Building a Sales Team? Hire the Person, Not the Rolodex

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0:00 Water probably, unfortunately, is a dirty secret in dentistry. About 70% of practices in the U.S. currently right now, as it sits, do not test, shock, or treat their water lines. if you have a swimming pool and you don't test or shock that pool, after a couple of weeks, you're going to notice you probably don't want to get in that swimming pool.

I'm more concerned what gets them out of bed in the morning than what keeps them up at night. I think the world used to be, you know, it was all around who you know. Now it's who knows you. I think with AI, a lot of that has changed. if you're not proactively out there, you know, talking about your personal brand, talking about your products, talking about your organization, well then AI is never going to find you.

I think it's who you surround yourself with. Be careful of who you surround yourself with. Welcome to Zero Friction Podcast. This is Terry Coutsolioutsos. And once again, I have another very interesting guest with me today that has an extremely interesting story. He's spanned a couple of decades in the sales business in the medical technology and healthcare space. I do have Steve Craig with me. He is the Vice President of Sales for North America for Solmetex LLC. And they really have brought some light to me. I had a brief conversation with Steve a couple of weeks ago.

And it is about the dental industry. It's about water hygiene and Steve has some great stories to tell around sales experiences, but also how Solmetex is helping to take friction out of the dental industry. So Steve, welcome to the program today. Appreciate you being here. Why don't we lean into just a little bit about your sales experience and how you became the head of North America sales because I think it's a really interesting story there and then we'll pivot and then we'll go in to Solmetex a little bit and talk about the solutions that you're providing to the dental industry.

Absolutely. First off, just appreciate the opportunity to have the conversation with you. So again, yeah, my name is Steve Craig. So I started my sales career quite some time ago. I wanted to get into healthcare sales, found out pretty fast right out of college. I don't really hire you into healthcare sales back then right out of college. So everyone talks about life insurance, payroll services, office equipment, those type of things. So I started interviewing in that realm after I wasn't getting any nibbles in the healthcare side and got into office equipment.

2:53 I don't know if it was fortune or unfortunate. I planned on being there for six months, like everybody, and was there for about five years, I worked my way up, but it's truly where I learned how to hire, develop, and train people, because that's pretty much what you're doing all day long in that business. You also really learn how to sell, because you're selling fax machines and copiers. They do two things, and make copies and break. And unfortunately, I remember it's a breaking point, so it really allows you to grow thick skin and really learn how to learn your craft and your trade.

After a little bit of time, I wanted to get back into my journey because that's all I was doing was hiring and training and developing people, but it's like I said I truly appreciate the skill I learned in that setting and that's when I started interviewing back into the health care field and I've taken a job in ophthalmology and specialty sales did everything there from pharma rep to to manage care to Surgical to our rep to eventually into leadership and towards the end what we were doing was we were really building out what now you would call the DSO space in dentistry, a lot of the ophthalmologists, you know, wanted to band together and knocked it into the hospital setting and control their destiny by building surgical centers to do cataract, lactic surgery, all those type of things.

And that's really where I got recruited to come over to Johnson & Johnson and join the dental world, which now I've been in for a little over 23 years to help build out the DSO space for J &J. We are merging some divisions together to make one entity for Johnson & Johnson the dental space. did that for a couple of years, helped build out the DSO space, and then, you know, got tapped on the shoulder to move into leadership. Eventually, I wouldn't say I was probably, you know, burnt out.

I was probably more bored out. And that's when my original CEO for my J &J days reached out to me, and he had left and got a Dentsply for quite a few years. And then said, hey, I became the CEO of a company called Solmetex. I'm sure you've probably never heard of them, but we're going to merge four other companies into one and be the only comprehensive of Nden Water Solution Company. And we have no presence in the DSO space. You know, would you like to join that journey all over again and help change that in the DSO space?

So did that for for a little bit and then got tapped on the shoulder as he did 20 years ago to kind of move into leadership of leading those teams of leading leaders. So that's currently what I'm doing right now. I love what I'm doing and it's always fun and it's always challenging in the dental space. You know, it's really interesting how, you know, I hear this story over and over again and actually have some friends that help people transition from other occupations into the medical device or medical technology space.

5:28 Yeah, and, you know, we do tend to, you know, snub our nose a little bit, you know, with people that don't have medical experience. And, you know, tell me how that initial experience getting into the space has sort of guided you through your hiring processes over the past few years. I know I have my own journey on that too, but it's an interesting concept on like, you know, as you hire people coming into the medical space and the healthcare space, you know, what are you looking for?

Or whether they're in the space currently or not in the space currently. Talk a little bit about that. sure. I mean, really, when I look at as the individual. I have a lot of questions around, you know, do they have a growth mindset? You know, what gets them out of bed in the morning? You know, a lot of really what what makes that person tick? You know, do they want to advance their career? Do they want to advance themselves? Do they want to get better? Those are things that really can't be taught.

A lot of that is inside somebody. I've learned through the years that, you know, a lot of coming into medical or coming into dental and selling, a lot of that can be taught, the products, the different types of customers you're going to be meeting with and those type of things. But the more softer skills of that individual, that really can't be taught. So it kind of sounds kind of strange. And I know I've had a lot of past employees that I have hired, they still talk to me about this this day.

But I start most of my interview process out like, today, my job is to talk you out of position because at phase value, it seems pretty simple. You walk in, you sell a product to somebody, they're going to turn around and sell to a patient from face value. It seems pretty simple, but that's where it goes sideways pretty fast. So a lot of, like I said, my questioning is always around the individual themselves. What makes them tick? And I'm more concerned what gets them out of bed in the morning than what keeps them up at night.

It's just finding those individuals that can go out and can really make the complex simple and really want to change people's lives. And they really have probably that team concept. And they're a lot more me than I is really what I look for. You know, it's really, it's a great point and I fall in line with, you know, exactly what you said to be honest with you. I look at it like there's certain things that you can't hire, especially from a sales perspective and like it's resilient, it's commitment, those intangible things that you're either, you're born with and you're wired with it because of your DNA or it has been nurtured into your system by the time you're probably eleven years old and that's just sort of the footprint psychologically who you are.

8:04 Those are things that can't be taught. I totally agree with you. You can teach people about markets, you can teach people about products, you can teach people about people, but those other things are not taught and they're self -motivating, self -energetic, self, you know, development, coaching, all those things you have to have your mindset to. So I Yeah, do it's all agree. right. I agree. It's all about mindset and looking at those individuals. know, Somebody was successful somewhere else, may not be successful the next place in vice -versa, but through my study of leadership and through my study of watching sports teams and things like that, I think one thing that really separates championship teams from non -championship teams a lot of times, one team's B players are better than the other team's B players.

If you have a full team of a players, they're probably not going to get along. They're all going to be fighting for the limelight, all going to be fighting for the ball, all going to be fighting for the money. But if you look at some of those championship years of even, say, the Chicago Bulls based Yeah. on being out of Chicago, a lot. Michael won a lot of the shots, but there's a lot of games where Steve Kerr, John Paxson made you the winning shot. It's because the Bulls B players were better than the other opponent's B players.

So, you know the eight players are the eight players. They're gonna do what they do with the Michaels the Kobe's of the world They're gonna do what they do but Yeah. a lot of times it's your B players like a Dennis Rodman is far superior than the other teams B player. You know, it's so true. It's so true. And that mindset has guided me in so many ways where, you know, I know that in our space, there are many leaders that find it much easier to hire somebody directly from the space, Yeah, that may not have the raw skill or the temperament or the psyche to handle the job.

But because they've been in the space for so long, it's an, it's easier to get them up and running quickly. But, you know, those, there are other people from a long term perspective that might have been better choices. So I, I, I agree with you. I just, when you, when you mentioned that earlier, I just thought that was a nice, interesting topic for us to talk about as sales leaders and, commercial leaders. It's always a fun thing to talk about there. But let's... it's a difference between hiring an individual and hiring a Rolodex the individual is gonna perform longer than the Rolodex well for sure, for sure.

Let's talk a little bit about Solmetex and how they came together. You left a great company in J &J with great products and great technology, great leadership, great support systems. and you have a guy that you've worked with in the past that's working to aggregate four different product companies coming together into one that's going to support this surgical outpatient center marketplace. And so, let's talk about Solmetex and what they do. And, you know, as you and I discussed before the call, like, some of this stuff is kind of shocking to me.

10:54 Yeah, you come into the marketplace and you learn about new products and the problems that you're solving is kind of remarkable. Yeah, especially when you talk about something as simple as water in our environment today. Yeah, definitely water can be overlooked in dentistry obviously waters overlooked in the world not every place outside the U.S. Can you turn a faucet on? Even some parts of the U.S. Can you turn a faucet on and have good, clean running water? But in dentistry, you need water for every procedure you do.

It's a number one instrument used in dentistry. So Solmetex has taken on this challenge. We're the only comprehensive end -to -end water solution organization. So what that means is we handle the water coming into the practice, the water traveling through the practice, the water traveling through the patient, and the water exiting the practice. And what we wanted to be is good stewards of that to make sure, one, we're taking care of the teams that we serve, we're also taking care of the patients, and we're taking care of the environment and the municipalities that we all live in.

So so water probably, unfortunately, is a dirty secret in dentistry. About 70% of practices in the U.S. currently right now, as it sits, do not test, shock, or treat their water lines. And these are small little tubes, and the average dentist is open, you know, three days a week, seven hours a day, which means water is sitting stagnant more than it's moving into practice. So what we really try to do is help build custom protocols that they can live with to really figure out how to handle that.

So what we did was, like I said, we took four organizations, merged them into one. know, most Most offices are going to have good EPA standard water coming into the practice, which means 500 colony-forming units, which basically means acceptable drinking water. But if they're not, we have whole office systems that can treat water to get that up to par where it needs to be to get to the practice. If they do have good, accurate water coming in the practice, well, then we help build out a protocol with them on how to test that water, how to treat that water, how to shock that water.

Like I said, it's small little tubing. You know, if you have a swimming pool and you don't test or shock that pool, after a couple of weeks, you're going to notice you probably don't want to get in that swimming pool. But unfortunately, in a dental practice, it's thin little tubing that's running through the floor, the walls, the chairs. It's not easily accessible. So you only see it when it's exiting the water lines. So, we we Sterisil, you know, focus on that. We then have two other products called DryShield as one and ReLeaf is the other.

DryShield is for doctors and clinicians. ReLeaf is for hygienists. But what it does is it controls to keep the team safe, but also keep the practices more efficient. So, now the water is crossing over the patient. So, it's a device you put in the mouth, it can, you know, it will do the suction for them. It'll capture 96% of aerosols. What it's really designed to do is hold back the cheek, the tongue, and all that. Staffing shortage is a real thing everywhere in the world, but they're a massive problem in dentistry, especially post -COVID.

13:42 So what this device really does is if they have the appropriate amount of assistance, great. They can get to what is called true four-handed dentistry, where you're seeing a dentist and assistant work in rhythm and be a lot more efficient and handle that. But if they don't, a dentist can still perform these procedures because the device is not going to do exactly what an assistant does, but it's going to take care of the suction. that's going to take care of the patient in regards to the cheek, the tongue, the bite block, all that to keep them in the proper place.

But more importantly, the other thing, like it says, it captures 96% of aerosols. Prior to COVID, we thought if a patient presents to a practice and they're not sneezing, running nose, they look pretty healthy, everything is good because we assumed the aerosols came out of the patient. But what the CDC found out during COVID was that 78% of the aerosols are coming out of the dental unit water lines and with 70% of practice and that test shock and treating those water lines and now explains why dentistry has a high rate of eye infection, ear infection, upper respiratory infection, nasal infection, not really from the patients themselves, but from the teams that are in there all day long working on patients to improve their life and their health care.

So this device really helps where the water is crossing over the patient. And then Solmetex focuses on the extraction of the water leaving the practice. So we're capturing all the amalgam, all the mercury, everything that unfortunately dentistry is one of the largest pollutants of that to make sure we're keeping the municipalities and all the waterways and the aquifers safe. So we all have good drinking water and our next generations have good accurate drinking water. So that's kind of where we sit with those. We do have a whole nother arm to our business which is called OsteoGen which is for socket preservation but where this really comes in is and how our teams work together is surge and when you're in true surgical as I was in the oR for ophthalmology but in dentistry pretty much everything they do is surgical.

But they don't use saline every single time unless they're in true full -blown surgery. But for pulpotomies, a baby root canal for tooth extraction before implant dentistry, they're using the water in the practice. Well, we've now opened up the bloodstream of the patient. So if we don't have good clean water, we can have some problems there. So we really work with the surgeons to make sure that they have good effective clean water. And then we also have products that help with exact socket preservation to make them a lot more efficient, a lot more productive, and grow back a lot healthier bone a lot faster than most products in the market.

So that's kind of in a nutshell of kind of how we take that water into the practice, through the practice, through the patient, and then exiting the practice. So talk to me a little bit about the water, like, you know, end surgery. We talked a little bit about the impact of, you know, the aerosol piece of it, but, and we certainly understand how, you know, splatter can, you know, translate to, you know, higher infection rates and that type of thing. But talk to me about the water and surgery.

16:30 That's the one thing, you know, to me. So when they're doing surgery, they're not using a sterile water at that point. They're just using something that's coming out of the faucet or what is the, what's the water supply look like when Yeah, it comes to they're certain. all a little different. Everyone's seen, like I said, some might have a full office treatment system that we sell and support. Others might have a bottle sitting on the chair where the water's running through that. And hopefully they're Okay, using some type of maintenance product, whether it be a tablet or a straw, to make sure that water is clean and effective.

And then at times in true full -blown surgery, you know, they're going to be using saline, but saline is used less than people think in that surgical setting. It's like I said, anytime you go to see the dentist, they're doing some form of surgery to you, whether right. it's a cavity, a root canal, whatever it is, they're doing full -blown surgery majority of the time.

So, you know, let's talk a little about how you go to market today versus, you know, in historical purpose. Yeah. So, you know, running a sales organization today in 2026 and moving into 2027, how is it different today than it was 15 or 20 years ago for you in your teams. Yeah, I mean, 15, 20 years ago, you know, you had a marketing department, you had sales people, you pretty much handed them a telephone book and they went out and called on doctors that were in that city or that town or that state inside that phone book.

Well, it's a lot different now. You know, the world's changed. I think the world used to be, you know, it was all around who you know. Now it's who knows you. I think with AI, a lot of that has changed. if you're not proactively out there, you know, talking about your personal brand, talking about your products, talking about your organization, well then AI is never going to find you. I would say most dentists, probably 40 years and younger, one of their board of directors and probably their number one source to go to is either a chat, a Claude, a co -pilot bot that they're asking all their questions to.

You know, what should I use for water? You know, who should I go see for a dentist? I need to get a root canal. Who's the best dentist to see? All that is now showing up in that form so if you're not proactively out there AI is probably never gonna find you and the next individuals are. and I think you know we always say that the consumers are smarter, but you know, there was a book written in 1910 that basically said you know sales is over because the consumer is so much smarter than ever before and that was because a Sears catalog came out so everything was at their fingertip of what they could buy what they needed what they wanted those type of things so, I think some of that is the same.

19:04 It's just how we go to market, how we do things. The world is changing fast, and probably what happened in AI today is going to be obsolete tomorrow. So, you're always on your toes, you're always trying to get out there, and you're always trying to expand things. And, you know, I think the number one killer of any business is this is the way we've always done it. And that's why we're pretty proactive, and we have gold tier products. We have great market share with our products, but we're always looking, what is the next best way to help our customers build customizable protocols and make the solutions they use for us more simple.

So we're always on the cutting edge of trying to see what is next out there that can do that. So we're not the next Kodak blockbuster, Sears, Yeah. et cetera. Yeah. You know, it's kind of interesting. you you know, we've gone through this whole digital age and we had COVID happen and, you know, I think that the data is pretty simple, is that most buying decisions or 80% of that decision is made without the seller today than it was before. so, you know, you know, when you and I entered into the medical healthcare space.

It was pretty much hand -to -hand combat and that customer was relying. 90% of that sales process was, we were the funnel for that entire process. Now, you know, with digital, not just you have social, you you have web, you have search, you have AI. I know these are all avenues where TikTok, I mean, across the board, you have all these different avenues where people are getting influenced and getting connected with products and services and so, you know, AI is a one big part of it.

We always have to make sure that we're evolving but, you know, more than now than ever, I feel like this whole omni -channel presence is critical and, you know, we had omni -channel before and we built these platforms for humans to engage. What most people don't realize moving forward is, is now we have to create these platforms to create an experience for the agents as well. So your websites have to be designed so that they are easy for search agents to come and look and get the information because it's not going to be too long before you and I have agents that say, I need this product, please go find me the top three vendors in this particular category and the agents are going to go out and you know they're just like anybody else they're going to go find the path of least resistance to get the best fastest information possible and if we're not designing that's like you know we're doing website design that right now and when we're designing

21:52 Websites we're designing it for customers not only for human interaction and human interface but we're also designing websites so that the the agents can navigate and get what they need as well. What are you all doing to sort of, you know, support this omnichannel presence? And I would imagine that dental community, just like any other business, has a wide diversity of aging demographics.

And I would imagine that the millennial and the Gen Z component of that practice mix is getting bigger and bigger every day and the boomers and the Gen Xers are phasing out. So, how are you and your sales and marketing team sort of aligning to this new buyer demographic that's becoming more digital oriented than it is human to human oriented? definitely. It's something we're doing all the time. On our side of the business, you know, we now have a a social media team, a digital marketing team.

Those are things we, like you said, 15, 20 years ago, nobody had. We have to reach customers where they want to be reached. And I think, you know, for most sales, you know, people hate to be sold, but they love to buy, but they want Yeah. to buy it in their terms. Yeah. So I think you have to try to reach people where they want. So some of it's being on podcasts like this, some of it's we do a lot of Webex. You also have to have a digital marketing platform of getting out there, like you said, on LinkedIn, on TikTok, on Instagram.

So you're hitting patients there, you know, there also are the people that still want to look at a slide deck and have a conversation. Others want to, you know, do the research on their own and get to you when they need. But it's not much different for our customers, you know, where I spend a lot of time with practice owners and owners of DSOs is, you know, you have to realize that, you know, the world has changed, like you just said. So a lot of times it's your number one customer is not the patient.

Your number one customer has to be your team. If you take care of your team the team will take care of the patients and the communities you serve so a lot of it is around that of making sure that's there and like you talked about with websites There's so many times where most websites are built to impress other dentists versus how do I serve the community? I serve how do I serve the patients? I serve that's a lot of where they have to get to and the website can't be talking about those things because the way I look at it is Patients vote with their feet and the patients vote with their feet on how you made them feel they don't know a great clinical procedure from a very poor clinical procedure.

They don't understand if that was a good crown, a bad crown, a good margin, a bad margin, a good cleaning, a poor cleaning, but they know you made them feel. So I think it's like that everywhere, from the sales side, from the vendor side. You have to really look at how are you supporting your customers, how are you making yourself easy to buy from and easy to work with. And I think that's where you'll see the success and we have that conversation with our customers all the time that, you know, if you take care of your team, the team is going to take care of the patients and community you serve.

24:39 Yeah, it's a great pivot. Let's talk about the team and the criticality of the team as when you're a commercial leader. I think you and I talked a little bit about headlining this a little bit as we close up the conversation is that, you know, as a commercial leader and a company, you have various different, you know, as an enterprise, you have different customers. You have, you have customers, you have customers of customers, you have your people that work for you. And let's talk about, like, the sales team and how you treat them.

Yeah, your team has to be a number one customer, and they will take care of the people you serve. So a lot of it is making sure that you're giving them what they need. You're kind of that conduit between the head of the organization and the field, and everything that the field thinks needs to roll to the top may not need to, and everything from the top probably doesn't need to be rolled down to the bottom. But a lot of it is really figuring out, how do I remove barriers for them to to make their life and their job easier so they can do what they need to do.

And then at that point, it's really around accountability and getting the teams to understand what's your job to perform to make this team successful. The team's only as strong as its weakest link. So like I said, as long as you're working with that team, figuring out what makes them tick, where do they wanna go in life, what's their goals, what's their aspirations and help develop with that. And I think a lot of it is, you don't wanna treat people unfairly, but you will treat people differently.

Everyone learns differently. Everyone wants to be coached differently. Everyone wants to be developed differently. And I have a lot of people that say they don't agree with that and I always tell them. So like I, you know, a prime example for you, Terri B, if today's your wife's birthday and your sister's birthday, you love them both, but you're probably treating them a little bit differently. And it's the same thing. Right. If your number one customer calls you at 8 AM with a problem, your number 101 customer calls you, you're probably calling back number one.

And then when you're done with that conversation towards that problem, you're calling number one to one. That's just how it works. But I think a lot of it is, like I said, it's treating everybody fairly and it's really trying not like that. to develop people. The more you can develop people, the stronger the side. team is going to be, which means That's then what your it customers is. are going to be a lot happier. But like you said, the world's changed. It's a digital footprint now.

Everybody Everybody goes to an organization for different reasons. Everyone looks at true personal success somethings? differently. it somethings? So I think a lot of it is having, you know, working with them to define where where they want to go in life, what's their personal mission, vision, mission, all that. And how do we help them get better? And how do we help them succeed? And I think when you move into leadership, it's definitely a lot more we than me, and you're really trying to help people develop and find out where they want to go.

27:19 And sometimes, unfortunately, your greatest seller might want to develop and move on and the opportunity may not be with us, it might be somewhere else. But you're now an evangelist out there that's talking about your leadership style, talking about your products and all that. And I always tell my team, if we're as good as we think we are, we can hit our number with a vacancy. but but if as long as my job is building that bench to make sure we have people that can fill in, we'll be phenomenal.

But like I said, a lot of times, you're the a players are going to do what they do. It's really developing those B players. And that's where you see the true success of organizations. Yeah, so true. It's, and even from a leadership and a development perspective, it's all about, you know, it's about elevating, It's about making your a player as a plus, making your B player as a player, making your C player as B players. It's all about upgrading. and, you know, what's when you look at sales professionals, what do you think are the top five, we'll go top three motivating factors on why people are really successful?

What do you think really creates success for, you know, the contemporary sales professional in today's marketplace? Yeah, I you know, think motivation gets you going, but discipline is what carries you across the finish line. So I think they're one, they're very hard workers. Two, they're very disciplined. And the third one is they surround themselves with great people. I always say, you know, the whole famous Jim Rohn where the average of the five people we hang around, I think your biggest predictor of success in life is who you decide with both personally and professionally.

You get around the wrong people, and things aren't going to go well. You get around the right people and always try to elevate and get into better, better, stronger rooms, the more you're going to develop. So at the end of the day, we're all like trees, really growing or dying. So you're looking for those growth -minded people, you're looking for those hard workers. You're looking for the people that want to succeed and they have that it factor. People always talk about who the goats are in any sports.

The majority of the times, it's not sometimes the greatest athlete. It's the people that have the discipline, have the commitment. They never gave up. They were the hardest workers. They were the first one to show up and the last one to leave. That's what makes people great, and they can overcome some things with hard work and dedication and discipline.

I totally agree with you, you know, you think about all the greatest athletes of our lifetime where you have the Michael Jordans and, you know, you have the Kobe Bryant, you have the Tiger Woods, you have, you know, people that really transformed and transcended the whole sport in itself.

30:05 And, you know, they're always the first on and always the last to leave. They're all competitively just, you know, over the top, like, you know, could not stand to not win or be successful. You know, the other thing I wanted to bring up that we hadn't talked about was like, I think purpose and mission is also when I look at some of the most successful people that I've worked with, the motivators for them weren't always, well, most first, frankly, most people that I, you know, money is not typically the thing that I associate myself with the most successful people.

I mean, money comes when you are successful. Don't get me wrong, but I'm one of the people that believes that money is not the most effective motivator. I'm one that like, and this is why I I like health care is that you know, and I've been in and out of health care but the reason why I like health care is that you can wake up. It has great purpose every day you know, you're helping to solve hard problems that have quality of life or even life staging type of impacts and you know, you're really you know as a sales professional to be able to lean into health care in some ways It's almost a real privilege and that that's was always for me the great purpose and the great mission that like That's why I was I could get up at three o 'clock in the morning and get home at nine o 'clock at night the same day you know because it was that

Mission. It was that purpose and that that made it fun. You know, that made a lot of fun Yeah, I think it's those individuals, they either have it or they don't. And I think that's where I talked about, you know, the interview process. I saved all my notes and I usually closed every interview when I'm hiring someone is, you know, do I have your permission as we go walk this journey together to have those difficult conversations and successful conversations with you? because then you're always bringing it back to them.

You know, this is what you said you wanted. This is not what I'm seeing. The story I'm telling myself is, this is what I see. Do I have the story wrong? So you can have those conversations with them, but that's really how you grow, develop and train people by figuring out what makes them tick. What is their personal vision? What's their personal mission? What's their personal definite success? And then you have those conversations with them along the way. But you have to have that we mindset of, I want to grow these individuals and take them to the next step.

32:36 And like the people you named, Tiger Woods had a coach, Michael Jordan had a coach, Kobe Bryant had a coach. They all had multiple coaches doing different types of things. And, you know, they're the best of their profession, but they're always striving to get better. And they realized what their role was. I've seen interviews with Kobe. Kobe was the first one there and the last one to leave. He said, that was my role on the team. My team was to build the belief in those individuals that we're gonna get it done.

And if it comes out in the last second, I'm gonna do what it needs to do to win. So that was his role in the team that may not have been everyone's role in the team so he realized probably through you know kind of Michael's hardship in the beginning that you can't make everyone want to be me you Right have who what's their role in the team? And I think you know Nick Saban says it best of you know mediocre people don't like to hang around high performers Night performers like your Thank people but if everybody does their job on every single play and be where your feet are We're gonna be highly successful.

We're gonna have challenges We're going to mess up at times, but as long as we can talk through watch film and coach and develop and all that We'll be successful more times than then than we won't and unfortunately Yeah, you're not going to win the championship every single year but I've always tried to coach my teams that the more cohesive we are together the better high -performing team we can be and the most important thing is being that cohesive high -performing team Because one of the first things I always started off the year with was you know looking at the goals looking at the cop plan and understanding no one's ever beginning of a goal they like it's always too high no one's ever gonna cop plan they like it's always too low but how do you reverse engineer that to what we need to be successful what you need to reach whatever your personal vision and mission was and and how do we do that and if it always then

Would break down like the President's Club rankings so there you know there's 12 people going in President's Club there's eight people on the team but that means all you guys aren't competition with each other it's It's just two of the four people running along with us. And then you really get people to buy into that team concept and realizing that all eight of us could make it. It's just two of the four people come along for the party. But I think that's how you really change that.

But it's diving into that individual. And really, like I said, for now it makes a tip in where do they want to go and how can you help develop and get them there. it's such a great point and, you know, I have one last question for you before we close things up and I asked this to all my guests and I'm going to actually make it an episode with all of them but, you know, you've had a great, great career and you've done a lot of remarkable things and you've, you know, moved around various different industries.

35:08 And, you know, if current day Steve can go back to 22 -year -old Steve when he was trying to get into med tech and health care and, you know, had to pivot and go into the office, I believe you said office furniture category, what would that be, that one piece of advice, whether it be professional or whether it be personal, you know, what would be that one piece of advice he would give you a 22 -year -old self.

I said it once before and I'll say it again. I think it's who you surround yourself with. Be careful of who you surround yourself with. You're going to, to the Nick Saban point, you're going to become one of the high performers or you're going to become one of the mediocre people. Probably the only really regret I probably have in my career, and it just wasn't like we talked about in the very beginning. It wasn't around back then is I wish I would have built a personal brand right when I entered the dental industry.

Because if you build that personal brand, that way your teams, your customers, everyone kind of already knows, likes, and trusts you when they meet you because you have it out there. you know, AI wasn't around back then. Now it is. I tell people all the time, you know, build that personal brand as fast as you can, get it out there, full digital print, anywhere you can get it. It's going to make life easier. It's going to make AI finding. It's going to make people, like I said, already know I can trust you, but it comes down to who you surround yourself with.

You have to make sure you're with the right people that have the same values, mission, vision that you have and are going to help push you and drive you. If not, if you're with the wrong people, you're probably going to go the other way. So be careful of who you surround yourself with and always elevate to get into better rooms. And don't ever get stagnant. Try to find the next people to help push you. Such great advice too. you for being such an experienced and tenured guy and throwing the LinkedIn word out there, it's kind of remarkable, but I will sit here and tell you that I probably have trained over 100 people on LinkedIn optimization on how to start building their professional brand or personal brand, however you want to talk Thank about it, but you.

It does elevate your authority. you you know, LinkedIn is a huge network amongst professionals. So, Yeah, you know, I promise you customers are going to go find you on LinkedIn and look who you are and look and see what kind of content you're either reading, sharing, or posting. And, you know, it will help elevate your authority in the marketplace for sure. So really commend you for pushing that for your sales professionals. What a great opportunity to, you know, kind of guide them in that direction. So thank I you.

37:47 Think you have to show by example, you know, I post every day on LinkedIn a quote every day, because you I think, you know, the world's lonely, sales is lonely. Like I said, you got to surround yourself with the right people, if you wake up with a bad attitude and say, you know, I overslept, something went wrong today, I stubbed my toe, well then you're going to carry that in the day. So you have to have something that's really good to get you going. But, you know, especially in the dental market, LinkedIn is a huge tool.

The dental community is on there, like nobody's business. Now, granted, a lot of them are never going to post like or comment. They're kind know, of more lawyers of seeing, you know, who's connected to, who talks to, who likes what, who comments on what. But they're there and they're watching and AI is there and AI is watching. So I think the more you can get into that, the faster you can get into that. Just the easier life gets. It never gets easy, but it can get easier.

But like I said, then people kind of already know, like, and trust you. So I highly encourage people to get out there, get active. And like I said, the world's changed. It's no longer who you know, it's who don't you. it's funny that you mentioned LinkedIn and it's funny that earlier in our conversation you were talking about having AI get to know who you are and who your company is and I just was reviewing some LinkedIn content from some master creators and the real data out there is there's an actually an algorithm where LinkedIn is the number two source of information for AI search.

So your content and that's the other piece is moving forward and how you write content in LinkedIn for those out there that are listening actually care but there are things that like if you're using bold italics in your post if you're using emojis and things like that. AI cannot read those. ChatGPT cannot read that code. And so in order for ChatGPT to read LinkedIn content, and again it's the second most resource content for AI search, it has to be in plain text. So there's this balance of like, you know, how you get people to pay attention to your LinkedIn content, but at the same time, since it's such a huge consumptive component for AI, you've got to write it in a way where they can read it and understand it so they can, you know, they can figure out who you are too.

Yeah, I think everyone's kind of looking for that magic bullet. Unfortunately, kind of live in an insta -famous Facebook world. I think a it's just being yourself. I tell young people in the dental industry to reach out to me all the time. You know, LinkedIn is a great tool. Be yourself, but figure out what can you commit to and be consistent at what you can commit to. If that's posting every day, great. That's posting once a week, great. Just be consistent at what you do. And I always tell them that, you know, you're probably going to reach out to 100 people and probably 10 are going to respond.

40:39 And I know that seems very frustrating, if but it's you're that lucky, if you're if lucky. you're lucky, but it's actually a gift. And it's a gift you just were awarded because Yeah. those 10 people that reached out to you are the people you want to connect with. They're just as interested in helping you as they want you to help them. Whereas the other 90 people, they would never ask what they could do for you. All they want to know is what you can do for them.

So it's actually a gift for you. But I think you just got to get out there. You got to get creative. You got to get consistent. And you just got to get out there and interact with it. And I think if you do, you'll see your life, you'll see your sales journey, you'll see everything change. You know, Steve, what great words of wisdom from a guy that has, you know, spanned, you know, you know, multiple generations of sales professionals and, you know, really, you know, like you and I have been in the space a long time and we've seen, you know, we've gone from hand to hand combat and door knocking Yeah, all the way through digital door knocking today.

And so I just want to first of all say thank you so much for being here. It's been a real great joy just to sort of talk shop around sales and how the world's changing and how it's moving and learning more about Solmetex and the importance of, you know, clean filtered water in our dental space and what that absolutely. means to us as patients and caregivers. So thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. I just appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation with you and wish you the best.

Thank you Steve.