Mike Paton joins Dental All-Stars to discuss the roles of the visionary and integrator in a business operating system called EOS and tips on how to implement this for business success.
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About Mike Paton
Having grown up in a home full of teachers and entrepreneurs, it’s no surprise that Mike Paton has spent much of his nearly 40 years in business helping entrepreneurs and leaders get what they want from their businesses. One of the first EOS Implementers on the planet, Paton has helped the leadership teams of more than 150 companies run better businesses and live better lives, co-wrote Get A Grip with Gino Wickman, and succeeded Gino in the Visionary role at EOS Worldwide. He’s now a sought-after speaker, host of The EOS Leader podcast, and continues to create and share content with EOS fans around the world.
About Shelly VanEpps
Shelly is the VP of Business Development & a Mastery Coach with All-Star Dental Academy. By aiding in the growth and expansion of All-Star, Shelly’s passion for dentistry allows the company to focus on guiding dentists and their teams towards achieving their vision of a successful dental practice. Because each office has their own definition of “success” Shelly focuses her attention on customized coaching by applying her 21 years in the dental field to each department within the office. In addition, as a John Maxwell Certified Leadership Coach, Shelly enjoys working with doctors and office managers on shifting their approach from a managerial approach to a more effective leadership style.
About Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Alex is the CEO and Founder of All-Star Dental Academy®. He is a former Tony Robbins top coach and consultant, having worked with companies upwards of $100 million. His passion is to help others create personal wealth and make a positive impact on the people around them. Alex received his Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Florida International University.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:02
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management, and training. Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Alex Nottingham, founder and CEO of All-Stars Dental Academy. And with me is Mike Payton, the former visionary at EOS Worldwide and host of EOS Leader Podcast. And our topic is the visionary and integrator. Please welcome Mike Payton. Thanks, Alex. Great to be here.
00:31
You go by Payton, so we’ll continue to refer you as Payton. And I also have our integrator, Shelley Van Epps, also our VP of Business Development and Lead Mastery Coach. So we’re gonna have some fun here. So let’s start with some definitions. So we’re all kind of on the same page. So we did a wonderful podcast in the past, a few months ago with you, Payton, about EOS. We go into detail about that. I’ll put a link to that podcast. But just to kind of give us a…
01:00
quick overview of EOS and then we can go into the my first question for you is what is this visionary and integrator and why is it important? Yeah, yeah the quick overview of EOS is it’s a business operating system, a way of creating a crystal clear vision, establishing clarity of roles and executing on that vision with discipline and accountability and building a more cohesive functional
01:28
open and honest team so that everybody’s working together to achieve that vision. And the visionary integrator duo is the leadership pair that tends to rise to the top of the accountability chart, which is an EOS tool in an entrepreneurial company. The visionary, I would define almost always the founding entrepreneur, majority owner of the organization. Not always, but almost always.
01:58
Visionaries are great builders, creators, disruptors, challengers of the status quo, always asking what’s next, imagining a brighter future than the present. I like to say visionaries invented trains. Integrators are people who enjoy keeping the trains running on time. They drive accountability in the trenches. They’re totally comfortable with difficult conversations.
02:26
They’re data or logic driven rather than idea driven. Um, and, and they are great partners to visionaries because a powerful visionary integrator duo working together. Can imagine what’s possible. Prioritize the right activities to execute on what’s possible and not overcommit the resources of the organization and make great things happen over time. So the visionary integrator, very succinct.
02:55
the way you laid it out. So okay, so typically it is the owner of the organization. Now, one of the things that we often get sidetracked on when I talk about it is, am I a visionary, am I an integrator? And then we found a third one, which is the artist or the tactician using the emith verbiage, like somebody who’s not an integrator or not the visionary.
03:21
How does that work? How do you identify yourself or an organization? Who’s what and Because sometimes like for example, and I’ll put one other thing as well like like Shelley will say well I come up with ideas sometimes and I can appreciate the vision So like how does how do you work that? Yeah, so there’s a lot to unpack in that Conversation so let’s just start at the top. So first of all
03:49
Visionary and integrator are two seats on an accountability chart of a company running on EOS That doesn’t mean nobody else on the leadership team is ever allowed to or able to come up with visionary ideas Nor does it mean the visionary is incapable of executing in the trenches when that’s necessary Okay, these are job descriptions not personality profiles per se now
04:14
The one seat on an accountability chart that morphs itself to the unique attributes of its owner is the visionary seat. And I have seen lots of different kinds of visionaries. I’ve seen visionaries who have high levels of startup business acumen. They like to start businesses from scratch and incubate them until they’ve proven a concept and then they get bored and don’t want to have anything to do with the business again. Okay.
04:43
but they aren’t artisans or crafts people or passionate about the thing they’re doing. And then I’ve seen visionaries who are artisans, crafts people and passionate about the thing they’re doing, but they don’t have any business acumen or they don’t have a lot of business acumen. They prefer not to be business people. I can’t tell you how many visionaries have said to me, oh my God, if I have to look at another spreadsheet, I’m gonna lose my mind. And so,
05:10
What we’re trying to encourage people in a fast moving entrepreneurial company to do is know thyself, know what the organization needs and put yourself in the seat where you’re going to add the most value, leverage your God given skillset and your experiential acquired abilities and deliver real value to the organization and, and visionaries do that in the visionary seat and integrators do that in the integrator seat.
05:40
And there is some crossover of responsibility from time to time. Where I see the biggest issues for our target market being dentists is that the dentists may not claim or really own the visionary seat or even know that they’re a visionary because I didn’t even know I was a visionary. I was CEO. I was doing a lot of things that visionaries did. Uh, and because I have a business background, I know that I
06:07
I accept the vision, I do these things, but it wasn’t as clear as you guys have made it at EOS. And certainly to know about an integrator, I just think I need a general manager or something. And then also with dentists, they may think their office manager is this integrator or the manager gets it done, but often it’s not. It’s another thing where they have to put out fires. And then on top of that, they have issues with delegation and so on. So they’re a bit of a mess.
06:37
I would say for dentists that they embrace being the visionary because you’re saying they’re the founder and we all have different qualities. They have to embrace it because they’re the ones that were responsible for it and they created that. And then hopefully they can cultivate or find an integrator, which I’ll ask you later how you do that, to be able to put it into action. So I think an important question in this, and you can comment on all this, whatever I talked about, is…
07:03
What’s the difference between an integrator and a manager? Well, a famous, and I’ll start with that last part of that question, a famous quotation used by many, many visionaries, including me, way too many times and I’m a little sheevish about it, is I’m great at managing people who don’t need to be managed. Which is really kind of not a thing and Shelley’s nodding her head, yeah, I’ve heard that before. So.
07:31
Almost everybody, we’re humans, right? We need some management. And in fact, integrators who are really good integrators are just as adept at managing the energies and the skill sets of their visionaries as they are the people who report to them in the organization. The first part of your question though is, you know, is it possible for somebody who founded a dental practice or any other business for that matter to be neither a visionary nor an integrator?
07:58
is kind of the way I read that question. And the answer is absolutely yes. I think my third or fourth client was in the visionary seat for a couple quarters and he came into a session one day and he walked up to the whiteboard. We had the accountability chart up there because somebody had teed up that we needed to talk about structure and he just erased the visionary seat. He says, you guys have been putting me here because I founded this company, but all these five roles in the seat being the face of the company.
08:27
Thought leadership is that bullet. Culture, big ideas, I don’t do any of that. I’m a coder, this was a technology company. I’m a coder, I’m one of the best coders on the planet. It’s particularly in this specialty. So I wanna sit in a seat that says coder, right? I wanna do code, that’s what I wanna do for the rest of my life. That’s the artisan or the practitioner model.
08:55
And he didn’t need to be a member of the leadership team. So he left the leadership team. He ended up in the owner, what we call the owner’s box in EOS engaged in regular meetings with the integrator, keeping him up to date about what’s going on with the health of his business. But in the business, his role was a member of the development team.
09:20
that got thrown the most vexing problems and the most complex coding requirements. And he was happy as a clam and really good at his job. And he and his integrator business partner, they were co-owners of this company, ultimately sold the business for a really nice multiple and he’s still coding. So that is totally normal. And if that’s who you are, if you’re a dentist,
09:49
and you love being a dentist and you’re willing and able to let go of the rest of the stuff as long as you’re getting input from your leadership team about how the business of your dental practice is going, by all means consider doing it that way. Life’s too short to be in a bunch of meetings you don’t want. Yeah, that’s very, very powerful and I think will be will resonate with a lot of dentists generally when they’re reaching that burnout stage.
10:14
It’s because they’ve been trying to sit in the visionary seat. They’ve been trying to be an integrator. They didn’t know these terms and they’re trying to be the dentist. And so they’re, they’re at that burnout stage. So this is huge. That’s great. Yeah. It’s, it’s hard to ride three horses with one rear end. So you, you, you gotta be careful. Often with the dentist is I say, look, they, they have to wear typically two hats and, and three is too much. So two is being the producer. And.
10:43
The second is being the visionary or embracing or working on it. And I believe that there are those that are more natural visionaries and those that you can train the skills and be a facsimile of a visionary because your team needs it because you, you did find, find it like my father. Uh, that’s how I got into dentistry is I helped turn around his practice, but he still had a vision. He’s not a visionary. He’s an artist, but he still saw in his mind and often artists have a vision. So it’s over complicated.
11:12
And that’s where coaching helps to supplement and train and improve those capabilities. And I think what’s really missing is the integrating because they’re integrating because they’re managing their managers because they don’t trust they can be done. But when you have an integrator, everything’s taken care of. So if a dentist, all they have to do is set the vision and motivate and be a dentist and even can delegate.
11:41
to a good integrator some of the responsibilities of the visionary, that can work too. Yeah, well, when the visionary, when the owner of the organization isn’t sitting in the visionary seat, and we talk about the structure of the leadership team, a very common conversation we have is, if we’re going to be an integrator-driven business on behalf of the owner,
12:11
Who’s going to do all the stuff the person who owned the visionary seat would be accountable for if we had one that was willing to work hard to be great at that job. And so in that conversation, often culture goes to the integrator seat or the head of HR, depending on the size of the organization. Big ideas might go to the head of marketing or sales.
12:39
Creative problem solving might go to the head of ops. Who knows? Because I think you’ve mentioned before, and in your books, Peyton, you’ve mentioned that you can run a very successful organization without a visionary. An integrator can work. But you’re separating integrator facets. That is correct. That’s correct. And what Mark Winters and Gino Wickman say in Rocket Fuel is they say that is true.
13:07
Most visionary driven businesses will grow faster and achieve more than integrator. Integrators tend to be maximizers and optimizers, tweaking things to get a little bit more profitable, a little bit steadier, more consistent results. Visionaries tend to make bolder moves. Tend to, again, I’m not saying Shelley is incapable of making bold.
13:35
game-changing moves or Alex is incapable of getting in the trenches when he needs to get in the trenches. I’m just saying that’s what the tendency is, but yeah, I work with numerous integrator driven organizations and the vision is coming from the other members of the leadership team. Occasionally an ownership group or a board is providing a vision, a PE or a VC firm can…
14:01
play that role, you just need to make sure there’s clear accountability for where growth is coming from. And that’s really the discovery. Like what you said about your father, Alex, what I would say is the reason so many small businesses led by a practitioner, somebody who’s good at something and passionate about something flatline or fail is because it’s very difficult to grow or scale a business without a great leadership team.
14:29
And a teeny little business with 10 people in it is kind of like a Pee Wee football team where the two or three great athletes you have play all the important positions on offense, defense, and specialty. But when you get to be 50 or a hundred or 250 people, you need specialists. You need people who are great at visionary, great at integrator, great at marketing and sales, great at operations, great at back office, you know, finance and accounting stuff.
14:58
That’s what ends up happening. And so what you did when you went into your father’s business is you brought that holistic view of what this business needs to bear, and then you started building those pieces parts in that practice to make sure it could grow to whatever size you scaled, whereas a lot of dentists will say, Oh my God, whenever I get to more than nine people, it’s time to stop growing because my maximum tolerance for humanity is nine people. And.
15:28
For the record, I totally get that feeling. But that’s the choice your listeners have to make, is if I wanna grow and scale this business, what seat am I gonna be happiest and most effective in? And it probably isn’t integrator. It might be dentist, it might be visionary, might be owner’s box, I don’t know. It’s interesting, and I have to like, kind of think about my father’s practice. Maybe I acted as like a co-visionary with him, because I knew the overall thing, but.
15:57
I was speaking on his behalf to spread that out and then having Heather kind of be somewhat of an integrator but more of a tactician building that business. Now interesting story, I went to a mastermind, I do a mastermind, we have a mastermind at All Star for our dentist but I also have my own mastermind group and Heather comes with me and we’re talking about those ideas and Heather’s having so much fun and we’re on the plane. She’s like, I want to be acknowledged as a visionary too and I’m not going to have a fight with my wife. I mean, happy life, right?
16:26
So I say, okay, let me go edit the chart. I’m listening to Rocket Fuel on the way there. And I’m like, let me edit the accountability chart. I’m gonna put you right here as co-visionary. And then she starts reading Rocket Fuel. She’s reading the book. And she turns to me after the first chapter, she says, I’m not a visionary, am I? I says, no. Because she’s reading and says, I don’t wanna do any of that stuff. She just wanted recognition. She’s actually happiest. She was taking on the role as integrator.
16:55
and hating it. Once we got, now Shelly’s here, they’re best, Shelly says, Alex, Heather, I like you, Alex. I love Heather. So that was, she made very clear. And Heather and them are besties because Heather is a great tactician. She’s amazing at taking care of the clients and she embodies the vision more than anybody, but she doesn’t wanna manage
17:25
these things, she doesn’t want to have to also hold people accountable or do, but she’s happy and so she’s able to be the tactician and loving it. And this is very, because she’s a co-owner. So in a practice, if you have a partnership, you may have one partner that may be better to be the visionary and the other partner can very happily just be a tactician and owner of the business. And that’s fine.
17:51
Yeah, I mean, I think in order to embrace this thing, you have to kind of let go of your ego a little bit and not feel as though unless your name is the top one on the chart, you’re not relevant. Okay. Every seat on an accountability chart and a company running on EOS is vital. The person who greets people walking through the front door is vital. The janitor is vital. You, you, you know, you, it, we’re trying to match what the business needs to your passions, skills, and experiences.
18:20
period. And you deserve as an employee of any business, whether you’re an owner or not, you deserve to spend 80 to 90% of your time, maybe more, in roles that you’re hitting out of the park every day and in general, enjoy doing. You’re going to have bad days, right? Like I love working with my clients. There are some session days where I go home at the end of the day and I’m like, man, that was a slog. That doesn’t mean I don’t love what I do. It just means that not every day is perfect.
18:46
But that’s what every one of the people listening to this podcast need to hear is life is too short to spend all your time, you know, beginning expecting you can teach yourself to be great at stuff you weren’t put on the planet to be great at. It’s a waste of time. I like what you said about ego because I think this is so important and ego being false sense or the need to, you know, the title.
19:16
the power and things like that. I think, so I can give an example with dentists and with ourselves at All-Star, I really appreciate the humility that we have. We’ll put the opposite of ego in that when I’m visionary, it isn’t, yes, I have a lot of influence, but I also set it up that, look, this is my job as ideas. Even today, I’m gonna push, I’m gonna say some wacky things, some bombastic things, but know that it’s always gonna be brought back by the team.
19:46
and the integrator is, and I’ll say these things, and we have, she’s the highest integrator, Shelly, but we have other integrators in there as well, but they’ll all go, they get it, and they’ll back it off a little bit respectfully. And so, and then also making sure, in the books and what you also talk about, and you mentioned last time, make sure you praise your integrators so much, because the amount of work that they do, it’s unbelievable. And Shelly, what she does for this organization, and the artists too, like Heather.
20:14
always praise them, very important. So I think in terms of that book, Rocket Fuel, I see like, I’m happy when Shelley and I have a little bit of irritation. Sometimes we get irritated, but never problems, because there’s a lot of respect, because we know that irritation’s good, because we are different, and we are moving some things along, but we understand, and I think that’s very important. And so to dentists, dentists have to watch that ego
20:44
I’m the dentist, I’m the boss, I’m this well-educated. No, you’re a visionary, that’s the goal we’re looking to coach you to be. But in order to allow an integrator to be successful in your business or to work with you, you’re gonna have to be able to be open to ideas of how he or she is gonna be running. Because they’re gonna, I say, they run the business, I don’t. Go ahead, Payton. Yeah, the key…
21:11
Mistake that I see made around that Alex is hiring someone in whom you don’t have enough confidence To let them make those decisions Okay So so remember the integrator is the person accountable for executing on whatever vision and plan we have for this business So we maximize
21:35
It’s value creation, growth rate, consistency, ease of management, et cetera. That’s the integrator’s job. When you put somebody in that seat, it’s important to hire somebody who’s so good at that in your view, either because you’ve worked with them before or because of their heavily credentialed and other people who they’ve worked for speak highly of their skills, where when you find yourself arguing with them.
22:02
You stop yourself about halfway through the conversation and say, why am I arguing with Shelley about how to execute on this thing? I’m the idea guy. What I winning this debate is actually losing this debate because what happens, what happens Alex is that if she gives into you, then it’s your way and she isn’t really accountable anymore. She’s doing it the way you wanted it to be done.
22:29
You’re paying her to be accountable. So let her win the argument. Okay. And she’s right. Most of the time that she, yeah, most of the time she is, but trust, but here’s the key, the right integrator, when they get a month or a week or a quarter into executing on their way of executing on something and they start to feel like maybe you were right all along, great integrators are like, Oh my God, I got to bring this to Alex’s attention right away because
22:58
He was right. And it’s painful, Shelley, you have to admit. It’s painful to admit he’s right when you had an argument about something. We’re human, okay? But that’s what great integrators do. We’re not keeping score. There’s no tally sheet. There are no demerits. Okay, we’re running a business. We’re gonna make mistakes from time to time. But if you want someone to take responsibility for execution in your business,
23:23
then you have to also give them authority to make decisions around how we’re going to execute. Shelly, I wanted to see if you had any questions. I think that’s what’s helped me to be, yeah, I was just gonna say that right there is one of the things that’s helped me as an integrator, which I did not know that I was for a long time in the practice, was allowing other people to come up with ideas as well, and then to allow them to take action within that. And they do it, and they do it until they make it work because it was their
23:53
idea, which a lot of times helps. Obviously you’re overseeing it, you’re directing and helping to push people toward the right decision to get the result that you’re looking for. But being that integrator is huge. And it’s something that, like I said, I never knew that I had been in that seat for as long as I had until I read the book. But I agree with the visionary having all of these ideas.
24:21
And then the integrator feeling like, Oh my gosh, I need to make all of these happen. And so understanding your visionary and knowing some of these ideas, they just need to work through first. And then you decide which ones are the ideas that you’re actually going to implement. And I learned that the hard way with Alex early on, and I was trying to get everything that he said done. And then he’d come back the next day and he’d say, what are you talking about?
24:50
Yesterday you told me this is what you wanted to do. I spent like four hours making it happen. He’s like, Oh, well I changed my mind. I’m like, Oh, okay. So it’s, it’s one of those want to get it done attitudes, but understanding and making sure that the integrator and the visionary are on the exact same page with open communication has been extremely powerful for Alex and myself. That’s the power of the issues list. The issues list is kind of mother’s little helper for a integrator. And when, when.
25:19
We don’t have the bandwidth to execute on all the ideas. We put the least immediate needs on the issues list. And my favorite moment in a quarterly session, especially with a brand new client, this happens a lot is, you know, we’re two or three quarters in to implementing EOS and I’m reading their long-term issues list off the VTO, which in many cases early in the journey, they haven’t looked at enough during the quarter.
25:47
And I’m reading these things and I’m saying, is this still an issue? And the clients are saying to me, what does that mean, Payton? Like I’m somehow going to remember what it means. I haven’t seen them in 90 days. And when you forget what an issue is, it’s that’s the classic definition of definitely not an issue. That’s where we started putting initials after on our IDS. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. I want you to forget what the issue is, because then you cross it off. So.
26:15
Trust that when the person has the same idea again six months from now, they’ll put it back on the issues list And the scary part about this if you don’t do that is you’ll have especially visionaries will put the same thing on the Issues list three different times with three different labels and won’t remember what any of the three things true. That’s so true So true, that’s why we started putting it there because I say alex you told me to put that on the ids and he said Just trust. What was it? No, you’re just lengthening that
26:44
unfruitful conversation. Get those initials off of there. My humble opinion. We’ll do. We’ll do. Now, the big thing here, I mean, these are two huge issues, Ron is recognizing the visionary, embracing the visionary role, whether you’re natural at it or not, it can be trained. And especially if you’re the founder, you’re going to have something, some feeling, you know, it’s not overcomplicated, you’re gonna have some feeling, you don’t have to get an MBA for that, you have a feeling this is your baby.
27:13
Right? And you have a, like my father had a vision to provide amazing care, service, high quality. He had specialists. He, I was talking to my mother the other day, they designed their office a certain way so it would flow this way. I mean, they had an idea what they wanted to do and most dentists do. It’s just embracing that fully and get, because you’re a dentist and you’re so specialized, is getting the training. We do a lot of that.
27:41
in terms of the business training and phone skills and practice management. EOS is amazing. Peyton and his team are great coaches to help support that. Now that’s one aspect. Then it’s the integrator because I said before, we often think my father had difficulty because he had an office manager that was not an integrator. And sometimes we think, okay, because of the title they are. So how do we find?
28:06
these integrators. That’s a big question I have. I want an integrator. We just had in our message board today, one of our clients are like, I need an integrator. How do I hire for an integrator? And we have a hiring service that helped dental offices hire. And so we’re like, okay, we can help you with that. But, and we look for traits, but how do you, how do you hire, how do you find an integrator? Yeah, I mean, integrators come from all sectors of the business. I’ve seen people who were sales and marketing professionals elevate successfully into the.
28:34
integrator seat, I’ve seen operators elevate into the integrator seat. That’s probably the most common background. And I’ve seen people in the finance seat, you know, or, or division elevate into the integrator seat. Um, so there is no sort of career, you know, the integrators are great. Builders of teams and drive, uh, establishers and maintainers of effective processes.
29:03
they take tremendous pride in getting consistently exceptional results. So when you are looking for an integrator, you are looking for people who love doing those three things and have a history of being great at it in whatever role they’ve served and in whatever type of business they’ve served in. I don’t know what your track record of success is pulling somebody into a dental business.
29:31
from outside the dental business, but I found that sometimes technical expertise is a bad attribute for an integrator because they tend to get sucked into the technical weeds a lot more than they should, as opposed to being full-time leaders and managers. My father promoted a superstar assistant, his best assistant ever, because she wanted to be office manager and wasn’t great at it, but she was an amazing assistant.
30:01
And I think, you know, because it’s maybe it’s a role that’s you sit behind a desk or not. I don’t know what the reasoning is, maybe more pay. But I think instead of looking, this is what you guys do great at EOS throw away titles. We’re looking for attributes. What Peyton just said, those are the areas that you want to qualify and look around. And I do believe, I think even in dentistry, I don’t you don’t need to have an integrator that knows dentistry. They’ll figure it out. They’re bright. It’s they have to have the mind the way they think.
30:32
The way they in their attitude, their positivity. Analytical, decisive, collaborative, good at collaborating, it doesn’t wait around for consensus, kind of a ready aim fire mentality versus ready aim aim aim or ready fire, oh my God, I think I just killed somebody. So.
30:57
You know, and I believe assessment tools can be very effective. I’ve got a lot of clients using culture index, predictive index, working geniuses, Pat Lynch, you know, we use Colby a lot. So you’re, you know, think of the job it is you’re expecting someone to do and find someone who’s experience, skillsets and passions align with what you’re asking them to do is the short answer. You know, work in your network.
31:27
And then I wanted to go back to one thing you said earlier about your father and he, you know, didn’t feel like maybe he was a visionary or he would say, you know, what you said is he had a vision of building a particular kind of dental practice where astounding levels of care were the way. So what I would have said to your father, if we were talking about this way back as you were entering to help him out, is I would have said, what are all besides just practicing dentistry?
31:57
What are all the activities you could engage in on behalf of this business to build a business that’s widely known as the best at that? And he might have rattled off a list like networking with other dentists who are just getting out of dental schools so that they want to come to work for me. But only the best of the best. Maybe I need to network with other dentistry school teachers.
32:23
so that they send me all their best candidates because I know they’re this kind of person, right? Like there’s a million things on the list of, and here’s what the real reason visionaries don’t recognize their visionaries is because they’re so gull-durn busy with non-visionary shit, pardon my French.
32:45
that they don’t feel like they’re ever gonna have the luxury of doing all the things. But you gotta say to a visionary, if you could write your job description and love every minute you spend working on behalf of this business, what would you, what would your job description say? And I’m guessing your dad could have given us a list of those things. Yeah. And I think also in hearing you like he at that time and even
33:15
his personality will be very difficult. But I think that’s where coaching is so important because you would have brought out because he doesn’t like to network. He’s a bit, he’s not extroverted like that. He’s not a great, but even though he isn’t now, but what if you, this is the power of compounding of working little by little. He would have been terrible strategist or business person, but if he had a coach that
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Because we do some leadership coaching as well. I know you guys do. And if you just, it’s not gonna be overnight. We’re changing conditioning. But it doesn’t mean, even if you’re a terrible business person at the start and strategist, but you still could be a visionary. You have a vision. I mean. If that’s what you want. If what you want. You have to work at it, yeah. If what you want is to grow this thing that you don’t already have.
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and you’re passionate about that, you will engage in those activities because you want to drive to achieving this thing. And if you’re lacking that drive, that’s fine. There’s nothing at all wrong with running a 10 person dental practice. Nothing wrong. And, and serving your patients well and being a great employer and, and being a stalwart of your community. And that’s a perfectly rewarding life.
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But if what you want is bigger than the thing you’ve got now or different than the thing you’ve got now and you’re driven to go get that, whatever barriers you have to achieving that vision will go away as long as we don’t ask you to spend lots and lots of time doing stuff you’re never going to like and you’re never going to be good at. That’s a good point. That’s all. And I think even a practice that, so our practices typically are between, we were doing some study between 1.5 and 3 million.
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We have bigger ones too, certainly, and they get this concept a little better. But even at that 1.5, 3 million, you’d be very profitable. And often it can be done better, meaning when you have the right integrator. Now all you’re doing is visionary stuff and dentistry. You’re not integrating, you’re not worrying. That’s very doable. And it’s interesting too, it’s all about having intention because Shelly came on board, I did not know she was an integrator.
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I did not call myself a visionary. I got a side thing about that because we still don’t call myself a visionary. I want to talk about that. That’s the last question. That’s another question I have to add. But make sure don’t forget that one. But the thing about this is there was no intention. If I now knew what I knew, I would be like, whoa, that’s an integrator. Because subsequent to Shelley, we’ve brought another integrator, a couple. We have one in our hiring service. And you’re like, these are integrators. And you see them.
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and you’re more intentional. So I think knowing this and being very clear and working through it, you’re intentional. Now, here’s the question. So Shelly’s an integrator. We’re struggling with visionary of me saying I’m visionary. That’s not a set, like in the company I’m visionary. But the dentist that come to talk to me, I have like, I say I’m founder and CEO. And I think they get that, but I say I’m visionary. Like, what are you, you schmuck?
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You know, like you’re visionary. Like you’re telling you’re such as I’m the visionary. You know, like it’s a put you could put schmuck on your business. I could. And at least it would be telling it’d be more telling. They knew what they’re getting into. Yeah, it’s a great thing. This used to be a much more frequent conversation when people actually had or used business cards. So, you know, it’s so funny that you’re asking. So first of all, call yourself whatever you want.
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A founder and CEO is very common for a visionary. If you’re uncomfortable with visionary, that’s fine. I had a, I do a regular dinner with visionaries and then, uh, then I also do a regular dinner with integrators and I have my integrator dinner just last week and, uh, this subject came up. What w you know, what do you put on your business card and what won the day? What won the day is one of my clients said,
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My life has been infinitely better since I changed my title to integrator because nobody ever calls wanting to sell us something, asking to speak with the integrator. They asked for the president, the CEO, the CEO, blah, blah, blah. And everybody was like, Oh my God, I’m changing my title right away. Fantastic. So I’ve got, I’ve got integrators who are chiefs of staff.
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general managers, presidents, chief operating officers. It’s all over the board. And visionaries, when I was the visionary for EOS worldwide, I called myself a visionary, but in the legal documents and when business media was involved, it was CEO. Okay. So, it is what it is. And you teach this stuff, you gotta say visionary. So,
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Peyton, I could go, we could talk for hours and hours and hours. It is such a blessing and honor to have, wow, the former visionary and CEO of EOS Worldwide. I mean, I hear everywhere we’re talking about it’s EOS, EOS. I’m not saying we’re the first to this, far from it. It’s very popular framework and very popular book series, including your books. And so I’m so happy to have you on this program. If you’re interested in this program, please go ahead.
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If our listeners want to learn more about you or EOS, what are some good resources or places to go? Yeah, so the first place to start is eosworldwide.com. We built that site a hundred years ago to be the one place where you can find books, videos, access to people like me, professional EOS implementers. It’s the right place to start. And then the other thing I always say when I’m on a podcast is
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I’m genuinely enthused about helping the people who own and run entrepreneurial companies. So if somebody is listening to this and they have a question or they’re stuck with something and they want to talk to somebody, you’ll find my information on the show notes and you can find me through the EOS Worldwide website. Please feel free to reach out to me. I’m not too busy to help. I genuinely want you to get everything you want from your business. Wow. Thank you so much, Peyton.
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Thank you, Shelly, the integrator, for being on a call here. And remember to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, and get the episodes as they are released. Share with your friends. Until next time, go out there and be an all-star. An all-star.
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We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
