Why Most Dentists Hire Wrong and How to Fix It – Episode #711

On this episode of The Dentist Money Show, Bryton Nield and Bob Spiel from Hiring Pros join Matt to unpack what it really means to hire with intention. They dive into why so many dentists struggle with hiring, how poor decisions can impact team culture and stress levels, and what steps practice owners can take to build a strong, cohesive team. They talk about how to define your ideal candidate and create a structured onboarding process. Tune in to learn how intentional hiring can transform your practice from the inside out.

Check out Hiring Pros here!

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Podcast Transcript

Matt Mulcock: Welcome to the Dentist Money Show where we have Dentist make smart financial decisions. I am Matt and excited to be here today with Bob Spiel and Bryton like the ski resort, Nield Welcome guys, the co-founders of The Hiring Pros. Guys, how are doing today?

Bob Spiel: Great. Good to be with you, Matt.

Bryton: Fantastic. Thanks for having us on, Matt.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, of course. I had to give you a shout out Bryton as a skier. your sounds like you’re about your skier or a border, you snowboarder. Ski. Okay. Uh, we’re starting off the show with calling myself out with mispronouncing your name. And I love the analogy that you use when you’re like Bryton, just like the ski resort. And I was like, this is my guy. This is my guy. So, um, super excited to have you guys and we’re going to talk about such a, such an important topic today.

Bryton: Yeah. ⁓ I see. Yeah, definitely more of the purest form, right? There we go. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Really kind of twofold, you guys specialize, I’m to let you guys introduce yourselves, but, the focus today around hiring and what that means for leadership as well, kind of the post hiring process. So I want to do a deep dive with your guys’s expertise of again, this topic, maybe a twofold of topic that Dentist struggle with of hiring leadership and all that, and what goes wrong, what are the consequences of getting it wrong? But before we dive into any of that,

Bob Spiel: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: I’d love for you guys. ⁓ we always like our guests to just kind of introduce themselves, kind of tell their background, who better to introduce themselves than you guys. So if we just start with, Bob, kind of tell us about you and, and, give us your background and then who you are.

Bob Spiel: Yeah, you bet, Matt. Thank you so much. Your listeners may be familiar with my voice a little bit. I started a podcast a couple of years ago called Just Say No to the DSO ⁓ to kind of let you know where things fall as far as independent practice goes. My background is that I’ve been in dentistry now for 17, going on 18 years. Before getting into dentistry, I got an MBA and then worked in healthcare in the late 90s. ⁓ Was a hospital and surgical center CEO When those gigs ended, got into consulting and I consulted in medicine for a while, found that I was good at it, but there’s no heart. Just happened to have a real fortunate event take place. I call it a God thing where, you know, a friend of a friend said he had a neighbor that was wanting to sell his dental consulting practice. It turns out I didn’t buy it from him, but he mentored me for a couple of years. And the biggest thing that he did for me met a great guy named by the name of Larry Winterstein, who’s now retired. He let me see dentistry from the outside in and helped really understand what he called the game of dentistry, what that is. You know, there’s a phrase that I’ve coined that practice, well, practice in life and even school may teach you how to throw, dribble, or even kick the ball. Okay, but someone else has to teach you how to play the game. And so what I learned was how to teach dentists how to play the game and how to do it well so that they can actually achieve the goals that they want and not feel run over by their practice. But instead they can really thrive in an environment where they have a team around them that they love and that they get to a point where they have to realize, you know what, I’m busy enough and I need to find another one of me. And that’s where I’ll bring Bryton in and let him kind of complete the story. But we’ve, we’ve really specialized in what we call a world-class approach to making sure Dentist can keep their growth curves going, keep their life together eventually transition their practice but do it in a great way where they maintain their legacy and they find partner quality associate dentists.

Matt Mulcock: That’s Bob. I appreciate that. I want that to be, I think that’ll be such a great theme as we talk the difference between having skills or tactical abilities versus understanding the broader game. That’s so such a good setup. Bryton. I want to kick it to you to follow that up. Why would you, why’d we start with Bob? That’s my fault. I apologize. I should not have done that.

Bryton: I don’t know, you really set me up to fail there, Matt. You’re good. Yeah, I don’t have the 20 years of practice management experience to pull on, but Bob and I formed Hiring Pros ⁓ almost four or five years ago. And before that, I studied accounting and business in school and helped build a few other ⁓ companies, a marketing company, a sales company. ⁓ But my real passion was discovered in helping people. build and create high performance teams. I just, love Bob and I have done a lot of leadership coaching together and development, but we realized that a lot of people are leading teams that they didn’t intentionally choose or even curate. It’s unfortunate that we find ourselves and practice owners find themselves in a situation like this all the time where they dread going into work on Monday because they, before you know it, they’ve hired a bunch of people they don’t even like, right? We have learned and taken a model to help people really learn how to hire the best people for their unique practice, hire the right people for their unique practice. And we’ve specialized in helping people hire associates over the years. And that’s all I’ve done for the last four or five years is completely hyper-focused on helping practice owners hire the right fit team members and right fit associates so they can get their life back so they don’t have to hate where they work. But they can also continue to get out of being the bottleneck. as far as that’s a little bit of my credentialing, the most important thing in my life is I’m a husband and I’ve got three little beautiful boys. All this is, you know, six, four and two or six, four and one. And so we’re in it. We are in it. Yeah, but it’s, you know, it’s the thing that lights me up more than anything. I love being a dad. I love being a parent.

Matt Mulcock: You’re in the trenches, Bryton. You and I are in the trenches here, yeah.

Bryton: And there’s a lot of similarities to raising kids and being a leader and building teams and things like that. But that’s my life. That’s who I am. I’m a father, husband, follower, and believer of Christ. And then I happen to also be hyper passionate about helping people build the best teams across our organization.

Matt Mulcock: I may have set you up to fail, but you didn’t, you nailed that. really appreciate that. And I also love that you, often use, truly use analogies with children and parenting along with these kinds of things all the time. I really do think there are a lot of analogies that we can talk about. And I too have a six year old and a four year old. again, I know what you’re going through really, really.

Bryton: Yeah. Boys or girls? I don’t know this is red.

Matt Mulcock: I have a daughter, a six year old daughter and a four year old son. So.

Bryton: Yeah, see, we’re all boys. It’s pure madness. It’s pure madness. It’s awesome.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure. ⁓

Bob Spiel: Because Bryton’s wife is actually raising four boys, not three. yeah, it is absolute madness. But I’ll just say the guys having raised six kids ⁓ and they’re all now grown and they have kids of their own, believe it or not, it actually passes really, really fast. So yeah, and I don’t mean to patronize you with that because sometimes you’re thinking, man, can I just make it through the next 15 minutes, right?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she would.

Bryton: True that.

Matt Mulcock: Yes, I’ve heard this many times.

Bob Spiel: But yeah, you turn around and you go, holy cow, they’re gone, they’re grown.

Matt Mulcock: Yes, it, it for sure. Bryton. Let’s just turn this into a, ⁓ us talking to Bob about parenting technique and skills and wisdom. We’ll come back to hiring people later. So no, Bob, it’s funny. said that hear this a lot, ⁓ from siblings and friends and you know, my dad and I try to think about this all the time of not letting it just like pass you by without being present. So I appreciate that, that comment. So:

Bryton: Yeah, totally transition.

Matt Mulcock: Well, let’s jump in. I, again, I love this idea and Bryton, something you said really struck me because I hear this all the time, which is dentists. Often, most of the time love dentistry, especially practice owners. They got into it for a reason. Um, it might’ve been to make, you know, because they, they heard they’re going to make a lot of money. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I think dentists get into dentistry because they like dentistry crazy thought, but

Bob Spiel: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bryton: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: What I often hear, and I want to get your guys’ thoughts on this, what I often hear is team is usually the reason why, is usually the top of, top two or three reasons that they’re stressed out. This is something you obviously are trying to solve.

Bob Spiel: Right.

Bryton: Yeah, what are the, yeah, it’s like, are the things that they go home and they’re stressed about, we complain to our spouse about and are carrying day in and day out. Oftentimes, it’s that one team member that we’re probably delaying a conversation with that, you know, inevitably you probably need to have and probably shouldn’t have hired them in the first place, right? Team members are all amplifiers and they either come in and they amplify the good or they can really amplify the bad. And the more that, forgive me with the analogy, but the higher they are up the food chain, the more impact they have, the more they can amplify, right? And so when you bring in an assistant, they may amplify a little bit and then you bring in a ⁓ front desk or an office manager, they amplify more. And then when you bring in another dentist and provider, there’s no more greater amplification than another provider in a practice. And unfortunately, too many people take those burdens home and are stressed about it and it hurts their practice and it hurts their relationships and they carry the stress on and on and on. And reality is they could have avoided that entirely if they would have made key decisions earlier on in that sort of process.

Bob Spiel: Yeah, too often hiring is viewed as a crap shoot, to be honest, you know, and in this sense anymore post COVID of man, anybody will do. I just need a body. And we find that honestly, a bad hire is worse than no hire at all. Even if your team is running behind and stressed, cetera. ⁓ You know, to you, I’m going to borrow an analogy that an assistant may be like a tweeter, but if you have the wrong

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, look.

Bob Spiel: Associate in that’s like a woofer. Okay. I mean, it’s just this huge amplification of a lot of things that you’re either right or either wrong and One of the things that I learned through my consulting career was really how to be intentional and how to teach dental practice owners to be intentional and Kind of use cubbies phrase begin with the end in mind Okay, and we’ve taken that concept and in Bryton and I and now his team have really blown that whole thing out in terms of a really

Bryton: You

Bob Spiel: Incredible system to be able to go through the whole process because one of the things we discovered, unlike any other type of executive hire, frankly, is that two dentists in the same practice or three dentists in the same practice, if it’s a really good fit, it’s magic. And if it’s not, man, it’s combustion. And too often it’s combustible because they didn’t do the homework.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. So that’s what I was going to ask Bob and Bryton is, is we can talk. I want to get into like the consequences and maybe hear some stories of things that you’ve maybe have seen gone wrong, but let’s, let’s start from, ⁓ the beginning of Bryton. said a lot of times dentists end up with the team. They, they kind of didn’t feel like they brought on or, or it kind of ended up being like, how did I end up here? Where, where does that come from? Is it just Bob, what you’re saying of the crap shoot mentality? What goes wrong here for dentists when they end up in these spots with team?

Bryton: Yeah, well, you can definitely if you’ve ever had, mean, your listeners are super smart, right? They’re they’re all very, very intelligent dentists that they are. They’re they’re the smart ones because they’re listening to Matt. but no, they they they understand that their practice and their financials is and themselves is probably the greatest asset they could have invested in. Right. And I realized, you know, too often when we play with our

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, they are.

Bryton: Are hiring and the members we bring on to that asset because the people become a part of that organization that you’re in, you all the people, the equipment, everything is part of who we are as an organization. And when we don’t have any sort of intentional process to filter who’s a good fit and who’s not a good fit, it’s like we’re just rolling the dice. It’s like we’re gambling, we’re going down to Vegas and just hoping it lands on red. And that’s just not going to work. And what happens is, Oftentimes people just go off some sort of gut feel, seems like we get along. We get to the point where we’re in a lot of pain and we decide, I just need a body in here. I can’t keep operating at this level. We need just someone that seems like they’re nice and let’s get them in and hope it works out. We call that panic point hiring. And too many people just make panic point hiring decisions, which ends up just throwing more on and causing them to drown even more. I love it. there’s a quote from ⁓ Tony, ⁓ he was the founder of Zappos. can’t remember his exact name, but Tony Hsieh. So there’s a quote from Tony Hsieh that says, they lost hundreds of millions of dollars hiring the wrong people. And that’s from a very, very much larger business than most of us have. And ⁓ that’s a lesson that he talked about was how important

Bob Spiel: Tony C.

Bryton: Of a skill it was for him to learn how to hire the right people. And so, yeah, unfortunately, we’ve learned how to make very good panic point hires, which surrounds us with people we don’t actually like. And then we end up dreading the environment that we’ve curated. So, but there is hope, there is different ways to do it. And the often the people that find hope are those that have gone through enough pain where they realized that I can’t keep doing this, I’ve got to change, I’ve got to do something different.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bryton: And so they start to get a little bit more intentional about their culture, who’s a good fit, who’s not a good fit. But most of those people are 20, 30, 40 years into their career. And they finally got to that point where I’m to be more intentional with who I have.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Or they’ve listened to this show or to you guys, they’re hopefully out there listening now and being like, I need to be thinking about this more proactively and learning from other people’s pain and mistakes. ⁓ you just use the word intentional and Bob, you said intentional before as well. What does that look like in this process? Like, where does that, what’s the process of having more intention with this process?

Bob Spiel: Sure. Bryton, can I run with this for a sec?

Bryton: Yeah, please.

Bob Spiel: I would say intention looks like this, that too often just to frame it, hiring is a 90 % emotional process and 10 % intellectual. And we have to learn to flip that towards 90 % logic and then 10 % emotion because there still is that element. They do very, very much so. Yep, they do. And so what does that look like to be able to actually flip that? Well, what we recommend is again, intention.

Matt Mulcock: So most people use emotions more than anything, Yeah.

Bob Spiel: Be really clear who’s going to succeed in this role, who fits in our practice, what are their characteristics? Define, we call that an avatar, define that person upfront so that then as you go through the process of finding and interviewing and vetting, you actually have something to compare against. Okay. Instead of comparing candidate A to candidate B, you compare candidate A to your avatar. And that at least establishes a benchmark so that you know what it is you’re trying to find and who that person is. Too often we hire out of, as Bryton said, this panic point, desperation, need, whatever it is, but we’re not applying ⁓ real sound logic to it and waiting for that right person to come. Tony Hsieh’s quote is great. Patrick Glencioni gave the quote one time, we’ve heard often that the right people are what you need in a company, but he said, no, actually, well, people are your most important asset. He said, it’s the right people are your most important asset. Okay, forgive me for misquoting that. Not just people, it’s the right people. It is the right people that

Matt Mulcock: Not just people, it’s having the right people. Yeah.

Bryton: Yeah.

Bob Spiel: Really matter. And so how do you find the right people? Well, you start off by knowing exactly what your expectations are.

Matt Mulcock: Love that being proactive. Bryton, do you want to add anything to that?

Bryton: Yeah. And, and Bob just as a reminder, it’s Jim Collins that said the quote. Um, yeah, author you’re, you’re good. You were, you were, you were going down the line. It was good. Jim Collins. Yeah. And author of good to great and, um, Bill Talas. Yeah. Yeah. He, talks about, yeah, bringing on not just the, just anybody, but the right people are your most important asset.

Bob Spiel: My bad. Okay, maybe I should say that again. Okay.

Matt Mulcock: It’s a great book. Yeah.

Bryton: And yeah, so to Bob’s credit, like if you’re not clear on exactly who those right people are, then how would you ever even find them? ⁓ And so as a leader and as a business owner, as a practice owner, one of the first steps is you have to be clear on who am I and what’s important to our practice. And you have to have some sort of value system in place, whether you call them core values or key behaviors or whatever it is, you have to have some sort of intentionality to your practice, or you have to at least be honest enough with yourself to say who would actually be good for us and our business and our practice. ⁓ And that’s where getting super clear on that ideal avatar is extremely helpful. But the issue is most of the dentists are gonna go, they’re gonna go take pen to paper and they’re only gonna write clinical skills. They’re gonna think, yeah.

Matt Mulcock: I was just gonna ask you this,

Bryton: They’re going to go, right. They need to be great at Crown and Bridge. I want them to be able to somewhat competent in implants. Maybe they want to do some thermal or endo. It’d be awesome. Our patients would love that. ⁓ We really want to do a lot of cosmetic cases. We got to get that in there. And then they forget that dentists are humans and we bring our entire whole souls, our personality, our value system and our skills into work every day. Right. And so we have to not just vet for clinical skills which you still should, but the other 70%, 66 % that they’re gonna bring every day is all the other stuff that we forget to even think about. Okay, so that ideal avatar should be clinical skills, but also should be majority culture, value systems, personality traits, communication, leadership, intent, commitment, all those different things that should be a part of who we’re bringing into our practice. And I think the higher they, the higher they get up in the food chain, if you will, the more characteristics you need to be vetting against and the more intense that vetting process should be. So for example, like with a dentist, when we help our clients, we typically have about 15 to 20 very, very well-defined key characteristics written out, defined in the moment on paper so that when we’re interviewing someone, you know, three months, six months down the line, we don’t compare them against the guy we just talked to last week. We always compare against the ideal. And what happens is it takes that logical brain, connects it with the emotion and allows us to make the best decision we can because we’re not just basing it off of like some gut vibe check we’re having in the moment. And we’re actually really beginning with the end of mind and using that as a filter for how we, who we focus on and who we could potentially work with.

Matt Mulcock: That’s a really good point. love that you just said that, Bryton, that it’s not because there’s probably a lot of biases that can come into play with interviewing of like, this guy wasn’t great or this gal wasn’t great, but she was better than that guy that I just talked to you last week.

Bryton: Yeah. But yeah, and it’s like, how do you know who’s great and what is great if we don’t even have that defined other than how the conversation went in the moment. And so much of that is affected by you and how you’re feeling that day. Are you feeling in an abundant mindset that day or a scarcity mindset? Are you carrying stress into that conversation or not? So much of it gets carried into some conversation. And especially when it’s

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bryton: Old dental school buddy or your nephew who’s graduating from dental school who you kind of know a little bit or you know the friend who said hey my cousin’s coming up from this dental school you should interview him. All those biases can kind of go into it but we do everyone yeah all that all that goes into it and we do every one of this service when we don’t begin with the end in mind and try to come at it with the best kind of win-win abundant mindset we can.

Matt Mulcock: The emotions.

Bryton: And that’s just, it’s too fleeting, it’s too going. And so that we’ve got to have something that brings us back, grounds us so that there’s some sort of baseline that we’re actually measuring against. And too many times that just doesn’t even exist. Or it’s up in the clouds and it’s fleeting and it’s going.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. What, what room do you guys leave for gut feel? Just like a vibe, like Is that kind of built into this process?

Bryton: Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, we’re our whole souls, like, there’s got to be some sort of connection there. ⁓ But like, just to show how level of intent, like the level of intensity that we take. ⁓ So we we have that ideal avatar, right, 15 to 20 somewhat characteristics. And then from there, every person that goes through our vetting process has to go through at least a 10 to 12 point vetting. So they go through career survey, multiple behavioral based interviews, a disc like a behavioral assessment, reference checks, background check, license check, all those different data points have human connection, right? Cause we’re having conversations and then they’re scored and they’re graded by two different people against that ideal of guitar. And so while we carry all that emotion into it, it’s like you got to build in quality assurance in order to make it make sense. so, and, and I think

Matt Mulcock: Wow.

Bryton: You know, there’s a lot of questioning of like, why even do that? Well, if we know how much stress it hurts to bring on the wrong person, there’s the whole humongous financial side of it. you know, Department of Labor, ⁓ the Department of Economics, Dental Economics, never places have reported this, but on your normal employee salary or a normal employee hire, any failed hire, i.e. you fire someone and they move on. costs you at least 30 % of that person’s annual salary. But if they’re in any sort of key leadership role, if they’re a producer in the practice, it’s a hundreds of thousands of dollars decision, if not millions of dollars decision. And so when we just kind of go at it with this gut feeling, it’s really like taking dice to the table and hoping it works out. And I don’t like to gamble with my business. And I don’t know if you like to gamble with your business, Matt, but it doesn’t really work for me. I’m not that big of a risk taker.

Matt Mulcock: Very expensive. Yeah. No. Yeah, definitely. Bob, any follow up thoughts on that? Just a room of gut feel.

Bob Spiel: Sure. Well, what I said was 90-10. So 90 % logic, 10 % emotion. I mean, there is that human element of connection of chemistry, so to speak. And so we always have to include that. And that happens as you get together, as you have a time to communicate and visit with one another. So we have interviews and surveys and all these different things. But in the end, there’s a presentation of a candidate.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. ⁓

Bob Spiel: There’s a meeting of the candidate and the team and you just keep working that human side to see once you know what you know, how does it feel? And that’s how it works for us. And it’s been very, very successful. Exactly. Yeah, it does. But we are very, very intentional. Again, I’m sorry we’re overusing that word, ⁓ but targeted, know, with thank you with the surveys that we have with the advanced interviewing that we’re doing.

Matt Mulcock: Kind of coming out naturally. Got it. No, it’s great. I love that word as well.

Bob Spiel: We really know who’s gonna fit in that model. So think of what we do like match.com for dentists. I mean, that’s the deal. We wish that we could take this and transcend it down into hiring team members and hygienists and everything else. But we found that it is such a particular skill just to do for associates that that’s the lane that we have to stay in because it sets the stage for the rest of the practice, literally.

Matt Mulcock: Such a high consequence of getting it wrong.

Bob Spiel: Absolutely. Yeah. Again, it’s that woofer. Okay. It’s not a little tweeter. It’s a woofer. You get it right, man. You can make beautiful music together. Yeah. And it yeah, man. I was going to say on top of that, once you’ve got the right person, whether we’re talking an assistant, front desk or new associate, there’s this whole onboarding process as well. That is so vital. And too often, once again, we do that by default instead of by design.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ go ahead.

Bob Spiel: Once again, it doesn’t take a lot of intention to get that in place and make it work, but it has to be packed with wisdom and feedback. Okay, so for instance, when we have a new associate come on board, one of the first things we recommend is take in our old photos, everything that you do, every step of the way along a process until you and the senior doctor feel confident with how you’re approaching that procedure. ⁓ Just not because they were doubting but it’s because we need to establish interpersonal trust, clinical trust, business trust. And you do that through showing and telling and talking and learning together.

Matt Mulcock: Totally makes sense. Again, I think intention is a good word to continue to use because it’s, what you’re talking about. Proactivity, intention. I love the word design. It’s so good. ⁓ Bryton, said, 15 to 20 different traits. Are these things that you’re providing the debt, like the owner or are they, are they bringing their own?

Bryton: Good question. Yeah, great question. mean, anybody that’s listening to this could go do it on their own. ⁓ And they should, even if you’re just hiring, not just, but if you’re hiring for any position in your practice, I would encourage you to go through the exercise and create some sort of ideal avatar of the candidate. know, who is the best assistant in our practice and model that person, see if we can get another, you know, another one of them but when we work with our clients, yeah, we, actually, ⁓ we become their full blown kind of like hiring partner. So we actually interview all of their staff. ⁓ we interview the doctor owner and we have them take a different personality assessment. And then we gather all that information and we sit down and review kind of our recommendation and tweak it with the doctor owner to make sure it feels right to everyone that it’s accurate. ⁓ and that’s kind of how we create that characteristic list. So if you’re doing it on your own, you would want to ask your team, you’d want to get feedback. If you know, I’d ask my spouse like, Hey, does this make sense? If they have any any inside of my personality, and how I communicate, and things like that. So that’s how we that’s how we create it. And how anyone could go create some sort of ideal avatar.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, what I hear is getting really thoughtful about like, what’s the culture we want for our team and for our business, for this company we have.

Bryton: Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s important to, to be realistic in who we are today. Oftentimes in recruiting, it’s a very easy thing to fall into of only show the good and hide the bad and the ugly. And you do yourself a really big disservice if you’re not willing to ⁓ be very honest with what’s our situation actually like and who’s going to be the type of person that can come in and not just like fit into that, but also maybe help us improve it. ⁓ It’s actually a huge benefit if you can sit down and you can communicate to a prospective candidate saying, hey, this is where we’re at. These are the challenges we’re dealing with. But I also think with what you’re bringing to the table could really help us to continue to grow. ⁓ Too many people just portray some fake reality. And what happened on day one is the candidate walks in and is ultra confused and they’re out before we even made before they even got started because they had no idea they were walking into some sort of really toxic environment or whatever it was just expectations do not meet reality. And you’re going to set yourself up to fail very quickly if you do that.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, that, that makes sense. Bob, I would imagine as, as Bryton says that this is almost like dually beneficial to, to that point, Bryton, of not only the practice and finding the right fit, but for the person coming in that eventually gets selected as well. I would imagine it’s double, double benefit there.

Bryton: Soup. Yeah, I mean, we say it all the time. It’s one of our values in our business. We always strive for win-win. And that means we have to know that the candidates walking into an environment that’s going to absolutely crush what they’re looking for and vice versa. It should go both ways. If you feel like one person’s walking into a lose, it’s not worth engaging in. And that, both parties have to be really honest and true with their conversations and their commitments. And we found that vetting them through that level of intensity often starts to filter out the fakeness pretty quick. Because most people are pretty competent. They can interview well for an evening or one call, ⁓ but can they go through several hours and meeting so many people, are they consistent in how they show up? They’ll either start to get impatient or they’ll show their true colors and we can avoid that with a 10-foot pole. Exactly. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Or drop out altogether, I’d imagine.

Bob Spiel: Right, right.

Bryton: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Bob, are the traits that you guys are referring to? Maybe what are like two or three or four examples that you hear a lot that come out of these kind of owner interviews?

Bob Spiel: Yeah, great question. One is sense of urgency. OK, ⁓ I would say another is being a team player. Humble, hungry, coachable. Those are a few that are pretty unanimous across every type of hiring environment for an associate, because you really want to find that person who doesn’t think they know it all. It’s coming in.

Bryton: So, with the presentation. So, I’m going start with the presentation.

Bob Spiel: Wanting to learn, wanting to be coached, wanting to do more, wanting to

Bryton: So, I’m with the presentation.

Bob Spiel: Learn more, wanting to raise their skills. But realizing that where I am today is not where I’m going to be a year from now, if I’ve got the right support and the right team around me to help do that and also pursue the right type of CE. I can think of one of the associates that we helped hire last year for a sedation practice out in Boston. I had a practice owner who ended up with a really nasty, and this is typical, you know, nasty split with the associate that he hoped was going to be the one who was going to eventually buy him out. And that’s still five years down the road, okay, but he’s got a big enough practice and he has enough success within his practice that he had to be really careful about the type of person that was going to be in it. And this associate that he had to split within a month, and he was really, really hosed because it was a $4 million practice with himself and another associate, and he couldn’t do it all. A coach of his reached out to us and said, hey, he really needs some help. You know, can you, can you find the right person for him? And the great thing was in about four months time we did, we landed her. was in Chicago. She moved to Boston. She has been a complete home run. ⁓ but she came in with such a great attitude of being coachable, being kind, but also being really driven, you know, in a good way of wanting to do more, learn more. Seymour, shadow, learn dialogue, all these different things, viewing in her own right that, know what, this is going to be mine, but I can’t just dance into this thing. I have to be able to acquire the skills that my own or doctor has. So when the day comes that he’s no longer here, I can walk in his footsteps. And when that happens, Matt, it is so exciting to be able to see both the confidence that that puts in the heart of the owner doctor and the excitement that it puts within that partner quality associate. It’s really a cool thing.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I can imagine, ⁓ Bryton, how much coaching and communication with the owner doc goes into it from you guys around post hire. You guys are, I’m guessing at that point, stepping away. They got to go run their practice. What does that process look like?

Bryton: Yeah, it, it, yeah, so it depends. So it’s funny you bring that up because with with that client Bob shared with he was three, four months in he, he called us and was starting to self sabotage this relationship because he thought it was too good to be true. Like he just

Matt Mulcock: Boy.

Bryton: He was just like, I don’t know if I believe her that she’s this honest, this good. And he was just like starting to create problems. was, was actually quite funny. And I think that happens a lot. The one thing that, and I love them like, cause they’re our clients, you know, but dental practice owners really struggled to lead and have any sort of conflict conversation. And when I say conflict, mean, any sort of level of feedback. And when, when leaders and business owners avoid feedback, like it’s the plague, they end up creating it in their own practice. Okay. And that we see happens all the time with these new associates. they come in and things, there’s always a honeymoon phase. It’s usually the first 30, 60 days. Everything’s so good. And then all of a sudden the assistant comes up and says, I can’t believe they did something different than how you did it. And it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, it was just different. And the next thing you know is that amplifies into some gossip mill and the associate who is probably still a great associate in the practice is being sabotaged and kicked out because the doctor wasn’t willing to engage in some sort of conversation about, I heard you were doing it this way, can we talk about it and just have a conversation. anyways, if you are a practice owner and you are starting to engage in that loop, I just encourage you to just actually sit down and have a conversation. The way that we have helped in the past is we created what we call the associate retention system. It’s a 12 month program where we coach them exactly how to retain with their client, how to retain the associate. And what that really looks like is there’s a pre-onboarding phase. So how do we start to introduce the associate to the team? How do we start to build trust? the first 30, 60 days for an associate, their primary goal should be to just gain trust from the team. That’s it. Like they should do dentistry, they should do that, but their primary goal should be to gain trust because it’s not necessarily easily given, but it’s very, very fleeting and it can disappear overnight. You can make one simple stinking mistake and it’ll just, it’ll cut your knees off. It’s just not gonna work. So you 100 % have to own who you are. own your, ⁓ how you show up in the practice and build trust as quickly and just totally focus on that. So that’s one of the things we encourage. We’ve developed ⁓ like five, five ways to increase trust and how to do that. It’s just doing what you say you’re going to do it, having integrity and communicating and seeking feedback, all those things, not complex. It’s just simple stuff. Right. One of the ways we also encourage people is to have a, like a onboarding meeting. How are we going to talk about this new doctor?

What’s the language we’re going to use around them? How are we going to schedule them? How are we going to get them busy? All that stuff. ⁓ Instead of just having the associate, which you’ve probably heard and we’ve heard, they hired him on the weekend. The next thing you know, they forgot to tell the team. They show up in the practice and they’re like, hi guys, I’m Dr. Smith. I’m the new doctor. And everyone’s looking around like, who’s Dr. Smith? We’ve never heard of this guy. We didn’t even know we were hiring. And it turns out it was, you know, the

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bryton: The doctor, owners, cousins, nephew just graduated dental school and needed a job. And so here he is. And there’s no, there’s no plan. There’s no intention on how we’re going to communicate this to patients or how are we going to get them busy? What, what clinical ⁓ training wheels do we want to have on if any, what, what patients are they going to see? You can’t afford to just fly by the edge of your seat. Like you, have to have a plan.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bryton: And some plan, some level of communication will put you 95 % ahead of everyone else who’s onboarding associates, because most people are just making it up on day one.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. How much involvement pre-hire in this process do you allow the team to be a part of? what, what, I’m sure there’s a balance there of having collaboration from them, but not giving them final say. And how do you communicate that? Yeah.

Bryton: Yeah.

Bob Spiel: Question.

Bryton: Decision authority. Yeah. So the first step is involve them in the ideal avatar, right? So you want to involve them from day one, who would be great for our practice. We, the way we do it is we just interview everyone for five, 10 minutes and just get to know them, understand what would be important to them, what would be red flags and why would anyone ever want to work there and live there? Right. So you get their involvement from that point. And then I would always encourage before you ever extend an offer is invite that person on site for at least a day or two. And if you want a really hot tip or a pro tip, it would be to do some sort of treatment planning role playing while they’re on site that day with different members of the team. Pick cases from the last two weeks and show them the x-rays and all the case information and have them actually role play as if that assistant was the patient. And so you get their feedback from the very beginning you get their feedback in the onsite visit. And then the people that are going to ultimately help this person, this new doctor succeed is going to be the team. And so you need to involve them in the onboarding plan. How do you guys want to get them busy? How are we going to work with them? Who, what patients should see them? Cause they know the patients just as well, if not better than the doctor does. And they, they are a pivotal piece, but obviously you reserve decision making authority because it’s your business, it’s your practice. And That’s your burden to bear. So should be on you.

Bob Spiel: So Matt, the way we put it is a team has influence, not veto power.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, that totally makes sense. What? And I don’t, I’m sure there’s a thousand different like hypotheticals we could go to, but just in general, what, what do you see? I would imagine that it’s probably not too uncommon that because the owner doc has that decision making power and they should, but maybe there’s someone on the team or a couple of people on the team are kind of like, Ooh, there’s this kind of bugs me.

Bob Spiel: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: Like where is that? I go, know this is like, we’re talking specific situations, giving general advice, but just like generally how to, how would a doctor owner think about that when it’s not a unit, it’s never going to be

Bryton: Yeah. Bob, you wanna take that one?

Bob Spiel: Sure. Well, there’s two things. Number one, we coach our associates that we bring on board to solicit and listen to feedback. It’s vital. You have to be able to have that capacity to be able to do so. One of the ways we actually try to facilitate that is by surveying the team anonymously and hearing, you know, what type of feedback do they have to give and what’s working, what’s not working, et cetera. But from an owner doctor standpoint, You have to early on draw the line. And I suppose, Matt, if there’s kind of a lesson that I want to draw from all of this, that it is so much easier to set expectations upfront than it is to set them after the fact. Okay. And all of this, this is all expectation setting in terms of who we need, how are we going to find them? How are we going to get them busy? And so the expectation that you set with the team, frankly, as a senior owner is, listen, unless it is patient endangerment,

Bryton: You

Matt Mulcock: Yep.

Bob Spiel: All right, or a severe issue with quality. If there’s an issue that goes on, please let me know, but I’m going to hand it back to you and say, how can you coach this associate on how they’re going to get better? Okay. What can you do to communicate with them? And that may put an auxiliary member of a team in a comfortable situation like thinking, man, this person’s a doctor and I’m an assistant. But at the same time, it’s super valuable, like Bryton said, to establish those lines of trust. Okay.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bob Spiel: So that’s an expectation we try to set early on is together you’re going to help this person succeed. But if something’s going on, unless it’s really egregious, you need to go talk to that associate yourself. And don’t create a drama triangle, Mr. Owner or Mrs. Owner. Okay.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. That’s such a good point, Bob. I don’t know where I heard it. Don’t know the original source. If you guys do, please let me know. But I heard it on a podcast a while back and I’ve heard it again and again of today’s unspoken expectations are tomorrow’s resentments. I don’t know the original source, but I think about what that in that context of what you just said. So with that said, how much like

Bryton: Love that.

Bob Spiel: Spot on. Yes.

Matt Mulcock: Bryton, said something earlier about owner doctors, you go through this process is going to have to probably do some like reflecting on and maybe being some, eating some humble pie around. There’s some missing holes here and I haven’t been, I haven’t maybe been amazing at communicating with my team. And I guess my question is how much of this is like almost like

Bryton: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Starting anew for as they begin this process and where what challenges come up for the owner doctor in that situation when you go through that initial interview stuff.

Bryton: Yeah. Yeah. What a great, great, insightful question. So just to take it all the way back to the beginning, if you’re a doctor who’s considering bringing on an associate, I think there’s two big boxes you need to really check before you say you’re ready to do that. And the first one is just logistically, financially, doesn’t make sense. Do we have the patient numbers, the patient flow, the team, the ops, the revenue? even, yeah, revenue is key collections. And then also just the overhead margin. Will I lose money or will I make money? If you have anything higher than a 70 % overhead rate, you probably shouldn’t bring on a doctor. You’re gonna lose money, ⁓ But at the same time,

Matt Mulcock: The Top Line Revenue.

Bob Spiel: Right.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, don’t do it. Yep.

Bryton: There’s the logistic side, right? ⁓ And that’s usually the pain that people feel and they’re like, I need another doctor. But there’s a very, very real emotional side that we have to check ourselves with. And that is, am I actually going to be okay sharing? Sharing the revenue, the production, the collections, my team responsibilities, and you have to shift from being a solo doc If you are in that case, the ones that really see success in this transition, they have to shift from being just, I’ve got to eat first, I’ve got to feed me, and I’ve got to be the guy or the gal to produce. They have to shift that to being a little bit more of a, I’ve got to feed my team first, I’ve got to feed this new doctor. Your whole goal as a new, as someone that’s brought on another doctor, the highest RWA thing you can do is to get them busy as quickly as possible. Right. And that means oftentimes you have to take a short term hit and not, not always, but oftentimes. Okay. And if you’re not willing to do it for the long haul, to see the bigger picture on like there’s a deeper why pushing me to want to expand in scale and grow this practice. When the push comes to shove and you’re three months, six months in, and your production numbers are getting lower you’re gonna look at yourself and like, why did I do this? Because if you were just doing it for a money thing, or if you’re just doing it, because you didn’t wanna do bread and butter dentistry anymore, it’s just not gonna work out for you, right? So you have to transition from being just this doctor to really, like even more so than you ever had to becoming a leader. You have to transition your mindset that I am now a leader and one of the key people I’m leading is another dentist is another doctor. And that is a big jump for a lot of people. And it but it’s an important paradigm that we have to you have to really shift if you want to see success, because there’s too many practice owners who just jump on the pain. want someone else to help relieve the busyness that I’m experiencing. They don’t fully comprehend that like, ⁓ I might actually see some there might be there might be a hit on my production, I might have to share to the team, I might have to share that beautiful, you know, CAD CAM machine that we just got or that 3D printer or that whatever it is, you know, the Sarek machine, and they might do things a little bit different. But if you have this abundant mindset and you realize that, I’m a leader now, it can change everything. And honestly, what happens is that those practice owners that experience that learn to love business and practice ownership more than they ever had before. Because now they don’t have a ball and a chain.

They have a true marketable asset, something that allows them to live a lifestyle that they always dreamed of, but because they were the only producer of the bottleneck for everything in their business, they could never experience it. So it’s pure magic and it’s amazing to see when a doctor owner’s willing to go through that shift and totally, totally experience it.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, go ahead, Bob. Please.

Bob Spiel: So Matt, I can just kind of put a capstone on that, it’s borrowing a phrase from a book that I wrote on small business leadership a few years ago. It’s flipping your focus and realizing that my job as a leader is to see that my team succeeds, not the opposite. That it’s my team’s job to see that I succeed. It’s literally turning that around and adopting a new paradigm. And to Bryton’s point, When a practice owner can do that and they realize, you know what, this is now my job, it’s to make sure that they win in the end, the amount that the owner wins is so much greater than if they keep this scarcity mentality.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. So good. ⁓ I’m hearing from you guys, a service mindset for the greater good where everyone wins, but that does take some sacrifice. does take some humility, dropping your ego, which I know understandably so is hard for dentists. You’re the, you’re the, you’re the man or the woman for so long. You build this thing and now you’ve got to relinquish some, some things beyond just the clinical production aspects of it. It takes.

Bob Spiel: Yeah.

Bryton: It it. ⁓

Bob Spiel: You, exactly.

Matt Mulcock: It takes, I’m sure, again, the word of the show is intention. It’s intention there.

Bob Spiel: Mm-hmm.

Bryton: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a very deliberate choice you have to make. And some people won’t enjoy that and some people won’t succeed in that. And if you’re that way and you’d prefer to just, I would encourage you to just stay how it is. not saying you can’t change, but if you kind of know yourself, you have enough self-awareness to know. I don’t know if I play well with others. I would encourage you to not go down that path and learn to optimize your practice in other ways than bringing on an associate because it’ll end up being a ⁓ horrible decision for you and you’ll hate it. So I would encourage those to kind of go that way. But for the right practice owner who believes in abundance and that I want to practice more than just by myself and I want to upskill and

Bob Spiel: That’s not me.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bryton: And really learn that level of leadership. It’s really invigorating, really empowering, and it’s a lot of fun.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. How many dentists to that point, Bryton, how many owner docs have come to you to engage in your process of bringing on an associate that have had whole like that are trying it again, as opposed to fresh new owners.

Bryton: Oh yeah, well, great question. So in the industry, 75 % of associate chips fail. And that’s typically within a year. Could you imagine if our implants had that rate, if the equipment that we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on failed within a year? Like we wouldn’t stand for it, right? But for some reason, we just look at people and it’s like, well, guess we’ll just keep, go back to the drawing board. It’s just kind of part of what-

Matt Mulcock: Which is crazy, by the way.

Bob Spiel: Yeah, it is.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. He seems cool. Yeah, yeah.

Bryton: Yeah, yeah, we just like, like I hear all the time, it’s like, well, I know it’s gonna take us probably like three or four and to find the right one. And that’s just kind of how it is. And I don’t know, I can’t afford, my business can’t afford to have ⁓ a couple of hundred thousand dollars walk out the door tomorrow. but maybe I’m just not ⁓ fortunate enough. but we turn practice owners away on a weekly basis that feel like they are not, that feel like they want to hire an associate. But when we look at the numbers and we have a conversation with them, they’re not ready for it. But to answer your other question, what question you actually asked, but we get people coming to us all the time that have already experienced one, two or three, four failures. And they know the pain. so they’re like, know I’m not good enough. We just brought on a new client recently who had experienced three or four in the last couple of years. And he’s like, I know I can find dentists, but I don’t trust myself to make the hiring choice. And it’s not because he’s not capable, right? It’s not because he’s not capable, but one of the big issues is as a practice owner, you are super busy. And if you’re running a high performing practice and you’re working chair side four days a week, and then you’re typically on your fifth day, you’re probably catching up on all your admin stuff.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bryton: When in the world are you gonna find time to properly recruit, run candidates through some sort of 10 point vetting system? The reality is like most of the time you’re not gonna do it. So you skip steps, you make panic point decisions and you fall back into the same cycle that’s been plaguing your business forever. And so until you learn to change it or until you learn to bring on a partner or someone in your team that could help relieve some of that.

Bob Spiel: Thanks

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bryton: It’s you’re going to be caught in the same insanity loop for years and years to come.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Don’t underestimate the poor decisions you make when you’re tired or hungry. Right. And I like, honestly, and I think these, I truly think these dentists to your point, this is a, this process is its own company. Hello, hiring pros here you are. Like there’s a reason why you’re here. And if anything, you’re going to outsource of critical magnitude and like massive thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars consequences. This would be the one thing that

Bob Spiel: Yeah, there we are.

Matt Mulcock: Not only from a skill perspective, but to your point, Bryton, just being burned out and tired and being like, now I got to go hire somebody that’s probably, and it’s funny you said that right. And I actually think that statistic, the 75 % fail is so egregious, but it’s almost because it’s so egregious. We’ve just accepted it. Like it’s so bad. They were just like, well, this is how it is.

Bob Spiel: Mm-hmm.

Bryton: Yeah, it doesn’t, it almost sounds so bad, it’s not personalized. It almost sounds like, yeah, like that’s what it is, but like.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bryton: That’s everyone else. I mean, that’s what we do, right? It’s everyone else. Like, yeah, it’s not me. can do it different. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: Yes, well, exactly.

Bob Spiel: Because, it’s like, what are the stats in Vegas? mean, how many of the people that are playing the tables, how many actually win?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, not a lot. That’s a great point though. We’re kind of like all like united in this like, it sucks to hire people. Yeah, we’re all doing it together. Yeah, totally. It’s a great analogy.

Bryton: Yeah.

Bob Spiel: Probably a lot, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re all standing at table together, you know,

Bryton: Yeah.

Bob Spiel: And we’ll see what happens. But he got taken, but man, it’s not going to happen to me. Okay, because that’s why I’m standing at this table, because I know that I could beat the system. I can beat the house, but it doesn’t happen.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Bryton: Yeah. Yeah. And, and the other, the other really sad reality though, is they, that we do hear this and then we give up hope and we, you know, and we never engage in the fact that there could be a better way. And so I, one of the, my happiest moments with our clients is that, that, that practice owner was grinding away, burning himself out had been for years, right? And they have this obligation.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bryton: To take care of their patients and their team. And so before you know it, they were working four days, now they’re working five. Maybe they’re doing a Saturday a month or something like that. And they’re working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, but they feel this obligation because they’re a doctor and they wanna take care of their people and their good souls, but they don’t feel like there’s any other way to get out of it. And so like, okay, maybe we drop insurance or maybe we change our schedule, but the reality is like, there’s still only one you and you’re just gonna to burn yourself out. And so when they finally say, okay, I can’t, just, got to figure this out. I got to bring on someone. And they realized, oh, like, I don’t have to just shoot in a barrel and like, just hope it works out. There’s, there’s a way to do this. And they bring on someone that’s great. And then they take their family to Disneyland for the trip they promised to them 10 years ago. Like, honey, I swear we’re going to go to Disney. We’re going to get there. We’re going to get there someday, but you can never pull away from the practice because you’re the only person that That vacation is five times as expensive because it’s just you. so anyways, there is hope. And I would hate for some practice owner who’s grinding it out right now to say, I’m just like, there’s no hope. I just, yeah, yeah. Like there, really is a way to do it. And ⁓ like, even if you took what we did and talked about today and try to apply to your own hiring process, you will be in way better chances than if you were to just.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Tried it, done it, yeah.

Bryton: Follow the typical stuff. Now, most people won’t. Most people won’t take that. They won’t do it. And they’ll keep going back to the same way. And we look forward to having a conversation when they get tired of failing enough.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. ⁓

Bob Spiel: Definitely.

Matt Mulcock: I’m curious at this, such a good conversation. I could keep, we could keep going. I am curious though, how does the dentist know it’s gone wrong and when to pull the plug? Cause I imagine it’s not a hundred percent, right? Like there’s going to be times where it’s still, know, the honeymoon phase is over. what are signs? Like, how do you know, like we can keep pushing and developing this person versus like it’s time to call it.

Bryton: Hmm:

Bob Spiel: So Matt, let me give you a quick example. We had a client in Florida who hired a new doctor out of residency. Sweetest gal ever. So kind, so attentive. And I was engaged with her frankly, and the practice owners every month trying to coach her, trying to get her up, trying to bring her to where she needed to be. But it was interesting, the team would not tell the doctor that they really didn’t trust her dentistry. And this is over, this is over months. Okay. As a person, she was great, but clinically she just was not dialing up her skills. They gave her time to do so. They gave her resources to do so. They brought in the best assistants to help her, but everybody liked her so much that it finally kind of came to a head when one of the hygienists had to come in, frankly, on a weekend who used to be an assistant, saw the level of her work and realized, my goodness.

Matt Mulcock: Hmm, so it’s clinical, yeah.

Bob Spiel: She’s been here nine months and she’s still acting like she’s brand new out of residency. She called the senior doctor and said, we’ve got a problem. He then called everyone. Okay, she had enough time, she had enough resources. He asked him one question, would you let her work on your mother?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Hmm.

Bob Spiel: And unanimously, they said no. And then we had to have an uncomfortable conversation to pull the plug and tell her we love you. This just isn’t going to work. OK. And that was such a wise call on his part. But it goes back to leadership and team building and being intentional in all of this, giving people a chance to both fail or succeed. OK.

Matt Mulcock: Oof. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Bob Spiel: They gave her a chance to succeed. She didn’t have it, but she finally showed that she just wasn’t dialing it up. And then they said, you know what? We love you, but it isn’t the right place.

Matt Mulcock: Clearly a good culture there that he’d created of communication and trust with his team for them to be able to go to him knowing that he would do something about it. And the fact that he collaborated with his team and asked him that question. Critical. That’s, that’s great. That’s a great sign. ⁓ Bryton, anything you want to add to that?

Bob Spiel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Correct. Yeah.

Bryton: Now I yeah, I know there’s so many varying circumstances. I think they’re that you have two, like you have the clinical skill side, are they capable of doing the job or not? And that’s the case that he shared. The cultural ones become apparent really quickly. And you know, if someone’s being rude and you provide feedback and they continue to be rude, it’s probably time to move on. You know, like, it’s a very fine balance. But if there’s an environment

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bob Spiel: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah.

Bryton: Or a culture or some sort of process of continuing to provide feedback and we either see growth or we don’t. I think a three strikes you’re out is probably pretty good. ⁓ know, did they, they go through the same thing up to three times and if they didn’t, it’s, they’re probably not coachable. They’re probably not going to be good with our, with our team and stuff. Now being a bad fit culturally does not mean that that’s very, that’s a different. definition than if someone’s just doing something differently. Because they might do something differently, but doesn’t mean it’s bad, doesn’t mean it’s good, it just might be different. And so don’t let the differences affect the way that you view them. As a leader, you’ve got to play the situations, but I always just as anytime you’re a leader, you have to first look at yourself in the mirror and say, have I done everything I can to support them to give them the resources, the training, the incentive.

Bob Spiel: Right.

Bryton: In order for them to feel like they could rise to the occasion or not. if you first have, can answer that question honestly and say, I’ve given them all I can, all the time I can, all the resources, and they’re not stepping up, it’s probably time to move on.

Matt Mulcock: And I’m guessing to have a communicated clear the my expectation and my standard my standard.

Bryton: Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Bob Spiel: Right, right. And, and as well, Bryton uses phrase feedback. Really? One of the challenges that many dentists have is that they fear feedback thinking it’s going to create conflict. And yet I can think just right now of a couple of examples with, ⁓ associates that we brought on that were actually failing, ⁓ clinically, they were okay, but interpersonal, they were failing. But when the senior doctors gave them feedback,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bob Spiel: They actually listen to it. And both of them have dialed it back up and realized, you know, if this is my best shot, I really like it here. I’m going to make some changes. So it’s one of those interesting points that you made earlier, Bryton. You know, if you don’t provide that, you avoid the conflict and actually what you’re doing is you’re just adding to the conflict later on. So give them, give them frequent feedback and let them know when they’re not meeting expectations and then sit down again and talk about how things are going.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah.

Bryton: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bryton: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it will happen. Like I 1000 % guarantee promise no matter what there will be have to have a conversation of feedback. It will happen. And so, yeah, you have to anticipate it. Even you follow this perfect hiring process and you hire the perfect person. It does not matter. You have to engage in conversation. And honestly, the sooner you do it, the less

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. You work with humans. Yeah, that’s going to be, that’s going to be the case.

Bob Spiel: Exactly, right.

Bryton: Problem it’s going to create. And if you just create that habit of like just attacking it head on and having a very reasonable conversation, you’re going to be a lot less stressed and the relationship’s going to, you’re going to, you’re going to figure it out a lot quicker. we just, those, those problems we take home as business owners, like we’re just constantly festering about them. They’re usually the conversation we haven’t had yet and, we need, we need to have it. So.

Bob Spiel: Absolutely, yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. It’s so true. heard somewhere along the way as well that the level of success you have is directly correlated to the level to the amount of uncomfortable conversations you’re willing to have. And I think that’s, that’s so true. I’ve seen that personally in our business. And I’ve seen this with dentists, like the ones that are communicated, like they’re able to communicate directly and lovingly kindly. There’s a difference between being kind and being nice. Like being kind doesn’t mean you got to tell them what they want to hear all the time. So:

Bob Spiel: Mm-hmm.

Bryton: Yeah, I know.

Matt Mulcock: I think it’s such a good point of the ability to give feedback and communicate guys again, this is so good. I want to wrap up with, as we go through this, ⁓ I can’t help, but think that the ripple effects of this being protecting independent and private practice ownership, because this to me is a way that private owners can, I think this gives, as I hear you guys talk,

Bryton: Yep. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Gives hope and options beyond just throwing your hands up and being like, I’ll never compete with the corporate groups. Can you speak for a moment just about the importance

Bob Spiel: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: Of remaining independent, remain remaining? mean, Bob, you mentioned your podcast, say no to the DSO. You could not be more clear about that. ⁓ talk about the importance of staying private and independent in dentistry.

Bob Spiel: Yeah. You got another hour? Okay, I mean, yeah, we’ll do a part two, Matt. I mean, really, here’s the whole premise of staying independent. Number one, because of independent dentistry, dentistry, I believe has achieved the highest level of patient care of any part of the healthcare spectrum. All right, but it’s because you’ve got an owner doctor whose name is on the door. And so this tension between production and patient care.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I was gonna say we’ll do a part two. Just give us the summary. Yes.

Bob Spiel: is really balanced well because they realize their reputation is most important thing that they have. What happens is when you then allow that to continue to grow and become this really wonderful entity called the dental practice is that people become family and dentists can become, as you know, well off. Okay, are they going to get to the 1 % level? No, but are they going to compare to their neighbors? They’re going to do well with it, you know.

Bryton: Okay.

Bob Spiel: The problem with the whole DSO side of things and keeping and having dentistry flip to a corporate model, it suddenly removes all of those guardrails. The name on the door doesn’t matter. The patient quality starts to suffer. And frankly, what happens is that person who could have made that practice even more wonderful underneath their own leadership and stewardship has basically sold their birthright for a mess-up-pottage. OK. because that pottage is what’s promised by the DSO to them saying, listen, we’ll give you X and X really amounts to the difference between  what you would make on your own and what they’re going to pay you for the cash. But after that, it’s this group of promises that are all based upon recaps and consolidations and other things. And 90 plus percent of the time, they don’t happen. And I don’t want to put out there that there aren’t ethical DSOs out there.

Bob Spiel: But even if there are, here’s the issue. I can think of one locally here in Utah that really started with very high intent. Guess what happens when they sell to the next private equity group in line? They stripped everybody who knew anything about dentistry. And all of a sudden, what they feared, what they tried to prevent from happening happened anyway. And here’s the line we have to draw.

Matt Mulcock: Yep.

Bob Spiel: is the private equity in a healthcare model does nothing but enrich the private equity individuals, enriches, you know, those that have put the money in. But for the owners, for the team, for the patients, it does nothing. It strips quality, it removes the guardrails. And here’s the deal in dentistry, because I saw this happen in medicine, and medicine, you’re never going to get the genie back in the bottle, all right?

Bryton: Okay.

Matt Mulcock: Patience. Yeah.

Bob Spiel: Medicine, unfortunately, has been taken over by Wall Street and private equity. Dentistry is still about 20 % of dentists are DSO employees. right. We haven’t reached a tipping point. That:
being said, it’s really up to each individual dentist who is in a position of either selling or transitioning to keep their practice independent. And if they want to know more, the only thing I’d invite them to do is dial into my podcast with my Dear friend and co-host, Nate Williams, just say no to the DSO. You can find it anywhere where podcasts are found. And it is full of so much wisdom and knowledge and information. Dentists are great decision makers if they have the right information. And for too long, they’ve had the wrong information. And this is one of the sources of right information for them to be able to separate it out and understand what’s going on and realize their best bet at being able to become

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Bob Spiel: Wealthy and be able to serve humanity is to stay independent.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Love Bob. And we’re going to, that’s a perfect tease for our part two of this, which is going to be diving so deep into that. Cause I, what I respect so much about yours and Nate’s approach and your podcast is you put your name on it. Meaning you, you put your flag in the ground. It’s there’s no, there’s no guesswork here. There’s no guesswork. And I respect that so much that people can disagree with you. That’s okay. I know you’ve had many people on your show that have, but I respect that you have your reasons and you’ve stuck with it.

Bob Spiel: Yeah. There’s no, no. Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: I agree with your approach and how you’re doing. We too are trying to protect and empower, as you know, private practice ownership.

Bob Spiel: Yeah, yeah. And Matt, I’ll just tell you that what I mean, Nate and I fund this on our own. All right. We’re not in this for anything other than try to help the industry, help the profession with dentistry stay independent. But what our payback is, is when we get the emails, which happened two or three or four times a week from dentists who’ve heard our podcast, realized what was going on and have said no.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Bob, just so you know, just had a conversation with one of those that heard a show that we did that you listened to that allowed us to connect. They, she listened to the same show and then went and devoured your show. And she said it saved her from like the biggest mistake of her life. So, so cool to hear that. so,

Bryton: Yeah.

Bob Spiel: Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Final words of wisdom. I’d love to hear from each of you just final word here and then I want to hear how the best way a listener out there, dentist out there can find you.

Bob Spiel: Yeah, thank you. Bryton, why don’t I start since, you know, I had the first word so you can have the last word. Okay. ⁓ Man, where do you want to go with this?

Bryton: This.

Matt Mulcock: Perfect.

Bryton: Okay.

Bob Spiel: I’ll put it this way, Matt, my co-host of Just Say No, Nate Williams, made a really interesting observation. And he’s in a similar lane as you are, working with dentists as a CFP and CPA and helping them learn how to keep more of what they make. All right. And then in the end, be able to have what they want. OK, not just financially, but also personally. He made a comment a year or so ago, which really stuck with me. He know, Bob, it’s interesting in this space. The longer I’m in dentistry.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yep.

Bob Spiel: I realized there’s about 80 % of the people that service dentists are really in it for the money. And there’s about 20 % of them that really care. They bleed for their clients. They want them to succeed. They understand the stress. And when they get it and help them, it’s super rewarding. I think that’s why we’re so invested in this, Matt, to be honest with you, because we’re part of that 20%, at least I hope we are, that really cares, that we want.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah.

Bob Spiel: Them to get out of dentistry what they got into dentistry for the first place, which is to have a really great quality of life to serve people and to deliver great work. ⁓ And we’ve seen, you know, what are the Achilles heels, honestly, of being able to achieve that. And one of the biggest is not being able to replicate themselves with a partner dentist who can deliver the same type of quality they can.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. What? ⁓ and that’s exactly why, again, what you’re doing is so connected to protecting private practice because you are solving that problem without them having to go, well, guess I got to sell. So yeah, you have no answers. Yeah. And for what it’s worth, Bob, for the short time that I’ve known you, I’d say you’re part of the 20%. So for what it’s for what that’s worth, ⁓ Bryton, he, he did it again, Bryton. set the bar high. So you got to come in here and follow that.

Bryton: Thank you.

Bob Spiel: I gotta sell. Exactly. I have no answer. So boom. Yep.

Bryton: You did it again. No, I’ll keep it short.

Bob Spiel: Thank you.

Bryton: I’ll keep it short. Yeah, I would say there is hope. ⁓ The way that you can increase the value of your practice is by not making it just about you. If you are of that abundant mindset and you believe there’s an opportunity to grow in the scale and you don’t want to create key man risk and a bottleneck in your practice and you want to experience what I have seen a lot of practice owners want, how to practice ownership, which is a business that they love being a part of, but also supports their life in and out of it. And you can totally do that. But one of the biggest tampers will be, can you replicate yourself? Can you eliminate yourself from being the entire bottleneck, both in growth and in chair side and decision-making and all those things. And I think we’ve been able to at least find one way. to be able to help you do that through our hiring systems. So if anyone found this helpful or valuable, I know we’ve got a page on the Dentist Advisors site, but you can also just go to hiringpros.com where you can shoot me an email directly at bryton at hiringpros.com. And I’d be happy to provide, we have a full associate hiring system blueprint. They can get it for free ⁓ listening from this podcast. So they can email me blueprint. They can get a free copy of that. It’s like a 10 page document that walks them through our whole process if they want. So we’d love to be able to help more people. ⁓ If anything, I think this was a super fun conversation, Matt, and I hope we can have another one soon.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. We’ll have to have you guys back on super, super helpful. went, we went long and there’s a good, there’s a good reason for that. Cause you guys are sharing so much knowledge and wisdom that is so beneficial to the dental space, which is what our main focus is just like I know you guys are. So, same thing. If you found this helpful, check out hiring pros. He found this episode helpful. Please share it. We’d love for you to share the episode. Get the, get the word out. Yeah. We would love to have you do that. So.

Bob Spiel: Absolutely, yeah, please get the word out.

Matt Mulcock: Guys, thank you so much for being here. Um, everyone, thank you for listening. If you’re still here, you’re one of the cool ones. really appreciate it. Uh, until next time. Take care. Bye

Bryton: Thanks

Keywords: hiring, leadership, dental practice, team dynamics, intentional hiring, feedback, onboarding, independence, private practice, dental consulting.

Practice Management