For over 3 decades, Steve Anderson has studied, applied, proven and proclaimed: All human action is grounded in Natural Law.
Know the law and better results can be predictably designed. Ignorance of the law, however, does not free one from it. As a Behavioral Physicist, he identifies the applicable Natural Laws, educates, and designs systems to accomplish predictable, consistent results.
Presenter:
For over twenty years he has spoken at major industry meetings and conventions in North America, Australia and the United Kingdom, conducted hundreds of seminars, and worked with thousands of businesses and organizations to increase their productivity and profits through the application of over 101 Natural Laws. His combination of behavioral physics, high energy, humor and every-day application makes him one of the highest rated speakers at every venue where he appears.
Author:
He has written over 100 articles for industry publications, authored 5 books, and produced dozens of audio and video learning programs. He hosts two monthly programs viewed by thousands around the world interested in boosting productivity and profits.
Entrepreneur:
As the founder of over a dozen businesses, he has propelled organizations and individuals to the highest levels of performance and productivity. In 1995, he co-founded the Crown Council, an international industry association that now spans three continents. Through the Crown Council, he co-founded the Smiles for Life Foundation, which has raised over $32 million dollars in the last 12 years for children’s charities worldwide. He has been named the “Businessman of the Year” and is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist. Steve is also the founder of Eagle U, a nonprofit foundation that provides success education for high school and college students, giving them a 7-year head start in their career and their life.
Name: Steven J Anderson
Company: Total Patient Service
URL: https://totalpatientservice.com/
Title: Founder and Chief Creative Officer
Transcript of the Conversation
RJ Martino:
Welcome to the iProv Made Podcast where we help you build a better and more profitable healthcare practice. I got with me, my wonderful co-host, Jordan Smith.
Jordan Smith:
Hey everybody! How are you RJ?
RJ Martino:
Man, I’m great. I am excited about today’s guest. This is a guy who is, if you are a dentist and go to any large conference, you have heard or seen him because once you hear him, he gives so much good content that you can’t stop thinking about what he tells you.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah and if you haven’t, you are definitely gonna to be a fan even if you just listen to a couple of minutes of this.
So today we’ve got Steven J Anderson. He has helped dentists for many, many years just ride the ship and all the stuff we talk about RJ. You know, articulate your vision, sharing it with the organization, you know, figuring out what your goals are. You know, at the end of the day, his why is he wants you to build a successful practice. There are a couple of organizations that he has; Total Patient Service and also his non-profit which we really didn’t get into but I would encourage all you guys to look it up, Smiles for Lives.
RJ Martino:
Yeah, we should talk more about that but one of the things that I want everyone to pay attention to is he starts talking about coaching which is really important and near and dear to me. He talks about why it’s important and he talks about how you can find coaches right now in your own backyard.
So let’s go and jump into the podcast. Jordan, you ready?
Jordan Smith:
Without further ado, Steven J Anderson!
RJ Martino:
You know, one of the things we do is we try to find the best speakers and consultants in the world that can help people grow their practice. And I am excited because we’ve got a wonderful guest who has been recommended highly by some of our audience listeners and I have Steve Anderson.
Hey Steve!
Steven J Anderson:
Good morning! Good to be with you RJ and Jordan.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah, we are pleased to have you. So I am excited to bring this podcast to you guys. So RJ, can you tell us all about Steven?
RJ Martino:
So Steve is named “Dental Businessmen of the Year” in the past. He is also founder of one of the most well-known and I think one of the largest nonprofits, Smiles for Life, that raised over, I’ve read, Steve you’ll have to tell me but it was over 50 million dollars for children’s dental and other dental services and things like that. Is that right?
Steven J Anderson:
Yeah! We are almost over the 50-million-dollar mark. So, that’s right.
RJ Martino:
Gosh! That is great. We are so excited that you are on. Steve why don’t you just kind of kick this off and tell us a little elevator pitch about you and your organization?
Steven J Anderson:
Perfect! So I am a- I am kind of a creator by nature. My- I spent most of my time as a kid playing with Legos. I loved to build stuff and I found my career building organizations. I love to create things. I love to make a difference in people’s lives.
And so that has taken on the nature of one of our organizations, it’s called Total Patient Service. Its focus is case acceptance. Our secret sauce is a system that gets higher levels of case acceptance in- primarily in dentistry, but really anywhere where there is a patient decision to be made.
We did not originate in the dentistry. Dentistry found us years ago. We are working with all kinds of businesses and it just happens to have a really good fit in dentistry. So we work with dentists all over the world.
We’ve got an organization called the Crown Council which is focused and dedicated to creating a culture of success in dental practices. We’ll talk a little bit today about culture. It’s one of our passions.
And then RJ you mentioned Smiles for Lives. So Smiles for Lives has been a, outgrowth of our efforts in business. It’s one of the largest charities in dentistry, had us raise nearly 50 million dollars for children and dental related charities. I want to talk a little bit about how that fits in the success of a practice in terms of doing good and charitable work and how that fits in the whole strategy. So that gives you a little bit of background. Hope that helps.
RJ Martino:
Yeah it does. You know one of the things we talk about all the time when we say how to build a profitable practice. We’ve kind of got these baby steps that we go through and it usually starts with one, we usually sit and we hear lots of symptoms of problems. And you know, we nod our head listening to these practice owners and the second step is asking questions back and making sure that they are the kind of people that take accountability for the problems. Because we all, especially as professionals wanna kick, and scream and stomp like a child, and get our way but we don’t wanna do anything about it and so accountability is really important for us.
Then we kind of triage where a practice owner is. You know, we say step three is do you have what we call a business plan and it really talks about core values, a vision of what you are trying to build. So many people go to the office and just go to work and they don’t have a vision of where they wanna go. So that is usually where we spend a lot of our time is just helping them tease out what’s in their head.
Then and only then do we build a strategy on how we are gonna get them to their vision. And then we work the tactics. We kind of layout exactly what we think they should be doing. And those tactics, it could be intake, it could be marketing, it could be messaging. But those tactics change all the time. Strategies usually don’t change that much. What’s interesting is most of the time physicians, dentists, professionals in general, we usually hire people backwards. You know, we just say, hey, what tactics should we be doing? Can you tell us what tactics you do if you are working for us? And inevitably that fails.
So we always say, let’s start with the vision, let’s go to the strategy, let’s go to tactics and then let’s get alignment and then empower your team. But until you’ve worked out the stuff in your head, why don’t you first do that and then empower your team.
And so as we tell our audience that I always say, hey does anyone else kind of align with this thought that you think should be speaking to our group? That’s one of the ways that your name came up. So tell us about where this started. You said that you didn’t start in dentistry. How did it start?
Steven J Anderson:
Yeah, so we originally had an organization that was doing a lot of work with really any kind of business, insurance, hospitality, you name it. Basically anybody who had to sell something, we worked with.
And we had some dentists that showed up to one of our courses and fell in love with what it was and its specific applications to the dentistry. We didn’t get it. We didn’t understand the applications to dentistry. Until, we started going into dental practices. Now, this I mean to speak to dentistry I mean is really any business has this issue.
So here is the core issue at the heart of it and we call it the elephant in the living room. That’s in an, you know, alcoholic anonymous term. So the elephant in the living room is the problem that everybody knows, it’s there but nobody wants to talk about it because nobody knows what to do about it.
So the biggest issue in dentistry, in terms of treatment acceptance, case acceptance, really anything in any discipline of medicine or any business for that matter, where there is an elective choice, right, so short of my having a heart attack and being in the ER and I gotta have open heart surgery. I don’t have any choice. We gotta get it done. Most things in healthcare are elective in some way, shape or form.
Dentistry has a unique problem. In that, nobody likes the dentist. So on a daily basis, people come in, they walk through the door and the opening boly is I hate the dentist. Well who does that? So like RJ, if on a regular basis and you are doing what you do and people walked in every morning and say, “You know RJ, I just don’t like guys like you.”
RJ Martino:
Somehow that’s socially acceptable too!
Steven J Anderson:
Yeah everybody laughs about it and the whole deal. And it has a huge psychological impact. So here’s what happens is that it’s- that gets over compensated in other words because nobody likes the dentist, then what happens more often than not, is there is overcompensation to get everybody to like me. I want everybody to like me, I don’t want anybody to hate me. I don’t, so, and nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news.
RJ Martino:
Right.
Steven J Anderson:
Right? So what happens when we started looking at it, we are listening to the conversation that’s going on in the treatment room. The conversation sounds like this, “Well you know RJ, you’ve got a little bitty infection here and we may be might kind of wanna take a look at some time but we can watch it, we can wait, we can see, we’ll watch it, we’ll check on it next time.”
I am over exaggerating just a little bit. Those are all words that we hear all the time in dentistry. Tentative, don’t wanna offend anybody. The whole deal.
So what does a patient do? Nothing!
I think we got an infection, you got it too, I guess it’s okay. So they walk out doing nothing.
And so we hold based on our research that there is far more under-diagnosis that takes place in a lot of elective medicine like dentistry, a lot more under diagnosis than over diagnosis because of, we call it approval addiction. I just want everybody to like me. So approval addiction, so I’m in, I just want him to like me. I am not gonna to say anything that would alarm them, or upset them or make them mad. I just want them to keep coming back.
And then the result of that is patients who get mad, who say then, you know, why didn’t my dentist tell me this when they end up having a serious problem. Or they go along and then they say, you know, I feel like my dentist spoon feeds me every time I go in. There is always something wrong.
Well that’s because the truth wasn’t told in the first place. You just tell the truth in the first place, then you wouldn’t have that residual always having to tell them something new to spoon-feeding the treatment plans.
So, all of those issues, so that’s originally what drew us into the profession. They kept, they came in drowse because we had a system to manage approval addiction.
I’ll just say this. We all have it, we’ve all got it. Jordan you got it, RJ you got it, I got it, to different levels and degrees. And here’s why. We are wired to do this together. Right. We as human beings, we wired to fly in tandem. We are not wired to do this solo.
So, proof of that. Longest Longitudinal Study in healthcare on life expectancy is still going on at Harvard. Over 70+ years in its duration, I think we are into our 4th generation of researchers that have worked on this one project, and they’ve been trying to isolate what are the biggest keys to longevity. And, so they, you know, they’ve eliminated, you’ll be happy to know, they have eliminated diet, they have eliminated exercise.
RJ Martino:
Oh good!
Steven J Anderson:
All those things that we all talk about; they don’t have anything to do with that.
RJ Martino:
I’ve been given an hour a day back to my day, just to know what’s standing.
Steven J Anderson:
What they figured, what they found is that those who have quality long-term, intimate relationships are the ones who live the longest. The ones who do it together are the ones who hang around the longest. We are wired to do this together. So the flip side of that is that we are wired to all the alarms go off, when we get rejected.
RJ Martino:
Yeah!
Steven J Anderson:
You know, we go back to the tribal, when we were in tribal civilizations, the death sentence was to get the exiled, right. Because you couldn’t do it on your own. So we are wired anytime we get rejected, we got alarms going off all over that something that’s wired.
Rejection is wired to fear of death, subconsciously. Right. So if I’m in any kind of profession where there is possible rejection, I’ve got big time psychological challenges, I’ve gotta overcome if I am going to be successful.
And dentistry is full of it. Rarely, does it get talked about but it is a big-big issue in dentistry.
RJ Martino:
So, can you talk about what a before and after picture looks like for a successful, do you call them clients, successful practice, one of your successful groups, what was happening before and what were the triggers that they said, “Yeah, I might need something like this.”
Are you looking at numbers, are you looking at you know, patients or reviews and then what happens afterwards? What does the transition kind of look like?
Steven J Anderson:
Yeah, so I think there is a number. There is a number of leading indicators, one of them is being in dentistry for a period of time and getting to a point where there is a high levels of frustrations like I am doing this everyday but I am not getting the return that I think I outghta be getting, right.
And then, So then, yeah there’s a lot of numbers that we look at in terms of case acceptance rate and you know, average production per visit, all those metrics, you can look at a lot of metrics and that’s just a reflection of the relationships in the practice.
So let me address that because I think you know, a lot of times, when you get into the business conversations in dentistry and it’s healthcare and people say, well you know, healthcare shouldn’t be about the numbers, and you are right. It’s about people.
In fact, our slogan at Total Patient Service is “Because people mean everything” right. This is a relationship business. Dentistry is a relationship business and so when you look at that, we look at the relationships and the communication, and all of those pieces, you heal the relationships, you heal the business.
When you are doing the right thing for the client or the patient and you are being honest and you have the right way to communicate it, then the other things, they take care of themselves. They still have to be managed. They still have to be strategized, you still gotta but those things start to fall in its place.
It’s about the relationship, the patient relationships, the team relationships, and I’ll say this, this will sound a little ironic in terms of priorities, I do not, now that I’ve said that, I don’t believe in having a patient centred practice. That just came from a guy who started a company called Total Patient Service.
Here’s why.
I have been in too many patient centred practices in medicine, in dentistry, in any discipline and I can tell there is so much background noise going on in terms of team disharmony, lack of systems, no management, no leadership. There is so much background noise that nobody can focus on the patient because they are trying to manage all this stuff back here that distracts them from patient care.
So, first priority is you gotta pull- the most important relationship is the team relationship, you gotta pull that together because when that works then that frees everybody up to focus on patient care. So it’s practitioner and team first, you gotta get that dialed in and then, we can all go to work taking care of the patients in that order.
Now the piece of that rarely gets addressed is one of our biggest passions and it’s called culture.
So what’s culture?
Culture is not something that you grow in a petri dish. It is the values, the beliefs, and the actions that make up the business or the practice.
So one of my favourite definitions comes from Dr. Clayton Christensen who just recently passed away. Dr. Christensen was a Professor of Management at the Harvard Business School and everything that he wrote during his career, it’s a masterful piece of work. His last book was called “How will you measure your life” which I thought was interesting. That was the last book he wrote. But it is a great business book and it is a great personal improvement book.
But what he said, he defined culture, he said, culture is the combination of priorities and processes and how an organization and the people in it execute on them or act on them daily.
Right. So priorities and process, what’s your priorities, your values, the things that are important to you. So here your priority and then the process is the system that you put in place to reflect those beliefs and values. Right?
So, if I got a belief system, here’s what I believe about patient care, here’s what I believe about the clinical side of my practice of those beliefs. What systems am I gonna put in place to reflect on those values and deliver on those things that I believe in? And more often than not when there is a discontent by a business owner, it’s because the beliefs and the systems are not aligned.
RJ Martino:
I think that’s great. I think I am following you. Give me some applications of what that means in a typical dental office and how would I see something like that if I was a patient?
Steven J Anderson:
Okay! So, I am gonna be very specific in terms of an action item here. I am gonna ask everybody who’s listening to do this because rarely when we walk into a practice or a business, do I see this. Initially, and it’s one of the things that we highly recommend they do.
So when you look at a practice or a business, when you guys go into any business or practice, you make a sub-conscious decision within seconds. Right.
RJ Martino:
Yeah! We all do that.
Steven J Anderson:
Yeah right! We make decisions emotionally and then we justify that emotional decision with logic. That’s natural. We all know that. We don’t wanna admit it but we all do it. You have kind of this gut level reaction and then consciously you try and figure out why you feel the way you do. Right?
So, a lot of that comes from the culture that’s in the practice or in the business. It’s the tangible and a lot of the intangible. So every business, every organization has a culture. It’s either a culture by design or a culture by default.
So the culture by default is I just didn’t really think it through when we show up when we go about what we do and however it falls, the chips just fall versus a culture by design that I’ve thought through and I’ve said what do I want my work environment to be like? What do I want the people that I serve with, what do I want them to be like? What it’s going to be like around here every day, what kind of environment do we want our patients to come into? What do we want them to feel, right? That’s all part of culture.
So one of my challenges is I am getting to everybody who’s listening to this challenge is to codify that, to put it in writing. We call it a culture guide.
Jordan Smith:
Yup!
RJ Martino:
Yeah!
Steven J Anderson:
Culture Guide. Right. So basically, it’s not a policy and procedure manual. Those are the systems, that’s good. You gotta have that. It’s not a policy and procedure manual. It’s the things that we all, if you have a new team member that comes on board, it’s the things that takes them 6 months to figure out. It’s all of the behavioural norms that nobody ever tells you about, you just gotta have to figure it out. Well don’t put them through that. Put it in a place and let’s define it.
So, let me give you a personal example.
Several years ago, we moved our business from South Texas out on the Texas Hill Country to Dallas Texas. There was a strategic reason we did that. And so, most of our team came with us. We hired some new people. We built out a new office. It was kind of an opportunity to, you know, its gives you an opportunity to do things in a different way.
And so I am sitting in my office for our 7:45 Monday morning meeting. And I am in our new conference room, you know, feeling good. New office, new team members, so, you know, feeling good. 7:45.
So our meeting is at 7:45. Well 7:50 nobody is there. 7:55, I got a few stragglers in and I think we got started a little bit after 8.
And I got smoke blowing out of my ears, right. That meeting was supposed to start at 7:45. And so right before I said something about it, I said to myself, you know, there is probably a reason that everybody showed up when they did. And that’s because the leader has done a pretty poor job of articulating expectations. So we had the meeting, I didn’t say anything. We had the meeting and then I left and I went out, I found a quiet place on my own and I wrote my first culture guide.
And one of the first items in that culture guide said this, the title was, “Be early”.
And as I said that everybody wants to work in an organization where they know they can rely on each other and that starts first thing every day. And that’s why we believe that when you are early, you are on time. When you are on time, you are late. And when you are late, you are lost.
RJ Martino:
Love it.
Steven J Anderson:
That was one of the first things on the culture guide. Right. So then, there were 21 of these things that I wrote out. And then I went back to the team and I said, “Okay! My apologies as a leader because I’ve fallen short. I have allowed our organization to have a culture by default. And I am drawing a line in the sand and we are today, today is going to be the beginning of a culture by design.”
RJ Martino:
Love it.
Steven J Anderson:
We are going to walk through, here are the expectations that I have of the culture I wanna work in and I am gonna invite you into the culture and you are free to add to and make suggestions of how we build this out even more. So as that one, so we read through this and then we talked about what does that really means, right? What do each of these things mean?
So for example, we talked about the “Be Early” thing. So we said okay, what does that mean. If we have a meeting at 7:45, what does it mean? We talked about it. Well, I guess that means we all need to be here at 7:30, 7:35 and then we need to be in the room, we need to be prepared so that we start at 7:45. We are not getting ready to get started, we start at 7:45.
So the culture shifted from one of people straggling into meetings to then the culture shifted to, it became a contest to see who could show up first. Right.
And what happened was amazing was because then the culture shifted from one of stress, and anxiety, and rushing in at the last minute. To now, it’s like people show up early, they are relaxed, we have these casual conversations, we get all of the stuff, you know, the small talk out of the way. So at 7:45, everybody is settled down, ready to go and we are ready to go to work.
Total culture shift.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah.
RJ Martino:
Well, two things to that too is, you know, as leaders we often think that, you know, I got to, you got to write it like Moses and you gonna come down and you are going to tell everybody what to do and nobody wants to work somewhere where you got a militant leader but what you see as you talk to the people that work for organizations like that. It provides behaviour clarity for them. They actually know how they should be acting and so they are not questioning whether they are doing the right thing. You know, now they are confirming in their own mind and they are succeeding at work and that’s what we all want. We all want progress and we need to know what success metrics look like. So that’s number one, is behaviour clarity for your employees, your employees will actually love that.
Number two is it allows them to recruit the right kinds of people that fit that culture too. And so now you got that self-fulfilling prophecy where, you know, I meet somebody who loves being on time, and loves being early and I can now say, man you would love my friend Steven. He has an organization and that’s one of their, you know, core beliefs. So very- I love that concept.
And so from a dental practice, they are engaging you to help them build this, are you giving them a framework so that they do it themselves?
Steven J Anderson:
Yeah, and actually, I am going to give it to you. So here, this will be free.
Alright so here is- RJ to your point. There is a lot of applications to the culture guide.
So one is to build the team who you hire with it. So we suggest that when you are actually interviewing, you give the interviewee your culture guide and you say, “Look, if we decide to invite you onto our team, these are the cultural expectations we have in our organization. We are not perfect, right. We don’t get it 100% of the time and this is what we are striving for and so this what you will be expected. So get familiar with it because if this is not the kind of culture you want, then let’s save each other a lot of time here.
So we hire with it. We do what we call 360 degree evaluations with it, right. So we- you know, you got all those expectations and then the team members have the opportunity to evaluate each other in each area of the culture. That’s team accountability, not just leader accountability.
So here is what I would recommend is that very first culture guide, if you go to thecultureofsuccessbook.com, right, so I wrote a book called Cultural success, so thecultureofsuccessbook.com and in the book is the actual original culture guide. Right.
So you can copy it and then, I believe it’s a lot easier to edit then it is to create. So that is available for plagiarizing so do as much you want. What I found is that it’s a lot easier to take it, you know, a base document and then you can add to it. What I found is most people that have taken that original document, they agree with like 80 plus percent of it and then they add their own pieces to it.
So create your own culture guide, write it out, you know get the book, write it out, present it to your team, hire with it, because that is the environment into which your patients will enter. It’s your culture.
Jordan Smith:
I mean and those are the things that you can’t teach somebody. You know those are those core values you were talking about where, hey, we can teach you a skill, you know, we can teach you how we do the books and that type of stuff, you can’t teach somebody, you know, those core values.
I think that’s super important for aligning with that. So for those listeners out there, tell them how Total Patient Services, you know how you work with your clients. What do you do on a day-to-day basis to make sure that those practices see success?
Steven J Anderson:
So, we do a couple of things at Total Patient Service. We have seminars that we do that are all focused on the systems that we implement in practices. So we have a course called Total Immersion which is all of the core systems to deliver great patient service that dramatically improve case acceptance.
Jordan Smith:
Okay.
Steven J Anderson:
So it’s all about helping the patient get what they want. Right. So, do all kinds of courses. We have an entire team and an army of what we call practice advisors who are very, very seasoned in dentistry, that are experts in the most important part of the process which is implementation, right. Implementation and accountability.
So here is a piece of this that I think is important for any business.
Several years ago, I had just the serendipitous, unplanned experience of having dinner with coach Chuck Daly. Now, you guys remember coach Chuck Daly. He was the coach of Detroit Pistons and what put him on the map really was, he was tapped to be the coach of 1992 Olympic dream team. That was the first year that professional basketball players were allowed to play in the Olympics and he got chosen to be the coach. So that was, I mean, it was all the greats of that era, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, you go down the list, all the greats were there. He coached them.
So we had this, just by accident, we were at a conference together, it was open seating, we just happened to sit down next to each other and when I saw who sat down next to me, I thought oh this is gonna be good.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah!
Steven J Anderson:
So we had, we sat there for two and a half hours. I think he may be got two bites of his dinner because I just kept firing questions at him. I mean, here is one of the greatest coaches of all time and I’ve got one on one audience with him.
So, here is what a huge, huge takeaway is, he probably didn’t want to eat dinner, so he started asking me questions. So he asked me this question and I’ll ask you guys this question. He said what is a coach’s job. What’s a coach’s job? You know, I am sitting there thinking about the coach’s job. Well, it’s a coach.
No-No-No-No.
He said a coach’s job is to make sure the team wins. It’s the player’s job to play but it’s the coach’s job that the team wins.
Because the coach has to sit there and strategize, on the side line he’s got to think who do I need to put in the game. What player do we need to run? What do we need to do now to be in the best position in the next quarter or at the end of the game, right.
The coach is figuring out the winning strategies. It’s the coach’s job to make sure the team wins. Every great team has a coach. In professional sports, every great team has a coach.
And I believe in business, every great team that wins in some way, shape or form has a coach, in a large corporation it’s called a board of directors. It’s an entire group of geniuses from other industries and other businesses that come in to coach the CEO and the executive team to give them different perspectives. So they can guide the company in the right way, so big companies have board of directors.
I am a huge fan of the whole mastermind concept. In our Crown Council organization, we organize dentists into mastermind groups of 8 to 10 that meet on a regular basis to be each other’s informal advisors. Our practice advisors are the professional coaches. Their job is to make sure the practice wins and build in the systems and the accountability to make it happen.
So one of my biggest challenges, I would say in addition to creating your cultural guide, everyone that’s listening is, get a coach! Whatever way, shape or form that takes for you, everybody needs a coach. We are not that smart. Each of us individually, we are not that smart but with a group of people we can be if you got the right coach and the right mentors.
Jordan Smith:
Yup!
RJ Martino:
Yeah that’s great. You know, we talk about it all the time that we get a coach anytime we get into Golf. We go on the golf range, we want a coach. We get into a team sports, we want a coach. You can’t imagine playing, you know, junior high football without a coach.
But there are a couple of areas where having a coach feels weird. A lot of it is marriage counselling, you know, if you are not good at marriage and some of it, it’s a hard thing to do.
Get a coach and in business it is another thing where there is this operational maturity where in the beginning you think I don’t need a coach. I am a businessman. It is a point of maturity which you admit to yourself that you know what, a coach is a good thing and everybody that has a coach will say, “Man, I wish I would have done this earlier. I wish I would have done it sooner.” And so providing coaching, and you mentioned Crown Counselor, if audience members are listening to this, is coaching something or mastermind too, is that something that you can help them with?
Steven J Anderson:
Oh absolutely. We do it every day at Total Patient Service. We do a thorough analysis on the front end for free. We are very careful about who we choose to coach cuz we wanna make sure it’s a winning combination. So we will do an analysis for free where we look at the particular key performance indicators, look at where the opportunities are, and then map out a strategy for where we think we can help the practice go next based on the dentist or business owner’s goals. Right? Success, I am a huge believer that success is how you define it. How YOU define it. So you gotta define it first and then we got to figure out a way to get there.
But some of the biggest challenges we have are working with practice owners who have never decided what success really means for them and they are operating based on somebody else’s definition.
Jordan Smith:
Yup!
Steven J Anderson:
And you gotta be careful about that because some, everybody has got their own set of unique abilities and if you have adopted this mind-set that success is you gotta grow-grow-grow and keep growing and make it bigger and bigger and bigger and you are miserable, maybe you need to re-look at your definition of success. Maybe you need to decide how much is enough and what does sustainability looks like to you. And then what kind of business do you wanna have? The sustainable that you enjoy that has a right kind of culture where you are doing the things that you want to do, that you enjoy doing. That is your definition of success.
Jordan Smith:
That’s a great point and with iProv, our marketing agency, you know, we are talking to dentists all the time. And we have got one client and his, and we talk about vision a lot, right. And that’s what you are talking about. You know, we have got one client, his three year vision is to be able to take a month long vacation, with him and his wife where they can go, float the Grand Canyon. He said I’d love to do that but I can’t. Because I am seeing, you know, 75 patients, you know, a week. So his vision is to get to the point where he can hire another provider so he can take some time off cuz he hasn’t taken a proper vacation in 16 years. We’ve got another, you know, they wanna open up other offices across the State.
So, you are right. It’s the very first step. It’s kind of defining what success looks like cuz it’s, you see it, it’s different from practice to practice, right?
Steven J Anderson:
Different for everybody. And I think that’s one of the biggest shortcomings as we don’t find it then you get into the state of misery because you are doing all these things you really don’t wanna do and there is no one, bigger is not necessarily better. And for some people it is bigger is better.
Jordan Smith:
Oh yeah!
Steven J Anderson:
Everybody has got their own, you gotta figure it out. I wanna give you one, just one quick personal example about it. As a kid, when I was in high school, my dad took me and an older brother of mine to San Francisco. We went to Johnson O’Connor Human Research Laboratory. They are nationwide. They are a non-profit organization. They’ve been around for almost a hundred years. Their speciality is aptitude testing.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah!
Steven J Anderson:
So you go through a day and a half worth of aptitude tests. And they show you where you compare to the population in terms of your natural aptitudes. And their philosophy is that you have something that is a natural aptitude that you can do better than 10,000 other people, right. They are just trying to help you figure out what your personal genius is. I think everybody gotta go through it.
So we go through this, and halves worth of stuff and they layout the results and it’s all based on a percentile basis of how you compare, how you stack up to a hundred-year worth of people who have taken their test. So it’s pretty good, pretty good measurement of how you measure up. They open up my results, and there is not one single line above the 50th percentile.
NOTHING.
RJ Martino:
I bet your dad was- that was a proud moment for dad.
Steven J Anderson:
I looked at it before the guy could say anything, the testing guy, I looked at it. Right. Now I am 16, I am in high school and so I am thinking, you know grades, A, B, C, D and going on.
RJ Martino:
Yeah! I am below average on everything.
Steven J Anderson:
50% percentile is failing, right. So I looked at him and I said, “Oh, I can’t wait to see how you spin this. Because you just basically gave me my results and I failed life. I am good at nothing.”
And so he said, Okay calm down. He goes, you know, hold your horses. Let me explain this. There is a point to my story because this has to do with how you define success.
He goes, look. He said the biggest problem we have in our organization is people who come in here who have aptitudes, all kinds of aptitudes and talents, they’ve got stuff just all over the place. He said and their biggest challenge is they start over every 4 to 5 years. They do one thing, they do it really well and then they get bored because sub-consciously they’ve got other things they know they do well. So they quit and start something else. Then they quit and start something else. He says, you’ill never have that problem.
Then when he brought it into a landing, he said look here’s the deal.
He said, you have the perfect profile to run whatever you wanna run and build it as big as you want to build it. He said because you will be very-very willing, in fact eager to find people who are really-really good at things, in fact better at it then you are and hire them and delegate all day long.
He said so go for it whatever you wanna to, he said because you have the perfect profile to do that. And then he turned to my brother to do his results, he goes now, everything that I just told Steve, none of that applies to you.
So now let’s look at your profile because your profile is hands-on. You have to work with a very small intimate team that you can rely on 100%. He had a totally different profile. Totally opposite.
So how he defines success is very different then how I define success and we are business partners.
But we totally understand what our unique abilities are, what our strengths are, what success means for each of us. And it’s very different and we are able to then work together because he does things that I don’t do and vice – versa.
Right, so you gotta define it for you. I am a big believer, it is a very-very personal thing you gotta figure out. One other thing that we do and I want to mention this because of all those experiences we started that is now part of our non-profit. We actually have a course that we do for high school and college students on that topic. So it’s called Eagle University so if you go to eagleuniversity.org, it’s a non-profit and it’s a program that we do for high school and college students and its whole purpose is to help them get a 7-year head start on their career. Right. So figure out all those things early so you don’t have to try to figure it all out.
RJ Martino:
Yeah, I hope you are thankful that your dad put you in the zone early on. You know, I wish and this is going back to our audience is that I wish someone would have said RJ, you need a coach, so much earlier than they did.
It took me a decade before I got over my ego, thinking I can’t do this by myself. Literally, a decade and if someone were to said on day one, RJ, what do you want for the future and then if they would have just asked me why three or four times, I would have eventually gotten to where why i really wanted to grow a company and then what size. But you know, for guys that are excited about starting a practice, started a practice, they usually don’t dedicate the time they need to even tease out what’s in their head. You just go-go-go-go-go. And you just think volume is going to fix it, and I will figure it out along the way, pulling out what you want and your vision, you know, we end up spending a lot of time on that.
How do you do that? Because most of these and I am talking to the audience, most of you guys never do that and it’s not, it doesn’t make you weird that you don’t or bad business people, it’s the fact that’s just how businesses get created. So how do you do it? Is it a legal pad, go sit, or drink coffee for 48 hours or how?
Steven J Anderson:
So here’s, I will give you an Arkansas relevant example as you guys are both from Little Rock. I think this is one of that. So there is a guy from Arkansas, years ago that was known in the retail world to just show up unannounced with a legal pad and walk through grocery stores, and retail stores just taking notes, he’d meet the owner, he’d talked to the owner, I asked him about what worked, what didn’t work, he was inquisitive, always just looking for great information.
That guy’s name was Sam Walton. Sam Walton, early on his career was, from all of the stories that I’ve read, one of the most- he had no problem walking into any retail stores in America, unannounced, and would walk the aisles, he would ask to speak to the manager, he’d ask to speak to the owner, he made everybody his mentor.
If you’re a dentist or anybody, why can’t you do the same thing? Why can’t you go see other practices, talk to other dentists, ask them what works, ask them what doesn’t work. You gotta see a lot of different things and it’s amazing, you know, the ideas that you come up with and that’s why I am a big proponent of this whole mastermind idea. Different practitioners, different parts of the country, they can, you know, exchange ideas. I have been a part of a number of those for many-many years. And it’s amazing when I go back and I look at the origin of some of the things that I decided to do, many of those started in that environment. Just looking for good ideas, good mentors and be willing to be inquisitive.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah and vulnerable too. I know that’s a hard thing for some people, it’s just to kind of admit to themselves that they don’t have all the answers and they can’t do those things.
Steven J Anderson:
Hundred percent! Alright RJ, so you’ve got kids.
RJ Martino:
Did you see him? I tried to just act like they weren’t there, while he was army crawling across the floor.
Steven J Anderson:
All good! Okay, so, how old are your kids?
RJ Martino:
I’ve got an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old.
Steven J Anderson:
Perfect! Okay. How many questions a day does your 5-year-old ask?
RJ Martino:
Oh! I mean, it’s all day.
Steven J Anderson:
All day right! And the most popular question that’s asked over and over is?
RJ Martino:
Why?
Steven J Anderson:
Why!
Okay! Now here is the interesting contrast, the average 5-year-old asks at least 50 questions a day.
RJ Martino:
I believe that. I think my kid is skewing that!
Steven J Anderson:
Average college students, two! One of those is something really intelligent like where is the bathroom.
Now here is my question. Who is learning more proportionately, the kindergartener, your 5-year-old or the college student? Who’s learning more?
RJ Martino:
Well! She is getting smarter every single day. It’s incredible!
Steven J Anderson:
So it’s the one who’s asking the questions. Now what happens to us between kindergarten and college? Because you and I- maybe you have RJ, did you ever sit down with your 5-year-old and give her a seminar on asking?
RJ Martino:
No, that was- she came out that way.
Steven J Anderson:
She is wired. We all are wired to do it but then something happens to us in our education, I believe it’s in our educational experience where maybe we were the one who asked the question and the teacher made fun of us, That’s a stupid question. Whatever it is. So we learned pretty fast that it’s a lot safer to look smart than it is to be smart. How do you look smart? Well you look like you’ve got all the answers, you don’t need anybody, you’ve got all figured out. Versus being smart which is the one who’s asking all the questions.
RJ Martino:
Right.
Steven J Anderson:
I was in college, had a college course I took called Intellectual Traditions of the West. And it was taught by a professor that was some left over the 60s and you know, long hair, jeans, the flannel shirt and you know the whole deal. And in the, at the middle of the semester, he stopped the class and he looked at me, goes, “Anderson, he goes, do you always ask so many questions?”
I never really thought about it and I thought and I said, I guess yeah I do. And he said, don’t stop! He goes, now let me point something out. He goes, “Mr Anderson has single handedly controlled the curriculum of this course, up until this point. He goes, it stops today.” But he said, “here is the deal, he said, you can customize your own education, if you are the one asking the questions.”
He articulated and I didn’t even realize what I was doing but I never forgot that lesson is you can customize your education at any age. Even if your formal education is over, you can customize your education if you are RJ’s 5-year-old daughter. If you are the one asking the question.
RJ Martino:
I love it! I love it!
Steven J Anderson:
Alright! Simple concept but yet we often fall short in doing it.
Jordan Smith:
That’s great! And speaking of asking questions, and we wanna be respectful to your time, I feel likewe can do a whole series with you.
RJ Martino:
I love this.
Jordan Smith:
Our audience would love that. I would love that too, but for people out there that are listening that have questions they want to talk to you or your team. What is kind of the best way wrapping this up to get a hold of you, to find out more information?
Steven J Anderson:
Perfect! So yeah, what I would recommend is totalpatientservice.com, so singular, totalpatientservice.com, you can email us at Answers@totalpatientservice.com. We have got a live chat function on our website. You can ask any questions.
The other reference I gave you was the to the book, thecultureofsucessbook.com and you can pick up a copy of the Culture of Success. It’s in audio format, you can get it in kindle format, you can get it in print, whatever format you want or however you learn the best. It’s got the culture guide in it, you can copy, you can build your own and that’s and again, that’s one of the ingredients of I believe creating a great business.
Jordan Smith:
Well that’s fantastic! For anybody out there, if you guys have questions, I know that this content is going to be valuable. I’ve even taken a ton of notes here. So I appreciate your time and if you guys have any more questions, Steven J Anderson, he is the man.
RJ Martino:
Yeah this is, Steve this has been great. Thank you for your time.
For our audience, you know, it’s a lonely world out there being the owner. You often are running in the problems that you can’t go to your staff or even some time your leadership team to. And so, I hope you hear me loud and clear, it’s not weird to reach out to mentors, to mastermind groups, to consultants. And Steven just laid out, he is the guy that you connect to. He is open and willing to talk to you. In fact, he told the story about Sam Walton who just walks into places and asks questions. Do that to Steve, just give him a shout and ask him, hey how can you help me through this problem? And he will connect you, he will consult you, or he just might give you the Timbits information that you need. But it is not a weird feeling to feel overwhelmed, underpaid and running into problems that you don’t know how to solve.
So, Steven you have said a lot of things that hit home for me. We’d love to have you back. I am going to be grabbing a copy of that book and we will be in touch. If we can ever do anything for you, you know we are here. We would love to help you. We owe you one.
Steven J Anderson:
Thank you Gentlemen!
Jordan Smith:
Alright! Thank you so much.
Steven J Anderson, Thank you!
Guys, I know, if you’ve gotten to this point, you are very privileged. That was a great conversation. I hope that we can have Steven on again and if you guys got to this point in the podcast or the video recording, I think you all would agree with me.
RJ, Closing thoughts?
RJ Martino:
You know, he talked about culture by design versus culture by default. We talk about that all the time. It just felt like he and our thoughts are so in line. The concept of you know building a culture, culture by design, it’s uncomfortable. Most of the time you don’t even think that’s important. So that really rang true and I am just glad to hear other people in the industry, talks to the physicians or dentists about how important it is to be intentional and tell the world what the culture in your business is. Because so often business owners we just show up and we are running and gunning all day and we think our people are gonna just fall into the place and watch us as a worthy example to do the exact same thing.
And they don’t, it’s not because they are bad people, it’s because they need guidance, they want guidance. So culture by design that whole topic something to reinsure.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah, you know, I loved it. Being team centric, I mean all of those things. So everybody, if you are at this point and you haven’t yet, subscribe, like, comment, share.
Let us know what type of content you want. We are doing this with you guys. So hopefully this is valuable. Also if you know people that would be good guests on the podcast, reach out to us there also.
RJ Martino:
Yeah we, you know, Steven came in as a reference from an audience member and we need more just like that. So if you hear someone that, you know, you just enjoyed hearing, and you think other people should hear their message, send it to us. Send us a link, a call or a text. Whatever works. You know how to get in touch with us.
Jordan Smith:
Absolutely! Alright RJ. Thank you so much. Until next time.
RJ Martino:
Until next time
Jordan Smith:
See ya!
