Are You Under 35? No One in Business Takes You Seriously.

Sean Weisbrot: Glenn Akramoff is the founder and CEO of Akramoff, which helps companies to revitalize their workplaces. In this conversation I talked with Glen about his experience working with his son in his business. We talked about things like. What's the hardest thing about working with your son? What's the most important thing you've learned from working with your son? Has your son ever done anything to make you angry or to make your employees angry? What are some of the best things your son has done for the business and so much more? This was a really interesting conversation for me because I worked for my father. When I was in high school, in college and I came home from China for a year and a half to help him get back to health, uh, in 2011, 2012. And during that time, I was the manager of his business as well, and I grew up watching him run that business for decades. So the stories that we shared were very, uh, poignant and emotional for me, uh, remembering the good times and the bad times I had working with my dad. So if you are a parent. Working with your kid or you're someone who thinks in the future you would love to work with your kid. There's something important in this lesson for you to learn, and that is, well listen to the podcast and you'll find out for yourself. Let's get to it. When you started your company, did you ever imagine you'd be working with your son?

Glenn Akramoff: Actually, yeah, I think we had planned to do it from the beginning. Just didn't know when, or I did. He didn't, I had to talk him into it.

Sean Weisbrot: Has the experience been what you thought it would be?

Glenn Akramoff: In many ways it's been a lot better than, than we both thought it could be. Um, and, but of, of course, it's put some challenges, you know, the, the whole fa father, son dynamic does pop out. And, uh, but we've learned how to work our way through it.

Sean Weisbrot: How do you work your way through that where you are the boss and you're the dad? And so sometimes you have to be like, well, as your dad, I think you, you know, please listen to me like this. And other times, as your boss, you'll be like, yeah, but as your boss, like, you gotta do it. I don't care

Glenn Akramoff: that that's been the, that's been the rub. Um, we had, we recently had a, a. What started out as an email argument and debate over how the business was going. And then father stuff got into it, father, son, and, and it was interesting 'cause I sent it to my daughter and said, Hey, can you gimme some feedback on that? And I think that's part of what we do, right? We, we get feedback from other people. Um, is this dad stuff coming up or is this whatever? And, and clearly what she said to me is, there's no way that if he was working for somebody else, he would've sent this email. And so we, so we started talking, you know, so we, we started working through that part of it. Um, and then, you know, and that's part of it is I, you know, when you're, when you're paying your son to work for you, then your financial impact decisions impact his life as well. So there's that dual role that is very complicated. We do our best to keep them separate. In that we have regular meetings that we talk about the business. And then when we're, when we have a family event, then we talk about the business maybe a little bit at the beginning, but once everybody's there, we don't, um, we keep it separate. Um, and then we're both really good at, uh, feedback. So we give direct feedback regularly and that helps. And then we also take it pretty well, so we, we. Listen, we pay attention and then we think about, hey, is that really the truth or not? Um, and so that's how we got through this argument was we both kind of came very quickly to a point where what we were each responsible for and, uh, we're able to kind of work it out.

Sean Weisbrot: So I've worked for my dad as well. I've talked about this a few times before, but I'll go I guess more into detail in this episode specifically. So my dad's a dentist. He had his own practice before. Thankfully he sold it because I begged him to, because he, he's a, he is a professional, right? He is. He's a dentist. So oftentimes these kinds of professions are trained how to do the job, not how to run a business while doing that job. Mm-hmm. So he's a, a fantastic dentist, but he's not a great businessman. And one of the reasons why I came in, so I, I worked with him. Okay. As a kid. I watched him do his thing in high school. I worked for him in the front desk and in college I did the same thing. After I finished college, I moved to China. I was there for five years and then I came back for a year and a half because he had had surgery and he needed my help to kind of keep, you know, not keep the business going, but to. Rebuild the business because I was one of the only people that he could trust to, to understand it. And when I took on a managerial role, everything changed for me with the business because when I was the employee, I. I didn't have a larger understanding of how things were going, and therefore my input was also limited, and I was also younger and less experienced. But as I got older and I was taking on this managerial role, I started to see how everything was like really not great because. When you're a professional like that and your time is spent in the mouth of a patient, your time is not able to be spent thinking about how to grow your business or how to manage your employees or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so a lot of people were taking advantage of him, but. Now that I was there, I was able to see what was happening and I ended up firing everybody and hiring brand new people from scratch because those people were gonna understand, you know, you don't screw around. One of the issues that I faced specifically was from that first group of people that were there when I first came, was that I wasn't their boss. I was the doctor's son.

Glenn Akramoff: Right, right.

Sean Weisbrot: And, and that was really. Annoying for me because just 'cause I was half their age doesn't mean that they have the right to tell me that I don't know what I'm doing when I grew up in that business.

Glenn Akramoff: Right,

Sean Weisbrot: right. There's people that have, that are patient, that were patients of my dad's that I knew when I was like three or four years old. So when I'm in my late twenties, I've known these people for two decades.

Glenn Akramoff: Right,

Sean Weisbrot: right. I know the names and faces and life stories of, of many of his patients. Who are they to tell me I don't understand his business. Anyways, that was, that's different. So I guess the, the question here is, does your son, I, I know you have a few other employees, does your son have any managerial sway over them or is he kind of at the same level as them in terms of how he's treated within the organization?

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah, he's actually helped hire. Them. He's been part of the hiring process of both of them. So he came in at the beginning. He was the first employee, so that helps I think, in that process. The other part is he definitely has run into that too, more with our, our vendors, more with the, you know, I. Our insurance company, our, not so much. Our attorney, our attorney accepted him really quickly. Our accountant did, but those folks have been the ones who, who pushed back, well, you're not Glenn, you're not, and, and he, he acted as the GM for a while, general manager because he expertise actually is not, kind of like you described, his, his expertise is helping founder based businesses scale. So we are doing that work at, and so he's helping me do it Now. He's, he, we found that he doesn't like, there's some of the things that I like, that he doesn't like to do as far as being the CEO type of thing. And that really helped. But, so. We don't get, he has, he's gotten a little pushback from my first executive assistant, which we hired together and didn't work out. The second ones worked out better and they had to kind of work out the dynamic, but he and I both knew what that would look like from the first experience. So we changed the way we onboarded to make sure it didn't happen. But yeah, it does happen and, and there are people who just won't respond to him because they're not me. And on. And also, not unlike your experience, I built my program. Um, he's seen me build it from scratch as you know, two, three years old. He, he always tells people I was raised on this. And so, um, so he, he knows it inside now. And so when people, you know, say, well, you don't know it, because yeah, he does, he knows it as well as me and uses it. Um, as well as me, he does it a little differently, but, um, but he knows it as good as anybody on the planet, and that is, that's part of that. The other thing that you said was trust. I know I can trust him and, um, and that family trust dynamic is. Is incredibly valuable as you're trying to scale up a business. Sure.

Sean Weisbrot: So I didn't have an issue with any of the vendors. They were very happy to talk with me. Nice. And the second crop of employees were totally fine. Yeah, it was that first

Glenn Akramoff: group. Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: One of the. Interesting things was they use a software, it's a specifically made, you know, custom dental software that they pay a lot of money for. And some of these people come in, you know, I come in and they're like, I, I, I spent, you know, let's say a week, refamiliarizing myself with the software. 'cause it had been like five or 10 years. Mm-hmm. And I had found some inefficiencies in the way that the people up front were operating based on my rediscovery of the software. I pointed out to them those inefficiencies and they got mad at me because, oh, I've been doing this for 25 years. Yeah. Well, fantastic. I've also been technically doing this for 25 years on and off. I found you have an inefficiency because the software has updated in 10 years, and it looks like you haven't adapted to those changes in the software. But I found what the changes were. Um. So I had to just deal with this entrenched old school mindset of these people. Some of them were in their fifties, I was 25, so they resented me being half their age and being the doctor's son and me showing them up in their software that, that they use day in and day out. But inefficiently, yeah, no.

Glenn Akramoff: I think you two parts to that. One is, that's, um, I, I, it is, it's, I found in my career and watched this happen, and, and, and Josh just turned 35 years old, and 35 seems to be that magic number. You, the society says you don't know enough until you're 35. And you certainly ran into that. And that's not true. That's ridiculous. But that's what, and and I said, you watch when you turn 35, it'll be almost overnight. And he did, he noticed it. He goes, wow. People who weren't listening to me yesterday or listening to me today just 'cause I turned 35. I'm like, yeah, it's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen, but it's a reality. Um, the other part to that is that I have found, 'cause we do a lot of work on processes and, um, that people get so tied up. They, they think they're clever when they find a workaround, even if it's inefficient to. A system not working right or the update didn't run correctly, that they get so bogged down and tied to their workaround that they, they defend it with their life. It's the, even though, even though, like you're describing, they're, they could be doing it in half the time, it just doesn't make sense, but it's real.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I, I got a very interesting one. I, uh, through doing that research on the software, I found that there was, there had been. Developed a feature that would allow them to electronically submit their claims to the insurance companies. And in 2012, they were still mailing every single claim. They were printing everything. They were, they were getting an envelope, they were putting a stamp. It was costing a lot of money, and it was taking two months to get the money back from the insurance company. Which, when you're running a cashflow business, that cash is so important because it's not insignificant. It's tens of thousands of dollars at any given time. Yeah. You know, it's like 50, 60, 70, $80,000 at any given time. Yeah. And the, the team had already been trained to input the insurance information for the patient into their profile on the software. When they first become a patient, they had already done half of the work. Every time the, the patient came back, they were instructed to call the insurance company and verify that it was still active. Okay. They, they, they, they knew the information and they knew that it was valid, but they didn't go the extra step of asking, can we, can we do a digital claim? They didn't even know that it was there. And so through doing my rediscovery of the software, I found it was there and I was like, Hey dad, do you realize this is there? And he is like. No, and I asked any of the employees, they're like, no. I go, great. Well, I've just spoken to all of the insurance companies we work with, and every single one confirms that this software has the ability to submit claims and they accept them. So we're gonna stop doing paper claims. I'm literally, I'm taking your envelopes and your stamps away and you're gonna be forced to do this. And they're like, ah, what are you doing to us? But what I found was. The digital claims, the money, the, the check came back in five or six days.

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah.

Glenn Akramoff: And I, and I think that's,

Sean Weisbrot: and literally lower, sorry.

Glenn Akramoff: No, I think that's a, a valid point is that they didn't understand the big picture to the business for some reason.

Sean Weisbrot: Right. And my dad was too busy with his patients to see that.

Glenn Akramoff: Of course

Sean Weisbrot: he was. And that single action lowered our outstanding from like 80,000 to 20,000 at any given time

Glenn Akramoff: overnight. Yeah, that's crazy.

Sean Weisbrot: So all of a sudden he had tens of thousands of extra dollars he could spend on the business.

Glenn Akramoff: Right. Yeah. And less stress on top of it.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. So I, I think it's one of the best things I did for the business.

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. Well, it'd be hard to beat that. There was,

Sean Weisbrot: there was another thing I tried to do, which was much harder, which was to force everyone to go paperless. I wanted to have digital. We, we already had digital charts. But I wanted all of the notes to be typed. I wanted to get rid of all printed, uh, paper. I wanted to get rid of all of the, the clients, um, all of the patient's folders, everything. I wanted everything to be online in the cloud. I. And that was very hard because it, I had to hire someone to come in and help me scan everything, and then I had to format all the data and I only got through like a hundred or 200 charts before my dad was like, come on, just stop. Like every, I was making everybody miserable.

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: But it was, but they had like five, they had 5,000 charts. 'cause legally you have to hold these charts for, for seven years

Glenn Akramoff: right. Before

Sean Weisbrot: you can get rid of them. But if it's digital, who cares? It's just a hard drive.

Glenn Akramoff: Right. Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: so, so I don't know if your son's ever come up with these, uh, you know, ideas that drive everyone crazy.

Glenn Akramoff: Well, I, I think, I think, yeah, I think there, one, one of the interesting things that kind of goes in that same vein, almost in reverse is that, um, while he was doing the GM and, and all of that, he, he did this whole research and met with a ton of people on marketing, and we found our marketing to be the way we have to market because we're just a different. A different. Business that some of the normal things don't work for us. You know, the lead gen and all that stuff doesn't, it doesn't work for us because of the way we do clients. But, so he went through this whole process, took about six months, and he just said to me, I don't even want to talk to them anymore. And, and some of the things I'd learned from him and said, yeah, I totally agree with that. I'm not, well, let's not mess with that. But when I got a little more time and my client. Base dropped enough where I had time. I went ahead and did, did the same process and took six months to do it. And we came to the same conclusion. We asked different questions and came to the same conclusion that the, the lead gen and the marketing people who were gonna contact us were not gonna use, they, they just don't, they're not effective. They don't get our business, they don't care about our business. They care about getting money for lead gen. It was really funny because it was one of those deals which we both have done to each other a little bit, is we, we trust, but we, we gotta verify. And so we, we duplicated that effort a little bit, but in the end it built a little more trust between us so that when one of us goes and does something, we're just gonna buy off on it. We've already done that a few times, but does, has he done that a few times? Sure. I mean, what I was using thumb drives. A lot because I'm going from client to client and all this stuff, and he put us on, on the Google Drive right on the on, and that process was a little bumpy, but, um, we lost a little data. It wasn't anything important and all that, but it was him modernizing us and making us more efficient. But did it, it, it, it actually led to the. First, uh, executive assistant leaving because she just couldn't keep up. Um, she just didn't have the technical, she couldn't keep up with our, our speed of our business was her number one thing, and then she didn't, the technology was, was too much for her. She was, I. Older and just hadn't done a lot of that. Um,

Sean Weisbrot: hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far and I hope you're loving it. And if you are, I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of we, and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story, and what we do requires so much love. So that we can bring you something amazing and every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back to the show now.

Glenn Akramoff: And so we agreed to separate and then we got one who really jumps into it and gets all of it. And so it, it, it really was a positive. But that was, that was him doing kind of what you're describing, driving her a little bit crazy And me a little bit too, 'cause I didn't wanna lose data and. And I had to learn a new system and a new way to do it. And, um, and he drove that process. Um, but in the end it's, it's been incredibly beneficial for us.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, digital transformation is, uh, often underestimated because, like, imagine. If you have Google Drive or Dropbox, whatever, an example, and you need to go from one place to another, all you have to do is log into your Google account and you have it. Or you could even just share the file with your client and you don't even have to go to them.

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah, it, it is been a dream that way and especially, I mean, I, we produce a lot of documents, tons of documents per client. I mean, we're at the end of a end of a nine month. Uh, client interaction. We can have as many as 300 documents to give them. And it's nice to just share the file with 'em. They download when they want to, they put it where they want, and we don't have to send it to 'em individually and all that. And, um, the one thing it's been save a lot of money in printing. Oh. And time. I need time savings. Right? That's what I need. And, and it saved me incredible amount and, and just like. Just like you were talking about the, the folks in your dad's office. I was cranky about it at first, just a change process that I had to go through. But I also know, you know, that I teach people to go through change processes. So I stepped back and taught myself and kind of dealt with, I. How I was feeling about it and set that aside, and, and it's been, it's been awesome once we got it finished, and that's been two and a half years ago. So, and I'm having a surge in clients right now. And I had one then, and I can tell the difference. Now I can do so much

Sean Weisbrot: more. Yeah, you can, without needing more people or without needing to change much, you can just handle more clients.

Glenn Akramoff: Yep, absolutely. It's so much smoother and so. Um, again, that's part of that. I think that's part of that, you know, father, son dynamic mixing with the business dynamic. If he wasn't my son, I might have questioned it even less. Same maybe with your dad. And so it was just, um, once we got through that, I. You know, I trust him to go ahead and do others now if we're gonna, if we're gonna technology up and we talk about it and it's the best thing to do. We just started a, a project management software that we had that he brought in, that we used when I wrote my book, but we didn't integrate it into the full system. We just integrated that two weeks ago so that we can, and it's, that one has gone flawless Asana.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay.

Glenn Akramoff: Nice.

Sean Weisbrot: Um, I tried Asana. I prefer Clickup, but I get it.

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah. Well, I think, I think for us, all three of us had used it. Um, on projects and we already had it. We just weren't using it, and so we've gotten familiar with it. And so I, I've tried a couple others and, and they, some of 'em were clunky, some of them were great, and this one just seems to work for us now. I. Again, doesn't mean it will for 10 years. We may upgrade and do something different in two, three years, but for now it's, and we, we integrated that. We did that in three days, changed that process in three days. Um, so it, it, it again, we've really streamlined that process. Got all the emotional stuff out of it, and now we're just. It's just business.

Sean Weisbrot: Has your son tried to introduce something like Zapier, which allows you to automate different workflows between softwares and systems that you use, or has he not gotten there yet?

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah, we haven't done that yet. Um, my guess is that because he's doing a lot of consultant work, and I'm doing a ton right now, my guess is that our executive assistant will be the one who introduces that, those processes, because she's the one who's. The go between now and that can make her job a lot efficient, a lot more efficient. I know she's researching a few of those, so that's, that's probably she'll be the trigger of that because we are using, I don't know how many softwares right now to do different things. So

Sean Weisbrot: let, let me give you an example of how it can be helpful to you. I know it's not really relevant to the topic, but since we're already kind of here.

Glenn Akramoff: Sure. Um.

Sean Weisbrot: There was a business that I was starting, I dropped it, but the knowledge is so valuable. It was, uh, so I had, I had set up something where I was gonna get leads coming in. I. And they were gonna use a form to, you know, fill out a form. And when they fill out the form, there was an integration through Zapier that was going to automatically not only book a call, uh, and, and then have my, uh, calendar appear with this information. But then it was also going to send me an email with that information and it was gonna populate. Uh, like Pipedrive with the information of that person and say that there's a new event with that person and, and there's specific columns of information and all that. And then once the call was done, I'd say, okay, well the call is booked and, you know, I'll, I'll send them the contract or whatever. And then if they view the contract, I'll get an email from the software saying that I've, that they viewed it when they sign it. Then I'll receive an email and Zapier will tell Pipedrive that now they've signed it and they moved to need to be moved into the next step. And then when that step is done, then it'll trigger an email to them welcoming them for the onboarding schedule another call with this other team member. So like you can automate a lot of different processes in your business that will save not it in some instances. It doesn't just save an assistance time. It makes an assistant not necessary. Right. I'm not saying to fire your assistant. No, but I. I built that, that business so that I didn't need an assistant and I would just need like one sales person and one customer service person, basically.

Glenn Akramoff: Nice.

Sean Weisbrot: And it didn't blow up like I thought it would. Yeah, that's fine.

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah. Uh,

Sean Weisbrot: but the fact that I put the energy into learning how to do it, 'cause I had never done it before.

Glenn Akramoff: Right.

Sean Weisbrot: Um, it was, it was mostly an exploration of can I automate the hell out of a business? The answer was yes, but I just didn't get the client, the, the number of clients that I wanted in the time that I wanted. So I just gave up. Right.

Glenn Akramoff: Well, I, I think it's, uh, in thinking about it, the one of the clients that my son has now, that would actually could work. Um, for them, let, let alone us. I mean, I do a lot of government work and so they're very slow and very methodical about what their, that process looks like. Um, so I. Um, and they, uh, you know, you want to talk about slow to change. That's the way that happens. But, um, but his, his clients and certainly the client he's working in mainly now would, that could expedite their process. So that sounds like a, and again, like you said, that. Whether the executive, our executive assistant, has a lot of skills, including HR and some other things that we use her for, with clients, just allows us to use her more in that realm than, than the, than the executive assistant role. So lessons over, so

Sean Weisbrot: it's. So like when I was younger, my dad hoped that I would become a dentist and take over his business.

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: Working with him taught me that it was not what I wanted to do, but, but I enjoyed the experience nonetheless because it taught me something that I didn't want to do. And I think, you know, everyone, parents want their kids to like, and society wants people to figure out what they wanna do, but unfortunately people don't get enough opportunities to try different things so that they figure out what they don't wanna do, which helps them get closer to what they do wanna do. Have you ever had a conversation with your son about. Taking over your business?

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah. I, I think what we've done is, is actually he works, he tries to work with family based businesses too. Um, when he, his clients. Um, yeah, I mean, we've talked about, that's what I've said that multiple times. Hey, it's yours if you want it right, we can sell it. We can close it or you can take it on from here. And since it has our last name on it, that's where it, it. It means a lot, right? It, it, it's, um, and we talk, we talk a lot about, in the context of my dad, um, who was a police officer and when he retired, did some real estate stuff, but, um, very most honorable man I've ever met, and he's gone now. But we talk about it in honoring the family name. So my guess is that he will. Um, but I don't, that's not a. I'm not gonna be disappointed if he decides to do something else at all. Um, but he has a good knack for doing this type of work and it, and he enjoys it at this point, and we enjoy working together. But if that changes, you know, we we're both open to whatever happens. Um, but I would love to see that. For sure. I mean, we're building it together and I, it, you know, I've taken all the financial stuff so far, but that doesn't mean that's gonna change or not change, right? I mean, I, um, and, and as we move forward, um, you know, I don't really think in the context of retiring. I mean, that'll happen someday, I suppose, but at this point, I'm. I'm happy with what I'm doing and um, I like working with him and the business is, is his if, uh, he wants to take it once I'm done. Sounds fair.

Sean Weisbrot: What do you think is the greatest thing you've taken away from running a business with him?

Glenn Akramoff: I've learned a ton from him, and I think that's. The thing that I've learned the most is that you can, and I've always believed this, but I really learned it here, is that he has skills and, and expertise that I don't, and vice versa. And when you're building a business, leveraging, you know, especially when you're a small business, leveraging everybody's skillset to the max is so important. And it, and like we talked about, it doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter. You know what your background is, you can bring something to the table. To make the business successful, and the second part is letting go. There are things that I did as a founder that I don't do anymore, and he had to talk me through not doing those things, but I'm much more open to let, letting go of them now, um, to him or, or to whoever else on our team needs to be doing them. But, and he taught, he taught me that. I learned that from him. Mm-hmm.

Sean Weisbrot: What's been the hardest thing about working with your son?

Glenn Akramoff: Well, I'll tell, I'll tell a story. When we had the ar I told already talked about the argument, right. That we had. I was very frustrated and so I need to vent to someone and so does he. And so I send a text meant to go to my wa my wife that says, you know, I'm, I'm at a point where I just wanna fire him. Problem is I sent it to him and then he came back and said, fire me. Huh? And then we got on the phone and worked it out. But, and that's the stuff that ends up happening, right? For a good reason. But, uh, but it, it, it's really tough because you said it earlier, the, the employee and the dad dynamic is so different. I wouldn't have tolerated in, in the way that I tolerated it, um, the way he spoke to me in the email. I, I also wouldn't have reacted. If a regular employee did it, I wouldn't have reacted that way. I, I would've, I would've been very calm and very calculating about my answers and everything, but I got real emotional with him because it's, because, you know, this is my son. Am I disappointing him? You know, am I, you know, get into that sort of vein. Um, and, and so that, that is the difficult part is separating the emotion from the, from the business.

Sean Weisbrot: Is there anything I haven't asked you yet that you feel I'm missing?

Glenn Akramoff: Well, I would say that the only thing that is really missing is the joy that we get from working together. I mean, we get to talk about stuff that we're both working on in a context that most people can't. You know, we, it's up. Sometimes it's even unspoken, which is such a dynamic that I can't have with anybody else unless I work with my daughter. Right there. It just doesn't, it's just not there. And so that blood thing really is, um. Really is quite cool. And you know, I would've loved to have worked with my dad in some, some way. And, you know, people say, well, I couldn't work with my family. I've had a number of people tell it, tell me that because of this. But, um, but I could have definitely worked with my dad. He was different than both of us. Um, certainly. But, um, that would've been fun.

Sean Weisbrot: I agree. I think it was fun working with my dad because I got to see parts of his personality that I wouldn't see outside, but being around him also showed me parts of him that I wish he didn't have.

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: because he's, he's quite a pushover in a way. Mm-hmm. He cares so much about helping his patients that. His employees end up walking all over him and they, the patient's not so much, but it's like the same thing that makes him a great dentist. Makes him a bad businessman. Right. He cares too much.

Glenn Akramoff: Right,

Sean Weisbrot: right. And I think, I think I got that from him. 'cause like, I, I wouldn't say I'm a pushover. I, I try to be empathetic and understanding. Of employees and partners, but I also don't allow people to take advantage of me be. And so actually maybe I learned to not let people take advantage of me because I saw him getting taken advantage of, and I told him many, many, many times, this person's taking advantage, that person's taking advantage. You can't allow that to happen. You know, he, he now works for other dentists and sometimes they don't pay him on time or they don't give him everything that he is owed or they wi withhold the information that allows him to figure out exactly how much he's owed. Mm-hmm. And he just kind of takes it.

Glenn Akramoff: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm like, why? Yeah. You know, so

Glenn Akramoff: that's a great point. I think it, you know, it changes the relationship because you both see each other in, in areas, in ways that you don't before. So, and that's both strengths and weakness. 'cause we all have 'em. Um, and when you're growing up with your dad, you don't get to see the, you know, you see the persona that he puts on and you don't see everything when he goes to work and how he deals with, with those situations. And I think that is, that has definitely been a dynamic for us, a learning dynamic for us.

Sean Weisbrot: So what's the most important thing you've learned in life so far?

Glenn Akramoff: I would say that for me, I. It's a lesson my dad taught me, which was you can learn something from anyone and so be open to to that teaching at all times. And it served my life incredibly well and allowed me to communicate with people that other people haven't been able to.