The Ladder: Kevin Davis/ Willie Mitchell

Jul. 23, 2018 The Ladder: Kevin Davis: Today I found this article by Shelley White in the Globe and Mail:

Kevin Davis is an orthodontist and owner of Davis Orthodontics, which has nine offices in Southern Ontario.

I grew up in Thornhill, Ont., and played a lot of sports in high school – football, hockey and baseball. I think team sports are very important for learning how to function in a group: when to lead and when to follow, when to speak up, how to win and rebound after a loss.

My dad is an orthodontist, but there was never an emphasis by him or my mom to push me into doing that at all. Then in my late teens, I thought, ‘I like kids, I want to be my own boss and make my own kind of lifestyle. And that’s exactly what my dad does.’ 

My dad was home for dinner. We had time to spend as a family. That’s still a very important part of who I am, and he was a great role model for that.

I went to Harvard because they let me do my masters in health care management. At Harvard, I learned to think like a consumer, not like a doctor. Back when I was in school, most health care offices were set up for the benefit of the practitioners, not the patients: hospital gowns opening up in the back, sliding windows between the receptionists and the patients. 

So when I graduated, I set up our clinic to be very different than that – much more people-friendly. We had a coffee bar, video games and courtesy phones. Those things are common now, but they were rare at the time.

When I [joined my dad’s company], he had five employees. We have 100 now and nine offices. I have focused on taking over practices that are a good cultural match, rather than fast growth for the sake of the fast growth. 

The selling doctor is able to maintain their legacy, something important to me and obviously important to them. It hasn’t been like a quick, ‘Boot them out the door;’ it’s them sticking around for a couple of years to introduce me and our systems to the community. Each office has a home doctor and a dedicated staff, and I rotate between all the offices. 

Patients benefit by getting at least two doctors’ opinions on critical treatment decisions, so it’s like a built-in second opinion.

To build a motivated, happy work force, it takes trust and it takes genuine gratitude. If there is one thing that I can tag my success onto, it’s that we’ve attracted and maintained a real group of experts.

 I think it’s known in the industry that we take good care of our staff. If you take care of your staff, they’ll take care of your customers. And you’ll also attract the best players for the team.

My advice to other business owners is, ‘Don’t be greedy.’ Attract smart people around you and listen to them. Learn from your mistakes. And don’t rush. Rome wasn’t built in a day. If you go at a pace that is doable, then you’ll make good decisions and fewer poor decisions.

Also, leave time for yourself outside of work, so that you have a good balance. I try to do that and I want that for my staff as well. I coach baseball and hockey. I like adventure travel, and with my family we’ve done some very unique kinds of trips, like an underwater hotel in Florida where you had to scuba dive to your room.

We like to have fun at work. We have spirit days for holidays – for Canada Day, we dress up in red and white, for Halloween, we dress up in costumes.

My parents taught me the importance of giving back to the community. So we made it mandatory that the staff donates two days a year to doing some kind of charitable work. As an organization, we do charitable activities. 

We’ve donated to local homeless shelters. We adopted a road, so we’ve done road cleanup. We’ve sponsored all the nine-year-old teams in Richmond Hill, Newmarket and Hamilton soccer leagues.

One of the nicest things we’ve done is called Million Dollar Smiles, where we build playgrounds for children with terminal illnesses. It’s unbelievably fulfilling. 

And many years ago, I was asked to join a group of dentists and hygienists who travel to Central and South America to pull teeth in communities that otherwise have no access to dentists. So we’ve done that six times.

 Usually in a week’s time, we help between 1,000-2,000 people, between pulling teeth and doing fillings.

We’re a very close-knit group at Davis Orthodontics. We work together during the day, but we do the charitable things together also. [My staff] sees that I’m the same as them, so it definitely levels the playing field, and brings us closer together.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/management/article-orthodontist-business-owner-kevin-davis-offers-tips-on-building-a/

Aug. 13, 2018 The Ladder: Willie Mitchell: Today I found this article by Brenda Bouw in the Globe and Mail:

Willie Mitchell is a retired, two-time Stanley Cup-winning National Hockey League player who is now the co-owner and managing partner of the Tofino Resort + Marina in Tofino, B.C. 

He retired from the NHL in 2016 after suffering one too many concussions, and bought the resort with two partners, former fellow Vancouver Canuck player Dan Hamhuis and developer and businessman Andrew Purdey, founder of Ruskin Construction Ltd. 

I was born in Nanaimo, B.C., and raised in the small town of Port McNeill, B.C., on Vancouver Island. My father was a heavy-duty mechanic and my mother was a ticket attendant with B.C. Ferries. Hockey was always a passion: My grandfather played amateur senior hockey and once, during the Original-Six era, earned a tryout with the New York Rangers.

At age 15, I was at that 'Y' in the road where you could get into some trouble in a small town. My parents weren’t wealthy but managed to send me to the Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, a private school with a hockey program. I later went to Clarkson University in New York state, where I played junior college hockey.

In professional sports, you’re only a prospect for a certain period of time. I played for about 16 years including in Minnesota, where I met my wife Megan, then briefly in Dallas, then my home province of Vancouver and then Los Angeles, where I got do to the ultimate with a team – which was win the Stanley Cup, twice. I finished in Florida as the captain of that team.

In hockey, the captain of a team is a leader. You’re looked to for some guidance, especially from younger players. The quicker you can get those younger guys on board and understanding what it takes to win, the more success you have as a team.

To me, a good leader is someone with a lot of passion who chooses a direction and doesn’t waver from it. Indecision is the quickest route to failure. They also make sure their team has buy-in. That’s what I try to do – to get buy-in from my team to find success.

In Florida, I had to make one of the toughest decisions of my life, which was to walk away from the game of hockey for my health. [Doctors said] the next hit could’ve put me in permanent post-concussion syndrome. Leaving the team going into the playoffs, which is everything in professional sports, was really hard.

There was some leadership in walking away. I want people to understand that it’s okay to walk away, to take care of yourself first. If you don’t, how can you make other people happy?

It has been the hardest two years of my life, managing the resort. I am a perfectionist. Brand is everything to me. If you come onto my site and it’s not a good representative of my standards for my brand – that upsets me. I have a level of where I want the property to be. We’re not there yet, but we’re working on it.

I’ve made some mistakes in the business. One was not trusting my instincts and using my voice earlier on. In hockey, I had good situational awareness. I could see everything going on on the ice. 

With the business, I tiptoed in. I saw things going wrong and didn’t voice it right away. There were no policies or procedures in place. I’m learning to trust myself more, and my instincts.

Managing people is a big part of leadership. People need to feel important and valued. You also need to define a clear path forward. If you don’t have that, everyone is just going around without direction.

To be a good leader, it’s important to ask a ton of questions. It’s the only way to learn, to improve. You have to put yourself out there in life.

What keeps me up at night? Not running my business efficiently and taking care of my people. They’ve bet on me. I feel an obligation to them. I try to make sure I don’t kill my team’s passion. If they’re passionate about working for me, I know it’s going to work.

This interview has been edited and condensed

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/management/article-former-nhler-willie-mitchell-describes-one-of-the-most-difficult/