I think one of the most important things you can do to become a successful practitioner, whether you’re a dentist, a restaurant owner, a physician, or whatever you do, is develop a supportive team around you. In my book, Treating People, Not Patients, I have a chapter—chapter eight, I believe—called 'The Unsung Heroes.' The reason I call them unsung heroes is because not everybody gives the team the accolades they deserve. In our practice, my team gets accolades every day. We have close to 1,000 five-star Google reviews, and many of them mention various teammates, whether it’s Danielle, Taylor, or Ashley. I have two Ashleys. They can be 'Ashley in the front' and 'Ashley in the back.' They’re constantly getting shout-outs about how great they are because they serve my patients—our patients—the patients that come in for treatment.

If you don’t respect your teammates and build them up on a daily basis, they’re not going to be there to serve your patients. And then the stress level just goes very high. I remember being at a friend’s house in Atlanta, visiting one of my mentors, an oral surgeon I’ve known for 30 years. He just sold his practice, and he’s doing well financially. He’s a very good oral surgeon, one of the best in Atlanta. I asked him, 'How are you doing?' because he’s getting a little older but still working. He said, 'Yeah, I love the work, I just hate my team.' He didn’t call them a team. He said, 'I just hate the staff.' And I felt sorry for him because if I went to work every day and didn’t like the people I worked with, it would be a really bad day. It’s sort of like being in a bad marriage. And some of you may have been in bad marriages. Many of us have been in bad relationships.

As I get older, one of the things I’ve learned from Dan Sullivan is that you want to have freedom in relationships. And what does that mean? I want to be free to have relationships with the people I want to be in a relationship with. Early in my career, I had bad lawyers, bad accountants, bad vendors. I worked with bad dentists. I had bad people in my life. My team wasn’t the same. What happened is I decided what kind of team I needed to support me so that we could be successful.

One of the things we do every year—and it’s one of my favorite days of the year—is team-building day. We go to New York City. I grew up in Connecticut. I’m in New York all the time, and I’ve been teaching at NYU for 40 years. I love going into New York City. It’s a gift that I share with my team. A lot of my team doesn’t like being in New York City. We’re only 40 miles away—42 miles from the center of New York City—but a lot of my teammates, the people I work with, never go to New York. Some of them have never seen a Broadway play.

Every year, we get together in the office. We have coffee around 8:00, 8:30 in the morning, take an early train to New York, and arrive by 9:00, 9:30, or 10:00 at the latest. Then we’re off—it’s an adventure. We don’t get back to Connecticut until sometimes midnight, or even 1:00 in the morning, or later for some of my team members. What do we do during that day? We have a lot of fun. I love planning that day. We may go to an event early in the morning or go on a scavenger hunt, as we did this year. We spent a couple of hours in Central Park, ate at the Boathouse overlooking the lake, maybe got into boats and rowed around, or took bikes through the park.

This year we did karaoke. Jose, who’s filming this video right now, is a great singer and a great organizer for karaoke. I’m not a good singer, but I have a lot of fun getting up there, and he puts on the songs that people can sing. I’ll tell you something: we were in the karaoke room for two and a half hours. I had to beg him to leave because we had to get to the play. We saw Hell’s Kitchen this year, featuring Alicia Keys’ music, which was great. Some people don’t know who Alicia Keys is, but once they got to the play, they were singing her songs all the way home.

Maybe we had cocktails later, or another drink, or dinner somewhere. It’s a fun day, and I’m hanging out with the people I work with on a daily basis. They get to see different sides of each other. But you know what? They don’t really see different sides of each other because who we are at work is who we are at play. We bring the same selves to both places. What happens is all those barriers get removed, all those layers. We peel back the onion, as Parandel says. We peel back the layers and get to our essence. And when our essences communicate, guess what? We’re vulnerable with each other, and we can support each other. We can support our patients because our patients are vulnerable.

So when I have a strong team that feels confident we’re doing the right work, we have a great day, and we do the right work with our patients. It’s not easy—nothing great is. But if you’re not loving your team, figure out a way to do it. And you may not be the one, but find someone who can bring that team together. I’m really lucky that I love this, but I wouldn’t be doing it unless I loved it. At my age—71 years old—if I’m not doing what I love, I’d lead a pretty bad life. But you don’t have to wait until you’re 70 before you do this. Start now. Be a gift to those you serve—not only your patients but your teammates.

Have a great day, everyone. And remember, be the gift.