You must show up as a leader.

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At the end of the Korean-American dental business conference after I’d given my speech, the last speaker wasn’t able to make the scheduled uh conference. So what we did instead was we had a panel of all these speakers who had gone before and we all sat in a row and the audience asked us questions and it was an amazing site. There was R.J. who was I think at one point or still is the CEO of Aspen Dental. There were uh people who were talking about AI, virtual assistants, how to buy and sell and all

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this other stuff. And I was asked a question that at the time cuz I was on the spot I didn’t really have a good answer for. So I just gave out some generic answer and um I thought about it more and decided to make a video about it. And the question was, if you had something to say to young doctors or people who were starting a new practice, um something that they could hold on to as they started their careers, what would it be? And I think at the time I answered with um lead with empathy or sorry, not lead with empathy,

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but like um cultivate empathy, uh patience and uh generosity. So those three things and I and I those are true but I I I think I could phrase or wrap it better and I’m not taking away from my previous answer. I do believe that empathy lets us do the work of understanding what the people we seek to serve want. That we can understand that when when we understand what they want, we’re able to serve them in a way that others who don’t have that empathy can’t. So it’s a very very powerful thing to start

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cultivating especially in healthcare. The second thing was I had the order wrong. So it’s empathy um generosity and then patience. Order doesn’t really matter but let’s talk about generosity. So generosity is one of the things that motivates us and gets us to do things that are difficult because of generosity. There’s times where I led with ego where I started and my motivation was egoic. Uh, and it doesn’t get me very far. It didn’t get me very far. But whenever I took the stance of generosity,

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it would lead me to do things and motivate me to do things that I wouldn’t have done if it was just about myself. And not to sound cheesy or cliche, um, that it just was the truth. and at least for me. So for example, I think when a parent does something very difficult or puts themselves in harm’s way for their child without second thought, I think that’s work of generosity. And for me to go up on stage, which I have terrible stage fright, and to give a speech, um I was I had to focus on generosity or else I

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don’t know if I would have been able to do it. And I remember um the night before I went to bed before the speech, I had typed out generosity onto my computer so that when I woke up that it would be the first thing I saw on my screen and so it would ground me and remind me to lead with generosity. So generosity is a huge thing to start cultivating um along with empathy because it will give you the motivation and fuel to do very difficult things. All right. And then patience because you can have the most empathy, you can have

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the most generosity, but if they’re just not ready, and I guess this ties in with empathy, that we get to be very patient and understand that everyone’s timeline is different. We get to engage with them without an agenda of this has to be done at this point or you have to work on my timeline. patience allows the other two of um empathy and generosity to work and because the timing won’t always be right. It’s just no matter how empathetic you are, no matter how generous you are, they might just not be

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in the right situation. Um and then the last thing I added, I threw in there because again, I was just winging it. I added time. That it’s very important to give yourself a long time horizon. you can have the best workout plan, but if you don’t have enough time to implement it, the most perfect workout plan won’t do anything for you. So, those were the four things. All right, so now let’s go back to after that where I was just kind of thinking about if I could go back and answer that

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question, how would I have answered it? And I would say that if I had to just give one advice, um, not to say those aren’t valid, they really are. And hopefully you can see how it is valid. But it would be to show up as a leader. To show up as someone who is looking to take a group of people and take them to a better place, right? The work of getting people on board. I see a vision of a better future. I don’t really know how we’re going to get there, but if that interests you, come along with it. I think the way of

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showing up as a leader is so important especially in today’s economy where we have enough we have enough dentists we have enough things to buy we have enough food we have enough water and of course I’m making a broad generalization of most people um there’s for sure impoverished people underserved people um people in desperate needs but in our realm that we’re working in, we have enough. And in this economy where we have enough, if we just show up as another commodity, as another provider, as just another

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choice, then unfortunately, it’s just too easy to ignore average people today. So if we want to show up and start a career and make an impact and which also translates to personal and business success, then we have to show up as leaders. We have to show up as people who are not just average, as people who are pushing the boundaries. And if we’re not ready to show up as a leader, it doesn’t really matter. And fortunately my previous answer I think was also valid because when we start to cultivate generosity

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the only way to be even more generous I think is to quit a job if you’re working in a job because by nature the job has is going a direction and when we cultivate just generosity and we try to always push the boundaries of how generous we can be, it’s likely that you’re going to want to go a different way, like not necessarily aligned with that path. Um, you’re going to want to see things in the system that are broken because even the best systems aren’t perfect. And as you try to

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improve on those because of your generosity, you will start to show up as a leader. So um just to recap, if you had to start today, what advice would I give to help you show up in a way that succeeds and thrives in today’s world? It would be to show up as a leader. Someone who is helping people get from where they currently are to a better place. Someone who will figure it out along the way. Someone who will get their enrollment. who will be empathetic enough to reach out to them in a way that gets them

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voluntarily joining you, motivated by generosity, certainly patient enough for for the journey and also for the people you seek to serve and giving yourself a long enough time horizon so that you can help those get to that destination. All right, hope this video was helpful and I hope it gave you some food for thought and I’ll see you guys in the next video. Thanks.