Lessons in Developing Boldness from the Founder of 1-800-DENTIST

The Transcript

Art Wiederman, CPA: Hello everyone and welcome to a very, very special edition of The Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. I'm your host, Art Wiederman. Welcome to my podcast. I am a dental division director for the CPA firm of Eide Bailly. I work out of Tustin, California. We work with about 300 dentists in our group in Tustin and through our firm in Eide Bailly, about a thousand overall.

And the reason I said very, very special is I get to talk to one of my longtime friends in the dental profession and maybe the one of the most recognizable names to all the dentists in America. We're going to be talking to Fred Joyal, who is the founder of 1800 Dentist. And we're going to be talking a lot about his new book today, which is called Super Bold From Under Confident to Charismatic in 90 Days. I don't know if I could get there in 90 days, maybe 120, but we'll work on that. But we're going to talk about Fred's book. We're going to talk about boldness. We're going to talk about what marketing has looked like in the last 35 years since you and I got into the profession. And I'm really, really excited. I mean, Fred, I had actually had Fred lecture for my CPA clients. Oh, my gosh, 15, 20 years ago. And the only mistake I made was having Fred come on Presidents Day weekend. I didn't even look at the calendar, but we still had well over 150 people in the room. And it was one of the best lectures I ever put on. So you're in for a treat today, folks.

Let me just make some announcements and give you some information. First of all, please look at our partners website and subscribe to their magazine. Decisions in Dentistry magazine www.DecisionsinDentistry.com. Best clinical content of any magazine in the dental profession. An advisory board that's a who's who in dentistry and 140 clinical courses for one low price. www.DecisionsinDentistry.com.

Also folks if you're going this podcast is going to air I'm guessing sometime in April and April of 2022. Can't believe it's been two years since we're through this pandemic and I will be speaking on, I believe it is July the 28th at the Academy of General Dentistry National Convention in Orlando, Florida. I'm doing a half a day on financial planning and a half a day on the metrics of a dental practice. Know your practice by the numbers. So we got thousands of podcast listeners. If you're in Orlando and you go to the meeting, come by and say, Hi, I would love to meet you.

Also, if you have not applied for the employee retention tax credit, if you had a greater than 50% reduction in your gross receipts for the second quarter of 2020 versus 2019, you could be looking at tens of thousands of dollars of free government money. And if you had a greater than 20% reduction in your gross receipts for either the first, second and third quarter of 2021 versus those same quarters in 2019, the credit is 70%, up to $10,000 per employee per quarter. We have gotten over $4 million in credits for our clients and a lot of non clients. Several of our podcast listeners have called us and said, Hey Art, can you do this for us? Yeah, we can do this. We've got about another year to do 2020 and about another two years to do 2021. If you're interested, give me a call. 657.279.3243 and also Art.

All right. So I want to get to my good friend, Fred Joyal. So let me read you his bio. Fred is an author, speaker, entrepreneur and business advisor. So he's a busy guy. Fred co-founded the most successful dental referral service in the country, 1 800 Dentist you've all seen him on the TV commercials. You've seen the commercials. 1800 Dentist was one of the just fantastic company. Fred's previously written two books on marketing. And in fact, folks, I give Fred's books out to new clients. That's how much I think of what he's done. So his first two books on marketing were amazing, but this one is over the top. So he's written two books on marketing. Fred tells me he's dabbled in standup, in improv comedy. He's acted in some bad movies, he's made some excellent TV commercials.

His latest book, like I mentioned earlier, Super Bold From Under Confident to Charismatic in 90 Days. Fred was telling me before we came on the air, I think he said it's fourth on the Wall Street Journal list and seventh on the Amazon List bestseller list. He we're going to talk about this, too. He tells me he once beat Sir Richard Branson in a game of chess. And was also a question on Jeopardy. Fred's an avid cycler, a below average tennis player and even a worse golfer. And Fred lives in L.A. Tell me about. Hello, Fred. Welcome. I got so much I want to talk about. So. Yeah. So. So how did Richard Branson feel when you beat him in chess? How did that happen.

Fred Joyal: He didn't take it well. He was kind of shocked. And so was I really, because he plays chess a lot and I hadn't played in 30 something years. And but he asked me if I wanted to play. The story is I was on his island, Necker Island.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I was going to say, did you get to go to one of his islands on his private plane or something?

Fred Joyal: No. Well, we were there with a business group and he drops in occasionally. And I was playing tennis and I ruptured my Achilles tendon. Ouch. And so I was just hanging out by the tennis court. And he just came up and he was he was such a bother that this has happened to you. Do you have do you play chess? And I went, this was the bold move. Whereas not having played in almost 40 years, I still said yes. And he said, waved to somebody, get a chessboard, bring it over here. So we sat down on the couch and we played and I play such an unconventional game that he couldn't figure out what the heck I was doing. And I finally went to That's check, actually, it's checkmate. And he just looked at me and he was like and he called me his name, which, oh, no, which you can't say on the air. And he immediately sets the board up again. Now, I love Richard. He's probably one of the business people I admire most in the world. And he's a very fun and playful guy and he's very competitive. So for the rest of the week, he sought me out to play and he would beat me every time.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Oh, did you let him beat you?

Fred Joyal: Oh, I didn't have to let him.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I didn't. So are you now banned from Virgin Airlines? Is that the deal?

Fred Joyal: No. But I always get a middle seat, no matter how I book it.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay. And then. And then I want to hear also, where did you perform comedy and how did that go? Tell us about that.

Fred Joyal: That was many years ago when I really wanted to expand my stage skills and I had always wanted to try standup. And a good friend of mine was a working comedian and he said, I know you want to try this. And I said, Yeah, but I don't know how to go about it. And he says, You just got to write 5 minutes and get up and bomb. And he says, And then you're going to figure out that all the things you're scared of are you're wrong about. And then you learn all the things you should be scared of. And so I wrote 5 minutes and did it at an open mic and then eventually did it at the Ice House. I had ten, 15, 20 minutes of material I eventually developed, and it was really fun. It's not a lifestyle I was interested in because it's a road lifestyle and you basically wait 23 and a half hours every day for a chance to do a half hour of work. And but it was really fun to just get up on that stage with that instant feedback loop, because a lot of speaking that you do, you don't really know if they're excited about you or interested in you are bored to death or think you're an idiot. In standup, you know, right away.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. From when you when you and I are on the lecture, they're sitting there, they're listening. If they look like they're taking notes, then maybe we're doing a good job. But I don't know. But you. You are. And I'm not exaggerating just because you're on the on my computer today. When you came and did the program for my clients, it was one of the best programs I ever put on. And I'm very was honored to have you. I'm honored to have you on today. So tell us your story. I mean, I know you started 1-800-Dentist back in the eighties was 70s or eighties, wasn't it?

Fred Joyal: It was eighties. Let's not go back too far. I meet more dentists who go, I wasn't born yet. Yeah, I know. Good for you.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, you and I know a lot of the. You know, I mean, we know. I mean, I grew up with Dr. Jim Pride, Dr. Phil Whitener. You were one of the few, but we know those guys and everything. But so tell the audience your story for the maybe one or two people that are listening that don't know who you are.

Fred Joyal: Yeah, a bunch of people don't, because if they weren't watching television in that 90s and the 2000s, they would have not seen me. But I was. I started out as a copywriter in an ad agency after doing a bunch of other jobs. And then I decided I didn't want to stay in the ad business because I didn't like the career arc and I really wanted to own my own business. So a friend of mine and I just started 1 800 Dentist because another guy we knew had the phone number. And so we created some radio spots, found 20 dentists to go along with the whole thing in L.A., set up a phone room and just started running the radio spots. And we got 50 calls on the first day and we said, Wow, this, there's a real need here. Because you never know until you launch your business if you're smoking dope, right? If you think, oh, right, exactly. This is this is everybody's going to love this. It's like nobody loves this except your mom. And, you know, in the end, you're stuck.

So we just kept adding dentists, adding advertising money, adding call operators, and then adding cities till we became the largest dentists referral service in the country. Over the 30 years we ran it, we generated over $1,000,000,000 of revenue in total. So.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, you know, Fred, I remember my clients and because I started in dentistry as a dental accountant in September of 1984, and I remember three or four, maybe more of my clients actually, you know, I'm looking at their general ledger. I'm saying 1 800 Dentist, you're paying. How much are you paying? And here was the answer. The answer was, Oh, my God, Art, the phone is ringing off the hook. It's the best thing I ever did, especially for those people that got in early, right?

Fred Joyal: Yeah.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah.

Fred Joyal: So yeah. And we were Yelp before there was Yelp. We were filtering these patients and matching them with the practice so that there was a much better chance of converting them into productive patients. And that was how we did it. We always had live operators screening the calls and finding out what that person really needed and then selling the practice, because a lot of times the front desk doesn't see that as their job to sell the office. They think their job is to answer the phone. So we would pre-sell they all that this is a great dentist. We sent a lot of people to her. She's terrific. People love her. You're going to love her. Get in there today. And then we would transfer them over. So we did. You know, we did probably I think by the time I sold the business, we had done somewhere between eight and 9 million referrals.

Art Wiederman, CPA: That's amazing. That is so amazing.

Fred Joyal: It's who knows how much dentistry that, you know, if every patient is worth, you know, $500 or $1,000.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, I want you to know that when I do when I do consulting or expert witness work, I actually use your you talk about 1000 to 1500 dollars per year for a new patient. And you say that in your in one of your first two marketing books. And again, there's a lot of things that go into that. We're not going to go deep into that today. But I use your numbers as a reference and they're spot on and stuff.

But I want to get into this book because it's just as it is so spot on. And I want to really gear what we're talking about, Fred, to talking about how dentists can apply what's in this book. So I want to read just a little excerpt from what's on the Amazon website. So again, the name of the book is Super Bold From Under Confident to Charismatic in 90 days. So says boldness is a super power. Bold individual sees life in remarkable, almost unbelievable ways. They succeed in business and careers and in love, and they have a great time doing it. Bold people walk up to supermodels and ask them to dance. Now, I've never done that because I maybe I'm not a bold person, but maybe I'll read your book. Well, no, I won't. I've been married for 37 years.

Fred Joyal: Still, young Art.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I don't want to lose half my stuff. There you go. They start they stand in front of audiences and tell jokes. They start companies. They run for president. What surprises most people is that boldness can be taught, and I'm just reading off of the website, says Fred Joyal. Started as an extremely shy person, which I don't believe that one bit, but we'll talk about that too timid even to make a phone call and transformed himself into someone who has done stand up an improv comedy, spoken to audiences of 5000 or more and dozens of celebrities. And just by being bold found love, joy, passion, success. I think that's a good start to the conversation. So the first question is, Fred, why is bold a superpower? How does that work?

Fred Joyal: Because almost everything that you want to really achieve takes boldness. It takes the confidence to believe you can do it. And then the courage to act. And that's really what boldness is, is your confidence in action. And what happens to most people is we become under confident in a lot of areas in our life. We have these zones of confidence with our friends, with our family, maybe with our coworkers. But anything outside of that, we're timid. We hesitate. And we miss opportunities. And what bold people have learned is that abundance comes from stepping into your discomfort zone and discovering what's possible.

This is how you chase your dreams is knowing there's a risk of failure, but knowing that there's an upside just in trying. And so I encourage people to say, this isn't about becoming a show off or an attention grabber or something like that. This is about bringing the full you to the world, presenting everything about you that is great and exceptional and unique and wonderful to whatever situation you are in, and that takes time to develop that skill. It took me decades to develop it, but it can be developed.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And I want to talk about that in a second. But the thing that I think I want to bring up and get your opinion on is, you know, people are afraid to fail. They're afraid if they fail, people are going to look down on them. But I mean, Fred, you were maybe one of the most successful business people in the dental profession with 1 800 Dentist. I like to think that most days I had a successful CPA career. I built a CPA practice and do what I do. But anybody who says that in their life, in business, that they haven't made a mistake is just flat out lying. I mean, how do bold people, what do they do you know, if they fail, what do they do? Why should our dentists be not worried that they're going to fail and not go for this?

Fred Joyal: Because failure is full of information. This is what bold people know is if they don't turn it into a self judgment of inadequacy or worthlessness or it would be the worst, that then you can mine it for information and say, okay, what was in this for me, whether it was a conversation that you had where you could tell the person lost interest and you stop and say, what did I do? And you know what? I monologue. I just kept talking and talking and talking and never gave him a chance to get a word in edgewise. No wonder their eyes glazed over after a while.

Or you start a business. Every entrepreneur I know has had 1 to 3 failures before they succeeded. And then, just like me and you, we made mistakes. We made just survivable mistakes because we figured out what we can't close. So we got to figure out what to do. Right? Made a mistake. We've blown 100 grand. You know, we blew a half a million dollars and endorsing the Angels. The Los Angeles Angels or the Anaheim Angels, whatever the heck they were calling them. And yeah.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I'll bet you did.

Fred Joyal: It did nothing. It did absolutely nothing to have our 800 Dentist banner in the ball field for the entire season. You know, 100 something games played there, didn't matter, didn't move the needle at all. But, you know, you have to survive that stuff. You have to say, okay, now what do we do? We learned our lesson. Let's circle the wagons and get smarter and bold people decide not to beat themselves up. They just say, okay, that's a step up. Every failure is a step up next.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Exactly. So. All right. So how you mentioned in the bio and you've mentioned on here, first of all, I can't believe that you were shy. You have never done what I've known you you're not shy. You're very articulate and all this stuff. But you say that you developed boldness. You did it on your own. How did you do it? How if I have a dentist out there who says, well, you know, I'm really afraid to take risks and my practice isn't doing well and I don't know what to do. I mean, what advice can you give them? How did you create a bold personality in yourself?

Fred Joyal: All right. Well, the reason a dentist should want to do this is because boldness is required. If you're going to run a business as a leader, and very specifically in dentistry, it takes boldness to lead a team, to give them feedback, to say what you expect from them, to criticize them effectively without adding emotion to it. All of those are life skills. It takes boldness to make videos of your practice, which is of yourself and your practice. It takes boldness to ask for referrals. It takes boldness to present a $50,000 treatment plan. I know dentists who can present $100,000 treatment plan without batting an eye with complete confidence. That's the difference boldness can make in your career as a dentist.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So if a dentist doesn't, if they're in that position, like you just said, I can't do that. What would be a first step? I mean, obviously, reading your book is going to help a lot, but.

Fred Joyal: It's going to help an awful lot.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, exactly. But what would be the first thing someone says, I want to become bold or I want to take these steps, I want to move forward. I mean, maybe a little bit. What did you do?

Fred Joyal: Well, what I emulated bold people because I sort of said, what is their mindset? Why doesn't rejection affect them? Like, it affects me? And I also looked at my own life at the times. I was bold and said, wow, so much good came out of that. I have to be more like I have to do that, even if it makes me uncomfortable. And so but you have to do it gradually. You build your boldness muscle like you would build any other muscle, gradually pushing yourself, but not pushing yourself too hard. And I break out the steps in my book in detail on how to how to do this.

But you would start something as basic as may talk to a stranger every day. Decided that every day you're going to do some bold, outgoing thing and you're going to build your boldness muscle. And I have 100 exercises in the book that you can do that work you up. But something as simple as that. Every time I walk into Starbucks, I'm going to talk to the person in front of me.

Art Wiederman, CPA: You know that. That's great. I'm going to relate that to my stepdad, who basically raised me. I talk about him occasionally. He passed away 30 plus years ago. His name was Irving. Irving was a photographer for the Associated Press. He actually was the one that took one of about eight photographers who took the original picture of Marilyn Monroe with her skirt blown up on the New York subway platform. He got paid 100 bucks for that. That was bold. But he taught me exactly what you're saying, Fred, which is always talk to people. Talk to them.

If you're on the line at the supermarket, talk to them on an airplane. I talk to any time I'm on the airplane, I talk to the person next to me. Now, they may not want to talk to me, but I've had some of the most interesting conversations that I'm sure you have, too, on airplanes with people, because you never know who you're going to meet and you never know what kind of connections you're going to make. So, I mean, that's a good, good piece of advice is always talk to people and ask them about themselves and stuff, but always wanting to learn.

So let's talk about let's get a little bit into. Well, before we do that, I want you to talk a little bit about how first of all, how do we get the book? The book is called Super Bold - From Under Confident to Charismatic in 90 days, it's available on Amazon. Is that the main place or where else can they go?

Fred Joyal: Yeah, that's the place you would go. Yeah. And I want to remind people who are listening, it's Super Bold. Bold. A lot of times they go, is this about the Super Bowl? Is this like a football book or.

Art Wiederman, CPA: The movie is Super Bad, right? No, it's not Super Bad.

Fred Joyal: It's not Super Bad either. It's which was a great movie, but it's not about that. No. And so it's on Amazon, it's in hardcover, it's in Audible with me reading it and it's in Kindle. So you have three formats. What however you digest this kind of material and you can go to my website, FredJoyal.com. And download the first chapter if you want. There's also a couple of videos of me doing boldness lectures and that's the way to absorb it. But understand that it's a book about taking action. It has it is a systematic way that you will build your confidence in boldness, and it will surprise you how fast it happens and how much fun it becomes. After a while, you will surprise yourself where you get in 90 days.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So doctors, like I've told you for three and a half years of me doing this podcast, we're well, getting close to 200 episodes that we've recorded. This podcast is a call to action. Okay. I'm hoping that you're going to listen to this. You're going to listen to Fred. You're going to listen to what he's saying, and you're going to wake up tomorrow morning and say, you know, there's something that's not right in my practice. There's not something that's not right in my life, and I need to do something different. We all know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So I would encourage you to get the book. Also, Fred, you've got a seminar webinar coming up. You were telling me about a two it was a two day thing going on. What's that?

Fred Joyal: Yes, I'm doing a two day Super Bold workshop in Los Angeles June 24th and 25th. And this will transform you. I'm going to put you through your paces. You are going to be uncomfortable, a good part of the time. But at the end of it, you're going to be surprised at how far you've come and you will have the tools to interact at a whole different level with people and a systematic way to approach any situation where you're feeling under confident and you say, Wait a minute, I know what to do. I know exactly how to proceed. So you don't miss opportunities so that you step up, you take risks. You meet who you want to meet. You try things you want to try. You say things you want to say.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And I think you told me at the end you're actually going to have the audience sit there and everybody is going to be required to do some stand up comedy. Is that right?

Fred Joyal: Oh, yeah. They have to prepare 15 minutes of comedy and get up and they'll win valuable prizes.

Art Wiederman, CPA: How can they how can they register for the you say is going to be in Los Angeles.

Fred Joyal: It is in Los Angeles, yes. So.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay, how can they is there a is there a website or somewhere they.

Fred Joyal: Can go read Joy, overcome the website, my website. They'll be able to go in, get more information and register for it. And so if you are not in L.A., you'd have to fly in the night before. But this is this is an investment in your entire life that this will you will 100 x what this does for your life.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I again, I've told you guys for three and a half years, I don't get paid to have people on my podcast. I have people on my podcast that help my dentists because this is my legacy to the dental profession. If you want to make a change in your life and this sounds interesting to you, I would go to the webinar and buy the book. I really would. I mean, again, I get honest to God, guys, I would, but you can't see me. I'm putting my hand up and I'm swearing. I get nothing from Fred or anybody else to talk about the wonderful things that my guests do to help the dental profession. I would encourage you to do that. I talk about the Fred, the consequences of hesitating.

Fred Joyal: What happens is you start to stack up regrets because you didn't meet that person that you really wanted to meet. You didn't ask for that order as a salesperson or as a dentist, you said, you know what, I was afraid to present this full implant case to this patient. And then I find out she did the whole thing with another dentist and he charged her $10,000 more than I would have. And you start to realize I am missing out because I am hesitating. I am letting my lack of confidence stop me. And that's it.

Remember when you were talking about a patient and you're talking about a large restorative case? The reason they accept it is your confidence in your ability to do it and your projection of that confidence. You may be absolutely certain that you're the best trained dentist to do this for them or you're as good as they're going to find. But if you don't project that in how you articulate it, in the energy that you put out, they're not going to accept treatment. They're going to wonder. They're going to have all sorts of other things going on. Oh, well, he just wants to make more money. Or he's just trying to get me to do something that I don't need to do. He just wants to do it. And, you know, my dentist is he has so much confidence in what he does that patients accept everything he says.

Art Wiederman, CPA: That's right. And again, I've talked about this before, Fred. You know, I as a CPA, I hang a shingle, dentist hangs a shingle. It is presumed that if you say you're a dentist or you're a CPA or you're an attorney, that you have passed the requirements to do that job, to be in that profession. That's a presumption. What's not presumed is that people trust you and that you care about them. And that's why the hesitancy is, well, you know, you really we should really do these four crowns and but, you know, we could way. Well, I know money is a concern. That's the hesitancy part, right?

Fred Joyal: Yeah. You give them a way out before they ask for one. Yeah. And because you're not confident that the bold move is to present your treatment plan and say and this is if you were my brother in law, this is what I would be recommending to you. So what would you like to do?

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah.

Fred Joyal: And you wait and you shut up. You wait to find out because they. I've had dentists tell me I've done that and they say, okay, when do we start? And the dentist thinks I was I could have said, Oh, well, we could wait or we could, you know, maybe this is too much for you. We could do it in phases. They, instead of backtracking, they shut up and wait.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I remember early in my career when I didn't know what the heck I was doing and I would present a fee to a prospective client. I actually taped myself once read this back in the eighties, and I found out I was almost apologizing for the fee that I was quoting. And one of the things that I've been taught by people like you and all the other great iconic people that we know in dentistry, is that when you. Well, Mr. Smith, it's $10,000. And I'm going to tell you, your smile is going to change your life. When we're done with you, you're going to be a completely new person. And then the fee becomes totally irrelevant because you're thinking about becoming a new person, right? I mean.

Fred Joyal: And so it'll affect every smile, every kiss, every meal, every conversation for the rest of your life.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Exactly. And it's a mindset. And I think that people have to fail a little bit. But then when you have some it's almost like my stupid golf game. You know, we talk about golf, right? You know, I'll get on the course and I'll I had 109 yards to the 18th tee the other day to the 18th hole the other day. And I had a perfect lie and I muffed the shot. But then the next, you know, three holes later, I hit a perfect drive and a perfect and had a birdie. I mean, and you think about, I can do this, you have successes and then you have the failures. So you talked about that you were shy. So we have a lot of people that are shy that go in a dental profession. How does someone who has that shy, non bold personality? I mean, people don't change. Maybe a couple of tips out of your book is to some things they can do to get started.

Fred Joyal: I mean, so step one, stop saying I'm shy and understand, because you're telling yourself to behave this way when actually you're shy in certain situations and not in others. You exhibit shy behavior sometimes. So separate yourself. Don't define yourself as shy, say sometimes I behave in a shy way and I want to do that less. I want to do that never. And realize that there are times when you're not and that just like anything else you get good at it takes practice. It takes understanding how to do it.

One, if you were trying to learn the guitar, you wouldn't expect to sound good on the first day when you picked it up, you wouldn't think buying the guitar was the whole process. It's the first step, and you wouldn't. If it didn't sound good the first day, you wouldn't throw the guitar away. You would assume you had to learn how to get better by being lousy at it for a while. It's the same thing with interacting with people. You're going to be awkward and nervous until you're not, and then all of a sudden you say, Wow, this is this is a whole new world, because I can calmly interact with anybody.

And so, step one, if you can't talk to anybody, smile at everybody. That's, you know, it's I go nonverbal and this process is smile at everybody you meet, go out every day and walk around and smile and everybody you meet. And when they don't smile back, don't take it on. It's got nothing to do with you. They don't know you and you don't know them and you don't know what kind of day they're having. But it becomes this thing where you say, Wow, I smiled at 20 people. 18 of them smiled back. I thought five of them would smile back. And you realize this is that your mindset is wrong, that you think everybody's judging you, everybody, nobody's interested in you. You've got all these things you're going to be, you know, embarrassment is actually a choice. I'll give you my favorite story. I'll give you two stories. Like, if I spilled wine on myself at dinner and I'm with a bunch of people, I could be humiliated and embarrassed. Or I could say, you know, this is why my dry cleaner loves me.

Art Wiederman, CPA: You'd probably spill more wine.

Fred Joyal: And everybody just laughs and they let it go. And I'll tell you my favorite story of this, of dealing with what could be embarrassment. A friend of mine, great speaker. She's on stage. 500 people in the audience. She breaks her high heel 10 minutes into the lecture. Now, this is a horrifying thing to a woman, right? The women in the audience are going, oh, my God, I hope that never happens to me as long as I live. She kicks her shoes off and she says, I guess I should spend more than $30 on shoes from now on.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And everybody probably cracked up right there.

Fred Joyal: The place busts out laughing because there's so much tension, right, that this has happened and they're so embarrassed for her. And then all of a sudden she's not embarrassed for herself. They bust out laughing and she owns them at that point because she humanized herself completely. She said, Look, I don't have to be perfect. I just have to roll with it, whatever happens. And that's what people, big, bold people learn to do, is whatever happened. You don't have to label it as bad. You label it as interesting, unique, unusual, and it's something to learn from.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And I would like, you know, Fred, maybe you have. I mean, we have so many favorite lectures that you and I know in dentistry, but so I'm going to be and I didn't mention this. I'm going to be at the I'm going to be speaking at the California Dental Association Convention. I'm going to be we have a booth there every year. We've had it for 15 years. So if you're at CDA in Anaheim, May 12th to the 14th, come by and visit and say hi. It'll be maybe the only time in the last two years you might see me in a suit. And but anyway, I'm going to encourage you doctors that when you go to and whether it's the California Dental Association Convention, whether it's Hinman, Dallas, Midwinter, Chicago, they've just passed. But whatever conventions you go to, okay, whatever convention you go to, don't go to a course on occlusion, you know, occlusion. Don't go to a course on TMJ, go to a course on how to talk to your patients, how to communicate.

Katherine Eitel as one of my favorite people in dentistry and she talks about courageous communications, courageous conversations. I mean, you know, you read Fred's book. It's all a mindset. It's absolutely a mindset. So let's talk about how the dentist let's say we can get some of they read your book, they come to you. Of course, they learn about boldness. How do we how do we communicate that boldness to the dental team, Fred? Because it's not just that you and I both know that success in a dental practice is not just the doctor, it's the team. How do we get the team involved in this boldness thing?

Fred Joyal: I think that you can make a game out of it. You have everybody read the book and then you say, okay, we know the boldness exercises. We know we have to do them every day. We're going to keep score and see how people do. And everybody's in a different starting point because we know Angela, she's already crazy bold. Okay. So she's starting at level four. And she's got to make level. She's going to do those exercises. But then she's got to make a video of it or she's got to tell us what she did. And we're going to challenge each other and be each other's wing person to go out and do bold stuff and do bold stuff with patients.

Let's start with everybody's going to get good at asking for referrals. You know how we're going to get good at it. We're going to start not good at it, but we're going to look in Fred's book and say, What is the verbiage you use to ask a patient to do a video testimonial or an online review on Yelp? There's a way to do it. Once you do it and you get comfortable with it now, all of a sudden you realize they respond to it because you get good at it that they won't respond right away. I don't really like to do that. And you say, You know what? Me neither. But you know what? Let's do it. If you don't like it, we'll erase it. Let's do it right now on our phone. And if you don't like it, I'll delete it right away. But I have a feeling you're a lot better at this than you think.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And I think a lot of people are. And I always tell doctors, Fred, because I ask every doctor who I consult with, so do you ask for referrals? And it's kind of like the joke, the Jeff Foxworthy, he's one of my favorite comedians on the planet. He talks about when he went to his dentist. Well, have you been flossing every day? Well, not every day. Well, when's the last time you flossed? Well, last time it was when you did it. Six months ago. So there you go. Same thing with asking for a referral. I'll ask my doctors. Have you do you ask your patients for a referral? They'll never say no. They'll never say, I don't do that. They'll say, well, not as much as I should, which means they don't. Right. Yeah. And I think the easiest way, Fred, and I'm sure I haven't gotten to I will be reading your book. There's no doubt I've read your other two books, cover to cover twice, but definitely is to just I like just starting off by saying, how did it go today? Mrs. Smith that opens the door for her to tell you how much she loves the office and all this. And then you're in a positive mindset and well, you know, we hear that a lot. And boy, I don't know if you know this, but we would love to have people like you come to visit our practice. And if you have any friends, I mean, I'm sure you've got lots of lots of really good tips on how to ask for referrals and in your books, right.

Fred Joyal: Yeah, but it's also how do you how do you approach it with confidence? One of the things I teach in the book is how to make somebody feel like the most important person in the room. And it's really simple and nobody teaches you this in school. I didn't learn it in high school. I didn't learn it in college. I didn't learn it in my jobs. I eventually observed people doing it and figured it out. I actually watched Bill Clinton do it at a fundraiser when he was early in his career, ready before he'd become president. And I watched him meet 200 people in a row, one at a time. And every one of them came away like he had locked onto them completely and was totally interested in that. And I thought, I'll do it.

Art Wiederman, CPA: He smiles.

Fred Joyal: All. He smiles any, any and when he's looking at you, it's like everything else behind you has been blurred out. He never looks away. And he listens and he and these are this. And I lay out the steps for how to do this.

But if you do this with a patient, you just look at them and say. I really want to know, honestly what it's how you feel about being a patient of ours. Well, I really you know, you make me really comfortable and you just look at them and you listen and you say. Is. Is there anything that we do that you don't like here? Oh, no, there's nothing like that. You sure? Because, you know, you can tell me or you can write to me. So now you haven't asked for a referral at all? And they said, no, we love you. And then you say, How would you feel about making a little video for me? And you don't have to do it if you don't want. But you know, the world we live in, it's a tick tock world. And so a video certainly would help me to attract people like you because I want to treat people like you. So if you could do that, that would help me to find more patients like you. And then all of a sudden they say, Oh, I would do that because what did you do? You've made them feel like the most important patient in the practice.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah. Exactly. So let me ask you a question. And it can be someone in the dental profession or it could be someone not in the dental profession. Are there maybe a couple of people that come to mind that if someone were trying to become bold or become better at being bold, that you could kind of watch their watch them, watch how they talk, watch them. Do you have a couple of people other than yourself, of course, who's very good at it? Do you have anybody out there that you just say you mentioned Bill Clinton. Is there anybody else out there? I mean, I know Barack Obama, I think is a. And forget by the way, folks. Disclaimer, I don't talk politics on this show. I talk to people.

Fred Joyal: Well and politicians succeed or fail by how they project their trustworthiness, whether they are or not. And so and how they connect with their constituency, that that is going to get you elected or not. You could be. We have often not elected the smartest person and actually or the most capable person because they couldn't connect with us.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah. Yeah. So do you ever do you have a couple of folks that are just like, these were your role models or these are people that I say this, this is who I think you should be like anybody can think of.

Fred Joyal: You know, the person that comes to mind is Will Smith. Oh, yeah. I love him because he's so down to earth as a person. And every role that he does, there's a there's a Will Smith to it element, but it doesn't overwhelm it. But you feel an ability to connect to him and he tries everything. You know, he's done sitcoms, he's done rap music. He's you know, he's launched movies. He goes out and lectures. He bungee jumped out of a helicopter. Somebody talk to me.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I'm not doing that anytime soon, folks. I'm right. So that's not happening.

Fred Joyal: Yeah, well, and this is when I talk about boldness. I'm not talking about physical danger. I'm not talking about base jumping and stuff like that. No, that's for adrenaline junkies. I'm talking about when it matters, like.

The example I always use because it has such a crucial element to it is. You know, if you need to give a eulogy for your oldest friend or a parent who passed away, you want to be able to do it. You don't want to say, oh, I don't like to speak in front of people. I can't do it. This is your one chance to get up and say how much this person meant to you in your life. You don't have to be brilliant. You don't have to be clever or entertaining. You just have to get up and speak from the heart. You may choke up. You may not be able to finish. That won't matter. What will matter is that you stood up and spoke what was on your mind and in your heart. And no one's going to laugh at you or judge you. And I pity the person who does judge you because they're in a terrible, terrible place.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I totally agree. Yeah. I mean, there's Toastmasters out there. I don't know if you've ever dealt with them, but that's if you want to practice your public speaking and trying some of the stuff out that might be some place you might want to go try where it's non-threatening and everybody's trying to get better and stuff like that.

Fred Joyal: And it's nothing but encouragement. And everybody who's doing it sucks, right? They're starting off badly. They know it. And so and they embrace sucking is what I tell.

Art Wiederman, CPA: People like that.

Fred Joyal: The only way to get good at something is start off bad at something. That's how you became a dentist. You were not good at it. It took you 2 hours to do your first round prep or three. Exactly. So you didn't leave dental school? You just got faster?

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah. I mean, we all we all have to. And that's a good point, because if you're going to start making a change in your, you know, how you talk and how you address people, it is how I go back to my golf think golf game. I've been taking lessons at Golf Tech with my coach Riley now for over a year. And he says, Art, it took me seven years before I was happy in my swing. This doesn't happen overnight. You have to be patient and you have to be happy with all the victories.

So, like I say, you and I could talk for days. I would strongly encourage you folks. Again, the book is called Super Bold. I will spell it. From Under Confident to Charismatic in 90 days on Amazon. I encourage you to get it.

Let's I mean, you've spent your whole life in marketing. I can't let you off this interview without talking a little bit about how marketing has changed in 35 years. And, you know, maybe a little bit about, you know, what what's working today, what's not what you're seeing in the dental profession. I'm just going to let you go here. What how does it change? I mean, I remember back. Yeah, postcards. We'd send postcards and coffee cups, and then they had this thing called the Internet that changed everything. So what are you seeing and what do you see? Working and not working?

Fred Joyal: But what's happened is we've gone from a push environment to Broadcast advertising, pushing products in your face, telling you what you should want to oppose the environment where people are out there looking around for what they want. But. The biggest shift of all. Not only is there so many different media to use to get to people, but you have to do you have to work in all of them in some way. You have to be involved in Facebook and Instagram. You have to have testimonial videos on your website and rebuild your website every two years. You have to have a YouTube channel. You have to have a well-designed office. You have office even has to smell good. All of these things are marketing. And then you have to build a personal brand. This is the huge shift that's occurred over the past 20 years. Is your personal brand matters more and more then the brand of the business, the company, whatever. And that this is the most successful people, whether they're salespeople or dentists, is because their brand means something to thousands of people that who they are as a person, as and for their skill, for their confidence, for their caring, for their trustworthiness.

Or you have to decide how you project this. And if you're shy, you're withholding who you are. You're withholding what I believe. Most dentists have a really strong character. They entered this field to make people healthier. A lot of times, in spite of themselves, there's great nobility in being a dentist versus any other sort of health care practitioner because you get a lot of grief about it until they need you.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Right. And everybody's like, I'm afraid to go to the dentist. It's like a root canal and all this stuff. This brings up I was lecturing at a large in front of a large group at a local dental society before the pandemic. And I was lecturing with a guy who owns a marketing company because he was one of the guests, and they asked me to be on stage with him. And, and they were talking. So one of the dentists stood up. And you could tell, Fred that this gentleman was not bold, he was shy and he was scared. And he said, Art, I need to understand something. He says, I have a big national chain clinic across the street from me and tons and tons of people go to them. And I'm not getting a lot of new patients and how can I get around that? And I started talking about what you just said is you've got to build a brand. I said, Who are you? He says, I'm a dentist. I said, You're a good dentist. I'm a very good dentist. I said, But what makes you different? What makes you special? Well, I don't know. And that's exactly what you're getting at in this boldness thing is people have to realize. Talk a minute about building a brand. How do you get started? I mean, that's a two hour podcast. I understand.

Fred Joyal: But yeah, if your answer is I don't know, that's why the office isn't busy.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah.

Fred Joyal: It's because you don't know why you're exceptional. You don't know why somebody should come to you versus somebody else. If you don't know it, how could they know? And so what you have to do is what is that what are your core values? What are you willing to do for money and not willing to do for money? How will you treat people and how will you treat your team members or how what won't what is not acceptable? All those things have to be clear. And then you have to say, who do I uniquely want to be? And it could be, look, I want to be the best implant dentists there is. I want to be focused on sleep. I want to be the high value, low cost provider in my neighborhood. You have to define it. I am a dentist is not the answer. There's 180,000 of you and there's this one across the street or six in your building. Yep. And you don't need everybody to love you. Part two. You don't need the whole town to love you. You need 1200 people to think you're amazing. And what you're doing is developing that skill of effectively communicating that you care enough about them to do what is most important for them to maintain their teeth the longest time in their life.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I think the good news for our listeners, Fred, is that virtually every dentist that I've ever met in 38 years in the profession cares deeply about people. They wouldn't go into the profession if they didn't. Well, I'm going to fix your teeth, but I really don't care if you have periodontal disease, and I really don't care if you have. No, everybody cares. Every time I've had the opportunity to refer some friends to dentists here in Orange County, where I live, and every time I talk to that dentist and their office, it's like the caring switch goes on. So that's kind of the first step of this. They do care. They just have to learn how to communicate it, right? I mean, yeah.

Fred Joyal: Because they need to know that there is value in what they're getting from you and you have to communicate that. And they have to know that you are trustworthy. They have to perceive that you are trustworthy. And I talk about this a lot in Becoming Remarkable, my second book, because you can't make people believe you're trustworthy by telling them to trust you. And it's not even things that we would normally say are how you build trust. It is how they feel comfortable. It is an emotional decision on people's parts to trust someone. And it's like, oh, well, I like the way he dresses. I like how gently he talks. I like the way she always explains everything to me before she does it. Then she asks me certain questions and she remembers the name of my kids and stuff like that. So all of that happens because you are behaving in a way that connects with people and that's what builds trust.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, I have I have one of Fred's books. I have. I'm holding it right here. My hand is I don't remember. This is I think the first one was Everything is Marketing the Ultimate Strategy for Dental Practice Growth, right?

Fred Joyal: Yes.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And then what was the second one? The second one was called Becoming Remarkable. Are they still available, by the way?

Fred Joyal: Yes, they are both on Amazon. Everything is Marketing is in its fourth revision. And Becoming Remarkable is not, it's still the original.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And the great thing is I read Everything is Marketing. I ordered 100 of them and I gave them out to my clients and I still give them out to my clients. Even though, you know, it's been years, it's still relevant. I read it from on an airplane from Los Angeles to New York, and it's an easy read. It's got lots of great examples. So I wish I could talk to you for another 2 hours.

Fred, it is just an honor and a privilege. I want to thank you for all of our thousands of listeners. What you have done to help the dental profession in your 35, 40 year career is remarkable. I mean, and there are people I'm so blessed to know people like you and all the other people I've had the privilege of interviewing on this podcast and in my webinars and stuff like that. So thank you for everything that you have done to help the dental profession. Thank you for what you're doing now. What you're teaching right now about boldness and empowerment, I think, is some of the most important things that a dentist can learn. Because if you can have that confidence to do these things, folks, the rest of it's going to fall in line. It really, really is. So. Okay, Fred, one more time, Super Bold From Under Confident to Charismatic in 90 days available on Amazon and where else?

Fred Joyal: That's well, I mean, wherever you buy digital books, you can buy it if you use other formats. But Amazon is obviously the easiest place to go. And if you go to www.FredJoyal.com, you can see more about me and the concept of super boldness and also get a link right there to go buy the book if you want.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And one more time you said June 24th and 25th is your live seminar in Los Angeles.

Fred Joyal: Yes. And it's going to be limited to I think in 50 is my maximum in the room. So it's going to fill up fast.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay. So if you want to get on there, jump on FredJoyal.com and register for that. Is that a Friday Saturday?

Fred Joyal: Yes.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay. Sounds good. Fred, stay with me as I take the podcast out. Thank you so, so much. I hope you come by CDA say hi and it's just always an honor and a privilege to talk to you. And again, thanks again for everything that you do to help dentists.

Fred Joyal: Thanks, Art. It's a pleasure to be on your show and really always great to connect with you.

Art Wiederman, CPA: All right. So, folks, please take what you've just heard and take some action if you feel you need to make some changes in your life and even if you don't. So just again reminders to go on to our partner Decisions in Dentistry www.DecisionsinDentistry.com for their great clinical contact content and 140 fantastic CE courses at a very reasonable price.

Again, we are a proud member of the Academy of Dental CPAs. It probably may be after or just when this podcast airs, we're finally going to get to do a live meeting up in Napa for the first time in two and a half years, and we're just going to be hugging each other for two and a half days. I don't think anything is going to get done.

If you're looking for a dental CPA, we at Eide Bailly can help you and that's I'm at awiederman@EideBailly.com my phone number 657.279.3243. The Academy of Dental CPAs has 24 CPA firms across the United States that represent over 10,000 dentists. www.ADCPA.org. Make sure to apply for the employee retention tax credit. If you need some help with that, give us a call.

And as this thing goes on, for those of you who received money after December 31 of 2020, so in January, February of 2021, in the first quarter of 2021 from the HHS Provider Relief Fund, you are going to need to report sometime between July one and September 30th. Don't forget that.

Well, I'll tell you what, this has been one of my favorite interviews. I say that every week. But this is honestly, I just love having conversation like this. And I thank you for the honor and the privilege of your time, folks, the thousands of people who listen to this podcast, the emails I get, the calls I get. You've been so kind. I want to change your life for the better. And that's what my legacy is in the dental profession. So please keep listening. Tell your friends if you don't subscribe, go on to your favorite podcast app and subscribe and you'll get the podcast we publish twice a month. And with that, folks, my name is Art Wiederman. Dental Division Director at Eide Bailly and for the Art of Dental, Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. We'll see you next time.