📍  Hey guys, it's Sarah Beth Herman, and today I am sitting in front of this microphone with the fullest heart. There are episodes you plan and there are episodes that you map out and then there are episodes that you quietly hope and pray. You will one day have a reason to record, and this is one of those episodes.

 For a long time, I have carried this dream in my heart that one day I would sit here on no silver spoons and tell you that Dentistry Support is a Better Business Bureau. Torch Awards for ethics winner. Not just a nominee, not just a finalist, not just hopeful. A real official 2025 winner of the Better Business Bureau Torch Award for ethics in the Pacific Southwest.

In the highest category for our business size and region. I prayed for this. I imagined this. I dreamt this. I wondered what it would feel like. I told myself if the day ever comes, I wanna bring my listeners into every detail. I want them to know it all. The real and raw version, the disappointment, the waiting, the growth, the doubt, the surprise, the joy.

Today is not a theory episode, but it is also not a short episode. It's also not a hypothetical episode. I wanted today to be so intentional. Today is the story of how a small women owned company that started in a garage I couldn't afford. And in an industry that is male dominated.

Became a 2025 BBB Torch Award for Ethics winner. I'm gonna walk you through how it started two years ago, actually with an anonymous nomination, how I completely misunderstood the process at first, how we did not even make the finalist section that first year. How we tried again, my trip to come back and be judged the blank faces on that judging panel.

The men that lined up along with me backstage, the mothers that I carried with me, the moment our logo appeared on that giant screen. And what this win really means for dentistry support and for what I believe every small business listening. So if you're driving, fold this story into your commute. If you're at home, grab your coffee.

If you're at the office, let this play in the background and let it remind you of what is possible, because this is not just my story. It is a story for anyone who is building quietly, who is hoping deeply, who is trying their best to do business the right way, despite failing over and over and over again.

So let's get into it. Two years ago, I opened my email and I saw a message from the Better Business Bureau, and if you're like me, whenever something comes into your email, it can be so triggering, especially if you see like big name companies because you don't know what they're sending you a message for.

Is it a review? Is it something I did wrong? Is it something I did Right. Well, on this day. The subject line read Dentistry Support has been nominated for the Torture award for ethics. I remember staring at that subject line, reading it twice, maybe three times. My heart jumped and I probably shouted through my house in some fashion trying to find my husband just to tell him that we got this.

I texted my then marketing director. I messaged a few people on our chat system. I felt like the universe had just handed me this big glowing sign that said, you are seen. What I did not realize at that time is that a nomination is really just the start of a journey. It's not the finish line. And honestly, I did what a lot of us do when something really exciting happens.

I ran ahead in my mind. I thought we were nominated.  This must mean we're automatically finalists. We basically won. Where's my trophy? Nomination, it came through anonymously. To this day, I don't even know who submitted us, and that alone just means a ton to me.

It means someone out there experienced our company and felt so strongly about how we operate, that they took the time out of their life to nominate dentistry support with nothing to gain for themselves. No recognition, no tag, no credit, no ability for us to thank them back.

A nomination. It says one clear thing. Someone believes in you enough to put your name forward. And for me, that's all the power I needed. You know, in business we chase a lot of metrics, revenue, followers, engagement. But a nomination like that is one of the purest signals that your work is reaching people in a meaningful way.

I thought I understood exactly what it meant. I didn't yet, but I felt in my spirit that this was the beginning of something really significant. That first year as I dug into what the Torch Awards actually are, I realized how little I knew.

You see, the Better Business Bureau or the BBB as most of us call them, has existed for more than 110 years. Their entire mission is to help people find businesses, brands, and charities that they can trust. They are not a marketing company. They are not a pay to play awards program. They are a trust and ethics organization.

The Torch Awards for ethics are one of their most respected programs. The awards recognize businesses that operate with exceptionally high standards of integrity. To even be considered a business has to demonstrate ethical leadership, a healthy culture, a track record of honest relationships with customers, and a true impact in their community.

There are four big pillars. They look at character, culture, customers, and community. And when a business is nominated, that is when the real work starts. You complete a detailed application. You answer questions about how you lead, how you communicate, what you do, when things go wrong, how you treat your team, how you handle complaints, how you make decisions.

You submit your policies, your structures, your SOPs, and then the B. B. B invites your clients, your employees, and your vendors to submit written references and accounts about your character and how your company actually behaves. And you have to receive those. You have to have everyone submit on your behalf.

This is not about who you say you are. It's about whether other people's experiences with you match what you claim. When I learned all of that, when I realized how intense and how real this process is, it taught me that it's not a popularity contest. It's not a voting on social media. This is not an award you can manipulate.

And that's why it mattered so much to me. It wasn't something someone could say, I just happened to get, or It must be nice, or you stumbled upon it. I had to earn it in everyone's eyes. The first time we were nominated, we did not make it to the finalist stage. And I wanna pause on that because I think a lot of people only ever tell the story from the moment that they win.

They skip the part where they waited. Or where they lost, where they doubted themselves, where they felt like maybe it would never happen for them. And I did feel that I had built up in my mind what it would mean to be a finalist. And my marketing director and I talked about it like it was a sure thing.

We imagined what it would look like on our website. What our podcast episodes would be, what our press release would look like, what our future marketing would look like, where we would place logos, how it all would work out, how we would share it with our clients, how proud our team would feel. And when we found out that we had not made the finalist list, it stung more than you could imagine because I really built it up and not because I needed constant external validation.

I've been in leadership a long time, a long enough really to know that you cannot build your life on awards, but it stung because I wanted so desperately to show that ethical, virtual, human powered companies in dentistry could stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the biggest companies in our region.

That year taught me humility. It also taught me patience and perspective.   I started noticing BB, B logos everywhere on vehicles, windows, websites, social media posts. It was like my brain had tuned itself to see evidence of the award everywhere I went. In fact, I even saw people that had won the Torch Award for ethics in previous years.

I saw their logo on their vehicles. That's how our mind works though. When we lock in on something, our brain starts surfacing everything related to it. I talk about this a lot when I teach on mindset and neuroplasticity. We start seeing more of what we focus on that year. The dream of one day being a Torch award winner did not go away.

It just settled in a little deeper. It became quieter. Maybe you could say more sacred. The kind of dream you carry privately while you get back to work and keep building your business the right way. Then 2025 happened. I did not have nomination dates on my calendar. I was not refreshing my email looking for news.

To be honest, I still felt like it was such a difficult award to win that I thought our first nomination had been our one and only shot.

 When you're part of the BBB, you get notifications about things coming up, and I knew the Torch Award for ethics nominations were open, but I didn't know if we were gonna get nominated again. This time the message was different. It wasn't just you've been nominated, it was Dentistry Support has been named a finalist for the 2025 BBB Torch Awards for ethics in the Pacific Southwest region.

That includes Greater Arizona and parts of California competing with major companies. We were one of three finalists, and if I'm being really honest, my first reaction was disbelief. How did this even happen? Who nominated us this time? How did we become finalists

but I think deep down, I did know. It happened because our people believed in us, our clients, our vendors, our employees stepped in again to write about who we are, how we handle our issues, how we treat people, and how we lead. It happened because we kept working on ethics behind the scenes.

We built a ticketing system for ethics related issues. We used every concern or complaint as training. We prioritized communication and quality assurance. We doubled down on being human powered. When the rest of the world was running towards automation. The nomination was evidence that those choices mattered.

And this time we approached it quietly. We did not blast the world with we are finalists. We did not want to look foolish if it didn't work out, but privately we started preparing for what could be the biggest moment of our company's life in the summer of 2025. I was traveling quite a bit for speaking engagements, training for dental practices, and life.

At the time of the finalist judging, I was actually in Denver, so I had to take a quick trip from Denver to Phoenix, about six hours door to door, just to complete the finalist phase. The Better.

Business Bureau Pacific Southwest Region has their headquarters there. This is the division that serves Greater Arizona, Southern and central and Inland, California. They manage an enormous region and oversee countless businesses. When I walked into the building, something stopped me now first to outside.

So probably what really stopped me was the air conditioning that I finally went into. But I will say on the giant monitors in the front lobby in full color, seeing my company's logo and the words welcome finalists. There was just something surreal about it. It's like seeing your business recognized inside an organization that has existed for over a century.

And as a woman who started her own company on faith and grit, being in dentistry since I was 17 years old. Fighting through every single path that you could possibly fight in and everything against you that could be against you, losing everything, rebuilding again, going through everything I've been through just to have this face, it felt like one of those moments where life quietly whispered to me.

See, I told you. It made everything feel real. This was no longer a line in an email subject. We were physically standing in the space where decisions are made about trust and ethics and recognition.

The finalist process is not just about paperwork. It is deeply personal. You sit in front of a judging panel, real people, community leaders, business experts. They ask questions about your company, your culture, your leadership, your ethics, how you handle difficulty, how you correct mistakes. You actually share stories of how you chose ethics over profitability.

They're not just reading what you wrote, they're assessing how you live it. Hi. I am someone who reads a room very quickly. I read tone and facial expressions and energy. It's part of how I lead, mentor, and coach others. But this room was different. The judges kept completely neutral expressions.

No smiles, no nods. No, this is great. Or, I love that. No cues at all. And I mean all of that as a compliment. They were there to evaluate, not to be swayed. For me though, it made it one of the hardest interviews of my life. I walked out thinking, well, that's it. I definitely didn't win, even though my marketing director and I had prepared, even though we had rehearsed stories, moments, we were going to share.

Policies and best practices we have. Even though we knew our company inside and out, it felt like I had no idea how it landed. There was no validation. There was no, you did great. Just a quiet thank you, and onto the next, but looking back, it was a powerful reminder that real evaluation is not always comfortable.

It often stretches you. It forces you to stand in what you know is true about your company. Even when you cannot read a room, like you still gotta stand in what you know, you're gonna be asked questions. You can't go look at a piece of paper. You can't ask some AI out there to rewrite something for you.

After the interview, we were given a sponsorship sheet, pulled into a separate room by the title sponsor and a few of the members of the BBB. They shared with us that there were opportunities ranging from a couple thousand dollars all the way up to a hundred thousand dollars, maybe even more.

I can't quite remember, and let me just say, as a real small business owner, some of those numbers look like my entire annual marketing budget on one sheet of paper. And for a minute I had the thought that many of us have, do I have to sponsor to have a chance at winning?

In that moment, we made a decision. We chose not to be a sponsor and not because we don't support the BBB, but because stewardship matters. My responsibility is to my team, to our clients and the sustainability of dentistry support. It would not have been a wise stewardship to spend our full marketing budget on one gala quietly.

A part of me wondered if that decision meant we would not win, but deep down I knew if this award is truly about ethics, then it cannot be bought. And once again, the BBB process proved that that is true. I wanna bring you to the night of the event. The 2025 BBB Torch Award for Ethics ceremony was held at the Arizona Biltmore.

The moment I walked into that ballroom, I felt like I had stepped into another world. There had to be 50, maybe 75 tables in there, and all of them sat anywhere from 10 to 20 people. It was beautiful. There were place settings, program, books, centerpieces. It was a full formal dinner. There were students receiving scholarships, pay it forward moments.

There were stories shared about perseverance and integrity. The keynote speaker was Anthony Robles. He shared his journey from overcoming adversity to becoming an NCAA national wrestling champion. His story was a testament to what it means to fight through difficulty and stay grounded in character.

It truly felt to me like the Oscars for business ethics. Earlier that evening, the team had walked us backstage to prepare us for the finalist parade and just like what the event would look like from start to finish.

This is where they explain how everything will flow. They show you where you will line up, which order you will walk in alphabetically and based on category your business is in, where the tape on the floor marks your place, where the arrows will guide you as you take photos. With the CEO, they explain how they will announce your name, where your logo will be placed, your company, and place the trophy in your hands.

For the Torch Awards, there are six categories based on business size  and dentistry support was in the largest business size category of the entire Pacific Southwest region. Let me say this clearly, as a woman, as a small business founder, and a male dominated industry in the largest category of this entire region.

Just to stand there as one of three finalists was already a moment I will never forget when it was time for the gala to begin. We were to enter in the ballroom and head towards backstage on the floor. We had markers that had our business name listed. We were to stand on that marker and they were doing roll call quickly to make sure everyone was present.

As we lined up backstage, the line curved around toward the stage, and I looked in front of me and behind me, and all I saw were men. There were absolutely other women finalists in the other categories, like smaller business sizes, but from my position, I couldn't see them at all in that moment.

It hit me how rare it still is to see women standing in these larger categories. It made me pause internally. I realized that regardless of what happened next, I needed to take that in because sometimes your win is not the trophy. Sometimes your win is simply the fact that you're standing in places you once thought were impossible to reach.

As a woman who has worked almost 25 years in dentistry, who has built dentistry support, who is a five time CEO, who is currently completing my MBA at Grace Christian University. That moment showed me just how far we have come, and I wanna say this to every woman listening. If you ever find yourself feeling like the only woman in the room.

Pause and honor that. It does not mean you are less qualified. Hip means you are a trailblazer, and trailblazers are rarely surrounded by people who look exactly like them.

Now there are little human moments that still  make me smile. When I had first checked in to the Better Business Bureau event, the gala for the evening, they didn't have my name tag printed. They had my husband's name already as a guest, but not mine as the owner. I'm not upset about that at all, but I would be lying if I said it didn't trigger a little internal commentary.

Dentistry support is a woman owned company and I'm standing there saying, hi. I am actually the CEO and this is my husband. He's my guest. I went to have my name tag printed with our customer service team, and they fixed it immediately. But it was one of those moments where you feel the weight of what it means to be a woman in business at higher levels.

I know the BBB didn't mean for that to happen, later on, several people recognized me as the girl with the glasses. The funny part is that during the finalist interviews at the BBB office, I wore my glasses.

But by the time of the awards event, my glasses were out getting a new prescription, so I didn't have them. They still remembered me. They remembered my glasses. They remembered my presence. My husband teased me and he said, they definitely know who you are and you're absolutely going to win. I joked back, they didn't even have my name tag earlier.

There's no way I'm winning.  It was one of those funny tension moments where you're half hopeful and half convinced it's not gonna  📍 happen.  Right before the parade of finalists, I saw a woman who looked absolutely stunning and I was walking next to her as we were going in. She smiled and told me that she was wearing her mother's necklace and earrings and her mother had passed away three weeks earlier.

I told her that I had actually ordered three dresses for this evening and all three were the wrong size. I went to my closet and all I had was one black dress sitting back there and it just so happened to be the dress that I wore at my mother's funeral. The dress was three sizes too big, but I was gonna make it work 'cause it's.

All I had, I had also chosen that day to wear my mother-in-law's ring that she had gifted me on my 40th birthday. So I felt like both of our moms were present with us. We stood there for a moment, two women on the edge of a big moment, both carrying pieces of our mothers on our bodies and in our hearts.

I remember after we completed the parade. She looked at me and she took my picture with the trophy, the one that says I'm a finalist, and she said, I'm taking a picture for your mom. She's so proud of you. It reminded me that no matter how big the room is, no matter how many lights and cameras and trophies are present, some of the most important parts of our story are invisible.

The people who shaped us. The ones we've loved and lost the sacrifices that no one else sees. I walked into the rest of that night feeling like my mom and my mother-in-law were right there cheering me on. As the evening went on. We enjoyed an incredible dinner. We listened to stories, we heard from scholarship recipients, and we took in the atmosphere toward the end.

It was time to announce the winners. They started with category one, then category two. Then three with each one, I clapped and cheered, and I actually loved seeing other people win. You can feel the joy in the room when a name is called and a team, and the crowd celebrates family reach. Category six, the final category.

My category. I could feel my heart beating in my neck, literally beating in my neck. My hands were sweating. I felt my husband put his hand on my left shoulder and I reached up and I held it. My marketing director was to my right and my phone was in my hand, and I was recording the whole situation.

I , Wanted to record whatever I was gonna see, whatever was gonna happen, whoever was gonna win. I remember as I held up my phone. I had already pressed record and I said to my husband and my marketing director, it's okay either way,

For a split second, I had a thought, if I win, it means two other really deserving companies did not. I do not want to hurt for them. And then the other side of my brain said, if I do not win. Does that mean I was not worthy of being here? Did I not do enough? Did we not measure up? I had shared this same thought with my husband earlier in the evening, and he said, you're setting yourself up to feel bad.

Either way, you're going to feel bad if you win and if you don't. He was a little right. My emotions are complicated. The huge monitor went blank. Category six appeared and they showed the three finalist logos. The room got quiet, the sound changed, and then the winning logo flashed on the screen, and there it was.

Dentistry Support winner  of the 2025 BBB Torch Award for ethics in our category. For a moment, everything went silent in my mind. I could not hear the room. I could not hear the music. I could not even remember how to move my feet. I just stood, the emotions hit. This was the moment I had hoped for. I had prayed for.

I had worked toward quietly. I had let go of at different points when it felt impossible. Walking to the stage, felt like walking through a highlight reel of the last decade. The garage, I walked to the doubt the day I was fired and walked into a house I couldn't afford asking my husband to believe in my vision to create dentistry support.

My first client took a chance on us, the hard conversations, the tough years, the people I didn't make proud the people. I did make proud. The mistakes that we learned from the nights my team and I stayed up late fixing something because we care so deeply. The employees who trusted me with their livelihoods, the dentist who trusted me with their practices, the patients who never knew our name, but felt our impact through smoother experiences.

 And there I was on a stage holding a trophy that represented ethics. For me, that was like holding an Oscar or a Grammy. It's the highest honor in our world. We were told to prepare a 62nd speech. I did not, not because I didn't take it seriously, but because I know myself if I over script my gratitude. I overthink it.

I would rather just speak from my heart. You see, I've spoken in front of crowds of one or two people all the way up to a hundred thousand people. I'm not afraid to be on stage. I mentor, I coach. I love engaging. I love training. I love being with my audience, so I just wanna speak. To my audience in the most real and authentic way.

I don't get scared. My hands don't sweat to speak. I'm not worried what someone's thinking about me because I'm completely in my element. I thanked my family. I thank my husband. I thanked my team. I thanked our clients. I thank the BBBI thank the dental industry that is often male dominated where I have had to learn to stand my ground and lead with grace.

I thanked the mothers that couldn't be in the room, but were in every part of my story, and I thanked God and I reminded the room that our company exists because someone believed in me the day I lost everything, and they decided to just believe Anyways. You know, there's something really special about this particular award that I want you to know.

When you win A BBB Torch Award for ethics, you carry that recognition for three years. For three full years, you are considered an Active Torch Award winner. You are also not eligible to win again during that time. And I love that it keeps the award meaningful. It prevents the same businesses from winning over and over and overshadowing others.

It spreads recognition across more organizations that are doing good work, and it gives you a clear period of time where you are carrying that torch on behalf of the marketplace. For the next three years, dentistry support will be a current recognized BBB Torch Award for ethics winner. And our responsibility is to live up to that message, not just in our marketing, but in how we treat people and how we keep refining our processes and in how we keep ethics at the center of everything.

And we do not take that lightly. I want to pause here and talk about who we are because this award reflects that. I promise this episode would not be short, but I am almost done. Dentistry support is the number one remote dental billing, insurance, eligibility phone and virtual dental team company. That is not just a tagline.

That is the result of years of creating systems that work training people well and caring about the human experience. We do not use an automation system to run the work. We do not outsource our ethics to software. We do not believe a bot can replace good judgment, and we don't compare ourselves to others to make them look bad.

It's about every claim, every phone call, every eligibility check, every piece of support being done by humans. Real humans. Humans who are trained, coached, encouraged, and held accountable to ethical standards. We built a full ethics team and ticketing system when we were first nominated because how the BBB challenged us meant everything.

They taught us ways we needed to operate, and I think that's why we didn't win the first year because we hadn't yet lived out what we were working on. We needed to make sure that when something goes wrong. It isn't just fix and forgotten. We capture what's happened. We look at why we turn that into training.

We build better processes from it. We also hold quality assurance meetings weekly for all of our clients, their first 12 weeks with us. It's not about micromanaging our team or micromanaging their processes, it's just about support. We want people to understand not just how we work, but why we do what we do and how it's going to impact them.

We mentor dental practices. We train teams onsite and virtually. We care deeply about the patient experience. We want patients to feel like things were handled with clarity and care, even when they never know our name. Ethics for us is not just a value written on a wall. It is baked into the rhythm of our company.

If you are listening to this episode and you are building something of your own, I want you to hear this as a personal message. You will have nominations that do not become awards. You will have efforts that do not become results right away. You will have seasons where nothing seems to move and everything feels like it's going wrong.

You will have times when you feel like maybe you're the only one in the room that actually cares. Do not let those moments convince you that your work does not matter. Ethics is a long game. Reputation is a long game. Impact is a long game. And when I say long game, it means that during that whole time.

That you're in the game, you're gonna have ebbs and flows. You're gonna have moments where you screw it all up, where you do it all right, and where you're just barely alive. And often by the time the world discovers you, you've already been doing the work quietly for years.

If you stay honest, if you treat people well, if you keep learning from your mistakes, if you keep choosing to do the right thing when no one is looking, there will be a day when your name is called to, and maybe it will not be in a ballroom at the Arizona Biltmore. Maybe it will be in a small office building or a simple phone call or a message from someone whose life you've changed, but it will come.

Because good work and ethical leadership always create a ripple. So that is the real story behind our 2025 Better Business Bureau Torch Award for ethics win the nomination that surprised us the year we did not make finalists, the second nomination that turned into a finalist spot. The trips over the summer to be judged the blank faced judging panel.

The sponsorship decision, the feeling of being the only woman in my category, the mothers that we carry with us. The moment the logo flashed across the screen and what this award truly means for dentistry support for our team, and hopefully for you. If you're part of the dental community and you want to learn more about working with dentistry support, you can always visit our website@dentistrysupport.com.

If you're a podcast host, a media outlet, a journalist, or you run a platform where you want to feature this story, talk about ethics in business, or discuss how to build a human powered virtual company in a world that loves shortcuts, we would truly love to connect with you. You can submit your interview or feature request to email at corporate@dentistrysupport.com.

You can also check the show notes. Our email and contact information is listed there. Tell us about your podcast or platform, what angle you would love to explore, and we would be honored to consider it. We genuinely mean it when we say we love to share what we have learned and help other businesses build with integrity for the next three years.

Dentistry support will carry this torch award. We cannot win it again in that timeframe, and I actually love that it gives us a focus season to live out what the torch represents. Thank you for listening. Thank you for walking through this entire story with me. Thank you for caring about ethics and business.

Thank you for believing that doing things the right way still matters. I'm Sarah Beth Herman. This is No Silver Spoons, and today I finally got to share the story. I hoped and pray. I hoped and prayed. I would one day get to tell. I'll catch  📍 you on the next episode.