Episode 218 | Dental Unfiltered | CEO Decisions

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Dental Unfiltered. I'm um, Matt Brown and we're here with my normal co host, Dr. Andrew Vallow. I just want to mention something. Dr. Valo is just talking crap. Think he can beat me in a fight. And I'm sure all the listeners know that the ex special ops guy who's a Brazilian Jitsu black belt will tie the dentist up in knots. So Dr. Vallow is delusional. Let's, let's get on to the next. We're working on some really cool episodes today. And this one because you haven't been in any Andrew. You haven't ever been in a physical conflict. You're unproven.

Speaker A: Seen my hand?

Speaker B: What about it?

Speaker A: You see that scar there? Where do you think I got that scar from?

Speaker B: Anyways, you won one fight and you broke your hand. It got damaged. Oh, that's exciting. Anyway, let's get into this, um, CEO decisions. And I'm a Chief Revenue Officer, not a CEO over at Energized Group and at Dental Unfiltered and at zero, Ryan Raybould is our amazing CEO. So I don't make CEO decisions, but I make a lot of Chief revenue officer decisions for those two companies because I'm in the C suite. But Andrew, you went from chair really to like small group practice owner to like full on blown large organization CEO. So let's talk about some of the CEO decisions that you've had to make.

Speaker A: What I kind of had in mind for today, rather than to get into too many specifics about the decisions that I've made, I want to talk more about how I approach decisions as a CEO and uh, maybe even like some of the decisions that I don't even want to make. So I, this, this will make, I think this will make more sense, you know, here in a little bit. But um, basically something that I've, I've realized uh, over the years, uh, from, from talking to other dentists, other business owners, other CEOs, one of my skill sets, one of my like superpowers is knowing what to focus on. Uh, and I think it's, it's, it's strategy, uh, it's, it's knowing what not to focus on. I've talked about bandwidth on here a little bit. But like decision fatigue is a real thing. I mean there have been scientific studies done on this. This is why some of like the most famous, you know, CEOs and business owners and some of the wealthiest people in the world, like this is why they do things like Wear the same black shirt every single day, eat the same breakfast every single day. It's because it's one less active decision they have to make. Um, and if you think about it, you know, you can think about your decisions, you know, capability, your decision, fatigue. Like, you can think about it like maybe like say, a jar of marble. You know, you wake up in the morning and you've got so many marbles in this jar, but every single time that you've got to make a decision, you're taking a marble out. And like your brain, it doesn't really distinguish between, hey, was that like an important decision or not an important decision. It was just like, it knows that you had to think about something and you had to decide. Picture two different mornings. You know, morning a. You got a, uh, CEO, let's call him Jack. And you know, Jack doesn't have a set wake up time. He doesn't have a set morning routine. Some days he goes to the gym, some days he doesn't. Just kind of depends on what he's feeling like. So, you know, like maybe, maybe an alarm goes off and he wakes up and he thinks to himself, do I want to get up now or do I want to use my alarm and go back to sleep? Do I want to go to the gym or do I want to stay in bed? And so he's already making decisions before he even got his butt out of bed in the morning. And you know, let's say, let's say he, you know, this is a choose your own destiny. So let's say he decides, you know what, I'm going to be good today, I'm going to go to the gym. So he gets out, he turns off his alarm, he goes in his closet, he's like, uh, oh, what do I want to wear at the gym today? And so he's, you know, looking, looking through gym clothes or whatever, trying to figure it out. And he gets to the gym and he doesn't have like a set workout routine necessarily. What do I, what do I want to lift today? You know, what exercise do I want to do today? And he comes home from the gym and he. Some days he eats breakfast, sometimes he doesn't. Some days he has pancakes, sometimes he has eggs. You know, sometimes he stops for breakfast on the way. And so he's thinking like, what do I want to do about breakfast? Do I want breakfast? Do I not want breakfast? What do I want to eat for breakfast? He has breakfast and he takes a shower. And then, you know, he heads in the office to, to Go start to work. And he's trying to decide, what should I work on today? You know, should I work on uh, something for marketing? Should I work on this new system we're trying to roll out? Should I call an impromptu meeting, you know, with some of our executives to discuss this HR issue that's going on? Um, but he doesn't have like a set to do list. He doesn't really know like where he should be focusing his time. And it's, it's 10:00am and like Jack's already exhaust, like emotionally exhausted because he's made so many decisions and like not a single one has really had any impact on his business whatsoever. And he goes in the afternoon and he's just spent, man. You know, you know those days where it's just like your brain is just in a million different places and you can't even focus on one task and you know, you can't do any of that deep work, you can't make any progress and you go home and you're just like, what the hell did I even do? But yet like, you were up, you were doing stuff, you were gone all day, but you got like nothing accomplished. Now, uh, let's, let's converse that idea with another CEO and you know, we'll call this one Joey. So, you know, Joey gets up, he's got a set routine every day. 5:30 alarm goes off, he goes to gym, he's already got his gym clothes sets out. He's, he bought five of the same set of gym clothes. Everyone in the gym thinks he stinks and wears same clothes every day. But who cares? Uh, you know, he's already got the clothes set out, he gets up, he gets out of bed, he's not thinking about anything. He puts the gym clothes on, he gets in the car, he drives the gym. He's on a, uh, five day rotation of uh, you know, his lifts. And so today's shoulder day. So he's not even thinking about what he's got to lift. He's just, maybe he's listening to a podcast or whatever. He's, he's doing his shoulder day. He leaves the gym. Jack, you know, Jack does the intermittent fasting, so he doesn't eat breakfast, so he doesn't have to think about it because he knows he's not going to eat until he has his lunch at 1pm so he leaves the gym, comes home, has the same T shirt he wears every day to go in the office, throws it on, gets in his car, drives the office, he has a to do list set out for exactly what he needs to work on throughout the day. And he's even assigned, you know, chunks of time, you know, to different times of the day. Joey's essentially made zero decisions. His whole day is a routine. And, like, you might be sitting there thinking, like, this sounds boring. You know, this sounds like Joey's a robot. And I get it, man. And in a sense, it kind of is. But again, like, studies have shown, like, this type of behavior, this type of repetition, like this battles decision fatigue so dramatically. You can see such improved performance in your. In your job as your CEO, in your role of your company, if you're not having to make a million little damn decisions every single. Especially ones that don't matter about your personal life. Like, what. You should wear it in that routine. So, like that. I guess that's my first, uh. I guess that's my first tip about this.

Speaker B: Two things. One, the whole jar analogy, I think that's used in a lot of psychology. So for me and, like, my fellow friends who are military that have, like, PTSD and stuff, the analogy they use with us, for us losing our patience and us struggling to, like, get through the day with stress is like, you have, like, pennies in your hand, like five pennies. And like, you wake up in the morning and you trip and fall. There goes one penny. I wake up in the morning and my leg isn't fitting right. There goes another penny. It's kind of the same thing. It's mental fatigue from. From stress or decisions. Right. And I think going to a really good example of this, Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day.

Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, I was. That was one of the people I was thinking about.

Speaker B: Like, the guy literally wore the same thing every day. Did the same thing every day, the

Speaker A: same breakfast every day. I mean, like, uh, this. This isn't just shit that I'm making up. Like, this is.

Speaker B: No, this is real.

Speaker A: From real successful people that have, like, refined their daily routines.

Speaker B: I can tell you my routine. I get up when my kids get up, I get in my wheelchair. I go brush my teeth, I get my shower. I roll over to my dresser. I have three T shirt drawers. I reach in and I grab one. I don't even look. I throw it on the bed. I throw my shorts on the bed. I roll over and put them on. And I'm surprised by what T shirt I picked because I can never see the logo until I get it out of the. Out of the, um, dresser. And part of that is I'm too lazy to fold them and put them back in. And then I get to my desk at 8am I do all my communication for the day, and then I roll into my day and I remove all that morning crap. I believe heavily in decision fatigue. I believe there's lots of things that don't need decisions at all. This is my opinion. If the decision doesn't affect the outcome of your day, the outcome of your future or anything like that, it shouldn't be a decision, right? Like it shouldn't be. I don't eat breakfast. People think that's crazy, but I'm, um, not a breakfast guy. Like, I don't eat breakfast for lunch. I don't make decisions either. I roll down the steps and I just open the fridge and whatever leftovers are left go in the microwave and they get eaten. And then at night, I'll eat whatever my wife. I'll tell you, the only personal decision I probably make at night is what me and my wife do as far as watch a movie or hang out or play a game after the kids go to bed. I reserve all my decisions for my work day.

Speaker A: And I agree, man. And I think, you know, I'm not perfect in this sense, or I guess I'm not. I'm not maybe as extreme as. As some of these, uh, you know, CEOs and founders you've been talking about. But I've. I've gotten a lot more routine than I ever used to be. And I. And it's helped me. It absolutely has helped me with my focus. Um, one of the things that's helped, you know, is having kids, because you kind of don't have a choice, man. Like, I, you know, now my mornings are super routine around certain times that I've gotta get my daughter up and feed her, get my son up and get him to school. And so it's like, if I want to have gym be part of my normal routine, like, I gotta get up at this time and go to the gym. Otherwise I'm not gonna have time to do it. So I'd, uh. Like that has helped me really create a much stricter routine than it used to be. And I've got routines with certain days of the week too. It's like, you know, my son goes to school Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Those days. This is exactly the timing that this has to happen. I'm training for my first marathon right now. My long run or, uh, Wednesday morning. So I know Wednesday morning I. I have to get up at this time to get this run in before I even get my daughter up to Start the rest of my day. Personal life decisions. I think it's super helpful. The other side of this is the decisions you make in your business as, uh, CEO. Like what decisions are you making versus what decisions are you allowing other people to make? And what decisions maybe don't even matter at all. So I'm part of Towers Business Advanced Business Mastermind, uh, Tower Leadership in Atlanta with Eric Morin. And I've been working with them for about 15 months now. One of the things that Eric talks about is he talks about leaf, uh, branch and trunk decisions. So basically the trunk is the decisions you should make in a CEO. You know, those are the decisions that are really going to move the business. Those are the core decisions. Those are the decisions you don't want to delegate to anyone else. The branch decisions, those are ones that are less important. And like, maybe you may want some involvement or you may want like final say, uh, potentially, or it might be like a collaborative effort, but in a lot of cases, like your executive team could be making those decisions. And then there's like leaf decisions, the ones that like, literally don't matter at all. Like, I mean, let me give you a good example of a leaf decision. What food do you want to order for the office for the lunch that we promised them on Thursday? I don't freaking care. You pick, they pick. Uh, you know, anyone can pick. I am not wasting one of my marbles on that decision. I'm not. You know, I don't even want to think about what I'm going to eat for lunch. You think I want to think about what other people are going to eat for lunch today? Seriously. So, flavor Trophy paste. Do you think we should order this month? Mint? I don't know. I think that's the most popular one. Just like, like make the damn decision, you know? Like, I want to be fair to my team. I don't get asked these kind of questions very often. I think at this point I've trained my team to know, don't come to me with a question that my input does not need to be had on. Um, and, and the same thing happens with meetings. Like, I'll tell my, like, we have an executive meeting every Friday. Um, and sometimes they're kind of long. Like, sometimes they're. I mean, because to be fair, we're a fast growing company. There's a lot of stuff discussed. So you're like 90 minutes, I'll tell my team, hey, I'm showing up for this 30 minute chunk. So whatever you want my input on, let's Talk about it during that 30 minutes in all of those leaf and branch problems you guys can talk about during the other 60 minutes of the call, or maybe the leaf problems you don't even need to be wasting. And like, and honestly, some of that still is happening. Like, I'm still trying to train my executive team on stuff that they shouldn't be wasting their time. And it's like a trickle down effect. It's like, you know, there's decisions that the CEO, okay, yes, you should be involved in these, but not these. And then there's decisions like executive team, yes, you should be involved in these, but maybe not so much these. Maybe, maybe those decisions can be made by the dental assistant, by the hygienist, you know, whoever. Um, and then like even there's certain decisions that's like, maybe no one really needs to make the decision because it's like, it's stupid. Like, let's just, let's just move on with our day. So you know what?

Speaker B: Um, which one that drives me nuts is I could tell my work day and I'm burnt and I'll go downstairs, my wife will ask me a decision. Like she was remodeling the bathroom recently and she asked me like three colors on the wall. And I'm like, I don't care.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: She's like, you don't care about anything. I'm like, no, no. What makes you happy? I have no opinion about this. My wife gets so frustrated because it's every single thing she wants an opinion on. I'm like, that one. She's like, why? I was. Because I have to pick one because you're going to pressure me. Well, why are you picking that one? I don't care.

Speaker A: I deal with this a little. My wife too. And I've had this conversation, I've kind of tried to explain it to her. I, I think she understands in a sense. But me, I think if you, if you're not in the role of CEO of a fast growing company, like, I don't think you can truly understand how many decisions can come across your desk on a weekly basis. And I don't think my wife can truly appreciate how many decisions I have to make on a day to day basis. That's like when I come home, like, okay, if it's an important decision about something dealing with our kids, like, yeah, obviously I want some input. But like to your point, if it's something minor about something with the house or like, she's like, you know, hey, I think I'm thinking in the Nursery. I'm going to swap the positioning of the rocking chair and the table, and I'm like, go for it. Like, I, you know, I don't care. You don't do it. Yeah, that's. That's totally fine. Here's a funny example, actually. We do a lot of deals, you know, a lot of offices, and, you know, a lot of times we buy equipment in a second gen space now. And so this office that we're buying, the broker. I think he. He kind of knows how I've worked a lot of deals with him now. He's done a lot of the deals that we've done, and he kind of knows my personality. So I think he's, like, almost afraid to even, like, call me with these questions, but it's like he's got to ask me them. So, like, he did, like, two different calls to me yesterday, and. Or, uh, he'll. He'll just text me. He'll text because he knows he can't get a hold of me. Otherwise he'll text me, call me when he can. So I'll call him. He's like, hey, I'm sure I already know the answer to this, but, you know, for this, that we're working with the attorneys, and it's like, they're up for the. Like, because of the delays, like, the timing is up for the lease renewal. And your attorneys wanted to make sure that you definitely wanted to renew the lease on this dental practice that you're buying. And I'm like, well, uh, yeah, no, like, I'm. I'm not gonna buy this existing dental space for the second gen space and not renew the lease. Like, it's just such a dumb question. Dumb to sit. And, like, I get. Like, attorneys are so wired that way that they have to ask, like, every single question. I'm like, okay, like, yes, obviously we're gonna renew the lease. Like, yes. You know, he's like, yeah, I. I knew you're gonna say that. But, like, they said, I had a check with you before. We, like, worked on this, you know, process or whatever. I'm m. Like, okay, like, whatever. And then he. Later, it was like, later that day was like the same thing. He's like, call me when you can. He's like, okay, like, another stupid question. But, like, I have to ask. Like, we're working on the ap, the asset purchase agreement and the selling doctors. Like, oh, I've got to make one change there. The fish tank broke, and so I had to throw it away, but it's on the apa. Like, is that okay with you that he takes out the fish tank from the asset purchase agreement? And I'm like, literally like laughing. I'm like, yeah, yes, take it out like that, huh? Let's just get this thing like ready to sign. But that's my point. It's like, you know, at work people ask you these, this, these questions that you know, literally don't matter at all. But every single one, it's like your brain still has to think about it, like you still have to process it. You know someone's asking you a question. Even if it's a super like dumb sounding question that should have 100 obvious answer, your brain still has to process it and give a response and it still adds to that decision fatigue. So you still feel like you're making a decision even though it's like a no brainer decision. So part of my strategy to help myself avoid decision fatigue is to isolate myself, to isolate myself from being asked these questions. So I get it like in this circumstance because I'm the business owner and I'm, you know, my name's being signed on this document, like they have to ask for my permission essentially, stupid as that sounded in those two, those two circumstances. But like, I don't want a dentist coming to me to ask me. And I've had this, I've had dentists like directly come to me and say, hey, I really want to work with this particular dental assistant. Or like we've got a doctor who's traveling to do sedation off. Uh oh, I really want this to be my traveling assistant. And I'm like, cool, why are you texting me this? Like, go to your office manager, regional manager, director of doctor. Like you've got so many people that you should have texted to tell them that you wanted this. And uh, like honestly, this should have never even gotten to me. This is not a trunk decision. This is not something that I should even have to like exert any of my brain power thinking about. Um, this is not going to significantly move the company in one direction or another. So that's kind of where that chain of command comes in. And so, you know, I've, I've created this chain of command where like I've got multiple, multiple levels of separation from the majority of the organization. And I do think sometimes people in the organization think it's like me like being antisocial or grumpy or like, you know, wanting to restrict access. Like, uh, like me just being like a dick. And like that's not the intention, the intention of doing this is so that I can reserve my finite decision making power for those decisions that really matter. And I mean, it's worked, it's not perfect. Don't get me wrong. Uh, there's still stuff that comes to my desk and I'm like, why, why is this even being brought to me right now? But it's a heck of a lot better than it used to be. Um, so, you know, my advice to all you dental CEOs, aspiring CEOs, you know, growing your practice, growing your group, you need to reserve that ability. So like, if you as a clinical dentist, you can delegate a lot of decision making power to your assistants, you know, you don't have someone's making a temporary crown. You don't have to sit there and think if you want it to be a 1 or B1. I'm sorry, like the dental assistants make enough temporary crowns, they can talk to the patient, they can show them the shades. You don't need to be involved in that decision of if it's going to be A1 or B1 for the temporary crown on that patient. You don't. I'm sorry, you don't. So, like, you can start as a clinical dentist, delegating some of those decision making powers to your team. And then like, as you grow and have associates and have multiple practices or a large group practice, you can delegate business type decisions to other leaders within the organization so that you can really focus in on the biggest, most pressing problems that are really going to move the needle. You're going to feel so much better, you're going to be so much fresher, you're going to make better decisions if you do that. And so that was really what I had in mind for this episode when I said CEO decision. I don't want to get into too much detail about like the exact decisions that I'm making or like the decisions that have like, I guess like the big picture decisions are the decision to invest in yourself and invest in your company, the decision to take on risk, the decision to accept great opportunities as they come across, the decision to have a abundance mindset instead of a scarcity mindset. Um, like those are all great decisions that I've made as CEO, but um, those are really big picture stuff. I more wanted to get into how you approach decisions on a daily basis, both in your personal life and in your business life. And I truly believe there's a wrong way to go about it. Um, so that's, that's kind of what I had in mind for this episode.

Speaker B: So awesome.

Speaker A: Hey, guys.

Speaker B: This was a really good episode. I think decision, uh, fatigue is real. I think it's something to really think about is how you reserve your decisions and where you apply them. I routinely say to people, and it frustrates everybody, and I say, that's not really my worth my time. Like, I just. I just say that I literally do

Speaker A: a nicer way to say that. Matt, is. Is that a leaf problem or is that a trunk problem? And so, like, my. My team has heard me say that. I. I've kind of adopted that phrase. But that. That. Me saying that is a nice way of saying that's not really worth my time.

Speaker B: Yeah. Right. So. All right, guys, uh, thank you so much for joining us. Please, like, subscribe, share, and follow.