Mentally Tough: Crisis Mode Ep. 012

There is no way that if I work this hard, I will not be rewarded. There is no way that if you work this hard, you will not be rewarded. Both you and me. We have got to believe that this moment, all this hard work, everything that we're doing right now is preparing us for something amazing. Mel Robbins said that. This week, I found myself rehearsing this a thousand times as I go through the laundry list of things I have to complete. 

It's been crazy. All the tasks, what's it for? What am I doing? All of this for all the hard work, all the good, the bad, the preparation, the mindless tasks that I just have to get through.  It's got to all mean that I'll have results, right.

 I know you thought the same thing. 

Welcome back to episode 12 here at dentistry support the podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Beth Herman. And I'm absolutely confident that today is exactly the episode you needed to hear. A while back, I learned a fun fact. The human brain cannot comprehend negative. Simon. 

Sineck a incredible leader. If you don't know who it is, go read. Some of his books, go listen to some of his podcasts, his Ted talks. They're all fantastic. He spoke on this very topic and he gave us a really great example to prove this theory. Are you ready? Here you go. Don't think of an elephant. No man. 

You thought of an elephant. I know you did because it worked on me and thousands of other people that he's tried the same thing on. You can't tell the human brain not to do things. What happens is we reinforce things when we put a negative spin on it, or we put it in a negative space. It's a common theme to reconvert negative things. 

We're supposed to do this with children. And instead of saying, no, don't eat on the couch. You're supposed to say. Eat at the table. Nothing negative in that second one. Pilots know this it's very well known in their industry. Don't hit the obstacle. Then they hit the obstacle. Skiers, know this. If you say don't hit the tree, all they see is trees. If you focus on the obstacles, all you'll see is the obstacles. It's your choice to choose how you see your own career. Your own business, your leadership, your team, whatever you're faced with. It's your choice to see it. 

 This brings me right in to mental toughness. Everything you choose to see is a choice. Joy is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Love is a choice. Success is a choice. And your mental toughness. Is going to be tested so many times. We're going to talk about three main ways that you can overcome mental toughness, experience mental toughness. What it looks like when you have a lack in mental toughness. We're going through it all. Navigating through crisis modes like terminations business losses. And leading through uncertainty can drain you worse than a 90 minute workout back to back. These moments feel like personal failures.  Due to their significant impact on both you as the leader or the small business owner and your team. However. These also give us such a unique opportunity to build mental toughness. Without them, we would have no idea how to navigate various scenarios and our future. So when I go back to that quote, I talked about in the beginning that Mel Robin teaches us. When I think about all the things that I go through. It's got to yield something, right. 

I can't go through all of this without yielding something. Whenever I go through something that challenges my mental toughness. I think whatever is on the other side of this is what I'm yielding. Whether or not it's making me money. I'm yielding an opportunity to grow. This is where I will be encouraging you today. 

You are going to learn to build a mental toughness and lay the groundwork. For generational leadership. 

 In fact, I think mental toughness is. I guess you could say overlooked so frequently and people don't spend near enough time talking about it, especially with those who are leaders and business owners. We don't spend enough time. So I'm going to take the time. We're going to spend the next four weeks learning about mental toughness. 

You're going to learn to build your mental strength and things that you've got to start doing on repeat, to build a tolerance, to the challenges that come your way. Let's start with terminations. This is a hard one. The need to terminate an employee, especially after investing time and resources into their development. It feels like a personal failure. It feels like I failed someone. 

I could not lead them right. Or manage them. Right. And now I have to fail them. It might also make you reflect on your ability to make the right hiring decisions or to be able to motivate your team. The second you make that choice to terminate someone. You might have guilt on what's going to happen in their life. 

There are circumstances where will your business suffer? You might worry what your customers will say, how your team will respond in secret, because let's be honest, they're absolutely going to gossip about it. No matter how many rules you put in place and say we have a no tolerance, gossip policy. I promise you they're texting each other right now about it. There is an impact on your team. There is increased anxiety about job security. 

If someone gets terminated,  the potential to disrupt team dynamics. It can lead to increased workloads for some of our team members and your team can be very anxious and nervous about that.

Terminations are hard. They're hard for reasons, even if you tend to be someone who's a lot stronger that says, Hey, It's their job to keep or their job to lose. Yeah, that's true. I'm not negating any of that, but where our mental strength comes in is the doubt. You don't talk about the doubt of 

what happened here.  Is my boss thinking, man, she couldn't hire the right person or I'm not going to trust her anymore. Or if you don't have a boss and you run the show, Are you thinking? My team has lack of faith in me. There's a million things that run through our mind with terminations. How do you build a mental toughness to this first? You're going to start viewing terminations as a necessity. They're difficult. 

And I know that. But they are part of leading a healthy and productive team. Every time you have to make a termination. It is a learning experience for improving the hiring practices. You have your management techniques, your communication skills. 

Today, you're going to cultivate a mindset that seeks constructive outcomes from every challenging situation,  you will be building your resilience. When you terminate that person? Meet with your top leadership. Get a plan in place. Learn from the mistakes that were created there, no matter how long it went on. Forgive yourself and we're moving on. 

As a generational leader. You're going to now establish a transparent and empathetic process for terminations. That your future leaders can also model because just like it was hard for you to terminate or deal with that termination, any leader past you, or that comes as a result of you. They're going to have the same fears, the same concerns. And you building a mental toughness now creating a process immediately to overcome. 

This is what will set you apart. Document what this process looks like, the lessons that you learned from this situation and share it with your team. Create clear communication on, Hey, this happened. I acknowledged this happen. Here's what we're doing to fix it. Here's how we're preventing it from happening in the future. 

There is an element of clear communication. Fair process and emotional intelligence that will be required while you're making these tough decisions. I'm encouraging you today to develop that process that will work for you.

 Let's talk loss in business. A significant loss and business can feel like a direct critique of your strategy. Your decision-making. The way that you have handled your team and its entirety, the way you've built your business. It can trigger self doubt,  questioning your capability to steer your organization towards success. Loss and business can be anything from comparing last week to this week, last year to the current year. Or simply acknowledging the end of a contract with a client or a canceled appointment. 

All of this is loss. All of this is significant. And as a business owner or a leader that oversees a team that handles these things in the business. It's crippling, especially if you have no other job. Income source or income stream coming in. I know plenty of business owners who do the owning on the side. Because they have a job and an income, and there is a distinct. Difference between someone who only owns a business singularly and someone who does it on the side. You don't have the same mental weaknesses to overcome. If that's you. I'm sorry for the sting. But also, I'm not sorry because you need to be pushed to go to the next level and to go all in. Every second, you waste building another business. 

You are robbing from your own future. When you own your business and there is no other job, no other income. You have a fight. In you that cannot be compromised. You have a mental weakness that needs strengthening. And it isn't to say that all business owners are completely weak.  But you have to build your mental toughness in a totally different way. Because you are constantly in fight or flight mode, we've never been coached on how to really handle our emotions. When you have a situation where financial instability comes into play. It can create an atmosphere of fear that you've never been a part of before. 

You've never seen before. And then it kind of becomes normal for you. And it's not on purpose. You're not doing this because you want to live in fear. You're not doing this because you really love to be stressed out. But it happens, especially when you haven't built that mental strength yet. 

Your team is who I want to highlight first.  When you have financial instability. It can lead to cuts and resources. Layoffs increased pressure to perform. All of that can negatively impact your team, morale and productivity. If you want to build a mental toughness to losing contracts or losing business. 

I want you to focus on what can be controlled and how to pivot or adapt strategies based on what you learned from those interactions. When you learn to maintain a positive outlook and demonstrate a commitment to overcoming the challenges, this inspires your team and teaches them that they don't have to be in fight or flight mode. 

Whenever a client cancels a contract, whenever a patient cancels an appointment, find things that inspire you and keep that on. Repeat. It's a great technique. For example, if I know that we're going to lose a client, or if I know that someone has decided that they want to end our support because of a maternity leave. I have structured my business in a way where it allows us to have another 30 days of business. 

So we get 30 days to come up with a plan of action to replace that business and continue to grow the company. I've done this so that everybody isn't freaking out, that services have ended. I've made a commitment to my team to provide jobs. I need to have 30 days to make sure I get them a new job so that they can continue to work for me. That's my commitment to them. 

So while I have a commitment to my customers, I also have a commitment to my team and I honor that and the way I've structured my business. You can do the same thing. You can put things in place that, oh, okay. If this happens, this is what we're going to do to replace that income. My focus has always okay. What are we going to do about the problem, but then how are we going to make it better for future. So in generational leadership. 

We're going to make strategic shifts. On what we're going to do in the future. We're going to share with the team what's going on. Make sure everybody's on the same page. And everyone is ready to make the changes needed to grow from whatever it is that we're experiencing. So that means if you're a dental office or a business that thrives on appointments, once someone cancels an appointment, what is the strategy to replace it? 

It's not, oh my goodness. My team is going to be in trouble because someone canceled an appointment. It's. Okay. We're not going to be reactionary here. We're going to be  preventive here. And we're going to choose that when an appointment cancels. We have a specific line that we say to our patients or our customers or consumers. 

And if they still choose to cancel, we're going to put that appointment somewhere else. We're going to reschedule it so we don't lose the revenue, but then we're going to add to our revenue by finding a new person to put in that spot. And we're putting this in place so that everyone knows what's happening. 

Now, if it's a last minute, do you have a cancellation policy that charges the patient, a fee, people don't like that, but the reality is, is you're a small business and you need to have things in place that protect your business. Because even if. That appointment cancels. You still have hourly wages to pay. You still have an electricity bill to pay rent, to pay all of the things that go into having an owning a business. 

So your job is to have the foresight. To think and consider all of that. Before you move on and if you don't have a plan in place, you're going to operate reactionary. You're going to forget.

That your team is going to be scared of you. Whenever something happens with finances.

 Finances and terminations, aren't the only things that leaders or business owners think of.. 

Uncertainties can be anything from office closures, weather closures. Loss and business terminations, lots of different things. Things I'm not even naming on this very podcast. The point is uncertainties of any kind can make you as a leader, feel inadequate.   Even if you think you're a really strong leader, I know that you're just like me. And sometimes you feel like you're faking it until you make it because you know, you've got to be strong to your team. 

Your team is looking to you for security and guidance. When you have uncertainty as a leader.  It can lead to lack of focus, decreased productivity. And a really anxious work environment. Your team members will struggle with whatever the unknown is. 

You're going to strengthen your ability today to tolerate the ambiguity by focusing on short-term goals. And achievable tasks. When you've got something scary in front of you. You need to dumb it down, start with something small and work your way up. Nothing is ever as big as we think it is. So take a step back for a second.  Communicate openly about whatever is going on with your team. Let them be there to support you. Be humble enough to say, you know what, guys, I am stressed. I can't handle this right now. I need your support. My husband gave me a great idea that I think you've heard from someone else, but either way, it's a great idea. 

And he talked to me about it.   He said a great leader. Is someone who knows all the things that they really hate doing. That they tend to put off for whatever reason.  And they will acknowledge, they know those things. 

And then they hire someone who loves to do those things. Fantastic.  I have started to work that way where I don't just hire people to hire people. I'm interviewing them, finding out what they really love doing. And if they really love doing the things that I just can't wrap my head around, why they love doing they're a great candidate to be part of my team. Especially my top leadership team. 

I need people that make up for where I lack and it's okay to openly communicate about that. 

And generational leadership. You should be challenging. Those that come after you. To create a culture where questioning. Innovation and adaptability are things that you really love because anybody who is willing to ask questions, willing to innovate, willing to adapt, that is who you want on your team. When you model how to lead with integrity and transparency, even when you don't know what to do, or even when you're lost, you create a blueprint for future leaders. Document all of these different experiences you have, how you navigated them. 

Well, And use those as future training models to help your team become better. If you're a small business, you might think, oh gosh, you want me to have a training module for someone when I have a bad day? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. I want you to take that bad day. Think about it, marinade on it, give it a week, put a training together and have a 30 minute powwow with your team, sharing your experience, being vulnerable, talking about how you overcame it and now how you're successful because of it. In all of these things we've talked about with mental toughness, the key to overcoming that sense of failure. 

That thing in your mind, that just eats at you is building a legacy of resilience learning and a commitment to actually developing your future team. 

 One thing we don't talk about enough is the combination of our mental health and those in similar positions, mental health.  Here's what I mean by that. I'm teaching you all the ways to help yourself. But don't you wish someone would have been looking out for you all along? What if I told you that you were the one created to do that for someone else? This week. I need you to start operating differently as a leader.  I need you to recognize and stand up for never allowing people to diminish others in business. It kills me to witness someone leaving a bad review for someone else. It kills me that we even have review platforms. The reality is. Those platforms exist to create drama. 

And I stand firm on that. They are only for the bad experiences and it's ridiculous. I'm going to talk more about this in a future episode. And I know that I have a soap box, just waiting for me there.  Until we get to that episode. I want your commitment to yourself and to other businesses that you won't put up with that. You will fight for the other small business leaders out there and you will help us create a culture of standing up for each other.  Not everyone likes everyone's business and you won't make every customer happy. But you can be an advocate that stands out. And every person that leaves a bad review is only telling their side. People aren't innately bad people also don't make it a point to make their customers mad. 

That is never why someone actually started a business. The person that you're dealing with at whatever business you had a bad experience with. They in fact  don't have any ownership in that business. They're paid an hourly rate and you have no idea what their story even is.  Last week. 

 Last week. My husband told me a story about a local donut shop. That someone absolutely trashed their name in the local town that I live in. They went on and on and on about how their doughnuts were terrible. 

They would never make it in this town and they would likely need to be bailed out by some corporate company eventually. How disgusting that that person chose to do that. They didn't complain about the customer service. They just talked about how terrible their donuts were and that it was like another business that had been bought out by another company. 



The admin of where this  review was posted. Is actually my new favorite person. They stated that this place was about building up small businesses. And that America was built on them. And we may not like every business, but the goal is to help them thrive. She carried on for several sentences and it was beautiful. After that you saw our community rally around this business owner to share how much they love their donuts, how they've had a great experience there and how they felt this business was really going to thrive. My point is this very situation? You can want to know the truth about a company. But are you really going to get that from someone who just had an opinion on their operations? And are you really going to get that from someone who doesn't own the business?  Sure there is a need to know what others' experiences are, but to what extent, and when do you draw the line?  If you want to know the truth, give the small business to try, keep building America. Let them prove it to you personally. Call them speak with the owner. Make your own decisions don't rely on the feedback from everyone else, because I have surely had a different experience than you at many similar businesses. 

As we took time today to talk about terminations loss in business. Uncertainty. Building up your mental toughness. How many scenarios. Have you experienced that you rethought of in the last 12 months? That just came to mind as I was talking today. Wouldn't you have loved if along the way. Someone was watching out for your business to say, No, that's not. 

Okay. We don't talk this way about small businesses. 

Would you have loved if someone would have guided you. Down all of those paths you had to take. 

If you were wishing for that. I'm going to be your new business BFF. I'm here to encourage you to give you a safe space, to learn more, to understand that every bad interaction doesn't mean your business is going under every stressful situation you can actually learn from. And you don't have to be in fight or flight mode. Your that's good moment today. It's something that I find myself repeating over and over to myself. And the more I replayed as over and over in my mind, the better my mental clarity gets, especially in these three things we talked about today. 

If they don't have what you want. Don't listen to what they say.  There is no greater waste of time. Than justifying your actions to people. Who have a life that you don't want. 



Get the right team around you that makes up in the areas you lack in so that you make the whole. Better than the sum of the parts individually. 

I know you are a strong leader. I know you are going great places and I believe in you. Let's build a better community of people who encourage others and don't stand. For the things that create that anxiety in us. I'll catch you all  on the next episode.