467: Leading the Way | How to Build a High-Performing Dental Team | Dr. Yolanda Mangrum

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Guest: Yolanda Mangrum

Business Name: Fortune Management

Check out Yolanda's Media:

Website: https://www.fortunemgmt.com/

Email: yolandamangrum@fortunemgmt.com

Phone: 707-478-6394

Other Mentions and Links:

Costco

UCSF

Hire to Inspire

SuperCamp

DDS4Kids

Mother Teresa

Host: Michael Arias

Website: The Dental Marketer

Join my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/

Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society

My Key Takeaways:

  • Learn what you want to do in life and shape your practice to support that!
  • Aligning core values and designating purposeful work is essential with new hires.
  • We don't want head bobbers with no input in our team. If they are asking questions and engaging, they will be stronger leaders for their role!
  • Responding to angry patients with an apology and offer to help will prove much more fruitful than defensiveness.
  • We want to support our team members in solving the problems they have rather than just solving them for them.
  • Each team member is a leader of their role. Let them have say in the areas that they are the expert!


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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

Michael: Alright, it's time to talk with our featured guest, Dr. Yolanda Mangram. Yolanda, how's it going? Excellent. Excellent. That's wonderful to hear. So if you can tell us a little bit about your past, your present, how'd you get to where you are

Yolanda: today? So, uh, Post dental school. I guess we can start there.

I started a dental practice after two years of being out of dental school. Immediately after dental school, I went into being hired as a educator, the a professor at U C S F. And so I was teaching, two days a week. I was associating two days a week by the time that I started my practice and I was opening my practice two days a week.

it was a busy, busy time for

Michael: sure. Okay. So you opened your practice two days a week and two days a week you were working and two days a week you were educating. So you had one day

Yolanda: Yeah. To go to Costco to buy stuff for the practice or to go to whatever. It was an Aaron's day.

that's how I got started in the practice. Fast forward, I grew that practice to be basically what I felt was like a teenager. My baby kind of grew up to be a teenager and and I'd already had at that 0.2 babies. And I shaped my practice to be. The way I wanted it for my life.

And so I had the great benefit of starting my practice pretty much six months out with a coach. and, you know, the big centering point was, what do you want in life? And let's shape your practice to be that. So at different times, I wanted to be at home to be able to, breastfeed or I wanted to be able to have certain times or days off so that I could pick up the kids.

So the practice was kind of shifted and shaped to support that. fast forward, we were in this having kids stage. and I had a maternity leave and basically at that point it made sense that I have an associate. So we ended up having, coverage for the first baby, and then by the second baby she became a partner.

so that I could have that life balance. What I didn't plan, 'cause that seemed like a logical thing, being a mom and do that. What I didn't plan was being approached to buy another practice. And I was like, oh no, that's not my plan. My plan is this. when this came about I actually took a different trajectory and did invest in another practice and we came up with a bigger why.

And that y became our 10 year mission, in growing this second practice and that y became so big that, it meant that I actually would do something that I would've never, ever thought I would do, which is sell my baby, let my baby that grew up to be a teenager. Go on and exist.

In my hometown and have me move one town over and grow a multi-specialty medical and dental practice. So that's where I am today. I have a 10,600 square foot building, 16 op operatory, a med spa, dental spa, and education center. all because of my big why. that I wanted to be able to have a practice, have the passion, in my practice, and also have all this dedicated time to support my family.

we had this plan for 10 years. my kids were hitting junior high to do dental missions and to travel the world and to service. and that happened pre covid, thankfully. Because if it had happened a year later my 10 year goal would not have came to a full, existence.

So we traveled to probably, I. Five or more countries. and the kids were homeschooled and we did a lot of family values, time in incorporating family values into, experiences through traveling and service.

Michael: So you guys still do that right now?

Yolanda: they're now in high school.

we did it pre covid, and we've done only one mission post covid. we basically weave in. When we do traveling, there's always a way to do some service with it. Even concierge at Nice Hotels can set up a service mission for you. They can look into some local and find ways for you to do a give back, we've done it in Jamaica, Costa Rica.

And those have been more just like checking with the local concierge and asking them how can we help? The other things that we did were more with organizations and they were like planned just to go for that. But almost always especially when you're traveling to these beautiful tropical countries, there's plenty of needs in those communities.

So, One day excursion being of service is been the way that we've been, bringing our children into a give

Michael: back. And they appreciate that. the people appreciate it, but your children will, you know what I mean? Like, it's gonna open up their give back even more.

Right. Hospitality, things like that. that's really good. If we can rewind a little bit. You were hired as an educator. but that was

Yolanda: immediately after dental school. Yeah I was very active in dental school and I've always been happy sharing and teaching. so about, for about three to four years, I was I don't know what the title was, but some kind of professor, like an assistant associate or somebody about professor at U C S F.

I was low on the totem pole, but yes I did some education right after dental school and was teaching things like anesthetic and being on the clinic floor and. And that type of thing. And so all those education things, I was a dental assistant before I went into dental school.

I went to lab, tech school before dental school. So that really helped to have a full experience of all the different fields in dentistry before, I opened up my practice 'cause I, I literally know how. It feels to be in each position in the practice, and there are challenges. So that's what's been a key success, I think to me in 2011, I wrote a book knowing that I wanted this mission to be able to travel with my kids. it's called Hire to Inspire. I've. Updated it, but I haven't published the newer version post 10 years after that. But hired to inspire, it was two things that I realized as an employer.

One, I only wanted to work with happy people, and two, I only wanted to work in partnership with them. and that meant that I needed to be surrounded by leaders, people that were working on their leadership development. And I never wanna be in a management position. When I hire people in my practice, I sit down and I have a conversation with them about purpose Ikigai is a term in Japanese that's called your reason for being.

We start from the very beginning, on our onboarding, which is part of the Hire to Inspire process, which is basically to, from the beginning, make sure that we have matching core values and that we have purposeful work. And so this may be only a point in time for you as far as this leveraging you to your next place.

So I always say, you know, as long as this is your happy place. To come to work, then we're in alignment. But I only wanna work with happy people. So if we get to the place where you really, find that your passion is somewhere else, then I'm gonna help you to find your happy place.

And that means we'll continue our journey, but in a different way. So you will go off to be, say, a hairdresser. Which ironically yesterday, one of my former employees did. or you'll, we'll stay here and we'll continue to grow together, but ultimately we all have to be continuing to grow and.

Be passionate about our work. So Hire to Inspire was a shift in 2011 for me, and I literally took each chapter and I sat down and I read it out loud with my team, many of which are still here with me. many who also have came. And I've supported to go off into other areas. So, So the idea is just to continue to inspire them to look for what their purpose is.

so that's our onboarding process is to really get things straight about our core values, who we are. I have a culture handbook that we go over, and we have what's called Operating Principles. Operating principles. Are basically staying, how we do things, why we do things what our why is, is really important.

And basically team members. as people, we all want to do, a good job and feel good about our work. But we often don't know how. Or what the best way for that work to show up is. So the more clarity we can have, especially onboarding people, the better. right now we have 50 something people in our practice.

Between the two practices. it's always a work. I'm the culture keeper. That's my role is to just keep the culture and it's not always easy. because everybody has different beliefs and things, but. Ultimately having good communication lines and having clarity around your values and, our why is how we, continue to ha live in a happy place and have, that line when you cross over, it's showtime, we're here to serve.

Michael: Interesting. So you mentioned you only hire leaders. what's your hiring process look like? How do we even find leaders in that sense, or the ad and everything like that? You know what I mean?

Yolanda: Yeah. That's the irony. Everybody can be a leader everybody is a leader to some degree.

It's just how well developed are they? most importantly, Do they want to be developed in that way? That's probably number one is everybody in our practice, no matter what your role is, if your role is to clean the toilets, then you are the leader of cleaning the toilets.

So we will listen to you when it comes to taking care of that. It doesn't matter what it is. you know, If you are, the Hy Hygienist, you're the leader of the periodontal therapy, and when it comes to you telling us what needs to happen in that department, you're the expert, you're the person who's going off and making a hyperfocus in that area.

And so we're gonna, all collaborate on things, but at the same time you're the person steering the ship on that area. As a c e o, as an owner I have to be surrounded by smart people and I want people that are thinking, I want people that are speaking their mind. I don't want people just being head bobbers.

Yep yep. Oh, that's not gonna work. Yep. She's gonna fail on that. Nope. I want them to say, I like where you're going, but maybe we need to consider a different direction. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah reasons, or have you considered this? Or, what's gonna happen with that?

So I want people asking questions. Is it frustrating sometimes to be like all excited about doing something, but then have someone put all these questions around? Absolutely. So that's where I had to grow my own leadership. You know, I had to grow who I am to not have such an ego about me being all knowing, we do a collaborative process and everything is about leadership development. I personally, Don't want to be in a conversation where I'm managing something, because stressful at that point. If we're collaborating, if we're working towards brainstorming on how to make things better, then it's a very easy light energy um, process.

Michael: Uhhuh, okay. So there has to be like a balance of with every person you find. Humility and confidence, basically. Right? Yeah. Because it's like you gotta be confident enough to know you're the leader for this, and you're gonna tell us how to do it. Give us instructions, manuals, things like that. SOPs, and then humble enough to, yeah, you're cleaning the toilets, but you're the leader for that right.

Kind of thing.

Yolanda: Whatever it is. to some degree. Um, We all have certain innate skills in certain ones and some things that we have to work on. it's progress over perfection, all the time.

And then we're appreciating also that, failures lead to learning. there's um, many different keys in our development process in fact one historical thing that's shaped me and continued and those that have children highly recommend super camp. There's the eight keys of excellence.

It has been a hundred percent woven into my structure of living my life. And, we actually weave it into our culture handbook. The eight Keys of Excellence with Super camp. And they have some education on bringing children and teaching children personal development skills.

Early on I was a team leader, during undergrad, and so I did three or four years of that When I got out, I was really looking for that camp experience where personal development was forefront in having a team surrounding me with those kind of skillsets, communication, personal development, mindset, all of that.

And so I looked and I, interviewed many different. Consultants. And I knew that I needed to have you know, this ongoing constant learning, environment. and after, probably more than a hundred different seminars of sitting in practice management, learning learning, learning what I could. I came across something called Fortune Management, and that's another part of my life now because I've been Coaching for now 10 years, but been coached for 25 years with Fortune Management and it's about extraordinary life, extraordinary practice.

So that was the key thing when I had the startup. It's like, what do you want in life? Let's shape your practice to meet that. So fortune, has had a huge impact on me and my. thinking, my processing, our team development, super camp, this, personal development skills, started young.

Yeah, I think that these things are a real big part of our development. The reality is, we don't get taught how to talk. We don't get taught how to have relationships, how to get through conflicts. There's a lot of conflicts that can happen in dental practices, and we need to learn how to, come out stronger on the other end.

A bad review is an opportunity because it's a cry for help. It's a cry to say, Hey this happened to me. It's not easy to lean in on those things but if someone comes to you say in the office and they haven't actually sprayed it across the, Google and Yelp and all that, then they're coming to you with a concern, or you might call it a complaint, but then they're caring enough to share.

So humility again, comes into the place of listening to understand. And also understanding that, we're never gonna be perfect. So if that was that one person's experience, what can we learn from that? Our team is encouraged to basically lean into issue processing, and that's a leadership skill too.

Because at first a reaction would be go into defense mode. instead of just apologizing first and then, thinking them immediately for bringing the concern to you, it puts you in a different state.

Now you're not in a defense state. know, I apologize for the impact that had on you. Certainly wasn't my intent. thank you for bringing this to my attention. I wanna help boom, you just say those things to anybody that is upset with you at any time. Now, what do you, how would you feel about that?

Yeah. If I said that to you and you were upset with me how would you

Michael: feel? I'd feel calm. I'd be like oh, oh wait. Okay. I feel, you know what? I feel heard validated like, oh, okay. You're, yes, you're listening to me. Yes.

Yolanda: So part of fortune's training is to, understand that there are human needs, people have human needs, we don't know what's going on in their life.

It's most likely more to do about them than it has to do with you, And to feel validated, that one, they're being seen, they're being heard and that they matter is huge. And then you get to choose from that point. How much of that is really mine and how much of it is theirs?

there anything we could change in our systems or in our processes that could shift the dynamic here? 'cause we are practicing, so let's. Figure out how we can have an issue come up, but then make it better the next time, So we learn from it and we see that as an opportunity to grow.

Versus when we're in a mode of defending, we're not in a mode of growing. So I highly encourage that in the leaders to be big instead of to be small. when you are, thinking small, you're in that defense mode. But when you're willing to set that aside and lean in and get curious about it and think like, how could that have happened?

How could we have done better? Where did this, go to that side what's missing here? Oh, they don't really understand this part And the, key thing is, That you may get to the place where you totally understand that they don't know what they're talking about when they're talking to you, but if you shift right away into telling them something, you have to remember, are you in rapport with them now?

What I said in the beginning that set the framework was to start to get rapport with you, Michael. Mm-hmm. I apologize. it's not my intention. I would never want you to feel like that. So now that was the beginning of rapport. And in our processes and fortune, there's the steps of enrollment, there's steps of getting into rapport with people.

that we train, our team members to go through because rapport is everything. Rapport with your team members, rapport with your patients, rapport and influencing. You influence people all the time, getting really good at influencing it and really good at influencing yourself, like talking yourself off the ledge to be defensive.

is a big deal. So those are some of the skills that we focus on in, in our leadership development. But basically everybody is in leadership development all the time. You never get out of that school.

Michael: Gotcha. And you're a hundred percent right Yolanda, like when it comes to defending We've hear this all the time, they're like, it's good to apologize. It's good to say sorry. Right? It's super good to do that. But you try being the first one to do that, right? Yep. Then it becomes, oh my God. Well, If they say sorry, I can say sorry. You know what I mean? But you know, I'm the first one. I don't know. You know what I mean? Because then you start defensive mode. it takes a bigger viewpoint of there's a bigger thing happening here than just like that little, oh my gosh, we're arguing about the bad review or the defensive, or, I'm not paying you for this or that.

There's a bigger picture that we gotta look into. Yeah. that's really valuable. Super camp,

Yolanda: what is that? Yeah. Super camp is what's called quantum learning. And personal development. Super Camp is held on colleges all across the world. Actually. I even taught in Hong Kong. dental school got in the way, or I'd have been in many other countries, but, it's a really cool 10 day camp.

It focuses on the eight keys of excellence one day, each skill is focused on, so eight keys of excellence. Is this, is it like living in the moment? I'm not gonna list all of 'em right now, but communications, speak with good purpose, failures lead to success. All amazing things to get straight in your head as you leap into the world, So basically you go through a 10 day. Personal development, but also there is these quantum learnings where you learn speed reading. different ways to look at math. s a t prep of some sort. Mm-hmm. So, it's a big impact.

10 days. And I was able to be a team leader. It is not inexpensive to do that, and I certainly would've not been able to attend from a financial standpoint at that point. But as a team leader I got to absorb a lot of those teachings and I was taught to teach them. So, It was like the best of all worlds.

Michael: Nice. Okay. So you were able to absorb as much and you still carry it on until today. Yeah. From what we're talking about, right? Yeah. One of the things I wanted to ask you is, it sounds like from the beginning you've had I guess like a mission or, my children.

I wanna be with them. I wanna be with my family and everything like that. How did you keep that mission in front of your eyes this whole time? for example, I'm opening a practice, then you're just, that's my baby. I gotta do that practice. Then another one, oh, then we get mom guilt and stuff like that. How did you keep that mission in front of your

Yolanda: eyes? Yeah, it's a daily mindset for sure. And it's what you're saying yes to, means what are you saying no to? you always have to look at your yeses and your nos.

And you also have to be really focused on your, why Is it bringing you closer to your why? I certainly, I. Have made more mistakes than, it feels like anyone in making this mission come together. you know, and people think that success is just straight up, but it's like this, you know?

Mm-hmm. you just dip and then you come back up and you dip and you come back up. you win, you lose, you win. You lose. it's just a matter of better the next time. And that's where leaning into issue, processing, leaning into, facing the things that didn't work.

And it's about getting back on the bike and continuing to pedal. So I know that, with my kids it was definitely always the centering for me, and my why I was working and how we were developing the team members. The good thing is that I happen to be one of those people that really enjoy.

Service and support, and I get a lot out of seeing people grow. More than my own successes. it gets me really excited to see someone figure something out and to have been, this little part of it, or maybe just enough to, get them to jump up.

So in my lifetime in the beginning, We got a post-its and we got a big board and my husband and I boyfriend at the time, said, okay, what do we wanna accomplish with this practice? fast forward looking 10 years from now, looking 20 years from now, what do we wanna see after all of our years of work?

And that's where. being in the future is really valuable because now you get your why, but then you have to come back and we have to be in now. What can we do now? What's the best resources now? Because if we're always just like dreamy, dreamy, dreamy over here, then we're not actually accomplishing things.

And the other thing is, that if we're always looking back, What ifs? Should'ves. Could'ves. Wished of, you know, wished, wished, wished. If I'd only known then now we're not doing anything about the now. Things are not moving forward. They're just staying behind. So I think the present, the key, this is it, It's hugely beneficial to stay in the now. each one of those keys, the eight Keys of excellence really keeps me centered.

Michael: Yeah, that's a really good point. I feel like if you stay in the, now you stop so much procrastinating 'cause of the future, right? You're like thinking of my why.

Oh, I'm gonna get there. And then you eventually, you know what I mean? Or it's gonna get there. If you're in the now, you're like, okay, now I got to do this in that moment kind of thing. I only have

Yolanda: now, right? Yeah. Yeah. I only have now

Michael: really good. You mentioned, two words that I kind of want to ask you about issue processing.

is

Yolanda: that? So issue processing, this is where real leadership comes into play because, we look at, say an issue. maybe the phone's getting answered. Mm-hmm. You take an issue and we all, put our emotions aside and we at it and, how could we do that better?

And if we are in a process of brainstorming with all these different people, like how can we get this better? How can we get this better? And the focus is around that one issue. Now some solutions start coming up. What I'm not a fan of is having someone hand me their monkey and then I'm supposed to put their monkey on my back.

Basically, as a leader, their issues come up, but if they just wanna say, here's my problem, so I don't need people coming to me with their problems, basically, that's their monkeys, and I wanna be able to support people to figure things out. I wanna be able to support them to be making some decisions. In fact, we have a process called decision Tree.

So basically my goal is to help them to know which decisions they need to just make and which decisions they need to bring to me. So in a tree, for instance, I'm the roots, you know, in the trunk, but I want my team members to make some branch decisions, or at least the leave leaf decisions.

I don't want them bringing me all the leaves, I don't wanna be raking up all those leaves all the time because then that's a whole different level of energy. I want them to feel empowered to make some decisions. So when they're part of issue processing. Then they can understand like, how I'm thinking, what I'm thinking.

for instance, a patient's upset and they're complaining about their crown. Maybe you don't give the entire crown away. Don't just say, we're gonna do it for free. Don't worry. I don't want you to be upset. Yeah. Maybe we come up with a better decision. So, As a leader, leading leaders, I'm careful to Squish them in a place when they've made a decision. And then I said that was a bad decision, so I have to develop them in that regard. So I want them to stay open to possibilities in that issue processing. I want them to have some. Initiative I want them to be willing to defend their decision.

So why did you decide that? Why did you decide, not from a defense standpoint, but ex explain to me, help me understand. ' cause if I can understand why you did that and what you're thinking was, now I can put you on a different level of thinking because, obviously we can't give away every crown.

How could I pay you? what else could have happened Is this, So now you've got that muscle built up and you're building their leadership muscles. So how we talk to them is really, really, important. Build up versus tear down.

Michael: Yeah. You're teaching them basically how to make decisions, And I like that because they're not always gonna go to you and being like, what should I do? What should I do? What should I do? And then you're kind of like, man, I'm always having to tell you what to do. But I guess it comes back to us as a leader where we never help them develop that muscle, like you said.

Yeah. Teach 'em to fish. Yeah. Yeah. Teaching to fish. I like that. So then if we fast forward a little bit more, you were approached to buy another practice. Yes. And your why changed? So what was your

Yolanda: why before. So my why before had much to do with being able to have choice picking up my kids after school, be able to comfortably care for them as a mom, a working mom, Then when I took on the partner, I thought my why was gonna be so that I could be like p t a mom, you know, I could be very active in school and, spend a lot of volunteer hours doing things, but still make enough money and, be able to be at home. And so I was preparing for 50% work, type thing.

and then this other big opportunity came up and, my knee jerk was, no, that's not my why. That would mess up that. And so then my husband and I sat down literally on the staircase up there We said, you know, what's the bigger picture here with raising these kids?

You know, what do we want? What is our job as a parent? We wanna make sure that they have the values, and their own leadership to lead their own lives, if they're always dependent on us, that would be a problem. Not that I couldn't have done that as my other plan.

There became this bigger opportunity because we literally have been in the same home, in the same town growing up in this little area. And we didn't really want them to just have this little microcosm of, of life. We wanted them to be have the humanity to understand the whole world and that the whole world was an opportunity for them.

But how do you travel and. Expose them to things like that. in the current position I was in, even with bringing on an associate and now having that as an a partner, I was not necessarily making money unless I was there. So if I clocked out, say for a month, Then, my income stream is going way down.

ultimately the idea of, go big or go home, I guess came in the thing is about being small. you either stay small or you go big and in the middle you get pounded on with all kinds of, business growth and changes. And that was something that was really clear.

We were reaching the middle ground with that practice that had its own challenges, its own growth challenges. So ultimately, I. The goal of our family and the idea came into play to be able to travel with them. And for two years we did that.

we homeschooled them. We traveled basically about every month. six weeks at a time was our biggest one. And then two weeks being gone was our normal time. So we'd come back, we'd go, so we were traveling a lot each place had a different perspective and a different reason for being there.

But, what I needed to do for that is my team had to be able to take the reins and keep the practice going with or without me. I had to create this practice that these leaders could run the practice with me, still having my extraordinary life without them. this whole way of developing this leadership was a necessary process in order to accomplish my goal of being able to come and go as I want in my practice and have the extraordinary life or whatever life I want.

Michael: that's what your why kind of evolved into. Yes. It's like I just want to do my own thing. Interesting. real quick, which place, 'cause you said each location gave you a different perspective, change your life. Which one to you was like, this one was a whole 360 Really changed my life, my perspective.

Yolanda: I would say that one of my favorites was our Asian tour. I really, really love. Asia. And so that would be one of my favorites. And, post COVID, we haven't been able to get, back to Vietnam, but my plans and my involvement with d d s. Four kids.org continues.

I still fundraise and do lots of things with DDS for kids. It's the number sign four. And Lon Jones, who's the founder of this, she's like a mother Theresa, x fold better. She's like this most beautiful person. And so having met her and having my kids get to know a person that's beautiful. So giving, who's, hasn't had children of her own, but she says the whole world is her children. And so she cares and loves and goes into all these different places to take care of them and make a difference. So having that impact and having my kids know.

That type of person. Knowing you know, when we went to Haiti, That was a little much, that was a lot, much for me. Dr. Laurenti Barnett. He's been doing such amazing things in Haiti for so long, and I'm so grateful that we got that experience to go and do work there.

there's so much going on there. Unfortunately, it's also so corrupt. and, got a lot of dangers I think for traveling. But Dr. Barnett and his, decades and decades of giving and service to Haiti and really helping has been beautiful.

So, Having my kids, having had the influences of these people that do things like that,

Michael: priceless. Yeah. Priceless. Yeah, man, that's beautiful. Okay. So then one of the last questions I wanted to ask you, Yolanda, is you mentioned made many mistakes, right? Yeah. So I guess from the moment you decided okay, I'm going to start my own practice, right? today, what's been some of your biggest struggles or fails or pitfalls?

Yolanda: it has a lot to do with this leadership development. wasn't always as strong of a leader, I certainly had to lean in on, messing up certain relationships along the way because I wasn't, Ahead of this pre communication, I had to have things onboarded with team members, and not have it go longer term because I didn't have my vision or my communication about what I was looking to accomplish.

So clearly documented, so clearly, able to reference. To where anybody walks into the practice that they can understand a direction. I think that we lost a lot of time and a lot of energy with emotions being misunderstood with different things because we didn't have those clear directions and, mistake or just journey.

It was a journey. you journey through and you learn things along the way, and hopefully you don't have to keep making those mistakes over again. But I think the biggest thing is any team members, and there's been hundreds and hundreds of team members that I've had at this point.

They've all taught me something. I've learned to be better because maybe I wasn't as good at the time. But how can I get better? How can I get better? Has been, definitely a support for me in this journey. Yeah,

Michael: I like that. Thinking about each team member and looking at them and saying, can I learn from you?

You know what I mean? Yeah. and it goes back to what you said, it's gonna be like this. Yes. sometimes right now, I know a lot of our listeners may be like, man, I'm trying to reach to that million dollars a year, mark, you're gonna get there, I feel. But then it's going to, there's still gonna be times where you're like, my team, it's worse. I'd rather sacrifice the money and, you know what I mean, Seasons. Two seasons. Yeah.

Yolanda: Go through seasons learning's never out, at all.

It's constantly about learning constant and never ending improvement all the time. And when you buy in and you get your team to buy into some of these belief systems, you accelerate. That was probably the smartest thing I ever did is from the beginning is, stay with a coach, keep a relationship.

Have someone who's on the outside telling you, with all authenticity, then reality, you screwed up. this isn't being your best self. you're thinking small. Be big be the bigger person, apologize, 'cause team members can't do that to you, you're like, okay, you're fired. You know, it's like, it's, there's only so much that they're gonna be able to authentically be your board of directors. that's something to do easily is get a board of directors, get people, be a board of director for someone else, and, get mastermind groups together.

and speak authentically to each other. you're not perfect. This could have gone better this way and recognize that when someone's giving you an opinion, there's plenty of 'em. Maybe that one is not exactly the right one too.

Just because people have an opinion doesn't mean that you need to embrace that opinion too. think through it, continue to be a critical thinker.

Michael: Wonderful. Yeah. Thank you so much, Yolanda, for being with us. It's been a pleasure. But before we say goodbye, can you tell our listeners where they can find you?

Yolanda: You can find me Yolanda Mangram at Fortune Management, which is fortune mgmt.com. That's my email. Or you can call me on the phone seven oh seven, 4 7 8 6 3 9 4. I'm always happy to help, in any way. It's really a beautiful journey. And try to be really nice to yourself.

Mm-hmm. You work really hard and your intentions are straight so, be nice to yourself. Self-talk and self-love is definitely where my focus is right now. We are type A people most of the time and we're pretty hard on ourselves. So as much as I was talking about being humble and taking on, all the learning moments, remember to also focus back on some self-love and giving yourself a lot of credit.

Michael: Wonderful. Thank you so much Yolanda, for being with us guys. That's all gonna be in the show notes below, so definitely reach out to Yolanda and thank you for being with us. It's been a pleasure and we'll hear from you soon. Sounds great.