S4 E07: Embracing Change for Career Growth

Wright: [00:00:00] We wear so many hats as dentists, clinical expert, entrepreneur, marketing department, teacher, HR, you name it, all to grow and manage a successful dental career. I'm Dr. ArNelle Wright.

Ioannidou: [00:00:14] And I'm Dr. Effie Ioannidou. That's why today we have the Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine here with us. offering expert advice to help us manage professional change and learn how we can better build for tomorrow.

Announcer: [00:00:31] From the American Dental Association, this is Dental Sound Bites, created for dentists by dentists. Ready? Let's dive right into real talk on dentistry's daily wins and sticky situations.

Wright: [00:00:46] Hello, hello, everybody. If you are enjoying Dental Sound Bites, please help us by rating the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening.

Ioannidou: [00:00:57] And please leave a review. That will help us continue to support other dentists in our great profession.

Wright: [00:01:05] You know, Effie, we go to dental school and we learn to do beautiful dentistry. But many of us are really surprised when we are faced with the business and the entrepreneur side of practicing and managing our careers.

Ioannidou: [00:01:18] You're absolutely right. It's not only surprising. I think sometimes for many of the graduates, as I see it from the education side of the story, a lot of the graduates feel scared about this and intimidated.

So it's a lot more than surprise. So I think today we are so thrilled to have a special guest with us. One of the top voices in the field. He's the Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, a podcast host and author, Jason Feiffer. Welcome to Dental Sound Bites, Jason.

Feifer: [00:01:50] It is such a delight to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ioannidou: [00:01:52] So podcast, magazine, editor in chief, I mean, author, do you ever sleep?

Feifer: [00:01:59] People ask me that a lot. The answer is not nearly as much as I should. I also have a nine- and a five-year-old, so they contribute to the lack of sleep every single day.

Ioannidou: [00:02:08] Oh, dear God.

Wright: [00:02:09] Well, we're so glad to have you here with us today. Jason, can you please tell our listeners a little bit more about you and your background?

Feifer: [00:02:16] Yeah. Well, maybe you're wondering, what does a guy who runs an entrepreneurship magazine have to teach people in the dental profession? That's a reasonable question. I will tell you, the thing that I really am is a guy who is incredibly fortunate to be learning from the greatest entrepreneurs and leaders and builders in the world.

And what I have found is that the ones who are the most successful at any level, we're talking about building billion dollar businesses, but we're also just talking about building main street businesses, building personal businesses, building lifestyle businesses. The ones that are most successful have developed what I like to think of as a unique personal relationship with change.

And that unique personal relationship enables them to grow and build in ways that others can't. I have been spending years studying this, trying to understand it, trying to understand how these people navigate major changes. I'm sure that everyone who's listening right now is feeling like they're navigating major changes.

So this is what I'm really excited to share with everybody and what we can dig into. And I will say, I do have a very personal connection to dentistry because my dad is a dentist. So I grew up going to my dad's dental practice in Margate, Florida. His name is Roy Pfeiffer and he is retired. He sold the practice a number of years ago, but he, he is still very tied to the community because now he loves flying around and being an examiner for, and this is funny because I always just think of it as like, Oh, he's an examiner for dental exams, but I asked him very specifically what it was so that I could share it on the podcast.

And he said to me that it's, I'm reading it because it was so much. It's such a mouthful. He's an examiner for a CDCA-WREB-CITA in the delivery and grading of assessments nationwide. And he absolutely loves it. So he's flying around and doing this work and staying connected to dentistry and having a blast.

Wright: [00:04:13] What a big deal.

Ioannidou: [00:04:14] I'm curious to know, how did you save yourself from dentistry?

Feifer: [00:04:20] That's a funny question. I have this belief that every human being has the exact same skill set. And that skill set is pattern recognition, but everybody is different in what patterns they naturally recognize. And I discovered at a pretty young age that the patterns that I was recognizing were communication patterns.

I was able to look at a newspaper story and understand how it was structured and replicated. And magazines, I mean, I started by, like, making comic books at home, but I was just naturally a writer. And my parents, I think one of the greatest things that they did as parents, and they were wonderful parents. My parents were so open to whatever path my sister and I wanted to take and encouraging of whatever that path was. I, you know, I'm sure that my dad would have really loved it if I took over the practice, but that wasn't naturally where I was. I was a writer and I wanted to communicate with people and I have no interest in medicine outside of being healthy.

And so, it just never came up. To be honest, it just never came up.

Ioannidou: [00:05:38] Well, that's great. You had great parents. They gave you the space to grow in the direction that you wanted to go. That's amazing.

Feifer: [00:05:45] But, you know, actually I come to think of it, I should say that I think that in my dad's dental practice, what I saw and absorbed was a different kind of the skill set that I developed myself, which is communications.

Such a big part of his practice were, was the relationships that he had with his patients. You know, when I would hang out there, he knew all of them. He knew them in detail. He remembered important details of their lives. We would run into them around town and that relationship building and that ability to connect with people, even while you're, you know, working in their mouth, is something that I think was really a key to his success and is a key to my success too.

Ioannidou: [00:06:26] No, that's great. This is a talent actually. I think it is for sure. So Jason, you say that your goal is to help anyone become more resilient and adaptable in the world of a constant change. And you brought up the change earlier too, so we can seize new opportunities. And I, I really love this quote.

Tell me a little bit more about this and how can we use change and the idea of change to our advantage in the profession?

Feifer: [00:06:53] Let's start down at the elemental personal level. I think that we all as professionals in any field, we make a mistake, which is that we tie our identities too closely to the output of our work or the role that we occupy, which is to say that if someone came up to you at a party and said, what do you do?

You know, your answer would probably be, I'm a, I'm a dentist, I'm a hygienist, so whatever the, the case is, and there's nothing wrong with that, but at a deeper level, what you're really thinking is who I am and my value to the world is tied very much to the way in which I operate professionally. And if any of that changes, even the technology that you're using in your office or the way in which you're relating to patients or what people need or, or, or however your, your business and your, and your career is structured, whenever any of that changes, and it will, it doesn't just feel like a change to your work. It feels like a change to your identity. And that's really scary.

Because here's the thing about change. You know, it's easy to say, ah, people don't like change. People don't like change. You know why they don't like change? Here's my assessment of it. The reason they don't like change is because we equate change with loss because decades of psychological research have confirmed what's called Loss Aversion Theory. Loss Aversion Theory means that our human brains are naturally programmed to protect against loss more than to seek gain, which means that when something new happens in our world, in our professions, the first thing we do is we think about all the comfortable and familiar things that we no longer have access to. 

That feels like loss. It's so hard to see gain. And that happens on a specific level, like, Oh, well, now I can't do this anymore. Now I can't treat people that way anymore. Now I can't, whatever. But also it happens at this very personal level, like I set up a second ago, which is that we start to feel a fundamental loss of our own sense of value and purpose and identity when change happens. 

So what do we do about this? The first thing I think we need to do is that we need to define our value in a way that does not change in times of change. I would challenge everyone listening to this right now to spend some time thinking about a mission statement for yourself. And here, here's how that would, it's going to work.

Okay. The mission statement is going to be a short sentence. The first word is the word I, after that, every word is carefully selected because it is not anchored to something that's easily changeable. So what does that mean? Well, for me, I could say I'm a magazine editor, but that is very changeable, very.

All it takes is the president of Entrepreneur Media, parent company of Entrepreneur Magazine deciding to fire me, or to close down the magazine, or for the company to be sold. There are a million ways in which I could no longer be a magazine editor. If that's my identity, that is fragile. So, here's another way of thinking about it.

I tell stories in my own voice. Now, I tell stories. Stories is something nobody can take away from me. Stories is something that no change eliminates. I'm telling stories to you today. I tell stories when I consult with startups. I tell stories on stage and books in any possible way. In my own voice is me setting the terms for how I want to operate at this stage of my career.

Everybody who's listening right now, define that for yourself. Understand your value to people and the thing that you do that is separate from, and bigger and deeper, than the individual tasks that you perform every day or whatever happens to be on a diploma of yours. Because that, that is the thing that you can always deliver regardless of what change comes to you so that every time that something changes in your work or in your practice or whatever it is, you now have a new opportunity to deliver the thing that is always at your core and that makes you always valuable.

Ioannidou: [00:11:26] I love this. You're absolutely right. And it takes so long. It takes so many years. I mean, you figure this out very young, but you know, it really takes long time and a lot of, thinking, I guess, and soul searching to be able to reach this. For some people, right? I mean, you, I definitely, I didn't have this approach when I was in my dental school years or even early after graduation. It, I think it takes a long time to figure out yourself and to figure out your purpose in, in life.

Feifer: [00:12:02] Yeah. What I find really valuable about this kind of exercise is that it clarifies what your ultimate value is to people, and it gives you a roadmap for what to lean into. By the time I came up with all this, my dad had retired and sold his practice.

I don't know what he would say to this. I could ask him, I guess. Maybe he'll tell me after he listens to this episode. But I could imagine when he was operating his practice, he might have said something like, I help people feel comfortable and help them remain healthy through oral care or something like that, right?

And the reason that I'm thinking about that is because what I just described are phrases that people will always need and that's always valuable. If you can help people feel comfortable, comfortable in your space, comfortable in a setting that they might be naturally uncomfortable in, then that's a tremendous gift and also a tremendous competitive advantage.

And then, I want to define it in terms of health and oral care because those are things that people always need. The means of doing that may change. When I go to a dentist today, the technology that they're using is radically different from the technology that I remember when I was going to my dad when I was a teenager.

The way in which this work is being done is totally different. So, I don't want to have people define themselves by the operations. I want them to define themselves by the outcome, because the outcome is always in need.

Ioannidou: [00:13:32] Yeah.

Wright: [00:13:33] This is so good. Oh my gosh. I feel like we just jumped straight in. Thank you so much for everything that you're sharing with us.

You know, we want to talk about entrepreneurship, and I feel like we're going to get there, but in this moment, I kind of want you to talk to us about like, why this work and these exercises are so important to anybody on the journey to become, you know, an entrepreneur and to have better patient relationships.

Like, why is this important for us?

Feifer: [00:13:58] Let's define entrepreneur. So the word entrepreneur has taken on a lot of different meanings. And I kind of love that because to me, entrepreneurship is an ethos more than it is anything else. I think of an entrepreneur as someone who makes things happen for themselves.

That's it. So it doesn't, you don't have to own your own practice necessarily or, you know, own a small business or a large business to identify with either the word entrepreneur or the tenets of entrepreneurship. To me, an entrepreneur is someone who sees doors where other people see walls. 

So, why is this important? The most important thing that an entrepreneur learns, no matter what work they do, is that the idea that they started with is not the idea they will be successful with. The idea that they started with is the thing that got them moving and allowed them to enter into a, whatever it is, a space, a marketplace.

And then they started to do the real work of learning what people need and how to adapt to that and to adjust to that and to create something of real value. Which is to say that the most successful people understand that the thing that they do today will not be the thing that works tomorrow. And therefore the decisions that they make today have to be informed by the reality that it will change.

And once you start thinking that way, you become less attached to certain processes. You start to think about how everything that you're learning is really setting yourself up for the next phase of learning. You become more of a lifelong learner. You become someone who starts to adopt technologies faster, who starts to push boundaries in healthy ways.

And that I really believe is just simply the only way to have a successful long career is to, is to always be operating with that. You do not want to get to the point where you are holding on to things simply because they were familiar because that's not valuable to anybody. It's not valuable to you because just because something's familiar doesn't mean that it's useful and it's not valuable to anybody else because they don't care about what's familiar to you.

They care about what they need and you better understand what that is at all times and be willing to adapt yourself to those needs.

Ioannidou: [00:16:31] Let me just play the devil's advocate here. Okay. So obviously healthcare becomes more and more and more complicated. Right. And, and we can talk about the business side of it and the new trends in healthcare, but the reality of the matter is we have departed from the traditional setting that existed 20 and 30 years ago, the generation behind. So things are more complex. The technology is more advanced. The demand to follow this is high, right? You spoke about familiarity and I get it. I'm someone that personality wise, I'm attracted by change. So I'm excited. I want to follow the trend, but there are people that are, you know, they have different skills and different personality traits. So people are more reluctant, people are more afraid. You spoke about the loss of the familiarity, if you will. So how can someone make this leap and say, Okay, until yesterday I was stuck with tradition and a routine that I was following for, you know, 15, 20 years. But today I'm making the big decision to go into big data, moving to Epic and connect with my medical colleagues and take healthcare to the next level. Like, is this really realistic in practice? How do you see this happening?

Feifer: [00:17:52] Okay. This is a great question. Let's pick it apart in a number of different ways.

Number one, when I'm advocating for people to build the reality of change into the way in which they operate, what I am not saying is that you have to chase every new trend, you have to treat every new thing as good. That's not realistic. That's not the way in which it works. So what you do need to do though is you need to be constantly aware of what is changing and you need to be clear on what your value proposition is throughout that change.

I'll give you an example of something that may sound counterintuitive to that, but that as you were talking, Effie, I was flashing back to conversations that I had with my dad, for example. So my dad had seen over the decades that he was operating. Yeah, you know, new technologies and new services and new trends that other dentists were offering.

And some of those were good and some of those he felt were frivolous. They were things that people were offering, but that patients didn't always need. And he made a conscious decision to not push to not push things that he felt that patients didn't really need and to be extremely transparent and clear about that.

Now, one way to think about that is to say, well, maybe that guy just didn't want to go with the flow. Maybe that guy just wanted to do things the way that he always did it and he didn't want to follow these other things. But here's another way of thinking about it. Another way of thinking about it is, maybe that guy was thinking really deeply about what his value proposition is to his patients.

And a big part of the value proposition is trust. Trust is a competitive advantage. All right. I mean, you got to think about it like that. Like when you're in business. And you're in a marketplace full of other any things, any professionals or any products. Then quality, quality service, quality products, quality whatever, quality becomes actually kind of table stakes.

I remember and I'll circle back to dentistry in a second, but I'm going to take it into some completely different field, which is, this really became clear to me, I had a conversation with the president of Reebok a while ago, and he was telling me how the conversations that they have at Reebok are about how they have to transcend quality and be customer obsessed.

And the reason for that, he said, is because at this point, in manufacturing, quality is too easy to achieve. He's like, he said to me, his argument was, imagine that you started a new company that made scissors. Can you market those pair of scissors as the sharpest scissors? No. You know why? Because every pair of scissors is the sharpest scissors. Every pair. It's way too easy to manufacture sharp scissors now. So you can't market yourself, you can't differentiate yourself on quality of the product. So it has to be about something else.

Now, if you're in a product business, a big part of that differentiation is going to come through story and branding. What does it look like? How does it feel to the consumer? What are you projecting to the consumer? If you're in a service business, some of that is useful, right? There can be great and smart branding, but also a lot of it, especially in a service based business, is about how you relate to people, because the way in which you relate to people is going to be a differentiating factor.

That is a competitive advantage. Trust is a competitive advantage. Responsiveness is a competitive advantage. Friendliness is a competitive advantage. All that stuff matters. When I look at what my dad was doing, I was seeing him assess new things, select a few that were worthwhile to be integrating into his practice, but being ever more clear-eyed about what he needed to be doing in times of change to be relevant to people.

And a lot of that I think came down to building trust. And sometimes building trust means being really transparent and saying, you know what? You don't actually need this. You don't actually need to spend this money with me. I want to charge you less because you don't need to spend more money. And that I think is one of the reasons why his patients kept coming back to him.

So I'm not here to say that every new thing you need to, you know, you don't need to become the most high tech person in the world. You don't need to be constantly, like, reassessing everything, but you do need to be aware of what's happening constantly around you and making really conscious decisions about where your value is and make sure that you are embracing what people need now instead of what they needed before.

Does that make sense?

Wright: [00:22:33] A lot.

Ioannidou: [00:22:34] No, absolutely. I completely agree with you and definitely makes sense. And I don't think that change can be, should become an obsession, but you are absolutely right. You need to be aware of your surroundings.

So in these surroundings, the healthcare surroundings, what do you, what do you identify as the most significant trend in the business side of healthcare now, like the dentistry, medicine included, whatever you want to point out.

Feifer: [00:23:00] I mean, I will admit that the business side of healthcare is not my area of specialization. So I mean, I know that it is exceptionally complicated. And I think that what people are craving more than anything else is a feeling of simplicity and transparency. And what I see coming out of interesting startups in the healthcare space tend to be oriented around those things. Let us make something simpler for you, let us make something more transparent for you.

Because it's complicated, and it's complicated in so many different ways, right? I mean, everything from billing is complicated, but also, you know, people don't have medical degrees. They don't know, If they need this thing or they don't need this thing, they don't know whose word they should trust. And it's scary.

Ioannidou: [00:23:49] There is Dr. Google.

Feifer: [00:23:50] There is Dr. Google. That's true. And there's, and now there's Dr. Chat GPT. You know, and people are turning to that and that's, you know, that's been a challenge in every industry because suddenly the consumer thinks that they're an expert in something or, or they, they question the professional's judgment because of something that they happen to read.

And so you have to navigate that. But again, I think that comes down to increased trust and increased transparency. I mean, you know, the conversations that I'm having about AI, for example, and I have a lot to say about AI, but are really, really interesting because the smartest people who I talk to about this all predict some version of the same exact thing, which is that as we build an increasingly digital world where, you know, the previous digital generation was about ease of finding things. And now the new digital generation is going to be about ease of processing and engaging with things.

And as we interact more and more with digital brains, there's going to be an increasing premium and value put on human interaction and the humans who are best at connecting on a human level, and the services and experiences that are most pleasant to happen in person, are going to become the ones that are most valuable because a lot of AI is going to start to feel interchangeable. So the differentiating factor is going to be human.

So even as technology becomes more sophisticated. And as all the professionals who are listening to this podcast start to, you know, use and be trained on more sophisticated technologies, we cannot forget that the thing that's going to make the difference is ultimately your ability to connect with another human being.

Wright: [00:25:37]Connections. 

Ioannidou: Absolutely. I mean, the thing about it, the simple experience that we all have been having, actually experienced it this morning because my luggage was lost. So I had to call the airline and immediately you go to the automated service and, and you really, you, you really want to speak with a human being to communicate and just use like five words. They get you, they respond to you. As opposed to automated service that cannot pick up the Greek accent and you say one thing, they hear another thing you have to repeat. It's so ridiculously frustrating.

Feifer: [00:26:414] Yeah, that's right. And so the winners are the ones who cure that for people. Right. This is one of the most helpful frameworks that I've ever heard in business. And I'll share with you, you can apply it to anything having to do with relating to your customer, anything. So this comes to me from Rochelle Deveaux. She's a friend of mine and she's a consumer insights researcher. So her job is to interview and research consumer needs for specific companies and then develop strategies based on what she learns from consumers.

And she says that, to truly serve a customer, whatever it is, right, and, Effie, like what you're just describing there with the phone maze is a version of bad customer service, right? To truly serve a customer through customer service or through just through a product or service, you need to fill out the following Mad Libs.

And, and the Mad Libs goes like this. When Context, I want Solution, so that Benefit. And this is, by the way, this is coming from the perspective of your consumer, your customer or your client or whatever.

Wright: [00:27:20] Yeah.

Feifer: [00:27:20] Again, I'll say it again. When Context, I want Solution, so that Benefit. So Rochelle gives the example, when she shares this, of a compression sock company because she, she wants, did some work with a compression sock company.

So when Context, the context for the consumer would be my feet hurt from standing all day. I want Solution, which the solution would be to feel comfortable. So that Benefit, benefit, I can do my job. I can be present for my family. I can enjoy my life while not standing out and focusing on my foot pain. All right.

So why is this important? Maybe this sounds obvious, but here's the thing. Professionals, companies, anybody in business, we tend to focus on solution. We talk about solution because solution is the thing that we provide, right? The product or the service that we make is a solution. So we often talk about the solution.

Oh, you need this. You need this. We make great compression socks. You should use the compression socks. But here's the thing. Nobody wakes up in the morning saying, You know what I need? Compression socks. No. What they wake up in the morning thinking is, my feet hurt and I wish that I could get through the day and focus on my work and my family without having to be thinking about my feet all day.

Right? They're talking about outcome. They're talking about outcome and most professionals are talking about solution. And those are different things. So we need to understand the outcome that people want and then we need to talk to them and we need to make sure that they are feeling Outcome. We need to talk to them in a way in which we understand their outcome and are communicating their outcome to them and that we need to make sure that we're delivering upon that outcome.

Right? You didn't want, when you called customer service, you know what you didn't want? You didn't want good customer service. You don't care about good customer service. What you wanted was your problem to be solved. Those are different things. That's the difference between the problem and the outcome or the solution and the outcome.

And the problem that they're making is that they're making the customer service experience bad. And it's taking way too long to solve your problem, which is the outcome that you actually want. So, we need to reorient ourselves around outcome and the way that this plugs back to the conversation that we've been having here about change is that as things change and as new technologies change and as new contexts change and as solutions change, we tend to get really caught up in that.

What are people saying? What do they need now? What are the new ways to deliver value? And we get so caught up in it that we lose track of the outcome. And we stopped thinking about what is the patient outcome? What do they need? They need to feel comfortable and happy and they want to be healthy and they want to get out of here feeling like they weren't taken advantage of.

That's the outcome that they want. That's why it matters that you're kind. And that you're trustworthy and that you're transparent and that you're simple. Those are the things people want. That's what they want more than ever, especially as things change.

Ioannidou: [00:30:19] But keep in mind that medicine, and this is very philosophical now, I know that we are turning it, but keep in mind that medicine and dentistry were built on valued outcomes that the physicians, the dentists themselves, thought that are important.

Very recently, we started asking patients what is important to them, right? That's why we have the patient centered outcomes now for the last few decades. But prior to this, the dentist would care about if the pocket of five millimeters becomes three. Patients don't even know what a millimeter is. It's metric for God's sakes.

Like, I always want to show people when we talk about the, you know, probing depths and all this and around the gum, the gingiva tissue. And I say, Oh, you know what a millimeter is? It's small. And they're like, is this important really? I know my gums bleed. So to your point, you are absolutely right and I really like this conversation because I think it's so much more than what the, we, the dental, medical profession professionals have in our mind and how we really completely disregard really what the benefit is for the patient.

Feifer: [00:31:31] I love that. That's a really wonderful example. I did not know that history, but that's really fascinating.

Wright: [00:31:35] We'll be right back.

[00:31:37] Is it time for a vacation? Well, then anchors away. ADA members get member-only pricing on thousands of cruise itineraries from the biggest names and destinations in cruising. Experience the Mediterranean, the Antarctic, the Caribbean, and more. Visit avidtraveling.com/ADA and never pay full price for a cruise again.

Sweatpants may not be appropriate for the dental office, but your dental team can be comfortable while looking good. Upgrade their wardrobe with Logo'd apparel from Land's End. ADA members save 10% on comfortable and high quality clothing to promote your practice's brand in the office and out in your community. Visit ada.landsend.com

Wright: [00:32:27] Welcome back to Dental Sound Bites. We are having a conversation about the business side of dentistry with Jason Feiffer. How do we navigate all of this as dentists trying to transfer this information and this idea of change to our patients?

Feifer: [00:32:42] You make a really wonderful point there, ArNelle, because what you are pointing out is that although we've spent the last 30 or so minutes talking about navigating change, having change come to us, right? Being changed. Dentists, healthcare professionals are also bringers of change. Introducers of change. You have to, you have to introduce change to your, to your patients. You have to introduce change to your teams.

And there is a mistake that people make when they are the bringers of change. And that mistake is that you become so familiar with the value of the new thing that you're introducing, that you forget that it doesn't make sense to anybody else. And then when it doesn't make sense to them, your instinct is to just keep trying to explain the value or pushing it on them.

And people don't like that. There's a story I love telling that brings this into stark relief, and it's this. So, I love history, I'm a big fan of history because the story's been told. You know, we don't know, we don't know the ending of the story  of our era right now, but you know, you look back a hundred, two hundred years and you can see what happened, what turned out.

So, in the late 1800s, the car was a brand new thing. They didn't call it the car back then, they called it the horseless carriage. And if that, that's if they were being generous. If they were not, then they would call it the devil wagon because that's literally what people called early cars. They called it the devil wagon. They threw rocks at these things. They scream. If you were to drive down the street of Brooklyn, New York, which is where I happen to be right now, and in a horseless carriage in the late 1800s, somebody would be standing on the side of the street and they would yell, Get a horse! at you. That's true. They'd yell, Get a horse. Decades, decades of Get a horse shows up in newspapers back then. It's hilarious. 

And the question is an interesting one, which is how did we go from the devil wagon, get a horse, throwing rocks at these things to the dominant mode of transportation worldwide. How'd that happen? The answer that people often give is Henry Ford.

Henry Ford was the person who revolutionized manufacturing and made cars, you know, faster and cheaper, and therefore more accessible, more affordable to more people. That's true, but actually, when I talked to a car historian, what I found was that Henry Ford was the beneficiary of a change that had happened earlier that set him up for success.

That's what I'm going to tell you. I swear to you, this is going to be relevant to dentistry. So here it is. Back in the early days of the car, like the early horseless carriages hitting the market, these things were marketed as a replacement to the horse. So the advertisers at the time would say, get rid of, get rid of, Dobbin. Dobbin is a generic name for a horse, like spot for a dog. Get rid of Dobbin and get this horse, right? That's what it said. That's what the ad said for the new, for the early cars. People hated that. Found that offensive. And they should have because they loved their horse. And every generation that they had known back in their family had a horse.

And now here come the late 1800s version of Silicon Valley tech bros telling them that the way that they've always been doing things is stupid and that they should get rid of it. People don't like that. You know why? Here's one of the morals of this story. Because people don't like new things. But you know what they do like?

They like better versions of old things. That's what they like. So, the car industry realized this, and they made an important change, which is that they stopped talking about the car as a replacement to the horse. And they started talking about the car as a better horse. They started to popularize terms like horsepower, which we still have today. They started to name cars after horses, which we still have today. Right? Mustang, Bronco. 

Wright: I was just taking notes. 

Feifer: They, they, they started putting mechanical horse heads on the front of cars, which we don't do today, obviously. But, this mattered and, look, people aren't stupid. It's not like everyone was like, oh, I guess it's a horse, right?

That's not what I'm talking about. Like, what mattered was that these people felt like the people who made these cars understood their needs and was talking to them in a language that they were familiar with. And it helped them see how this car fits into their lives in a way that it didn't before.

Because what that, what was the point of this car? What were you going to do with it? I mean, now it sounds obvious, but back then it really wasn't. And this shift, of not starting with the thing that you have, but rather starting with the thing that your audience is comfortable and familiar with. This is what I call the bridge of familiarity.

And the bridge of familiarity means that you start by understanding what is comfortable and familiar to the people who you serve. You understand their language, you understand their needs, you understand where they're coming from. And then you build a bridge that does not start with you and goes to them, but rather starts with them and goes to you.

And that's by always being respectful of what they need. And what they are comfortable with. So, you know, this started, ArNelle, with you asking this question about, well, what does it mean to introduce new things to, to people, to patients? And the answer is don't start with the new thing. You start with the old thing.

You start with the outcome of the old thing. What did they need and what was the positive outcome of how things used to be? Now let me tell you how you can get that outcome, that exact outcome in a way that is faster. In a way that's more painless, in a way that's simpler, whatever the case is, you start with them.

You start with their outcome, with their needs. That's how you build the bridge of familiarity. If you try to do it the other way, all people see is change and they equate that to loss and then they are nowhere with you.

Wright: [00:38:59] Amazing. Oh my gosh. An earful.

Ioannidou: [00:39:02] I love this. No, I, I love it because what you, you, what you just brought up, I think not only enhances the communication with the patient, but also improves the trust.

So as you said, the bridge from the patient towards you, I love this. And having said that, what do you think are additional elements that someone can, I mean, you already brought up the, I think the deep elements, the deep communication and the deep listening and how you relate with your patients. But is there anything else that you would like to add in terms of, you know, improving the business side and the business plan of the practice and how we enhance and we improve the diversity of the services in the practice?

Feifer: [00:39:43] Well, look, I, there's so many ways that we could go with that. And I'll just offer this as a umbrella way of thinking about these more granular changes, which is that when we experiment with new things, whether, whether we explore, maybe even experiment is not the right word, but when we explore, when we are open to, when we investigate new ideas, new ways of doing things, we tend to ask a question and it's a really terrible poisonous question.

And that question is, is this perfect? And, you know, we ask that because we romanticize the way that things used to be done. So the way things used to be done feel perfect to us. And therefore, if something new is less than perfect, then it feels lesser than, and therefore we should get rid of it. But that's not really right because number one, we're romanticizing the past, which is very different from actually assessing the past.

And number two, if you ask the question, is this perfect? Of literally anything. I don't care what it is. The answer is the same. The answer is no, it's not perfect. So if you ask the question, is this perfect of a new thing? The answer is going to be no. And then you're not going to do the new thing. And that's not a way to act.

So here's a better question to ask. Question is, is my new problem better than my old problem? Because when you ask that, you more realistically assess situations. You make room for problems. Problems aren't the end of something. And frankly, if you're in business, you should like problems. Problems are the reason you exist.

So, and that's not to say that we like want people to have problems, but we're in the business of solving problems. So when you introduce something new, I don't know, you know, whatever, whatever it is, you guys know the specifics of new technologies or new methodologies far better than me. But I can tell you that when you engage with these, it's not going to be perfect. It's going to create some new kind of problem that you're going to have to solve. 

But the question is, is it a better problem? Is it a better problem than the problem that you previously had? If the answer is yes, then that's progress. That's what it looks like. And then you get to solve that problem. Move on to the next better problem.

Ioannidou: [00:42:00] I like problems.

Wright: [00:42:02] I kind of feel like that was a good recap. Yeah. I feel like that was, that was like a wrap up right then and there. Like mic drop, literally .

Ioannidou: [00:42:09] No, no, it's true. And it's really, really, important to recognize the fact that the problems are opportunities. Because most of the people are, like, overwhelmed with problems. Yeah. Oh my God, I have a problem. I'm like, oh yeah. It's a puzzle. Let's solve it.

Feifer: [00:42:23] It's a puzzle. And you know, most people find problems overwhelming because they misidentify what the problem is. Quick example of that. I remember this is, this isn't a dental example, but whatever. It all applies.

I remember I was talking to a young advertising executive and he said, I have a question for you. I said, sure. He says, nobody is accepting my ideas. Do you think that I should just spend budget without approval to execute my ideas so that people see how smart they are? And I said, hold up. Because the problem here is that you don't actually know what problem you have, right?

Problems feel big and abstract, but they're not. They're actually really specific, and to understand the problem that you have and therefore find the solution, because every version of a problem requires a different solution, means to start picking apart, naming, and simplifying problems, and then experimenting on how to solve them.

So, for example, this young advertising executive is not getting his ideas through at meetings. Okay, so that's the problem he's seeing. But that's not actually the problem. What kind of problem does he have? Let's run some hypotheses. Does he have a junior problem? Which is to say that he is in an environment where senior people simply don't listen to junior people.

And that's his problem. Does he have a communication problem where he's not actually very good at communicating his ideas so his teammates don't really understand what he's saying. Does he have a trust problem? Has he not done enough team building so that people just don't know that he can really execute on these big ideas that he has?

Does he have a complexity problem where he's bringing ideas that are just too hard to execute and he needs to simplify? Until he knows what problem he actually has, he doesn't know how to solve it. But every problem that I just listed has a solution, right? If it's a junior problem, if it's just that he's on a team that does not, like, give the floor to entry level people, well then, what he should probably do is go find somebody a few steps above him and partner with them and share some of his ideas and see if he can work together and then take those ideas to the team together.

Let's see if that works. Does that not work? Well, then maybe it's a communication problem. Are you verbally pitching your ideas and nobody knows what you're talking about? Well, why don't you try to mock them up? Why don't you try to sketch them out? Why don't you do something so that people can see it better?

See if that solves the problem. But the problem is that we get so tied up that we have a problem that we don't spend any time trying to define our problem. And if we can't define our problem, then we definitely can't solve it.

Wright: [00:45:07] I feel like I was definitely the student today. This is so good. I'm just flabbergasted at all of those teachings.

Announcer: [00:45:14] On the next Dental Sound Bites.

Ioannidou: [00:45:17] Discover the secrets to negotiating your salary and uncover what's holding you back from your best financial future.

Wright: [00:45:28] We do have to end the show. I want to say thank you so much for being here. Can you tell all of our listeners, Jason, where can they find more about you and just tell us where, where can we connect with you online?

Feifer: [00:45:38] Yeah, sure. So guys. Thanks for having me. This is such a great conversation and like I said, such a delight coming from a son of a dentist to be having a conversation in this context.

So I'll give you two ways to connect with me. Number one is, I write a weekly newsletter. It is called One Thing Better. And a lot of the kinds of things that we've talked about today are the kinds of things that show up in that newsletter each week. It's one way to be more successful and satisfied and build a career or a company that you love.

So you can find that by going to the website, onethingbetter.email. That's a web address. So just plug it into a browser, onethingbetter.email. And then I have a book, which is a guide to resilience and adaptability in your career. It's called Build for Tomorrow. And you can find that wherever you find books in any format. So it's a audiobook on Audible or Spotify. It's a hardcover on Amazon. It's an eBook on Kindle, everything but stone tablets. We didn't do that one. Anyway, onethingbetter.email for the newsletter and Build for Tomorrow for the book.

Wright: [00:46:44] Thank you so much for being here with us.

Ioannidou: [00:46:46] Thank you so much, Jason. It was such a pleasure.

Feifer: [00:46:48] Oh, absolute pleasure. Thanks so much.

Wright: [00:46:50] And remember, if you like this episode, share it with a friend, then be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening so that you can get the latest episodes. You can also rate it, write a review and follow us on social media.

Ioannidou: [00:47:03] And don't forget. The conversation always continues on our YouTube channel and on the ADA Member aApp. Catch the bonus content and everything you didn't hear on the show.

Announcer: [00:47:16] Thank you for joining us. 

Dental Sound Bites is an American Dental Association podcast. You can also find this show, resources, and more on the ADA member app and online at ADA.org/podcast.