The Coaching Call: Foundational Leadership Principles & Practical Resources for Dentists & Leaders

Dr. Summer Kassmel

You became a dentist. What nobody told you is that you also signed up to be the CEO, the culture keeper, the HR department, and the person who gets called when everything falls apart at 7am. The Coaching Call is where we fix that. Hosted by Dr. Summer Kassmel, founder of Ladder5 Mentorship & Resources and former owner of large multi-provider dental practices, this show delivers foundational leadership principles and practical resources for dental practice owners and the in-practice leaders who keep everything running. Episodes drop twice a month, built to fit a commute or a lunch break. Every episode ends with one clear tool, framework, or piece of language you can take directly into your practice that week. Because the goal is never just awareness. The goal is action. The goal is leadership that is clear, consistent, and grounded in the rooted version of your best self. If you are a practice owner who is tired of being the bottleneck in your own business, this is for you. If you are an office manager or director of operations carrying more than your job description ever accounted for, this is for you.

Episodes

  1. Oct 8

    Why "I Don't Want to Micromanage" Is Actually a Clarity Problem

    Liesel Bailey, practice manager at Green Mountain Dental in South Burlington, Vermont and co-lead of the Ladder5 Team Collective, joins Dr. Kassmel for part 1 of this two-part series on the clarity gap. They start with how vague direction actually happens, using a real example: "we need to schedule more new patients" sounds clear until you realize it could mean five different things. From there, they get into what separates a practice with real clarity from one without it, why a team left to guess will either overfunction or quietly give up, and the three specific places clarity tends to break down. They also tackle a question Dr. Kassmel hears constantly from owners: what's the actual difference between being clear and micromanaging? Liesel shares the system that changed how her own admin team operates, and why her team ended up asking for it. Grab the tools and guides that go with this episode at summerkassmel.com/podcast-bonus. If you want to build this kind of clarity into your own practice with a leader by your side, enrollment for Foundations is open now.

  2. Sep 24

    The Seven Things Great Dental Practice Leaders Do That Nobody Notices

    In episode 6, Dr. Kassmel covered how to select the right leader before you ever hand out a title. Here, she covers what comes next: the seven invisible layers of leadership that decide whether your practice runs well when you're not in the building. She names each layer and, more importantly, what a leader actually does differently because of it. Self-awareness and the ability to receive feedback well, which is the bedrock everything else sits on. Pattern recognition, catching cultural drift on the second occurrence instead of the fifth. Early intervention, using a 48-hour rule and a four-part conversation structure: observation, benefit of the doubt and impact, expectation, and support. Standards over comfort, and why the "hero to villain" cycle starts the moment a leader picks up someone else's slack. Emotional regulation, including what she calls a clean acknowledgment when a leader gets it wrong. Long-term protection, thinking past today's fix to what it costs the practice in a year. And the last layer, the real dividing line between managing and leading: growing people instead of just managing numbers. Dr. Kassmel also shares the doormat to dictator cycle, why she believes practices run on 20% systems and 80% culture, and how to quantify each layer so it's not just a nice idea. Grab the companion worksheet with the scorecard for all seven layers at summerkassmel.com/podcast-bonus. If you want to build this out with your own leader beside you, enrollment for Foundations opens August 14th, capped at 30 practices, and includes a seat for one of your leaders by design.

  3. Sep 10

    Why Your Best Clinician Might Not Be Your Next Leader

    You know the scenario. Your best team member, the one with seven years in and the best hands in the building, gets the title. Lead assistant, office manager, clinical director. And within 90 days she's frustrated, the team's frustrated, and problems are showing up on your desk three weeks late instead of getting solved. You can't unpromote her without a cost, and now you're both miserable. In part 1 of this two-part series, Dr. Kassmel explains why this almost never comes down to training and everything comes down to selection. She names the three attributes she looks for before anyone gets a leadership title: wanting to be effective more than wanting to be right, emotional self-awareness paired with real open-mindedness, and the capacity to sit in healthy conflict without avoiding it or dominating it. She also names the one disqualifier, a person whose lens only points inward. Then she gets practical: why proof of concept has to come before the title, what kind of project actually reveals whether someone can lead (hint, it has to require working through other people), and what to watch for over that 90-day window. This episode is the foundation. Part 2 covers the seven invisible layers of leadership once you've selected right. Grab the worksheet with the leadership characteristics scorecard, the project chart, and the 90-day observation log at summerkassmel.com/podcast-bonus. Ready to build your leadership bench the right way, with your own leader alongside you? Enrollment for Foundations opens August 14th, capped at 30 practices, and includes a seat for one of your leaders.

  4. Aug 27

    How to Build Joy Into Your Practice & Life, Not Just Achievement

    Featuring Special Guest: Dr. Karley Schneider, dentist, practice owner, and Ladder5 Mentorship coach based in Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Schneider built a thriving practice while walking through some of the hardest years of her life. In this conversation, she and Dr. Kassmel dig into why so many dentists have mastered achievement but never quite land on joy, and the shift that changed how Dr. Schneider runs her practice, her team, and her own days. They break down the real difference between happiness and joy, and Dr. Schneider shares the framework she now teaches her own clients, plus a few specific, sometimes uncomfortable moments that pushed her to change. If you've hit your goals and still feel like something's missing, this one's for you. Foundations, Dr. Kassmel and Dr. Schneider's signature group coaching program, opens August 14th with spots capped at 30. Join today! https://products.summerkassmel.com/Foundations For all episode resources and homework: summerkassmel.com/podcast-bonus

  5. Aug 13

    The Five C's: A Dental Practice Accountability Framework to Stop Repeating Yourself

    If you've rolled out a standard, watched it hold for a few weeks, then watched it quietly slip, this episode is for you. Dr. Kassmel built the Five C's after years of repeating the same expectations to the same team members, sometimes fifteen times over, and never feeling confident she'd done enough before letting someone go. The Five C's are five checkpoints: clarity, commitment, consistency, consequence, and cutting the cord. Clarity means your team can answer four specific questions about the standard without you repeating yourself. Commitment means asking directly and knowing the difference between silence and a real yes. Consistency is where most leaders skip a step. Consequence isn't punishment, it's making the impact clear, calmly and without shame. And cutting the cord is what's left when the first four have genuinely been done and it's still not holding. Dr. Kassmel gives a real script for delivering consequences without shame, plus a challenge: pick one standard you keep letting slide and diagnose which C it's breaking down at. Grab the worksheet here at summerkassmel.com/podcast-bonus Ready to build a team that holds standards without you repeating yourself? Join Foundations, my group coaching program for Doctors ready to make a lasting, impactful change to their practices and their lives. See more info here: https://products.summerkassmel.com/Foundations

  6. Jul 30

    Why Every System You've Bought Keeps Failing (And What Actually Comes First)

    You've done everything right. Hired the consultants. Bought the systems that came pre-built in a binder. Sat through the CE, collected the leadership books, and still found yourself wondering if the problem was you. In this episode, Dr. Kassmel picks up where Episode 1 left off on triggers and nervous system patterns, and connects it to a question a mentor once asked her that she couldn't answer for years: do you actually know if you're winning? She unpacks why every tool, script, and system she ever purchased ultimately sat on top of an unregulated nervous system, and failed the moment things got triggered. Not because the tool was bad, but because no one ever asked who would be holding it. She walks through her own pattern of people pleasing in her own practices, what changed once she did the deeper work first, and why strategy only works when the leader underneath it has built a steady foundation to hold it. This episode also includes a concrete action item: picking one moment this week where your pattern shows up, pausing, and asking yourself what you're actually trying to avoid feeling. If you're ready to build that foundation instead of buying the next fix, join Foundations, my group collective coaching for doctors, starting August 14, 2026. Head to summerkassmel.com/podcast-bonus for this episode's resources, including the action item worksheet and more on somatic practitioners.

  7. Jul 10

    Why Your Dental Team Reacts to Your Energy, Not Your Words

    You can have the best-documented standards in dentistry, but if the energy you walk in with doesn't match them, your team won't buy it. They're reading your nervous system before they're listening to your words. In this episode, Dr. Summer Kassmel opens the mindset and nervous system work that sits underneath every system, hire, and strategy in a practice. She redefines success first: production and collections matter, but they don't mean much if you're not feeling joy or purpose while building them, or if your relationships and your body are paying the price. From there, she breaks down triggers, like the look from a front office person in huddle, a patient complaint about a treatment plan, or an associate's tone, and explains why these reactions are almost never about the other person. She walks through her five-step practice for catching a trigger in real time: notice it, pause, discharge the energy, notice your return to baseline, and ask if it actually requires a response right now. This week's action item: just notice where your triggers show up and what patterns you see. You don't have to fix anything yet. Resources mentioned in this episode: https://summerkassmel.com/podcast-bonus/ Join my July 14, 2026 masterclass, The Invisible Layer of Leadership. 1 hour of CE and instant replay included if you can't attend live! https://products.summerkassmel.com/masterclassjune23

  8. Jul 7

    Welcome to The Coaching Call: Leadership, Systems & Freedom for Dental Practice Owners

    Dentistry never taught us to lead. In this launch episode, Dr. Summer Kassmel shares her own burnout story and how it led her to build the Ladder 5 Framework, the five pillars behind everything on this show: Clarity: most practice chaos is a clarity problem, not a people problemThe Compound Effect: own your numbers before they own youLeading With Impact: consistency and trust over being likedResilience: building roots that hold through hard seasonsLegacy in Motion: a practice, culture, and body of work built to last This show is for practice owners and the in-practice leaders who run alongside them. New episodes drop twice a month, built for a commute, a lunch break, or a walk between patients. Get the free resources mentioned in this episode: summerkassmel.com/podcast-bonus Join our July 14, 2026 Masterclass with 1 hour of CE and instant replay available if you can't attend live: https://products.summerkassmel.com/masterclassjune23

  • 8 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

You became a dentist. What nobody told you is that you also signed up to be the CEO, the culture keeper, the HR department, and the person who gets called when everything falls apart at 7am. The Coaching Call is where we fix that. Hosted by Dr. Summer Kassmel, founder of Ladder5 Mentorship & Resources and former owner of large multi-provider dental practices, this show delivers foundational leadership principles and practical resources for dental practice owners and the in-practice leaders who keep everything running. Episodes drop twice a month, built to fit a commute or a lunch break. Every episode ends with one clear tool, framework, or piece of language you can take directly into your practice that week. Because the goal is never just awareness. The goal is action. The goal is leadership that is clear, consistent, and grounded in the rooted version of your best self. If you are a practice owner who is tired of being the bottleneck in your own business, this is for you. If you are an office manager or director of operations carrying more than your job description ever accounted for, this is for you.

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