Marni: In a world becoming more and more artificial, your competitive advantage is your human intelligence, your ability to connect with others. Before you connect with other people, though, you have to do that inner work within yourself to show up as the best Anne and the best Marni that's out there.
Anne: Hello, everyone. It's Anne Duffy, and welcome to the Just DeW It podcast. I am so happy you're with us today because I have an absolutely dear friend. I would say a fairly new friend, and all through DeW. She showed up at one of our DeW conferences. I did not know who she was, but I certainly knew who she was after the conference because she was a big part.
She joined DeW and then dipped into the deep end. Let me tell you a little bit about her. Marni Blythe is a fractional COO, leadership expert, and keynote speaker with a Fortune 500 C-suite background, founder of Full Pocket Coaching, and co-founder of Lead360 Academy. She helps healthcare and small business leaders build scalable operations, strong cultures, and high-performing teams.
She also is the co-author of The Culture Catalyst, the book she wrote with Tiffany Wuebben. Woo-hoo. Welcome, Marni Blythe. It's so great to see you.
Marni: Thanks for having me, Anne. It's always a pleasure to get to chat with you. You're one of my favorite humans in the whole entire world.
Anne: Oh, my gosh. We're certainly two blondes, aren't we? I love that. We go back, I don't know what year it was. It was the year we were at the Hilton Garden Inn in Waverly, and I just remember you were so profound. You raised your hand and contributed, and I don't think we had met each other before that. Is that correct?
Marni: That is correct. I think this is either year five or six. I'm a little murky on it, but DeW is the single biggest organization in dentistry that's changed my life in so many ways. I am so grateful to you and every single DeW out there who has been a sister and a friend and helped give me an answer in the ladies' room.
Anne: I know it, because we know principle number four: the answer is in the ladies' room.
Marni: Always.
Anne: Even though we love our guys, and you're newly married, and your hubby is precious and gorgeous and a wonderful dad and good friend of yours, which is a great way to marry somebody, right? It's just so fun to be able to share the ups and downs and everything with our sisters who have that toe dipped in dentistry. We're women first, but I'm surprised at all the friends I have made who are so dear and near to me since starting DeW.
In my experience, I thought, "Oh, I have plenty of friends." But the richness of these women is hard to even explain, isn't it?
Marni: It's interesting because when you and I got on, we were just talking about Heather McGuire, for example. As you know, and some of my other DeW sisters know, the last year was a pretty challenging year for me, losing both of my parents within about six months of each other. I can't even tell you how many DeWs, including Heather, reached out to send me products to help support my mom's oral health, spent so much time with me on the phone or just messaging me, and just showed support and love.
It goes beyond just that. It's literally any time there's a need, anything at all. I had to have surgery about two years ago on my face, actually. Lana Rivera, I hardly knew her, sent me flowers out of the blue. That is the depth and the kind of individual this organization attracts.
It's a concept that I like to call servant leadership, and it's a concept I learned many years ago when I worked in direct sales. I know you and I had that in common. The whole concept is that you serve first. Or in BNI, Business Networking International, givers gain. It's really that you give with a full heart without expecting anything in return.
Then the law of attraction and the law of abundance say that everything comes back to you a millionfold because we live in an abundant world, don't we, Anne?
Anne: Yes, we do. It's so good to actually verbalize that, Marni, to remind me of that. Honestly, I'm thinking I want to be even more present this year in giving first.
I think my word last year was "give love." This year it's "giddy up," and let's go. Let's go, girls. Let's go. A lot of women don't know where we've been all their lives, right? It's not about me. It's about opening the door, and women like you find us and come through, and they stick.
Everyone's welcome, and I always say some of them will come for just appetizers. It might not be their community, but if you stay for dessert, you're never leaving. You are never leaving this organization because it's so yummy. It's just so yummy, isn't it? Oh, my gosh. Yummy. Num, num, num. I know.
I'm really excited because I have a couple questions here that I want to ask you, and I want to talk about your keynote. You recently keynoted for a healthcare organization on your Lead From Within framework. What does that mean in practice, and why is it resonating so strongly with leaders right now? I can't wait to hear your response on how it went because you just got back.
Marni: I just got back. I've never been to Lake Tahoe before. It is extraordinarily beautiful. The scenery. I was at the Ritz-Carlton in Lake Tahoe, and I was treated like a queen. Let me tell you. I'm all about hospitality, but the Ritz-Carlton and these folks at AdvoCare really went above and beyond, from the moment I was picked up at the Reno Airport in this beautiful Tahoe.
I loved the upgraded room. It had this beautiful view of the mountains. They left me hummus and vegetables, and they were just so thoughtful. It was so appreciated. They actually have this really great vitamin product. It's a supplement company. There's a 9,000-foot elevation there, so they gave me some of these. It helps with oxygen, so I was able to get more oxygen, and I really liked that product.
They brought me in for their Champions Council, which is their top sales distributors in the company, about 100 people and their spouses. I'll tell you, it was so much fun. On Wednesday night, we got to go to this beautiful restaurant right on the lake, and I got to sit with these folks, talk to them, and get to know them. If you want to talk about servant leadership hearts, these folks were all about helping other people get healthier.
That was a beautiful thing because I got to know these people, and I was able to personalize my keynote and add them in the next day.
Anne: Nice.
Marni: It was a lot of fun. We talked about riding the wave, which basically means what you do to navigate change because most of us are not very good at it.
We talked about this concept of leading from within and that success and happiness are an inside job first. If we don't go within first, if we don't do our own work to be emotionally responsible in how we regulate ourselves and how we observe the thinking that's happening, then we're going out and leaking power.
We talked about the framework that I've developed over the last 20 years, which I am extremely passionate about teaching leaders. Whether you're a leader or not, this is something everybody can use, and it's a six-part process. The overall umbrella of the discussion, Anne, was about something I'm calling human intelligence, or HI, versus AI.
In a world becoming more and more artificial, your competitive advantage is your human intelligence, your ability to connect with others. Before you connect with other people, though, you have to do that inner work within yourself to show up as the best Anne and the best Marni that's out there.
It was a 50-minute keynote, and oh, my God, it was extraordinary. I actually got the blessing to be able to go to the spa, and when I was at the spa, I was meditating, and I got the download that I'm supposed to write my next book.
Anne: Okay. Yay.
Marni: I'm going to write my next book on the Lead From Within framework, so that's going to be coming up. We're going to start working on that soon. Lots of cool stuff.
Anne: That's so cool. We go back. The networking end of it, we discovered that, I think, probably on our first call. That taught me so much, too, because I was with the company OxyFresh with toothpaste and mouth rinse, and I have the personality where if I believe in something, I'm going to tell everybody about it. I couldn't believe the world didn't know about stabilized chlorine dioxide at the time.
I think that's why I was successful in the company and actually went to the top and had the biggest team of female dental professionals, which actually led me to the next one, to the next one, to the next one. Then I was like, "Okay, damn, I'm just going to start another magazine and highlight women in dentistry."
It's so funny how you say yes, and the world moves with you. Also, when I think about that leading within, I didn't know about leadership. That was my first role in leadership. Actually, Marni, I think everybody should get in a network marketing business to set themselves up for success.
That really did set me up for what I'm doing now. I learned how to speak, we learned how to run a room, and we learned how to run a meeting, right?
Marni: Absolutely. I really credit the company I worked for, a company called NuCentrals, and Phil Mims, who was the CEO. I really credit him with helping me learn how to build relationships and how to have sales conversations and not be scared. I learned how to be a leader through that company. I learned how to get through a lot of fear and how to overcome objections. It was huge.
The leadership piece of it is what actually ended up landing me down here in North Carolina. I moved from New York City here to Raleigh because I just fell in love with the people, but it was because of that business, because I built a huge team down here. It's not for everybody, and that's okay.
Anne: Right.
Marni: No, it's not. But it's how I fell in love with the health industry, and that's really where my core values of oral and systemic health began, which eventually led, of course, into me niching into dentistry because of such a passion and a core value of health.
Anne: That is really cool. It's funny because I see your top strengths, and I've been telling people this because I did the interview at Thrive Live, and it was an interview process. I'm not a speaker; I'm a talker. People laugh at that, but my strengths, you could see why I'd be great at networking because I'm WOO, positivity, communication.
You, on the other hand, I see why you are a sought-after speaker and a book writer because number one is strategic. Anything in the green, which is strategic in Gallup's mind or their reviews, doesn't come onto my strengths until number 11.
Then maximizer. A wonderful coach. You see something, and you know how to make it better. Relator usually means you are not the person I am. I'm a WOO, so I need to meet every single person in the room, and I have to talk to everybody, and I can't wait to see everybody. You want to find your group of really strong relationships, and you hang onto those.
Which is beautiful because it means a lot to have that core group of women you can go so deep on. Even though I think I go deep on everything, I just go deep on a lot of people.
But learner. Kill me if I have to read every book and remember it. What makes a learner so powerful as a speaker, Marni, is that you not only learn it, but you can explain it so people understand it.
When I explain things a lot of the time, I'm like, "Stick with me. It's coming. It's coming, but it's going to take me 10 minutes to get to the end." At my age now, I hope I don't forget what my main core message was while I get there. Learner is so beautiful.
Then arranger. You know how to arrange the pages and the content. You're perfectly created for divine speaking and writing and really empowering your audience. I have goosebumps thinking about your top strengths and how you are principle number one, living your strengths, looking for opportunities that build on your strengths. Congratulations for finding your chi and moving forward.
Marni: I'm very grateful. It's been a journey, and I think anybody who's listening to this can relate. We all have a lot of pivots. We all have to find our own resilience, and that's really what we find and do also: this ability and opportunity to be vulnerable with the people who can catch us. It's riding those waves, like I was just talking about. There are times when I've cracked hard, and I feel like the ocean is just going to swallow me whole. Then it's like, oh, there's the lifeboat with the DeWs in it.
Anne: Yeah.
Marni: They've come out, and they've got the jet skis, and they've got the lifesaver to go. I'm enjoying this analogy. But it's just so real and authentic. It's not fake, what we're talking about here. It's authentic, and it's what's real. Again, we might not be for everybody, and that's okay. But for those who we are for, who understand and can see what this organization stands for, my goodness. And then the other people we get to bring along the way. It's an honor. It is a joy. It is a privilege, and I just feel so grateful.
Sarah Rueberg is who introduced me to DeW.
Anne: I know it.
Marni: I'm forever grateful to her. She hadn't even been to DeW yet, and she told me I should go. So thank you, Sarah.
Anne: Thank you, Sarah. Love that shout-out. The other thing we were talking about is that you're doing a meeting with Dr. Riddhi Patel.
Marni: I've been speaking for a lot of study clubs. I get to go speak with her, and we're doing the Formula for Predictable Growth. That'll be on Friday, this Friday, actually, in Charlotte. She's bringing me in. We're going to do two and a half hours, and I'm so excited. We're going to talk about how we lead through data.
We'll be taking all their study club members through that. Then I get to come back to Charlotte, the Charlotte area, next week. I'll be in Shelby, and I'll be in Belmont. I'll be at Dr. Brent DeLong's study clubs. I have two study clubs, and we're going to be talking all about culture and how we intentionally create culture because values are not just what's written on the wall or in some book; it's what's practiced in the hall and how you systematically create culture.
It's leadership, culture, numbers, all that kind of put together. It makes you very strategic in how you approach things.
Anne: Exactly, strategic. You had me at culture. As soon as you say numbers, I'm like, "No, God." But I love that this is all part of dentistry.
The thing I wanted to talk about with Riddhi is that it was so cool. By the way, her oral surgery office is just... I could live there with a toothbrush in hand. It is so gorgeous. It's like the Taj Mahal.
Marni: I have to stop by. I've been told how gorgeous it is.
Anne: You started working with her after the DeW Retreat, and you were just helping her out of the kindness of your heart and having calls with her. Now look at it. You're doing her study club. No-goal networking, Deb Carrier coined that, but that's something that is all about servant leadership, isn't it? It truly is, and that's a big part of who you are and who our members seem to be. It's so fun.
Marni: Transparently, she did hire me for a couple of coaching sessions. I helped her, yes, and just for transparency, we helped her with some referral strategies because I work as a fractional COO and a CMO.
I love working with specialty practices, especially oral surgery practices, which are so much referral-based. She has been so successful, and she's opening up her second location. I'm really proud of her. Just a good human.
Anne: I know. Not only that, but just a mom, a wife. She's incredible. I love the collaboration that has followed.
How does Lead From Within philosophy actually show up when you step into a practice as a fractional COO? And yes, you are for hire as a fractional.
Marni: It's interesting. Earlier, you said something about being more present. That is actually one of the beginnings of the framework when I work with practices. We talk about that patients feel your presence before they feel your dentistry.
How it shows up is working with my clinicians and working with the teams so that we are actually there, and we're not thinking about the schedule that's fallen apart or the lab case that didn't arrive. It's how we're really present with people because, according to a Harvard statistic, 47% of the time, our mind is spent wandering. Forty-seven percent of the time. It's really significant.
It's about bringing in mindfulness so we can be aware of the things that we're thinking about. One of the things I help clinicians understand is that you are not your mind. Your mind is a tool. How you know that is that you can think about thinking.
Your thoughts create your world. If we live in an abundant world, if we live in a world where patients are out to get us, or we live in a world where our team members are out to get us, then as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of our organization. We have to monitor our thoughts very closely to ensure that we're really thinking thoughts that are empowering because we can think empowering or disempowering thoughts.
That's step one and step two of my process. The ultimate goal is, of course, emotional regulation, that we feel good in our bodies, that we're able to do what we need to do for our patients and really show up in our full selves. That kind of exists within this framework that I've put together over the years, where we have a very systematic, strategic approach to how we help our doctors and our teams not only maximize profitability, but also retention. It's also about having a good place to work where people are happy and they want to feel good doing the work we're doing.
Anne: I feel like this can transcend into everyone's life, honestly, Marni. How do you show up for your kids? How do you show up for your friends? It's a choice, and I love that part of this as well.
Sometimes you feel stuck, but look, you may need a coach, because we talked about that at the luncheon. Daniella Skene asked this question: how do you get out of being stuck? Well, sometimes a coach. I heard this many times: you just need a coach. Sometimes you only need a coach for a couple of months to get it out, have this shift in mindset, and then have a check-in after that.
She was talking about somebody that, I'm sure you've seen this in your world, two months in, this particular female dentist could switch her mindset and was on the route. But then you still have to have check-ins, because all of us, no matter how positive I am, I can wake up some days on a Monday morning after a trip to Vegas still tired and being a little like, "Oh, no."
It's just a mindset shift. You get on one call, like I say, call a DeW, get on a Zoom with Marni Blythe, or get on a call or Zoom with Heather McGuire or Carla, my team member, and it'll turn from, "Oh, God, what's in front of me?" to, "Oh, yay, it's in front of me today, and I have a great day ahead."
We need each other, don't we? We cannot do this walk alone.
Marni: I think the biggest thing is that you don't have to. None of us have to. I'll tell you, Cassie Talan is also one of my favorite DeWs. If you want to talk about somebody who's uplifting and awesome, we got to do the podcast a couple of weeks ago, she and I.
I'll be honest with you, the beginning of that morning had a couple of challenges. But as soon as I got on and I saw your face and Cassie's face and Carla and all the other DeWs, it just lifted me, and I was like, "Oh, yay, I'm back in the flow." It was such a good thing.
Anne: You're speaking to your friends. That was a Learning Crew, and that was recorded and is on our website. If you're a DeW, I think it's in your portal. That was wonderful. I felt like we were in the middle of your coaching session. It was super cool and non-threatening. It was all of us throwing love out there to each other and the love coming from you, too. Also, the strategy. That's when I have a little bit of strengths envy. God gives us what we need.
Okay, one more question. What shifts do you see in a practice when leaders truly start leading from within instead of reacting to everything around them?
Marni: That's a great question, Anne. More peace. When we talk about mental health, it's a really, really important topic because in dentistry particularly, if you look at the statistics, the stress levels of our team members and our clinicians are through the roof.
I think it's really important that people learn how to start doing this work and how to go within because there's a peace that comes when you really are doing what I call soul work, not just self-care. It's soul care. This is something that I've been meditating on lately because, I'll be honest with you, I'm really good at self-care. I do a great job taking care of myself. I go to the gym, I take the supplements, I eat well, I drink well, blah, blah, blah.
Soul care, I had to actually go, "Oh, Marni, you're not doing your own work." I had this aha moment about a week and a half ago, again, in a meditation, where I realized after working with a coach, because I love to work with coaches. I have four coaches I'm working with right now, and she said, "Well, how's your self-care?"
I said, "My self-care is great, but my soul care, that's a different story, and I need to spend more time taking better care of myself." That's a really big thing that we talk about: how are you taking care of you? Because that analogy when you get on an airplane, if you don't put on your oxygen mask first, how are you supposed to put on the oxygen mask for the people around you?
Anne: We all need to remember that we have to take really good care of ourselves. Also, the other part is the delegate and elevate piece of this, really understanding where you can delegate so that you can elevate yourself and do only the things that are your strengths, right?
Marni: What are the things that...
Anne: Yeah.
Marni: That's a big thing that changes when I work with practices, leadership teams, and when I do workshops. We really start looking at those key components of what we can shift that isn't shocking. Again, change is hard for a lot of people.
I remember when I first started in the industry, I'd be like, "Let's go! Guns ablaze. Fire hose. We should do this, this, this, this, this." People would be like, "Err." I was very overwhelming. Over time, I've had to learn that just because I want to go fast doesn't mean other people want to go fast. Each person is on their own beautiful path and journey, and we have to meet people where they are.
Anne: That's so valuable and so profound, and that's with my giddy up. I want to get going. I want to giddy up, but I also have to step back and know my audience, right? You're right, baby steps are the way to go. It builds confidence.
We talked about that when I was at Thrive. Confidence comes from motion, and you have to be able to take baby steps. If you're a coach, you can't give giant steps, right? That doesn't sustain itself. It doesn't build a muscle. You can't go and lift a 100-pound weight right off the bat.
I did some workouts last week, and I started with, I think, three-pound weights. The gal in front of me had a 15-pound weight, and my back was killing me. Not killing me, but I could tell I had worked out. I'm like, three-pound weights. Okay, you have to start somewhere.
Marni: Exactly.
Anne: I love it. I love that you're making this universe better. I see the confidence in you, and I think that comes from probably getting a standing ovation from your audience, which is very helpful, right? And putting yourself out there, Marni, even more courageously.
You know you've got something that is really powerful to give, and you're doing it. Some things have happened in your life that you had to take care of, and I think now is your time. Where do you see yourself going in the next year? I mean, a year from now, where do you see yourself?
Marni: Thank you so much. Less fractional work and more speaking, professional speaking, keynotes, workshops, and opportunities to work on a bigger basis, a larger basis. Only because I really feel like the message I need to share needs a bigger stage so I can help more people and serve more people.
From a very transparent and vulnerable place, the work I have done to really heal myself is this framework that I can't wait to teach more on. I have other things that I love, too, in my programs, but this is the one I feel the most passionate about right now.
It's something to put yourself out there and say, "Hey, listen, this is how I've done my own work, and now I want to help you with this." When you start having people say things to you like, "Wow, you just really changed my life," or, "My gosh, I never thought about it like that, and that's a new perspective I hadn't thought of before. Thank you for doing that," from a heart-centered place, it gives you what you need to keep moving forward and keep putting yourself out there in a big way because fear begins at the end of your comfort zone, right?
I'm getting myself more and more uncomfortable and going on bigger stages than I've ever been on before because I know that God, the universe, whatever you want to call it—for me, it's God—has put this on my heart, that I'm supposed to help more people in a really big way. I feel called, and I feel very grateful for the opportunity to do this work.
Anne: I love it. Never bet against a woman who is called for something big and special. The other thing is, I used to say, "Hey, do what I say, don't do as I do," but you are doing it, and you're saying, "Do what I do, and I say what I do." How powerful is that, Marni?
You've lived it, you've been on the other side of it, and we've got a group of women that, if you're having one of those days, you just call them up. You call Cassie Talan, you call Atiffa Ewen, you call me, you call Heather, you call any one of us in the large group that we have, and your day will be better. You'll be better.
Marni: Always better.
Anne: Always better.
Marni: Thank you, Anne, so much, for everything, really. Thank you for your support, thank you for your love, thank you for the moments on the back porch, thank you for the phone calls in between, and just thank you.
Anne: Thank you so much. How do we get in touch with you? I'm sure someone's looking to fill a slot for a keynote or a workshop or just a great phone call from you. Tell us how we find you, Marni.
Marni: Thank you so much. You can find me on my website, which is fullpocketcoaching.com. Feel free to check out my YouTube at Marni Blythe Speaks, my Instagram, Marni Blythe Speaks. Those are the best places to find me.
On my YouTube, you can see videos of me speaking, testimonials from my clients I've worked with, and people who've come to my programs. Thank you for all of this, Anne. I really appreciate it.
Anne: We are so excited. We're going to see you pretty soon in a big way in Dental Entrepreneur Woman, and we will see you on the road. I know you're going to be in North Carolina. You'll probably see some DeWs when you get here. Well, you are. The best is yet to come, my dear.
All right, I love you. I'll see you.
Marni: Love you too. Bye, darling. Thank you again. Bye.
Anne: Thank you, Marni. Take care. And remember, everybody, join us for our 10th anniversary retreat in Charlotte, North Carolina, November 12th through the 14th. It's on our website, dew.life. Join us. We're going to have 250 women in the room or more. Don't forget the most important thing out there, everybody: remember to keep doing you. I love you, Marni, and take care. I'll see you on the road. Bye.
