📍 A big hello and welcome to you for joining me today. I am Sarah Beth Herman. CEO of dentistry support and your host on our brand new podcast. This is episode number one. Our intro into letting you know all about what you can expect here. At dentistry support the podcast. I think it's fair to say that I'm not 100% sure how you found me. Whether you stumbled upon this podcast by mistake. You're a long time friend or somewhere in between.
Thank you so much for listening today. With this being the intro episode. I struggled so much to try to find out exactly what we were going to talk about. So I'll just start right here. I have tried so many times to start a podcast. I have been invited on other podcasts.
I've co-hosted podcasts. I've tried to design what I thought the perfect podcast would look like. I've talked by myself. I've talked with others. I've been interviewed. Never really knowing what the greatest mix would be. Should I have instead, but interviewed. Who am I even talking to? There is this complex that happens.
There's something that stirs inside of you that says if I just say all the things I'm thinking right now, I, if I express all of my dreams and all of the ways that I hope to communicate to the world exactly who I am and what I stand for. Is the person listening right now, really going to hear what I have to say. So I went to work. I'll be honest. This is my fifth recording of this exact very first episode. It's embarrassing. But I'm taking you on a journey here of what it meant to record this very first episode of dentistry support the podcast. I want you to know what to expect. I want you to know what I promise to give you an, each of the future episodes that you are going to listen to. I've written this episode five times. I perfectly scripted it out. Took me two weeks. A lot of different pauses stops. Research. I listened to dozens of other podcasts.
I search Pinterest for the perfect outlines and graphics. I asked Chad GBT to craft the words I would say. Should I write how friendly I should be. How authentic should I be? How do I actually be authentic? All of the things you could imagine you would be doing. If you wrote out your very first episode. I did all of that. I recorded it four times. And I sent it to my sister. I said, I want you to give me the best feedback you possibly can. And I hung up the phone. And then I watched the clock tick. I knew exactly how long this first episode was. I crafted it so perfectly. As soon as 15 minutes hit, I was like, man, she should be calling me any second. She calls me three minutes later, I was nervous, but excited.
I partially thought she would say, wow, that was really stinking. Great. You did an excellent job. I'm so proud of you. That's the conceited big sister in me. And then part of me was like, oh man, she's going to totally hate it. She's going to tell me I was fake. She's going to tell me I couldn't get my crap together, that I need to redo the whole stinking thing. She calls.
I answer. First, I'll tell you. She gave me a whole lot of grace and I'm very grateful for that. She did. However, give me 11 things that were wrong with it. And maybe those 11 things we'll just live rent free in my head for a little while. But I love that she did that. Five years ago. My sister would have never been so candid with me. And 10 years ago, I would have cried at the very thought. Of that kind of feedback that she gave me. You know, I'm curious as soon as I just told you that. Where you are you, have you ever been one of these two people? Are you someone who cannot give or receive feedback? Are you someone who would never give or take feedback? Are you someone that just cannot hear what someone else thinks about something you created? I feel like this exact situation is so many of us at any given point in our journey. If you don't feel like any of this is you, you're probably one in a trillion people, because I believe in leadership. At some point you're one of these. Maybe you aren't anymore.
Maybe you've grown and Hey, you're just an expert at giving and receiving feedback. That's not me. I still struggle from time to time. And that's why maybe some of those 11 things will be hard for me to swallow later on.
She has a little side note for you. My sister is actually the director of marketing and technology for three of the businesses that I passionately lead and own. She has worked so hard and come so far. I do respect her opinion. And all of those 11 things, she stated led me to rerecording this episode and giving you this version of me. So right now. What you're hearing.
I hope you love it. I hope it's really, really good. And I hope that it is starting to fuel your soul for what you are going to learn about in all of our future episodes.
I want to start at a little bit different of a place than you normally would on an intro podcast. I always find it fascinating to know how someone got started in something a little bit about them that helps me realize they're actually a real person. Because if someone has the courage to get up and speak in front of people or record a podcast, create social media posts. Show their face on Tik TOK.
I want to know about them. I find myself wondering sometimes if they are actually real people. Or just some figment of my imagination. I've created. Are they someone who is just playing this crazy part in this weird life that has nothing to do with mine. And why am I even watching them? Who cares? So with all of that. I would love to share with you a little bit about my life and how I got started in hopes that I won't just be creating more minutes for you to listen to on this podcast, but I'll be creating for you a window into my life.
And that you now feel like someone is really on your generational leadership journey with you. I'll start with my first job. I delivered newspapers. That was my very first job that paid me. Now of course I was a babysitter for my siblings. I did lots of other little things here and there when I was a little girl, but. At 12 years old. I started my first job delivering newspapers. And I love talking about it. I still remember living in Colorado and waking up at two o'clock in the morning as a young girl. Wrapping newspapers and binding them with a large rubber band or throwing them in these orange plastic bags and my hand being covered in the ink that rubbed off of the paper. I rode my bicycle. To the neighborhood, just across the street to deliver newspapers.
And I would collect the checks from those who subscribed. Throughout my career, I worked at several different places like hobby lobby, old country buffet, TGI Fridays. While I was waiting tables at TGI Fridays. I also worked simultaneously at a small bank. And I carried a third job working at a dental office. I was 17 years old when I started that job. And I would like to say that the dental office, I just felt like, man, this is pretty cool.
I'm not at a bank working with my brother and I'm not at just some restaurant waiting tables. I'm working for a real business. I felt so important. I felt like I really got my foot in the door, you know, like I was starting my career and I was going to do this. I don't think then I really knew that it was going to be my career in dental, but fast forward, 20 plus years later.
And now I've created several multi-million dollar companies in dentistry. How profound, if I could just go back and tell myself then. What would happen in the future? I think I would be maybe even a little bit more proud of myself that I, I took that job filing charts.
You are going to learn all about each of those journeys throughout our episodes here at dentistry support the podcast. And what brought me to this today. You listening to my very first episode.
Through this podcast, I'm trusting that you'll be here, that I'll get to teach you leadership things. I learned along the way. Some big time mistakes I made and huge triumphs I had.
And I am not sharing these from the perspective that I want you to admire me or find me to be some excellent person. But rather that you see all the moments of humility. And learn that that's what leadership is all about. I want to teach you a lot about dental business. So if you're in the dental profession, You're going to learn a lot here. If you just want to learn leadership, you will hear about dental, but stay for the leadership. I really love small business. And I really love leadership.
My passion is understanding and knowing leadership. And creating something I've called generational leaders. So those that come after me and those that come after them. Really understand how to lead and continue to create leaders. I think that when we talk about creating and cultivating generational leaders, it gets messy. I think leadership gets messy because people talk about leadership and they invite in the words, servant leader. It's a buzzword. It's got a lot of traction lately. And I've seen people in my company sign off on their emails as servant leaders.
Hey, I've done it too. We want everyone to know. We preach about it. We go over it and all of our employee meetings, we talk about it in our emails and our blog posts, how we are these great and amazing servant leaders. But it gets messy because people don't actually live that out. Now I love servant leadership, please.
Don't mistake my candor here for not loving what servant leadership represents and where it was founded. I am a believer in Christ and I believe very much so that servant leadership is where all of us need to be. But I think the buzzword has created this with people. They haven't been treated right by these so-called servant leaders. I don't know about you, but I personally never want to be seen as a person or heard as a person that's just saying or telling you of how I'm a servant leader, but not actually living it out. Acting like I just have this all figured out. Instead, I want to be a person who acts out in servant leadership without having to say. I participate in servant leadership. The heartbeat behind this episode is all about you. I want you to really find out if this is the place you want to come back to every week. If you really think you're going to be inspired to create other leaders. That lead our future generations in a way that positively impacts others.
That creates moments. We are proud of.
I think it's really fun to share stories.
To learn about all of the different scenarios that led people to become the leaders they are today. I also believe that in sharing those stories, especially the ones that emphasize humility. It's important for us to reflect on them. Because leadership starts right there. It starts where humility begins. Oftentimes when you are in a leadership position. You make mistakes.
We all do it. We've hurt people along the way. You've been hurt along the way. And it feels really scary to share those really vulnerable moments. I am making a goal to be brave enough in this podcast to share those with you. I am going to share with you the times that I was super cringe-worthy. And that I can't even believe I said certain things or I did certain things I want to share with you. The times that I was really embarrassed and I am.
It's easy to say that I want to do that or that my goal is to do that. But the really crazy thing about recording a podcast is knowing that I'm talking to you right now. And that you might be someone I did hurt in my leadership journey. You might be someone that I didn't even know. I hurt. You might be someone that unintentionally crossed my path. Or I unintentionally crossed yours and things didn't work out.
And I wasn't the leader that you needed me to be. I hope right now, if that's you. You know that I care for you and that I never meant for you to feel that way. I want to share with you some really cool stories. I'm about to tell you one that happened seven years ago.
When I started in dentistry, I never knew where it was going to take me. And honestly, I didn't even know that I was going to make a career out of it. When I was 33 years old, I was scouted out by a very large dental organization located in Beverly Hills, California. It was a dream experience. I was contacted through a popular business networking site. And the CEO of the company was so interested in me. He wanted to know about my journey, how I could bring more of me to their organization. I was ready for a change. I had outgrown, in my opinion, the current place I was at.
The leadership and mentorship. It just, wasn't what I needed to grow.
I'll say this. It wasn't bad for the people that worked where I used to be. I just knew that it was time for me to go. And that I no longer belonged in that space. And I think it's really fair for us to get comfortable enough and sure enough of where we want our future to go. For us to say that it's okay to find a new opportunity. And in this situation, This new opportunity was a beautiful new venture for me. At the time I was located in the east valley of Arizona and a smaller town. And to be talking to someone in Beverly Hills, California, about my skillset. Me, my leadership. Everything they had to say to me, it was just wild. We talked for several weeks, we would have these conference calls where we would ask. We spoke for several weeks. We would have these conference calls with all of the members of their C-suite organization.
They would each go through. And ask me questions one after another. It was pretty cool to be looked at like this. One day, one of the CEOs said, Sarah, Beth, we want to fly you out here for an in-person interview. We're going to fly you to Los Angeles for one day.
So in one day I flew from Phoenix to lax and back to Phoenix. I remember sitting on the plane. I was sitting next to a gentleman who was in the tech industry. I was talking to him about this situation and the fact that I was going to be in this interview that I had never even been to Beverly Hills before. He said, you know, they're going to hire you, right. I was like, uh, no, I don't.
I am going to an interview. Mr. Tech guy was like, uh, people in LA don't just fly you here because they want to fly you here. They aren't in the business of wasting their time. And at first I thought what he really meant was they weren't in the business of wasting their money, but no, he meant their time.
They fly you here because they know they're going to hire you. They just want to see you in person. I was like, okay. Mr. Tech guy. Plane lands. I get off the plane and I didn't have any check baggage. So I immediately went over to passenger pickup. And they sent out a fully blacked out SUV with a personal driver. They were there waiting to pick me up. Take me all the way to Beverly Hills.
We get all the way to Beverly Hills and there is this huge sky rise building and I needed to go to the 11th floor.
And at this point, I honestly just can't even believe that I've made it this far, that I've made it to the point where I'm getting out of this SUV and I'm getting ready to step into this. Building and meet with the C-suite of people for the job of a lifetime. I mean, Uh, salary I'd never had before an opportunity.
I never dreamt of.
I didn't even know if they were going to like me or pick me. I remember walking through the front door. And signing in on a sheet at the front counter. There had to be 25 names ahead of mine. Were they all there for the same reason I was. There was only one hour of time selected. Because my driver was going to be back to pick me up on the next flight so I could get back to Phoenix.
Hi, walk into this room and there's six different people in there. Huge office. I've never actually seen an office this big before. They actually asked me to never leave. They said they would fly my husband, daughter and all of our belongings. If I would just stay and start working right now. Obviously, I couldn't do that. I still worked for my previous company. I had to be honorable and let them go and move on from that organization. So, yes, I did ultimately get picked up by my driver, head back to lax and fly home on a flight that I was already scheduled for.
I went home. I told my husband, he helped me negotiate the offer. We went back and forth emailing. I strong-armed them. It was amazing. I landed on a six-figure salary that they offered me, plus a life-changing sign-on bonus. It was absolutely life-changing. It was wild. I ended up with an amazing offer and an opportunity to be relocated to California. And I did that in just two weeks. Fast forward four weeks from my interview. I'm now living in a small town in orange county.
I really did it. And every week on Thursdays, there was always the plan to beat at the corporate office where I first interviewed. He would head there. To meet with everyone in the C-suite. I was going to be attending my very first meeting this Thursday. The windows pant from floor to ceiling in their conference rooms.
You could see Santa Monica pier out to the left and all of the rolling Hills of Beverly Hills to the right. It's beautiful. The ocean's just right there. It's my first time to speak. I stood up and one of the other leaders, she was from a different department, not the C-suite, but equally influential. She looks at me as I finished rambling on about how I have all of these plans. And all of these ways that my leadership has worked in the past and everything that I'm going to do and have done. Because in the past, I've increased other businesses.
I've made them more profitable. I've grown teams of hundreds of people. I am incredible. I am the perfect person here. They chose the right one. The end of my grand speech and all of these ideas that I shared and everything about my past. She looks at me and she says, Sarah, Beth talk is cheap. And, you know, There was never a moment in my career that I ever remember words striking me like a dagger so deeply. And it wasn't that she said anything that was disrespectful or untrue. It just gave me a defining moment. A moment that I had to pause and think for a minute about what she meant by those words. And I think about that board room meeting many times in my career. I think about it before I get on tough calls.
Sometimes I just reflect on it when I'm not really thinking about anything, it seems insignificant. Like, why am I taking the time in this intro episode of this podcast? To tell you about a moment when someone said talk is cheap. Because you've probably heard it before. But I want to remind you of this. As a leader. You are going to have many moments. Where you have an opportunity to influence a room. And there are many people in that room that are very much so smarter than you are. And you are going to think you are the smartest person in the room. And for once. I want you to hear the phrase. If you are the smartest person in the room, get out, go to a new room. Because in that moment. On the 11th floor of a high rise building in Beverly Hills, California. I was not the smartest person in that room. But I sure wanted everyone to think.
I was. I needed to hear talk is cheap. So that I could evolve. To the next step in my leadership journey. I was standing in a room with all of this zeal, this excitement, passion for life. And I was going to transform this gigantic organization with 1500 plus employees. I was going to do it. And I was telling them how I was going to do it. The words, show me, don't tell me ring true in my mind, And they are repeaters for me that live rent-free. I just run those through my mind constantly. And these moments that you have the chance to talk in front of people. Do so from a standpoint that you aren't just going to be about the words, you're not just going to be about what you've done before. That now. You're going to be about action. You're going to start every speech. With the opportunity that you have the chance to implement something new, not just talk about what you did. One of the annoying traits of a new hire as how they always compare their old job to where they are now.
Sometimes I just want to say, well, why don't you just go work back there. If you're going to talk about your old job all the time. I'm not here to bash on who you are as a leader or those new hires that drive me crazy sometimes. But I am here to remind you about your leadership. And the opportunity that you have, that you are called to speak and to live out your leadership differently.
I didn't stand in that room. Scared of speaking in front of people. In fact, I get jazzed up at the thought of just speaking in front of a hundred thousand people.
Like, I'll go do it right now. I'm not scared. I'm not going to have stage fright. I love engaging with a crowd. It fuels my soul. So I know that I wasn't ever really nervous to be in that room, but I was nervous. Because. I didn't know where to go next. Once she said those words. I know now where I was going.
I know now what I would say differently or how I would act differently. But I'm giving you the opportunity to enter your next opportunity to speak. Much differently than I handled my last interaction seven years ago.
Something, I would also like to share. Is that it literally breaks me every time I encounter a leader who is defeated or down on themselves. And it's not from this perspective that I just want to cry and hug them, but I also kind of feel like maybe I do want to cry and hug them because I know that they never had a mentor that was going to stick with them and get through whatever leadership hump that they were currently in. Getting them past this bump in the road. Small business is hard.
Leadership is hard. It breaks me because I know you've used all of your thinking spots in your mind. You have used all the spots in your mind. Were you previously controlled things, you currently control things. Things that you were successful in. You're recapping moments that went really well for you.
And you're trying to use those past experiences in your current situation, but it's just not working. Like you thought it would. I want to teach you. That? Yes. The hardest part of leadership is realizing that you're going to be uncomfortable. But also that in this podcast, you have a leader who's walking alongside of you. Sharing similar experiences that are going to help carry you through. And every time that you reached the base of that mountain, that you're trying to push and leadership. And your muscles are tired and your mind is exhausted. Those are moments of true growth.
And I want to help you get through those to the other side so that you can look back at all of those experiences that you had and realize how far you've actually come. I've had a couple of thoughts come through my mind as I'm recording this podcast. But one of them takes me back to interviewing people. If you're anything like me and my journey of leadership interviewing you kind of become a pro at it. And I have interviewed not hundreds of people, but probably thousands of people. That sounds really dramatic. But all of my companies are global organizations. And when you are hiring globally, you actually interview and very large quantities. So you get to almost foretell. What's going to happen in an interview. As soon as someone starts talking.
In my journey of interviewing all these years, I have found a very common reply to different questions that I've asked throughout that process. And so the part that I want to talk about now may ruffle a few feathers, but I'd like to invite you to hear me out on this perspective for a moment.
If you are in dentistry or any industry. for that matter, you two have probably heard this line in response to a question during an interview. Maybe you've even heard this response in a large group setting, or you've heard this kind of line shared in a speech you've heard or something.
You've seen someone write.
If you aren't in dentistry, go ahead and fill in the blank with whatever industry you're in. But I've heard this a hundred times. Maybe even more dentistry is my passion. Or blank industry is my passion.
Let's get real for a minute.
That line is very annoying. I have talked to many of you who also roll your eyes at that very line.
If there would be anything that I could share with you to take away for the next interview you go into or something you could share to someone else who's going to be interviewed. It would be that when you want to talk about the industry, you're in. Instead of saying dentistry is my passion or blank industry is my passion. I'm going to encourage you to say, I know dentistry really well, or I know blank industry really well. And I'm really comfortable with the ins and outs of what that business looks like, because I really love having confidence and what I do for a living.
It makes leadership so much easier for me. It makes it feel like I don't have to work so hard at being a great leader because I have confidence and what I do because I am an expert at it.
If you already disagree with me on the whole passion thing. Let's talk about this for a moment. Passions defined like this. I went to Mr. Google because who doesn't want to Google Google's opinion. We are in the 2020s, right? Like we got to go to Google, everything. Google first lists synonyms. When you search the definition of passion, like infatuation, passion, enthusiasm, zeal, mean intense emotion, compelling action. According to good old Google passion applies to an emotion that is deeply stirring or ungovernable.
Now. I don't think in all the times that I heard someone say, dentistry is my passion, or they've talked about your industry. That they're really saying they have this. Deep stirring ungovernable emotion. About that industry or that they are infatuated with that industry. Or that they have so much enthusiasm or mean, and tense emotion about this industry.
That compels action.
I mean, Hey, if that's you let's go, but can we be real for a minute? It probably isn't. It is completely fair to be passionate about things. I love it. And I really passionate right now about this podcast. I think it's going to be a hit. I think we're going to meet every week and that you're going to stink and love it. But it's hard to say that about an industry. You could be really comfortable.
You could really know something, but our passion. Comes from within. And a lot of that joy that we experience comes from the way we interact with people. It is not necessarily the industry as a whole. But as the interactions that we get from being comfortable with something. From being able to be generous with our time talents and resources. My goal in this podcast. It's to deliver that. Those tiny tidbits of wisdom and actionable generational leadership and 5, 10 20, 25, maybe 30 minutes.
I don't know. We're playing it by ear.
We're never going to go more than 30 minutes. But I want to make sure that you have enough time while you are on your way to work. Getting ready for your morning huddle. Or if you're at a dental office, listening to it for your morning huddle, whatever you need, I want it to be enough time that it doesn't feel overwhelming for you and that you can stick with me. Hi, I'm excited to meet with you every week. That's what I really want you to know. I am excited to meet with you because I have been in your steps. And where I am today. I'm going to look back 10 years from now and I'm going to be like, wow.
I knew absolutely nothing. We are continually evolving and growing, and I am excited to be here with you. And I trust you are excited to be here with me. So in the beginning of this episode, I talked about how I have full intentions on sharing with you. All the cringy things I've done. And I'm about to do one more. I wasn't joking then, and I'm not joking now.
It's good for you to know my personality. And I'm here to introduce a tradition that I'm going to carry forward in each episode. It's going to be called the that's good moment. Or TGM. Now I know this is pretty cringy, but stick with me for a minute. That's good moment. If you think about all the times you read a post on social media. You watched a movie and you heard something inspiring.
You listen to a great speech or you read an awesome book. You saw a meme, somebody shared a quote, whatever it was. And you said, that's good. That's really good. Okay. That's good. That's what this is your that's good moment. Or TGM now why did I do that? Because I love acronyms. I kind of call myself the acronym queen, if that's even more cringy. I really love acronyms.
My name is Sarah Beth. Herman people call me SBH. My license plate is SBH. I literally love it. So that's what we're doing. You're going to hear me say at the end of every episode, Our TGM. Our TGM moment. It's kind of like a sign-off, but it's more meant to be a deliberate effort to spotlight moments of positivity or growth that you can take with you and your leadership from every episode. I want you also doing this. I want you to find TGMs in your own life, even if it's a small triumph or a lesson you learned, or an inspiring quote. Your TGM is your motivation. For yourself, it's for you.
And I really want to hear about it. If you get yourself a TGM moment, how about you to share that with our community? Tag me on social media. Drop me a comment. Shoot me an email. I want to build a space of celebration and inspiration as we navigate the world of generational leadership together. So as I bring this intro episode to a close, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to me, ramble and I hope you've had fun. And I really hope that you are as excited as I am to hear what is to come in our future. Thank you for being part of dentistry, support the podcast, even if you're just here for the first episode. This is where wisdom and dentistry meets leadership. And leadership becomes generational.
Here's a helpful tip for you and perhaps you are TGM for this episode. If you find that I am talking too fast or talking too slow. You can always check your podcast player, speed settings and slow it down a tad or on the flip side. Speed it up. If you do speed it up, you'll be a lot faster along in my podcast.
Won't even be close to 30 minutes. So whatever works for you. And whatever rhythm you need with that until next time, keep leading with intention and keep leading our future generations. Find your that's good moment. And I'll catch you on the next episode 📍