Episode 179 – Is Talent Overrated?

“A mediocre dentist has the potential with deliberate practice to improve significantly even in the second half of their career.” ~Dr. Chad Johnson

The first of 20 asynchronous business book review episodes arrives today as Everyday Practices Podcast co-hosts Dr. Chad Johnson and Regan Robertson discuss the national best-selling Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin. This book challenges the notion of natural talent and argues that deliberate practice is the key to achieving incredible success.

Dr. Chad and Regan review the highlights of Colvin’s book, and they add a little of their own experiences, what they’ve learned, how they might apply Colvin’s lessons, and certainly, how you can too. Whether you’re a seasoned dental professional or you’re just beginning your career, this episode will challenge you to think differently about what it takes to achieve world-class performance.

Think of these questions as you move through this episode:

• Are practice and experience the same thing?
• What advantages do you gain when you begin deliberately practicing (as a child and in your later years)?
• How does your inner drive relate to practice?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Regan 0:00
Hi Dr., Regan, Robertson, CCO of Productive Dentist Academy here and I have a question for you. Are you finding it hard to get your team aligned to your vision, but you know, you deserve growth just like everybody else. That’s why we’ve created the PDA productivity workshop. For nearly 20 years PDA workshops have helped dentists just like you align their teams, get control of scheduling, and create productive practices that they love walking into every day. Just imagine how you will feel when you know your schedule is productive, your systems are humming, and your team is aligned to your vision. It’s simple, but it’s not necessarily easy. We can help visit productivedentist.com/workshop that’s productivedentist.com/workshop to secure your seats now.

Dr. Chad Johnson 0:46
Even if you’re a mediocre or above average dentist, the question is, “Okay, so Pareto Principle, how do you practice up, in the first few hours of practice gets you good enough, but that’s where most people stay is what the book says. The key is to practice that 80% more just to get the last little bit of juice out of the squeeze and that’s tough because most of us don’t want to do that.

Regan 1:15
Welcome to the Everyday Practices Podcast. I’m Regan Robertson, and my co-host Dr. Chad Johnson and I are on a mission to share the stories of everyday dentists who generate extraordinary results using practical proven methods you can take right into your own dental practice. If you’re ready to elevate patient care and produce results that are anything but ordinary, buckle up and listen in.

Regan 1:47
Welcome to another episode of Everyday Practices Dental podcast. I am your host Regan Robertson here with my studio is my co-host, who is also a shared guest today. Dr. Chad Johnson, how are you doing today?

Dr. Chad Johnson 1:59
I’m doing well Regan great to see your face, it’s too bad, the rest of the listeners won’t have that privilege.

Regan 2:05
That’s right, I’ve got my curly hair down my beautiful read on and you’ve got the complimentary blu ray. Dancing with me. You know what’s really nice about that is that most people might not know that you are an accomplished singer.

Dr. Chad Johnson 2:21
No musician, but not a singer.

Regan 2:25
But I’ve heard you sing.

Dr. Chad Johnson 2:28
That’s true.

Regan
And you can sing.

Dr. Chad Johnson
I can sing ,I can I can hold a tune. It’s not pretty, but I can I can hold a note.

Regan 2:33
So in my opinion, it is pretty and it’s a perfect segue into our episode today in a very roundabout way. So we’re reviewing and kicking off the 20-book series with Chad and this book is “Talent is overrated” by Jeffrey Colvin and one of the great benefits of knowing you over the years, and I’ve mentioned it on podcasts before is you have this innate ability to adopt a particular skill with what looks like to me on the outset with a lot of ease. So when I say that listeners, Chad can speak four languages, he can play, do you play multiple instruments?

Dr. Chad Johnson 3:14
I have, yes, yeah.

Regan 3:18
Multiple instruments.

Dr. Chad Johnson 3:19
I am like stop, but yes.

Regan 3:20
Well, I’m gonna tie this together really, really well here to,

Dr. Chad Johnson 3:23
Exactly, but for the, for the point, I’ll be like, “Yes, I do”

Regan 3:28
And you’ve, you know, you’ve done the triathlons before. You really just seem to be very disciplined and seemed on the outset to pick things up easily and to some people, I think it may make them scratch their heads like, “Are you smarter than everybody else? Are you naturally more gifted or talented than other people? What is it that makes,

Dr. Chad Johnson 3:48
And this book talks about that?

Regan 3:52
Right, it completely focuses on it and as soon as I read it, I thought, “Oh, my goodness, this is how you got to where you are today,” and where I tie this together, as I’ve played two instruments as well. I’ve also gone down the path of multiple languages as well but there’s a difference. I didn’t stick to them. I did for years on a few of them, but I didn’t stick to them and there, and it doesn’t mean that I was any necessarily less qualified than you were. So I’m really excited to go over this book with you and talk about you know, this was your number one book that you wanted to go over with it. So to me as I read it, I thought this is your formula and I don’t know if it was inherent to you or not, but that’s how I see you adopting some of these principles in the book.

Dr. Chad Johnson 4:37
Yeah, believe it or not, there wasn’t much strategy to it. It was just the first on the list and I had said it last week that this was gonna be our book. So it wasn’t that this is the, you know, the anchoring theme, but we did want to talk about three major lessons and so, I mean, do I just spill the beans and then we go into each one, you know, kind of what the three are. How do you want to do this?

Regan 4:59
Spill the beans get to the heart of it. We get, we’re providing very punchy, powerful podcasts and this is like a Cliff’s Notes.

Dr. Chad Johnson 5:09
Exactly. Yeah, so three lessons. Number one, practice and experience aren’t the same thing. Number two, when you start practicing deliberately as a child, you will have three big advantages and then the sub-point to that is, well, we’re not children. So how else does that work, and so seize the day, just, you know, today’s the youngest you’ll ever be and point number three, you can let your inner drive develop over time by forcing yourself to practice. So back to point number one, practice and experience are not the same thing. So the book talks about a bunch of musicians and you know, how much time was spent and that there’s been studies showing 10,000 hours and I think that’s a, Jim Collins is good to great if I remember right and he basically, this guy’s got a contrarian point of view and he’s like, listen, Tiger Woods became Tiger Woods and Mozart became Mozart, because his dad, both of them, he correlates the two of them together, like both of their parents, their dads, were domineering and forceful in creating those environments and characters, and everything like that, that made them into the stars that they were and you know, he also counterpoints. He’s like, it’s not 10,000 hours, it needs to be 10,000, good hours, but he’s like a musician, if they spend, you know, two or 3000 hours a year playing an instrument that they will, they’ll keep on doing that their whole career and keep on getting better and better and 10,000 hours was at the age of 20, when these people were studied. So what about 30 year-olds? What about 50 year-olds and stuff like that? So the 10,000 hours is somewhat arbitrary. It’s a good point, but I don’t think his point is that the point doesn’t just stop there.

Regan 6:57
Well, it’s interesting to think about, even from a child’s perspective, getting over that, that hump of really enjoying the journey or the process to it. So a lot of times, I think we just want to be experts out of the gate, but we forget all of this, the discipline and the steps that it takes to get up to that and, and in this particular lesson, practice and experience not being the same thing. I remember, there were certain times of my career, where I felt like you know, I’m doing this but I don’t know if this is really improving my path. For example, when I, my first career out of school, what I really pushed myself to be was a great, I didn’t want to be just a great graphic designer, I wanted to be like the best graphic designer and it was an innate in me, I started practicing in high school and, and then after I graduated, every spare minute, like a for either I was playing computer games, or I was designing and I would design. I had nobody to design for Chad, so I would practice. I would like pick a topic like cat food and I would do fake advertisements for cats. I just couldn’t stop and it compelled me forward and I didn’t realize at the time, that was really good practice. I followed the people that I really, you know, looked up to, I got the books with the tutorials in them and then when YouTube came out, I looked at YouTube videos and tutorials. So I just always practice but it was always with this like one singular goal. Whereas as my career grew, and some of my responsibilities increased there, I didn’t always have that drive and that knowledge that what I was learning was actually putting me on the path that I wanted to be on, and I kind of felt like this example that you shared, you can make 20 pizzas for 20 years, and they still might be crappy pizzas. Another example is apple pies, because I was an apple pie baker, for any of you who didn’t know that.

Dr. Chad Johnson 8:50
I did, actually.

Regan 8:50
Yeah, it’s only as really good as the recipe is, I mean, once my talent was developed, you could still make a crummy apple pie if the recipe isn’t very good. Yeah, so I can relate to that

Dr. Chad Johnson 9:00
Some people in your, in our industry will say, you know, like, with a combined experience of over 80 years in this dental office, and it’s just and you might be thinking, “Oh, brother,” you know, like, and, I mean, we all want to think that it matters and it hopefully should matter, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that just because you’ve spent more time in it that you’ve improved

Regan 9:23
And herein lies the juicy crux of this, because you need the 10,000 hours. So you do need quantity, but it has to be quality 10,000 hours it has to be or in ‘Talent is Overrated”, deliberate.

Dr. Chad Johnson 9:40
Yep. So he talks about the experience trap and loosely the quote was, “While companies typically value experienced managers, rigorous study showed that managers with experience did not produce higher quality outcomes,” and so you know, like if you were hiring, he goes in it’s, you know, the great thing about books is they’ve got examples of have, you know companies that hired the best people, but did they actually achieve that? Or someone else that didn’t have any experience with, there was a car recall that they were going to do and, and they hired someone that had never done car work, or recalls, and they nailed it, you know, because he knew he knew the job and so that was just kind of interesting. It’s not necessarily a direct correlation. Now, over time, there are cases for that, but he’s like, what did he call it? The, that there’s a divine spark, you know, for the people that say it’s purely nature, that he kind of disagrees with that and then, which is good news for some of us normal kind of people with a positive work ethic, kind of mentality, because as you said, right, and it’s just like, you know, what, what, how did that make me click? And it was just because I’ve always been willing to be like, “No, I’ll out all out, practices are all out to try the smarties and do better in the long run and there could be people that prove me wrong, you know, that are just naturally gifted and smart and I know them and but this book would say they’re not actually naturally smart, they have just been been told and so it kind of goes into the second point, you know, that they were smart, a little bit, and, but that that helped accelerate their growing when their parent would say, “You know, like, hey, wow, you do a really good job at that.” So he called that the multiplier effect. I’m skipping to point number three, it’s not point number two that I made at the beginning, the multiplier effect is basically as a kid, if, for example, for myself, you know, like my dad said, you know, I was always a good speller and I’m going to work with your spelling lessons and make sure that you’re a good speller and so then I would be like, “Well, I mean, if dad was a good speller, I need to be a good speller,’ and then I do well on a spelling test, because we practice and then it’s like, yes, and then I’d be like, “I’m a good speller, dad’s a good speller and I have to be a good speller, because it’s in our genes,” and the truth was, I was just encouraged. I was just encouraged and so you know, but that, that, that builds upon itself and the expectations. My mom would always say, “You know, like expectations influence outcomes,” and, you know, if you’re, if you’re willing to set the expectation that you will do that, and I even do that now, as a coach, while I’m coaching my middle child’s soccer team, and, you know, or even basketball for my son or something like that, where I’ll, you know, set an expectation that, “No, we’re not going to talk like that to one another. We’re a team and we’re going to build each other up,” and it’s funny, how over the course of a couple of weeks now into soccer practice that I’m starting to see, you know, one girl flubbed up the other day, and she started dogging on this other girl, and she says, “No, you know what, I’m sorry, that’s not building our team up,” and I was just like, “Well, what did you know?” I was like, that’s pretty cool, that demonstrated some cool leadership that she was like, You’re right. No, I didn’t even look at her. It was out of the corner of my eye that I caught her eye-catching herself and I thought that was really cool.

Regan 13:13
Well, that’s super powerful, because neurologically speaking you’ve got that. I don’t know which part of the brain it comes into, but it comes, think about it coming down here and you’ve got that choice, it can go the take the synapse that goes positive, or take the synapse road that goes negative and by and large as we grow that negative highway can get really, really strong based on our you know, what happens to us in our childhood, in our development years, but to indicate that means that there is a good, you know, there’s a good wiring choice being made there. That’s incredible to do that.

Dr. Chad Johnson 13:44
Yeah, in the book, it’s really cool. He talked about how Jerry Rice, at practice, every route that he would run, Jerry Rice just for people. He was an 80s, 90s football player who the author, I didn’t know this, but he goes into he wasn’t exactly the highest pick of the NFL Draft. He wasn’t anticipated to be great. He you know, was hardly, you know, a great high school star, but he was a track star and it was interesting that when he would run his routes at practice, every route that they would run, most people would kind of walk back he would run down to the endzone wherever they were, he would run all the way to the endzone to mentally complete the task of we are in it to score and it’s really cool because he had so many touchdowns and so many yards. I mean, it’s just going to be tough to ever beat his record 21, 20 or 21 years in the league and in which is an amazing for a wide receiver or let alone any football player you know, aside from maybe quarterbacks and stuff like that. In the book goes into that. I just thought it was fascinating that every route that he ran, Jerry Rice would run to the endzone and people started catching on this guy practices different, he practices deliberate. Now Regan, you kind of went into the book and you looked at deliberate practice, what was like, what were a couple of your take-home messages?

Regan 15:10
Well, the formula that I was really hungry for is I want it well, let’s touch on that. So your chances of success in this particular methodology is exponentially larger if you begin, doing it as a child, which is great. I thought, well, this is good if you’re if you’re a parent, so you can influence this but what happens if you are an adult, and you’re already, you know, grown and your brain is slower? What can you do? So the formula that I thought was really, really fascinating and I definitely can relate over my past 20-plus years in marketing and my own career. So the key attributes for deliberate practice are, it’s designed specifically to improve performance. It’s repeated a lot. So whatever you are doing specifically to improve your performance is repeated a lot. It three feedback happens in a continuously available environment. So you’re able to get that feedback on a regular basis, which isn’t always available. So it’s, that’s, I think, a pretty critical component in this. I almost see it like Maslow’s triangle when I’m visually viewing this.

Dr. Chad Johnson 16:16
You and I talked about it before we hit record, that in dental school, at least at the time, the thing that I got frustrated with was on tests, when we were heavily tested, I think, you know, our freshman and sophomore year, there was almost no time to get feedback. So when I would get, let’s say, eight out of 10 correct on something, I would think to myself, well, but what were the two that I got wrong? Now I’m less confident in the other eight, because I go well, “There’s a chance that one of those two or that one, you know were the ones that I got wrong, I’ll never know which ones those were,” and I really just I remember still is, you know, 20 years ago thinking at that, like, how frustrating is it that we move on to the next test tomorrow because I don’t have any time to learn from it and I guess the rest of my career, I’ll never know, you know, like, what cutting angle museum marginal trimmer is supposed to be because I, you know, stuff that you can look up but there’s other stuff where I’m like, this is kind of foundational, but it’s almost so fast, you know, so much learning that I was just like, I mean, who knows what I got wrong, I, you know, we can’t ever stop and go over it. And wouldn’t that be awesome to do that. Which is why, for example, in Duolingo, on the language app that because you mentioned the language stuff that they give feedback and it’s like, you can always, any given day or week or month, you can click on, I want to basically practice just my mistakes, they keep track of which ones you made mistakes over and they repeat that lesson, and just the ones you got wrong and that’s kind of cool, because then you’re always sweeping up, I had my

Regan 17:54
Sweeping up, that’s the best.

Dr. Chad Johnson 17:57
So that way, you have like, full comprehension

Regan
Comprehension.

Dr. Chad Johnson
So my, in high school, I really loved the lessons that like the life lessons that I learned from basketball and here’s one that was even off the court. My junior varsity slash assistant varsity coach was our math teacher and when you got a problem wrong, he’s still, you know, teaches to this day and when you get a problem wrong, you had to go back and correct it. The assignment was not complete until you got 100% on all of your assignments and that was every day, every you know, so like, if you got behind, you couldn’t, you couldn’t just get by with doing 70%. He’d be like, “That’s good, now the other 30% is due tomorrow again,” and if you get 80% of that 30%, you’ll have more to makeup, you know, and so you better do it right the first time and if you don’t, that’s fine. You’ll just have to redo it, and you’ll redo it, redo it, redo it, because it’s also fundamental that you have to carry that on and those were really good lessons for me because at first you go, “Oh, man,” then you realize, wait a second, I need to have grit and do it right the first time and if I don’t, I need to learn why I did or didn’t do it right so that way I can move on to the next part because how do you get to the 10th lesson or the 100th lesson within that, you know, pre-algebra, algebra, you know, geometry stuff, and, and, and not have the foundational work and so there have been a few to I mean, there’s been, those are just a couple of quick examples of, of through my life, through everyone’s life. The question is, do you receive it? You know, so everyone’s had those lessons, but did you just say, why do we have to do this, this is stupid. It’s reinforcing those neurologic pathways, versus just being like, “Well, alright,” then that’s what we’ll do with a healthy dose of stoicism.

Regan 19:48
It makes this particular point, feedback can being continuously available, makes a great argument as we excel in our own career paths or mentors. So feedback can come both ways when you’re in a leadership position, it can get a little bit more tricky if you’re in a C suite or an executive position, or in your case, Chad, entrepreneur, CEO and dentist, you clinically, you know, you’ve got all the people that you really switched over and you know, you want to go clinically learn from and leadership, you have to seek out the same thing. So I think seeking out mentors that can inspire you and that are in your specifically, right designed to improve your performance in your area is good and you can also think of feedback downward as well. So continuously getting feedback from the people that you lead, to make sure that you’re improving in your own skill set as well.

Dr. Chad Johnson 20:36
So in delegation, which I love talking about, within that realm, if you’re not able, in within a dental setting, which is often to be able to immediately correct your employee or your associate on a certain matter, or as an associate, you know, if you are not able to get that feedback, it’s, it doesn’t have to be immediate, though. That’s great, but like, how do you do that with the patient right there? So it’s important to get in what in like military terms, like call, like an after-action report, AAR, that you stop, and you go, “Okay, what did we do, right? What did we do wrong and how do we learn from that?” So that way, next time, if we have this scenario happen again, we are able to execute that mission and for example, you know, like if, if someone, just as a new assistant, and they blow a bunch of spit and everything onto your just freshly acid etched prep, it’s like, okay, you don’t want to be like, ‘Hey, you can’t do that.” I mean, you want to find a nice way to put it, I’m just I’m trying to find a way to not word it rude even, you know, on the podcast, but, you know, so there’s a nice way to put it, but then also, it’s just like, well, you know, in front of the patient, you don’t want to be saying, “Well, since this is your first time, you did it wrong,” you know, and using all these strong language words. So you’re trying to find a polite way to put it, but then afterwards saying, “Hey, can we talk about that?” That’s, that would be the take-home. We’ve talked about three, there are a couple more. You said designed specifically to improve performance repeated, repeatedly, feedback is available, what’s the next couple

Regan 22:12
Highly demanding mentally and not much fun and, you know, I think you have to make some sacrifices and choices. I’ll tell you I had, I got just as excited when I went for my Business Made Simple Coaching Certification, as when I became a graphic designer. I really, really ran towards it, which means you’re going to have to get up at maybe four in the morning or five in the morning before it starts, like you’ve still have your full time career. Absolutely, if you’re if you’re on path to getting certified, I just kicked off an entirely different coaching certification program under a gentleman named Shirzad and I’m really excited about that, but that means that it’s going to be highly demanding of me mentally, your brain has to allow for space to learn, which can be I mean, I’m never going to forget sweeping up. I want to be that a person, I want to make sure that I can comprehend everything that I’m learning and taking the time to learn, that takes space and you have to carve that out and we’re both parents, we’re both spouses were both deeply involved in our businesses and our children’s lives and our community. I mean, it’s, it’s a lot. So I think, and sometimes it’s I like that number five is not much fun. Sometimes you just have to be comfortable at being uncomfortable, not, you can’t push yourself towards the point of panic. So if you’ve ever seen that little I think it’s maybe from the energy bus, I can’t remember what book it’s from, but there’s this little, like, think of a green, yellow and red circle. So you know, in the green is your comfort zone, that’s just where you kind of exist in your sweatpants, you really cozy and yellow pushes you a little bit outside those comfortable boundaries and red is when you’re in sheer panic and you kind of lock up and you never want to be in that level, but you kind of got it you have to be used to living in the yellow you have to be used to kind of living a bit uncomfortable and no, you know, physically when you’re in like strength training, doing little tears in your muscle to make more muscle that doesn’t feel good. It’s not necessarily like really fun.

Dr. Chad Johnson 24:08
Yeah. Yeah. So this book was just good because it’s a contrarian view again, in which I am one like a contrarian and from what I’ve been told, and I accept that and but talent is overrated basically just says, ‘No, it’s not just that, you know, well, people are, are, are just a once in a lifetime genius or, or stuff like that. It may be true, but that you have the capability to get there,’ and so I thought this was the hope of the book, was a mediocre dentist that might be listening to this, has the potential, with deliberate practice, to improve significantly even in the second half of your career, or, you know. Like I knew a guy, Dr. Chuck from it. When I forget his last Oh, look Wait is that is when he started picking up Sarah can you know he was in like early 60s, and you know, learning how to do CEREC and it was just an encouragement to everyone that he was an old dog learning new tricks, but you know that even if you’re a mediocre or above average dentist, the question is, okay, so Pareto Principle, how do you practice up? In the first few hours of practice gets you good enough, but that’s where most people stay is what The Book says. The key is to practice that 80% more just to get the last little bit of of juice out of the squeeze and that’s tough, because most of us don’t want to do that.

Regan 25:43
And it can be hard to encourage, I think, as a parent, or even yourself, and that, that actually wraps back around to what I was talking about earlier in playing instruments. I played instruments in school, I loved it, I thought it was fun, but it wasn’t a huge passion for me, there were other areas that I wanted to develop and so I think we can give ourselves a little bit of grace and, and use that as an indicator, you’ve got to know you’ve got to be self-motivated, and know yourself enough to know when it’s time to push yourself and go as far as you can kind of like the artistic route for me, I wasn’t going to give it up for anything. So I had a strong belief that I was going to be successful at it just like, I have a strong belief now that over the next 10 years, I will be an absolute master communicator, I just won’t give it up. It’s like a dog with a bone but if you’re kind of mad about it? Sure, I think you could focus I think the book talks a lot about focusing in on what you feel is your highest and best and then letting some of those skills kind of fall by the wayside.

Dr. Chad Johnson 26:44
And I think the last thing that I’ll say too, is that there was this a generational point to this book. To some degree, he would say, ‘Listen, if you feel like you’re too old to learn a new trick, or to become better or whatever, it’s never too late to help your children or grandchildren or nieces or nephews or the next generation have some regard by mentoring them and encouraging them in certain aspects so that way, they can be their best too.” So not just to focus on okay, how do I become the best dentist or the best business manager, but then wait a second, I only have so much time left, How do I make sure that my kids are getting that discipline to to improve to become who they want to become to.

Regan 27:32
It’s, I think it’s a really interesting tightrope that we walk as parents because we can see natural talents bubbling to the surface, and we can encourage our children and I think one of the best gifts we can give our children is, sometimes they’re just not going to want to do it and if we can get them I think you said a little over that hump. Like if we can get them over that hump, it can lead to that explosive greatness like Mozart or Tiger Woods, for example, or as the book says, or not, and they just ended up feeling a bit resentful for it and they don’t, and they don’t want to go that direction and they said it was kind of a random, you know, toss up between the two of them, but I think it’s it’s, it is a dance, it’s a dance with a whole lot of complexity to it, but as parents, it’s not our job to be their friends, it’s our job to help lead them into healthy habits. I think these key keys of deliberate practices is an enormous gift that we can give any child such an early age in life to help them understand that this there’s uncomfortableness with growth and once you embrace it, and that there’ll be mistakes, you’ll have to try again and again and again, if we can get them to fall in love with that process. I think that sets them up for for vastly more success and not driven by IQ.

Dr. Chad Johnson 28:43
Right. So in seventh grade, I jumped. I love jumping and trying to touch the rim and stuff like that and I remember in PE class one time I finally touch the rim. It was in seventh grade and I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, I can touch the rim now,’ and within a week, this was powerful to learn in junior high. Within a week, I was able to grab the rim with my you know, front couple knuckles. Yeah, no, I did not gain two inches of vertical that week and I realized I was like, “How in the world did I go from just from the first time touching the rim to being able to grab it?” My mind knew I could grab it, that I could touch it.

Regan 29:30
You had that confidence.

Dr. Chad Johmson 29:31
Yes,

Regan 29:32
it was knowing.

Dr. Chad Johnson 29:35
Yes, so I went straight from you know, just barely nicking it to a week later, being able to grab on to it and that was a powerful lesson as a seventh grader. I was like, wow, like, you know, your mind has a lot of, of I don’t know what the word would be. It’s, it’s responsible. Yeah. It’s a lot of responsibility for what your body can outcome because I was it’s not like this was some some foreign lesson or some, you know, abstract lesson I was like I within a week gained a couple, maybe an inch and a half or whatever of a vertical. No I didn’t, I had it all along. That was really cool. I mean, that builds on itself, right?

Regan 30:21
That’s the part I think that snowballs that that’s the point that I wanted to make at the beginning of this call, if you can get on that track where you start to snowball, and you know, this has worked in the past, I’m gonna apply it in this way that I was missing I think as a child, like in certain areas, I had it but in others I didn’t. So this time around, for example, the family goal that we’re gonna have is to learn Italian together and you and I were talking about it and you said, “You know, it’s really not that hard, just do 15 minutes a day,” because I said, “I was telling you, how are we going to work this in maybe I’m going to have to hire a private Italian teacher, this is going to cost a lot of money,” blah, blah, blah. I just started thinking of all the limiting beliefs and you said, “No, it’s actually, just get your Duolingo set aside 15 minutes a day, like who can’t find 15 minutes a day, right? You can find it and be consistent with it and you can get over that hurdle.

Dr. Chad Johnson 31:12
So this is a with the Italian thing. This is a side note at this point. Sorry, everyone, but the word in Italian to add is “aggiungere” Yes. Isn’t that so soft? As soon as I learned Italian, yeah, it’s just I’ll kind of be working on a tooth and during the day, I’m just like, a sugar mommy. And I’m just, I just think it’s funny to some of these words. They’re just so poetic. It’s beautiful

Regan 31:37
Aren’t they called the Romance languages? It’s Yes. It is French, Spanish, Italian. Yeah. Well, everybody that is a quick palate is overrated.

Dr. Chad Johnson 31:51
So I hope that aggiungere to your little pocket of tricks, so thanks for listening, everyone. We’re gonna go over, I wish I could tell you right now, our our next book, but I’m excited that we’re going to be doing this, this 20 book series and next up on the list is drumroll, “The Obstacle Is The Way’ by Ryan Holiday. The obstacle is the way am I right, Ryan Holiday. We’ll see you guys next time.

Regan 32:24
Thank you for listening to another episode of Everyday Practices Podcast. Chad and I are here every week. Thanks to our community of listeners just like you and we’d love your help. It would mean the world if you can help spread the word by sharing this episode with a fellow dentist and leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Do you have an extraordinary story you’d like to share? Or feedback on how we can make this podcast even more awesome. Drop us an email at podcast@productivedentist.com And don’t forget to check out our other podcasts from Productive Dentist Academy at productivedentist.com/podcasts See you next week.