May 19, 2025 • 12 mins
What would happen if your entire dental team quit tomorrow? Rather than just a nightmare scenario, this thought experiment reveals critical insights about your practice's foundation. I share the story of a dentist who actually experienced this situation—when he laid out his vision for the practice and gave his team of seven the option to leave if they didn't align with it, five walked out. Surprisingly, this became one of the best things that ever happened to his practice.
Ready to transform your practice with proven systems and leadership strategies? Visit dentalpracticheroes.com to explore our one-on-one coaching opportunities and work with someone who's been exactly where you are.
Text us your feedback! (please note: we cannot respond through this channel))
👉 Register for the Free Webinar: How 7-Figure Dentists Work 3 Days or Less… Without Working Harder
Learn the exact systems top practice owners use to increase income, reduce clinical days, and finally escape the daily grind.
Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
We help dentists take more time off while making more money through systematization, team empowerment, and creating leadership teams.
Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DentalPracticeHeroes.com to learn more.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Now let me ask you something.
If your whole team quittomorrow everybody gone, nobody
on your team shows up for workwhat would you do Now?
I know this is a terrifyingthought, and I actually know a
dentist that this happened, tobelieve it or not, but this is
an idea that every one of usshould wrestle with in our mind,
(00:22):
Because the truth is, if yoursystems aren't solid and your
leadership is unclear, thenrebuilding from scratch would be
very scary, and this issomething that I used to worry
about because I, like a lot ofpractice owners, love
catastrophic thinking.
I just like to go off the deepend and go into a dark space
(00:42):
mentally, because who doesn'twant to be more miserable than
you already are?
Obviously, I'm joking, butlet's talk about this.
What if this did happen?
How could you predictably buildback your team so that it's
stronger this time around?
You are listening to the DentalPractice Heroes podcast.
This is where we help dentistscreate practices that grow
(01:04):
without grinding themselves intothe ground.
We are all about team-drivenand system-driven practices that
allow you, as the owner, towork three, two, one, even zero
days clinically, if you shouldchoose.
Before I get into this, let meshare the story about somebody.
I knew that, had this happen tothem, they had their entire
team quit.
(01:24):
And what this was?
This was a very frustratedpractice owner.
He was standing in front of histeam.
He was tired of the team.
This was an acquisition that hejust purchased, maybe four or
five months prior, and he walkedinto a meeting and he said
things are gonna change, this iswhat I want, this is my mission
and vision.
And he laid it out there and hesaid I'm going to go in my
office for five minutes.
(01:44):
If you don't believe in thatand you don't feel like doing
that, I'm asking you to get outof the practice.
But if you're still here, whenI come back from my office in
five minutes, let's starttalking about how we're going to
make this happen.
Now, he had a team of seven.
Five people left, two peoplestayed.
So that was probably a prettyscary time for him, but I can
tell you from what he said itwas one of the best things he
(02:06):
ever did.
Now am I recommending you dothis with your team?
No, I think there's better waysto do it, but the fact of the
matter is, we've got to be clearon where we're going and we got
to get the right people on thebus right.
So if I had to start over witha new team, the first thing I
would do is set expectations forthem.
I would tell them this is myvision for the practice, this is
(02:28):
what I want, this is themission, this is the vision,
these are our core values andthese are our brand promises.
This is what it means to bepart of this office.
This is the way we treatpatients and this is how we
treat each other and work witheach other.
Now, we all want that greatculture, right?
But a lot of us that want thisgreat culture.
We don't really talk about whatthat great culture looks like.
(02:49):
Invite a great culture intoyour practice by explicitly
saying this is what I want forthe culture, this is what I want
to be about.
I feel like this is a oftenskipped part of practice
ownership that just doesn't seemthat important and doesn't seem
like that much fun.
This ownership that justdoesn't seem that important and
doesn't seem like that much fun,but it's super critical,
(03:10):
foundationally for creating agreat office.
All right, the next thing Iwould do is I would establish
communication rhythms with myteam.
Every practice needs to have arhythm of communication.
You've got to have a cadence ofregular meetings.
You can't do it without it.
So I'm talking about dailyhuddles.
Now you've heard me say I don'tdo huddles in my practice.
Now the reason I don't dohuddles in my practice is
because of split shifting.
(03:30):
If I wasn't split shifted, Iwould still do huddles.
Daily huddles, talking aboutthe day what are our goals for
the day?
Daily huddles, talking aboutthe day what are our goals for
the day?
We would have monthly meetings,if not two meetings a month.
I think we would actually havetwo meetings a month because we
would be changing so many thingssince we're starting over.
But monthly meetings so that wecan communicate with each other
and we can train, we can roleplay, we can do things like that
(03:52):
.
We would have quarterly all daymeetings that would be
specifically for training androle playing, working all day
meetings that would bespecifically for training and
role-playing, working onspecific skills and specific
training things for certainsystems, and then we would have
a regular cadence of one-on-ones.
Now I recommend you do theseonce every quarter, but if
you've never done them, itdoesn't hurt to do them more
often.
You're not going to hurtanybody by doing it more often
(04:14):
and these communication things.
This is what's going to helpcreate your culture.
It's going to help make itsolid.
Now I had a client once that washaving a ton of turnover at his
practice and luckily he wasable to hire people so that he
could fill the spots.
The problem was he justcouldn't keep anybody long term
and so one day I decided I askedhey, can I talk to your team?
And I set up a bunch of calls,like 10 minute calls, with his
(04:37):
team members.
So essentially I was doing theone-on-one.
And what, and what do you think?
I found out there was noregular meetings and the
one-on-ones never happened.
What do we expect to happen?
We expect to have turnovers.
If you're looking at turnover atyour office, it's because
people don't want to work there.
They're frustrated workingthere and you can find out what
(04:59):
they're frustrated about whenyou do the one-on.
And then they stay happy atyour practice.
So you don't have that turnover.
And for anyone to have asuccessful dental practice
you've got to have a stable team, because, damn, it's hard
enough to grow and add teammembers to your team.
And if you've got to replacethe team members that are
leaving at the same time.
I mean, you're going to be inthis never ending cycle, and
(05:19):
that's where he was stuck.
He wanted to go to an associate, but the step that was
preventing him was just gettinga stable team so that he could
grow his team.
Eventually, I held himaccountable to have the meetings
, to do the one-on-ones, on aregular schedule, and, wouldn't
you know, the turnover decreasedsignificantly and the team felt
better.
The culture was better.
All right, the next thing Iwould do is bring leaders into
(05:42):
my team, and I'm talking aboutteam leads.
Now, you might not have a teamthat's big enough to have team
leads, and what I mean by thatis if you only have, like, two
hygienists and you make one thelead, then the other hygienist
just becomes not the lead.
So I'm not saying that you haveto make leads for each position
, but you should have a leaderother than yourself at your
practice, no matter what size.
(06:03):
So I would look at my new teamand I would say who are the
leaders here?
Who is somebody that everybodyrespects?
That could help me grow thispractice, and you don't have to
wait until someone's an awesomeleader already to empower them.
They will grow into thisleadership opportunity.
They will learn how to lead,just like you learned how to
lead.
I remember when I lost my firsthygiene lead.
(06:25):
I loved her.
Her name was Calla.
She was so great and I didn'tthink anybody could fill the
shoes of her.
And then we had the new leadcome on.
I was hoping it was going to beokay, but Calla had set such a
high bar for me it was reallyhard for her to step into that.
But you know what she did.
She exceeded my expectations,she blew me away and she turned
(06:45):
out to be one of the best leadsI've ever had.
So why I'm telling you this isthat they don't have to have it
figured out before you give themmore responsibilities.
As long as you're willing to bepatient and you're willing to
guide and train, your team willstep into those leadership
positions and they will getbetter at it over time.
All right, the next thing Iwould do is start to deploy
systems.
(07:05):
I would start looking at like,hey, the basic stuff.
How do we answer the phone?
What information do we get?
What are our routines forverifying insurance, taking and
putting in payments, takingdeposits, just all that routine
stuff.
I would zoom out and say how dowe do it, when do we do it and
who is responsible for gettingit done?
I would start with schedulingright away.
(07:25):
I would go to block schedulingsomething that's efficient and
high production.
I would not just hand my teamlike a hundred page SOP manual
and be like this is how we do it.
Now, you know I'm a big fan ofdocumenting your systems, but I
think it's fallacious to thinkif we could create a giant
manual that we could just hirenew people and hand them the
(07:46):
manual and everything would begood.
You have to be the personleading the change.
Remember, you're the leader atthe practice.
You have to lead the change.
You've got to lead the teamwhere you're going.
And then the last thing I woulddo is just monitor, just pay
attention.
What's not working well?
Did we drop the ball on apatient?
How did we do it not workingwell?
(08:06):
Did we drop the ball on apatient?
How did we do it?
How can we fix it so it doesn'thappen again?
And I would make sure that I'moffering my team forgiveness.
I'm not leading withintimidation, I'm not leading
with my title.
I am equal with everybody andI'm treating everybody with
respect and grace, because we'reall learning together and I
would stress that as part of myculture.
We need to learn from ourmistakes.
That's normal.
We're not going to get upsetwith anyone when they make a
(08:29):
mistake, so that's what I woulddo if I lost my entire team
overnight.
Now you're thinking well, youdidn't say how you were going to
find all these people toreplace those people.
I don't think that was thepoint of the exercise.
I agree with you it would bevery hard to find all those
people at once, especially inthis labor market, but that was
(08:49):
not the point.
So if you were thinking that,stop it, all right, a few things
that I wouldn't do this timearound, just with my experience.
I wouldn't hang so much of mypersonal worth on everybody
being 100% happy all the time atthe practice.
I've got enough experiencewhere I can say, hey, that's
unrealistic.
I would make sure that whenthere was a difficult
conversation to be had, that Ididn't put it off, that I had it
(09:11):
right away.
I can't think of a singlesituation where putting off a
difficult conversation everworked out.
It always got worse.
And I would also avoid waitingtoo long to delegate, because
you can grow so much faster ifyou've got people to help you
and you're not doing everything,and that's a very challenging
thing for a lot of my clients todo.
(09:33):
So you do not need to wait foryour entire team to reboot your
culture and reboot your practice.
Most of us are not startingfrom scratch like this, but
we're often starting from stuck.
We are stuck and don't knowwhat to do.
So if you're sitting theretoday and you're like gosh, I
don't know where to start, startby declaring to your team what
(09:54):
you want it to be like at yourpractice and then make a problem
list what are the largestproblems at the practice and
just start figuring outsolutions for each of them.
And I think you'll find justdoing the exercise of thinking
about what are the problems atthe practice and just looking at
one at a time makes it a loteasier to fix them one at a time
(10:15):
.
Don't get overwhelmed If you'restarting from stuck.
Just declare your culture andstart with the problem list.
And if you're looking for help,you want someone to walk you
through this process ofsystemization, somebody who's
been there, who can be a mentorfor you.
Please look at our one-on-onecoaching opportunities that we
have at dentalpracticeheroescom.
Thank you so much for listening.
I really appreciate your.
Now let me ask you something.
If your whole team quittomorrow everybody gone, nobody
on your team shows up for workwhat would you do Now?
I know this is a terrifyingthought, and I actually know a
dentist that this happened, tobelieve it or not, but this is
an idea that every one of usshould wrestle with in our mind,
(00:22):
Because the truth is, if yoursystems aren't solid and your
leadership is unclear, thenrebuilding from scratch would be
very scary, and this issomething that I used to worry
about because I, like a lot ofpractice owners, love
catastrophic thinking.
I just like to go off the deepend and go into a dark space
(00:42):
mentally, because who doesn'twant to be more miserable than
you already are?
Obviously, I'm joking, butlet's talk about this.
What if this did happen?
How could you predictably buildback your team so that it's
stronger this time around?
You are listening to the DentalPractice Heroes podcast.
This is where we help dentistscreate practices that grow
(01:04):
without grinding themselves intothe ground.
We are all about team-drivenand system-driven practices that
allow you, as the owner, towork three, two, one, even zero
days clinically, if you shouldchoose.
Before I get into this, let meshare the story about somebody.
I knew that, had this happen tothem, they had their entire
team quit.
(01:24):
And what this was?
This was a very frustratedpractice owner.
He was standing in front of histeam.
He was tired of the team.
This was an acquisition that hejust purchased, maybe four or
five months prior, and he walkedinto a meeting and he said
things are gonna change, this iswhat I want, this is my mission
and vision.
And he laid it out there and hesaid I'm going to go in my
office for five minutes.
(01:44):
If you don't believe in thatand you don't feel like doing
that, I'm asking you to get outof the practice.
But if you're still here, whenI come back from my office in
five minutes, let's starttalking about how we're going to
make this happen.
Now, he had a team of seven.
Five people left, two peoplestayed.
So that was probably a prettyscary time for him, but I can
tell you from what he said itwas one of the best things he
(02:06):
ever did.
Now am I recommending you dothis with your team?
No, I think there's better waysto do it, but the fact of the
matter is, we've got to be clearon where we're going and we got
to get the right people on thebus right.
So if I had to start over witha new team, the first thing I
would do is set expectations forthem.
I would tell them this is myvision for the practice, this is
(02:28):
what I want, this is themission, this is the vision,
these are our core values andthese are our brand promises.
This is what it means to bepart of this office.
This is the way we treatpatients and this is how we
treat each other and work witheach other.
Now, we all want that greatculture, right?
But a lot of us that want thisgreat culture.
We don't really talk about whatthat great culture looks like.
(02:49):
Invite a great culture intoyour practice by explicitly
saying this is what I want forthe culture, this is what I want
to be about.
I feel like this is a oftenskipped part of practice
ownership that just doesn't seemthat important and doesn't seem
like that much fun.
This ownership that justdoesn't seem that important and
doesn't seem like that much fun,but it's super critical,
(03:10):
foundationally for creating agreat office.
All right, the next thing Iwould do is I would establish
communication rhythms with myteam.
Every practice needs to have arhythm of communication.
You've got to have a cadence ofregular meetings.
You can't do it without it.
So I'm talking about dailyhuddles.
Now you've heard me say I don'tdo huddles in my practice.
Now the reason I don't dohuddles in my practice is
because of split shifting.
(03:30):
If I wasn't split shifted, Iwould still do huddles.
Daily huddles, talking aboutthe day what are our goals for
the day?
Daily huddles, talking aboutthe day what are our goals for
the day?
We would have monthly meetings,if not two meetings a month.
I think we would actually havetwo meetings a month because we
would be changing so many thingssince we're starting over.
But monthly meetings so that wecan communicate with each other
and we can train, we can roleplay, we can do things like that
(03:52):
.
We would have quarterly all daymeetings that would be
specifically for training androle playing, working all day
meetings that would bespecifically for training and
role-playing, working onspecific skills and specific
training things for certainsystems, and then we would have
a regular cadence of one-on-ones.
Now I recommend you do theseonce every quarter, but if
you've never done them, itdoesn't hurt to do them more
often.
You're not going to hurtanybody by doing it more often
(04:14):
and these communication things.
This is what's going to helpcreate your culture.
It's going to help make itsolid.
Now I had a client once that washaving a ton of turnover at his
practice and luckily he wasable to hire people so that he
could fill the spots.
The problem was he justcouldn't keep anybody long term
and so one day I decided I askedhey, can I talk to your team?
And I set up a bunch of calls,like 10 minute calls, with his
(04:37):
team members.
So essentially I was doing theone-on-one.
And what, and what do you think?
I found out there was noregular meetings and the
one-on-ones never happened.
What do we expect to happen?
We expect to have turnovers.
If you're looking at turnover atyour office, it's because
people don't want to work there.
They're frustrated workingthere and you can find out what
(04:59):
they're frustrated about whenyou do the one-on.
And then they stay happy atyour practice.
So you don't have that turnover.
And for anyone to have asuccessful dental practice
you've got to have a stable team, because, damn, it's hard
enough to grow and add teammembers to your team.
And if you've got to replacethe team members that are
leaving at the same time.
I mean, you're going to be inthis never ending cycle, and
(05:19):
that's where he was stuck.
He wanted to go to an associate, but the step that was
preventing him was just gettinga stable team so that he could
grow his team.
Eventually, I held himaccountable to have the meetings
, to do the one-on-ones, on aregular schedule, and, wouldn't
you know, the turnover decreasedsignificantly and the team felt
better.
The culture was better.
All right, the next thing Iwould do is bring leaders into
(05:42):
my team, and I'm talking aboutteam leads.
Now, you might not have a teamthat's big enough to have team
leads, and what I mean by thatis if you only have, like, two
hygienists and you make one thelead, then the other hygienist
just becomes not the lead.
So I'm not saying that you haveto make leads for each position
, but you should have a leaderother than yourself at your
practice, no matter what size.
(06:03):
So I would look at my new teamand I would say who are the
leaders here?
Who is somebody that everybodyrespects?
That could help me grow thispractice, and you don't have to
wait until someone's an awesomeleader already to empower them.
They will grow into thisleadership opportunity.
They will learn how to lead,just like you learned how to
lead.
I remember when I lost my firsthygiene lead.
(06:25):
I loved her.
Her name was Calla.
She was so great and I didn'tthink anybody could fill the
shoes of her.
And then we had the new leadcome on.
I was hoping it was going to beokay, but Calla had set such a
high bar for me it was reallyhard for her to step into that.
But you know what she did.
She exceeded my expectations,she blew me away and she turned
(06:45):
out to be one of the best leadsI've ever had.
So why I'm telling you this isthat they don't have to have it
figured out before you give themmore responsibilities.
As long as you're willing to bepatient and you're willing to
guide and train, your team willstep into those leadership
positions and they will getbetter at it over time.
All right, the next thing Iwould do is start to deploy
systems.
(07:05):
I would start looking at like,hey, the basic stuff.
How do we answer the phone?
What information do we get?
What are our routines forverifying insurance, taking and
putting in payments, takingdeposits, just all that routine
stuff.
I would zoom out and say how dowe do it, when do we do it and
who is responsible for gettingit done?
I would start with schedulingright away.
(07:25):
I would go to block schedulingsomething that's efficient and
high production.
I would not just hand my teamlike a hundred page SOP manual
and be like this is how we do it.
Now, you know I'm a big fan ofdocumenting your systems, but I
think it's fallacious to thinkif we could create a giant
manual that we could just hirenew people and hand them the
(07:46):
manual and everything would begood.
You have to be the personleading the change.
Remember, you're the leader atthe practice.
You have to lead the change.
You've got to lead the teamwhere you're going.
And then the last thing I woulddo is just monitor, just pay
attention.
What's not working well?
Did we drop the ball on apatient?
How did we do it not workingwell?
(08:06):
Did we drop the ball on apatient?
How did we do it?
How can we fix it so it doesn'thappen again?
And I would make sure that I'moffering my team forgiveness.
I'm not leading withintimidation, I'm not leading
with my title.
I am equal with everybody andI'm treating everybody with
respect and grace, because we'reall learning together and I
would stress that as part of myculture.
We need to learn from ourmistakes.
That's normal.
We're not going to get upsetwith anyone when they make a
(08:29):
mistake, so that's what I woulddo if I lost my entire team
overnight.
Now you're thinking well, youdidn't say how you were going to
find all these people toreplace those people.
I don't think that was thepoint of the exercise.
I agree with you it would bevery hard to find all those
people at once, especially inthis labor market, but that was
(08:49):
not the point.
So if you were thinking that,stop it, all right, a few things
that I wouldn't do this timearound, just with my experience.
I wouldn't hang so much of mypersonal worth on everybody
being 100% happy all the time atthe practice.
I've got enough experiencewhere I can say, hey, that's
unrealistic.
I would make sure that whenthere was a difficult
conversation to be had, that Ididn't put it off, that I had it
(09:11):
right away.
I can't think of a singlesituation where putting off a
difficult conversation everworked out.
It always got worse.
And I would also avoid waitingtoo long to delegate, because
you can grow so much faster ifyou've got people to help you
and you're not doing everything,and that's a very challenging
thing for a lot of my clients todo.
(09:33):
So you do not need to wait foryour entire team to reboot your
culture and reboot your practice.
Most of us are not startingfrom scratch like this, but
we're often starting from stuck.
We are stuck and don't knowwhat to do.
So if you're sitting theretoday and you're like gosh, I
don't know where to start, startby declaring to your team what
(09:54):
you want it to be like at yourpractice and then make a problem
list what are the largestproblems at the practice and
just start figuring outsolutions for each of them.
And I think you'll find justdoing the exercise of thinking
about what are the problems atthe practice and just looking at
one at a time makes it a loteasier to fix them one at a time
(10:15):
.
Don't get overwhelmed If you'restarting from stuck.
Just declare your culture andstart with the problem list.
And if you're looking for help,you want someone to walk you
through this process ofsystemization, somebody who's
been there, who can be a mentorfor you.
Please look at our one-on-onecoaching opportunities that we
have at dentalpracticeheroescom.
Thank you so much for listening.
I really appreciate your.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.