It's Not What I Know...It's How I Learned It

By Dr. Richard B. Liposky

All businesses succeed or fail. A successful businessman may fail, but what makes him successful is that he never quits. He learns from every experience. He grows through failures on his way to success. All the lights on our journey toward success are constantly changing. We move forward on green, are cautious on yellow, and wait for the reds to turn green. We may hesitate, but we dont stop. And a detour is just another way to get to our destination . . . success. This book is about sixty-five years of business successes and failures. From the city to the farm, from the university to the operating rooms in Vietnam and the jungles of Central America, from good patient care to professional politics, from business successes and failures, the author dissects what works and what doesnt work. The author wont tell you what he knows . . . he will tell you how he learned it. When you know how he learned it . . . you will have engaged the most powerful ally to reach your business success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493149070

Dr. Richard B. Liposky

Dr. Richard B. Liposky Dr. Liposky is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, School of Dental Medicine. After completing a USAF internship and active duty in Vietnam, he returned to complete a five-year residency in oral and maxillofacial surgery at the School of Medicine, Presbyterian University Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While in private practice, he also provided surgical services to the freedom fighters in Central America and was a consultant to the US State Department in the People to People program. He has been active in professional associations, patented medical devices, and developed and implemented new surgical procedures. He is a contributing author for one textbook and is the author of twelve professional publications and forty-eight newspaper articles. He has given more than 232 presentations to professional organizations. He hosted the radio show “Speaking of Dentistry.” With more than fifty years of business experience, Dr. Liposky has had the privilege of coaching new physicians, dentists, and businessmen and women in starting, developing, and growing their businesses or practices. He teaches them to integrate sound business principles with continued personal growth and innovative ideas. Dr. Liposky launched Specialty Dental Services and Online Dental Consulting Services to provide surgical support and consultation to general practitioners. In addition, Dr. Liposky teaches courses on “Oral Surgery for the General Practitioner.” Dr. Liposky is president and CEO of Dental Specialists of America LLC, providing outpatient oral and maxillofacial surgery and specialty services to group practices in eight states. He personally provides surgery services at practices in Atlanta, Georgia. He currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife, Irene. He enjoys his profession as well as business, golf, gardening, writing, and six grandchildren.

Book preview

IT’S NOT WHAT I

KNOW… IT’S HOW

I LEARNED IT

DR. RICHARD B. LIPOSKY

Copyright © 2014 by Dr. Richard B. Liposky.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 04/10/2014

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction Excuses And Reasons

PART 1: DEVELOPING THE BUSINESS MIND

Chapter 1 Growing Up: From The City To The Farm

Chapter 2 Recognition And Relevance: When We Feel We Count

Chapter 3 The Who, Why, And How Of Getting A Business Started

Chapter 4 All Businesses Succeed Or Fail

Chapter 5 Getting Through Dental School, 1962 To 1966

PART 2: PEOPLE, POLITICS, AND PATIENTS (PPP)

Chapter 6 Beginning My Professional Career

Chapter 7 Beating The Odds, Cheating Charlie

Chapter 8 Kill The Kid, MEDCAP Missions

Chapter 9 Coming Home From Vietnam

Chapter 10 Learning To Rebuild Faces: Residency Training

Chapter 11 Politics Before Patient Care: The Medical Center Of Beaver County

Chapter 12 IMC Missions… Surgery In The Jungles Of Honduras

PART 3: BUSINESS 101: SIXTY YEARS OF BUSINESS SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

Chapter 13 How It All Came Together

Chapter 14 Learning Business The Hard Way… Sixty Years Of Business Experience

Chapter 15 Dividing The Pie

Chapter 16 Learning To Help People Help Themselves… The Amway Experience

Chapter 17 Did I Learn Anything After Sixty Years Of Business?

Conclusion: It’s Not What I Know… It’s How I Learned It

Appendix

Bibliography

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the many people who participated in this story. Most importantly to Dr George Sotereanos, Dr John Gaisford, and Dr Leonard Monheim whose vision changed the scope of facial reconstructive surgery and the evolutions of the specialty of oral and maxillofacial surgery. To the first generation Leposky and Kiddon families who came from Europe with a dream, worked hard and passed it on to the next generation. To the businessmen and women who have told their stories so that I might learn from their experience. To my comrades in arms in Vietnam and Central America who fought and died to preserve the integrity of our next generation’s freedom. And especially to my wife Irene and our daughters Amy, Angela, Melissa and Michelle who, without their motivation and support, this story would not have been so exciting and rewarding.

All businesses succeed or fail. A successful businessman may fail, but what makes him successful is that he never quits. He learns from every experience. He grows through failures on his way to success. All the lights on our journey toward success are constantly changing. We move forward on green, are cautious on yellow, and wait for the reds to turn green. We may hesitate, but we don’t stop. And a detour is just another way to get to our destination… success. This book is about sixty-five years of business successes and failures. From the city to the farm, from the university to the operating rooms in Vietnam and the jungles of Central America, from good patient care to professional politics, from business successes and failures, the author dissects what works and what doesn’t work. The author won’t tell you what he knows… he will tell you how he learned it. When you know how he learned it… you will have engaged the most powerful ally to reach your business success.

Introduction

EXCUSES AND REASONS

An old-timer’s wisdom:

When you think you know, you probably don’t.

When you think you know everything, you really don’t.

When you know you know everything, it’s time to shut up, sit down, and listen.

People often use an excuse as a reason not to move forward and accomplish great things. Other people use the same excuse as a source of motivation or reason to move forward and accomplish great things. The common denominator is the same excuse. The variable is how they decide to use the excuse.

Whatever your circumstances are, they are yours. You own them. They belong to you. This story is a chronology of circumstances. It will give you hope that someone else can have similar circumstances as you and still succeed. It will depend on how you deal with them. Will you react or respond? Will you listen and learn or pout and blame?

You can’t change the past, but you can change the future. Where you will be in a day, week, month, and years to come will be determined by the decisions and actions that you make today and tomorrow. Not making a decision is a decision. We are either growing or not growing. We will not stay the same by doing nothing.

Charlie Tremendous Jones said, You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read. People we meet influence us either positively or negatively. It will be one or the other. No influence" is still influence. I don’t believe that there is a perfectly neutral influence.

The books we read refers to the information that we process. It can be from books, but also from any of our senses. We process all the information picked up by our senses. What is interesting is that even darkness or silence is interpreted and processed. We are constantly processing our environment. Therefore, we only stop processing information after we take our last breath.

Interesting? That would mean that we are continually being influenced by the people around us, our environment, and the information that we process. That means that if we want to grow, we must make sure that we are in an environment that helps us grow. Our environment should include people and information that helps us go in the right direction… to achieve our goals and dreams.

I love the example of picking a piece of fruit from the tree. The moment we pick it, it can no longer grow. It begins the death and decay process. Our object is to eat it sometime between death and decay. It is a simple process. We like fresh fruit because it is closer to the growth process. We call it fresh. The longer we wait to eat it, the less appealing the fruit. It looks different, smells different, and tastes different. We call it rotting.

What is the source of our physical growth? It is the food we eat and convert into energy. No food, no energy. No energy, no growth. No growth… we are like that fruit plucked from the tree. Our body begins to break down. We are starving our body. If we wait long enough, the process is not reversible.

What about our mind? It is the same process. Yes, it needs energy just like a computer needs a battery. And like a computer, the mind has to have data input in order to have output. Our mind processes information our entire life. If you control the input… you will control the output. Sometimes I think some people are dying and don’t know it. They decide to quit learning. Even though they still process all the information from their senses, they have detached themselves from their sources of positive influence. The longer they stay away from positive influence, the closer they come to mental decay.

A simple plan: Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, and then never quit learning. If you never quit learning, then you will eventually learn what they know, and new people of influence will come into your life. I coached my surgery residents to learn the surgery techniques from as many sources as possible. Their surgery skills would be the summary of the best of all the sources. If you only learn from one source, you can only be as good as that source. Surround yourself with people of influence and knowledge, and you will experience exponential growth.

React or Respond

People react or respond to the situations in their lives. When you react to an event in your life, you experience it and live with it. It is your circumstance. You let the event direct your life. The event controls your reaction.

When you respond to the event, you change, modify, how the rest of your life will be affected by the event. You direct how the event will affect your life. You control the response.

This story is about my life and the people and events that helped me get to where I am today. It is not a road map to success. It depicts my map. If you want to get where I am, follow my map. More importantly, decide where you want to go and follow your own map. Stay focused on your dreams and goals. Get the right people to guide you and the best directions for your journey. Regardless of the detours, breakdowns, or obstacles, take the detours, fix the breakdowns, and hurdle the obstacles. You will reach your dreams. You can do it.

I’m not going to tell you what I know… I’m telling you how I learned it.

Learn how to learn… and you will know how to grow!

PART 1

DEVELOPING THE

BUSINESS MIND

Chapter 1

GROWING UP: FROM THE CITY TO THE FARM

IT STARTED IN THE CITY

Dad always had something going on the side. We lived at 934 Morton Street, New Castle, Pennsylvania. I learned to recite my address very early. If I got lost, I could tell someone where I lived. Neighbors actually looked after everybody’s kids. If you did something wrong to a neighbor, they would just call your dad. That meant a whooping when you got home.

New Castle was a bustling mill town. During WWII, the mills produced war material. After the war, rebuilding America was the mantra. Dad worked for United Engineering as a planner operator. He was deferred from serving in the army because of his vital skill area in the mill. He was an adamant union leader. I’ll shut the plant down if… was often heard around the dinner table. He was dedicated to the men.

We could never say anything good about the company. They’re a bunch of capitalists, They hurt the working man, We do all the work and they make all the money. It was not the annual company picnic at Cascade Park. It was the union picnic. Capitalist became a bad word in the household and at family affairs.

Let’s fast-forward thirty years, and now of all my dad’s ventures, he and Mom built a golf course. This was his biggest adventure. One day, he and I were golfing. Keep in mind that when you own the course, you’re picking stones, picking up trash, checking the course as you plan your shot.

So Dad and I are on number 5 fairway, a long par 5 with a larch tree planted in the middle of the fairway as a directional marker for the golfers. I noticed that the fifteen-foot tree was pruned to the bark on one side from top to bottom.

What happened to the tree? I said. I could have hit Dad with my 5 wood and would not have got this much response.

These goddamn workers, he started.

Mom and I built this course and work our butts off. They break equipment, leave wrenches on the fairway, and then hit them with the mowers. They spill and waste seed and fertilizer. Do you know how much that stuff costs? They just don’t care. All they want is a paycheck.

By now, his face was turning red. I must have touched a nerve.

But what happened to the larch tree? I said.

He went on with fury.

Andy fell asleep again on the John Deere and hit the tree. He hit it so hard, the tree bent over, and the tractor and mowers were on top of the tree. He couldn’t back up, so he put it in four-wheel drive and mowed the whole side of the damn tree. I didn’t find out until Russ Sontag told me he saw the whole thing from number 6 green. He was pounding his club on the ground.

I fired the son of bitch, but that doesn’t help the tree. Should have fired him a long time ago, he complained.

Not knowing how to respond, I thought I would be proactive… positive… objective and helpful.

You know, Dad, maybe if you paid a higher wage, you could attract more skilled employees. You could train them, and they would stick around. The more they know and understand your business, the more they will care about it and look after it, I said, exploiting all my business wisdom. When you think you know, you probably don’t.

For some reason, Dad just didn’t appreciate my concern.

Are you kidding me? You don’t know anything about business. You’re a doctor. Doctors don’t know business! he shouted. (Looking back after thirty years in the profession, he and I didn’t know how right he was.) But getting back to the drama at hand, he continued to talk about how he and Mom risked everything they had to build this course. He was making a strong point about how owners take the risk and the workers get paid and can do what they want. Remember, this is coming from a former worker’s rights union leader.

I don’t know what motivated the stupid in my brain. I reflected back to the days in the city when we heard about those mean capitalists who took advantage of and didn’t appreciate the workers. All I said was Gee, Dad, you’re starting to sound like one of those capitalists.

Dad had been out of the mill for twenty years, but suggesting that he was becoming a capitalist was still touching a nerve. I never before saw this look on his face. His neck veins distended.

You son of bitch! Don’t you ever call me a capitalist! I’ll kick your ass.

With that, I got out of the cart. He did too. He started after me, and he was serious.

Mom happened to see me running down the fairway without my clubs and knew something was up. When I reached the clubhouse, she came out to see what was going on. Dad easily weighed three hundred pounds and couldn’t keep up, but he tried. Sooner or later, I would have to deal with him. Mom knew it was bad.

What happened out there?

All I said, Mom, was Dad was starting to sound like a capitalist.

"You said what?

Dick, you should know better than that. You called him a capitalist? I ought to give you a kick. You better get your clubs and head out. He’ll calm down, and I’ll deal with him. Mom knew how to handle him. This was not the first time she dealt with these situations.

After a while, Dad was fine. I would live to golf with him again.

Everyone knew Dad had great business ideas. In the mid forties, while he worked in the mill, he started a remodeling business. Dad took an evening cabinet-building course at Ben Franklin High School and started building his own kitchen cupboards. Formica was the new kitchen counter surface, and rubber and asphalt floor tile was replacing wood and linoleum floors. He and Tony Skufka would remodel kitchens and baths evenings and on weekends.

I was only seven or eight when Dad started taking me with him on some of the jobs. I was a working man. He would have me look at drawings of the tile pattern and hand him the tiles as he pressed them into position. Each individual tile was marked on the drawing. It must have taken him hours to draw it and then order just the exact number of tiles for the job. No computers or calculators back then. Just a slide rule, a T square, and some graph paper. Little did I know that I was learning to read prints and, later, actual blueprints.

In 1950, a $100 savings bond matured, and Dad bought a paper route for me. I had never thought about it, but he had watched me pitch baseball and knew I was not going to the major league. The route had one hundred customers, and I made two cents per paper or ten cents a week per customer. Hmmm. Ten dollars per week for a nine-year-old in 1950 wasn’t bad. I paid thirty-five cents a week for my bus pass to go to school, so I was rich and mobile.

My paper route days were interesting. I ran my own business. Dad took all the calls when people didn’t get their paper. It was usually there, but they just didn’t look in the bushes or on the porch roof. We had to fold the papers in thirds and then thirds again. It made a perfect eight-by-eight-inch missile that I would throw from the street. Thus, some papers landed in the bushes, some on the roof, most on the front porch, and worst of all, one or two a month through the glass window in the storm door.

It was a great experience for a nine-year-old. I met the paper truck at the corner of Ray and East Washington Streets. I put the newspapers in my bag and started the trek up the street, folding and launching the paper missiles. Elmira Senior Home for Ladies was a good stop. Got rid of twelve papers and didn’t have to fold them. The ladies were always nice to me.

Most daily papers were ten to twelve pages, but Thursday was a fifteen-to twenty-pager because of all the advertising. That meant my bag was twice as heavy. Christmas season came, and they said we would have thirty-five-to forty-page papers. That was four times my normal load. So I hired an assistant.

Just picture two nine-year old little boys trying to manage the heavy paper bag. We started to cross busy East Washington Street. We couldn’t lift the bag, so we were dragging it across the street. Suddenly it tipped over, and the papers shot out of the bag, each one sliding on the other. When everything stopped, we had a fifteen-foot line of papers across the center of the intersection.

We just stood there. We didn’t know whether to cry, run, or start picking them up. Traffic back then was heavy when you saw three cars in each direction. The cars stopped, and people got out and started helping us pick up the papers. They helped us carry them to the side and even kept them neat so we could still deliver them. Can you imagine the response of the drivers if this happened today at that same intersection? It would be horns, shouts, and fingers. There would be papers all over the place, and no one would get their paper. And my dad would get a call from the city with a litter citation and a bill for the cleanup.

My growing-up days in the city were occupied with piano lessons from Sister Marion Joseph, building model airplanes, and building anything with my Erector set. I even built a spaceship in the attic and took a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the mission to space. Of course, I fell asleep in the spaceship before it left the attic. When I woke up, it was time for dinner, so I had to abort the mission. What an imagination.

One day, Dad took me to a sawmill to get lumber for his cabinets. I was fascinated by the way the men moved the logs into position and cut them into boards. Next day, I went to the attic and proceeded to build my own sawmill with my Erector set. My blade was a thin three-inch diameter gear. Now all I needed was simulated logs. Hmmm. Mom always had a bag of paraffin wax that she used for sealing jelly jars. Perfect. I melted the paraffin over the hot-air heater and shaped them into little logs. I cooled them on the window seal on the shady side of the house.

They were perfect logs and worked well going through my little mill. The paraffin sawdust was flying everywhere. It was working. The paraffin sawdust reached the warm temperature of the attic and was sticking to everything… floor, ceiling, walls, my clothes, my shoes. Now what does an eight-year-old do in a situation like this? He quits for the day and finds something else to do. Mom never complained about the mess I made, but I’m sure she had many surprises over the years.

Complain? Well, maybe once, a few years later, when I pressed my culinary creative skills to the max. It was just after Halloween, and Mom and Dad were working each night remodeling an old farmhouse for a later move. It didn’t have any indoor plumbing, so Dad had to plumb the kitchen and put in a bathroom. It was a big project that lasted about six months.

By then, I was a ten-year-old with a six-year-old brother and a two-year-old sister. Each night, I did my homework, watched the kids, and got them off to sleep. We would all be asleep by the time Mom and Dad returned. Sometimes I would have surprise gifts for them or welcome-home notes or even a snack. Jelly sandwiches cut in quarters (soldiers) or rice crispy bars were my favorites.

This time I was going to really make something special. Popcorn balls were a new treat this Halloween, so I thought I would make some for them. I knew they would really like them. I just knew.

I watched Dad make popcorn many times. Heat a spoonful of bacon fat from the jar on the stove until it started smoking. Pour some popcorn in the grease, put the lid on, and shake the pot until the popping stops. Wow! A perfect pot of popcorn. Pot after pot of popcorn. I was moving into mass production. I heaped Mom’s big five-gallon roaster with popcorn. I should be able to make at least a dozen balls.

Next question, how do you get the popcorn to stick together and form a ball? I know. Karo syrup. How much? I figured at least a bottle for a big pot like this. This was great. They will love it. Need more syrup. Found Mom’s last bottle, but I know that she won’t mind since she will love these popcorn balls. I’ll even get some Christmas paper from upstairs to wrap them. They will look better than the ones we got at Halloween.

Boy oh boy, these little popcorns stick to everything. Maybe I’ll get her dipper and shape them in the dipper.

Wow! This stuff is really sticky. Some even stuck to the handle on the counter.

Now they’re even stuck on my shoes. I can’t get them off my hands. Wow!

The little corns were everywhere… clothes, counter, floor, cabinets. What does a ten-year-old do when popcorn has stuck to everything in the kitchen? He goes upstairs and jumps in bed.

Mom and Dad came home to the largest solid mass of popcorn they had ever seen. By then, the roaster was a solid ball, and the kitchen was speckled with popcorn. Who did it? No problem. Just follow the popcorn tracks down the hall, up the stairs, to the bedroom. Who did it? It was probably the owner of the popcorn-covered clothes beside the bed. The next morning, Mom did say that she would like me to tell her when I planned to cook while they were out so she could help. A loving way of saying, Brian, please don’t surprise us like this again. Little did she know that this was only the beginning of a lifetime of surprises.

As the family grew and before we moved to the farm, Dad decided he could save money on milk by getting it directly from a farm. Three times a week, we would go to a little farm just outside town to get milk. A bent-over old lady with severe arthritically deformed hands would pour milk from the five-gallon cans into the filter/funnel and into our glass gallon jugs. It was raw milk right from the barn. We would take it home and boil it, and we had pasteurized milk.

How did we survive? Milk right from the farm? Before the farm milk, our milk was delivered by the milkman in bottles set on our front porch. The quart bottles had paper caps, and when the winter came, the milk would freeze and pop the cap. The cream on top would extend one or two inches out the top, depending on how long the milk was exposed to the cold. The original ice cream! That meant that the cream could be cut off, and it was delicious. Of course, the cream on our lips was pretty much a giveaway as to who was stealing the cream from the bottles. Once the dairies started homogenizing milk, the cream didn’t separate, and we were back to five-cent ice cream cones at the Isaly’s Dairy store.

THE MOVE TO THE FARM

Mom and Dad worked each night for at least six months, remodeling the old farmhouse. Knob and tube wiring was replaced