Skip to content
Back to Blog

702: The 4 Elements of a Great Partnership – Dr. Jen Derse & Dr. Brett Levin

Without a healthy partnership, your work life could be torture. If you want to increase your happiness at work, don't miss this episode! Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Jennifer Derse and Dr. Brett Levin, founders of Espire, to share their recipe for a healthy partnership that lasts. To learn how to stay aligned, navigate disagreements, and to disagree agreeably, listen to Episode 702 of The Best Practices Show!

Learn More About Dr. Derse and Dr. Levin:

Learn More About ACT Dental:

More Helpful Links for a Better Practice & A Better Life:

Main Takeaways:

  • Respect and support your partner.
  • Be aligned with one another’s vision.
  • Learn how to disagree and give feedback.
  • Find a cadence for communication to stay aligned.
  • Accept that you will have some hard days with your partner.

Quotes:

“The opposite of [a healthy partnership] could be complete torture. I think having a healthy partnership exponentially increases your happiness at work. Enjoying the partnership that you have and the fun that you get to have makes work more fun.” (3:56—4:18) -Dr. Derse

“Part of a healthy partnership is not always agreeing but when you disagree, how you work through that with intent and with caring so that you can really get to the right outcome that you both want.” (4:23—4:45) -Dr. Levin

“You don't always have to agree, but you have to figure out how to be aligned. If you don't both agree on where you want the outcome to go, it doesn't matter how aligned you're going to be — you'll never get there. You don't need that many team members coming to Jen to get one answer and come to me to get a different answer. We need to be able to give the same answer regardless of how we feel about it, but we will vet that ahead of time and then be able to support one another and the team member in how we give that answer and how we provide them support to get over whatever challenge they're going through.” (5:21—6:03) -Dr. Levin

“For us, we know where we're going. And so, we can also disagree agreeably.” (7:44—7:51) -Dr. Derse

“For me, as a partnership, it’s the intent of the feedback that you're going to give your partner. And it doesn't have to be a business partner. It could be any type of relationship. Are you giving it because you care, or are you giving it to kind of zing them and hurt them, or you just want to win in that way?” (7:56—8:20) -Dr. Levin

“The more you grow, the more complex it gets no matter what because there are more opinions and there are more emotions. And then, as you add more and more people, some people are on different journeys and what they've gone through. When we started working together, we were in coaching immediately. We're like, ‘Let's work on this.’ We were reading the same books and navigating how we would properly communicate. And then, you add in more and more people who might not be at that same place in their journey. So, you're bringing them up as well as navigating conflict.” (10:00—10:38) -Dr. Derse

“Obviously, the more people you have, the more you're going to be challenged on staying true to your vision and you have to determine where, not you're going to sacrifice, but where are you going to be like, ‘I got 99% of the way there. I'm not going to get 100% of the way there.’ Or, ‘This person is probably good, but they're only good for 80% of what I need. Is that good enough for me? Is it good enough for you, or do we have a role that suits them? Can we shift them to a different role that will allow them to do 90% or 95% of it?’ And then, you have to agree on, ‘You know what? This person isn't cutting it. How do we figure out a way to be nice and move on from that person?’ And that could be a doctor. It could be a hygienist. It could be anybody that is helping manage the vision of our company.” (10:41—11:32) -Dr. Levin

“You have to be consistent about [alignment time] because you can get so busy doing all these other little tasks and take for granted the relationship you have that you can forget to do that. And I think the daily ones are great. The weekly ones within our executive team are great. But then we try to connect outside of the office because I think it's great to have a different perspective when you're not being bombarded by 20 other people coming into your office asking you every question in the book. As you know, in the dental office, they don't care what you're doing. They're like, ‘We're going to ask you this,’ and you never get the thought out. So, it's finding different places and different times so that you can be deliberate about that connection and reconnection.” (13:56—14:50) -Dr. Levin

“We would communicate on anything. Like, ‘Hey, this happened today. This patient is here.’ So, you're going through this process of constantly communicating that there's also the part where small things that — sometimes people might say small — like, ‘Hey, I want you to know what happened here impacted my patient's situation over here,’ or, ‘This happened over here. This happened here,’ and we could give that, and you have all these small conversations about maybe small conflicts, but they give you that foundational support system that you have a good outcome from, and you have positive feedback from it, and then you can have the bigger ones later. So, you don't let the little shit just go. We talk about it because all the shit becomes shit, and it makes us better for it. We have positive feedback or positive reinforcement from our little-shit conversations to make the big-shit conversations easier.” (17:15—18:14) -Dr. Derse

“There are two dynamics of communication for us. I think there's communication between each other, and then we communicate differently to other team members. And we've done enough training that sometimes I'll be like, ‘I think you're going to communicate this idea better to X or Y,’ whereas in other times, we're like, ‘No, you're going to lead this conversation because they're going to hear you better.’ And so, it's being comfortable with ourselves to know where our strengths and weaknesses are, and we've communicated how that is.” (18:33—19:04) -Dr. Levin

“I think the communication between ourselves is just that. It's like, ‘Hey, this hurt my feelings. Maybe you didn't mean to say it this way, but this is how it made me feel,’ and that gets into being vulnerable and all of those things. But we meet each other where we need to be. And there are times we need to communicate very strongly with each other, and then there are other times we have to be the opposite of that, and it's knowing where we need to be, and it's even verbalizing it, ‘Hey, I need this from you today. I know you want to be X, but I need Y from you today. Can you do that for me?’” (19:22—19:57) -Dr. Levin

“One thing we maybe didn't do right when we first started Espire is we probably didn't communicate enough. And there's a fine line here because you can't just tell everybody everything. But it was a big mental shift for a lot of team members. Five years ago, the way people looked at starting a DSO, even though we call ourselves a private practice model, wasn't favorable. We learned how to communicate better so that we can maintain the teamwork of the practice because that part hit some road bumps a little bit.” (32:28—33:15) -Dr. Levin

“It would be hard to be really good partners with somebody if they weren't one of your friends — or, for us, best friends. I mean, Brett officiated my wedding. Like, there's a strong, strong friendship here that is pretty tough to break. So, I don't know how you could be business partners with somebody but then also not be friends with them.” (35:23—35:54) -Dr. Derse

“You respect your good friends, right? You support your good friends, and you have their best interests at heart. I think Jen said it really well. Creating a partnership and being successful in that, you're going to have hard days. You have to accept that. It's really how you support each other in the hard moments that makes you savor and enjoy the good moments that much more.” (36:01—36:36) -Dr. Levin

“We would never have built the practice we built without each other. We were like one plus one is ten, not one plus one is two. And I think we were also equally driven and passionate about it too. It's not like one of us was showing up and the other one was like, ‘Yeah, I'm done every day at 4:00, and I don't do anything after 4:00.’ It was like, ‘All right, you're still here at 4:00. You're still here and something is going on. I'm here with you.’ Like, we're in this together, always. I think that's a big part of it, because you do hear of these partnerships where it's really heavily weighted on one person doing all of the heavy lifting.” (37:07—37:54) -Dr. Derse

“The trust and respect is so intertwined along with the friendship and the grit and the hustle. So, that's your recipe. There you go. Make it.” (38:24—38:32) -Dr. Derse

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

3:47 Why a healthy partnership is so important.

4:51 Why being aligned on vision is important.

6:05 How to stay aligned and navigate disagreements.

9:40 Complexities in adding more people.

12:25 Schedule regular alignment time.

16:41 How Dr. Derse and Dr. Levin communicate.

22:36 How Dr. Derse and Dr. Levin define respect in a partnership.

28:56 How Dr. Derse and Dr. Levin cultivate teamwork.

32:27 Mistakes to avoid in a partnership.

35:16 Last thoughts.

38:33 More about Espire and how to get in touch.

Dr. Jennifer Derse Bio:

After dental school at Marquette University School of Dentistry, Dr. Derse focused her practice on cosmetic dentistry in Scottsdale, Arizona, and taught at the Arizona School of Dentistry. In 2010, she moved to Denver to join Espire Dental, formerly Levin Family Dental, where she has maintained a Top Dentist award by 5280 Magazine every year since.

Dr. Derse completed the Kois Continuum and focuses her dental practice on esthetic and restorative dentistry. She is actively involved in the Denver community, serving on local non-profit boards and fundraising with Smiles for Life. She has also gone on numerous medical missions to the Dominican Republic and Guatemala to provide dental care in needy communities. To build upon her service in non-profits, she started the Derse Levin Foundation, Espire’s philanthropic arm that funds humanitarian work along with local charities.

Dr. Derse loves puppies, traveling, cycling, and spinning (you can ask how she fell off the spin bike). Fun fact: as a leading cosmetic dentist specializing in dental veneers, same-day crowns, and Invisalign, she is often called up as an expert witness for dental cases presented to the Colorado Dental Board.

Dr. Brett Levin Bio:

After obtaining his dental degree at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, Dr. Levin returned home to Denver to practice with his father, Dr. Alan Levin. Having served the Glendale/Cherry Creek area for over 20 years, he values the “idyllic” relationships he has created with his patients. He is committed to upholding the traditions of Espire Dental while incorporating the best of modern dental practice technologies.

Dr. Levin is one of a select few clinical instructors at the prestigious Kois Center, a clinical program designed to integrate the latest advances in esthetic, implant, and restorative dentistry. As a leading Denver cosmetic dentist specializing in dental veneers, same-day crowns, and clear aligners, he is uniquely qualified to give patients the smile of their dreams.

Dr. Levin is a respected member of the Denver dental community, having served on the board of the Metro Denver Dental Society (twice) and being awarded 5280 Magazine’s Top Dentist every year since 2008. He has also traveled on medical mission trips, providing dental care to communities in need.
ACT Dental Team

ACT Dental Team

    Subscribe to our newsletter