Do you often feel like your homebase emotionally is a little … chaotic? Kiera reminds listeners that having a “calm” practice doesn’t necessarily mean having a slow practice; rather, it’s an intentional place, and it’s worth existing in.
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Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is such a great day. It's podcast day and I'm so excited to be here with all of you. I hope that you're excited for today. And again, I hope that you just remember that we are truly so blessed and so lucky to be living in the world of dentistry. I love being in dentistry. I love helping people have smiles. I love that like smiles are contagious, that good dentistry is contagious, that great teams are contagious. And today, today's podcast is
? calm is contagious and so is chaos. And, I think a calm practice model is really something that's going to help high performing offices feel easier. And I was actually talking to one of my business coaches the other day and he said, Kiera, I just want you to know that chaos is contagious. And so is calm. ? our company is going through some really evolutionary changes. I'm very excited about them, but at the same time, I've made the joke that sometimes I feel like an orange juice being squoze. And the other day told my husband, was like, no, no.
that's too much juice that comes out of one squeeze, I actually feel like an olive. Like you are pressing everything out of me to get one teeny tiny drop of olive juice ? or olive oil. And I just feel like sometimes practice owners, might feel this way. Office managers, you might feel this way where ? sometimes that chaos is very, very contagious. And sometimes I think we accidentally live there. That might be our emotional home that we live in. It might be the place that we naturally go back to. And so just thinking that maybe there is another path.
maybe you coming in with a space in the center of calm and seeing how your team and your patients respond to that rather than coming in with this chaos. I did the trend, the AI trend where you ask chat GPT to make you a character based on what it knows about you. And it was fascinating for me because the character I got was me in a business suit. was holding papers. had traction in the background. had, it was kind of this like a tornado flurry behind me and I was holding a barbell weight because I do like to work out.
and I was in a black and white, so black skirt, white shirt, like holding this barbell weight in my hand and there's a tornado coming down behind me with like papers kind of flying and it was like, you're in this building phase of a little bit of chaos and this tornado. And then I decided to ask it like, well, based on where you know our company is going and where you know I'm going, build me a picture that looks like that. And it was fascinating because there was me in a cream suit, no black and white.
I was sitting there actually barefoot. So I'm in like a very professional suit. My arms were folded. I was very much at like peace and calm and ease. was at, there was like a sun. So it was like Hawaii slash Greece. Like I love to travel, but it was behind me. So was like no longer chasing or striving. was there. Family was incorporated rather than like being there. Working was part of my like Zen. And that's the image that I hold. And I think that that analogy and that story hopefully just shows that both are real.
I'm the same person and I'm living in a world of chaos or I'm living in a world of calm. And even my body feels better when I think about me being calm. And I think that there's times of chaos and there's times of calm. And I was actually chatting with my therapist the other day and we were talking about this like chaos versus calm, this force versus flow, this like drive and hit results versus like, you know, have flow. And she said, Kiera, it's kind of like being in a kayak. And she said, you know, a lot of people are trying to like force.
So you get in the kayak and you're rowing upstream and you're like working really, really, really, really hard to get somewhere, but you're going against everything. And it really is chaotic and you get exhausted and you get burnout. And I think so many practices feel this way. And she's like, versus Kiera, think what you think of calm or flow is like, you just get in the kayak, put your hands in the air and let go of the paddle and you just float wherever you're going to go. And she said, that's actually not flow, that's apathy. She said, flow or this calm is when you're actually in the kayak and you're looking ahead.
and you see rapids or you see a rock and you like put the paddle in to steer around it. And then when it's calm, you actually enjoy that calm rather than having your focus so far down that you're afraid of the rapids that you forget to enjoy the moment you're in today. And hopefully with some of those analogies I've given and some of those examples, you can see yourself in a practice of both of these are contagious. You can be the Kiera and the tornado where it's like, I got the barbell and I'm doing it all, but I'm exhausted and there's a smile, but it's a fleeting smile.
or there can be this calm and centered. And so today, just helping you realize that like a calm practice is not a slower one. It's a very intentional, right? Like me having two businesses, a lot of business owners, when you look at them, a lot of our multimillion, I'm talking my five, 10, 15, 20, $30 million practices, it's very different who that owner is compared to my like startup one, two, $3 million. And what I've noticed, and even some of the five, 10, 15, I'm not saying just when you hit a certain dollar amount, you become this.
But what I do see is these owners are very intentional with their time. One that runs a $30 million organization, works out, doesn't have any apps on their phone, ? has another side business. They're running all these practices. But when you meet this person, you don't feel that anxiousness. You feel this like very much like they're willing to just sit down and have coffee with you and chat with you about your life.
It's very fascinating. And so I also hope that you realize like calm is not a indicator that you're a slower practice. It's an indicator that you're intentional and chaos is not an indicator of growth. think sometimes even for myself, it's like, but if we're having chaos, it's like what I'm darting through traffic, am I really making progress or does it just feel good to have an adrenaline rush? And so chaos is not a sign of growth. Most of the time chaos means that there's missing structure. Now there's going to be times, right? There will be times of rapids. There will be times of
boulders coming down the river, but we don't have to stay there and we don't have to live there. And so I just wanted to kind of go through today a couple of quick tips that I see of these calm, like flourishing, thriving, imagine me sitting there, cream colored suit, very calm. Like literally that's the image that I have in my mind of who I want to be and the practice I want to have and the business I want to create. Because to me, that's more sustainable. That's more fun for my team. It's more fun for me.
And so just going through that. if you guys don't know who we are, I'm Kiera Dent Dental A Team. I'm obsessed with all things dentistry. Our philosophy of Dental A Team is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible and to literally break through the myth that to have a successful practice, you have to be stressed. You have to have chaos. I do believe running a successful practice should be easy and it can be easy with the right team that's empowered. I believe you can have it all. And so ? really truly, I wanna just help you see that like,
You are not always just going to be calm and you're not always going to be chaotic. There's going to be that. But what is your baseline center that you go back to? I think is more of what it is. And for someone like Kiera, who chat GPT says there's a tornado around. I actually just got back from a trip and my team said, Kiera, you feel so calm. And I do think that there's intentionality behind it. I want to show up differently. And I think there's a few best practices that I'm happy to share. So I think calm comes from predictability, not personality. ? I'm a very vibrant human and yet there's calm that comes from predictability. So
Like when we look at this, it's consistent scheduling patterns. It's hitting our daily targets. It's making sure we know our profit margins. It's making sure that our whole team is following structure and processes. And so when we go through a practice assessment with new offices, we talk about, you have a vision and a 10 year target together? And does your team actually know where we're headed? Then do we use KPIs and data to make decisions? Are we profitable? And do we have our systems documented and in place? And do we have right people, right seats?
And then based on those answers, it usually determines if we're stressed out or not. And usually that stress level influences the rest of those other items within a circle. And the more stressed the doctor is, usually the lower those numbers are. And so when we look at it of how do we have like what a good day looks like in our practice, how do we have our systems being documented and followed by all? How do we ensure that we have the correct processes and flow and scheduling and all of that? It does not happen overnight, but it is being very intentional. And I will say a crazy schedule.
creates KZ dental practices, not scheduling and driving patients to where we want them to schedule rather than saying, where do you want to schedule? All these little, little minute decisions that we make throughout our day, how we communicate, they actually create more or less chaos. Having said structured meetings, I will tell you the practice that is multi-millions, 10, 15, 20, 30. I'm not joking. Every single department, every single practice meets every single week for meetings. It's structured. There's agendas. There's accountability. And my company,
Mondays are meeting days. have our leadership meeting. We have our marketing and client success meeting. We have our consultant meeting. Like we are very, very, very intentional. I meet with my executive assistants and we go through everything. Everything is mapped out. There are agendas. There's follow through. There's follow up. We have tracking systems for it. We review our numbers. We have a scorecard. And this is what we teach practices to do. And I think when you have that predictability as an owner, usually your stress comes from people not doing the jobs that you think that they should be doing.
or cashflow. Typically, those are like one of the two areas that you're stressed out. Sometimes there's other things, but usually it's one of those two levers of a practice. ? And then like you just feel the weight of it all on yourself. So then you run around crazy creating this tornado and then you are stressed out. And so for this of how do we actually build this structure for our team? And so I feel like if you are driving, sometimes you can actually be driving and hitting huge numbers and huge success, but you feel like you're exhausted at the end of the day. And I feel like where's the and can we have
great success in production and happiness where we're leaving the end of the day. The answer is yes, but it's intentional, it's designed and it's slowly chipping away. Just like with like a lot of compliance things, we're not going to be compliant overnight. You're not going to be this calm practice overnight, but I would look at your practice and I would do a little autopsy of it, of where is the bulk of your stress coming from? I can't tell you how often I do this. It's usually when I'm very stressed. I try to do it at least once every three to six months of what's causing me the most amount of stress and where can we fix systems? Where can I delegate and elevate?
And then how can I actually be more intentional and show up better? I've learned that having meetings right at 8 a.m. stresses me out to no end, especially on Monday mornings. So we've moved those to where I have them at 10, 30 or 11 so I can come in prepared and I'm not showing up frantic. So whatever your rhythm is, whatever your model is, I really do believe take an audit of your practice and let's see where we could be 1 % more intentional. And don't worry, you can have a whole running list, but we've got to prioritize the top one or two things. That's what we as consultants are really good at doing is practices usually have like.
I wanna do everything and that's the chaos like throw up. And we're like, perfect, let's like dig through and sort through and like, let's work with this and this. These two items are gonna reduce your stress dramatically right away. So I would recommend like, look to see where you feel the most unpredictable, the most stressed and let's identify that and let's either elevate and delegate or create systems and processes or fix it to figure out what it is. Maybe you're not looking at the numbers consistently. Maybe you're scheduling a psychotic. Maybe we're not closing enough cases.
there is usually one or two massive pain points. And if we just fix those one or two, you're actually gonna move from that chaos to calm very quickly. And what you'll see is a result of actually exponential growth. So the next ? piece that I've noticed with these calm versus chaotic practices is calm practices remove the decision fatigue. So you're not sitting there making decision after decision after decision, right? We have a set process of how we schedule. We have a set process of how we hire. We have a set process of how we...
set up a room for filling our crown. We have a set process for how we run our leadership meetings. We have a set process for how we terminate people. That is like, I feel as a business owner, and Jason and I talk about it a lot, it's like death by a thousand cuts. And I'm like, I don't want to answer another freaking question. If I see another Slack message, like I'm out and it's just because you're just pecked to death with decision after decision after decision. But to me, that's an indicator of we lack systems and we lack accountability to those systems. So what we can do is like,
doctors where you may be the bottleneck, like what's one or two things where you're like, I am pecked to death on these questions. Great. Who really should own that? And how can we delegate and elevate to that person where we're not being apathy, we're not in the kayak or we're just throwing the paddle in the water and saying, take me where you want me. It's, very intentional with this. So there's less decisions that need to be made. I will tell you, this is a, this is a snowball approach and it feels like you will never get there. And you slowly start adding pieces one by one, by one, by one, by one.
and that snowball starts to compact and it feels like it's so fluffy and it's not getting together. And then we start to roll it and it gets a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger, meaning less and less and less is sitting on your shoulders. A lot of times through this, you can actually go through those matrix where it says like, what are you good at? you, and you love doing what are you good at, but you hate doing, what do you want to be good at? But you're actually not good at it. And what do you like not good at and hate doing? You can actually start to categorize your, ? your tasks within those that oftentimes helps you figure out where to delegate.
where to elevate. I think doctors and OMS who do this together, you might be able to find these gaps. So we remove that decision fatigue because owner doctors, you're not the only one who has this office managers. You're also having it to where you're just like, we have a team member, Kaylee, and she like taught elementary school for quite some time. And she'd be like, my lid is flipped. And it's like, there's just too much on us that creates that chaos. And either what we do is then we stay in that chaos or we become apathetic and we just stop caring. And that's where it leads to burnout. And so how can we have like,
Systemization, and like I said, it's not an overnight sensation. Dental A Team has so many systems, we've got so many processes, we've got onboarding, we've got terminating, we've got documents, we've got resources, we have people to help out, we've got tons of set processes and systems for you. And I think once you have that, you can then start to have ownership. We can have defined decisions. And then we also have documented standards. You start to build what's called a knowledge base. There's a great book called Come Up for Air that really talks about how to systematize this.
And it's not rigidity, it's just relief. Like the team now knows like, okay, when one plus one, like it's two and we do this. If it's red and green, we do this. They're not having to sit there and be like, hey doctor, what do you want me do for this? Hey, what do you want me to do for this? Like even for myself, like people are like, well, what do you want for birthday gifts? And I finally called Britt last night and I said, Britt, we just need a process for this. Like it's getting too large and too big. And I'm realizing these are decisions I don't need to be making constantly, but they just run in the back of the white noise. And I think,
once you commit to, I'm gonna be calm and profitable, you start to realize these things that are just pecking you to death and we start to make changes for it. And so I just want you to know that like very sophisticated practice owners actually make less and less decisions. I will also say that it's an identity loss and an identity shift that a lot of these owners feel because you're so used to being the go-to girl or guy that everything's coming through and you're like, I don't want that anymore. So then when people stop needing you, it becomes weird. And you actually sometimes,
Myself, I'm only speaking for Kiera. You might not be this way and I hope you're not You might actually go create chaos to feel important. So also look at yourself and sometimes we've been in this chaos I don't know like Psychoticness I've been there I've lived there to where that feels comfortable for me and when I'm calm and things are not broken Sometimes I wonder like what's going on and I go and create chaos So I think also know thyself and watch yourself to see like what is a decision that I'm making constantly that I could have someone else make
I think having a really good org chart or accountability chart has really streamlined it for us. had a great fractional COO come into our company. She organized it really well for us. And it was like, so I literally pulled out the legend. I'm like, okay, this decision should go to this person. And it's a reworking and I'm not going to lie to you. I felt like we were a snow globe that was shaken up and it lasted for about three months of just pure hell and chaos. But then it started to shift down and it was like, perfect. Britt makes these decisions. Shelbi makes these decisions. Tiff makes these decisions. Paul, Jenna.
down the line, Doug, Tyler, all of our team, these are the decisions are capable of making. And then when something comes up, people are like, Hey, who is this? And we all talk about like, based on the job duties, based on the job descriptions, this should go under this person. And then how can we give them the autonomy and the guidance to where I'm not answering every single decision, but we've got enough guidance around it to where I'm not having to answer every single one of these questions. So I'd say right now is a quick call to action on that is
figure out what decisions are coming past your desk every single day that you're like, this is not sustainable. And then let's create a delegation elevation and a system in a process to make it to where these decisions are not coming by you. And then point three that I want to make is calm is a leadership signal, not just a feeling. And so when I look at it, you can actually see how doctors operate. So a very chaotic practice is doctors rush, team fails, that patients fail it, mistakes increase. Calm leaders,
pause instead of react, they address issues early and they protect recovery times. Like there's literally CEO time built into their schedule. And what it looks like is when we have this of ? running frantic and everybody's feeling it and we're making very like in the minute decisions. I started like figuring it out where we have an agenda and we actually, it's our parking lot. And that has saved me so much of those like on the fly decision-making. It's like, nope, put it there. If it's not something that has to be answered life or death today.
We actually have it to where I respond to my questions usually once a week with our team. like, you can even just feel like, as I say that, I went from this like, my gosh, it's like bombarding me constantly to I have a set day, I have a set time, my team knows when I'm gonna respond to them. They can get back. Now you might be like, well, Kiera, patients are calling. 95 % of the patient issues, like there's some that need to have emergent issues. And I still have a folder that is must do today. Usually there are two items in that folder every single day that are absolute must do today.
And half of those actually aren't even like must do's today. So for you to have a like, this is when I have, like, this is when we answer questions. These are my meetings. People just park their issues that they need from me. I've had doctors where they're just being bombarded by team members. Team members, you're not doing it wrong. Doctors just are like trying to do a filling, trying to go and do this exam, try to stay on time, try to sell treatment, try to make sure everything's running. And then you guys are coming in like, Hey, did you get this Invisalign case? Hey, did you get this crown? Hey, hey, hey.
And if you guys have read the book, the one minute manager, it's like a monkey being put on your back or my friend described it as a magnet. We're like, you're just like dumping them or as like an office manager, she's like sticky notes compiling over you to where we've actually done it for offices, whatever your path is. If it's like we have a Google doc, everybody just dumps it there. We review it once a week. Fantastic. Or I've had some doctors where they have like a list outside their office where people just go and write it they put the due date on it. So that way it can be again, a consolidated time. You review this during your CEO time, but like you can even just feel that it's like,
It's a calming, it's a how do we operate? I'm not gonna run in this like frantic frazzled and you just let people know it's not fair for the team. It's not fair for patients and it's not fair for you to be making all these decisions haphazardly. And so I think just like when we actually look at this, doctors take their CEO times. I call it deep work time for myself. It's blocked in my schedule. It's taken me about a month to get my schedule there. I like it in the mornings. I don't like meetings in the mornings like.
I have a very, very, very structured of when I like to do it. They also figured out me when I used to do podcast recording, like it just was not working and serving. So I think even if you are a seasoned practice owner and you've done this before, look to see where can this be refined? Where can we make it towards it? More of your operating style, but literally stop skipping our CEO time every single week. I've seen practices that don't like that's all like doctors just own their power time, their CEO time, office managers and front office team members own that. We do it for about a month. Nothing else changes.
team starts to notice, things start to get done more effectively, tone starts softening, communication improves and culture actually elevates. And so if you do nothing else other than just like hold your CEO time to where you make decisions rather than being frantic and on the fly, you're going to actually have a lot more calm. So as we look through this, like I said, calm is contagious and so is chaos. And I think which...
It's almost like, you know how they say, you've got like an angel and a devil sitting on either side of you, or there's like a Indian, Native American story where it's like, which wolf am I feeding in the inside? Which one am I feeding? Am I feeding the calm side of me or the chaos side of me more every day? And our decisions are actually serving the calm side or the chaos side. And like I said, it does not mean less growth. It does not mean less anything other than more stability, more ease, more true flow.
And so for you, just look at it like, how can we increase our predictability? How can we reduce unnecessary decisions? And how can we lead with regulated energy and structure? So that way everyone's on the same page. I think like calm is not the absence of pressure. It is the presence of structure. And when I heard that, I thought like, gosh, that's so solid because pressure is still going to come. And I my husband and I, were walking the other day and
Some things happened in the company and I just said like, Jace, this is just like another stroke or color or flavor of business. Like that's all it is. This is part of it. Like it's not gonna go away. These things, it's not like we'll have a marathon and we'll get to the end line and like all of our problems will suddenly be dissolved. It's just, how are we able to contain that? How do we navigate through that? How do we respond to that? And are we more on the calm side or the chaos side? And I will say this is a habit. It is not something that most people are born innately with.
I will say it's discipline and it's dedication and it's following through. But really I think it's who do you want to be as a leader? What do you want to show up for me? I just realized like I'm not showing up as the best wife. I'm not showing up as the best sibling. My siblings would call me and I just like they would wait weeks on ends before I'd respond to them. And I'm like, that's just not who Kiera wants to be anymore. ? Kiera wants to be the sister, the mother, the wife that can come in and show up in a way where my family gets the best of me, not just work. I wanted to come in where work was getting the best of me and I wasn't being
like barky on all of my decision making and being annoyed. Team members would say like, here we used to brace asking you for things like you're always polished, you're always professional. But like we know there's this air of annoyance. And for me, my team deserves better. I deserve better. My family deserves better. And I think there is a different and a better way to live if you choose it. So I think like if your practice is feeling just maybe heavy, ? it's not a failure. It's just a signal. And oftentimes I think when you decide to commit to this,
It unlocks a lot of like refinement in the practice and unlocks a lot of systems that we could do. It unlocks leadership opportunities that doesn't have to just sit on your shoulders anymore. And so I think this is some of our favorite work in Dental A Team because it helps us like practices are able to feel this release immediately. We're able to quickly like navigate and streamline. So if that's feeling like you or you're like, gosh, Kiera, you're speaking directly to me, which I know a lot of you feel, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com or go to our website and click the book of call. It can just be like, let's talk through this and let's give you some tangible tactical ideas.
to help take you from where you are to where you wanna go. Whether you work with us or don't, you will leave that call with tactical resources. You see a map of like, where am I today versus where I wanna go, like I was explaining. And it's actually one of the most fulfilling things for me is to be able to do that for practices to where you can actually see that. So reach out, I'd love to do it. It's no pressure, totally complimentary and just giving you kind of a baseline of where you are. Or if you're like, my gosh, like I need the help, reach out. This is literally what we specialize in. This is what we're experts in and it's what we're obsessed with doing.
So reach out because this is the time for you to choose to have growth and calm, not one or the other. And I believe that the best practices have that. So you guys, is your chance. This is the time. Reach out if there's any way we can support you. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.