How to Create Core Values and a Collaborative Culture for Your Team – Episode #619

On this episode of the Dentist Money Show, Ryan sits down with Elevation Association’s Managing Partner, Ryan Passey, to discuss his experience moving from retail to the dental industry and the unique challenges dentists face in managing their practices. He highlights the significance of leadership emphasizing the importance of establishing a clear vision and core values to build a collaborative team environment. Finally, he discusses the importance of leaving a lasting legacy through service and the opportunities for engagement and growth within the dental community.

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Creating Impact Through Partnership: Elevation Association’s Journey in Dentistry

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Podcast Transcript

Intro: Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Dentist money show brought to you by Dentist advisors. We have another amazing show for you today. This is a Ryan and Ryan show. our Ryan Isaac interviews Ryan Passey from elevation association, from Nicaragua at the, elevation association life summit. Ryan Passey does an amazing job sharing what, elevation association does the importance of having, making data driven decisions and tracking KPIs in our practice to find success. As a dentist. So as always, we hope you get something out of this show, something of value, and we hope you enjoy.

Ryan Isaac: So man, welcome back. Matt and I already recorded one episode down here. We’re down here Nicaragua, Rancho Santana. We are supporting good friends and partners of ours, the elevation association, partners who have been at our summit last year. Dr. Jared Hill and his wife, Maren will be main stage speakers for us again this coming year. Are you coming to

Ryan Passey: Yeah, we’ll, we’ll all be

Ryan Isaac: You’ll all be there. Okay. So stoked for this. So we’re down here. third year supporting elevation association. And I’ll just say, just as a really quick plug, year three coming down here, the, the CE credits, the environment, the group of people, it’s like big enough to have ideas flowing.

Small enough to feel very personal and intimate and safe to share. the CE, the classes, and more importantly, the conversations happening while in these gorgeous places. Like right now, I wish people could see this. I wish we had a film crew like Mark did. We’re staring out the balcony of a, you know, three story gorgeous home at these waves just barreling and these, the palm trees blowing out of the cove.

Ryan Passey: amazing. It’s part of the magic though, is to get Dentist out of the office, out of the day to day and get them away long enough to kind of unwind,

Ryan Isaac: huh.

Ryan Passey: lower their guard a little bit. and be a little vulnerable, right? You can even see, like, from day one to day two, day three, how some of the guests start to kind of open up, find some friends, like, and the group’s small enough that, like, everybody mingles with everybody and kind of has an opportunity to share, but the magic happens, like you’re saying, like, you get a great CE course, hear a topic or something sparks an idea, but it’s out, you know, waiting for a wave or

Ryan Isaac: getting

Ryan Passey: on a bike ride or eatin tacos that, you know, some of the great discussions

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, it’s so good, man. And man, I’ve been inspired. I mean, just this morning, I’m going to forget his last name. Buck last name, drew Buck drew and his wife, Becky, right. retired kind of multiple times, a doctor who retired fairly early. And, uh, went back to work in and out for the love of it, for the money of it, and built a life kind of post retirement teaching all of us who are still trying to aspire to get there, hopefully even reach that point and just, just hearing that journey of someone who’s decades ahead and the wisdom that he and she had to share about their lives and the, the way that it flowed and the things they’ve learned was just so incredible.

I didn’t expect that.

Ryan Passey: Right, and it was interesting, cause like, this is the first, like, retired couple we’ve had on one of these events, you know. And so for me, it was also like, wow, what a needed thing as well, is like the perspective

Ryan Isaac: what I thought.

Ryan Passey: You know, I was where you guys are 20 years ago. This is what I learned. Here’s some things to help you so you don’t make the same mistakes.

Or, learn from what I did and apply it now. Like, I thought I was a great wisdom. And Buck’s such a, he’s a character.

Ryan Isaac: a character and he’s so humble though.

Everything he says is couched in a statement like, Hey, this is just what I think or this is what I’ve seen. I’m not telling you what to do. Yeah, it was, I didn’t expect, I didn’t, I really loved that.

Ryan Passey: Yeah, it was great. Jared, Jared was blessed to have, you know, Buck as a mentor. Kind of worked for him after he semi unretired for a little while, wanted to work. Went to work with Dr. Hill for a bit,

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. So

Ryan Passey: Know. Dan and I have kind of adopted Buck

Ryan Isaac: Uh huh.

Ryan Passey: Mentor as

Ryan Isaac: I’m sure.

Ryan Passey: Know, if you’re in a room with Buck, you’re smiling and you’re learning something,

Ryan Isaac: And, and what he’s learned beside, I mean, clearly he made it financially and it’s working financially, clearly. but he’s, I mean, as a 70 year old man in hockey leagues, mountain biking, climbing mountains, traveling the world, doing yoga, it’s just healthy and fun and happy. And that was really, really cool. I want to have them on the podcast too. Anyway. I guess four minutes into it, we can say this is Ryan Passey elevation association. There will be an intro before all this even starts, but Ryan, how about give a little bit of an introduction to. And uh, maybe the role you play in elevation, what you guys are up to.

Ryan Passey: So, yeah, my name is Ryan Passey. my background is not in dentistry, although I’m getting to the point where,

Ryan Isaac: Be able to say that,

Ryan Passey: Can almost say that.

Ryan Isaac: I’m sure it’s close. How many years is

Ryan Passey: Five years

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. That’s a, that’s a good

Ryan Passey: We’re getting there, right? So, but I, spent 25 years in retail. Uh, last 10 years was an executive level manager. we had 30 store locations. I was over operations for the 30 stores. So I had to spend a lot of time with data and background and those things. The company I worked for had been in business for a hundred years.

Ryan Isaac: Wow, yeah.

Ryan Passey: Opened their doors in 1905 and, was changing to the, you know, fourth generation ownership. And there was just no one in the family that wanted to continue the family business. So they divided all their assets in the

Ryan Isaac: Called it good? Hmm.

Ryan Passey: Something we think you’d like is come help us with our practice. We’d love to have someone take a look at the numbers and help us make sense of the business side of things. And then, uh, we’ve got these other projects that were in Jared’s mind is, this Elevation Association gig and, and, and stuff like that. So, I came on there, five years ago. rolled up my sleeves, started learning dentistry. You know, they gave me some reports of the practice, how they were doing. And, and, uh, it was interesting to see, like, You know, a lot of things are relative once you learn products and services and, you know, like, everything translates over pretty well from

Ryan Isaac: What your experience really felt like? Yeah.

Ryan Passey: Yeah, because

Ryan Isaac: You could overlay the things you’ve seen from a huge retail operation to a small dental

Ryan Passey: Right, you’re still, yeah, you’re still dealing with customers, services that you offer, all those things, but like, Costs and revenue, P& Ls, all that stuff. So I was just learning how that kind of translated into dentistry. And wrapping my head around that and like, and then, how do we put things in place to manage things better and improve

Ryan Isaac: Do you, I’m always, I’m always curious because it is such, I mean, when, when you, when people ask you what you do and you have such, when all of us non dentists have specific jobs in the field of dentistry, people are always really curious about that because it is an interesting place to be. Do you remember anything that struck you as just funny, odd, quirky about just being in the world of dentistry? Like when you started digging into the numbers and the terminology and the, just the way things ran.

Ryan Passey: Well, yeah, the first thing they gave me was a, A report they’d gotten from Burkhardt, who was our supplier at the time, and it was a practice analysis, you know, so. It was some great information for me to be able to be, okay, where, where’s our baseline on some of these

Ryan Isaac: Okay.

Ryan Passey: And, and it said perio 6%. National average should be 30, you know, something like that. And I was like, what’s perio? Cause, we suck.

Ryan Isaac: This perio thing is, unless it’s like golf, it should be higher.

Ryan Passey: I was like, we’re, we suck at this. So, so I was just learning some of those terminology phrases. There’s so many different things in dentistry, occlusal

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Hundreds of things. I’m curious. Okay. Just on that example alone. What do you think it is about dentists and dentistry or the business of running a practice that I mean, Dan and Jared are highly intelligent people, the people around them in the practice. I’m sure they had noticed that or knew about it. What do you think it is about just the environment that prevents a dentist from looking at the period number, for example, one of a hundred things. and realizing that’s not okay, we gotta do something about it. I mean, what, what is that? What’s going

Ryan Passey: It’s such a unique business because the, in dentistry, the dentists are the producers. So they are the machine. They are the business where. Entreprofessional, like you guys name it, right? Like, it’s, it’s such a different business model, because in most small businesses, the owner or the CEO gets to kind of stand back and analyze. They’re in the numbers, they’re in the overseeing, those kind of things, and where we’re generating revenue from. But in a dental practice, like, if you’re not in somebody’s mouth, you’re not making any money, right? And so, it’s a, it’s, it’s a different model in that, because the dentists are the producer. And again, Like, they have to take time away from being a dentist to then be the CEO of their business. And, and I think it’s overwhelming. The bandwidth is,

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, it’s so

Ryan Passey: It’s so narrow. And these guys work hard, I mean, all day long, seeing patients. And, it’s hard to then, like, have the bandwidth at the end of the day to go, like, How are we really doing on this

Ryan Isaac: You don’t have the bandwidth to do it. Most people don’t like it in the first place. And then there’s no training. I mean, no one learned

Ryan Passey: No one learned it right, yeah.

Ryan Isaac: Not in the field of dentists. Not from a clinical training

Ryan Passey: Yeah, We listened to your podcast a few weeks ago about, you know, what are things that dental dentists wish they’d learned in school. And it was overwhelmingly like leadership, business management, P& L, how to manage a team, those kind of things. And so, one, like you’re saying, they don’t learn that in school,

Ryan Isaac: There’s nowhere to learn it. Pick it up.

Ryan Passey: They probably don’t enjoy it.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Most people don’t. Most people are not built like you. they don’t want to see a spreadsheet with things and just spend time with

Ryan Passey: Right, yeah. Um, okay, so.

Ryan Isaac: Um, okay. So tonight it’s tonight. You’re giving a presentation. That’s you’re up tonight. what’s it called? That’s what I wanted to chat about. Kind of get an unfair sneak peek about what you’re going to talk about tonight before you go tell everyone, what’s your topic tonight? You said it came from, or it had to do with something we just spoke about on the

Ryan Passey: So it was from that podcast of like leadership. So, because I think, you know, when you get out on these retreats, we do a pretty good job of like, uh, at Elevation Association, we have three focuses. We, we focus on life, which is kind of that work life harmony, trying to get Dentist

Ryan Isaac: By the way, I love that word, harmony. You guys use the word harmony instead of balance, and I’m going to start doing that now. It makes so much more sense.

Ryan Passey: And, and that’s one of our focuses is like, how do, how do dentists like, have an awesome life, right? Outside of practice because, again, having the spouses here at this retreat is an important part of that. And then our other focus is leadership and legacy. So those are the three things we focus on. Yeah, but at these summits we haven’t done a stellar job with dealing just with the leadership aspect of things. So, we’ve created a framework, in Elevation Association, a leadership framework that has eight components. And so my talk tonight is like, from base camp to summit, exploring the, the peaks of leadership, and, and we’re gonna dive into kind of what are these eight leadership principles, and how they relate to a dental practice, and how you implement those

Ryan Isaac: I don’t know. Do you mind going

Ryan Passey: We can go through them,

Ryan Isaac: To ask you before we do that. how do you address this? Maybe that’s part of the eight. How do you address taking kind of an overwhelmed dentist who has to stay busy with clinical unless their operations huge and they, So we try to provide endless support to kind of take um, the load off or to

Ryan Passey: So we try to provide them with support. To, to kind of take, the load off, or to expand their bandwidth a little bit by creating some systems and have some

Ryan Isaac: Free them up through efficiencies in

Ryan Passey: Efficiencies, and then through elevation association to kind of give some of the guidance along the way to kind of, like this is how you, how you do it,

Ryan Isaac: Yeah

Ryan Passey: A lot of times we just need to get the dentist to slow down a little bit to speed up, right, is that principle of

Ryan Isaac: Did someone said that last night? Slow down to speed up. Where did that come from?

Ryan Passey: Think it, came from Buck Drew, uh, and then to Jared, and then from Jared, you know. He

Ryan Isaac: Down to speed

Ryan Passey: Down to speed up. Is this

Ryan Isaac: I love that concept, man. How do you, how do you picture that? I think of it, of course, the big shocker to everyone in surfing terms, slow down to speed up. I think about that on a wave. Sometimes you do have to just slow down a little bit and let the wave kind of do what it’s going to do. And it’s unique little shape and size for that, you know, few seconds, which can then help you. Find efficient speed versus trying to force your board and your body to make speed into something that’s not natural. And that just resonated with so much to me. How do you, how does it, what does it mean in a dental practice

Ryan Passey: It means it’s similar. That’s a great example of that. Of just like taking some time to read, read the situation, right? Like, so in a dental practice, it would be like Like, nobody likes to have meetings, but sometimes, you know, if you’ll take the time to have a really efficient meeting once a week with your team, like slow down for an hour, we’re not going to be producing, we’re not going to be in the chairs, we’re all going to meet, we’re going to go over what we’re doing well, what we need to improve, what are the issues in our practice, we’re going to work to solve those things, and then we’re going to make the other, you know, if it’s a 40 hour week, whatever, we’re going to take one hour and make 39 other hours. Much more productive. Right? It’s that slowing down. We’re going to take an hour. We’re going to look at things, analyze. Come up with a strategy. And then we’re going to make the other hours much more efficient

Ryan Isaac: There’s another phrase in there that is parallel. I’m totally gonna butcher it. It’s I think it came from an Olympian. It’s something like Slow is smooth smooth is fast something like that. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s that other word There’s the slow down to speed up and then the smoothness in there because when you do slow down to kind of assess the situation read the situation it creates smoothness that then creates momentum, which is the, the speed you’re looking for. Then you can move forward with that moment. And that’s really cool. I like when you guys said that. Oh, let’s talk about the eight, the eight points, if you don’t mind. Yeah. And you know, we don’t have to like go super deep on them. Save a few nuggets for me for tonight,

Ryan Passey: So a lot of our inspiration comes from, comes from the book Traction with Gina

Ryan Isaac: That and

Ryan Passey: So we’ve taken that kind of model that works really well with most small businesses, anywhere from five to five hundred people. And then we’ve tweaked it for the specific needs of a dental office based on, you know, some of these things you’re exactly sharing. So the first thing we try to do is really help a dentist come up with a vision of like, what are you working towards? Like, what’s the end goal? So that then we can kind of work towards what you’re trying to accomplish. And so the vision component is like the first stage is like in, in our, in our guidebook we say, you know, what’s the peak you want to climb? Like what, what’s the destination? So that then we can start to, you know,

Ryan Isaac: Start. And a destination could be anything from an actual financial goal to a lifestyle goal, to a type of practice goal.

Ryan Passey: Mostly we’re focused on the practice in this stage. Like we’re, you know, where do you want your practice to be in 10 years from now? Like how many days a week do you want to be working? How many Team members do you want to have? Yeah, measurable things like, what does it look like? Try to get a pretty good written down summary of what you’re trying to create. A blueprint, right? You want to say, this is what I’m working towards. And again, all those things take into consideration. Your life, like, what do you want to, you know, have and accomplish and those kind of things, but we’re really trying to define like, yeah, where do you want your business to be in ten years so that it can drive the other things you want to go out in your life and accomplish. But let’s, let’s take this thing and like, let’s really Build a blueprint for it, so that you know exactly what you’re trying to work towards and accomplish,

Ryan Isaac: Do you find, as you’re saying this, I’m thinking that’s a pretty intuitive thing to do, you know, look, look where you want to go. But I don’t think a lot of us do that, that often, even though it’s a very intuitive thing. I think we just kind of live and go through the motions a lot. Do you find the same thing in business setting?

Ryan Passey: A great story that kind of illustrates this principle. It’s the story of the, the fire of London in 1666.

Ryan Isaac: The fire

Ryan Passey: You know, the fire destroyed the entire town of London. So the monarchy hired Sir Christopher Wren to rebuild part of the city. And he was a famous architect back in the day. And had built a lot of, like, cathedrals and stuff. So they, they gave him the assignment of, like, building St. Paul’s Cathedral. And, so he was this great architect. And there’s a cool story about him on the worksite one day. He goes down and he starts to look at his different brick layers and visit with them. I don’t know if you’ve heard

Ryan Isaac: No,

Ryan Passey: Goes down and he meets with the first guy. And the first guy he sees is, like, working hard, but seems, like, unhappy and just kind of disengaged. Frustrated and flustered. And he’s like, you know, Who are you and what are you doing? He’s like, I’m a bricklayer. I’m laying bricks. So that I can feed my family, you know. And he’s like, okay. Goes on to the next guy, a little bit farther down the line. Seems a little, seems a little bit more engaged. A little happier. And he’s like, Who are you and what are you working on? And he’s like, I’m a builder. And I’m building a wall. And he’s like, okay. And he goes down a little bit farther and he finds this guy. He’s like, totally engaged in, in work. He’s happy to be there. He’s whistling while he’s working, you know, thrilled, and he’s like, Who are you and what are you doing? He’s like, I’m a mason, and I’m building a cathedral to the almighty

Ryan Isaac: Arts. Right, he captured

Ryan Passey: Right, he’d captured the vision, right? And he, he knew what he was working towards. And I think in a lot of ways it’s that same thing with a, with a dental, practice, right? You, you gotta know what you’re working towards, right? So that you go to work every day and you’re like, I’m working on a cathedral, right? I know what I’m, I’m

Ryan Isaac: Cause it’s easy to go throughout a day and everything’s a brick. It’s everything’s brick and mortar for, and the days turn into months turn into years way faster than we

Ryan Passey: Yeah, those three bricklayers lived in the

Ryan Isaac: Same, same tools, same place,

Ryan Passey: Worlds, right? Yeah, mentality on

Ryan Isaac: Vision number one. Great. What’s number two?

Ryan Passey: Number two is establishing, like, once we know, like, where you want to go, like, where are you currently sitting? Like, what’s, what’s your baseline? Like, where, what are your metrics? What are your, you know, what’s your P& L look like? Where’s your staff look like? And all those things, like, we usually run growth report for baseline. things for practices, your fee schedule, all those type of things. So we have some data to be like, we know where you want to head with this thing. Like, where are we currently sitting? Where’s the trailhead start? So that we can then know that we’re, we’re headed in the right

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, I always think of those old, uh, being a child of the eighties, the, uh, being in the mall a lot and the maps you are here

Ryan Passey: You are here. You are here.

Ryan Isaac: Uh, in the, in the financial planning world, we do the same thing a lot. And I’m always, it’s always interesting to see how much stress comes away, like melts away. Stress relief happens when you get to measure where you’re at. Even if you know, you’re not in a great spot. Like, I’m sure does this happen to like, we’ll measure someone’s net worth of their spending or their savings or lack thereof and all those things. And even if it’s a negative net worth and too low or no savings and the spending is too high, just knowing the bad news is better than just wondering where we fit. Does that kind of strike with the same?

Ryan Passey: It, it’s exactly, you gotta, but it’s such a, it’s such a hard thing to do sometimes. You know,

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Well,

Ryan Passey: You gotta be vulnerable. We had one of the docs that’s here today, when we talked to him about, you know, let’s get a baseline for your practice and stuff. He’s like, finally he’s like, you know, okay, let me drop my drawers and show you what I’m working

Ryan Isaac: Feels like that. You don’t want to know. Yeah. It’s like, you want to, you know, let’s measure your spending and you’re like, I don’t want to look at

Ryan Passey: I don’t want to see

Ryan Isaac: Don’t want to see that because if I don’t see it, maybe I can pretend that it’s not that bad.

Ryan Passey: But it was good for me to recognize like, how vulnerable a dentist has to be to like, you know. Yeah, like, you know, I’m going to show you exactly where I’m

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Passey: And sometimes they’re sitting off a lot better than they think they are.

Ryan Isaac: Often, quite

Ryan Passey: You probably see that in your side of things, right? But just getting a baseline of like, okay, here’s where we’re starting from today. So we know when we’re making progress,

Ryan Isaac: You have power and control over something when you know, okay, cool.

Ryan Passey: Third thing is we, kind of focus on what’s the North Star, right? Like core values and core focus.

Ryan Isaac: What keeps us going? We know where we want to go, but what’s the motivation? Yeah. Or the

Ryan Passey: How do we move forward? Right? We got our peak. We got our starting point. Now, how do we move forward? What are the non negotiables? What are the rules by which we live by? You know, as we move towards our goal. These are the things that we’re not going to budge on. Right? So, kind of like, defining what that means for, for practice. Right.

Ryan Isaac: Can that be in this settings this is are these still metrics measurable things or can these be Maybe values based

Ryan Passey: Right, most of these are values, not necessarily metrics, right? Met, metrics kind of help measure some of the success. But these are more like, how do you operate? Like, what’s important to you? Like, teamwork or, mastery of your profession. Those kind of things, like, always be growing. We’ve, we’ve got so many cool core values that the Dentist have come up with over the years, you know, yeah We’ll share some of those tonight some of the different ones, but they’ve got some fun ones The Jared and Dan one of their favorite ones is the Yoda effect is one that our team uses which is great Cuz you know, we we all know Star Wars, but the younger

Ryan Isaac: They don’t, they’re missing out. Yeah.

Ryan Passey: Who’s Yoda? We have no

Ryan Isaac: Talking about, man? Yeah.

Ryan Passey: The master, right? So it was a principle of mastery You know, but, there’s some fun core values, but defining how you show up, you know, and how, how you hire, fire all your, your crew, how you reward them based on core values,

Ryan Isaac: I, I like, I like the concept of core values and non negotiables. Yeah.

Ryan Passey: Setting that culture in your practice, right? That’s really what this is about, is like, what’s the culture going to be in your practice? and to set some time of like defining what that is, so that, You know, like, when you bring someone on, do they fit well within the culture of my practice? Are they a good fit? Because you can teach skills and stuff, but if someone’s outside your core values, even if it’s a vendor or an insurance company you work with or anything else, like, they might not be a good partner for you, right?

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, totally agree. Cool. That was number

Ryan Passey: That number three? Number four is establishing waypoints, so. Benchmarks. Benchmarks, yeah, so.

Ryan Isaac: Markers.

Ryan Passey: Yeah, so now that you know where you want to be in ten years, where do we need to be in three years? Where do we need to be a year from now? And when, where do we need to be a quarter, this next quarter? And we really try to help focus on, you know, what’s the next 90 days look like? Because, if you focus on a good quarter, it’s kind of that same principle. You have a good, you know, five good days is a good week. Four good weeks is a good month. Four, four, you know, three good months is a good quarter, right? How do we take that and kind of shrink that into, like, manageable steps? Like, you know, we know which direction we’re heading, but we really need to concentrate on what’s the next

Ryan Isaac: I like that. We, we tend to do our financial planning touches throughout a year and meetings with clients in a similar way. We, we always have bigger goals, you know, things that we’re obviously working towards, but really life, especially for a dentist happens in those, you know, month increments. Also, what’s really fast. I don’t know if you’ve found this, I swear to a dentist, three or four months will go by and to us, it feels like three or four months, but to a dentist, it’s like three or four days. Like they’re, they’re just moves, moves, moves for them.

Ryan Passey: Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Isaac: It goes pretty

Ryan Passey: It’s an interesting practice, you know, to do all this stuff, because, you know, we’ve had dentists that then recognize, like, they’re not where they want to be. You know, like, I’m not even in the city I want to live

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. But

Ryan Passey: You know, I need, I need to change, you know, like, uh, but it’s taken some time to, like, sit down and, like, map out where do I want to be, and am I on the right path, you know,

Ryan Isaac: I heading there? Okay. So the

Ryan Passey: So the next one is like, mapping out your strategy. Like, now that you know, yeah, how to do it, how do we get there? And so this, this involves like, you know, coming up with your ideal avatar for your patient. Who are we looking for in our patient? How do we, you know, set our core focus? How do we, what’s our proven processes here at the practice? And what are we guaranteeing our patients, you know? To kind of come up with a good

Ryan Isaac: Of the technical logistics? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And

Ryan Passey: Yeah, come up with those things. Yeah,

Ryan Isaac: That probably plays a part that probably gets in. I mean, that influences your marketing strategy that influences the people you hire, right. That that’ll influence. The way that, yeah, the way that you’re training your team because these are the things we have to get done. to make it along the way.

Ryan Passey: Yeah, if you don’t know what kind of person you’re trying to market to, right, to get into your

Ryan Isaac: The avatar. That’s

Ryan Passey: Yeah, like that avatar that you want to have in your practice, then, you know, you’re, you’re just going to be taking any patient, and

Ryan Isaac: When you can’t. Okay. So from a, from a long retail background that when you have a product that’s a pretty specific, what kind of retail was it by the way?

Ryan Passey: So we did a variety, it was a variety store, so a lot of variety stuff.

Ryan Isaac: I, I, I just imagine, I don’t even know if this is true. I just imagine in retail having a more specific avatar of a customer, a client is a given, but in a dental practice, is it all over the place?

Ryan Passey: It’s all over the place, dental,

Ryan Isaac: Of insurances or community, or you just like take whoever walks in the door, like a store doesn’t really do that unless you, especially if you have like more specific products or niche store or something. You attract a certain type of person, but in dentistry, it’s kind of like whoever happens to drive by, live around, have the insurance, but that doesn’t make them a good fit for the practice at

Ryan Passey: But, but I think that’s the, the key is like trying to establish what is your niche within your practice. What, what makes you unique in the marketplace? And then why should patients, those patients come to your

Ryan Isaac: And how do you get to them?

Ryan Passey: How do you get

Ryan Isaac: You get your message to

Ryan Passey: How do you get your message to them? If you’re, you know, if you’re fishing for bass you don’t want to be in the trout

Ryan Isaac: Imagine.

Ryan Passey: Like, how do you make sure you’re You’re in the right place, putting lines in the water for the right people to come to your practice. And there’s such a variety on dental patients, right? Like, because you’ve got insurance heavy ones, you’ve got Medicaid, you’ve got other, you know, type of patients, cash patients. Patients who want big veneer jobs or cosmetic stuff. And so, it’s just defining like, what is your niche? And then how do you get those patients that you want, more of them into your practice.

Ryan Isaac: Where would, as you’re saying this, I’m thinking that, that the other side of that equation is the doctor has to know what kind of dentistry they even want to do. Is that in step two? The, the, no, no, no. Step three, the Northstar.

Ryan Passey: And like, establishing like, where you want to be, right? What kind of dental practice do you want to

Ryan Isaac: Oh yeah.

Ryan Passey: You know, from the very

Ryan Isaac: I want to be the dentist who does these kinds

Ryan Passey: To be, yeah, these are the type of procedures I want to be involved in. This is what makes me happy. This is what I like doing.

Right.

Ryan Isaac: So I was talking to him and his wife and he was saying that he had, or no, she was telling me, Oh, he has this goal to retire at 50. And in this conversation he goes, actually, I don’t have that anymore. And she’s like, what are you, what are you talking about? And then he started to say, yeah, once I changed the type of dentistry that I wanted to do, and then I said no to everything else. And I got that on someone else’s plate. I no longer have to hurry up and retire anymore. And she was, I mean, it was like a fresh conversation unfolding for the, and I was like, man, that she’s stoked now. Cause there was a lot of pressure because she was saying, yeah.

Ryan Passey: In 10

Ryan Isaac: Do this? I got, you know, I got to make this happen in such a short period of time and work with us. And now, and then he’s like, I love this so much now, simply by finding or, or, you know, knowing where he’s headed, what kind of practice he wants to be in. And that one change, the type of work he’s doing now erased like a rushed, anxious deadline of retirement. And now it’s like indefinite. I’ll do it for

Ryan Passey: Changes so many things when you go to work and love what you’re doing, right? Now,

Ryan Isaac: And it did too. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I don’t know if we’re on number

Ryan Passey: That. I

Ryan Isaac: Don’t

Ryan Passey: We’re on, we’re moving on to, uh, let’s see, number

Ryan Isaac: Okay. Cool.

Ryan Passey: Six is like, uh, roles and responsibilities within the practice, you know, organizing your team. Uh, just like if you’re trying to summit, you know, having a good team that helps you get there is

Ryan Isaac: The seats on the bus. The right people on the bus.

Ryan Passey: Accountability charts,

Ryan Isaac: Guys like E Myth people? Is that still a helpful

Ryan Passey: Helpful book. Yeah, like we, again, Traction is very good with, uh, the

Ryan Isaac: The right people in seats on the

Ryan Passey: And write seats, right? So, that’s where we build that. We use the software, that integrates, the principles from Traction really well with dental offices. So it’s called Bloom Growth.

Ryan Isaac: It’s the

Ryan Passey: It’s the original Traction Tools software, so it’s built in there. They’ve got a great accountability chart that you build out and just, assign, like, who reports to who, what’s everybody’s roles, responsibilities, so everybody knows who they report back to and, what they’re responsible

Ryan Isaac: You’ve probably seen that in your career in different facets where you have just the total right personality but they’re doing the wrong job and they’re demotivated and they’re dragging along and then you just make that switch for them and they’re a rock star.

Ryan Passey: That Peter Principle of management, too, where you promote someone beyond their abilities. Because they’re doing great where they’re at. They’re like, this person’s a rock star. And then you promote them to a new position. And they’re like, those are terrible.

Ryan Isaac: That, that, man, I relate to that so much in a small growing company, Dentist Advisors. That was something I experienced mostly out of necessity because we didn’t have enough people. It was not enough money to hire. I would get pulled into other Things that just were, they, I, I couldn’t do them well and I didn’t like doing them. And it was amazing how much that affected me. And then being able to finally, you know, we’re lucky enough to have a business that grew and have resources to hire smarter, better people at those things. And then pull back into the things I do probably two core things I like doing in the business, being an advisor and then doing this stuff. How much happier I was. And it is amazing when you. Yeah, you pull people in. You think you’re helping them. Like, we’re going to promote you, you know, but that’s not always the most helpful

Ryan Passey: Just promoted him beyond their ability to do the

Ryan Isaac: Now they’ll shut down. Yeah, they don’t even like it anymore. No matter what the money

Ryan Passey: Right. So that’s a big role is helping practices learn how to, you know, maximize their team and make sure they have the right people in their practice. And then again, continue to build that culture within their practice with core values and those kind of things that worked on that. And then after that, we, we help implement like the meetings, meeting pace, right? Like, how often are you having meetings? Structuring that, like we help them with, you know, morning huddles and weekly team meetings, monthly reviews, quarterly team meetings and annual reviews, those kind of things. So, help get that set up to kind of keep everybody fired up, working on the same page. And again, that principle of slowing down to speed

Ryan Isaac: Slowing down to speed up. I love that so much. communication between people. Meetings. Can go overboard and not everyone loves them, but they are, they are necessary to bring people together and, kind of cultivate the sharing of ideas. That’s where you develop trust with people. You let people speak their mind. You make a safe space for it. You speak your mind. You have this like sharing of ideas and that’s where teams, I think, get really developed.

Ryan Passey: Yeah, we have a, kind of a core value at, at Wood River Dental where, you know, you might not, everybody gets their say, you might not get your way.

Ryan Isaac: Table. Yeah.

Ryan Passey: That’s kind of the rule, like, everyone has a seat at the table, right, and everyone gets a chance to voice their opinion, but once the decision’s made by the group, everyone’s, everyone’s on board pushing it

Ryan Isaac: Their opinion, but once the decision is made by the group, everyone on the board is

Ryan Passey: Got to move forward. And then once the decision is made, even if you weren’t agreeing on it, you’re on board.

Ryan Isaac: Board

Ryan Passey: Yeah

Ryan Isaac: Which is part of, uh, that’s part of trust and vision and real teamwork. It’s hard to cultivate.

Ryan Passey: Yeah.

Ryan Isaac: That leadership part. I think dentists feel so overwhelmed and adequate. I don’t know what the word would be, but that’s, that’s so hard to build.

Ryan Passey: It’s interesting, though, that, but if you put in the effort, I was trying to think today, like, when was the last time we replaced an employee at the

Ryan Isaac: Really? Oh, so good.

Ryan Passey: Two and a half, three years since we’ve done that. Had to hire somebody other than like a new hygienist, but like

Ryan Isaac: Like, what’s that worth?

Ryan Passey: Yeah,

Ryan Isaac: That not worth the time and the effort to not have to hire and find new

Ryan Passey: Find new people like and again, I think it’s part of the culture We built there and Dan and Jared of like having people that want to show up to work loved being a part of the team Feel included and not just their financial needs are met but like hey I’m a part of the team and part of what’s going on here. So we have a great team there and Fantastic human beings, but yeah, it’s, it’s like our turnover’s been almost zero,

Ryan Isaac: Is, that is the, that is the less expensive path than hiring compared to hiring new people all the time. Yeah. Uh, was that eight or

Ryan Passey: Uh, and then number eight’s collaboration, like, we, we want to get the dentist on, on these kind of things, where they’ve got some support, not just, uh, in the office, but outside the office. Other like minded professionals, you know, come to a summit, hang out on the surfboard with, uh, Ryan Isaac,

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Let’s

Ryan Passey: And be able to collaborate, because there’s, there’s magic that happens when you get Dentist, you know, getting out of the office and onto

Ryan Isaac: That. And that’s the key. Um, I would, I would love to have you kind of just shared some of the things you’ve got other things you do. You’re not in Nicaragua every month of the year, but you guys do a lot of things, but there is some magic that happens when you just pull any human away from their normal environment where the stresses are and the pressures are. And yeah, you get some, like you get some camaraderie walls come down and Yeah, the, the conversations that ended up happening, the, the connections, people get really inspired. They learn new things. I mean, a couple of the docs here that are, I think they’re presenting tonight. they were talking to Mark Costas this week here as well. And they, it like sparked a, a huge shift in a business idea for them. And they’re already crushing it with this, with this business they’re doing. And one conversation, they were like, Oh, that’s what we need to do. Just one side conversation. Really

Ryan Passey: Really cool. And, and again, that’s part of the purpose of these retreats, is like, we have these frameworks, but we actually want to provide, like, the actual experience or event, right? Same thing with, like, Legacy, right? We, we want to create, like, not just tell Dentist that it’s great. You need to have a legacy, but like, here’s a humanitarian opportunity, right? That you can come and, and be a part of and, and be able to experience what it is to, you know, create a legacy, you know.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Ryan Passey: Of Midwestern University, Dr. Brad Smith. Yeah, he was giving us some C. E. and talking about, like, the joy of doing dental missions and we were up in a, you know, isolated alpine lake. And he was dropping some knowledge bombs on us. And we just thought, gosh, we’d love to be involved in something like that.

Ryan Isaac: And then the next time he

Ryan Passey: The next time he showed up at a summit, he was like, you guys still want to do a humanitarian thing? We’re like, yeah, we’d love to go. And he’s like, no, I don’t mean go, I mean do one. Like, do one. Like, be. He’ll be in charge. He had a connection in Africa and he, uh,

Ryan Isaac: Oh, that’s how it started.

Ryan Passey: That’s how it started, yeah. He had a dental student at the dental school there that, uh, had passed away his first year in, in dental school. He had actually, was one of the people that found the student in his apartment. Gave him CPR until, yeah, got there. But kept him alive enough for his family to come say goodbye. Established some He had a great relationship with his family and his family had some connections to Africa.

Ryan Isaac: And that’s how it began.

Ryan Passey: That’s kind of how it began. They dedicated a clinic to the, to the student over in Africa. And we went over and helped started, to help provide service for the clinic. And we’ve been doing that for three years now.

Ryan Isaac: You go once a year or a couple times a

Ryan Passey: A couple times a year. We took Mark Costas and his group, Smiles Outreach International, last January. Annalee and I, my wife, we spent, uh, two months over there from October through November. Dan brought a group out in October, we came out with him, and then we stayed, and then Jared brought a second group at the end of November for Thanksgiving.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah,

Ryan Passey: And, uh, it was a fantastic thing. So again, you know, we, we’re trying to not just, uh, talk about the need for legacy, but trying to provide some of that opportunity as well for Dentist to Come have an awesome experience in Africa and then go on a fantastic

Ryan Isaac: A lot of the people, a lot of people that come to these retreats, I haven’t been to Africa. I’d really like to go. They, they, Africa is their favorite thing. And we’re sitting in like beautiful resorts right

Ryan Passey: Right,

Ryan Isaac: And Africa is their favorite thing. It must be a pretty special experience. Yeah.

Ryan Passey: It’s very special. The place we go is kind of remote and isolated and the people are just so fantastic. And, again, I think it’s more about serving than, you know, like here there’s kind of,

Ryan Isaac: The legacy

Ryan Passey: They kind of come out here and learn about themselves and spend some time, but like, Like, there it’s just giving, giving, giving, but the more they give, the more they receive back. And, and then, you know, we talked about burnout yesterday, and like, one of the best ways to avoid burnout is, you know, a service trip. Like, fall back in love with dentistry, like, why you did the profession. Most, and again, I, I love working with dentists. Like, coming from a retail background, and then work with dentistry. Like, dentists are such fantastic

Ryan Isaac: Agree. Yeah.

Ryan Passey: Like, and have such a skill set that’s just, to be able to help people in a way that

Ryan Isaac: So central to their communities. Yeah.

Ryan Passey: Just crazy. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac: How do people get in touch with elevation? And, if you want, you can talk about different ways that people can interact with it, with elevation.

Ryan Passey: So, yeah, you can come on a retreat like this. We do this big annual summit once a year. We’ll do another one next February. We tend to do this couple summit over Valentine’s Day. We kick off with the Super Bowl and end with Valentine’s, which is a fantastic week to get away with a spouse and have some fun. And then we do, we do some local stuff and up in Sun Valley. We’ve got a leadership retreat coming up there where we’ll take a two day, high intensive course to go help a doc walk through all of these things. So we’ll help build the BHAG, we’ll help establish core

Ryan Isaac: In person events.

Ryan Passey: Person events, yeah. So this is at the end of May. Up there we’ll have a two day, heavy CE, 16 hour kind of day. But we’ll try to fit in something fun. This one will be pretty, set up on just learning these leadership principles to take back a plan and applying your practice. So, you can sign up for that online. We’ve got, an Alaska Summit coming up next year as well. We’re gonna take some, get us up to Alaska, do some deep sea fishing and hang out at a, lodge there in, outside of Juneau, which is fantastic. And then, uh, every month we do some free webinar, CE webinar, just to kinda, you

Ryan Isaac: Have so much going on.

Ryan Passey: Yeah, and then uh, Dentist Advisor Mastermind once a month, so, yeah.

Ryan Isaac: He’s really involved. Yeah. Thanks man.

Ryan Passey: And then we have two trips for DLF this year. We’re going over to Africa the end of April. Again with Mark Costas group, Smile Outreach International. But if you want to learn more about that, you can go to, you know, dentallegacy. foundation. org. And then we’re going to go again in October, so, yeah.

Ryan Isaac: And what’s the website for Elevation?

Ryan Passey: Elevationassociation. com You can find out there. Send us a contact form. If you want a free growth report for your practice, fill out the form there. But you can get a hold of us through the website. It’s the easiest way. I’ve

Ryan Isaac: I’ve been really proud to be, partners with you guys, friends with you guys. You do really good work. You guys care a lot, about the wellbeing and the outcomes of everyone that you work with. And so everyone should be sitting where we’re sitting right now and make that happen next

Ryan Passey: Absolutely. It’s fantastic. And again, I think having Jared and Dan as practicing dentists, you know, gives us a different take on things as well. Like, we’re in the trenches every day with Everybody else. And so we really understand what a doc’s going through

Ryan Isaac: Yeah

Ryan Passey: And try to make their life a little easier. That’s what we’re all about is helping docs, you know, fulfill their personal and professional goals. That’s what we want to do.

Ryan Isaac: Well, Ryan, thanks for joining us here. We’ll go, we’ll go grab some dinner together and then do this again soon. Thanks everyone for listening. Catch you next time. Bye bye.

Keywords: Dentistry, data-driven decisions, leadership, dental practice management, Elevation Association, vision, core values, team collaboration, legacy, service, culture, roles and responsibilities, growth opportunities

Practice Management, Work Life Balance