Season 5: Episode 125: What People Think Success Looks Like vs. What It Actually Looks Like Sarah Beth Herman | Founder of Dentistry Support | PHOENIX Magazine 2026 Health-Care Heroes

📍 Hey, guys. Welcome back to No Silver Spoons. I am Sara Beth Herman, founder of Dentistry Support, Dentistry Support Academy, and a few other companies that you can go check out on my LinkedIn profile. But most importantly, I'm the host of this podcast.

And today's episode is really special to me because I finally get to talk about something that I've had to keep quiet for a little while. I was recently named one of Phoenix Magazine's two thousand and twenty-six Healthcare Heroes. And before we even get into today's conversation, I want to say something honestly and transparently. I intentionally paused when the feature came out, and not because I didn't care about it, but because it really did matter to me.

And I think sometimes people become so uncomfortable acknowledging their own accomplishments that they rush past meaningful moments before they fully absorb them, and I didn't wanna do that here. It's okay to feel proud of yourself. It's okay to appreciate milestones, and it's okay to recognize that something special in your life happened, and you're proud of that, and you feel good. It gave you a sense of accomplishment, especially because in today's world, visibility has become so incredibly transactional.

There are people spending tens of thousands of dollars every month trying to secure press, credibility features, recognition. And over the last year, I've had more podcasts, publications, magazines, interviews, and opportunities come my way than I can honestly explain. And I say that with a lot of humility because I still very much so feel that I am in the middle of building my life. But this Phoenix Magazine feature felt meaningful to me because it recognized something I genuinely care about, which is operational impact in healthcare.

Not visibility for the sake of attention, not social media influence, not popularity, actual work, actual systems, people, outcomes. And after the article came out, I found myself thinking about something I haven't been able to stop reflecting on People are usually introduced to success only once it becomes visible enough to actually celebrate it. They see the feature, photo, title, announcement, but they are meeting the finished architecture, not the years spent laying the foundation.

, And maybe you've heard conversations like this before, people talking about how success is really hard or reminding you that nobody sees the difficult parts. But I don't really wanna give you another generic conversation about struggle. I wanna talk about what it actually takes to continue building your life while there is still uncertainty attached to it. Because even now, while I'm sitting here talking about this recognition, my husband and I are currently in the middle of taking a massive risk in our own lives, a really, really big one.

And I'm intentionally not sharing every detail because some things deserve privacy while they're still unfolding. But what I can tell you is that the potential reward on the other side of this risk is extraordinary And what's interesting is how many opinions people suddenly have anytime you decide to pursue something ambitious. Everyone has advice, everyone has warnings and concerns, but one thing I've learned is that people often give advice through the lens of their own fears, their own limitations, their own experiences.

And sometimes that advice simply does not apply to the life that you're building because they've never stood where you are standing. They have never carried the responsibilities you carry. They have never experienced the level of risk that you are considering, and sometimes they cannot envision the reward because they've never seen that kind of possibility for themselves. That doesn't make them bad people, though, but it does mean you need discernment, because if you spend your entire life making decisions based on only what feels safe to everyone else, you may never discover what was actually possible for you.

And yes, sometimes risks fail. Sometimes things do not work out the way that you hoped. Sometimes the reward never fully materializes, but sometimes it does. Sometimes the risk changes your life completely, and you will never know which outcome was waiting for you if fear convinces you not to move at all.

That's really what I want today's episode to be about. Not just success or recognition, but the endurance required to continue moving toward a life you cannot fully see yet. Because I think there are people listening right now who are quietly becoming who they are meant to be, but because it hasn't materialized publicly yet, they're questioning whether they're making progress at all. And I really need you to understand something.

Visibility and value are not synonymous. Some of the most important seasons of your life will unfold long before there's evidence the outside world can recognize. And if you quit too early, you'll never meet the version of your life waiting on the other side of your endurance Don't forget that. One thing entrepreneurship and leadership have taught me is that success feels profoundly different internally than it appears externally.

Externally, people see momentum. Internally, you feel responsibility. People imagine success at this arrival point where life suddenly becomes stable, clear, and emotionally uncomplicated. Like, eventually successful people stop doubting themselves.

They stop worrying. They stop carrying pressure. has not been my experience whatsoever. If anything, growth sharpens your awareness.

You become more aware of the weight attached to your decisions, more aware of how your leadership affects people, more aware of the importance of culture, communication, and emotional steadiness, especially in operations. Because operational leadership in healthcare is not flashy work, but it is extraordinarily consequential work At Dentistry Support, our mission has always been helping dental practices create healthier operations so that teams can function better, patients can have stronger experiences, and providers can focus more fully on patient care instead of constant dysfunction behind the scenes.

And when you spend years inside that world, you realize healthy businesses are not built on charisma. They're built on stewardship. And that word means so much to me now. Stewardship, the ability to responsibly manage something that impacts other people's lives.

That's leadership to me now. Not optics or appearing important, not constantly broadcasting accomplishments online. Stewardship requires composure. It requires discernment.

It requires the ability to make thoughtful decisions even when there's pressure attached to them. And honestly, I think some of the strongest people are the people carrying enormous responsibility without needing everyone else to constantly witness it. I also think that we're living in an era where visibility is often mistaken for substance, and those are also not the same thing. The internet has created this environment where people feel pressure to exhibit success constantly rather than quietly cultivate it.

But cultivation and performance are entirely different things. One creates appearance, the other creates permanence. And I think a lot of people right now are emotionally exhausted because they're trying to maintain this appearance of success instead of building the infrastructure required to sustain it. And there's a difference there.

One's curated and one's durable. I would rather build something durable, even if it takes longer, even if fewer people understand it while it's happening, or even if it unfolds more quietly than other people's timelines. Because eventually, substance always outlasts spectacle And I've learned that meaningful success is cumulative. It's built in ordinary moments most people would overlook.

And consistency, discipline, difficult conversations, learning how to lead yourself before trying to lead anyone else . There have been seasons of my life where externally nothing looked particularly extraordinary. No major announcements or headlines, no visible evidence that anything exceptional was unfolding. In fact, I did not have my very first press release in an actual publication until I was in business for ten years.

Ten years. So for ten years, I didn't have anything that someone else was saying about me, but I still kept going. No, I didn't put tens of thousands of dollars a month into trying to chase fake publications or buy my way to the top. I refused to do it.

Do you know how many marketing gurus I met with that were like, "Sarah Beth, it's ten thousand dollars a month, and I'll get you on Good Morning America. I'll get you a TED Talk." No, I'm not doing that. I'm not buying my way to the top.

I've never done that before. I'm not starting today. I don't need to do that but looking back now, those were the years where the internal infrastructure was being built for me. The fortitude, resilience, my emotional regulation, my leadership capacity, discernment that I had to have.

Without all of those years and all the years that are to come, the opportunities that eventually arrived and will be arriving for me would have reached me before I was prepared to sustain them. That's the part that nobody's talking about. Everybody wants the visible opportunity. Far fewer people are willing to endure the invisible preparation Every podcast episode I share with you, I always have a That's Good moment.

And if you've been here for any length of time, you know that I don't just want to talk to you and have you listen to me and then go about your day. I want you to take something that you're like, "That is so good. I wanna keep that, and I wanna remember that." And so every episode, I summarize my thoughts for just a brief moment while we close out the episode, and it's time for that moment.

It's time for our That's Good moment. This one is for you, the person who feels discouraged because your life hasn't happened yet. And I want you to know that if your season feels slow right now, I want you to resist the urge to interpret that as failure. Some seasons are not designed for visibility.

They're designed for preparation, and preparation rarely feels glamorous while you're inside of it The crazy thing about life is that we don't realize how long something takes to do it, and then once it's done, it's like, "Wow, that happened so fast." Let me give you an example. I recently finished my MBA last year, about six months ago. I'm going for my second master's degree now.

I'm actually going for my MHEL, my Master's of Higher Education Leadership. And the reason I'm doing that is for my school that I own. I want the credibility. I wanna learn more in-depth ways to teach people at a higher education level.

There's many, many reasons for that. But when I first would hear that people had accomplished their master's degree, I didn't know quantifiably the time it took to get that. I also didn't understand the intentionality and the effort, and I had no concept of what would be ahead of me, the papers I would write, the research I would do, the people I would meet, the instructors I would have, the professors that would lead me in ways I've never been led before, people who would challenge me in every single way.

I had no concept of what that would mean. And now, looking back, I would tell every single student in college, " Get your undergraduate, wait ten years, and then go get your master's." You need time to have real life happen. You need to lead teams.

You need to lead yourself. You need to have a different level of understanding about how the world and leadership work before you ever go get that degree. All the time it took me to accomplish getting my first master's degree, it was a lot. I did it while navigating working, being a wife, a mom, a nana, an aunt, all of the greatest roles of my life.

But it's so hard to get there. It takes time. It feels repetitive, it feels stretching, it feels uncertain. But all of that preparation, it changes you in ways that recognition can never change you.

And one day you may realize the reason you were finally capable of handling the opportunity that you have now was because of the season that almost convinced you to quit. And that's what I want you remembering. I also want to talk about one more thing before we close this episode, something that has become incredibly important to me over the years. I repeat this to my husband, I repeat this to my friends, my daughter, anyone that I come in contact with.

No one can stop what is meant for you. And I don't mean that in a passive way where you sit back and you wait for your life to happen. You still have to work. You have to become disciplined.

You have to develop your skills, your character, professionalism, consistency, all those things. But I think there is a tremendous peace in understanding that your entire future is not dependent on one opportunity, one conversation, one rejection, or one person's opinion of you. People can delay things, life can redirect things, and you can outgrow environments. You can outgrow places, people, things, landmarks.

You can experience setbacks. But what is truly aligned for your life will continue finding you as long as you keep moving forward. That belief has carried me through a lot of seasons where I could not yet see what my life was becoming. There were moments things have felt uncertain, moments where I wanted stuff to grow a lot faster than it was.

Times when I questioned whether the work was truly leading anywhere. But I've always kept going, not perfectly, not fearlessly, just steadily. And I think a lot of that is important because people assume successful people were simply confident the entire time. Most people are not moving through life with unwavering certainty, and I can promise you that.

They're just moving with conviction, and I think there's a difference there. Conviction says I may not fully see it yet, but I believe there's a purpose in continuing. And honestly, I think conviction matters more than confidence ever will because confidence, it fluctuates, but conviction, it sustains you And lastly, I wanna talk about the most important part of all of this conversation, my team If this Phoenix Magazine recognition represents anything accurately, it represents collective excellence.

My name may appear in the feature, but the caliber of work required to build something meaningful at this level is never singular. It's cumulative, and I mean that wholeheartedly. There is absolutely no version of my success without the people I work alongside every single day, not one. And at Dentistry Support, I am surrounded by people who are exceptionally intelligent, thoughtful, hardworking, and deeply committed to helping all of our practices improve.

Not performatively, not only when it's convenient, but consistently. People who solve difficult problems quietly, who care deeply about my clients, who create stability during stressful situations, who bring professionalism and compassion into environments that desperately need both. And honestly, I think one of the greatest misconceptions about leadership is that leaders are supposed to be heroes. I don't believe that anymore.

I think healthy leadership creates environments where other people can thrive, and that's the goal. Not becoming the center of everything, not needing this constant recognition, not attaching your identity to being the most visible person in the room, but creating something sustainable enough that people around you become stronger because they're part of it. And that matters to me more now than the recognition itself because titles are temporary. The way people experience working with you is what actually lasts.

One thing healthcare taught me is that systems affect human experiences, whether people consciously recognize it or not. Healthy operations create healthier teams. Healthier teams create stronger patient experiences, and better patient experiences create better outcomes. Everything's connected.

That's why operational leadership matters. That's why support matters, and that's why I'm so proud of the people I get to build alongside with every day. I also think my definition of success has changed dramatically over the years. When I was younger, success felt very tied to proving myself.

Achievement, recognition, external validation. And there's nothing inherently wrong with ambition. But eventually, you realize that if your entire identity is attached to accomplishment, you'll never actually feel settled because there will always be another goal, another level, benchmark, something to chase. Now success feels more rooted in integrity.

Peace matters to me, sustainability matters to me, and the quality of my relationships matter to me. The health of the culture we are building matters to me I want success that allows me to remain human, and I think ambitious people sometimes forget that. You can build something meaningful without destroying yourself in the process. You can pursue excellence without becoming consumed by performance.

And honestly, I think some of the wisest people become quieter over time because they realize just how much energy is wasted trying to constantly prove your worth publicly. Substantive people don't spend their lives announcing their value. build it So now that it's finally public, I'm incredibly honored to say that I was featured in Phoenix Magazine as one of the twenty twenty-six Healthcare Heroes for the work that we're doing right here at Dentistry Support. And truly, I'm receiving this recognition with an enormous amount of gratitude and perspective because I know exactly how many years, people, lessons, and challenges are attached to this very moment.

This recognition represents years of invisible work, consistency, , learning how to lead better, helping dental practices improve operationally so that patients and teams can ultimately have healthier experiences. But more than anything, it represents people, the people that I work beside every day who helped me build this, who continue showing up with intelligence, professionalism, resilience, and most importantly, care. This feature may have my name attached to it, but my team is the reason the work exists at the level it does, and I hope they feel celebrated in this moment too because they deserve it entirely.

Before we end today's episode, I want to leave you with this . One of the most dangerous things you can do is abandon your future simply because it has not introduced itself yet. Some of the most meaningful seasons of your life will unfold quietly without applause or immediate recognition and without visible evidence that your consistency is leading somewhere significant. I want you to keep building anyway, not frantically or performatively, but steadily.

Keep refining your character, honoring your commitments, becoming someone trustworthy, resilient, discerning, and grounded because eventually people may look at your life and call your success sudden. But you will know how much endurance it actually required. Thank you guys so much for listening to another episode of No Silver Spoons, and truly thank you for allowing me to share this milestone with you. I am incredibly honored to be featured in Phoenix Magazine's two thousand twenty-six Healthcare Heroes issue, and even more grateful for the people I get to build 📍 alongside every single day.

I'll catch you on the next episode.