[00:00:00] Cassie Kellner: Welcome to The Bloom Effect. I'm your host, Cassie Kellner, former chair site assistant, turned team coach and founder of Everbloom. This podcast is all about the real stuff, honest compos, leadership lessons, and the heart behind thriving orthodontic teams. If you're ready to grow, lead and bloom, let's dive in.
[00:00:23] Hey, Bloomers. Welcome back to The Bloom Effect. I am Cassie Kellner, founder of Everbloom, and I am so glad that you are here. it's May, and I wanna talk about moms. Specifically, the moms who are running your schedule, who are running your front desk, who are building relationships with your patients, who are holding your team culture together, all while managing everything that comes with being a mom outside of work.
[00:00:55] Orthodontics and dentistry are female dominated industries, and that is a fact. And, a big portion of the women on your team are moms. Mother's Day is coming up, and I feel like as a business owner and entrepreneur, I'm really feeling this too lately of, that working mom feeling, with all the things as we go into spring, we have recitals, and we have sports, and we have, class performances, and the kids have field trips, and it's just a really, really, really wild time.
[00:01:34] Oh, we have, oh my gosh, teacher appreciation week. it's intense, okay? the question I really want to ask today is super simple. Are you actually set up to support the moms in your practice? And I wanna be really clear, because, this is gonna hit in some areas, especially if you're a male. but this is gonna hit as a business owner, as a leader, and you don't have to agree with everything I'm gonna say in this podcast, but I don't think that we're talking about this enough, and I think moms deserve more, in, in all aspects, not just working in your practice, right?
[00:02:11] I want you to actually set up support for them, but, not in a guilt trip way. In a very, very practical ... This is hil- how you build a practice that people want to stay in kind of way, right? Because, let me tell you, there are three things that I see, best practices doing the, the real work, making the real difference.
[00:02:38] And I wanna walk through all three of them, okay? the first one, get ready. This is not gonna be new. It's cross-training. And I know, I know, I know. I know if you're listening to this, that you're like, "Yeah, I, I know we've talked about cross-training for, since, the beginning of time." But here's the thing.
[00:02:57] I want to really reframe this for a second, right? Most practices think about cross-training as, a backup plan, right? Oh, someone calls out sick, someone's child is sick and they're not coming in. It's good if someone else can cover the front, or someone else can be a TC for the day. And yes, by the way, all of that is true.
[00:03:15] But when you have a team largely made up of moms, cross-training becomes something way more important than just a contingency plan. It becomes a culture statement, right? And here's what I mean. When only one person knows how to do a specific job, that person can never be unavailable to you or your practice on any given patient day.
[00:03:43] They can't take a sick day without the whole team feeling it and rolling their eyes. Let's get real. Let's get really, really real for a second on all the feels that people feel when people call out. It doesn't matter what they're calling out for, okay? Because what that means, we immediately, and myself included, when I worked in practice, you immediately go into, this crazy selfish mode of, ugh, that just, what did that just do to my day?
[00:04:09] What did that just do to this team? And, oh, let's pretend you have two or three people out all on the same day. things get wild. We work in an industry where we're very patient focused. those patients still come in even though we may not have the team to support it. Things still move even when people call out, right?
[00:04:30] But here's the thing, these individuals, these mothers, these female mothers in your practices cannot step away for a school emergency without everything becoming a crisis. They became ... The, they become the single point of failure, and that is an enormous amount of invisible pressure to carry, okay? And you wanna talk about invisible pressure.
[00:04:58] Being a mom is already invisible pressure, right? So now I have a whole other level of females, right, that work on my team that are also not all of us, but mothers themselves, right? And now they're feeling the, "Oh my gosh, I'm letting my team down." You're gonna feel that no matter what. But to be able to have cross-training in place that lifts that pressure when multiple people can cover a function, no one person is trapped, right?
[00:05:29] And by the way, I do see this a lot too in labs. If you have a lab, typically, lab people hold all of that knowledge and memory of how to run your orthodontic or dental lab within your practice. And I do feel like they feel a lot of pressure because if your lab person is out, things can go south very, very, very quickly, right?
[00:05:52] But here's the thing, life happens, and we want your practice to keep moving. That's good for operations. It's good for the humans doing the work. I want you to look at your team right now. Who is the only person who knows how to do something very critical? That's where I want you to start. Build a cross-training plan that gives that person real, true backup.
[00:06:22] It gives them real backup, real competence, not just some vague idea of how this works and what I need to do if this person is not here on this day or this week, right? Do it before you need it. That's the whole point. Okay. The second thing that I wanna talk about is mentorship. Now, I talk about a buddy system, I lectured on this at the AAO, 10 days ago.
[00:06:51] This one's really, really close to my heart. the moms on your team who have been in this industry for years, who have figured out how to do this job beautifully while also raising kids, managing a household, they figured out something incredibly valuable. They know how to be efficient. They know how to prioritize.
[00:07:15] They know how to stay calm under pressure because their baseline pressure is already high. All of us, all your moms out there, our baseline pressure is high. That wisdom doesn't automatically transfer to, to new team members on your team, not unless you build a structure for it. mentorship inside your practice, it doesn't have to be super complicated.
[00:07:43] It can be something very simple as intentionally pairing a new team member with a senior one. And by the way, this doesn't have to be all encompassing training. Your buddy system can be something totally different than this. They integrate this person into their practice. They teach them morals and values by giving them time together, right?
[00:08:04] Making this person a real part of how your practice works. And what this really does, this mentorship in your practice, it develops people, right? It's not ... Developing people does happen organically. That's if you're luck ... You have to actually develop team members in your practice, experience or not, right?
[00:08:24] So if you have a mentorship program, then you are creating this kind of beautiful connection already and giving your team member, your new team member, a safe space with someone who knows what they are doing, how they should be doing it, and what this practice is all about. And here's the thing about membership that I don't think that people are talking about enough.
[00:08:51] It's really good for the mentor too. When you give a senior team member the role of someone to develop individuals, of someone who's actively growing the people around them, they feel valued in a different way. We all do. They're not just doing their job. They're shaping the team. They have a stake in something bigger.
[00:09:15] They are developing, and that is the kind of investment that keeps your people. And you know this. You have to keep your people. You have to keep them happy. You want to keep them around. Turnover is real. And so you especially want to keep the ones around long enough so that they have options. So think about who on your team is, one, already a mentor.
[00:09:43] You know who those people are. I'm sure you just thought of one person, as I said that. And are they ready to be a mentor? And then make it official. Give it a name, give it a structure, and watch what happens. Okay, here's the third thing that I know is also gonna sound really small, but it's genuinely a big deal.
[00:10:03] And I feel like I got hit with this more recently. my children are in kindergarten and first grade. My daughter is five. My son will be seven in a few weeks. And I don't get enough of this, actually from my children's school system. And I don't know, it could be my algorithm, but, I get like a lot of really funny memes about this.
[00:10:26] But here's the, the small but big deal. Your team, you have to make sure that your team is getting advanced notice on things that are coming down the pike in your practice. I'm talking about marketing events, patient appreciation days, open houses, Saturday hours, additional things outside of the scope of patient care, team training days, all of those things fall out of, outside of the normal schedule.
[00:10:55] So here's the reality. If you tell a mom that she, on your team on a Monday, that you need her on Saturday or you need her to fill in or, whatever, or I need you to take the on- call, phone, emergency line, all the things. This is, this is quick stuff that I need you for. And you give her short notice.
[00:11:18] What happens is you have just detonated her weekend, her childcare plans, her spouse's schedule, a child's activity or sport. It all has to be rearranged and canceled. And even if she says yes, she's going to say yes, stressed. So I'm also talking about if you needed to make a massive pivot with patient days, your team should know their schedule in advance.
[00:11:45] And if you are not doing that, it's time to sit back and go to the drawing board with your team and figure this out together, right? They need to know, well, I always recommend that you have your entire year schedule mapped out. Your 2026 schedule should be mapped out right now. If it isn't, you should at least have the next six months so that she can plan.
[00:12:06] She can make arrangements and she can actually show up as her best self instead of showing up scrambling. And the best part is the best practices that I work with are building marketing calendars at the start of the year. They're building all of their schedules at the start of the year. They know when their big events are.
[00:12:26] They know when their patient days are. They know when their admin, admin days are. They know when their big team meetings are or team retreat. They communicate them as early as humanly possible. And when something does come up last minute, which it will. listen, we're human and this is an exception, not, it's the exception and not the rule.
[00:12:47] The team rolls with it because they have trust that you respect their time. Advanced notice is not complicated. It's just planning with your team's real lives in mind. The real moms on your team who, let's be very real for a second. I would say 78, 70 to 80 to 90% of your teams are females. And so many of those are mothers.
[00:13:14] And I'm not even talking about the single mothers who are doing it primarily on their own. So it's sending a message. I know that you have a life outside of here, and I am going to do my part to make this work for you, because I am here to tell you that that message matters more than you think. Okay, three things.
[00:13:37] Cross-training that no one person is stuck, okay? No one person is stuck. We are cross-training. We're making sure that we have a primary and we have a secondary. If you've ever done Asana training with me, we, we map out your roles and responsibilities for every single team member on your team so we know who's primary on this task, who's secondary, how do we do this?
[00:14:01] When do we do this? Is this an admin day? Is this ad ne- as needed? Is this a patient day? Map it out. Mentorship so that your experienced team members are growing the next generation, the new team members on your team, and advance notice so that your team can actually plan their lives around your practice calendar.
[00:14:25] I have to tell you, if you're sitting in your car, you're on your walk with your weighted vest, which by the way I got recently, shout out to those millennial moms. None of these things that I'm telling you are revolutionary, but they are the difference between a practice where moms feel supported and a practice where they feel stretched too thin and then they actually leave.
[00:14:46] So I want you to pick one. I want you to start this month. And if you want help building any of these into your practice, you know where to find me. DiscoverEverbloom.com, hit the contact button. I would love to connect with you. Happy Mother's Day to every mom who is doing this job and doing it beautifully.
[00:15:11] You are the backbone of this industry and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Thank you for being here, Bloomers. I'll see you in two weeks. Take care of yourselves and Bloom. Thank you for joining me on The Bloom Effect, where we keep it real, keep it growing, and always keep it team first. If today's episode sparked something for you, an idea, a shift, or just a reminder that you're not alone, take a second and share it with your team or a fellow ortho leader.
[00:15:42] Be sure to subscribe so you never miss a convo, and if you're loving the show, leave a review. It helps more practices find us and join the movement. And if you're ready to bring this kind of energy into your practice, visit discovereverbloom.com to learn more about working together. Until next time, keep leading with heart, keep building with intention, and keep blooming right where you're planted.
