Debunk Millennial Stereotypes to Better Manage Your Dental Team

The Transcript

Art Wiederman, CPA: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of The Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. I'm your host, Art Wiederman. I'm a dental specific CPA and a dental division director at the wonderful CPA firm of Eide Bailly. And I'm located here on a beautiful, sunny day here in Southern California. Beautiful summer, summer, sunny day. I'm using lots of the same letters. I'm much better at numbers, guys, you know that, than I am at letters.

And I got a real treat for you today. You know, this is going to be really fun for me. I get to talk to all kinds of people in the dental world, some not in the dental world. My guest today is Ryan Vet and Ryan is I'm going to call him a serial entrepreneur. Or I mean, for nerds since the age of 14, he's been involved in helping start and set up lots and lots of companies. And he is now working primarily in the dental space. He's written a book which is going to be the basis of our conversation today, which is called Cracking the Millennial Code.

Folks and if you are a millennial listening to this and I looked up the definition a millennial is someone born between 1981 and 1996 are ages 26 to 39. So my two children fall into that category. Forrest is 28, Nathan is 33. So they're right there. So I'm feeling all this right now Ryan. You know, so, but we're going to talk about millennials as they relate to working in your dental office. I was an employer for 33 years. I had millennials. And again, if you are a millennial and you're practice owner, you might have other millennials working with you. Please don't shut the podcast off. We are not here to bash millennials for now. That is not what this is about, but this is to talk about what they do, how they are, how they tick, and how you can best be successful having them as members of your dental team. So we'll get to Ryan in a couple of minutes.

I want to first again remind you to please go on to the website of our wonderful, wonderful marketing partner, Decisions in Dentistry magazine, the premier clinical dental magazine in the world. You have the opportunity to purchase 140 continuing education classes on top clinical subjects by top clinical clinicians all over the world for a very, very reasonable price. Go to their website www.DecisionsinDentistry.com.

If you are looking for a dental CPA, we at Eide Bailly who are taking new clients, always taking new clients. My number is 657.279.3243. I just got a call this morning from one of our wonderful listeners in Central California and they said, I'm a longtime listener and want to see what you can do to help us. So we do that all the time. My email is awiederman@EideBailly.com. I'm also part of the National Academy of Dental CPAs www.ADCPA.org. That's my mothership that I helped form about 22 years ago, I guess 21 years ago.

A couple of reminders that we give you every single podcast and I'm still getting calls on this. Got one yesterday. The Employee Retention Tax credit. If your practice had a greater than 50% reduction in gross receipts any time in any quarter in 2020, starting March 13th of 2020, which would be the second quarter when everybody shut down or you had a greater than 20% reduction in your gross receipts for the first, second and third quarter of 2021 versus the same quarter in 2019 or the fourth quarter of 2020 versus the fourth quarter of 2019. I've been saying this hundreds of times. It's kind of rote by now. If you have not applied for this credit, we are getting, we have worked with over 100 dental practices and we have gotten we're now pushing close to $5 million. And if you're eligible for 2021, the numbers get kind of silly and it's free money and it's legal if you have these reductions in gross receipts.

Also, doctors, if you received more than $10,000 from the HHS Provider Relief Fund between January 1st and June 30th of 2021, let me say that again, January 1st to June 30th of 2021, more than $10,000. You need to report on the HHS Provider Relief portal on or before September 30th of 2022. Now, this podcast will come out pretty close to that deadline, but you need to make sure that you do that. If you don't, they will lock you out of the portal and they will send you a nice little letter that says, Dear Dr. So-and-so, you will have to give this money back and we don't want to do that.

Last thing I want to share with you. This is the first time I'm doing it, I'll do it each time. We are going to have our Business of Dentistry Webinar Series. We're going to have two series. We're going to have here are the dates if you want to jot them down. Our Business of Dentistry series is going to be October 21st, November 11th and December 9th. They'll all be at 9 a.m. in the morning Pacific Time. They'll be live. We're going to be doing one that I'm going to do with a couple of my good consultant friends on metrics of a dental practice. And then I'm going to have Kiera Dent come on and talk about whatever Kiera Dent wants to talk about because she's a great consultant. And then in December, we're going to do our year end tax planning seminar. Mel Schwarz and I from Eide Bailly are going to do that.

We are also doing our transition webinars in December, in October, November, December. I'll have to get you those dates a little later. We're still finalizing those, but that's going to be with my good friend Pat Wood, who's a dental attorney, Kathleen Johnson, who's a dental consultant. And I'll talk about the brokerage side and the financial side of transitioning your practice. So please, if you are interested in being signed up for them, they are free. Drop me an email.

All right, let's get to my guest, Ryan Vet. Now Ryan was raised in the suburbs of Chicago and as a young boy, he dabbled with various entrepreneurial ventures ranging from the typical lemonade stand to a line of trading cards and a neighborhood newspaper. And at the age of 14, Ryan launched a multinational marketing firm. This not for profit organizations. And he scaled that organization to work with over 200 clients in 25 different countries. Now, that's at the age of 14. My youngest son's teacher, Ryan, told me that 14 year old boys have one thing in common that they have no brain cells. So you must be the exception rather than the rule. But you'll tell me about that in a second.

Since then, Ryan has risen to executive leadership roles at multiple corporations, as well as he holds advisory board roles in several companies and not for profit organizations. Ryan is a I called him a serial entrepreneur. He's his bio says he's a passionate entrepreneur. As such, his experiences have led him to launch several startups and act as an angel investor and others. And he's going to tell you a little more about himself. But so, Ryan, welcome to the Art of Dental Finance and Management.

Ryan Vet: Thank you so much Art for having me.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So when you were 14, you had some brain cells, it looks like.

Ryan Vet: I don't know. I don't know if you can say entrepreneurs have brain cells. I think that's why they go out and do crazy things.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, I mean, I love talking to folks like you. You and I have chatted and it's just I mean, we can talk for days. I wish we had days, but we have an hour. First of all, you are a sommelier. Did I pronounce that right?

Ryan Vet: You did, yes.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay. And so and I'll give you a 20, maybe 50 words or less. What's your favorite one?

Ryan Vet: That is probably one of the hardest questions to ask me about. My question back to you is where am I, who am I with, what am I eating, what's the weather like? Generally, I'm inclined to go more towards a red wine. I'm a big fan of Central Coast and Santa Barbara, you know, pinot noirs from South America.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yes.

Ryan Vet: But if I'm you know, if it's a nice day outside, Sancerre from France is always a good go to. You know, a little bit crisper and love some of those old world wines, too. So, I mean, I could go on and on about all the different wines. Where we are and what we're eating, who we are with. But generally those would be two, two extremes that I'd probably lean towards.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So here's one request. I am going to Italy in early September with my wife. You'll have to give me some suggestions for I'm going to be and will be in Cinque Terra. So that's north yeah. And then we'll be in Puglia, which is the heel? Yes. If I survive a nine day, eight night bicycling trip, that's supposed to be 20 to 30 miles a day. I've been working on my peloton as much as I can. So you'll have to.

Ryan Vet: The wine will help, too.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, exactly. So. But anyway, you have a podcast. You are a fellow podcaster. Ryan's podcast is called the Dental Experience Podcast, where he talks about positive patient experiences. And if we have time, we'll get to some of that. How long have you been doing that?

Ryan Vet: It's been about four years now.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah. So you and I do about the same thing. It's fun doing this stuff.

Ryan Vet: It is. It's great talking to fun people.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, exactly. So tell us a little bit. I mentioned a little bit about your bio. Tell me a little more about your journey and especially kind of how you got into dentistry and what you're doing right now in dentistry.

Ryan Vet: Absolutely. So I've been in the startup entrepreneurial world for quite some time and typically that had me in the software space. So working on anything from consumer apps that you'd have on your phone to enterprise software that help corporations or businesses run more efficiently. But somewhere in that mix, I stumbled into dentistry. Some people I knew asked me to join a medical device startup that happened to focus in dental. And so I joined that company, led their sales and marketing efforts for some time. And that happened to be the exact same timeframe that my wife decided to go to dental school. So it just so happened that we both entered dentistry at the same time, taking very different paths in the industry side, hers, obviously the clinical side. And so that was kind of my foray into dentistry. I left dentistry after I left that company. Always kept a finger on the pulse, was asked to speak several times at organizations and national meetings. And finally, after selling my last startup and I say it's my last startup, but I've said that before, so I'm hoping this was my last startup after selling that.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Again, serial entrepreneurs never have a last anything.

Ryan Vet: Yes, that's true. So after signing that in 2020, I was like, Well, what's next? Where do I really want to be? And out of all the industries I've had the opportunity to be a part of and all the cool people I've had been able to meet dental just always felt like home. And so I kind of decided to only focus on things that I really enjoy doing moving forward. So I have a couple of wine bars. That's a big passion of mine throughout North Carolina and Florida and hopefully coming to a city near you soon.

Art Wiederman, CPA: But you're from you're from Durham. So Duke or North Carolina.

Ryan Vet: It depends who's listening. Duke is in my backyard. And my wife went to UNC for dental school. But I would say I generally pull more for the Tar Heels.

Art Wiederman, CPA: All right. Well, you know that. Everybody's got to pull for somebody. So let's get into the discussion about, you know, I mean, millennials. And again, your book is called Cracking the Millennial Code. And let's start off with I mean, define a millennial. Talk about just kind of the what is I mean, it's a term it's got myths. I want you to talk a little bit about what it is, maybe some of the myths behind it, because, you know, again, not every you know, there's been some negative connotations in the press, in the media and in society about it. So just kind of start talking about what a millennial is and what some of the myths are.

Ryan Vet: Absolutely. One of the biggest myths or misconceptions is how old or what is a millennial. And so for the sake of our conversation, we can kind of go off that same time frame that you presented at the beginning, that 1982, 2000 or 1981 to 1996. That's generally the range of a millennial, and there's subsets in that. And for the sake of today's conversation, we don't have to go into that. So we're lumping everyone together. Whenever you lump anything together, there's a lot of generalizations. And so I'm going to preface this with saying, hey, if you're in that category or near that category doesn't necessarily mean you fit all the stereotypes. But Millennial, for quite some time has been this like it's almost been like a curse word that's echoed down the halls of corporate America. You know, the millennials are coming and everyone feared these myths. And so some of the big myths that I hear the most about millennials and of course, this is not an all inclusive list, but I think topping the charts is usually millennials are entitled. You know, they have everything. They get everything. They always get a trophy.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Or you get a trophy, little league. You always get a trophy, right?

Ryan Vet: Exactly. Exactly. There's no winners with millennials because everyone's a winner. So that's one of the big ones. One of the other big myths that I hear quite frequently is millennials are lazy, and that actually couldn't be further from the truth. And we can unpack that later. Some of the other ones I hear millennials disrespect authority. Millennials are disloyal and noncommittal, millennials antisocial. So these are all things that have plagued millennials. The other one, you know, millennials only work at trendy companies are my favorite, maybe not the most common I hear, but millennials are in an exclusive relationship with their technology. So those are some of the big myths out here.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Hey, listen, I just turned 63 the other day, and there are days that I look at my Instagram feed 20 times a day. So you could say that about me, you know? There you go. There you go. Yeah. Hey, listen again, the reason I had children I've said this before is to teach me about technology. That's why, you know, in my next life, I'm going to come back and I'm going to know how to get onto Facebook and I'm going to know how to you know, I've never been on TikTok, so there you go. I don't know.

Ryan Vet: Hey me either. That's all right. That's a whole nother rabbit trail right there.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So when talking about these millennials, I mean, you know, you see, you know, you and I've talked about this is millennials have short tenures at dental practices. They seem to maybe don't work there a long time. Talk a little bit about why that might be.

Ryan Vet: It's a great question, and I think there are several reasons. But before we focus only on the millennials, I want to zoom out and think about the practice as a whole. You know, a lot of practices have a handful of team members, usually under ten, if it's a solo practitioner. And what we see is a lot of these practice owners are going to be of the baby boomer generation, some Gen Xers, but most are baby boomers. Yep. And as I unpack more in my book and I'll try to unpack a little bit here what we see the problem and I'm doing air quotes for those of you who can't see my finger is "the problem".

Art Wiederman, CPA: He is, he's using two fingers each time.

Ryan Vet: Yep. With millennials is the fact that there's actually a generational misunderstanding. And so baby boomers get so frustrated with millennials because they actually share some of the most common trends of modern generations. And it causes a lot of conflict. But one of the things that's most important, for example, to a baby boomer is generally respect. They have earned their title. They have earned their position, they have earned their degrees. They have earned their position in the community or on the school board or, you know, at their church, whatever it might be. And that usually when a baby boomer introduces themselves, they say, Hey, I am so-and-so and this is what I do, or this is my title. That was very important. And so this respect paradigm was drilled into them by their parents, where kids were supposed to be silent. And so their parents, the silent generation, taught baby boomers to be silent and sit and just be seen, not heard. And so that same go ahead.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I was going to say, my mother, when I didn't like what was going on, she would just say and she was she was only one of two people like in the world who calls me Arthur, everybody calls me Art. And she would say, So, Arthur, if you don't like this, go bang your head against the wall, which maybe that accounts for some of the things that's going on in my brain, but that's what she would tell me.

Ryan Vet: So yeah, and that's very typical. And so when, when you have this generation of baby boomers mostly managing these millennials, there's a huge conflict because millennials have always been on the same playing field as far as they're concerned with everybody. Social media has done that, technology has done that. It has created this informal communication where I can talk to someone that's elder with this in the same way that I would talk to a peer, and that same type of casual, direct conversation that happens with technology and was made easier by technology and texting now comes into the workplace. And so millennials and baby boomers automatically clash because baby boomers feel millennials are being extremely disrespectful and really it's a different form of communication. I'm not saying that millennials couldn't communicate better, but it's not necessarily a sign of disrespect.

Art Wiederman, CPA: You know, it's funny, Ryan and I've talked to many people. First of all, we have so many team members in our office in Tustin, Eide Bailly, and I will tell you, I can't think of any of them who fit the negative stereotype. They're all very hardworking people who are not feeling entitled. But one of the things that I've always noticed is that I've never I don't like texting, I don't like emailing. You know, it's like if you're trying to say something and make a point, an email and a text or a post is a one sided thing. Okay? If I've got an issue with somebody, I want to call them up or I want to walk up to them say, hey, Ryan, we got this issue. Let's talk about it face to face so that we can go back and forth. I mean, is that part of all this, too?

Ryan Vet: Absolutely. So you have, you know, one of the biggest issues in any relationship, whether it's, you know, a friendship or a marriage relationship, whatever it might be, is communication. If you don't have clear communication and communication in the same way, that can cause conflict. So the millennials don't have the same and again, generalizing, but a lot of them don't feel the need to pick up the phone or walk over and have a difficult conversation because they can shoot a quick text and move on. Also, it's easier to hide behind a cell phone and it's easier to have confrontation behind a phone because words are powerful and millennials are one of the most highly they are the most highly educated generation in history to this point. And a lot of them are very good with words. Reading and writing was actually a focus for this generation in school. More than now. We're seeing it move towards STEM, which is impacting Gen Z, but English and writing. Most millennials had two courses compared to both previous and current generations that had one course in some sort of language arts. So you do see this shift that makes their words very powerful.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So why don't they stay a long time in dental practices or at any of their jobs? What that all about?

Ryan Vet: There's so many reasons. The biggest thing is millennials are willing to work for a cause or invest in something that they feel is bigger than themselves and they're willing to stay there longer. And this is why you see some of these trendy companies that millennials often go work for. You see them stick around a long time, even if the work environment isn't great because they want something bigger than themselves.

The second thing that a lot of millennials want is they do want that flexibility and dentistry, as in hospitality, which I'm heavily invested in, as well as some service industries, that flexibility just isn't there. You have patients that come in on schedule or you have people getting coffee on a schedule at one of my coffee shops. These things are very challenging because with the rise of social media and I've talked about it a lot, I do not think social media is the only issue. In fact, I think there's a lot more to it. But you see people always on the beach in Italy. I'm going to be looking at Art's Instagram here in a couple of weeks and watch his bike ride down the coast of Italy drinking wine. I'm going to have that FOMO fear of missing out and I'm going to want to do it. Not sit behind a desk in a dental practice or sit chair side.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And hopefully you'll see me upright on a bicycle instead of on the side of the road holding my ankle or something like that. So millennials ask sometimes for more money than previous generations, and obviously in a dental practice in all businesses today, with the rampant inflation we have going on and the things going on in our economy and PPOs, again, you and I need about 10 hours to do this podcast. I mean, but, I mean, you know, why do they ask for more money than maybe my generation? Because I'm a baby boomer.

Ryan Vet: Absolutely. I think so let's rewind to baby boomers. So as a baby boomer, your parents were most likely silent generation members. They were born between 1900 and about 1940, almost guaranteed. And with that, they grew up in an era where they were directly exposed to or a family member was exposed to the Great Depression. People from that era are used to folding up their tinfoil, washing out their Ziploc bags and drying them. You know, if you celebrate Christmas, you would maybe get one gift per child if even and it was just a very different thing. It was one parent working. The mom was staying at home, and they were used to working a blue collar job or a small business job for the most part, and again, generalizing.

Then they had kids, the baby boomers, you know, six weeks after the war ended, it was cold outside. They didn't have heat, central heat. What do you have? You got baby boomers. So the baby boomers come along and they want to do different for their kids, the Gen Xers, than their parents did for them. So baby boomers introduce the 60 hour workweek, the two household income, you know, two cars. All of these things started to come around with the baby boomer generation. And so baby boomers said, no, we're going to work for our title. We're going to work for our money. That's something we're earning and we're going to do it different for our kids. Well, then you have the millennials that have been handed just about everything, have had a comfortable lifestyle because their parents are either Gen X or Baby Boomer and they want to do something different for their kids than they experience. And so you see this cycle.

This is why I say it's not necessarily just a millennial problem. It's a generational, just generational differences. But the other thing beyond that, and the cushier lifestyle and upbringing that most millennials had in the United States, there are fees and expenses and lifestyles that we consider basic necessities now, arguably, they're not, but basic necessities that never existed in any previous generation. For example, first generation where more than one computer was a thing. Okay, now laptops come around now Internet and now cell phones and not just, you know, flip phone, but a smartphone. And this happens in middle school. And so now this is $1,000 a year expense just for a device, maybe 2000 per child. And you're talking about Internet that can be anywhere from 50 to 150 a month. And now you're talking about a cell phone bill, which is another 100 or so. Now you're talking about thousands of dollars a year that never existed in any budget prior to the millennial generation being around.

So when they get out on their own, everything they look at is in subscriptions. It's a very different world. We live in a subscription economy and so when a millennial does a budget, it's not how much do my groceries cost and can I eke out $50 at my local grocery store? It's how much is my Hello Fresh or Home Chef box in a cost that costs me $79 a week. And so they're budgeting based on these subscriptions and milestones. So they've got their Hulu, their Netflix, their clothing box, their Stitch Fix or the Trunk Club or their Stately Men there.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I don't know what any of those are, but keep going.

Ryan Vet: So these are all subscription boxes that can be delivered to your door. So I don't have to go shopping anymore. I don't have to do any of these things because my budget is now built on subscriptions. In addition, you have school bills that are higher than ever in any previous generation. So all of these things make the millennial almost feel that they need to earn more just to function and live.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So I want what I really want to drive home today and this is incredible information is if I'm a business owner, if I'm a dental practice owner, okay, I go in, I do my dentistry, I'm trying to be a good leader. And I've got these team members. And because of some of these generational situations that you've just described, they're different than we are. We get frustrated with them. What are some advice that you can give? Even then I would offer to our listeners here. But what's a little advice you can give? If I have someone who has some of these traits who maybe he is, you know, is exhibiting some of these traits? How can we best interact with millennials? That's, I guess, the key of what I want to really get into today.

Ryan Vet: Yeah, I think one of the big questions we have to ask is why would they want to stay at my practice.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, that's good. That's a good reason. There's not a lot of advancement. You've got to work at Google, Ryan. You've got to work at Facebook. You had to work at General Motors. You can start off in Department A and you can work your way up to CEO. You can't work yourself up to be dentist or CEO of the dental practice. I mean, if it's a large group practice, it's a big organization, but that's a different conversation. But in the average, like you say, you know, ten employee, five, ten, 15 employee dental practice, you know, you're a dental assistant or you're a hygienist or you're the you can be the office manager, but you really can't go much further, right?

Ryan Vet: Absolutely. And so when you can't have that vertical advancement in the career necessarily, the question is why would someone want to be here? And for millennials, like I talked about a minute ago, they are not big investors or donors to nonprofits. They invest in causes, still a nonprofit, just a different skin. And marketers found that out a long time ago. The same thing is true of a dental practice. If you have an office that is just doing work, drilling and filling, why would a millennial really anybody want to come and be a part of that?

But if you want to come into the office and say, hey, every day we have an opportunity to transform someone's life because they can, I heard Sean Pierce, winner of a speaking competition earlier this year, talk about how a woman who is up in her years really wanted to have her whole mouth redone so she could eat steak and the practice wouldn't do it. And she went to this whole story and Sean tells the story about how that was her favorite pastime with her late husband was eating steak by the beach and she had lost that memory.

In a story like that sounds so simple, but that's what you have to create if you millennials in your practice. We have the opportunity to transform in this woman's last years here on Earth. We have an opportunity to transform this woman's smile and give her back memories that she's since had lost. And that's just one example.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So what you're saying and you and I are so on the same page, it's crazy, okay? Because when I talk to dental groups, when I've talked on this podcast for the last three and a half years, I say doctors and I'll say it again and I'll say it on every single podcast. And if you get tired of it, I'm sorry, but this is the God's honest truth. You guys are not about fixing teeth. You are about a better life, a better relationship, a better self-esteem. You have saved people's lives. You have changed their lives for the better. And if you create an atmosphere in your dental practice, that that's what we do. And by the way, as a side product of it, we do crowns, we do inlays, we do onlays, we do veneers, we do all this kind of stuff, we do implants, all that stuff. But this is what we do. That gives me a better chance to connect with that millennial, right?

Ryan Vet: 100%. I think the other thing that you can do is get behind what the millennials are behind. If they want to go pick up trash and adopt a highway, you know, close down your practice for a day or an afternoon and do that. These things don't cost a lot of money. And retention is very, or attrition is very expensive. It is incredibly expensive when you lose a team member. And I don't think people realize that.

I mean, Gallup recently came out with a survey that was saying that Gallup I'm sorry, Gartner, Gallup also has great surveys. But Gartner came out with this this study that was saying the minimum cost for the average company for an employee is about $30,000 every time that they leave. That's unrealized cost and realized. And the same is true in a dental practice. And that survey went up to $200,000. I mean, we're talking about a large, large expense to the company. So if you pay, you know, 100 bucks a month to adopt a highway and maybe a couple thousand dollars every quarter in paying your team to work and do some volunteer, volunteer work. And this is just one example. I'm not saying every dentist should go adopt a highway. I definitely don't do that.

Art Wiederman, CPA: But especially here in Southern California, they're really long. Yes, the highways are big, especially the five where I live.

Ryan Vet: There you go. But figure out what your team's involved in and interested in maybe. And you can speak to this from a tax perspective, charity donation matching. That's part of a benefit. That's a great it's a great tax. And I'm not a tax guy. So I think there's one on this conversation that might be able to shed light on that, but that's a very cash effective way to add a benefit to your team members and just start to understand some of that.

I think the other big thing is flexibility and schedule, which I know is so hard in a dental practice, but we say that we have to be open at a certain time because that's what we've always done, that's what patients expect. But whenever you when that patient sitting in the chair, and the hygienist's scheduling the next hygiene appointment, the hygienist says, here's three times I have available. The patient doesn't know what time you open and what time you close. And I think that's something else that you can start to look at. And even if that's, you know, taking off a half day every other Thursday because we know you're probably not open on Friday anyway in the summer and giving summer Thursday. So you have that longer weekend or whatever that might be. Look for those ways to add that flexibility, to give those team members a little bit more freedom in their schedule. That makes them feel special.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I mean, one of the things we do at Eide Bailly is we have a charitable outreach group in our firm in Tustin, and I'm involved in that. And I've gone to you know, I've gone to Santa Ana and I've gone into a charitable organization, and we make, you know, hash tag lunch bags and we make lunch lunches and we bring them to areas that are underserved. And we knock on doors and we and we give out sandwiches.

I mean, and if you get you know, if you have, you know, one or two of your folks in your office that have a cause, get the whole office behind it, do something. And I mean, you've got that person for life.

So I want to take a second Ryan, you have this book, Cracking the Millennial Code. You have an offer for our listeners. You might want to and I want you to, you know, I mean, Ryan is speaking all over. He's got this great, great podcast. Please listen to his podcast. And you're speaking all over the place, too, right?

Ryan Vet: Absolutely.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So check on his. I want you to give out if you want a phone number and an email address and whatever you want to offer to our listeners.

Ryan Vet: Yeah, absolutely. You can find out everywhere I'm speaking both in dentistry and not in dentistry at ryanvet.com. My non dental speaking engagements still are relevant to dentistry because they're about leadership management and all of that. And you can also shoot me an email at Ryan@RyanVet.com, and if you send me an email there, I'll be sure, mention this podcast, otherwise you won't get it. But if you mention this podcast, I'll be sure to give you the first chapter of my book, Cracking the Millennial Code for free. So you can just get a taste for what it's all about.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah. And it's a wonderful, wonderful book. And again, you know, I don't get the opportunity too often to interview someone who's so well rounded and just has this perspective about this. So I don't know if we answered this question, but, you know, we mature, more mature. I don't know how mature I am, but more mature generations. I mean, you know, interacting with these people we talked about maybe getting involved in some of the causes they're involved with. But, you know, just and I know that one of the things that you talk about in some of your lectures and things is confrontation. So maybe talk about if we get into a confrontation, we baby boomer gets in a confrontation with our 30 year old Gen-X millennial over whatever. How should we as the business or even if you're a millennial, getting in a conflict with another millennial, how should we handle those conflicts?

Ryan Vet: Good question. There is a fantastic book called Crucial Conversations. I highly recommend that to everybody listening. That's good for any confrontation, whether that's millennial to millennial, millennial to boomer or vice versa. So I highly recommend that book. But as far as the conversations and this is borrowing it from the books, I am citing that source.

Art Wiederman, CPA: That's all right.

Ryan Vet: Have common ground. That is the simple, greatest thing that you can have in a difficult conversation. Because often when you try to find the common ground, sometimes you realize you might not be right and maybe the conversation shouldn't be had. But if you have common ground in saying, hey, you know, the way we interacted with that patient was not the best for the patient, nor the practice. And our goal here at Doctor Smiles office is to make every patient have a positive experience and walk away with the smile. Yes, that was funny, but hey, it works.

Art Wiederman, CPA: No, but that works. I mean, absolutely.

Ryan Vet: Yeah. Then you're setting that common ground. Then you can say, so when you did x y happen, it's kind of that that cause and effect doesn't have to be long and drawn out. But one of the best things you can do to even curb those difficult conversations is to mentor a millennial. One of the biggest things that millennials long for in a corporate environment, which would translate down to a dental practice, is mentorship and leadership. They don't know how to ask for it, nor will they ask for it because generally speaking, again, generalizing. But millennials give off the appearance that they're more proud or more put together, because social media has had, you know, makes them look put together. You only post the best put your best foot forward on social media. So before it even gets too far down the road, offer to a millennial saying, hey, can we have check ins and either talk about life, talk about business. Obviously, there's HR lines, but maybe why I do this in my dental practice and start explaining the why. Like, hey, we, you know, we use this distributor because it could be something that silly or we chose this phone system and bring the millennial into the fold and teaching them because millennials crave information, they're hungry for information. They have Google at their fingertips and you better believe they are Googling everything. And so you want to be their single source of truth, not the Internet and whatever someone put there. Otherwise they will believe that.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I've been fortunate enough to be able to mentor. I've mentored young dentists. I've mentored young accountants because that's the world I live in. It was funny when my son went off to training for his the job that is now his job he does dental loans for one of the major banks. When I dropped him off at the airport to go to his training, I said, here's what you need to learn and what you need to remember. The customer always comes first. Whatever is best for the customer, whether you make money or not, if you take care of the customer, the money will come. If you think about the money first and the customer second, you will not have as good of a result. I mean, does that make sense?

Ryan Vet: Oh, absolutely. I totally agree with that. And that's one of my big my most popular talk is called Creating Experiences Worth Sharing it's all about the patient and customer experience.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So. And since you brought that up, let's switch gears for a second. We'll get back to a couple more things on millennials. Talk about what you think dentists need to do to provide a really high level of care to patients. I know that's one of your passions to talk about. I know you talk about that on your podcast, but talk about that.

Ryan Vet: I think it's getting back to the why you're doing what you're doing. And a lot of times it's easy to get lost in kind of the drill and fill, I know that's an overused analogy, but when you take that story that I shared, that Sean Pierson shared with the steak and giving someone this memory back this ability back through giving someone kind of an end of life wish or whether it's just doing a simple procedure that removes pain because, you know, there's a hot tooth or something, whatever it is, remember why you're doing it.

And I think one thing I challenge most practices is make sure that every single person that calls your practice ends up on the schedule. First of all, a second, make sure that every single person that leaves your practice is going to leave telling a positive story because they're going to leave telling a story. But you have the opportunity to shape that narrative. And so make sure that every single detail in your practice is for the patient. It'll make your team's life easier because your patients will be happier. You're not going to get as many frustrated calls won't make them go away. Your patients are going to come in. It could even reduce anxiety. And I even talk about that. How certain things in your practice can reduce a patient's anxiety when they're waiting in that waiting room before they get back to the chair because we know a lot of patients don't like to be there. And so anything we can do to help mitigate that and give them that positive experience will make them go be your biggest champion. And when they go tell their neighbors and family about the great time that they had a Dr. Smiles office, they're you know, you're going to have more patients.

Art Wiederman, CPA: You know, it's interesting. I was telling in the last podcast I recorded, I talked a little bit about how I attended your good friend and my good friend, Deborah Englehart Nash's lecture when we were both at the AGD meeting in Orlando in July. And she told these stories about she told a story about how her husband Ross and again, if you've if you're looking, you know, Ross Nash's and Deborah's courses on clinical dentistry are second to none. But the fact is, is that she was telling a story about a patient who came in and, oh, who called at 4:00 in the afternoon and said, I need 20 veneers, I'm going to a wedding. I don't remember exactly what the story was. And basically Ross looked at the team and said, Well, what do you guys wanna do? And they all said, We're going to get it done. They were there till like 11:00 at night. I mean, that's it's about taking care of the patients.

I had another story. Ryan that was interesting. One of the social media, social media marketing companies that I'm familiar with told a story about. I think this was in Utah where a young man was very, very sadly and horribly picked on and then ultimately physically assaulted. And they just destroyed his mouth. And the dentist in town found out about it. And basically he rebuilt that young man's mouth and he was 13 years old, totally rebuilt it for free, and it just brought them. So these are the types of things that doctors you need to be doing in connecting with your team on that really important. So I don't know. So millennials are Gen Y, right? Is that what is. Do I have that right? Yes. Okay.

Ryan Vet: A subset of them. Yes.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I'm Gen X. They're Gen Y. What's next? What do we have coming down the road? I mean, the babies that are being born, what are we looking at now?

Ryan Vet: So we've seen Gen Z as kind of the next wave after millennials that again, people argue all over the place where that official year starts, whether that's, you know, that 96, 97 or whether it starts at 2000 and forward. If you look just a quick aside, if you look at sort of the sociology and anthropology behind these generational cohorts generally, apart from the silent generation, which was 1900 in 1940, they're blocked in every 20 years, give or take a couple in their general. So it doesn't mean that if you're born one year before or after year, magically a totally different personality has to do with your parents where when they were born, where you grew up, whether it is rural or urban or suburban, those all have impacts on kind of what generation you fit in. But all that say, Generation Z, we're seeing a high uptake in consumerism, which is interesting.

Art Wiederman, CPA: What does that mean?

Ryan Vet: A higher a higher level of spending and more attached to kind of the worldliness, if you will. A lot of it's probably because of what's portrayed on social media and these individuals. You have to realize most millennials were exposed to social media in their late teen years because that's when it started. But it wasn't necessarily across the whole world, so most of them were in college. And again, that's depends where you fall on that spectrum. Gen Z never knew life without social media. So these things are all an impact. And I've again picked on social media a lot, but you also have the parents that have learned more.

Gen Z parents are almost all Gen Xers, whereas millennials are really interesting because half the parents are baby boomers who waited later in their lives to progress further in their careers to have kids. So we saw half of the generation have what I would consider older parents. And then you have the other half of the generation having more standard. What we've seen in the United States around 23, 24, maybe being a first kid. So you've seen a huge break and there's almost a ten year gap between 10 to 15 year gap between those parents. And so they raise their kids extremely differently and those kids are going to school. It's this whole I'm going to go down a rabbit hole if I'm not too careful. But that is this whole thing that impacts it.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And, you know, this COVID 19 pandemic, where kids are not going to school for two or three year, is really going to. I'm really nervous about that. I talk to young parents all the time, dentists and friends and kids of my friends. And I just say, I can't even imagine if you got two, three, four, five, six kids what it was like to try and home basically homeschool these kids on a computer and keep them engaged. It's just got to be like absolutely crazy.

Ryan Vet: So and you've got the remote work now, which changes parenting dynamics, family dynamics, home dynamics. You've got the nomadic and digital lifestyle where people are traveling and don't have homesteads or a homesite. I mean, there are just so many things that are going to impact this next generation.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, absolutely. So when we talk about how I want to give maybe we'll put a bow on this here shortly. But I want to maybe just your top two or three or four or how many you want. You have full artistic license to say whatever you want on this podcast. Right? But you know, the tips that you can give to our dental doctors, a lot of the people that listen to this podcast are dental practice owners who have employees, who have older employees, who have millennial employees. So just maybe some of your top tips as far as what they can do to be successful in having millennials on their team and to keep them, because, as you said, it costs 30,000 or more to replace somebody.

Ryan Vet: Absolutely. Well, I do want to rewind to something we said earlier, because I think it's very important with the whole using the picking up trash analogy or even Ross and Deborah Nash's analogy of staying till 11 p.m. to get something done. Ross is a perfect. Ross and Deborah are a perfect example of the team that was bought into the vision and were willing to do that, which is really important. There's a common phrases going around which are fundatory meaning it's something fun but mandatory and voluntold. I'm volunteering you, but really volun telling you. So you've been voluntold to do something. A lot of times those are worse for a millennial because you've now taken away their flexibility, which is important to them. So I would say if you're going to do any of those fun events, close down your practice or take an afternoon off, or do it during times where the millennials would already not be at home or doing whatever they were doing. Otherwise now, you've created a conflict in their life and actually are reversing the good that you're trying to do.

So I did want to caveat that there as one first tip, but I think the biggest tip I could sum it all up with communication. And it starts with taking initiative and leadership. You have to sometimes as a practice owner or as a business owner, have difficult conversations. And in a dental practice up to this point, there hasn't been as many opportunities to do that. Me in my career working with companies, I've had plenty of opportunities to hire and sadly and unfortunately, those to let go and fire and lay off and many different types of dismissal. And once you do that time and time again, I wouldn't say it becomes easier, but you're more equipped for the conversations.

Dental practice owners generally don't have those many that many conversations in their lifetime, so they don't get that practice and those repetitions to figure out how to do that gracefully. So have open communication to begin with, have those not necessarily difficult conversations, but have those crucial conversations early and often. If performance isn't where it needs to be, don't wait until it gets too bad. Just say, Hey, One minute Manager is a great book. Give one minute shout outs and give one minute corrections and just have that conversation like, Hey, Art, you did this so well today. Thank you. And then maybe the next day, you know, Art's always on his cell phone you know, he's scrolling through Instagram. He already admitted that to us at the front desk when patients are checking in and says, hey, Art, you know what? You really shouldn't be on your cell phone and then give the why, because it gives a bad patient experience and they see your face glowing with the Instagram feed and you're not smiling at them or something like that. So giving that why.

Art Wiederman, CPA: No that's great advice and communication. I don't know. I'm sure you and I know all the same people. Another person who's really good at talking about courageous communications is Kathleen. Itellbelle, you know Kathleen real well. That's true. Yeah. Catherine, I'm sorry. I said Catherine. Catherine, I adore her. She's just wonderful. And she lectures on that stuff.

And doctors, again, you know, you go to the dental convention, you're going to go to a course on occlusion, you're going to go to a course on TMJ, you're going to go to a course on the veneers. I'm going to suggest you go to course of how to talk to your employees and how to talk to your patients. I mean, that stuff. If you can master that, you know, your patients have an absolute understanding that you've hung a shingle. And I've said this before, too, you've hung a shingle. You have the technical skill to be a dentist. I have the technical skill to be a CPA. Nobody knows Ryan how good or bad of a CPA I am. I'm a very good CPA. Last I checked, and most everybody that is listening to this podcast are very good clinically and you know that's certainly up to you to go to courses and make sure you're outstanding clinically.

But the way you grow your practice is by connecting with people, showing that you care, making them trust you so that there's hugs when you walk into the dental office. I mean, the other thing is respect, isn't it? Because we talk about respect. I mean, if you, doctor, and I get front office people who will call me and they'll say, Art, he never comes to the morning huddle. He's always late. He doesn't engage. I mean, if you don't care about your practice, why will your team members, whether they're millennials or not? Right.

Ryan Vet: Absolutely. That's a huge one. I mean, that the doctor not showing up to the morning huddle is one of the biggest issues across practices like that's one of the first questions that I know a lot of my consulting colleagues ask when there's conflict in the practice, like do you have morning huddle? Yes. Are you there? Sometimes they get drafted about my kids off or after I get my Starbucks and walk in with my, you know, triple venti, extra hot with foam latte, that's a huge, huge issue. So respect and like I said, millennials demand respect, too. And a lot of times they don't see age as a big delineation in the level or amount of respect that they should receive or give. Whereas previous generations see age as one of the big determining factors of the amount or level of respect given. And so having those conversations and understanding what respect looks like is critical.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, absolutely. One more time, Ryan. Boy, this is great. I mean, I wish we could talk for another hour or two and we will again. Would you? You know, you had made a nice offer to our listeners about a chapter in your book. Give out your contact information, the website that they can look, look you up and see where you're talking. And what you're doing is you're doing a lot of stuff and give that out, if you would.

Ryan Vet: Absolutely. My website is RyanVet.com. And then my email address is just Ryan@RyanVet.com. Definitely mention the podcast. You know, listen to it and I will happily send you a PDF of the first chapter of the book so you can get a little taste for that.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And tell us just a little bit about your podcast. Again, it is called the Dental Experience Podcast and talk a little bit about what you do. How often do you publish?

Ryan Vet: Yeah, we are. We're a seasonal podcast, so we do 20 episodes in a season. Right now we are on a break like Ross and Rachel, from Friends. My Gen-Xers and Millennials will definitely get that, but we're on a break. We'll be back again this fall here in just a couple of weeks. But we're all about patient experience and also team experience. And so we talk about everything from how you can have a better experience as a practice owner, someone who works as a practice at a practice, or how you can provide that experience for your patients.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Oh, that's great. And again, your information in the podcast is awesome and you are awesome. So and I want to thank you if you want to hang with me as I take the podcast out, I'll make my final announcements. And again, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the honor and the privilege of your time. We are very excited about some of the guests that we have coming up on the podcast, working on some surprises, hopefully. And, you know, that's always getting people's schedules together.

But please go to our marketing partners website Decisions in Dentistry www.DecisionsinDentistry.com. Great clinical content 140 continuing education classes for a very, very reasonable price www.DecisionsinDentistry.com.

We at the at the CPA firm Eide Bailly can be of help to you if you need a cost segregation study if you have IRS problems. We have a whole resolution group. I was on the phone with the IRS. I was on hold for 2 hours last week for a client where they screwed up the employee retention tax rate. And I find when you call the IRS, by the way, you call the IRS. Well, can I give you my number in case we disconnected? No. Can you give me your number in case we get disconnected? No. So if we get disconnected, you've sat on hold for 2 hours and then you have to start all over again. Fortunately, I made it through. And when? When the lady who was very nice looked at it, she says, This is dumb, this is wrong, I'm going to fix it now. And I spent three total hours on the phone with two different I mean, it's crazy. We have a group that does that.

We have groups that do cybersecurity, all kinds of things. If I can be of help to you, my number 657.279.3243 and my email address is awiederman@EideBailly.com. Ryan Vet you are a great young man and it's a pleasure and an honor to speak with you and I look forward to interacting with you a lot more. Again, I mentioned the SCN also a little bit about. So I learned of this from Deborah and it's called the Speaking Consulting Network and it's got the who's who of dental speakers involved in that. And I'm excited that I'm going to be a part of that coming up here shortly.

And in my next life, again, I just turned 63 a couple of days ago and I found out that I have Ryan I have three happy places. On a golf course, in a boat fishing and on a stage. I actually really enjoy giving. I feel like I can give something and you do too I'm sure. To give something back to this wonderful profession of dentistry that I've had the honor and privilege of serving for almost 40 years now. I mean, it's I think we just the Labor Day. Labor Day will be let's see, that will be 38 years for me. So it's been really fun.

Dentists are some of the most wonderful, caring human beings I have ever met. And it's and I'm not saying that just because I need to make my listeners feel good, that's the God's honest truth. There are other folks that I want no part of, but dentists are wonderful.

So anyway, thank you for hanging out with us and thank you for your time and I look forward to interacting with you more. And ladies and gentlemen, that is about it for today's episode of The Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman. Please tell your friends about our podcast and we look forward to seeing you and having you listen next time. Take care.