Shelly VanEpps and Alex Nottingham JD MBA discuss the “Law of the Rubber Band,” highlighting growth by stepping outside comfort zones in small, manageable steps.
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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 Shelly Van Epps, the COO and lead coach at All-Stars Dental Academy. And our topic is the law of the rubber band. Welcome Shelly. Alex, I’m excited to be here today. This is an exciting topic. Yes. We’re doing these shorter interviews, fun interviews.
00:31
you and me and I say that I’m going to call come up with a name for it. Is it the Shelley and Alex show the Alex and Shelley show? I don’t know. Or the whatever show, SH whatever. Okay. So that’s a whole nother area. So let’s, let’s talk about the law of the rubber band. This is around leadership. So before we start, we have three sections. We’re going to talk a little bit about the content. We’re going to talk about a coaching hack or tip since you’re a coach for all star lead coach.
01:01
and then some call to actions and resources. So tell me about the law of the rubber band. It’s a really fun thing that I heard first off. I know it comes from a lot of different places, but John Maxwell is where I heard it. And the law of the rubber band says that true life begins at the end of our comfort zone and we arrive there by stretching. And so I like to point this stretch it.
01:27
That’s right. I like to use it from an analogy of asking people when a rubber, when you have a rubber band, when is it actually working and that’s when it’s stretched. Right. You’re utilizing it. If you’re using rubber band to hold some things together, you have to stretch it. Otherwise it just falls right off of that particular your hair or your product or whatever it is that you’re trying to hold together. So the law of the rubber band is essentially saying it’s not working unless it’s stretching. In a practice, what I like to. Like.
01:55
kind of bring that back to his team members. I hear all the time, I hate role play. It’s so uncomfortable. I don’t wanna do it. I’m afraid of failing. Like listen, when you’re stretching, you’re growing. That pain that you’re experiencing is growth. And so one thing that I like to make sure to mention is that we’re not gonna stretch you so far that you snap. That’s what happens to a rubber band when we take it and we just rip it apart. We’re not gonna do that to you. As a coach, as a practice, we wanna just nurture you, get you to grow.
02:25
a little bit at a time, small baby steps, and then you’re going to see that result on the other side of it. If you stretch too fast, if you grow too fast, it’s not going to last. And so we want to go in small increments just outside your comfort zone. And that’s where we start to continue to see that growth. I was talking to my dad today, the dentist, about lifting weights. And actually, kind of as you’re talking about, I’m thinking about a tendon or a muscle and they’re
02:54
Well, I don’t think they like to be stretched, but when they are stretched, there and they are taxed, I think they do like some, you know, our attendance that helps it grow too much. You injure yourself and too little. They contract and you lose flexibility. So anything on life, it is this rubber band effect, finding that, that medium, that middle place between you’re overcoming your comfort zone, but not going too far. You know, they say, get out of side of your comfort zone. This is the idea of the rubber band.
03:24
But if you go too far outside, you traumatize yourself. I remember even today we were talking with Heather, the co-owner, about that’s an opportunity. We were talking about going live on, which we’re gonna do later, and there’s an opportunity to push yourself a little bit. And that’s where you have to find in terms of growth. Okay, so that makes sense. The law of the rubber band, we don’t want to push too far, of course, and we don’t wanna underutilize, because then we just kinda stay where we are.
03:54
And everything we do, anything you want to improve on, there’s gotta be a little bit of discomfort and finding ways to embrace a discomfort. So, yeah. When you stretch too far and then you go backwards, all of a sudden you start to get bored. Like think of in your analysis, if you were lifting, I don’t know, 20 pound weights, and all of a sudden you go to a five pound weight and you’re like, you could just use your two fingers and you’re like, do do do, it’s not doing anything anymore. Wrong fingers. Yeah, I know, right? It’s not doing anything for you anymore.
04:24
It’s literally just an activity that is getting no benefit. You’re not getting any benefit out of it. And so once you’ve stretched to go backwards, it’s just kind of like, what was I doing back there? It doesn’t even feel right anymore. So I like to put that into perspective for team members, especially if they’ve stretched so far and then all of a sudden they take on a different responsibility that’s backwards. Nobody likes to take steps backwards.
04:54
necessarily. So I just know it
05:23
challenging ourselves, we will go backwards. And I think what’s also important to do, and this might be in your, your action steps, we’ll say in a moment, but one of the issues that we’re laying out is what’s my motivation, like why do the rubber band? Because sometimes it’s like, this is uncomfortable. Why should I even do it? And I think part of that is there, we have to tap into what our motivation is because like even with Heather, when we talk about this, like going out there and speaking, it can be anybody who’s
05:52
a decent speaker will feel some emotions and some fear. And I think the question is, well, what’s the outcome? What’s the benefit from that that you grow personally? Give an example, went to Disney World and I was a little afraid of going on Tron because I was traumatized by Guardians of the Galaxy. They’ve got a great ride, but you spin around and you go fast. And it’s too many things at one time. But I went on it and it was actually quite tame. I enjoyed it and I felt really good about that. So I stretch. So now I’m looking forward to doing that and others.
06:20
So I think this is a great, there’s so many ways that we can go about doing it. And also for those that are listening, I love bringing on Shelley and talking about this because she’s coaching. We live this when something comes up, rubber band, let’s talk about that. I did a whole podcast about the firefighter and fire lighter that you, you taught me. I think we should do another, we should do an episode about that. We can talk about it live. I was just talking about you, but we remember to utilize those things. And the same thing in the office, as your coach, as you learn these things,
06:49
apply them. Okay. So that’s the idea of the law of the rubber band. Let’s talk about our coaching tip for this podcast. Tell me. I like to use this. We’ll go off of this law of the rubber band to some extent, but when it comes in your practice, stepping outside your comfort zone and talking to your team members in a one on one process. And it really goes a long way. I just was at an onsite a couple of weeks ago and there’s some turmoil.
07:18
couldn’t put our finger on it, started doing one-on-ones, just sitting down and talking to the team, one-on-one, how are you doing, what’s going really well, what things are you challenged by, how can I support you? That one short meeting with each team member turned that practice around almost instantly. It was like the camaraderie came back, the excitement came back.
07:47
The team was gelling again. I do have to say it’s not just the leader or the owner or the office manager who should be having those one-on-ones. I absolutely love it when you can carve out enough time to do this as a round robin, meaning each team member is meeting with each other. So if you have an admin team member, they are literally meeting with your hygienist, your assistant, every single team member, and you can go online. You can look up different.
08:14
If you’re a sports person, you can find these different round robin simulators and tell everybody your team number one, two, three, it’ll tell you what order to go in. You don’t have to come up with a schedule. Plug it in there. We have 17 members. Give me a round robin. Set a timer five to seven minutes for each session and just let them talk to one another and how they can support each other. It is practice changing. I would say life changing. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it is practice changing. It is.
08:44
So that’s my, that’s my hack. And I think with the hack and speaking about law of the rubber band, it, and we were talking about this about clients that it’s, I say communication, confrontation, there’s so much fear, even I’m afraid to do sometimes, but we all face that we don’t, we, we’re approval addiction, which is another thing we teach a lot and wanting people to like us, but we have to be able to have those important.
09:13
crucial conversations with our team. Those one-on-ones are able to do get that feedback. And if you have a structure to it, a lot of doctors that I’ve done this with, they’re like, they’re just gonna sit and they’re gonna chit chat and talk to one another about where they’re gonna go for coffee or something. And I said, not if you give them a structure and a purpose in why they’re doing this and acknowledge that it may be somewhat uncomfortable. That’s how it ties to the law of the rubber band.
09:39
If you’re going to ask another team member for help, that shows for some personalities that makes them extremely vulnerable, makes them feel weaker, not worthy or not able or capable to do their job. But if they have the support of their team and they know, Hey, she’s got my back or he has my back. It just, I mean, the transformation that can happen with that one simple activity is it’s huge. Tremendous. Couldn’t talk about it enough. So let’s talk about.
10:09
What’s new at All-Star? Yeah, so off of leadership, we have limited space at our leadership retreat coming up in July. The Fort Lauderdale, Lagomar Beach and Club, Beach Resort and Club, fancy name, amazing place, amazing hospitality over there at the Lagomar. And we are so, so fortunate to be headed back that way. And it is going to be headed up by our president of coaching, Eric Vickery.
10:38
myself and you, the three of us are, the three amigos are gonna be running the leadership retreat this year and it’s for doctors. Like I said, limited seating, I think we max out at 25 and we already are more than halfway there. So we’re limited seating and we just hope to get some more doctors who really wanna focus on themselves, how they can help grow their practice, work on their leadership, their vision, their mission in a retreat style.
11:07
application. It is not a lecture. It is a work on yourself two days. And so we’re super excited about it. First time we’ve been able to do it as a two day retreat. We’ve done it as a one day. It just wasn’t enough time to really be able to dive in and get really in the nitty gritty. And that’s the goal this time. So super excited about it. That’s awesome. I remember talking to Eric about this and I’m like, well, why are we doing these leadership retreats? And
11:37
And he’s like, well, our clients need it. And as we talked more about it, we see that there are, there’s a training, but it all comes back to leadership, communication, things that we’re talking about, the one-on-ones. How do we, how do we give feedback? That’s I think one of the most difficult situations. I talk about this in our webinar. If you’ve been seen at Ulst backslash webinar, I talk about the ADA.
12:03
States that staff related issues are the biggest problem for dental practices and for dentists. They don’t want to deal with the team. They don’t mind the team if they’re happy, but anything that’s they have to express something that’s not right, it’s very passive aggressive or they just suffer. But with leadership, we always have to start with ourselves and Shelley as our COO, make sure that the CEO is in line and that I’m listening. And we were talking about this recently, giving me feedback for me and how I can be better.
12:33
understanding my limitations. You know, I know that there’s, I can stretch only so far and there’s certain things I can do and what can I learn and what systems can we put in place to help that and so on. So I think it’s important to have that and that humility and see what other leaders do, emotional intelligence and working on oneself. Not only am I looking forward to presenting, but I’m looking forward to participating and learning from everybody. And I think that’s the idea. And I think I know, and I’ve done it before, of leadership. So it’s an amazing program.
13:03
Where can we learn more about the leadership program? Where do we go? Go right to our website, click on events. It’s All-Star Dental Academy, facts.com. Yeah, you can click, yeah, events take you there. And if you go there, you just click the button, events, you’re there, and you can find out about leadership. And you can see all of our events, but that one in particular, that’s our next one that’s coming up. Coming up. I wanted to make sure to mention it. I’m so excited about it, it’s gonna be amazing. Thank you, Shelley Van Epps. And what I like to do for you that are listening,
13:33
So if you’re in the podcast, of course, and you’re driving, you can’t do that. But in terms of comment, I like the comment. Tell us about your experiences of the law of the rubber band. If you’re on YouTube or Facebook and you’re listening to this, whatever posts on there, and we can have a discussion about different ways that you’re utilizing this insight. And of course, follow us, subscribe, share with your friends. And until next time, everyone, go out there and be an All-Star.
14:00
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
