Pod Insights Growth Think Tank The Power of Radical Transparency to Build a Great Culture with Brian Hunter at Tiny Rhino Group About this episode In this episode, I sit down with Brian Hunter, founder and CEO of Tiny Rhino Group, to explore how Radical Transparency can be a powerful force in building a thriving company culture. Brian shares how embracing Radical Transparency has helped his team foster trust, accountability, and alignment across all levels of the organization. We discuss the challenges and breakthroughs that come with leading openly and how Radical Transparency can accelerate performance in fast-growth environments. Tiny Rhino Group, founded in 2018, has rapidly expanded its impact in the dental industry by focusing on people-first growth strategies. Tune in to learn how transparency isn't just a leadership buzzword—it's a catalyst for sustainable success.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 A new phone for Billy, a necklace for Sam. All the while on the lookout for scams. A swipe here and tap there better make it go far. Turns out mom didn't know she needs a new car.
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0:28 Speaker 02 What I've discovered is that most people tell the truth up to about 90%. But they hold back the 10% out of either a fear of rejection or causing more trouble or drama, or they just don't like conflict at all. So they'll give you as much as they can and they're going to hold back what's really going on. But the issue is always in the last 10%. The thing that needs to be talked about, dealt with, solved is always there. So what we do is we say, we need to have a last 10% conversation. So when we're practically teaching team members how to handle these conversations of conflict and transparency and issues, it's like we start with that as our precursor. Hey, we need to have a last 10% conversation.
1:12 Speaker 02 And what that means is I'm not going to, I'm not going to speak the truth in a negative way. It's not brutal truth. I don't believe in brutal truth. I think that's just ridiculous. We want to speak the truth in love, but we need to speak the truth of what we're thinking and what we're feeling.
1:27 Speaker 03 Welcome to Grow Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hammett. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow?
1:44 Speaker 04 Today, we talk about radical transparency. Really, what is it? Why does it matter? How do you do it? Our special guest today is the founder of the Tiny Rhino Agency. They do a lot of work with dentists, not just on the marketing side, but also the organizational shift and changes needed to create an incredible business. Brian Hunter is who our guest is today. Brian and I start unpacking. Transparency. Looking at radical transparency is probably a little bit scary for most people because they're worried that they're going to say too much or they're going to be too something. Well, the truth is, if you don't have and practice radical transparency, you'll be surrounded by people that feel like they're on the outside.
2:27 Speaker 04 And when you bring them into your world, I know you probably do trust some people more than others, but the, the culture of your, that you are building really is based on trust. And a tool to help you get there is radical transparency. And so we're going to go deep into that today with Brian. My name is Gene Hemmott. I'm a CEO coach. We do executive leadership development. We do manager coaching and we do a lot of different things to help you and your organization continue to grow. If you are in growth mode right now, one of the things I know that you're probably struggling with is how do I spend my time? You know, how do I, you know, get really focused on what gives me energy? And how do I create the right strategy for us to execute at the next level? No matter where you are, because I work with companies that are, you know, in the millions
3:12 Speaker 04 and in the tens of millions and the hundreds of millions, they, there's always a next level of your own leadership. Now I say it like that because if you have people problems, if you have anything else, it always comes back to people and how you lead them matters. If you're curious about the work we do, you have just some questions, you want to lean in, maybe even get a plan for yourself, find out what your leadership blind spots are. Send me an email, [email protected] . It's absolutely free. If you really want to grow and transform, you're listening to this, just say you heard it on the podcast. We will have a unique conversation that transforms you and that is my promise. Now here's the interview with Brian. Brian, how are you?
3:49 Speaker 02 I'm doing great, man. How are you?
3:50 Speaker 04 I am fantastic. We're going to have a great conversation today talking about radical transparency. Before we dive into that, tell us about Tiny Rhino Agency.
3:58 Speaker 02 Tiny Rhino Agency. Yeah, we are a full-service marketing agency that is specifically geared to the dental niche. We have an incredible performance division where we help patient acquisition and grow companies that way and practices that way. And then we have a really robust brand division where we actually go into practices and dental businesses and we do organizational design from the ground up. Because we really believe that marketing and branding is not just a public message that you put on the outside. It's actually your internal culture so that whatever you tell the public you're going to be when they show up, it needs to match, otherwise it becomes false marketing.
4:32 Speaker 04 I love what you're doing. I've worked with a lot of agencies and I, I, I got tired of telling people to specialize in, in one market because they're all like, oh, I want to be creative and I want to have a bunch of clients. And I was like, you know, look at the creative place that behind actually solving a problem for someone.
4:49 Speaker 02 That's right.
4:50 Speaker 04 And I can imagine when you go deep into an industry like dental, you understand not just the language, not just some of the problems, some of the mindset stuff that gets in the way, but you really understand the business models. You understand what's working and it changes frequently. How did you pick dental to, for your focus?
5:08 Speaker 02 So just had some relationships in the dental space early on in the beginning, uh, back in, you know, seven and a half years ago, when we started this thing, uh, dental, the dental niche was like an ideal niche. But what they don't tell you before you get into something is once you get into it, you start to find there's nuances to a very specific niche. And I know everybody in the niche is going to say, well, my, my niche is that way too, but, uh, there's just a very unique culture in the dentistry world. Uh, you've got a very kind of cutting edge culture on the gentle dentistry side. You've got a very traditional culture on the surgical side and the specialty side. Uh, they all have different competitions between each other. Uh, there's a lot of unique experiences inside of practices and the dynamics that go on there.
5:49 Speaker 02 So there's just a lot to the dental industry. We see a lot of marketing companies try to come into the dental space and then they're out within a year. Because you really have to understand the, the psyche and the psychological patterns of what's going on inside of the dental, uh, experience. Because most people don't want to go to dentist. So they're always getting hit with negativity. And then that's just a really hard culture to even overcome because they're always being looked at in a negative way. And so it's just a challenge to sell to dentists and then it's a challenge to sell dentistry. And so it's just a very unique niche.
6:22 Speaker 04 Well, we're going to dive in not to the business that you have, but into the leadership and the, the principles that drive success. You guys made the Inc. List, uh, you've got, you know, 20 plus employees. And when we did research on you to, to be able to qualify you to be on the show, uh, we found that you really embody this radical transparency within your own company. Let's define that before we go any further.
6:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, we're a we're a super valued based company. And one of the premier kind of key rules is the only way you can really get fired besides like immortal things, the only way you can really get fired at Tiny Rhino for failing is if you talk behind somebody else's back. And we had a no tolerance policy. We've only had to remove one person in seven and a half years for that policy because we know that when you start to have clicks and private whisper conversations in the corner, it creates this toxic, unhealthy environment where people feel like they're constantly having to compete and then have a second conversation going on all the time. And we just don't believe that you should be living with kind of that dualism of
7:32 Speaker 02 what you're saying and what you're thinking being the opposite. And so we have very fundamental rules that we live by and how we handle communication, how we handle conflict to make sure that everybody knows that whatever's going on, that's all that's going on. There's not a second conversation or a second thing that's happening that we're not sharing. And it keeps everybody very safe, very free to kind of live and do and be and act the way that they want to and need to.
7:57 Speaker 04 I think a lot of people hear what you're saying and they say, okay, that I agree with that. But we don't want to have these strict rules, you know, for some people get triggered around rules. I don't. But I'm kind of curious, how did you start coming up with these rules? Was it really early? Or was it kind of later into the cycle of the company growing?
8:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. So when I say that, when I say our key rule is you don't talk behind somebody else's back, everybody loves that idea. And I'm telling, I was like, look, we started with that. So when you start with it, it becomes a foundational principle that everybody in the organization buys into right out of the gate. So they know from the beginning, trying to institute that into an existing organization is extremely difficult. There has to be years of grace and it can't be a one strike and you're out kind of policy like we have. So starting with it is different than adding it, that's for sure. But for me, when I, when you think about values, I treat it like a nautical analogy. When you're one or two degrees off your value system, over Start ending it really, really far off course.
9:01 Speaker 02 So you might hate rules, but you're going to have a culture by default. And it could be either a chaotic culture and then a healthy or toxic culture. Because you don't have guiding principles. Or you can allow the rules, that you call them rules or values, to be the guardrails where there's plenty of freedom in the middle to operate and function within that. But those are the ones that kind of keep things on course and people then self-police. And what you're doing is you're heading off conflict in advance by having those types of rules. So that when, when people start to behave and lean a certain way outside of those boundaries, everybody in the organization is very aware of it. And they're not so much trying to slap their wrist that they're doing something wrong. They're more concerned about the person and what's going on in their lives. So they can help get them back on track.
9:44 Speaker 02 So it's more about we're in this together, not so much just trying to make sure you're just doing, behaving the right way and behavior modification.
9:51 Speaker 04 I have worked with a lot of my clients on helping them understand, not just to define their company core values, but how to live them, how to operationalize them. It's a very rare thing, but it is, it is quite common with the INC 5000. And they are performing at a higher level than most of these companies. I think there's a correlation. Would you agree to that?
10:13 Speaker 02 Oh, absolutely. Like, that's literally the foundation of our brand vision. Is that we go in and we'll do a brand workshop. And what we're trying to do is our V2MP process, vision, mission, purpose, values. And we divide values into two sections, code and commitments. The code are the promises that you make inside the organization of who you're going to be to each other and how you're going to do life and work. And the commitment are the promises and guarantees that you're making to your consumer or your end user. And so we understand that once we go through that process, then what we have to do is we have to take very smart dentists and their smart teams, take the complexity of what they always try to give us more language than we need to, and then we simplify it. And what I always say is we want to put the cookies on the bottom shelf so that everybody can eat from it.
10:56 Speaker 02 So we want really simple language that everybody can understand, but also memorize. Because once they memorize it and then they have a huddle experience where they repeat it and coach it over a year, it starts to become something that's internalized. And then what you're teaching your team is how to think, speak and behave on value and on vision by just repeating the same thing over and over again. But we always start with the leader because we believe that like Maxwell says, everything rises and falls on leadership. So we start with the heart of the owner because the vision and the dream is there. That's what they wake up with. That's what they go to bed with. They carry the full responsibility of it. And in the dentistry world, no one's really ever taken the time to go into a scientist and pull what's in their heart out and then put language to it.
11:41 Speaker 02 And then what you do when we do that, like every single time we see these men and women who have years of just incredible degrees and practice and experience, just weeping because now finally the thing that's in their head, they can never get out, we put words to, and all we're doing is reflecting back their own heart. And now everybody can understand it. So when they have multiple locations, because we lose, we lose the value drip from proximity. So when we get to four locations and you've got a front desk person that's 60 miles away, they have to have a codified culture that they understand what's in the heart of the owner without ever being around the owner. And that's what that brand language does.
12:19 Speaker 04 One of the concepts I've come up with around transparency or radical transparency, which is what we're talking about today, is the transparency line. I'll define my thing, but I'd love you to add to it or you could even disagree because I'm going to give you the chance to, you know, this isn't my way or nothing. But the radical, the transparency line is what you believe it's okay to share with your people. I may not share about my personal life with my employees, my sex life or things like that. Those are off the table. But I will talk about, you know, what's going on with my son or, and, you know, at a high level kind of thing. I will talk about financials. I will talk about other things. That transparency line, if it's more toward that radical transparency, I see the organizations perform better because
13:04 Speaker 02 That's right.
13:05 Speaker 04 Employees, even if you tell them the hard truth of, hey, we're, we've got some headwinds ahead of us, they rally for you, not against you. What is your, how would you define your transparency line in your?
13:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, I absolutely love that because you don't want it to get to this like you're having to work them through a psychological process and unpack trauma and things like that. I think the higher degree of trust in an organization, the deeper the vulnerability is permissible. So I love that, you know, there's certain things that you do hold back. It doesn't mean that you're being deceptive. It just means there's, there's boundaries that you have to set up within your work culture that don't cross, you know, specific lines. For us, how we kind of handle it is we have this rule called the last 10%. And what I've discovered is that most people tell the truth up to about 90%. But they hold back the 10% out of either a fear of rejection
14:01 Speaker 02 or causing more trouble or drama, or they just don't like conflict at all. So they'll, they'll give you as much as they can and they're going to hold back what's really going on. But the issue is always in the last 10%. The thing that needs to be talked about, dealt with, solved is always there. So what we do is we say, we need to have a last 10% conversation. So when we're practically teaching team members how to handle these conversations of conflict and transparency and issues, it's like we start with that as our precursor. Hey, we need to have a last 10% conversation. And what that means is I'm not going to, I'm not going to speak the truth in a negative way. I'm not, it's not brutal truth. I don't believe in brutal truth. I think that's just ridiculous.
14:43 Speaker 02 We want to speak the truth in love, but we need to speak the truth of what we're thinking and what we're feeling and how we always kind of condition it is, hey, it may be me. This is just what I'm thinking and feeling and I could be wrong. And why we try to do that is because a lot of times we're missing information about the context of what's happening and we have created a narrative and a story in our own head about what's going on. So we kind of lead with, hey, let's have a last 10% conversation. I just want you to know, this may be me. This is just what I'm thinking, seeing and feeling. And we put it all on the table. And then at the end of that conversation, like I said, there's not a second conversation going on. So I haven't held anything back. Now we can deal with what's real and then we can move forward in an effective way of how we deal with what's real.
15:25 Speaker 02 And I think that for us is what has been the best way to foster transparency inside of our organization is that most people are not taught well how to deal with conflict. And once you teach them how to deal with conflict, then everything else around communication is much easier.
15:41 Speaker 04 Now Brian's been talking about the last 10% and I love it. I think it's an incredible tool that you could bring into your culture and it will be scary, but I will tell you, I was talking to a guy one day and his company was, was really facing some challenges, some headwinds, if you will, maybe similar to today with the economic uncertainty and tariffs and all the things that are going on. He did not want to tell his people that things were troubling. And so the people just showed up every day, no sense of urgency, just did the thing that they did. And I mentioned this concept of radical transparency or in the transparency line, and he did not want to see it. Now, whatever happened to this person, I don't know.
16:23 Speaker 04 I'm not going to tell you the finish of the story that he crashed and burned, but I will tell you that he was resistant to having a level of transparency to get his employees to rally for him. He missed an opportunity, in my opinion. And I share this with you because I don't know where you are. I don't know, you know, what your headwinds are, what challenges you face, but radical transparency is a sign of great leadership and I encourage you to consider it, take this and maybe even talk about with your executive team and see if it's something you want to adopt. And if you have any questions, send me a question by email, [email protected] . I'm happy to help. Back to Brian. I gotta just reflect on this, Brian. I mean, I think you're spot on. And this is exactly
17:03 Speaker 04 the reason why I host a podcast, to make myself a better coach, because of the 1,200 interviews I've done, literally 1,200, you're 1,201.
17:12 Speaker 02 Wow.
17:14 Speaker 04 You're the only person that's shared with me this concept of the last 10%. I've seen it show up in different other CEO groups I'm with where they'll call it the last 5% and it's the things to hold back and employees have, they hold back probably more than CEOs with each other. I also, you said something in there that really hit me. If you don't tell someone the full truth, they make up in their head and it's usually the worst thing, the worst.
17:41 Speaker 02 That's right.
17:42 Speaker 04 It's not the best scenario. It's not even the middle of the road. It's the worst scenario.
17:46 Speaker 02 That's right.
17:47 Speaker 04 And so you're, you're, you're living this, this experience. I see the smile on your face and everything. What do you think about leaders that, that try to hold back and then they try to rally the troops toward, toward the next innovation or the next big challenge in front of us?
18:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think they get exhausted really fast and they get burnt out because they've got so much baggage that they're carrying mentally and emotionally. When you, when you live free, if you just are who you say you are in private and public and there's consistency there, then you can face your employees with, with radical transparency and vulnerability, of course, within the boundaries that we talked about. But that's what builds that trust in you and they'll follow you anywhere. But if you're just trying to keep everything under this tight-fisted control because you, you don't, you're insecure, like, that's really the, that's really the issue there is like, it's insecure leadership and it's the most dangerous form of leader there is. Because they just do so many, they have so many bad habits that they can't get outside of their, out of their own way. Um,
18:47 Speaker 02 but you're just making it harder on you and harder on your team and you're slowing everything down. You can move much faster when there's high trust and high freedom. Like, you can go so much faster as an organization when that's there because you're not dealing with all of the drama. We, I always say conflict is inevitable, but drama is a choice, right? And we just choose not to have the drama because it just, it sucks your energy, it, it takes you off-target, it gets you focused on the wrong things. And so you just, you're losing out. And then you're losing out on the quality of your own experience. Like, your culture, you should, like, we spend so much time at work, and let's just be honest, we spend more time at work than we do with our families. So, your work culture needs to be something that you love being a part of and look forward to being a part of and
19:31 Speaker 02 adding value to. And it needs to be, you know, authentically you as the leader for sure, because everything, you know, comes from your heart. So, it's really, really important, I think, to, to keep moving those things forward that way.
19:43 Speaker 04 Hey, let me break in here for a second. If, we've been talking about creating the culture you want, creating this radical transparency, and a lot of times, it requires you to address the people problems. You can't avoid them, hopefully. Uh, but if you want to get better at tough conversations and get people back in alignment, then check out our book, How to Have Tough Conversations. It will help you. There's a free set of tools in there. If you'd rather just download the free tools, go to coreelevation.com/toughconversation. And get the free tools. Your next tough conversation will be easier and more effective. Or you can buy the book and really dive into the details and you won't be sorry for that. All right, back to Brian. I'm going to lean on you one more time before we close up today's conversation.
20:29 Speaker 04 You've got a lot of habits, rituals, practices, whatever the word you use.
20:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:35 Speaker 04 At reinforce the kind of culture you want.
20:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:38 Speaker 04 You've shared with us the, the, the last 10%. Is there anything else that's kind of in the similar kind of area that you love to do and you'd love to share with us today?
20:48 Speaker 02 Yes.
20:48 Speaker 04 That you would love to see other companies see if it works for them.
20:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, and it will. And we've seen it happen in hundreds and hundreds of dental offices that do huddles. So we call it the fist bump. And what we believe about fist bump is, is that you need to make deposits into your team and, and celebrate what they're doing right. Because you're going to have to make a demand on them at some point in the future of their time, of their energy, and you're going to have to ask some things of them to sacrifice. But you don't want to do that if their tank is empty. So what you need to do is you need to build up their, fill up their tank and make sure that it's full consistently so that when you make a demand, they do it willingly without resentment. So what we do is we have this thing called fist bump and we do it once a week.
21:31 Speaker 02 And what we're doing is we're having everybody on our team trying to catch other people on the team doing right. Now, it doesn't have to be a big thing. It can be a small thing. And a lot of times if we can connect it to one of our values, it's even better. But the whole idea is everybody on our team is responsible to have a list of a couple of people on their list to do a fist bump. And it, and it works like this. So here's how we do it. Uh, so I'll say, LaCrisha is my director of operations. I'll say, uh, I want to fist bump LaCrisha. And then everybody on the team screams, hollers, yells. So the energy is really, really hot. And then it's just in front of everybody, I'm just going to say, LaCrisha, I heard that client yelling at you and demeaning you and you, you never broke, uh, your voice inflection.
22:16 Speaker 02 You stayed calm. You stayed kind. You, you solved their problem. You took it on. I just want to, just want to honor. You for doing the right thing when someone was doing wrong to you. And I just want to fist bump you for that. So with that being said, let's fist bump with Christian. And then everybody does this little chant. We slap the table, clap, two slaps, clap. And the whole team does it. And then if somebody else has something for La Crisia, they'd be like, I want to piggyback. And they piggyback and they do another. And what happens is everybody is enforcing the things that we care about and enforcing the value of the person, not just the results. Because if you'll love people and you'll, you'll develop people, um, the results will come naturally because you've hired a level talent.
23:00 Speaker 02 So talent will get you to a certain level, but it's the character and the things that you do around that talent is what will take you from where you are to where you want to go exponentially, in my opinion.
23:10 Speaker 04 I'm glad I asked the question because I would have, I had another one lined up and I said, no, this one's better. Because I, I call it a little bit something different within my, my culture and with, when I'm working with clients. But it's really just a value shout out.
23:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:23 Speaker 04 You guys have some much more structure and ritual behind it that.
23:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:26 Speaker 04 My thought that was going through my head is this is the kind of company that you don't dread on Monday.
23:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:32 Speaker 04 Or any other day to go to work.
23:34 Speaker 02 That's right.
23:34 Speaker 04 You go because it feeds you energy.
23:36 Speaker 02 That's right.
23:36 Speaker 04 And people are recognizing them. And you know, those CEOs that are listening right now, I'm going to just call you out. I know you probably don't need the accolades because no one tells you, you're doing a good job, probably. But.
23:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:49 Speaker 04 The people around you do, and it does set up the trust and allows you to do this. I actually wrote about it in my book. I have a book called How to Have Tough Conversations, which you know, you're watching the video, you can see the book or you can see the neon behind me. And there's a chapter in there, we put it later into the book, but it's still just as important. It's making deposits in the goodwill bank, which is really just praising people for what you want to see more of. And we should do that with our families. We should do that with our friends. We should do that with our, at work for sure. And CEOs, get over yourself. It's not.
24:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:21 Speaker 04 It's not enough just to pay them. I've had, I've had people say that to me, Brian.
24:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, I believe it.
24:26 Speaker 04 That's good enough, right?
24:28 Speaker 02 That's right, because they're that's because they're incentivized by money and not everybody's incentivized by money.
24:33 Speaker 04 Yeah.
24:33 Speaker 02 In terms of their primary incentive, like everybody wants to be paid more, but that's not always the incentive. You know, there's love language. We even have everybody in our team take that five love language test. Like, we do all kinds of testing so that we know everything about them psychologically, like the Wonderlic, the DISH profile, Myers-Briggs, we do all of that and the five love languages because we want to know what what fills them up.
24:57 Speaker 04 Great conversation today, Brian. Appreciate you sharing your insights on leadership, talking about radical transparency and and really just sharing your your little habits and rituals that make your company perform at a very high level. And I'm imagining fun too, because I can see this smile on your face when you talk about the fist bumps. Thanks for being here.
25:16 Speaker 02 Man, I appreciate it. It's been an honor. Thank you so much.
25:18 Speaker 04 Wow. Another incredible interview here on the podcast. I love this this concept of radical transparency. What it means for your organization is a unified group of people that are willing to run through walls for you. Now, a lot of people want that, but they're not willing to have the courage to actually practice radical transparency. And it is a practice. You might not get it right. You might stumble. We all do this. But when you have radical transparency inside your culture, you embrace it, people will feel like owners. They will demonstrate that entrepreneurial spirit that's made you successful and they will grow because of it. All good things that happens in this concept of radical transparency. My name is Gene Hammond. If I can help you in any way, please reach out to me.
25:59 Speaker 04 Gene at genehammett.com is my email. When you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of growth and as always, the courage. We'll see you next time.
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