Breaking Past the Entrepreneur Isolation Trap & Why the Lone Wolf CEO Gets Eaten First

The business world loves to tell owners how to serve everyone else, while quietly ignoring what it costs the person at the top. When you’re dealing with higher taxes, tighter regulations, HR headaches, and constant expectations to stay upbeat, the most dangerous move isn’t working hard, it’s doing it alone. I’m making the case that the “lone wolf” approach is not strength at all, it’s exposure, and it slowly turns into stress, tunnel vision, and decision paralysis.

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More about today's episode: 

The business world loves to tell owners how to serve everyone else, while quietly ignoring what it costs the person at the top. When you’re dealing with higher taxes, tighter regulations, HR headaches, and constant expectations to stay upbeat, the most dangerous move isn’t working hard, it’s doing it alone. I’m making the case that the “lone wolf” approach is not strength at all, it’s exposure, and it slowly turns into stress, tunnel vision, and decision paralysis.

I walk through a story I love: cows try to outrun a storm by scattering, while buffalo tighten up and run straight into it together. That difference explains a lot about entrepreneurship, leadership, and orthodontic practice management right now. The storm is going to hit either way. What changes the outcome is whether you face it in isolation or with a real mastermind group that functions like a player-led locker room, where peers challenge you, call out blind spots, and keep you accountable.

We also talk about filter fatigue, the mental taxation of filtering bad news and carrying every crisis yourself, plus the echo chamber effect that happens when your only sounding board is your team or a room full of yes people. To make it practical, I end with a five-question accountability audit you can use immediately to spot what you’re avoiding, where your calendar is out of sync with your goals, and what yellow flag you’ve been hiding.

If you’re building a small business, running a dental practice, or leading any team under pressure, subscribe, share this with another owner who needs it, and leave a five-star review so more entrepreneurs can stop fighting the storm alone.

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Transcript

The Lone Wolf Trap

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The modern business landscape was not designed for your sanity. It was built to consume it. Between the shifting regulations, higher taxes, HR laws that protect employees but have no regard to the business owner, everything is penalizing your growth. And the cultural expectation that you must sacrifice everything along the way for your team. The rules are officially stacked against the person at the top. Every leadership book talks about how to serve your team, teaches you how to be better for your team. But very few, very few, talk about serving the person that signs the paychecks. But the biggest trap isn't this system. It's the belief that you have to fight it in a vacuum. Every day you spend grinding it out in isolation is a day you're missing the collective leverage that happens when brilliant minds come together as a group. When the world tries to isolate the owner, the most radical and profitable move you can make is to stop being in isolation and stop being an isolated target, living in a vacuum, and start being a part of a greater whole. Let's talk today about why the lone wolf is actually the easiest one to take down and how coming together changes the math entirely. So if you're ready, let's go.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Welcome to the Brian Wright Show, a podcast that transforms the lives and businesses of all entrepreneurs, but dedicated to doctors that own their own practice. And now your host is a husband, father of two, founder and CEO of New Patient Group and Wright Chat, and a business consultant and speaker for Invisalign, Orthophy, and others. Brian Wright.

The System Stacks The Deck

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Month of April is always a special one to me, is that is when our mastermind members and spouses come together for a powerful in-person event. That's exactly what's happening this month, in fact, here in just a couple weeks. We're all coming to Asheville, North Carolina, is where we're taking the group this year. And Asheville's an amazing city, one of my favorite ones. Matter of fact, when I was still an umpire in professional baseball, that's how I got to know it when I was in the Appalachian League. Traveling Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina. Asheville was always one of my favorite stops. And it's an amazing city. Really cute downtown, tons to do. The waterfalls, the lakes, the hiking, just a magnificent area of the country. So excited that we're doing that. But the podcast that comes out in April usually serves as one of our large talking points at our roundtable. Matter of fact, this time last year, I came out with a podcast around identifying your blind spots, which we're going to be referencing a little bit today as well. And that served as a large talking point at our round table is the self-audit, is trying to find your weaknesses, trying to pay attention to them, which is much harder when you're doing it in isolation that we're going to be talking about today around the power of groups. Stop keeping yourself in a vacuum. But if you also are going to be a part of a group, the things that you must do to make that group a better place to learn, a better place to be held accountable, a better place to celebrate each other's wins. And we're going to be diving into all kinds of that stuff today. And today, more than ever before, this episode is directed at my mastermind members. Obviously, as anything else in this podcast, it's for anybody, entrepreneur, somebody in life, whatever it is. You're trying to get better in life, employees, you're you want to get uh something more out of your career, entrepreneurs, you want to get more out of your business. This is also going to help all of you. But today is really specifically directed at my mastermind group, the new patient group clientele, and talk about some things that are traps when you're trying to do it in isolation, breaking the habit of being in isolation when you have a group that is powerful and innovative and wants to help and wants to learn. Many times when somebody becomes part of a group, it's hard enough to get them to become part of the group. But once they're a part of the group, then they don't participate. And so if you are a part of a mastermind group out there, partly today we're gonna be talking about the psychology of trying to go at it alone, why it's not the way to do it. And again, if you are if you are buying into that and you say, look, I want to be part of a group, right? What you need to do yourself to make that a better group. You can't just say, hey, I'm gonna be part of a group and I'm gonna sit back and not do anything and not participate and not ask questions and not give my feedback and not provide answers and my opinion. And I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna be a part of holding people accountable, things like that. Then the group fails. Right. So there's a big part of the group and being a part of that group where you have to hold yourself accountable. What I talked about in the front end of this podcast in the intro is so true. The odds are stacked against us, unlike ever before as business owners. And everywhere you go, it doesn't matter if you're in our niche from a doctor's that own their own business standpoint, or you're out of our niche, everywhere you go in every industry, you can find books, speakers, classes, whatever, up there preaching what you must do for your team, how much you must give back, why you need to be a better leader. And meanwhile, every single day, the politicians are finding new ways to screw the business owner, whether it be raising taxes, penalizing your success, creating new HR laws where you can't get rid of the crappiest, the crappiest of employees, no matter what they do wrong, no matter how much you've tried to help them, you still can't do it because you'll be sued and probably lose. Regulations, the more regulations there are, the more the more the business owner is hampered. So you have all of these things stacked against you, and there's all of these teachings out there telling people this is what you must do for your team. But there's very few teachings that say, hey, I'm the one signing the paycheck. You know, where is people's loyalty to me? Where is the where are the classes? Where are the teachings? Where are the books? Where are the speakers that say what needs to be done for the entrepreneur? What needs to be done for the small business owner, which is the backbone of the country. If you look at the percentage of employees across the nation, it is startling how high the number is of people that are employed by small business owners. It is, you know, you hear Amazon and now like you hear all the big corporation names, but they don't even come close from a statistical standpoint from people that are employed by a small business. But yet every single thing, every single day seems to be stacked against us in so many ways. Now, as many of you know out there, what I teach is those aren't reasons to blame for a failure or not achieving your personal and professional goals. Just like I said in the on the intro, the reality is these are what they are. It's how you handle it, it's how you go about it. And if you remain in a vacuum and you remain isolated, whether you're part of a group or not, just because you're part of a group doesn't mean you're not isolated. It's like I was talking before. You can be part of a group, but you could be isolated from the group and get nothing out of it.

unknown 7:37

Right?

Isolation Makes Weaknesses Worse

Buffalo Run Toward The Storm

SPEAKER_02 7:38

So if you're part of a group or you're not, it is so important to be able to find people that you can vent to, that you can admit mistakes to, that you can ask questions to. Because the system is designed to kick our ass. But what we teach on here is how to kick its ass, how to reverse the numbers, the odds, the game in your favor. But you must do your part in order for that to happen, or the group is worthless. The teachings are gonna fall on deaf ears. And that's the other piece, too. You know, as an entrepreneur, the journey of self-improvement, there's not a lot of people waking up every day wanting to be better today than they were yesterday. And there's a lot of people that say that, but then they get burned out, they quit, they go right back to their old ways. And this journey in self-improvement as an entrepreneur is a lonely one. Very few people understand it. In the scheme of in the scheme of things, the vast majority of people still don't own, they may work for one, but they don't own a small business. They don't understand the entrepreneur. You have corporations out there that try to help the small business, but they've never even owned one before, and they're completely disconnected from what an entrepreneur and a small business owner, two different things, really need to thrive when they're isolated on an island all by themselves. And as these things are stacked against us, the more and more you're isolated, the more difficult they become, the more they're compounded, the more, the more, and this again, last April, if you want to go back and listen to it, I'll link it below. But your blind spots, the more your blind spots become invisible, the more your weaknesses are magnified. And arguably even worse, is that when you do have wins, whether they're small or huge, you have nobody to celebrate them with. And a lot of times they fall on deaf ears because a lot of these wins may put a lot of money in your pocket, but you can't really talk to your team about it because they're gonna feel, hey, you know, Joe took all the money. I and and it's that's the other piece too. When you're a part of a group, you're part of a group in a sense of you have other business owners going through the same struggles. You know, a lot of these things that you can vent, you can't vent to your employees. I'm not bringing enough money home. Meanwhile, you're bringing home 10 times the amount they are. There's so many other examples of things that while leading with empathy, leaning with vulnerability are great things, but there's also things you need to be very careful about what it is you bring up around your team members. And having a group that you can bring these things up to is fantastic as long as you bring these things up. We're gonna be going through an exercise here in just a little bit, kind of a self-audit exercise that we are gonna be talking about and using as roundtables in our in-person session in Raleigh. Excuse me, not Raleigh, Asheville, geez. We will be going to Raleigh May 8th. So I'll talk about that more either today or maybe in May. But in in Asheville, North Carolina, I want to make sure I'm going to the right, I want to make sure I'm going to the right place. And I think this self-audit is going to be powerful because you will realize that as you self-audit yourself and you look in the mirror, one, you may not have the right answers, but if somebody else is coaching you and holding you accountable, maybe they can look at you and say, no, no, no, no, that's not your true weakness. This and that are, which is why any group, for it to work and for it to be powerful, the members must hold each other accountable. No different than players on a sport team must hold each other accountable. Oftentimes, the most successful sport teams, the players police the locker room. And as long as you have the right players with the right mindset and they're not running off good people, right? But they're holding each other accountable for the betterment of the team, the culture, the fans, the organization. That is no different inside a mastermind group. You can't always have the leader at the top, which in our group, that that's me. You can't always have that person being the one analyzing you, trying to get everybody on board, trying to pick you apart, trying to coach you, trying to find your weaknesses. When you do it as a no different again in sports, it can't always be the coach doing that. It can't always be the general manager, it can't always be the owner. It has to sometimes be the players policing themselves, holding each other accountable, calling each other out in order to make the better hole, the culture, the wins, the stats, the organization thrive. One of my all-time favorite stories, I heard this years ago, and I've used it on stage now for many years. And it's the buffalo versus the cow analogy. And man, as I tell you this story, if you haven't heard, you haven't heard it before, you're gonna go, damn, this is so good for business. Because when I heard the story, when I heard the analogy, of course, my brain, I can't turn it off. So I'm always looking for for things, whether it be analogies, whatever it is, stories that really aren't intended to be about business or life or anything at all. I'm always, my brain is always going, okay, how can we turn that into a business lesson, a life lesson, a career lesson for the employees? Well, you know, this storm all of you are in, high taxes, more regulation, right? All the laws are stacked against you with the HR laws, all these things that I'm referencing really create a storm that you can face one of two ways. And it's not only just about facing it in one of in one of the two ways, it's about facing it right. And I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about that more here in just a second. So if you look at the cow and the buffalo, whenever a storm is coming, they can sense it.

unknown 13:26

Right?

Face The Storm The Right Way

Filter Fatigue And Owner Burnout

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Now, how they sense it, I don't know, but they can sense it. And the cow, if they're in a herd, the cows are if they're in a herd, whenever the storm is coming, they take off and they they they go away from the herd and they all go singular and they all start running away from the storm. Right? So let's there, there's ten of them and they're all there, they're on the farm, whatever it is. They sense the storm is coming and they bolt and they bolt the opposite way of the storm and they all go in their own direction, trying to get through it alone. Now, the buffalo, on the other hand, whenever they sense a storm, they become tighter together, one, right? So if they're in a herd of ten, like I referenced the cows, they're gonna bolt too. But they do it in two different ways. They come closer together as a herd, and they run right at the storm, they attack the storm. So obviously, you're never gonna outrun a storm. So if you look at the cows as they isolate themselves and they start taking off and heading to the woods or heading to the mountains or heading to the pasture, whatever the heck it is, and doing so alone instead of coming together as a collective group, they're never gonna outrun the storm. So they're stressed out, they're fighting it, they're trying to ignore it, pretending the storm's never gonna actually hit them. There's chaos, you know, they're they're sweating it out, they're stressed, all the things. But meanwhile, the storm catches up with them anyway. So they spend hours worried and stressed, going in isolation, trying to get away from something that they're never gonna outrun. And then once the storm connects with them, catches up with them, right? This pain and this suffering that they're already gone through trying to go away from the storm, then it gets worse because now they're tired, they're angry, they're frustrated. And when we're in that state as human beings, it is very difficult to make the right decision. It is very difficult, personally or professionally, to be able to take a step back and still have a longer-term vision. So they're going through all of this misery. And then what happens? The storm reaches them anyway. All of this misery and suffering, they have to suffer through it while the storm is pass is passing through. And then the storm passes, and all the fruits of the storm, right? The greener pastures, greener grass, the new water, whatever it may be, they can't they can't enjoy it because they're all too tired. They're too worn out. And they can't enjoy any of it. The buffalo, meanwhile, that come together as a collective group and come closer and closer together, touching together. Right? And they face the storm, and sure, do they face pain and suffering and misery? Of course they do, but you know the difference is they don't face that and suffer through that before the storm. It happens when they go through the storm. Right? So as the cows are facing all that before the before the storm even hits, then they're facing it when the storm hits, and then they're toast afterwards. You look at the buffalo, though, they bolt right at the storm, they come together as close as they possibly can. They get to the storm, and sure, is there pain and suffering? Yes, but it's much more minimal. They get through it together faster, quicker. Because the storm's gonna hit all of us. Like I said, you can't outrun it. They get through it faster and quicker, and then when the storm has passed, they can enjoy the fruits of their labor. They can enjoy the fruits of the storm, the water, the greener grass, the beautiful landscape. So many of you out there, like I'm talking about with these high regulations, the economy, whatever it is, you are in the midst of the storm. And you have a couple different ways to face this. You can face this in isolated fashion, like the cows. You can face this running away, trying to hide from it. Right? If you have a bad day, you can you can talk to your wife about it, your spice spouse about it, drive her nuts or him nuts, right? You can talk to your buddies or your peers about it. Right? But if those people are not part of a collective group that is trying to accomplish a lot of the same goals and they're going through a lot of the same things that you're going through, it's never going to bring you out of isolation. Now, referencing the buffalo, all of you out there, the ones that are facing the storm head on, it doesn't mean that this storm isn't gonna last a year, two years, three years. It doesn't mean just because you face the storm, you're gonna kick its butt. You've got to face the storm and you've got to face it the right way. You've got to be a self-learner. You've got to understand that the storm may last longer than you want for all kinds of reasons. And no matter what you do, that are the right things to do, they may not pay off for a year, two years, three years. But if you come together as a herd, if you come together with the power of the group, you're gonna get through it faster. And even if you don't get through it faster, you're gonna get through it with much less chaos, much less stress. You're gonna have the peace of mind that other people are dealing with it, you're gonna have the backing of an innovative, forward-thinking group that gives you ideas that you may not have thought of. Hell, they may give you ideas that I haven't thought of. You know, when I founded New Patient Group, as I do this podcast today, 13 years ago, it'd be 14 years in November. It's crazy. I named it what I did because at the time I wanted to start a company that basically did everything you would ever need for new patients under one roof. Right? It would help you attract more of them, get more calls, then would also teach you how to convert it at the high highest levels, teach you leadership to make sure the culture's set up, to make sure the training and marketing work. Right. And it's all under one umbrella to make sure you have everything you need working at the highest levels to attract more new patients and convert them and to turn them into fans that refer and become your sales force. And I put the word group on it because at the time I wanted to attract, and we have definitely accomplished this, I wanted to attract the most forward-thinking, innovative minds that wanted to stay five years or more ahead of where everybody else is eventually gonna have to go. They just, if you look at in the consumer bell curve, they're just never gonna go there until enough other people have tried it, or until they're forced to because the I, you know, the rotary phone doesn't exist anymore and they're a laggard. Therefore, they have to do all these things because they have no other choice. And over the course of time, we've expanded our services. Now we do the same thing. Uh you know, now we're doing it for the existing patient experience, training assistance on sales and hospitality, and all the stuff many of you know out there. And the services keep getting getting more amazing and more advanced and more innovative, more in-depth, more broad, producing better results. But the thing about it that that never changed is my vision of having a group of people that are all in the fight together. Because I know if your employees know each other, I know that if you all as doctor business owners know each other and you trust each other and you bounce ideas off each other and you have fun together, that you will have more personal and professional success. The odds that are stacked against all of us as entrepreneurs, and and as you know, many of you out there know this as doctors. You've worked your butt off to have that title. And in many ways, because of that, you're lucky in the sense of you can have leaky holes all over your practice that literally would put every business outside of healthcare out of business. You can have those holes and still break bring home a ton of money and then sit around and criticize these other companies, even when you have more leaky holes than them. You just happen to be in an industry that you can make a ton of money when you have leaky holes everywhere. But you've also earned that bust in your butt all the way through school to get the title that you have. So you've earned the right to be able to be lucky. But that doesn't Doesn't mean that all of you are making what you want to make, that you all are having fun, that you're efficient, that you're looking at numbers differently. I have a podcast, I was thinking about doing it today. That this April episode is always there's some pressure there because of the in-person mastermind event, how we use a lot of this for talking points. There's always some pressure there to come out with the right one at the right time. And for two years now, I've been working on, and it's just not ready. It just wasn't ready to be delivered. The program isn't ready. But I think that that the numbers and how practices, businesses are being analyzed by in industry, inside the bubble people is vastly outdated. From profitability to all kinds of stuff, I think it's very outdated because people are using the same numbers to break practices down as they do today when today there's remote monitoring, there's more digital tech, more higher share clear aligners, outsource partners. And a lot of this stuff is a totally different way. I relate it to if you look at Bitcoin, Wall Street does not know how to valuate the Bitcoin treasury companies, the companies that are buying Bitcoin left and right and keeping it on their balance sheet. Wall Street is still trying to valuate those companies with the same terminologies that they valuated companies for years. And a lot of the entrepreneurs that I follow are absolutely brilliant. And they reference, it's actually where I got the idea from, listening to them talk about the new data that is needed and the new names of the data that are needed to actually valuate these Bitcoin treasury companies as they really are. It started sparking my interest listening to that, going, This is exactly what we're living in in the orthodontic world. Even other industries, whether it be dentistry, plastics, or whatever it is, you could apply it in a different way to all them. And many of you out there as well. You could outside of our niche, you could still apply it. But but talking to our niche, there are so many outdated statistics that just absolutely don't apply anymore. You cannot talk about profitability the same way in an analog braces practice as you can with our model that teaches one to two employees per$1 million of revenue. A lot of different times you'll see overhead higher in our practices, but you'll also see way more fun, less chaos, more efficiency. You see growth when other practices are not growing. Right. So if you analyze that with the same numbers, you're gonna come to improper conclusions. So I I can't wait to dive into that topic whenever it's ready to go. But today's topic and back on, what we're gonna be going through is several things that make up a great group. And those are things that all of you out there, clients, non-clients, in our niche, out of our niche, you need to be searching for something like that. And then when you become a part of it, you must be an active participant in it. And I'm gonna be talking about how people who aren't active participants are driving down the interest and the results of the or the participants that are active and want to take it to another level. We're gonna be talking about several psychologies today about that. So let's dive into all of this. And that's exactly where I want to start. And it's called the psychology of isolation. There, there was a lot of really good information around this that I have studied for a long time, read for a long time, because hey, look, you know, doing what I do and being an entrepreneur and trying to lead my own teams and doing so virtually, by the way, which is which is not easy when your company and employees are virtual and you don't get to see each other much. It is hard to be a great leader. It's hard to execute on a lot of the things that you want others to be executing on from a leadership standpoint. It can get lonely. There's a lot of pressure, a lot of expectations, because I'm also a leader for all of you out there. And now I enjoy what gets me by it, which gets me by is I I enjoy the bejesus out of it, right? I can't get enough of it. So that keeps me rolling and keeps my energy levels like I'm a five or 10-year-old at all times. I just never get burned out. I keep rolling. But but that's also abnormal. And and this psychology of isolation is is really around filter fatigue. You know, that there is so much mental taxation, if you will, of having to filter out all the bad news before it gets to the team, or being the you know, the CEO, the, the, the, the chief energy officer, you know, the the bunny, if you will, the the energizer bunny all the time. And then all of a sudden, you know, the times that you aren't, it's like, hey, what's wrong with that guy? You know, it's you're always supposed to be happy. It goes back to the books that teach you leadership. You know, you're you're you're supposed to be happy and motivating. And and I'm at Fall of It too, because that's what I teach on here. I I teach constantly how to be a better leader, how to get the more out of your team, how to create the right cultures. And it's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this today, too, because it's also kind of a celebration of the entrepreneur, because everybody tells us we do it wrong. Everybody is saying you've got to do it differently. Everybody, and a lot of times those people are ones that have never owned a business in their entire life and were taught by a bunch of college professors that wouldn't know the first thing about business if it bit them straight in the butt. Then you're just getting it left and right on do this, do that. But the reality is all of you deserve somebody to say, where are the teachings and where are the people that say we deserve something? You deserve something. You know, do you want to filter this out? You know, this filter fatigue because you don't want the team to panic. You know, but it ends up a lot of times if you're in isolation, is who you end up panicking is your wife. Like I fall into traps of that all the time. Right? And is that, you know, I'm involved with a mastermind group and it's some really high-level people. And and sometimes, though, instead of me going to those people, I end up freaking my wife out, talking about things that really she shouldn't even know because she has no control over it. Right? Or going to my employees, which is exactly what I teach all of you not to do. And this is the problem with isolation is you end up going to your employees for everything, decision making, and and which I'm going to be talking about here in just a minute, and why it's the last thing you should be doing. You know, it's like the burden of AirQuest, the brave face, if you will, is just the exhausting requirements of being on stage all the time is that chief energy officer, like I talk about. You know, it's like when I hop on stage, I've got to be the chief energy officer up there. It's what I'm known for. You know, I bouncing off the walls, getting people excited, getting people motivated, right? Telling them things that they may not want to hear, but it's always going to make them walk out better than they started. Well, guess what? There's times where I haven't slept in three weeks because I've got to lead my own clients. I gotta, I've got to make sales for our companies. It's things like that, but you don't have a choice. And and all this leads to really, I think it leads to it advice and balance, where it's like if you audit your current business literature, if you will, and you really look at it, you're you're gonna find that at least 90% is about how you pour your heart and soul out into the team. Just what I'm talking about. Like, and it may even be more, right? It's it's it's gonna be less than 10%, probably most likely more like 0%, about how to refill your tank, how to refill the gas tank, you know, replug in and recharge yourself. There's always so much literature on pouring your heart and soul out into the team, but not literature around how you refill the gas tank. Keep your energy up, make sure you're having fun.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

Chaos is low, efficiency is high.

Decision Paralysis And Bad Sounding Boards

SPEAKER_02 30:10

And unfortunately, the thief a lot of times is isolation, and I don't think a lot of people look about this, and this is why the lone wolf CEO, you will always be able to kick their butt in the long game and the infinite game. Because isolation is it is not a badge of honor. It's not something special that you're doing. No matter what you may tell yourself, you're not the smartest person in the room. And if you think you are, that guarantees that you're not the smartest person in the room, no matter how much that may hurt your feelings. And and the reality is, is it's a structural risk to the business for all kinds of reasons. Like I said, your blind spots become completely invisible, your weaknesses are completely magnified. Whether or not you can put the finger on that or not, and it all leads to this decision paralysis. And I have not done a podcast uh about this, but I teach it all over on stage because decision paralysis is very much actually part of the four stages of psychological focus. And and I've brought up, if you're at, if you've been to some of our iconic events, I have talked about the four stages of psychological focus before. But one of those stages is indecision. And indecision is the enemy of progress. And indecision is created from a lot of a lot of ways. A lot of times, brilliant people have a very difficult time. And I've read a lot about this, and I have at least three podcasts on this topic how brilliant people have a very difficult time making good decisions. And it has nothing to do with how smart you are. It has everything to do with the fact that you over-analyze and overthink everything. And as you do that, you're more and more likely to make the wrong decision. And part of that wrong decision is indecision, not making any decision whatsoever in going six months trying to analyze it. And this enemy of progress is magnified when you're in a vacuum and every choice feels heavier. You're getting more weight on your shoulder because there is no sounding board that understands the specific stakes of ownership, the specific stakes of where you are in your journey, personally and professionally. And that's, you know, it goes back to the intelligent people have a difficult, and a lot of the doctors that we help out there, you're very intelligent people. In many cases, you're abnormally intelligent. And so much of that absolutely is screwing your business every single day because you look at it not like an entrepreneur. Right? Great entrepreneurs don't overanalyze anything, they make the quickest, fastest decisions, and they're willing to screw everything up and fix it before the next guy or girl have even implemented it yet. They're still analyzing everything. And then you try, you know, with this sounding board, one of the sounding boards, because you're not part of a group, or again, you are part of a group, but you're not actively using the group the way it's designed to be used, is that now you're bouncing things off your employees, asking them for permission, which you should never do. And I'll link the podcast I did about this. I think it was last season, I'll link that in the description below because I'm not going to be going in depth about that today.

unknown 33:33

Right?

Escape The Echo Chamber

SPEAKER_02 33:34

Then the employees most likely are going to give you bad advice. There's all kinds of reasons for that. They're not going to want to do things that they don't want to do, even if it's best for them and your business. And if you're stuck in isolation, that's what you end up doing. Your sounding board is your team. And that can't, first of all, it's not fair to the team, but it's not fair to you either. You know, you're running things by the team to get their approval. And that is a high cost of being in a vacuum. It's the reality of the situation. And again, going back to, and I've said it five times already, I'll probably say it five times more. Just because you have a group that you're involved in doesn't mean the group is going to help you. It's when you're an active participant in the group, using every single resource that group has. That is when that group is going to help you get out of isolation. And see, all of this that I'm talking about, from psychological focus to isolation, to everything I've referenced, all now goes into the echo chamber effect. And each one of these will be more in-depth podcasts throughout the years as we move forward in the show. But this echo chamber effect is when you only talk to your team, you only hear versions of your own ideas. Right? Sometimes you'll talk to the team and you have team members, and they're just gonna say, Yeah, great job, you know, great idea, Dr. Joe, or great idea, Dr. Susie or Mary or whatever, just because they want to be yes people. And that's the worst thing you can do is surround yourself with yes people. If you're involved in a group that is never challenging your thought process, never challenging your ideas, never calling you out when you're not doing what you should, you need to get rid of that group. The last thing you want to do, and I see this a lot of times in our niche, doctors, you just want to surround yourself with people that are telling you how good you're doing. You know, because reps from comp the reps from companies and most people in this industry are not gonna tell you like it is, like I do. They're gonna come in, they're gonna be respectful, they're gonna tell you how great everything is, right? Blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to. If you're screwing up, I'm going to tell you stop screwing up. If you think you're doing it right one way, I'm going to tell you five other ways that are better. That's why we are so popular in this industry, because we come from outside it and we aren't going to hide the truth, the facts. Some of you aren't going to like it, but a lot of you are. Because in the end, we are going to make you better. And this is a perfect example. This this visionary tunnel, if you will, this tunnel visionary, this tunnel vision that you fall into whenever your own, your sounding board is and you're bouncing these ideas off your team. Like I said, you've got the yes people, then you've got other people that they don't want to do anything. Right? That they may be the laggards on the consumer bell curve chart. And no matter what new idea there is, the new idea threatens them, right? It they they don't feel like the smartest person in the room anymore. They don't want to be a part of it. If they have to work harder, they don't want to be a part of it. If it changes their daily routine, they don't want to be part of it. And all you're doing is bouncing it off these type of people. And they've never owned a business in their entire life. And you have to be able to have a group where you can bounce all of these ideas off of. They're your sounding board. Not your spouse, not your team, a group that is going through the same journey, even though they may be in different stages of the journey, they have the same goals, they have the same dreams, they've been through the tough times, the battles, they can guide you, they can help you, but again, you must ask. The question, because this this filtering fatigue, you know, the mental taxation of processing every damn crisis by yourself before deciding what to do, if anything, right? Share it with the staff, or or making sure you're having the mental taxation, the mental burden of processing all this stuff so the staff doesn't know, right? And and and trying to figure out all this stuff. I'm telling you guys, it's crushing your business. And you may be growing, you may be very successful, you may be achieving or maybe even surpassing it. But I promise you, this storm that I'm talking about, it's coming, it's on the way. You're either oblivious to it or you know it's coming. It just hasn't hit you yet. I see several practices that are still thriving, and they're doing all kinds of things in an outdated fashion. And it may work for them today, but at some point, in some day, this storm is gonna catch up and kick their butt.

The Rule Book Trap

SPEAKER_01 38:25

And they are gonna be far too tired, far too frustrated to make the right decisions themselves to get out of it. You know, there's something I've called for years is called the rule book trap.

Collective Problem Solving Wins

The Accountability Mirror In Groups

SPEAKER_02 38:42

And and I really it in many ways when I talk about it, I'm talking about what I call the brules. And and the brules are the bullshit rules we all follow. You know, our our our parents told us to and raised us a certain way, so that's why we behave that way. You know, our our inside our industry peers taught us how to do it, so that's why we do it. And inside the bubble consultants say, do it this way. So you end up doing all these things based on how you were taught by inside your bubble people. But meanwhile, you look at these brules, uh, all these biases that are created, right? You've been in an industry for 20 years. Well, that's 20 years of bias that come with it. So if you look at Elon Musk in the car industry, when he came in with Tesla, even though Tesla is way beyond a car company, but you get the point, he came in there, he had no preconceived bias. There were no brules. He didn't follow anything, and he kicked everybody's butt that had industry experience for years. Richard Branson is my favorite example with Virgin Atlantic. You know, he came in with zero airline experience. He comes in and puts 10 airlines with CEOs that have been in the airline business for decades, puts them all out of business. Right? And there's several upon several more examples of that. Because these rules hold you all back. And this rule book trap, you know, the traditional rules of management right now is what I'm talking about, often neglect the psychological safety of the person at top. Exactly what I'm talking about today. Every rule that's written, every teaching, et cetera, again goes back to your team, your team, your team. What can you give to the team? What can you do for the team? What can you learn to help the team? And there's literally nothing in the scheme of things that talk about the psychological safety and what can be done for the business owner. Because the reality is, employees listening to this, there are things that you owe somebody for having their name on your paycheck. There are things that you should be learning on how to be a better employee, what you can give back to the business owner. This is the kind of stuff that doesn't exist out there. So as business owners, you fall constantly into this, right? Whether it is maybe your production's down, your collections are down, your profitability's not the way you want, your cash flow's down, you're not having any fun. Maybe you're growing like crazy, but everything's chaotic and you have no time to enjoy it, whatever the hell it is, right? There, there's teachings on a lot of that stuff, right? On how to get better, but there's nothing that teaches you how to refill the tank. There's nothing devoted to the business owner. And you have to find a group. Have to find a group that can be that sounding board, that can take away the rule book trap. That and another part of why I brought that up, that can be somebody that challenges you to go beyond these brules, these bullshit rules that a lot of you out there follow that are actually the reasons you're not succeeding and achieving and surpassing personal and professional goals. I see it. Because now that a lot of you who own practices have become commoditized in the sense that if you type in Invisalign, there's eight choices within 10 minutes of my office, kids' school, or my house. Inside the industry consultants that only worked in a practice, their teachings are not designed for commodities. Period. All they know is what they've learned inside a practice. You have to be part of a group that can teach you to think beyond the rules. To think beyond the standards set by in-industry people. You have got to be part of a group that tells you no, you're doing it wrong, no, you're not participating enough, no, you're not communicating well. You've got to be a part of a group that's been through these battles. They're battle-tested, they're business owners, whether it be for a short or a long period of time, that can teach you how to refuel your tank, that can answer your questions in a different way than your team is ever going to, that an inside-the-industry consultant's ever going to, and oftentimes many of your peers are going to. And collective problem solving is almost always better than trying to go at it alone. And again, this assumes that the collective hole there are the right people. You know, if you surround yourself with people that do nothing but moan and complain about their problems and blame all of their problems, like many in this industry and many entrepreneurs outside the healthcare industry that we help as well, I see it all over the place. Down economy, inflation, price shoppers, competition, all these things that you have no control over whatsoever. You use as the reason you are not achieving and surpassing your goals when that stuff is uncontrollable and it's not the reason. Now, it's part of it, as well as high taxes and regulation and politicians getting involved when they shouldn't be involved, and et cetera, et cetera, more and more and more stuff. Right. Yeah, those are all factors, but it's how you combat it. It's how you attack the storm. If you run from it and complain about it and be isolated from it, yeah, those things are going to kick your ass, but it's not those things that are doing it. It's how you're facing the storm. Not running at it, right? You're not coming together as a collective whole. And this collective problem solving, you know, a group of five innovative, forward-thinking owners, business owners as an example, can solve a unique problem and come up with ideas in five minutes, maybe because one's already been through your same problem. And I think, you know, if you go back to the previous Quick Tips episode that I did about an expert, see, this is what so many of you have to do. You have to put your ego aside. And I am convinced, especially in our niche, you know, you've had success your whole life. You're at top of your school in college, top of your school in dental school, got you into ortho school is an example. You've kicked butt and been a success your whole life. And oftentimes you did it isolated. And now you get into the business world where school doesn't teach the business world, doesn't teach anything about it. That's a farce of business school. It doesn't teach you how to build a better culture, doesn't teach you sales, doesn't teach you leadership, doesn't teach you hospitality, customer experience, customer service. I could go on and on and on and on. Doesn't teach you any of that. So the reality is when you come out in any industry, you've got to get yourself together with a group of people, and you've got to, you've got to be the expert, meaning you have to be the one that asks the questions. You have to understand that you're not the smartest in the room. You have to be vulnerable. And yeah, you should leave with vulnerability with your team. But at the same time, it's still there, there's a there's a science to that. There's a fine line. You can never make your team be able to look at you like, hey, this guy has no idea what he's doing. Like we're in the crapper here and he doesn't know what's going on, right? You don't want the team to ever feel that way. But you can absolutely be completely vulnerable if you're in the right group, but you need to do it. You need to use it right, you need to ask the right questions. You may not even know the right questions to ask, right? But then you need to be learning what the right questions are. I think a lot of times life, career, and business isn't even about, it's not even about answers. It's about knowing the right questions to ask. It's about problem solving. We all have problems. No matter how much money you make, no matter how much good things are, there's gonna be problems. And in life, we all know if things are going great today, guess what? There's some serious crap right around the corner. That could be personally, professionally, or both. But that's the way life is. Collective problem solving is always gonna be better than isolation. But you've got, again, the expert is not the one with all the answers. The expert is the one asking all the right questions. You know, in resource aggregation, I it just it's moving from, and this is a part of my vision with the new patient group company, the new patient group mastermind, is it's moving away from my practice, my company, my business, to an alliance where it's it's everybody owns it. It's not that they literally, from an on-paper standpoint, own it, but I want everybody so bought into each other that it's like you all have ownership in all of your practices. Like it's one large OSO, DSO is as an example, from a think tank standpoint. But again, that means everybody has to participate. That means everybody listening out there, no matter what part of a group you are, you have to be the one participating at its maximum fullest extent using every resource imaginable.

unknown 47:45

Right?

SPEAKER_02 47:45

When and when we look at that, like our company, that's why I always talk to you guys about better vendor rates, clear liner discounts, right? Market insights, data analytics. Because as many of you know, a lot of the data analytics that are that are available to all of you out there are crap. It doesn't compare apples to apples. You're looking at compliance data with an all analog braces practice compared and lumped into the same category as somebody that does all in Visaline. It's ridiculous that you would even pay attention to that statistic. The statistic that matters is the compliance data and look at all analog braces practices and not compliance. Now you're comparing apples to apples or production data when every business owner wants something different. I can't tell you how many times we get hired, and the goal is not growth. The grow is the goal is efficiency, more fun. Right?

SPEAKER_01 48:38

How do we create predictable consistency throughout our entire organization rather than these ups and downs? You know, and part of being expert, it goes into something I've I've called the accountability mirror, right?

Five-Question Accountability Audit

SPEAKER_02 48:55

Peers won't just you know, when when we look into the mirror, oftentimes we have a very skewed view of what's going on. Like I said, we can easily miss the mark on our blind spots, our weaknesses. It's easy to see our strengths or what we think we're good at. It's very difficult to self-audit, if you will. But peers should do that. If you're part of the right group, if you're part of the right group, peers are going to tell you your faults. Peers are going to hold you accountable for lack of communication. Peers are gonna hold you accountable and bring up the things they see that you aren't doing right. There's massive power in that. Not just coming like in our mastermind, which I said, like this is directed at it, but this is for everybody, regardless. Like, it's not just me doing that, the leader of the group. It is a player-operated locker room, player, player-policed locker room. Right? It's calling you out on your habits, both the good ones and the bad ones, right? A good one may be, hey, I really appreciate how you do A, B, and C. Teach me more. Okay. But it's also look, D E and F, the reason you have these problems, it's because of you. Here are things you're doing. You're not facing the storm correctly. That is a group. That is a policed player locker room that is holding each other accountable. You have to move away from trying to be this solitary genius, if you will, and start understanding the power of becoming a collaborative powerhouse. There is so much power in it. Our non-clients out there, I can't force you to become part of a group or our group. But I want you to be. The ones in our group, I want you to get so much out of this personally and professionally. I can't even describe it to you in words. And why I did this episode today, among many other reasons, directed at you, is our group is already so powerful. There's so much good that comes from it. But I know as the leader of this group that we can take it to levels that many of you may not even be able to comprehend. But if you're the only person who knows the full truth of your business, whoever you are out there, without doubt, you are its greatest liability. If you are the only person that knows the full truth, you are your own greatest reliability. I want to go to some quiz questions here, and then we're gonna wrap it up. I'm gonna call this the accountability audit, if you will, because there's five questions that I'm gonna ask, and then these apply whether you're already part of our group or you're not. These are gonna apply if you're part of another group as well. This may help you know if you're in the right type of group. And I'm gonna start it off with something around the blind spots. And this goes back to the episode, which I'll link in the description below, because if you have listened to it, I want you to listen to it again. To come best prepared, especially if you're coming to our mastermind this month. If you've never heard it, it's a great podcast from a self-auditing yourself perspective. Learning to identify your blind spots. But I want to talk about of the blind spots that you identified last year at our mastermind, right? What has improved amongst those blind spots? Also, what has gotten worse? Some of the things that you identified last year, maybe some of them have crept and they've gotten even worse. So I want you to talk about and identify what's improved, what you think you're better at doing compared to what you weren't in those blind spots last year. I want you to talk about and identify what has gotten worse. You may have gotten it better and then it ignored it. What has gotten worse? Maybe you just never focused on it and it's just kept creeping, kept just moving down the getting worse aisle. And then also, what new blind spots have crept in? Right? Because we all have these new ones that are creeping up all the time. Right? So of the blind spots you had last year, which ones do you feel have improved? What have you done to improve those? Which ones have gotten worse, and what new ones have crept in? The next one we're gonna call the growth gap. So, what is the one thing in your business right now, this very second, that you're avoiding because it's uncomfortable? This could be a lot of different things. I know back in the day I would avoid looking at our bank account as a company because I knew the cash flow wasn't good and I knew payroll was coming, and I would just get nervous and I wouldn't want to see it. Now, what that created was more angst, more anxiety, all the stuff that I teach everybody to just jump in. Well, I would avoid it.

unknown 54:13

Right?

Participate Or The Group Fails

SPEAKER_02 54:13

It made because it made me uncomfortable. Right. And then what would cost me is that, you know, I we weren't managing the bank account right. We would miss a payroll or two, things like that. Right? So by avoiding it, it just made it worth. So, with all of you, by avoiding it because it's making you uncomfortable, right? How much is this costing you? By avoiding it, what are the things that have crept up? So again, what is the one thing in your business right now that you are avoiding because it's uncomfortable? You're putting it off because it's uncomfortable. You know you need to do it, but you're not doing it because it's uncomfortable. It's gonna take time. That could be a difficult conversation with an employee, you know, you need to have, whatever it may be. And how much is that avoidance costing you? Number three, the integrity check, we're gonna call it. And I want you to think back to a goal that you have set over the past year, whatever that goal is. And it doesn't have to be 365 days ago, it could be two weeks ago, but think of a goal or two that you have set over the past year. And if you were to look at yourself, you look at your calendar right now, would that calendar reflect that goal? Or are you using the excuse that you're just too busy with distractions? With so many do. I don't have enough time to shoot the right social media content. I don't have enough time to be a leader, I don't have enough time to train my team. Yes, you do. You're not managing the time properly, you're not efficient enough. You don't have the discipline to block time on your calendar to focus on your business. Role play with your team, implement ideas, strategize. So think of some goals that you have set. Are you accomplishing those goals if you looked at your calendar, if you analyzed your business, if you self-audited yourself, how many of these goals over the past year have come to fruition? Do you see them being executed by your team, whatever that may be, right? Or are you blaming distractions? And that's the reason these goals are not being met. The mirror question. If you were your own consultant, now this one's hard, and another reason why being a part of a group that is forward-thinking and innovative, that can do a lot of the self-reflecting for you, is so powerful because oftentimes when we look into the mirror, we are incapable of seeing our real faults, our real blind spots, our weaknesses. We may, if we try really hard, we may think that we're doing it and sometimes we're spot on, but oftentimes we don't do it. And if we do, we're way off. But I'm gonna ask the question anyway. If you were your own consultant, what is the first piece of advice you'd give yourself? And again, mastermind members, we are gonna go through this list as part of our round table when we're there. And I, amongst the rest of the group, when it comes to this question and others, I'm gonna look at that and I'm gonna say, I agree with you or I disagree with you. You're way off. Here's why. And we're gonna challenge each other on some of these self-audits, these integrity checks, the mirror question that I'm asking right now. Again, if you were your own consultant, what is the first piece of advice you'd give yourself and why haven't you taken it yet? Why haven't you taken that advice yet? The group ask, question number five. What is a yellow flag in your own business that you've been hiding from the group? So if you're somebody a part of a group out there, what are you afraid of bringing it to that group? If you're not part of the group, this is a group, this is why being part of the right group is so powerful. And right now, this is directed at my mastermind members. Is what are you hiding from us? What are you hiding from your peers that are part of this group? I want you to find something, no matter how difficult it is, personal professional, and I want you to let us know why you're hiding it from us. Are you afraid of being judged? Which unfortunately, a lot of groups out there, they are very judgy, if you will, and look down upon questions. We don't have that kind of group. One of the things I am extremely proud of, and this is a shout out to every mastermind member we have, you are some of the best people on the planet. You are amazing clinicians and amazing human beings, and I love you dearly for it. But just like me, it doesn't mean we don't have our faults. So what are you hiding from the group? Possibly because you're afraid of being judged, whatever the reason. And we're gonna make that part of our round table discussion at this year's mastermind. And to wrap it up, everybody, look, here's the reality. In isolation, like you've heard me say, your blind spots become invisible, your weaknesses become magnified, and your winds fall on deaf ears. But in this room, on this podcast, and our mastermind group and with New Patient Group, and any other group worth its salt, if you will, they are your biggest growth opportunities. But you must participate. Owning a business and the journey of self-improvement is a lonely game, but only if you choose to play it that way. And we've chosen differently. Our new patient group clients, our mastermind members to maximize all of your successes. We have chosen it differently. And together, life and business is always better together than alone. And on all of that, I wish you the best. As always, thumb this video up. Make some comments on YouTube, spread the word, audio experience channels out there, write us a five star review on whatever outlet you're on. And until next time, I'm out.