gift my parents could ever give us so and also kudos to my mom that meant Christmas morning it's cereal for breakfast like talk about a smart mom I've got so we'd always go to the store we pick out our cereal and then we would do like sometimes we'd go shopping for last-minute Christmas gifts and then we'd usually go home and it feels like an eternity of countdown of time from that like 11 a.m.

 

to 5 p.m. And I remember as a kid, it would snow and my dad was very proactive of giving back to the community, which I really love and respected my dad. And we would go and we'd shovel snow at all of our neighbor's houses. And I remember my brother and I were two years apart. We were super tiny. So we were probably like, I was probably eight and he was probably six. And we were shoveling all these yards. And I remember we were laying behind our house after we were done making snow angels.

 

and we're both in our little snow suits and we look to each other and we're like, it's gonna be forever before tonight happens. I think that that's the reality of how we feel. And then for my family, what we'd always do is for Christmas Eve, we would make waffles, Belgian waffles. My parents again got smart. So it was like, they could feed a lot of boys very quickly. And then we go into like a Christmas program, which over the years, my siblings have definitely like made.

 

crazy. It's now turned into a talent show and I absolutely hate that part. And if any of them listen to the podcast, I just want to put it out there. I think we should not do this is my trust conversation with my family. I hate the talent show, but they love it. So Jason and are not as talented. So last year we talked about how we do Disney because I love Disney. But like really, it's just this funny thing. But we all get together. All my family spread out with seven siblings. We none of us ended up close to each other. My older brother's in Alaska. I'm in Nevada.

 

Kiera Dent (02:21.038)

The brother below me is in Ohio, brother below him is in Texas, brother below him is in Utah, sister below him is in Missouri, Kansas City, and then the youngest sister is in Utah, and my parents live in California. So literally, I feel like we just spread all over the nation, but just a fun time of year. And I hope today I wanted to just pop on real quick and give you guys like a quick little noodle thought for you as you're probably getting ready for the festivities or time away from the practice.

 

But during this time, and I've got something fun for you guys for tomorrow for Christmas as well, but during this time, I think about the anticipation that we have for Christmas and the excitement that little kids have. And my question is, how can we bring that excitement and anticipation to our practices? Maybe not the same, but are we actively anticipating? Are we having countdowns to something so magical and special? And how can we actually do that within our practices? And so a couple of ideas are...

 

What do we do monthly? And do we celebrate when we are hitting our monthly goals? Or are we just like nonchalant, like it's fine. And there's no magic. Like think about children with Christmas and how like blissfully magical it is to watch a little kid so excited and telling Santa what they want and circling in the magazines what they're hoping and wishing for. And then the like utter anticipation of sleeping through the night and waiting for the next day.

 

Like how can we create that as adults for us within our practices, within our businesses, within our lives? Like what are you anxiously anticipating waiting? Because I feel like the holidays and the magic that we have right now is what we can actually produce within our practices. So whether that's through bonuses or whether that's through a community outreach or it's adding in new services. I know an office like literally are counting down the days to add in sleep apnea to their practice and make a sleep center within their practice.

 

But like, are we allowing ourselves to get excited about our practices and get excited about the magic of what we're able to do for patients? Or is it just another day every day? And I think the true secret to a lot of success is creating magic within the day in day out. How can we get the countdown chains out for something within our practice? What do you get excited about? Do you have something that you set for a goal for yourself for next year that utterly makes you giddy? Or is it for me, I love to travel and so within work.

 

Kiera Dent (04:40.584)

Dental A Team and what I do, I have so much passion and excitement and this year I'm so freaking excited. If you have not joined us in platinum, get ready to have your life changed forever. We, have a, it's, it's similar to what our platinum has been, but it is slightly different and more advanced. And I cannot wait because we are bringing offices together in person. And if you are not a part of it, please email me right now. [email protected] and come be a part of it. I only, we've limited our space for our first year to make sure that we can.

 

execute at the highest level. But like, that is the countdown. I am counting down the hours, the minutes to March. If you can't join us in March, don't even stress it's virtual as well. And then we have another one in September. And I am just so excited. It's like counting down to Christmas to be able to put on something so magical for clients and change their lives and do life and dentistry. I realized life is my passion dentistry is my platform. And I'm so geeky about dentistry. And I love it. But I love giving you your dream life more. And so for me,

 

That's something I'm so lit up about within the company, like literally a countdown chain to March. Our team is so excited. I'm so excited about it. We're so excited to have offices be a part of this, like giddy to meet people in person. So if you've been a podcast listener and want to meet me in person, well, it's time. It's time to come and join us. But really like, what are you so giddy about for next year? Are giddy about the goals? Are you giddy about the CE? Are you giddy about the team?

 

What is the magic where you literally are sitting there like, can't come soon enough, I cannot wait for it? Or do you add in the sprinkles like my husband and I always plan fun trips, so I'm looking forward to something because so often we just need something to look forward to. And I think that that's actually what creates so much magic for us. So as you're filling the magic of this year, which I hope you're feeling, and if this year and this time of year is hard for you, I'm just giving you a giant hug because this time of year has been hard for me too.

 

And I think when I realized that there's so much magic that can be here even through hard times I feel like Christmas changed for me and the end of the year changed for me and I can see it now with sparkle and glitter and gold Whereas before it used to just be sadness And so I'm here and I'm happy to be a friend to you through it I also am here to let you know that like it's okay to feel sad at this time of year It's also okay to feel happy It's okay to have hard times and to to come out the other side of it and to be happy again

 

Kiera Dent (07:02.496)

I think the greatest gift that we can give ourselves is the gift of being happy and having something that we're so giddy about. So tonight, maybe as you're sitting there dreaming, getting excited, think about what would get you so giddy and excited in your practice as well. And if I can be a part of it, like I said, I am so giddy. I'm so giddy to help offices literally get their dream lives and their dream practices and to do it with doctors and office managers and have leadership retreats in person and then to have

 

quarterly check-ins, whereas like kind of like a boardroom assessment where you're looking at your practice and we're really assessing and then do the team integration where we're helping your team. Just really being able to like do a huge lift for these offices. I can't tell you how giddy I am about this. So I hope that you have something you're that excited about. Maybe it's a CE that you're excited about. Maybe it's joining consulting that you're so giddy about of having a different life. Maybe you've already started. Maybe you haven't. Maybe you're excited about.

 

I don't know, but I just hope that you build some type of excitement and anticipation within your practice that you and your team can literally get fired up, lit up, so excited about because finding ways to make magic within our businesses in the day in, day out is how we keep our stamina. It's how we feel alive. This is where is the power of fun of creating magic.

 

So go create some magic. you need some brainstorming ideas, email me, [email protected] If you want to pop on a call, click a strategy call with us. I'm happy to chat with it, but truly let's stream up some magic. I don't want to take too long with you guys today. I hope you go with your families. You go do something of service. You enjoy your cereal. You eat your waffles. You do whatever your traditions are for your family. I love to hear traditions. So also if you're bored, email me, [email protected] I know this is oftentimes weird for business owners because we have so much time.

 

We don't know what to do with ourselves. So I love to dream of my business. I love to get excited. I love to sit there and think of all of my great ideas. So if you need a pen pal, you want to send me some of your fun ideas, I'm happy to pen pal with you. [email protected] But I really, really, really, really hope that you give yourself something that you are just magically so excited about for this next year, where you count down with utter anticipation, waiting for the moments. And like I said, sometimes it is joining consulting. Sometimes it is doing a CE. Sometimes it is

 

Kiera Dent (09:21.86)

expanding your practice. Sometimes it's bringing on another doctor. Sometimes it's on status quo where we're so giddy that we're taking vacations. I don't care what it is. Sometimes it's even offices taking trips together. But let's find a way to create the utter excitement and magic within our practices. And I'm here to help you every step of that journey. And as always, thanks for listening. Go enjoy the holidays. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

It’s Dental A-Team’s last book club episode of 2024!

December’s book is Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. Kiera dives deep (heh) into what it means to work with such intensity in a world overrun with distractions, including layers of cognitive focus, an increase in the ability to master topics, the power of routine and ritual, and more.

Episode resources:

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:01.124)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and welcome to the book club. This is the last book club of 2024. Can you believe it? We are to the last book club of the year. And just as a fun little book club, let's do a year in review of all the book clubs that we've done together this year. So in case you didn't read these books or you need a book or you need to remember the book clubs we did, January, we did the Go Giver. February, we did Crucial Conversations. March, the Noticer.

 

April, buy back your time. May, high output management. June, come up for air. July, you can heal your life. August, your next five moves. September, die with zero. October, the power of fun. November, who, how. And December, deep work. This is our last one. And like talk about a really fun year that you guys have actually gone through of all these different books. And I hope you've enjoyed them. I hope you've read them. I hope you've enjoyed the book club. I'm excited to...

 

like, you know, we're doing in 2026, it's still TBD or excuse me, 2025 still TBD. But talk about how many incredible books that you guys have read this year. and just think like that's so much wisdom brought into your life. And I hope you're implementing these ideas. Like I think back to, as we look back, the go-giver remembering to do those simple acts of kindness for people and to notice and to give more value than people expect. Crucial conversations, saying what needs to be said, not like dodging and beating around the book.

 

or the Bush. Wow. the noticer just noticing people. remember the, the, was either the beach. He was sitting on a beach and eating seafood and was like, I'm on this crummy beach eating this like day old food. And the noticer said like, I am eating surf and turf with a view and just looking at things differently. thought was it such a cool perspective, April, buy back your time. You guys know, I'm obsessed with this. What's your dollar per hour? how can we buy back more of our time and do more of what we absolutely love?

 

High output management, figuring out how we can actually maximize and be high output consistently within our management team. Really lovely book. Come Up for Air. You guys know I love this one. This was like leveraging systems and teams. I made my leadership team. I didn't make, I had our leadership team read this book. There was so much goodness with Come Up for Air that I loved. Systems and tools, we've implemented so many of the things from that book. Definitely is gonna be on my consistent books to read here over here.

 

Kiera Dent (02:23.552)

The next one, you can heal your life. This one was such a unique one of diving deep into our own personal lives and how can we heal ourselves and heal from the past and letting go of things that are holding us back. Your next five moves, looking at the business strategy and thinking of what do we need to do next and what are the next five moves in our business. Really incredible. Die with zero. I loved Die with Zero. Another book where you literally like live life now.

 

And it's such a controversial book compared to Profit First. I love the controversy. I love thinking of it, but really die with zero and how can we have more fun in life? The power of fun. you know, remember how to feel alive again and the different areas of how we can make fun and play more a part of our daily life. Who, not how. It's going back to buy back your time. Thinking of who can do this, not how can we do this? Who can we leverage? Consultants, team members.

 

Delegating collaborating all those different pieces and now today deep work This book to me is such an incredible Like I love it. I love it so much It was recommended to me by a doctor that I'm obsessed with and their team and he's just someone this doctor I feel is able to get so much done and I was like, what do you do? And he said deep work is one of my biggest things and he goes and hides in the library and he Will consistently like this doctor is someone that I feel is such a high

 

output constantly and just keeps doing it. like his secrets are he's great with time management. He has none of the apps on his phone. So there's no Slack, there's no text messages or excuse me, there's no emails. It's literally just used as a phone. And then he has, he blocks his time. He's very disciplined. He's disciplined with his spiritual life. He's disciplined with his kids life. He's disciplined with his physical life. He's disciplined with his work life. And I'm just so impressed by who he is. And he said deep work was one of his pieces.

 

So getting into deep work, are four rules. number one is work deeply. Number two is embrace the boredom. Three is quit social media and four is drain the shallows. And what I loved about this book is he really talks about like he, this guy, he was like in his room and he realized when he like locked himself in this room, he was able to like exponentially grow in his career and like what he was learning and realized.

 

Kiera Dent (04:41.464)

that the reason we don't grow as much as we could is because we're constantly distracted. so within Deep Work, it talks about, we blocking time? And you can call this CEO time, you can call this Deep Work time, but like, we blocking time, distraction free, to work on the biggest projects of our organization? And so Deep Work, like I said, you will see in every one of my calendars, blocking out two to four hours per week is what I recommend for doctors. And I'm really big on blocking it during your production time. So that way you actually...

 

are super focused and super intentional with no distractions. That does not mean you have to be in the office. I actually sometimes recommend not being in the office so you're not distracted, but it's really awesome. There's actually some really cool apps that you can do that lock everything. So when I go into deep work time, you can literally lock everything. So no email, you could set up the apps or the browsers that you're allowed to do. And then literally your whole computer locks out of everything else. So when we get bored, we want to go scroll social media. You can't do that.

 

And that's where it's like the embracing the boredom that I thought was so critical and so incredible is we embrace the boredom. We embrace these different things because when you embrace the boredom, you push through versus being distracted and wasting away our time. so during it, like literally you want to go check your email and it's shocking because you'll see how often you check your email, check your social media, do all these different things. But the answer is like, we're here to have deep work with no distractions and we're training ourselves.

 

to become so effective with our time when we're working on these projects that we actually move the needle forward exponentially. And I love this. I love this so much because we are in such a distracted society that we don't get deep work done. So many dentists are like, Kiera, like, I just can't get this done. I'm like, block the deep work, block the CEO time, office manager, same thing. Like this is, and it's not for us to do the little tasks, like the payroll that we know is going to get done or to check. It's like, no, we need to make a operations manual. We need to get that done.

 

We need to build out new job descriptions and tiers for our employees to move up from one position to the next. We need to go and figure out like it could be CE. For me, a lot of times it's like projections for the next year. It's looking at my PNLs. It's building out for us. Like I've been working, my deep work time has been so focused on building out content for next year's in-person events for our doctors that I hope that you're coming to. If you have not, please sign up. Prices do go up in January. We have promoted the prices through end of year for you guys.

 

Kiera Dent (07:04.42)

giving you, want people to have this be a no brainer. So you actually save exponentially thousands and it is a complete tax write off. You get to come be with us in person. You get to network with peers, but we're going to do, like I said, a strip down from top to bottom of your business. And you're going to have a plan every quarter of what to do plus one-on-one calls with the consultant. And you also get us to help with team implementation. So we're working with the doctor and the team. It's doctors and OMS in person. This has been my deep work. This is what I'm working on every single week. This is what's pushing the needle forward. This is how

 

as a CEO who's busy, I pushed the most important things forward. And it's crazy because this is, one of my favorite quotes from Jaco Willings is discipline equals freedom. And so having the discipline to do this deep work that Cal Newport talks about in there is just so incredible to me. because really we've got to be digging in, we've got to be working on the pieces that move us forward. We have to be able to focus without the distractions on these tasks. And so like,

 

It literally allows you to focus and to work without distractions. And they talk about in their like shallow work versus deep work and shallow work is non-cognitively demanding logistical style work often performed while distracted. So think about like how often we submitted payroll while distracted, how often we've answered emails while distracted. We've been slacking like in our company, I make it to where we're in meetings. We have no new standard that...

 

We are present and that means Slack is closed, phones are shut off, all of our emails are closed and we are present here because it's so easy to be distracted. Whereas Deep Work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive 21st century economy. And so really it's like, in order to produce our absolute best stuff, we have to commit to Deep Work. This is where we have the creative spaces, this is where we have the very Deep Work. Like this doctor I was telling you about who recommended this to me, they have...

 

Six practices they have grown their practices exponentially their practices are producing Multi-millions they have a leadership team the doctors been able to remove themselves from the practice and it's because I believe this doctor has been working on deep work for years Also in deep work It's the ability to quickly master hard things and the ability to produce at an elite level for quality and speed two core abilities for thriving in today's economy because when we When we teach ourselves not to be distracted when we teach ourselves that we're here to work

 

Kiera Dent (09:22.99)

There's no distractions. Like it's literally incredible. If you guys didn't listen to my podcast with John Jackson from Defy Ventures, who was a prisoner. I hope you guys listened to that. He is someone who has inspired me in 2024, like top people that I've met this year. And I remember him saying like when he was in prison, there was nothing there for him to do other than learn. He was sitting in cinder block walls. There were no distractions he could have.

 

And he learned and he learned a lot. He learned how to run businesses. He taught himself that and that's why they do this for prisoners, but like, let's not be in prison to teach ourselves how to work without distraction. and in the book, one of the quotes is to learn hard things quickly. must focus intensely without distraction. So if you don't know how to do your numbers, well, are you spending the deep work time to learn how to read a PNL to learn how to do cashflow to learn and listen to different podcasts or books or have a coach or a mentor with you doing this with you.

 

But really it's there. And then they said, your work is craft. And if you hone your ability and apply it with respect and care, then like the skilled will write, you can generate meaning in the daily efforts of your professional life. So, and then I love, say the key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intention and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower. Nessa Nessa. Wow. Necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.

 

And when you can master deep work, and I'm not going to say that I'm the best at it. I'm not here to tell you like, I'm incredible. I'm here to say like, I have learned a lot of this. have taken this on and it's true. Like we are so distracted. It's so easy to be distracted. There's even a company called The Brick. And what you do is you can literally brick your phone where like you can tap it and your whole phone shuts off. And it's just a phone like that you can call with. That's the only thing you can do with it. But just think of how much more in life you can achieve, how much more in life you can.

 

accomplish, how much further your business could grow, how much more you could invest in your relationships if we weren't distracted. And that's not to say there's not a place in time for social media and different things. Like, of course there is, but let's do that intentionally, not distractedly. Let's do that because we choose to, not because it's a habit that we haven't been able to break. Let's work on the big frogs of our business, right? They talk about eat the frog first in the morning, the thing you don't want to do. To me, that's the deep work. Like so much of what I put on deep work, I literally dread.

 

Kiera Dent (11:46.264)

But now with the use of chat GPT and other things, like you can actually move things in deep work so much faster than we've ever been able to do. And so really maximizing this. So like I allow it to be open, but like it's wild. When I lock everything out, I feel annoyed actually. I'm like, but I also am shocked at how fast my mind gets distracted. so to be able, it's like meditation, to be able to help ourselves be so like to me, deep work.

 

and meditation are training our minds rather than being like, I don't know, it's not manipulated, but guided by a wandering mind. Like I wanna focus and be intentional with my thoughts and with my life. And I'm creating it rather than being managed by it. And I think that that's deep work does is that to me, deep work is exercise for the mind. Meditation is exercise for the mind. It is being able to be this like pristine top performer.

 

for two to four hours a week and to get the big projects done. And just, want you to think about, let's just think about a practice, a doctor and an office manager who do deep work. I guarantee you like bonuses for your hygiene. So hygiene production and bonuses could get done. Operations manuals could get done. Protocols and reviews of the company could get done. The financial piece could get learned in one year's time doing deep work. It probably would be less than that. You could really go through and write protocols and...

 

have better onboarding systems. Think about an associate onboarding process. Think about being able to figure out a billing system and process. I mean, yes, of course you can hire us and we have most of that already for you, but just think of all the things you can move forward. Think of the new ideas you could create. Think of the ability to onboard an associate doctor better. Think of the ability to go and look through all of your exams that you did and figure out where did I not do as strong and how can I refine my presentation style.

 

Think about being able to go and observe your practice and see it in this zone. Like all these projects, think of everything that's big on your list. To be able to set aside two hours a week is just like mind boggling. And then to think if we're doing this consistently, how much more will you actually be able to get done? How much more time will you be able to have? Because you're gonna like check off your checklist pretty quickly and then you're gonna start to go into like new lessons. Like think if you spent two hours a week on chat GPT.

 

Kiera Dent (14:06.378)

learning it and how to use AI better in your practice. How much further ahead would that send you? This is the type of deep work and learning new skills and learning new insights that I think could be absolutely masterful for you. So I loved this book. I love helping offices set this into their schedules. I love helping office managers realize the practice will not burn down with you being gone for two hours. I love doctors realizing this is your CEO time. This is where you review your P &Ls. This is where you look at the numbers of your business. This is where you do your projections for the next year. This is where you do all the different pieces.

 

is during this deep work time, undistracted, very focused. So I hope you read it and I hope you love it. And I hope that you had a really fun year advancing yourself with professional development of reading these books and expanding your minds and expanding what you believe is possible and turning the impossible into possible. And I really hope that you've just realized how much you've invested in yourself and how beautiful it is to keep

 

growing and creating and evolving. Life is a journey. These things take time. Mastery is not done overnight. And so I just implore you as you go into 2025 that you truly, truly, truly set aside deep work time. Commit right now that you're going to do it you're going to see how much your practice will flourish. And I promise you will be life changing for you.

 

I hope that you choose to join us in person in 2025. I hope that you choose to not to keep thinking about consulting, but to execute on it. I hope that you decide to invest in yourself and your team this next year and that you just truly have the best year of your life. I will be getting you guys books to read and I just hope that you know your life is yours to create, not to manage. So let's start creating it through our deep work time. And I hope you guys loved it. I loved reading this, if you can't tell.

 

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

Tiff and Dana are here to gameplan your goals for 2025 by starting big and breaking it into smaller and more attainable pieces. They discuss aspects to consider, such as profitability, time management, tracking systems, and more.

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:01.106)

Hello, Dental A Team team listeners. We are back here today. I've got Ms. Dana with me and we are here to talk to you about numbers today. I'm excited for this one. Practice owners, doctors, dentists, all of you guys out there, this is a really important one and Dana and I have some awesome information to really hand out to you. But before we dive in, Dana, how are you doing over there? How are you?

 

We're wrapping up the end of the year. I know I've seen a ton of successes in so many of our clients. How are your clients doing? What are you working on right now with your clients?

 

Dana (00:34.404)

Yeah, it's great. 2024, I think was an interesting year for a lot of practices. I think different than some of the more recent years. But I think in all of that, practices are still coming out with huge wins, lots of growth, and getting patients to accept treatments. So I call that a win for 2024 for sure.

 

The Dental A Team (00:52.836)

Yeah, I agree. think there was a lot of... gosh.

 

unknown uncertainties in 2024. I think 2020 we had some uncertainties too, right? We walked into the year with uncertainties, but then it kind of grew from there. And we've had just this massive growth in dentistry, I think since 2020 and COVID shutdowns. And this year, was kind of like, wait, hang on dentistry still doing fine. we're in a, we're in a recession proof industry, but what the heck is going on? And so there were just so many questions I think in outside of

 

of dentistry and financially that it did lead to some oddities that we haven't seen in recent years, like you said, within the dental world. know a lot of my practices have been, I think they're coming out of it now, but we had some issues with confirmations or patients coming to appointments or pre-collecting, kind of making sure that those pieces were really dialed in and locked in, because I did feel as though here in the recent months, kind of September, October.

 

some August really was tough for some practices in case acceptance, but then November hit got a couple weeks into November, how we'll say it and things just started to really turn around again. And I think again, there's so many uncertainties of the world translated into uncertainties within the dental industry and and Dana, I think you saw that too. Yeah.

 

Dana (01:55.438)

Thank

 

Dana (02:15.363)

Yeah.

 

The Dental A Team (02:16.56)

Yeah, well guys, we're on the other side of that. So this is the exciting part and this is one of my favorite times of year. I'm really looking forward to what's to come and we have to look at what was right to know what can be in many cases, but this is the time of year where we really get to dream up what next year will look like and what it can look like and it's just so much fun for me.

 

I love building out goals with practices. I love seeing what it's going to take to get you to that goal and really working backwards. So dream big and then work backwards and make it smaller and smaller and smaller. So today, I wanted to chat about that and Dana pulled in to help me just really discuss how we go about increasing goals every year. And we do this with all of our clients. We look at what does an increase look like for next year? What is it going to create for you? So a lot of our clients will say, you know,

 

I want to have more time at home with my family. We're having a baby this year. We want to take a maternity leave. I want to take a vacation to Europe for two weeks. I had a doctor that took her family to Paris this year. Like, how are we building that into the goals? And realistically, how are we making your business work for you so that you can have the personal life that you want? And so your team members can as well.

 

But really what does the business have to do to afford you those pieces of life that are really, really valuable and important to you? One of those things that we look at is your profitability. And your profitability is key, you guys. That is the extra money on top, that's the kush, that's the, this is really what my business is able to create for me within that. So we do look at that when we build out your goals, but just on average, we wanted you to know what an increase, an annual increase looks like.

 

her practice majority of the time a practice that's already been working off of their BAM. So their bare ACE minimum, right? Your, this is what it takes to pay my bills. This is what it takes to survive plus a percentage to get that profitability. So we typically look at, I Dana and I talked about this this morning, we're usually looking at what's your BAM. So what's your baseline? This is my baseline, just like at home, like this is what it takes to

 

The Dental A Team (04:35.57)

feed my family and to pay my bills. This is the baseline money that's going out and then 20 % on top of that. So baseline plus 20 % creates a profitable business. If we're only looking at baseline, you guys, I don't know, I felt Dana like in that conversation this morning that it was a confusing space maybe for people that...

 

That's one of those spots I think where we talk dental. People are like, what are you talking about? All right. Our marketer this morning was like, what's a bloody profie? And I was like, that's funny. So it's one of those spaces that's like, what are you talking about? But Dana, I you do this with your clients to have really that baseline plus that 20%. So Dana, how do you go through that with your clients and really helping them to figure out one what their baseline is, and then what that 20 % is on top?

 

Dana (05:00.716)

No.

 

Dana (05:25.09)

Yeah. So really it is, it starts with their overhead. So what is their overall practice expenses? Okay. So that's going to be part of their bare ACE minimum. And then what are they taking home? Right. Also to any debt services, because we've got a pair of debt services to be to utilize them, whether it's a practice loan or equipment loan or whatever it is, as far as debt services, we've got to put that in your BAM. Cause at the end of the day, those things have to be paid or business will be shut down.

 

The Dental A Team (05:34.546)

Yeah.

 

Dana (05:53.052)

Failure to pay those things too So just making sure that you know all of those pieces that go into it and all of that is accounted for because oftentimes actors like well No, I don't put my pay in there. Well, right? You're not being able to live your life and you're not being able to afford like you have to be paid too That's why you are a practice owner. That's why you chose ownership, right? So we want to make sure that is included in there. So Let's just say we know you know, they're they're

 

The Dental A Team (06:05.446)

Yeah, yeah.

 

The Dental A Team (06:15.538)

Yeah.

 

Dana (06:22.148)

BAM is 100,000, because I like round numbers. So 100,000, we would obviously say then, okay, for that 20 % profitability, we need an extra 20,000 each month. So your goal then for that month becomes 120,000. And as long as we hit 120,000 each and every month, that will give you your BAM every month, plus your 20%.

 

The Dental A Team (06:25.735)

Yeah, same.

 

The Dental A Team (06:37.339)

Mm-hmm.

 

The Dental A Team (06:43.302)

Yep, I love that. I think the confusion or to separate statements is we've talked about when we talk about all the time your overhead and Dana, you just mentioned your overhead, right? So we do say your your true overhead.

 

is if someone if someone were to purchase your practice from you today, what would they respond be responsible for taking on your pay your loans and come with you right you they they're not going to continue paying you. So what would a practice owner take from you if they were to purchase your practice is your true overhead. So in order to find your band, you find your true overhead, this is your outgoing money. And then you add in your loans, your debts and your pay.

 

And if your associate pay or whatever else is not included in your true overhead for you, you add that in underneath. This is what you have to make in order to maintain your business as it is. So if you were looking at your personal finances, you would say, great, what are my credit card payments? What's my mortgage payment? What's my car payment? Those go into your baseline for what you need to make as an individual within your home. So you're to think the same thing. What does my practice need to make to baseline to say,

 

We are at a zero zero, right? We are zero zero. We are not negative, but we are not positive. This is what my business has to make. And then we add, like Dana said, that 20 % on top of it. So that's the difference, you guys, when we talk overhead versus bam, is overhead is different. Your bam is going to be everything included. So I think that's where some of that confusion may come in.

 

Now that 20 % can be bucketed out however you want it to be. So that 20 % could be bonuses. I do have a practice that's like, Tip, want, this is our BAM, but I want my practice to bonus every month. I'm like, great, then let's add a percentage after your BAM.

 

The Dental A Team (08:34.276)

a certain percentage of that will be their bonus. So they know if they get to this tier, this tier, this tier, but for that practice specifically, you guys and for most of my practices that talk about this, I want you to know I don't go bam plus 10 % and then they get you know, they get that bonus at that 10%. No, I still want bam plus some now it's above above and beyond that. So it has to be above and beyond your profit. Otherwise, now you're bonusing and taking out of your profit for the practice and the

 

for the practice should be going towards renovations, should be going towards new equipment, it should be going towards whatever you want it to be, an emergency fund, like all these things to be reinvested back into the practice, not taking, we're not taking money out to pay people. That's an above and beyond situation. So just clarifying that a little bit for you guys, going into a new year, once you have that settled, you're like this year Tiff, I went off my ban plus my profit, that was my goal.

 

Fantastic. So then next year, going into 2025 goals, we really want those goals to be, I like 10%. I usually say seven to 10 % on top of what you did last year. Super easy math, number one. Number two, inflation has to be accounted for. Inflation on average in America right now is near 7%, right, at least. So

 

If we go above and beyond that 7 % and hit that 10%, again, we're looking for that profit margin. Because if we're only accounting for 7 % inflation, again, we're just status quo. We're not growing. In order to see that growth, we've got to go above and beyond. So that 10 % creates that above and beyond. And again, that's if you've been operating off of BAM Plus profitability. If you haven't, then let's work the numbers and figure out where you should be and what you're able to do next year.

 

but that 10 % should be able to be finagled within that. And creating that space is really fun. Figuring out how am going to get 10 %? A lot of doctors' teams usually will be like, that sounds awesome, but like, my schedule is full. Where in the heck do you want me to get? So we're adding 10 % every day. So we're adding 10 % of time every day to have like, how are you doing this? I'm like, no, it doesn't have to be that

 

The Dental A Team (10:57.736)

hard. This is where we make sure you're pulling your financial analytics. Like where are you at for your fees, your fee analysis? Have you had a rep pull your fee analysis? Have you requested fee increases from all the insurances? Have you looked at insurances that you could drop? How do we squeeze more out of the time that you have? Dana, I know a lot of clients come in and they're like, I want to reduce stays, but I want to be more profitable.

 

Fine, absolutely, you guys, can create the magic for whatever you want. If it's unrealistic and we're like, that's a little crazy, we will tell you that too. But oftentimes coming in from, you're working five days or four days and you're like, I really want a half day admin day.

 

Great, we're going to squeeze more dollars out of the time that you have. So Dana, I know you've been working on this a lot with a lot of your clients this year specifically and block scheduling, things like that definitely contribute. But what are some pieces that you've got a lot of clients currently working on for next year to squeeze more out of that time that they have?

 

Dana (12:03.5)

Yeah, so one, is taking a look at just each provider in the practice, their production per hour. Because if we're looking to cut hours, then we know exactly how much production we need to make up in different hours of the day. Also, two, helps us see just is there any provider that like, okay, they've got a little bit more opportunity. So we can kind of let's say we look at hygiene, right? And they're not hygiene across the board isn't hitting their daily goal or their hourly goal. Then what can we do there? Can we talk about a

 

The Dental A Team (12:08.765)

Yeah.

 

Dana (12:32.452)

upgrading our perio protocol, can we talk about adding adjunct services? What can we talk about on that end? On the other side, when it comes to providers, can we look at just efficiency? Are we maximizing and utilizing our assistance so that there is more actual doctor time to do additional dentistry? Another thing that I'm working on as far as building that in and helping to see goals is just cost of procedure versus

 

The Dental A Team (12:58.408)

Mm.

 

Dana (12:59.576)

time it takes to do the procedure. So a cost per procedure is I'm doing that with a couple of offices just because it does help us see. Okay, if

 

this doctor does this procedure in 70 minutes and this doctor's doing it in 90, like what does that look like as far as then their production per hour and where can we squeeze and those things. So I think it starts by knowing really what you're producing each hour, especially if you want to cut back hours. And then as we're looking at that, who has potential for growth or where do we have potential for growth? And then how do we get there? What does that look like?

 

The Dental A Team (13:30.632)

Yeah, I like the breaking it down by cost per procedure and hourly. That's something I think that we forget we can do and that really makes such a drastic difference. The perio space, the hygiene space is huge. You guys, I have a client this year that we were just looking at their KPIs this morning, Dana and I, and they had a goal of increasing one to 2 % on their perio.

 

program, right? So hygiene was going to go from 18 to 19 percent and on average is where they were in 2023. This year they needed to hit at least 20 percent overall production, which means the hygiene department as a whole contributes 20 percent of the monthly and yearly production.

 

So we looked at it this morning and luckily the office manager had filled out November and so for November they're actually tracking at 25 % for their hygiene department which is great. I usually push for goal wise so you guys know for goal sake 25 to 30 percent.

 

Dana (14:23.844)

Thank

 

The Dental A Team (14:36.38)

for hygiene to be making up of that goal. So when you're going into next year's goal, and you're like, gosh, 10 % means I'm going to be at $2.1 million next year. Freaking fantastic, do it. So look at, okay, well, what did my hygiene team do? On average, what was their percentage now with us not looking at it? And think, okay, what would one to 2 %? What would a 2 % increase from last year look like financially? It's over a year, it's usually pretty significant what a 2 % increase can do.

 

And then how can we get a 2 % increase? Normally when practices are not tracking their hygiene department, they're typically sitting anywhere from like 14, 15 to maybe 20 % on average. I would say probably like that 17 % range is pretty common.

 

for practices that haven't been really looking at it and caring. So then you have a space of like fantastic, what's a 1 % increase in everything that we do? It could be making sure we're always charging out for the PAs. That's a 1 % increase. Like really looking at all of the coding and making sure we're getting every single code in there every single time, because those things add up over time. But when you're parsing it out, sometimes I think doctors feel like, gosh, $2.1 million. That's a lot of

 

implants, that's a lot of crowns, like, you are not the only one that's providing that. And so really looking at what are the other contributing factors? How can we add more value? How can we add more whitening this year? So in-office whitening that our assistants are doing, what would it look like if we did three more Invisalign cases this year in comparison to last year? What would it look like? How many, you know, how many of each thing do I want to do?

 

Oftentimes I'll take a practice and say, do you want to do more of next year that you love doing this year? And I know I had a doctor that was like, gosh, Tiff, I love placing implants. just, I want to do more implants. Great.

 

The Dental A Team (16:31.144)

So we went into 2023 with a goal of X amount of implants this year. And so then the goal from there, we backtracked and we're like, okay, great, every month you have to do this amount of implants every month to get to this yearly goal, which would allot for X amount of dollars towards your yearly goal. So then we translated that into well, how many opportunities do I need based on my case acceptance? So then we said, well, you've got to talk to X amount of people about missing teeth

 

and the implant option to get your 65 % case acceptance on it to get to that. And within the first quarter of the year, he had surpassed his quarterly goal and was well into his six month goal for the year. But it was because we had worked backwards and made it so simple, it was really easy for everyone to track. From there,

 

the team was like, well, how do we keep track of all these? Like we're talking, they're like, I have ideas. And now the team is creating tracking systems and using the whiteboard and they're following up with the patients because they can see it. And it's so easy. So that 10 % increase from last year can feel a little daunting sometimes. And I've had practices, Dana, that I'm like, to get you on track to where you actually want to be. And because we weren't working off of a BAM plus 20 %

 

previously, you actually need a 15 % increase this year to get you to where you should be. And still though, as long as you can increase it by how much ever you want to, and as long as there's a plan in place and we can work backwards to see how we can actually accomplish it, I think that's where the success really lies. And I've watched it time and time again of how easy it can be to just say,

 

How many implants do we have to do? How many Invisalign cases do we have to start? How many, you know, all-on-fours do I need to do? And you guys, holy Hannah, if you don't like surgery, you don't want to do all-on-fours, don't do it. It is not a space where it's easy money. It is not lucrative if you do not like doing it, so don't do it.

 

The Dental A Team (18:43.334)

Pick the things that you enjoy doing. Is Botox something you want to do next year? Fillers, like what does this look like? Cosmetic cases, like what do you love doing? And how do we translate that into part of that percentage goal for next year? Dana, what other thoughts do you have on that goal and just really making sure that it's set in stone?

 

Dana (19:05.349)

I love that you do that and I think too if you're like, well, I don't really know even okay I know 2.1 right but what does that look like every day or what does that look like every month? Map out your projections put in your number of working days put in

 

your number of hygiene days for each month, your number of doctor days each month, and then play around with your numbers. Say, okay, well, I did, let's say $3,000 a day this year, and I'm trying to grow 10%. Okay, well, that looks like 3,300. So put in 3,300 and see, does that get me to my 2.1 million? If it doesn't, okay, let's increase that. Let's say 3,500, put that in and see, okay, does that get me there? Okay, that gets me partway. Now, what can I do with hygiene? Right? If hygiene hit, let's say 960 this year, if I get them to a thousand, if I can just get $40 additional every hygiene day, what does that look like?

 

So take your working days take where you were for the last year look and say okay average This is what we produce each day. What does it take each day? Because once you know what it takes each day Each week each month then you can do exactly what you did tip and say, okay How do we do that? Because oftentimes if we don't know what that looks like if we don't know that that's the difference in a crown every other day

 

The Dental A Team (20:03.058)

Yeah.

 

Dana (20:11.0)

Right? Once you have it broken down into daily and weekly and monthly numbers, then it's very easy to say, okay, look, these simple things, if done consistently, or this addition of 10 crowns each month, that's what's gonna get us there. But you have to know kind of what those smaller numbers look like. It's real easy to say 2.1, but when you break it down into daily and monthly, it's super simple then to see where opportunity lies.

 

The Dental A Team (20:36.968)

Totally agree. And I love that you said like going from 3000 to 3300 or 3500 because even if it 3500 and I've got an eight hour day, it's like that's less than $100 an hour. In addition to what I was already doing. That's a couple PA's. That's a couple x-rays like it's, it's charging out for the things that you're doing. So I love that. Thank you, Dana. Right now you guys know it's the time of the year to see where are you going to end you should be able to project at this point in the game like what what it's going to look like at the end of the year.

 

Dana (20:51.556)

Thanks

 

The Dental A Team (21:06.918)

Start mapping out what next year can look like. Don't wait till January, because in January, you should be boots on the ground, freaking running for those goals. So start building that out now. Reach out to us, you guys. [email protected] If you have any questions on this, there was a lot of numbers involved. There's a lot of trajectory, a lot of projections. Reach out to us. We have all of this information. We love giving it out, and we love nothing more than to answer your questions. So [email protected] You can find us on all the socials as well, Dental A Team.

 

We want to hear from you. Drop us a five star review. Let us know that you loved this content and we cannot wait to support you and your biggest 2025 dreams. Let's make them all a reality. Thanks guys. Thank you, Dana, and we'll catch you guys next time.

To inspire the most effective team for your practice, Kiera shares three key attributes that need to exist among staff members:

1. Trust and vulnerability

2. Healthy debate

3. Peer-to-peer accountability

Episode resources:

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:01.05)

Hello, Dental A Team Listeners. This is Kiera and I am so excited for today's podcast. This is something that I've been working on with tons of teams and within our organization and just a lot of different fun things for you. So I hope you guys are having an incredible day. I hope you're ready for just some magic here. I hope you're ready for some podcast magic. I hope you're ready for some life magic. And I hope you just remember we are truly so blessed because we get to work in the incredible profession of dentistry. So I hope you just remember that. And as always, thank you all for being podcast listeners.

 

Don't forget to download, like, subscribe, share this, leave the reviews to keep this dental podcast serving all of you practices for free. That's how you guys can help us out is to go and share this with someone to give us those reviews, to share it in those Facebook groups because my goal is to have this podcast in the hands of every single Dental A team listener, every single dental, we need an edit. 52.

 

My goal is to have this in the hands of every single dental practice out there and so you can help make that dream a reality. So please share it, love it, like it, leave the reviews and just know I'm giving you a high five, a hug as appreciation and thank you. So let's get going today. Today I wanted to go through, I've talked about it a couple of times before, but there is a book by Patrick Lencioni called The Five Dysfunctions of Teams and I've talked about it before. It's one of my absolute favorite books.

 

on the podcast. have not booked Club This and I honestly should book Club This, but it's a really great one. And I was introduced to this book and I was told to literally use this book in like partnerships and different things. And if we don't have the core five layers of this, we actually have dysfunctional teams. And so me and some of my offices, we've been working on it and we realized that we don't want to have dysfunctional teams. We want to have functional teams. And what's another word for functional?

 

It's a winning team. And so if you're not familiar with it, I'll give you a quick rendition. I coach this with lots of offices and I think being an outsider, that's honestly why I love being a consultant. We are having the same thing within our company because sometimes just that outsider perspective can really, really help you and your team get on board and get into those levels that you need to have it. And so with Teams, I'll just introduce you to the five dysfunctions of a team or as we call it, we flipped it around of how to have the five elements of a winning team.

 

Kiera Dent (02:20.186)

So it's in a triangle and at the bottom, it is actually with the bottom portion of the foundation of this triangle is called trust and vulnerability. And so if we have trust and vulnerability and it's not trust of like, if I delegate something to you, I know you're actually going to do it. Like that's one element of trust, but there's the other element of trust where I trust that I can say whatever needs to be said to you and know that there's not going to be backlash. There's a really great example think about in sports.

 

The quarterback is getting sacked and they go to the blocker and they say, hey, you've got a block for me. I need you to block. And the blocker is not like, the quarterback's so mad at me or the quarterback's feeling this or that because they have the conversation. But we have permission to give feedback and receive feedback. And I think really setting up your office to have those permission to play, permission to give the feedback, permission to have the conversations, permission to say what needs to be said so we can ultimately make our practice grow.

 

Now, of course, within trust and vulnerability, the way we say things and the way we present things will oftentimes make it so much better versus just saying what needs to be said. So I do believe that trust and vulnerability is an art more than it is a science. But if you can get your teams really having that trust and being able to call the shot, if you will, like in sports, because in sports, they're able to do that because they know how to win and they're willing to call each other out. They're willing to say what needs to be said because they want to win. And in Patrick Lanzione's book,

 

it really does give the formula of how we're able to win as a team. And so if we know how to quote unquote, put points on the scoreboard, and that doesn't necessarily mean revenue, it can, but if we know what winning looks like within a practice, then it's easier to have the trust and vulnerability, have the conversations. And I think the more you give your practice the permission to play, the permission to have the conversations, the easier it is. But this is a conversation that needs to be had. I go around to offices and I actually coach offices on how to do this, on how to have these

 

conversations on how to say the things because the reality is this is tricky. And in a lot of offices, this isn't real. If you speak up and you say your mind, you get fired. And so society has kind of taught us not to have this trust and vulnerability, not to say what needs to be said. And I'm here to say, why don't you have your practice be a different experience? Why don't you have your employment be a different experience? There's this whole buzzword of vulnerability and being authentic. And I think this is how we actually can create that as a real true piece within our organizations.

 

Kiera Dent (04:44.27)

So once we go up the rung of the ladder, we've got trust and vulnerability. The next layer is healthy debate. So if we have this true trust and vulnerability with each other, we're actually going to have the healthy debate. We're gonna say what needs to be said and we don't come, I really help offices and teams realize we're not coming from our own selfish vantage point. Yes, we bring our vantage point there, but we're always working towards what's in the best interest of the business. And if the business and the practice is the root of what we're doing, then guess what? The healthy debate should be not if you're right or if I'm right.

 

but it's literally what's in the best interest of the business. And I think when offices do this and have the healthy debate and we have the conversations, hygienists bring their opinions, dental assistants bring their opinions, front office brings their opinions. And again, not to be right, but to figure out what's the best for the business and the practice and the patients instantly we're able to flourish, which then leads to the third rung on this ladder of our winning success pyramid. And that is commitment.

 

So whatever we healthy debate, whatever we decided meetings, we as a team actually commit and we're not having these side conversations. I always say, what needs to be said in a meeting needs to be said in the meeting. We're not having it go outside because once it goes outside, we've lost all of our trust and vulnerability. We've lost all of our ability to communicate with each other. All of that's gone. And so say it in the meeting. And if you don't say it in the meeting, that's on you. And you need to take the ownership of that and say, I didn't have trust and I didn't speak up and I didn't healthy debate it.

 

And that's on me because whatever's committed in that meeting, we commit and we move forward, which then leads to the fourth tier, which is peer to peer accountability. And I think what's really lovely in peer to peer accountability is let's go back to that sports analogy. They're having peer to peer, that quarterback's not running over to coach and saying, hey coach, could you tell the blocker to block for me? They're like, hey office manager, could you tell that assistant to have that route slip handed better to me? No, we've given permission to play.

 

We're calling the play, if you will, like block for me. I can't get sacked. We're not going to win. If you don't bring up a route that fully filled in that's, that's hurting me and the patient, the patient didn't get the best experience and nobody wins. And on peer to peer accountability, if we don't have that, we don't have the permission to play within our team. And we don't have the trust where teammates can call each other out so we can win again in a way that's with love and empathy and curiosity and also making it to where the patient wins, the team member wins and the practice wins.

 

Kiera Dent (07:03.234)

That's what we're looking for. We want our patients to the best experience. And if we can't call each other out when a route slip is not handed off perfectly, or we don't have a perfect handoff, the patient didn't get the best experience because now they've left and we didn't get the correct information there. The treatment coordinator didn't get the best experience. They didn't win from that. The dental assistant or whomever dropped it off or the hygienist whomever dropped the patient off, they're not getting the best experience because they didn't even know it was a wrong handoff. And this is where we have that peer to peer accountability. And when you can get your practices to have peer to peer accountability,

 

your practice will flourish. And that's at the top of the triangle is winning. And in Patrick Lanziani's, it's the opposite and it's like inattention to results. And so this is the flip of how to have a winning model. And I just want to come on of like, if you can help your team realize trust and vulnerabilities where we should be spending 90 % of our time. So how can we build more trust within our teams? We can do trust exercises. We can be vulnerable. Trust exercises are not like I remember as a kid, my brother.

 

Remember the trust falls where it's like you have to trust that someone's behind you they're going to catch you? Like, yes, you could probably do that. But we're talking more trust of, can we say things? Maybe it's about being vulnerable with our lives of what we've gone through in our childhood. Like, hey, this is where I was born. This is the number of siblings I have in my family. And this is something I really struggled with in childhood. This is something that I really struggled with that made a big impact and a profound impact on me. And just thinking about, are there ways that we can actually get this to where

 

We're sharing and we're more open and the more vulnerable owners are here and the more they have trust in the more we actually call the things out of like, Hey, dental assistants, what's your perspective? I know that there's something there. The more we have permission to play, the more we have these trust conversations, the more we build trust amongst each other, the more we share things, the more we call each other out and say like, great job. was a great, that was a great blocker. That was a great handoff or Hey, I need this information from you. And we're not having the nitpicky, the

 

drama, the eye roll of like, my gosh, Keira just always wants a perfect handoff. Well, yeah, of course I do. That's our standard of winning. If I don't have a perfect handoff, how am supposed to have a perfect treatment plan for these patients and not to blame you? This is just the system that we have. So let's all work together. My job is to make sure I'm presenting perfect treatment plans. And I can't do that if I'm not getting perfect handoffs of the information that was said in the room. So all these little places are how you're able to build a winning team.

 

Kiera Dent (09:25.016)

And this is what I obsess about. And this is what I love helping offices have because we focus so much on the skills. So many people are like, here, I want the systems. And yes, I've got the systems. Come, we have it, whether it's on our virtual or in-person. Come, I've got the systems for you. I have operations manuals. I've got the systems of morning huddle and route slips and handoffs and case acceptance and trackers and phone call trackers. And like literally any system you probably have ever wanted, I have a system for it. But that's 20%. It's just like in football, they can have all the plays.

 

But if they don't run the plays, they don't execute, they're not watching each other and they're helping because once you put the plays in action, AKA when you put the systems in action, customers come in, patients come in, people are coming different ways, other people are working, we've got lots of hands in the pot. The way you have the systems operate perfectly is being able to, have a great system, that's 20 % of this equation, but the other 80 % is being able to have this trust and vulnerability, the healthy debate, the commitment, the peer-to-peer accountability, and then we ultimately win as a team.

 

So if this resonates with you, try it out. Have the trust conversations with your practice. Have the trust conversations with your team. Have these conversations. And the more you have it, to me, it's how can we build more trust and vulnerability? So ways to do it, like I said, where are you from? How many siblings? And then tell something that you struggled with. Now, this is where you've got to be vulnerable. This is where you've got to set the stage as leaders.

 

of what's the level of vulnerability that we're going to have within our practice. What's the level of vulnerability? If it's like, you know, I really struggled being popular. That's something I struggled with. Well, your team can't relate with that, but maybe you struggled with weight loss when you were a child. Maybe you struggled being bullied as a child. Maybe you struggled like for me, I cheated in first grade because my brother was so freaking smart and I actually wasn't that smart. And my family was so insistent that we go to college and here I am not passing spelling tests. And so I literally cheated in school.

 

to get my mom to put my paper up on the wall because I wanted to be as good as my brother was. I really struggled in school and people look at me like, how is that even possible? You graduated from Valedictoria. Like, no, I freaking struggled and I had to work really hard at it I would throw my books across the room because I was so frustrated that like all of my other siblings got it and I just didn't. And yet I knew I had to get good grades because my parents couldn't afford to put me through college. And the expectation to my family was that I went to college.

 

Kiera Dent (11:42.244)

Like that was something I really struggled with. And so I literally in first grade moved my books away. I put the test words right there. And I literally cheated on my test in first grade to make sure that I could have good grades. And I got called out on it I was super embarrassed. And I had to go home and tell my parents and I straight up lied to my parents that I was just looking at the floor. But it taught me a really good lesson that I'm not naturally smart. I actually have to work for this and I have to figure it out.

 

And that was something that I really struggled with as a child. And if you can come to the table where you actually can share and empathize, now it's like, all right, this is Kiera as a human. I'm not coming here because I'm better than you or I'm less than you. I'm coming here because I ultimately want to make our practice great. And if we can share those things with our team and we can expect that level of trust and vulnerability and you as the leader and the owner and the doctor and the office manager coming together and telling our team, like, we want to hear this.

 

Yes, there's navigation. can't tell you how many times I call it out in offices of like, Hey, like we could definitely say this with like a little more finesse, but you're right. Like this is spot on. This is what needed to be said. Let's practice our delivery and our approach for future. Those are the small things, but this is how I make practices exponentially grow. And if you don't have the trust and use you as the owner aren't doing this. That's where I love consulting offices. This is where I love. I help hundreds of offices do this. This is where I love teaching each other to how do we call each other out in the play?

 

How do we help each other realize when we're presenting treatment plans, we're planting weeds in our flower garden, aka we're saying words that's actually deterring patients from saying yes to us. And if I can't hear that internally, I need to trust my team to call me out on it and receive that with grace and humility and say, thank you. That's the way we're all able to win together. So this is an epitome of how you build a winning team. It's a great formula for you. Like I said, the book is incredible. Also something where we help with this, but I think...

 

For me even having an outsider that can help my team realize like, say the things and watching that consultant within our company navigate our team and help them have the trustable conversations, say what needs to be said, really commit. There's no side conversations. And when there are side conversations, how do we have grace and humility and help each other out is really what I'm passionate about. So if you realize like, my gosh, my team needs help with this, reach out. [email protected].

 

Kiera Dent (14:04.846)

I'm here for you. can do a strategy call. can help you because so many people want the systems and don't realize the trust and vulnerability, the hard conversations that you don't even have to call them hard conversations. Let's just call them growth conversations. This is how you're ultimately going to flourish and win. And so I just encourage you to set up the winning model, encourage this model with your teams. It works. I've watched teams literally morph in a quarter, in a half a year, in a year into these thriving teams. when teams are disjointed or they're not hitting goals with ease,

 

Usually that that indicates to me that there's not a lot of trust of true trust and there's actually artificial harmony within that team And so just bringing that for you if I can help in any way I'm here for it and also just bringing it to light for you. So try it out Let me know and as always thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.