Six Steps to a Magical Practice

Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.

00:00
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management and training.

00:13
is reality and the world works like that. So the first step is your perception. How do you perceive your life? How do you perceive your dental practice? Do you look at your dental practice as a job or is it a creative act? And then I often will say to dentists when I do strategy calls with them, I say, is your vision? And what I mean by vision is what do you want after your practice? And I’ll joke off them and say, I wish for you to have a boring practice. I got to work on the language, but I say you come into your job, you love what you do, you’re

00:40
Your patients are happy, your team is happy, everybody’s making plenty of money and having a good work-life balance. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek. Obviously, we see the team is always the issue. That’s why people come to All-Star Dental Academy working with the team. But you have to have the vision that it’s not a job and I love what I do. And I think that’s why the culture of All-Star is so strong, is because we all love what we do. And the dentist that we attract, it’s the same way. Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy.

01:09
And I’m very excited today to interview Alex Nottingham, the founder and CEO of All-Star Dental Academy. And together, we’re going to be discussing the six steps to bringing magic into your dental practice based on Alex’s masterpiece and highly anticipated book, My Uncle the Magician, a book that makes life more magical. Well, welcome Alex. Yes. Thanks for having me.

01:36
Well, I want to first off, thanks Cheyenne. She, she’s been such a big help. She’s our, one of our executive coaches and our marketing director. And she provided a really good topic for us to discuss is adapting my uncle, the magician to, to dentistry for sure. It’s a book that as you talk about bringing magic into your life that can apply the subtitle is journey from heartbreak and fear to self love.

02:05
So this is a deep book or it can be a deep book. It’s a romance. It’s an adventure. I know you read it. Many people will see different things in it. It’s not a book that preaches to you. It’s a story with teachings and wisdom, but I wanted to highlight some areas of the book and put it into kind of a system that we can guide us a little bit more dental focus. And that’s kind of what Ulster General Academy is. We take wisdom.

02:31
in business and personal development. say we’re a personal business development company and we adapt it to dentistry. And obviously we have niches and we have specialists ourselves, you as president of coaching to make sure that we know the dental numbers. But at the end of the day, when we’re coaching and we’re leading our dentists and being part of them and their practice, it comes down to personal development. I know you do so much on that.

02:59
and your wife is a therapist and speaker as well. And at the end of the day, we get to that. If the personal isn’t dealt with, then nothing works. So that’s right. And so what I wanted to start with is the first step and the book, just so you know, the book isn’t laid out in these six steps. You’re going to find these nuggets as you go along. But I wanted to highlight some areas of the book and apply it to

03:27
our experiences in dentistry. So the first step is perception. The first step. And this is the core of the book. And I’m to go by, by heart, by the way, here, here’s a cover of the book. So you go, you can get it on all book sellers have it. You said it’s so pretty. What was that? It is pretty. Yeah. It’s a pretty cover. Yeah. It’s, it looks awesome. I think it’s an easy read. You know, I think

03:55
People who love self development, who are looking to always grow, looking to get an edge on how do I become a better human being? This is foundational. This is one of those, I think books to have right on your bookshelf that you go, Hey, this is something that when I read it, helped me, helped me shift into a better mindset is how I would frame it. But you’re right. I think the starting point is perception and identity. And I’ll let you kind of, well, I also wanted to say that.

04:25
We also have an audio book form. And I’m very proud of this because I spent hundreds of hours doing the audio with an audio director and it’s a great experience. My wife listened to, she read the book multiple times and then she listened to it. So this is great. It’s entertaining and you’re doing all the work for me. I know many of our dentists love audio books. So check that out as well. Get both. And it’s, yeah, people are saying they love the cover. They just want to have it to hold and look around. It’s a good looking book. Looks good in your bookshelf.

04:55
So definitely good to read, do both. You read, you can go back and reference some of the material, but it’s great also to listen. I did the best I could with acting for a CEO. So give me a break. I hope you enjoy it. Okay, the first step is perception. And actually for me too, instead of me making it up, let me just go to the first. We’re gonna go in our books, everybody. Let’s do a book club. Let’s go to page. Here we go. After the dedication or near the dedication.

05:24
we are after the table of contents is the premise of the entire book, which is as follows. The world is an illusion. It works by magic and the magic is perception. And if you change the way you perceive, you change the way the world works around you. In other words, you change reality. Perception is reality and the world works like that.

05:50
So the first step is your perception. How do you perceive your life? How do you perceive your dental practice? Do you look at your dental practice as a job or is it a creative act?

06:02
And then I often will say to dentists when I do strategy calls with them, I say, what is your vision? And what I mean by vision is, what do you want out of your practice? And I’ll joke often and say, I wish for you to have a boring practice. I got to work on the language. But I say, you come into your job, you love what you do, your patients are happy, your team is happy, everybody’s making plenty of money and having a good work life balance. It’s a bit tongue in cheek. Obviously we see the team is always the issue. That’s why people come to All-Star Dental Academy working with the team.

06:32
But you have to have the vision that it’s not a job and I love what I do. And I think that’s why the culture of All-Star is so strong is because we all love what we do. And the dentist that we attract, it’s the same way. And working on it. And I know many of you, or even before I get to that story, one area that I know you’re gonna say yes to is knowing your why. Why do you do what you do? What is your purpose? And as you’re aligned with why, and I’m gonna,

07:01
By the way, I’m gonna remind this a few times throughout this talk that some of these mindset work or vision work which relates to business development. We do a lot of this at our leadership retreat led by our president of coaching. That’s you, think, Eric, every January. So definitely check that out. And we’ll see as we go through some of these leadership tactics that you’ve teached. I’m gonna reference one, because I was a good student, Eric, and how it applies to the book.

07:31
So it starts with you and that’s what develops your culture. Now kind of a starting point for this discussion is I want to set a background of the first dentist that I ever known. That’s my dad. And many of you have seen the webinar, Dental Practice Excellence, and if you haven’t, I definitely recommend that as core competencies for any all-star or would-be all-star. And I talk about my father. My father’s a dentist.

07:59
He told me when I was very little, don’t be a dentist because he saw corporate dentistry coming in. Insurance companies were very strong back then or kind of taking over and he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. A Panky trained dentist, AGD fellow, high end cosmetics. He says, that’s it. I’m done. I have to get a partner. have to, he was scared. My mother was telling me too, it’s like your dad was scared of these corporate and insurance. And he’s just like, put, put this, this is perception.

08:30
This is it’s fear. There’s a lot of we’re not going to talk about here, but in the book, a lot of talk about how to face fear, deal with fear. So later in my middle to end of my dad’s career, I had the opportunity to help him. talked more about it in the webinar and he was able to shift his shift his perception. And we turned around that practice from it was what 1.2 and then went to one 2.8 2.4.

08:57
No, one million to 2.4 million in 18 months. And he was working with heads of state, celebrities, doing high-end cosmetic dentistry, which is what he wanted to do. He came into the practice looking forward to the practice. It was a change in perception. And what I often say is that dentistry is one of the greatest franchises ever developed. It’s a franchise. It’s a franchise you don’t have to pay for necessarily. You pay through training.

09:26
And you’re, I you do pay for it hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it can work if you follow these steps and all star is just building on top of that franchise that’s always existed. I mean, especially the clinical side. And so what’s pretty cool. And we’re seeing this as well as we’re seeing dentists leave corporate dentistry. The pendulum is turning. They’re saying, I learn what I learn. I’m going to follow the franchise. And a lot of them are like coming to all star and companies like ourselves and saying off the bat, I need.

09:56
coaching, support, let’s do it. Cause I know the corporates have the consulting built in to the model, right? Cause they want the formula. So, so I want to stop there. A few more, more points, a few other examples of how perception this, gave a big example of my father, how perception we can shift that and it changes the entire outlook of the practice. me unpack it just for a moment and translate. Cause

10:23
I think I want to make sure if people are listening, I’m trying to listen how they’re listening. Okay. What does that mean? So, uh, first for me, uh, are you mansplaining on me? Don’t do it. We’re going to explain this. So I, I think of it as response. Things are happening and how do I respond to it? Which in our world, we talk a lot about emotional intelligence and how do I perceive what’s happening and how do I control my response? Well, and how do I perceive what is, what is

10:52
appropriate in and appropriate out. And I think there’s a process that you go through in helping people understand, we’ll get to stop and slowing down. That’s my favorite part of the book. But where you really are processing in a way that’s healthy so that you don’t feel like you just have a J-O-B. You don’t even just have a calling. You have a passion. You’re passionate about what it is you’re doing. In the book, you go through this arc of even with All-Star and your decision-making process, which is what I love about the book is it’s a story that’s applicable.

11:20
that you take the lesson out of reading a story instead of here’s step one, here’s step two, here’s step three. So think about it for those who are listening, it’s like, okay, the first thing I gotta do is understand how am I perceiving things? And I’ll put a broad spectrum on it is how healthy is my perception? And how do I get healthy in my perception so I can even do the things I need to do well? And that’s foundational. That’s something that we all have to work on. And there’s lots of different.

11:49
I think approaches to this and I think you make it really clear in the book about how do you get to a place where you understand your why so you can be all in on what it is you’re doing. Cause I do agree with you. Dentistry is an incredible profession and it shocks me anytime I hear somebody saying, I’m not sure I want to be a dentist anymore. Something has happened there that has really broken them mentally and maybe it’s perception, they need to understand the magic of this. It’s always perception. And I think where

12:17
was talking to somebody today, which is interesting. She came from the Bahamas and she had a lot of failed businesses and she’s growing. But she said, I never had the mentors that a lot of Americans have had. So I had to go through this. I was blessed with a mentor, uncle Mark in the book. And he really set a foundation that I wouldn’t have been able to create all star without. I wouldn’t be able to have a culture and work with you and others that I look at it. said, well, I must be doing something well to have these amazing people that love this culture.

12:46
And that’s Uncle Mark. It’s all Uncle Mark. It really is. And so I wanted that mentorship for people to have that, bring Uncle Mark into their life, to be able to, hey, it’s perception. He talks about three ways of how to, three options and three steps to stop worrying. So there’s processes in the book. And to kind of put a button on this topic, and of course, perception is so powerful, we can unpack it even more. A few other examples.

13:15
Difficult patients, instead of looking this as a problem, Uncle Mark would say, it’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for growth. And you teach us a lot too. And team issues, we have team issues. Well, this is an opportunity to improve our leadership. We even have a leadership one day program every year for team leaders and team. We have a one day case acceptance program, which also has leadership qualities and so on for the entire team.

13:44
So it’s out there to improve so I can put my head in the sand and say, I can’t do it. I’ve tried everything. I love when Tony Robbins, his responsibility, said, I’ve tried everything. Well, how many things have you tried? Have you tried 10? No. Have you tried three? No. You tried one or two things and it just didn’t work. You gotta keep it going and look what as the glass half empty versus half full. We’re gonna go with half full. So that’s perception. Big part of the book.

14:13
Big part of the book. Okay, let’s move on to energy. So Uncle Mark, who’s a physician, he came to me, we talk about this in the book, and he says, Alex, do you know what I, the purpose or the goal of me being a physician, I say, do no harm. Ha ha ha ha ha, no. No, nephew. You’ll see I get in trouble in the book all the time. Smart ass. So.

14:43
What he said, no, it’s not the clinical work I do, it’s energy. What do mean? He says, I want my patients to leave with more energy than they came in with. And this is very similar to the great quote, it’s not what you say to someone, it’s how you make them feel. It’s how they make you feel. That’s what my father would always envy. Why are some of these dentists that clinical skills are subpar to him are crushing it?

15:11
because they have a great, yeah, you know as a coach, they have great emotional intelligence, which is what we do so much work at leadership. And we’re always working, we’re being coached on it. And I’ve gotten a lot of coach on it. And I know that Eric, you’ve seen me 15 years ago where I am now, it’s a milder work because I kept working on it. The personality, it’s not easy to do that, but well, it can be done. So it’s not the filling, it’s not the veneer, it’s not the root canal.

15:40
It’s giving your patients that time. It’s focusing on my energy, what I’m bringing to the practice, how they’re gonna feel. The outcome isn’t money. The best dentist that we know, the same thing about what is our COO of the company who runs the company, our boss, Shelly, says if you take care of the people, the people take care of the business.

16:04
So if you’re focusing on the energy and that’s really as a leader, you get that you come into the practice and you feel, do I feel good about this? I feel something’s off. feel you should be coming in excited. Not all the time. We’ve had had cruder critical conversations. So cute. Eric and I, whenever a critical conversation comes up, you’re like, Oh no, not that. And we both read it, but we have to have it on every couple of years. But, but it’s not like that all the time. You don’t want to feel.

16:32
nervous around the people you’re working with. You want to feel safe. You want to feel good energy. And that as a CEO is very important to maintain. Yeah. Yeah. So the unpacking of this from a dentistry, here’s what we hear from dentists. I just want to work on teeth. I just want to do the dentistry. Yes. Well, or they’ll say, uh, people drain me. People are driving me so much and they’re super analytical. They’re very detailed.

17:00
They’re very data research driven personalities, let’s say they’re task oriented and you can learn how to refocus that energy and actually see people as a task. I know it sounds weird, but you can actually see people as a task and say, Hey, I’m going to check the boxes of these questions. So how was it going with you, Alex? Oh, it’s been a great, you know, and actually work on how you engage with people and what’s your energy like?

17:29
People need to be drawn to you if you’re gonna be in any profession. People are gonna have to be drawn to you. And I do a whole presentation, I did think at our last summit, about energy management. Watching, and we do talk about in the book, My Uncle the Magician, ways to improve your energy, to be balanced, to be able to be there for your patients. I mean, we’re focusing on happiness. We’re focusing on uplifting our team, leadership, culture.

17:58
It’s not your practice numbers. It’s not your P and L and not often. Well, it will. We will see that improved energy and perception will translate to it, but you may not see it right away. You’re going to be, you could have a very successful, but toxic practice. That’s right. And that’s not a win-win. And so this is where we talk about the patient experience, your culture. So just ask yourself when you’re walking into your practice, when you’re working with your team,

18:28
Where’s your energy? it up and down? Working on improving the energy you bring to your team and that your team, everybody, when you come to, when you leave the practice, everybody has higher energy yourself and your team and the patients. And I think that if you can accomplish that, you can make a big difference in your practice. say all the time at leadership and in our coaching, your team is reflection of you. They’re just mirroring who you are. You’re getting people.

18:56
You’re attracting the people to your practice that work for you or patients, but let’s say team come to you because of who you are, because of the energy you have. And so you have to understand how to work on your energy and your persona, your character, all of that. So if you’re attracting the right people and they want to be there because they get it and their perception is, is actually comes into play at some point here. So yeah, that that’s, it’s a huge part of.

19:25
frustration for dentists. And we always say, okay, don’t always just point at your team. You’ve actually got three fingers pointing back at you. What’s your, what’s your ceiling? What’s your leadership energy like? And how are you, how are you, um, how are you being received by people? My son says his coach does this when he is PE coach you, because he doesn’t want any fingers pointing back at him. You like this, five fingers, all fingers. Yeah.

19:53
So we talked about perception, we talked about energy. Now the third step is hologram. And I think you were speaking about this. What is a hologram? When Uncle Mark talks about a hologram, it means the small reflects the whole. In the book, I remember telling my uncle, who’s a physician, he doesn’t smoke anymore, but he used to smoke cigars and I love the smell. And he had this cigar lighter that wasn’t working. And I say, he says, oh, they don’t make it like they used to. I says, well, you can get another one.

20:22
He said, have plenty of money, you’re a physician. And he goes, Alex? And I’m like, uh oh. Well, he used the, he put me on a place with that. And I said, I know, I know. And the hologram is, even though I’m, it’s not my place to judge someone of how they use their money. So that small action that I’m doing is showing how judgmental I am on many things. And

20:51
And so that was kind of a, so what’s nice about the book is you’ll see these kind of more extreme examples, maybe not as subtle, because I don’t make things subtle, of being able to see where you’re off. And so I’m gonna give an example. One of the classic examples of those people, those people, those people, are wonderful peoples, okay, that are using our training program or what have you. I think one question we often get,

21:21
Our online training program covers everything from phone skills, broken appointments, case acceptance, and so on. And often I’ll hear that the clinical team will say, this doesn’t apply to me. I don’t need to know the great call process, telephone, I don’t answer the phone. I just deal with the teeth. But let’s think about that. First of all, that’s not the best perception. But also, what does that say about, do you have a growth mindset?

21:51
Are you looking for how to think how things will work? And the small reflects the whole what’s in a phone call. Well, we teach most of the phone calls rapport. Do you not think that rapport skills will help everybody in the practice? I have, I had a practices. take the gray call process. I know you do this as well in the coaching department and adapt it for every position in the office. But you, you want to look at, have extreme makeover dentist that I interviewed once and he said,

22:18
My front office is often the least paid, but the most important part of the practice because they have to deal with new patient intakes and so on. If your hygienist and your assistant can handle a phone call, can role play a phone call and knows the great call process, knows the verbiage on broken appointments, they’re going to be outstanding with customer service. And the hologram is every step of the patient experience has to be phenomenal. If you break a step, you break rapport, people don’t trust you.

22:49
So that small, there was a line where there’s a great book that was written, biography based on, yeah, it wasn’t auto, but it was a biography based on Steve Jobs. In Steve Jobs, his father had him paint the fence. He painted the outside only. He says, why did you do that? Well, they’re not gonna see the inside. And his father said, everything counts. So that’s an example of the great Hall process as the small reflect in the whole.

23:18
So I talk about phone skills and just to kind of repeat here, perception should be, can learn everything versus, oh, we don’t love this. Then know it all. I know it all already. Again, that’s a problem. Go back to step one, perception, right? Yeah. Yeah. I love this. The small things matter. The hologram, the illusion of, I don’t need that. Or that’s not for me. I already know that there’s talking to someone else.

23:46
At the end of the day, if you’re a level 10 clinician, but you’re a level five at customer service, your physical plan’s a level five, your communication’s a level five, you’re not using the great process, anything, the perception now of the patient is you’re a level five clinician, and it’s gonna pull you back down. So we’ve gotta be great in all things, and yeah, it’s a great appointment process, it’s a great phone process. All of the things that we teach and train,

24:15
Apply to each aspect of this patient flow and team communication. We’re a great team. We greet each other. We build rapport. We engage with each other. We ask questions of each other. We’re paying attention and it’s, it’s yeah, it’s systematic, but it’s a great approach and it’s focused on little things mattering, making, making a big difference. want to give another example. When Heather was leading my father’s practice, the phone skills, and we went to a

24:43
was a trade show for the practice. And this guy who worked for a local water delivery service was kind of interested in cosmetics and talking. And a lot of the other offices like he’s a waste of time. Don’t follow up. We do so great. And Heather said, no, I’m going to follow up with him. I’m not going to assume. Turns out this guy came into a lot of money and he spent like $50,000 on total total mouth reconstruction.

25:12
And so again, the small reflects the whole. How do you treat the smallest among us? I know you’re a very spiritual person, Eric, and one that live, I always say, said, Eric’s one of those spiritual people that live it. They don’t just talk it. And it’s, you the one going to volunteer? Are you the one that’s going to, and not judging anyone. So I think that was a very powerful example. Another simple example, Dr. Running Late.

25:41
always wondering you’re late. What does that say about you and the practice and your respect for the patients? Annoying team members or annoyance by team members? Well, and what I mean is if there’s a little of annoyance, like I sense in our company if someone seemed a little annoyed, I want to work that out because that can be something bigger later. Are we listening for that? And it’s never too small. Another, I was speaking to Dennis recently.

26:11
and he cleans the toilets. He makes sure everything, all the hygiene is, is of the office is perfection. The small reflects the whole. That is hologram. Yeah. So powerful and it’s, cannot be missed. cannot be missed. That’s all right. So number four, I know you were so excited to get to this. This is my favorite. Stop. S T O P. So the way

26:39
Uncle Mark describes this in the book is that you want to freeze frame. You want to be able to stop reality for a second when something, when you’re at a balance, when something is going on, stop. And like in a movie, everything stops for a second and you can reorder and rethink which way am I going to go? Am I going to be reactive? Am I going to be proactive? What choice do I have? But by stopping taking

27:06
And there’s actually, if you look up online, there’s multiple mindfulness acronyms for STOP in terms of what do you proceed. But essentially, Uncle Mark likes to keep it simple. We’ll talk about that in a second. Is that stop, just stop. Step back, what am I doing? How can I be proactive? And again, with these steps, how’s my perception of the situation? How’s my energy, right?

27:33
Is there a hologram, something small that I’m missing that’s going to represent something bigger? So, oh, here we go. This is Eric. I said, I wrote this for you. When I took your leadership course, which I go every year, what I like about the leadership program is that you repeat a little bit, some things that we have to hear again, but you also add new stuff. And I remember the employee feedback model about deposits. And that was pretty profound.

28:02
is in order for you to be able to give feedback and build, you have to make deposits. Because I guess what I’m saying, and I’ll have you just talk about it briefly, but what I’m saying a reactive way is giving employee feedback and not stopping and saying, where do I stand with this employee? And now you’re dominating them, you’re making them feel uncomfortable.

28:30
Kind of give us a little quick, what is this and how does this apply to stop? The big umbrella for me on this is in the emotional intelligence framework, self-awareness, self-management. Yes. If I’m really aware of who I’m being, I recognize I need to stop. And I think the reason I love this so much is I’m the type of person I need to stop. I’m an ID personality style. And if I just stop for just a moment and thought about my approach to be better, and then underneath that is emotional deposits before emotional withdrawals.

29:00
And those crucial conversations that you have with people, those are well thought out. Those aren’t, you’re just not walking in street from the hip and going, you’re late again. You know, you’re really stopping and saying, what should my approach be? And I love this saying, I don’t even know where it comes from, but it says, we judge ourselves based upon our, just like who we are intrinsically, like our intentions. We judge ourselves on our intentions. We judge others on their actions or their words.

29:28
But if I really knew someone, if I was really pouring into them from a leadership standpoint, I would stop and go, it’s not actually how Alex is wired. I know Alex better than that thing I just witnessed or experienced. Let me ask him some questions to figure out what was going on there and then engage in a conversation that might be directive. That is healthy. And so I love the stop. Like if you could take one, I know we don’t want to simplify the book this much, but if you could take one thing out of this from a leadership.

29:58
from even a patient interaction standpoint. it’s like stop and just take, survey what’s going on and recognize what’s happening before you engage so quickly. Yeah. So I’m just going to throw a few other examples and then we’ll go to the next step, which is sometimes we get a bad review. I’m put that out there. How do we respond to that or feedback from a patient that’s complaining.

30:26
What do we do instead of reacting? What if production’s down for the month? Or you see an investment go down? What do we do? Stop. And we’re going back to this, right? Am I being reactive? And we have other systems to be able to deal with that, go for a walk. We also have mentors and coaches that help us work through it. And also giving it time, sleeping on it. Going back a step, energy. Where’s our energy?

30:55
If we, if our energy energy drops to reactivity, stop and do not proceed until your energy is, is comes back. Often we’ll force it. have the I personality and D you too, and we’ll just kind of force it. And I’ll pick on Eric. There’s a little bit, like Eric’s known and we love him. He always says, says, Alex, I’m your friend. like, what did you do this time? You got excited and you just pulled it. Eric is, is fire than aim.

31:25
We love it. We love it though. And, there’s self-awareness there. He’s improved though. Then he says, Alex, I was going to do it, but I didn’t do it this time. Yay. So we have a time. part though. I I that’s what I, I think that’s why I love this part of this book. I think it’s a part of who we are and what we teach. think it’s in our DNA is look, if we’re going to be healthy, this is, this is like, echoes my wife. If you’re going to be healthy, define what healthy is. Healthy is.

31:53
I could communicate very effectively. Let’s say that’s one of your definitions of being healthy. I could communicate very effectively. Well, in order to communicate effectively, my thoughts need to be processed into words, not words coming out and then thoughts trying to keep up with it. That’s why I think Stop works for me so much, because I am like, we’re a virtual company. We’re on islands, and we’re working out here, and I’m thinking, oh, Alex would love this, or wait, stop. I need to run this by. Let’s engage, and then let’s have process to it. Yeah.

32:23
And I think a couple thoughts. One is that what’s great about this book is you’re going to see what you need to see. There’s not one thing. It was written in a way that everybody will find what they want to take from it. And, and so I think that’s really important. And even, yeah, so I had another thought, but I think that this thought, the first thought was, was the best thought. So, all right. So we talked about stop.

32:52
So just to kind of review, perception is number one, then our energy, then hologram, which I’m going to call this a little differently at the end as we do the final summary, just to remember these three points. The fourth is stop. The fifth is simplify. So Uncle Mark would always say, for my mind to work, I have to take the complex to make it simple. I’m a simple person. He’s so humble.

33:16
And I say, well, you know so much, uncle Mark. And he’s like, I only know the process. Well, the process is kind of the core of the book. It’s a philosophy you’ll learn about. What is the process? So Eric, and you do a lot of joking about this, but probably the first, the first thing that comes to mind, we do a lot of this in dentistry is the recommendations. How do we take this complex dental jargon and make it down to earth? Eric dentistry, it comes across like,

33:45
this and I gotta tell you, before we jump in, I just was listening to Abby listen to a health professional explaining, was a dentist, explaining the connection sleep apnea to all these things. And she was so smart. She was using words that I, at 28 years of dentistry, had no idea what she was talking about. You know, she’s going maxillary, mandible, you know, she’s going through all these things. But the simple example is,

34:14
You know, when the dentist says, you know, you have an M O D L amalgam with defective margins in a class five in the buckle, let’s do a crown and a buildup on that. And that’s what I was waiting for. I was saying, that’s what I wanted to hear. That’s the line. And, we can do it over and over and over again and with different examples. But the point being is this, the most basic example of what we do in dentistry when it’s like the crazy math teacher who, you know, you put this complex algebraic, you know, formula or problem up here and

34:42
Instead of bringing the number over and changing the sign and flipping and dividing instead of multiplying, all those things, he goes from step one to five. And he just tells you the answer. Here’s how, not how I got here or what I’m worried about. I think in what we teach at All-Star is for your patient, you have to simplify it. They’re not going through all of this all day long. And it’s a lesson for me and what we teach. We need to simplify what we’re teaching.

35:09
And repetition, repetition, repetition, and go back through it from a coaching standpoint. We all can learn this lesson to figure out how to simplify. People don’t know what they don’t know. You don’t know what they don’t know. You got to start from ground zero and make it really simple from them to understand it. Repetition is the mother of skill. I really enjoy that quote. Repetition is a mother of skill. So a few other things to consider financial arrangements, simple systems that we can repeat.

35:39
Breaking down large goals. That’s a big part of leadership chunking goals into measurable actions. And we talked about some of the systems. you can say simplifying is like building systems. So the great call process systems are KPIs 95 five principle that we teach and so many of them. And I want to highlight self funding coaching. That’s something that we

36:06
We do at All Star Dental Academy, do leadership coaching as well, a bunch of coaching, but the foundation of what we do is self-funding coaching. What is this? Let’s simplify. How can we get coaching to pay for itself within 90 days? No contracts, and what happens? We have clients that are lasting years and years and years. But the model has taken this complex thing of dentistry, of growing your business, of coaching and consulting.

36:36
and simplifying it for people. Something that every coach that we teach can do. so that came to me is that we’re making this so much more complicated than it has to be. And then you build on it. So this is an example in practice management at Ulster Dental Academy, how we built a system. Everything we look at, I mean, that’s my job as visionary, is taking everything and you can allow some complexity.

37:05
but then taking it back to simplicity. Taking it back to simplicity. So that is number five, simplicity. And now let’s talk about our last step. The last step in the six steps to a magical practice, dental practice, is make your world better. Make the world around you better. So there’s a quote.

37:35
or discussion I have with Uncle Mark. And I say, I say thank you Uncle Mark for all the help that you’re giving me. And he says, I don’t exist. That’s it. What do mean you don’t exist? He says, I do everything for myself. That’s a funny way of looking at it. He says, Alex, what I do is by making the world around me better, I make my life better. Wow, that’s pretty profound.

38:05
So I think this is a wonderful way to round out these six steps. We start with the patient in the chair, perception, building energy. We’re simplifying things. We’re making aware of a hologram. We’re stopping. And to look at that our goal is to improve the lives of everyone around us, our employees, our patients.

38:35
our friends, our coaches, our neighbor, to create careers rather than jobs, to help that frightened patient feel safe, to give people confidence in their smiles. I mean, that’s what you can do. It was very interesting in the analysis of ABC’s Extreme Makeover many years ago, they said that

39:03
Dentistry even more than plastic surgery had the biggest impact on people’s confidence Your smile. Yeah, and that’s what you can do. You can you guys are have have therapy in your hand for their mouth and you can save lives with the oral systemic link in many issues relating to cancer and gum disease and so on but I think fortunately, it’s yes to saving life, but also building confidence and

39:32
having people feel better as people when they leave. Here’s what I would challenge people listening to this. I think it could show up in personal and professional. At the end of the day, one of the things I love about Abby and what she does is we actually look at our schedule because you forget, you forget and you focus on the cancellation you had that day instead of the seven patients you helped or whatever. And we look at our day and she said, tell me about your day. Now what I know that means for Abby is not just like, oh, it was good. It means give me something that was

40:02
You know, exciting prolific. was, it was something that, that would be really worth sharing. And I would say, look at your day and say, how did I make the world better around me today? At the end of this day, let me look back at it. Okay. Now let’s put that into at the dental office at your morning huddle. Our morning huddle agenda starts out with what was the best thing that happened yesterday? You could look at this and say, how do we make the world around us better yesterday? And that is a way to keep everyone in check to say,

40:32
Go back to why, go back up to perception, go back to the and reset our energy and get ready for this day. And I don’t think this, the six step is something that we need to skip over and just go, Hey, when you do all this is going to make your world better. think you need to make it take action. Accountability to it. Like have it have a tactical. Yeah. Practical tactical approach to saying, Hey, what are we actually doing to make the world better around you today? Yesterday? Yeah. So good. Well, I’m going to give you some, some clearer. mean, obviously.

41:03
This relates a lot to perception. I’m perceiving making a difference in people’s lives and making the world around me better. Obviously energy as well. Another thing to think about, I’ll get to that at the end with another teaching, but also I see dentists, other examples of this is charity, community, giving back. I have one dentist, this is an extreme example.

41:31
She left to Africa to start an orphanage and she came back and is building a practice solely to fund the orphanage. So talking about making the world better kudos to her. And, but there’s many ways that can be done. There’s a line from a famous, I think it’s a religious book, but it says, if you save, if you

42:01
If you save a life, you save the world.

42:06
And so you don’t know the impact. I scientists call this the butterfly effect. One person can change so many things. And I would say this kind of the round out this principle and I’m happy to hear your comments as well is remember it’s not about you. A friend of mine told me the other day, and I know you teach this often, my speaking is improving because when I did the audio book, the audio director’s like, nope, speak.

42:35
distinctly, right? And I’m like, oh my goodness, you’re all going to love it. Audiobook lot, a lot of work there, but I really enjoyed it is so it’s not about, it’s not about you. There’s this idea of servant leadership thought about me. I don’t come in with an agenda and there’s this concept that uncle Mark teaches, which is receive an order to share. We receive an order to share. If we receive something,

43:04
That could be money. I mean, abundance. We all have great abundance, wonderful families. You don’t, the universe, God, whatever you call it to be has given you something or you got lucky if you don’t believe in any of that. But still the law of averages, it’s good for you. But the way, I’ll put it this way. Uncle Mark has this system he calls the process. We don’t know.

43:31
In the process, and we talked about this in one of our last interviews, the process was based on many of the great scientists, think tanks, philosophers, psychotherapists, and they don’t know. But the reality is the world happens to work like this. That, I mean, you see when these famous athletes and so on and musicians, lots of money, wasted away with drugs and so on, because they lost being grounded. They made it about them.

43:59
and they found when they made it about them, the world became empty. The world became empty. So when you receive abundance, you must find a way to share them or what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna short circuit. If you’re not contributing, doesn’t mean the universe karma, okay fine. I would use the word karma in the book and Uncle Mark would say stop it with that. But my point is that if you get something

44:27
and you are not sharing or making about you, the short circuit is going to happen to your psyche and you’ll start to lose stuff, lose people because people can sense that you’re not in it for making help in the community. So I think that’s a really nice teaching to think about. it will take you back to perception. It’ll take you back to energy. It’ll take you back to those things that you stop and say, well, who, who am I here? Who am I being in this moment? And

44:56
I love that you mentioned servant leadership. It’s foundational to us in our, in our leadership training and our heroes acronym, the S is servant leader and teaching people how to be servant leaders. Cause like you’ve said, this is about how do I make the world better around us? How am I giving back in this? And the imagery I get on this is the water flowing into the dead end pond and it’s just stagnant and

45:24
yucky and instead of it flowing out, not only who is your mentor, but who are you mentoring? And it has to flow through you and have to be pouring into others. And I love that it’s, it’s the part of the making, making the world a better place section of this. And it’s, it’s a powerful tool and we need to acknowledge it. So let’s, let’s summarize the six steps. And this is something that we’re

45:52
We’re doing on a fly, we had some preparation, but we’re also seeing what comes through us. Uncle Mark talks about that too. How can we be a good conduit, if you will, for the teachings, for sharing with others? The first step is perception. Everything starts with perception. You change your whole world with, an other’s world with perception. The second step is energy. Where is your energy at?

46:22
And now in terms of like this model, I was kind of thinking about some of these. So we can say the third step is hologram. It could also be, it could be details. I mean, as we’re going through. I don’t know what, how we find different acronyms or acronyms, but other ways of saying it.

46:49
Labeling it somehow like labeling it. So so hologram detail small reflects the whole and And now we’re building on it. The next step is stop now stop another way of saying stop is your response So you have your perception you have the right energy We’ll just fill in details for now that we’re getting more details from it because the small reflects the hole and You have to make sure that you know everything there. There’s something that

47:17
Uncle Mark teaches is not in the book. I’m taking notes of so many things that Uncle Mark teaches. I couldn’t fit it all. Never assume, presume or anticipate. Make sure you see the entire picture, the hologram, the details. The next is a response. Stop. Step back. Get a lay of the land. What do do next? The fifth step is simplify. Taking the complex, making it simple. So we’re really refining what we’re doing.

47:46
And at the very end, we call making the world around you better. We can also call that service, service. So play with these teachings, make the six steps, embody them for yourself. But these are a sampling of some of the teachings. There’s many others in the book. And what’s great and so many of the readers and listeners have said is like different.

48:15
different teachings will stand out to them and they don’t feel that they’re being preached to, that anybody know. And I say this, I don’t know. I’m just the messenger. I was blessed with a great teacher. And why am I doing what I’m doing? Why am I doing? We’ve built a wonderful company at All-Star General Academy. We have opportunities to get back. We’re very grateful.

48:43
This was actually that last step. I’ve been giving so many blessings and this is a book that I’ve been working on for 20 years. And I wanted to make sure that I share that journey and this great person who gave me this wisdom. Not everybody has wisdom and that’s okay. Some parents give you love. My father is a great dad, a great family. My uncle Mark is not as lovey-dovey, but he’s got wisdom.

49:12
And I wanted to, to, to, grab that, put that in a bottle and, share it with everyone. So I’ll also say that for those that are interested in the book, you can, you can find it on all booksellers all around. I’m really grateful. I have a, a traditional great publisher, Ben Bella books. The imprint is Matt, Matt Holt’s book, Matt Holt books, whatever that means.

49:40
So some of these publishers have imprints, which are, they bring on fame, pretty well known publishers to lead their book division. But this you can find anywhere Amazon, Barnes and Noble. That’s there. The audio book is on audible or Amazon, same company and also on Apple books. Very easy to get. I, I recommend we talked about in the beginning, get them all. Here’s the cool thing. So the hardcover is so nice. And it’s a very, like you said, it looks good on your bookshelf. The, the audio is in a wonderful.

50:10
Experience because so many people say to me that I want the narrator I want the one who wrote the book to do it and I believe that’s important I’m a kind of an audio snob I like to make sure that as long as the the audio that the narrator has a half way decent voice I prefer them to do it and here’s the cool thing. There’s something called whisper sink if you get the the If you get through Amazon or Kindle if you get the electronic version

50:38
and you get the audio version, you can watch it speak with each word. If you want that experience, which is fun sometimes. Anyways, that’s where you can get there. A few other quick resources. I highly recommend action steps from this podcast. Of course, get the book. I want to point out, if you haven’t seen the Dental Practice Excellence podcast, go to allstartdentalacademy.com. You can click there. Webinar, watch that free great training on practice management.

51:07
the vision of what we do, but more so some really good educational material for there. Number two, go to our events page. We have events that we do throughout the year. Our big one is leadership retreat only for dentists. A lot of this stuff, I would say if any program, any events that we do, the one that applies most to this book and personal development is the leadership retreat. It’s a highly exclusive kind of group. We limit attendance. It’s not a huge event.

51:36
It’s on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. Typically it’s going to be somewhere very nice and warm. So we’ve had it there for a while. And, and so I would just check out the dates and the location. Yeah. Yeah. That’d be awesome. I look, it’s, overlays so well with what we teach and do and repetition, right? That’s what we’re talking about here. Repetition, get the book. You’re going to love the read. You’re going to have a lot of fun with it and you’re going to be cheering. Uh, just, just a little.

52:02
you’re gonna be cheering for Heather in this book. I just want everybody to know, you’ll be rooting for Heather. So, love it, it’s a great book. Alex, thank you so much for giving us time to unpack it some more here and give us some application for a Monday morning in the dental office. What am I gonna do with this? How do I use this? This is great. It’s great. Have a magical day. Alright, thanks everyone. And until next time, go out there and be an All-Star.

52:36
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at AllStarDentalAcademy.com