Are you struggling with growth, stuck in overwhelm, or unsure how to level up? You're gonna love my chat with Dr. David Pearce on reinventing your business (without starting over from scratch). From moving practices across state lines to shifting from dentistry to coaching, David shares hard-won wisdom on pivoting.
Can't-Miss Moments from This Episode:
This one's got lots of gold nuggets - listen now!
David's bio:
- Clinical Dentist for 39 years, helping people with dental disabilities and dental reconstruction
- Dental Coaching – Your Dental Coach™ - Ultimate Success in Dentistry
- Mentor: Kois Center, Seattle Washington
- Fellow: Misch Implant Institute, International Congress of Oral Implantology
- Board Diplomate: American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine
- Father, Husband, Christian, American
- Hobbies: Reading, Golf, Tennis, High Altitude Backpack hunting.
I owned three different practices in two states. After increasing revenue by 10x, I sold my last practice in 2021 and moved out of NYS to our homes in Florida and Montana. In 2022, I started my coaching business, Ultimate Success In Dentistry, and authored my first two books. Now I help dentists reach the business success I did, much faster.
Resources and links:
Let's collab:
Let's connect:
If you dig the show and want to help bring more episodes to the world, consider buying a coffee for the production team!
Are you struggling with growth, stuck in overwhelm, or unsure how to level up? You're gonna love my chat with Dr. David Pearce on reinventing your business (without starting over from scratch). From moving practices across state lines to shifting from dentistry to coaching, David shares hard-won wisdom on pivoting.
Can't-Miss Moments from This Episode:
This one's got lots of gold nuggets - listen now!
David's bio:
- Clinical Dentist for 39 years, helping people with dental disabilities and dental reconstruction
- Dental Coaching – Your Dental Coach™ - Ultimate Success in Dentistry
- Mentor: Kois Center, Seattle Washington
- Fellow: Misch Implant Institute, International Congress of Oral Implantology
- Board Diplomate: American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine
- Father, Husband, Christian, American
- Hobbies: Reading, Golf, Tennis, High Altitude Backpack hunting.
I owned three different practices in two states. After increasing revenue by 10x, I sold my last practice in 2021 and moved out of NYS to our homes in Florida and Montana. In 2022, I started my coaching business, Ultimate Success In Dentistry, and authored my first two books. Now I help dentists reach the business success I did, much faster.
Resources and links:
Let's collab:
Let's connect:
If you dig the show and want to help bring more episodes to the world, consider buying a coffee for the production team!
Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, Angie Coley, and let's get to it. Hi and welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass.
David Pearce:With me today is my new friend, Dr David Pierce Say hi, hey, angie, thanks for having me on the show there again.
Angie Colee:Oh, my pleasure. This has been an adventure getting the show to happen, sometimes as we are doing our pre-show walkthrough, like we got to fix audios, zoom is being a beast. Today I got to tell you that I'm excited for this. The energy feels real good.
David Pearce:Yes, we made it through, we're here. We made it. We made it, we're here.
Angie Colee:So tell us a little bit more about your business and what you do.
David Pearce:Yeah. So, back story, I'm a clinical dentist, so that means I've been doing dentistry for 38 years or so. I had a dental surgical practice I'll tell you more about that in a moment, if you wish In Syracuse, new York. Sold that in 2021. Finished patients up in 2022.
David Pearce:Then my wife and I moved to our homes in Florida and Montana. I've always been involved in the business side, coaching dentists. I'm more of a mastermind type group because my practice was too busy to really have a second business in addition to that. So once we moved there, I refocused all my energies into the coaching business, which is called Ultimate Success in Dentistry. That's been awesome. It's a great journey. The practice that I had.
David Pearce:Our mantra was changing people's lives one smile at a time, and so the thought behind that, rather than being cliche, was we were really doing full mouth surgical reconstruction. People who had really it's not really said this way, but they really had true dental disabilities. They were so ashamed of their smile They'd cover their mouth, put their hands out of their mouth, wouldn't take pictures, didn't want to go out in public. The idea of reinventing themselves after a relationship break up it's like I can't do that or just plain eating Like a friend's going to bite me over. I know she's going to serve that meal, I can't eat it, so I'll say no.
David Pearce:And to take folks in that and have them go and just have a totally new lease on life is just so rewarding. And so now I help dentists, basically on the business side, who have all that skill set but are just struggling with how do I put it together. So I have a team that supports that, the marketing supports that, the sales process supports that, and with the end goal being that patients can make that very large investment of time and money and emotion in themselves to just truly change your life. So I can live vicariously through these dentists that are just doing more and more and more of their work. So it's awesome.
Angie Colee:Oh, that's awesome. That sounds like such a great journey too. And okay, I want to unpack that a little bit. So tell me a little bit about building the practice. I mean, I know that we're kind of condensing this for purposes of a podcast, but that sounds like there was some learning and some growth to get to that point of business and then selling it. Ultimately, what was that journey like?
David Pearce:Yeah, sure how would I say? Painfully slow, because, yeah, yeah, because you know, it was all. You know like any business is never going to grow any bigger than the owner or the person that's running it. You know, if the owner totally steps aside and lets another team maybe run it in every sense and the owner doesn't get in the way, but in a smaller business, I think many times the owner is the key to the speed at which and the height at which that business goes to. For sure, and mine that was the case, and I think that my initial thought, because of the dentist that I met when I first came out of school, was that if you get really good clinically, you become a clinical master, whatever that looks like, then everything else takes care of itself and of course, of course you know that's a lie, it just doesn't work that way.
Angie Colee:It's like Kevin Costner movie If you build it, they will not come. Sorry.
David Pearce:Exactly. Yes, they may come, but they may turn around and go away and so, yeah, so, but that took me, I don't know, gosh, it's like two decades probably. We were in one state. My wife wanted to move to different states, to relocate states, so that took a while to stop and restart. Most of the patients don't follow you when you go from New England to middle New York state, so you start over and it's all good.
David Pearce:It's a great. It's a great, healthy, great move. So but at the end of that, somewhere around that, you know, into the second decade maybe of that work, I was looking and learning other things I love learning and started to become a parent that the business side had a lot of interest to me as well, and plus that that was really where the key of our next leap or next growth was going to come from. So then it was I really wished that I'd had access to, or I found, a coach type person, like somebody you know that I can take people in the sense like, oh, I've done it, I have everything to gain by you succeeding and let's do it really fast because there's a reason to do it. So but I didn't have that.
David Pearce:But at the same point in time we had lots of great you know, there's lots of great resources and books and all that kind of information is out there.
David Pearce:So we just kind of piece at a time. And how do you put together a team that wants to be there, engaged team or got better at figuring that out, become a leader in myself, you know, like you know, nobody's going to follow something less than a leader patients, or and then on the sales and the marketing, what, what, you know, how can we do that? What does that look like for us? The very more and more became a specialty, niche type of an office, in this far as the type of work we're doing and the scope of the work we're doing. So, yeah, that was a fun journey and I guess it was nice in a sense that when I decided I wanted to leave the practice of dentistry, it was still growing, I was still learning, I was still going to the top of my game, so to speak. So it's nice to leave at that point, as opposed to people saying you probably should have left a few years ago.
Angie Colee:Yeah, I'm a big fan of following that strategy too. I worked for a big name marketer a celebrity marketer, I think, tony Robbins but for online businesses, and I left that. When they were like, I turned to my notice and they kept giving me project work after that so that I could stay working with the team in some capacity, and at one point I had to be like guys, I got, we got to call it, we got to be done. And when people asked me why I did that, especially when they were like we'll keep you on with contract work, I was like, yeah, it was one of those things where I could feel it shifting inside me and I didn't really want to do that work anymore. But I loved the people and I didn't want that relationship to burn. When my apathy ultimately kicked in and I stopped doing as good a job as I normally would, so like leave on a high note. I'm a big fan of that.
David Pearce:Right, yeah, yeah, and the space that I went into I was excited about that too. I mean the night and day, in the sense that clinical dentistry it's. I don't know if a patient outside would think about it, but for me the start. A patient goes to sleep at eight o'clock in the morning and at one o'clock you're still bent over the same patient working that. Physically there's a little bit of a rule to that, but the biggest piece probably is the obvious is it's a brick and mortar business, so you have to be there, yeah, and when you're not there, that thing called overhead is saying feed me, feed me, feed me. And so that compared that to becoming a coach, where I didn't even coach from anywhere. Yeah, yeah, anyway, really. So that's great.
David Pearce:So you have that freedom of having it fit into your life all the time, as opposed to looking at saying how do we? My office? We close the office 12 to 14 weeks a year, so there was a lot of time that everybody was off, but even with that, there's still another 40 weeks a year where you got to be there. You can't be someplace else. And so that was part of the just a lifestyle change, of incorporating that into our lifestyle, my wife and I. It's great, yeah, so it's perfect. It's just the right time, yep.
Angie Colee:Oh, I love that, and I'm curious about this, because this is how I had to learn it too. Did you find, when you wanted to free up more space in your calendar, that you had to claim the space first, or did you ever get to a point where the space just kind of naturally opened up from the changes that you were putting in place?
David Pearce:Oh yeah, Definitely the former. Yeah, you don't, you don't schedule it, it doesn't happen. Whatever, whatever that is no. If it's a, if it's a certain procedure, if it's a certain time off, a certain course, you know it's like forget it. Yeah, you got to schedule it.
Angie Colee:I suspected that was the case, but I'm hoping that one day somebody surprises me. But, like, the takeaway for anybody listening here is that if you want something to change, you have to block it out on your calendar and you have to make it important. Otherwise the work will fill up every available moment, if you let it you can't let it.
David Pearce:That's so true, Angie. That is so true.
Angie Colee:And I think what's really interesting to me and all of this. You know, I've spoken to over a hundred business owners since I started this and when I started the show, I really thought that I was going to focus exclusively on creative service providers writers, photographers, things like that but I've noticed this incredible overlap with literally every business that I've spoken to You're you're one of, I think, five dentists that I've spoken to so far.
Angie Colee:But I hear that same thing that, like, I have to be present, I have to show up on, like my background is in marketing and copy, so I have to show up on these calls. I have to be present at meetings, I have to do the work. Nobody else is going to do this work for me in my business. And it's interesting to hear so many parallels, though I am curious because I never realized until you said it. It's such an obvious thing that you don't think about the physicality of literally having to work in this tiny space, in this limited position of movement. Oh my gosh. Yeah, all of my gratitude to the dentists that have helped me over the years.
David Pearce:Yeah, well, it is, you know, of course it's. You know the dentists, the assistants, the hygienists, not necessarily the front desk, because that's more of a administrative computer type position, but they're all you know, bending over the exact same repetitive motion things. You know all those kind of things that then creep up on you after a certain number of years of doing that repetitive type work.
David Pearce:Yeah, it's yeah it takes this whole on lots of folks. Yeah, for sure. You see a lot of hunched over dentists walking around Angie. When you now, when you start looking at, oh, dentists must be dentists, oh, hygienists, they're an assistant.
Angie Colee:That's gotta be what it is and then, on top of that, to be you know, I imagine that a lot of the people that you work with are resistant or fearful or scared or nervous when they get into your chair. I mean, I wouldn't say that I'm like, hey, let's get in the chair, like happy to go to the dentist, but I know that I'm pretty easy going about it. I imagine not everybody's that way.
David Pearce:Yeah, you know, I think that that was part of our niche, that the actual name of the practice was was a gentle dentistry Balanzo gentle dentistry and I was found there are so many little tiny things that you can do, just physically little tiny things you can do to make it so much easier on people.
David Pearce:And I always, you know what we, what I certainly found was true, is that the biggest thing this is my, this is one person's opinion, but with a lot of research and thought behind it is that the hardest part for people going to the dentist is embarrassment and being judged. And so if you, if they can go someplace and I know somebody tell you like, really, no, like, like these guys aren't, you're not going to feel judged. If you feel judged as you judging yourself, it's not words or things you're doing, because they're just like there to help you and we just got, we got really good about just being as pure to that as we could be, just be empathetic. Like you know, we all have our shortcomings in our lives and just happens to be there as a dentistry, but we all, you know, we all have stuff that we wouldn't want pushed around. But they can't send their mouth mail order. They have to show up, you know, and so.
Angie Colee:I just like to take this off for a day, yeah that's right, yeah, so you have to accompany it.
David Pearce:Therefore, you're going to be judged because your teeth are coming with you and so when you get rid of that, you know, people try, looked at and said like these people are truly, you know, listening to me, they're paying attention to me, they're coming up with a plan that's specific for me and and and, and it makes sense why it's right or wrong and so forth that that I think that just maybe, that maybe because our process involve I don't know two or three hours at least where a person's in the chair before anything was put in their mouth. You know, we're just talking and gathering information and let's figure out something together. That probably for many folks, that was enough, where they looked at and said at some, at some level, at least I want to trust these people. I can't, I don't know, but at least I want to trust them because I'm getting a good feeling of that. So that was our objective and then to largely, we were successful and I think that's probably why so many people ultimately said okay, I want you guys to help me out.
Angie Colee:So I love that. It makes a huge difference. I know that there was gosh. It was last year, it was 2022.
Angie Colee:I'm a digital nomad and I travel around from different places. I've been on the family farm for a while working on my book, but normally I'm on the road just visiting different places. And I was in Vegas when I woke up one morning with not excruciating pain, but just a little bit in the jaw, to the point where I was like I don't like that and I don't want it to get worse, so I'm just gonna go ahead and schedule an appointment today with a dentist. I called around to a few highly rated places and wound up at one on the mother of bad mornings. So, oh my gosh, I walked into this office in a mood. My car battery was dead because I stupidly left the lights on. I was surprised by my Airbnb host sending over an electrician at eight o'clock in the morning without telling me when.
Angie Colee:I'm on my way out the door to this emergency dental appointment, I met with one of those it sounds so random Honda Civic drivers are like the Chihuahuas of drivers, Like if you do something to offend them, they will just attack, like psychotically. So there was a light that was out and I was trying to get into a left turn lane and nobody was letting me in. So I pulled out my intertext and was like all right, signal is on, that is my space. And I pissed off a Civic driver who pursued me for miles, flashing his lights and trying to run me off the road. That was the mood that I walked into the dentist's office and I found like they were there. They were in such a great mood. I sat in the chair. There was a TV on the ceiling and I was like, oh great, like I don't feel compelled to like talk with your fingers in my mouth, like that Ricky Gervais talking animal Scared.
Angie Colee:I was like and they took such good care of me and I was like I don't have dental insurance, how do we work this out? So they helped me figure out a price that was affordable and it just so happened that I picked a place that could do. It turned out I had cracked a molar so they could do all of the stuff in house same day if I was willing to wait. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is just. Thank you so much for taking care of me and for making this is a great experience on a day when I, like I, was about this far away from biting people's heads off. That didn't deserve it. All of that from a dentist's office, that's fantastic. Like I don't know why, I felt compelled to share that story, but that was my experience with it.
David Pearce:So, yeah, that's great. Well, not everybody has a good dentist story, so we need to get that on here.
Angie Colee:Yes, that is so true, and it was interesting to me. Like you mentioned a couple of things that I want to unpack. One was this you know, taking a business to another place and having to start over, and the fact that you can't take your people with you. I think that's one thing that holds a lot of entrepreneurs back, especially people that do have physical locations. This idea of having to rebuild and how much work that would be what ultimately like, swayed you toward that and made the move worth it in the end, or was it?
David Pearce:Well, yes, either that or I'd have no family. So it was actually pretty easy, angie, given the choices we have in life, you know. Yeah, no, we had just moved. My wife grew up in the city of Syracuse. I was doing a hospital residency program. She was working the same hospital. We met and got to know each other at a romantic level, but nothing serious.
David Pearce:I bought a practice in New Hampshire. She was looking for a change of place, so she moved to Vermont. We stayed in touch, eventually got married, had some young kids and at some point just said this small town isn't enough for me, I want to get back around my family. And so, you know, we talked about it a lot and it just was like she just wasn't gonna, couldn't get herself happy in that place, and Mr Fam way too much. So you know it's like okay, so it just makes sense, you know.
David Pearce:But at the same time what you can't take from somebody, for instance. So I worked in, I bought a practice there, I had some success with that, whatever that looked like. But when you go to the new place like all that success it's all in your head. It's on paper, but it's all in your head, so you don't have to reinvent that part, you can just take that and so you're hitting the ground running way faster than you did before. So it's not like you have to repeat the process and sometimes, you know, the new location can even have.
David Pearce:You know, there are things about Syracuse that I left there for a reason. I moved to another place for a reason, but they're from a business standpoint. There's things about Syracuse that make it easier to thrive in a business perhaps, than might someplace else. You know, for instance, a smaller town like we moved to. So yeah, so no, I had no regrets that. You know, it's like one of those. I don't know if people think about it. I think about a lot. You know. You say like, well, what would you have done if you stayed there? And be like, how would you know if I get in the state? It's like all you can do is take a while and guess what would have happened, but there's no way of knowing what would have happened. So you know, you don't even think about it, just go.
Angie Colee:Amen Louder for those of us who obsessively planned and wonder about all of the different paths that we could be taking, like for those of us in the back that are overthinking the hell out of this louder for them. You can't know what the road looked like that you didn't take, and so you can't build that up in your head to be something that it wasn't, because you have no idea it could have been better, it could have been exactly the same, could have been a hell of a lot worse.
Angie Colee:You're on the path that you're on.
David Pearce:Right, yep, let's go forward. There you fell over your shoulder. Yeah, I mean stupid little things, right? You mean you missed the semi that got out of control coming down the hill because you weren't there to be in that road. It's like you wouldn't think. I mean, I don't think about that stuff, but life that always has stuff you can't predict, so don't try to predict, they just go.
Angie Colee:Oh yeah, that's kind of the state that I'm in. I find myself, at the business events that I go to, usually being the driver of some sort, usually carting people around in my rental car, for whatever reason, and it could be because I'm the daughter of two truck drivers, but it also could be because I refuse to road rage and I just trust. If I got caught in traffic, cool, that probably is preventing me from being in a place where that car is barreling down the road and I would have been in the path. We're just gonna trust.
David Pearce:That's right. That's all you can do.
Angie Colee:Well, and I was hoping that you would say something like that, but of course I never asked. I never know, when I asked the question, what the conversation is gonna be like. But you mentioned that you're not technically starting over from absolute zero, and I think that's the part that we missed so much in these entrepreneurial conversations that if you make a big choice like this, where technically you would have to be starting over and doing something new in a new place with new customers, you could build so much faster because you don't have to figure these things out all over again. You've got a good baseline of what success looks like and an idea of how to get there, so you can build a lot faster the second time around and maybe even improve on some things from the first time around. Is that accurate?
David Pearce:Oh yeah, and of course, the biggest in my journey, everybody's journey there is that technical know-how. For sure, there's no question. The biggest thing is just your mindset about success. So if you look at and said, even if you limit yourself and say, by limiting yourself by some sort of easily measured metric which isn't necessarily a mindset thing, but we'll say so if you said, oh well, my income was this. Well, what was your income out of school? Well, it wasn't that big. Okay, so we're starting at a higher expected income. What was the revenue in the business? Well, the day one in the new business is zero in the first year. So after extra reviews, it was higher, right? Yep? Well then you're starting in your mind, like that's the number you kind of expect, like anything less than that your deserve. Level says no, you're better than this, and that alone will push you to that point. So it is the technical part, for sure, but it's always the mindset that's going to warp, speed you to an amazing place or it's going to keep you nailed to the ground.
Angie Colee:Oh, yes, absolutely, and it was interesting because I just finished writing a book and we were talking before we started recording about your book that's going to come out. We're going to give people a link to that at the end of the show. But while I was doing research, that same old scary stat popped up about how many businesses fail when they first start. It was something like 18% of businesses survived beyond the first, however many years, and that's a scary stat to somebody that's doing this for the first time or maybe working up the courage to try again the second time after a failure happened. I know that that happened to me.
Angie Colee:My first experience freelancing was an abject failure, but the funny part to me when I came across that article was that you never know. That stat, while widely cited, is also incomplete, because they spoke to the same thing that you just mentioned, which is but subsequent ventures started by those entrepreneurs that failed the first time tend to find success at much more exponential and faster rates because they're learning with every failure. They're learning what to improve and they're iterating. It's interesting to me that that stat popped into my mind. I was like, yeah, here we go, seeing it all over again.
David Pearce:Sure, I think too. I mean, it's great to have all this mindset inside yourself, but there's no question in my journey, the further I journeyed, the more I was able to put together a community of people who were doing the same and you could separate yourself from the naysayers that were like, well, mine's going to fail, yours will fail too, as opposed to those who were like, yeah, well, whatever, mine's struggling, but it's better than it was, I'm moving forward, I'm doing this and doing that. So the more you can put a bubble around your brain and say, okay, I'm just going to talk to people that expect to succeed. I'm not going to talk to people that expect to get divorced. Why would I have a client of people like that? I'll talk to people that want to have a successful marriage and people that want to have a successful business, and the other folks. I'll just try to give them a little pass, maybe for now.
Angie Colee:With all the love I have. Don't project your shit on me Like your experience is not universal, but I appreciate the love and concern that I know that you're coming from, or I'm going to assume that you're coming from, because I'm going to assume the best right. That's so great. And that ties into another thing that I wanted to bring up that you mentioned earlier, which was coaching, because I know that I experienced some skepticism and some resistance towards coaching in the beginning, because I had a lot of head trash around, people trying to take advantage of me and like, oh, this is the teacher, can't do so they teach, kind of scenario.
Angie Colee:But since then I've come to learn that while, yes, there are some outliers in every industry I mean, there's bad writers, there's bad dentists, there's bad actors everywhere If you go into this with a sense of here's the problem that I'm trying to solve and I know somebody out there can help me, odds are you're going to find somebody that can help you shortcut the process and I just I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with that, other than I want to destroy this idea, especially this like American exceptionalism, capitalism, tight idea of it's only worth it if I suffered and struggled through it on my own, and I didn't need any damn help.
Angie Colee:But that's never true, right, it's never true, that is not one single successful entrepreneur, or even entrepreneurs that weren't so successful that I met, that got anywhere without help.
David Pearce:I mean somebody someplace invented this microphone I'm talking to you with. It's like, yeah, I mean we're always standing on the hands, of the arms, of the shoulders of giants before us that allow us to go the next step further if we choose. So, yeah, I know you're absolutely right. Yeah, I mean it's kind of silly.
David Pearce:Well, I don't know, I love there's a book called Sword with your Strengths which is kind of related to this and it really kind of talks about, if you like, it maybe comes from a faith standpoint, but if you believe, everybody has certain strengths and gifts in them, which I certainly do, I mean. And this particular book looks at schools and says, you know, schools says well, if you're getting a B plus a minus a math, we'll leave that alone. If you get a C minus D and social studies, we'll work on social studies. This book would say, well, why would we do that? I mean, we're trying to make everybody mediocre and average. Why not take the A minus person and turn them into absolute mathematical extremist, because they probably like getting their good at it and then make this, make the social studies good enough, so it doesn't get in the way of the math, and to me that's I love that.
David Pearce:It makes so much sense. It's like, well, why don't we do that with everything? Why do we? Why do we? But anyway, I'm, I'm going to have myself, I'm sure, in some way or another. So it's like that point, if you looked at it and said, well, if I have this amazing gift and I can hook up with this person, that person, that person's just going to accelerate that A minus into an, a plus into a. Well then that's good to the world, because I may come up with some ideas that I wouldn't have otherwise, that can help somebody else on their leg.
Angie Colee:Yes, and you're operating in your zone of genius to things that are that feel good, that are probably easy for you but are not easy for other people. Like that's the thing that drives me the most nuts about this is that I see so many talented people that are down on themselves because they they fall for the marketing messaging right and I don't mean that in a derogatory, haha, you got full sense but a you know, the marketing convinces you that you're missing something. You might not be missing something. It might not have to be hard at all because you might have that natural strength that you you just talked about. Um, I struggled with that for a long time and I recently discovered something called the strengths finder. I don't know if you've heard about that or not.
Angie Colee:I got. I beat myself up and I got beat up a lot for not being very disciplined and for being inconsistent. I run it, considering we're on a production schedule for a podcast that I've put out for over 140 episodes right.
David Pearce:Well done yes.
Angie Colee:Those were literally out of the 34 strengths that it measured. This assessment measured consistency and discipline are 33 and 34 for me super far down.
David Pearce:Not 110, not 110. No, Angie, that's good.
Angie Colee:That is true, that is true, but it was funny. I noticed that when I was talking to the, the coach that helped me with this assessment shout out to Mary Ann Grammig Um, I was like so what is it that allows me to be disciplined and consistent in some areas, where in others I completely fall flat and she goes. Well, you leveraged your strengths, your top strengths, which are actually um activator somebody who can bring an idea into reality and strategy. You leverage those to create a process and a system that allowed you to show up and do the fun part for you, which is talking to people. The rest of this is going to happen with my team and my editor, and I get to show up and do the fun part. That's right.
Angie Colee:That all came through the strengths, which came through asking for help, which came through people approaching me and saying you should have a podcast. I really like your voice and me reacting with. Well, that's dumb. I don't like my voice, it's weird.
Angie Colee:And also I don't know the first thing about doing a podcast. So where would I even start? Oh, go talk to this person, go talk to that person. And all of this even us just sitting here is a result of having the courage to admit that I don't know how to do this and I would rather just ask for somebody's help than try to beat my head against the wall and figure it out by myself. For instance, we met through a site called Podmatch. Shout out to Alex and Phillipo Put together a fantastic platform.
Angie Colee:I had this audacious goal to be on 40 podcasts or stages or articles or some combination thereof, by the time I turned 40 on December 1st. We're recording this in November. It's going to air in 2024, but you know, you're here, you're traveling back in time to hear me talk in November and about. I made that announcement in June and I want to say about August I noticed I'm only like just over 20. And if I don't hit the gas soon, I don't know if I'm going to make it. And I'm not getting a response from the places that I've sent pitches out to, despite the follow-up, and the leads are coming in much slower than they were at the beginning. I don't know if I'm going to make it and that makes me upset I need to really ramp up my outreach, but I don't know what to do.
Angie Colee:So I made a post online about how I was frustrated and I told a couple of people like I'm looking to get on more podcasts but I don't know how to get there. And people suggested Podmatch and I signed up for that and I got like instantly booked on a whole lot of shows. They weren't all the best fit for what I was trying to do, but it broke that plateau that I had been at and I very easily could have fallen into that. Well, I'm not going to make it. Let's go focus on other things. Trap. I'm glad. I'm so glad I asked for help. That was the point of that Rance.
David Pearce:Yeah, that's great. Well, in your perseverance, right you, like you said, no, knock me down, get back up. So well done, Angie.
Angie Colee:And then we get to have fantastic conversations like this. I'm always delighted. I never know what to expect in conversations like this, because it's just fascinating to hear how people in different industries do business, what people have learned. So, yes, thank you for allowing me to do this, to geek out over stuff like this Thanks for the invitation Without you.
David Pearce:So you're the master mistress here is leading the way, so good for you, well done.
Angie Colee:Awesome, thank you. Well, hey, abrupt segue into. So we talked about the growth of the business, we talked about moving the business and all of the learnings within. Talk to me a little bit more about pivoting into coaching other dentists to build a successful practice, like what led up to that. I know you mentioned a little bit about the wanting to get more time and more flexibility, but I'd love to hear about that.
David Pearce:Yeah, well, I was fortunate and still fortunate to be in a mastermind group. This is about maybe 30, 35 dentists or so and all just just an amazing group, just incredibly bright, talented, just awesome group. And we get together quarterly. There's a very talented businessman, thinker, big, big idea thinker, who facilitates it for us and what the idea behind those is. People have a little clinical questions that they're always sidebar. It's all about like so here's this guy on my business, how do I do this, how do I do that? All that kind of stuff, and I just really enjoyed those. Every time we had a me as like a positive energy. That was awesome. But the questions and so forth and the folks in the room were always very kind, saying I, david, you seem to have the ability to take these complex issues, boil them down to the simple little steps and actual steps that I could do Monday, and so that, yeah, so that way, that felt good, getting that feedback from peers, and so I at the end of the clinical part I looked at and said, well, I had success in my own business and part of part of what I noticed on my clinical journey to you know, getting those advanced skills and it's so easy, maybe easy in a sense that so available to get those skills today in these courses. And so there are many students in there that I would meet them and I'd be so intimidated by how, just a vernacular, the scope of what they would know and all this kind of stuff, and we might get talking over a lunch break or something and like so, like you're doing this stuff like all day long, right, and they'd be like no once in a while, it's like so, like, how did you choose not to do it all day long? I said, well, you know, insurance doesn't pay for this, that or people or this, or, and all these excuses. And so, you know, I just kept hearing more and more of that thought, man, such a shame. Because you know, at whatever level of ability I have, we were very successful at helping lots of folks get us to get very good, very good results there, and these people should be doing the same or more because they just have more gifted.
David Pearce:And it wasn't happening. And I saw in lots of different scenarios. And so I, you know, kind of looked at that and said, well, we're able to do it in my office I seem to have some ability to help people, not in my office, through this mastermind that I've been in for six, seven, eight years. So if I marry those two, then I could do something that feels very significant. You know, I'm helping one person at a time. I'm not going to. I don't want to sit in front of a thousand people and talk about something conceptually for a few hours and walk away. I want to really hold somebody by the hand, so to speak. Okay, first steps, let's talk every week, let's see what we're going to do. How did that work out? What's next step? Really kind of lay it out, best tracker, which is exactly what we're doing.
David Pearce:And so I think that you know it just was just, it just made sense. The part that didn't make sense was, you know, in my mind it was like, well, and I mean, everybody's an ego, I would say mine's intact, but you wouldn't probably notice it. And so you know the idea of people just coming to me in the mastermind. People just came to me, they did, what do you think about this, what do you think about that? And, of course, my office. Everybody goes to the doctor and says, well, you know, whatever, whatever that is. So, but when I wasn't in that space. Nobody came to me because they don't know me. Like, why would I go talk to David? He's not a coach, he's never been a coach, he's never been a consultant, he's a bull of the radar type guy.
David Pearce:And so the idea of writing a manual, or like I don't want to write a manual, and some of my friends said you would never want to write a manual, you know what I take to write, you know two, three hundred pages, like that's just horrible. So anyway, I hired a coach to teach me how to coach and he said, well, you're going to need a manual. And I said, why? So he said, well, you got something deliverable. I mean, I know you had great success and it looks good on paper and it's great. Talking to you, obviously you know you're doing, but I'm telling you, if you don't have something to give people, like they're just going to be, like why would I pay you any amount of money, much less of considerable amount of money when? So anyway, he convinced me. So you know, four or five, six hundred pages later, okay, the manual stuff. And the same coach says, well, you know people, really, they got got something, but they still don't know you.
David Pearce:And if you, you may attempt me. You may feel about the same way, angie, about your book. If you want to be an expert in your field, you won't find an expert in any field, true expert, that hasn't written a book. It's like that's just part of being seen as an expert. So you're going to need to write a book. So the first five years this year, I thought, well, you know, I got time, I'm not practicing anymore, I'm in a new house, you know, and so forth. So I got, you know things are about that's not done, you know it's in a brand new house, so okay. So actually I wrote two books. I didn't tell you a second rest or two books when I sent in the publisher. I'm just going to self publish myself. A distinction now.
Angie Colee:And so I'll never, I'll never do podcasts.
David Pearce:Why would I do a podcast? I don't want to do a podcast. So, like, this is what I am, I'm 30 or 35, but I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to do that. So some of the processes have been fun Just I use that word loosely fun reinventing myself in a different space, and but it gives me such a great appreciation, you know, for the folks that are starting out a business on their own. It's like, you know, back to my other business that was so entrenched to success that, as long as we paid attention to it, kept doing things, stay current, you know, keep them on top of marketing. It's like it was. It was a rolling big snowballs rolling along. Yeah, where as a new venture like this, it's like no, there's no snow here at all. We're just trying to get a little snowball here so we can push it on the ground. So so it's there.
Angie Colee:There were so many great things that you said in that that I want to unpack a little bit Like this idea of reinvention. I think like we've got a lot of subtext and baggage attached to that concept. It often feels like we have to burn it down to the ground and completely rebuild which we've already established is not a thing that you need to do. So like if we're approaching this from ease, from simplicity, from leaning into our strengths, from leaning into our passions. You said the perfect thing that I want people to take away from this and pay attention, to listen, for people that are coming up to you and paying compliments and asking questions with nothing to gain from saying that. Those are signals that I always love to pay attention to. That's what got me to start the podcast.
Angie Colee:Like I had a number of people at different events unrelated to didn't know each other. All came up and said the same thing independently of each other and I went oh, maybe there's something here, and so you had the same thing. People that come up to you and say, oh well, this is a thing that you know and you start to put together. Not only is this a thing that I have to value, even though I'm looking at folks and going this is intimidating, like I can't teach you anything, I can't work with it. I'm here to learn from you. I've had that experience with so many of my mentors and colleagues. Where I'm over in my corner talking about well, I can't contribute to this conversation because look at all these brilliant people over here and they're thinking the same thing about me.
David Pearce:I wish Angie would come over and join us so she could drop some pearls on us yeah.
Angie Colee:Like this intimidation factor. A lot of the time the other people that you are comparing yourself to are feeling the exact same thing about you or other people in the room. So at least there's that universal sense that like, do I really know what I'm doing? Do I? Why would people talk to me about that? And that ties in perfectly to what you said about building a reputation. I feel like a lot of us feel this pressure to kind of go out and Facebook ads and build a community and build a following and all of that stuff. And, on the one hand, what you said about building authority with a book is totally accurate. I used to think that that was complete and utter bullshit by people who are trying to sell books. But having worked on this thing for the better part of five years and realizing how hard it is to bring these ideas into the world at least for it was for me I'm not going to say that's universal, but not everybody's going to do that, because it's hard work. So I absolutely understand that the people that get to the finish line and publish a book are in authority. That was a lot of work and that's a labor of love sometimes, but that ties perfectly Like.
Angie Colee:I remember early in my copywriting career that I was experiencing some challenges with the clients that I was working with who were constantly arguing with me and I don't say that in a sense of like Angie's right, how dare you argue with me? But like, clearly something is disconnecting If you hired me for a thing and then everything I recommend you argue against. Like something has broken here. And I remember talking. I was frustrated I'm venting to one of my friends and we happened to be at a conference for copywriters and they just point blank asked me Angie, why are you working so hard to build your reputation with people who have no idea what you can do and what you're capable of and they don't know your skills, versus continuing to lean into the people on the other side of that door right there who know exactly who you are and what your skills are and what you bring to the table. And that was like God, I love having people like that in your corner. That will show you how you're kind of thinking in circles and not really moving forward.
Angie Colee:Because I fired that client. They clearly we just weren't a good fit and they didn't see my strategies as viable. So give up on trying to convince them. That fight a downhill battle and I got a new client right after that. That was a perfect fit and that work was full of ease and joy. And, oh my gosh, we had fun brainstorming the ideas but that was like a long kind of shiny thread ramble. But I think it all connects in such a beautiful way that like this can be easy. You can ask for help, you can pay attention to the people that ask you for help and come up with a brand new offer and a new, a next new stage, without feeling this pressure to go into a cave and reinvent yourself.
David Pearce:Okay, yeah, that's, yeah, very well said. I like that yeah.
Angie Colee:Well, thank you, that was my goodness.
David Pearce:The idea of going back, you know, the other side of the door. That's a very good. Yeah, that's a very good, very good picture. I can see that clearly.
Angie Colee:You've already got people in your life, no matter what stage of business that you're at, that know you and know your potential and, just like you said earlier, with the the putting a bubble around your brain and the people that just don't get it, you can ignore the people that just don't get it. You can love them from a distance and just not invite them to join you on the business journey and then just go play in the sandbox with the people that get what you're trying to build and will will build you up along the way. We're here, I promise we're all here. David's here, I'm here, we're here.
David Pearce:That's true, you're absolutely right.
Angie Colee:I just looked down and realized we're coming up against time, so I'm going to say I want to keep going. We're going to have to book in another two, because I another episode to talk about this, because I love this. Tell us more about your businesses where we can learn about you. Drop the links. Tell us about the book. I want it all.
David Pearce:Oh, okay, sure, yeah. So the no particular order. The book is called peak success and entrepreneurial guide to business prosperity. You can get it on Amazon. I think the end of this week, first part next week is available on Amazon. And then a website is called ultimate. Maybe the business is called ultimate success in dentistry website A little different, so you have to listen to it Ultimate successdentist. There's no calm or order in that ultimate successdentist. And then this, and then the second book has a phrase and I'll just I'll leave you lingering on this, a phrase called 4M 40. So there's another website called 4M 40.com which takes you to the website and the second book ebook and so forth. And then the social stuff. You know, linkedin is usual Backslash David hyphen, our hyphen hyphen, pierce hyphen DDS, but really, if you just go to the website, there's all kinds of information there and some giveaways and silver. That way is current and fun and so, yeah, that's easy. This way I'm easy to find.
Angie Colee:Well, and it's going to be even easier because we're going to make sure that there are clickable links in the show notes Super easy for people to reach out and connect. Thank you so much. This was such a great conversation to happen today Lots of energy, lots of lessons. I love it, thank you. Thank you, angie. That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the permission to kick ass podcast on Apple podcast, spotify and wherever you stream your podcast. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.