All right, welcome back to the SPG podcast. This is the next in the series of our doctor spotlight episodes. These have been super fun for me to do selfishly, and I try to tailor the content towards what's going to be sustainable for me to do because it's enjoyable. And at the same time, it's offer some impactful content that'll be beneficial to all of our listeners. And today's guest, I've been wanting to have on for a very long time for a variety of reasons.
We have Dr. Devin Poussel from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Devin, how's it going? Hey, how's it going, Alex? Thanks for having me on. Dude, thank you for making the time. Thanks for cramming me into your clinical day today. And before we hit record, we were treating war stories about our backgrounds right now. He's at his office. I'm in my home office.
Apparently, we have another fantasy nerd in our midst that likes to read Brandon Sanderson and George R. Martin and Lord of the Rings and all that stuff. Fun fact, Dr. Kyle Hargis is big, a novel nerd as we are. So, Devin, thank you for noticing my background and thank you for inspiring me to get back into reading fiction. Yeah, absolutely. And we're going to have to chat books with Kyle at the retreat in May. Hard not to notice. You've got a pretty prolific collection back there.
And honestly, as you've known, I've reached out to you to get recommendations on self-help books. So, I can certainly give you recommendations on fantasy books in return. It only seems fair. Yeah, I think I'll take you up on that because I just have this... I have a mental block where it's hard for me to read fiction unless I'm in the right frame of mind. So, got to make time for that. So I have to say, thank you for not being a fantasy writer. Thank you for being a dentist and being Team SPG.
And I want to start the way that I start all these episodes, which is why dentistry? Yeah. You know, it's funny hearing. I've listened to every single one of these now. So, if you listen to them in a row, I feel like you're going to hear a theme where we, at least I have a very similar background to like Grady. So my dad, he's a dentist. Still practicing, he just had a 70th birthday. And my mother, she passed away, but she was a high-genist.
And so when I was growing up, we actually, my dad graduated class at 82, UNKC, and he bought a bar and turned that into a five-obdental office. And we actually lived in the apartment that was above it. So it was like a double lot. We had like a backyard with trees and like this eight-foot privacy fence and we're in down, you know, South City, St. Louis. And you know, first seven years of my life, we lived there.
And I remember, you know, I'd come home from school and walk into the dental office instead of going upstairs, you know, and see what dad was doing. And I have a really vivid memory of walking in. And I had had a few cavities at that point. And my dad had a little girl in the chair and she was getting ready. And this was, you know, a tall fell mire and everything was about to go on. And I'm like, oh, you're getting a filling? I'm like, oh, man, those are no fun or something like that.
And my dad's like, out, get upstairs, you know? So I almost said squirt gun. But they were squirt guns to me about air water syringe fights with my friends on the weekends, you know. So office was like my house, my home. And eventually crime started to kind of pick up in downtown St. Louis during the Bosnian war. And there was a lot of refugees coming in. Our cars kept getting stolen. And my dad was like, you know, I think we're going to leave South City. And we went out to West County.
So it's like the suburbs about 45 minutes away. And he bought into a practice and he's been in a partnership ever ever since. So I thought dentistry for a long time. And then I kind of maybe got a little rebellious and was like, I'm not going to do what dad did. I'm going to do something else. So I kind of chose pre-med in college. And I thought I'm going to be a surgeon. And I got a college job. I worked on the weekends doing 24 hours to 12 hour shifts as a nurse tech.
Wanted to be in the hospital setting and just hated everything about it. I was miserable. Like at the time, girlfriend now wife could tell you I was not not a fun person to be around because I I was really disillusioned. And it was you see the doctor walk in and just like face into the clipboard, barely glance at the patient and I'm like, Oh, you're still in pain? Okay, that's a bummer. Well, let's see if that's any better tomorrow and like walk out. I'm like, Whoa, what just happened?
And so I was six months and I was out of that job. And I was very quickly decided that it wasn't for me. And so then I have a like one of those moments, it's kind of like 9 11 and other things where you have it burned into your brain this moment. I was on the phone with my dad in my apartment in Columbia, Missouri. And I'm like, Dad, I don't know what I want to do. I'm like, I thought I wanted to be a surgeon. The medical school route is long.
And I don't think that that's the way I want the way I want to practice or what I want to do. So I thought I wanted to be a PA and be a physician's assistant, my sister-in-law, she makes really good money, two years of school. It's kind of, you know, you can change around and switch what type of specialty you're going to work in. And I'm like, he's like, but do you think you could not be your own boss?
If you disagreed with the doctor, would you be able to go with what he said because he's in charge? I was like, no, he's like, well, what about dentistry? And so I was like, huh. So I decided to go shadow not dad. And because I'd seen dad dentistry my whole life. And so I did oral surgeon. I did an endodontist. I did a lot of GPs and I really didn't want to do ortho, but I looked into it. It just wasn't for me. And so I kind of got the bug. He's like, you're good at talking to people.
You're good at woodworking and metals. And I, you know, like using my hands and I play video games. So for me, it was kind of a natural thing once I kind of figured out what I wanted to do. The problem was I was a senior in college and I didn't have all my prerequisites, you know, for dental school because I was not aiming for that. So I missed a physics class and I, you know, a couple of things I had to take. So I actually was a manager of a target.
And I did that while I was taking night classes and I basically took my prerequisites at Columbia College, you know, is like these eight week, every, almost every night courses where it's like you just finish a whole course in eight weeks and it's a science level college course. So I blasted through those, applied for 17 dental schools in 2013, got weight listed to three and didn't make it. So I moved to Kansas City and ended up just going into UMKC every week to shadow.
And I was working at Target as a manager and eventually a second round got into UMKC and a couple other schools, but wanted to go A, where my dad went, B to the state school that cost way less than the other schools they got into. And from there, the surgery thing kind of always stuck around. I always liked doing surgery, but I'm sorry if you want to jump in. I know I'm just talking, but you know, what really stuck with me.
And what I don't want to say got tricked, but I ended up going with Pacific Dental, going with a DSL right out of school because I had a mentor that I met when I was a second year in dental school in Breckenridge in line for crepes. And he was a dentist and he offered me a job. He was lying for crepes for crepes. Yep. He offered me a job. Make sure I heard that right. Yeah. And he was like, Hey, hit me up. And so I moved to Colorado Springs and he basically was part owner in seven offices.
And I know he was making really good money and he seemed like he'd had it all together. And I'm like, well, that seems like the route for me. I want multiple offices and I can do one clinical day a week in each or something. And it's like, because what has always struck me as a dentist that I always notice with my dad is he never is making money when his butts not in the chair. And that's something that I struggled with during COVID because I didn't make Jack for money because I couldn't work.
And my brother, he is remote. My sister-in-law was able to work remote and they're living this, you know, great, you know, secluded life together where it's like no very little stress. And I'm like, man, I'm stressing over not being able to produce. But if you have, you know, multiple offices and you everything's all split up and you're getting income from other dentists, I was like, that's the route. You know, that way it's a passive income. You can't get that easily in dentistry.
But I learned that that's not as easy as it sounds because you're dividing your attention, you know, in so many different directions. And frankly, it can be challenging just managing three associates in my one office that I had, you know, and trying to get them to produce. And I had class of 2020 grad associates and so like getting them not to be afraid of dentistry. And, you know, it was an uphill battle. And I had a light bulb moment. I was miserable in GP.
I had bought my own 3D printer and I was just doing whatever I could to creatively try and branch out because I was pretty bored with what I was doing. And the patient based on the in the PPO, you know, HMO, I wasn't getting the patients that necessarily want to do these huge cases constantly. And so I was doing whatever I could to try and get myself back to be happy. And I saw a post on Facebook from Brenton Rupp that he went and he was opening his office in St. Louis.
And I'm like, what in the world is this? I didn't know that there even were denture and implant only offices. And so, you know, I reached out to him and then Matt G. And it was like I got struck by lightning. It just everything made sense. And the only thing that I really had to do was get on board clinically because, you know, I was GP for five years, you know, it may be placed to three implants with someone over my shoulder, but it wasn't what I did every day.
And so, you know, you guys were awesome and helped me work with getting with two of your clinicians three actually and shadowing for multiple months. You know, in the meantime, while we were getting Grand Rapids squared away and kind of took a little leap of faith and moved my family up to Michigan when I'd never even been here before. But how we were, we're really liking it up here. That's amazing. And I love hearing the story because it's funny.
The theme that I've spoken about multiple times on this podcast and an SPG focus day is, and I'm sure we'll touch on this with your team when we do our focus day next week. But in this model, because you go narrow, because you consciously put on blinders and you say, we're only going to commit to doing this type of dentistry, there's definite trade offs to this type of dental care, to the pressure, the stakes, the irreversibility of what we do in a lot of ways.
And for me, the people that do the best in this model long term are the ones like us that have a pretty significant amount of GP experience. Because to me, when you've experienced PPOs, HMOs, drill fill bill, stacking the toffle mires, getting your crowns taken away from you by your boss, that was my story. It makes it easier to bear the challenges of the path that you do choose.
Because you have to almost experience that adjacent possible to understand a bad day in that environment, to me, is way worse than a challenging day in our environment, because at least we're choosing it. At least we're going in eyes wide open and saying, look, because our good days are so good, because we do the type of dental care that we do, it makes the challenging days worth it. Because no matter what, you're going to have the challenging days.
It's just what type of challenging days do you want? And I love what you said about growing up in kind of that idyllic, classic dental offices on ground level apartments up here. A lot of people still practice that way in certain parts of the country. But I think it's cool that you've seen the progression from your classic 1960s picture of dentistry to I worked at Pacific. I did the corporate hardcore GP thing for a while.
And then you had enough mileage on you, as it were, to be able to get struck by lightning. Because if you hadn't experienced what you'd experienced, you wouldn't have had the recognition to know, hey, this is the move, this is the thing to do. Because had you seen Britain's Facebook post right out of school, or had you not experienced the pitfalls of the other types of dentistry, you wouldn't have had that gut instinct.
You didn't have enough experience to be calibrated such that it would hit you the right way. So I think it's interesting that you've experienced other parts of dentistry to have that resolute feeling of this is the way to go. Well, I mean, sitting in a dental office is the only provider, you know, and having two hygienists and sometimes three. And I mean, you walk in the door sometimes and you blink and it's five o'clock, which is in some ways good.
But in four years, after four years, it's like, I don't know how sustainable this is. Maybe I'm just weak. It's a GP time warp. You're checking for three hygienists and like, where did the day go? I didn't have time to sit down and do that little project or this, that or the other. It can be good, but at the same time you've got that emergency, you're trying to sneak in and it's just it's like the stress level never drops sometimes. You know, in this it can't it's cyclical.
You know, like you said, you've got some of the best days I've ever had, you know, clinically or here because you can't be more transformative. I mean, I guess you could if you're doing FP1s and, you know, somewhere doing zygos, but this is more than fillings and crowns by, you know, a measure of, you know, an order of magnitude. And so yes, there's failures that are heartbreaking, you know, and it's it's sometimes even worse when it's like, I didn't cause this.
This was unfortunately your fault, but I still struggle not to take that on myself, you know, because I mean, I'm still gonna have to deal with it, you know, and we have to fix it and figure out what the what the solution is. And, you know, but it can be a toll to take. But then you have the the guy that you just changed his life and he's like, you know, I've you've talked on this pod, my blue singer who, you know, is one of my favorite patients.
Because being able to take somebody from pain, can't sing, can't do what they love to constantly smiling seems like a different person. I mean, you can't really buy that. Well, the the trade off of not being the MD with his face buried in the clipboard is that you get to access the highs and the lows, like the the being buried in a clipboard. That's a compensatory response for the stress that he's under. Right. He's regulating himself. He's he's right in the middle. He's not too high or too low.
And so he's he's almost numbing himself to the experience of serving people every day. Whereas I find that the opposite is way better, like stare in the face of the amazing stuff that happens, but also find a way to reconcile the challenges. And your point, I think you articulated that great, like when things don't go according to plan, even when you look at your post-op scan, you say, how could I second guess my implant placement? Like I would execute this case the same way again.
Maybe we didn't have great bone on the upper right. So I had to reorient and find a different spot. We got good torque. We talked about our post-op expectations. We have documentation of the fact that we told the patient not to eat ice. We said that smoking is a big no no. We talked about ways to control your blood sugar. Like we did all of the things. We control our inputs, but we can't control the outcome fully. We can influence the outcome.
And then once the outcome happens, you fall into that territory of it's not my fault, it's my responsibility and we're going to clean it up. And what I've found is that the more reps you get, the thicker that stomach lining gets to be able to handle the negatives, to be able to handle the upset patients that have mismatched expectations. And man, I don't want to mimic or parrot this because I'll bungle it, but Vore Holt's verbage around dropping the hammer of bad news on people.
Dude, it's so good. What does that sound like? If you have it more memorized than I do, I think that's so great. So it's like, Mrs. Jones, I've got some unfortunate news. When we were doing the tap test on implant number four on the upper left side, or upper right side, it unfortunately did not sound right when we went and moved it, the implant was moving. So in my experience, that means that that implant has failed.
In my experience, the best course of action would be that we should get you back in. If you have time today, we could get you back now and we could replace that implant. What questions do you have? Yeah, you just lay it out there. And a lot of times when you him and Haw about saying what needs to be said, you suffer twice, like you suffer in your head and then it's hard when you're telling the news, but you just lay it out there, like open as can be.
And then sometimes the patient takes it and stride and it's not as bad as you think. And then other times they have questions and then you can spin it as we're investing the time and energy to do it right now so that we have fewer repercussions down the road because we're solidifying the foundation now.
If we built the house on a crappy foundation at this moment, then we would have worse outcomes later on that would set us further back in the timeline versus if we just take one step back right now, we don't have to take five steps back later on.
Right. Yeah, I love that framing and I think for people that are getting their feet wet in this model, it's finding a way almost to insulate yourself from those downsides as you're planning out your future upsides because as I've connected more with some of our newer doctors recently, I've realized that one suboptimal, we'll call it outcome can color every conversation that you have with your wins, with your team, with future patients.
And so the trick is the the Dory thing, like the short term memory loss so that you're able to compartmentalize that learning opportunity, where even if it wasn't anything that you did, if it was just the situation, the patient wasn't compliant, biology didn't cooperate, whatever it was, finding a way to have that exist over here without it influencing your stage presence. Easy to say, hard to do. Is that is that your experience?
Yeah, what does that I think it's Ted Lasso where they say be a goldfish? You know, it's just, you know, you can't not you'll it because then that is when you just keep pushing it down and buying then you explode. Yes. Unfortunately, I've got experience with that. It's as as men, it can be, you know, seen as the expectation to not feel or just deal with it.
But I feel like it's important to have somebody to talk to and to have a mentor or, you know, even your wife, anybody, you know, but that's one thing I love about SPG is there's multiple mentors that I've talked to that have helped because, you know, it seems like things come in waves in dentistry. And so, you know, I've had a couple failures and it's been been hard to deal with sometimes because, you know, you're like, well, what what is different? What am I doing wrong?
What can we change in the future? But at the end of the day, sometimes you have to in a row and it's not necessarily something that you're doing wrong and wraps. Like you said, I think that that's just getting getting the failures in and then getting past them by having them become successes, maybe just a couple of months late, you know, and once you see that. Um, also, thanks, switching to Neo Dant was a good choice for us.
I, you know, from my, oh, yeah, just better outcomes, you know, from what I have experienced. Yeah. That's that's such a funny story because I still vividly remember when we first had that conversation. This was Matt Ford bringing us the concept back in, I want to say July or yeah, June or July of this year, initial conversations were happening. We met with some of the Neo Dant folks at Dykama at the event and they were trying to convince us to make the move.
And we finally got it across the finish line. Like after a lot of back and forth and a lot of discussions, we just decided that we've got to put our foot to the floor on this because to your point, we believe in the company. I got to tour the manufacturing facility in Massachusetts and I was awestruck by the checks and balances, the steps, the exactness, the quality control, the, the belief that that company has.
Like, I think at SPG, we do a lot of things pretty well as far as culture and alignment and energy around our purpose for what we do, but they take it to a different level, like an aspirational level. And that's just a company that makes freaking implants. And so I want to do business with a company like that. That's that was just my expectations were completely too low when I walked in that manufacturing facility.
And you mentioned the, um, the doctor retreat that we're going to have in May at their facility, at Strahman's facility in, in Texas. And we'll, we'll all get a little taste of that. So it's, it's nice to do business with people that you believe in wholeheartedly and a neodym falls into that category.
I want to own a circle back to something you said about when you have those low times, because it sometimes feels like when it rains, it pours, it can feel that way in dentistry and it can feel that way when, for example, something as simple as first patient shows up late, puts you behind. So then the second patient's even more behind and the third patient's behind and you have that waterfall effect and it can feel that way with clinical outcomes.
Sometimes it's a feedback loop where things go well and then things keep spinning up and going even better. And then the, the counter example can also be true. How is it working with your team when you're in those doldrums? I think it's important to talk about, because obviously there's the situation clinically that you're managing with an implant that didn't take or a patient that wasn't compliant and we're dealing with some rework that has to happen. But how, how does that work with your team?
What have you learned to keep, keep the team focused on what they need to be focused on so that they don't get pulled into the negativity cloud that that's so easy to fall into? Yeah, it's hard. You know, you know, morale, if you will, keeping, keeping that up and making sure everybody is, you know, I guess I always am like, even when I'm in the crappy part, you know, if it's like the worst day, I'm a one foot in front of the other kind of guy, you know, like I'm a boy scout.
We went, I went to Philmont and did the whole backpacking. Oh, you went to Philmont? Sure did. I did too. That's a great experience. Really? Some of those 10, 15 mile hike days, you're at NEM. You're just like, I just have to find the reserve. We're going. We've got some wars on the fire at the end of this. We can manage. Exactly. Yeah, we found some wild blueberries and made a powdered cheesecake with wild blueberries in the mountains. It was pretty cool. That's adventurous.
That could have been a diarrhea fest if you picked the wrong berries. Yeah, you're not wrong. Fortunately, I guess we got all those books. So you know, keeping the team hard, but you know, fortunately, it's not just me, me and my team lead, you know, he's awesome. And we're, you just got to move past it and you look at the bright side, I think, and look at the wins or, you know, be what we need to be thankful for and that we've got patients coming in the door.
I have the knowledge and the skills and the advanced training and, you know, more CE and you guys keep offering more to just keep furthering our skills. So when we need to do revisions, we've got the skills and the bone to do it. I don't know what else more can you really do other than, you know, reassure that, you know, we're doing the best we can, making sure that we're given the best post-op instructions and doing the best surgeries we can.
Yeah. And I think what, what comes, what comes over time, and I noticed this in the GP realm, both in doing GP dentistry and then also layering in this type of dentistry in the GP context, like I, like I did, is your team, as they get more comfortable navigating the minefield, they get better about lifting you up over time. That develops over time because they're developing their stress tolerance, they're normalizing in their own heads that we're doing things right.
And sometimes things just don't break the right way. Right. And so over time, a case that doesn't go according to plan right now is handled a certain way. And then I guarantee you in six months, your team is going to handle that even more adeptly just because they believe in each other. They jive well, they, they're able to pull each other up by the bootstraps and get through those challenging times.
And that's what's so hard about turnover at the practice level, like one of our big initiatives for 2025 is we're taking results from the employee engagement survey that we conducted. And we're, we're looking for trends, we're looking for patterns, we're thinking about what can we do to promote consistency of performance at the practice level that stems from folks sticking around for the long haul because there's, it's hard to quantify this.
But in my experience, the longer that you work with someone, that relationship capital, makes your job so much easier, not just to perform better, but to actually perceive that your job is easier because of the lack of friction, the lack of activation energy. Because if you have someone that you know, you can go shoulder to shoulder with, kind of like the old Spartan phalanx, like where you're, you're, you're shoulder to shoulder and you trust in the shield of the person next to you.
That's real in dentistry because those hard days, it's all about that teamwork. And so like with you and Rob and your team, the longer you work together, the less that each individual person has to do because the strength of the team just continues to grow. Have you noticed that trend in your time working with Rob? Because when when I met Rob, I think he'd been hired like a week or two before the team lead retreat, he was, he was fresh. Yeah, he was fresh.
And I was like, okay, this dude is sharp as attack. He's smart. He's capable. He's experienced. He knows dentistry from a, a differently nuanced perspective than most people do that are in his role. But what have you noticed about the development of that rapport over time?
Well, it's been really cool because, um, you know, he has a lot of experience with, uh, like doing all on fours and selling all on fours and he was with Aspen and then he and his, uh, you know, uh, friend did like a mobile lab situation. And you know, my lab tech actually. Um, and so they, he's seen it from like a lot of different areas. And so he's really experienced, but I think what was coolest for him is being with a doctor in one location and learning each other.
Cause it's just like Vorehole being a traveling surgeon. Like that's got to be challenging when you don't have a home base. You're doing Strahman one day. You're doing Nobel another, you know, it's like no consistency. And so we're learning each other. We're, you know, he's, he's really good at it. Like telling me in the download kind of like really distill, like boom, boom, boom.
These are kind of like the things to focus on or like this patient's like, you know, Alonda or, you know, whatever just to, to cause we, we dialed in that communication really well. Um, you know, it gets to the point almost like an assistant where you're, you're not even asking for things or saying things and you're, you're just kind of sympathetic. Oh, and everything is just kind of happening the way it should.
Um, and the other thing that's nice is, um, sometimes it can be hard when, you know, everybody's got a different leadership style and then for better or for worse, mine tends to fall on the, in the like friend, but still want to hold you accountable.
But like I'm not a hard, sorry, I'm going to cost, I'm not a hard ass, you know, I'm not, not, you know, then doc, there's so many dentists that like I have an assistant and she's like, oh my God, and my last dentist was so like terrible to work for. And I'm like, really? Why? And there's a scream and yell and throw in things. And I'm like, they always say throwing things. Who throws things? They always say that. Hear that too. And I'm like, man, that's just not me.
Like sure, I could get riled up or get frustrated about something. And you know, we had a couple, a couple of things that were like, oh, man, maybe one day we didn't have a consent signed it. Like I feel like we should have. And it was like, OK, well, this is a huge ball to drop that sort of thing. But then we talk about it, form a plan. How do we make checks and balances for this again? And then, you know, we've passed it. So I've probably rambled past your question at this point.
What is perfect? Yeah. You're giving me material. No, I think that's the honey versus vinegar argument of leadership. And I've always been on the same side of the fence as you, where if you respect people, you treat them like equals, you pour into people that works more times than it doesn't, in my experience. It's the abundant view versus the scariest view. It's believing in the best of people rather than assuming that they're out to get you.
And that doesn't keep people from trying to take advantage of you. That doesn't keep bad things from happening. That doesn't keep the occasional bad actor from pulling the wool over your eyes. But it's the same thesis as just because some procedures don't go to plan. It doesn't mean you should stop doing procedures.
Just because some people are bad doesn't mean that you shouldn't believe in the best of people until proven otherwise, because operating in the opposite way is fatiguing and it's limiting. And it keeps you from it's low. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's lonely. And then that's how you get the miserable people that are throwing stuff at other people because they're trying to be the genius with a thousand helpers, which doesn't take you very far.
And creating that collaborative work environment to me is the key because so many doctors that reach, I guess we can call it like the the middle level of practice maturity. And in Lake A put it a really good way because he was talking about it in terms of buckets, I believe either buckets or categories of you start out just doing consults and procedures and you're doing consults procedures and post ops and you're doing all three of those.
Plus, restorations, then deliveries and you have all of these different types of procedures that get layered on top of one another, but yet you still have the same number of hours in a day. And so either you can get on a faster pair of roller skates or you can pour into your team so that they can handle proportionally more of the load in each of those different appointment categories and that looks differently by category.
But you have some practices where the the smile consultant or the team lead is doing 95% of the initial consultation. Right. And then the doctor just comes in and like builds rapport talks about the specific case that the patient is bringing in and why they're a good candidate and then they hand off back and they get the case closed.
And then other practices, the doctor does a little bit more of it, but it depends on the strengths of your team and it depends on in a lot of ways how much you've empowered your team either purposely or subtly because there's there's disempowerment that comes from nonverbals. There's disempowerment that comes from subtle nonverbal cues that people pick up on. So it's a trick. It's a trick to make sure that you're singing the same song consistently to your team.
But what have you noticed about as you've gotten busier, as you've done more different types of procedures building the team around you to shoulder more of the clinical load? Yeah. In this harkens back just a little bit to what you're talking about and turnover and being a challenge. We we had a whole team turnover minus one, you know, myself in a lab tech.
And that set us back a little bit because you have to redevelop all those relationships and they have to kind of get their feet under them and get comfortable. And so, you know, I feel like we we've done a pretty good job there. Can you refresh me on the exact question you asked? Sorry. Yeah, just when you're when you're welcoming new team members into the fold, what has been your approach to help pour into them so that they can then do a little bit more. Oh, sure. Each week.
So yeah, so that so that you don't have to do as much because when someone's new, you're having to demonstrate you're having to do the whole thing or have to show them your preferred way of doing something. And then it's a it's up to interpretation. How long that handoff takes because some doctors are very, very slow to trust and empower and implicitly they make it so that if you make a mistake, I'm going to stop my foot and be pissed off versus like, Hey, give it a go.
And then let's let's debrief on what didn't go well afterwards. I'm number two. So, you know, and maybe even sometimes too soon, but I know for myself and it's probably going to be dependent on what your assistant and their personalities like and your team lead or whatever. But I am a visual and then a doer learner. So if you tell me something, it's going away and I'm not processing the steps. I have to see it in my head. And then I'm doing it and then I get it and then it's locked.
So like I was always a concept guy, not a memorized guy because if I got the concept, it was done. I could just apply it. And so, you know, I'm as long as it's not a step that if, you know, a minor failure is going to cause a critical misstep in the process, I'm going to let them try and do it. And so, you know, whether that's taking the arch off, you know, or it's doing some minor occlusion adjustment or, you know, whatever it is, there's fear there around them doing it.
And I'll usually try and baby step it depending on what their comfort level is. But, you know, we're at the point where, you know, six, six months in and, you know, I'm pretty comfortable letting her do most anything. And saying, you know, obviously I'm anything that she shouldn't be doing, I'm still doing. But I think that's important to find somebody who's willing and not willing to dive in and do it.
I had a couple working interviews and like the assistant was there for surgery and they were like, Oh, I'm not willing to do this. And I'm not willing to do that. And I'm like, OK, Rob, I guess, will you come in and help me finish the surgery? You know, it's like stuff like that. It's just like you got to you got to be the right person for the job and you got to have the right, I think seats on the bus. You know, some people call it.
But once that if you got the right person and you have the right personality, you know, to mesh with them because that's another thing too. I lost an assistant because we were like oil and water and it was it was like, well, I was desperate. I needed somebody. They were surgically trained. But I'm like a city boy, you know, kind of Joe Ville and, you know, they were the exact opposite. And we just we tried it for like a month and a half and it just didn't work.
So I don't think trying to force it is ever going to be the right choice. But getting the right people, making the right, you know, moves together, making sure everybody's progressing and wanting to be better and getting better and learning. That's all you can really ask for. I couldn't agree more. If you don't mind talking about it and if you don't mind giving people a look under the hood, yeah, what are you excited about for our focus day next week slash?
What are the outcomes that would make it a successful time together for us next week? Yeah. You know, it's funny because when we first scheduled it, I probably would have different things that I say we would want to focus on then out because we're just constantly evolving. And we had a couple of slow months in Q four and then suddenly it was like halfway through November, something switched and, you know, it was like six arches closed in two days.
So, you know, at the at the end of the day, I think that I want the team to be as cohesive as possible. I want to figure out where balls might be being dropped and coming up with plans on how to not drop them. You know, coming. I want to hit 2025, you know, like with the ground running or, you know, I know we've got some new marketing initiatives coming some videos that from my region that we're going to be playing on YouTube.
And, you know, so I just kind of want to hit 2025 like the beginning of 2024 was for us where we were, you know, crushing it. And so, you know, I guess outcome wise, I would want any pain points to be brought to light, even if they're uncomfortable because, you know, if there's resentments and stuff, then obviously I want to know about them.
And that way we can address them and, you know, figure out where where people want and need to grow what they need from me that maybe I'm not getting them giving them and any feedback, you know, I'm. I'm trying to be as thick skin as possible, but, you know, it's sometimes feedback can be can be hard to receive, but it's it's necessary to. Now, this is great.
And, and I think what you're talking about are exactly the things that we need to focus on because marketing is going to hit new patients going to be there. What do we need to do to capitalize on those opportunities so that people don't go unserved? That's that's going to be a lot of the questioning that that I bring to the team. And a lot of times I just shut up and listen to see what is this person's approach with unvarnished way of approaching this challenge.
And sometimes I learned something while I always learned something, but sometimes I learned something that's new for me that's helpful. And sometimes I learned something about that person that tells me what are their preconceived ideas, what might be getting in the way of them really collaborating to the end that we're trying to achieve.
And so I mean, really by promoting everyone's knowledge base, by broadening their perspective, helping them to understand more about the depth of what we do, then that helps them perform individually better and then better as a team to. So yeah, I think increasing everyone's ceiling.
And one thing too that sometimes I find helpful to focus on for 15 or 20 minutes is to just take a poll and ask how people talk to patients about different appointment types and different things and the words that we use for certain parts of the practice. Because a lot of times without realizing it, one person calls this one thing, one person calls this something else over here and then the patient is confused. And the patient is confused, the patient doesn't move forward.
So what can we do to be projecting the same message and singing the same song on stage to minimize the confusion? Because even in a GP practice where you're just doing feelings and grounds and whatever, it's a lot of dental jargon. It's a lot of lingo. And in the less lingo that we use, the more that we can infantilize the language, the better off we are. And I'm not naturally good at that, but when you focus on it, you get better.
And that's something we can spend some time on too, maybe as like an introductory exercise. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, but I'm. I'm saying the right words is really powerful and, you know, not talking over the patient because it's, you know, you say, I mean, you've got an incredible vocabulary. I think that's pretty well known, but, you know, you were talking to a 85 year old woman, you're not going to throw out the same words that you are talking to us doctors. It's just not going to be the same.
The measure of your mastery of your linguistic skills comes down to how much can you tailor it to your audience? And that's been a learned thing over time. And I think if you, you're going to talk to an engineer who's in your chair way differently, then you're going to talk to Edna, who's 85 and is sick of her denture. It's going to be very, very different. Devon, I know you've got patients to go see. So in closing, what are you most excited about for 2025?
Honestly, it feels like we are at the beginning and it's weird because we're not, but it feels like we haven't even started and somehow. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's like, OK, we got what you mean. We're on the bus with Neodent. You know, we're doing really great things. We're about to get a, you know, customer management system or whatever. It's CRM. You know, just all of these things. We're going digital. Everything is lining up to just rocket ship to the moon.
So I'm really, really excited. I think 25 is going to surpass what we think and we're going to look back and be like, holy crap. That was a ride. I know. It Steve put it really, really good last night on the doctor call in his classically sometimes perverse and crass and eloquent way where he just said, we're a real company now. I thought it was just a bunch of people doing dentistry together and like it's starting to feel like a company.
Yeah. And I think that's another way of saying what you're saying, which is it's kind of like the we're at the starting line. Like so much of what we've been doing has been the training and the buying the right equipment and all of a sudden we're ready for the race now. Yeah. Is what it sort of feels like and I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. Well, Devin, thank you for your time today. Thank you for bearing with me on this and let's SPG pod episode.
And I very much look forward to hanging out in person one week from today. Hard to believe. Yeah. I'll dress warm and you got to give me some restaurant recommendations. So looking forward to hanging out in Michigan. We'll see you next week, Alex. Thank you again. Thanks, Devin. Take care.