How to Connect Your Profits to a Higher Purpose – Episode 216

Do you have a passion for what you’re building that extends beyond just profits?

On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Reese interviews Jayme Amos, founder of Ideal Practices, a leader in helping dentists create successful startup practices. Jayme reveals how his own business found an altruistic vision that added greater personal purpose to his work, and created a more unified office culture. 

You set the bar for office culture, but also how you’re going to serve your community. It’s a responsibility that can actually help create a better world … and workplace.

To receive your course scholarship from Ideal Practices, visit: www.StartupPracticeBlueprint.com and click the green “apply” button. Be sure to include  “referred by Reese Harper” in your application.

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Podcast Transcript

Reese Harper:
Hi, Dentist Money Show listeners. It’s Reese Harper here. Today I had a chance to interview Jayme Amos. Jayme and I have been friends for a while and I’ve always admired his passion for connecting with the unique purpose and vision, identity, values, community and social cause that drives each practice owner. Ultimately it’s really important to find something that you can connect with, either through your own practice or in the community that really binds you to your employees and to the community at large that you serve. I really believe that the practices that find that deep sense of purpose will be more profitable and will also find that their lives are more fulfilling and have a much greater impact. Whether you’re a startup scratch star, like Jayme spends a lot of time advising, or you’re someone that’s 10 or 15 years into your career, I know that this concept can really help.

Announcer:
Consult an advisor or conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors, a registered investment advisor. This is Dentist Money. Now, here’s your host, Reese Harper.

Reese Harper:
Welcome to the Dentist Money Show where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m your host, Reese Harper here with a special guest today. Ryan Isaac has let me come back to the interview studio and interview one of my all time favorite guests, Jayme Amos. Welcome to the show, Jayme. Thank you so much for coming back.

Jayme Amos:
It is so good to be here. Just knowing that we’re able to reconnect is so great, but on top of this, you know I know startups and I know a whole lot of startup dentists. Man, they love you.

Reese Harper:
Oh good. This is good.

Jayme Amos:
One of the things I love about Dentist Advisors is we’re able to … with me looking at startups, I love startups. I know that you do too. With startups, when they’re done right, I believe that startups change lives and startups change entire communities when they’re done the right way.

Reese Harper:
Industries … They do change industries. It’s not too big of a word to say that.

Jayme Amos:
[crosstalk 00:02:09]

Reese Harper:
They do …

Jayme Amos:
Innovation comes from startups, the fresh blood comes from startups, but the life change comes from startups and I love that when we sent doctors out on kind of this path toward fulfillment and realization and coming into being as a practice owner, I love that you’re right there to kind of align those pieces so that they stay in alignment long term and then the compounding effects of those early stage decisions on their finances is beautiful. So, it is good to be here. I think we see the world in similar ways.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, man. Yeah, it’s so fun to reconnect. I’m surprised that we don’t … My team has seen you more than I have seen you in recent months. I’ve heard stories of a trip on a catamaran that Justin and Jenny were on over the last few months where they apparently want to go back and do this again. So, thanks for hosting the crew out there in brainstorming for 2020 on how we’re going to help more people make good decisions. So I appreciate you doing that.

Jayme Amos:
It’s pretty special.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, it was super cool.

Jayme Amos:
It was great having them here.

Reese Harper:
I’ve been jealous because I was … left me back here grinding away. Keep me in my office.

Jayme Amos:
That’s okay.

Reese Harper:
Close the door, stay in there.

Jayme Amos:
Somebody’s got to wear the long sleeve shirts, my friend. Somebody’s got to wear them.

Reese Harper:
And the collared shirts, yes, they’re there.

Jayme Amos:
True, true.

Reese Harper:
Well, I thought today would be a good time for us to look back at what you learned, some new things that you learned in 2019. Kind of go back to … you know, you’ve been running your business for a long time and you learned something, if you’re like me, and a lot of people that tend to be people I like, they don’t stay stuck in their ways. They adjust, they pivot, they make new changes based on things they learn. They listen to people tell them adjustments that they would like to see made, and then they make minor adjustments. Sometimes it’s not huge but sometimes it’s significant.

Reese Harper:
I kind of thought we would go back and put you on the spot to think back this last year and tell us some of the biggest things that you learned about dentistry, the things that you really learned that … or, some of the things that you adjusted or would like to change for the future. So, what’s the first thing that kind of comes to mind as I throw that at you? I didn’t give you this in advance, so this is very spontaneous.

Jayme Amos:
Yeah, super spontaneous. I think I’ll give you the punchline and then if I’m allowed, I can kind of build up to what it is.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, let’s do it.

Jayme Amos:
So the punchline … how should I quantify this? I’m going to say … Let me do some quick math here. Yeah, 1,500 businesses. So 1,500 startups. I’ll start with that punchline, like what’s that all about?

Reese Harper:
I like it.

Jayme Amos:
Here’s the buildup. In 2019, this is a pretty powerful year for me and for my family and for my business, and not just my wife and my kids. We’ve got two kids. Lisa and I have a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old, but for my immediate family, back, I’m going to say, just about 20 years ago I started my first business. I know I don’t look like I’m necessarily that old, but I started my first company … I don’t know if you know this, Reese, I have a degree in international business. I am not a dentist, but kind of going back in time a little bit, I don’t even know if I really wanted to start a startup, but my first business was a startup.

Jayme Amos:
I knew that I wanted to have control over a business. I knew I wanted to own my own business, but I didn’t like the risk associated with a startup, especially with loans on my back and everything else, but my cousin and I jumped into it and I think in the first year, like most startup businesses, I learned some tough lessons, like trial and error style lessons, and they’re hard. The grind and the push through, the trial and error, learned the hard way, but we dove in. That was a recruiting company. It had nothing to do with dentistry, but in that first business, we had a lot of early stage success. We did a million dollars in our first year. We had 32 people on the payroll. It’s sort of the apex, and I thought I made it. I kind of did one of these and thought I made it.

Jayme Amos:
I thought kind of the two big goals, and I thought the only two goals, now I see three goals in startup practice ownership, but in a startup business I thought if I could get open then I’ll kind of have the bragging rights and the pride of being open, and the second goal being successful, like if I can be successful and profitable then cool, I made it. So I had both of those things, and right at that moment I was touring a space, like a piece of real estate. We were going through to look to expand the business and I remember getting a phone call from my mom. It was one of those moments that you just won’t forget ever, but for me I picked up the phone and what I heard was something like this. She said, “Jayme, there’s been an accident. Your brother Michael and his fiance Trish, they were broadsided by someone that night and it doesn’t look good.”

Jayme Amos:
I remember the call like it was yesterday. She said, “You should get to the hospital as fast as you can,” so I did.

Reese Harper:
Wow.

Jayme Amos:
I hopped in the car, got there as fast as I could. I found out that night that my brother and his fiance, all of 20 years old, they were both killed by a drunk driver that night. Those are the moments when time stops and everything gets kind of recalibrated in your mind.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, it’s like everything that I’ve ever been thinking about up until this moment just doesn’t matter and now what matters? I don’t know. It’s just like a deep pit of something, like nothingness, you know?

Jayme Amos:
Well, that phone call and that moment had kind of the … like you said, the world stopped. It was brutal, crushing. You can only imagine. He was 20, in the prime of his life and he was doing incredible things. So I actually moved back in with my parents and over the next couple months, I kind of had some self-reflection time. Like obvious self-reflection time where I’m re-looking at the world again and asking myself, “What the heck is going?”

Reese Harper:
What’s this all about? What do I want to do with my entire existence? Because it’s so fragile and I don’t have a lot of time and-

Jayme Amos:
We get one shot, right? That’s it. We get one shot in life. That’s all, and sometimes we don’t get as much time as we plan on having. So for me I actually took those next couple months. I ended up selling my business. I think it was a good decision at the time but I thought it was going to kind of help a healing process. I thought it was going to help move to the next stage. In retrospect, though, I actually feel like I almost had two legs of a three legged stool. I had this open business that I was proud of and I had this success, but it was kind of like, “Shoot, now I’ve got this pile of money and now what? I don’t have anything left. There’s very little of me at the moment,” so I actually tried to pivot, so one of the things that people talk about now a lot is pivoting.

Jayme Amos:
I pivoted into real estate. I started buying real estate up and down the East Coast. I got some commercial buildings, I got some apartment buildings. I started going out west. Built an interesting, fast growing portfolio and I started to see some interesting patterns of commercial real estate and demographics and even startup businesses starting to align, and I started to notice some cool things. It was right around then that my second … maybe my second most influential call, most memorable phone call of all time, it hit me and my buddy Joe from undergrad called me. This call was a good call. This call was a little nicer. This call was a little more happy.

Jayme Amos:
Joe called and said, “I’m about to finish dental school,” and I was like, “Sweet, you’re going to finish dental school.” He’s my undergrad roommate. So Joe asked me to be his boards patient. He said, “You’ve got time on your hands. Want to be my boards patient?” So I learned what that was. I had no idea, and through Joe and a couple other introductions of friends of friends, I met a dentist who said … His name was Dr. Dan. Dan said, “Jayme, with your real estate stuff and your small business stuff, do you think these demographics ideas and all these strategies would work for a startup dental practice?”

Jayme Amos:
I remember looking him in the eye. I remember saying to Dan, “Dan,” I said, “Dan, I see what you’re getting at, but I have no idea if this would work in dentistry. Like not a clue if it could work.” So we tried it and Dan, in his case, we did 1.2 million in that first year in his first … pardon me, in his first 18 months. So back then it was a good success but it was really hard fought. We had to push through [crosstalk 00:10:59]

Reese Harper:
It was a grind, yeah.

Jayme Amos:
It was a grind. So, building up to 2019, it was at that moment with Dan when I saw this kind of cool success story unfold. It was right then that I thought, “Okay, I have an opportunity here to realize I get one shot.” This is a new beginning, new opportunity and my ideal practice, this company, the consulting company, the concept of it was birthed right then with Dan. That was about 15 years ago now. It was almost like a big contrast for me and for my family to say, “All right, well, we have this birth of this ideal practices thing and almost the grieving or the loss of still kind of grappling with the loss of my brother and contrasting those two things.”

Jayme Amos:
So I said, “All right. Here’s what I’m going to commit to myself.” If I’m going to pursue the first thing of being open again with a business and if I’m going to teach this to other people, then sure, we’re going to pursue the success and get people profitable. But there has to be this third leg of the stool and for me it always boiled down to fulfillment. From then all the way til now, this topic of fulfillment and purpose and passion beyond being open the pride. Beyond the success and the money, kind of getting to a place where we can say, “What do we really stand for? What do we preplan and want to be known for beyond the pride, beyond the profits, beyond that?”

Jayme Amos:
Get this. Right then I birthed this idea of every time we open a startup dental practice in the United States, we simultaneously fund 10 startup businesses in third world countries, and last year, huge celebration for my team who I’m so proud of, huge celebration for all of our clients who participated in this, we’ve now officially funded 1,500 businesses in the States and overseas. And what’s really powerful about that is in third world countries, startup practice ownership is kind of not an option. They don’t have access to money. Like here, we’re very fortunate. We have access to loans like I had with my startup, like our clients’ startup practices have, but overseas they don’t, and I remember walking into this dirt village, like a tin hut village.

Jayme Amos:
It was sad and super poor and there’s a lot of sickness, but I remember walking through and seeing this woman there to go preview what this micro lending, this lending thing was that I was interested in, and this woman in the back of the village, she had this huge smile, ear to ear, and she and her family were standing around this metal pot, like a four foot wide metal pot. It was full of oil and she had plantains that were frying in there. Well, turns out that she was one of the loan recipients from this program, this micro lending program.

Jayme Amos:
So in this little village where there’s so little hope, this woman was able to get a small loan to start her business and fry plantains with her kids and package them in plastic and take them to the market to provide income. Now she’s like this beacon of hope in your community and I remember looking at her and thinking, “Wow, she looks like a dignified person in her town, even employing some of her own neighbors.” So for me, I love startups because they change lives, because it’s not just the money, because it’s about fulfillment and changing lives and changing communities is what I love.

Jayme Amos:
And last year for us was a huge celebration with 1,500 businesses officially being opened through ideal practices.

Matt Mulcock:
Hey Dentist Money Show listeners, it’s Matt Mulcock with Dentist Advisors. I want to invite you to join Ryan Isaac and me for a monthly webinar series where we tackle one of the elements topics each and every month. It’s going to feel a lot like the Dentist Money Show but you’ll have the ability to ask questions, answer live polls and get a behind the scenes look in how we work with clients. You can sign up for free at DentistAdvisors.com/webinar. Hope to see you there.

Reese Harper:
Sometimes it takes life events that are very significant like the unfortunate passing of your brother and sister-in-law, right? Sometimes it’s going through a bankruptcy. I talked to a guy last night at an NBA basketball game and he told me his financial story, going through bankruptcy as a pool contractor refinishing pools and how his purpose was reborn after he went through that, and now he does something completely different. Sometimes it’s as significant as a new relationship that comes into your life or a sickness, an illness could be … It’s this existential place that a lot of people get to where you just start hoping that what you’re doing for the time that you have actually leaves some kind of meaningful legacy, some kind of mark and I think sometimes it’s hard for people to feel like their everyday routine can be that valuable, can be that consequential, that being a dentist, running a small practice can really be that consequential.

Reese Harper:
But I kind of want to riff on this for a minute, and I want to give you a chance to throw one idea out there that you’ve seen where someone can find a deeper purpose, whether it’s a startup or an existing practice. What’s one way or one idea you have for where people can really find a deeper purpose? I want to throw one out there too and we’ll see if we can come up with a few ideas for people.

Jayme Amos:
Yeah, I love that. It’s such a cool idea. So first of all, let’s acknowledge that people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, like really financially successful people, the people who are closest to them, people consistently say that Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, they now work harder giving away their money to worthy causes than they worked building up the wealth that they’ve created. In other words, the passion has become more important than the profits. I literally just today saw on one of the biggest news sites in the country a picture of Britney Spears. It’s Britney Spears in this weird green thing and a boa constrictor around her neck from the early 2000s and it said, “Why fame and fortune is not enough and why so many of the rich and famous want to be artists.”

Jayme Amos:
If you think about that … I didn’t read the article. I didn’t care to click on Britney that day, this morning. What I think it means is they’re looking for something that matters. I think so many of us, when we get to those places of having … I call it the first possibility of a startup, so I’ll tie this into startups because that’s what I know, but for a startup dental practice, for any practice owner, you will have a moment where you could be open, the first possibility of startups, and then you can pursue the possibility of being successful or profitable, but then that third possibility of being fulfilled, I believe the backbone of what ideal practices is, and the backbone of what I think every practice in America should be is pursue all three.

Jayme Amos:
Start with all three. It doesn’t have to be a graduated scale. You could pursue all three or not. So, in terms of practicality, I’ll give you a cool example, somebody who you and I both like very much, Dr. Bryan. So this is the guy from a documentary.

Reese Harper:
Bryan Packard, yep.

Jayme Amos:
Dr. Bryan Packard. Got to check him out. I’m dropping his name. Check this out. Go to StartupDentist.com. There’s a documentary that we made about Dr. Bryan’s startup journey, so, Doctor, if you’re listening to this and you want to get inspired and you want to see how to create a huge purpose, I’ll give you a verbatim. Bryan says in the video, “This is about much more than just a dental practice now.” So get this, he’s in his first 12 months and he’s already a million dollar practice, million dollar collection startup. So some people will say, “Whoa, he must be in some town with great demographics.” Nope, he’s actually in a town with demographics that are 25% worse than the dudes who sell demographics reports tell you to open in. There’s 53 other dentists in his town.

Jayme Amos:
But on his opening day, he decided that he was going to pursue a path of having purpose, not just being open and not just being successful, but all three. This three legged stool concept. So in his case, and with all of our clients, we take clients through this, but anybody who’s listening, if you want to pursue something like this, Reese, you asked for a practical thing that people could use, I recommend asking yourself what matters. I recommend asking yourself, “What do you want to be known for, current day?” Then ask yourself, “Who do you want to be remembered by long term?” And ask yourself what you want to give to.

Jayme Amos:
I think if you push through those three questions and ask yourself authentically, realistically, what actually … it’s a power word. What matters to me as a human? What matters? For Brian, he’s now able to tell his whole community … This is awesome, so inspiring. He’s able to tell his whole community, “With every new patient who comes to our practice, we sponsor a family of a child with special needs. Why?” And then he keeps going. He says, “Why? Because when I was a young child, I lost my baby sister to a special needs condition, and I saw how much that hurt my family. So now anytime a new patient comes into our practice, we wrap our arms around those types of families in our community.” Whoa, whoa, right?

Jayme Amos:
So now, beyond just feeling good, like, “Cool, you’ve got a ribbon on your website,” don’t do that. If you’re just going to put a ribbon on your website, that’s my big “don’t do it” moment, don’t just put a ribbon on your website. It’s technically … I mean if you’re doing it just for the sake of trying to grow your business, that’s a gimmick. Technically that’s a lie and it will hurt the practice more than help the practice, but if it matters, like if it matters to you, then man, this could be something … like in Brian’s case he says, “Jayme, I had no idea you guys were so right. This cause that my practice now stands for, we’re attracting team members now who are more passionate about this cause than even I am, and we have patients coming to the practice just to join in with this movement.”

Jayme Amos:
And beyond that, he was on the news twice before he opened, two times on national broadcast television and three times on the radio before he opened, all wrapped around this concept of what matters. One of our clients, she had 209 patients on her fourth day and it takes a year and a half to build up to this moment to get that kind of a surge, but in her case, her startup practice, she went through this same conversation we’re going through now, and in her case she’s a real outdoors person, like mountain biking and hiking and kayaking, so she and her husband … her name’s Lauren. Lauren and Raul, they teamed up with a mountain biking trail restoration group. So they rebuild the trails, and it’s so beautifully, authentically them.

Jayme Amos:
So they restore this trail and they sponsor stuff with the riders. The relationship with the nonprofit that restores the mountain bike trails was so impressed with Lauren and her passion for their cause that they invited their 1,000 mountain bikers to Lauren’s open house. Powerful, right? Because the authenticity.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, and I think that’s just a good example. I think a lot of people don’t feel … Whatever it is that you’re passionate about, like I’m passionate about 10 different causes and that may be the right choice, but I really think it’s important for your team to have some input into that passion, and your team to have some input into that social mission and not have it be something that you mandate but something that you engage their conversation in so that it’s a collective choice.

Jayme Amos:
[crosstalk 00:22:55]

Reese Harper:
So your whole team can really get behind it. Man, I can’t overemphasize how important finding a cause that’s deeper than what you do everyday, really will be to your culture and to the authentic kind of happiness level that your team feels and your customers and patients feel.

Jayme Amos:
Yeah, going back to the open … Let’s see if I can do it backwards here. The open and then the successful and then fulfilled. Those three possibilities, we call it the three possibilities of startups. Open, successful and fulfilled. I believe that the most satisfaction from team members is when those things are defined before the doors open. So if those things are well crafted, well defined before the doors open, you have an opportunity to set the bar. You set the bar for culture. You set the bar for standards. Of course you can set the bar for clinical care, like you’re going to do this kind of clinical care, that’s perfect.

Jayme Amos:
But what about how you’re going to serve your own community? What about the literal patient experience from the moment they walk in the door? What about the ways that you interact with your team when the clock turns off and you’re all cleaning up for the day? I recommend that those things are all predetermined ahead of time like a bar that everybody has to live up to because then, when people show up for an interview, they’re faced with a future that they can join in on. When they show up to that culture, when they show up to that sacred DNA in the practice, they’re being challenged and motivated and encouraged to live up to that potential which gives you the best future employees.

Jayme Amos:
So I try to practice what I preach. I’m not the best at it, but one of the things I’ve just been enamored by with my own team … we have consultants all over the country and in our last meeting, they hashtagged. #BestJobLastJob. #BestJobLastJob, right? How cool to know that your care of your team and your care of the people that your business serves could evoke that kind of response? So whenever I hear of a practice that’s struggling with team members who are maybe not appreciated or if the doctor feels like they are not appreciated, often times I wonder if that bar was set at the beginning of the journey.

Jayme Amos:
Again, when thinking about being open and then successful and fulfilled, I would recommend that all those things are preplanned, again, before the doors open. The biggest downside, the biggest problem I’ve noticed with startups last year, going back to your question about 2019, is so many doctors, especially on Facebook groups and on social media, they all kind of sprint toward a goal of getting open for business. It’s almost like, “Go, go, go,” and they’re all like, “Let’s do a Facebook Live. Let’s do a Facebook Live. Get open for business.”

Reese Harper:
Well, and me and you obviously have … I’m a startup and you’re a startup and you specialize in this area, but you can see how this is for our audience who, statistically, not everyone can be a startup in the US, as you know, and even though we’d like them all to be, and I think the dental industry would be better if we had more people going through the beautiful opportunity of starting their own business. I do think you learn things in a way that you can’t in any other form or fashion. I don’t know if I could have had the culture we have today if I was not a startup. I don’t know. I’d like to believe I could have, but the natural momentum might have been too strong and maybe there is something really special. But I really think you have to sometimes think of your 10, your 20-year-old business like a startup and you’ve got to clean the slate and you have to start over and you have to say, “What got me here is not going to get me there.”

Reese Harper:
Ryan and I are pretty easy to talk with and so are our other advisors. Let’s just find a time that works for you so we could start a conversation about how to take control of your financial future. Give us a ring at 833-DDS-PLAN to set up a free consultation or just go to the website at DentistAdvisors.com and click “book free consultation.”

Jayme Amos:
Here’s a framework that maybe everybody can use whether you’re a startup or not. The term of what I’m about to share, hopefully, like you said, will give people some encouragement and some hope. So whether you’re a startup or not, this will apply. Now, in those open, successful, fulfilled framework, going through those three possibilities for a startup, the second one is successful and with successful, I’m implying profitable. I’m implying you will actually profitable in a healthy, good, sustainable way. In this section, in this possibility of startups, being successful, we have the Startup MBA. So whether you’re an existing practice or not, this will apply.

Jayme Amos:
Startup MBA. In the Startup MBA process, we have 10 specific pieces that get defined before opening day. So if you’re 20 and you need to regroup, reframe, see if these 10 things, if you sit down, take a week long retreat and define all of these to the Nth degree, and if you’re a startup, preplan with all of these. We have people asking us to jump in on the Startup MBA for that alone. We don’t do it. We just do it for free with our clients. It’s a multi-month process, but sit ready.

Jayme Amos:
Here we go. The 10 things. Systems, all your systems, policies, your protocol, your hiring, what is your standard for hiring? How are you going to go through that process? What is the hiring method for your practice? Internal marketing. Literally writing it down. External marketing, number six. Number seven, leadership. Number eight, financial guidelines. What are the financial guidelines that you and your practice adhere to? Number nine, the new patient experience. How specifically are you going to find the new patient experience in your practice? And I’m missing one. I said leadership. Oh, insurance strategies. Whether or not you’re a participating practice with insurance. You need an insurance strategy in your whole team.

Jayme Amos:
So these 10 things, policy, protocol-

Reese Harper:
But you forgot number 11.

Jayme Amos:
I don’t have 11, what is it? Tell me.

Reese Harper:
The treats and snacks area.

Jayme Amos:
The treats and snacks. Yeah, that too. What I’m getting at is-

Reese Harper:
You’re [crosstalk 00:29:35]

Jayme Amos:
Use this as a framework to check off and say, “I need this defined.” If it’s not defined, then someone else is going to define it for you, and that might be okay-

Reese Harper:
So you could have the non-startup retreat soon where the people that wish they could’ve done a startup but acquired a practice go and get the Startup MBA? Because, you know, Wharton Business School still teaches the startup principles to people that are 10 years into their career. I’m just going to let you noodle on that.

Jayme Amos:
I like that.

Reese Harper:
Launch that Startup MBA for the people that want to restart.

Jayme Amos:
The Restartup. How about the Restartup MBA?

Reese Harper:
Yeah, dude.

Jayme Amos:
The Restartup MBA.

Reese Harper:
I’m just telling you, I would show up to that and learn about the 10 principles.

Jayme Amos:
You’ve spoken at Wharton. You know.

Reese Harper:
Okay?

Jayme Amos:
You literally have spoken … You spoke at Wharton in my hometown. You got invited to Wharton. I never did. I’m just-

Reese Harper:
A small part, a very small role. I was still there to learn, but I feel like that’s really critical, man.

Jayme Amos:
Here’s what I’m getting at. Remember I said “no mission statement”? I said “no mission statement” intentionally. So here’s what I want to encourage people with. If you’re doing a startup, preplan all these 10 sections. Literally spend months doing it. We spend a year, maybe a year and a half in some cases, building, orchestrating the whole process. But one of the other key moments is not having a mission statement and instead having your best possible review defined. So think of it like you’re running a play. Maybe you’re running a Broadway show. I want you to not describe how good the play is. I want you to think about it like this.

Jayme Amos:
Think that you are the person watching the play and describe what that experience is like. Not just the definition of, “There were three people on the stage. They made me smile.” No, no, no. Describe in your best possible review the emotional experience, the feedback, the observations, the interaction with your team. Describe all those things. Even describe what they would say about you. Some of our clients go through this process and they literally have three or four pages of their best possible review. That’s a process … That’s like a standard that the team can live up to and that defines everything.

Jayme Amos:
So whether you’re going to open in two years or you’ve been open for 20 years, turn it off. Turn it all off and get clear on the 10 parts of the Startup MBA or the 11 parts of the Restartup MBA with the treat counter-

Reese Harper:
Yeah, it’s the best.

Jayme Amos:
And your best possible review, not a mission statement. So maybe that will give some ideas.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, I think that’s great, man. We’ve covered a lot of ground today. I think the focus of what I was hoping to accomplish today was what I think you do best, which is really finding a uniquely identifiable passion that can drive the growth of your career and drive the growth of your practice, drive the health and longevity of your service to your patients. There really is an important dimension here of both social mission, both internal team culture and social cause and practice systems that all support that vision and I think you do that really well. But I digress-

Jayme Amos:
If you’re not passionate about something in your practice beyond the care of patients … It could be anything, mountain bikes or you name it, if you’re not carrying who you are in an authentic way into the practice, it becomes much harder to lead. It becomes much harder to attract. It becomes much harder to retain, but if you can, here’s the cool byproduct. Reese, like you said, if you can tap into this, if you can uncover it, then you actually show up more motivated everyday, which in turn inspires and re-inspires your team, which in turn inspires and re-inspires your patients.

Jayme Amos:
So, I believe if you can tap into what matters in an authentic level, it’s not just about being able to put the ribbon on the website. That’s not the purpose. The purpose is to have something that matters.

Reese Harper:
It’s a deeply-

Jayme Amos:
I think that’s a core piece of culture, of DNA. Sorry [crosstalk 00:33:57]

Reese Harper:
It’s a deeply … If you can tap into this inner passion and energy that you can find from cultivating a deeper sense of purpose in your life, your business will not only have significantly greater financial results but you’ll just be able to embrace your life with a lot more happiness and satisfaction. Sometimes-

Jayme Amos:
And I don’t want to downplay it. It’s a heavy topic. Even for our own clients, with one-on-one guidance, it’s a four to eight month process to figure it out. That’s with handholding through the whole thing, exploring [crosstalk 00:34:35]

Reese Harper:
If you don’t have handholding and if you don’t have accountability to discovering this, it’s hard to do on your own. It’s difficult to do on your own. And it might require multiple coaches and multiple versions of you exploring this. I just think it’s worth finding, and I can just say in my own anecdotal experience, once I tapped into my own internal purpose for existence and once that internal purpose really started showing up in the DNA of our company and we were able to define it very clearly, I became more energized than I’ve ever been in my life.

Jayme Amos:
I didn’t mean to do this, but check this out.

Reese Harper:
What have you got there?

Jayme Amos:
You know what that is? I’m not showing you this-

Reese Harper:
2,000 times [crosstalk 00:35:16]

Jayme Amos:
I’m showing you this. Can you read that?

Reese Harper:
For those of you who are listening, because this is an audio podcast and Jayme’s very excited, he’s showing me pictures, he’s got a 2,000 times 2,021 on his sleeve of his shirt.

Jayme Amos:
It’s on the sleeve of my shirt, it’s on our hats, it’s on our logos, it’s on all of our internal stuff [crosstalk 00:35:36]

Reese Harper:
He has it actually tattooed on his lower back too, but you can’t see that.

Jayme Amos:
I showed you my lower back when nobody was looking. That’s weird. So, it means … Here’s how real this is for me and my team. It means 2,000 businesses will be affected by ideal practices, startups … 2,000 startup businesses will be opened by ideal practices influence by the year 2021. We’re on track. I’m super proud of this.

Reese Harper:
Well, you’ve influenced me, Jayme. You’ve influenced a lot of people and I think that that passion really does show up in the way you interact with people.

Jayme Amos:
Well, thanks. Well, listen. It is a huge honor to be trusted with startups, with the rest of people’s lives. I said it in the beginning and I’ll keep saying it. I believe that startups are the best part of dentistry because we’re able to affect people’s lives on a new level and we’re able to affect entire communities at an entirely new level. This is why I love startups, and, Reese, I didn’t tell you this ahead of time but I hope it’s okay to drop a huge $3,000 gift on the table for everybody. Is that cool?

Reese Harper:
Okay, yeah.

Jayme Amos:
So, at our course, the Startup Practice Blueprint Course, we teach this whole process over two days. Two days is enough to ingest a lot of this. It’s a $3,000 tuition, so if it’s okay for you and your listeners, I want to create a scholarship for one person to be able to attend the Startup Practice Blueprint, the next one coming up, so if that’s of interest, I’m sure we can put my contact information somewhere so people can apply and apply for the scholarship. We’ll choose one person for this cycle of the blueprint for the course, so [crosstalk 00:37:16]

Reese Harper:
That’s awesome, Jayme. I appreciate you always being so willing to help and give back. I guess I want to wrap up here and just make sure everyone knows that I think there’s people in your life that are important to surround yourself with. Jayme and I have gotten a lot from our mutual association and I feel like the energy that you get from associating with people that help you find your best self really can’t be overstated. I want to encourage everybody to find a little bit deeper sense of purpose in what it is that you’re trying to create, whether you are a startup or an existing practice, whether you’re an educator, whether you’re an associate. Just find what it is for you that helps inspire you to have a deeper sense of value each day in your work. I think that’ll make a huge difference in all kinds of ways and from a financial perspective, which is what we do here on the Dentist Money Show, I really can say that people who do connect with that inner sense of purpose have very different financial trajectories in their life. It’s a win-win. There’s a positive correlation.

Jayme Amos:
[crosstalk 00:38:35]

Reese Harper:
Yeah, there’s a positive correlation between social causes, internal team dynamics and financial success. They are correlated and I just think it’s really cool to see that. Jayme, I’ll let you have the last word.

Jayme Amos:
Well, I think what I would ask anybody who’s listening is to please take my story seriously, my story of having to literally come to grips at an early age with being faced with the reality that we get one shot. We get one chance, and time sometimes does expire too early, so if you want to have significance or purpose while you’re still here, remember, take action now. Choose a path that you want to pursue and start moving toward it right now, because you might get one of those phone calls or someone may make that phone call about you.

Jayme Amos:
That’s just the reality, but I know, if you look at this like a three legged stool where you have … you’re open, you are successful with something like the Startup MBA and then you are pursuing a version of fulfillment that is meaningful to you, all three legs of that stool, if you do that, then my hope and my challenge to you is that you won’t be like me where you have the first two and then you look back in regret realizing what you’ve lost out on and realizing that you could have affected so many more people. You could’ve done so much more for yourself, for your family, for your community.

Jayme Amos:
So I hope today for anybody who’s listening, who this matters to, I would say don’t stop this podcast before you write down what you’re going to do about it. Commit to do something. Don’t just listen. That’s educational entertainment. Commit right now to do something. Press pause, write down what action you’re going to take from what you heard, whether it’s the experience vision statement, whether it’s the best possible review, whether it’s the Startup MBA, whether you want to apply for the course, for the Startup Practice Blueprint course, whether you want to go to StartupDentist.com and watch Dr. Bryan Packard’s startup story and see how he did it and why he’s so freaking passionate about what he does.

Jayme Amos:
So, whatever it is, write something down and take action. So here’s to you in private practice ownership success and an incredible year. Reese, this is a huge honor. Thank you for allowing me to be here in your space. This is awesome. Thank you.

Reese Harper:
Thanks Jayme. It’s been a pleasure, man. We look forward to doing this again soon.

Jayme Amos:
Thanks, man.

Reese Harper:
Thanks again to Jayme for taking so much time to help us understand his unique perspective on social causes and unique vision and mission statements for each practice. I’m really excited for people to find and maybe reconnect a little bit with what drove them to go into dentistry in the first place or a unique kind of energizing second stage of career motive that really pushes your practice to new heights. Make sure and take time to check out our webinars and our content on the website and reach out to us for any questions that you have. We’re always here to help. Thanks again and carry on.

Practice Management