Kevin Cumbus 

Hello and welcome. It is so good to be back here with you all. What a summer, what a year to date. We are fresh off the Dykema DSO conference out of Denver, Colorado. That conference is absolutely incredible. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger every year, and this year we hosted our fifth M&A workshop. It was as good as it’s ever been. For those of you who track this market, you get it, right. It’s an ever-changing world where buyers are coming and going and valuations are changing, and it’s really great to get to spend time with really the best business leaders and largest DSOs and in the market, the largest lenders in the space and the most influential private equity companies out there to get their feedback. You know, when you live in this world, it can be a little myopic, and you kind of feel like you live in an echo chamber. So, it’s good to kind of break out of the office every now and then and get some outsider perspective. Well, we brought an outside perspective into our workshop this year, because, frankly, you know, I think one of the biggest leaders of evaluation and really helping people retain workers, team members these days is building culture, making sure that you’re the best leader that you can be in today’s environment. So, I leaned on a friend. I’ve got with me today, Coach Matt Doherty.

So again, keep in mind, I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. I didn’t even know balls bounced up and down until I went to business school at Wake Forest. So, I get introduced to Matt as a business coach. I say, this is great, and I’ve been working with Matt for two and a half years. Come to find out, he had quite a career before he joined me as my business coach. Matt had an incredible career as a player, both in high school and at UNC, had a brief stint up on Wall Street, and as many of you will know, had an incredible coaching career in the college ranks. It’s just, what I’ve learned about Matt is he’s an impassioned leader that brings all of his knowledge and skills to business leaders like myself. Best part is, he’s now become a friend and someone I lean on, both personally and professionally. So we were lucky enough to convince Matt to come join us at our workshop, and I think we did six to seven hours’ worth of content, I was the one to kick it off, Matt was kind enough to join me. Afterward, I was told regularly, Kevin, I wish you would have sped it up a little bit, because although Matt was on stage for an hour, I really could have used 90 minutes of his content. So Matt, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Matt Doherty

Oh man, thank you, Kevin. You know, I think the most important thing that we can find in our lives is purpose, and you know, I was blessed to find it probably in my late 20s, when I tapped my boss on the shoulder in Wall Street and told him I was leaving. And he said, “Well, what time you coming back?” I said, “No, I’m out.” And I moved to Charlotte, and I thought I was going to, were getting a real estate business. That was my goal. I was chasing money and fame, and I started coaching the eighth-grade team, and I loved it. And then I was doing the radio at Davidson for Bob McKillop, who was my high school coach, and became Steph Curry’s coach, and I loved it, and I was making, literally $24,999 in 1989 and I was happy as heck, because I loved what I was doing, and it was my purpose to make an impact on the lives of young men as a basketball coach. And fast forward, I’ve gotten fired a couple times and went on a leadership journey and learned more about leadership through failure, really, and you know, the soft skills, the culture piece, the emotional intelligence. And then I went back to coach because I wanted to put those skills to use. And ended up writing a book Rebound: From Pain to Passion, and became an executive coach because I want to help people, business owners, business leaders, avoid the landmines I stepped on because I got blown up. I got blown up a couple times, and your life’s impacted by three things, the people you meet, the books you read, and the trauma in your life. And you can control the first two. The third’s coming, whether you like it or not, it’s just how badly you get blown up. And sometimes you need to get blown up badly enough for it to impact you and change the way you behave and lead. And I think it was a blessing in disguise that I lost my job at North Carolina in 2003 on a lot of fronts, family, business, and here I am today, matching my purpose with my profession as an executive coach, my purpose to make an impact on the people I meet and the groups I work with while dropping bread crumbs to the Lord. My purpose is to teach and coach. Here I am. I never thought that I’d be coaching dentists and dental practice owners, but listen, it’s been a fun ride, and I get to meet people like you, who are truly servant leaders that I get to learn from, and you make me better. I quote you more than I should give you credit for because I don’t want you to think that you could start charging me for our sessions.

Kevin Cumbus 

Yeah, well, we’ll handle that at a later time. Well, Matt, I mean, our audience can already tell, I’m sure, why they need to spend time with you, and I’m sure they’re already regretting not being in the workshop. So, we’re going to go back to some of those concepts that you spoke about, that you share with our audience in the second half of today. But I’m going to kick it off by sharing with you all what my experience has been, I’ve been going to Dykema ever since I can remember. We’ve seen this show explode over the years. There was a point in time you could shake the hand of, or buy a drink for, almost everyone that was in that room. Now it’s 2,500 people. I don’t know how many vendors are there, but there’s a heck of a lot more than there were before, and the amount of knowledge and wisdom that’s in that room is pretty incredible. Yes, there’s speakers that are on stage, and they’re delivering their prepared remarks, but really, where I think the wisdom comes in for me is the early morning coffee. The thing you overhear by walking the trade floor and then, I want to hear people’s unique experience and their unique knowledge, because we’re all operating in different spaces here. So, there are really three big takeaways that I want to focus on. And I guess, I guess where I’d start is where, all of us were on that kickoff of the morning, right Thursday morning, the kickoff of the event. Brian Colao is preparing to walk on stage. The pyrotechnics are everywhere. There’s $85,000 of pyrotechnics going off. Brian Colao walks on stage, and he begins to talk about how challenging the markets had been, how challenging of an operating environment this has been, how challenging the M&A markets have been. And I’m nodding my head, going, “Yeah, I get it.” Brian works with, let’s call them enterprise level DSOs. He shares in the last 24 months, there have been more failed deals in that world than there have been in the history of the DSO world. He shares that there are 40 private equity backed groups that are still waiting to go to market. And basically, what we have is things stuck in the top of the funnel, and nothing can get through. And there’s curiosity by private equity about, you know, what are these businesses worth? And on and on and on. And he’s telling a story of his truth, and he’s telling the story and really speaking to his audience and his clients. And I’m looking around the table with my guys, the TUSK guys, going, man, his experience has not been our experience.

So here we are, you know, kind of rapidly sprinting towards the end of 2025 and I was spending time with my partners today, and we looked at our numbers, and we’re going to have the best year we’ve had in the history of the firm. We’re going to close more transactions this year than we ever have. How is that? It’s incongruous, really, to what Brian is saying, and I think really for a couple of reasons. One, we’re not working with 100-million-dollar EBITDA deals. That’s not our wheelhouse. We really focus on $1 million to $20 million of EBITDA. It’s clear the buyers have gotten a lot pickier, but candidly, so have we. We only work with the businesses that have the great cultures, that have the great stories, that actually integrate additional locations rather than stacking EBITDA, and are able to tell that story and have the data to back it up. So the buyers are pickier, we are too. And I feel excellent about what we have seen so far in 2025. All right, number two, we saw a lot of great leaders, CEOs of large DSOs from the stage talk about a refocus on operations, a refocus on, what are the SOPs we need to be focused on. Let’s, analyze every single step of our business and make sure that we’re being as efficient as we possibly can. Because look at what we saw post-Covid, we saw the great resignation, then we see wage inflation, then we see EBITDA, or margin deterioration. Then we saw rates go up, right the FED raises rates because they shot the money cannon out for all of us Americans. So, we got all this money all of a sudden, we got to bring some money back in. So, rates go up and inflation hits, and everything feels a hell of a lot more expensive. If you’re a business operator that’s in a highly leveraged environment, all of a sudden, the bank comes knocking and says, “Hey, your debt service coverage ratio is out of whack, and we’re not going to allow you to buy any more businesses right now.” Well, if you can’t buy businesses, and your whole business model is to buy businesses using leverage to sell to the next person, you got to kind of figure out a new trick. And there have been loads of DSOs that have focused exclusively on stacking EBITDA over the last 10 years. And when their investment bankers and their advisors say, “Oh, by the way, that business is unsellable in today’s market,” you need to focus on operations. They can take direction, and that’s exactly what they have decided to do. So, there’s a lot more focus at the conference this year, more than ever, on cost savings, culture, team retention, and really a big push around leveraging artificial intelligence. I’ve never seen more AI vendors ever, and the big question that we’re all kind of asking ourselves is, which ones are going to make it and which ones are not, and is this a real business, or is this just a cover for Chat GPT like, what’s really going on here? And everybody’s kind of slow playing that to figure it out.

One interesting takeaway is one of the largest DSOs in the nation is going to actually deploy three or four of these new AI businesses across their hundreds of practices, and they’re just going to test them on their own. So, stay tuned for that testing to get completed before you make an investment, unless you’re an early adopter and are comfortable moving that way. So this focus on operations, it felt like it was presented as, “Look at what we’re doing now and how good we are.” And I would argue it’s more like “You can’t do anything else until you focus on your operations.” This is a sign of maturation of the bit of the world that we’re in, and the industry that we are in, and you’re going to have to connect these business, culturally, clinically, operationally, in order to get the value that you deserve for the work that you’ve put in. So, to me, that felt a little bit like old news, because in the last six to nine months we’ve actually seen DSOs begin to hire BD folks, you got to keep your ear to the ground to understand, really what’s going on. Because when a DSO begins to hire a business development team member, that means they’re investing in their future, and it means they’re ramping up the M& A machine. Doesn’t mean they’re stop stopping their focus on operations, but what it does mean is they’re about to get out there and start buying again. If these 40 groups that are sitting in kind of, let’s call it M&A purgatory, don’t get out there and start buying businesses again. No one will buy them. 50% of the market has been down, and they have to prove that they still have that muscle to go out and originate deals, execute acquisitions and integrate them before any investor is really going to take them seriously as a platform worth investing in. So, we’re starting to see this heat up a little bit initially through the hires, and we have seen businesses that have been kind of 18 months quiet start to reappear on the buy side and submit offers on deals again. Are they top of the market offers? No, not really. They can’t afford to make a misstep on their first acquisition or their second acquisition. But we’re starting to see, and it is, demand starts to bubble up. For those of you who kind of studied economics, as demand increases and supply stays the same, price will be going up. So, these are really positive trends that we’re seeing, that we’re that we’re sharing with our clients. And three, there was a lot of talk from the buy side about when the M&A markets return, things are going to be different. The way they paint picture of different is valuations from 2019, 2022, 2021, they’re probably gone forever. Some of this is a little self-serving, right? So, they’re in the business of buying low and selling high, and I agree with them. It’s going to be hard to get a deal done where you get 80-90% cash at close if someone’s writing you a check for $60 million. But I’m not so convinced that valuations are going down as precipitously as they might have telegraphed in their conversations. I’ll never forget I was talking with the CEO of a very large DSO before, let’s call him a former CEO of a very large DSO, and this was at a point in time when we had some deals in market, and the U.S. stock market was way down. And he said to me, I’ll never forget, he goes, “Cumbus, the private markets always follow the public markets, and you think this business is worth this much, and I’ll tell you, it’s worth this much, because look at the NASDAQ, look at the SMP.” Look, if you layer that logic into today’s market, digital practices are woefully undervalued. And what I’ve come to realize is people tell stories that are in their best interests, and that’s okay, that’s fine, but, but you’ve got to kind of take it with a grain of salt. So our perspective is, look, as buyers return, there’s some structural things that we probably won’t see again, but on the valuation side, I think it’s going to be hard for really, this demand that we know we’re going to see, for them to just accept that, let me say it this way, for sellers not to see more demand drive up the value of their practice. It is a function of supply and demand, and we are beginning to see it already. Some specialties we’re already seeing are great beneficiaries of this. So, it feels like we kind of have some sleeping giants that are waking up, and we expect to see these M&A markets ripping here in the next 60 days or so.

We’ve talked about the deals that still need to close. There’s a nice, large transaction expected to close the next 30 to 60 days. We know the FED is going to meet again, and the expectation on the rate cut is about 25 basis points. And so as the rates go down and capital gets pumped into this space, it is going to be a heck of a rod. So right now, let me just forecast a little bit. We do have a president in the market right now, in our economy right now that’s pretty business friendly. There has been some concerns by some people about, is he being too erratic? Can he hold the seat? I’m not going to play politician here, but what I will tell you is, in the event the Republicans don’t hold the White House, there will be changes to taxes, there will be changes to spending and the world that we operate in today, specifically around long-term capital gains, rates will be changing. So, in light of all that, in the pent-up demand from private equity and the broader U.S. economy, I think we’re walking into one of the greatest three year runs of M&A activity that we’ve seen in a very, very long time. So, I came away kind of like feeling almost like a tale of two cities, right? Maybe those guys are just talking about the higher end of the market, but we’re seeing some really nice early signs that we’re going to be getting back to some really nice, if not just glorious, valuations for our clients. So, I came out of that meeting feeling enriched and feeling full of gratitude that I’m in this space and really anticipating great things for all of our clients and really for our whole economy.

So that’s my takeaway, and it was, they do such a good job. It’s entertaining, it’s educational. Food is great. The people are great. I cannot say enough good things about that conference. And look, this year they had McEnroe too. So, they’re they always do a great job of bringing some outside voices in. And it is certainly one of my favorite weeks of the year. Now on to my guest So Matt, thank you again for joining us. I’m so happy you’re here. I’m not kidding you. It was the feedback I got from our audience. I get to work with you a lot. I know what it’s like. We’ve had you speak to our team. I think people are craving what you’re sharing right now. I know it’s hard to operate in this business environment. It’s been challenging for every entrepreneur. You hear it, well, about 80% of the entrepreneurs in our group, the challenges they faced and internally get a shot in the arm and be invigorated and reminded it’s not that you’re going to get docked down. It’s how you get back up and that you get back up stronger, with more wisdom each and every time. That was a message that I think we all needed, and I would just wanted to invite you on today to share some of those nuggets and some of that wisdom so that maybe we can, you can, inspire more folks to come away with the same knowledge that our audience did when we were all together in Denver.

Matt Doherty 

Thank you, Kevin. Thank you so much. It’s just the opportunity to work with you and your team, your talented team, and getting the opportunity to speak in front of your group at the workshop about 50 dentists or dental practice owners. I’m a coach. My background is basketball. I played at a high level at North Carolina. Played with the legendary player Michael Jordan, coached at a high level at Notre Dame, North Carolina, assisted at Kansas. And I just want to share something you know, fundamental that I look at, and you kind of touched on a couple of things.

So, I’m going to share the screen here, if you don’t mind, and start out with this right here. Okay, that is Michael Jordan on his knees listening to Dean Smith, and body language is 50% of communication, and you could see Michael hanging on every word that was coming out of Dean Smith’s mouth. I tell young players, I tell anybody listen. Now, you know, listening is a talent like running and jumping. Michael was the best athlete on our team, but he also might have been the best listener and had the best ability at applying what he heard to the floor. And why do I say this? Because at the beginning of my talk at Dykema at the TUSK workshop, you know there weren’t people listening. There weren’t people engaged. There are people on their computers, texting, as you were talking, Brian was talking, and I’m like, thinking to myself, “Man, oh, man, that, one, is disrespectful. Two, they paid money to be a part of this,” and you cannot multitask. I mean, dentists are doctors too, right? And so, they understand your brain can’t work that way. So you’ve got to, and we have to do a better job of listening and removing distractions. And so when I start meetings, I have protocols to shut your phones off, put them in your back pocket, in your bag, whatever it may be, no electronic devices, and because we need to stay in a flow state so that we can digest and retain critical information that can help us go to the next level. So, I want to, I want to share the next screen, which is, is fundamental to everything I do. I’ve kind of coined this, the organizational triangle, and you’ve touched on part of this. Every organization is made up of talent, systems, and culture, and at the base are systems and culture. The better your systems and the better your culture, the better talent will you’ll attract, the better talent will be, will perform, and the better the talent will be retained. You can control systems and culture, and it needs to continue to grow if you’re growing your organization. So, you talked about a refocus on operations. That’s systems, right? And, you know, again, sports, there’s so much carryover from sports to business. I say business is a contact sport, and when you read a leadership book, you often hear sports metaphors. You know, “We’ve got to huddle up. We got to get the ball across the goal line. We got to play as a team. We got to define our roles.” You know, “We’ve got to block and tackle.” And so, the fundamentals of the systems and the culture can be intentionally driven the refocus on systems.

See, when you say refocus, that means they weren’t focused, and that’s drives me crazy. As a coach, my job is to hold people accountable to stay focused. See, sometimes the bad markets, the down markets, are good because it flushes out the pretenders, right? I like bad markets because that means the people trying to get into my market will get washed out because they’re not committed to it. They don’t have systems or the culture in place. So, Jeff Van Gundy, who was a legendary basketball coach, would say, “Do not accept in victory what you would not in defeat.” So, you know, with covid, a lot of companies had some tailwinds. A lot didn’t, but a lot of them did. They were flush with cash. They had record years, and they got lazy. So, you look at sports teams that that have a big lead at halftime, my biggest fear as a coach was a big lead at halftime. I didn’t want to, I’d rather go in almost down two, if my team was good, then up like 15, because I would write up on the board, SOU. Coaches love acronyms, sense of urgency, or I’d write NLU. That was a good one too. I love the NLU. “No let up” It’s the process. You’re an Alabama fan, Nick Saban, he was all about the process. The best golfers are all about the next shot. Dean Smith, who I played for at North Carolina, it was all about the process. He did not judge you by wins or losses. He judged you by the execution of his system. So, why do I like the dental space? Through my executive coaching, I’ve had four dentists. Two have struggled, two are doing well, what I see is dentists are trained to work in the mouth, work on teeth. Very few of them took business classes. And the challenging thing for Dennis is you’re not making money unless you’re in the chair. So how do you remove yourself from the chair to put in systems or establish a culture to support the talent in your organization? You need to step out and have a growth mindset. A lot of people, successful people, and I was one, as a young coach, as a head coach, young head coach, I thought I knew it all. I didn’t. I didn’t have a growth mindset when it came to leadership. I had a growth mindset towards basketball systems, you know. And so I think that having that growth mindset and making time to lead, to grow, to implement systems and intentionally drive a culture. That’s a hard thing to do, because people don’t see an immediate return on culture. Everyone wants to measure everything. I get it. Well, the how do you measure culture? Are people smiling in your office? Are they showing up on time? Are they staying late? Are they helping each other? What’s your retention like? And then you could do surveys and 360s and pulse surveys and things like that. But it’s more of a vibe that you feel. And to me, culture is king, because I’ve seen organizations with great talent, great systems, but fail because they have poor cultures. And then on the flip side, I’ve seen teams with average talent, average systems, great culture, and they win anyway. Let’s move to the next one.

Okay, the next slide. This is one of the things I love about being an executive coach, because I get to learn from my students, my clients, and I get to learn from the speakers. And we had a speaker come in who served in the military, flew jets, landed them on short runways out in the Pacific Ocean, on aircraft carriers. And he talked about decision making, and he went through the Eisenhower Time Matrix, which we, most of us probably on this show have seen, and you know, when he presented this and I talk about leadership as a practice, because sometimes we feel like we’ve arrived, and I use the analogy of being in the red zone in football, and all of a sudden you think you’re going to score, and somebody pushes a button and extends the field another 100 yards, that’s leadership but I never understood why they called it a dental practice, a law practice, a medical practice, until I became an executive coach, and I realized you never arrive as a leader. You never arrive as a dentist. You know, because there’s always, you know, takes skill to clean teeth. It takes skill to pull teeth. It takes skill to work in someone’s mouth. And then you have change in technology. Now you can make teeth in your office with printers. You know, what’s next? So, you have to constantly study and practice this skill so you can do a good job with your patients. And so, leadership is a practice. So, we had a speaker come in, and he showed us this: The Eisenhower Time Matrix. I’ve seen it before, but sometimes you need to get hit with it again and again and again for it to sink in.

So, the Time Matrix is basically, this is Dwight Eisenhower developed this, and this is how he broke down his decisions. What’s urgent and important is quadrant one. That’s the do it now. That’s the pressing problems, deadline driven projects. What’s important but not urgent. You know, planning and scheduling, relationship building, strategic planning, learning and development. Then quadrant three, not important, urgent. You know, interruptions, somebody knocks on your doors, somebody DMs you texts you, unnecessary meetings. And then quadrant four is time wasters. You know, mindless scroll, scrolling, doing busy work, looking at social media. Where do good leaders live? They live in quadrant drum roll two. I was living in quadrant one. We all know people that are living in quadrant one, because you can brag about quadrant one. “Oh, man, I’ve been working 16 hours a day for the last month. I haven’t had a vacation.” And now, when I hear that talk, I say to myself, you’re an idiot. You’re an idiot. You need to hire, right? You need to plan, you need to strategically, you need to learn, you need to develop, you need to put people in the right seats. You need to delegate what is in your quadrant three to somebody else’s quadrant one. And it’s okay to be in your office and plan and think, and that doesn’t have to be done at 10 o’clock at night. It’s okay to do it from nine to five or eight to five. And so why, why do I bring this up? Because most dentists are in quadrant one because they’re making money by working chair side in the mouth of a patient, they don’t make money in quadrant two, but I challenge the dentists, the dental community, that by being in quadrant two, you will operate more efficiently and create a better culture where your talent will perform, and ultimately that will creep into the patient experience, and they’ll want to come back. What’s the worst thing for a patient? Two things, the wait, right? The wait. And then does it hurt? And then three, do I have to come back? Right? I don’t want to have to come back. So can the wait time be less if you are putting in the right culture and the right systems? Can that experience be better. Instead of the person on the phone at reception, they’re maybe bringing me something to drink. Maybe they’re talking to me about my son and daughter. They’re making it more of a positive experience. And then I get back there, hopefully that Dentist has practiced enough where the shots don’t hurt, and then if he does a good enough job, I don’t have to come back. But to get systems in place and to drive a culture, dentists need to spend time in quadrant two, and that’s where, selfishly I come in. It’s executive coaching, peer advisory, getting together once a month, four to five hours with other dentists that are facing the same issues you’re facing. What does peer advisory help you with isolation relief? Where can you go and share your troubles in a safe place? That’s what we’ve created with our groups, Kevinm and that’s what I’m creating with the Doherty Dental Cohort. Thank you for letting me rant. I get pretty geeked out on leadership.

Kevin Cumbus 

It’s not a rant, right? So, it’s passion supported by wisdom and experience, right? Your wisdom that you’ve gained through your collective experiences, but also from the entrepreneurs and dentists that you’ve worked with over time. I’ll never forget living in quadrant one all the time. And this is at our former office. I met an old colleague, a buddy of mine, who was a group graduated from the same college, and we got together for lunch, and I sat down and said, “Man, I, I’ve been coming into this office at 4:30, 5 o’clock in the morning every day, and I don’t leave till 10 o’clock at night, and I’m, you know, I’m missing some time with the family, and I’m missing dinners, and I’m missing sporting events, but we’re, I mean, we’re just doing so well. I’m really proud of it. And, you know, to hear you say it, it’s a reflection, like I was sitting there bragging about how hard I was working and the results I was getting from it. And he looked at me, and he goes, “Do you think that’s scalable? How long do you think you can continue at that pace before something really bad happens, until it breaks?” Right? And it wasn’t until I saw the Eisenhower Time Matrix to where it really started to make sense, and started to hear you explain to me really what that meant. We talk a lot around here, that you really need to hear things or say something seven times before it finally sinks in. And although I’d heard it before, it’s really the, it was the time I’ve spent with you to where the light bulb came on and I go, “Okay, look, I need to be delegating and elevating.” And that’s what it’s really about. And that’s such a powerful tool when you do something like that and delegate opportunity to others inside of your team, they’re grateful for the opportunity, and they don’t look at it like “Woah they’re piling on more work.” They’ve probably been waiting to do that task for the longest time. And they view it as an elevation their roles and responsibilities. And then you’re able to move ever so slightly from quadrant one to quadrant two. And the more that you delegate, and the more you think outside of your office, and what you know, can really, how can I drive this business forward, but by not just sitting here working on a client issue or working on a patient’s mouth? That’s when things get really, really fun.

Kevin Cumbus

Yep, exactly I talk about CEOs, business owners, leaders have a lot of responsibilities, but three main in my mind, one, cast the vision, two, drive the culture, three, engage in large business transactions. You can’t do that in quadrant one. So, casting the vision. You said repetition. You got to repeat things seven times before it sticks. You can’t just say, and again, I love the metaphors with sports. I don’t think Nick Saban said, and by the way, he never talked about winning championships, apparently. But you know, I don’t think you talk about, “Hey, we’re gonna be the best program in the country just one time.” You know, you’ve got to say it multiple times. So, casting that vision, you’ve got to say it repeatedly and and you can’t do that in a vacuum, you’ve got to get out either through, you know, communication, like virtual communication, or the best is actually, you know, touching someone on the shoulder or being in front of a team live. And then secondly, driving the culture. Same thing. You’ve got to drive that culture and catch people doing things right? Okay? Because I was a “find the flaw” coach. I thought that people should do the right thing. That’s the right thing to do. So, I don’t want to spend time doing that. I want to spend time trying to fix the mistakes. And that was a flaw in my leadership, a lack of emotional intelligence. Leadership is a learned behavior. Most exciting thing ever read in my life is 2003 I lost my job. I went on a leadership journey, and I was taking a class at Wharton, a business weeklong, business executive coach, executive class. Fran Johnson was teaching out of the book primal leadership, the art of emotional intelligence. I probably have it on a shelf here in my office. And in that book was written by Dan Goldman, and she assisted in the writing of it. She said that on one of the pages, “Leadership is a learned behavior.” And I read that. It was the most exciting thing I read in my life. Now you may say, “Matt, you’re a geek. Okay?” I say, “Okay, I’m a geek.” I’m very passionate about leadership, because at that point in my life, I had just gotten fired at North Carolina, and people said to me, and it was in black and white in the newspapers on the internet, so it must be true if it’s on the internet, that I was a bad leader. And when I read that, I said, there’s hope I can get better. And so, you know, you talked about rebounding, and one of my favorite quotes is from Nelson Mandela. He said, “I never lose. I either win or I learn.” So, I learned some hard lessons that have stuck with me for a long time, and now I like to impart them with others through the executive coaching. But the life’s impacted by three things, the people you meet, the books you read, and the trauma in your life. And that trauma for me was losing my job. But you can choose in quadrant two, what are you reading and who are you intentionally meeting with. You can make it a point to never eat alone. Talk more about that.

Kevin Cumbus 

I mean, look, so I’m in a habit of trying to grab coffees breakfast and lunches or bring somebody in the office on a regular basis, because I want to learn from others. I like to understand what their struggles are, what their successes are, how they’re handling adversity. I want to learn how they’re parenting frankly. I want to learn how they’re handling artificial intelligence with their 16-year-old child. I want to understand how they’re handling social media with their 13-year-old daughter. All those things, right? So, I look at every interaction as an opportunity to, frankly, learn and grow right? That’s where I believe the most knowledge is with other people who are living it. I love to read but, but really, it’s those conversations and relationships that I build that enrich me the most.

Matt Doherty

Well, like I said earlier, I referenced Dean Smith a lot when I was coaching, or actually I was teaching at camp Mitch Kupchak, a basketball camp on Long Island. Mitch played for the Lakers, was a GM for the Lakers and the Hornets, and he had a camp, and I was teaching the shooting station, and I ended up shooting the ball really well that summer. And Dean Smith said, to be a teacher is to be a student all over again, right? So, you know what you know, but if you’re going to teach it to Ryan, Alex, Alyssa, Mariana, you better study it so you don’t skip a step, right? And so, by studying it more, you become a better your student, so you can teach it better. And I found that very interesting. I just quote Dean Smith now more than I ever did as a basketball coach.

Kevin Cumbus 

Well, I’m sure everybody here that’s watching and listening and learning today is going, “Okay. I get it. I understand why Cumbus has said to me that over the last two and a half years, he’s grown more as a leader,” but the key for me was recognition that I need to grow and I need to change and I don’t have all the answers, and to be surrounded by a peer group of other business owners. They’re at all sorts of various stages of their professional development in the in the growth cycle of their business, some of whom in our group who have sold to have sold their business to their third private equity group, and then some guys who are just starting out and are in, you know, call it year three of their entrepreneurial journey. And I know that I’m going to learn as much from the guy that’s in his, you know, second or third private equity turn as I am from the guy who’s just starting out. Now, it might not be about business or but it might be about personal or health, and it’s just such a multifaceted approach of coming in with an open mind and a ready heart and a desire to learn and listen that creates the culture that that we have inside of our group that you’re going to be creating in your dental cohort. So, man, I just I’m grateful to know you and have you in my life. And just wanted to thank you for you sharing just a small snippet of what you shared in Denver with the group today. It’s been awesome, Matt. If folks want to get a hold of you, how can they contact you and reach out to you?

Matt Doherty

All right, so DohertyCoaching.com, my assistant [email protected], her phone number or connect with me on LinkedIn, and then I’d love to share with the audience, just give a freebie. If they’re interested, a complete survey. They can complete this survey for a Crucial Conversation guide. What is that? It’s, how do you have a crucial conversation? And to me, Kevin, the most, and you know this man, the most important institution we lead is our family. So, are we having crucial conversations with our spouse, significant other, our kids? You know, our parents, you know those of you that have to, you know, take care of your parents. You know the elderly parents. Are you having Crucial Conversations? How do you have those crucial conversations? Leadership? It’s all about crucial conversation. So, if they fill out this survey, they’ll get the free guide for Crucial Conversations. So, thank you for allowing me to share with your group, with the listeners, with the viewers.

Kevin Cumbus 

Well, look, it’s good to see you again. And I’m excited for your new launch and this new endeavor. It’s going to be so impactful to the dental leaders inside of the US. And I’m grateful for you doing it, and I can already foresee the impact it’s going to have. So again, thank you.

Thank you all for joining us. If you got questions about the dental M&A environment, what’s happening, what we’re seeing, feel free to reach out to us anytime. And again, Matt shared his contact info. Highly recommend you reaching out to him if you’re tired of managing in isolation. Look at this entrepreneurship. It’s lonely and to be able to get connected with other like-minded individuals that are looking to grow and looking to learn about themselves, their business, the how-to, it can be life changing for you and your business. So, thanks everybody for joining us. Look forward to seeing you next time.