Nearly Failed Airplanes and The Value of Improv w/ Dr. Brad Hughes of Vision Dental Partners

✈️ Another episode of Kinda Different is here! In this episode, Matt chats with Dr. Brad Hughes of Vision Dental Partners and they discuss the importance of vision and innovation in dentistry, the significance of building a brand within the community, and practical advice for young dentists to enhance their communication skills and patient relationships. They explore how a strong brand can transcend price competition and create lasting connections with patients, emphasizing the need for storytelling and understanding patient values. Brad shares personal experiences of overcoming obstacles and emphasizes the need for aligning core values with business practices, ultimately advocating for a people-first approach in dentistry.

Listen in on Apple Podcasts/Spotify or watch below!

You can get in touch with Brad here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bdhughesdds/
Website: https://visiondentalpartners.com/

Transcript
What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Kinda Different, a dental podcast where we talk about some of the most important things in dentistry, at least in my opinion, certainly, and I'm the host, so I get to determine what we talk about, right? We talk about innovation and dental care.
We connect with some of the best people out there. And I mean, it happens every week, but today is absolutely no exception. I'm just always flabbergasted by the quality of people we get to chat with, and today is no exception to that.
And we talk together about how we can all make dental care more human. I am Dr. Matt Allen, CEO and Co-Founder of DifferentKind and your host for Kinda Different. And I am thrilled to have with us today Dr. Brad Hughes, who is the Founder and CEO of Vision Dental Partners.
I'll let him tell you a little bit more about exactly what that entails and who he is. But we're in for a great conversation today. So Brad, thank you so much for taking the time to join us.
Tell us a little bit more about you, what you're working on, and then we'll dive in.
Yeah. No, that number one, that was an amazing intro, like incredibly energetic, like I'm even more fired up now. So yeah, this is gonna be a lot of fun.
I couldn't agree more. So yeah, excited to be here. Founder, CEO, Vision Dental Partners, you know, eight practice group based out of South Carolina, Indiana.
You know, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a business owner, we're just doing all the things, and we're in a people business, and that's what we're here to talk about today. And so, it's a rock and roll.
Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate that. Let's start with the name of your DSO, right?
Vision Dental Partners, and if you don't consider yourself a DSO, feel free to correct me there, too. But, you know, vision, right? I think that that word is so important.
As we think about innovation, right, we always kind of start there. I think it's one of those things where, to be innovative, like you have to have a vision of the world looking differently and kind of experiencing it differently and whatever. And certainly, if someone looks at vision, dental partners are like, wait, is this an optometrist?
Is it a dental clinic? Like, what is it, right? But I certainly see that from the perspective of like, hey, we are visionary and what does that look like?
So at least that's my take on it, right? We haven't chatted about this, but just giving you my, you're doing customer research here, right? So tell me a little bit more just about what that vision looks like for you, what that kind of difference looks like for you.
Like how do you hope that that kind of goes into the world and helps people see it different?
Yeah, no. Good point. And you're partially right.
Let me give you the real story as to why the name is there. And then I will tie that into innovation. So because it does come into play.
So I became a private pilot about 12, 13 years ago. Aviation is like my second or third love sort of behind like entrepreneurship, dentistry, and then planes. I love aviation.
It's an amazing space. So we're actually, I named the company after the Vision, the Cirrus Vision Jet. So it is the, this plane in about 2007 was a concept.
It was written on paper. They said we're going to build a single engine private aviation jet. Everybody said, you're crazy, you're nuts, you're stupid, you have no idea what you're talking about.
It's going to have a parachute just like all of the other Cirrus SR22s and SR20s before it, yada, yada, yada. For 10 years, they said, you're still never going to do it, you're crazy. Literally Cirrus almost went bankrupt making this airplane.
It took, I believe, first delivery in 2017. So it took them 10 years from inception to actually flying. I flew it for the first time in the late 2017 or early 2018, fell in love with this thing.
It's unbelievable, but the technology and the innovation, right? So it is a single-engine jet, seven-seater. It has a ballistic parachute recovery system, so safety, innovation, only one of its kind in the entire world.
They now have a safe return program, which is an AI-driven pilot. It becomes incapacitated. The passengers can hit a button, and the thing will auto-land itself at the nearest airport, talk to ATC, do all the things that are unbelievably just innovative, nothing else in the world does, and it is the second most delivered jet on earth.
And everybody told them initially, you can't do it, and they told them for 10 years, it'll never fly, yada, yada, yada. So I fell in love with this thing, and I'm like, that's the type of company I want to build that has like, so my point in that is, all of the people that put in all the work for 10 years, they got punched in the face, they just about ran out of money, they said, everybody said, you cannot do this, but they innovated and they made it happen, and they had to have great core value alignment, they had to have great culture, they all had to be moving downstream together. And that was the type of company, I'm like, that just resonates with me.
You've gotta be on the same page. And so for me, the vision was really to lay out and build an emerging group, a DSO, whatever you wanna call it, that everybody, like really good core values that through good and bad and everything in between, we're all moving in the same direction, supporting each other, and I think that's the only way to really, actually transcend what we're doing in the dental space is have a group of like-minded individuals all moving in the same direction. And I think that's what separates every emerging group, all 2,000 of us out there, is that every group has a little different culture, every group's doing it a little bit different way, they've got different core values, they've got a different set of things that they're looking for in the human beings that they're trying to bring into the company and build their tribe with.
And so, I named my company after the Sears Vision Jet, but it was the things behind the jet and all of the innovation that it took to get it going and the stick-to-itiveness and the resiliency. And I love answering the question because it's just I'm pretty passionate about it, yeah.
I love that. I'm gonna hold one of those things for when we come back and kind of move into the connection period and learn a little bit more about you, because I have something that I really wanna press on there a little bit and hear a little bit more from you on. But I love that, just in general, in terms of the story behind it and kind of almost the like, obviously, being multiple meanings too, right?
Certainly, I resonate with that as the founder of a company called DifferentKind. People are like, why is it called that? You're like, well, for several reasons, right?
And kindness and the difference in type and all of those things. So anyways, totally really appreciate that story and love it. And yeah, I'm, like I said, excited to kind of round back on one of those threads there.
When you specifically kind of think about what you've built over the past number of years now, I think one of the things that certainly stands out to me, at least as somebody who has seen some of it from the outside, he kind of experienced what you're putting out there on social media and just kind of how you think about the world. You certainly have this kind of what I would say like, bet on yourself, build into yourself, right? Like I don't see a lot in people talking about, right?
Instead of like, hey, you are your brand and you are this kind of person who needs to go out there and do this stuff and not just focus on dentistry, right? In the way that you're a surgeon, right? We were talking the other day about like, should we change the name of DDS to something else that's more indicative of a doctor of oral health, right?
Or whatever that might be. All that to say, to me, that feels really innovative. What has caused you to latch on to that is like, hey, there's something here that the industry needs to progress in?
And kind of tell us a little bit about how you found your voice in that as well, because that's not the easiest thing to A, notice and then B, like kind of champion in a certain way.
Yeah. I mean, and phenomenal question, by the way. So I think that not being the smartest guy on earth, like I've never claimed to be that, like I'm whatever, but I will find the answers.
Maybe it's taken me 17 and a half years to figure this one out, Matt, but I think I've always said that there's a difference between a dentist that's just drilling holes, they're a dental operator, they're a dental technician, and somebody who's actually an integrated part of a community, and to me, that's what a dentist is, right? Like that is the part that made me want to become a dentist in the first place. My grandfather and my dad were both dentists, so I grew up around Leo, Indiana, where my dad was the dentist in town, and I saw when he was in Lions Club, when he came to my little league games, when we went to church, he was...
it had nothing to do with the dental work, it just had to do with the relationships that he built. I was so obsessed with, like, to me, that was so cool that everybody knew who he was, and I think that's the difference that separates a technician, who maybe is a whole driller versus a dentist, who is a incredible part of the community. But they're an incredible part of the community because they've built brand within the community.
Now, what I didn't realize 17, 15, 12 years ago, that's all I was doing as a young dentist. But we call it relationships, but in reality, we were just building brand. Patients come in, I think we kind of overutilize the term trust a little bit.
Like, in my opinion, if a patient comes to you, they already trust you. I don't think they would come through your front door if they didn't. Now, it's just about building a relationship with them that keeps them coming back time after time after time.
That you just do through brand. The conversations matriculate, they go from very superficial, the weather is great, how do you love my Indiana Hoosiers, the football team is doing awesome this year, yada, yada, yada, to very in-depth about families, about friends, that relationship transcends over time and it morphs over time, and that's what keeps them coming back, but that's your brand. I mean, the ones that can do that at a high level.
You know, when you sprinkle in charisma with relationship building, sky is the limit in our space, really in any space, but especially in the dental space, because we do spend a lot of time with our patients, and to me, that's what keeps, there's kind of two ways to build a practice, right? Like, you can build brand, and you can build relationships and build brand in your community, or you can be the cheapest game in town. You can't be the third cheapest game in town, nobody's going to come to you.
You got to either build brand or be the cheapest. So there's kind of a race to the bottom, whether it's in full arch, whether it's in crown of bridge, it doesn't really matter because there's so many people doing so many different procedures now, and everything's being marketed cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. I just think that when you can, I've seen it, I live it every single day, I still practice four days a week.
When you can build brand in your practice, and when you build brand in the community, way more patients just don't really, it's not about what insurance company you're in network with, it's not about who's the cheapest game in town, they want to see you. That's what I preach every single day to all of our doctors in my company. Those are the type of doctors that we go out and really align with us and have made the absolute greatest acquisitions into our company.
They've just gelled so well with us when they've joined us and partnered with us because we just have a similar mindset around that. That brand is more important than price. It's just very clear to me.
I think that when we can, I sort of look at, and I say this all the time, but I really look at our practices as like little Instagram accounts. The patients that come in your office are a part of your community. They come back because they want to consume your content, right?
They like what you're putting out there, whether it's, and it doesn't, it's just a microcosm of social media. It's you have similarity with them. You have the number one principle of influence, which is likability.
You have some level of commonality with them, and they want to keep coming back time after time after time. That's basically exactly, it's just about attention, which is exactly like Instagram or LinkedIn or TikTok or anywhere else. We just don't talk about it in that way.
And so, to me, brand, I think, is important to build on those platforms. But then we take it into real life and we build that out in our practices.
Yeah. So that's really fascinating. Never heard it described that way before.
How do you, if a young dentist is listening to this, and they're like, how do I do that? I don't know how to do that. How do you encourage them to take the first step?
What's some low-hanging fruit that you see of like, okay, I buy into that. How do I now actually materialize that in the world? Give us your one or two recommendations.
Yeah. My biggest recommendations for any younger doctor is do what I didn't do quick enough. I didn't really do one or two of these things, but I think all young dentists should.
And I had filmed some content the other day where I'm like, quit, in fact, it came out today on LinkedIn, quit making extra payments on your student loans. Like everybody's so focused as a young dentist about, I gotta get my loan paid off, I gotta get my loan, but actually focus on just producing more, which comes from value creation and relationships. So go spend money on improv class and get really good at communicating.
Go buy every book you can that has to do with body language and become a freaking expert on body language because you're gonna need to know what your patient's body language is saying to you when it comes to case excel. Like we talk about, like we don't script things, just learn what their body language is and learn improv and then go get a public speaking coach because when you're in presenting treatment, you're just on a little stage and you need to have a captive audience and you need to have that, you need to be able to tell that story and understand what the patient's values are and you need to, you need to be able to hit all of these points in order to really do things at a high level, to have a high level of case acceptance, which means, oh, by the way, you get a butt back in the chair, which means now you get to actually do dentistry as a dentist. But you got to be able to sell kind of as a dirty word in dentistry, but you got to be able to sell and selling is storytelling and selling is understanding how to understand what that patient values and then being able to overcome their objections and then you get an ass back in the chair.
Then you get to go be the little technician. But it's important to be able to sell it through storytelling and value creation and all those things. So just take an improv class, get a public speaking coach, like learn to really communicate and I think your inner self and your inner charisma and your confidence, I think you're going to become a version of yourself that you didn't know that you could become and all of a sudden you're creating a lot more value.
Your patience are there, you're building relationships faster and all of a sudden your production's magically going up and you're making more money. And like I wish I had done those things, I wish somebody had told me to do those things and I think it's super important. And I think for younger dentists, if they would do that by year five out of school, they're so much further ahead of myself or anybody else that doesn't do those things.
But they get wrapped up in, yeah, you have it, you know, time, you have time, you're like out of school for 15 months, like you have time. Number two, it's like think in five and ten year increments, not in like next month increment. And when you can think in longer term increments, you're like, you just will be much more financially successful.
So, you know, don't always just worry about, like money's important, I get it, but like just don't always worry about like, hey, gosh, you know, I took the job with this group and they're paying me this big salary, they love me, that's great. But invest in yourself because you're going to wish 10 years down the road, you really, really, really had done it. And I think those are key ways to do it.
Man, I, yes, like 100% yes. Let me, yeah, like man. So three books that I would recommend for that, and you might represent these, right?
Number one, Alan Alda, if I understood you, would I have this look on my face, right? It starts with a dental story, talks a lot about medical improv and like how they kind of brought that into medical schools and like why that's important. You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy, another fantastic book on just becoming an amazing listener, right?
And how well that can drive people. And David Brooks, How to Know a Person, just came out this year too. Wonderful, wonderful read on how to really know people, right?
And to your point around, if you selling, to me, selling is ultimately empathy, right? Like, you know, you have to be so empathetic with what that person wants and needs and understands. And I think when we view it like that, it becomes less dirty.
It just becomes, how do I truly and deeply understand this person? And if I do that, like, they're probably going to give me the privilege of actually helping them achieve those goals and those wants and those desires versus me just trying to like externally push something on them that I think they need that they might not need, right? And so to me, that's like a huge, you know, mindset shift that I just absolutely love how you articulated and yeah, I mean, yes, couldn't agree more.
And I think you had a key point, like it's empathy, not sympathy. Like understanding the difference, like empathy is very patient centric. Sympathy is like, sympathy drives a wedge between people, almost like you're looking down on the patient versus empathy where you're kind of on their level.
And I think that's a big, I think I see the word sympathy or hear the word sympathy a little much empathy. So nail on the head with that one, Matt.
Well, and so to make that practical, you gave us a great practical tip of what can young dentists do. One of, this is something that patients will say to me all the time. So doc, what would you do?
And I would say back to them, I'm happy to share with you what I would do, but what I would do might not be what you would do because we're different people and we value different things. My job is to help you figure out exactly what is most important to you, not to tell you what I would do. If you really want to know that after we've explored that a little bit together, great, I'm happy to tell you.
But I view my job not as telling you what I would do, which I would say is sympathy, of like, oh, too bad you don't have a whole bunch of nice looking teeth. Let's do it all on four for you or whatever versus like, hey, what do you really want? How could I help you get there?
That's a much different perspective. That can be just a very practical language way of being like, hey, I will share that with you, but first let me understand.
A hundred percent. I love it. I mean, you just hit the nail on the head.
I love it. Yeah.
It's a fun conversation, man.
I love it.
Let's move into connection. I really want to hear, to kind of round back on what we were talking about first from you. You mentioned this idea of as they built the plane, the vision plane, Cirrus Vision, right?
Yeah. That it was hard and they were almost running out of money and they were getting punched in the face, right? I think one of my favorite things to learn from people is like, hey, what is some big obstacle that you've overcome, that you felt like, man, I was getting punched in the face, I was struggling, I was hard, right?
Because especially in a world of brand and TikTok and Instagram and LinkedIn, whatever it is, right? It looks a lot better from the outside than sometimes it feels from the inside. And there's certain there's a lot to be gained from that kind of grappling in the kind of hand-to-hand combat with life, if you will.
So yeah, if you're willing to share, I would just love to hear something where you're like, man, this was a challenge for me, and here's how I overcame it, here's what it taught me. Just love that insight.
How about I give you my biggest loss? Does that work? Let's go with that.
Yeah, as long as you can bring it around. You're just like, hey, this sucked, and I still haven't figured it out. I mean, that's fine.
You're going to be able to tell that story. But I'm guessing if there's a moral, like that might be good too.
Yeah, I think, so we had done an acquisition of a kind of small fore practice group a couple years ago, and did a lot of due diligence financially. Probably didn't do enough on the human side, right? And it was a rollover deal, so the doctor that we had acquired the fore practices from was still a 20% owner.
Fine. Became very apparent early on. He was not gonna be a good core value fit.
So my company's four core values are action, will to win, bring the fire, close the gap. So like action, will to win, bring the fire, close the gap. It just was not gonna be a good fit.
And we're a company that does core value reviews every 90 days. So our HR team will sit down every 90 days, and I'm involved in this to a certain level. And we just review around core values.
Like, yes, KPIs are important. Yes, driving ROI is important. Yes, there are a number of things.
We are a business, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there is nothing more important than core values to us. And it became pretty apparent that this was not gonna be a good core value fit.
It was weighing down the company. It was, you know, my management team was kinda stressed out because they kinda knew it, but they were putting in time, energy, and effort to try to just make it work. But it was a square peg, circle hole.
These four practices, when we acquired them, really weren't doing that well, so I injected a lot of cash into them. It was almost like four de Novos. A lot of cash all at one time.
And, you know, I finally... I don't remember the exact day, but I remember walking out of the gym one morning at about 6.25 in the morning, and I went, I just can't. Like, this is not good core value fit.
Like, what am I doing? Like, I'm trying to make it work. Trying to make it work ain't gonna work.
Like, we have exhausted every option. So, at that point, I said, we just, we need to... They need to be with somebody else.
These four practices need to go to somebody else. And that's okay. Nothing against, you know, this human being or any of our team members.
We had just... We would have made this work. Financially, it would have been great for us and for the company and whatever, but core values have to matter.
And, you know, in that moment, I just said, look, it's gotta be people over profits. It's gotta be people over money. It's gotta be people over everything else every single time.
And so, made the decision to move on from those practices, and we ultimately did. And we sold them to somebody else. And we closed on those a few months ago and, you know, lost a good chunk.
It was hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. And, you know, that's okay. At the end of the day, you gotta make the decision.
Is it gonna be people, or is it gonna be profits? And core values have to matter.
Man, that is, that's a great story. I love that. And one of the things that, you know, it stands out to me too, is that, you know, that moment of realization didn't come, you know, at a board meeting, or, you know, by sitting at your desk thinking about it, right?
It came at 625 in the morning after working out, which I just like, I'm a huge believer in like, go outside, take a walk, do something, right? Like, and I think so often we get, especially in those situations where there's high stakes, it's like, I gotta figure this out, I gotta work on this, right? And I'm such a believer in creating space for yourself to like, ultimately solve those problems in a meaningful way and to have those insights and those nudges that like, you know, you can, that can only come from letting your brain function differently.
So, A, love, love that, and want to highlight that. But B, I mean, yeah, I think that takes a lot of courage, right? Is what I'm hearing in that story of, it sounds like it wasn't an easy decision, and it sounds like it wasn't an easy process.
It's not like it's just like a one-time decision and it's done, right?
Because I beat myself up. Like, I was beating myself up for months and months, but like, I can make this work. I can make it work because I was, I had to take, you know, I just raised my hand.
Like, I'm the one that made the decision to do the acquisition. So, it was like, this is on me. This is on nobody else.
Like, right here. This is the only guy that can take blame for this. I've got to be able to put in the time and effort to get us out.
So, I judged myself for a number of months. I struggled with that. Like, I felt like I had failed.
Now, the rest of the company was doing amazing, but I was just like, I was absorbed by this. And so, you know, it took a few months to kind of come out of that and kind of quit judging myself and realize like, this shit happens, man. Like, this is the way it goes.
Like, this is why core values matter. And I wish we got it right every single time. We don't.
But I'll tell you what it's done. It's narrowed our focus so much, moving into future acquisitions, future team members, future recruitments, into exactly, I mean, core values could not be more important to this company than they are right now. And it's never been more clear as to why that's the case.
And, you know, lessons learned. And that's how we took a little step back so that we can now go grow forward. And so a little bit of a smack in the face.
It was a big challenge. But at the end of the day, people matter more than anything else. And I just couldn't continue to put the poor culture fit onto my team because it was weighing us down.
And I think, you know, we've got to be able to protect those core values at all costs.
Yeah, man. Well, the analogy I see there is like pruning, right? Like you like imagine the company as a plant, right?
And you have this like beautiful new flower that like, whoa, like all of a sudden, you know, we brought in all this EBITDA or whatever it is, right? It's like, you know, we're like, oh, actually this thing is going to be the thing that kills, you know, the plant in the long term, if we don't, you know, do some pretty quick pruning here. And, you know, that pruning is hard, right?
Like it doesn't look good, like when you prune plants necessarily at the beginning, or doesn't, you know, I don't know how plants feel, but I'm guessing if they, you know, have deep feelings, they probably don't love it, right? But it's like, it's so necessary to produce something that's going to be what it can be to produce the kind of fruit that it can in the long term. And, you know, bravo, right, for recognizing that and for taking the hard steps to, you know, make it happen.
So way to go.
I mean, I think the lesson there too is like, that I would give to everybody else is, I mean, things are just going to come up. You're not going to win at everything. I love the net win analogy, right?
If we can net win 100, if we can win 110 and lose 74, like just keep going. And, you know, that was a bit of an L. But in the long run, it will be a big W for us.
Just, I think through experience, lesson learned, and the way that we've just so narrowed down exactly who and what we look for. And really, not even just what we look for, but who and what we attract. I think the, because the message is so narrow now, we attract just unbelievable core value fits into the company.
It's really, it's a lot of fun. It's amazing.
Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you really, yeah, like got it honed and got it figured out in terms of that. And that matters so much for, not only for the people who come through the door as patients, but certainly for the people who come through the door as staff and stay as staff, right?
Obviously, that's such a big problem in our industry right now. And if you have that clarity around it, it's only going to be easier for staff to continue to say yes every single day. So absolutely love that.
All right, let's move on to making dental care more human. We literally could have this conversation all day. So we got one question here before we round out.
I would love to hear from you one of the things that, so I have a tattoo of a tree on my left leg with just roots, and I think that obviously a tree can't stand up, kind of going back to this idea of core values, and I've heard that a lot from you here. You can't be a successful company, you can't be a successful human if you're not deeply rooted in certain things. What are things that you do to make your work and yourself more connected, more rooted?
Are there specific practices or specific things that you do where you're like, man, this brings me back to my why, this brings me back to my self of how I feel like I express myself most clearly? Just walk us through some of that because I can sense from your leadership that you probably have some things that ultimately do bring you back to that consistently, so I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.
I think for me, I mean, I would say I probably experienced something like that this week. It was like we had, if you take it back to the clinical side, like we had a great clinical day on Monday and on Tuesday, it was like it was my first day in practice ever. It was like just everybody coming in was like, I mean, you'd think there was a hurricane going on outside or something.
I mean, it was a humbling day in the sense that right when you think you've got it all figured out, you don't. You're gonna get humbled in some fashion. I think what it comes down to for me is just going back to team growth, people growth.
When I need that thing that you're kind of talking about, it's like go back to, I would say going back to a story like, I had a dental assistant years ago that just really wanted to own her own business. She was being held down by a number of outside forces in her life. I just pushed her.
I coached her. I pushed her probably really hard sometimes. I mean, there were some days she probably didn't love me, but at the end of the day, she now owns multiple businesses, not in the dental space.
I hear from her a couple of times a year through text messages, just, you know, hey, hope every, you know, just here's how things are going, hope you're, you know, can't wait to connect the next time, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and so I think just going back to understanding what it is that I really am setting out to do, which is understanding that it's not really about me. It's about team and it's about their growth.
And so I just need to go, I like to just hear their stories. I like to go back to why they come into work every day, why they show up every day. Why do I have members of our management team that just put in more hours than I could ever ask somebody else to do?
And there's reasons that they do it. And I'm humbled by it. I mean, these guys kick ass.
And I don't have to twist an arm. I don't have to say a thing. And I think that those are the things that keep me going, keep me going harder than ever.
Because I know that if I don't, number one, it's not going to look very good. But number two, I'm not holding my, I'm not carrying my water. I'm not, it's just, it's motivational, I guess, is really what I'm trying to say.
And gosh, you know, when you're surrounded by unbelievably hardworking people who understand what their why is, I love to hear their why. And I work harder and harder to try to help them achieve their why. Probably more than I do just for my own, in some cases.
Yeah, well, the word that comes to the surface, you know, in that response, at least for me, right, is curiosity, right, of cultivating a sense of curiosity about other people and, you know, what drives them and what, you know, is successful for them. And I think that the most successful people tend to be really curious people, because there's not this, like, thick sense of what the world is going to look like. There's this possibility on the other side of that, and that ends up, you know, bleeding into lots of different beautiful things that, you know, we could never have imagined, right, when we foster that sense of curiosity.
So that's certainly what stands out to me there, and I love that idea of, you know, especially as we get older, especially as we think we have this sense of what the world can and should look like, right? If we never lose that sense of curiosity, especially for other people, like, we will generally be incredibly successful, both relationally and probably in business, and, you know, in all the aspects of our life that we ultimately want to succeed.
And you have a, and I have five-year-old twin daughters and you have a five-year-old, so you understand this, like, curiosity to them at age five, like, all they do is ask questions, right? So, like, I think there's a lesson there that's, like, always, like, just don't lose that. And that, that, that always resonates with me.
Even though sometimes it's a little annoying when they've asked you 47 straight questions, it, like, it, it, it does stay with me in those moments where you go, but you know what? They're learning. And they really genuinely want to know, I need to do more of that.
Yeah. Yeah. They're not just sitting there asking you, like, the six levels of why, right?
They're like, no, I care because I want to know. And I think that that, that is, you know, one of those things where you talk about learning about better communication skills and all that stuff. You can do all of that.
And it can be very superficial level, right? Like, it can be like, hey, I know how to communicate. It's just like a formula, right?
Of like, I'm going to listen to you, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z, I'm going to ask this good open ended question here. But like, coupled with curiosity, right? Like, you become an unstoppable force.
Love it, man. Well, again, we could go so much deeper, so much broader, so there's so many things that I want to ask you about. And maybe we will in the future.
But in the essence of time right now, really have appreciated having you on. If people want to learn more about you, Connect, like I said, you have some amazing content out there. Want to learn more about vision.
Maybe you're interested in figuring out like, hey, is it close enough to me to be a part of this, whatever? Where should they go? Just tell us where?
Yeah, simple, visiondentalpartners.com. Or just check out my LinkedIn account at Brad Hughes.
Awesome, man. Well, again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today, to share a lot of this wisdom and expertise.
Hard one, obviously, and just really grateful for your willingness and yeah, who you are as a person leading this company. I want to find out about those examples in the world and just stack hands, right? So here's me digitally stacking hands and saying I love what you're doing.
No, I appreciate the opportunity and to your point, I could probably talk another four hours. So hopefully at some point we'll get to do it again. But yeah, just appreciate you being on or appreciate you having me on.
And yeah, this was fun.