The Leadership Skills of a Great Practice Owner

EPISODE NOTES

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Full Transcript:

Jonathan:

Welcome to the Tooth and Coin podcast, where we talk about your adventure of being a dental practice owner. In these episodes, we're going to be talking about problems that you will likely face as a practice owner, as well as give an idea about actionable solutions that you can take so that you can get past this problem in your practice. Some of these concepts are really big ones. Some of them are very specific. But we hope that these episodes help you along with your journey.

Jonathan:

Now, a very important piece for you to understand is that this is not paid financial advice. This is not paid tax or legal advice. We are not your financial advisors. We are not your CPAs. This is two CPAs talking about informational and educational content to help you along with your journey, a very important piece for you to understand.

Jonathan:

Another thing you need to know is if you enjoy today's content, join us on the Facebook group. So we've got a Facebook group that is active with dentists that is going to have content talking about what we're talking about today to continue the discussion. Agree with us. Don't agree with us. Have a story to tell. Have something to share. Join us in the Facebook group. If you go to Facebook and you search for Tooth and Coin podcast, click on it to join it and be able to join us there.

Jonathan:

Finally, if you need some more help, we're developing a list of resources that are going to be centering it around our topics of discussion to be able to help you a little bit more than what the content is doing. So if you'd like access to that whenever it becomes ready, all you have to do is text the word toothandcoin T-O-O-T-H-A-N-D-C-O-I-N to 33444. Again, that's toothandcoin, all one word, no spaces, to 33444. Reply with your email address, and we'll email you instructions on how to get into the Facebook group, as well as add you to the list to be able to send you those resources when they're available. If they're available, we'll go ahead and send them to you as well. So onto today's episode. Hope you enjoy it.

Jonathan:

Hello, ambitious dentists. Welcome to another episode of the Tooth and Coin podcast. This is episode number five, which is a really good one. We're really excited about it. One of the things that if you've listened into one of the 120 episodes of the Start Your Dental Practice podcast, one of the things that I said that people needed in order to be able to be a business owner is leadership skills. It's one of the things that I always say this is not something that is usually inherent in a lot of people, is having leadership skills. You may believe that you have some leadership skills, and you may not be afraid of leading, but leadership skills are definitely something that once you get to a certain size of a company, it adapts, it evolves, and it becomes even more important.

Jonathan:

I find that a lot of people think that they may be really good leaders, but they're going off of that gut feeling of how it feels to just kind of push people along and try to go in a certain direction, because they know where they want to go. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing that great of a job of leading everyone. So that's the reason that I said leadership skills are one of the things that is the hardest to come by whenever you become a practice owner to actually have and have to be inherent to actually just understand and know about.

Jonathan:

So one of the things that I always tell the people, I get a question like, "I am in dental school. What do I need to focus on in order to be able to be ready for practice ownership whenever I get out?", that's one of the things, is leadership. It's not, "Oh, you have to understand exactly how assets equal liabilities and owner's equity." The balance sheet is not super important compared to understanding leadership. So today's episode is going to be about leadership. I'm going to be interviewing Joseph about this. Joseph has a lot of experience with leadership in different programs and lectures on this topic and is someone who's very knowledgeable about leadership in small business. So Joseph, walk us through ... I mean, did I do a good job of teeing up that leadership is important? Tell us your take on leadership.

Joseph:

Yeah. I think that whenever we talk about the things that we do as a firm, one of the things that we're always constantly hitting on is that dentists spend 10,000 hours or 15,000 hours learning to do dentistry and zero hours learning how to run a business. I think to kind of piggyback on that, leadership's just something that is inherent in owning a business. It's a very difficult thing to understand how to do it and how to do it correctly. I think that's one of the biggest things that dentists can continue to work on, especially earlier in their career, is being that good leader of the office.

Joseph:

To be fair to dentists, it's really most of the people that are out there that are running businesses. They've got kind of their own what they would call style, and they just think that everybody needs to learn their style and this is exactly how we're going to do it, and we're going to move on. So I think that it's imperative that any business owner knows leadership, studies leadership, understands leadership. I think that that's one of the things that we can hopefully shed some light on today.

Jonathan:

So in keeping with the theme and the patterns of our episodes, why would it be a problem for a small business owner to not understand or take leadership seriously?

Joseph:

I think a couple of different things. Number one is that if you don't lead people well, they'll leave. People don't want to just work for money. They want to work for a higher purpose. They want to do work that matters, if I want to kind of pull a key phrase that's out there, and they need to be continually reminded of that, that what we're doing is work that matters and this is why. If you have a whole bunch of turnover, you're going to have a lot higher cost to go along with things, and things aren't going to run very smoothly. If your front office isn't running smoothly, if your chairside stuff isn't running smoothly, then you're going to lose out on opportunities to do well and to help more people and to service more people in your community and to be able to realize the financial dreams that you had whenever you started a business. I mean, leadership is key to making sure that you're able to meet your own goals and to do all of those things that you want to do with inside the practice.

Jonathan:

One of the things that I've noticed as I've consciously tried to sharpen my leadership skills and do better at leadership is that when I do that, it's not just the leadership of my employees that gets better. It's also the leadership of our clients and potential clients and my family. There's a whole lot of other pieces that go along with it, that leadership is not just about the small business. It helps out in a lot of different ways. So cool. I would probably just highlight a big problem is that a lot of people, you don't get to be a leader until you're leading.

Jonathan:

I mean, it goes back to one of our first episodes, saying, "You're not an owner until you're an owner." You don't own the business until you own the business. You kind of learn by doing, right? So it's hard to be self-reflective if you've never done it before. So walk us through it. Talk us through a framework for leadership. Talk us through how someone who has started hearing the podcast and understands, "Okay, I understand why I need leadership. Listen to these really smart, good-looking guys, and go with what they said, believe what they said." So talk us through that.

Joseph:

So when I was in college, Jonathan, I went to a small school and was in a couple of different organizations. I felt like I was a good leader. I just said, "Get out of the way. I'll show you how it's done. Give me all the work, and I'll do all of it. I'm not going to let you do anything. Look at all these great results that I'm producing for my organization." When I was 19 years old, I got selected to take part in a really elite leadership program for college juniors and seniors, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. That really opened my eyes to there's a whole lot more to this than "working hard" or getting the job done. I think that's probably one of the traps that a lot of entrepreneurs fall into. It's just like, "If I just work hard enough, everything will be okay. If I just try hard enough, if I just do all of these different things, get out of the way, and I'm going to show you how to do it."

Joseph:

So what I was introduced to at an early age that just really was ... I guess they call it an aha moment, right? The light bulb went off. But there was a couple of guys named Kouzes and Posner that wrote the five principles of exemplary leadership or the five practices of exemplary leadership. As we went through this exercise, just light bulbs started going off about my own shortcomings inside of leadership. So if it's okay with you, I'd love to go through these and maybe just kind of bounce some ideas off of you and get some thoughts from you on this, Jonathan. Does that sound like a good idea?

Jonathan:

Yeah, yeah.

Joseph:

So the first thing that really hit me, whenever you go out and study or look at leaders, is they have a tendency to have just incredible vision. They can see where things are going. But it's not about just me telling you what the vision is. One of the things that leaders do is that they inspire what's called a shared vision. So not only am I going to inspire you, not only are we going to have vision, it's not going to be my vision or your vision. It's going to be our shared vision. So whenever I say that, inspire a shared vision, I mean, one of the things that immediately comes to mind is what we're trying to do at Tooth and Coin inside of our CPA practice. As a shared vision, we want to be the CPAs from the time that they enter practice ownership until the time they retire. That's something that we can all get behind. I mean, what are your thoughts whenever I talk about inspiring a shared vision, Jonathan? What are some things that kind of stand out to you?

Jonathan:

Yeah. I mean, originally, that's one of the things that I think is a big pitfall about having a shared vision, is that entrepreneurship, there's a saying that it's kind of lonely at the top whenever you don't really have ... I mean, it's kind of just in your head. I think for dentists, they can usually sometimes think that the vision is, "I've got to get more patients in. I've got to do dentistry. That's my vision, is what my dental practice is." It's more than that, like you stated. People want to be paid for their efforts, but that only lasts for so long, and that shared vision is how you start your team, basically. You're surrounding yourself with people that are trying to do the same thing that you're doing.

Jonathan:

One of the really big analogies that people use in terms of teamwork is they talk about sports teams. If you're on a football team, your shared vision usually isn't that you're going to create some more social good in the world or you're going to bring a lot of spirit to the school. It's that you're going to win a football game. You have a vision of, "We're going to win. We're going to go to our state championship this year. That's what our vision is, and we're going to work towards that as a team to get to that point." It's not anything other than that.

Jonathan:

Whenever you're in business, you sometimes think that state championship is just the business is successful. In reality, it has to be something much more nebulous. It has to be a bit more impactful to the people that are surrounded, because what does that mean to be successful, and how do we define what that success is so that we can boil it down into a better vision of, "Okay, the practice is successful. Yes. But the reason it's successful is because it's doing what we want in our community. It's helping the people that we want to reach into our community. It's providing security and happiness to the people that are involved in our community." Maybe there's a certain types of procedures that you prefer to do over other people or other services.

Jonathan:

One of the things that I've stated before that is a dental moment that's helped me is before I got Invisalign, I would get really bad headaches. I found that whenever I finally got my teeth straightened, I didn't have as bad of headaches anymore. It helped a lot. So that's something that that practice owner did for me that if someone is to surround themselves with, "Hey, we're going to help people. We are a health organization that's going to help" and is very specific in the way that it's going to go about doing that, then that makes it much easier for people to get onboard and be a part of that team so that they can start moving forward towards that state championship, so to speak.

Joseph:

Yeah, absolutely. So we've got to have a shared vision. We've got to be able to be on the same page with all of that. The second thing that we've got to do is we've got to be able to enable others to act, or you might call that process delegation. So if a dentist starts a practice, they're not going to be able to answer the phone, schedule appointments, file claims, verify insurance, collect payment, do fillings, do x-rays, do hygiene. They're not going to be able to do all of it. That was one of the things that I know you and I have talked about this internally, is we try to figure out and bring staff along and to delegate some responsibility and to pass work down and to basically enable others to act. We kind of have this own self-thought that, "It is only me. I'm the only one that's good enough to do this job." So the second thing inside of exemplary leadership is we've got to enable others to act. I think that goes kind of a long ways. I mean, any thoughts on that, whenever you're delegating, enabling others to act?

Jonathan:

Yeah. So, I mean, making sure that people can do the jobs that you've assigned them to do is really important. So whenever you're talking about enabling others to act, are you just saying that people have to be able to move towards that vision in their own way? Fill that out for me. Talk to me more about that.

Joseph:

Yeah. So, I mean, everybody needs some guidelines and some guideposts, or you could call them bumpers in the lane of bowling or whatever. But they need to be able to have a little bit of autonomy to come up with the best way that they have to do the job. Nobody wants to be a robot. It's really about giving them some guidelines and giving them some guideposts. But what you want is you want to make sure that people have ownership in their position and that we're hiring human beings with real brains that have the real desire to want to do a good job. So we've got to give them some space in order to do that. Now, certainly, there's certain ways that you want to have things done. You want to have some uniformity in a lot of things that you do. But in a big picture understanding, you can't do it all, and you need to be able to enable others to act and enable others to help.

Jonathan:

I think dentists are pretty good about that. I think that naturally, a lot of dentists are pretty good about that, because they're used to, "Here's your role. Here's your role. Here's your role." The dentist doesn't want to be doing the [inaudible 00:14:28]. They're going to let the hygienist do that. They're going to be able to do the pieces that go along with that. So yeah, I get that.

Joseph:

Yeah. So first thing we talked about inspire a shared vision. Second thing we talked about is enable others to act, and the third thing is that we've got to do what's called encourage the heart. We've got to give people some feedback in how they're doing, and a lot of times, this is something that's absent inside of our business and absent inside of our organizations, is just taking the time to say, "Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for doing a good job. You did a really good job with this." We've got to encourage the heart, in a way, because, again, we're dealing with human beings that are on our team that we're leading. We've got to help them see all of the good that they're doing. "Hey, did you notice that Ms. Jones that was in, did you see the before and after pics on that? Man, look at what we did together. Nice job helping us out with that." So I think that's another big thing, is we've got to encourage people. We've got to encourage the heart.

Jonathan:

Yeah. One of the things that comes to mind with that is Tom Shoes. If you remember, the Tom Shoes is you buy a pair of shoes, and then they're going to give another pair of shoes to someone in an impoverished country as a way to do social good. So not only are you buying a pair of shoes, you're buying someone else a pair of shoes. You're doing good by buying these shoes. When Tom Shoes came out, it had this massive success, because they shared their vision with their customers, not just the people that were working with them.

Jonathan:

I've seen dental practices do this, too. So a really good example of this is we had a client that said, "Hey, we're going to do a bonus program for our fluoride." They had a really low fluoride percentage. They're like, "Hey, Jonathan, we've been trying to figure this out. [inaudible 00:16:11], the data consultant on it said to do this." They tried this, and it worked, was they said, "Okay, for every fluoride that we do over the next quarter, we're going to give $5 to this charity." It was a charity that the team had came up with, or I can't remember if the team came up with it or the doctor came up with it. But it was a charity that everybody wanted to help out with. So they said, "Okay, we're going to do these $25 fluoride ... We're actually going to offer them to patients."

Jonathan:

So they let the employees have more of a reason than just, "Hey, it's your job to offer fluoride to patients," have a reason to do it. They ended up getting something like, I don't know, $2,000 they ended up raising for this charity that was a big help to the charity. So it actually did something. Them doing the fluoride actually did something. An added benefit to that was once that incentive was over, the team had basically self-trained themselves on how to offer fluoride.

Joseph:

That's awesome. That's awesome. I like it. So we talked about inspire a shared vision, enable others to act, encourage the heart. The fourth piece of exemplary leadership is model the way. So one of the things that you'll hear a lot about in the leadership world is they'll talk about tone at the top. They'll talk about what kind of example are you leaving for your employees? So if you're constantly 15 minutes late to the office, you should expect your staff to be 15 minutes late. If you're on time, if you're early for stuff, if you present yourself in a very professional way, if you watch your language, if you keep things in a very professional way, you're modeling the behavior you want from your team members.

Joseph:

I think modeling the way is a really, really important thing, and it's not about being a prideful thing, "Everybody's got to be like me" kind of thing. But it's about how are you going to act in front of the patient? How are you going to treat that patient? Are you going to belittle your patient? Well, you should expect your staff to belittle the patient. Are you going to use their last name whenever you address them? Are you going to address them with respect? Are you going to call them. "Mr. Rucker, thank you for coming in today"? Are you going to be grateful? Are you going to be gracious? What is it that you're modeling for your staff in order to present the tone and present the kind of culture that you want at your office? I mean, are you going to belittle one of your team members in front of a patient in a way that's going to be very disrespectful and it's going to make them upset? Then you should expect your team to do that.

Jonathan:

I'm sure there's a lot of people that are nodding their heads and have seen that in the past, where you've had a boss that acted in a certain way. Then you look at and around you, and even though there might be some contempt about how the boss is handling the situations, that's kind of how all the situations got handled after that point. I've had bosses that lashed out at employees and would yell and scream and curse. Honestly, after I left those work environments, it was hard for me to kind of not think about things in that way, because the person that I had modeled in my mind as being the boss, that's how they reacted to those situations.

Jonathan:

So I had a lot of times I pulled myself away and thought, "No, Jonathan, you're a calm, collected guy. You're not a hothead. You don't have to act that way just because the other person acted that way. Doesn't mean it was right." That's something that even I have struggled with in the past to reconcile, because all these patterns are learned behaviors. So setting the tone at the top makes complete and utter sense. So yeah, that's a great one.

Joseph:

Yeah. Another thing is what are you going to tolerate? Whenever it comes to different stuff, how are you going to address things? Are you going to have the courage to address the things that you need to address? Those are all tough things. I think we could probably spend a whole podcast, Jonathan, talking about having crucial conversations and addressing things and what do you address and what do you not address and what's the best way to do that? So I think we should probably save that for another topic, but modeling the way is a big, huge piece of leadership.

Jonathan:

It reminds me a lot of just the culture conversation of businesses. What is the culture of the company? Even when you said, "How do you address people?," I mean, there are a lot of different ways you can address people. You can be incredibly professional and have that be done in multiple different ways. You be incredibly professional and be casual. You can be incredibly professional and be very manneristic, so Mr. and Mrs., making sure who it is. There's a lot of different ways you can do it, and all those little things are going to permeate throughout the business. They're going to create the culture of the company and the culture of the practice.

Jonathan:

That's one of the reasons why a lot of people sometimes tend to lean towards ... When I say a lot of people. I'm not saying the majority. I'm saying there's a lot of people out there that their ideal way of going into practice ownership is through a startup process, because they don't want to go into another culture and try and reshape that culture based off of their personality and style. So yeah, I definitely think we could probably have a whole episode about culture, and that's definitely a part of it.

Joseph:

For sure.

Jonathan:

So you want to go to the next piece?

Joseph:

Yeah. So the last piece is to challenge the process. We give you all kind of just cliches that are out there. If you keep doing what you're doing, you keep getting what you're getting. What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Insert your own cliche for doing things. We talk about Saly a lot in the accounting world, right? Who's Saly again, Jonathan?

Jonathan:

Same as last year. She's only got one L in her name, but she's [inaudible 00:21:52].

Joseph:

Yeah. So number five is to challenge the process. If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting. So as you get a chance to look at all of the different things that you're doing, are you doing things exactly the same way year after year? Are you having problems with your scheduling? All right. So if we keep having the same different pieces, do we have a lot of no-shows? If we have no-shows that are taken up time on the schedule, what are we going to do differently? What are we going to challenge the process, and how are we going to handle this in a different way? Is it because we're confirming appointments? Well, maybe we need to have a different system of confirming appointments. Maybe we've got all kinds of different stuff that we can try.

Joseph:

So one of the great things about being a business owner is that you get a chance to try all kinds of different things. If you don't challenge the process, if you just keep doing the same thing over and over again, you're going to continue to beat your head against the wall. So number five is challenge the process. What are your thoughts on that, Jonathan?

Jonathan:

I think that of all the leadership traits that I have that I enjoy versus the ones that I'm not as good at, challenging the process is the one that kind of is the reason our business got created, was because every CPA firm that I was a part of, I was building up and breaking down every process that we had, because I'm to a fault a person who likes the most efficient way of doing things. If it's not the most efficient way of doing things, then I'm probably going to space out real quick whenever I'm a part of that process. Joseph, you can amen that.

Jonathan:

So one of the things that I get a lot of eye-rolls about from our team is where I decide to add in a new app to our software stack, because we're always trying to find a better way of doing it. There comes a point where that can be detrimental, but yeah, you've got to be able to keep adapting and moving, or else your business model could end up going to the wayside. If someone else figures out a better way to do it than you that's substantially better, you've accidentally inherited some business risk. In dentistry, you'll probably be fine, but it's a danger to your business.

Jonathan:

So yeah, definitely challenge the process. I don't know how many times I've heard from so many owners throughout the country that the reason that this is a problem for us is because it's our patient base or it's our software or it's because of this insurance that we take or it's because ... There's a reason behind why this doesn't work for them. Yeah, sometimes it takes 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 20 different ways until you finally figure out the way to do it the best way, but you've got to keep trying. You've got to keep challenging the process to see if you can make it better and do better at the end. The purpose of doing that is to meet that shared vision. There's a reason you're trying to do that. It's not just because you're trying to add two cents a dollar to your bottom line. It's because you're trying to meet that shared vision. That's how you get the buy-in from the team to be able to do that. So I'd love to hear your insights to challenging the process, working in our firm.

Joseph:

Yeah. So you mentioned that this is probably your biggest strength in this list, and this list isn't you have to get all of these right 100% of the time. It's really a guide work and a framework for you to determine your own style and to move forward and to help your practice move forward. You mentioned challenge the process as being your best one. That's probably the one that I don't do well at all. It's like, "Man, I've got this tried and true way of doing things. I know it. I don't have to learn a new process. I can just crank through as much as I possibly can. I've been using this same Excel file for this many years, and it's just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam."

Joseph:

So I think, interestingly enough, if this is what you would call your area of strength, it's definitely my area of weakness, is to challenge that process. It's not that I don't want to get better. I want to get better, too, but I don't want to take the time learning a new software, a new app, a new work process, a new workflow, all of those different things. I guess I've just been scarred over the years. I used to really good at this early in my career, like all these challenges and stuff. So I'd come up with all these different gadgets, all these different ways of doing things and spend all this time on it. Then it just wouldn't work. I'd be like, "Well, see, we should've just done it the same as last year," right?

Joseph:

So, anyways, I think that's why we complement each other well. When we look at this list, Jonathan, what would you say is your biggest challenge? I mentioned that the challenge process is my biggest weakness in this list, but between inspire shared vision, enable others to act, encourage the heart, model the way, challenge the process, what would you say is probably your most difficult piece in this list?

Jonathan:

It changes. It's fluid. I think of ones that have been challenges. So initially, inspiring a shared vision, we talked about one of the challenges at the beginning is that you're trying to build something successful. That's what you think the vision might be. I went along with that, too. I made that mistake when I started the business, until we became much more purposeful in the way that we did leadership inside the firm. So at one point, it was that. I feel like we're in a better space than that now. So at one point, that was it.

Jonathan:

The thing I think I've always been pretty good at, enables others to add, but there have been times where ... I tell my employees this all the time. If I'm handing something off to you, I have to hand it all off to you, because if I'm even touching it, I have to be a part of all of it. I can't just pass over a piece. It has to be all or nothing. So in a way, at one time, I probably wasn't great at it, because probably it was too of a min-max, or what's it called wherever you ... Micromanage people. But I think I've gotten better at that.

Jonathan:

Encouraging the heart, another one that I think we could probably do a little bit better at that now, but I feel like I do an okay job of that. Modeling the way, we're a virtual company, so we don't see each other every day. Sometimes whenever you've had a hard day or not slept in a few nights because you've got a newborn at home, you come into a meeting, and you're a little tired or something like that. Yeah, sometimes that can be hard to do, too. But I feel like over the time that I've had in this industry, as well as in this specific business that you're never going to be perfect at all of them. So you have to have to give yourself some grace in these things. But you have to be aware that you're working towards doing a better job. That's what I try to do every day, is I just try to be better. I try to be better while allowing myself to not be perfect.

Jonathan:

So I feel like I have minor weaknesses in all of them, but I would definitely say that my strength would probably ... See, with the one that I said I had the strength in, I said I had maybe to a fault that sometimes I like to challenge it too much, because maybe I'm trying to make something more efficient, and it ends up wasting everybody's time because we look at an app that we end up not implementing because it ends up being only a fraction of a second better or something like that or even be worse off than the other solution. So you're going to have your pros and cons to all of these. It's just you have to try and do as good of a job as you can on the ones that you can and then allow yourself the grace on the ones that you don't. So what about you? Where do you feel like the ones that are ... You mentioned that your weakness was your biggest strength.

Joseph:

I always like to be a cheerleader. I figured out a long time ago that it's very easy to be the worst part of somebody's day. The person at the drive-through does something bad, you can yell at them, and that five second encounter will be the worst part of their day. So I kind of flipped that on its head, and I said, "How can I try to be the best part of somebody's day?" So mine is encourage the heart. I really like to get a chance to tell people in a sincere way ... It's got to be honest, and it's got to be sincere. It's not just a Johnny good job kind of thing. It's got to be one of those things where it's honest and sincere and it means something and it's not handed out all day, every day. "Hey, congratulations for showing up to work on time today." Well, you're supposed to show up to work on time today. But you can say at the end of the week [crosstalk 00:30:15].

Jonathan:

[crosstalk 00:30:15].

Joseph:

Yeah. "I made it through another" ... Yeah. But you can say, "I really appreciate your dependability as an employee. I always know that I can count on you." That's honest, and that's sincere. "The other day, whenever you helped Ms. Jones out, she was having the pain with whatever, and you walked her through that and helped out with that. That really meant a lot. Thank you for putting our patient's mind at ease and helping them out." Having that kind of honest, sincere appreciation for your team members, that's one of the things that I really like a lot kind of to do. I don't know. It was a challenge that I figured out several years ago. I want to be the best part of somebody's day, because it's just so easy to be the worst part of somebody's day.

Jonathan:

I definitely agree with that statement. So cool. So is there anything else you wanted to add in terms of leadership? Leadership is a big topic, everybody. I mean, this is not a 30-minute thing that you're going to listen to that. "Now I'm ready to lead that Fortune 500 company. I'm ready to be the CEO." While I would love for that to have been the case with what we shared today, that's not going to be the case. But this is a really good framework to start, to start conceptualizing and looking internally on the ways that you're going to be able to impact the lives of your people inside of your practice, not just your employees, again, your patients and your community and your family and everything like that. So Joseph, is there anything else you wanted to add in terms of this topic?

Joseph:

Yeah, no, I think he nailed it on all of these things. This is a framework. This was the first framework I was introduced to, is learning how to be a leader. It's been very impactful for me, and I'm just glad that we got a chance to share it with our audience today. You're not going to be perfect at any of them. Leadership is a process. You've got to continue to learn and grow and learn as much stuff as you can about leadership and continue to challenge. Going back to challenge the process, challenge the process of how you're leading your team and continually seek out knowledge on that.

Joseph:

I mean, as you mentioned, we could spend hours and hours and hours talking through different leadership models and theories and all the different experiences that we've had in our life. I'd like for this to just kind of be a beginning, a beginning, the conversation with you about leading, having these five core principles according to Kouzes and Posner about exemplary leadership. Again, inspire a shared vision. It's not my vision. It's not your vision. It's our vision. We want to enable others to act. We want to encourage the heart. We want to be able to help people understand that they're doing a good job. We want to model the way, set the tone at the top, and we want to challenge the process. Saly is not always our friend.

Jonathan:

Perfect. Well, guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode of the Tooth and Coin podcast. This is episode number five. It's about leadership, where we talked about the problem being that if you don't take leadership seriously, your business just won't be as effective as it should be. It can cause a lot of issues and even cost you a lot of money in the long run. We've shared a framework that you can use and adapt to help conceptualize on how to do these and gain these skills in leadership and maybe even do some planning on how to impact your business on your own.

Jonathan:

If any of these topics have resonated with you, if you have stories to share about bad bosses, people who've done bad leadership in the past, that can be a really powerful tool to be able to share with people to see how to not do the stuff. One of the best ways to learn how to do something is to learn how to not do it. So if you have any stories about that, feel free to share them in the Facebook group, in the Tooth and Coin Facebook group. Thanks again for listening in to the Tooth and Coin podcast, and we will see you next time.

Joseph:

Bye, guys.

Jonathan:

That's it for today, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Tooth and Coin podcast. If you are going to be a practice owner or a new practice owner and you're interested in CPA services, head on over to toothandcoin.com, where you can check out more about our CPA services. We help out around 250 offices around the country. I would love to be able to have the discussion about how we could help your new practice. We do specialize in new practice owners, so people that are about to be an owner of a practice they're acquiring, about to be an owner of a practice they are starting up, or have become an owner in the past five years. That is our specialty. We'd love to be able to talk to you about how we could help you in your services with your tax and accounting services.

Jonathan:

If you enjoy today's episode, again, go to the Facebook group. Talk to us about what we've talked about, join in on the discussion, and let's create an environment where we can talk about some of these things so that we can all help each other get through these things together so that this adventure of business ownership is more fun, more productive, and better in the long term. Lastly, if you want access to those resources that we are currently building, just text the word toothandcoin to 33444. That's toothandcoin, no spaces, T-O-O-T-H-A-N-D-C-O-I-N to 33444. Apply with your email address. We'll send you the instructions in the Facebook group. We'll send you the resources when they're available, and we will see you next week.

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