Reclaiming Joy: Dr. Kevin Cassidy on Orthodontics, Leadership and Growth

Michael Burcham: Welcome to Microcap Moments, a podcast from Shore Capital Partners that highlights the stories of founders, investors, and leaders who have taken on the challenge of transforming ideas and small companies into high growth organizations. The journey of building and scaling a business takes one down many unexpected paths. It’s a journey where we learn from our mistakes fall down often, but have the entrepreneurial grit to pick ourselves up and persevere.

Within this series, we will share these stories of success and failure of the challenges and the rewards faced by those who dare to dream big. And through their lessons learned, we hope to inspire others who are on a similar journey of becoming, growing and leading.

Anderson Williams: In this episode, I talk with Dr. Kevin Cassidy of Cassidy Orthodontics, a partner in Southern Orthodontic Partners. Dr. Cassidy talks about his decision not only to follow in his father’s footstep in orthodontics, but to buy his father’s practice. He shares how he grew the practice over 20 years, and his decision to start looking for an exit strategy, a family practice, a small community, generations of patients, and a critical call to an orthodontic school colleague.

Dr. Cassidy’s story is one that shows the value of building relationships and treating people right, every step, every day, along the way. And this is why he and I connected so immediately and so strongly from the first time we met. Dr.

Cassidy shares how his participation in Shore University’s Leadership Academy, which I have the privilege of facilitating, has transformed his most recent era of his practice in leadership and how his partnership with SOP has transformed his career and his life.

Welcome, Dr. Cassidy. I’m looking forward to today’s conversation. To get started, will you just introduce yourself and say who you are, what you do, where you do it, that kind of thing.

Dr. Cassidy: Thanks, Anderson. It’s great to be back with you again.

Dr. Kevin Cassidy. I’m an orthodontist in Topeka, Kansas. I’ve been married to my wife Marcy, who’s a school superintendent. It’ll be 35 years this July. I have two grown children. one 27 and one 24. Our oldest child’s getting married in about two months, and our youngest son is finishing law school in May. So lots of big stuff going on. I’ve been in practice since 1996 and I’m a second generation orthodontist. Joined my dad’s practice in 96 and bought it in 2000 and have run it ever since.

Anderson Williams: Yeah, so say more about that. Did you grow up like in the office or what was that like as you decided? I could see it going two ways. Like no way I’m ever gonna do what my dad does, or, yes, I absolutely wanna do what my dad does. How did that come to be for you?

Dr. Cassidy: Yeah, so I started mowing the lawn. That was my first adv.

Anderson Williams: At the practice.

Dr. Cassidy: Exactly. You know? But then I graduated into the lab and I would grind study models and make retainers and do things like that, and not seriously being in the lab with patient care. I was never allowed to be on the floor with patient care, but just seeing the transitions of people who come in with crooked teeth, the straight teeth and the relationships that you begin to build with them as they start as maybe a 13 or 14-year-old. You kind of follow them as they grow up, and I just like, that’s really kind of a cool thing to be able to make people smiles better, make their confidence better. I just thought that was a really, really cool thing and since that’s what he did, that’s kind of all I knew about dentistry.

Anderson Williams: And say more about that. I think that my time with you and with other orthodontists within Southern Orthodontic has kind of opened my eyes. You know, I was a kid, I had to have braces, I had crooked teeth, I had jaw alignment, all those kinds of things. Everybody I know did. My kids do. Say more about that transformation you were just speaking to about helping someone smile.

Dr. Cassidy: Yeah, so a lot of times you’ll see children come in and the parents will say, he never smiles. He won’t show it, and you can see it the first time you meet ’em. They’re embarrassed of their smile. They’re very self-conscious of it. And really one of my goals is beyond getting them a smile, I want to establish rapport with them, of course, and I want them to begin to come out of their shell while we’re making their smile better.

One of the mantras in my office is I want their visit. With me to be the best part of their day. Now, it may not be because what we’re doing that day, but I want our environment, I want our interactions to all be very positive, to let them know that, hey, we’re going on a pathway right now. We’re taking a journey right now. And at the end of the journey, it’s gonna be a transformative process. And you’re gonna be a different looking person. And my hope is that you have the self-confidence to show that beautiful smile.

Anderson Williams: So, Dr. Cassidy, you mentioned that you bought your practice from your dad in 2000, and then at some point as you built your practice, you also considered joining a new company, selling that practice, partnering with Southern Orthodontic or others.

Can you talk a little bit about two sides of that. One is how did you think about that family legacy continuing this connection between your family and the families you serve, but then what you were looking for in a partnership and why that seemed the right thing. So the first side is how did you think about your own family legacy as you considered that move?

Dr. Cassidy: Yeah, and we’ll start with that because those two events are very, very far apart. In the life of my practice. So, you know, in 2000 when I bought the practice, my goal was just to build it. You know, back in the day it was, you know, the old model was put your shingle up. They’ll come to you, go on your merry way.

But I realized I wanted to do something bigger and better. Now, the why I didn’t really know. It was just ingrained in me, okay, let’s build, build, build. And so the biggest transformative part for me was building a new building and moving into it in 2010. That allowed me to really expand my operations, become more efficient, do things like that, that really set me on a growth chart that was incredible.

So fast forward to, I think it was either 21 or 22. One of my mentors, Dustin

Burleson, he’s an orthodontist from Kansas City, who I follow a lot. I took his Napoleon Hills Laws of Success class. Amazing, fantastic. And then we had a reunion in Orlando, I think in spring of 22. I can’t remember the date. But at that meeting, were two representatives from an OSO and A DSO. And they started talking about, if you want to partner, here’s this thing. And they said, if you’re looking at potentially retiring the next five to seven years, this is your best opportunity. And I turned and looked at Marcy. I’m like, that’s me. And so that’s what started the ball rolling.

Before then, I had not any idea of what I was gonna do at all. That triggered me. I was like, Hey, maybe there is something higher out there for me. So I started, uh, looking around. At several organizations actually had an NDA from another group that I was considering.

And then that fell through. And then I got a cold email from somebody at SOP and my marketing manager said, who is this group? And do you wanna do this? And so I looked at it and I looked it up and I realized that the founder was Scott Blackman, who was in residency a year behind me.

So I’ve known Scott for 30 years plus. So I picked up the phone and I called Scott and we had an hour long conversation and that’s how we got the ball rolling.

Anderson Williams: Wow.

Dr. Cassidy: So I don’t know if it was fate. I don’t know if, if somebody’s looking over me.

Anderson Williams: That’s amazing. Just talk a little bit about that business owner, entrepreneur side of you. That was between you taking your father’s practice and this conversation with SOP.

Dr. Cassidy: At the beginning when I took over, I realized that there were a lot of inefficiencies in the office, which we all have and we still do to this day. But I saw room for growth in the marketing aspect, especially. My dad used to joke that marketing was a four letter word to him.

Well, back in the two thousands it wasn’t. You know, especially roll back to

2007, 2008 with the big drop. You look at the dot-com implosion in 2000, 2001, I realized things had to be done differently. And so we really hit a big marketing campaign just getting out and about because a fairly small community. And so it was a lot of personal interactions and so that was kind of that low hanging fruit you could grab and go off of that. But I reached a point where late 2000’s that I realized the current building I was in was out of date and did not offer me what I needed moving forward to expand where I truly wanted to be.

So we moved in in 2010 to the new building. And then one of the biggest things I did was I really went full scale into aligner therapy. I don’t wanna get too deep into that, but that really changed a lot of my growth in terms of being able to see more patients with the same amount of team members. And becoming a lot more efficient. So that’s really, and then the marketing, the experience as I got older, you become one of the. “senior orthodontists” in town and people know you. And so a lot of the growth and referrals come from multiple generations of patients.

Anderson Williams: Yeah. And at that point, you know, I gotta assume you’re running a significantly bigger business through all of that marketing new building and all those things. How did you adjust as the business owner side of being the orthodontist?

Dr. Cassidy: Very poorly. Um, frankly, I’m definitely a very type-A control freak, my fingers on everything in the practice, and I was paying all the bills, doing payroll, doing all of that, but I never had a good mechanism to kind of pull myself away from doing less of that. Fast forward to 2022, 2023, when I started looking at partnering with SOP.

Didn’t really know what that was gonna be for me being a business owner, but once I signed and started realizing some of the tasks that they were gonna take away from me, I was glad to do that. It gave me a peace of mind that I could really just truly start focusing on being the orthodontist. Being the team leader. Being a servant leader that I’ve always wanted to do, just never had the opportunity to do it because I could never rest my brain.

I was always taking work home or staying late at the office. I wasn’t able to take care of my physical fitness the way I wanted to because I was always so ingrained in that and that’s been one of the nice, really, the nice advantages. I’ve been able to have a better balance in my life because of my decision to partner with SOP. And frankly at age 56, but, okay, what is my exit strategy? How long do I wanna do this? So that was one of the key drivers that drove me to this.

Anderson Williams: Yeah, how long and how, in the latter part of my career do I want to be practicing, right? Do I want to be swallowed by the business or is there a way to get back to being the orthodontist? That maybe you were closer to when you started your career before you were also running a large business.

Dr. Cassidy: Oh, totally. And that’s been a really a lot of joy.

I tell everybody I’m so lucky. I love what I do. At this point, I don’t have any interest to retire anytime soon because I get to do what I want to do.

Anderson Williams: Yeah. Isn’t that, yeah.

Dr. Cassidy: It’s the fun part. This is the good stuff. This is why I went into it.

It wasn’t to pay bills, it wasn’t to write payroll. It wasn’t to do some of the, what I would call mundane back office things, the things that make the business run, but it can overwhelm you.

Anderson Williams: Well, it’s interesting to hear even that evolution of thinking and triggering this idea of an exit strategy, but then also in that process, finding an opportunity to get back to doing what you love. To where exit strategy isn’t necessarily so imminent.

Dr. Cassidy: Yeah. I’m in no rush at this point. I’m really not.

I mean, I truly enjoy, I get a lot of questions on that from patients you know, they bring like, you know, a 6-year-old in and how long, much longer are you gonna practice? I say, I have no plans to retire at this point. I say I love what I do, and I plan to be around here for quite a while.

Anderson Williams: Yeah, you were feeling a little old before, and now when patients are asking, you’re like, I’m not that old.

Dr. Cassidy: I, I agree.

You know, my gray hair all, you know. Kind of belies that. But uh, you know, my spirit has definitely revived since my partnership, I’ll be honest with you, has really allowed me to take a step back and make some changes.

Dr. Cassidy: Also, one of the biggest things that I’ve ever done, the greatest thing I’ve ever done recently was go through the Leadership Academy with you. Uh, it really opened my eyes to the parts of me that I’d forgotten that existed because you get so single-mindedly focused on business, business, business that you forget who you are and forget what your internal drives are and so for that, I thank you for bringing that alive in me.

Anderson Williams: Oh gosh, it was my pleasure. And for those listening, this is how I met Dr. Cassidy was through the Leadership Academy. And you know, one of the questions I have about that is, here you are, you’re in, we’ll say the last third of your career. We won’t put a hard number on it since we, it’s evolving and you’ve been a successful orthodontist. You’ve built a successful practice. You’re successful enough that the partnership with SOP happened.

I think a lot of people would say, why would you need a Leadership Academy experience? Why would that be something? It seems like you’ve done it like you’re successful. Say a little bit about maybe what you were looking for in that partnership or that opportunity rather, and why you were looking for it.

Dr. Cassidy: I think at this point I would call a seasoned orthodontist. My techniques, my methods, it’s kind of, it’s like clockwork. You’re rolling like that. So what other areas do we want to grow in? What’s the next thing you can grow? Well, to me the obvious one is leadership.

My leadership skills were fairly lacking and you don’t get a lot of that in dental school. You definitely don’t get any of it in your residency. You just, you kind of have to learn it either through hard knocks or whatever like that. So I was like, okay, this is something that I could look forward to to become the best leader that I can be.

Then why did I want to do it again? I think it opens up another part of your life and your brain. That’s not strictly mechanics, and it’s not the bottom line of financials. It’s truly becoming the servant leader that you need to be for your team. To make life more worthwhile. You know, we can all just go in and go through the routine, but if you don’t know why you’re doing it and you don’t have that inner passion, or not just straightening teeth, but you know, leading your team, helping them out, being a mentor.

I feel like you’re missing a big part of your life because, you know, ultimately when I’m done retiring. People are going to remember my smiles, probably not. What do I want them to remember is that I was kind, our team was great, we practiced in a way that made them feel special. That’s what people will remember about you, and that’s kind of the legacy play that I’m looking for, at this point.

Anderson Williams: And just for context, through the Leadership Academy, we talk about building trust with your team. We talk about communication, we talk about healthy conflict, we talk about problem solving. We talk about running better meetings. We talk about leading change. We talk about a whole range of things leading through others.

How do you see yourself now practicing differently? And have you had any feedback from your team or have you seen things change in your team as a result of some of those practices that you picked up?

Dr. Cassidy: In terms of the practice, I’ve definitely gotten better with conflict resolution or having conflict. Not anybody’s favorite thing, but you realize it’s just part of doing it. ’cause you know, I remember the quote, the absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy. That really stuck with me.

Anderson Williams: Adam Grant.

Dr. Cassidy: Because I was very, very adept at running from conflict, and now I don’t enjoy it, but it’s just something you have to do. And what my team has realized that as we have these conversations, it shows that we actually care about them and they need the feedback. I didn’t realize that at the time until I went through the academy and started doing those kind of things.

The other thing, as a leader, I feel it’s my responsibility to, at our morning huddle to give them something more than just, here’s the schedule, here’s this. And so every day I read them a leadership quote and I tell a dad joke. No, the dad jokes are horrible, but I want to get those off to a good start, but, but I do believe it, it’s important.

And I’ve got a couple team members who take some, they really believe in, they’re plastered all over their area, and the patients and the parents that come back, they actually look at those and they’re like, Hey, that’s really cool. What a neat quote that is. And so I feel like that’s a bigger picture than within just my walls.

I believe there’s some great things out there and not to get sappy or anything like that, but we all just had some more of those soft skills and things like that. I think our world would be a better place. I really do. And the interactions with the team are so much better than they ever used to be.

Anderson Williams: One of the things that we’ve had the chance to talk about since the Leadership Academy and did during the Leadership Academy was the topic on leading and managing change that I know resonated specifically with you. Will you just share a little bit about why that particular topic resonated so much with you, and then we can dig into some more details, but why did that one particularly grab you?

Dr. Cassidy: Because I’m so adverse to change. I think a lot of us are, it gets us out of our comfort zone, things like that. But I just remember sitting there as you were going and introducing the change management model, and I was just thinking to myself, gosh, I wish I’d had this model as I was going through my process of, of signing and integrating and getting every onboarding and doing those kind of things.

It was, no one had ever taught me about change management before. You know, change truly another four letter word for most teams. You go to a course, oh, I’m so excited to do X, Y, and Z. And the staff and the team, they’re hoping that, oh my God, please let ’em forget about it. Don’t say anything for a week and it’ll go away.

This gave me the tools to implement the change that I needed to understanding what the team members are hearing and what their feelings are and what I need to do to foster the change.

Anderson Williams: Yeah. And I think often, you know, in your position there’s an assumption like you’re gonna make this decision to partner and that’s better for the business.

And you know why it’s better for the business in your own mind. And then so you just sort of take for granted, and you look out to your team, you think, oh, their job’s not really gonna change. And so they shouldn’t be worried about it. So then you don’t need to communicate much to ’em about it.

And what you don’t realize is they know you’re out of town more often than you’re used to. They know your door’s closed or your schedule’s slightly different. And they’re wondering why that is, and they’re gonna fill that change with their own story. And that story is gonna be a whole lot worse than your story. And I think that that’s one of those things that sometimes we can fall in the trap to say, no, I’ve got this, I’ll take care of it.

But not recognizing that in the absence of our communicating with our team. They’re making up their own stories and their fears are surging the same way, even if they have nothing to fear. And so I know we talked a lot about that, whether you’re answering the phones or you’re entering data or you’re a technician or you’re another doctor, if you don’t know what’s going on, but you know something’s going on, you’re natural inclination is either to fear or to resist.

Dr. Cassidy: Totally, and I knew why I wanted to partner. I deep down knew why I didn’t do a really good job of explaining it a hundred percent to the team and I didn’t prep them the way that I wish I would have prior to the integration process. I just kind of poo-pooed it and said, nothing’s gonna change. It’s all gonna be good.

Well, worst thing I ever said, because there was a lot of change and people are naturally resistant to change, especially people who had been with me for quite a while, who were in more back office positions that things were gonna change and there was legit concern that they were gonna lose their job or they’d have to do things so radically different that they just didn’t wanna learn something new.

And in retrospect, that’s part of why that day it was so earth shattering to me that I had not prepped my team the proper way to accept the change. Now everything is great, everything is fine, but that first six months was a major struggle.

Anderson Williams: And again, it’s. No mal intent, right? You’re thinking you’re making the best decision. You know, people’s jobs aren’t on the line. You know they’re gonna take care of the team.

But on the other side, your team’s going, well, wait. We have this great practice. We love working together. We love our community. We love our brand that we’ve built together, and everybody says it’s great. Why are we changing?

Dr. Cassidy: Yeah, and you’re right, because there was concern. Are they gonna rebrand us? Are they gonna relabel us? How the phone’s gonna be answered? Are people gonna be watching our computers all day long listening in conversations? And we had not had those conversations.

And that was a mistake because that just breeds doubt and definitely you can feel the tension that’s palpable in the office. During those times. Yeah. Where there was a lot of confusion and one of the things I had told them I would do is every Friday we’d have a meeting about it. Well, then Friday would come and we’d be so busy and we just, oh, okay, we’ll talk about it next week.

Well, no, that’s not the way to do it. You just gotta keep people updated. You’ve got to have honest, frank conversations with everything.

Anderson Williams: Yeah, even when you don’t know the answer, right? Like it’s not just that you’re not saying anything until you have all the answers. There’s something to be said for saying, well, this is the why and this is where we’re going, but I don’t know that detail yet, but I’m gonna find out.

Dr. Cassidy: And just being honest with them. And if they have a question, you don’t know the answer to it, don’t make something up. Just say, I don’t know. But I will find somebody who does know the answer, and we’ll get that answer to you as soon as possible.

Anderson Williams: If you had to sort of say like a couple of things, if you were to summarize that experience, what would you recommend to that founder, that seller, as it relates to what you would’ve done differently in terms of working with your team, communicating through change? What would you advise? Just any ideas.

Dr. Cassidy: First thing I would’ve done is I would’ve been much more transparent from the beginning. Once I’ve kind of agreed in part to doing this while I was going through the due diligence, I would’ve began to have some conversations with the team. First thing I would’ve done is gone to a couple of my people who’ve been with me for a long time, who kind of were the leaders in the practice, and I would’ve pulled them aside and had a private conversation and explained exactly what I was doing, what was gonna happen, and just get feedback from them and get input from them.

That would’ve been the absolute number one thing that would’ve saved us from quite a bit of the issues that we had.

Anderson Williams: I think truly, if you had to summarize the absolute one, right, like that’s probably it. I mean, you are making a decision as the business owner that impacts your whole team. The sooner you can have more people, particularly people with influence, that share your vision and share your direction so that they don’t have to come to you for all the answers, or it’s not singularly trusting you that it’s gonna be the right thing for everybody, but they can talk to other people who have different kinds of influence on them as team members, the safer the whole process gets. Right?

Dr. Cassidy: Oh, totally. Because as kind of leaders within the practice, they’re getting asked, bombarded with questions because the team members don’t wanna come talk to me.

They’re not afraid, but they may not feel it’s to their place to ask and they kind of wanna go through an intermediary. Well, if the intermediary doesn’t know the answers either they’re gonna start making stuff up, which is even worse. Or they’re just gonna be silent and silence leads to like, oh hmm something bad is gonna happen.

Anderson Williams: Yeah. Yeah. We fill silence with the negative almost always. And whether it’s this sort of size practice or you’re looking at larger change in an organization, the worst case scenario is your management level.

Whatever that means for you goes, you know, I don’t know. That’s what corporate told me to do, which is the agr. I don’t know. That’s just what the doctor told me to do. Right? Like it just totally blows up any opportunity to buy into the change.

Dr. Cassidy: Totally. And then you’re chasing your tail. Yeah. For a long time.

You’re doing damage repair as opposed to it being this celebration of something that really is bigger and better. You’re putting fires out all the time and that takes away from the transition tremendously.

Anderson Williams: Given where you are today, where you are in your career, as the partnership with SOP has worked and has actually helped you kind of reframe and rethink what your horizon is and you’re find a little bit of a different perspective on your practice, what’s next for you?

Like as you think about that now as you’re sitting here today, where do you continue to grow? How do you continue to grow? What’s next for your practice? Where’s your head in that process now?

Dr. Cassidy: Practice is growing so well, don’t break it if it’s working. Yeah, don’t break it just in my mind, I’m just gonna continue to develop my leadership skills, interpersonal skills, that really, at this point is about it. I, I don’t have any overarching plans. At this point.

Anderson Williams: Enjoy your work.

Dr. Cassidy: Enjoy my work.

Anderson Williams: Enjoy your team.

Dr. Cassidy: Enjoy reading books. Yeah. That I’ve never gotten, yeah. To read on leadership and life. That really is it. I got a window that, uh, I joke with everybody maybe five to seven years. I don’t know. I love it so much. I don’t even want to think about it. I, and I’ve got.

Anderson Williams: That’s already shifted a little bit.

Dr. Cassidy: Well, yeah. ’cause at first it was three to five and now it’s gone to five to seven. And yeah, just, you know, begin to really enjoy the fruits of my labor. Maybe take a little bit more time off.

The biggest thing is just being able to enjoy my evenings and weekends again, without being like, oh, I have to do the books. I have to do this, I have to do that. No, I get to do what I wanna do on the weekends, either for myself or as a couple with my wife and I. And that’s probably been one of the biggest impacts of partnering with SOP. It really has given my life back.

Anderson Williams: This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners and recorded in the Andrew Malone Podcast Studio with story and narration by Anderson Williams. Recording by Austin Johnson. Editing by Reel Audiobooks. Sound design, mixing, and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks.

Special thanks to Dr. Kevin Cassidy.

This podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners, LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the terms of use page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.