People Buy People: How Personal Brands Outshine Corporate Strategy in the DSO World

In this episode of The DSO Hygienist Podcast, I sit down with the vibrant and insightful Sarah Ruberg, a powerhouse in the DSO and vendor space who is shaking up the way we think about marketing, branding, and visibility in dental. 

We talk about:
 ✅ Why people buy people—not products or logos
 ✅ The untapped power of authentic LinkedIn presence
✅ How DSOs really make buying decisions (hint: it’s not from patient-facing posts)
✅ The one thing successful companies—big and small—all have in common
✅ What to do if you’re burned out, feeling stuck, or afraid to post 

Whether you’re a vendor trying to gain traction, a dental professional considering a career pivot, or a DSO leader looking to increase brand trust—this conversation is a must-listen. 

  Founder, Our Thrive Tribe | Head Unicorn & Plant Lover
Sarah “Sparkles” Ruberg leads Our Thrive Tribe, a strategic marketing agency helping DSOs and industry partners grow with authenticity. With 10+ years in dentistry, she’s passionate about empowering others through self-awareness, strong relationships, and bold branding. Her team supports clients with strategic marketing and advisory services—all with a touch of sparkle 

#DSOHygienist #DSOLeadership #DentalMarketing #PersonalBranding #LinkedInForDentistry #DentalVendors #WomenInDSO #AuthenticBranding #DentalCareers 

@thedsohygienist
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music credit:  "Seize the Day" by Andrey Rossi

Transcript

I would like to Welcome Sarah to the DSO Hygienist podcast today. Welcome, Sarah.
Hello, young lady. Thank you for having me. I'm super pumped.
Yeah. I'm so great that you said yes. 'cause I just think you're doing so many amazing things and you're all over the LinkedIn. So I wanted to talk to you about a bunch of different things. So let's get started with the questions. you work with a lot of vendors and DSOs. what's one thing you wish more people understood about selling into that space?

Ooh, that's a good one. And it's, and it's, to me, it's easy,
easy answer. Not necessarily easy to do, but I. I, one thing I've realized is a lot of people are afraid to build their personal brand. Our industry is super relational, as you know, and I think a lot of people are really afraid to be themselves.

And so be authentic utilizing LinkedIn especially in our space, which if you would've told me two years ago that. The DSO space would be like all over LinkedIn. I'd be like, Christine, you're cute. That's not gonna happen. And yet 20, 25, here we are. And people are like, wow, I see you all over LinkedIn.

And that's what makes me feel happy about myself. Well, lots of things, but I think people just need to realize, what I want people to realize is that it's okay to be ourselves and that's what's most important. So people buy people not products or services, so. If you're a salesperson, you wanna sell into the space, do not wait for your marketing team to produce you leads and go out there and post on LinkedIn and be yourself.

Yeah, I think being authentic is so important. So you've said that personal branding is more than just marketing, it's self-awareness. So what do you mean by that? I.

I believe that the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our relationships, and in order to have meaningful relationships selling into the DSO space, you have to be able to understand other people. But before you can understand anybody else, you have to be able to understand yourself and your personal brand.

Newsflash to everybody who's listening. Like you don't make it up. It's already here. So you have to be able to understand. What your personal brand is, which is what's important to you. What things do you stand by? Do you wanna wear glitter? Yes. Okay. Well that's could potentially be part of your personal brand.

And so it's not, I I probably say it to a lot of people, like I think it's easy because it came easy for me. Because I've worked on self-awareness a lot. I know it's not easy, but in order to understand what your personal brand is, you have to be able to understand yourself. So self-awareness, and again, if you're in sales or anything, relationships, period, personal, professional.

In order to understand other people, you have to be able to understand yourself. So that's why I think it really all starts with self-awareness.

I love that. Yeah, I think that's such good advice. why do so many companies

companies

out on LinkedIn and. What's one thing they could do different starting tomorrow?

tomorrow. I think a lot of companies on LinkedIn utilize their corporate pages and their corporate pages only, so that's one thing too. They like to sell. I don't think that they're creating the right content. DSOs want data. If a vendor comes to me and says, well, Sarah, all of our content is very patient focused, we wanna sell to the DSO because we want to help their patients.

And I say this, Christine, very lovingly and nicely, DSOs, do not care. Now, do they care about patients and patient care? Of course they do, but when you are running multiple locations, you really have to also care about how your, how someone's product or service is gonna make you money or save you time. So I think a lot of companies miss the mark on the type of content.

DSOs wanna see data, and also they really don't, I, I feel like a lot of them miss the mark and they don't see the importance of building, of having a face. So I tell, if people ask me, how do we succeed in the DSO space, they say you have to build your corporate brand. You have to build a personal brand.

There has to be a face. If a company approaches me and says, well, we want you to manage our corporate brand and we don't have anybody, we're not doing personal branding for anyone in our company. I will turn 'em down because the face is what makes the biggest difference. People, it's interesting. I've seen recently, and I was just telling somebody yesterday, it's almost as if our industry will scroll through LinkedIn and they'll see somebody's post and they're like.

Man, I love this person. They, they have a cat coffee mug and they talk about this, and I like the fact that they talk about personal development. It might even take somebody like a week or two to look at what that person actually does. And that's when they're like, oh, oh, this person that I really like following on LinkedIn, they actually do something that could help me.

So it's almost, it's almost reverse. So that's, I think companies, if there's one thing they should do, they should just pick somebody who goes to all the conferences. That's the third thing. Go to conferences. And then if you have that person building their personal brand in between conferences, it's like, that's your, I think that's some, a large thing that they're missing that they don't, they don't see the value in or how much value is there.

You are so right about that.
Right?
companies, there are people that I associate with companies.
You know, by the person who is representing them. So building that brand is so important.
Well, what advice do you have for someone in the in dental who is scared to post on LinkedIn because they don't know what to say? I.

That's such a good, good question. This is like the consistent conversation that I have a lot and I think. There's a couple of things to think about because people will say also in that same breath, say to me, I do not wanna promote myself. That's cringe. I don't like it. And I say, that's cool. You don't have to do that.

There's a couple of different things that you can do. You can promote other people. If you go to conferences and if you see when you go to conferences and you take a picture, say you and I, Christine, we, well, we do, we have pictures and. I, I share on LinkedIn a picture of you and I, and I say, I know I don't have to introduce this fabulous young lady to the industry, but I just wanna talk about this one time that we sat down at this conference and we had this amazing conversation and this is what I learned from it.

I'm not saying anything. You can say a lot about yourself without saying anything. So one, if I share about someone else that I like in the industry. That in itself kind of gives people a picture of, okay, they like promoting other people. They're more than likely they have an abundance mindset. Like people start to, to kind of make their own formulations in regards to, to who you are.

Our industry really likes personal development, so we like to talk about journeys. We really like to talk about struggles. Because we're all, I'm a four on the Enneagram, so I think that I'm the only person that's like me, and there's no one else like me, and no one will understand me when I am not, I'm, I'm not the most unique human being in the world, so I think we're all looking for a sense of, of relatability, and so.

If somebody doesn't know what to post, I would talk about things in the industry that are important to you other people in the industry that are important to you. We don't want, our industry doesn't like selling. We like people, like people not products or services. So. Again, the journey. What's important to you?

If you like books, talk about a quote from a book that you like. If I recommend, if when you get to the end of your caption, ask pe, ask yourself, what do I want? What do I wanna feel after I post this? Or what do I want people to take away from this post? And if you can't think of anything, then. Then don't post it.

So I know this is a more difficult question, and plus, usually when people ask me this, I'm like, well, let's talk about what's important to you. So write down what are the things that are important to you and how can you incorporate it into this space? Because no, this should not be a, I proposed to my girlfriend this weekend and this is what it taught me about business like I know a lot of people see that and it's like, no, you don't.

You don't have to do that. But number one, be yourself because we can all. Spot a phony from a mile away when we go to a conference and it's like that person is not like the way that they post on LinkedIn. We don't like that.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. I definitely think sometimes we, we don't realize how important relationships are and how we build up other people in our industry. You know, it's generosity of your, of your talent and time too. so you talk about talk a lot about relationship building what's your favorite way build a connection online?

'cause sometimes that's difficult.

I never, it is difficult and I, I think I learn, I attribute a lot of my relationship building back to when I was in sor, a sorority in college. Yes, sorority girl. And and I, it's interesting, I used to work at the University of South Florida where I graduated from, and I remember I was an, I was an event planner and even though it's a college campus and I could see people, I could go to their office and see people, I would develop a lot of relationships on the phone.

And I remember thinking to myself, I made some best friends with people that were literally across campus that I hadn't seen in person ever. And close to a year. Like I, it took me a year just to even see them. And I remember thinking, people wanna feel important and people wanna feel like like they, they trust you.

Right? And so online, I just talk to people the way I would talk to people. And I don't talk about, I, I want to be myself. There's a young lady. Who I can't remember the name of the company that she works at, but as a, I was at A DSO and it was after everyone was at the welcome reception and I was leaving the vendor area and she said, you know what I like to do, Sarah, when all, and she was a vendor.

She said, you know what I like to do after all of like, everyone's gone and the vendor hall is an empty, I like to go through the vendors and see who has socks as their swag. And I like to take their socks. And I was like, okay, I love that for you. And so now every time I see her anywhere on LinkedIn, I'll be, if she's responding to something or if she has a post, I'm always like, well, you know, response to post hashtag, don't forget to take the socks.

Like, and I, I make it, I think it's really important. I was talking to a salesperson about this the other day to remember things about. The other person and make it more about them and make, and make it a relationship that's not just give to give, not to receive. And so if you, I feel like if you come from that point of view, it makes it easier.

But also ask them. Ask them questions about them. Don't expect something in return. Genuinely be interested. I think a lot of people will say that. Ask, ask questions, but that's, and I like to check in on people, even if it's not a, i, I had sent a proposal to someone the other day and I wasn't expecting anything, but I wanted to give them a graphic to share for something.

And so I was like, here, I just made you like a quick graphic, like, here, just share it whenever. And they wrote back and they were like, actually, we're ready to move forward, so thank you for sending that. I was like, oh, well, I mean, I was just. Okay. Yay. But here I was just sending this to you. So when you make it about other people, I think it's, or when you're genuinely interested and I'm so sorry.

I wanted to say one last thing about from two questions ago about how to stand out and, and this is like a common theme. It's really hard to determine what your unique selling proposition is. As a company, as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you've experienced this when, when you have a lot of other people that do the same thing, what is it that sets you apart?

If you ask a DSO, what? What is it that sets you apart from other DSOs? We're doctor owned and led, get in line? Or if you ask a practice, what sets you apart from the other practices around you? We have advanced technology. Well, you better or we care. My favorite, we care about our patients. Oh my goodness.

Thank, thank the heavens that you do. So like, and it's not, it's not that those aren't valid things, it's that that's a really hard question to answer. So what I would say to companies, the number one thing that sets you apart is your people. So if you have a company and you put five of these companies that do very similar things in a row, and you have one company who has an individual who's built their brand in the space and they're fun and they're exciting and they're good at what they do, people are gonna gravitate towards that because they know that person.

So your people are, are great ways to help you stand out. So, sorry, I meant to say that earlier.

No, I really agree with you on that. 'cause like I said, so many people in this industry I associate with their company and they're great people and so of course I think their company is great.

Exactly. Yep.

So what's one marketing trend in dentistry that you think people are overhyping and what's one that they're un that's underrated?

Oh man. Marketing people are not gonna like me for this. I, I think it's so funny, a lot of people, and I've worked in dental marketing before for solo practices specialists group group practices. So like, I've seen it all. I man marketers do not hate me for this. But I don't know, I feel like a lot of people talk about.

SEO and how important that is, and especially in the DSO space, like SEO is what you utilize to like bring people to like your website and things like that. But, or, or even honestly, Christine, I'm, I'll put a blanket statement. The trend that I see in marketing that I think that is in the DSO or dental space, DSO space specifically, do you want me to talk about the DSO space dental space?

Is it, what would you like me to talk about?

You can talk about both. I mean, I think

Okay.

things in both. Obviously I'm the DSO hygienist, so we kind of focus on the DSO space, but there's a lot of other hygienists and other professionals that listen to this. So yeah,

Well, thank you. And actually, as I ask that question like this applies whether you are a dental practice marketing to patients, whether you're a vendor marketing to DSOs. When people put all of this marketing into Google Ads, SEO, email campaigns, all of this stuff, even like spending all this money to go to conferences.

But if you don't have a face. It, it's, it takes so much longer to actually work. So we're, I mean, we're a full service marketing agency. Of course, I want to and, you know, when we're in business for ourself, Christine, it's very nice for us to make money. Is it that, that's like the whole point. But when somebody approaches me and says, I wanna do all this marketing.

Cool. Who do you have a face? Who's building their personal brand? I, they say no. I said. Okay, do not waste your money. Let's work on organically building your a person in your company, whether it's you, the founder, whether it's you, someone else in the company that goes to all the, the events and things like that.

Let's start there before, because if you build, if you do emails and you do all of this stuff and you don't have. A personal representative that people can like, I just don't think it's worth it. Or like, even if you bring I don't know if, if this, this bothers anybody as much as it bothers me, but when I go to a website and I go to their about page, if you don't have your founder, your executive team, and it's just like a stock photo and it's like about us, we love what we do, blah, blah, blah.

Like I don't, I don't even entertain it. You don't have a picture of your founder or anybody. IE, like, I don't, so if you are using SEO and you don't even have that on your website, like you're just, I, so I think spending a lot of money in marketing like that is not, I, I mean it could con it, it takes longer.

It, you don't have somebody in this space is like your ambassador. So I think a lot of people are still sleeping on not utilizing. Personal branding. The co. A company I talked to yesterday, it was actually their marketing team, and they were like, we see, we see Sarah. Our emails don't work. This doesn't work.

We need to build personal brands in this space. And I was like so refreshed. I was like, thank you. We see like you see this now and this. Any sales person that's out there. If, if one more person says to me, I'm waiting for the marketing team to bring me leads, like I'm pretty sure in sales, you wanna make money.

So go out and use LinkedIn. It's free. Lay in bed at night and you're sat in pajamas with your coffee, your champagne, my personal drink of choice, your water, depending on whatever it is. Your little heart desires and you just network for free. Or you hire somebody to do it. But either way, it's just a really easy way to to get in front of people.

So traditional marketing without a personal brand, I think is just, it's a waste of money. Sorry, everybody

Ha. So you've worked with both large

large, get those.

and the scrappy startups. What do you find the most success? Successful ones have in common when it comes to their visibility.

That they're real. A lot of these a lot of these startups, whether it is a DSO, whether it's a, you know or an industry partner when they're genuinely authentic and talk about. Their, their journey. I think that that's really relatable to a lot of people because it's like on social media with anything, if you see these like perfect people, perfect.

They, their hair's always done and their videos are high quality. Like, it, it just doesn't seem like it's attainable for us. It's not relatable, and so it's kind of like intimidating, right? But when you have. Anybody who talks about man being an entrepreneur, sometimes it sucks. It's hard. It's not glamorous.

It might look like it sometimes, but it's not. I think people really value that and when, so I think. Oftentimes we feel we have to be put together. Everything has to be put together. I have to be, look, I have to look put together. You know, even as a large DSO, we've got to be put together. But I, I read this really great book called mistakes Were Made, but Not By Me.

And it's a huge book. It's fascinating. I love it so much. And that they break it into different segments of, people in the United States, like one chapter is about like oh, like law not law enforcement, but like the legal system. And I'm not gonna bore everybody with it. It is a fascinating book and I do have a point.

I pinky promise. But like in that example, it's like a prosecutor puts somebody away for 30 years and then 30 years down the line finds out with like new DNA testing, et cetera, that they put the wrong person behind bars. And so now, so now this person gets out. So this prosecutor has one of two things that they can do.

They can either say, wow, I, I, I, you know, like. Take accountability, talk about it, learn from it. Or they can say, Nope, I know I did the right thing. I put the right person behind bars. You guys, like, we can convince ourselves of absolutely anything. And so the reason I'm bringing all this up, at the very end, they talk about politics and how making mistakes and owning up to those.

Can increase your popularity as a as a politician, way more than like, glossing over it and not thinking about it. So that to me says we just, we just wanna be real. We wanna be able to trust people. And so whether you're small or big. Talk about your people. Talk about what's important to you. If your core values are integrity and all those other basic things like please snooze fest, like do something else with your core values because integrity is like a given.

So I think hopefully that answered the question now that I went off on that huge rant about mistakes were made, but not by me. But it's such a good book.

Well, I think we have to give each other more grace with mistakes and that it's good. I mean, you learn from them and I think that's really the key there is definitely learn from your mistakes. So you are recently moving to Utah. So what is going on with that? What has been influenced your mindset to take this leap?

I there have been a lot of things. It's funny, I just looked down at my, my cell phone and Matt, I don't know if you know Matt McGaw, but he wonderful human, so anybody in the industry, not, not like a, this is maybe a shameless plug, but he's one of my best friends, nicest human, and he lives in, in Utah and he knows I'm moving next week and he's like, do you need anything?

Other than helping me move, he's already established. He's like, I am not helping you move boxes, nothing. And I, girl, I'm 46. I'm not asking, like never again am I moving anything myself or asking anybody. I will hire somebody to help me move. So if anybody out there is like, I should, you know, move myself. No, hire somebody.

Save your time and you're back. Yeah, I, I'd, I've always wanted to move out of Florida. I grew up in Connecticut kindergarten through eighth grade, so I'm used to falls and winters and I miss it so much, and my parents and I moved to Florida. I. When I was in going into ninth grade and just circumstances in life and I haven't had a chance to, to leave and sitting on Eric Roman's back porch in beautiful daybreak Utah, which if you, if anyone's ever been, or if you haven't, the house is there if you like.

It looks like a movie set almost as if you were to open the door and it would just be fake, like a cardboard front or something. That's what they look like, and it's not, and it's stunning, and it's surrounded by mountains. I live in Florida. I love hiking. When people say they're going on a hike here, no you're not.

You're going for a flat walk. And it's hot. And there's alligators. I don't even, like, I don't even like the beach. I don't like sand. Sand gets everywhere. There's scary animals in the water. Like, no, thank you. So, and it's so, gosh, it's so hot and humid. And so I've wanted to move out for a long time, but I haven't had a chance to.

And then, yeah, Eric was just, all it took was Eric looking at me and saying, you should move here. And I said, okay. So here I am lucky, lucky for Eric. He just, he commented on one of my posts this week and I was like, Hey, coming to you live from an apartment soon to be near you. So you're welcome. I get to hang out with him in his man bun more often.

I hope he is ready for it.

Right. Well, I wanna ask you one more question before we wrap up. someone is listening is burnt out or stuck in a role that they've outgrown, what's one small action? They could take to get unstuck.

That's such a good question and I feel like there's so many people in our industry. I don't. Props to the clinicians and, and the hygienist and assistants, like anybody who, who has a job that takes so much of your phy, like is so taxing on, on you, like in your, your, your body and all those kinds of things.

And I feel like a lot, actually, a lot of people reach out to me and ask me, either one, we wanna move out of this position, what do we do? Or how do I, I don't like this anymore. And I. I hope this answers the question. I think one of the reasons that people feel stuck is because we, we don't know what to do, or we think that we have to stay in this one area.

And something I learned a long time ago is it's not I, I. I used to think I had to stay in one industry in order to accomplish what I wanted to, but ultimately I love helping people and I can do that anywhere in regards to building relationships and just even understanding that I'm not stuck in one industry and I can take my, my strengths and apply them somewhere else.

I think that that is. Is something important to realize. So yes, we feel stuck, but you don't have to specifically stay in this industry or whatever industry it is that you're in. The other thing that I would say is. Assess like under obviously understanding yourself, self-awareness, because I feel like a lot of times we feel stuck because we're in positions that we shouldn't be in.

And so I personally love StrengthsFinder. It gives you out of one to 34 strengths, and I use this with my team a lot. One to five. So it ranks, you know, through 34, and I really love to look at one through five because those are the areas and so often Christine people are like, oh, well I have strengths and weaknesses.

I have to work on my weaknesses. No, you don't look at what's in your top five. The assessment is about $45. It's on the Gallup website, G-A-L-L-U-P. You can go buy it, but it's so worth it. Is that what you're, what are your top five Can is your first one connectedness.

It is.

That's, that's understanding. What are your, what are your top five?

Mine are connectiveness, positivity, include restorative, and woo.

Whoa. Oh, I could see that. And includers, so you love, you love making sure that people feel like, like they are, and I know obviously it's in the title, but include it. That's really important to you. I love that. That's great for working with teams. 1000%. If you were to. And connectiveness. So you know that it for you, working by yourself, like with, with your own autonomy and like by yourself and not having people around you.

Would you like that?

No,

No.

be with people. And actually, it's so funny. I'll tell you a quick story, which I don't normally talk about myself on my podcast, but when I was in college, I was a chemistry major and I. I worked at Cargill, the seed company, and I worked in their tissue culture lab, I was in a hood all day. With these fans running on you and just, there was me and another girl, but you couldn't really talk because the hoods were so loud. Every time someone was asked to go to the greenhouse, I'm like, me, me, I gotta get outta here. I'm going crazy by myself in here. Like, I have to talk to people. Where are my people? yeah. So that made me decide that maybe research wasn't in my future, so that made me look at some other career alternatives, and that's how I became a hygienist.

I love around people and you get to, you know, be an includer. I, I love that. And you know, we don't know, we don't know anything when we're in college. We don't know that kind of stuff, you know, or what, what it is that we wanna do. So it takes time. But I love, I. I love StrengthsFinder because you can look at your one through five, but what I really love to do is I like to look through the last five especially.

So I have my whole team take it. And the bottom five are the things that you are, that you are not good at. And when people say I need to work on, oh, those are the bottom five, I need to work on those permission to not do that. Yeah, because the time that you spend on it in on improving your weaknesses, I don't even like that term, it, it would take you so much longer, take that time and really put a focus on it of into your top five.

And the reason that I'm saying that in regards to your question about feeling stuck, I feel like sometimes we feel a sense of, of shame. I am not. I as in learning about myself. 'cause it's not just about self-awareness and you can have a whole other conversation about, it's not just self-awareness, then you have to get to self-acceptance and that's even harder.

I am not a very disciplined person and I can now admit that before I would feel shame around that. Why aren't I disciplined? I wanna be more disciplined by all of these other people. Well. I am really good at my number one strength is individualization, and that means I see what's unique in everybody and that's when I want to, to help them to bring to the forefront, which after all of this, it's like I.

That makes so much sense, so much sense. And when you know more about what's, what you're good at, then you can think of so if you're in an un unhappy position, you're burnt out. And I don't like systems and processes. My old boss put me in charge of being a pro, the head of the project management department.

Christine, I didn't know at the time. I thought it was so cool. I get to start something. I was miserable. I look back on that and I laugh so hard. I'm like, project management. I don't know how to spell that. I don't like it that much. Like, you know, so it's when you understand more about yourself, I think it gives you the ability to be on one, accept that think burnout means sometimes burnout can mean.

Lots of different things. So when you have a better understanding of yourself and what to look for in regards to how to become unstuck, I don't know if that makes sense, but I just feel like when you understand those things and you have those moments and you're like, oh, that's why I procrastinate that because it's in my bottom five.

I don't even like it, and it's okay. You do not have to be good at everything, be good at the things that you really enjoy doing.

Yeah, that is what it's all about, that's for sure. So if my listeners wanna get ahold of you, how can they get in touch?

Oh girl. I live on LinkedIn. Message me on the link to the Inn and that's, that's where I'm at all day, every day.

Well thank you so much for coming on the show
We really appreciate it.

Well, it was my pleasure. I love talking to you and your little Johnny Cash vibe you got going on.

Okay, well thank you so much and we'll see you soon.