Dr. Allison House and Shawn Zajas kick off 2026 with a raw conversation about what separates dentists who thrive from those who stall. After hosting two Olympic athletes over the holidays, Allison shares a key insight: elite performers surround themselves with coaches in every dimension of life. Not because they lack knowledge. Because growth demands outside eyes.

The episode confronts a hard truth. Intelligent people can easily slide into pessimism. The data supports it. The profession faces real challenges. Yet Allison describes “learned optimism” as the deliberate choice to see opportunity alongside struggle. She traces this back to her weightlifting background with her father, who coached her to break down complex movements into fundamental pieces. The same approach works in dental practice. When systems break, you isolate the component. Fix the pull. Fix the scheduling gap. One piece at a time.

Shawn shares his own revelation from years of journaling. He noticed a pattern of abandoned plans. The reason? Waiting for missing components before taking action. The fix? Move with an incomplete plan. The marketplace teaches you nothing if you stay on the sidelines.

The hosts discuss the Tom Brady Super Bowl comeback against Atlanta. Down 25 points in a sport where no team had ever recovered from more than 10. On the sideline, Julian Edelman kept telling teammates: “You gotta believe. It’s going to be one hell of a story.” That mindset separates practitioners who rebuild from those who quit.

For dentists who logged 2025 as a loss, Allison offers a reframe. If you caused your bad year, you have control. That means you can fix it. External forces like economy and insurance leave you powerless. Personal responsibility equals personal power.

The episode closes with practical wisdom: find a coach, stay in community with believers, and never wait for the perfect moment to move.

Shawn: I guess I just wanna encourage people that might have had a hard year and, are, maybe feeling like they're the reason

Allison: if they're the reason, that's a good thing. You have more control over that.

When it's the economy, when it's insurance, you don't have as much control over that. But if you are the reason that you had a bad year. That's fixable. You just have to figure out where it's, that's always my mindset. If it's me, that's an easier fix.

Speaker 3: Welcome to the Authentic Dentist Podcast. Join Dr. Allison House of House Dental in Scottsdale. And Sean Zia, founder of Zana as they lead dentist deeper along the journey of authenticity to reach greater fulfillment in their professional lives and to deliver remarkable patient experiences.

But you and I both know dentistry. it can be very, very difficult.

Allison: I think it gets difficult every year more difficult and more incredible. What we can do is incredible. I'm excited about the AI for this year, really. I am.

Shawn: Is there anything specific on the AI front that you, you're thinking about?

Is it more like what, in dentistry as far as like the tools, like the radiograph. What it can do to read that? Or are you thinking like in what way? Specifically?

Allison: I guess for me it's, it's what I'm capable of doing. I'm just noticing that I can scan and the accuracy is incredible. I can design in the software that didn't exist before.

Felt like things slowed down and whether that was their consulting business, coaching business or dental practice. And again, I think it's just the lagging effects of, of the economy. And yet, I know in some ways the year was challenging for you, but here you are seemingly still looking forward to what is to come.

How do you practically actually do that? How do you practically maintain either your vision or your optimism? Because I don't think, I think it's something that's so naturally baked into the way that you are, that you may not realize that, that it's something that you're intentionally doing.

Allison: No, I, I know it's learned optimism.

You know, it's gonna be. We're gonna lose things that we want. There's never gonna be a perfect moment in time. I don't wanna live 30 years ago when I have to cast gold, when now I can design in software. It's, it's amazing. But that does mean that I've lost some of the community that I used to have.

Dentists used to be a pillar of the community and all these relationships, and that's not really true anymore. So I, I think you have to take the good with the bad, but the learned optimism is really important to always look for the good things.

Shawn: So from what if I like what I'm hearing is correct, you see the areas that you could be discouraged about, you see the writing on the wall or things that could, I dunno, just reality.

If you ever want to be inspired, hang out with Dr. House because, uh, I feel like it, it comes very natural. So again, over the last 20 years, when. Like, what do you think you were developing in order, I dunno if it's a what or how, like how is it that you've maintained this ability to stay inspired?

And I was talking about how I've always had coaches in my life. And, uh, one of 'em was talking about that she didn't want a therapist. Like a therapist was a terrible thing. And, uh, that, that they had a nutrition coach. And I couldn't help but think that you have to have coaches in every aspect of your life.

I don't, you don't have to call 'em a therapist, but you also have to have people push you to grow to see the better in you to see what's possible. And you can't do that. And if you're an Olympic athlete, you're used having. Weightlifting coach weight, that's normal because somebody has to watch what you're doing.

Correct. Make small corrections. Even though you know what to do, you're still gonna make mistakes and you still have to overcome the mental pieces of it. So I guess for me, I've had a coach in my life since I was a little girl, and I just have lots of coaches in different aspects of my life that I use to keep myself on track.

Shawn: You just happened to call him dad.

Shawn: So it's interesting 'cause you say that, and I instantly think about three of my kids are in competitive rock climbing right now. And the two oldest ones that are in it handle competition completely differently. My son is very focused on just what matters when he's competing.

And my daughter, because she's so much more. Dynamic, you could say she's aware of the emotional component of like, well, am I letting down my coach or my teammates or who's watching and what does that mean? And she just picks up on all these other layers where it's like my son almost simplistically can just be like, I just need to do better.

You're weakening the person because they're now reliant on you. It somehow actually gets the individual to perform at their best, and that's, that's wildly challenging because of how different everybody is. What did you learn from the best coaches in your life as to like how to actually get someone to I improve their behavior versus getting almost crippled by it.

Allison: When I first started my practice, I hired a, uh, group to come in and help me with systems. 'cause I did not know what the heck I was doing. And I felt like they just beat me over the head with these systems. They didn't let me come up with anything. It wasn't fun. And so I, I remember I sent one of them an email one day and I said, so here's what happens in weightlifting.

They just put a system in place without teaching me all the pieces to it. And the lady who actually lives here in Phoenix was really funny. She says, I love that I'm gonna do that from now on. I'm gonna teach people in pieces. And so she, she's a fabulous coach, but back then I was just, oh, it's just not good.

But I learned really early on that that was important to me because that's the way I needed to be coached. I needed to see the big picture. And that's not true with everybody. I needed to see the big picture. I needed to see what I was looking for, but then I needed to be broken down into systems, into small pieces.

So at least I knew what I was working on. So if I couldn't get a lift over my head, it was because I don't, I wasn't pulling hard enough. And then it would be when I looked at my system in the office, how come I don't have any patients? Well, because we're missing this system. It wasn't that I just saw the big picture.

And that's not true for everybody, but you have to find a coach that works for you, that you're inspired by.

Shawn: So I'm curious when it comes to you specifically, when it comes to like confidence, here you're doing something. Let's say you're learning a lift and your dad recognizes that the form needs correction or needs to be improved.

How do you take that in a way that is, he's not picking at what I'm doing wrong? How do you frame it so it's like, oh, this is. This is a way for me to do it better instead of look at what I'm not doing. Like, because you could look at, it's like two sides of the same coin, and yet winners find a way to keep, keep going because they stay encouraged.

They keep seeing the areas of growth where it seems like a losing mindset is like focusing just on. Where you're like, I don't know. What was it? What was it for you?

Yeah. The basics, the, the

Shawn: fundamentals. Yeah.

Allison: I don't think that they were, his coach was making fun of him, or I think that you constantly want to improve the fundamentals, and that's not a, that's not a negative thing. My dad would come in and say I think you're not pulling hard enough. Let's work on that today.

So it wasn't a, it was, how are we gonna get to, how are you gonna get to the higher level? Well, all of the pieces need to go together, so let's work on this piece.

Shawn: But there was nothing in you that was like, yeah, but, but like Dad, I'm trying, like, I'm just saying like, that never came out like a, can't you see him?

You were never frustrated because he was pointing out areas where you weren't doing it good enough. I was frustrated

Allison: that my body wouldn't do it, but I wasn't frustrated that he was showing me how to do something better. But my dad was also really good about celebrating the positives and I think sometimes you have coaches that are only looking for the negatives.

I like that. This is something I think you could work on that would make things better for you. And my dad was always that way too. You'd lift something over your head that you hadn't done and he would just cheer and be so excited for you. And that was great. Everything was perfect. Let's do that again.

So I, I think it is how people coach you that makes a difference. You don't want just a list of negative things that I'm doing wrong. Yes, I'm doing that wrong, but I must be doing something right.

Shawn: So if, okay. Again, what I think I'm hearing is it seems like between the lines, you also knew that he believed in you so much that like when he's sharing something that you can improve on, it wasn't like, it's devastating to talk about the area that I'm not perfect in yet.

It was like, oh, this is just part of the.

Kind of the only way to keep your marriage and raise your kids is to pay attention, to ask questions, to get feedback. When somebody tells you you're not doing something right. Doesn't mean you're, you're not, it just means that you need to listen to them and processes it.

Shawn: Well, there's this interesting relationship with personal responsibility and personal autonomy or power.

And I remember Dan Kennedy, uh, he's like an OG marketer known for direct response. So basically if you've ever been on like a landing page where you're scrolling and it's very marketing copy heavy and. Anyway, he's just a famous copywriter and his whole thing was, every ounce of responsibility that you don't take is every ounce of power that you're, you're not able to possess.

Allison: I think you can be a realist and still be optimistic.

The reality is that there's always things working against you. I mean, the hero's journey, Hercules had to, was it Hercules? Yeah. Hercules had to overcome all these challenges, but if there were no challenges, it's not the hero's journey, right? It's just me walking in the park. It's, there's always gonna be a whole bunch of challenges, some of which I have control over and some of which I don't.

I had control over other of it.

Shawn: You kind of had partial genetics to go there. Wasn't your dad a strong man? Yes.

Allison: Yes. My dad was a bodybuilder. I mean, my dad did it all and he, he coached, but he wasn't, he never went to the Olympics.

Shawn: So it's your mom's fault. You're listening. I love you. I'm just kidding.

Allison: I mean, I didn't have the genetics.

Shawn: Okay. So part of what I'm hearing then has to do with. How do you manage defeats though, or seeming setbacks? Because in your Hercules example, there are all the obstacles that he ended up overcoming.

Or someone else is like, oh gosh, it's gonna take two years of something because I'm gonna keep on going and believing. And I, I don't know. I have more fortitude to know it's gonna get better and I'm gonna be able to figure this out for some people. Don't, they don't have that resilience. Um, or they haven't cultivated it yet, you know, as well.

So all of a sudden it's like two, you know, two tough weeks in a row and it's like, oh my gosh, like we're doomed, we're going downhill. 'Cause I don't necessarily think it's as much how we handle when we do breakthrough or when we do overcome, but what do we say to ourselves when, when we haven't?

Allison: So Mark and I always talk about Steve Jobs and I would love to hear the interview, which I don't think exists when Steve Jobs was fired from his own company. I would love to know what his mindset was, because that was the hero's journey. He didn't get where he wanted to go, and instead of, you know, keep going forward in a situation where he couldn't, he pivoted and built Pixar.

That's interesting to me. Like, why did you decide the hero's journey instead of getting this, you're gonna go get that because there was an obstacle that was insurmountable. And you pivoted and made a different decision. And I, I love that. I would love to know what his mindset was, but when I'm really in a dark place, I kind of think about that.

Like people who, yes, this was the end, never going to the Olympics, you know this is never going to happen because of all of these other things that are in the way. So what do you, where do you pivot? Where do you go if you pivot?

Shawn: Yeah, it reminds me sort of, of, um, one of the Super Bowls that Tom Brady played in against the Falcons.

If you're down 20, that's twice. This was 25. And because of the way that NFL films produces productions now post, like after the game, they have a lot of people on the sideline miked up going into it. A lot of players. So one of the players was Julian Edelman, um, who happens to be Tom Brady's, like go-to receiver, right?

You gotta believe it's gonna be one hell of a story. You gotta believe. And he's saying this not just to himself, he's saying it to his teammates. And it's like, wow, here you are. And statistically no one has come back from such a deficit and you hear, this is how winners talk. This is how winners think.

It's, it says, you know, in Proverbs outta the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. He's saying these things because it's like they didn't lose hope. I want that to be true of me when I'm in difficult moments, and you know, you, you've seen. Me in more trying times, and sometimes it's not, I'm not always believing it's gonna be, oh, I don't know, maybe I'm,

Allison: you can never just say it's gonna be okay.

You never tell a patient, it's all gonna be okay. 'cause you don't know. But when you're giving the example of the football game I'm back to the hero's journey. So when you're fighting Medusa and you're there, you can't stop. So the only thing to do is to believe that you're gonna overcome and keep moving.

Allison: I think it's the coaching background again. I make a list of things that are really bothering me right now about the office. And I don't make it in a negative way.

I make it in a, oh, we could do this. So, and a lot of it's me mindset decisions. Where am I making mistakes? Where is my team making mistakes? How can we fix this? And if we fix all those little things next year, I mean, we could just. Blossom. And the reality is, we did blossom last year. I didn't have a bad year, had a really good year because we made a lot of course corrections.

There's so many things wrong. I mean, you can only go up, right?

Shawn: I think a lot of humans not just into struggle with how do I deal with seemingly what could be, um, what could lead to conflict, right? Areas where there has to be improvement. You know, I've talked to lots of fathers that are like, I don't have a blueprint for how do I talk to my son or daughter when I need to bring a correction because I want them to know I love them, but I just don't know what to do.

Imagine what would happen if we could actually string some of these together. I love that. 'cause all that is, is like excitement, life opportunity, potential instead of correction, blame let's expose something that's more of a downward cycle.

Allison: And people use the words accountability, course correction.

I don't know. I just feel like there's, it's always opportunity. How can we, something, you know, this little thing that we're doing wrong and if we hold harder. It would work. Work. And I know that. I guess I know that from lots of experience. The thing with kids, I have to come back to that because I've raised two now, 27 and 26, and they're great people.

I would love to take some credit. I don't get to take all the credit 'cause a lot of it's just them. There's incredible people. But I know that I didn't know how to do this and in fact, I didn't really have an internet at the very beginning. A little bit, but not the information that we have today. So that was a seeking answers.

That's not what I want. I want everything for you. I love him and he loves me, and it's, it's a good relationship. It doesn't mean I was perfect, but I always was looking to seek answers and to do better,

Shawn: you know? Alison, with, with everything that's happening in dentistry I see that you, you still give yourself permission all the time to practice dentistry on your terms and, you know, you're more mature in your practice.

It's not your first decade. You're going into the,

Allison: this is my third decade. That's what I'm, you're

Shawn: going into the like a second half of your second, or It's

Allison: 25 years.

We're gonna position our practice more of like a what is it? Boutique or spa. I know some that was kind of a big, like instead of getting caught by every opportunity or every fad, what is your, I don't wanna say true north, but how, how do you make sure you continue to practice the way you want to going into every single year?

Allison: I think I wanna, what I'm Don's.

I just wanna do the best I can possibly do for this patient because I, I feel like your mouth is so sacred. When I take a bur and I cut on something, I'm cutting on human tissue, and I always think about that before I do it. I'm cutting on human tissue. Am I doing something that's going to make things better for this person?

So all of those things are important. Those are, I guess, my true north when I retire. I just wanna know that I made the world a little better in my little niche and, and that's my true north. When I first started, the debt was overwhelming for me. And so I know that young dentists are dealing with that.

How do I get out from under this tremendous amount of debt? How do I learn all the skills that I need to learn without being able to go to all these continuing educations because I can't afford it? I mean, I, I remember all of this. I, you just find a way. Yeah, there was a, a story. Now I can't remember the whole story about these swimmers.

Sometimes the answer is, this team that I have, they're not gonna come with me this time. So, and sometimes it's, I'm not staying in this environment that I'm in because it doesn't suit me. I've outgrown it. And that's not a bad thing. It just, it just is. You're, you're going to outgrow your environment.

Shawn: Yeah.

I can hear, I can hear my dad saying where there's a will, there's a way. And that kind of gets me back to protecting your identity so that you have the will, because it's when that gets attacked or eroded, undermined. You start seeing your story in a way where you're either not the main character or you feel powerless it's hard to keep doing the same thing.

If it keeps leading to, I dunno, despair or depression or discouragement, um,

Allison: if that's happening, then something's wrong. You have to figure out where it is in the system that's, that's happening.

Shawn: Yeah, because I, I think that's the most amazing thing with the human story with. So much of the, even you were just reading outta this athlete's book the Daily Athlete.

Allison: It's the year of a horse. And last year was the year of the snake.

Shawn: I guess I just wanna encourage people that might have had a hard year and, are, maybe feeling like they're the reason

Allison: if they're the reason, that's a good thing. You have more control over that.

When it's the economy, when it's insurance, you don't have as much control over that. But if you are the reason that you had a bad year. That's fixable. You just have to figure out where it's, that's always my mindset. If it's me, that's an easier fix.

Shawn: Okay. So this year what do you say to a young dentist that's excited about the year?

Allison: I can only tell you what I felt at that time, and I was very discouraged as a young dentist. I worked for somebody that I felt like we weren't doing good dentistry.

I had a ton of debt. I was trying to be a mom and a wife, a good daughter, and all of the list of things you're supposed to do plus train some, and I just felt really defeated that I couldn't be everything to everybody. So I think if, if you're in that situation. You look at what you can fix right now, you can't fix the whole thing, but what can I change?

What small change can I make that might make a big difference? And for me, it was always, how can I make myself healthier? Because that seems to be healthier mindset, healthier body. And then how can I honor what's really important to me? How can I decide what's important to me? And then how can I honor to what's important to me?

Shawn: Okay. So I have a tactical takeaway that hopefully this will help somebody out there.

Just the other day I, I like journal. Everything I do is, is a notion and like my life each week. So I've been journaling. My professional journey for the last like 15, 16 years. And what will get really discouraging for me is I look back on journals like three, four years ago. And I look at it and I'd be like, oh my gosh, I'm kind of in the same place, is what it felt like where I'd be trying to get a campaign off the ground.

I'd be trying to do this or that, and I'd look and I'd be like, what the heck? So I finally was, was seeing a pattern here where what I would do is I would. You know, I determined an objective of what I was wanting, some sort of growth. And then I was really realizing, okay, well here's a strategy of how I could do it.

I thought components of it was missing. And what I realized is that you don't need to have everything in place perfectly in order to move and to move decisively and with some sort of confidence. Because inaction, you never learn anything from not doing anything like the marketplace doesn't tell you anything.

You don't learn from your patients, you don't learn from your team. Um, you don't discover whether quarter one was okay because you tried some new initiative. It's better to try. An incomplete, imperfect plan and get data then to wait for the perfect plan that never comes. And I think that's one of the biggest takeaways that I recently realized.

Like overstate that enough, how important it is. Like even Dr.

Allison: That's the coaches. Yes. Have people around you that believe in you, that makes all the difference in the world.

Shawn: But even this podcast, like the fact that we've had to consistently meet for six years now, you are one of the most positive people.

So it's like in those seasons, sometimes I'm not quite as positive or I'm a little discouraged and I have someone that I'm meeting with that is. Positive that is shining their light, that's encouraging me to keep going. So thank you. So find, find someone that is like Dr. House that's going to be encouraging, uh, or just tune in and, and keep joining us on this journey.